Editor’s Note: Projecting features a selection of great film and television focused writing from around the internet.
Laura Bogart sees Joan Rivers’ later work as a detraction from her trailblazing start, for Press Play:
As a writer and a feminist, I should have called in my own tribute on the switchboard of Facebook. And yet, I can’t. Rivers’ early work may have been a slingshot lobbing stones against the powers-that-be, but, in her later years, her cruelty became a cannon unloading upon the oppressed. She trafficked in tired slut-shaming and fat jokes.
Cindy Davis supports maintaining the mystery in The Leftovers, for Pajiba:
Mind you, I haven’t read Tom Perrotta’s novel so I’m flying blind; I’ve no idea if the author ever gives an explanation of what happened to The Leftovers’ departed souls (*please don’t SPOIL me or anyone else in the comments). What I do know is — whether or not Perrotta did — Lindelof shouldn’t. Wait, did I just type that? Because the best choice for the man who made so many of us skittish to even give this series a chance could be the same guy who teaches us, Hey, maybe we don’t really need an answer.
Xin Zhou reports on the Chinese Government’s decimation of the Beijing Independent Film Festival, for Indiewire:
This year, the festival was scheduled to open on the afternoon of August 23, and continue until the end of the month.
However, save for a few off-site screenings at artists and filmmakers’ homes, no official screening took place in the Songzhuang village, or in the city. In the early hours of the first day, uniformed and plainclothes police started to block the road to the Li Xianting Film Fund office, preventing filmmakers from checking in at the festival headquarters.
Andy Denhart explains why reality TV shows need to stop casting crazy people, for HitFix:
Probst defended Rocker’s casting by calling him “a perfect fit for this show because of all the baggage he brings in” and arguing that because Rocker “made some very controversial, polarizing comments about how he views the world. That is in its core, when you take away all the strategy and all the challenges — that is what Survivor is about.”
I hate to take the bait here and react to such obvious trifle, but: No, no it is not.
