Year's End with Endgame

When do I have to turn on Endgame so that Thor knocks Thanos’s block off right as the New Year’s ball drops?

Hanging and Shanging

I just saw “Shang-Chi”! It was the first movie I’ve seen in theatres since I went to “Onward” on the last day cinemas were open before the pandemic. And it was the right one to go to. I was expecting some sort of crime intrigue adventure with martial arts and family drama. But yo! Vague spoilers? It was so much more! It veered hard into mystical wildness from the jump, and that was right in my jam. 

Like alright. Just going to say it. Dude rode a dragon. And that wasn’t even a clear contender for the most fabulous thing. 

And for real, everyone had such wonderful chemistry with each other. The whole swishy thing was joyous throughout. 

It just felt right to join some friends in seeing this film put the “cinema” back in “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Watching “Black Widow” at home was fun, but that was a different thing. 

I heartily endorse all this big screen magic wuxia fantasy.

Zak and George

I wasn’t anxiously anticipating the Snyder cut, but there was always a fairly good chance of my watching it.

Why not? And I do like when creators can just completely put themselves into the work. When he’s allowed, Zak Snyder is certainly good at that. Sometimes that works for me. Sometimes it doesn’t. His output is comparable to Tim Burton’s in my mind. Neither of them like to compromise, and that turns out wonderfully when they’re creating their own material or the subject matter they’re working with is already suited to their tastes. I like it less when they impose their tastes on something that’s not very compatible.

It’s why I love things like “Sucker Punch”, “Watchmen”, “Alice in Wonderland”, and “The Corpse Bride”. All of those were either created by their directors or adapted from works that clearly resonated with their psyches. It’s also why I think that Snyder and Burton were not the people to make movies about Superman and Batman respectively. They weren’t necessarily bad movies in an abstract way, but they weren’t great at focusing on those characters’ essential natures.

And while “Justice League” falls more into the ill fitting category for Snyder, he nonetheless made a gorgeous movie that flowed well, and even if I hadn’t enjoyed it more than I expected to, which wasn’t at a nadir to begin with, I would have supported the realization of that vision anyway.

In another sense, I could compare him with George Lucas. I legitimately love how that dude is such a rarity because he maintains is auteur nature even when he’s a vastly powerful figure in the Hollywood machine. Snyder has a bit of that, and both of them have been praised for things like concepts and visuals even by people who derogate their writing. I don’t think either of them is really bad at that, but part of the reason for which Lucas dwells deep in my heart where Snyder barely ever approaches is because I personally like Lucas’s inclinations more. That’s on me. But I still appreciate when those two and others of similar vision can realize their ideas to their full satisfaction.

Mutants, Slightly Less New

Finally got around to seeing “New Mutants” after it finally got released after years of delays. Finally.

And it delivered. Even other people liked it! Obviously, I was going to enjoy it.

But I think the part that brought the most warmth to my heart was seeing how they made room for a dance montage after “X-Men: Apocalypse”, which is still my favourite of the franchise, relegated that to the deleted scenes.

Cheers!

Bonus Question!

Best New Mutant!

Magik! For weirdness. Also mixing mutanthood and magic. I feel that.

New MCU Punisher! The End of White Castle?

There are rumours of a new non-white MCU Punisher, and of course people are complaining about malefic social justice agendas and stuff.

But here’s the thing. If the Punisher just stays as a white dude in his next screen appearance, those same complainers are just going to whine about the inevitable swathes of articles that decry the new Punisher franchise for being a glorified ode to fragile white masculinity or whatever.

But if Frank Castle isn’t white, the volume of those articles will be severely diminished, and all of Frank’s fans will still get a satisfying Punisher movie or whatever it is without having to cavil about that polemic aftermath. Everybody wins! Or at least no one loses?

Well, maybe someone loses. There is one group to whom my mollifying arguments do not apply. Yup! White supremacists. For whatever reason, Frank, through no fault of his or Marvel, seems to have an inordinate number of avowed bigots in his fan base, and obviously, they’re always going to want a white protagonist. But those are some feelings I care even less about.

Bonus Question!

Best castle?

Howl’s. It’s in the sky, dudes!

Sandman Dream Cast

Man! When I saw the cast list for the audio adaptation of The Sandman in mid 2020, I initially thought it was for the movie, and I got really excited. The two names that stuck in my mind most were James McAvoy and Kat Dennings for Dream and Death. Those two are fun to watch in anything, and having them in two of the best roles would be a treat.

Around the new year, I was talking with a friend about the movie, and they mentioned those two names. At first I thought they were confused, but then I learned Gaiman has a habit of appreciating people from audio adaptations of his works enough to get them into filmed versions, and McAvoy and Dennings made that leap.

Could not be more excited.

And then I found out that was not the cae, and fhe actual Morpheus is someone I can’t really claim to know, but apparently be played Byron in that Mary Shelley horror movie, which is appropriate in a different way.

Bonus Question!’

I just realized “Dennings” fits with the Endless tradition of names that start with D, and now I’m wondering if McAvoy’s first name should be “Djames”.

Sleepy Chris

A while ago, my ex-girlfriend expressed surprise at the fact I hadn’t seen “Christopher Robin”. I told her I remembered seeing it come to theatres and just not making a priority of it before it left. I placed that memory around the second half of 2019, but when we went to watch it, I was it came out in 2018 and got slightly confused until the mid point of the film when I realized the source of my error.

In the second half of 2019, there was indeed a Ewan McGregor vehicle wherein he portrayed an adult version of a famous fictional kid who revisits the fantastical aspects that defined his childhood, but that movie was not “Christopher Robin”. It was in fact “Doctor Sleep”, and those two films with their conceptional overlaps mingled in my mind, where the Winnie the Pooh one, related as it was to a franchise I always had an attachment to, easily achieved dominance.

There. Cleared up. And the movie rocked.

Bonus Question!

Worst doctor of sleep?

Doctor Destiny. Dude did some dire dream dastardliness in that diner.

Treehouse Time

I watched the new Croods sequel. Ryan Reynolds and Nic Cage as weird cavemen? Yes. More of that.

But the sequel in particular got me by featuring Leslie Mann in a fantastical treehouse, which was how I was first introduced to her in the Brendan Fraser classic “George in the Jungle”. Probably also how I was first introduced to Brendan Fraser and John Cleese. Thomas Haden Church … Maybe everyone in that movie? I was a very young child.

Anyway, “Croods 2” was a joy, and if you still need more of Leslie Mann in an epic treehouse, go back and watch “George of the Jungle” again.

Bonus Question!

Best George?

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron.

Aphra Name Change - Star Wars Retcon?

Everyone now knows and loves Doctor Aphra, one of the greatest new Star Wars characters of the modern era. Darth Vader’s erstwhile archaeologist assistant. Evil Indiana Jones lady. Overall amoral science type. She began as a supporting character in Vader’s comic several years ago. and now she might be getting her own television series.

Anyway, recently I was looking on Comixology or something for the new issue of her comic, and my search for “Aphra” was turning up nothing. That’s when I realized I’d somehow gotten her name wrong for this entire time. It was actually “Althra” or something. I had no idea how that mistake had happened.

Until I woke up.

Yes, it’s actually Aphra. Chelli Lona Aphra.

Sweet dreams.

Bonus Question!

Best evil Indiana Jones?

I mean …. This guy.

Bee-Lo and Stitch?

Though I was familiar enough with the franchise in general and the television show in specific, I’d never seen the original “Lilo and Stitch” movie. But it’s one of my girlfriend’s favourites, and we finally watched it together.

Here’s what I’ll say. That scene at the beginning where the alien winds up at the dog pound and gets claimed against the manager’s protestations by the protagonist? In my mind, that’s what inspired the beginning of the first Michael Bay Transformers film. Just with a car alien instead of a dog alien. Stitch and Bumblebee even have somewhat similar habits of intermittent unintelligibility.

Bonus Question!

Best bee?

Anudder Woman

I still remember that whole plot in “Batman Forever”, one of my favourites, where the awkward, poorly socialized Edward Nygma idolizes his rich, glamorous superior, Bruce Wayne, and obsesses over him to the point of emulation. I remember seeing it again in “Iron Man 3” with the exact same hair. Before and after. And again in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”. Different hair and blue skin, Worse teeth.

But now that classic “Notice Me, Senpai” school of villainy is back at DC with Kristen Wiig’s Barbara Minerva in the new Wonder Woman movie, and all is right with the world. Well, many things aren’t. But this is.

It’s a good movie. That’s what I’m saying.

Velvet Rewind

So. This new David Bowie movie’s out. “Stardust”. It’s a movie about David Bowie that’s not allowed to use any of David Bowie’s music because no one in David Bowie’s family wanted it to happen.

But like . . . This exact thing already happened.

In the 90s, Todd Haynes, who went on to more mainstream biographical success with the multifarious Bob Dylan film “I’m Not There”, was set to direct a movie about Bowie called “Velvet Goldmine” until Bowie realized he didn’t like the specific biography that served as primary reference material for the film. Instead, Haynes turned the whole thing into a fantastical view of the glitter rock era’s general feel with weird touches like the idea that it began because of a magic gem Oscar Wilde’s extraterrestrial parents gave him. Also, Ewan McGregor was a composite of Iggy Pop and some other dudes, and he looked like Kurt Cobain. And he wasn’t famous yet. And neither was Christian Bale. Or Jonathatn Rhys-Meyers. Toni Collette. Eddie Izzard might have been the biggest star in it at the time.

Anyway, I love that movie.

Bonus Question!

Best Stardust movie?

Mulanimal Crackers

I have nothing against it, but I really doubt I’m going to see the live “Mulan” movie. I liked the original, but I think my personal experience of the remake would be similar to my assumptions around the 2019 “Lion King”. Too much of the charm is missing to my tastes. In the case of “Mulan”, that charm is largely coalesced in the form of a diminutive dragon with the voice of Eddie Murphy.

But you know what else got released to streaming around the same time? “Animal Crackers”! A movie about officially licensed Animal Crackers with the voices of Ian McKellen, Office Jim, and others of epic merit. With heart! Apparently, it was a huge passion project for some of its creators to the point where one of them painted the official poster by hand. And one of the directors turned out to be the guy behind the animated “Mulan”.

So you know what? “Animal Crackers” is to me the real successor to cartoon “Mulan” for the summer of 2020. Confirmed.

Bonus Question!

I just realized Eddie Murphy’s Mushu could be a descendant of Eddie Murphy’s Donkey and his dragon wife.

Comics, Cartoons, Comedy

Man, that final weekend in August. The August of not a lot of movies!

And this one weekend had three big ones I had to see. Who knew a day would come when an X-Men movie would not be prioritized of all else for me after a lifetime of my affinity for the franchise? And it’s not because I’m not excited. I’d be here for it even if no one else thought it looked good. And public opinion is not seeming to be largely against its quality.

Nah. I’m holding off on that, which is a film that looks somewhat appropriate for the Halloween season in its horror overtones, and the new Bill-Ted movie because of Phineas and Ferb. It hasn’t done much in years, but I still love the soundtrack, which includes some cuts from their first movie, like the song Slash played on. And was called out in for the guitar solo.

Now they have another movie, and since the whole franchise is predicated on endless summer, it felt right to fit it within the season. So yeah. In the words of Phineas, “Alright, Slash, let’s go.”

All of you are called Slash for the purposes of that quotation.

Bonus Question!

Worst Phineas?

Phineas Mason, the Tinkerer, was a bit of a jerk. Especially to Spider-Man.

Greasy Grandeur

My girlfriend and I were on the subject of musicals I hadn’t seen after she showed me the second “Mamma Mia” movie for the first time, and the one at the top of the list to watch was “Grease”. But then her mother, who’d been planning a trip across the country to visit her, caught wind of this plan, and she insisted on our waiting for her to watch it together.

And lo! That day came, and the younger brother and grandmother turned out to be there with us too. In addition to the things I already knew I’d absorbed about the film over the years through osmosis, there was even more I was familiar with in one way or another, regardless of its attribution in my head to the movie.

I did not know that it ended with a flying car though. That was a perfect ending, though the mother’s opinion was rather opposite.

Anyway. Worth the wait.

"Gods Behaving Badly" Filmed Badly?

Big fan of mythology. Also comedy. And also fantasy stories. There was this book, “Gods Behaving Badly”, which hit that trifecta for me quite well when I read it ages ago.

Today, I just learned that it was made into a movie in 2013 with an astonishing cast. Christopher Walken was Zeus. That’s just a taste.

In the same day, I tried to find a place to watch it, whereupon I discovered that it had one showing at an Italian film festival before consensus decreed that the director’s inexperience and the general messiness of its production made the movie essentially unreleasable. Thus, it was never actually released.

But at least I saw some pictures. I got a taste.

Bonus Question!

Best movie about badly behaved gods?

“Thor”. It’s not even the best Thor movie, but the entire plot starts when Thor’s bad behaviour gets his father to overreact and send him to Earth, which is bad behaviour in itself. And then Loki starts behaving worse.

Fatigue Fatigue

Superhero movies.

Among other things, this last year saw the finale to a storyline that began 11 years ago with the film that cemented the current cinematic superhero zeitgeist. “Iron Man” to “Endgame” and all the stuff that’s run alongside that stuff. And for something like half of that time period, people have been talking about the idea of “superhero fatigue”.

But does anyone else feel something closer to fatigue fatigue? Like . . . I could really live without hearing people whine about stuff they have no interest in. There are all kinds of things I don’t care about. I prefer to talk about the things I like. This blog should evince that quite well. I’ve never seen the point of arguing for the death of anything. Especially in this post-monoculture world where the mainstream’s been divided into innumerable tributaries that cater to all sorts of diverse tastes. Am I biased because I love the whole superhero mythos? Not really. I remember when those Hunger Games movies were huge. I never watched a single one, but it was still annoying to hear aspiring intellectuals dismiss them with lazy comparisons to “Battle Royale”. It was especially bad because most of them didn’t actually seem to know anything about “Battle Royale” beyond the fact that its basic plot was similar to that of the Hunger Games. It was just a reprise of all of those people that accused Rowling of copying Hogwarts from whatever magical school was foremost in their minds without any consideration for the possibility that broad ideas like child soldiery or mystic academia can be independently created and executed in myriads of equally valid directions.

I could also deal without people who drone on about constant adaptations and remakes. Like, dude. “Gone With the Wind” is one of the most deified movies of the golden age of cinema or whatever, and it was based on a book. Execution’s the only thing that matters. If someone has a take on something, they should be allowed to spin it out. Same with sequels. If people like a thing, let them have more of it. Especially since “Empire” is the Star Wars film that gets the most praise. No “Empire” in a world without sequels. And the good stuff’s always going to be worth letting the bad stuff pass through. Filtration’s futile.

But yeah. It’s much easier and more satisfying to concentrate on the things you love and leave everything else for the people who do love it. It’s really not that hard.

Bonus Question!

Best sequel?

“Rush Hour 2” is the one that sticks out in my mind because it came out during a formative time in my life and it actually has a 2 in the title.

B

The Scott Pilgrim of Superhero Movies

Just saw "Birds of Prey". Of course, it was a fun one, displaying great character work, a frenetic pace, a soundtrack with intent, and epic costumery, but the best part for me was the fact that it's another movie featuring Ewan McGregor alongside someone's diverting rendition of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend". If "Moulin Rouge!" taught us anything, it's the potency of that combination. And love. It also taught us love.

Bonus Question!

Best diamond?

Emma Frost.

Uncut Sandler

Everyone’s astonished at the dramatic quality of Adam Sandler’s “Uncut Gems”, but his acting ability is not a new revelation. He seems to sprinkle in this kind of thing among his more characteristic works from time to time, and they’re generally well delivered. It almost seems like the reverse of that thing where actors do big blockbusters in order to finance their smaller, more independent works. It’s as though Sandler does these quiet drama pieces just frequently enough to keep himself at a level of relevance that can justify the big dumb comedies he loves making with his friends. Which I support too. I don’t actually love all of them, but it’s easy to tell that he’s having a great time with his buddies in the making of them, and I can respect that.

Best gem?

One of the Infinity ones. Probably Power.

Clone Zone

My mother had never seen the last two Star Wars prequels, and before "Rise of Skywalker", she finally decided to open the box set I'd given her several Christmases ago. In watching "Attack of the Clones" with her, which is still my favourite Star Wars film of all, I did admit that some of the special effects are somewhat shaky in comparison to what's around now. That shouldn't surprise anyone, and it certainly doesn't bother me, but it might actually add an extra layer of characteristic charm to the movies. George Lucas orignally made the franchise in imitation of those quanit old adventure films that had captured his imagination in his youth, and the visual quality of those did not age impeccably. Though the degree in Star Wars is lesser, seems fitting for his movies to be similarly identifiable with a particular era in cinema through their aged appearance.

Bonus Question!

Best clone?

Ben Reilly jumps to mind.