Shmee.Me

July 24, 2015

I Love Short TV Seasons!

Recently a lot more TV shows have been releasing seasons in a shorter format. 13, 10, and sometimes even 6 episode series are becoming the new normal, and I think this is great! A shorter season means that the TV show can focus in on the central stories, and not get caught up with a bunch of pointless plot lines. That is not to say that a 26 episode season can’t be good, I still love The Flash and Arrow, but they definitely are prone to wander.

This is not the writers fault because to fill 26 hours of content you need to create multiple storylines and points of interest, but the viewers will not/cannot care about all of them, so any episodes that feature those plots will be quickly dismissed as filler. The Walking Dead has definitely suffered by going to 16 episodes. Again still good, but there are always a few episodes that the show could do without.

I understand from a TV channel’s perspective the more episodes of a hit show they can get the better, so they don’t have to juggle as many cycling shows. Especially now with the viewer’s expectation of year round quality programming, but a lot of those extra episodes are making the show worse, not better, and may even be loosing the show ratings, and by extension the channel.

A major bonus with shorter series is that they are easier to keep up with. If you get behind a season or two with a normal length show it is understandable to give up because you have like 50 hours of TV to watch to catch up, but with shorter seasons that time is obviously greatly reduced, and then people are more likely to watch the show live (well at least DVR’ed) since they are all current with what is going on.

I am all for the current migration towards shorter seasons. I hope that it is a trend that continues. We could all do with a lot less filler in our lives.

July 21, 2015July 21, 2015

A series of reviews by The Paladin

A truth of our time is that there is a lot of entertainment for us to consume. Also true is that we have only so much time to watch it all. Average shows or movies tend to slip through the cracks or fall down the TV schedule, so it’s nice to have Netflix or Amazon Prime to catch up on a TV series or Movie you meant to watch but just didn’t. Assembled below are three short reviews for some things I’ve watched recently and maybe you should too.

Ant-Man

Although Shmee has already reviewed Ant-Man, I’d like to add that Payton Reed did a fine job jumping into a difficult situation as Director. Audiences were excited for Evan Wright’s take on the Marvel Superhero Brand that we were all a little disappointed he left. Absent Wright’s direction, the film could have been slap-dash and paint-by-the-numbers, but I came away from the film really happy; having enjoyed my one hour and fifty-seven minutes (not counting the stingers at the end). Ant-Man had it problems, but I think it does something recent Marvel movies have not done – be small and deal with more ordinary people. Arguably that’s what draws us to Superheroes in the first place, the people behind the mask. Ant-Man explorers that just a little bit more and better.

Agents of Shield

Another Marvel property that I like, because it too follows the little guy (namely Agent Phil Coulson). Agents of Shield has its faults though. ABC has thankfully kept the show going, probably because someone in a meeting used the word “Synergy”. Agent Coulson and his team have changed a lot since the last season, which was slow to build and then after Captain America: Winter Soldier went sideways. Agents of Shield Season 2 builds on that last half of Season 1 and tells two stories that build into each other. A critique of Agents of Shield would be that the final story arc had a good section of the show taking place in a new-age massage parlor set that just really took me out of the show. All together though I enjoyed this season a lot and look forward to Season 3.

Ascension

Ascension was a SyFy event movie about a generational ship build during the days of Kennedy and sent off into space. All of the crew have not experienced the cultural revolution, 9-11, or any of the other events that have shaped American culture so they are a unique microcosm of society that has developed in their own way. A murder on the ship throws everything into chaos and we see the cracks that have formed in everyone’s relationships throughout the ship. Ascension then plays a slight of hand, by changing the show to something else… something not as compelling by episode two. Also there is a lot of hanky-panky. A lot of the appeal of Ascension for me was the idea of a generational ship half way to its destination and the society that has grown because of that reality. Ascension starts with that same premise, but then stops its world building to do something else. About half way through I was just watching to finish the series; which doesn’t really end with any real satisfaction since SyFy didn’t choose to turn the miniseries into a full blown series. All of the pieces seemed right for a compelling science fiction drama (beautiful sets, nice costumes, and even some compelling characters), the end rest though was just flat.

July 15, 2015July 15, 2015

What If Uwe Boll Had $200 Million?

While watching Transformers: Age of Extinction, I remembered a part of one of the many rants of infamous director Uwe Boll saying something to the effect if he made a movie with the budget of Michael Bay his would be better. That seems like a very low mark to aim for, and to Bay’s credit I think he is very smart and knows exactly what he is doing, but it made me ask the question, “What would a $200 Million Uwe Boll movie look like?” I mean what cinematic horrors would he unleash? I am going to give my best guess as to what this movie would look like.

First off, Uwe would need a video game to base his movie off of. It couldn’t be something small, with this budget he would get one of the top franchises. Halo and Call of Duty are too controlled by their publishers, and Boll has too much of a reputation for them to take the risk on him, but one publisher would relish the theatric destruction Boll would bring. That would be Take-Two/Rockstar. That’s right, I am betting Boll would make a Grand Theft Auto game.

Now part of the fun with Grand Theft Auto is it knows it is over the top, and everything is very tongue and cheek. Uwe Boll would miss all that and play it straight. His movie would follow a man as he murdered and slaughtered his way to the top. He would think he was making a new version of Scarface, but in reality it would just be stupidly violent. Now with $200 Million he could pay a script writer to write something decent, and he probably would pay someone to do it, but then he would say it was garbage and then write his own worse version. It would all be part of the process.

Since this is Uwe Boll we are talking about I am guessing he would try and ‘sex’ it up a bit. He would do that the only way he knows how: adding naked women. They would be everywhere. He would put them in like a home decorator adds in lamps. He would get an actual actress do strip down too. He was very proud of himself for saving money in BloodRayne by hiring prostitutes, but with this budget he would get real SAG actresses. I am guessing he would set a record for the amount of skin on screen in an ‘R’ rate movie.

Now all that money would finally get him the special effects budget that he has always wanted, so I am pretty sure that to prove he is better than Michael Bay he would try to beat him at his own game. This movie would be nothing but slow motion pans and explosions. He would level Detroit, or some other cheap-to-film-in US city. Everyone would be shooting at any given moment just because he could afford it.

So what I am saying is the movie would be gloriously bad. It would be a violent, incoherent mess with a bunch of naked ladies. So pretty much a Michael Bay movie, but without any of the marketability. I think Uwe Boll would fall very short of Michael Bay, and give us one of the worst movies ever made. Something that would be talked about for ages. Rockstar Games would love it.

July 3, 2015

Thanks Ash Vs Evil Dead, I Need A Starz Subscription Now!

Thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we now have our fist set photo of Ash vs Evil Dead, and it looks perfect! Chainsaw arm? Check! Blood? Check! Stupid self-assured look on Ash’s face? Double Check! This looks like so much fun, but that means I will have to pay per episode, get Starz, or wait until the season is over and get the set, and I want to do none of the those things. <sobs> Oh well, I have a lot of TV to watch (I say to convince myself unsuccessfully) <sniffle>.

For you lucky shmucks with the Starz channel, you will have to let me know how it is this Fall.

P.S. I hate all of you with Starz for not already inviting me over to watch this. Your names will forever be listed in my Necronomicon.

July 1, 2015July 1, 2015

Hey There Is Sci-Fi on SyFy Now!

So I was watching the first episode of the space bounty hunger show Killjoys, which was pretty good, and I think it will be a decent summertime distraction, when it occurred to me I was being shown nothing but Sci-Fi based show commercials. I mean Killjoys is jammed between Defiance and Dark Matter, so there are three solid hours of pretty good Sci-Fi programming right there. With the SyFy channel being nothing more than a place for ghost hunter “reality TV” and wrestling for the last couple of decades it is nice to see it return to the genre that gave it its name. Well its original name anyway. Nothing is named SyFy because that is terrible, and the branding people at NBC that thought of it should be thrown in to a sarlacc pit where they can be digested for centuries with Boba Fett (that’s right Boba Fett is dead nerds!).

I hope this is a trend that continues because it might make the SyFy (sarlacc pits for everyone!) Channel my go to place for summer TV. Almost like it was when I was thirteen. Oh man I am old! <sobs in to keyboard, but recovers with the knowledge that Boba Fett is an overrated jerk>