First Blog

 Super Power and Super Forces + Violence Did you know that 99% of all top-grossing American movies use special effects of some kind.  About 14% of all American movies feature super heroes. An extra 5% of American movies feature super powers of some sort. Thus 19% (or 1 in 5) of all American movies exhibit super-something as one of their key components.  About 94% of the top-grossing movies in the United States from 1985 to 2014 featured at least one violent scene. Of those movies, half involved a gun. Just for the record 73% of the top 100 grossing movies in 2017 contained at least one instance of foul language. Of them 43% used the F* word. Other percentages?  sh*t (33%), a**hole (26%), and damn (25%).

Have you noticed how many modern TV shows and movies have a supernatural component?  Not God really, but characters with beyond-the-real abilities.  Ghosts, superheroes, super-powers, anthropomorphic devils, clairvoyance, mysterious forces, and the lot. Also, we have characters visiting the past, the future, and alternative realities. It seems to portray or offer secular-religious experiences.  When I was a kid, we had superman, then batman.   That was about it until into the atom bomb age when insects grew to monumental proportions.   Also, there was a clear bad guy, to be defeated by the good guy. You can’t really count Frankenstein, as he was a medical invention. But then came Dracula, who is revived twice a year, every year. (We like evil defeated.) Historical biographies are gone completely. Family dramas have vanished, but family comedies featuring kids with the stupid dad continue. Protagonists with a great moral dilemma, once a staple, have largely disappeared. War movies

Like pearls in the ocean, talent is hard to find.   We   hear every day of the latest multi-billion dollar media company developing its own contents for streaming. Include Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Hulu, and more.   There are so many, you can find top-ten lists.    They are spending multiple billions on their ventures, making serials, documentaries, games, and films with large budgets.   Thus, in addition to Hollywood, cable and broadcast television, we have a host of Internet contenders.   It might be considered when only Hollywood and TV were the only sources of entertainment, there was a surprising number of flops and B-movies. Some TV series lasted only a few episodes before cancellation.   Some Hollywood movies never make it to the theaters but are sold off to the networks.   Why???   Talent.   There is just not enough. For the current crop of providers, talent is needed to create huge volumes of entertainment media.   One result is the large number of unscripted talk and