Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Thanks to sustained, legitimate outrage from people on the Internet and a major ethical violation, there will be one fewer outlet for white supremacists to plead their case to the American people. On Friday, A&E briefly changed the name of its eight-episode series from Generation KKK to Escaping the KKK: A Documentary Series Exposing Hate…
Is Collateral Beauty the worst movie of the year? Those were the whispers I heard before I headed into a screening this week, on the Christmasy Upper West Side of Manhattan. (Though, being just a few blocks north of the Trump International Hotel & Tower makes it hard to feel Christmasy, or really anything but…
There’s a treat in store for anyone who takes a perverse pleasure in seeing truly terrible films, because Hollywood’s latest video-game adaptation, Assassin’s Creed, is a Christmas turkey with all the trimmings. That may not seem too surprising, given that most films based on video games are awful, but this one isn’t a shoddy cash-in,…
Members of the secret Facebook group Pantsuit Nation gathered in front of the White House to take pictures and show support on Election Day for Hillary Clinton. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times When Libby Chamberlain, the creator of the pro-Hillary Clinton Facebook group Pantsuit Nation, announced this week that she plans to publish a…
IN LATE 1994, LUCASFILM HELD A SERIES OF TOP-SECRET MEETINGS with Star Warslicensees. On the agenda: how to invigorate a lucrative movie franchise that hadn’t released a movie for more than a decade. Out of those brainstorming sessions — attended by Bantam author Steve Perry and representatives from LucasArts, among others — emerged a 25-page outline for…
Nothing goes out of date more quickly than films set in the future. Big-screen visions of tomorrow always reflect the era in which they were made – hence the disco outfits in Flash Gordon. Most soon become quaint relics rather than uncanny prophecies of the shape of things to come. But then, on the other…
“That’s L.A.—they worship everything and they value nothing,” sighs Ryan Gosling’s La La Land character Sebastian. I’m not sure if this is a critique or a mission statement. Perhaps it’s both. Certainly, a movie that forces you to endure Gosling and Emma Stone sing multiple songs is trading in the crass depths of celebrity culture….
“A MASTERPIECE” reads the poster of Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea in a font larger than the title. It’s a font so large that the blur of motion doesn’t render it illegible—it’s in, I think, every subway station along New York’s L line, which means I’m confronted at least a few times on most…
Media center-infused smart speakers and Bluetooth speakers are pretty common these days, but over on Hackaday, user Carlo Maria Curinga made one of the slickest looking little speakers we’ve seen yet. The hardware here includes a Raspberry Pi, a DAC, an amp, speaker, and a little LED matrix for visual feedback. On the software end,…
Screenshot via Columbia Pictures After nearly a year of hot and heavy anticipation, the Cruel Intentions reboot that we didn’t think we wanted until we really, really did is officially dead in the water. Deadline reports that the series in its current incarnation is officially dead, but rumors abound that Sony TV might reinvigorate the…