Disney employees are in panic mode. Or perhaps I should say more in panic mode than usual. Bob Iger is now openly admitting that he's looking for buyers for some of Disney's properties. Specifically, it's cable networks and ABC, although not all of it. A week ago Iger gave an "unusually candid interview" on CNBC's The Squawk Box. Where he discussed the possible sale of Disney's linear assets ABC, Freeform, FX, and the rest of the cable networks Disney...
Way back in the Before Internet Times, meaning the Seventies and Eighties because who cares about the seriously Before Internet Times that proceeded that, if you were a comic book fan and you were curious about European comics your options were: Pretend there was no such thing as European comics Try to get a semester overseas thing. Join the military and hope you didn’t get posted in New Mexico Buy a copy of Heavy Metal. There is an internet rumor that Heavy Metal magazine was...
This weekend’s box office was underpowered as opposed to the gaping maw of utter fail we’ve gotten used to seeing this summer. Mission Impossible 7 has opened with a reasonably solid $235 million worldwide. When adjusted for inflation this is a slightly weaker first weekend than Mission Impossible: Fallout. MI:7 is a much better movie than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. A lot less CG and a lot more traditional heroism. It has its weaknesses but a lot of that is from...
Normally, I have to wait for a new Arktoon to find its footing before I can do a spotlight on it. Before that point there just isn't enough going on for me to comment on. There are exceptions of course. Black 5 is just out of the gate and taking a very early lead. This one is talking my language. The killing of Osama Bin Laden sets into motion a nightmarish retaliation plan to kill Pope Benedict XVI during his visit...
I've got to say, somebody at Disney's marketing department knows what they are doing. https://www.zillow.com/house/disney-haunted-mansion/ It's a Zillow listing for the Disneyland Haunted Mansion. Yep, Disney is trying to make another Haunted Mansion again and it is a fundamentally terrible idea. Pirates of the Caribbean was easier to work with because the ride was a macabre adventure with a few gags thrown in to break what little tension there was. It has no real characters, no fixed setting, and no real...
Recently a friendly acquaintance of mine posed a question on Twitter. Has there ever been a movie that was better than the book it was based on? I offered the original Mark of Zorro (1920). While that was an accurate answer because the Curse of Capistrano was nothing but a standard pulp and the Mark of Zorro invented the superhero, it was too truncated to be any kind of in-depth answer. Some books that have been made into movies are so different they...
And now for something completely expected. Robert Iger's contract as the CEO of the Walt Disney Company has been extended through 2026. For those of you asking, "What the fuck?" I understand well your consternation but I saw this one coming a mile off. Yes, I understand. Bob Iger is the one that has put Disney in the disastrous position it's in today. He overpaid drastically for Fox Entertainment by a factor of 100%, he let Kevin Fiege dismantle the...
Yeah, Gunn is doing something weird. Fillion recently appeared in a walk-on cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol III. The Canadian actor is well known to genre fans starting with Firefly as Captain Mal Reynolds. He is best known to the normies as the mystery writer Castle. He has had one other role as a superhero, the cowardly, bullying, Alpha male Captain Hammer. I had noticed that Fillion had lost some of the pounds he'd gradually put on...
No, I did spell the title correctly. This game should be in a museum. It is a nearly perfect time capsule of turn-of-the-century teenage angst for a very specific kind of teenager. Slayers X is an attempt and apparently successful one for a 35-year-old Millennial to finish writing a game mod he started back when he was fifteen. Something Generation X doesn’t really get at a bone-deep level is that at one time we were the cool big brother. The Gen Xer was the guy with a...
Sound of Freedom is a great film that tackles an absolutely brutal subject. And let’s be clear I don’t mean it’s a great film by the standards of “Christian films,” It’s a great film period. Certainly, the best I’ve seen this year. Sound of Freedom starts with a Hispanic father taking his kids a boy and a girl to an audition. It looks legitimate enough. He’s instructed to leave and come back in a few hours, when he comes back, the apartment is empty...
