PicoBlog

I clicked on a bunch of links to outlets from The New York Times to BBC to The Guardian and on today, looking for a simple transcription of Jonathan Glazer’s brief acceptance speech for The Zone of Interest at last night’s Oscar show. Couldn’t find one. Every outlet seemed compelled to chop up the text with editorial that told or led readers to what to ma… ncG1vNJzZmickau2pbzOpZinnF6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6tn5tlZWWBbrbOp5itoJGjeqi4wLOcq6tdpMCkrdFmqqmdlZi1

“Have you watched Baby Reindeer?” I texted an actress friend of mine. “He's getting bad press for exposing his stalker,” she responded, referencing the series writer, creator and star Richard Gadd and some ancillary press he’s gotten around the series, which is based on his own life. There’s a particularly bizarre media fixation on figuring out who the characters in the series’ real-life counterparts are. My friend, who hadn’t yet seen the show, continued: “I saw a producer on Instagram talking about how that woman will never be able to have a normal life.

The soundtrack album for Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers is one of the most notable al­bums of 1994—as an album. “Produced, conceived, and assembled” by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and issued on nothing/Interscope, this project can be taken as a work as personal as the movie itself. On the record, the musical narrative is so vivid it breaks the tyranny that the visual element almost always exercises over sound in a film.

This Friday, April 12th, Netflix will debut its reboot/spinoff of the 1970s hit sitcom Good Times, and if the trailer is any indication, the late Esther Rolle is turning in her grave. The original Good Times was a powerful portrayal of an intact, loving, strong, God-fearing Black family and a great source of pride and redemption for Black Americans who rarely saw accurate depictions of themselves on screen. Yes. Even despite their high marriage rates from the end of the Civil War through the 1950s, there had not been a Black nuclear family on television until Good Times aired in 1974.

Welcome to Part 5 of Six Degrees of Plácido Domingo, where we’ll be exploring opera’s current #MeToo reckoning through four centuries of misogyny and misconduct in the genre’s history — onstage and off. Catch up with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 for full effect. As The Great Caruso lays it out, Enrico Caruso met Dorothy Park Benjamin shortly before his Met debut. The heavily-fictionalized 1951 biopic presents the introduction as a comedy of errors between Caruso, what’s seemingly a teenaged Dorothy (though the sailor dress school uniform doesn’t do much to make 23-year–old Ann Blyth look so young), and her father, the aristocratic and autocratic Park Benjamin.

Nearly two weeks into July, I know what you want and, frankly, demand this time of year. Fireworks! The player movement kind. Don't worry. We will be dissecting that hoopla together right here, very soon, as the NBA calendar slowly recalibrates to something resembling normalcy. In the interim, I'd like to tell you more about my big move. Today marks the formal launch of a landmark in my career: Direct-to-you Stein Line publishing.

This week is Holocaust Education Week. In the wake of an at least 400% rise in Antisemitism in the last three weeks, it has been a struggle to even begin approaching what to say this year. But, in the last few days, my mind has been wandering frequently to a 2019 project by Israeli tech entrepreneur and filmmaker, Mati Kochavi. Rather than creating a traditional film, Kochavi used his source material: the diary of Eva Heyman, a 13-year old Hungarian girl in 1944, to show what it would have looked like if a Jewish girl during the Holocaust had social media.

Yesterday, I explained that I’d be sharing certain excerpts from my thesis—particularly the points that I felt were salient to our ongoing, public discussions around religion. I will be wrapping up this segment of the newsletter by the weekend, when I’ll officially be past Finals season and onto graduation. (Sorry to be too religious, but Hallelujah!) This week, reproductive justice organizers protested outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which prompted outrage in the media and swift funding to protect SCOTUS by our legislature.

I haven’t seen one in decades, but I remember watching them with my sister when we were really young. Though they occasionally had a message about scholarship and careers, most of the screen time was dedicated to beautiful young women parading around the stage in ball gowns and bathing suits. But as I was looking up something about the origin of the Miss USA pageant (which was my fave), I stumbled upon an article about the “most badass Miss America,” Yolande Betbeze.