What do you see as the pro's and con's of #documentaries? I'm often not a fan, but want to be. My issues with them, and mostly it comes from I love to learn and want docs to be a starting point, not the end:
Credentials of the experts can be spotty
No sources given
No way to ask follow-up questions
Too much theatrics / reenactment
Not as detailed as a book
Often don't cover the topics I want (social science, #religion, #history, etc)
Join Ronald McGillvray & yours truly as we wrap up 2023 with an all-new author spotlight, a bunch of talk about books, movies, TV, games, music, and so much more!
The second season of "High on the Hog," which charts how the momentous changes of the 20th century informed Black Americans' relationship with food, lands on Netflix tomorrow. Civil Eats spoke to co-hosts Stephen Satterfield and Dr. Jessica B. Harris about what the series covers, from food's role in the Great Migration to the Black Panther Party's free breakfast program for children.
The first of three special episodes of "Doctor Who" will land on the BBC and Disney+ on Nov. 25. GQ talked to Ncuti Gatwa, who will take over as the Doctor at the end of the run, about how he feels. “I’m a good actor [but] this is a 60-year-long British institution and I’m a Black man, so I never thought that I’d be chosen to front something that is basically the heart of the BBC,” he says.
Opinion: It's about time a Steam service for TV existed
I know you can buy access to content to some TV shows on the Apple store, Amazon and the Microsoft Store - but these are still subject to geoblocks, not accessible in many countries and only offer a relatively small selection of TV shows anyway (and even then they're subject to this shit.)
Think about how video games have been fundamentally transformed. You can buy the majority of video games on Steam (or just use other similar apps). They're all basically released everywhere on day 1. They're automatically yours forever (until such a potential when Steam goes down - but you can easily extract and secure the files if you worry about that).
The same is not remotely true with TV. I understand that multiple streaming services were obviously going to emerge as TV production expanded. I understand that expecting to be able to watch everything on Netflix for £9.99 a month was never going to be realistic. But alongside these streaming services, a Steam-type client should've emerged allowing people to just buy seasons of content on the services. For people who want to legally keep what they watch, paying something like £5-15 per season (with sales much like Steam). No geoblocks. No restrictions.
I say this because in many cases I have had no choice but to pirate to watch a TV show season. It literally was not available to me through any legal source. I could not digitally buy it, nor was any streaming service accessible to me carrying it. This is now happening to Americans more and more (I am not American) with European series being heavily delayed. The last season of Babylon Berlin released in October. It's carried by Netflix in the USA, who are clearly not interested in acquiring the latest season - and are probably holding the content hostage (or Sky are being obstructive). It's also not accessible in France or many other European countries too.The show has suffered from staggered international releases since it was initially released, essentially throttling its popularity potential (most expensive German series ever made at one point).
As for me? I'm British. I could not, and still can't watch the second season of Balkan Shadows anywhere legally according to Justwatch. Paris Police 1900 season 2 is also still not accessible for me. This is really quite pathetic when you think about music and video games.
“Bad Harsk Speech & Lewit Barbar Tung”
THE BOTTLE IMP 26: Scottish literature & translation
Featuring:
🇩🇪 SUNSET SONG in the GDR
🇮🇹 THE BLACK ARROW on Italian TV
🏆 Scotland’s Nobel-nominated #Esperanto poet
🇫🇷 Franco-Scots poetry & postcolonialism
📚 Transcreating concrete poetry
#OnThisDay, September 14, in 1812, the Great Fire of Moscow began as Napoleon approached the city and retreating Russians burned it (depicted in the BBC series War & Peace, 2016)
"The Tonight Show" has been a toxic workplace for years because of Jimmy Fallon's erratic behavior and an ever-changing leadership team that don't know how to say no to the host, @RollingStone reports. Krystie Lee Yandoli spoke to 16 current and former staffers about life behind the scenes.
#OnThisDay, August 17, in 1585, a group of colonists landed off the coast of present-day North Carolina, creating a military colony on Roanoke Island, sent by Sir Walter Raleigh under the charge of Ralph Lane (depicted in American Horror Story: Roanoke)
We are the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR), an archive preserving materials from the entertainment industries. We are home to over three hundred collections from playwrights, television and movie writers, producers, actors, designers, directors, and production companies.
Housed in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Library-Archives Division, the WCFTR is one of the world’s most accessible #archives and is regularly visited by researchers from around the world. Research undertaken in its collections has revolutionized the scholarship of American #cinema, #theater, and #television.
We use social media to share news about new collections, upcoming events, interesting materials we've found, and projects that we're working on -- as well as learning about what you're working on!