Archive for the ‘entertainment’ Category

Doctor Who: Six Points About the New Series Or Why It’s Worth Your Time Again.

Posted: June 2, 2024 by datechguy in doctor who, entertainment
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I haven’t really done any reviews of the Ncuti Gatwa Doctor Who episodes and I frankly don’t have time to do a full review today but as someone who walked away from the series after Capaldi I want to comment on the season so far today (and I’ll cover this week’s episode later this week) because I think people who are skipping it are missing out.

Point 1: Chibnall clearly isn’t the boss anymore:

I’ve been watching these episodes with my oldest son who unlike me watched all the Chibnall era episodes. As he put it the worst of the episodes to this date is leaps and bounds over the best of the Chibnall era. For me as some who discovered the show in 1976 and watched it regularly since about 78 you can clearly see that the writing and the plotting have improved. Davies being Davies has of course inserted his agenda into the show but that was true and recognizable from the moment the show was revived. The point was can he do so without overwhelming the story. For the most part he has succeeded. These are solid stories, as always some better than others but are clearly recognizable as Doctor Who stories.

Point 2: Gatwa works as the Doctor

I’ve seen plenty of Doctors over the years the two best being hands down Tom Baker and Matt Smith (Tennant is good but VERY over rated). It took a couple of episodes but Gatwa clearly has reached the point where he carries himself as the Doctor. Frankly the early episodes didn’t do him a lot of favors as the first three (The Church at Ruby Road, Space Babies and the Devil’s Chord were, meh) but Boom clearly established him as the Doctor and while 73 yards was a classic Doctor lite story but by that time you clearly saw him as The Doctor. That’s what you really have to do to carry this role, be clearly recognizable as the Doctor while still carrying your own Doctor’s traits. He has pulled that off. I think Davies would have done better to have the regeneration (or bi-generation Trauma) and perhaps that’s reflected in some early weakness (more on that later) but so far so good.

Point 3: Millie Gibson is more than adequate.

It seems to me that they have made Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday very strong right at the start which was overcompensating but the character has really worked. The proving ground was 73 yards, the Doctor lite episode. We got to see how traveling with the Doctor (even briefly) has affected her and watched her grow. That to me was the strength of the episode not the lack of Gatwa who as I have already said, had established himself as the Doctor by that time. From what I hear they are already getting ready to dump her and I think this is a mistake as the primary goal of this season is to reestablish the show as something worth watching and Gibson is worth watching

Point 4. The elephants in the (script) room.

A lot of people have written off the series because of the agenda thrown in their faces and we saw plenty of that during the specials and there is agenda here. As I already noted the Davies has been pushing his agenda since day 1 in 2005 but the agenda hasn’t been the boss of the show, at least not yet. As long as the agenda doesn’t get in the way of the actual stories I’m willing to put up with it. There are also those who hate that Davies hasn’t reversed the timeless child stuff, spoiler alert. That isn’t going to happen here and never was in the cards and won’t be until it hurt them financially and with Disney paying the bills that not likely. I simply ignore the references and remember rule #1 The Doctor Lies.

Point 5: Big Finish influences

Those of you who don’t listen to the big finish audios might miss it but there seems to be a ton of big finish influences in this series. Over and over I spot things from audios that I seem to recognize (elder Gods, relatives of the Toymaker for example) . This is not surprising as they have been doing Doctor Who for 26 years and doing it well so it’s natural that you would have some stuff bleeding over even if it’s not all considered canon. Given the quality of the Big Finish work this is a positive rather than a negative. I don’t know if this is deliberate or unconscious but either way it makes the show better.

Point 6: Irony Irony Irony Conservative Messages All Over the Place

One of the things that has been really amusing has been that the Davies crowd is so wrapped up in the agenda that they are missing things that I’m seeing. The latest episode is the best example of this but I’ll save that for my review later this week. Today let’s hit a few today from the prior ones

  • In the Space babies episode there is a scene where the intelligent babies suggest there is something wrong with them, but the Doctor reassures them they are good just as they are. While our agenda friends thought they were dunking there actually they dunked on themselves because that is an explicit message against transitioning kids. You are great JUST AS YOU ARE
  • In the Devil Chord episode the idea of pushing a Trans character was big, in fact SO excited were they missed what said character was. Or to put it another way: The same guy who was all bent out of shape having a handicapped person as the murderous Davros had no problem at all as a clearly trans character as an evil murderous elder God out to pervert and destroy not just the world but culture and joy.
  • In 74 yards I really liked how the Welsh noted how many in England still think of them (shades of Boomtown). More importantly the episode shows how the Doctor changes others in the sense that they see what’s in front of them and act. More on that later this week when we hit Dot and Bubble but that’s constant theme is there.
  • And of course in the Church at Ruby Road we celebrate foster parents, the idea that a kid is worthwhile even if said kid is not wanted. That the entire basis for the pro-life movement which I suspect few if any of those involved in product embrace.

Again I’m going to cover Dot and Bubble separately but to sum up. This season of Doctor Who is worth your while not because of the woke stuff so far but despite it. Granted we don’t know if it will turn on a dime but at least to this point, I must say the Doctor is back and he’s been missed.

Episode ranking as I see it (not including specials nor Dot and Bubble which I’ll review this week)

  1. 73 Yards ***** Solid episode
  2. Boom ****1/2 Nice basic plot
  3. The Church on Ruby Road **** OK doctory intro
  4. Space Babies **** Not bad but not great
  5. The Devil’s Chord ***1/2 Interesting villain but wasted potential with weak resolution & lousy ending.

(spoiler alert the top spot on that list will change this week)

Oh and let me re-iterate that per my son all of these are better than anything since Capaldi.

Trump-ified A Man in Full on Netflix comes up empty

Posted: May 12, 2024 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

If you only have a minute and you want to know, in a nutshell, what the Netflix adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel from 1998, A Man in Full, is all about, here it is: The lead character, Atlanta businessman Charlie Croker, is Donald Trump–orange hair and all. Then throw in elements of the George Floyd and Rodney King stories and add an even more shocking ending than the one in Boogie Nights.

Earlier this month, Netflix started streaming the six-episode series, which stars Jeff Daniels and Diane Lane. 

Wolfe, who is my favorite writer, after a two-decade career in journalism, made a smooth transition into fiction with his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. It encapsulates the boom years of 1980s–along with the mayhem of pre-Rudy Giuliani New York City. Three years later, the film version was released. It is godawful, starting with the miscasting of Tom Hanks in the lead role as “the Master of the Universe,” Sylvester McCoy. After I suffered through the movie, I said to myself, Vanities is a mini-series not a two-hour movie.

I had hopes, misguided ones it turns out, that A Man in Full would be better, because it is a mini-series. Adding to my anticipation was Netflix streaming last year the insightful documentary, Radical Wolfe.

As A Man in Full begins, Charlie Croker (Daniels) is celebrating his 60th birthday at a party with Shania Twain entertaining his friends, family, and business associates. Two of those guests are executives from PlannersBanc, his principal lender, Raymond Peepgrass (Tom Pelphrey) and Harry Zale (Bill Camp). While it appears that Croker is an Atlanta version of a Master of the Universe, he’s broke–Charlie owes PlannersBanc $600 million. He’s overextended with other lenders too. Peepgrass and Zale want to carve up Croker’s empire, starting with his quail hunting plantation and his corporate jet. A rescue is offered by the mayor of Atlanta, Wes Jordan (William Jackson Harper), who is campaigning for reelection, and Croker’s attorney, Roger White (Aml Ameen). But to save his neck, Croker will have to betray his former Georgia Tech football teammate, Norman Bagovitch (John Lacy), who is running against Jordan.

Bagovitch–wait for it–decries the status of the white male in his campaign. Jordan is Black.

David E. Kelley wrote the script, and he should be ashamed. No serious candidate for public office would campaign on such bigoted idiocy. And in Atlanta?!? Why does Kelley insult his audience?  

Oh yeah, he wants to demonize Trump. Orange Croker Bad. Oops, I mean Orange Man Bad.

Joyce Newman (Lucy Liu) is an alleged victim of a sexual assault from Bagovitch. In the book, well, let’s just say there is fear of a race riot because of the racial angle of that alleged rape.

Wolfe, brilliantly in my opinion, centered much of his plot on racial contrast and conflict, but also on Croker being an anachronism. The series is set in 2024, but events in the book take place a quarter of a century earlier. Croker, nicknamed the 60 Minute Man because he starred on offense and defense for Georgia Tech, played a lead role for a national championship Yellowjackets team, at a time when major college sports teams in the South were not integrated. Croker came of age just as the civil rights protests were picking up steam, and when Jim Crow laws were still in force in Georgia and other southern states. The world changed, but Croker, not so much. Sure, of course Croker in the novel knew blacks had equal rights, but they still belonged– and I’m not endorsing his sentiment–“in their place.”

Kelley, and the directors, eliminates that angle by turning Croker into Trump. He even does away with Charlie’s redemption in Wolfe’s novel.

There’s even a climate change dig included in the series. I mean, why not?

As Croker, Daniels, who is usually very good, is an embarrassment, beginning with his overwrought Foghorn Leghorn southern accent and his Trump-sized abdominal paunch. On the other hand, Diane Lane, as Charlie’s first wife, shines. I had the pleasure of seeing her at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth a decade ago.

Wolfe’s novel is over 700 pages long, so it’s understandable that some storylines are condensed. 

For instance, Conrad Hensley in the book is the child of worthless white hippies who, in spite of them, still manages to develop a strong moral compass. He works for Croker Foods in the East Bay area of California Hensley’s life, like Charlie’s, collapses. He ends up on the wrong side of the law after he violently tries to retrieve his towed car. By the way, anyone who has had his car towed and is forced to pay usurious fees to retrieve it, will sympathize with Hensley. In the series Hensley (Jan Michael Hill) is Black, and well, I already mentioned Rodney King and George Floyd. 

The subplot with Peepgrass and Martha Croker remains, with the Boogie Nights twist added. If you crave more details on that, click on this Daily Mail link.

Oh, the Crokers’ son, Wally (Evan Roe), sure looks a lot like Barron Trump in the series. 

Astonishingly, Trump-hating Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis doesn’t appear here. Maybe she was on a cruise with Nathan Wade during filming.

I guess I needed to suffer for some forgotten sins, because I endured all six episodes of A Man in Full. Of the other Netflix series that I punished myself with, in full, only The Pentaverate and Vikings: Valhalla were worse.

On the flipside, the cinematography for A Man in Full is sharp–Atlanta never looked so good. The soundtrack, compiled by Craig DeLeon, is spectacular, it’s as splendid as the best work of T-Bone Burnett. Keep an eye on DeLeon.

Wolfe, who died in 2018, didn’t like The Bonfire of the Vanities film. I don’t think he’d care for the series based on A Man in Full either.

I hated it.

A Man in Full is currently streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for violence, foul language, sex, and nudity.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Young Sheldon, George Cooper and the Ivermectin Irony

Posted: May 10, 2024 by datechguy in covid, entertainment, media, medicine
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CBS’ popular series Young Sheldon has been trending on twitter/X last night because the character of George Cooper, Sheldon’s Dad excellently played by Lane Smith was killed off by a heart attack.

It was very realistic in the sense there wasn’t a lot of “drama” involved. No big scene with him, nobody else around, he left for work that morning heading for his job in the knowledge that he had just achieved what has to be the dream of every high school football coach in Texas, being recruited to coach at the college level and just like that he was gone, all of his plans and the plans of his family eliminated in an instant.

All over twitter all kinds of users were in mourning even though it had been established by the parent series “The Big Bang Theory” that Sheldon’s dad died when he was 14. Everyone knew it was coming, although perhaps they figured it was coming next week or they and the fictitious Cooper would get a chance to say goodbye. The series writer Chuck Lorre who has a history of leaving endcards at the end of his shows left this one:

In case you can’t read the print:

Eighteen years ago , when we were writing and producing The Big Bang Theory, it seemed like a good idea to imagine that Sheldon’s childhood was deeply disrupted by the loss of his father. No one could have thought that someday we would regret that decision. That someday is now.

There were a lot of tears on stage when this episode’s last scene was shot. A reminder that we had all fallen in love with a fictional character Which is itself, a reminder to love the characters in our live who are real. To do otherwise is to live with regret

While I agree with the sentiment I found it rather ironic considering this story from a few days ago concerning Chris Cuomo late of CNN, apparently having nasty side effects from the COVID Vaccine and is taking ivermectin daily, the same drug that the administration along with practically the entire media and entertainment industry and CNN insisted was only for horses and urged the public to avoid.

His admissions drew a nasty rebuke from Gino Carano one of the many people tarred as “anti-vaxers” over questioning the shots, an excerpt:

You were a part of one the most powerful news organizations in the world and you bullied and shamed the genuine questions from the public that you were supposed to be offering unbiased news to. Instead, you all called them “anti vaxxers” and “alt right extremists”. Don’t try and change the story now. Show some humility. People weren’t allowed to sit next to their loved ones as they died because of the propaganda you spread! This phase in major news media history will go down as one of the most embarrassing, destructive moments that cost people’s lives and careers, broke up families and destroyed our economy. You don’t look like a hero now, you look arrogant with no idea how deep this goes for the people this destroyed.

What’s even more ironic, news that Astra Zenica has withdrawn its COVID vaccine from the market insisting it has nothing to do with any side effects. Perish the thought!

I bring this up because the grief of the cooper family that so many are commenting on and sharing is the same grief that the families of the 1483 young athletes who had sudden heart attacks and died after receiving the COVID vaccine and of thousands and thousands of others who have “died suddenly” since the push for the vaccine and the push against ivermectin.

Now for the record Mr. Lorre while supporting Joe Biden, did not attack people who didn’t take the vaccine (putting up a single vanity card making a joke about side vaccine side effects) and I can’t find a single entry in his cards containing the word: “ivermectin”

But I DO wonder how many people in mourning over George Cooper online were part of the crowd that pressured people into taking the COVID vaccines, who went after people who recommend ivermectin, who were part of the crowd who tired to cancel Joe Rogan for speaking the truth about this subject?

I wonder how many of them were hiring managers who would not let people work if they didn’t get the vax, I wonder how many of them were people involved in decision making that penalized and ostracized folks in the medical profession who spoke out about the safety of Ivermectin and how many if they were not part of that decision making crowd, merely added their voices online in support of the treatment of any who dared strayed from the orthodoxly of the message pushed every day by the media, the administration and the left?

I wonder if such people have any grief for all those families whose suffering and grief are real and question, even for a tiny moment, if they had any the slightest part in enabling that suffering and reflect on it.

I suspect such number are few but for those who are self aware enough, particularly those who had the power over others and made decisions that cost lives, be aware forgiveness for these acts is a single sacramental confession away.

The Answer is: “When the First Thought That Comes to Mind When Seeing This Story is: ‘Kristi Get Your Gun.'”

Posted: May 4, 2024 by datechguy in comedy, politics
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What is: “How do you know when a person’s national political career is toast?”

The story in question Is it time to ban pit bulls?:

Let’s take a look at the numbers. Between 2005 and 2017, at least 433 Americans were killed by dogs. And guess what? Pit bulls were responsible for a whopping 66% of these deaths. Pit bulls — a breed that makes up only 6% of the dog population in the U.S. — is causing the majority of fatal attacks.

It’s not even just humans who are suffering at the jaws of these dogs. In 2017 alone, pit bulls were responsible for the deaths of 13,000 dogs, 5,000 cats, and 20,000 horses and other farm animals.

Those are numbers Kristi Noem can only dream of.

I’m sorry but when you see this kind of joke in stories that begin with a police officer having to shoot a dog you’re finished politically whether you know it or not.

She might be able to be a Senator out of her state but VP or P not a chance.

As for the substance of the story in question, remember that the Pit Bull is so named because they were bred to fight in a pit:

The term “Pitbull” is derived from the dog breed that was utilized for bull-baiting, which took place in a “pit.” This violent sport involved pitting dogs against bulls, and the dogs were specifically bred for their strength, tenacity, and determination. This is why the name “Pitbull” became associated with these dogs.

Bull-baiting was a popular blood sport in the 19th century, particularly in the United Kingdom. The purpose was to test the dog’s ability to restrain and subdue a bull, which earned them a reputation as powerful and aggressive animals. Although bull-baiting was later outlawed, the association between Pitbulls and their historical past persisted.

I have no opinion on the matter one way or the other but for the record my next door neighbor has a Pit Bull called Kuz who greets me every day with loud barks and a wagging tail so I don’t know what end to believe. The dog absolutely loves DaWife.

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