“Germany’s national rail operator, Deutsche Bahn (DB), is planning to pipe ‘atonal music’ into the Hermannstrasse station in Berlin’s Neukölln district in an attempt to drive away people who use the place to take drugs. … The music has not yet been chosen, though, according to a report in Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper, DB has opted for atonal music ‘because it completely undermines traditional listening habits.'”
Tag: 08.19.18
The Key Thing Sasha Baron Cohen’s ‘This Is America’ Reveals Isn’t Gullibility Or Bigotry – It’s Fear
“Cohen’s real trump card is [the character] Col. Erran Morad, an Israeli ‘anti-terrorism expert’ who plays into every fantasy American conservatives seem to have about Israel. … Morad exposes these worshippers of military masculinity as almost parodically antiheroic. They’ll do anything as long as it’s called ‘training,’ no matter how humiliating it is in their eyes, and if it will save their own skin.”
So Sasha Baron Cohen Embarrassed You And You Want To Sue? Lotsa Luck With That
It’s true that SBC and his colleagues often deceive their guests to get them to appear on camera. So there’s a case, right? Well, many have tried to sue him and his producers before, and almost all of them have lost. Sopan Deb explains why.
Asia Argento, One Of The Leaders Of The MeToo Movement, Paid A Settlement To Her Own Accuser
“In the months that followed her revelations about Mr. Weinstein last October, Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room years earlier, when he was only two months past his 17th birthday. She was 37. The age of consent in California is 18.”
John Calder, An Independent British Publisher Who Fought Censorship, Has Died At 91
Calder published Eugène Ionesco, Marguerite Duras, Heinrich Böll, Samuel Beckett and nearly 20 other Nobel Prize winners. And he was against censorship: “In 1963, a few years after Penguin Books was acquitted of obscenity for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Britain, Mr. Calder acquired the rights to [Henry] Miller’s Tropic of Cancer — effectively daring the authorities to prosecute him under the British Obscene Publications Act of 1959.”
The Push For A ‘GoldOpen’ For ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Really Worked
It’s rare for a rom com to open at number one, but for a nonsequel comedy, the PG-13 movie posted the biggest opening weekend since last year’s Girls Trip, which featured four African American women and a star-making turn from Tiffany Haddish.
Oh Crap: Netflix Is Thinking Seriously About Adding Advertisements To Its Shows
Cries of “NO!” go up from millions of throats, but the streaming behemoth is probably going to do it anyway. As a matter of fact, it’s already in beta. “With increased competition from Hulu, though, Netflix has decided to begin testing out a new feature that brings its service more in line with what Hulu is offering. Netflix calls the new feature ‘recommendations,’ but we think a more catchy name would be ‘commercials.'”
The Literary Scene Is Popping In Bhutan
The country used to have a three percent literacy rate, and now it’s around 60 percent. “The number of bookshops is increasing; there are around a dozen in the capital, Thimphu, and a few more in far-flung districts. Bhutanese writers are publishing books more than ever before — fantasy novels, poetry, short story collections and especially folklore.” And then there’s the international literary festival.
Following The Lead Of Greta Gerwig, A Director Gets The Music He Wants By Writing A Letter
Originally, Coldplay (a band) refused to let Warner Bros. license the song “Yellow” – partly because of the connotations of the word. “Chu’s letter to the band, though, changed its mind within 24 hours, and a Mandarin cover of the song, performed by Chinese-American singer Katherine Ho, closes out the film at a pivotal moment.”