Movie Theaters Are Upset
Just sitting here, silently imagining the entire movie theater industry upending itself over TROLLS WORLD TOUR. What ha-happened was, the big theater chains were okay with studios like Universal shortening the window between theatrical and streaming releases, which you might have seen with (the extremely good) THE INVISIBLE MAN, which hit platforms shortly after everything closed down. However, what the chains were not okay with was eliminating the window entirely, which is what Universal announced might happen more frequently after Trolls raked in over $100 million.
Rather than seeing its success as the result of an improbable, likely unreproducible set of circumstances (everything’s closed, everyone’s shut in and wants sweet, sweet content because the kids already managed to play FROZEN II a number of times that seems temporally impossible when you divide the hours that have passed by the film’s runtime), the chains are now Extremely Mad online and off about it, announcing that they in turn will not run any Universal films at all, which, considering they ran both CATS and DOLITTLE, really seems like they missed the boat on the whole ban. Also given that Universal’s slate is pretty empty until the new November date for the Bond film, I’d imagine they’ll kiss and make up before then, but who knows, it’s a (cat butt)whole new world out there now.
Listen to This: California King - available wherever you get your podcasts
A second incarnation of an older podcast (You Look Nice Today), the style and even genre of it is tough to describe beyond comedy, which feels like it’s happening stream of consciousness. At its core the show is three friends who start with the germ of an idea, usually some sort of get-rich-quick scheme, but wind up riffing and improv-ing their way through it until they either reach a conclusion or get bored, usually the latter. After seven years since the last regular episode of You Look Nice Today, absent a couple of one-off episodes, the show was brought back this month as California King for no particular reason, either for its existence or the name change. As the original show had a monthly cadence, we’re still a week away from finding out whether this was a one-time thing or a new ongoing concern, but regardless I was thrilled to have it back, even once, and highly recommend it.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear had to apologize the other day after a press conference where, while explaining why the state was slow in disbursing unemployment benefits he brought up as an example of fraud people using fake names like Tupac Shakur. And, in an “as it turns out” you probably saw coming from forever away, other people on this planet were and are named Tupac Shakur, and Beshear had to call and apologize to Mr. Shakur. Now quit loafing around and run Mr. Madiq his check please.
In other hip-hop news, someone used the works of Jay-Z to do one of those deep-fake things where his voice is used to read the Book of Genesis, among other things. Those other things also include “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and some dialogue from the Star Wars films, if that will also tempt you into clicking the link.
Taking a break from his work at 1-877-Koffinz4Kids, Elon Musk has been popping out to say just the dumbest shit about our current situation, and is unsurprisingly on the frontlines of demanding that we reopen the country. This after his attempts to help hospitals this time by promising ventilators and sending along 50,000 party horns or something who even cares. This must be what it was like to not be a fan of Kanye West back when he was melting down with regularity and, I’ve gotta say, I hate it, and long for the day when we look back on the time when an army of people were ready to die for Elon and considered him intelligent because he once asked “what if wallet, but Internet?”.
Imagine the number of hours spent and hairs pulled over this puzzle in the Baltimore Sun, only to later find this correction:
That is, if you find it at all, as I assume the puzzle drove a non-zero number of people to madness, and they’ve changed their names and moved off to the woods.
Listen, with all the money you spend on films, there are times when you have to find corners to cut, also that might be a common name, I’m not too versed on the culture:
The fact that @DougLiman spent $60 million on making ‘The Bourne Identity’ and then made Matt Damon’s Russian name ‘Ashchf Lshtshfum.’
Ross Miller @rosstmiller
Friday film question: what's a tiny little detail from a movie, or trend in movies, that bugs the hell out of you? Not anything major, just specific.Finally, I’m not a student of history, but this seems like a preeeeetty big thing to overlook, or not even research a little further before trying to play “gotcha” with a stranger online:
At least you acknowledge when you’ve lost.
