Well, I have an Instagram.
This week, while scrolling, I was offered a deal I couldn’t refuse: one year of STARZ for a dollar a month, so twelve bucks for an annual membership.
I signed up; I figured it was a good deal. I had an old credit card that I needed to use anyways or I was going to lose it, so…
Besides, a couple of years ago STARZ offered up a free weekend (week?) and I caught the first couple of eps of High Town and I was intrigued, so I thought I might watch the rest. Twelve dollars seemed like a good deal. And I wanted to finish up that Now Apocalypse thing with Kelli I guess.
So… I jumped in.
Hmmmn. Wait… wut?
Sooooo… High Town isn’t there for some reason- IDK why- apparently it’s Netflix now. Now Apocalypse is… Tubi? Forreal? WTF?!? Heels is also Netflix? Oh… Hmmn… ok… Well… yeah. Well… White Queen I saw the first ep of and I liked, I’ll watch that. Seriously tho, I will say that there is a distinct lack of stuff on the platform here.
Disney+ gets a lot of flack for it’s lack of content, but the issue seems more acute with STARZ; however, in defense of STARZ, the prices there are far far more reasonable. 12 dollars for a year’s subscription in 1080p is more than reasonable for what is on the offer. In fact it is downright generous.
But I mean… the content is a bit… uh, sparing, and I suppose it would help A LOT if you were a new subscriber like myself.
Some thoughts…
There is, um, a “Wu-Tang” Collection. I did not expect this, to say the least. Headlining it is something called The Man with the Iron Fists, both written by and starring RZA. I have no idea what this is. There are seven movies in this collection! (Insert mind blown gif here) I note here that this movie also stars Russell Crowe. I will at this point mention that Russell Crowe starred in the film Boy Erased with Lucas Hedges, and that Lucas Hedges was in not one, not two, but three movies with erstwhile girlfriend Kathryn Newton. In a verrrrry broad and odd manner of speaking, this makes Kathryn a crab- step away from being in the Wu-Tang Collection herself, from a certain point of view. RZA, GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and… Kathryn Love Newton?
Stranger things have happened, I guess.
But not many, lol.
Seriously though, don’t do this guys, I’m literally just making a funny, this would be stupid AF, OK?
Other dumb crap- the Westerns, which aren’t dumb, they are entertaining as hell, and also vaguely depressing for very personal reasons.
Most especially, I like the ones featuring Alfred “Lash” LaRue, which were interestingly the movies that my mom liked the most when she was a kid. They’re exciting, action-packed, and… short, with all of the ones I’ve found being less than an hour in length. I wonder if these were made with TV in mind.
Many of these on STARZ co-star Jennifer Holt, a very beautiful girl which looks, sadly, depressingly like my erstwhile girlfriend Olivia Holt (I know, bipolar much? But still). My mom, being a fan of LaRue, was a fan of Jennifer too ofc. I hesitate to ask her if she was a fan of Hollywood legends Jack Holt or Tim Holt. She probably was a fan of both in some capacity.
I know that I was a fan of Gary Holt of Exodus and Slayer fame when I was younger.
Relations? I couldn’t prove it. Is it a coincidence that Olivia’s co-star in Kickin’ It! was named Jack? The character, I mean, not the actor. Jack Holt was a HUGE name in the Golden Age of Hollywood- look at his resume, it’s as long as anyone’s arm.
But like… man, I can feel it, tho. It’s the same energy, etc. I could see it. It was kinda creepy, honestly. This stuff is like… vaguely… I don’t even know. I mean, I don’t.
The same narrative beats, too. The things Jennifer’s characters do are the things Olivia’s characters do, too. It’s uncanny. I mean, the trappings are different- the vehicles are different; it’s stagecoaches and not cars, but the behaviors are the same. Hmmn.
I see on Insta today that Olivia is making fun of me. Um, thanks.
OK, BREAK TIME. Ye Gods people.
Alright I’m back.
Other STARZ stuff…
There’s a lot of… oddities here and that’s not a bad thing. I like peering into the corners of places, and that’s part of why I like Tubi so much- it has a lot of corners. In the kids section there’s this… Snow White movie, I mean, there’s the Lily Collins one, yes, but there’s also another one, an animated one, from 2009, that’s apparently a sequel? And the animation looks jankier than what you would get from a middling PC game from the late 90’s. I am TOTALLY checking that out. Forreal. And there’s this 3D CGI movie about Ants in space from… 2008? WITHOUT the 3D effect? With NO PEOPLE listed under the actors tab in the summary? Oh that is my fucking JAM motherfuckers!
Speaking of the 90’s trainwreck factor, I noticed in the “Trending Now” section of the app- and you can literally verify this for yourself- there is, I shit you not- an entry for fucking CB4. Yes, CB4. In the Trending Now section. CB4. I forgot this movie even existed, and yet, there it is.
Until this very moment when it has reappeared on STARZ, CB4‘s claim to fame was that back in the mid 90’s, it was the Gurnee IL Blockbuster’s 3rd most popular VHS tape featuring Chris Rock. Yeah, that’s it, that’s all CB4 has ever done or been known for.
Unbelievably and against all odds, I actually remember that fucking tape because I used to see it every. single. week. at the local video store. It would sit there, unrented, just… I don’t know, waiting, I guess, for the store to close, or maybe for the VHS format to die, I don’t know, but I would pass that thing every single time I would walk through the fucking store and it would ALWAYS be there, sometimes I would see people pick it up and look at it, only to put it back on the shelf, sometimes I would pick it up and put it back on the shelf, but it would never, EVER, move from it’s spot, save only for mere seconds, and only spatially in centimeters.
I mean it was ALWAYS there.
I don’t know, the fact that this movie could be trending TODAY on a streaming platform just… boggles my mind. Like I literally cannot fathom how this could even be happening. Even by the standards of Chris Rock’s meager resume CB4 cannot be his best work, right? I mean, … wait, how/ why am I even talking about this, honestly?
To harken back to an earlier topic- the Wu-Tang thing, The Man with the Iron Fists– I don’t begrudge struggling actors a chance to work, but seriously, this project looks like a dollar store version of Marvel’s Iron Fist, which was by many accounts a cheaper version of Marvel prestige projects.
Appears, ofc. I have seen neither movie.
But… holy shit, lol. IDK, maybe I should check to see which movie was created first, but… nah. I’m getting bored of writing about this, honestly.
I guess the main takeaway here is that I can see again the clear delineation between my girlfriends’ pedigree and… everyone else’s. It’s like… the dividing line is obvious. My girlfriends- and by extension, their families, those associated with their families, are the ones on top, and the rest are on varying degrees and steps beneath, scrambling to create associations where they can, apparently.
Not sure I’ll bother proofing this, too bored honestly