richardmurray

I quote Variety: 
By backing #Oppenheimer, Universal is making a bet that the right director can still get audiences excited to visit cinemas for original content. The film, which isn’t due in theaters until 2023, will need to defy the odds to become commercially successful

 

The article

Why Christopher Nolan’s $100 Million WWII Drama ‘Oppenheimer’ Could Be the Last of Its Kind

By Rebecca Rubin < https://variety.com/author/rebecca-rubin/ >  

Christopher Nolan’s next movie “Oppenheimer,” a $100 million-budgeted historical drama about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, could be considered one of an endangered species.

These days, it’s rare for traditional studios to pump nine figures into a film that isn’t inspired by popular toys, novels or comic books. Even before COVID-19 upended the moviegoing landscape, audiences had been gravitating toward superheroes and science-fiction spectacles — and not much else. That reality has made it increasingly difficult for Hollywood to justify the economics of greenlighting expensive movies that aren’t based on existing intellectual property. They’re a bigger risk, not only in recouping investments for studios, but also in generating profits, spawning sequels and leveraging consumer product riches. No matter how well people receive Nolan’s film, it’s unlikely J. Robert Oppenheimer’s face will adorn t-shirts or lunch boxes.

By backing “Oppenheimer,” Universal Pictures is making a bold bet that the right director can still get audiences excited to visit cinemas for original content. The film, which isn’t due in theaters until 2023, will need to defy the odds to become commercially successful. On top of its $100 million production budget, the studio will need to spend $100 million more to properly promote the film to global audiences. Because Nolan’s contract guarantees he receives first-dollar gross — an increasingly uncommon perk that grants the filmmaker a percentage of ticket sales — it will take $50 million to $60 million more to achieve profitability than it would take another film of similar scope. Consequently, insiders at rival studios estimate “Oppenheimer” will need to generate at least $400 million at the global box office in order to turn a profit.

That box office benchmark is one that Nolan’s films haven’t had trouble clearing in the past decade, with the exception of “Tenet,” which opened in theaters at a time when COVID-19 vaccines were still months away. And despite the circumstances, the Warner Bros. cerebral thriller — starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson — managed to collect $363 million worldwide. “Tenet” cost more than $200 million, making it nearly impossible to turn a profit in those conditions. When it comes to Nolan’s other original properties, 2010’s “Inception” grossed $836 million globally, 2014’s “Interstellar” made $701 million globally and 2017’s “Dunkirk” collected $526 million globally. In other words, Nolan is a filmmaker with an enviable box office track record.

Those who closely follow the industry point out that “Oppenheimer” won’t be the kind of gripping mind-benders that audiences have come to expect from Nolan, such as “Inception” or “Memento.” Instead, it’s a historical drama that’s firmly rooted in fact and physics. Unlike “Dunkirk,” which captures the heroism of British forces during the early days of World War II, “Oppenheimer” tells a darker story, one that exists in the moral murk of the past and is not only divisive, but firmly American. That could limit interest overseas, where Nolan’s films tend to make the bulk of their revenues.

None of this means people in the movie theater business are betting against Nolan. The reason that Universal’s chairwoman Donna Langley made it her mission to court Nolan after his relationship with Warner Bros. grew strained is that he’s one of the few directors who can take a bold swing and rake in hundreds of millions at the box office. It’s especially valuable at a time when Hollywood appears to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for IP that can be spun into cinematic gold. Case in point: There are (real) movies in the works based on the card game Uno, the crunchy snack Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and the invention of Viagra. Because not every project can be derived from Marvel, Star Wars, James Bond, Jurassic World and Fast & Furious, studios are turning to filmmakers with unique perspectives who can launch a film based on their name alone. Privately, other Hollywood players have voiced their desire to see “Oppenheimer” succeed because it would encourage studio executives and financiers to take more chances on new ideas.

“[Nolan] is a unique talent with a very loyal fanbase. If you were to say someone else was doing a period piece about J. Robert Oppenheimer, I would say it would be difficult to get made,” says producer Peter Newman, the head of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ MBA/MFA program. “Here, you know you’re going to get something different and original.”

There aren’t many filmmakers who are given the opportunity to create movies around new and unfamiliar ideas at that budget level, at least, not at traditional studios. (In a sign of changing times, Steven Spielberg, once a streaming service skeptic, forged a partnership for his company Amblin to produce new feature films yearly for Netflix.) When they work, in the case of Quentin Tarantino’s ode to 1960s showbiz “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” the studio and filmmakers alike can reap the benefits. Sony shelled out roughly $90 million to produce “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie and grossed $375 million at the global box office. When they flop, like Ridley Scott’s big-budget period piece “The Last Duel,” starring Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Adam Driver, or Roland Emmerich’s $100 million-budgeted war drama “Midway,” the losses can be ruinous.

Filmmakers like Jordan Peele and Judd Apatow have a similar ability to churn out hits, but their movies don’t cost nearly as much to make. Recent would-be blockbusters or adult-targeted movies with sizable budgets, such as Michael Bay’s “6 Underground,” Aaron Sorkin’s “Trial of the Chicago 7,” David Fincher’s “Mank” and “Red Notice” starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot, were set up by or sold to Netflix. The streamer, as well as its competitors, doesn’t report box office grosses and relies on luring subscribers with fresh content, so it’s impossible to know what kind of financial impact those movies had. 

Nolan could have easily sold “Oppenheimer” to a streaming service, which would have guaranteed him a massive payday without being subjected to the scrutiny of box office reporting. But he’s a big supporter of the big-screen experience and the struggling film exhibition industry.

Since “Oppenheimer” isn’t expected to debut in theaters until summer 2023, plenty could change in the movie theater business by then — for better or worse. There’s a chance it could launch in an environment that’s even more hostile to tentpoles that aren’t of the comic book ilk. Or, moviegoers could be ready to look beyond the constant drip of Batman, Superman and Spider-Man adventures and watch something that doesn’t involve grown men in tights.

With an original property, marketing executives have to familiarize audiences with the property while also enticing them to watch the story in theaters. In the case of “Oppenheimer,” Universal has to make people aware that Nolan has a new movie and convince them they simply must watch the story behind the Manhattan Project on the big screen. Nolan is assembling an A-list ensemble — Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr. — around Cillian Murphy (who is playing J. Robert Oppenheimer) to elevate the movie’s profile.

Another challenge will be reaching its target demographic of adult crowds. They may be more eager to go to the movies two years from now, but while COVID-19 is still lingering, the age group has been most hesitant to visit their local cinemas.

“There used to be at least one level of uncertainty in how movies perform: execution dependent,” Newman says. “Now, it’s not only execution dependent, it’s pandemic dependent. It takes over a year to make a movie like this, and nobody knows what the health situation will be [at the time it comes out].”

 

MY THOUGHTS

If I am honest, I think this movie dies hard. When M Night Shamala did Lady In The Water or Last Airbender, it sounds a lot like Oppenheimer from Christopher Nolan. A director with a set of fans who expect a certain kind of narrative in a film and who will not be happy of the course change. The article says directors like Nolan can be banked on money but admitted, the failures of big budget films, like Ridley scott's , The Last Duel, or similar are examples to show it doesn't work and has many recent examples of failures.
The one name the article doesn't mention is clint eastwood. It refers to Jordan Peele or Judd Apatow but to be blunt, Clint Eastwood is the quiet king of the low budget hit machine, starting decades ago. And to that end is where I think directors like ridley scott/christopher nolan/shamala all made the mistake. The reality is, big budget movies from the usa need to be the providence of comics/superheroes/fast and the furious/toys. The article didn't even mention Villaneuve, who did the Bladerunner sequel and Dune and in both cases, you can argue for failure financially. 

It is an art directing a low budget picture , it demands the director stop all the bells and whistles and simply tell a good story and pick wise actors to present their characters as compelling within the framework of said story. Nolan will get paid regardless, but I expect this film will be an end and I don't think it is a problem. 

I end with a simple truth. No one is stopping original ideas from being made into films. if viewerships or audiences are too stupid or too manipulated to give movies a chance beyond metacritic scores and various judgements of others, then the audience or viewership is the problem.

 

POST SCRIPT

The point they made about Netflix's films is very poignant. Who can know a streaming service has success with a film? is it number of streamers growth? If quantity of streamers, people who paid for a subscription, doesn't elevate then how is a film on a streaming service financially profitable, outside stock price speculation 

Article Title: Writing Compassionately about Parents 
Article Author: November 17, 2021 by Katie Bannon 

 

I Quote the article in a sequence: "Readers respond most to complicated characters."
"Remember that it’s difficult for readers to connect with characters who appear one-dimensional."
"A one-sided portrayal of a parent won’t cause a reader to hate or love them—it will probably only make them detach from the narrative entirely. "
"I have read or heard those often but a thought question to any who read this...does writing complicated characters make for good writing? 
Need help showing your parents on the page? Try this writing exercise:
Write a scene about a time you fought with or were scolded by a parent. The key here is using details to humanize the parent and show the reader the dynamic between the two of you. Play with the tension between what the character of “you” wants in the scene, versus what the character of your parent wants. Try to include the following elements:
Your parent’s physical characteristics
Your parent’s body language (twirling hair, stiffening of the shoulders, etc.)
Your parent’s speech (word choice, tone, cadence)
Your parent’s actions and reactions
Speculation about what your parent might have wanted and/or felt in the scene (which may be in conflict with what you felt/wanted)"

 

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE
Writing Compassionately about Parents 
November 17, 2021 by Katie Bannon 
https://www.janefriedman.com/writing-compassionately-about-parents/ 

My thoughts
HAs anyone heard the opening line of A. K. in Russian, does it sound poetic? 
After reading the article, the three main points seem to be: 1. readers need to see characters that are as multifaceted as possible 2. it may be difficult but parents can be displayed in a multifaceted way. 3. writing about parents with a balance or to a balance is difficult but an act of compassion. 

My questions and my own answers.
1. are readers who can't connect to one dimensional characters poor readers? I don't mean beta readers, but the general populace. I argue that readers who detach from narratives because of one dimensional characters or don't connect to characters who are one dimensional are poor readers
2. Concerning real parents, is it compassionate to write them other than you feel? I comprehend a fake parent can be whatever your imagination want, but to your real parent, is it compassion to see in your writing what you don't feel in reality? 

In conclusion, 
the topic is stellar. I love my parents. I don't know if someone will call how I see them and thus as I write them as one dimensional. But, does multidimensionality for a character come when a writer states a moment of yelling? Yes , my parents have been angry, but does that need to be said? is that multidimensionality? 
I don't know. I don't see the act of writing similar to what is suggested, but great topic, thought provoking.

DC pairs Milestone heroes with real-life Black historical icons for Black History Month special
By Chris Arrant 1 day ago < https://www.gamesradar.com/author/chris-arrant/ > 

Static, Icon, and Rocket paired with Hannibal, the Queen of Sheba, and more

DC has revealed details on Milestone Media's 2022 Black History Month anthology announced back during the 2021 DC Fandome. Milestone Media will veer away from superhero fiction for true-life stories of real-life Black heroes from human history for the 96-page anthology graphic novel Milestones in History.

There will be stories about real-life historical icons including:

Hannibal, the Carthagian general who fought the Roman Republic
The mythical/historical Queen of Sheba
Alexande Dumas, the writer of The Count of Monte Cristo and the The Musketeers
Eugene Bullard, a World War One fighter pilot who was an American but served for France
DC says the writers of Milestones in History will include Reginald Hudlin, Alice Randall, Touré, and Michael Harriott. The publisher says more writers, as well as the artists, will be named at a later date.

And although Milestones in History is non-fiction, there's still room for Milestone's heroes - Static, Icon, Rocket, Hardware, and more will act as narrators of these true stories of world history.

For February 2022's Black History Month, DC also has planned the massive 1300-page MIlestone Compedium One < https://www.am*zon.com/Milestone-Compendium-One-Dwayne-McDuffie/dp/1779513100 > , a collected edition of the recent Static: Season One, as well as a series of Black History Month-themed variant covers across the entire DC comics line. 

This follows a similar female-centric anthology DC published in 2021, Wonderful Women of the World - retelling stories of real-life women but themed around Wonder Woman. Could this be the start of an informal series of non-fiction anthology graphic novels with its superheroes as the narrators?  We'd love to read a true crime history anthology narrated by Batman.

Doug Braithwaite will draw the main cover to Milestones in History, with a variant cover planned by Chriscross.

DC/Milestone Media's MIlestones in History goes on sale on February 15, 2022.

These Black superheroes changed the face of comic books. 

 

Blood Syndicate returns to comics and Milestone gets animated in 2022
By Michael Doran October 16, 2021 < https://www.gamesradar.com/author/michael-doran/ >  

All the Milestone news from DC Fandome 2021 including a DC/Milestone Black History Month anthology

The new Milestone Initiative program to "identify, educate, spotlight, and empower" the next generation of Black and diverse creators in the comic book industry wasn't the only Milestone announcement from 2021's DC Fandome. 
 
In a discussion moderated by actor Echo Kellum (Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific on Arrow), Milestone Media producer Reggie Hudlin and Milestone co-founder Denys Cowan announced more new projects from their DC partnership and the Dakota Universe comic book universe, including a new Blood Syndicate comic book series for 2022. 

Hudlin and Cowan did not announce the creative team but the publisher did release a promotional image and the duo talked about how Blood Syndicate has been the Milestone property fans have been clamoring for.

Originally published for 35 issues from 1993 to 1996 and created by the late Milestone co-founder Dwayne McDuffie, writer Ivan Velez Jr., and Cowan, the Milestone team book starred a loosely affiliated 'gang' of superheroes, most of whom were former street gang members who gained powers during the Milestone 'Big Bang' origin event and used their powers for the greater good. 

Cowan (Hardware: Season One) and Hudlin (Icon & Rocket: Season One) also confirmed that there are plans for "Season Two" of each series and that their characters will appear in each other's titles, reestablishing a shared Dakotaverse. 
 
The characters will also appear in a Milestone anthology scheduled for February 2002 as a part of DC's Black History Month celebration, which will also feature the release of Milestone Compendium One on February 1, 2022 - which Cowan revealed his cover. 

And in Milestone multimedia news, Hudlin and Cowan confirmed writer Randy McKinnon is currently writing a script for a Static Shock feature film in production with Warner Bros. and Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society production shingle, and Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment are developing a Milestone animated movie based on a screenplay by Hardware: Season One writer Brandon Thomas (who is also co-writer of the upcoming new Aquamen DC series).
  
"This has been the thing that Milestone fans have been dreaming about for a long time, and we're happy to give it to you, finally," Cowan says during the Fandome event.  

As the promo image featuring Static, Rocket, Icon, and Hardware released by DC Saturday indicates, Cowan described the film as being about more than one Milestone character, suggesting it's more of a Dakotaverse film than a solo story. 

 

 

MY THOUGHTS TO THE FIRST ARTICLE

 

Technically, Hannibal was phoenician not carthaginian. Carthage was the capital of the phoenician empire which controlled the south of the meditteranean while the roman empire, centered on Rome controlled the north. But, the phoenician community had changed its center from the eastern mediterranean to the center. Part of it was the influence of Kemet/Hellens/Persia in the east. As the roman empire would eventually absorb kemet/hellens and create something akin to a USA/USSR dichotomy commonly called a "cold war" with each other.  

Sheba is historical in that history shows Black female queens/leaders in the lands now commonly called ethiopia. The myth is the unfortunate truth, the various wars in that region have destroyed alot of ancient monuments. 

While I comprehend the time period of Hannibal or Sheba gives them precedence in these sort of artistic endeavors. I will add to and if I can not add replace Hannibal with Jamal-ud-Din Yaqut while Sheba with Dandara and add Jonas Caballo of the Seminoles.  I think the legend of all three is needed. The reality is being black, is a phenotypical designation. It isn't about being african. And, i think more black people need to see Black people with cultures that are not african based. And need to see that the white/black dichotomy exist within being asian, within being latino. and, the violent/non-violent dichotomy exist within the descended of enslaved in the usa. Black is one thing. African is another. They are not synonomous.  To be blunt, Hannibal is mulatto. Jamal ud Din and the later Janjira state is a part of Black history in asia that is, ignored, not wanted, not presented. In the larger black world or in the asian world. I am not hating on Hannibal. I know his legend well And his legend warrant telling.  But, I think this book should focus on legends not talked about alot. And Jamal-ud-Din's military greatness is equal to Hannibal's but his existence in asia, as a siddi, gives him a relationship to ancient Kemet, where it is known traded with the various peoples  of what is commonly called today  the indian subcontinent. The existence of black peoples from the indigenous Negrito or Aborigina of Australia to the transported Siddi needs a champion. Jamal-ud-Din for me, is that champion.
Dandara , like Jamal-ud-Din, is not as old as Sheba or in relativity Hannibal. but, like Jamal-ud-Din fits the same category as HAnnibal. Dandara fits the same category as Sheba. Wife to a legendary leader. Warrior woman. A woman disputed in historian circles, a woman disputed in the brasil in which she lived. A latino but she J-Lo. She was a negra, not a blanquito, or mulatto or mestizo. All terms still valid in latin america today. so... I think she needs to be in it. Not the convenient Sheba, who is not known while well known. 

For me Jonas Caballo needs to be in it cause Black people in the usa continually reject Nat Turner or similars. To be blunt, for all the talk black people in the usa have about forebears, people like NAt Turner/Jonas Caballo are not given their due. But why? the why is their violence isn't contained. Black cowboys violence is contained within the usa. Jonas Caballo was fighting against the usa in what is now the state of florida. Nat Turner was fighting against the white community with the same energy as Haiti's initial forebears<dessalines to henry christophe>. BUt, the black community globally , to be blunt, despises them. Why? cause they can't place them in the convenient bubble of nonviolence and anti revenge. Nat turner/Jonas Caballo/Ann Nzinga/Menelik II are heroes but they are violent ones, who also had success militaristically and the black community globally, is led by anti violent zealots. 

Dumas will be interesting. I think Milestone missed a trick. While Dumas's Black saint domingan <not Haitia yet> grandmother and White french father produced his military schooled mulatto father. Pushkin is clearly the best legendary Black writer of Europe to use, for a story. His ancestor was Gannibal. An East african, raised as a show slave by Peter the great of Russia , who became a statued military hero and teacher in Russia. And Pushkin's great grand children were members of Eastern European regal aristocracy. 

Eugene Bullard, in the end, Bullard for me is black not american. People have this wierd way of attributing every person born in the usa as american based on nothing but they were born in the municipal bounds. but, Bullard after his world war exploits, came back to the usa to be a janitor, a elevator operator. In france he actually owned a business. The article says Bullard is american . I don't see him as american or french. His geographic designation is stateless. He was a black man who happened to be born in the usa and happened to fight for france. I like the choice of Bullard but I can already tell where the storytelling is going will not be to my liking. 

I hope the best for the book. 

 

MY THOUGHTS TO THE SECOND ARTICLE

 

Blood syndicate is my favorite Milestone title and I am saddened some others will take it cause I am certain they will turn it into what I will dislike. HArdware is black iron man meets lewis lattimer with edison. Icon is black superman as a conservative with a black supergirl who is liberal and not truly a blood relation to him. With the brilliant story caveat that Rocket is why there is icon. Static is spider man with a nod to the first black comic book character in the usa to get their own book, black volt or bolt. But ...
The Blood Syndicate is something else. They are pure Dakota for me. You can not find a similar story like Blood Syndicate in DC or Marvel. And the reason why is Blood syndicate reflects black cultures  unique reality. To restate, Blood syndicate reflects what Blacks don't have in common with whites. And that is special to me. It must be nurtured in the same way I want the Black latino, the Black asian, the Violent Black to have their due, I want this imprint to be free of the Static/Icon and Rocket/Hardware dogma. Those three in the modern version have been made lackies to the rebooting culture that plagues usa comics. From the first crisis in the DC universe circa 1985 to now. I don't want Blood syndicate to be part of some Black lives matter riot turned wrong. I want Blood syndicate's story unchanged. It was the big bang, they are the survivors of a big gang fight. the police department plus a white industrialist sickened and killed them.  They are the survivors and they exists  in a poor sector of the city , in the same way the hookers run a part of the town in sin city. Nothing needs to change for blood syndicate and listening to denis coan side others, I know they have already decided things will change. 
My blood syndicate, hurts, hurts bad, knowing what will become of them.

 

IN CONCLUSION

 

I wish Milestone well, I did as a fan club member , I did never having watched the static tv show but supported it in all other ways, I do now. Even if I am not chosen to be a part of their development <yes, I applied to the milestone initiative>. But, gardless of how successful Milestone is. A space exists for black superheroes of the many other ways. And, history , the teaching of history, needs the philosophical naysayers out of its telling. Just cause you don't concur or agree or like the path of one in history doesn't mean you dismiss them through never speaking their name. Comprehend the people in the past. ... Would Germany had been better eternally indebted to england or france? 

 

The HArder They Fall
 

MEdia That Moves We

 

Black Daddies

 

some of my thoughts

My Media that moves we commentary

the film was influenced by all the genre's of western films in the usa, from the john wayne era to the spaghetti western  to the black films like posse or buck and the preacher

That is the brilliance of the film, it in the end is an entertainment , not a documentary or historical film. 

Nike, you precancelled , canceled westerns:)

YEah, Multiple review shows of this film have I Think missed one key point. if you want to make a film a certain way, own a film studio. At some point you have to reject the level of complaint to how the story is told. Own a studio and you can do what you want ?

and let's be honest, revenge is a constant theme of westerns of all sorts, denzel's magnificent seven differed from kurosawa's seven samurai or  brenner/mcqueen magnificent seven, where the gunfighters are trying to redeem themselves in a quiet little place. 

yes, they trained with their doubles so they could have a more john wickian fight choreography

I give my entertainment ranking a 10, I was entertained , love the womens fight:) in terms of black westerns , it is a high percentage, 7 or 8. I think posse or buck and the preacher are better as films. In terms of westerns in general , from the black and white silent black westerns and et cetera to now, 7 . In terms of historical quality in western films... a five. 
  

My Black Daddies commentary

Was jill scott offered the role? did jill scott reject it?

blacker than buck and the preacher... I don't know, it is clearly up there

the usa has a long history of film superstar collabs in westerns, this films joins that very long list

white zombia was a financial play, legosi reportedly was paid a lot for that film, and it was clearly designed to play on the fandom of "monster movies" the cultural aspects of white zombie is clearly negative but the reason it was made was purely financial

do you guys think disney has written the entire phase 4 already, or at least all the parts?

Do you think a cartoon of a fiscally impoverished family from a dying black town, can be made by a high profile company like disney?

What about danny glover get production money to direct his toussaint louverture movie if he does this?

if lethal weapon 5 makes money does another Beverly hills cop happen?

What about the detective jumps from a spacex ship to virgin galactic ship to solve a cryptocurrency theft

This was for entertainment, in the spirit of westerns movies in the usa. never real history, always an entertainment
 

Wednesday, November 17th, is Day of the Deviant: a day of fun art streams featuring professional artists! (Learn when the event starts in your time zone.). :squee:  

Watch AliciaMarieBODY, AshMcGivern, TheOneWithBear, and Iamjustino teach each other how to create in their own style and medium

Get tips and insight on how to monetize your art with stumpyfongo, arvalis, AdorkaStock, and SOZOMAIKA

Take a tour of DeviantArt with danlev

Follow along with Ladowska as she colors line art created by simoneferriero

Each stream will feature opportunities to win prizes — decks for video streaming, professional drawing and computer tablets, noise-canceling headphones, gaming chairs, and more. If you're not able to make it for one of the streams you're interested in, have no fear! The streams will be available on DeviantArt's YouTube channel to watch afterward, so you can catch up on what you missed!

A major art contest will also be launching on November 17th, featuring over $11,000 in prizes! 

Save the date and set a reminder — you won't want to miss out on Day of the Deviant!  :ufo:  

https://www.deviantart.com/team/journal/COMING-SOON-Day-of-the-Deviant-894694550

Afropunk 2019 in NYC festival participant
Videographer: Ronald Reed

Chinese traditional ink making

 

Sorghum & Spear - The Way of Silk & Stone Anthology - Kickstarter Coming November 26th!
Join acclaimed editor Sheree Renee Thomas and our award-winning group of authors as they explore and expand the world of Orun Aye into the next phase of storytelling!  We have 14 amazing stories to share with you, as well as some new world-building reveals as well!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/greenecountycreative/sorghum-and-spear-fantasy-novel-the-way-of-silk-and-stone

We held a special panel of several of the writers during our SUBSUME SUMMIT: CREATIVE JUNETEENTH panel this year, for an exclusive look at the project.  Relive this amazing conversation by viewing our YouTube playback: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSfrwOl6rXU

 

 

 

MY REPLY

You miss two issues concerning milestone : First is of Dwayne McDuffie and that any literary form, needs a great storyteller, and milestone misses McDuffie.  I submitted to the Milestone initiative, that didn't even involve one of the milestone creators , who had to submit to it himself. so, do black comic books have the best storytellers. Your focus is on what people call "Woke", what I call stories involving elements of modern sociopolitical frictions.  The problem isn't the themes but it is the stories. The storytelling is simply not good enough. I oppose milestone's choice about changing the origin story, but I think other writers could had written a better story. Second, Literature is not meant to be escapists.  Literature can serve any of infinite functions to a reader but did milestone's administrators comprehend the financial market for comic books? The problem with milestone today  is they seem to be written absent a comprehension of the comic book market today. How do you sell the new milestone series better? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhUMiLlSYgc

 

My Novembrush gallery
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/gallery/80841709/novembrush-2021

Well... it is another Friday, another day to love, to Oxum, Oshun, Freya, or Venus, another day to Kizomba!

Steven and rashida from abidjan , ivory coast, have a lovely improvisation exposition 

 

a doc on Louis Armstrong’s secret child, comes to ABFF
Matthew Allen - Nov 12, 2021
https://thegrio.com/2021/11/12/little-satchmo-louis-armstrong-abff/

Sharon Preston-Folta is a senior account executive at WUSF Public Media in Tampa, Florida. She also happens to be the daughter of the late Louis Armstrong. That latter revelation was not public knowledge during the musician’s lifetime, but now her story is the subject of Little Satchmo, a documentary that’s playing at the American Black Film Festival (ABFF).
Since Armstrong was married to his fourth wife, Lucille Wilson, from the time Preston-Folta was born until his death, he chose not to disclose the existence of his daughter publicly. However, as evident in the trailer, he acknowledged her in private, sending video recordings and letters asking about her.

Preston-Folta, who worked in advertising sales and marketing for companies like ABC/Disney, CBS Radio, and Ennis Communications for over 30 years, didn’t come forward about being Armstrong’s daughter until 2012, as reported by The Telegraph.

“Publicly fawning over a child fathered with his mistress wasn’t exactly an option for Louis Armstrong,” Preston-Folta says during the trailer. “He always wanted to be a father, but we had to keep it all secret.”

Bandleader, vocalist, and trumpeter, Armstrong was a beloved musician who was one of the first African-American celebrities who enjoyed widespread crossover appeal.

Aside from recording American music standards like “What a Wonderful World,” “Stompin’ At The Savoy” and “Hello, Dolly,” he was a global ambassador for American jazz music. Armstrong’s public reputation was impeccable and he collaborated with other star musicians of the time including Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Ella Fitzgerald.

So, having a child from an extramarital affair that lasted for more than 20 years would not have been good for his public image.

The documentary, narrated by Preston-Folta, is adapted from her 2012 memoir, Little Satchmo: Living In the Shadow Of My Father, Louis Daniel Armstrong, and its release corresponds with the 50th anniversary of Armstrong’s death. Armstrong died of a heart attack in 1971 in New York City after experiencing numerous health problems. He was 69.

Not only does she provide more insight on her famous father through her unique vantage point, but Preston-Folta also shares her own journey as well, revealing the warm relationship between her and Armstrong that will resonate with those who have grown up in fatherless households as well as those seeking to better understand their familial heritage.
 

 

Glad to know Satchmo had a child, I wonder if his daughter had any children. I hope she did. 

Title: First Friday Nov '21
Videographer: Ronald Reed
VIDEO

 

Hey everyone! Happy to announce that                            Harriet Tubman : Demon Slayer  is being developed for TELEVISION W/ PRENTICE  PENNY & SEBASTIAN JONES! Click the image for the full article!

Tyler Martin's The Antagonists : Issues 4-6
Retired supervillains Tonya and Calvin Eval try to protect their kids from the supervillain hunting agency known as A.C.T.I.O.N.

 

 

contact Isoka Sports for management as a player or more  
WEBSITE
https://www.isoka.org/
TWITTER
https://twitter.com/IsokaSports

 

 

MY THOUGHTS

 

Night of the living dead
circa 6:47 I have one of those:) I got mine traveling the motherland. Woosah moments!

We're coming to get Nike , Nicole, He's over there:) 
The first thing I want to know is what either of you will do if a man tries to scare you at a cemetary like that.

Great Trivia Nike, the first film was Night of the Living Dead, the last was Ganja and HEss. Dwayne Jones did an interesting role in a film around the City College of New York. 

Ladies, night of the living dead 1968 is one of those old black and white movies that is rarely shown. In the war film categry think paths of glory. A legendary film, like Night of the living dead, but one that predated the 1980s media surge, and didn't have the annual television power like star trek/twilight zone/its a wonderful life

Nicole, I think it is called listening to a story. The USA during the late 1970s to today was raised on the idea that visual interpretations need to be scientifically honest aside plot quality. Before, people had the idea that special effects was merely entertainment, not a mandate . 

Nike, I don't think Night of the Living dead's plot is so silly. The mist thing from space can be acceptable. But the movie's genious is the explanation to how this scenario came about is in the background, it isn't pushed forward in the story. The genious in the screenplay is, the focus on what do you do if the situation applies is the premise of the plot. The initial character is the woman fleeing from someone formerly dead. Why he is formerly dead doesn't matter. IT is alluded to but it doesn't matter.

Nicole, well said, they came all this way to abduct somebody. Are all humans jesus or something? 

Yes Nicole, the movie forces the question of survival onto the audience. If you are into the story, you aren't interested in aliens or nuclear winds, you are interested on what you will do if surrounded by your parents/children/stranger in the street that are now undead and need you for food.

Good trivia Nike, interesting, Germany banned it for the blood. Outside the usa, the rearing of children or guidance of media is not the same as in the usa. 

Yes, Nicole, but Grimm's fairy tales were softened versions of the original german tales meant for all ages, not just merely children like Grimms. 

Nike, good point, the military is "heroes" in the story, and the usa film industry supports positive images of the military usually. 

Nike, more importantly, than who survived is how they died, i think each character in or about that house's death served a narrative purpose on failure to survive and how it works. 

good question on film influence Nicole

Ladies, Funny how Diahann Carroll was not allowed to be the love interest in Paris BLues in 1961 to Paul Newman or for Sidney Poitier to have a white female love interest in the same movie, while in 1967, Poitier has a white female love interest, who was to be fair, a teenager in guess whose coming to dinner and Diahann Carroll had her own show.

Nike, the sporting world in general was the only place black or white men had any battles in media. Your correct boxing was the only purely violent place.

I will give Night of the living dead a 5 then or now. I think the story or acting still holds up. 

Nicole GREAT POINT, the reason they bring back things is cause they have fanbases and it is financially safer to make a remake over new ideas. 
I comprehend your point but the financial model of film/streaming/cable wants the best return and a totally new story. 
:) good memory Nike 38:59 your reaction Nicole:) thank you jesus, rocky horror picture show

I agree to you ladies, but the reality is, when was the last time the top ten movies were all based on an original idea. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nFruH-5TT0

Title: Ebonee- in my style- ink calligraphy color
Artist: Richard Murray
Poem In Post; Title: The Rays of the Sun Touch The Stream
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Ebonee-in-my-style-ink-calligraphy-color-897403531

 

MEDIA THAT MOVES WE- TRAINING DAY 2001
One seasoned crooked narcotics cop. One eager to please rookie. What do you get when you drop this combo in the middle of LA? One helluva day! That’s what! Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke are polar opposites that hold a tight balance from start to finish in this film and make Training Day a fantastic ride. Join the discussion and share your thoughts!

 

 

 

MY THOUGHTS

Ethan HAwke seemed like the same character in The Lord Of War
Caricature cop is more how I look at Denzel in Training Day

I checked 
1993 Schindlers list won best picture the year after Malcolm X in the 66th academy awards, unforgiven won best picture, which is the end of a western film era.  Al PAcino won for scent of a woman. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65th_Academy_Awards
1985 - Out Of Africa won the Oscars during the year of The Color Purple, interestingly, Whoopie goldberg nor meryl streep won the best actress award
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/58th_Academy_Awards
 
Interestingly, when I looked at who was against denzel washington in 2002, it wasn't al pacino or clint eastwood, it was russell crow<who won in 2001> side sean penn side side tom wilkinson <whO i think is a great thespian but is more of a stage man>  side will smith playing ali:) oddly enough, showing nothing had changed in terms of playing biopic characters... at least till ray right. 
While Halle berry beat out  nicole kidman who won the next year <her first of two with the Hours, oddly enough another more negative character than her character in moulin rouge, so...> Judie Dench, who like williamson is british, is old, I don't think is favored, sissy spacek who had already won it through a biopic oddly enough, and zellwinger who will get hers eventually
My point being, the year they both won it, was interesting. in their competitors . 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/74th_Academy_Awards

 

Good point Nicole, white owned media, created a false narrative around Malcolm X , that the general white community grasped while also many black people who didn't like islam/his background/his positions acted as if Malcolm was being spoken of honestly by that depiction.

For me the film is a 0 from 1 to 5.. the plot is so silly. A lieutenant like him would not have some silly rookie in his car. 

So Nicole + Nike , is the Equalizer the hidden child between Malcolm and the Training cop? 
Or  is his Troy the hidden black man in all three characters: malcolm/training cop/equalizer superhero

Good point, on Black actors career choices. The lesson is, be very careful. I want to ask either of you, is it the black female community that leads to this viewpoint toward male black actors who play such visibly criminal agents towards black women. It is common knowledge that black women in the usa are financially worth more than black men , so with black women being more revenue, is the reception in media of some characters reflecting that?
Well, when parents let children watch the lion king and that romantic scene with the female lion on her back, you never know. 

To be fair, he never hurt a black woman as a fictional character. Malcolm reached out to a black woman and delroy lindo stopped him. Mighty Quin or Mo better blues he stands in the rain. Training Day he had a mestizo woman and he didn't even hit her. 

Nike, your facial expression when you refer to DEnzel as Don Pedro. I can tell you like Don Pedro quite a bit. I will not ask if you wrote about a similar character even though I just did

Nicole, most black women, including Nike, forgave Denzel cause of his looks. I saw Denzel in Fences on stage, the reaction by black women I will never forget when he came on stage, and I said specifically Black Women.

Nike, I think phyliccia rashad is unwilling to play that far from Claire Huxtable

The worst he is done, Virtuosity , I didn't like but I think I can recover, I wonder what you guys think about rewriting the script of a financially poor movie like that.
 

To Donate
https://trellis.org/virtualeventasankrangwadevelopmentfund

 

 

Well... it is another Friday, another day to love, to Oxum, Oshun, Freya, or Venus, another day to Kizomba!
Nana and Ebo, dancing freely, vibrantly lively is the perfect kizomba, all black as the night or bubbly or happy, to this particular day of love. 
The 44th second is special, enjoy fellas, it proves flexibility is not hindered from size:)  Lovely routine. not their best, he is really letting her show off more. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMyJQV1VLRQ

Melinda French Gates Launches Women-Focused Book Imprint
The philanthropist's new imprint, in partnership with Flatiron Books, will publish nonfiction about social issues faced by women and girls.Philanthropist Melinda French Gates is branching out into a new field: books. Elle announced that Gates, in partnership with Flatiron Books, part of Macmillan Publishers, is launching Moment of Lift Books, "an imprint dedicated exclusively to nonfiction about social issues faced by women and girls."
ARTICLE BY ANNIE GOLDSMITH
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/money-and-power/a37896307/melinda-french-moment-of-lift-book-imprint/

Keke Palmer and Jasmine Guillory collaborated on a story collection — get a first look
ARTICLE By Seija Rankin
https://ew.com/books/keke-palmer-jasmine-guillory-southern-belle-insults-first-look/

 

FAMOUS WRITERS HOUSES A TAXONOMY
NOTE: My favorites are Dylan THomas's boathouse plus Edgar Allen Poe's house in Baltimore.
The idea of having an expensive apartment sickens me
ARTICLE By Emily Temple
https://lithub.com/famous-writers-houses-a-taxonomy

 

REFERRING ARTICLE
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/10/15/blushing-books-trouble-sally-rooney-translations-and-the-return-of-the-scholastic-book-fair-this-week-in-book-news/

 

Cool resource alert: Variety has reported that Solange, through her Saint Heron studio, is launching a community library of “esteemed and valuable” books by Black creators. Readers can borrow any book from the collection of rare, author-inscribed and out-of-print literary works to up to 45 days, free of charge in the U.S. According to Saint Heron’s materials, the library’s focus is “education, knowledge production, creative inspiration and skill development through works by artists, designers, historians, and activists from around the world . . . We believe our community is deserving of access to the stylistically expansive range of Black and Brown voices in poetry, visual art, critical thought and design.”

Rosa Duffy, founder of For Keeps Books, an Atlanta-based community bookstore and reading room, has guest curated the first season of the Saint Heron Library; in collaboration with Saint Heron, Duffy has curated over 50 available titles including a signed first edition of In Our Terribleness by Leroi Jones, Meren Hassinger 1972-1991, a signed The Meeting Point by Austin Clarke, My One Good Nerve Rhythms, Rhymes, Reasons by Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, inscribed by the authors to Maya Angelou, and more. The first season, supported by Aesop Skincare, will run from October 18th until the end of November.

“The Saint Heron Library continues the work we have been building by preserving collections of creators with the urgency they deserve,” said Solange in a statement. “Together we seek to create an archive of stories and works we deem valuable. These works expand imaginations, and it is vital to us to make them accessible to students, and our communities for research and engagement, so that the works are integrated into our collective story and belong and grow with us. I look forward to the Saint Heron library continuously growing and evolving and over the next decade becoming a sacred space for literature and expressions for years to come.”

You can read an interview with Rosa Duffy, guest curator of Saint Heron Library’s first season, on Saint Heron’s website.
SAINT HERON website: https://saintheron.com/
ARTICLE By Walker Caplan
https://lithub.com/solange-has-launched-a-community-library-of-rare-books-and-art-by-black-creators/

 

When her phone buzzed on June 6, Iole Lucchese was still absorbing a shock that had come the day before. Her longtime boss, M. Richard Robinson Jr., the chairman and chief executive of the Scholastic publishing company, had died suddenly while taking a walk with one of his sons and his former wife on Martha’s Vineyard.

Now, Scholastic’s general counsel, Andrew Hedden, was on the phone, delivering a second surprise.

He had called to inform her that Mr. Robinson, 84 — who turned his father’s book and magazine business into the largest publisher and distributor of children’s books in the world, known for thousands of beloved series, including Clifford the Big Red Dog, Hunger Games and Harry Potter — had left Ms. Lucchese 53.8 percent of Scholastic’s Class A stock. The company where she had worked for 30 years, rising from a junior employee in the Canadian market to one of its top executives, was now a company she controlled.

“It was overwhelming,” Ms. Lucchese said in an interview at Scholastic’s headquarters in SoHo, water towers punctuating the cityscape behind her.

Being handed control of the company, which is valued at $1.2 billion, has made Ms. Lucchese, 55, one of the most powerful women in book publishing, and the stock provides her — the daughter of a construction worker and a homemaker — with significant wealth. The gift also shifts the business, which had been passed from father to son, to a person outside the family and puts Scholastic in an extremely unusual position for a public company: adapting to a succession plan many key players did not know was coming.

In his will, Mr. Robinson described Ms. Lucchese (her name is pronounced YO-lay lew-KAY-zee) as “my partner and closest friend.” But an article in The Wall Street Journal described them as “longtime romantic partners.” Six former employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were reluctant to cause further embarrassment to Mr. Robinson’s sons, confirmed to The New York Times that the romantic relationship between Ms. Lucchese and Mr. Robinson had been well known among many Scholastic employees.

“We were great business partners and close friends,” said Ms. Lucchese, a senior executive responsible for strategy and the company’s entertainment division.

She declined to address The Journal’s claim that she and Mr. Robinson had been involved in a relationship, which the employees believe ended a few years before his death.

This was Ms. Lucchese’s first interview with the news media since the death of Mr. Robinson, whom everyone called Dick. She was joined at a round conference table by Peter Warwick, the company’s new chief executive, and flanked by two publicists, one from Scholastic and another from the public relations firm Edelman.

“Dick understood that I shared his passion for Scholastic, and what this company means to the teachers we serve, to the children we serve, to everyone,” Ms. Lucchese said of his decision to leave his Class A shares to her. “He trusted me with that legacy, and I think it’s because we worked together and he knew that we were aligned.”

That bequest bypassed his two sons, John Benham Robinson, 34, known as Ben, and Maurice Robinson, 25, known as Reece. Mr. Robinson’s sons declined to comment for this article.

Scholastic said in a statement that the board had regular discussions about succession at the company.

The publisher's offices are in a warehouse-style building with exposed bricks, subway tiles and a giant sculpture of Captain Underpants busting through the lobby wall. On the day of the interview, the offices sat mostly empty as many employees continued to work from home because of the pandemic. Any silences in the conversation hung heavily in the air.

Sometimes confining herself to one-word answers, Ms. Lucchese discussed her career and the unusual situation of being both a longtime senior executive and now also the chairwoman. A stack of Harry Potter books kept watch from a large wooden bookshelf over Ms. Lucchese’s left shoulder.

“He’s the boss,” she said, motioning to Mr. Warwick, who, as chief executive, in one sense outranks her.

“But I do report to the board,” he answered.

Scholastic did not seek publicity for its new chair, the first woman and the first person outside the Robinson family to hold the position in decades. A few days after the news of the personal complexity around the succession had broken in The Journal, the company, known for its stable of beloved childhood classics, became an object of tabloid interest — “How ‘chameleon’ Iole Lucchese won $1.2B Scholastic empire,” read one New York Post headline.

When a reporter for The New York Times emailed Scholastic in August requesting an interview with Ms. Lucchese, Ira Gorsky, executive vice president at Edelman, the public relations company, called to inquire about whether Ms. Lucchese would be asked about “the alleged affair,” saying, “You can see how this is offensive, how the allegations implied that she has not gotten to her position because of merit.”

Mr. Gorsky said that as “a ground rule for giving an interview,” the Times reporter could not ask Ms. Lucchese about a personal relationship with Mr. Robinson. When the reporter declined to agree to such limitations, Mr. Gorsky responded: “Then we’re done.”

Ms. Lucchese did eventually agree to be interviewed, and no one representing her asked again for restrictions on topics or questions. Aside from an hourlong conversation with Ms. Lucchese and Mr. Warwick, preceded by a tour of the company’s archive led by a librarian, Scholastic declined to make any other employee available.

Her supporters say that as a 30-year veteran and a longtime senior executive of the company, she represents continuity and is qualified to lead it. Any skeptical reaction to Mr. Robinson’s choice of Ms. Lucchese is “laced with sexism,” said Erik Feig, the founder of Picturestart, a media financing and production company that Scholastic invested in and where Ms. Lucchese is a board member.

“She understands every brick of the literal and metaphorical building of the company,” Mr. Feig said.

Wall Street does not know her as well as some players in Hollywood do. Scholastic’s largest investor, after the Robinson family, was not aware of Mr. Robinson’s succession plan. “On a number of occasions, I asked Dick,” said David Wallack, a portfolio manager for T. Rowe Price, the Baltimore-based investment company, which holds more than 18 percent of the company’s common stock.

“He would tell me, ‘When I die, there is a safe, and there is an envelope in the safe, and the board of directors will open the safe and see what my wishes were,’” said Mr. Wallack, who was in regular touch with Mr. Robinson for 20 years. “I thought it was hyperbole.”

In its statement, Scholastic described the transition process this summer as smooth and efficient, saying that an interim team had taken over, as planned, immediately after Mr. Robinson’s death and that six weeks later, Mr. Warwick and Ms. Lucchese had been appointed to their new roles.

“Throughout this period — which was also set in the challenging landscape of schools reopening after Covid-shut downs — the company ensured the seamless continuation of operations, supporting teachers and students during a historic back-to-school season,” the statement said.

Mr. Wallack said he had hoped that after Mr. Robinson died, the board would conduct a broad search of internal and outside candidates for the chief executive role and elevate a board member to chair. He said that in July, when the board named Mr. Warwick, a board member since 2014, as chief executive and brought Ms. Lucchese onto the board as chairwoman, “we were shocked for sure.”

He said Mr. Robinson had never spoken to him of Ms. Lucchese and had never shared any information with him about her contributions to the company.

Mr. Wallack said that he couldn’t assess her skills himself. “I have never met her,” he said, “and none of my colleagues have met her.

After she was named chairwoman, Mr. Wallack waited to hear from Ms. Lucchese. “We are the largest shareholder after the family, and you would expect the company chairman to reach out and have a conversation with the shareholders she is supposed to represent.”

Mr. Wallack contacted an investor relations representative in June and again in September to request a meeting with Ms. Lucchese. “We were told they would let us know when she is available,” he said, adding that he was still waiting.

Mr. Hedden, the company’s general counsel, a board member until this summer, and the coexecutor of Mr. Robinson’s estate, said in a statement that he was not aware of Mr. Robinson’s plans. “From my knowledge of Dick, I know that he made his decisions around his will privately, as was his nature,” Mr. Hedden said, “and that he had the best interests of Scholastic and the continuation of his legacy in mind.”

But Mr. Robinson’s legacy includes a messy succession drama that spills into family drama as well. His will names Ms. Lucchese a coexecutor and gives her his personal property, “with the request, but not the direction” that she distribute it to his children in what “she believes to be in accordance with my wishes.”

The fact that the leadership of a public company hinged on the surprising bequest could represent a breach of duty on the part of the board, said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of leadership studies at the Yale School of Management.

“If he were 40 years old, they should have had a plan,” Professor Sonnenfeld said. “And when you’re talking about an octogenarian, the odds are not in his favor.”

Ms. Lucchese was raised in Toronto, the younger of two sisters, and went to the University of Toronto. In 1991, she recognized the Scholastic logo, a little flying book, on a job board at the university’s career center and applied for a position at its Canadian book club division. Since 1948, Scholastic has sold books to students through catalogs and fliers distributed in schools, and one of Ms. Lucchese’s tasks in those early days was to help make the fliers given out in classrooms, sometimes with X-acto knife and glue in hand.

It was through her new job that she met Mr. Robinson in the early 1990s. Ms. Lucchese said she had been walking through the office on her way to the graphic art department with book club paste-ups in her arms when Mr. Robinson stopped her and asked what was listed in the fliers. Her work at Scholastic — and connection to Mr. Robinson — began at a time when fewer rules and guardrails existed around what a relationship with a superior could mean for the course of one’s career.

Early on, Ms. Lucchese tried to expand the range of books offered through the club, moving beyond classics to include more contemporary and commercial titles students would be eager to read. “You can try to push them to read the classics or what was your favorite,” she said, “but it’s really going uphill until that spark happens with a book that they love.”

She worked her way up through the Canadian book club division and then the Canadian corporate office, becoming a co-president. In the years that Ms. Lucchese worked in Canada, annual revenue grew to 150 million Canadian dollars from 25 million Canadian dollars, according to her biography on Scholastic’s website.

She was made the corporation’s chief strategic officer, then added executive vice president to her string of titles, charged with duties like streamlining areas of the business. To compensate her for her growing role, the board gave Ms. Lucchese a raise and a bonus in 2019, which brought her total compensation to nearly $1.2 million.

Around the time she moved to New York, Mr. Robinson bought an apartment for Ms. Lucchese’s use in the same building in which he was living, according to someone involved in the transaction who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the news media.

Ms. Lucchese has focused much of her attention in recent years on her additional role as president of Scholastic Entertainment, pouring her time into film and television projects like “The Magic School Bus Rides Again,” a Netflix series in which the eager teacher Ms. Frizzle takes her students on magical scientific adventures to places like outer space or to the bottom of the sea.

The goal, Ms. Lucchese said, is to focus on a small number of quality productions that reflect the vision of Scholastic and its authors, in hopes of converting watchers into readers. “Ultimately, for us, it’s about selling the books,” she said.

It was while discussing these ventures that Ms. Lucchese was most animated, describing particular projects like the forthcoming movie “Clifford the Big Red Dog.” She gave a little cheer (“Yay!”) when she learned that a reporter’s children were fans of “The Magic School Bus Rides Again.”

“Clifford,” which was filmed before the pandemic, is scheduled to be released in theaters and on a streaming service in November. The adaptation places Clifford in New York City, away from his usual home on Birdwell Island. Jordan Kerner, one of the producers, said he had given Ms. Lucchese credit as a “producer” rather than the more ceremonial “executive producer” to reflect her day-to-day involvement.

“We were worried that Scholastic would react to Clifford being in New York, but she understood the comedy of it, of New Yorkers looking at their phones and not looking up at 10-foot dog,” said Mr. Kerner, who also produced the 2006 live-action “Charlotte’s Web” film and “The Smurfs.”

In the interview, Ms. Lucchese did seem to have thought quite a bit about how the big red dog would find life in the big city, and how he would adapt.

“Clifford is as big as a house if you read the books, but in order to make him interactable in the live-action movie, he has to fit in a room,” she said. “So he had to be a puppy.”

Since M. Richard Robinson Sr. founded the company in the sewing room of his parents’ house in Western Pennsylvania in 1920, Scholastic has been a family business. Dick Robinson’s siblings still own about 47 percent of the Class A shares, which are held by trusts.

Barbara Buckland, one of Mr. Robinson’s sisters, said the two of them often had dinner together on Sundays, though he would cancel if he was able to dine with his sons instead. She said he had come to her home for dinner shortly before he died and had been “full of his usual vim and vigor and all kinds of questions.”

“We’re saddened, but we know the company is in good hands,” said Ms. Buckland. “Nobody has any intention of selling. Nobody is worried. We are all sad.”

Despite Mr. Robinson’s age, his death came as a surprise to many in his personal and professional lives. A daily exerciser, he was fit and in full control of day-to-day operations at Scholastic, and anyone who knew him even a little bit would say the company was his life’s obsession.

A cartoon of his face, showing him looking off into the distance like a superhero, hangs on a gallery wall in Scholastic headquarters, near portraits of Harry Potter and Clifford. Ms. Lucchese said that when the office was redesigned a few years ago, Mr. Robinson hadn’t wanted any pictures of himself displayed but Ms. Lucchese said she sneaked that one in.

Mr. Robinson made it no secret that he wished Scholastic to remain an independent company, even as consolidation within the publishing business sped up around him. Penguin Random House, itself the product of a 2013 merger, is in the process of trying to buy Simon & Schuster. If approved by federal regulators, that deal would create a colossus far larger than any other publisher in the country.

But the remaining large houses will want to bulk up to compete, especially by acquiring rich “backlists,” catalogs of older titles that are reliable, long-term money makers — which is sure to make Scholastic an attractive target.

The company’s new leadership team appears to share what was perhaps Mr. Robinson’s most precious goal: Ms. Lucchese and Mr. Warwick expressed no interest in selling.

“We’ve got the resources ourselves to go forward at the pace that we want to go,” Mr. Warwick said.

Given Mr. Robinson’s devotion to Scholastic, it was fitting that his memorial service was held there last month. A virtual event with just a few people in attendance, it included a video eulogy delivered by his son Reece. “We will cherish the memories of the holidays and weekends we spent with him during Covid when he wasn’t working 12-hour days,” Reece Robinson said of his family’s relationship with his father.

The service had all the star power of a Hollywood collaboration, with video messages from Goldie Hawn, Bill Clinton and J.K. Rowling punctuating remarks from former employees and board members. The final speaker, Alec Baldwin, described the friendship he had developed with Mr. Robinson as neighbors in a downtown apartment building and expressed his condolences to Mr. Robinson’s family, the Scholastic community and Ms. Lucchese. He was the only speaker who mentioned her name.

Mr. Wallack, the portfolio manager for the company’s second-largest shareholder, had twice contacted investor relations at Scholastic to request information about Mr. Robinson’s funeral, he said. But no one alerted him to the memorial service, he said. “I was hopeful to have been invited to that,” he said, or at least sent a link. (In response, a company spokeswoman said the event was publicized on social media and the company’s website.)

Ms. Lucchese, one of Mr. Robinson’s closest business associates and the woman in control of the company, chose not to deliver remarks herself. Instead, she wrote a note in the program that appeared under a picture of Mr. Robinson’s broad smile.

“Dick knew that Scholastic could uniquely empower children to overcome obstacles,” she wrote. “He knew this work was worth doing, and he inspired in all of us the passion to get it done.”

The message was signed, “Iole Lucchese, Chair of the Board.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Katie Rosman is a features reporter who covers a range of topics including media and celebrity. She joined the Times in 2014. @katierosman

Elizabeth A. Harris writes about books and publishing. @Liz_A_Harris

ARTICLE By Katherine Rosman and Elizabeth A. Harris
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/business/scholastic-iole-lucchese-succession-battle.html

 

This week, the winner of the Planeta Prize, a Spanish 1-million-euro literary award, was announced: Carmen Mola, a famously private crime thriller writer. All that was known about Mola, often referred to as Spain’s “Elena Ferrante,” is that she was a university professor in her mid-40s living in Madrid with her husband and three children; three years ago, she told Spanish newspaper ABC that she used a pseudonym so as not to disrupt “an already-formed life that has nothing to do with literature.” But at the Planeta awards ceremony, the real reason for the pseudonym was revealed: Carmen Mola doesn’t exist. Instead, she is the product of three male screenwriters—Agustín Martinez, Jorge Díaz and Antonio Mercero—who showed up in person to pick up their prize money. According to The Guardian, their credits include television shows Central Hospital and Blind Date.

Some readers were irritated by the idea that the three men had used a woman’s persona to market their crime novels. Most of Carmen Mola’s novels center around detective Elena Blanco, a “peculiar and lonely woman, lover of grappa, karaoke, classic cars and SUV sex.” (The book that won the Planeta is not a Blanco novel; it centers around the search for a serial killer dismembering girls during an 1800s cholera epidemic.) Spanish newspaper El Mundo noted the Carmen Mola identity’s role in drumming up publicity: “It hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that the idea of a high school teacher mother of three children who teaches algebra in the morning and in the afternoons, then writes novels of ultra-savage and macabre violence in her spare time, is a good marketing operation.”

Beatriz Gimeno, former head of the Women’s Institute in Spain, critiqued the trio on Twitter: “Beyond the use of a female pseudonym, these guys have been answering interviews for years. It is not only the name, it is the false profile with which they have scammed readers and journalists. Scammers.” (Last year, a regional branch of the Women’s Institute recommended Mola’s novel La Nena (The Girl) on a list of work by female authors that help readers “understand the reality and experiences of women at different times [in history] and make people aware of their rights and freedoms.”)

Twitter user Jenne Popay, responding to The Guardian’s coverage of the hoax, wrote, “Men use a woman’s persona—not just a name—to sell novels about extreme violence often against women & in the case of this prize dismembered girls! And they are awarded a prize?”

For their part, Martinez, Díaz and Mercero deny that their choice of a female pseudonym was calculated. “Choosing a woman’s name was not a thought-out thing,” Diaz told El Mundo. “We didn’t want to send any message. We could have put R2-D2 on it, but we named it Carmen Mola.”

“There is something very healthy in eliminating this obsession with the author, to know who they are, how they dress, what life they have,” Martinez added. “If Carmen Mola has worked it is because the readers have liked the stories. Getting rid of the ego is difficult, but we try to leave it out of the room. Deep down, we do not matter so much.”

ARTICLE By Walker Caplan
https://lithub.com/a-woman-won-a-million-euro-writing-prize-then-turned-out-to-be-three-men/

 
I AM HAUNTED BY JOE'S STUPID LITTLE BOOKSELLING APRON
...
The truth is that it is rare to be idle working in a bookstore, let alone stay romantic about it. Someone leaves a used tissue on the handrail, folded over and tucked onto itself like a diseased cravat. UPS just delivered a ton of shipments and half of them are either torn open or full of titles you didn’t order. The book that you love that you constantly try to push on customers hasn’t moved off the shelf in weeks. Meanwhile, you have to check if there’s any backstock of The Alchemist because, for some reason, we’re always selling out of The Alchemist. And The Four Agreements. And The Myth of Sisyphus. And, weirdly, the fifth My Struggle book (just the fifth one).
Obviously this wouldn’t make for very compelling TV, which is fine. Viewers prefer to see Penn Badgley, with his handsome, sculpted face, and his insane, incomprehensible apron idly put a few books on a shelf or ring up the odd tourist. But it irks me to no end. If anyone has to pop out it’s for some light stalking, not a run to the bank. No one is lifting heavy pieces of furniture or rearranging shelves. No one ships out orders. No one sets up book displays. No one even orders their books. At one point in You, Joe is shown opening a box of books that seem to have been teleported to him by God before putting them out directly onto the shelves. Questions abound. Why is there only one box? Why isn’t he drowning under the weight of at least ten more? Doesn’t he want to at least label the merchandise first?
Onscreen booksellers should, at the very least, be tired. Or stressed out, or pissed off, or shown to be doing something that they don’t have time for. Toilets have to be cleaned. There’s an old man on Line 1 who wants to know why we don’t sell a book that he can’t recall the title of but remembers seeing in a window once in 1998. That part in You’ve Got Mail when Tom Hanks’ Joe Fox shops at Kathleen Kelly’s store and balks at the full price? Yeah, that part, always, forever. Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san, a manga and anime featuring Japanese booksellers wearing armored helmets and plague doctor masks, is perhaps the only truly accurate depiction of bookstore life. Customer interactions are stressful, everything breaks, everything is heavy, there’s no room to put books out, there’s both too much and not enough time.

The only trope more common than the perfect little bookstore is the bookstore that’s about to go out of business. People wearing shirts that say something like “My life is better with books” remind you that this book, every book, is much cheaper on am*zon and that e-readers are more convenient. All this can make a bookseller (me, I’m the bookseller) mean, which is why there is something recognizably funny and a little awful about people like Joe from You or Bernard Black from the British sitcom Black Books, who owns and runs the titular shop. Joe lords his pretentious literary authority over strangers. “These books are more alive, more worthy than anyone I know,” he says, the world’s most inept serial killer, television’s most negligent bookstore manager. Meanwhile, Bernard is constantly trying to get people out of his store. In one episode, a customer walks in during business hours and Bernard screams to his coworker, “Why didn’t you lock the door?!”
...Something about books, or the way we talk about books, stuns people into an obnoxious reverence about all the places that sell or borrow them. As my friend, who used to be a librarian and is now a best-selling author, told me recently, “Working in a library is like working in a coffee shop and by that I mean people don’t see you until they need something from you and then they ask for a sip from your mug.”

In every Instagram photo of a perfectly sunlit stack of books labeled “a good bookstore is my happy place” there is someone who is extremely undercompensated just out of frame waiting to reshelve those titles they used for props. Bernard Black says, “The pay is not great, but the work is hard.” Sometimes you meet cool people, sometimes you get to push a book into someone’s hands that changes their life for a little while. You’ll likely never know if or how. You’ll likely not have a fulfilling interaction like that for many weeks or months! Then again, there’s always more work to do. Like explain to people that the new James Bond isn’t based on a novel or why we don’t have an edition of Dune with Timothee Chalamet’s face on it.

Nicholas Russell is a writer from Las Vegas. His work has been featured in The Believer, Defector, Reverse Shot, Vulture, The Guardian, NPR Music, and The Point, among other publications.

ARTICLE from NICHOLAS RUSSELL
https://www.gawker.com/culture/why-did-joe-from-you-wear-an-apron-to-sell-books

 

"Imposing a minimum shipping cost for books would weigh on the purchasing power of consumers," am*zon told Reuters in a statement.

That is an undesirable consequence government officials are wary of at a time President Emmanuel Macron administration is scrambling to head off growing discontent over rising energy prices six months from an election.
More than 20% of the 435 million books sold in France in 2019 were bought online and the market share of France's 3,300 independent bookstores has been slowly declining because of competition from online retailers like am*zon, Fnac (FNAC.PA) and Leclerc.
French law prohibits free book deliveries but am*zon has circumvented this by charging a single centime (cent). Local book stores typically charge about 5-7 euros ($5.82-8.15) for shipping a book.
"This law is necessary to regulate the distorted competition within online book sales and prevent the inevitable monopoly that will emerge if the status quo persists," the ministry told Reuters.
Virtually-free delivery allowed book lovers in rural areas to buy books at the same price as someone who could walk into a bookstore -- precisely the spirit of the 1981 law, it said.
ARTICLE By Elizabeth Pineau
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/france-moves-shield-its-book-industry-am*zon-2021-10-25/

 

REFERRING ARTICLE
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/10/29/saving-french-indies-a-new-fsg-president-and-old-book-smell-this-week-in-book-news/

 

TITLE: Words With Friends: On the Joys of Tandem Reading
I learned to read on my own when I was barely five (getting my parents excited about the possibility that they had a child prodigy on their hands, a notion quickly dispelled by my total lack of math skills), and from then on, I never stopped. I was, to put it mildly, not the most sociable kid, partly because of my constitutional shyness and partly because we moved to new countries three times before I turned eight, leaving me faltering to figure out schoolyard lingo in Italy when I’d just barely cracked it in Russia. Through all that, though, books were my constant and faithful friends. I know—barf—but it’s true; the joy I got from cracking a new Baby-Sitters Club book or Nancy Drew mystery remains close to unrivaled in my adult life.

Actually, that’s not true. There is something better than reading alone, I’ve discovered, and it’s reading side by side with friends who don’t judge you for wanting to hit “pause” on socialization and disappear into a book. In ninth grade, I struck up a tenuous friendship with two of the other kids who’d also come in from different middle schools. One, a rangy athletic type with a host of popular older siblings, quickly found her place in the upper echelons of the high-school caste system and promptly forgot me; the other, a quiet comedy nerd and fellow bookworm named Jazmine, is still my best friend to this day. Our history is long and complex, made up of old SNL clips and hastily chugged, illicitly obtained Smirnoff Ices and endless subway rides from the Bronx to Manhattan, but I knew we had reached a point of no return, friendship-wise, when we began to read together.

In case you’re tempted to think of Jazmine and me as preternaturally sophisticated New York teens who would rather discuss Sartre than socialize, I should emphasize just how wildly unpopular we were in high school. Nobody invited us to football games or homecoming dances or *Gossip Girl–*style, pill-fueled ragers in their rich parents’ empty brownstones, so we learned to make our own fun, trading a copy of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty back and forth and discussing the protagonist Zora as if she were the third member of our little group. Jazmine has always been a more ambitious reader than I am, tackling the Russian novelists and David Foster Wallace when I was still secretly paging through my middle-school copies of The Clique, but reading was a common ground for us, a place we could go and find one another. As our friendship endured into college and then into our 20s, we could reliably bond by locating a wine bar, splitting a bottle of something pink and fizzy, and obscuring our faces with our respective paperbacks as we reached to stuff our faces with bar snacks.

Amazingly enough, the adult world proved far easier to navigate, socially speaking, than the thorn’s nest of high school, and I found more friends whom I was comfortable reading. On a New Year’s trip upstate last winter, my friends Kate, Maya, Abby, and I all rotated a few copies of a particularly execrable piece of trendy literary-ish fiction that I’m too polite to name, joyfully reading the worst sentences aloud as the men in our group went hiking, or shoved each other, or whatever it is men do when I’m not paying attention. When my friend Natalie drove out to Texas with me for my long-planned move to Austin, some of our best nights were spent sitting silently in vaguely creepy Airbnbs across the American South, our noses buried in the reads we’d picked up at local bookstores from Asheville to Nashville. (As we were preparing to leave for the trip, my friend Eliza, who had lived with me in L.A. and traveled with me many times, warned Natalie: “Make sure to bring books, because Emma will just whip one out and start reading.”)

I don’t know exactly what it is about reading with friends that I treasure so much, but I think it has something to do with comfort, with a tacit closeness that nobody feels the need to name. When you’re getting a drink with a brand-new casual friend (as I often am these days, while I adjust to life in a new city), you’re as “on” as you might be for a first date, peppering the person across the table from you with questions about work and siblings and dreading the crashing thump of an awkward silence. With old friends, though, you’re free to check out, to stare into space, to—okay, fine—be a little rude, and nobody thinks you love them any less just because you’re deeply engrossed, in, say, Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies, and absolutely need to know how it turns out.

I realize that putting an effort in is essential to making new friends, and that you can’t constantly hide behind a book and expect people to warm to you (or expect them not to call you a “Kirkland-brand Rory Gilmore,” as the case may be). Still, as I get older and strike up new friendships around the country, I’m all the more grateful for the women I feel absolutely no trepidation about reading with. There’s a moment in Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha that’s always struck me. Reading on the couch while her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), knits, Frances (Greta Gerwig) suddenly says “This is interesting,” and reads her a quote from her book. Their closeness is casual, easy, nothing to write home about; this is clearly one night in a chain of similar ones when each friend feels comfortable retreating into the written word and only occasionally surfacing with a read-aloud souvenir. Is there anything more simple, or more lovely?

ARTICLE BY EMMA SPECTER
https://www.vogue.com/article/words-with-friends-on-the-joys-of-tandem-reading

 

Books by Sally Rooney will no longer be sold in two Israeli bookshop chains, after the acclaimed writer’s decision not to sell translation rights for her most recent novel to an Israeli publisher.
she had turned down an offer from the Israeli publisher Modan to translate her book Beautiful World, Where Are You into Hebrew. In a statement, she explained that while she was “very proud” to have had her previous novels translated into Hebrew, she would not sell translation rights to an Israeli-based publishing house for now, in order to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS), a campaign that works to “end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law”
ARTICLE from Lucy Knight
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/05/sally-rooney-novels-pulled-from-israeli-bookstores-after-translation-boycott

In the Philippines, educators and researchers are responding to a military crackdown on “subversive” books and documents by launching an internet archive of endangered books and materials frowned upon by the government.
 Aswang Sa Aklatan (Hands Off Our Libraries) < https://handsoffourlibraries.crd.co/ >
ARTICLE By Walker Caplan
https://lithub.com/a-group-of-teachers-in-the-philippines-have-launched-an-internet-archive-of-subversive-books/

 

REFERRING ARTICLE
https://kobowritinglife.com/2021/11/05/stopping-a-merger-preparing-for-the-holidays-and-reading-with-friends-this-week-in-book-news/