09Mar
Just How Bad Nickelodeon Was
We knew it was bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvyULepxgw4 Discuss on SG
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09Mar
Sweet Baby Cyanide
So why haven’t I said anything about Sweet Baby? Because to me the problem has been so self-evident for so long that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.Yes, I knew about it. I knew the cancer for what it was and how it spread. I also knew that Sweet Baby Inc was not the only “narrative development studio that provides "sensitivity reviews and consultation.” Lionbridge Games is still on the grift train, Sliverstring Media is the up-and-comer. And...
08Mar
RE:View – SyFy’s Dune
On September 24, 1992, Leonard Nimoy was watching a countdown timer run out. For a few days, this countdown had been running on a new channel owned by USA Networks. It was a joint venture between Paramount and Universal.When the timer reached zero an extended trailer started featuring the finest, reasonably priced computer graphics available in the early 90s, combined with some miniatures designed by John Dykstra. The director held up three fingers, then two, then one. With the cheerful...
07Mar
Nelson Peltz’s White Paper
Everyone knew this was coming but the forms of vendetta must be obeyed. Nelson Peltz has finally thrown down his gauntlet at Bob Iger’s feet. The Trian Group has sent its 130-page white paper (more of a white novel if you ask me) to Disney’s institutional investors. This is basically a list of everything that Disney is doing wrong and what Peltz says needs to be done to fix them. The letter to PepsiCo was rather searing about PepsiCo’s own stance...
06Mar
Harddrive-by: Helldivers 2
I had pretty much given up on playing AAA games when this came along.. They have mostly been a series of rolling disasters for the past couple of years. Redfall, Gollum, Starfield, Skull Island, Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League and of course The Last of Us 2. You’ve probably got a list of your own. It’s not just technical incompetence, although if you buy anything from Bethesda, damn kid what were you thinking?No, politics have pushed...
04Mar
The Dark Herald Recommends Dune II
“Unadaptable” is the word that was most frequently used to describe Frank Herbert’s Dune and not without good reason. People who have had no trouble at all with Tolkien’s Silmarillion have struggled mightily to plow their way through Dune. Herbert stood the convention of “show don’t tell” on its head and mostly just told. He took a 900-page exposition dump on his readers and somehow made it all work. Making a movie version of this is all but impossible but there...
03Mar
The Dark Herald Recommends: Dune I
BUMPED 3/02/24. I'll be posting my review of Dune II on Monday, so I decided to bump this review of Villeneuve's first Dune movie. Obviously, the stuff about there possibly not being a sequel no longer applies but I decided not to edit it out. Frank Herbert’s Dune always makes the list of greatest science fiction books of all time. And unlike Foundation and 2001, it actually has business being there. It was a book that was genuinely for the thinking man. Dumb...
02Mar
It Came From the Nineties: Unforgotten Science Fiction from the End of the 20th Century
None of these are in this articleREPOST 3/1/24. In honor of Farscape's Silver Anniversary and because my review of Helldivers 2 needs an editing pass when my brain isn't fried, I repost this Dark Herald classic.TV tends to lag behind film trends. The 1980s is arguably the best decade ever for science fiction and fantasy movies. In the 1990s the small screen followed suit.This is a list of 1990s sci-fi series that I decided weren’t obscure enough to qualify as forgotten. I’ll do...
01Mar
Meet the Pretenders to Iger’s Throne
The court is assembling from all across the land for a king is dying. Various factions are now presenting pretenders to the throne while the old king insists that he's still good for years. But it is becoming clear that Iger has lost the support that matters. The last earnings call was a nothing but smoke and mirrors. Too much of it was obviously staged. When it was clear that no one who mattered would be allowed to ask awkward questions. Too much went wrong...
28Feb
Disney Deathwatch: The Executions Are Underway
Sean Baily is out as the president of Disney Live Action. I knew someone was going to have to answer for last year's carpet bombing of the theaters. I’m honestly surprised it was Sean Bailey. He really wasn’t responsible for the disasters that Disney has produced. Although, it’s true that he didn’t stop them either. Alan Bergman bears a great deal of the blame although Dana Walden bears much more. David Greenbaum at Fox Searchlight has been promoted to the newly created...