#But in general it was still watchable and enjoyable

[wingamy24]

"gas leak year" really isn't that bad. there are some episodes that aren't great but overall it's pretty much indistinguishable from any other season. (I have no idea how hot this take is, it could be lukewarm)

I've actually mentioned this before: In my opinion, S4 is the worst one, but it's definitely not the less enjoyable. S4 basically grabbed all the characters and exaggerated them to the point that they felt like cartoon characters. Even though I feel like it's overall not a good season at all, I enjoy it much more than S6. I physically can't bring myself to watch S6: It's just really bland and boring to me.

I also have a whole other issue with what they did with both Annie and Britta, but I already talked about that. The post linked to Britta is by @confused-much, and I agree completely with the whole post. What they did with Britta on S6 was WILD. Buuuut, we did get a bunch of Jeffbritta moments, so I'm not gonna complain.

Another thing that confused me about S4 is Pierce. He felt... likable? Don't get me wrong, he's still an ass, but I felt like the writing of the characters on S4 was so bad that it somehow made Pierce a likable person.

In general, I think even though gas leak year is pretty horrible, I think it's way more watchable than S6. S6 is still better, but god, is it boring. Its nice to see the whole gang together for the last time on S4 as well. S4 has some of my least favorite episodes, though.

[the-sinful-voice-witch]

Since according to one of our Cartoon Network gods 🥰 Craig McCracken the Powerpuff girls will be back in a proper reboot❤️‍🔥 I want to review another version of them... No, not the 2016 vomitive bullshit I hope soon to be lost media because nobody should acknowledge the existence of such an disgusting garbage tarnishing our childhood🤢🤮, that abomination doesn't deserve the time of anyone🤬... (I apologize to those who liked it but... I stand by what I said😖)

This is about one adaptation that though it was cut short due to the lack of success in audience but that it wasn't that bad, is still watchable and enjoyable and it has actual funny moments but in the end it was too far away from being a Worthy adaptation of the PPG, I'm talking about:

Powerpuff girls Z!!

We have to keep in mind the show was adapted to japanese audience and has the concept of ✨"Magical girls"✨ so they made lots of changes: the very first one I strongly disliked was that they weren't sisters and they weren't professor Utonium daughters, that alone made me irrationally hate the characters that were the girls individual families (yeah you're going to notice how salty I am about this xD). With that, one of the things that fans loved the most that is the very loving, funny and cute father-daughters interactions disappeared, seriously the girls still hang out a lot in his laboratory but it's not the same as the beautiful moments we got in the original show like how he plays tickles with them, how he kisses their heads to wake them up in the morning... 😔

And another thing is the girls personalities and dynamic between them and don't get me wrong it's not like they are unbearable or awful they are entertaining but in my eyes is just that they aren't "they"... And specially now that I re watched some things to make this review because... I realized that Z Buttercup and Z Bubbles have a bunch of fucking shippeable interactions in the show😨😨. If you were too young last time you watched it just search on YouTube a video of their interactions and you'll see! I'm not that twisted I swear!! Sometimes they literally look Like a married couple and Z Blossom behaves as if she was their daughter, Z Bubbles was even blushing in the first episode when she recognizes Z Buttercup from their School and saying she looked up to her and in general I found their interactions too shippeable and yeah in this universe they aren't sisters but is still incestuous as hell in my head 😖🤯

So individually speaking: Design and personally

For design in general I dislike that the style is not quite unique as I would have liked it, this character design resembles too much to Magical Doremi and something that really bugs me is that the PPG here are in an age between 13 and 14 so they are teens... Yet they made them look like little kids, you can see in the show that they are older than that only when they stand next to a younger character like Ken and like I said they resemble too much to the Magical Doremi girls and those girls were only 8 years old, there's a big gap between 8 and 13/14 you know? Specially for girls. This PPG don't have a single trace of "womanhood" In the shape of their bodies. I would have liked something more like Tokyo Mew Mew style since they were teenagers with (no sexualized) hips, bust and breast shape but the PPG have completely Flat undeveloped child bodies that don't correspond to their ages. I mean if you wanted little kids OK, the original where basically toddlers but if they are teens they are teens! Make some distinction between a teen and a 8 years old other than being tall please.

Z Blossom: Her clothes are nice and I think it fits her well, here she became a genki dumbass girl because they targeted her as the main protagonist (and is apparently a magical girl rule to make the main character a genki mostly dumbass girl) which is one of the things I dislike the most, with fanfics too, I hate when they are too much Blossom-centric if is a general story because to me the others are just as relevant and Blossom ends up being the main focus because she is the leader and is in the center and is seen as a big sister (which she isn't because they all popped alive at the same time) but well, even if it is mentioned several times at the beginning the show actually gives the three the same importance and as the original show sometimes there are episodes where one of them is the main focus so... Half-Ok. Genki is a Japanese term for very energetic characters and that's another problem, it feels like she just sucked all Buttercup's and Bubbles' energy and looks too chaotic hyperactive, her intelligence and liking for studying is nowhere to be seen, only you see traces of her being smart when she thinks of a plan. Also she is a sugar addict (that could be the hyperactivity explanation 😐) and is really thirsty for boys, ok look, is not that I think Blossom is out of character for being thirsty over a boy is just that she wouldn't be thirsty over EVERY cute boy she sees (but curiously not the RRB 🙃) . The original Blossom is a responsable (most of the time) dorky bookworm who likes to learn things and cares about her looks and brags a lot and...this one brags a lot too I guess? But even if Blossom had her not very graceful moments she wasn't as chaotic dumb as Z Blossom,🤦‍♀️. She also doesn't look popular in her school unlike the other too, I kind of feel bad about it, I always dislike when she is put in fanfics as the most or only popular of the three for a reason that usually is that she is a super hottie while her sisters aren't 🤨(but almost always with a repellent bitter personality 😑 that makes me question that popularity) but to no making her popular at all? Come on can we just agree that the 3 of them are meant to have their own fans to their different personalities and looks please? Smart, kawaii and sporty are popular in Japanese anime schools. And another annoying thing is that she also has an annoying bratty mean little sister nobody asked for😬😒 nothing like her original awesome actual sisters 😤, Blossom deserves better. Well at least she is cute and fun but is not very accurate to Blossom.

Z Bubbles: Ok Bubbles is my favorite but Z Bubbles lacks of some Bubbles things, I mean is totally fitting that she would be popular with boys but this way is not how I imagined it: a enthusiastic Kawaii girl that could be scouted to be an idol, instead she is a fine lady like mannered elegant girl (because of a strict traditional grandma nobody asked for 😑) that likes fashion, (i mean it makes sense for both her and Blossom to like that so.. That's ok) but my problem is that even if she is still a bit of an airhead she is way too calm and collected! TOO CALM!! Z Blossom absorbed practically all the usual enthusiasm and energy she should have and also given that her attribute is the "sugar" It would have been more fitting for her to be the sweet addict don't you think? Where is your sugar girl!?😫😫 Her civil clothes... one looks like an uniform and its a bit weird because in their school nobody wears uniform which is unusual in Japanese schools, to be honest I would have liked to see all the three of them in uniforms her other outfit is ok. Her hairstyle is a bit too complicated, I mean I don't dig in those loop style piggy tails I'll rather have normal piggy tails for her (she has to sleep with some balls with her hair around them to keep the shape, looks uncomfortable as fuck). It feels to me like a half baked Bubbles, almost but not quite there.

Z Buttercup: Thought her personality is decently similar to the original: tough, not as polite as the other two, sports star(she has fangirls 😆 which I think fits perfectly in her anime persona) there's something that rubs me the wrong way. In anime there are different kinds of tomboy characters (I kinda want to make a post about about it) the type used for Z Buttercup is not the one I think fits better, is way too overly against anything "girl related" to the point she'll despise the idea to spend time with other girls or even being acknowledged as one because being girly is "uncool" but is not like you see her with boys either unlike the original and Mitch. The original Buttercup defended womanhood and the right to be rough and tough and to like things usually "meant for boys" without being any less of a girl and she never disliked being a girl or tried to physically hide it, I totally think she would be offended if someone mistook her as a boy and would get a punch 👊😂. I don't think she hating dresses and skirts in general is accurate, what I think she hates are clothes with a girly or flashy style, she would be just fine with a simple denim skirt but she would absolutely hate something like a tulle skirt, in the original she is ok with her simple dress but she was upset with the pompous party dress she used in one episode.

A dress and a shirt don't have to be always too femenine and I think the magical dress isn't exactly a style she should hate that much because is not that girly, it has a football jacket 🤷‍♀️and fingerless black globes. To be honest she looks like a crossdressed boy, let me explain 🙌: her civil clothes are 100℅ masculine that mixed with her mannerisms, her Japanese name used for boys too, her voice with the tone used to play little boys roles and her spiked up hairstyle (that is the style Butch should have had) and as I mentioned before her completely flat without a trace of womanhood body makes her look like a crossdressed boy, in fact when Butch stole her dress in that episode he looked more like a girl than her because of his hair and feline eyes 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️, why can't she even have eye lashes if the other two have eye lashes? I want the 3 to have the same eyes style 😭. I have to mention that there was a make over episode where she gets a more femenine look to please a guy 🙂🙃 Emmm ok, that dress she wore was... Not so bad but just as she would hate tulle, frills are also not an option 🙅‍♀️ but I was very pleased with how they re styled her hair, it was almost like the original 💚. So the tomboy type I like for her is the girl with the boyish mannerisms who likes tough sports and has short hair but not necessarily boy style (like a Bob) and wears sporty style clothes that ok can be pants but also can perfectly wear a skirt like denim, or leather fabric or a Hoody dress and she could even wear make up like a simple eyeliner, that's it. Anyway according to the show she is the way she is because of her dad and 2 brothers 🙄thay nobody asked for (By the way I hate Z Buttercup pijama, looks like a Harlequin disguise 🙅‍♀️ like she is disguised as "Z Him")

Magical Dress design and Tranformation sequence:

Oh girl, here I go... I'm going to be mean... After seeing some designs in the artwork I feel robbed. I FEEL ROBBED!! Look!! LOOK!! 😤😤

I can't Fuckign believe out of all THIS☝☝☝ they went with that plain flavorless boring dress with a short sleeves football jacket?(why the fuck buttercup's jacket is yellow? I don't care buttercups are yellow, I didn't like it🙃) ROBBED WE WERE ROBBED!! And the transformation sequence was... MEH, not very superhero fitting, again they copied magical Doremi transformation style 🙄🙄 the only thing I rescue is that moment when Z Buttercup gets the skirt because her face and how she moves her legs is hilarious but really the animation is slacking in general, they should have been put more effort in the transformation sequence and also the weapons... sorry but magical girl or not I find insulting that the power puff girls needed weapons and a belt to transform NOPE, sorry Blossom for Ladybug kinda worked but you a yoyo?😕 Bubbles used a giant bubble blower? Ja. ja. hilarious.😐 I would have liked it better if she blew the bubbles directly from her mouth or her hand making a circle👌and Buttercup using the only thing that is an actual weapon, a giant hammer like Amy rose? Also Fucking yellow like the ugly football jacket? I just don't like it yellow, I don't care buttercups are yellow ok 😂 but honestly Buttercup deserves boxing globes because I rather have her punching instead of smashing like girl you're more of a Knuckles Girl type not an Amy Rose girl type... That's more like Blossom or Bubbles.

Secondary Characters:

Mayor: I'm disappointed he isn't bald and doesn't use a little hat... Was it so hard to give him a Chibi form? Something like Iruma-Kun's demon grandpa. Actually we were robbed again! One of his previous design had a more accurate design as the original and it was adorable and funnier! This one has such a BORING design... Like a background character... Mayor should stand out more!!

Miss Bellum: first of all... Why the hell is she blonde? Nop this is unforgivable, she is a REDHEAD, yeah yeah you kept the gorgeous body and the face hidden joke but she isn't blonde! 😑 also she doesn't have as much presence as her original version which was a role model even more than miss Keane for the girls to look up to but well she is still there I guess. Poor Miss bellum, here Fuzzy tried to pull a Browser with her 😂😂 but this isn't as funny as when he wanted to do that with the professor in the original show.

Miss Keane: nothing much to say in general, her design is pretty good for an anime version of her but unfortunately see isn't much relevant in the show.

Professor Utonium: they wronged you so much professor...😤😤 Instead of being the father of 3 super awesome super powerful girls you are stuck with a unoriginal tiny version of you of a son taking all the screen time you should have 😭😭😭 also he wasn't even the one who accidentally creates something, in this case the chemical Z, that credit was for a fucking robot dog!!! But at least he actually has a wife 😂😂 but he never sees her... 🤪. You know what is ok, if his screen time is not him being a dad with the girls I don't want it anyway 😒.

Ken and the robot dog: Out of the principal four protagonists the girls and the professor individual families Ken is the one I wrinkle my nose the most when he shows up, like who the fuck needed a junior Utonium playing son? NOBODY ASKED for this character and didn't make things more interesting and on top of that he has more screen time than the professor 😒😒, I guess is because in magical girl animes the adults barely have important roles... So we better put a random kid just because 🙄🙄. And the robot dog who talks I suppose is the anime version of talking dog but downgraded, because talking dog was a Fucking real dog DUH! Nobody cares about this robot, is so irrelevant I barely remember anything about him just that they tried to make a emotional scene with him at the end of the series. And my greatest resentment against Ken... He actually has a mom😒, of course since you didn't pop out of a concoction but you popped out of an actual woman but still... The actual daughters of the professor never got a mommy, you know what? It's ok they had miss Bellum 🖕🖕, and I'm not gonna hate the mom because she has the decency of only show up in one episode and didn't took screen time from the professor 😤 uff I'm way too salty about this...

Villains: (note, I'm going to complain a lot about how the colors aren't bright 😅)

Mojo Jojo: Why must you make a mockery of a villain that had such a great origin story... This one is too silly, he lacks of aggressiveness. Silly as mojo might be, this one is right away a pushover and is insulting! Mojo was very important in the original show and... This one looks like the principal villain but... No... His personality just won't do... Also why is he so tall? And I don't like his green! His green was brighter!! You know like ☢️ radioactive

Him: Excuse me but... He is a drag queen not a Fucking son of a Harlequin clown, he doesn't even look that demonlike, well yes, he looks like a possessed cringy clown doll... But uff I miss his bright color palette, he needs more RED!! Anyway he was the source of the black energy that created all the villains, as the lore of the show that wasn't that bad, keeping aside his downgraded looks.

Fuzzy: given the scenario I suppose he is pretty accurate, again with his color palette dulled, but he pretty much was dececently similar.

Princess: I know her name is princess but... What the fuck with those clothes? They took it too seriously, she is a rich mean girl, kinda like a bee queen... She should be more stylish, not a girl disguised as a tacky medieval princess, not even the original one who was 5 did that with her civil clothes and I hated her hairstyle when she goes villain mode😑. Her personality is... Half baked, she is still spoiled, nasty and mean but like not as mean as the original and well actually I do like when sometimes she wasn't bad but in general not the anime version of princess I would have liked. Also what did I say about please make a distinction between a teen body and a little kid body? 🙄 he looks even younger than the PPG and she is the same age!!

Sedusa: WHAT were they THINKING with that DESIGN?? Yeah sedusa had big eyes and a big head and didn't have a nose BUT THAT WAS IN THE CARTOONISH version!! She is supposed to be a extremely attractive woman not a fucking monster 😂😂 she is so out of the place with the style of the other characters! Also she is actually a normal girl that turns into this thing they called Medusa when she puts on lipstick!!😨Was it so hard to hit with the black ray an attractive thief woman so she gets magic hair?🤨🤨 And seriously, her body is ridiculous in this anime style, no even miss Bellum was that exaggerated

Gangreen gang: excuse but again, isn't anime style supposed to make characters more good looking? How the fuck they managed to make them uglier? Again with the wrong green color! but seriously what are those designs?! Is like they couldn't decide between the American cartoon and the anime style ☹️☹️... And they changed the gender of one of the members I HATE THAT. Oh look for Arturito there was a Chibi version unlike with the mayor 🙄.

Ameba boys:......i don't really know what to say about them... So... Meh? 😑🤦‍♀️ yeah that will be enough and one of them is a girl now. I could live without the original ones too to be honest.

Rowdyruff Boys: My heart is completely broken. 💔 Why? Why, why? Just WHY?? 😭😭😭 in this show I couldn't ship them with the girls!!! Because this time the boys are basically Mojo and the girls sons!! 😭 you don't know what I'm talking about? In this version the boys were made with Mojo's arm pit hair, his DNA and Blossoms saliva, Bubbles ear wax and Buttercup's foot sweat 😵😵 so their DNA, just like children are made from mommy and daddy DNA 🙈🙈😭😭😭 each boy is basically each girl son WITH MOJO 😭😭😭. I'm not going to bother to review the three of them separately because they have exactly the SAME personality🤦‍♀️, I like their outfits better than the girl's outfits thought Butch face and hair design is just... 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ emo bangs? SERIOUSLY? I want the Vegeta hair back thank you😤😒 Also I resent with all my soul that they got to be brothers while the girls couldn't be sisters 🤬🤬 and I can't believe how much of a bad joke they are compared to the originals, hello? The originals were intimidating characters that were pretty much equal to the girls in battle and they were dangerous thugs, here they are just 3 gross kids that fight throwing saliva, ear wax and sweaty socks 💔🤦‍♀️ they wronged you so much my boys and they took away my shipping energy by making it incestuous 🥲🥲

Others:

Duchess: well look at that, the 2016 abomination wasn't the only PPG adaptación that utterly disrespected the fourth Puff in an insulting way... She shouldn't exist to begin with, she was not only a wannabe Bunny but she also stole Princess original role: a rich attention seeker bitch who buys a supersuit more stylish than the PPG dresses, wanting to be a 4 PPG and also wants them to look bad... What kind of bullshit is this?? What she was is what princess should have been in the first place, and they dared to put Bunny's color theme, she even has the same hair color 🤬 and FUCK I hate how much I like her super outfit 1000 times more than the PPG outfits 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️. They wasted the chance to make an emotional episode using Bunny's lore. Maybe a girl in a wheelchair or another disability (since Bunny represented disabled people) that gets saved by the girls and wished to have the same powers and return the favor and she gets them in a accident, then saves the girls and loses her powers and then moves away from the city after saying goodbye (so that things doesn't end up as tragic as the original but still ends emotional) see? Something this simple would have been more respectful towards Bunny than this unnecessary bullshit of a character.

Cody: There's a few original villains of the show that I don't care about but I'm gonna talk about this one because of his relationship with Bubbles. This character basically is a hospitalized boy who was Bubbles childhood friend and first love, he gets hit by a dark ray and turns into a beast, so we could have a "beauty and the beast" With Bubbles. I just find curious that his design could be considered another version of anime style Boomer, his hairstyle is similar and he has darker blond hair and darker blue eyes and I wonder... I have the Headcanon that the creator of this character was a boomubbles fan that was as frustrated as me that the rrbxppg weren't shippeable here so they made a character who looks like boomer to make a love story with Bubbles 😂😂😂 what do you think?

Well in general I believe that this show was watchable and entertaining but as anime is not a very remarkable one, it doesn't have a particularly good animation (is a bit sloppy) or good script and definitely I don't think it does justice as an anime adaptation of another show like PPG.

Jeez... I think I roasted it too much 😶😶, I know that normally I talk about why I love things but sometimes a girl has to vent 😅👉👈, I apologize to those who loved this show 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️ sorry 😅😅

[somedayillbepeterpan]

I tried to re-"catch" the feelings I was having from watching Crash Course in Romance.

So, I looked into my deep watchlist and ended up with two very thoroughly enjoyable k-dramas that are re-watchable for a picky watcher like me. This is going to be long so read below if interested about the k-dramas Our Beloved Summer and Reply 1988

our beloved summer

I'm a sucker for slice-of-life stories. while this story navigates through different timelines, it expertly toes the line between the past and the present thus presenting a full growth for each character in this simple yet relatable story. i love the script. i especially love the ost which i listen to every day even after finishing this drama a couple of months back.

our beloved summer, adapted from a webtoon, is the story of Choi Woong and Kook Yoon-seo who became viral after starring in a documentary about the contrast of the top and worst student in their highschool. that alone makes you curious. it's a catchy premise and the whole story manages keep the premise alive until the end.

the story is simple and you can guess where the story is headed. but what made me stay is the pacing and the writing. and it being true to what it set out to do-- to say that love can be found in different people in different times. but there are special moments where you find a different love in the same person at a different time.

i can confidently say that Choi Wooshik and Kim Da-mi are both actors to watch out for. they are not just made for the small screen. they each have such a presence that can't just be contained in a small screen. or maybe i just loved their chemistry so much. it's not even that kind of chemistry where it will grip your heart but it's the work that they put on both characters to make them as authentic as possible. i was drawn in on how they portrayed Woong and Yoon-seo. i was drawn on why they did what they did that led to their eventual *spoilers ahead* break-up and subsequent marriage.

watch this if you're not too heartbroken and you like a slow paced stories that fleshes out human emotions particularly of love-- to a romantic partner, to a mother, to a friend, and to found family.

i particularly loved the way they blindsided me about the reason why Woong was the was he was and why in a way he couldn't open himself up completely to Yoon-seo made me fall in love with the writing. with the sheer amount of content and stories readily available for us to consume, you become so desensitised that it's sometimes a welcomed gift when you don't get to predict what happens in a story.

that particular scene where they get back together and Woong says "...please keep loving me," is engraved in my heart.

--the only downside to this wonderful drama is a 1/4 of a love quadrangle that is too green to handle a wonderful script like this one. you'll know what I'm talking about when you watch it.

2. reply 1988

i don't know what got me drawn to the works of the tandem director Shin Wonho and writer Lee Woo-jung but i am so glad that i am. i started with hospital playlist after seeing so much memes about it and now i can't imagine my life without hosplay (i still watch the whole thing like every month).

but i'm not here to talk about hosplay but the third installment of the critically acclaimed "reply" series.

Reply 1988 is the highest rated in tv ratings among all the "reply" series. and i can totally understand that as this show captures all the tales and woes of each generation.

i can say that the number 1 appeal of the Shin-Lee series' is the nostalgia and the bravery it takes to tackle the simplest yet the most constant worries of a human.

for the 3rd "reply" installment, it goes back to 1988, before the year looked funny (as you will see on one of the episodes). there definitely is something true about that as that's when all the technology in the world started to become accessible.

this show crept up to me (much like Prison Playbook). this was my second attempt at watching it since the first time made me drop it for being too "scream-y" which to be honest, a lot of shows are anyway. but what made me stay were the moms and dads. only did the last few episodes made me notice the actual gang of young misfits.

i loved the way it tackled real-world, real-family problems without being preachy. i love the way the pacing is so slow and nostalgic. i love the way all the families interacted with each other and with the other families.

don't come watching this show for the love story (although i absolutely loved who the main girl character ended up with). come watch this show if you enjoy stories about family dynamics.

--the only thing i didn't like (and this is just totally me), is how the noona who seems to be levelheaded fell in love with an immature child. maybe i was too salty to understand how it all went down but it just wasn't for me.

[anastasia-queen]

(MLB Movie Spoilers) What my thoughts the Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir The Movie?

I recently watched the Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir The Movie, and I must say it was an enjoyable watch. However, it does contain some issues, primarily from the fast pacing in Act 1, whether becoming immersed in this universe by seeing the similarities and differences to allow the audience to have a visual representation to see how this universe deviates from the show's continuity while still feeling connected to the source material, understanding the character's motivation to connect toward them on a personal level, or how quickly Marinette and Adrien gain their miraculous.

There are other issues contained within the movie does slightly hinder the experience of being immersed, like Plagg's unnecessary gross-out humor, the anti-climactic defeat of Gabriel, and some of the transitions in the musical performances of the voice actors, specifically between Marinette's voice and singer-actors. As a result, it makes Marinette's wants, desires, and meanings while singing feel less authentic because it feels like someone else is singing through Marinette than the actual Marinette singing.

Although these issues can pamper the watchability and enjoyment of the film, I still believe there are more positives within this film to outweigh the negative aspects, specifically their focus on redefining the importance of Ladybug and Chat Noir as a timeless and iconic heroic duo on equal terms. As a member of the MLB community, saying these words after three terrible seasons of poor writing, character assassination, and author favoritism is a blessing. Also, seeing classic LadyNoir action and chemistry is always a blessing.

As for other positive aspects of the film, I must say that the animation and art style are eye-dropping in a good way. (The amount of expression of life through the movie animation alone is remarkable and highlights the character's personalities. The art style is pleasant on the eyes, whether stationary or in motion. It gives you a sense of fantasy endearment/appeal and wonder. The lighting for the film is also fabulous.)

As for the writing for the movie, it is not groundbreaking for the characters or anything high, but it does do a solid job showing the growth of the characters through the theme of self-discovery and the importance of believing in yourself, even if the triggers of their development start within songs, which of speaking musical performances they are great. All of the singer-actors are a treat to hear.

The Miraculous Ladybug & Cat Noir Movie is very similar to the Steven Universe movie, with a general intention to make a movie that is connected to the source material and expand the worldbuilding for new audiences, but as well is a movie that reminds old audiences why they feel in love with the series, to begin with. Whether from the character's chemistry, simple but effective storytelling, great interesting characters arcs, and more, It is all there, and I appreciate this movie for that.

My Final Verdict & Ranking on the Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir The Movie is a 7.7 out of 10. (Animation 9.5/10, Score & Music 7.5, Pacing 6.5/10, Writing & Story 7/10, Overall Enjoyment 8/10 = Total 7.7/10) It is a good film that returns to the series' core roots and identity while still being unique within its rights and succeeding. However, it is not a film I would particularly rewatch so often or even consider perfectly timeless, which is fine because not every movie needs to be a grand event to notice and be successful. Sometimes, a simple story can go a long way. The Miraculous Ladybug & Cat Noir The Movie is a must and enjoyable watch for fans who miss the golden era of the show quality.

(Sidenote: because I didn't know where to put this.) The fact of the matter is that the movie has the honor of allowing Adrien and Gabriel to know each other identities and address the inner conflicts of their characters is legendary. (However, it doesn't mean it is perfect because there is a bit of a pacing issue with Gabriel getting to that destination. However, the movie's approach to this idea is leagues better than the actual show's attempt by downright removing Adrien and keeping him in the dark from the pivotal moment in the Season 5 finale.)

[nitrateglow]

Beyond its general weirdness, what fascinates me most about Deadhead Miles is the obscurity of its production history. I’ve done research trying to find out the general timeline of this strange odyssey’s creation, but with every new scrap of information I encounter, the questions remain. It doesn’t help that all the principal players in the film’s production remain reluctant to discuss it as anything but an unfortunate embarrassment.

Here’s what I’ve encountered:

Everyone was enthusiastic about Terrence Malick’s script. Malick was a few years away from his directorial debut, but in the late 60s and early 70s, he was an up-and-coming screenwriter. He contributed to drafts of existing scripts and penned a few of his own. Deadhead Miles was one of these and according to a production report from the time, Cooper was based on someone Malick once knew (though this could just be ballyhoo).

According to those who have read the original script for Deadhead Miles, the style was very “literary” and the material came off as something that would have been difficult to transfer to the screen under the best of circumstances. Still, it enthused the producer Tony Bill and the star Alan Arkin, so the project was greenlit.

The director was an underground filmmaker named Vernon Zimmerman. He would not go on to have a prolific film career, though he’s gained some level of cult immortality for his 1980s slasher Fade to Black, which is about a movie buff who goes on a killing spree while cosplaying as classic film characters. According to Wikipedia, he now works as a script doctor and creative writing teacher.

According to a 1971 issue of Sight and Sound magazine, Zimmerman and Arkin fought for control of the editing room. Zimmerman initially insisted on editing the film himself, but afterward, Arkin went in and made his own alterations. “There was bitterness among all these people, but Paramount will be releasing the film later this year,” S&S claimed.

Of course, the film was never theatrically released. In a 1976 issue of After Dark, Tony Bill claimed that it was all on account of Paramount executive Frank Yablans, who hated the movie (Yablans would later produce and co-write the infamous Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest, a movie that’s miles less watchable than Deadhead Miles, so maybe he didn’t have much of a right to talk).

My gosh, just… I would love to know more about how the shoot went, and the differences between Zimmerman and Arkin’s edits.

Bill and Arkin have both written off the film as a mistake in later interviews, but I still say Deadhead Miles is a fascinating and enjoyable ride for those willing to go on its wavelength. I don’t expect it to ever be given the Criterion treatment, but I hope someone will unearth more of its history someday, while some of the production team is still alive.

[mouseratz]

Friday the 13th rankings (in order best to worst but not numbered)

these are like kinda good I enjoyed them

part 6 (Jason lives). its a horror comedy. it's really fun. not perfect but like just an enjoyable movie

part 5 (a new beginning or something like that). Really interesting setting & protagonists, the primary bad thing I have to say about it is the original twist ending is kind of dissatisfying, but it got retconned anyway.

part 7 (the one with the psychic) love the protagonist/final girl and the audacity of the concept. however, while it has some fantastic scenes, it's paced badly and has a pretty dull middle.

this is okay I guess. not good but not awful

part 4 (The "final" chapter that. Isn't final.) I slept through most of this one but Tommy's cool.

these stink sorry

part 3 I watched this very recently and remember little to nothing about it except I think this is where Jason gets axed in the head. An improvement over the first two but still generally kind of a nothing movie.

part 1 & 2. (the originals.) they feel like the exact same bad movie. boring and nothing to me. they're over hour long movies but they feel like there's about 20 minutes of actual plot.

part 8 (takes Manhattan) what is even going on in this one. I appreciate the sloppy special effects but that's it it's both boring & incomprehensible.

Jason goes to hell. this one just isn't watchable. I cannot force myself to finish watching it

[sambinnie]

1. Solstice again. Creeping from the still house into cool air, then a run to smooth waters where even the dogs and their walkers haven’t yet rambled. We swim in almost-silence for a while, like steady kayaks, with a chiffchaff serenading us and the last of the willow fluff dusting the surface of the water, fish occasionally glopping upwards to grab a passing insect.

Home to pick a posy for the table. I must not fall asleep as soon as I sit down. I fall asleep instantly.

2. This spring has been wonderful. Besides the puffs from the willows along the river, the chestnut trees drip sap onto the pavements so our shoes click with every pace, and the ducklings, goslings and cygnets gather around their beady-eyed parents. Dragonflies and damselflies drone over the river. Huge poppies have grown in the chaos of the garden, I assume where I threw the seeds from pavement poppies last summer, and bees roll around among the stamens like playing puppies. I drive past the supermarket and see several people tending to a horse in the neighbouring scrubland.  

3. Have you finished Succession yet? This final series has been my favourite yet, for possibly obvious reasons — my stress levels were lower than my enjoyment levels for the very first time, so I could fully savour exactly how brilliant every single aspect is. Cast, crew, production, script — everything is perfect, and yet how hard to communicate why a programme about the world’s worst people is not just watchable but probably the best TV this year. This Vanity Fair clip with the director of the scene on Connor’s wedding boat is excellent and describes so well how TV like this is a kind of alchemy.

4. A brief sojourn to a foreign city, where the cathedral left me chilled but a record store was so exactly like the ones from my teens that I welled up and had to be pulled away. How do smells cut through all barriers and transform us so completely to our previous selves? I wanted to stay for hours and flick through every single album, and end up buying four, two I’d love immediately and two I’d hate, but would stick with because albums are never cheap, and the two that were harder work would become my favourites and stick deep in my brain forever. I thought myself too cool to be a Feeder fan at the time, but watching this video now I want to weep at how normal we all looked then, how clunky and average and awkward, how anyone who grew up in the 90s would recognise those bedrooms, that wallpaper, those lampshades, and how humans are so dumb to grieve things we didn’t even want at the time. 

But sometimes, for brief moments, like when you are standing at the stove making lemon and courgette risotto and listening to Head Like a Hole at full volume, your teen self and the adult self you thought you might be meld perfectly and all is well with the world. 

5. We read this book in bookclub recently, and I was struck at how we all struggled to verbalise our feelings about it. Was it good? Bad? Confusing? Funny? Unsettling? It was all and none, the live example of imagining a colour you’d never seen before. I was reminded of these two videos the algorithms had fed me, on Outsider Music and how audiences misunderstood the film of American Psycho when it first came out. Weirdness is so challenging, so aching and unsettling and new to brains which generally thrive on conformity and predictability. In the latter video, the film’s director Mary Herron says, ‘I have to always remind myself, sometimes I don’t get it, you know, when I first see something… particularly if it’s unfamiliar, it can be quite… there’s something uncomfortable or disturbing or it seems boring or like it does’t work, and it’s also because you’re just not attuned to it yet and it’s just sometimes you take time.’ Like those albums as a teen, the best, weirdest, most brain-engaging stuff often takes much longer to chew, but it’s almost always worth it.

6. (We also watched Mustang, which I recommend to literally everyone, although it does nothing to disprove my theory that all good woman- and girl-based films are secretly also horror films. But it’s brilliant, so please watch it if you haven’t already.)

7. I intend to make this tonight for the Solstice feast’s dessert. Happy summer, pals.

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2023: Reborn In Another Season As An Isekai Enjoyer

oh nooooooooooo

Idolish7 Third Beat Part 2 (Appendix 1)

The third extension of Idolish7 finally found the opportunity to end, or should I rather say, stop. At one point, I quite liked Idolish7. I don't know whether the show got significantly worse, or whether I just grew tired of it - likely both. In any case, this season was mostly just remarkably boring. Most of it is preoccupied with getting Trigger over - which I can't even call a failure, but it just takes them from annoying jerks to blandly affable. Revale have been sucked dry of anything interesting previously, and Idolish themselves are mainly just going through the motions, more circular histrionic Mezzo drama included. And the new guys, Zool, just fill the newly vacant "annoying jerks" niche. Though to be fair, Toma's slow realization that he's in a band with a bunch of selfish assholes and a cartoonishly evil manager is probably the best legitimate thing this season does. The unintentional high points are rare as well - sometimes the silly drama drops into silly silliness so hard it becomes funny, such as when a murder attempt is the perfect launchpad for some terrible manzai. The epic speeches can have some cringe appeal as well. But the best single moment in the show is when Iori calls Tsumugi in the middle of the night to talk at her on the roof about how Riku has become so moe he might destroy the world, while Tsumugi seems to be trying to figure out how she can leave without turning her back to him. That's some Babylon-tier entertainment right there, but of course it amounts to nothing. Everything amounts to nothing, it's just a soap opera at this point. I don't think I want to find out in exactly what way the upcoming Nagi drama also amounts to nothing, to be honest. 4/10

Trigun Stampede

I've said before that I only watched a bit of Trigun and barely remember any of it apart from not being a fan. What I do remember though is that it's nothing like this remake. I hear that the original gets more dramatic later on, but even so the appeal is probably finding sudden depths in a silly action comedy. Stampede on the other hand mostly resembles someone's awful Trigun x Advent Children fanfic (see attached picture). Which makes Orange's decision to painstakingly recreate the animation tropes of 90s action comedies in 3D puzzling, because as good as they are, now they're in a show where they don't belong. Also, it's nice that Orange have figured out how to make appealing 3D animation in general, but I really don't care how much you spin your camera if you're spinning it around uninteresting characters in an uninteresting, generic desert setting (to be replaced with a uninteresting, generic tech hallway setting later on). It's still watchable, especially early on when the content is more episodic, but it never amounts to "enjoyable" unless you're awfully interested in how to apply production wrong. 4/10

Nijiyon Animation

Nijigaku never was the most interesting Love Live, and its "full" version already trended towards the contentless side. Nijiyon is just an even more stripped down version of that. Not that that's a surprise, I suppose it's pretty much average for a tie-in short, but it certainly doesn't reach the highs of a Garupa Pico. The adaptataion of Miyako Hito's character designs to 3D animation also leaves quite a bit to be desired. On the other hand, 3 minutes a week don't need to be good to bother with, and there is a few episodes that are a bit more creative than not at all. Overall, barely acceptable for what it is. 5/10

Koori Zokusei Danshi to Cool na Douryou Joshi

Now this is a case where I don’t even know what to say. This show is so insubstantial that I had to spend the season with a team of particle scientists at CERN to even determine with 3-sigma confidence whether it actually exists. Now, lack of much of anything means there’s nothing to take exception with, so it’s not a bad experience in the moment, but in hindsight it becomes hard to argue that there wouldn’t have been better ways to spend the time - especially since the ending is somehow the least committed part of it. It does have its occasional moments, but even those are mostly happening in the periphery with the supporting cast. It’s cute and not annoying, but that’s not really the standard anything should aspire to. 5/10

Ooyukiumi no Kaina

So here's the other adventure anime of the season, and since I talk about it later, it's better than Trigun (and no, Hikari no Ou will not show up later since it was too bad to pick up). It doesn't have the luxurious character animation, or to be more precise, it has actually pretty bad character animation courtesy of Polygon. But on the other hand, the environment is worth showing in the first place. In fact, Kaina's gorgeous and interesting setting may be its biggest asset, since the characters are fairly bland and the story is extremely basic and somewhat flimsy too - it's hard to describe since languid pacing isn't exactly a rarity, but this one just doesn't feel slow, it feels lacking in content. this gets better towards the end, but even then it's just barely enough. So no surprises coming from Nihei. And yeah, there's a bunch of Blame references too. So, not exactly great but unlike Trigun, at least moderately engaging. 6/10

Benriya Saitou-san, Isekai ni Iku

They did it, the absolute madlads. Now, Handyman is not the first isekai story worth watching, but it may be the closest to the average basic bitch isekai that pulls it off and the first to have the curse-word in the title. That said, it still isn't really one of those (if it was, it would be terrible by definition). What it actually is is a fairly widely scoped fantasy parody, and since isekai is just the prime trope in fantasy nowadays, isekai takes a fairly major role but it isn't what really defines it. I'd describe it as somewhat like early Discworld through the lens of LN fantasy ca. 2023. And then it just stops being a moderately funny comedy and turns into moderately engaging drama, mostly centered around senile wizard Morlock. Like Kaina, it isn't outstanding or anything but it does feel pretty special for making this work at all, starting with a cursed genre and then pulling off the hairy feat of changing tones. I respect it. 6/10

D4DJ All Mix

This seemed like a pretty safe bet, and I can't say I'm disappointed. Another competent Sanzigen adaptation of a Bushiroad gacha franchise, what a time to be alive. That said, All Mix is not as good as First Mix mostly on account of First Mix actually having something resembling a story. All Mix now features 6 bands and especially early on, all it can do with it is giving all the characters a chance to do their gimmick in turn. Thankfully that gets better later on, but even then it's only episodic mini-plots with one or two bands. Lyrical Lily gets comparatively the most attention, and they're a pretty likeable bunch, but they're still no Happy Around. So All Mix has all the Umamusume focus problems while not even having the occasional real standout subplots of that show. It's cute enough, but very insubstantial even compared to its hardly profound predecessor. 6/10

Sugar Apple Fairy Tale

Conventional wisdom says that a romantic comedy doesn't need much more than two good leads, and by that metric Sugar Apple Fairy Tale certainly delivers. Ann and Challe have a good, sweet and spicy dynamic going on that's consistently entertaining. So far so good then, what's the catch? The catch is that this isn't a romantic comedy and often tries for drama, and on that front it doesn't do so well. But first, I'll say that this show's takes on slavery and misogyny aren't so hot. Not that I expect nuance or complexity from a thing that has "fairy tale" literally in the title, or that I think they have the wrong attitude, but if all you're saying amounts to "it sure is bad", that's not worth the time this show spends on it. All it does is fuel the drama, and as stated, said drama is not the highlight anyway. The cast beside the main two is a mixed bag as well, especially the moustache twirling villains, who just keep stealing Ann's sugar for moustache twirling reasons. The setting is functional but not much more than that. So in the end, this show has quite a bit going for it but instantly gets into trouble when it tries to do anything more meaingful than cute fluff, which is fairly often. 6/10

Mou Ippon!

Mou Ippon is extremely easy to describe: It's a very simple but competent sports shounen manga adaptation with a notably strong cast. That right there tells you everything you need to know, good and bad. The bad is limited to the "sports shounen manga" part, because that kind of storytelling just never quite works for me in animation. Whenever sport is taking place, expect an intense amount of sideline commentary and minutes of flashback in the middle of every other throw. It just is what it is. The "simple" part is already more of a benefit than a detriment though, because Mou Ippon knows what it's good at and stays in its lane, which is giving the characters room to do their thing. And all the characters, including all the opponents, are likeable and fleshed out just enough to make them seem fully realized, without overcomplicating things. This leads to some nice positive seishun vibes, and while the simplicity limits how good this show really can be, when executed this well I'll take it over misguided ambition everyday. It's just enjoyable. 7/10

Tensei Oujo to Tensai Reijou no Mahou Kakumei

So after Handyman Saitou was pretty decent, this one is the real twist. Sure, it doesn't have "isekai" in the title, but that's only the top of the list of garbage LN source material tells, and "tensei" is right behind it, just ahead of "yuusha" and "maou". So imagine my surprise when the "reincarnation" part of this show is entirely limited to about a minute of conversation in the final episode and even then its relevalnce is questionable. That's as good a way to do it as I've ever seen, question remains if they really had to pull a ruse like this. I've seen plenty of pointlessly isekai shows before, but they were never as minimal as this and more importantly, they were never good anyway. And Tensei Oujo is good indeed, it's a solid romantic fantasy drama with a setting and characters strong enough to carry that weight, and it's simply fun to see trash queen Anisphia and cool princess Euphie develop their relationship through trials and tribulations that are neither too farfetched (for a fantasy story anyway) nor too generic - mostly. Yes, the base content delivers, but there's still too many underwhelming lazor fight scenes that add nothing and aren't exciting in their own right, there's too many plot arcs that repeat too many of the same beats, it's a bit too talky and slowly paced, and the drama flips into melodrama occasionally, especially towards the end. So it is indeed a light novel, but I won't hold that against it too strongly when it delivers the one thing I didn't expect, namely a real ending. And that ending has everything one traditionally expects from a proper ending too: closure, denouement and lesbian sex. 7/10

[projecthipster]

(500) Days of Summer

"It's these cards, and the movies and the pop songs, they're to blame for all the lies and the heartache, everything. We're responsible. I'M responsible. I think we do a bad thing here. People should be able to say how they feel, how they really feel, not some words that some stranger put in their mouth. Words like love, that don't mean anything. Sorry, I'm sorry, I quit. There's enough bullshit in the world without my help."

This is a hard movie for me to review because in order to acknowledge its goodness I have to confront my own most entrenched flaws. A lot, like a LOT of the stories in these lists of Hipster Things have to do with the flaws of pretentious men in various ways. Almost like that’s a theme, hmmm. Of course I mean pretension by the definition: an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment. I tend to do a lot of aspiring and intending, and then real life, or my own usually psychological shortcomings, which are both extensive and multitudinous, get in the way. I do this with jobs, and trips, and just about everything that could be overplanned. And I do this with relationships, which gives me a desperate escape route out of the personal and back into (500) Days of Summer, which will still be part of my ongoing personal crisis of ambition, but more by proxy. Yeah, officially the title has parentheses.

Tom (Joseph Gordon Levitt, of giraffe fame,) is a guy. He studied architecture (like me,) but he’s working as a writer for a greeting card company, selling the natural pithiness of all quirked up white boy indie protagonists as little marketable epithets of condensed pith (not quite like me, I get my pith out in guiding tours, plus I have Tumblr.) He’s desperate for some sort of romantic affection (same) and the meat of the story explains to us his tendency to project onto objects of his own affection and imagine great significance in relationships based on the smallest indications (do I even need to say it?) This movie is, the narrator tells us, a story about love, but not a love story. That’s good par moi. I don’t tend to like love stories. They’re full of artifice and only serve to make me feel lonely, which I don’t need any help with. The chronologically earlier and more love-story-esque portions of (500) Days are watchable because of the flash-forwards to more enjoyable post-breakup scenes of abject misery and self-loathing. That’s the good stuff! And since Tom's incurable romanticism is what hurts people around him and spells his own misery, I think that technically makes this an Aristotlean tragedy.

Opposite Tom is famous quirky girl and hipster darling Zooey Deschanel (Franny Deschanel unaccounted for) playing the role of Summer Finn, whom he immediately falls for after she shares and compliments his music taste. Understandable - wouldn’t we all? Summer insists that she doesn’t believe in love, but is happy enough to fool around. Tom wants her to completely fill the void in his heart, so he outright ignores this and imagines her as his forever soul mate. Again, mood. The crux of Tom’s development is him growing past this pretension, though it ends on a hanging note of asking whether he can ever really change. That makes it sound like a tense or dark cliffhanger, but it’s more of a tongue-clucking “oh, that man!” kind of joke.

And that brings us to why I like this movie despite my general disdain for romcoms. In the hands of another director, aiming for a more serious introspective tone, this whole more realistic plot could be depressing as all get-out. But instead, Marc Webb, who had until then directed music videos and would go on to direct some mediocre Spider-Man movies probably just because of his surname, honed the late-2000s quasi-indie halfway-to-a-music video style to a point. (500) Days of Summer isn’t afraid to be fun, to skirt reality with fourth wall breaks and flash mobs, or to drop for a minute into a parody of expressionist silent film. Mostly this stylistic flair is comedic. In one especially memorable and compulsively rewatchable sequence, playing Tom’s expectations of a party next to the reality, it’s wrenching and all too real, but most importantly it’s interesting. This is hardly an arthouse movie, but it outshines its genre in creativity and care for its characters and storytelling. The soundtrack helps here. Scattered throughout the movie are needle drops from the record collection of the coolest 2000s hipster you’ve never known: The Smiths get a whole scene, my Calgary homegirl Feist is here, along with the obligatory Simon and Garfunkel, a Pixies cover, and an improv dance number to Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams.” Overall the movie rides a nice balance being too cutesy to tolerate and too grim to enjoy on a lazy evening.

I give this Hipster Movie four yearning glances out a train window out of five.

Project Hipster is a futile and disorganized attempt to dive into the world of things that the internet has at some point claimed "are hipster," mostly through ListChallenges search results.

This review comes from the tenth list, 80 Hipster Movies You Must See.

Stay deck.

Next up: one rather more violent movie or another, it depends on some circumstances.

[catofadifferentcolor]

Little Women (1994)

"I should have been a great many things."

There's something about the holiday season which always reminds me of Little Women. To this day I cannot hear "Ding Dong Merrily on High" without thinking of the 1994 movie.

I've watched the movie several times over the years, though not since I moved to where I now live some time ago. Which is odd, because it is a movie I truly enjoy as one of those rare adaptations that manage to distill the spirit of its source while still remaining a watchable movie. I'd even go so far to argue that in some respects the movie is better, avoiding most of the preachiness of the book without ignoring the essential Transcendentalism of the March family, which shapes the narrative in innumerable ways.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the 1994 movie is one of the rare movies which manages to transcend its source material - which is quite a claim, given the book it's based on.

I think part of the problem is I'm not really a fan of the book. I've been rereading it this week, needing something light, but realized about 50 pages in why I'd not much thought about it since first reading it in 7th grade: it's a product of it's time. It's pithy and enjoyable and well-written, but unfortunately digresses into moment's of the above-mentioned preachiness and little side-stories like the Pickwick Papers that aren't outright objectionable so much as annoying.

All that being said, I am a fan of this movie. Most of what I find annoying about the book has been cut out of the movie to streamline the narrative, or else is mentioned only in passing. All of the roles are incredibly well-acted, even if the actresses playing young and adult Amy look nothing alike except in the way all blondes look similar. Winona Ryder's Jo March will always be my Jo March, bringing the character to life in a way that's hard to articulate. She has just the right mixture of wildness and softness, and avoids being too much one or the other in a truly excellent way.

Or, to put it another way, I could watch this movie dozens of times more. After I finish this reread of the book, I'll probably never touch it again. Which is probably a matter of taste: the same year I read Little Women for the first time, I also read Lord of the Rings, which made a far greater impression. I grew up on Star Trek and, while I can appreciate 19th century bildungsroman with the best of them, it's not quite to my taste.

Which I guess is the takeaway. Although based on a post-Civil War novel, the 1994 movie works as both a well-acted, well-written period piece and as a coming-of-age movie for the generation that first watched it. Although firmly set in its time period, its message transcends time in a way the source material can't quite manage. I cannot recommend it enough.

[theharpermovieblog]

#HARPERSMOVIECOLLECTION

2023

I re-watched Subspecies (1991)

Since the 5th film in this low budget b-movie franchise is out now, I figured I'd go back and rewatch the original.

College girls in Transylvania become the prey of a ghoulish vampire.

Horror franchises are probably the most well known horror out there. Everyone knows Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers and The Evil Dead series and Scream and Aliens and etc... But, there are franchises that no one other than deep dive horror nerds have seen. Director Ted Nicolaou's Subspecies series of films is a prime example of this.

Made through Producer/Director Charles Band's Full Moon Features, The Subspecies franchise is probably one of the better things to come out of Full Moon's library. They're the production company behind the Puppet Master series and several other cheap horror flicks.

The subspecies series isn't anything special necessarily. It's cheap, it has terrible music, it can be a touch leaden at times and in general they are crappy but watchable horror movies. They are however no worse than most other horror franchises. And what they also have in common with other franchises is an iconic villain.

The Vampire Radu is a long fingered, blood spitting, raspy voiced freak who is instantly memorable. The actor Anders Hove has played the character in each film and, along with the makeup, he has the looks and voice to be effectively creepy.

This first film in the series is pretty alright for what it is. If you like mid 1980's and early 1990's B-horror, it'll fit easily into a movie night. And, if you consider yourself a horror nerd completionist, you should probably look into the full series.

It's not a very pretty looking movie. Cinematography isn't great, no amazing shots or lighting choices made. The use of actual historic castle and structure locations is pretty helpful to keep things authentic. The acting is a mixed bag, being sub par to good enough. Like I said earlier the musical score is Casio nonsense and terrible. The film isn't really well structured, because you see the monster almost immediately, so from moment one all surprise is out the window. Like, they make zero effort to hide him in shadow or build up to him. He's definitely too well lit for many scenes and it's a mistake.

Despite the many problems, it's still very watchable and enjoyable. Scary? No, but the bad guy looks cool and that's sort of worth it.

There are a few laughable moments, but nothing that makes it rise to so bad it's good. It's more just acceptably bad and it's definitely a series I'd like to see get a higher budget reboot. It takes itself a lot more serious than most Full Moon produced movies I've seen and if you took the minor lore that's already in place you could expand upon it.

Overall, Subspecies is a very flawed b-movie that walks the line of being a memorable franchise. Maybe I only like it because I so badly want it to be better than it is.

As a horror nerd, I see the potential in this one.

[eversonzoe-reviews]

Love Actually by Richard Curtis

In this review, I will be talking about the Christmas hit film from 2003, Love Actually written, produced and directed by Richard Curtis. This seasonal romcom is one that I put on every year to get me into the holiday mood. This film encapsulates the perfect amount of love, heartbreak, comedy and frustration for its audience to watch time and time again. It is a classic that no one can deny. 

The film centres around a group of ten seemingly random people during the run-up to Christmas. It shows their lives and how different they all seem to be, however, as the film progresses, it shows how they all are connected. They all know someone who knows someone and that is how they are connected. The film is a visual aid for the saying ‘a small world’.  It is a brilliant plot because slowly as the pieces come together you can’t help but fall in love with each character, bar one or two, and get excited when a piece of the puzzle fits to complete the bigger picture of the film. The film has also generated some iconic scenes from Hugh Grant dancing around number 10 to Andrew Lincoln’s iconic love confession to Keira Knightly with the big cards and the CD carol singers. 

The film is a culturally British film from the British cast to the humour. An American could not have written this film because it encapsulates the different yet uniting sense of humour that is found in the different generations of Brits. From the crude language and humour from Billy Mack, portrayed by Bill Nighy, to the self-deprecating and shy type of humour from Jamie, played by Colin Firth, and the childish yet comedic language used by Sam, played by Thomas Sangster. The film does not get old and is enjoyable for different generations every time. It is not only a Christmas film but also a film that is watchable throughout the year like on Valentine’s Day. 

 The cast is a start-studded one with actors ranging from well-known names at the time like Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Liam Neeson. There are a few like Keira Knightly who shot to fame during 2002-2003 due to her roles in Bend It Like Beckham and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and also Love Actually. She was only eighteen at the time but was landing roles that would later be remembered as iconic. There were actors also like Thomas Sangster, who went on to big roles down the line in his career, but a lot of people will remember his role as Sam in Love Actually. It is hard to believe since they do not look their age, but Thomas and Keira were only five years apart when they shot the film. It still shocks audiences when they remember that Thomas plays a ten-year-old and Keira plays a 20-plus-year-old. The cast is an iconic one and will always be remembered as one since everyone carried on their careers to do more iconic roles like Alan Rickman in Harry Potter as Severus Snape and Andrew Lincoln in The Walking Dead. 

The film has become a tradition for many that symbolise the winter season or the Christmas season but most definitely the season to be with loved ones. Whether it is family or a significant other it is held deeply in many hearts because of just how centred it is around love and life and the celebration of different types of love. To me, the most iconic scene and my favourite scene is the opening scene. The airport scene where they film the arrivals section of the airport. It summarises the whole point and sentiment of the film in one scene. The voice-over that Hugh Grant offers as well during the scene just adds to the emotional essence of the scene. It does not include any of the cast which makes it feel more real and makes the film feel more realistic since they are normal people coming together and reuniting with their friends, family and lovers. There is a scene at the end of the film that is also an airport scene that has some of the cast in it but it has a different feel to the first one since we know that not everything is okay between all the characters and that they did not get a traditional happy ending but that is okay because they got an ending that is realistic but also satisfactory.  

[casasupernovas]

"The second series of Loki has just concluded, and for many, it will have confused as much as it has enlightened. As with many of Marvel’s other shows and films, the emphasis on world-building has led to nigh-on incomprehensible relationships between the characters, as well as the more sober and sombre tone taking a lot of the wacky fun out of the scenarios depicted. If you fully understand whether Jonathan Majors’ character is Victor Timely, Kang the Conqueror or He Who Remains – or all three, simultaneously – then you’re doing better than the vast majority of viewers.

Yet one aspect has remained consistent throughout, and that is the hugely enjoyable performance by the show’s star, Tom Hiddleston. The actor has been playing Loki now for a dozen years, since his first appearance in Kenneth Branagh’s first Thor picture in 2011. He continues to attract acclaim for his charismatic and charming performance as the time-hopping anti-hero, even if those who have followed the character’s long evolution from tormented but dastardly villain bent on global domination to a likeable, if still morally flawed, protagonist might now be forgiven for feeling confused at the sheer number of iterations of the trickster god that there have now been.

And – spoiler alert! – with the finale’s revelation that Loki has now become the new keeper of time, looking after the infinite number of timelines that the multiverse demands, the show simultaneously gives its anti-hero a satisfactory resolution while, as ever, keeping the door open to future appearances.

Not that we need to see any more of the trickster god. At the last count, Hiddleston has appeared in films seven times as Loki – including uncredited surprise cameos – in addition to the two seasons of the eponymous show, and the animated series and shorts that he has contributed his voice to. It is difficult to think of any other actor who has become so synonymous with a single role in recent times. Whereas most of Hiddleston’s Avengers co-stars alternated their iconic superhero characters with other work – few would think of, say, Mark Ruffalo solely for his performance as the Hulk – he has become defined by his willingness to keep on reprising the role of Loki.

We cannot know whether he does so as part of an ongoing contractual obligation that he signed up to, possibly in blood, when he was a little-known British stage actor over a decade ago, or simply because he really enjoys playing the character, but he must thrive on his regular appearances at such events as Comic-Con, where he is assured of a deafening reception that even the most beloved of rock stars would struggle to equal.

It helps, of course, that Hiddleston is superb as Loki. He was cast in the role by his mentor Branagh, who he had worked with on stage and in Wallander on television, after an unsuccessful audition for the part of Thor, and in retrospect this was the right decision. Just as Chris Hemsworth is the heroic hammer-wielder, so it was clear from the first time that Hiddleston appeared on screen that he had entirely nailed the character, bringing Shakespearean gravitas and an affecting sense of wounded dignity to what could have been a standard-issue baddie with a lesser actor.

He then managed the impressive feat of stealing the show as the main antagonist in The Avengers, spitting off Joss Whedon-scripted one-liners with aplomb, and yet never becoming wholly unsympathetic despite the nefariousness of his actions. And although his subsequent appearances have varied according to the talents of the filmmakers he is working with – his appearance in Thor: Ragnarok was magisterial and hilarious, his brief cameos in the later Avengers pictures less impressive – he remains a compulsively watchable and scene-stealing presence.

There is, inevitably, a downside to all this. When Hiddleston began his career around two decades ago, he swiftly established himself as one of the most exciting young British actors of his generation. Like his friend and occasional co-star Benedict Cumberbatch, he could play charismatic leading roles, but he could also disappear into character parts with ease.

After the inevitable apprenticeship on television – in which he appeared in everything from Casualty to the Winston Churchill drama The Gathering Storm as Churchill’s son Randolph – he made his first film appearances for Joanna Hogg, in the low-budget but critically acclaimed pictures Unrelated and Archipelago, at the same time that his leading role in Wallander as the clear-sighted detective Magnus Martinsson led both to his being introduced to a far wider audience than before. This led to a working relationship with his mentor Branagh, who then encouraged him to audition for Thor. The rest, as they say, is history.

The disadvantage of Hiddleston becoming indentured to the Marvel series is that there has been a steady decline in the quality and the interest of the work that he has taken on outside of the MCU. In 2011 – a year that he must surely look back on as an annus mirabilis – he not only appeared in Thor, but worked with Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Terence Davies, giving memorable performances in roles as eclectic as the decent, doomed Captain Nicholls in War Horse, a louche F Scott Fitzgerald in Midnight in Paris and the petulant RAF officer Freddie Page in The Deep Blue Sea.

He was regularly cited as the most exciting British actor of his generation, attracting a rare mixture of admiration for his intellectual qualities – a Cambridge graduate, he took a double first in Classics – and for his classic good looks. It helped that he was an obviously friendly and decent man, who was charming both to interviewers and to starstruck admirers. The world lay before him, it appeared: an exciting, if dangerous, position for a young actor to be in.

At first, it seemed as if he could juggle the demands of Marvel stardom with other, more demanding roles. He was an excellent Prince Hal, and then Henry V, in the Sam Mendes-produced Hollow Crown series of Shakespearean adaptations, just as he made for a dynamic and charismatic Coriolanus on stage at the Donmar Warehouse in 2013. He continued to work with interesting, unusual filmmakers – he popped up in Jim Jarmusch’s vampire drama Only Lovers Left Alive and Guillermo del Toro’s stately horror Crimson Peak – as well as showing a sense of fun with a cameo in Muppets Most Wanted as none other than the Great Escapo.

By the time that he appeared in the lead of the John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager in early 2016, he was a household name, and that rare actor who could appeal to essentially everyone, from lovers of arthouse drama and Shakespeare to comic-book and horror aficionados. A brief nude flash in The Night Manager, in which he exposed his buttocks during a love scene with Elizabeth Debicki, sent the internet into a frenzy of approbation. He became a frontrunner to play James Bond, and seemed to have the world at his feet. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer, bizarrely, was Taylor Swift, who he met at the celebrated Black and White ball at the Met shortly after The Night Manager first aired. The American singer’s romantic life has been pored over since her first ascent to stardom, and Hiddleston was the latest in a long line of high-profile flings who included the likes of Harry Styles and Jake Gyllenhaal. Swift has form in immortalising her former lovers in song – her hit We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together is said to be about Gyllenhaal – and so the risk of entering into a relationship with her was not only the chance of a scathing break-up song being written about him, but also the possibility, for the first time in his professional life, that the attention directed towards Hiddleston would be unfavourable.

So it swiftly proved, when he was widely ridiculed for wearing a ‘I ❤️ TS’ T-shirt on 4 July. It was rumoured that the relationship was nothing more than a publicity stunt, and that the suspiciously staged-looking photos of the two kissing in Rhode Island or walking hand-in-hand on the beach had been designed to attract media attention. And, as Hiddleston was by far the less famous of the duo, he would, inevitably, be the beneficiary of such scrutiny.

Whether or not it was wholly real, the fling came to an end after a few months, and Hiddleston found himself being briefed against to the media by “friends” of Swift. It was said, cuttingly, that “it was all far too public…Tom freaked her out with his love of the limelight.” Hiddleston, every inch the gentleman, has never said anything remotely disobliging about Swift subsequently. Yet it was still an embarrassing development that showed Tom Hiddleston, actor, what the perils of being Tom Hiddleston, celebrity, were.

Those of us who expected that he would one day make a magnificent Hamlet were disappointed to find that, when he took the role on under Branagh’s direction in 2017, it was a semi-private performance in a tiny theatre designed to raise funds for his alma mater RADA. This newspaper described his performance as “proactive, masculine, edgy to the point of aggression – and definitely, absolutely sane.” Yet only a few thousand people were lucky enough to see it.

Still, if Hiddleston’s choices have often been low-key, there has always been Loki to keep him in the public eye. Yet, surely, the end of the character’s arc, as depicted in the second season of the eponymous show, is the time for this great actor to wish to step away from the golden handcuffs of Marvel and embrace more interesting and challenging roles. Cumberbatch, for instance, has paid off his mortgage(s) while playing Dr Strange, but has also given indelible performances in everything from The Power of the Dog to Patrick Melrose on television, showing a range and depth that his superhero performances barely hint at.

Hiddleston, on the evidence of his career to date, is no less talented than Cumberbatch, but he is sorely in need of greater variety if he does not want to be pigeonholed by a single role. Otherwise, despite the wealth and fame that it has brought him, he might think wryly on what the obituaries will one – hopefully distant – day say about him: “Tom Hiddleston, actor best known for Loki in the Marvel series…”

We can only hope that this fine actor embraces more dynamic choices in his career in due course – one of which may yet be upon us, with his lead in Mike Flanagan’s forthcoming Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck – as otherwise he may yet go down as one of the industry’s great “what might have beens”. And as his legion of fans, the Hiddlestoners, will readily attest, he deserves considerably more than that."

Oh wow that Telegraph article is 😳😳😳

Can someone who subscribes cut and paste it to me? I can only see the headline and first few sentences…

[emletish-fish]

Is the Kobra Kai fandom okay???? I don't watch the show and only know bits and pieces of what's happening because of your blog and people don't seem happy with Kobra Kai's canon.

It seems fanfics are being spitefully written in response and people are so much happier for it.

Is it bad or is it Game of Thrones season 8 bad?

I dunno?

Are we okay, CK fam?

Reactions to the 4 season are...mixed to say the least. It's definitely the weakest season out of all 4. It has some lovely moments and some interesting ideas, but it feels... like a third/fourth draft to me. I feel like they needed to go over it once or twice more, to really iron out some of the iffy bits.

Season 4 is really polarising in how people feel about certain characters/themes. (and to be fair, Season 4 reduced a complex ethical and philosophical difference down to simplistic defence vs offence nonsense with bonus pettiness, so the parts of the fandom that skew younger having reductive arguments about characters, eg character A is special and precious and character B sucks, is something that follows from that).

So season 4 being a weaker season probably explains the explosion of fix-it fics. (I have even written one myself. And I certainly feel better for having got it out of my system. Hawk Deserved Better, and So Did Johnny.)

I still don't know how I feel about season 4 - but I am actually cautiously hopeful that season 5 will be a stronger season. Season 4 definitely feels more like a 'set-up' season, if that makes sense. So I will reserve judgement until season 5 - after I know the end point of all these storylines, it will be easier to tell if the nonsense was worth it or not. (Eg, I loved Robby's plotline this season and it makes more more forgiving of the plot contrivances in season 2/3 to get him to CK, because the story did pay off well).

But that said, CK, even at it's worst, is miles and miles superior to the unending pile of suck and misery that GOT became.

CK is better written, more co-herent, much more fun and has something really interesting to say about the human condition, intergenerational trauma, conflict, mercy and healing - all without gross glorification of sexual assault.

In fact, refreshingly, female characters are very rarely sexualised. I can only think of 1 instance, (Johnny's dream of Carmen), and it was played for laughs, rather than titilation.

Cobra Kai has endearing and entertaining characters, even the evil ones are entertaining in a delightfully fun way. It is a show with huge heart (and campy karate ridiculousness), while GOT only had gritty, grimdark childish cynicism.

So, yeah, CK will never be as bad as GOT.

[dmbakura]

Gf and I have watched (rewatched in my case) every single saw movie (including jigsaw and spiral which I hadn't seen before) and I now have the definitive ranking for all of them, best to worst:

1 - the best, classic, most big brained of them all. Actually just a good movie. Legendary. Like idk just watch it.

2 - already a stupid as hell sequel but still fun. Jigsaw does a little trolling. The game/reveal is pretty cool and I really like watching Mr bad cop beat up an old guy

6 - tbh I rank this one so high because of the piranha scene it makes me lose my mind. It's also just fucking funny and the traps are very good. The political angle is really weird but at least the game is enjoyable and there's not too much of a focus on hoffman

Jigsaw - this one really surprised me. It makes no fucking sense but in exactly the same spirit as the earlier saw movies, while also being well shot and directed. Was very good, enjoyed it a lot

3 - now we're getting a little stupid but not so much in the fun enjoyable way as the ones above. Also this one feels oddly mean spirited in the traps and the lesson?? Jeff is kinda just a frustrating protag. That said, the doctor chick is pretty likeable and I enjoy Amanda being batshit insane so it's still very watchable for me

7 - kinda just a slog for the first half but picks up later. The traps are pretty funny and the effects are endearingly terrible with the 3D gimmick. Dr Gordon's reveal is hilarious (the fact they keep pulling that twist???!?! GFJFJF). Hoffman gets trolled and I'm a fan of that

4 - just kind of a fucking headache and obnoxiously shot. Revealed a literal background extra as jigsaws accomplice with no buildup (???) Literally WHO is hoffman at this point in the series. Gets points because "YOU KNOW NEVER TO GO THROUGH AN UNSECURED DOOR" is the funniest shit. His morality lesson was Not Going Through Doors

5 - hoffman is boring/fucking incomprehensible and the B plot for this one was stupid and disconnected. Just kind of a lame watch. That said

Spiral - I would rather watch saw 5 than this. This shit was so unbearably stupid and boring. Why did they even make this a saw movie. It's like they just had a generic cop script lying around and slapped saw onto it. The traps were not interesting. Tobin Bell wasn't even in it and the voice they used for "jigsaw" sounded like disguised L from the live action netflix deathnote movie. 0/10 awful don't recommend at all

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Do you have any thoughts about the HP movies? (Sorry if you've already done this)

Specifically? It’s been far too long. I’d have to rewatch them and that’s something I just don’t have the will power to do.

As a whole, I think they’re really bad movies, not quite as unwatchable as Twilight, but not enjoyable either. It’s very telling that I haven’t watched them in years.

Generally the films are carried on the backs of cameos by brilliant adult actors with star studded careers. And this is nearly every single adult character. Even bit parts like Ollivander are played by brilliant actors. Hilariously, because many fans don’t watch any other movies. I see many people claim, with no shame whatsoever, that Maggie Smith’s greatest role was Minerva McGonagall. Clearly, no one would know her name were it not for these wonderful movies. 

Unfortunately, these actors don’t appear much, so we’re left to the mercies of the child actor cast. On the whole, they’re not bad, I’ve definitely seen much much much worse. Daniel Radcliffe turned into a very talented actor, Emma Watson is... watchable, and I don’t remember Rupert Grint being unbearable. However, to me they were never that interesting, and it says a lot that Snape, a much more tertiary character, has much more presence in the films thanks to Alan Rickman.

Then you just have the plots in general.

Harry Potter really isn’t suited for movies, it’d be much better off as a series. Most of the actual books isn’t Solving The Mystery, it’s filler. Very enjoyable filler of Ron and Hermione and Harry having a spat about Crookshanks today or going to Divination with Trelawney, but filler. So you got these weird movies that try to focus on the collection of scenes they think are important, when most don’t actually pertain to the Mysterious Mystery, while also giving the Hogwarts Atmosphere. This is also what’s partly to blame for all those Quidditch scenes in the films, entertaining and short in the books, did not translate well to screen.

Combine with this the directors changing nearly every film, no one quite sure what the tone of any given film should be, and everything else and they’re just generally bad movies. Not the worst I’ve ever seen, but certainly not great.

And the fact that people will still insist to me that these are far better than Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” blows my mind every single time.