Musings from The Canaries

Shot Caller (2017)

★★★★★★★★☆☆

Well acted.

But more importantly, a not so subtle criticism of the goals penitentiary system present mostly in the US, and common to most of the western world. Is it there to punish or rehabilitate people? If the answer is to rehabilitate, the legislative (laws) and judiciary (D.A. and Courts) branches are doing a poor job.

If as shown by the movie a driver with an accident DUI don't stand a chance of getting type rehabilitation when Laws, Defense, Prosecution, and Courts advise him that the lesser evil is achieved by entering into a plea with the D.A. and accept he'll be punished with jail time.

Jails are not designed to rehabilitate but to contain and punish inmates, once you enter the system, one that is not designed to protect the inmate but to encourage antisocial behavior among inmates as part of the punishment. We, as a society, shouldn't expect anything but their deterioration as persons.

Anyone that believes that rehabilitation can arise from these conditions, is a fool or it's lying to himself out fear that those in the inside will be out on the street one day, and the only thing that jail has done is select and prepare the worst of them, "survival of the fittest".

American Made (2017)

★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Have you seen Narcos? Yes, now you know why the fat guy with a black beard from the CIA was always fucking Javier Peña's joint operations with the Colombian Army, the US ambassador didn’t want to expose the Colombian Government to end the immunity of the Cali Cartel (IRAN-CONTRA) and the real reason for Peña's resignation from the DEA.

The movie is probably the best one starred by Tom Cruise in at least a decade... Not a very difficult achievement, indeed. While being entertaining, it manages to critique. the US in a subtle and sarcastic way.

The film critiques the self indulged and naif belief that most of the US continue to have about their own country and government, like that they always have the moral high ground and that the motivation for any of their interventions is to save, protect and facilitate democracy in the world... When the reality is that they create and feed their own daemons, in secrecy, for their own interest, but when they go rogue the push the western world into a holy war, like going after Sadam Hussain under the excuse of weapons of mass destruction, the hunt for the former CIA trainned, armed and finaced assets Bin Laden and its group Al-Qaeda, the War on Terror, The War on Drugs,etc...

American Vandal

★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

If you hated The Blair Witch Project, it type of production (photography, direction, script, postproduction, etc…), simply skip American Vandal all together… it’s not worth suffering, don’t even bother looking at the ratings, as someone must have already said “people like flies eat all kinds of shit which doesn’t mean you should eat it too”.

I hate anything whose production style smells anything like “The Blair Witch Project”, the only movie that has made me get up and walk out of the movie theater, if a movie bores me I just sleep thru most it. But that one was a different beast, they were and I couldn’t bear it them laughing at the audience (me) so I got up, walked out just before the ten minute mark and got a refund.

American Vandal didn’t make the cut after barely playing the first five minutes, it stinks to The Witch Proyect. The look of an amateur documentary, it doesn’t mean that the production has to suck (you can go and see by yourself the quality of most documentary scripted, directed and postproduced by teenagers on Vimeo.com). But I guess, we’ll continue to see this shit surfacing from time to time.

There’ll always be producers who couldn’t care less about the quality of what they produce and don’t want to spend a cent making a TV Series or Movie and trech behind the old off-beat creativity excuse to sell a subpar production to the audience. If it happens to catch, they’ll make a huge (∞) return on their nil investment worthy of celebrating have a laugh over a few martinis.

But at least they’ll neither be laughing at me nor be paying any of these martinis with a cent gotten from me.

Get Shorty

★★★★★★★★☆☆

The first season is only 10 episodes long, a shorty by US standards. But if you enjoyed Fargo (The TV Series), you will most likely enjoy at least this first season. It’s no Fargo but shares some of it trade marked characteristics, like dark humor, stoicism and a feeling that not even the screenwriters will make beyond the season’s finale while there is a sense of purpose to everything that occurs well within the boundaries of the story line and the season finale depicting a coherent end to the season story... Although, in this case, you wouldn’t mind getting some more.

I would recommend to watch it to those Fargo fans waiting for a new season of the masterpiece, I don’t think they will be disappointed.

Frost/Nixon (2008)

More interesting than the movie itself, i.e. the potential narrative of the events vs how the movie actually narrated them, is the story of how Frost, a British reporter, [spoiler]who almost everyone expected to fail epically in his interview with the first US President to resign from Office[\spoiler], got from Nixon what no other person, reporter, commission or committee had been able to get him do in public before or thereafter.

If you haven’t read the accounts of these interviews, this movie is a historical must see… “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”

Thank You for Your Service (2017)

Just 144 viewers for an above average film. A movie that in the opening week had grossed more than its cost from just US movie theaters sales and in which strangely more than 68% of both, critics and viewers, agreed that’s a well above average movie.

It received from Rotten Tomatoes’ critics & viewers a solid 77% with 5,700 user ratings, Metacritics got an aggregated metascore of 68% for this film, and an IMDb’s viewer score of 6.6 after 1,259 users reviews.

I don’t understand how come it haven’t been seen by almost anyone that uses Tratk.tv. Maybe there is something that I am missing about this movie. If anyone would be so kind to explain what am I missing or the why is this happening with this movie, I would love to hear from him/her, and I would be very pleased to learn what it’s that I haven’t been able to see or understand solely by myself.

The Good Doctor

Um! I didn’t realize this TV Series only had 8 episodes, a shorty by us broadcasting standards, that would have be the norm if it were an UK BBC production but then each episodes would have lasted almost over 55 minutes. It seems abc does not trust that the show will survive this mini season and the audience numbers probably aren’t helping at all, because if they were nearly as good as House M.D. they would have already extended the first season to a full 20 episodes.

See that they haven’t extended the mini season, we should fear the worst, the show will most likely be cancelled at the end of this atypical first season due to a “lack of an audience” to make viable the investment.

Jungle (2017)

I hope to find someone that is able to give me a compelling reason to see this Class V movie, that every where else I look both critics and viewers agree that in that is either pure crap and in the best cases below a 5 out 10 (in my time that mean an F).

Despite all, here in Tratk.tv it has an outstanding 72% from 1.2k people out of 8.1k watchers, meaning that at least 15% of the people that watched think is it quite good.

I am open to be convinced and surprised.

Thanks,

abetancort

*————

This is why I think the movie must be crappy, besides the apparent consensus in the opinion of critics and viewers.

The producers and the studio actions and inactions for a movie that wasn’t produced under contracts with an streaming platform, tell a story. And it starts that they knew (or at least feared) that the movie was going to tank in the US if it was shown on movie theaters, and I think that it was before the even did the test-focus screening. And with the results of test-screening they wost fears were confirmed.

To cut their loses they decided to minimize their investment in promotion and distribution. The movie only had meaningful theatrical releases in UK and Germany where Daniel Radcliffe “still” has unconditional of following from his roles as Harry Potter.

Looking forward, the producers and the studio, in light of the very weak prospects for the US and almost every first tier market, had forecasted that they would probably not even get to recover a significant percentage of the distribution and promotion investment they had to made for a proper theatrical release in any other first tier market, and much less in the US.

The sound decision was clear, they had to stop throwing good money over bad money with the hope to transform the bad money (bad investment) into good one. And they clearly did it, they put their engines all flank speed aft and decided to release the movie in the US, the world largest movie theater market, and in any other first tier markets using Internet platforms (no distribution cost) and without any promotion.

In the rental-video heyday this type of production would have been referred as Class V movie, “a movie that couldn’t make to movie theaters, out of it crappiness, and it could only be released directly to rental outlets within the catalog, a package offering”).

Thanks again to help me decide if I give a chance to the movie.

Training Day

Well, another trakt.tv statistics “smorgasm”, if you check the stats for season 1 episodes you will see how trakt stats are becoming garbage and with them most of it not all of its rankings and charts. H ow likely do you think is for any tv show to suffer extreme volatility in views between back to back episodes and experience a total inconsistent relationship between downloads and views? The probability of occurring, as it's not a random event, is so low that is equivalent to 0, or impossible in the real world.

Let see what we have in this today's Top show in the top watched TV Shows chart:

Episode. Dowloaded. Watched 1x06 23.4k 76.3k 1x07 10.6k 9.3k 1x08 11.1k 76.9k 1x09 11.0k 8.3k 1x10 9.3k 72.9k

Somebody could conclude that as the show loses interest (the number of downloads halves from > 20k to barely 11k) it's audience is constant (by times watched) except for odd numbered episodes, people really don't like odd numbers because the audience it's just a little over 10% of an even episode. That could be the conclusion from a nut head.

if you think only the odd episodes data seems to be coherent, if for episodie 1x07 10.6k people downloaded the episode (had the intention of viewing it) only 7k watchers viewed the episode a total of 9.3k times, a completion rate of 88% which is pretty good specially if hoarding content doesn't carry a direct cost. On the other hand for even episodes the data doesn't make sense, if for episode 1x08 11.1k people downloaded the episode (had the intention of viewing it)

Get Shorty Season 1

I surprisingly nice discovery. This series are way better than what I had expected. This kind of quality is something you usually see from HBO or Netflix. It’s worth watching.

Surviving Escobar: Alias JJ

The only thing that can have much more than 20 episodes per season is a “telenovela” or soap opera… I don’t know what got Netflix to put its seal on this Caracol production, I guess the latino population, the one used to consume telenovelas, is an important and growing segment of its total consumers.

While Narcos appealed mostly to a wide english speaking audience, an European Spanish speaking audience and US educated Latin American viewers.

I never seen more than a few minutes of a telenovela or soap opera, and I don’t see myself watching ==this==.

Tin Star

Track.tv’s rating doesn’t do justice to the show. If you have enjoyed Fargo, you will most probably enjoy at least its first season. It’s no Fargo but shares the characteristic darkness and the feeling that not even the screenwriters will make beyond the season’s finale while everything having sense of purpose within the story.. I would recommend to watch it to those Fargo fans waiting for a new season of the masterpiece, I don’t think they will be disappointed.

Victoria

if I were you I would not miss it, higly recommended for anyone fond of good dramatic movies or tv series. You won’t be disappointed, there’re plentiful of very fine to sublime interpretations, with an splendid Jenna Coleman masterfully performing the role of the wonderful Queen Victoria. But if you happen to love bio or historic novels, it simply is a must see, as it also is the “The Crown” which’s also a biography But about Queen Elizabeth’s reign.