A few recent watches. Loved The Menu. Plus, I liked it more when I read how the sommelier was an ironic casting choice. His other big role - one of the two guys from the Sonic commercials, sitting in the front seat savoring Sonic’s latest Snickers and Whoopie Pie BLT bullshit. The Gray Man on Netflix was also a good take. Light. Action packed. And the snooty critics hate it, which only makes it more attractive. However …. My latest find was pure gold. Bare Knuckle Boxing. For me; the fights are just an added bonus. The announcers are the real show.
Just watched the man with the golden gun for the first time since my teens. My bond rankings from favorite to least: Daniel Craig Sean Connery Pierce Brosnan Timothy Dalton Roger Moore Never seen the lazenby film, heard it was good though. Anyone else have rankings
For me, it’ll always be Connery and then also-rans. Daniel Craig is good, but I don’t think it’s fair to measure him against any other. His Bond is really a different character. I supposed I’d order them: Connery Craig Moore and Brosnan (tied) Dalton and Lazenby (tied, I guess) Lazenby just never felt like Bond to me. He almost feels like an experiment. We go from Sean Connery, banging chicks and dropping funny quips, to Lazenby - a semi-sterile Bond who falls deeply in love and cries at the and. CRIES!!!
You have to be a well-mannered thug to play Bond right. That makes Connery and Craig perfect and everybody else a poofter.
Robert Moore always felt like the Mad Magazine version of Bond to me. Sleazy and greasy and not quite as interesting as it's trying to be.
Just started Barbarians on Netflix last night. As historical fur and feathers dramas go its pretty weak beer compared to Vikings, the Last Kingdom or even Marco Polo, but I still kinda liked it.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount+ is very good. It's like the original series updated for the 55 year gap. Must-see TV just for Captain Pike's hair.
Started watching Will Trent on ABC... It's not great... but it ain't bad for a network television police procedural. A bit too many cringey scenes... The guy who plays Will Trent carries the show...
Netflix running trials on its new policy to crack down on account sharing. LINK Yup, that ought’a do it. Memo to Netflix: people share passwords because there are a crapload of streaming options now and you’re not offering enough content to justify the expense. One decent movie or show now and then isn’t enough. So, what’s the endgame here? How does this grow subscribers? I’d be willing to bet when Sopranos caught fire back in the day, HBO subscriptions skyrocketed. Why not try focusing first on quality of content? Offer something of value and people will want to buy. Simple, really. Or, if better content isn’t on the table, then sell off your catalog and give someone else a shot. I just looked it up - Netflix had 223.09 million subscribers as of 2022 Q3. It’ll be interesting to see where their numbers a year from now.
I've cut off all of my subscriptions except for Paramount+ and YouTube. Not planning to use any more at this point. I pay Paramount+ year round because they're my ticket to most of the Jets games. I cut the cord for TV like 20 years ago now and have rarely regretted it since.
Related to that, the bigger problem for Netflix, far more than account sharing - it’s no longer unique, and a movie/tv catalog alone isn’t enough. Peacock has Premier League and other streaming sports. Hulu+ is trying a cut-the-cord-on-cable thing with live programming, although - good luck taking on YoutubeTV. Amazon Prime comes with a trillion product marketplace and NFL. With Netflix all you get is a stale library of TV/movies and a shot every now and then at fresh content worth the subscription. They should save all the time and energy trying to police accounts and focus more on innovating. Try being unique again. Maybe partner programming with one of those home meal services to create a Dinner and a Movie Fridays experience. Or work some sort of revenue sharing deal with Target that connects their online store with your 223 million subscribers - watch a show and two clicks away you can buy bath towels. Invest in exclusive rights to a stable of top talent. Just to spitball a few examples of what I mean by innovation.
I think Google and Amazon are going to eventually crush all of the competition because in lean times, their bread and butter has nothing to do with streaming entertainment (or entertainment at all) as a primary existence. Being a leader of completely different industries and still competing in this one is a ridiculous advantage. They are built to survive adversity while Netflix and the others will be forced to throw away money buying existing customer bases and infra to survive. All those two have to do is keep growing and wait.
Yeah, I’m not thrilled about those two behemoths expanding their monopolies, but I’m with you there. Or, better said - I’m sorry to say, I can’t see anyway you’ll be wrong. If I were Netflix, I’d have jumped into the college football conference game. There are at least two, and could sometime soon be three, major conferences looking for broadcasting contracts and willing to try a streaming option. At least an experimental package. Plus, it won’t be long before all they have is mediocre options, and Netflix is just as mediocre as anyone else. All these games and only a handful of broadcast options, but they’ll opt for Season 2 of How Many Things Can I Fit Up My Ass over college football.
My sister sold me on this and swears it’s worth sticking with. I thought it was a decent call, but I’m wondering how long it will be before Charli gets annoying. And by the way - any surprise she’s single and on the run with no prospects? I’m only two episodes in, but hopefully they tackle the paradox of dating a hot chick with a husky voice, who apparently has plenty of money, likes booze, gambling and muscle cars, but doubles as a human lie detector.
Wife got us started on the Kominsky Method. Alan Arkin may be the best living actor in America today.
One of a slew of things where i watched the trailer and clicked through knowing I’d get back to it. Just haven’t yet. I’m also there on Alan Arkin. I liked him in his cartoony In-laws days, but at some point that dude went from character to actor and just gets better with age.
In other news, I started into Perry Mason on HBOMax with zero expectations. Mostly because I was locked into the Raymond Burr series. Not even remotely close. They were kind enough to make that clear five minutes into episode 1, when Perry runs surveillance on an actor modeled after Fatty Arbuckle while Fatty is making a meal of some young starlet - then sees Mason and chases him into the street with every bloated mass of skin waggling in the breeze. I’m not all that enthralled with the storyline, but I appreciate the twists on old assumptions. Plus, Della Street is a lesbian with a live-in girlfriend in 1930’s L.A. and that’s always cool. Explains a few things.
I had trouble with season 1, and I like Matthew Rhys and the period stuff. It was too disjointed, and the church story arc was annoying. I was still able to watch it though, I'll check out season 2 when I start up HBOMax again. I need to catch up on Barry, too.
