When The Bear first premiered, it was all in one fell swoop, eight feverish episodes dropped onto Hulu in June 2022. While the show was beloved by critics, it took a while, relatively speaking, to catch on, popping up as the second-most-watched show across all platforms three weeks later and …
Read More »Somehow, Concerts Are the Biggest Memes of the Summer
On Wednesday, Juneteenth, Kendrick Lamar threw himself a party. Dubbed “the Pop Out: Ken and Friends,” the concert—held at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles—served as a celebration of West Coast hip-hop, and a “victory lap” for Lamar after he ostensibly won his beef with Drake following the release of …
Read More »A Blatant Attempt to Generate a 'House of the Dragon' AI Overview
This Sunday is a big one for fantasy fans. House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel-spin-off thingy, launches its second season on HBO and Max. (Though not HBO Max. RIP.) Amidst a summer of flopping movies and pretty OK television shows, the gate is open wide for House …
Read More »All I Do Is Scroll Netflix Forever. Does That Count as Entertainment?
When I pull up Netflix at the end of a long day, sometimes it takes me an hour just to decide what to watch. I think this makes me pretty lame. Though maybe I'm also hoping you'll tell me that endless scrolling is a perfectly valid new form of entertainment? …
Read More »Spotify Hates Albums. Here’s How to Fix That
I might be old-fashioned, but I like listening to albums. Spotify seems to always be fighting me on this. I like experiencing a collection of songs all at once, played in the order chosen by the artist. I especially like doing this when I discover a new artist: I want …
Read More »Netflix Isn’t About Flicks Anymore
“Netflix” was always a bit of a misnomer. In a well-worn piece of Silicon Valley lore, cofounder Reed Hastings once said, “There’s a reason we didn’t call the company DVD-by-Mail.com,” noting that the service was always meant to evolve into a streaming platform. In choosing that moniker—rather than, say, Netshowz—the …
Read More »Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery Just Reinvented Cable
Said it before, will say it again: Streaming is just cable TV now. So much so that the services created to give cord-cutters the content they want have now resorted to reinventing the wheel. To wit: On Wednesday, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery announced a new partnership, one that will …
Read More »Musi Won Over Millions. Is the Free Music Streaming App Too Good to Be True?
In 2016, a pair of 19-year-old pals from Winnipeg appeared on the reality television show Dragons’ Den—Canada’s version of Shark Tank—to seek funding for their music streaming startup, Musi. Baby-faced and clad in ill-fitting blazers, Aaron Wojnowski and Christian Lunny looked more like students practicing a presentation than entrepreneurs raising …
Read More »RIP ‘Red vs. Blue.’ Machinima Is Gone—but Its Legacy Is Everywhere
Red vs. Blue is officially over. On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery released Red vs. Blue: Restoration, the final installment in the long-running saga that was once at the forefront of a whole new form of entertainment: web videos created from in-game footage. Machinima signaled a new world where that footage—of …
Read More »Jerry Seinfeld, ‘Hacks,’ and the Future of Comedy in a Digital World
Once upon a time in Hollywood, Jon Favreau wrote a movie. It was called Swingers. It was about a group of twentysomething dudes—played by Favreau, Vince Vaughn, and Ron Livingston—trying to make it as actors. Toward the movie’s end, Favreau’s character, the affable Mike, is telling a woman he just …
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