My understanding-- and I'm hardly an expert-- is that, invisible to us all, Amazon Web Services has become their new bread and butter. They own half the Internet and we don't even realize it; even their "online Walmart" could fail and they'd still be fine.
Yes. It is by far their most profitable service. I'd defer to more of the experts here on the differences/market share of Azure v AWS but it is wildly successful.
Anyway, I think we're kinda saying the same thing when I say that they're kinda bad at entertainment and you characterize them as "dabblers." There's a certain organizational competence that you can't get just by throwing money at the problem.
Fair point. I think I was hearing you say they were "bad" in the sense that WB/Discovery are bad/performing poorly (or at least, that's my impression of how that company has been performing lately with the rebrand, shows that aren't hitting - for me - and poor financial performance). WB/Discovery is an entertainment firm that is just failing to execute.
Your point about throwing money at a problem is well-taken and your example of Rings of Power is perfect as we both view that as a money sink that was poorly executed (as well as Wheel of Time, for me).
And I'll continue to watch both because I like genre fiction! So maybe they're onto something marketing to rubes like me! lol
I have no idea how Wheel of Time is doing financially; it certainly doesn't seem to be as ludicrously expensive to produce as Rings of Power, nor have they put anything like the same marketing push behind it.
I enjoyed it, but I definitely enjoyed it despite its flaws and am not prepared to defend it too hard. The hardcore book fans seem to seriously loathe it, but it's tough to get a good sense for how much that matters to the bottom line.
Rings of Power they put so much money behind that it seems like they really needed it to be a mega-hit to be financially successful, and while it does seem to have found an audience, I doubt it's much better than a break-even proposition financially, if that.
It's hard to tell how much of my hatred for RoP has to do with it being qualitatively worse than WoT and how much is just me being more attached to Tolkien than Jordan and thus more personally bothered by such an aggressively mediocre adaptation.
Part of it is the sense that, whatever its faults, the people behind WoT cared. It was often clumsy, and there are creative decisions I disagree with, some quite strongly, but I never felt like those decisions were made out of expediency or just not giving enough of a sh*t.
From jump, RoP has the stink of something conceived in a boardroom to justify the money they spent on an expensive license, not something that arose from an honest desire of creative people to share a story.
All that said, I still don't understand the business model for some of these services.
Spend $1bb (or whatever) on RoP and generate...how much more in Prime memberships?
I don't get it!
I liked the way Jack Ryan ended, and their inclusion of Chavez for this season. There's a chance they could step into Rainbow Six with the ending they left. Much better than the joke that was Without Remorse...
Speaking of Taylor Sheridan projects, with what was the wreck of Without Remorse, i'm pleasantly surprised with Special Ops: Lioness on Paramount (yea i know not a Amazon show)
My understanding-- and I'm hardly an expert-- is that, invisible to us all, Amazon Web Services has become their new bread and butter. They own half the Internet and we don't even realize it; even their "online Walmart" could fail and they'd still be fine.
So, perhaps AWS / Amazon = Steam / Valve?
AWS is ubiquitous across all sorts of industries in ways we probably can only guess. For example: I work at the University of Notre Dame, and all of its sites are hosted on AWS. But a lot of their data and computations are done through AWS.
About 10 years ago I saw a presentation by a group trying to do something new with a very large survey of the nearby Andromeda galaxy using the Hubble Space Telescope. They were explaining why the project was behind schedule. At the time, the biggest challenge was in the computations required to precisely map the sky locations of all the individual exposures so that the images could be stitched together in a way that didn't reduce the resolution.
Basically they said: "We know how to do it. We could start the calculations on our own machines now, but it will happen faster if we use AWS. We just have to wait for the cost-per-cycle to come down enough that we can afford to do it, but it will still get done before it would if we used our local supercomputers..."
I liked the way Jack Ryan ended, and their inclusion of Chavez for this season. There's a chance they could step into Rainbow Six with the ending they left. Much better than the joke that was Without Remorse...
Speaking of Taylor Sheridan projects, with what was the wreck of Without Remorse, i'm pleasantly surprised with Special Ops: Lioness on Paramount (yea i know not a Amazon show)
I am also enjoying Spec Ops: Lioness so far.
I also enjoyed Jack Ryan.
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan - Season 4:
I'm halfway through, but can we somehow get a show dedicated to Murder Grandpa?
Oh Gen V a The Boys spinoff I was entirely unaware of comes to Prime on the 21st September. It looks like it has potential.
Basically they said: "We know how to do it. We could start the calculations on our own machines now, but it will happen faster if we use AWS. We just have to wait for the cost-per-cycle to come down enough that we can afford to do it, but it will still get done before it would if we used our local supercomputers..."
Years ago I read a discussion about planning a hypothetical future interstellar expedition, where there was a bit along the lines of "what you do is plot your potential launch date versus your rate of technological progress, and you launch when the estimated time of arrival stops going backwards."
Finally got around to watching Deadloch. Totally blew me away. Brilliant, flawless mystery/comedy that keeps you guessing (and laughing) right to the end.
It’s still early but The Boys Gen V might be one of the rare spinoffs that’s potentially better than the main series.
Oh yes. Must check that out today.
Edit: Twenty minutes into the first episode and it’s shaping up nicely. I’m really enjoying The Boys (I’ve no interest in reading the original comics) but this feels like they are making the most of being freed from the original source material.
TBF even the main series plays pretty fast and loose from the source material- they essentially only take the characters and basic premise and then does it’s own thing. I like the comics but they are bad. They’re mean spirited and cruel just for the sake of it, and the show is a rare example of an adaptation being better for NOT being faithful to its origin.
I remember seeing an interview with the creator once where he said he had started writing The Boys because he wanted to see how far he could push things before DC dropped him so he could move to an independent publisher with less corporate oversight. It took six issues.
Interesting. I fully believe the last part. Your feelings on the comics tie in with my impression. I actually watched a recap of the comic’s version of the story so I know roughly what the show is building towards.
I like many kinds of superhero stories but brutal tales, like ‘The Boys’ show, raises the stakes and makes it more intense and scary, like the stories in horror movies. It isn’t necessarily all going to work out in the end (as you can pretty much guarantee with most Marvel and DC stuff.) Literally anything can happen and anyone can die.
I also like the ‘evil Superman’ trope. When it’s done well it’s terrifying and the show is doing it very well.
Everything about The Boys disturbs and disgusts me, and I sincerely don't know why I keep watching it. Guess I'll have to check out Gen V now.
TBF even the main series plays pretty fast and loose from the source material- they essentially only take the characters and basic premise and then does it’s own thing. I like the comics but they are bad. They’re mean spirited and cruel just for the sake of it, and the show is a rare example of an adaptation being better for NOT being faithful to its origin.
I remember seeing an interview with the creator once where he said he had started writing The Boys because he wanted to see how far he could push things before DC dropped him so he could move to an independent publisher with less corporate oversight. It took six issues.
Garth Ennis?
He did most of his most famous stuff for Vertigo which was under DC, so yeah, he couldn't do the same juvenile stuff with DC, but if he's saying he was some kind of genius for sticking it to the publisher...eh.
I know this is sacrilegious in comics circles, but Ennis is an awful writer and the gross-out stuff in The Boys is fair to lay at his feet.
ruhk wrote:TBF even the main series plays pretty fast and loose from the source material- they essentially only take the characters and basic premise and then does it’s own thing. I like the comics but they are bad. They’re mean spirited and cruel just for the sake of it, and the show is a rare example of an adaptation being better for NOT being faithful to its origin.
I remember seeing an interview with the creator once where he said he had started writing The Boys because he wanted to see how far he could push things before DC dropped him so he could move to an independent publisher with less corporate oversight. It took six issues.Garth Ennis?
He did most of his most famous stuff for Vertigo which was under DC, so yeah, he couldn't do the same juvenile stuff with DC, but if he's saying he was some kind of genius for sticking it to the publisher...eh.
I know this is sacrilegious in comics circles, but Ennis is an awful writer and the gross-out stuff in The Boys is fair to lay at his feet.
He is kind of the quintessential edge lord of comics. Rereading stuff of his (even stuff I remember liking) it doesn't hold up nearly as well as one would hope. The Boys is one of the worst offenders of that, whereas the show has taken the concept and spirit of the thing and made it much better than the comics.
I agree that they definitely made The Boys series more palatable than the comic.
My wife and I really enjoying Gen V.
Jason Kelce (Center for the NFLs Philadelphia Eagles) had a film crew following him for the past 2 years. He also lost in the SuperBowl last year to the Kansas City Chiefs (who have on their team Travis Kelce, his brother).
So good.
Jason Kelce is an amazingly cool dad.
Travis is the definition of the cool uncle (who is currently hooking up with Taylor Swift).
Their mother is amazing.
Jason's wife is an amazing mother and there are some spots where you can feel the love for each other.
Especially the way she looks at him after the Eagles lost and he is playing with his daughters and the way he is looking at her shortly after the birth of their 3rd daughter.
I agree that they definitely made The Boys series more palatable than the comic.
I don't think they had a choice. The stuff in the comics would never make it on TV.
Also, with Seth Rogen involved, I think he knows how to walk the line between what is funny and what is just offensive.
I feel like Herogasm was the closest the show got to the comic and even that was still tame in comparison.
Blimey.
I was wondering why the hell they decided to call this new Gen V character Tek Knight when he bore no relation to the character in the comics, but then it turns out that of the two main aspects of his character in the comics, the part they decided to adapt was the less interesting, more problematic part.
I wish they had they left that part on the floor and instead made him the spoiled billionaire Batman/Iron Man pastiche that uses wealth to compensate for his lack of powers. The name “Tek Knight” doesn’t even make sense for the show version.
Yeah, that "quirk" caught me by surprise. I'd completely forgotten about that characteristic from the comic, which I wouldn't mind keep on forgetting.
Just watched Renfield, pretty fun movie. Nicolas Cage pretty solidly cast as Dracula.
I didn't read/watch/preview anything about it beforehand. Asked a friend who had seen it if it'd be an okay watch for someone squeamish (one of the folks in our group isn't into horror/gore), and the friend said they couldn't remember anything that would be off-putting.
Literally within minutes of the movie starting someone explodes into meat chunks. Hahaha. Same friend said "I just remembered it being funny!"
Definitely is more of a comedy, but at times there's a slapstick amount of gore/blood/violence. So we got through it and I thought it was very funny, but if you really don't like it when the occasional head explodes, maybe give it a pass.
Also not the film I'd expect from the guy whose previous major credits include directing Lego Batman and Tomorrow War and editing Lego Movie.
Very unhappy with how Gen V ended. It's like it was half an episode and then over.
I must watch the rest of Gen V. I think I’m two episodes in.
Honestly it was great, but the ending was really halfbaked and unsatisfying.
At least you’ve set my expectations so it won’t be as much of a disappointment.
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