Category: Entertainment

And Miscellaneous Other Matters

I guess I really, really don’t like soccer

Amazon’s series about Middle Earth is apparently going to be sexualized. That’s unfortunate but perhaps not unfair to the narrative.

Amazon is hiring an “intimacy coordinator” to assist women who are doing sex scenes in Amazon’s upcoming series about Tolkien’s world. They have also put out calls for background actors who are comfortable with full or partial nudity.

Tolkien? Sexualized?

Fans are fuming.

I don’t blame them. I detest gratuitous sex and nudity on the screen or in books.

But here’s the thing: The Amazon series is supposedly going to cover the Second Age of Middle Earth.

The Second Age revolves heavily around a place called “Numenor.”

If that’s the case, the sex and nudity probably aren’t gratuitous.

Some Background

In the First Age of Middle Earth, a god named “Morgoth” fought the elves for centuries, eventually beating them. The elves appealed to their kindred in the Undying Lands to overthrow Morgoth, which they did in the War of Wrath.

In the War, many men fought with Morgoth instead of the elves, but some fought with the elves. These men were called the “Dunedain.”

For their reward, the gods gave them a large island between Middle Earth and the Undying Lands. The men who accepted the gift and sailed to the island were blessed. They had great resources and were relieved from all illnesses.

The Dunedain (or “Numenoreans,” as they came to be called) grew wise, then powerful, then rich.

And then they started to enjoy it all.

Tolkien tells us the Numenoreans “turned the more eagerly to pleasure and revelry” and that “they drank and they feasted.” … Read the rest

According to The Guardian:

10. The Last of the Mohicans
9. Goldfinger
8. The Adventures of Robin Hood
7. Die Hard
6. Bullitt
5. Raiders of the Lost Ark
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
3. The Wages of Fear
2. Deliverance
1. North by Northwest… Read the rest

Fox Sports is Coming

Hallelujah! Is the tyranny of women’s basketball and NASCAR coverage about to end? Fox is launching a nationwide sports network to compete with ESPN.

Please, Fox, please: No political correctness. Hit us with football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Toss in coverage of other sports for flavor, but no more than flavor. Here’s an ideal line up (I’m practically doing their programming research for them):

1. Emphasize the four major sports in their respective seasons, laying particularly heavy emphasis on football.
2. No women’s basketball. At all. Through the ramrodding political correctness of our media, women’s basketball has become reviled among men. Most of us hate it because it has been pushed down our throats. This is unfortunate. None of us innately hate it (why should we care if women play basketball?), but our resentment towards it has grown in direct proportion to the amount of effort the MSM has put into making it artificially popular. I believe the social engineering sought by the media has backfired and made women’s basketball–which should be a nice sport available to females–into the poster child for everything that’s wicked about political correctness.
3. A smattering of female sports coverage when big events occur: Wimbledon, certain female Olympic sports, etc. No Danica. Please, no Danica. She’s probably a fine woman, but geez.
4. No NASCAR, for that matter, unless perhaps at Daytona. (Aside: I believe the points in this list represent the thoughts of most men, but given NASCAR’s incredible popularity, this point number 4 is probably more of a personal preference.)
5. The lesser sports should be featured when they’re featuring a big event: … Read the rest

The Humor Escapes Me

You know who I can’t stand? Stephen Colbert. I’ve actually grown to like Jon Stewart a little, but Colbert? I can’t stomach him (yeah, yeah: I know he’s Catholic–that just makes it worse). His entire schtick strikes me as the effort of a smarmy teenager who thinks he’s too clever for words, the kind who snickers behind the adults’ collective back because, at age 16, he has everything figured out and they’re stupid. On top of that, Colbert is relentlessly leftist in his smarmy attacks.

But a friend tells me I have Colbert wrong. He says it’s all an act. I’m not sure why the “act” has a leftist slant, and I know Colbert uses real news reports as the backdrop for his scenes. I’m not sure where the commentary ends and where the acting begins, but my friend is a smart guy and I respect his opinion.

He also sent along this link to a WaPo article about Colbert. It paints Colbert in a more sympathetic light, but I still don’t “get” his humor. If anyone can shed some light, that’d be great.

Drinking Corner

Okay, I may have found a new favorite beer writer. This guy slams Budweiser, and he does it better than I ever have: “It tasted . . . like a wet piece of the cardboard that comes in new dress shirts – and that’s not an original observation. I first read it on the website of the world’s foremost beer critic, Britain’s Michael Jackson. He had almost nothing positive to say about Bud. I don’t either.”

But he doesn’t stop at its taste. He … Read the rest

Rise of the Zombies

In Monsters from the Id, E. Michael Jones advanced an interesting theory: a culture’s horror films reflect its sub-conscious. Frankenstein was fear of the unknown energy known as “electricity.” Dracula was fear of syphilis. The rise of slasher movies in the 1960s reflected our culture’s disgust with (and horror of) the sexual revolution. Borrowing from Jones, I wrote the following for “Busted Halo” many years ago (go here for full article):

When sexual freedom rose, horror rose with it. Deep Throat came out in 1973 and Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1975. Both were low-budget long shots that brought its producers millions of dollars. Maybe it was coincidence.

Maybe it was also coincidence that Blood Feast, a movie that signaled the official birth of the gore film, came out in 1965, just as America was beginning its full-scale tumble into the sexual revolution.

But you ever notice how it seems that the pretty and promiscuous girls are always the victims in the horror movies? David Hogan noticed it in his book, Dark Romance: Sexuality in the Horror Film, criticizing horror films for working “from a surprisingly Puritan morality” that punishes fornication.

What’s the big horror genre today (if you put aside the “horror” represented by Twilight and knock-offs)? It’s zombies. Zombie movies and zombie sites have become so common that my twenty-something nephew wouldn’t go see Zombieland because he’d grown tired of zombies.

And what is on the rise in our culture? Zombies: the zombie corporations that Japan’s central bank has propped up for the past two decades, the zombie banks and automakers that the Federal Reserve … Read the rest