BSG taught us that you can actually wing it for quite some time and still get a moderately good result at the end.
The Boston Consulting Group?
Battlestar Galactica (the reboot). One of the best sci-fi series ever. And had a plot so convoluted and made up on the fly, they had to make one of the main characters an angel to make it make sense.
Will any of the One Nation Tory MPs walk after Badenochs ECHR announcement ?
There aren’t many left admittedly but still leaving the ECHR is certain to cause problems with that wing of the party .
It would be rather ironic if, expecting Farage to welcome another Tory MP it ends up Ed Davey welcoming his first defection of a Tory Home Counties MP following Kemi’s ECHR exit announcement today.
Kemi will certainly hope though that overall the Conservatives make a bet poll gain from Reform after this announcement and her proposal to scrap net zero. If not Cleverly will likely replace her within a year
I think Caroline Nokes would be the one most likely to walk . The problem with the Badenoch policy is that she’s now boxed herself in and leaving the ECHR alone wont solve the problem . Are the Tories also going to leave the UN Convention Against Torture ?
Labour are planning to change the legal framework around this. If it works, it will be a moot point. If it doesn't work, then support for leaving will only grow.
Liberals and internationalists should be proposing a new framework for modern times rather than doggedly protecting the status quo as if it is scripture.
The ECHR goes back to the Congress of Europe in 1948, convened by Churchill (Conservative), Adenauer (Christian Democrat) and Mitterrand (Socialist). The lead person in drafting it was David Maxwell Fyfe, a UK Conservative MP. It is as much a product of conservatism as anything else, but conservatism has lost its way.
So what?
It's not working today, and needs either fundamental reform or a new settlement.
It works fine. It's just become a bogeyman for Daily Telegraph headlines.
Does it?
Things change, and it might be that laws require fettling as a consequence. A law that is unchanging might soon become bad law, however well-intentioned the drafters were, and good the law was at first.
As an example: AIUI the international law on refugees was largely written at a time that refers directly back to the WW2 experience, and was undoubtedly good at that time. But times change. Whilst many refugees are still fleeing warfare, there are also many economic refugees, and also some countries are using refugees as a form of warfare. Travel is also much easier.
In addition, countries cannot be expected to take unlimited numbers of refugees.
So: we either rewrite the international law on refugees to reflect the modern world, or risk increasing numbers of countries ignoring it.
Indeed:
This is the key point, and what instead is happening is that (other than a few centrist dads ), the world is polarizing between:
1. We must remove all limitations on State power to do whatever they like. 2. The ECHR must never be altered in any way, shape or form, even if it is clearly no longer fit for purpose.
I think some people are in group 2 because they anticipate a Reform/MAGA-type government going for group 1. That's why we need some strong centrist-dad leadership now that sees us reform the convention OR withdraw from it and replace with our own set of laws that closely resembles it. The former option would seem easier.
Oh, and I'm sure some people are in Group 1, because they actually want it the EHCR reformed, but believe the only way that will happen is with the threat of departure.
I am reminded of David Cameron's "reform the EU or I will campaign to stay in" attempt at negotiation. And my lot's (the LDs) call of "give us Federalism or else we will accept the status quo".
And so the enshittification of James Bond has commenced. The government really needs to think about having restrictions on foreign ownership/control of culturally significant property. Amazon are going to take a great franchise and ruin it and ruin it's legacy.
What's happened?
James Bond is best known for wielding his Walter PPK, but if you're looking for his signature sidearm on Amazon, you won't see it. Prime Video has made changes to its posters, and where Bond was initially holding a gun, it has been removed. Not only that, but the company appears to have done this using Photoshop, and it shows.
Walther PPK, Jimmy B’s preferred sidearm apparently.
Come to that why is a foundation stone of British cultural significance punting a hun pistol?
Good question. It’s explained in the books, and at the start of the first movie. But it’s too dull to set out here and I’m not sure I understood correctly anyway.
Could have been worse. Boothroyd actually said he thought the Russian equivalent was better...
Vasily Blokhin of course carried out about a third of the Katyń massacre himself, using Walther pistols (although admittedly not the PP)
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
While I concede I am wading into territory here I know nothing about (I've seen Star Wars, but it was 30 years ago), all the examples your provide are relatively short. Maybe story arcs work over a handful.of films (at least where they're thought out in advance), but don't over more than that.
There were 23 films in the MCU Infinity Saga and it worked very well.
All planned out by the same individual though, Kevin Feige, who ensured all 23 films worked with the same vision building up to the Infinity Wars finale.
Honestly, it was all a pretty dull way to watch 23 movies.
The infinity saga was brilliant, it has a few duds in it but the overall quality of storytelling is good and it still left room for individual movies like Winter Soldier.
Everything since then has ranged from nostalgia bait like Spider-Man or complete dogshit like She Hulk. Marvel is very much on its final of nine lives, they've gambled big time on bringing Robert Downey Junior back and paying Sony shit loads of money to keep Spider-Man in the tent but I'm not sure it will work, they've burned through almost all of their fan goodwill just like Star Wars and Star Trek did. People just aren't excited about seeing the next big Marvel movie in the way they were 10 years ago.
From chatting to (non-MCU obsessed) friends, I think the problem is that there's just too much MCU, spread too widely. It was good when there was a film or two a year, and you could go to the cinema as an event. But then you also had the TV series and all the other things, if you were not a hardcore fan it just became too much - I wasn't going to get Disney+ for the MCU.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
Italian weather forecasts turn the forecast wind speed red, if it reaches 20 km/h (13 mph!!), and tonight there’s a wind weather warning out as the forecast is that it might gust as high as 40 km/h (=25 mph!!). Italians really are terrified of the wind, since they hardly ever get any.
Will any of the One Nation Tory MPs walk after Badenochs ECHR announcement ?
There aren’t many left admittedly but still leaving the ECHR is certain to cause problems with that wing of the party .
It would be rather ironic if, expecting Farage to welcome another Tory MP it ends up Ed Davey welcoming his first defection of a Tory Home Counties MP following Kemi’s ECHR exit announcement today.
Kemi will certainly hope though that overall the Conservatives make a bet poll gain from Reform after this announcement and her proposal to scrap net zero. If not Cleverly will likely replace her within a year
I think Caroline Nokes would be the one most likely to walk . The problem with the Badenoch policy is that she’s now boxed herself in and leaving the ECHR alone wont solve the problem . Are the Tories also going to leave the UN Convention Against Torture ?
Labour are planning to change the legal framework around this. If it works, it will be a moot point. If it doesn't work, then support for leaving will only grow.
Liberals and internationalists should be proposing a new framework for modern times rather than doggedly protecting the status quo as if it is scripture.
The ECHR goes back to the Congress of Europe in 1948, convened by Churchill (Conservative), Adenauer (Christian Democrat) and Mitterrand (Socialist). The lead person in drafting it was David Maxwell Fyfe, a UK Conservative MP. It is as much a product of conservatism as anything else, but conservatism has lost its way.
So what?
It's not working today, and needs either fundamental reform or a new settlement.
It works fine. It's just become a bogeyman for Daily Telegraph headlines.
Does it?
Things change, and it might be that laws require fettling as a consequence. A law that is unchanging might soon become bad law, however well-intentioned the drafters were, and good the law was at first.
As an example: AIUI the international law on refugees was largely written at a time that refers directly back to the WW2 experience, and was undoubtedly good at that time. But times change. Whilst many refugees are still fleeing warfare, there are also many economic refugees, and also some countries are using refugees as a form of warfare. Travel is also much easier.
In addition, countries cannot be expected to take unlimited numbers of refugees.
So: we either rewrite the international law on refugees to reflect the modern world, or risk increasing numbers of countries ignoring it.
Indeed:
This is the key point, and what instead is happening is that (other than a few centrist dads ), the world is polarizing between:
1. We must remove all limitations on State power to do whatever they like. 2. The ECHR must never be altered in any way, shape or form, even if it is clearly no longer fit for purpose.
I think some people are in group 2 because they anticipate a Reform/MAGA-type government going for group 1. That's why we need some strong centrist-dad leadership now that sees us reform the convention OR withdraw from it and replace with our own set of laws that closely resembles it. The former option would seem easier.
Oh, and I'm sure some people are in Group 1, because they actually want it the EHCR reformed, but believe the only way that will happen is with the threat of departure.
I am reminded of David Cameron's "reform the EU or I will campaign to stay in" attempt at negotiation. And my lot's (the LDs) call of "give us Federalism or else we will accept the status quo".
There is a halfway house. As well as his work on how Article 8 is applied, Starmer could he involved with the other European nations who want reform:
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
The Italian memorial photo from the village high in the Apennines, that I posted earlier - it seems that immediately after dropping supplies to the partisans, the US plane with US crew and two Brits on board, burst into flames and crashed with the loss of all on board. According to a contemporary report:
At about 9:30 pm, an allied plane appeared in the skies of Zavattarello. It entered the launch zone making regular photographic signals. Garibaldi's troupes answered with the agreed signals. After two rounds of the field, the unit dropped off two containers, immediately after followed a very sad display: a tongue of fire burst from the aircraft's left engine, the blaze was followed by a hiss, then a bang and almost immediately spiralled down without hope, crashing against the lower slope of the mountain.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
While I concede I am wading into territory here I know nothing about (I've seen Star Wars, but it was 30 years ago), all the examples your provide are relatively short. Maybe story arcs work over a handful.of films (at least where they're thought out in advance), but don't over more than that.
There were 23 films in the MCU Infinity Saga and it worked very well.
All planned out by the same individual though, Kevin Feige, who ensured all 23 films worked with the same vision building up to the Infinity Wars finale.
Honestly, it was all a pretty dull way to watch 23 movies.
The infinity saga was brilliant, it has a few duds in it but the overall quality of storytelling is good and it still left room for individual movies like Winter Soldier.
Everything since then has ranged from nostalgia bait like Spider-Man or complete dogshit like She Hulk. Marvel is very much on its final of nine lives, they've gambled big time on bringing Robert Downey Junior back and paying Sony shit loads of money to keep Spider-Man in the tent but I'm not sure it will work, they've burned through almost all of their fan goodwill just like Star Wars and Star Trek did. People just aren't excited about seeing the next big Marvel movie in the way they were 10 years ago.
From chatting to (non-MCU obsessed) friends, I think the problem is that there's just too much MCU, spread too widely. It was good when there was a film or two a year, and you could go to the cinema as an event. But then you also had the TV series and all the other things, if you were not a hardcore fan it just became too much - I wasn't going to get Disney+ for the MCU.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
Agreed that the quantity over quality approach hasn't helped but really the stories are just bad, the changes to the source material is bad and they've turned a series that was primarily for men into one that is now pitched towards women. I don't think they realised how quickly the original audience of men that built the MCU into a huge juggernaut would just shrug and stop buying tickets when it wasn't Captain America and Iron Man but instead Ms Marvel and She Hulk. Maybe they thought women would start watching to to bridge that gap but if that's the case their market research was very poor.
A win for Spurs today keeps them 2 points behind Arsenal in the Premier league race. They are at present, 50/1 to win the Premier league with William Hill. I know it's Spurs, chance of capitulation etc, but these odds seem ridiculous to me, worth a trading bet.
I've had a nibble each way at this. They have a tough set of fixtures November, but I get the feeling this year may not be the Liverpool procession we expected a fortnight ago. Arsenal currently top, dependent on the final score in Chelsea v Liverpool
Bournemouth also 2 points behind Arsenal are 200/1 with the same bookie. Again potential for a trading bet, a better idea may be to back them for the top 4, odds will be out once the PL game is finished
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
These days, with AI, do we really need to follow them? Why not simply recreate them?
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
It may be possible to make Snape treat other white kids much better, and make it obvious that his hatred is for Potter alone. But there's also the house rivalry to consider as well. In the series, Snape seemed to prefer Slytherin pupils first and foremost; then pupils from other houses aside from Gryffindor, and he treats Gryffindor's pupils the worst - perhaps because that's where Lily was sorted. And finally, at the bottom of his list, is Harry Potter - who reminds him of both the man he hated, and the woman he loved.
Snape is a wonderfully rich character, to the extent that if it is seen as a simple racist hatred, then the writers and producers have utterly failed.
(I hope the facts (not opinions) in that are correct; it's years since I read the books or watched the films..)
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
It comes onto a wider problem that the films pretty much used up the whole pantheon of British acting talent. There’s not many British actors of notable standing who didn’t have any involvement in them. The passage of time is not great enough to have had that pool of talent re-filled, IMHO. If they’d left it another 20-30 years there’d have been a decent number of actors moving into maturity who would have been able to fill those roles, together with upcoming talent.
The Palantir interview is the end for Starmer's digital id proposal although it was already pretty doa and he didn't mention this wonderous solution once in his speech to conference.
A win for Spurs today keeps them 2 points behind Arsenal in the Premier league race. They are at present, 50/1 to win the Premier league with William Hill. I know it's Spurs, chance of capitulation etc, but these odds seem ridiculous to me, worth a trading bet.
I've had a nibble each way at this. They have a tough set of fixtures November, but I get the feeling this year may not be the Liverpool procession we expected a fortnight ago. Arsenal currently top, dependent on the final score in Chelsea v Liverpool
Bournemouth also 2 points behind Arsenal are 200/1 with the same bookie. Again potential for a trading bet, a better idea may be to back them for the top 4, odds will be out once the PL game is finished
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
It comes onto a wider problem that the films pretty much used up the whole pantheon of British acting talent. There’s not many British actors of notable standing who didn’t have any involvement in them. The passage of time is not great enough to have had that pool of talent re-filled, IMHO. If they’d left it another 20-30 years there’d have been a decent number of actors moving into maturity who would have been able to fill those roles, together with upcoming talent.
They're absolutely flogging a dead horse. Not as bad as making The Hobbit into three overlong, boring films, but still flogging it. The films were good enough IMO.
And that's the thing - the films did a good job of capturing the essence of the books. True, bits were left out, but nothing vital. All eight movies are about 20 hours in total runtime. HBO's first series is apparently going to be eight episodes - as the characters have not aged, presumably that'll be just the first book. If each episode is 45 minutes, then that is six hours for the first book. There simply is not enough material in the first book - which is actually quite a simple plot.
A win for Spurs today keeps them 2 points behind Arsenal in the Premier league race. They are at present, 50/1 to win the Premier league with William Hill. I know it's Spurs, chance of capitulation etc, but these odds seem ridiculous to me, worth a trading bet.
I've had a nibble each way at this. They have a tough set of fixtures November, but I get the feeling this year may not be the Liverpool procession we expected a fortnight ago. Arsenal currently top, dependent on the final score in Chelsea v Liverpool
Bournemouth also 2 points behind Arsenal are 200/1 with the same bookie. Again potential for a trading bet, a better idea may be to back them for the top 4, odds will be out once the PL game is finished
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
It comes onto a wider problem that the films pretty much used up the whole pantheon of British acting talent. There’s not many British actors of notable standing who didn’t have any involvement in them. The passage of time is not great enough to have had that pool of talent re-filled, IMHO. If they’d left it another 20-30 years there’d have been a decent number of actors moving into maturity who would have been able to fill those roles, together with upcoming talent.
They're absolutely flogging a dead horse. Not as bad as making The Hobbit into three overlong, boring films, but still flogging it. The films were good enough IMO.
And that's the thing - the films did a good job of capturing the essence of the books. True, bits were left out, but nothing vital. All eight movies are about 20 hours in total runtime. HBO's first series is apparently going to be eight episodes - as the characters have not aged, presumably that'll be just the first book. If each episode is 45 minutes, then that is six hours for the first book. There simply is not enough material in the first book - which is actually quite a simple plot.
There's a lot to be said for the old theatrical/Play for Today convention of introducing your characters, setting up the scenario, resolving it and saying goodbye to the characters forever in time for Newsnight. It's more expensive for the producers that way, and audiences prefer seeing old friends and stories again, but it's a bit dismal if new ideas are largely going to be squashed out by retreads of old ones.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
While I concede I am wading into territory here I know nothing about (I've seen Star Wars, but it was 30 years ago), all the examples your provide are relatively short. Maybe story arcs work over a handful.of films (at least where they're thought out in advance), but don't over more than that.
There were 23 films in the MCU Infinity Saga and it worked very well.
All planned out by the same individual though, Kevin Feige, who ensured all 23 films worked with the same vision building up to the Infinity Wars finale.
Honestly, it was all a pretty dull way to watch 23 movies.
The infinity saga was brilliant, it has a few duds in it but the overall quality of storytelling is good and it still left room for individual movies like Winter Soldier.
Everything since then has ranged from nostalgia bait like Spider-Man or complete dogshit like She Hulk. Marvel is very much on its final of nine lives, they've gambled big time on bringing Robert Downey Junior back and paying Sony shit loads of money to keep Spider-Man in the tent but I'm not sure it will work, they've burned through almost all of their fan goodwill just like Star Wars and Star Trek did. People just aren't excited about seeing the next big Marvel movie in the way they were 10 years ago.
From chatting to (non-MCU obsessed) friends, I think the problem is that there's just too much MCU, spread too widely. It was good when there was a film or two a year, and you could go to the cinema as an event. But then you also had the TV series and all the other things, if you were not a hardcore fan it just became too much - I wasn't going to get Disney+ for the MCU.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
Agreed that the quantity over quality approach hasn't helped but really the stories are just bad, the changes to the source material is bad and they've turned a series that was primarily for men into one that is now pitched towards women. I don't think they realised how quickly the original audience of men that built the MCU into a huge juggernaut would just shrug and stop buying tickets when it wasn't Captain America and Iron Man but instead Ms Marvel and She Hulk. Maybe they thought women would start watching to to bridge that gap but if that's the case their market research was very poor.
I think another part of the issue is they've burnt through the best quality characters, reasonably enough, so are now scraping the barrel at what's left.
Rather than rebooting to cast a new version of the same character.
Since Iron Man came out in 2008 there's been 3 (4 if you count Keaton in Flash) actors who've played Batman in a live action film. Easier to do when Affleck and Pattinson weren't being a continuity of Bale.
If they wish to maintain continuity in MCU then Iron Man is gone, but of course the comics themselves would never write off such a titular character and keep him dead for long.
Will any of the One Nation Tory MPs walk after Badenochs ECHR announcement ?
There aren’t many left admittedly but still leaving the ECHR is certain to cause problems with that wing of the party .
It would be rather ironic if, expecting Farage to welcome another Tory MP it ends up Ed Davey welcoming his first defection of a Tory Home Counties MP following Kemi’s ECHR exit announcement today.
Kemi will certainly hope though that overall the Conservatives make a bet poll gain from Reform after this announcement and her proposal to scrap net zero. If not Cleverly will likely replace her within a year
I think Caroline Nokes would be the one most likely to walk . The problem with the Badenoch policy is that she’s now boxed herself in and leaving the ECHR alone wont solve the problem . Are the Tories also going to leave the UN Convention Against Torture ?
Labour are planning to change the legal framework around this. If it works, it will be a moot point. If it doesn't work, then support for leaving will only grow.
Liberals and internationalists should be proposing a new framework for modern times rather than doggedly protecting the status quo as if it is scripture.
The ECHR goes back to the Congress of Europe in 1948, convened by Churchill (Conservative), Adenauer (Christian Democrat) and Mitterrand (Socialist). The lead person in drafting it was David Maxwell Fyfe, a UK Conservative MP. It is as much a product of conservatism as anything else, but conservatism has lost its way.
So what?
It's not working today, and needs either fundamental reform or a new settlement.
It works fine. It's just become a bogeyman for Daily Telegraph headlines.
If it’s article 8 that’s the issue just pass an Act of parliament disapplying Article 8 and saying that no judgement relating to article 8 will be enforceable in the UK
It isn't just Article 8. Article 3 has come up a lot in some appalling judgements, and frankly the links are so tenuous that if you disapplied a particular article, judges would just find another to fit the case.
The issue is that the whole concept of Human Rights being grafted on to British law doesn't work. It is not our Government's job to be involved if a foreign citizen who is a paedophile, or frankly who is a Christian or gay, may face hardship if they return to their country of origin. And we certainly should not be placing those rights above those of British citizens who may be disadvantaged in the process.
Human rights basically means that we are responsible legally for the welfare of the entire world - ahead of the welfare of our own citizens. The whole concept needs to be rejected and removed from our law, because it's a cobra disguised as a kitten.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
It comes onto a wider problem that the films pretty much used up the whole pantheon of British acting talent. There’s not many British actors of notable standing who didn’t have any involvement in them. The passage of time is not great enough to have had that pool of talent re-filled, IMHO. If they’d left it another 20-30 years there’d have been a decent number of actors moving into maturity who would have been able to fill those roles, together with upcoming talent.
They're absolutely flogging a dead horse. Not as bad as making The Hobbit into three overlong, boring films, but still flogging it. The films were good enough IMO.
And that's the thing - the films did a good job of capturing the essence of the books. True, bits were left out, but nothing vital. All eight movies are about 20 hours in total runtime. HBO's first series is apparently going to be eight episodes - as the characters have not aged, presumably that'll be just the first book. If each episode is 45 minutes, then that is six hours for the first book. There simply is not enough material in the first book - which is actually quite a simple plot.
We just did the HP audio books in our house. Most of the stuff that got cut from the later movies was met with cries of tedium from the kids. The elf emancipation plot being the biggest offender.
The movies run along at a good clip and still hold up, even though the first is now 24 years old. Most of the adult actors are now dead. Maggie Smith, Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris / Gambon, Richard Griffiths, Robert Hardy, Roger Lloyd Pack…
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
While I concede I am wading into territory here I know nothing about (I've seen Star Wars, but it was 30 years ago), all the examples your provide are relatively short. Maybe story arcs work over a handful.of films (at least where they're thought out in advance), but don't over more than that.
There were 23 films in the MCU Infinity Saga and it worked very well.
All planned out by the same individual though, Kevin Feige, who ensured all 23 films worked with the same vision building up to the Infinity Wars finale.
Honestly, it was all a pretty dull way to watch 23 movies.
The infinity saga was brilliant, it has a few duds in it but the overall quality of storytelling is good and it still left room for individual movies like Winter Soldier.
Everything since then has ranged from nostalgia bait like Spider-Man or complete dogshit like She Hulk. Marvel is very much on its final of nine lives, they've gambled big time on bringing Robert Downey Junior back and paying Sony shit loads of money to keep Spider-Man in the tent but I'm not sure it will work, they've burned through almost all of their fan goodwill just like Star Wars and Star Trek did. People just aren't excited about seeing the next big Marvel movie in the way they were 10 years ago.
From chatting to (non-MCU obsessed) friends, I think the problem is that there's just too much MCU, spread too widely. It was good when there was a film or two a year, and you could go to the cinema as an event. But then you also had the TV series and all the other things, if you were not a hardcore fan it just became too much - I wasn't going to get Disney+ for the MCU.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
Agreed that the quantity over quality approach hasn't helped but really the stories are just bad, the changes to the source material is bad and they've turned a series that was primarily for men into one that is now pitched towards women. I don't think they realised how quickly the original audience of men that built the MCU into a huge juggernaut would just shrug and stop buying tickets when it wasn't Captain America and Iron Man but instead Ms Marvel and She Hulk. Maybe they thought women would start watching to to bridge that gap but if that's the case their market research was very poor.
The whole Marvel thing is deeply unappealing to me, because I want to hear about ordinary people who do extraordinary things when placed in extraordinary circumstances. The fantasy lives of 'superheroes' is such a sterile topic.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
While I concede I am wading into territory here I know nothing about (I've seen Star Wars, but it was 30 years ago), all the examples your provide are relatively short. Maybe story arcs work over a handful.of films (at least where they're thought out in advance), but don't over more than that.
There were 23 films in the MCU Infinity Saga and it worked very well.
All planned out by the same individual though, Kevin Feige, who ensured all 23 films worked with the same vision building up to the Infinity Wars finale.
Honestly, it was all a pretty dull way to watch 23 movies.
The infinity saga was brilliant, it has a few duds in it but the overall quality of storytelling is good and it still left room for individual movies like Winter Soldier.
Everything since then has ranged from nostalgia bait like Spider-Man or complete dogshit like She Hulk. Marvel is very much on its final of nine lives, they've gambled big time on bringing Robert Downey Junior back and paying Sony shit loads of money to keep Spider-Man in the tent but I'm not sure it will work, they've burned through almost all of their fan goodwill just like Star Wars and Star Trek did. People just aren't excited about seeing the next big Marvel movie in the way they were 10 years ago.
From chatting to (non-MCU obsessed) friends, I think the problem is that there's just too much MCU, spread too widely. It was good when there was a film or two a year, and you could go to the cinema as an event. But then you also had the TV series and all the other things, if you were not a hardcore fan it just became too much - I wasn't going to get Disney+ for the MCU.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
Agreed that the quantity over quality approach hasn't helped but really the stories are just bad, the changes to the source material is bad and they've turned a series that was primarily for men into one that is now pitched towards women. I don't think they realised how quickly the original audience of men that built the MCU into a huge juggernaut would just shrug and stop buying tickets when it wasn't Captain America and Iron Man but instead Ms Marvel and She Hulk. Maybe they thought women would start watching to to bridge that gap but if that's the case their market research was very poor.
The whole Marvel thing is deeply unappealing to me, because I want to hear about ordinary people who do extraordinary things when placed in extraordinary circumstances. The fantasy lives of 'superheroes' is such a sterile topic.
I find even those tiresome; I like films about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances.
BSG taught us that you can actually wing it for quite some time and still get a moderately good result at the end.
The Boston Consulting Group?
Battlestar Galactica (the reboot). One of the best sci-fi series ever. And had a plot so convoluted and made up on the fly, they had to make one of the main characters an angel to make it make sense.
It does help when you're anchored by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
While I concede I am wading into territory here I know nothing about (I've seen Star Wars, but it was 30 years ago), all the examples your provide are relatively short. Maybe story arcs work over a handful.of films (at least where they're thought out in advance), but don't over more than that.
There were 23 films in the MCU Infinity Saga and it worked very well.
All planned out by the same individual though, Kevin Feige, who ensured all 23 films worked with the same vision building up to the Infinity Wars finale.
Honestly, it was all a pretty dull way to watch 23 movies.
The infinity saga was brilliant, it has a few duds in it but the overall quality of storytelling is good and it still left room for individual movies like Winter Soldier.
Everything since then has ranged from nostalgia bait like Spider-Man or complete dogshit like She Hulk. Marvel is very much on its final of nine lives, they've gambled big time on bringing Robert Downey Junior back and paying Sony shit loads of money to keep Spider-Man in the tent but I'm not sure it will work, they've burned through almost all of their fan goodwill just like Star Wars and Star Trek did. People just aren't excited about seeing the next big Marvel movie in the way they were 10 years ago.
From chatting to (non-MCU obsessed) friends, I think the problem is that there's just too much MCU, spread too widely. It was good when there was a film or two a year, and you could go to the cinema as an event. But then you also had the TV series and all the other things, if you were not a hardcore fan it just became too much - I wasn't going to get Disney+ for the MCU.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
Agreed that the quantity over quality approach hasn't helped but really the stories are just bad, the changes to the source material is bad and they've turned a series that was primarily for men into one that is now pitched towards women. I don't think they realised how quickly the original audience of men that built the MCU into a huge juggernaut would just shrug and stop buying tickets when it wasn't Captain America and Iron Man but instead Ms Marvel and She Hulk. Maybe they thought women would start watching to to bridge that gap but if that's the case their market research was very poor.
The whole Marvel thing is deeply unappealing to me, because I want to hear about ordinary people who do extraordinary things when placed in extraordinary circumstances. The fantasy lives of 'superheroes' is such a sterile topic.
Worse, I fear it makes people believe that they can rely on superheroes to fix things. I got annoyed in the latest Captain America film that there is yet another American superhero coming in to fix the world's problems, at a time when America is losing all moral leadership.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, real superheroes - people indistinguishable from you and me - are fighting evil. And many die in the process.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
It comes onto a wider problem that the films pretty much used up the whole pantheon of British acting talent. There’s not many British actors of notable standing who didn’t have any involvement in them. The passage of time is not great enough to have had that pool of talent re-filled, IMHO. If they’d left it another 20-30 years there’d have been a decent number of actors moving into maturity who would have been able to fill those roles, together with upcoming talent.
They're absolutely flogging a dead horse. Not as bad as making The Hobbit into three overlong, boring films, but still flogging it. The films were good enough IMO.
And that's the thing - the films did a good job of capturing the essence of the books. True, bits were left out, but nothing vital. All eight movies are about 20 hours in total runtime. HBO's first series is apparently going to be eight episodes - as the characters have not aged, presumably that'll be just the first book. If each episode is 45 minutes, then that is six hours for the first book. There simply is not enough material in the first book - which is actually quite a simple plot.
The audio book for book one is 8 hours and 25 minutes long. I don't know what the conversation factor would be between audio book and TV adaptation, but I could see eight 45 minute episodes being filled quite easily.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
It comes onto a wider problem that the films pretty much used up the whole pantheon of British acting talent. There’s not many British actors of notable standing who didn’t have any involvement in them. The passage of time is not great enough to have had that pool of talent re-filled, IMHO. If they’d left it another 20-30 years there’d have been a decent number of actors moving into maturity who would have been able to fill those roles, together with upcoming talent.
They're absolutely flogging a dead horse. Not as bad as making The Hobbit into three overlong, boring films, but still flogging it. The films were good enough IMO.
And that's the thing - the films did a good job of capturing the essence of the books. True, bits were left out, but nothing vital. All eight movies are about 20 hours in total runtime. HBO's first series is apparently going to be eight episodes - as the characters have not aged, presumably that'll be just the first book. If each episode is 45 minutes, then that is six hours for the first book. There simply is not enough material in the first book - which is actually quite a simple plot.
The audio book for book one is 8 hours and 25 minutes long. I don't know what the conversation factor would be between audio book and TV adaptation, but I could see eight 45 minute episodes being filled quite easily.
Audio books are always longer, as you need to spend paragraphs setting a scene that can be done in a few seconds of film. Dialogue, of course, does not compress in the same way. So I'd expect dialogue-heavy books to 'film' nearer the audio book length than ones that vividly describe scenes. The first film was 2hrs30; so they have to fill over double the time. That's a big ask IMO - though to be fair, I haven't read the book or watched the film in a while.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
It comes onto a wider problem that the films pretty much used up the whole pantheon of British acting talent. There’s not many British actors of notable standing who didn’t have any involvement in them. The passage of time is not great enough to have had that pool of talent re-filled, IMHO. If they’d left it another 20-30 years there’d have been a decent number of actors moving into maturity who would have been able to fill those roles, together with upcoming talent.
They're absolutely flogging a dead horse. Not as bad as making The Hobbit into three overlong, boring films, but still flogging it. The films were good enough IMO.
And that's the thing - the films did a good job of capturing the essence of the books. True, bits were left out, but nothing vital. All eight movies are about 20 hours in total runtime. HBO's first series is apparently going to be eight episodes - as the characters have not aged, presumably that'll be just the first book. If each episode is 45 minutes, then that is six hours for the first book. There simply is not enough material in the first book - which is actually quite a simple plot.
The audio book for book one is 8 hours and 25 minutes long. I don't know what the conversation factor would be between audio book and TV adaptation, but I could see eight 45 minute episodes being filled quite easily.
For example, The Lion, the Witch and the wardrobe is a 4h21m audiobook and was also a BBC TV adaptation (1988) that had a running time of 172 minutes.
So that's 261 minutes for the audiobook to 172 minutes for TV. The TV is about two-thirds the length.
So Philosopher's Stone is 505 minutes long in the audiobook two-thirds of which is 334 minutes, or 5h34m. Six hours isn't far off.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
Harry Potter was a brilliant example of a series, with a great overarching plot arc and story, great characters that grew with the series, and superb world-building. It all generally just works. The films are slightly more uneven, but still excellent.
The extensions to the universe (in film form) were flops IMV - because they failed in all those areas. Unlike the book series, there was no magic. Having magic in the story does not make the story magic.
I thought the Harry Potter films were awful, because they couldn't fit in all the material required for the overarching plot arc. They end up relying on the viewer knowing the books well enough to fill in the gaps.
Awful is harsh: let's not forget that 70% of people who saw the movies never read the books, and they clearly got enough out of the movies to make it onto the next one.
Awful is harsh. I thought the actors were really well cast, and for someone who had read the books (several times) it was fun to see certain scenes play out.
But there were key parts of the plot where it felt like they'd randomly cut half the words out in order to make it fit the running time.
I was really looking forwards to the TV show but then they fucked up the casting of Snape very badly. If they wanted to race swap a character Snape was among the worst to do it with. Lupin or Sirius would have been the correct choice. It's also really hurt the hype for the show, constantly the comments in social media posts are relating how poorly they've cast Snape and how he's the worst character to race swap.
After that my excitement for it disappeared, there is a Sora 2 Harry Potter anime floating about the internet somewhere which was brilliant, I hope some enterprising OpenAI super user feeds it the all 7 books and it spits out 50h of anime...
I understand why they’ve done it. Rickman was such a definitive and iconic portrayal, you probably do need a completely fresh take on the character. Or it would be like bad karaoke. The trouble is it means the elements of bullying to a young snape will take on a twinge of racism that will be a complete invention of hbo.
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith are both going to be really acts tough to follow IMO. But yes, you've stumbled on the issue - by making the character black there will now be a racial element to the rivalry between James Potter and Snape which didn't exist in the books. The issue is that they made this casting decision at the height of DEI bullshit but by 2027 when this releases it's going to be extremely out of fashion. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if after the first season they'll recast citing creative differences or something.
These days, with AI, do we really need to follow them? Why not simply recreate them?
Ian Levine has been recreating Dr Who episodes using AI.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
While I concede I am wading into territory here I know nothing about (I've seen Star Wars, but it was 30 years ago), all the examples your provide are relatively short. Maybe story arcs work over a handful.of films (at least where they're thought out in advance), but don't over more than that.
There were 23 films in the MCU Infinity Saga and it worked very well.
All planned out by the same individual though, Kevin Feige, who ensured all 23 films worked with the same vision building up to the Infinity Wars finale.
Honestly, it was all a pretty dull way to watch 23 movies.
The infinity saga was brilliant, it has a few duds in it but the overall quality of storytelling is good and it still left room for individual movies like Winter Soldier.
Everything since then has ranged from nostalgia bait like Spider-Man or complete dogshit like She Hulk. Marvel is very much on its final of nine lives, they've gambled big time on bringing Robert Downey Junior back and paying Sony shit loads of money to keep Spider-Man in the tent but I'm not sure it will work, they've burned through almost all of their fan goodwill just like Star Wars and Star Trek did. People just aren't excited about seeing the next big Marvel movie in the way they were 10 years ago.
From chatting to (non-MCU obsessed) friends, I think the problem is that there's just too much MCU, spread too widely. It was good when there was a film or two a year, and you could go to the cinema as an event. But then you also had the TV series and all the other things, if you were not a hardcore fan it just became too much - I wasn't going to get Disney+ for the MCU.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
Agreed that the quantity over quality approach hasn't helped but really the stories are just bad, the changes to the source material is bad and they've turned a series that was primarily for men into one that is now pitched towards women. I don't think they realised how quickly the original audience of men that built the MCU into a huge juggernaut would just shrug and stop buying tickets when it wasn't Captain America and Iron Man but instead Ms Marvel and She Hulk. Maybe they thought women would start watching to to bridge that gap but if that's the case their market research was very poor.
The whole Marvel thing is deeply unappealing to me, because I want to hear about ordinary people who do extraordinary things when placed in extraordinary circumstances. The fantasy lives of 'superheroes' is such a sterile topic.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
The title always sounds like it is a shortening of Harry Potter and the Quantum of Solace.
BSG taught us that you can actually wing it for quite some time and still get a moderately good result at the end.
The Boston Consulting Group?
Battlestar Galactica (the reboot). One of the best sci-fi series ever. And had a plot so convoluted and made up on the fly, they had to make one of the main characters an angel to make it make sense.
It does help when you're anchored by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
Home alone 2: Lost in New York for me. Never actually walked out on a movie but came close during this one…
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
Arcs are good so long as the stories being told are good. Many of the best franchises are good because of good arcs.
Star Wars (original trilogy), Back to the Future, Godfather and in recent years Dark Knight and the MCU Infinity Wars.
It needs to be done well. It needs a compelling overarching vision that tends to require someone who understands what they're doing and plans it out well.
Bad storytelling is a failure whether in an individual story or an arc.
While I concede I am wading into territory here I know nothing about (I've seen Star Wars, but it was 30 years ago), all the examples your provide are relatively short. Maybe story arcs work over a handful.of films (at least where they're thought out in advance), but don't over more than that.
There were 23 films in the MCU Infinity Saga and it worked very well.
All planned out by the same individual though, Kevin Feige, who ensured all 23 films worked with the same vision building up to the Infinity Wars finale.
Honestly, it was all a pretty dull way to watch 23 movies.
The infinity saga was brilliant, it has a few duds in it but the overall quality of storytelling is good and it still left room for individual movies like Winter Soldier.
Everything since then has ranged from nostalgia bait like Spider-Man or complete dogshit like She Hulk. Marvel is very much on its final of nine lives, they've gambled big time on bringing Robert Downey Junior back and paying Sony shit loads of money to keep Spider-Man in the tent but I'm not sure it will work, they've burned through almost all of their fan goodwill just like Star Wars and Star Trek did. People just aren't excited about seeing the next big Marvel movie in the way they were 10 years ago.
From chatting to (non-MCU obsessed) friends, I think the problem is that there's just too much MCU, spread too widely. It was good when there was a film or two a year, and you could go to the cinema as an event. But then you also had the TV series and all the other things, if you were not a hardcore fan it just became too much - I wasn't going to get Disney+ for the MCU.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
Agreed that the quantity over quality approach hasn't helped but really the stories are just bad, the changes to the source material is bad and they've turned a series that was primarily for men into one that is now pitched towards women. I don't think they realised how quickly the original audience of men that built the MCU into a huge juggernaut would just shrug and stop buying tickets when it wasn't Captain America and Iron Man but instead Ms Marvel and She Hulk. Maybe they thought women would start watching to to bridge that gap but if that's the case their market research was very poor.
The whole Marvel thing is deeply unappealing to me, because I want to hear about ordinary people who do extraordinary things when placed in extraordinary circumstances. The fantasy lives of 'superheroes' is such a sterile topic.
I find even those tiresome; I like films about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
Tory Party conference? The gawp show. As in show up and gawp at how mad they are. And gawp knowing you’re watching the dying days of the grand old party.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
Were China and India wrong to recognise Palestine in 1988?
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
Home alone 2: Lost in New York for me. Never actually walked out on a movie but came close during this one…
The only movie I've seen someone walk out of was the Guy Ritchie movie Revolver. They left with a few choice words. At the end of the film, I thought "they did the right thing".
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
Were China and India wrong to recognise Palestine in 1988?
It is hard to conclude that doing so achieved anything meaningful.
Babis will begin talks immediately – perhaps as early as tonight – with the two small right-wing eurosceptic parties that managed to pass the 5% threshold: the anti-Green Deal Motorists for Themselves, and the anti-immigrant Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, led by the Czech-Japanese entrepreneur Tomio Okamura.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
Home alone 2: Lost in New York for me. Never actually walked out on a movie but came close during this one…
The only movie I've seen someone walk out of was the Guy Ritchie movie Revolver. They left with a few choice words. At the end of the film, I thought "they did the right thing".
I remember walking out of Vanilla Sky....awful film.
Generally speaking if you want people to take you seriously then you should only do serious things and avoid empty gestures.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
A reminder that Mrs J and I realised that you could replace one word in each of the Harry Potter book titles with the word 'cum' and get some interesting titles. E.g.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Cum Harry Potter and the Chamber of Cum Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Cum (or Cum of Azkaban) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Cum (or Cum of Fire) Harry Potter and the Cum of the Phoenix (or Order of the Cum) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Cum Harry Potter and the Deathly Cum
Yes, we are that immature.
Having said, that, they'd probably make a much better TV series...
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
Home alone 2: Lost in New York for me. Never actually walked out on a movie but came close during this one…
The only movie I've seen someone walk out of was the Guy Ritchie movie Revolver. They left with a few choice words. At the end of the film, I thought "they did the right thing".
Mission to Mars is the one film that I wished I'd walked out of, as several other people did.
Generally speaking if you want people to take you seriously then you should only do serious things and avoid empty gestures.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
It certainly did not seem to be a part of any strategy beyond "If we do this, something may happen..."
A reminder that Mrs J and I realised that you could replace one word in each of the Harry Potter book titles with the word 'cum' and get some interesting titles. E.g.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Cum Harry Potter and the Chamber of Cum Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Cum (or Cum of Azkaban) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Cum (or Cum of Fire) Harry Potter and the Cum of the Phoenix (or Order of the Cum) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Cum Harry Potter and the Deathly Cum
Yes, we are that immature.
Having said, that, they'd probably make a much better TV series...
Those sort of films are definitely verboten under the OSA without ID.
Generally speaking if you want people to take you seriously then you should only do serious things and avoid empty gestures.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
It certainly did not seem to be a part of any strategy beyond "If we do this, something may happen..."
Compare it to what Trump's plan may have already produced, with a promise to release the last of the hostages.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
Home alone 2: Lost in New York for me. Never actually walked out on a movie but came close during this one…
The only movie I've seen someone walk out of was the Guy Ritchie movie Revolver. They left with a few choice words. At the end of the film, I thought "they did the right thing".
I remember walking out of Vanilla Sky....awful film.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
You're right, but the problem is he didn't do it to influence the Middle East or help either the ordinary Palestinians or Israelis.
Generally speaking if you want people to take you seriously then you should only do serious things and avoid empty gestures.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
It certainly did not seem to be a part of any strategy beyond "If we do this, something may happen..."
Compare it to what Trump's plan may have already produced, with a promise to release the last of the hostages.
I would be very surprised if Trump's Sharpie ever saw a page of the 20 point plan. I suspect the original draft was handwritten with Tony Blair's Montblanc.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
You're right, but the problem is he didn't do it to influence the Middle East or help either the ordinary Palestinians or Israelis.
He did it to pander to his base.
Indeed. He gave in to the Gaza mob and it all it did was embolden them as we saw with devastating results in Manchester. Appeasing then has made things worse here and it has had no effect there other than to cause Hamas to celebrate.
Generally speaking if you want people to take you seriously then you should only do serious things and avoid empty gestures.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
It certainly did not seem to be a part of any strategy beyond "If we do this, something may happen..."
Compare it to what Trump's plan may have already produced, with a promise to release the last of the hostages.
I would be very surprised if Trump's Sharpie ever saw a page of the 20 point plan. I suspect the original draft was handwritten with Tony Blair's Montblanc.
What a shame that the actions of a demented and unsuitable US President grabbing on to the plan of the last person he spoke to, being based on the work of someone out of office for eighteen years . . . is so much more credible than what our own Prime Minister did.
Generally speaking if you want people to take you seriously then you should only do serious things and avoid empty gestures.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
It certainly did not seem to be a part of any strategy beyond "If we do this, something may happen..."
Compare it to what Trump's plan may have already produced, with a promise to release the last of the hostages.
I would be very surprised if Trump's Sharpie ever saw a page of the 20 point plan. I suspect the original draft was handwritten with Tony Blair's Montblanc.
What a shame that the actions of a demented and unsuitable US President grabbing on to the plan of the last person he spoke to, being based on the work of someone out of office for eighteen years . . . is so much more credible than what our own Prime Minister did.
Indeed. Recognition of Palestine was utterly ineffectual.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
Home alone 2: Lost in New York for me. Never actually walked out on a movie but came close during this one…
The only movie I've seen someone walk out of was the Guy Ritchie movie Revolver. They left with a few choice words. At the end of the film, I thought "they did the right thing".
I remember walking out of Vanilla Sky....awful film.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
You're right, but the problem is he didn't do it to influence the Middle East or help either the ordinary Palestinians or Israelis.
He did it to pander to his base.
You might both be wrong. Starmer is a lawyer, possibly *the* lawyer. This simple truth runs through and explains everything he does. So it may well be Starmer believed implicitly that legal recognition of Palestine would cause a Palestinian state to exist.
I've just realised that you could replace "Harry Potter" with "Bonnie Blue" in the book titles I gave earlier, and have things that have all occurred in her bus in Oxford in the last week ...
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
The Rise of Skywalker is dire, awful, rubbish. The only Star Wars film I've watched just once ever, and the only Star Wars film I've refused to buy the DVD or Blu-Ray of. Awful!
Generally speaking if you want people to take you seriously then you should only do serious things and avoid empty gestures.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
It certainly did not seem to be a part of any strategy beyond "If we do this, something may happen..."
Compare it to what Trump's plan may have already produced, with a promise to release the last of the hostages.
I would be very surprised if Trump's Sharpie ever saw a page of the 20 point plan. I suspect the original draft was handwritten with Tony Blair's Montblanc.
What a shame that the actions of a demented and unsuitable US President grabbing on to the plan of the last person he spoke to, being based on the work of someone out of office for eighteen years . . . is so much more credible than what our own Prime Minister did.
Whatever the value or otherwise of recognising Palestine, it is as you suggest most likely paying lip service to the base. However when it comes to the analysis on the Israel and Gaza war, your solution is both immoral and ridiculous.
In the past I have asked you to give me a maximum number of acceptable collateral casualties in this war and you have been courteous enough to respond "whatever it takes to extinguish* Hamas". When I have asked if 2 million dead Gazans is acceptable you have responded with "whatever it takes to extinguish* Hamas". I find that outrageous.
I don’t care if Trump rushed this proposal out to get an agreement before the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded next Friday!
Whatever your political side I hope I speak for all in desperately hoping that this Peace Plan can get agreement .
Looks like the pressure on Netanyahu put on by Australia, Canada, Portugal, France - and Starmer's United Kingdom - through recognition of Palestine has finally brought him to the table.
Hot off the heels of a comparatively upbeat Labour Party Conference, the latest polling from Opinium shows Labour leader Keir Starmer’s approval rating continuing to slide, with a net rating of -44 (-3). More voters viewed Starmer’s Conference speech negatively (34%) than positively (23%).
Oh dear. And that was supposedly speech of his life (TM Beth Rigby). Whatever it is, he does have this incredible ability to rub people up the wrong way.
I don’t care if Trump rushed this proposal out to get an agreement before the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded next Friday!
Whatever your political side I hope I speak for all in desperately hoping that this Peace Plan can get agreement .
Looks like the pressure on Netanyahu put on by Australia, Canada, Portugal, France - and Starmer's United Kingdom - through recognition of Palestine has finally brought him to the table.
Not sure the numbers make very good reading for Kemi Badenoch either in all honesty.
Looks like calling Farage racist every hour on the hour isn't going to work.
I always come back to Iain Dale take down of Nick Griffin. A huge amount is made of his car crash QT appearance, but Dale interview for me was far more effective. He never called him racist, and instead focused on policy, and Griffin was lost. You could hear the cogs cranking around as he couldn't just go to his usual playbook of defending about accusations of being a racist, and instead having to discuss industrial policy.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
You're right, but the problem is he didn't do it to influence the Middle East or help either the ordinary Palestinians or Israelis.
He did it to pander to his base.
You might both be wrong. Starmer is a lawyer, possibly *the* lawyer. This simple truth runs through and explains everything he does. So it may well be Starmer believed implicitly that legal recognition of Palestine would cause a Palestinian state to exist.
That's not an absurd thought. A state that is legally recognised but occupied by a hostile power can be said to still exist.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
You're right, but the problem is he didn't do it to influence the Middle East or help either the ordinary Palestinians or Israelis.
He did it to pander to his base.
You might both be wrong. Starmer is a lawyer, possibly *the* lawyer. This simple truth runs through and explains everything he does. So it may well be Starmer believed implicitly that legal recognition of Palestine would cause a Palestinian state to exist.
That's not an absurd thought. A state that is legally recognised but occupied by a hostile power can be said to still exist.
Well quite. France was still France even when the Nazi Jackboot controlled the country.
James Bond: the British owners made a nice mess of the IP themselves to be honest. Escapist entertainment requires the protagonist to escape.
The clear path forward is to make it a period piece. The cars, fashion, music, locations. The main issue bond has had is the big bad in real life is China but they are such a big market for movies they daren’t show that on film.
I think the Craig films were generally pretty good, and a bit of a change from the paint-by-numbers, repetitive approach that the Brosnan era (and before that, Moore) ended up falling into.
Their failing was in trying to tie everything together and write an “ending” for the era (modern screenwriters are generally appalling at writing effective and logical endings).
I think it’s probably time that the series did trade on its nostalgia again. A period piece, as you say, would probably work pretty well nowadays.
It is the 21st Century obsession with arcs. It ruined Dr Who; it ruined Star Whatever; it ruined James Bond. Out went the inter-film reset button, to be replaced by the accumulation of in-universe lore over multi-year story arcs until collapsing under the weight of its own internal logic.
As someone who thought Bond films were standalone, and watched Quantum of Solace before I had seen Casino Royale, I heartily agree.
Quantum of Solace is standalone.
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
Die Another Day is by far the worst.
It's not great, but QoS is one of the worst films (not just Bond) that I have paid money to see.
Home alone 2: Lost in New York for me. Never actually walked out on a movie but came close during this one…
The only movie I've seen someone walk out of was the Guy Ritchie movie Revolver. They left with a few choice words. At the end of the film, I thought "they did the right thing".
I remember walking out of Vanilla Sky....awful film.
I enjoyed Vanilla Sky, good film, although it's a pretty straight remake of the Spanish original film Abre los Ojos, which is a really great film.
Films I would've walked out of had I not been with someone else are... Inland Empire, and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Maybe also Greenaway's The Pillow Book.
Generally speaking if you want people to take you seriously then you should only do serious things and avoid empty gestures.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
It certainly did not seem to be a part of any strategy beyond "If we do this, something may happen..."
Compare it to what Trump's plan may have already produced, with a promise to release the last of the hostages.
I would be very surprised if Trump's Sharpie ever saw a page of the 20 point plan. I suspect the original draft was handwritten with Tony Blair's Montblanc.
What a shame that the actions of a demented and unsuitable US President grabbing on to the plan of the last person he spoke to, being based on the work of someone out of office for eighteen years . . . is so much more credible than what our own Prime Minister did.
Whatever the value or otherwise of recognising Palestine, it is as you suggest most likely paying lip service to the base. However when it comes to the analysis on the Israel and Gaza war, your solution is both immoral and ridiculous.
In the past I have asked you to give me a maximum number of acceptable collateral casualties in this war and you have been courteous enough to respond "whatever it takes to extinguish* Hamas". When I have asked if 2 million dead Gazans is acceptable you have responded with "whatever it takes to extinguish* Hamas". I find that outrageous.
* My word choice, replace as you feel fit.
We all have to hope this peace deal works and to be fair the Palestinian Authority has said Hamas will have no place in the post peace settlement
Not sure the numbers make very good reading for Kemi Badenoch either in all honesty.
Worse for Davey though.
I am obviously much more engaged in following politics and I have bugger all idea what their policies are even after their conference. Whereas with the boobie enlarger party, I know they are all about wealth taxes and Gaza.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
European countries attempted to use the recognition of Palestine to punish Israel and now that bolt has been shot, nothing changed for Israel and we rewarded terrorists. Instead if we'd reserved that recognition as a reward for Palestinians who sought a permanent peace with Israel we'd still have that in our armoury and something to bring to the table in the next phase of this. As it stands the twatter is right, European countries are completely irrelevant and sidelined, we have nothing to offer either party. Short termism from Starmer to give in to the Gaza mob means we have zero influence today.
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
You're right, but the problem is he didn't do it to influence the Middle East or help either the ordinary Palestinians or Israelis.
He did it to pander to his base.
You might both be wrong. Starmer is a lawyer, possibly *the* lawyer. This simple truth runs through and explains everything he does. So it may well be Starmer believed implicitly that legal recognition of Palestine would cause a Palestinian state to exist.
That's not an absurd thought. A state that is legally recognised but occupied by a hostile power can be said to still exist.
From the desert to the sea, Western Sahara will be free!
Comments
And my lot's (the LDs) call of "give us Federalism or else we will accept the status quo".
I saw the kid they’ve found to play Hermione as Matilda on stage. She is something special. If they’ve cast the other child roles as well as her, I can see how the Snape casting drama might be soon forgotten.
It's worse when plot events happen between films. For instance, the fact that Mantis was Star-Lord's sister was revealed in the Holiday Special (on Disney+) and was poorly explained in GotG v3. "Wait, what? She's his sister now?" I'd watched the first two films, and felt cheated that something important had happened with these characters essentially off-screen.
Also, making so much also makes quality harder to obtain.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14771925/amp/Britain-fails-sign-letter-nine-European-powers-demanding-reform-ECHR-pressure-mounts-Attorney-General-Lord-Hermer.html
Maybe he doesn't agree with their approach, but what's the harm in being involved?
At about 9:30 pm, an allied plane appeared in the skies of Zavattarello. It entered the launch zone making regular photographic signals. Garibaldi's troupes answered with the agreed signals. After two rounds of the field, the unit dropped off two containers, immediately after followed a very sad display: a tongue of fire burst from the aircraft's left engine, the blaze was followed by a hiss, then a bang and almost immediately spiralled down without hope, crashing against the lower slope of the mountain.
A win for Spurs today keeps them 2 points behind Arsenal in the Premier league race. They are at present, 50/1 to win the Premier league with William Hill. I know it's Spurs, chance of capitulation etc, but these odds seem ridiculous to me, worth a trading bet.
I've had a nibble each way at this. They have a tough set of fixtures November, but I get the feeling this year may not be the Liverpool procession we expected a fortnight ago. Arsenal currently top, dependent on the final score in Chelsea v Liverpool
Bournemouth also 2 points behind Arsenal are 200/1 with the same bookie. Again potential for a trading bet, a better idea may be to back them for the top 4, odds will be out once the PL game is finished
As ever, DYOR
But there's also the house rivalry to consider as well. In the series, Snape seemed to prefer Slytherin pupils first and foremost; then pupils from other houses aside from Gryffindor, and he treats Gryffindor's pupils the worst - perhaps because that's where Lily was sorted. And finally, at the bottom of his list, is Harry Potter - who reminds him of both the man he hated, and the woman he loved.
Snape is a wonderfully rich character, to the extent that if it is seen as a simple racist hatred, then the writers and producers have utterly failed.
(I hope the facts (not opinions) in that are correct; it's years since I read the books or watched the films..)
...and PB is discussing children's story books and films.
Just shows that the Tories are irrelevant.
both have pretty much used up all the available onstage talent and need to lie fallow for a decade or more
both are based on fantastical stories that people want to be true but... (that's enough. Ed.)
both have a creative spirit driven mad by soci.. (no, I meant it. Ed.)
Like, "Quantum of Solace, please go over there and stand alone and don't let anyone see you."
And that's the thing - the films did a good job of capturing the essence of the books. True, bits were left out, but nothing vital. All eight movies are about 20 hours in total runtime. HBO's first series is apparently going to be eight episodes - as the characters have not aged, presumably that'll be just the first book. If each episode is 45 minutes, then that is six hours for the first book. There simply is not enough material in the first book - which is actually quite a simple plot.
Rather than rebooting to cast a new version of the same character.
Since Iron Man came out in 2008 there's been 3 (4 if you count Keaton in Flash) actors who've played Batman in a live action film. Easier to do when Affleck and Pattinson weren't being a continuity of Bale.
If they wish to maintain continuity in MCU then Iron Man is gone, but of course the comics themselves would never write off such a titular character and keep him dead for long.
The issue is that the whole concept of Human Rights being grafted on to British law doesn't work. It is not our Government's job to be involved if a foreign citizen who is a paedophile, or frankly who is a Christian or gay, may face hardship if they return to their country of origin. And we certainly should not be placing those rights above those of British citizens who may be disadvantaged in the process.
Human rights basically means that we are responsible legally for the welfare of the entire world - ahead of the welfare of our own citizens. The whole concept needs to be rejected and removed from our law, because it's a cobra disguised as a kitten.
The movies run along at a good clip and still hold up, even though the first is now 24 years old. Most of the adult actors are now dead. Maggie Smith, Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Harris / Gambon, Richard Griffiths, Robert Hardy, Roger Lloyd Pack…
I appreciate this is not the majority view.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, real superheroes - people indistinguishable from you and me - are fighting evil. And many die in the process.
Want to take punt on outlasting Keir Starmer, @KemiBadenoch?
We’re only too happy to oblige @StarSports_Bet!
Who goes first?
Keir Starmer (Labour): 11/10
Kemi Badenoch (Tories): 8/11
https://x.com/keejayov3/status/1974455567768015096?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62qezmr92lo.amp
So that's 261 minutes for the audiobook to 172 minutes for TV. The TV is about two-thirds the length.
So Philosopher's Stone is 505 minutes long in the audiobook two-thirds of which is 334 minutes, or 5h34m. Six hours isn't far off.
'The premature recognition of "Palestine" by France and the UK has made Europe even more irrelevant to the conflict than it was already. A joint French-British-German initiative to work with the US and Israel would have brought Europe back in the game.'
He's truly the worst PM of the modern era, worse than Truss who at least had the decency to resign.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62qezmr92lo
What a great name for a party "Motorists for Themselves"....they are definitely the sort of people who sit in the middle lane of the motorway.
Recognising the state of Palestine and then following that up with no practical measures to make a sovereign state of Palestine a reality, is an empty gesture and an unserious action.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Cum
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Cum
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Cum (or Cum of Azkaban)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Cum (or Cum of Fire)
Harry Potter and the Cum of the Phoenix (or Order of the Cum)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Cum
Harry Potter and the Deathly Cum
Yes, we are that immature.
Having said, that, they'd probably make a much better TV series...
He did it to pander to his base.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/04/rise-of-katie-lam-next-tory-leader-migration
Alarming.
Whatever your political side I hope I speak for all in desperately hoping that this Peace Plan can get agreement .
In the past I have asked you to give me a maximum number of acceptable collateral casualties in this war and you have been courteous enough to respond "whatever it takes to extinguish* Hamas". When I have asked if 2 million dead Gazans is acceptable you have responded with "whatever it takes to extinguish* Hamas". I find that outrageous.
* My word choice, replace as you feel fit.
https://www.opinium.com/resource-center/opinium-voting-intention-1st-october-2025/
(chucks lit match and leaves)
Oh dear. And that was supposedly speech of his life (TM Beth Rigby). Whatever it is, he does have this incredible ability to rub people up the wrong way.
➡️ REF: 34% (+2)
🌹 LAB: 21% (-1)
🌳 CON: 16% (-1)
🔶 LDEM: 12% (-2)
🟢 GRN: 10% (+3)
Not sure the numbers make very good reading for Kemi Badenoch either in all honesty.
I always come back to Iain Dale take down of Nick Griffin. A huge amount is made of his car crash QT appearance, but Dale interview for me was far more effective. He never called him racist, and instead focused on policy, and Griffin was lost. You could hear the cogs cranking around as he couldn't just go to his usual playbook of defending about accusations of being a racist, and instead having to discuss industrial policy.
Badenoch is likely to resign post May 26 but the bigger question is will Starmer?
Films I would've walked out of had I not been with someone else are... Inland Empire, and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Maybe also Greenaway's The Pillow Book.
Colour me sceptical, but anything Middle Eastern with Blair's fingerprints all over it haven't gone so well in the past.