And everyone would be having huge arguments over which season they should have called it quits.
Movie, TV, Web Series, and Music Hot Take(s).
- Thread starter BrawlMan
- Start date
Can Ezra Miller fuck off already? Tired of seeing headlines about the latest annoying thing he did.
Actually, can all these Jared Leto types in general fuck off?
Actually, can all these Jared Leto types in general fuck off?
I've been ruminating on Star Trek as of late, as a life long fan. Out of the current crop of Trek's offerings I've found I've enjoyed Picard the most. Lower Decks put me off side instantly with the Rick and Morty art style - good ship design though, kudos - and its humour isn't what I look for in Trek. Discovery I just hated to its bone marrow after the first season.
However, Picard is something I like because it allows me to watch a fairly indulgent character deep dive on my favourite captain with some interesting side characters along for the ride. If someone can give Captain Rios his own show on the Stargazer after Picard Season 2, I'm all for it cos I love that guy. Picard also has the sort of indulgences and digressions I appreciate and support in a side series, but would find to be grievous sins in a mainline show. Like the swearing; it will never not be weird to hear people in Starfleet uniforms say 'fuck'.
So I suppose the TL;DR hot take is thus: Star Trek Picard is a fine, even great side series. But if they tried flogging it as a mainline show it would deserve all the shit people give it and then some.
And Captain Rios and the Stargazer would make a good show.
And the next Enterprise based Trek show needs to take place about two hundred years after Voyager. Just to disallow the impulse for cameos.
However, Picard is something I like because it allows me to watch a fairly indulgent character deep dive on my favourite captain with some interesting side characters along for the ride. If someone can give Captain Rios his own show on the Stargazer after Picard Season 2, I'm all for it cos I love that guy. Picard also has the sort of indulgences and digressions I appreciate and support in a side series, but would find to be grievous sins in a mainline show. Like the swearing; it will never not be weird to hear people in Starfleet uniforms say 'fuck'.
So I suppose the TL;DR hot take is thus: Star Trek Picard is a fine, even great side series. But if they tried flogging it as a mainline show it would deserve all the shit people give it and then some.
And Captain Rios and the Stargazer would make a good show.
And the next Enterprise based Trek show needs to take place about two hundred years after Voyager. Just to disallow the impulse for cameos.
Youtube music videos are actually a really good way to find songs and bands you'll like. Browsing for music is really time consuming for me because of how difficult it can be to find what I like and how I need to devote a lot of my attention to the song to be sure it's one worth buying. Searching by genre or random searching doesn't give me good returns but I realized that a lot of bands and songs I like are ones I learned of through AMVs.
I feel like a better way to catogorize music would be to group it onto what kind of feeling it evokes rather than how it does so. Uplifting, creepy, blood pumping, etc. feel like they'd be better for getting what you want if you're not particular about genre. Youtube MVs were good for me finding music because it sets a theme, this is set to an action scene I know of, this is for a romance, this is for a sad moment, this is for a character. Makes it much easier to pinpoint whether a song is tailored to what you're looking for.
I feel like a better way to catogorize music would be to group it onto what kind of feeling it evokes rather than how it does so. Uplifting, creepy, blood pumping, etc. feel like they'd be better for getting what you want if you're not particular about genre. Youtube MVs were good for me finding music because it sets a theme, this is set to an action scene I know of, this is for a romance, this is for a sad moment, this is for a character. Makes it much easier to pinpoint whether a song is tailored to what you're looking for.
That assumes a single track evokes the same emotion from every person, and it doesn't work that way. Probably obvious, but have you tried Pandora? Start with a song you like, and it jumps to another in a similar vein, and you "like" or "skip" each song while Pandora learns your preferences and tailors its results to your liking.
Doesn't that require a subscription or something though? I hate dealing with those kinds of services.
I don't recall; I haven't used Pandora in the better part of a decade, since Spotify came about. But if memory serves me at all, I think entry is free with an ad every few songs. It's how I discovered a LOT of artists and music I grew to love.
Alright, Star Trek and music!
Star Trek: @Gordon_4 and I are looking for very different things from our Trek, perhaps. I watched the first season of Picard and it became the first Trek show I ever quit again. I watched all of Enterprise and Voyager even though they are not good, but it's still Trek and I watched them. I very much dislike the new movies but I watch them, because it's Trek. But Picard was just too much for me- it really just feels like pure nostalgia with nothing else, and I don't care for that.
Maybe part of it is I don't LOVE Picard like so many others do. He's my 3rd favorite captain. So just having old man Picard is not in and of itself interesting. The plot was stupid in season 1 and had nothing else beside the nostalgia as far as I can tell. The ads for season 2 has Q, so more nostalgia, and I'm done.
Discovery, however, is good now. Look.. it's not GREAT. Season 1 was rough, with the weird Klingons, clearly they know that and gave up. Season 2 was total poop with prequel nostalgia that was even worse than Picard. But with season 3 they did something amazing: they started to fulfill the broken promise of Voyager. They went to a brand new setting, disentangled themselves from the chains of canon and nostalgia, and started making their own stories. And it's... fine. Cast is solid, plots are somewhat logical- well, on like TNG season 6 level- and it has a very modern sensibility that is appropriate.
My biggest criticism of Discovery now though is that it's kind of "safe"- it focuses on consistency and "quality" to make sure each episode is well done and has a familiar rhythm but never does anything beyond that.
A large part of it is that's made like a Netflix show- each season is just a 12 hour movie and each episode can't be distinguished from the last. One of the great things about Trek was those really stand-out episodes you'd be talking about for weeks, your Cities on the Edge of Forevers and Locutus of Borgs and whatnot. I can't tell you what any episode of Discovery is about other than "and then it's the next one."
Star Trek: @Gordon_4 and I are looking for very different things from our Trek, perhaps. I watched the first season of Picard and it became the first Trek show I ever quit again. I watched all of Enterprise and Voyager even though they are not good, but it's still Trek and I watched them. I very much dislike the new movies but I watch them, because it's Trek. But Picard was just too much for me- it really just feels like pure nostalgia with nothing else, and I don't care for that.
Maybe part of it is I don't LOVE Picard like so many others do. He's my 3rd favorite captain. So just having old man Picard is not in and of itself interesting. The plot was stupid in season 1 and had nothing else beside the nostalgia as far as I can tell. The ads for season 2 has Q, so more nostalgia, and I'm done.
Discovery, however, is good now. Look.. it's not GREAT. Season 1 was rough, with the weird Klingons, clearly they know that and gave up. Season 2 was total poop with prequel nostalgia that was even worse than Picard. But with season 3 they did something amazing: they started to fulfill the broken promise of Voyager. They went to a brand new setting, disentangled themselves from the chains of canon and nostalgia, and started making their own stories. And it's... fine. Cast is solid, plots are somewhat logical- well, on like TNG season 6 level- and it has a very modern sensibility that is appropriate.
My biggest criticism of Discovery now though is that it's kind of "safe"- it focuses on consistency and "quality" to make sure each episode is well done and has a familiar rhythm but never does anything beyond that.
A large part of it is that's made like a Netflix show- each season is just a 12 hour movie and each episode can't be distinguished from the last. One of the great things about Trek was those really stand-out episodes you'd be talking about for weeks, your Cities on the Edge of Forevers and Locutus of Borgs and whatnot. I can't tell you what any episode of Discovery is about other than "and then it's the next one."
Music discovery: I'm a bigger music dork than game or Trek dork, it is actually my favorite entertainment and I have lot of strong feelings and opinions about it.
But one I don't have is music discovery- you find what you find.
The one thing I will defend though is the value of knowledge, it can really enhance your listening and be the best way to find new stuff.
This how I got into jazz, for example- just going doing rabbit holes of "this band was influenced by X" so you listen to some X and you hear a piano player and you listen to that piano player's own stuff and you read he was influenced by this other dude and before you know it the idea that you don't know what to listen to quickly becomes insane. And those threads can go down really interesting roads.
But one I don't have is music discovery- you find what you find.
The one thing I will defend though is the value of knowledge, it can really enhance your listening and be the best way to find new stuff.
This how I got into jazz, for example- just going doing rabbit holes of "this band was influenced by X" so you listen to some X and you hear a piano player and you listen to that piano player's own stuff and you read he was influenced by this other dude and before you know it the idea that you don't know what to listen to quickly becomes insane. And those threads can go down really interesting roads.
Your reasoning is exactly why Picard would and indeed should be deeply criticised if it were a mainline show. It’s relying on nostalgia pretty heavily - though not exclusively - and is not about Star Trek’s core mission of brave new worlds etc.
As for the short form format of yesteryear, I don’t know if we’re getting that back (hot take 1). Deep Space Nine - the franchise golden child - started Trek on long form writing but competitor Babylon 5 did it better (hot take 2) and after the the punch combo of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones really cemented the viability of it on television. Streaming turned viable into an entrenched position.
I don't think this is really a hot take but the emotion I feel makes it seem like one. Give me more abstract and interesting powers in media that isn't just boring ass "I can shoot fire" stuff.
I was just reading a story where various people had powers thanks to special artifacts. One girl had the power that we are initially led to believe is the ability to essentially become invisible. She's not becoming invisible, like light passes through her, she can make herself or something else lose its presence to other people, basically they don't notice something she uses her power on.
But this isn't actually what her power is.
Her actual power is revealed when she has to save her brother from an asshole that has multiple relics and is killing people by turning them to stone and in order to save him she uses way more of her power than normal (Which is considered dangerous) and removes the asshole from existence. Physically, that person is just gone, and it's suggested by another character that that wasn't even the full use of her power and that if she had gone even further then she would have erased that person from time and memory as well, it would have been as if they never existed at all.
Give me more of these kinds of powers dammit! I'm sick of eye beams and super speed junk.
I was just reading a story where various people had powers thanks to special artifacts. One girl had the power that we are initially led to believe is the ability to essentially become invisible. She's not becoming invisible, like light passes through her, she can make herself or something else lose its presence to other people, basically they don't notice something she uses her power on.
But this isn't actually what her power is.
Her actual power is revealed when she has to save her brother from an asshole that has multiple relics and is killing people by turning them to stone and in order to save him she uses way more of her power than normal (Which is considered dangerous) and removes the asshole from existence. Physically, that person is just gone, and it's suggested by another character that that wasn't even the full use of her power and that if she had gone even further then she would have erased that person from time and memory as well, it would have been as if they never existed at all.
Give me more of these kinds of powers dammit! I'm sick of eye beams and super speed junk.
> Babylon 5 did it better (hot take 2)
Well, no argument from me! Stanning for B5 is one of my big weird pop culture things. Love that show.
Did you know they're doing a remake/reboot on the CW? I'm expectig a clusterf, can't wait!
Well, no argument from me! Stanning for B5 is one of my big weird pop culture things. Love that show.
Did you know they're doing a remake/reboot on the CW? I'm expectig a clusterf, can't wait!
Looking at the online "discourse" about Morbius, I'm convinced that there is a large number of people who watch (and say that they like) movies panned by critics purely out of spite. I haven't and won't watch Morbius, but I will eat my foot if there is anything in it even remotely resembling a good movie.
I'm not seeing the movie either, nor Sonic 2, because I am not wasting money when I need it for actual important things. Plus, Morbius look boring and uninteresting. Not wasting my weekend on that. I'd sooner watch both Ghost Rider movies. Those are actually good though. Spirit of Vengeance got way too much hate. I consider SoV, the better of the two movies.
I get critical dissonance, and I have a distastes for most movie critics. Don't matter if they're "professionals" of the Ebert variety, or hacks on YT. But sometimes they have a point, or not exactly wrong.
I still hate Avatar (2009) and have no interests in any of the sequels. Whenever they're supposed to come out. Better hurry up Cameron; you ain't young anymore. Use that budget and talent and make sequel to Battle Angel. Buy the rights back from Disney. They don't want it, and will do nothing with the IP.
Eh... There's no real easy way to tell if a movie is good or not unless you read a lot of reviews and use your own judgement in appraising whether the reviewer is giving the thing a fair shake or not, regardless of whether it's a paid reviewer or a random person. Sometimes the paid reviewers are clearly just turning their noses up at a fun movie or fellating a bad movie for some kind of political reason just as a random person could just be taking the piss out of something because it's controversial to do so or it'll rile up someone or praise a movie just because people they hate are singing about it. *sigh* Even in the case of reviews that are supposed to give one an idea of what they're paying for before they invest in it too heavily require a decent amount of investment. Life is so tiring.
I don't actually follow any real reviewers, the only time I consult reviews is when I want to watch some old ass movie from years ago and I'm looking for recommendations. By then usually, there are enough reviews out there that aren't tainted by hype or sponsors. Which admittedly means I watch a very small group of newly released movies (usually superhero stuff). Honestly, after Covid, I don't see myself going to the cinema that often. It's so easy to sample content these days, whether authentically or not, that I really don't bother trying to see if I like it before I start watching it.
I do tend to give some weight to aggregate scores. A 50 or 60, maybe you can still find some value there, but the guy in me who slogged his way through years of statistics classes will never accept a movie with a rating as low as 17% from hundreds of critics as anything other than dogshit. Like seriously, the amount of people who don't understand what the Tomatometer means... I get that it's designed that way to attract clicks, but STILL. Do people not know how percentages work?!?