I read somewhere that rape is impossible on the show because the contract explicitly stipulates that the participant agrees up front to be fucked. I'm reminded of the contract for West World robot actors where they agree up front to genital-to-genital contact. Classy.

Imagine Donald "Hey, did you hear Lincoln was a Republican?" Trump daring to call someone else dumb. America would have done better randomly electing the White house janitorial staff to the presidency. I use to joke that Trump was liable to appoint Gary Busey to a post. Now that's looking like it would be very much…

I don't know why I struggle so with 'modern literature'. While reading modern novels I find myself becoming increasingly angry at Raymond Carver for permanently fucking up American literary conventions. Yes yes, I know its completely illogical and prejudiced. its like a film fan who traces the downfall of cinema as a…

A lot of Stephen King stories seem to be fascinated with ham radios. Which today is as anachronistic as pagers and fax machines.

Being from Maine, myself, its called a 'downeast' accent because you have to go down the (rather large) state and to the eastern seaboard before finding people who talk like that.

I'm starting to wonder if the weakness inherent in the long string of bad Stephen King miniseries is due to Stephen king, not to the showrunners. The film 'The Shining' owes it greatness to Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall and Stanley Kubrick. The 1997 miniseries 'The Shining' owes its mediocrity entirely to Stephen King…

Hulu (or at least the 'Yahoo View' version of Hulu) has a long string of excellent *Korean television shows* in its 'international' section. The actors and actresses on Korean TV are breathtakingly beautiful. The lead in the last series I binged looked like A Korean Ben Hur-era Charlton Heston.

The main draw of Hawaii 50 initially was "Hey, that's the girl from Battlestar Galactica and the guy from Lost!" Those other 'stars' getting paid more are so generic LA actor types they might as well have been made of papier mache.

This brings up the question of when is CGI preferable and when are practical effects?

Next up on Netflix, a psychosexual drama involving an illegal taxidermist entitled "To kill a mockingbird".

Someone posted elsewhere that Trump during the (no questions) press conference with the South Korean president yesterday looked like he was stoned out of his mind. I'm remembering decades back, the erratic behavior of that one college dorm junkie whose always creating unnecessary drama.

It seems the divide between 'prestige TV' and 'peak TV' continues to widen. When you see name actors (over a certain age) in crappy TV roles just bear in mind the movie roles that they're being offered these days are probably even crappier.

I grew up in rural Maine, a moose coming in through the windshield is an actual danger. I even got to partake in roadkill moose steaks once! That aside, why do TV people so rarely look like real people?

I noticed when trying to plow through the terrible first episode of the X-files return that it seemed that most of the show's conspiracy theories had somehow devolved into right wing conspiracy theories. Let's recall Steve Bannon is also a bitter ex-Hollywood wannabe from about the same time period as the original…

There is no 'normalizing' behavior such as this.

Ben Hur was basically a gay film though nobody informed Charlton Heston about it. Screenwriter Gore Vidal was struggling with the motivation for bad guy Messala. The actor playing the part, Stephen Boyd, suggested Messala and Ben Hur had an off-screen 'history'. You can see Boyd acting up a storm as the spurned…

Emphasis on 'younger'.

It rather feels like next season might be the last. I mean from a narrative standpoint. If the zombie vaccine works and the zombie cure resurfaces that's basically the end of the story. Unless they do a 5th season of tracking down zombie hold-outs. I can't see the story dragging on Walking Dead-style for 12 years.

If this was a TV daytime drama a sudden resignation like this would be driven by a dead hooker buried in the back yard under the rose bush.

I have a 'chamber of commerce'-style Republican relative who CONSTANTLY bitches about how the poor are stealing out of his pocket, how they DARE to buy beef at the grocery store and wear bright colors. The right wing wants America to resemble Haiti where the poor have virtually nothing while the rich have everything.…