Greetings, my dears! The end of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the impending return of Game of Thrones have brought new articles about both shows, along with other good stuff…

On the 5th, Pat O’Sullivan at the Daily Grindhouse took another look at the masterwork of cinema, Pet Semetary II:
“This film is definitely not an adaptation of King’s work, but it does manage to pass itself off as a reasonable facsimile at times. There’s a undercurrent of teen angst throughout the film, something that’s not exactly foreign to King’s novels. Dealing with divorce, death, bullies, watching your parents move on and learn to love again…it never quite reaches Stand By Me level pathos but it nudges that line. There’s also a scene where Anthony Edwards’ character has a sex dream where he’s fucking a topless girl with the head of a dog while a Traci Lords (?!) sung power ballad plays in the background. I don’t know how many Stephen King books you’ve read but that’s pretty on brand.”

On the 6th, Rick Porter at The Hollywood Reporter discussed how Crazy Ex-Girlfriend stayed on the air for four seasons, despite low ratings throughout its run:
“For all its critical acclaim and fiercely devoted audience, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend ends its four-season run as one of network TV’s least-watched shows. In three of its four seasons, in fact, it finished dead last for the season among all regularly scheduled broadcast programs in total viewers (the exception is 2017-18, when another CW show, Life Sentence, had a slightly smaller audience). It was last or tied for the bottom in adults 18-49 in all four seasons.”

Alan Sepinwall theorized that Game of Thrones is unique TV event, the 9th, over at Rolling Stone:
“A dozen years earlier, The Sopranos had tossed out many of TV’s unwritten rules with the episode where Tony strangled an informant with his bare hands, the sort of thing that just wasn’t done in the five decades prior. (Both that scene and Ned’s execution were followed by a shot of birds flying in formation overhead.) But in the creative renaissance that followed on the small screen, some notions still seemed sacrosanct, particularly: Don’t kill off your main character, and definitely don’t kill him off before you’ve even finished your first season. Not only did Game of Thrones do that with Ned, but two seasons later, it bumped off his wife Catelyn, son Robb and Robb’s pregnant wife Talisa after Robb had been plausibly established as Ned’s successor in GoT’s dramatic hierarchy. This was a show where the heroes not only lost consistently — they died in brutal fashion, and with them, it seemed, all hope of a good ending to the series as a whole.
And we ate it all up with a big damn spoon.”

Finally, on the 11th, Wendy Lee at the LA Times, asked if computers will ever replace scriptwriters:
“It may sound like science fiction, but the idea of using computers to help write scripts and other tasks is gaining serious traction in Hollywood. Machine learning — where computers use algorithms to sift through large amounts of data and often make recommendations — is infiltrating all corners of the industry. Entertainment companies are using the technology to color-correct scenes, identify popular themes in book adaptations and craft successful marketing campaigns. Even talent agencies are harnessing the technology for suggestions on how to market their stars.”

Enjoy!