Day: July 15, 2023

Meh, who cares?

I haven’t been to a theater in a decade. I killed Netflix and Amazon Prime a couple years ago, and Hulu is Next.

I don’t watch network TV

Most of the movies I’m interested in are either old, or from independent or foreign production houses.

It’s not even about “Woke” vs. “NonWoke”, it’s about the quality of the story. I’ll grant you, I don’t like being preached at. So about the time something looks preachy I’m out.

With the streaming services, I found myself asking, “How is it that I have 3 streaming services and still can’t find anything I want to watch that I don’t already own?”

Hulu has started to annoy me because of their algorithms. I can’t confirm this for a fact. But it seems that when I add a movie to my personal Apple TV library, suddenly Hulu starts showing me the exact same movie and encouraging me to view it on their service. Uh… look dumbasses I already own it commercial free, why the hell would I watch a movie that I own through your service with commercials?

Perhaps Hulu, you should have been showing me something new!

The only reason I’ve kept Hulu to this point is that they were more or less cheap and sometimes I’d be able to find a movie I hadn’t seen. They’ve saved me purchasing some real turkeys. But since I enjoy campy sci-fi, even the turkeys in my collection are amusing sometimes.

Speaking of campy sci-fi I saw a photo of what looks like Jane Fonda protesting with the writers. Honestly, the photo made me smile. Jane Fonda did a lot of protesting when I was a young person. There’s a sweet nostalgia seeing her out protesting now. I think I’ll have to fire up Barbarella.

Lilly Tomlin was in that same photo and I thought that was very cool homage to Grace and Frankie which was a show I enjoyed.

Personally I think this strike is ill timed and is going to hurt the writers, producers, and actors much more than it helps.

Like it or not, the COVID years, got everyone used to not going to movies, and a lot of folks, myself included got used to looking for old shows or movies that we remembered fondly.

I can speak for myself when I say I don’t have a clue what is new on the boob tube. When we cut the cable years ago, it seemed that every other show was some form of “Reality TV” that we weren’t interested in at all. So why were we paying over $100 a month to Not watch TV? We didn’t miss it once it was gone and if I put that $100 into old movies and TV shows that we did like we still came out ahead.

But for other folks, this strike is going to feel like nothing more than an extension of COVID production halts and likely, whatever shows or movies aren’t being produced won’t be missed.

I’d strongly suggest that the writers and actors not push this too long. People are fickle and have the attention span of a gnat these days. Give it 6 to 9 months and stupid TicToc challenges will be all the entertainment people remember or need.

On the plus side Alec Baldwin’s epic Rust will probably rot on an editing computer, never to see the light of day.