Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Yeah, affordability is the main reason we have so many competition and "reality" shows.  They're cheap to produce.  

My opinion-- you get what you pay for.

I bet Han Solo can sing a mean "Friends in Low Places."

Speaking of sitcoms, I hear Hollywood really wants to bring sitcoms back to due to costs. A big reason why ABC's Shifting Gears with Tim Allen and Kat Dennings was greenlit. For now it's a rating hit; definitely captures the 90s sitcom heyday of low stakes laugh tracks.

Yup.  Particularly with a limited "main" cast.

The productions costs on some of these shows have to be insane.  The Star Wars and Marvel shows on Disney+ have to cost as much as a movie.  Suddenly paying Tim Allen's salary doesn't seem so bad, when you can just stick him on a sound stage.  Will it get great ratings?  Probably not, but how many shows do anymore?  Viewership is so spread out

Curiously, I ended up watching Emilia Perez this weekend. My wife and I didn't know what it was about, read the squib on Netflix, which was pretty vague, and said, "why not?" [SPOILERS TO FOLLOW, BUT I'M PROBABALY THE LAST TO KNOW...]

Then I thought about the comment somewhere on this site about it was just pushing too much of an agenda. I'm not sure that I agree. Maybe I'm the last to know that the story revolves around a character's sex change/gender transition (call it what you want). And yes, the character appears to be a better person after their surgery. BUT...the comment he makes before the surgery is that he can't live as he is--it's all going to fall apart on him. Then he becomes a she, but she also can't live as is. She makes decisions that inevitably result in her own death, and a lot of other bad things--unable to get away from who she was before. If I were to take a through line from this movie, the point is that whether he or she, the character was doomed. In the end she loses everything--just as he was worried would happen if he didn't make the change. And making that change is central to why everything falls apart.

So yeah, if you don't want to watch a movie where a trans person is at the center of the story (and a trans woman plays that character), then avoid it. But as for actual political messaging? I'm not sure that it's a big endorsement for how gender transition makes everything better. That's certainly not how things go in this movie.

The musical aspect of it was interesting; that was what sucked us in on the vague description of the movie. My wife speaks pretty good Spanish, but I needed the subtitles for all of it. Some of the scenes were excellent, a lot of them were just ok. For a couple of people who didn't start the movie expecting gender transition to be at the center of the plot, that was pretty jarring. But it was an interesting story.

And, unsurprising since it's based on an opera, the end is not exactly uplifting.

I think the Academy's nomination of it as a Best Film is more agenda pushing than the film itself. The movie is pretty good, but not best picture material (I don't think). I think Zoe Saldana does a great job, and generally the acting is good. The story is a little stilted (also typcial, since it's sort of a musical).

Then I thought about the comment somewhere on this site about it was just pushing too much of an agenda. I'm not sure that I agree. Maybe I'm the last to know that the story revolves around a character's sex change/gender transition (call it what you want). And yes, the character appears to be a better person after their surgery. BUT...the comment he makes before the surgery is that he can't live as he is--it's all going to fall apart on him. Then he becomes a she, but she also can't live as is. She makes decisions that inevitably result in her own death, and a lot of other bad things--unable to get away from who she was before. If I were to take a through line from this movie, the point is that whether he or she, the character was doomed. In the end she loses everything--just as he was worried would happen if he didn't make the change. And making that change is central to why everything falls apart.

...

I think the Academy's nomination of it as a Best Film is more agenda pushing than the film itself. The movie is pretty good, but not best picture material (I don't think). I think Zoe Saldana does a great job, and generally the acting is good. The story is a little stilted (also typcial, since it's sort of a musical).

I think that's what we, or at least I, meant.  Every movie has a viewpoint, or a stance, I don't think that makes it an agenda.  But my wife and I both hated it, and looking at its reviews in real time, they weren't great.  Nominating it for all of those award seemed like the agenda.  And then it sort of backfired spectacularly

Im currently rewatching Ken Burns The Civil War.  Its been over ten years since I first watched it.  Tremendous piece of work.

Anybody else watching Silo on Apple?  I love a well done future dystopia movie. 

This one is novel as it depicts life after an apocalyptic event where the survivors live in a silo underground, completely self sufficient from any outside world needs. They also have lived this way for maybe 100+ years. 

The catch is that somehow over 100 years ago there was an uprising that resulted in the destruction of all knowledge and references to the outside world. The only information regular citizens have is from a camera outside the silo that depicts a lifeless, gray world. They have computers in the silo, but only very rudimentary ones like we had in the early 80’s. No tv, radio etc. anything from the “ before times “ is forbidden, they’re called relics.