Category: Entertainment

Reality TV — The Cameraman

camermanAs I’ve said many times, even though I don’t watch it, I have no philosophical bitch with Reality TV.  It’s TV, so, as the man said “Here we are now: entertain us.”  And presumably, it does.  But have you ever wondered about the cameraman? (Yes, I realize sometimes they’re women, but we all know what we’re talking about.)  He’s the guy who has to do everything the Reality Star does — with one hand holding a camera.  This is nothing special if you’re Keeping up With the Kardashians but in the wild and woolly world of Reality TV, I imagine some gigs are tougher than others.

Ice Road Truckers – The camera follows a group of truck drivers in northern Canada and Alaska — in winter.  I’ve been to northern Canada, and the place is so full of nothing even Google doesn’t go there.  Calling it “tedious” is wildly optimistic.  The cameraman’s job is to film somebody driving a truck, hour after hour, through this white wasteland — on the off chance that something will go wrong.  That anything will go wrong.  Please, God!  Break something!  At kilometre 300, he can’t feel his bum anymore.  At kilometre 600, he’s convinced he’s trapped in The Matrix, and by kilometre 1000, he’s praying for a polar bear to come and eat him.  Nowhere in the history of entertainment has one person so completely wished for disaster to befall another human being than on the set of Ice Road Truckers.

Swamp People — The camera follows a group of ‘hunters” who find and kill alligators.  What possible enticement would convince anybody to go and film that?
Wanted:  Experienced camera person to travel to a disease-invested swamp, get into an itty-bitty boat with a couple of hillbillies, and film them attacking gigantic piss-off alligators.  Good balance an asset.  Lack of imagination a plus.  Malaria, typhus, cholera, hepatitis A, B and C, yellow fever and rabies shots required.  Preference given to orphans and idiots and anybody who hasn’t seen the movie Deliverance.

And the granddaddy of them all:

Deadliest Catch — The camera follows crab fishermen in the Bering Sea — in January.  Commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous occupations on the planet.  People die doing this stuff — frequently — when they’re holding on with both hands.  Imagine standing in the middle of an iceberg-cold ocean, pointing a camera at a 10 metre wave that’s about to drown you, the stupid little boat you’re standing on, and anyone else not smart enough to be on dry land.  What would you be thinking?  “Wow, those four years of film school are really going to pay off now!”

So, even though I don’t watch it, I tip my hat to Reality TV — if only for the person working the camera.  I’d pay money to eyeball that guy.

We’ve Run Out Of Villains

zombieA couple of years ago, I thought one more season of The Walking Dead was finally going to finish all this zombie crap — for good.  Wrong!  In a couple of weeks, AMC is going to be back at it again with Season 6.  (Not only that, but word around the campfire is, the production team has plans for a Season 7, and an 8, 9 and 10.)  It’s like Route 66 with butcher knives.  Plus, now they’ve come up with some nonsense spinoff, “let-me-explain-the-apocalypse prequel: Fear The Walking Dead.  What’s the deal?  The original Night of the Living Dead lasted 96 minutes.  Rick and his minions have been killing zombies for 5 years!  How many different ways can you blow somebody’s head off?  And more importantly, why is any audience still interested?

I’ve figured it out.

As a society, we’re starved for villains, and zombies are the last ones available to us.

Check it out.

1) Hollywood has clichéd Evil Corporate America out of existence.  When a movie has a white guy in an expensive suit in it — he’s the bad guy.  D’uh!  Audiences have been there/done that so many times even Disney has quit trying to sell that lame old story line.

2) No film maker is ever going to risk making the ethnic guy the villain.  That’s like throwing gasoline on the Eagerly Offended fire.  Every self-appointed activist this side of Mars would be on his ass faster than you can say “Don’t you ever show your face at Sundance, again!”

3) Point #2 goes double for all other identifiable groups.  Try making a gay guy evil, or a single mom, or a paraplegic and the Social Media would go berserk.  They’d threaten to blow up your car, burn down your house, slap your face, kick your dog and pee in your porridge — you insensitive bastard.  The last time a guy in a wheelchair was the villain of a movie, it was Kenneth Branagh in Wild, Wild West and even Salma Hayek’s boobs couldn’t pull that dog out of the fire.

4) The entertainment industry has made bad guys look good.  Tony Soprano was a Mafia Boss.  He was a criminal.  He stole things.  He cheated.  He lied.  He killed people.  WE SAW HIM DO IT!  But who cares?  We were still cheering for the guy when family night got cut short by the blackout series finale.  Dexter?  Totally psycho!  Walter White in Breaking Bad was a meth dealer.  A METH DEALER!  There are no redeeming qualities to that profession.  Yet there are people in this world who think the moral of that story is we should pay teachers higher wages!

So who’s left?  British accents and pretty girls.  And even that doesn’t always work.  I cheered for Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl just because she knocked the snot out of Ben Affleck.

No, folks.  We’re stuck with zombies for the foreseeable future.  In a society where vampires are cozy, crime is a career choice and everybody’s entitled to a rainbow, zombies are the last bastion of evil.

And to demonstrate just how far our world has descended into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, never once — in the entire Walking Dead series — does anyone ever say the word “zombie.”  I think the producers are scared skinny that Z.A.C (the Zombie Awareness Coalition) is lurking in the shadows somewhere.

Is NOTHING Sacred?

sevenI didn’t bitch when you turned the Green Hornet into a lard-ass slacker.  I didn’t complain when you made the Lone Ranger and Tonto look like a couple of transcendental boobs.    Hell, I even bit my tongue over the Ben Affleck Batman affair.  There’ve been so many Batmans (Batmen?) anyway that nobody cares anymore.  (Actually, a lot of people think that Cate Blanchett should take a crack at the cowl.0  But there is a point when every person has to cowboy-up and finally say WTF?  I’m talkin’ to you, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  What, by all that’s holy, gave you the idea you could remake The Magnificent Seven?  THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN?  Arguably the best Western ever made (sorry, High Noon) and you think you can just casually redo it?  For shame!  Five shame!

Here’s the deal.  If — maybe — perhaps — you got Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Charlize Theron, Russell Crowe, Jason Statham, Idris Elba and if Steve McQueen came back from the dead to play Vin, then I might consider it.  Otherwise, you’re sucking pond water.  In fact, you’re just cashing in on a famous name, you insatiable whores!

And it’s not as if Hollywood has any kind of a track record for treating the classics with any class.  Look at these less than honourable money grabs:

Star Trek – In an alternative reality (shoot me in the head, right here!) Kirk is an overgrown juvenile delinquent, Old Spock wanders around looking miserable, young Spock has a temper tantrum (and, oddly enough, a girlfriend) Sulu looks as if he’s lost without Kumar, and the one requirement to command a Starship is you show up on a motorcycle and eat apples!

King Kong – What Peter Jackson did to that monkey oughta be illegal.  Where the hell is PETA when you need them?

The Ladykillers – Every once in a while, the Coen bros go nuts and think they’re cinematic gods.  This movie proves them wrong.  Tom Hanks should have run screaming from the studio when he read the script.  Unfortunately, he didn’t.  Now, he wakes up every morning and begs the ghost of Alec Guinness for forgiveness.

Around the World in Eighty Days – Turning a 50s epic into a Jackie Chan kungfu movie is bad enough.  However, trying to shoehorn homage to Michael Todd with cameos by Schwarzenegger, Cleese. Johnny Depp and the brothers Wilson is just insulting the guy’s memory.

Planet of the Apes – Mark Wahlberg spends most of the movie looking surprised that he’s even in this movie, Charlton Heston plays an ape, Paul Giamatti is an unusually short orangutan and Helena Bonham Carter plays a chimp (with mixed results.)  The plot is based on coincidence, the climax is like five seconds long, the ending is stupid and when Wahlberg and Bonham Carter get all inter-species, the whole thing just gets icky.

The Wicker Man – Nicholas Cage deserves the bees.

Alice in Wonderland – Every stoner east of Malibu Bay is saying “Whoa!  Alice gets a sword!  Cool!”  The Mad Hatter is a demented revolutionary.  They stole the White Queen from the Wizard of OZ and Helena Bonham Carter plays herself (with mixed results.)  And the frightening thing is Disney did it to themselves.

I’m not even going to get into Psycho, Swept Away, Godzilla or The Pink Panther.

Hollywood needs to just stop.  The Magnificent Seven?  My God! What next?  Gone with the Wind?  Casablanca?  Leonardo diCaprio as the Little Tramp?

I’ve had enough.  If there are no original ideas left south of the San Fernando Valley, so be it, but quit carving up other people’s masterpieces!