Nobody Cares about TV and Film

[bubblesort]

I just watched the first half of the first episode of Moon Knight. It's the first MCU property I just bailed on because it's so bad.

Basically, you have this dude who clearly has multiple personalities. The audience knows this because we all saw the trailers. Dude knows it, too, because he shackles himself to his bed at night. Then he acts shocked and completely disoriented when his other personalities take his body out for a run and do stupid things with it, or mess up his plans, or make strangers call him. It's like he only knows about his condition when he's going to bed, but then afterwards, he totally forgets about it.

On top of that, he has the most annoying London accent. I think it's north London? I'm probably wrong, I'm sure somebody will correct me... point is, even when that particular London dialect is properly done, or being spoken by a native, it annoys me. Oscar Isaac does not do it well, though, which makes it even more obnoxious.

I might come back and watch the whole show if Dr Strange 2 makes me curious when I see it, but I'm probably just going to skip it.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

I am enjoying Moon Knight but it is one of the comics I used to follow way back in the 80s, although I am not familiar with the current run so there are changes

One of the biggest being that they relocated him to London since New York is getting crowded.

I liked the way the first episode focused on the least connected personality. You meet others at the end of the episode briefly, and get more in episode two. Have not seen the third episode yet.

With the convoluted backstory that has been retconned multiple times over several decades, the confusion of the first episode is probably the best way to start off. You learn along with him.

eta: At the start of episode one he knows he sleepwalks and loses time, but he does not know about the other personalities yet. They explain in episode two that something is causing the walls between them to weaken. Marc knows about Steven, but not the other way around.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

 

[Veritable Quandry]

And of course...

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

All I know of the Moon Knight is the Moon Roach.

Also, that guy with the mustache and styled hair just reeks of the '70s.

And American TV.

 

[NyteWytch]

I know relatively little of Moon Knight. I think the only time I really heard of him was when I played Marvel Heroes (rip) and he had a small bit in the marvel avengers game as well.

So far (I'm current), I'm really enjoying the series and started on the comics because of it. It's probably my fav dis+ marvel series to date, tho I'm admittedly a marvel hater .

 

[Noodles]

No Sailor Scouts yet, and they seem to have changed his costume...

 

[Caete]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Noodles]

I lost HBO when my work TV discount went away recently. Now I have dropped Netflix because it costs too much.

Everything else is still pretty affordable, for now. (Hulu+D+, Acorn, Paramount+, Amazon Prime)

 

[Free]

Who could have imagined after the 2nd: The 4th Thor film...

 

[danielravennest]

Who could have imagined after the 2nd: The 4th Thor film...

He's been in a few other films between the "mainly Thor" ones, and they quickly dumped his girlfriend until now.

Notice at the end how Mjolnir is cracked? When last we saw his original timeline hammer, it was lying cracked on the ground after Hela broke it. So my plot theory is Nick Fury, who is always interested in super-weapons, gets Jane Foster to investigate the hammer shards. She jumps at the chance to study dwarf-star alloy. While trying to re-assemble it, something goes wrong, and she is given powers, but due to the cracks they are off somehow. Thus Thor has to get involved to fix it.

Being an ordinary human, rather than an Asgardian, supersoldier, or synthezoid, lifting such a heavy hammer makes her arm ache a lot, and thus Darcy coins the name Mighty Thor, and it stuck.

 

[Free]

/me very lightly taps the horn.

 

[Noodles]

Master Chief took off his helmet. WHY DID HE TAKE OFF HIS HELMET?

OH GOD NOW HE IS TAKING OFF HIS ARMOR? WHAT IS GOING ON? I THOUGHT THIS WAS A HALO SHOW!

 

[Veritable Quandry]

That is not the way.

 

[Free]

Oh hey, who wants to pay a subscription fee to see Wolf Blitzer? I know I DON'T.

CNN Plus will cost $2.99 per month for early subscribers

CNN announced plans for a streaming service last July.

www.theverge.com

I might have bet for it to last no longer than 6 months, but wow.

CNN Plus is shutting down only a month after it launched

Warner Bros. Discovery has different plans for the streaming era.

www.theverge.com

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

He's been in a few other films between the "mainly Thor" ones, and they quickly dumped his girlfriend until now.

Notice at the end how Mjolnir is cracked? When last we saw his original timeline hammer, it was lying cracked on the ground after Hela broke it. So my plot theory is Nick Fury, who is always interested in super-weapons, gets Jane Foster to investigate the hammer shards. She jumps at the chance to study dwarf-star alloy. While trying to re-assemble it, something goes wrong, and she is given powers, but due to the cracks they are off somehow. Thus Thor has to get involved to fix it.

Being an ordinary human, rather than an Asgardian, supersoldier, or synthezoid, lifting such a heavy hammer makes her arm ache a lot, and thus Darcy coins the name Mighty Thor, and it stuck.

I'm certain part of her "upgrade" will be attributed to her surviving being inhabited by The Aether, aka the red "Reality" infinity stone.

 

[bubblesort]

The news this past week about Netflix is that they are going to to hike prices again, start putting ads on everything, cancel a lot of their projects, shut down their animation division so harshly they cancelled Bone without ever airing a single episode of it. AFAIK, they have not announced that Love Death + Robots season 3 is cancelled, so hopefully that survives. Also, they are cracking down on password sharing, which is bullshit, because I explicitly pay them for 4 simultaneous streams, damnit! The media says that Netflix is doing this because their user base contracted for the first time, by 200,000 subscribers. In response, Netflix is losing their shit, panicking, their top talent is resigning, and setting the place on fire on their way out. It's so bad, their stock price has dropped to a third of it's value in the last 5 days, since the announcement of their loss of 200k subs, on April 19. I don't think that stock price drop is really because of the subscribers, though. I think that subscriber loss wouldn't bother most investors at all. I think the stock price drop is mostly because no sane person believes in Netflix's bizarre strategy.

The angle that most mainstream reporters seem to take on the situation is that Netflix is persuing a rational strategy to increase company value for share holders. I don't know if I can buy that. It seems a bit weird for a company to shoot themselves in the foot so many times, then reload, and empty a magazine into the other foot, but that's what most of the press is saying they are doing.

If you want a more exciting explanation... In the more fringe/tin foil hat corners of the internet, people are saying Netflix is just another Boston Consulting Group victim. Boston Consulting Group has been a major villain for years, behind such corporate failures as Sears, JC Penny, Toys R Us, Circuit City, Radio Shack, and, of course, Game Stop. They've also been implicated in things like the de-funding of public education in America. If you ever read the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, they are basically accused of doing what the hit man does in the book, but they do it domestically. The basic idea is that Boston Consulting Group embeds with companies, then runs them into the ground, in order to let financial companies like Mitt Romney's Bain Capital swoop in and gobble up the assets for pennies on the dollar. They work with companies like Citadel. They're sometimes called vulture capitalists.

At least, that's the explanation from the weirder corners of the internet. It seems a bit less weird than the idea that Netflix is doing this deliberately, but not that much less weird. Out of touch executives do weird shit all the time, so maybe Netflix really is dumb enough to not understand their own value proposition? I mean, I pay $10 a month for Netflix now, no problem, but their library isn't really worth $15 a month to me, as it is, currently. It's certainly not worth $15.50-$20.00 a month, with ads, and no simultaneous streams. HBO is barely worth $15 a month to me, and it's the service I've used most in the last 6 months or so. Vulture capitalism is a real issue, but I don't know if this is really vulture capitalism yet. Lets at least wait for the body to cool before we seriously accuse the vultures.

Maybe they are talking about doing all these horrible things, then plan to back off on all of them except the price increase, in order to get less people to leave Netflix when the price goes up? Kind of a mass negotiation tactic, at a time when people's disposable income is dwindling?

Any way you look at it, the most simple, and optimistic explanation, is that they are dumb. I hope they are dumb.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

* We lost 200,000 subscribers, what do we do?
* Drive the rest away?

 

[Noodles]

Something to conaider that will be the next shoe on this Netflix mess.

The price hike announcement was less than a month from the earnings call. So many people cancelling over it, won't be in that 200k loss (that they blamed on half a million Russiana being blocked).

My subscription, from the days of DVD only, ran out a few days after the news of losing subscribers.

I expect another loss in Q2.