13Nov
Open Thread
Discuss what you want but... IT MUST BE RELATED TO POP CULTURE. ALL OTHER COMMENTS WILL BE NUKED. When I post "thread locked" no more posts.
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12Nov
Chinballs Scorched Earth Doctor Who
Chris Chibnall is building a tribute to all Gamma Malekind with the 13th season of Doctor Who. He would appear to be privately furious about being fired from the job he’s wanted since high school and is determined to leave Russel T. Davies with nothing but smoking ruins. There was a stream of leaks not too long ago that looked incomprehensibly ridiculous when they first hit the internet. But one of these leaks has proven to be true. And frankly, the Timeless Child looked to...
12Nov
Did Feige Get the Stallone Treatment?
I think there is no question he did. But the big question is was it deliberate? For those who don't know what the Stallone Treatment is. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone had a feud going in the 1980s back when they were fighting it out for the title of King of the Blast Flicks. They officially kissed and made up but the underlying rivalry was still very much there, but they were pretending to be friendly in the...
11Nov
Disney Plus Fails to Meet Wallstreet Expectations
Terrible earnings call for Bob Chapek today. The growth of Disney Plus is tortoise-like and it's all in the wrong markets. Disney Plus needs to get subs in the West where they can charge decent prices that will actually turn the company a profit. Instead, the only place anyone is signing up is in India, where the business model is dependent on low prices with mass subscriptions. I asked a friend who still has a free year left...
09Nov
Rogue Squadron Shelved “Indefinitely”
The official statement is that Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkin’s pet Star Wars film, Rogue Squadron has been delayed without a projected start date. That usually translates from the Hollywoodese as ‘it's canceled but we don’t want to say it's canceled.’ It is supposedly being pushed back a year but here is the kill quote from Hollywood Reporter, “The hope is that once Jenkins’ fulfills her previous commitments, she will be able to return to the project.” Which wouldn’t be able to start until...
08Nov
The Aggressive Mediocrity of Bob Chapek
A while back I had joked that the Disney difference was now just “Six Flags Over Orlando.” I have never spoke truer words. When the new Riviera Resort opened it was a chance for Bob Chapek to demonstrate the kind of curator of Walt Disney’s legacy he had been as the big boss of all the Disney Parks. It turned out he was cheap and unimaginative. One thing that has always set Disney Resorts apart was the theming. Even if the resort was going...
06Nov
Cheap Thrills – The Friday Night Edition
Chris Chibnall's final season of failure has begun on the shortest season of Doctor Who in the show's nearly sixty-year history. Apparently. I have to take other people's word for it that it's on the air again because I'll be damned if I'm wasting another minute of my life on the travesty he created. However, there was a time when Doctor Who was something special. There was also a time that it was wandering in the wilderness after it was canceled...
04Nov
BBC Loses Creative Control of Doctor Who
Despite the fact that the BBC are absolutely the owners of the IP, they are having to give up creative control of Doctor Who. Russel T Davies is being brought back on board to try to… I was about to write “save a sinking ship,” but the sad truth of Doctor Who is that the only part of the ship still above the waterline is the top of the smokestack. It would be more accurate to say that he’s been brought in to...
03Nov
Blog Business
First. The first Open Thread seems to have been successful. I'll be posting one on Fridays from now on. Second. I'm afraid I'll be posting less frequently until the end of the year. I will finish writing my new book by Dec 31st if it kills me. Although I'm not abandoning you, my beloved readers.
02Nov
Eternals Tracking Softens After Rotten Rating
The opening weekend projection has been dropped from over $100 million to the mid-sixties. After Eternals dipped below 60% on RT and stayed there. The review battle was valiantly fought with Rotten Tomatoes frantically rounding upwards when it should have been down, changing votes to Fresh that were obviously Rotten. And finally, frantically creating new reviewers who obviously hadn’t seen the movie. They finally gave up, it’s at 58% as of this morning, certified Rotten by critics. And that doesn’t include the newspaper reviews that...