Wading through digital sewage is the upfront cost of using these sites. Less obviously, we pay with our attention and creativity, freely providing the content that expands the fortunes of their founders. And yet social media remains an alluring prospect, especially for the lonely. - The Guardian
"The company, which expects to lose roughly $10 million again this year, needs to build another revenue stream to continue on its path to profitability, (said) CEO Nicholas Thompson. ... The vast majority (around 90%) of The Atlantic's revenue currently comes from advertising and subscriptions." - Axios
"The ceremony will return to the Beverly Hilton in time for its 80th anniversary on Tuesday, Jan. 10." (Does this mean the hosts and presenters will have to drop all the dirty jokes and naughty language?) - Variety
"While the streamers' appetite for documentary content has created a new golden age for nonfiction filmmaking, it's come with transformations that many find worrying: Doc subjects are being paid, timelines are getting scrunched, and the line between premium nonfiction and reality television is blurring." - The Hollywood Reporter
Pressing Don’t Recommend Channel would stop only 43 percent of unwanted video recommendations while the Dislike button stopped only 12 percent of recommendations users did not like. - Wired
Kazu Hiro, who turned Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill and Bradley Cooper into Leonard Bernstein: "I hate to see 'This actor is unrecognisable.' It's so easy to make someone unrecognisable. The point is how the makeup represents this character. What we are doing is part of the storytelling." - The Guardian
The Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia printed an article this weekend quoting Allen saying that his next movie (his 50th) would be his last; on Monday, his representative denied it to Indie Wire. But Allen has definitely said that he does not find making movies for streaming fun. - The Hollywood Reporter
Sure, the service mostly died in 2019 - but it's being revived now, and a lot of hardcore users still have their MoviePass cards. "It was a badge that gave you permission to see the worst that Hollywood had to offer while creating a buffer," one says. - Wired
The judge "decided two of three claims that Mitchell filed against the producers — assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress — could not proceed." - Los Angeles Times
Apparently, some people can't predict when a Black woman-led (and directed) action film might truly perform at the theatre. But "The Woman King received rapturous reviews. More important, ticket buyers gave the PG-13 movie an A-plus grade in CinemaScore exit polls." - The New York Times
"The academy is looking for more experienced TV veterans to steer the Oscars, which has been dogged by declining ratings for years, and hopes to establish an ongoing relationship with producers over multiple years." Then there was the Slap. - Los Angeles Times
"Agile in its strangeness from the beginning, Atlanta never lacked for awe. It reveled in it. What gave the series its juice was its willingness to experiment while staying true to the intonations of Black storytelling." - Wired
It's more than just dunking on people who think (white) mermaids are real. "These new visions of classic fantasy worlds and characters are simply a reflection of our new, more multicultural world. And that's probably what most scares fans who are used to white-centered fantasy." - NPR
A new film, based on a real-life pair of twins, aims to upend the narrative of identical twins as creepy, potential serial killers. - The New York Times
Well, you might say, not a one is real. We don't have matter transporters, faster than light engines, or for that matter a Federation. But the whines aren't new: a 50-year history of Trek "recounts decades of skeptics dismissing various iterations as not 'real.'" - Slate
