#I usually don’t realize Tom Kenny is in a lot of stuff until I look at the cast list

[mycotoxin]

So many live action movies nowadays just look like major celebrities running around in Halloween costumes.

[hoogiehowser]

MEDIA DIARY JANUARY

:::::::::: MOVIES ::::::::::

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) I liked this so much I ended up seeing it twice. The animation is on a whole different level from everything else in theaters I just can’t believe it. Nothing has immediately endeared me to a character more that when Miles gets to the place where he’s going to put up graffiti and yells “BROOKLYN!” to get the echo. Absolutely perfect. 

Happy Death Day (2017) The trailer looked good but the trailer for the sequel looked even better. Good time repeating movie. Way better than Blood Punch. I’m excited to see more of this.

Alien: Covenant (2017) Had no clue what to expect going in but I actually dug it. It’s just Alien again like every Alien movie but what they do with David from Prometheus makes it really interesting. There’s also some straight up slasher movie sleaze that definitely appeals to me.

MacGruber (2010) It’s just a bunch of dick jokes while a bad action movie happens. There’s no clever spin to it.

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) Wanted to watch this due to the Fast & Furious connection. It’s a great movie about overachievers and getting away with shit. I think Justin Lin is a great director and his unique voice benefits every movie he does.

Collateral (2004) I didn’t realize until the credits that this was a Michael Mann movie but it was so obvious in hindsight. The premise is simple, Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx are great, and everything comes together in a genuinely cool film.

Wilson (2017) Based on a comic I don’t particularly like from Dan Clowes’ grumpy old man phase. The cool thing about the comic is that each page works on its own and has a different art style. The movie can’t do that. But it’s still faithful to the book which means it feels like a series of one page gags strung together until it finishes. Woody and Laura Dern are great though and it is pretty funny at times.

Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare (2018) There was another truth or dare based horror movie a year before that was a Syfy original. The Syfy one is better. The problem with them both is the supernatural contrivances that make people play truth or dare against their will. It’s such a strained premise.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) Guy Ritchie made a King Arthur movie and it feels exactly like you’d expect. 

Thoroughbreds (2017) Girl who can’t feel emotions befriends girl who is very politely hiding her extreme emotions. Things get bad when they start to think about murder. Anton Yelchin plays a druggie scumbag loser. It’s such a good movie. 100% my kind of thing.

:::::::::: TV ::::::::::

The Great British Baking Show (Beginnings, Collections 1-4) Got addicted to this one. I love cooking competitions shows and pleasant ones are usually the best. I like seeing competitors that like each other. I like Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry not trying to tear people down. I love Mel and Sue. It’s just a nice show for the nice people.

Toei Spider-Man (Episodes 1-5) I’m not a big toku guy but Spider-Verse got me curious about various Spider-Men. Takuya Yamashiro wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider, he was injected with blood from the last survivor of Planet Spider and carries out a mission against Professor Monster’s Iron Cross Army to avenge Planet Spider and his own father. Next to nothing present from the classic Lee/Ditko Spider-Man and that’s totally alright. I’m going to try to watch more because the episode where Spider-Man has to donate his blood to hurt child has some serious heart.

The Prisoner (Episodes 7-17) I started watching this a while ago but only now got around to finishing. Mostly super clever plots and the atmosphere is always great. Patrick McGoohan sells it every single time. Some of the later episodes go really off the rails though. There’s an entire wild west episode. Nothing in this stretch tops my favorite episode, The Schizoid Man, where Number Two brainwashes Number Six to act differently and then forces Number Six to pretend to be Number Six while a different man is already pretending to be Number Six. The ending is solid though and carries a really good tv series to a confusing, surreal end.

Cutthroat Kitchen (Season 7, Episodes 1-7) Polar opposite of The Great British Baking Show. It’s the Mario Kart of cooking competition shows. Everyone tries to fuck each other over and Alton laughs at them the entire time. It’s brilliant.

:::::::::: PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING ::::::::::

TJPW Tokyo Joshi Pro ‘19 (January 4) I don’t follow TJPW and don’t know any of their wrestlers besides Meiko Satomura but I watched this because it was on before Wrestle Kingdom. Meiko vs Reika Saiki definitely made the show worth watching and the rest was pretty alright. Lots of fun, new personalities that I like.

NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 13 (January 4) Probably the most I’ve looked forward to a show and it absolutely delivered. For the past few years I’d watch WK and recommended matches but in in July I started following everything NJPW. That added investment made this WK special. Ibushi/Ospreay tore it up and I really hope Ibushi recovers soon. Jay White/Okada shocked me. Naito/Jericho was fucking brutal. And Kenny Omega vs Hiroshi Tanahashi was a match I was so invested in that I thought I was going to cry. If you haven’t checked out New Japan yet this show would make an excellent start. GO ACE!

Impact Homecoming (January 6) Impact has gotten pretty good. I’ve only seen a few of their most recent ppvs but it’s obvious that they have a wealth of talent and they’re willing to tell the kind of dumb stories that I really like. Since Homecoming was in Nashville I went and it was one of the best shows I’ve been to. The energy was insane all night and LAX vs Lucha Bros has to be the best match I’ve seen live. Now that they air on Twitch I’ve been following the weekly show and enjoying it quite a bit.

WWE Royal Rumble (January 27) I always love the rumble but the rumble was weird. Both rumble matches were okay but filled with dumb stuff and way too many recovery spots that were immediately deflated by the person getting eliminated. I like the winners. AJ/Daniel didn’t deliver like I wanted. Sasha and Ronda had a good match. I loved how Finn Balor worked Brock Lesnar’s diverticulitis. Fun show.

NXT UK Takeover Blackpool (January 12) NXT UK doesn’t really grip me aside from the women’s division. I liked this well enough but nothing really changed my mind. Finn Balor made a surprise appearance and he looked like such a star compared to everyone else. Excited to see what WALTER can do here though.

GCW 400 Degreez (January 12) GCW’s brand of hardcore indie nonsense is my absolute favorite. 400 Degreez isn’t the best they’ve done but it was full of disgusting beautiful deathmatch bullshit. Markus Crane vs Nate Webb especially.

NXT Takeover Phoenix (January 26) Takeover always delivers. Johnny Gargano vs Ricochet was definitely the match of the night. I don’t dig the War Raiders schtick but their match was great. Bianca Belair and Shayna Baszler also killed it.

:::::::::: COMICS ::::::::::

One Piece by Eiichiro Oda (Volumes 1-10) I wanted something long to start reading so why not One Piece? Enjoying it so far. I like getting the crew together and Usopp’s story in particular is great. Oda is a master cartoonist. I love every time we get reaction faces.

Spider-Man: Fever by Brendan McCarthy Spider-Man fever got me wanting to revisit Spider-Man: Fever because I remember liking it. I still like it. Doctor Strange accidentally opens a doorway into a spider dimension and Spider-Man gets caught in Doctor Strange’s bathtub and the alternate dimension spiders take him. All this and McCarthy’s art make Fever pretty far out. 

Spider-Man 2099 by Peter David, Kelley Jones, and Rick Leonardi (1-15) Miguel O’Hara wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider, he had Peter Parker’s DNA put into him by weird future DNA machine and he wages war against the gigantic corporations that control everything. I like Spider-Man 2099. Miguel is so different from the Peter Parker archetype and he’s got claws and fangs. He’s brutal. It’s got a neat post-hero future kind of like Batman Beyond. I stopped reading because the next part is a crossover with Punisher 2099, Ravage 2099, Doom 2099, and X-Men 2099. I’ll hopefully pick it back up because I want to know what happens with the hologram that’s in love with Miguel. 

Spider-Man by Kazumasa Hirai & Ryoichi Ikegami Yu Komori was bitten by a radioactive spider and he definitely wishes he wasn’t. It starts off a lot like our usual Spider-Man but the villains are so much more tragic and Yu deals with some heavy shit. Ikegami’s art evolves from cartoony to serious as the tone of the book changes. He’s a really incredible artist who is consistently pulling neat tricks and trying new things. I really liked this and it may top my favorite Spider-Man comics. It’s just so bleak and unforgiving to poor Yu. By the way, the final plotline is exactly the same as the Sonny Chiba movie Wolf Guy. Turns out the comic that movie was based on was written by the same guy that write Spider-Man. An odd find.

:::::::::: VIDEOGAMES ::::::::::

Axiom Verge Had my eye on this for a long time and finally picked it up on sale on my Switch. It’s okay. There are a lot of clever ideas here that I don’t think work for me. But I do like the decorrupter and the teleport. Some of the movement feels great but some stuff like the grappling hook feels awful. I hate the story. Completely incoherent sci-fi nonsense. But it’s a fun game and I enjoyed my time with it.

Hollow Knight I’ve spent about 30 hours on this game and I feel like I’m close to the end of the story. I absolutely love it. The movement, the combat, and the exploration all feel excellent. I’ve played over ten metroidvanias in the past year (I really like them) and this might be the best. My favorite part about them is how you’re almost never wasting time because there are new secrets to discover all across the map and Hollow Knight does such a good job with that.

[fly-pow-bye]

Powerpuff Girls 2016 - “Witch’s Crew”

Written by: Haley Mancini, Jake Goldman

Written & Storyboarded by: John West, Angela Zhang

Directed by: Nick Jennings, Bob Boyle

Boo! It's the Fly! Pow! Bye! Spooktacular!

On this dark and not-stormy-until-someone-says-"how can things get worse" night, Princess is readying a magic spell at a place that may or may not be her house. Apparently, Princess is the Magica De Spell of the Powerpuff Girls universe, who knew? I always had a feeling that certainly PPG 2016 plots seem to be made willy-nilly, and then they just put in whatever character they feel fits the most. This was definitely true of The Squashening, and this concept kind of makes me feel the same way.

I could even see some sort of alternate universe plot where this takes place in some sort of fairy-tale kingdom, like that one Looney Tunes where Yosemite Sam is suddenly a knight with a pet dragon guarding a magic sword. If that fairy tale kingdom is the same one from Once Upon A Townsville, it's probably for the best that it is not.

I guess from all of the magical smoke in the air, the Powerpuff Girls show up to stop her from practicing black magic without a license. See, they decided to justify why the Powerpuff Girls are going to prepare to beat up Princess, since she's technically not doing anything wrong by trying to improve herself, so they pull out this excuse out of thin air. I'm surprised there's even any justification; previous episodes were happy without one.

Also shocking from this show: the Powerpuff Girls apparently decided to skip Halloween this year, as they're still in their ordinary clothes. Maybe they think they're popular enough to where they can just dress up as themselves for Halloween. Or maybe they just didn't bother when 80% of the episode won't have them in them.

One character sure still does the Halloween tradition, though: Discount Jojo. The real Mojo Jojo would be taking over the world with a death ray that happens to be powered by children's candy. We don't even get that justification; he just wants candy just like an 80's one hit wonder and/or Shaq defeater. Specifically, he wants black licorice. He would not even need the ray gun if he tried that at my house. That is, if I even had that vile weed.

Princess disagrees and most likely lies about not having any candy, and Jojo responds by pulling out his ray gun. The good news is that Princess just happened to have a mirror that reflects the ray. This causes this apparently rubbery ray to bounce across the room until it hits the vat, drowning the room in "magic stuff".

As soon as Princess awakes, she finds out she became an ugly ogre that can burp fire. Discount Jojo gets the rawest end of the deal, as he only turns into an ordinary cat. A talking cat, but we never really confirm if it's one of those Wild Thornberries type situations where only Princess can understand him. One thing we can understand is that the Powerpuff Girls get new costumes after all.

Specifically, these color-coded witch costumes. While Princess and Jojo kept their personalities and general lack of morality, the Powerpuff Girls are fully evil, and are ready to cause mischief with their newly gained evil magical powers! They still seem to have flight and super-speed, right down to the contrails, but they now just shoot beams out of their hands and anything can happen.

Princess has to reverse this spell, and thankfully, her spellbook just happens to have the exact ingredients to reverse this situation, right down to who has what. For example, the first ingredient, which she gets immediately, is one of Discount Cat's whiskers. Apparently, this curse seems to guarantee. Of course, Princess is doing this for selfish reasons; she just wants her old, beautiful body back! Turning the Powerpuff Girls back into heroes that can be beaten by ordinary rope is just the unintended side effect of that.

It's not just because they had very little personality to begin with, but because they may have asked themselves what would each Powerpuff Girl do if they lost their morality and got magical powers. Here, Witch Bubbles is stealing all of the kid's sweets with her new magic, because she's usually the sweet one. Well, not always, but I think that was the theory.

According to her book, her second ingredient is a pigtail from Bubbles. What if the girl she accidently transformed into a witch didn't have her hair in pigtails? We'll learn later that this is pretty much random.

While she figures out a plan, she gets interrupted by a boy in a chicken costume. He asks this person with a great and scary costume where Elm Street is. The joke that is Nightmare on Elm Street exists. She then burns him with some orc fire by complete accident, and he runs off crying. Clearly, this will lead somewhere, but I'm not sure if it is going to be anywhere good.

Princess uses a trail of candy to lure Bubbles to a giant wrapped gumball. The Ogre Princess confronts her and challenges her to a bubble-blowing match. Bubbles blowing bubbles, I think that may be the idea here. Bubbles ends up overdoing it.

The next ingredient on the list is a toenail from Buttercup. Well, she’s screwed; the Powerpuff Girls don’t have toenails. She gets a pretty good hint on where to find her, as she finds tons of tiny Mayor clones running across the neighborhood. Hey, Tom Kenny needed to have his paycheck justified somehow. Witch Buttercup has been going around trick or treating, and turning everyone who didn't have a treat into a tiny Mayor clones. Apparently, Townsville has a lot of houses that give out toothbrushes.

Princess needs an idea to take on this monster, and she needs the book to figure this out.

Immediately after saying she needs the book, she uses it to whack Buttercup on the head. Again, this is fitting, because Buttercup seems to be the Puff that punches people far more often than the other two. Not that great for the whole series, but I get it. I guess you can not prove that she also got orc-like strength from that magic brew, and witches aren’t known for their resilience to bludgeoning.

She then decides to extract the toenail while she's knocked out with a chainsaw. We certainly did not need to be reminded of that commercial that also involves an ugly creature lifting up someone's toenail. Apparently, someone on the crew agreed, as we don’t get to see where Princess could find a toenail on a toeless character design. This all happens off-screen.

We do get to see Discount Jojo-Cat puking into his hat...and putting it back on his head without realizing what he has done. This may explain a lot if this is his normal procedure with puking. We do get to see said toenail once it is extracted, complete with a scream sound, but I already did enough damage by reminding you of that commercial.

Speaking of hate, uh oh, that kid she accidentally burned got an angry mob to go after Princess! They sure love those angry mobs! Clearly, she's going to be chased all the time, hated by even the people she thought loved her.

Or, she can just hide in a bush in a forest, and the angry mob just runs right past it, never to be seen again. Subplot over! Unfortunately for Princess, Discount Cat is stuck in a tree, leaving her all alone in the dark black forest. Even worse, it starts raining just as soon as she says that nothing can get worse. See, I wasn't lying in the beginning. While other shows would make fun of it, this show uses the cliche as straight as humanly possible.

Speaking of cliches, Princess starts to lament about how this was all caused by her want for "beauty, power, and riches", and now she lost it all. Didn't she already have riches? It could be commentary about how the rich just love to get richer.

She sees a cottage nearby, and randomly says that it isn't a five-star hotel just to remind you that this ogre is supposed to be Princess Morbucks. This cottage is owned by a kind old lady, who happened to have really poor eyesight so she couldn’t see the horror before her.

While the old lady is comforting this ogre, she tells her a story about her past that, in no way, is supposed to remind Princess about her evil ways. She used to be this super rich person who lived in a big city, until her greed angered a witch. The witch cursed her to be poor. Princess assumes this made her really angry, but the old lady subverts her expectations by saying it made her happy! She learned that she didn't need beauty, power, or even riches to be happy!

Yeah, that Bat Boy impression is pretty fitting. Once she hears this, she faints.

She wakes up, only to be tied up in ordinary rope over a boiling pot. If buildings-full-of-people-strength can't bust through that, orc-like strength has no chance. Turns out, the old lady was going to cook her as the main course in her "ogre stew"! I guess since Princess is now the heroine of this story, she gets to be the damsel in distress, too. That isn't the only twist, either.

Blossom: You’ve been tricked to be the treat!

The Reboot Puffs just can't think of any other Halloween puns, can't they? Yeah, that old lady was Blossom this whole time. Unlike some other twists this show has done, there are some hints to this:

She wore pink. That's a good tell.

The glasses made her look like she had bug eyes, just like the bug eyed freak that her real form is.

Blossom is the only one of the three that want her to see the light (i.e. see that money isn't everything) in more than one episode.

I could see Blossom doing this even without the evil brew corrupting her mind. Well, aside from wanting to eat Princess alive.

Thankfully, this heroine does get a man to save her! Well, a cat who used to be an evil ape, but still a male cat who used to be an ape. Discount Cat jumps out of the window and causes the second vat of green water to fall in this episode, this time with his body instead of a ray gun. Blossom-Witch doesn't follow Wizard of Oz rules, but she does get knocked out so that she can grab that ribbon.

She has to get to the house quick, and grabs one of the witch's brooms that happened to be lying around. She specifically refers to the room she has to go in as "the house", I'm still not sure if it is Princess's, or if Princess decided to go into some random witch's house to do all of this Magica De Spell activity.

This Princess chase scene isn’t anywhere near as good as the one in the Christmas special, but that's kind of a foregone conclusion. Of course, I'm talking about the real one, not the Generic Tree Lighting Day one. How can she manage to beat these girls who may still have super-speed in a race?

Tree Punch, Witches Down, womp womp. Well, I guess that’s to be expected from the Reboot Puffs, even if they’re supposed to be evil witches; the Reboot Puffs can’t escape their penchant for failure. Also, Buttercup should get those eyes checked out.

She makes it, and throws in all in the apparently self-filling vat. Magic! Discount Cat raises a point that Princess has to give something related to her, too, such as her crown. Princess has to think about it for a minute. Considering what happens later, it would have been a good scene for her to throw some sort of Burger King crown instead.

She relunctantly throws her real crown in, and then frantically has to chant the reversal spell. The Witchy Puffs show up, but the curse gave them Stormtrooper-caliber aim! Maybe Princess's curse made them nearsighted, too, just like Blossom's story. Nothing in the episode disproves that, especially the tree scene!

After completing the spell, the Powerpuff Girls are back to normal. It even had the courtesy to regrow Bubbles’ hair and Blossom’s bow. I would not say it regrew Buttercup’s toenail, because she shouldn’t have toenails in the first place.

Jojo's back to his discounted ape self, too. Because the puking scene wasn’t good enough, we get to see Discount Jojo coughing up a hairball. However, the spell to change everyone back turned out to be imperfect, because Discount Jojo’s is missing a little piece of his cape! Well, either that or it's just another aspect of the curse Craig McCracken indirectly put on this show.

Princess: All that time as an ugly ogre, I’ve learned that inner beauty...

Oh look, she may learn a lesson after all, prove that she is just a one dimensional villain!

Princess: ...is for CHUMPS!

Oh, reboot! I thought you were going to be like a real show for once! If they really want to turn Princess into this good person, why can’t they just do it without these cop-outs? Princess ends up praising herself for becoming her beautiful self once again.

Though, in a karmic twist, this spell gave Princess a tail. She didn’t have in her ogre form, so I can just assume the spell did it. The Puffs and Jojo decide not to tell her about it. They can also not tell her about all those Mayor clones that are now running around Townsville. As this episode proves, continuity is for chumps, too.

Does the title fit?

A singular witch could have a "crew" of other witches, and Blossom is supposed to be a leader.

How does it stack up?

Out of all the Halloween episodes, I can argue that this one is the best of all of them. That is not that much of a contest, though. Squashening had a decent ending, and Midnight At The Mayor's Mansion was just a wreck through-and-through. This one at the very least had a decent idea, switching around villains and heroes, and the execution isn't too terrible. Above average for the reboot, really.

Of course, the plot could still use some work. The ending is a particular sore point with me. There was no reason why Princess needed to stay evil besides she has to be. Poorbucks has proven she could still be evil even if she gets a soft spot, and it's kind of sad we'll never see that again.

All in all, not as bad as black licorice. At least, to me anyway.

Next, we go from Halloween to Generic Tree Lighting Day 2...Christmas?!

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