The Bat Cave! Hiding in plain sight. Who would have guessed? I should have believed the angry TikTokers whining about the Dark Knight fleeing crime-infested Gotham for San Diego. What good is capturing criminals when the DA won’t prosecute and they return to the streets in mere minutes? No wonder he headed West.
Problem: Catch-and-release policies are rampant across California. Prosecution deferrals are increasingly commonplace. Can the Caped Crusader save us? Please!
We return to Mission Beach for a final time, from my April 29, 2024 quickie visit. Subject of the Featured Image is the person working the sand with a metal detector, as two other folks stop their walk to watch.
Once again, I pulled out Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra to make the moment. Vitals: f/3.4, ISO 32, 1/1900 sec, (synthetic) 230mm (digital and optical zoom); 10:39 a.m. PDT. In post-production, I started to lighten up the dark areas, but instead decided to leave the photo as shot. Moody is better, and everyone is considerable distance away.
In late-May 2022, we cut the cord for good—and for real—this time. Our first attempt was during June 2013, and we reconnected not long later. Streaming services couldn’t compare for video quality or, when aggregated, price compared to AT&T U-Verse. Each subsequent effort to cord-cut ended with the Wilcox household returning to IPTV or cable connection.
But recent launches of AMC+, Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, and Paramount+, to name a few, along with content improvements from standard-bearers like Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix, make streaming not only appealing but overwhelming. There is too much content. We had opportunity to switch to a local, 5G wireless Internet provider—and ditched U-Verse at the same time. Now we’re cord-cutters in the purest sense since we no longer have wired Internet.
Over the last couple of weeks, I watched the original “Game of Thrones”, all eight seasons, streamed from HBO Max. My overall impression is much better—with respect to the final, tumultuous episodes that had many fans screaming loud criticism. Continuity is stronger storytelling viewed as a flow from first to the last—stark (no pun intended) difference during the final airing in 2019, when weekly nail-biting waits created so much anxiety and animosity about how the show runners chose to end a story that had advanced beyond the source material (In 2022, George R.R. Martin has yet to catch up the books).
I have two major complaints, though, and both are with the last episode. (Spoilers start here, so stop reading if you haven’t watched the series.) Jon Snow asks Tyrion Lannister about murdering the Dragon Queen: “Was it right? What I did. It doesn’t feel right”. Her death feels wrong. Whoever wrote the dialogue was right to ask the question. Daenerys Targaryen had overcome so many obstacles to reclaim the Iron Throne, only to have everything snatched away so carelessly by a wimpish hand. If Jon Snow had been a fraction of the man that Daenerys was woman, maybe the betrayal would have been better received—or better storytelling, if not at all.
On this solemn Saturday, commemorating the tragic Tuesday 20 years ago, I can’t add much more than past recollections in 2005, 2006, 2015, and 2020. I can strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that you watch National […]
I really want to know. That sentence, the title, and a short list of TV Shows about viral epidemics is as far as this post proceeded when I started it on April 26, 2016. I meant to come back many times over the nearly five years since and really regret the failure following the World Health Organization’s declaration of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2)/COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Still contemplating writing this essay, but not getting to it, I shot and edited the Featured Image on June 11, 2017. San Diego’s Museum of Man (since then renamed to “Us”) featured exhibit “Cannibals: Myth & Reality”. With so many of the virus movies or TV series focused on Zombie apocalypses, the exhibit artwork seemed so perfect illustration. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/1000 sec, 28mm; 2:07 p.m. PDT, Leica Q.
Half a decade later, I wonder: How much did pandemic feature films and TV shows create soil for COVID-19 to grow into a state of global fear—and, as I will opine in six days, far exceeds the real risk posed to the majority of people; whether or not they are infected? Surely, you can guess my answer.
To celebrate my fifty-ninth birthday earlier this week, I acquired on this fine Friday the 13th the same (but slightly newer) model watch worn by both Cassie and Cole on 12 Monkeys, which wrapped its final season one week ago. Coherency and consistency makes for compelling character-driven, superb storytelling. The actors were well-chosen for their roles; the dynamic among them is believable and compelling.
Too many series shift suddenly to reboot the narrative, between seasons. Common tactic: Jumping months or years ahead, and in process changing characters’ circumstances while leaving viewers feeling like they missed something—as previous plots are tossed aside. Not 12 Monkeys, which fourth season was in almost all ways the most entertaining of all. Jennifer Goines performing P!NK for Der Furher is sure to achieve cult-meme status, when the program reaches the right threshold of fans.
Before my wife started watching the new series streaming from Hulu, I warned her: “I can’t imagine how I would feel if a woman”. I had already finished first hour “Offred” from the production based on 1985 tome The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Three episodes are online now—and their tone and timeliness are visceral and all too familiar, like was the Battlestar Galactica miniseries that followed the 9-11 terrorist attacks by two years. There is something that is too real, too possible—and, unlike the so-called Trump “Resistance”, I don’t refer to the current government in Washington, D.C. No imminent right-wing coup is on the horizon, as so many Liberals want to believe. That’s as fictional as The Handmaid’s Tale.
What’s disturbing is another kind of currency, which is largely lost in the torrent of “it could happen here” commentary: The plight of women portrayed in the series isn’t far removed from what many of them experience elsewhere in 2017. Not in some alternate-reality United States, but across swaths of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—if not both American continents and Europe. Severity may vary by degrees, but where on this planet isn’t there, at the least, some vestige of the subservient, objectified woman? Liberals, who as a class supposedly champion for the human rights of all people, shouldn’t ignore what is while obsessing about what might be for fear it could happen to them.
What a difference 12 years and an anniversary makes. Here is the Starship Enterprise on display in the Air and Space Museum, October 2004. In celebration of the TV show’s 50th airdate—Sept. 8, 1966—celebration. the […]
Not since (what was then) SciFi Channel televised the Battlestar Galactica miniseries in 2003 has science fiction storytelling been so good as Ascension, which aired last week. BSG changed the tone and tenure of speculative drama, that felt altogether more real in the aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Later watchers won’t feel the same about the miniseries or full seasons that followed. They’re beret of the shared context that amplified the emotional content.
Ascension’s showrunners smartly seek something similar, but playing reminiscent emotions rather than anger or fear. For aging Baby Boomers, and even their descendants, Ascension is a time tunnel to the early 1960s, perfectly preserved 51 years later. Pop! Let’s look inside the time capsule! i09 calls Ascension “Mad Men in Space”, and there’s something to that allusion. But unlike later Mad Men seasons, which carried the characters forward into the decade’s crises and conflicts, Ascension harkens a golden era of innocence before Civil Rights, Vietnam, war protests, hippies, political assassinations, or even the Beatles.
I grew up watching Canadian TV from the CBC station across the St. John River in New Brunswick. Programs like “The Beachcombers”, “The Friendly Giant”, “Mr. Dressup” and “North of 60”, among many others, delighted. In 1995, my wife, daughter and I moved home to Maine for 18 months, and my daughter watched “Big Comfy Couch” before its stateside debut. Many successful American TV shows were produced in Canada, such as “Battlestar Galactica” and “X-Files” and many HGTV programs.
The Canadian shows have a much different tone than their American counterparts that reminds of British TV. Well, they’re both part of the Commonwealth, eh. Yesterday I discovered CBC drama “The Border” on Netflix and have since streamed four episodes. I like it so far.
It’s a question I’ve pondered for some time, and I’m inclined to answer affirmative. The subliminal cultural impact of television is too easily overlooked, although the New York Times took a politically charged look in March 26 story “For ‘24,’ Terror Fight (and Series) Nears End“. The Times’ perspective is different than one I present here, but worth noting for what’s there and what is not.