Top 10 (Groups of) People I’m Glad I Started Following on Twitter in 2010

Even though I’ve tried my best to move all my Twitter content to my blog, I’m still quite active on Twitter and enjoy scanning through my feed for the latest happenings in the worlds of media, politics, journalism, and film. Here are 10 (groups) of people I’m glad I started following on Twitter in 2010 [If I follow you and you’re not on this list, it doesn’t mean your tweets aren’t awesome and that they haven’t changed my life; just that I probably didn’t START following you this year. By the way, you can always follow me on Twitter, if you wish]:

Maria Popova – If there’s one person you follow as a result of reading this list, make it this one. An incredible writer, Maria is also a master curator of interesting, artistic works from all across the internet. Must-follow!

Give Me Something to Read, Longreads, and Instapaper – Because together, these services have changed my life.

DRUNK HULK – I didn’t get on the Drunk Hulk bandwagon until 2010, but I’m certainly glad I did. Every one of this guy’s tweets always manage to give me a smile or a chuckle. My only complaint? Sometimes he sounds less like “DRUNK HULK” and more like “WITTY AND ERUDITE HULK.” False advertising.

Dustin Rowles from Pajiba and Vince Mancini from Filmdrunk – I would argue that no two people in the film blogsphere are smarter or funnier than these two guys. They also are the only two people who seem to take film and entertainment journalism with the requisite grain of salt that it requires. Many laughs have resulted from their writings, Twitter and otherwise.

Scott Mendelson from Huffington Post, Linda Holmes from NPR, Steven Zeitchik from the LATimes – Zeitchik offers a healthy dose of insight from his post at the center of the entertainment industry. Holmes is probably the most fair-minded writer on pop-culture that I’ve ever read. And I’ve really become a huge fan of Scott’s writings this past year, which are always provocative and well-said. Of course, I don’t always agree, but if I did, life would be boring…

Rachel Sklar from Mediaite – Whip smart and very witty, Sklar’s writings for Mediaite (a site for which I hope to one day write) are always a must-read for me.

Jay Rosen – No other Twitter account I’ve ever followed provides a more comprehensive look at the interesting questions going on today in the world of journalism. If I wasn’t already in a Masters program, I would totally apply to be in his program in NY (which is also being taught by the genius Clay Shirky).

Adrian Chen and Foster Kamer – Speaking of journalism, these guys hail from the Gawker media empire, and it shows: both provide insightful commentary on media and journalism, with a humorous, biting twist (Kamer has gone on to work at Esquire, which will undoubtedly yield interesting results).

Matthew Seitz from Salon and Sean M Burns – Matt Zoller Seitz has forgotten more about film than I will ever know. Also, he’s a damn good writer with an appreciation for what it takes to make a good slide show and/or video essay. Meanwhile, Sean Burns offers fantastic one-sentence reviews of films from the person I know whose movie tastes most resemble Jay Sherman from The Critic. But your Twitter account is locked, Sean, preventing others from getting a taste of your film knowledge glory. WTF, mate?

Tasha Robinson, Nathan Rabin, and Keith Phipps – I’ve been blessed to be able to interact with each of these humongously talented individuals on the /Filmcast this year (and hope to have them on again frequently in the future). There’s a reason why AV Club was singled out as the one publication that would bring about the pop-culture apocalypse…

Honorable mentions: Cole Abaius, The Playlist, Hannah, Jim Roberts, Ray Pride, AdFreak

How Do You Reconstruct a 550-Year Old Battle?

At first, I wasn’t too taken by The Economist’s detailing of how the medieval battle of Towton was reconstructed. But by the end of the piece, I was fascinated and impressed by how much work goes into these things. If you’re any sort of a science dork, as I am, trust me, it’s worth a read:

Piecing together what happened on a single day 550 years ago is exceedingly difficult. Even observers would have found it hard to discern a precise order of events in the confusion. Contemporary accounts of the battle may be politically biased or exaggerated. Mr Sutherland says that the idea of medieval soldiers slugging it out for ten hours, as the conventional view of the battle has it, defies credibility; he thinks there was a series of engagements that led to the main battle and that took place over the course of the day….

The battlefield was first swept for ferrous materials such as arrowheads. That search proved frustrating. The trouble was not too little material, but too much—bits of agricultural machinery and other things dating from after the battle. Looking for non-ferrous items—things like badges, belt buckles, buttons, pendants and coins that would have been ripped off during the fighting—proved to be much more fruitful. After identifying clusters of these personal effects, which seemed to mark the main lines of battle, researchers went back to looking for ferrous materials and started finding a concentration of arrowheads.The battlefield was first swept for ferrous materials such as arrowheads. That search proved frustrating. The trouble was not too little material, but too much—bits of agricultural machinery and other things dating from after the battle. Looking for non-ferrous items—things like badges, belt buckles, buttons, pendants and coins that would have been ripped off during the fighting—proved to be much more fruitful. After identifying clusters of these personal effects, which seemed to mark the main lines of battle, researchers went back to looking for ferrous materials and started finding a concentration of arrowheads.

Myles McNutt Reflects on Showrunners vs. Critics

Colleague and /Filmcast favorite Myles McNutt has written a reflection on Kurt Sutter’s dismissal of certain TV critics, who have been none-too-pleased with the latest season of Sons of Anarchy (which Sutter currently showruns):

[M]y greater issue is that Sutter seems intent on profiling critical responses, a profile which is bleeding down into the show’s rabid fanbase. I think it’s one thing to dismiss critics entirely: I think it is perfectly reasonable for a creator as admittedly hyper-sensitive as Sutter to stop paying attention to what critics are saying, and I would not be offended if Sutter said he didn’t give a shit what I said about his show. However, instead of fueling a general apathy towards critical responses, Sutter profiles critics as lazy, unoriginal, and reductive; he portrays male critics as linear, incapable of grasping the complexity of the series, instead of simply disagreeing with them. In the process, the real hivemind in this situation is revealed to be those who commented on Sutter’s blog post, spewing back the same rhetoric about lazy critics with very little originality – the most alarming part of Sutter’s piece is not his own comments, but instead the degree to which the dichotomy between critics and “real” fans of the show was picked up by the 50+ comments which followed.

For his part, Sutter has already responded to McNutt via Twitter, saying:

You missed the fucking point. or perhaps the point is that you lean away from the point so you can masturbate all over your blog. To be fair, I only got thru 1/3 of your blog, then I got bored & confused, so I switched to porn and masturbated all over MY blog.

Classy.

Update: The dialogue continues! Here’s a screenshot of further Twitter dialogue between McNutt and Sutter. Sutter has also listed some of his favorite TV critics and bloggers (so we know he doesn’t hate everyone):

Kevin Smith’s Twitter Tirade (December 30, 2010)

Wow, it’s been an interesting day on the Twittersphere today, hasn’t it? Just a few days after director Kevin Smith publicly stated he would not do interviews with press for his upcoming film Red State, he’s let loose with a bunch more thoughts on movie bloggers, his career, the film industry, plus extended a strange offer.

The following tweets are from Smith’s Twitter account today. I’ve aggregated them all here for easy reading. Looking on the entire corpus, it’s a breathtaking, intense critique, and a personal account of a man who’s trying to reinvent himself.

A few movie websites this morning have chided me for talking about not doing press on Red State. Number one, that’s ironic right there. Even I say I’m not doing Red State press…and press writes about it. But I never said I’m not talking: said I always talk plenty right here. So if you can always ask me anything you want right here (and often get a LONG-ASS response), what’s the damage? Besides, the only story in RedState that really needs telling is the MichaelParks story – and, as per usual, NOBODY is writing it. “Gotta wait & see on the Parks of it all. Don’t wanna be out front, first with THAT story. Now – the boring story of how KevinSmith Tweeted he’s not doing press? THAT’S news!”

And one month from now, when EVERYONE ELSE is writing the MichaelParks story, these websites who wasted their time/space on a fruitless war of words with me are gonna wonder why other websites get more hits/have more followers/earn more than their site does. I’M TELLING YOU THIS FAR OUT: why the FUCK aren’t you writing about the MichaelParks story? First one out there gets the top Google hits. But these swing have zero vision; it’s all “Kevin Smith is gonna hurt his career not talking to press.” Seriously: Someone actually wrote that story today (naturally it was a movie news site). The site that’s accomplished merely a fraction of wha tother movie sites in the online fraternity/sorority have, suggested that – since I’m not gonna play the game the normal, boring way, I’m gonna hurt my career.

Once again, these motherfuckers are a day late and a dollar short? Hurt Kevin Smith’s career? Have you SEEN this: smodcast.com? I ain’t hurting the career of Kevin Smith, I’m taking a fucking chainsaw to the career of Kevin Smith. That’s what you gotta do as an artist: when everyone’s comfy, pull the fucking chair out from under their settled asses while showing ’em something they’re not used to seeing from anybody, least of all YOU. And if you lose some people in the process, so be it: art should be a little dangerous, scary & thrilling – ESPECIALLY for the artist. You think there isn’t some tiny part of me that stops & says “You can make this SO much easier on yourself & the journey of this film if you just do what you’ve ALWAYS done and go hat-in-hand to the snark-factory…”? But nothing about RedState has been done conventionally; why should I start NOW? Best piece of advice I can give a bunch of people who only wanna shit on what I do? Go find MichaelParks and BECOME the interview of record. Stop writing about how you’re mad at me, or how I’m not doing it your way, or how I’m gonna hurt myself. Write about something original: the guy who the entire WORLD is about to wanna talk to. The money’s out there; pick it up it’s yours; you don’t, I got no sympathy for you.

“Hurt Kevin Smith’s Career”? Bitch, I’ve ANNIHILATED Kevin Smith’s Career. And now? I get to remake it, all over again. And I’ve got a dopey movie blogger to thank for it: one day, one of these hymens wrote “Kevin Smith owes his career to people like me” – said people being bloggers, critics, movie journalists. I gave this some serious thought & realized I’d never know whether that theory was true or not.

But while I couldn’t validate the veracity of the statement, I realized it didn’t matter: if people like this were to thank for my career, then I didn’t want that career anymore. So I made SModcast. And now RedState. And then combined the two. And realized I could do it without the help of the same people who don’t seem to have anything nice to say about not only my flicks, but ANYBODY’S flicks they see. Their game is rigged; why play it? I go to the carnival, I wanna ride the roller-coaster, not waste money on the rigged games of chance, the rewards of which are cheap, empty prizes that don’t seem nearly as cool in the light of day, away from the cotton candy haze. If they weren’t convinced that I made my own way the first time, I’m happy (and more importantly, EXCITED) to do it again, one more time – just to prove that point.

And if you’re gonna make art, you SHOULD reinvent periodically anyway. Lots of jackasses writing about my craft & how I conduct it weren’t even BORN when I built my shit from scratch. They can’t possibly be expected to be impressed by shit they couldn’t witness for themselves because they were just cum when it happened the first time. So rather than continue being the same ol’ KevinSmith that all these movie sites kept insisting I was, I practiced my game, skated night & day, and learned to stay out of the scrum & figure out where the puck was going. I stopped being the KevinSmith they loved to bitch about; the KevinSmith they chided to change. So I changed. And guess what? Now they’re bitching about that? And trying to scare me with some booga-booga bullshit about hurting my career. Like I said: the game’s rigged. So why play it on THEIR terms? KobayashiMaru that shit: at the very worst, you get bitched-out by cowards. At best? You BECOME James Tiberius Kirk.

Shortly afterwards, Smith  extended an offer for up to 48 movie webmasters to go to his house for a screening of Red State, which prompted a whole other wave of hand-wringing and further questions. I’ll address the implications of that offer in a separate post.

The End of the World Began on October 5, 2010

Cord Jefferson argues that he knows PRECISELY when the end of the world began:

Most people don’t know this, but the beginning of the end of the world happened on October 5 of this year. That’s the day Frito-Lay announced it was ceasing production of most of its compostable bags due to customer noise complaints. That is, full-grown adults had whined so much about the biodegradable bags’ unusually loud crinkling that Frito-Lay caved and returned to housing its chips in standard, difficult-to-recycle mylar containers. It was one of the dumbest decisions made this year, and it went largely unnoticed for the abomination it was.

Pajiba’s Brutal Takedown of Kevin Smith (and Movie Bloggers)

When Dustin Rowles from Pajiba gets pissed, I get the hell out of the way. There’s something I find addictive about Rowles’ incendiary language. It’s the language of righteous indignation, language that doesn’t give a ____ who or what gets caught up in the ensuing maelstrom. And because his latest attack targets both director Kevin Smith and some of my fellow movie blogger colleagues (and probably myself?), I present an excerpt here without further comment:

If you follow Kevin Smith over on the Twitter, I pity you. I follow Kevin Smith because I love the guy, but Jesus Christ: The man alternates between two personalities: Pitch-man, trying to sell his wares and promote his film (and the endless Smodcasts) or King of the Motherfucking Bitches. Everyone complains on Twitter — my God, it’s an endless stream of whiny motherfuckers who are either detailing every goddamn boo boo they’ve ever experienced, or taking umbrage with something someone else said or wrote. I bet you didn’t know that there were 140 characters in “YOU SUCK! PAY ATTENTION TO ME,” but that’s probably because you don’t follow enough movie bloggers on Twitter.

But nobody whines more than Kevin Smith, not even the movie bloggers who constantly whine about Kevin Smith. Lately, the dude refuses to shut the fuck up about movie critics and movie blogs and how they’re ruining society and sending us into a dark dystopian future where we’ll never be free to run Cop Out on a continuous loop until our fucking brains bleed out of our head.

The Last Processor of Kodachrome

A sad story from the NYTimes about the last processor of Kodachrome (the first successful color film):

At the peak, there were about 25 labs worldwide that processed Kodachrome, but the last Kodak-run facility in the United States closed several years ago, then the one in Japan and then the one in Switzerland. Since then, all that was left has been Dwayne’s Photo. Last year, Kodak stopped producing the chemicals needed to develop the film, providing the business with enough to continue processing through the end of 2010. And last week, right on schedule, the lab opened up the last canister of blue dye.

I still think back with nostalgia to my college days, when I spent countless hours in the darkroom, developing and printing film on real photo paper. And while I love the convenience of digital, I’m sad that this way of photography is slowly fading…

Viagra Cinema

Matt Singer has an insightful piece on how Sylvester Stallone’s films have mirrored the actor’s career:

What Stallone’s done is basically without precedent. All of his former rivals for action film supremacy have faded away or moved on; all of his predecessors turned to moodier and more reflective work by the time they were his age. This is a situation that suits Stallone, since endurance was always the most important value of the “Rocky” movies. Rocky Balboa’s greatest strength as a boxer wasn’t his footwork or his punching power; on those fronts, he was mediocre fighter. What made Rocky extraordinary was his ability to take a punch and never go down. Though he has occasionally tried to distance himself from the character in his career (typically when he’s working on something other than blue-collar action films) it’s clear that Balboa is an extremely autobiographical character for Stallone. Rocky’s story is Stallone’s story: the dreams of an opportunity to prove your greatness, the struggle to remain hungry amidst the trappings of success and fame, the realization that you’ve lost your spark, the desire for one last chance.