Tag: TV

The End is in Sight

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Tuesday is the end of my ten-day ordeal.  A Chinese water torture of sorts.  Tomorrow will feel like being beaten for twelve hours with a bag full of oranges but knowing that only a single day stands between me and freedom makes me anxious to get it started.  I anticipate catastrophic failure, mob violence and accusations of mopery and dopery.  But it’s as if I can see the daylight shining through the hole punched through the Earth by the screaming asteroid of doom.  So, I am almost giddy with anticipation.  Bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.

I read most of the news today and other than that Miller Beer manifesto for sucking all the joy out of men drinking beer, I didn’t see anything all that exciting.  There were all the lefty rags admonishing Trump and DeSantis, “Let’s you and him fight!”  And there was that idiot Durham with his 300-page report confirming that the FBI started the Russia-gate investigation without any evidence and yet without any criminal or professional consequences for the conspirators.  There were all the economic warnings of the impending financial meltdown.  There was Biden claiming he was going to prevent the millions of immigrants that he invited to the border from coming in, somehow.  There was the ridiculous budget battle between McCarthy and Biden.

And all sorts of other apocalyptic headlines.  But none of them were ready for prime time quite yet.  I’m curious to see if McCarthy scares Biden into creating a budget.  That would be a major accomplishment.  But we’ll have to wait.

The rest of it is just stuffing to separate the beginning and end of these news sites.  It’s something to keep these journalists off the crack pipe.  Or is it fentanyl now?

I was getting Camera Girl some cold medicine at Wally-mart and I went past the $5 bin of DVDs.  And I spotted a copy of John Wick 1.  Now I saw it when it came out and kinda, sorta enjoyed it.  I mean, it’s so cartoonish that I enjoyed it as a cartoon.  And when the second one came out, I rented it.  And it was too cartoonish to enjoy.  The volume of bullets flying and the sheer numbers of people being shot is dizzying.  It almost gives you motion sickness.  I missed the third one.  And now there’s a fourth one coming out.  So, seeing that copy in the remainder bin of venerable old John Wick 1 made me feel nostalgic for the comfortable 5X speed that I remember from that classic.  After my ordeal is over tomorrow, I’m going to find two hours or whatever it was and watch Keanu Reeves do whatever it is that he does in motion pictures.  Sure, it’s stupid and sure it’s not acting but so what?  Where is there acting anymore?  Certainly not on tv.

Of late Camera Girl has been watching some of the innumerable and interchangeable cop and fireman series that are sprinkled across prime-time network tv.  Once in a while she’ll have one on while I’m in the room and recently I’ve discovered what these shows have become in the last ten years or so.  They’re soap operas.  The most important component of the plot is the girl cops or fire girls or NCIS girls emoting about their feeling to their male counterparts or talking to the other girls about which boy they’re in love with.  Honestly, this is what the women of America think a police precinct or firehouse or SWAT team is all about.  It’s completely unwatchable and I have chastised Camera Girl for her horrible taste in entertainment but being a girl herself she can’t see the problem.  So, I’ve asked her to find some time when I’m out of the house or in a coma to watch this sort of dreck.

So Wednesday I’ll resurface and try to have something somewhat clever to say.  But for now, it’s horror and anticipation that holds me in sway.  Enjoy your Tuesday.  We who are about to die salute you.

Television as a Metaphor

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Camera Girl likes police procedurals.  She watches Blue Bloods, NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles.  I used to watch Blue Bloods too, until the progressive propaganda became too annoying.  But recently she was watching an episode of NCIS and I was trapped on a computer in the same room.  And because of what I saw and heard I have determined that these shows are now written for an audience of fourteen-year-old girls.

It was so pathetic it was embarrassing to watch.  The men and women were like a table of freshmen high school girls.  “If you like me then I’ll like you.”  The whole show was just the allegedly highly professional and deadly agents of NCIS snickering and gossiping about whether the pretty girl and the cool guy are dating or not.

So, I confronted Camera Girl.  I said, “What the hell is this?  Is this what this show is all about, a Dating Game with handcuffs?”  Well maybe I didn’t say exactly that.  But it was very sarcastic and very clever, whatever it was.  And she was very defensive and swore that it was usually all murders and forensics and gunplay.  And I gave her a cold and very knowing “hah!”

Now maybe I did accidentally see the one silly episode of the season.  But the odds say that isn’t the case.  What’s clearly the case is that the people writing these shows are millennials and they’re writing them for millennials.  And I guess that makes sense from a demographic and commercial perspective.  But at the same time, it is an indictment of a whole generation.  This means that the women and the men of Gen Y are infantilized idiots.  Even a show that’s whole reason for existing is to provide an action-adventure story has been turned into Archie Comics.  Jughead, Archie, Veronica and all the gang are hanging out at the malt shoppe talking about whose going with whom to the high school prom and trying to stop Al Qaeda from blowing up Joe Biden.

It’s a minor point and you might say, “Who cares?”  Fair enough, tv always sucked anyway.  But it’s just another marker to show that the people who are now the grown-ups aren’t.  They aren’t grown-ups.  They aren’t ready to take over the world.  And they aren’t going to make it.

Our society is infantile and it’s not a world that can be handled by infants.  Watching the millennials in Antifa play acting a riot and the authorities letting them do it tells me that we have ceased to transact our business in a business-like manner.  What is currently happening is a choreographed piece of theater that the millennials can point to as the reason for why things will have to change.  This is the fig leaf that they will point to as the reason why a corporate/bureaucratic managerial state will take over everything and they’ll just do as they’re told.  A whole generation feels unqualified to do anything and that’s that.

I’m not sure there is anything that can be done about these people.  I think they’re hopeless in every sense of that word.  They’re probably relieved that they can just declare themselves the losers and go home to their tiny shared apartments and spend their unemployment check to buy their meager meals and wait to shrivel up and quietly die, thereby saving resources for Gaia.

Well, despite what the Gospel says the meek will not inherit the earth.  The strong will.  The Chinese are not impressed by Gaia or Antifa or Twitter.  They are looking to expand and they are not worried about anybody’s feelings.  They will push aside these weak fools very quickly and the fools will get their wish, poverty and oblivion.

Now how do we get out from under this?  Damned if I know.  Maybe we really can separate ourselves from them.  In fact, we have to.  If we don’t, we will be swallowed up in the ruin that they are making of our world.  They are willing to hand things over to the machines and those machines will grind them up and use them for a lubricant.

Well, I’ve complained enough.  It’s not as if tv was ever much good anyway.   But it is good for one thing.

What Would It Look Like If Hollywood Tried To Give The Troglodytes What They Want To See?

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The recent furor over the large audience for Roseanne Barr’s tv show and the rumor about Fox resurrecting Last Man Standing got me thinking about what it would be like if TV and the Movies produced a certain amount of product every year for troglodytes like me.  And let me try to be precise.  I don’t mean generic action or sci-fi shows where the eighty-pound magic girl kung-fu-fights her way through acres of white South African and Serbian villains.  And I don’t mean family drama about blue collar guys who clean up after a hard day on the construction site and strut their stuff on the local drag-queen circuit.

So that’s what I don’t want.  But what would I prefer?  You know, it’s been so long since there was a choice other than weirdo-liberation of the week tv that I actually have to imagine what it would be.  Well, for a start how about a tv family where Mom stays home with the kids and Dad goes to work?  And how about a family where everyone is heterosexual or even better let’s just say normal?  And how about the words gay, lesbian or trans never come up?  And imagine if there are no disgruntled minorities aggrieved about the name of the school being Washington or Jefferson?  And how about if no one forces the boys’ baseball team to add a girl to the squad for “fairness?”  And imagine if we never have to hear about “Black Lives Matter” or “White Privilege?”  Suppose gun control and hate speech are unknown ideas?  And just to round things out, if we never mention Obama, Al Gore or Climate Change I’ll be happy.

You know what was a pretty good sit-com?  “Home Improvement” was actually almost perfect.  Innocuous comedy, family warmth and chemistry between the actors playing the family.  What else do you need?  And here’s a thought, when Tim Allen already has a popular family show on tv, why not try supporting the show instead of cancelling it when it’s near the top of the ratings for its viewing night?  ABC, you are truly hopeless.  Walt Disney must be spinning in his grave.

Now as for action-adventure, just have Americans blowing up foreigners and space aliens and pretty much I’m there.  Did I mention I don’t need any sexual weirdos or racial politics?  Good.  Try to remember it and I’ll go see your movies.

But who am I kidding?  Hollywood would rather go broke than support normal values.  They have too many friends in the LGBTQ weirdo network to turn back now.  So, this whole arc must be allowed to reach its inevitable conclusion.  In a few more years when Hollywood has completely lost the normal people someone will start over with the things I mentioned above and low and behold the people will beat a path to their door.  Hopefully that will put the last nail in the coffin of Hollyweird.

Hat Tip to The Z Man, ‘The Death of Hollywood’

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The Z Man has a very good post up about Hollywood (but mostly TV).

http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=11881

He discusses the waning audience for broadcast tv and questions the reason for this.  He discusses a couple of theories.  I’ll leave you to read it yourself but I’ll state that I think he’s right that the anti-traditionalist agenda has finally combined with the cord cutting phenomenon to kill broadcast tv.  Halleluiah!  What took them so long?

One line that caught my attention was a question.  What was the last show that captured the imagination of the country so that everybody would be talking about it the next day.  His answer, Seinfeld.  That show has been off the air for almost twenty years.  I think that says it all.  Now, maybe it was 9-11 that killed off the fun or maybe the Democrats trying to poison the Bush presidency.  Either way we stopped being one people about twenty years ago.  The death of television is just a symptom of the great divorce.

Cowboy Bebop – A Sci-Fi TV Review – Part 2

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Cowboy Bebop – A Sci-Fi TV Review – Part 1

So I’ve watched two and a half of the discs.  Interestingly Netflix says there is “Unknown Availability” for Discs 3 and 6.  How’s that for the customer is always right?  I’m liking the show.  The episodes vary.  Some are back story.  Some introduce new characters.  There’s usually at least a little bounty hunting involved.  The ratio of comedy to drama is high.  The visuals are a mixture of standard cartoon and high-end graphics.  Some of the space scenes are especially well done and interesting.

I’ve been trying to think of what I can compare the viewing experience to.  As I said in my last post, there is a decidedly close resemblance to the look and atmosphere of Firefly.  But because it’s animated it’s obviously not identical.  And in a related sense it is reminiscent of Westerns.

Not being a recent consumer of Japanese cartoons, I guess another thing it reminds me of are the Japanese cartoons that were on when I was a kid back in the sixties.  One that has a little relevance was “Eighth Man.”  The story was completely unrelated.  But just something about the pacing makes it seem akin in my mind.

With respect to back story, the protagonist, Spike, has a history involved with a crime family.  There is an evil brother figure lurking in his past.  Down the road there is sure to be a reckoning for past sins.

I still don’t know what the relevance of the welsh corgi will be.  Maybe he’ll turn out to be super intelligent.  Right now he’s just sort of annoying.  They’ve also added a young girl who is also (of course) a world class hacker to the crew.  I’m guessing she’s the River Tam of the crew.

So, just to update, not sure where it’s going, still liking it.

Summer 2017 – When the Blockbuster Formula Ran Out of Gas

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What do most of the Twilight Zone episodes, the third season of Star Trek and Transformers VI (or whatever number they’re up to this year) have in common? They were no good, nobody wanted to see them and they were written by hacks. Sure, there were a few good Zone episodes and also a few of the Trek episodes were fun or interesting. What I think you’ll notice with these is that the episode was written by somebody creative. The rest of the dreck in these categories was ground out by talentless hacks who couldn’t even spell the word plot let alone write one. And that brings us back to Transformers XX or whatever it is. Great Caesar’s Ghost!

Is the business really that bad? Is there no other way to fund and produce movies than to pile sequel onto sequel? How many times can Sylvester Stallone climb into the ring or jump out of a crashing helicopter? How many times can that stupid alien ravage human colonies before somebody gets around to inventing industrial strength Raid for aliens and drop it on their ugly butts?

As even Deadpool himself said (before his upcoming sequel of course), and I paraphrase, how many times can Liam Neeson let his daughter be Taken before we assume he’s just a not a very good father. Wasn’t Godfather III enough to prove that even the best stories can’t be endlessly resuscitated without being turned into crap?

But you notice, TV is able to make some pretty good stuff. I’ve just finished Justified and I’d put that up against anything I’ve seen in the theater in the last five years. Why the disparity? First of all, Justified was adapted from the works of Elmore Leonard whose stories have time and again translated well into movies. Whereas with these endless sequel franchises, I assume they are assembled from some formula that is somehow supposed to capture the original flavor of the first episode but without the high price of the original screenwriter. Apparently, they’ll pay tens of millions to get Bruce Willis or Jamie Foxx and millions more to CGI the explosions but they’ll settle for the story line to be written by the corporate lawyers who put the financial deal together for the studios.

I think I read that because of the cable fees TV is actually able to monetize their quality shows pretty successfully whereas on the big screen only a giant blockbuster success is lucrative enough to even attract sufficient funding to get made. And that means Terminator 30 gets made before something well written and entertaining like possibly a faithful version of one of Heinlein’s juveniles. I imagine that Citizen of the Galaxy or Farmer in the Sky in the hands of a good screenwriter and director would be very entertaining and very commercial.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking, “Focus Photog, focus. What’s your point? Bring this back around to the title. Bring it home.”
Fine, I will. Hollywood is dead. Long live TV. Except for some extraordinary slam dunks like “The Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter” Hollywood is too paralyzed by the fear of losing gobs of money to try and put a quality product together from quality components. And that’s why I don’t feel deprived when I skip whole decades at the theater. There’s nothing there. Even the occasional stand out ends up being barely acceptable. I remember hearing raves about Gravity. When I finally rented it, I was puzzled what all the fuss was about. Okay would be a generous appraisal. The same with “The Martian.” Adequate would cover it.
And it couldn’t happen to a nicer set of people. If DiCaprio and Depp start only making seven figures instead of eight I certainly won’t cry. When they’re replaced by AI – CGI maybe the stories won’t be as insulting to the dirt people. What a concept!