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Tidbits – Dec. 28, 2023 – Reader Comments: Trump-Haley-MAGA GOP Embrace Slavery-Fascism; Israeli War Crimes; Migrants and Immigration; Reader Response to Police Reform; Maestro Does Disservice; March on Washington for Gaza-Jan 13; More…

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Reader Comments: Trump-Haley-MAGA GOP Embrace Slavery-Fascism; Israeli War Crimes; Migrants and Immigration; Reader Response to Police Reform; Maestro Does Disservice; March on Washington for Gaza-Jan 13; more Announcements; Cartoons;

Striking Actors and Hollywood Studios Agree to a Deal

Brooks Barnes, John Koblin and Nicole Sperling New York Times
The agreements with actors and writers represent a capitulation by Hollywood’s biggest companies, which started the bargaining process with an expectation that the unions, especially SAG-AFTRA, would be relatively compliant.

Bela Lugosi: The People’s Horror Star

Hank Kennedy Cosmonaut Magazine
Anti-fascists, leftists, socialists, radicals, and revolutionaries looking for a horror film to watch this October should seek out one of Bela Lugosi’s classics. But please broaden your horizons beyond Dracula. You won’t regret it.

To Live and Strike in Hollywood

Gary Phillips Stansbury Forum
Writer Gary Phillips traces the history of the Writers Guild, the militancy of Hollywood unions, beginning with the writers, the difference between the writers and actors, and why the actors remain on strike.

How Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus Broke the Hollywood Blacklists

Taylor Dorrell Jacobin
Telling the story of a slave revolt in ancient Rome, the 1960 film Spartacus was penned by two blacklisted Communist writers. Its arrival in theaters was a middle finger to the McCarthyist witch hunt in Hollywood and publishing.

What Might Finally Resolve the Hollywood Strikes

David Dayen The American Prospect
The unions raised the need for antitrust enforcement, and the Biden administration’s top antitrust cops paid attention. The one-two punch of simultaneous WGA and SAG strikes, for the first time in 60 years, has stalled out virtually all productions.
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