Новости за 15.12.2017

In theory, superhero fans should be delighted by Thursday’s news that Disney, in one one of the biggest corporate deals in history, is acquiring most of 21st Century Fox for around $52 billion. One of the major creative consequences the move is that it will bring together the hitherto scattered intellectual properties of Marvel Comics, allowing for a consolidation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into one coherent entity. Hitherto, Disney had owned most of Marvel’s vast pantheon of heroes, including Iron Man... Читать дальше...

Two things that the political press excels at are intensive (I would say excessive) speculation about who will win a particular race, and overconcluding about its result. (Paying no attention to the first is an excellent way to save time.) Yet while speculation is harmless (if people lay money on the basis of it, that’s their problem), overconcluding can lead to unwarranted expectations and major disappointments—even to a sense that the election must have been stolen or rigged, a disillusionment with politics. Читать дальше...

“I think any man, if someone comes in the room—gay or straight—their first thought is ‘would I fuck them?’” Glenn Close had been talking about murder mysteries for a while before she delivered this dose of gender essentialism. She told me a nice story about her great aunt, who was sent home in a passing car after getting knocked out by a horse in the 1930s. We were here to talk about her latest movie, an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Crooked House. While on set her fluffy white dog Pip leapt... Читать дальше...

Using taxpayer dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency has hired a cutting-edge Republican PR firm that specializes in digging up opposition research to help Administrator Scott Pruitt’s office track and shape press coverage of the agency.

Patagonia, the outdoor sportswear company, made a bold business decision last week: They threatened to sue Donald Trump. “The President Stole Your Land,” the company declared on its website, an angry rebuke of Trump’s decision to shrink two national monuments in Utah. The removal of federal environmental protections for much of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments is “the largest elimination of protected land in American history” and “illegal,” the site read. “Tell the Administration... Читать дальше...

Toward the end of the 2010 World Cup, Julio Grondona made a prediction, or perhaps it was a promise, to a group of journalists in the gilded lobby of Johannesburg’s Michelangelo hotel, the five-star Italian-marble palace where FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, had established its tournament headquarters. Argentina had just been humiliated, 4-0, by the Germans, but Grondona wasn’t worried about the backlash. In 31 years as president of the Argentina’s national soccer association, he’d endured personal scandal... Читать дальше...

Illustration by Mario Wagner

The Austrian director Michael Haneke has been called a cynic, a nihilist, and a fraud. He’s called himself a “realist.” The question is whether the bleakness of his films represents a recognizable reality or whether his dark manipulations and depictions of violence—especially of suicide, but also torture, murder, and mercy killings—are merely sensational, calling attention to nothing more than themselves. That he works in the grammar of European avant-garde cinema—often... Читать дальше...

When I saw the words “The Silence Breakers” splashed across TIME’s Person of the Year issue last week, a GIF began playing on a loop in my head. It was pulled from a scene of television from 2013, one that often flickers in the back of my mind. I saw Laura Dern as Amy Jellicoe, scowling in a sunny board room in the finale of Enlightened. The scene is one of divine retribution. Amy sits, seething in a denim jacket, across from the high brass at Abadonn Industries, a fictional Southern California... Читать дальше...

Ajit Pai thinks net neutrality held us all back. It stifled innovation, he said. It deprived consumers of choices, starved rural communities of broadband, and even threatened the survival of the internet itself. Pai, who lobbied for Verizon before Barack Obama appointed him to the Federal Communications Commission, has prioritized the repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules since becoming its chairman under President Donald Trump. Considering Pai’s background in the telecommunications industry... Читать дальше...