Technology And Progressives

17 Replies to “Technology And Progressives”

1. “Meanwhile, endless numbers of Hollywood right-think movies and supposed literary masterworks about oppression are dismal failures for studios and publishing houses that would rather sink into debt than face a social-justice firing squad on Twitter.” ”

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   Lord of the RIngs; The Incredibles; The Dark Knight; Braveheart etc. There are many. And, if you’re looking for a reason that Amazon decided to go full blown “woke” on their Lord of the Rings television show, it’s partially because the original story holds a conservative message and is written by a conservative advocate.

   1. I have to wonder if that’s also why The Chronicles of Narnia were never finished.

      1. The Chronicles of Narnia weren’t financially successful enough. This is a good example of movie studios not understanding their audience. Narnia is explicitly a Christian allegory; most fantasy fans are aggressively anti-religious because the fan community is anti-religious. They’re also children’s books and Lewis writes down to his audience. It’s hard to turn that into something adults who are not already in the fanbase will enjoy over a five-film blockbuster franchise. You can get one-offs – Inkheart, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Nim’s Island, The Golden Compass – but you can’t build a franchise around it. They got three movies, that’s a miracle all on its own.

2. In somewhat related news, the media have been ranting all day about someone assaulting worshippers at a Mississauga mosque. People are stabbed and shot every day in the GTA but it doesn’t make national news. However this story will now quickly go away. The name of the attacker has been released. His name is Mohammad. Well, there goes the narrative.

   1. Can you imagine the state many at the CBC had worked themselves into, only to have it shot down by that one inconvenient fact? The disappointment will be palpable.

      1. The CTV clip I caught said nothing about his name and were more focused on the rise in hate crimes in Canada and Doug Ford’s announcement that he stands with the muzzies…..blah blah blah no room for hate in Onterrible. I’m still very upset that I watched CTV news (it was on in the restaurant lobby) so forgive my poorly written comment.

3. Is it just me or are all modern movies shit? Throw me a bone here. I haven’t seen a good movie in years. Can you name one movie in the last 10 years that wasn’t complete leftist crap? And they took my favorite star trek and turned it into a bag of shit, recently cameoing Stacey (the “unelected”) Abrams as President of Earth. If it wasn’t enough watching Picard apologizing for being a peanut…

   1. Is it just me or are all modern movies shit?

      They are. The last movie in the last 20 years that I thought was worth seeing was Master and Commander.

      And they took my favorite star trek and turned it into a bag of shit

      I watched the first one of the “re-boot” series and I was appalled at how bad it was. Gene Roddenberry must be rolling in his grave.

      1. Is it just me or are all modern movies shit?
         I was appalled at how bad it was. Gene Roddenberry must be rolling in his grave

         The rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia strike again. Star Trek was always terrible. People just think it got worse because when they were children it was their escapist fantasy, and most nerds of any generation don’t read real books or watch real movies; they only consume poor quality genre fiction. Thus they end up thinking that the simplistic versions of the ideas presented in children’s pulp SF TV are somehow original and groundbreaking.

         There have been very, very good recent movies, even in the nerd culture market. Joker is one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time, and it would have been even better had it not needed to tie itself to the DC comics franchise to get made. Split was a good M. Night Shyamalan movie, insomuch as “M. Night Shyamalan” is an actual genre. Fatman is a brilliant deconstruction of its own genre – the “darker, edgier” superhero adaptation.

         Now, those films may not be to your taste, and fair enough; but they’re all excellently crafted films. I wouldn’t disagree that the collapse of any profitable business models for Hollywood movies means that they’re playing it very safe right now, which means endless films produced solely as lowest-common-denominator ROI generators. But then that’s always been true; mindless action films and last-week-before-the-wedding rom-coms have been guaranteed bank since at least the 1980s, which is why there’s so many of them.

         1. Star Trek was always terrible.

            The presentation of the original series was often hokey, but that was offset by a number of excellent stories, one of which won a Hugo (The City on the Edge of Forever, written by Harlan Ellison). Many of the episodes were allegories about what was happening in society at the time they were produced, often tackling controversial themes (e. g., Let This Be Your Last Battlefield or Plato’s Stepchildren).

            The last time I saw a movie in a theatre was nearly 30 years ago.

            A lot of times, I watch certain films that are of more recent vintage on cable. The reason I do is because of the adulation and good reviews they’ve received. If I do manage to finish them, I often wonder why I bothered an what all the fuss was about.

            1. 2005’s ” Serenity ” with Nathan Fillion was a descent spinoff sci-fi movie from the short lived Firefly series.
               It bookended the original series and provided a nice finale to it all.
               Was produced by Josh Whelan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame.
               Worth a watch, lots of action.

               As far as sci-fi series , any of the StarGate and spinoffs and little movies were fairly descent.

            2. The original Stargate movie (Kurt Russell, James Spader) was a bit of fun. I wasn’t so enthusiastic about the series.

               It was one of director Roland Emmerich’s earlier movies. Unfortunately, much of his subsequent work was, frankly, rubbish (e. g., Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC).

   2. Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong is played by Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin is played by Buzz Aldrin. Etc.

      1. And the travel budget for that one was relatively tame as well.

   3. The new dune is pretty good

4. That was Neil’s best yet, IMO.

5. So the author is saying that you don’t need to read 1984, you can watch it on the Parliamentary channel.