Hatchet man. Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Bloomberg Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Bloomberg Robert Mueller, an unusually honorable and admirable law-enforcement official with a long history of public service, is preoccupied with letters. In March, the former special counsel sent a plaintive note to…

This week marks the release of Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood , director Quentin Tarantino’s ninth feature film. To celebrate, we’re looking back at the best of QT—the best scenes, the best stunts, the best dialogue. We’ll drill down on his extraordinary rise from video store clerk to filmmaking…

June 26, 2019, 5:00 AM EDT Hooked A raging heroin addiction fueled a former Boeing engineer’s 14-month, 30-bank robbery spree. By Josh Dean Illustrations by Oscar Bolton Green When Anthony Hathaway spotted the black SUV with the tinted windows, he was pretty certain the end was near. The guys…

For our project on the future of movies, the director wrestles with the changes being wrought by the streaming revolution. Jenkins says he’s always going to aim films for a big-screen communal experience, but accepts that audiences may not watch that way. Credit Kayla Reefer for The New York Times…

Hollywood's most celebrated and scrutinized screenwriter ups the ante for his directorial debut as he floats a 'West Wing' reboot (with a black president) and reveals the anxiety that fuels his ambition: "I always feel like my life depends on writing something good." On a late summer evening, Aaron…

Margaret Hamilton led a team of 350 people to design the software behind the Apollo 11 mission. AP Without the computers on board the Apollo spacecraft, there would have been no moon landing, no triumphant first step, no high-water mark for human space travel. A pilot could never have navigated the…

FaceApp is a viral lark that takes a convincing guess at what you’ll look like when you’re old. FaceApp is also the product of a Russian company that sends photos from your device to its servers, retains rights to use them in perpetuity, and performs artificial intelligence black magic on them. And…

Netherlands Dispatch It may sound extreme, but it’s normal in the Netherlands. In the Dutch scouting tradition known as “dropping” groups of children, generally pre-teenagers, are deposited in a forest and expected to find their way back to base. Credit Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times…

Not long ago, my co-worker Josh Rothman and I each listened to several hours of audio erotica—a broad swath of podcasts and such—as research for a proposed story about “sexy self-care.” Erotic podcasts, like many genres of podcast, have been booming in recent years, and, in theory, it was a fun…

Illustration by Wren McDonald O n Sept. 16, 2007, a Japanese YouTuber who goes by the handle “Computing Aesthetic” uploaded a forty-eight-second-long video with the deafening title, “ULTRA MEGA SUPER LUCKY SHOT.” The video shows a high-scoring shot in Peggle, a vastly popular video game, loosely…

Morgan Mandriota’s show, “The Advice Podcast,” was short-lived. “We assumed we’d be huge, have affiliate marketing deals and advertisements,” she said. Credit George Etheredge for The New York Times Skip to contentSkip to site index If past experience (cough, blogs) is any indication, a shakeout is…

Getty Images/Ringer illustration On Tuesday night, my phone lit up with images of the elderly. A friend in one of my group texts had downloaded a viral photo-editing software called FaceApp and run each member’s photo through its “Old” filter. For a brief moment, we convened in horror and…

Ringer illustration The golden age of cord-cutting was over almost as soon as it started. On Tuesday, WarnerMedia rolled out the name and programming details of its upcoming streaming service, HBO Max, set to launch in spring of next year. The announcement was paired with the news that Friends…

The first time I visited Brazenhead was in 2010. I had just moved to New York and I was friends with a few regulars. It was the “secret bookstore” or the “speakeasy bookshop,” terms that immediately hook in a certain kind of curious person, especially an out-of-towner or new-to-towner. But it wasn’t…

Konami/Reid McCarter [ Ed. note: Out today at itch.io , Okay, Hero is a book analyzing the Metal Gear Solid series. Written by Reid McCarter and Edward Smith — known for their game criticism at Bullet Points Monthly — the text breaks the franchise down in a series of essays covering six of its key…

I n 2006, after years reporting in the Middle East, I moved to Paris. It was an accidental choice, the serendipity of a sublet through a friend of a friend. It was meant to be temporary; at the time I was just looking for somewhere to hole up and finish a book. My friends all said: “Oh Paris, how…

FaceApp . So. The app has gone viral again after first doing so two years ago or so. The effect has gotten better but these apps, like many other one off viral apps, tend to come and go in waves driven by influencer networks or paid promotion. We first covered this particular AI photo editor from a…

Advertisement Pocket Worthy · Stories to fuel your mind. How Giving Up TV For A Month Changed My Brain And My Life Watching a couple hours of TV a day can have major effects on your brain. So what would happen if you quit cold turkey? Photo by Flickr user Martin Howard; App Photo: Flickr user…

For our project on the future of movies, the director has harsh words for the industry. A theater “is not the reality of most people’s experience with film.” DuVernay said she had the option to make “When They See Us,” on the Central Park Five, as a big-screen release. She chose a Netflix series…

Photo by Erich Auerbach/Getty Images On August 29, 1952, at a rustic outdoor chamber music hall tucked on a wooded dirt road in Woodstock, New York, the piano virtuoso David Tudor prepared to perform the most jarring piece of music ever written. Or not written, depending how you look at it. Tudor…

Egypt is a popular place. Well, that’s not quite right. Ancient Egypt is a popular place. Our fascination with this ancient civilization dates back centuries, and to this day it continues to be the subject of new discoveries and inspiration for countless stories. Yet these stories rarely offer a…

W ho rules the underworld today, and where do they conduct their business? Once there were the familiar mugshots and Runyonesque nicknames, the clubs and pubs where the usual suspects gathered, plotted and schemed. Now organised crime is run like any other business, and its leading figures look like…

For our project on the future of movies, the director and actress notes there are more opportunities but smaller paychecks. For everyday workers on productions, “it’s a lot harder to get by,” Banks said. “And that’s true for middle-class actors and writers, too.” Credit Elizabeth Weinberg for The…

Credit Illustration by Erik Carter Feature It helped to develop all the new ways we watch TV — on-demand, bingeing, mobile. But the Silicon Valley company still has to keep reinventing itself. Credit Illustration by Erik Carter O ne night in early January, a little after 9 o’clock, a dozen Netflix…

Sol de Zuasnabar Brebbia / Getty When Tonya Parker, a mom in Illinois, wanted to better organize her family life a little over a year ago, the first thing she did was set her kids up on Trello, a web-based project-management tool. Parker’s four children, ages 9 to 18, now use Trello, which is more…

Mother Jones illustration; Getty In late May, Coca-Cola announced it would produce 50,000 cans of New Coke as part of a promotional campaign linked to the third season of Netflix’s Stranger Things , which takes place in 1985, the same year the fizzy reboot made its short-lived debut. The new drink…

Photo: Maya Robinson and Photos by Columbia Pictures, Focus Features, Eureka Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Disney Even if you spent your summers on the couch watching reruns of The Price Is Right with your babysitter Sonia who smelled like sweat and cheese balls stuck in braces instead of going…

Julie Dash, Matty Rich, Darnell Martin, Ernest Dickerson, Leslie Harris and Theodore Witcher on a boom that went bust, and what’s different now. Credit David L. Byrd For the first time in a long time, things seemed to be changing in Hollywood. Black filmmakers were making inroads where their white…

Credit Illustration by Giacomo Gambineri Feature In their rush to match Netflix, competitors like HBO, Hulu and Amazon are ordering a slew of content — ushering out the age of “prestige TV” and ushering in an age of anything goes. Credit Illustration by Giacomo Gambineri When Nick Weidenfeld heard…

Photo: Amy Lombard In the spring of 2018, I visited the offices of the millennial/Gen-Z-oriented website babe.net, a sunny loft space in Williamsburg, just around the corner from Vice. Babe.net — now shuttered — was then at the frothy peak of its existence. I made sure to wear my coolest pants. The…

For our project on the future of movies, the ‘Avengers’ directors also see the traditional two-hour narrative losing steam. Anthony, left, and Joe Russo say that taken together, the Marvel films should be considered an experiment in long-form narrative. Credit Brad Torchia for The New York Times…

How Will the Movies (As We Know Them) Survive the Next 10 Years? by Kyle Buchanan Big studios are gobbling each other up as smaller movies struggle and even name-brand titles tank at the box office. Netflix is revolutionizing the way people watch films, while major new streaming services from Apple,…

“People get so angry at me because I interview them over and over again,” Robert Caro says. Photograph by Daniel Hambury / eyevine / Redux If you read anything about American history and politics, you’ve got to know the name Robert Caro . He’s written about two politicians—just two—but both of them…

By now it should be exceedingly clear that YouTube has a YouTube problem. The platform has rules — well-thought-out ones, in fact — but the enforcers cannot seem to enforce them, because they’re either powerless or afraid of seeming biased according to the terms of a few bad actors acting in equally…

“Ocean sunset with birds flying and dolphins or whales swimming”—Jose (California) Photograph by Matthew Leifheit and Ole Tillmann / Courtesy Photo Requests from Solitary Willie Sterling III imagined this: a line of people, bonded by a belief in his humanity, travelling up a hill in southern…

Getty Images/Ringer illustration The song is called “Nostalgia,” and sounds like it. The gentle acoustic guitar. The ambling drum loop coated in rec-room dust. The even gentler flute. The Gundam Wing sample. And above it all, the inimitable voice of Chicago’s own Chance the Rapper, cheerful and…

Posted Jun 27, 2019 We tend to glorify the people whom we consider ‘masters’ of their craft. Just look at the celebrity chef craze that has taken the world by storm over the past decade. We praise the long, grueling hours chefs like Thomas Keller or David Kinch put into mincing, filleting, and…

Sarah T. Roberts, the author of “Behind the Screen,” describes how the work of content moderation takes a psychological toll. Photograph by Gary John Norman / Getty More than one hundred thousand people work as online content moderators, viewing and evaluating the most violent, disturbing, and…