“A leisure class of the newly vaccinated will mean that hotels, catering services and other businesses will be scrambling to employ bartenders, servers and other staff who are also vaccinated, the better to ensure the safety of all. A vaccination will begin to represent not only safety from the virus but also, for some, a leg up in the job market.” – The New York Times
Making Film That’s Both Political And Personal
Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero, who directed and wrote the new film Identifying Features, “don’t believe Mexican storytellers have the luxury of creating apolitically. Not at a moment in history when thousands disappear or are murdered as a consequence of drug-related violence and the widespread state complicity that enables it. Neither of them set out to make movies with a social justice angle, but coming of age as artists in this environment urged them to confront the appalling national trauma.” – Los Angeles Times
Walter Bernstein, Blacklisted And Celebrated Filmmaker, 101
Bernstein’s “career as a top film and television screenwriter was derailed by the McCarthy-era blacklist, and decades later [he] turned that experience into one of his best-known films, The Front.” – The New York Times
The Internet Is Shaping, ANd Changing, The Novel
Can a novel be, or feel, contemporary without references to doomscrolling or at least brushing up against social media? “While the internet and mobile phones initially posed problems for fiction writers – not least for their potential to destroy traditional plots of desire and obstruction (chance encounters, missed connections, quests), the dangers of such instant gratification increasingly appear to spark the plot itself.” – The Guardian (UK)
Whiners Didn’t Like A New Star Wars Host’s Support Of Black Lives Matter
The official Star Wars account (and thus, Disney) is backing its Star Wars: The High Republic Show host Krystina Arielle, a Black woman who tweeted last summer in support of Black Lives Matter. – BBC
The Backstage Details Of That Pandemic Inauguration Gala Spectacular
The producer of the Celebrating America gala had to be very cautious, and very (very) flexible: “Our plans were carved in Jello. Everything was moldable. In a way, it makes it tenfold harder, but in a way it’s a little freeing because you’re not stuck into shoehorning into the things that exist. The pandemic also caused us to figure out how to not draw a crowd and how to build a show without drawing a crowd, which is against every instinct we have.” – Variety
Turns Out Netflix Has A Vice President Of Inclusion Strategy
That’s a long way to say the global creator and distributor of streaming (and don’t forget DVD) content wants, and needs, to diversify the voices making its content. That’s where Vernā Myers comes in. – Los Angeles Times
Larry King, Interviewer Of Darn Near Everyone, 87
King “shot the breeze with presidents and psychics, movie stars and malefactors — anyone with a story to tell or a pitch to make — in a half-century on radio and television, including 25 years as the host of CNN’s globally popular Larry King Live.” – The New York Times