“User-generated content” is the future of the moving image, and the present as well. A less sentimental look back at 2022 in film would probably take the measure of TikTok trends, Instagram Reels, Twitch streams, YouTube reaction videos and OnlyFans porn. Before cinema dies, you see the Ring Video Doorbell surveillance footage repackaged, America’s Funniest Cops–style, in the syndicated Ring Nation, which premiered this year (coproduced by Ring and MGM Television, both subsidiaries of Amazon). The overwhelming proliferation of digital images, recorded by consumer-grade digital cameras with ever-greater resolution, storage capacity, and ubiquity, is the story of the century. Such […]
by Mark Asch on Dec 19, 2022By the time of the new Jackass Forever, some of the series’s performers have neared or surpassed age 50. Their bodies remain sturdy, if marked by 20 years of unnatural trials. To extend their infamous game of indecent brinkmanship, the crew has endured a brand-new omnibus of freak obstacles and some reimaginings of past favorites. Beekeepers use a queen bee to attract a hive to Steve-O’s (47) phallus; Danger Ehren (45) sustains countless blows to the groin in an exhaustive series of “Cup tests”; Johnny Knoxville (50) re-contends with a particularly mean bull in a ring; series newcomers (“Poopies,” “Jasper,” […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 9, 2022