Weekly Rewind: May 1st, 2020

UFO footage finally recognized by the Pentagon

Three formerly-leaked videos, two released by the New York Times, and a third by an academic conspiracy site, are now officially on the record, according to the United States Department of Defense, an admission which UFO enthusiasts have been waiting on for decades. Although the DoD has now confirmed both the existence and the making of these videos, they did not have any further comment on what these videos show, instead referring to them as "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena." The representative from the Pentagon said that they did so in order to "clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real." Real enough, I suppose. But still the question remains...what are they?

Some might say this is great news

We're all currently pining for the past, when we could hug our families, see our friends, go to the pub and have regular access to eggs. But for those who have a hankering to place themselves even further back in time (say, the 1990s) then this week's news of a recently discovered 'lost' Oasis track will be wholly welcomed. "Like the rest of the world I've had infinite time to kill lately so I thought I'd finally look and find out what was actually on the HUNDREDS of faceless unmarked CDs I've got lying around in boxes at home," said Noel Gallagher, which was reported on the BBC website. "As fate would have it I have stumbled across an old demo which I thought had been lost forever."

The track, called Don't Stop is a classic Oasis ballad, though missing one key ingredient of the Oasis mix, namely Liam Gallagher, who tweeted in response to Noel releasing the song; "Well there's something missing in this god almighty stew and it's your brother. Don't forget your brother." 

The King is dead... Long live the King!

ESPN and Netflix's Michael Jordan/Chicacgo Bulls epic The Last Dance surpasses Tiger King as the world’s most popular documentary. According to data compiled by Parrot Analytics, a global content demand analytics company, The Last Dance has become the most in-demand documentary in the world. While Netflix is still enjoying the success of Tiger King, which was one of the most popular series in the first quarter of 2020, it also holds the overseas rights to The Last Dance and will be streaming the docu-series in the US this summer. In short, Netflix already has two of the year’s most popular documentaries.

And the Oscar streams to...

After years of remaining steadfast in a changing market, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka The Oscars) has announced a temporary change to its rules of eligibility. Previously only accepting films if they have been shown in a Los Angeles cinema for at least a week, the academy have recognised that that might be a bit tricky in the horror-show that is 2020, so will allow films that debut on streaming or video on demand services as well. 

The news comes at the same time as cinemas have started fighting back against studios' decisions to (and huge successes in) releasing films digitally, with both AMC and Cineworld very-publically boycotting films from Universal. As reported in Empire, both companies are planning to "refuse entries from the company's output that break the theatrical window model".

Dramatic streams scenes indeed!