u/MrGittz

This detail has always been something I’ve obsessed over. Is it to suggest the passage of time in the meeting? Everyone is now comfortable? At ease? Or is there a more sinister symbolism at play?

I’d think nothing of it except David Chase includes a shot of Tony looking behind him when George or whoever says “Anyone want a water?” and then we cut to the bottles sitting on the table behind Tony. Why show this close up of the bottles? That’s a deliberate choice. Is it meant to suggest how far the mob has fallen from its glory days? These guys at operating out of some cold, dank dump and have bottled water from like Costco as an offering?

What throws me is that Chase does something interesting with the bottles. As the meeting goes on, we randomly start seeing Little Carmine, Paulie, Butchie one by one have a bottle of water in front of them. Except Tony. Watch closely. We see single medium shots of each character isolated with a bottle of water in frame. Except Tony.

Either it’s a continuity mistake. Or signal that time has passed and everyone is at ease or there’s something more. It plays into the final scene and where alliances lie.

David was on the A24 Podcast posted a few days ago with the creator of The Beef and they talked about how they both read Reddit and can’t help themselves.

That’s right. David Motherfuckin Chase is reading our shit. And you assholes convinced this great, great man that he’s hated.

David, if you read this, we love you. Sure, we break balls, but it’s on honor to love a show created by a genius man and not those corn holed cocksuckers that ruined game of thrones that franchise should fucking die!

Anyways, David, if you read this, A) please come and do an AMA and B) please share any season 6 scripts you might have. I’d love to get a chance to read some of those scripts.

Alright, I said my piece.

I just watched an interview conducted by the guy who created “The Beef” and it has Steve Buscemi, Chase and Terry Winter. It was at a screening on the episode where Livia dies

First question the guy asked was about the Livia scene in season 3 episode 2. And Chase said HBO is in the process of remastering that sequence.

For those who have HBO Max, is it on there yet?

It’s never bothered me, but obvious cgi tends not to bother me. Blade 2? Neo vs all those Agent Smiths? I love that shit.

But Lord of the Rings has these huge sequence of really obvious computer effects. For example…Aragorn and Theoden on horseback go plowing down an ungodly number of Orcs towards the end of Two Towers?

I find interesting people just go with this. Like…we all know these are nameless computer effects getting mowed down.

Is it because of how beautiful and painterly these shots are? The charge of the Rohirrim down the steep hill with Gandalf in Two Towers is just mesmerizing. And we cut between real close up and fake wide.

In the prologue at the start we see these huge armies and none of them look “real” but the way their armor shines and the camera moves, I don’t know, there’s something going on here that people seem to not care this is all fake the way they normally complain about unrealistic CGI. Maybe it’s because no one really knows what the amount of people looks like in a military context?

I was such a fool. I really enjoy The Muppets. Somehow I got it in my head that “Muppets From Space” was one of those cheap made for TV muppet specials. The kind where Whoopi Goldberg shows up. Reviews and word of mouth had always been not great. But I’m a huge Gonzo fan. I’m especially a fan of Gonzo and Rizzo together ala “Muppets Christmas Carol”. Add in Pepe the Prawn as a sort of trio and you’ve got me.

So I gave it a whirl this past weekend. What a fool I was. This movie is soo much fun. It’s funny. It’s more adult aimed I think & I laughed quite a bit. I actually really loved that there were no song and dance numbers, it was just a straight up movie. It was a nice change of style. I love it when they mess with the format a bit(I was a huge fan of the network “Office” Muppets type TV sitcom show from a few years back)

So what’s it about? Gonzo wonders what he is and where he comes from. There’s a couple parodies. Miss Piggy has a fight scene with a Man In Black.

But the best stuff is just the muppets hanging around the house. The soundtrack uses funky 1970s soul/r&b/disco music that gives the movie a really cool/fun vibe(I know I keep using the word “fun” too much but it really is the best description).

I would say this might be my 3rd fav Muppet flick. Christmas Carol is Number 1 followed by Treasure Island and then this.

Now it’s not flawless. You can tell they didn’t have a huge budget. And the cameos are really B list. Hulk Hogan? Rob Schneider?(I know it was the late ‘90s but he always felt B tier to me).

But as a Gonzo lover, he’s always been my fav Muppet, this movie scratched an itch I didn’t know I had.

Look I don’t love everything that’s happening in Hollywood. It sucks. Tech companies consolidating the studios? Paramount owning WB?HBO? Come on.

But what’s done is done. Now it’s time for us, the people, to let these suits know, you want to impress fans? You want to show people you’ll be a benign force? Then step up and pony up. You’ve taken an entire studio, now it’s time to give a little something back.

You’ve got a crown jewel sitting in your library right now wasting away. It’s show so good, so forward thinking, it serialized storylines before that was the “in” thing. But it’s stuck in SD. Stuck in a format utilized to help bring costs down at the expense of future proofing. Problem is, it’s stuck in a visual quality so low new viewers don’t even bother.

How do I know? I was one of em. I tried in years past. I did. It just looked so bleh. Then Covid hit, I needed something to watch and so a random episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine was the ticket. I wasn’t even much of a Trek fan. I’d seen the movies, a few episodes. That’s it. Then. I watched Trials & Tribulations from DS9 and I got hooked. More than hooked. But I had to watch ugly ass 480i versions. Yuck. But that’s how great this show is. I watched and fell in love anyways. The characters, the sets, the battles. This show had it all and it’s just sitting there begging for you to unleash its true power upon the world. It’s right there!

When I finally got to Next Generation with its glorious HD remaster, oh my I was jealous. Why wasn’t DS9 & to a lesser extent Voyager given this treatment? Well. Now I know. Money. Lots of it, TNG cost a fortune to basically redo the entire post production process from the old film prints(the show was shot on 35mm film like a movie but then transferred to cheap ass video tape, all editing & VFX compositing was done on tape, not film. Tape is SD only. To remaster? all the filmed elements would have to be reedited and made like a new show. Very $$ very time consuming. DS9 and Voyager have added complexity of using lots of CGI in later seasons. CGI rendered in SD. And most of those VFX companies are long gone.

But when there’s a will there’s a way. The documentary “What we Left Behind” has remastered DS9 footage. Rerendered VFX. Its glorious. It’s Beautiful. It’s proof this can be done. It MUST BE DONE,

So come on Mr Ellison, come on Paramount. Let’s get this going. No A.I. No short cuts. A real, legit, from the ground up remaster. Maybe I’ll even subscribe to Paramount+.

You bought WB. You bought Paramount. Now give something back. You can do it