The leadership election is going more and more Cleverly’s way.
It is as long a Jenrick chooses him rather than Tugendhat as the repository of 'surplus' vote to knock Badenoch out.
I think Jenrick would prefer to face Tugendhat than Cleverly as Cleverly could run him close.
So it is not impossible he could 'lend' Tugendhat some votes in the next round. Personally though I think Tugendhat is a better bet than Cleverly so that could be a risk for Jenrick.
Cleverly has got Shapps working for him, who will be up to all sorts I don't doubt. My best guess is a few Tugendhat's will vote for Cleverly. Tudendhat is knocked out.
From there it is very difficult to predict but there is no doubt that a campaign, both inside and outside of the party, is being run against Badenoch so I'm guessing manipulation if necessary will ensure a Cleverly Jenrick members' vote.
Tugendhat speaking well so far, articulate and clear. His odds should shorten
Lending votes... So given that Tugendhat or Cleverly is likely to be eliminated next, then it's the survivor of those 2 who is likely to be in a position to lend votes to determine whether they face Jenrick / Badenoch... surely? So it's a choice of who is more likely to shit the bed with the members and suddenly the total lunacy that the pair have been spouting makes sense tactically. They're competing to be selected as the easier opponent to be lent votes by Cleverly/Tugendhat.
The leadership election is going more and more Cleverly’s way.
It is as long a Jenrick chooses him rather than Tugendhat as the repository of 'surplus' vote to knock Badenoch out.
I think Jenrick would prefer to face Tugendhat than Cleverly as Cleverly could run him close.
So it is not impossible he could 'lend' Tugendhat some votes in the next round. Personally though I think Tugendhat is a better bet than Cleverly so that could be a risk for Jenrick.
Cleverly has got Shapps working for him, who will be up to all sorts I don't doubt. My best guess is a few Tugendhat's will vote for Cleverly. Tudendhat is knocked out.
From there it is very difficult to predict but there is no doubt that a campaign, both inside and outside of the party, is being run against Badenoch so I'm guessing manipulation if necessary will ensure a Cleverly Jenrick members' vote.
Tugendhat speaking well so far, articulate and clear. His odds should shorten
Lending votes... So given that Tugendhat or Cleverly is likely to be eliminated next, then it's the survivor of those 2 who is likely to be in a position to lend votes to determine whether they face Jenrick / Badenoch... surely? So it's a choice of who is more likely to shit the bed with the members and suddenly the total lunacy that the pair have been spouting makes sense tactically. They're competing to be selected as the easier opponent to be lent votes by Cleverly/Tugendhat.
Jenrick is through, Badenoch will almost certainly come 3rd, it is between Cleverly and Tugendhat to be the One Nation centrist candidate to face Jenrick with the members
A medical negligence story at Surrey Health Trust. Lot of awful details, but this is the paragraph that concerns me the most. If commenting, I recommend reading the piece.
The trust lost a nine-month legal battle with the BBC and The Times to block access to and redact documents in two employment tribunal cases
It all sounds a bit odd. Surely there are missing details. Why would a surgeon take his penknife into theatre? Was this perhaps an emergency in uncontrolled circumstances like outpatients, or A&E at a stretch? Of course, the unnamed surgeon could just have been an arrogant fool on a power trip at patients' expense.
Presumably the incident was not in an operating theatre, and the surgeon not scrubbed too. There are emergency situations such as a tension pneumothorax where time is of the essence, but rarely in a hospital context. I think that the point of the criticism. In a hospital the equipment is availible, albeit often not immediately to hand. Was the procedure that time critical? Or was it a case of impatient and impetuous action?
I found this bit in the BBC article telling:
"After reviewing the surgeon’s employment record, which included a long wait to become a consultant, Prof Poston said: "I do not know this individual, but you would be concerned that there were problems during the course of that training and progression through training.”"
I have experience of this, and it can be a red flag. The Trainers know the individual is a nightmare, but lack the firm evidence to "release him from training"*, so he carries on to completion, albeit with a bad reputation, but sooner or later gets a job elsewhere. I wouldn't want to be the Training Programme Director with my signature on his Specialist Registration.
* yes this really is the euphemism for chucking someone off the programme.
I really like the idea that incompetent people can become surgeons - often enough that standardising the euphemisms around it is a thing.
It is the age-old joke: what do you call the person who came bottom in medical school? Doctor.
Mishal Husain failed to sufficiently challenge guest over anti-semitic conspiracies, BBC admits
Got to have some sympathy for the BBC over its reporting on the slaughter in the middle east here. Has a fine line to tread and both sides are calling bias. I think, by and large, it gets it right.
It was a very 'Thought for the Day' opening. This is a more traditional leaders conference speech than Tugenhadt's. Personally I prefer it as it comes across as more leader like but I can see why others might find it dull. Big points for the Warhammer figures quip though.
Kemi on Today at the moment. She’s already getting cross with Mishal for the impertinence of asking her for policy proposals.
She's kind of right though. Now is not the time for detailed policy, which will only invite the question of why they did not try it when they ran the country less than six months ago. Now is the time for philosophy and broad direction of travel, for strategy and tactics, for aspiration and vision.
But not getting cross is a key political skill that Kemi needs to work on. It is useful in real life too, especially for night time posting on PB.
Is she ? If you raise a political topic, as a politician, you ought at least to have a rough idea of how you might go about addressing it.
Of course no one expects detailed policy from her, but the odd clue might be good. Until a few months ago, she was a cabinet minister, so she's had more opportunity than most opposition MPs - indeed has been required to have considered views on all manner of policy.
The problem is indeed the contradiction. She’s repeatedly pointed out specific problems as examples of what needs fixing, then refused to say whether she would fix them.
This morning it was all about small businesses having too much regulation and red tape. Then and got shirty when asked what regulations she would tackle.
Any politician talking about excessive regulation should be asked if they've read the long detailed section in the Grenfell Tower Fire Report on the consequences of "deregulation" for building fire safety or the section dealing with the consequences of fire safety assessors (often operating as small, very small in some cases, businesses) not having to comply with any minimum regulations on training, qualifications or competence.
Then they can turn to the evidence of Lord Pickles who, in a vain attempt to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of the policies he loudly espoused, tried to claim that he didn't really mean them and civil servants should have ignored what he said because campaigning was not the same as governing.
Badenoch like so many politicians seems incapable of thinking anything through properly.
The question is - what does the actual regulation do?
A friend, on the management committee for his block, discovered that it was structurally deficient, in addition to the cladding fun. The building company had *rooms* of paperwork on the project. They'd managed to not include any info on testing the concrete, though. Or the flammability of the cladding. Funny that.
The cladding testing reminds me of the testing of British heavy shells for the Royal Navy pre WWI - the tests were elaborate bullshit.
Process and regulation is often used to *hide* defects and problems.
That hammering sound you can hear behind me on the pb webcam is builders bringing us up to scratch after a fire assessment. New fire doors, alarms, and even illuminated signs to guide us down the stairs and out the front door as if it were physically possible to take any other route: no corridors off t-junctions here.
In recent times I was connected with a leading ecommerce website that underwent regular performance tests. The problem was not that the tests were unrealistic but that the pass/fail thresholds were. 10 seconds' delay might be just about acceptable during payment, but not 30 seconds, and not 10 seconds for product search.
Those delay thresholds are the bane of my life where ever I'm working. And most of the time my job is demonstrating that while the bits I do are customer / user facing the actual problem is in that system over there...
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
Mr. Tyndall, wasn't Galadriel (along with Elrond) one who immediately saw through Sauron's disguise?
Yes and although they have played a bit with the time scales on that, it is also what is portrayed in RoP. This is all minor stuff. I do laugh when people ignore the massive changes made by Peter Jackson (whose films I really like) to Tolkein lore but get upset about minor changes and gap filling in Rings of Power.
IMHO, the two worst parts of the LOTR films were the butchery of Denethor’s character, and turning the Dead into the green soap bubbles of death. The first two films were great, I thought. The third, more mixed.
Changing Arwen for Glorfindel and changing the whole end of the book were rather grating at the time.
Arwen taking over Glorfindel's role wasn't especially bad - he has that one scene, really. Given who she is the daughter of, not terribly surprising if she has power in the Unseen.
It removed one of the most powerful elf figures in the whole Canon.
But my real point is the films made massive changes to lore, far more so than RoP. There are dozens of examples. And most of the 'lore' criticisms directed at RoP are clearly based on the crtics not actually knowing the lore in the first place.
As someone who has read pretty much all of the source material. Including The Annotated Shopping Lists of JRR Tolkien, by Christopher Tolkien*, 2,564 pages.
I can agree. A bit.
But the soap opera plotting and setting just feels like the Warcraft film (had to sit through part of that one, when some friends of my youngest daughter were having a sleep over. The horror. The horror.)
*Which includes a forward by Christopher Tolkien decrying the crass commercialisation of his father's work.
That is a difference of personal taste. I don't agree but that does not make my opinion on taste any better or worse than yours of course. Just different. My main point is that the majority of criticisms seem to be on the 'its woke' level or criticisms of the content related to Lore. Both of which are way off the mark.
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
"No mergers, no deals with Reform".
From a LD perspective I hope he loses. But If I were a Tory I'd vote for him.
The YouGov "popularity" polls are dodgy as hell. The methodology is really unclear, and results are way out of line with conventional polls.
My favourite feature is that the list misses out Britain's most "popular" politician - step forward Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Ms Laura Trott.
And anyone who thinks any of YouGov's respondents are thinking of the highly decorated Olympian and smiling face of London 2012 are nasty, bitter h8ers who don't get how strong a grip the Sevenoaks MP has on the nation's heart. See also David Frost, to whom we would all give a warm, "hello, good morning and welcome" if we were lucky enough to meet him.
One adaptation from book to film that I loved was Villeneuve's Dune.
I take @Foxy 's point about films about history. Perhaps, too much accuracy drives away too many viewers. There's a good example of this with Ride with the Devil, to my mind, an outstanding film set in the US civil war, about Confederate Irregular Cavalry in Missouri.
They did the sort of things that Confederate Irregular Cavalry did, and made liberal use of the Forbidden Word, and the film flopped, accordingly. Whereas, something like North and South, which is mostly historical rubbish, performed fantastically.
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
I doubt his claiming he brought down immigration will convince Reform voters to switch from Farage and LD voters woud prefer Tugendhat to him. He is more likely to win over Tory to Labour switchers than voters the Tories have lost to Reform and the LDs.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
amusing to see people slagging off Rings of Power on the previous thread on the basis that it is 'woke'.
This is of course utter bollocks. There is nothing woke about it at all. Moreover most of those criticising its accuracy clearly don't know their Tolkein beyond the Peter Jackson films - which contained huge numbers of inaccuracies themselves.
Rings of Power has just been renewed for its third season and is going from strength to strength. For most Tolkein fans who move beyond just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it is a great series filling in a lot of detail on Tolkein's lore. The 'go woke, go broke' crowd are just bitter because they weren't able to bring it down with their whining about non-white characters.
It hasn't been "renewed" Amazon are contractually obliged to deliver 50 hours of content or they face a huge break fee with the Tolkein estate. It also isn't going from strength to strength, it opened with around half of the viewers that the first season opener did and it has the same downwards viewing trend the first season did which indicates that by the end only around 20% of people who started the first episode of the first season will make it to the end of the second season. It's a disaster but Amazon have no choice but to continue, if they could cancel it and not end up paying the Tolkein estate hundreds of millions in break up fees I'm certain they would do so.
I think the only saving grace for it is that the next season isn't already written like season 2 was before filming so they can start to take fan feedback into account and sack the terrible writers and bring in actual lore experts that won't give us stupid concepts like Orc wives and babies or Galadriel thirsting after Sauron even after she fucking knows it's Sauron. I think there's been an admission within Amazon studios that they need to change direction on the story and lore so I expect season 3 will be much closer to what people expected from the beginning.
I actually agree with most of this (I think the writing is terrible and on a par with the final season of Game of Thrones - Bret Devereaux has a good write-up of all the issues here and elsewhere), but the Orc babies thing isn't a stupid concept. It's how Orcs reproduced canonically (the "growing from the mud" thing was a Peter Jackson invention). It's how you could have "Bolg, son of Azog" in The Hobbit. Orcs reproduce "after the manner of Elves and Men," and Tolkien stated in a letter that "there must have been orc-women"
The terrible writing simply matches that for Game Of Thrones, Foundation and the Star Wars films.
They keep riding billion dollar properties into the ground. Because reasons. And having some good bits in there, somewhere, isn't an excuse.
I hardly ever watch box sets and/or serials, but I watched "Star Wars: Andor" last month, and was pleasantly surprised how good it was!
It's very audience specific.
ANDOR "Andor" is about middle-aged men trapped in a system of constant labour with no rest, where the lowest rung are automatically punished and the higher rung given only modest pleasures, with this system being imposed by the extraordinarily powerful. This appeals to the legacy audience of Star Wars, who are middle-aged men trapped in a...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTAjkDICyu0
THE ACOLYTE "The Acolyte" is about a young woman who is forced to be automatically good becoming aware of an identical twin who is free to be very bad at whim. This appeals to the new audience that Disney hopes to attract to Star Wars, which are young women...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://damiengwalter.medium.com/the-acolyte-is-good-20f775367c55
amusing to see people slagging off Rings of Power on the previous thread on the basis that it is 'woke'.
This is of course utter bollocks. There is nothing woke about it at all. Moreover most of those criticising its accuracy clearly don't know their Tolkein beyond the Peter Jackson films - which contained huge numbers of inaccuracies themselves.
Rings of Power has just been renewed for its third season and is going from strength to strength. For most Tolkein fans who move beyond just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it is a great series filling in a lot of detail on Tolkein's lore. The 'go woke, go broke' crowd are just bitter because they weren't able to bring it down with their whining about non-white characters.
It hasn't been "renewed" Amazon are contractually obliged to deliver 50 hours of content or they face a huge break fee with the Tolkein estate. It also isn't going from strength to strength, it opened with around half of the viewers that the first season opener did and it has the same downwards viewing trend the first season did which indicates that by the end only around 20% of people who started the first episode of the first season will make it to the end of the second season. It's a disaster but Amazon have no choice but to continue, if they could cancel it and not end up paying the Tolkein estate hundreds of millions in break up fees I'm certain they would do so.
I think the only saving grace for it is that the next season isn't already written like season 2 was before filming so they can start to take fan feedback into account and sack the terrible writers and bring in actual lore experts that won't give us stupid concepts like Orc wives and babies or Galadriel thirsting after Sauron even after she fucking knows it's Sauron. I think there's been an admission within Amazon studios that they need to change direction on the story and lore so I expect season 3 will be much closer to what people expected from the beginning.
I actually agree with most of this (I think the writing is terrible and on a par with the final season of Game of Thrones - Bret Devereaux has a good write-up of all the issues here and elsewhere), but the Orc babies thing isn't a stupid concept. It's how Orcs reproduced canonically (the "growing from the mud" thing was a Peter Jackson invention). It's how you could have "Bolg, son of Azog" in The Hobbit. Orcs reproduce "after the manner of Elves and Men," and Tolkien stated in a letter that "there must have been orc-women"
The terrible writing simply matches that for Game Of Thrones, Foundation and the Star Wars films.
They keep riding billion dollar properties into the ground. Because reasons. And having some good bits in there, somewhere, isn't an excuse.
Modern writing to me suffers a bit too much from indulging in audience fantasies/wants rather than focussing on telling a story.
A lot of franchises have gone the way of reading like bad fan fiction and I think that’s a product of the lack of restraint. Sometimes you don’t need to write to cater for the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” or “let’s come up with 100 theories for why this happened” crowd. Let people fill in the gaps themselves - that makes the stories more engaging and enjoyable.
As a general rule I don't watch films made (I use the term loosely) from books I've enjoyed. I've found I ended up irritated, disappointed, or both.
Clint Eastwood was told, to his face, that he was a bad film maker. Because the film Firefox followed the book *too* closely.
Some rather fun stuff came out about how the writers and execs on the Harry Potter films *hated* being forced to keep reasonably close to the books.
Zac Snyder's Watchmen suffered a similar problem. He followed much of the original Alan Moore Comic book almost frame for frame (although he did make some major changes to the nature of the threat) but it was just too close and made it rather sterile.
More that the studio didn't quite know what to do with a dark, anti-superhero story.
Then came The Boys
The Boys, Preacher, The Expanse. I find it hard to agree with this idea that we are not in a time of great TV.
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
I doubt his claiming he brought down immigration will convince Reform voters to switch from Farage and LD voters woud prefer Tugendhat to him. He is more likely to win over Tory to Labour switchers than voters the Tories have lost to Reform and the LDs.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
He is far and away the best choice for the leadership
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
I doubt his claiming he brought down immigration will convince Reform voters to switch from Farage and LD voters woud prefer Tugendhat to him. He is more likely to win over Tory to Labour switchers than voters the Tories have lost to Reform and the LDs.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
In the light of Labour's implosion, perhaps your earlier assessment that you need someone with oomph is wrong and all you need is a bit of quiet gravitas, which he seems to have more of than the other options.
As somebody more used to the Star Wars/Star Trek[1]/Dr Who fan arguments, I have to say this LOTR argument on here is far more refined. Nobody here has threatened anybody yet. Well done.
[1] the pylons on the USS Enterprise in the Discovery era should not be that shape and if you think otherwise you are against God and should die.
Yeah, imagine how a debate like this would play out on Twitter or Gallifreybase ?
Imagine Ian Levine with a firm view one way or the other involving himself in the debate
Would The Rings of Power be better if John Nathan-Turner or Russell T. Davies was the writing the episodes.
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
I doubt his claiming he brought down immigration will convince Reform voters to switch from Farage and LD voters woud prefer Tugendhat to him. He is more likely to win over Tory to Labour switchers than voters the Tories have lost to Reform and the LDs.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
He's speaking s l o w l y and deliberately. The audience is listening to him, and lots of applause. Now 3.1 on Betfair. Now 2.8
amusing to see people slagging off Rings of Power on the previous thread on the basis that it is 'woke'.
This is of course utter bollocks. There is nothing woke about it at all. Moreover most of those criticising its accuracy clearly don't know their Tolkein beyond the Peter Jackson films - which contained huge numbers of inaccuracies themselves.
Rings of Power has just been renewed for its third season and is going from strength to strength. For most Tolkein fans who move beyond just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it is a great series filling in a lot of detail on Tolkein's lore. The 'go woke, go broke' crowd are just bitter because they weren't able to bring it down with their whining about non-white characters.
It hasn't been "renewed" Amazon are contractually obliged to deliver 50 hours of content or they face a huge break fee with the Tolkein estate. It also isn't going from strength to strength, it opened with around half of the viewers that the first season opener did and it has the same downwards viewing trend the first season did which indicates that by the end only around 20% of people who started the first episode of the first season will make it to the end of the second season. It's a disaster but Amazon have no choice but to continue, if they could cancel it and not end up paying the Tolkein estate hundreds of millions in break up fees I'm certain they would do so.
I think the only saving grace for it is that the next season isn't already written like season 2 was before filming so they can start to take fan feedback into account and sack the terrible writers and bring in actual lore experts that won't give us stupid concepts like Orc wives and babies or Galadriel thirsting after Sauron even after she fucking knows it's Sauron. I think there's been an admission within Amazon studios that they need to change direction on the story and lore so I expect season 3 will be much closer to what people expected from the beginning.
I actually agree with most of this (I think the writing is terrible and on a par with the final season of Game of Thrones - Bret Devereaux has a good write-up of all the issues here and elsewhere), but the Orc babies thing isn't a stupid concept. It's how Orcs reproduced canonically (the "growing from the mud" thing was a Peter Jackson invention). It's how you could have "Bolg, son of Azog" in The Hobbit. Orcs reproduce "after the manner of Elves and Men," and Tolkien stated in a letter that "there must have been orc-women"
The terrible writing simply matches that for Game Of Thrones, Foundation and the Star Wars films.
They keep riding billion dollar properties into the ground. Because reasons. And having some good bits in there, somewhere, isn't an excuse.
I hardly ever watch box sets and/or serials, but I watched "Star Wars: Andor" last month, and was pleasantly surprised how good it was!
It's very audience specific.
ANDOR "Andor" is about middle-aged men trapped in a system of constant labour with no rest, where the lowest rung are automatically punished and the higher rung given only modest pleasures, with this system being imposed by the extraordinarily powerful. This appeals to the legacy audience of Star Wars, who are middle-aged men trapped in a...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTAjkDICyu0
THE ACOLYTE "The Acolyte" is about a young woman who is forced to be automatically good becoming aware of an identical twin who is free to be very bad at whim. This appeals to the new audience that Disney hopes to attract to Star Wars, which are young women...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://damiengwalter.medium.com/the-acolyte-is-good-20f775367c55
The Acolyte was rubbish, it was rightly cancelled.
As somebody more used to the Star Wars/Star Trek[1]/Dr Who fan arguments, I have to say this LOTR argument on here is far more refined. Nobody here has threatened anybody yet. Well done.
[1] the pylons on the USS Enterprise in the Discovery era should not be that shape and if you think otherwise you are against God and should die.
Why do they even need pylons when they have direct energy transmission ... ?
Canonically, the pylons need to have uninterrupted line-of-sight to each other. This is usually explained by a flow of energy between them, although my head canon says that the space between them is stressed by the warp process, causing metal fatigue, eventual sickness, etc. My head-canon is great and explains all things, only briefly interrupted by reality proving it wrong.
As somebody more used to the Star Wars/Star Trek[1]/Dr Who fan arguments, I have to say this LOTR argument on here is far more refined. Nobody here has threatened anybody yet. Well done.
[1] the pylons on the USS Enterprise in the Discovery era should not be that shape and if you think otherwise you are against God and should die.
Yeah, imagine how a debate like this would play out on Twitter or Gallifreybase ?
Imagine Ian Levine with a firm view one way or the other involving himself in the debate
Would The Rings of Power be better if John Nathan-Turner or Russell T. Davies was the writing the episodes.
Douglas Adams's Ring of Power is the show I want to see...
Meanwhile Apple has come with a wet sail and its top three viewed series are Slow Horses (excellent), Ted Lasso (excellent), and Bad Monkey (very good indeed).
They seem to be leading the pack atm.
Slow Horses is possibly the best TV drama since Breaking Bad. It’s that good.
amusing to see people slagging off Rings of Power on the previous thread on the basis that it is 'woke'.
This is of course utter bollocks. There is nothing woke about it at all. Moreover most of those criticising its accuracy clearly don't know their Tolkein beyond the Peter Jackson films - which contained huge numbers of inaccuracies themselves.
Rings of Power has just been renewed for its third season and is going from strength to strength. For most Tolkein fans who move beyond just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it is a great series filling in a lot of detail on Tolkein's lore. The 'go woke, go broke' crowd are just bitter because they weren't able to bring it down with their whining about non-white characters.
It hasn't been "renewed" Amazon are contractually obliged to deliver 50 hours of content or they face a huge break fee with the Tolkein estate. It also isn't going from strength to strength, it opened with around half of the viewers that the first season opener did and it has the same downwards viewing trend the first season did which indicates that by the end only around 20% of people who started the first episode of the first season will make it to the end of the second season. It's a disaster but Amazon have no choice but to continue, if they could cancel it and not end up paying the Tolkein estate hundreds of millions in break up fees I'm certain they would do so.
I think the only saving grace for it is that the next season isn't already written like season 2 was before filming so they can start to take fan feedback into account and sack the terrible writers and bring in actual lore experts that won't give us stupid concepts like Orc wives and babies or Galadriel thirsting after Sauron even after she fucking knows it's Sauron. I think there's been an admission within Amazon studios that they need to change direction on the story and lore so I expect season 3 will be much closer to what people expected from the beginning.
I actually agree with most of this (I think the writing is terrible and on a par with the final season of Game of Thrones - Bret Devereaux has a good write-up of all the issues here and elsewhere), but the Orc babies thing isn't a stupid concept. It's how Orcs reproduced canonically (the "growing from the mud" thing was a Peter Jackson invention). It's how you could have "Bolg, son of Azog" in The Hobbit. Orcs reproduce "after the manner of Elves and Men," and Tolkien stated in a letter that "there must have been orc-women"
The terrible writing simply matches that for Game Of Thrones, Foundation and the Star Wars films.
They keep riding billion dollar properties into the ground. Because reasons. And having some good bits in there, somewhere, isn't an excuse.
I hardly ever watch box sets and/or serials, but I watched "Star Wars: Andor" last month, and was pleasantly surprised how good it was!
It's very audience specific.
ANDOR "Andor" is about middle-aged men trapped in a system of constant labour with no rest, where the lowest rung are automatically punished and the higher rung given only modest pleasures, with this system being imposed by the extraordinarily powerful. This appeals to the legacy audience of Star Wars, who are middle-aged men trapped in a...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTAjkDICyu0
THE ACOLYTE "The Acolyte" is about a young woman who is forced to be automatically good becoming aware of an identical twin who is free to be very bad at whim. This appeals to the new audience that Disney hopes to attract to Star Wars, which are young women...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://damiengwalter.medium.com/the-acolyte-is-good-20f775367c55
The Acolyte was rubbish, it was rightly cancelled.
Yeah, truly awful. I couldn't make it to the end but read what happened in the final episodes and glad I gave up on it. I heard the viewing figures were so bad by the end that Disney are looking into doing a Willow and just taking it off the platform entirely and pretending it never happened.
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
"No mergers, no deals with Reform".
From a LD perspective I hope he loses. But If I were a Tory I'd vote for him.
He's quite obviously the best choice for winning seats back at the next GE and has some interesting ideas like SDLT changes. Sense of humour and does not appear to be gratuitously malevolent or weird.
amusing to see people slagging off Rings of Power on the previous thread on the basis that it is 'woke'.
This is of course utter bollocks. There is nothing woke about it at all. Moreover most of those criticising its accuracy clearly don't know their Tolkein beyond the Peter Jackson films - which contained huge numbers of inaccuracies themselves.
Rings of Power has just been renewed for its third season and is going from strength to strength. For most Tolkein fans who move beyond just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it is a great series filling in a lot of detail on Tolkein's lore. The 'go woke, go broke' crowd are just bitter because they weren't able to bring it down with their whining about non-white characters.
It hasn't been "renewed" Amazon are contractually obliged to deliver 50 hours of content or they face a huge break fee with the Tolkein estate. It also isn't going from strength to strength, it opened with around half of the viewers that the first season opener did and it has the same downwards viewing trend the first season did which indicates that by the end only around 20% of people who started the first episode of the first season will make it to the end of the second season. It's a disaster but Amazon have no choice but to continue, if they could cancel it and not end up paying the Tolkein estate hundreds of millions in break up fees I'm certain they would do so.
I think the only saving grace for it is that the next season isn't already written like season 2 was before filming so they can start to take fan feedback into account and sack the terrible writers and bring in actual lore experts that won't give us stupid concepts like Orc wives and babies or Galadriel thirsting after Sauron even after she fucking knows it's Sauron. I think there's been an admission within Amazon studios that they need to change direction on the story and lore so I expect season 3 will be much closer to what people expected from the beginning.
I actually agree with most of this (I think the writing is terrible and on a par with the final season of Game of Thrones - Bret Devereaux has a good write-up of all the issues here and elsewhere), but the Orc babies thing isn't a stupid concept. It's how Orcs reproduced canonically (the "growing from the mud" thing was a Peter Jackson invention). It's how you could have "Bolg, son of Azog" in The Hobbit. Orcs reproduce "after the manner of Elves and Men," and Tolkien stated in a letter that "there must have been orc-women"
The terrible writing simply matches that for Game Of Thrones, Foundation and the Star Wars films.
They keep riding billion dollar properties into the ground. Because reasons. And having some good bits in there, somewhere, isn't an excuse.
Modern writing to me suffers a bit too much from indulging in audience fantasies/wants rather than focussing on telling a story.
A lot of franchises have gone the way of reading like bad fan fiction and I think that’s a product of the lack of restraint. Sometimes you don’t need to write to cater for the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” or “let’s come up with 100 theories for why this happened” crowd. Let people fill in the gaps themselves - that makes the stories more engaging and enjoyable.
As a general rule I don't watch films made (I use the term loosely) from books I've enjoyed. I've found I ended up irritated, disappointed, or both.
Clint Eastwood was told, to his face, that he was a bad film maker. Because the film Firefox followed the book *too* closely.
Some rather fun stuff came out about how the writers and execs on the Harry Potter films *hated* being forced to keep reasonably close to the books.
Zac Snyder's Watchmen suffered a similar problem. He followed much of the original Alan Moore Comic book almost frame for frame (although he did make some major changes to the nature of the threat) but it was just too close and made it rather sterile.
More that the studio didn't quite know what to do with a dark, anti-superhero story.
Then came The Boys
The Boys, Preacher, The Expanse. I find it hard to agree with this idea that we are not in a time of great TV.
I find it hard to agree with the idea that i isn't possible to make great TV and films.
I also find it hard to agree with the idea that tons of shit is being made. Said shit isn't shit because of woke. But because it is written by people rejected from Brazilian telenovela writing.
Also incidentally, the Warhammer fan film "Astartes" is one of the best animated fan-fics ever. I'm not into the franchise, but even I can tell the fanfic is really good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7hgjuFfn3A
(I won't bother you with my decade-old Babylon 5 fanfic on alternatehistory.com... )
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
I doubt his claiming he brought down immigration will convince Reform voters to switch from Farage and LD voters woud prefer Tugendhat to him. He is more likely to win over Tory to Labour switchers than voters the Tories have lost to Reform and the LDs.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
He's speaking s l o w l y and deliberately. The audience is listening to him, and lots of applause. Now 3.1 on Betfair. Now 2.8
So it's going to be Jendrick versus Cleverley.
Probably but we will see, if that is the choice I would vote for Jenrick I think
amusing to see people slagging off Rings of Power on the previous thread on the basis that it is 'woke'.
This is of course utter bollocks. There is nothing woke about it at all. Moreover most of those criticising its accuracy clearly don't know their Tolkein beyond the Peter Jackson films - which contained huge numbers of inaccuracies themselves.
Rings of Power has just been renewed for its third season and is going from strength to strength. For most Tolkein fans who move beyond just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it is a great series filling in a lot of detail on Tolkein's lore. The 'go woke, go broke' crowd are just bitter because they weren't able to bring it down with their whining about non-white characters.
It hasn't been "renewed" Amazon are contractually obliged to deliver 50 hours of content or they face a huge break fee with the Tolkein estate. It also isn't going from strength to strength, it opened with around half of the viewers that the first season opener did and it has the same downwards viewing trend the first season did which indicates that by the end only around 20% of people who started the first episode of the first season will make it to the end of the second season. It's a disaster but Amazon have no choice but to continue, if they could cancel it and not end up paying the Tolkein estate hundreds of millions in break up fees I'm certain they would do so.
I think the only saving grace for it is that the next season isn't already written like season 2 was before filming so they can start to take fan feedback into account and sack the terrible writers and bring in actual lore experts that won't give us stupid concepts like Orc wives and babies or Galadriel thirsting after Sauron even after she fucking knows it's Sauron. I think there's been an admission within Amazon studios that they need to change direction on the story and lore so I expect season 3 will be much closer to what people expected from the beginning.
I actually agree with most of this (I think the writing is terrible and on a par with the final season of Game of Thrones - Bret Devereaux has a good write-up of all the issues here and elsewhere), but the Orc babies thing isn't a stupid concept. It's how Orcs reproduced canonically (the "growing from the mud" thing was a Peter Jackson invention). It's how you could have "Bolg, son of Azog" in The Hobbit. Orcs reproduce "after the manner of Elves and Men," and Tolkien stated in a letter that "there must have been orc-women"
The terrible writing simply matches that for Game Of Thrones, Foundation and the Star Wars films.
They keep riding billion dollar properties into the ground. Because reasons. And having some good bits in there, somewhere, isn't an excuse.
I hardly ever watch box sets and/or serials, but I watched "Star Wars: Andor" last month, and was pleasantly surprised how good it was!
It's very audience specific.
ANDOR "Andor" is about middle-aged men trapped in a system of constant labour with no rest, where the lowest rung are automatically punished and the higher rung given only modest pleasures, with this system being imposed by the extraordinarily powerful. This appeals to the legacy audience of Star Wars, who are middle-aged men trapped in a...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTAjkDICyu0
THE ACOLYTE "The Acolyte" is about a young woman who is forced to be automatically good becoming aware of an identical twin who is free to be very bad at whim. This appeals to the new audience that Disney hopes to attract to Star Wars, which are young women...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://damiengwalter.medium.com/the-acolyte-is-good-20f775367c55
The Acolyte was rubbish, it was rightly cancelled.
Unless you are pulling off some epic sockpuppeting, you are not a twelve-year-old girl...
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
I doubt his claiming he brought down immigration will convince Reform voters to switch from Farage and LD voters woud prefer Tugendhat to him. He is more likely to win over Tory to Labour switchers than voters the Tories have lost to Reform and the LDs.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
He's speaking s l o w l y and deliberately. The audience is listening to him, and lots of applause. Now 3.1 on Betfair. Now 2.8
So it's going to be Jendrick versus Cleverley.
Probably but we will see, if that is the choice I would vote for Jenrick I think
Then you are being very foolish and haven't put the conservative party best interests first
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
"No mergers, no deals with Reform".
From a LD perspective I hope he loses. But If I were a Tory I'd vote for him.
He's quite obviously the best choice for winning seats back at the next GE and has some interesting ideas like SDLT changes. Sense of humour and does not appear to be gratuitously malevolent or weird.
Big opportunity for the Conservatives.
Also he mentioned the bicycle as a great British invention (debatable). Very hard to not to like him tbh.
I did feel like apologising to random tourists on the streets as they were cowering in their pac-a-macs in the gloom walking around the West End.
Yep, warmer air has a higher capacity for moisture and warmer seas have higher evaporation...
Are you saying I should tell them it's their own stupid fault for flying here in the first place.
Anyone who flies to England and is shocked by rainfall is deserving of as much sympathy as those who fly to the Dubai are are shocked that it's a bit hot.
The weather’s slowly getting better. 36ºC today, first rain of the year in the mountains, and we could be down to 33ºC maximums by the weekend. Can’t wait for winter!
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
I doubt his claiming he brought down immigration will convince Reform voters to switch from Farage and LD voters woud prefer Tugendhat to him. He is more likely to win over Tory to Labour switchers than voters the Tories have lost to Reform and the LDs.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
In the light of Labour's implosion, perhaps your earlier assessment that you need someone with oomph is wrong and all you need is a bit of quiet gravitas, which he seems to have more of than the other options.
PMs going straight into the role need gravitas, Cleverly would be OK for that.
Getting very excited over a speech most voters in this election won't even see. He gives a good speech, but he's fundamentally out of step with the Conservative base, and claiming he was a success on migration is pure fantasy. Not willing to reckon with why they really lost.
As somebody more used to the Star Wars/Star Trek[1]/Dr Who fan arguments, I have to say this LOTR argument on here is far more refined. Nobody here has threatened anybody yet. Well done.
[1] the pylons on the USS Enterprise in the Discovery era should not be that shape and if you think otherwise you are against God and should die.
Yeah, imagine how a debate like this would play out on Twitter or Gallifreybase ?
Imagine Ian Levine with a firm view one way or the other involving himself in the debate
Would The Rings of Power be better if John Nathan-Turner or Russell T. Davies was the writing the episodes.
Well it would certainly be flamboyant and Hawaiin shirts the order of the day.
The leadership election is going more and more Cleverly’s way.
It is as long a Jenrick chooses him rather than Tugendhat as the repository of 'surplus' vote to knock Badenoch out.
I think Jenrick would prefer to face Tugendhat than Cleverly as Cleverly could run him close.
So it is not impossible he could 'lend' Tugendhat some votes in the next round. Personally though I think Tugendhat is a better bet than Cleverly so that could be a risk for Jenrick.
Cleverly has got Shapps working for him, who will be up to all sorts I don't doubt. My best guess is a few Tugendhat's will vote for Cleverly. Tudendhat is knocked out.
From there it is very difficult to predict but there is no doubt that a campaign, both inside and outside of the party, is being run against Badenoch so I'm guessing manipulation if necessary will ensure a Cleverly Jenrick members' vote.
Tugendhat speaking well so far, articulate and clear. His odds should shorten
Lending votes... So given that Tugendhat or Cleverly is likely to be eliminated next, then it's the survivor of those 2 who is likely to be in a position to lend votes to determine whether they face Jenrick / Badenoch... surely? So it's a choice of who is more likely to shit the bed with the members and suddenly the total lunacy that the pair have been spouting makes sense tactically. They're competing to be selected as the easier opponent to be lent votes by Cleverly/Tugendhat.
Jenrick is through, Badenoch will almost certainly come 3rd, it is between Cleverly and Tugendhat to be the One Nation centrist candidate to face Jenrick with the members
Nobody is through until they've counted the round 4 votes. Assuming Stride's votes stay moderate, round 3 is Jenrick 33, Badenoch 28 and then either C or T. Potentially C or T then has 58 votes but only need 40, so can decide whether they face Jenrick or Badenoch, unless career minded Cleverly/Tugendhat supporters switch to Jenrick.
Getting very excited over a speech most voters in this election won't even see. He gives a good speech, but he's fundamentally out of step with the Conservative base, and claiming he was a success on migration is pure fantasy. Not willing to reckon with why they really lost.
Not for me, I would vote for Jenrick over Cleverly I think but Tugendhat first
Cleverley is pitching a central positive position that could appeal to both Reform and LD voters and unite the party. So he's bound to lose. Though his odds are now shortening further.
I doubt his claiming he brought down immigration will convince Reform voters to switch from Farage and LD voters woud prefer Tugendhat to him. He is more likely to win over Tory to Labour switchers than voters the Tories have lost to Reform and the LDs.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
In the light of Labour's implosion, perhaps your earlier assessment that you need someone with oomph is wrong and all you need is a bit of quiet gravitas, which he seems to have more of than the other options.
PMs going straight into the role need gravitas, Cleverly would be OK for that.
Opposition leaders need charisma and oomph
Did you pay any attention when SKS was the leader of the opposition. Charisma and Oomph are not exactly words that you would use to describe him.
Getting very excited over a speech most voters in this election won't even see. He gives a good speech, but he's fundamentally out of step with the Conservative base, and claiming he was a success on migration is pure fantasy. Not willing to reckon with why they really lost.
He is the one the opposition fear most
Baseless platitude. The leader required is the one who gets back the voters who defected or stayed at home, often largely due to Cleverly's personal failure on immigration.
As somebody more used to the Star Wars/Star Trek[1]/Dr Who fan arguments, I have to say this LOTR argument on here is far more refined. Nobody here has threatened anybody yet. Well done.
[1] the pylons on the USS Enterprise in the Discovery era should not be that shape and if you think otherwise you are against God and should die.
Yeah, imagine how a debate like this would play out on Twitter or Gallifreybase ?
Imagine Ian Levine with a firm view one way or the other involving himself in the debate
Would The Rings of Power be better if John Nathan-Turner or Russell T. Davies was the writing the episodes.
RTD (2005-2010) would have set-up series-long arcs with an epic ending where the companion saves the day JNT (1980-1987) would have paid far too much attention to the fans whilst attracting attention by stunt-casting that usually doesn't work RTD (2023-present) would be all over the place, with some bangers but a main character that's too passive and cries a lot.
Getting very excited over a speech most voters in this election won't even see. He gives a good speech, but he's fundamentally out of step with the Conservative base, and claiming he was a success on migration is pure fantasy. Not willing to reckon with why they really lost.
He is the one the opposition fear most
Baseless platitude. The leader required is the one who gets back the voters who defected or stayed at home, often largely due to Cleverly's personal failure on immigration.
His personal failure? Wasn't it Badenoch who lobbied for immigration restrictions to be lifted?
It was a very 'Thought for the Day' opening. This is a more traditional leaders conference speech than Tugenhadt's. Personally I prefer it as it comes across as more leader like but I can see why others might find it dull. Big points for the Warhammer figures quip though.
I need to see photos of some of his models and how fluffy his lists are.
Another unfunded commitment from Cleverly. He is really stacking them up.
Hmmm. Although I take your point (talk is cheap etc) I think it's a bit much to expect candidates in a leadership election, several years out from a General Election, to write a Budget. At this point, it's about setting out priorities for your leadership.
It's fair to wade in if, having been elected LOTO, someone continues to rack up expensive promises and doesn't back it up with a broad fiscal plan within a year or so. But the work of an Opposition (as well as opposing, of course) is to develop a plan, not to come in with a complete plan on day one.
When you become the new leader of a governing party, you of course have an existing plan on day one - it's not your plan, and you want to put your stamp on it, but you don't have a blank sheet of paper. One minor defence of Liz Truss is that her predecessor didn't have much of a plan and ran on bluster and guff, so she (and Sunak) did need to try to develop something in flight. She made a dreadful job of it, and he was only marginally better, but still.
As somebody more used to the Star Wars/Star Trek[1]/Dr Who fan arguments, I have to say this LOTR argument on here is far more refined. Nobody here has threatened anybody yet. Well done.
[1] the pylons on the USS Enterprise in the Discovery era should not be that shape and if you think otherwise you are against God and should die.
Yeah, imagine how a debate like this would play out on Twitter or Gallifreybase ?
Imagine Ian Levine with a firm view one way or the other involving himself in the debate
Would The Rings of Power be better if John Nathan-Turner or Russell T. Davies was the writing the episodes.
They should have Joe Abercrombie writing the episodes.
I assume the Yougov leader ratings quoted up thread are gross favourability. That usually gives the highest scores to the most divisive but cultish figures and the lowest to the inoffensive triangulators. Corbyn used to do well on gross favourability.
Kemi on Today at the moment. She’s already getting cross with Mishal for the impertinence of asking her for policy proposals.
She's kind of right though. Now is not the time for detailed policy, which will only invite the question of why they did not try it when they ran the country less than six months ago. Now is the time for philosophy and broad direction of travel, for strategy and tactics, for aspiration and vision.
But not getting cross is a key political skill that Kemi needs to work on. It is useful in real life too, especially for night time posting on PB.
I don’t really agree. The Tories, including Kemi have only just left Government. They should absolutely be all over policy, and proposing solutions to issues affecting delivery, or changes to the broader policy direction, should be well within their capability. It's pretty daft for Kemi to expect to be elected on the basis of having no policies but 'here's my personality, isn't if great?'. It also feels dishonest - like she can do what the heck she likes when she gets in with no comeback. Frankly she could apply to rejoin the EU or make the UK into one huge asylum centre if she wanted to, but as long as she's doing it in that plucky Kemi way, we should all love it. It's like the Kemi version of a Ming vase strategy - and we all know how great that turned out.
Mr. F, Abercrombie's written some very good books (been a while since I read them, though). Ever read the Thorns books by Mark Lawrence? Rather liked them.
I don't think Cleverly will make the final two. Jenrick has the numbers among MPs, and probably with sufficient comfort to enable him to pick his opponent through tactical voting. This conference has probably convinced his team that his opponent shouldn't be Cleverly.
It feels like the direction of travel is moving in favour of Cleverly
You mean the membership is FINALLY getting smacked upside the head by reality?
There's something about Jenrick which doesn't quite convince or sit right with me. Given his level of MP support he must have something.
Cleverley was excellent. Tugendhat limp.
The vibe in Birmingham yesterday seemed cheery and relaxed. In that context I could imagine Mr Avuncular would go down much better than our Brandon Flowers lookalike trying to channel Ralph Fiennes
It feels like the direction of travel is moving in favour of Cleverly
You mean the membership is FINALLY getting smacked upside the head by reality?
He is supposed to be the one with the best judgment of the candidates and yet is the same person who at a Downing St reception thought it a good idea to talk about drugging his wife with Rohypnol, and thought if its only a little bit of the drug its not really illegal.
I don't think Cleverly will make the final two. Jenrick has the numbers among MPs, and probably with sufficient comfort to enable him to pick his opponent through tactical voting. This conference has probably convinced his team that his opponent shouldn't be Cleverly.
Yes - I see that - but does he have the numbers though?
This team won't want Badenoch either (unless she balls up her speech) and they won't be able to engineer a Tugendhat path through to the final two, surely?
As somebody more used to the Star Wars/Star Trek[1]/Dr Who fan arguments, I have to say this LOTR argument on here is far more refined. Nobody here has threatened anybody yet. Well done.
[1] the pylons on the USS Enterprise in the Discovery era should not be that shape and if you think otherwise you are against God and should die.
Yeah, imagine how a debate like this would play out on Twitter or Gallifreybase ?
Imagine Ian Levine with a firm view one way or the other involving himself in the debate
Would The Rings of Power be better if John Nathan-Turner or Russell T. Davies was the writing the episodes.
RTD (2005-2010) would have set-up series-long arcs with an epic ending where the companion saves the day JNT (1980-1987) would have paid far too much attention to the fans whilst attracting attention by stunt-casting that usually doesn't work RTD (2023-present) would be all over the place, with some bangers but a main character that's too passive and cries a lot.
Mr. F, Abercrombie's written some very good books (been a while since I read them, though). Ever read the Thorns books by Mark Lawrence? Rather liked them.
And, Abercrombie is a script writer. IMHO, the final seasons of Game of Thrones would have been far better had he written the scripts (it's plain that Benioff & Weiss are not good scriptwriters).
I tried the first Thorns book, and even for me, it was too dark and depressing. When you have the protagonist recounting raping a farmer's daughter, before burning her alive with her family, it puts you off a character.
amusing to see people slagging off Rings of Power on the previous thread on the basis that it is 'woke'.
This is of course utter bollocks. There is nothing woke about it at all. Moreover most of those criticising its accuracy clearly don't know their Tolkein beyond the Peter Jackson films - which contained huge numbers of inaccuracies themselves.
Rings of Power has just been renewed for its third season and is going from strength to strength. For most Tolkein fans who move beyond just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it is a great series filling in a lot of detail on Tolkein's lore. The 'go woke, go broke' crowd are just bitter because they weren't able to bring it down with their whining about non-white characters.
It hasn't been "renewed" Amazon are contractually obliged to deliver 50 hours of content or they face a huge break fee with the Tolkein estate. It also isn't going from strength to strength, it opened with around half of the viewers that the first season opener did and it has the same downwards viewing trend the first season did which indicates that by the end only around 20% of people who started the first episode of the first season will make it to the end of the second season. It's a disaster but Amazon have no choice but to continue, if they could cancel it and not end up paying the Tolkein estate hundreds of millions in break up fees I'm certain they would do so.
I think the only saving grace for it is that the next season isn't already written like season 2 was before filming so they can start to take fan feedback into account and sack the terrible writers and bring in actual lore experts that won't give us stupid concepts like Orc wives and babies or Galadriel thirsting after Sauron even after she fucking knows it's Sauron. I think there's been an admission within Amazon studios that they need to change direction on the story and lore so I expect season 3 will be much closer to what people expected from the beginning.
I actually agree with most of this (I think the writing is terrible and on a par with the final season of Game of Thrones - Bret Devereaux has a good write-up of all the issues here and elsewhere), but the Orc babies thing isn't a stupid concept. It's how Orcs reproduced canonically (the "growing from the mud" thing was a Peter Jackson invention). It's how you could have "Bolg, son of Azog" in The Hobbit. Orcs reproduce "after the manner of Elves and Men," and Tolkien stated in a letter that "there must have been orc-women"
The terrible writing simply matches that for Game Of Thrones, Foundation and the Star Wars films.
They keep riding billion dollar properties into the ground. Because reasons. And having some good bits in there, somewhere, isn't an excuse.
Modern writing to me suffers a bit too much from indulging in audience fantasies/wants rather than focussing on telling a story.
A lot of franchises have gone the way of reading like bad fan fiction and I think that’s a product of the lack of restraint. Sometimes you don’t need to write to cater for the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” or “let’s come up with 100 theories for why this happened” crowd. Let people fill in the gaps themselves - that makes the stories more engaging and enjoyable.
As a general rule I don't watch films made (I use the term loosely) from books I've enjoyed. I've found I ended up irritated, disappointed, or both.
Clint Eastwood was told, to his face, that he was a bad film maker. Because the film Firefox followed the book *too* closely.
Some rather fun stuff came out about how the writers and execs on the Harry Potter films *hated* being forced to keep reasonably close to the books.
Zac Snyder's Watchmen suffered a similar problem. He followed much of the original Alan Moore Comic book almost frame for frame (although he did make some major changes to the nature of the threat) but it was just too close and made it rather sterile.
More that the studio didn't quite know what to do with a dark, anti-superhero story.
Then came The Boys
The Boys, Preacher, The Expanse. I find it hard to agree with this idea that we are not in a time of great TV.
Unfortunately the most recent season of The Boys was /terrible/.
On AppleTV - I did enjoy Severance. The next season is apparently going to be the most expensive TV Apple has ever made which worries me - Season 1 the writers did a lot within the constraints imposed by their premise & budget. I suspect without those constraints the writing might fall apart. We’ll find out in January...
Cleverly has been Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. On paper it's obvious that it should be his contest to lose.
He wasn't very prominent in either role. I forget which job he had first.
Jenrick strikes me as someone with more of a plan and the drive to implement that plan. Now, sure, it's doubtless a devious, underhand, baby-eating, evil Tory sort of plan, but as a lefty he's the option that I'm most worried about.
Apparently it was true. Why is it crass to talk about it when it wasn’t for, say, covid?
Because one was a highly infectious novel airborne infection killing thousands of people per day in its source countries and threatening to overwhelm an under-prepared health system, and the other is a treatable chronic condition that’s been around for decades?
It also seems a rather feeble dogwhistle (for dogwhistle it is, of course). Who’s actually scared of randomly contracting HIV from strangers these days?
Not enough people, which is the main reason why its on the rise again, as with other STIs.
HIV in the UK was very focused in certain groups, promiscuous homosexuals who didnt practice safe sex, those who either engaged with prostitutes or were prostitutes, and once again who didnt engage in safe sex, intravenous drug users who shared needles, and those infected with donated blood.
Immigrant derived HIV was very different because it was been transmitted by sexually active heterosexual men, and we started getting clusters of heterosexual women getting HIV.
I was absolutely terrified of it in the late 80s and early 90s, and viewed it as a death sentence. Which, in many respects, it was.
Definitely led to slightly more caution when I was a teenager.
"DON'T DIE OF IGNORANCE!"
Fair play to Thatcher for that. Apparently she was sceptical of such an overt campaign at first, but was persuaded it was necessary and agreed to run it. Norman Fowler was the Health Secretary at the time. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55973726
amusing to see people slagging off Rings of Power on the previous thread on the basis that it is 'woke'.
This is of course utter bollocks. There is nothing woke about it at all. Moreover most of those criticising its accuracy clearly don't know their Tolkein beyond the Peter Jackson films - which contained huge numbers of inaccuracies themselves.
Rings of Power has just been renewed for its third season and is going from strength to strength. For most Tolkein fans who move beyond just Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it is a great series filling in a lot of detail on Tolkein's lore. The 'go woke, go broke' crowd are just bitter because they weren't able to bring it down with their whining about non-white characters.
It hasn't been "renewed" Amazon are contractually obliged to deliver 50 hours of content or they face a huge break fee with the Tolkein estate. It also isn't going from strength to strength, it opened with around half of the viewers that the first season opener did and it has the same downwards viewing trend the first season did which indicates that by the end only around 20% of people who started the first episode of the first season will make it to the end of the second season. It's a disaster but Amazon have no choice but to continue, if they could cancel it and not end up paying the Tolkein estate hundreds of millions in break up fees I'm certain they would do so.
I think the only saving grace for it is that the next season isn't already written like season 2 was before filming so they can start to take fan feedback into account and sack the terrible writers and bring in actual lore experts that won't give us stupid concepts like Orc wives and babies or Galadriel thirsting after Sauron even after she fucking knows it's Sauron. I think there's been an admission within Amazon studios that they need to change direction on the story and lore so I expect season 3 will be much closer to what people expected from the beginning.
I actually agree with most of this (I think the writing is terrible and on a par with the final season of Game of Thrones - Bret Devereaux has a good write-up of all the issues here and elsewhere), but the Orc babies thing isn't a stupid concept. It's how Orcs reproduced canonically (the "growing from the mud" thing was a Peter Jackson invention). It's how you could have "Bolg, son of Azog" in The Hobbit. Orcs reproduce "after the manner of Elves and Men," and Tolkien stated in a letter that "there must have been orc-women"
The terrible writing simply matches that for Game Of Thrones, Foundation and the Star Wars films.
They keep riding billion dollar properties into the ground. Because reasons. And having some good bits in there, somewhere, isn't an excuse.
Modern writing to me suffers a bit too much from indulging in audience fantasies/wants rather than focussing on telling a story.
A lot of franchises have gone the way of reading like bad fan fiction and I think that’s a product of the lack of restraint. Sometimes you don’t need to write to cater for the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” or “let’s come up with 100 theories for why this happened” crowd. Let people fill in the gaps themselves - that makes the stories more engaging and enjoyable.
As a general rule I don't watch films made (I use the term loosely) from books I've enjoyed. I've found I ended up irritated, disappointed, or both.
Clint Eastwood was told, to his face, that he was a bad film maker. Because the film Firefox followed the book *too* closely.
Some rather fun stuff came out about how the writers and execs on the Harry Potter films *hated* being forced to keep reasonably close to the books.
Zac Snyder's Watchmen suffered a similar problem. He followed much of the original Alan Moore Comic book almost frame for frame (although he did make some major changes to the nature of the threat) but it was just too close and made it rather sterile.
More that the studio didn't quite know what to do with a dark, anti-superhero story.
Then came The Boys
The Boys, Preacher, The Expanse. I find it hard to agree with this idea that we are not in a time of great TV.
Unfortunately the most recent season of The Boys was /terrible/.
On AppleTV - I did enjoy Severance. The next season is apparently going to be the most expensive TV Apple has ever made which worries me - Season 1 the writers did a lot within the constraints imposed by their premise & budget. I suspect without those constraints the writing might fall apart. We’ll find out in January...
Most of the Severance season 1 was filmed in what looked like a Doctor Who set.
Mr. F, got to admit I'd forgotten about that. Fair enough. There was one book I stopped reading a while ago that had a lot of grim stuff in, to the extent it didn't seem to serve the story so much as just be there for shock value.
What scripts has Abercrombie written? It's astonishing that Benioff and Weiss did such a poor job. They should've just handed over to someone else if they didn't care to actually finish the series properly. Better to hand over than ruin something that was so good.
The irony is their buggering of the end of GoT is likely what cost them their Star Wars trilogy (although there are a ton of cancelled SW projects).
Comments
So given that Tugendhat or Cleverly is likely to be eliminated next, then it's the survivor of those 2 who is likely to be in a position to lend votes to determine whether they face Jenrick / Badenoch... surely?
So it's a choice of who is more likely to shit the bed with the members and suddenly the total lunacy that the pair have been spouting makes sense tactically. They're competing to be selected as the easier opponent to be lent votes by Cleverly/Tugendhat.
Got to have some sympathy for the BBC over its reporting on the slaughter in the middle east here. Has a fine line to tread and both sides are calling bias. I think, by and large, it gets it right.
License fee still needs to go though.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/mishal-husain-failed-to-sufficiently-challenge-guest-over-anti-semitic-conspiracies-bbc-admits/ar-AA1rxmxX?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=6953cde3167f42dcb88fb2b1f8d3159a&ei=15
So he's bound to lose.
Though his odds are now shortening further.
From a LD perspective I hope he loses.
But If I were a Tory I'd vote for him.
https://x.com/RalphBlackburn/status/1841422783483412891
I don't know if that rules him in or out but it's better than making model buses from boxes.
My favourite feature is that the list misses out Britain's most "popular" politician - step forward Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Ms Laura Trott.
And anyone who thinks any of YouGov's respondents are thinking of the highly decorated Olympian and smiling face of London 2012 are nasty, bitter h8ers who don't get how strong a grip the Sevenoaks MP has on the nation's heart. See also David Frost, to whom we would all give a warm, "hello, good morning and welcome" if we were lucky enough to meet him.
I take @Foxy 's point about films about history. Perhaps, too much accuracy drives away too many viewers. There's a good example of this with Ride with the Devil, to my mind, an outstanding film set in the US civil war, about Confederate Irregular Cavalry in Missouri.
They did the sort of things that Confederate Irregular Cavalry did, and made liberal use of the Forbidden Word, and the film flopped, accordingly. Whereas, something like North and South, which is mostly historical rubbish, performed fantastically.
However he is doing OK but lacks energy in my view
ANDOR
"Andor" is about middle-aged men trapped in a system of constant labour with no rest, where the lowest rung are automatically punished and the higher rung given only modest pleasures, with this system being imposed by the extraordinarily powerful. This appeals to the legacy audience of Star Wars, who are middle-aged men trapped in a...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTAjkDICyu0
THE ACOLYTE
"The Acolyte" is about a young woman who is forced to be automatically good becoming aware of an identical twin who is free to be very bad at whim. This appeals to the new audience that Disney hopes to attract to Star Wars, which are young women...but you can finish this by yourself. See https://damiengwalter.medium.com/the-acolyte-is-good-20f775367c55
His current unfunded stamp duty abolition is an almost Trussite policy. His opponents might dine off that for some time.
Are the Tory party ready for ‘normal’?
The audience is listening to him, and lots of applause.
Now 3.1 on Betfair.
Now 2.8
So it's going to be Jendrick versus Cleverley.
The Eight Star Fleet Ship Design Rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au9UeLfI6TE
By this point in the 2019 to 2024 parliament we'd had two VI polls from YouGov?
Big opportunity for the Conservatives.
I also find it hard to agree with the idea that tons of shit is being made. Said shit isn't shit because of woke. But because it is written by people rejected from Brazilian telenovela writing.
Madness if he is not the next leader
Also incidentally, the Warhammer fan film "Astartes" is one of the best animated fan-fics ever. I'm not into the franchise, but even I can tell the fanfic is really good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7hgjuFfn3A
(I won't bother you with my decade-old Babylon 5 fanfic on alternatehistory.com...
2.78 on Betfair. Jendrick 2.04.
"Let's be more normal"
Opposition leaders need charisma and oomph
Assuming Stride's votes stay moderate, round 3 is Jenrick 33, Badenoch 28 and then either C or T.
Potentially C or T then has 58 votes but only need 40, so can decide whether they face Jenrick or Badenoch, unless career minded Cleverly/Tugendhat supporters switch to Jenrick.
So, it will be the other two.
Cliches.
Not inspiring. I hope he wins.
JNT (1980-1987) would have paid far too much attention to the fans whilst attracting attention by stunt-casting that usually doesn't work
RTD (2023-present) would be all over the place, with some bangers but a main character that's too passive and cries a lot.
It's fair to wade in if, having been elected LOTO, someone continues to rack up expensive promises and doesn't back it up with a broad fiscal plan within a year or so. But the work of an Opposition (as well as opposing, of course) is to develop a plan, not to come in with a complete plan on day one.
When you become the new leader of a governing party, you of course have an existing plan on day one - it's not your plan, and you want to put your stamp on it, but you don't have a blank sheet of paper. One minor defence of Liz Truss is that her predecessor didn't have much of a plan and ran on bluster and guff, so she (and Sunak) did need to try to develop something in flight. She made a dreadful job of it, and he was only marginally better, but still.
Cleverley was excellent. Tugendhat limp.
https://x.com/tykestakeonit/status/1841202622101143962
You really, *really*, don’t want to be importing people with such diseases.
That's the ULEZ bomber vote tied up
After that there has always been vested interests limiting what the executive could do.
Its not quite Maggie v Hezza.
This team won't want Badenoch either (unless she balls up her speech) and they won't be able to engineer a Tugendhat path through to the final two, surely?
Very good.
I tried the first Thorns book, and even for me, it was too dark and depressing. When you have the protagonist recounting raping a farmer's daughter, before burning her alive with her family, it puts you off a character.
On AppleTV - I did enjoy Severance. The next season is apparently going to be the most expensive TV Apple has ever made which worries me - Season 1 the writers did a lot within the constraints imposed by their premise & budget. I suspect without those constraints the writing might fall apart. We’ll find out in January...
Jenrick strikes me as someone with more of a plan and the drive to implement that plan. Now, sure, it's doubtless a devious, underhand, baby-eating, evil Tory sort of plan, but as a lefty he's the option that I'm most worried about.
What scripts has Abercrombie written? It's astonishing that Benioff and Weiss did such a poor job. They should've just handed over to someone else if they didn't care to actually finish the series properly. Better to hand over than ruin something that was so good.
The irony is their buggering of the end of GoT is likely what cost them their Star Wars trilogy (although there are a ton of cancelled SW projects).