Dolly Parton, an entertainer and philanthropist with a nearly seven-decade career, has died. Her team confirmed the news in a statement. “A rhinestone life that shone bright enough for the world to see, Dolly will forever stand as an inspiration not only through her timeless music and prolific songwriting, but also her wit, warmth, and kindness that made us all feel like family,” it reads. “Dolly Parton’s legacy is one of love, compassion, and resilience.” A cause of death was not shared, but Parton said last week that she was experiencing “hard times with [her] health.” She was 80 years old.
Across music, film, television, and giving, Parton was an American icon. Parton got her start performing as a child before penning hits like “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You,” “9 To 5,” and countless others. In the 1980s, she courted a new audience with roles in films like 9 To 5 and Steel Magnolias. As a personality, she was among the most recognizable figures in popular culture, serving as the face of the Dollywood theme park in Tennessee. Parton was also well-known and admired for her charitable giving, particularly her work with the Imagination Library, which provided free books to children every month up until their fifth birthdays.
Born in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Tennessee, Parton was one of 12 children. Her humble beginnings were frequently referenced in her music, and she was passionate about music from a young age. She recalled performing for “my brothers and sisters and chickens and the dogs with a tin can as a make-believe microphone” in a 2010 interview with Performing Songwriter. Of course, it wouldn’t take long before she began performing for bigger audiences. Her first singing job came on the Farm And Home Hour when she was ten years old. “It’s funny, I was on TV before we owned one,” she said.
By the time she was 20, Parton had established herself as a successful Nashville songwriter. She released her first full-length album, Hello, I’m Dolly, in 1967, the same year she reached a wider audience with a regular recurring spot on The Porter Wagoner Show. For years, her biggest successes were the duets she released with Wagoner. However, she eventually decided to strike out on her own, telling People last year, “I couldn’t be Porter’s girl singer forever because God had a bigger purpose for me, and I had bigger dreams of my own.”
Her biggest solo hit at the time came in 1973 with “Jolene,” a song that has since been recorded by a number of artists and frequently considered among the greatest songs ever written. Years later, a story circulated that Parton wrote “Jolene” the same day she wrote another of the greatest songs of all time: “I Will Always Love You.” However, Parton clarified that she had merely written the two classics within a matter of days. Written originally about Parton’s professional break with Wagoner, Whitney Houston’s 1992 recording of the track went on to become one of the best-selling singles of all time; Parton later recalled having to pull her car over the first time she heard it because she was so overwhelmed with emotion.
In the second half of the 1970s, Parton began to reach a broader audience. Her 1977 album Here You Come Again sold one million copies. She performed televised specials with Cher and Carol Burnett, earning an Emmy nomination for the former. In 1979, she won her first Grammy Award; she would eventually earn 11 out of 54 nominations. But her biggest crossover moment yet would come in 1980 when she made her film debut opposite Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in 9 To 5. Following the lives of three underappreciated female office workers who conspire to get revenge on their chauvinistic boss, the film has since become a comedy and feminist classic. Casting Parton was Fonda’s idea, who noted that the “humanity” in Parton’s music made her believe that she could act. The title track from the film became Parton’s first number one hit on the pop charts and won two Grammys.
By the 1980s, Parton was a cemented cultural icon. The decade was her most prolific in terms of film acting; she went on to appear in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, Rhinestone, and Steel Magnolias in the remaining years of the decade. In 1986, she lent her name and energy to Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee that has since been rated among the best in the world. She also released eight albums in the remainder of the decade, and while her film career slowed in the following decade, her musical output did not.
In the 1990s, Parton focused further on her charity work and business, becoming, usually lovingly, caricatured in popular culture, exposing a younger generation to her work. Indeed, younger millennials and older zoomers are fairly likely to have learned about her from an appearance on Reba or Hannah Montana as from “Jolene.” (Parton was Miley Cyrus’ godmother.) Or perhaps they know her from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, which she founded in 1995 as part of the Dollywood Foundation to provide free books to children up to age five. By 2026, the library had sent books to an estimated 120 million children around the world, and sends about 3 million free books per month. In 2020, it was also revealed that Parton had donated $1 million to vaccine research that ultimately helped yield the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
Even after her death, Parton has new work on the horizon. Later this year, Dolly: A True Original Musical will premiere on Broadway, bringing her life story to the stage. Last year, Parton released Star Of The Show, about her career performing on stage. “I’m at that point in my life where I just want to be able to do good things that can be carried on,” she said at the time. “I’m proud of my legacy so far, and I hope to just continue to do things that might be of use to other people.” There is no doubt that her work, both on stage and behind the scenes, will continue to help people for decades to come. Fans are encouraged to leave messages at dollyparton.com or make donations to the Imagination Library.
A police department in Florida used “decoy” Flock cameras that an officer 3D-printed at home to “bait” would-be vandals. Police officers monitored the fake cameras for days, then charged a man with three felonies after he cut down and destroyed one of the plastic devices. The police department in question refuses to release any information about how the decoy operation was devised or carried out and claims there is zero paper trail whatsoever about the operation.
Oviedo, Florida mayor Megan Sladek said she “had NO idea” that this was happening and said she was “speechless” over the sting operation, which was first reported by News 6 Orlando. The arrest shows that police have escalated their attempts to catch potential Flock vandals, and that some departments have dedicated significant resources into doing so. Sladek told 404 Media that the 3D-printed camera in question was “free.”
Despite the decoy camera being worth, at most, several dollars worth of plastic filament, Evan Meyer was charged with three felonies: attempted larceny/grand theft, criminal mischief of property damage worth more than $1,000, and property crimes against computer equipment supplies, according to an arrest report obtained by 404 Media. The arrest report states that the operation was devised after several Flock cameras in Oviedo were stolen in late July and early August.
“Several of our Flock Safety cameras were stolen between 7/23/2026 -8/3/2026 out of the Lockwood Blvd. corridor and we replaced them with clone style Flock cameras. These Flock ‘bait’ cameras were made to closely resemble that of real Flock cameras but did not cost the same amount nor collect any data within the device,” the arrest report states. Meyer was arrested shortly after midnight Thursday after knocking the 3D-printed fake camera off a pole with a pair of garden shears and destroying it.
“When asked how much he believes the camera costs to replace, he stated approximately $1,000-$5,000 proving that Meyer knew it was an expensive real piece of equipment and not a fake replica,” the police report states. “The actual cost to replace our Flock camera is valued at $800.00 plus any installation fees. Meyer advised he has been hearing all the negative things online about the misuses of Flock cameras (specifically the CEO of Flock Safety) and decided to knock the one down which was closest to his house. Meyer grabbed his father's pruning shears from the garage, walked down the street (south from his house) and was tall enough to cut the mount off and then smashed the camera on the ground.”
The arrest report implies that because Meyer thought that Flock cameras were expensive and because he didn’t know it was a decoy that he could be charged with attempted grand theft and other charges that carry more consequences.
The operation is reminiscent of Amazon “package sting” operations that several police departments attempted several years ago, in which empty Amazon boxes were placed on people’s porches while police officers watched. Those sting operations resulted in zero known arrests.
The Oviedo Police Department has thus far refused to release almost any information about the operation outside of what was said in the police report, and has repeatedly claimed to 404 Media that public records about how the fake camera were made do not have to be released because they have to do with an ongoing criminal investigation. The department first claimed that it has zero public records whatsoever about the fake device from before the arrest, then claimed that any and all records are exempt from release.
A representative for the Oviedo Police Department told 404 Media that “The decoy FLOCK camera was produced by an officer at their home using their personally owned 3D printer and donated to the agency Our agency does not own a 3D printer therefore does not have design, planning and creation of the alleged decoy or replica cameras before the arrest, including the communications and presentations through which that work was discussed.” It said there are “no meeting minutes, no text messages, and no emails regarding the production of a decoy FLOCK camera prior to the arrest on 8/20/2026.”
Mayor Sladek posted on Facebook that she was “speechless” over the operation, and that “transparency is so important.”
"My 2 cents: there are 2 completely separate issues in play here, and they're tangled up in an unfortunate way. ISSUE 1: VANDALISM IS WRONG. I don't care if it's a Flock camera, a piece of art, or graffiti in a public space, it's not right. The police caught a person who engaged in destroying public property, and that's what we hired them to do. They did their job,” she wrote. “ISSUE 2: on Monday, just days before this incident, a majority of COUNCIL AGREED TO CONSIDER ENDING FLOCK. There is a timeline of events related to installing decoy cameras, and somewhere in that timeline, City Council instructed staff to prepare a resolution to end the use of Flock in Oviedo. While it is irrelevant to the issue of vandalism, when the fake cameras were fabricated and installed relative to a very public discussion about their potential discontinuation is something I would like to know.”
In an email to 404 Media, Sladek said that “the whole thing is very interesting from a legal perspective. Mayor is a part-time job here in Oviedo, and I'm an attorney by day, so I'm probably looking at this with a bit different lens than the average person. Even if the guy knew it was a fake camera, that would still make it art, and it would still be vandalism.”
“I became aware of the camera's existence when I heard about it from a resident who saw it on the news, and shortly after that, my first questions were about the cost and process,” she added. “Can't do much better than free, and the effort did result in someone hopping up a pole and attempting to take it down. What is not known is whether the person who removed the first camera at that location is the same as the person who removed the decoy. It would be interesting to know if the one arrested has any prior criminal history or if this was a first offense. How to charge is up to the state's attorney, but you'll see on the police report when it arrives that the person arrested believed that he was damaging property valued at a much greater price point than the actual value was. “
In a Facebook comment, Sladek posted several responses to questions that Oviedo police chief Dale Coleman gave her. Coleman said that he approved the plan, and that “supervisors have latitude how they go about solving a crime operations [sic] like this are done whenever there is a reasonable chance of success. This operation is similar to a drug operation or a theft ring at the mall. CID has done this many of these and know what is needed to do it lawfully.”
Coleman told Sladek that there were multiple cameras installed last Sunday, and said that police officers were watching the cameras all night between Sunday and Thursday, when Meyer was arrested.
It is not clear which 3D printed plastic Flock camera model the police officer used, but 404 Media found various Flock camera replicas on popular free 3D printer model sites.
The animated/live-action Looney Tunes hybrid comedy Coyote Vs. Acme is finally seeing the light of day three years after Warner Bros. Discovery shelved the movie for a tax write-off. Distributor Ketchup Entertainment had previously released The Day The Earth Blew Up, the first all-animated Looney Tunes feature, which was also initially shelved by WB. For cinephiles and Tunes fans alike, the release of these two filmsseems miraculous, since both embattled movies will finally reach audiences in versions that reflect their creators’ original visions. The same couldn’t be said, though, for the last time the Tunes hit the big screen in an original film. In fact, director Joe Dante tells The A.V. Club that Warner Bros. only released 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back In Action “because they spent so much money to make it.”
On paper, it seemed like a no-brainer to hire Dante (Gremlins, Small Soldiers), a cartoon lover among cartoon lovers, to direct a Looney Tunes film. But that passion didn’t make it into Looney Tunes: Back In Action, which lacks Dante and his cartoon stars’ signature antic wit. So why was this particular Looney Tunes project micro-managed to death? Why has Dante repeatedly called the film “the longest year and a half of my life”? Does anything in Looney Tunes: Back In Action still reflect Dante and his collaborators’ obvious affection for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and their fellow wisecracking ‘toons?
Looney Tunes: Back In Action was the first original feature starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and their cartoon pals since the soulless but profitable Space Jam. Other planned Space Jam sequels fell through, including a basketball-themed sequel with Michael Jordan and a Jackie Chan genre mashup called Spy Jam. By sheer morbid coincidence, the production of Looney Tunes: Back In Action also began one month after the death of formative Looney Tunes writer-director Chuck Jones.
Dante is a big Jones fan (Jones makes a cameo in Gremlins), and he’d even written an unproduced behind-the-scenes comedy called Termite Terrace, a playful homage to Jones’ time working on the Looney Tunes cartoons. Dante also shared Jones’ disdain for Space Jam since, according to Dante, it didn’t “adhere to [Jones’] view of what the characters should be like.” WB wouldn’t make Termite Terrace, but they were eager to make another Space Jam. Dante, on the other hand, wanted to make “the anti-Space Jam.”
“I frankly didn’t think the [Back In Action] script was very good,” Dante says. “But I did think that if I didn’t make it, somebody who was gonna dance to Warner Bros.’ tune would, and it’s gonna be another Space Jam-ish movie. So my goal was to make something that I thought Chuck would like.”
Dante soon found himself caught between the demands of the studio’s marketing and merchandising reps, who were mainly concerned with how to sell the Looney Tunes characters, and the heads of WB, whom Dante says, “had no affection or interest in these characters or this project.” Rewrites continued through the summer of 2003, when the movie was originally scheduled to be released, and only stopped about a month before its revised November premiere.
Jokes were endlessly rewritten by an estimated 29 writers, all but one of whom went uncredited and most of whom didn’t seem to know what they were doing. An Oscar-winning screenwriter was asked for his feedback, and started by asking if Bugs Bunny has to say, “What’s up, doc?” “And that was just the first hour of the meeting,” Dante sighs. Sometimes, after thoroughly rewriting jokes and plot points, Dante and his colleagues returned to what was written in the first place. He adds that the version of the movie that was eventually released had a completely different beginning, middle, and end. “It was a real boondoggle,” Dante says. But unlike recent Tunes endeavors under the current WBD administration, shelving the project never seemed likely, since the studio kept throwing money at the production: “They’ve got an investment to protect,” Dante explains. But that didn’t mean the film was safe.
Original screenwriter Larry Doyle left the production after a year following disagreements about characterizations, gags, and a slew of other changes. Doyle didn’t see eye-to-eye with Dante or animation director Eric Goldberg, and tensions eventually got so bad that, according to Dante, a typical brainstorming session couldn’t begin until Doyle left the room. “Larry is a very abrasive guy,” Dante says, even though he was loyal to the Tune philosophy. “He was adamant about having the characters be true to themselves.”
Dante also almost quit, but didn’t. “When you’ve put in as much work as it takes to direct anything it’s pretty hard to leave it unfinished,” he says. But he described the WB he worked with on Back In Action as a bifurcated organization at war with itself, split between “the half who cares about what they’re doing, and the other half who cares about making money and has no respect for the people who make the movies.”
The movie’s convoluted story—Bugs Bunny (Joe Alaskey) chases Daffy Duck (also Alaskey) across Nevada with his human pals, aspiring stuntman Damian “D.J.” Drake (Brendan Fraser) and brand-obsessed studio stooge Kate Houghton (Jenna Elfman)—was majorly overhauled following a negative test screening. Costly reshoots were then ordered by the studio, who added, among other things, a new concluding half-hour set in outer space, which was shot, but ultimately not used. “[The new ending] didn’t help,” Dante said. “It didn’t hurt either, it just wasn’t as good as what we had.” If nothing else, it contributed to the film’s oversized budget, which The New York Times estimated ran higher than $100 million.
“I don’t think the makers of [The Day The Earth Blew Up and Coyote Vs. Acme] got the same kind of pushback,” Dante says. “Once the movies were greenlit, the studio people likely said: ‘Okay, go ahead, make your movie, and then we’ll decide whether we want it.'”
Ironically, Dante and the writers received no feedback about their corporate-critical human characters—whether that was Kate and her defining obsessions with branding and “synergy,” or Steve Martin’s clueless Acme executive Mr. Chairman, whom Martin has described as a “supertwit.” Bugs and the other animated characters, on the other hand, received scads of notes and suggestions for rewrites.
Speaking to The New York Times in 2003, Dante remembered getting some negative feedback about cartoon violence from early test screenings. “We couldn’t not deal with that, even though I think it’s ridiculous,” he said. ”I don’t think that Roadrunner cartoons ever made any kid go out and shoot their brother or put the dog in the microwave. I think kids are smarter than that. However, parents—who are the people who go to the previews and fill out the cards and recommend movies to other parents—feel dodgy about the subject of violence and cartoons. Well, sorry: Elmer Fudd comes from an agrarian society where people shoot their food.”
Thankfully, Goldberg at least seemed to understand and appreciate Dante’s struggle to keep the Looney Tunes gang behaving authentically. Dante tried to get Goldberg a co-director credit for the movie, considering there was so much animation in the film, but the Directors Guild Of America wouldn’t agree to it. They only cared about the live-action elements, which was much more of a challenge for Dante, even if he’d had experience with projects that paired human actors with puppets.
Acting opposite a co-star that you can’t react to is a “particular talent,” Dante says. Most Back In Action scenes filmed with cartoon characters were shot at least three times, using a “stuffie,” or a giant stuffed animal version of the characters, as well as a shiny mirror ball on a stick to reflect where all the lights are on set for the computer animators who would later add the Looney Tunes cast members. Fraser was a natural, with the ability to “focus on some place in the distance that is not the wall, but some place in between.” While Elfman required more coaching, she still got it figured out. The cast wasn’t the problem. “It’s a difficult thing to do and it takes time,” Dante says. “I’m very happy with all the actors.”
While the final film still features welcome onscreen cameos from Dante co-conspirators, as well as a vast storehouse of allusions to classic cartoons (like footage from Tex Avery’s “I Love To Singa”), the movie is undeniably hamstrung by the many cooks that flitted in and out of Warner Bros.’ maxi-sized kitchen. Dante remembers his disappointment after he attended the movie’s premiere: “It was so loud. I thought, ‘I’ve just made another one of those annoying, loud movies that I don’t like.'”
Some critics found more than a little to like when Looney Tunes: Back in Action first came out, even if they damned it with faint praise. In the L.A. Times, Manohla Dargis wrote that the movie was “a distinct improvement over the dreary synergy of Space Jam.” Others spent more time speculating as to what went wrong behind the scenes. Film JournalInternational‘s Ethan Alter suggests that, while it’s hard to know who to blame for the movie’s shortcomings, it’s “best to chalk this zany mess up to a case of too many conflicting ideas and no strong overarching vision.”
While Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has no “overarching vision” besides seeking tax breaks, his studio was at least considerate enough (eventually) to license both The Day The Earth Blew Up and Coyote Vs. Acme to a more caring distributor. While Dante didn’t get the same consideration with Looney Tunes: Back In Action, he doesn’t hold any grudge against the studio—even if he’s not waiting around for their call.
“It’s not the same company,” Dante says. “The executives I was having problems with have all gone away. That said, there’s no chance they ask me to make Termite Terrace now. I would certainly consider it if they did. I just think the time’s passed.”
As for the Looney Tunes films of today (like The Day The Earth Blew Up, which he calls a “return to form”), Dante is just happy that they’re reaching audiences who’ll appreciate them. “It’s nice to know that there are people out there that still care about this kind of thing,” Dante says, “and that these movies are now getting seen by people who seem to really like them.”
Despite a little Moana and Grogu hiccup, Disney has had a pretty good year. Its latest co-production, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, just swung across $2 billion, joining Toy Story 5 in the top three biggest movies of the year. In a letter to shareholders this month, Disney announced revenues are up, and that the Toy Story franchise alone has brought in an estimated $16 billion for The Walt Disney Company. It hyped new resorts, parks, and cruise ships built on the strength of its family-friendly brand. To celebrate the bright future, Disney’s shiny new C.E.O., Josh D’Amaro, who took over for Bob Iger (Iger has since gone on to buy the LA Lakers with Jared Kushner’s brother), notified more than 200,000 employees that as of 2027, they can no longer enroll their spouses in the company’s insurance plan if the spouse can get those benefits from another job.
This is per Puck, which reports Disney’s decision will kick “thousands” off the company’s plans and force them to pay more for inferior coverage, which will “likely impact lower-paid workers and hourly employees most.” It’s all part of Disney’s employee loyalty program, “Total Rewards,” a new internal benefits system that allows those who make that Disney magic possible to experience the wonder of a Disney price hike. However, while it might seem egregious, heartless, and cruel for a $185 billion company to treat its workers like a Disney+ subscriber, an internal memo obtained by Puck reveals a very sympathetic reason for kicking its employees’ spouses off their healthcare: “Like many companies, we’re navigating a number of factors, including rising healthcare costs, evolving company needs, and shifts across the industry.”
“We used to light movies” has become a common refrain among filmgoers who watch both modern cinema and titles from decades past. On streaming, there’s a waxy sheen to the image, where James Corden, Meryl Streep, and Nicole Kidman in The Prom have an uncanny and unnaturally soft smoothness, where light hovers around their faces as if caught by a mesh net. In nearly two decades’ worth of Marvel and DC superhero movies, lugubrious action scenes—from The Avengers to Spider-Man: Brand New Day—are filmed in an even, inoffensive, medium-pressure light so that everything is visible, with few shadows to speak of, and even the glints of light supposed to imitate lens flare are slightly dulled down from the original luminosity. Even audience members that don’t typically pay much attention to visual details have begun complaining about Wicked‘s washed-out cinematography and the omnipresent “Netflix look.” So why do movies look like that?
In these aforementioned examples and more, subjects, their settings, and their backgrounds are not defined apart or in relation to one another. This low-contrast approach is a modern take on “naturalistic” lighting, where all light sources appear to exist in-universe and mimic what illumination would look like without the need for any additional “artificial” lights. It’s lamps, overhead fluorescents, outside weather, and phone screens versus hard key lights and stylistic fills. Generally soft, gentle, and utilitarian, this approach comes at the expense of texture, tactility, and definition.
Crucial changes have occurred in the last few decades of filmmaking, beyond the digital technology that’s used to create these shots—primarily, their distribution and the mode in which they are consumed. From social-first clip-farming, to chopped-up fancams of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, to ripped-for-YouTube excerpts, movies are being watched (in whole or in part) on phones, laptops, the backs of airplane seats, TVs with HDR, tablets, and cheap home projectors. While movies are shot on a variety of formats, from 35mm to the Arri Alexa, the symbiosis between the tools that make the images and those that view them has been upset.
That sometimes difficult to describe “look” movies from other eras have, usually shot on film, has much to do with celluloid’s tangibility. Even as it captures something as ephemeral as light, film in a literal object with material properties that a digital sensor turns into electronic information. On one frame of unexposed film, depending on the stock and manufacturer, there are at least three layers beyond the film base and the layer that absorbs UV rays. In color film, the emulsion layers that correspond to color couplers (cyan and red, magenta and green, and yellow and blue) are subtractive, and create a negative image; when placed atop one another, they create a full color image. Film contains silver halide crystals, which absorb the light photons. Light passing through layers of physical material, and the chemical reaction that occurs during the exposure and development period, is what gives film its texture, its ability to create dense and inky shadows or shimmery highlights.
Digital filmmaking cements ephemerality into the filmmaking process, sensors approximating without replicating that photochemical procedure. Light that was once captured by crystals on film is turned to ones and zeroes by a sensor. The sensors detect and read the light information, going through a process of photoelectric conversion, charge accumulation, signal transfer and conversion into voltage, and finally conversion to a digital value.
But digital and analog are merely tools with their own advantages and disadvantages—what distinguishes them is materiality and flexibility. As colorist Jared Rosenthal tells The A.V. Club, “Film is higher contrast. It does things that the characteristics of [physical] film naturally has, which have shaped aesthetics, or what a movie looks like, for decades…what a ‘movie’ looks like to people, it looks like what film looks like.” Different stocks and film types changed that aesthetic over time, with regional trends and processes also helping to dictate these aesthetics. But the inherent textural qualities of photochemical film—its grain, the tiny crystals that literally shimmer and shine when light passes through them—created a standard that was disrupted by digital.
While color, space, and depth of field were concerns for cinematographers during the early digital revolution, dynamic range—the spectrum between light and dark, white and black—was top of mind for cinematographers like Geoff Boyle and Jost Vacano when they were interviewed for the 2013 documentary Side By Side. Though the technology had been introduced to consumer televisions in the late 2010s, either as Dolby Vision or HDR10, this advancement in home image quality became standardized by the 2020s. This meant that scenes could now be lit with a hair of light, the assumption being that audiences at home watching Game Of Thrones would be able to see what the cinematographers had seen on set. Of course, it hasn’t really worked out that way.
Rosenthal mentions House Of Cards as helping develop a new look—antiseptic, shadows curved towards gray, borderline monochromatic—”[Netflix] was like, ‘Okay, this is gonna set the standard.'” But few craftspeople are like David Fincher and his DP Igor Martinovic, able to paint with subtlety and precision using a limited color palette. Fincher and Martinovic created a cool, steely aesthetic that appeared not that difficult to achieve in its limited, carefully controlled, icily neutral colors. They paired a sense of depth with an ability to make the political world at once claustrophobic and representative of a late-2010s luxury minimalism, one that anticipated a flow of wealth towards the already wealthy. House Of Cards looks the way it does because it’s a political thriller about the soulless siphoning power away from the people. But not all movies or shows are about that, nor do they take the time to refine their visual identity, which meant those that followed the series learned the wrong lessons: Use modest “realistic” lighting, make it easily shareable on a variety of platforms, and pump it out.
While these images may be composed with little light but a bit of artistic intention, they’re still subject to the file compression that platforms use in order for videos to be streamed at the drop of a dime. Even 4K video is shrunk in order to be streamed at home. It doesn’t matter if there’s a beautifully composed night shot of Aemond Targaryen in House Of The Dragon if the pipeline between the scene being lit—faintly, relying on fast and ultra responsive digital sensors—and refined in post—emphasizing darkness and the HDR technology—if the file that contains that scene is ultimately going to be crushed, rendering that picture information less legible, detailed, and complex. What comes out is visual mush.
This confluence of consumer trends and changes in production workflow has effectively resulted in frames that strive less for innovation or beauty and more for a quick fix. The quickness and disposability here has infiltrated the set. This means that, outside direct-to-streaming films and the glut of plasticky Marvel and grim DC movies—and exceptions to the rule, like star DPs Roger Deakins, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, and Robbie Ryan—the late 2010s and 2020s have seen the screen get grayer. Regardless of the quality of the movies, their visual identity is constricted by a notable lack of oomph, an absence of substantiality in their colors, highlights, and blackpoints.
The industry, from the best to the worst to the mediocre middle, has gravitated towards a look that takes the wrong lessons from House Of Cards‘ darkness and its low-contrast monotone. Cinematographer Steve Yedlin tells The A.V. Club that “It’s a business, and a lot more stuff gets created than is necessarily the pinnacle of the craft. There is a factory belt.” Felipe Vara de Rey describes the contemporary look as “desaturated, low contrast, a little dull,” Rikki Porter says she’s seen “a more flattened look across the board,” Tara Violet Niami says that movies lately have a “super low-contrast, desaturated look that’s lit softly but [with] directionless lighting,” and camera operator Joe Brady says he had been seeing images where “the contrast ratios are very slim [and] there’s no detail in the shadows or in a really overexposed highlight.”
What these technicians describe is partially the product of what’s happening on set, but is more emblematic of the temperature of the film industry. As de Ray explains, there’s simply less time. “We have to shoot movies that we used to shoot in 42 days, [now] we have to shoot them in 28, so we sacrifice polishing the look,” he says. “We sacrifice budget on lights and electrical crews, because with the modern sensors, the dynamic range, the sensitivity, we can shoot something and fine-tune it and polish it in post.” Streaming platforms have reshaped production schedules not only for their own content, but for their industry competitors. “People just have less patience for spending more money on lenses and lights,” Porter says of her experience with streamlined schedules. “People, at the point where we get to post, they don’t care anymore. They’re like, ‘We just want this movie done, right?'”
Cinematographer and director Jake Moore says that, to increase efficiency, more cameras are being added to shoots: “When you have two, three cameras, that changes the lighting plot, because Camera A can’t catch Camera B’s light, etc.” This results in lighting setups designed to be primarily unobtrusive: top lights that hang from the ceiling or are placed high up and emit little more than a soft and even glow, or single light sources that are faster to strike. “I’ve been on set with some high-level talent who do not want contrast ratios on their face,” Brady says. “I was on a set with [model] Iman a while ago, and she literally yelled at the DP because she was moodily lit and she wanted a ring light.”
This desire for efficiency collides with an assumption that all could be fixed in the post production process. “It’s awesome that you have all of these knobs and buttons that can do everything you like,” Yedlin says, “but not if you need to use all of them in order to just get to a baseline before you can even finesse it.” An unprecedented level of freedom in crafting an image is countered by producers breathing down cinematographers’ necks while also siloing them from important collaborators, like their colorists. As much as cinematographers like Porter or camera ops like Brady or colorists like Rosenthal may want to create more dynamic images, they are ultimately beholden to the client. “You’re not working in a vacuum,” Rosenthal says, “These decisions are [being] made by committee.”
Moore, who works frequently in the advertising and music video space, refers to creative directors who bring in lookbooks featuring shots by Wong Kar-Wai and David Fincher, and then, when the time comes to do the shot, recoil from those more stylish ideas—blown-out highlights, velvety colors, inky blacks, tactile contrast, visible noise and grain—instead pushing his team to pivot towards something flatter, more even, duller, and easier to rework later. In his experience, rather than create dynamic shots on set and refine them in post, there is an expectation to capture the blueprint on set and ultimately create the image in post-production.
That’s rarely a possibility. “I know colleagues who do great work, but a lot of times it’s not set up in prep,” Yedlin says. “So then [there’s] this Herculean effort in post to get it to work, because they don’t have that setup.” As Brady quips, “If you didn’t do anything particularly interesting on set, you’re not gonna be able to make it look that good later.”
There are, of course, recent counterexamples—Maddie’s Secret, Disclosure Day, I Love Boosters—where masters and ascendant filmmakers alike find lushness, vibrancy, and buoyancy in their cinematography. Yet, two of the highest-grossing films of 2026—Obsession and Backrooms—are bellwethers of a materializing YouTube generation who shot their first films on shoestring budgets. Now their more accomplished movies still suffer from murky, listless shots. Much as darkness is a crucial component to both films, their shadows look less like a dark abyss enveloping the viewer and more like sludge.
One additional factor behind this may be these filmmakers’ experience making images that can be watched any way and anywhere with no distinction. The images themselves, once essentially intended for a single place, the movie theater, are diffused across a visual landscape in which everything that bookends them—memes, comedy sketches, “get ready with me” videos, AI slop, and (most frequently) advertisements—is flattened and blended together.
One can describe images of the last five or so years in simple terms: gentle, consumable, shareable. But when we look back at the Hollywood movies released in the 2020s, at their glut of bizarrely unremarkable images, what will film history classes say about them? What will students say about movies with “streaming sheen”, murky shadows, and blunted highlights; about faces smoothed out by diffuse lighting; about shots with directionless lighting that deny an image a sense of space or scope? Will they mourn when homogeneity invaded the movies?
If so, they’ll really be mourning artists having less time, fewer resources, and more demands from risk-averse committees, all of which stems from a consolidation of Hollywood as a whole. The WB/Paramount merger is on the precipice of approval, meaning the superconglomerate could slash through thousands of layoffs; Disney laid off one thousand people in April, converting many longtime craftspeople to contract workers on project basis. Meanwhile, the microdrama, an import from China, offers competition on an even faster production timeline. Yet, this matrix of issues is symptomatic of a broader problem: The audience and the work are becoming disconnected from one another; movies are so unmoored from a place and time that those at the top see little reason beyond tentpoles to assert their material value.
The resurgence of moviegoing may suggest a renewed connection between film, audience, and the big screen, but the long and short of this persistent problem is that it takes time, labor, and care to craft a beautiful image. Making sure the lights are at the right angle, that they’re set at the right levels, that the camera is in harmony with that arrangement—it requires collaboration, communication, and a willingness to experiment. It requires people investing in the present moment, not deciding to fix everything in post. Even if the industry has normalized (and incentivized) a certain look, that won’t shape the work of every artist, now or in the future. “I think there will be something fresh and different coming, particularly with the young generations,” says Tara Violet Niami, who teaches at Chapman University. “They’re experimenting. I have some hope.” Along with proper lighting, hope isn’t a bad way to illuminate the path forward.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission last week eliminated the gigabit speed goal established during the Biden administration and declared that current levels of broadband deployment in the US are acceptable. Though fiber networks have routinely offered such speeds for years, the FCC said the gigabit speed goal is not "technologically neutral," suggesting that it isn't fair to other, slower technologies.
In 2024, the FCC raised its broadband benchmark to 100Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream, setting the new standard by which to judge whether deployment is reasonable and timely. The FCC at the time also set a long-term speed goal of 1Gbps download speeds paired with 500Mbps upload speeds, saying it would use the goal "as a guidepost for evaluating our efforts to encourage deployment." Republican Brendan Carr, who is now the FCC chairman, never liked that long-term goal. He proposed abolishing it last year, and the change was finalized on August 14 in the FCC's latest broadband deployment report. The reports are mandated by Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act.
"As part of our return to following the plain language of Section 706, we adopt our proposal from the Notice [of Inquiry] to abolish without replacement the long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps established in the 2024 Report," the order said. "A long-term goal is not mentioned in Section 706 and could appear to violate our obligation to conduct our analysis in a technologically neutral manner. At present, it is impossible to predict long-term technological developments and the evolution of consumer preferences." The FCC said that comments submitted by cable industry group NCTA and wireless industry group CTIA "support our reasoning for abolishing the long-term goal." Last year, the Brendan Carr-led FCC said (PDF) that the gigabit goal "may be unreasonably prejudicial to technologies such as satellite and fixed wireless that presently do not support such speeds." However, last week's report contradicts that stance.
"We disagree with commenters arguing that our concern about technological neutrality merely serves to accommodate technologies that may currently offer slower speeds," the FCC said. "At present, we do not know the nature of future consumer preferences and, considering that the goal is not required by the statute and does not serve any positive purpose (as discussed herein), we believe it prudent to abolish it."
Log in
