Some Potpourri Before Leap Day

 A couple of little tidbits to cram into one entry:

You probably haven't noticed yet but on the list of links below the header is a new section for Virtual Voice Audiobooks.  Since Amazon doesn't make a convenient link to share, I decided to make my own.  

First I did the Eric Filler ones on that blog.  I brought up my Eric Filler author page and sorted by "audiobooks" and then I put the titles and links onto a list.  And since it just brought them up pretty randomly I sorted out the series--as many as I had.

Then I realized that Amazon's stupid buggy software hadn't just brought up audiobooks; some of the links were Kinde books!  Which would be fine if all the Kindles had audiobooks, but they don't so some of them were linking to books that didn't even have an audiobook!

So because Amazon's dumb software can't handle a simple filter job that some giant mainframe using punch cards in the 1960s probably could have handled, I had to go through and audit the list and make a bunch of changes.  Then go through it again and catch a couple more.  Hopefully now it's finally right.

It was easier to do with the PT Dilloway ones because there weren't nearly as many.  I threw the Patrick Dilloway books on that list too.  All of the books are $3.99 or $1.99 if you have the eBook already.

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I've talked a couple of times about the Movie House app.  It was an app on my Roku where if you watch their crappy movies and TV shows you get credit towards a $5 gift card to Amazon or Vudu.  Then they added a daily spin where you got extra points.  At first after 5 spins you got a free gift card.  Then later they downgraded that to 50% towards a gift card.  Then 40%.

It was pretty awesome for a while as I got hundreds of dollars in gift cards for doing relatively little.  I mean, I hardly ever watched the actual content and I set an alarm on my phone to do the spin once a day.  I think it was a good deal and y'all slept on it.  Sucks for you.

But now it's over.  First without saying anything they downgraded the wheel again so instead of getting 40% you get...another spin.  And of course that extra spin is rigged so you'll usually get 5%.  So basically it's going from 40% to 5%.  The only good thing is the bonus would kick in after 4 days instead of 5 but still not an improvement.

When I finally did get 100%, which took almost twice as long as it used to, there were only Vudu gift cards.  I mean sure I could use that to rent some movie, though most of the newer ones are $6 or more so I'd still have to spend money.  But really, I don't care about Vudu.  I can't buy stuff I need with that.  So fuck it.  I'm done.

(And Vudu gift cards suck.  The one I got for $5 I saw Across the Spider-Verse on sale to buy for $5 so I'll just use it on that, right?  Nope, it's only for rentals.  OK, so it's $2.99 to rent and I haven't seen it yet, so fine I'll just do that.  I should have $2 left, right?  I mean that's how every other gift card works.  Nope, the rest of the amount just vaporized.  So, yeah, fuck Vudu.)

Like I've said before, the failure of this should go into a business textbook for college students.  There were so many things they did that were just dumb and so many things mishandled that I'm shocked it took this long for them to implode.

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Last December my Amazon Vine account was terminated.  Not just that but they terminated my "community" account so all of my reviews (non-Vine and Vine) for over 20 years was deleted just like that.  When I emailed them I got a really lame explanation that then basically just said, "WE HAVE SPOKEN!!!" and then they just ignored any other emails.

A problem I found out a few days later when I looked in my Spam folder is the night that they suspended my account there were like 37 emails saying I had reported a review as fake.  The thing is, all of these emails were made when I was asleep, so how could I have done that?  Unfortunately the emails don't say what reviews were reported as fake, though I suspect they were my own reviews, because why else would my account be suspended?  But of course no one wonders why I would be reporting on myself.  Nope, just destroy my account.  Then refuse to answer any questions.

When I email their "community help" I just got ignored.  I went online to talk to drones and was told all they can do is email the "community help team."  So, what, this "community team" is some autonomous entity that doesn't answer to anyone?  It really doesn't make sense.  It's especially annoying because this was a lot of suspicious activity on my account.  It would be really nice if they took that seriously.  At one point since I'd tried emailing them a few times with the whole list, I sent each one separately.  They of course ignored all 37 emails.  It's utterly ridiculous.

At this point I'm less concerned about getting my account back than figuring out what the hell happened to it.  It seems really shady.

And it got even shadier when I read a review on Goodreads where my longtime Amazon friend Ethan Cooper said he had the same thing happen to him.  Amazon deleted all but one of his reviews--including those on my books--because of "fake reviews."  Which is utter bullshit.  Maybe Coop was a little easy on my books for instance and maybe I was a little easy on his, but it wasn't fake.  What's wrong with some authors knowing each other and reviewing each other's books?  I'm sure Stephen King never reviews any books for authors he knows, right?  Yeah, I'm sure.

Now I'm wondering who else they went after in their latest purge.  They have overcompensated before to combat "fake" reviews with their Gestapo tactics.  It's still pretty ridiculous that they don't have any kind of due process for this to prevent people from losing their accounts for no real reason.  Meanwhile I'm sure there are plenty of actual fake reviews they haven't done anything about.

Why is Every Streaming Service Doing the Same Wrong Thing?

 For years, companies have often been pretty secretive with streaming data.  Companies like Netflix and Disney haven't been extremely forthcoming in saying what people are actually watching.  It was a little enlightening then when Nielsen (you know, the ones behind TV ratings since ever) listed the ten most-streamed shows of 2023.

As you can see there are 2 kids shows (Bluey & Cocomelon) and the rest are all shows that originally aired on network TV.  Not a single "original" streamer show like The Mandalorian, Power of the Rings, Stranger Things, or whatever.  Most of the shows are dramas or maybe dramedies (Friends is the only one of these shows I ever watched any of and that was only like 3 seasons) that aired on traditional networks from the 90s-2010s.  The top "original" series was Apple's Ted Lasso with 16+ billion minutes watched, which would probably be something like 12th-15th place on that list. 

I don't really know how accurate this is.  I mean I don't know if this counts everyone--like me for instance--or only a sample size.  Still, this should probably be a wake-up call for these streaming services throwing millions of dollars at "original" IPs.  

The thing is, almost every streaming service--even some of the lesser ones like Crackle or Tubi--has employed the same strategy.  They have some old stuff but they try to create "original" shows to gain attention and get people to sign up.  Disney has leaned on a lot of Marvel and Star Wars shows since the pandemic while Amazon invested big in Lord of the Rings and comic books like The Boys and Invincible.  Paramount+ made a big investment in Star Trek and Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan.  Netflix probably has the most "original" content in a variety of genres.

But now what we see is this strategy doesn't really work because people aren't watching this expensive "original" content as much as shows that in the case of Friends has been off the air for 20 years.  Really I think a lot of this is Americans are a pretty provincial people.  If you label something "Original" that's saying it's "New" and new is scary.  New is unexpected.  It's better to watch something you've seen before so you aren't surprised.  That's safe.

When it comes to entertainment, Americans have a pretty bland taste too.  And you can see most of the shows on that list are pretty bland.  Nothing that would probably be more than PG-13 rated at most.

The list of movies is almost entirely kids movies, most of them from Disney.  Almost all of them were released in theaters first, not streaming originals.  And as I just said all PG-13 and under, most being PG or less since they're for kids.  

I suppose it makes sense that if you and the kids (or just the kids) are home streaming they'll put on a movie for kids, right?  Maybe a surprise that Moana, which is from like 2016, is at the top of the list.

Something I was thinking is most of the shows and movies on these lists were put on regular TV or movie theaters before streaming.  Maybe provincial Americans need that seal of quality to try it.  Sort of like how a lot of people wouldn't read a self-published book because they think it won't have the same quality.  Streaming isn't self-publishing, but maybe there's the thought that it's not as good as something that's on regular TV or in a movie theater.

Anyway, you have to wonder now if streamers will prioritize older content over "original."  Not only is it cheaper and easier, it seems to be more popular.  The obvious problem though is there's only so much of that stuff people want to watch.  I mean when MAX locks up Friends that takes it off the board for the others so no one else can have it.  The same for the others.  You can't really make more of the stuff.

I wouldn't be surprised then if there is more of a push from companies to lock up older series.  That of course makes it suck a little more for people who can't afford (or just don't want to have) a ton of streaming services.  In which case some of us might have to just go back to DVDs to watch our old favorites.

And if you want another depressing nugget, looking at that list of shows, you don't have a ton of diversity.  I mean some of those shows have people of color in them, but predominantly they're shows starring white people.  That's pretty unfortunate.  The movies are more diverse with Moana, Encanto, and Wakanda Forever on there.  I'm not sure what that says--people can tolerate diversity in small amounts?  Kids are less racist?

A Cheap, Fairly Generic Thriller Idea

 Who says you need "AI" to come up with ideas?  Here's an idea I thought of after reading that Codename: Chandler book referenced in the last entry.  I'm not going to say it's original, because I think this is kinda generic, but it'd be easy for someone to turn into a book or even a cheap movie.

Created by Wombo "AI"

The McGuffin of that Chandler book was a phone that was basically like the "nuclear football" the president is supposed to have nearby at all times.  Whoever had this phone and the code could launch a nuclear strike instantly.  Which I really hope is not a thing because that would just make it ridiculously easy to start WWIII.

Anyway, so let's say such a thing exists and some spy has it.  Bad guys find out and chase the spy.  To throw the bad guys off, the spy drops it in some random dude's pocket or random woman's purse.  Random person is going about his/her day later when bad guys attack!  And then the spy saves him/her but is badly wounded.  He explains that random person has to get it to someone for safe keeping.

Random person then is on the run from bad guys like Cary Grant in North by Northwest.  Mayhem ensues!  And maybe the person he/she is supposed to give it to turns out to be a bad guy and random person has to get the phone back.  And eventually random person gets the phone back and maybe the spy shows up again having survived the attack.  Or maybe the spy is a bad guy too.  Whatever.

Eventually random person saves the day and is invited to become a spy or something but turns it down to go back to the mundane life that seems a lot better now.  The end?

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And now here's an Eric Filler version!  Instead of a nuclear football phone, let's say that there's some kind of magical artifact that can grant someone a wish, sort of like Wonder Woman 1984.  The thief doesn't have time to make a wish after stealing it from a museum.  He drops it in some random guy's pocket/purse or whatever and random guy finds it and turns into a hot girl!

Bad guys get after the hot girl since she has the valuable stone.  She has to go on the run and try to get help.  In the end the bad guys are taken down and the girl decides she likes being a girl and starts a new life, probably with a love interest developed along the way.  The end?

So there you go.  Now to wait for someone to put that first idea on Hulu or Tubi or whatever in a movie starring Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, and Kevin Dillon.

Codename Chandler is More Austin Powers Than James Bond

Flee by J.A. Konrath
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This felt like the literary equivalent of cheap action movies I sometimes watch on streaming that want to be like the high-budget productions but don't have the money or talent to actually make it happen. Money is less of an issue here than talent. As in writing talent that could craft decent characters or a logical plot.

So "Chandler" is a government agent living at the moment in Chicago. Then suddenly she's set upon by assassins who all look like her. The reason for this is actually less plausible than clones, robots, or even multiverse versions of herself. I won't give it away, but it's pretty silly and implausible. About as silly and implausible as the McGuffin: a phone that can literally call in a nuclear strike anywhere in the world with just one code. As dumb as American government could be, I hope we're not stupid enough to make nuclear strikes so easy an almost-random person could it.

There are of course villains but they're as thin as the paper I didn't read this on--because I read it on Kindle. The POV is largely first-person from Chandler but when it switches to third-person with the villains it doesn't do them any favors. Instead of adding depth, it only makes them more one-note, mustache-twirling clichés.

Even the naming system of the agents doesn't make that much sense. Chandler and Hammett were contemporaries in the 30s, but then you have Fleming from the 50s-60s, Forsyth/Ludlum from the 70s-80s, Follett late 70s-present, and Clancy 80s-2013. There's no consistency in the time periods or really even the genres. If you were giving these names out all at once, why would you do it like this? Either pick authors from the same time period or the same genre or just make it more random.  I mean it's like if Splinter had named the Ninja Turtles da Vinci, van Gogh, Picasso, and Warhol, who were all in different times with different styles instead of using all Renaissance painters/sculptors. 

Then there are forced cameos by Konrath's other Chicago characters "Jack Daniels," a female police detective and some private eye guy whose name I can't remember and whose cameo contributed nothing and was far less subtle than Stan Lee's cameos in Marvel movies.  Unless you're a fan of Konrath (which I'm not since this was the first--and maybe last one--I read) these cameos are just intrusive and don't add much.

The only standout is "Fleming," who reminded me of Barbara Gordon, who was Batgirl until she was crippled by the Joker and then became a hacker named Oracle who aided the Bat-family and other heroes. That is basically what Fleming does.

This could have been a fun read if the characters had been interesting. Since much of it is Chandler's POV she needed to have a personality, but didn't. I would recommend "The Barista's Guide To Espionage" by Dave Sinclair that was similar but much more fun and with a better character.

That is all.

(Spoiler:  Since no one is likely to actually read this I'll just spoil it and say that "Chandler" and her doppelgangers are identical septuplets who inexplicably have the same fingerprints.  The likelihood of that is about the same as getting struck by lightning after being beamed up by a UFO on your way to redeem the winning lottery ticket you bought from Bigfoot.  And then someone in the government like instantly has the brilliant idea to take these seven girls and turn them into killing machines.  Sounds legit.  Not.)

Dialing Back the Dial of Destiny

 It's President's Day so there will probably be even less interest than usual in blogging.  So here's another of my stupid movie ideas.  At one point I actually looked around my blog and made a list of links and I think I had 33 of them.  (A lot of Star Wars prequel/sequel ideas.)  So this would be #34.

My biggest problem with the movie (besides that Harrison Ford is just too old to do much) is the last act where they actually go back in time and meet Archimedes and fight Romans.  Ugh.  How is that better than aliens?  I mean, that's Bill & Ted shit.  It was pretty weak.  Also, the fate of Indy/Marion's son Mutt.  I get that Shia LaBeouf basically got himself canceled but just saying that he went to Vietnam for...reasons and died was weak.  And while we still probably wouldn't want him in the movie, maybe we can at least make his death count for something.

You can still have the deepfake Indy in 1945 fighting Nazis for the dial if you want.  Skip forward 24-ish years to where Indy/Marion are at his retirement party for whatever college.  The party is interrupted when a messenger shows up to say that Mutt has died in Greece or Italy or some such place where he was studying something or other.  Indy and Marion are then distraught.

Days later there's the funeral though there's not really a body or anything.  At the funeral, "Wombat" shows up to express her condolences but also to say that she and Mutt were working together on finding the dial.  They were getting really close to finding the missing piece when he was killed by some bad guys.  And then bad guys show up!  Maybe then Marion is injured so we don't have to use her in the rest of the movie.

A lot then can go like it did as Indy and Wombat go to find the other piece of the dial.  The change I'd make at the end is instead of the dial only being able to take them back to whatever BCE could take them pretty much anywhere, anytime.  So the Nazi guy is going to back to 1939 like before but then Indy stops him and gets the dial.  He considers using it to go back to when his son was killed to save him.  But then Wombat convinces him that would create a paradox and really make him no better than the Nazi guy.  As someone who loves history, he should keep it unaltered, even if it means losing someone he cares about.  So he destroys the thing instead.  Like maybe he opens a gateway to the distant future and tosses it in, sort of like Discovery.

Then Indy goes home to see how Marion is doing and Wombat reveals that she's pregnant with Mutt's kid--Indy's grandkid.  Cue the theme song!

Not perfect, but I think it's better.  It still isn't exactly Indy going out in a blaze of glory, but at least some better character work.  Or not.  You decide!  Or not.

And even though they didn't use my better idea, here's how you could still do a revival movie:

In the 90s a guy who turns out to be Indy's illegitimate grandson (they killed "Mutt" offscreen but who's to say he didn't knock someone up?) is an archaeology professor.  When the Taliban takes over Afghanistan and start destroying historical artifacts, the guy goes there to save what he can.   In addition to saving artifacts, he saves some women who would be killed by the new regime as well.  It's gritty and real and topical! You could probably also use Iraq in either 1991 or the early 2000s.

Narcissism Is Nothing New

 I always find it a little amusing when someone like Michael Offutt will rant about how people have "become" so narcissistic, as if a lot of people weren't already narcissists.  People do this kind of thing a lot, ranting about how things are so terrible now, meaning they weren't that way before.  I always wonder when was the Golden Age when people were kind, empathic, giving, and well-read.  Um, yeah, probably never.

Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So it's funny when I read a book like this that according to Goodreads was first published on New Year's Day 1966.  The book is mostly about a prostitute Travis McGee rescues from sleeping with the fishes only for her to be murdered (again) a short time later while trying to get her stash of money.  Trav then takes down the prostitute's pimps in pretty easy fashion.

At one point Trav's friend Meyer talks about a book.  According to the author, a lot of people see themselves as real but view just about everyone else as an object.  In other words, most of the people were narcissists who only thought of themselves.  Everyone else was just there to serve them or for their entertainment.  They lack the empathy to understand that other people are as real as they are.

A modern way to think of it is that these people think of life like a video game where they're the main character and everyone else is an NPC.  So it doesn't matter how crappy you treat them, because they're not real.  That certainly explains all the terrible drivers out there, doesn't it?  I run you off the road or destroy your car, so what?  You'll just regenerate, right?  It explains mass shootings too.  These aren't "real" people they're shooting, just characters who are easily replaced.  (I'm not saying that video games cause this behavior, just that this is how some people seem to view things.)

The point being, if you think narcissism is something new, it isn't.  I mean a book written in 1965 was already saying this.  These old books also rant sometimes about increasing population and urbanization leading to a lack of morals or things like that. It's a good reason to read classic books or watch classic movies.  It helps you realize that everything old is new again.

I copied this off Kindle on my computer so it's not great-looking, but if you want proof, here it is:

Ironically though we're so narcissistic that we think we're the first ones to be huge narcissists.  lol

Happy Valentine's Day: The Most Loved Post

Pretty self-explanatory.  For Valentine's Day I pulled up the most-viewed post.  It's still this one from an A to Z Challenge by a landslide.  I mean by about 2000 views.  The bots really love bimbos.

In the Transformed series are not one but two books focusing on bimbos.  For my purposes a bimbo is a woman who looks really hot but isn't all that bright.

The first Transformed Into a Bimbo borrows heavily from my prior novel Chance of a Lifetime.  In the first story, a scientist is working on an anti-aging drug called FY-1978, which is the drug that turns Detective Steve Fischer into Stacey Chance in the novel.  Anyway, some animal rights protestors raid the lab to free the test animals and in the process the scientist gets dosed with the FY-1978.  He finds himself turning into a girl who gets increasing hot--and increasingly dumb.

The second story is basically a miniature version of Chance of a Lifetime.  A detective tries to foil a robbery at a pharmaceutical company and is shot with the drug, now going by the name Yunagin--Young Again, get it?  He turns into a young woman who then gets revenge on the criminals.

There are a couple of key differences.  First, Steve/Stacey is named Jake/Jackie Madigan; Jake is Steve's old partner in the Chances Are books.  Then of course Stacey looks like this:

You know, pretty much like a normal young woman.  Whereas Jackie looks like this:

Yowza!

Then there's how Jackie takes revenge.  Where Stacey pretty much fought them with guns and such, Jackie uses her body.  One guy is into S&M stuff so she uses that to her advantage and gets kind of creative.  You know, because this is supposed to be erotica.

Someone whined about the first book that the character should get into the sex more quickly, so I decided to give that a try with the sequel.  The first story is really short.  It's one of those classic Twilight Zone stories where a rich guy thinks he's going to cheat death by transferring his brain into his bimbo trophy wife, but gets more than he bargains for when he really starts turning into her.  If you read carefully you can see where Michael Offutt makes a cameo.

The second story was a lot longer.  It's one of those that sort of spun out of control a little.  Basically a janitor at a lab triggers a weird holodeck sort of thing and finds himself inside the holographic world as a character called "Naughty Nancy."  A scientist gets pulled in with him and together they jump through a few different scenarios as they struggle to escape.

The scenarios I based on some of my previous books, so they end up as schoolgirls, little girls, Goth girls, whores, fat girls, and geek girls.  That's part of why it ended up longer than I intended.  Fans of "Archer" will get the Dr. Krieger reference in the story.

And of course you can buy both on Amazon for the low low price of $2.99 each!

Would You Pay To Read This Blog?

 I mentioned in a couple of blog entries that former Forbes movie critic Scott Mendelson started a Substack and I subscribed to it.  Like a drug dealer he gave you the first few articles for free...then the paywall went up.  To which I shrugged and said, "Yeah, I'm not paying to read your blog entries."

This is one of those new problems to consider.  Besides dozens (hundreds?) of streaming channels now, you also have Patreons, Substacks, Youtube channels, Instagrams, TikToks, and whatever other stuff.  Some of it like Patreon and Substack are already monetized and others might be as well; I just don't use them enough to know.  Musk is already experimenting with charging for Twitter X.  As I'm sure more and more of these get monetized, I wonder how people will decide what content they want to pay for and what content they don't want to pay for.

A lot of it will probably come down to WHO is offering the content.  Celebrities obviously have fame on their side, so the gossip hungry might pay to see more of their lives.  "Influencers" also have fame, albeit perhaps less so.  Someone like Mendelson at least has perceived expertise versus someone like me.  But what about the rest of us?  

I read some other blogs--when the authors actually bother to blog something.  And most of them I find enjoyable.  But if they put up a paywall and asked for $5/month, I'd scoff and say, "Yeah, right.  I'm not paying to read your blog entries."

A lot of it is that I'm poor but also from an older generation where web pages and then blogs and then social media were free.  Now you're coming along and asking me to pay for what I was getting free before?  Check your roll, dude.

I can't imagine anyone paying to read a blog like this.  I mean, people barely read it when it's free, why would they pay for it?  I think eventually a lot of people will try the paywall route only to find it's a figurative brick wall and they'll go SPLAT like Wil E Coyote.  But those who are famous or who are perceived to be experts at something will probably survive.  Unfortunately that means less content for those of us who can't/won't pay for it.

The problem with newspaper paywalls is it makes it even easier for people to turn to fake news that's largely free.  In a similar fashion, when all the reputable experts hide behind paywalls, it leaves people to go down skeevy blind alleys of fake news and conspiracy theories.  And that's unfortunate--sometimes even dangerous.  If the only news and content people have access to is from whackos, what do you think is going to happen to the people viewing it?

So it would be good if not all real content hid behind paywalls to make it only for the rich to access.  If you remember, the Internet was literally created for the free exchange of information between universities and such.  Since the early 90s people have had to pay to access the Internet as a whole, but now we're seeing more and more sites/apps charging for access to their content on top of paying for an Internet connection.  Like with streaming there will probably be a saturation point where consumers just have enough of this nickel-and-diming.

At the same time, if I thought someone would pay to read this, would I start charging?  In a heartbeat!  It's all about the Benjamins, baby!

Can You Own a Word?

 On Facebook the official DC account posted this:

And I laughed and said, "Really?  Avenge?"  I mean, come on.

And of course other people are like, "What?  Marvel doesn't own that word."

Well, no, they don't OWN it in the legal sense, but they own it in the court of public opinion.  I mean it's the base word of one of the most successful franchises in movie history.  There's an obvious connotation between that word and Marvel.  So unless they're hoping to trick people into thinking it's a Marvel movie, it's kind of a stupid thing to do.

There have been cases where people try to trademark some pretty common word.  There was a romance author who tried to copyright some pretty ordinary word and it was just completely ridiculous and I think it eventually got thrown out of court.  Marvel really can't say DC can't use the word "Avenge" in ads or even titles, but it's just kind of a common sense thing.

Word association is a psychological test they can give people.  If I say, "Avenge" what do you think people would associate with it:  Marvel or Black Manta?  Duh.  And acting like it's just some random word they used is pretty ridiculous; Avengers movies have made like $10 Billion!  Or probably more than the entirety of the DC movie universe.

Even if your property existed first there can still be that problem.  Like the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender came out years before James Cameron's "masterpiece" Avatar.  But since the live action movie of the former came out second, they mostly called it The Last Airbender so people wouldn't associate it with the billion-dollar movie.

That's something to keep in mind when you're looking for a title for a story.  I mean, I can call my book Gone With the Wind or Slaughterhouse-Five or Twilight or something like that, but people are still going to think of the other one.  While legally you might be able to do it, it's probably not sensible from a practical point of view.  Unless you're hoping people will be looking for that book and yours will pop up, which is unlikely.

In that vein, I might have mentioned once before how I looked up Carl Hiaasen's author page and there's clearly a book that's not his but it has pretty much the same name as his--Skintight vs Skin Tight--so Amazon just stupidly lumped them together and despite that I've flagged it a few times they still don't change it.  Or how Amazon stupidly put reviews for a different book called Naughty or Nice on my book called Naughty or Nice.  Don't expect Amazon to be smart enough to know which one is yours and which is someone else's.

Anyway, by now the Aquaman movie is on pace to make about half the first one.  So it's flopped less than The Marvels but still didn't do great.  Guess this poster didn't really help much.

Why Do Shows/Movies Have to Make Needless Changes to Characters?

A while back I watched the first two episodes of The Winter King on Amazon Prime.  The rest of it I had to sign up for MGM+ on Black Friday to watch.  I wrote an entry about the first two episodes and how diversity casting can be annoying when you're really a fan of the source material.  But reluctantly I did have to admit that maybe Merlin could be black in 5th Century Britain.  It's not likely but it's plausible since Rome had a lot of contact with Northern Africa, especially in its wars with Carthage.

A few episodes went by on MGM+ and it was OK, setting things up nicely.  Then finally it gets to the kingdom of Powys and we meet the princess Ceinwyn and her handmaiden Guinevere--as in that Guinevere.  And the casting just sucked for both of them.  Not that either actress is a bad actress, but they both totally looked wrong for the part.  I hate to be shallow like that, but again, when you're a fan of the book, you want things to look like the book.  And especially in this case it seemed easy to do.

In the books, Ceinwyn is the "Star of Powys" because she has really pale blonde hair, like platinum blonde so it's like starlight.  Get it?  And I think she was kinda pale and delicate and so it's a little "opposites attract" when she ends up with Derfel, who's this big strapping warrior.  Basically she's supposed to look kind of like Danerys in Game of Thrones, though the books for this came out long before that show--I'm not sure about the book.  Anyway, seems like it should be really easy to find a pale blonde or just someone pale and use dye or a wig to take care of the blonde part.

But no, they cast some average-looking brunette instead.  (Sorry, Emily John.)  Why?  Well the other half of this is in the books I'm pretty sure Guinevere is a redhead.  Again it seems like that ought to be pretty easy to find.  But no, let's cast a black woman.  A black woman with blonde hair.  WTF?!

I have nothing against black women with blonde hair in modern times, but this is the 5th fucking Century.  And this ain't fantasy like Game of Thrones or Rings of Power.  This is historical fiction.  Why the fuck would there be black women with blonde hair?  Is it a wig?  Doesn't seem like it considering she apparently sleeps with it on when she's with Arthur on their honeymoon.  Is she dyeing it?  

I had to go Google whether they had dye in the 5th Century.  It turns out the Romans did have dyes and even made prostitutes dye their hair blonde--though most wore wigs.  So I guess theoretically it's possible though at this time in Britain the Romans have been gone for a while and most of their technology has been lost or abandoned.  It's possible there could still be a recipe for blonde dye around Britain then, though I doubt it would look that good.

My thinking is that since they made Guinevere blonde for...reasons they then decided they should make Ceinwyn brunette so they wouldn't look alike.  Because why not ruin both characters while we're at it, right?  For no goddamned reason that I can tell.

Does it really matter?  It matters a little bit.  Ceinwyn is kind of a Helen of Troy in that she's the beautiful woman that inadvertently causes a war over her.  In this case it's because Arthur dumps her to marry Guinevere.  Her beauty is another part of her "star of Powys" nickname.  When you make her look ordinary and just shrug off her nickname as "it's just what my mom called me" it really waters down the character.  A character who is supposed to be somewhat important to the overall story for all 3 books.

The Guinevere thing then annoys me because then I feel like a racist even though it's not really about race.  It just doesn't make sense that anyone would look like that in that place and time.  And again it's historical fiction, not fantasy.  It felt like a little bit of a betrayal too because I went along with Merlin being black, suspending my disbelief, and then you do this.  I'm supposed to suspend that much more disbelief?!  Gah!  I can't get behind that!

If you want to think of it another way, imagine if I were going to do a drama set in Central Africa in the 5th Century focusing on the various tribes or nations or empires or whatever was there at the time.  And then I decide to cast a white woman for the princess of one tribe that is otherwise all black.  And I decide this white woman should have pink hair.  Besides being racist, it would be completely implausible from a historical standpoint for a person like that to exist in that place and time.  That's pretty much what they did with this show.

And really it seems like a needless, silly thing to do.  I don't know what their excuse would be.  "We couldn't find anyone else for these parts."  Yeah, right.  That's as lame as when studios whitewash parts and claim they couldn't find a black/Asian/Middle Eastern/Indian/etc person for it.  Yeah, right.

There have been a couple other times in the last few years where something like this happened.  In two different GI Joe movies there's been a "Baroness" character and both times they have her just talk in an American voice instead of an Eastern European accent like she's supposed to have because she's from somewhere in Eastern Europe where they have, you know, baronesses.  After watching that Origins Snake Eyes movie I screamed, "Why is it so hard to get someone who talks with the right accent?!  Is that tiny amount of fan service too much to ask for?!"  I mean, really, how fucking hard is it to get that one little thing right?

Another time was in The Martian they cast Mackenzie Davis as "Mindy Park" who's supposed to be Asian in the book.  It's one of those needless whitewashing things.  I mean, they couldn't find an Asian woman for a pretty minor part in the movie?  Really, Ridley Scott?  REALLY?!?  And I liked Mackenzie Davis in an episode of Black Mirror but, come on, she's not a household name where it's like, "OMG we need to find a role for her in this movie so we can put her name on the poster and stuff!"  

The latter is also true for The Winter King.  Like I said, the actresses they cast are fine but neither is a household name.  Jordan Alexandra's biggest part according to IMDB was playing "Office Worker" in Dr. Strange 2.  So obviously this wasn't about casting star power.

Anyway, this kind of stuff just annoys me because in all of the cases mentioned it was needless.  It really shouldn't have been hard to find someone to actually fit the part the way it was supposed to be.  When you don't do that, your "poetic license" or whatever really starts to become a distraction.  It's definitely not a distraction I needed when I really want to like a show because I love the books it's based on.  Maybe as a fan of the books you could just throw me a bone and not make stupid, needless changes to the characters?  Maybe?  

And like with the Baroness thing, when you don't get simple things right it tells me as a fan that you really don't know and/or care about the source material.  As a fan then that annoys me because it makes it seem like you're not taking this seriously, not as seriously as I take this.  It's more important to you to put your artistic stamp or whatever on it.  Or you're just lazy and don't care who you cast or what they sound like or any damned thing.  Just put whoever in there and shoot this thing so we can go home.  Like with the GI Joe movies, Transformers movies, Star Wars movies, etc. I really just want someone who's going to care about the source material as much as I do.  Needless changes like the Baroness's accent, or the race of particular characters, or hair color of particular characters, or whether the particular character even has hair (ie, Lex Luthor) make me question that commitment.

I did still like the show, but I'd have liked it more if they'd done those two characters right instead of making stupid casting choices for no real reason.

Stuff I Watched Last Month

 Probably not that much, but maybe not...

The Creator:  In the pre-streaming, pre-Covid world I probably would have watched this in a movie theater because it looked pretty interesting.  And it was good, though not really as good as I wanted to be.  Like Pacific Rim it kinda starts with two prologues, though they aren't quite as long.  The first reveals that AI blew up a nuke in LA and so the US and most of the world banned AI.  But "New Asia" or the "Far East" as it used to be called didn't and so America leads a war against them.  In the second prologue we meet Josh (John David Washington) who is undercover in Thailand but falls in love with Maya, a scientist.  American soldiers attack the night Maya reveals she's pregnant.  Josh thinks she dies and is taken back to America for debriefing.

Five years later, Josh is told Maya is alive and the link to "Nimrata" or the creator of advanced AI systems.  Nimrata is developing a weapon and so they need him to guide a team into the hidden lab to destroy it.  The weapon turns out to be an AI girl with a mostly-human body called "Alphie" who is basically a living universal remote--if your universal remote could turn off just about anything electrical. 

The problem for me was I could already figure out who Nimrata was and what was going on with "Alphie."  I spent the next hour or so then just waiting for Josh to figure it out.  That's always kinda annoying when watching a movie.  But otherwise it was a good movie.  It borrows a little from Star Wars, Aliens, Avatar, I Robot, Chappie, and probably some other things.  Still it never really feels like a ripoff of anything.  The visuals are really good and the acting competent enough.  Besides Washington there's Allison Janney as the hard-as-nails American military commander and Ken Watanabe as an AI soldier protecting Nimrata.  Overall if you like sci-fi this is one you don't want to miss even if it probably won't replace your favorites. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  A lot of movie was shot in Thailand and in the credits it seemed every Thai crewperson had a nickname like "Something 'Bo' Something."  I don't think I'd ever seen that many nicknames in credits before.  When they show the giant US Army tank thing I kept hoping it would transform into a robot or something.  Speaking of robots, the Americans don't use AI but they employ robots that look like R2D2 with arms and longer legs and chests filled with explosives.  Kamikaze bots like that probably would have been more effective for the Trade Federation during the Clone Wars.)

Prospect:  A year before The Mandalorian and a few years before The Last of Us, Pedro Pascal was Pedro Pascaling in this indie sci-fi movie.  A teenage girl and her father (Jay Duplass of indie directing team the Duplass Brothers) go to "Green Moon" to find a stash of rare gems.  Their ship lands off-course and so they have to hike.  But along the way they're ambushed by Pascal and another dude.  The father and other dude are killed, so Pascal and the girl have to team up to find the stash and get off the planet alive.  Along the way, despite that Pascal killed her dad, they start to bond.  For a low-budget movie it is really good and well-made.  Like I said, this was basically a warm-up for Pedro Pascal to his more popular "gruff guy protecting a child" roles.  The rest of the actors are good as well.  I just wonder though how much better a movie like this could be if it had the budget of The Creator or Avatar 2. If you haven't seen it (and you probably haven't) this reminded me a lot of Settlers (2021) that I watched last year.  Both are worth watching if you like sci-fi.  (4/5) (Fun Facts:  If you have a weak stomach, you might want to turn away during the amputation scene.  I hadn't even heard of this movie until I read a review on this site.  That's why you should actually read reviews like these instead of just skimming one or two; you might actually see something that sounds interesting.)

Robots (2023):  Another good indie sci-fi movie, only one I found myself on Hulu. Like I said on Facebook, if you want a rom-com for Valentine's Day with a little sci-fi and light R-rated humor then this is a good pick.  The movie takes place about 10 years from now when "Tesla Corporation" has replaced illegal aliens with robots.  The robots wear weird rubber mannequin faces so they're easy to tell apart.  Making robots look like actual people is forbidden and if you're caught, you can go to jail.

But a rich douche named Charlie does it anyway.  He uses "C2" to work at his dad's company and pick up women.  After a few chaste dates, a hookup for sex will be arranged and the real Charlie will move in and then dump the girl.  Seems a little unnecessary but whatever.

There's also a woman named Emily who does sort of the opposite.  She goes out with rich guys to get stuff and then uses her robot "E2" to actually have sex with the guys so that way she's not really a hooker; it's the robot taking one for the team.

Then C2 meets Emily, but on the night they're supposed to hook up, things get mixed-up and C2 and E2 end up together and fall in love.  They run away and the real Charlie and Emily have to track them down before the cops find out.  And guess what happens while they're doing that?  There is a happy ending for everyone though.

It is a lightweight comedy with some R-rated edge, but it's pretty fun and only about 90 minutes.  Like I said it'd be good for a Valentine's Day watch or a date night or something like that.  The actors and effects and everything are decent for a small-budget movie.  Also, to put on my pig nose for a moment, I didn't realize the girl from those Divergent movies had such nice boobs.  Oink.  Oink.  (3.5/5)

The Holdovers:  Alexander Payne reunites with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti for this "holiday" movie that really isn't a holiday movie.  As you'd expect from a Payne movie, it's not really heartwarming and jolly and doesn't really end Happily Ever After.  It's more sad because in the end no one is really better off.  Are they maybe wiser for the experience?  Possibly.

It's the end of 1970 at the Barton School for Boys.  Giamatti is a crusty teacher put in charge of five boys.  There's also a cook who lost her son in Vietnam.  But then 4 of the boys get a place to go leaving only one.  He, Giamatti, and the cook are left to their own devices and Giamatti and the boy start to bond.  They even take a trip into Boston for a "field trip."

There are some funny parts and some poignant moments.  Have the tissues handy if you're susceptible to that because the end is pretty sad.  It is really a lot like a movie version of a lot of literary fiction novels.  Or like Scent of a Woman without the Pacino yelling and some of the wackier bits.  A big courtroom-type scene at the end probably would have made for a happier ending but this was more believable. Overall while I wouldn't put this in my holiday rotation, it was a great movie. (4/5)

Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny:  Taking place over 10 years after the horrid Crystal Skull, this is a little less wacky, but seems more tired and paint-by-number.  It tries to hit all the notes of a classic Indiana Jones movie, but it's obvious how much feebler Harrison Ford is.  After an opening at the end of World War II with a deepfaked Ford, it moves to 1969, a month after the moon landing.  A Nazi scientist working for NASA and the daughter of an old friend of Indy's are both looking for the "Dial of Archimedes" that could predict fissures in time.  In action movie (and GI Joe cartoon) fashion the dial has been split in half so two pieces need found.  The last act gets a little wacky; in some ways even wackier than Crystal Skull.  And in the end I'm at a loss as to why we needed this.  It wasn't a huge step up over Crystal Skull and leaves Indy/Marion in a worse place than that did.  And while fans didn't like Shia LaBeouf's Mutt, killing him off-screen doesn't really give that or Indy/Marion's grief much heft.  Mads Mikkelsen matches Ford's low energy as the villain, which again is not really an improvement over Cate Blanchett's Soviet villain in the previous movie.  In the end while James Mangold and various writers deliver a well-crafted movie, it was pretty unnecessary and doesn't really let Indy go out in glory like Mangold did for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine in Logan.  (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  This is the third time Harrison Ford has revived a classic character with a new director after Episode VII and Blade Runner 2049.)

Loki, Season 2:  Speaking of something involving time and also failing to justify its existence in the first place.  I liked season 1 that had a variant of Loki created during Endgame taken to the "Time Variance Authority" and escape destruction by agreeing to help them find another Loki, who turned out to be a female called Sylvie.  Loki and Sylvie developed a thing for each other and found "He Who Remains," aka Kang.  Sylvie kicked Loki out a time door and then presumably killed Kang.  The season ended with Loki returning to the TVA to find statues of Kang and no one recognizing him.

Season 2 picks up with Loki being chased and jumping back-and-forth through time.  Then he meets Ouroboros or OB (the guy from Goonies and Everything Everywhere All At Once) and they try to get him stuck back in time but the "time loom" is overloading and so they have to hurry.  Episode 2 picks up with them looking for Sylvie and even though the problem with Loki being unstuck in time didn't really seem solved, I guess it was?  From there we have a lot of McDonald's product placement and another Kang Variant called Victor Timely (Fun Fact:  Timely was the original name of Marvel) and blather about time looms and doors and controlling the TVA and then the destruction of the TVA and I just could not give a shit about any of that.

This is that lame kind of sequel that just throws more stuff at you at the expense of doing anything interesting with the characters.  Maybe because it was "weird" they pretty much abandon the Loki-Sylvie thing.  Mobius (Owen Wilson) is just around to blather about pie and jet skis.  OB and Timely are just the same almost-autistic nerd who's good with machines and less good with people; OB is more child-like and Timely more con artisty but still mostly the same stock character.  Tom Hiddleston's Loki is pretty well wasted until the last couple of episodes.  Most of the time he lacks even the wit and charm that made people like him in the first place!  Who really wants to see Loki pining for his "friends" he's known for about five minutes?  If you're going to pine for someone, pine for the people you knew for thousands of years like your brother, father, Lady Sif, etc.  He should be trying to bring Asgard back, but I guess that would be more expensive.  Like "Brad" tells him, "You're a villain!  Just be that!"  Own it, dude.  But I guess that was always the problem with Disney trying to make a show about a bad guy.  Like Book of Boba Fett they had to take a perfectly good villain and make him a whiny bitch in some lame quest for "redemption."  Yuck.

The first season wasn't the greatest but at least it had more Loki being Loki and the fun Loki variants.  Plus the Loki-Sylvie thing that maybe was "weird" but it made sense.  I mean, who understands you better than you?  Especially when you're both "Variants" being hunted and threatened with execution.  This season just steps back from all that made the first season worth watching.

The last episode tries to put a cherry on this turd sundae but doesn't really do it.  Loki sacrificing himself for the greater good?  Meh.  Like that's what we wanted. Like seasons of Picard, Titans, Doom Patrol, etc, most of the characters are useless in the end, thus there's no real reason we needed to spend time learning about any of them.  Sylvie is especially underused and really contributed nothing to most of the show.  Why'd they even bother bringing her back?  Why'd they bother with about all of it?  This could easily have been slimmed down into a less-than-two-hour movie.  (2/5) (Fun Facts:  The "Time Tree" or whatever you want to call it that he creates is shown in the last episode of What If...? that I'll get to a little later.  There's a mention that "Universe 616" took care of a Kang, which is a reference to Ant-Man 3 as the 616 universe is the MCU.)

Echo:  Another failed attempt to "redeem" a villain.  When they announced this series I didn't really care since I barely remembered the character from Hawkeye.  Basically she's a deaf Native American girl with one leg named Maya who was raised by the Kingpin as a killer.  But when she found out he killed her father, she shot him and left.  This picks up five months later as she returns home to Oklahoma.  Then sends a bomb to the Kingpin in a vain attempt to take over his operation before he shows up and tries to recruit her and then kill her.

I would almost guarantee there was studio interference with this.  I mean from Hawkeye and initial reports this was going to be violent, bloody, and R-rated like Moon Knight, you'd think it would be a gritty crime thriller.  But by the end it seems someone handed down the edict to make her a Native American Ms. Marvel.  So in the last episode (that is a paltry 35 minutes) she gets a native costume and somehow has superpowers that she somehow knows how to use to basically do to the Kingpin like Sybok does to people in Star Trek V.  And also she can give her underused former best friend and grandma superpowers...cuz why not?  The problem is Maya is not adorkable like Ms. Marvel and with only 5 episodes (some pretty short) they didn't really set up the family and powers so it really doesn't work.  If they hadn't shifted the premise halfway through from her trying to take over the Kingpin's empire to becoming a protector of the Choctaw (or something) it would have been a lot better.  (2/5) (Fun Facts:  Daredevil has a cameo in the first episode during a flashback.  In the final cookie scene, the Kingpin gets the idea to run for mayor, which happened in the comics.)

Rick & Morty, Season 6:  This is not the most current season but the penultimate season.  It was...OK.  Not bad but not really great.  Competent and with some funny parts, but not really a lot of memorable bits.  Stuff happens.  Beth falls in love with her cyborg clone--and vice-versa.  Rick and Morty have to battle meta "heroes."  The family battles their nighttime selves.  Rick has to save Morty in a Sims-type video game while Summer "does a Die Hard" against some alien terrorists in an arcade.  Morty becomes king of the Sun.   Jerry becomes some kind of Green Lantern/Iron Man dude. Rick goes to therapy.  The latter two were part of the very special episode where Rick pretends to be the low-rent villain "Pissmaster" after the original kills himself. (Call 988 if you need help!)  The final episode asks the question:  what happens if you drop a lightsaber perfectly vertical?  Nothing good.  Probably should have had a safeguard that it turns off after a certain amount of time.  Also, not to nerd it up too much but a lightsaber can't instantly cut through everything so it would take a lot of time to make its way through the surface of Earth.  Anyway, if you like the show you'd like this but not love it.  If you haven't watched it this won't really make you a fan. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  This was the final season with co-creator Justin Roiland as Rick/Morty as he got canceled like Jonathan Majors did recently.  But apparently Roiland had pretty much only been doing voices for years.)

Rick & Morty, Season 7:  This dropped on MAX just days before my subscription was up so I binged through it.  This first season without co-creator Justin Roiland (still listed as an Executive Producer and still with a production card at the end of the credits but no longer doing the voices of Rick & Morty) is not that good.  The first episode was really annoying.  It focuses on Rick and some buddies going on a bender with "Mr. Poopybritches" whose wife is cheating on him.  It's one of those episodes that really takes for granted that people give a shit about the show enough to remember who the fuck Mr. PB and "Squatch" and "Birdperson" actually are.  And, yeah, that's not me.  The second episode has Rick and Jerry mixed up so there are two people who are part-Rick and part-Jerry instead of a clean body swap.  The third episode has the president fall in love with Rick's therapist while an old flame of Rick's visits and inadvertently creates a hive mind that threatens the Earth.  The fourth one was pretty stupid as there's some planet where if someone dies from suicide they create spaghetti inside of them and Rick has been harvesting that for the family, until Morty screws the whole deal.  WTF?!  I think it was supposed to be a nod to Soylent Green and supply chain issues from the pandemic or some dumb thing.  Whatever.  (Again, call 988 if you need help.)  The fifth episode is another of those where if you give a shit about previous seasons it would be a lot more interesting.  "Evil Morty" is forced to help Rick find "Rick Prime," and there's a brutal scene where Rick literally beats his other self to death for killing his wife.  And then, well, he should have read some comics or Count of Monte Cristo to realize that revenge is a hollow pursuit.  

The sixth episode is a clip show without real clips when Rick and Morty call up an Observer (like an almost-flat geode) to audit whether a list of "adventures" are adventures but when they insult the Observer they're arrested.  Some of the clips were funny but not great overall.  The seventh episode barely features Rick as Summer and Morty become fused like the mutant in the original Total Recall who had a Kuatu in his chest.  Morty is the Kuatu and then it becomes like Taken as he's kidnapped.  I guess if you really like those movies it'd be funnier.  The eighth episode is purely awful.  It reminded me of the South Park April Fool's episode where the whole thing was a Terence and Phillip movie.  Like with that, I wondered the first 5-10 minutes if this was an opening, but slowly it dawned on me it was the actual episode.  The whole episode is some weird thing about numbers and letters fighting each other, featuring Ice-T as the leader of the letters.  Rick isn't even in this episode, just Morty and his math teacher.  The only cool thing was that the look and overall story were based loosely on Transformers The Movie from 1986.  The ninth episode finally features Rick as he has Bigfoot kill him to infiltrate Valhalla to steal energy or something.  But the Pope steals the energy instead and in Edge of Tomorrow fashion they have to fight him several times before they get it right.  The season goes out with a whimper in the final episode.  Morty jumps down a "fear hole" in a Denny's and then it's like one of those mental Star Trek episodes or an attempted Twilight Zone episode where the hole keeps feeding on Morty's fear and he has no idea what's real and what's not.  

Overall while they downplayed Roiland's contributions to the series, this first season without him was pretty rocky.  It's like they gave in to all their worst impulses.  A few fun bits but nothing really good.  If you've never watched the series, definitely don't start with this.  (2/5)  (Fun Facts:  In that awful 8th episode, the title card of the fake movie uses the Transformers movie font.  In a later cookie scene that sets up a sequel I hope doesn't happen they show a title card using the Gobots movie font.  Adult Swim played it close to the vest about who the new voices of Rick and Morty are.  And they are...no one you'd have heard of.  One nobody does Rick's voice and another does Morty's now.  Unless you're really listening there's not a huge difference.)

Archer: Into the Cold:  After the final season that was pretty meh comes essentially a movie to close things out.  While originally billed as a 3-episode finale, on Hulu it streams all as one thing.  Basically while the UN is planning to ban private spy agencies, Archer and company have to unravel a plot to start a new Cold War.  This was a step-up over season 14 as it brings in some guest stars including Archer's cyborg ex-fiancée Katya, her former lover/Archer's former nemesis Barry, the former CIA operative Slater (Christian Slater), Rip the seaplane-flying Manhunter (Patrick Warburton), and even Milton the mobile office toaster.  The plot gets a little messy trying to work everyone into a winner-take-all scenario but for a final episode it was pretty decent.  It was nice some mention was made of Archer's father (though of course we'll never know who he was) and Archer and Lana's daughter makes an appearance at the end.  Maybe not everything fans were hoping for, but better than making the whole show (or even the last 6 years) a coma fantasy or something.  It just feels like a lot of cards were left in the draw pile though. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  In the bottom of the elevator shaft part of the old ISIS logo is visible.  I always think you can largely blame the terrorist group for this show going downhill as trying to replace the name of the spy agency--or if it even was a spy agency anymore--became a recurring distraction.)

Marvel's What If...? Season 2:  Season 1 was kind of a mixed bag of potential universes.  This second season is not really an improvement on that front.  Some stories are really good and some are less so.

Episode 1 has sort of a Blade Runner vibe to it.  In this universe Nebula becomes part of the Nova Corps just as the planet they're on is being invaded by Ronan the Destroyer or whatever, who bumped Thanos off.  "Nova Prime" uses a planetary shield to keep him out--and everyone trapped.  Years later, things on the planet are looking grim and when Yondu is killed, Nebula has to solve the mystery, which in Watchmen fashion becomes a world-changing event.  Overall it's a minor story with no great Marvel characters but pretty well done. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Seth Green voices Howard the Duck, who has become a casino owner/crime lord.)

Episode 2 throws it back to the 80s.  When Peter Quill is taken to Ego by Yondu, he gains his Celestial powers.  After he returns to Earth in 1988 and starts blowing up stuff in New York, a team is put together to stop him.  Peggy Carter and Howard Stark kind of share the Nick Fury role, Hank Pym is Ant-Man, Bill Foster is Goliath, T'Chaka is Black Panther, Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier, Wendy Fowler (I guess from the Captain Marvel movie?) is a Kree warrior/pilot, and Thor is Thor.  While the team struggles to stop Peter and then Ego it's Hank's daughter Hope who connects with Peter to save the day.  One of the things with some of these stories is how it can make you realize connections you wouldn't have thought of, like that Hope van Dyne and Peter Quill are roughly the same age and both at this point in time had lost their mothers, so it really makes sense they would bond.  It's good for the 80s Avengers that like a lot of comic book villains Ego uses his Celestial power in pretty linear, basic ways like creating rock monsters with his face on them.  You know, instead of just vaporizing them or something.  The end leaves room for a sequel and I am here for it. (4/5) (Sad Fact:  The animators are pretty careful not to show the World Trade Center in the New York scenes.)

Episode 3 is a holiday special patterned on Die Hard.  After the battle in Avengers, Happy Hogan is organizing the Christmas party in Stark Tower when terrorists led by Justin Hammer take over the building.  Happy, Black Widow, and Darcy (Natalie Portman's assistant) have to take on the bad guys and get help.  In the process, Happy accidentally gets dosed with Hulk blood to make him Hulk Hogan!  (Not the wrestler.)  This episode was hilarious and just absolutely brilliant for fans of Marvel and Die Hard.  It also really made me miss the first Avengers team.  We didn't know how good we had it! (5/5)

Episode 4 is the missing episode from season 1.  When the Watcher was putting together his team, there was a Gamora from a world where she and Tony Stark teamed up after meeting on Sekarra or whatever it's called from Thor Ragnarok.  For whatever reason that episode wasn't done in time so now they get to it.  Basically after throwing the nuclear missile into space during Avengers, Tony winds up on Sekarra instead of Earth.  Gamora turns up there to kill him for Thanos.  The episode reminds me of all the things I hate about Thor Ragnarok along with a lengthy race that gave me flashbacks to the podrace in Phantom Menace.  Jeff Goldblum manages to be even more annoying as the Grandmaster and the race is so interminable that it really sucks the air out of the episode.  A little more focus on Tony Stark and his struggle being light years from home would have been nice but there was so much that needed done there simply wasn't time. (2/5)

Episode 5 is a sequel to the first episode of the series where Peggy Carter became Captain Carter and Steve Rogers, who didn't get the super soldier serum, instead received a sorta Iron Man suit from Howard Stark called the Hydra Stomper.  This sequel combines The Winter Soldier with Black Widow movies.  Years after the Battle of New York, Peggy finds the Hydra Stomper with Steve inside, but he's being used by the "Red Room" as their assassin.  Peggy and Black Widow are lured to a creepy fake American town in Sokovia where they face off with the Hydra Stomper and an army of Widows led by Black Widow's fake mom--voiced by Rachel Weisz.  It's a good episode if you liked those movies mentioned above.  I really liked the former and the latter was pretty good too so I mostly enjoyed it.  Really they should make this a series, but they probably wouldn't.  The end has Peggy taken to 1602 for another episode. (3.5/5)

Episode 6 is a departure from the rest of the series.  While the other episodes are based off something from the MCU, this one creates something new.  A Mohawk girl named Kahhori finds the Tesseract and is transported to another world.  She gains basically Scarlet Witch powers and uses them to take down the Spanish attacking her village.  Did the Spanish ever actually interact with the Mohawk tribe?  I thought they mostly were down in Florida and in the southwest while the Mohawks were up in the New York state area.  Looking at someone asking about this on Reddit the popular answer is, "Bruh it's a cartoon."  Um, yeah, so?  I agree with someone who wondered why they didn't use the French.  It's basically Marvel making Disney's mistakes in Pocahontas.  Anyway, I hope you like reading subtitles because pretty much the whole episode is in Mohawk language and Spanish.  And what exactly is the distinction between her using her power to destroy the Spanish, even to force their queen to surrender, and Scarlet Witch using her power to create a family or destroy worlds trying to save them?  They don't really answer the question. (2/5) (Mini-Rant:  It kind of annoyed me they list the title as "What if Kahhori...something something?"  Like I was supposed to already know who Kahhori is when in actuality she never existed before this episode.  They should have made the title like, "What if the Tesseract Landed in Early America?" or something like that instead of making me feel stupid for not knowing who this character you just made up is.  Typical Marvel arrogance.)

Episode 7 is kind of funny because after the Mohawk episode pandering to Native Americans they decide to use cultural appropriation and a literal white savior.  This combines Thor Ragnarok (again, sigh) and Shang-Chi when Hela the Goddess of Death is stripped of her powers by Odin and lands in ancient China, where she meets Wenwu, who has the 10 rings.  Then there's this whole Kung-Fu thing where she learns from a master before having to team with Wenwu against Odin.  It was OK but I wasn't a Hela fan and while I liked Shang-Chi I'm not intimately familiar with it so it didn't do a lot to me. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  At the end, when she changes her ways, Hela's armor turns white like Darth Vader's in a Star Wars Infinities book--their version of What If...?)

Episode 8 is a riff on Neil Gaiman's Elseworlds tale Marvel 1602.  That featured Nick Fury as an agent of Queen Elizabeth, Stephen Strange as a court magician, a non-Spider Peter Parker, and other Marvel characters, including Steve Rogers as an "Indian" or something.  I don't remember it really well since I read it almost 10 years ago.

Anyway, this is sort of the same only it uses MCU characters like Thor, Loki, Hela, Scarlet Witch, Nick Fury, and then Captain Carter is called there to help, though she's unsuccessful as a rift in the sky periodically makes off with people.  When Hela is taken, Thor blames Carter and she takes refuge with Steve Rogers and his Merry men including Bucky Barnes and Scott Lang.  Appropriately then there's a heist to steal a stone that can find out who is the "Forerunner" or first person from somewhere in time who's inadvertently causing the rift. 

It's a pretty fun episode fitting a lot of the MCU into Elizabethan times.  The end is pretty poignant too.  Definitely a step up from the previous couple. (3.5/5)  (Fun Fact:  When Happy Hogan gets angry during the big fight at the end, he turns into the Hulk Hogan--still not the wrestler--from Episode 3.)

Episode 9 begins with the Dr. Strange from the previous season bringing Peggy Carter to his Sanctum, where he's imprisoned multiverse threats--and others.  Kahhori shows up to tell Peggy that Strange is trying to bring back his world that died in the first season.  (She speaks English now--pretty modern English too--so no subtitles.)  So then there's a big fight that brings in zombie Scarlet Witch, Killmonger with the Infinity Stones from last year, Hela, Surtur, the 10 rings, and more!  The fight goes on for a while and I'm sure you can guess who wins.

It's a pretty good ending, but not as good as the previous season.  Like the previous season they really needed to set up the Big Bad from the beginning and make it more of a recurring thing. (3/5)

There is of course plenty of room for sequels if they get the green light.  Most of this season was good and for me the best episodes are the ones involving the characters we know and love (or like at least) from the MCU.  I'm sure there's still plenty they could do with that.  This season featured only T'Chaka Black Panther for of course the sad reason that Chadwick Boseman was dead and I guess they didn't want to recast the animated voice either, even though they did for Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Black Widow.  Maybe because of Jeremy Renner's accident Hawkeye also doesn't really appear except in a couple of backgrounds.  This also didn't feature any Spider-Man; I'm not sure if that had something to do with their alliance with Sony or they just didn't feel like developing any stories with him.  With his long history and rogue's gallery they could really do a whole season just for Spider-Man stories.  There also wasn't any Captain Marvel, Star-Lord, Shuri, Vision, War Machine, Sam Wilson, (Captain America or Falcon), and only a glimpse of Rocket Raccoon.  Also none of the newer MCU characters like the Eternals, Ms. Marvel, Monica Rambeau, She-Hulk, Shang-Chi, or Ironheart.  And still none of the Defenders:  Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, or Iron Fist.  Or the Punisher.  So that's a lot of stuff they could work into another season.

The Watcher doesn't really get as involved as he did in the first season; he does have one funny line at the end of Episode 5 where he's like, "I'm the Watcher, I see all, I know...what the hell?!"  But it seems like he and Captain Carter kinda have a thing for each other.  Which makes you wonder what the Watcher has under his robe and what would happen if he made a baby with Captain Carter?  That would be an interesting What If...? episode or even story arc as their baby could be a rogue Watcher who threatens the universe and they have to put him/her down.

Tallying it up, the final score is 28.5/45 which makes for about 3.17/5, so a smidge over 3.  I'd say then it was decent, though a few episodes less so.

Invincible "Season 2":  After making people wait about 2 years, Amazon/Skybound give viewers 4 new episodes.  Hooray?  There are a lot of plot threads but obviously no resolution on anything.  

Previously:  After Mark (Steven Yuen) finds out he has superpowers because his father is "Omni-Man" (JK Simmons) he becomes the superhero "Invincible" who is pretty vincible.  When Omni-Man revealed his true plan was to take over Earth for the evil race the Viltrumites, he turned on Earth and his own son.  But he couldn't kill his son and flew away.

Some time later, Mark has recovered from his injuries and tries to work for the government though he still winds up making a mess of things.  Meanwhile his mother is trying to move on from finding out her husband is an evil alien who considered her a pet.  Atom Eve finds out that unilaterally using her powers, even with good intentions, is not a good idea.  Mark goes into space and finds out where his dad went until the Viltrumites show up for him.

Besides the Viltrumites there's a guy who was trying to bring together all the multiverse versions of himself to create a superbrain but Mark's interference turns him into a freaky supervillain who's going to...do something...maybe.  Mark is also going to college until he leaves for space.  The Guardians have a lot of inter-team hook-ups.  And a Martian decides to join the Guardians as a shapeshifting "hero" and despite that he in no way seems like a real human everyone just accepts him as human.

Some of it is good but it obviously is too short to really go anywhere.  Like the first season there are some funny parts and sweet parts and also some extreme violence and gore so there are some big tonal shifts. And plenty of gratuitous butt shots because I guess the animators like butts.  The second part of the second season is supposed to start in mid-March; I'm not sure how much I'll be able to watch before my Prime expires. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  the legendary Peter Cullen--Optimus Prime himself!--voices an alien leader who might be a turncoat.)

Reacher, Season 1:  Offutt mentioned he was blogging about this so since I had nothing else to watch, I watched the first 4 episodes and liked it.  What people complained about with the movies is Tom Cruise is nothing like the book Jack Reacher.  So this time they cast Alan Ritchson, who is huge and swole.  This Reacher is like if you could put Sherlock Holmes's brain in Steve Rogers Captain America's body.

Reacher goes to a little town in Georgia only to be arrested for the murder of a stranger that turns out to be his brother.  With the help of a black detective and a female regular cop, he starts unraveling a massive counterfeiting conspiracy.  My only criticism of this first season is it probably didn't need to be 8 45-55 minute episodes.  Six episodes or even a 2 1/2 hour movie probably could have gotten it done.  It doesn't really feel long or boring, but maybe they didn't need all of the plot twists and such.  The book is I guess 530 pages so they probably did do most of that, but I haven't read any of the Reacher books.  Anyway, it was fun to watch Reacher beat people up and make his deadpan, insightful comments. The supporting characters do a good job as well. (4/5) (Fun Fact:  Before this Ritchson was the douchebag linebacker Thad on Spike's Blue Mountain State and also Aquaman on Smallville.  Kristin Kreuk was Lana Lang on Smallville and plays a banker's wife who has to go on the run with her kids.)

Reacher, Season 2:  Season 2 ramps things up as Reacher goes to New York to hook up with others from his old Army unit.  A corrupt company is planning to sell missiles to terrorists and when a couple of Reacher's old buddies find out, they're killed by being thrown out of a helicopter.  Reacher and those who are left have to track down the bad guys led by Robert Patrick of Terminator 2.  There are also flashbacks to Reacher's unit's first--and last--case.  Most of it was good but the end is pretty disappointing.  I mean we follow this "AM" guy's whole journey from LA or wherever to New York and then there's no throwdown with Reacher?  The rest is wrapped up so easily that literally half the episode is just an epilogue.  Like the previous season it probably could have been 6 episodes or even fewer.  Still it was pretty fun. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  One of the company execs who unwittingly becomes part of the scheme is played by Christina Cox who was in Due South and Street Law back in the mid-90s and Max Havoc 2 in the 2000s.  While season 1 was based on the first book, this season is taken from book 11, which from the description is set on the West Coast instead of New York.)

The Retirement Plan:  A movie that could have been good with more of a budget and more talent behind the camera.  There was plenty in front of the camera with Nic Cage (looking like Nick Nolte's mug shot), Ron Perlman, Jackie Earle Haley, and Ernie Hudson.  You have a bunch of old guys who've been in better things slumming in a movie that can't decide if it should be a comedy or action but winds up not doing either well.  

There are a lot of action movie cliches:  there's a McGuffin (a thumb drive) that's stolen and given to Nic Cage's granddaughter; who's sent to the grandpa in the Caymans (where Krusty the Clown and other rich people do their illegal banking); the bad guys follow but Nic Cage is a former government guy with a particular set of skills.  Then blah blah blah, fight scenes, people taken hostage, double/triple/quadruple-crosses.  It starts out not that bad but loses its way to just become bland and dull.  A lot of the camera work and overall quality of the production looks little better than Rifftrax fodder like Birdemic or Jurassic Shark.  Or maybe Max Havoc Curse of the Dragon with a slightly better cast in a slightly different tropical setting.  (2/5)

Mob Land:  To tell you how uninterested I was in it:  I paused this after lunch to shovel snow.  Then I paused it again later to watch football.  How I thought of this is basically a cheap cosplay of No Country for Old Man, Hell or High Water, or another similar gritty thriller story.

A lot of cheap action movie favorites are here:  Kevin Dillon as a guy who plans to rip off a couple of Oxy pushers, Steven Dorff as the wanna-be Javier Bardem, and John Travolta as the sorta-fat fake Southern sheriff.  The main character is some dude named Shelby who has a wife and little girl with really hairy arms.  (Seriously, the kid's arms look hairier than mine.)  Shelby is down on his luck so he agrees to help Kevin Dillon but then shit goes wrong and Steven Dorff forces him to help clean things up for no real reason.  Travolta sorta looks into things while apparently having cancer or something.

It's really long and boring and like the previous one there are a bunch of cheap action movie clichés.  Maybe I'm just getting bored with these.  Or maybe they're just out of ways to make them interesting. (1/5)

97 Minutes:  Let's start with a Fun Fact:  this is only 94 minutes.  It's a really cheap and poorly-written and poorly-staged airplane hostage movie.  Really makes me miss the quiet dignity of stuff I watched with Rifftrax like Hijacked Flight 285 and Money Plane.  There's almost no attempt made to establish any of the characters ahead of time and then we have little idea who the hijackers are (even they don't seem to know each other) or who the passengers are or anything.  The "command center" is an obvious green screen set that's so sparse it looks more ridiculous than the fake sets in James Nguyen's Replica.  I'm pretty sure Alec Baldwin is only in this to help pay legal fees for what happened on the Rust set.  At this point maybe only something this bad and low budget would be willing to risk employing him.  Other than Baldwin there's Jonathan Rhys Meyers of The Tudors as the "good guy" and some lady who's a doctor and...some other people, including the writer of the film as one of the lead terrorists...I guess.  This also features some of the worst air combat scenes since McBain.  An F-22 launches a Sidewinder missile at the airliner and the good guy makes the plane jerk to the right or left.  Which since a Sidewinder is heat-seeking would not really throw it off much and as long as it has fuel it could probably circle back.  That's why planes like F-22s have flares to throw off heat-seeking missiles.  An airliner wouldn't have that though except for Air Force One like in that Harrison Ford movie.  Anyway, this was another pretty bad cheap action movie. (1/5)

Bait (2019):  I read a review of this on a blog and it sounded interesting.  It is a fairly odd film.  It's shot in grainy black-and-white so that it looks like a low-budget movie from the 40s or 50s.  Or sort of like Clerks.  There are a lot of close-ups and flashes to stuff that might be flashbacks or flashforwards.

Mostly it's about a guy named Martin whose family have been fishermen in southwestern England for a long time, but now his brother has turned their fishing boat into a tourist boat.  Their family home has been bought by yuppies and turned into a vacation home/Airbnb for other yuppies.  There's a whole gentrification thing going on that Martin and others don't like while others just shrug and go along with.  To get by, Martin strings a fishing net on the beach to catch fish washed in by the tide.  He sells the fish to the local bar to make money to get his own boat.

Eventually there's conflict with the yuppies and someone dies--I think.  This probably could have been told in a more coherent style and might have been more meaningful.  I didn't find it bad as much as a little odd and confusing.  But at least it's shorter than other rich vs poor movies like Parasite, Triangle of Sadness, and Saltburn.  So there's that. (3/5)

For Groundhog Day, Let's Go Back in Time!

I decided since it's Groundhog Day to honor the movie Groundhog Day and its time loop, here's a post looped in from long ago.  I used a random date generator to pick a date, which took a few tries because it kept picking weekends.  And also it seemed to pick December a lot so no surprise that it picked December 7, 2012, the 71st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor but also a post on Briane Pagel's holiday blogathon and a story from Tales of the Scarlet Knight Vol 8: The Heart of Emma Earl that I expanded a bit.

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This is part of Briane Pagel's holiday blogathon (of doom).  Today I'm giving away a free copy of We Are Now, a book of flash fiction stories (over 65 in all!) written by me, Neil Vogler, and Sean Craven.  As a preview of the sheer awesomeness contained therein, this is one of those stories, "Christmas Feast."

An author's note is that this story is based on a story former Scarlet Knight Percival Graves tells the current Scarlet Knight Emma Earl in the final volume of the series--I think.  It's about an incident that takes place at Christmas in World War II when Percival was in the British army.  This story itself is largely based on the old Snoopy holiday album where Snoopy and the Red Baron share a Christmas together.  So now you know...
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Marching through knee-deep snow in the blistering cold in some godforsaken corner of France is not how I ever wanted to spend my Christmas.  But we got our orders.  We’re supposed to march these German bastards to base so they can ride out the rest of the war in a prison camp.  At this point I envy them for that.

“Why’d we have to get stuck with this shit job?” I ask.

“Just lucky I guess,” Syd says.

Talking takes too much energy, so we plod on.  It’s starting to get dark when Lucky calls out that he sees a house.  Anyone else said that I’d think they were imagining it, but Lucky once spotted a German machine gun nest in the pitch dark.

It’s a few minutes before I can see Lucky is right; there is a farmhouse up ahead.  The roof is mostly caved in, as is the porch, but the walls seem solid enough.  Sarge dispatches Reg to make sure.  “Why don’t you make one of the Jerries do it?” Reg says.  “Let the damn roof fall in on them.”

“Get in there, you pillock,” Sarge growls.

Reg grumbles, but he does it.  None of us ever go up against Sarge, not even the lieutenant when he was still with us.  Sarge got a medal in the Great War for defending his trench from a German attack.  Held it all by himself.  A man like that you don’t challenge unless you want to end up in pieces.

We mill about and smoke some of our last fags while we wait for Reg.  The house doesn’t fall in on him.  I expected something bad happened when he came out waving his arms and shouting.  “Sarge, you got to see this!”

“What is it, you damned fool?”

“You’ll see.  Come on!”  Reg prances about like a six-year-old who’s got to use the loo.

Syd and I are the last ones into the house.  Even then we don’t get to see much as we have to watch the Jerries.  We keep them in the living room, amongst a bunch of scorched and mildewed furniture.  The Germans don’t do much; they’re just happy like the rest of us to get out of the snow and wind.

Lucky comes back to give us the word.  “There’s food in here:  canned ham, potatoes, and even peaches!  A right proper feast it is.”

I lick my lips as he talks.  For the last five months about all we’ve eaten is the canned shit the Yanks call “food.”  The prospect of ham—even canned—sounds too good to be true.

The news gets better.  Finn tears into the room, armed with a couple of glass bottles.  “Look at this!  There’s a whole cellar full of it.”

Wine!  That’s even better than canned ham and peaches.  It’s tempting to grab one of the bottles and guzzle it right then, but I know Sarge would knock me on my ass if I neglected the prisoners to get drunk.

“What’s all this ruckus about?” Sarge asks.  Finn describes what he’s found.  “Leave that down there.”

“But Sarge—”

“Leave it.  You and Lucky go out and check that barn.  Make sure no one’s holed up in there.”

Finn and Lucky grumble, but again they obey.  Sarge turns to me.  “Percy, you and Syd get these Krauts into the dining room.”

I don’t know any German, but a jab to the back with my rifle and some pointing gets them to move in the right direction.  Reg and the rest of the platoon are already in there.  They’ve got the food laid out on the table.  There’s ham, potatoes, peaches, preserves, and even some tinned biscuits.  It’s not a lot, but compared to what we’ve had it’s a banquet.

Sarge addresses the Jerries in their native tongue.  They sit down on the floor in a couple of rows.  “Now, lads, get out some plates.  Try to find some that aren’t cracked.”  They manage to find enough plates, trays, and pot lids for the whole platoon.  Sarge clears his throat.  “You lot fail your math classes?  Get out ten more plates.”

“Ten?  But Sarge, we int going to share with the Jerries are we?” Reg asks.

“They got to eat like the rest of us.”

“Let them eat the canned shit,” Reg says and others murmur agreement, including me.  This is the first real food we’ve had in months; why should we share it with the blokes who’ve tried to kill us?

“Now see here.  I’m in charge of this outfit and I say we’re sharing with the prisoners.”

He glares at us, but this time Reg glares back.  There’s a wild look in his eyes I haven’t seen before.  “You’re wrong, Sarge.  We shouldn’t have to share anything with these bastards.  If you don’t see that, then maybe you shouldn’t be in charge of this outfit no more.”

Sarge has Reg doubled over before I even see his fist move.  A second punch and Reg is out cold.  Sarge looks around at the rest of us.  “Anyone else want to argue about it?”

Lucky decides to press his luck.  “I don’t mean no disrespect Sarge, but these are the enemy you’re talking about.  Why we got to treat them so good?”

“You lot forget what today is?  It’s Christmas Day, the day when our lord and savior Jesus Christ was born.  He’d be damned ashamed to see this.”  Sarge glares at us again.  He gestures at Reg.  “Any of you others think different, you’ve got to go through me first.”

 No one else challenges him.  We let the Germans have their share of the food.  We even let them have some of the wine.  Maybe it isn’t the biggest Christmas feast I’ve ever eaten, but it’s the best one I remember.

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One random commenter will receive a free copy of We Are Now, which includes "Christmas Feast" and many more stories.  Of my stories I can say a few others are in this same sappy vein while many others are far more madcap.  They involve things like zombies, vampires, dragons, Transformers, gods, God, and Godzilla.  If you don't win, you can buy the book from December House Publishing. (Offer no longer valid as the company hasn't existed for years.)

Monday is [NOT] a Phony Photo of a May-December romance...

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Now the appropriate song for this entry...

Be sure to put your booties on campers, because it's cold out there!