'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!

Prothero's Princeton Guide to Prehistoric Mammals - Jan 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Therefore, I look around for means to escape this, and what do I come across but Donald R. Prothero’s ‘Princeton Guide to Prehistoric Mammals’. Yay?

Mmm, no. As we have discussed back in 2019, I am not the biggest fan of Mr. Prothero these days, and the ‘PGPM’ did not really challenge this opinion, though not for the reasons you think. You see, ‘TPGPM’ is not exactly a field guide; it is more of a reboot, done in a manner not unlike what happened to the SW franchise after it merged with Disney!

…What is the punchline, you may ask? Good question and the answer is located right in the very first chapter of ‘TPGPM’, the ‘How Do We Classify Animals?’ subchapter. It promptly and directly tells the book’s readers, (aka us), that the old classification model of, well, classifying the animal kingdom, (plants and fungi are left beyond the brackets of this book & discussion), is outdated and is going to be rebooted, even if the lay public is not aware of that yet. Moreover, ‘TPGPM’ is an attempt to introduce the lay public to this reboot, one faction of animal kingdom at a time, in this case – it is prehistoric mammals…as well as their modern descendants and/or relatives. The end result is… a picture book for adults, illustrations in ‘TPGPM’ overwhelm the text, though yes, let’s be honest – the chapters are very heterogeneous, and uneven, which is quite reasonable, because the internal factions of the mammal ‘kingdom’ aren’t really equal to each other either. That said, Mr. Prothero may’ve called this book of his a ‘guide’, but it feels more like an encyclopedia, a book that tried to encompass everything that’s mammal-related… and this brings us to another book on prehistoric mammals – Mauricio Anton’s ‘Sabertooth’, which is an encyclopedia on prehistoric mammals and mammal-like reptiles that utilized sabre-teeth as a hunting weapon (& technique). The book approaches this topic from all sorts of angles, but the titular topic is always constant and remains unchanged. Fair enough, since the prehistoric sabre-toothed hunters were a mixed bunch: there were the mammal-like reptiles of the Paleozoic, several creodont species, (more on them down below, maybe), the marsupial Thylacosmilus (and maybe its’ relatives), and the nimravids, the barbourofelids and the true cats slash felids – six major animal groups in total. And?

And nothing, ‘Sabertooth’ is an informative and entertaining book that features not just text, but also illustrations and graphs – Just as ‘TPGPM’ does, though it isn’t mentioned in the list of ‘Further Reading’ in ‘TPGPM’, (though several other books written by Anton and Turner are). Fair enough, though did I mention that I do not like Mr. Prothero lately? Just checking! What next?

‘TPGPM’ seems to follow the approach of ‘Sabertooth’, but because its’ subject is so much broader, the result is a mess. The first chapter is an intro to the book, really; the second cover the mammal-like reptiles, proto-mammals, or stem mammals of Paleozoic, but mostly – the mammals of the Mesozoic; the third – the marsupials of Australia and South America, existing and extinct, (though given the monstrous fires of Australia telling which group is which is trickier than it looks, sadly. Real life sucks). It is only from the fourth chapter onwards to the penultimate seventeenth that we get to see the ‘new’ classification of mammals, and it is as follows: the Xenarthrans – sloths, armadillos and anteaters of the Americas; the Afrotheres; and the Laurasiatheres. Mazel Tov! More precisely, proportionally speaking, we got the Afrotheres – elephants, sea cows, hyraxes, aardvarks, elephant shrews, tenreks, and several other mammal orders, both extinct and still existing. We got the already-mentioned Xenarthrans – and we got all the other placental mammals, aka the Eutheres, which are more closely related to each other than to the Xenarthrans or the Afrotheres. Fair enough, but the result is a great unwieldy mess that doesn’t seem to serve any practical function other than to tickle the egos of various men and women of science – I seriously doubt that anyone else will be particularly impressed by it. Mr. Prothero may state that such outdated terms as ‘Reptilia’ and ‘Amphibia’ (and ‘Mammalia’?) will soon vanish from the professional scientific nomenclature and works, even though the lay public does not know it, but just because they do not know it, does not mean that it will accept it, certainly not easily or graciously.

True science doesn’t need that, science is science, it is its’ own reward? Maybe, but given that Mr. Prothero has released a very thorough and visually impressive picture book for adults, (it includes even images from Wikicommons – really, Mr. Prothero? Really?), trying his best to sell it to people not just literally, but figuratively as well. Considering that the book is a heterogeneous mess, I am not so sure that he had succeeded. True, unlike most Western books, ‘TPGPM’ has both an intro (the first chapter) and an epilogue (the last, eighteenth chapter, which talks about prehistoric mammals and their extinctions, and of course it is the humans’ fault), and it has done its’ best to be professional, entertaining and the like. The problem is that human beings are contrary and unpredictable and you just cannot be sure that they will swallow whatever you try to sell them no matter how pretty the wrapper is or how sweet you consider your product to be. Professional scientists may be retiring the old terms of ‘Reptilia’, ‘Amphibia’ and so on, but odds are that the public will transition to this product will take much longer, and will be much rougher, than how Mr. Prothero and his fellow scientists, expects – real life sucks, remember? (Just look at the Disney/SW mess, for an example!)...

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

The New Mutants trailer 2 - Jan 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In this particular instance, it is because I got sick, apparently, and this makes real life worse, for the obvious reasons. (Man, I hate common cold). Therefore, I look around, and what do I find but the trailer for this year’s ‘New Mutants’ movie. And?

And nothing – the trailer for the ‘New Mutants-2020’ film is a dark, horrific mess, with ‘horrific’ showing the genre – the ‘New Mutants-2020’ is shaping to be a horror film, so far. Belay that – it is a horror film, it looks like.

Well, FOX’S mutant movies were always a mixed bag – for every ‘Deadpool’ or ‘Logan’ we got ‘Dark Phoenix-2019’, for example. That said, we’re talking not about quality here, but genre, and my statement stands – for every traditional superhero movie we got something atypical, whether it was the very first ‘X-Men’ film, or ‘Logan’, or even ‘Deadpool’. It brings Illyana Rasputina, aka ‘Magik’, who is also the sister of Colossus, which had appeared in both ‘Deadpool’ movies up to date, so who knows? Maybe we will get some sort of a reference. It brings Wolfsbane/Rahne Sinclair, who might have been around the earlier X-Men films – I am not so sure. It brings Sam Guthrie/Cannonball, (ditto), and a new incarnation of Roberto da Costa, (Sunspot, who was in earlier X-Men movies, I am sure), and Danielle Moonstar/Mirage, (people claim that she appeared in the past X-Men films). They will be dealing with an incarnation of a mutant doctor named Cecilia Reyes, (who also might have appeared in the past films) and an entity named the Demon Bear, which is a giant demon bear, (duh), and who is certainly a new villain in the Marvel movies, regardless of genre, universe and whoever is making them. What is next?

…I am actually looking up to this movie, that is what. SW9 proved to be as bad as it was supposed to, and the crew blaming it on the fans, (aka ‘fan service’) did not do any wonders to the movie. Yes, it went down the collective throat, but again, you have to be ‘Cats-2019’ level bad to fail at this achievement. SW9 was not, and so it went down and out. Yay. Now does anyone have any idea as to where Disney/SW will go next, or will it just fizzle out instead? My money’s on the latter – as far as movies go, SW9 was broken and reset once too many times. Anything else?

Sadly – no. Real life sucks. I feel rotten. Ricky Gervais made a ‘roast’ at the Golden Globes awards – really? Does anyone care anymore? Probably not, but did I mention already that real life sucks? If not, here is another reminder.

This is it for now. See you all soon!

SW: TROS - Jan 5

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Our family’s holidays were the pits, and my family are bleeps that I hate with all my life and soul. I myself am no prise, but regardless I hate them, I hate them, I hate them forever!.. Gollum, ‘The Hobbit’. What next?

SW9, that is what. As far as escapes from real life go, this one was only marginally better than ‘Cats 2019’, but that is because nothing is as bad as ‘Cats 2019’ were. SW9 is… bad. It is not too bad, but neither it is that great. It’s ‘fan service’, according to the official statement that explains as to why SW9 proved to be so bad. Here is my response: that is a lie. What do fans want? For Rey to have a relationship with anyone, (with whom exactly is another question), but what do they get? Rey pulling an Elsa from ‘Frozen 2’ and ending up single and free as a bird instead. Did the fans want this? Judging by their reaction – no. So, how is this ‘fan service’? The honest answer – it is not. So, what is it, instead?

Let us start with the beginning: from the SW7 onwards, the SW sequel trilogy was a mess, especially from the plotline P.O.V. As for relationships… do not start – the SW7 movie had ‘shipped’ Rey with Finn, (not Ben or Poe), so hard! So, why didn’t it work, and instead Finn was ‘shipped’ with Rose in SW8? …It is anyone’s guess, but the fact that Hollywood and the rest of America’s elite has plenty of issues with interracial relationships, probably played a role. In SW9, we get briefly introduced to a character named Jannah, who is former Stormtrooper who is aiding the Resistance against the First Order. Now, why does it sound familiar? We look at Finn, who decisively ignores Jannah in favor of his Rose. Good for him. In the canon, Jannah was shown interacting with Lando Calrissian, maybe because she is supposed to be his long-lost daughter, but Lando’s own role got diminished severely in SW9, as did Rose’s own, BTW. …Yes, on one level it can be explained by the fact that Rose’s actress, Kelly Marie Tran, received her own amount of hate, as did Rey’s actress, Daisy Ridley, after the SW 8 film, so it’s probable that she didn’t want to appear in SW9 one, but the fact is that many characters, not just her and Lando, got diminished in the SW9 movie, which implies that the SW9 film is a bad, unsatisfying one, not just to the viewers, but to its’ crew and cast too. Why? Moreover, what next?

Firstly, the conclusion – the entire main cast of SW films four through six is dead, and it is now a blank slate, with or without Ben Solo. Fair enough, but considering that the problems of the franchise began precisely because of this – after the merger, Disney/SW promptly dismissed all of the old info, declaring them to be ‘Star Wars: Legend’ instead, and it promptly began to fracture SW’s original fan base – and not because of U.S.A’s current racial or gender problems. The old SW fan guard got angry, didn’t back down or mince words, and by the time of the SW8 and ‘Solo’ films things were quite bad, especially by Disney’s standards. They tried to alter this situation by flooding the comic market with the SW comics, but apparently it was not enough, especially on its’ own. ‘The Mandalorian’, of course, is a different thing entirely – emphasis on ‘different’: it does not appear to connect with the SW sequel trilogy at all!.. Anything else?

For now the SW universe is calming down; instead we got Robert Downey Jr. returning to the silver screens this month, (January 2020) as the titular character in the ‘Dr. Doolittle 2020’ movie. So far, it is a mess, the final trailer shows a gorilla fighting a tiger and later on – the Iron Man and his new animal Avengers – some sort of a dragon, straight from an RPG (think Smaug from the ‘Hobbit’ trilogy earlier this century). So far, the next most memorable thing after the Iron Man himself is Selena Gomez, who will be voicing Betsy the giraffe, (CGI, not real life). Considering that Ms. Gomez herself was down in the dumps lately, this is a step up for her nevertheless. Real life sucks, remember? Even for Disney & SW, it seems – SW9 tried to be a soft reboot ala ‘Frozen 2’, (remember, we discussed it in November 2019?), but it failed. The two franchises are just too different, and the similar approaches to them were different as well.

Ergo, for now this is it. Maybe real life will perk up further down in 2020, but I am not so sure. Until then – see you soon!

JW: motion comic part 4 - Dec 20

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. One’s family sucks even worse. When both of those factors combine, life becomes practically intolerable but what can you do? You take what you can, of course, and screw everything else. What is left after this approach, aside from reality, (such as it is)?

Well, there’s ‘Cats’, the 2019 edition, but we’ll talk about it later, maybe even in 2020, because so far this perfidy exists to ensure that life becomes even worse, if you spend roughly one and a half to two hours watching this… thing. Ergo, let us talk about the fourth part of the JW motion comic instead.

What can be said about it? Spoiler alert: judging by the ominous ‘the end’, white on black, at the final part of the motion comic, it is suggested that this is ‘it’ – an Allosaurus ate Rebecca Ryan. The end.

Pause. Here is the thing. This particular installment of the JW motion comic has made Rebecca Ryan be genuinely stupid – she wastes valuable time first trying to listen to her husband on the cellphone ignoring the obvious signs of danger – her frantic video crew, the park’s rangers, the helicopter circling overhead – and then, when idiot’s luck strikes and it’s her – well, the news’ – van that gets taken by the Allosaurus, and she gets to scamper to safety, she actually tries to get the still-active cell phone, (it gets stepped-on by the carnivore in the process), and so she catches Allosaurus’ attention. The end.

Another pause. Yes, this motion has promptly tied into the BBR short feature – remember it? The motion comic refers to it directly, featuring a surprisingly wooden re-enactment of the Allosaurus vs. Nasutoceratops battle, it doesn’t resemble how it went down in the BBR at all, but that’s not the point – the point that we’ve discussed the two dinosaurs featured in this short feature when we’ve discussed BBR itself, and you know what? Compared to Rebecca Ryan (and her skeleton crew), this nameless family proved to be pinnacles of common sense, competence, intelligence and teamwork! Really, the first three installments set the standard bar low – did part four need to get character assassination involved? Rebecca Ryan and co. barely had any character at all! Literally! Why did they have to add stupidity to her mix?..

…Wait, it ill behoves to speak poorly of the dead? Well, we haven’t seen Big Al eat Ms. Ryan yet – maybe she’ll have her great escape when the Nasutoceratops family makes its’ appearance. Otherwise, I am sorry, but this I am not very sympathetic for her plight. Anything else?

…Been reading Mercedes Lackey’s ‘Elemental Masters’ series lately. Cannot say that I am impressed by the latest version of it. To wit: the first seven books were written by one author, maybe even Ms. Lackey herself, but then they began to meander: first it were blatant imitations of the first seven books (book 8), then it was over to continental Europe (books 9-10), and now, the last four books are really the best reboot yet – ‘adventures of Sherlock Holmes and friends’, the magical edition, really. It is not as annoying as Ms. Patricia Briggs’ situation, for example, but bad enough. From truly exotic and intriguing novels, the ‘Elemental Masters’ have devolved into popcorn for brain – you read those novels once, and move on.

…Earlier in the ‘Elemental Masters’ series, there were even two anthologies – collections of stories written by other authors, set in this Mercedes Lackey’s universe – this particular universe was so good. Now it is not. Sad, but that is real life for you. It sucks… and that is before ‘Cats 2019’ got released today, (Dec 20, 2019). Between the bizarro take on the titular critters in question and the already problematic plot, (especially in regards to coherence), ‘Cats’ in particular isn’t a musical that takes well to the movie screen media, period. ‘Into the Woods’ was bad enough, but it had a plot that was both cohesive and coherent…more or less, but it was still hard to swallow on the Big Screen; even the ‘Phantom of the Opera’ does, and it’s the king of all musicals, (so far). And ‘Cats’ is a musical based on a poetry anthology of T.S. Elliot, a classic of English literature that these days is virtually unknown in the world outside of English language and literature academia, which is what the world deserves – there is a God. …Andrew Lloyd Weber and his team combined the anthology into a single musical – the anthology itself is just that, a collection of nonsensical poems about various cats in London-town, (that’s London, Great Britain, not London, Ontario, Canada), and the result is just that – ‘Cats’. A musical… or rather a series of musical numbers performed by actors, singers and dancers in cat costumes with some plot going-on. This… is not encouraging or easy to transfer to the movie screen, and, apparently, during the adaptation process, many things went wrong…to a point where a blueberry-blue Will Smith from ‘Aladdin 2019’ begins to look wholesome and realistic. Anything else?

No, not really, not right now – real life still sucks, though the ‘Cats-2019’ rant did make it better. Maybe more some other time, but for now? See you all soon instead!

JW: Motion comics part 3 - Dec 13

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so sometimes when you go online and find a really great story that helps you get through the day – then you are quite lucky. And sometimes you go online and see the next installment of JW’s online motion comic, and that is something else. So, let us talk about it.

…Well, first let us make a shout-out to Netflix’s upcoming ‘The Witcher’ series. It is shaping up to be the next GoT series and rightly so, because it’s author, Mr. Sapkowski, had written the original ‘Witcher’ as a series of books, not unlike Martin’s ASOIAF series, but with some differences: for one thing, the first book (or two) of ‘Witcher’ are more like series of stories and novellas rather than proper novels. For another – Sapkowski has actually finished his ‘Witcher’ series, while Martin’s ASOIAF, (which separate from HBO’s GoT, FYI), remain unfinished, for all sorts of reasons, but still unfinished.

…Will I be watching Netflix’s version of ‘Witcher’? Having actually read the original novels, I’ll probably pass – yes, the goal isn’t unlike that of Martin’s ASOIAF, or the ‘Jupiter Ascending’ film that’d come up to the movie screens few years before now, (i.e. before 2019) – it’s a space/fantasy opera, full of swords and sorceries and politics and plots. There are actual monsters – ghouls, vampires, sirens/mermaids, etc. There are dwarves and gnomes and elves. It is everything that a fantasy fan wants, but you can only read the entire series once before having enough – it will stoke the fires of your inner fan for months to come. That said, I want to point out that the word ‘Witcher’ is nonsense: Sapkowski’s own word for it is ‘wiedzsmin’ or something similar, (I don’t know the Polish language all that well), which roughly means ‘man-witch’ or ‘witch of a male gender’ in other languages, and in English language specifically, there are several words that also have similar meanings, words such as ‘sorcerer’ and ‘warlock’; J-Ro has actually used the latter in her ‘Tales of Beedle the Bard’ story anthology, remember? …Probably not, since between ‘the Cursed Child’ and the current Newt Scamander series J-Ro has really muddled her own fandom, but it is there. Why did the English language adaptations of Sapkowski’s series had to create the word ‘Witcher’ and the good old ‘warlock’ could not serve is anyone’s guess. Human logic is one of those reasons as to why real life sucks.

And why does real life suck in this instance? For personal reasons – sometimes your life just changes for the worse and you cannot do anything about it, no matter how much you struggle to figure out a way out – but we digress. In other news, Weinstein – Harvey Weinstein – paid 25 million to get the charges dropped and be a free man – so much for #MeToo, put otherwise.

Listen. Back in 2016+, the whole damn process was supposedly precisely aimed at this sort of thing – for men in power not to be able to buy their way out of their crimes… but this is exactly what Weinstein seems to be achieving… so it all comes back to money. Not surprising – post Cold War, the U.S. philosophy was increasingly dominated by capitalism and it was all about the money, so now that the country is trying to distance itself from the all-mighty dollar – it does not work. It does not work for several reasons, including the one that is that from the 1990s onwards the U.S. increasingly tried to be a utopia and it failed for all sorts of other reasons, but regardless, money and the money cult do not make things any better either. ‘Frozen 2’ is a typical example of that… but we have talked about this movie already. Let us try to talk about the latest installment of JW’s motion comic, as we promised.

…Okay, here we got no money or philosophy, but a direct continuation of the first two parts; it even features Rebecca Ryan the news’ anchor and her nameless husband as well more new characters. Two of those characters are zoo workers – an Afro-American woman named Rachel, (yes, JW seems to have a problem with names that start with the letter R for some reason) and her Anglo-American co-worker, (of male gender), while the third is a journalist reporting to Rebecca, named Julie. Again, by utilizing the motion comic format, JW avoids from giving any characterization to any of its’ human characters at all, and as for the non-human characters…

…As for the non-human characters, this week’s motion comic featured that good old favorite, Rexy the T-Rex. Here, the motion comic picked up where the last JW film ended, (among other things): Rexy confronted Leo the lion at a zoo, and here we get to see what happened next. Nothing much, sadly: Rexy and Leo roared at each other some, and then human-piloted helicopters arrived and led Rexy off into some ravine. Kind of a letdown, especially since Leo was not backing down from a fight: the keepers may have been able to take wives and cubs to safety, but not him, as you can see in the motion comic. Maybe in the future installment he and Rexy will be able to have their final face-off? That would not be bad, especially since the actual franchise was never against blood and death, until now…

…Here I am talking about the pteranodon. The motion comic itself is confused as to how to call them: it calls them both ‘pteranodon’ (as a plural) and ‘pteranodons’ (ditto) within a couple of sentences, so let’s call them pterosaurs instead. In the motion comic, Rebecca wonders if they’re the same pterosaurs that were seen at lake Mead, and then one of them picks up some random guy off the street and drops him into a fountain, (so the shmuck probably survives this fall), and that’s problematic on so many levels.

Firstly, the lake. In the U.S., there is a lake Meade, which is located in Pennsylvania, and is not a lake, but an ‘unincorporated census-designated place’, whatever that means in normal English, and second, there is a Lake Mead, which is a lake, albeit an artificial one, which lies on the Colorado River. Which one was talked about in the motion comic is anyone’s guess.

Next, the pterosaurs themselves. The truth is that Crichton never wrote about pteranodons – his pterosaur species was the Cearodactylus, a flying reptile that looked more like the ornithocheirus from the 4^th episode of ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ (1999) – no horn on the head, and the jaws aren’t a toothless beak, but have teeth that function like a fish trap and a keel-like ridge as well. Why the franchise decided to replace them with the pteranodons onwards from ‘The Lost World’ film if not from the original JP one – is anyone’s guess, but by now the pteranodon are firmly a part of the JP franchise. Live with it.

…Living with the fact that the entire JP franchise, starting from the already mentioned ‘Lost World’ film depicted its pterosaurs bipedal like birds at least some of the time is harder. People know that on the ground pterosaurs moved on all fours like bats rather than just on their hind legs as birds do: just look at Hatzegopteryx in the final episode of ‘Planet Dinosaur’ (2011): the show showed scientific proof that on the ground those aerial monsters moved on all fours. So why are JP pterosaurs bipedal? Let us blame Dr. Wu, I guess.

Finally, the matter of size. Pteranodon was one of the bigger pterosaurs back in the 20^th century, (maybe even the biggest back then), but now Quatzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx shadow it: Pteranodon has only a 9-m wingspan; theirs was much bigger and they were even larger than the pteranodon was. So how did this flying reptile became so much larger than a human as shown in this motion comic, (not in any of the movies, mind)? Again, it is probably the fault of good doctor, so let us move on to the final part of this discussion:

I.e. on one hand, this motion comic is not so bad, the plot is fairly straightforward and the characters are consistent. On the other, the plot is also unsatisfying and tries to have it both ways: there are scary monsters, (I am sorry, but a T-Rex is certainly a monster, albeit a real life one), but also – that no one gets hurt.

Yes, this is the sort of ambiguity that has haunted the Western movies lately, ever since Rose Tico mentioned about defeating the First Order with love, not with violence. This is not how it works; this is not how it worked in the original trilogy, it was more of a ‘speak softly but stand-up for your principles’ instead, so Rosie, you got it all wrong. Still, the SW9 film is almost upon us, so it will be interesting to see as to how team Resistance co. defeats Palpatine and etc. Real life may suck, but often there are movies (and the like) to carry us through…

This is it for now, however – see you all soon.

Kings of Pain 2 - Dec 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks and your family does its’ best to make you feel worse. You cannot escape them, not really, and certainly not legally, and if you aren’t ready to cross the legal lines, you are in trouble, and if you are-? Then you are ready to spread your trouble to your immediate vicinity and beyond because you are that badass, (but in a bad way, so do not get too cocky). …And so I tried to escape into the realm of TV for some sweet release, and what do I find there? ‘Kings of Pain’.

Now, I have been talking about them in passing in our last few entries, but I tried to avoid talking about them directly, because there were, and are, better topics to talk about; this time though there aren’t any. Oh, sure, there are also the news that the Marvel TV as such is being assimilated into the greater MCU, but this was in the cards all along: FOX mutant TV shows and FOX itself – cancelled/concluded/assimilated. Netflix TV series – cancelled or finished. AoS – finished in summer 2020. C&D – cancelled. Runaways – finished this winter, (2019/2020). And then there were none, and Disney+ is coming out soon, so any outsiders shall be dealt with accordingly. Yes, Sony showed that Disney/Marvel juggernaut is not so tough. Yes, until Netflix’s rights expire properly and for real, (we’re talking about the Defenders here), Disney/Marvel isn’t about to use any of them in its’ movies, TV shows, and so on, lest there be a copyright conflict issue. Quite a while back, Lionsgate made an animated ‘Planet Hulk’ film, and so we got ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ film the way we got. Disney/Marvel isn’t quite as badass as it appears to be, but it’s close enough, the end.

…Not that DC is much better – remember the Maxwell Lord situation that we have mentioned earlier? That is typical for DC, however – the ‘Arrow-verse’ is tight, and nothing else in DC-verse is. What does it have to do with ‘Kings of Pain’?

Here’s what: just as Disney has clamped down tight on its’ YouTube aspects – ‘Mulan’ barely got any discussion, and what did occur was carefully controlled and positive – so has ‘Kings of Pain’ stopped appearing on YouTube at all, even on the official YouTube channel of History TV. Why?

…Before we get into it, let us give a dishonorable mention to NatGeo, and not just because its’ website is now a paysite. Aside from the online paysite, NatGeo has two other main sources of sharing its’ info: the magazine, (which is always available on the site, of course), which is available as a corporeal, paper magazine, (duh!), and also on the YouTube channel – as videos. Actually, there are several connected YouTube channels that are property of the NatGeo brand, but…

…But now that the mothersite of NatGeo is a paysite, NatGeo releases its’ videos on its’ YouTube channel very rarely and very sparingly and they are only clips from its’ various shows now – no news. You get only what you pay – how commercial. They are not about to share much freely, but neither are they about to abandon this venture either.

Why is NatGeo’s YouTube info free? Hard to say. Various movies, TV series, etc., are for cash only on YouTube, but not short episode clips – just look at BBC Earth YouTube channel, for example. Video clips that are under 5-10 minutes are free, and apparently, NatGeo has to follow this rule slash guideline as well. Therefore, it does, and it does so by releasing only a couple of clips per week at most – yay. No.

How does the History channel compare to this sort of thing? Just like the BBC TV family on YouTube, it reveals plenty of episode clips from its’ shows on its channel – the full episodes are available on the History website where you need to sign-in, join-in, etc. Fair enough, but lately there are no episode clips of ‘Kings of Pain’ on YouTube, only full episodes on the History website proper. Why? Does the team of the History channel consider this show so good? Let me give you a hint: they are not.

…On this week’s episode, ‘Kings of Pain’ dealt, first, with the toe biter, aka a giant water bug. Note the ‘bug’ in its’ name – this is important, because the leads of ‘Kings’ called it a ‘beetle’ repeatedly on the show instead. ‘Bugs’ aren’t ‘beetles’: the two groups of insects are separate and distinct as much as – cats and squirrels, for example.

How you differentiate beetles from bugs? Beetles have two pairs of wings. The hind pair of wings is membranous and transparent and is used by beetles for flight. There are flightless beetles, of course, but they still have front pair of wings that are more properly called the elytra and aren’t wings at all, but hard covers that protect the vulnerable hind pair of wings and the soft abdomen of the beetles.

Bugs also have the membranous hind pair of wings and they too can fly, and they also have the elytra, but their elytra is only partial, it only covers part of the hind wings and of the abdomen, giving bugs a very different appearance from the beetles.

The second main difference of true bugs from true beetles is that all of bugs have a proboscis – a sharp syringe with which they stab their food, liquefy from the inside and sap it up. Beetles, conversely, usually have jaws called mandibles and they chew their food up – but they are a very varied group, and some beetles have adapted to eat liquid food also – we are talking about the stag beetles and their kin, so this method of separating true beetles from true bugs is not as reliable as the first one.

…And then we have the Wikipedia that already has done the hard stuff and you can always look it up to see just what you are dealing with, broadly speaking. Team ‘Kings of Pain’ did it – in this episode, they also list a number of lay names for the giant water bugs aside from the primary toe biter moniker that they clearly got from the Wiki – so why did they insist on calling this insect a ‘beetle’? Giant water bugs are no more beetles than cats are squirrels, you know!

…My money is on the show itself – it has its’ good aspects still, but so did AoS, and on ‘Kings of Pain’ we may be dealing with an AoS level of bad. The main leads seem to be decisively unenthusiastic when working with each other, they have no chemistry, and sometimes they appear to honestly hate each other sometimes, or at least – not like each other very much. Sometimes their banter does seem natural, but this isn’t enough to save the show entirely, so why the apparent VIP treatment by team History? Because they consider the new show to be that good, (it isn’t), or that bad, (it just may be)? Everyone can draw his or her own conclusion.

…The other animal featured on this week’s episode was the scorpionfish and that came with its’ own problem. You see, the term ‘scorpionfish’ applies to a very large family of fishes, scientifically known as Scorpaenidae. The lionfish, which appeared in an earlier episode and was referenced here, is actually a lay name for a fish genus named Pterois: it includes several fish species and is a part of the Scorpaenidae family, aka the scorpionfish. This particular ‘scorpionfish’ featured on ‘Kings of Pain’ didn’t look anything like a lionfish, but there are several genera of ‘scorpionfish’ that resemble each other very closely, (which is why the scientific names of their genera sound similarly), so it’s hard to figure out just what species of ‘scorpionfish’ ‘Kings of Pain’ used in their show. Of course, in the wild the scorpionfish live mostly in Indo-Pacific, which is nowhere near Baja California where this episode supposedly took place at, but not exclusively so, as the wild lionfish do, so let’s give ‘Kings’ the benefit of doubt on this one and call it a day.

Anything else? Well, Boris Johnson, who is the U.K.’s PM (for now, but still), had hid in his fridge to avoid an interview on live TV – nice. It is because of actions such as this one Ms. Greta Thunberg became TIME magazine’s person of the year… but we have already mentioned that real life sucks, so let us call this an end for this rant.

…Ergo, this is it for now, so see you all soon!