Thoughts on Stranger Things Season 2 (strengths and weaknesses)

Season 2 of Stranger Things was great but it had a few shortcomings for me. The new season added new people and new creatures but it was hard to know how much relevance some had to the central story line. A lot of it felt like they were laying the groundwork for a third season.

These were some things I think Season 2 did very well. Steve's character growth and his babysitting of the group were some of the most entertaining parts of the show. The interactions between Steve and Dustin, then later Lucas and Max, were funny and exciting and unlike what Eleven, Jonathan, and Nancy were up to, appeared like they actually belonged. 

Will Byer, played by Noah Schnapp, didn't have much of a role in Season 1. But in Season 2, he gave a standout performance. A lot of people are saying he deserves an Emmy. There's no doubt about that. 

I loved how the show dealt with the aftermath of Season 1. The characters haven't merrily gone on with their lives after all the things that happened to them. We see how they're all still traumatized and struggling emotionally. There's a great scene where a very drunk Nancy tells Steve they killed Barb. She's been tormented with guilt and is angry that he seems unbothered by what happened. 

The biggest shortcoming was Eleven's role, or lack thereof. She spends most of her time watching TV and hiding out in Hopper's house. The interactions between Eleven, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin were some of the best moments from Season 1. All Eleven really does in Season 2 that has any relationship to the central theme is show up at the end to save the day. I did like some of her scenes like when she went to visit her mother and the back and forth between her and Hopper. Hopefully Season 3 will bring Eleven back in a meaningful way. 

Nancy and Jonathan had an excellent story-line in Season 1. In Season 2, their parts, much like Eleven's, seemed to have been written simply to give them something to do but it all felt like it was very peripheral and had little to do with the rest of the story. Their subplot attempted to make up for the fact no one seemed to care that Barb had gone missing in Season 1 (even though she was the second child to disappear in a matter of days). But it very forced and tacked on, and had little relevance to everything else that was going on. 

In Season 2, we find out that Eleven has a sister named Kali. Kali is an interesting but wasted character. The only point of her existence is the teach Eleven how to channel her anger at the end of the show. 

A new girl Max joins the show for seemingly no other purpose than to have a girl in the group, since Eleven was sadly no longer being utilized that way. Other than as a love interest for Lucas, she didn't seem to play much of a role. Like with Kali that's a pity because she could be a genuinely interesting character. She also has an abusive step-brother but it's hard to know what the point of his existence was supposed to be. 

How time travel functions in fictional works like Harry Potter and Back to the Future

This is a great video that explains how time travel works in various popular movies, books, and television shows. The video focuses on how it "causally affects the perspective of characters’ timelines." Some of the featured fictional works are Ender's Game, Planet of the Apes, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Primer, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Back to the Future, Groundhog Day, Looper, and the video game “Braid”, and Lifeline.

Could Charlie Heaton's role on Stranger Things be in jeopardy?

Charlie Heaton who plays the character Jonathan Byers on Stranger Things was denied entry into the United States when trace amounts of cocaine were found on his belongings. He wasn't arrested but there are concerns the British actor may lose his work visa. If he's unable to enter the US, he'll be unable to film the next season of the show. Even if he doesn't lose his work visa, his role in the show could still be in jeopardy. What if the show's creators are concerned that even if Heaton didn't lose his visa this time, it may happen in the future? If he lost his visa in the middle of filming season 3, it could lead to costly delays and reshoots. 

It will be interesting to see what happens with this. If he loses his visa his character could be away at college. If he doesn't lose it, the creators will have to decide whether to keep him for the full season or kill him off early in the season if they're concerned about him being denied reentry again.

Heaton, an English citizen, was detained at LAX and denied entry to the country https://t.co/m8czaUE9lP

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) October 28, 2017

Murder on the Orient Express "Disturbing Truth" Trailer

One Direction Members Solo Album Sales and Critical Reactions

Three out of five of the original members of the boy band One Direction have released solo albums. This is how they have fared both in first week sales in the United States and in critical reception. 

Zayn Malik's debut Mind of Mine had 157,000 album-equivalent units in its first week. It's the most successful in terms of critical reception with a Metacritic score of 69%.

Harry Styles' self-titled debut had 230,000 album-equivalent units in it's first week. It's just one point behind Zayn's Metacritic score at 68%.

Niall Horan's debut Flicker had a somewhat surprising opening of 145,000 album-equivalent units considering that he was a lessor known member of the band and both singles were only moderate successes in the US. He has the lowest Metacritic score at 64%.

Liam Payne - TBA 
Louis Tomlinson - TBA

Has streaming ruined the charts?

Charts like the Billboard Hot 100 are meant to be a measure of what's popular in music. A popular song should be one that's widely known by the general public. In the old days, determining what was popular was easy enough. Single sales and radio play were counted to find the biggest song of the moment. Overall those were accurate measures. Of course, radio play can be controversial. After all, record labels in the form of payola do pay-to-play to get songs onto the radio. But still, radio has a strong incentive to mainly play songs people want to hear. If they play too many songs people don't like, they'll lose listeners. Radio stations use surveys like callout scores and other methods to determine what their listeners like. So, while radio is somewhat imperfect, it's still a pretty good indicator of what people actually like.

But now streaming is having a big impact on the charts and in many ways it's a poor indicator of what's popular. Here's one example of why that is. Someone goes to YouTube to leave a comment on how much they hate Taylor Swift's new song. But by doing so, they've contributed to streams and to the song's chart success. Thousands of people who want to express their disdain for an artist or song by leaving a negative comment are inadvertently making the song more popular. Taylor Swift's Look What You Made Me Do has one million thumbs down and six million thumbs up. Every one of those million thumbs down helped increase its chart position.

If the thumbs up/thumbs down ratio is an accurate representation of how many people disliked Look What You Made Me Do, it would mean that about 84 million of the song's 600 million streams were by people who didn't like it. People won't buy a song they dislike. But for many reasons they will stream songs they dislike. As an example, a new release that gets mentioned on lots of websites, forums, and blogs will inevitably include an embedded video. Many people will click play out of curiosity and contribute to the song's chart success even if they never listen to it again. In that case, streaming reflects how much hype and attention the song got. Not how much people like it.

Curated playlists are another problem. All streaming services have top 40 playlists and hot songs playlists. Many people run these playlists in the background and may not always skip songs they don't care for. Think of someone who's studying or doing housework with music they aren't fully paying attention to running in the background. Even songs they dislike will play and count toward the charts for no other reason than no one bothered to skip them.

Songs that are popular on iTunes but weak on streaming may struggle to enter the top 20 on the Hot 100. And yet a lot more is required to buy rather than stream a song. In Digital Spy, Tom Eames complained about the effect streaming was having on the UK charts. He pointed out that Drake's One Dance was #1 on the overall chart for 15 weeks. But on a sales only chart, it was #1 for only four weeks. In one of those weeks where the song was #1 overall, it was only #14 on the sales only chart. Did One Dance hold onto the #1 for 11 extra weeks because people were deliberately streaming it (either searching for it or playing it from personal playlists) or because it was in so many popular curated playlists?

The daily Spotify chart often has little in common with the iTunes chart. iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon typically have a lot of overlap in their biggest selling songs. Thunder by Imagine Dragons is #1 on all three. But it's at #39 on the Spotify United States Top 50. The #1 on Spotify is Rockstar by Post Malone. It isn't in the Amazon top 10. It's #4 on iTunes and #2 on Google Play. That's fairly close. But the #2 on Spotify Bank Account by 21 Savage is way off compared to sales. It's #55 on Google Play and #57 on iTunes. It isn't in the Amazon top 20. Thanks to streaming, it's #14 on the Billboard Hot 100, just 6 places behind Thunder. This is the case for several songs in the Spotify Top 10. Many don't even rank in the top 25, and in some cases the top 50, on sales. To quote Tom Eames,

Many Spotify users simply play Spotify's curated playlists or the 'UK Top 50' playlist of the most popular songs around right now. Over and over. This means it takes yonks for songs to finally go away or to allow others to have a bloody turn. And it depends on Spotify's algorithm.

In other words, it's not listeners determining what's popular. It's the software they're listening on making that determination. The more types of popular curated playlists a song is placed in, the higher it will rank on the charts even if few people in the general public have ever heard it. These few songs that are played over and over make it harder for new songs to break through. The BBC's Mark Savage points out that this has consequences for musicians and music fans.

In the first six months of 2016, there were 86 new entries in the UK singles chart. Ten years ago, that figure was 230. And while artists like Beyonce, Rihanna and Calvin Harris continue to rack up the hits, new artists are being pushed out of the race. 

There are also concerns about chart manipulation with streaming. Republic Records was accused of manipulating the charts by putting a 3 minute 38 second loop of the chorus of Post Malone's Rockstar on their YouTube page. The loop had 42 million views, which all counted toward the charts, even though none of those listeners heard the full song.

Tom Eames recommends taking streaming out of overall charts to more accurately reflect what truly is popular. But this doesn't make sense because increasingly people are consuming music through streaming services. If you remove tens of millions of streamers from the charts in favor of a dwindling number of purchasers, the charts still won't be accurate.

So, what can be done to make the charts more accurate and give more songs and artists a chance to shine? 

• Exclude curated playlists. That way only songs people actually choose to listen to through searches or from their own playlists count. 
• Weight streamed songs in a way that aligns more with digital downloads. 
• Eliminate radio services like Pandora, which don't involve much in the way of choice. 
• Take thumbs up versus thumbs down and average watch time into account on YouTube to better reflect how much listeners like or dislike a song.

Billboard is frequently changing their formula. Right now, no one (other than the few artists who have long running number 1 songs) seems to be happy with the current formula. 

I helped contribute to the success of Taylor Swift's Look What You Made Me Do when I clicked on it to find how many thumbs up versus thumbs down it had.

 

Riverdale: Who is the green-eyed man?

The latest season of Riverdale has a big mystery: who is the green-eyed man who shot Archie's dad? Pajiba.com is comparing eyes to try to determine who the culprit may be. They ruled out Hal Cooper, Sheriff Keller, FP Jones, Hiram Lodge, and Smithers. Check out the article to see why they have been eliminated.

Will Eleven Go Home In Season 2 of Stranger Things?

In Season 1 of Stranger Things, we learned that Eleven's mother Terry Ives sued Eleven's father Dr. Martin Brenner claiming he had taken away their daughter. The official story was that Ives miscarried in the third trimester. Hopper and Joyce spoke to Terry's sister who believed the official story. Hopper and Joyce believe Eleven's birth was covered up by the government. According to Buzzfeed, Eleven will make it home in Season 2. They posted a screenshot of Hopper and Joyce leaving the house. In the Season 2 trailer Eleven is shown standing at an open door. According to Buzzfeed, it's the exact same house. Does this mean Eleven comes home? To find out, watch Season 2 of Stranger Things on October 27 on Netflix.

Marvel Comics Superhero Black Panther Coming to Theaters in 2018

Black Panther (starring Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman) takes place after events in Captain America: Civil War (2016). King T'Challa returns home to the African nation of Wakanda, and becomes the country's new leader. His throne is challenged by factions within the country. Black Panther teams up with the CIA and others to prevent Wakanda from being dragged into a world war. Coming February 16, 2018.

 

Netflix Show Stranger Things Season 2 Trailer | #1 Trending on YouTube

The Last Jedi's trailer is almost definitely misleading you

The Independent UK newspaper has an article titled "Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi's trailer is almost definitely misleading you" and subtitled 'This is not going to go the way you think'

This was exactly my feeling after watching the trailer: "Whatever may seem like a spoiler, may actually be mere illusion." 

Some things the Independent claims are misleading:

• Kylo Ren will not kill his mother Leia
• The scene where Kylo Ren is reaching out his hand to Rey when she says "I need someone to show me my place in all this" are two separate scenes. 
• When Snoke says "When I found you, I saw raw, untamed power. And beyond that, something truly special" we don't know whether he's talking to Kylo Ren or Rey

You can read the full article at Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi's trailer is almost definitely misleading you.

Everything You Missed In The Last Jedi Trailer:

Theories on Who Rey's Parents Are

The release of the trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi brings up the question once again: who exactly is Rey?

Tor.com goes into this in some depth in "Our Final 4 Theories On Who Rey’s Parents Are."

The four options are:

• Rey’s parents grandparents are: QUI-GON JINN
• Rey’s parents are: HAN AND LEIA
• Rey’s parents are: NOBODY
• Rey’s parents are: LUKE

The piece is a long but interesting read.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Trailer

Critical and Box Office Responses to the Thor Movies

*** Updated***

A new Thor movie, Thor: Ragnarok hit the theaters on November 3, 2017. Here's a quick look back at the critical and box offices responses to its two predecessors and how it fares in comparison.

Critical Response:

The first Thor movie released in 2011 had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 77% and a Metacritic score of 57 (mixed reviews). On Metacritic the film had 22 positive reviews, 14 mixed reviews, and 4 negative reviews.

The follow up Thor: The Dark World (2013) fared worse with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 66% and a Metacritic score of 54 (mixed reviews). On Metacritic the film had 22 positive reviews, 19 mixed reviews, and 3 negative reviews.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) is by far the most successful Thor movies critically with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% and a Metacritic score of 73 with 44 positive and 4 mixed reviews.

Box Office:

Thor (2011) made $181 million in North America and $268 million outside North America for a worldwide total of $449 million. It was the fifteenth highest grossing film of 2011.

Thor: The Dark World (2013) earned $206 million in North America and $438 million outside North America for a worldwide total of $644 million.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) earned $122.7 million during its opening weekend.

Thor Official Trailer: