If anyone’s interested, I love this Anderson short, which I believe was a deleted portion of Darjeeling Ltd.

The repeated faces was a plus for me. It heightened the playfulness and absolute break down of any suspended disbelief. Haven’t seen The Swan yet but it’s a bit of a bummer that this is perhaps going to be the standard approach for the series. I would have welcomed different tacks for each short. 

It would be great if he challenged himself to Dogma-like conditions to show us what the “real” world looks like through his eyes.

(The Swan is live, BTW, at least in the US.) I really loved the pacing. I had to really focus to keep up, letting the words flow through my brain — no checking your phone during this one. This was a demanding but rewarding creative choice. And it also matched the playful, DGAF ethos of Dahl. Keep up or get left…

I’ll give it a shot!

Comedy Central will do anything to not hire Wood. No idea why, but they clearly don’t want him. It’s perplexing given his talent and the outpouring of love he’s inspired. 

You genuinely can’t see the degree of difference between a cheeky twist on the truth in a low-stakes bit and lying about a child exposed to what was potentially anthrax? Serious autobiographical comedy naturally requires a different standard of truthfulness. Imagine if John Mulaney one day just said, “JK, I never did…

Disney has a couple other businesses outside of streaming, I think? 

I love a lot of Harmon’s work but RaM never really connected with me. Still, it’s insane (and impressive) that such a chaotic soul and a decidedly niche channel are behind the top comedy for millennials — it’s like the bizarro cousin of Yellowstone.

He seems to have conflicts only when he’s matched up against someone who’s shining brighter than he does. A spouse outside the business sort of solves that personality deficit. 

Chase seems to have genuinely not gotten Community, but he did recognize Glover as a threat — in other words, a uniquely bright light in an already really solid cast. Everything I’ve read seems to point to Chase being jealous (and maybe feeling every bit as out of step as he actually was). That doesn’t excuse his…

The thing that grabbed me in the trailers so far has been the tactility of the world. I’ve been numbed by the pristine CGI-ness of the Avatar and Marvel films. This at least brings some of the grit and texture back to imagined worlds.

I grew up paying $3+ for the rental of one video tape for a finite period of time, so I too have a significant sense of the weird “economics” of streaming. It’s stupefying to a person who grew up in the physical media age to contemplate how many things I get access to with only 1 subscription to 1 platform.

I would resent this a lot less if they were actually funneling this cash to the creatives instead of passive income queens like shareholders and executives. 

If the contract negotiations are actually going as well as some people think I imagine a lot of these unrenewals may try to sneak in before everyone gets back to work. 

Agents can start negotiating for that even if the unions don’t cover it. I recently listened to a podcast about this being the case now for creators demanding a digital or physical copy of their content in the event it gets disappeared from platforms. There are so many of these new realities that they are unlikely to…

Someone should make a show about a scientific fraud who repeatedly gets caught for faking evidence and, at least in one case, shocking test subjects without proper ethics clearance in place. The twist is that this serial liar somehow has a flourishing publishing career that has netted him at least one prime time…

Just like Elvis is believed to be dead. People see that dude all over the place. 

The movie takes place on May 28, 1976, roughly 17 years before its release date (Sept 24, 1993). Which, for a similar gap for a film today would be a story set in 2006. Honestly, I’d be down for an ‘06 take on this same dynamic. (Terrorism on TV, a Guitar Hero duel in someone’s living room, Destiny’s Child blasting…

Listen, I ain’t rooting against it, and you’re definitely right. But the financial hit here has been bigger than the pandemic subscriber boom era.