Alright, this might be fun. Here we go. So, new MST in April, and I know that this is a moment that is huge in everyone’s hearts here. I also think it will not disappoint. It’s gonna be great, maybe different than what is expected, maybe something that will take time to soak in, but great. But, what I want to know about is a pop culture moment in you peoples lives that did disappoint. Video game, tv, movie, whatever. What’s the thing that broke your heart the hardest. Also, I want this post to be a safe space, so anyone is allowed to have hated whatever they want without repercussions.
For me, the first thing that comes to mind is the episode “across the sea” of Lost. Us diehard losties knew this was going to be the origin episode we needed, and instead it was just more vague half-implied and half-hearted explanations and pretentiousness that was the foreshadowing of the polarizing ending of the series we got. Just a huge punch in the gut after spending the whole season waiting for it.
Anyways…. your turn.
For some reason the first thing I thought of was the first Tomb Raider movie. I loved the game (well, I loved the memories I have of playing it with my daughter) and I really wanted it to be good. And it just wasn’t.
I would also mention the Seinfeld finale. I was a big fan and it felt like somebody pulled the plug and all the comedy drained out.
One other: the terrible Hitchhiker’s Guide movie, which may be unfilmable but they could have done something better than this.
Have at it!
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Peter Capaldi’s reign as the Doctor. I looked forward to having an older doctor again, much as I liked the very young Matt Smith, because I thought it might get the show away from the whole “every companion must fall in love with the Doctor now” thing that was already tedious during David Tennant’s time. But somehow Capaldi never gelled; he was okay, but less than I was expecting. And then it turned into the Clara Sue show. Who wants to watch the Clara Sue show?
On the plus side, we got some nice camera shots of Summer Glau’s bare feet.
I’d have to say superhero movies in general. Some of them are okay, I guess, but geesh, we’ve been beaten to death with sooooo many of them. For crying out loud, I’ve lost track of how many Batman, Superman, and X-Men movies there have been. Enough already!
(Thank you, Sitting, for reassuring me that SOMEONE remembers the days when the Doctor’s companions were spunky “protege'” orphans and stowaways, and not the entire next season’s “Romantic relationship”.
Although personally, I blame Billie Piper/Rose’s galactic ego for first turning the entire New Who series into “The Companion & Her Doctor”.)
Dick Sargent replacing Dick York removed any faith I had in humanity long ago.
“Theater of Pain” by Motley Crue: Their previous record “Shout at the Devil” was post apocalypticly themed and had crunching power chords that could almost be described as proto-speed/power metal. Theater of Pain had songs about smokin’ in the boys room, and going home sweet home. The music was painfully flat and boring. I never listened my copy a second time. Even the look of the band had gone from Road Warrior reject to some stupid looking gypsy clown thing with the lead singer wearing a pink headband and pink spandex pants. At a time when I was starting to listen to Slayer, Motley Crue decided to become Poison. I was not amused.
Batman & Robin (1997). As Mike Nelson said in his book Movie Megacheese ‘It’s not the worst movie ever, it’s the worst thing ever.’ Especially when the 1989 Batman movie made a strong and permanent impression on me, largely because of the music and art direction/set design by Anton Furst. Congo (1995), bad movie made worse by having read the book already. Maybe not Crichton’s best book, but still enjoyable. A large percentage of 1990s pop music has no redeeming value whatsoever.
@26 and @30
At 40+, I’ve reached the age where Hollywood is mining my childhood for reboot material. And yes, it is hit-or-miss:
Lucas and now Disney milking the Jedi cash cow dry a million times over? Yawn. At least that’s been going on pretty much since Star Wars began.
Disney revisiting animated classics as live action? Hey, if they can pull off the effects, fine. After all, there was that critically-acclaimed theater version of The Lion King.
Gender-bent Ghostbusters? Haven’t seen it. More disappointed they did not make it a sequel or an extended-universe thing instead of a straight reboot.
Reboot Power Rangers back into the original zord configuration? Aside from that the zords have been designed by Michael Bay’s Transformers and not with clean, toy-friendly Voltrony lines, that’s fine again so long as the effects are done well.
But the one that’s currently burning me is . . .
CHiPs!
Yeah, freakin’ Ponch and Jon get the reboot treatment.
And IMDb’s synopsis says that it’s the original premise (Ponch is a rookie paired with veteran Jon) grafted to . . . an undercover heist sting. Yep, one of our heroes is undercover, but fortunately, the other is not a crook. Granted, the original was just accidents and traffic violations, but simple pull-over stops turn deadly all the time.
Even worse, it’s rated R! The original was practically a kid’s show to begin with, and they quite famously never had to pull their guns. In other words, it would not have taken much to add an “edginess” to a reboot.
In another sign of how bad it might be, no one I recognize from the original has made a credited cameo as per the full cast list.
And their sergeant is played by Maya Rudolph, when it should be uber-in-demand action hero du jour Chris Pine . . . whose father played the original’s Sarge.
Classic rock radio. It (at least used to) feature my favorite rock era, ’60s and ’70s, but once it went from awesome weekend specials to full radio formats, the increasingly limited playlists and trading off most of the ’60s stuff for ’80s made it less good for me. At least our local station, WAQY, has recently taken to doing semi-regular ’70s weekends (and an ’80s equivalent) where they play rarer songs along with the usual.
I feel your pain. Nintendo is usually great at mining nostalgia, but they have seem to stumble a lot with that title. Yoshi’s Island DS and Yoshi’s New Island are bad and bland, respectively. Yoshi’s Wooly World is the best of the pretenders, but sometimes you can’t beat the real thing.
For me, it’s not precisely a single “moment” of pop culture disappointing me, but a sort of ongoing, horrible realization.
I absolutely adore traditional animation; classic Disney, Miyazaki, and more non-mainstream stuff like Ralph Bakshi, etc. Growing up, I really took it for granted that cartoons looked a certain way and that that wouldn’t change. Then in 1997, Toy Story was released. I went to see it and I knew I didn’t like the CGI visuals, but I gave it a chance, and that movie left a very sour taste in my mouth (it makes it worse that the series is almost universally beloved so nobody ever relates to me on this).
In less than 10 years, Disney stops producing traditionally animated (or at least things that look like traditional animation) entirely and all the old guard of animators are fired in favor of Pixar. Other studios quickly follow Disney’s lead and suddenly the very definition of animation as I understood it has changed.
Now, don’t get me wrong; my dislike of CGI isn’t absolute, and Disney-Pixar has made some incredible stuff: Monsters Inc. was fun, and things like Up, Moana, and Inside Out have been brilliant, just to name a few. I don’t prefer CGI by any means but I can recognize when it’s done very well and I’m not some sort of animation-Luddite. I love a lot of what they’ve created recently.
But as much as I’ve enjoyed a lot of newer CGI animated movies, the same magic of traditional animation just isn’t there for me. I just miss the look and feel of characters that are either drawn by hand or look as if they are. I can’t wait when a foreign animated film, like a Studio Ghibli, is shown as some indie theater nearby, or when they show an older animated film. That’s all I get.
The one “moment” of disappointment was when Disney briefly returned to the traditional style, with “The Princess and the Frog” in 2009. There was talk of it heralding a return to traditional animation, and then…nothing. That was a bit heartbreaking.
I couldn’t agree more. And I’ll add Metallicas’ last good one was And Justice for All.
The Muppets. Ever since Jim Henson died it hasn’t been the same and while I am glad Disney wants to continue the property to keep the brand and characters alive, I’m not sure of how they’re doing it. The new show last year was not good. I don’t care about “behind the scenes” behind the scenes stuff, if that makes sense. I want Miss Piggy and Kermit to get back together dammit. Even if they need to see a therapist or 12. Frank Oz has done the voices of Yoda and Grover recently once again. He should voice The Divine Miss P as well. Someone else can hold her, he can just record the voice.
I’m another certified geezer so I’ll echo the complaints against “Lost In Space”. It could have been so cool, and started off that way, then it quickly went downhill into cartoonish, low budget nonsense.
Another early disappointment was the 1960s “Batman” TV series. This was actually a double disappointment for me. I’d never seen the comics and I had no idea who Batman was, so I was expecting some kind of awesome werewolf-like half-man, half-bat. Instead it was a doughy “superhero” in silly tights and a satin cape. Then the show turned out to be just a lame, campy joke instead of having real superhero stuff.
I was never a rock or pop music fan, but I have to say that music took a serious turn for the crapper when MTV and “music videos” came along. It’s been going downhill ever since.
More recently, the Star Wars prequels are high on my list of disappointments, of course.
“Prometheus” was severely disappointing. With the return of Ridley Scott, and a trailer that looked awesome and scary, I was expecting something much, much better than the mess it proved to be.
For me, the Comedy Central run of Futurama. It was all basically all right, but somehow the little touches that made the original brilliant were worn down or rarer, and that made the parts that were meaner or grosser stand out more.
Also, stretching things a little: the Mac port of SimCity 3000. It should have been great, or at least decent enough, but they did the port in the worst way possible. Instead of rewriting the code for Mac, they commissioned a stripped-down mini-Windows-emulator, for the Mac, that would be enough to translate the game elements to run on the Mac computers of the early 2000s. And that might have run tolerably except, legend goes, they hired people who had never done a project even close to that before. So the result was buggy, and crash-prone, and ran achingly slow when it ran at all. Sooooo much sadness in that game. I want a new SimCity but how am I supposed to trust something from the people who brought us that sad, soggy mess?
By every account I’ve seen, the Seventh Doctor era was presented in a much better fashion in the Big Finish audio dramas, and that extends to the Fifth and Sixth Doctors, as well.
2 moments:
1) Star Wars: The Phantom Menace:
I had never been so excited for a movie. And once Jar Jar appeared and then proceeded to appear in virtually every scene, my heart broke. The 10-hour pod racing scene didn’t help nor did Jake Lloyd, midochlorians or basically….everything. I went in hoping to see one of my favorite movies ever and it became my most loathed film of all time.
2) U2: POP
Same deal. U2 was my favorite then-current band. I adored Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby and couldn’t wait for POP, their first album in 4 years! Featuring songs such as Miami, Mofo and The Playboy Mansion, I was stunned by how much I hated it. I’ll never forget the second day after it had been released, I was still trying to love it. I was listening to Mofo in my car (the third song). And then I had to turn it off. I sat in stony silence, pondering how this could have happened.
Oh, and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. What a waste.
5150 by Van Halen was a big let down. Another cassette I only listened to once. Ironically the first song on it was called “Good Enough”. I disagreed.
Aside from a great opening track Turbo by Judas Priest was a pretty big disappointment. But they made up for it with Ram it Down a year later.
By the time I watched it on VHS I knew not to expect much from Phantom Menace. But for crying out loud. Not only was it one of the worst films ever made, but I can’t think of movie off the top of my head that was more of a collective disappointment for everyone.
The first Star Trek film was a let down. We were expecting something like Wrath of Khan, and instead we got a really long and slow Laser Floyd show without the Floyd. The Floyd would have helped.
When I was a child, my favorite TV program (outside of the Looney Tunes) was “Shining Time Station” on PBS. Ostensibly produced as a way to introduce the British ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ stories (told by Ringo Starr and later George Carlin) to American audiences, that show gave me a lifelong love of railroads and was a good show in its own right. As the show and the Thomas characters grew in popularity through the early 90s, the prospect of a Thomas the Tank Engine feature film started to appear around the middle of the decade.
The idea of seeing Thomas on the big screen excited me like nothing else could. When we finally received that feature film in 2000, however, the bottom dropped out.
“Thomas and the Magic Railroad” was beset with problems. It attempted to mesh the American and British views of the Thomas characters and ended up pleasing no one, as most of the elements that made “Shining Time Station” good were lost to the passage of time (the show had ceased production in 1996). Further, the story introduced magic to the Thomas universe, displeasing British viewers who knew that Thomas usually presented a more realistic view of railway operation (outside of the engines having expressive faces and personalities). Further, the financiers required the producer to hastily recut the film after a disastrous test screening, resulting in the loss of a whole character and his story arc.
Couple all that with performances that veered from over-the-top to barely caring (dull surprise!) and the film was a box office bomb. I remember seeing it with my little sister in a deserted theater and although I enjoyed it as much as I could, suddenly things just weren’t the same. I began to drift away from keeping up with the TV series and didn’t feel as much of an urge to keep collecting the merchandise.
Worst of all, the film’s failure caused the ouster of its producer, Britt Allcroft, from her own company and led to the Thomas franchise being sold off to a corporation that allowed it to fall into a rut for more than a decade. It’s only been in the past 3-4 years that the show has regained the quality it used to have. There’s even talk of trying to resurrect a ‘Director’s Cut’ of the film so audiences can see what the film was meant to look like.
1) Superman II because several things…….the President of the U.S. kneeling was really offensive at the time, the special effects were pretty cheesy, Superman giving up his powers and getting beaten up, and the final scene was so anticlimactic that I left the movie cheesed and never watched III or IV.
2) In total agreement about The Muppets, and most remakes in general. Trying to catch the same magic the made the original is like catching lightening in a bottle. I’m an old geezer too, so Columbo and Perry Mason come to mind. That being said I faith in Joel to get it right.
3) Don’t get me started about Prometheus! DON’T pet the alien cobra!
I lasted through the first Hobbit move but it got sillier and sillier.
The straw that made uncontrollably turn off the video was in the third one when Dain Ironfoot shows up riding a pig! Any LOTR groupie will tell you of the importance of Dain Ironfoot and his importance in the background during the War of the Ring. Tolkien painted a vivid picture of Galdalf telling Frodo and others of the battle at the Lonely Mountain that occurred at the same time as the sacking of Mordor. Their battle was lost but they protected the riders flank with their lives. In a single sentence Tolkien paints a picture of Dain Ironfoot, old even by dwarf standards, standing over the body of King Brand, fighting and protecting his friend “as the darkness fell”. Yet Jackson paints him as comic relief, the final middle finger to LOTR fans.
My husband’s vote is for when the original Star Trek was canceled. Broke his 12 year-old heart.
Coming at this a different way, there are productions that I am predisposed to be disappointed in. I have never seen Game of Thrones but the, to me, over exposure, overpraise and relentless push by others to get me to watch has really put off of it. Another is the Broadway show Hamilton. I am surrounded by fans (of the album; no one I know has actually seen the show yet) and I may have been inclined to actually like it. But by the time I finally heard it I don’t think I appreciated it as much as I might have without the hype.
I will say the A-Team movie really disappointed me. Look, you just don’t destroy the A-Team van, you just don’t, add the fact that the cast was lousy and that it failed to capture the charm of the original series, and it was a total stinker in my opinion. Also, the Andy Dick version of Get Smart was just awful.
Related to that is the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC. I tried watching it when it premiered but it was so boring. There’s also a cheapness to it that makes ’70s comic shows look grand. The show feels completely disconnected from the Marvel movies, even though they take place in the same universe.
Season 4 is why I got Netflix in the first place. Season 4 of Arrested Development was ****. It’s like they wanted to make a show that said, “Fox was right to cancel this.” I think the only purpose of the show was to make Michael Bluth so unlikable that, in the finale, we get to cheer when George Michael punches his dad in the face. The young man is done with his family and we are done with the show.
Thankfully the excellent Orange is the New Black premiered that same month and I’ve kept Netflix ever since.
Sports –
Yes, Sports with a capital S. Believe it or not there was a time when even professional sports was not ruled by the mega dollar. The head football coach at the university was NOT the highest paid person on the faculty and a family could spend a Sunday afternoon at a Major League Baseball game getting hot dogs and Cracker Jack for all and not have to take out a second mortgage to pay for it.
I think it might have started with the Dallas Cowboys in the seventies when they named themselves “America’s Team”, but instead morphed into America’s Criminals getting arrested for all the things we find all too common with today’s athletes and coaches – Rape, drug’s, and other violence. Deep, heart felt sigh.
@ 58 Man, rated R? I wasn’t the biggest “CHiPs ” booster around but one of the charming things was it’s lack of violence and profanity. They certainly could have made a PG or PG-13 version with no problem, but no they have to be edgy. Oh, and you’re lucky you didn’t see the new Ghostbusters film, it was dreadful, with horrid acting, writing, and directing. Despite the fact that they made Scrappy-Doo a villain, the live-action Scooby-Doos grated on my nerves.
The Dukes of Hazzard films were dreadful, as well. It seems Hollywood can’t capture the corny or cheesy charm of older shows. The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Chipmunks by Nickelodeon are pretty dreadful as well.
Scrubs “Medical School” was not that great to watch–but I did somehow try to look forward to it, whenever it came on
Oh, man. Don’t get me started; the list is FAR too long. I’m very easily disappointed in a LOT of pop culture these days. I don’t even know where to begin.
Let’s see…
Every Star Wars movie after Empire Strikes Back comes to mind.
The show Lost: After the tailies’ stories started, and the “others”, it just went down hill. It had the promise of being something unique and weird, then it just got completely STUPID.
The show Supernatural. It used to be just these two brothers trying to fight off the local monsters, a bit of fun along the way. Then they started travelling the country, getting from one state to another in about 45 minutes. Then they brought Heaven and Hell and God and Lucifer into the mix, and where the hell do you go from there? You meet God, whose just some schmuck named Chuck. No, sorry. (Oh, and his sister – :eyeroll: ).
Most music today sucks on ice. I can’t even name something that I like to listen to that’s recent.
People are becoming these jaded, empty, soulless shells who are constantly on their phones. (I was in a store where two women were talking to EACH OTHER in different aisles ???!) And then there’s the driving while talking or texting. People are sitting with family or friends in a restaurant and can’t even talk to each other face to face, they have to be talking or texting to OTHER friends on their phones. They have to constantly be checking their damn messages and texts while you’re trying to have a conversation. (What do you think you’re missing?)
Everything that happens to them or around them, they have to get their cell phones out and record it for the world to see. Just let people have their moments and their breakdowns or whatever. I think it’s disgusting that people feel the need to gleefully record someone’s low moments and post on Youtube or whatever. People say it’s fair game, that they’re in a “public” place, but in ye olden days, a few people saw someone crying or falling or messing up for a few moments and it was forgotten. Now, millions of people see it and it’s on there forever. That’s just mean. People don’t seem to have any compassion anymore.
Or they have to share every bowel movement with perfect strangers, saying what they ate, felt, thought every moment of every day. Not really connecting with actual human beings, just typing nonsense so they could read what they wrote on some social site.
And the anonymity of the internet makes people show their true racism and sexism and just general cruelty in their comments online. For crying out loud, I can’t see a video about a microscopic critter online and EVERY comment has to bring politics and religion into it and it ends up just being a war of words and people spewing hate. Folks: You can’t just marvel at the wonders of nature without being a total dickweed? What do “libtards” or “sheeple” or “republicant’s” or – the new favorite “snowflakes” – have to do with a friggin’ WATERBEAR? Just watch the damn VIDEO!!
Ahem.
The whole “everybody wins and gets a trophy” attitude that seems to prevail today. God forbid kids today have to work at something, and learn from failure. Their widdle feelings might get hurt. We’re turning them into a bunch of little marshmallows. I once had to stop for a school bus while I was driving to work. It stopped in front of the kid’s house, and TWO houses down, another kid was waiting, with HIS MOTHER, and they waited there for the bus to stop AGAIN! You telling me, you can’t walk 30 feet and just get on when it stopped the FIRST time? Are you friggin’ KIDDING me?! Wow, that’s lazy.
I, too, am disappointed with Dr. Who lately. I like Capaldi as The Doctor, but the stories are just dull or dumb (the moon is an egg? really?). A little Captain Jack might spice things up. :)
And I’ll join in the hate for all the reboots and re-imaginings. Come up with something new already! How many times can you tell the same story? Well, we want to bring back a character that died, let’s just start over from the beginning again. Great idea! They’ll come in droves! (And they do, which is really sad).
I can’t name all the books, movies, TV shows, songs, etc. that I’ve been disappointed in. This post would go on for days.
All of you get off of my lawn!
Re: #81 — Totally agree, crowschmo!
Yeah, the kids today with their loud music, hula hoops, fax machines, big pants, colored chalk, not knowing about sodium…
@63, @71 – Well, I don’t expect many non-fans to know the whole ’99 internal troubles of how “Muppets From Space” turned out to be the Let It Be that caused the internal breakup of the original Muppet performers–After Frank Oz had irreconcilable differences with Brian Henson’s management and left to focus on his directorial/Jedi career, and writer Jerry Juhl, who had created the original Show’s style of humor, took the opportunity to retire after objecting that they hadn’t used his Muppets In Space script.
But still, anyone who was expecting all of the ’11 Disney movie’s smarmy-deconstruction 70’s-kitsch jokes to be an “affectionate tribute”, and watched the second movie and TV series tank trying to follow suit, really only have themselves to blame… :(
A lot of these just seem to be “disappointments” and not “break your heart” moments but perhaps that’s just an old man talking.
It’s hard to think of any pop culture moment that “broke my heart” because in the first place you need to be so heavily invested in some property that if it isn’t done right it will just kill you, and in the second you need to be at least a bit naive in believing someone will actually get it right. I think those two things truly belong to the very young (or at least a lot younger than I ever was).
However, since someone earlier mentioned it, I will say that “Game of Thrones” has the POTENTIAL to be the one that does it to me. I’m not a fan of fantasy in general, but my wife got me hooked on it, and I am invested in several of the characters to the point where if they all die (surely at least some of them will, that I am going to deal with) I will be pretty wiped out. The four I really and truly liked have stayed alive (mostly — or come back to life) against all odds and all are extremely likable and easy to root for (unlike others who I actually was rather glad ended up dying — Rob was a bit of a prick, for example).
If it happens it will be very sad, indeed — and yet I can’t really see a “happy” ending no matter how optimistic I am. So, sigh.
Re#12: I actually think the Powerpuff reboot is okay, partly because it’s a soft reboot that didn’t dramatically change any existing characters. The one I’m most curious to see in a couple weeks is Ben 10. Considering the original ended recently enough that even much of the target demo surely remembers it, a hard-reboot is just a strange choice, no matter how it turns out.
I think much or the blame falls on Cartoon Network trying to reproduce the (inexplicable, IMO) success of Teen Titans Go!, which epitomizes both the nostalgia-reboot-self-parody trend and the difficulties of getting kid-targeted original (not an extension of a movie-driven property) action-cartoons greenlit today (since the end of Generator Rex); the closest thing CN has right now is Steven Universe, and that’ll probably remain the case for the foreseeable future, so I hope it still has many years left in it.
Haven’t gotten around to Jack yet, but I hope against hope that it does well enough to ensure Gendy gets the chance to finish up Symbionic Titan.
Re#74: Haven’t seen GoT yet either, but have noticed that mentioning Game of Thrones in the hype for any other show serves only to set up a future letdown. Recent examples I’ve watched are Emerald City and Machinima’s bizarrely misassembled Combiner Wars cartoon (Transformers fans would pay big money to see that one professionally riffed; a textbook example of an entertaining trainwreck)
But beyond the general state of action cartoons…I can’t think of many pop culture disappointments that weren’t the fault of the writers’ strike (Heroes, Metalocalypse), and as I fully sympathize with their side, I can’t really complain. By the time the ’90s were over, my expectations for pop culture had just been lowered so far that even distilled mediocrity just sort of muddles over the bar now, and nothing can technically disappoint. Thanks in part to MST, I’ve learned to just laugh it all off. I genuinely care about Star Wars since it’s the bedrock of so many great ’80s toy franchise mythologies, but when Phantom Menace came along, I just laughed in amusement at the ruined-forever s#!tstorm. Sure, Beast Machines happened the following Fall as if to punish me for my callousness, but deep down, I knew that 2 unforgivable seasons of character gutting and wrong-headed retcons was a necessary price to pay for how awesome Beast Wars was. Look at the bigger picture surrounding Phantom Menace, and I like it just because it inspired the Toyfare Magazine spoof, “Mr. Spidey goes to Coruscant”, which made Twisted Mego Theater so awesome that it eventually led to the creation of Robot Chicken! And I’ll never watch Terminator Salvation again, but it gave me 3.75″ endoskeleton figures cheap enough to troop-build with, so now the Jedi, Joes, and every ReAction figure can fight against judgement day! And Prometheus? If you know your Alien rip-offs, you can have fun spotting all the ones they referenced in a sort of reclamation effort (I spotted Leviathan, Galaxy of Terror, and Horror Planet/Inseminoid), recapturing the zeitgeist of the original Alien! The Force Awakens had a similar vibe, but I might just be imagining any explicit references to SW cash-ins.
The point is, if you can find the good and the beautiful buried in the crap, you’ll rarely be let down too far, no matter what we were all promised!
The Walking Dead. I stopped watching it during season six because it kept insulting my intelligence.
Wow, lots of things I agree with. Doctor Who most certainly. It turned into a CW soap opera, almost.
Radio is another. My local rock station used to have a playlist of 10,000 or so songs. Now you can’t go more than a few hours without hearing the same Rush or AC/DC song. But apparently studies have shown people don’t want to listen to music they don’t know so that’s what program directors do these days, play the same damn songs over and over and over and over and over. .
And really, rock music in general is terrible and has been terrible for probably 20 years now. It’s no longer a factor in the music industry.
devil-horn fingers to “the original” cornjob! personally, i was never much at all for the (pardon me for saying it) “cheesier” metal in the first place, whether motley, metallica, or maiden… me, i was always more into the anthrax/slayer end of the spectrum.
i know no one’s mentioned it here yet, so i fear that once again, i’m gonna pull a “titanic” (once upon a time, when the WDT was about “riff-worthy oscar-winners”, i shot a fish in the barrel with that one… ;)
two… words.
“HOLIDAY – SPECIAL.”
not enough? how about four words… “happy life-day, pal.”
okay, -six- words/names, delivered in a seventies-style variety-show announcer voice… “bea arthur! harvey corman! art carney!” (and, hey, while we’re at it, let’s say, “art crooowww!!”)
okay, that’s enough… save to say, that when i finally rewatched it again for the first time at a much later age, i could only respond to my friends in the room, “you know, the only reason i ever tried drugs in the first place? has to be because i saw -this- when i was a kid.” (and none’a’ya neither pity nor mock me for that; i’ll paraphrase bill hicks and say, “i’ve had -grrreat- times on drugs!”)
meanwhile, as long as one can get their hands on (usually) the original theatrical cuts of their favorite movies (i know, tougher to come by these days)… nothin’s goin’ nowheres. you still have your favorites. frustrating part is sometimes trying to get ahold of them. (and this is a trend growing even in some music circles; it’s tough to find original versions of some music available via cd/digital… keep watch! keep vigilent!)
p.s. rock radio? pee-shaw… “clear channel,” now “iheart” or whatever “radio” ruined it long ago. wiki “clear channel” and look at what they did post 9-11… they used it as an excuse to “clean up” and “disney-fie/autotune” our culture… control our culture, control our thinking? “i don’t think soooo!”
the fascists try to
manage and marginalize
us.. do not let them!
p.p.s. don’t bother listening to “regular” radio; listen to the mexi-cali stations around; listen to npr (even if it annoys you, even as a lefty myself)… find some “old country” (not -new- country, duh!) station… just don’t bother listening or watching commercial stations at all. give it up, old people! and i’m speakin’ as one’a’ya. get with the times!
BATMAN VS SUPERMAN – what the hell was that?!
Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy unfilmable? What about the 1981 BBC tv series? ;)
I didn’t think the big budget film was all that bad. Just different.
#90: Two Cornjob metal heads, what are the odds? You sound like a man after my own heart. Everyone should get in touch with their inner Cornjob.
#52: I hope you’ve seen Phase 4 and Fire Maidens of Outer Space.
Star Trek: The Next Generation. We traded campy, swashbuckling fun mixed with solid science fiction for an insufferable collection virtue signaling bureaucrats wagging their fingers at the audience.
Star Trek: The Next Generation. We traded campy, swashbuckling fun mixed with solid science fiction for an insufferable collection virtue signaling bureaucrats wagging their fingers at the audience.
Wow! TNG disappointed you so much, you said it twice. :D
Comic book super heros…I think as comic books is where the concept is best…the recent big budget movies just seem to be lacking in charm and warmth…when the comics started going darker/edgier that was ok with me but that has not been put on film to my liking…a few come close but some with the over use of CGI look like bad cartoons…
So many….(1) The reunion movies for “Dead Like Me” and “Anne of Green Gables” (she’s a spy?!).(2) The Second J.J. Abrams Star Trek Movie (3) The Adam Carolla-Dennis Miller podcast ( “PO’D Cast”), (4) Any Marvel Avengers sequel since “CA-Winter Soldier” (5) Marvel’s Agents of Shield-Season THREE (it’s not over yet, maybe i’m wrong…) (6) The Suicide Squad (why did I believe it would be good?) (7) Frozen Fried Twinkies (8) Lay’s Chicken & Waffles potato chips (9) “The Return of Jezebel James” sitcom (2007), (10) Curly Joe DeRita.
Just so you know – John Lassiter was the one that wanted to bring Disney back to traditional hand drawn animation, but Princess and the Frog sank at the box office ($267 million isn’t terrible – but Tangled one year later did more than double that.) It was a fantastic movie, too – so a real shame that it failed. Lassiter then pushed a standard animation Winnie the Pooh movie, and again it sank at the boxoffice – bad. Again, it was a good movie – so even the reason that it missed being that 5 year olds don’t go to movie theaters was ignored and again blamed on traditional animation. It didn’t help that survey’s showed that the people didn’t like the old-fashioned animation. Anyways, the result was the final nail in the coffin for traditional hand-drawn animation. I am very much with you, too…I would love to see some level of hand drawn being done by the Mouse House, but unfortunately it’s probably a long ways off. (Though the advent of Disney’s “Paperman” short was supposed to lead to a new blend of traditional and computer animation – it hasn’t really happened.) In the end I am less bothered by you, as I will take whatever I can get from a story standpoint.
1. The Dungeons & Dragons movie. One of the nerdiest things I have ever done in my life was to go see Blair Witch 2, not having seen Blair Witch 1, just to see the Dungeons & Dragons teaser trailer in the theater (I had already seen it online).
2. Cars 2. The first Cars may have been a mediocre movie, but it still had some charm. Cars 2 is inexcusably bad. From any company, much less Pixar.
3. The online MST3K animations. Jim Mallon gets a lot of vitriol, some deserved, some not, but he WAS part of Best Brains all throughout the show. I don’t know how anyone that actually knew what MST3K was could approve those animations.