Hello Hollywood tech nerds!

In this week’s post:

🧌 HBO Trolls TV Critics on Twitter

🎞️ IMAX Is Killing It

🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for

HBO Trolls TV Critics on Twitter

I couldn’t get enough of this well-reported (and frequently amusing) Rolling Stone article about HBO using fake Twitter accounts to attack critics of its TV shows. The article describes “six instances between June 2020 and April 2021 in which [HBO execs] discussed using what they called a “secret army” to fire back at several TV critics on Twitter (now known as X) as well as anonymous commenters on articles about HBO programming.”

Now, artists are notoriously sensitive types about their own work - Ridley Scott is still salty about the long-dead Pauline Kael’s forty-one year old pan of Blade Runner, as reported by this terrific profile in The New Yorker - but these Twitter trolls weren’t activated at the behest of the show’s creators, or even a low-level rogue marketing manager. No, these tweets were ordered direct from the top: HBO’s then-president of original programming Casey Bloys. And they say executives are overcompensated!

Anyone who’s been on the Internet is of course familiar with the practice of sockpuppetry, from Redditors using alts to defend their unpopular opinions to writer Lee Siegel praising himself in the comments of his New Republic blog to authors reviewing their own books on Amazon.

Hollywood studios are not new to the dark art of manipulating critical opinion on their content either; all the way back in 2000, a marketing executive at Sony created a fake movie critic named “David Manning” who “seemed to hold a special affinity for movies released by Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, including the Rob Schneider comedy The Animal, which Manning called ‘another winner!’” Ironically, Warner execs may have themselves been the victims of fake Twitter accounts during the heyday of the #SnyderCut Justice League fandom. It looks like they learned their lesson (manipulate public opinion through chicanery).

In unrelated news, here’s a very kind email I received from a regular reader:

Wow! Thanks random reader! If you want to send me a similar note, you can always do so at [email protected].

IMAX Is Killing It

When it comes to theatrical experiences, your boy Steve has done it all (except Sphere, I’ve yet to make my Vegas pilgrimage - that Christmas bonus is a long ways away). I even saw Fast and Furious 9 in a Cinemark D-Box, which was a nightmare within a nightmare; Schlockception, if you will.

For my money, the undisputed king is still seeing a film shot on IMAX film in a theater projecting IMAX film (and not seeing it in LieMAX - don’t get me started!). My theater of choice in the LA area is the IMAX at Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood; I’ve seen almost every movie shot with IMAX sequences there, everything from most of Christopher Nolan’s films to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, to Damien Chazelle’s supremely underrated First Man.

Imagine my delight, then, at this story from Fast Company, detailing the overwhelming success IMAX has had this year, led by Nolan’s Oppenheimer:

At the risk of beating a dead horse, this is exciting for films and filmmakers alike; what will drive audiences out to theaters in the coming years will be experiences: going out to see things you can’t see at home or in ways that you can’t see them at home. The IMAX experience cannot be replicated in home entertainment. That’s a good thing!

Oppenheimer is headed back to IMAX for a weeklong encore engagement. If you didn’t get to see it in IMAX 70mm, make sure to do it now!

Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)

Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:

For every hit TV show, there are 100 misses. (link)

NYC’s action plan for AI. (link)

Adobe launches Project Stardust. (link)