I feel like someone who has lived in South Korea as an expat is digging into experiences I’ve gone through and it’s making me nervous. The above picture from “I Want You Back” is a prime example — that could be me and Annie Shapiro way back when.
The two protagonists are drinking soju (straight from the bottle!) and OB, both of which are fixtures of expat life in South Korea. I think maybe the characters are doing this in LA’s Koreatown — that would make the most sense — but it is eerie.
Then there’s THIS picture. It took me a double take to make sure it wasn’t set at Nori in Seoul.
Could it be that someone was an expat in Seoul (or somewhere in South Korea) then decided to interpolate those experiences in LA’s Koreatown? Spooky, spooky, spooky.
The only reason why I know the above ISN’T at Nori is the layout of the women’s bathroom is all wrong.
Anyway. We’ll see, I guess.
I just wish someone in my family genuinely cared about MY creative aspirations and didn’t just give them lip service so they didn’t feel bad for not caring about me.
Apparently, there is a Civil War movie being produced. Here’s how I would lay out the plot of such a movie.
Act 1 In the background of a conversation between a liberal mom and a conservative son is an announcement that the post-Election Day debate is growing tense.
Inciting Incident: Rather abruptly, things collapse across the United States as there is a huge debate about who POTUS is
The Heroine gets separated from her son in the chaos. Second Act
Midpoint: the Heroine gets captured by Red forces
We see that tactical nukes have been used across the United States and the lights go out. Third Act The chaos of all of this allows her to get out her imprisonment.
The moment of truth is when she’s about to get murdered by Red forces — she’s saved by her son, who is now the leader of Red forces.
The more I learn about Ye’s new muse Julia Fox, the more I find her intriguing. She seems rather…wide open…about her life, but unlike Kim Kardashian, she seems to actually have some discernible talent.
Fox seems like an actual person worth becoming a stan of, unlike most of the Kardashian clan that seems to simply fill a cultural niche because…they fill a cultural niche. (I exclude Kendall from this evaluation because she is actually gorgeous enough to be a model.)
I’m impressed that Ye would pick Fox, of all people, to be his muse. As a creative person myself, I could definitely see where she might inspire art. (Especially dat ass — holy shit.)
But she’s more than a pretty face and thicc ass, she genuinely seems like an interesting person unto herself. I honestly barely know anything about her, but the information I’ve passively learned about her in dribs and drabs has been compelling.
I look forward to her coming unto her own in the 2020s. Maybe, if things like Fox continue to bubble up to the cultural surface, not everything will be a dystopian hellscape of civil war or autocracy.
I’m a nobody in the rural part of a fly over state. I don’t know anything about anything. But in my travels around the world over the years, I have noticed that people from Perth, Australia are some of the most unique in the world. They’re very interesting, creative people.
So, whenever my mind wander into what might happen to some of the deeper Blue portions of America like Hollywood, I think of Perth. If the movie industry were to, en mass flee autocratic America, they would do worse than to go to Perth. Now, Perth is in the middle of nowhere. It’s pretty much a long ways away from everywhere.
But the weather is decent and it would be a great place for all the Deep Blue Hollywood types to live once Hollywood is finally consumed by Immersive Media. I have to note, in passing how annoyed I am at how many center-Left people already have one foot out the door when it comes to the United States. I mean, come on, people, you don’t have the gumption to stand and fight for the freedoms that have made you so wealthy?
Ugh. Fuck that and fuck them.
But anyway, the issue is — we all have to prepare for some severe turbulence in the United States between now and no later than January 2025. Everyone is going to have to pick a side based on what they believe. It’s just sad that so many Twitter liberals who could otherwise help the cause of saving freedom and democracy in the United States are cowards and would rather run away than help defend the idea that the America really is the land of the free, home of the brave.
Or put another way — just because Trump was too stupid and lazy to “not lose” the 2020 election, doesn’t mean he won’t be able to “not lose” the 2024 election. We’re totally fucked no matter what. We’re just not going to muddle through this crisis like we have with other major events in our history in the past.
The years 2024 – 2025 will be the biggest political crisis in American domestic history since the secession crisis of 1860 – 1861. Either you’re prepared for it when it happens, or you’re not.
Now, this may all happen in the context of America pulling itself out of the ruble of a Second American Civil War, but Hollywood is ripe for a massive series of reboots of existing IP.
I say this because all of the major franchises at the moment are pretty much dead in the water. They’ve been strip mined to the point that audiences — or at least the audiences that grew up with them, are worn out. As such, there is going to come a tipping point when studio execs realize that there is a whole generation or two ripe to re-introduce franchise after franchise to.
Our new Ripley?
There will be much waling and gnashing of teeth by Baby Boomers and GenX, but in the end, we’re all going to see ourselves throwing down $20 at a streamer showing us a start-from-scratch reboot of Alien, Blade Runner, Die Hard, The Terminator and maybe even The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
Just take Alien, for instance. I could very easily see Zendaya play a totally new Ripley in a totally new version of Alien that would start the whole franchise fresh. Give her a three picture deal and finally sort that particular franchise clusterfuck out once and for all. You get a hip horror director a three picture deal as well when you do this and you’ve just made yourself half a billion dollars.
What’s interesting is the James Bond franchise is, as of this moment, doing fairly well. It seems to me Henry Cavill — despite some unsettling blind items that allegedly are about him — would be the perfect new James Bond. He’s definitely who I think of when I think of “James Bond for the 2020s.” He’s got the Right Stuff for the role.
James Bond For the 2020s.
Anyway, I guess what I’m pointing out is, we’re just about to see a generational changing of the guard. This happens every once in a while, when people too young to remember The Good Olde Days, discover The Beatles, or whatever. This time, it will be Hollywood and it’s going to be pretty lit. A lot of the strip minding errors of Hollywood’s past should be fixed (I hope) because the studios know they have great IP on their hands and all they have to do is give the new versions of these beloved franchises some forethought before they roll them out to Xennials.
Let me be clear — I’m very much willing to bend over backwards to give Don’t Look Up good press. It’s message is dear to my heart. The problem is, the movie itself sucks.
And, yet, here I am, listening to Vanity Fair’s Oscar podcast and they’re saying that Don’t Look Up could very well be in the running to win Best Picture. I get it. It makes sense. But, God, on a storytelling basis did that move suck. And, no, I haven’t gotten around to watching is all the way through yet.
I think some of that comes from how out of synch my expectations for the movie was. I went into it blind and I had some vague notion that it might be a modern day Network dealing with global climate change. But it just seemed way too busy sucking its own cock to be a Network-level movie. It was just annoying and irritating and I totally agree with its message.
What I saw of it was just too over the top. It seems to be trying too hard. It was too eager to make A Statement that it lost sight of telling a cogent, great story. If Don’t Look Up was a modern day Blue State Network, then I would love it and defend it against the slings and arrows of MAGA dipshits.
But, sadly, Don’t Look Up was just A Bad Movie on a storytelling level. It’s just irritating on a storytelling basis. It was all over the place, to the point that I didn’t care about the characters and didn’t want to watch it to the end despite being very receptive to its message. If it gets Best Picture despite that, then Woke Culture will really have flexed its power to the point that it will make me roll my eyes.
The thing about Network is it’s timeless. It’s such a great story that you could release it today and it would still be popular. Anyway, as I keep saying, I’m going to at least try to watch the movie all the way through and then re-reevaluate it.
We are fast approaching a moment when the first Mikey Mouse shorts will be in the public domain. I think 2024 will be it. So, logically, it would make a lot of sense for The House Of Mouse to become The House Of Simpsons.
No one listens to me.
What they should do is move all their Simpsons IP over to Pixar. The show should have been canceled a long, long, long time ago and Disney should bite the bullet and do just that. Then, after maybe five years, come back hard with a planned series of Pixar-produced Simpsons movies.
The Simpsons would be updated using the best of Pixar’s computer animation and storytelling. Then, every two years or so, there would be a Simpsons movie that would fuse the greatness of the Simpsons with the equal greatness of Pixar.
I have a lot — A LOT — of movie ideas rolling around in my mind. One concept that I think someone, somewhere should do is kind of like “Battlestar Galactica 1980” meets Star Wars: A New Hope. The story would go something like this — it’s the modern day, when out of the blue a rag-tag group of space aliens fighting some sort of Galactic government swoop in and settle on the planet.
You would have all the archetypes of Star Wars, only set in the modern world with our modern technology. You would have all these exotic space aliens doing their thing among humans, all along with idea that theGalactic government might at any moment attack earth.
lulz. meh
And, if you really wanted to make things interesting, you do all of this in context of Red and Blue America, with Red America doubting everything and Blue American embracing all the aliens and preparing for a fight. Or something. Something like that.
But the point would be it there would be fun aliens and just an interesting story. No “woke” effort to sell a message or toys to little kids. Just a story about an Iowa farmboy who wants to save his girlfriend who is kidnapped and is now on the other end of the galaxy. Or something. You get the picture.
Absolutely no one listens to me, though. I can’t even get a 1,000 unique views for this site. So, meh.
I keep ranting about this because, much like Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, I was in the sweetspot for its intended audience. But, as with Booksmart, I bounced just about at the inciting incident. I fucking hate Booksmart for reasons similar to why I feel Don’t Look Up was a real missed opportunity.
While Booksmart was fucking preachy and caused me to feel attacked simply for being a “CIS white male,” Don’t Look Up was so hysterical and frantic in its desire to bang its message over my head that I just could not continue to watch it. This is not to say I won’t try to watch it again. Now that I know what I’m getting into, I may very well give it another go.
But let’s talk about why, despite such a great start, I found myself giving up on Don’t Look Up.
First, the movie seemed like liberal-progressive wish fulfillment. But, at the same time, it tried to hide this by couching everything in extreme bothsiderism. The POTUS in the movie seemed to be the some freakish Frankenstein’s Monster of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This was done in to such a extreme manner as to cause me to first roll my eyes then later grow so frustrated that I gave up watching.
There was just too much going on with Don’t Look Up. It seemed a mish-mash of competing storytelling agendas. Was it supposed to be a political and climate change Mars Attacks or a modern day Network? Was it meant to scare the shit out of us about how we’re not doing anything about global climate change or was it just supposed to be an long SNL skit with better production values.
Here’s how I would have fixed it. I would given the movie a far more serious tone, something on a par with Arrival. I would shock the audience by how blase everyone was behaving about the end of the world until someone flipped out about it Howard Beale style.
Or, put another way, there was a Network-style drama to be had in Don’t Look Up. Not that there wouldn’t be humor in such a different interpretation of the concept, it’s just I would have preferred a mixture of Arrival, a Paul Thomas Anderson movie and, maybe Wes Anderson movie.
Something about how over-the-top and forced Don’t Look up in its humor I found very grating to the nerves. There was also just way too much screaming. I mean, cool it, folks.
Anyway. I’m going to try again to watch this movie. Maybe I can stand it more on a second go.
I did not finish watching the movie “Don’t Look Up.” But that has caused me to have strong opinions about it what I did see. The thing that bothers me so much about the movie is it could have been a modern day Network, but it totally blew its chance.
At the core of that failure was it’s social commentary was way too heavy handed and preachy. It was like a very long SNL skit, only the writers were hysterical about global climate change. Sometimes, less is more. Or, put another way, I would have made the movie more of a drama that was funny at times than a heavy handed, ham fisted extended SNL skit that swerved between comedy and dramas as it served the purposes of the plot.
There came a point, at least for me, when I didn’t care if anyone lived or died. After a great beginning, it just seemed like the movie became Mars Attacks, only about a comet-which-was-really-global-climate-change. I just didn’t care about the characters when they started screaming at each other. So, I stopped watching.
But there was a much better movie crying to come out of what was there. Like I said, I would have really tried to make the movie a modern day Network. In fact, I might even have started the movie much later than it was. Why not start the movie about where we are right now with global climate change — we all know it’s real and we’re not doing anything about it?
So, instead of going through the rote process of meeting POTUS, you start with a Network-like freak out by our Hero on TV. But, and this is the key issue, you play it for drama, not forced laughs. Then the rest of the movie would be about how everyone simply refuses to take the coming end of the world seriously. What I saw of Don’t Look Up had the air of liberal-progressive wish fulfillment, in the sense that I felt the producer really wants to scream his frustration live on TV (specifically Morning Joe.)
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