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generalexcuse · 3 years

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Alright. I am beating a dead horse here but taking time off of this show and fandom did not work. This will be the last time I ever say something about it but it’s upsetting to me so I need to vent. And to everyone saying “You are an adult man and this is fiction, why are you so obsessed? Weirdo. Learn to differentiate between fiction and reality.” I am going to address these notions as well as other problems I am having here. But really, Inuyasha was one of my first Anime, I have many dear memories and especially Rin was one of my all time favourite characters. Seeing her being mistreated like this upsets me. Ofc it does because if you watch something in formative years it’s not just fiction like a boring sitcom you watch now. Shows and characters are important to people and to simply dismiss it like that even if they would have been equally upset if it wouldnt have become canon, is infuriating. Really this is just therapeutic for me because even after weeks it’s still so baffling to me. Also please excuse the grammar and spelling mistakes. I am not a native speaker.

So the problem is obviously Sessrin and how it’s done because while I absolutely dont agree with this pairing, it would have been fine if it wasnt like it is.

In the original show, Rin is an 8 yo child and her entire character reflects just that. She behaves like a child and depends on others. She has also been traumatized, doesnt speak at the beginning of the show and dies twice. Both times she is saved by or because of Sesshomaru. In many ways, while she has survival skills on her own, she depends on his presence alone to keep danger away. He also leaves her with trustworthy humans at the end but stays in her life as a protector. Now I like the original dynamic. It’s sweet, innocent and both characters grow because of it. Rin can work through her traumatic experiences, learns to trust others and Sesshomaru becomes a better person. What happens afterwards only happens offscreen right until Rin gives birth to his children at the crippling old age of 15. 15. My lil sis is 16 now and couldnt consent to something like that. And she is mature af. It’s ridiculous. My blood boils just typing that shit out. And if you give me the ‘it’s legal in Japan’ excuse. In Germany a 14 yo can be with a 20 yo sexually. Still not okay in societies eyes and on tv it’s never shown as something positive. It’s even explicitly forbidden for authority figures like teachers or protectors to be with their protégé before the age of 18 because the chances of even unintentional grooming are too high.

Now lets take a quick break and discuss how this kind of relationship usually plays out in other fictional pieces. A minor with an adult is something that is being portrayed at times and I dont have a problem with that. The problem is how it’s being done in Yashahime. And I dont mean the nonexisting character development but the fact that even in adult fiction this type of relationship isnt depicted positively. And this show is for young adults and teens that will exist way after all the discourse as the official sequel to Inuyasha. A cult anime. Meaning that in the future young people will watch it. Just like many still watch Inuyasha to this day. It’s on Netflix for fucks sake. Just to preface what comes next. Some people say, “But cant you differentiate between reality and fiction?!?!?!” Adults can but younger people havent developed this ability to the same extent. What happened to Rin was statutory r*pe in the USA, illegal even in Germany and should have been depicted as such unless the showrunners and fandom are okay with watching it without criticism or deconstruction. At best it was done with the intention to please the fanbase but really it’s neglectful to anyother part of the present and future audience. Not even most Animes do that. And I get that Sessriners arent into that shit in real life and an adult show could have gone this route because the viewers understand and add the criticism in their heads. Not ideal but whatever to me. But a YA show to go this route is so wrong on so many levels. The younger viewer who will watch this show in the following years might subconsciously internalize that this is acceptable under certain conditions when it’s not criticized properly on the show. That lowers their alertness when an adult actually starts to groom them. How dense do you have to be to assume that the lack of criticism on this YA show is a good thing?? Not everyone who will ever watch this show is an adult or capable of the same reasoning.

But another thing: for the same reason r*pe isnt depicted in a positive light, these types of relationships arent either. Because it’s not a positive thing and most people and showrunners dont want to see or create it as positive. Even in adult fiction, even in other anime, the media critizes and deconstructs what it’s showing because normally the showmakers dont approve but show it for realisitc or dramatic reasons. the same sessrin storyline would fit a fucking horror or thriller series. Just change the music and show it all. No showmakers in their right mind would go “Aye we got a r*pe scene coming up, lets put romantic music and have a pink filter over it.” “But it’s a different time and culture!” People will say and I agree but to have the audacity to assume that back then it was okay or that in todays Japan it’s okay, is fucked up. Think about it for a second. That’s so fucked up to think. Even if the society back then or in Japan thinks it’s okay, does it make it okay? 15 yo girls werent able to consent to adults and bear their children back then. They had to. They were raised with the expectations and they simply grew up thinking that it was the normal thing. But that doesnt make it right. That’s just societal grooming which did not prepare them in any way or allowed them the human dignity that they would have deserved. To now act like it’s all cool to just show the “positive” aspects or to twist it into something positive is so fucked up. Child Brides are a fucked up concept and to portray it as anything else is fucked up and also undermines the experience many girls still have to make. period.

I heard people say that it’s okay to portray it in this way because “Sesshomaru is not human!!!1″ and that’s correct. He is not. BUT, it’s not about being human but about maturity, consens, and independency. Him being a yokai makes it worse imo because there is an obvious power discrepancy. But in this particular fiction a good relationship could have been established (Kagome and Inuyasha for example) on those foundations but they did not because I can only assume they wanted Sesshomaru to smash and the show to pick up at a point where the other characters arent too old to be cool.

“What’s with Sango and Miroku, Kagome and Inuyasha?? It’s the same!” No it’s not. Rin was 8 at the beginning of the show. Kagome was 15 and Sango was 16-17 when they met their significant others. If you now tell me that you think 8 to be comparable to 15-17, I must ask you to get a reality check. Kagome’s and Sango’s relationships were slowburns starting when they already were able to have sexual and romantical feelings. Rin was a child. And Kagome did not kiss Inuyasha until they knew each other for a long ass period of time and bonded as friends and maybe more. Sesshomaru and Rin never were friends in the same way that Kagome and Inuyasha were because the maturity levels are way off. No adult is friends with a little child in the same way they are friends with their adult friends. And normally you dont grow into such a friendship but in the rare case you do, it’s not when she is 15 but maybe 20 or 25.

Last but not least, Rin is not a character to the audience the same way Kagome or Sango are. Why? Because she was never shown as an adult or 3 Dimensional character to the audience. We know her as a child who wants to be with her trusted group. She is naive, but tough and doesnt have any motivation or drive on her own outside her group. Like every child she clung to the adults around her and her world outside of this group was nonexisting. Kagome wanted to be successful in school, Sango was a demon hunter and wanted to find her brother. Those are motivations and traits that dont circle around the love interest. Rin never had those because she was not developed to that point. Because she was a child and her entire existence was to develop Sesshomaru and to perhaps give the viewer a character to simply adore. What we see is of her: Mistreated child, -> Dead child -> Child being looked after and healing, -> Child not being homeless anymore -> ????? -> Teenager getting knocked up, pumping out main characters and then getting yeeted into a tree.

This is not the way you treat a beloved character. There is no dignity to her character. “But she is fictional!!1″ Yes she is. But please show me a show that treats its child characters like this without criticizing it.

I would have loved to see her grow as her own person. Go on her own adventures or learning a craft or developing meaningful bonds with other characters her age. Forming ideas that dont revolve around Sesshomaru alone. You know her being 3 Dimentional and not just there to pump out main characters. And if she then with 20 or 25 met Sesshomaru again and thought he was the hottest shit, I would have been fine with it. Not happy but fine. But in the little time we saw her as ‘not a child’, she still behaved the way she did before.

#anti sessrin

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letterboxd · 4 years

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Pure Verhoeven.

Writer and director Jeffrey McHale talks to Dominic Corry about his new documentary You Don’t Nomi—an examination of the cult surrounding Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 “masterpiece of shit”, Showgirls—and recommends a few campy sequels to watch afterwards.

Few films have enjoyed as interesting a post-release existence as Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 film Showgirls. A classic “blank check” movie—that is, a film made with unnatural freedom thanks to a director’s prior success—Verhoeven and controversial screenwriter Joe Eszterhas attempted to build on the success of their 1992 smash Basic Instinct by upping the on-screen sauce in a riff on All About Eve, set in the “high-stakes” world of Las Vegas striptease.

Elizabeth Berkley, at the time still defined by her performance as the (mostly) virtuous Jessie in the Saturday-morning teen sitcom Saved By The Bell, led the film as Nomi Malone, a young woman who arrives in Vegas, gets work stripping in a low-rent club, then ascends to the sought-after position of lead showgirl in a big casino’s “classy” choreographed striptease show, replacing the previous star Cristal Conners (Gina Gershon).

Proudly sporting the otherwise box-office-neutering NC17 rating, Showgirls was marketed as a serious adult drama about ambition and the price of success. It was not received as such, instead met with huge amounts of ridicule by audiences and critics alike. Pick a Letterboxd review at random, and you get, for example, “Beautiful direction, so if you put it on mute, it’d probably be great. But nearly every actor is sorely miscast and the script is the hottest garbage.”

Poor Berkley received a lot of the blame, and although she continued to work, the venomous (and often misogynistic) critiques hindered her career as a big-screen leading lady.

Then something funny happened—the film was re-evaluated as a camp classic, driven largely by the queer community, who embraced its over-the-top ridiculousness. The cult has grown considerably over the years, expanding into midnight screenings and even live stage adaptations. Subsequent DVD releases have leaned into the perception by offering commentary tracks that acknowledge the movie’s glorious failings.

Showgirls’ continued presence in the culture has even seen it experience something of an artistic redemption. Its perception is now well beyond that of being simply a camp classic that is so fun because it’s so bad—it’s a genuine cultural touchstone that tells us a lot about how audiences judge films featuring overt sexuality. Indeed, among the many ironies associated with the film is that it was partially designed to highlight American sexual hypocrisy, then failed spectacularly in a manner that effectively highlighted American sexual hypocrisy.

Kyle MacLachlan and Elizabeth Berkley in ‘Showgirls’.

A brief survey of Letterboxd reviews finds plenty of fans. In a half-star review alongside the exhortation to “please for the love of God watch Showgirls”, Letterboxd member Jesse writes: “There shouldn’t be any shame in liking something you know is bad, I don’t have to try and re-codify Showgirls as a secretly good classic just because of how amazing it is. It truly deserves its cult following.” Jesse makes particular mention of the infamous swimming pool sequence, a scene “so unsexy… that it achieves camp euphoria, a pure moment of enlightened cheese that needs to be seen to be believed”.

“‘So bad it’s good’ it may be for some but I happen to be among the camp that thinks Showgirls is genuine good: a misunderstood work brimming with brilliance,” writes Jaime Rebenal, while Matt Lynch argues that it’s often mistaken for “a satire of American greed and attendant dreams of stardom, when its true target is the apparatus that sells those dreams to an endlessly returning audience of narcissistic suckers.”

Or, as Joe puts it, “The Rosetta Stone for understanding this entire movie (if not life itself) is the shot of Elizabeth Berkley angrily slamming a ketchup bottle on the table and causing a bright red stream of ketchup to come flying out.”

Jeffrey McHale’s ridiculously entertaining new documentary You Don’t Nomi looks at the cult of Showgirls from a multitude of angles, including the evolving critical and cultural perception of the film, how Verhoeven’s characterization of his intentions have changed over the years, the significance of the film within the LGBTQIA+ community, and how Berkley eventually emerged from the whole affair as something of a hero.

McHale makes fantastic use of footage from Verhoeven’s killer filmography to emphasize his points, alongside interviews with a variety of cultural critics. He tells the story of April Kidwell, the writer, producer and star of I, Nomi, a one-woman musical comedy about the life of Nomi Malone before and after her adventures in Showgirls. Kidwell is a fascinating presence in the film, and not just because she also played Nomi in the stage show Showgirls: The Musical! and Berkley’s character in the Saved By The Bell-inspired Bayside: The Musical!.

The twentieth-anniversary ‘Showgirls’ screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

The documentary features illuminating footage from the twentieth-anniversary screening of Showgirls at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, an event that Berkley attended, where she received a rapturous response from the thousands of fans present.

McHale attended that screening, and told Letterboxd that that’s where his deeper interest in the film was properly sparked.

Jeffrey McHale: I had seen it already, ten years prior to that, but that was the first time I saw it with an audience. I think that was, officially, the largest screening of Showgirls that has happened. There were 4,000 people there. I’m not from LA, but I’ve lived in LA for the last eight years, and I’ve gone to a couple of those Hollywood Forever screenings and I don’t think anyone in our group anticipated Elizabeth Berkley showing up. It felt epic. It was a historic moment in the afterlife of Showgirls.

I didn’t walk away [from that screening] thinking ‘I should make a documentary’, but I was mostly interested in kind of finding out more. You’re always curious if you can figure anything out about the intentions or what the filmmakers had in mind, so that’s what inspired me to start consuming everything that had been written about Showgirls. I read the Adam Layman book, the book of poems, [lots of] articles, and I was just scouring the internet for reviews. And what I found was this wide range of really interesting opinions, theories and people’s relationships with the film. Everything was just so different. You set out looking for answers, and it’s not about getting the answer for it, it’s about this ever-evolving relationship that we have with this piece of art.

At what point did you come to realize the degree to which the queer community had embraced this film? As a gay man myself, it feels like it’s part of the fabric of our culture, ’90s culture. The poet Jeffrey Conway, when I interviewed him, he said it perfectly: it’s just like in your DNA, you know? It appeals to the queer culture community, you cannot explain it but you’re just kind of drawn to it. I thought that was an interesting way of describing the experience of watching something like that.

This film appears to only be widening the cult of Showgirls. It’s been a really fun project, and I’ve been blown away by the response it’s getting. I didn’t really know what the end result would be when I started. I knew that whatever you make, there will be a very vocal and excited and enthusiastic fan base. I’ve been very surprised by the broad appeal. These are people who have never seen Showgirls and are really drawn to it, and find the message and the story, the culture, and the way that we consume media, the way that we critically talk about things. It’s been a wild ride.

The twentieth-anniversary ‘Showgirls’ screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

You point out the hypocrisy of how audiences are willing to see Verhoeven’s films as satirical when it comes to the violence (as with Robocop and Starship Troopers), but when it comes to the sex, the audience gets prudish. Paul and Joe talked about that on a lot of their press junket interviews: America’s fine with the violence and the violence gets you rated PG13, but then you have something as human as sex, then that’s shunned and discouraged. It was interesting going back and just looking at the way in which Elizabeth was criticized. And the way that Paul was criticized. Just the way she was ripped apart for her physical features and all that, it was disgusting. I think we’ve evolved a little bit further in that sense. I don’t think that you’d see a Gene Siskel review, the way that he describes her face, those details, like comparing which one was hotter, it was like: this is what we’re reviewing? Actresses’ physical attributes? It was disgusting. I think we’ve gotten better in that sense.

How did you encounter April Kidwell? She brought a lot to the film. She was one of the later additions to the project, after we’d started reaching out to people. I knew that she was in the musical. Then I found out that she had also done Saved By The Bell. It was really interesting that she played two Elizabeth Berkley characters, to get her opinion on it. From the very first phone call, she was just so open. I was blown away by her story and how vulnerable she was, just putting herself out there. She’s been very open about her experience and the way that it was therapeutic for her. She’s the heart and soul of Nomi. She’s somebody who went through something awful, disgusting, terrible, and now she’s found power and strength, within—specifically—the character. The act of performing Nomi on stage was therapeutic for her. It was an experience that no other person I spoke with had. She’s amazing.

Gina Gershon in ’Showgirls’.

I loved how you used footage from the other Verhoeven films to provide additional commentary. How did you come to adopt that filmmaking strategy? When I went in, I didn’t how much of that would play into the narrative. I wasn’t familiar with his earlier work. But when I started to go back and watched all of his Dutch films, I was surprised by how all the dots, everything just felt like it was connecting. All these motifs and scenes and shots. And how repetitively these things popped up. So I wanted a visual way, to kind of make it a subplot, where the characters were interacting with Showgirls, where their experience paralleled the contributors, so that was a way to visually tie it back to the argument that people like to think Showgirls sits by itself outside of all of Paul’s other films, like Starship Troopers, Robocop and Total Recall, but tying it into the argument that it’s Verhoeven at his purest, [which is what] I like to think of Showgirls as.

I’m a huge Verhoeven nut and I’d always been disturbed by the dog food subplot in Spetters [in which a takeout van sells croquettes made with jelly-meat], but I had never drawn the connection to Showgirls [in which Cristal and Nomi bond over both having once been so poor that they had to survive on dog food]. I’d also never noticed how much vomiting is a recurring motif for him. Yeah! Women vomiting! It was always women that were throwing up, which is just bizarre. The doggy chow thing I thought was interesting because [initially] I felt like ‘oh this is a Joe Eszterhas bit’, something from his script that’s just bizarre and weird, but then when I saw that thread from Spetters, it was just like ‘oh my god, you’ve done the whole eating doggy chow thing before’.

I’ve always been interested in Verhoeven’s evolving description of the film himself; how he has recast history a bit to say he was in on the joke, but the funniest thing I thought he ever said about it was that he regretted not putting a serial killer plot in Showgirls, because that would’ve distracted the Americans. Had you heard that? I have yes. I think Adam Layman mentioned that. [Verhoeven]’s like: “Basic Instinct was enough of a thriller that people could watch it.” That was something I’d heard a couple of times before. I think he’d actually been considering it, like a death or a murder or something.

Thanks for making your list of Campy Sequels To Watch After Showgirls. Talk us through them. What did you make of Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven? I’ve only seen clips. It’s a film that might be better in small doses, not one whole thing, because I think it’s, like, two and half hours long. I think it took me a couple of viewings to get through the whole thing. But it’s interesting because [filmmaker] Rena Riffel plays Penny/Hope in Showgirls. She wrote it, directed it and starred in it, and it follows her character playing off Nomi’s leaving Vegas to go to Hollywood. [Riffel] was in Mulholland Drive, so part of me thinks she was trying to do a David Lynch thing. Or a John Waters thing. She’s definitely very aware of the afterlife and the over-the-top campiness of it. So there’s all these little Easter eggs where she’s drawing comparisons to Showgirls. But it’s super low budget, and she kind of embraces that. I would recommend it to hard core fans of Showgirls; it’s definitely not a movie for everybody.

‘Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven’, featuring writer-director Rena Riffel (right) as Penny.

Grease 2 ‘Cool Rider’—amazing. Christmas-tree dress. I like that the gender roles were flipped. And it’s a fun movie. It’s a fun movie that I always enjoyed as kid.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch That was another one that I saw late. And I mean, the musical number, Hulk Hogan, just knowing that the director went all out and didn’t hold anything back. I mean—Vegetable Gremlin? There are just so many things it in that are bizarre, and it didn’t follow the traditional 80s/90s sequel formula.

Beyond The Valley of the Dolls Yeah. You know that Roger Ebert wrote that, right? That’s another one that’s probably closer to Showgirls 2 in the Russ Meyer aesthetic of it. But these are all films that had similar [critical trajectories]—it was panned when it came out but got [a] second life. I mean not to the scale that Showgirls has, but I think people revisit it and embrace it for what it

Magic Mike XXL It feels like they’re more in on the joke, and I kind of found it more enjoyable than the first one, just because it didn’t seem like it was taking itself so seriously. And Jada Pinkett Smith is kind of playing the Matthew McConaughey role. It’s The Big Chill meets Chippendales. And as far as the dance numbers go, it feels a lot campier and they’re a little bit more aware of what’s happening. Not as much as like a failed-seriousness kind of camp, but there’s something going on there.

Final question. Showgirls: good or bad? I call it a masterpiece of shit.

‘You Don’t Nomi’ is available to stream or rent on digital and VOD services.

#showgirls #showgirls 2 penny's from heaven #paul verhoeven #joe ezsterhas #camp classics #lgbtqia #queer cinema #elizabeth berkley #jeffrey mchale #letterboxd

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biofunmy · 4 years

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The best TV of the decade? It’s a lot to sort out.

Impossible, really — and, at first pass, my picks for best shows of the 2010s wouldn’t look much different from most other critics’ lists: “Breaking Bad,” “The Americans,” “Game of Thrones,” “Twin Peaks: The Return,” “Veep,” “The Good Wife,” “Transparent,” “Atlanta,” “Fargo,” “The Crown” — that’s 10, right? Hit “send” and let’s get on with life.

But perhaps there’s another way to approach this stretch of much-too-much TV, and instead categorize the shared qualities that separated the decade’s very best shows from the heap of mediocre ones. That way, we can talk about this extraordinary period of scripted dramas and comedies without starting one last argument about where they rank.

I know readers only have time anymore to read lists, but bear with me. Here are the best kinds of shows we watched over the last 10 years. Many of them belong to more than one category — a sign of their greatness.

Anxiety-makers

These would be your nail-biters, seen mainly on prestige cable, often on Sunday nights.

Why we gorge on these cliffhanging, often upsetting dramas on the night we most need to rest up for the week ahead, I’ll never know, but we went to bed desperate over characters and story lines we couldn’t control: In AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” probably the decade’s finest work of story engineering and execution (and yes, I’m aware it premiered in 2008), when will Hank Schrader (or Skyler White) finally catch on that Walter White is the meth kingpin of New Mexico? Some of those close calls (the train episode!) and slow-building conflicts were almost too hard to take.

The decade’s other great adrenaline-producer, FX’s “The Americans,” aired on Wednesday nights, where the panic attacks seemed more manageable. How long would it take FBI agent Stan Beeman to figure out that his friendly neighbors, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, were deeply embedded KGB spies? How much does Paige know? Will they outlast the Cold War? Showtime’s “Homeland,” meanwhile, neatly bundled our post-9/11 anxieties with the mental problems of a CIA agent who thought she could save the world.

These are but three shows that gave America’s TV addicts a strong case of the jitters. Others tried and sometimes came close. I started out the decade worrying way too much about Rick and the other doomed survivors of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” (until I gave up on them entirely a few years ago), but the show’s success is notable for its stress-inducement, which was so strong that the network started an aftershow, “Talking Dead,” to help audiences cope with the latest gory developments.

Immersive portraits

These were some of my favorite shows, broadly defined by the word “dramedy” (because they were sometimes intensely funny), but better described as character studies, portraiture — of characters I’ll never forget: Amy Jellicoe in HBO’s “Enlightened,” followed by Hannah Horvath in “Girls.”

Many shows in this category can in some ways be regarded as selfies. Louis C.K., who quickly became persona-non-grata, nevertheless triumphed with “Louie,” which made it possible for similar shows to act as a mirror that not only reveals a personal nature, but a universal quality that potentially can be shared by the audience. I’m thinking here of Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” (FX), Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” (Netflix), Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” (along with “Catastrophe”) and Pamela Adlon’s “Better Things” (FX).

This genre also, at long last, helped television achieve the diversity it had for too long failed to produce. Issa Rae’s “Insecure” (HBO) is a triumph in the way it both inhabits its creator’s viewpoint as millennial black woman, yet welcomes viewers of any sort.

To that list add Hulu’s “Ramy” and “Pen15,” HBO’s “Looking” and Comedy Central’s “Broad City” — any show where a viewer potentially discovers someone unlike themselves: different age, different background, different race. Or, more importantly, a viewer at long last sees themselves in the main character.

Washington certainly saw its uglier self in Armando Iannucci’s gloriously foul-mouthed “Veep” (HBO), the true definition of comic relief and on-point satire at a time when politics grew unfathomably absurd.

Metaphorical profundity

The best dramas in the 2010s reflected a larger message about the society that watched them — sometimes obliquely, sometimes bluntly. Despite its notably weakened final season, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” has proper claim, I think, to be deemed the show of the decade, but not just because it grew so popular. It’s because how much of it seemed to eerily echo our surroundings: Climate change (and denial of it); shocking acts of violence; widespread social collapse; galling politics; extreme disparities in class and wealth; weapons of mass destruction . . . I could go on.

Timing is everything. Hulu took a 1985 dystopian novel — Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — revved it up and released it just as the Trump administration began detaining, locking up and banning immigrants, appointed conservative judges and looked the other way at nationalist fervor. The metaphor there was almost too applicable; fortunately, the show was strong enough to withstand the hype.

Viewers learned how to find meaning in just about any show — the betters ones made it more compelling: AMC’s “Mad Men” was a beguiling search for the soul of the 20th century; CBS’s “The Good Wife” was a wicked running commentary on politics, technology and modern relationships; NBC’s “This Is Us” was (and still is) a fascinating rumination on the essence of what makes a family. (Note to all you Ancestry genealogy nuts: It’s not just DNA.)

Happy-snarky-sweet

Certain comedies just make us feel better (and also sharper, wittier — empowered, even) no matter how many times we re-watch old episodes. It’s in the camaraderie aspect, the life lessons, the archetypal arrangements, the snarkiness glossed over by group cohesion. It’s a continuation of what began in the best multicamera, studio-audience, ersatz-family sitcoms (“Cheers,” “Seinfeld”), rejiggered for a wired generation. Most of them aired on NBC: “Parks and Recreation,” “30 Rock,” “Community,” “The Office,” “The Good Place,” “Superstore” — now joined by “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” A few others aired on other networks, giving viewers a similar satisfaction: “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS; “Modern Family,”“Happy Endings,” “Cougar Town” and “Black-ish” on ABC.

Transformative tellings

In addition to finding new narrative styles and (quite belatedly) focusing on overlooked demographics, TV turned out to be an excellent venue for recasting an old story from a fresh perspective or enlightened distance.

I’m thinking here of FX’s “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” a compelling departure from the way we popularly regarded that murder trial. It inspired others to dramatize previous events with a corrective, even courageous new viewpoint — such as Netflix’s “When They See Us,” about the unjustly imprisoned teens who were wrongly coerced into confessing to a 1989 Central Park attack on a female jogger.

Crime wasn’t the only subject in need of a remix. Both “Downton Abbey” (PBS) and “The Crown” (Netflix) succeeded because of the way they re-examine extreme privilege, without preventing us from enjoying the luxurious roll in it.

Some shows were revelatory in more subtle ways: Jill Soloway’s “Transparent” (Amazon Prime) masterfully wove a woman’s journey with the entirety of modern American Judaism, enlightening its audience to more than just the trans experience. And Showtime’s “The Affair” played with the very nature of truth, telling the story of marital infidelity from competing — and crucially different — perspectives.

Impossible puzzles and true art

If the decade in TV will be remembered for anything, it will likely be the complexity of some shows. The weirdness. The unexpected swerves. It turned its viewers into perpetual puzzle-solvers and conspiracy theorists. After beginning the decade with an unsatisfying wrap-up of ABC’s “Lost,” co-creator Damon Lindelof returned on HBO with a confounding take on “The Leftovers,” finally mastering the balance between befuddlement and momentum with “Watchmen.”

There are, finally, two standouts — and they challenged my ceaseless harangue about reboots. One was Noah Hawley’s expanded and wholly reimagined take for FX on “Fargo,” a Midwestern crime saga first seen in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 film classic.

The other was David Lynch’s long-delayed but staggeringly beautiful sequel to his 1990 TV sensation “Twin Peaks.” Critics argued, somewhat pointlessly, whether “Twin Peaks: The Return” (Showtime) was a very long film or a strangely protracted TV series.

I can settle that: It was nothing short of pure art — unexpected, absolutely original and layered with deep, trippy meaning. Of all the TV I slogged through in the 2010s, it’s the show I most look forward to someday watching again.

Sahred From Source link Entertainment

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chyna9 · 5 years

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You Can Call Her Joanie: Wrestling’s Fine Chyna

Even if you’ve not yet fallen under the spell of the sports entertainment juggernaut known as the World Wrestling Federation®, odds are still good that you’ve encountered its raven-haired female superstar Chyna. In the past few years, the sinewy seductress has surfaced on talk shows and sitcoms, at award ceremonies and at the newsstand. She even hosts her own Chyna Fitness video, if you’re optimistic enough to think that anything but a miracle could help the rest of us look like that.

But this is undeniably Joanie Laurer, the intelligent, introspective, 30-year-old alter ego of the smack-talking, manhandling wrestler, taking a seat beside me in the empty auditorium of Milwaukee’s Bradley Center a few hours before a packed house will witness a live performance of TNN’s Raw Is War. And Joanie Laurer is not who you might expect. There is no arguing that that body is an anatomical masterpiece, but in person the woman doesn’t seem so scary. Instead you notice perfect teeth, flawless skin and gray-green eyes freshly enhanced by the WWF’s makeup crew. And she is supremely comfortable publicly setting her onscreen persona aside.

“Actually I prefer it, because that’s who I am,” Laurer says. “There are identity crises for the fans and [also] amongst the talent, I think. There are some people that put themselves in a certain position where they feel that if they break character too much, that will affect the person who is going to buy the next Pay-Per-View to see what happens to them — and that affects them financially and professionally. It’s all intertwined, and so sometimes that line is very difficult to break. For me it’s a choice I made ahead of time. I can’t live my life like that. I have to be separate.”

Feeling at home in her own skin is a new sensation for Laurer. She was raised in Rochester, New York, one of three siblings who endured horrific neglect and abuse at the hands of troubled parents. Though she excelled at academics, earning a U.N. scholarship to Spain as a teen and blazing through college in less than three years, the youngest Laurer did not aspire to the workaday world. She dabbled in a host of oddball occupations that included fronting a band, performing singing telegrams, working for a telephone sex hotline and belly dancing. If it got her some attention, she was willing to give it a go.

“Having my childhood be that way gave me a tremendous drive,” says Laurer. “I felt that I had a lot to prove and I was starving for attention and I did what I had to do to be a part of the spotlight. The question that always really pops in my mind is why my sister never really felt that way or why my brother never really felt that way — why it was so necessary for me to become successful in the entertainment field. To really be unique and set apart from everyone else instead of blending in. Whereas my brother and my sister really craved normality in a family setting, I craved completely the opposite.”

Still, the realization that she was getting nowhere fast led Laurer back to her sister’s New Hampshire home, where she found a job selling beepers and haunted the gym. Rebuffed both as an actress and as a fitness competitor for being too “hard,” Laurer refused to give up on finding a way to combine her impressive physique and desire to perform. She wound up at the wrestling school of legendary grappler Walter “Killer” Kowalski, where her fearlessness and quick-study skills caught the eye of alumnus Paul Levesque, who was making a name for himself as the WWF’s Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Along with the federation’s crown prince, Shane McMahon, Levesque championed Laurer’s 1998 debut in the sports entertainment big leagues. She was given a deceptively dainty moniker and the role of buffed-up bully amid the blond, busty china dolls in the women’s locker room — and in no time, Laurer created a one-woman dynasty, making Chyna a flirtatious femme fatale who could also hold her own against the men in the wrestling ring. She’s even the first woman in WWF history to earn the league’s coveted Intercontinental title.

And she knows what you might be thinking about that. To the folks who dismiss pro wrestling as a script-driven hoax, Chyna offers a refreshingly no-nonsense response. “Yeah, what we do is ‘fake,’” she says, “but it’s like any job position. It’s like someone telling you ‘I’m going to give you this title and you have to be credible in that title, and make all the fans believe that you can hold that title and you can fight these guys who want the title from you. And you can be a spokesperson for the company and do all these interviews and talk shows and be able to represent the company on that level.’ It was a reward to me. Our company has levels just like any other job.”

With success in the WWF securely in her grasp, Laurer felt compelled to exorcise some personal demons as zealously as she exercised her body. She underwent a few cosmetic surgeries, for which she makes no apology. “When you have a very fit or maybe muscular woman out there, they’re portrayed one way,” she muses. “So you either have the ultrafeminine woman who’s the sex kitten, or you have this woman who, if she has force or opinion or a fit body type, all of a sudden she is cast as a very butch, hard he-man. And it’s so opposite of what I am! I am a lady with muscle. I had a harder body and I needed some boobs to make me more feminine just like any other woman out there. Do I condone a 16-year-old going out there and getting a pair of breasts because she wants hers to be as big as her friends’, ’cause the guys are looking at them? Absolutely not!”

And with the WWF’s blessing, Laurer revisited the entertainment industry, which had previously labeled her too tough for TV. This time she was welcomed with open arms, acing a recurring role on NBC’s 3rd Rock From The Sun and becoming the darling of the talk- and award-show circuits. And with her proud, hard body on its November 2000 cover, Playboy enjoyed its best-selling issue in more than a decade. “All the things that were considered to be extreme negatives at one point in my life have now overturned and are these really unique positivities,” Laurer points out. “So I appreciate that!”

In January, Laurer unveiled her autobiography If They Only Knew, a tell-all she hopes will help wrestling fans and detractors alike get to know the woman behind the diva. The book unflinchingly addresses her difficult early years and the struggle to accept her body and herself. But it also allows Laurer to have some fun, entertaining readers with her love of all things girlie, her future aspirations and her personal relationships with other WWF superstars. She fully expects her parents to try to cash in on the book’s success with the help of unscrupulous media sorts, but she prefers to focus her energies on getting the book made into a film. With typical drive, Laurer would be perfectly willing to take on roles on both sides of the camera.

“Being able to do something like that would be an incredible learning process,” she says, “to learn about the movie industry … what really goes into directing and producing. I’ve been on the opposite end, but I’ve never been in the director’s chair.”

There’s one more pending film project on which she has her eye — costarring with Arnold in the next sequel to The Terminator. “Three years ago people used to say to me, ‘Describe the character of Chyna,’ and I used to go, ‘Well I think that Chyna is the Wonder Woman 2000 and she is the Terminator 3.’ And then a couple years later you have this role of a female Terminator coming along and I thought ‘I wanna do that!’ Because there’d be nobody else who’d be as qualified as me. And I believe that. I think there has been a real female action hero — a credible female action hero — that we’re missing out there!”

For now, the credible female wrestler has found a happy home under the auspices of the World Wrestling Federation. “We’re now WWF Entertainment,” she says, “and with the WWF, I’ve done my book. With the WWF, I’ve done my video. And I don’t see why, with the WWF, I can’t do movies and then come right back here and keep doing what I do. I think that I am one of the very few people in this company that has an immense crossover ability. I don’t know exactly what I am going to do in the next couple years, but I know really I am either in the middle or I’m just getting started!”

#interviews

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tartantardis · 5 years

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Tony Osoba - third time unlucky

(This interview originally appeared in the Daily Record on 4 October 2014, ahead of the broadcast of Kill The Moon. This is the full interview text - less than half of it appeared in print)

HE’S BEEN exterminated by a Dalek, frozen to death by a space criminal, and now Scots actor Tony Osoba is heading for the moon.

Glaswegian Tony, 67, is appearing in this Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who, Kill The Moon, in which he has his third encounter with the Time Lord.

He first appeared in the cult TV series in 1979’s Destiny of the Daleks with Tom Baker, then returned opposite Scot Sylvester McCoy in 1987’s Dragonfire, and now chalks up his third role opposite Peter Capaldi.

Although tight-lipped about his fate in this weekend’s adventure, Tony said: “There’s a huge difference in the production values, and what you can do with modern technology is light years ahead of what was available when I did Destiny of the Daleks and Dragonfire. My first one was in 1979, and we could only dream of the technology they have now.

“What they’ve done over the years is retain the essence of the Doctor’s stories, but it still feels like the same Doctor Who, even though it’s for the 21st century. They’ve retained it, from Christopher Eccleston onwards, that’s part of the success of it.

“One of the common themes throughout all the Doctor Whos I worked on was the bon homie and the good humour - it was all very enjoyable and professional on set.

“I’ve got happy memories all round - yes, we were under pressure, and time is always a major factor on these, but you get the job done.”

Tony was particularly delighted to becoming back to the show. He said: “It’s my third Doctor Who, and the third Doctor I’ve worked with.

“The fact the BBC brought it back was all credit to them. It seemed to me that they made a decision to cancel it as they thought it had had its time. Bringing it back was a bit of a gamble, with a budget bigger than it ever was - and it’s worked."

The actor was particularly pleased to work with fellow Scot Peter Capaldi.

Tony explained: “Doctors have always been thoughtful, but with Peter - and I imagine it’s a deliberate decision - they’ve gone back to the essence of the classic Doctors, which he does very well.

“From what I’ve seen of the episodes so far, there’s a kind of slow revival going on. There’s several ways of doing it with and Peter’s character is somewhere between the old and the new. You find out more and more about him each week.

“There’s a hidden depth to Peter’s character that’s still to come out, and that’s part of the classic Doctors. He’s a wonderful actor, and he’s got the essence just right.

“I worked with Peter a long time ago, but I hadn’t seen him for some time, so it was great to see him again.

“The whole crew were superb and it was a wonderfully happy experience to work on the show again.

“On many long-running series, when you come in as a guest actor, everyone else knows what they are doing and they get on with it - you play your part and off you go. On some, they can be very welcoming,, which is how it was on Doctor Who - it was a joy from start to finish, a hugely enjoyable experience with the cast and crew.

“On your last day, you really do feel sad that it’s over. It was a wonderful job.” When shooting Destiny of the Daleks, Tony had the joys of location work in 1979.

He laughed: “Most actors enjoy going on location - when we did Destiny of the Daleks, it was in a big sandpit near Poole, and the weather wasn’t great. It was cold and a big damp.

“The problem was, the character I was playing, Lan, was wearing a pristine white costume - along with Peter Straker and Suzanne Danielle. If someone slipped and fell, you wouldn’t get much sympathy! It was very difficult, as you didn’t want to get marks on your costume for continuity reasons - you couldn’t do one scene with a dirty elbow, if you’d already shot a later one when it was clean. You were worried about leaning on anything or sitting down, because you had to keep this skin-tight costume clean - there were all these practical issues!

“I’m told by the fans that I was the only person to be shot dead by a Dalek, and then came back to life, which Lan did. Then someone told me David Tennant had been shot, and he came back too. Doctors don’t count - they’ve got a get out of jail free card!”

Although he has appeared in three Doctor Who stories, Tony is best known for his role as Jim 'Jock' McClaren in the popular 1970s British sitcom Porridge - and its sequel Going Straight.

He said: “Porridge was another wonderful programme, hugely successful and had probably the best loved British comedy actor/performer of the last 50 years, in Ronnie Barker.

“It was so beautifully written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, as the idea you are going to set a comedy in a prison isn’t immediately appealing and you wonder where the opportunities for humour are. You need clever writing for that, and they did it.

“You also need to make the viewers sympathetic to people who are criminals and getting one over on the prison officers - the prisoners are there to be punished.

“The audiences probably didn’t even think about the fact they were cheering for the bad guys. It’s such a neat trick to pull it off.”

Tony added: "Doctor Who has a huge fan base, and - as with most actors who appear on the show - I get requests for signed photographs, or fans writing, or approaches in the street. It’s such a precious show to them, for the real fans. People just adore the show and enjoy seeing anyone from it.”

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captainwondyful · 6 years

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Love, Simon at the Box Office

Hello, Tumblr. One of my idiosyncratic fandoms is box office tracking and results. If you’d indulge me for a hot minute, I would like to make a plea for you to go see this in theaters.

The following is a long post about box office numbers, life hacks for cheap tickets, and overall gay crying.

I have seen this film twice in the past 24 Hours, and I’m still struggling to find the exact words to properly describe how it profoundly affected me.

I’m somewhere between:

Love, Simon is a paint-by-numbers rom-com released by a major Hollywood Studio (Fox 2000). Only the lead protagonist is a gay teen. As Peter Travers of Rolling Stone states in his review:

A seemingly ordinary coming-of-age tale that looms large because of its inclusive romantic embrace, Love, Simon wins you over by capturing your heart without pushing too hard for the prize. ... Yes, the plot mechanics tend to lean toward the disappointingly slick and sitcom-ish. But what redeems the film and makes it such an exuberant gift is the sincere joy Berlanti and the actors take in celebrating its protagonist's growing self awareness…. Love, Simon is a John Hughes movie for audiences who just got woke. And for all its attempts not to offend, it's a genuine groundbreaker.

I love this critique. In Love, Simon no one dies, contracts HIV/AIDS, or is the victim of a violent hate crime. The characters face complications and angst -- coming out in 2017 still is a huge undertaking with monumental stakes. Yet in the context of this film, we understand that everything will be okay. The genre makes it safe. The audience knows that the homophobic bullies will get their comeuppance. The friends will make up. The main protagonist will find love.

Love, Simon might not be perfect. It might not be everything to everyone. But it deserves its praise, and we (the LGBTQIA community) deserve to have more films like it, because everyone deserves to escape into indulgent, cotton-candy media where they can see themselves proud and happy. Love, Simon is important; just as films like Black Panther, Girls Trip, Wonder Woman, and A Wrinkle In Time are important.

And we need to financially support it:

Money Makes The World Go Run

The film business is a business first. Movies that don’t make money, don’t get sequels or start trends. So I know, I know, I’m asking for a lot, but we need to embrace capitalism for just a second.

Love, Simon opened to a $11.5M Opening Weekend (OW) from 2,402 theaters.

According to Deadline.com

Love, Simon drew 58% females, 42% males with 59% under 25. The movie over-indexed in the west, Northeast, and Midwest; slightly under-indexed in the Rockies; and under-indexed in the south and southeast. Top 20 markets that over-indexed include LA, NY, SF, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Minneapolis. Top grossing theaters came from LA, NY, SF, Boston, Toronto, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, and San Antonio. Canada repped 5.6% of the weekend’s take.

Tumblr, you are driving this movie. You are going to make it a success. You have the power. We need to get this film to bring in a total domestic box office (DOM) of 50M+

Love, Simon’s budget is between 10M - 17M, plus P&A (Print & Advertising) Marketing Budget. I don’t have the P&A numbers.

There is a general rule of thumb in Hollywood called the 3X Rule. It states that a film is a box office success if it makes 3X its production budget. If a movie costs 50M to make, a 150M box office is a success. This rule is NOT exact, because it does not factor in the Print & Advertising (P&A) budget of the film, or that a movie can do terrible at the box office but still be considered a financial success because of X-factors like merch sales (I’m looking at YOU Pixar’s Cars)

Love, Simon will need 51M to pass the 3X Rule.

It’s not impossible looking at the comps:

Everything, Everything 34.1M OW / 64.6M DOM (1.89X Multiplier)

Paper Towns 32M OW / 85.5M DOM (2.67 Multiplier)

The Fault Is In Our Stars 48M OW / 124M DOM (2.58 Multiplier)

But it won’t happen if we don’t get that multiplier up to a 4X+

Multiplier = The total DOM divided by the OW. So for example:

Justice League (2017) 93.8M OW / 229M DOM = 2.44 Multiplier

The Greatest Showman (2017) 8.8M OW / 169.7M DOM = 19.04 Multiplier

We need to pull another run of legs like The Greatest Showman and keep it keep it theaters until Avengers: Infinity War (April 27, 2018). Once IW shows up, the summer box office season kicks off, and, realistically, the jammed packed release schedule will push Love, Simon out of theaters.

We have Five Weeks - to go see this film, to tell everyone we know to go see this film, and support the cast and crew as much as we can.

The best way to do that is a positive Word of Mouth and Legs.

Word of Mouth: TALK ABOUT THIS FILM. RAVE ABOUT THIS FILM. Post on Twitter, on Facebook, on Tumblr. Get a Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB.com account and post reviews. You can NOT underestimate a good grassroots effort to get the word out.

Legs = Tied to the multiplier. It’s how much a movie makes AFTER the opening weekend. Movies like Justice League are front-loaded; meaning most ticket sales are opening weekend and in the first week. Other movies, like The Greatest Showman, have much stronger legs, where they earn a decent amount every weekend for a large total.

Weekend Drops: The percentage that a movie drops from week to week. For example, Black Panther has had amazing holds with its (as of writing this) 5 Week Run: Weekend 1 242.1M Weekend 2 111.6M (-44.7%) Weekend 3 66.3M (-40.6%) Weekend 4 40.8M (-38.4%) Weekend 5 (26.6M (-34.7%) Even though it’s making less money every week, we can see that Black Panther’s domination over the marketplace is consistent. Solid audience retention is why Black Panther is not dropping many theater screens, despite being out for over a month. This is the same reason why The Greatest Showman (which came out before Christmas) is STILL playing in 700+ theaters. TGS actually had FOUR weekends out of its seventeen where it went UP from previous weekends, and had an average of a -20% week to week drop.

It is CRITICAL to Love, Simon’s success that this weekend only drops between 20% and 30%. Some on the Box Office Forum I’m apart of are speculating that the next week will be CRITICAL to the success and failure of Love, Simon’s domestic box office run.

So, let’s go to the movies!

Cheap Ways to See Films

Going to the movies is expensive. Here are some life hacks for discount tickets

MoviePass

Like Netflix or Spotify, you can sign up with MoviePass, and for $9.99 a month, you can see a movie a day. Yup. A movie a day. It is a steal of a deal and pays for itself after the first month. The only drawback is it takes a couple weeks for the company to send you your MoviePass card. I think it took three weeks to get mine. Still! This is A VALUE. And you can go see Love, Simon once a day for a month for only $9.99

Discount Tuesdays

Most movie theaters offer discount tickets on Tuesdays. You will have to check with your individual theaters, but Tuesdays are the most common day across the US and Canada. Our theater is $5 on Tuesdays.

AT&T Ticket Tuesdays

Do you have AT&T as a mobile carrier? They offer Discount Tuesday Tickets. Buy 1, Get 1 Free. You can read the fine print here

Dealflix.Com

Check Out this site for discount tickets.

Groupon Has A Banner for Discount Tickets

in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, and Washington D.C. In the past, Groupon has also offered discounts on Fandango, MovieTickets.com, and DealFlix gift cards or vouchers.

Student, Seniors (65+), and Military Tickets

Many theaters offer current discounts to these three groups. So check your local theater’s website, grab your grandma, friend in the military, and/or student ID, and head out to Love, Simon.

Group Rates

Often times buying tickets in bulk results in getting a discount. So get 10 or 20 of your friends, and call the theater to see if they offer group rates.

Go To a Matinee!

Remember! The early shows before 4 PM (6 PM at some theaters) are always less!

Wait! I Don’t Live in the US or Canada

You’re going to have a wait a little bit, but PLEASE go see this once it's released. Foreign Box Office is a HUGE part of a film’s success, sometimes it even saves it!

So, Save the Date:

March 22, 2018 - Brazil

March 29, 2018 - Australia

April 6, 2018 - UK, Ireland

May 3, 2018 - Argentina, Singapore,

May 4, 2018 - Finland, Taiwan,

May 9, 2018 - Philippines

May 10, 2018 - Hong Kong

June 14, 2018 - Czech Republic, Netherlands, Slovakia,

June 15, 2018 - Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden

June 21, 2018 - Hungary, Portugal,

June 27, 2018 - France

June 28, 2018 - Germany

June 29, 2018 - South Africa, Spain

August 30, 2018 - Italy

Even if you watch (or have already watched) a CAM online, please still consider seeing this in the theater when it comes out it in your country!

The more we can show Fox/Disney that we are willing to put our money where our mouth is, and go support this movie, the more likely it is that similar films will be made. Hollywood is constantly searching for the next big thing, so if they see a hit or potential trend, they going to try and figure out how to copy it.

I Just Don’t Have the Funds or Means to Get to the Theater

The goal of this post is drive box office success. I get that sometimes you just can’t get to the theater; or, because of the nature of the film, it might not be safe for you to attend. You can STILL help out with Word of Mouth

Fox is checking Social Media. Keep tweeting and posting about how much you love this movie, and how much it means to you. Make sure to use the Hashtag #LoveSimon. Reblog this post so others can get the information. Tell your friends to go, and RAVE about it. Post positive/rave reviews on Amazon, Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDB. All of those things help Love, Simon.

If you’re still here, I know that was a lot, THANK YOU, and I hope you get a chance to enjoy and love this movie.

#movies #Love Simon #box office #signal boost #please reblog #go see this movie

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papermoonloveslucy · 6 years

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BOB HOPE'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH LUCY

September 23, 1989

Produced & Directed by Ellen Brown

Written by Robert L. Mills, Martha Bolton, Jeffrey Barron

Lucille Ball (Archival Footage) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in April 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon, which was not a success and was canceled after just 13 episodes.

TRIBUTES BY

Bob Hope (Himself, Host) was born Lesley Townes Hope in England in 1903. During his extensive career in virtually all forms of media he received five honorary Academy Awards. In 1945 Desi Arnaz was the orchestra leader on Bob Hope’s radio show. Ball and Hope did four films together. He appeared as himself on the season 6 opener of “I Love Lucy.” He did a brief cameo in a 1964 episode of “The Lucy Show.” When Lucille Ball moved to NBC in 1980, Hope appeared on her welcome special. He died in 2003 at age 100.

George Burns (Himself) was born Nathan Birnbaum in New York City in January 1896. He married Gracie Allen in 1926 and the two formed an act (Burns and Allen) that toured in vaudeville. They had their own hit show “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” first on radio then on CBS TV from 1950 to 1958, airing concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” He appeared as himself on “The Lucy Show” (S5;E1) in 1966 as well as doing a cameo on “Lucy and Jack Benny's Biography” (HL S3;E11) in 1970. After Allen’s death in 1964, Burns reinvented himself as a solo act. In 1976 he won an Oscar for playing one of The Sunshine Boys. He was also known for playing the title role in Oh, God! (1978) and its 1984 sequel Oh, God! You Devil. Burns and Ball appeared on many TV variety and award shows together. He died at the age of 100.

Danny Thomas (Himself) was born Amos Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz in 1912. His screen career began in 1947 but he was most famous for appearing on television in the long-running show “Make Room for Daddy” (1953-64), which was shot at Desilu Studios. When the series moved from ABC to CBS in 1957, Thomas and the cast starred in a rare TV cross-over with “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” titled “Lucy Makes Room for Danny.” In return, Lucy and Desi turned up on Thomas’s show. Fifteen years later, Lucy and Danny did yet another cross-over when Lucy Carter of “Here’s Lucy” appeared on “Make Room for Granddaddy.” In addition, Thomas also played an aging artist on a 1973 episode of “Here’s Lucy.” Thomas is fondly remembered for founding St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He is also father to actress Marlo Thomas. He died in 1999.

Betty White (Herself) was born in 1922 and has the longest career of any female entertainer. She is probably best known as Rose Nylund on “The Golden Girls” and Sue Ann Nivens on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Although White and Ball never acted together, the two appeared several times on “Password,” one of Lucy's favorite game shows. It was originally hosted by White's husband, Alan Ludden. She last shared the “Password” panel with Lucy in November 1988, just six months before Ball's death.

Kirk Cameron (Himself) was the star of ABC's hit show “Growing Pains.” He appeared with Lucille Ball on three other Bob Hope specials from 1986 to 1988.

Les Brown and His Band of Renown (Orchestra) were the musical guests on the 1956 “The Bob Hope Chevy Show” that satirized “I Love Lucy” with Hope playing Ricky Ricardo.

John Harlan (Announcer)

ARCHIVE FOOTAGE

Doris Singleton (as Doris from “The Bob Hope Christmas Special” ~ December 9, 1973)

Gary Morton (as Himself from “The Bob Hope Christmas Special” ~ December 9, 1973)

Bobby Jellison (as a Gangster from “The Bob Hope Show” ~September 24, 1962)

Desi Arnaz (as Fred Mertz from “The Bob Hope Chevy Show” ~ October 6, 1956)

Vivian Vance (as Ethel Mertz from “The Bob Hope Chevy Show” ~ October 6, 1956)

William Frawley (as Captain Blystone from “The Bob Hope Chevy Show” ~ October 6, 1956)

Vitto Scotti (as Carlo from The Facts of Life)

Peter Leeds (as Thompson from The Facts of Life)

Joe Ploski (as Man at Drive-In from The Facts of Life)

Mary Jane Saunders (as Martha Jane Smith from Sorrowful Jones)

This special aired on a Saturday evening at 10pm, traditionally a difficult time for television programs. Luckily, its lead-in was the season 5 premiere of the phenomenally successful “The Golden Girls” (also featuring Betty White) which led the evening with a 23.5 share. “Bob Hope's Love Affair With Lucy” came in second, with a respectable 19.3. It was up against College Football on ABC. Because the special was 90 minutes and started on the half hour, its competition on CBS was the last half hour of “Tour of Duty” (season 3 premiere) and the series premiere of “Saturday Night With Connie Chung.”

Because this special aired on NBC, no scenes from any of Lucille Ball's CBS sitcoms (or “Life with Lucy” on ABC) were included. Kirk Cameron was an ABC star, but worked on several of Hope's NBC specials. Although Betty White never acted with Lucille Ball, the pair enjoyed an off-stage friendship. White also was a perfect tie-in to keep “The Golden Girls” fans tuned after the sitcom's season opener. Although Burns and Thomas both worked on screen with Lucy, no clips of their collaborations were used. Also conspicuously missing is Gale Gordon, who was part of Lucille Ball's career since her days on radio.

[For more information about the clips, click on the hyperlinks, where available.]

BOB HOPE

The special opens with a montage of clips of Lucille Ball's entrances on Bob Hope's specials, underscored by the “I Love Lucy Theme.” After a quick commercial break, Bob Hope enters to the sounds of his theme song “Thanks for the Memory.”

Hope: “Lucy handled the media and television like she handled everything else, with grace and style and a richness of color that didn't need any help from the peacock.”

The ‘peacock’ Hope is referring to is the NBC logo. Lucille Ball left CBS for NBC in 1980, but the move resulted in only one TV special (“Lucy Moves To NBC”), one failed pilot (“Bungle Abbey”) and multiple appearances on Bob Hope's specials.

The first clip in the 90-minute tribute is from “The Bob Hope Christmas Special” (December 9, 1973). Ball and Hope play themselves in a sketch about a misunderstanding surrounding an expensive ring he's bought for his wife, but sent to Lucy's home for safe keeping. Naturally, Lucy thinks it's for her. The clip features appearances by long-time Lucy character actress Doris Singleton and Lucy's husband Gary Morton.

DANNY THOMAS

Danny Thomas calls Lucy his 'landlady' because “Make Room for Daddy” was shot at Desilu Studios. He tells a funny anecdote from when Ball appeared on his short-lived sitcom “The Practice” in 1976.

Thomas: “When I worked on her show, she did most of the directing. And when she did my show... she did most of the directing.”

Thomas talks about of their working relationship. He says that despite their great friendship, Lucy would not divulge her age, even to him.

In a voice over, Bob Hope introduces a black and white clip of a sketch from “The Bob Hope Show” (October 24, 1962). In it Lucy plays a District Attorney and Bob a gangster named Bugsy Hope. The 1962 clip edits out a bit that was frighteningly prescient. A spray of gunfire comes through the window and Lucy remarks “Just what I wanted, a Jackie Kennedy hairdo.” Considering the tragic events of November 1963, this clearly could not be aired in 1989. Another change involves music royalties: in the original, Lucy makes her entrance into Bugsy's flat to the tune of David Rose's “The Stripper” (released in 1962) but in 1989 it is replace by a similar sounding piece of music.

Bugsy Hope: “I don't usually go for flatfeet, but the rest of you kind of makes up for it.” DA Lucy: “I don't usually go for hoods, but you could use one.”

In the sketch, Hope makes Lucy laugh and drop character several times, a rarity for Ball.

KIRK CAMERON

Kirk Cameron (who had just turned 18) says that the first time he met Lucille Ball on a May 1987 Bob Hope show at an Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. On a subsequent Hope special, Lucy needed a stand-in to take a pie in the face and chose Cameron. He was unsure if it was an honor or payback for making her wait outside her dressing room to meet him the year before.

Cameron: “I think that I speak for a lot of people my age when I say that I love Lucy.”

The next clip is the satire of “I Love Lucy” featuring the entire original cast (plus Hope and Tommy the trained seal). In “The Bob Hope Chevy Show” (October 6, 1956), Hope introduces the sketch as himself wondering what it would be like if he had married Lucy instead of Desi. It is presented in its original black and white, although it was later colorized for a video release. Not coincidentally, five days earlier the sixth and final season of “I Love Lucy” began airing with “Lucy and Bob Hope” (S6;E1).

GEORGE BURNS

George Burns affectionately recalls how Lucy was in show business 24 hours a day. He says that he was married to a comedienne (Gracie Fields) but she couldn’t have been more different than Lucy.

Burns: “Lucy was all of show business wrapped up in this charming lady.”

He remembers an appearance with Lucy when they sang “Lazy” by Irving Berlin. He sings a few bars. Burns says that he's booked to play the Palladium in London when he turns 100. Although he did live to 100, his health declined at age 98 and this booking never came to pass.

Bob's voice over introduces a couple of scenes from The Facts of Life, a black and white film that Hope and Ball did for United Artists in 1960. In the scene Larry (Hope) and Kitty (Lucy) are on a fishing boat remembering old times when they realized they went to the same high school together. In the second clip, Kitty and Larry realize they can't play cards without their glasses, but they can't kiss with them on either. Finally, Larry and Kitty are kissing at the drive-in when they are spotted by the local dry cleaner. Lucy had just finished playing Lucy Ricardo, with the final episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” airing in April 1960.

BETTY WHITE

To the accompaniment of “Thank You for Being a Friend” Golden Girl Betty White is introduced. She lists three-word TV titles of the '50s, “Our Miss Brooks,” “I Married Joan,” “Life with Elizabeth,” “Father Knows Best,” and “I Love Lucy.” White remembers that she shot her second series “Date With the Angels” at Desilu Studios and that is where she first met Lucy.

White: “I can still see her. Tall and built and she had a navy blue dress on with white polka dots and this hair that made it look like her head was on fire.”

White credits Lucille Ball with filming comedy using the three camera system and a studio audience. White's mother Tess and Lucy's mother Dede were great friends. Betty recalls the last time she saw Lucy, a week before she went into the hospital. She says she can still recall Lucy's deep and abundant laughter that night. White let's the audience know that they shoot “The Golden Girls” at the old Desilu lot.

Bob's voice introduces a clip from the film Fancy Pants (1950) with Bob Hope as Humphrey the butler and Lucy as Agatha, the daughter of the man he works for. This movie was made just before Lucille Ball got pregnant with her daughter Lucie, and before “I Love Lucy” was in development. At the time, Ball was starring on radio in “My Favorite Husband.”

Next is a dramatic scene from Sorrowful Jones, a film Hope and Ball did in 1949. Ball played Gladys and Hope was Sorrowful (aka Humphrey).

A clip from “Happy Birthday, Bob: 50 Stars Salute Your 50 Years with NBC” (May 16, 1988) has Lucy singing “Comedy Ain't No Joke” by Cy Coleman and James Lipton.

This leads directly into Lucy as Sophie Tucker singing “Some of These Days” from “Bob Hope's All Star Comedy Tribute to Vaudeville” (May 25, 1977).

Lucy and Bob sing “I Remember It Well” by Frederick Loewe from “Bob Hope's High-Flying Birthday Extravaganza” (May 25, 1987). The song (originally from the film Gigi) has special lyrics with references to their legendary partnership including Fancy Pants and Facts of Life.

Finally, a clip of Lucy and Bob's last appearance together at the 61st Annual Academy Awards telecast (March 29, 1989). This was also Lucille Ball’s last public appearance.

In his final remarks, Hope works in mentions of two of Lucy's most memorable comedy bits from “I Love Lucy”: “Hollywood at Last!” (S4;E16) and “Lucy's Italian Movie” (S5;E23).

Hope: “Whether her nose caught fire or she was stomping grapes, Lucy got us all to laugh. Thanks Lucille, for making life a ball.”

The closing credits appear over stills of Lucy and Bob on TV, some of which were not included in the special.

This Date in Lucy History – September 23rd

“Mod, Mod Lucy” (HL S1;E1) – September 23, 1974

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bewitching-elizabeth-olsen · 3 years

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Press: Marvel’s Latest Frontier? In ‘WandaVision,’ It’s the Suburbs

Marvel’s first series for Disney+ is part drama, part homage to vintage sitcoms, following the misfit heroes played by Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany to some weird places.

NY TIMES: In the time they have spent playing Marvel heroes together, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany have gotten extremely comfortable with each other. Not even a little misdirected mucus during the making of their new Disney+ series, “WandaVision” — an incident they affectionately describe as “Snotgate” — flustered them for long.

It occurred when their characters — a woman enhanced with psychic powers named Wanda Maximoff (Olsen) and a synthetic android called Vision (Bettany) — shared a kiss in, especially cold weather. And some disagreements remain about the specifics of how it transpired.

“Paul was not in a good mood for me to make a joke about his snot,” Olsen said in a video interview with Bettany last month. “It was my first time ever seeing him get truly defensive about anything.”

Here, Bettany leaned into his camera and replied, sotto voce: “It was her snot. Anyway.”

They agreed that their differences were quickly settled, and now they can laugh about it. “It was over as quickly as it happened,” Bettany said.

Such are the perils of playing a troubled woman and a sophisticated robot who have fallen in love with each other — characters who first met in the 2015 Marvel blockbuster “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” returned for several sequels and now get the chance to carry their own television series when “WandaVision” makes its debut on Jan. 15.

Like its main characters, “WandaVision” is, well, weird. It’s not strictly an action-packed spectacle in the manner of hit movies like “Avengers: Endgame” — it’s a hybrid of drama and comedy that pays faithful homage to vintage sitcoms like “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Bewitched” and “Family Ties.”

Now, through circumstances beyond anyone’s control, “WandaVision” has to carry even more weight. When the pandemic prompted Marvel to reshuffle its release calendar, “WandaVision” became the studio’s first attempt to bring the superhero soap opera of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to an original Disney+ series, in hopes that it will do for its comic-book characters what “The Mandalorian” has done for “Star Wars,” another Disney-owned fantasy franchise.

These are unexpectedly high stakes but, like the love-struck misfits they play, the stars of “WandaVision” see them as reasons to be more understanding of each other, snot and all.

As Olsen explained: “It’s daunting to take these movie-theater characters and put them on a small screen. There’s a lot of firsts that are a little scary as an actor.”

Bettany agreed. “We need to feel safe with each other,” he added, “to do the thing we’re doing.”

Both actors entered the Marvel family in unusual ways. Bettany, a star of films like “A Beautiful Mind” and “Margin Call,” was cast in the first M.C.U. movie, “Iron Man,” to play the voice of Tony Stark’s artificial intelligence system, J.A.R.V.I.S.

“I would turn up for one day’s work and solve everyone’s problems,” Bettany said. “I could go, ‘The bad guys are coming, sir!’ And then they would give me a bag of money, and I would go home. It was lovely.”

Bettany was upgraded to an onscreen role for “Age of Ultron,” which also introduced Olsen (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”) as Wanda. At that time, Olsen said: “I was getting typecast as emotionally struggling young women in small genre films. They were like, let’s put her in a bigger genre film and make her the mentally unhealthy struggling hero.”

Though the spotlight shone brighter on co-stars like Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr., Bettany and Olsen bonded over the strangeness of their enterprise, like a behind-the-scenes debate they observed over whether Vision should have android genitalia. (Mercifully, the answer was no.)

As they went onto films like “Captain America: Civil War,” they found that they shared an appreciation for diligence and preparedness, even on a hectic Marvel set.

At one point on that film, Olsen said, “I asked Paul if he wanted to run lines with me for the next week. And he had his lines memorized for next week. I was like, this is going to be a great working relationship.”

But Vision was seemingly killed in “Avengers: Infinity War,” and the following year, “Endgame” concluded the narrative arcs of major heroes like Iron Man and Captain America.

Marvel was exploring storylines for its next wave of movies when Disney introduced its Disney+ streaming service, with the expectation that Marvel would also provide original content for it.

Kevin Feige, the Marvel Studios president, said that a Disney+ series offered the opportunity to flesh out the relationship between Wanda and Vision that had been only hinted at in the movies.

“The entirety of the love story between Wanda and Vision was basically one shot in ‘Age of Ultron’ where he swoops in to rescue her, they make eye contact and fly away,” Feige said. “Then a bit more in ‘Civil War,’ a bit more in ‘Infinity War,’ but it all goes bad very quickly in that movie.”

In several decades of comics, Vision and Wanda shared a romance that was much more intricate: They dated, married, had two sons, broke up and reconciled. (Also — and here is where it gets messy — Wanda discovered that her sons were actually the missing pieces of a demonic villain, who reabsorbed them; then she lost and regained the memory of her vanished children; and then she vengefully unleashed her powers to rewrite reality itself.)

With “WandaVision,” Feige said that he had wanted to honor the complexity of the title characters and Wanda’s reality-warping abilities but also to leaven the story with tributes to sitcom history.

“I feel like I’ve justified all the time I spent playing with action figures in my backyard,” he said. “All the time I spent watching Nick at Nite and old TV shows, I haven’t justified yet. This show is helping me do that.”

The series finds Wanda and Vision — now somehow alive — residing in suburban bliss, not entirely sure of why they are cycling through various eras of television history and encountering veteran Marvel performers like Kat Dennings (as her “Thor” character, Darcy Lewis) and Randall Park (reprising his “Ant-Man and the Wasp” role of Jimmy Woo) as well as new additions to the roster, like Teyonah Parris (as Monica Rambeau) and Kathryn Hahn (playing a perplexingly nosy neighbor named Agnes).

As with many of the Marvel movies, there is also a central mystery running through “WandaVision,” asking viewers to ponder the ever-changing reality that envelops its romantic leads.

Jac Schaeffer, the head writer of the series, said that the show’s comic exterior was intended to lure its audience into its further layers of intrigue.

“You enter a sitcom episode with the understanding it’s going to make you feel good and it’s all going to be OK at the end,” said Schaeffer, who also worked on “Captain Marvel” and “Black Widow.”

What “WandaVision” adds to this formula, she said, is an element of “creepiness — the idea of shattering that safety in a calculated way.”

Matt Shakman, who directed all nine episodes of “WandaVision,” said that the series ultimately tells a story of “grief and trauma and how we hold onto our hope.”

“Wanda is probably the person who has suffered the most of anyone in the M.C.U.,” he added. “And so the show is always grounded in that. Even though what you see are faithfully recreated television shows, there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye.”

Shakman has previously directed shows like “Game of Thrones,” “Succession” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and was himself a former child actor on TV sitcoms like “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Just the Ten of Us.” Directing “WandaVision,” he said, was “a gloriously schizophrenic job” that some days required orchestrating action sequences on green-screen sets, and some days involved shooting on the same sitcom stages where he once worked.

For these TV tribute sequences, Shakman and his team worked carefully to reproduce the wardrobe and production design of shows like “I Dream of Jeannie” and “The Partridge Family,” using vintage lighting and camera lenses and filming in front of live studio audiences.

Although the “WandaVision” actors were given two weeks of sitcom boot camp before filming started, they did not require much training to get into the spirit of things.

Olsen is, of course, the younger sister of the former “Full House” stars Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen; she appeared in some of their later projects and grew up a fan of shows like “Laverne & Shirley” and movies like “A Very Brady Sequel.”

Bettany said that classic American shows were a regular part of his TV diet when he was growing up in England. He speculated that some of the religious exploration his family undertook in his childhood may have happened “because my mom was watching ‘Little House on the Prairie’ — we were in for a penny, in for a pound.”

Had events unfolded according to Marvel’s earlier plans, the debut of “WandaVision” would have followed the theatrical releases of movies like “Black Widow,” “Eternals” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” as well as the premiere of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” an action-oriented Disney+ series in a more familiar, “Avengers”-like mode.

The pandemic required Marvel to reorganize this rollout, but Feige said that the studio’s carefully planned master narrative, stretched across its films and TV shows, had not been significantly affected.

“If the run we had in 2018 and 2019 had gotten disrupted this way, in the buildup to ‘Endgame,’ it would have been a bigger headache,” he said. “With these projects, it worked well,” he went on, adding that the debut dates for the TV shows were shifted only “by a matter of weeks.”

The creation of “WandaVision” was also affected by the pandemic; its actors left an environment where they could freely mingle with co-workers and returned to one, several months later, where “you finish your scene and you get whisked away into these hermetically sealed bubbles,” Bettany said.

“I had a hard time with that,” Olsen said, her voice hardening in exaggerated anger. “I was like: ‘But I’m talking to the crew! This is for moral support!’”

In that sense, the actors said, perhaps it was fitting that “WandaVision” should reach audiences at this moment, when both its narrative message and its making-of process reflect a human desire to keep going, no matter how unrecognizable the world becomes.

“We’re all experiencing this extreme version of life right now,” Olsen said. But for a time, while she and her colleagues finished their work on the series, “We created this microcosm of humanity where we could communicate and problem-solve together,” she added. “There was something great about getting to come to work and experience that.”

What Marvel has done consistently, for its characters, its cast members and its audience, is “create a home for people who wouldn’t necessarily find each other,” Bettany said.

In the particular case of “WandaVision,” he added, “It’s about a group of people finding each other — people who are really getting their freak on — in a situation where it’s all right to be really different.”

Press: Marvel’s Latest Frontier? In ‘WandaVision,’ It’s the Suburbs was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

#Elizabeth Olsen #Avengers #Scarlet Witch #Avengers Infinity War #Avengers Age of Ultron #Captain America Civil War #Kodachrome #Ingrid Goes West #Godzilla #Sorry For Your loss

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eichy815 · 4 years

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Fall Fusion 2020 (CBS)

Normally during this time of year, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and The CW get ready to unveil their primetime rosters. However, this year will be much different, due to the uncertainty surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic. Virtually all Hollywood productions are currently shut down until it can be determined that they are safe to reopen. As a consequence, most of the fall pilots weren’t able to be completed in time for network executives to screen them ahead of constructing the 2020-21 network television season.

Although the networks will still be doing “upfronts” in May, they won’t be live...and, more pointedly, they will probably be more tentative when it comes to potential calendar dates. After all, we won’t know when series are ready to have their exact premiere dates green-lit until we have a more concrete timeline of when they can go back into production.

While many writing rooms have been able to operate and interact – in preparation for next season – remotely, the on-set production cannot resume until safety precautions are developed. Presumably, these protocols will involve: medical screening and constant testing for all cast and crew members; appropriate sanitization regimes to keep the sets clean; and creative ways to mitigate risk (such as more closed sets, “bottle episodes,” and tapings where studio audiences are absent).

The “bubble shows” for this season are probably more likely to return than they would have been in past traditional seasons, just because they are familiar commodities with infrastructure already in place...and there is obviously a lack of completed pilots for new series that could replace them. These could-go-either-way series include: Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist, Good Girls, Council of Dads, Lincoln Rhyme, Indebted, and Perfect Harmony on NBC; For Life, American Housewife, Emergence, Single Parents, Bless This Mess, Schooled, blackish, mixedish, and The Baker & The Beauty on ABC; All Rise, Bob Hearts Abishola, The Unicorn, Man with a Plan, Broke, Carol’s Second Act, Tommy, MacGyver, Magnum P.I., SEAL Team, and S.W.A.T. on CBS; Katy Keene on The CW; and The Moodys and Outmatched on Fox.

Some new programs have already received a straight-to-series order, whereas others could receive a blind pickup commitment based on their written premises. In addition, I wouldn’t be surprised if some shows are held over until later in 2021, just so the networks have a way to hedge their bets if there was a “second wave” of studio shutdowns due to hypothetical re-infections in late-2020 or early-2021.

Based on this unprecedented state of limbo Hollywood finds itself in, I am constructing a tentative “blueprint” for each broadcast network from the limited information we have. I have constructed their respective schedules in three hypothetical programming “waves” – November/December/January, February/March/April, and May/June/July.

Obviously, any productions are subject to further delay based on extenuating circumstances. Likewise, a series that receives a more limited order of 13, 16, or 18 episodes could see its episode order expanded, if filming circumstances grow more favorable and the specific show performs well upon its return.

(All times are Eastern/Pacific; subtract one hour for the Central/Mountain time zones)

(New shows highlighted in bold)

Featured network for today’s column…

CBS

Sunday

7:00 – 60 Minutes

8:00 – Love Island (late-2020) / Ways & Means (early-2021) / Big Brother 23 (mid-2021)

9:00 – CBS Sunday Night Movie (late-2020) / NCIS: Los Angeles (early-2021 through mid-2021)

10:00 – CBS Sunday Night Movie (late-2020) / S.W.A.T. (early-2021 through mid-2021)

For fall “filler” programming, the newly-resurrected CBS Sunday Night Movie could fill two of the four hours on Sunday. 60 Minutes can continue to thrive in its traditional time slot, and Love Island would be easy and cost-effective enough to be placed in perhaps a modified format.

By January or February, political drama Ways & Means should be ready to fill the time slot previously occupied by God Friended Me. The middle time slot would retain NCIS: Los Angeles, with S.W.A.T. bringing up the rear. Even with scripted programs likely still finishing out their seasons well into June and July of next summer, the twenty-third edition of Big Brother (assuming that Season 22 is able to air sometime later this year) would be set to dislodge Ways & Means (even if the Patrick Dempsey-led newcomer gets a back-order of episodes commissioned).

Monday

8:00 – The Neighborhood (late-2020 through mid-2021)

8:30 – Bob Hearts Abishola (late-2020 through mid-2021)

9:00 – One Day At A Time encores (late-2020) / All Rise (early-2021 through late-2021)

10:00 – 48 Hours (late-2020) / Bull (early-2021 through late-2021)

For fall “filler” programming, Love Island or Big Brother 22 are programs that could fill space, as well as back-to-back episodes of the One Day at a Time remake (which is partially co-owned by TV Land, even though it airs on Pop TV). 48 Hours or any of its ancillary investigative editions would also be a reliable filler-in.

By January or February (or possibly sooner), The Neighborhood and Bob Hearts Abishola are two of the likeliest sitcoms to have stockpiled new episodes after being brought back into production. All Rise and Bull would retain their time slots from last season, even if they’re not ready to debut their newest seasons until sometime after the new year.

Tuesday

8:00 – NCIS (late-2020 through mid-2021)

9:00 – FBI (late-2020 through mid-2021)

10:00 – The Equalizer (late-2020) / FBI: Most Wanted (early-2021 through mid-2021)

Love Island and Big Brother 22 are also possibilities to fill Tuesday nights, in the event that NCIS and FBI aren’t ready to return until November or December. Meanwhile, the star power of Queen Latifah could make The Equalizer one of the first new dramas on CBS’s schedule to have original episodes ready, especially if the rapper’s lead character isn’t dependent on exterior location shoots for her scenes. FBI: Most Wanted would return by January or February, at which point The Equalizer would migrate to a different night if it receives a Back-Nine order.

Wednesday

8:00 – The Amazing Race 32 (late-2020) / Survivor 41 & 42 (early-2021 through mid-2021)

9:00 – Undercover Boss (late-2020) / SEAL Team (early-2021) / Big Brother 23 (mid-2021)

10:00 – Out The Door (late-2020) / NCIS: New Orleans (early-2021) / SEAL Team (mid-2021)

For fall “filler” programming, Season 32 of The Amazing Race (originally slated for next month, but held back due to the postponement of Survivor filming its next two seasons) would be a logical choice to sub into Survivor’s time slot while CBS awaits Season 41 of Survivor to complete its delayed schedule. Undercover Boss should be doable to adapt its format in light of Coronavirus mitigation, while the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced drama Out The Door could launch with lower-maintenance production needs.

If Out the Door receives a Back-Nine order, it would move to a new night (or possibly even be placed on hiatus until the summer). Survivor hopefully can air its forty-first and forty-second seasons almost back-to-back (with Survivor 41 premiering in January or February, and Survivor 42 debuting in the summer). January would see the returns of SEAL Team and NCIS: New Orleans at 9pm and 10pm, respectively. Once Big Brother returns in the Summer of 2021, SEAL Team would move over to 10pm to finish airing any of its remaining episodes, while NCIS: New Orleans could finish out its own season on Thursday nights.

Thursday

8:00 – Young Sheldon (late-2020 through mid-2021)

8:30 – The Unicorn (late-2020 through mid-2021)

9:00 – Mom (late-2020 through mid-2021) / Big Brother 23 (mid-2021)

9:30 – B-Positive (late-2020) / Please Hold For Frankie Wolfe (early-2021) / Big Brother 23 (mid-2021)

10:00 – Evil (late-2020) / Clarice (early-2021) / NCIS: New Orleans (mid-2021)

Following any episodes of Love Island or Big Brother 22 potentially airing in October and November, Young Sheldon, The Unicorn, and Mom would all return for the first 90 minutes of CBS’s Thursday comedy bloc. Relationship comedy B-Positive would get the initial tryout in the post-Mom time slot, with a Back-Nine order possible. Evil would return for its 13-episode second season.

Regardless of whether CBS orders more episodes of B-Positive, the new Julie Bowen sitcom Please Hold For Frankie Wolfe could be a post-Mom midseason replacement. Once Evil wraps up its sophomore season, Clarice (a sequel to Silence of the Lambs, starring Rebecca Breeds) would take over that time slot for 13 more episodes. NCIS: New Orleans would pick up the slack following Clarice’s season finale, shifting here from Wednesday night as Big Brother 23 returns in Summer 2021.

Friday

8:00 – Tough As Nails (late-2020) / MacGyver (early-2021 through mid-2021)

9:00 – The Good Fight (late-2020) / Magnum P.I. (early-2021 through mid-2021)

10:00 – Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone (late-2020) / Blue Bloods (early-2021 through mid-2021)

For fall “filler” programming, another edition of Phil Keoghan’s upcoming reality show Tough as Nails could be commissioned if its Summer 2020 run is successful. CBS could also dip into its “All Access” library, featuring episodes of The Good Fight and The Twilight Zone reboot.

By January or February, the MacGyver / Magnum P.I. / Blue Bloods lineup should be ready to return, although their full seasons may need to extend through June and July due to the overall production delays faced by most returning scripted series.

Of course, new original series (including scripted programming) could be developed throughout the year and added to the schedule in piecemeal fashion. It’s just going to depend on how quickly location shoots and live studio audiences can be reintegrated into productions as commonplace, once again.

Until then, TV shows will have to find creative ways around that...or develop alternative types of programming.

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a34trgv2 · 7 years

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Top 10 Disney Disasters

#10. Renewing Pickle and Peanut: I acknowledge from a business stand point, if a show is popular, it should get another season. Pickle and Peanut, however, is not that popular. Not only have ratings declined since it’s premier, but less and less people are talking about it, and when they do it’s not positive. But apparently, no one at Disney Television give a shit as it’s been renewed for another season. If you thought less people were watching it by the end of Season 1, then no one is going to watch it at the start of Season 2.

#9. Giving up on John Carter: After being in development limbo for over 80 years (I’m not kidding, Hollywood’s been trying to get this character of the ground since the 30s), Disney finally gave John Carter his cinematic debut. Despite under performing at the box office and getting mixed reviews from critics, audiences were very accepting to it and wanted more. However, instead of let’s say attempting to make an animated show based on it like one of their other cult films (Tron) or having the character find new life in video game form, Disney just gave the film rights back to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ estate. Really? After decades of being stuck in development limbo, John Carter is just thrown back in? I know Disney lost money on the film, but they could’ve saved the character from falling into obscurity again by making a tv show. But, that’s reality I guess :/

#8. Ripping Off Ren and Stimpy: I’ve talked about this before, so I’ll keep it brief. Disney is a company that has made a name for themselves in pushing the boundaries of animation and story telling. So they should be more than ashamed of themselves for mooching off the success of their competition instead of making their own original show -.-

#7. Ending Wander Over Yonder: Just, why? About a year ago, Disney decided not to renew Wander Over Yonder. Why? Honestly, I don’t know. I know Craig McCracken said they “felt 2 seasons and 80 cartoons was enough,” but he never explained WHY they felt that. And no, it wasn’t because of the ratings nor was it because Disney didn’t like it. It really does baffle me how Phineas and Ferb got 4 seasons and 222 episodes before getting the axe (not bashing the show, I actually like it, I’m just trying to prove a point) and yet they felt Wander Over Yonder was just a 2 Season show and a 3rd would spoil it. What?!

#6. Canning Potentially Good Sequels: I know the direct-to-video sequels are notoriously unpopular, but that doesn’t mean they’re all without merit. Cinderella 3 told a fairly solid story and had some genuine stakes involved. Tarzan 2 you could argue is just filler, but kid Tarzan does go through a real character arc in this movie. And Return to Neverland is my personal favorite of the bunch and that’s mainly because of Jane. Disney Toons had plans for sequels to Dumbo, Chicken Little, Meet The Robinsons, and Pinocchio among others before John Lasseter shut them all down. I respect his dislike for these films, but I honestly believe some of them could have been more than just run of the mill. Like, more adventures with Pinocchio or The Robinsons; I actually wanted to see a Mulan 3 (Mulan 2 isn’t in my top 10 Disney sequels, but I don’t think it’s that bad). At the very least, these movies could’ve been decent with the right amount of effort, but like with Circle 7, John would like the rest of the world to pretend these ideas never happened.

#5. Bad Timing on Release Dates: Winnie The Pooh, Muppets Most Wanted, The Rescuers Down Under, The Rocketeer and Treasure Planet. You know what these movies have in common? They were all released at the worst times for their respected genres. I’m not a box office analyst (check out Grace Randolph for those statistics; yeah, yeah I know “she’s terrible” “kys” blah blah blah -.-), but last time I checked, you shouldn’t put something as innocent and family friendly as Winnie The Pooh up against something massive like Harrry Potter. Nor should you release a goofy family comedy like the Muppets in the spring if you expected similar results like its predecessor. Also, who’s idea was it to release one of, if not THE best Disney sequel the same week as Home Alone? I don’t know about you, but that’s not very smart if you ask me. Why? Really think about it; this was Disney’s first sequel and it’s set in the desert of Australia. They put in alot of effort to make this an improvement over it’s predecessor; from the animation, to the characters, to the story, even down to the humor. All that effort and yet they decided to release it around the holiday season, as opposed to, I don’t know-SUMMER?! I know no studio is perfect, but there should be no reason why they messed up these release dates so bad.

#4. Sitcom Overload: You know how many sitcom are on Disney Channel right now? 6. And they’re all about preteens or teens going through their everyday lives with wacky hijinks and some character bonding along the way. To be fair though, they are better than the Stupid Sitcoms on Nickelodeon, but the quality of them isn’t the problem. The problem is that there’s so many of them and not enough animation. Like I said earlier, Disney has made a name for themselves in pushing the boundaries of animation and storytelling. So, where on Earth is the animation on television? Answer: Disney XD. The reason why this is bothersome is because when people think of Disney, they think of the animated content first and the live action stuff after. Disney has made some good live action movies and tv shows for sure, but they’re not nearly as remembered as the ones that are animated. As such, the Disney Channel is generally regarded as the Disney Sitcom Channel. Yes, from a business standpoint, sitcoms are profitable, but too many sitcoms can damage you brand as an animation company and in a sense it has. Also, on a minor note, can we change Disney XD back to Toon Disney? I’ve honestly never understood the name change so can we turn it back? No? Worth a shot :/

#3. Controversial Jokes: I know comedy is subjective, but that doesn’t mean joke’s can’t cause an uproar if handled poorly. And boy were these handled in the worst way possible. Making a joke about models barely eating on paper, sounds exactly what you think it sounds like: a joke that inadvertedly sounds like an eating disorder joke. And it was. The joke was from an episode of Shake It Up and while that joke was removed, this wouldn’t be the last time Disney did something like this. Did you know Jessie has a character who eats a glutten free diet and they made an episode revolving around this? No? Because alot of angry parents saw that and Disney was forced to change it or risk getting doxed. Disney should really remind themselves that they can’t make light on topics like these as it does more harm than good. They didn’t joke around with racism, so eating disorders should obviously be a no no.

#2. Producing Dumb Ideas for Bad Movies: Mars Needs Moms, Alexander and the God Awful Title, The Santa Claus 3, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Prom. All of them were terrible ideas made into equally terrible movies. Mars Needs Moms, from the title alone is their worst film, no contest. You know it’s bad when the title sounds like a 4 year old thought of this film. The plot is nonsense, the characters are awful, not even the animation does it any favors. This isn’t the first time I’ve ranted on this film, so let me explain the biggest problem with this movie: the concept. Why would an alien race need our human mothers to grow the species? They were doing just find before. Alexander, meanwhile, is based on a kids book. Wouldn’t be so bad if A. The title wasn’t stupid and B. The plot wasn’t a light version of Everybody Hates Chris. I’m aware The Santa Claus has its fans, so it wouldn’t be fair to put it on the list because of my hatred for the film. Objectively, however, The Santa Claus 3 should not have been made with the generic It’s a Wonderful Life plot. I don’t care if It’s a Wonderful Life is a classic, it should not be remade and retold over and over again. The other two were based on a joke or dare, I swear. Who was asking for a movie about going to the prom? And don’t people hate Lindsay Lohan? And drama queens? Especially if they’re teenagers? I’ll refer you back to my point at #s 4 and 8 because I hate repeating myself -.-

#1. Ignoring Song of the South: In the Tom and Jerry Highlight Collection, Whoopi Goldberg did an introduction explaining why the cartoons featured in the DVD included Mammy-Two Shoes despite her being criticized as a racist stereotype (I’m with BenTheLooney in that this criticism is bull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl01VhWbC74). Whoopi said that taking her out of the DVD would be the same as pretending she didn’t exist. Don’t get me wrong, racial stereotyping is bad, but so is pretending films and cartoons involving black characters didn’t exist. Case in point, Song of the South, I feel, is one of Disney’s underappreciated films simply because of the portrayal of blacks in the Post-Civil War era. I get it, slaves were miserable after the war; that said, that’s not what the film’s about. Its about a boy living on a plantation who listens to the stories of Brer Rabbit, told by Uncle Remus. The film was last seen in theaters in 1986 and never received a home release in the U.S.. Bob Iger calls it “fairly offensive” and you can debate all you want, but not giving this movie a home release isn’t helping your case. That only makes people want to see it more. Whoopie Goldberg herself wants this movie to have a home release. Sure you can just bootleg it or watch it online, but if you were to own it on Blu-Ray, you could get some insight into the process of making this movie, a brief history of racial stereotyping in movies. They still play the Zip-a-dee-doo-dah song, and they put alot of effort to the theme park attraction. This movie should not be ignored because the company wants to stay family friendly. Families don’t keep things from each other, just saying.

Conclusion: I love Disney, just about everyone loves Disney; but they’re not perfect and to think otherwise would be foolish. Pointing out their flaws and criticizing their actions is the only way they can get better. I’m aware of the Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar problems, but I wanted to focus on Disney specifically. Know any other Disney slip-ups? Let me know in response to this post. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon.

#Disney #Walt Disney Pictures #whoopi goldberg #song of the south #uncle remus #Disney Channel #disney xd #disney television animation #cartoon #sitcoms #like #share #reblog #follow #pixar #marvel #star wars #Wander Over Yonder #savewoy

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mrhotmaster · 4 years

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Prime Video: Best Movie Series In India (March 2020)

Best All-Time Amazon Prime Video Movie Series In India Of March 2020

With the brand new profiles function introduced in March, Amazon Prime Video is all of sudden a far higher streaming provider for buddies and households. More so in India, wherein a Prime club runs at just Rs. 999 per yr. Unlike Netflix, Amazon additionally does not make you pay more for HD or 4K. Yes, we admit Prime Video's collection catalog isn't any match for Netflix — it's less than a third of its overall — however there is nevertheless a whole lot of proper TV to be determined right here. It would not assist that Amazon does not do an awesome activity of surfacing hidden gems, however, hello, that is in which we come in. Below, you'll discover a bunch of big names (The Big Bang Theory), Amazon originals (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), and stuff you've probable by no means heard of (Spaced).

To choose the satisfactory TV suggests on Amazon Prime Video, we started with Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb scores to draw up a shortlist. Considering the shortcomings of review aggregators in that department, the last of them is needed for non-English programming. Also, we used or rejected our editorial judgment. This listing can be up to date once every few months if there are any worthy additions or if a few TV shows are eliminated from the service, so bookmark this web page and preserve checking in. Here is the pleasant collection currently to be had on Amazon Prime Video in India, sorted alphabetically.

➔4 Blocks (2017 – Present)

Set inside the Berlin borough of Neukölln, this German-language crime drama follows the leader of a Lebanese drug cartel who desires to leave in the back of the violent manner of life for a non-violent life along with his wife and their daughter, however, is reluctantly pulled in after a police operation threatens the entirety. Set for a third and final season in 2019.

➔The Adventures of Tintin (1991 – 1992)

A co-manufacturing between three nations — Belgium, Canada, and France — this animated variation of cartoonist Georges Prosper Remi's maximum famous work ran for 39 1/2-hour episodes across three seasons, handing over nearly dozen adventures that had been praised for his or her faithfulness, every so often lifting comic panels to the screen precisely as they seemed.

➔The Affair (2014 – Present)

A schoolteacher and budding novelist (Dominic West) begins an extramarital affair with a younger waitress (Ruth Wilson) seeking to piece collectively her life in this somber drama, which brought two robust seasons of the deep and psychological statement earlier than a slight dip added by using plot struggles in the 0.33 season.

➔The Big Bang Theory (2007 – 2019)

This long-lasting sitcom, loved and hated in the same degree, is ready for the physicists and their neighbor pretending to act and nerd friends: the aerospace engineer and the astrophysicist. It brought two women — a neuroscientist and a microbiologist — because it went on. Seasons two through six have been the best years.

➔Bosch (2014 – Present)

Adapted from the novels he wrote, writer and writer Michael Connelly offers us Los Angeles Police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch (Titus Welliver), a Gulf War and Afghanistan veteran who solves inscrutable instances — the murder of a boy many years in the past to a high-quality civil rights lawyer — whilst handling non-public struggles. The slow first season, however it soon delicate itself.

➔The Boys (2019 – Present)

Far from perfect, this gory superhero-obsessed-tradition antidote, based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comedian collection, follows a bunch of nobodies (Karl Urban amongst them) seeking to take down a corrupt group of superheroes who've chosen capitalism over charity. In short, the superheroes are the supervillains.

➔Casual (2015 – 2018)

A newly-divorced female and successful therapist — and her teenage daughter — movements again in along with her more youthful brother and relationship site co-founder in this candy li'l comedy-drama. The two educate each other through the pains and tribulations of the dating global, even as together raising the girl.

➔Deutschland 86 (2018)

This sequel to the hit authentic — Deutschland 83, which is regrettably no longer on Amazon — is ready within the titular 12 months either aspect of the Iron Curtain, because it explores existence in each West and East Germany thru the standpoint of an undercover secret agent, who navigates love, own family, and secrets and techniques. Renewed for a 3rd season, titled Deutschland 89.

➔Doctor Who (2005 – Present)

David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, and — the first-ever girl Doctor — Jodie Whittaker provide their take at the time-traveling, galaxy-hopping alien in the modern-day revival of the long-lasting British sci-fi show. Seasons 1 – eleven are to be had. Seasons two, three, four, and five are usually considered the high-quality of the lot, with the closing of them generally highlighted.

➔Dororo (2019)

Born without any frame components because of his strength-hungry father, a younger guy — blind, deaf, and more — made from prosthetics units out to reclaim what's his from 12 demons on this anime. Along the way, he befriends the titular orphan boy.

➔Downton Abbey (2010 – 2015)

A post-Edwardian generation period drama set within the English countryside, managing the aristocratic Crawley circle of relatives and their domestic servants, and the way the terrific activities of the 1910s and Twenties affected their lives and the British social hierarchy. I went through a dip in excellent inside the center to past due years however recovered for the final season. The follow-up 2019 movie is on iTunes.

➔The Expanse (2015 – Present)

Hundreds of years in the future, mankind that has colonized the Solar System is at the threshold of warfare and it's up to a crew of various origins — Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt — to show the best conspiracy of all.

➔Fleabag (2016 – Present)

Phoebe-Waller Bridge created and starred on this comedy-drama out of her one-female play, approximately a young, sexually-liberated, dry-witted irritable woman who navigates contemporary lifestyles in London at the same time as coming to phrases with a recent tragedy.

➔Forever (2018)

Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen megastar in and govt produced this comedy-drama approximately a married couple who've lived the identical lifestyles — the same conversations, the equal meals, and the identical lake-residence vacation — for 12 years. But after the spouse proposes to shake matters up, the two locate themselves in a whole new global.

➔Fringe (2008 – 2013)

This sci-fi collection counts J.J. Abrams as a co-creator and follows an FBI agent (Anna Torv) who is forced to paintings with an institutionalized scientist taken into consideration this era's Einstein and his estranged son to make the experience of unexplained phenomena, which ties into parallel universes and trade timelines.

➔The Good Fight (2017 – Present)

A spin-off sequel to the severely-acclaimed The Good Wife follows Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) after she's forced out of the law organization wherein she becomes an accomplice, and has to enroll in a high-profile regulation corporation in Chicago. The criminal/political drama has greater than held its own unlike most spin-offs and has been praised for its examination of topical social issues.

➔Good Omens (2019)

Michael Sheen and David Tennant megastar as an angel and demon with an unlikely century-spanning friendship on this Neil Gaiman-led version this is responsible for sticking too close to the book he co-wrote (among some different faults). Having grown content with existence on Earth, the two attempt to save you a drawing close Armageddon.

➔The Good Wife (2009 – 2016)

After a humiliating sex and corruption scandal puts her husband behind bars, his spouse — a former kingdom's attorney — must go back to work to offer for her own family, at the same time as battling the undesirable highlight. Known for its unique criminal cases, top-notch performances, and turning in always on all fronts at some stage in its lengthy seven-season cable run.

➔The Grand Tour (2016 – Present)

The former Top Gear trio of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May persevered to do what they did at BBC — overview supercars, excursion the arena, however mostly make amusing of every other — for three seasons, before switching to specials-only with the fourth season.

➔The Handmaid's Tale (2017 – Present)

Elisabeth Moss stars in the lead of this prescient and unflinching version of Margaret Atwood's dystopian traditional novel, set in a global where a totalitarian army dictatorship has overthrown America authorities and subjugates ladies inside the call of declining fertility quotes. Two high-quality seasons followed by using a dip in the 1/3.

➔Homecoming (2018 – Present)

In her first collection of ordinary positions, Julia Roberts performs a caseworker who enables US veterans to transition again to civilian existence, and a waitress returned in her fatherland who has trouble remembering her earlier existence throughout periods. As an auditor digs into her past, she realizes she changed into being misled. A mental thriller directed by way of Mr. Robot's Sam Esmail.

➔House (2004 – 2012)

For 8 long years, Hugh Laurie played the misanthropic and unconventional titular doctor who regardless of reliance on pain remedy and a cane — it simply introduced to his acerbic character — led a team at a fictional New Jersey health center, and made notable use of his out-of-the-field wondering and instincts to diagnose sufferers.

➔Laakhon Mein Ek (2017 – Present)

Biswa Kalyan Rath's anthology collection offers a have a look at unlucky souls — a teen caught at an engineering coaching institute, or a young health practitioner published to a rural cataract camp — preventing in opposition to prejudices, the gadget, and extra. And generally failing.

➔Lodge forty-nine (2018 – 2019)

Overlooked using most, which led to its cancellation after seasons, this splendidly weird comedy-drama follows a disarmingly optimistic former surfer who by hook or by crook arrives at a rundown fraternal hotel after the demise of his father and disintegrate of the family enterprise, hoping to find his manner again to the life he had.

➔The Looming Tower (2018)

Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-prevailing ebook of the same name is adapted into a ten-element miniseries, exploring how the clash and contention between the FBI and CIA inside the early 2000s may additionally have inadvertently brought about America's biggest tragedy, September 11. Powerfully written and strengthened through exceptional acting, which includes Jeff Daniels, with a directing tone set by way of Alex Gibney.

➔Luther (2010 – Present)

Idris Elba stars as a committed and tremendous British detective who attempts to preserve a grip on his private existence while managing the mental fallouts of the crimes he is tasked to remedy.

➔Mad Men (2007 – 2015)

Set in New York in the 1960s, a slow-burn theory that provides an insight into a fictionally produced advertising agency, specializing in one of all its exceptionally talented managers (Jon Hamm). It offered brilliantly crafted characters and a subversive, sensible have a look at the American workplace, while in no way losing in fine throughout seven seasons.

➔Made in Heaven (2019 – Present)

From the minds of Gully Boy duo Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, a drama approximately the excesses, hypocrisies, and darkness hiding in the corners of huge, fat Indian weddings, instructed thru the eyes of two wedding planners looking to stability their personal and professional lives. It has many faults, no longer as excellent as others in this listing, however, it is the high-quality of what Amazon has produced in India.

➔Malgudi Days (1987 – 1988)

R.K. Narayanan's collection of quick stories approximately unique faces of existence in a fictional South India metropolis are selectively tailored for the display screen, thanks to his cartoonist brother R.K. Laxman, actor-director Shankar Nag, and manufacturer T.S. Narasimhan.

➔The Man within the High Castle (2015 – 2019)

Philip K. Dick's famous change history novel of the identical name, in which the Axis powers won World War II and divided the USA to be ruled by using Germany and Japan, opened in engrossing style and multiplied itself in powerful methods in its 2d year, however, changed into in the end permit down by using its unwieldy plot.

➔The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017 – Present)

Arguably Amazon's high-quality authenticity so far, the ideal existence of a Jewish housewife (Rachel Brosnahan) in overdue 1950s New York City crumbles after her husband confesses he's having an affair, which leads her to a surprising discovery: she has a knack for stand-up comedy.

➔The Mindy Project (2012 – 2017)

Fresh off her success with The Office, Mindy Kaling created and starred in her show, a rom-com about an OB/GYN (Kaling) seeking to balance her professional and private existence. After three appreciated seasons with a few faults, it moved to stream in which it similarly delicate itself and ended with the 117th episode and six seasons.

➔The Missing (2014 – 2016) This two-season anthology thriller is about lacking youngsters — a five-yr-old boy in France, and a woman who turns up eleven years later in Germany — and the way it impacts their families as they undergo the disaster. Always uses dual timelines shifting in parallel to construct suspense. Tchéky Karyo's lead detective is the simplest common detail. ➔Mozart within the Jungle (2014 – 2018) Inspired by oboist Blair Tindall's 2005 memoir, this 4-season long comedy-drama concentrated on a formidable oboist (Lola Kirke) who develops a robust bond with the new conductor (Gael García Bernal) of a fictional New York symphony orchestra, with escapades in Mexico and Italy across seasons. ➔Mr. Bean (1990 – 1995) Rowan Atkinson's famous character, whom he defined as a toddler in a grown man's frame, has appeared anywhere from the London Olympics establishing ceremony to an interview on Japanese television, always pronouncing little. He was given his start with this iconic collection that produced a paltry 14 episodes over 5 years but gave us enough laughs to closing an entire life. ➔The Night Manager (2016) Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Olivia Colman lead the way with robust performances in this six-episode miniseries model of the 1993 John le Carré novel, approximately a former British soldier and luxury motel manager (Hiddleston) who turns into an undercover operative to infiltrate the internal circle of a worldwide arms supplier (Laurie). ➔The Office (2005 – 2013) This American remake of Ricky Gervais' BBC sitcom mockumentary lasted some distance longer — 201 episodes over 9 seasons — as it observed the pretty-often beside the point and awkwardly-hilarious lives of the employees of a suburban Pennsylvania paper employer. Suffered in later seasons but returned to form in the very last season after the return of creator Greg Daniels. ➔One Mississippi (2016 – 2017) In this shifting -season comedy, a girl (Tig Notaro) returns home after the sudden death of her mom and struggles to adjust to life as she battles her fitness issues, and her dysfunctional circle of relatives and discovers extra about her mom's beyond. Notaro is also a co-author. ➔Parks and Recreation (2009 – 2015) Amy Poehler starred as an always-constructive public authentic in an Indiana city's parks department for seven seasons, surrounded via an ensemble cast as eccentric as the following one. Co-created by way of Daniels (The Office) and Michael Schur, the show made adjustments after a poorly-received debut season and by no means appeared again, as it blossomed into one of the best sitcoms of this century. ➔Penny Dreadful (2014 – 2016) An explorer, a gunslinger, a scientist, an immigrant, and a mysterious and powerful girl (Eva Green) team up to combat supernatural threats that draw upon nineteenth-century Gothic fiction — assume Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll — London in Victoria. Green's entity and its overall success were praised. ➔Person of Interest (2011 – 2016) Before Westworld, Jonathan Nolan explored AI as a supercomputer that profits sentience, which enables its reclusive billionaire programmer and a presumed-dead ex-CIA agent to keep lives by giving them the identities of those involved in imminent crimes. A process that became an invasive serial account and mediation of the ethics of artificial intelligence regulation. ➔Planet Earth II (2016) Yes, it's a documentary, but it is also the top of BBC's potential to craft storylines out of the lives of animals that proportion the planet with us, and the dangers we gift to them. And to top off its wonderful pics that span islands, mountains, jungles, deserts, grasslands, and towns, David Attenborough's voice courses us through all of it. ➔Preacher (2016 – 2019) After a supernatural occasion imbues him with a present, a preacher teams up with his trigger-happy ex-girlfriend and a hard-ingesting Irish vampire searching for answers and God. Based on the comedian series of the identical call, the show has gore and offensive amusing aplenty, however, it can lack in narrative recognition. Ran out of steam inside the final season. ➔Psych (2006 – 2014) After conning the law enforcement officials into believing he has psychic abilities, a hyper-observant guy with eidetic reminiscence turns into a contract consultant for the nearby police branch, launching a faux psychic enterprise with his formative years' satisfactory pal. Improved after a no longer-so-correct first 12 months and has caused TV movies because its 8-season run ended. ➔Queen Sugar (2016 – Present) Ava DuVernay and Oprah got here together to create this drama based totally on Natalie Baszile's 2014 novel, approximately the lives of the estranged Bordelon siblings who move back to Louisiana after their father's loss of life to run the family's struggling sugarcane farm. ➔Seinfeld (1989 – 1998) Scores and important success for the duration of its run, this sitcom about a stand-up comic (Jerry Seinfeld) and his neurotic New York friends (Julia Louis-Dreyfus amongst them) butting heads over trivial questions remains a hallmark in television history, albeit some episodes and characters have not aged properly in any respect. Seinfeld and David are co-creators. ➔Shameless (2011 – Present) Based on the lengthy-jogging hit UK collection also from writer Paul Abbott, the American remake — now in its 9th season itself — is about inside the south side of Chicago and centers on a perpetually-drunk single father of six with the children mastering to attend to themselves. Several stumbles in the latest seasons. ➔Shaun the Sheep (2007 – Present) Before it spawned a feature movie that earned Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominations and where the titular clever, assured and mischievous sheep talked, this forestall-movement lively youngsters collection was recognized for its bite-sized episodes, with Shaun leading the crowd on adventures and walking jewelry across the sheepdog. Four seasons are to be had.

➔Sneaky Pete (2015 – 2019) Bryan Cranston co-created this crime drama wherein a con man (Giovanni Ribisi) assumes the identity of his cellmate to keep away from a dangerous gangster whom he once robbed. But residing with the fake-family — which has no motive to suspect who he is, due to the fact he changed into long lost — presents challenges of its personal. ➔Spaced (1999 – 2001) Before they gave us the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg directed and co-created, respectively, this sitcom approximately the misadventures of twenty-something London strangers (Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, fellow co-writer) who pose as a married couple to get a flat in the English capital. ➔Star Trek: Picard (2019 – Present) Patrick Stewart returns as Jean-Luc Picard on this follow-as much as the lengthy-walking Star Trek: The Next Generation — available on Netflix — nearly a decade and a half of after he retired, after a young girl with feasible connections to his beyond seeks his assist. It is probably too sluggish for a few and it would not attempt hard enough to take on new fans. ➔Supernatural (2005 – Present) Over two and a half of many years when they lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force, two brothers — introduced up with the aid of their father as soldiers with knowledge of the mystical — roam throughout the again-alleys of the united states and hunt down each evil they stumble upon. Eric Kripke ran the show for five seasons, and the darkish myth series is about to finish with its upcoming fifteenth. ➔The Terror (2018 – Present) This supernatural horror anthology takes actual-life events — British Royal Navy Captain Sir John Franklin's lost day trip to the Arctic in the mid-nineteenth century, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II — and spins terrifying tales, presenting ghosts, cannibalism, demonic polar bears, and Japanese folklore. ➔This Is Us (2016 – Present) This heartstrings-tugging circle of relatives drama jumps via time to depict the lives of three siblings (Sterling K. Brown among them) and their dad and mom, who appear to be mysteriously related to each other in methods beyond their shared birthday. ➔Transparent (2014 – 2019) A dysfunctional Los Angeles family unearths their past and destiny unraveling following an admission from the elderly father (Jeffrey Tambor) that he identifies as a girl. Winner of numerous awards which includes the Golden Globe for the first-class collection for its poignancy and empathy. Finale turned into middling though. Tambor turned into fired over sexual harassment allegations.

➔Undone (2019 – Present) From the makers of BoJack Horseman, a more lifestyles-like lively series about a 28-year-vintage woman (Rosa Salazar) who discovers she has a brand new relationship with time after moving into a vehicle coincidence, after which makes use of that to solve the mystery of her father's (Bob Odenkirk) loss of life. But her exploits positioned her relationships and fitness in critical jeopardy. ➔A Very English Scandal (2018) Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw lead this three-component miniseries based totally on a real story and John Preston's book of the same name, following the upward thrust of British Member of Parliament Jeremy Thorpe (Grant) and the scandal that could cease his lifestyles, concerning the tried murder of his ex-homosexual lover (Whishaw). ➔Vinland Saga (2019) Set in large part in Danish-managed 11th-century England, this anime follows Thorfinn, a young man introduced up by Vikings who murdered his own family and invariably desires vengeance. They are soon stuck in a conflict of succession between Danish princes, at the same time as Thorfinn desires of a non-violent land that his father pointed out. Adapted by way of Hiroshi Seko (Ajin, Attack on Titan). ➔Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi (1984) Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro director Kundan Shah and satirist Sharad Joshi came collectively to deliver this sitcom that deftly poked fun on the Indian center magnificence, specializing in a poker-confronted husband, his vivacious office-going spouse, and her unmarried brother. It benefited from the chemistry of its 3 leads (Shafi Inamdar, Swaroop Sampat, and Rakesh Bedi) and the sheer versatility of Satish Shah. ➔Yes Minister (1980 – 1984) Together with its 1986-88 sequel — Yes, Prime Minister — the two short-lived British series are reigning kings of the political satire, following a newly-appointed branch minister suffering to carry out reforms and later, his surprising elevation to the best workplace inside the land.

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lifeonashelf · 4 years

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CKY

Do any of you remember a film from the ‘90s called Shazaam?

Allow me to refresh your memory: Shazaam was a vehicle for C-list comedian Sinbad, who is perhaps best known for starring in a 1994 sitcom that was creatively titled The Sinbad Show—which I never watched because the show starred Sinbad. The Sinbad Show didn’t even last a full season on the FOX network (probably because the show starred Sinbad), but sometime either shortly before or shortly after that program was cancelled, its namesake landed the lead role in a film entitled Shazaam, a part which allowed him to stretch his acting chops by playing a wisecracking genie who acted exactly like Sinbad.

I distinctly remember seeing the trailer for this cinematic tour de force. To the best of my recollection, the plot revolved around two precocious children—one girl and one boy, naturally, to ensure that twice as many kids would beg their parents to buy the tie-in merchandise that would inexorably be produced if the film was successful—who one way or another encounter a djinn named Shazaam. Though their initial meeting befalls as a startling surprise for all parties concerned, they quickly become the best of pals and Shazaam subsequently convoys his youthful comrades through a rote series of comical PG hijinks. The specific nature of their shenanigans has been lost to the haze of time, but those details don’t matter much; a mid-‘90s movie built upon that scenario and geared toward that audience sort of writes itself (I doubt there was a subplot about Hungarian sex traffickers, for instance). I’m sure Shazaam helps the moppets surmount some sort of reasonably benign conflict and everyone learns a lesson about the true meaning of family by the time the credits roll. I’m assuming a clever dog is also involved in some fashion, and I’m confident the film features at least one protracted flatulence gag. Mind you, this is all just speculation; I can’t verify any of it since I never actually watched Shazaam (I decided not to because the trailer revealed that the film starred Sinbad).

Perhaps you already know where I’m going with this, but in case you don’t: Shazaam likely qualifies as the least successful celluloid offering ever concocted, because it is a movie which literally nobody watched. Oddly, this dearth of viewership didn’t have anything to do with Sinbad starring in it; the main reason nobody watched the film Shazaam is because the film Shazaam doesn’t actually exist. And I have a real difficult time wrapping my head around this, because not only am I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING CERTAIN that I remember viewing the trailer I’ve described, I can also readily visualize the VHS case for this movie that was never really a movie on the shelves at Blockbuster Video (imagine my incredulity when I learned that Blockbuster Video never actually existed, either). And even stranger, there are evidently thousands upon thousands of people who recall the existence of this movie that does not exist as vividly as I do.

If you kept up with the brief internet furor about this topic which arose a couple years ago, you’re undoubtedly aware the Shazaam phenomenon has been explained away as some peculiar mass delusion known as the Mandela Effect—apparently, so many human brains muddled the title and star of the ill-advised Shaquille O’Neal genie flick Kazaam that our collective hive-minds fabricated an illusory film to match our erroneous memories. (Of course, this begs the question: do those of us who remember Shazaam subconsciously wish there was a film in which Sinbad plays a sassy, flatulent genie…?). This clarification makes a kind of sense, even though my vague recollections of the corporeal Kazaam and my lucid recollections of the false Shazaam differ substantially (in my brain, Sinbad never raps or does karate in his movie, yet both disciplines factor into major plot-points in Kazaam—and Shazaam doesn’t meander into a baffling second-act detour about Hungarian sex traffickers like Shaq’s film inexplicably does).

So here’s the reason I’m bringing this up here: when I sat down to write about the band CKY, the paramount thing I intended to delve into was how I was introduced to their music. Do me a favor and keep that in mind—this information will come in handy later.

When I was a twenty-something in the very late 1990’s-slash-very early 2000’s, I worked at Domino’s Pizza as a delivery driver, which was a really excellent gig at the time. I had almost no bills and gas was a buck a gallon, so I only needed to work about 20 hours a week to earn enough money to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. And like most twenty-something males who make their living as pizza conveyance professionals, when I wasn’t on the road, my comfortable lifestyle mainly entailed spending inordinate amounts of my free time listening to a bunch of punk rock, smoking a bunch of pot, and playing a bunch of video games.

[To be clear, not all of my co-workers at Domino’s did even one of these things. There was Dennis, for instance, who to the best of my knowledge did not enjoy punk rock, marijuana, or video games. He did, however, regularly come into work with cartons of expired baked goods that he extracted from the dumpsters behind Vons, which he would then rinse in the sink to make them “fresh” again. The prevailing rumor about Dennis’s backstory was that he was a former surgeon who had a nervous breakdown after losing a child patient on the operating table. I’m not so sure that was true, although I am very sure that he once brought in a plastic grocery bag filled with vomit instead of pastries and attempted to rinse that in the sink, too—which is why I tend to lean more toward believing Dennis was probably just fundamentally insane. There was no preamble to his unambiguously unhinged act; the dude simply strolled into the prep area at the start of his shift and said “hey, Taylor” to me like it was any other day… except he was carrying a sack of upchuck with him, clutching it right below the straps, as if girding the parcel to ensure he wouldn’t spill any of his cargo. My manager sent him home when she saw what was in the bag, but Dennis came back to work the very next afternoon—sans puke satchel—and the incident was never spoken of again. To this day, I cannot fathom how Dennis accumulated all that vomit, why he was hauling it around in his car, or what he was hoping to accomplish by soaking it in the same basin where we washed our pizza pans. Anyway, what I was getting at is that he didn’t especially fit the stereotype I outlined. We got along okay, though; I always made it a point to be really nice to the guy—you know, considering his alarming derangement and all.]

One of the staples of my Playstation habits in those days was the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. Despite having only spent a combined total of maybe zero-point-three hours on an actual skateboard in my entire life, my best friend Andy and I logged approximately 19,000 hours guiding the avatars in those seminal games through a multitude of gravity-and-logic-defying feats which no human being could ever possibly achieve with or without a skateboard. In the real world, I probably couldn’t even pull off an elementary trick like an ollie—but in the realm of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater I was a four-wheeled fucking god who could effortlessly grind up the side of a building, soar off the opposite edge, perform roughly nineteen twisting flips on my way back down, then execute a perfect landing on the downslope of an opportunely-placed ramp so I could launch off that and catch enough air to do nineteen more flips. Though I have never been an aficionado of that particular sporting pursuit, the Tony Hawk games were incredibly fun and offered endless replay potential due to the almost pornographic extremity of their facets. The conscientious city planners in THPS’s utopia were mindful to randomly insert dozens of half-pipes and empty swimming pools all over their towns, and none of their edifices featured a single surface that could not be utilized for some sort of astonishing aerodynamic exploit.

Instead of composing an original musical score for the series, the developers of the Pro Skater franchise rather ingeniously opted to license fifteen-or-so songs by relatively popular bands for each installment. These tunes supplied the background inspiration during gameplay, and were ostensibly chosen because they represented genres which the skater demographic enjoyed—unsurprisingly, the soundtracks predominantly relied on crowd-pleasing punk and hip-hop material (although one of the sequels featured a song by Powerman 5000, whose fanbase was roughly equivalent to the number of people who have watched Shazaam). However, a cycle of only fifteen tracks doesn’t go a very long way when it’s entirely feasible to play 100 rounds in one sitting—as Andy and I regularly did. So as you might suspect, we ended up hearing the same song-batch an incalculable number of times throughout the course of any given session, which inevitably burned every one of those tracks permanently into our brains. This is how I became intimately familiar with the band CKY, whose cut “Flesh Into Gear” appeared in one of the Tony Hawk releases and was consequently submitted for my listening pleasure hundreds upon hundreds of times.

Luckily, “Flesh Into Gear” is a really cool tune, a prime slice of appealing proto-metal with an insidiously catchy chorus and a snaking stoner-rock guitar riff that would undoubtedly inspire anyone in their right mind to rail-slide across a chain of forty conveniently-equidistant park benches. I could hardly believe a song this excellent and shrewdly-crafted was coined by an outfit like CKY, since the group’s foremost point of notoriety at the time was their drummer’s family ties to one of the cast members of Jackass—an obtuse reality television showcase for the misadventures of a squad of unabashed idiots whose misguided testosterone impelled them to launch bottle rockets out of their rectums, drink animal semen, and obsessively scour the ends of the earth searching for various objects to pummel each other’s testicles with.

My persistent exposure to “Flesh Into Gear” via Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater eventually motivated me to purchase CKY’s 2002 release Infiltrate-Destroy-Rebuild, the album the track was borrowed from. I have been spinning that disc repeatedly since I started writing this, and—while the rest of the band’s material is satisfactory but un-extraordinary—every single time “Flesh Into Gear” comes on, it instills me with a rush of delightful nostalgia. I cannot remember the last time I played any of the Pro Skater installments, but with “Flesh Into Gear” navigating my recollections just like it navigated my board-wielding avatar seventeen years ago, I can still clearly visualize the games’ indelible imagery and virtually weave my way through the vast intricacies of those levels I traversed countless times back then. And these evocations are accompanied by a flood of additional splendid reminiscences, snapshots from a far simpler and more idyllic time—perhaps my very favorite phase of my life—an era free of real jobs and real responsibilities, when on any given day my best friend and I could unreservedly spend endless hours engrossed in Playstation, and the most critical concerns in our purview were what combination of toppings we should order on our pizza and whether or not we would be able to track down an eighth so we could smoke a bowl before watching that evening’s new episode of South Park.

This is the true and immeasurable splendor of music. Even this many years removed, I can still listen to “Flesh Into Gear” today and instantly be enveloped in those potent and wonderful memories, transported back to a comfortable living room in Lakewood, sitting in front of a big-screen television beside someone who is closer to me than a brother, our fingers frenetically tapping on the joysticks which control our destinies on the monitor, beautifully oblivious to the evaporating hours because we are twenty-one and our time seems infinite and our futures are wide open and we have a whole lifetime of escapades ahead of us. On these glorious occasions, Andy and I weren’t just mindlessly zoning out on some silly skateboarding game. We were ardently devoting ourselves to having fun, pure and unadulterated fun, the kind of serene merriment you only get to have for a woefully short yet richly blessed period of your existence, the kind of immaculate and untroubled amusement you don’t realize you won’t ever experience again until that phase of your life imperceptibly cedes to the next and the ravages of the real world begin to methodically devour your body and your soul. We were also laughing, a lot, often so vigorously and exuberantly that our giggle-fits overtook us in irrepressible paroxysms that brought tears of elation to our eyes. Simply by being in the same room with each other, we were celebrating just how special a friendship that spans literal decades truly is, and how singularly magnificent it feels to spend time with people whose mere presence has the ability to make you happy. So, it didn’t ultimately matter how many times we heard “Flesh Into Gear”. I never got sick of that song. Who could ever get sick of laughter and happiness?

The list of CKY’s quantifiable merits isn’t an especially long one. Nevertheless, they created something which conjures a surge of jubilant memories that I will never forget, and would never want to. Thus, they will always occupy a warm place in my heart, a place where they are inextricably tied to one of the most joyful epochs of my life: those euphoric and carefree days when my best friend and I had all the time in the world to listen to “Flesh Into Gear” over and over and over again while we were playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

Okay, are you ready? Here comes the Sinbad part…

In the interest of accuracy, I went online to look up the Pro Skater series and clarify which installment this particular track was used in. As I said, each of the Tony Hawk releases featured a different assortment of songs, and since Andy and I enthusiastically immersed ourselves in all of them as they came out, we heard and re-heard the music on all of those playlists accordingly. I was fairly certain “Flesh Into Gear” was part of Pro Skater 3’s soundtrack, but I wanted to verify that it hadn’t instead appeared in one of the previous games before I started waxing nostalgic here.

What I found out is this: CKY’s song “Flesh Into Gear” did not appear in any edition of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The band did indeed supply a track to THPS3, but it was an entirely different cut called “96 Quite Bitter Beings”, which I do not have in my collection because it isn’t even on the same album as “Flesh Into Gear”. This means that for the last however-many years, I have been assigning a reverent sentimental significance to a song that, for all intents and purposes, has absolutely no relevance to the detailed web of memories I have snuggled around it. The crystal-clear recollections I have of guiding a pixilated daredevil through a labyrinth of nosegrind-ready obstacles while “Flesh Into Gear” churned in the background never happened.

Shazaam.

For the record, Andy is still my best friend, and has been for 33 years and counting. Our lives have changed significantly since our Pro Skater era, but our bond has not. Though we are only able to hang out every couple months or so at present, whenever we do, we still play video games. And we still watch South Park. And we still approach ordering pizza like the medley of toppings we select are variables in an intricate and vitally-imperative equation. And we still laugh a whole fucking lot.

Sure, I miss the old days—anyone who doesn’t miss the old days obviously wasn’t doing the old days right. Yet, despite only seeing Andy a handful of times a year and having to drive two hours to Oceanside to do so, I never get so wistful for the way things were that I neglect cherishing the way things are now. I love Andy’s wife, Neisa, and I love having a front-row seat to the incredible and inspiring marriage they have built together. I absolutely adore the two remarkable humans they created, Shae and Nixon, and I consider it the most profound honor of my life to be their Uncle Taylor. There are plenty of things I would change about my own contemporary reality, but there isn’t a single thing I would change about theirs.

Still, every now and then, I do find myself wishing I could revisit that living room in Lakewood, settle down in front of that big-screen TV with Andy, turn on the Playstation, and feel as infinite and invincible and utterly content as I did back when I was a twenty-one year-old pizza conveyance professional whose universe was far too harmonious and secure to generate even an inkling of anxiety about the present, let alone the future. If I did return to that time and place, it wouldn’t be so I could instigate any sweeping amendments or pass on some sage piece of cautionary wisdom to my younger self. No, I think I would let the pages of that chapter turn exactly the way they did. Because, all things considered, spending entire days on end doing something as enchantingly frivolous as playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with your best friend in the world isn’t really all that irresponsible—it’s probably precisely what life is all about. And, you know what, it wouldn’t matter to me one bit which CKY song was on the soundtrack, just as long as Andy and I were having fun while we listened to it.

I hope you enjoyed this piece. Even though it starred Sinbad. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go ahead and roll the credits here on that poignant note. I’ll save the story about my run-in with Hungarian sex traffickers for another time.

July 21, 2018

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weekendwarriorblog · 6 years

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND 8/17/18 – Crazy Rich Asians, Mile 22, Alpha and More

I’m going to do things a little different this week, because one of my absolutely favorites from Sundance is coming out this weekend, and after seeing it again last week, it’s probably going to end up in my Top 5 for the year, and that is…

JULIET, NAKED (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions)

I’ve been a fan of Nick Hornby’s writing for a very long time, but when I received a copy of his new book in 2009, I was immediately caught up in its story of a has-been musician, his diehard fan and his ignored wife. I was really excited to hear that it would be adapted by director Jesse Peretz, who had been making big waves (and got an Emmy nod) for directing shows like Girls, New Girl and GLOW. The general story revolves around Rose Byrne’s Annie, a woman living in a British seaside town married to Chris O’Dowd’s Duncan, an avid fan of an American singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe. Duncan runs a website dedicated to his idol, but when he receives a previously unheard demo recording called “Juliet, Naked,” he gets into a squabble with Annie, because she is quite vocal about how much she hates it (mainly to get Duncan’s goat). When Duncan sleeps with a co-worker, Annie kicks him out, but then the real Tucker Crowe (played by Ethan Hawke) gets in touch with Annie (over her negative review of the rare demos), they begin a transatlantic correspondence that leads to them meeting and more. It’s another great story from Hornby in the vein of About a Boy and High Fidelity, one that creates an amazing portrait of this woman who feels she’s in a rut and how she connects with the famous musician who walked out of a concert 20 years earlier and has been raising a young son in upstate New York.

This is a fantastic romantic comedy from Peretz that’s produced by Judd Apatow and others with all-star writing team including Peretz’s sister Eugenia, Jim Taylor (Sideways) and his wife Tamara Jenkins (The Savages), who all did an amazing job adapting Hornby’s work.

Here’s my interview with Jesse Peretz over at NextBestPicture... Enjoy!

INTERVIEW WITH JESSE PERETZ

Juliet, Naked will open in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, expand to more cities next week and then hopefully be fairly wide on August 31.

But that isn’t the only Ethan Hawke movie this week, nope. The actor is having quite a good year indeed...

On top of that, Hawke’s latest film as a director, Blaze (Sundance Selects), will be released in Austin on Friday, as it slowly rolls out to arrive in New York City on September 6 and then in L.A. later in September.

Blaze tells the story of Blaze Foley, played by musician Ben Dickey, who was the lesser-known blues singer who collaborated with his friend Townes Van Zandt. Not knowing much about the Austin native, this is a fascinating film by Hawke that shows a lot of his dysfunctional relationship with his Jewish writer wife (and the film’s co-writer) Sybil Rosen, played by Alia Shakat (who is simply fantastic in the role). Musician Charlie Sexton pulls off a respectable version of Van Zandt, and look for cameos by the likes of Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn, Kris Kristofferson and Hawke’s long-time collaborator, Richard Linklater.

This is another great music-based film from Hawke, and a much better narrative feature than his earlier features, 2006’s The Hottest State and 2001’s Chelsea Walls. There’s also a connection between Foley and Hawke’s Juliet, Naked character, because the fictional Tucker Crowe similarly became the subject of urban legends after vanishing from the public eye following a concert. (Foley was actually killed in a scuffle after recording a live album at one of his club performances, which acts as the framing device for the film.)

And now, back to our previously scheduled wide releases, and how ironic that the proverbial “Dog Days of Summer” would begin last weekend with an actual movie called Dog Days, and it bombed? And a giant shark movie starring Jason Statham opened with almost $45 million… crazy times! Yeah, these last few weekends of August have never been known as a good time to release movies, and most movies that end up here are ones that studios just want to get off their coffers before their even slower fall months. That would normally be the case, but that is definitely not the case with…

CRAZY RICH ASIANS (New Line)

The first August anomaly is this romantic-comedy based on Kevin Kwan’s best-selling book, which is the first major studio movie since The Joy Luck Club25 years ago to feature a predominantly Asian cast. This one is about an Asian college professor who takes his Asian girlfriend to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding where she discovers that his family is super-rich and he’s a very in-demand bachelor.

The movie features an amazing cast that includes Constance Wu from the hit ABC sitcom Fresh off the Boat, veteran Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh, comic superstar Ken Jeong (Dr. Ken) as well as fresher talent like rapper Awkwafina, last seen in Ocean’s 8, Gemma Chan and newcomer Henry Golding as the male lead. The movie is directed by Jon M. Chu, who has directed an odd number of movies from G.I. Joe: Retaliationto Step Up 3 and the Jem and the Holograms movie, the latter a huge bomb despite being made for not so much money.

Crazy Rich Asians is a romantic comedy, and obviously, there’s a limited audience for the genre normally, but possibly even more when you have Asians in every role, because you’re never sure whether women of other ethnicities will be as interested in this as they might be with Valentine’s Day or other rom-com hits like The Proposal or Pretty Woman. Of course, we can also look at the long-standing legs of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which drew in a large Greek audience at first, but word-of-mouth helped lead it to $241 million domestic, the highest gross for a rom-com ever.

There haven’t been that many successful rom-coms in recent years unless you include Mamma Mia: Here We go Again or Greg Berlanti’s Love Simon, the latter which grossed $40.8 million opening in March with $11.7 million. Crazy Rich Asians is likely to sway more towards the former, I’d imagine.

What’s interesting and maybe not unexpected is that the Asian-American community has been rallying around the movie, whether or not they’ve read the book or even like romantic comedy films, with many entire theaters/screenings being bought up in advance. It’s likely the community realizes that Crazy Rich Asians will need to succeed if they’re going to see more Asians and Asian-Americans in significant leading roles. Even so, you have to remember that Asians only make up 6% of the U.S. population and maybe a little more in Canada, so how much impact can a movie have even if every single Asian person in the country goes to see it? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Crazy Rich Asians is opening on Wednesday, which kind of throws a wrench in trying to project how the movie might do, because a.) people who desperately want to see the movie might rush out to see it on Weds if b.) some might not even realize it opens on Wednesday and will wait for Thursday or Friday. (There weren’t any Tuesday previews to give us any sort of hint of what’s to come.) One presumes the point of the earlier opening is to help drive word-of-mouth for the weekend, although New Line also gave the movie sneak previews last Wednesday, which might do the trick. Reviews are excellent with it currently holding a respectable 96% on Rotten Tomatoes but there are many more reviews to come.

Expect the movie to do big business on Wednesday and Thursday, possibly $9 to 10 million, and then another $20 million plus over the weekend, although it shouldn’t be surprising if it does more than $30 million in its first five days. After all, we’re definitely entering new territory here. Even so, word-of-mouth should help it over the rest of the summer and into September, so don’t be surprised if it ends up making close to $100 million or more, especially if it’s as good as I’ve heard.

MILE 22 (STXfilms)

A movie hoping to bring in the business that will have little to no interest in Crazy Rich Asiansis this new action-thriller from actor Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg, who now have made three movies based on real events: Lone Survivor (’13, $125 mil. Gross), Deepwater Horizon (’16, $61.4 mil.) and Patriots Day (’16, $31.9 mil.). That’s a fairly dramatic drop from their first movie to their last one, and Mile 22 is an original story not based on real events about a CIA task force who have to protect an asset from terrorists over the course of 22 miles. (And yes, that does sound a lot like the Bruce Willis-Mos Def movie 16 Blocksfrom 2006, thanks for noticing.)

Besides Wahlberg, it stars Lauren Cohan from The Walking Dead, John Malkovich (who also was in Deepwater Horizon), MMA champ and WWE contender Ronda Rousy, Indonesian martial arts star Iko Uwais (The Raid) and Berg himself. It’s a great cast but we’ve seen similar movies like this one with great casts that don’t do so well from Hotel Artemis earlier this summer to John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 in 2016, although both of them looked like they could be good.

Obviously, Wahlberg is going to be this film’s biggest draw, but his filmography has also run the gamut of hits and bombs. Last year, Wahlberg appeared in Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight, the comedy sequel Daddy’s Home 2 and the beleaguered Ridley Scott drama All the Money in the World, continuing his run of two to three movies a year with varying degrees of quality and success.

Like so many other movies in theaters and quite a few from STX, Mile 22 is a Chinese co-production, which doesn’t mean a heck of a lot for the film’s domestic success. Last year’s The Foreigner starring Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan is a good example as that topped out at $34.3 million domestic after a $13.1 million opening, although that movie did three times its domestic take overseas.

This might be why STX decided to dump the movie into late August, because maybe it isn’t as strong as some of the Berg-Wahlberg’s previous offerings, but is more of a throwaway action-thriller instead. The studio also isn’t screening for critics until Wednesday night, the day before it opens for Thursday previews, so I wouldn’t expect it to be one of “Da Bergs’” better-reviewed films.

On top of that, there’s also just too much competition for older males in theaters, so this might have a hard time doing more than $15 million this weekend, a third place showing, as it struggles to make $35 million by summer’s end.

(Note: I may run a mini-review and make a few changes above after I see the movie tonight.)

ALPHA (Sony)

The odd dog or wolf of the weekend is this big screen adventure epic set during the Ice Age starring Kodi Smit-McPhee (X-Men: Apocalypse), which looks a lot like Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC. Hopefully, it isn’t nearly as bad. (See my review below. It isn’t.)

Alphais the new movie from Albert Hughes, one half of the Hughes Brothers, who broke out with urban crime films like Menace II Society and Dead Presidents before making From Hell with Johnny Depp and The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington. After the latter, the two went their separate ways and after a couple failed projects, Albert decided to make this very different movie as his solo dramatic feature as a director. It’s a strange choice for sure, but Sony have doubled down by giving the movie an IMAX release to push its big-screen nature.

There should be enough awareness of this movie being that it was supposed to come out last November and then earlier this year – I was seeing trailers for this in front of Thor: Ragnarok in early November and over the Christmas holidays as well – but Sony clearly doesn’t have much faith in the movie as they moved it to the dumping ground of late August. The studio has also completely changed the marketing as the movie’s release neared, pushing it more for the wolves that might get women and kids excited to see it. Personally, I don’t see the switch in marketing gears helping much, as I was already tuning out about the movie after seeing the trailers too much last year. (Reviews, surprisingly, are STELLAR so far, but there are only eight on Rotten Tomatoes, so that might change?)

Although people might know about the movie, it really doesn’t look that appealing from the marketing, and it won’t help that schools have already started in many places cutting potential business for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Frankly, it will be a shocker to me if Alpha makes more than $7 million this weekend even with the higher incent and price for IMAX tickets.

Mini-Review: When I was younger, I used to love watching pre-historic epics like 1 Million Years B.C. on television. Hopefully, some young boys and girls will be as inspired by watching Albert Hughes’ solo narrative debut as a director, but Alpha is definitely not the type of movie that should be watched on a television set.

It gets off to a rough start with young Keda (Kodi Smit-Mcphee) not living up to his chieftain father’s hopes as a warrior. When the tribe takes on a herd of buffalo, Keda gets knocked off a cliff and he’s left behind for dead by the tribe. Trying to survive, Keda faces off against a pack of wolves and one of the wolf pack is injured in the melée. The caring young man brings the injured wolf along on his journey of survival as the two of them work together to catch prey and survive.

This is where Alpha picks up greatly, becoming tale of a boy and his “dog” survival tale that’s charming and heart-warming and not nearly as corny or obvious as the earlier storytelling might lead you to believe. (It doesn’t take long to get over the awkward decision to begin with the buffalo hunt, then cut back a week as Keda is about to go over the cliff, and then show the buffalo hunt again, throwing Keda over the cliff for real the second time.)

If nothing else, one needs to commend the impressive job by Hughes and team -- from the animal trainers to the visual FX department, sound and music – for bringing this tale to life in a way that keeps you glued to the screen and benefits greatly from the IMAX 3D projection. It might be good to note that all of the film’s dialogue is in some ancient prehistoric dialect, so if your kids are too young to read subtitles, then they may get frustrated by not understanding what is being said.

Though there are problems in the first third, the fact is that if Terrence Malick or Alejandro Innaritu made this exact same movie, it would be thought of as a revelation. The late August release and lesser status of Hughes as a filmmaker will mean this film will mostly be overlooked, which is a true shame.

Rating: 7.5/10

Either way, this weekend could be a close call for #1 between Crazy Rich Asians and the second weekend of The Meg as both are vying for somewhere in the high-teens to low-$20 millions. Even so, I think the marketing/hype behind the New Line romantic-comedy will be enough to push it over the top to win the weekend.

This week’s top 10 should look something like this…

1. Crazy Rich Asians (New Line) - $21.5 million N/A 2. The Meg (Warner Bros.) - $19.5 million -56% 3. Mile 22 (STXfilms) - $15.3 million N/A 4. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Paramount) - $12 million -40% 5. Christopher Robin (Disney) - $7.7 million -38% 6. Alpha (Sony) - $7.5 million N/A 7. BlacKkKlansman (Focus Features) - $7 million -35% 8. The Spy Who Dumped Me (Lionsgate) - $3.9 million -48% 9. Slender Man (Screen Gems) - $3.7 million -67% 10. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (Universal) - $3.5 million -40%

LIMITED RELEASES

While I gave some extra attention to Juliet, Naked above, there are a bunch of other limited releases worth checking out this weekend, especially as the wider releases become less interesting to the masses.

First up is The Wife (Sony Pictures Classics), an amazing drama starring Glenn Close as Joan Castleman, wife of the elderly reknowned author Joseph Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), as the couple travel to Stockholm for him to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature along with their son David (Max Irons). Joe can be a handful and Joan finds herself caught in the middle of a domestic feud between her husband and David, while a pesky biographer played by Christian Slater tries to get info from both Joan and David about Joe, a known philanderer. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Björn Runge, best known for his film Happy End, this is a terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside. The Wife will open in New York and L.A., and there will be QnAs in both cities on Friday and Saturday. Glenn Close and screenwriter Meg Wolitzer will be doing QnAs at the Paris Theater in NYC on Friday night after the 7:30 screening, while Wolitzer will also do a QnA on Saturday night. In LA, actress Annie Starke (who plays the younger version of Close’s character) will be doing QnAs on Friday and Saturday nights at the Arclight Hollywood and the Landmark.

A terrific doc worth checking out is Megumi Sasaki’s A Whale of a Tale (Fine Line Media), which opens at the Quad Cinema in New York and then in L.A. on August 24. If you liked the Oscar-winning doc The Cove, this is sort of a follow-up as the filmmaker travels to the town of Taiji in Japan where the dolphin killings continue. AP journalist Jay Alabaster has embedded himself in Taiji since The Cove came out and along with Sasaki, they document the town’s attempts at making necessary changes without giving up their legacy of “whale-hunting” that’s hundreds of years old. This is the type of movie that might make you question your own ecological leanings even as it gives a fairly well-balanced overview of the situation, particularly between the townspeople of Taiji and the world at large.

Another worthwhile doc is Bing Liu’s Minding the Gap (Hulu/Magnolia), a very personal look at the life of the filmmaker over 12 years living in Rockford, Illinois, focusing on two of his skateboarder friends’ whose upbringings affect their lives, including 23-year-old Zack whose relationship deteriorates after the birth of his son, and 17-year-old Keire trying to deal with the death of his father. The film won a jury prize at Sundance for Breakthrough Filmmaking with Steve James acting as exec. producer. It will get a theatrical release at the Metrograph on Friday as well as being available on Hulu before screening on PBS POV in 2019. (I want to add that this is a fantastic film well worth seeking out... Liu is an amazing new and young filmmaker to watch.)

After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, the self-explanatory doc Ed Sheeran: Songwriter (Apple Music/Abramorama) will open in select cities. I never got around to watching it, but I’m not really a fan of Sheeran other than him helping to bring the Electric Light Orchestra back together for the Grammys. It opens at the IFC Center on Friday, in L.A. on Aug. 24 and then will be available on Apple Music starting Aug. 28.

A venerable horror franchise returns with its 13th(!) installment Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (RLJE Films), co-directed by Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund from a script by S. Craig Zahler (Brawl in Cell Block 99). It stars Thomas Lennon from the State as Edgar, as a recently-divorced man who returns to his childhood home where he finds an evil-looking Nazi puppet in his brother’s room. For this one, the unmistakable Udo Kier plays the evil puppet master André Toulon, and it also stars Charlyne Yi, Barbara Crampton, Jenny Pellicer and Nelson Franklin. I hope to watch it soon, but I’ve heard some atrocious things about the overt racism in the movie.

As far as other and hopefully tamer genre films, if you’re in New York City, you can see The Ranger, the directorial debut by Larry Fessenden’s producing partner Jenn Wexler, when it plays at the IFC Center, following its Closing Night premiere at What the Fest?! and Fantasia in Montreal. It will also screen in L.A. on Sept. 7. It stars Chloë Levine as Chelsea, a girl who hangs out with her punk friends who get in trouble when her boyfriend stashes drugs in her bag, so they head to a cabin in the wilderness where they encounter a ranger. It premieres on Thursday night with many QnAs with Wexler, producer Heather Buckley and the cast over the weekend.

A movie that premiered at Sundance that I wasn’t that into was Jeremy Zagar’s adaptation of Justin Torres’ novel We the Animals (The Orchard), about three young boys going through their adolescence under the gaze of parents (Raul Castillo, Sheila Vand) who have their own tumultuous relationship, and are trying to protect the youngest Jonah from heading the same direction as his older siblings. It opens in New York Friday at the Angelika and Landmark 57 West, then will expand to L.A., San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia next Friday. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie, it is a nice fictional counterpart to Minding the Gap.

Ricky D’Ambrose’s Notes on an Appearance (Grasshopper Films) deals with the disappearance of a young man named David and the two people who go looking for him but become diverted by the strangers they meet on the journey. It opens at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center on Friday.

Opening in New York and L.A. on Friday and on Demand Sept. 4is Josh Crockett’s dark comedy Dr. Brinks & Dr. Brinks (Gravitas Ventures) about estranged brother and sister who reunite after the death of their parents.

Based on Lois Duncan’s Y.A. novel of the same name, Down a Dark Hall (Summit/Lionsgate Premiere) stars AnnaSophia Robb as Kit, a difficult girl set to a boarding school to deal with her temper via the headmistress Madame Duret (Uma Thurman) and the other four young women. Also starring Isabelle Fuhrman from Orphan, it opens in select cities, On Demand and on iTunes Friday.

Emmanuel Finkiel’s Memoir of War (Music Box films), opening in New York this Friday at the Film Forum and Film Society of New York and in L.A. at the Laemmle Royal and Regal Edwards Westpark 8 next Friday, adapts Marguerite Duras’ novel The War: A Memoir, and it stars the ever-present Mélanie Thierry as Duras. In 1944, Duras was a Resistance member along with her writer husband Robert Antelme. When he is sent to the Dachau concentration camp, she becomes friendly with a French collaborator (Benoît Magimel)to get information to help her group. (Interesting fact: Duras was the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour.)

A few more odds and ends…

Shirley McLane and Gina Gershon star in a modernized live action adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid co-directed by Blake Harris and Chris Bouchard. Not sure what more can be said about that.

Opening in New York at the Cinema VillageFriday before its digital release on Sept 4 is the doc Davi’s Way (2B Films) about Italian-American Robert Davi, a Frank Sinatra enthusiast and stylist who prepares to recreate Sinatra’s famous 1974 concert at Madison Square Garden.

Actor Peter Facinelli makes his directorial debut with the dark comedy Breaking & Exiting (Kali Pictures / Freestyle Digital Media), starring Milo Gibson as house thief Harry who stumbles upon (film co-writer) Jordan Hinson’s Daisy and tries to save her from herself.

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Not a ton of repertory things on my radar other than a Winona Ryder retrospective at the Quad Cinema called “Utterly Winona,” including all her great movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s. I guess there’s a Truffaut retrospective at the Metrograph, but you know what I always say: Truffaut... Tru-cares? (I don’t always say that so don’t write me angry letters Truffaut-fans. I don’t mean to cause a Trufuffle for anyone.)

Last but not least, streaming giant Netflix offers the Spanish film The Motive from Manuel Martin Cuenca based on the novel by Javier Cercas, about an aspiring writer who seeks inspiration for his novel by manipulating lives.

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