Insights into Entertainment

Insights Into Entertainment: Episode 7 "Smoking out Apple"

April 01, 2019 Joseph and Michelle Whalen Season 1 Episode 7
Insights into Entertainment
Insights Into Entertainment: Episode 7 "Smoking out Apple"
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In this weeks episode we introduce our new segment Disney Detective with news dedicated to the house the mouse built. We briefly discuss what is shaping up to be anything but a brief moving in Avengers End Game. We then do a deeper dive into Apples expansion into the entertainment industry with a series of services announced at this weeks keynote a their World Wide Developer Conference. Then we'll finish up with two new Insightful picks of the week.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to insights into entertainment, a podcast series, taking a deeper look into entertainment and media, your host, Joseph and Michelle Waylon, a husband and wife, team of pop culture, phonetics are exploring all things from music and movies to television and fandom.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to insights into entertainment. This is episode seven a smoking out apple. I'm your host, Joseph Wayland, and my cohost, Michelle Waylon. Hello everyone. How are you doing today, Michelle? I am doing just fine. How are you? I am doing awesome. So today we've got some entertainment news to talk about. We have a new segment that we're introducing and we have some insightful picks that we're going to be going over. So the first thing they're going to be doing today is our new Disney detective segment. Since we seem to always have some information about Disney that we go about in the podcast here, right, we're not going to have a section just for that since there's plenty of it. Yeah,

Speaker 3:

yeah. Kind of made sense to give it its own little area.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. From there we move on to our entertainment news where we're going to discuss apples foray into the entertainment industry. Uh, we will also talk about some additional information on Avengers end game as well. And uh, we have a few other things to talk about from there. If we have time and we will finish up with our insightful picks of the week. Let's get right into it. Yeah.

Speaker 4:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

So this week's news segment, Disney detective, I turned it over to you, Michelle. Well

Speaker 3:

thank you. So obviously looking at, you know, various entertainment things, there's always stuff about Disney that that pops up. So I had suggested that we kind of bring it, you know, a new segment. Uh, so two of the things that came up and we're all over the place all over social media was a Disney world and Disney land implementing some policy changes as of the 1st of May. There were actually three to kind of being the, the major ones. First one is stroller changes. So effective May 1st strollers can be no larger than 31 inches by 52 inches. And they are totally prohibiting any of the stroller wagons that seem to have popped up within the last couple of years as parents who have taken, you know, small children to Disney. Um, you know, having a stroller obviously, you know, is very handy, you know, throughout the day. But do you need to have a big giant wagon?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that does seem a bit extreme. Now the question I have is this, all Disney parks are doing this app?

Speaker 3:

Yes. As far as I know, it's all of Disney world and Disneyland. So it's, it's all of the parks.

Speaker 2:

Okay. And all the obviously theme parks in Disney.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. All of the park. Now what's kind of funny is I think it was when we were last down there, we actually saw there's a outside company, so there's many outside companies that you can actually rent strollers from if you don't want to bring your own. Um, and they had, they were these big, um, uh, uh, Cinderella coaching. Well, that's not going to be allowed now. And those are like$400 or more stroller. So, um, so that company is now going to, going to be out of business, uh, uh, doing those, um, I know a lot of people get very animated when it comes to strollers and even, um, the, the Acvs, the, you know, the scooters and stuff that, you know, they say there's too many scooters and there's too many strollers and there's too much stroller parking. But it's a theme park meant for kids. So to try and not have any strollers or any scooters, you're never going to completely get rid of them.

Speaker 2:

You're being the, the Disney cynic that I am a hand help but wonder is this really just a way for Disney to make money off stroller rental zone?

Speaker 3:

Well, kind of, but the thing is, you know, it's also the, the larger strollers that they're, you know, they're really targeting. And the thing is you can get a double stroller, you can rent a double stroller, so from Disney. So obviously you can still bring a double stroller, but you know, what about the, the, the parents that have triplets and have the triple strollers, that's where, you know, now it's like, okay, well now I have to bring two shoulders because I can't just have a triple stroller. So it'll be interesting to see the backlash, um, from that. But the other one or the other big changes is no smoking areas now are for all of the parks. So Disney years ago allowed smoking in the parks and then many years back they designated smoking areas within the parks. Now smoking areas will no longer be available in theme parks, the waterparks, Espn Sports Complex and downtown Disney in California, there will be some smoking areas available in Disney springs and Disney resort hotels. But other than that, you'd have to go out to the parking lot, I guess to smoke. And I think that's actually going to cause issues because there were many people that had been posting, you're talking about when they first made Disney a nonsmoking area, you were um, trashcan fires were starting because people were going and smoking in the restrooms, sneaking a cigarette because they didn't know where the non smoke in the smoking section was of of the park. So they were just finding any place smoking and then you'd have a trashcan fire. So cells where the smoking areas are right, there are none. So that's going to be, you know, and I know V and that also includes vaping as well. So I know there are many people that are very excited about this and obviously you know those that, that still smoke are upset by this. My mother smoked for years and I remember as we've talked before, I remember when you could go to a restaurant and smoking or non smoking was your section. You can even smoke on a plane, you know, back then. So I always sympathized for smokers rights because you know, she always admitted, you know, smoking to her, she was addicted to it. It was clearly an addiction, one that she wasn't proud of, but you know, she had to have a cigarette every couple of hours, you know, over the years she got smoked out by certain areas and things like that. So I kind of feel for the people that, that have that where they need to, to have that nicotine, you know, I wonder if having like a gum, you know, will that help them get through the day? I kind of almost, not really parallel to it, but why does there have to be alcohol served in a theme park and then they recently went that way with magic, right? It was dry for the Lawrence toward the longest time and now you can get alcohol in the magic kingdom. You can obviously get it in all other parks if you're not allowing smoking, why are you still allowing devil's advocates? Having a glass of wine is not going to affect anybody else's health. True. A cigarette affects everyone. No, I, and I totally agree, but you could still have a section in the park somewhere off to the side and you know, have some sort of ventilation system so that the smoke isn't, you know, and I, you know, to a certain extent, I agree because the, the smoking areas that they had that were designated previously were far enough away from the gender. They were never right. They were never in the way. And you're using curious what the push was for this? Yeah, I, I, I, I don't know. I don't know what, what prompted it, but like I said, it was, you know, all over the place. Um, and the other little policy change, which not really sure why the reasoning behind it was you're allowed to bring coolers into the parks, but effective immediately. Now no loose or dry ice is permitted. So I guess if you have a cooler, it needs to be ice packs, but nothing loose. So dry ice, I could understand there's a safety hazard so I could post it. Who Sys, not really sure why. Because you know, half the time, you know, you can't even say that it's a safety issue with that because how many times do you walk past, you know, a drink stand and they're emptying it out for the night and there's loose ice all over the world. The only thing that I could think is if you, if you look at FAA regulations and stuff like that where all right, yeah, it looks like ice, but maybe it could be some type of dance substance. That's the only thing that I can show them. Sure. We'll go with that. They're allowing you to bring in sealed ice packs, right. Which that's even more toxic then the chemicals are ion there themselves and you know, are toxic, but it doesn't take much to emptiest sealed ice pack out, fill it up and reseal it because no one's gonna look at it closely enough. Right. To make sure it hasn't been tampered with. So I'm sure something prompted it, but nothing's come out yet. So it's either, it's either for the children or it's for safety. Right. So that was the, the changes that are coming. Uh, the other interesting thing that came out with obviously star wars, galaxy edge opening up in the, uh, end of May for Disneyland and then later on, uh, for Disney world. So Disneyland has now they're going to be doing a virtual queuing system. So beginning June 24th, guests who wish to visit, uh, Star Wars Galaxy's edge, we'll be using a virtual queuing system. So what'll happen is once they get into the park and their ticket is scan, they're going to be able to reserve a time slot to go and visit the land. So this way it's going to allow guests to visit other areas of the park. When their time comes, they'll go to galaxy's edge, wait on a line to get in, which will hopefully be shorter than those acute of standing in a line to Parker stand in line to get on a ride. Well, that's how Disney does things. Um, so that they're hoping that this way it'll help manage the time. And then when it's time, uh, for, like I said, for the guests to enter, they'll go to a shorter waiting line with other people, have their wait time. But this will only go into effect June 24th and on from May 31st when galaxy's edge is going to be opening until June 23rd guests, we'll need a reservation time to get into galaxy's edge. So it's,

Speaker 2:

so we did talk about the reservation system that previous podcasts, this is in addition as queuing system is in addition to an a supplement of that reservation system after the reservation.

Speaker 3:

Right. So the reservation system, they're only doing for, you know, less than a month. And the reservation system has, we had talked about before was if you're a resort guests, you get kind of first dibs at a reservation spot and then, uh, anybody outside of resort guests would be able to get some sort of reservation spot. Now they're looking to do the queuing system for anybody that's entering after the time. Now the interesting thing is Disney world has not come out with anything yet regarding this. So I'm guessing they're probably going to wait and see how it goes in California a few months later. Right. And if it kind of works out well in California, I could totally see them.

Speaker 2:

So now is this going queuing system expected to be in place moving forward?

Speaker 3:

It didn't, it didn't say that it was going to expire. So I'm guessing it'll probably be up and running up until, you know, they see a decline in in attendance.

Speaker 2:

Did they mention whether or not this queuing system was tied to park attendance or anything like that

Speaker 3:

now? It was basically as soon as you scan your ticket in, you'd be able to make kind of your fast pass, cause it's not really a fast pass but make your virtual,

Speaker 2:

this is what dump through what the Disney app or as or kiosks to do this.

Speaker 3:

It didn't, it didn't mention anything yet. So I'm guessing there's probably for a while there's probably going to be cast members standing at the entrance when you know, when you first go in to to help with everything. Kind of like how they've done with all of their new technology there. There's usually always cast members there to, to help.

Speaker 2:

Here's is clearly they're thinking forward on this expecting the turnout and trying to compensate. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Oh absolutely. Because they've seen how much of a disaster toy story land was when, when it opened, how you just had this mass mob because, and that, and that's the thing is, that's the beauty of when Walt designed Disneyland originally. He, he designed it as the spoke to that you, you know, you would go up main street and you got to an area and you could go wherever you wanted to. So that's kind of the, the beauty of the magic kingdom. It's the other parks that Horan bit of a mess in that same design because you go in and well, you can kind of go this way, that way or that way. But it wasn't that way. Obviously, you know anybody that's going in, you know, that's where they're heading. They're heading to, to galaxy's edge. Right. You know, they don't want to go anyplace else. So hopefully this'll help to alleviate, is there a time limit on how long you can spend any area? Nothing said, you know, how long you know, you, you, you could, you could stay. Cause I'm curious how they're going to regulate just because I'm sure they're not going to kick you out. But the other thing too is, as of right now, there's only one ride that's opened. Um, there's a couple of other little guest experiences. So how long, you know, could, okay, you could probably spend the whole day there. Yeah. It's just immersing myself in the, you'd go find a nice corner and drink your blue milk and, and, and be happy. I guess it, you know, that's the thing is, is it one of those things where they watch how many people leave and then they say, okay, well then we send in the next group of people or,

Speaker 2:

yeah. I mean I almost pictured it as a, like a museum reserve time where you're allowed in from this time to this time, right? You get your ticket, you go in, you, you know, we know it's an an hour and a half long after that hour and a half, we're assuming that you're leaving at that point in time.

Speaker 3:

Right, right. And that's the thing is, you know, we've seen how they kind of do that with people when they have like the extra magic hours and it's only resort guests that are allowed to be able to get on the ride. You have to show your resort id or your magic band gets tapped and then can get on the ride. And if you're not a resort guests, then kind of nicely tell you, right, you know, to leave, are they going to have something like that? You know, like a band that you know, like, Oh, if you're an orange band, you're allowed to be here this time. If you're a green band, oh your time expired. You really need to leave. I don't know how they're going to Ms. What's kind of disturbing[inaudible] they've not given any real details. Right. And it's, it's still, I guess, you know, everything's still kind of, you know, in the work. So it, it should be interesting to, to hear and then obviously see what Disney world does. Okay, well that was our Disney detective segment for this week.

Speaker 4:

Oh,

Speaker 2:

so Avengers and the game going to be out shortly, April 26 release date. The latest news that came out was that this one is going to be a very low movie,

Speaker 3:

so don't drink or eat anything.

Speaker 2:

Three hours, a little over three hours are saying, wow, that's a long movie. Could you sit for a movie that long?

Speaker 3:

It's going to be tough. My watch is going to go off multiple times telling me that I need to get up and move. I'll have to tell it. You know, it's definitely gonna think I'm sleeping. Um, I don't know what three hours is a long time.

Speaker 2:

What's interesting is that AMC and another movie site had released the running time of 182 minutes and it was quickly pulled down. Disney was asked about the runtime and they've refused to confirm it. So I don't know why they're keeping it a secret. Yeah, yeah. If it is that long, it will be the longest film yet produced by marvel. Uh, the second being infinity war, which was around two and a half hour.

Speaker 3:

And it's funny cause infinity wars didn't see like it was a long movie, but it didn't seem like it was two and a half hours.

Speaker 2:

No, it did cause it flowed so well. You didn't realize there were no laws in. Yeah. And, and we sat through that.

Speaker 3:

You know, we, we didn't, we didn't get off and you know, and of course knowing marvel, you have to stay till the very, very end because there's something, yeah,

Speaker 2:

no, there's no, no estimates for what they expect for opening day weekend. But it is expected to bring in more than infinity ward, which was 257.7 million domestically and 640 million worldwide. Wow. Interesting fact that came out of this was that between marvel, Lucas and Pixar, Disney currently holds nine of the 10 biggest openings of all time. That's pretty good

Speaker 3:

for us. That is very impressive. Oh, they, they know how to do it and they do it well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. They're very good. And the miss, the fact this year alone has got to be huge with a vendor's end game. Toy Story four and star wars episode nine or releasing this year, not to mention any other live action ones. Those are releasing cause we have line king and we have Aladdin and Dumbo opened yesterday. So this is if you, if you're looking to buy stock, Disney's a good stock to buy right now. I think I might need to call my investment broker and add some more a Disney stock to our portfolio. A vendor's name came was directed by the Russo brothers and Anthony and Joe who did infinity war and the two captain American sequels. And it opens April 26. I know you're not an apple fan. No, no. Can't say I am. We do have some apple products around the house that you grudgingly use. Like our apple TV. Right? I do. So I guess you didn't wash the apple keynote on Monday, Huh? No big shocker there right now. Um, I did and they announced a number of interesting forays into the entertainment industry. Okay. A number of subscription services just like everybody else. Exactly. Everything's going subscription. And what was interesting was apple, the previous week had released all of their product. There are hardware announcements with the new iPads, iPad mini, oh, new airpods et cetera. New Imac is out. None of that came out in the, in the keynote, which was, which was odd for apple. They simply talked about moving to services and they announced apple news plus. Okay. Which is um, a nine 99 a month service, a meat available immediately that gives you access to over 300 magazines and newspapers including vogue, Gq time, Wall Street Journal, La Times. There were a few notable holdouts that were in the news weeks prior to it. A New York Times and Washington Post wouldn't agree to the terms apple head. Okay. But basically you pay 10 bucks a month and you get access to all of those. Well, I know that so many of the new services you need to, to pay to, you know, look at the content online. Everyone is behind paywall these days for 10 bucks. To be able to see all of them, I guess. And honestly, I think that's probably the most viable offering that they have, which is why they had it ready to go from day one. I think in addition to that, they're going to have updates to their apple TV APP. Now, from my perspective, I use my apple TVs all the time. You know that we've got the digital tuners, we've got the channels APP, everything. The apple TV APP is useless if you haven't bought something from apple or renting it from apple, the apple TV APP. So far as being useless. Yeah, I was gonna say, I didn't even realize it, that there wasn't an apple TV APP. Yeah. Because we don't, it's cause there's no, cause I don't buy TV through apple. Um, so they're launching this on other platforms now, which is very unusual for apple. I mean, it took him years to move iTunes off of there. Their proprietary platforms. So they're coming to smart TVs from Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio. And, um, they're gonna make the APP available on Roku and Amazon fire TV and avi, ironically enough, it's not even available. Ios bringing it to know their cousin. So what they're doing is they're taking it from what it is and they're expanding it with another service called Apple TV channels. So just like you can go through Amazon prime now and subscribed to HBO or showtime and get it through your Amazon prime, you'll be able to get it through apple now. So they want to be your one stop shop for all that stuff. Sure. Of course. They didn't announce any pricing for that yet because they're still trying to really expensive. Well, what it really means to me is they're trying to figure out how much money they can get out of people because no one's going to pay more than they're paying for Amazon prime makes sense. And you get so much more with it. So in addition to that, they're also releasing apple TV, which this is basically their attempt to directly compete with Netflix and Hulu for original content. This was really the big push of the whole presentation because they, they trotted out all the stars for it. You had Spielberg, you had Oprah, and you had various other content creators come out for this. Um, they're going to be offering their original TV shows, movies, documentaries that are going to be exclusive to apple, one of which was amazing stories that Steven Spielberg's. Oh, okay. Well I know that they've been talking about that for, for years. You know, him bringing it back, but I guess there was no platform, you know, that was was taking it. So, okay. So that's probably the probably the biggest thing that they're trying to bring back there. Um, and then they came out, and again, they were all over the place here, so it was almost reeked of desperation of them trying to find where the next niches to make money. The announced Apple Arcade, which is basically their attempt to take on someone like I'm stealing where they're going to have all these games that you can, you'll have a monthly subscription fee you'll have access to right now they're saying over a hundred games with a that are exclusive to the apple platform. Well, how is that going to be different than, you know, the apple store and going and downloading a game as well? Because you don't buy these apps. You buy the service one main service that has all the game, exactly similar to what Nintendo launched on the switch where you buy the service and they give you new games every month. Okay, Gotcha. You can tell I'm not really a Gamer. I totally understand. And honestly I don't, I don't know where they're going with this. I don't really see this taking off because the games that they showed were not impressive games, not really mainstream gains. But I think everyone, the apple feels like everyone needs content offering for television and video games and so forth and all of that. And the, and the last thing that they mentioned, and it's not really entertainment news, but it's worthy of throwing out here just cause it was in there. They're coming up with the wrong credit card. They're, they're partnering with Goldman Sachs, the rolling it into the apple wallet and Apple Pay. They're doing their own take on daily cash back for spending. Um, I, I don't know. I don't know where they're going with some of this stuff, but apple almost seems desperate and what they're trying to do now, they're just trying to be everything I guess. Well and I think there they had the model of art, we're platform that you put out music and software on and we get 30% of it. Well if we become the platform where you make all your purchases, we can get 1% of that and they make a fortune. I think apple basically realizes there the hardware side of things is not making the money that they want because they're not going to be adoption rate and they're clearly, apple is not desperate for money, but they're desperate to find a new revenue stream to make sure that that money keeps rolling in cash. Cow. So for our insightful picks of the week, I will turn it over to you first my dear for your pic. Thank you. So my insight full pink is a new horror comedy television series that is actually based on a 2014 film of the same name called what we and the

Speaker 3:

in the shadows. Um, it actually just premiered on March 27th on Fx. It is, it's based off of the feature film, like I said, at the same name that is done in a documentary style look. And it's a look into the daily or rather a nightly lives of for vampires who lived together for hundreds of years in Staten Island. So it's, it's actually a mockumentary is what it is. But very funny, we happened upon the movie, the actual movie from 2014, I guess maybe about a year ago. Little less than that, I think it was one of those we were looking through, um, we ran out of stuff. We ran out of stuff to watch them. It's like, oh, what's this? And we watched the movie and we were hysterical watching, watching this and when we saw that they were making it into a television series, we're like, okay, we have to watch it. Um, so the television series is done a little bit differently. The, the characters are different, but it's, it's funny because the vampires have lived together for centuries and it's how they deal with modern life. So going to the grocery store but being dressed in gothic where, and long capes and you know, and, and trying to use their powers on, you know, cashiers who are like, what are you trying to do to me? Um, and you know, their, their day to day life. Um, so this episode, uh, dealt with, or the first episode that we saw was after an unexpected visit from their dark lord and leader. The vampires are reminded of what they were initially tasked upon doing once they arrived in New York City over centuries ago. Um, they were supposed to dominate the new world. So basically the vampires came over, they just kind of settled in Staten Island and just kind of stay there and never really took over. And now the dark lord is like, no, we need to conquer. And they, they basically know they're being filmed because they know that there's this, this camera crew, uh, following them. And just hysterical to see, you know, the one vampire, you know, wanted to get glitter so that he could sparkled. Like the vampires creepy. He cuts to the store and he's buying all this creepy paper and the crepe paper. It's great paper. No, it's creepy paper. You know. So we, we definitely enjoyed it. It's definitely one that we will uh, can continue to watch. And you know, we, we were in tears from laughing so hard. So if you change, you know, a good silly showed a watch, this is definitely one of them. Awesome. So my pick this week is a show that's in its second season on history channel called might fall a bit of a history buff and I specifically am very studied on

Speaker 2:

the knights Templar, which is what this show is based on. I will be very gracious in saying it is loosely based on historical accounts of the fall of the Knights Templar and the 14th century. They've taken a lot of creative freedom in what is otherwise a very well documented period of history. They tend to stretch reality and history in this show. But if you set aside the historical inaccuracies, uh, and, and just enjoy the show as purely a work of fiction, it's actually a pretty decent show producing broadcasts on the history channel. A though it doesn't really, that doesn't lend much credence to its historical significance. Seasoned to just start it, uh, with a nod to so many of our childhood dreams when they brought Luke Skywalker himself into the show and Mark Hamill has now joined the cast and is playing a leading role in the second season. This is almost a fitting given how much the Jedi Knights of Star Wars and drew from the monastic orders like the knights Templar for their own fictional musings. This histories channel answer to game of Thrones, but on and obviously tighter budget, less complicated plot lines and not nearly as much newer to the insects and no dragons a not yet, although given the direction that the show went last season, I would not be surprised with some of the occult stuff that they're dealing with. It's violent excessively at times. There's an underlying love story that abruptly ended at the end of last season and that's kind of ubiquitous in TV shows these days to draw some kind of drama out of it. There's enough drama to fill the hour though, but it's served up in kind of a predictable manner. There's really nothing earth shattering. Um, we're given a hint of an underlying plot slowly revealing itself through, you know, various conspiracies in some crude detective work. Curious the direction that's going to go into the second season though. Uh, the dialogue is interesting. Uh, it struggles to appear period authentic. Uh, the problem is that so far everything has been set in France in the 14th century and the parents, no one's speaking French, no one speaking with a French accent. Everyone speaks perfect. King's English, even Mark Hamill. Oh, by the way, who squints a lot and speaks with an English accent. It looks like a pirate most of the time. So it's Kinda hard to believe the fact that they're in France other than the fact that he keep talking about being in France. It's not a bad show. It's a good show. It's a bad historical show. Um, some of the stuff, some of the concepts that they, that they introduce, they take conspiracy theories to that extreme in order to delve, derive some plotlines from it. But all in all, I enjoy the show. If you watch it just as a medieval knights Templar type thing and, and try not to get too much history out of it. It's actually pretty good. So nightfall airs mondays@tenpmeasterntimeonthehistorychanneloritcanbestreamedfromthehistoryapporahistory.com website. That was my pick of the week here. Did you have any closing thoughts while you forgot to mention that? We are recording in our lovely new furnished studio that that is true. We are a, we have our camera's going today. We have our new studio today. We, we did film in here last week, although it was kind of a make shift arrangement, we didn't have all the little bit more set up a little, yeah, we did not have the kit set up properly last week. So welcome to the new studio. Welcome to the new studio. So I think that's it for this week. We will be back next week. In the meantime, you can reach out to us on twitter@insights_thingsoremailusatcommentsandinsightsintothingsdotcomoryoucanemailtomichelleatinsightsintoentertainment.com as well. Anything else? I think that is it. All right. Well, thank you for your time and talk to everybody.

Speaker 5:

[inaudible].

Introduction
Disney Detective
Avengers long run time
Apple's move into entertainment
Michelle's Insightful Pick of the Week
Joe's Insightful Pick of the Week