#the rip times are unbelievably inconsistent and they have been that way since this saw first caught my eye (season two)

[alicepao13]

The disrespect this show gets on a daily basis, from the production to the network(s) to even the pirates who prefer to rip shows like *checks notes* Big Brother Canada (same group)...

I wouldn't be calling them out if I hadn't done this myself, by the way. People who have never ripped a damn thing can stay in their lane. I have earned my stripes, I'm not someone who wants to talk shit about those who do this, and I understand the process involved. The webrips are a different story, as they are uploaded by Amazon whenever. The HDTV rips should be uploaded on time, shortly after the network airs the show, and it's the same process as it always has been to rip them. Uploading HDTV rips after the webrips has no value whatsoever, unless someone cares that much about the promo, which of course CityTV doesn't care enough to upload themselves, proving once again what a shitty network they are.

Hudson and Rex has an international fanbase, it shouldn't be so difficult to be able to watch it as an international fan in 2024.

[lastsonlost]

Comedian Ricky Gervais is clearly enjoying himself as he rides the outrage wave from his fan-loved and Hollywood-loathed performance as the host of the Golden Globes Sunday night. After gaining hundreds of thousands of followers as a result of his celebrity slamming performance, Gervais took a moment early Wednesday to provide a helpful list of reminders about humor for his “offended” critics — many of whom happen to be journalists, who Gervais also made sure to mock.

In his instantly famous opening remarks at the awards show Sunday (transcript below), Gervais announced that it was his “last time” hosting the show and then promptly proceeded to do what so many viewers have been longing for a host to do: put virtue-signaling Hollywood in its place. “Let’s go out with a bang, let’s have a laugh at your expense,” he said at the start. “Remember, they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon and there’s no sequel, so remember that.” After calling out Hollywood hypocrisy — including on sexual misconduct, corporate corruption and human rights abuses — Gervais ended his blistering opening statement by telling all the winners, “If you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and f*** off, OK?”

His brutal rebuke of Hollywood was met with predictable outrage from many, including media figures and journalists, which Gervais pointed out in one tweet Tuesday.

“I always knew that there were morons in the world that took jokes seriously, but I’m surprised that some journalists do,” he wrote (tweet below). “Surely, understanding stuff is pretty fundamental to their job, isn’t it?” He ended the post by twisting the knife: “Just makes it funnier though, I guess.”

Early Wednesday, Gervais felt compelled to help out some of those particularly suffering from a case of perpetual offense by offering a list of reminders about how humor works and doesn’t work:

1#. Simply pointing out whether someone is left or right wing isn’t winning the argument.

2#. If a joke is good enough, it can be enjoyed by ANYONE!

3#. IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!

4#. Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.

As The Daily Wire reported, Gervais spent Monday after the Globes having fun at his critics’ expense online, ridiculing responses to his performance from The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter and The Independent, along with the very show he hosted.

Among his posts was one in which he slammed those calling him “right wing.” “How the f*** can teasing huge corporations, and the richest, most privileged people in the world be considered right wing?” he tweeted (post below).

He also made a point of thanking his hundred of thousands of new followers. “Welcome to the 300,000 new followers I acquired today. I promise you won’t like everything I say, but here’s a sexy photo,” he wrote.

Gervais continued to hit his critics on Tuesday, including retweeting a defense of his Golden Globes jokes by Second Amendment champion Dana Loesch, who called The Independent’s condemnation of Gervais “garbage.”

“Oh garbage,” Loesch wrote. “[Ricky Gervais] demonstrated that good comedians go after everyone. No one should be safe, but the prevailing thought these past 10+ years is that one group IS exempt. They can lecture from the stage but he can’t mock their inconsistencies? You prove his point.”

<I mean if calling out corrupt corporations and the super rich is right wing then I guess the right wing is better at being liberal than liberals.

Below is the transcript of Gervais’ opening comments at the Golden Globes:

You’ll be pleased to know this is the last time I’m hosting these awards, so I don’t care anymore. I’m joking. I never did. I’m joking, I never did. NBC clearly don’t care either — fifth time. I mean, Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets — hello?

Lucky for me, the Hollywood Foreign Press can barely speak English and they’ve no idea what Twitter is, so I got offered this gig by fax. Let’s go out with a bang, let’s have a laugh at your expense. Remember, they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon and there’s no sequel, so remember that.

But you all look lovely all dolled up. You came here in your limos. I came here in a limo tonight and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman. No, shush. It’s her daughter I feel sorry for. OK? That must be the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to her. And her dad was in Wild Hogs.

Lots of big celebrities here tonight. Legends. Icons. This table alone — Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro … Baby Yoda. Oh, that’s Joe Pesci, sorry. I love you man. Don’t have me whacked. But tonight isn’t just about the people in front of the camera. In this room are some of the most important TV and film executives in the world. People from every background. They all have one thing in common: They’re all terrified of Ronan Farrow. He’s coming for ya. Talking of all you perverts, it was a big year for pedophile movies. Surviving R. Kelly, Leaving Neverland, Two Popes. Shut up. Shut up. I don’t care. I don’t care.

Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that. Hollywood Foreign press are all very racist. Fifth time. So. We were going to do an In-Memoriam this year, but when I saw the list of people who died, it wasn’t diverse enough. No, it was mostly white people and I thought, nah, not on my watch. Maybe next year. Let’s see what happens.

No one cares about movies anymore. No one goes to cinema, no one really watches network TV. Everyone is watching Netflix. This show should just be me coming out, going, “Well done Netflix. You win everything. Good night.” But no, we got to drag it out for three hours. You could binge-watch the entire first season of Afterlife instead of watching this show. That’s a show about a man who wants to kill himself cause his wife dies of cancer and it’s still more fun than this. Spoiler alert, season two is on the way so in the end he obviously didn’t kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he’s your friend but I don’t care.

Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels. I’ve heard a rumor there might be a sequel to Sophie’s Choice. I mean, that would just be Meryl just going, “Well, it’s gotta be this one then.” All the best actors have jumped to Netflix, HBO. And the actors who just do Hollywood movies now do fantasy-adventure nonsense. They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn’t acting anymore. It’s going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids, really. Have we got an award for most ripped junky? No point, we’d know who’d win that.

Martin Scorsese made the news for his controversial comments about the Marvel franchise. He said they’re not real cinema and they remind him about theme parks. I agree. Although I don’t know what he’s doing hanging around theme parks. He’s not big enough to go on the rides. He’s tiny. The Irishman was amazing. It was amazing. It was great. Long, but amazing. It wasn’t the only epic movie. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, nearly three hours long. Leonardo DiCaprio attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew was like, “Come on, Leo, mate. You’re nearly 50-something.”

The world got to see James Corden as a fat pussy. He was also in the movie Cats. No one saw that movie. And the reviews, shocking. I saw one that said, “This is the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs.” But Dame Judi Dench defended the film saying it was the film she was born to play because she loves nothing better than plunking herself down on the carpet, lifting her leg and licking her pussy. (Coughs) Hairball. She’s old-school.

It’s the last time, who cares? Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It’s already three hours long. Right, let’s do the first award.

[emeraldspiral]

So I saw Venom last night opening weekend but totally forgot about this draft until now.

As I expected, Venom is not good, but it’s not so much that there’s anything exceptionally bad about it. It’s just missing a certain je ne sais quoi that good movies have that make them really satisfying.

It’s more complicated than being, cliche”, “disjointed”, “tonally inconsistent”, or “confused”.

So I’m just gonna say things that I thought about off the top of my head.

There’s an extent to where I feel like it’s nitpicking to call a story cliche, because sometimes a story just demands a certain type of structure. Like, you have to establish what normal is before you can show how the plot device changes things for the main character, then you have to show them struggling to adapt to whatever changes occur because of the plot device, then start to get the hang of things, then have a big setback, then have a triumphant comeback. That I can deal with.

But then there’s stuff like how they handled the villain that just felt incredibly phoned-in.

Like, I think the first scene of him he’s giving this really idealistic speech to a bunch of kids and a girl wants to ask him a question and the other kids shush her for no apparent reason (maybe they just wanted the lecture to be over with because they were bored?) and the bad guy makes this very on the nose speech about how some people like to silence others and stop them from asking questions and I should note that the bad guy is played by Riz Ahmed and the little girl was black. So you think you just got your first hint of what his villainous motive is and you think there’s going to be some kind of political statement. Like he or his parents were speaking out against oppression or something and then they got “silenced” and now he has some radical crackpot theories about solving all the problems of humanity through like, eugenics or something really taboo and now feels like he’s being “silenced” again because everyone’s telling him he’s insane and no one’s ever gonna get on board with his plan. But no, it ends up having nothing to do with his motivation at all. It was just there so he could show his true nature as a hypocrite in the next scene when he “silences” Eddie, specifically for asking questions he didn’t like.

Riz’s actual motivation is just... I don’t even know man. Like, the reason he’s established as a villain from the beginning is that he preys on vulnerable communities to get test subjects who he just slaughters en mass in order to create pharmaceuticals to treat like cancer and stuff. So it’s like, he’s an idealist who wants to save the world, but at the same time he has like no regard for human life. Like, it’s never indicated that he’s in it for profit or power or prestige, so all we’re left with is “He’s simultaneously a bleeding heart and a heartless misanthropic murderer. But the thing that really makes his character seem phoned-in is how they don’t have an explanation for why he’s so reckless and cuts corners and tries to go way too far way too fast with the symbiotes. He’s not under any pressure to produce results, he’s not about to lose funding. He just wants immediate results because...? My best guess is that since Eddie starts the interview listing things he achieved at a ridiculously young age that maybe it’s some kind of commentary about millennials being impatient and wanting instant gratification when it comes to the changes they want to see in the world. Either that or maybe it’s something like the Jurassic Park scientists being so over-eager to do something with their scientific breakthroughs they don’t bother to stop and consider the consequences.

The rules for symbiotes are a little confusing. We’re told they need an “exact match” and we’re shown several times the symbiotes rejecting hosts. But then we also see Venom and Riot just jumping into whatever bodies they want and being fine.

Also, they establish that the symbiotes basically eat the hosts from the inside out even when they are a match, but also need their hosts to survive. Venom tells Eddie that he wouldn’t eat him because he's a strong host and he likes him, but then later we learn that he has been eating his organs after all. Venom denies it, so you think maybe they’re mistaken somehow when they tell him his heart as atrophied. But no, he really was eating Eddie and at the end that’s just resolved with Venom telling Eddie he needs to eat more food if he doesn’t want Venom snacking on his liver. Like, is his heart still atrophied? Can Venom help him rebuild it? Does he need Venom to live now?

One of the biggest issues I take with the movie is how casually it treats cannibalism. Like, it’s a PG-13 movie with cannibalism in it. That alone is kind of unbelievable. But on top of that like, it happens multiple times, and the people involved just barely react to it. No projectile vomiting and curling up into a fetal position or anything. They’re just like “Oh, Venom, in my body, bit that guy’s head off. That’s mildly distressing.”

The other biggest issue I have is that the symbiotes look like shit. Spider-Man 3′s symbiote looked way better. The new symbiotes look incredibly fake, not just because they’re CGI, but like just the concept of them. They don’t look or move like they have real physical properties like mass or texture. They look like they’re trying to go for a liquid or gelatinous look, but it comes out looking like something that would’ve been considered cutting edge 10 years ago in a pre-rendered video-game cutscene.

I liked that the girlfriend at the beginning wasn’t just there to be a part of Eddie’s happy perfect life that he loses and then we never see her again so there was no point getting us invested in her instead of whoever the actual female lead is. She actually comes back and is useful. I also liked that at the end of the movie she didn’t just dump her boyfriend who did nothing wrong to get back with Eddie. But then, they ruined it by having Venom say they were going to win her back.

Which reminds me; why even have the fake-out where we think Venom is dead? There was no explanation for how he survived. No, “Oh, I thought he was gone! But it turns out there was a piece of him left somewhere and he reconstituted himself” or anything. We just cut immediately from “Goodbye Eddie” to “Psych! You totally thought he was really dead didn’t you! JK! He’s still around”. Also, what in-universe reason does Eddie have to lie to his ex the same way the movie lied by making her think Venom is gone? Especially if he’s going to be biting people’s heads off in public as if that’s not going to get back to her?

I also felt like Venom’s relationship with Eddie was underdeveloped. Like, Venom just attaches himself to Eddie, forces him to eat until he pukes, then beats up a bunch of people and suddenly he’s like “I like you Eddie” and “Oh, look at this skyline, maybe I don’t want to destroy the earth after all”. Like, we just met Venom, we didn’t even spend any time establishing what he thought of earth or humanity or Eddie before. We didn’t even know he planned on destroying humanity until he said that he didn’t want to anymore because the skyline was pretty. The only explanation we get for why Venom likes Eddie is him saying that Eddie’s a loser and on his planet, Venom’s a loser too but on earth he’s a badass, and that’s why he wants to keep the other symbiotes from taking over the planet. My pet theory though is that the real reason Venom takes a shine to Eddie is because prior to attaching himself to Eddie, Venom was using a homeless woman who knew Eddie as a host, and because Eddie was nice to her, her positive feelings toward him were transferred to Venom.

The end credits were really cool looking and even though it’s not really my jam I thought it was kinda cool that they wrote an actual song about Venom, (sounded like Eminem, would not be surprised if it was). You know, we really don’t see a whole lot of movies with songs written just for them. Like, Will Smith used to do it back in the 90s but the only other movie I can think of in recent memory that has it’s own song written specifically for and about it, is that David Hasselhoff disco number from the end credits of GotG 2. Even musicals tend to write their songs to be generic enough that they can be divorced from the context of the movie so they can be played on the radio and you can just imagine that they’re talking about you and your non-specific relatable experience.

Also, in the end credits there was a piece that sounded so much like Invader Zim music I was almost convinced Kevin Manthei worked on the film, and it looks like he has done some work with the Spider-Man franchise, but I didn’t see Venom anywhere on his IMDB. So IDK, if it’s just a coincidence, or if the composer was ripping off/inspired by Manthei, or if the music actually was originally composed by Manthei, but was used on a TV series or game first and became iconic enough that they wanted to keep using it, kinda like how they keep using the 60s “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can” song in every Spider-Man film, even though they also have their own original themes.

If you stick around all the way to the end of the end credits you will actually surprisingly not get trolled with a ten second scene of nothing happening like in a lot of Marvel movies. They actually played a lengthy, like five-ten minute clip from Into the Spider-Verse, which actually got me interested in Into the Spider-Verse. Although I feel like the demographic for that movie is not the same as the demographic for Venom. Venom was clearly an R that got neutered so it could be shown to a wider audience.

The film itself was pretty much entirely self-contained. There are exactly 0 references to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic universe. Nobody gets purged at the end like in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and there’s no reference to it having already happened. Nobody name-drops Tony Stark or any other Avenger, or SHIELD, or anything else in the MCU. The closest they ever get is having Eddie and his girlfriend have thick New York accents and reference having once lived there before Eddie was run out of town. I actually think they did that specifically to avoid having to acknowledge Spider-Man, the Avengers, Dr. Strange, or any other New York based hero or event in the MCU. Likewise, even though it’s set in San Francisco, there’s no references to Ant-Man either.