Category: Rant

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Did Rotten Tomatoes Forget That Metacritic Exists?

So by now I am sure that you have heard that Rotten Tomatoes is withholding Justice League critic reviews and the ‘Tomato Score’ until it streams its new show ‘See It/Skip It’, and if Rotten Tomatoes was the only critic aggregating site in town it might make sense to use its popularity to promote its new show this way, but guess what?  It is not.  If you want to go see a bunch of reviews with an average score just click on over to Metacritic.

I can save you some clicking and just tell you that Justice League is doing okay.  Not great, but much better than Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad.  Apparently the story is rushed nonsense, but the characters are great, so if you love Bats and Wondy, there is a good chance you will like this movie because they act like their true selves.  In other words, the dialog works, so it sounds like the Joss Whedon part of the flick works.  I will find out myself on Friday and then let you know what I think on Monday.  If things work out as planned that is.

Anyway, if Rotten Tomatoes makes this delaying the reviews thing a normal deal.  There are other, and some may say better, places to get the same info.  In this case, Metacritic.com.

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Will Anime Strike Work For Amazon?

Netflix recently went on record saying they were going to be putting a lot of money towards licensing and creating anime.  They also followed that up by raising rates for all but their most basic service, so it seems that more content requires more money.  Amazon is also aware of this, but instead of raising rates for all customers, they charge you an extra $4.99 a month for their ‘channel’, Anime Strike.

While on the surface $4.99 doesn’t seem like a lot for a streaming service that supposedly has more than 1000 series on it service, but you can only get Anime Strike if you have a Prime account.  Which is $99 a year, so $8.25 a month, but that includes a lot more than just streaming TV.  Anyway, Anime Strike plus Prime works out to $13.24 a month plus tax.  Which makes it a pretty expensive compared to other services.  Though to be far, most people already have a Prime subscription, and unlike the base Prime membership you can add and drop Strike at will, so if there is a series you want to see that you can watch it in a month you can cancel Anime Strike after you are done.

While it makes sense on the surface to charge people who want to watch niche programing more than people who don’t, I am just not sure it will pay off.  With all the services people are having to pay for now, I just don’t see that many people excited to spend another $5 on top of something they are already paying for.  In the end it will come down to content.

Amazon got me to try Anime Strike with their free trial because they were the only place that had ‘Sword Oratoria: Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side’, but they didn’t have enough to keep me past the seven day trail.  This will be a problem for Amazon.  If they can’t get people to pay for its anime channel, than they will not have enough money to get more anime to keep up with Netflix, Hulu and Crunchy Roll.

It is just interesting to see Amazon going about this differently than everyone else, and I am not sure it is the right path to take.  We will see, I may end up spending an extra $4.99 month if they end up with the only place to get the content I want, so far that is not the case.

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I Am Enjoying Netflix’s New Found Commitment To Anime!

In the early years of Netflix, their anime library was a bit of a wasteland.  There was nothing to see except a couple series that just about every other service had too.  Netflix’s only upside was that they didn’t have commercials.  I complained about this a couple of times on this very blog.  However, it seems like they have learned the error of their ways.

They have announced several new shows and movies that will be distributed by them exclusively in the USA, and that they are going to start working with Anime development companies to create new shows just for Netflix.  Apparently, according to The Verge, a large portion of their $8 Billion programming budget will go towards getting more Anime on their service.

While there still isn’t a ton of Anime on Netflix, it has picked up.  Whenever I am in the mood to watch some Anime I am able to find something interesting.  In fact I just finished the Netflix Original: Kuromukuro, and while it wasn’t earthshattering, it was pretty entertaining.  This is just after watching Little Witch Academia which was excellent, so the quality is improving as well.  Not to mention their American animation arm which is pumping out great things like Voltron (season 4 just hit!).

I am not the only one that is happy, Netflix is adding millions of subscribers, and they attribute a lot of that success to Anime fans.  Yeah us!  So apparently big companies do listen to their customers, and I look forward to all the new Anime I am going to get to watch.

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It Proves 2017’s Poor Box-Office Was Due To Bad Movies, Not Sequels And Remakes!

Apparently I was one of the few people that didn’t head out and see ‘It’ over the weekend.  The Stephen King adaptation did approximately $117 Million worth of business at the box office, and insiders say the number could go up to $120 Million since hurricane Irma was downgraded.  That is the second biggest opening weekend ever for an ‘R’ rated movie, and the largest opening weekend in September by over $68.6 Million.  This of course all comes during a very down year for major movie studios.

Studios and theater chains have blamed everything from Rottentomatoes.com to the lack bankable stars.  Though the major target has been sequels and remakes.  Surefire franchises like ‘Transformers: The Last Knight’ and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ have flopped, and while the ‘Fate of the Furious’ made $1.25 Billion worldwide, its domestic total was down quite bit, ‘only’ bringing in $225 Million.  ‘Baywatch’, a major release for Paramount this year, failed hard, as did ‘CHiPs’ from Warner Brothers.  Both remakes of old TV shows, so obviously sequels and remakes are to blame.

Not so fast.  The biggest movies this year have all been sequels and remakes.  ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming‘, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy 2‘, ‘Beauty and the Beast‘, ‘Wonder Woman‘ was a follow up to ‘Batman v Superman‘, and now ‘It’ based on Stephen King’s popular book.  Though the creators admit the idea came from the massively successful TV miniseries, thus a remake.  What do all these movies have in common?  They are all good.  While what makes a movie good or bad is subjective, it helps if a lot of different sources all say the same thing, and all the movies in this list have been universally praised.  While all the other movies listed before have been universally panned.

Of course all this ragging on sequels/remakes makes even less sense when you consider big movies like ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets‘ are original, but tanked anyway.  Again, the movie was crushed by critics and fans saying it was nothing but a pretty face with little going on behind the eyes.

I think what is going on is that audiences are finally wising up to the fact that they can do a little research on movies before they spend their money.  Sure they can go to places like Rottentomatoes.com, but they can even go on social media and see what other people are saying about the movie.  They don’t just have to spend $12 and pray that the film is good.  For movie studios this is probably a nightmare.  They can’t guarantee success with good marketing anymore.  They will have to make good movies too.  In the end this will be better for us since studios will have to produce a more quality product.

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Star Wars Looses A Director While Suicide Squad Gains One!

It seems like Disney can’t hold on to their directors for Star Wars.  They have now lost two directors (well three, but two come as a set) for their upcoming Star Wars projects in the same year.  Colin Trevorrow’s exit from Star Wars IX isn’t as stunning as Lord and Miller’s from Han Solo, but clearly Disney has a specific vision for their films, and if you can’t deliver it, you are out.  Really at this point they just need to lock in Howard or J.J. to long term deals and have them direct the next few movies, since both of them can deliver a pretty solid Spielbergian adventure film.

On the Warner Brothers side of things, we are finally getting details about the upcoming Suicide Squad sequel.  It looks like Gavin O’Connor has been called in to write and direct.  He is an okay choice.  I say that because most of his movies are, you know, okay.  Much like The Accountant which I recently reviewed.  If you go look at his IMDB page you will not find a bad flick.  Though you will probably not find a movie you feel super strongly about either, so this is probably a smart choice for a studio trying not to have any more critical failures, but just not one the fans are going to get supper pumped up about.  Hey, maybe he will get to direct an upcoming Star Wars movie!