Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. One’s family sucks
even worse. When both of those factors combine, life becomes practically
intolerable but what can you do? You take what you can, of course, and screw
everything else. What is left after this approach, aside from reality, (such as
it is)?
Well, there’s ‘Cats’, the 2019 edition, but we’ll talk about
it later, maybe even in 2020, because so far this perfidy exists to ensure that
life becomes even worse, if you spend roughly one and a half to two hours watching
this… thing. Ergo, let us talk about the fourth part of the JW motion comic
instead.
What can be said about it? Spoiler alert: judging by the
ominous ‘the end’, white on black, at the final part of the motion comic, it is
suggested that this is ‘it’ – an Allosaurus ate Rebecca Ryan. The end.
Pause. Here is the thing. This particular installment of the
JW motion comic has made Rebecca Ryan be genuinely stupid – she wastes valuable
time first trying to listen to her husband on the cellphone ignoring the
obvious signs of danger – her frantic video crew, the park’s rangers, the
helicopter circling overhead – and then, when idiot’s luck strikes and it’s her
– well, the news’ – van that gets taken by the Allosaurus, and she gets to
scamper to safety, she actually tries to get the still-active cell phone, (it
gets stepped-on by the carnivore in the process), and so she catches
Allosaurus’ attention. The end.
Another pause. Yes, this motion has promptly tied into the
BBR short feature – remember it? The motion comic refers to it directly,
featuring a surprisingly wooden re-enactment of the Allosaurus vs.
Nasutoceratops battle, it doesn’t resemble how it went down in the BBR at all,
but that’s not the point – the point that we’ve discussed the two dinosaurs featured
in this short feature when we’ve discussed BBR itself, and you know what?
Compared to Rebecca Ryan (and her skeleton crew), this nameless family proved
to be pinnacles of common sense, competence, intelligence and teamwork! Really,
the first three installments set the standard bar low – did part four need to
get character assassination involved? Rebecca Ryan and co. barely had any
character at all! Literally! Why did they have to add stupidity to her mix?..
…Wait, it ill behoves to speak poorly of the dead? Well, we
haven’t seen Big Al eat Ms. Ryan yet – maybe she’ll have her great escape when
the Nasutoceratops family makes its’ appearance. Otherwise, I am sorry, but
this I am not very sympathetic for her plight. Anything else?
…Been reading Mercedes Lackey’s ‘Elemental Masters’ series
lately. Cannot say that I am impressed by the latest version of it. To wit: the
first seven books were written by one author, maybe even Ms. Lackey herself,
but then they began to meander: first it were blatant imitations of the first
seven books (book 8), then it was over to continental Europe (books 9-10), and
now, the last four books are really the best reboot yet – ‘adventures of
Sherlock Holmes and friends’, the magical edition, really. It is not as
annoying as Ms. Patricia Briggs’ situation, for example, but bad enough. From
truly exotic and intriguing novels, the ‘Elemental Masters’ have devolved into
popcorn for brain – you read those novels once, and move on.
…Earlier in the ‘Elemental Masters’ series, there were even
two anthologies – collections of stories written by other authors, set in this Mercedes Lackey’s universe – this
particular universe was so good. Now
it is not. Sad, but that is real life for you. It sucks… and that is before ‘Cats
2019’ got released today, (Dec 20, 2019). Between the bizarro take on the
titular critters in question and the already problematic plot, (especially in
regards to coherence), ‘Cats’ in particular isn’t a musical that takes well to
the movie screen media, period. ‘Into the Woods’ was bad enough, but it had a
plot that was both cohesive and coherent…more or less, but it was still hard to
swallow on the Big Screen; even the ‘Phantom of the Opera’ does, and it’s the
king of all musicals, (so far). And ‘Cats’ is a musical based on a poetry
anthology of T.S. Elliot, a classic of English literature that these days is
virtually unknown in the world outside of English language and literature
academia, which is what the world deserves – there is a God. …Andrew Lloyd
Weber and his team combined the anthology into a single musical – the anthology
itself is just that, a collection of nonsensical poems about various cats in
London-town, (that’s London, Great Britain, not London, Ontario, Canada), and
the result is just that – ‘Cats’. A musical… or rather a series of musical
numbers performed by actors, singers and dancers in cat costumes with some plot
going-on. This… is not encouraging or easy to transfer to the movie screen, and,
apparently, during the adaptation process, many things went wrong…to a point
where a blueberry-blue Will Smith from ‘Aladdin 2019’ begins to look wholesome
and realistic. Anything else?
No, not really, not right now – real life still sucks,
though the ‘Cats-2019’ rant did make it better. Maybe more some other time, but
for now? See you all soon instead!
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