A what of what?

I have so little interest in the Oscars these days that I didn’t even realise until the results came out this afternoon that it even was Oscars time. That said, however bored I am by them unless Will Smith punches someone or there’s a Best Picture announcement fuckup, I nonetheless offer full acknowledgement of when something historic happens. And something did tonight: not only the first female cinematographer to win an Oscar, but a woman of person. Doesn’t that make a refreshing change from all those men of people who’ve monopolised the award for nearly a century?

Sinners didn’t do anywhere near the business I think people were expecting it to do, having earned a record number of nomiations; Slate magazine then ran a piece about how it made by then losing the most number of nominations (16 noms, 4 wins). I haven’t read the piece cos it’s paywalled and I can’t be arsed breaking it, so for all I know it might actually be a perfectly well-meaning piece about the Oscars shafting a worthy contender because a black dude made it and that’s why losing so many nominations was bad… but I kind of doubt that for some reason, and people on Bluesky are roundly slating (ho ho) it for being an essentially mean-spirited take… I mean, yeah, it didn’t win 12 of its nomination, but the four it did win were pretty major ones (original screenplay, cinematography, score, best actor). And one of those was a woman of person, too. I think celebrating that is better…

How the “mighty” have fallen

Ah, Buzzfeed, once upon a time you were so ubiquitous… now you’re just catastrophically in debt, and you should be:

In January 2023, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced in a memo to staff that the company was making a hard pivot to AI — years before the word “slop” was added to the public lexicon.
In the memo, which was published roughly two months after OpenAI unveiled its groundbreaking ChatGPT chatbot, Peretti said BuzzFeed would be using the software to enhance the company’s infamous quizzes by generating personalized responses.
The company’s stock price jumped aggressively, from around $3 per share to north of $15. But longer-term, neither insiders nor the public were particularly compelled by the move. Nonetheless, Peretti doubled down, promising in May 2023 that AI will “replace the majority of static content” on the site, just a month after shuttting down its Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News division.
Reality soon set in. The AI quizzes were underwhelming, and the site was soon caught publishing entire AI-generated articles that were sloppy and repetitive. After the initial spike in enthusiasm, the company’s stock took a massive beating; as of this week, its shares are hovering around 70 cents.

Woof. I think Buzzfeed was already long past its peak anyway when Peretti was making the shift to AI, and the latter clearly failed to achieve what I assume was the goal, i.e. get people interested in BF again. The company has now admitted outright that they probably don’t have the wherewithal to meet its financial obligations over the next twelve months. And, as the first article ominously notes…

The brutal reality check seemingly hasn’t put Peretti off from pursuing AI, though. He now says he’s hoping to bring “new AI apps to the market” this year.

…Peretti doesn’t seem to have learned anything from the last few years. If Buzzfeed does go under, it will have deserved it if its founder couldn’t come up with a better idea…

The queen is deaf

Morrissey cancels Valencia concert after being left in ‘catatonic state’ by city noise

British singer Morrissey has cancelled a concert in Valencia after being left sleep-deprived during the city’s notoriously noisy Las Fallas festival.
A statement on his website said: “Having travelled for two days by road, Morrissey reached the hotel in Valencia late on Wednesday. Any form of sleep or rest throughout the night was impossible due to festival noise/loud techno singing/megaphone announcements.”
The statement went on to say that “this experience has left Morrissey in a catatonic state”, and that he would not be performing.
Morrissey is due to perform in two other Spanish cities, Zaragoza and Seville, on 14 and 16 March respectively.
His team insisted that the Valencia concert hadn’t been cancelled but that “circumstances made it impossible to perform”. The singer produced recordings of the noise to justify the decision. The cheapest tickets for tonight’s scheduled show at Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia cost €103 (£88).
In a later communique, Morrissey wrote that his hotel was an “indescribable hell. It will take me one year to recover. And that is an understatement.”

Well if he’s going to need that much time to get over this attack of the vapours, that doesn’t bode well for those other two Spanish shows, does it? As the article notes, he’s booked 21 shows to promote this new album of his and he’s already cancelled five and postponed a sixth, which I’m sure will be properly called off in due course. Never change, Steven Patrick…

HOLY SHIT

WELL. Seems I should have been worked up about the reports of missing Doctor Who episodes late last year… cos they’ve just been proven CORRECT. Episodes one and three of “The Daleks’ Masterplan”, astonishingly enough, have indeed been unearthed by the people at Film Is Fabulous, and, delightfully, Peter Purves got to watch them as a surprise…

News of the discovery left actor Purves, 87, tearing up after travelling to Leicester on Wednesday to attend what he believed were going to be interviews with the media about television in the 1960s.
Learning the real reason he had been lured to the venue with “a perfect lie”, he said: “I’m speechless, knocked out.”
And after viewing the two episodes, he said, “my flabber has never been so gasted”, although he quipped: “I’ve never forgiven the BBC for losing those episodes, it would be really nice to get a few royalties.”
Purves added: “I’m not sure I even saw those programmes go out originally – I remember the stories, but having seen them, the pictures are unfamiliar to me.
“I didn’t remember the first one when I was still almost comatose following the injury I received fighting in Troy in the wonderful Mythmakers – which of course is missing.”

Well, there’s been rumours for a while that a couple of episodes of “The Myth Makers” are still out there awaiting rediscovery, so… given this news, those rumours might not be so wrong? Who can say at this point; if these two episodes of “Masterplan” (which was famously never sold overseas, making it far less likely than any other 60s Who to ever reappear) can turn up like this, I suppose almost anything else could. I’m just delighted to have actually happy news to report on for once, cos the last couple of weeks have been so fucking awful otherwise…

Freedom of speech but not reach?

So, just to make the Iran war even better, there’s been vague talk of possibly reinstating The Draft among certain idiots on the right. And here’s how one of those idiots chose to respond:

Yeah, Edolf, a man who would know all about avoiding duty because he did precisely that himself, maybe not through technology as such but certainly through his mother’s Canadian citizenship to obtain a Canadian passport in order to flee South Africa’s mandatory military service requirements in 1989. Apparently this American far-right regime is fine by him but his native one wasn’t… Mind you, I don’t think even Mushroom Cock’s cult will tolerate the draft coming back anyway, but even if it did somehow, I suspect most of the people the draft is likely to target can’t afford a Tesla to begin with, so the threat is kind of empty…

I watched Melania

No, really. I told myself I’d watch (or, more accurately, hate-watch) this thing once it became available on Amazon and someone had ripped it from there and started circulating it elsewhere so that I wouldn’t have to pay for the pleasure, and tonight (with the film having landed on Amazon just a few hours earlier and already spread elsewhere) that was just what I did… albeit I did play it at 1.2x speed to make it a little quicker, and in doing so I learned that if you speed Mushroom Cock up to 1.2x, he almost sounds like a normal person. That is the sum total of what I learned from this thing, mind you; I expected practically nothing from Melania, yet I was still genuinely taken aback by just how vacuous this obscene puff piece actually proved to be. It’s astonishing how little is really going on in this thing; Melania herself comes over as just the most vapid, closed-off charisma void possible, and the film itself a 105-minute wank. nothing but pure narcissism. No insights, no stakes, and no wonder two-thirds of the crew reportedly had their names removed from the credits. It wasn’t even good for a hate-watch. Fuck me and my morbid curiosity, eh. Still, this is the first feature film I’ve watched all year (been watching a ton of shorts), and if nothing else that means everything else I watch this year will have to be a masterpiece by comparison…

You’re not the only one, Dave

David Littleproud resigns as leader of National party, saying he’s ‘buggered’

David Littleproud has quit as leader of the Nationals, admitting that he is “buggered” and needs a break, and calling for a partyroom meeting to elect a successor.
Littleproud was joined by his wife, Amelia Littleproud, as he made the shock announcement after question time on Tuesday.
First elected to parliament in 2016, Littleproud is a former agriculture and water resources minister, and has led the Nationals since May 2022.
Littleproud said he intended to stay on in politics, representing the Queensland seat of Maranoa.
“I’m happy to serve in whatever capacity, but I haven’t got the energy to lead,” he said.

Translation: he got what he wanted and he can’t deal with it. Obviously the whole point of him pulling the Nationals out of the coalition was to make the other side dump Sussan Ley, and he was successful there, but it looks like “well done Angus” Taylor has been another matter for him. Oh well, no sympathy for Dave, he inflicted Angus on the country and now he’s all our problem… cunt.