Death of a unicorn - April 27

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the ‘Death of a Unicorn’ film.

Or not, as despite its’ title, the film is rather lackluster and banal. Pause.

Well, there is nothing to pause. A father-daughter duo bring down (accidentally) a unicorn foal and bring it to the father’s boss and his family, (idle rich, whereas the father and daughter are more of working-class people), who promptly abuse and experiment on it… wait. This makes ‘DOAU’ sound actually exciting, while in reality, it feels more like the second Jurassic World film, just with unicorns, rather than dinosaurs; it is a straightforward D&D RPG film, just set in a modern setting, with scientists rather than sorcerers or wizards. In addition, hey, some of the secondary characters are people of color, so there’s that box ticked off!.. Second pause.

Third try. ‘DOAU’ has a lazy script, and while the cast do their best to liven it, the script still fails. Yes, now, the unicorns are more than just horned horses, but so what? Until the 19^th century, perhaps, when the unicorn had a lot of cultural meaning, when the dominant view was that of the Western society, that it is a gentle, pious beast, then ‘DOAU’ could, and would, have been shocking and edgy, but not anymore. Now, the unicorns include the Far East’s qirin and kilin, (remember the last Grindelwald film? Those Far Eastern creatures had a relatively important role in it), animals that blur the lines between the dragon and the unicorn, though they are fully benign. In the RF, there is the Indrik-beast, a mighty monster that is reminiscent of the Near East’s karkadann, (more of a rhino than a horned horse). The Near East also had the al-miraj, a carnivorous rabbit with a single horn, as well as the shadhavar, a unicorn with a hollow horn – when the wind blew, it made a lovely sound with the horn; other creatures, including humans, would approach the shadhavar and be devoured. Finally, in the sea, there was the campuchurch, a marine unicorn with flippers rather than hooves. I.e., real life folklore had plenty of ‘monstrous unicorn’ ideas, but the A24 Company opted to go with a classic, with a twist on it that is just insipid.

The virtuous maiden… she’s played by Jenna Ortega; between “Wednesday” and the “Beetlejuice 2” film, she’s typecast; in this role, yes, she swears and has a nasal ring to make her more modern, but it doesn’t appeal to anyone, as neither the modern audiences nor the fans of the classical ‘the maiden and the unicorn’ approach will care for the ‘DOAU’ film. I did not care much for the ‘DOAU’ film and I have watched it. It ranks right there in the bottom with the ‘Dr. Odyssey’ franchise – but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

D:BA S1 finale - April 16

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. The debate about the CB wolves being or not being dire has become more subdued and out of the spotlight, but real life still sucks.

The S1 finale of D: BA is as dramatic and well-made, as one expects from Disney/MCU – quite good. Of course, there is the question as to how Fisk is getting away with a de-facto secession from the rest of the U.S., but who cares? The first season of D: BA is over, and the world is ready to move on.

Also, keep in mind, that CA: BNA film is showing events that are happening at the same time, so the greater U.S. government just might not be finding time to deal with Fisk and his Napoleonic complex or whatever, and the Kingpin/Mayor is bribing people like crazy to get away with it, and MCU wants its’ own version of Gotham, so there you have it, folks! Question answered!

In other news, meanwhile, a rebooted version of ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ (WWD) is coming to you in 2025! The original WWD series is something of a classic by now, (and not only because it was released in 1999 either). The new WWD has some big shoes to fill – and the viewers will go Snowwhite-2025 on its’ ass if it fails.

Finally, back to PBS Nature show about the female empowerment and nature. Last week, the episode was actually done well – it balanced gender politics and wildlife protection… in the U.S., so what did the YouTube channel do? It downplays them in favour of a nature document about Africa. Maybe it was because of the entire dire wolf excitement, maybe not; this week, the show is about South America instead, and PBS Nature is not downplaying it at all. I wonder why…

…In addition The Weather Network is airing a rather nice documentary series about Canada, its’ provinces, and probably territories. It is quite fun to watch, and I advise you to do so – it certainly is better than just to argue about dire wolves…

For now, then, this is it. See you all soon!

D:BA and dire wolves - April 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but then Colossal Biosciences Company threw dire wolves at us. Pause.

Initially, I intended to discuss the penultimate S1 Daredevil episode, which had Bullseye coming back, and Murdock (Daredevil) taking a bullet for Fisk (Kingpin) because of reasons? Apparently? Does anyone care about those two anymore anyhow? Dire wolves are more interesting than MCU, these days.

…Of course, these days, at least some news outlets discuss with an authentic feeling, who makes a better jam and/or spread – king Charles III of Great Britain or Megan Markle, his younger daughter-in-law. Seriously, and compared to this sort of news, MCU’s D: BA show is cutting-edge political drama or something along those lines. Nevertheless, what about the dire wolves?

…I am a sceptic when it came to CB’s claims. See, while the RL dire wolf (let us leave Westeros out of this, the topic is already quite confusing), is a true canine, (as opposed to a bear-dog, a bear, or any other kind of mammal carnivore), it also belonged to a completely different genus than the modern wolves do. However, so what?

See, even CB admits (sort of) that their dire wolves – Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi – are not exactly purebred dire wolves, more like grey wolf/dire wolf hybrids. Eh? The problem with that statement that in nature hybrids occur only between animals that share the same genus, albeit belonging to different species. Pause.

Let us try again. We are talking only about mammals here; in other animal groups, such as birds (say, songbirds), or amphibians (such as the tailed salamanders) the hybrid situation might be quite different, but along the mammals? Either it works or it does not.

See for yourselves. On one hand, we have horses and donkeys, whose hybrids are sterile and can’t really make a new species; big cats, whose hybrids aren’t sterile but can’t survive in the wild due to health-related reasons; and the two species of the gnu antelope, whose hybrid offspring also aren’t sterile but have plenty of health defects that they die quickly enough. Pause.

On other hand, we have the beluga and the narwhale whales, for example, or the better-known polar and grizzly brown bears, whose hybrid offspring are viable and are increasing in numbers. The wolf branch of the wild dog family, incidentally, is in this boat too, as the various coyote/grey wolf/domestic dog hybrids of eastern North America are growing more numerous and are establishing their own independent populations…

That said, those wild dogs are all in the Canis genus, while the extinct dire wolf is not, not anymore, at least not at the moment. In addition, if you look at the related animals that belong to different genera, they do not form hybrids – just look at rhinos or elephants, for example. African and Asian elephants do not hybridize, not even in captivity, unlike the big cats, and the black and white rhinos of Africa do not hybridize – unlike the feral domestic dogs and the Ethiopian wolf. The latter is a separate, albeit related, species to the grey wolf of the northern hemisphere – the term ‘wolf’ covers almost two dozen animal species, living and extinct, most of whom are related to each other (i.e. they’re canines), but some are not…

Where were we? Right, the DNA of the dire wolf isn’t in as a good a condition as that of the woolly mammoth is – what’s left of the dire wolf are mainly fossilized bones, teeth, and the like. Extracting DNA from them, even if the dire wolf was in the same genus as the grey wolf, doesn’t guarantee success; the fact that the surrogate mothers were domestic dogs, aka a third canine species, separate from the other two (I’m going with this theory), only complicated the situation: how did their pregnancies go? How did the births go? Did the mothers survive or not? However, no, all we get are sterilized reports of a success, and automatic reactions to those reports. Neither is a reliable source of information and so far no one outside of CB has much to go on. Still…

Remember Ms. Nicole from my last week’s entry? Or rant, whatever. As it was said, she was hired by CB, or something similar to make six videos about mass extinctions; so far, two of them were aired, but we talked about this; the point is that one would expect her to jump onto the dire wolf promotion bandwagon, because CB are her employers or something, but no. She is keeping mum about them instead and seems to have outright distanced herself from the CB. Does she know something about this that we do not? Maybe, maybe not, but I, for one, am sceptical of just what CB’s latest wolf pups are. Real life does suck, but sometimes it is less sucky and more complex and complicated instead…

This is it for now. See you all soon!

D:BA 'Art' - April 2

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us… still talk about it, in a manner of speaking. First, in regards to PBS Nature: if their first, rhino-based episode was a product placement without any product, their second episode, which talked about Madagascar’s lemurs was a complete opposite – it delivered. It talked about Madagascar and its’ rewilding programs, in terms of lemur return (to the wild), in general terms – such as the replanting of the bamboo that the lemurs eat (the episode was de-facto about the greater bamboo lemur), and also – about the wilderness education of the Madagascar people. There was very little aesthetics, plenty of authenticity, and the only unnecessary element, in a manner of speaking, was the gender issue – this online show is about women taking care of the wild, but taking care of the wild and humanity’s social gender politics do not really overlap…

Speaking of humanity’s (ok, the West’s) social gender politics? Let us mention Ms. Lindsey Nicole. I’m probably not the biggest fan of her – this driven and determined young woman wants to get ahead of her competition, and remain afloat; in particular, when Biden and the Democrats were in charge, she made a point of mentioning her alternative sexual orientation, (but nothing more, nothing concrete). Now that we got a ‘new’ U.S. president and his Republican political party, all of her mentions of her alternative sexual lifestyle are gone – LN wants to stay afloat… and she’s succeeding: just last week she launched into yet another online series, this one a collaboration with another YouTube channel, a series that deals with mass extinctions… it is essentially a re-telling of Animal Planet’s™ ‘Animal Armageddon’ series. You have to give LN her credit though – she is a great populizator, her aggressive ‘shock and awe’ delivery style works, and she is always open to collaborate with other people – she really wants to be successful, and so she is. Kudos and a shout-out to her.

In addition, what about this week’s D: BA episode, ‘Art’? It works about as well as you would expect it to work: this season’s mini-bad, Muse (a male villain) is dead already since the season is done in another couple of weeks, and on its’ own, D: BA works just fine. As a part of the greater MCU, however…

‘Mayor’ Wilson Fisk has introduced the Anti-Vigilante Task Force, or AVTF. Um. While we acknowledge its’ connections with some RL issues in the U.S., what about the Sokovia accords? In the ‘She-Hulk’, Matt himself says that they are done and gone, so shouldn’t AVTF be outdated or something? As the Kingpin, Fisk did not care about popular opinion, of course, at least not too much, but as a mayor of NYC, he should, and he is intelligent enough to recognize this fact.

Listen, in RL, analogues of AVTF, such as ICE, exist because people – some people, including some of the Americans, and quite a few of them – approve of them and their actions; numbers matter, and if enough people approve of them, these ‘analogues’ will stay and even flourish, and propaganda – especially the mild one delivered by Disney and its’ daughter organizations – won’t be enough to see them off.

…Not to mention that even internal American propaganda has its’ limits, as the outcome of the elections-2016 showed, for example. However, Disney and co. cannot learn, or do not want to learn and accept, or something. Since they do not, their promoted values do not stick, as the companies cannot change and adapt – it could cost them money in the end, and they do not want that. Much better just to do a token service and be done with it. The viewers and the public will not object too much – they can adapt, on the other hand, as demonstrated by Lindsey Nicole… Real life certainly can suck, and it does.

This is it for now – see you all soon!