#i’m watching the american crime story season on the impeachment

[heavenbarnes]

you want to hear a crazy one? colin hanks is really sexy to me

[popculturebuffet]

Wallace and Gromit Retrospective: A Matter of Loaf and Death: The Wrong Wallace (Comission by WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to my Wallace and Gromit retrospective. We’re almost at the close, after this there’s only one film left after this, the theatrical opus “Curse of the Were-Rabbit”. You may be thinking “Wait didn’t this come out after the movie”. And your right.. but the movie simply felt like a stronger finale going out on their one and only feature film, than on that fourth short most people would rather forget. 

This one coming long after the original shorts days of playing on cartoon network on loop, I naturally caught this one a few years after it came out. Keep in mind the planet wasn’t as plugged in back then so there weren’t any talks of streaming or any alerts to tell me “oh there’s a new wallace and gromit short” and none of the networks I watched aire dit. I only found out when it ended up on TV at one point.

And I... was underwhelmed. 

Yeah it was a feeling I couldn’t quite grapple with: It wasn’t BAD but something felt not as good as the others. Was it because I hadn’t seen it as much? It coudln’t be nostalgia, curse was only a few years older than this. What was it. 

Turns out the answer.. was it was just okay. It wasn’t me and I wasn’t the only one to feel this. I’d just put the franchise on a pedestal and it was hard not to see whY: i’d seen the original three loads of times, loved the move and loved everything else Aardman had put out. I just wasn’t as used to something disapointing me. Whereas now I have a lifetimes worth of disapointmetns bulit up.. come on let me share some with you just off the top off my head

DISAPOINTMENTS JUST OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD

 Wonder Woman 1984

IT Chapter 2

The Loud House Movie

My Dad’s Politics

The President not helping civilians out of afganatsthan

The Coronovirus getting a second wind thanks to people’s stupidity

Final Space Season 3

Final Space not getting another season and probably not a movie

Ducktales getting canceled

No Clear news on a darkwing duck spinoff

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Jason Aaron’s Avengers

Dan Slott’s Fantastic Four

Dan Slott’s Fantastic Four Making Franklin Richards Not a Mutant

American Crime Story: Impeachment not coming to FX on Hulu

Jeff Bezos coming back from space alive

Myself

All the Movie Delays from Last Year

The Spider-Man Games not being on switch

Psychonauts 2 not being on switch

Let’s just save time and say a lot of things not being on switch

Not getting to play it takes two with kev

The 87 Turtles being used in Allstarbrawl instead of the rise ones

The Rise Movie being delayed to next year

Regular Show Season 7

Star Vs Final Arc

Teen TItans Academy

Finding out Guardians of the Galaxy was stream only on switch

Sonic Origins Collection not being released till next year

No Mega Man Battle Network Anniversary Collection

Look a lot of those are petty, some not so much, and I probably coudl go on but i’m not getting paid to list all of my petty and not so petty frustrations. I’m getting paid to talk about wallace and gromit. My point is I wasn’t used to things letting me down as much as I am now. So this was kind of a shock. And compared to most of these, it’s not honestly that bad, but it was still one of my major disapoitnments. And if you want to know why... then join me under the cut for a full review and analysis of “a matter of loaf and death” won’t you?

Not a lot of production stuff this time, in part because production ran very smoothly with Lord preferring this to curse of the were rabbit, which had tons of studio interfernce from dreamworks.. but more on that next time. In contrast BBC actually knew what luck they had in comissioning this and thus didn’t rock the boat. 

So we open  with a baker going about buisness, being stalked by someone in POV till he warmly greets said someone.. who then kills him and causes him to drop dead in his own dough

Yeah as you can probably guess by the overt murder, if slightly goofily done because this is still wallace and gromit, this is a bit darker than the other shorts.. emphasis on a bit. The first one had Gromit feel he needed to leave and was edged out of his home and the second had him arrested for a crime he didn’t commit and the rest of our heroes nearly fed into a grinder. The series has always been goofily light with a tinge of darkness, this one just added an extra tinge is all. It’s a bit darker, including some animal abuse and attempted murder.. but it just dosen’t strike me as THAT much worse than the other films. Only one bit to me is truly out of step with the tone of this franchise, and that’s really it. Everything else fits the series penchant for mildly dark but still wonderfully cartoony stories it’s had since the “Wrong Trousers”, just escalated slightly.  And frankly they needed to escalate things slightly since the last short invovled a robot dog and the movie involved our hero turning into a giant rabbit monster.  If they were going to do a plot like this they had to go all in as much as they could while still keeping the needed pg rating. 

Anyway it’s a new short so that mean’s it’s a new job for our heroes who have set up a bakery in their house which has now been upgraded into a windmill.  Now simple logic says they simply moved into a windmill to make baking easier.. but Wallace and Gromit logic says there’s a whole short we didn’t get to see where Wallace destroys the entire top level of their house to make it into a bakery/windmill. Probably involved some sort of time traveling goose who likes to steal people’s shoes. 

Naturally Wallace, like myself, is a sleepy bitch and has to be woken up. Gromit isn’t even phased by it he just lines up a water balloon to fall on his best friend/owner/dead weight. The breakfast machine gag is gone, replaced with a neat tube slide that gets him in gear. I got to admit I do love the bakery setup here, including the boys inflating their chef’s hats with a little sunroof for them to stick through. It’s incredibly charming. 

So our heroes pull of deliveries, with loaves of fun to be had until they encounter a woman on a runaway bicycle with her dog... said woman being familiar to Wallace as “The Bake-O-Lite” girl and naturally gives chase to help her. Said chase is fun as you’d expect iwth Wallace actually proving useful for once, not only JUMPING ON THE BIKE himself to stop it iwth his body, but suggesting gromit throw some baked goods to serve as cusions

Eventaully our heroes stop it.. just before an alligator pit.... 

Wallace properly introduces himself to the Bake-O-Lite girl, Piella Bakewell, former spokesmodel for said company who strikes up a flirtation with wallace. Gromit notices two things: how shaky the woman’s dog, Fluffles, is.. and that when fixing the bike the breaks were fine. He naturally suspects something’s up but Wallace is too smitten and too dumb to notice. 

Later that day as their working, Wallace is mooning over Piella, and look if I happened to save Karen Gillian from a runaway bicycle i’d be moony too.. and also look over any shady circumstances, so I get it .I get it.  And what a concidence Piella shows up to thank him/ask him out.. and uses Fluffles as a tool to help it along, leaving Gromit with all the work. Cue your standard falling in love montage: while Gromit is left doing both their jobs, Wallace has fun with his new sweetie: doing flamnico, having a picnic and..... reinacting... the pottery scene.. from ghost.. with a... certain look on his face...

........... 

excuse...me.... for...a...moment...

Okay now i’m legally blind, i’m up for a parody of the pottery scene from ghost as much ast he next guy whose never seen Ghost, but I think I can speak for all of mankind when I say we NEVER needed to see Wallace’s O-Face and that it will haunt me as long as I live. And all of you because if I suffer you suffer.  Tis the true face of madnes, the face we’ll all see in the end times, the face of your childhood getting really horny and not in a way anyone can enjoy. It’s like imagining your elderly uncle getting horny.. no one wants that and no one asked for this.. and if you did please don’t tell  me. I know i’ve been attracted to weirder but I still please ask not to know for my sanity’s sake. 

So naturally Wallace’s good fortune becomes Gromit’s bad fortune as Piella basically moves in, throws all of Gromit’s stuff away, and in general invades their house. And this is where the film’s biggest issue really kicks in: Wallace is insufferable in this film. Just like Wrong Trousers, he lacks any empathy for his pooch/roomate, letting his girlfriend throw al lhis stuff out, shove him out of his house and not carring as long as he gets his dick hard and OH GOD WHY DID I SAY THAT

This review is like living in a living nightmare. The point is he puts a new partner over his best friends feelings. And yes Gromit is his dog.. but for starters I woudln’t stands my partner mistreating my dog or throwing out his things.. my dog dosen’t have things other than a bowl granted because he won’t play with toys but still, if he had a record collection I wouldn’t let them fuck with it. 

For finishers... it just isn’t consistent with the last short and the movie. Sure gromit was treated more lik ea dog in wrong trousers... but both Close Shave and Were Rabbit had wallace treating him more like a sorta equal who just happened to be his dog/live in butler. He went to regular jail instead of the pound, didn’t walk on all fours nearly as much, and was more humanoid. You just can’t suddenly go back to the way things were after you changed it.  You can’t return to a previous state of play without it being an outright reboot. I Know this series isn’t exactly stable in continuity, I get that, but it is stable in how it treats thign sna dhow it evolved and going back to an old way of treating Gromit just to make a plot work is way lazier than I expected.

Speaking of Lazy, said snapback also calls to mind another problem with the short: it’s plot is too similar to wrong trousers. It’s not a direct copy, to it’s benefit and the villian at the heart is a good one and we’ll get to that, so it’s not the biggest or most tedious retread i’ve seen.. but it’s still a story where a new intruder in wallace and gromit’s life makes Gromit’s life that much harder, and Wallace does nothing to stop it as he’s oblvious ot his pain. It wasn’t the part of that plot I liked the FIRST time around and it was done better then, as at least wallace felt bad about the room a bit. Here he just cares fuck all nad it makes it that much worse. While the villian’s motive, personality and scheme with wallace are all diffrent, the fact it’s basically the same thing again in a franchise this small just makes it all the more glaring their repeating themselves. And for a fracnchise where each work felt unique and stood out that’s utterly disapointing. 

Gromit has a fit in his room over the situation, only to find a pleasant suprise: Fluffles. Fluffles is a great addition to things and while the obligatory new animal sidekick, is a diffren tbreed: a very sad soul. And while we did “sad soul love intrest forced to work with the villian last time” cuddles is unique enough and well animated enough, via her constant and endearingly heartbreaking shakes, for me to let that bit of repettition slide. Her reasons are diffrent from wendolyne: wendolyne mistrusted her fathe’rs creation until it was too late and let him lead her into stuff. Fluffles is simply an abused dog who dosen’t get a choice and like most abuse victims is likely too scared to make one. The two have a moment before she leaves.

Piella ends up leaving her changepurse behind so Gromit decides to take it back... and also snoop, heading to her spooky mansion, likely repurposed slightly from the mansion scene intended for the “Wrong Trousers”. It’s a nice, eerie scene as we don’t know what Gromit will find and if Piella will show up, and he soon finds himself face to face with a rather eerie site: 13 Manequeins with bakers hats.. and an album containin gpicutres of EVERY dead baker.. and one with wallace at the end. While obvious for the audeince given the opening, and frankly given the fact that the instestive woman who threw a dog’s stuff out in the bin is probably the bigger suspect than the shaky traumatized poodle. Wallace is the last of a “baker’s dozen”. 

Gromit ends up having to hide and sees more of Fluffle’s sad life, having to sleep in a cardboard vitabix box with Piella planning on finishing wallace tommorow. 

Gromit unforunately choose to hide in a chandeleer so he ends up trapped there all night, thankfuly only falling once piella was gone. It’s then we get something a bit dumb as Gromit decides to rush home to tell wallace.. instead of thinking “Gee PIella’s gone and clearly playing him maybe I should stash this in case she’s here. “

Instead he runs home, likely to save Wallace but still he could’ve thrown it in a bush or something, and finds the “happy couple”: are now engaged and free to ghost anytime they want and OH GOD

Just... a bit further jake you can do this. Piella end sup fake hugging Gromit and throwing the album in the fire. Congrats on being astoundingly stupid Gromit, you now know how your pal feels every day of his life. 

So Gromit studies up on survllaince and preps the house to be death proof to save his owner. An evil version of Kurt Russel asked about using it to murder some women but he just gave him a brow furrow and called the police. 

This leads.. tot he worst scene in the thing and honestly the five shorts: After some pretty funny shenanigans.. Piella fakes being bit. And Wallace.. FULLY FUCKING BUYS IT. Yes, no trust in the dog whose saved his life FOUR TIMES AT THIS POINT and will again for reasons that will forever escape me, no love, no regret just getting mad at his dog, putting him in a mask and chaning him up. No asking if he did it no, sorry later just being a big dick to his pet. And again were this an actual dog i’d get beliving the human and the dog would likely being agressive. But gromit has NEVER bit in all four shorts and dosen’t seem like he would. It’d work better of Piella played up the sympathy card iwth Wallace being regretfully but submitting to it and reluctantly doing it. But him just up and doing so so quickly, just bleiving his dog is the oppisite of the good boy we know he is with no real poof other than a way too thin bite mark.... it’s just utterly infurating. 

Naturally this nearly gets Wallace killed with Piella tries to shove him off a high ledge. 

Gromit can’t save him.. but a mysterious flower sack does, Causing Piella to spil lher real guts, throw the ring at wallace and call him a fruitcake, storming out. And given the way she picks up fluflles and is angery at the poor pupper.. it’s clear who saved him. 

Gromit comforts wallace who wondered how this happened, and asks if he’s a fruitcake.. and Gromit can only respond with a very strained look of the eyes. It’s gloriouss as it is accurate to the question. 

Piella ends up showing up with a cake for wallace who intends to have it with tea. Gromit is both curious about what the hell her plan is this time and knowing he can’t stop Wallace from submitting to natural selection goes to Piellas mansion again to investigate and to hopefully find Fluffles, who didn’t come with her this time.

Turns out though Piella is a clever psycho and knew he’d do this. and is thus ready to grab him literally and metaphorically by the throat. 

She does make the mistake too many villians make.. she throws gromit, and fluffles, in her closet.. the same one where her old bake-o-lite balloon is. 

So Gromit escapes with his new lady to go save wallace, and both arrive just in time. And after wallace stupidly lights the candle/fuse a bunch the bomb, which hilariously is a cartoon bomb with BOMB in white letters on it. Wallace’s reactoin? “Gromit.. it’s a bomb!”

Piella stops it with her foot, holding Fluffles hostage only for th dog to you know, bite her, her first bit of karma.. and another sign everyone in this movie, even gromit is some form of brain dead. 

Our climax ensues. First Gromit has to get rid of the bomb but finds some nuns and some ducks in his path

And get sblocked by piella, but ends up getting rid of it when Wallace intervenes. We then find out Piella’s motives in a gloriously hammy rant: turns out she blames bakers for her gaining weight and thus loosing her sponsorship. 

While I have issues with this short... I do like Piella as a villian. She has a sympathetic motive, being dropped for doing the very thing she was supposed to (eat a lot of baked goods), taking it out on the wrong person. It make sher no less of a monster mind you, but it’s still more motive than the other villians which are “Steal a diamond to make more crime money”, “got his switch flipped to evil” and “shoot a rabbit man to seduce a woman who probably won’t be impressed by this” It’s what makes it work

And while this wasn’t the best short as always the climax is spectacular as Fluffles get sher revenge, arriving in a baking version of the power loader from alien and smacking that bitch up like the boss bitch that she is, getting her revenge and knocking her abusvie owner out a window. It’s oh so cathartic. 

Piella ends up doing herslef in riding away on the balloon.. which collapses in front of the alligators. This is that bit I mentiond earlier that’s a bit too dark: while we don’t SEE her eaten to death and she certainlyd eserved it.. it isn’t any less horrific. I mean yes Preston was ground into parts but he was also a robot and got brought back right after as his old self. I mean the evil version of hi mwas dead but he tried to kill sheeps man fuck him. 

So Fluffles leaves, leaving Gromit heartbroken and Wallace to console his best buddy, finally having regained his brain. We do get a really sweet ending though: The two head out for work, only to find fluffles waiting.. and not only does Gromit, after 4 shorts and a movie worth of bullshit, get the girl.. btu Wallace gladly welcomes her “Always room for a small one”. it’s just a sweet gesture that reminds me that while Wallace can annoy me.. at his best he is a sweetheart. So the two play each other off to puppy love as the three head into the sunset. Awwwwww. And I managed to make it through the rest of the reivfew without thinking of wallace getting horny in some capacity again DAMMIT. 

Final Thoughts: So as you could tell this short is a step down from the others and has some serious issues with Wallace’s characterization and repeating itslef. It also has some pacing issues, with scene sometimes having a drawn out feel.

But... it’s still okay. It’s still got fluid animation, some great jokes, some clever puns, and a wonderful climax. That’s the weird thign: while it isn’t AS good as everything else.. it’s still not BAD. It’s just okay. I think it just had the misforutne of following three masterclases in short film and a loved theatrical film is all, and Park likely reveled in getting to do what he wanted without being told to make it more american or fucking replace the lead actor, yes that really happened, that he probably got a bit too compfrable and fell back on old patterns. IT’s not BAD it just feels like the other stuff was fresher and more vibrrant is all. Still worth a watch if your rewatching or watching all the shorts but not really worth seeking out if you haven’t seen the others yet.

Next Time: The Retrospective closes as Wallace and Gromit go theatrical! It’s rabbit season baby! 

[spworldnews]

Trailer Watch: Monica Lewinsky & Linda Tripp Take Center Stage in “Impeachment: American Crime Story”

Trailer Watch: Monica Lewinsky & Linda Tripp Take Center Stage in “Impeachment: American Crime Story”

“There is a woman I’m very close to in the midst of an affair with the President of the United States,” Linda Tripp, as played by Sarah Paulson, says in the new trailer for “Impeachment: American Crime Story.” Her decision to go public with this knowledge appears to drive the action of the new season of “ACS.” Monica Lewinsky, played by Beanie Feldstein, confides in Tripp about her relationship…

[viralafeed]

Trailer Watch: Monica Lewinsky & Linda Tripp Take Center Stage in “Impeachment: American Crime Story”

Trailer Watch: Monica Lewinsky & Linda Tripp Take Center Stage in “Impeachment: American Crime Story”

“There is a woman I’m very close to in the midst of an affair with the President of the United States,” Linda Tripp, as played by Sarah Paulson, says in the new trailer for “Impeachment: American Crime Story.” Her decision to go public with this knowledge appears to drive the action of the new season of “ACS.” Monica Lewinsky, played by Beanie Feldstein, confides in Tripp about her relationship…

[davidpwilson2564]

Bloglet

Thursday, November 21, 2019

The Impeachment Inquiry ends. Fiona Hill quite impressive. Mr. Schiff makes a great closing speech, explaining in detail that Trump's crimes are far worse than Nixon's.  It's not just a matter of bungled burglary.  We are playing into Putin's hands (much to his delight).

And now a long (holiday) vacation. 

It was perhaps hoped that this inquiry would make the public more aware of its issues (like, how we've played into Putin's hands).  All of this will be lost on Trump's base.  They'll be watching Fox during the Thanksgiving break. Whatever they might have been alerted to will be lost in a tryptophan haze.

Friday, November 22, 2019

Weather a bit nippy but nice enough.  Around Columbus Circle they are setting up the reviewing stands for the next Thursday's big Parade.

The president is ranting.

Some very sad news: Violinist Katsuko Esaki died.  Damn. A colleague for decades. (Wife of conductor Steve Richmond.) Such a nice lady. 

Saturday, November 23, 2019

The Holidays are closing in.

Checking my emails...somehow I have gotten on the American Ballet Theatre mailing list, as if I were a donor or patron and not a mere employee.  This announcement: It Almost Nutcracker Season.  Ouch.  It means it's almost Nutcracker season in Orange County, CA, where, for the past years has company has established a December residence. Of course, they use local musicians.  (I have my collection of memories re Orange County...That huge statue of John Wayne at the airport...ultra, ultra conservatives...not a black person in sight...Latinos quietly attending to lawns...)  ABT did their Nutcracker HERE for a few years (longish story: David Koch threw some money our way) but it was at BAM, a place not easy to get to.  Everyone loved the production (Ratmansky) but, alas, we couldn't put butts in the seats.  So...reading this email brought about fresh pain.  Ah, the vagaries of the business.

I see some of the U of TN game vs Mizzou.  Neither team has had much of a season (both are hoping, one thinks, to end up .500) so there are many empty seats.  I am wondering how much I'm paying to see my alma mater's games on  that (obscure) SEC channel on cable. I'm wondering if it's worth it.

[thisdaynews]

The Special Counsel’s Job Is Done, but the Mueller Media Complex Roars On

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-special-counsels-job-is-done-but-the-mueller-media-complex-roars-on/

The Special Counsel’s Job Is Done, but the Mueller Media Complex Roars On

In mid-July, four months after Robert Mueller delivered his investigative findings to the attorney general, a podcast called “The Report” aired its very first episode. You might have thought that after two and half years of obsessive coverage another voice in the media din would have a hard time finding an audience.

You would be mistaken.

Story Continued Below

The 39-minute podcast—a deep-dive on the minutiae of the special counsel’s much debated 448-page work on the Russia probe, complete with dramatic narration, ominous sound effects and carefully-enunciated foreign names—was an instant online hit. Goosed along by a Rachel Maddow mention and by diehard fans of its makers at Lawfare, a wonky online repository for national security and intelligence news, the podcast racked up 300,000 downloads. With another dozen or so episodes still in the pipeline, the producers of “The Report” see their work’s popularity as proof that despite the president’s proclamation Mueller cleared him of committing any crimes while in office, Americans are nowhere near ready to declare “case closed.”

“They’re not sick of talking about it, and I can show you the numbers to prove it to you,” Susan Hennessey, a Lawfare executive editor and the main narrator of “The Report,” said the day after the former special counsel delivered his terse and undramatic testimony to Congress.

“The Report” is but one example of a little remarked phenomenon of the Russia scandal: While the special counsel’s office has shut down and the boss himself has returned to life as a private citizen, the universe of pundits, podcasts, journalists and others focused on Mueller’s work has continued to expand.

On top of the major networks and dominant national newspapers, all of which have seen their audiences grow substantially since 2017, there are more than a dozen podcasts that have emerged to pore over the Mueller saga and Russian election meddling. Mueller’s report is still selling well too: a version published by theWashington Posthas been on theNew York Times’ best-seller list for 15 weeks even though it’s available for free online. And you can expect, in the coming weeks, more details about a miniseries adaptation of James Comey’s memoir,A Higher Loyalty, which told the story of the former FBI director whose firing by Trump led directly to Mueller’s commission. And Bob Woodward himself is eyeing a second book on the Trump era that looks “deeply into all of these issues direct and indirect,” he told POLITICO.

Call it the Mueller Media Complex, and it thrives despite the former special counsel’s admonition that all the answers are contained in the report.

All the ingredients exist for this hydra to keep on growing too: Trump’s constant tweets invoking the Russia investigation, a daily drumbeat of “will they or won’t they?” impeachment chatter in Congress, lawsuits and testimony that promise to keep dredging up details out of the special counsel’s report, a Roger Stone trial this fall in Washington D.C. and warnings from Mueller himself that some of the same forms of foreign sabotage are happening again in 2020.

Just hours after Mueller completed his doubleheader appearances before Congress last month, “The Asset,” another popular podcast that could only be made in the Trump era, taped a special edition of its show at a bar just blocks from the Capitol. About a hundred people downed free cocktails while watching the live panel discussion, which included former agents from the FBI and CIA trying to put the special counsel’s low-key testimony into larger context. The hosts were also eager to promote their show’s 12-part series, which was winding down after a three-month run of weekly episodes drawing connections between Trump’s business dealings, Russia and the Mueller investigation.

“I feel there’s a huge appetite for more information about this, for more stories to be told and hopefully at some point in time to reach a satisfying conclusion that is more definitive than where we are right now,” Paul Woodhull, producer of “The Asset,” which is affiliated with the left-leaning Center for American Progress’s lobbying arm, told me.

That House Democrats are eyeing impeachment “breathes a lot of life into this” because of the prospect more could still be learned if Congress is able to get its hands on an unredacted copy of the Mueller report, Woodhull explained. The podcast’s funders are weighing whether to green light a second season, Woodhull added. “I can say I’m aggressively lobbying for it.”

***

As Bob Woodward’s career demonstrates, every major scandal since Watergate—even some outside of Washington politics—has seen large media ecosystems build up around it. Each is also frequently a reflection of the technology of their times: Think of the print investigative reporters who helped take down Richard Nixon, the cable TV legal analysts like Jeffrey Toobin and Greta Van Susteren who made names for themselves during O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, or how the brand new Drudge Report website scooped Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff to reveal Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The Russia investigation may be remembered as the probe built perfectly for the podcasts. Sure, long-form audio shows have been around since the tail end of the George W. Bush presidency. But here during the rise of Trump more than a dozen programs have taken form with roots in discussing the shenanigans of 2016—and what’s happened since. All political perspectives are available, like the “Special Prosecutor with Larry Klayman” show where the founder of the conservative group Judicial Watch gets introduced to the sound of helicopters flying overhead and then frequently uses his airtime to impugn the Russia probe’s origins. Over on “Mueller, She Wrote,” which features three Southern California female comedians, one of the more popular segments is called “fantasy indictment draft.”

“Everyone owes Robert Mueller a dinner or something for all of this, at the very least,” said Chris Bannon, chief content officer at Stitcher, a free online radio service that hosts many of the aforementioned Mueller-themed podcasts, including “The Mueller Report: A Radio Dramatization” and “Stay Tuned with Preet,” a talk show hosted by the former U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York that covers a cross section of topics but often returns to the special counsel’s work. Bannon explained that the Russia probe has lent itself so well to the medium because of its complexity—and the interest of listeners who want to hear it all pieced together.

“It’s the reasonable voices talking in a room together,” he said.

Isikoff, now chief investigative correspondent at Yahoo! News and host of two podcasts with ties to the 2016 election, said the range of new online audio shows related to Trump and Russia “are a natural marriage of a new medium with the hot story of the day.”

“It’s not a surprise that there’d be so many podcasts that’d revolve around the events of Trump’s presidency. It’s the dominant news story of the era and podcasts are the increasingly dominant way in which we get our news,” he said.

The Russia probe has meant new career options for scores of former federal prosecutors and others with backgrounds in national security and law enforcement. Several signed lucrative contracts with cable networks eager to have their own on-call analysts. Many had spoken up first in print news accounts and via their own extensive Twitter threads, where they pitched their services to a confused public eager to make sense of the most arcane legal maneuvers.

“I think it’s safe to say this is a moment in which there has been more interest in legal analysis than there has ever been in my lifetime,” said Renato Mariotti, a former assistant U.S. attorney from Chicago who said he had fewer than 100 Twitter followers when the Mueller probe launched but has parlayed his expertise into a CNN analyst contract, a podcast and a recurring column in POLITICO Magazine. His Twitter followers now exceed 200,000.

“For someone like me it was an opportunity. It allowed me to present facts and analysis to a lot of people and it spread very quickly,” he said.

The same went for Lawfare, a side project of the non-profit Brookings Institution that for years had been a backwater venue for detailed policy conversations about everything from government surveillance to terrorism and cybersecurity. Then came Russian election meddling, and its top editor Benjamin Wittes often responded to big Mueller media revelations by posting on Twitter short videos of a miniature cannon explosion. The website published hundreds of Mueller items, including a real-time dissection of the Trump campaign’s 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer who approached Donald Trump Jr. offering dirt about Clinton. Thanks to the Russia investigation, the web site has seen its traffic surge at exponential rates and boasts of about 15 million page views combined for 2017 and 2018.

“We have all been very surprised at the degree to which this giant new audience has shown up at our door wanting to participate in that conversation,” Wittes said. “Yeah, it crept up on us except there was nothing subtle about it…It hit us over the head like a sledge-hammer.”

Mueller media coverage hit its peak in 2019 as the probe came to an end. But even the end didn’t feel particularly final, what with the debate over Attorney General William Barr’s summary, Mueller’s subsequent press conference about Barr’s summary, and then seven hours of House hearings. The long goodbye drove coverage through the roof.

Nearly 5.6 percent of MSNBC’s total airtime this year through early August was devoted to the special counsel, according to data compiled by the TV News Archive. The online research outfit, which measures closed-caption mentions in 15-second intervals for the three major cable networks, also found that 4.5 percent of CNN’s coverage and 2.9 percent of the FOX airtime covered Mueller so far this year. For all of the networks, that’s more than a two-fold increase compared with the attention they each gave to the topic during the second half of 2017 when the Russia investigation first got rolling.

***

Mueller beat reporters are donewith their courthouse stakeouts. Patriot Plaza, the southwest D.C. office complex where the special counsel and his team of lawyers and FBI agents were housed, has returned to bureaucratic anonymity.

But that doesn’t mean the media ecosystem is dying. In fact, it’s just changing shape, or at least location.

Lawmakers are actually getting help from some of the people who played featured roles in the media’s coverage. One of the House Judiciary panel’s senior attorneys is Norm Eisen, the former top Obama White House ethics official who early in the Trump era was a frequent CNN pundit and while at his previous perch at the Brookings Institution co-authored an extensive analysis about why the president obstructed justice. It’s a similar story over on the House Intelligence Committee, which started the year by hiring Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor and MSNBC analyst to lead the panel’s investigations, and Diana Pilipenko, a money laundering and sanctions expert who had been part of the Center for American Progress’s Moscow Project that’s dedicated to digging on Trump’s financial ties to Russia.

More opportunities may hinge on impeachment and the Democratic congressional investigations, and whether anyone can turn up stones that the special counsel didn’t already publicize. Some of the people who have established brands around Mueller say they have no trouble shifting to other topics of expertise.

“As long as people keep listening we’ll keep putting the content out,” said A.G., the host of “Mueller, She Wrote,” which she launched in late 2017 and now has 1 million monthly downloads, advertisers and a live road show selling $30-tickets to deep-blue audiences in Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Boston.

The San Diego comedian, who doesn’t use her real name because she also has a day job in the federal executive branch, recently launched a second podcast called “The Daily Beans” talking through the news headlines. “It wasn’t supposed to be a forever situation,” she said of the “Mueller, She Wrote” persona. “It’s kind of up in the air, just like our democracy is.”

Most of the big shows are also up in the air. But they’re not coming in for a landing anytime soon.

“We’re talking about that right now,” Isikoff said of ConspiracyLand, the six-episode podcast he hosted that examined the unsolved 2016 murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich in Washington D.C. The show has garnered nearly 1 million listeners. “It’s really hit a nerve out there,” he said.

Chuck Rosenberg, a former head of the Drug Enforcement Agency and ex-FBI staffer under both Mueller and Comey, launched a podcast in April with 10 episodes logged as of the end of July. It features in-depth biographical interviews with several of the top national security and law enforcement officials at the center of the Russia probe, including Comey, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI acting director Andrew McCabe, former FBI general counsel James Baker and former Obama White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco. Rosenberg is now working on a second season for the podcast, scheduled to begin again in early to mid-September, and he’s also continuing to do on-air work as a legal analyst with MSNBC.

And some members of this robust ecosystem are in it, whether they like it or not.

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor andNational Reviewcolumnist who kicked off his own podcast around June 2018, said he expected to keep talking about issues including Mueller, impeachment, Democratic lawsuits to enforce the emoluments clause of the Constitution and trying to gain access to Trump’s tax returns.

“I don’t say that with any great joy. I think it’d be better if we actually moved onto what is going to happen in the country after 2020,” said McCarthy, a FOX commentator dating to the George W. Bush administration. “If that meant my little piece of the industrial complex had to fade away, I would be OK with that.”

Broadway and Hollywood have had their roles to play as well.

A celebrity cast reading in New York last month featuring Kevin Kline playing Mueller and John Lithgow in the role of Trump has gotten more than 3 million online views, and a tool kit explaining how to mount a live production including a free version of the script written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan has been downloaded more than 13,000 times. Hundreds of local groups, many of them chapters of the pro-impeachment group Indivisible, are already planning their own readings.

Details on any Hollywood productions dealing with Mueller or the 2016 campaign remain under wraps, though several sources with ties back to the entertainment world say they’ve been privy to discussions on film projects about the Russia investigation. Given the lack of an actual ending to the overall Trump story and studio squeamishness about getting into the president’s crosshairs, it could be years before anything memorable gets made about the Mueller probe. Just look at the late-blooming interest in the Clinton impeachment: the Slate podcast “Slow Burn” didn’t come out until last year, and a new Monica Lewinsky-produced season of American Crime Story is set to air next fall on the FX network.

“I think that there’s endless potential and that I think what has unfolded as a matter of fact is infinitely more fascinating than what fiction writers could have thought of two years ago,” said Eric Schultz, the former Obama White House deputy press secretary who consulted on the recent Netflix reboot of the presidential television drama “Designated Survivor.” For starters, he called the FBI’s pre-dawn raid in the summer of 2017 on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s Alexandria, Virginia, condominium “a scene that writes itself.”

“It felt incredibly cinematic throughout the course of the investigation, the revelatory nature of how it unfolded,” Schultz added. “In terms of the chronology of the underlying facts and how we learned them I think would make a lot of Hollywood writers jealous. It’s powerful raw material and can certainly translate on screen.”

For now, it’s up in the air who, if anyone will emerge as the next Woodward or Isikoff—a name brand forever linked back to the 2016 campaign, Trump and the Russia investigation. Mueller himself won’t ever be a talking head. He’s made that abundantly clear. But could one of his deputies emerge in that role?

So far, no one who worked on the special counsel probe is talking publicly about their work, though a memoir from former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann is reportedly coming. Whether Weissmann would ever migrate from the cloistered realm of the prosecutor into the noisy media world remains unknown. Back in April, while sitting in the D.C. federal courthouse cafeteria, POLITICO asked him whether he’d consider breaking the special counsel office’s well-documented silence to opine publicly the next time there’s a major presidential scandal.

He replied, “God help us.”

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Here's an Update on American Horror Story and All the Other Upcoming Ryan Murphy Shows

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/heres-an-update-on-american-horror-story-and-all-the-other-upcoming-ryan-murphy-shows/

Here's an Update on American Horror Story and All the Other Upcoming Ryan Murphy Shows

Ryan Murphy is probably the busiest man on all of television. 

The executive producer of American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Feud, 911, Pose, Ratched, and probably a few more was on hand during FX’s winter press tour for multiple panels for multiple shows, and he even took a second to spill even more on shows he wasn’t there to panel. Honestly, we don’t know how this man sleeps or has any idea what’s going on inside his own head. 

To help you (and maybe him) keep track of his many shows both current and future, we’ve compiled the updates he gave during the 2018 press tour on everything that’s in the pipeline. There’s even a small American Horror Story tease in there, along with tidbits on Feud, the Monica Lewinsky season of ACS and more! 

Fox

9-1-1

Fox’s newest procedural, a drama about 911 operators and responders which stars Connie Britton, Angela Bassett, and Peter Krause, premiered on January 3 to around 7 million viewers. 

FX

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

The second installment in the ACS series will premiere January 17 on FX and stars Edgar Ramirez, Darren Criss, Penelope Cruz, and Ricky Martin. 

FX

Pose

The drama exploring the world of ballroom culture, featuring the largest transgender cast on any TV show ever, will premiere this summer. 

FX

American Crime Story: Katrina

Murphy confirmed that Katrina, with Sarah Paulson starring, will be the next installment of the American Crime Story series. While originally the season was supposed to tell a broader story about the disaster, it will now focus on Paulson as a doctor in a New Orleans hospital, and it will be based on the book Five Days At Memorial, by Sherri Fink. 

“We decided to do a more intimate version of that story that I think is probably much more intimate and topical,” Murphy said, explaining that the new season would focus on the healthcare industry and disasters and global warming, which is important for any American Crime Story season. “It has to be something that works on a bigger social issue. I would never do Jon Benet Ramsay and I would never do the Menendez Brothers.”

“We’ll probably shoot that in the fall,” he said. 

FX

American Horror Story Season 8

AHS is heading into the future, but not too far. Only the next 10 or 20 years. 

“It’s a projection story,” Murphy said. 

That Coven/Murder House crossover likely won’t happen until season nine or later, depending on actor schedules. 

Anwar Hussein/WireImage.com

Feud: Charles and Diana

Murphy says he’s getting ready to cast the next installment in the Feud series, all about the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana, but he keeps pushing the show back because he has too many other shows going on. It should start shooting in the fall. 

And no, Murphy is not concerned with The Crown catching up to the time period and competing, but he does love The Crown and says it’s the show he watches every time he’s sick. 

Fantasy Films

Ratched

“Sarah Paulson is the lead. That’s all we’ve done,” Murphy said of the cast of the Nurse Ratched origin story, which is heading to Netflix. 

“The great thing about that show is that the first four seasons follow Sarah’s origin story, like how did she become a Hannibal Lecter figure? What happened to her to make her do that?” Murphy continued. “It’s also a feminist tale, because it starts in 1947 and it looks at the birth of a lot of things that are happening in our healthcare system, and th elast season of that show will be Sarah facing off against the Jack Nicholson character from [One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest].” 

  CNN screen grab

American Crime Story: Monica Lewinsky Scandal

Murphy and co. acquired rights to Jeffrey Toobin’s book A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down A President, which chronicles the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal that lead to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, but don’t expect that any time soon.

“We’re interviewing writers,” he said. “That’s a very tricky one, and I’m not in any rush to do anything now unless it’s done right. I’m actually working on having dinner with Monica Lewinsky because I sort of feel that it’s very important that her point of view is presented. So I want to make sure that we do it right, and I think particularly now in this era, we have an obligation to a lot of research.” 

Murphy had already confirmed Sarah Paulson would be involved, and he still wants her to play Linda Tripp. He hopes the show will be written in the spring, and hopes to get Lewinsky’s input on the cast. 

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