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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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The Loud House Reviews: Ghosted!

Halloween Havoc returns! Lori is haunted by a ghost and brings in LIncoln and Clyde ot fix things.. only to find out he’s actually the beloved school mascot and must enlist Lucy and her crew of goths to help her. The bar from the overlook hotel, 1900′s disco, and Boris, the best loud house character i’d never heard of all insue. All hail boris, and prepare for full review with spoilers. under the cut.

We’re back! I’m sorry this is a week late. This is both due to having a LOT going on.. as well as my own fault for pushign this review back to do a review of the first episode of Starkid’s “Nightmare Time”.. only to have to push BOTH back after I was unable to finish this weeks’ Ducktales on Monday because I ended up having to get off it so my mom, who works from home, can use it, and because AT&T is an utter nightmare we’re thankfully leaving, so if nothing else that will hopefully never be an issue again.

TLDR: I kept putting this one off, didn’t realize this week’s episode was in fact on this week, and now I have to get 5 reviews done in the span of three days: I have this episode, this week’s loud house, the amphibia halloween special, and reviews of Ducktales “The Duck Knight Returns” and the first darkwing duck episode “Darkly Dawns the Duck”.

I kid, this blog will end as I too hope to end.. taking rusty and Zach with me. But i got myself into this mess and i’m getting myself out of it. I will get these done even if it kills me.. my ghost can then take care of the two fictional children. ON with the review!

We open at Fairway University.

I had to. Lori is practicing for the big tournament coming up.. which normally would have me super excited as tournaments are my shit... but we’re not talking two people beating the shit out of each other, wether it be for the sport of it, because their master told them to, because one of htem is a demon who will end the world, or because their loved ones will be murdered if they don’t beat people up as a team for demons, nor people playing card games for their grandpa’s soul, or a grudge caused by an abusive childhood that leads to a battle over gods inside trading cards, or because the school decided why not, or because you need to both keep your godlike dragon that’s also in a card and your friends safe, or.. you get the idea. I love Anime tournaments in what anime I have watched. Me watching or reading of those is like coke to me... a golf tournament however?

Yeah i’m not big into non-wrestling sports in general, let alone one where hte main action is a ball went really far. I mean it IS impressive a golfer can do that and accuratley no less, that’s some Hawkeye level stuff, it’s just not for me. I do HIGHLY enjoy mini golf, and mini golf episodes as both simpsons and gravity falls episodes on that are a good time. I mean any episode that gets flanders to say this is worth at least one watch.

And thanks to fond memories of my grandpa using them to get around his carnival, yes my grandpa owned a carnival and yes it was great and yes he was a great man and I miss him every day, and carting me around in them. If it were street legal i’d have one. And finally I LOVE happy gilmore. While Adam Sandler took a turn, and hopefully Hubie Halloween is a sign that long national nightmare is over, that film still holds up and is still REALLY damn funny. And by this point your probably wondering what the hell my point is. Well the hell my point is is that in light of me liking golf related things for weird reason despite praying for death but death won’t come at the thought of watching actual golf, I love fairway university. I love the fact that a golf based college is credible, I love the fact it goes so far in it’s theme that the text books are all golf related, the dorms are all weirdly golf themed, and students apparently can get an arnold palmer at any time of night. I also assume the dorms have on demand streaming for happy gilmore and caddyshack, and a genisis with a copy of lee carvillo’s putting challenge. Back on the actual episode at long last, Lori is putting in some driving practice and facetiming bobby. The reason the tournament is so important is that she needs to beat the evil elf Malketh at golf or else Suryr will end all life... I may of been reading walt simsons’s thor lately but admit it you would watch that. No it’s more mundane than a fire giant trying to commit universal genocide: Being the only freshman on the team, as in that good, if she dosen’t do well, she might loose her scholarship. Granted I DOUBT they’d take it away after one game, but it’s understandable why she fears loosing it: She can’t afford college any other way. Her parents finances are spread among 11 kids who all live comofrtably and while every loud would gladly give things up so she could go to college still.. Lori wouldn’t accept it. She’d be grateful.. but she wouldn’t have her family be miserable for her sake, even if it’s her dream. This is her one shot for the career she wants and loosing this would destroy her. Even if she’d still have Bobby. But Bobby is pulled away because his customers are annoyed.. and by customers I mean just Vito.. the rest seem fine despite the line, who complalins his spumoni is melting... because apparently he can’t just have bobby get him a fresh one as Bobby would be happy to do because he’s made of pure joy and it was nice seeing him. Though I do hope to see him in college himself next season. It is WEIRD having the casagrandes season 1 paired with a season of the loud house taking place months later.. and having the halloween episode for season 2 show up months ahead of season 2 itself.

But soon Lori has bigger problems than Bobby having to go or crushing loss... after consulting the school gopher, because the dean apparently really loves caddyshack as ANY dean of a golfiing school should. I forgot to mention it above but I freaking love that movie too. Good stuff. Back on point, Lori soon gets stalked by a g-g-g-host! And nope this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around.. nor is it a scooby doo esque scheme. This is an actual ghost. Represented by a ball of light but .. yup they went there. And look I get the show breaks from reality a lot: Luann acts like the silver age joker once a year and gets away with it, Lisa gets up to dexter’s lab esque shenanigans on an episodic basis, and Girl Jordan isn’t part of the group despite clearly sharing their intrests and being intrested in both lincoln and stella. There are stretches in reality.. but mostly for humor or because it’d make a good plot. Most of the plots are grounded in reality: From Luna’s entire romance arc, with her insecurities and her and sam’s worries about each other, to Luaan’s nervousness about her first kiss, to Lincoln and friends having to learn that sometimes a girl dosen’t want to date you just because their nice to you, to Lynn learning not to be a dick and hten forgetting it overnight because this show hates me, the show grounds wacky shenanigans in relatable slice of life stuff. It’s what makes it and it’s sister show work so well. Grounding the exagerated comedy with likeable relatable characters. IT’s what works. Why I bring this up is this and family bonding show a possible trend of the show getting into more bizzare stuff. A ghost here, a secret agent there.. it means the loud world can get as insane as it wants and the reason I bring it up is simple: Is that a GOOD thing. And my opinon, it CAN be if used right. With Family Bonding the fact there are Secret Agents is just.. casually mentioned. Like yup james bond esque spies exist and have weather dominators and an 11 year old just stopped them. It’s just.. treated like a normal thing when it’s not. Here.. a ghost showing up.. is treated like someone suddenly finding out ghosts are fucking real. Lori slowly comes unraveled a bit as the first few minutes go: She deals with seeing a ghost glow on the range, having the ghost drop books on her in the library, and having it serve her an arnold palmer.. in what genuinely looks like the bar from the overlook hotel from the shining.

I get it’s a deliberate shout out, especially since it’s bartender is a ghost. But it just raises so many questions: Was it a concidence or did whoever put this bar in really love the shining? Did he want teenagers to murder their wives and children? Did he? Is this building haunted and not just by the genearl ghost that haunts everything? Did they take this from the overlook since it didn’t burn down in the movie? Does this mean shining and loud house are the same universe and by the same token so is community and the casagrandes? WHy is a tea with lemonade called an arnold palmer? But yeah after breaking down in her room Lori can’t take being stalked by a ghost and does what 80% of people in a paranomal activity film take too long to do and calls a ghost hunter. Specifically clyde! And to my shock this is apparently the first time the two have interacted since season 2! And it shows.. their on perfectly fine terms, to the point she has his number and they can talk like humans. I like it.. it’s subtle. Again wouldv’e appricated the episode where he got over here being more finte, but still, this is better than him either passing out in his own master roshi esque blood or trying to get her to leave bobby because bobby is a saint. The worst he’s done is break up with someone because her brother made his sister cry, when none of that makes any sense but he’s dumn and noble enough i’ll allow it, and telling sergio never to come back, which his show framed as a bad thing but really I would two after two minutes with him.

She called Clyde because he’s the brains behind the outfit... but Clyde has her on speaker. Wah wah wah. Their watching ARRRGH! The ghost adventuers style show that showed up in an episode I never saw but read about. Wah wah wah indeed, but it was apparenlty made up. Why their still into it I dunno, but apparently argh ghost blasters ARE ACTUAL LASER GUNS. This show has gone enitrely off the rails and i’m fine with that. As long as it’s funny. But seriously who gives out actual proton packs I ask you your just asking for some kid to blast himself in the face. But yeah Clincoln McCloud is on the case. And while i’m still annoyed they didn’t bring at least two more friends to play ghostbusters, presumibly stella because she’s the compitent one and Zach because he could NOT belivie in something for a change and tha’td be funny. I know i’m beating a dead horse but it dosen’t HAVE to be all or nothing with their friend groups. You do know that right writers?

I mean I get only using them here as opposed to family bonding, but still, if you can use LIam outside of his episodes you can use the rest of them.. and I don’t even like Zach but he’d be in his element here. It’s not complicated but it is frustrating. Anyways the boys and Lynn Sr arrive with Lynn Sr making a scene.. which embarasses Lori but i’m on his side here. His oldest went to college. She left the nest. It’s a lot. Plus she apparently hasn’t visted home yet so he misses his baby. Just accept it. She also asked the boys to be subtle about their ghost hunting which does not work at all. Lori you knew who you were asking for this. It’s like asking Sterling Archer NOT to be sarcastic, loud and slightly hammered. It’s part of the process. Natrually hyjinks insue as our heroes chase the ghost with the most... on this campus.. and end up shaming him into leaving. Yes really. Clyde even says that’s what usually works on him. Oh Clyde.. if that were true you would’ve stopped trying to break up two people clearly in love with each other for your own benift, you twit. So problem solved right, ghost busted, no more stalking and no lori turning into a monster and ushering in 80 sequels with no real resolution right?

Yeah I mean this is a half hour special. Everyone at Fairway starts playing off, and it turns out because they realized the ghost was missing. Yes.. everyone knew the ghost was real. Thankfully given this is a halloween episode fairway isn’t some kind of rosemary’s baby, midsommar, herditary, paranomal activity , god a lot of movies use this death cult scenario. That we’re aware of Lori may just not be the target. The team captain takes Lori aside to explain things: They normally don’t tell freshman this until after their first game because the plot says so, but Fairway has a ghost. And again what makes this work is the guy does realize people might not belivie this and while normal for the students of fairway, it’s not normal for everyone and they might not belivie in it. But no turns out the ghost is beloved 1900′s era Caddy, Shanks Bogey, who in the moment that cemented him as a legend singelhandidly helped Fairway to a big comeback in their first tournament ever, and was given a permanent positoin after graduation. Because they train caddy’s here too which makes sense. And now his ghost lives there too and still helps to this day. OR did anyway. Now why he coudln’t of told her this or why they don’t check to make sure one of the students dosen’t bring ghost hunters around or an exorcist or ash williams?

This episode already runs on nonsense i’m just going with it. Point is LOri’s hair’s falling out, more apparenlty, from the stress as she retreats into her hoodie.. Clyde gave her one to protect her because ARRRRGH! is really freaking shameless apparently. While LIncoln dosen’t know how to put a ghost back luckily Lucy has the mortuariy club over and LIncoln sends them over. Also Lori dosen’t want dad driving them, but Lincoln was on speaker which.. yeah Clyde I might get, the only person he’d probably want privacy with is his girlfriend, he and Lincoln have the exact same running crew but lincoln has 10 other people int he house who may eevesdrop. But hell yeah, it’s my first Lucy episode on the blog and my first with her club period. For Lucy she IS one of the sisters I like I just haven’t checked out her episodes since season 2,a nd that’s my fault and something I intend to correct. She’s adorably, hilarious in her creepiness, and endearing in how she feels ignored at itmes.. because she is. They also ALL can apparently do her suddenly sneak up on people batman schtick as they all pop up on lincoln when he mentions a ghost. But yeah I love she has her own adams family esque group of goths, and that one of them is a Haiku from an earlier episode. While he and clyde hitting it off went nowhere it IS nice for the show to actually bring back an earlier character they entirely forgot about. It’s very rare for them.

But yeah I already like these guys, arriving in coffisn and accidently sending my new faviorite borris flying.. a boy who talks like dracula, looks like an orlock and talks in the third person, though he ends up completing a cheer pyramid, because as an intentional joke or not, fairway , a school for a sport built on quite conversation... has a cheers squad. But hey we get boris talking about his hollow bones and cheering out of it so we’re good.

But now the goth gang can get down to business. They try the obvious first a séance which.. yeah if bill and ted and beetlejuice have taught me anything, Seance’s can only end in friendly ghost murder. Granted unlike Otho I think Lucy knows what she’s doing, I just don’t want Shanks to die. This dosen’t quite work as while there is some bubbles it’s just Froggy 2 who apparently goes here when he’s not with adelaide. Good for him, getting some higher book learning. That’s rare for frogs. Though the faces on the Club are priceless as they are adorable.

Plan B is to set out Shank’s faviorite food, Ferminted Bean Meal.. which yes is both to set up a fart joke and may or may not exist. He also liked pigs in a blanket, which is a good gag. Lori asks why theyd idn’t go with that I say they simply did because these are professional Goths, and they will always go for the weirdest option possible. It’s who you signed on for lori. You could’ve just called the fentons at the start of this but no, no crossover for us. And yes it’d be butch heartman free but as far as I’m concerned he can go fuck himself for, most among a LARGE pile of him being a jackass, promoting faith healing seminars that among serious illnesses.. include autisim, aka equating what I have to things like alhimers and cancer. No joke there just screw him, don’t screw danny phantom it’s great, moving on. They intend for shanks to eat it but Lori’s teamates do instead as does the one club member who has weird hair that really unernves me. I get it’s supposed to be spider like but still, the rest of the club is really well designed, including him minus the hair. Why this why. They all get stomach poisoning and blame Lori for it despite, you know, eating strange food left in the middle of campus which is never a good idea, as it’s either someone’s elses or possibly spiked. What did you think was going to happen? Lucy’s last ditch effort is partying like it’s 1900. We do get the club and lori in top hats and canes with presumibly pocket’s full of miracles. So that’s neat. But it fails thanks to the cheerleaders coming in, boris very much included. Lori is desparing,.. until it turns out the disco ball which broke offers a mirror to the other side.. and thus where shanks is.. at the graveyard just off campus. Haiku finds this school creepy and wants to go there. Me too little sister, me too.

Lori opts to go alone.. while this shit terrifies her, understandably, it was her mess and she needs to clean it up.. even though him not explaning himself to her or anyone else did this I don’t know if he can talk so fair enough. He can however caddy obviously as Lori gives him a heartfelt apology, and then plays a round, with him helping.. though apparently returning her ball also opens a doorway to hell. Go figure. Great gag though especially lori’s casual “that was disturbing”. He dosen’t give a sign he’s coming back though. Then we cut to the game.. with no real sign lori told anyone anything.. was.. was a chunk cut out of this episode or did they just run out of time? I dunno it’s jarring but the game is down to her, and Lori ends up in a sandtrap with the sun in her eyes. But luckily shanks returns! He llfts an umbrella for her. Again I think it’s less that he’s inconsiderate and more that he’s mute.. or maybe he’s just a jackass I dunno. We don’t know enough about him. Point is Lori wins, her scholarship is secure and her family is cheering her on.. well okay her family in terms of lincoln, clyde, because he counts dammit, and her parents the rest of the girls minus lucy are absent because they needed room for her club. Whose in the sun somehow. Lori wins, Boris does an exorcist head spin, and Lucy feels he’s lost to them. I mean.. he has to go home.. unless he dosen’t have one... which is probable. Man now I want a fairway spinoff even more.. I mean just give lori and bobby an off campus place, have leni and her two friends move in, maybe throw in carol and have boris living in a hole in the backyard and we’re good. Please nick, greenlight this. I will write it for you just give me the go ahead.

Final Thoughts:

This one was okay. As I said the reality breaks are fine if their used for good reaosn, but I felt the episode put Lori though a bit much. She hasn’t been unsympathetic in so long, and she has a genuine heartwrenching reason to want to do well and is terrified of shanks. It’s not her fault no one told her. I mean that should be in the brochure “We have a ghost but he’s a casper ghost and not a gozer ghost so your good”. I mean the fact Jack Fenton HASN’T come blaring down the campus is only because he already did that and is banned from campus. that and he drove through the comisary.. like through both walls. The Fenton Van is thick. Point is lori goes through a lot of pain and humilation for no reason. It also feels like a two parter put into one half hour: The first half has a problem that’s seemingly solved only to have a cliffhanger with Lucy coming in as the solution. That being said I aboslutely love the mortuariy club. Why they can’t repalce spider head with rocky I don’t know, but otherwise I love em. Especailly boris who i’m fine with him staying at fairway as long as I get that spinoff> The Clyde and LIncoln antics are just “ha ha their mech dosen’t work”.. when they still have rayguns as part of the merch, though I do appricate that them running out of power is set up: Their guns discharge as a running gag so it’s no suprise their out by the time our heroes need them. And Clyde’s line about shame and guilt “Just like me!” was gold. This dosen’t really have the missed opprtunity smell of family bonding or strife of the party, it did fine enough and the scene of lori and shanks playing golf was really sweet. It really is just okay: Not AMAZING, but not terrible. I’ve seen much worse already this season, but the creative halloweeny premise, fun with the goth gang, and general weirdness of fairway make it a hole in two. Not a slam dunk but still fun. Just because an episode is mostly okay dosen’t make it bad. If you liked this review follow for more, as I have weekly coverage of ducktales and loud house and ocasionally the casagrandes and later today should have, space and time permitting, reviews of the new loud house, the new amphibia, and later this weekend some darkwing duck. Until then stay safe, stay spooky and happy halloween. Play us out white stripes!

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#halloween #the loud house #ghosted #lori loud #lincoln loud #clyde mcbryde #lucy loud #haiku #boris #dante #morpheous #perspherone #lynn loud sr #rita loud #fairway university #shanks bogey #halloween havoc

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ladyaj-13 · 4 years ago

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Fandom Year in Review - 2020

I did one of these last year and I kind of liked looking back at it, so figured I'd do it again. It's got some crossover with the AO3 writing tag game from a few days ago, so sorry about that and please forgive my indulgence. Feel free to use the format if you want!

Activity

Still a fanfic writer! I've also started posting the odd media review on here, and in the summer I did a statistical analysis of the Endeavour fandom.

Fandoms

Arrowverse (Arrow, the Flash), Endeavour, Fantastic Beasts, James Bond (Craig films), Merlin, Midsomer Murders, Outer Banks and White Collar (also Life on Mars and Inspector Morse, but only in relation to/crossover with Endeavour).

I'm obviously well-established in Endeavour (60 stories!), and Merlin too. The others are all new, although I've been reading the Flash for a couple of years, and Midsomer Murders (as a show, rather than a fandom) goes back to my childhood.

Word count – 164,787 (!?!?!? No seriously, how?)

Overall reader favourite – Thin Band of Gold Merlin, Merthur, 3.5k (I'm totally gobsmacked at the reaction to this one. Nearly 9000 hits and over 1500 kudos. In a year. I'm sorry, brag over, I just can't believe it.)

He holds a thin band of gold in his hands. His arms had been rising, as if they were about to place the circlet on Arthur's head. Except Arthur wears a crown now, not his circlet, and Arthur had been out at training.

“I was just cleaning it,” Merlin explains.

He places his gloves on the table, leaning against a chair. “Put it on.”

“What?”

He nods at the circlet. It had been what Merlin was about to do, wasn't it? And it will be funny, the peasant turned prince.

Main fandom reader favourite – Like Spinning Tops we Stop Endeavour, Morse/Jakes, 20k

Peter Jakes was a friend. He can admit that now, now that he's half a world away. Until, suddenly, he isn't.

My favourite one shot – Home Comforts Endeavour, Gen, 8k

“Morse, come in, stop cluttering up the doorway,” Mrs Thursday ushers him out of his coat and through to the kitchen. She's tucked a warm cup of tea into his hands before he's much realised what's happening, and he glances down at it before taking a gulp. “Now, let me look at you.”

He smiles awkwardly, fixing his gaze over her head; out the back window and into the garden. “Roses are looking good,” he tries.

“Those roses need a good clipping, Morse, I've been telling Fred about it for weeks.”

My favourite multi-part – Out of Line

Endeavour, Morse/Sam Thursday, 15k

Morse is pushing forty when Sam Thursday comes back into his life. He'd be happy with friendship; he's always found Sam uncomplicated, easy company. But Sam wants more... and Morse realises he does too.

My favourites by fandom:

Arrowverse – Say it With Soup (Gen, Barry and Oliver). Familiar lightning crackles to a stop. “All taken care of Arrow! Wait - where did everybody go?”

“Home, Barry. Speaking of which - you come with me.

Endeavour – Like Spinning Tops we Stop

Fantastic Beasts – Bowtruckles and Gigglewater (Gramander). His book is finished, published, and it's time to drop a copy off with Tina. But what should be a quick stop-off on the way to seeing some saltwater mermaids turns into something more when Newt gets called in to MACUSA headquarters.

James Bond – Drive (00Q) Bond drags his eyes away from the figure Q cuts in those trousers, cardigan discarded over a chair and shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, to find M staring at him.

Merlin – White Knights (Merthur) A noble takes liberties with Merlin.

Midsomer Murders – Late Last Night (Ben Jones/Charlie Nelson) Nelson smiles at him; a lopsided, brief quirk of the lips which nonetheless feels warm enough. “So you’re heading undercover and need tutelage in how to assimilate with the gay community.”

Outer Banks – Settle (JJ/Kiara/Pope) JJ moves in with Pope. It wasn’t discussed; he just climbs into the Heywards’ car and they don’t stop him. He follows them home like a lost puppy and for some reason, they let the stray stay.

White Collar – A Secret Impossibility (pre P/E/N) When Peter gets hurt on a case gone wrong, it leaves Neal shaken. It also leaves Elizabeth with a woozy husband unable to move under his own steam.

And finally, in my now annual tradition of accepting that some fics don't find an audience but they're mine and I love them anyway - least read fic:

Sweet Escape (Arrow, Thea/Roy) Thea tips the little bottle from side to side, listening to the pills inside rattle. Vertigo. Only three of them, personal use. Oliver never stood for drugs in his club, and she won’t either. She opens the cap.

Last year I predicted in 2020 I'd finish Tread Carefully, as well as Endeavour one-shots about cats, people looking after Morse, the disaster trio and two post-S6 fics, plus more Merthur and some new fandoms. I made zero progress with Tread Carefully, but everything else I actually did see through! Shocking.

In 2021 I (heh) will finish Tread Carefully and Uncommon People, and hopefully clear some of my non-published WIPs too! In Endeavour, that means more disaster trio (Morse/Joan/Jakes), undercover!Jakes, and some seasonal Morse/Max. In Merlin, it's Merthur bed-sharing romp silliness and pre-series Ealdor-based indulgence. For 00Q there may be competent!Q crawling though vents, and in White Collar perhaps a 5 times P/E/N Diana-POV fic. I hope (and think I'm fairly safe in predicting) there will be a new fandom or two as well, as I like shiny new toys.

#year in review #aj's fanfic #aj rambles

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slamsams-blog · 4 years ago

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Moonraker - #24WeeksofBond

Happy Labor Day! Here we are, the last Bond film until November’s release of No Time To Die. In a world, and in a year where everything has seemed to slow down due to the chaos and the uncertainty of a global pandemic...this project has done what I wanted it to, which was speed things up. I can’t believe we are already in September and only two months away from No Time To Die’s release. This has been fun and watching all the Bond films out of order has opened my eyes and offered a fresh perspective of each film respectively. That being said, Moonraker finishes our Bond marathon out and it actually was exactly what I remember it being, so no real eye opening, out of body experience here.

As a young adult I always rather enjoyed the humorous side of the Bond films. I thought the dirty one liners were hilarious and the gadgets were super cool. Which is why Moonraker had been one film I looked forward to as we would go through the Bond films in sequential order, over and over again. These days my palate is a bit more refined. I’ve matured and developed a taste for good story over anything else. Moonraker offers everything on the surface, a rather “paint by the numbers” Bond film; there is nothing hidden, nothing to go back and figure out. Not saying that that isn’t welcomed sometimes, but I would still like to try and figure out just who is behind everything rather than just being told right away.

Moonraker was a reactionary move on the part of Eon productions after Star Wars came out and after the box office numbers saw huge dollars, they decided to change gears. It had become customary after every Bond movie to reveal the title of the next Bond film in the closing credits, after The Spy Who Loved Me the credits rolled and said “James Bond Will Return In: For Your Eyes Only”. Whoops. Well because Bond is being reactionary here and because they only allowed a couple years in between each Bond movie, it was hard to change pace and give each Bond movie a unique flavor like the Daniel Craig Movies; therefor we get just another run of the mill, funny ha-ha Moore Bond movie...but in space with freakin laser beams!

We open up in the pre-title sequence with an airplane carrying a space shuttle called the Moonraker, but gets hijacked mid air. This causes alarm so Bond is called in, but before he reports for duty Bond is accidentally thrown from the airplane he is in by the returning Jaws! Yes, Jaws had been so incredibly popular that he had to come back, but this time...he’s pretty much a clown, but I’m kinda into it. Not the creepy ass clown we see in a dark alley which was horrifying...but just a regular clown that entertains kids at barbecues. I think it really would’ve worked better had they not re-introduced Jaws until after Drax’s man Cha dies.

Back to the film...Well, Bond says the shuttles are made by Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) so that must be it. And yep, it is. Pretty simple. I wonder if they could’ve at least gave us a few scenes with Drax to speculate if it is him, or if he is being set up before we see Drax’s evil side. Drax and Bond have tea and Bond can’t even get out the door before Drax is telling his guy to F him up. So the plot is pretty much spelled out for you, the only thing we have to wonder...is why? Before we come to that answer, we are pretty much taken on a 2 hour ride of Drax’s people trying to kill Bond, but failing. Seriously, Drax has someone around every corner, how does he get these people to go along with these plans??

One heart wrenching scene in this film is when Bond discovers a safe, and Cha finds Bond with the pilot who took him to the property. They then stick the dogs on her, this poor girl is running through the woods like she is in “The Grey” trying to get away from the dogs, but ends up getting ripped apart. Unfortunately Bond never finds out that he had a hand in her death by getting her to help him - this could’ve added a little weight and dramatics to the film. But I love the part in that same scene where Drax wants Bond to shoot a pheasant from the sky for sport, but instead Bond shoots a gunman out of the tree, and as Drax says “You missed Mr.Bond” the shooter falls out of the tree and Bond retorts “Did I?”. Love it.

Bond eventually finds a laboratory where some vials are being filled with some toxic gas but Drax tries to throw everyone off the scent by replacing the lab with a giant office. Bond convinces M that the Lab was there, and M keeps Bond on the mission - but on the DL.

Along the way Bond is introduced to one Holly Goodhead, oh those funny sex pun names for females that have not aged well...Goodhead, played by Lois Chiles, is an undercover CIA operative working for Drax as a cover. When we first meet her she takes Bond to the flight simulator where all our worst nightmares about amusement parks come to life. Cha takes over the controls and damn near takes Bond’s face skin off before the wrist dart gun comes in handy. Pretty intense stuff there. Bond finds out she’s CIA and they begin working together. There’s nothing special about Chiles performance here...she skates by.

They follow the trail of crumbs until they are eventually finding themselves on one of the Moonraker space shuttles lifting into orbit and inside a space headquarters that will be used as a sex pit....yes, Drax is scheming to kill everyone on earth and replace them with men and women who are physically superior, and they are to breed and make babies so that the new world will be physically fit and sexy and Drax will become God. Hot. Well, of course Bond is not about that...even though maybe he could’ve prevented COVID-19 had he let Drax wipe out the population? Thanks a lot Bond!

Another funny avenue they take with the Jaws character is that he finds love in a woman we are supposed to believe would fall for someone like him...because she has pigtails and glasses? If she had had braces it would made sense...two metal mouths, ya know? But because Jaws finds love, he turns babyface and starts helping Bond kill Drax, because Jaws fears Drax is going to eliminate him for not being genetically superior. This ends with Bond and Goodhead trying to escape but can’t, so they enlist Jaws to break then free, and Jaws and girl fly off into the sunset...literally.

All in all, Moonraker is meant to just be a fun ride. I don’t mind that every once in while, and I do find a lot of Moonraker’s bits to be amusing, but because there is a lack of depth in the story and a lack of interesting personalities in Goodhead and Drax, this movie falls a little short. Not Moore’s worst, but not his best - just very middle of the road. And while it does have it’s moments of suspense with Bond and Goodhead being trapped underneath the ignition of the shuttle, and the cable car scene with Jaws - we are also taken for idiots with the gondola scene where Bond is driving it through the city - forcing birds to do double takes. Yeah you read that right.

Thank you to everyone who followed this little blog of mine closely, this was super fun for me, and I am going to use this as a way to rank all the Bond films once and for all!

Sound off, what did you think?

Reviews from Friends:

Curtiss Frisle

Pretty great until they get to space.

24 Weeks of Bond will return in November with -

No Time To Die

#James Bond #Roger Moore #moonraker #star wars #24WeeksofBond

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jisforjudi · 6 years ago

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Finty Williams: Me and my mum, Judi Dench

As Finty Williams stars in a role her mother, Judi Dench, played to acclaim, she tells Andrew Billen about the joy and pain of being in a famous family

Andrew Billen

September 28 2018, 12:01am, The Times

During a play’s rehearsal period, the most likely moment a journalist will interview its star is over lunch. This is often unsatisfactory. The reporter finds the actor’s mind still half in the rehearsal room; the actor, between answers, barely gets through a sandwich. So I am pleased that Finty Williams, who is in a revival of Hugh Whitemore’s subtly anguished 1983 play Pack of Lies, agrees instead to see me at the end of a day’s rehearsals at the Menier Chocolate Factory in south London.

Now we are talking in its bar, however, she seems to me exhausted: vulnerable and unsure. It is a perception, admittedly, enhanced by her pale skin and slight frame. Still, it cannot be good when an actress answers a question about what she is doing next with “probably run a cat home on a Greek island” or describes herself as a participant in a race in which her mother is hundreds of places in front of her.

Judi Dench is a subject hard to avoid when interviewing Williams, and impossible to do so today. This is the first London production of Pack of Lies since it opened at the Lyric Theatre, London, in 1983 when Dench was cast in the very part that Williams, her daughter, plays now. When I ask if this a coincidence, Williams’s riposte is: “You’d have to ask somebody else that.” I could, but what could the theatre say other than that she is the best actress for the role? No doubt she is, but in a wicked world where publicity angles sell tickets, the reply might not tell the whole story.

The play is based on a true espionage case from the early Sixties. The Jacksons, a suburban London couple, are approached by Special Branch for permission to spy from their bedroom window on their friends, the Krogers, across the road. The Canadian bookseller, Peter, and his vivacious wife, Helen, are, in fact, Soviet spies. Williams plays Barbara Jackson, whose fate is to discover that she has been lied to by Helen and must betray her best friend back. In a coda, we learn that she dies soon after the Krogers’ unmasking. This is not true of the real “Barbara”, Ruth Search, but the play ends with a death knell.

An intense day of rehearsal, I suggest to Williams, sensing her mood. “Really intense because it’s a play about spies, obviously, but it’s also a play about friendship,” she says. Friendship, I shall discover, is a delicate subject for her.

Williams, who was 46 this week, remembers finding the play intense in performance when she first saw, or rather heard it, many times, from the Lyric’s dressing room. She was 12 and her father, Michael Williams, was in it too, as Barbara’s husband. Her godmother, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, played Helen. “I remember being very upset by the end,” she says. “Really shocked.”

Dench and her husband acted on stage several times together, and enjoyed it. However, when Dench became M in the James Bond franchise in 1995 and when, four years later, she won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, equivalence in their two careers was destroyed. Michael Williams was hugely proud of Dench, their daughter says, but Hollywood can be “quite a ruthless place if you’re the plus-one”. She says: “I think he found that very difficult.”

The question that she will have heard before (oh, imagine the number of times) is how difficult it is for her, as an actress, to be the daughter of Britain’s greatest actress. Her sensible reply is that if she had entered the profession wanting to be either as good or famous as Dench, she would have set herself up for a fall. She did not. The problem is other people. “A lot of people want to go, ‘She’s not as good as her mother,’ which is true, but I can also name you another 80 people who probably aren’t as good.”

Does it piss her off? “It pisses me off being pre-judged. That pisses me off, pisses me off hugely. Just because I don’t think it’s fair. I don’t know whether, if your father is a brain surgeon, people go, ‘He’s not as good a brain surgeon as his father.’ I don’t know whether that happens, but because of who Ma is, a lot of people have an opinion, which they form before they get to know me or before they see what I can do.”

A terrible thought occurs to me. Theatre critics go on for so long in this country that there must be at least one who will review this new Pack of Lies having seen the original. (Sure enough, I later find The Guardian’s Michael Billington reviewed it in 1983 and singled out for praise Dench’s “totally unpatronising portrayal” of Barbara. As she tended to, she later won an Olivier for it.)

“Oh, don’t worry,” Williams says. “I’ve had that thought about a month ago. I’d put about £100 on the fact that it’s going to be mentioned at least once. There’s no escaping that. There is no escaping the fact that people are going to go, ‘Well, she’s not as good as her mum was,’ but do you know what? I’d really like people to come and see it with an open mind.

“If it was Grand National day, she [Dench] is up and leaping Becher’s Brook and I’m in the novice race at the beginning, and you think about all the hundreds of actors between me and her. She is jaw-dropping, but I also happen to think that Helen McCrory is jaw-droppingly brilliant. I happen to think Ruth Wilson is jaw-droppingly brilliant. Zoë Wanamaker. I don’t aspire to be any of those people. I’m me, and I’ve got the cards that I’ve been dealt.”

Her hand is undoubtedly a tricky one, not because she is not close to her mother, but more likely because she is, very. In her twenties she lived with her parents in London, notoriously burning down their house one night having fallen asleep next to a lighted candle. “Just a shit thing that happened,” she says, unhappily. In her thirties she lived with Dench, who was by then widowed, in Surrey, and although she has long since moved out, she talks to me of the “production” that Christmas Day always is for the family in her mother’s home.

She had not intended to follow her parents’ vocation. As a girl she aspired to be a dancer, but did not grow into the kind of willow that was prized. Instead she successfully auditioned for a children’s TV show and, while continuing with her A levels, went into a play with McCrory. At the Central School of Speech and Drama she tellingly studied musical theatre, a genre that her mother was not known for. Her final college show was A Little Night Music. A year later, wouldn’t you know it, Dench won an Olivier for the musical at the National.

That was in 1996. The next year Williams, then 25, became a single parent (the father’s name has never been made public). Neither Dench nor her husband discovered she was pregnant until a few weeks before Finty gave birth. Dench’s director at the National Theatre, Richard Eyre, later said that Dench was “massively wounded” by not being told — although it is likely that it was Michael Williams, a traditional Catholic, whom Finty had feared telling more. In the end, naturally, Williams Sr came round. “Who couldn’t be pleased with Sammy in your midst,” she says. He is now 21 and travelling. “He’s an excellent chap.”

Since Pack of Lies is about secrets, I wonder what her take on that period of secrecy is. “Oh, man! No, it is not helpful. It was something that happened to me when I was really young,” she says, adding that she should be allowed to move on from her mistakes. “Bringing it up brings back those old feelings. ‘Oh yes, I remember how that feels: it makes you feel pretty shit.’ ”

After her father died of lung cancer in 2001, Williams hit some terrible times, but pulled herself out from under them four years later when she entered a clinic for her alcoholism. She has not drunk since. “It was a whole mixture of things . . .” she begins and peters out. Her head sinks almost until it hits the table. “I suppose a lot of it was I didn’t feel pretty enough, or talented enough, or funny enough, or interesting enough. I always felt the most interesting things about me were things that weren’t about me.”

But possibly to do with her parents? “Yes. And not many — and I really do stress not many — but there are a few people I have met in my life who have reinforced that feeling. Maybe they were friends with me for reasons other than being friends with me.” This was all a long time ago, she says. She is now “incredibly happy”, “very well” and “very, very content”.

“It doesn’t mean I still don’t sometimes feel how I used to feel, but now, what do I do now? I watch reality television and I drink tea and I eat a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and I get on with it.”

She has done rather more than that. She has worked consistently as an actress, in films such as The Secret Rapture and Gosford Park, on television in Cranford and Born and Bred, and most frequently on stage, including with her mother in The Vote at the Donmar Warehouse in 2015. Performing at the Globe in Nell Leyshon’s Bedlam in 2010, she met the actor Joseph Timms and they have been together ever since. With Timms, she says. she “won the lottery”.

“Genuinely, I am so content. Funnily enough, about two months ago somebody sent me a thing on Facebook and it said, ‘Wanted, person 40 years plus, to go out to a Greek island to look after 55 cats for seven months. Accommodation supplied. You will be paid per month. Please apply.’ And do you know what? There was a part of me that thought, ‘Yeah, I could do that.’

“We’re all puppies at the end of the day. We’re all puppies who do a job and go, ‘Please like us! Please like us!’ I needed that at one point in my life. Actually, I’ve got to a stage where I could go and look after 55 cats on a Greek island and I would be just as happy.”

I really hope she doesn’t because while she may not be the marvellous Dame Judi, plenty regard her as the marvellous Finty Williams. This is not flattery. After we part, on good terms I think, I contact three directors who have worked with her.

The first to reply is Michael Attenborough, who as Richard’s son knows something about families that cast shadows. Directing her in JB Priestley’s Dangerous Corner four years ago, he discovered, he says, a “Rolls-Royce”. He speaks of her “effortless sensuality”, her “sense of humour” and her “energy within”. “If I was putting a company together I would have Finty in it any day.”

Roy Marsden, best known as Adam Dalgliesh in the ITV PD James adaptations, directed her in Noël Coward’s Volcano in the West End in 2012. He extols a “delicate, beautiful talent” with whom it was “a delight” to rehearse. “Her facility as an actor is enormous, but her own self-doubt, I know, frightens her. Yet as soon as she walks on to the stage from the wings it all disappears and you go, ‘Wow!’ ”

Finally, the actress Eve Best, who directed her as Lady Macduff in Macbeth at the Globe in 2013, comes back to me. “Finty,” she says, “has that rare mix of heart-shattering vulnerability and a sort of flinty toughness that says, ‘Don’t f*** with me.’ Utterly brave, utterly generous, ready to put her heart on the line.”

Attenborough says one other thing. In rehearsal Williams, he says, “gives everything”. He is not at all surprised that I should find her somewhat spent by 4.30 in the afternoon. “She gives her all.” She has given me her all too. Next time we meet, let’s settle for a lunchtime sandwich. Pack of Lies is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1, to November 17

picture credits

1) Finty Williams and her mother, Judi Dench (DAVE M. BENETT/GETTY IMAGES)

2) CHRIS MCANDREW FOR THE TIMES

3) Jasper Britton, Chris Larkin, Macy Nyman and Williams in Pack of Lies

4) Williams in 2000 with Michael, her father, and DenchMICHAEL CRABTREE/PA

#judi dench #finty williams #pack of lies #1888 #28sep2018

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promoabout109 · 3 years ago

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Casino 11 Cours Charlemagne

Stinkin’ Rich Texas Tea 50 Lions Pompeii Playboy Red White Blue 7s Secrets of Petit Casino Cours Charlemagne the Forest Da Vinci Diamonds A Pot of Gold Book of Ra 6 Sizzling Hot Thundering Buffalo April 16, 2019. Now £64 on Tripadvisor: Hotel Charlemagne, Lyon. See 565 traveller reviews, 259 candid photos, and great deals for Hotel Charlemagne, ranked #48 of 151 hotels in Lyon and rated 4 of 5 at Tripadvisor. Prices are calculated as of based on a check-in date of.

Born27 May 1974 (age 46)

Paris, France

NationalityFrenchOccupationActor, freerunning instructor, public speakerWebsitefoucan.com

Sébastien Foucan (born 27 May 1974 in Paris) is a French freerunner of Guadeloupean descent.

Casino 11 Cours Charlemagne Des

He is the founder of freerunning and considered an early developer of parkour. Known for his views on the philosophy of Parkour and freerunning, Foucan stresses the need for training in the basics of both for individual safety and to maintain a positive public perception of the activities. As creator of freerunning, Foucan has stipulated its values:

Follow your way; Always practice; Respect others in their practice; Be an inspiration for others; Be positive and look for positive environments; Respect your environment; Feel free to try other disciplines; Don't take it too seriously; The journey is more important than the goal; There is no good or bad, right or wrong, but what is important is what you learn from experiences through practice; Freerunning is not an elite discipline, but for people who love and continue to move; Channel your energy in a good way, a way to be better(1)

He became known in the United Kingdom after Mike Christie's Channel 4 documentary Jump London in September 2003 and the subsequent documentary Jump Britain. In addition to those programmes, Foucan appeared as Mollaka in the 21st James Bond film Casino Royale.(2) He spent three months in the Bahamas on the film.(3) Foucan appeared in the music video for Madonna's 2005 single 'Jump', accompanying the singer on her 2006 'Confessions Tour'.(4) He helped K-Swiss develop the Ariake, the first in a line of five freerunning-shoe models. Foucan appeared in a trailer for the game Mirror's Edge. His most-recent role is assassin Anton Bogart in The Tournament.

It was reported on 3 January 2012 that Foucan would be among 15 celebrities in the seventh series of Dancing on Ice.(5) On 19 February he was eliminated in a double Ultimate Skills skate-off with Heidi Range.

Freerunning(edit)

A saut de bras

Foucan attributed the name free running to Guillaume Pelletier, who he had worked with at the time of Jump London.(6) The word 'freerunning' was coined during the filming of Jump London to present Parkour to the English-speaking world. Since then it has come to represent Foucan's methodology, which focuses on innovation and expression rather than Parkour's speed and efficiency.

Foucan explains freerunning:

Freerunning, for me, is my Parkour evolution. I can't say any more that I do Parkour, because if I want to be free to do flips, or let's say I'm learning breakdancing, and I would like to incorporate it into my Parkour expression...Not to say I am doing capoeira, breakdancing, Parkour and anything else. Freerunning is the way I choose to name my own expression. Now people recognize Parkour with flips (acrobatics) as freerunning. But only the action of doing Parkour and flips is not freerunning. It's the action of adding more stuff into your expression. That's the Freerunning attitude.(7)

Foucan has described the core value

Follow your way; Always practise; Respect others in their practise; Be an inspiration for others; Be positive and look for positive environments; Respect your environment; Feel free to try other disciplines; Don't take it too seriously; The journey is more important than the goal; There is no good or bad, right or wrong but what is important is what you learn from experiences through practise; Freerunning is not an elite discipline, but for the people who love and continue to move; Channel your energy in a good way, a way to be better.(1)(8)(9)

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He defines Freerunning as a discipline for self-development, following one's own way.(1)(8)(9) Foucan's dissatisfaction with Parkour's limited creativity and self-expression motivated him to develop a similar art of movement which became known as freerunning.(10)

He reported that he was forced to define free running as a discipline separate from parkour because others had rejected his practice as not being within their definition of parkour.(6) For example, David Belle and other Parkour enthusiasts have criticized Foucan and freerunning:

Free Running? A kind of demonstration mixing parkour techniques, and acrobatics to be more spectacular and serve the medias and marketing, but also a sport. The term Parkour has been invented by David Belle and Hubert Koundé in 1998 and the word Free Running has been created much later by Sebastien Foucan for the purpose of spreading Parkour in a marketing fashion (they thought the word 'parkour' wasn't international enough and Sebastien Foucan proposed them this word). The problem is that they fully mixed acrobatics to impress people. This is where Freerunning becomes different from Parkour. To make a comparison, Free Running is like artistic katas in martial arts, the goal is only to be spectacular. So it is related to parkour but doesn't answer to the same philosophy. I mean, when you practice to show how spectacular your jump is gonna be, people aren't focused anymore on the difficulty, on the obstacle but on you. This showing-off attitude isn't the parkour philosophy which preaches for humility. In this, Free Running and Parkour are fundamentally opposite even if the first one is related to the second one. Like the traditional way and the freestyle way.(6)

Foucan has described freerunning as a process of movement aimed at self-development through physical activity, play, and creativity. He regards it as an act symbolic of leaving 'fixed path and social systems'.(11)

Foucan appeared in Ninja Warrior UK 4 and cleared the Heats, but his run in the Semi-Final has not been broadcast yet.

Filmography(edit)

Casino 11 Cours Charlemagne Lyon

Acting

Casino 11 Cours Charlemagne Avec

Casino Royale (2006) as Mollaka

The Tournament (2009) as Anton Bogart

The Antwerp Dolls (2015) as Marco

Creators: The Past (2016) as Tammuz

Stunts

55 Degrees North (TV series) Episode #1.1 freerunning performer (2004)

References(edit)

^ abcFree Running founder Sebastien Foucan to be interviewed by Worldwide JAM. Worldwide Jam.tv.

^IMDb, Casino Royale (2006)

^'Curtis – Sébastien's stunt double'. theurbanheroes.com. 29 November 2006. Archived from the original on 22 May 2007. Retrieved 14 May 2007. Curtis was hired to be a stunt double in the recent James Bond Film 'Casino Royale'. He was on location in the Bahamas for 13 weeks working closely with Gary Powell the stunt coordinator to help plan and execute the opening chase scene.

^Confessions Tour details – Mad-Eyes – Madonna tour schedule, setlist, equestrian, bedouin, disco. Mad-Eyes.

^(1)Archived 10 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine

^ abcWorldwide Jam. Parkour and Free Running Resource. Worldwidejam.tv.

^'Ask Seb' Episode 1 – Sébastien Foucan. YouTube (2 November 2010).

^ abHome « Sébastien Foucan: the official website | Sébastien Foucan: the official website. Foucan.com (16 August 2012).

^ abFreerunning: Find Your Way: Amazon.co.uk: Sebastien Foucan: Books. Amazon.co.uk.

^Foucan. Foucan (16 August 2012).

^Sébastien Foucan: Founder of free running | Life and style. the guardian.com.

External links(edit)

Sébastien Foucan on IMDb

Sébastien Foucan in British Documentary 'Jump Britain' at Google Video

Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sébastien_Foucan&oldid=994080766'

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demonwriterx · 6 years ago

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Spy Kids: Mission Critical Netflix review

Alright I have to get something off my chest. I have this weird thing...(not that weird but you’ll see) like a fetish in seeing villains wearing suits. Honestly everytime I see one that looks like this...

I am hooked, which brings me to spy kids because of this guy!

Lets just take a moment and just...admire him. He is such a dork! He is! He really is, he is ruthless when he wants to be, like when he tortures his minions. But, he is also kinda a soft noodle. His body language says it all.

His mannerisms, his body language, the way they animate his hands whenever he is talking! Ugh! such good characterization! And he is voiced by Tom Kenny. Perfect. This has been a public service announcement.

But Let’s talk about the show as a whole. I had seen the original movie of Spy Kids and when I heard Netflix came out with a Spy Kids Animated Series, Nostalgia hit me like a thumb-thumb. I had to see it and I was greeted with a throwback to the characters.

This series still has the same characters from the first film, like the Cortez family! We have Carmen and Juni who are enjoying life in the secret spy lair with their parents and other operatives until they are faced with a villain called the Golden Brain. (which is the nerd in the yellow suit). Golden Brain is a creation created by Mr. Cortez who escaped and created his own body. He is fueled with revenge and wants to destroy the spy agency and also take over the world. Typical kid-show villain. Emphasis on the “kid-show” part.

Even though they reference Mr. Floop and other past events for the parents who are spending time with their kids, it is still a kid’s show. I would put it in between “Sophia the first” and “Elena of Avalor”. One is strictly lessons and predictable plots and the other is action and adventure. Spy Kids: Mission Critical, is in the middle.

Let’s start with the characters.

They are caricatures. Let me explain, we have

Juni Cortez- Red headed younger brother who is often depicted as the “Punch first, take action” type of boy.

Carmen Cortez-Smart girl who believes she is mature but is really not.

These two are fine. Its the others I have critiques on because we have the “stylish Indian kid” (james bond, and I am saying indian because I think that is what it presented but I could be wrong.) His name is Sir Awesome. I don’t really enjoy his character because he sips tea all the time and...that’s it. He is sophisticated then the others but, there is nothing else interesting about him.

Then we have the Australian, “Ace”, who always says “mate” all the time and other Australian words but I feel as if they are trying really hard with his character to tell the audience “HEY! HE IS AUSTRALIAN!” Yes...we got it. He is seen as a friendly rival for Juni and is seen as perfect (even though he isn't) He is the skilled shooter in the team but that’s it. All you need to know is that he’s australian and he can shoot pretty good.

We have the Russian girl, “scorpion” who is actually a lot more interesting then the other side characters. She is the daughter of Floop! which is pretty awesome. She is not silly but serious all the time. She is sarcastic towards Carmen and confident in herself but she does have an angry side. In the cartoon, she has the most interesting dialogue and backstory. I can give her a thumbs up. Oh and she also has a thumb-thumb as her personal butler.

The last one is the worst. She bugged me a lot and her name is Glitch. She is the tech savvy, hacker, smart asian girl. (I’m saying she is asian because of the depiction but I might be wrong) She always says “Hashtag!” “LOL” “ZOMG”, “frown face emoji”. eeeew the emojis were the worst. They could have stuck with the hacker and smart part but when they added those words to her dialogue, its pretty cringy. But hey at least she has cool hair.

and by far, the best character in this whole series is this guy right here. Golden Brain.

He is more fleshed out then the side characters, thanks to how they animated him, the dialogue and how he react to things. Even though he is a typical cliche villain, who wants to take over the world and nothing else type off guy. Think of him like Cobra Commander in G.I Joe or Skeletor from He-Man. But he is pretty ruthless and serious, at the same time, he is silly and rambles when he’s nervous.

Whenever he is disappointed in his minions, he uses his cane to zap them. Its actually harsh and it physically hurts them, knocking them down where they stood. He shouts and screams. But he is intelligent (as a brain should be) Yet, he kinda has a softer side, especially when it comes to this girl.

Who is my second favorite character! Therese. She is Head of research and Development. She is also very smart and got the attention of Golden Brain from her work ethic and diligence to please her boss. She is a hard worker but a bit of a naive person. The whole time, she has no idea Golden Brain is actually a villain and thinks he runs a “vegan” and “environmentally-friendly” company. It actually makes me smile and laugh hearing the two talk to one another, especially since Golden Brain is trying to keep his agenda’s secret. But she is the only one that actually does not “annoy” him and is genuinely quite gentle with her.

He does this funny thing when he sees her and that’s when he is waving at her. He kinda likes waving goodbye or acknowledging her. He can’t control it. There was one scene when he waves a little “too long” and had to physically slap his hand down.

There’s nothing special between them.

No. I’m serious.

.......

I ship them.

Okay but listen! I really think the writers are setting something up. Just go watch episode 4 and tell me you don’t see any shipping quality! These two is the life force of this show! and I would like to see a solo episode with them in the next season.

But i’m getting sidetracked.

The season so far as ten episodes. It’s pretty short. I wish they made it a bit longer, like two episodes more. Each episodes has its ups and downs and a few are better than most like ep 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10. I would say these are my top five. Most of the episodes are cliche and is often a moral but that’s alright since it is a kid show.

The animation is okay. it reminds me of Puss and Boots. You’ll see what I mean when you watch it. There are only three main locations, the spy academy, taco place, and desert. Since its a netflix show, they have to work with what money they have on hand.

Altogether, the show is good. The side characters are annoying but everything else is fine. If I would give it a rating out of ten I would give it a....

7/10!

Its a kid show!

But I highly recommend you all give it a chance and watch it. Especially for Golden Brain because he is great and I would like to see more fan art of him and Terese sooooo...get on that!

#spy kids #spy kids: mission critical #black hat #villainous #golden brain #review #netflix #kid's show #shipping fuel #khan #jungle book #toffee #star vs the forces of evil

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mfalsomni · 3 years ago

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No Time To Die (2021)

It has taken me ten days to write this because I couldn't stop crying every time I thought about the film. But here it is, my probably bad review on my favourite Bond film.

To start, I was amazed and incredibly happy at seeing a Bond that really feels —and is not a misogynistic asshole. The character evolves throughout more than 2 hours to reach an incredible yet devastating ending I still haven't got over of. To be honest, every main character felt incredibly well written in its own way. Back to what I was saying, seeing Bond feel and hurt like a human —in contraposition to the classic "perfect manly man" he usually portrays— is incredible.

On to other characters, women in this film felt perfectly written to me. None of them is there to have the minimum representation, neither is written in a stereotypical manner —which is sad to celebrate, but I'm happy about it.

The story develops smoothly into something I couldn't predict at all, but that felt like the perfect ending. Every little detail since the beginning makes that ending even better than it already would be by itself.

Regarding music, it's composed by Hans Zimmer, I loved every second of it. The opening sequence was incredible —it was nice that it didn't revolve around naked women as the tradition follows—, Billie's voice really matched the vibe and lyrics. Actually, I didn't expect it to fit the context so well, but it did amazingly.

Now some random things I don't know where to put (before I start crying again). I will never be over how good Daniel Craig looks in those tick deep blue turtleneck sweaters they always make him wear for infiltration scenes... (Btw if anyone knows where to get one like those kindly tell me). Also, the classic cars are so pretty I want to scream!! And the Italian village they visit at the introduction... It was so beautiful, I loved that part of the movie.

SPOILER ZONE

It really hurts me to see Daniel Craig go as James Bond. It was time, and this was an incredible way to do so, but it hurt me too much. He's the Bond I've grown with (Casino Royale was released when I was only 4) and seeing him go feels —for some reason— like saying goodbye to an old friend. This is probably why seeing him watch on that island and saying goodbye hit me so hard... To me, he will always be the best James Bond that has been.

END OF SPOILER ZONE

In conclusion: this film was incredible and I cannot wait to watch it again, and again, and again. I enjoyed every minute of it, and I really wish I could watch it for the first time again. Watched on October 10th 2021.

#tea reviews james bond films #no time to die #james bond #007 #cary fukunaga you motherfucker...

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jfbuckley · 3 years ago

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After at least two postponements due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the new James Bond film has finally been released. It isn’t my cup of tea by a long chalk, there are plenty of films at the cinema that I’d like to see first. I may well go and see it, but there are a number of others ahead of it in the queue.

However, it is a big “cultural event”. My blog’s favourite film correspondent has been to see it, and has submitted his review:

“Hi - the 007 franchise has been going on for a very long time (started in 1962) and i was 8 years old - i'm now 67 so it is unsurprising that 007 has evolved - it is no longer the 007 of moore and connery who mixed a bit of humour and romance alongside the fight to save the world

in this episode bond has retired and is living with a pretty young lady but is dragged out of retirement by a CIA ally to fight Spectre again - to me this is a weakness of the film - maybe the writers are also getting tired as they can't think of a new villain - the threat to the world is ( i think) a DNA that if passed by a carrier by touch can infect and kill anyone who comes into contact with it - the film was written before the advent of coronavirus

there is then the usual routine of explanations of the threat to the world, confrontations with villains, car chases in exotic locations, 007 killing lots of people who fire loads of bullets that all miss, 007 returning to london to re-enlist and meet familiar colleagues and also finding out that the 'new' 007 is female

the denouement is set on an island which has to be destroyed but in doing so 007 has a final confrontation with a villain, the outcome of which means that 007 can never return to the life he desires - and we are left in doubt that daniel craig's time as 007 is over

i enjoyed the film and mark it 7/10 - it was a little long and some parts weren't that exciting or interesting - but i like these kind of films and they work well on the big screen - it is not as good as skyfall but miles better than quantum of solace which i considered dull and boring

as for the future the fact that the writers tentatively introduce us to a female 007 (in the film she graciously returns the 'number' back to james bond) suggests that is the way the franchise is going and will certainly be a way of freshening up the series and give it fresh momentum

mind you at the end of the film the usual line came up - 'james bond will return' - we shall see

bye”

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Zack Snyder’s Justice League: DC Comics and DCEU Easter Eggs Guide

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This article contains Zack Snyder’s Justice League spoilers. We have a (relatively) spoiler free review here.

Well, they finally released the Snyder Cut! Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now out in the world (and streaming on HBO Max) and it’s four hours of the director’s undiluted, controversial take on the DC Universe. It’s even more packed with DC history than the “official” theatrical release, if you can believe that, and it builds out the world of the DCEU in some new and unexpected ways.

There’s no shortage of DC Comics Easter eggs in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and even nods to DC movies of the past. It’s a six course meal of a movie that DC superhero fans should savor, because we’re unlikely to ever see anything like this again.

We’ve tried to find all the DC references and lore in the film. Here’s what we’ve got so far.

The Story

While the Justice League have been around since 1960 (they first appeared in Brave and the Bold #28) the broad strokes of this movie are based on 2011’s Justice League: Origin (which was adapted as the animated movie, Justice League: War), the comic book story that revamped the team’s initial team-up for a new generation. The villain of the comic was Darkseid not Steppenwolf, but the Parademon hordes, the Mother Boxes, and the tying of Cyborg’s origin to Fourth World technology all come straight out of this story.

Steppenwolf DID show up in a contemporary story as well, though. A visually-similar version of the character appeared in DC’s Earth-2, which indicated that Darkseid’s attack on Earth was one that spanned the multiverse, and his lieutenant Steppenwolf ravaged a different Earth, killing its greatest heroes in the process. So that’s two big comics influences out of the way here.

Throughout this movie, Steppenwolf keeps on trying to bring about “the unity” with the three Mother Boxes, but as far as I know, that has no correlation to anything in the comics. If anything, Steppenwolf’s quest and the movie’s backstory has more in common with the Lord of the Rings saga than anything Jack Kirby did, with magical tech being distributed across the different races of the world to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.

Aquaman

Of all the characters in this film, Aquaman seems to bear the most of Zack Snyder’s stamp. It’s incredibly visible just in his eyes, which were “humanized” considerably by the time he appeared in his solo movie.

Snyder’s original vision for Aquaman was clearly something a little grittier than the gleaming underwater fantasy that James Wan brought us. The eerie “hymn” that the women of the village sing to mark Arthur’s departure is a haunting reminder of how these characters are seen in this world.

As Aquaman returns to Atlantis, we see a familiar octopus. Could this be Topo, comic book octopus sidekick to Arthur and famed for his drum solo skills in the Aquaman movie? I’d like to think it is.

Willem Dafoe’s Vulko is here, looking a little different and perhaps a bit less kindly than he did in Wan’s film. Interestingly, he refers to Arthur as “the king who would be man,” an inversion on “the man who would be king,” and a shot at Arthur for not taking his rightful place as heir to the throne of Atlantis. For his part, Arthur’s refusal on the grounds that the Atlanteans are a “brutal, petty, superstitious people” also hints at broader visions Snyder had for the character.

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It’s interesting to note that Mera and other Atlanteans speak with English accents here, where they didn’t in the Aquaman movie. It’s a proud tradition of making alien races speak with an English accent, one perhaps most famous in superhero movies thanks to virtually the entire population of Krypton in Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie.

Similarly, Atlanteans don’t speak underwater here as they do in the James Wan film, instead creating bubbles of air in which to communicate like land-dwellers. It’s pretty cool.

The song that plays when Arthur vanishes into the waves is Nick Cave’s “There is a Kingdom,” and its lyrics are pretty much as on-the-nose as you might expect.

Aquaman spearing two Parademons with his trident reminds me of this moment from Justice League: Origin, as well…

Is Aquaman the first person to call Bruce “Batman” in the DCEU? In Batman v Superman it was all “the Bat” this and “the Gotham Bat” that.

Speaking of Batman…

Batman

When we first see Bruce Wayne searching for the mysterious Arthur Curry, he’s riding a jet black horse, which is very similar to the steed he rode in some famous pages of Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley’s classic and influential The Dark Knight Returns, a work which has considerable influence on how Batman was portrayed here and in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

If you look closely you can see a 201 area code on Bruce Wayne’s business card, which further confirms that Gotham City is on the New Jersey side of the river that separates it from Metropolis.

This movie, like Batman v Superman before it, reminds us that we’re dealing with a Batman who has been active for 20 years. It’s yet another reminder of the influence of The Dark Knight Returns on the DCEU vision for Batman, depicting him as a much older, more experienced crimefighter.

Let’s just take a moment to appreciate how good Jeremy Irons is as Alfred Pennyworth. His line about “someone who broods in a cave” is classic Alfred shade (as is the moment later on when he is totally micromanaging how Diana makes tea). See also: Bruce’s joke about how he works for Alfred.

Bruce tells Alfred that he “made a promise to him [Superman] on his grave.” As we well know with Bruce and his parents, when he swears on someone’s grave, it’s a promise he takes very seriously.

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We meet Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Crispus Allen very briefly in Gotham PD HQ talking to JK Simmons’ excellent Jim Gordon. Detective Crispus Allen was a Batman supporting character who played a significant role in the excellent Gotham Central series. While we don’t get any hint of his future here, Allen went on to become the human host of the Spectre after he was murdered by a corrupt colleague.

Barry asks Bruce incredulously, “you have a satellite?” to which Bruce calmly responds, “I have six.” It feels very much like something Grant Morrison’s Batman would say (he even owns a flying saucer), but it ALSO hints at the fact that for many years, the Justice League operated out of a satellite HQ. Perhaps Bruce would consider moving the team up there in future installments.

During the big battle at the end, there’s a terrific shot of Batman that mirrors his first appearance in Detective Comics #27.

There’s a pretty clear shot of the Bat-tank that is a very direct nod to a panel from Dark Knight Returns.

Cyborg

It seems like all the flashbacks to Vic Stone’s pre-Cyborg college days take place in 2015, so it’s after the events of Man of Steel, but he has only been “Cyborg” for a relatively brief period here.

Thanks to the backstory in this version of the film, we learn that Vic is already a genius level intellect. Although in the comics it was because Drs Silas and Elinore Stone were already experimenting on their son long before the accident that forced them to turn him into Cyborg.

Interestingly, the origin story here is neither the classic comics origin nor the New 52 version (surprising, since so much of this film feels inspired by the New 52 Justice League: Origin story). There, it was either an accident with interdimensional energy or the opening of a Mother Box/Boom Tube which virtually destroyed Victor’s body and caused the creation of Cyborg.

What is the Dean of GCU’s name? It looks like it might be “Dean Stanton” which would be a lovely tribute to actor Harry Dean Stanton (but there’s no DC Comics connection here in that case).

You may note that the scoreboard for Gotham City University was built by Wayne Enterprises.

It’s probably a coincidence, but Cyborg financially helps out a “Linda S. Reed.” In the comics Linda Reed was a short-lived Green Arrow character who (along with her twin sister Ramona) went by the uninspiring name of “Girl Archer.”

Since Vic Stone has traditionally been a Teen Titans character, and he and Barry are by far the youngest members of the League, it makes sense that they would bond. Especially since this version of Barry Allen has more in common with the comic book version of Wally West than anything else, and Wally was a member of the Titans with Vic.

The Flash

When we first meet Barry Allen he is late to a job interview. This isn’t just a play on “oh, the fastest man alive is actually really slow” or something, Barry’s habitual lateness was baked into the character in his very first appearance back in Showcase #4. Similarly, even his predecessor, Jay Garrick was known for this not terribly charming trait, too.

Interestingly, Barry’s persona in the DCEU feels much more in common with the Wally West of the DC Animated Universe. He’s the less experienced hero, a kind of point-of-view character, and generally younger and funnier than his teammates. But the more specific Wally reference is his need to consume tremendous quantities of calories to keep going (his “snack hole” crack), something that was unique to Wally among Flashes (but which was also utilized when John Wesley Shipp played Barry on the 1990 The Flash TV series).

That’s Billy Crudup as Henry Allen in jail (who sadly won’t be reprising his role in Andy Muschietti’s The Flash movie) The whole “hands on the glass” thing was done quite a bit between the TV versions of these characters, played by Grant Gustin and the great John Wesley Shipp. Henry’s line to Barry that he should “make your own future” would seem to foreshadow the events of Flashpoint, as well.

But there’s one other similarity to the TV show worth pointing out…

Henry is rocking the Jay Garrick look with the grey hair at the temples thing. With certain developments on The Flash TV series, this could also be an indicator of how things will be handled in the DCEU. I wrote lots more about Jay Garrick, one of my favorite characters, right here.

Barry notes to Bruce that he is fluent in “gorilla sign language,” which could come in handy down the road should he encounter a race of superintelligent gorillas who have started their own civilization or something like that.

Is Barry wearing a “Black Freighter” t-shirt? As in the pirate story that is woven through the Watchmen comics? You don’t need me to remind you that Zack Snyder also directed a Watchmen movie, right?

If you look at Barry’s desk, there’s a photo of Nikola Tesla there, which makes sense given Flash’s whole aesthetic.

One fun thing about Barry’s personal HQ: If you look carefully on one of the TVs, you can spot that he’s a Rick and Morty fan, and a particular season two episode, which involves a chemically-enhanced Summer and Rick beating the crap out of unsavory types like Nazis, is playing in the background.

It’s interesting to note that Barry is only now just on the path to becoming a police scientist, rather than already having been driven to do so. It’s almost like his time with the Justice League inspires him to do more with his professional life, as well.

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It’s interesting that the Barry Allen of the DCEU is Jewish, if only because we’ve never had any hint of Flash’s faith (or lack thereof) in the comics or on the TV show. The closest Barry Allen has to any kind of religious or ethnic identity has always been “midwestern.” Brian Cronin at CBR thinks this could be a reference to a throwaway line from a late ’80s DC story, but I don’t necessarily think that’s considered canon. I’m open to corrections, though!

Iris West

We see the first meeting between Barry Allen and Iris West here. I don’t know the exact make and model of the vintage convertible that Iris is driving (if anyone does, please give us a shout in the comments or on Twitter), but it feels like it COULD be from the year 1956, when Showcase #4 was published. Similarly, the excellent and underrated The Flash TV series from the 1990s used to populate the streets of its version of Central City with vintage cars to give it a “timeless” feel.

Speaking of Showcase #4, the fact that hot dogs are among the things kind of hovering in midair thanks to Barry moving at super speed is another nod to the character’s first appearance, when one of Barry’s first super speed acts was to catch a spilled tray of food in a diner in mid-air before the waitress knew what had happened.

What’s the brand of fast food the truck driver is eating? I can’t quite make it out. It would be cool if it was a Big Belly Burger with a Soder Cola, but I think it might just be something lame like “Burger Shop.” Help me out, folks!

The truck that nearly kills Iris is for a company called Gard’ner Fox, a reference to classic Flash writer/co-creator Gardener Fox.

You can see a newspaper box for The Central City Tribune, which hints at the fact that Iris West is a journalist in the comics.

Superman

Martha’s dog’s name is Rusty, which I THINK is a reference to a briefly glimpsed pooch in Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie. But I can’t fully confirm that as of this writing.

Lois Lane’s depression and loneliness is soundtracked, appropriately enough, to “Distant Sky” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Mr. Snyder seems to love the work of Nick Cave), which features lyrics like “They told us our gods would outlive us,” but there’s lots here that mirrors the journey of these heroes in the film.

The Daily Planet’s slogan in the DCEU is “reporting on the planet, daily” which seems a little on-the-nose to me, but whatever. It’s had several in the comics, but in Richard Donner’s Superman it was “Metropolis’ Greatest Newspaper.”

When the Motherbox generates the image of Superman flying, it’s a classic Superman pose this is. This is a really cool shot, and looks like a Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson drawing of the Man of Steel come to life.

During the return to the Kryptonian ship that served as the de facto Fortress of Solitude in Man of Steel (and which gives Supes his black costume here), we can spot the open pod that launched so many fan theories in 2013. A possibly no-longer-canon Man of Steel prequel comic that was nonetheless written by David Goyer implied that it was Kara Zor-El who was in that pod, and who has roamed the DCEU undiscovered thus far.

You can hear moments of Hans Zimmer’s truly excellent Man of Steel score at key Superman moments throughout the film, too.

Clark Kent was buried in a conservative dark blue business suit, with a red tie, and black shoes. That is the exact outfit that the comic book version of Clark Kent wore in virtually every single comic book appearance from roughly 1938 until 1986. Henry Cavill’s Clark was a little more fashionable in life, but not in death.

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When Superman wakes up, well, it’s not pretty. This scene serves two purposes, though. For one thing, it demonstrates how he is more powerful than the entire team combined, lest anyone think that Superman is lame. But his disorientation and raw fury are a slight nod to how in the comics and cartoons, at several points, Superman has been manipulated by Darkseid. While that doesn’t quite happen here, the role of Fourth World technology in his resurrection feels like it’s not a coincidence.

Clark “returning” to himself in the field in front of his Smallville home and being greeted by Martha Kent feels like an inversion of Clark leaving home in Superman: The Movie and bidding his mother farewell. He’s wearing a similar flannel shirt in both scenes, too.

As Clark completes his journey and “returns” to being Superman, complete with the cool new costume (more on that in a second), we hear the voices of BOTH his fathers, both Jor-El and Jonathan Kent. It’s yet another nod to Richard Donner’s Superman, when Kal-El was guided by the voice and spirit of his Kryptonian father when he first wore the suit. And, of course, his takeoff here mirrors his first flight in Man of Steel, completing his “rebirth.”

The black and silver Superman suit was a fixture of Reign of the Supermen, the story that brought the recently deceased Man of Steel back to life. In the comics, it was a kind of regeneration suit, meant to help harness solar radiation for Superman’s cells. It’s not clear if it is meant to serve that purpose here, since (as we see when he kicks the entire League’s ass) he was already at full physical (if not mental) power upon his resurrection. It’s been done several times in live action too, but it has never looked as good as it does here.

Amusing detail about the Kent Farm being foreclosed on…there’s already some awful suburban McMansion built right across the road.

Marc McClure who played Jimmy Olsen in the Donner Superman films played an Iron Heights prison guard in the theatrical cut of the film, but here he is the cop guarding the Superman memorial in Metropolis.

And the final true shot we see of Superman in the film, with Clark Kent becoming aware of trouble and doing the classic “shirt rip” is another iconic moment from throughout the character’s history, although it’s never better than it is in Superman: The Movie right before the big helicopter rescue. It’s worth noting that in the theatrical cut, Supes was back in the red and blue, while here he has chosen to stay in the black and silver.

Wonder Woman

One of the big takeaways from Wonder Woman’s intro sequence is that even mundane villains in the DCEU are cool, stylish, dangerous, and they don’t think small. These guys are the face of a mysterious organization who want to “turn back the clock” but I have yet to find a suitable DC Comics parallel to them.

Of course, the statue we see Wonder Woman standing on is Justice herself.

Diana’s white dress while she’s working on restoring the statue feels vaguely reminiscent of her “mod years” in the late 1960s, where she briefly ditched her primary colored costume to fight in something a little more practical.

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Wonder Woman wearing an appropriately stylish black getup when visiting Bruce in the cave kind of reminds me of Wonder Girl Donna Troy’s star-spangled black outfit that she wore for a little while…but that’s probably just a coincidence.

Diana tells Bruce that she “once knew a man who would have loved to fly it” regarding Bruce’s flying troop transport for the League. She is, of course, referring to Steve Trevor, but this line takes on a little bit of extra weight after we see Steve flying more modern aircraft in Wonder Woman 1984.

At one point in the film, Diana hints that Atlantis and Themyscira had been at war at one point in the past. This has been teased in the comics several times and came to a head in the Flashpoint comics.

There’s a cool moment when Steppenwolf tells Wonder Woman that she has “the blood of the old gods” in her veins. When Jack Kirby created the New Gods and the Fourth World, he was still working for Marvel. The original plan was for the Asgard of Marvel’s Thor comics to undergo a Ragnarok, everyone would die, and in its place would be these New Gods. Obviously that didn’t happen, and the concepts ended up at DC. But that one line, tying Diana’s Greek mythology roots directly to the cosmic New Gods of the DCEU, is surprisingly in keeping with Kirby’s original intention.

Ryan Choi

We get another hero snuck into the mix in this movie, in the form of STAR Labs’ Ryan Choi (played by Zheng Kai). While he doesn’t suit up in this film, Choi was the inheritor of Ray Palmer’s mantle as the shrinking superhero, the Atom.

By the end of the film, Choi is given the title of head of nanotechnology for STAR Labs, further setting up his future as a hero.

Green Lantern

While no Green Lantern remains alive for long in this film, there are plenty of references to the Green Lantern Corps throughout…

Steppenwolf promises that there are “no protectors, no Lanterns, no Kryptonian” guarding Earth this time, which is pretty self-explanatory.

This member of the Green Lantern Corps we see fall in battle during the flashback sequence is Yalan Gur, a character who has only made a handful of appearances in the comics. Gur was indeed the Green Lantern of space sector 2814 (that includes Earth) around the time this battle would have taken place. In the comics, Gur was corrupted by his own power and turned on the humans of Earth, but he clearly didn’t get that chance in the movie, as he was killed by Darkseid in the flashback.

During the vision of the future where Darkseid has gained control of the Anti-Life Equation, another dead Green Lantern can be spotted amongst the rubble of a ruined city. That would be of Green Lantern Corps drill sergeant and fan favorite, Kilowog. This is Kilowog’s second live action appearance, if you count 2011’s not great Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds.

Darkseid

Steppenwolf tells the Amazons that he “has come to enlighten you to The Great Darkness.” The Great Darkness is more than just a reference to Darkseid himself and his entire philosophy, but is also a reference to what is perhaps the ultimate Legion of Super-Heroes story, The Great Darkness Saga, by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, which saw a long dormant Darkseid return to life to terrorize the galaxy a thousand years from now.

When Darkseid strikes the surface of the Earth with his axe, it creates the kind of hellish firepits that his homeworld of Apokalips is famous for.

Darkseid taking on the literal “old gods” of Earth including Zeus, Ares, Apollo, and Poseidon is a fun contrast with the fact that he is part of DC’s “New Gods” mythology.

Darkseid is searching for the Anti-Life Equation, which we wrote more about here.

During Darkseid’s “vision” of the universe once he has obtained the Anti-Life Equation, we can see Superman holding a charred corpse, which is presumably the body of Lois Lane. This apparently sets him up for corruption by Darkseid, and helps bring about the “Knightmare” vision from Batman v Superman, which is once again glimpsed at the end of this film.

The third figure we see on Apokalips with Darkseid and Desaad appears to be Granny Goodness, the chief of the armies of Apokalips (and the one who trained/traumatized DC heroes Mister Miracle and Big Barda).

Parademons

The weird insectoid drones making everyone’s lives miserable are Parademons, the foot soldiers of the planet Apokolips, a hellish world which lives in opposition to New Genesis, the home of the New Gods and Forever People. All of this great stuff was created by the brilliant Jack Kirby, by the way. Steppenwolf (more on him in a minute) and the Parademons are trying to collect three Mother Boxes left on Earth.

What is a Mother Box?

The Mother Box is the unifying piece of technology of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World epic. Think of a Mother Box as an alien smartphone that can do anything from heal the injured to teleport you across time and space. It’s pretty cool hearing their trademark “ping. ping. ping.” sound for real.

Mother Boxes are often used to call down Boom Tubes, the preferred method of transport of the New Gods and their friends and foes. We see them deployed quite a bit throughout this movie, obviously. Super Powers fans of the 1980s may remember that on Super Friends: Galactic Guardians, boom tubes were referred to as star gates.

It’s POSSIBLE that the knights burying the Mother Box are meant to be King Arthur and his crew, while the one with the horns could be Sir Bors. They relatively recently appeared in Demon Knights, but they were best in Seven Soldiers of Victory, where the Knights of the Round Table fought an invasion from evil Faeries and lost, only to have Sir Ystina, the Shining Knight, help save the world in the present day. Honestly, that sounds like it would be pretty up Zack Snyder’s alley too, now that we think about it.

Mother Box is cataloged as “unknown object 61982” after it has been discovered in the modern world. So far, I haven’t been able to find any DC Comics or DCEU significance to that number.

DeSaad

DeSaad is Darkseid’s chief advisor and torturer-in-chief (hence the name). Like all the other cool Fourth World stuff in this movie, he was created solely by the legendary Jack Kirby. He first appeared in Forever People #2 in 1971.

It’s kind of cool that the nameless “Motherbox priestesses” kind of look like DeSaad, too.

Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf is the first Jack Kirby creation to show up in a DC superhero movie (for comparison, nearly the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe owes its entire existence to Jack Kirby). They don’t really give us much to go on with Steppenwolf in this flick, but to be fair, he wasn’t one of Kirby’s most inspired creations and it’s not like he has the longest comic book history. In the comics, Steppenwolf was Darkseid’s uncle, and responsible for the war between Apokolips and New Genesis, but here he appears to be his nephew instead.

In a lot of ways, particularly his appearance, this version of Steppenwolf seems to owe more to his appearance in DC’s New 52 version of the Earth-2 comics than he does any of Kirby’s vision.

The weird little spider-y device that Steppenwolf uses to get information on people looks a lot like Starro, the first villain that the Justice League ever fought in the comics, right down to the way it attaches to people’s faces.

Martian Manhunter

We get our first long-promised revelation of Martian Manhunter in the film, who, as it turns out, had been masquerading as Harry Lennix’s General Swanwick the entire time.

Martian Manhunter finally revealing himself to Bruce at the end kind of completes Bruce’s journey from vaguely fascist xenophobe in Batman v Superman to someone far more heroic.

Martian Manhunter says he has “gone by many names” but doesn’t mention any of them. It doesn’t make sense why he wouldn’t have introduced himself as J’onn J’onnz (his Martian name). Other names he has gone by include Detective John Jones (not in the movies), and as we’ve seen in this very film, General Swanwick.

While we don’t get to see Martian Manhunter officially join the Justice League here, his presence in the film kind of completes the “unite the seven” tease that dates back to Batman v Superman. Martian Manhunter has always been depicted as a founding member of the team, both in comics and in the excellent Justice League animated series.

Deathstroke

We get a LITTLE more of Joe Manganiello’s Slade Wilson in this movie than we did in the theatrical cut…

In the theatrical version, Lex had summoned Deathstroke in order to start assembling a Legion of Doom-esque team of supervillains. But here it’s to give him Batman’s true identity. Apparently this would have helped set Deathstroke up as the villain of the Ben Affleck-led Batman solo movie, which would have featured Deathstroke dismantling Bruce Wayne’s life, Daredevil: Born Again style.

We see Deathstroke again during the epilogue where Slade (who is more of an antihero in the comics) has joined Batman’s ragtag group of freedom fighters against Darkseid and the forces of Apokalips.

Speaking of that epilogue…

Joker

No, your eyes do not deceive you, that is indeed Jared Leto returning as the Joker, marking his first appearance in the role since his controversial turn as the character in the Suicide Squad movie.

So…it appears that the “Knightmare” sequence in Batman v Superman wasn’t a vision of this movie after all, but rather for the Justice League 2 we’ll never see. And it’s up to Jared Leto’s Joker of all characters to explain this to us once and for all.

It seems that in a not-too-distant future, Darkseid’s armies have indeed come to Earth, and he is either in search of or has claimed the Anti-Life Equation, having murdered Lois Lane, turned Superman to evil (god, why does Zack Snyder love this idea so much), leaving a ragtag group of heroes and villains to try and set things right.

The death of Lois Lane at the hands of a villain turning Superman into a maniac feels quite a bit like the storyline of the Injustice video game.

Joker makes several allusions to having murdered Robin, which in the comics would be Jason Todd, although Snyder has hinted before that the dead Robin in question was actually Dick Grayson (hence, no Nightwing in the DCEU).

The notion of Batman and Joker teaming up in any capacity isn’t one with a whole lot of weight in the comics, but them coming together in a post-apocalyptic landscape with Joker acting as a kind of truth-teller for Batman is faintly reminiscent of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman: Last Knight on Earth.

Joker’s hints that Batman needs to die in order to set things right are reminiscent of Grant Morrison’s superb Final Crisis.

Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor’s escape from Arkham Asylum (side note, it has always rubbed me the wrong way that they keep Lex at Arkham…that isn’t where you put Lex Luthor) with a fakeout vaguely reminds me of how he escaped from prison in Superman II, which involved using a hologram to fake out the guard. The guard’s response to “Lex” not doing what he’s supposed to here is similar, too.

When we finally see Lex for real, it’s on the yacht, and his loud outfit is more than a little bit reminiscent of how Gene Hackman’s Luthor dressed as Lex in the Superman movies of the 1970s and 1980s.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Bruce returns to the ruins of Wayne Manor which he intends to convert into a headquarters for the newly formed Justice League. But placing a roundtable in a mansion has a little bit more of a Justice Society of America vibe to it…but that’s just a coincidence. However, we’ll be meeting the Justice Society in the upcoming Black Adam movie.

There’s a headline in The Daily Planet that says “Security Bank of Manhattan Sets New Architect.” No, this isn’t a John Stewart Green Lantern reference. Instead, it’s a nod from Snyder to the character of Howard Roark, the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, a favorite of the director’s and a project he once hoped to adapt into film. In that book, Roark is an architect who is commissioned to work on the “Security Bank of Manhattan.” Draw your own conclusions about Snyder’s love for this book and Rand’s work, however.

That isn’t the only Ayn Rand reference in the film, either. The fishing boat that Aquaman rescues is called the Cortlandt, a reference to a housing development in The Fountainhead.

The place where Lois gets her coffee is “Fred and Ginger Coffee” as in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Also, if you look really closely in the window of the coffee shop as she leaves, there’s a man at a table wearing a vest. I’m not 100% sure, but I THINK this is Zack Snyder giving himself a Hitchcock-esque cameo in the film.

The STAR Labs janitor who goes missing/gets eaten by Parademons is apparently named Howie Jensen. Whenever there’s a janitor in a top secret area working with alien tech in the DC Universe, my mind immediately goes to Superman villain, the Parasite. The most famous version of the Parasite was Rudy Jones, a STAR Labs janitor who ended up wallowing in some toxic waste (perhaps coincidentally because Darkseid manipulated him into it). Anyway, this isn’t Rudy Jones, so it can’t be the Parasite right? Well…mostly. There was a previous Parasite names Raymond Jensen…which seems to be our poor, doomed, pal Howie’s name in this.

When Bruce leaves Barry’s lair to drive to the Central City Airport, there’s an American Foundation for Suicide Prevention billboard that says “You are not alone,” a nod to the work Snyder has done to help raise awareness for their cause. You can learn more about them here.

During Darkseid’s vision of the future he wants, there’s a ruined Hall of Justice, the Justice League headquarters first made famous on the Super Friends cartoon and which, in more recent years, has become a fixture of the comics.

The pregnancy test in Lois’ nightstand is named, we kid you not, Force Majeure.

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Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Zack Snyder’s Justice League: DC Comics and DCEU Easter Eggs Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

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hadarlaskey · 4 years ago

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The Dig

Bravi to director Simon Stone, writer Moria Buffini and their team for taking on the unenviable task of spinning a heart-pulsing melodrama out of the discovery of the archeological treasures of ‘Sutton Hoo’ in the late 1930s. Widowed dowager Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) calls on the services of local excavator Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes, basically playing a version of Ted from Fast Show mainstay, Ted and Ralph) to take a look at a pair of mounds which she feels could be bulging with antiquarian goodies. A very pursed English drama ensues.

Initially there are hints that this is to become a love story, and that the pair will develop a romantic bond amid the sopping mud and high seriousness of the endeavour. But any notions of such stifled yearning are nixed by about the half-way point when the story introduces a clutch of new characters, which includes Lily James’ bushy-tailed student archeologist and Johnny Flynn’s cool-guy photographer-cum-flying ace, and heads off in some strange and not-altogether satisfying directions.

In the scenes prior to the moment that shovel has first connected with mud, Stone is forced to dance on the spot a little by working with lots of shots of people standing in empty fields, and try as he might, he can’t make them interesting. As breathtaking as a windswept Suffolk vista is on screen, too many of them can certainly have you glancing off to search out the nearest tea room. Yet hands are soon dirtied, and there’s even a left-field action set piece where Basil almost comes a-cropper.

The scope of the find becomes clear by about a third of the way into the film, but then the script almost sweeps this once-in-a-generation bounty aside in favour of exploring Edith’s life-threatening ill health, Basil’s hard-bitten honour code and lack of professional nous, and Edith’s pre-teen son’s (Archie Barnes) sentimental search for a father figure, having lost his own in the war.

Add to that some rather unsatisfactory business involving Ben Chaplin as a closeted gay man who is stringing along James (and the film is in no way empathetic towards his sexual awakening), and a Mexican stand-off between Basil, the British Museum and a local museum, and it maybe doesn’t end up amounting to much.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the film is how little time it spends on actually convincing viewers unfamiliar with the importance of Sutton Hoo that this was a fairly epochal moment in the annals of British ancient history. When treasures are plucked on the ground, they’re flung in a pot or on a table, and the audience are left to see them as random spoils rather than as a blueprint to the very fabric of our modern society.

That said, Mulligan brings a sultry verve to Edith which lends the film a much-needed sense of windswept melancholy, and there’s also the always-great Monica Dolan who pops as Basil’s nervy wife. In just two short scenes, she fleshes out this small character with a full and eventful life, and her immaculate line-readings hint at what is an extremely dysfunctional relationship that itself could be the burial mound of its own undead demons. Would’ve been nice to have seen more of it, frankly.

youtube

ANTICIPATION. Top cast, but is this not just Time Team 1939? 3

ENJOYMENT. Wheels out soft romantic shenanigans at the expense of the drama of the dig. 3

IN RETROSPECT. Lots to admire, but not enough to love. Mulligan is MVP. 3

Directed by Simon Stone

Starring Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes, Lily James

The post The Dig appeared first on Little White Lies.

source https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-dig/

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peter2filmteljes · 4 years ago

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Rendező: Will Gluck Forgatókönyvíró: Will Gluck, Patrick Burleigh, Beatrix Potter Szereplők: Margot Robbie, Domhnall Gleeson, Rose Byrne, James Corden, David Oyelowo Bea, Thomas és a nyulak egy igazán különleges családot alkottak meg, de valahogy Péter még a legnagyobb erőfeszítései ellenére sem tudja levetkőzni korábbi rossz hírnevét. Miután.

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Its somewhat ironic that a movie about time travel can’t be reviewed properly until your future self rewatches the movie. It’s bold of Nolan to make such a thoroughly dense blockbuster. He assumes people will actually want to see ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő more than once so they can understand it properly, which some may not. This movie makes the chronology of Inception look as simplistic as tic-tac-toe. Ergo, it’s hard for me to give an accurate rating, without having seen it twice, as I’m still trying to figure out whether everything does indeed make sense. If it does, this movie is easily a 9 or 10. If it doesn’t, it’s a 6. It’s further not helped by the fact that the dialogue in the first 15 minutes of the movie is painfully hard to understand / hear. Either they were behind masks; they were practically mumbling; the sound effects were too loud; or all of the above. The exposition scenes are also waayyy too brief for something this complex — a problem also shared with Interstellar actually. (Interstellar had this minimalist exposition problem explaining Blight, where if you weren’t careful, you’d miss this one sentence / scene in the entire movie explaining that Blight was a viral bacteria: “Earth’s atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, we don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen”). I guess it’s a Nolan quirk. Hopefully, a revision of the film audio sorts the sound mixing out. I do like the soundtrack, but it’s too loud initially. I liked all the actors. You think John Washington can’t act at first, but he can, and he grows on you as the film progresses. And Pattinson is his usual charming self. Elizabeth is a surprise treat. And so on. Its worth a watch either way. See it with subtitles if you can. And definitely don’t expect to fully understand whats going on the first time around. Its one hell of a complicated film. It will be very hard for an average viewer to gather all the information provided by this movie at the first watch. But the more you watch it, more hidden elements will come to light. And when you are able to put these hidden elements together. You will realize that this movie is just a “masterpiece” which takes the legacy of Christopher Nolan Forward If I talk about acting, Then I have to say that Robert Pattinson has really proved himself as a very good actor in these recent years. And I am sure his acting skills will increase with time. His performance is charming and very smooth. Whenever he is on the camera, he steals the focus John David Washington is also fantastic in this movie. His performance is electrifying, I hope to see more from him in the future. Other characters such as Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Clémence Poésy have also done quite well. And I dont think there is a need to talk about Michael Caine Talking about Music, its awesome. I dont think you will miss Hans Zimmer’s score. Ludwig has done a sufficient job. There is no lack of good score in the movie Gotta love the editing and post production which has been put into this movie. I think its fair to say this Nolan film has focused more in its post production. The main problem in the movie is the sound mixing. Plot is already complex and some dialogues are very soft due to the high music score. It makes it harder to realize what is going on in the movie. Other Nolan movies had loud BGM too. But Audio and dialogues weren’t a problem My humble request to everyone is to please let the movie sink in your thoughts. Let your mind grasp all the elements of this movie. I am sure more people will find it better. Even those who think they got the plot. I can bet they are wrong. ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő is the long awaited new movie from Christopher Nolan. The movie that’s set to reboot the multiplexes post-Covid. It’s a manic, extremely loud, extremely baffling sci-fi cum spy rollercoaster that will please a lot of Nolan fan-boys but which left me with very mixed views. John David Washington (Denzel’s lad) plays “The Protagonist” — a crack-CIA field operative who is an unstoppable one-man army in the style of Hobbs or Shaw. Recruited into an even more shadowy organisation, he’s on the trail of an international arms dealer, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh in full villain mode). Sator is bullying his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) over custody of their son (and the film unusually has a BBFC warning about “Domestic Abuse”). Our hero jets the world to try to prevent a very particular kind of Armageddon while also keeping the vulnerable and attractive Kat alive. This is cinema at its biggest and boldest. Nolan has taken a cinema ‘splurge’ gun, filled it with money, set it on rapid fire, removed the safety and let rip at the screen. Given that Nolan is famous for doing all of his ‘effects’ for real and ‘in camera’, some of what you see performed is almost unbelievable. You thought crashing a train through rush-hour traffic in “Inception” was crazy? You ain’t seen nothing yet with the airport scene! And for lovers of Chinooks (I must admit I am one and rush out of the house to see one if I hear it coming!) there is positively Chinook-p*rn on offer in the film’s ridiculously huge finale. The ‘inversion’ aspects of the story also lends itself to some fight scenes — one in particular in an airport ‘freeport’ — which are both bizarre to watch and, I imagine, technically extremely challenging to pull off. In this regard John David Washington is an acrobatic and talented stunt performer in his own right, and must have trained for months for this role. Nolan’s crew also certainly racked up their air miles pre-lockdown, since the locations range far and wide across the world. The locations encompassed Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and United States. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is lush in introducing these, especially the beautiful Italian coast scenes. Although I did miss the David Arnold strings that would typically introduce these in a Bond movie: it felt like that was missing. The ‘timey-wimey’ aspects of the plot are also intriguing and very cleverly done. There are numerous points at which you think “Oh, that’s a sloppy continuity error” or “Shame the production design team missed that cracked wing mirror”. Then later in the movie, you get at least a dozen “Aha!” moments. Some of them (no spoilers) are jaw-droppingly spectacular. Perhaps the best twist is hidden in the final line of the movie. I only processed it on the way home. And so to the first of my significant gripes with ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő. The sound mix in the movie is all over the place. I’d go stronger than that… it’s truly awful (expletive deleted)! Nolan often implements Shakespeare’s trick of having characters in the play provide exposition of the plot to aid comprehension. But unfortunately, all of this exposition dialogue was largely incomprehensible. This was due to: the ear-splitting volume of the sound: 2020 movie audiences are going to be suffering from ‘~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipőis’! (LOL); the dialogue is poorly mixed with the thumping music by Ludwig Göransson (Wot? No Hans Zimmer?); a large proportion of the dialogue was through masks of varying description (#covid-appropriate). Aaron Taylor-Johnson was particularly unintelligible to my ears. Overall, watching this with subtitles at a special showing might be advisable! OK, so I only have a PhD in Physics… but at times I was completely lost as to the intricacies of the plot. It made “Inception” look like “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”. There was an obvious ‘McGuffin’ in “Inception” — — (“These ‘dream levels’… how exactly are they architected??”…. “Don’t worry… they’ll never notice”. And we didn’t!) In “~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő” there are McGuffins nested in McGuffins. So much of this is casually waved away as “future stuff… you’re not qualified” that it feels vaguely condescending to the audience. At one point Sator says to Kat “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?” and she shakes her head blankly. We’re right with you there luv! There are also gaps in the storyline that jar. The word “~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő”? What does it mean. Is it just a password? I’m none the wiser. The manic pace of ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő and the constant din means that the movie gallops along like a series of disconnected (albeit brilliant) action set pieces. For me, it has none of the emotional heart of the Cobb’s marriage problems from “Inception” or the father/daughter separation of “Interstellar”. In fact, you barely care for anyone in the movie, perhaps with the exception of Kat. It’s a talented cast. As mentioned above, John David Washington is muscular and athletic in the role. It’s a big load for the actor to carry in such a tent-pole movie, given his only significant starring role before was in the excellent BlacKkKlansman. But he carries it off well. A worthy successor to Gerard Butler and Jason Statham for action roles in the next 10 years. This is also a great performance by Robert Pattinson, in his most high-profile film in a long time, playing the vaguely alcoholic and Carré-esque support guy. Pattinson’s Potter co-star Clemence Poésy also pops up — rather more un-glam that usual — as the scientist plot-expositor early in the movie. Nolan’s regular Michael Caine also pops up. although the 87-year old legend is starting to show his age: His speech was obviously affected at the time of filming (though nice try Mr Nolan in trying to disguise that with a mouth full of food!). But in my book, any amount of Caine in a movie is a plus. He also gets to deliver the best killer line in the film about snobbery! However, it’s Kenneth Branagh and Elizabeth Debicki that really stand out. They were both fabulous, especially when they were bouncing off each other in their marital battle royale. So, given this was my most anticipated movie of the year, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg for me. A mixture of being awe-struck at times and slightly disappointed at others. It’s a movie which needs a second watch, so I’m heading back today to give my ear drums another bashing! And this is one where I reserve the right to revisit my rating after that second watch… it’s not likely to go down… but it might go up. (For the full graphical review, check out One Mann’s Movies on t’interweb and Facebook. Thanks.) As this will be non-spoiler, I can’t say too much about the story. However, what I can is this: ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő’s story is quite dynamic in the sense that you won’t understand it till it wants you to. So, for the first half, your brain is fighting for hints and pieces to puzzle together the story. It isn’t until halfway through the movie that ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő invites you to the fantastic storytelling by Christopher Nolan. Acting is beyond phenomenal, and I’d be genuinely surprised if neither Robert Pattinson nor John David Washington doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. It’s also hard not to mention how good Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Johnson both are. All around, great acting, and the dialogue amps up the quality of the movie. The idea of this movie is damn fascinating, and while there are films that explore time-travelling, there’s never been anything quite like this. It has such a beautiful charm and for the most part, explains everything thoroughly. It feels so much more complex than any form of time-travelling we’ve seen, and no less could’ve been expected from Nolan. Oh my lord, the score for this film fits so perfectly. Every scene that’s meant to feel intense was amped by a hundred because of how good the score was. Let me just say though, none of them will be found iconic, but they fit the story and scenes so well. In the end, I walked out, feeling very satisfied. Nevertheless, I do have issues with the film that I cannot really express without spoiling bits of the story. There are definitely little inconsistencies that I found myself uncovering as the story progressed. However, I only had one issue that I found impacted my enjoyment. That issue was understanding some of the dialogue. No, not in the sense that the movie is too complicated, but more that it was hard to make out was being said at times. It felt like the movie required subtitles, but that probably was because, at a time in the film, there was far too much exposition. Nevertheless, I loved this film, I’ll be watching it at least two more times, and I think most of you in this group will enjoy it. I definitely suggest watching it in theatres if possible, just so you can get that excitement. (4/5) & (8.5/10) for those that care about number scores. At first, I want to ask Christopher Nolan one question, HOW THE HELL YOU DID THIS? Seriously I want to have an answer, How did he write such as this masterpiece! How did he get this complicated, fabulous and creative idea? What is going on in his mind? The story is written and directed perfectly, the narration style was absolutely unique. I have no idea how can anyone direct such as this story, that was a huge challenge, and as usual Nolan gave us a masterpiece that we’ll put beside (Memento), (Inception) and (Interstellar) The movie is so fast-paced in a good way, there was no boring moment. The chemistry between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson was great and funny and both of their performance was really good. Elizabeth Debicki performance was the best in the movie because she had the chance to show her acting abilities and she cached up that chance and showed us an A level acting. The music wasn’t unique and distinct as the music of Interstellar for example and I think this movie needed the touch of Hans Zimmer, I’m not saying that Ludwig Göransson failed but Hans Zimmer in another level. If there was something I’d say that I didn’t like it in the movie would it be that Nolan discarded any set up or characters backgrounds except Elizabeth Debicki dramatic story but it wasn’t that bad for me, I didn’t care about that, the exciting story didn’t give me the chance to focus on it. But the actual problem was the third act, it was really complicated and I got lost and I convinced myself to discard the questions that were in my head and enjoy the well-made action sequences and Elizabeth Debicki performance. I think this kind of movie that gets better with a second and third watch. I honestly don’t quite know where to begin with ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő. I love Christopher Nolan’s work but I have never seen a more complicated film (and I understood Memento). ~After nearly three hours, I came away from ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő not knowing myself, my mind reduced to nothing more than piles of ash. Was there time travel involved? Hmm, there was definitely something about time inversion. I mean, does Nolan even understand what he wrote? Look, I give credit to the director because he’s one of the few directors left who knows how to create a compelling and intelligent blockbuster. ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő is full of Nolan trademarks — the gratuitous Michael Caine cameo, a loud, really loud score, complete with stunning cinematography and slickly inventive action set-pieces. This time around however, Nolan has finally managed to ‘out-Nolan’ himself: the palindromic plot, whilst creatively ambitious, is simply far too complicated for its own good. ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő is overlong, overstuffed, pretentious and too exhausting to comprehend in its entirety — it makes Inception and Interstellar look like Peppa Pig by comparison. I’m aware of the technical wizardry and creative mastery in this film and lord knows I’ll have to watch this again. For those who want a puzzle, ~Nyúl Péter 2 - Nyúlcipő at least provides a unique cinematic experience. But to actually enjoy solving it Nolan wants you to work very very hard

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filmstruck · 7 years ago

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Jungle Madness by Pablo Kjolseth

I had the honor of hosting Werner Herzog for a dinner back in 1999. Prior to his visit, I had hunted down an out-of-print first edition autobiography by Klaus Kinski entitled Kinski Uncut The book goes into eye-raising details that are by turn boastful, salacious and extremely lewd. Kinski traipses from one sexual conquest to another while undercutting many of the famous directors he's worked with along the way - including Herzog. At the sight of my hardcover edition, Herzog's eyes lit up as he exclaimed: "Oh, what marvelous lies!" Herzog then also recalled how Kinski had called him up prior to its publication and said something along the lines of how he had made up a bunch of horrible things about Herzog because he thought that would help sales.

Kinski Uncut is many things, but it's never boring. Here's a taste of how Kinski describes Herzog: "In any case, he's still sporting those unwashed, sweat-stained, fart-soaked rags - and he's just as unwashed as ever. And his teeth are as rotten as ever. And he's just as recalcitrant and he still stuffs his face like the garbage can he is - without ever picking up the check."

Herzog got his revenge on Kinski with the release of his documentary MY BEST FIEND ('99), which was released eight years after Kinski's death and gives Herzog the last word on their mutual love-hate relationship. Actually, Herzog doubles-down on getting the last word because ten years after MY BEST FIEND he went on to publish Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the making of Fitzcarraldo. In this book he revisits the journals he kept while shooting FITZCARRALDO (’82). He describes this book as "inner landscapes born of the delirium of the jungle." A clear taste of that delirium can be had from an excerpt from his journal marked down as "Iquitos - Camisea, 23 May 1984":

Kinski looked at the site and announced that my plan was completely impossible, prompted by madness. He is becoming the epicenter of discouragement. On closer inspection it became clear to me that no one is on my side anymore, not a single person, none, no one, not a single one. In the midst of hundreds of Indian extras, dozens of forest workers, boatmen, kitchen personnel, the technical team, and the actors, solitude flailed at me like a huge enraged animal. But I saw something the others did not see.

That "something" was a monumental movie about the title character’s quest to build an opera house in the middle of the jungle, a film that would go on to win the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival along with many other accolades.

FilmStruck is streaming seven titles as part of its “Herzog & Kinski” theme, including Les Blank's BURDEN OF DREAMS ('82) about the making of FITZCARRALDO. Les Blank and Werner Herzog shared unique bonds. I met Les Blank when I screened what would end up being his last documentary: ALL IN THIS TEA ('07). This happened on the same night I met Charlie Kaufman for the first time (that being a longer story for another time). Blank was a much gentler soul than Klaus Kinski (or Kaufman, for that matter), but he was also a hell of a storyteller and he deserves to have his own words heard on his time with Herzog before and after FITZCARRALDO.

With this in mind, I now reach for my bookshelf Burden of Dreams: Screenplay, Journals, Reviews, Photographs edited by Les Blank and James Bogan. The following two paragraphs are written by Les Blank as part of his intro ("The Genesis of Burden of Dreams"):

In 1979, Werner convinced the program committee of the Hamburg Film Festival to invite me over to present a retrospective of my films. Here, I firmed up details with Walter Saxer, the producer of all but one of Herzog's films. I was to come down in October of that year and film preparations for the Fitzcarraldo production. The general plan would be for me to make the film as I saw it, but if it proved detrimental to the success of Fitzcarraldo's release, I would agree to postpone my release until a year later. Jose Koechlin von Stein, a Peruvian who had loaned Herzog the money to complete the filming of Aguirre, The Wrath of God, was to arrange financing with the help of West German television.

When I arrived in Munich, I spent a night at the apartment of Werner's half-sister, who took me on a fascinating tour of Munich's famous beerhalls. And I thought I was a beer drinker! These people are something else... the more dedicated swilling it down from liter-sized mugs in between puking on their feet and pissing in their pants. The following morning, I met Werner at the train station where an entire section of the Hamburg-bound train was reserved for the Munich-based film community. During the trip Werner introduced me to his countrymen and women, always insisting that I show the tattoo on my arm of two death-head masks, one laughing, one crying. They are attached by ribbons in the New Orleans Mardi Gras colors of green, purple and gold. I received it from San Francisco's Ed Hardy while making a film with Bruce 'Pacho' Lane on the great American carnival tattoo artist, Stoney St. Clair. When Werner had first seen mine, he immediately went to Ed Hardy to get tattooed with a skeleton dressed in a tuxedo and singing into an old-fashioned microphone. He proudly exhibited his tattoo, after he showed his friends mine and said, “See, this one is better.” His is a good tattoo, and may be better by some standards of tattoo judgement, but having marked myself for life, and having it called inferior, I found myself quietly cursing the Aryan arrogance of my boisterous benefactor. In Hamburg the train was met by a brass band and fire swallowers. The mayor threw a gigantic party and I decided I liked the Germans. Strange as they are, I seemed to get along with them and they seemed highly appreciative of the eight or nine films that I showed. At Werner's press conference I began to get a taste of the anti-Herzog element. He was viciously attacked for exploiting the indigenous people of Peru; and while he had explanations of rumors such as forcing Indians to work at gunpoint, I began to wonder uneasily how innocent he really was.

Blank and Herzog had met many times while attending the Telluride Film Festival. Herzog himself tends to premiere many (but not all) of his films at that prestigious film festival which also, coincidentally, overlaps with Herzog's birthday (T.F.F. always occurs over Labor Day Weekend, Herzog's birthday is September 5th).

In 2007 Blank would receive the Edward MacDowell Medal for "outstanding contributions to the arts." Previous winners had included only two other film directors: Stan Brakhage and Chuck Jones. Chairmen of the jury included Taylor Hackford, Ken Burns, Steven Soderbergh, Mira Nair, Spike Jonze, and T.F.F. founder, Thomas Luddy.

Luddy, quoted in a New York Times obituary for Blank, said: "...Les Blank's films will be revered as time-capsule classics. I said 'Amen,' as did all the other members of the committee. We never even discussed another name, and our meeting was over in less than an hour."

Herzog's FITZCARRALDO is a monumental achievement. So is Blank's BURDEN OF DREAMS. It really doesn't matter what order you see them in, as long as you see them both.

#FilmStruck #Werner Herzog #Burden of Dreams #Klaus Kinski #Fitzcarraldo #StreamLine Blog #Pablo Kjolseth #Les Blank #Kinski Uncut

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