Award-Winning Hair
I don’t usually have much to say about the Oscars, but I do love checking out all the nominated shorts and this year’s winner for best animated short is just, well, check out Hair Love:
Various and Sundry
Writing
Barry Lyga on Writing What You Know (kinda)
I’ve been musing on the old –and to my mind, inaccurate– advice to “write what you know” and I’ve been meaning to write a post about it. But in the meantime –and perhaps for the better– how about I just link to a piece by novelist (and occasional Tohubohu screenwriter) Barry Lyga? There’s a whole lot of nuggets in here, but I won’t spoil them for you. Suffice to say I agree with a lot…
Various and Sundry
Disney+ has added a lot of subscribers
I guess this is turning out to be the week that my eye keeps catching articles about streaming services, given Monday’s post. Yesterday, Peter Kafka over in Vox mentions how Disney+ now has over 28 million subscribers. While that’s nothing compared to Netflix’s well-above 160 million subscribers, it is impressive on top of its already impressive debut in November with 10 million subscribers. It also makes Disney’s stated goal to get to 60-90 million subscribers…
Various and Sundry
Netflix and a “Less is More” Strategy
I know I’m not the only one who’s noticed how much content seems to be slipping away from Netflix as more and more companies take their metaphorical Matchbox cars and go home. And by “home,” I mean “create their own streaming service.” Rani Molla, writing in Vox, goes into how Netflix is trying to do more with less content, including more subscribers and more awards. The article itself covers a number of topics, including how…
Producing Reviews Writing
Hangin’ with the Velocipastor
This week, I joined the Streaming Nonsense crew in their mission to review lesser known films available online. This time, we looked at The Velocipastor. Is it everything you want from a disillusioned-priest-becomes-dinosaur-and-fights-ninjas movie? Give a listen.
Various and Sundry Writing
Classics per Checkout: the New York Public Library’s List
The New York Public Library (NYPL) released a list of its most checked out books in its 125 year history (it was founded in 1895). Coming from a family that includes librarians, archivists, and avid history readers, this was delightful news. I learned about it as the NPR story covering it was shared widely among my social media channels. One curious note in the NYPL release: an honorable mention for Goodnight Moon, which I suppose…
Acting Producing
Rule of Law: Theatrical Edition
I haven’t been in a stage production for an age, but I was both on stage and backstage enough times to lose count — and I was a theatergoer long before that. So I greatly appreciated Mark Evanier sharing actor, director, and all-around theatrical Larry Blyden‘s theatrical laws. Laws, do you hear? Okay, to be honest, I haven’t always followed Law #5 or Law #10, but I definitely do my best with Law #17. Law…
Various and Sundry
Once more unto the Trek breach…
I’m going to do one last post looking forward to this Thursday’s launch of Star Trek: Picard. The first link is to an excellent article by David Itzkoff in the New York Times about the future of Star Trek. It covers similar ground as my last Crisis of Infinite Star Treks post, but, you know, it’s a journalistic feature article with first-person interviews vs. my Internet-based observations, so I think many of you will find…
Producing Writing
2019 By the Indie Numbers
I’ve mentioned author and indie published Russell Nohelty a couple times on the blog, both specifically about his book on selling your work and in his detailing his efforts to build his business. So, as a bit of follow-up, all last year he did a monthly income and expense report about his business, often detailing what worked and what didn’t, what his predictions were, and what the basis of those predictions was. It was wonderfully…
Writing
Murakami on Magic and Writing
Magic and writing? Redundant, I know. But anyway, this is from last year, but Japanese writer Haruki Murakami‘s birthday was yesterday, so it popped up in some of my feeds. Emily Temple over at LitHub collected several of his observations on writing and –what can I say?– they’re a good way to start off the week.