2023 - Arkhaven Site

30DecDecember 30, 2023

Top Ten Worst films of 2023 (Part Two)

Picking up where we left off. While this was a terrible year for American movie studios (Angel Studios excepted in a big way), it was unquestionably the worst year ever in the history of the century-old Walt Disney Studios. Every. Single. Thing. Lost. Money. Yes, I’m including Guardians of the Galaxy Volume III. Given how things work these days a Disney film with a budget of $250 million has to make at least $1 billion before it’s comfortably in the black. A big...

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28DecDecember 28, 2023

Top Ten Worst Films of 2023 (Part One)

This is kind of an unusual year, I’m actually finding it difficult to coble this list together. I have never had trouble finding material for a list like this before but this year the term “embarrassment of riches” doesn’t come close to describing the unscalable mountain of bad that Hollywood built this year. 2023 is the worst (non-plague) year in the history of motion pictures. I hardly know where to begin. Yes, I do. The big winner of the worst of...

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27DecDecember 27, 2023

We Have a Sauron And We Hope This Choice Pleases You

My Beloved Darklings, I have a chip fracture on my index finger which means I'm going to be typing one-handed for a couple of weeks. Adjust your expectations of my output accordingly. Meet Sauron II. Initially, I couldn't decide if this was just fanfic engagement farming or if it was for real. The first announcement was from One Ring's Twitter account and they are deep in Amazon's vest pocket these days. Amazon took the precaution of winning them over with the usual influencer beads...

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27DecDecember 27, 2023

Disney’s Tower of Woke (Part One)

REPOST 12/26/23 I'm probably down for the week. Blogging will be light Tianna's Rain Forrest Cafe . There is an old adage in business; talent goes where the money is. There will shortly be a new adage; talent avoids where the Woke is. Google and Amazon became the powerhouses they are today because a generation ago (ouch) they were willing to spend big to get talent. And they got it. It says something about the level of people they were getting that one of the questions...

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25DecDecember 25, 2023

Christmas Ghost Stories

Americans are an odd bunch, even those of us holding on to our great heritage get a lot of that heritage wrong. Take a look at Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. Americans can identify with the familiar aspects of the story, but there are others that feel like they would be more at home at Halloween. There are strong undertones of the eerie and the uncanny throughout the book. That there is a darker reason that children are tucked into their beds with care, and blankets...

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23DecDecember 23, 2023

The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend – Rebel Moon

Yes, the robot is wearing antlers. No, I don't know why. Zack Snyder has always been utterly dependent on his writers. There is no great shame to this. If you can accept your limits as a creative professional and admit your dependence on colaborers in other fields, it is possible to create something extraordinary. Snyder has done this on occasion. He got his start in the music videos. Okay, plenty of directors have started out there and frankly, it beats filming porn...

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21DecDecember 21, 2023

Warner Brothers/Paramount Merger?

That headline feels like it's from 2019. Last week there was a rumor that Skydance was looking into buying Paramount, or at least buying Shari Redstone's shares of National Amusement which amounts to the same thing as NA owns 77% of Paramount. RedBird Capital is bankrolling Skydance's play so it looks like there is definitely something to this. Certainly, David Zaszlav thought so, because it seems to have kicked him into a panic move to merge with Paramount. I'm...

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21DecDecember 21, 2023

Anime’s Great – It’s the Fans That Suck: Spy X Family

Storge (store-jay) refers to familial love. Storge is one of the Greek variations of love, which describe different aspects of love, or ways to love other people. Most often, storge is described as the love shared between parents and their children I used to be a believer in writers setting up estates to protect their life's work. The past three years have forced a major reevaluation on my part. The absurd lengths of time that entertainment conglomerates have inflicted on copyright protection...

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19DecDecember 19, 2023

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings at 20 (Part One)

Twenty years ago this week, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King hit the theaters completing his take on J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnum opus. These three films are cared for deeply and fought over bitterly by fans of Tolkien (#JusticeForBombidil). After twenty years they are still being discussed and critiqued, praised, and condemned. Peter Jackson is as often lionized as he is vilified but there is no denying the man made something magnificent. The making of the...

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19DecDecember 19, 2023

The Dark Herald Recommends: Wonka

This film is kind of a toss-up. It’s got a bunch of small things going for it but a few big things going against it. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory got its start when Roald Dahl was in school and the ferocious rivals of Cadbury and Rowntree would send sample boxes of their chocolates to various schools as part of their market research. The thing is these two companies really did hate each other and were constantly trying to steal each...

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Yearly Archives - 2023