I don’t think Jurassic World had any scenes that conveyed the menace of dinosaurs as convincingly as the red eyed AT-ST stomping towards us from behind the tree line. Maybe they should have let her direct that movie.

A different historical podcast titled after a year — “1865" — would have made this list for me.

Levar Burton has talked often the difficulty that wearing a visor presented for being able to emote as Geordi on Star Trek: TNG - the eyes being an actor’s most expressive asset. The challenge of emoting while wearing a full-blown helmet is so insane, I genuinely can’t believe it works at all. And yet it absolutely…

I hated, hated, hated that movie.

Everything about this seems, on paper, like a fantastic show, that I’d eagerly look forward to watching. I love the space setting, I like the actors, and I don’t think Ianucci has produced anything I didn’t laugh hysterically at.

I have no love for Josh Gad, but insufferable douche is in his wheelhouse, so this could work. Agree that the rest of the cast looks phenomenal. Don’t know why they made Hugh Laurie put on his American accent - the doesn’t seem like a setting that needs it - but he’s had plenty of practice at it.

I think HBO falls somewhere between the BBC and Showtime with its willingness to let commercially successful shows end. Meaning, it won’t insist on milking the cow until it keels over and dies, but nor is inclined to let a good thing end. See, most recently, Big Little Lies, which was supposed to be a one-off, and the…

nips like razors.

You can gather from Goldblum’s comments that voice acting a cartoon was a “couple hour” commitment. Having a major role in a feature film is a much bigger deal. With Iron Man in the suit being CG, it’s nothing like the commitment that Chris Evans had to put in playing Cap (plus Evans had to be in peak physical…

It occurs that the forced ads you get on demand / streaming usually aren’t the same as the TV ads. And it’s probably a lot easier to directly track viewership with on demand and streaming views, as opposed to the Nielsen system for broadcast viewership that works like a poll (sampling a small number of households and…

Apple is apparently doing a “channels” thing very similar to Prime. IFC is available a paid tack-on. It would make sense for Criterion to make itself available in a similar way. I trialed their service a couple weeks ago because it was the only place I could stream a particular old movie I wanted to watch, but there…

“The network was paid to air the commercials and they did” — the whole point of ratings is how much they can get paid to air the commercials.

Nielsen ratings mostly just capture live and DVR viewing. Some Hulu and Netlflix shows are apparently compatible with the system, but there aren’t many of those shows that were broadcast live in the first place (I don’t actually know what Hulu covers because we don’t have it in Canada - do they stream broadcast shows…

Maybe just angling for some freebie like an extension of the free trial, or an extra month of subscription.

On the one hand, I admire Apple’s clear and simple focus on premium original content. As someone who’s already signed up for a few streaming services, I obviously wasn’t going to be sold just because Apple scored every season of Thomas the Tank Engine. On the other hand, there is something about gaining access to…

EA’s scheme, obviously, is for Anthem to be up and down for the better part of a year, and then on December 25, 2020, just as the family is sitting down to open their new gaming consoles, and Anthem is priced at $0.99, BAM, it’ll be amazing, and everyone will remember what a magical day it was, gaze gratefully up into…

Well, when people watch shows delayed, they can fast forward the commercials. So it does matter. But it never made sense to me to distinguish “same day” delayed viewing vs. 3-day or 7-day. 

The real Sarah Koenig was inside us all along. 

I saw a commercial for this movie, and was struck by Emelia Clarke’s spark and charisma in the few short clips I saw. It was not what I expected from her based on the relatively flat and mopey performances I’d seen from her in GoT (in which I thought she was very good, but a bit one-note) and Genisys (in which I…

When a guy walks on a sidewalk, they ordinarily expect oncoming traffic to move out of their way, with the confidence of a lunatic in an old Mustang playing a game of chicken.