Monday, October 4, 2021
Outrage Culture and Calm
With all the talk about certain social media platforms amplifying outrage, hate and unrest, what comes to mind is the Harry Sheerer character in This is Spinal Tap saying that his band mates David and Nigel are like hot and cold and his role is to be "luke warm water." The next thing that comes to mind is an old John Cleese video listing all the people hated by the left and hated by the right, with both lists ending with "moderates." Nonetheless, that is where I see myself, the person who will come off as glib to those who thrive on outrage. It's not like anyone's adrenaline can sustain for days at a time, or that they have enough salive to foam at the mouth 24/7 but there are incendiary positions held as deeply as religous zealotry that come out as compulsive hashtag tweeting and blog sharing. You know the person who wakes up each morning to Google their trigger words. "JK Rowling won't copy/paste my opinion -- she must be a witch!"
I am against lies and spin that "make life easier" or harder for anyone. If I had the means to put out fires I would. I am not an influencer. I can struggle with my weight and all of its related malodies and still be against any drive to enforce the idea that fat is as good as muscle. Social media might call for a wider range of body types and faces in movies, but maybe cinematographers might not want the challenge of making them "look good." Claudette Coulbert in the early days of cinema got a camera man fired for shooting "her bad side." Rosie O'Donnell sued her namesake magazine supposedly for violating their contractual agreement to never show an unflattering photo of her. That seems to be a set-up for walking-on-eggshells.
What I have usually instead of active rage about the issues of the day is bemusement instead of amusement, an eye-roll. For example, the term cis was not used in relation to gender until about 2013 when it began being foisted onto the discourse even though as the opposite of trans it only had relevance in regards to that subject. The late Norm MacDonald described cisgender as "a way to marginalize normal people." So as cheeky as that assessment may have been, it is not a term that I will use. It is at least redundant for those of us who remain the same gender our whole lives. Only a small fraction of the population claim to be transgender, and surely an even smaller portion would be considered as such by a narrow standard such as gender confirmation surgery, or what used to be called a sex change operation. To call it like it is, or to refuse to join the short-lived trend of cramming preferred gender pronouns beside your name on Twitter is not in any way causing a trans person to comit suicide or a mad gunman to target a trans event nor condoning idiots chasing after and beating up transgendered people in the streets. But one of the tactics of the activists who range from well meaning to deranged is to conflate those violent events and anyone's refusal to play along and say two plus two is five.
While it should not be about personalities, the cases that got a lot of heat came from Twitter. JK Rowling commented under a caption that used the term "People who menstruate" and her quip was a joke like, ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?" Let me be clear: This is a funny line responding to the absurdity being shoved in our faces. It will not please everybody, and nore does the re-engineering of language to artificially boost the relevance of societies margines. The term "menstruating persons" instead of women has been taken up by AOC, but at least she has not been using "Latinx" which is a term her people flatly reject. Unfortunately, it does get used by Michael Moore. The reality is that there are people you value and respect, from politicians to moviemakers and writers, who are going to have an opinion you do not like. You can cut off your nose to spite your face, giving up on any work that person is involved in or dismissing them wholesale over that one or two failures to overlap with your Venn diagram or you can take what you like and leave the rest. You will have friends and family with whom you disagree on one issue or another.
Hating a celebrity or public figure because his or her social media reach is being used to prop up something you dislike or is failing to boost the ideas you want promoted is a waste of energy. Gina Carano voted the wrong way the first time she voted in her life in 2020. I also disagree with her on vaccinations for Covid 19. But I like her in movies and enjoyed her as Cara Dune on The Mandalorian. I expect I would have liked Rangers of the New Republic which had been written and developed by Jon Favreau built around her. But Kathleen Kennedy and her toxic-woke gremlins at Lucasfilm used her irrelevant Twitter posts as an excuse to not renew her contract. This impacted Jon Favreau and his shows.THAT is the kind of issue that can frustrate me. It all started with Gina politely refusing to pust her own gender pronouns, and when people did not respect her choice and kept swarming and nagging, she posted Artoo Detoo pronouns "Beep/bop/boop" and sparked further outrage among the most cretinous Twitter stans ostensibly looking to "make trans people feel welcome" on the all but anonymous platform. In practical terms, they have drawn blood from people who had benign indifference to trans issues and now see their white knights as a dangerous joke. If a Gina Carano fan flushes an obnoxious activist out an airlock, that will be the reason. Trans people "need better representatives," as Gina has said.
Monday, August 23, 2021
Friday, May 28, 2021
Sunday, May 23, 2021
Saturday, May 22, 2021
Sunday, May 16, 2021
Saturday, May 15, 2021
Bucketheads: S1E1 "Ground Zero" - Prologue (Star Wars Fan Series)
A fan film with a budget. Very nice. Real Star Wars
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Star Wars Moments On The Graham Norton Show - George Lucas's Birthday
Happy birthday to George Lucas !! (And Robert Zemeckis, Sofia Coppola and Cate Blanchett)
Sunday, May 9, 2021
Friday, May 7, 2021
Monday, May 3, 2021
Sunday, May 2, 2021
Friday, April 30, 2021
Friday, April 23, 2021
Monday, April 19, 2021
Sunday, April 18, 2021
Saturday, April 17, 2021
Friday, April 16, 2021
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Monday, April 12, 2021
Sunday, April 11, 2021
Saturday, April 10, 2021
Saturday, April 3, 2021
Friday, April 2, 2021
Monday, March 29, 2021
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Liberal yes, Woke No : The War Against Fans
Regardless of the initial intent or officially stated meaning, liberal can be equated with sanity and woke with insanity according to how the terms are used. If you say something in error and someone fact-checks it or restores context, the deflection might be to call the correction "mansplaining" or "whitesplaining." When talking about movies and setting straight the current problems with pop culture, the expected response from yahoos on Twitter or from twits on Yahoo might be to deflect it as "fansplaining" or more likely to get out the big guns and make the leap to Toxic fan, Alt. Right, or sexist Nazi.
Taken in large doses, the current culture can push people from the moderate middle to the fringe where they have no genuine interest in being. Calling out corporate spin is more vital than ever. One of the first things to have been removed from high school curriculums was any kind of media studies to prepare people for looking beyond the sales pitches they are fed. The powers that be do not want people thinking for themselves. They may still be fooled into thinking that is what they are doing when they choose Coke or Pepsi. Someone you know and love has voted for the wrong person, so do you acknowledge that there is still a passing grade on the score card or much overlap on your Venn diagram or do you exile them for a disagreement?
It is important to know that Warner Brothers made a compromised version of Justice League and then did not want anyone to see the evidence of how much better the abandoned vision would have been, so when AT & T took over and greenlit Zack Snyder completing his cut of that movie to promote HBO Max and it was celebrated and well received its success was enough embarassment for some Warner executives that their next move was to try to distract from it and throw shade at the fans who pleeded ReleastheSnyderCut, fans who were called racist as one lump group defined by inarticulate outliers on-line despite the efforts of these potential customers to raise money for charity and also despite the increased diversity representation in the Snyder Cut.
Whether or not movie studios can be directly connected to the rash of disparagement campaigns besetting youtube pundits critical of current trends, it is worth saying that consumers and customers represented by the more critical voices are valid market feedback that could be taken as data to improve and course correct the missteps of cinema especially. The hastage TheFandomMenace, a loose moniker for those who are vocal about pop culture losing its way, is made up of many principled individuals who are simply frank about what they like (Luke Skywalker's cameo in the season two finale of The Mandalorian) and what they do not (Lucasfilm's removal of Gina Carano and her character Cara Dune from the same show and other planned related series ostensibly for a shared meme but actually for voting Republican). So an action star has some degree of right-wing or conservative opinions. Stop the press. This is thought to be a strategic move to throw a monkey wrench into Jon Favreau's plans for the only Lucasfilm live action output the fans actually like.
A recent hit piece attributed to Rewriting Ripley (short form Re-Ri) painted a number of popular youtubers with a defamatory wide brush. They succeeded because tags will bring up the article and video when those youtube channels are searched. Someone also went to the trouble of manipulating imdb credits to connect many pundits to the Fandom Menace as if that were a production company and not just a catchy term for disgruntled audience members. At the end of 2017 the release of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi caused an exudus of half the built-in fanbase, to an extent that five months later when Solo: A Star Wars Story was released fewer people wanted to support it. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and her Lucasfilm Story Group as well as her other loyalists disrespect their core demographic in favor of trying to lure and pander to those for whom empty virtue signaling is enough.
The false conceit being pushed is that youtubers are significantly more influential that their millions of dollars in marketing budgets and studio connections to mainstream media, popular talk shows who want name guests, and famous people like Kevin Smith who do podcasts in the same space and lean toward promotion of new content. Many blogs and websites that had sprung up to report the crazy misdeeds of the 45th President of the United States have less scandal to draw clicks and so they are mining the so-called Culture Wars. They may resent Fandom Menace and affiliated or like-minded youtubers with better subscriber numbers and view counts, even when youtuber criticism of their columns draws activity to their own sites.
Smith's co-host Marc Bernardin, a writer for Star Trek Discovery season 2, is to the left of him physically and politically. He has used the term "Trojan horsing" as if it is a positive practice - using a popular brand as a front and sneaking in more woke elements. A better term for it is counterfeit. Millionaires talked of drinking "fanboy tears" when Paul Feig declaired his reboot of Ghostbusters the future of that brand, and when it underperformed (because activists can't be counted on and old fans should not be taken for granted), eventually it got retro-booted back to the original continuity and the angry tears were coming from the handful of FeigBusters boosters including cast member Leslie Jones who called it a Trump move.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, with some theater chains closed and with some people possibly reticent about crowding into a movie theater after being acclimatized to physical media and streaming at home, it is less reasonable to expect a billion dollar box office on a two hundred million dollar budget and whatever is invested in marketing. This is a poor time to alienate a huge portion of the potential audience. For film studios with tremendous reach and resources to play victim and demonize the average moviegoers whose enthusiasm for brands of the past helped build their apparent value is nuclear meltdown level toxicity. It is less about the stated objective of broadening the audience to all cultures - who themselves will have divisive tastes and priorities - than taking something away from the perceived bro demographic that had been used to being satisfied, if only thirty years before.
The Marvel Comics books division of Disney, as opposed to the Cinematic Universe, is run by more aggressively woke people. (DC Comics cleaned house to a degree when AT & T took over as parent company.) Modern Marvel comics has been continuing the misguided choices that ComicGate had questioned. Lando Calrissian is being put forward as an icon of LBGTQ because reporters embraced the suggestion (encouraged by Jon Kasdan) that the character might be pansexual, particularly due to banter with his robot. Jon's father, co-writer of Solo Lawrence Kasdan, was less committal and said the banter could mean nothing. Billy Dee Williams shot it down as making a big deal about a little moment with a droid and then when he referred to Brian's Song as a love story woke media ran with a misinterpretation that he was claiming to be bisexual. He then had to spoon feed them about Carl Jung's concept of anima and animus and how people can have characteristics of either gender without being gay. Nevertheless, that did not stop Marvel comics from doubling down on the character's ret-con. The trilogy of Lando novels from the Eighties and any other appearances in books and comics over the decades could have hinted at rainbow identity but it did not. And Han Solo is being spun in the new comics as if his smuggling was a facad and he was an idealist and activist all along. Utter garbage of woke imposition. Again, taking away and not building anything new.
Rumors about a "more powerful than Vader" character for Brie Larson in an upcoming Star Wars show (maybe the ill-conceived Acolyte, run by Harvey Weinstein's former assistant) seem to be a troll of the fanbase who typically have some sort of aversion to Brie Larson and her lip service to diversity and her self-congratulatory interviews. If studios are this antagonistic toward the demographic that actually pays to see things and buys merchandise, the current leadership is very bad for business. There is nothing more toxic than the entitled hashtag wokesters who cheered the loss of Gina Carano or were triggered by the sight of her on The Mandalorian because whe would not put gender pronouns into a Twitter, or has the political bent of Chuck Norris.
Saturday, March 27, 2021
Monday, March 22, 2021
Saturday, March 20, 2021
Thursday, March 18, 2021
Friday, March 12, 2021
Friday, March 5, 2021
Friday, February 26, 2021
Star Wars Leak | Kennedy Behind Gina Carano's Firing, Source Claims (RUMOR)
The core fanbase did not like Episodes VII, VIII and IX - especially VIII. Kennedy disparaged the fanbase and notoriously told Michael Arndt Luke was distracting in his original outlines and that Luke "represented the patriarchy and male-driven narratives" so he had to go or be sidelined and then Rian and the "story group" Kennedy hired retconned Luke. So Kennedy was already hated and she resented Jon Favreau's Mandalorian winning back fans, and especially hated seeing the surprise return of active, heroic Luke in the finale. She is a psychopath and a lot of people at Lucasfilm are hurting because of her. Gina just got to be the scapegoat.
It gets exhausting to fact check people on this. Bots and "stans" made it a mission to inflate the anti-Carano reeeeeee! Now because Disney caved (to mostly fake accounts) slactivists are emboldened and may go after Rosario Dawson. These decisions hurt the brand. Carano may be conservative but no more than Stallone, Chuck Norris or any number of action stars we enjoy seeing content from. Jon Voight has crazy views but I like seeing him act. And how often did we compare the orange con-man-in-chief to Hitler, and people who don't like the way comic books have gone (comicsGate) to Nazis ? The bar for hyperbole is already set. And to demand someone put pronouns in their bio is absurd. Busybody imbeciles. But it is Kathleen Kennedy and her faction that are to blame. It is unfortunate that (by Kennedy's design) Favreau's shows that stole her thunder will suffer as core fans (real fans, not those claiming cultural real estate) withdraw from Disney plus and hurt the bottom line (while likely pirating the Favreau and Filoni stuff or Marvel).
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Friday, February 19, 2021
Sunday, February 14, 2021
Friday, February 12, 2021
Friday, January 1, 2021
List of Reasons The Last Jedi the Worst of the Sequel Trilogy
On the argument of The Last Jedi being the least weak of the sequel trilogy, here are some things to consider, even though the argument may be wearing us all out.
The trouble with The Force Awakens was a) sidelining Luke so he won't distract, although his absence ended up being a distraction itself and b) mystery box format which itself is not Star Wars and rarely pays off c) too much like the original Star Wars even to the point of Starkiller Base exploding which seems rote and d) The concept of Starkiller Base is built-in self destruction since it is fixed to the planet and will doom itself by draining its only sun, as opposed to the Sun Crusher which was mobile in the EU books. e) Entering the atmosphere at light speed is dumb but some edge is taken off of it by the comical slide to the edge of a cliff. f) failing to devote the first film to the issue of Ben Solo and his training, culminating in his massacre and escape instead of having that be backstory. Too much concern about introducing Rey right away.
On the plus side, until Han's fate he is a welcome and entertaining presence.
The case against The Last Jedi both as Star Wars and as a movie on its own goes something like this:
A) Leaving no time lapse between episode VII and VIII serves no purpose except to show how Rey and Luke's first conversation would go (and that could have been skipped unless the lightsaber toss was hilarious).
B) General Hux (Hugs) is minimized as a threat by being treated as a joke right away. His only solid laugh about repeating commands was funnier the first time when Sigourney Weaver did it in Galaxy Quest. His one moment of balls where he reaches for his gun when Kylo is unconscious comes from the actor Domhnall Gleeson, according to Rian Johnson's commentary track.
C) Rey and Luke, Holdo and Poe, as well as Rose and Finn have the same condescending dynamic in their scenes, even to the extent of girlsplaining the econimics of The First Order to a storm trooper.
D) The Holdo maneuver could have been performed by a sacrificial droid.
E) While this isn't clear in the movie, the novelization says that Leia sees a light go out indicating that Poe has switched off his radio when she objects to the bombing run. She could have called it off - as General - on the open channel and still had a case for his demotion.
F) Unconscious in space, Leia could not breathe. While she can wake and will herself back to the ship she does not have the power to come out of a coma except via help from a male, her brother, through long distance force healing.
G) Despite the ostensibly feminist construct of the characters, Holdo misjudges Poe and ensures there will be mutiny, Rose for all her knowledge of Canto Bight does not know to ask permission to land, and Rey is wrong to fall for Kylo's lure and for ignoring Luke's advice.
H) Flashbacks at all in Star Wars don't fit. This is inherited from JJ's mystery box having abandoned the more linear narrative of the other films. But worst of all Luke would have had a parent-teacher interview with Han and Leia if he was worried about Ben (should have been first scene of The Force Awakens to get those three together right away). Luke would not have crept to his sleeping nephew in the night, let alone with murder at all a consideration. Even a protagonist in a non Star Wars movie would make no sense doing that.
I) Luke restores his connection to the force and demonstrates force push ability on Rey's hut, but then doesn't bother using it when Rey gets him on his back and pins him with his own family saber. He should have sent it flying one way and Rey another. This moment you can really imagine Rian typing away and Kennedy's "story group" having no problem with it.
J) Luke may have a reason to deceive the First Order outside the old Crait rebel base, but he has no reason to deceive Leia and the resistance team, especially not to give Leia the magic disappearing dice which apparently she dropped on the floor at some point. Apart from Luke winking at Threepio (Mark Hamill's decision because Rian didn't want him to acknowledge his old droid) there is no clue that things are not as they appear. Rian put his own arrangement of reveals ahead of what would have been practical. Luke could have said to Leia, "The rear exit is blocked by rocks. You better get levitating those and get people out. I'll distract your guests outside." Poe really didn't have to be left to connect those dots, except that it contrives something for him to contribute. Although, if Luke wants them to escape, he could have cleared the rocks himself.
K) The Escape from L.A. twist with Luke works fine, but might he have been able to use the force to also crush the canons or kneecap the walkers, or could he have arrived earlier and prevented the "death star tech" from cooking Finn's kamikaze run (and save us from the cringe moment with Rose) ?
L) After being told by Leia that Poe is not ready, she decides, "Why are you looking at me? Follow HIM." Which somewhat again flips the ham-fisted messaging that came before.
M) It is not clear how Rey in an off screen stolen Imperial ship reunited with Chewie and the Falcon so they could arrive at Crait.
N) Luke's death is arbitrary.
O) The broom boy playing with home made Star Wars figures might have been stronger if we had not been bombarded with commercials featuring kids playing pretend interacting with representations of the real thing.
P) The point is often made that the Fathiers freed by Rose and Finn would be easily gathered up later, while had they freed the kids they might have hidden and evaded capture.
Q) DJ describing the black market of ships to both the bad guys and the good bothers some people, although the military-industrial complex is a fair topic to give a nod. But had they met DJ in the rebel brig Rose was dragging Finn to, there would be no need for the mis-direct about the code breaker we kind of hoped would be Lando. DJ could have been discretely released from the brig and began the mission, maybe even after perhaps the hologram of Maz Kanata might not be able to give him a reference. (It looked like she was busy in a better movie.)
R) The Captain Phasma character was given an anticlimactic and premature death falling into fire, but in fairness we can put an asterisk on this point because the next writer or director or the ever vigilant story group could have just had Gwendolin Christie infiltrate the Resistance with a burn scar on her eye and maybe a patch which might have explained it. Her armor might have protected her beyond the helmet crack.
S) It was not quite clear when the lightsaber crystal exploded and the Holdo explosion happened who was on what ship.
T) Deleted scenes like Luke's third lesson and a trooper (Tom Hardy) recognizing Finn in the elevator, should have stayed in and Canto Bight just eliminated.
U) When page drops the bomber payload, maybe it should have been as explicit as the novelization in stating that they are magnetic so some viewers couldn't take it as ignoring the lack of gravity.
V) BB-8 coming to the rescue riding a chicken walker was very ewok-esque.
W) Could Luke have simply resisted the call to adventure politely and offered Rey tea instead of being rude to the one other human on the planet ?
X) Chewie is guilted out of actually eating the porg even after he killed it, plucked its feathers, and put barbecue sauce on it and cooked it. After the other porgs batted their eyes and caused him to hesitate, the button on that scene should have been Chewie taking a defiant bite. Instead it gets an eye roll over imposed vegan-ization of a wookie. Even in the new Holiday Special, he stops his wookie family from eating porgs.
Y) Why did Holdo's plan of refueling smaller ships and then distracting the First Order have to be a secret when there was no way Hux and his team would not detect a wagon train of small ships leaving the area?
Z) Rose posts herself at the escape pods and feels entitled to zap and arrest people who try to leave a VOLUNTARY resistance. How is that any different from fueling the smaller ships to escape? People like Han can come and go without being branded disloyal. And knowing Finn's status (which must have been really talked up far and wide in the ZERO time between the last film and this) she still assaults him and assumes at every turn that his nature is to bail. Had he been allowed to leave, he might have reached Ach-to and had a Meet the Parents dynamic with Luke.
I realize these points have been bandied about for three years. You might be sick of them. But The Last Jedi is such a case study in ideology causing blind spots in storytelling that I feel compelled to call the movie on some of its shit. Luckily I have run out of alphabet so I can leave it at that. Based on the above points, The Last Jedi is the worst of a very flawed trilogy. The Revise of Skywalker inherits most of its deficits from The Last Jedi. I can't get past the idea that any part of the Endor Death Star survived the explosion, let alone an almost intact Emperor's throne room. Pure stupidity the "Lucasfilm Story Group" would not care to challenge because it has nothing to do with identity politics.
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