>People basically just say this word to sound smart

Which is, itself, pretentious. I've always thought that was hilarious.

This is Iron Man 2, but for Favreau Star Wars.

It doesn't make a lot of internal sense, it isn't very fun to watch, there's a ton of money being thrown at it and it looks really good, but it's just extremely half-assed and disappointing as a television show, although it's very likely this will end up being key to 3 or 4 other Star Wars shows that will follow after it.

(Worth noting: For all the setup Iron Man 2 ended up doing for the larger MCU, it's still arguably bottom 3 all-time Marvel films, and Favreau was removed from the creative teams going forward. Probably won't happen here, though)

Mandalorian doesn't know how to be what it was, and all it really wants to do is set up a bunch of other shit. Favreau is 100% focused entirely on MYTH and "LORE" and the problem is that he sucks at that shit, and also, it's not that important to why the show was beloved in the first place.

Mandalorian S3 is primarily now setup for the live-action Rebels sequels that Ahsoka and Skeleton Crew will likely end up becoming. And that version of Star Wars, might finally be what people have been hoping Star Wars would become for awhile now (a completely separate-from-the-saga thing set way far away from anything familiar) but it looks a lot like Mando S3 is gonna suffer for it.

My favorite line from that whole show is in that episode:

"My bicycle masters boardwalk and quagmire with aplomb! Those that doubt me? Suck cock by choice"

It's not the BEST line in the show, but the combination of frills+filth is so pitch perfect, to me, that it's the one I love the most.

Saturday Night Live is a sketch comedy show. Yes, there are still music performances, this seems almost done not because people actually care about the music performances (people mostly hope the musician shows up in a sketch) but out of tradition.

America's Got Talent isn't a variety show it's a reality competition show.

The issue is that it's a variety show, and people don't like variety shows anymore, because media is so splintered and the means by which people consume media is so democratized that the very idea that made variety shows possible basically doesn't exist anymore.

The Muppets trying to put on a show is a fine framework for interpersonal dramas that lead to really funny situations. The show being a variety show is a terrible choice in the 21st century. This show seems to have figured out a way around that.

This sounds like a really interesting way to try doing a Muppet Show without it being either in the shadow of, or scrambling to be absolutely the opposite of, The Muppet Show.

The problem with trying to actually just do The Muppet Show in modern times is that it's a variety show, and variety shows are dead, and have been dead for decades now. Trying to modulate the atmosphere of the Muppet Show to be about a late night talk show was an okay idea, but trying to make it The Office (or Larry Sanders, even) just didn't work.

Picking characters people like, but don't know a lot about, and making it about a side of the entertainment industry that isn't just "Let's put on a show, gang!" is a really smart way to sidestep a lot of what tripped up everything post "The Muppets" movie with Segel/Adams.

Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen)

Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton) is a good runner-up tho.

OK, this thing's really fucking cooking now. This dude is like adding an instant +10 charisma/intrigue to your show through casting alone.

edit: also please go watch Emily the Criminal right now.

Give it the chance! Especially since you can come to it on a two-a-night schedule instead of having to wait weekly. Episodes 1&2 probably should have aired on the same night, honestly.

Shaw has so many amazing lines and they're being served up exquisitely.

I'm probably botching it, but "Forgive me: at some point asshole became a substitute for charming" - that's some real shit right there, LOL.

>5 speeches is a lot and and giving 5 acting awards for lead and supporting waters down the value of the award.

I disagree that it "waters down the value of the award" for a couple different reasons.

1. The Oscars are self-marginalizing and self-devaluing in general. Hence our agreement that the reasoning people even show up has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with superficiality. We want to see pretty famous people get happy for being pretty and famous. That's the drive.
2. Picking single winners has also, by this logic, "devalued" the award because if you fuck up and pick someone that shouldn't have won it, you end up making the award mean less. The evidence for this POV is seen by, once again, our shared recognition that people don't tune into this thing to see movies win things based on merit.

As it stands, the acting awards are the ONLY awards anywhere near as delineated as they are already. Not only are they split into Supporting/Lead categories, they're the ONLY awards split by gender role as well. If giving more people statues for being among the five best performances of that year is dilution of the award, then the decision to make "Best Acting" into four separate trophies was already dilution.

The awards are, themselves, an advertisement (and historically, an anti-labor union measure, LOL). Their status as a legitimate designator of merit has been in question longer than we've been alive. This is not an institution known for great judgment, and it's accepted for that.

The biggest hurdle isn't a supposed devaluing of awards whose key reason for existing is superficial advertising. It's just getting over the artificial "tradition" being changed going forward.

> The real reason not to do it is that you'd be removing two awards from the show. People watch the Oscars to see famous people win awards.

So don't remove two awards. Increase the number of people who get to win.

Basically, turn the acting awards into a top 5 instead of a top 1. Nominate 10 people for lead, and 10 people for supporting, and then reward the top 5 in both categories. Now you have 10 pretty and famous people all standing up and winning statues and smiling like the Prom Court they are.

Gender categories - removed

number of famous people being rewarded - increased.

>I cannot imagine how bad Twitter would be

Yes you can.

You don't even have to have an imagination, honestly.

The question is why everyone defaults to wondering what a known tire fire will smell like when someone threatens to pour gasoline on it.

It depends on what kind of TV they like.

Do they like political/crime drama? Then I recommend them Andor

Do they like episodic western/adventure? Then I recommend them Mandalorian.

This hypothetical is sort of silly though because it's not like watching Star Wars is a hard thing to do, and anyone actually interested in checking the shit out will do it on their own since Star Wars is basically everywhere. Nobody really ever needs to recommend Star Wars to another person.

The King of Comedy was basically about YouTube "Content Creators" about 30 years before such a thing existed.

But that's more or less what it is.

>For those of you that look at IMDb ratings,

Here is the first problem: People really shouldn't be looking at these ratings. People just do it out of habit or reflex, and never really stop to think what these ratings represent, or if they're even remotely reflective of the people who are watching the show.

So even before you get to the part where viewer-submitted ratings are suspect from jump precisely because of how they've become the first stop for the lazy malcontent who wants to feel like a culture war activist without even having the courage of their own convictions (which they likely just stole from the comments section of a YouTube grifter's rage channel anyway)....

User-submitted ratings are only ever representative of what a extremely tiny self-selecting minority of the general audience presumably thinks. So even if every single one of those ratings being collected for their average actually was created in good faith (and as you and I both know, they routinely are not, it is part of the online grift cycle now, permanently) you're still looking at a rating that almost solely represents the views of 18-49 year old men who would even bother leaving a rating after watching something in the first place.

For whatever reason, people just accept this collection of ratings as a useful representation despite the fact it's anything but, and never has been. It's wild how people will thoughlessly accept that these numbers are trustworthy for no other reason than they're on imdb, despite knowing without a doubt that the only people actually contributing to these numbers are an extremely limited volunteer sampling of an extremely narrow-focused demo, many of whom are only there because they mistakenly believe the registering of their bad opinion counts as political activism in any way.

TL:DR - review bombing isn't a problem if everyone stops acting like those numbers have inherent worth in the first place, because they don't.

The article is new but I swear I've seen the video at the bottom of the piece a couple years ago? Maybe only just last year.

Either way: It looks pretty bad.

It's also really shitty timing for this, since every other article from every other entertainment outlet seems to be about people putting subtitles on for everything anyway.

Spending money to AI people's mouths so they're not distracted by the lip-flap probably isn't going to be much of a concern now that everyone's finally over their weird hangups about subtitles.

Jackson McHenry fucked up hard on this one.

This is a profoundly bad take, Jackson. You wrote a bad song.

>Having Bill step in and do the usual "Oh my god he's so good at singing" thing kind of cheapened it.

Bill wasn't very good at singing. He just didn't miss the notes. He's just as awkward as Frank was, the point is that he's obviously practiced it over and over and even with the voice not being very good at all you can tell he means it.

The point isn't "oh god, he's good at singing" it's "oh god, something finally unlocked in this man."

If you know what it means there shouldn’t be any misunderstanding then. Dunno how else to describe it than with an easily understood word you admit you understand.

Well damn.

Shouts out to her roles in American Graffiti and The Conversation. People tend to only think of her in terms of Laverne & Shirley because of how huge that show was, and how key she was to its success, and it's led to a lot of people forgetting that in the early-to-mid 70s she was instrumental in helping people like George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola make some of the best films of their careers.

What does any of that have to do with me explaining Stallone's consistent descents into unentertaining solipsism as the primary creative choice?

"Dragos" wasn't an inevitability at all. It was simply the first idea Stallone had pop into his head, and so it was the only idea he ever pursued. And it shows.

It's a key compontent to Stallone's whole career, and honestly part of the reason that career consistently goes way up and way down. He's a tremendously solipsistic creator.

Basically - Creed worked the way it did because he had minimal (if any) creative involvement. Creed II (didn't) work the way it did because MGM didn't want to wait for Coogler and handed the series back over to Stallone. And Stallone essentially wrote a Rocky sequel, not a Creed one.

Headline makes no sense, especially when the piece itself drops two much more interesting comparison points:

Piano Teacher and King of Comedy

Glover & Nabers teaming up to basically channel the way, way, way ahead of its time satire of King of Comedy, but aimed directly at TikTok/Insta/"Stan" culture?

FUCK YES

Guessing Vanity Fair editors put that headline together because referencing "Mad Men" in any way likely perks their eyes up (and their imagined readership's eyes) more than citing the actual influences behind the show.

Was already excited to see what Jordan does with full creative control here, and to see how this story plays out without any of Stallone's weird self-fetishizing being hamfistedly inserted into the narrative (Creed II).

And then you add Jonathan Majors looking more ripped than 1982 Stallone and weathers COMBINED...

...and then add that Jordan said the fight scene choreography was inspired by BOXING ANIMES.

top this all off with another Ludwig Goransson score? I'm all in.