“Although headlines focused on Net Neutrality, the Trump FCC did a lot more than destroy open internet rules. It walked away from its authority under Title II of the Communications Act — and thereby undermined its authority to protect our communication rights.”

“Saul Bass’ work in film—his title sequences especially, but also his holistic approach to film branding—revolutionized film graphics. In an almost sixty-year career he only made some twenty-five film posters that were actually used commercially (and at least ten of those were for Otto Preminger) but his most famous designs are so iconic and have been so consistently referenced and plagiarized in the half-century since they were made that his impact and reputation as a movie poster designer is unimpeachable.”

Behind The Dangerous Nonsense of The Pandemic Fake Documentary Infesting YouTube And Facebook

Shelly Fabares: “I laughed out loud. Talk about the things he doesn’t know. Donna Reed would have scared the living… well, you know. On ‘The Donna Reed Show’—on which I played her daughter—the real Donna Reed was also a great, savvy, brilliant woman who was as good at calling out fakes as she was at standing up to injustice. Not only a fabulous, award-winning actress, she was a tough-minded, very successful producer and a proud Republican who fought nuclear power, actively opposed the war in Vietnam, campaigned for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 election, and was one of the founders of Another Mother for Peace. If Donna could ask Mr. Trump a question today, I guarantee it would be one he’d try to dodge by calling her ‘angry’ and a ‘nasty woman.'”

Trailering Saul Bass At 100 (four-minute video)

Celebrating Tom Of Finland At 100

“Germany’s largest state has unveiled plans to reopen movie theaters as the local economy [makes the] transition from lockdown.”

“Writing a screenplay would be a confusing endeavor right now. Would it have to take place prior to 2020? I think so. At least in my genre. They keep saying we’re only in the second inning of this pandemic, so this story has a way to go.”
Nancy Meyers On Quarantine Instagram And Her Kitchen Island Unto Itself

“Traditional pay TV subscriptions fell by a record 1.8 million in the first quarter, the worst quarterly result on record, bringing the annual rate of decline to 7.6 percent, also a record. With sports off the air, and with the tsunami of unemployment beginning to hit, these numbers will get worse in the second quarter.”

Endeavor-William Morris Endeavor Lays Off A Further Twenty Percent Of Its 1,500 Employees

Civic Radar: Tenet 7/17?

“Novels and movies that show us how things are, things that are thoughtful and reflective. TV is just a stream of replaceable, empty nonsense, even in its so-called prestige form. Because the crisis is so intense, however, it is a paradox that now it is hard to concentrate on the kind of thinking we all have to do. Movies help with that more than novels, I think, because they focus concentration more for a set amount of time, and they feel less lonely right now, when many people are home by themselves. Novels need more peacefulness. It’s harder to read now because reading is a choice to be alone. Now being alone is not a choice.”

“We’re sorry to hear that any of our festival attendees were unwell either during or after our January edition. We are not aware of any confirmed festival-connected cases of [virus].”
“Logic dictates that they most probably did have it. With Sundance, you’ve got the perfect formula for this virus to really go to town and contaminate everybody.”
Sundance: Early Virus Petri Dish?

“He’s 61 now. He is still so handsome. His hair is still blond. His eyes are still the unimaginable green of Oregon grass right after the rain. His jaw is still the main event — the nasolabial area of his cheek bookending the inferior jowl so that his superior jowl appears sunken and his face takes on romantic geological proportions. He was wearing a very heavy turquoise and coral necklace that his mother, who died last year, wore for 20 years straight, along with her turquoise bracelet.”
Here, Read Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Magnificent NYT Magazine Profile Of Val Kilmer

“Remaining an Amazon VP would have meant, in effect, signing off on actions I despised. So I resigned. Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.”

“Their friendship both defies and fulfills the social codes and political expectations that govern their interactions. The ruling class likes to imagine a state of familial harmony between those who own the land and those who toil on it, but not necessarily the free and easy companionship that Olmo and Alfredo sometimes enjoy. And the enmity that socialist theory posits between capital and labor is largely a structural, impersonal matter rather than a drama of sexual jealousy and fraternal treachery. Olmo and Alfredo, in other words, don’t behave like allegorical figures. Thank God — or Marx, or Bertolucci — for that. 1900 is not a bad history lesson, though it does take liberties with the timeline and the record.”
A. O. Scott On Bertolucci’s Novecento (1900)

Jay Babcock on Indie Music Venues: “I would imagine they’re all goners, save those who own the building or have an angel who will float them the rent indefinitely. Brutal.”

Charlie Brooker: “I’ve been busy, doing things. I don’t know what I can say about what I’m doing and not doing. At the moment, I don’t know what stomach there would be for stories about societies falling apart, so I’m not working away on one of those. I’m sort of keen to revisit my comic skill set, so I’ve been writing scripts aimed at making myself laugh.”

“Kraftwerk pioneered the idea of a synthesizer group that didn’t pretend to be anything else, challenging the boundaries between organic and artificial sounds. Florian Schneider: ‘We don’t make a distinction between an acoustic instrument as a source of sound and any sound in the air outside or on a manufactured tape. It’s all electric energy, anyway.'”

“Despite public commitments to diversity, leaders, directors and board members of Australia’s major arts, screen, and cultural bodies are overwhelmingly from non-migrant backgrounds, a landmark survey has found. More than half of the nation’s museums, music and opera companies, screen and theatre companies have no people of diverse cultural or linguistic heritage among their board members, award panels and executives.”