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Allegations of Sexual Misconduct by Ex-Real Estate Guitarist Detailed by Seven Women

Real Estate
Jason Tate

Andy Cush, writing for Spin:

In the months leading up to the publication of SPIN’s initial story, we spoke with multiple women who gave accounts of alleged sexual misconduct from Mondanile. In the following days, more women came to us with stories of his behavior. These on-the-record accounts, from seven women in total, largely involve allegations of Mondanile touching, kissing, and groping them without their consent. Two women alleged that Mondanile groped them while they were sleeping, and a third said that he did so while she was trying to sleep.

Kendrick Lamar Interviewed by I-D

Kendrick Lamar
Jason Tate

Kendrick Lamar recently sat down for an interview with I-D:

Kendrick lives a life that befits the king of hip-hop, if you think what truly befits the king of hip-hop is to basically live in the studio looking for the perfect beat and the ultimate rhyme. “I can sometimes cut the whole world off to write a verse that is perfect to me,” he says. “I could be in the studio all day and turn the phone off and completely zone out, because I feel like this was what I was chosen to do. And I can’t let anyone get in between that.”

Movies Anywhere App Launches With Joint Studio Backing

Jason Tate

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).

D.R.U.G.S. Are Not Reuniting in 2018

DRUGS
Jason Tate

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 Talk With Alt Press

Tegan and Sara
Jason Tate

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.”

Tom DeLonge Announces To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science

Tom DeLonge
Jason Tate

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.”

Martin Scorsese on Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office Obsession

Film
Jason Tate

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.