Trash fires
1) I was reminded of the scene in Firefly where Simon says, upon seeing Jayne's statue, that this must be what going mad feels like. I watched the 2003 Hulk movie by Ang Lee and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. So I went to Wikipedia to see what had been said about this trash fire of a movie and read the following:
"Hulk grossed $245 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 2003. The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes calls it an ambitious and stylish film that focuses too much on dialogue at the cost of action. "
Ok, to me there's no way a Hulk film could focus too much on dialogue, especially when the last quarter of the film is almost constant action. Rather it's that the rest of the film is so awful that it's a relief when Hulk just starts leaping through the desert.
The only bit I agreed with was: "Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly stated, "a big-budget comic-book adaptation has rarely felt so humorless and intellectually defensive about its own pulpy roots.""
Unfortunately I didn't get much insight into Lee's POV other than that he wanted to create a Greek tragedy. (Clearly Oedipus, given how much Jennifer Connoly resembled Bruce's mother).
I hardly know where to start in my WTF. Clearly given the endless rewrites and long development delays, it's no surprise the film was a mess. Also unsurprising was this statement: "France claimed "Someone within the Universal hierarchy wasn't sure if this was a science fiction adventure, or a comedy, and I kept getting directions to write both. I think that at some point when I wasn't in the room, there may have been discussions about turning it into a Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler movie.""
So I'm gathering that it was Lee's idea to use a comic book framing style for the film. It was super distracting and just cheapened the look of the film in my book but it was hardly the only problem:
a) The whole movie looks like it was shot on video tape, and given the acting and sets the whole thing looked like an 80s TV movie.
b) There was a decent cast but not much for them to work with. The dialogue was wooden and cliché, and the way Jennifer Connelly's Betty was presented was just cringeworthy. She alternated between being ineffective, having no clear role as a scientist, and being the beauty for the beast -- as if that had had any effect on Bruce's father David when it came to his mother's safety so it was just extra naive here. Not that David isn't a piece of work as the film's deepest villain, but the over-the-topness of that portrayal didn't help anything. Everyone here is acting as if they must be super serious and as if we couldn't possibly pick up any subtext unless we were hammered over the head with it.
c) There could have been something done with how systems are awful but pretty much everyone was awful or ineffective. I particularly hated the uncaring destruction of natural landmarks. Oh, and of course we have to have a moment with Hulk up on the Golden Gate bridge because that's never been done before in 1000 movies set in San Francisco.
d) The soundtrack had some weird moments which were apparently the result of leftover pieces of Mychael Danna's original score, which "was rejected by studio executives for its non-traditional approach, which featured Japanese taiko, African drumming, and Arabic singing." In this case I agree with them -- I mean, why? What possible reason would the score be using them given the storyline? I'm not even a person who generally notices a score and I found them jarring.
e) An hour into the film I looked at the timeline and couldn't believe there was over an hour still to go. It seemed interminable.
2) Speaking of trash fires thanks to producers who didn't respect the canon and figured fans would buy anything: a review of Trek tie-ins with a dispiriting but unsurprising discovery. As time has gone on, fewer women have been hired for these books. (Thanks to Satsuma for the link)
It doesn't surprise me that women's tie-in novel contributions are dropping. A lot of early women writers were adapting fanfic, but the pace of these Trek novels became an assembly line in the late 90s (and a decreasing quality in the books, many of which seemed to have virtually no editing). Early on I bought and read every Trek novel and stopped around 1999 when I realized that S&S cared nothing for its readership as long as there was new content to push.
Those sorts of deadlines, I suspect, favored men who could write full time with few interruptions.But it is quite interesting that the later series, DS9 and Voyager, had more female writers. Of course, given that DS9 hasn't had books recently it could be they were being taken up by writers who might otherwise not get a contract. And Voyager has a female lead and other key female characters that might dissuade male writers from working with it.
But I also think that it is simply common for men to be promoted by their agents and to be thought of first for work. Una McCormack is busy (she's also written for Dr. Who and still writes fanfic as well) but she's like Smurfette at this point.
If you don't have much time, just scan the graphics as they tell the story rather quickly. These things were written at such speed and with so little care that a post by muccamukk outlines just how bad things could get for bookbuyers.
As the OP points out, the new Trek shows provide a renewed opportunity for women to work on these books (and hopefully improve them). I'm fairly sure S&S don't give a crap, but perhaps a social media campaign might put pressure on them from other quarters.
3) "Consumer Reports examined 787 consumer cable bills from 13 top cable providers and found that while the average user paid around $156.71 per month for cable TV, users in reality paid $217.42 a month once fees were included."
What's more:
"The report is quick to highlight how some of the bullshit fees (like the "regulatory recovery fee") are named in such a way to trick the consumer into blaming government. "
This is literally the reason why we cancelled our cable, because I was so incensed by this deception:
"The study found that in 2015, Comcast started charging consumers a $1-a-month Regional Sports Fee and $1.50-a-month broadcast TV fee ($2.50 per month). By 2019 those fees had ballooned to $18.50 a month, or a 600 percent increase in just four years."
Think about that. You could pay for one or two streaming services a month for that same cost.
4) My first thought was of the habit of fans to search via kudos on AO3.
"Based on these results, Australian researchers proposed the first model (dubbed the MusicLab model) to explain how content becomes popular in cultural markets - why a few things get all the popularity while most get none and (most important for us) why showing the number of downloads can be so detrimental."
5) And in contrast, a great use of AO3 as a cultural landmark. I love seeing all the different fandoms going by.
View poll: Kudos Footer-103
Comments at Dreamwidth
.
"Hulk grossed $245 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 2003. The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes calls it an ambitious and stylish film that focuses too much on dialogue at the cost of action. "
Ok, to me there's no way a Hulk film could focus too much on dialogue, especially when the last quarter of the film is almost constant action. Rather it's that the rest of the film is so awful that it's a relief when Hulk just starts leaping through the desert.
The only bit I agreed with was: "Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly stated, "a big-budget comic-book adaptation has rarely felt so humorless and intellectually defensive about its own pulpy roots.""
Unfortunately I didn't get much insight into Lee's POV other than that he wanted to create a Greek tragedy. (Clearly Oedipus, given how much Jennifer Connoly resembled Bruce's mother).
I hardly know where to start in my WTF. Clearly given the endless rewrites and long development delays, it's no surprise the film was a mess. Also unsurprising was this statement: "France claimed "Someone within the Universal hierarchy wasn't sure if this was a science fiction adventure, or a comedy, and I kept getting directions to write both. I think that at some point when I wasn't in the room, there may have been discussions about turning it into a Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler movie.""
So I'm gathering that it was Lee's idea to use a comic book framing style for the film. It was super distracting and just cheapened the look of the film in my book but it was hardly the only problem:
a) The whole movie looks like it was shot on video tape, and given the acting and sets the whole thing looked like an 80s TV movie.
b) There was a decent cast but not much for them to work with. The dialogue was wooden and cliché, and the way Jennifer Connelly's Betty was presented was just cringeworthy. She alternated between being ineffective, having no clear role as a scientist, and being the beauty for the beast -- as if that had had any effect on Bruce's father David when it came to his mother's safety so it was just extra naive here. Not that David isn't a piece of work as the film's deepest villain, but the over-the-topness of that portrayal didn't help anything. Everyone here is acting as if they must be super serious and as if we couldn't possibly pick up any subtext unless we were hammered over the head with it.
c) There could have been something done with how systems are awful but pretty much everyone was awful or ineffective. I particularly hated the uncaring destruction of natural landmarks. Oh, and of course we have to have a moment with Hulk up on the Golden Gate bridge because that's never been done before in 1000 movies set in San Francisco.
d) The soundtrack had some weird moments which were apparently the result of leftover pieces of Mychael Danna's original score, which "was rejected by studio executives for its non-traditional approach, which featured Japanese taiko, African drumming, and Arabic singing." In this case I agree with them -- I mean, why? What possible reason would the score be using them given the storyline? I'm not even a person who generally notices a score and I found them jarring.
e) An hour into the film I looked at the timeline and couldn't believe there was over an hour still to go. It seemed interminable.
2) Speaking of trash fires thanks to producers who didn't respect the canon and figured fans would buy anything: a review of Trek tie-ins with a dispiriting but unsurprising discovery. As time has gone on, fewer women have been hired for these books. (Thanks to Satsuma for the link)
It doesn't surprise me that women's tie-in novel contributions are dropping. A lot of early women writers were adapting fanfic, but the pace of these Trek novels became an assembly line in the late 90s (and a decreasing quality in the books, many of which seemed to have virtually no editing). Early on I bought and read every Trek novel and stopped around 1999 when I realized that S&S cared nothing for its readership as long as there was new content to push.
Those sorts of deadlines, I suspect, favored men who could write full time with few interruptions.But it is quite interesting that the later series, DS9 and Voyager, had more female writers. Of course, given that DS9 hasn't had books recently it could be they were being taken up by writers who might otherwise not get a contract. And Voyager has a female lead and other key female characters that might dissuade male writers from working with it.
But I also think that it is simply common for men to be promoted by their agents and to be thought of first for work. Una McCormack is busy (she's also written for Dr. Who and still writes fanfic as well) but she's like Smurfette at this point.
If you don't have much time, just scan the graphics as they tell the story rather quickly. These things were written at such speed and with so little care that a post by muccamukk outlines just how bad things could get for bookbuyers.
As the OP points out, the new Trek shows provide a renewed opportunity for women to work on these books (and hopefully improve them). I'm fairly sure S&S don't give a crap, but perhaps a social media campaign might put pressure on them from other quarters.
3) "Consumer Reports examined 787 consumer cable bills from 13 top cable providers and found that while the average user paid around $156.71 per month for cable TV, users in reality paid $217.42 a month once fees were included."
What's more:
"The report is quick to highlight how some of the bullshit fees (like the "regulatory recovery fee") are named in such a way to trick the consumer into blaming government. "
This is literally the reason why we cancelled our cable, because I was so incensed by this deception:
"The study found that in 2015, Comcast started charging consumers a $1-a-month Regional Sports Fee and $1.50-a-month broadcast TV fee ($2.50 per month). By 2019 those fees had ballooned to $18.50 a month, or a 600 percent increase in just four years."
Think about that. You could pay for one or two streaming services a month for that same cost.
4) My first thought was of the habit of fans to search via kudos on AO3.
"Based on these results, Australian researchers proposed the first model (dubbed the MusicLab model) to explain how content becomes popular in cultural markets - why a few things get all the popularity while most get none and (most important for us) why showing the number of downloads can be so detrimental."
5) And in contrast, a great use of AO3 as a cultural landmark. I love seeing all the different fandoms going by.
Click to viewView poll: Kudos Footer-103
Comments at Dreamwidth
.