(1) AGENT CUT LOOSE BY AGENCY. The kt literary agency is presumably talking about Hilary Harwell, the subject of item #1 in Pixel Scroll 6/23/24.
(2) THE ‘SPORT’ OF REVIEW BOMBING. “In Three Weeks ‘The Acolyte’ Has More Audience Reviews Than Three Seasons Of ‘The Mandalorian’” reports Forbes.
You may not like The Acolyte, but don’t look me in the eye and tell me it’s not being review bombed to hell and back.
The Disney era of Star Wars has been full of debates about quality, canon, oversaturation and contained a mix of good and bad projects. But I have not seen this kind of backlash to a project since The Last Jedi, and things have gotten just absolutely ridiculous at this point.
There is this idea that The Acolyte is not being “review bombed,” it’s just really that bad. But the data here is absurd, showing a clear tidal wave of users racing to make it the lowest user-scored product in 50 years of Star Wars history, and it’s amassed quadruple the reviews of the longest-running Star Wars series, The Clone Wars. The only thing even close is three seasons across five years of the massively-watched Mandalorian, and even then, that falls well short…
(3) GAMING AWARD CODE OF CONDUCT AND “ZIONISM”. The CRIT Awards™, which will be presented at Gen Con, foster “Creator Recognition in Table Top Role Playing Game industry”.
Our mission is to celebrate and recognize the contributions and achievements of our community in a way that is inclusive, diverse, and represents the values of our community.
By shining a light on the talent, creativity, and hard work of our community members, we aim to inspire others to reach their full potential and make a positive impact on TTRPGs and beyond!
Their six-part statement of Criteria And Code Of Conduct begins with:
1. Inclusivity and Respect
1.1. No Racism: We do not tolerate any form of racism, racial discrimination, or xenophobia. Treat all individuals with respect and fairness, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or cultural background.
1.2. No Homophobia: We embrace diversity and do not condone any homophobic behavior or discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
1.3. No Ableism: We are committed to being accessible and accommodating to all individuals. Avoid ableist attitudes or behaviors and strive to make the CRIT Awards inclusive for people of all abilities.
1.4. No Sexism: Gender-based discrimination, stereotypes, or harassment will not be tolerated. We promote gender equality and a supportive environment for all genders.
1.5. Individuals who identify as Zionists, promote Zionist material, or engage in activities that without a doubt support Zionism are not eligible for nomination.
The fifth point triggered Larry Correia’s post “Inclusivity And Respect In The Crit Awards” [Internet Archive link], which he terms to be “anti-Semitic crap”.
…GenCon is hosting a event that explicitly bans people who think Israel has a right to exist… yet I guarantee the same kind of invertebrate squishes who condemn people like me for nothing, won’t say crap about that.
None of these grifter scumbags actually give a crap about racism. It’s always a political weapon, nothing more. I can at least respect them for their hustle. It’s their willing dupes, the cowards, the quislings, the useless one-way virtue signalers who can only speak up when their masters say it’s okay, who are too scared to go against the rigid group think of their deranged cult, who’ll let evil shit slide because they’re scared their team will get upset at them… Those people I despise.
Mostly it’s all about Larry, venting a long-held grievance. But setting him aside, does that fifth point belong in a code of conduct?
(4) SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET ACTUALLY CHANGED THEIR MIND! “Ginger” first published the error-riddled post “Can the Hugo Awards Recover Their Credibility?” on the Hidden Gems Book Blog in March. Chris Barkley recently noticed it began bombarding it with critical comments. “Ginger” now has written a new version, which appears first (not trying to deny the problematic original existed.) Here’s an excerpt from the post’s new introduction.
Hi there! Ginger here. Back in March, I wrote an article entitled “Can the Hugo Awards Recover Their Credibility?” referencing the controversy surrounding the nominations for the 2023 Hugo Awards, which were awarded to winning writers at the 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu, China.
Months later, it was pointed out that there were some factual errors in that article, such as my claim that the 2023 Woldcon was the second to be held in Chengdu (when in fact it was the second Worldcon to be held in Asia – in 2022 the Con was held in Chicago, Illinois.) Several readers, including Hugo Award winners and nominees, and members of the Worldcon committee themselves, pointed out these errors while criticizing the article itself….
…It was careless, lazy, and not representative of who I try to be as a writer. I’d lost sight of who I write these articles for – writers – and tried to “report” on a news story instead. Not only did I do a bad job of that by incorporating errors, but I feel now that the tone, subject, and theme of the article were also incongruent with the sort of article I want to write.
I imagined for a second how I’d feel if I’d been recognized for a Hugo Award following a lifetime of hard work and dedication to my craft, and then had some random ginger kid with a British accent dismiss the significance of that with a wave of their hand – and in an article that contained factual errors, no less!
So, instead of just ignoring the criticism, or trying to retroactively fix the errors to pretend that they didn’t happen, I wanted to take responsibility for the tone of my article and revisit it. After all, I’ve mentioned many times how important science fiction and fantasy was to me growing up, and how influential many Hugo Award winners have been to my writing, and my enjoyment of books as a whole. The Hugo Awards deserve better, and so do the writers who took the time to read and comment on my article….
(5) STOP THAT TRAIN! “Record Labels Sue AI Music Services Suno and Udio for Copyright” – Variety explains the lawsuit.
The Recording Industry Association of America has announced the filing of two copyright-infringement cases against the AI music services Suno and Udio based on what it describes as “the mass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings copied and exploited without permission by two multi-million-dollar music generation services.”
The cases are the latest salvo in the music industry’s battle to prevent the unlicensed use of copyrighted sound recordings to “train” generative-AI models.
The case against Suno, Inc., developer of Suno AI, was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and the case against Uncharted Labs, Inc., developer of Udio AI, was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs in the cases are music companies that hold rights to sound recordings infringed by Suno and Udio – including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Records….
… “The music community has embraced AI and we are already partnering and collaborating with responsible developers to build sustainable AI tools centered on human creativity that put artists and songwriters in charge,” said RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier. “But we can only succeed if developers are willing to work together with us. Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it’s ‘fair’ to copy an artist’s life’s work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all.”…
(6) GOODBYE BETSY, HELLO STEFAN. Open Road Media’s Strategic advisor, science fiction and fantasy Betsy Mitchell will retire on June 28.
Stefan Dziemianowicz will join as consulting editor, horror, fantasy, & science fiction.
(7) ASTOUNDING AUTHORS AT WAR. You might like to be reminded “How Sci-Fi Writers Isaac Asimov & Robert Heinlein Contributed to the War Effort During World War II”, an article at Open Culture.
…Having once been a Navy officer, discharged due to tuberculosis, Heinlein jumped at the chance to serve his country once again. During World War II, writes John Redford at A Niche in the Library of Babel, “his most direct contribution was in discussions of how to merge data from sonar, radar, and visual sightings with his friend Cal Laning, who captained a destroyer in the Pacific and was later a rear admiral. Laning used those ideas to good effect in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, the largest naval battle ever fought.” Asimov “was mainly involved in testing materials,” including those used to make “dye markers for airmen downed at sea. These were tubes of fluorescent chemicals that would form a big green patch on the water around the guy in his life jacket. The patch could be seen by searching aircraft.”
Asimov scholars should note that a test of those dye markers counts as one of just two occasions in his life that the aerophobic writer ever dared to fly. That may well have been the most harrowing of either his or Heinlein’s wartime experiences, they were both involved in the suitably speculative “Kamikaze Group,” which was meant to work on “invisibility, death rays, force fields, weather control” — or so Paul Malmont tells it in his novel The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown. You can read a less heightened account of Heinlein and Asimov’s war in Astounding, Alec Nevala-Lee’s history of American science fiction.
(8) MEMORIES OF DONALD SUTHERLAND. The Guardian has a set of reminiscences from those who worked with Donald Sutherland: “’I can see him now. I will see him forever’: Donald Sutherland remembered by Keira Knightley, Elliott Gould, Ralph Fiennes and more”. Francis Lawrence, director of three of The Hunger Games films, recalls:
When we were on set, he’d call me “Governor” and sometimes hold on to me as we walked along. One day he seemed sad and I asked him why. He said: “Because this is almost over.” I was like: “No! We still have a few days and it’s not even the last movie.”
That evening, he wrote me this hilarious email blaming his sadness on a handful of bad grapes he’d eaten. As soon as he got back to his trailer after our walk, he wrote, he’d blown a hole in the lavatory. Now they’d need to burn down the trailer and he hoped that didn’t disrupt the shoot. It was great fun and it was written really beautifully. Now I’ll have to frame that email.
Donald was very politically engaged and that’s why he wanted to do The Hunger Games. He loved that we were smuggling these ideas about the consequences of war into a pop cultural phenomenon. He certainly didn’t give a shit about being a celebrity. It was all about the work and craft and collaborators.
A lot of people see the character he played, President Snow, as the villainous antagonist of those films. And he is – but we needed to find out what his belief system was. Snow believed in the Hobbesian idea that everybody in this world is savage and therefore needs to be ruled with an iron fist. So Donald and I talked a lot about that, on a core thematic level.
(9) MEMORY LANE.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
June 24, 1987 – Spaceballs. Let’s reminisce upon a certain rather silly film named Spaceballs that premiered in the States thirty-seven years ago. No, make that an utter silly film called Spaceballs that everyone loved, and yes, I know I usually quote critics later but I’m breaking my format here, well because I can, to share a quote from the review by Peter Rosegg of the Honolulu Advertiser: “Spaceballs has everything you have come to look for (or dread) in a Brooks movie. Riotous sight gags, terrible puns, rude language, movie and TV jokes.”
So this is a parody of Star Wars and that meant the blessing of Lucas as it hewed way too close to source material to be considered original material. Lucas agreed with one interesting restriction: there could be no action figures as “Yours are going to look like mine”. So that meant the very cool Yogurt doll used in the merchandise scene couldn’t be made; it is now owned by Brooks.
Lucas according to Show Biz Cheat Sheet sent Brooks a note saying how much he loved the film.
The script was written by Mel Brooks, Ronny Graham and Thomas Meehan. Now Brooks I don’t have to do a deep dive into since y’all know him but the other two I’ll assume that’s not true of.
Ronny Graham was an actor with a very long of credits who Johnny Carson apparently liked a lot as he was a very frequent guest. (The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson!, thirty seasons, available on Peacock.) I suspect he got picked as a writer here because four years earlier, he had written and been in An Audience with Mel Brooks, but I don’t know, so let’s continue onward.
Let’s see if Thomas Meehan has a link too to Brooks. Yes indeed. He acted in When Things Were Rotten, the mid-Seventies series Mel Brooks created, a Robin Hood parody, and he was in To Be or Not to Be is an early Eighties war comedy Brooks produced. The screenplay was written by both Ronny Graham and Thomas Meehan, so that’s where the writing connection comes from.
The script was, I believe, a perfect parody of Star Wars. But not just that film as it cheerfully ripped into guts — sorry I couldn’t resist — of popular culture everywhere, as this delicious morsel of quote from John Hurt who makes a cameo appearance credited as himself, parodying (SPOILER ALERT) Gilbert Kane’s death in Alien as a xenomorph rips out of his stomach . He looks down at it and says “Oh, no. Not again”.
Now a great script deserves fantastic cast and this film certainly has one. The primary cast was the trio of John Candy, Rick Moranis and Bill Pullman. I’m going to say all three were perfect parodies of the characters that they were based off, a very neat trick indeed. Pullman in particular pulled off the neat job of merging aspects of Luke both Skywalker and Han Solo into one character.
The supporting cast would’ve filled the seats of a cantina on Mos Eisley, or Brooks’s parody of one as it was Dick Van Patten, George Wyner, Lorene Yarnell and Daphne Zuniga. Now that doesn’t count Brooks who played a dual role, with Dom DeLuise and Rudy De Luca who appeared here in cameo appearances.
And then we have Joan Rivers doing voice work here for Dot Matrix, Princess Vespa’s droid of honor and guardian. She is a parody of C-3PO. She does a more than merely good version female version of that character. Lorene Yarnell, a mime and dancer was the performer of the body.
I liked it though I thought Brooks was trying too hard to stuff as many references by way of jokes to every cultural thing he or possibly the other two writers could think of.
Wikipedia would have you believe the film received a lukewarm reception and, guess what, they’re wrong. A lot of reviews I read on Rotten Tomatoes were positive. They like the gags, the acting and well, that’s all they wrote up. Not one mentioned the ship, the cutimes, the helmet. Interesting indeed.
Here’s another review quote by Jay Carr of the Boston Globe: “Spaceballs has the happy air of a comic enterprise that knows it’s going right. It just keeps spritzing the gags at us, Borscht Belt-style, confidently and rightly sensing that if we don’t laugh at this one, we’ll laugh at the next. And so we do.”
Now it’s not fair to you to give the impression that critics were all positive, so here’s one of the more negative ones by Elvis Mitchell of the Detroit Free Press: “No one is that interested in Star Wars anymore. So watching Spaceballs is like picking up an old copy of Mad magazine and being puzzled about that Jack Palance parody you found so funny years ago.” Oh ouch. Really ouch.
Finally, how did it do financially? It certainly didn’t make money at first as it cost twenty-two point seven million to make and it only made thirty-eight point two million. Given that movie theaters in the States receive forty percent of each ticket sold, so that leaves nine million point three for all other expenses. (Foreign theaters do even better getting between sixty and eighty percent depending on where there are.)
Eventually with television sales, cassette and DVD sales and now streaming, it certainly made money.
I think I need to stop now before this essay gets any longer…
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Free Range reveals a special interest the dating app left out.
- Mannequin on the Moon diagnoses a magical affliction.
- The Flying McCoys shows a convincing salesman at work.
- The Argyle Sweater hosts a party that’s not for everyone.
- Carpe Diem uses the Force at home.
- Tom Gauld has a scientific breakthrough, and a fabulous book.
(11) SHE’S BACK. The Hollywood Reporter tells how “Krysten Ritter’s Breaking Bad Death Paved Way for Orphan Black: Echoes”.
It’s now been 15 years since Krysten Ritter’s Breaking Bad arc came to a tragic, series-altering end. But that eight-episode run in season two of the beloved AMC series continues to bear fruit for the actor.
Last night, she made her return to the home network of Breaking Bad as the star of Orphan Black: Echoes — a spinoff of Tatiana Maslany’s mothership series that picks up 37 years later. Created by Anna Fishko, Ritter’s new character, Lucy, instead of being a clone, was recently printed into existence by a four-dimensional printer. And, despite her best efforts to create a well-adjusted life for herself in just two years’ time, she’s soon forced to piece together the puzzle of who she really is and why she was created.…
(12) NEW SFF ACADEMIC CONFERENCE. Speculative Fiction Across Media will hold its inaugural conference, “Queens of the Future: A Century of Women in Speculative Fiction Media” from October 17-19 in Los Angeles. Present will be Guest of Honor: Gale Ann Hurd, Special Guest: Ann Leckie, and Featured Speaker: Constance Penley. SFAM is located in Southern California and sponsored by UC Riverside, Cal State LA, and the University of Zurich.
(13) BOILER MAKERS. Collider offers its list of the “10 Best Steampunk Movies, Ranked”.
Steampunk refers to the sci-fi subgenre that imagines a society where humanity continues to rely primarily on steam power. It takes the aesthetics and gadgetry of the Victorian era but extrapolates them to their logical conclusion, producing quirky, hyper-advanced machines with a retro flavor. Steampunk movies also often play with the gender dynamics and social norms of that era, usually to subvert them.
In ninth place is last year’s unexpected award contender:
9. ‘Poor Things’ (2023)
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
“I am a changeable feast. As are all of we.” The latest addition to the canon of steampunk classics is Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Poor Things, a dark comedy about a woman (Emma Stone) brought back to life by an eccentric scientist (Willem Dafoe). Set in a fantastical Victorian era, Bella embarks on a journey of self-discovery, navigating a world filled with bizarre characters and situations. It’s essentially a raunchy, tongue-in-cheek rewrite of Frankenstein, and it’s simply terrific.
Lathimos deploys steampunk aesthetics throughout, like the fisheye lenses and stylized colors. The setting is also simultaneously retro and futuristic, with both rudimentary surgery and advanced skyships. Indeed, the technology is decidedly steampunk, particularly the machines and critters in Baxter’s laboratory. He has a device that digests his food for him and a host of pets spliced together from various animals, like a duck/dog hybrid. “Creating the animals was a challenge because we did it partly in-camera,” noted effects supervisor Simon Hughes.
(14) ORLOK UNLOCKED. Variety sets the frame: “Nosferatu Trailer: Bill Skarsgard Plays Vampire in Robert Eggers Movie”.
From Pennywise the clown to one of the most famous vampires of all time, Bill Skarsgård is transforming into Nosferatu in Robert Eggers’ upcoming reimagining of the iconic 1922 German Expressionist silent film. But horror fans will have to keep waiting to see Skarsgård’s full appearance as Count Orlok, as the movie first’s trailer from Focus Features continues to keep the vampire’s complete look a mystery. Skarsgård is barely seen in the clip outside of a few quick shots, but his character’s haunting presence looms large….
(15) RICK AND MORTY: THE ANIME. Here’s a preview of Rick and Morty: The Anime, coming to Adult Swim and Max later this year.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna) who says this is a novelization of the Tom Baker-era episode “Scrolls of Pixeldon”).]
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So the anti-racist thing is racist. Interesting. I am not Jewish but I do think that Israel should exist.
(2) As I said the other day, I think: these people literally have no lives. I am reminded of the idiots with too much time on their hands in college in the early nineties, who attacked newsgroups with spam and megaposts.
(3) I believe they’re using “Zionism” to describe the people who desire Eretz Israel, with no one but (their kind of) Jews. So, like the Taliban or Iran. Wish there was another word than that, but it’s asking to be taken as antisemitic.
On the other hand, I find objectionable that they missed one, and I propose 1.6: anti-agism. No attacks against someone for being old or young.
(7) Sprague De Camp was there, too.
(13) Since it’s only movies, they miss The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, on the then-sci-fi channel, which was absolutely perfect steampunk (the dirigible!).
(3) So their code of conduct includes 1.5. Individuals who identify as Zionists, promote Zionist material, or engage in activities that without a doubt support Zionism are not eligible for nomination. So, racism encoded in a code of conduct. Nice. Not.
3) Frankly, including a clause banning Zionism in a code of conduct is completely beyond the pale. For starters, there is no definition of what is considered Zionism these days, which can mean anything from a hardcore supporter of the policies of the current Israeli government to anybody who believes that Israel has a right to exist, even if they do not agree with the policies of the current Israeli government. In that case, I guess I’m a Zionist, too. Also note that there is no clause banning people who agree with the policies of the government of any other country or who believe that any other country has a right to exist.
I would also not attend an event which had such a clause in its code of conduct, because all too often what passes for Anti-Zionism these days is just plain old Anti-Semitism. And sadly, we are seeing more and more of that in the SFF community.
Anyway, I’m probably going to be attacked for this, but I don’t care. Anti-Semitism is one thing I do not tolerate.
3) Yeah, they should not have that anti-Zionist clause. It is improper, immoral, and inaccurate. Yet I do sympathize to some extent, given my feelings that the proper moral stance should be:
—pro-Palestinians (the victims)
—anti-Hamas (who initiated the attack knowing they could use the Palestinians as shields), and
—anti-Netanyahu (who desperately wanted an attack by Hamas so the religious right-wing and their settlers could wipe more Palestinians off the face of the planet).
(3) Mixed feelings – I know what they’re trying to do, which is to keep out the pro-Israel anti-Palestine people, but they should have considered a better way of wording it that includes all the other extreme nationalists.
(3) I really, truly hate having to agree with Larry Correia. But, no, point 5 doesn’t belong in a code of conduct, and yes, it is antisemitic crap. These jerks are going after things that include a bottle of Coke because “Zionism and genocide,” and don’t want be bothered about the massive terrorist attack on civilians, including children, that started this current round of fighting.
And yes, I can say that Bibi should be standing trial in The Hague, and that this is antisemitic crap from people who don’t have time to be bothered and terrorism Hamas directs at Israel or about the fact that Hamas still wants to wipe out Israel.
Also, the phrasing contains zero evidence to support the idea that they only meant to target a poisonously extreme version that loves all Netanyahu’s worst acts, rather than mere supporting Israel’s right to exist.
(1) A good move.
(4) And let us commend Ginger for admitting their mistakes and also their error of judgment.
(5) Much as it pains me to agree here, he has a point. Being inclusive means including people you don’t necessarily agree with or particularly like, or else it’s just another flavor of exclusion. And identifying as something is not a conduct that should be regulated, particularly when no one can agree on what that something even is.
I do understand the desire to make a statement, and could go on at length in some other venue.
(9) My favorite bit is the one where Dark Helmet’s assistant walks in on him while he’s playing with his action figures.
(1) Good for them!
(3) This reminds me of that crappy list of “Zionist” authors somebody posted on Twitter a few months ago. Somebody whose brain was not fully grown yet was making specious claims — and didn’t understand why some people had a very strong ick about the list.
(11) And her father was played by John de Lancie!
(3) Another person who normally wouldn’t dream of agreeing with Correia (his framing strikes me as mostly nonsensical), but he has a point here. I’m not about to defend Israel’s ghastly treatment of the Palestinians, and it breaks my heart that the politics of the country have been so far-right for so long, but “anti-Zionist” is one of those old terms that overt anti-Semites use to make their sentiments seem more palatable to onlookers. There is also a decades-old habit of the Western world criticizing Israel selectively in a way that looks a lot like holdover sentiment about Jews from the first half of the 20th century. I don’t want this to turn into whataboutism on my part, but it’s exasperating to see this sort of thing emerge easily when there is no clause about e.g. pro-Russian people being unwelcome since the invasion of Ukraine, or pro-Chinese people being unwelcome given how the Uyghurs and/or Tibetans have been faring lately. Like Cora, a code of conduct like this would mean that I would stay home. I have never been to Israel and would dearly love to see it stop committing war crimes and other kinds of abuse of human rights…but language like that will attract people who hate me, and do it gleefully.
(7) I remember Asimov’s autobiography noted that he was so invested in observing the results of his experiment that he didn’t have a problem with flying – on that one occasion.
P.S. Thanks for the Title Credit!
Gen con cancelled the event.
3) “It’s their willing dupes, the cowards, the quislings, the useless one-way virtue signalers who can only speak up when their masters say it’s okay, who are too scared to go against the rigid group think of their deranged cult, who’ll let evil shit slide because they’re scared their team will get upset at them… Those people I despise.”
So he despises the Sad and Rabid Puppies, and all those with similar views. Nice of him to admit it in public.
Correia is right. That language is flagrantly anti-Jewish, and another example of very old tropes (such as “the Zionist entity”) that have been working their way into the pro-Gaza movement.
Perhaps they should have simply said “no anti-Palestinian”, and left it at that.
@Jon Meltzer
For many of us, Zionism isn’t the same as Judaism. It’s a whole different thing, wrapped up in politics going back about 150 years.
9) Spaceballs the Essay series…
😉
3) LC is obviously correct. The CoC as written is anti-Semitic. He has a bunch of other positions that many would find agreeable. It’s a modest challenge to find him in a mode where he isn’t packaging those positions poorly. The WriterDojo podcast that he does with Steve Diamond is one format where he isn’t trying to present as outraged over everything.
Maybe finding occasions of agreement are a good thing!tm
2) I’ve heard a couple of reviews. Yup. They didn’t like The Acolyte. But those reviewers have had positive reviews of other entries in the Star Wars franchise that weren’t episodes 4, 5, or 6. So maybe there is a point worth discussing in their criticisms.
Hear me out for a second. Maybe…just maybe… Disney’s decision to jettison the pre-2014 books and canon (now referred to as Legends) wasn’t the smartest business decision ever made. And maybe…just maybe!!… electing to displace all of that work in favor of content that contradicts the previous work makes about as much marketing sense as reframing Sauron as a pro-growth economist who is being opposed by anti-progress Elves. Maybe putting the Star Wars brand on sub-par content that wouldn’t survive without the branding is a poor choice. Sort of like the geniuses that came up with New Coke ~40 years ago.
Even the author of the Forbes piece considers The Acolyte as “just okay.”
Regards,
Dann
Tronatology 101 – Never let the smoke out.
How much time would you spend with the angry ranting drunk at the end of the bar waiting for him to say something agreeable? Life’s too short.
(3) Larry Correia does a stopped clock impression and manages to be right (and not far-right) for once. That CoC is antisemitic, barring people with one political position and not any others. By most definitions, everyone who recognizes that Israel is a sovereign nation is pro-Zionist–it’s not a particularly obnoxious ideology. I don’t see any mention of banning tankies or pro-Hamas or pro-CCP shills, who are lot more obnoxious in their politics–I wonder why not?