#have seen the film in person. Mixed reviews from some when compared to Alive. but it the vibe seems to be like a 8/10

[flags-planes-and-fire]

(Video Credit Here)

Dr. Roberto Canessa talking to Tom Holland regarding the new Netflix film - Society of the Snow.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Suicide Squad Team A

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS! Seriously, as soon as you click that read more, you’re gonna be smacked with SPOILERS! Don’t say I didn’t give you ample warning this time!)

The world’s in danger yet again, and Amanda Waller is in need of some expendable forces to take on some dirty jobs in the name of preserving peace. Last time she did this, it seems like she hired the wrong people. Nice guy Will Smith Deadshot? Bland, boring Killer Croc? El Diablo, who became attached to a bunch of reprobates after spending a couple hours with them? The only one who was useful in that squad was Katana. She had their backs, could cut all of them in half with one sword stroke just like mowing the lawn, and her sword traps the souls of its victims. Unfortunately, she was decidedly not expendable, so what is a girlboss like Waller to do?

Easy: Assemble a brand new squad of criminals to do the dirty work. Harley and Boomerang are the only ones she brought back, because let’s be real, they’re the only ones we give a damn about. Filling out the rest of the squad are the stoic, craggy crackshot Savant; the handsome, German spear-thrower Javelin; the alien warrior Mongal; the frothing, psychotic animal Weasel; the confident and all-powerful TDK; and Blackguard, who is literally just a guy. Together, this team gets deployed to Corto Maltese to do what no one else can do, and with skills like theirs, they are absolutely unstoppable!

They all fucking die before the opening credits.

Motivation/Goals: Considering the goal of the squad is to shave time off their prison sentences by going on the mission, it’s ostensibly the reason every single one of these goons accepted the job. Savant and Weasel are pretty well established in this regard; we get to focus on Savant for much of the opening, so we can get a sense of him, and Weasel is stated to have murdered no less than 27 children. So, yeah, they need to do this mission.

The rest, though? Who knows! Why are Mongal, Javelin, and TDK in prison? How did they even get an alien like Mongal? What did they do to land in the position they’d need to go on a suicide mission? Why doesn’t this movie have flashy, intrusive cards explaining everything to us in a throwaway gag in a montage?!

Blackguard, at least, has some other motivation. He sold out the entire squad to the military of Corto Maltese, which is why they’re ambushed. Now, there’s actually some ambiguity here: Did he do this of his own volition, and was this a complete surprise, or is it, as it is heavily implied, all part of Waller’s plan and she let this happen as a diversion for the other team to get in unnoticed?

Honestly, though, it doesn’t matter what their goals are. They’re all dead within five minutes of the movie starting, with one exception.

Performance: So, the reason these guys are even worth talking about is because, despite their minuscule screentime, all of their actors manage to cram in enough humor and characterization that they’re all pretty fun and likable. Michael Rooker is as stony and stoic as ever as Savant (until he hilariously isn’t), Flula Borg’s Javelin is really sweet and charming in his interactions with Harley, and Pete Davidson’s Blackguard is just amazingly douchey and pathetic. Special mention goes to Nathan Fillion’s TDK, who has an utterly endearing and unwavering faith in his astoundingly crappy ability to… detach his arms. It’s honestly kind of beautiful. Then there’s Weasel as portrayed by Sean Gunn, who is just a hilarious crackhead of an animal man.

Final Fate: Literally every single one of them die horribly thanks to Blackguard’s betrayal. He’s the first to go, because as soon as he walks out saying “Hey guys, it’s me, the one who contacted you!” he literally has his face blasted clean off. The rest go soon after. Mongal, in one of the most astounding moments of idiocy I’ve ever seen, leaps on a helicopter despite Rick Flag telling her specifically not to. Her weight and strength send it careening out of control, which leads to it shredding Captain Boomerang to bits before exploding, burning her alive as she painfully screams and writhes in agony. TDK gets his arms shot into Swiss cheese, leading to him bleeding out since even detached they still are part of him. Javelin is also shot, but gets a dying moment with Harley where he passes her Checkov’s Javelin. Finally, after witnessing all of this carnage, Savant completely loses his shit and tries to swim away, leading to Waller blowing his head up.

You may be wondering what happened to Weasel. He appears to drown as soon as the Squad deploys, because despite being actually smart in this movie, Waller forgot to make sure everyone on the Squad could swim. Thankfully, this lovable child-murdering crackhead rodent was just sleeping, and wakes up in the first credit scene.

Best Scene: Obviously, it’s their one and only scene. It’s a magnificent slaughter that puts the X-Force scene from Deadpool 2 to shame.

Final Thoughts & Score: I’ve gotta hand it to James Gunn. Even though these losers are only onscreen for a few minutes, they all get to cram a lot of charm and personality into that time, to the point it’s actually kind of sad seeing them all die. It’s a beautiful mix of comedy and tragedy. Since their screentime is so limited, though, I’m mostly going to be grading them on style, performance, and so on rather than on villainy like normal. They are all bad guys, as they don’t really get a chance to redeem themselves like the other Squad, so I’m still counting them as villains, which means they could potentially score above an 8 (which is the highest score I’m willing to give heel-face turn villains, because they end up being better as characters in general than as villains).

I’m also not going to talk about Boomerang (I’ll talk about him when I review the original Squad) or Harley (because she not only lives, but deserves her own solo Psycho Analysis). Now here we go, from best to worst:

TDK

If you thought anyone but TDK would get top marks, you’re sadly mistaken. Seeing Nathan Fillion proudly wield the insanely lame power to detach his arms to lightly tap soldiers on the head and gently grab their guns is a sight I never knew I needed to see until this movie. The fact he just seems so darn proud about this power that he doesn’t even bother to use in any way that would be remotely useful is honestly really endearing. Frankly, the sheer fact they adapted Arms-Fall-Off Boy in any way is enough for me to give him a 10/10.

Weasel

Weasel is just disgustingly delightful. He’s just a horrible, nasty, ugly little bastard… But he’s kind of adorable? He clearly has no idea where he is at any given time and is just so goddamn freaky that I can’t help but love him. The fact that, despite being a character who in the comics is noteworthy only for dying on his first mission with the Squad, he manages to survive the entire movie is pretty impressive. Hopefully he comes back in the future, but either way he gets an 8/10 from me.

Javelin

Honestly, aside from Boomerang, his death stung the most. He’s just so cute and charming, and he doesn’t even get to fling his javelin at anyone! Thankfully, he passes it on to Harley, and boy does she ever get to use it! He’s so cute, I have to give him an 8/10. I just wish we got more of him.

Savant

Savant is just an absolutely hilarious bait-and-switch. We follow him through the prologue, with everything seeming to point to him as our main character and the Squad leader. He’s stoic, he’s cranky, and he has impeccable aim… and then we get to the beach and he just freaks the hell out and starts screaming and crying and running away like a little bitch. Seeing Michael Rooker act like he’s shitting his pants after playing a badass like Yondu is just the sort of hilarious subversiveness that James Gunn loves to do when you let him loose. The fact that he looks like, to paraphrase the TVTropes YMMV page for the movie, a “cyberpunk Tommy Wiseau” is the icing on this 7/10 cake.

Blackguard

I was prepared to hate this guy just based on how lame Pete Davidson’s costume was, and you know what? I do hate him. But I love to hate him. He’s just an utterly pathetic scoundrel and a coward, true to his name. The fact he is the first to die, as just about everyone predicted, and is killed absolutely gruesomely makes any annoyance he could provide moot, and his freeakout over being seated next to Weasel on the plane is actually kind of funny. I was originally going to give him a 6, but you know what? He can have a low 7/10. He’s like the only member of this particular Squad to actually do anything evil, so I gotta give him props for that.

Mongal

Let me make this perfectly clear: I do not blame James Gunn or actress Mayling Ng. I’m not actually mad at either of them for what they chose to do, because it is ultimately hilarious and sad. It suited the narrative of the film, and I’m not actually, genuinely mad.

With all that out of the way, Mongal is one hell of a stupid cunt. It is one thing to cause your own death with your stupidity, it is something else entirely to cause the death of a beloved character with your poorly planned attack. The fact she didn’t take into account how her weight and strength would effect an airborne helicopter makes one wonder if she is really supposed to be based on a character who can take on Superman and live to tell about it.

Let’s compare her to two similar characters to really show how bad she is. Like Blackguard, she is directly responsible for a death on the beach, Blackguard being responsible for everyone by selling them out and leading them into an ambush (and yes, I’m including him as well), and Mongal killing Boomerang with the chopper. The difference is, Blackguard’s betrayal was deliberate, he meant to sell the team out, he was actively doing something evil there, while Mongal killed Boomerang out of sheer idiocy.

Now, let’s compare her to Zeitgeist from the similar bloody massacre that occurred during X-Force’s deployment in Deadpool 2. Like Mongal, he accidentally kills a teammate. The difference is, in the case of Zeitgeist, he only accidentally melted Peter, it was a freak accident, and ultimately it does get undone by the end. Meanwhile, Mongal made a conscious, stupid decision and ended up killing her squadmate with her own idiocy. She sucks, hardcore. I don’t do this lightly, but I’m giving her a 1/10. Villains just don’t get much stupider than her.

I will giver her this, though: the makeup work on her is good. She’s lowkey kinda hot if I’m being honest. But being hot and having good makeup does not a good villain make.

[yesterdanereviews]

Alice's Birthday (2009)

Film review #502

Director: Sergey Seryogin

SYNOPSIS: Alice Selezneva has just failed a history exam at school, but things are looking up, as a friend of her Father's Gromozeka, has arranged a trip for her birthday to the planet of Koleida with a research expedition. The planet once had a flourishing civilisation, but a space virus wiped it out centuries ago. Alice decides to use the expedition's time travel machine to go back in time (along with Professor Rrr, another member of the expedition) to save the planet's population, not knowing the virus is still alive in the present and approaching the camp of the expedition...

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Alice's Birthday is a 2009 animated sci-fi film, which is a re-imagining of the popular 1987 film Lilac Ball and the original novel. The film starts out introducing Alice, an energetic and mischievous girl who fails a history exam after causing chaos in the classroom. She meets up with her Father's friend Gromozeka, who has a surprise for her upcoming birthday: to join a research expedition to the planet Koleida, where a flourishing civilisation was wiped out by a space virus centuries ago. The film, as mentioned is a re-imagining of the film Lilac Ball and it's original novel, part of a series of adventures starring the character of Alice. The series was quite popular in the Soviet Union, and so this film is riding a little on that nostalgia bandwagon. However, it certainly stands as a film in it's own right too, as the story deviates from the original film a fair amount, and being an animated film, has a lot more freedom to bring the futuristic world to life. The story itself flows pretty well, being split into a fairly typical three-act structure that has a good amount of variety, humour, action, and even some scary dark moments. The essentials of the story are things that you have probably seen before involving time travel and trying to change to change the course of the future in time, but it is still entertaining enough to watch.

Alice is a very typical lead for these types of films: adventurous, mischievous, and a typical kid which it's young audience can identify with. Her character has a wide range of emotions and relationships with other characters, so she feels like a well-rounded individual with enough spirit and energy to be her own person. One notable difference in the rest of the characters form Lilac Ball is that the animated medium gives a lot more freedom to give the aliens a more alien design; in Lilac Ball, the characters which were aliens in the novels were re-imagined as mostly human; in the animated Alice's Birthday, the aliens aboard the research expedition are all shapes and sizes, and though we don't hear from many of them, their unique appearances make the film colourful and interesting. There is some weird comments near the beginning of the film, which seem to suggest there's some discrimination against aliens on Earth, but it's not really brought up again or addressed, so that's a bit odd. The minor characters, like Professor Rrr and Gromozeka have a very specific role, and you know what to expect when they're on screen, which is comforting. On a more novel note, the commander of the expedition is voiced by Natalya Murashkevich, who played Alice in Lilac Ball and the 1984 mini series Guest from the Future, which is a nice nod to those productions, and reinforcing the idea that there is a bit of reliance on nostalgia for this film, even though the target audience is obviously a generation that will not have seen those originals.

The animation is fairly fluid, and the characters and world are colourful and animated enough so that it feels like things never really stand still. This is good in the action scenes, but it becomes a bit more choppy when the characters are moving more slowly. I'm not sure how this compares to other contemporary Russian animation, but it feels like a mix between modern productions, while also having a bit of that Soviet-era aesthetic within it too. Again, maybe that's part of the nostalgia effect the film is riding on. There's some musical numbers which are a bit generic, but again, perfectly serviceable for a children's film. Overall, Alice's Birthday creates a colourful and energetic world for it's titular character to be her adventurous self: the designs of the aliens and the futuristic setting are fun, varied and interesting. The story is a little formulaic being a very typical time travel scenario, but it is still made entertaining by having interesting, individual characters, and expressing a variety of emotions throughout the different scenes. A decent children's film, which also banks on some nostalgia for a beloved character for adults too, although they probably won't find too much appeal in the content of the film.

[wanderchyld]

PBIO/IOTNBO theories

This is long so bear with me.

FYI, I watch the show on Netflix and while English is my first language, I know Chinese and Korean, so sometimes I ignore Netflix’s subs or (they tend to miss some nuances, not just for IOTNBO, heh) or change to Chinese subs for fun. If I quote anything, it might be a mix of Netflix’s subs and my interpretation.

There were 2 women in the Go household.

Moonyoung’s house had a group of dolls consisting 1 male doll (Go Daehwan), 2 female dolls (Do Heejae and ???) and 1 smaller female doll (Moonyoung).

There were 2 women that allegedly died: 1 in the basement, 1 in the lake.

I know there’s a "Moonyoung has a stepmom" theory going around, and a lot of fairytales have stepmoms. But I think there is a possibility that the other woman is Do Heejae’s sister. Why?

Welcome to Oz

Every episode’s theme is tied to a certain story. However, there’s one story present in the show almost every episode, yet it was never explicitly mentioned; and that is The Wizard of Oz.

The current mystery around Do Heejae, Moonyoung’s mother, must be related to her novel, which is titled Witch of the West’s Murder. There is no way the novel was named after The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West for no reason at all, so this story has to be the the drama’s overarching theme. (I can also confirm that it’s the basis of the books’ content after reading the few pages they flipped on camera.)

Plus, the disgusting book reviewer from ep 2 mentioned that you can tell a lot about an author from their writing. So what does Witch of the West’s Murder tell us about the mysterious Do Heejae?

This story has multiple variations but I refer mostly to the 1939 film (the most popular adaptation) and the Wicked musical.

Who are our witches?

The Wicked Witch of the West (WWOTW) and Wicked Witch of the East (WWOTE) were sisters. This may be linked to the 2 women in the Go household mentioned earlier. The 2 women may be Do Heejae and her sister, and my guess is that the Head Nurse is the sister.

WWOTE = Moonyoung’s mother, Do Heejae

Known to be beautiful => multiple mentions that Do Heejae was beautiful, portrayed as feminine (often associated with beauty)

Used sorcery to control people => obsessive control over Moonyoung

Infatuated with Tinman before he became Tinman => she married Go Daehwan, so….

Caused Tinman to be without a heart => maybe she caused Go Daehwan a mental breakdown that landed him in the psychiatric hospital

Died from a house falling on her = died under a house => died in the basement, which is where? Under a house!

WWOTW = the woman in the lake aka Do Heejae’s sister, who might be the Head Nurse

Known to be a tomboy => Head Nurse has tomboy tendencies

Saved Tinman from losing his heart => Taking care of Go Daehwan in the hospital

Melted in contact of water => died in the lake, and Do Heejae loves to sing "Oh My Darling Clementine" which is about a woman drowning in a river

Who is Dorothy?

After WWOTE died, Good Witch of the North (GWOTN) gave Dorothy WWOTE’s ruby shoes, which WWOTW coveted, and told her to follow the yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz. Coincidence with the red shoes Moonyoung wore and the hospital’s brick path in ep 2 despite being linked to a different fairytale? I don’t think so! By now, we would have known that IOTNBO doesn’t do coincidences.

So Moonyoung is Dorothy. Not just because of the shoes. Firstly, what did Dorothy want the most? To return home. Just as how Moonyoung wants a warm family or home, they needed a sense of belonging.

Secondly, Dorothy was pointed to as the person who killed the 2 witches. While I’m pretty sure Moonyoung didn’t kill any of these 2 women, it’s almost definite that she’s related to or perhaps the very reason of their deaths.

The murder of the Witch of the West

Then what was the sister coveting? Go Daehwan? Her sister’s newfound wealth after marrying Go Daehwan? Or Do Heejae's attention (since Do Heejae loved Moonyoung to the point of obsession, her obsession may have ruined the sisters’ relationship)? (Thank you @honeyohhon​ for this.)

GWOTN described WWOTW as "worse than the other," so if this direction is right, Do Heejae's sister wouldn’t just sit back and accept it. She would be vengeful and put up a fight with Do Heejae. This might explain why she ended up in the lake, and why the Head Nurse, who comes off as an easygoing person, barely interacts with Moonyoung and even seems a bit cold to her (though Moonyoung doesn’t like to socialise lol). And Moonyoung doesn’t recognise the Head Nurse as her aunt because Moonyoung was always kept in the house.

Therefore, my take is that Do Heejae's novel is not about murdering Kangtae’s mother like some theories I’ve seen (she did write a few volumes before she killed Kangtae’s mother). It’s about Do Heejae killing her sister aka Head Nurse. And with all the foreshadowing and the mention that the novel had not been completed, both women might be alive………....????!?!!??!!???? Idk man 🤯🤯🤯I’ve no idea where Do Heejae would be.

Anyway, The Wizard of Oz doesn’t just apply to the 2 women in mystery. In IOTNBO, we also have our own tinman, scarecrow, lion and wizard.

Go Daehwan the tinman with no heart => no soul

Sangtae the scarecrow with no brain but is just young and naive => has a developmental disorder and infantalised by almost everyone

Kangtae the lion with no courage => ’nuff said

Director Oh the middle aged wizard who is "a good man but a bad wizard" and gave Tinman, Scarecrow and Lion what they needed => helping them as the director one way or another

Park Ok Ran the messenger

She’s definitely a red herring. Likely a pawn. WWOTW did have winged monkeys to do her bidding. Being the head nurse of a psychiatric hospital, Do Heejae’s sister/Head Nurse has easy access to the mentally unstable patients and their files. She could have conditioned the patients into certain behaviours or to do things for her. Perhaps she conditioned Kang Eunja in ep 5 and 6 into mistaking Moonyoung as her daughter? And Park Ok Ran?

Park Ok Ran had just begun reading the novel’s first volume in ep 5, the day after Go Daehwan choked Moonyoung. I really don’t think that’s a coincidence. By ep 7, she was at volume 9.

While she took volume 9 from the library herself, what made her start reading the books in the first place?

It seems like she received the first few volumes with cue cards like Sangtae did, judging by the cue cards kept in her copy of volume 3 (an earlier volume). Get this: she possessed a copy of volume 3 even when she left the hospital in ep 10 but the library wasn’t missing any volume when she went to get volume 9 in ep 7. 👀👀👀  

She used to be a theatre actress, and she seems clear that she’s not Do Heejae but a fan. Perhaps she received a role to play and the director communicates with her through the cue cards?

Kangtae also found her notebook, which seems to be a study of the books. I can’t read them because the shots aren’t very clear and it doesn’t help that the handwriting is a bit inconsistent. I then tried to compare her handwriting with the cue cards Sangtae received, and it is possible that his cards were not written by Park Ok Ran. I could be wrong because cursive vs neat handwriting? Ugh, spare me.

ETA: @annerossee​ mentioned that ep 13′s preview had Kangtae showing Director Oh the cue cards and Director Oh told him not to trust anyone. Seems like he recognised the handwriting.

If I’m right, then Park Ok Ran was simply passing the message to Sangtae. She was the last person to have the library’s copy of volume 9. And the volume Sangtae received in ep 10 was NINE. 👀 

End.

Any thoughts? 

I actually have have more theories on Moonyoung, her dad and Sangtae but this post is already quite a lot of work 😅Maybe tomorrow.

[galacticbugman]

Colorado Fun! Summer 2019 Part 1: Prehistoric Adventures

Greetings from Colorado! It was sure a wild trek I took a few weeks ago. It was so cool to visit some of the old hot spots and the new places. This was a photo of me taken at one of my favorite Dinosaur Museums. This place is called the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center. It has a lot of cool things in it. It may be a small little place but it has quite the collection. Here I am behind a model of a Megalodon’s Jaws. These suckers got huge. They wouldn’t have to bite just to swallow you whole. I am so tiny compared to this set of Shark Chompers. It was kind of freaky yet cool. I got a lot of neat photos so lets get started. Just a warning you will be hearing and reading a lot of Jurassic Park related stuff in this posting. 

Okay so you know I can’t pass up a Jurassic Park post it is one of my favorite movies of all time. This one is at the same place as the Meg jaws. This poster I am next to is an authentic original Jurassic Park (1993) Poster. I have all the movies and now the original books. Jurassic Park has had a big impact on my life and I enjoy the whole series. The movies are great and the books are even better. I have been a big fan and no trip to a Dinosaur museum is never complete without some references to classic Dinosaur films from the Sliver Screen. Did you notice my clothes? I thought you did. Yep I wore my Jurassic Park button down and my Jurassic World Raptor shirt for this trek. I went all out and even wore my fossilized Shark Tooth Necklace. I always have a theme when I got to certain places or at least I try to. 

On the other side of the theater area they have another authentic poster from my favorite JP movie in the series. This is an original poster from The Lost World: Jurassic Park which came out in 1997. This was so cool to see posters from the two best Jurassic Park films ever created. I really enjoy finding Jurassic Park based things. I just crazy about stuff like this. I really enjoy the novels that Michael Crichton wrote back in the 90s as well as the movies. I like both types of media and I know that when this movie came out many fans of the book were pretty outraged by the movie not being like the book like we saw with the first movie which did follow pretty close to the book with a few plot differences and things. Jurassic Park for me is one thing I really enjoyed growing up with I have some of the Toys, a Jurassic Park bed sheet set, all of the movies that does include the Jurassic World stuff. I have the Lego Jurassic World Video Game for the Nintendo 3DS, I have played countless Jurassic Park games including the Rampage Edition, the NES Jurassic Park game, the SNES game, I have played the demo for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, I have played Jurassic Park Builder for Android, Jurassic World the Game, and Jurassic World: Alive. i even have the Jurassic Park: Danger board game. I am just a huge fan of this and have several shirts and things that I wear pretty often. I wasn’t able to watch the films until I was older. I was I was about ten or eleven when I was finally able to watch the films. Ever since I was able to watch them my mind was blown and I became an instant fan. Of course I did collect  the toys way before I saw the movies I have several that I might post in post of their own in a collection of my collectibles that I have collected over the years of being a huge fan of many things. Still a pretty cool find in one of the coolest museums on the planet. 

One of the coolest things about this museum is that they have the third Largest Tyrannosaurus-Rex. It used to be the second almost topping Sue; but in recent years there is another one that has been discovered to be even taller than Sue. Still this monster is one of my favorite dinosaurs and has always been my favorite since I was kid and it is one of my favorites in the Jurassic Park franchise. Tyrannosaurus-Rex was not really an active hunter but more of a scavenger. It’s teeth are kind of dulled out and only used for ripping and swallowing whole instead of chewing. What is the deal with the tiny little stubby arms you ask? It has been up for debate for years but some thing that they played a part in the mating ritual of this species but we are not too sure about that. It is just speculation which paleontology is all about. Still a fantastic and giant creature from the last Cretaceous period. 

 One of my favorite shark fossils is this one. This is an almost complete spinal region and skull of a shark. It maybe the only one in existence so far as we know. This is kind of a really interesting rarity. As we know Shark skeletons are made of cartilage and it often breaks down and deteriorates after a while but in this is one of those rare fossils of cartilage. It is kind of neat and this shark may looks small but it is pretty large. The photos don’t really do it justice than experiencing these fossils in person. Lets look at another cool fossil shall we. 

What is this weird creature? Is it an alien? Well it is from a time very different from our own. This is the Giant Ground Sloth and my brother and I saw this guy being put together on a display stand. This is one of the weirdest creatures. You may have heard of the Horse Apple or Bois De’ Arc tree. Well the horse apple was a favorite food of this species as well as the mammoths that lived here thousands of years ago. This one was pretty young and just a little taller than me. I am about 5′ 9″ and these guys could get up to ten foot tall so this guy was not even close to being done growing. This guy is kind of a weird dumpy animal but it is quite interesting to look at. It was kind of cool to see all kinds of extinct animals other than Dinosaurs. There was a bunch of neat stuff at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. 

As a huge Jurassic Park fan I couldn’t help but notice this skull hanging in the prehistoric wing of the museum. You may recognize it from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. This guy is the Stygimoloch AKA Stiggy in Jurassic Park. Sorry to bust your bubble on these guys but they can’t actually ram each other or solid brick wall. These guys would shatter their skulls if they were to do that. These guys may have used their heads to amplify noise or to show off for the ladies. These guys are still pretty cool to look at. I saw this and was instantly familiar with it. Stiggy is one of my favorite Jurassic World Dinosaurs for the chaos at the auction scene when we was running about causing panic and confusion to buy Owen Grady some time. This was one of the coolest fossils in their collection. This is the first one of these I have seen in any museum collection. 

A cool battle scene between an Allosaurus and a Stegosaurus. You might think of a Stegosaurus to have a pretty good defense due to those big thick bony plates; however this is simply not the case. The plates are actually very thin and were possibly only used for mating purposes. This made the plates more like a blood filled cookie. Still they did have their famous weapon the Thagomizer which was used as a weapon and could really do some damage. I will never forget the scene in The Lost World: Jurassic Park when Sarah Harding gets attacked by the family heard after her camera messes up when she is photographing the baby causing it to sent of an alarm call. Stegosaurus is a huge dinosaur and will always be one of my favorites. Fun Fact: In the first Jurassic Park novel by Michael Crichton instead of using a sick triceratops like they did in the film it was actually a sick Stegosaurus that Dr. Harding was caring for when the Toyota Land Cruisers came up to that point on the tour. That was one of the biggest differences in media but the same thing was going on with both animals in both forms of media.   

A close up of a Stegosaurus Thagomizer. 

A cool Hadrosaur fossil that was also at the Denver Museum. They had a lot of cool fossils but I didn’t get a chance to photograph them all. There was just too much and so little time to see the whole museum but heck it was really cool to see some of the Jurassic Park superstars in this museum. Hardrosaurus was not in Jurassic Park but this was one of the first dinosaurs I ever learned about. These guys are also known as Duck-bills for their goofy looking mouths. Dinosaurs had some of the coolest features from weird headgear, to weird mouth shapes, to their wild arsenal of weapons. Even in the time of the dinosaurs biological warfare was very weird. 

A rather cool replica I got on the trip was this cast of a Raptor claw. I am a huge Raptor fan and adding one of these to my collection was really cool. My collection is now in a nice display cabinet with some of my Jurassic Park toys in the mix just to make it more interesting. Fossils are just one of my favorite things to collect and even though this is a fake it is still a nice edition to my educational collections and too I got it reminded me of Alan Grant’s Raptor Claw from Jurassic Park (1993) and I am a huge JP Raptor fan. I will be doing a top ten Jurassic Park Dinosaurs post soon to show you what my top 10 pics are after the trip photos. So stay tuned more animals and stuff to show you from Colorado as my Colorado trip review continues. 

[anamedblog]

The Rise of the Ottomans in Istanbul

By Mark Huggins, ANAMED PhD Fellow (2019–2020)

My entry on the ANAMED blog takes a look at the new Netflix docudrama: Rise of Empires—Ottoman, a second effort following on its last docudrama on czar Nicholas II Romanov of Russia (reviews of that series were mixed; the Guardian wasn’t kind (https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/11/the-last-czars-netflix-historical-drama-that-the-whole-of-russia-is-laughing-at), but the Daily Beast raved (https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-last-czars-inside-netflixs-stunning-russian-answer-to-the-crown).

All 6 episodes of Ottoman were made available for streaming on Netflix this past Friday, 24 January. The reviews I’ve found published so far have been positive ( https://www.thereviewgeek.com/riseofempires-ottoman-s1review/, https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/01/24/rise-of-empires-ottoman-netflix-narrator-charles-dance-actor/, https://www.thecinemaholic.com/rise-of-empires-ottoman-netflix/, https://readysteadycut.com/2020/01/24/rise-of-empires-ottoman-netflix-review/) and at least one ANAMED fellow was watching the series yesterday and seemed to be thoroughly entertained. Having watched the episodes myself, and being an enthusiast of period pieces generally, my opinion of the series is also positive overall. Each 45-minute episode addresses a particular theme/step in the process of Sultan Mehmed II’s (Fatih Sultan Mehmed) eventual capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. The series draws on both modern accounts and ancient, both Byzantine and Ottoman. The format is further supplemented by breaks in the historical dramatization to receive background information and explanations from scholars on the period.

Being a fellow at ANAMED this year has decisively influenced the way I viewed this series because over the last few months I have had the opportunity to explore this living treasure chest of past civilizations, and to the series’ credit, it is filmed on site here in Istanbul (though, of course, special effects and constructed sets are also employed). Generally, I’ve been fortunate; since I have studied in nearby Thessaloniki, I managed to visit Istanbul a few times before coming to ANAMED. Nevertheless, I never even scratched the surface compared to what I’ve experienced and learned now (and I certainly haven’t even scratched the surface this time, either, in relation to what the city has to offer). That being said, my time here has afforded me the opportunity to visit some of the monuments and sites mentioned in the series—of course, with the knowledgeable and pleasant company of other fellows! For example, episode 1 takes a look at Mehmed II’s bold construction (in 4 months!) of Rumelihisarı. I visited the site last October, currently located just north of the scenic Bebek neighborhood on the European side of the Bosphorus. Mehmed II’s construction of the fortress sent a message to Constantinople that he was coming.

image credits: Stavroula Valtadorou 

This by itself wasn’t enough to necessarily unnerve either Constantine XI, the reigning Byzantine emperor at the time (and the last one, of course), or any of his predecessors. As the series repeatedly notes, many armies had come and gone, falling either dead or else impotent at the impenetrable fifth-century Theodosian Walls. It had been common knowledge among Byzantine rulers for centuries that, when all else failed, Constantinople would withstand any possible attack. Hold the city and you’re emperor. This was what Mehmed II’s father, Murad II, had learned the hard way back in 1421. The Byzantines didn’t need superior forces (which was good because they hadn’t had any for a long time); their diplomacy was enough as long as the walls held, and a well-timed revolt or challenge to the throne was usually enough to make massive armies disappear. Murad II had better luck in Thessaloniki, which he captured in 1430. He immediately proceeded to convert the Panagia Acheiropoietos Church (built in late 5th century) into a mosque, and his seal commemorating his victory and thanking Allah can still be seen in the now functioning church to this day.

image credit: https://gr.pinterest.com/pin/510947520199763166/?d=t&mt=login 

The series does a good job of explaining Mehmed II’s motivation in taking Constantinople, as well as the factions within his own Court that sought to undermine him. Since his father, Murad II had failed, Mehmed II was determined to succeed. In order to do so, though, he needed superior technology, and this is precisely what he procured in the form of the legendary “basilica” canons, which did eventually manage to breach Constantinople’s famed defenses. In Edirne, capital of the Ottoman Empire at the time, a monument commemorates Mehmed II’s victory, complete with a replica of some of his cannon.

image credits: ANAMED PhD fellows Jeffrey Haines and Athanasios Sotiriou

The story that Rise of Empires—Ottoman tells is full of detail and vivid imagery, making it accessible to anyone (even Byzantinists (!), who are usually trained to stop thinking of anything past 1453…) All in all, this mini-series is enjoyable, engaging and, if you’re an ANAMED fellow, yet another reminder to get out there and explore this incredible city and country that is full to the brim with historical treasures everywhere you look. My stay at ANAMED has made this experience come alive for me like never before, interacting with both the place and the people, especially benefiting from the extensive knowledge of other fellows. The series by no means replaces the in-person, hands-on experience of the city, but for anyone not yet fortunate enough to have been here, perhaps it will provide the impetus you need to make the effort to visit and explore. I highly recommend the series, because, if for nothing else, it reminds us fellows of what we enjoy every day throughout these 9 months and may serve as an initiation for others to come and experience the same one day.

I am grateful to all the fellows who helped with this post by providing pictures and/or background information to supplement my (embarrassingly almost non-existent) knowledge of the Ottoman Empire: Betül Kaya, Ibrahim Mansour, Jeffrey Haines, Athanasios Sotiriou, and Stavroula Valtadorou (my fellow!).

[timeagainreviews]

An Unearthly Comparison

Before we begin, I would like to start by saying- I know that "An Unearthly Child," is considered part of the Cave of Skulls serial. I've chosen to treat it as it's own separate story, due to the fact that it has very little to do with the other three episodes. As far as I am concerned, you could have put any story at the end of An Unearthly Child, and the results would have been the same.

In the last two days since "The Woman Who Fell to Earth," aired, I've had discussions as to why the Doctor lost her TARDIS, and what that might mean. A worry I had was that the TARDIS had rejected Jodie, and was making her prove she was still the Doctor, which would suck for obvious reasons. But my friend suggested something else- it's just a plot device. And it makes sense. Why would Yasmine leave behind her job to travel with the Doctor? What better way is there to keep Graham and Ryan together as a family? The Doctor can't just kidnap people can she?

Watching "An Unearthly Child" can be really jolting for a lot of modern Doctor Who fans. The Doctor is cantankerous, aloof, unhelpful, and contumacious. Sure, we've seen these traits in all of our modern Doctors, but with William Hartnell, it's so prevalent. Which is why it's hard to believe there was a version of him that was even more unpleasant! So naturally, I had to find out for myself.

For those of you not in the know, when "An Unearthly Child" (or AUC) was originally filmed, BBC's Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, was unhappy with the results. He told producer Verity Lambert to reshoot the episode in its entirety with a few changes to the characters and script. Ironically, with all of the official episodes of Doctor Who that were destroyed, this unaired pilot still exists! The episode lived another sort of double life, as it was aired two weeks in a row, due to the Kennedy Assassination the day before the premiere. Or as Terry Pratchett put it- "because of public demand and that pesky business with the grassy knoll."

The beginnings of the two different versions of aren't all that different. There is an audible "bang," sound in the opening music that I had never noticed before. And oddly enough, the picture quality in the unaired version is a bit crisper. You can actually read the I.M. Forman written on the gate of the scrapyard on Totter's Lane. Though I will say the camera work in the aired version is much snappier. I'm not sure if it's just the version I have, or if it has anything to do with the 16 mm telerecording. Who knows?

Try to imagine, if you will, what it was like to watch Doctor Who back then. Science fiction was still a thing of ire. Spaceships were stupid looking, and the stories were hacky. But this was something different. Something like C.S. Lewis (who also died the day before the episode aired). No matter what programs Doctor Who has inspired since, there's still nothing quite like it. Nothing that gets so borderline surreal. Nothing that has so much staying power.

We're introduced to Ian and Barbara. Two teachers at Coal Hill School in London. Barbara is concerned about a mutual student who perplexes her. In rewatching these episodes, I was reminded of the scene in Donnie Darko when Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle discuss the titular character, a student of theirs that seems to stand out from the rest. In comparing the two versions of AUC, the biggest difference is that Ian and Barbara are sitting down in the aired version, which seems like a good choice. There's a more intimate, less rushed feeling. They feel more familiar with one another. Evidently, the original script had indicated a romance between them but was later toned down. I don't know why. I ship it.

It's through this interaction that we meet Susan. I've always had some rather conflicted feelings about Susan. On one hand, she's kind of endearing, and in other ways, she's downright annoying. When we meet her through the lens of Ian and Barbara's perspective, she's brilliant, enigmatic, and strange. Possessing knowledge no person her age should actually know.

The Susan we meet moments later is a bit more of a kid you'd expect in the 1960's. She listens to surfer music by the fictional "John Smith and the Common Men," while sort of strumming along with the music. This marks the first appearance of the name John Smith in Doctor Who, by the way. The impression I get is that Susan was supposed to be kind of "hip." Even her hairstyle was designed by Vidal Sassoon, which is actually still pretty cool.

After surreptitiously trying to learn more about Susan's home situation by offering her a ride home, we're left alone with the young girl. One of the things I'm kind of sad they scrapped in the aired version, is Susan's little inkblot Rorschach test she reads like tea leaves. It was a very "I Ching," moment, that I thought made her seem almost mystical. Instead, the scene ends with Susan looking through a book on the French Revolution (all white with big black letters like it was produced in the Repo Man universe), and exclaiming- "That's not right!"

Ian and Barbara follow Susan to the address in her school file, 76 Trotter's Lane, the same scrapyard from the beginning of the episode. They follow her in to find nothing but a bunch of junk and a large blue police box. Upon touching it, Ian describes the box as "alive." It is at this point, that the two versions of the episode begin to diverge the most.

William Hartnell's initial portrayal of the Doctor is almost villainous. Where he's supposed to come off as mysterious, he comes off as scheming and methodical. Instead of thinking he has some great secret he's worried about getting out, he appears more to have some horrible secret he's hiding. You almost side with Ian and Barbara, that Susan is in danger. It's easy to see how this is wrong for the character. You want the Doctor to be independent, and at times, contrarian, but never to the point that he seems like the antagonist. Dr Smith in Lost in Space comes to mind. His initial portrayal was one of a villain, but over time, his strength was found in being a sort of anti-hero, and friend to Will Robinson.

The way they solved this? Well, he appears more curious. More aloof. Less direct and confrontational. There's a bit more twinkle in his eye the second time around. Vague threats turn into goading and daring. As Ian interrogates the Doctor, the Doctor takes interest in some of the random junk around him. His curiosity, mixed with his blasé attitude toward their concern gives him the right mix of intrigue and mischief. You can tell he's hiding something, but it feels less to evade justice, but rather to protect himself, Susan, and even the two interlopers.

A lot of the beauty in capturing this balance is in the name of the show. Who is this Doctor? Why is he in a scrapyard? What is the deal with that police box? These are the right questions that the audience should be asking. You should wonder about his intentions, but not be able to say outrightly- this man is a criminal. But Ian and Barbara are still unconvinced, as they push forward into the big box, and like a C.S. Lewis novel, into a whole new world.

Some of the best moments in Doctor Who are the big reveal of the TARDIS. It will never not be cool. But the unique element to this reveal is it's the first one that was a big reveal to the audience as well. That's actually rather unique when you give it some thought. Usually, we're all in on the joke, waiting for it. We know about the wide-eyed expressions, mouths agape. "It's bigger on the inside!" they'll say. You know something is weird about the police box. They've framed it in the middle of the shot. The episode begins around it. We've been beckoned toward it since the beginning of the story. Even with the red herring of seeing a policeman walking past it at the beginning, the low hum it emits betrays any sense that it is merely common.

Ian and Barbara, have at this point, seen too much. It's still early, days and our Doctor doesn't like showing off his special ship. We learn it's name, given by Susan as an acronym for "Time and Relative Dimension in Space," (later to be changed to "Dimensions," for no apparent reason). One of my favourite aspects of this scene is the Doctor explaining the TARDIS's dimensional capabilities by comparing it to television's ability to shrink a large object down onto a screen. It's sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, but I love it.

Another big difference we see here is that in the first version, Susan explains that she was born in the 49th century. It's a little too on the nose. Explains a little bit of the "Who" in the title too much. Another thing is the hum of the TARDIS is much more abrasive in the original version. In reviewing it just a moment ago, my cat gave me a rather cross look from the shrill noise. Like Ian said, “I have... a very sensitive ear.” Though this is not the last time the Radiophonic Workshop will pierce your eardrums.

It's in this scene that we see the greatest disparity in William Hartnell's performance. He's angry, confrontational, and even calls Susan a stupid child at one point. His temper is evident and not at all endearing. It makes his decision to kidnap Ian and Barbara less one of survival, and more of one of control. While it has never made a whole lot of sense what danger two school teachers knowing his secrets could present, the Doctor chooses to kidnap his new guests. We never know why he was in the scrapyard (though we do find out in later episodes) or why Susan wanted to attend school. Susan's "why," may be self-evident, in that she's a child who wants to be around other children, but the Doctor's reasons are less evident. Either way, the scene fares far better in the aired version.

What comes next is one of my favourite shots in the history of the show. There's something exhilarating about the TARDIS among a rocky terrain, and the approaching shadow that cuts a long menacing shape against the horizon. It's pure science fiction and yet another big reveal. The Doctor wasn't lying. This ship of his really can move through space in an instant. It's a beautiful beginning to one of television's greatest sagas.

Thanks for reading! I won't be writing the Cave of Skulls retrospective until maybe next week. I have a convention to attend this weekend, so I probably won't have the time. You should probably expect more series 11 coverage around then too!

[graemereviewsdisneymovies]

Fantasia (1940)

I thought this review would be short and then I just sort of kept writing. Sorry about that.

The third film in the Disney Animated Canon is the first anthology film, and to this day the longest feature film Disney has ever released. Early Disney films hang around hour, Renaissance films hang around 90 minutes, and Revival/modern era films generally around 100 minutes. The original and restored cuts of Fantasia are 126 minutes (just over 2 hours), and it was originally released with a 15 minute intermission. Similar to Snow White, this one seems like just as much an experiment as a feature film, as it’s essentially a series of music videos for classical music. It began life as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was meant to be a Silly Symphonies short that would be a comeback for Mickey Mouse. Then the budget went past what Disney would make back from a short, so Disney animated 6 more sequences, all set to classical music, and threw in live action scenes of music critic Deems Taylor as a Master of Ceremonies and the Philadelphia Orchestra (who recorded all the music except The Sorcerer’s Apprentice). It works out to be significantly longer than either of the preceding films in the canon, at 2 hours.

This is the first Disney Animated Canon film I’d seen at all as a child - I saw the Night On Bald Mountain short at school once, although I had very faint memories of it and I have no idea why we were watching it. And my teacher called it Night On Bare Mountain, for some reason, I specifically remember that. Also my childhood association with a few pieces of classical music may have affected my opinions on a few of the recordings.

After Taylor explains the idea behind the film, the first piece of music beings. He shows back up between every segment of the movie to introduce each piece of music and what the animation will do.

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (the generic creepy castle pipe organ song) opens on footage of the orchestra, mostly in silhouette, against brightly lit coloured backgrounds. A few minutes in, it turns to strange abstract animation, which continues to the end of the song. At the end of the song, it returns to the orchestra. There’s not really much to say about this part. The music is good, the visuals are nice, but it’s not particularly memorable.

Taylor introduces the next piece with a comment that’s become hilarious in hindsight. I thought it was dry sarcasm while I was watching the movie. While explaining the history of the suite, he says that “the ballet it’s from isn’t very popular, but the suite is”. He’s talking about Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. Apparently the ballet was a huge flop on initial release, and didn’t become the Christmas classic it is today until the late 60’s, which also explains why the animation has absolutely nothing to do with the story. It follows fairies, dancing plants, fish, and the changing seasons as brought on by the fairies, who show up again at the end. The dancing flowers were particularly memorable and fun to watch.

Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the most iconic short, starring Mickey Mouse as the titular apprentice, who enchants a broom to carry water for him, despite a lack of control over his magic. He marches around with the broom a few times, falls asleep, conducts the music while pointing at the starts and causing them to twinkle brighter in his dream, and wakes up to find the room flooded. He murders the broom with an axe, but the broom reforms and every splinter or broom forms a whole new one and each one carries more water. The sorcerer, who is not named on screen, but is officially named Yen Sid (real creative name, Disney) wakes up, comes downstairs, fixes the problem, and swats Mickey with the broom. This one feels most like a Silly Symphonies short, because that’s what it was originally meant to be. Probably the most memorable overall, compared to the other shorts which mostly have a few memorable shots or scenes. The music is good, the animation is good, and it introduced a redesign of Mickey that’s still in use today.

Before Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring, Mickey walks up to the conductor, tugs on his coat tail, says hi, and leaves. The lighting allows Mickey to appear entirely in silhouette, hiding the fact that animation was decades away from Roger Rabbit style integration with live action. Then someone knocks over the chimes, which is meant to be some kind of comic relief, I guess.

The Rite Of Spring opens on the Earth forming, and has a spectacular sequence with lava and volcanoes followed by what was probably at the time a believed to be scientifically accurate depiction of the rise and fall of the Dinosaurs. A T-Rex fights a Stegosaurus, while the other dinosaurs watch as if they’re about to film the fight and put it on youtube or something, and then all leave when the Stegosaurus loses. They look almost comically disappointed by the ending, as if they’d lost a small bet over the winner instead of just watched a death. Then all the vegetation dies, they try to migrate, they all die, and the Earth floods. Stravinsky was the only composer alive to see his music put to animation in Fantasia, and he hated the sequence. I didn’t. The lava and the dinosaur fight are both great, and I’m not familiar with The Rite Of Spring so the rearrangement of the piece doesn’t annoy me.

After this, Deems Taylor announces an intermission. In some cut’s, anyway. I’ll get into that later. Following the intermission, there’s a short jam session, and then we’re introduced to The Soundtrack, a stylized representation of the soundtrack on a reel of film.

Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony follows a group of mythological creatures holding a festival for Bacchus, which is interrupted when Zeus (looking an awful lot like his later appearance in Hercules, but blue) decides to throw lightning at everyone for no discernable reason other than being a dick. The animation is nice, but this short is better known because of the censorship of one of the centaurs, who has been cut from the film though a combination of pan and scan zoom ins, re-editing, and being completely erased from one scene, on the grounds that it was… racist. Really racist. Starting with the 1969 re-release, Fantasia has been completely blackface donkey centaur free, which is nice. This segment was good. The music is nice, but the animation wasn’t a huge standout to me.

Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours was, to be completely honest, my least favorite short. It’s about dancing animals, focusing for most of the short on Hippos and Alligators. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just didn’t stick out to me the way some of them did. The music was good, the animation was good, there’s nothing actually wrong with it, it was just not as good as the rest of the shorts.

The final short, and my personal favorite, is the only one that consists of more than one piece of classical music. Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain and Schubert’s Ave Maria share a short, which contains some stellar animation and great creepy imagery. Chernabog the demon (heavily implied to be Satan himself by Deems Taylor in his introduction for the short, but he’s since been identified as an obscure Slavic deity, because… reasons) is suitably macabre and creepy, and most of the short consists of him being worshipped by ghosts and skeletons, before the church bells ring, the spooky scary followers go back to the graveyards, and Chernabog is forced back into the mountain by the bells and the sunlight. A procession of people walking through the forest carrying candles sings Ave Maria, signalling the coming of the morning. The music is great, the animation is great, and I’m probably biased because I love horror movies but I just really like this part of the movie.

Fantasia has been re-edited several times. Besides the removal of that one racist centaur, there’s been re-releases that remove or trim the live action sections, resulting in Deems Taylor being dubbed due to lost audio in some of his restored scenes in some cuts of the movie.

On the subject of audio, it was the first commercial film released in Stereo Sound. The original release boasted the “Fantasound” speaker system. Given that the movie relies so much on visuals and sound, I feel like I haven’t been able to truly appreciate it, given that I watched it on a fairly small screen, wearing headphones. It deserves to be watched in at least 5.1 Surround (or if you have the setup for it, there was a blu-ray release with 7.2 Surround). I, as a broke college student, do not have a large screen tv, or a surround sound system, but I imagine that they would add a lot to the film. However, it’s currently in the Disney Vault with the exception of Netflix.

The animation also improves dramatically overall compared to Snow White and Pinocchio. Rite Of Spring and Night On Bald Mountain in particular have scenes that are vast improvements on the previous films. I would love to see a theatrical re-release of this.

It was meant to be updated and changed every year, with segments being taken out and replaced with new ones, but this idea was scrapped when it didn’t do well at the box office - World War II cutting off distribution to Europe didn’t help it’s chances - despite being mostly critically acclaimed on release. Later re-releases helped it to gain its current acclaim, though it’s still considered somewhat of a mixed bag, and it’s aimed more at adults or teenagers than the rest of the canon. The usual target age group of Disney is likely to just get bored for most of the runtime, then terrified by Night On Bald Mountain. It eventually received a sequel, Fantasia 2000, in 1999, 54 years later. If we’re all lucky I’ll get around to reviewing the sequel faster than Disney got around to making it. So worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, I guess, although I can’t say I’ll be rewatching it any time soon unless I’m given the chance to see it with a really good audio setup.

Also, apparently the 2010 Nick Cage movie The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is supposed to be an expansion of the scene of the same name from Fantasia so I guess this is the only disney movie that can claim have a remake starring Nick Cage. And, I guess, the first to get a live action remake?

[ramblesandmumblesofanerd]

Rambling Reviews: Netflix’s Death Note

Welp, the day has come. As you can see, the Netflix version of the popular anime Death Note has just been released. And, as I said I would, I saw it. What are my initial opinions on the subject? Well, through the filter of professionalism I have put upon myself for this blog, I can certainly say that the film is dull, boring, ignores all of the rules of the source material and leaves you questioning as to why this film exists. If I were to remove this filter, all you could hear would be the incoherent screaming of a nerd who has been thoroughly wronged by whoever thought making this movie would be a good idea. For a better understanding of why this is the case, allow me to both make a few comparisons between the film and the anime/manga and also briefly talk about the film as a whole.

So, what is the plot of this particular version of Death Note? Well, one day at high school, Light Turner (ugh, that feels so wrong) comes across an old notebook which can kill people according to the onslaught of rules held within and the Death God Ryuk who practically forces the young man to try it out on a two-dimensional school bully. After he discovers the power he holds, Light and his high school sweetheart Mia Sutton decide to take it upon themselves to become KIRA, a God who will “never disappoint” and kill as many criminals as they possibly can. Eventually, the detective known as L gets involved and declares that he will capture and execute KIRA. And thus the story focuses on the struggle between Light being KIRA and also being a high school student all while trying not to be caught by L.

Firstly, things in this film just happen. The film never takes a moment to take a breath and calm down, every moment just races by at the speed of sound and smacks you in the face. Not even a full minute and thirty seconds pass until Light gets the notebook. No build up, no establishing characters, just: BOOM, Death Note. Also, the Death Note’s appearance comes with a lot of horror movie fanfare, as it comes on the breeze of a storm and causes all of the lights to flicker whenever it is being used. The same goes for Ryuk, especially in his initial appearance when he just messes around and scares the excrement out of Light. You expect big things to happen in this film, dramatic reenactments of iconic scenes lifted from the source material, but they fly by so fast that you're left wondering “...was that it?”. You wouldn’t have even known this was Death Note at the beginning of the film until you saw the title sequence.

So, I guess I should start talking about the characters at some point, shouldn’t I?

Well, Light was absolutely boring and was the complete antithesis to his predecessor. Light TURNER is just a punk high school student who helps other kids cheat on their tests for cash because his mom was killed. Oh, yeah, they go that route. One of Light’s first targets of the notebook was his mom’s killer, but I just couldn’t give a care. At all. Light Yagami was never driven by revenge (at least not until L started messing with his vision, and even then not by much), he just saw injustice in the world and his seventeen year old mind decided that if he uses  his Death Note to eliminate all of the evils of the world, he will assume the mantle of a godlike being. He does not care about anything else so long as it doesn’t benefit his vision. Granted, Light Turner eventually came to the same conclusion, but only after he got revenge and his girlfriend told him to keep going from there.

Meanwhile, there is Mia Sutton. “Who?” You may be asking? Well, she is Netflix’s version of Misa Amane, the Second Kira from the source material. She was a Japanese Pop Star who wanted to personally thank Kira after he killed the man who murdered her parents. By sheer coincidence, she came to possess her own Death Note and even more power than Light, thus how she was able to find him and become his girlfriend. Many people complain how she was not entirely necessary for most of the story, and I am willing to agree. Her character in the source material never seemed to go beyond “Love me, Senpai” and thus her intelligence in the later seasons suffered greatly. In the film, ironically, Mia is more like Light Yagami than Light Turner was for most of the film. She was the Id to Light’s Ego, as she constantly strived to eliminate all opposing forces, going so far as to plan ahead for certain scenarios. She was manipulative towards Light and vindictive to all who opposed KIRA. This would have made for an interesting twist, but by the time the climax was happening and everyone was going all in, I just couldn’t bother to care anymore.

Speaking of not caring, that is exactly how I believe the writers felt about the original, true version of L; they didn’t care, so they just made their own version. L in the source material was an orphan with a brilliant mind, one very similar to Sherlock Holmes. His soon to be butler and father figure Watari raised him at an orphanage where other children would soon be raised to succeed him should the need ever arise. This was due to the fact that L soon became a detective of then unparalleled genius and determination, solving all sorts of previously difficult or unsolved cases left and right until the day when KIRA became a looming threat. He is seen as secretive, emotionless, analytical, and deceptive in spite of his disheveled appearance. He is the perfect man to take on a mysterious psychopath like KIRA, be it from the shadows to keep his identity a secret, or face to face under a slew of fake names and aliases. Now, take all of that, and completely ignore it in this film. Netflix L is an overemotional child who openly mocks and taunts KIRA in the open without any form of protection other than a mask. He just comes out and says “HI, I will be your L for the evening!” And don’t get me started on him emotionally freaking out about losing control over the case to the point of actually holding a gun to Light’s head.

But what about Ryuk, the one character I was actually looking forward to seeing on the screen? Well, he is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, I do actually like the way he looks, the effects are mostly practical and you do believe he is in the room...from the neck down. From the neck up, in spite of some moments, you can tell that the CGI isn’t registering as realistic to your eyes, so all you’re thinking is that Ryuk is just a man with either a green face mask or motion capture dots on his head. As for his character, Ryuk has apparently been a traitorous backstabber who has been passing down the Death Note for generations who constantly taunts Light for not just simply killing everyone who opposes him. All he’s really meant to do in this version is exposit rules about the notebook (most of which don’t even exist in the source material), laugh a bit and look scary. And yes, while the original Ryuk did that, he never came off as a threat rather than an interested bystander. Ryuk was a shinigami who just got bored in his world one day, as all you can really do in a world full of immortal death gods is gamble and sleep so long as you write enough names in your notebook to keep yourself alive. He sees how Light uses the Death Note and basically hangs around to watch the show and laugh at the funny humans until Light either gives up the notebook or dies. That’s what I like about the original Ryuk, he’s just a spectator and is thus an odd reflection of the audience.Netflix Ryuk is just a spiteful spirit who is more interested in Mia than Light.

So, you have failure across the board for all of the iconic characters, Not even the secondary characters like Light’s Dad or Watari get a pass, as they either have no character at all or the character we are given is so poorly written or overdone that we just do not care about them. Every character just felt so two-dimensional that I felt like I was watching a film starring a cast of cardboard cutouts. The only one who gave somewhat of a good performance was the tag team of Willem Dafoe as Ryuk’s voice and the poor shlub who had to physically be Ryuk.

And the effects...lordy the effects. When it comes to the deaths in this film, they are somewhat gruesome if not ridiculous. The first two deaths are reminiscent of Final Destination, as they are executed through what I can only describe as a Rube Goldberg Machine of Coincidence, and when the payoff comes watch out! There’s so much blood and gore, I’m surprised the town wasn’t painted red by the end of the movie. While death is kind of a big deal in this franchise, the way the film executed it was quite silly if not sickening.

So, in the end, Netflix’s Death Note was not a good film. It’s not even good in the “so bad, it’s good kind of way.” Fans will hate it because of how much it gets wrong and casual observers will just be bored and confused by it. I understand that when it comes to making an adaptation, some things need to be changed or erased, but when die hard fans of the source material leave your film feeling so much agitation that they want to make an entry in their sub-par blog(s) to talk about why it doesn’t work by repeatedly comparing it to the source material, perhaps it would have been better not to make your film in the first place. So, unless you like torture, avoid this film.

In the meantime, never stop rambling, TM