Becky with the good SAT scores
SAT scams, MoviePass news, new movie trailers and more: Here's the week in pop culture news
Hi y’all! Welcome back to Jacob’s Letter, a free pop culture newsletter full of puns and dog photos.
Thanks to everyone who subscribed and opened the newsletter last week. Which reminds me — you can find me in other corners of the internet as well, if you so choose. There’s my personal website (which focuses on pop culture, faith and my journalism clips), a Twitter account and a Letterboxd account. Subscribe away, if that’s your thing.
This week, we got news about the standardized test scandal that will forever taint our view of Aunt Becky, MoviePass shakeups and some of the week’s best movie trailers. Put on your St. Patrick’s Day green and scroll down for more.
A desperate full house of cards
Yes, the ‘90s are making a comeback, but that’s not the only reason you probably saw the faces of Lori Loughlin (Aunt Becky from “Full House”/“Fuller House”) and Felicity Huffman (Lynette Scavo from “Desperate Housewives,” and, more importantly to me, Dana Whitaker from “Sports Night”) all over the news this week.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice revealed that 50 people have been charged after an FBI probe into a college admissions found a scam where rich parents either had people take standardized tests for their kids or had their children falsely designated as athletes to ensure their acceptance into top-tier schools like Yale and Stanford, the University of Texas and many, many others.
Two of those charged were Loughlin and Huffman. The FBI allege Loughlin bribed University of Southern California officials to accept her daughter Olivia as a crew athlete, while the FBI says Huffman paid to inflate her daughter’s SAT scores and almost did the same for another daughter, but decided against it.
It is unknown what will happen to the kids at the center of this scandal, but many are already calling for them to be punished and/or expelled.
The whole thing has cast a light on the wealth gap in this country and the lengths parents will go to get their kids into a good school, which is still a status symbol even if you’re a millionaire. But unless more scandals like this come out, I don’t think this will change anything. These parents will pay a fine at least and serve a small jail sentence at most. Their Hollywood projects will probably still be funded. It’s their kids who will end up suffering the long-term consequences, though.
A moment of levity in all this: The FBI’s probe was code-named “Operation Varsity Blues,” which prompted one of the best tweets I’ve ever seen, from that high school football movie’s star, James Van Der Beek:
(I would also like to add that my dog Nova the white German shepherd is an obedience school dropout and I have never bribed anyone to further her dog education. I did bribe her with treats to pose for that photo, though.)
Step 1: Offer movies for free. Step 2: Maybe don’t offer movies for free. Step 3: Profit?
MoviePass is dead; long live MoviePass.
The once-popular movie subscription service revealed this week that it lost more money last year than it had originally claimed —$146.7 million over the quarter ending in September of 2018 as opposed to $137.2 million.
Add to that a growing number of disgruntled customers (including myself; I canceled my membership three months ago after the app became unusable and the only showings were 9 a.m. screenings of “Mortal Engines” at a theater 15 miles away from me) and another high profile exit — executive vice president Khalid Itum is out after a few months of getting a promotion — and it looks like this thing’s dead in the water.
Anyway, I wrote a lot about this company from the get-go at Austin360 if you want to see how we all went from bullish to straight up bear cub-ish on this venture.
Trailer Park
A new segment of the newsletter where I look at some of the movie trailers that debuted this week (because there were a lot). I know some people don’t like watching them because of potential spoilers, but a good trailer done well is a work of art in itself. Here’s a few I saw that I liked:
“Avengers: Endgame”
Really into the black/white/red-all-over color palette of the first part of this, and I like how it teases new things while also cobbling together relevant footage from the previous 21 Marvel films.
“Booksmart” and “Good Boys”
Looks like the same company edited both of these trailers. Both are coming of age stories, both use Run the Jewels’ “Nobody Speak,” both feature kids getting up to shenanigans and both look hilarious and heartfelt, a lot like “Blockers” or the back half of “Superbad.” (These trailers are also very very vulgar and Not Safe For Work, sorry Grandma)
“Aladdin”
I don’t know, man. At least they made the Genie less blue. I’ve been on the fence about a lot of these live-action Disney remakes and I’m not sure about how this era is going to be received in the company’s history. But this trailer at least looks better than the two that came before it. The singing got me at the end, but I don’t know if I’m excited to see it.
Out of Egypt, into your hearts
I re-watched “The Prince of Egypt” for the first time in about 10 years as prep for a film essay I’m submitting next week. This thing is 21 years old and still holds up. The animation is better than most modern-day films (those fish in the Red Sea!), the voice cast is top-notch and the songs still slap, as the youths say.
An interesting thing I realized this time that I never noticed before: The voice of God in the burning bush is Val Kilmer, the same person who does the voice of Moses, and the voices for all of Moses’ real family are American (Kilmer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny Glover) while the voices for his adopted Egyptian family are British (Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren, Ralph Fiennes). I could go on abut what that could mean, but I think I might keep that for the essay.
My rating: 5 chariots out of 5
One more movie review
I rented the futuristic sci-fi flick “Upgrade” from the library. Worth your time if you like innovative camerawork and action-packed B-movies.
Friday News Dump
A list of online stuff I really liked this week:
My wife Taylor wrote a really cool piece on North Texas beer distributors and another piece on how those breweries are vying for shelf space in your supermarket. Both feature some cool infographics she made and some photos she took (via Dallas Business Journal)
This week gave us genre re-imaginings of both “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “This Is Us” with some fan-made trailers. The “Fresh Prince” one imagines the show as a drama, while the “This Is Us” one is clips of Randall Pearson’s family set to the “Family Matters” theme song. I’ve watched both about five times each, and they’re joyous. (via Morgan Cooper on Vimeo and @shadowandact on Twitter)
Speaking of watching things on a loop, this GIF of a chain link being made mesmerized me for far too long. I’m a simple man. (via @AnimationVidz on Twitter)
This feature on the Dallas Stars video coach is one of the reasons I subscribe to The Athletic (that, and David Ubben’s Vols commentary)
Lindsay Ellis is one of the few YouTube personalities I follow for film criticism, and this feature on her in Wired does a good job of explaining her celebrity and highlighting the toxicity of YouTube (via Wired)
What if The Bible, but photogenic? This startup wants to make your Bibles Instagrammable (and if that sentence makes zero sense to you, I envy you). (via Washington Post)
There apparently was a real Murder on Music Row, a story I have never heard before even though I know the song by heart (via Saving Country Music)
My former employer sent an intern to see “Office Space” for the first time…at the film’s 20th anniversary SXSW screening. The review is a riot. (via Austin360)
Not an online link, but I recently started reading Hanif Abdurraqib’s book on A Tribe called Quest, “Go Ahead in the Rain.” Poetic and informative.
That’s all, folks. If you liked what you saw here, click that subscribe button (promise I won’t send any annoying emails) and tell all your friends!
See you next week,
Jake