'Knight' S1 finale - Feb 23

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Life is turning out rather for the worse; I really do not want to make it until late spring of 2026, but the odds of me achieving that are quite high. I am so happy – no, really. Real life sucks; I swear an oath upon it. Next?

Well, ‘Knight’ had its’ S1 finale last night, so we are going to talk about it, but in a roundabout way, I suppose. First stop – the A.I. It is not going to take away jobs from humans because humans make it, and does only what humans programmed/designed it to do – make pictures, or stories, or etc. There is a story about how people had A.I. make Brad Pitt fight Tom Cruise, and now Hollywood is huffy – but because the people in question are Chinese… yeah, Hollywood will deflate even more rapidly than how it inflated.

As I wrote before, A.I. has its’ flaws – you often need to be precise with your instructions to it to get exactly what you want, (and sometimes, not even then). Otherwise, you are liable to get something else entirely – it might be bad, it might be good, but it will not be what you wanted, and that is the point. You need to know what you want to get what you want, for otherwise? You do not need to start the process, what you will get will be something else entirely. Of course, you might have no problems in working with the new result, (it’s called a compromise when you’re dealing with other people rather than A.I.), but it doesn’t apply to everything, and, again, when it comes to A.I., it’s either your job, you get paid, and so you don’t really need to get emotionally invested in your A.I. works, or it’s not, and you are emotionally invested, and-

Where were we? Ah yes, RPG. An RPG – especially the 3.5 D&D generation and the like – is not unlike an A.I. – you need to design the characters, the obstacles, the setting, the lair, the traps, etc. You need to be precise and accurate in your designs too, or else you will fail and your ‘tenure’ as a DM is over.

Again, an RPG is a luxury good – it needs to be demanded and desired, or else it is over, done, as Pathfinder (2^nd edition) shows – this franchise is dying, however, slowly – people just aren’t buying enough of its’ products to sustain it, so it cuts down on the released product, but there’s even less of it for people to buy and to spend their money on; Pathfinder’s income diminishes further… you get the gist. Where does it leave the ‘Knight’?

As it was written before, ‘Knight’ is positioned between the other HBO Westeros TV shows… and an RPG. When he was writing the ASOIAF book cycle, Mr. Martin had one agenda… no, wait. In ASOIAF, the end game is the return of the rightful dynasty, the Targaryeans, in the characters of Jon and Dany. GoT did not do that, so it ended badly – though that was only one of the reasons. However, GoT and ASOIAF are two different aspects of the same franchise, and since then both HBO and Mr. Martin himself moved onto the Targaryeans proper – ‘the House of the Dragon’.

…HoD is returning to the screens only in the summer of 2026, so all is still I the air, but the point is that for Mr. Martin, the Targaryeans are just ‘fire and blood’, and HBO does it’ best to do so with its’ TV shows. If that is a good thing is debatable, but the point is that when ‘Knight’ didn’t have any of the Targaryeans, (and Egg was undercover, cough), it was just an RPG – Dunk went here, Dunk went there, Dunk succeeded on Diplomacy checks, Dunk failed on Bluff checks, etc. It is not bad, but it is generic – and then Egg’s adult relatives arrived, and the plot accelerated like a spurred-on horse; suddenly there is death, and drama, and the Blackfyre rebellion – fun. Well, fun for the fans of Mr. Martin, HBO, and Westeros at least – and ‘Knight’ does not ask for more. Ser Dunk, who is still a hedge knight, or rather – a landless knight; legally, he is a noble, sort of, but in reality? He is right there with the proletariat; his status is not higher than that of Bronn (the one and only), who is a man-at-arms instead, (technically). Still, Egg is now his official squire, (I think), the other Targaryeans appear to like him, and Aerion (who right now is not as bad as GoT’s Aeris was), is sent to Essos instead. Overall, it is not a bad place where he is right now.

…Ok, right now he is between yet another Targaryen HBO drama on one hand, and a generic fantasy RPG/TV show on the other. However, hey, ‘Knight’ is not pretending to be more than that either. Its’ first season made it an OK show at least – better than real life, which just sucks.

This is it for now. See you all soon.

Minions and Monsters 1 - Feb 10

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us turn to the movies, and… what is that? The seventh ‘Minions’ movie? Why, for the love of God?!

Let us try again. The DM1 film (I am just numbering them, come on, all know which DM movie is which); the DM1 film was about Gru adopting three orphan girls as his stepdaughters and becoming less despicable and villainous. DM2 introduces Lucy, his love interest; DM3 – his brother, and the trilogy was complete.

The DM4 film explained the origins of the Minions as well as their metaphorical journey to become, well, the Minions. DM5 – showed them becoming, well, minions to Gru when he was a teen or some age like that. DM6 introduced Gru and Lucy’s new baby son, as well as Poppy, a teenage girl that becomes somewhat of a family friend – eventually. It also introduces the Super-Minions, but they do not appear to be in this film, at least – thank God for small mercies. What next?

The DM7 film appears to be a new expansion of the DM-verse, as the Minions are going for the Monsters to have them star in the Minions’ movie. Guess someone watched MCU’s ‘Wonder Man’ series, eh?

Right, Disney/MCU’s ‘Wonder Man’. It is more ambiguous than it looks. Namely, on one hand, it looks to be the culmination of Disney/MCU’s desire to have a mini-series with a P.O.C. in charge; they tried it with RiRi ‘Ironheart’ Williams, and when her own series failed first, and Marvel Zombies cartoon series were almost just as bad, they went with Wonder Man instead. Therefore, on the other hand, WM appears to be more like ‘Agatha All Along’: it is connected to MCU but doesn’t appear to influence it; as Agatha and co. were dismissed after AAA finished, so did the WM – it is done, it is gone, Disney/MCU has its’ feel-good, and it puts WM into the storage, right next to AAA, if it ever will need either of them again. (It will not). What next?

‘Knight of the 7 kingdoms’ continues apace, with even more Targaryens that we ever wanted. The people are continuing to watch it; they like it well enough, but nothing more; the fan support is getting there, of course, but slower than they had with HoD, so there is that. Dunk and Egg are joined by Waffle – I mean, Daeron Targaryen and are about to go against Aerion the Monstrous; say what you will, but Aerys from GoT (ASOIAF) was much worse by far out of the two (for now). Guess we will have to wait to see if he does live up to his moniker, or not.

In addition, it will be curious to see just how Lyonel Baratheon’s friendship with Dunk and Egg will evolve. The Baratheons were Lords Paramount of Stormlands, and as such – just below the Targaryens themselves, but Egg is a Targaryen, (and will become king, cough), while Dunk will become the Lord Commander (and the ancestor of Brienne), so Lyonel’s friendship with them can easily become a Good Thing for the House Baratheon – and maybe it did. Certainly, until the Targaryens did that shit with the Starks the Baratheons were loyal to them well enough; why, everyone was loyal to them until Rhaegar listened to his inner Tarquin, and then almost no one was. (Just look up Shakespeare’s poem ‘The Rape of Lucretia’ would you? It is that Tarquin). What next?

Well, DM7 is going to be a cash-grab; good or bad is another story, but this one? It is going to be a cash-grab. ‘Illumination’ is already sticking Minions wherever, anywhere, regardless of whether people want it or not, and now they are getting their own movie. Again. DM4 was their first movie, and it did lay the groundwork for the second DM trilogy, but you have to admit that the DM6 film has a rather final feel to it, especially the last scenes that just re-introduce all the main characters from all of the six films in one capacity or another; it leaves Gru with his wife, daughters, son, and even brother (and some family friends) on his lawn – clearly, it was supposed to be the series’ finale. Now we are having a new Minions movie, (just when the U.S. movie industry seems to be struggling as it is). Why, for the love of God?! Oh, wait, it’s real life. It sucks. Yay.

Well, this is it for now anyhow. See you all soon, instead.

Knight of 7, series premiere - Jan 21

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Toronto Public Library, of which I am a card-carrying member and all, decided to remake its’ website fully, and so now I had to re-register myself online and all. It was unnecessary, redundant, and all, but they did it regardless. Damn them.

The weather is just as bad – this winter is a bad one and the weather network cheerfully reiterates it day after day. Between that, and our apartment needing repairs, life sucks. So, let us look at HBO’s ‘Knight of the seven kingdoms’, shall we?

…Well, my first avenue of escape from reality was our RPG, based on D&D 3.5. (Why is a story for another time). One of our opponents was a Green Star Adept, that is to say something of a magic user who is slowly becoming a construct instead. The person who was designing this opponent just had the GSA be a wizard before becoming a GSA; one of our players wanted the GSA’s base class story to be more diverse, and so the gaming session just imploded; person 2 proclaimed that the GSA was just a basic wizard with the prestige class tackled on and that the base class history should’ve been more diverse, and person 1 pointed that a lot of GSA’s skill requirements were Knowledge skills, and so a wizard was a best choice… it was a mess. Onto the ‘Knight’?

Eh, after watching the series’ premiere I have one question: what happened to HoD? GoT was able to finish itself, though no one was pleased as to how it happened, and HoD? HoD ended with S2, so far there is no info when HoD will go onto S3, and HBO is already presenting an entirely different Westeros show. Is HoD on a hiatus or something? People would like to know, I bet…

As for ‘Knight’ itself… it is an RPG. It is a quasi-historical RPG, set in a quasi-England, with Dunk and Egg being the main players. They have to pass obstacles, surmount challenges, flat-out survive and all… it is not a bad concept, and not a bad delivery, and I, for one, have no problem with ‘Knight’, but that robin…

One of the scenes in 1x01 is Duncan hearing – and seeing – a robin in a tree. Since Westeros is based on England (of Shakespeare, and Chaucer, and even Bearns, just a bit), I am guessing that it is a European robin rather than some other – in our times the name ‘robin’ is applied to several bird species, not really related to each other. Of course, given how Westeros is imaginary, and that Mr. Martin tends to use animals in his novels as random monsters if at all, HBO could’ve used an American robin just as well, seeing how no one cared; but.

But what exactly did they do with the robin? I am reckoning that they could have gone into public video domain and got the footage of the European (or any other) robin to use in their show. Instead, I am mostly convinced, they used some sort of an AI to generate the bird; it is not a bad idea, it just makes the bird look rather fake. Duncan’s (ok, his actor’s) look at the singing bird only drives this point further – it’s quite fake and the show didn’t even tried to pretend that the fellow was really staring at an actual bird; instead, the actor just did his best to look incredulous… at nothing in particular. Fun!

That said, CGI-birds and the like aside, ‘Knight’ is a good TV series and I am surprised at the general lack of reaction towards it. Sure, there are reviews about it online, but little else; seemingly the Westeros fanbase itself is suspicious of HBO’s new move, even though ‘Knight’ does work. Oh, and Mr. Martin is teasing his new book, ‘The Winds of Winter’. Sigh.

Did not want to go there, but perhaps part of Mr. Martin’s, and HBO’s, problem is that people are moving past Westeros; his books aren’t selling as they did before, and overall the franchise’s popularity is waning; HBO tries to fix this, and they’re doing it better than how Disney did with SW, but regardless…

Regardless, it might not be enough. Right now, it’s winter 2026, it’s a bad and snowy one, and the Donald seems to be trying to destroy democracy on the planet, so of course people will watch anything to escape reality, and ‘Knight’ is a good show. Of course, so far, it is just the series’ premiere, so what happens next is anyone’s bet, but so far, the show is promising, so let’s be optimistic for the moment, even though real life still sucks.

Well, this is it for now, actually. See you all soon!

'Anaconda'-2025 movie trailer - Sep 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, (mostly), so let us talk about the trailer to the 2025’s ‘Anaconda’ movie instead.

The original ‘Anaconda’ franchise was about people who came to the South American jungle for various reasons, and most of them would be eaten by an oversized anaconda (one or several) during the run time of the films, (there are several). Therefore, what makes this franchise better than the ‘Coyotes’ (remember them)?

The movies of the ‘Anaconda’ franchise, (including the one coming up in 2025), do not take themselves seriously and are not going for realism (or social commentary) the way that ‘Coyotes’ (and ‘Death of a Unicorn’) do. Even the trailer shows that the movie is going to be ridiculous and hilarious in a good way, and the completely unreal anaconda is a part of it.

The green anaconda might be the biggest modern snake; only the reticulated python of the Asian tropics might be able to match it; and the king cobra, of course, is always worth a mention, but the king cobra is a venomous snake among its’ other qualities, while the anacondas are constrictors.

‘Anacondas’ are used as a plural because ‘anaconda’ is a name of a genus of constrictor snakes, also known as the water boas. Just how many species of anaconda there actually are, is debated; two are known for sure – the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) and the yellow (Eunectes notaeus) are confirmed and recognized; the rest are up to debate, (and one is a fossil species anyhow, which just makes everything more complex).

Usually, the people talk about ‘THE anaconda’, or, more precisely, the bigger and more massive green anaconda of Brazil, Peru, French Guiana, Suriname and Bolivia; the smaller yellow anaconda lives mainly more to the east (the two species do co-exist in Brazil), and the rest of the anaconda clan do not matter right now. What matters is that the green anaconda can be big and impressive, yet it is nowhere near the size of the mythical snake monsters that haunt the West imagination ever since the Europeans began to colonize South America. The South American rainforest is larger than life even now, so naturally it has to be inhabited by larger than life monsters. The Native Americans of South America agreed, but their monsters are much less realistic than the oversized anaconda of the European colonists and their descendants is, so let us put them aside too.

Besides the CGI Titanoboa wannabe, the trailer shows the cast handling (and accidentally killing) some other non-venomous snake, probably a boa constrictor. When put face to face, the boa is much slimmer and smaller than the green anaconda is, but like all the constrictor snakes, it has a mouthful of hook-like, needle-sharp, backwards pointing teeth, and it can deliver very painful and bloody bites too, so it should never be taken for granted.

…The cast go to the American tropics with a ‘movie budget’ under 10 000 dollars. Again, there is no realism; they want to make an ‘indie film’ (a movie within a movie – that is quite clever, in fact); so why not go to Florida, (or perhaps California) is unknown. As RL shows, there are plenty of escaped pythons, (some of which are quite large), in Florida, so an anaconda would fit in as well, but no – it is South America or bust. Anything else?

Just that after their boa is lost (it falls in the water, where the piranhas get it, or the boat propeller does, or something), the cast go into the rainforest to find a replacement snake. Suspension of disbelief and all, but the way they were doing it would have resulted in them finding a venomous snake instead, most likely, and most of the South American venomous snakes are pit vipers, too. Just think rattlesnakes without the rattles, really. (In all of South America lives a single rattlesnake species – all the rest are natives of North America instead). A bite from anyone of them would have been bad – period. In a certain light, the cast of the ‘Anaconda’-2025 are lucky that the snake they confronted was a non-venomous type.

And again, given just how unrealistic this movie’s snake monster is, it just as well could have been a giant bear, (the spectacled bear of South America is not as large as the brown bear is, but it can kill adult livestock with blows of its’ paws), or even a horde of orcs – why not? How is a kaiju-sized snake more realistic than a horde of orcs?

It is not, but the cast make it work. Even in the trailer, they are clearly having fun and are not careening all over the place as ‘Coyotes’ script (and cast) do. ‘Anaconda’-2025 does not have any ‘special’ message as the other film does, but I daresay that it will be more enjoyable and fun to watch than ‘Coyotes’ will be.

…And as for ‘Marvel™ Zombies’, coming to the viewers on Sep 24, 2025? Looks as if they are designed to cover up for the ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ just as the ‘Eyes’ did for ‘Ironheart’. Again: ‘Ironheart’ was bad, perhaps not as bad as Disney’s ‘Snow White’ remake, but still bad, hitting all the right notes in all the wrong ways. For Disney, MCU, and the rest, good relationships with Afro-Americans are important, so they covered-up (and replaced) ‘Ironheart’ with ‘Eyes’.

However, ‘Eyes’ themselves were something of a rushed job, and people have felt it. Disney/MCU do not like confrontations, so they are using ‘Zombies’ to cover-up ‘Eyes’. ‘Zombies’ themselves, of course, are strongly reminiscent of ‘Game of Thrones’ series finale, when the heroes of Westeros found themselves confronting the Night King and his cohorts, including the walking dead – but let’s wait until Sep 24, 2025, to see the ‘Marvel™ Zombies for ourselves first).

…And yes, in early 2000s, ‘Animal Face-Off’ had a ‘jaguar vs. anaconda’ episode where the anaconda won. Sadly, it is only slightly more realistic than the upcoming ‘Anaconda’-2025 film will be, so let us discuss it some other time.

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

She-Hulk, Jen - Sep 22

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about the latest ‘She-Hulk’ episode instead. Only… it is not doing so hot either – this week’s episode’s highlight, apparently, was when the titular character, wearing a sparkling pink dress, punched Titania – who was back for round three – in the mouth. Titania was wearing an equally sparkling pink power suit, BTW. So what?

So earlier this week I watched the latest HoD episode – you know, the one where Daemon T. kills his wife with little more than a big rock. Killer Croc from the DC-verse would have been so proud!.. But we are not Killer Croc, and I, for one, find it kind distasteful that team HBO and co. have needlessly vilified Daemon T. just for extra drama.

Again, in the book, Daemon is not a good man, but his wife dies pointedly from natural causes and he has nothing to do with it, Targaryen family powers or not. By making Daemon actually do the deed, team HBO and co. have made him something of a misogynist and have diminished him as a person and as a character. The fact that HoD’s main protagonist – you know, the ‘new and improved’ Dany – wants to elope with him does not help anyone either… but wait!

In this universe, actually being an evil asshole gets you ahead! Daemon and co. are doing the right thing by their standards! Well, yes, and don’t forget – the upcoming Dance of the Dragons thingy will be the start of the end for the Targaryen dynasty; odds are good that GM was going to revive their reign at the end of ASOIAF, but now that ASOIAF faded away, and GoT ended up with a Stark on the throne instead… yeah, this makes it hard to root for anyone on the show and I’m actually hoping that all of the Targaryens featured on the show so far will die – but there was one unexpected side-effect: I remembered MCU’s AoS.

…yes, I’ve been talking about it on and off for ever, but this time the death of Ms. Daemon reminded me of Fennec Shand from the SW-verse instead. Why?

In SW, Fennec is shot down, left to die, but with Boba’s help she recovers and becomes his assistant.

In MCU, Kara is shot down – not unlike Fennec – and is just killed-off by the show.

Put otherwise, Fennec is SW’s Kara, and the issue isn’t that that Ming-Na Wen, plays Fennec on SW, and played both the Cavalry and agent 33 on MCU, (in a manner of speaking, but still), and it isn’t that Disney properties recycle each other’s ideas, but how AoS has treated Kara. Agent 33 was an interesting character, and the showrunners could have pulled a Fennec and kept her alive, but they did not. Indeed, Kara did not have to be a regular character on the show at all – they just could have sent her off to her mother, (with or without her memories intact), or done something similar, (as they did to the characters of Lance and Bobbi in S5), and that would have been the end. Instead, they flat-out treated her as crap, and that is the final line.

…Not that HBO is treating its’ powerful women characters any better – Ms. Daemon was verbally abused by her asshole husband at first and then killed-off by him, while the surrogate Dany is coming off as Daemon’s female counterpart instead. Oh, and one of her (potential) minions just killed-off her new husband’s same-sex partner. Take that, modern socio-political values!

…In the ‘She-Hulk’ we do not go so far, but it is the same direction still. In the comics – and the cartoons – the character in question was, and is, one of the Hulk’s most powerful relatives and allies, and Titania is her adversary and arch-nemesis. On the show, the two appear to be little more than just two semi-toxic bitches that just cannot get along because that would be the reasonable and sensible thing, am I right, fellows? Oh, and the ‘Mr. Immortal’ subplot, cannot forget that – a Marvel character has faked his death 8 times, effectively becoming a bigamist! Ha-ha-ha! ‘Futurama’ actually did that plotline first, save that its’ bigamist did not fake his death, he just shapeshifted and packed-on more wives. Have to admire his stamina, if nothing else – but he still were taken down by all of his wives, just less legally and more violently than Mr. Immortal has been.

…There is also MCU’s Abomination, who was last seen on the show having a cult with multiple girlfriends – and he got set free. Aside from the moral issues, there’s the fact that he got diminished from being a monstrous reflection of the Hulk into a mere jerk too – but that is what ‘She-Hulk’ the show does, apparently – it diminishes all the Marvel characters that it touches, no wonder the original Hulk fled to Sakaar in the episode 1x02 before it was too late – or maybe it was, we’ll just have to wait and see.

...That said, my original point is this is what the American nation have come down to, after ‘MeToo’ and all of that? Between HoD’s handling of Ms. Daemon on one hand, and ‘She-Hulk’ making its’ titular character a mockery of the ‘powerful female character’ concept, I am really sore at real life. Did I mention that it sucks?

…Well, this is it for now, people – I will see you all soon.

Loki 'Lamentis' - June 23

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Loki’ instead. In this week’s episode, ‘Lamentis’, the show changes completely – it is no longer just about TVA, (well, about TVA and its’ interaction with Loki); rather, it is about Loki and Sylvie, who, in MCU, seems to be a conflation of a female Loki and the Enchantress.

Now, about the Enchantress. Yes, in the Marvel Comics, Sylvie is one of the characters who has this title; but the main character who has been associated with this title is an Asgardian magician/witch known as Amora instead. She also has a younger sister whose name is Lorelei, who did appear in MCU – in AoS’ S1, and left such a poor memory in the show’s fan community, that she vanished after about one and a bit of an episode. It’s possible that this bad fallout had ricocheted over at Amora, or perhaps she just got a bad stroke of luck, given that the ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ film has largely rebooted the entire Asgardian plotline in MCU, if not outright ended it, (Thor himself teamed-up with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of the ‘Endgame’ film).  Either way, it looks as if the newcomer to MCU is named Sylvie, and she is a variant Loki instead. What next?

Hard to say. Unlike the adventures of WV and Sam and Bucky, ‘Loki’ seems to be downplayed – officially; the nearest analogue is the 4^th episode of CAAWS, which was downplayed, in the news, because no one wanted to associate it with Biden’s reign in the RL America, but unlike CAAWS, ‘Loki’ has no connotations with America, real or otherwise, so what gives? Hard to say; people say that it reminds them of the lack of shout-outs regarding AoS, which began to be remade from S1, and whose plot had plenty of flaws – and so, to avoid self-repetition, let me just tell you that ‘Loki’ doesn’t appear to be suffering from such flaws, but rather it is more reminiscent of the Agent Carter TV series at its’ best, including a tight cast. Where it differs from AC is in the fact that AC was focused around a single city – NYC in S1, LA in S2 – whereas ‘Loki’ is all about jumping the different times and places; here it is a planet called Lamentis, (cough, allegory, cough), which is an obscure planet at the very edge of the Kree space. …So far, ‘Loki’ had not shown at Kree, only a single Skrull, but that can always change, but that isn’t important; what matters to us is that this episode is all about Sylvie and Loki, as the two bond, show their similarities and differences, and for the moment, TVA isn’t all that important for either of them, but getting off the planet is, since – I assume – that at least Sylvie’s master plan isn’t about her dying on Lamentis alongside Loki. The other/titular Loki, i.e.

…Well, maybe it is, but in this case, ‘Loki’ the series is going to be one weird TV series from now on, and somehow I doubt that this is what its’ cast and crew intended it to be. Rather, it is all about…well, this titular character and how he fits-in into the MCU, now that it is transitioning from what it was at the end of Phase 3 into whatever else it will become. So far, we already had Wanda and Vision going their separate ways, (to put it lightly), we got to see Sam Wilson become the new Captain America, Sharon Carter – the new MCU villain, and baron Zemo – Marvel’s new Batman, (the previous one, in the Marvel Comics, was a character called Night Hawk, but clearly MCU aren’t bringing in the Squadron Supreme just yet – so what else is there?

Well, Loki, obviously – but so far, ‘Loki’ is taking time to bring its’ titular character to his final destination, one hopes. Again, it is always possible that in the show, Loki will die on Lamentis, now that the fallen space debris has destroyed their ride off it, but this does go against the show’s grain, from what it showed the audience so far. Yes, the final season of GoT did do just that, but GoT also suffered from it, and while GoT did this sort of thing only at the end of its’ long run, ‘Loki’ so far doesn’t appear to be a one-season show as WV was, so this turn of events is unlikely, but then again, ‘Loki’ appears to be a much more subdued show that either WV or CAAWS were, so it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen there next. For now, let us just accept the abrupt plot twist, from Loki’s stay and employment at the TVA to his road trip with Sylvie and go on.

…More precisely, I had watched ‘Luca’ this weekend, and what can I say? It was not as forgettable as ‘Over the Moon’ was, (remember that film? It had a girl and her stepbrother going to the moon to cheer up a despondent moon goddess – or something along those lines), but neither it is as good as people thought it would be. The relationship between Luca, Alberto and Giula, (and also Giulia’s father) is certainly good and realistic, but everything else is secondary; the movie’s main villain, a liter version of Gaston from B&B, is a jerk but little more, and the conflict itself is deflated rather quickly, making one wonder just what the stakes there were. The overall stakes were quite clear – the friendship between Luca and Alberto – but everything else was secondary; it was only the genuine feelings in the core of the film that saved it. That, and the definitive lack of songs as opposed to ‘Over the Moon’, where the abundance of music caused me – and probably not just me – to hit the fast forward button as often as possible, until the movie’s end credits were revealed. Bravo, the end, and ‘Luca’ wasn’t so bad even if it was more circus than bread, you know? But still, nowhere as good as people proclaimed it to be either – ah well, that is the way a cookie crumbles, sometimes.

For now, though, this is the end. See you all soon, instead!

AoS episode 7x11 - Aug 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, especially if you are a cicada, from the U.S. state of West Virginia, which are being infected by some insecticidal fungus, which is neutering and killing them, (presumably in that order). That said, the scientists, (starting with the various entomologists), are cool about it, saying that this cicada species will survive this. Fair enough, but where does this leave us?

With the latest episode of AoS – next week it is going to be the double-feature series’ finale! Sounds exciting, and after yesterday’s episode, the series could use it. Pause. Let us restart.

Yesterday’s episode was lackluster, to say the least, as it featured the usual set of AoS’ shortcomings.

First, there were plot twists – i.e., Kora talked to Daisy that Sibyl told Kora that Daisy would not abandon her sister…and Daisy showed that she considers Simmons to be her sister, not Kora. Very poignant, really, but considering that Jemma and Skye were friends from the start, and Kora appeared… what? Only halfway through the S7 and she and Daisy didn’t really interact until now? Yeah, suddenly the twist appears to be a lot less twisty.

…Incidentally, when did Daisy and Jemma acknowledge themselves ‘sisters’? In S6, they had some bonding on an alien planet, but no acknowledgement of sisterhood. In S3, Bobbi Morse acknowledged either one of them to be her ‘sister’… and that was the Russian mission episode after which Bobbi and Lance left the show for good, (yes, Lance appeared in one S5 episode, but his appearance was perfunctory, so let’s let it slide), so not a good track here, people! AoS tried to do a dramatic, poignant twist, but it just managed to make itself look stupid itself.

…The mention of S3 brings us to Grant Ward – in this week’s episode, Kora actually mentioned him, talking how she, (+Nathaniel Malick? – things were blurry for me by that point), could bring back all of the team Time Bus’s deceased friends, including those, who died because of Ward. Pause. How does, or did, Kora learn about Grant Ward and co? Did the Sibyl and Malick tell her about him? If so, why?

No, really, why? Yes, Grant Ward became of the greatest enemies of S.H.I.E.L.D., thanks to Coulson’s hubris, Melinda’s viciousness, and his own arrogance, (among other reasons), so it would make sense to bring him to the anti-Time Bus party, but instead, we got a young John Garret, who acts nothing like who his grown-up version acted in S1. …Yes, MCU brought the son of the original John Garrett actor to play this new version, but so what? I like trivia points as much as anyone does, but even I acknowledge that trivia on its’ own does not make a successful TV episode, (among other things). Pause.

Let us put Ward aside from the moment and return to the inconsistency issue – did anyone notice that the AoS rebooted itself again? The S7 premiere was all about the Chronocons and time travel, but by now both of them took a second seat to the InHumans, as well as Nathaniel Malick and his not quite Hydra. Notably, Gideon Malick, Nathaniel’s elder brother and the Hydra head from the S3, is quite absent from the episode. Ouch.

…And yet, the issue of Gideon Malick is nowhere as prominent as the great big jarring absence of Leo Fitz. The man had been physically absent from S7, and though his absence is a major plot point, sadly, YouTube had told too much: there is a video clip that has Jeff Ward, (who plays Deke Shaw), acknowledge that he and Iain, (who plays Fitz, no duh!), cannot stand each other. Ergo, first we had the S6, where Leo had been kept separate from the rest of the team because of reasons, (feel free to re-watch AoS’ S6 to re-learn all about them), and now we got S7, which is glaringly Fitz-free. Since the series’ finale is coming up next week, I really hope that Leo will finally re-appear on the show and save everyone, because he is just that adorable.

And if he doesn’t? That does not matter, sadly, because after the next week, that is it for AoS – it will be done and gone. High road, low road, it does not matter: they are about to be done for good, and while they are doing it better than how HBO’s GoT did it, that’s because practically anyone can do it better than how GoT did it. And yes, the last season of GoT has similarities to AoS in general – but that is another story.

…Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

AoS 7x09 - June 24

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, let us get to AoS and talk about it, now that I am back home and all. Where are we with them?

On one hand, this week’s episode was one of the best, as the Team Time Bus had to deal with a brand new situation that’d never come up on AoS beforehand: they were caught in a time storm/time vortex/time loop and had to work as a team even as time and space were running out. Since there is still four episodes left until the series’ finale, they made it, of course, with Enoch self-sacrificing himself to save the rest of the team. Because obviously his character is not coming back to MCU, his death actually meant something, unlike the demise of Phil Coulson LMD#2, who was back and functioning by this episode. Yay! MCU’s AoS actually managed to have a meaningful death of a positive character for a change. In addition, now that a major recurring character is out of the picture for good, maybe we will get Fitz back, ‘cause in real life? The AoS’ budget could not have both Fitz and Enoch on set full time. Ouch!

On the other side, there are some repetition still: the rebooted Nathaniel Malick and Kora, cough, are so the rebooted Ward and Kara Palamas – sort of. Sadly, it seems that the AoS’ corner of MCU tends to burn bridges with the ex-members of its’ cast, so no Ward or Palamas or Raina; instead, we got Gordon and Jiaying, and I’ve no idea what it cost MCU/AoS to have those two actors return to the plot. Daisy is supposed to be reunited with her mother – that is Jiaying – in the next week’s episode, and since back in the S2 finale Jiaying proved to be very much a villain, it’ll be interesting to see how team AoS have handled this in their last reboot… because it is one. (Cough, Li, cough). (Idea reboots alongside idea recycling and repetition were/are major problems of AoS).

Finally, there is Daisy and Daniel Sousa – apparently, they are an official couple on the show. Big whoop. Timing is everything – when Daisy and Lincoln kissed in the S3 mid-season finale, that meant something because the show was continuing, and no one knew that Lincoln would be killed-off at the end of S3, and mentioned only briefly when Daisy met Robbie Reyes, (MCU’s Ghost Rider), as part of the Quake/Ghost Rider story arc.

…Sadly, MCU’s plans for the Ghost Rider fell through, his show got cancelled, Mr. Luna’s career is currently on hiatus post his 2019 appearance in the latest ‘Terminator’ film, and also in ‘Hala’, and so, instead, we had the AoS’ S6, which had very strong elements of the ‘Ghost Rider’ franchise – and at the AoS episode 6x13 the show got rebooted once again, this time with the Chronocons. …Only, there were no Chronocons in the latest two AoS episode, and instead all of the focus was on Nathaniel and Kora as the antagonists, with nary a word about Hive too. Maybe the Chronocons are gone? In which case, how will team AoS write themselves out of this corner, or will they go down the GoT’s road – blatant plotholes, blatantly unrepentant? We will just have to wait and see.

…And as for Daniel and Daisy… well, they do leave Deke hanging in the air: yes, he has restarted S.H.I.E.L.D. – sort of – in the 1980s, but now what? Ever since his appearance in AoS’ S5, Deke and Daisy had been matched up together, however, clumsily, but now Daisy is with Sousa instead. Not that it matters, but Deke is now a loose end, plot-wise, and he did not stay dead either. What is next?

Hard to say, actually. This week’s AoS episode had truly been a storm, and an enjoyable one, but it is still an AoS episode, and therefore flawed, and next week the team Time Bus is returning to the 1980s, meaning that they will be back to their ‘regularly scheduled’ plot lines, ha-ha. We will just have to wait and see as to what will happen next.

…Well, this is it for now. See you all soon.

Quarantine entry #40 - April 30

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, COVID-19 or not. It’s raining today, so we got to stay inside, and on the DA – which itself is supposed to end at the end of May, aka within four to five weeks – I found a comic about a South Andean deer named Awka and her friends.

…From what I could understand, the South Andean deer are disorganized and scattered, at a disadvantage from the introduced red deer, (better known in North America as the wapiti), who are staying together and who have blocked-off some of the South Andean deer migratory routes and don’t let them pass. Balrog and Gandalf the Grey so understand – been there, done that, ripped the mountains of Moria asunder – where were we?

Ah yes, the deer wars. Some of Awka’s family are trapped on the other side of the red deer blockade and cannot get through – supposedly, because we are never introduced to them at all. Instead, we get flashbacks and the like, as Awka messes with the red deer herd by being the absolute worst. Pause.

Here is the thing. In AoS, (especially the initial seasons), in ‘Frozen 2’, in ‘Trolls 2’ and the like we are introduced to the idea that there are few to none deliberate villains, mostly people that misunderstand and the like. That is nothing new, even the Old Norse, (and I am not talking MCU here), had a saying that amounted to, like, ‘Even a hero had their flaw and a villain isn’t all bad’. That is realistic enough, but when we are dealing with a movie that has a magical snowman (on top of many Norse mythical monsters), or a comic that features talking deer, realism isn’t up there, is it? Tolkien’s LotR trilogy, in particular, was really clear-cut – there are the bad guys, and here are the good guys, no one is in the middle…and there are racist overtones, even though his fanbase, (such as David Day), try to deny it.

By contrast, Mr. Martin’s ASOIAF series never really has purely good or evil characters, (let us leave Brienne out of it). As a result, both in GoT and in the novels, ASOIAF became something of a morass to wade through, as alliances are made and broken, everyone is soldering on – and the unquestionably evil Night King, a fusion of Sauron and the Witch-King of Angmar, (aka the Nazgul #1), is leading an army of White Walkers and the Walking Death onto the living. To Mr. Martin, it seems, humanity is a morass – but we’ll have to hope that in his final books, he’ll show how Westeros defeats the Night King – if they defeat him; plus the GoT version was extremely dissatisfying to its’ fanbase, but we’ve talked about this before… Back to Awka?

…With Awka and the rest of her South American comic, it is the same thing – the author/illustrator is doing their best to depict everyone as well-rounded characters, and as a result, it is extremely hard to root for Awka sometimes, and she is still the main character.

Pause. Modern mass media, such as comics, TV series and movies may try to get rid of outright evil (and outright good?) characters, but that will never happen, because not all characters are equal and because conflict, (outright or otherwise) is still the main plot motor, so good & evil are still a part of media world, and for main characters in any fictional plot, they are especially important; I’m not sure if I’ll be rooting for Awka to succeed or even continuing to follow the comic, but I felt that the above had to be said. What else?

…I confess that I wanted to talk to you about bison today. Why? Because of yaks. You see, there are two species in the bison genus – the American bison that most people know, and the European bison, aka the wisent. The two species of bison are related to each other, naturally, but they look quite different from each other, and the scientists have established that proportionally, the American bison is more closely related to the yaks than to their European relatives.

To elaborate, the ancestral bison species were Eurasian rather than American animals. Then, as they began to go west during the Pliocene-Pleistocene period, they interbred with the yak ancestors and split, eventually, into two species, the American and the European. The American bison consists of several subspecies; the European bison – of only one, (the rest were killed off by humans), but this is how the cookie crumbles; the American bison is more closely related to the yak than to the European bison. Bet you that MLP: FiM, which featured both the American bison, (wrongly called buffalo – both bison and buffalo may be bovine mammals, but they are not closely related to each other within the group), and yaks, did not tell you this!..

…Well, I guess that this is it for now – see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #22 - April 12

Obligatory disclaimer: Happy Easter! Yes, real life still sucks, but Easter has nothing to do with real life, so enjoy your Easter! Or your Sunday, period. What next?

Firstly, on the topic of real life – people were telling me yesterday that while ibises and spoonbills share a family, and both of them share an order with the heron family, the storks are a separate order of birds’ altogether, and got nothing to do with the other three. Fair enough. Evolution itself is a mess, and convergent evolution only muddies things down, somewhat.

Just look at – the jellyfish. These critters, also known as the medusas, are the free-floating stage of several invertebrate groups, none of which is closely related to each other at all. Even on the layperson stage, there are ‘jellyfish’ that aren’t really jellyfish, such as the Portuguese man-o’-war, you know? And on a professional level…do not even go there! What next?

…So, yesterday, I got to watch yet another DW episode, this one being the ‘Nazi Waffen SS vs. Viet Cong”. In layperson terms – ‘Nazis vs. Communists’, and what can be said about this episode?

It was completely out of DW’s comfort zone, that is what! The final simulation, (let us start there), was really the American G.I.’s vs. the Viet Cong, and the latter have lost.

…Actually, the latter were set up to lose; in particular, in the long-range weapon comparison, the Viet Cong were given the MAT-49 firearms, which were inferior to the SS’s MP-28. Fine, but in the S2 finale, which put the U.S. against the Israeli commandoes, the Viet Cong had a cameo, and they had AKMs there instead, because of course they had! The AKM machine and submachine guns appeared in all 3 seasons of DW, and they were always superior to whatever their rival were; if they’d appeared in this episode of DW, the Viet Cong would’ve been more likely to win instead.

The rest of the weapons… it was a mixed bag – punji stakes against a flamethrower; a land mine vs. a grenade & a land mine combo; and a Mauser vs. a TT. Yes, the weapons for those two combatants were all over the place…but this is why this DW episode was rather fun to watch; but after it was aired, DW never really attempted to do something like that again, possibly until the S3 episode ‘Ivan the Terrible vs. Hernan Cortez’, but we’ll talk about that episode some other time.

So, why did the Viet Cong lose? I will not tell a lie – I have no idea, and that brings us back to the comfort zone. See, normally, after a DW episode aired, there was an online ‘aftermath’ episode, which would feature two of the show’s regular hosts, as well as a representative from both of the titular teams. For that episode, however, instead of one of the regular hosts in question, we got some other member of the DW team, who was never seen before or after this episode – and with his overall appearance of a stereotypical highwayman, it is easy to see why. So, why did he appear on that episode?

…Probably because he was the sponsor of that episode, (as well as of DW in general?). Yes, this theory smacks of conspiracy theories, but the fact is that for all of its’ positive aspects, DW had remained a flawed show, and in the end, this was why it got cancelled – it tried to play the real life version of GoT, and it backfired, with the show ending on ‘Vampires vs. Zombies’ note. Seriously, why not ‘Dragons vs. Griffins’ instead? The two face-offs are not that different from each other in terms of realism! Anything else?

Sadly no. DW is gone, and while the jellyfish are still around, and on occasion, they are wreaking havoc on our marine ecosystems, the latter is our fault. COVID-19 – I have no idea, the occasional conspiracy theory aside, but most ecological disasters are certainly our fault. Did I mention that real life sucks, Easter notwithstanding? Yeah…

Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #2 - March 23

It is the second day of the quarantine, and real life still sucks more than it usually does (obligatory disclaimer, this is). I am still going through the DW episodes; this time I stopped on one of S1’s last episodes – ‘William Wallace vs. Shaka Zulu’. This episode is not prejudiced, just faulty. Why?

Well, for most of the weapons, the two contestants went neck to neck, practically – Wallace’s claymore sword, (used by the Highlander in FH, remember?) wasn’t really superior to Zulu’s sword-like spear, and the Scottish chainmail wasn’t too different or really superior from the African shield.

The ranged weapons – ditto. Zulu had a glorified throwing stick, while Wallace had a ball and a chain combo – neither weapon was very effective.

The mid-range weapons: Wallace had a war hammer, (just as the Shaman in FH does), and Zulu – a battle-axe, (FH’s Hitokiri, I suppose). Both weapons are similar in design and function, neither gets a real edge.

Finally, we get special weapons, and Zulu has a spit of poison. Here where it falls apart for him, as this poison is not really a weapon at all, does not get him any kills, unlike Wallace’s targe and dagger combo. Whatever else you can say about them, they kill, and so Wallace killed Zulu in the episode’s stimulation face-off. It went just under 2 minutes, making it one of the shortest fights in the DW’s entire history – but DW S1 was weird like that, this is why I continued to watch it even in the more formalized S2 & 3 – but we talked about it before. Anything else?

Just one more thing – Wallace’s war hammer, (in real life that is two words, unlike the game franchise, where it is just one), reminded me not only of the Shaman, but also of Robert Baratheon from the Martin-verse.

Here is the thing. I do not care for Cersei, either the novel or the GoT version, but Robert Baratheon was not too sympathetic either. Frankly, I suspect that GM based him on real life Henry VIII, (maybe influenced by Shakespeare’s depiction of that monarch), who used to be a valiant knight and warrior in his youth, but became a tyrant as well as monstrously fat in his later days. The main difference between Henry VIII and his GM counterparts, (there were more than a few of them, including several Targaryens), was that Henry VIII also actively influenced U.K. economics, changed the country from being Catholic to Protestant, (and this trait remained after his death), and was in general a much more active and pro-active king.

Pause. Yeah, if you ever read GM’s books, (especially before his Targaryen love fest), then you would notice that there was little progress, social or otherwise. Yes, ASOIAF/GoT is fantasy, but a relatively realistic one, more so than LotR is, for comparison, and in real life, once people get fed up with how things are made, they try to do their best to change them – even Shakespeare’s plays about English history, (as well as others, such as ‘Coriolanus’, for example), reflect it.

Not so in GM’s novels – the world of Westeros doesn’t change too much, even after losing their dragons and becoming much diminished, Targaryens continue to rule, everyone else – to obey, and nothing changed until that ill-fated tourney, when Rhaegar absconded with Lyanna Stark and jumpstarted the entire Robert’s rebellion. When Robert killed Rhaegar at the Trident, and the Lannisters finished the job at King’s Landing, the world of Westeros did change…and then it stopped. GM doesn’t appear to be too interested in change, the entire ASOIAF novel line – at least until the final seasons of GoT derailed everything – was about the return of Targaryens, as represented by Jon and Dany. Yes, the king would have been a former ranger of the North… I mean, a Night Crow, one of the black-robed folk at the Wall, cough, and the queen wouldn’t have been a virtuous elven maiden, platinum hair and lavender eyes or not, but a much more experienced and jaded woman, (in theory). Instead, however, we got, well, GoT S8, where Jon killed Dany, and the throne went to Bran, even though ‘the Wise and the Crafty shouldn’t rule’, according to the late and lamented Terry Pratchett. Plus, the North did separate from the rest of Westeros – this would be as if Scotland won slash seceded from the rest of the U.K…. wait, are we talking about the real world again?

Back to Westeros and Westeros v. 2, because in real life the U.K. is still united. Everyone was aware, consciously or not, that the last two seasons of GoT went against the grain of GM’s novels, but they were still aired anyhow, and GM endured it…why?

Because whereas now the hoopla associated with GoT and GM has noticeably died down, back then, right after GoT was finished, there were a lot of plans for sequels, spin-offs, prequels, what have you – and GM was probably going to get at least a part of the financial plenty from all of this bounty. But! If he confronted the HBO and co. regarding his disapproval etc. regarding the last GoT seasons, his relationship with HBO and co. would have deteriorated no matter what the outcome was, and then he would’ve had problems, especially if GoT was cancelled, and it would be his fault, even if just in part. GM may look like someone atypical, but he certainly loves his money, I would bet!

…And yes, people are aware by now that his views regarding his fans are not very flattering for the fans, but the fact is that GM’s novels are products that people need to buy…at least from his POV. Otherwise, if his works will remain on the shelves, he is in trouble, and since they are, odds are that he will not go to confront HBO, (or didn’t, in the past tense), because GoT and co. are his ‘other’ source of income. Fair enough, especially since by now the world of Westeros does not appear to be coming to the big screens anymore, and GM may be in trouble nevertheless.

Getting back from the real life to Westeros, what about Robert Baratheon? My point is that his war hammer made him an atypical knight from the start – realism or not, GM’s knights fight with swords, and seemingly – only with swords; even such fairly mundane weapons as war hammers, clubs and spears seem to be exotic weapons in their hands. This was not the case in real life; tourney lances aside, so I cannot help but to wonder if Robert did not win at the Trident, because he was wielding an atypical weapon by Westeros’ knightly standard and because he was also atypically large and strong by Westeros’ standards as well. Quite a bit of imagery associated with Robert Baratheon, (and by extension with Gendry, cough), is reminiscent of storms and thunder clouds and of Thor, the Norse thunder god, whose trademark weapons was the war hammer, as practically everyone knows these days. Where was GM going with this? In GoT it went nowhere, save for Arya and Gendry’s relationship, and GM himself is keeping mum, even before the COVID-19 struck.

…Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!

Doolittle-2020 - Jan 23

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. It sucks just because, and your family, as well as yourself, are a part of it. Yes, every new day is different, one way or another, but as a rule – real life sucks. You may want to discuss the long-tailed duck or something, but you cannot, simply because real life sucks, and your personal life sucks, and you suck. Plus – priorities. No matter how much you love nature, sometimes you just cannot master the enthusiasm to write about the ducks, (or the woodpeckers, hedgehogs, squirrels, etc.). So, let us talk about something else – the doctor. He, (i.e. Doolittle), is in the house!

…And apparently, he sucks almost as much as real life does, according to many reviews and critics. They are wrong. ‘Doolittle-2020’ is not bad. It is insipid.

Does anyone remember Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ that’d aired several years back? If not, it is not surprising – the show lasted for a single season, and it numbered only eight episodes. Yes, in the pre-Disney+ era Marvel TV shows didn’t last for more than two or three seasons, (AoS is the exception, period), but even so, ‘InHumans’ stood-out: they were that bad.

And yet… there did not appear to be something that was specifically damning that prevented them – in theory – from continuing from another season or two. (Marvel’s ‘Runaways’ ended after 3 seasons, for example). Instead, it was an entire assimilation of small flaws, including bad script and rushed acting that did Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ in. In different hands, under different management and circumstances, they could have been good, but because real life, they failed to launch instead. ‘Doolittle-2020’ is in the same boat, even though it is a single film and not a TV series instead.

On one hand, it had a lot going for it, actually, starting with the Iron Man being the titular character and a story plot that sounded good on paper. On the other, with such an illustrious name playing the main lead in a film that just couldn’t be anywhere near the level of the last two Avenger films, (let’s be honest – even in the best of circumstances ‘Doolittle-2020’ wouldn’t be anywhere near the level of ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’), enough people would feel gipped, as if this was a step down or something – and they were probably right.

 …And top of those failed expectations and the subconscious feeling of being cheated out of something that is Avenger-level film, the film itself is flawed, let’s be polite. The plot felt rather like Stark’s new Welsh accent – completely unnecessary and a straight-out failure. Queen Victoria is poisoned, so Stark – er, Doolittle – is off to bring back the miracle cure? What is this – the Avengers, Victorian era? Well, maybe – we did also get Sony’s current version of Spider-Man voicing a dog, so it could have been a start. Instead, we got a failure with a bunch of grown-up jokes in a decisively pro-child film, (children under the age of 10 will enjoy ‘Doolittle-2020’ moreso than their parents, yes), the titular character farted by a dragon, (what is this – mockery of GoT? If so, then ‘Doolittle-2020’ is excessively late for this party), and, oh yes, a gorilla fighting a tiger, (sort of) among other things.

Off topic, if a gorilla fought a tiger for real, who would win? In AFO, when a gorilla faced-off with a leopard, it actually won, but a tiger is much bigger and heavier than a leopard is and carries a much heavier punch than a leopard does. In a feline clash, tiger will triumph over a leopard, as ‘Jungle Book-2016’ showed openly and clearly – even though it is fiction, it actually did a good job of being realistic, at least to a point. But a gorilla is completely different beast than a leopard is. A tiger is a professional hunter and killer, but if it fails to get a drop on the modern world’s biggest and strongest primate, period, then it can go either way – and, of course, ‘Doolittle-2020’ went in a completely different direction to begin with. What next?

Well, for me, Chee-Chee the gorilla brought back memories of the Soviet adaptation of Doolittle, (where Chee-Chee was actually a capuchin monkey instead). To wit, this adaptation consisted of one large poem where the Soviet Doolittle went to Africa to cure all the cute animal babies there, because they all were sick; and of another large poem, where the good doctor comes to Africa to rescue a couple of human children from the Soviet analogue of Rassouli; and also a couple of novellas for children where the good doctor crosses swords with the pirate leader time and again, until he defeats the villain for good. Not such a small assimilation, especially by children’s standards, after all.

…And then the Soviet cinematography produced a cartoon series, and a couple of movies, all about the good doctor confronting the wicked pirate and his crew, and frankly, one of them, ‘Soviet Doolittle-66’ is just as crazy, but much more coherent and enjoyable than the U.S. 2020 version. Not unlike the gender-flipped ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot, ‘Doolittle-2020’ is just bad as in uninspiring and insipid, which brings us back to Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ TV series – they had the same problem and collapsed, though compared to them, ‘Doolittle-2020’ is better, (and it is certainly better than ‘Cats-2019’, cough), simply because the younger children will enjoy it with all the poop and fart jokes as well as periodic clothing, and, hey, the Iron Man is riding an ostrich in this universe, while a giraffe is talking to him in voice of Selena Gomez. Fun! Anything else?

Well, the second ‘To all the boys…’ movie is coming out on Netflix on Feb 12, 2020. Why before 2020’s Valentine Day – who knows; who cares, too – while the first film had its’ flaws, clearly, the entire franchise has proven to be tough, enduring and popular enough to bring forth a second movie. (Jenny Han wrote a trilogy about LJ’s adventures, so there is at least one more movie in store for LJ and her love life). By comparison, ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ franchise apparently hadn’t – so far there’s no news about a second movie in this franchise; maybe because it tried to be a pro-American propaganda piece among other things back when it aired and ‘Boys-1’ didn’t? Who knows, but ‘Boys-1’ was a very good romantic movie, surprisingly so, given all the flaws of both it and the original novel…but it was not insipid. It delivered. It gave enjoyment to the views. It made real life slightly more endurable than it is on its’ own. I am actually looking forwards to ‘Boys-2’ coming to Netflix next month. Yay.

…This is it for now, see you all soon!

Kings of Pain - Nov 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Yesterday, (Tuesday, Nov 12, 2019), I went across the entire Toronto for an afternoon doctor’s appointment… only it was not. Somehow, I became bumped to a late Friday morning (Nov 15, 2019), so I am going to do it all over again. I hate this shit. At least, family did not try to make it worse, one way or another. Hallelujah for small mercies is all I can say. Now onto the TV shows.

We are talking about the new live-action show, ‘Kings of Pain’, which has also premiered on Nov 12, 2019, on the History channel, (history-dot-ca on the Internet). We have already discussed a different show from this channel, ‘Forged in fire’, and that is really an AWE me/Man-at-Arms YouTube show meeting some sort of a cooking show, ‘Chopped’, maybe. People forge knives, hatchets, other weapons, using materials provided by the show hosts – some people like it, others don’t, but the show IS original in its’ approach, let’s be honest. ‘Kings of Pain’ – not so much.

Instead, ‘Kings of Pain’ are a clear rip-off of the ‘Brave Wilderness’ YouTube & TV show that stares Coyote Petersen and his cohorts. Just like the latter, the hosts of ‘Kings of Pain’ are getting stung and bitten by various creatures; in the series’ premiere, this went towards the executioner wasp and the warrior wasp. (Admittedly, I am not sure about the goliath birdeater tarantula, but)…

The main difference is that Coyote dedicated an entire episode to each creature – yes, it was only 15 to 20 minutes long on average, but the truth is, the plot of such an episode is actually quite limited: Coyote would capture the insect, it would bite or sting him, he would suffer, the end. Not a lot to proceed on here, and a lot of it was occupied by Coyote’s theatrics – the man is an actor, and the fact that he does gets stung for real does not change it.

By contrast, the hosts of ‘Kings of Pain’ do not do those theatrics as well at all – they get stung or bitten, they yell and flail, the end – and the next shot shows them calmly discussing it at a campfire. Plus, they constantly break the fourth wall by showing their camera crew, medical assistants, and so on – ‘Brave Wilderness’ didn’t do it on such a regular basis. Score another one for ‘Brave Wilderness’.

Am I biased? Well, yes, but the truth is that what ‘Kings of Pain’ are doing? ‘Brave Wilderness’ did it first. The latter show is not without its’ own flaws, and is aimed primarily at children as audience, but grownups can enjoy it too. ‘Kings of Pain’ are trying to aim at the grown-ups instead, but it still comes across as second best – in this week’s episode, (‘Nightmare in a Box’), the show’s hosts were shown to be stung and bitten by two different wasp species and the goliath bird-eating spider, yet somehow it was depicted as a less exciting and a more pompous, (in a pseudoscientific way), version of the ‘Brave Wilderness’ ‘Coyote getting stung’ story arc. That is life for you. Anything else?

In the promo for the upcoming ‘Vikings’ season, we get to see the titular characters face-off against… the Turco-Mongols, (or whatever they are called now). Sigh. In real life, the proper Scandinavian Viking culture vanished quite a while before the Turco-Mongols had reached the lands of Rus and Europe proper, so this ‘clash of East and West’ is historically anachronistic and is about as realistic as GoT’s Dothraki coming to Westeros as part of Dany’s forces – but the ‘Vikings’ historical inaccuracies were discussed at length in the past by much more knowledgeable people than me, so let us drop it. We know that the Vikings are going to win anyhow, simply because it is their show, and not the Turco-Mongols’. Ah well, this is TV for you – whether it sucks or not, it usually is not realistic.

…This is it for now. See you all soon.

Lady & Tramp 2019 - Nov 12

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In the ‘Canadian’ edition, this was demonstrated by Don Cherry, who was fired after he was carried away and said some distinctively politically incorrect & unsanctioned statements on the sports’ channel.

Here are the facts: as far as I can remember, Mr. Cherry was spouting this anti-immigrant bull-crap since the 1990s, and no one did anything about him. That said, under Mr. Trudeau’s leadership, the Canadian government changed its’ views on immigration, especially that of POCs, but there are plenty of Europeans also still coming to Canada, i.e. Ukrainians and the like. As the numbers of ‘new’ immigrants and their immediate descendants continues to grow and to accumulate, Mr. Cherry’s statements grow increasingly politically tone-deaf, and so he was given the old heave-ho, aka the boot. Will he be missed? I have no idea, but aside from his ‘political deafness’ the fact is that a sports’ channel isn’t the most appropriate place to discuss socio-political issues that aren’t related to sports at all, either.

No, seriously, Mr. Cherry did not even try to pretend that his rant is sports-related – he just vented his spleen, his own personal opinion, on his job. Seriously, man – get an online blog and do just that, rather than confuse it with your work. No wonder than he got fired – he is either politically incorrect and unprofessional, or old and marasmatic, (chronologically and biologically speaking). People are trying to pretend that this is an end of an epoch, but in reality, it is anything but – merely an old man, who either took his privilege too far, or who had simply lost ‘it’. Onwards to the TV shows?

…No, let us talk about a Disney+ movie – the 2019 remake of ‘Lady and the Tramp’. Unlike TLK-2019, Disney did not put this remake into theaters, but rather – into its’ own new and personal streaming service, aka Disney+. Yay?

Well, certainly ‘yay’ on a certain level – on some level, L&T-2019 is better than TLK-2019, in no small part because it does use real-life animals, (at least some times), and only adds CGI-facial features to them when it is necessary, rather than uses precise and accurate, (realistically authentic?) CGI models as they did in TLK-2019.

Of course, the difference is understandable: proportionally, domestic dogs, (used in L&T-2019) are much more trainable than the African lions and similar animals are, but regardless, it kind of makes TLK-2019 even more redundant, unnecessary and etc., when compared to L&T-2019 – honestly, what was Disney trying to prove with it? When ‘Dumbo’ was remade, for example, it was really remade – we’re talking about a different movie entirely from the old one, (which was good, because the original ‘Dumbo’ didn’t age well at all – just as Canada’s Don Cherry didn’t), whereas TLK-2019 wasn’t, not really: it was the same movie just with some cosmetic changes.

True, you can say the same thing about L&T-2019 – it is the same movie that was made in the 20^th century, but with some cosmetic changes – i.e., in the original film, it were some live beavers (from a zoo) that freed Lady from her muzzle, whereas in the 2019 version, it is a beaver statue in the park; or in case of the cats, in the original film, they were Siamese, (and also racial stereotypes, let’s be honest), while in 2019 they’re more like hairless Sphinxes, or some similar breed, (still creepy as Hell though), instead. Disney does know political correctness, it seems, but then we come to the human aspect and this is where things took a strange turn, as IGN noted on its’ own review of the movie.

I’m not the biggest fan of IGN these days – it seems to be at least partially paid by various movie companies to review its’ movies and give them ‘the right’ reviews; in a not-too-distant past someone was actually fired from IGN for given a ‘wrong’ review, but here we’re not talking about the ‘quality’ of reviews, but more about their content, what they’re talking about, and in case of the L&T 2019-reboot, it is the fact that Lady’s owners, are an interracial couple. Considering that L&T took place in the first half of the 20^th century or so, when interracial relationships and marriages were illegal in some countries and states, this is simply an anachronism – and also a case of ‘wokeness’ done wrong, not unlike as to how it happened back in ‘Dark Phoenix-2019’, (remember, the Mystique-Xavier interaction scene? Yeesh), only more blatantly so. This is nothing new for Disney, of course – for example, the current ‘Spider-Men’ films try to match up the Anglo-American Spidey with ‘people of color’ – Elizabeth Toomes, (herself a daughter of an Anglo-American father and an Afro-American mother) in ‘Homecoming’, and MJ herself in ‘Far From Home’ – but because these movies are good movies and are set in modern times, rather than in the past, unlike a ‘King Arthur’ or a ‘Robin Hood’ movie, this works.

Again, in real life, there are several aspects to the interracial issue, especially in North America. In Canada, I have seen plenty of interracial couples – on bus stops and in buses, in stores and on streets, and so on – and no one cares. Even Don Cherry seems to have issue not with the interracial aspect of immigration; rather he is rejecting all immigrants outright, by claiming that they are not true Canadians, but are rather taking advantage of them and Canada itself as a whole. This… is clearly the case of the horseradish that is as bitter as the bitter radish is, but while we seem to be splitting hairs between the rotten apples, it seems that Hollywood has gone the other way around, and lumped this current stage of social affairs with the past.

…The current state of casual interracial affairs has taken years, if not decades to develop, and both U.S. and Canada underwent a lot of hard effort to reach it. By comparison, in the time set in L&T, both the original and the remake, this effort – aka the integration – was not even in the works, though it must be acknowledged that it is there, sort of: we’re talking about a relationship between a ‘posh’ Lady and a ‘street-smart’ but ‘poor’ Tramp: a social interaction slash integration… minus the racial angle. In the 2019 remake, Disney tried to take this one-step further, to the modern level, but because the movie is still set in the past, it does not really work. God knows why, the movie is primarily about dogs, rather than people, they could’ve just set it in modern times and then an interracial human couple would’ve seen perfectly natural, but there you are, a genuine social anachronism in a Disney movie, one that not even IGN couldn’t ignore.

This brings us to the upcoming Sam & Bucky ‘Captain America’ Disney+ show, again because of the entire interracial issues in the USA. From what we were told, Sam & Bucky will not have it easy by transitioning to the new Cap – on one hand, MCU’s version of Zemo is coming back, complete with his trademark purple mask now, (but keep in mind, that in MCU he isn’t supposed to be Hydra, unlike in the comics), and on the other, we’re going to get introduced to MCU version of John Walker, the US agent. He is supposed to be one of those Captain America variants done wrong, who is violent and prejudiced and evil and so forth. I remember a comic arc when Cap encountered this sort of a character – it was Nuke. That comic arc was set in the so-called ‘Ultimate Universe’ (Earth-1610 if anyone cares), and so Nuke was Frank Simpson rather than William Simpson… as he is known in MCU. In MCU, Nuke/William Simpson was part of Netflix’s ‘Defenders’, but it does not mean that he could not appear in its’ other parts, (especially since his part in JJ was not that big, actually), but instead we are getting John Walker/US agent in Sam & Bucky. Fun.

…Rounding out the cast is MCU’s version of Sharon Carter, (agent 13), who, for a while, was supposedly a love interest for Steve Rogers, but sometime after the CA: CW film she just vanished from MCU. It will be interesting to see as for how long she will stick around this time. Anything else?

…Well, people are beginning to compare the conclusion of MLP: FIM series to MCU’s AoS, claiming that both shows used plot twists and turns incorrectly, but they are wrong. Rather, MLP: FIM is Hasbro’s answer to HBO’s GoT, as both were great and long-lasting shows that did more poorly in their finales, as both were about gone and done officially and for good, while pissing-off the fans in the process. …But it does not matter! They are over! Only not! They are still around! Hasbro is already talking about the G5 ponies, while HBO is already working on the Targaryen family saga, as presented by one George Martin, so yay, really. Pause.

We have steered far off course, and it is time for us to take a break. This is it for now, see you all soon, (hopefully).

Not quite a rant - Aug 19

Let us start this rant with the obvious: real life sucks. True, it sucks in various ways – in the People’s Republic of China, there is Hong Kong, in the RF – Moscow, and in the US – there is the Donald. It makes one wonder if Mr. Epstein didn’t commit suicide just to get away from it all; makes my problem – the fact that I’ve missed the AoS ‘S6 finale’ look positively pitiful.

…Of course, AoS in itself has become rather pitiful: the final two episodes – a double feature! – received some of the lowest numbers there were in AoS history, and that considering that on average AoS S6 did pretty good in its’ run. True, the fact that its’ other half – the so-called AoS S7 – will be airing only in summer 2020 – doesn’t help in the long run, but that is how life works. Anything else?

Officially – on 2019’s Comic-Con and the like – AoS did its’ best to pretend that Jeff Ward (Deke Shaw on the show) is one of them, possibly to counter the damage presented by him, when he stated on CM movie premiere back in spring 2019 that he and Iain hate each other; it was a better job than the one done by team Marvel, when they had Tandy and Detective Mandy appear on the ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ premiere to pretend that it was a part of the Marvel crew; that was simply sad – but Jeff Ward’s status on the show isn’t much better. Due to me missing the final three episodes, I do not know if he is with Snowflake or not, but if he is, it will certainly be a good and a convenient way for AoS to take him out of the picture without much of an effort.

No, seriously, while it is sad that May has died, and Yo-Yo may have died, and some other people have died, the truth is that people have died on AoS all the time, but as long as they were needed, they came back. And if they weren’t – they were gone, just ask Blood and Palicki; Blood did return for a S5 episode, but his role was perfunctory there, and when the old Marvel website published Blood’s interview for Marvel, it was also perfunctory and short – clearly, things weren’t as rosy there as Marvel wanted people to believe. Ah well, now that version of the Marvel website is gone, and so’s that interview. Life goes on.

And so do the characters of AoS – they constantly die and return. Coulson’s death was so tragic because he was supposed to stay dead, (CM the movie took place in the past of MCU-verse, so Coulson there didn’t really count, his role was more secondary to Fury’s, anyhow), but first we got ‘Sarge’, who was something of a faux-Ghost Rider, and now Coulson/not-Coulson is coming back for real in S7. Yay?

No, not exactly – yes, AoS as a whole retained a healthy fanbase, but the actual TV series has less and less to do with it, as the fans continue to ignore it more and more. Once the TV show is gone in 2020, the fanbase will go on, as it had done with GoT in 2019.

That deserves a mention of its’ own. GoT was also supposed to be present on Comic-Con 2019, but given its’ rocky finale and its’ now-damaged relationship with its fanbase…it did not. Seriously, its’ (former) cast and crew appeared on Comic-Con 2019 in a much abridged group, and then they quickly left altogether, leaving the fans behind. Yes, that was obviously intentional, seeing how the show and its’ fans parted ways badly – the fans almost practically demanded a remake of GoT S8, and the cast dismissed it very brutally, maybe unnecessarily so – behold the power of Internet, where you can talk flak about other people and they cannot do anything about it! …Oh wait, they can always confront you in real life, face-to-face, on such an unconventional place as a Comic-Con, and then what do you do? Apparently, you talk between each other, and eventually reach a conclusion that while you do not care about them, you are make sequels and spin-offs, and what else have you from GoT, so you actually do not want to alienate your fans further, lest they decide to abandon you completely in favor of something else.

This probably brings us to Martin-man himself – recently he claimed to be relieved ‘to be free’ of HBO and GoT or whatever. Jolly good, but we’re living in an age where printed media is on the downswing – I come to a bookstore, and find it full of unsold books – Riordan, and J-Ro’s HP, and even Martin’s ASOIAF sitting on shelves in various, glorious recent editions, unsold. In fact, some of the bookstores themselves are closing and are remaking themselves into Internet stores or something similar. By contrast, comic book stores and the like are going on strong, which rather brings us back to AoS: in the past, they tried to launch a comic series reminiscent of the series, but they couldn’t make two full volumes of their comics – that’s less than 12 issues, i.e. Given how AoS is relatively successful on TV, this is just sad. What next?

The other point of contention as to why my life sucks right now is the Pathfinder RPG. It had rebooted itself into a second edition, which is very much like the fifth edition D&D. D&D itself seems to be going through some redesigning crisis, but we have largely dismissed it since the fifth edition version took off. Are the two events connected? Hard to say.

…And getting back to our earlier discussion to the printed media, it should be noted that in the 3.5 edition D&D, there were two series of magazines, ‘Dragon’ and ‘Dungeon’. Actually, they were around since the first and second editions of D&D, so they were formidable! And then, when D&D switched from 3.5 to the 5^th edition, those magazines became completely online – you still had to buy them, of course, but it was all done through Internet, and PayPal, and what else have you – and its’ old website (from the 90s) became practically a paysite with minimum free features. D&D attempted to do something similar in the past, true, but that transformation was still unexpected, and not entirely welcome.

As for Pathfinder, their official website is largely a place to buy slash order their products online, (if you cannot buy them physically in stores), plus a forum, plus a newsboard – nothing so glamorous and encompassing as what the D&D 3.5 edition used to have, but then again, by now they have diversified into Starfinder as well – the sci-fi twin to Pathfinder’s fantasy. Neat! And there are also websites that offer an access to information from most of the core books as well. Go Pathfinder!

…Well, no, since its last campaign path – the one set to set the PCs against Tar-Baphon – had devolved into a hot mess. Thank someone that we did not get embroiled in it. But then again, this was supposed to be a rant about why life sucks, but we have veered into something different entirely, so let us call it a night and let us end here. Aka—

This is it for now, see you all soon!

PS: Here is an alebrije to finish off this rant, (from the Pathfinder campaign path mentioned above):

CROCODILE CR 4

XP 600

N Large magical beast (extraplanar)

Init +1; Senses darkvision 120 ft., dreamsight, low-light vision, scent; Perception +14

DEFENSE

AC 15, touch 10, flat-footed 13 (+1 Dex, +6 natural, –1 size)

hp 32 (3d10+21)

Fort +6, Ref +4, Will +2

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft., swim 30 ft.; sprint

Melee bite +5 (1d10+8 plus grab) and tail slap +0 (1d12+6)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks death roll (1d8+6 plus trip)

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 3^rd, concentration +3)

3/day—dream, nightmare (DC 11)

1/day—dream council (DC 12), dream travel (DC 12), mind thrust III (DC 10), plane shift (self plus 50 lbs of objects only)

STATISTICS

Str 23, Dex 18, Con 21, Int 5, Wis 18, Cha 6

Base Atk +2; CMB +7 (+11 grapple); CMD 18 (22 vs. trip)

Feats Skill Focus (Perception, Stealth)

Skills Knowledge (arcana) +4, Knowledge (planes) +4, Perception +14, Stealth +11 (+19 in water), Swim +16; Racial Modifiers +8 on Stealth in water; Racial Modifiers +8 Knowledge (arcana), +8 Knowledge (planes)

SQ hold breath

Languages Common; telepathy 100 ft.

ECOLOGY

Environment warm rivers and marshes

Organization solitary, pair, or colony (3–12)

Treasure none

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Death Roll (Ex) When grappling a foe of its size or smaller, a crocodile can perform a death roll upon making a successful grapple check. As it clings to its foe, it tucks in its legs and rolls rapidly, twisting and wrenching its victim. The crocodile inflicts its bite damage and knocks the creature prone. If successful, the crocodile maintains its grapple.

Dreamsight (Su) Alebrijes are able to notice and locate sleeping creatures within 500 ft., as well as creatures engaged in similar rest, such as meditation or resting trances.

Hold Breath (Ex) A crocodile can hold its breath for a number of rounds equal to 4 times its Constitution score before it risks drowning.

Sprint (Ex) Once per minute a crocodile may sprint, increasing its land speed to 40 feet for 1 round.

What do you think about it? How does it look?