Lessons Not Learned - The Fall of the Studio System

Hey, I know, long time, no see.  Well, that's what comes from starting a new job, and then a whole mess of terror about an apocalyptic global event getting in the way, sorry.  Still, I think I have some new things to say on here.

Now I'm not a very big player of video games, but I am interested in them, and seeing what the games industry has been going through recently has been fascinating, if a bit saddening.  Major issues of systematic harassment, exploitation of staff, corruption, and still making utterly obscene profits on top of predatory business practices.  With recent legal interventions on some of these points occurring, as well as a few other recent things which I'll mention in a moment, it suddenly hit me that where the Triple-AAA games publishers are these days is very similar to where The Big Five Studios used to be before a slow-motion trainwreck of their own creation mangled them across the 1940s and 50s.  So it's time to also dust off my "Lessons Not Learned" title, for not a look at a film going wrong, but close to the entire US film industry going wrong, and how we can see a few parallels with things happening in the games industry today.

Best way I could think of illustrating old cinema and modern video games at the same time.

The Morlocks Will Be Right - Cummings and Goings

Hey, I've been quiet on here for a while, I know.  Well, the general level of global stress and bru-ha-ha has not been great for the ol' mental health, not exactly ideal writing conditions (and entering the brain-broiling heat of summer isn't exactly helping).  However, I decided that working constructively on here is perhaps one of the best forms of therapy I can have, so to that end, here's the start of a new little column, The Morlocks Will Be Right, which is me going full political.  If you don't get why it's called that, have a little think about what message a certain Mr. Wells was going for in his work.  This isn't going to be that regular, it's just more here to help clear my head whenever the world get too... interesting.  So with that in mind, let's talk about the Dominic Cummings situation.

The energy I'm going for.  Especially with my quarantine haircut.

Happy Birthday to Me - 34 More Underrated Films from my Lifetime

Well, I enjoyed doing it last year, I thought I'd try it again this one too.  As a little birthday treat for myself, here are 34 films that deserve a bit of a better reputation than they currently do.  They're not necessarily the best of that year, or true classics, and some do have a better reputation than others, they just all deserve to be a bit better known.  Some are well known to film geeks, but they really should be household names.  Others are a lot more obscure, and just an audience to find them.  How many of these have you seen?

Canary Duty - Inside No. 9 Series Five

Another TV preview, however a pretty tricky one to review.  Inside No. 9, the wonderfully dark anthology show from half of the League of Gentlemen, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, has developed a reputation for its twists in the story, though as I can say from the Q&A somewhat to at least one of the creators' annoyance.  So if I say anything about whether or not there are twists or big surprises in either of the episodes, it will colour your initial watching of them, you'll spend all the time trying to "guess the twist", when it's best just to follow along with the story and performances.  Thus rest assured, I will not be giving any spoilers, nothing that you couldn't gather from a Radio Times listing; this show has had plenty of surprises that you couldn't have paid me to give away.

The Oscars - My Countering

I was going to do a blog about the Oscars in a more calm manner, one where I have a proper look at the nominations and get into what they did right, what they didn't.  Well the thing is, some of the omissions were ones so massive, and some of the decisions were so wrong-headed (11 nominations for Joker?  Really?  11?  It's the frontrunner.  Are you kidding?), that I decided I had to do a proper retort to this.  Now there were some fine decisions made, most of the Best Picture nominations are very strong (and then there's Joker squatting in amongst them, like it slipped past the bouncer saying "I'm with them"), glad that Taika Waititi, Greta Gerwig, and Rian Johnson got some noms (although none for Best Director, when the guy behind The Hangover did), and that an international feature like Parasite (which you bet I'll be seeing as soon as it gets a proper release over here) has gotten a lot of love.  But still, there are some notable absences and bad calls, like an all male Best Director line up again, in a year when there were a load of female lead features to pick from.  So what I'm going to do is take a note from The Kermode Awards, and give my thoughts on what I think should have gotten in there.  Now these aren't necessarily my favourites of last year, they are ones though where I genuinely do think that they are of the calibre to deserve the nod.  Before I start, I can't comment on ones I haven't seen yet, so I can't say much about Rocketman, Little Women, The Farewell, or Dolemite is my Name, even though I plan to catch up with all of them this month.  Let's get started though with...

Canary Duty - Cats

You may be wondering why the hell I'm bothering with this one; hell, cats have been known to eat canaries after all.  Well the thing is that there's been a lot of... performative outrage over this one ever since the first trailer came out, and I admit that in coining the line "Dr. Moreau's Reject Pile" I was part of that.  A lot of these bad reviews have been huge scale attacks on the whole thing, some being oddly very well worded for something where the press screenings were only a few days ago.  So I thought I should go in with a more level head in mind.  I should mention that though I'm familiar with the stage show, and actually have a few friends that have done Cats costumes before, I haven't actually seen the whole thing, so this is me going in completely fresh, no real expectations about how it "should be", just a filmgoer saying "OK movie, impress me!".  I'm writing this opening paragraph before going in, so let's see if the hyperbole was justified...

:one attempted viewing later...:

Jesus wept.

Just One More Thing - The Limits of Cinema

As the year is winding down, I'm sorting out a few final blog posts of the year.  There'll be a look at some good films of this year, my top ten, and a look ahead to stuff I'm looking forward to in the new year. I might also do a favourite films of the decade list, but I might leave that a little while, as I have some catching up to do for a few major titles.  I'm also planning out what I'm seeing in the new year, what previews and such I can get to as "Canary Duty" material; for example, I'm currently on to see a preview of next series of Inside No. 9 in early January, that should be done by the second weekend of 2020.