Speaking of heroes, Ben Blaine (@ben)’s latest is about superhero culture, billionaires and Epstein – and is worth a read: “the mass public dumping of the Epstein files comes at the end of the Hero culture, where it is no longer quite enough to stick a cape on a body suit and count the dollars flowing in. For two decades though, the decades that saw Epstein at the impossible height of his power and influence, the dominant narrative of the age was that of a world in awe of the superhero. Who will save us? The lone billionaire with his secret identity and hidden palace. What slows him down? Fools who demand this figure is held accountable.”
The Publish Press newsletter: if you don’t have the youth, guts or stamina to keep up-to-date about the ‘Creator Economy’ this weekly-ish newsletter has you. Founded by Colin and Samir who setup a popular YouTube channel, they’ve built a brand and remind me a tiny bit of Tom and me 25 years ago before the realism set in – except they’re phenomenally successful.
LetterBoxd superuser (itscharlibb), composer of Wuthering Heights, creator of the Brat Summer and occasional superstar Charli XCX is at the Castle Cinema in Homerton on Friday night. It’s sold out – but if you can’t get a return, you can read her review of Marty Supreme.
NonDē – Ted Hope’s alternative vision to independent cinema – non-dependence: can only only be read about after a pay-wall – perhaps its biggest, implied statement. Thankfully Raindance wrote up a summary – it’s a series of negations, apparently – starting with 1: NonDē Is Not Anti-Hollywood (it’s an exit strategy).
TMDB. It seems quite a few people don’t know seem to know TMDB yet – which is like IMDB, but has twice as many films, is community driven and isn’t owned by the world’s 2nd biggest corporation.
Pop Culture Detective Agency. There’s many film essayists we could talk about, but this one (with 85m views and counting) I first met when he was helping Anita Sarkeesian’s culture-setting Feminist Frequency videos (which arguably mainstreamed discussion of the Bechdel test) during the Open Video Conference days. I like it as it overlaps pop culture, film criticism and feminism, but from a guy – and he seems to make an enough of a filmmaker living via Patreon to keep making them. He also once gave me the best put-down for a web design I’d tried to donate to one of his projects: ‘could it maybe not look so bad?’. Some of my favourite vids include The Myth of the Alpha Male, The Tragedy of Droids in Star Wars, and Wall-E as Sociological Storytelling .
