golli
@golli@lemm.ee
- Comment on Warner Bros. Discovery To Split Into Two Companies, Streaming & Studios And Global Networks 2 weeks ago:
I definitely agree that this is a big problem happening way too often, but not sure if it is the case here.
First of all we need to remember that the majority of debt came from AT&T splitting off Warner and saddling it with billions of debt, not from the Discovery side at their merger or the split now. Secondly as i understand it the linerar networks are obviously the declining assets, but still the ones with more profit/revenue.
That makes it a judgment call whether one believes that those will be able to pay off this debt, before they become irrelevant. This might indeed involve cost cutting measures and negative effects, but who would invest in this business today? So long as there are no public bailouts involved i’d be fine with letting the debt holders judge by themselfes if they are fine with this (i assume they had a say in allowing this?). I guess this might be sad for CNN and some of the sports programs, but i feel like most people here won’t care too much what happens with the likes of TCL or HGTV.
The part we probably care more about (Warner/HBO) is the one getting the clean slate. Whether they try to make it work as a studio with streaming service on its own or try to sell it to someone else we will see. So presumably not a situation like JoAnn fabrics or Toys’R’Us where a liked company was saddled with debt and bled dry.
- Comment on Warner Bros. Discovery To Split Into Two Companies, Streaming & Studios And Global Networks 2 weeks ago:
They’re effectively undoing the merger that they did just a few years ago
The big difference is that the declining cable networks and more importantly also the debt is apparently in the Global Networks company. Tbh i am not sure if there would have been any other solution to get those away Warner/HBO this clean.
- Comment on Warner Bros. Discovery To Split Into Two Companies, Streaming & Studios And Global Networks 2 weeks ago:
So after this brief merger they are already splitting again? But this time Discovery gets loaded up with the declining linear television parts and I assume also the huge pile of debt?
Obviously share ownership adjusted accordingly, but I guess there would have been no other way to transfer the debt and declining business parts directly to discovery or someone else. Because no one would take that deal even for free.
I might actually see this as a win for movie/television fans as I doubt there’d been a faster way for warner/HBO to become separated from the debt and cable stuff.
The re-rebranding back to HBOmax makes more sense now.
It’ll be interesting to see how this changes CEO pay. Does Zaslav take a pay cut since he now manages a much smaller company? I doubt it. I bet he gets another performance bonus and on the other side the former CFO now CEO of the new company will also be paid handsomely to handle the crappy parts. Leading to overall even more management salary.
- Comment on What are you watching and, what do you recommend this week? 4 weeks ago:
I’m a big Asimov fan so I was really looking forward to Foundation. S1 was OK but not entirely sure about some of the many ways they have departed from the books.
Ironically i’d say the best thing about the show is something they completely made up for the show: the whole genetic dynasty with dawn/day/dusk.
- Comment on What are you watching and, what do you recommend this week? 4 weeks ago:
Grand designs
One of my guilty pleasure shows. I’d love to see more actual “Grand designs” with people , but as you said more often then not it is not quite unlike reality tv.
- Comment on What movies have you watched this week? 4 weeks ago:
When watching the machete order, did you skip episode 1 like suggested here? Because if yes, then watching it this way and then the sequels seems like a contradiction to me. Episode may be a failure in execution, but the core concept imo is solid. Can’t say the same about the sequels, even if they look prettier (to the point of doing stupid scenes just for the visuals).
- Comment on What are you watching and, what do you recommend this week? 4 weeks ago:
Murderbot: Loved the books, not quite sold on the series yet. The lead being male didn’t take me out as much as i expected (murderbot’s gender is never mentioned in the books and i always imagined it female). My biggest gripe is how short the episodes are, especially when they release weekly (after getting 2 in the first week). For anyone considering it i would probably recommend to just wait until the season is done and then watch it all at once. I planned to do that after the first two, but ended up watching the third this week aswell. Episode 3 is only 23min long opening credits included, for which you can substract another 1.5min or so. The first book is relatively short with 144 pages (according to goodreads), but if that is not enough for a proper season, then they should have maybe just combined the first two?
The Last of Us: Good, but not great. Maybe having the comparison to absolutely outstanding shows like Severence, the Pitt or Andor this year makes it feel weaker.
Love, Death & Robots: Very weak season. Opening it with what is basically just a Red Hot Chili Pepper music video kind of set the tone as to what quality to expect from it.
- Comment on Hush over Hollywood: why has it become so hard to make films in Los Angeles? 4 weeks ago:
They overinvested funds into stuff they didn’t need (disney buying lucasarts and such)
I do agree that they overspend on a lot of things, but in my book buying Lucas Arts for $4b was a steal. Even with the way misshandeld it (bar some highlights like Andor), this was most certainly a good investment.
I mean the sequels were bad and yet those alone made more than $4b at the boxoffice (yes I know that isn’t profit, but just to give some perspective). And star wars is also a powerhouse in terms of merchandise sales, think of the amount of baby Yoda toys being sold.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Another aspect of why it is more profitable is that it allows them to avoid paying taxes on sales and already accumulated profits, which is desirable because of the compound interest effect.
I think if using something as collateral for a loan would create a taxable event and eliminate this advantage, then they would care a lot less about the arbitrage play between interest rates and average long term stock returns.
- Comment on Career-Ending ‘Game Of Thrones’ Injury Led To $9.4M Settlement: Why Stuntwoman Thinks It Exposes Everything That’s Wrong With Her Profession 4 weeks ago:
To be fair that is true for many jobs. Anytime you are working around heavy machinery for example.
What gets me is that their whole profession is about getting a known dangerous task and figuring out if/how the scene can be performed in a safe manner. With time in advance to prepare, and mitigate risks.
And yet they still cut corners.
- Comment on "Avatar: The Way of Water" returns to theaters on October 3 4 weeks ago:
But an awesome tech demo.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
it can be predictable at times
I mean considering we know it ends with Rouge One and generally sits within a larger established universe, that seems somewhat unavoidable.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
I think the Saw parts fit in decently. It adds another flavor of resistance to the mix.
We get the rebellion, which is an organized military like effort, we get luthen who as a spy master pulls strings in the shadows, Mon mothma straddling the line between being in a privileged public position and helping the rebellion, on ghorman we get a more amateurish resistance, Cassian is more of an individualist who finds his own path between the different factions, and with Saw we get a gurellia like extremist faction
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
I’d say it is the best mature star wars piece of media ever made. Because I (today still, but especially my younger self) do love me some good light saber fights or large scale space battles, which we didn’t get here. Andor not including those is for the better, but I wouldn’t want to completely go without them either.
- Comment on What are some of your unpopular opinions, hot takes about series, streaming services, the wider industry etc? 5 weeks ago:
I think there should be more variety in how shows are released and it should be based on what the creators feel like suits them best.
Something like Severance definitely benefits from the weekly release to give everyone time to speculate and keep up the suspense for longer.
With others it’s nice to just get the full season at once. I wouldn’t even say “bad” shows, but shows that are skewe more towards pure entertainment, action and mindless distraction (which do have their purpose). Something like say Reacher would fit that category imo
Andor struck an interesting middle ground imo by releasing 3 episode blocks at a time. For me that worked great. It gave us a similar amount of content like a long movie per week, which considering the quality was basically film level worked out great.
- Comment on What new TV series are you most looking at with interest for the second half of the year? 5 weeks ago:
I wasn’t blown away by it either, but the episodes were so short that it was similar to one episode of other series.
I probably won’t continue watching it for a bit, since one 25min episode per week is too slow for me, but might give it another shot once the season is done (assuming people like it at that point).
- Comment on What are you watching and, what do you recommend this week? 5 weeks ago:
Another issue I have is that at least the first two episodes are less than half an hour long, and after this we will only get one per week. For me that’s too little content per week, so I might just wait until more is released until I continue.
As a comparison Andor imo had an amazing release schedule with its 3 episode blocks with each being between 45-55min long.
- Comment on What new TV series are you most looking at with interest for the second half of the year? 1 month ago:
Surprisingly looking forward to Murderbot. I think Skarsgard is miscast, but the previews have looked great so maybe it will be good after all.
You and me both. It’s been a while since i’ve read the books, but as i remember it’s never stated what appearance or gender Murderbot has and this wiki seems to support my recollection.
In my imagination Murderbot was female similar to GLaDOS in Valve’s Portal game series, just more anxious.
- Comment on Max Is Changing Its Name to (Get This!) HBO Max 1 month ago:
Agreed. Max wasn’t a good naming choice, but taking out the HBO part to protect the brand value of it standing for prestige television was the right call. And honestly Max wasn’t great, but imo not as bad as i first thought when they introduced it, just really bland. I guess going with something that includes the Warner brand in the name wasn’t on the table after the merger?
- Comment on Top 50 TV Shows Of All Time Ranked by the most known sources of ratings like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic etc. Agree? 2 months ago:
It’s one of my personal favorites, but I am still a bit surprised to see House so high on the list.
Imo one notable absence from this list is “The good place”, which imo is among the all time greats, managing to stay consistently good from start to finish.
Also I actually haven’t seen the other true detective seasons, but heard they aren’t even close to as good as the first one. So i assume the rating is heavily carried by it?
- Comment on PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now 3 months ago:
Tell that to everyone playing games like path of exile (which i admittedly have also played too much of in the past).
- Comment on What movies have you watched this week? 3 months ago:
Watched Gattaca (1997) the other day and really enjoyed it. Sci-fi movie that imo aged quite well and i somehow hadn’t seen until now.
- Comment on ‘Anora’ Takes Best Picture Oscar As Sean Baker Wins Four To Tie Record; Lead Acting Prizes To Mikey Madison & Adrien Brody: Full List 3 months ago:
Fun fact: by beating Timothée Chalamet Alan Brody defends his record as youngest actor to win this category, which he holds from his first win for “The Pianist” (2002). Had Timothée won tonight, he’d have been younger by a few months.
- Comment on The Highest-Paid Actors Of 2024 (Including all earnings, film salaries, & other forms of income) - The Rock Tops the List with $88M 3 months ago:
He and Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) are are the only tv actors on the list, the latter one suprises me even more.
I’d imagine the Friends cast barely missed this list? Because i was under the impression that they also pocket close to like $20m/year from residuals.
- Comment on The Highest-Paid Actors Of 2024 (Including all earnings, film salaries, & other forms of income) - The Rock Tops the List with $88M 3 months ago:
Additionally, the ranking only includes earnings related to entertainment—acting, producing, directing, or other forms of performance (such as stand-up comedy). Entrepreneurial endeavors not related to entertainment, such as joint ventures, licensing, commercials or social media partnerships, were not counted.
So presumably that isn’t included here, unless he pays himself for advertisements? His income this year is probably primarily from Deadpool and Wolverine, where he doesn’t just earn through acting, but also writing and producing.
- Comment on ‘Anora’ Takes Best Picture Oscar As Sean Baker Wins Four To Tie Record; Lead Acting Prizes To Mikey Madison & Adrien Brody: Full List 3 months ago:
Sean Baker with Anora was definitely the biggest winner of the night. 4 Oscars in different disciplines (directing, writing, editing, producing) is just insane.
Emilia Pérez and Conclave seems like the losers of this year.
- Comment on It’s Official: The DVD Business Died in 2024 3 months ago:
Another thing that i am already missing, since it usually isn’t included in those Blu-ray rips, are the movie extras.
- Comment on What movies have you watched this week? 3 months ago:
Watched The Gorge recently aswell.
Wouldn’t go as far as saying that i was pleasantly suprised, but it’s one of those movies where I use very different metrics compared to movies i go in with the expectation to watch something actually good. It definitively falls into the category of mindless entertainment, which despite the somewhat negative name has it’s purpose. In that regard it does fulfill it’s role adequately for me, which is really all i was looking to get out of it.
I’d agree that the creature/environment design was interesting. The biggest downfall of the movie is that it tries to be too many things at once instead of comitting to one single thing: suspenseful slow paced thriller, romance, horror, action, character study, historical mystery, and so on. Can’t be all at the same time and in the end everything suffers from it.
Tbh biggest suprise is that it’s an appleTV+ instead of Netflix movie.
- Comment on Can I lose a beer belly working out one day a week? 4 months ago:
Yep. Weight is lost through diet, sport might help but can also make you hungry. The main benefit of exercise is better health through increased fitness.
People should compare how much calories exercising burnes per hour compared to the simple act of e.g. switching sugary drinks for water. Especially when you aren’t fit to begin with, meaning you won’t for example be able to run for hours each week.
Intermittent fasting definitely is a good method. But it varies for everyone. Imo it helps to start with changing what you groceries you buy. At least to me the further away from the plate you implement caloric reduction the easier it is.
- Comment on What movies have you watched this week? 4 months ago:
I am not an Alien die hard fan, but I’d say that is definitely a factor. The movie reuses a lot of ideas from the older movies and some of the references are pretty on the nose. Still an entertaining movie though.
As a comparison i think Prey (2022) did a better job in being a fresh entry to a similar and established franchise (predator in this case) and standing on it’s own.