Agents of Yesterday

Of the DC shows, “Legends of Tomorrow” has been the clear favourite for me, in large part because it’s a weird, whimsical time travel romp that’s especially

brazen in its embrace of superhero surreality.

Which has often been what “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” didn’t do. Where “Legends” felt like comic book “Doctor Who”, “Agents” felt like an “X-Files” imitation with little connection to justify the placement of “Marvel’s” before its name. It’s not bad. It just often felt bland to me.

But this final season has turned that around for me. From what I can tell, it started by taking a page from the “Legends” book and went on to take several chapters, and I’ve honestly been having more fun with it than I did at its previous high point, which would have been the end of the first season when it was allowed to get crazy with the aftermath of “Winter Soldier”. 

So yeah. For anyone who wants a slightly more directed take on comic book time travel questing from the Marvel side of things after exhausting DC’s version, this last season of “Agents” gives solid satisfaction.

Bonus Question!

Best Marvel Agent?

I remember liking Agent Zero in the old Weapon X comics.

Real Evil Genius

Just watched “Artemis Fowl”. I keep hearing that all of these film houses are so desperate to adapt a fantasy book series into cinema’s next Harry Potter franchise, and people always seem down on it. Meanwhile, I’m here and loving all of it. But they never do well enough to stick around. it took a year or two for me to realize that the “Golden Compass” movie wasn’t getting a sequel. At least we got James McAvoy’s Asriel in the television series.

And “Artemis Fowl” gave us a whole new Josh Gad with a scratchy voice and a demeanour that almost felt like what you’d get if you got Jack Black in a Johnny Depp Halloween costume.

Basically, I’m saying this movie ruled.

Bonus Question!

Best fowl?

Phoenix.

"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.

Dialectal Love

You know how your ancestors can fling off to space and maybe go through some weird time stuff to make a kind of cosmic colony that evolves over thousands of years into its own civilization that mostly forgets its connection to Earth even as it continues to speak English? And now it’s just sitting there alongside modern Earth because of that aforementioned weird time stuff?

Anyway, they still speak English, but it’s hard for language to stay static. When you fall to Earth, it’s easy enough for you to communicate with the locals because you and they are speaking the same language in a broad sense,, but due to your separation through time and space, your version has essentially become its own dialect. Thus, it takes that extra bit of effort for you to grasp the nuances of Earth conversation and convey to them the full meaning of your intent.

And then suddenly you meet someone who somehow speaks the exact same ancient space dialect that you do.

That’s what romance is to me.

Bonus Question!

First dialect you remember encountering?

Probably New Orleans creole.

Nostalgia, Societal Change, and the 50s or Whatever

I’ll admit that this year has seen some proliferation of dystopian aesthetics. Prophylactic masks on everyone, shields around cashier desks, and prescribed sitting circles in public parks. Despite that stuff, I’m not much of a dystopic thinker. Even in areas where things are bad, they’re almost never worse than they were. I think believing otherwise leads to a kind of laziness that can hinder progress when it fosters the fallacy that clearing up some supposedly modern problems will revert the world back to some default state of goodness that it’s assumed to have had at some nebulous point in the past.

But nah. Work has to be done to put that state in place, and it’s going to be harder because it will be an entirely new thing.

Have you ever heard someone say that they wish they could just go back to being the person they were in high school?
But then you look at their high school self and think “Uh, yeah. That’s not really an improvement.”

That’s how talk of societal change sounds sometimes. But instead of high school, it’s the 50s or whatever.


Bonus Question!

Best high school?

I went to  a bunch, but I graduated from Blythe Academy and had a pretty solid time there. And now I happen to live across the street! At the time it was a commute.

Quietest Riot

Man, my city had its second consecutive weekend of protests in a row. But this one was believed to have been organized with violence in mind that far exceeded last weekend’s notably polite demonstrations. In response, many of the big businesses in my area, which have been performing excellently amidst their very recent reopening, decided to close and literally board up for the entire weekend from fear of riot damage.

But nothing happened. Once again, the government commended the protesters for their respectful approach. 

I feel as though these shops wouldn’t have reacted so fearfully if this had happened a year ago. There’s a risk with any protest, but it’s low in my city. The most damaging public gathering in recent memory was last spring when our NBA team got into the finals, and that wasn’t too bad. Not even any looting. Just some incidental breakage. I was actually walking through its midst since it was my favourite kind of misty spring night and I wanted to enjoy the air after the show I’d just played. Walking home through metropolitan party time was just a bonus.

But yeah. I think 2020’s just gotten people to a place where they think they can’t be too careful because anything’s possible. Who really did anything about any of the other pandemic risks of the last 15 years? Swine, bird, and whatever? Well, COVID blindsided them, and  now even the smallest risk is blown up in the public mind like a photograph on a police procedural show after someone says “zoom and enhance”. 

Anyway, I’m not complaining about the lack of looting. It was just bizarre to see all those stores board up right after they’d been so excited to open up  for the first time in months.

Bonus Question!

Worst board?

 Bristol. It’s not actually intrinsically bad, but it tended to entail a larger amount of homework.

Supergroups

Thinking about the DCEU. That developing cinematic universe with the DC superheroes. I've found some of the individual films to be enjoyable by themselves, but they don't lend themselves to the sort of cohesion the dudes in charge seem to want.

It's like . . .

Imagine if someone rolled up five dump trucks of fat cash to Paul McCartney's house at 9:15 in the morning and told him to lead a musical supergroup with Jack White, Angus Young, and Ed Sheeran. They'd be hanging in the studio and coming up with sweet licks, wouldn't they? And some of those ideas would probably have the potential to be great songs, but they might not mesh well together without the concerted efforts of an attentive leader. And that's probably not Paul McCartney in this case. He's already led some amazing bands. He's probably just sitting on the side  now and jotting down notes for his next solo album while the other fellows are spinning off in their own directions.

That's how the DC films feel to me sometimes. I'm stil having fun with them, though. And let's be honest. If this fictional supergroup of Paul and the boys ever became a thing, I'd doubtless have fun with that too.

Bonus Question!

Lockheed from Excalibur versus that beast from the Asia album cover! Battle of English supergroup dragons!

Mmm . . . Lockheed can definitely breathe fire, and I assume that he has more combat experience. He was hanging out with Kitty Pryde and the X-Men for a while before he joined Britain's premier superhero team. The Asia dragon splashes around with a shiny metal ball. Does it have telekinetic control over the ball or something? Can it scry with the ball? Is it like what Jareth does with his oft spinning orbs in "Labyrinth"? I don't know. But I'm giving the win to Lockheed. Even without my X-Men bias, it seems pretty clear.

Hey, Ricky! You're So Fine!

I’ve liked Ricky Gervais ever since I saw his original “Office’ on a road trip and found myself unable to progress beyond the fourth episode because I didn’t know if anything could top the relentless hilarity of the guitar scene. But he never seemed to me like the kind of guy who’s overly concerned with editing. This is largely subjective, but I never thought he took pains to trim the fat around his many pieces of meaty genius. “The Invention of Lying” was where that seemed especially obvious to me. It took what felt like a whimsical idea for a short sketch and blew it up into a marbled slab of feature length film without a lot of logic. Still funny, Not so tight.

But a year ago, I saw “After Life”. It had a more even balance between comedy and drama than Gervais’s most famous works, but it still felt like the tightest piece of content I’d ever seen by him. It seemed finely crafted from beginning to end with a degree of meticulousness and deliberateness I’d never seen from before.

And now I’ve heard there’s a second season, which I was not expecting. But I’ll get to it.

Bonus Question!

Best afterlife?

Valhalla.

May the 4th and More(th)

Everyone knows “May the 4th be with you”. It’s like Easter. It’s the same for everyone. But then you have Revenge. Of the 5th or 6th? That’s more denominational. Like the sabbath. For some it’s Sunday, but others prefer Saturday. Honestly, since the Sith have the Rule of Two, it makes a kind of sense to celebrate both.

But you know what May really needs next on the Star Wars pun front?

“Return of the Jed-Ides”. The 15th! The Ides of May! The Ides are famous for being fatal to one emperor in Caesar, and “Return” is the movie where another emperor meets his own end. And I only realized that after I’d already come up with the pun.

And this year’s is on a Friday, which I just like because Fridays are awesome.

Happy “Return of the Jed-Ides”, Force friends!

Back to the Past with Gerard Butler

My brother was telling me that he’d recently watched a great romantic comedy with Gerard Butler, which intrigued me because he generally delves into that genre far less than I do. He told me the name of it, and I asked if that was the one where the poster has a woman with a chocolate box and Gerard Butler with a chocolate box over his crotch. He said that wasn’t it, and then I got to wondering what the name of that movie was. I looked it up and discovered it was “The Ugly Truth”, but then I looked further down the man’s filmography and found some captivating stuff. Like this movie called “Timeline” that was meant to be a vehicle for Paul Walker in the immediate wake of the first Fast and the Furious movie. It’s about an archaeological team that goes back to medieval France on a quest to rescue their professor. How could I turn that down? Even my brother couldn’t. Worthwhile watch.

Bonus Question!

Best medieval time travel film with French stuff?

“Just Visiting” with Jean Reno, which was apparently a remake of a French film Jean Reno did a few years earlier.

COVID: The Movie!

This whole pandemic situation is feeling like an interesting movie that’s just too long for my liking. I want to see what happens, but I also really want to get out of here soon.

Things are going to happen after this! The world will be different! How? In what way? How will those differences feel? To different people? In different areas? Handshakes might be gone, but a lot of places never did that anyway. And which changes will last? Which ones will go the way of “Freedom Fries”?

There’s a lot to be curious about, and there’s also a lot of normal stuff to get back to besides.

But it already feels too long, and the world might run out of popcorn.

Bonus Question!

Best popcorn flavour?

Butter and salt, baby.

That Other Thing You Did

Hearing about the coronavirus death of Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger was weird for me.

The day began for me by listening to a podcast from earlier in the week. That episode happened to mention that he’d just been confirmed to be sick with the virus. Within a few hours of listening to that, I heard elsewhere that the disease had just claimed him. Not a lot of lead time for me.

Anyway, I learned that he was actually the dude who wrote the title song for “That Thing You Do!”, which was the one hit the fictional band in the movie was known for. That movie, starring fellow COVID sufferer Tom Hanks, was made in the 90s, the decade before Adam’s own band became, in the minds of many, a one-hit wonder with “Stacy’s Mom”. Personally, I preferred “1985”, but that’s basically where my knowledge of them ends.

Although they also did the music for and camoed in that MTV cartoon about an intern at MTV that was written by an MTV intern with the same name. I think his name was Greg? It was definitely a part of the title.

Bonus Question!

Best one-hit wonder?

I legitimately love Smash Mouth even beyond “All Star”. I think they qualify, though some might say “Walking on the Sun” was big enough to disqualify them. Anyway, that still seems like a fair answer.

There and Back and Eragain

Does that work as a pun tenuously connected to fellow fantasy franchise The Hobbit?

Anyway, the next movie I watched during Corona Closure, or Cinemapocalypse, was “Eragon”, which my brother probably only agreed to because he remembered reading the book in childhood and gave in to his sense of nostalgia.

Remember how I talked about “Troy”? The deuteragonist in this movie was also in “Troy”. He was also the lead in that awesome TRON sequel where Daft Punk do the soundtrack and play program versions of themselves in a club run by a program version of David Bowie.

Man, I love that movie.

Also, “TRON” is really close to “Troy”.

Which I don’t love.

But I love that TRON movie.

“Eragon” was good too.

Bonus Question!

Best version of David Bowie?

Lucifer in The Wicked and the Divine. It’s not even the first Lucifer to be modelled on Bowie, but it’s my preferred one.

Oddly, one of the other deities in the story was changed from Bast to nigh identical Egyptian cat god Sekhmet because the author thought Bast was too tied to Neil Gaiman in the public consciousness, but Gaiman was also the guy who made Lucifer into David Bowie in the same series.

So.

Shot Through the Blood

Hey! This week actually saw an interruption in my recent weekly trips to random movies of the past couple of decades because actual new theatre content is now coming to home video.

To start? I went with the next movie I was probably going to see before the COVID closures, “Bloodshot”. I’ve read some of the various comic series from Valiant since it got rebooted at some point within the last 10 years, but since their output was more peripheral to my comic book diet, I really just picked the ones that jumped out at me, and the transhuman cyborg character of Bloodshot wasn’t one of those. Talk about Ivar Timewalker, who’s like an even less responsible and possibly more flamboyant version of the Doctor? Yeah. I was up for that. Quantum and Woody? Another pair of siblings at opposite ends of the maturity spectrum? I checked it out. And then there was that alternate universe miniseries where all of the company’s characters were high school students. Ooh! And Manowar! Viking with power armour! Hekk yeah!

But anyway. This was a movie, and I see a bunch of those. One a week at least to be more specific. And Vin Diesel basically guarantees my presence. That’s not because I’m a committed Diesel fan. A Fan Diesel? But the films he features in do tend to be the ones that align fairly well with my tastes. Remember “The Last Witch Hunter” or whatever that was? I don’t. But I know I liked it.

And this “Bloodshot”? I liked that too.

Bonus Question!

Best witch hunter?

Gaby Van!

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

Sinbad, No Cinema

Since the movie theatres have closed down, I've begun replacing my weekly cinema trip with the sort of movie that'd fit in now but got missed because when it came out I wasn't religiously going to a film a week.

I started with an animated Sinbad feature with Brad Pitt in the lead role. Had I heard about this before? Probably. But I definitely forgot.

It served well though. I think it was part of that weakening wave of traditionally animated movies to come out right before the big studious switched entirely to computer generation for the rest of the decade, which let it fall through more cracks than it otherwise might have. Didn't this come out right around "Troy"? Traditionally, I might prefer Achilles, and  Brad Pitt slayed both roles, but his Sinbad movie gave me more of what I want out of historical adventure story. Which includes less pretension about supposedly being historical and more mythic adventure. Balls to an Achilles who's immortal because of luck or whatever! Give me that River Styx coating! Show me a war caused by a petty contest among a few divine sisters! 

And hells! You can even give Sean Bean his own Odyssey spinoff since he managed to avoid dying for a change.

Anyway. That Sinbad cartoon. See it. I can't remember the full title.

Bonus Question!

Best Pitt role?

Maybe the dude in “Megamind”? He was a dude who just wanted to practice his art outside of the spotlight, which fits with Pitt’s whole thing of a dude in a leading man body who’d love to be a character actor.

Bro-nward

I’ve got to say. I’m often up for a weird road movie, and “Onward” clinched it by also being about two brothers, including a daydreaming man-child and a responsible one with a more reasonable outlook on life. I relate to that dynamic. And they’re elves. I also relate to that.

And the spirit of their father lingers in their hearts to inspire them in different ways.

Honestly, the one part I might relate to less is the driving. It’s been a while since I’ve taken up that responsibility.

But still! Awesome movie. One of my favourite cartoons in a while.

Bonus Question!

Best elf brothers?

The Stormrages.

A Review of Sonic

It's at this time of year when I reaffirm my craving for an actual Leap Dave Williams film, but at least this February saw Jim Carrey be hilarious in a big movie again. It's been too long. The last Jim Carrey movie I remember seeing in theatres was "The Number 23", which also came out in February, but beyond its emphasis on  a particular number, it had nothing else in common with "Leap Dave Williams". Despite my lifelong love for Jim, I had no designs on seeing it, but I was dragged over by some friends. And I might have been on mushrooms. It was  a bad time.

But you know what wouldn't be? "Leap Dave Williams".

And you know what wasn't? "Sonic the Hedgehog".

Bonus Question!

Favourite number?

Midnight.

Fast or Fantasy

I had to decide between two movies to see recently. Which to see first. The obvious choice would have been “Sonic the Hedgehog”, since I’m always up for a silly adventure like that. The fact that Jim Carrey became my first favourite actor after I saw “The Mask” at day camp when I was 3 or 4 is just a bonus on top of everything else that guaranteed I’d see that movie. However, I became increscently intrigued by “Fantasy Island”. Old television shows have been rebooted into new movies for ages, and they’ve switched tone and genre before. But I can’t recall any example wherein an old comedic series became a modern horror. And that very thing, which so piqued my curiosity, combined with the surprising financial success of “Sonic”, made me think that “Fantasy Island” would have a tenure in theatres far outmatched by the furry blue dude, and I hit up “Fantasy Island” first.

And then I realized Ryan Hansen was in it, and that dude resonates in everything I see him in.

So yeah. A good time.

Bonus Question!

Best furry blue dude?

Dust!

Ugh. So. I’ve been relishing “The Secret Commonwealth”, Phillip Pullman’s latest entry in the follow-up trilogy to the His Dark Materials series. I loved those books when I was about 11, and I vividly recall the bittersweet ending that served to metaphorize childhood’s end.

My next visit to that world was in that awkward teenage period where I briefly felt at a complete loss from my child self. That’s when I read the short story about teenage Lyra in her new situation. At that point, I think my general sense of existential dysphoria would have hindered my ability to enjoy “The Secret Commonwealth” this much.

It really explores that bittersweet feeling I associated with the finale of the original trilogy, but since my own personal growth has gone beyond the phase of Lyra’s life that’s on focus in “Commonwealth”, I’m able to enjoy it more fully. What I’m seeing in it is the kind of dissociation from the childhood self that can hamstring development into a contented adulthood. It’s showing the mistakes that can be made along the way and the idea that those mistakes don’t define the person you are or the one you will be. As Lyra’s daemon tries to guide her away from those missteps, she ignores him. But as I moved past my own bad decisions, she begins to pay more heed to her daemon’s guidance.

Honestly, I haven’t finished yet, but I’m eager. Even without that extra metaphor sauce, it’s an awesome read.

Bonus Question!

Any chaser?

At the same time, I’m finally watching “Cardcaptor Sakura”, which has some tonal resonance to the very opening of “The Golden Compass”, wherein a young girl alongside her adviceful and excitable familiar is introduced to a grander and more fantastical world.