Browse: Home / The Friday Article Round-Up Diversifies Its Interests

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • Local 32-Year-Old Man Successfully Expands His Taste In Music
  • Celebrating the Living: Kirk R. Thatcher
  • Attention Must Be Paid: Whitney Blake
  • Disney Byways: Non-Disney Properties on Disney+
  • The Friday Article Roundup: Writer's Blocks
Here's your gatekeepers.

The Friday Article Round-Up Diversifies Its Interests

Posted By The Ploughman on April 10, 2020 in News | Leave a response

You like crime novels? We got crime novels. You want classic TV? We got classic TV. Video games? Yep. Music? You bet. Sports? Doing our best. Movies? … stay tuned.

ProPublica and The Atlantic dig into Amazon’s tacit allowance – and even promotion – of white supremacist literature and the questions that arise in an era of absent or automated gatekeeping:
Other authors manipulate their ratings by making their self-published books temporarily free so that readers can “purchase” them and leave a positive review… As a result of this behind-the-scenes lobbying… far-right texts often seem to have better reviews than other kinds of books, which may affect how frequently Amazon recommends them. The first installment of [self-published neo-Nazi Billy] Roper’s trilogy has 70 reviews and a rating of four out of five stars. Roper even gave the book a five-star review on Goodreads: “I liked it so much that I’m currently working on the sequel!”

At ye olde AV Club, Anthony John Agnello talks about the impetus behind the Final Fantasy franchise and breaks out its best, worst and weirdest entries:

Hironobu Sakaguchi, the man who created the original Final Fantasy in 1987—expecting it to be the swan song of his game-making career—had a name for it. “Sabishii,” a Japanese synonym for “lonely,” is how he described the game he wanted to make. And he succeeded.

Speaking of 30-year-old franchises, Scott Tobias describes the strangeness of witnessing the Twin Peaks pilot when it first aired for The Guardian:

I was a senior in high school, working at a movie theater in suburban Atlanta, and I watched it alongside a concessionist with whom I used to trade enthusiasms about Marin Scorsese and Brian De Palma, and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which we had smuggled under our parents’ noses at the video store. It was the one and only time I’d ever spend at his house, and I don’t recall a word spoken between us until it was over. It was like nothing we had ever seen on television, and like nothing we had ever seen in a theater either.

As Hemingway wrote about bullfighting and Mailer boxing, so Noel Murray at Mel Magazine describes the pleasures of rewatching old baseball games when new ones aren’t coming any time soon:
So this becomes the new pleasure in watching recorded baseball games instead of live ones: the little ironies, the little surprises. I know how these games are going to end, but I don’t know how the people watching them and talking about them are going to react, or what they’re going to say. They couldn’t see the bigger picture then, just as I can’t see it now.
Scott Bradfield at the LA Times surveys the novels of Ross Thomas and why they haven’t seen many adaptations before the new Briarpatch TV show:
Partly this may be the result of Thomas’ cynicism about American politics — especially his vision of the Washington “intelligence” community as a motley crew of sellout turncoats-for-hire. Thomas’ characters were a far cry from the typical Schwarzenegger or John Wayne-style American hero. They don’t usually shoot it out or blow stuff up to save the world; they just play the game of politics and crime more smartly than the bad guys and, when they’re really good, take home all the money.

And finally, at the New York Times, Hanif Abdurraqib revisits a Bill Withers concert and remembers what made him unique:

Withers, in both formal interviews and informally recorded banter, could sometimes be crass, even abrasive, but rarely was he oversentimental. For this, the sentimental moments within his music feel more vulnerable and float above the emptiness of the feel-good machinery within so much of the celebrity-media industrial complex — the mutually assured sanitized reproduction of life.
Thanks to Miller for contributing to this article. As always, send article suggestions throughout the week to ploughmanplods [at] gmail [dot] com and post your favorites from this week below for discussion.
Posted in News | Tagged Amazon, Baseball, Bill Withers, Briarpatch, final fantasy, Friday Article Round-up, Noel Murray, Ross Thomas, Scott Tobias, Twin Peaks

About the Author

gemofpurestray@gmail.com'

The Ploughman

Related Posts

The Surreal Horror of TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME→

Carrie Amanda on the Real Horror of TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME→

SCENIC ROUTE: Twin Peaks, “Hawk? Can you hear me?”→

Well, these corpses aren't gonna desecrate themselves.The Friday Article Roundup: New Looks for Old Things→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    33882 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    27462 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    25079 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    20104 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • Yvonne, or: CASABLANCA In One Character and Three Scenes

    11147 views / Posted August 21, 2014
  • Local 32-Year-Old Man Successfully Expands His Taste In Music

    March 27, 2023 / Tristan "Drunk Napoleon" Nankervis
  • Today, in "images you can hear"

    Celebrating the Living: Kirk R. Thatcher

    March 26, 2023 / Gillianren
  • Her second stint as Perry's defendant

    Attention Must Be Paid: Whitney Blake

    March 25, 2023 / Gillianren
  • My face on seeing the "recently added"

    Disney Byways: Non-Disney Properties on Disney+

    March 24, 2023 / Gillianren
  • Oh, to have the straight line just hovering over your shoulder for when you need it.

    The Friday Article Roundup: Writer’s Blocks

    March 24, 2023 / The Ploughman

Last Tweets

  • Local 32-Year-Old Man Successfully Expands His Taste In Music - https://t.co/GoGCg4XoOK, 12 hours ago
  • Celebrating the Living: Kirk R. Thatcher - https://t.co/MmxFh9W4xf, Mar 26
  • Attention Must Be Paid: Whitney Blake - https://t.co/Z7Fskqs03u, Mar 25

©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

Menu

  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login
Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!