Category Archives: Media & Entertainment

Live Streaming Star in China

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From the New York Times: “Over the past year, as Covid-19 has severely limited our ability to interact with the world beyond our front door, livestreams have helped transport us to places we couldn’t visit, people we couldn’t see and events we couldn’t attend. In China, live streaming services command an audience of nearly 560 million, with streamers broadcasting to devoted followers who tune in every night. Successful live streamers can earn thousands of dollars each month in direct donations from fans, and those at the very top earn millions from brand sponsorships and major contracts. In the short documentary above, we enter two agencies that scout promising newcomers and mold them into high-earning stars. But what’s it like working for a company that engineers every aspect of your life — and then requires you to livestream it all day?”

Not sure which I found more frightening… the lives of the “stars” or their fans.

Tiny machines trying to kill us?

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“The Berserker series is a series of space opera science fiction short stories and novels by Fred Saberhagen, in which robotic self-replicating machines strive to destroy all life. […] The Berserkers’ bases are capable of manufacturing more and deadlier Berserkers as the need arises.” (Wikipedia)

I read my first Berserker story in the late 60s so, 50+ years ago? What if the COVID-19 virus (all viruses?) is a form of intelligence whose purpose/mission/raison d’être is to destroy all human life? Is the COVID-19 virus really a tiny Berserker machine?

Speaking of science fiction…

We won’t see the first movies about the COVID-19 pandemic until it’s over, right? But if it’s never really over… I’ll wager some early “treatments” are already being pitched. There have been so many movies about viruses and pandemics (link below), what’s the fresh take?

I don’t think you can make a movie about the COVID-19 pandemic of 202(?) that doesn’t have vax-deniers and conspiracy nuts as a major plot element.

Rambo III: Freedom Speech

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We knew how Afghanistan was going to end way back in 2008. In this scene from Rambo III Richard Crenna warns the Russian commander how stupid it is to start a holy war in the middle east in the name of freedom.

And this from 2009. Matthew Hoh, a former marine saying Afghanistan is not worth U.S. lives.

“I feel that our strategies in Afghanistan are not pursing goals that are worthy of sacrificing our young men and women or spending the billions we’re doing there,” Hoh said. “I believe that the people we are fighting there are fighting us because we are occupying them — not for any ideological reasons, not because of any links to al Qaeda, not because of any fundamental hatred toward the West. The only reason they’re fighting us is because we are occupying them.”

Nobody Trailer

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Action is my movie genre-of-choice and I’ve watched a bunch of them. But I’m not sure I’ve seen a better one than Nobody, staring Emmy winner Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul, The Post, Nebraska) as Hutch Mansell, “an underestimated and overlooked dad and husband, taking life’s indignities on the chin and never pushing back. A nobody.”

I watched most of this movie standing in front of my TV. Don’t recall doing that before. Hell, Christopher Lloyd has an action role in this movie and he rocks it. One more thing… I paid $20 to rent this film for 48 hours. Haven’t done that before but I’ll get my money’s worth when I watch it again tomorrow night. So much going on in the action scenes there was no way to catch it all.

And while I’m all hyperbolic, this movie might have the best soundtrack of any action movie I’ve seen and I’ve always thought Quintin Tarantino films owned that.