[QuickTidal]

Listen, I know this looks like it's kinda teen angsty, and I get that...but as a Trek nerd I'm still into it...I think the USS Athena looks gorgeous as a ship, I love that Picardo is back as the EMH Doctor, and ADORE Tig Notaro (so she's a bonus), and lastly, I realize I'm gilfing it up by saying this, but 67 years old Holly Hunter is still STUNNING and I am not afraid to admit my crush...

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

David Ellison[...] bought Paramount over the summer and appears to be creating a right-wing media ecosystem dominated by the Trumps. [...] Paramount told Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders they should accept its offer because Trump would never allow the Netflix deal to happen, and [...] Trump appeared yesterday to agree with that suggestion.

The Paramount merger gave Ellison control of CBS, which promptly turned rightward. At stake now is CNN, which Netflix doesn't particularly want but Paramount does, either to neuter it or turn it into another version of Fox News. [...] Ellison told Trump he would make "sweeping changes" to CNN if Paramount acquires Warner Bros. Discovery. The Wall Street Journal reporters note that "Trump has told people close to him that he wants new ownership of CNN as well as changes to CNN programming."

Political historian Heather Cox Richardson - Professor of History at Boston College

And buying Warner would give them the film rights for Superman and Batman. Trump loves posting memes of himself as Superman. He's called himself Batman. So is America ready for MAGA Superman (Supertrump? Homelander as the unironic racist fascist hero?) and Trump as Batman (the Movie)?

[Abyss]

Azath Vitr (D, on 10 December 2025 - 11:37 AM, said:

Quote

David Ellison[...] bought Paramount over the summer and appears to be creating a right-wing media ecosystem dominated by the Trumps. [...] Paramount told Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders they should accept its offer because Trump would never allow the Netflix deal to happen, and [...] Trump appeared yesterday to agree with that suggestion.

The Paramount merger gave Ellison control of CBS, which promptly turned rightward. At stake now is CNN, which Netflix doesn't particularly want but Paramount does, either to neuter it or turn it into another version of Fox News. [...] Ellison told Trump he would make "sweeping changes" to CNN if Paramount acquires Warner Bros. Discovery. The Wall Street Journal reporters note that "Trump has told people close to him that he wants new ownership of CNN as well as changes to CNN programming."

Political historian Heather Cox Richardson - Professor of History at Boston College

And buying Warner would give them the film rights for Superman and Batman. Trump loves posting memes of himself as Superman. He's called himself Batman. So is America ready for MAGA Superman (Supertrump? Homelander as the unironic racist fascist hero?) and Trump as Batman (the Movie)?

"On my world it stands for Supremacy."

[QuickTidal]

IT: WELCOME TO DERRY finale (and I thought last weeks episode was amazing)...FULL spoilers for the season...

Spoiler

I'm going hit bullet points as I'm still scooping my brains off the floor and it's easier.

1. Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise was on fucking FIRE in this episode. Using the school to summon an assembly and use the dead principle as a puppet, and then deadlighting the whole ass student body into a long train of floating kids behind your macabre circus wagon....insanity. Also, the "I was submersed in deep red blood for a while in the last ep, so only the top of my face from my nose up looks white still" look was creepy as hell.

2. Pennywise skipping to my Lou at various points was incongruous and amazing.

3. The girls fighting over the dagger like it's the One Ring, the acting of these three actresses was incredible.

4. Chris Chalk's Dick Halloran was the MVP of the series, and coming up in a close second place is Matilda Lawler's Margie.

5. I think we all knew that Margie was Richie's mom, but it's nice to have the confirmation...there were a few easter eggy foreshadow moments before the reveal, but the best was her saying "I want to kill that fucking clown" aping what her son says 27 years later.

6. The whole mist sequence LOOKED incredible and gave the whole thing the eeriest vibe, the trains of kids, the wagon, pennywise cracking jokes, the military acting fools, and the other adults coming into help.

7. Rich's ghost coming in clinch to help his friends save the day was incredible...Halloran's reaction was the best when Charlotte asks what he sees when Rich runs by "A motherfucking miracle"...and then as he's running by the struggling Pennwyise he flips him off....FUCKING CHEFS KISS. Perfection.

The biggest revelation here is that this show is NOT a prequel as were all assumed. It's a sequel. Pennywise revealing that he knows that Margie's son will kill him in the future, and that he sees all times (Past, present, and future) all at once...and then Margie and Lilly's convo where they realize that "What if Pennywise is now travelling back in time to kill their parents"....that this whole show seems to be happening due to PW being defeated in 2018 by the Losers...is he travelling back in time to the events on the timeline to try to change them and get out of the loop? He deliberately goes after Margie, Richie's mom....something that doesn't seem to be indicated by Richie's mom in the movies...and the most glaring one is old Ingrid Kersh revealing herself to Beverly Marsh in the institution where her mother hung herself with the line "You know what they say about Derry, no one who dies is ever really dead"....something she says to adult Bev in 2018...indicating the possibility that Pennywise is changing the timeline or attempting to? He talks about that not being his death, but his birth....whatever is left after the Losers club defeats him in 2018, starts pushing back in the timeline to try to change things...creating a new timeline...

It's WILD and I am here for it. I cannot wait for Season 2!

Hands down the best TV show I've watched all year, and probably the best show in the last few years. Amazing, start to finish.

EDIT:

Spoiler

I also think this canonizes Tim Curry's Pennywise in with Bill's....hang with me here...IT: WELCOME TO DERRY being a sequel to the movies, and essentially Pennwyise moving/seeing back in time and trying various things to step out of the timeline where the Losers Club finally banishes him back to Todash space in 2018...it might make sense that the 90's IT miniseries was the previous timeline, and the movie timeline is It pushing things back a cycle to try to gain a new advantage in a different time...and now with WELCOME TO DERRY he's trying that again except using his knowledge of the future to change shit in the past. Gods, it's such a great narrative spike to something we all thought was just a straight prequel.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 15 December 2025 - 03:49 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

Army of Shadows

Ronan Bennett follows his hits such as Top Boy and The Day of the Jackal by updating this second world war classic – and placing it in a near-future Britain that has been invaded by America. We follow the burgeoning British resistance fighters who are trying to keep their country intact … and get their freedom back. Explosive stuff.

The 50 must-see TV shows for 2026 | Television | The Guardian

I'd be more interested in a show about Canadian resistance fighters, using natural terrains, urban environments, traps, espionage (Canadians posing as Americans---interrogators trying to tell if someone's Canadian), rigging mines to explode or flood, and so forth... but I guess that might be too insensitive (towards Canadians, not MAGA, that is---well, not counting Canadian MAGA), no matter how pro-Canada and anti-MAGA it is.

Plus Trump might try something... wonder if his administration will try to stop Army of Shadows from airing, or retaliate...

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 02 January 2026 - 05:13 PM

[Abyss]

 Azath Vitr (D, on 02 January 2026 - 04:51 PM, said:

Quote

Army of Shadows

Ronan Bennett follows his hits such as Top Boy and The Day of the Jackal by updating this second world war classic – and placing it in a near-future Britain that has been invaded by America. We follow the burgeoning British resistance fighters who are trying to keep their country intact … and get their freedom back. Explosive stuff.

The 50 must-see TV shows for 2026 | Television | The Guardian

I'd be more interested in a show about Canadian resistance fighters, using natural terrains, urban environments, traps, espionage (Canadians posing as Americans---interrogators trying to tell if someone's Canadian), rigging mines to explode or flood, and so forth... but I guess that might be too insensitive (towards Canadians, not MAGA, that is---well, not counting Canadian MAGA), no matter how pro-Canada and anti-MAGA it is.

Plus Trump might try something... wonder if his administration will try to stop Army of Shadows from airing, or retaliate...

this is SO DUMB, like Sharknado level dumb without the charm or Ian Ziering.

[Briar King]

I didn’t watch much TV tv last year but I got to watch IT Welcome to Derry with my male offspring and both things were a pure fucking treat!

Idk what this shows plans are but I’d love for other Derry stories to be entwined or maybe an anthology format. Bring in Insomnia and Tommyknockers nods.

[Tiste Simeon]

I've been watching Pluribis, which is utterly phenomenal! Like I am so into it.

I'm also trying out a show called The Institute, based on a Stephen King story. It's a good concept but the show feels a little low budget. I'm still in but it's not as good as I feel like it could be.

[Tsundoku]

The Mrs just finished S1 of Pluribus and enjoyed it.

[QuickTidal]

Briar King, on 05 January 2026 - 05:18 AM, said:

I didn’t watch much TV tv last year but I got to watch IT Welcome to Derry with my male offspring and both things were a pure fucking treat!

Idk what this shows plans are but I’d love for other Derry stories to be entwined or maybe an anthology format. Bring in Insomnia and Tommyknockers nods.

NEEDFUL THINGS and THE SHINING are the closest to this one Derry-wise, but yeah I'm with you, spread out and anthologize all this. A King TV universe.

Hell, it still tickles me that It/Pennywise and Randall Flagg/The Man in Black are both played by Skarsgaard brothers...and I maintain that any other people connected to the Crimson King should just be like Gustav and Stellan and round out the familial connection to evil creatures in King's universe.

[QuickTidal]

I was already looking forward to this, but this is the first of the trailers that I feel really sold me on what they are doing here, re-establishing Starfleet Academy post-Burn in the 32nd Century...and doing it on a a ship as opposed to earth makes tonnes of sense.

Also I still love Holly Hunter...

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Abyss, on 03 January 2026 - 02:03 AM, said:

Azath Vitr (D, on 02 January 2026 - 04:51 PM, said:

Quote

Army of Shadows

Ronan Bennett follows his hits such as Top Boy and The Day of the Jackal by updating this second world war classic – and placing it in a near-future Britain that has been invaded by America. We follow the burgeoning British resistance fighters who are trying to keep their country intact … and get their freedom back. Explosive stuff.

The 50 must-see TV shows for 2026 | Television | The Guardian

this is SO DUMB, like Sharknado level dumb without the charm or Ian Ziering.

If you mean the premise (of near-future de facto American fascist occupation of the UK), I think they chose a far-fetched and (in that sense) fantastical setting on purpose. Obviously a show about armed resistance to MAGA fascist rule in the United States would be much more realistic. Or in various other countries that Trump has actually threatened. Why has no one (afaik) made any well-publicized commercial movies or TV shows about this? In part, perhaps because it's a very sensitive topic. And because they may fear retaliation from the Trump administration, perhaps including accusations of fomenting violence against the US military or even of helping people plan violent treason within the United States. A "fantasy" choice of space-time region (which I think almost everyone would agree that it is, perhaps barring some extremely rapid (and extremely unlikely, in the near future) military-technological advances under the control of MAGA and/or Putin) also obviously allows them more creative freedom, with less pressure to create realistic simulations of what might happen. And they can treat it more as almost allegorical.

As for whether the show, aside from the premise itself, will be Sharknado-level dumb: apparently no trailers or other previews have been released yet, but the adaptation was written by a critically acclaimed novelist, screenwriter, and showrunner whose shows have been nominated for many awards, including the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes, and won one BAFTA award.

No casting has been announced yet either.

Brief backlog of TV reviews:

Finished slogging through The Rings of Power. It had a few mildly entertaining "WTF" moments, and a couple of nice parts, but (as with season 2 of Generation V) it barely had enough decent material for a short film, much less eight hour-plus episodes. From a meta-perspective, I think my favorite little WTF moment was when

Spoiler

Elrond, as he's stabbing a fallen orc, shouts "Guano!" And then it immediately cuts to what I initially assumed was the orc's body being catapaulted into a wall and disintegrating into what looked like poop. In retrospect, Elrond was actually shouting---and correctly conjugating---the imperative form of the Elvish word for "die"; could be pure coincidence, but I doubt it.

Other nice moments:

Spoiler

Gandalf is examining a tree's branches, iirc considering breaking one off to use as a staff, when the tree opens up and eats him; after Celebrimbor finally turns on Sauron and thinks he has him trapped inside a circle of elven warriors, Sauron takes control of their bodies and has them iirc go around the circle slashing each other to death---maybe the last one stabs himself?---while Celebrimbor looks absolutely shocked; and some of the battle scenes were okay.

So after slogging through two series I thought barely had enough material for short films, what did I do? I started on a four-season long TV adaptation based on what was originally a short film and later adapted into a movie: Twelve Monkeys. While I found it a bit more watchable than Generation V or RoP, it's not very good, at least by the standards of prestige TV. At least not season one. (Very corny and cheesy writing and acting, okay pacing, but at best mediocre by modern standards.) Supposedly it gets better---and weirder and more mystical---later on, but I'm not going to bother.

Then I noticed Amazon Prime had Landman, which Tsundoku mentioned liking, so I decided to give it a try. I hate the subject matter (oil drilling in Texas), and the main character spouts a lot of pro-oil propaganda that the show (as far as I watched) doesn't contradict, but it's a good example of how good writing and acting (and decent cinematography) can overcome distasteful subject matter. However, it turns out it was just a free preview of the first few episodes, and I'd have to subscribe to the pro-Trump Paramount+ network to watch more (oh how appropriate, the pro-oil propaganda show is on one of the pro-MAGA streaming services?), so that's not going to happen.

Then I watched The Mighty Nein. I was surprised by how much more confusing, unfamiliar, and complicated the first two episodes were in comparison to The Legend of Vox Machina, especially for a series aimed at a (relatively) popular audience, but if anything I consider that more of a positive than a negative. It had a bit of that WTF energy interspersed throughout, but

Spoiler

with the different strands eventually coming together, with the final strand (and apparently the final party member) connecting with the main party at the very end

. As with The Legend of Vox Machina some of the dialogue is a bit corny or "cartoonish", but for the most part the writing is pretty good.

Most recently I gave Amazon's Red Queen a chance---partly because it's in Spanish. Granted, the premise is dumb: the main character has an IQ of 240-something which (so the show claims) makes her "the smartest woman in the world". But the opening is visually bold and mildly inventive-seeming in terms of form. The visual FX are fairly well done, and the dialogue (as translated in the subtitles) is okay. But the treatment of intelligence is really dumb, the plot seems pretty dumb, and what finally got me to give up on the show was when I realized they were going to keep doing the "when you give a person a pill---orally, that is---it works immediately" nonsense: for example,

Spoiler

she's driving a car at over 200 mph in a high-speed chase, and hallucinating crazy monkeys attacking the windshield, so she has her "squire" iirc putting the pills into her mouth so the hallucinations will immediately stop...

... so dumb. Oh well. Obviously it's fitting that a show about the smartest person in the world would end up being "Sharknado-level dumb" (without the charm of the sharknado...).

Searching for critically-acclaimed Amazon Prime shows to watch next, I got very excited when I saw one called The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which is an English translation of the title of one of my favorite works of literature, Matsuo Bashō's Oku no Hosomichi. But what it's actually about is very different---it's partly about the perverse fascist appropriation of Bashō's work: a PoW during WWII is enslaved and forced to work on building the Thai-Burma Railway, and a Japanese commander at the camp is a fan of Bashō and justifies Japanese imperial expansion (in part) as a means to "take the beauty and wisdom of Bashō to the larger world." Ugh. They might as well title it "Hard to Watch". But apparently the Booker Prize winning book it's based on is actually heavily influenced by Oku no Hosomichi, and quotes a (translated) hokku (AKA haiku) by Bashō at the start of every chapter; and the tv series is also supposedly influenced by Oku no Hosomichi. So IDK. Perhaps I should force myself to watch it in part because it might be hard to watch. And I might even enjoy it more than the Rings of Power.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: Today, 06:53 PM