The man who sued a movie theater for showing too many pre-show ads...and won
These are the best things I found on the internet this week!
Hello friends!
Thank you to everyone who participated in my Oscars pool — 30 entrants this year. Not bad! The full results will be announced on Friday, but the winners have already been notified, so if you haven’t heard from me…better luck next year.
As much as I’d like to, this Tuesday newsletter isn’t the place for Oscars reactions, winners/losers or meme-able moments. There are plenty of other (and better) places to find those things. We tend not to come at the big news obliquely rather than head-on, if we comment on those things at all.
These are my “conversation starters,” a round-up of the best, most interesting and most entertaining content on the internet in the past week. Hope you enjoy!
What’s the coolest story or thing you found on the internet this week? Reply to this email and shoot me a link. Would love to hear from you!
It was a really big week for me over at Forbes. I published THREE different stories:
I explain why independent film financing company BondIt Media Capital is the safest bet in Hollywood, and why their success last year (Woman of the Hour, Terrifier 3) really matters to the current movie ecosystem.
I published our Forbes list of the top 20 highest-paid actors in Hollywood. It’s a helpful snapshot of how much control talent can wield in the industry, and what they’re doing with it.
I heard from Dana White for the first time since publishing my cover story on him (available on your grocery store magazine shelf now!!). White called to tell me about his latest risky bet on himself — pulling his upstart league Power Slap from livestreaming platform Rumble to compete with the big fish on YouTube. “You know who I like to bet on?” he asked me, rhetorically. “Me.”
Speaking of which, if you’re interested, our Forbes video team (shoutout Lauren Rivera!) posted my full sit-down with Dana White on our Forbes YouTube channel. Check out our nearly 35-minute conversation!
OK, enough back-patting Matt! Here’s something that will wake us all up. What’s up with all these airline crashes lately? The Verge summed up my thoughts perfectly: “It certainly feels like the global aviation system is coming apart at the seams. Every video I watch of the recent crashes makes my brain lurch with primal fear.” They ask experts whether these plane incidents should or shouldn’t make you reconsider your next cross country flight.
Here’s an example of the kind of oblique news-adjacent story I love. Have you ever wondered who makes the red carpet for the Oscars?? I’ll do you one better. It’s one company, and specifically one guy, who makes the red carpets for the Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammys and Emmys, as well as for Disney, Marvel and Warner Bros. movie premieres and the Super Bowl. The New York Times introduces us to carpet master Steve.
John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight published a handy step-by-step instruction guide to make your online presence less attractive to online advertisers, which means fewer of them will barter and trade your personal information around the internet back and forth.
If you’re one of those people that complains about how long the ads and trailers are before the movie starts, perhaps this news will make you cheer. A man in India successfully won a court case against the country's biggest movie theater for showing too many pre-movie ads, after he complained that having to watch too many advertisements before a movie caused him to miss important work meetings. Nearly $600!
The Washington Post claims to have identified the house color that that tells you when a neighborhood is gentrifying — gray. Really cool visuals in this story, to complement a really interesting hidden trend they spotted in cities across the country.
Thanks for reading and sharing! On Friday we’ll have the official Oscars pool results and set the table for a brand new year of movies!