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The best movie culture writing from around the internet-o-sphere.
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“The Trials of ‘Entertainment Weekly’: One Magazine’s 24 Years of Corporate Torture” – A stunner of a beautiful essay, Anne Helen Petersen at The Awl provides an exhaustive, thoroughly entertaining and slightly depressing look at what the search for synergy can do to a once-important voice. It’s a tale as old as time and as young as Botoxed flesh.
“The editorial maxim was a simple one: Write the best story. Don’t worry about who owns the product, or even if it’s a popular one – just cover it in a way that’s compelling. That maxim was what gave EW its unique critical voice and, more importantly, its incredibly loyal readership. Over the course of the 90s and early 2000s, protecting that voice engendered more and more conglomerate animosity.”
“Forgetting Jimmy Darmody” – Paula Marantz Cohen at The Smart Set – with an armful of spoilers – theorizes that the trend of TV shows killing off favorite characters is something we subconsciously want as fans. Let’s call it Psycho Syndrome.
“Bicycle Thieves and Other Apocalyptic Movies” – Brad Avery at Smug Film looks at the De Sica’s classic through the cracked lens of the end of the world, painting a picture of the highest kind of personal stakes in storytelling.
“Will Hollywood learn from The Fault in Our Stars?” – Chris Dorr wonders if other studios will be able to engage potential fans as part of an advertising campaign, instead of merely making them the target of one. But have studios ever taken away the right lesson from a successful movie? Ten bucks says an executive is yelling, “Cancer is hot right now!” into a cell phone this morning.
