Producing Various and Sundry

Now Playing: Detailed Public Viewership Stats for Netflix

I still should work on a wrap-up post regarding last year’s Hollywood Strikes, but one of the outcomes the unions were able to negotiate was visibility about the success of shows on streaming services. In what definitely feels like an effort to guide that narrative, Netflix released a heretofore unprecedented amount of data publicly in December regarding how many people watched what on their service. You can get a summary, watch a half hour press…

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Various and Sundry

TCM Remembers, 2023

Earlier this week, I did a post about the what we’ve gained in the public domain as of January 1st, “Public Domain Day” becoming something I post on. Thinking of annual posts, I meant to do this last month, so here goes: TCM does a great montage of folks we’ve lost in the previous year (see examples from 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 for the most recent entries). This time around, I decided to do…

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Producing Various and Sundry Writing

Public Domain Day, 2024

Last year I mentioned making a Public Domain Day post a tradition and so: Happy New Year to All! Plus, welcome to the public domain for so many goodies. For a great overview of said goodies on offer, check out this article from Aaron Moss over at Copyright Lately. Moss is an intellectual property attorney and is quite ready to delve deep into all things copyright. I appreciate that he goes beyond the much-covered fact…

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Acting Various and Sundry Writing

Visions of a Post-Strike Hollywood

So, the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, approved a tentative agreement with AMPTP on November 8th, but the agreement has yet to be ratified by the membership and there appear to be a lot of questions about how AI is being dealt with (actors’ concerns being similar yet different in some important regards than writers). So I’ll plan to write something post-ratification (and yes, the presumption is that the agreement will be ratified). But the ratification vote…

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Various and Sundry Writing

WGA Has a Deal, SAG-AFTRA Working on One

Okay, I’ll be honest: I was putting off finishing this post in hopes that I could do one big post about the end of both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Although SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP are back at the negotiating table since last week, as of this writing, they haven’t made a deal. The WGA, however, has made a deal and, in a trend they established from the get-go, the WGA has provided a great summary…

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Various and Sundry

Let’s Talk About Dead Bodies!

I’m not gonna lie: I thought of the Monty Python skit when I saw this video as Victor Sweeney is everything you thought a mortician might be. This was apparently decently popular, so they brought him back for a part 2: And wouldn’t you know it? Mr. Sweeney has also done one of those experts-review-films videos and it’s very informative: Hope everyone’s spooky season is starting off right.

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Various and Sundry Writing

Banned Books Week 2023: Resources & Reports

Although I did make a post last week giving an excellent resource to all sorts of banned books to start reading for this week, aka Banned Books Week, I would be remiss if I didn’t make another post during the week itself. Last week’s post from Harper’s Bazaar drew from an exhaustive report done by PEN America, and you can learn all sorts of details about the who, what, why, and when of the various…

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Various and Sundry

Babylon 5: The Best Imperfect Space Opera?

The new Babylon 5 movie is out and, since it’s not readily on any of the streaming services I subscribe to, my thrift will delay me seeing it soon. At the same time, when I do see it, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it immensely. Right in time for its release, Tor.com has re-published a wonderfully truthful article by Jennifer Giesbrecht from 2019 that goes into how Babylon 5 is great even as it is not…

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Various and Sundry

Animation Break… with Pizza

Apart from contemplating whether to see any component of Barbenheimer in the theaters, I didn’t have anything I was planning to see until my kids announced they were unanimous in wanting to see the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film aka “Wait, there’s another TMNT movie?!?” This was a surprise because, to the best of my knowledge and theirs, they have not seen any previous TMNT movie. They also have not been around long enough…

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