…his first Grammy win, received for producing the Music by John Williams doc that won the best music film category. […] …a Tony (for producing A Strange Loop)…
Not that any of this matters, but ‘producer’ credits shouldn’t count towards EGOT winner status.
As they say: there’s no accounting for taste.
Here’s the entire article text (speaking of people not having attention spans):
For years, audiences have groused that films are too long, and now, a number of film professors say their students are having trouble finishing films they are assigned to watch for class.
The Atlantic writer Rose Horowitch published a piece Friday based on surveying 20 film-studies professors who shared stories of students struggling to sit through films in class without checking their phones or answering basic questions about said films after watching them.
In an anecdote that gained attention on X, the University of Wisconsin Madison professor Jeff Smith recalled asking his students about the ending of the 1962 François Truffaut film Jules and Jim. Horowitch writes: “More than half of the class picked one of the wrong options, saying that characters hide from the Nazis (the film takes place during World War I) or get drunk with Ernest Hemingway (who does not appear in the movie).”
Professors report they have even resorted to asking students just to watch portions of films. It’s a phenomenon mirroring what is happening in high school English classes around the country, where students might just be assigned portions of books.
Though these are discouraging stories for cinephiles to hear, there’s evidence that members of Gen Z are embracing movie theaters and film culture. Some in Hollywood have dubbed them the Letterboxd generation, and they were credited with helping fuel unexpected hits last year.
As Northwestern professor Lynn Spigel told The Atlantic, “the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are.”
Precisely the sort of hot take I’d expect from The Atlantic, swirling the drain of stewardship by hiring David Brooks^.
But look, I get it. I’m a genuine film nerd today, and I kinda always have been. When I was little, I’d watch old movies and everything about them set my mind wandering. They were black and white, the pacing was stilted, shot compositions and lightning were static, the audio quality was equally too drab and too sharp at the same time. All the characters were old, boring adults who wore suits and were busy with… adult things to do. It felt like eating crusty week-old bologna. Everything about “contemporary” movies was great! Crisp colors, dynamic lightning, hyper-focused Robert McKee screenwriting that made sure your brain knew precisely what to be thinking at what moment and give you a right happy dopamine hit at the end. What’s not to love?
Bless my dad. I once told him that I thought all black and white movies were boring. I had to be something like 10 years old at the time. He told me to go to the video store up the street and rent an old black and white movie called ‘Fail Safe’ and watch that. I did. That movie left me absolutely floored. Shook. I didn’t know, couldn’t even imagine, that old movies could go so hard. That was where my interest in the medium really started.
It took a lot of time, discovery, honing of taste and learning the technical limitations of the decades to develop a palette that could appreciate classics.
I don’t fault younger people for having the same aversions I did. If I were developing film studies cirricula, I’d ensure that foundational education about expectations of the various cinematic eras was already complete before throwing students into Truffaut.
^ Who is David Brooks? This is David Brooks.
Full list of 2025 entries (with links to films that are available to watch online for free):
Pop Culture Happy Hour did an episode on this not long ago. Their picks:
But also, starting every trailer with the isolated piano key F6 (the same note as car horns and digital alarm clocks, specifically chosen to slap your brain to attention).
The Instant Smear Campaign Against Border Patrol Shooting Victim Alex Pretti
Within minutes of the shooting, the Trump administration and right-wing influencers began disparaging the man shot by a federal immigration officer on Saturday in Minneapolis.
Within minutes of Alex Pretti being shot and killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Saturday, the Trump administration, backed by right-wing influencers, launched a smear campaign against the victim, labeling him a “terrorist” and a “lunatic.”
Pretti, 37, was killed during a confrontation with multiple federal immigration agents. Pretti was an American citizen and a registered nurse who worked in the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a colleague who spoke to the Guardian. Video from a bystander shows Pretti was attempting to help a woman who had been pepper sprayed by an immigration agent when officers tackled him.
Pretti’s killing comes 17 days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three. Good was also 37 at the time of her death.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said during a press conference on Saturday that information about what had led up to Pretti’s fatal confrontation was limited, but at a separate press conference, Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander overseeing federal operations in Minneapolis, claimed to have a full assessment of what had taken place.
Bovino claimed Pretti had approached officers with a 9mm handgun, resisted disarmament, and was shot in what he described as a clear act of self-defense. He claimed the man had two loaded magazines and lacked identification, and alleged that Pretti intended to “massacre law enforcement,” while the Border Patrol agent who killed Pretti, he said, had extensive training.
The Department of Homeland Security reiterated Bovino’s claims in a post on X that has been viewed over 17 million times at the time of publication, and the narrative was carried unquestioningly by right-wing outlets, like the Post Millenial, which published a story headlined: “Armed agitator Alex Pretti appeared to want ‘maximum damage’ and to ‘massacre’ law enforcement when shot by BP in Minnesota.”
Key portions of these claims are contradicted by publicly available evidence. Multiple videos shared on social media in the moments after the shooting show no indication that Pretti’s gun was visible when he was approached by the officers. Analyses by The New York Times and Bellingcat found that Pretti was clearly holding a phone, not a gun, when the federal officers approached him and forced him to the ground.
On Truth Social, President Donald Trump weighed in to blame Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. “The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric,” Trump wrote in a post that included an image of a gun DHS claimed Pretti was carrying at the time he was killed.
Vice President JD Vance backed up Trump’s criticism of local leadership, sharing a screenshot of the president’s Truth Social post and writing on X: “When I visited Minnesota, what the ICE agents wanted more than anything was to work with local law enforcement so that situations on the ground didn’t get out of hand. The local leadership in Minnesota has so far refused to answer those requests.”
Also posting on X, defense secretary Pete Hegseth added to the criticism of Frey and Walz, as well as denigrating the victim: “Shame on the leadership of Minnesota — and the lunatics in the street. ICE > MN.”
Walz, in a press conference, referred to the federal narrative as “nonsense.” “Minnesota’s justice system will have the last word” on Pretti’s killing, Walz said, adding, “the federal government cannot be trusted with this investigation.” Most Popular
Trump’s homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, went further in a pair of posts, labelling Pretti an “assassin” and a “terrorist.”
The Trump administration’s smear campaign against the victim was quickly repeated by supporters on social media. Nick Sortor, one of a group of right-wing influencers camped out in Minneapolis to cover ICE’s campaign there, falsely referred to Pretti as an “illegal alien” and added that he “was armed with a gun and attempted to PULL IT on agents as he was being apprehended.” Pretti was a US citizen and born in Illinois, according to family members, who had no criminal record. Sortor’s claims are contradicted by video evidence. Quoting a video of the shooting, Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer with close ties to the White House, wrote on X: “It is most certainly illegal to disrupt federal law enforcement operations and doing so while armed is not only unlawful, it is a good way to get shot.”
Minneapolis police chief O’Hara clarified in a press conference that he believed Pretti was “a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”
Despite the Trump administration’s talking points, not everyone on the right was on board. While right-wing podcaster Tim Pool labeled Pretti “a radicalized leftist” in a post on X without providing any evidence, he also disagreed with Bovino’s claim about killing multiple law enforcement officers: “There’s no reason to think he was trying to massacre LEOs,” Pool wrote, referring to law enforcement officers.
Dave Smith, a comedian who endorsed Trump in 2024, went further, suggesting in an X post that immigration agents’ killing of a second US citizen in the space of just over two weeks could be a tipping point for Trump’s supporters.
“I’m an immigration restrictionist. I believe that we have the right to remove any and all people who entered our country illegally,” Smith wrote. “Also, ICE is out of fucking control. A bunch of pussies, drunk on power going around intentionally escalating violent interactions and intimidating US citizens.”
From what I recall, Fathom got its start by doing live streams of all kinds of events, not just the met opera.
If they’ve moved into traditional digital media delivery (either downloadable or physically delivered), that rules. That’s all the assurance I need.
It still seems like a big get for Fathom, though. With all the consolidation going on, I figure studios would be salivating to get their hooks into Laika if it weren’t all run on private Nike money.
Maybe it is possible for a production company to be run for the love of the game.
David Burke, the Laika’s Chief Marketing and Operations Officer, said, “’Wildwood’ is a testament to Laika walking its own path.” He added, “For ‘Wildwood,’ we’re taking a more customized approach to how we bring the film to audiences, matching partners to the specific needs and ambitions of the project. Partnering with Fathom’s Denver-based team brings national perspective and operational strength to the U.S. release, while working with FilmNation internationally positions the film with scale, reach, and deep expertise in global markets. It’s a strategy built specifically for ‘Wildwood,’ preserving Laika’s independence while aligning with world-class collaborators to support the film’s ambition.”
Going with Fathom seems like a peculiar choice. I associate them with theatrical live streams and low-low distribution re-releases.
My immediate question is about the quality of the picture we’re going to get. I don’t associate streaming with high bitrate anything, but I suppose that’s what the Coraline and ParaNorman re-releases were meant to test out.
I just hope it sees a wide release.
One of the best cinema experiences I’ve had in the last few years was going to a 10:30 am screening of The Brutalist, with an intermission and a head-up on how many ads and trailers were being shoved in before the show started.
John Carter didn’t deserve the hate it got. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it got done dirty.
Well I’m so glad you asked!!
You’re looking at one in the screenshot. Firefox does this, as does Chrome and some other browsers as well.
A bookmark keyword is a tiny bit of text that you can configure your browser to treat differently when you use it in the location bar.
Typically, whatever you type into the browser location bar will either treat that text like a website you’re trying to go to (like “apnews.com” or “ www.wikipedia.org ”) or text that gets sent to a search engine (like “tasty dinner ideas” or “best white socks”). However, if the text you enter starts with a bookmark keyword you’ve set up, the browser will insert the rest of the text you entered into a website address in a specified place.
This is typically useful to speed up searching on specific websites.
So if you want to search Wikipedia for “particle physics”, you can go to the Wikipedia website and enter “particle physics” into the search box and click the search button. That would send you to a page with search results of the text you entered. If you look at the location bar, you should see a URL that looks like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=particle+physics
What we notice here is that the text you entered, “particle physics” is right there in the URL.
To turn this into a bookmark keyword, you create a bookmark to this search results page, then replace your search term with the characters “%s”, so the bookmark URL would look like so:
Then, in the “keyword” box, you can enter whatever text you want to use for this shortcut. For Wikipedia, I like using just the letter ‘w’. (You don’t need quotes around it.) Save the bookmark, and that’s it.
Now, whenever you want to search Wikipedia, all you have to do is type “w particle physics” or “w forest fires” or “w whatever” into the location bar and the browser will take you directly to the search page with those results.
You can do this with basically any website with search functionality: search engines, retail stores, news, IMDb, reference resources, whatever.
This feature also can be used for going to detail pages directly if you have a specific reference number.
So let’s say you’re at work and you have a trouble ticketing system that shows details of ongoing issues. The URL for ticket number q-rt-654321 might look like this:
https://troubletickets.mycompanyfoo.biz/ticket/q-rt-654321/view
So if you had the ticket number handy (like from an email chain), you could create a bookmark keyword to go directly to the ticket detail page:
https://troubletickets.mycompanyfoo.biz/ticket/%s/view
…and use the keyword “tt” for trouble ticket.
Now you can just type “tt q-rt-654321” into the location bar and go right to the detail page (presuming the ticket number is accurate).
And that’s it.
Somebody at work showed me keyword shortcuts ages ago and I have tons of them now.
45 days isn’t long enough to create the urge and FOMO that audiences need to endure the inconvenience, cost and drudgery of the modern theatrical experience.
For this to work for theaters: minimum 3 months, ideally 6 months.
But I’m an art house nerd. I’d much rather focus my movie budget on supporting independent films that only ever get minuscule distribution. Unless one lives in a big city, you’re never going to see those kind of movies in your local village multiplex. Streaming makes those films available in any home with an internet connection, and that’s pretty great for access. Younger generations of cinephiles are feasting. I just hope they’re also finding community. My youthful experience of finding like-minded folks while hunting down underground screenings of rare movies and independent video stores isn’t something that people get to do anymore. There’s letterboxd and discord I guess; it’s not the same.
Has Carol ever flat out asked The Others† to sever their connection? That it would make her happy to return the human race to autonomy? I suddenly don’t recall them ever telling her “No” at any point.
† “The Others” is how Vince & co refer to the hive (ref).
Careful not to mention trans folks…
😮💨 🚁 ☢️ 🫢
The Guardian claims that there are some redacted documents that can un-redacted by copying the text and pasting it into another window. Also, in other documents, photoshop can be used to enhance features of the redacted portions of text to reveal potential characters being covered.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/23/epstein-unredacted-files-social-media
Back when usb was first appearing on boards, some cases had their usb port cables broken out into individual pins that you needed to place in the correct order.
The entity is absolutely, deliberately manipulating Carol through social isolation. The collective knows what social isolation does to people; there’s a million or so therapists it can draw that info from. There are also many ways to perhaps combat it that they could be offering to Carol, but they aren’t doing that. The entity has its own agenda, likely a set of Asimov-esque rules of robotics, serving a primary goal of propagation (with most of the human race out building satellites and radio antennas powered by solar to blast the signal further).
Traveling logistics. For the entity to be able to deliver items to Carol while she is on the road so quickly, I imagine there’s a fleet of cargo trucks following her around, just a few miles behind her (beyond her view), with delivery drones ready to fetch and deliver whatever she asks for.
You think this show is slow? There is a big difference between a series that is paced with deliberation to cultivate a tone and establish character motivation… and a series that is just insufferably drawn out. I remember Serial Experiments Lain. Pluribus is fine.
Having an army of rabid fans who are actively encouraged to hassle theater owners leads to box office success. Who knew?
¯_(ツ)_/¯