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Public interest advocate Gigi Sohn is withdrawing her nomination to the FCC, after a 16-month battle in which she faced relentless attacks from industry lobbyists and from commentators on the right.

“When I accepted his nomination over sixteen months ago, I could not have imagined that legions of cable and media industry lobbyists, their bought-and-paid-for surrogates, and dark money political groups with bottomless pockets would distort my over 30-year history as a consumer advocate into an absurd caricature of blatant lies,” Sohn wrote in a statement to The Washington Post. “The unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks on my character and my career as an advocate for the public interest have taken an enormous toll on me and my family.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “She has tremendous intellect and experience, and we thought and we believed that she would be a … great candidate and would have been...

With the White House set to shift parties in January, powerful regulatory agencies the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission face sweeping issues with big implications for tech and entertainment, from antitrust and privacy to net neutrality, legal immunity for Internet platforms and media-cross ownership.

“They are piling up. Many issues that we were working on a decade ago are still around — the digital divide, net neutrality, copyright — and now we have others, like looking at big tech antitrust and Section 230. We need to see policymakers step up and take action,” said Christopher Lewis, president and CEO of policy nonprofit Public Knowledge, which promotes free expression and an open Internet.

Curating Internet content, or not, is by far the noisiest issue and the most political. The right and left both have concerns about how social media platforms operate, but diametrically opposed goals: the left wants more aggressive policing,...

A teenager tried to kill Queen Elizabeth II on her trip to New Zealand in 1981, according to declassified intelligence documents obtained by Stuff. The report states that during the Queen's tour of Dunedin on October 14, 1981, a 17-year-old named Christopher Lewis fired a gunshot at the royal monarch, but missed. A memo from the Security Intelligence Service dated in June 1997 states the teen "did indeed originally intend to assassinate the Queen." The memo then continues, "However did not have a suitable vantage point from which to fire, nor a sufficiently high-powered rifle for the range from the target." Stuff reports that media who heard the gunshot "were told it was a falling...

Queen Elizabeth was the target of an assassination attempt in New Zealand, but government officials covered it up over fear of losing future Royal tours ... according to new declassified docs. New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service says 17-year-old Christopher Lewis fired a shot at the Queen during her October 1981 visit to Dunedin. He was arrested shortly afterward -- a rifle and used gun cartridge were found in a building overlooking QE2's parade route. Police at...

New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (Sis) have released documents confirming that a New Zealand teenager attempted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II while she visited the Commonwealth nation in 1981. New Zealand Teen Tried To Assassinate The Queen In 1981 The then-17-year-old Christopher Lewis shot at the Queen as she exited her vehicle on her way to a […]

Source: uInterview

The post New Zealand Government Confirms That Teen Tried To Assassinate The Queen In 1981 appeared first on uInterview.

With the demise of the drive-in theater rose the behemoth home video industry – and a torch was passed from one era of low-budget directors and producers to a new batch of underfunded fringe filmmakers. These fresh faces had new technology, and a new distribution game… but a similar reckless abandon and rebellious tenacity as their b-movie forefathers.

Fright fans were introduced to a new breed of horror movies - made for tens of thousands of dollars… or thousands of dollars… or a few hundred bucks and a borrowed video camera. Unpaid amateurs / quasi-professionals made up the bulk of most casts and crews - and often, the directors and producers were quite inexperienced themselves.

Join me for a visit to the heyday of the direct-to-video, micro-budget horror movie. We’ll explore this strange new cinema of the 80s and see how it evolved through the ‘90s. (Be sure to adjust tracking for best picture quality.

This month sees the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street, a remake that’s been a long time coming. With so many slasher revivals going on, be they remakes or original properties, it’s important now to look back on the genre and learn a few of its intricacies. The wealth of material to cover is staggering. The films that follow do not necessarily represent the finest work the genre has to offer, but were selected for their uniqueness and appeal.

If any of these tickle your fancy, I've included some Amazon links to buy the ones that are still in print. Unless otherwise noted, all of these releases present the films in their original aspect ratio and in their most complete versions available to date.

[Note: While extensive measures have been taken to eliminate graphic details in deconstructing the films, trailers and clips have been provided wherever applicable. They can at times be exceedingly violent, and quite spoiler-heavy. We urge you to use judgment before viewing them. Thank you.]

Inferno (IMDb)

1980, Dario Argento

The core difference between director Dario Argento’s celebrated Suspiria and its overlooked follow-up, Inferno, is simple: Inferno hates you.