Things that annoy me about TV shows/ movies these days

[canuckamuck]

Do you find it annoying that at the start of many shows these days instead of getting the quick reminder of what happened up to this point. They show you what is coming up in the episode you are about to watch. For example, I watch Gold Rush. A show about gold mining that probably no one watches anymore. But I still like to see the mining, my brother has a mine up there. Anyhow, right off the start they ram a bunch of spoilers down your throat, from which a clever person can deduce how things are going to go and spoils much of the entertainment value. Fortunately I watch it on my PC, so I can just skip the intro and the opening credits and watch the show without the foreknowledge. But you have to remember to do that every time.

It is a similar thing with movie trailers. Many times the trailer shows all the critical moments of the movie, ruining the experience once again, This is why I refuse to watch trailers. What I do instead is go to imdb.com and look at the rating, summary, and a review.

One other thing I find annoying is not the fault of the movie makers, but the folks who put together torrents. I think it is wonderful that they usually add a sample in a torrent, but sometimes the sample is a critical scene, I have even seen a sample that was the actual ending of the movie. 

Anyhow, that's my little rant for the day. Anyone else annoyed with the way we get served spoilers and formula driven media.

[giddyup]

What I hate is when the programme resumes after what would have been an ad break, and then they show 5 minutes of "catch-up", stuff you have already seen. It's basically just filler.

[canuckamuck]

3 minutes ago, giddyup said:

What I hate is when the programme resumes after what would have been an ad break, and then they show 5 minutes of "catch-up", stuff you have already seen. It's basically just filler.

Oh yeah I agree, way too many shows have about 10 min of new material, which they rehash over and over to fill in the episode, and the repeated teasers about some non event that they leave to the end.

[Jingthing]

Watch better shows.

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[Emster23]

Maybe just response in change of viewer attention span, which is about as long as a quark's.

[dotpoom]

The one thing that really annoys me is the background music....or should it be called foreground music...I sometimes cannot hear what the actors are saying because of the music.

I have mostly stopped watching Hollywood movies now because they consist largly of ....killings, violence of the worst type, super heros and monsters of all descriptions that after a bellyfull would even bore my grandchildren.

   I watch the TV5Monde movies with the subtitles.....The french continue to make great down to earth realistic movies.

[faraday]

Yup I agree, it's so annoying how sometimes they shorten the length of TV series, which can reduce the time in some of them by 10 minutes.

 

Then, at the beginning you get the recap, & often a show says it's 56 minutes for example, but the episode is really only about 40 minutes.

 

Horrible!

[Dustdevil]

I recommend metacritic.com as well. As for TV, I personally limit myself to scripted shows from the prestige channels as well as the U.S.-based streaming services. It was The Sopranos (1999-2007)  that heralded the current Golden Age or "prestige TV" IMHO. As for Hollywood movies, you just need to know where to look. There are also art-house or realistic films such as "Princess Cyd." I know sci-fi can be silly but not "Blade Runner 2049," a worthy successor to the original (1982 but 2007 final cut) masterpiece.

[norbra]

My pet peeve is the camera work on Muay Thai boxing shows, every channel has the same format, presentations are credible enough but the actual combat is 1970's , keep watching us as we have a zoom lens and its mobile enough to show overhead shots yay. and at the start of every round must pan from wide angle to zoom,must goto a ringside shot from the "mat" to the top rope,.Even though some channels show UTP bouts in close up ,Thais just can't seem to accept that ringside cameras provide the best coverage.

[Kwasaki]

On 1/25/2018 at 9:58 AM, canuckamuck said:

Do you find it annoying that at the start of many shows these days instead of getting the quick reminder of what happened up to this point.

No   like the Mrs says to me if something annoys you in Thailand don't watch it, don't look at it or don't do it. 

[Grumpy Duck]

Yes, it is boring how so many new releases are nothing but remakes and sequels. I suspect there is a 50th episode of Star Wars or Fast and Furious 30 on the drawing board. 

 

I really think that Hollywood lost most of its creative talent when they refused to give writers residuals. 

[joebrown]

I feel very sorry for the average Thai TV viewer, because it seems most programmes are made to appeal to anyone wih an IQ of less than 50.

[OneMoreFarang]

My solution to this is that I read a lot of books on my ebook reader and watch only few movies. There are lots of good books out there, some new and some old. I.e. recently I read The Godfather and I read all James Bond books. I once had a look at old Bond movies; it's no fun to watch them now with their, at that time, modern technology which is by now totally outdated. But the books are still good entertainment.

 

Some new movies are good but it seems it's best to wait for recommendations from friends. Recently I looked up the new StarWars which had at that time 93% on RottenTomatoes. I watched it and it's hard to imagine how they got the 93%.

[OneMoreFarang]

1 hour ago, joebrown said:

I feel very sorry for the average Thai TV viewer, because it seems most programmes are made to appeal to anyone wih an IQ of less than 50.

Only Thai TV? Less than IQ 50 is a little hard. But I guess many are made for less than IQ 100 - and by definition 50% of all people are covered in that group...

[OneMoreFarang]

2 hours ago, Grumpy Duck said:

Yes, it is boring how so many new releases are nothing but remakes and sequels. I suspect there is a 50th episode of Star Wars or Fast and Furious 30 on the drawing board. 

 

I really think that Hollywood lost most of its creative talent when they refused to give writers residuals. 

I guess the thinking is: Why change a winning concept? I.e. people looked movies with fast cars since forever. Some stories are good. So why invent a new story if the same 20 year old story with new cars is just fine? I guess most people who watched movies 20 years ago are not really the prime audience these days. I guess for 80% of the audience the story will be brand new.

 

Not that I like this but I guess commercially it makes sense.

[lemonjelly]

Through movies, we can see the general demise in society; watch any old Charlie Chaplain or Harold Loyd movie, people moved around much faster in those days


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[giddyup]

2 minutes ago, lemonjelly said:

Through movies, we can see the general demise in society; watch any old Charlie Chaplain or Harold Loyd movie, people moved around much faster in those days


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They never said much either.

[lemonjelly]

They never said much either.

now you’re being silly


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[StreetCowboy]

On 1/26/2018 at 7:22 PM, lemonjelly said:

now you’re being silly


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That would have been much better said  in the style of Charlie Chaplin, with a pronouncedly quizzical stare at your screen, and, if you felt obliged to put paw to keypad, a simple “?”, with a suitable border round the frame.

 

”Least said, soonest mended”, as my dear old late grandmother used to say, and she was about the same age as Charlie Chaplin

[dick dasterdly]

On 1/26/2018 at 8:44 AM, dotpoom said:

The one thing that really annoys me is the background music....or should it be called foreground music...I sometimes cannot hear what the actors are saying because of the music.

I have mostly stopped watching Hollywood movies now because they consist largly of ....killings, violence of the worst type, super heros and monsters of all descriptions that after a bellyfull would even bore my grandchildren.

   I watch the TV5Monde movies with the subtitles.....The french continue to make great down to earth realistic movies.

Couldn't agree more about the bloody music!

 

I find it necessary to watch films with the remote control in hand, to keep turning the volume up and down....

 

I'm also convinced that the (film) actors frequently speak as quietly as possible nowadays, basically whispering.  It could be that I'm going deaf, but I can hear the actors just fine in old movies and sometimes it's obvious (from the tone/'catches' in voice) that they are often (and for no good reason)  keeping their voice as quiet as possible!

[OneMoreFarang]

59 minutes ago, dick dasterdly said:

Couldn't agree more about the bloody music!

 

I find it necessary to watch films with the remote control in hand, to keep turning the volume up and down....

 

I'm also convinced that the (film) actors frequently speak as quietly as possible nowadays, basically whispering.  It could be that I'm going deaf, but I can hear the actors just fine in old movies and sometimes it's obvious (from the tone/'catches' in voice) that they are often (and for no good reason)  keeping their voice as quiet as possible!

I think the "bloody music" is very different in a big cinema and at home.

I like to see movies in the cinema and sometimes loud music is part of a good movie. I never had problems understanding the actors when I am in a cinema.

But if I see a movie at home on TV (no special sound system) then the music is often annoyingly loud. And when I turn it down then in the next scene I can't understand the actors and I have to turn the volume up again... 

 

 

[badischer Barde]

9 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

But if I see a movie at home on TV (no special sound system) then the music is often annoyingly loud. And when I turn it down then in the next scene I can't understand the actors and I have to turn the volume up again... 

yes... very true. But even in the cinema it can be somewhat annoying to have that much bass and volume. Together with lots of CGI and 3D it might have once been a viable substitute for stories and talent, but masterpieces like transformers XXI (or wherever we are now) and pacific rim show that even that doesn't work all the time.

 

edit: I guess by having plot-relevant conversations in whispered tones they want to encourage you to watch the movie "the way it was meant to": loud. Because without Bigscreen, CGI and Dolby Digital Surround every Transformer movie is about as entertaining as the '80 ten minute toy commercials they (d)evolved from... /edit

 

Thankfully, Series like Breaking Bad, GoT and so on easily fill the gap. Because lets be honest: While the majority of movies is getting worse, we  rarely had series of this quality level before.

 

(Of course, the majority of series is really bad, too. But we have so much more of them that we don't have to bother with the crap ones anymore. So fully agree with Jingthing here: Watch better shows!)

[badischer Barde]

On 26.1.2018 at 12:01 PM, OneMoreFarang said:

Only Thai TV? Less than IQ 50 is a little hard. But I guess many are made for less than IQ 100 - and by definition 50% of all people are covered in that group...

 

Isn't that obvious? It is much cheaper to make entertainment for the intellectually handicapped. For example because you can fill 50% of your airtime with trailers, previews, what-happened-before(-the-5-minute-commercials-break), and hire talent-amputated amateure-actors for scripted reality shows.

 

But not only that. They respond better to commercials and product placement, and are less likely to start reading books instead just because you offer them the paintthinner-from-a-plastic-bag equivalent to entertainment...

[lemonjelly]

The worst for movie showing are the Dutch, they chuck the commercial breaks in at a set time rather than a logical place in the movie, ie change of scene etc...... halfway through a scene and it goes to commercials.... awful media management


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[nikmar]

Its still the boiings and whistles and "Oh Nooo"s that do my head in. Big time.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎1‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 6:22 PM, canuckamuck said:

Oh yeah I agree, way too many shows have about 10 min of new material, which they rehash over and over to fill in the episode, and the repeated teasers about some non event that they leave to the end.

It's all about money. They worked out that even though ads make all 1 hour shows about 45 minutes long, they can cut that down even more by putting in filler. They make more money by paying the people that make the shows less and the viewers get screwed, as usual.

Same reason news channels don't show much news anymore. They use fillers telling us what a great job they do, and repeat the same news all day. Al Jazeera one of the only ones I can watch at present that does show different articles throughout the day. 

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎1‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 3:29 PM, lemonjelly said:

The worst for movie showing are the Dutch, they chuck the commercial breaks in at a set time rather than a logical place in the movie, ie change of scene etc...... halfway through a scene and it goes to commercials.... awful media management


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Same in Saudi. Watching something and they cut to Mecca according to the time. Eventually we got satellite tv, but they had to hide the dish from the mutawa.

[Andrew Dwyer]

Same in Saudi. Watching something and they cut to Mecca according to the time. Eventually we got satellite tv, but they had to hide the dish from the mutawa.

Plus all the censorship that goes on with Saudi tv !!
An episode of Baywatch lasts about 5 minutes after they’ve cut all the “ obscene “ material out !!

Barely worth reaching for the tissues !!

[Langsuan Man]

The thing that annoys me watching US TV shows is the competition at the network level to grab part of my screen

 

If it isn't a stations logo , then it's a scrolling banner ad on the bottom of the screen, or something else telling me about an upcoming show

 

One time when watching the Macy's 4th of July fireworks, NBC thought they would be cute and have a animated 4th of July log that had fireworks going off.  Many times you could not tell if it was the actual fireworks or the silly logo you were seeing

[thaibeachlovers]

18 hours ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Plus all the censorship that goes on with Saudi tv !!
An episode of Baywatch lasts about 5 minutes after they’ve cut all the “ obscene “ material out !!

Barely worth reaching for the tissues !!

Saudi tv cut "Skippy", the children's series, and Saudia ( airline ) cut Mrs Doubtfire so much at the end it was unwatchable.