Consortium of Seven: Year 4

      Rolling into the middle of July already?! I hope you've each been able to avoid the worst of what your region's been dishing out in local weather, be it oppressive heat, violent storms, and/or flooding rains.       The Screen Actors Guild has joined the picket lines the Writers have already been on since May, presumably adding to the pressure for whatever deal's to eventually come as the screen entertainment industry continues to wrestle with what the new normal will be.       For now, though, we continue to have a great deal out there, new and old.       As I roll into the weekend, I'll be happily getting around to seeing this week's return of What We Do In the Shadows (new Thursdays on FX, and Fridays on Hulu), and the final two episodes of this final season of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime).        The covert war against shape-shifters hit the two thirds point wit...

        Another weekend looms!       Two pieces of personal trivia in advance of a couple items in this week's piece: I have never seen the 1997 film The Full Monty (though I know much about it, both in terms of plot and it's amazing box office arc from an opening week flop to a staggering, word-of-mouth-driven success), and I've never eaten a Flamin' Hot Cheetoh.       That noted...       Landing today on Peacock is a recent theatrical outing, a comedy horror one, for Nic Cage and Nicholas Hoult.        It hit theaters in mid-April, and was one of the films I came close to bothering to go out to see. It looks like great fun, and now looking into the box office for it (it did terribly there, not even hitting a worldwide gross of $26 million against its $65 million production budget) I almost feel a little guilty.        It's a story developed by comics wri...