Weekend Reads (12/4): Chuck E. Cheese, Christopher Nolan, Disney+ Censorship, “Halo”
Recommended weekend reading material for December 4, 2021.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
I don’t think anyone would associate terms like “innovative” with Chuck E. Cheese, but that helps explain why the pizza chain with animatronic puppets is still around after more than four decades.
The company moved away from its traditional paper tickets — the paper stock of which cost $6 million to $7 million annually — to an e-ticket platform. It releases albums of Chuck E. Cheese songs on Spotify and is adding digital dance floors.
The company also started expanding its business beyond its physical play places. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down locations and stay-at-home orders boosted demand for food delivery, Chuck E. Cheese opened a ghost kitchen called Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings (named for one of the members of the animatronic rodent’s band).
I’m sure some folks felt a little hoodwinked when they ordered from the more upscale-sounding Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings only to discover that they were actually eating Chuck E. Cheese — but you gotta respect the hustle.
Christopher Nolan’s next movie is a $100 million WWII drama about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb — and it might be the last of its kind. Or it could signal a Hollywood renaissance.
The reason that Universal’s chairwoman Donna Langley made it her mission to court Nolan after his relationship with Warner Bros. grew strained is that he’s one of the few directors who can take a bold swing and rake in hundreds of millions at the box office. It’s especially valuable at a time when Hollywood appears to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for IP that can be spun into cinematic gold. Case in point: There are (real) movies in the works based on the card game Uno, the crunchy snack Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and the invention of Viagra. Because not every project can be derived from Marvel, Star Wars, James Bond, Jurassic World and Fast & Furious, studios are turning to filmmakers with unique perspectives who can launch a film based on their name alone. Privately, other Hollywood players have voiced their desire to see “Oppenheimer” succeed because it would encourage studio executives and financiers to take more chances on new ideas.
Christopher Nolan’s movies are frequently criticized for having unintelligible dialog, but it’s a trend that seems to be affecting more and more movies. There are several possible reasons for that, including how modern actors say their dialog.
Mangini says that in the old days, “you could count on an actor’s theatricality to deliver a line to the back seats.” But acting styles have changed so dramatically over the years that it has become much more difficult to capture great sound on the set. When actors adopt that more naturalistic style, “it’s even harder for the production sound mixer to capture really quality sound. Now we get those compromised microphone positions here in post-production, reaching for a dialogue line that is barely intelligible or maybe even mumbled because it’s an acting style, and already, we’re behind the 8-ball in trying to figure out a way to make all of those words intelligible.”
Earlier this month, the big (clickbait-y) headline was how much director Ridley Scott hates superhero movies. But Stellan Skarsgård claims the real problem is the corporate influence that dominates the modern movie industry.
“I’ve got nothing against superhero movies. I’ve been in a couple, and they definitely have a place. The problem is that the system that allows eight people to own half of the wealth in the world enhances the power of the market forces, so small and independent cinemas rarely exist anymore outside a few big cities. There’s no distribution channels for all the mid-budget films that have the best actors, the best writing because they can’t throw up $3m for a marketing campaign. When cinemas let them in, they do so for one week, and if it doesn’t pay off in a week, they’re gone.”
Skarsgård has starred in several Marvel movies as Dr. Erik Selvig, but has also starred in less commercial films like Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and Nymphomaniac.
When every character needs to have an origin story, writes Amelia Tait, you end up with cheapened, cliché-riddled movies.
Academics have argued that the rise in longform television content has led to a greater search for psychologically rich characters, and arguably society now has a better understanding of the ways in which trauma can beget trauma. Many of the cheap heroes-and-villains tropes of days gone by are now rightly recognized as problematic — good people are sexy! Bad people have scars! — and on paper, it’s no bad thing to make goodies and baddies more complex than those labels traditionally allow. But now that every film and franchise features a tragic backstory to underpin villainy, this type of writing has become cliché and lazy in turn.
Related: Star Wars has a similar trend with trying to connect everything and everyone in its universe to the Skywalker family, as evidenced by Luke Skywalker’s appearance in the second season of The Mandalorian.
In Afghanistan, internet access is unreliable. Instead, enterprising individuals created a “sneakernet”; they physically bring in hard drives full of content from neighboring countries.
“I use the Wi-Fi at home to download some of the music and applications; I also have five SIM cards for internet,” says Mohibullah, another kar who asked not to be identified by his real name. “But the connection here is not reliable, so every month I send a 4 terabyte hard drive to Jalalabad, and they fill it with content and return it in a week’s time with the latest Indian movies or Turkish TV dramas, music, and applications,” for which he says he pays between 800 and 1,000 afghanis ($8.75 to $11).
However, the Taliban has been bad for business, forcing many of these individuals to scale back their operations and hide any material that violates Taliban law. Via Numlock News.
Related: A similar service has existed in Cuba, too, which distributes the latest movies, TV shows, etc., across the country via hard drives, CDs, and USB sticks.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has come under fire for investing over $100 million in a military AI startup, with artists and users calling for a boycott.
The deal has angered artists including producer Darren Sangita, who wrote on Twitter: “#BoycottSPOTIFY now! Cancel your subscription today. Artists and music lovers must not support the military #AI industry! Register your anger at the #Spotify involvement in sponsorship of Arms Corporations. This is so vile. Music is NOT War! Just wrong on every level.”
The startup, called Helsing, claims that its software uses artificial intelligence to sift through myriad battlefield data in order to provide more accurate reports and “keep liberal democracies from harm.”
Related: Damon Krukowski shared how much money his former band Galaxie 500 made from Spotify: $22,800 after 7.6 million streams, which equates to $7,600 for each of the band’s three members.
Also related: Spotify recently removed thousands of comedy tracks, apparently in response to new efforts to get the streaming giant to pay additional (unpaid) royalties. Some of the comedians affected include Robin Williams, John Mulaney, Mike Birbiglia, and Jeff Foxworthy.
I’ve had physical reactions to music that I found particularly beautiful or moving, but I never would’ve described that sensation as a “skin orgasm.” In any case, scientists are trying to figure out an explanation for the phenomena.
Some scientists have suggested that goosebumps are an evolutionary holdover from our early (hairier) ancestors, who kept themselves warm through an endothermic layer of heat that they retained immediately beneath the hairs of their skin. Experiencing goosebumps after a rapid change in temperature (like being exposed to an unexpectedly cool breeze on a sunny day) temporarily raises and then lowers those hairs, resetting this layer of warmth.
Since we invented clothing, humans have had less of a need for this endothermic layer of heat. But the physiological structure is still in place, and it may have been rewired to produce aesthetic chills as a reaction to emotionally moving stimuli, like great beauty in art or nature.
The official term for the sensation is frisson, which is the French word for “shiver” or “thrill.” If you’d like to experience some frisson of your own, check out this subreddit.
When Disney+ launched in Hong Kong this past November, the streaming service removed an episode of The Simpsons to appease the Chinese government.
“Goo Goo Gai Pain” includes scenes in which the family visits the embalmed tomb of Chairman Mao; Homer calls the leader “a little angel that killed 50 million people”; a Chinese minder named Madame Wu (Lucy Liu) mocks Tibetan independence; Homer tricks Chinese soldiers by pretending to be a Buddha statue; and the family walks through Tiananmen Square to find a plaque reading “On this site, in 1989, nothing happened.” Soon after, Madame Wu arrives in Tiananmen Square in a tank, allowing Selma to recreate the famed June 5, 1989 “Tank Man” photograph.
Another Simpsons episode that’s not available on Disney+ is “Stark Raving Dad,” the season three premier that features Michael Jackson voicing a mental patient who believes he’s the King of Pop. Following the release of Leaving Neverland, a 2019 documentary about the sexual abuse allegations surrounding Jackson, the Simpsons producers chose to remove the episode from distribution.
Apple is one of the world’s most successful companies. But that success is built on the backs of frontline employees who feel like their company doesn’t care about them.
The Verge spoke with 16 current and former employees on Apple’s retail, support, and sales teams who say their complaints about working conditions and pay have largely been ignored. Some say they are governed more by algorithms and systems than actual managers, making it difficult to get holistic help. All of them note that while they came into the job believing in Apple’s mission, they see a profound breakdown in how the company’s corporate values translate to the frontlines.
From the Blog
Halo Infinite (finally) comes out next week, so in preparation, I recently played through all of the Master Chief-specific campaigns in the Halo franchise — and ranked them from worst to best.
I’ve invested more time in the Halo franchise than any other video game, so I wanted to reflect on the Halo games and note where they succeed — and fail. That, and get caught up on everything the Chief’s done prior to his December arrival on Zeta Halo.
This post is available to everyone (so feel free to share it). However, paying subscribers also get access to exclusives including playlists, sneak previews, and podcasts. If you’d like to receive those exclusives — and support my writing on Opus — then become a paid subscriber today for just $5/month or $50/year.