Category: Embrace Hollywood

Old Tales, Retold

It is, it has to be said, a strange way to promote an upcoming remake of a children’s classic – to wheel out an actress who boasts of having “hated” the original film, made by the same studio, and who disdains much of the story on which it’s based. And who does so seemingly on-message. Especially when the future of Disney, its very existence, is looking uncertain.

And as The Drinker and others have noted, the glib and joyless ‘strong female character’ trope now sounds much more hackneyed and cringeworthy than a tale in which unlikely friends are made and love is found, and in which a malevolent, magic-wielding queen is chased by dwarves and an entire forest of critters, before being crushed under a giant boulder, rightly, and then devoured by vultures.

On Snow White, old and new.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Writing Overlords

“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore.

The first draft is the most lucrative step in any feature writer deal. A rule of thumb is that a “rewrite” pays two-thirds of a “first draft.” So if you’re being paid $75,000 for a rewrite, you should expect to get $100,000 for the first draft. In practice that gap tends to be a little bigger but for our purposes, two-thirds is a good benchmark (Remember that calculation because it’s going to become very important later on in our discussion of A.I.).

Via Stephen Green.

Embrace Hollywood!

“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore

…Barbie goes to plasticine hell. Diversity hires America Ferrera and Issa Rae give abominable speeches about Latino and black feminist sacrifice, and Rhea Perlman appears morphing Barbie inventor Ruth Handler into Ruth Bader Ginsburg. New Lizzo and Billie Eilish songs provide feminist equity. Things get more child-unfriendly when Gerwig tosses in terms such as “irrepressible thoughts of death,” “Proustian flashback,” and “patriarchy anxiety.”

Via Ed Driscoll

Embrace Hollywood!

“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore

Former Paramount CEO Barry Diller delivered a grim prediction for Hollywood on Sunday, warning that the industry is facing an “absolute collapse” if the Writers’ and Screen Actors Guild joint strike extends into the fall.

“What will happen is, if in fact, it doesn’t get settled until Christmas or so, then next year, there’s not going to be many programs for anybody to watch. So, you’re gonna see subscriptions get pulled, which is going to reduce the revenue of all these movie companies, television companies, the result of which is that there will be no programs,” Diller said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “And at just the time, [the] strike is settled that you want to get back up, there won’t be enough money.”

Well, that’s a story I suppose.

Starflation

How much would you pay to see a Taylor Swift or Beyoncé concert? I couldn’t be bothered in any event but price doesn’t seem to be an object for quite a number of concert goers these days. I’ve heard similar things from a friend who looked into purchasing tickets for an Adele concert in Vegas recently but changed his mind after seeing the prices.

A perusal of ticket-purchasing sites makes the sticker shock clear. On reseller Stubhub, the cheapest seat for a July Taylor Swift show in Seattle is $1,200; tickets for an August Mexico City show cost $500 each.

“I had to get nine phone numbers for three different accounts on Ticketmaster under three different credit cards,” said Joel Barrios, a Beyoncé fan in Los Angeles. He spent about $7,000 on three U.S. shows for himself and friends – as well as another $6,650 for several shows in Europe.

Embrace Hollywood!

“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.” – Michael Moore

The phone call I mentioned above was with a person who works in the entertainment industry and said they obtained—through connections—vaccination record cards for use by major Hollywood celebrities and others.

These aren’t counterfeits, but actual cards purloined from a hospital pharmacy where the vaccines were sold and included batch numbers but without names attached. In essence, they were contraband.

The person claims to have been inspired to do something for people in the face of forced vaccination after news emerged that the virus might have been the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, and that the government had been lying about the pandemic in general.

My interlocutor says they began selling the cards in early April 2021. Between then and early October 2021, calls were apparently coming in every day for contraband cards.

Via Ed Driscoll

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