Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch:
“We decided to take a more aggressive stance in our rules and how we enforce them,” Dorsey says. “New rules around: unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence. These changes will start rolling out in the next few weeks. More to share next week.”
Sure.
Foster the People have released an acoustic and reworked version of their latest single “Sit Next to Me.”
Sorority Noise are releasing a new 7″ featuring two unreleased songs.
Stephanie Prange, writing for Variety:
Five of the six major Hollywood studios have joined forces to make digital movie collecting easier than ever.
Movies Anywhere, a free app and website digital locker service, launches tonight at 9 p.m. PT, backed by four top digital retailers and content from Walt Disney (including Pixar, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Entertainment — a combined library of more than 7,300 digital movies.
Movies can be redeemed through digital retailers Amazon Video, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu (owned by Walmart).
Substream has confirmed that D.R.U.G.S. are not reuniting next year and someone has taken control of the band’s Twitter account without their knowledge:
According to another person connected to the band that we spoke with, whose name we are protecting upon request, the members of D.R.U.G.S. have not had access to the account in some time. “There was a phishing scheme,” the contact told us. “Something involving a fake charity.” This contact also provided Substream with the name and contact information of the person the believed to currently be controlling the account.
Tegan and Sara talked with Alternative Press about the upcoming 10 year anniversary of The Con:
Tegan And Sara created no guidelines. Artists could record in their own bedrooms, for all the twins cared, as long as they made it their own. “The goal wasn’t to get versions that sounded exactly like the originals, and we spent a great deal of time curating artists with individual songs to avoid that from happening,” says Sara. The effort was worth it, and they fell in love with the result: “It was fascinating to hear how people approached the project so differently from one another.”
Slowdive has released a video for “Don’t Know Why” on Apple Music.
Leslie Kean, writing for HuffPost:
It all started with award-winning platinum recording artist and producer Tom DeLonge. […]
Fast foward to the present. Now, these early advisors have mostly receded to the background and Tom has moved on to something even bigger. He has assembled a new team of collaborators and created the To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTS/AAS), for which he is President and interim CEO. The Academy includes three synergistic divisions: Science, Areospace, and Entertainment. The Public Benefit Corporation is seeking to serve the public good through exploring “the outer edges of science and the understanding of phenomena,” and making all of it public.
On Wednesday October 11, at 9:00 AM PT and 12:00 PM EST, the team will launch the new initiative at an event to be live-streamed from Seattle. Tom will introduce his colleagues and explain the intentions and purpose of the new company, and its need for public support.
The new initiative has a website.
2017 has broken my ability to be shocked by anything that hits the news. Aliens could start walking down the street tomorrow morning and I’d be like, “oh, it’s a Wednesday in 2017, whateverfuckit.”
Josh Ritter was recently featured on CBS This Morning.
Yours truly is on the latest episode of Welcome to Geekdom talking about The Lego Batman Movie and the animated Batman film Mask of the Phantasm. Both films are great and I had a lot of fun geeking out on two different variations of the Batman character.
Martin Scorsese, writing at The Hollywood Reporter:
There is another change that, I believe, has no upside whatsoever. It began back in the ’80s when the “box office” started to mushroom into the obsession it is today. When I was young, box office reports were confined to industry journals like The Hollywood Reporter. Now, I’m afraid that they’ve become…everything. Box office is the undercurrent in almost all discussions of cinema, and frequently it’s more than just an undercurrent. The brutal judgmentalism that has made opening-weekend grosses into a bloodthirsty spectator sport seems to have encouraged an even more brutal approach to film reviewing. I’m talking about market research firms like Cinemascore, which started in the late ’70s, and online “aggregators” like Rotten Tomatoes, which have absolutely nothing to do with real film criticism. They rate a picture the way you’d rate a horse at the racetrack, a restaurant in a Zagat’s guide, or a household appliance in Consumer Reports. They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film. The filmmaker is reduced to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer.
He’s not wrong.
And as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene, it seems like there are more and more voices out there engaged in pure judgmentalism, people who seem to take pleasure in seeing films and filmmakers rejected, dismissed and in some cases ripped to shreds.
Sounds a little like popular music criticism as well.
Steve Baltin, writing for Forbes, interviews a variety of artists on fighting addiction and depression:
Travis Barker: Sobriety saved my life. My only my regret is it didn’t happen sooner. It was sad that it took a plane crash and almost dying to finally sober up. My second chance at life and my kids was enough to never touch drugs again. Being present and sober is something I wouldn’t trade for anything. Music is my drug.
And:
Anthony Green: I don’t have the answers for what we do, but I know that in Circa Survive and with my situation, the forefront with everything in the band is each other. That stuff comes before making money. From the beginning of the band we wanted it to be a family that cared about each other. So when I needed to go to rehab and I needed to have my mental health issues addressed, the band got put on hiatus and pause. I think that a lot of these guys are in situations where they’re afraid to stop the train from rolling because a lot of people depend on them financially. I think putting the idea of your mental health in front of making money is one thing you can do.
Today is World Mental Health Day and there’s some great insights from a variety of people in this piece.1
I hate trying to use Forbes’ website though, so I’m sorry about that.↩
Apple and Steven Spielberg have reportedly agreed to a content deal to bring Amazing Stories back to TV:
The new deal pulls in the director’s production company Amblin Television, along with NBCUniversal, with plans to resurrect beloved 1980s fantasy/sci-fi/horror anthology Amazing Stories. The original series only ran for two seasons in the mid-80s, but racked up a fair amount of critical acclaim and fond memories, including a dozen Emmy nominations.