“One man’s signal is another man’s noise”
The story of the scientists who try to predict earthquakes – and why their quixotic quest might never succeed.
Him and Her
A Longreads Guest Pick from Rebecca Hiscott, a graduate student at NYU and a features writer for Mashable:
“I’m still marveling at ‘Him and Her’ by Mark Harris from the Oct. 14 issue of New York magazine. The piece is both a nuanced profile of director Spike Jonze — despite Joaquin Phoenix’s stony-faced cameo on the cover — and an eye into the making of Her, the quasi-sci-fi movie that aspires to be ‘a cautionary meditation on romance and technology’ and ‘a subtle exploration of the weirdness, delusiveness, and one-sidedness of love.’ The narrative follows Jonze through the process of writing, shooting and editing the film, and his subsequent efforts to correct a cinematic gamble that hasn’t paid off. Harris’s lush prose mimics Jonze’s aesthetic as a filmmaker, which the author describes as ‘disarmingly sincere, and melancholy in surprising places”; the article also has an evocative opening scene that perfectly captures the spirit of the film and its enigmatic director.”
The Day the Movies Died
“Fear has descended,” says James Schamus, the screenwriter-producer who also heads the profitable indie company Focus Features, “and nobody in Hollywood wants to be the person who green-lit a movie that not only crashes but about which you can’t protect yourself by saying, ‘But at least it was based on a comic book!’ “
The Red Carpet Campaign
[Not single-page] Inside the singular hysteria of the Academy Awards race.
Will Somebody Please Save NBC?
The beleaguered and tattered Peacock Network deserves better than Jeff Zucker, Jay Leno, and maybe even Comcast.