The Nose looks at ‘Asteroid City’ and continued OceanGate Titan fascination

Asteroid City is Wes Anderson’s 11th feature film. It’s written and directed by Anderson from a story by Anderson and Roman Coppola. It’s a comedy-drama, sort of sci-fi thing with a play-within-a-TV-show-within-a-movie structure. The ensemble cast is predictably ridiculous and includes the likes of Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, and Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, and Hope Davis. There are more. I didn’t even mention Willem Dafoe or Steve Carell or Margot Robbie. Or others.

And: The OceanGate Titan disaster isn’t the sort of thing The Nose usually covers. But collective internet obsession is, and so The Nose is interested in the internet’s collective, dark, ongoing obsession with the OceanGate Titan disaster.

Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take:

• America Is… What one piece of culture captures the true spirit of our country? We asked 17 columnists to find out.
• The Case Against Travel It turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best.
• How Review-Bombing Can Tank a Book Before It’s Published The website Goodreads has become an essential avenue for building readership, but the same features that help generate excitement can also backfire.
• If you love film, you should be worried about what’s going on at Turner Classic Movies
• Turner Classic Movies Is a National Treasure The channel has an astounding degree of control over a crucial part of American cinema. It should become a public resource available to all.
• Want to suffer Hollywood’s wrath? Mess with TCM, you dirty rats! Few things are sacrosanct in streaming TV’s chaotic revolution. But as Warner Bros. Discovery’s top exec recently learned, Turner Classic Movies is still zealously protected.
• This Broadcast TV Genre Continues to Thrive. (What Are Game Shows?) “Wheel of Fortune,” “Jeopardy!” and “Family Feud” continue to attract big audiences even as streaming upends viewing habits.
• Fifty Years of Hip-Hop in a World That Could Not Exist Without It The musical genre of sociopolitical change, cultural transformation, excess, and fabulousness enters its next half century.
• Virginia Woolf classic joins growing list with ‘ludicrous’ trigger warnings To the Lighthouse from 1927 now carries warning that the book ‘reflects the attitudes of its time’
• It’s Getting Hard to Stage a School Play Without Political Drama At a time when lawmakers and parents are seeking to restrict what can and cannot be taught in classrooms, many teachers are seeing efforts to limit what can be staged in their auditoriums.
• A ‘Cage Match’ Between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg May Be No Joke Talks over a matchup between the two tech billionaires have progressed and the parameters of an event are taking shape.
• GQ Editor Who Pulled Critical David Zaslav Story Is Producing Movie for Warner Bros.

GUESTS:

• David Edelstein: America’s Greatest Living Film Critic
• Sam Hadelman: Works in music public relations and hosts The Sam Hadelman Show at Radio Free Brooklyn
• Carolyn Paine: An actress, comedian, and dancer; she is founder, director, and choreographer of CONNetic Dance

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