Monthly Archives: July 2021

Series Review LOKI

 

This week Disney+ and Marvel Studios released the final episode of LOKI season one. Some mild spoilers for the history of the MCU through Avenger: Endgame are part of my review.

Loki, adopted brother of Thor and former villain of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, after meeting his fate at the hands of the mad titan Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, lived on by way of a parallel time stream variant that escaped captivity due to the Avengers time heist to save half the universe in Avengers: Endgame. The series LOKI follows this edition of the character who
has not experienced the character growth from the films Thor: The Dark world or Thor: Ragnarök as he is hunted as a ‘variant’ by the Time Variance Authority the mysterious organization charged with keeping the timeline orderly and proceeding according to plan. Whose plan and why is the central mystery of LOKI as it compresses three feature films worth of character development for Loki into a montage and then challenges the character with a number of variations on himself exploring the question are we fated to be who we are, or can we choose who we are.

LOKI is a series that I could not review until the complete run had been released. It’s central mystery and eventual character development revealed in the final episode are too critical to the piece’s artistic vision. Overall, I think that they writers, directors, and actors, including some surprise and fun guest stars, landed their craft admirably and delivered an entertaining and even occasionally thoughtful series. Not as deep into exploring human emotion and motivation as WandaVision’s examination of the power of grief but a little more subtle and nuanced than The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’s dive into identity and social racism. Revealing one last mystery in its final scene LOKI promises more adventures for the Asgardian with an announced second season.

 

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Stunned by Evil

 

The currently political conditions are beyond stupid, or corrupt, or evil incompetence and are transgressing into the territory that can only be called evil.

An entire political movement, devoted to a thin-skinned, orange, tantrum throwing god/king has forcefully and utterly placed itself against science, common sense, and the health and lives of its base all in the name of ‘not doing what liberals are doing.’

This pandemic has killed over six hundred thousand in the United States and despite several vaccines, produced not by miracles or divine intervention but by the hard work brilliance and education of scientific heroes, infections and deaths are beginning to against rise due the conservative crazy.

The Governor of Florida is selling campaign merchandise celebrating resistance to vaccination. Tennessee republicans have sacked the head of the health department and suspended outreach to all adolescents for ALL vaccinations, not just the COVID ones, to appease the ravenous ignorant monster of a base that they have created with decades of dedicated anti-science, anti-expertise campaigning.

All of this, this disease and death, to support what? That Former Guy who’s a cheat and swindler? To lower taxes on the uber-wealthy? To loosen gun regulations? A pistol will not save you as you die on a ventilator with your lungs shredded by a virus.

NO matter what they say, no matter what they promise, we must turn out and vote and deny the modern GOP are hint or taste or any political power or authority.

 

 

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Series Review: Wellington Paranormal

 

In 2014 the world was treated to the feature film comedy What We Do in The Shadows, a mock documentary of a film crew following a trio of vampires around Wellington New Zealand leading up to a major vampire celebration. It’s co-writer, Director, and one of the stars, Taika Waititi has gone on to create memorable movies such as Thor: Ragnarök and JoJo Rabbit. Here in the United States the first spin off of the successful vampire comedy was the Hulu television series What We Do in The Shadows which utilized the same mockumentary conceit but this time following three old-world vampires living in Staten Island. However New Zealand actually witnessed the first television series inspired by the mockumentary Wellington Paranormal.

Employing the same mockumentary style Wellington Paranormalfollows three officers of the Wellington Police Force as they investigate and deal with supernatural threats and occurrences in the city. The series combines the broad humor found in the original feature film with a satirical reproduction of the seriousness of programs such as COPS. The show’s principal characters are Officer Minogue partnered with Officer O’Leary played by Mike Minogue and Kate O’Leary respectively a pair of hapless but good-hearted officers hopelessly over their head in dealing with ghosts, vampires, and in the first episode of the season, demonic possession. The rough handheld camerawork mimicking the documentary style allows the series to utilized decent special effects while covering the for the television level of budget with quick pans and shaking visuals. While some of the humor is clearly based in local culture and geography and doesn’t translate to an American audience over all the series is funny and well worth the time.

Wellington Paranormal starting with the 1 season originally aired in New Zealand in 2018 plays on the CW Network with episodes becoming available on HBOMax the following day.

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Movie Review: Black Widow

 

This weekend my sweetie-wife and I did something we haven’t done since February of 2020; we went out for Sunday lunch and a movie.

Lunch was open air dining at a seafood place and the movie was the COVID delayed MCU franchise film Black Widow.

Natasha Romanov, AKA The Black Widow, was introduced into the MCU with Iron Man 2 as an agent of SHIELD with her background as a former assassin revealed in marvel’s The Avenger and throughout the twenty plus run of the MCU movies though always displaying strong fan support she remained the only Avenger character without their own stand-alone entry in the series. Now, following the conclusion of star Scarlett Johansson’s run as the character, Marvel Studios has backfilled a film for Natasha with Black Widow.

The film is principally set following the events of Captain America: Civil War which presented the dissolution of the Avengers due to political and personal conflicts between its members.

A fugitive because of her refusal to abide my new international law regarding ‘enhanced’ individuals, Natasha’s plan to lay low and off the grid watching bad Bond movies is shattered when her past as an assassin reemerges and the deadly, abusive, and corrupt organization that created her and a cadre of women with similar skills is revealed to be quite operational. Forced to reunite with fellow undercover operatives from her past Natasha arc confronts her with not only with challenges to global peace and freedom but with her self-image and understanding of exactly who and what she is.

Black Widow is a solid entry into the MCU canon that personally does not score high enough to place it within the top quarter of entries but rather just below that. The story is solid, the acting credible, and the action fast paced and well shot never leaving the viewer confused as to who just did what, a result all too often these days of frenetic editing in other action movies. Setting the story between Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War limited the film’s ability to breath and carve out its own space and it would have been far better for this to have been produced and shot in sequence instead of feeling like an afterthought apology to the character’s fans. Though the movie’s post credit sequence could only have been created and shot following the events of Avengers: Endgame.

Still, this was a fun film and well worth the time to get out and see it in a theater.

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Series Review: Katla

 

 

My sweetie-wife enjoys programming from Iceland, and this has expanded my cinematic and entertainment horizons with the latest being the enigmatic series Katla.

Katla is the largest volcano in Iceland and in the program Katla is had been erupting for a year when the first episode begins. The shows start with a woman covered in mud and ash climbing out from under the glacier and stumbling to a local station. The nearby town of Vik has been evacuated save for a few people maintaining the vulcanologists studying the eruption. The mysterious woman gives the name of a Swedish tourist who had visited Vik some twenty years earlier. Soon other strange occurrences begin happening. Dead ravens are seen alive again and people who are missing or known to be dead and buried appear in the area, again covered in the mud and ash of the eruption. The reappearance of the dead, missing, and long departed persons reopens traumatic memories and familial divisions with the people surviving the brutal conditions at the volcano’s base.

I haven’t yet finished the series and so I reserve final judgment. Endings are critical and something as atmospheric and mysterious as Katla depends heavily on a satisfying conclusion.

That said I am very much enjoying the series. It is well produced, every frame carries mood and tone far beyond the simple spoken word and the air is not only thick with ash and gas from the volcano but with tension, secrets, and menace. Katla is not an action series but one that builds slowly over its episodes as we follow disparate characters struggling with mysteries with the viewers the only ones having all the clues.

Katla is currently streaming exclusively on Netflix.

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Transitioning From Pollywog to Shellback

 

In the United States Navy, a sailor who has never ventured south of the Equator is called a Pollywog and once you have crossed that line and gone through the initation you are a shellback.

1981 on my WestPac Cruise I crossed the line and passed through the initiation transforming from a pollywog to a shellback.

Most of that ceremony and hazing are now lost to my memory, robbed by the mists of time but there is one moment one image that stays with me.

LHA 3 was an amphibious assault ship that carried boats, jets, and helicopter of the Marine Corps to take beaches and was about the size and shape of an aircraft carrier from the second world war. At the stern of the ship was the elevator that lifted aircraft from the hanger deck to the flight deck directly above.

I was on a leash, don’t you just love initiation ceremonies, in the hanger deck and it was only dimly lit. Slowly the elevator descended from the flight deck. On the elevator were at least twenty men, this was well before any women served on combat vessels, but the bright daylight beyond them cast them into sharp silhouette and they appeared only as shaped without any discernible features. Everyone on of them had a length of hose and were crouched over beating the deck in near unison with these, chanting guttering shrieks with every stroke.

It was as though a squad of orcs had appeared and were enraging themselves for battle with their hated foes the elves.

There was, of course, no battles and no beatings, but that stark and compelling image has stayed sharp in my mind’s eye for 40 years.

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Blue America and Plague America

 

When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic there are clearly two Americas, Blue America where vaccination rates are high and Red American where they are low.

Red America, that land where refusing to wear a mask of a symbolic gesture to show that you ‘do not live in fear’ but going everywhere armed is merely judicious judgment, has climbing cases of COVID-19 and still they refuse to get vaccinated.

This chart from the New York Times shows the absolutely clear relationship between vaccination rates and death from COVID-19.

Conservatives who would be excited beyond measure if the U.S. Supreme Court declared that ‘Constitution Carry’, the ability to carry a firearm conceal without any permitting requirements, and pack pistols before the ink was dry on the decision because they live in total terror of crime still refuse to get vaccinated. In rough figures because the data is not yet fully compiled there were about 20,000 murders in the United States last year and to date the pandemic has killed 30 times that number at more than 600,000 people. More that the US lost in World War II and Vietnam combined. Clearly saving their own lives and that of their families is not the reason that would prefer to pocket a pistol before taking the vaccine.

It is a clear indication of the madness that has taken over the conservative movement that its member would rather deal death than prevent it.

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Movie Review: The Banana Splits Movie

 

After discovering that not only had someone revived the weird psychedelic children’s program The Banana Splits Adventure Hour not only into a feature film but a slasher horror film at that I knew that I was destined to rent and review the feature.

The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, a live action sort-of furry kids shows ran from 1968 thru 1970 for just over 30 episodes and presented a mixture of live action and animation sprinkled with musical numbers. After 1970 the series aired in syndication for another decade a tribute to the heavy drugs consumed during the 70s.

The Banana Splits Movie deviates in two major fashions from the historical Banana Splits. First, instead of human performers in anthropomorphized animal costumes the Banana Splits are advanced mobile self-directed animatronics. Secondly, instead of being canceled in 1970 the show remained a hit running continuously until 2019.

The movie opens on what could have been a disappointing fake-out with Beth awaking to the sudden and horrifying image of one of the Splits standing over her as she slept on the family sofa. I feared that this was a set-up for the entire film to be a dream but luckily that was not the case.

Beth’s son Harley is a fanatical fan of the show and for his birthday his entire family, Beth, her second husband and Harley’s father Richard, and her son from her deceased husband are all going to a live taping of the show bringing along a friend of Harley’s. At the studio we are introduced to a series of quirky but not fully fleshed out characters, Paige the page, Rebecca the producer, the heartless studio executive, and an assortment of audience members. When it is learned that the series is now canceled and this will be the last performance that information along with computer code malfunctions, turned the Splits into murdering machines and everyone is suddenly in a fight for their lives.

The Banana Splits Movie could have been written and produced with a heavy sense of irony and lots of winking at the camera but that was not the path taken by screenwriters Jed Elinoff & Scott Thomas or director Danishka Esterhazy. Instead, they present the film as a straightforward, non-self-aware horror movie firmly in the slasher genre. When violence breaks out it is graphic and bloody. The stakes are real and with few exceptions that danger is presented an a suitably threatening manner. When a film, particularly a horror movie, includes children in vital roles it is always a concern. Make the children too precocious and you’ll damage the suspension of disbelief, make it clear that the kids are in no real danger and the stakes evaporate, kill the kids and you’ll lose your audience very quickly. The Banana Splits Movienavigates these treacherous waters deftly employing screenwriting solutions to all of these issues.

The Banana Splits Movie is far from perfect, there are unmotivated camera moves that are distracting, the story is told in manner that takes too long to get to the stakes and establishes certain characters too solidly at the expense of other and draining tension from the story. That said it was a decent rental and I have endured far worse horror films. For a rental fee of two dollar and ninety-nine cents I can say I got my money’s worth, and I can salute the filmmakers for avoiding the trite and worn troupe of treating this project as mere fodder for japes and jokes.

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Disorganized Thoughts

The Collapsed Condos: I think we’ll find that in addition of a cocktail of events and conditions that some form of corruption was involved. Cursed with a vivid imagination it’s all too easy for me to visualize being jolted awake as my room fell and then being crushed to death. Horrifying

Cosby: The turn on details and it certainly looks like the DA missed/ignored a detail that unraveled the entire prosecution. I have no doubts about his guilt.

The Former Guy: The Manhattan DA has arrested the CFO of the Former Guy’s organization and the financial crimes appears to go back decades and decades. Here’s where the Former Guy is not a cause but a symptom. The lax enforcement of laws against the wealthy has thoroughly corrupted our system. A robust and fair enforcement regime would have not only prosecuted the crimes much earlier for the former guy and others it would have prevented the travesty that was his election.

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