Category: Mainstream Entertainment

All posts relating to general happenings in mainstream entertainment, where it’d be movies, television, music, or other things that fall within that bubble.

Rondarano

In case you missed the news – either because you don’t follow combat sports news or you just had better things to do; both are valid – Netflix is going to air the return of two female legends in the MMA circle this coming may. Yes, Cold Ronda returns to something resembling an octagon but not really because it’s not a UFC thing to fight other legendary MMA person Gina Carano, who no doubt is looking forward to punching things after her truffles with the Disney Corporation.

It goes without saying that I care very little about the happenings of MMA. I care even less so about the happenings of Cold Ronda unless she’s eating some semblance of humble pie. But to say that something like this isn’t a big deal is ludicrous. Whatever your thoughts on the individuals involved, these are two pioneering women that brought the female portion of the combat sports equation up to a higher level and this is the first time both are stepping into the arena to face each other in what looks to be familiar MMA trappings.

Hey, good for Ronda giving Gina another payday since apparently, this whole deal was her idea. Is it something I’d be interested in watching? Not really, but for you MMA fans out there, I’m sure that’s something to look forward to down the road… and if not, there’s always that UFC show from the White House… which I also will not be watching.

What do you want? I was never an MMA fan. Not about to start now. But any excuse I can use to pull out Ronda’s KO’ed mug and plaster it on a post… I will take it… so you know who I’m rooting for, if nothing else.

Spider-Noir… Coming Soon.

I know nothing about the Spider-Man Noir that this is based on… but you know what, I’m intrigued by this. And I like the fact that you can either watch it in color or in black and white… the latter as your wormhole aliens intended, I’m sure.

Spider-Noir premieres on MGM+ May 25th, with Prime Video getting it a couple days later. Genuinely looking forward to this one.

PEE COCK IS ONE HUNDRED YEARS ANCIENT

100 Years Of NBC… and 26 years of pretending that Conan O’Brien never got the Tonight Show… I guess they couldn’t find two clips of Big Jaw to add to that montage.

Never letting that go, by the way…

Oh well… at least they remembered that Star Trek was a thing… that they cancelled… TWICE.

Happy birthday, NBC.

Now go fuck yourselves.

 

Doctor Who Doesn’t Need To Be Star Wars

Source: https://bleedingcool.com/tv/doctor-who-never-going-to-be-star-wars-is-a-good-thing-mark-gatiss/

Yes, we’re going to continue using the Doctor Boo banner for whenever we need to talk about the current direction of Doctor Boo. If we ever need to touch on vintage Doctor Who, we’ll use something else. But as far as this current flux of Doctor Boo, BOOM! There you go. I ain’t even bothering with Billie Piper. Ncuti deserves some love… and also deserved some better scripts, but that TARDIS has long since flown off… but I digress.

So some time ago, veteran writer of many Doctor Who scripts Mark Gatiss opined his two pence on the failure of the Disney experiment and suggested that maybe Doctor Who doesn’t need to be another Star Wars or Marvel type franchise with its own cinematic universe or other such rubbish. It should just focus on being a good show and embrace its somewhat kitschy nature.

I’ll leave that “kitschy nature” point open for debate, but yes, Doctor Who doesn’t need another Whoniverse or whatever marketing bollocks you want to use. There’s a whole bunch of Big Finish stuff that covers the nuances and how many people actually dig through all those subseries about the companions and side characters that aren’t the Doctor themselves? I don’t need (nor want) to watch eleventy billion side series to enjoy the main show. Just give me one good show with good stories and good characters. And then if that starts to get some wheels, you can think about maybe one (and just ONE) side story here and there.

Whatever happens with Doctor Who next, hopefully it’ll recover from the past few years of the Disney malaise that inflicted it. Go back to being cheap as shit if you have to. As long as the scripts are good.

And fuck off with all the “mavity” bullshit. That was fucking stupid.

Does Kathleen Kennedy’s Departure From Lucasfilm Actually Mean Anything?

Source: https://filmstories.co.uk/news/kathleen-kennedy-steps-down-as-lucasfilm-president-praises-ai/

So I guess there’s going to be a particular sect of fans and film viewers who will be throwing huge parties over the departure of (now former) Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy, who had been running the ship since 2012 when Disney bought the company and has had a rather debatable influence on the various Lucasfilm properties she had overseen… I think that’s a diplomatic way of saying it. You may be cheering for this or you may be possibly sad by this outcome. I honestly am ambivalent towards the whole deal, but regardless, I wish her the best in all her future endeavors.

I’m just wondering if this actually means anything in the long run because to me, Kennedy was just the head of a division who generally follows mandates from people above her pay grade. To me, the Disneyfication or Marvelizing of Star Wars into a cinematic universal property to be exploited and mined for content would have happened regardless of whoever was in charge. I’m sure she’s had some say on what happened with these properties, but at the same time, is a changing of the guard really going to mean anything going forward or is it just lip service to cause a bit of ruckus before we settle back to the usual routine?

Either way, it’ll be interesting to see who gets the position now and whether they’ll actually affect the way Lucasfilm and its properties are treated, but after that, it’ll be business as usual and nobody will wiser. I make mention of this, but I will forget this soon after.

New Power Rangers Disney Force Coming In 2027… Meh

Source: https://www.superherohype.com/news/646913-power-rangers-disney-tv-show-release-date-reboot

For those who don’t want to click a link, the largely unknown Power Rangers reboot is allegedly due to see release sometime in 2027, with shooting to start in March and a massive promotional campaign to follow. With Super Sentai coming to an end, this enables the reboot to become its own thing rather than recycle material from another franchise.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, a fresh start is probably the way to go if you’re not going to continue what came before and you really want to put your own stamp on this thing. On the other hand, though, it’s going to be a Disney+ co-production, which is a massive red flag considering how their involvement pretty much killed Doctor Who for me. Granted, there was never a point where I felt a reboot had any hope, but anything involving Disney these days is going to be the kiss of death.

I hope I’m wrong. I want to give this thing a chance… but I’ll wait until reliable word of mouth and not the usual white noise proves that this is something I’d actually want to watch. Otherwise… well, there’s plenty of old Power Rangers that I haven’t watched yet. Maybe I should give that a shot.

BleedingCool’s Assessment Of RTD (also fish sex)

Source: https://bleedingcool.com/tv/doctor-who-russell-t-davies-is-now-the-best-the-worst-showrunner/

An interesting perspective on the second run of Russell T Davies, with comparisons to John Nathan-Turner, the last Doctor Who showrunner of the classic era before the show was put on ice for good. To be quite frank, I’m not sure if that’s a fair comparison. Sure, Nathan-Turner might not have been the most popular producer, but there’s stuff from his era that I thought was pretty good and at the very least, his solution to getting away from the sonic screwdriver (i.e. just get rid of the bloody thing) was a way to make the Doctor more clever and resort to other means to solve problems.

Far be it for me to use this as another excuse to rag on ol’ RTD for his recent shit run, but I made a banner called Doctor Boo and so I might as well make the most of it.

For what it’s worth, though, I got around to seeing some of that War Between Land And Sea before I decided that I got bored and just read the synopsis for the rest of the series. Of course, the whole thing degrades into a love story between a man and a fish girl. That’s all this whole thing was about anyway, wasn’t it? Anything that supposedly touches on an interesting premise eventually devolves into bestiality… er, sorry, I mean interspecies erotica, fucko!

Man, remember when this guy was a genius responsible for reviving Doctor Who and turning it into a sci-fi juggernaut? Those were the days… can we build a TARDIS and bring THAT guy over so he can fix up the mess his future self mucked up? Would be nice.

Belated Good News: The Nuking Of Fake Trailer Culture

Source: https://filmstories.co.uk/news/youtube-has-deleted-two-major-channels-which-specialised-in-fake-film-trailers/

I hadn’t had the chance to comment on this piece of business, but I wanted to get it out there. I am pleased to hear that Screen Culture – the Youtube channel that often houses fake movie trailers with its fake thumbnails and other bullshit fakery – has been nuked by Youtube, along with a couple others that have specialized in fake trailers and trying to pass that shit off as real.

Very rarely will you have me championing the nuking of a Youtube channel for content that I disagree with, but there’s a HUGE difference between making your own fan trailers and making your own fan trailers while trying to pass them off as legitimate. And for years, I’ve had to put up with search results that constantly brought up these con artists and their obviously doctored thumbnails when trying to look for recent movie trailers. All I can say is thank fuck this is being remedied.

I’d imagine the ongoing trend of using AI tools to create fake trailers is what spurred this action on Youtube’s part and, yes, there’s going to be the other side of the coin where channels producing genuine, worthwhile content might be false shitcanned… because that sure as shit hasn’t happened in the past. But hey, at the very least, the system did what it was intended to do and that was clean up a mess that needed to be cleaned ages ago. And for this one, brief moment, I will applaud their efforts.

Now if only someone can nuke Screen Rant while we’re at it… or replace all the opinion writers on that site with actual journalists who will post actual news and not fluff pieces that don’t matter. That’d be a real step up, thanks.

Unless Jay Wants To Do It Too

You folks don’t mind if I hold off today’s upload until later tonight to fix a couple last minute things? Great, fantastic. Here’s something to hold you over; six minutes of Conan O’Brien doing Jay Leno impressions.

Given it’s been fifteen years since the whole Coco/Leno/NBC late night fiasco and I’ve largely been silent on the issue, this is as close as you’ll get to a commemoration of the event.