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
"Austrian director Ulrich Seidl has cancelled his visit to San Sebastian for the Sept. 18 world premiere of Sparta, amid allegations of impropriety and child exploitation made against the director." The film was not screened at the Toronto International Film Festival after the allegations emerged. - Variety
Why? Energy bills. "Autumn has arrived with stark warnings from industry bodies, including UK Music and the Music Venue Trust (MVT), that live venues, studios and other music businesses will face insurmountable costs this winter." - The Guardian (UK)
"M*A*S*H is in some ways the most contemporary of its contemporaries. Its blend of madcap comedy and pitch-dark drama — the laughs amplifying the serious stakes, and vice versa — is recognizable in today's dramedies, from Better Things to Barry, that work in the DMZ between laughter and sadness." - The New York Times
"I was looking for stories, each in a different way, that showed how everybody left the war with a wound of some kind. ... The crazy behavior wasn't just to be funny. It was a way of separating yourself for a moment from the nastiness." - The New York Times
The story enacted by Viola Davis and her colleagues is fictional, but the Agojie did actually exist: a troop of women warriors, founded in the early 1700s in the Kingdom of Dahomey (in present-day Benin), which grew to 6,000 strong by their peak a century later. - Smithsonian Magazine
"Rather than a crime drama in the vein of the Scamming Show canon, Better Call Saul is perhaps best understood as an unlikely Künstlerroman — the story of an artist coming into his own ... an artist whose medium just happens to be scamming." - The Point
“This important claim will represent a class of victims of Google’s anti-competitive conduct in ad tech who have collectively lost an estimated £7bn. This includes news websites up and down the country with large daily readerships as well as the thousands of small business owners who depend on advertising revenue." - The Guardian
Social media first presented itself as a new wave of populist content, eccentric infotainment. But look at that: Social media is now shot through with sketches and music videos made by rich personal brands and consumed by a passive audience that gets iron-skilleted with ads. - Wired
"Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar will not be making his English-language feature directorial debut with A Manual for Cleaning Women, which has Cate Blanchett set to star and produce under her Dirty Films." The director said, "Unfortunately, I no longer feel able to fully realize this film." - Deadline
