Random Thoughts about TV, Film and Media (Page 10 of 11)

I was recently watching the 2021 movie SHIVA BABY, which is a pretty funny comedy of awkwardness. There is a plot point that involves the main character misplacing her smartphone which someone else finds and accesses. The smartphone has no password protection, no fingerprint scan, and not so much as a PIN or pattern lock. Anyone can pick it up and read everything on it in order to forward the plot.

This reminds me of a TV show that I follow, YOU, about a twisted stalker and his deranged campaigns of intrusion and depravity. The first season in 2018 has him obsessing over a female target and infiltrating her life by stealing her phone and accessing her personal information. This is possible because the phone has no password protection, no fingerprint scan, and not so much as a PIN or pattern lock.

I simply cannot imagine this. My first cell phone was a talk and text device, the very cool Samsung SPH-A500 which flipped open to review the screen and keypad and had a silver, rounded, sleek design, and I didn't lock it because I only used it for calls. I didn't start texting until I bought the Samsung Link phone in 2009 which was a cheap imitation of the Blackberry Bold 9000, and I still didn't lock this phone either because I texted so little.

However, my first truly smartphone-esque device was an iPod Touch in 2009 that had access to my email, and this I locked with a PIN. My first Android smartphone was the Nexus S in 2011 with access to all of my instant messages and emails and chats, which I also locked with a PIN. My Samsung Galaxy S3 in 2013 was also PIN-locked, but eventually got upgraded to pattern unlock. I remember getting my Samsung Galaxy S7 in 2019 and being delighted by the center button being a fingerprint sensor for unlocking the phone.

I have serious trouble believing that anybody would ever have a pocketable device with personal email and messages and fail to lock it.

I always thought it was nice that the powers that be gave that show a end movie, the way Timeless got that too.  Most of the times the studios or distributors can be rather tough with decisions (and I suspect it's more that way again now) but at that time, at least they tried to address how fans felt.

Mehhh, this is far more prescient.  Studios are retreating into a zone of crud. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/a … VINER.html

I don't know very much of anything about the ARKHAM ASYLUM games or the latest SUICIDE SQUAD game. I am not a gamer and I have many PS3 games in my closet that have never been loaded. However, I know that the ARKHAM series means a lot to you and I am sorry that it has disappointed you.

I did look over a plot summary of SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE. It is peculiar to me that the developers, Rocksteady, has made so many Batman games in their own video game continuity, the Arkhamverse, a Batman video game universe in which Batman is the lead character, only to then treat the character like a supporting player who is then killed off.

One would think that such a story could be presented in a Suicide Squad-centered continuity rather than the main Arkhamverse continuity. It is also strange to me that a licensor would make a game where the player kills the heroes, although I am hardly the final arbiter of taste.

I would note that the director of the original ARKHAM ASYLUM game, Sefton Hill, is credited as director on SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE but in fact left Rocksteady in December 2022 and the game was reportedly completed by others. I don't know enough about this to offer any real assessment, but it is always difficult when a creator comes up with ideas that are unconventional and but then other people without the some unconventionality are the ones to execute them.

Demoting Batman and killing him off is a choice where maybe the person who came up with the idea needs to be the one to shepherd it to completion. Maybe Hill would have carried it out more satisfyingly and compellingly. It seems like what's most upsetting to fans: this was reportedly Kevin Conroy's final performance as Batman in the games before he died. Conroy was a definitive Batman, and complaints declare that his final appearance didn't capture the appeal and enjoyment of his Batman but was instead insulting towards him.

It looks like the game will have a sequel, an additional year's worth of gameplay in downloadable content. It's entirely possible that Batman's death in the game is a temporary situation. Batman has died in the comics at least 10 times only to return via magic or time travel or Fourth World technology or voodoo or whatnot. However, even if the Arkhamverse Batman returns, Kevin Conroy (probably) won't.

I do not know enough about these video games to say whether or not Batman's death should be taken seriously; in comics, Batman's death is at most an extended coffee break.

I do not know enough about these games to say whether or not it would be upsetting if the resurrected Arkhamverse Batman were voiced by Roger Craig Smith (I read that Smith voiced the younger Arkhamverse Batman in ARKHAM ORIGINS while Conroy voiced the present day version in the other games).

DC has had some curious attitudes to licensing Batman over the years. I understand why a studio would think Zack Snyder and Batman are a great match, but then there was Batman's deeply unflattering portrayal in TITANS. That bizarre presentation of Batman as a mentally fragile figure was also crippled by Warner Bros. refusing to let Batman wear the Batsuit in the show. Batman is absent in BATWOMAN and GOTHAM KNIGHTS, but his absences make him seem either incompetent or uncaring (intentionally or not).

What's behind this? Well, to me, the whole DARK KNIGHT RETURNS storyline is one of the most abrasively insulting Batman stories ever written, and yet, it's viewed as character-defining by most Batman fans and most of DC. Maybe the Warner Bros. licensing office sees downbeat cynicism as on brand for Batman.

I would prefer that the caretakers of Batman insist that Batman be a heroic figure who, even if he is to be killed off, is given a death scene that reflects what makes Batman an iconic and powerful character. Something like flying a nuclear bomb away from the city or stopping the embodiment of evil or dying in bed after solving 15 murder mysteries based on nothing but casefiles and with his dying words bequeathing his favourite quick Bat-Disguise Kit to Alfred, his favourite Bat-Glider to Dick, his favourite Bat-Decrypter to Barbara, his favourite Batarang to Jason, his favourite Bat-Sonar Lenses to Cassandra, his favourite Bat Signal Jammer to Stephanie, his favourite Bat-Claw to Kate, and all the Bat-Computers to Tim.

There is one Batman death story that I really like but still find questionable: LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH. Spoiler warning: it features Bruce Wayne waking up to find that Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by a supervillain named Omega who killed all the other heroes and villains. Bruce is baffled by how he has no memory of how the world came to be in this state and in addition, he notices that even though he should be in his 70s given the span of time, he is somehow in his early 30s. Bruce seeks to unravel the mystery of the past while evading the ruling supervillain of this world, Omega.

Bruce comes to a disturbing revelation: he isn't Bruce Wayne at all. He is a clone, a backup plan established by the original Bruce who wanted to ensure that upon his death, a cloned replacement with all the training would take over as Batman. Bruce is further horrified to learn that the original Bruce Wayne survived the supervillain war by becoming Omega and has become embittered, twisted and ruthless. The ending has Bruce defeating Omega and beginning the work of rebuilding the world, hoping to carry on all that was good in Bruce Wayne while leaving behind the bad.

I am not sure I like the idea of Batman becoming a supervillain who is defeated by his clone, but LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH is still engaging with what it means to be Batman and declares that Batman is such a planner that he would, deliberately or not, plan for his own defeat should he ever become a supervillain. In contrast, Batman's demise in the Arkhamverse, based on a summary, doesn't seem to really tap into what makes Batman special.

However, I have never and will probably never play the game, so I can't claim to have any real opinion of it beyond saying it sounds like a strange choice.

Like ireactions, I haven't touched a game newer than the PS3/360 generation, and even those were scant.  I'm not surprised that a story-based IP-heavy game stinks though.  I did see quite the anger over the treatment of the character, especially given that this was the final performance as Batman.  I think the shift to a "Suicide Squad" title led to what was devised.  Batman was not the only major DC character splattered during that game, it's simply the M.O. of that universe.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with the Suicide Squad killing the Justice League.  As a separate project, it's a fun concept.  They're inherently bad guys so they shouldn't have any issue killing heroes.  They're brainwashed so you're not necessarily doing bad things.  It's a way to incorporate super heroics without figuring out how to do super heroics as the hero (every attempt at doing Superman has failed).  It's a cool concept.

But like ireactions said, you killed me!  And you showed enough of my adventures to prove that it's definitely me and not someone random.  It's just a weird concept to do.

And I get it.  The hope, after there were tons of Superman references in Arkham Knight, was that Rocksteady could finally figure out the Superman dilemma.  And I get that maybe that's still just not possible with our modern gaming.  You can make Superman look great - there are plenty of Unreal engines that show what it could look like.  But how do you make a gamer feel like Superman without weakening him or juicing up villains to the point where it just feels like any other video game?

And I can assume they didn't want to do another Batman game.  And since they'd already done tons of DLC for the Bat-Family, not wanting to do a game like that.  But it might've been fun for them to do that SuperMax concept that was going to be a movie all those years ago.  You use Green Arrow who's been arrested and thrown into a superhuman SuperMax and have him fight his way across this prison.  No superpowers - a similar fighting system to Batman - and a ton of fun cameos for villains and heroes.

It is crazy that the game was in development long enough for there to be two separate failed Suicide Squad movies (failing for two different reasons).  The concept of the game seemed fun, and I guess they delivered on the promise of the title.  It just seems like the game itself is a mess, and narratively, it just feels cheap.  Not only did they kill Batman, but they also undid the emotional ending of the last game with a cheap two line idea.  It's just bad.

And I guess one more thing.  The Arkham games would be terrifying if you were one of the villains.  He hides in the shadows and picks off people one by one.  Imagine if that was a boss battle.  It would be a treat to Arkham fans to have to figure out how to beat an advanced AI version of the player you've been all these years.  Instead, you fight a bunch of visions and then a Scarecrow toxin - induced giant version of Batman.  It's silly.

They did do something cool - early in the game, if you look across the city, Batman is constantly stalking you.  You look around and he's watching you.  If you shoot at him, he disappears.  That's cool.  Everything else is super lame, and that sucks.

One of my favourite sitcoms is WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU (2002 - 2006), featuring the brilliant Amanda Bynes and the incandescent Jennie Garth as two sisters who adore each other and drive each other crazy. The first episode is one of the funniest pieces of television ever made, where teenaged Holly (Amanda Bynes) attends a launch event for a new cologne from pro skateboarder Tony Hawk. The event is organized by Holly's adult sister, Val (Jennie Garth), a public relations manager. Holly's clumsy eagerness promptly brings disaster when:

1. Holly, playing with Tony Hawk's skateboard when no one is looking, accidentally knocks the skateboard off the roof and onto a balcony on a lower floor. She retrieves the skateboard, only to find the roof access door is locked and she cannot get back into the event. She finds a ladder that goes to the roof, only to reach the roof and discover:

2. Tony Hawk has already started performing on the halfpipe ramp using a different skateboard borrowed from a fan who brought the board for an autograph.

3. The ladder that Val climbed to reach the roof led to a floor-positioned hatch, and this hatch door opens directly in the middle of the floor of the halfpipe ramp.

4. Holly opens the hatch door on the halfpipe ramp in the middle of Tony performing his skateboard tricks, and Tony, surprised that a teenaged girl has suddenly popped up in the middle of the ramp, swerves to avoid hitting her on his skateboard and falls off his skateboard face first into a table of desserts and snacks, humiliating Tony and Val, who was organizing the event.

5. The final shot of this scene is a terrified Holly standing in the hatch door as Tony Hawk's borrowed skateboard without Tony rolls past Holly.

As a kid in 2002, this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. As an adult in 2024, I'm seeing some serious lapses of logic and reason here.

As this is a rooftop event filled with people, food, equipment and cologne samples. It does not make sense that entry to the roof is locked; how did those guests get into the event and how would they leave to use restrooms and return?

The halfpipe ramp is positioned on the roof and has a hatch door at the center of its floor that opens to a ladder between the roof and the floor directly below. This presents the halfpipe as a permanent rooftop fixture and a point of entry and exit to the roof.

This is unlikely: halfpipe ramps at events are temporary structures that are assembled and disassembled. Permanent halfpipes in skate parks and arenas are built out of concrete; a roof with a permanent halfpipe would need to be built specifically to support the weight of the ramp and the roof would need strident fall-prevention mechanisms; there are no readily available examples of rooftop skateboarding ramps because the reinforcement and barriers would be needlessly expensive for something as esoteric as rooftop skateboarding.

In addition, there is no halfpipe design that would ever position a hatch at the center of the ramp floor. There is no reason for a hatch door to be present as a halfpipe requires a smooth surface for skateboarding and there is nothing below the ramp that requires access nor would there be any reason to access the top of the ramp from underneath it. A halfpipe with a floor-installed door in the center is a pointless addition that would serve no purpose while being an obvious safety hazard for the skateboarder.

Watching the 2002 WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU pilot episode now as an adult in 2024, the skateboarding accident is utterly irrational in its staging and occurrence, offering a chain of nonsensical plot points in building construction and sporting equipment. It is absurdly illogical.

It is also absurdly hilarious and that shot of Amanda Bynes cringing as Tony Hawk's skateboard rolls past her remains one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

As I said in my alternate history essay, I watched Rebel Moon part 2.  It was definitely better than part one, but I still do not get this.  I actually think he took more chances and did more interesting things with Army of the Dead, and I think that should've been the project he hooked onto.  Robot zombies and time loops and all that is interesting (if we ever get those movies).

Rebel Moon is a very cheap knockoff of Star Wars that adds nothing.  It's just bad Star Wars with more cursing.  Part One is boring.  Part Two is more interesting (because it's the part of the story where things happen) but it's just Seven Samurai.  Nothing about it is original.

He has ambitious stories, but the problem with Snyder is twofold:

- He likes to tease things rather than actually get there.  He doesn't make a movie about Robot Zombies and Time Loops.  He makes a movie that teases those things.

- His execution when he actually does the thing he's teasing is underwhelming.  BvS is one huge tease for Batman to fight Superman, but when he gets there, it's just nothing.

If I were advising Snyder, I'd abandon Rebel Moon.  If he really loves the universe, give it to someone else to try.  Lucas only made one Star Wars movie in the original trilogy.  Own the story if you want but let someone else do the directing.  Focus on Planet of the Dead and that universe.  It might not be great but at least it's something new.

It didn't look cheap.  I thought the movie looked really nice, especially for the price that it apparently cost.  Cheap in the sense that it wasn't really even trying to be its own thing.  You can see the seams of an attempted Star Wars movie with some simple alterations to make it the minimum legal requirement for it not to be Star Wars.  One person uses lightsabers but not really.  The bad guy uses a Star Destroyer but not really.

If you think about it, you can see how it would've worked if it was a Star Wars movie.  There's some stuff he obviously added after it was no longer Star Wars involving a royal family.  But I think even that stuff probably could work depending on when the movie is set.

Hmmm, it's hard for me to say.  So much of Dexter was Michael C Hall's performance.  He was able to capture a serial killer and make him cheerful and charming and funny while also being terrifying.  The show was funny but also very dark.  Even if the writing is good, I think the actors have to sell it.

I'm interested, but I guess I'd have to see what people think.

I kind of want to see this movie.

https://www.amazon.ca/Slider-Bruce-Davi … 072ZM74YW/

What was wrong about the writing for you? I thought it was as strong as it had ever been, and had the same weaknesses and inconsistencies the series has always had.

I've always found every MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, even the ones I didn't like, were very stagey and writerly. Which is fine for me because MISSION IMPOSSIBLE is about confidence tricks and deceit and staged scenarios to manipulate marks. I'm not sure what you're referring to by fourth wall breaking.

Some people were down on the Boys season 4.  I thought it was pretty good.  I think the politics of it was a little too heavy handed, and I guess I'm not 100% sure how this world works.  Some quick spoilers:

S
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So I don't know if the show has done a good job of explaining why people are against Supes.  I get why they'd be against Vought, especially after it was revealed that they experimented on children.  But are people actually against all superheroes?  Even if they're against the Seven, there are hundreds/thousands of superheroes.  Even if all of them are secretly bad, are all of them publicly bad?  The Boys know the truth but does the whole country, and half the country is cool with superheroes actively killing people and doing no real good deeds?

I know they're going for some sort of political metaphor, but unless I forgot something (and I've only watched each season once), I'm shocked that a superhero hasn't already been elected president.  I'm also shocked that people would be upset / offended by a supe president - you'd think we'd want our presidents to be bulletproof.

I think that's the part that was the most confusing to me.

But other than that, it was a lot of fun.

I think Michael C Hall as Dexter is a really compelling character.  I think I would give any story about Dexter a shot.  I gotta think that the plot will be Dexter as someone else's dark passenger (I assume his son's). 

The show hasn't ventured anywhere near the idea that someone could be resurrected, but several dead people have appeared in visions to people (usually in the form of a dark passenger).  It's unclear if the dark passengers are actual people speaking from beyond the grave or if it's just an extension of their own madness.  But I assume in this case, they'll actually confirm that it's truly Dexter's spirit.

I will watch it, assuming it's on a platform that I can watch it on.

I watched Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.  I have a complicated view on these movies because I don't love movies where humanity (as a whole) is the bad guys.  I didn't even watch the third reboot movie because it looked too depressing.

This one was pretty good.  One thing that felt kinda weird was the opening of the movie, which stated that apes took over because humanity was destroyed by its own hubris.  Is that what really happened?  James Franco's character was trying to defeat Alzheimer's - is that really hubris?

Ha, this is more about my allegiance to The Weekly Planet podcast.  I've started watching every movie they do an episode on.  Even ones I wouldn't otherwise watch

It was on Hulu so I gave it a shot.  I think all the movies are well done, and this one was less upsetting than the second one.

Planet of the Apes has always been a bit of a fascination with me.  Which is weird because I don't think I love any of the movies.  But I have seen all of them - the five original movies, the reboot, and the four new reboot movies.  That's ten movies of a series I like but don't love.

The problem is that the original series was a warning about nuclear war.  The first movie is more direct with the famous "you maniacs!  You blew it up!" scene.  The second movie also revolves around a nuclear bomb and (spoiler alert for a movie that was made before I was born) ends with the Earth being fully destroyed.  The next two show how we got to a planet of the apes.  And in that version, humans have taken on apes as pets/helpers after a virus wipes out all cats and dogs.  It's basically the same as a robot apocalypse - we "enslave" these intelligent beings to make our lives easier, and there's an uprising.  In an attempt to calm things down, the government turns to nuclear weapons and the apes win the war.  If there's an explanation for how it gets flipped, I don't remember it.  I think it's just supposed to be evolution.  The first smart ape in the revolution is the son of two intelligent apes that went back in time - the rest of the apes just learn to talk by being around him?

In the new series of films, they start in the past.  James Franco's character is trying to cure his father's Alzheimer's and comes up with a virus designed to repair the brain.  There are some evil human characters, but the whole thing ends up sorta being an accident.  The virus fails to cure the father - but it does make apes intelligent.  Not only that, it kills humans.  The movie ends with Caesar (the helper ape to Franco) turning a few apes intelligent and leading them out of San Francisco.  The twist comes at the end when a pilot neighbor to Franco catches the virus and spreads it around the world - it kills people and makes ape intelligent - Planet of the Apes.

The sequels are about Caesar leading his new group of apes as they gain power and the humans lose it.  In all instances, there's a powerful/desperate human leading a military group of humans, they fight the apes, and the humans lose.

And I get that humans generally suck.  Our leaders are bad.  Our militaries are bad.  But it's weird for movies to present the idea that humanity needs to be wiped out and replaced with something that's better.  I like stuff like Star Trek where humanity finally passes the test.  Even in post-apocalyptic stories, I like for us to learn a lesson and get better.  No one ever gets better in Planet of the Apes movies - some people try and everyone ends up dead.

In this new movie, there seems to be at least an attempt for both sides to live in some kind of harmony.  And that's a better message to me.

Can you elaborate on why? I have never seen it and probably won't, simply because there is so much violence and horror in the newspapers I read that I don't need it in fantasy fiction as well. However, I am curious: if RISE and DAWN were setting up an inevitable conflict between two savage races, what made WAR cross the line for you?

My father is fascinated by war movies. I suffered through a few viewings with him, but I never enjoyed them and avoid them today. However, I am always interested in *why* people enjoy art or don't, and I'm curious as to where WAR reached a personal threshold.

I feel that this post has made me understand my father better by explaining why war movies speak to the human condition.

Something you seem to have seized on: the special effects makeup for the original PLANET OF THE APES movies was not very convincing. However, you seem to note: this made the events and the ape characters and the war feel less real and more like an allegorical sketch as opposed to a violent reality. The primitive effects made these war movies seem more like an abstract impression of war.

I am guessing that WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES with its modern CG-enhanced makeup and costuming and prosthetics and motion capture presented a depiction of ape-human war that looked less like an illustrative approximation and more like a documented reality, and that crossed the line.

That's just my guess.

The original movie was a masterpiece, if you ask me, there were just so many things going on in that script.  So many allegories and symbolism.  The score was unbelievable, Jerry Goldsmith, an absolute master, with how the music kept you riveted and was as frightening as anything.  The cinematographer was Leon Shamroy, who won Oscar for Cleopatra, the man knew how to use the camera.  From the wide shots of the landscape early in the film, to the close-ups when Taylor and humans are being rounded up, just breathtaking.  The original script ironically by Ron Serling presented a far more advance ape society, like the modern films, was too expensive to shoot.  So Michael Wilson, who effectively wrote Lawrence of Arabia, set it in a primitive society which worked perfectly.  Everything about that film worked.  Heston was Heston, with all those improvised one-liners.  Kim Hunter and Roddy Taylor were so charming, and Linda Harrison was astonishingly red hot as Nova.  So many themes.  It's one of my favorite films ever made.  How do you improve on perfection?  You really can't.  At the end of the day, again, I felt like Rise tried to go in a different direction with it, but the series inevitably HAD to move into the post-apocalyptic.  It's fine, they've made a lot of money making them, but as I said, the original tended to be about humans and humans with furry costumes, NOT CGI creatures which truly represent a different species.  It worked better the old way, kind of like how Star Trek aliens did.  They relied on dialogue not makeup.

One of the oddest projects in recent memory was the SCREAM TV show on MTV which was separate from the movies, but offered a new take on the visceral thrills and chills of the films. While boasting a great cast and a compelling mythology, the show suffered from executive interference with the MTV network constantly trying to change who would be revealed as the killer even after the creators had already changed it as asked.

The second season saw new showrunners come in after the original team got fed up with MTV. The second season ended on a series of cliffhangers... and the third season had yet another new creative team with a completely different cast and story that was unrelated to the first two seasons entirely, leaving that narrative incomplete and abandoned.

Recently, a YouTuber named Nathan Banks who makes the BEYOND THE MASK video essays about the SCREAM movies announced that he had been in contact with the original showrunners and Paramount and had been given permission to write a conclusion to the TV show in the form of a novel, LAKEWOOD: A SCREAM STORY, published first as individual chapters on his Patreon and then as a Kindle ebook on September 2, 2024. While I didn't subscribe to his Patreon, the ebook was only $8 USD, so I pre-ordered it on Amazon.

I was highly aware, though: there has been no official announcement from Paramount TV or Spyglass Media about a SCREAM novel. There has been no corroboration that this Nathan Banks has a publisher or any licensing arrangement with Paramount TV or Spyglass to release a novel featuring the SCREAM TV series characters. The SCREAM franchise logo on the movies and TV show is clearly not on the book cover.

Banks implied in his YouTube video that it was a licensed product in his claim that he'd been in contact with "Paramount" and the "showrunners" about his ebook, but studios generally don't license media tie-ins to be published on private Patreon pages before an ebook release. Studios don't generally approach individual authors, but instead license the property to a book publisher that chooses the author.

In addition, Banks tweeted photos of the print version of the book on his Twitter. He photographed the first two pages. https://x.com/BeyondTheMask8/status/181 … 96/photo/1

I took a look and... Banks does not know how to use commas and periods for dialogue. In English, the convention is that a sentence of dialogue with an attribution tag at the end uses a comma before the closing quotation mark. "I learned about this book," said Ib.

However, Banks alternates between no comma or using a period before the closing quotation mark. ("I learned about this book" said Ib.) ("I learned about this book." said Ib.) This tells me that Banks' grasp of basic English punctuation is confused and applied randomly or not at all. I also noticed that he arbitrarily switched from past to present tense and back.

There's a passage on the second page where Banks addresses the reader to say, "There was a lot Gina could tell you about Aubrey." This direct address to the reader breaks the fourth wall and while not incorrect, is generally avoided in professional prose because it reminds the reader that they are reading a story instead of keeping them immersed in the fiction.

The first two pages have the Audrey character getting a phone call from a girlfriend, Gina, and the dialogue from Gina is: "I'm about to sort out the pizza, can you send me your order before I pick it up?"

Aubrey replies, "Erm, sure. I'll text it through to you now."

This is stilted and unnatural. In American parlance, people "order" pizza, they do not "sort out" pizza. They do not ask people to "send me your order"; they ask what toppings the person wants ("What toppings?" or "What do you want on it?") Americans do not "text it through to you", they "text you". Furthermore, given that Gina and Aubrey are on the phone, there is no need for Aubrey to text anything; a list of toppings is easily conveyed verbally.

It's pretty obvious from these two pages: Nathan Banks is not an American. Banks is English, and he does not have a firm grasp of the American dialect. Nathan Banks is also not particularly skilled in the basics of narrative perspective, tense, human interaction in fictional terms, or how to use quotation marks, periods and commas.

This is just on the first two pages.

Banks is trying to imply that his SCREAM novel is a licensed media tie in; I'm reasonably sure studios and publishers prefer to have their tie-ins written by people with at least a basic aptitude for the written word in the English language. I'm also pretty sure that, for American properties, they would like their hired writers to be able to write Americans in a passably convincing fashion.

I think it's pretty absurd for someone to claim to be a licensed media tie-in novelist when they can't even convincingly render how someone orders a pizza.

Look, I'm far from perfect. My SLIDERS REBORN scripts featured Canadian spellings that Slider_Quinn21 had to strip out. I mistakenly thought you could buy road salt in San Francisco. There were typos. However, I do know how to write prose and dialogue in English and my errors were individual instances. In Banks' case, I've only looked at the first two pages and each page has had least three errors that, in totality, make the whole thing look slapdash to the point of being unpublishable for any professional publisher.

But yes, I pre-ordered the book. It's $8. I wonder if Amazon will ever actually charge me because this is unlicensed fan fiction being sold for money, it's not under a Kindle Worlds license, and I really do not see how that can be legal.

Let's see:

Was a professional, enjoyable product throughout - Yes, I think so.  Season 2 is a bit muddled and the start to season 3 is  a bit of a mess, but I enjoyed it all the way through.  Season 2 and Season 3 end on such highs that I don't think you can say either of them are bad seasons.  Nothing touches season one, but that's an incredibly high bar IMO.

Had a decent run of at least four seasons - Yes

Had no major shifts in production that made the series subfunctional or outright dysfunctional - The most disfunctional part about LOST was behind the scenes with the weirdest producer/studio issue ever.  Disney wanted the show to continue, and Lindelof and Cuse wanted it to end.  LOST almost became a casualty of its own success.  Outside of a dip in the quality of flashback stories, I don't think this issue affected the show as it aired.  There was some cast issues, but none of them were major (depending on how much you liked Mr. Eko).

Had a series finale that served as a satisfying conclusion - This will be the most debatable of the four for some, and it's going to depend on what you were looking for in a conclusion.  If it was a list of answers to questions that may or may not have already been answered, then no.  If you moved beyond the mysteries to care about the characters, then I think overwhelmingly yes.

Curious - when did you stop and would you ever revisit?  A YouTuber named Billiam recently has been doing these supersized videos on the history of LOST and has stoked my interest in LOST again.  It covers an incredible amount of material in a much shorter amount of time than rewatching the series (although it's still a huge time investment).

******

LOST is my favorite show.  I think the best show of all time is The Wire.  It easily satisfies all four of your requirements.  Even if season 5 is the worst season of the show, the conclusion of the show is incredible.

The Simpsons has moved beyond qualifying for the questions you asked, but I have watched more Simpsons than any show ever.

This is interesting

https://www.hiddendoor.co

I seem to recall Aaron used a different story of storytelling participating site.  This one is different.  I don't think they have many IP brands integrated yet but they have some decent investors that may give them a shot if they get enough traction with their initial product.

I'll go ahead and link to the video since I'm going to use a lot of it as background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tk664MfQgU You might think the video is long but it's actually part one of at least five videos of varying lengths.

The writers didn't see the show as a long-term project.  They didn't expect it to be successful and when it was, they knew it couldn't be sustained at the same level.  The writers knew as early as season 2 that they weren't going to be able to make the show last forever.  There were just two problems - it was a monster hit that ABC didn't want to let go and shows just didn't operate like that back then.  Nowadays you can have a show like Three Body Problem that's set for three seasons and that's it.  Back then, shows were on until they ran out of steam or until something like Friends or Seinfeld where everyone just decides its over.

To their credit, the writers tried to make it work a couple different ways.  They introduced the Tailies to give more backstories they could show.  They introduced Nikki and Paolo as a way to show a new perspective and maybe even show flashbacks to the Island.  They introduced Others like Juliet that could have their own flashbacks.  Everyone (including the writers) always points to the "Jack's tattoos" episode, but that was after they'd tried a bunch of different things.

What ended up changing things was Carlton and Damon essentially threatening (and preparing) to quit the show.  They didn't want to be involved in a 20-season LOST where Jack has a flashback about how he bought his dad's shoes. 

They wanted two seasons to wrap things up and settled for three.  I think seasons 4-6 are pretty lean, especially for network TV at the time.  I think there's a universe where it went four seasons (where seasons 2 and 3 are combined and seasons 4-6 are just two seasons), but I think the only difference would be less meandering in the beginnings of seasons 2 and 3.  I think the Henry Gale stretch of episodes is one of the strongest outside of season 1 and season 3 (once Jack and Juliet get back with the group) is also incredibly strong.  I could see a version of "Season 2" where Henry is found around episode 4, he captures Jack/Kate/Sawyer midseason, and they get off the Island at the end of Season 2.  But you'd probably lose some meat with the fat in that instance.

I think people didn't love the time travel stuff, but I really think if you look at everything from LOST from a character lens instead of a plot lens, the show is so much better.  Was I extremely satisfied with the answer to "what is the Island?"  No.  But at that point, I honestly didn't care about that.  I loved the characters and just wanted to see what happened to them.  Time travel allowed them to literally live in the past, and the show was all about the past.  The flash sideways was somewhat predictable and cliched, but the whole show was about moving on from their baggage.  There wasn't a better metaphor for that.

I'm not accusing Grizzlor of misunderstanding but there's also a lot of criticism that's directly related to people misunderstanding the end.  They weren't dead the whole time.  They didn't even die at the same time - some people died decades apart from each other.  Some was people not listening and some was bizarre choices like having the final credits roll over images of the empty wreckage on the beach with the sound of waves (which could imply, in a vacuum, that they died in the crash and none of it happened).  The problem is that the show explicitly says that it all happened.

I really liked the epilogue.  I think the Ben Linus one is a bit silly because it's one of those "rapid fire answer" segments.  If you really cared about answers, I guess its satisfying but it doesn't really do anything for the character stuff I liked.

The Hurley/Walt scene was really cool.  I wish they'd been able to put that into the actual show, but I don't have any idea where it goes into the finale.  I also would've loved to have seen a Hurley/Ben/Walt spinoff show.  Or some kind of rebootquel now.

I have a soft spot for the Saw films (I don't know why.  I'm not a horror person and I don't like gore or torture porn or any of that stuff).  I watched Saw X and actually thought it was pretty great.  I was surprised that the franchise had that in them.

I also was pleasantly surprised by The Hunger Games prequel "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" - I enjoyed (for the most part) the Hunger Games books and movies but didn't have a ton of interest in seeing a prequel.  But despite being too long, I thought it had a compelling story and kept my attention throughout.

I thought Alien Romulus was worth seeing at the theater.  And Furiosa.  I didn't love either film (but I liked both of them), but I thought seeing it in theaters was enjoyable.  I wish my theater had been a little more raucous in my viewing of Deadpool and Wolverine, but I had to see it on a Monday night after it had already been out a few days.

I also would like to see Megalopolous in theaters, if only to experience whatever they're going to do for the "audience interaction" part of the movie.

I try to see the Marvel movies in theaters if only so I don't have to wait three months and avoid spoilers for that long.  I know it's expensive but my wife and I are both pretty good with not spending for anything crazy so I feel like it's worth it every month or two.

I skip theaters. Does anyone else collect physical media? I've been upgrading my collection to 4K discs from some of my old blu-ray and DVDs. I picked up a show called "Early Edition", DVD of course. It aired on CBS back in the 90s, but it's no where to be found streaming. I guess I feel ownership is important (even though you only have certain rights to use them). Plus seeing the artwork on a shelf makes in more appealing than a digital front to me.

I wanted to order the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, but the 4K is running at an appalling $35 right now and people aren't happy. People proclaim that physical media is cheaper, and they're definitely wrong. The bang for the buck is through all the streaming services, but it gets annoying when I wanted to rewatch a movie a while back and suddenly it's pulled. Only to be rented or sold via Apple, etc. I don't remember the name.