Soundkeeper

‘Elaine From Atlantic … She Needs to Leave’ Representative Jasmine Crockett claimed I wasn’t kicked out of her rally. Here’s the audio.

Jasmine Crockett’s team called The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey a “top-notch hater”—then armed guards escorted our reporter out of a rally. Listen to the audio here:

Last time I stayed in DC, I was in Navy Yard, and that was my home station for a month. This is badass. A month early, even with all the snow and ice!

Now they need to work on U Street and Shaw.

#DesiWatch

New: As David Ellison prepares to take control of CNN, legendary CBS News producer Mary Walsh, who is exiting, sent a goodbye note to colleagues.

In the note, Walsh writes, "We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that."

#FilmSky

Tired: Vertical integration
Wired: Horizontal integration

Pappan Priyappetta Pappan (1986) A singer Pappan (Rahman) is killed in a bike accident, but Yamaraj the Lord of Death (Thilakan) realizes that Pappan has a few more days to live. Yamarajan allows Pappan to enter into bodies of other ...

On 4 July, it will be 40 years old.

Added to my watchlist.

boxd.it/8Ceg

Here it is!

“Pappan Priyappetta Pappan?” It’s a PPP loan!

I forgot! I got it from either @totallyfilmi.bsky.social or @moviemavengal.bsky.social

I finally have cause to use it! 😆

There is a great deal of despair about Paramount buying Warner Bros. Here’s some reason for optimism: Almost 80 years ago, the Supreme Court decided a landmark case in media history. Its name is the Paramount case, & it ended vertical integration of film studios. Different time, but a ray of light?

Understood. And thank you for this. The only British media I read or listen to are The Economist and the BBC; those newspapers over there are sleazier than the NY Post. But I do appreciate this link. Astounding. It’s like he holds hosts’ appearance against them, especially women 🤔

Damn. This is a mess. #DesiWatch

H/t: @totallyfilmi.bsky.social

Dr. Jarvis, do you have a link to a source or sources where they’ve said this?

I’ve long been an admirer of your work.

There is reasoned concern about the Paramount-Warners deal. It could mean the end of a great American institution, CNN. Ted Turner changed the world with it in 1980.

Will the Ellisons do to it what they’ve done with CBS News, the greatest U.S. news organization prior to the rise of CNN?

Netflix Declines to Raise Offer for Warner Bros. - About Netflix

Breaking: Netflix announces that it will NOT raise its offer for Warner Bros. after the revised bid from David Ellison's Paramount. Full statement: about.netflix.com/en/news/netf...

Netflix declines to raise its offer to buy Warner, says deal is 'no longer financially attractive' Netflix is declining to raise its offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business, in a stunning move that effectively puts Paramount in a position to take over the storied Hollywo...

Does this mean the demise of CNN as an independent news voice? “Unlike Netflix’s bid, Paramount wants all of Warner’s operations, including networks like CNN and Discovery. That would put CNN under the same roof as Paramount’s CBS and combine two of Hollywood’s last five remaining studios.” 📽️

Not many stories are mentioning CNN yet. Even the LAT and Variety.

PAR bid for the entirety of Warners, including the cable channels. NFLX was only going for the studio assets.

Netflix drops out of bidding after WBD deems Paramount’s takeover bid ‘superior’ | CNN Business Netflix said Thursday afternoon that it has “declined to raise its offer for Warner Bros.” after the Warner Bros. Discovery board determined that Paramount has submitted a “superior” offer.

“The announcement means that Paramount has suddenly moved much closer to taking over CNN and the rest of the assets owned by WBD.”

Paramount Wins Bidding War For Warner Discovery As Netflix Drops Out Paramount emerged victorious in the fight to buy Warner Bros. Discovery after Netflix said it wouldn’t match the David Ellison-led company’s latest offer for the iconic Hollywood property.

History was made today. There will soon be one fewer Hollywood studio. Warners will be swallowed up by Paramount after Netflix refuses to counter the PAR offer.

🎁: www.wsj.com/business/med...

But on the whole, we got a weaker episode of Starfleet Academy this week than we had become accustomed to.

I like Star Trek a lot more when they’re doing Shakespeare, and not Thornton Wilder. I’m starting to worry a little about the overall quality of the series. Just a little.

[bangs gavel]
🖖

a man in a star trek uniform is sitting in a chair with his arms behind his head . Alt: Robert Picardo as the Doctor

Here’s what I did like about Academy this week:

The Doctor finally gets to revisit that thing that happened in VOY that was traumatic that they never talked about.

Tarima came back.

Mary Wiseman has lost some weight. Good for her. Regardless of what anyone thinks, this will boost her career.

Janeway channels my feelings about this week’s Starfleet Academy episode. Our Town was never any good. Alt: Janeway channels my feelings about this week’s Starfleet Academy episode. Our Town was never any good.

I was not a theater kid. I was a literature kid who was theater-adjacent. But every one of my theater friends **hated** Our Town. So an episode that uses it as a central metaphor is bound to be overblown and full of itself.

This is two-for-two Starfleet Academy episodes that were Not As Good. 👎👎

Tilly from DISCO appears as an instructor on Starfleet Academy with an extremely annoying personality, a slimmed-down new look, and a new high-pitched voice in her performance. She says “Theater!” and does jazz hands. The cast of Academy reacts the only appropriate way: Groaning and muttering. It’s LITERALLY in the Closed Captioning.

This week’s episode of Starfleet Academy cannot figure out what it wants to be. I could have used a LOT more SAM+Doctor and WAY less Tilly-inspired Our Town torture porn.

You don’t treat trauma with Our Town, you inflict it. Theater kids know what I’m talking about. It’s been foisted upon us.

“I mean, he DID shoot the guy.”
-Sarah Vowell at a late Bush-era book reading at the Carter Center, FRFR

With the revelations of what the ultrarich class think they can get away with, Eyes Wide Shut 📽️ has a new resonance in the 2020s. But a quarter century later, I’m still trying to figure out what the movie is saying when people literally kiss through masks.

Late 20th C. love just be like that, huh?

Scene from the censored U.S. version of Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick showing hooded, digitally inserted figures obscuring the kinky masked sex at the house party orgy from the viewer. Puritanism is alive and well. #FilmSky

Though I love that Regal Theaters brought a Kubrick back to the big screen for us cinéphiles, sadly, they showed the censored version of Eyes Wide Shut, with the orgy’s thrusting obscured. It must be legal or contractual—the uncensored version would be NC-17. Get the Blu-ray for the Full Monty. 4/X

YouTube video by Luca scriabine György Ligeti ' Musica ricercata: No. 2, Mesto - from From "Eyes Wide Shut"

What truly hit home this time with Eyes Wide Shut 📽️ was the impact of the soundtrack. Typical Kubrickian classical gas. But the selection from the second movement of “Musica Ricercata” by Ligeti, w/the relentless accelerando attack on the one piano note, works best as horror in surround sound. 3/X

The morgue scene from Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick. Note the purple bug zappers hanging from the ceiling, in contrast/resonance with the earlier Christmas lights in most interior scenes

I’ve seen it at least a dozen times, but watching Eyes Wide Shut on the big screen made some things pop: Stanley & Christiane Kubrick themselves as extras—incredibly obvious if you don’t just look at the hotspots in the frame; the suffused X-mas lighting; the bug zapper lights in the morgue 😧 2/X

Saw Eyes Wide Shut 📽️ on the big screen for the first time in literally decades last night. It is now more relevant than it was when it was released, which is saying something. Kubrick turned in his cut to Warners and then promptly passed away, so the buzz around its theatrical release was HUGE. 1/X

For serious: Why do people do this? Do they think these plastic things just go away, like wooden toothpicks? You can see where the rental scooters have run it over. Or is it the heavy-duty ice salt that’s eaten it up?

Also: Who the hell is FLOSSING walking around? 🩸🦷

These things are a scourge.