Quarantine entry #41 - May 1

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but at least the province of Ontario is beginning to show signs of recovery, as at least some businesses are going to reopen next week, since it’s the first of May people, yay! April is over, and life is changing again. …So, what is my point?

Ah, yes, to further progress my escapism, I have rewatched the 2004 ‘Catwoman’ movie, and…

…And it is not that bad. Oh, sure, the depiction of the titular heroine is problematic and doesn’t really mesh with the entire underlying ‘girl power’ message that the C-2004 movie seems to push forwards, but on the other end, it’s not a horrifying mess that ‘Cats-2019’ have been, you know? The movie feels kind amateurish, the villains are not very impressive, but the same can be said for the first ‘Venom’ film, and now we are getting a second one and everyone is excited already, and not just because of cabin fever… where were we?

Ah yes, the Marvel movies of the early 2000s aren’t all that popular – ‘Daredevil’ was rather reminiscent of the ‘Batman’ films, (and yes, the Catwoman version in ‘Batman returns’ was better than the 2004 one, no argument), and as for ‘Electra’… it was really more style than substance, flashy to watch rather than fun, but… since then Marvel got itself together, (cough, Disney, cough), while DC didn’t. It is still a tangled mess, as the repeatedly delayed film about Batman, (the latest one) indicates. ‘The Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn’ is itself something of a ‘Suicide Squad’ reboot, (even if it is getting a ‘proper’ reboot now), and the underlying ‘girl power’ message… pause. Didn’t we already mention it in the subtext of C-2004?

…Yes, yes we did, and it looks like as if everything old is new again; Selina Kyle has apparently appeared on S2 of the ‘Harley Quinn’ cartoon series, which in itself is something of a reboot of the ‘Batman Animated Series’ of 1990s, which went through several transformations of its own, before it ended, (I’ve seen it personally). Put otherwise, of all the DC aspects, ‘Batman’ is one of the more enduring and versatile, even moreso than ‘Superman’, so to have it struggle is…disheartening to say the least. I have no idea where DC will go in the future, now that ‘The Fantabulous Emancipation’ is over, and everything is suspended by COVID-19, where everything is falling apart.

…Yes, now that it is May, things are coming to life once more, but still. DC had problems before COVID-19, so during and after… who knows?

In other news, I have also rewatched a DW S1 episode – ‘Knight vs. Pirate’. The pirate won, of course, but the knight had him working for it. Was it a fair episode? Yes, as the entire DW team were busy establishing if the basic firearms, (a flintlock pistol and the like) could penetrate the Medieval plate armor…and the answer is yes, it could and it can, but it was much dicier than in case of the more modern weapons, (19^th century onwards, I suppose). This episode of DW was all about the weapons and the warriors, and as such, it was one of the better ones. Anything else?

Here is another piece of my original fiction – hope that you will like it:

Once upon a time, there was a dog, who lived in the kennel. Though the kennel had no furnace, the dog's fur kept him warm, and since he did a good job of keeping various thieves and blackguards out, he was well fed as well...

"Screw this!" said the dog as he looked over the author's drabble take of him. "I'm a dog! Man's oldest companion and best friend! Surely, I could get something bigger than just a drabble - a story, maybe, or a sequence of them..." He looked around, as he scratched himself behind an ear in a thoughtful way. "Maybe I could do some sort of a crossover, even..."

The dog looked around; he sniffed around and he walked around the enclosure of his drabble, which was supposed to be a yard. He tested the borders of his drabble, examining the entire fourth wall concept, until he got the idea of the lay of the land, so to speak, and he also tried to figure out as to where his story was going to go, because he also felt kind of lonely, (domestic dogs are social animals, as is their close cousin the grey wolf, and don't like to be by themselves, period), until he finally made a decision.

///

Once upon a time, there was a cat, who lived in the house. She caught a mouse in the cellar and was rewarded with milk, while her kitten, who was too young to appreciate milk properly - her mother could always give it to her fresh - was busy playing around the house, being a nuisance to everyone else, but a lovable one...

...And then the window into their room slash house opened wide, and the dog looked inside. "Hello there, neighbor!" he spoke in a particularly dopey way, which was typical of overly enthusiastic canines. "Doing anything currently?"

"Hello!" the kitten called back cheerfully. "Hi there, neighbor! And what are you doing?"

"Young lady!" the mama cat was far more defensive and less enthusiastic. "Behave yourself! And you," she turned to the dog, "what are you doing? The human owners will catch you at any moment-"

"Nuh-uh," the dog did not back down. "There are no humans, not right now - the author didn't put them into their drabbles, not yet! Anyways, I am going to break borders through our original fandom and another one - could you two please come along with me? It'll be lonely on my own-"

The mama cat looked decisively unimpressed by the dog's plea - cats and dogs don't constantly fight, but neither do they always get along, plus unlike dogs, cats are individualist creatures and don't do large social gatherings...unless they want to, (and there's catnip involved. When there's catnip involved, all bets are off).

"I don't know, mister," the kitten spoke up suddenly. "Mama doesn't really like to travel and to have adventures. Maybe you can come in and play with me - I mean, with us, instead?"

The dog thought this over for a bit. "Sure!" he finally agreed, and jumped into the house through the window, right onto the carpet, where he gave himself a good shake, shaking himself clean. Well, cleaner. The kitten giggled and imitated him to an extent; the mama cat just stared.

The dog stared back. For a while, the two grown-ups just looked at each other, clearly trying to establish some sort of a telepathic communication slash argument. The kitten just looked at them, feeling rather worried - she did not like it when the grown-ups fought.

"So where are we going?" the mother cat suddenly changed her tactics.

"Yay! We're going on a trip!" the kitten mewed enthusiastically. "Thank you mama!" and she hugged her mom.

"Yes, well, even a trip is better than having our... neighbor here," the older feline mewed. "Also, where are we going?"

"Oh, I got it all figured out!" the dog replied brightly, as he reached out and pulled the fourth wall between this original fandom and the next one...

///

"...Wow, where are we?" the kitten mewed delightfully as she pranced around the grassland - literally. Well, no - literally speaking they were in a savanna, complete with long grass and trees that were more tropical than the ones that grew in the forest that was located beyond their village...

"In Africa," the dog said brightly, as he sniffed around one of the trees in question. "Smell, or see, this one? It's an acacia tree-!"

"Yay!" said the kitten and immediately began to climb it. Her mother was far less amused.

"You!" she told their new acquaintance. "You! You man! Do you know as to who lives here?"

"Your relatives?" the dog suggested brightly, as he pointed out to a lion in the distance. (So far, the latter was more interested in a herd of zebras and was ignoring the disturbance, not that the smaller mammals minded that, king of the beasts and all).

The mother cat looked at the king of beasts in question and her ears went flat. "You!" she switched her attention back to the dog. "You! You bachelor! You bachelor man! You self-designated bachelor- dog-! You!"

"Mama!" And the kitten (of whom the mother cat had kind of forgotten, cough), fell from an acacia branch - she did not have too much experience at climbing trees yet, and right onto the dog.

There was a pause as the trio tried to get their bearings together, because reasons. "See, mommy? I landed on my feet, as a big cat!" the kitten said brightly, switching her mental gears really easily, and doing her best to sound innocent, too.

The mother cat was not impressed - mothers often are not. That said...

"Right," she spoke finally. "Let's go and walk around here for a while - gently. We can play and all but do so quietly, and without making a commotion. Understood this, both of you did?" she asked, sounding a bit like the older version of Yoda, (not the new baby one).

Instead of commenting on this, however, the other two just nodded in understanding, and this was that: the not exactly dynamic trio went on for a walk through the acacia grove and had many adventures, both here and elsewhere - but that was another story.

End.

Did you like it? All comments and criticisms are welcome! I will see you all soon!

Harley Quinn and the prodigal son - Feb 25

Obligatory disclaimer… no, wait. Secondly, the ‘Harley Quinn’ cartoon TV show’s great, no doubt about it. Firstly – real life sucks. No matter what you try, no matter what you try to figure something out, real life will derail you, and then-

Pause. Let us talk about the Biblical parable of the prodigal son. No, we will not talk about the TV series of the same name, because I found it to be forgettable and meh; we are talking about the actual article. In it, the titular character lives his loving but traditional family, screws his life completely, returns home with tail between his legs, (metaphorically speaking), and is celebrated with a fattened calf, because, as both the narrator, (the Savior?), and the father of the family tell the audience and the other son, who dutifully worked at the family business all the time while his bro wasted his chance, Heavens are happier at one repented sinner than over many more people who neither sinned nor repented to begin with.

…You know, who sinned and then repented? Judas. Yes, that guy. Does it mean that he also ended up in Heaven and not, you know, in Hell, according to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’? Just asking, but the truth is that in the ‘Prodigal Son’ parable everyone is an asshole.

Let us elaborate. The titular character is an asshole because he had wasted all of his potential, literally and otherwise, and ended up being good for nothing but to herd pigs. When Jacob the patriarch, (son of Isaac, father of Joseph), ended up being a shepherd, he ended up making a fortune and married to Leah and Rebecca, (and not to mention a couple of concubines on top of them). The prodigal son? He did jack squat, other than bitch and moan about his fate & come crawling back to his family, as the parable intended to. Man, the Savior sometimes could be a jerk storyteller!

However, the rest of the family is not much different from the titular character…only they are. While he was doing nothing, they were doing the same thing repeatedly – running the family farm, (because of the fattened calf reference, because otherwise we got nothing to go on here). Yes, that is often hard, repetitive and boring, which is why the prodigal son ran away. And then he just partied hard and this is it, possibly because that is the only thing he had ever done? With his father if not outright enabling him, then certainly babying him, because he is the baby of the family, maybe? Pause.

Yes, something similar happened to Joseph back in the Old Testament, only our man Joseph did become the viceroy of Egypt or something similar, and revealed himself to be a bad ass. The titular character is an uninitiative waste of space and his father is okay with it, he is that forgiving. At least this time he gave his other some cock and bull excuse, dimly aware that this time he might have gone over the line.

…This isn’t the point of the parable? See above, cough Judas cough. St. Augustine supposedly once said that he believes in Christ and Christianity, because it is absurd, (or that absurd?). Fair enough, but proportionally, St. Augustine was closer to the time when the Gospels actually got written, (following the Word of God) than to our time in this time and space continuum, and it tells.

…So what does that have to do with me? Nothing, save that I am doing my best to find a regular job, (I may be no Old Testament Joseph, but still), and am having zero luck. My family, on the other hand, seems to be shoehorning me into the position of the parable’s older son, who works almost for nothing save for room and board. Did I tell you that I hate my life? Because I do. Arthur Fleck (cough Phoenix cough) was a genius if he was able to rework his life from a tragedy into a comedy, because I certainly cannot.

…Yes, I know that Joker in all of his incarnations is anti-hero at best and a villain at worse, as he was, or rather is, in the ‘Harley Quinn’ cartoon, which is doing all the same things that the ‘fantabulous emancipation’ film has done, but at a slower pace. Then again, it is a cartoon series, not a single-shot film, so it can afford to be prolonged.

One aspect that is affected by this is the Harley-Ivy relationship: the S1 finale ended with Ivy being dead, and/or resurrected, I am not sure. I.e., whatever relationship Harley and Ivy will have, this will be taken slowly, I suspect. Then again, DC is not Marvel, it doesn’t have Disney backing it up, (yet), so it’s not surprising that Ivy and Harley may be going the ‘Elsa met Honeymaren’ routine. Hell, Joker is outright absent in the ‘Superman: Red Son’ movie, and it is still a good one. (It just came out this February).

…Yes, SRS is focusing more on the Superman’s corner of DC’s Elseworlds than Batman’s, (cough spoilers cough), but still, the laughing prince of crime tends to pop up in unexpected places, but we digress. (SRS is not a bad animated movie either, incidentally). The point is that my life lately sucks more than it usually does, more family sucks more than it usually does, and I see no way out, period. I do not intend to be either the good or the prodigal son, while we are on the subject. For better or for worse, I am just trying to be myself, regardless as to what this entails, down to the end - now if only all my ads on LinkedIn, and Glassdoor, and Indeed, and Monster, and so on would come to a fruition. (Sad face emoji).

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

The Harley Quinn Movie - Feb 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, pure and simple, and your family tends to make it worse – and it is also simple. So, let us talk about something more complex – the latest DC movie – instead.

Why it is a more complex subject? Because in reality, it is two movies stitched into one – first, we got ‘Birds of Prey’, (BOP), which deals with a group of anti-heroes, led by Harley Quinn, in a fight against a crime boss named ‘the Black Mask’, (DC’s answer to Marvel’s Red Skull, BTW), and the second is ‘the fantabulous emancipation’ of the same Harley Quinn as she gets over the Joker, (Jared Leto’s version). Pause.

Now, this is not the first case of two movies being stitched into one – I personally remember the ‘Lost World: Fallen Kingdom’ film, which was two films – the first being the team Owen/Claire (OC) teaming up with the minions of the Evil E to rescue several dinosaurs, (including Rexy and Blue), from the exploding island; and the second being team OC infiltrating/getting captured by the Evil E’s minions to get into the Lockwood mansion and stop the Indoraptor from…something – yes, it’s a killing machine, but nothing more; the movie heavily anthropomorphized it, but it still was nowhere as formidable as the I-Rex from the first ‘Lost World’ film was, and plenty of dinosaurs got out into the world… but we digress.

…And the second film was the SW8 movie, where everything from Rey and Ben’s final confrontation in the ex-Snoke’s throne room feels like a tag-on from an entirely different SW8 film – maybe it was borrowed from the original SW8 script? Or something? Hard to tell, and we have discussed the SW8 & 9 films before, so let us get back to the DCEU.

Did DC succeed with their latest film? As people have acknowledged, it’s no ‘Joker-2019’, and indeed, when the discussions about BOP-emancipation began, ‘Joker-2019’ was avoided. Not surprising, since on one hand, ‘Joker-2019’ is an outlier and not a part of the DCEU per se, and as such, it is a completely different film from the DCEU ones… and it had also won an Oscar. Not surprisingly, then, that team DC does not known as to what to do about ‘Joker-2019’ and tend to avoid it in their discussions, especially unofficial ones.

That said, ‘Joker-2019’ did try to discuss important social issues in real life…and the Harley Quinn double-whammy tried to be feminist! Feminist! Feminist! In addition, girl power! Rawr! …Did it succeed?

Leaving aside the impressive interweaving of the two films, BOP and ‘the fantabulous emancipation’, done in a way that would make Marvel’s Deadpool, (especially the MCU version), proud. That said, since people treat it as a single film instead, well… it is done by the book – women are good, men are bad, (or outright evil), and women are beating them down as soon as they are done being oppressed by them. Just look at Greta Thunberg, back in real life.

…What is this? Now that the initial shock value is gone, Greta seems to have met only a limited success – people are indulging her, going along and pretending that she matters. Since none of her efforts seem to have actually amount to anything beyond making this or that public statement and talking to this or that leader of some country or another… Greta is beginning to feel like a trained parrot that everyone loves but will forget as soon as the entire out of sight out of mind situation occurs – and this, atypically, brings us to Cassandra Cain.

Why? Here is the thing. Margot Robbie’s Harley is consistent with her depiction in 2016’s ‘Suicide Squad’ film. Dinah and the Huntress look nothing like their counterparts in the DC ‘Arrow’ TV-verse (or the original BOP TV series), but DC is inconsistent like this, so that is acceptable. However, for both Renee and Cassandra, this is their official entrance into the live-action DC depiction, (especially for Cass), so what, and who, was thinking? They took ‘Orphan’, one of Batman’s most formidable lieutenants, and turned her into a plucky extra from ‘Ocean’s 8’!

…Actually, the entire movie has a strong feeling of ‘Ocean’s 8’, especially in regards to girl power – ‘Ocean’s 8’ was ‘Ocean’s 11’ albeit gender-flipped and more edgy. Alas, as the ‘Ghostbusters’ reboot showed, gender flipping a movie plot is not always enough, (both it and ‘Ocean’s 8’ are largely forgotten by now), and as ‘Like a Boss’ proved, girl power on its own isn’t a miraculous money-maker either.

Does the Harley Quinn movie has anything else going for it? It is bright, it is loud, it verges on the absurd, and the good guys – that is, girls – win in the end. It is not trying to be intentionally deep if you move away from the titular heroine as she goes on a journey of self-discovery and the rest of team BOP is going for the ride as they need to work together to defeat the Black Mask and Zsasz. The latter are completely unsympathetic, (especially Zsasz), nonredeemable, and are killed at the end. 

Sigh. Even Marvel/MCU is moving past killing every villain in their movies – Loki is back and being redesigned, so’s MCU’s version of Zemo, (and maybe others?). Seeing how DCEU is trying to ape MCU still, maybe it is time for them to stop killing-off their villains… oh, right, Joker. Pause. Never mind. This version of the Black Mask was decisively influenced by the comics’ Joker, and it shows – the movie’s villains have actually more time on screen than its’ heroes – aside from Harley, and this brings us to Cass, but also – to the hyena.

Cass is simple – Harley decided to make her her protégé or something. Ask Harley. Maybe she knows. But the hyena is something else. True to the DC canon, it is a spotted hyena, which is the biggest modern hyena species, and the strongest. It can literally rip a person apart with its’ bone-crushing jaws, so seeing Harley interact with her new pet is something else. I really hope that she had picked-up her comic-book counterpart’s hyena managing skills, because otherwise, there will be trouble!

…As it is, there may be trouble already, as the movie shows no sign of a Poison Ivy. These days, in most incarnations, Ivy and Harley are a couple, a duo, a team – Ivy helps Harley the way that Joker did not, would not, or could not – take your pick. They are also a couple, the same way that Willow and Tara were on the BtVS TV series, for example, so her absence in the movie is glaring, and also telling.

In ‘Frozen 2’, there was Honeymaren, Elsa’s new potential love interest, and yet nothing came of it. Why?

Because Disney does not like to make statements that hurt it in the wallet; it does not like to be hurt in the wallet to begin with: their ‘damage control’ in the SW9 film is the latest evidence of that. Only, in SW9, this ‘damage control’ didn’t succeed, so for now no more SW movies, and especially trilogies; ‘The Mandalorian’ and the like will need to carry the SW-universe forwards for now.

For Disney, their ‘Princess’ series are even more important than SW is, so they have no intention of rocking the boat by getting either the same-sex issues or the sexuality issues involved. Yes, there is many fanworks that do just that, but they do not matter, especially not to Disney, whereas DC…

…Well, in DC, there is the current Harley Quinn cartoon series, which seems to be going precisely in that direction, by the means of an endgame. Yes, DC is not putting all of their eggs in one basket, and the HQ cartoon series is different, and much more balanced, than the HQ movie is, but the signs of this were there in the last trailer, so we were warned. Anything else?

No, not really. ‘The Fantabulous Emancipation’ gave a new dimension to the movie, which otherwise would have been just a more violent and psychedelically crazy ‘Ocean’s 8’. The gangster setting…well, ever since the Superman/Batman animated series of the 1990s, the gangster setting was the default for Gotham, which only served to make the Black Mask and Zsasz even more formidable. The fights themselves were nothing special, certainly not in 2020, and they were not any more feminist than the ‘Like a Boss’ movie was. So, yes, Harley Quinn saved the movie and the day, just not how she probably intended to… i.e., this her normal M.O., especially without Ivy around to ground her, cough. Hint-hint. Regardless, go Harley!

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

'Birds of Prey' trailer 2 - Jan 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. There is still sickness in my family, and we all keep on fighting with each other, making sure that we all feel worse. Human beings are complicated, my family is my family, and I hate my life. Ergo, I look for ways to escape it, and what I find is the second ‘Birds of Prey’ (DC Movie) trailer. Yay?

Let me just point it out – I liked the first trailer better, this one seems to be the new old ‘Suicide Squad’ movie with a mostly female cast that seems to be developing into an inferior version of ‘Ocean’s 8’ movie instead. The film in question wasn’t so bad, it just was a reboot slash remake of the original ‘Ocean 11’, just with much more girl power, and just like ‘Charlie’s Angels-2019’ film, (itself a reboot of the 2003 CA film that no one talked about just because, cough), ‘Ocean’s 8’ never developed into anything more, even though it was much more compact, proportionally speaking, than ‘Hellboy-2019, for example. Where were we?

Oh yeah, ‘Birds of Prey’ are in-between Scylla and Charybdis. On one hand, there’s the established ‘Harley Queen’ cartoon for grown-ups, which is already dealing with ‘the fantabulous emancipation of Harley’, literally, among other meanings, but because it is a cartoon series, it can better pace itself and take its’ time to do that, unlike the ‘Birds of Prey’ film, which can’t, because of the differences between a film and a cartoon series. However, on the other hand, today’s trailer, (aka Jan 9), revealed that the film may have problems with its’ own.

First, there is no Poison Ivy. While that is not a problem, it is a disappointment – these days DC comics have made Harley and Ivy practically gay BFFs, if not an outright couple. The HQ cartoon seems to be working in this direction as well; yes, it is taking its’ time, again, but it uses this time to give both Harley and her new crew character development, (not to mention the Bat-family, of course), and it does a good job of it too! We are talking the complete opposite of the old ‘Suicide Squad’ film here. Put otherwise, while Harley is slowly becoming emancipated, (alongside Ivy), Dr. Psycho is becoming less crude and toxically masculine, King Shark is leaning to stand up for himself, a giant anthropomorphic shark or not, and Clayface is beginning to come into his own as well – and at the same time their depictions, initial and derived, are still fairly consistent with those in the DC comics, whereas in the trailer…

In the trailer, we got Harley, who is directly transplanted from her ‘Suicide Squad’ flashback depiction, (cough Jared Leto left DC franchise in a bad way cough), we got Huntress and Black Canary who seem to be only coming into their superhero selves, (not that that’s a problem), we got a bespectacled Renee Montoya, (which is very different from how she is usually depicted in the DC comics), and finally we got Cassandra Cain. In the DC comics, Cass is Batgirl, and one of the most formidable members of Batman’s crew. She is also a mostly silent semi-homeless ninja, because it is comics. Here, in the trailer, she seems to be nothing more than a pickpocket who begins to look up to Harley as the movie develops, (or this is how it looks like in this trailer), someone, who is more like Linus from ‘Ocean’s 11’ or Constance from ‘Ocean’s 8’. Why?

Because DC and co. could, that is why. Fair enough, they own the franchise, they can reboot their characters however they like, but the problem is that it’s not necessarily a good thing either: Disney rebooted the SW franchise after the SW8 film in order to appease the fans – the ‘fan service’ – but the resulted SW9 film wasn’t really an improvement either. Official-unofficial mouthparts for the Big Mouse may claim that the SW fans do not know what they want, but somehow when George Lucas had been in charge, he never had that problem, not even in the prequel trilogy, and everyone knows it. He also – and now it is officially known – did not like the SW9 movie when he saw it, so there is that. SW – or at least its’ sequel trilogy – has ended with a whimper rather than a bang.

This brings us back to the ‘Birds of Prey’ movie. Just as the SW9 movie tried to distance itself from its’ predecessor,  so ‘Birds of Prey’ is setting itself to be apart from both the old ‘Suicide Squad’ movie and its upcoming reboot. The SW9 movie did succeed…just in wrong ways…so who has to say that ‘Birds of Prey’ won’t? DC had a bad run with movies, until ‘Wonder Woman’, and ‘Shazam’, and ‘Aquaman’, and to a lesser extent – with ‘Suicide Squad’. It was not a great movie, but neither was it horrible, so where this leave ‘Birds of Prey’ does is anyone’s guess. If MCU makes great movies, and everything else is second rate, with DCEU it is the other way around – the movies are usually the underdogs in this franchise. Considering that the ‘Harley Queen’ cartoon, (also a part of the DC franchise, remember), is proving that – it is very good, in my opinion – then the ‘Birds of Prey’ film need to struggle twice as much and twice as hard to top it…period. Otherwise, they will end up as the old ‘Suicide Squad’ did – maybe not as a bad movie, but one that is flawed, and mocked for those flaws all the same. Real life – and it includes movie critics, (just look at ‘Cats-2019’) – sucks, remember?

This is it for now; see you all soon!

Doolittle-2020 & etc - Oct 14

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. You may try to alleviate some of this suckage by trying to do something new…but the U.S. government does something entirely different as judging by the Middle Eastern mess. It just is not good, and it makes the situation back in D.C. worse. Is the Donald getting impeached or not? For a while, there were even rumors of Mike Pence being the next Republican president, but this is it. Now there’s the Middle Eastern situation with the Kurds, there’s the story of a police officer shooting an Afro-American woman in her home in Texas, there are rumors of an Epstein-Trump connection, but nothing concrete about the impeachment.

The most likely possibility is that it had died down again. As the recent events showed, the Democrats are not that cohesive themselves as a political unit – the ‘old guard’ and AOC and her ‘new squad’ are not getting along, and there may be other factions inside that party as well. That said, none of them are all that enthused about Mike Pence’s presidency, so that might be an extra motivation for the Democrats to back down from the impeachment push and return to the previous plan: tone down the internal aggression to define and decide as to who’ll be the next presidential candidate for the next election. With the Democrats backing down, so will the Republicans – they don’t care much for the Donald either, but gives them the main advantage against the Democrats for the moment, and so they’re keeping him, if they can and if he continues to provide them the advantage. Otherwise, they will give him the boot themselves, the end. The only end that is left loose are the U.S.’ Mid-East politics, which are left in disarray while the big chiefs back in D.C. resolve conflicts of their own making and pat themselves on the back for doing this, but that is neither here nor there. What is next?

Let us talk about movies instead. ‘Gemini Man’ was expectedly bad unless you are a diehard Will Smith fan; the ‘Addams Family 2019’ was surprisingly good, though the live action ‘Addams Family’ 1991 movie is still the best, in my opinion. That said, the animated 2019 film has clearly been influenced by the live action movie series, (I think it was a trilogy), and did its’ best to capture the Addams family magics, (metaphorically speaking), and it succeeded so yay! Anything else?

There is going to be a ‘Spider-Man meets Venom’ movie after all, so far, there are no discussions of the ‘Addams Family 2019’ film online, (oddly enough), and then there is the ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie trailer. In regards to the latter, what the Hell? It is a hot mess that is almost as bad as the trailer for S1 ‘Insatiable’ Netflix series had been; supposedly, the movie is about the titular character going on a journey to save queen Victoria, (yes, we’re talking about a character based directly on the real-life monarch here) from some mysterious illness after his wife died some time later. An assembly of sidekicks, both human and animal, are assisting him…but the trailer does a bad job of explaining this, all it is so far is a mess of movie action shots that just do not tell a coherent story, nor do they introduce any characters aside from the titular character who is played by Robert Downey Jr., also known as the Iron Stark – sorry, the Iron Man – who gets to ride a CGI ostrich in this movie instead. At least I hope that the ostrich is CGI, because while you can ride a real ostrich in modern times, you will probably be sued by ASPCA or some similar agency afterwards, and I doubt that Disney wants that.

…Disney doesn’t appear to be openly involved with the ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie? Not surprising, because already the movie is off to a bad start, involving massive reshoots and changing dates to avoid conflict with the Disney/SW ‘SW9’ movie, which doesn’t promise anything positive for this particular film. Of course, keep in mind that I, for one, am more used to the Soviet adaptations of the original novel, which got to be very different from the original; in it, the titular character usually goes to Africa to treat some ill monkeys slash apes, encounters an atypical animal called Pushy-Pulley, and becomes an arch nemesis of a pirate leader… it really is a lot more child-friendly and less exciting than how it sounds, but the Soviet cinematography really loved it, and there were several versions of ‘Doolittle’ adaptations during the existence of USSR – cartoons, live-action movies, animated movies, etc. By contrast, in the West, (ok, the U.S.), ‘Doolittle’ adaptations are even more free-style than the Soviet ones were, often going completely off-script, but this is justifiable: in the original novel when the good doctor went down to Africa, for example, he encountered a kingdom of cannibalistic savages…which is really inappropriate for the twenty-first century for all sorts of reason, we all can agree. Even this misbegotten trailer for ‘Doolittle 2020’ movie seems to skip this plotline, though there was a shot of someone who might be this movie’s version of a pirate chief – and we see the Iron Doctor, sorry, the Doolittle Stark – facing-off with a man-eating tiger as well. If ‘Doolittle 2020’ will be able to keep itself together, it can be a really good movie, but otherwise? It risks becoming a mess on par with the ‘Insatiable’ S1, only worse so, since ‘Insatiable’ is a Netflix series, and in S2 it seems to have fixed itself and has become less controversial and edgy and more mainstream instead. ‘Doolittle 2020’ probably will not get the chance to do that via a sequel. Anything else?

The second ‘Frozen II’ movie trailer was mostly all about Olaf and didn’t give anything new regarding the plot of this film, and then there’s the trailer for the upcoming ‘Harley & Ivy’ cartoon series, starring Kaley Cuoco as the voice of Harley Quinn. It is not too coherent either, but it does not need to be – it depicts clearly enough that it will be about Harley breaking up with Joker and becoming her own woman, probably with a romantic plot line involving her and Ivy. The first attempt to team up those two had been back in the 90s, in an episode of Batman: the Animated Series’, where Harley had had enough of Mr. J for once, tried to strike out on her own and ended up teaming up with Ivy instead. The pair had had some fantabulous adventures of their own, though because it was the 90s, there was no Harley/Ivy romance…but from then on, the pair had increasingly more and more girl time together especially in the animated DC works. Ergo, this particular development in the DC cartoons is only natural and expected, but where does it leave the upcoming ‘BP 2020’ movie?

…Potentially high and dry and unrequested, because Harley will already have her fantabulous emancipation in the cartoon series, and the live-action movie will be the 2020’s analogue of the 2016’s ‘Suicide Squad’, where several years of character development in the comics tried to be crammed into a single movie, so is it any surprise that the result was not so much good or bad, but mangled? If it does not work, the 2020 ‘Birds of Prey’ film will end up in the same way, and that would be sad, especially since Jared Leto is already upset that he and his version of Joker was apparently kicked out of DCEU for good. Ah well, maybe he will do a better Morbius in MCU instead.

…This is it for now – see you all soon.