Feeling Unsettled

I'm sorry, but I really can't be arsed to post anything remotely profound or significant today.  After yesterday's post-pub anti-Trump rant, I can't even summon enough righteous indignation at the latest Nazi antics from across the pond.  (Although I'll be returning to the subject, possibly with a more rational approach, soon).  Not only that, but aside even from the Orange Shitgibbon's outrageous behaviour, yesterday was a day of bad news which has unsettled me.  First up, it seems that Neighbours has been cancelled.  Again.  This time by Amazon.  See, I told you that Jeff Bezos wasn't to be trusted - first of all he starts bending the knee to Trump and suppressing free reporting at the newspaper he owns, now he axes my favourite Australian soap.  (That's quite apart from Amazon's anti-union stance, its refusal to pay taxes properly in the UK and its shitty treatment of its workers, of course).  Although, it has to be said, that Neighbours hasn't been nearly as good as it was in its pre-Amazon incarnation, although it was still popular, at least in the UK, where it was regularly one of Amazon's top three most-watched shows.  The upside of this, though, is that when it does end in December, I'll be able to completely sever my ties with Amazon's TV service, as it was the only thing I ever watched there.

The second unsettling thing is also Amazon-related - the news that Eon Productions had ceded creative control of the James Bond films to their production partners, MGM, which is now owned by Amazon.  Which means that we'll doubtless now see Amazon-MGM trying to squeeze everything it can out of the property, with endless spin-offs which, ultimately, dilute the whole thing.  Part of the success of Bond movies was that they didn't churn them out to a strict schedule (except in the early days, when they turned out the first four annually), meaning that each film was an event, that could be built up to, raising audience expectations.  If there are endless subscription-only TV series, without which you won't understand the next film, (in the style of Marvel), then even the most loyal of fans are quickly going to lose interest.  To employ one of my favourite analogies: modern streaming studios are simply doing the same thing that the lesser Hollywood studios used to do in the forties, taking a successful property then trying to cash in on it by grinding out ever more poverty-stricken B-movie sequels.  Ultimately, these sequels became either so repetitious that they felt like the same movie over and over, just with a variant title, or so ridiculous and far removed from the original that even diehard fans stayed away from them.  The current streaming offerings of this ilk might look glossier than the average Universal B-movie, but they are just as lacking in creative innovation and originality.