Some Wholesome Content

On Bluesky I follow an account called "Discontinued Foods" that's pretty neat because it shows a lot of old food products and fast food items from as far back as the 60s to the near-present.  Some of the stuff I remember and some of it either I was too young or I just never tried it.

One day he posted one of those translucent pebbly cups you'd get at restaurants back in the day and it began a discussion of old-school family restaurants you might remember from back in the 60s-80s before chains took over everything.  The kind of place your family might go to when they're feeling fancier than just going to McDonald's after church or some group event.

In Michigan we still sorta have places like that with "Coney Islands" that are maybe more like diners but a lot of the attributes are the same.  Maybe there are a few Big Boys or Ram's Horns that were more like that only they were technically chains.

(And this is where someone pops up saying, "I don't remember anything like that."  And I have some un-wholesome ideas of where you can stuff a useless comment like that.)

I copied as much as I could onto this slide, but Bluesky kinda sucks at threading so I missed a few.  My main suggestion was at the register you should have off-brand fun-size peppermint patties (like the York ones) for 5-25 cents and of course individually-wrapped toothpicks to get anything out of your teeth or just to suck the fake minty flavor off of.

Anyway, maybe you remember a place like that and have some suggestions for it.  I think it'd be kind of neat to actually build a place like that; it'd be a lot more real than those fake 50s diners and such.

And did you know you can buy those cups on Amazon?  Probably other places too.

Christmas Crossovers You Never Expected--Or Probably Wanted

 I had a couple of ideas for bizarre crossovers involving a couple of Christmas movies and a couple of regular movies.

First, one day at work there was a check with the name "Gower" and I remember the Rifftrax line mention "Mr. Gower wouldn't have poisoned that kid."  (Which is false in the real universe as young George Bailey stopped him.)  And then I had this weird idea.

So basically you'd start with It's A Wonderful Life and keep it the same until World War II.  George is turned down for the war because of his damaged ear from saving his brother or whatever.  So now we get to the crossover where George volunteers to be part of a German scientist's super-soldier experiment so he can get into the war and help his brother and all that stuff.  But of course while the experiment works, there are rogue Germans who kill the scientist and destroy equipment.  George tracks down the bad guys but they die before they can talk.

Image by Wombo AI

Now it becomes Captain America: The First Avenger!  George says goodbye to his family and then goes to sell bonds for a little while.  Then he gets into the war and fights the Red Skull and Nazis.  The only difference is instead of Bucky you have his brother (who probably doesn't die or become a Winter Soldier) and there's no romance with Peggy Carter since he's married.

Eventually George runs the plane into the ocean and disappears before waking up in 2011--on Christmas Day!  It's been almost 70 years so Mary is dead but some of his kids are alive and he has grandkids and great-grandkids.  While it's weird getting to know them, it does help him to acclimate to the future.  And he has Captain America stuff to do yet as well.

Yes, this is the Christmas movie you didn't know you needed!

This next one is thanks to this blog entry about a weird Japanese King Kong movie where he fights a robot Kong called Mechani-Kong.  The movie was partially animated by Rankin-Bass, who are most famous for animating the classic 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

So naturally, I thought:  why not combine them?  King Kong and Rudolph Save Christmas! (Or whatever.)

It's getting close to Christmas at the North Pole and the Abominable Snow Creature is feeling lonely because there are no other huge beasts and it's hard for him to play with the smaller critters.  Rudolph decides to take off and search around the Island of Misfit Toys and such for someone the Abominable's size.  

Eventually Rudolph finds an iceberg and sees a large gorilla frozen inside.  Using his nose, he thaws the ice enough that the gorilla awakens and busts out.  It's King Kong!  But of course he's not happy to be free from the ice.  He starts stomping around and throwing shit and makes his way to Christmas Town.  Not even the Abominable--or Santa--seem capable of stopping him!  

Then Kong pulls a roof off and grabs the big Christmas tree inside and is mesmerized by it.  Rudolph explains what the tree is and what Christmas is and Kong starts to settle down as he thinks of his home on Skull Island.  There's probably a song here as everyone gets in the Christmas spirit.

Kong starts to help repair the damage and get things ready for Christmas Eve.  He of course is too big to go with the sleigh.  Once Rudolph, Santa, and the rest get back, it's decided that Santa will help Kong go back to Skull Island.  And at least for a little while the Abominable will go with him since there are lots of big critters there like dinosaurs and whatever.

Everyone says goodbye to Kong and there's another song as he leaves--until next Christmas.  And that's how King Kong and Rudolph Save Christmas--From Themselves, Really.

Maybe I'd tweak that story, but it mostly works to me.

One I posted on Facebook a while back combined Die Hard and Home Alone 2.  Basically it's like Die Hard only Kevin gets on the wrong flight to LA and somehow ends up at the party.  He and John McClane then use goofy traps and plenty of bullets to stop the bad guys.

If I have more weird ideas for Christmas crossovers, I'll share them.  Maybe you have one?

Godzilla Minus One is the Greatest Prequel Ever

I had wanted to see Godzilla Minus One from the start, but I don't go to theaters and when I had a Vudu gift card for $5 it wasn't available for rent--then the Movie House app ran out of gift cards for anything.  The movie ended up on Netflix, which I don't have.

Last Sunday I finally just said "fuck it" and rented it for $6 from Amazon--I don't have a Prime subscription anymore but I guess I can still rent and buy stuff.  Anyway, pretty much every blogger/social media person in my feeds said it was good.  And they were not wrong.

The movie starts in 1945 near the end of the war. Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a kamikaze pilot, but he can't bring himself to go through with it, so he ditches on Odo Island, which is a tiny place to fix damaged kamikaze planes so they could go blow themselves up.  The crew examine the plane to find it has no damage, which is pretty awkward.

That night, a bunch of dead fish from deep in the ocean pop up.  And then...Godzilla!  At this point Godzilla is not really big.  He's kind of like a T-Rex in the Jurassic movies only with spines on his back.  He rampages around, killing most of the people on Odo Island.  One mechanic wants Shikishima to use the gun on his plane, but again he chickens out and is knocked unconscious.

He wakes up later and there's a boat to take him and others back to Japan.  The mechanic gives him some photos from the other mechanics so Shikishima can remember who he failed.

Shikishima goes to Tokyo, which has mostly been turned to rubble by American bombs.  He meets a young woman, who hands a baby off to him as she runs from cops.  Shikishima holds on to the baby and when the woman returns, she questions why he didn't leave the kid.  They go off to a damaged house where the woman introduces herself as Noriko and the baby as Akiko.  What becomes clear soon is that Akiko is not Noriko's baby, just an orphan she found.  They find an older woman who helps them feed the baby.

The movie jumps into 1946 with Shikishima and Noriko still together with the kid.  Shikishima gets a government job working on a wooden boat being used as a minesweeper.  The idea is two wooden boats drag a blade to cut the mines loose and then someone uses a gun to blow them up.  Shikishima gets that job when his military training proves to make him a better shot than the sailors and enigmatic Mr. Noda.  (The boats have to be made of wood because the mines are magnetic and would attach to a metal boat and blow it up.)

Meanwhile, a nuclear bomb is tested on Bikini Atoll and the implication is this causes Godzilla to mutate.

Noriko gets an office job in Ginsa and with the money she and Shikishima are pulling in, they can fix up the house and start thinking about the future--but not so much about marriage.  That's just another thing Shikishima is chicken about.

And then of course Godzilla returns!  This Godzilla is more like the one fans are used to with the taller build, but not maybe as tall and the plates maybe not as big and without the fire breathing yet.  The Japanese defense force has little left to throw at him while the Americans won't help because any buildup of ships, planes, etc could be seen as an aggressive action by the Soviet Union.

The two wooden minesweepers are recruited for a mission to stall Godzilla with their guns and some of the unexploded mines until a battle cruiser can show up.  This of course does not go well.  The other minesweeper is turned to splinter while Shikishim's boat is able to drop a couple of mines that don't do much good--until one rolls into Godzilla's mouth.  Shikishima shoots it with the machine gun and the mine blows up a chunk of Godzilla's face--but it quickly starts to heal. (Fun Fact:  that part of Godzilla's face is discolored the rest of the movie.)  The battle cruiser shows up to do some damage, though mostly it just pisses Godzilla off.  He starts ripping it apart, but after taking another couple of shots goes underwater to use his ultimate weapon, which we don't get to see yet.  Then he swims away.

Some time later, Godzilla shows up again.  After Godzilla breaking through the puny defenses to Ginsa, he can basically do whatever he wants, which is mostly to smash buildings with his claws and tail.  Shikishima and Noriko try to flee, but then Godzilla evolves his most devastating power:  the nuclear breath!  His spikes turn blue and he starts spewing nuclear fire all over.  In the devastation Noriko disappears and Shikishima is knocked out.  Godzilla has left for whatever reason and Noriko is seemingly dead.

Shikishima mopes around until he's recruited for a mission to destroy Godzilla once and for all.  With Japan's defense force in such sorry shape, a ragtag group of former military personnel get some old destroyers and retrofit them with cranes and special launchers for a weapon designed by Mr. Noda and some other scientists.  Shikishima gets a prototype fighter that's in pretty bad shape so he has to recruit an old enemy in the mechanic from Odo Island.

To kind of turn things full-circle, Shikishima has the mechanic plant bombs in the plane so if the plan fails, he can try to fly into Godzilla's mouth and set off the bombs to kill him.  So before he rejected being a kamikaze pilot but now he's embracing it for the good of his friends and family.

Really the whole thing here is kind of like the original Star Wars where the motley crew of the Rebellion launches a fairly crazy attack on the Death Star to destroy it.  And like that things don't go so well at first, but maybe the tide will turn.

The entire movie is in Japanese with subtitles, but it didn't matter a whole lot to me.  I think what really made this better than other prequels is that it's basically made as a stand-alone movie.  The changing design of Godzilla is supposed to tie into the 1954 movie and later ones, but mostly this tells its own story that focuses primarily on Shikishima finding the courage to do what's right and also his relationship with Noriko and their sorta adopted daughter.

Some of the supporting characters are a little goofy, like the other sailors on the minesweeping boat, but Mr. Noda is pretty awesome as the not-quite-mad scientist.  Unlike most Godzilla movies from 1954 to today, the human story isn't just there to eat up screen time and maybe introduce some plot point; it's actually interesting enough to hold the viewer's attention.  Probably because the characters have an actual emotional journey, so they do more than point and shout, "Oh no, it's Godzilla!"  There are actually dramatic stakes involved in a way none of the other movies really achieves.

But for fans of the King of the Monsters, there's still plenty of Godzilla wrecking shit.  He eats people, he body slams ships, he smashes buildings to rubble, and of course he eventually uses the flame breath--which comes with the iconic roar.  In a way he has his own journey too, becoming more and more powerful as humans create more and more powerful nuclear weapons.  This isn't really said, but if you think about it, this was a period where we went from the A-bomb to the H-bomb and nuclear weapons were spreading to the Soviet Union and other countries.

Anyway, I thought it was an amazing movie.  It's not perfect, but hands-down it's the best prequel ever.  It's definitely worth a stream or rental and then a purchase.  I watched the regular color version, but the black-and-white version is also available.

RAWR!!!!

July Movies & TV

Sometimes I feel like I should write a How To guide on how to respond to these entries.  Simply put, this isn't Match Game.  We're not doing a game show where you compare how many things you saw to what I wrote about.  If you want to make an empty comment like "I haven't seen these" then just write "Thanks for sharing" and move on.  Or don't say anything at all.

The better way to look at it is to read and consider whether you might want to watch a movie or if it sounds like crap.  Or maybe you heard of a movie but didn't get around to it and now maybe you will.

I'm sure sometimes I've done the lazy way too and I should do better.  We should all do better.

Now it begins!

In July Walmart offered Walmart+ for half price, which as I say is basically the same price as the included Paramount+ on its own, making the Walmart stuff just gravy.  So I got to catch up on the Paramount+ stuff I'd missed since the start of November.

Star Trek Discovery, S5:  This was the final season of the show and it was...OK.  The plot structure is mostly like one of those old GI Joe miniseries in the 80s in that the Federation has to find pieces of a device left by a group of scientists in the 24th Century.  (Or The da Vinci Code if you prefer.)  It unlocks a way to find the technology of "The Progenitors" who were an ancient race revealed in an old TNG episode to have seeded life throughout the universe.  It was basically a device for the writers to explain why most of the alien races all had the same humanoid look, though of course in real life it's just to save money on makeup.

Anyway, racing them are two former couriers named Moll and La'ak.  Moll looks like Shin Hati in Ahsoka for some reason; hey, makeup and wardrobe departments, there are other looks for young white women besides shaggy platinum blonde hair and lots of black eye makeup.  La'ak is a Breen without the helmet and armor.  And Moll is the daughter of Book's mentor.

After a couple of episodes, Saru leaves the ship to be an ambassador--what happened to his home planet and that kid who caused the Burn?  Isn't that why he left the first time?--so Burnham chooses a new first officer named Commander Rayner.  Rayner was Captain of a ship called the Antares but while trying to apprehend Moll and La'ak he went too far so they took away his command.  He's a really brusk, no-nonsense kind of commander, which rubs the touchy-feely crew of the Discovery wrong.

So they have to track down clues on some planet and Trill and stuff.  Moll and La'ak get captured by the Breen and so then they get involved.  Eventually everything leads to some black holes and lots of mayhem happens.  But don't worry, no one has to sacrifice her/him/themself for the good of the universe.  Only one of the bad guys dies.  Discovery gets to go on its merry way.

Most of it wasn't really that bad.  I really liked Rayner even if I missed Saru.  I know they had to minimize his time on the show as Doug Jones, like Peter Mayhew, was getting too old for this shit.  But like with Chewie couldn't they have replaced him in costume with a younger actor?  And maybe have Jones just dub the voice?  I guess as compensation they brought Tilly back pretty much full-time.  But Detmer and Owo make only a couple of appearances before getting written out entirely.

For the final season they don't exactly pull out all the stops.  There are no cameos from the original Trek shows or any of the other ones on P+.  There are two episodes in the middle of the season--one where Burnham and Rayner are bouncing through time and another where Burnham and Book find the alternate universe Enterprise in a sort of wormhole--where they could have had some cameos.  But we don't get an appearance by Lorca, Pike, Spock, Sarek, or Michelle Yeoh in either of her characters; we do get an appearance by Airiam, the cyborg officer who died in season 2, so, yay?

The chase for the Progenitors is interesting enough to keep things lively.  Like I was saying, the end is a little nauseating for how happy it gets.  It would have been fine if after Saru's wedding they beamed up to the ship to go on a new adventure.  But no, we get a nearly 15-minute epilogue about 40 years later with Admiral Burnham and Book living on some obscure planet when their son, who's a captain, of course, shows up to take Burnham for one final mission for Discovery to do...something.  It wasn't even like LOTR with all its goodbyes; it's of course just focusing on Burnham because who cares about anyone else, right?

Overall while it's good Discovery set the table for better shows like Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds, the shifts in tone and the 900 year jump made it hard to really connect to it.  And as I've said before it didn't do a great job building up the secondary characters.  I never really liked it as much as DS9 or TNG.  Still, it was mostly made well and the cast isn't bad. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  Rayner is played by Callum Keith Rennie who I'll forever know as "Fake Ray" from the 3rd/4th seasons of Due South but he's also been in sci-fi series like Battlestar Galactica and Man in the High Castle.  It's kind of funny that in the final episode Tig Notaro gets a "With" credit but then only appears in the background of one scene; it's sort of how Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Samuel L Jackson just show up at the end of Endgame but get prominent credits anyway.)

HALO, S2:  I probably should have watched season 1 again because it sort of throws you in there and it's like, "Wait, who's that?  Who's that?"  I remembered the gist of the season that Master Chief finds an alien artifact and a human raised by enemy Covenant aliens gets another and they found the "Halo," a metallic ring in space.  The Chief had an AI called "Cortana" put into his brain and to save everyone he let Cortana have full control.

The season starts a month or two later when John wakes up to find Cortana has been removed.  He's put back on duty, but it's supposed to be "safe;" just watch over some troops evacuating civilians from the colony of Sanctuary.  But things go south and the Master Chief finds a Latina soldier named Perez.  He rescues her from some Covenant troops who have taken over a communications relay but then when it seems like the aliens are going to kill them, they suddenly leave.

From there there's a lot more intrigue than video game fans would probably like.  About half the season John, the Master Chief, doesn't even have his armor.  He's imprisoned on the capital world of Reach, where he tries to warn them that Sanctuary was just a dress rehearsal and the next attack is on Reach.  Soon enough, this comes to pass and John and others have to fight their way off the planet.

From there they go to a mining colony to lick their wounds before heading to Onyx, which is basically the new capital now.  John plans to get revenge, but then finds out the humans are launching a suicide attack on the Covenant that will destroy both sides and maybe the Halo too.  He launches into space to save the day and get to the Halo.  Meanwhile, a Resident Evil-type virus has been unleashed on Onyx.

That's leaving plenty of stuff out.  Like I said, if you just want frenetic video game battles--which are expensive to film--there aren't that many.  There are a few other subplots that again would help if you know who everyone is.  

I binged it over two days so I liked it well enough.  It's not great but there's enough action and intrigue to keep a more casual viewer like me entertained.  And I suppose purists would again be pissed that Master Chief doesn't have his armor much when in the game he's known for having it on all the time.  This does give Pablo Schreiber a chance to act a little more than just fight.  Natasha McElhorne returns as a less-mad scientist in the second episode.  Her former husband, an admiral, appears in a couple of episodes and their daughter shows up for the last couple of episodes to help unleash the killer virus.  Gee, thanks!

The effects are decent for a streaming TV show--and probably better than Quantumania.  If you liked the first season then there's no reason you shouldn't like the second season as it continues the plot, though of course not everything is resolved. Sadly, though, Paramount canceled the show, so unless someone else picks it up, there likely won't be a third season to resolve things.  (3.5/5) (Fun Facts:  As John and Perez are evacuating Reach, they shelter briefly in an antiques shop that has an old XBox on one shelf; the HALO video game series was of course made exclusively for XBox.  I hadn't looked Schreiber up on IMDB before but I found out he's Liev Schreiber's half-brother.  I was also thinking it's too bad he's not in that Gladiator 2 movie because at nearly 6' 5" and pretty buff he'd be good for maybe not the main gladiator but one of the other ones.)

HALO:  Fall of Reach: This 2015 animated movie uses creepy uncanny valley CGI for the people.  While it's called "Fall of Reach" it really has nothing to do with that.  It's mostly the origin of John the Master Chief.  Ironically for "fans" who whine about sticking to the source material, much of this--taken from a novel of the same name--was used in the Paramount+ show.

Dr. Catherine Halsey (who looks more like Cortana than Natasha McElhorne) recruits a bunch of six-year-olds, replacing them with self-destructing clones.  She and her military minions kidnap about a hundred kids and start training them to be soldiers.  Along the way a lot of the kids die.  John-117 soon becomes a leader and standout of the group.  Over the years that follow, they undergo dangerous missions.

More dangerous is when they're "augmented" with surgeries.  About 36% of the recruits don't survive, but the rest are able to get really sweet armor to help them be much stronger and faster than regular people.  At the same time, the Covenant aliens start showing up.

If you enjoy child abuse in lame CGI then this is great!  It basically takes the core concept of Ender's Game only instead of controlling fleets they become augmented soldiers.  It wasn't really great, but interesting to see how it compared to the TV show (2/5)

Lawmen:  Bass Reeves:  I caught the first two episodes on CBS last winter during the strikes and liked them well enough that I wanted to watch the rest. Bass (David Oyelowo) is a slave in Texas who fights in the Civil War--for the Confederacy though not really by choice.  Eventually he goes back to his master's ranch where he has a woman and a couple of kids.  One night Bass beats up his master and escapes.  Then he heads north, where a woman and her son take him in and he starts a new life until a former Confederate soldier named Esau (Barry Pepper) shoots the kid.

Bass moves into Arkansas and eventually his woman and kids join him and they can be married officially.  Bass is trying to scratch out a living as a farmer but it's not going so well.  Then one day he meets US Marshal Sherrill (Dennis Quaid) who offers Bass money if he goes along to catch some criminals as a "posse man."  Bass agrees and while he doesn't get along with the racist Sherrill they do the job.  And soon Bass is promoted to a Deputy US Marshal by Judge Parker (Donald Sutherland) which allows Bass to buy a new piano for his wife and no longer worry about farming.

The next episode skips a couple years ahead where Bass is taking people in for money.  He has his own "posse man" to help.  One of the guys they catch is Billy Crow, a Native American who's a small-time crook.  After a couple more years, Billy becomes Bass's posse man and falls in love with a hooker.  Meanwhile Bass survives some dangerous missions and makes plenty of money.  His wife keeps things together on the homefront while their oldest child Sally is falling in love with a boy named Arthur.

Slowly the major story point comes together as word spreads of black people disappearing.  Bass hears of someone called "Mr. Sundown" and finds out Esau is now a Texas Ranger.  When Bass turns over a live prisoner to Esau, the prisoner is reported as dead.

The penultimate episode is a little disappointing as Bass is charged with murder for shooting his wagon driver/cook after he let a prisoner go.  We really don't see much of the trial or process of finding evidence or witness testimony or anything.  The episode is also only about 30 minutes, which was maybe so they could make the finale a little longer.

In the finale, Bass, Sherrill, and Billy Crow confront "Mr. Sundown" while Bass's wife is visited by the wife of their old master.  The white woman naively assumes she can just waltz in there and re-enslave Bass's family because of a law passed back in Texas.  Bass's wife rightly slaps her and throws her out but realizes she needs to get more activist or else she and her family could end up in chains again. (Sound familiar in this election cycle?)

Overall things end pretty well.  I'm not a huge fan of Westerns but I liked this.  Dealing with a black Marshal brings up issues that haven't gotten a lot of play since Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles.  Of course it's not really a "fun" show; Bass is pretty dour but then he really has a right to be. (3.5/5) (Sad Fact:  Since Donald Sutherland died recently I'm not sure what would happen if they do another season.  They could always recast Judge Parker or get a new judge or just write around anywhere a judge might be needed.)

Joe Pickett, S1:  This is I guess a Paramount Network series based on a book series that I might own some of but haven't read.  The eponymous Joe is a Wyoming Game Warden who gets a new post in the seemingly sleepy town of Saddlestring.  Soon Joe runs afoul of a local thug named Ote who takes his gun when Joe threatens to take his hunting license for shooting out of season.  Joe wrestles the gun away but a few days later Ote turns up dead on his woodpile.

More pieces are added to the puzzle including a black survivalist who burned off his fingerprints and raises falcons; a former game warden played by David Alan Grier who is kind of the one who gets everything started; a current game warden with big political hopes; a rich family called the Scarletts who of course are the real power in town; and weasels!  Joe's pregnant wife Marybeth helps him to investigate while also looking after their two daughters and butting into the lives of the thug from the beginning's wife and daughter.

It's kind of slow-building over the first 6 episodes or so but once most of the pieces are in place it begins to move faster.  There was one thing I really didn't like that mars attempts at a happy ending.  In the end I don't think all the bad guys (notably the Scarletts) get what's coming to them.  It's not as well-made (some of the animals look like they were made with bad CGI) or star-studded as Bass Reeves but it's still a good show if you like that kind of thing. (3/5)

Joe Pickett, S2:  Apparently the show moved to Paramount+ for season 2.  It starts about a year later.  The husband of a woman Marybeth is doing estate planning for has disappeared and so she asks Joe to go up to "Bermuda Mountain" to look.  Joe runs afoul of the "Grim Brothers," twins from the UP of Michigan who have become weird survivalists.  They kill Joe's horse and shoot him in the leg with an arrow.  He barely gets away.  But in the process the headless body of the guy Joe was looking for is found.

Soon Joe and Marybeth figure out that guys who were part of an annual hunting trip are being killed one-by-one.  At the same time a Native American man is looking for his daughter who has disappeared. The tribal authorities can't investigate because she didn't go missing on the reservation, but the sheriff's office won't investigate either because she lived on the rez, leaving her father and Marybeth to try to find her.

It's not as slow in building up as the first season and the end isn't quite as cruel.  There are numerous red herrings, twists, and turns before everything shakes out.  Again it mostly seems like the wealthy Scarletts get to skate while others are dead or hospitalized.  The one real loose end is David Alan Grier is let out of prison to help Joe with the case, but in about two hours escapes custody and...is never seen again.  Could Paramount not afford to bring him back for another episode to let us know where he went?

If you watch the first season and like it, then this is a good continuation of it.  I definitely wouldn't start here, though. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  In the first season when they brought up the title card they would have deer horns or some other animal on either side of Joe's name.  But in the second season they just use antlers.  I guess that was too expensive?) 

IF:  I really had no plan of watching this but it was "free" to stream so why the hell not?  Well, because it sucks and I have no idea who it was made for.  Like how a lot of comedies will push the best jokes in the trailers, this pushed the cutesy imaginary friends (IFs) in the trailer, making it seem like a kids movie.  Buuuuut, it's during the opening montage like Up that we find out the main little girl's mom died of cancer(?) and not long after we find out her dad is in the hospital for surgery.  That's just what kids want to see, right?

The girl named Bea moves to her grandma's apartment and starts to see IFs, who are being cared for by Calvin (Ryan Reynolds) because he can actually see them.  Then it starts to get into the stuff shown in the trailers where Bea and Calvin go through the IFs to make profiles.  They parade them to one kid in the hospital, who can't see any of them.

So then they decide to just give up on that and start uniting the IFs with their old kids who are adults now, starting with Bea's grandma.  And they do some more of that, which is supposed to be heartwarming, but why would you want to be reunited with your old imaginary friend?  Wasn't that the whole point of Drop Dead Fred like 30 years ago?  Then there's sort of a Sixth Sense twist and some other stuff and I just didn't find any of it funny or heartwarming or anything.  It's a serious misuse of Ryan Reynolds along with the voices of Louis Gossett Jr, Steve Carrell, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Awkwafina, Amy Schumer, and plenty more!  John Krasinski should probably just stick to making horror movies. (2/5) (Fun Facts:  Brad Pitt is listed as the "voice" for an IF named Keith--who is never actually shown, which is similar to Deadpool 2 where Brad Pitt played an invisible character in the one scene he's visible as he's electrocuted.  The most heartwarming moment is at the very, very end in the tribute to Gossett, Jr. who died in March.)

Knuckles:  Paramount's Sonic the Hedgehog movies were surprisingly decent all-ages entertainment--especially surprising after those pictures of "Ugly Sonic" first appeared.  In the second movie, Knuckles is a strong, fierce warrior who starts out trying to destroy Sonic until he, Sonic, and Tails join forces against Robotnik.

This six-episode series picks up a little while later.  While Sonic and Tails are enjoying their new home in Green Hills, Knuckles is restless, looking for a quest worthy of his warrior skills. After he inadvertently attacks a construction crew and destroys parts of the house and car, Knuckles is grounded.  Eventually he goes out and finds Wade Whipple (Adam Pally) who is a deputy from the previous movies.  Wade is beaten in a bowling tournament by a little girl and dropped from his team.  Knuckles offers to help him get to the tournament in Reno and win.

Meanwhile two agents of something called GUN in London are plotting to capture Knuckles and sell him to "the Buyer" who has plans for Knuckles' power.  The GUN agents run into Knuckles and Wade and capture Knuckles, but Wade's bumbling rescue attempt somehow manages to work.  Then they're on the run until the final showdown in Reno.

Overall it's a fun series though far from perfect.  There's really too much bowling and not enough development of "the Buyer" and what his goals are after he gets Knuckles' power or why he really wants it in the first place.  There's also not really enough Knuckles in Knuckles, but I suppose the CGI and Idris Elba are expensive.  Still, if you liked the movies it's an enjoyable 3-hour-ish addition to the Sonic universe. (3/5)

(Fun Facts:  In the first episode, Sonic, Tails, and James Marsden's wife--in the movies--all appear with accurate voices, though Marsden himself does not appear.  Knuckles' old master is voiced by Christopher Lloyd.  In a strange rock opera to teach Wade to be a warrior, his singing voice is dubbed by Michael Bolton.  Stockard Channing plays Wade's Jewish mother and Cary Elwes plays his estranged father, who many years ago left him at a TJ Maxx.  The two "ESPN 8" bowling announcers are played by Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel, who were both on FXX's The League, though only Scheer was a regular.)

Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning:  A fun fact is that I actually enjoyed the very first movie the most because it actually had some spycraft instead of just crazy chases on motorcycles and stuff.  And then with Ghost Protocol it became all about the insane stunts Tom Cruise would do.  Really that's mostly why people bothered watching to see on the big screen what sort of nutty thing he'd put his body through.

The problem with this seventh movie is it tries to do a lot of spycraft stuff and work in a current message about AI (actual, not ChatGPT) and there's not even a crazy stunt until the last act and it's not even that crazy.  And a fight on a train?  You did that in the first movie!  (Maybe others--I honestly don't remember.)  So most of the movie ends up pretty dull and I can see why people didn't really line up for it.

The basic story is that a Russian sub has the AI known as "the Entity" aboard when it sinks itself.  Months later, everyone is looking for two keys that form kind of a cross and can somehow control or destroy the AI.  Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is dispatched to find a woman who has one of the keys.  But things go sideways because of the AI messing things up.  Later they go to Italy and such and there's another brunette (Hayley Atwell) who's sort of a Catwoman type in that she's a thief trying to get out of the business and whatever.  And there's a blonde Asian woman named Paris(?) who is a bad guy and another blonde who's sort of an Emilia Clarke type who has a criminal empire or something and there's not much reason to care about any of it.

I think I mentioned with the last movie I have no idea about the women in movies 2-7.  They're basically all generic brunettes (sometimes blondes) who are sometimes good and sometimes bad.  And one was Ethan's wife.  Did she die or something?  Nobody seems to mention her.  I guess Hayley Atwell will be in the next movie as part of the IMF for whatever reason.

As I said there are a lot of attempts at spycraft with fake IDs, fake faces, and so on.  There's a sorta goofy car chase where Cruise and Atwell are handcuffed together in Rome and have to drive to escape the blonde Asian in a big Hummer or whatever.  That's about the only time when the movie tries to have fun.  Otherwise it's pretty dull.  You can see why they downplayed a sequel though it still says, "End of Part One." (2/5)

Lying and Stealing:  I didn't expect a whole lot from this movie since it apparently didn't even have money to get some washed-up A-lister like Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, or John Travolta.  Maybe that's a good thing as they didn't have to come up with some token part for someone cashing a paycheck.

The overall story is maybe not that original.  A young thief named Ivan (Theo James) steals valuable statues, paintings, etc at the behest of a guy named Dmitri to try to pay off gambling debts his father racked up before dying.  Just a couple more jobs and he'll be out.

During a job in a rich guy's house, he runs into Elyse, who is an actress forced to do crappy movies because she rejected a sleazy producer.  Ivan steals a statue, but before he can leave a little girl sees him.  The next day Ivan has to pick up his brother Tom, who is bipolar and was in a halfway house until they got tired of him trading drugs with prostitutes.

Ivan runs into Elyse again during his next job and he uses her to help steal a painting.  Then he helps her to get out from under the producer.  Meanwhile an FBI agent (Isaiah Whitlock, Jr. of Cedar Rapids and other movies) uses a tip from the little girl to track Ivan down.  The agent wants Ivan to deliver Dmitri to him so he can get a big promotion.

The third act slows a little as everything comes to a head.  Ivan, Elyse, and Tom basically form a smaller Leverage team to get Dmitri.  Overall it's a fun movie if you like heist-type movies.  It could have been better with some better actors but it was decent with what it had.  And the production values are good too. There's probably never going to be a sequel (this is from 2018) but like Leverage there could have been plenty more adventures for this crew.  (3/5)

Last Looks:  This is another attempt at a quirky neo-noir story like Inherent Vice and so forth.  Charlie Hunnam is a former LAPD detective who has retired to the mountains, where he lives in a trailer with only 100 possessions.  But then a former lover (Deadpool's girlfriend, Monica Baccarin) shows up and wants him to help with a big case.  A TV star named Alistair Price (Mel Gibson) supposedly killed his wife but Monica Baccarin isn't sure.  Hunnam says no and his ex drives away and like Deadpool 2 it seems she's killed before the opening credits even roll.

What finally gets Hunnam into the investigation is a couple of thugs barging into his trailer and beating him up.  He meets with a sleazy TV exec (Rupert Friend), Price, and the kindergarten teacher of Price's kid.  There's also a thug named Don Q with an Inuit henchman and a cop named Big Jim Cuppy (Clancy Brown) who want Hunnam to butt out.

There are some twists and turns and a lot of Hunnam getting beat up.  It's not a bad movie, but I started to zone out a little.  There is a sort of happy ending that could set up a sequel, though I doubt it will. (2.5/5)

Inside Man:  Not the superior Spike Lee movie starring Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster.  This is a 2023 movie that really wishes it could be Goodfellas.  But it doesn't have Scorsese directing and De Niro. Peschi, Leotta, and so on starring.  Still, I've said before that a good copy of a movie can still be entertaining.

In the early 80s, an NYPD detective (Emile Hirsch) finds his wife with someone else and nearly beats the guy to death.  His gun is taken and he's put on administrative duty.  Frustrated, he gets drunk in a bar, where he saves a mob-connected drug dealer from being killed.  The drug dealer becomes his in to a mob operation running out of the Gemini Tavern.  With the tepid support of his captain, he's given an apartment for a base and a partner who helps to gather evidence as he infiltrates the club.

Soon he becomes "Bobby Bones" and is stealing cars and eventually even murdering guys for the mob.  Meanwhile there's also a bartender at the club (Lucy Hale) who becomes sort of his fuck buddy.  There's not really the cliche where he becomes so close to one or more of them that he finds it hard to give them up to the cops.  I don't think he ever would have had a hard time with that.  

Mostly it wasn't bad, but like Lying & Stealing it could have used some better actors.  The production values are good and Hirsch does a good job as the hotheaded Bobby who still wants to do his duty and win back his wife, though whether he deserves her and she deserves him (I mean, she cheated on him first) is something I guess left for people to decide for themselves.  I will say that compared to Goodfellas (or other Scorcese epics) at least this isn't much over 90 minutes. (3/5) ( Fun Fact:  At the end it goes through what happened to a lot of the guys in the movie.  Spoiler:  most of them died shortly after, though two at the time of the movie were still in prison.  They don't tell us what happened to Bobby and his wife, which is kinda lame.)

The Crash:  At only about 84 minutes this movie is short--but feels much longer.  There's a pretty good cast led by Frank Grillo as a finance guy named Guy Clifton who basically tried to take over the market, which led to him getting indicted.  His marriage to Minnie Driver is on the rocks while their daughter Creason has an unspecified cancer.

And then the government led by a guy named del Banco ("from the bank" if my Spanish is correct and played by Christopher MacDonald, so you have a pretty good idea who the villain of the piece is) find out someone is going to hack the stock markets and shut them down.  So they recruit Guy to use his particular set of skills to stop them.  He recruits his team, which includes John Leguizamo in a wheelchair and a guy named Ben who's banging Guy's daughter.

From there you have some drama and hooking up cords and hitting keys and stuff that's not all that interesting.  Given the runtime it really could have used a firefight and/or car chase at the end.  Someone grabbing Guy to try to convince him to stop.  That kinda thing to keep viewers from falling asleep because there still isn't really a good way to make computer stuff interesting in a movie. The end is pretty lame with Guy pretty much fucking up the whole world's financial system.  Yay?  So no action, none of the fun of a heist movie, and a downer ending.  This definitely could have stayed off my radar. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  This takes place in an alternate universe where Hillary is president; I'm not sure why they chose to mix real people with fake people.)

Depressing Takes From Bluesky

Scrolling the "Discover Feed" on Bluesky can become a real time suck.  It brings up pretty much random posts, many of which do not interest me and many of which involve showing cats.  And sometimes it gets overwhelmed with Indonesians or K-Pop jerks until you figure out how to mute them.

One day in July I saw this post based on a Simpsons episode from long ago.  The episode is a flashback to when Maggie was born.  Homer and Marge were finally out of debt and so he quits the power plant in spectacular fashion to go work at the local bowling alley.  He finds actual job satisfaction there for the first time ever.  But then Flanders reveals that Marge is pregnant and soon Homer realizes he has to go literally crawling back to Mr. Burns for his old job.  As a punishment, Burns puts up a sign saying Homer will be there forever.  Homer uses pictures of Maggie to customize the sign to say, "Do It For Her."

So the basic premise of the episode is that Homer sacrifices his personal happiness for his family.  What did someone glean from all this:

A job with decent money, benefits, and stability is great--even if it's super boring and your boss (and his toady) try to make your every day there a living hell.  Wow, you really nailed it!

And you see where someone else says "dream jobs are a joke." And ends with, "just don't lay me off again!"  Basically all these people care about is money and stability.  They almost entirely miss the point about finding job satisfaction.  And the second one is probably willing to do anything the boss wants to keep her precious stability.  

God, it's so depressing to think people who presumably aren't as old as me are this broken by the world.

Though it's a little hypocritical on my part since I didn't study creative writing (my dream job) in college because I knew there was little chance of being able to support myself on it.  And, hey, I was right!  Still, ebooks have let me have a little taste of that as a "side hustle."

 In the thread was also this comment:

So, OK, seriously, you'd rather live in a zoo than in the real world?  Because that's basically what The Truman Show was:  a zoo.  Only he couldn't see the bars.  I suppose the way these people think is the same way viewers of the show thought:  he has a house, wife, job, etc so what's the problem?  I mean other than everyone around him (including his wife) is fake and occasionally we have to traumatize him to keep him from escaping or to keep anyone from telling him the truth.  Isn't it better to live in a nice, cozy cage where everything is provided than to make your own way in the scary real world?

It's again pretty depressing to see people are so broken inside that they agree with this.  That what they really want is to live in a zoo.  What the hell is wrong with you?  Zoos are good for endangered animals (or maybe soon-to-be endangered) so dipshit humans can't kill them all off like dodo birds or nearly the bison, but they're not supposed to be for humans.

I suppose people do this all the time on reality TV shows, letting themselves be filmed and doing all this unscripted (ha ha) drama for the cameras.  At least that's so they can maybe win a prize and get slightly famous for fifteen minutes.  Truman didn't get any money and wasn't even aware he was famous.  If that's what your idea of a great life is, I think it's pretty shitty because none of it is real.  Your entire life would be scripted and controlled by someone else.  To some extent maybe all of our lives are scripted and controlled by others but at least we have some choices.

These people all seem like good candidates for one of Offutt's DOOM! posts.  They just make me sad and a little depressed.  What happened to the pioneering spirit that let us slaughter trees, animals, and Native Americans to go from sea to shining sea?  How are we ever going to get to Mars or anywhere else if we're just a bunch of scared rabbits hiding in our warrens?  I guess hope some douchebag billionaire will enslave some of these rabbits to force them to colonize other parts of the Solar System.  There's a lot of stability in that--unless your suit starts leaking or something.

It's worth noting really none of these rabbits had the guts to fight back to make it a flame war.  Pathetic.