Mikhail's TV Digest #17: Two Months of Bi-Weekly Posts and Site News
June-July, Scheduling, FTNC Updates + Deadpool and X-Men
This is the seventeenth issue of what is typically an ongoing monthly-ish series that I like to call Mikhail’s Textual Variations Digest, aka MTVD, for short. It includes links to my recent posts, as well as some additional related thoughts and notes.
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June 11
This is one of my favorite personal essays.
I originally published it on Medium but it never quite got any traction there, so I decided to repurpose it here, and really liked the higher level of engagement. I hope to write more about my favorite movie of all time, especially as I’ve seen a leaked early version of it that was intended for TV broadcast before Lynch re-edited it into a feature.
June 27
This post started out as a bit more well-rounded, in that I initially planned to talk about other Mad Max movies, especially Thunderdome, but ultimately I ended up with way too much to say about Furiosa and decided to just stick with the one film. In my cover article, I talked about why I think the movie should’ve been longer and pointed to plot gaps that I assumed had occurred due to some connective tissue scenes being cut in post-production.
I was a bit sad as shortly after the article came out, another film/TV writer with some insider knowledge pointed out that my speculations were incorrect, in that the film’s final shooting script similarly had those gaps. This, however, lead me to do more research and I discovered that I wasn’t entirely wrong, for earlier versions of the screenplay did not have these gaps.
They came about as the original backstory for the title character underwent some interes-ting changes in the 9-year gap between the releases of Fury Road and Furiosa. I plan to publish a post about this fascinating evolution at some point in the future.
July 9
This was an old, deep-dive post I had initially written for my blog, back when I was trying to actively review every episode of the Terminator series, which is one of my favorite shows of all time. I hope to resume reviewing it at some point here on T.V. - there’s a whole second season to cover - though to be honest, I’ve found the traditional episodic review format a tad boring and not always worth the effort.
What can I say? Obscure genre show reviews just don’t get that many views, sadly. So, I’m gonna try to come up with an alternative format or larger articles, into which I could incorporate the TSCC episode reviews. We’ll see how that turns out.
July 23
Perhaps because a new Shyamalan movie is right around the corner, I finally got to writing this long post about superpower systems in the Eastrail 77 trilogy.
I’m always fascinated with how a longform story can transform over time and why, so it was a pleasure to finally delve into the changes that happened across Unbreakable, Split, and Glass. I plan to tie this into another, possibly even longer article about the 16-year evolution of Split, which began life as a cut subplot from the first movie.
Bonus Material: FTNC is currently on iceThe Film and TV Newsletter Catalogs is arguably one of my best posts.
Unfortunately, for the time being, I’m no longer able to update it due to some problems that have occurred with the ‘mention’ feature, which is intrinsic to the page. At some point later this year, I hope to revamp it so it can work without the use of mentions. Until then, however, it has to remain on ice. I apologize to anybody who wanted to be listed.
Bonus Material: Deadpool 3I saw Deadpool & Wolverine recently, and I thought it’s not bad. I think it’s great how it uses the multiverse concept to bring in other FOX characters. Channing Tatum was so amazing, I hope he gets his own R-rated spinoff, preferably directed by Gore Verbinski.
You can hear me debate the film’s merits in a podcast with members of the Comics Code UH-Thority on YouTube. And if you have any thoughts you want to share about it, please
Bonus Material: My X-Men movie rankingsJust to want to share this little image since we’re on the topic of the X-movies.
Deadpool and Wolverine would be slotted in the C-level, ahead of The Last Stand, as I see it as a B- or C+ kinda picture.
Scheduling UpdateJust wanted to let everyone know: I’m not sure what the publication schedule will look like for August. I had thought about returning to the regular weekly schedule, but right now I think I might need a break until September.
Hope to complete a big article by the end of the Summer in any case.
Solid X-Men Tier List, but Dark Phoenix in the A Tier has FLOORED me. It's probably the X-Men movie I had the least fun watching. Apocalypse is objectively a worse movie overall but there are *moments* in that film better than anything in Dark Phoenix, which was just immeasurably bland to me. The villain didn't even get a name!!! Incredibly uninspired action. Most of the cast phoning it in so hard they went bankrupt from the long distance bills! Truly a franchise low for me. I'd watch Apocalypse or Last Stand or even Wolverine Origins over it.