Posts Tagged ‘movies’

Under the Fedora: Tyrie Nichols summed up in one Sentence, Don Surber Makes His Case for, Truth violates Youtube standards, Groo & Usagi still Tops, Felton vs Grant

Posted: January 28, 2023 by datechguy in crime, culture, under the fedora
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In Tyrie Nichols the MSM/Left has finally found a case of black on black violence that they find newsworthy enough to publicly disapprove of

There are a lot of fine blogs and substack accounts out there worth making a free or cash subscription to, (I humbly suggest considering mine as I have writers to pay) but the best case I’ve seen made by someone to hit the button lately has come from Don Surber this morning with his spectacular piece on the better of the John Kennedys who served in the Senate:

  • “You will never win—never—the uber-woke sweepstakes. I understand that the pressure to run that race is fierce. You will never win it. Nothing you do will ever be enough. The uber-woke people in positions of power in this town think America was evil when it was founded and it’s even more evil today. You’re not going to convince them otherwise.”

He spoke that truth to power at a hearing on September 22, 2017, to Charles W. Scharf of Wells Fargo & Company, Brian Thomas Moynihan of Bank of America, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Jane Fraser of Citigroup, William H. Rogers Jr. of Truist Financial Corporation, Andy Cecere of U.S. Bancorp and William S. Demchak of PNC Financial Services Group.

If that line alone doesn’t get you loving Senator Kennedy nothing will and if this piece doesn’t get you to subscribe to Mr. Surber’s substack nothing will

This week Project Veritas put out what was likely the single most important video it ever did, catching a Pfizer exec going on about mutating the COVID etc. It’s the type of expose that can change the narrative.

Within two days Youtube banned the video and gave him a strike. It “violated their guidelines” not because it was false, but because it was true.

This is going to cost people their lives.

One must under the rules of Christianity love your enemies but as Youtube is a corporation and not a person I don’t think I’m violating rules by awaiting the day of the company’s fall with some anticipation.

Remember once upon a time AOL ruled the roost too.

Went to the local comic store today to pick up Groo and Usagi Yojimbo. The only two comics I still read new. Their creators eighty five year old Sergio Argones (Groo) and sixty nine year old Stan Sakai (Usagi) have been doing their respective two comics for over 45 years (Sakai actually got his start lettering Groo and still does). I don’t go there much as there is a large sign on the door nothing CDC mask recommendations and suggesting people wear them (when I went yesterday nobody had one on) which turns me off but there was one thing worth noting.

Back in the 1980’s when I owned a comic store there were a couple of reprint series out there (Marvel Tales immediately comes to mind) but today it seems every third comic featured is a reprint of a comic from the 60’s or 80’s or 90’s.

Comic stores have apparently figured out they need something other than woke to sustain a business.

Still highly recommend both Groo & Usagi

Finally Yesterday I was watching an old Cary Grant Movie Father Goose (1964) a comedy about a drunken coast watcher who gets stuck with a 30 something year old woman and a bunch of kids from a girls school.

It’s a quaint movie but I don’t recommend watching it right after watched Mark Felton’s audio about the treatment of captive women by the Japanese in World War 2.

The movie gets very serious when you consider what happens if they’re caught.

Answer: $425,308,966 and $180,734,472

Posted: July 25, 2022 by datechguy in entertainment
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Question: What is the difference between a woke movie for kids and a non-woke movie for kids:

That is the difference between the take of the Movie Lightyear and the take of Minons the Rise of Gru

Let me point out that when Lightyear started slow excuses were made about the timing and of COVID etc etc etc, but Minions was released just two weeks later and has managed to out preform lightyear by hundreds of millions with two less weeks to do so.

A more significant fact is this one:

The general rule of thumb is a movie has to earn double its production budget in order to break even. By that metric, Lightyear needs $400 million globally to recoup its costs. Going by Pixar’s history, it should be able to cross that figure without many issues. Prior to Onward’s pandemic-shortened theatrical run, Pixar’s Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2 both hit $1 billion. The studio’s original film Coco grossed $807 million globally. While Pixar does have some notable duds on their résumé (Cars 3 and The Good Dinosaur), it’s extremely rare for one of their films to perform poorly at the box office. Given Lightyear’s ties to the Toy Story franchise, it should prove to be a hit. Box office projections point to a modest (by Pixar standards) $70-85 million debut, but it could always surpass those expectations a la Top Gun: Maverick. It’s facing minimal competition for its target demographic.

So by these standards Lightyear is 185 million in the red as of 7/23/22

IMDB estimates for Minions on a free site the estimated budget via IMDB is $80 Million. Even if we figure another 80 million in promotion in 14 less days Minions has not only turned a tidy profit but had done so on its domestic take alone. That makes the $342 million overseas take all gravy.

That my dear friends is the difference between making a movie “Woke” and making a movie for Children.

Sooner or later studios will decide losing 180+ a shot is a bad idea.

Building solid products

Posted: July 9, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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I still enjoy going to the theater for a movie. My last in-theater movie was Dune, and while I have a good sound system at home, nothing can compare to giant theater speakers making your chair shake as a sandworm travels across the screen. Theaters have had to up their game compared to when I was a kid. Back in my day, you were lucky to get hot popcorn with something resembling butter and a seat that was cleaned a few hours ago. Now your seat is cushy, was reserved in advance (no rushing to the theater), and at my local theater you can order alcohol and dinner from your seat!

Movies are finally starting to up their game as well. We went through a drought of movies after Avengers: Endgame that just seemed didn’t inspire spending the money to go to a theater. On top of that, the movies went both woke and China-censored at the same time (which ironically often conflicted with itself). But times are changing, and Hollywood seems to be waking up to the realization that it should make solid movies and worry less about pleasing the Chinese or the woke mobs.

Apparently, its big enough that even CNN is recognizing it.

Look at the Top Gun sequel. Rather then make a movie about a sad Tom Cruise now working as the top DEI enforcement officer at the Pentagon, or cut out the Taiwanese flag on his iconic jacket, Hollywood decided to just make a solid movie. And it sold, bigly, now well over 1 billion dollars. Or look at Spider-man: No Way Home, another solid movie that just focused on being a movie. Or Dune, which took complicated source material and pieced it into an action-packed film.

My point is, if you make a solid movie, more often than not you’ll make money. That holds true across many other disciplines: make a solid product, and you’ll make a solid profit.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you like this post, why not listen to the author narrate his epic tale of woe to you by purchasing his book on Audible?

St. John Fisher, St. Thomas Moore, Blueberries LightYear vs Minions, Another Taste of Lawrence’s CRT lesions for Youth and Pinball Under the Fedora

Posted: June 22, 2022 by datechguy in Uncomfortable Truths
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Today is the feast day of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas Moore who choose to die rather than betray the faith for gain in the world.

Given what we’re seen from the church lately with Bishops and priests (with some notable exceptions) unwilling to stand for the faith and Public servants either not enforcing the laws or enforcing them selectively based on political allegiance they seem to be saints critical for our time.

I’m shocked they haven’t been dropped from the calendar.

My wife is a blueberry person and would regularly buy muffins at Hannaford market. However a bit ago she cut open her muffin and there were no blueberries inside. This is despite the fact that the price for the Muffins has gone up considerably.

It led to some drama when we cut open the 2nd Muffin of the two pack:

All of this brings to mind Casino:

This is actually the “broken windows” theory of enforcement where if you take care of small things you cut down on large one.

Under the left this has become passé and we’re paying for it.

There have been a lot of excuses for the failure of Lightyear by the defenders of Disney, none on them involved the decision to push homosexuality in a film for kids.

Alas for the woke crowd unlike schools they can not compel attendance in theatres so if parents don’t want to push this junk on their kids they don’t have to.

The real fun is going to come with the new movie Minions: The Rise of Gru. You see if all the Disney apologists are right then this movie should do just as badly as Lightyear because all of the same issues they claim are holding back Lightyear’s take will still be in play when it comes out.

Of course if Minions The Rise of Gru is as big of a hit as it seems likely to be it will just be another proof of the media as the lying propagandists that they are.

Not that they care anymore, they’ve given up on worrying about the pretense of being objective.

Speaking of schools here is another bit from that stuff I hinted at earlier that they are teaching elementary school kids in the Lawrence school system.

More of that Critical Race Theory that doesn’t exist

Funny for something that the left/media claimed was just a right wing fantasy there sure seems to be a lot of prepared items ready to be disseminated to public school kids in lieu of teaching thing useless things like reading, writing and arithmetic, particularly in schools were the parents don’t have a lot of other options.

I had planned to write something more extensive today about but I had forgotten about Juneteenth being a national holiday so the school crowd I tried to contact for comment might not have been in so I figured it would be fair to give them another day just out of fairness.

Of course I suspect I’ll be a tad busy the next few days…

…as PintasticNE begins tomorrow night and I plan on enjoying myself to the fullest.

As a teaser I have an interview with the owner of Cape Cod and Beyond a company that rents out machines who came down the house to pick up the Batman 66 machine that my sons and wife rented me for my birthday.

I suspect that you’ll see a lot more of these rental companies and the price of Pinball machines and the potential for investment continues to grow, but I think the real driver is the problem of where do you store these things if you don’t have to room for it.

The nice thing about a rental is there is always a fresh machines in your hands.

For the next four days I’ll be knee deep in pinball and I’ll forget about Biden, the Gas prices, Bad Government, and the lot.

We all need a few days away from it.

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