Monthly Archives: May 2016

On Movie Remakes

I’ve started seeing ads for the upcoming movie Ghostbusters. Anyone who’s been paying attention will know that there’s been quite a stir over it, with complaints ranging from the unnecessary remaking of a “classic” to the deliberate choice by the moviemakers to have the cast be all female this time around. I’m not going to wade into that debate, other than to note that some of the humor in the original is dated, a good number of the people complaining weren’t alive when the original came out, and that I think they might have been better served if instead of an outright remake, they did a sort of “spinoff” and had the movie be about a “branch office”/franchise of the Ghostbusters ™ working in another old city (Philadelphia or Boston, perhaps).

Hollywood remakes movies all the time. It seems that with every announcement of a remake, certain film buffs/purists get all up in arms over the lack of originality or the “desecration of a classic”. Except when it comes to a “reboot” of a superhero movie, of course. The fanboys never complain about those… But there are valid reasons to remake a movie.

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Random Thoughts from Eurovision 2016

No Love for the Czech Republic? Gabriela Gunčíková got gornischt from the televoters. This was the first year that the C.R. made the cut for the finals, and although “I Stand” got some points (41) from the jurors, not a single country’s televoters saw fit to toss them a point or two. I suspect that this was due to the flat and uninspired staging. The song was fine, her performance was fine, but there was nothing in the staging to help Miss Gunčíková stand out. No fireworks, no light-up costume, no backup dancers, no cool graphics or lighting. In a competition this intense, you can’t afford to miss any aspect of the performance.

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So, How’d They Do?

Thanks to the new method for announcing the scores, it came down to the very end. Only forty-three points separated the Top Three. Here’s the Top Ten, and the predictions from my post last time:

ACTUAL
RESULTS 		Bookies EurovisionTops ESCape Wiwibloggs
1. Ukraine Russia France France  Russia
2. Australia Ukraine Russia Russia  France
3. Russia France Spain Australia  Bulgaria
4. Bulgaria Sweden Bulgaria Spain  Iceland
5. Sweden Australia Hungary Ukraine  Croatia
6. France Malta Australia Croatia  Australia
7. Armenia Armenia Croatia Bulgaria  Ukraine
8. Poland Israel Latvia Latvia  Spain
9. Lithuania Italy Italy Italy  Malta
10. Belgium United Kingdom Azerbaijan Hungary  Cyprus

Looks like the bookies had it best, but even so, they had quite a few misses in the Top Ten. Everyone overrated France, YouTubers blew it on Ukraine, and the expert fans at Wiwibloggs…. Well, let’s hope no one lost too much money on the outcome…..

I’ll have some personal thoughts and observations in my next post.

Eurovision 2016 – The Predictions

The rehearsals are all done; the first semi-finals are tomorrow.

Now’s a good time to take a look and see what songs are predicted to win Eurovision this year. I’m going to go by country names and not song titles or artists, because that’s what everyone else does. I know it’s not really fair to them, but that’s the way it is.

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Baseball by the Month

With April over, we are well into the baseball season. Things should start settling out now, as “small sample sizes” are a thing of the past. Trevor Story has got to cool off, the Phillies can’t really be as good as they’ve been, and the Astros can’t be as bad.

But it’s not just April that’s a special part of the baseball season. Every month all the way through to October has its own characteristic, its own “feel”.

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