Rod, Karen and Sterling discuss listener feedback, entertainment, Josh Gad apologizes for “Let It Go”, Facebook adds safety feature to Metaverse, Gumby bought by Fox, Defenders going to Disney Plus, Twitch streamer gets swatted, Star Trek 4, Meta agrees to settle lawsuit, Peacemaker renewed, Nintendo closing Wii U shop in 2023, I Am Legend sequel, publishers uniting against Russia, God of War TV show, Playstation accused of systemic sexism, Xbox improves quick resume, Walgreens fridge doors, TikTok mental health influencers, Darth Vader in Obi-Wan, NFTs in gaming, Vimeo charging creators thousands, FCC wants on air disclosures, Xbox cloud gaming improves, publishers against Texas anti-trans law, The Batman box office and gangs using games to get kids to sell drugs.
The Nerd Off: (Protected Content)
First off sorry for the potential errors, this has been in draft since 15 March and of course I waited until the last minute to send.
To reference y’all discussion on the last show about how these, let’s call them Old Guard, directors criticize the comic book/Disney type movies…
They are correct. There is no real middle ground in the movie business anymore. But even I just said it, it’s the movie business. It’s art and money.
Tentpole type stuff is mass market entertainment — movies for the cash return. Art house type stuff is more about the art form of film and visual storytelling.
In the best world, every movie would be both of those things so everyone who made and watched movies could win but in our world of finite resources, movie folks have to make choices. You have to convince the rich people financing your project that it is important as “objet d’art” [obe jay darr] or it’s a good investment.
If you can find folks who have deep pockets and love your vision, you’re straight because the stars have aligned. But most folks are gon want some money out of spending millions of dollars paying people to create a film.
The best way to guarantee a return on investment is to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
The problem with that is that audience is smaller than ever these days.
There are more choices than ever for distraction, easier entertainment options overall; no one is locked in to any one thing anymore.
Studio mergers haven’t helped either; they reduce the pool of available financers.
We also have people who are post COVID aware and the same way they don’t see the need to go into the office anymore they don’t see the need to go into the movie theatres anymore.
Additionally, inflation is kicking everybody’s ass right now.
So yeah, there’s no middle class in movies anymore just like there isn’t a middle class on Earth anymore because all the resources are hyper concentrated in the hands of too few.
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Offtopic 1:
RIP Gen. Ross — I wanted to see him be Red Hulk
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Offtopic 2:
The Legend of Vox Machina is a visual representation of how my imagination feels while I’m gaming (playing D&D or other tabletop RPG [TTRPG])
Mwangangi
Hi y’all, Felix here. First of all congrats on the job rod, haven’t had the chance yet to say that but it’s really cool seeing folks you like prosper, trying to find a way to watch where I’m at so I can binge it and looking forward to it even though I don’t care about sports (except when listening to BDS of course lol). Also really really enjoyed the guests as usual. Love you sterling! Ok since it’s been a while and there’s not a lot of other comments imma go a bit long today. Apologies in advance haha.
Ok firstly I saw that the boruto Blu-ray’s are up to the episodes I worked in 2020 . I ordered a copy but still emotional about it, gonna have a thing I worked on in my anime collection . They’re almost at the really major content from that run now so the major fights will be awesome to watch in blu ray quality. Nice timing too since I got to work with those guys again recently and it was nice catching up with them.
You guys will go over this for sure but I’ll say regardless, that Thor trailer was crazy man. All I wanted to see was Natalie and Chris looking swole as hell and I woulda been happy but that trailer gave us so much. I can’t wait to see this movie.
Next up, since I was on a job the last few months doing crazy hours I hadn’t seen what happened to comixology in real time but man, when I opened the app and saw that shit … They are fucking crazy for doing that. I haven’t bought a single thing since seeing this and it’s not because I don’t want to buts it’s literally because I couldn’t find the sales and new releases tabs for a couple days and when I did the shit is so terribly organised that I can’t navigate it comfortably because all the deals are under one tab and not neatly separated and organised. Then the downloads of the books I already own aren’t downloading in HD, my subscriptions are all gone because I had the nerve to not live in the US. It’s just so much wrong that I’m just flabbergasted. I really hope they fix this shit. Especially since the marvel comics app (not unlimited) fortunately has the same old comixology interface so I switched there for my marvel stuff. The only gaping problem is outside of that, here in the UK I’m shit outta luck for indie and DC books digitally all in one place. DC discontinued their old comixology style app and said they’d launch DC Universe here by summer 2021 and only just announced a couple weeks ago it was launching here… Yes you read that right, it’s almost a year late launching and they hadnt bothered to give an explanation until a couple weeks ago. Add to that what Paramount pulled taking star trek discovery from netflix and telling everyone outside the US to wait till next year then backpedaling and putting it on a digital TV channel most people don’t have or know about and HBO Max just still not existing here. I’m just tired of this shit. We made so much progress democratising access to content last decade but now everything’s going backwards. I feel especially bad for my friends back in Zambia who now just can’t access digital comics at all because now that it’s linked to Amazon (a service that doesn’t exist there), they just can’t buy them and on top of that some comics are now region locked completely. It’s really heartbreaking.
Next up, on the netflix shenanigans that have been ongoing the last few weeks. It is fucking wild how crazy this is becoming. It’s not enough that they have gutted the 2d kids animation division and fired a lot of staff, hearing that some people where just hired sometimes 6 months to work on stuff only to be fired because of a slow quarter is crazy. There was a show I applied to work on last December that I didn’t get but I just saw a bunch of people on it where fired and the project canceled. I’ve seen from more experienced industry folks that this is a cyclical thing in the industry, studios implode, staff leave for other places, form new studios who them rise and then fall also. It’s at least comforting knowing some people have already found new jobs but it sucks seeing this happen regardless.
Building on that, with the news that Disney is going back into traditional 2d animation I have to say, while I will definitely watch whatever comes out… I’ll believe it when I see it. They teased this before and nothing came of it so if they’re just doing it for PR again I’ll be disappointing but I get my fix of high quality 2d animation elsewhere now so I won’t be devastated if it doesn’t happen. Would be nice to see them work on stuff taking in lessons learnt from anime productions with regards to how far the artistry has gotten and not just stuck to the old style completely.
Lastly, I’d like to give a shout-out to Reacher on Amazon. I did not realize how right the author of Jack Reacher was when he complained about Tom Cruise. It’s a completely different vibe when a man that is pure abs and biceps is doing that crazy shit haha. I was determined to be a hater but as soon as he started regularly taking his shirt off I was hooked. The black police chief dude was so fun too. I love me a by the book but will fuck you up cop show archetype. I’ve just learned to admit to myself that I just love cop/detective shows. Doesn’t matter, as long as the central dynamic is good I’ll watch 20 seasons. That’s why I loved Lucifer and Elementary. Also started watching Bosch on Amazon. Please feed me more of this Mr Bezos. Ok love y’all, Felix out.