Friday News Roundup
I got busy this week, sorry kids
Industry News Items
Norma Barzman, a screenwriter who was blacklisted during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and through the 1950s, has died at 103. She and her husband Ben, also a screenwriter, were members of the Communist Party and left the United States in 1949 to initially work on a film in London, and ended up staying in Europe for decades. She was one of the last living victims of this witch hunt which caused the end of the careers of hundreds of workers in Hollywood, and we should never forget how people in power both in government and the studios unjustly persecuted innocent people purely because of their beliefs. Her obit is definitely worth a read, but let me quote my favorite part - “She met Ben Barzman, another aspiring screenwriter, at a party at the home of Robert Rossen, yet another screenwriter. Mr. Barzman insisted that modern movies were too complex for women to write. She pushed a lemon meringue pie in his face. They married in 1943.”
The Red Scare-induced blacklist is a stain on our industry and our history Peacock* is exclusively streaming the NFL wildcard playoff game between the Dolphins and the Chiefs this Saturday night. The New York Times has a good overview of the challenges of this event, the first time ever that a NFL playoff game will be only available via a streaming service, versus on a broadcast or cable network (local markets for both teams will be able to watch via local broadcasters). Will Peacock successfully handle the expected large influx of viewers? Or will they pull a Love is Blind reunion and piss off football fans with a poor streaming experience? We’ll find out tomorrow night.
Anime streamer Crunchyroll recently announced that it surpassed 13 million global subscribers, which caps a period of very rapid growth seeing as they were at 5 million subs two years ago when they were acquired by Sony. I’m a firm believer that the streaming marketplace can and should support services that are hyper focused on specific content (horror streamers Shudder and Screambox also come to mind) so it’s good to see this kind of growth.
Amazon streaming services are unfortunately undergoing a series of layoffs - gaming-focused livestream service Twitch announced that it is laying off more than 500 of its staffers (35% of their total workforce), and Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios will be cutting “several hundred” people. What really pisses me off about layoffs is that its never the upper management who get cut due to their poor planning and management, it is always the rank and file who actually make things happen on a day-to-day basis and are merely executing the bad ideas and actions coming from the top. It’s especially cruel for a company that is as massively profitable as Amazon to cry poverty while bringing in billions in net profit in the last reported quarter.
Finally, CES is wrapping up and various tech outlets have published their lists of best in show. In the television world I previously mentioned LG’s see-through television and Sony’s car that lets you watch content on its very wide infotainment system, but there was also a glare-free OLED TV from Samsung, a portable projector from LG with a midcentury modern design and a gigantic 115-inch MiniLED television from TCL. Keeping up with all of the news each CES is a daunting task but for 2024 it appears to me that for the average consumer looking for a new TV this was more of an evolutionary year, not a revolutionary year.
Go Watch This!
Echo (2024) - For fans of the (former) Netflix shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones who like their comic book action street-level, this show will foot the bill. One of the best Marvel projects in ages, Echo has great action, acting, and look into the culture of the Choctaw Nation who were consulted and contributed to this series. Also, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin is one of the best acted characters in all the MCU; he really embodies the character and you can tell D’Onofrio gives it 100%. It’s five eps, so check it out this weekend. Available on Disney+
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*Disclosure - I currently work at Peacock, so we’d better not fuck this up