SDCC, media and whatnot
Hello world! It's been a while. I've been meaning to post, but I talk myself out of it most days. It's a lot of effort sometimes. Don't want to talk about current events. So let's talk about other stuff!
SDCC has moved online this year, which I'm sure most of you know, and the schedule is up. Among the panels I'm interested in are:
July 23 - Star Trek (10am), X-Men (10am), His Dark Materials (1pm), LGBTQ in TV (5pm)
July 24th - Charlize Theron musing on what a badass she is (10am)
July 25th - Cosmos and NASA panels back to back (10am, 11am), Constantine reunion (12pm), Disney+ The Right Stuff panel (1pm), Storytelling in Comics (1pm), Stumptown (4pm)
July 26th - Nathan Fillion and special guests (2pm)
Aside from the Trek panel, there aren't any showy Hall H kind of virtual panels. Which means a dearth of trailers this summer, sadly. People are at home in need of good things and they can't go to see any of the tentpole movies they were looking forward to this year. Drop some trailers, movie studios! The social media buzz would be tremendous.
Been watching quite a bit of media in my off hours, because I'm too tired to do anything else. None of what I'm about to say has spoilers, but cutting for length. Unsolved Mysteries has received an excellent reboot on Netflix in a new format - one mystery per episode, and mostly true crime. The mood of the show, however, remains vaguely creepy, complete with the spooky theme music, and a spectral image of the magnificent Robert Stack in the background of the titles. :) I can't wait for the next few episodes to drop. Also watched Tom Hanks' WW II movie Greyhound on Apple+ (pretty good, if you like tension on the high seas and an illustration of how impossible wartime command was). Watched The Old Guard on Netflix and highly recommend it - I'm 1000% here for Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne kicking all kinds of ass, plus immortal lovers who killed each other several times in the Crusades before they realized they were in love. People compare it to Highlander or The Losers, but IMO, it's not really like either, except superficially. Also watched Extraction on Netflix, which was...not very good, sorry Hemsworth! And the second season of Lost in Space, which gave me SO MANY ROBOT FEELS. SO. MANY!!
Hmm, what else. Was glued to Defending Jacob - for which Chris Evans should absolutely get an Emmy nomination - and of course, I watched Hamilton. I liked it? I didn't love it. The second half drags interminably. Maybe it suffers in a filmed format, IDK. Some of the numbers are much better with context, for sure. I love all the actors, though. I personally feel that Daveed Diggs, Phillipa Soo, and Renée Elise Goldsberry are the clear stand-outs. Chris Jackson as Washington, too. Groff steals the show with his numbers. It's hilarious to me that Aaron Burr went from being a murderous political villain and the punchline in a milk commercial, to being the narrator of Hamilton's life story in a world-renowned musical.
Remember when people used to talk about fannish things on DW? Those were the days.
Creators and EPs don't usually step down from their own shows unless there's some kind of serious internal problem ranging from abusive jerks to being a difficult human being to work with for all sorts of reasons ("creative differences/substantial differences" is the catch-all phrase there, think: Fuller on American Gods or Disco, Darabont on Walking Dead). Or unless the network wants to go on with the property they created but the show creator doesn't have interest in going on with it (see: Eric Kripke) and there's money still to be made from it. The narrative vaguely painting Carina MacKenzie's departure as leaving because of her principles about some unknown issue is odd. Anyway, I'm curious about what her departure will mean for the show, mostly in terms of the writing, since I felt it went substantially off the rails in season 2. It's possible the show might improve with consistent story through-lines. I'm sorry for those of you that love the show as is. Hope the things you love don't change. (Unless they involve tired love triangle tropes, in which case...I hope the things you love do change.)
Meanwhile, the firing of Peter Lenkov makes me sad - not for him, but for all the people working on his shows (especially H50) who were clearly miserable and/or mistreated for a very long time. I think about the ending of the show and how out of left field it was when the entirety of that episode was pointing to something else, and about how Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim had to leave because they weren't valued, and how female characters came in (and were usually well-written before taking a turn somewhere along the line) and then cycled right back out until Meaghan Rath, and about how visibly thin and sick Alex O'Loughlin had to become that year he was addicted to painkillers before anyone did anything about that, and how unhappy he was in every interview, and I think about how many injuries he and Scott Caan sustained during the course of the show, and so many other things, and it's kind of awful. They fired him too late to do any good for H50, but maybe it'll be better for the other shows of his still on the air.
Two day weekends are just not long enough to address the level of exhaustion I feel about everything. I laughed when I saw a tweet that said, short weekend has ended, long weekend is now beginning! Oh to be able to work at home. The grass is always greener. Some of us don't have that option, alas.
How are you all holding up out there? I hope all of you and your loved ones are staying well. <3
SDCC has moved online this year, which I'm sure most of you know, and the schedule is up. Among the panels I'm interested in are:
July 23 - Star Trek (10am), X-Men (10am), His Dark Materials (1pm), LGBTQ in TV (5pm)
July 24th - Charlize Theron musing on what a badass she is (10am)
July 25th - Cosmos and NASA panels back to back (10am, 11am), Constantine reunion (12pm), Disney+ The Right Stuff panel (1pm), Storytelling in Comics (1pm), Stumptown (4pm)
July 26th - Nathan Fillion and special guests (2pm)
Aside from the Trek panel, there aren't any showy Hall H kind of virtual panels. Which means a dearth of trailers this summer, sadly. People are at home in need of good things and they can't go to see any of the tentpole movies they were looking forward to this year. Drop some trailers, movie studios! The social media buzz would be tremendous.
Been watching quite a bit of media in my off hours, because I'm too tired to do anything else. None of what I'm about to say has spoilers, but cutting for length. Unsolved Mysteries has received an excellent reboot on Netflix in a new format - one mystery per episode, and mostly true crime. The mood of the show, however, remains vaguely creepy, complete with the spooky theme music, and a spectral image of the magnificent Robert Stack in the background of the titles. :) I can't wait for the next few episodes to drop. Also watched Tom Hanks' WW II movie Greyhound on Apple+ (pretty good, if you like tension on the high seas and an illustration of how impossible wartime command was). Watched The Old Guard on Netflix and highly recommend it - I'm 1000% here for Charlize Theron and Kiki Layne kicking all kinds of ass, plus immortal lovers who killed each other several times in the Crusades before they realized they were in love. People compare it to Highlander or The Losers, but IMO, it's not really like either, except superficially. Also watched Extraction on Netflix, which was...not very good, sorry Hemsworth! And the second season of Lost in Space, which gave me SO MANY ROBOT FEELS. SO. MANY!!
Hmm, what else. Was glued to Defending Jacob - for which Chris Evans should absolutely get an Emmy nomination - and of course, I watched Hamilton. I liked it? I didn't love it. The second half drags interminably. Maybe it suffers in a filmed format, IDK. Some of the numbers are much better with context, for sure. I love all the actors, though. I personally feel that Daveed Diggs, Phillipa Soo, and Renée Elise Goldsberry are the clear stand-outs. Chris Jackson as Washington, too. Groff steals the show with his numbers. It's hilarious to me that Aaron Burr went from being a murderous political villain and the punchline in a milk commercial, to being the narrator of Hamilton's life story in a world-renowned musical.
Remember when people used to talk about fannish things on DW? Those were the days.
Creators and EPs don't usually step down from their own shows unless there's some kind of serious internal problem ranging from abusive jerks to being a difficult human being to work with for all sorts of reasons ("creative differences/substantial differences" is the catch-all phrase there, think: Fuller on American Gods or Disco, Darabont on Walking Dead). Or unless the network wants to go on with the property they created but the show creator doesn't have interest in going on with it (see: Eric Kripke) and there's money still to be made from it. The narrative vaguely painting Carina MacKenzie's departure as leaving because of her principles about some unknown issue is odd. Anyway, I'm curious about what her departure will mean for the show, mostly in terms of the writing, since I felt it went substantially off the rails in season 2. It's possible the show might improve with consistent story through-lines. I'm sorry for those of you that love the show as is. Hope the things you love don't change. (Unless they involve tired love triangle tropes, in which case...I hope the things you love do change.)
Meanwhile, the firing of Peter Lenkov makes me sad - not for him, but for all the people working on his shows (especially H50) who were clearly miserable and/or mistreated for a very long time. I think about the ending of the show and how out of left field it was when the entirety of that episode was pointing to something else, and about how Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim had to leave because they weren't valued, and how female characters came in (and were usually well-written before taking a turn somewhere along the line) and then cycled right back out until Meaghan Rath, and about how visibly thin and sick Alex O'Loughlin had to become that year he was addicted to painkillers before anyone did anything about that, and how unhappy he was in every interview, and I think about how many injuries he and Scott Caan sustained during the course of the show, and so many other things, and it's kind of awful. They fired him too late to do any good for H50, but maybe it'll be better for the other shows of his still on the air.
Two day weekends are just not long enough to address the level of exhaustion I feel about everything. I laughed when I saw a tweet that said, short weekend has ended, long weekend is now beginning! Oh to be able to work at home. The grass is always greener. Some of us don't have that option, alas.
How are you all holding up out there? I hope all of you and your loved ones are staying well. <3