Rotten Tomatoes Ratings Proven Fake, Rich Chicago Suburb Tells Residents to be Poor for a Month, New Mexico Governor "Cancels" the Bill of Rights (The Five for 09/08/23)
Plus, Tyler Childers and Olivia Rodrigo drop "instant classic" albums, the new Netflix spy show looks epic.
Hey, welcome to The Five.
One note before we get started.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks…a day in which I thought both my uncle (Manhattan) and one of my best high school friend’s dad (Pentagon) had been killed.
We got the best news that day…both men had been spared, due to the hand of God.
But this should never be an normal day. Here are the times, if you want to set your phone to observe moments of silence, and/or pray for the families of the fallen.
With that being said, let’s get into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
The New Mexico Governor went and canceled the Constitution.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days in response to a spate of gun violence.
The Democratic governor said she expects legal challenges but was compelled to act because of recent shootings, including the death of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week.
Lujan Grisham said state police would be responsible for enforcing what amount to civil violations. Albuquerque police Chief Harold Medina said he won’t enforce it, and Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he’s uneasy about it because it raises too many questions about constitutional rights.
The firearms suspension, classified as an emergency public health order, applies to open and concealed carry in most public places, from city sidewalks to urban recreational parks. The restriction is tied to a threshold for violent crime rates currently only met by the metropolitan Albuquerque. Police and licensed security guards are exempt from the temporary ban.
In a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) the Governor claimed she could do…pretty much whatever as as long as she uses the word “emergency.”
If there’s an emergency, and I’ve declared an emergency, I can evoke additional powers.
If you’re wondering what the difference is between a leader that can ignore the Bill of Rights and a dictator…queue The Office meme:
[two]
Well, this feels like justice.
Apologies if you’ve read this story before, but in 2017 I was granted a “top critic” badge for Rotten Tomatoes, thanks to a movie publicist I’d worked with for years. All I had to do was get my login credentials…and start posting my reviews for the magazine I was writing for at the time (not going to link to the publication because I have no desire to give them free publicity).
For days, weeks, months I waited to hear back from the RT team. Those credentials never came. Eventually, I shrugged my shoulders and gave up.
Later, I was able to have a conversation about this with a Comcast employee in Chicago (the parent company of RT), who more or less confirmed I was probably shut out over my politics (leaning conservative—if I have to oversimplify it), religious views (Christian)…or both.
Today, I’m glad it never happened…because America’s most popular movie review site is corrupt to the core.
But despite Rotten Tomatoes’ reputed importance, it’s worth a reminder: Its math stinks. Scores are calculated by classifying each review as either positive or negative and then dividing the number of positives by the total. That’s the whole formula. Every review carries the same weight whether it runs in a major newspaper or a Substack with a dozen subscribers.
If a review straddles positive and negative, too bad. “I read some reviews of my own films where the writer might say that he doesn’t think that I pull something off, but, boy, is it interesting in the way that I don’t pull it off,” says Schrader, a former critic. “To me, that’s a good review, but it would count as negative on Rotten Tomatoes.”
There’s also no accounting for enthusiasm — no attempt to distinguish between extremely and slightly positive (or negative) reviews. That means a film can score a perfect 100 with just passing grades. “In the old days, if an independent film got all three-star reviews, that was like the kiss of death,” says Publicist No. 2. “But with Rotten Tomatoes, if you get all three-star reviews, it’s fantastic.”
Another problem — and where the trickery often begins — is that Rotten Tomatoes scores are posted after a movie receives only a handful of reviews, sometimes as few as five, even if those reviews may be an unrepresentative sample. This is sort of like a cable-news network declaring an Election Night winner after a single county reports its results. But studios see it as a feature, since, with a little elbow grease, they can sometimes fool people into believing a movie is better than it is.
Here’s how. When a studio is prepping the release of a new title, it will screen the film for critics in advance. It’s a film publicist’s job to organize these screenings and invite the writers they think will respond most positively. Then that publicist will set the movie’s review embargo in part so that its initial Tomatometer score is as high as possible at the moment when it can have maximal benefits for word of mouth and early ticket sales.
Granted, that is not rocket science or even particularly new. But the strategy can be surprisingly effective on tentpole releases, for which studios can leverage the growing universe of fan-run websites, whose critics are generally more admiring of comic-book movies than those who write for mainstream outlets. (No offense to comicbookmovie.com.) For example, in February, the Tomatometer score for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania debuted at 79 percent based on its first batch of reviews. Days later, after more critics had weighed in, its rating sank into the 40s. But the gambit may have worked. Quantumania had the best opening weekend of any movie in the Ant-Man series, at $106 million. In its second weekend, with its rottenness more firmly established, the film’s grosses slid 69 percent, the steepest drop-off in Marvel history.
If you’re looking for an alternative, check out metacritic.com.
[three]
Two albums dropped on Friday that are being declared “instant classics” in very different genres…Appalachian folk and modern pop.
Odds are, you know who Tyler Childers is…but if not, take a listen if you like Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, etc.
It’s a bit of a strange release at only 7 songs…with one of them being a Christmas song?! Still, there’s nobody like Childers. If you have even a passing interest in the alt country and Americana scene…give this one a skim.
As for Olivia Rodrigo, the ex-Disney-channel star is somewhere on the musical continuum between Avril Lavigne and Nirvana. There’s no way she’s writing songs this good at age 20 by herself, but who cares? Artists being the only writers on their albums, especially in pop music, is highly overrated.
Guts is bratty, soulful, angry…and brilliant.
[four]
One of the richest suburbs in Chicago,
no, scratch that, one of the richest suburbs in America according to the last census, has invited people to…live in fake poverty.
Disclosure here…I’ve done business in Highland Park, and yeah, it’s super rich.
Rather than dunk on the event, like a bevy of sites are doing…I applaud the attempt, but we need to label this as “severely misguided.” The reason residents in Highland Park, IL have no idea what poverty looks like is because of our zoning and city planning.
For much of American history, the rich lived in regular neighborhoods, albeit in MUCH bigger houses than the rest of the populace. For an example, look no further than It’s a Wonderful Life, where George Bailey buys a decrepit mansion to fix up. The house is huge (and old) but in a run-of-the-mill neighborhood.
Starting in the 1950’s, planned neighborhoods took the rich into their own cul-de-sacs, both literally and figuratively. Schools, funded by local property taxes, began to differ in educational output, and starting in the 1980’s, community churches began to be replaced by megachurches, often situated along major interstates, to bring in as many people (read: wealthy members) as possible (hey, somebody’s gotta pay for the shopping mall sized campus).
It took about 30 years for the pre-WWII communal roots to be completely chopped away, but by the time New Wave bands were a thing, the rich and poor in the U.S. were pretty insulated from one another, which has caused a LOT of issues.
One real example I have from Highland Park was meeting a woman who had a nonprofit to “teach underprivileged kids to play squash.” I don’t even know what the hell squash is (without Googling it…some kind of racket sport?), but I doubt it’s more important than food, clothing and educational supplies, which low income families struggle to be able to afford.
The city of Highland Park made a good faith effort to course correct, but they were off on the solution. A more effective program might have been to pair up Highland Park families with families in Waukegan, IL (just 20 minutes north) for networking…with the more affluent families providing people in impoverished Waukegan with financial planning help…and networking for things people in blue collar areas don’t get (like help getting their kids into top colleges).
Still, I hate that Highland Park is receiving so much hate online. It took courage to take a stab at a complex issue, which took 30+ years to take root in our modern society.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup.
Adam Driver (those bad Star Wars movies) looks unrecognizable in Ferrari, as he steps into the Italian loafers of the legendary car designer, which is helmed by Michael Mann (who also produced the mega-hit Ford v. Ferrari, so he’s uhh…really milking this Italian sports car thing). The always solid Joseph Gordon Levitt (500 Days of Summer, Inception) and Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars, Big Little Lies) along with A-lister Penelope Cruz (Murder on the Orient Express, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) co-star as well.
This one opens Christmas Day,
Flora and Son feels like the spiritual successor of the cult classic Irish musical Once. The Apple TV+ film follows the journey of a single mother and young teenage son as they stumble into making music together.
Catch it in theaters 09/22, or just watch it at home 09/29.
99% of the time when I cover a non-fiction (docuseries, reality TV etc) show I preface it with “I probably won’t have time to watch.”
In the case of Spy Ops, I’m making time! The documentary show from Netflix interviews real spies about critical operations that changed the face of the world.
Stream it next Friday.
Between the Spiderman films and The Greatest Showman, Zendaya has some massive hits under her belt at just 26 years old. The Marvel alum said she wanted to expand her skill set, and Challengers looks to be just that, as the actress takes on the tale of a former tennis champ in CHALLENGERS.
There hasn’t been a good sports dramedy in a minute. Cool.
Doesn’t drop until next year…which means the studio thinks they have a massive hit, if the movie is getting press this early.
Until the next one,
-sth