Between breaking the Internet and #rokerthon, we’re a little bleary eyed this week. So we’ve rounded up some easy weekend reading you may have missed this week.
1) Does anyone like recaps? I’m biased because I’ve made some forays into the genre. And reading recaps of “Mad Men” or “True Detective” is often the best way to spend a Monday morning while your brain boots up. Over at MediaPost, they aren’t so forgiving. Why all the hate?
2) John Oliver finished his first season of “Last Week” on Sunday and we’re sad we won’t have anymore hashtag campaigns to track for a while. In the meantime, Matt Zoller Seitz over at Vulture explains why we like Oliver so much. He writes:
I’m talking about a combination of aesthetic and journalistic progress. “Last Week is doing what media watchdogs (including the Peabody Awards) keep saying that “The Daily Show” does — practicing real journalism in comedy form — but it’s doing it better, and in a simpler, yet more ambitious, ultimately more useful way. If Stewart’s show is doing what might be called a reported feature, augmenting opinions with facts, Oliver’s show is doing something closer to pure reporting, or what the era of web journalism calls an “explainer,” often without a hook, or the barest wisp of a hook.
P.S. Seitz happens to be a lovely recapper in addition to a critic. Just saying.
3) Just in time for cold weather, Hulu and Fandor struck a deal this week. The deal allows Hulu — both the free and Hulu Plus to stream movies from the Criterion Collection each month. Every Tuesday, a new group of films will be released. You can see November’s launches here. Apart from it being nice to have new flicks on Hulu — does this mean we should start subscribing to Fandor, too? And aren’t partnerships between two competing subscription services sort of strange? My mind is a little blown about the logistics and implications about teaming up and sharing content.
What else did we miss this week?