Tag: Hollyweird

A No-Review Review of the Little Mermaid Remake

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Matt Walsh gives an amusing review of Disney’s remake of A Little Mermaid by comparing it to Burger King.  Personally I think he’s unfair to Burger King in this comparison.  But I did enjoy his rant.  It was well ranted.

The Means of Production – Part 1

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So, what to write about tonight?  Tucker?  Elon?  The Biden Crime Family’s Congressional investigation?  Trump and his various legal problems.  The Republican presidential contenders?  Dementia Joe’s sinking ratings?  The crime-drenched cities?  The invasion at the southern border?  The collapsing banks?  Stagflation?  The Ukraine War?  Bud Light’s ongoing sales freefall?

Meh.  Just not in the mood.  Maybe it’s the crazy local things I’m involved in.  Maybe it’s too much same old, same old.

Well for whatever reason, let’s talk about something different.

I was reading recently about a studio that has been producing family friendly movies.  Mostly Christian movies but not exclusively.  Let’s call them Christian friendly.  They recently had a hit with a movie called the Jesus Revolution, “a feel-good movie about hippies who returned to Christ during the 1970s, starring former “Cheers” and “Frasier” star Kelsey Grammer – has grossed more than $52 million since its debut just a few weeks ago, making it the most successful film released by studio heavyweight Lionsgate since 2019.”

Many years ago, I remember watching a few of the movies produced by Christian churches and other organizations.  And although it was refreshing to see entertainment that stressed religious values and themes, they were notable for very simplistic plots and amateurish acting.  I guess the cast was more living the moments of the plot rather than acting them.

““The biggest critique on Christian art of the last thirty plus years, is that it’s not good, or it hasn’t been good,” said Terence Berry, COO of Wedgwood Circle, a nonprofit that connects investors and creators to develop projects that are informed by their Christian faith. “And I do think there have been huge strides made in people creating content for the faith market.””

Move forward twenty years and the producers now out there like Wedgwood and Angel Studios are producing movies that can be viewed by mainstream audiences without eye-rolling.  Berry calls it “a third way.”

““Can you offer stuff that is not perceived as faith market, and that is really well done, and it’s good, true, and beautiful, and it’s speaking to larger questions and it is aligned with your faith,” he asked, “but it is done so in a way that allows other people from outside the faith to engage and like that content?””

In the article the writer mentions that these producers are producing movies and arranging theater distribution using both investor and crowd-funded capital.  And the products include movies, music, books, television, and radio shows.  In fact, there are even animated movies in the works.

So why is this interesting?

I think because Hollywood is melting down.  Other than super hero movies Hollywood has only had a very few actual blockbuster hits in the last ten years.  Tom Cruise in Top Gun is that exception that proves the rule.  And it’s especially relevant because it’s one of the few movies that bucks all the stupid trends that have cost Hollywood its audience.  It’s patriotic.  It doesn’t pound away at woke tropes.  It doesn’t replace entertainment with an agenda.  It doesn’t denigrate its audience.

So, with Hollywood marching into the ocean and at the same time starving audiences for wholesome content.  And with streaming and the lower price of computer-generated imaging making fantasy and other genera movies orders of magnitude cheaper than just a few years ago, this is the perfect time for small production companies to provide people with entertainment choices they sorely lack.

And I think it’s finally, finally beginning to happen.  I’ve watched some short sci-fi movies on YouTube that come close to Hollywood level special effects.  And because of how Hollywood is using “diversity, inclusion and equity” there are many unemployed straight, white, male actors, writers, directors and other creatives that could use work.  In such an environment I think we’ll start seeing more and more breakout productions that owe their success to giving people the entertainment that Hollywood refuses to produce.

But here’s the point.  All of these people trying to produce this content didn’t get into it because they always wanted to build their own movie studios.  They’re doing it because the movie studios told them that the content they wanted was wrong and shouldn’t exist.  So, they had to become movie makers.  Same thing with book authors.  The books we like are so evil that the publishers are retroactively changing the text of old classics like Roald Dahl’s children’s books.  Same for music, same for art.  Same for education.  If we want what we think is right we’re going to have to make it ourselves.  Internalize that and employ it as needed in your life and you’ll start changing things for the better.

If you don’t like the crap on display in woke world then search out something better at the fringes.  And if that doesn’t exist, then do it yourself.  That’s the lesson.

I intend to start looking for some of these movie projects and try them out.  I’ll report back on what I find.

Worst Movies of the 21st Century List

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The Hollywood Reporter is a rag that’s been around forever and purports to know something about film.  They’ve put out a list of what they claim are the “best” films of the 21st Century.  If you go through this list from start to finish you’ll most say, “Huh?”  Which is a good thing.  Most of this dreck explores the neuroses of sexual deviants trying to figure out why they are desperately unhappy and at odds with normal human experience.  Good luck with enjoying that with a tub of popcorn.  There are one or two movies that were entertaining or meaningful but as a list to choose entertainment it’s a joke, a bad joke.

One of these days I need to publish some best movie lists by categories and put these professional critics to well deserved shame.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 01MAR2023 – Further Comments on the Oscars

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I came to answer your question “What is wrong with the Oscars”?
(Although I agree with the rant about crappy movies.)
1) Too long. If you can’t get it done in 2 hours – don’t do it. People have lives, they need to get up in the morning.
2) Too woke. Stop awarding movies no one is ever going to watch just because they are woke.
3) Too much self preening. Take your award. Thank you mama, high school drama coach and your spouse – then get off the stage. We don’t want to hear about your current pet project. (Unless you are funny. Humor is welcome. Brevity or levity.)
4) Get rid of the damn politics. The country is just about evenly divided. No matter what you say, you will piss off half the country. Stop it!

This shouldn’t be news to anyone. And the fact that the Oscars (and every other award show) keeps on doing these things is just a giant middle finger to the audience.
We get it. You don’t care about us. Understood. Message received. Loud and clear.
So stop asking why we don’t watch your silly little award show. You know why.

What’s Really Wrong With the Oscars?

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I don’t know why I would read an article in Vox magazine entitled “This is the most populist Oscars in a long time.  So why doesn’t it feel like it?“   I guess it’s because sometimes I wonder what Hollywood thinks about its own destruction.  I really should stop wondering.  But anyway.

This article is centered around a recent Saturday Night Live skit about how no one can name any movies in the last five years.

“This is an interesting problem for me, a film critic, to think about. I watch more movies in a year than some people watch in a lifetime, and hear about hundreds more. The situation is different for most ordinary folks. In the SNL sketch, Yang asks Pascal to “name three movies from the past five years.” Stunned by the challenge, Pascal ventures, “Oh, wow. Three? Okay.” He contemplates, and comes up with Top Gun. Then he tries another: “The Hangover?”

“That was 20 years ago,” Yang says.

“The Night … Man,” Pascal says.

“Sounds like you’re just saying words. Come on, all you need is one,” Yang coaxes. “Can’t you just name one more movie?”

“Nope,” Pascal says, resigned.

“That’s right!” Yang crows, jubilantly. “Nope! You won the speed round!””

So, this is supposed to be funny but it’s just reality.  Hollywood can no longer make a good movie.  At this point if one happens it’s an accident.  All we’re left with are sequels and superheroes.  When they stray away from those mainstays we end up with a dreary story about tortured people that have some affliction like transgenderism or Tourette’s syndrome who we’re supposed to cheer on as they bravely struggle to force the world to struggle along with them.  Or maybe it’s a genre film; science fiction or film noir where the protagonists are transgender or have Tourette’s syndrome and the people who aren’t transgender or don’t have Tourette’s syndrome are the evil villains.  Or it’s a story about lesbian or gay love.  Or it’s a documentary about a woman who was being kept down by “the man” but now she’s the head of a multi-national non-profit that makes bean bag furniture for everyday people.  Or it’s a documentary about a mostly peaceful riot during the Summer of George Floyd.  Or best of all, maybe it’ll be another story about slavery in the antebellum South.  What a joy that would be!

But, no!  The authoress then reveals the real problem, it’s just poor marketing!  So, get that.  In a world in which you are bombarded with ads on every device you can possibly own, on every site you enter, giant media companies aren’t able to tell you they have a movie coming out.

“The abundance of options and possibilities tend to strip the context and intentionality away from the viewing experience; you didn’t have to talk to your friends about what movie you wanted to see, buy a ticket, and create an experience out of it. Now it all just flows toward you, content in an endless stream.”

This is gibberish.  I suspect this woman was dropped on her head at some point in the past and never recovered her wits.  Or maybe she thinks we were.  Of course, people heard about movies from friends.  The problem is all the movies are now unwatchable so our friends don’t have anything to tell us.  It’s like what happened to broadcast television.  The profit model changed so they stopped making things that were good and filled up the time with reality shows and police procedurals where the police are all young women who have really nice hair and clothes and only arrest straight white men who are keeping the BIPoCs, LGBTQ and women “down.”

There are no good movies to see.  Even the superhero movies have become infested with woke characters and plots.  And that why Top Gun made a bazillion dollars last year.  It was an old-fashioned movie with a plot and likeable characters and it didn’t show you anything weird that you had to make believe you liked.

“It’s okay if you haven’t seen most of the Oscar nominees, or even heard of them. In 2023, that probably means you live a normal, well-balanced life, one full of going outside to toss around a softball and maybe, I don’t know, reading books and whatever normal people do. But if you find yourself wondering why you can’t name three movies that came out in the past five years, remember, it’s not just the movies’ fault — and it’s a fixable problem, with a little effort.”

It’s not a fixable problem because Hollywood cannot be fixed.  It has been in a death spiral and that’s now approaching impact.  When it splats it will leave a lot of stupid emotional people without jobs.  Good.

It can only be replaced by something willing to provide entertainment that people are willing to pay for and willing to watch.  And that is why no one with half a brain will be watching the Oscars this year or any other year.  Pass the popcorn.

 

 

Could We Make This Permanent?

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Could you imagine if Hollywood shut down for four or five years?  Actors and actresses would have to subsist on what they could make using their other skills.  I guess prostitution would about sum it up.  Older actors would be completely unable to earn money and would starve to death.  And some Americans would notice their IQ’s slowly rising into double digits without the stupefying effects of Hollywood making them morons.

I sanction this movement.

 

 

 

Hollywood Scandal!

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A “scandal” is rocking the very foundations of the Oscar awards!  “Sources” say that a questionable marketing and influencing effort may have improperly boosted the nomination of a white actress, Andrea Riseborough.  And that might be responsible for two black actresses; Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis not being nominated!

Choking down feelings of anger, hatred and outrage I manage to shout:

WHO?

Really, who the hell are any of these people and why would anyone care at all whether they might win the Oscar for best actress?

First of all, I have a zero chance of ever seeing any movie any of them might be in.  That’s a guarantee.

Second of all, even if one of the black actresses is exchanged for the white actress and even wins the Oscar I will still never see any picture she might ever be in.

Third and last of all, even people who pretend to like these movies and go to see them, are bored and dread going to see them.  They have to claim to like them to impress people they think are important or smart.  But these motion pictures are propaganda exercises that mostly allow Hollywood to virtue signal about whatever the cause du jour happens to be.

Now if they were giving out an Oscar for Creepiest Hollywood Denizen and it was a contest between Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen and Roman Polansky now I’m all ears.

Contractions in the Media World

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I saw a couple of articles about companies off-loading media properties.  ABC is trying to sell Nate Silver’s 538 site.  And it’s rumored that Jeff Bezos needs to sell off the Washington Post as part of a deal to buy a football team.

These are smaller parts of a bigger story.  ABC is trying to shed costs because Disney is looking to sell ABC and ESPN and wants to make them look less like money-losing properties than they are.

And this same loss of profitability is a general situation.  CNN is tanking and its competitors; MSNBC and Fox are also suffering ratings slumps.  Even streaming giant Netflix is feeling the pinch.  And Amazon is seeing red ink in various entertainment departments.

And how is any of this surprising?  These media companies don’t provide valuable products either as journalism or entertainment.  They despise their customers and provide content that is poorly done and rarely helpful to its consumers.  Watching what passes for network news is painful and rarely rises to the level of professional journalism or even honest reporting of the facts.

And what Hollywood tries to pass off as entertainment is an outrage.  Except for a very small proportion of the cable shows everything is hopelessly derivative and completely lacking in interest.  The network television shows, the police procedurals and situation comedies have fallen below the level of high school theatrical productions.  The scripts are worse than hack work.  The actors are uninspired and amateurish.  The only thing that keeps the whole thing from completely imploding is the low expectations of the Millennial viewers and the desperation of the sponsors who need some outlet for their commercials.

Back in the 1960s they called television the “great wasteland.”  If those culture critics could have foreseen what passes for television to day they would have begged the forgiveness of the network executives who provided a product that was at least geared to people of average intelligence.  Their modern day successors have crafted a product that even marching morons would run screaming from.

And that’s why I buy DVDs.  If I find a good show I buy it and add it to the Noah’s Ark of entertainment that I maintain.  Re-watching a one or ten or eighty year old movie is infinitely preferable to suffering through some new piece of tripe that will insult my intelligence and my morals.  And that’s why I’m so grateful for conservative critics who can pass along news of that rarest of unicorns, something new that’s worth watching.

So let ABC and the rest of the alphabet soup go out of business.  Let Disney’s next fifty gay rom-com cartoons crash and burn on the runway.  There’s plenty of old entertainment to watch and there will be some good things made by someone, somehow.

The big problem is finding reliable news.  The truth is not something that corporate America allows.  For that you have to go to small venues and the rare big media exception like Tucker Carlson.

But you always have OCF (Orion’s cold Fire).  What could be better than that?

Hollywood Blacklists White Men

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Hollywood has codified affirmative action employment rules and is enforcing them.  So if the calculus of their rules requires that the director has to be a black transgender paraplegic then the results of the production should be fascinating.  And the results are already appearing.  Emboldened by the whip hand they’ve been given BIPOC cast and crew members now routinely lodge complaints against white male showrunners and directors knowing that the studio will put pressure on the man to kowtow to the empowered minorities or be fired.

The result of all this is obvious.  It will be all girl Ghostbusters all the time.  Expect humorless screeds from now on.  Every production from romantic comedy to action adventure will be so drowned in racial resentment and feminist screeching that the idea of being entertained will completely disappear from the experience.

I think it’s great,  I can think of no quicker way of impoverishing the industry than to let them put into practice their stupid beliefs about running society.  It’s all too reminiscent of Soviet cinema with its social justice messaging and secret police surveillance.  My only wish is that they dispense with white men all together.  Everyone from the owner of the studios to the assistant wig master should be some combination of non-white, non-male and non-normal.  I think of the great job they’ve done at reducing revenues and driving away their customers.  Eventually the Chinese will start producing movies for the American audiences and I’m sure they’ll be much, much better than the dreck Hollywood has put out in the last decade or so.

Alec Baldwin Talks to George Stephanopoulos About His Dream Come True

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Serial rage-aholic Alec Baldwin sat down with malignant dwarf George Stephanopoulos to discuss how he was able to shoot two people without any criminal responsibility.  And it was palpable just how in awe of Baldwin’s genius the sniveling dwarf was.  Sure, Stephanopoulos had witnessed Bill Clinton evade serious consequences for any number of felonies.  But none of the Clinton murders were ever captured on video tape.  Here Baldwin went through a second-by-second account of his shooting of the cinematographer and director of his grade z western.  You could hear the pride in his voice at pulling off the trick shot that bagged both targets with only one bullet.  Of course, there is a trace of sadness that the director survived, but he remained upbeat and speculated that in future shootings he might be able to line up three or even four targets as Deadpool did in the famous opening fight scene of his movie.

A second video will be coming out consisting of the portions of the interview that were edited out.  They consist of the times where the conversation got side-tracked while Stephanopoulos reminisced about the good times during the Clinton White House when Vince Foster and Vic Raiser met their fortunate ends.  Unfortunately, Disney will be putting that episode behind a paywall.

At the end of the interview Baldwin was asked what he had lined up in the future.  He said he was in development on a biopic project about President Biden.  It was tentatively titled, “Plugs” and it would star Baldwin as the incontinent commander in chief.  Baldwin spoke in glowing terms of the cooperation he had received from the White House.  He hoped to have it in theaters for Christmas 2022 and hinted that Wesley Snipes was being considered for the part of Corn Pop.

Seriously though, Alec Baldwin is a soulless sociopath.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that he put the bullet in the gun to collect on some kind of weird codicil in his movie’s insurance policy.  The points in the interview where he breaks down and weeps look completely fake.

I have to assume that at some point in the future Baldwin will up his game and succumb to the urge to cannibalize someone just to check it off his list.  Hopefully it will be Stephanopoulos or possibly Robert DeNiro and Baldwin will die from ingesting that much toxin.