Monthly Archives - November 2022

29Nov

Drive By Reviewers As I Get Ready to Run Out the Door

Blog business first. I will be offline from Dec 1st through the 12th.   I am way the hell overdue for a vacation.  As of Thursday, I. Am. In. The. Wind. FIRST The Dark Herald Recommends: Andor I think this show was padded eight ways from sunrise.  I strongly suspect that this series was originally meant to be about six hours in total.  Then Kennedy got excited because something, you know, good, had crossed her desk for the first time in years.  The reason I say this is that every three episodes...

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25Nov

The Dark Herald Recommends: Disenchanted

I hadn’t planned to watch this, but it was on at the in-laws after Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll give the movie this much.  It knew what it wanted to be.  It just wasn’t a realistic goal. The original Enchanted was Disney sending itself up and it was kind of endearing.  A Disney Princess comes to the real world and brings a little magic with her.  The Central Park musical number was really good and did everything it was supposed to.  At the end, Giselle gets the high-power New...

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24Nov

Appendix N Heroes: Imric the Elf Earl

NOTE: I'm using the term "hero" pretty loosely in this case. It was written in 1954, you can tell it was written in 1954 because it couldn’t be written today. This is a work of high tragedy that is strongly influenced by the Norse sagas.  If you like Game Thrones but would prefer that it be written by a non-sadist that can actually fit a story that should only take two hundred pages, into two hundred pages.  This is the book for...

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24Nov

Disney Rumors

Rumor: Kathleen Kennedy is leaving LucasFilm... Again. Sorry, not buying that one even if John Campea is. There is supposedly an agreement that she leaves the company after Indy V launches. I've heard that one before. I'm not buying that one either because she wants to leave on a high note and no project that she is headlining will be successful. How did Kathleen Kennedy get to where she is today? W-e-l-l-l-l, I do know that when she...

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23Nov

The Fan Hierarchy

I’ve frequently heard the claim that superhero movies are dead or dying.  That they have worn out their welcome.  This is usually being said by people who were never interested in them in the first place; like film critics. However, superhero movies have been around since 1978 when young Gen-Xers were first made to believe a man could fly.  It’s frequently stated that these franchises go in cycles, but this really isn’t the case.  What happens, (and it happens every time), is that the franchise...

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21Nov

I’M B-A-A-A-A-C-K

FLASH! Midnight coup by Disney’s Board of Directors. Bob Chapek, is out.  Dragged from his bed in the middle of the night and stood against a wall. Bob Iger is back in as CEO for the next two(?) years.  That is a weirdly abbreviated contract. Susan Arnold is remaining as Chairman of the BOD.  Iger had both jobs until he was hit by a boardroom revolt in February of 2020.   The institutional investors all knew that the next two or three quarters would be losses.  That was baked in.  It was...

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20Nov

Greg Bear 1951-2022

One of the last members of the Old Guard of hard science fiction has passed. During his career he authored over fifty books. He won five Nebula awards and two Hugos (back when a Hugo was worth having). He was also one of the founders of San Diego Comicon. Greg Bear suffered a massive stroke last week, his wife Astrid (daughter of Poul Anderson) released a statement saying that per his wishes, life support would be withdrawn. He breathed on...

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18Nov

Disney Deathwatch Update

It looks like nothing is coming up roses for Disney at the moment.  Strange World is being treated like a bomb waiting to happen.  Lightyear and Bros have already demonstrated just how much of the world was clamoring for gay romantic comedies. Which is no part of the world. From the interviews James Cameron has been giving, I think Avatar: The Way of Water is testing badly too. Cameron shot the next two chapters simultaneously and was planning on a fourth installment when...

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17Nov

Red the Pirate of the Caribbean Movie is Dead.

Okay, you might not know what that means. During Peter Rice’s heyday at Disney, all kinds of really and obviously terrible projects got the green light.  This was one of them.   In the early 00s Eisener got a bug up his ass about making park rides into movies.  He had one bomb with Haunted Mansion but more than made up for it with the Pirates of the Caribbean.  If you watched any of the behind scenes stuff you could tell pretty quickly that everyone on...

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