Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1023

Video Is Already Making Instagram Beautifully Strange

The Vine-killing video option Facebook added to Instagram on Thursday has immediately started to bring motion pictures to your wedding dress-filled mobile photo feeds, but in attempting to copycat Twitter's stop-motion app, Facebook has also introduced an oddly refreshing pattern of weirdness to the notably twee Instagram. Welcome to the age of the Instavideo freakazoid.

Until now, Instagram invited a sort of pseudo-artistic sensibility. Even if your average photo-taker isn't trying to get all fancy, the filters inherently make everything from rich kids to people smoking weed look pretty, in a hazy, nostalgic kind of way. Indeed, the top Instagram posters other than celebrities (and pseudo-celebrities) are users like @NewYorkCity, who puts out lovely pictures of New York, or National Geographic, which has found a new home, more than 2 million followers strong, for its incredible images from around the world. And that's the kind of stuff most of the rest of us 100 million-plus Instagram monthly users post — the top photos in my feed right now are a beach scene, a futuristic light fixture, the requisite cup of coffee, and a biker riding through the Utah mountains. It all looks very lovely. But with Thursday's video update, Instagram feeds have become instantly disrupted with delightfully bizarre new things.

[image error]Some of the first Instagram videos are just as mundane or "artistic" as the service's usual fare — but there's also a glimpse of what's to come. Some of the first videos to come to my attention were clips from mistercap talking about rolling joints. YouTube star iJustine has been playing around with Instagram video, and both of her clips — one of her making a grotesque face (pictured above) and another of testing out the service — verge on the lovably weird. Anyone who follows her Internet persona knows that's part of her schtick, but photo versions (pictured at right) tend to come off as an aesthetic rather than a personality. And personality bordering on odd means a lot more than photos with hipster borders, even if the 13 new Instagram video filters include names like "Brooklyn," "Moon," and "Gingham."

The video medium, of course, has always kind of allowed for a more personal form of expression than still photos, and you have to look no further than Vine — you know, the Twitter-made service that Facebook totally copied — to see evidence of that. The supposed "stars" of Vine aren't filming kids playing on a hill or a delayed subway so much as a guy yelling "love" at an unsuspecting shopper, or Riff Raff — the man who may or may not have inspired James Franco's character in Spring Breakers — yelling things at people. The biggest memes on Vine so far have involved spoon-feeding Ryan Gosling cereal and throwing up fake blood. That's a long way away from 15-second videos of how to make coffee, as demonstrated by Instagram chief Kevin Systrom during Thursday's product announcement. 

Vine and Instagram, though, have and will continue to have very different user bases, and Vine isn't going away anytime soon. Instagram is a social network for the masses; Vine has "weird Twitter." But, if trending hashtags (on Twitter!) are to be believed, Instagram will soon get an influx of Vine users, which would hopefully bring a little something different to Facebook's billion-dollar baby. It'd be nice to happen upon a video of some white rappers embarrassing themselves or Stephanie Tanner dancing to some Juicy J in between the the sunsets and scenery wouldn't it?

       

Downey Is Back for 'Avengers' 2 and 3, and He Might Be a $100 Million Iron Man

All is well in the Marvel Cinematic Universe now that the company has announced that Robert Downey Jr. has signed on as Iron Man for two more Avengers movies. This was expected, but the contract didn't come without serious concerns over whether Downey would walk out over money. He didn't, so let's go ahead and assume he's getting a pretty gigantic payday.

Downey, who apparently likes his bedroom windows looking into his rooftop pool and prefers a square toilet seat, has never exactly been shy about the cash he's gotten for donning Marvel's suit. He up and told GQ that he was paid $50 million for the first Avengers, and, yes, even gloated about it: "They're so pissed. I can't believe it. I'm what's known as 'a strategic cost." He likely made even more than that, considering The Avengers ended up becoming the third highest grossing film of all time, and the number is "was more like $70M-$80M now that the film is all in," Nikki Finke reported back in May. Downey is pretty high up on the list of the highest paid movie actors, but perhaps with this new deal he enters the Tom Cruise realm of $100 million.

Marvel is known as "cheap," but according to Finke's sources Downey had leverage. So we can bet that he's getting the kind of money he wanted to come back for Avengers 2 (set for May 2015) and Avengers 3 after that. Downey apparently isn't signed on for anymore standalone Iron Man films. 

Marvel's announcement of Mr. Stark's return includes this promising nugget: in the coming weeks, the company will "reveal additional casting updates, new characters coming to Marvel movies and so much more." And that's where things get interesting. The other Avengers, like Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, according to The Hollywood Reporter only made around $2 to $3 million with bonuses on the first film, practically pocket change when compared to Downey's haul. But probably enough to buy a few square toilet seats.

       

The NSA Guidelines for Spying on You Are Looser Than You've Been Told

[image error]On July 28, 2009, 189 days after Barack Obama became president, Attorney General Eric Holder (himself only six months into office) presented the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) with a list of ways in which the NSA and FBI would try and assure that the data it collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act came only from non-Americans. The delineation, released today by The Guardian, includes several ways in which collection of data from Americans is both likely — and allowed.

The paper's two new documents, one showing how non-Americans are targeted and the other how collection from Americans is "minimized," are almost certainly the latest files to come from the Edward Snowden leak. These documents are particularly significant given the repeated recent insistences that the government does all it can to minimize collection of Americans' data, something which is not legally allowed under FISA. (These documents only apply to collection under FISA, including the provisions of Section 702 that allowed PRISM. Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the sweeping collection of data from phone companies, knowingly and legally collects data about Americans.)

Members of both the House and the Senate have called for the release of documents that do precisely what these do: outline how and when the NSA might collect domestic data, and how it tries not to. One of the points these documents raise is that, given the breadth of the agency's collection efforts, collecting data from Americans almost necessarily occurs. According to a separate, one-paragraph document The Guardian has seen, however, the FISC found the procedures described by Holder to be "consistent with US law and the fourth amendment."

The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald provides an overview:

The top secret documents published today detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US, and reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens and residents from data collection.

To avoid including Americans (technically, "US persons") in its sweeps, the NSA asks several questions about a target.

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If the person passes that test, the NSA further examines the data it collects for signs that the person might or might not be an American, including checks against known phone numbers and IP address data. Or if the person happens to be a "buddy" of a foreign intelligence official.

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Should the data not pass these tests — if, in other words, the NSA believes the data does pertain to an American — it doesn't necessarily have to get rid of the data. Greenwald outlines three examples in which the NSA can keep and use data collected from Americans.

Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity; Preserve "foreign intelligence information" contained within attorney-client communications; Access the content of communications gathered from "U.S. based machine[s]" or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

The point about encryption was immediately isolated as significant by observers, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Hanni Fakhoury.

Per leaked FISA docs, using encryption is equated with criminal activity: http://t.co/k3IFHV3n0D

— Hanni Fakhoury (@HanniFakhoury) June 20, 2013

And, as attorney Amie Stepanovich noted, the NSA keeps email addresses and phone numbers it knows belong to Americans in order to identify other people as being American or not.

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Incidentally, if the NSA can't figure out whether or not a person is an American, it is allowed to assume that the person is not, according to Greenwald.

"In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person," it states "a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person."

[image error]It is not clear whether or not these are the "minimization procedures" still in effect for the NSA's surveillance systems. The compliance systems appear to comport with what was described by NSA head Keith Alexander and the FBI during a hearing this week. Since a previous FISA document obtained by Snowden apparently came from a batch of training documents, it's possible that these documents were similarly available to train new NSA employees on how and when to use the tools.

Again, the scope of the NSA's authorization means that scooping up data from Americans would be almost unavoidable. That scope is, of course, up for debate. But these two documents also raise significant questions about the repeated assurances that the NSA doesn't intentionally collect information on Americans under Section 702. Maybe not. But the rules as proscribed are much looser than the agency has implied.

Photos: Top, graphic by Electronic Frontier Foundation. Top inset, Attorney General Eric Holder, via the AP. Bottom inset, NSA head Keith Alexander, via the AP.

       

The James Gandolfini Effect

The news that actor James Gandolfini died yesterday, at a too-young 51 years old, was certainly sad and in many ways shocking. A gifted and seemingly kind and humble actor, Gandolfini represented everything we love about the idea of the workman actor, rather than the flashy celebrity who happens to show up in movies and TV shows once in a while. It's undeniably sad, in a faraway, "most of us didn't know him" sense, that he's so suddenly gone. But what is it about James Gandolfini, or more likely about his most famous character Tony Soprano, that, in the wake of his death, seems to have endeared him so intensely to so many people?

[image error]Well, I suppose the easiest answer is that America loves a gangster. The seedy underbelly, the life of crime, the dastardly deeds done under a hushed code of honor. There's something both scrappy and oddly elegant about the Don Corleones and Henry Hills of the world — they travel the wild, fast-lane to the American Dream, they're tough and exciting, as we'd all like ourselves to be sometimes. Tony Soprano fit into this world, but of course what Sopranos creator David Chase did, with Gandolfini leading the charge, was delve deeper into a gangster's psyche than perhaps ever before, giving us 86 sprawling episodes that brought us ever closer toward the heart of darkness, but also toward enlightenment. We truly got to know this gangster, and eventually came to see in him what I think we'd always suspected was there: ourselves.

It's probably a cliché at this point to say that The Sopranos wasn't really a show about the mob, that Tony Soprano wasn't just a gangster. But you know what? Those sentiments are clichés for a reason; they're very much true. With The Sopranos, we got the often difficult to love, but somehow no less lovable for it, gangster we initially tuned in for, but then the show took us to much knottier places, exploring a particularly American psyche to its frayed and mysterious limits. And in that we learned a lesson about ourselves, about our country, about our era. The Sopranos was a brilliant, searching, wholly vital and enriching television series, and Gandolfini was at the center of it, leading us along but never reaching back to hold our hand.

[image error]Meaning, Gandolfini never tried to get us to like him. Sure, Tony could be funny and on very rare occasion do the right thing, but he was largely a monster, a heavy-breathing hulk of narcissism and sociopathy. By all accounts he should have been the villain, and on a less thoughtful series he likely would have been. But instead Chase and Gandolfini steered us toward the howling pain within Tony, the bleakness and despair that roared especially loudly in Tony, but probably did sound shiveringly familiar to most of us, in some way. The rage and despondency of having so much and yet feeling you have so little — that's America on the whole, isn't it? Though the series was grim and scary and oftentimes relentlessly depressing, there was a kindness to it. Even if the kindness was simply that the show dared to be blisteringly honest with us about a certain small corner of the human condition. And Gandolfini accepted that rather huge responsibility — of being our chief avatar in this exploration of nothing less than the core of our own nature — with such grace and astounding, unwavering commitment.

Gandolfini was never a huge star. His post-Sopranos career certainly had its share of highlights, among them a well-received turn in the Broadway smash God of Carnage and a sober but sensitive documentary about wounded Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, but he was not a frequently uttered household name, no matter what might've been. Now, the outpouring of memories and appreciations — in a volume unmatched of late, even in these "everyone must weigh in" web-culture times — shows us that he seems to have represented something far greater than a movie or TV star. Here was a guy who helped give The Sopranos's many fans a gift far greater than entertainment. He let us take comfort in the ways that Tony was so much worse than us, and yet allowed for quiet and cathartic moments of connectivity. Gandolfini gave such unflinching vividness to Tony's life so that we could better understand our own. It's no wonder then that so many people feel so sorrowful that his is now over.

       

James Gandolfini's Last Roles and What Might've Been a Comeback

James Gandolfini was best known for playing a mobster on TV whom he stopped embodying six years ago—indeed, he was perhaps known only for playing Tony Soprano in a career that never exactly rose to the same heights, with supporting roles that followed as generals and cabinet secretaries and the voice of a lovable CGI-animated beast. But upon his untimely death on Wednesday, Gandolfini's acting future was thriving again. And while his many fans will get to see at least two posthumous film performances, there still remain those parts we'll never get to see him play, lost to other actors of lesser stature and an IMDb page lost to history. Some of these forgotten roles would have been familiar to the man who was Big Tone, like that of a New Jersey restaurant owner who deals with North Korean diplomacy. But we'll never get to see him play a 19th Century dinosaur hunter. Gandolfini was also producing projects like a remake of the Canadian TV series Taxi 22, the drama Big Dead Place (about an Antarctic research base, in which he might have starred), and even Oliver Stone's adaptation of Robert Caro's The Power Broker.   

Here is what's yet to come from Mr. Soprano, and projects that might have been—many of them right back home at HBO. 

The Performances We'll See Yet

Enough Said

This Nicole Holofcener film is "tentatively" going to come out next year, Steve Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times reported. In the movie, Zeitchik explained, Gandolfini plays "a gentle, lovable soul who is just looking for love." The film stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus seeking a relationship with Gadolfini's Albert, who is the ex-husband of a character played by Catherine Keener, as Lindsay Bahr of Entertainment Weekly wrote. 

Animal Rescue

If Enough Said puts Gandolfini in the world of romantic comedy, Animal Rescue sends him back in familiar territory, playing a bar owner in an adaptation of a Dennis Lehane short story. Lehane also wrote the screenplay about a bartender, played by Tom Hardy, who gets mixed up with Chechen gangsters. "In one memorable scene, Gandolfini and Hardy reportedly go back and forth on the pronunciation of names of people who come from Chechnya," the L.A. Times's Zeitchik wrote. "Gandolfini calls them 'Chechnyans' — you can almost hear Tony Soprano saying the word — and Hardy corrects him that it’s 'Chechens.'" 

The Performances We'll Never See

Eating With the Enemy

Based on a book described as what would happen if "Tony Soprano took a seat at the U.N. and tried to stop a nuclear war," Eating With the Enemy was being developed for HBO Films. The movie would tell the story of Bobby Egan, "a ribs restaurant owner, high school dropout, former drug addict and roofing contractor from Hackensack, NJ," and his dealings with North Korea and the U.S. intelligence. According to Entertainment Weekly's Anthony Breznican, screenwriter Pat Healy had been working on the script for Gandolfini for two years. Just last Friday, actually, Gandolfini met with HBO and Healy about the project. "He was getting really excited about doing it and everyone at HBO, including Len Amato, the head of HBO Films, was excited because he was excited," Healy told Breznican. 

Bone Wars

Straying from his Jersey roots, Gandolfini was attached to star opposite Steve Carell in an HBO movie about two dueling and ruthless paleontologists in the 19th Century. Gandolfini would have played Othniel Charles March to Carell's Edward Drinker.

Criminal Justice 

Gandolfini had already filmed the pilot for this series, which got a seven-episode limited series order at HBO. Though HBO had initially passed on Criminal Justice, Lesley Goldberg of The Hollywood Reporter reported that the network had come around on the show, which was to star Gandolfini as Jack Stone, described by Goldberg as "a downtrodden jailhouse attorney who frequents police stations for clients." Now it's unclear what will happen to the project, though Nellie Andreeva of Deadline said that "[a]ll sides indicated it is too soon to make decisions or even discuss the feature of the series, which had been reworked as a limited series and was yet to film any episodes beyond the pilot." Andreeva also indicated that the pilot mostly focuses on Riz Ahmed's Pakistani character accused of murder whose case Gandolfini's character takes. Gandolfini only appears at the very end. 

       

All-Woman Jury Selected for the Trayvon Martin Case

A jury of six women, five of them white, will decide the fate of George Zimmerman. Lawyers in the second-degree murder trial of Zimmerman, who shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last February, have finished the main portion of jury selection and are now making final preparations to begin the actual trial next week.

In an odd twist for those used to highly diverse television trials, the jury will only have six members (four alternates will also be chosen) and there are no men on the main panel. The Orlando Sentinel has posted brief descriptions of the jury, based on answers to their pre-trial questions — five of the women are white, three are "middle-aged" or older, and five of them have children. One is a woman from Iowa who was not even living in Florida when the shooting occured.

Opening arguments in the case are expected to begin on Monday, and the trial will likely last two-to-four weeks. Zimmerman has argued that Martin attacked him and he shot in self-defense.

       

James Gandolfini Has Died

Variety is reporting that James Gandolfini died suddenly in Italy at the age of 51. It looks like the cause of death was possibly a heart attack. More from Variety: 

According to HBO, he was on vacation at the time.  The “Sopranos” actor appeared recently in “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.” He had been working on Fox Searchlight’s “Animal Rescue,” now in post-production, HBO show “Criminal Justice” as well as CBS show “Taxi 22.”

The actor was best-known for his portrayal of Tony Soprano on the eponymous show. He won three Emmys for that work. But his career extended way beyond that role: the actor played the CIA director in "Zero Dark Thirty," and had roles in “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” and “True Romance.” He also starred in "In the Loop," A British and American indie satire film that's basically a comedy of errors ending in war. 

Gandolfini is survived by his wife, Deborah Lin, and two children. 

We're adding more to this developing story as it comes in. 

       

Jenn Allen His Sticking by Her Claims About Michael Arrington

In response to the defamation lawsuit filed by tech blogger and investor Michael Arrington, Jenn Allen, an entrepreneur who he once dated, is standing by her claims that he raped her in her recent legal response. First uncovered by Valleywag, Allen's filing does not say much: much of the response goes paragraph by paragraph through Arrington's suit and either flatly "DENIES the allegation" or "ADMITS the allegation." On the key claims, she maintains her previous positions — except for one. 

In paragraph 4.8 of Arrington's suit, she is accused of posting a Facebook comment in which she said she had suffered "rapes and 8 years of physical, emotional, abuse from a man who has a history of sexual harasssment" and also claimed, "I've got letters from other women in tech to show how he really is." In her response, she writes, "Defendant DENIES for lack of knowledge the allegation in Paragraph 4.8." It's not clear what she's denying: that she posted the comment or the content of it? But it would be odd for her to deny that she made these claims but stick by the rest, which includes murder threats, abuse both sexual and physical, as well as rape, and an aborted pregnancy. All of those parts of her story she is sticking to. So what happens next? 

Arrington already has a suit against Allen, which he filed after Allen refused to "unconditionally retracts your false and defamatory statements." He seeks more than $75,000 in damages for the various comments all over the Internet Allen made describing an uncomfortable relationship with Arrington. In his original filing Arrington included a slew of "evidence" including email conversations, IMs, Facebook notes, and Twitter messages from Allen. This is the only response from Allen so far. And, Allen's lawyer refused to comment to Valleywag further on the filing, only reiterating to Sam Biddle that "she refused to retract her accusations, believes everything she's said about Arrington—that he raped her, impregnated her, threatened her, etc," writes Biddle. So, then, the case will proceed and maybe finally we'll get more answers in the curious case of Michael Arrington versus Jenn Allen.

Photo by Joi Ito via Flickr

       

Jenn Allen Is Sticking by Her Claims About Michael Arrington

In response to the defamation lawsuit filed by tech blogger and investor Michael Arrington, Jenn Allen, an entrepreneur who he once dated, is standing by her claims that he raped her in her recent legal response. First uncovered by Valleywag, Allen's filing does not say much: much of the response goes paragraph by paragraph through Arrington's suit and either flatly "DENIES the allegation" or "ADMITS the allegation." On the key claims, she maintains her previous positions — except for one. 

In paragraph 4.8 of Arrington's suit, she is accused of posting a Facebook comment in which she said she had suffered "rapes and 8 years of physical, emotional, abuse from a man who has a history of sexual harasssment" and also claimed, "I've got letters from other women in tech to show how he really is." In her response, she writes, "Defendant DENIES for lack of knowledge the allegation in Paragraph 4.8." It's not clear what she's denying: that she posted the comment or the content of it? But it would be odd for her to deny that she made these claims but stick by the rest, which includes murder threats, abuse both sexual and physical, as well as rape, and an aborted pregnancy. All of those parts of her story she is sticking to. So what happens next? 

Arrington already has a suit against Allen, which he filed after Allen refused to "unconditionally retracts your false and defamatory statements." He seeks more than $75,000 in damages for the various comments all over the Internet Allen made describing an uncomfortable relationship with Arrington. In his original filing Arrington included a slew of "evidence" including email conversations, IMs, Facebook notes, and Twitter messages from Allen. This is the only response from Allen so far. And, Allen's lawyer refused to comment to Valleywag further on the filing, only reiterating to Sam Biddle that "she refused to retract her accusations, believes everything she's said about Arrington—that he raped her, impregnated her, threatened her, etc," writes Biddle. So, then, the case will proceed and maybe finally we'll get more answers in the curious case of Michael Arrington versus Jenn Allen.

Photo by Joi Ito via Flickr

       

Sanrda Bullock Won't Hate Little Girls

Today in show business news: The search for Miss Hannigan continues, some interesting clues about the next Star Wars movie, and Simon Rich continues to do well at his 20s.

Well, sorry to disappoint you folks, but the talks to cast Sandra Bullock as Miss Hannigan in the new Annie remake have fallen through. Yup. It looked like there was a possibility, however slight, for a minute there, but ultimately the idea was dropped. By whom we'll never know. I'd guess Bullock, but who knows. Maybe director Will Gluck heard her sing and was like "Nope." Whatever happened, it's probably for the best, right? There was a chance it could have been fun, but there was a way bigger chance it was going to be a terrible misfire. I know you rarely get anything good without risk, but it's just an Annie remake we're talking about. So. Onto the next. Who should they cast? I'm hoping for Adam Lambert. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Something that is happening in the movie musical world is the adaptation of Jason Robert Brown's The Last 5 Years. It's officially begun production with Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan in the story's only two roles. He'll sing a series of songs detailing the rise and fall of a relationship from beginning to end, she'll sing the same story, with different songs, from end to beginning. They meet once in the middle and then everything ends sad. Or wistful, at least. Richard LaGravenese is directing. Hopefully he'll keep this thing as small as the stage musical, though I suppose he can't film them just standing on a stage for 90 minutes. They'll have to move around. But not too much, I hope. [Deadline]

Innnnteresting. Some casting notes for the new Star Wars movie, Episode VII, have leaked, giving us some clue as to just who the heck is going to be in this crazy movie. The characters include two teen girls who are described as "independent, good sense of humor, fit" and "tough, smart and fit." So they're both fit. That's important to know. There's a middle-aged "military type" guy, there's a thirtysomething nerd, there's an old man, and then there are two young men. They are described as "fit, but not traditionally good looking" and "fit, handsome and confident." So, again, they are both fit. Everyone's fit! Well maybe not the old man or the nerd, but everyone else is. I'd imagine the "military-type" man is fit. So, yeah, this doesn't really tell us that much, but The Hollywood Reporter says there have been rumors that Episode VII will have a female lead, which could be interesting. Can't wait for the fanboy conversation about that. Not that they'll necessarily object, but there will probably be something to be said about it. Happy speculating! [The Hollywood Reporter]

FX has ordered a pilot from former SNL wunderkind and humor novelist Simon Rich. The show is called Man Seeking Woman and is based on his recently published book The Last Girlfriend On Earth. Deadline says that if the show goes to air, it will make 28-year-old Rich "one of the youngest series creators ever." Not younger than Lena Dunham! But yeah, pretty young. He was just 22 when he started at SNL, if you can believe it. It's really something. Imagine what he could have done if the impediments of going to Harvard and being on the Lampoon and his dad being Frank Rich hadn't slowed him down. [Deadline]

Here is the first trailer for The Spectacular Now, the teen indie romance from Smashed director James Ponsoldt. It stars the charming duo of Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley (sorry about Spidey, gurl) as a mismatched pair that falls in love despite their differences. See, he's something of a shiftless screw-up and she's sweet and shy and has her stuff together. So they fall in love and then, presumably, other things happen. The movie was a small sensation at Sundance this winter, so it's got that going for it. I can't quite tell if it looks cute or cloying, but I'm sincerely hoping it's the former. These kids seem nice. They should be in nice movies.