Tag: Entertainment

Desert Island Authors

Literature

Continuing the series on stuff I’d take to a desert island (see here for Guns, and here for Dames), let me remind you first of the island:

And now to the main topic.

Usually, the “Desert Island” series consists of only five items (e.g. 5 songs/discs), but there is no way on Earth that I could survive with only five books.  Recently, I have noted that such questions now allow compendia — e.g. the Sharpe’s Rifles series or the Hornblower series, and so on.

So now I’m broadening the scope, so to speak, to allow myself to take the complete works of five fiction authors onto that desert island.  They are, in no specific order:

  • Ian Fleming
  • William Shakespeare
  • D.H. Lawrence
  • P.G. Wodehouse
  • John Sandford*

*unlike the others, Sandford is still alive and writing, so I’d get at least one new novel every year, to keep things fresh.

I have other favorite authors, of course (Hugo, Dumas, Higgins, Follett and Ruark, for example), but unlike those listed, I don’t like everything they’ve written, whereas the above five are consistently good.

As for the five non-fiction authors, that’s a lot easier:

  • Paul Johnson
  • Victor Davis Hanson
  • John Keegan
  • Jacques Barzun
  • Thomas Sowell

Four historians and an economist.

Your own choices in Comments.

Excluded

Entertainment, Mocking Furriners

As Britishland gathered to celebrate their Queen’s Platinum Jubilee yesterday, the crowd was immense — even larger than the Lightbringer’s inauguration (click both pics below to embiggen).

I noted this picture, too:

Conspicuously absent were Prince Ginger and his Hollywood houri.  No doubt the Royals wanted the crowds to cheer (which they did, mightily) and not boo (which they would have).

Hidden Gem

Entertainment, Gratuitous Chick Pics

I am, as Regular Readers are aware, a huge fan of gloomy Scandi detective shows.  My latest binge was The Killing (on Prime), which I devoured, all twenty hours of it, over a couple days last week.

*Disclaimer:  I know that Denmark isn’t regarded as a Scandi country.  As far as I’m concerned, any country on the western shores of the Baltic which has damp, freezing, miserable weather, gets dark at about 4pm, and features actors speaking a language which sounds like a chicken with its throat half-cut, is a Scandi country.  Also, if the heroine detective — they’re all heroine detectives;  all the men are idiots, clowns or bad guys — is halfway between plain and ugly, and the plot is dense and contains about five different story lines, then it’s a Scandi detective movie.

As was The Killing, in absolutely every respect.

However, in this show I saw something out of the ordinary:  a woman with quite a large part, who was not halfway between plain and ugly.  Let me introduce you all to Marie Askehave:

In the TV show, she has coal-black hair which shows off those startling blue eyes to perfection:

Also, she’s one of those women who doesn’t do well in still photos — in a movie medium, though, she’s captivating.

The show’s good, too.

Lest anyone thinks I’m going overboard about plain-to-ugly Scandi female detectives, here’s The Killing‘s lead, Sofie Gråbøl:


…and that’s a studio pic — she looks far worse in the show.

No Surprise

Business, Entertainment

There are really three elements to the story of Netflix’s share price collapsing and their market cap falling through the floor.

The first is the simple stuff:  Netflix’s offerings are dire.  I think there should be an award for the guy who can scroll through their movie menu and find something he really wants to watch, in under 30 minutes.  Speaking for myself, I find myself looking for movies on Netflix longer than I actually spend watching any.  This is because Netflix’s own movies are about 10% decent and 90% utter trash.  The 10% includes the brilliant After Life  (Ricky Gervais).  The 90%?  Oy.  They run from endless permutations of women finding themselves while reconciling with a dying parent / sibling / whatever, to mindless celebrity pablum (“my Scientology experience”) to cartoonish rubbish action movies featuring female superheroes, and woke “dramas” riddled with angst.

After a while, I either turn off the TV altogether, or else take the option of Netflix’s other problem:  I go to another movie outlet.  Not that Amazon Prime is much better;  in terms of content, they’re about the same as Netflix:  10% decent, the rest ugh.  Even worse are Prime’s options, in that they’ll show you the first season of a show for free, but then you have to buy the rest.  Fuck that.  There, Netflix’s offer is at least consistent: subscribe, and everything’s “free” thereafter.  Hulu and Roku throw in atmosphere-destroying commercials, so forget that shit as well.

I rather like Discovery+, especially their true crime documentaries, while New Wife likes all the shows about Alaska, and some of the real estate shows.  But that’s pretty much it, because I absolutely refuse to subscribe to any other of the streamers like Britbox.  Thank gawd for Turner Classic movies, because I think I’m nearing the end with Discovery+.

Netflix’s third problem is a common one in the business world:  over-demanding shareholders and accountants.  You see, once a startup company reaches a commanding market share, further growth becomes increasingly difficult if not impossible, especially if new players enter the fray with similar offerings.  None of that matters to the shareholders and finance people, who have grown used to and got rich from annual gains of 25% in market share and / or the share price, and who want that gravy train to last forever.  It can’t, of course, even absent stupid business decisions (like embracing wokedom).  Market growth is finite, and expanding markets by getting into bed with evil yet populous societies like China or Russia have risks that could (and do, and have) endangered many, many corporations and organizations(Apple, NBA, coff coff ).

So there you have it:  a classic case of corporate hubris.

And I see that Disney is starting to see its own ass, too.