Something New (This Week)

Writers, raters, and music.

Welcome to (This Week), where I share Something New that I’ve been jiving with this week. If you like what you’ve been reading, please consider subscribing, or sharing along to another you love talking to about art. The more, the merrier.

We’re going Streaking (Striking)

The thing I’ve read and listened to most this week was information on the Writer’s Guild of America’s strike against the AMPTP – or “Hollywood” – that has shut down the film and television industry. I am obviously a massive fan, admirer, and supporter of the creatives who are now “pencils down” and picketing the Netflix offices, among other places, and I support this strike. Many headlines have read “____ in danger because the writer’s are striking”, but don’t be fooled. This is happening because the producers and CEO’s won’t budge on their ludicrous ideas of pay and protections for the people who are primarily responsible for creating the work their industry is based on.

Variety has a central place for everything they publish about it, and here’s some other stuff I enjoyed taking in about it.

The Watch podcast:

The Town podcast:

Alan Sepinwall’s Substack, a great place for TV writing.

Rating Movies is Hard. And Dumb

Brianna Zigler, a critic and internet person I enjoy reading, polled a bunch of Letterboxd users about using star ratings, or how they “rate” movies on the service, and in their lives in general. Applying a numeric metric to the personal artistic value something has for oneself is a bizarre task, and one that I am thinking about constantly.

Music is Good

Here’s some songs that I found this week, and enjoyed:

See you next week.