ThaOGDreamWeaver

UK kit is by Ben Sherman, and much as with that brand, looks... Wetherspoons*-ready, rather than fit for action or the catwalk. https://news.sky.com/story/team-gb-unveils-very-patriotic-olympic-kits-featuring-union-jack-13117912 La France: by Berluti and Le Coq Sportif, and... well, it's neat, NICE ceremony jacket, colourful but not loud for competition kit, quite smart and restrained for the podium outfits, and I might need a pair of the shoes. https://www.lecoqsportif.com/en/collections/collection-village-equipe-de-france If there's anything else I'm slightly coveting, it's the Aussie ceremonial jacket. And maybe the skirt (or the guys' boardshorts, because they're a bunch of bogans.) https://wwd.com/pop-culture/celebrity-news/australia-olympic-uniform-1236501025/ *Wetherspoons: think Applebee's, but with more beer, depression and drunken 2am fights

Netflix's infamous 3-and-out model explains a lot of the casualties - which (for legal/arcane/infernal reasons you'd need the crew from Wolfram and Hart to explain) stops them having to pay extended royalties. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/tvs-new-math-what-100m-netflix-deals-actually-shortchange-creators-1203846/ Also, since a show can live on a platform more or less forever, there's no other second-window opportunities like syndication. (Without syndication, ST:TOS would never have evolved into the cultural icon it is today. It's also why TOS episodes still look pretty fresh and have been easy to restore: back in the day, everything that wasn't news, sports or light-ents like quizzes was distributed to local stations on film, rather than videotape. And there's dozens of copies kicking around.) In fact, it's gone backwards. With platforms being voracious for content to suit any given mood - Amish True Crime? Horror Cake Reveals? Extreme Gardening? - they hoover up national, international and local productions like one of Escobar's hippos in a Miami dance club VIP room.

Final trailer's up... is this gonna give the people what they want?

So I went too far down an internet rabbithole, and have found the heroine whose (terrifying) gig it is to end the hippo invasion and save the world. Her name is Gina Paola Serna, and I shall raise a glass of fine rum to her. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/22/vet-sterilising-pablo-escobar-hippos

Hint: watch WandaVision from episode 3 onwards, then rewatch the first two.

Prince & The Revolution - Raspberry Beret

I'm not usually into YouTube explainers, but I gave these a crack. I knew about Praying Mantis's mission and background from my teaching days but not, of course, all the BTS yahoo c***erf***ery by the air wing that is more the province of the USAF. (Frankly, they're probably still jealous to this day.) I am now five minutes into the hippo video and have had to stop because of literal tears of laughter. I was already fully aware of hippos being basically two velociraptors welded together and then given a Cheesecake Factory VIP card, but his descriptions are even better. The video is also a neat object lesson in why we should not screw with ecosystems. To quote Douglas Adams... When you spend much time with naturalists you will tend to hear two words in particular an awful lot: endemic and exotic. Three, if you count disaster. An endemic species of plant or animal is one that is native to an island or region and is found nowhere else at all. An exotic species is one that has been introduced from abroad. And a disaster is usually what results when this occurs.

I've not met that many sharks in business. Well, except real estate, and there I'd guess it's mandatory.

Yes, but I'm sure that SyFy won't be able to get sharrrroh sweet Freya in Asgard. I see your hippos, and raise you... BBC News: Sharks off Brazil coast test positive for cocaine https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cek9mr43x1xo

Cody Pennington - Nothing On Us

Wizards did it. And while I am absolutely the last person to question Peggy and Cap's happy ending, how did she maintain that sparkling career as SHIELD founder with six-two of legendary blond superhero in tow and nobody bats an eyelid or mentions it? And does Steve just retire and become a cookie-baking househusband, coach Little League? I doubt it. With Captain America officially MIA, that helps the cover a bit if he decides to become Roger Stevens or something. But there are going to be enough people around who know...

"...wait, you mean Back To The Future was bull***t?" ...that, pretty much. Per Bruce, each change doesn't fix the existing timeline, because that would be a Grandfather paradox. After all, if you went back in time to fix a problem and fixed it, then the timeline changed around it - how would you know what to fix? Instead, any change made creates a new variant timeline. (And, handily, a fine spinoff series for Loki). Which is quite a neat way of sidestepping the whole oh-no-fixed-point-timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly stuff. I wasn't thinking about F4 going back in time - I was thinking forwards and a little bit sideways, to current MCU continuity from their more idealised 1960s home.

There's a lot it gets right (Bad News Bear Jackie Earl Haley's bravura turn as Rorschach, JD Morgan characteristically charismatically crazy as the Comedian, Doc's transformation sequence, Archie, the prison fight). But - IMHO - it doesn't either catch the full spirit of the books or hang together as a complete movie. And that ending is something nerds will be warring over for decades. I understand why the change was made but it... just... still... clunks. Put together with the sequel series, the ending does work better with...

Time travel flares my IBS, both in real life and the movies. Endgame mostly worked because it lampshaded a lot of the silliness (the test runs, that's America's ass!, and having to heist the Space Stone twice), although it still got twisted up with the way Thanos sabotaged it. If the new F4 is a period/time-and-relative-dimensions travel piece, it could be quite fun as a fish-out-of-water comedy with the team having to adapt to a new world where heroes are not only well-known and commonplace, but where Reed's advanced tech knowledge is either sixty years out of date... or still ahead of its time.

So, after Zack Snyder's adap mishap, and the rather better sequel TV series, Watchmen gets a full adap in the 2-and-a-bit-D style familiar to What If? fans. It's direct to rental, so I'm unlikely to be catching this one. And to be honest, I'm with the grumpy old wizard on this one: the book's structure was made to do things in a way a straight narrative flick can't. Though if some new fans show up, that's cool.

I know, it’s odd… …according to The Numbers and IMDB, there is not one big-ticket studio release currently scheduled on Aug 29 or 30 (you can count a whole five-day "weekend" from Thursday drop to Monday for a holiday opening's box office take. So normally, executives are jostling for this spot). I know the strikes and COVID screwed things up but…? https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/release-schedule

Full trailer is out…

You say that, but Blue Beetle had: a new-to-movies character played by a talented brand new young lead largely positive reviews and 91% audience score a (relatively) small budget at $115m-ish abuelas with laser machine guns And... nope. People didn't turn out for it. It didn't help that there was a small hurricane that hit SoCal, or that WB had already announced the death of the DCU. Which is a shame, as it's a very decent, fun little popcorn-munching cape flick with a sense of its own silliness. Check it out if you fancy some light entertainment. So... while a lower-ranked character allows you to introduce something new and fresh, it is a little harder to market. And much as I loathe the need for it, and/or my personal opinion of marketing crews and some of their ideas, I'll admit dragging folks out to the multiplex is a lot harder than it used to be. On that note... I'd quite like to see The Question get a TV series instead, though, to let the character breathe a bit more. I was trying to think about who could play him... what kind of Question are we going for - the early Angry/Greyhat/Loner/Eccentric/Terrifying/Sinister, the later Zen/Whimsical, or the Renée Montoya handover...?

D+ budgets are under review at the moment, and Acolyte is rumoured to have cost $180m. For that many Imperial credits, you need a Mando or Andor-sized critical and numbers hit, and… whatever you think of the series, that it ain’t. Fun thing though - there are various tidbits being released to tease (or plead for) an S2. And the Nasty Lookin’ Thing in the cave might be none other than that tragic figure, Darth Plagueis…

Two from my Pinup Heroes Tarot series I've been quietly working on... The Sun: Eight of Wands:

Small industry biz note: WB/D is now exploring breakup options. (FT sub required) This includes wizard wheezes such as hiving off their cash cow but declining legacy TV businesses (and saddling them with most of WB/D's crippling debts), leaving studios (inc DC) and streaming (Max) free to run and grow. Needless to say, this hasn't gone down well with investors and bondholders. But neither has their performance: their CFO wiped another 10% off their share price by admitting he couldn't predict free cash flow this year. (For non-financial wonks: that's not great.) The likely impact on DC and WB is a budget crunch, slate cuts, and maybe even lawsuits as debt holders try to secure any prime assets. Oh, and they need James Gunn's reboot and the Superman movie to be a win. Badly.

...though if ever our fine devs got round to rebooting the SBB...

Ep7 and Season Finale...

Never forget the reason for the season.