Being a naturalized citizen of the Washington area, I have followed the saga of the Silver Line for, well, decades. The fact that it exists and runs all the way to Dulles Airport is a fact that still doesn’t quite seem real. This video gives a relatively quick explanation of all the twists and turns it took to get there. Now if you’re a DC-area denizen like me, you might wonder about a local perspective,…
As mentioned the other week, Star Trek: Discovery has begun its final season. One of the highlights of the series for me has been the character of Saru, played by Doug Jones. There are a lot of actors whose mere presence bodes well for a production, but Doug Jones is one who historically has done so with his physical presence. In fact, one one level, he’s harder to spot than Gary Oldman, because while Gary…
I came across Javier Grillo-Marxuach’s “Eleven Laws of Showrunning” in the context of the entertainment industry not having the best management training for showrunners, the creative captains who steer a narrative show through all aspects of pre-production, production, and post-production. One of the notions raised in yesterday’s post was the fact that, well, a lot of people in a lot of industries are promoted to a management position… and the results are less than ideal.…
One of the nice outputs of reading Maureen Ryan’s Burn it Down, that I referenced last week, was to learn about Javier Grillo-Marxuach’s guide “Eleven Laws of Showrunning.” (PDF link) This guide was mentioned in the context of needing good management. So many showrunners are writers who have created the ideas of the show and are expert at both writing and solving writing problems, but they so often have zero managerial experience. Not only that,…
While I was covering the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes last year, an obvious question for a follow-up was what the future of Hollywood would be. While there’s certainly been a lot of pieces since the end of the strikes, one of the conversations I found that touched on this was with Adam Conover on his Factually podcast. It’s from August of last year, arguably during the height of the strikes. I actually linked to it…
I really should have posted this back in January when New Year’s Resolutions were top of mind… or perhaps when, here in the States, we sprung forward for Daylight Saving Time. However, whether or not our collection of Mason jars in the cupboard can successfully store daylight, having routines is a good idea… and certainly we’ve all heard about the importance of morning routines. In fact, go-getters who manage their extroversion without caffeine can be…
I’ve been working on additional film industry posts, but in the meantime, this brief article about an adjacent industry caught my eye. Video games are a huge business — and from talking with some industry folks here and there, they experience some of the same bull that the film industry rank and file experience, so I read this piece by Lauren Morton for PC Gamer with that in mind.
Okay, so the general election here in the States is many moons away, but anytime’s a good time to talk about the importance of voting, right? As some readers may recall, I’ve made several votes over the years regarding dealing with gerrymandering and the promise of ranked choice voting. The folks over at Vox have put together a video that explains how other countries tackle elections over and beyond the possibilities of ranked choice voting.…
In clearing out some old emails and other materials dating back to the height of the pandemic, when we were looking for so many distractions, I came across my sharing of this machine-learning curiosity, which is not only still functioning, it seems like it may be enhanced. So launch up your favorite browser and enjoy. Considering the recent departure of two folks who contributed much to world silliness, re-introducing this bit of silliness seems appropriate…
The beginning of the end of Star Trek: Discovery‘s five-year mission streams this Thursday, April 4th. Originally, this fifth season of Discovery was apparently not intended to be the final one, which has caused all kinds of rampant speculation online. However, Trek overall, is not only not going anywhere, the powers that be want to maintain what isn’t just a franchise, but a veritable Intellectual Property (IP) empire. In a longform cover story for Variety,…