Read Academy Establishes Representation and Inclusion Standards for Oscars® Eligibility (Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)
Today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced new representation and inclusion standards for Oscars® eligibility in the Best Picture category, as part of its Academy Aperture...
Long overdue and could have been an even higher bar, particularly on the studio side.
Read Required Reading by Hrag Vartanian (Hyperallergic)
Banksy got into the Valentine’s Day spirit and released an image of his newest piece in Bristol on Friday (Valentine’s Day). He posted about the new wall piece on his Instagram account (via @banksy)The Oscar-winning short animation flick is available on YouTube. Called “Hair Love,” it’s by...

🎧 The Daily: What Hollywood Keeps Getting Wrong About Race | New York Times

Listened to The Daily: What Hollywood Keeps Getting Wrong About Race from New York Times

Wesley Morris joins us to talk about “Green Book,” the latest Oscar winner to focus on a white character’s moral journey in an interracial friendship.

I love Wesley Morris’s analysis here. Racial reconciliation fantasy is a great name for a rampant problem we’ve got in America. While it’s nice to try to sweep the problem under the rug, we really need to bring it out front and center and have a more honest discussion about it.

This may be one of the best podcast episodes I’ve heard in two months. I highly recommend it.

👓 Kevin Hart Steps Down as Oscar Host | Variety

Read Kevin Hart Steps Down as Oscar Host by Kristopher TapleyKristopher Tapley (Variety)
Just 48 hours after agreeing to host the 91st Academy Awards, Kevin Hart unceremoniously stepped down late Thursday night on social media. The turn of events followed outcry over previous anti-gay tweets, and comments Hart made during stand-up routines nearly 10 years ago. Some of the tweets were feverishly deleted throughout the day on Thursday, leading to an Instagram video from the comedian that only made matters worse for him.

👓 What’s An Inclusion Rider? Here’s The Story Behind Frances McDormand’s Closing Words | NPR

Read What's An Inclusion Rider? Here's The Story Behind Frances McDormand's Closing Words by Colin Dwyer (NPR.org)
"I have two words to leave with you tonight," the actress told the audience after winning her Oscar: "inclusion rider." But she didn't define those words onstage — so, here's a helpful primer. Simply put: It's a stipulation that actors and actresses can ask (or demand) to have inserted into their contracts, which would require a certain level of diversity among a film's cast and crew. For instance, an A-list actor negotiating to join a film could use the inclusion rider to insist that "tertiary speaking characters should match the gender distribution of the setting for the film, as long as it's sensible for the plot," Stacy L. Smith explained in a 2014 column that introduced the idea in The Hollywood Reporter.

👓 The Academy Awards Scandal That First Got PwC Its Job Counting Oscars Votes | Time

Read The Academy Awards Scandal That First Got PwC Its Job Counting Oscars Votes by Olivia B. Waxman (Time)
Years before PricewaterhouseCoopers caused a scandal for mixing up Oscars envelopes, another controversy got the firm that gig.
 

👓 Manchester by the Sea Director Defends Casey Affleck | Pacific Standard

Read Manchester by the Sea Director Defends Casey Affleck by Katie Kilkenny (Pacific Standard)
The director of Manchester by the Sea called a piece written by a college junior “a tangle of illogic, misinformation and flat-out slander.”

Oscars red carpet:`The gravy train is over’ for TV stations and networks | Los Angeles Times

Read Oscars red carpet:`The gravy train is over' for TV stations and networks by Meg James (latimes.com)
For the first time the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is charging a license fee to TV stations and networks that broadcast live shows

Tweetstorms, Journalism, and Noter Live: A Modest Proposal

Tweetstorms and Journalism

Tweetstorms have been getting a horrific reputation lately. [1][2] But used properly, they can sometimes have an excellent and beneficial effect. In fact, recently I’ve seen some journalists using it for both marketing and on the spot analysis in their areas of expertise.[3] Even today Aram Zucker-Scharff, a journalism critic in his own tweetstorm [4], suggests that this UI form may have an interesting use case in relation to news outlets like CNN which make multiple changes to a news story which lives at one canonical (and often not quickly enough archived) URL, but which is unlikely to be visited multiple times:


A newsstorm-type user experience could better lay out the ebb and flow of a particular story over time and prevent the loss of data, context, and even timeframe that otherwise occurs on news websites that regularly update content on the same URL. (Though there are a few tools in the genre like Memento which could potentially be useful.)

It’s possible that tweetstorms could even be useful for world leaders who lack the focus to read full sentences formed into paragraphs, and possibly even multiple paragraphs that run long enough to comprise articles, research documents, or even books. I’m not holding my breath though.

Technical problems for tweetstorms

But the big problem with tweetstorms–even when they’re done well and without manthreading–is actually publishing them quickly, rapidly, and without letting any though process between one tweet and the next.

Noter Live–the solution!

Last week this problem just disappeared: I think Noter Live has just become the best-in-class tool for tweetstorms.

Noter Live was already the go-to tool for live tweeting at conferences, symposia, workshops, political debates, public fora, and even live cultural events like the Superbowl or the Academy Awards. But with a few simple tweaks Kevin Marks, the king of covering conferences live on Twitter, has just updated it in a way that allows one to strip off the name of the speaker so that an individual can type in their own stream of consciousness simply and easily.

But wait! It has an all-important added bonus feature in addition to the fact that it automatically creates the requisite linked string of tweets for easier continuous threaded reading on Twitter…

When you’re done with your screed, which you probably wrote in pseudo-article form anyway, you can cut it out of the Noter Live app, dump it into your blog (you remember?–that Twitter-like app you’ve got that lets you post things longer than 140 characters at a time?), and voila! The piece of writing that probably should have been a blog post anyway can easily be archived for future generations in a far more readable and useful format! And for those who’d prefer a fancier version, it can also automatically add additional markup, microformats, and even Hovercards!

Bonus tip, after you’ve saved the entire stream on your own site, why not tweet out the URL permalink to the post as the last in the series? It’ll probably be a nice tweak on the nose that those who just read through a string of 66 tweets over the span of 45 minutes were waiting for!

So the next time you’re at a conference or just in the mood to rant, remember Noter Live is waiting for you.

Aside: I really wonder how it is that Twitter hasn’t created the ability (UX/UI) to easily embed an entire tweetstorm in one click? It would be a great boon to online magazines and newspapers who more frequently cut and paste tweets from them to build articles around. Instead most sites just do an atrocious job of cutting and pasting dozens to hundreds of tweets in a long line to try to tell these stories.

References

[1]
D. Magary, “Fuck Tweetstorms,” Deadspin, 01-Dec-2016. [Online]. Available: http://deadspin.com/fuck-tweetstorms-1789486776. [Accessed: 31-Jan-2017]
[2]
A. Hope Levinson, “Men, Please Stop Manthreading,” Gizmodo, 13-Dec-2016. [Online]. Available: http://gizmodo.com/men-please-stop-manthreading-1790036387. [Accessed: 31-Jan-2017]
[3]
“Charles Ornstein on Healthcare and Trump’s #Travelban,” Twitter, 30-Jan-2017. [Online]. Available: https://twitter.com/charlesornstein/status/826264988784459777. [Accessed: 01-Feb-2017]
[4]
A. Zucker-Scharff, “Aram Zucker-Scharff on Twitter,” Twitter, 10-Feb-2017. [Online]. Available: https://twitter.com/Chronotope/status/830096151957344256. [Accessed: 10-Feb-2017]

Don’t Cancel the Academy Awards Over Trump. Oscar Nominees, Try This Instead. | Slate

Read Don’t Cancel the Academy Awards Over Trump. Oscar Nominees, Try This Instead. (Slate Magazine)
With the news that that the latest disaster in Donald Trump’s Lizard Brain Jamboree will bar Oscar nominee Asghar Farhadi from attending the Academy Awards (and Farhadi’s later decision to skip them whether he is allowed to come or not), the film community has been scrambling to find an effective response.
Continue reading Don’t Cancel the Academy Awards Over Trump. Oscar Nominees, Try This Instead. | Slate

Constance Wu Slams Casey Affleck’s Oscar Nom | Vulture

Read Constance Wu Is Disgusted by Casey Affleck’s Oscar Nomination: ‘Art Isn’t About Humanity, Right?’ (Vulture)
The Manchester by the Sea actor has been accused of sexual harassment.

Constance Wu Is Disgusted by Casey Affleck’s Oscar Nomination: ‘Art Isn’t About Humanity, Right?’

By

As anticipated, Casey Affleck received a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for Manchester by the Sea this morning. The news served as evidence to some that multiple allegations of sexual harassment against him and a related lawsuit have been successfully swept under the rug, at least in the Academy’s eyes (Affleck has previously denied all allegations against him, and settled the suits out of court for an undisclosed sum). Fresh Off the Boat actress Constance Wu, however, is not about to let the viewing public forget the accusations against Affleck, who is now being celebrated for his talent. “Men who sexually harass women 4 OSCAR! Bc good acting performance matters more than humanity, human integrity! Bc poor kid rly needs the help!,” the actress tweeted sardonically. Continue reading Constance Wu Slams Casey Affleck’s Oscar Nom | Vulture

Confessions of David Seidler, a 73-year-old Oscars virgin

Read Confessions of David Seidler, a 73-year-old Oscars virgin by David Seidler (LA Times)
My first realization I was hooked on Oscar was when I seriously began pondering one of mankind's most profound dilemmas: whether to rent or buy a tux. That first step, as with any descent down a...
This is a great (and hilarious) story by and about the writer of THE KING’S SPEECH.

Amplify’d from www.latimes.com

Confessions of David Seidler, a 73-year-old Oscars virgin

The screenwriter, whose first nomination was for ‘The King’s Speech,’ ponders his formalwear options for the big night, his standing in Hollywood and much more.