(no subject)

It occurs to me that I owe you a couple of reviews? Or maybe not? Maybe you don't care?

* What I just finished reading?

Finished Beatrice Small's novel Hellion, which as previously reported is an odd romance novel.
It sort of challenges the conventions of the romance novel and comments on them.

I can't decide if Small is a frustrated historian, possibly? Because the book at times reads like an amateur attempt at historical fiction. She dabbles at it. Not always well, but better than most romance novelists. The story takes place in the 1100s, during the reign of Henry I, the son of William the Congueror and grandfather of Henry the II (the King from Beckett and Lion in Winter). So pre-Tudor. These are the Anglo-Saxons and Normans.


( plot spoilers )

What movie I saw most recently?

Lady Bird by Greta Gerwig -- which the film reviewers appear to like a whole lot more than I did. I can't help but wonder if this may be because I've only seen a handful of movies this year, and most of them on - "On Demand"? Outside of Lady Bird, I've seen Wonder Woman, Thor, and..La La Land in a movie theater. Needless to say, of the three, I found Lady Bird the least enjoyable of the three and the least memorable.

It's a coming of age story about a Catholic High School girl in Sacramento, California. ( Read more... )

Television Round-up

1. Five Big Shows That Could See Major Changes After The Disney and Fox Merger.

Big news in showbiz broke earlier this week with the announcement of the merger between Disney and 20th Century Fox. In a bold (and very pricy) move, Disney purchased huge chunks of 20th Century Fox for a whopping $52.4 billion. The deal will see control of Fox's movie and television studios shift to Disney, along with 22 regional sports channels and cable networks FX and National Geographic. Since Disney already owns one major broadcast network, it couldn't purchase a second, and so the Fox network itself was not part of the deal. Still, there are bound to be some very big changes in store for certain shows, for better or worse. Read on for five in particular that could be affected!

[They basically bought the content not the network itself according to this blurb. Not that they were after Fox Channel, they were after Hulu.]

* The Disney/Fox deal should be pretty great for The Gifted, as the merger means that the rights to the X-Men characters will all be held under one banner, and there's the potential for bigger X-Men names to pop up on the small screen. Disney also owns Marvel, which means that the company is highly motivated to keep The Gifted on the air. After all, Disney did reportedly step in to save Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. from getting the axe after its last season. The Gifted could benefit immensely from the merger. In fact, the same can probably be said for FX's Legion now that Disney owns FX.

*Now that FX is owned by Disney, it's entirely possible that American Horror Story will be expected to tone down some of the legitimate horror. Other more adult series air on FX as well, but American Horror Story has the be the most extreme and un-Disney. Of course, Disney has already said that they don't intend to force any Deadpool movies to adapt to a PG-13 rating. Still, an ongoing TV series is very different from an occasional movie, and we'll have to see what happens.

[I don't see that happening. Disney wanted a more adult product. They've been struggling to create one for years.]

*Interestingly, The Simpsons made news almost as soon as the merger was announced when longtime fans realized that the show had managed to predict the Disney/Fox deal nearly twenty years ago.

[Along with Donald Trump taking the Presidency. Seriously, it's sort of scary how precognitive the Simpsons writers have been.]

*There's one big variable in play when it comes to Gotham, and that is the fact that Gotham is not actually owned by 20th Century Fox. Disney doesn't own Gotham and so can't make the decision to cancel it. Gotham is produced by Warner Bros. Television; if Fox wants to keep some shows that aren't owned by Disney on the airwaves, Gotham could survive to tell more stories about pre-Batman Bruce Wayne. Lucifer on Fox is in a similar boat, as it is a non-Marvel comic TV show owned by WBTV.

[Hmmm...neither Lucifer nor Gotham were produced by Fox or owned by Fox. They are merely distributed by Fox. Makes sense -- both are DC properties originally, and DC Universe movie rights is owned by Warner Brothers not Disney. And no, Disney can't get Warner Brothers too. It can't buy up all the movie studios. That is considered a violation.]

2. The Gifted

As an X-man fan, who has read most of the comics in the X-men line-up, I sort of saw the twist coming. And had some mixed feelings about it.

( spoilers for mid-season finale of The Gifted )

Wickedly behind on television shows. And there are a few I'm considering giving up on. Scandal, OUAT,
Big Bang Theory...Kevin Probably Saves the World.