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.

What Is Personality Death?

 I'm sure I've ranted before how much I hate when some "reviewer" views a story through the lens of some arbitrary rule he just made up.  Like, "All Stories Save to End Happily Ever After."  Or, "Characters Can Never Be Mean." Or, "The Character Has to Still Like the Same Sex They Did Before Gender Swapping."  It doesn't matter what else happens in the story, the only important thing is that one rule they made up.  Like this:

 

I've seen stuff like this a couple other times.  I'm not sure which books it was to know if it was the same person or not.  Anyway, it's this silly rule that the main character has to remain the same inside or it's "personality death" or "a murder."  Which seems ridiculous.

The whole point in a lot of stories is for a character to change.  Think of the classic A Christmas Carol.  The whole point of it was for Scrooge to change from a stingy old miser to a caring and giving person.  Was that "personality death" or "a murder?"  If it was, it was OK because he was bad, right?

In this case, the whole point was that the main character changes outside and inside.  Captain Amanda Harker--basically a retread of Lottie Donovan in the Scarlet Knight books--is a tough, butch, workaholic cop.  Then she gets a bunch of a drug called "Lezz" spilled on her.  In small doses, Lezz can make a woman like other women for a few hours.  In such a large dose, it starts to change Harker so that she gets incrementally less tough and butch to the point she has to leave the police force.

At the same time she's getting dull and self-centered like a lot of pretty girls.  I don't think the story works if she stays all tough and butch in a body that clearly isn't those things.  That would really be tormenting her more than this way where at least she can enjoy it.

Even in the Chances Are books, Steve didn't stay the same once he turned into Stacey.  He got softer and quieter and sweeter.  It's a byproduct not just of being in a different body but everyone treating him differently.  And also he can't solve problems the way Steve did by punching people or intimidating them physically.  Stacey isn't old enough to drink so she isn't drunk a lot of the time like Steve was and she doesn't smoke. She also hangs around a lot with Steve's daughter and other girls who are not cops whereas Steve would hang out with his partner Jake and other cops.  That would be another influence.

One thing I like to cynically think is that people who "review" with these "rules" aren't writers who have to actually write stories.  It always sounds a lot easier if you've never done it.  I mean, I just don't know how I wouldn't change the personality at least some.  If a 6-4, 250-lb 50-year-old guy suddenly turns into a 5-6, 110-lb 18-year-old girl, the world is going to be a lot different.  And the same if it happened the opposite way.  I don't think it's "death" or a "murder" so much as a journey physically and spiritually.  It's like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, creating something new from something old.  Or less romantic and destructive, a caterpillar emerging from the cocoon as a butterfly.  You can't really gauge the personality of a butterfly or Phoenix, but I bet they'd be different from a caterpillar or whatever.

The Origin of The Pumbaa Family

Part 1:  The Real Story

Today marks 5 years since Disney widely released the "live action" Lion King in theaters.  I did not see it in the theater and was not even really much of a fan at the time.  I had seen the original and had a couple of the Elton John songs on a Greatest Hits album.

Then came the pandemic and with the social distancing and stuff it was easy to feel alone.  I had a great idea to try to help me sleep better at night:  get a teddy bear!  I still had a lot of stuffed toys but those were mostly from the 80s and 90s so they'd be dusty or maybe not in the best shape.  I thought it was better to get new ones.  So I went to Build-A-Bear and of course I didn't want to spend a lot so I went to the Clearance section.

I found a couple of bears right away:  a black "Midnight Moon" bear and just a basic light brown bear.  There was a special if you spent so much you'd get a discount so I looked around and then I saw they had Pumbaa from the live action movie.  I thought maybe I could give Pumbaa to my mom for Christmas or something since I think she likes pigs.

A week or so later I got the bears and Pumbaa.  I put the bears back in my room to try out.  I found the problem was of course I'd end up letting the bear go and knocking it off the bed.  So that experiment didn't work great.  Meanwhile Pumbaa sat on a table in the living room.  And gradually I was drawn to his mane of hair and how cute it was.  I began messing with it and stuff.

Top Row:  Malkia (in crown), Pumbaa Sr., Lady Puffer
Bottom Row:  Binti (in ribbon), Pumbaa Jr. (in crown), Puffer Pig

We didn't have in-person Christmas in 2020 and I didn't think to bring Pumbaa up north to drop off for my mom, so I just kept him.  And just kept him on the couch to watch TV with me and stuff.  I even started to make him talk, though I can't do a Pumbaa voice real well so it's kind of a higher voice that's easier for me.  (Which he explains by saying they dubbed his voice with Seth Rogen for the movie.  You know, like how they dubbed Arnold Schwarzenegger early on.)  

Character Notes:  Since Pumbaa is by himself, I made him realize that Timon was always gaslighting him and so he's become more confident.  Maybe too confident.  He knows he's a big deal, especially among piggies.  But he's also very sensitive.  He does a really cute little dance called the "Pumbaa Shuffle."  It worked really well during The Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett end credits.  And during the final big musical number of Scrooged where they sing, "Put A Little Love In Your Heart."  Only Pumbaa sings, "Put Hakuna Matada In Your Heart."  A little aside we do sometimes is have him talk about how sometimes on the set of The Lion King he would be a total diva.  Jon Favreau would tell him to do another take and Pumbaa would scream, "I'm not doing another take!  I'll be in my trailer!"  He didn't really of course.  The Chip & Dale movie on Disney+ helped to explain the difference between 1994 and 2019 Pumbaa in that like one of the chipmunks he got the "CGI surgery" to be three-dimensional.  Of course Pumbaa has a brief cameo in that too.

I had HBO Max in 2021 so we watched a lot of the animated DC shows.  Pumbaa's favorite superhero is Kilowog (aka Piggy Guy) in Green Lantern Animated because he looks like a pig and he eats grubs and stuff like Pumbaa.  Since at the time they didn't really have a larger figure of Kilowog I got a small one from the 2011 movie for Pumbaa. He also does a good Batman impression, only he says, "I'm Pumbaa."  Which kinda gives away his "secret" identity.

Of course we watched a ton of Rifftrax movies too.  Pumbaa's favorite is Radical Jack because Billy Ray Cyrus's mullet is kind of like Pumbaa's hair.  And Pumbaa likes to imagine that Jack is beating up people who eat pork.

Anyway, I had Disney+ by then so we watched the movie a few times.  I don't know how many times it was until I noticed a little Easter egg near the end of the movie.  When Simba's new child is going to presented, all the animals gather around Pride Rock.  At one point it cuts to Pumbaa and then if you look closely you can see a baby warthog appear next to him.  You know it's a baby warthog because it looks like young Pumbaa from the flashback during "Hakuna Matada" earlier.  And I'm like, "Wait, Pumbaa has a son!?"  Sure, it could be a sow too but I just thought of it as a son.

Pumbaa Jr.

Baby Pumbaa

Since Pumbaa was on the couch he of course began whining that he wanted a son on the couch.  The problem is only one company in Japan made a stuffed baby warthog.  So I had to find a different little boar.  In July 2021 I came home from a trip to Waterford and found the package from Amazon.  It was Pumbaa Jr.!

I tried to look up a name in Swahili but didn't really find any I liked.  And then I thought what better way to help validate the Pumbaa name than to have a son with the same name?  So he's been Pumbaa Jr. since.

Character Notes:  I wasn't sure what to do with Pumbaa Jr. at first.  His yellow eyes were kinda freaky; I thought maybe he should be a villain.  After a few days, though, I decided Pumbaa Jr. came to his daddy so he could learn to be a boar--and a king.  Pumbaa Jr. is destined to be the king of all piggies someday.  But he's not conceited about that.  He's very sweet and smart for his age.  He has a very regal and mature bearing that makes other animals like and trust him.

For a while it was just Pumbaa and Pumbaa Jr. on the couch and it was mostly fine, though Pumbaa Jr. was a little bummed on Christmas when his mommy didn't appear.  Otherwise it was fun watching TV and stuff with them, plus a Grogu and Baby Scrat I got from Amazon Vine.  At some point I got a regular Scrat that was on sale for like $8 on Amazon to go with Baby Scrat.

Last March I also got a little ordinary stuffed pig from Vine as well.  I wasn't sure what to name him but then in an episode of The Mandalorian they called someone a "puffer pig" and the pig was vacuum packed so when you took him out of the bag he puffed up.  So I called him Puffer Pig and he became Pumbaa Sr's adopted son and Pumbaa Jr's little brother.  Now we had a trio!

Character Notes:  Puffer is a regular pig and doesn't really talk.  He just oinks.  He and Pumbaa Jr like to roughhouse but Pumbaa Jr has to be careful not to use his tusks because that would be an unfair advantage.

For Christmas I decided to kick things up a notch.  I decided to find Pumbaa Jr's mommy.  I got one that is a pretty accurate warthog but when I got it, I realized it was the same size as Pumbaa Jr so that would be a little awkward.  I had bookmarked another BAB Pumbaa on Mercari and someone made me a good offer so I ordered it.  From Vine I also got a slightly bigger regular pig.

So on Christmas I opened the presents with the pigs and the population doubled!  From Vine I got some hair bows and put a pink one on the BAB Pumbaa and a red one on the other stuffed warthog.  That way I'd know which is which.  Using Google Translate I found out "Malkia" is Swahili for "Queen" and so that became Pumbaa Jr's mommy and Pumbaa Sr's sow friend.  (Pigs don't get married like humans.)  And "Binti" means daughter, so that became the other warthog, who is Pumbaa Jr's sow friend.  And the regular pig is Lady Puffer or Puffer Pig's mommy.  So all the boars got a sow.

Character Notes:  I decided Malkia as the queen is very sassy and in charge.  She doesn't take any guff from either Pumbaa or anyone else--including me.  Her voice is basically the same as Pumbaa's because I suck.  I mean, I'm not Seth MacFarlane or anything.  Since I can't really do a lot of voices, Binti is a wild sow who doesn't really talk in English, but can speak in oinks or grunts or whatever.  Pumbaa Jr. is very protective of his new friend.

All of the pigs are not happy whenever I eat anything that uses pig meat:  pork, sausage, ham, spam, bacon, etc. etc.  Someday they vow that the pigs will rise up and destroy the pork eaters.  So, watch out for when that day comes...

Part 2:  The Legend

Now here's how the story would actually play out if it were in the movie continuity.

After the battle with Scar, Pumbaa sees Simba with Nala and decides to find some other warthogs so he can get a sow.  Timon wants to go but this is something Pumbaa has to do on his own.  Rafiki gives him some direction on which way to go.  Pumbaa sets out on a dangerous journey, escaping hyenas, crocodiles, or whatever other predators.

A few days later, Pumbaa sees a beautiful young sow and a couple of boars being attacked by hyenas.  Pumbaa leaps into the fray and drives the hyenas away.  The sow introduces herself as Malkia the queen of a group of warthogs.  She invites Pumbaa to come back with them and stay as long as he wants.  Finally Pumbaa has found his own kind!  And he's a hero!  At least to most of the warthogs, though there's one boar who doesn't like him because he was supposed to be with Malkia--and then he'd arrange for Malkia to have an "accident" to take over.  Sort of like Scar.

Pumbaa and Malkia get to know each other over a few days as they explore the area and dig up bugs and stuff.  Eventually some "furious jumping" would be implied.  But eventually Pumbaa decides to go back to Pride Rock to tell his friends about what he found.  He says goodbye to Malkia and promises to see her again someday.

Eventually Pumbaa makes his way back to Pride Rock and finds Timon has killed himself tells his friends of his adventures and finds that Nala is pregnant.  He's happy for Simba and there's probably a party and stuff.

Meanwhile, Malkia finds out she's pregnant and about 5 months after Pumbaa left, she gives birth to Pumbaa Jr--the Warthog King!  He is destined to someday take over the whole group.  But after the evil boar nearly kills Pumbaa Jr., Malkia decides to send him to his father to learn to be a boar and to learn to be a king from Simba.

One night, Pumbaa is asleep when Rafiki tells him that he has a son who is in great danger.  Pumbaa leaves at once to save his son before he can be killed by a crocodile in a watering hole.  Pumbaa Jr. says that he is Pumbaa Sr's son and his mommy sent him to Pride Rock.  So Pumbaa takes him there and they arrive as Simba and Nala's lion cub is presented.

Over the next months or year or so, Pumbaa Jr. gets older and grows tusks and stuff.  His daddy teaches him how to hunt bugs and all that stuff.  Then one day while they're looking for bugs and such they find a young regular pig called Puffer and take him back.  While it's extra responsibility for Pumbaa Sr, his son is very happy to have another boar to play with.

In time, Pumbaa decides his sons are old enough to return to Malkia's queendom.  He talks to Simba who wishes him well and thanks Rafiki for helping him save Pumbaa Jr.  Then they set out and get near Malkia's territory only to be chased off by some nasty boars working for the evil one.

They run into a young sow named Binti who tells them that after Pumbaa Jr. left the evil boar and his buddies captured Malkia and took over.  Binti helps the Pumbaas and Puffer get in and they free Malkia and Puffer's mommy.  Then Malkia and Pumbaa Jr. rally the other warthogs to defeat the nasty ones with Pumbaa Sr. and the Puffers helping.  

Once the nasty boars are driven off, Malkia is re-crowned the queen and Pumbaa Jr. is made the king.  Malkia offers Binti a place in the group and she agrees.  Pumbaa Jr. is smitten with her and while they go off to play, Malkia and Pumbaa Sr. get reacquainted.

The whole family is thus brought together and lives Happily Ever After.

And there you go, that's how a pandemic, loneliness, and madness shape a real story that inspires a fake story.

Part 3:  Pumbaa & Peppa

When Pumbaa Sr. was the only pig, sometimes I entertained him with clips of Peppa Pig on the Roku Channel.  When I finally got Paramount+ I could put on whole episodes.  Each episode is like 4 5-minute segments and they remix a lot of them in each season so I think I saw the "Pedro is Late" segment about 200 times for some reason.

Anyway, I thought of how to do a Pumbaa and Peppa crossover.  One day Peppa and her family are outside on a picnic or camping or something.  Then they're spooked by a noise in the bushes.  Out of the bush appears a wild animal!  It's brown with scary tusks, a snout, and a straight tail.  Daddy Pig is going to scare the wild animal away until it talks and says his name is Pumbaa.  He lives in Pride Rock but he got lost.

Pumbaa explains he's a warthog, which is a type of pig.  When they apologize for trying to scare him off, he says, "Hakuna Matada."  They don't know what that is, so he teaches them the song. And then Peppa invites him to jump in some muddy puddles with them.  With four hooves, Pumbaa can really make the mud fly!  Everyone has fun and then Pumbaa leaves, inviting Peppa to stop by Pride Rock with her family.  And they promise they will.

There you go, that can probably just be a 5-minute segment.  Or maybe it'd have to be 2 if you use the whole song, which is like 4 minutes by itself.

Fun Facts:  for Christmas I also got Pumbaa Sr a stuffed Mummy Pig.  Malkia does not approve of that or Peppa in general because they're too much like humans.  Pumbaa Jr. doesn't really like the show because it's for babies.  I got a few other Peppa toys from Vine like a train with Peppa and Miss Rabbit and little wooden figures of Peppa's whole family.  There also used to be videos on the Roku Channel where someone was playing with a lot of the different Peppa toys like a house and RV and all that stuff that was kinda expensive so I never got any of it; I mean even my madness has limits.

June Movies & TV

 I spent most of June rewatching DS9 on Pluto TV so not really a lot of "new" stuff that I watched.

Money Monster:  I didn't watch this when it came out in 2016 and forgot about it until another blog mentioned it in February.  But then it was only on Starz.  In June, though, it was on Hulu so I could finally watch it.  And I was not disappointed. 

George Clooney is Lee, a Jim Cramer-type who hosts the titular financial show.  Julia Roberts is his harried producer who has to almost constantly rein Lee in and keep the show on track.  One day a delivery guy named Kyle (Jack O'Connell) shows up on set with a gun and bomb vest.  Kyle lost $60,000 thanks to Lee's urging to buy a certain tech stock.  More than that, people lost $800M on that stock in the span of a day.  Kyle plans to hold Lee hostage live on the air until he gets answers.

The police led by Giancarlo Esposito set up outside and there's kind of the cliche thing where he doesn't want to go in guns blazing but of course some hothead in SWAT does.  Meanwhile, everyone is trying to find the CEO of this tech company to get answers while Lee tries to stay alive.

I really enjoyed this movie.  It never got boring.  I think they mixed things up with the hostage situation enough that even without a John McClane running around killing people, it didn't get dull or maudlin.  There's actually a funny (and sad) scene where Lee urges everyone to buy the tech stock to pump it back up, sort of like Gamestop.  Buuut...it loses money instead.  Whomp, whomp.  And then Kyle's pregnant girlfriend shows up and is not very helpful.  Meanwhile there's also the mystery of the tech company and how it lost so much money.  So there's enough going to keep things from getting stale.  And of course there's a great cast; Clooney and Roberts have worked together enough times that they have natural chemistry.  Esposito could have used more to do but it was probably nice not being a villain.  O'Connell is great as the blue-collar guy who just wants back what's his and to fight the unjust system.

The ending isn't really Happy Ever After.  It's realistic--and disappointing--to think in the end nothing will really change and the tech company will probably get away with most of its crimes.  You need more than one hostage-taker to get any real progress. (4/5) (Fun Fact:  The movie was directed by Jodie Foster, who probably could have played the Julia Roberts part if she had wanted to.)

The Sisters Brothers:  This 2018 Western seemed like it should have been funnier from the title and that it stars John C Reilly as Eli, one of the titular brothers.  The other, Charlie, is played by Joaquin Phoenix.  They work for a man known as "The Commodore" in Oregon City in 1851.  He sends them to find an amateur scientist named Hermann Warm (Riz Ahmed) who is being watched by private detective John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal).

There's a lot of mayhem ensuing then as Charlie's drinking, a spider, a bear, and other problems slow the brothers down.  By the time they find Warm and Morris, those two have thrown in together and are on the verge of some Brokeback Mountaining.  When Eli and Charlie throw in with them it seems they'll be rich--until things go horribly wrong.

The last act gets kind of gross and depressing and then the problem is just sorta solved on its own.  There's a cameo at the end by the great Carol Kane as Mrs. Sisters.  Overall it's a unique twist on modern Westerns.  These aren't rugged, square-jawed tough guys but kind of dumbasses who pretty much just have one skill in killing people.  It's not a fun movie but it's entertaining enough with a talented cast. (3.5/5) (Fun Facts:  The movie features a really weird credit:  "With the Participation Of Rutger Hauer."  Hauer played the Commodore though he didn't have any lines and only appears in a window and in a coffin.  Most of this Western that was supposed to be in Oregon and California was actually filmed in France, Belgium, Spain, and Romania.)

Sympathy for the Devil:  I saw this on Hulu and didn't bother adding it to my list; I just watched it right away.  I mean, "Nic Cage taking Joel Kinnaman hostage in a car."  And only 90 minutes?  I'm down for that. And it gives you what you expect:  Nic Cage being a crazy bad guy while terrorizing Kinnaman's seemingly normal family guy who looks like a prequel version of Walter White.

Kinnaman is just pulling into the hospital where his wife is having a baby when Nic Cage--looking like a lounge singer version of Satan in a sparkly red jacket, maroon hair, and goatee--hops into the backseat to hold him at gunpoint. He tells Kinnaman to drive him to Boulder City--wherever that is.  Mayhem ensues!  But soon it starts to become clear that Kinnaman is not who he appears to be, which makes things more challenging for Cage.  It's also clear that this was not a random carjacking, but what is Cage's agenda?

Like I said, this has exactly what you want from a straight-to-streaming movie like this:  Nic Cage being crazy, some violence, a couple of twists to keep things interesting, and a fairly short run time.  It's not cinema, just a quick, fun ride. (3.5/5)

Desperation Road:  This straight-to-streaming movie from last year is described as a "Southern noir" because I suppose it's not a very pleasant movie and is supposed to take place in Mississippi--though it was filmed in Louisville, Kentucky.  There are a couple of stories that end up overlapping.

First there's a woman with a young girl who are walking to the woman's hometown in Mississippi.  Low on cash, the woman decides to whore herself to a trucker.  Though she doesn't actually do this, a cop shows up to bust her.  Instead he takes her to a remote location and rapes her.  But as he's going to call his buddies to let them have a turn, the woman gets the cop's gun and shoots him.  She takes the gun and runs away.  She and the girl leave the motel and look for somewhere safe.

Later, Russell (Garrett Hedlund) is released from prison.  When he gets back to the town the woman is in, he's greeted by a scummy guy named Larry, whose brother he accidentally killed.  Russell gets beaten up before Larry is run off.  Russell goes to the farm owned by his father (Mel Gibson) who gives him a house and a rifle.  But it isn't long before Larry finds the house and breaks the windows.

Eventually the woman runs into Russell and takes him hostage with the cop's gun, forcing him to drive her and the kid away.  He agrees to help her and the kid find somewhere safe, but that proves to be difficult between Larry and Russell's black friend who's a deputy.

Everything comes to a head with Russell, Larry, and the woman.  Overall it's not a bad movie and not poorly made like some of these straight-to-streaming movies.  At about 2 hours it's a little slow in parts.  Despite describing it as "noir" there is a fairly happy ending though it requires some moral sacrifices.  As you might expect, Mel Gibson doesn't really do a lot, though he does contribute something to the end.  I kinda think a few years ago his part would have gone to Bruce Willis. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Hedlund sings the titular theme song during the end credits.)

Wander:  A former cop turned PI/conspiracy theorist podcaster (Aaron Eckhart) is contacted by a woman whose daughter mysteriously died in the town of Wander in the Southwest.  He goes to investigate only for his past to start coming back to haunt him.  And we're supposed to question how much is real and how much isn't.  It was pretty good with a few twists and turns.  At about 90 minutes it's not very long either. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Eckhart's podcast partner is played by Tommy Lee Jones; they played both versions of Harvey Dent/Two-Face in Batman movies.)

Last Man Standing:  Not the Tim Allen sitcom from a few years ago but the 1996 movie starring Bruce Willis.  Basically it's like if John Woo made a Western only using 1920s gangsters.  Willis is a hired gun leaving the country and ends up in Jericho, Texas, near the border with Mexico.  This is during Prohibition and bootlegging is a big business--big enough that an Irish Mafia gang and Italian Mafia gang have both established themselves in the town.

Willis decides to shake down both groups to turn a tidy profit.  He kills a bunch of guys on both sides while hooking up with a couple of women and nearly being killed a few times.  He makes friends with a bartender (the robot fixing guy in Blade Runner) and kinda falls in love with the Native American-Mexican woman the leader of the Irish guys is ga-ga for.  And he makes an enemy of Christopher Walken, a hired gun for the Irish who is jealous that Willis is so quickly accepted into the fold.

Most of it isn't terrible.  It could have been better.  The female characters are barely used as anything except honey pots and damsels in distress.  The action scenes are ridiculously exaggerated with guys flying back or hopping back many feet when they get shot and the guns magically only need reloaded when it's a convenient time despite being fired a couple dozen times. (3/5) (Fun Facts:  Bruce Dern plays the corrupt sheriff who makes a living by letting both sides bribe him to not do a lot.  "Tiny Ron" plays one of the Irish henchmen and was also the bodyguard of Grand Nagus Zek in DS9.)

Lions for Lambs:  This 2007 movie by Robert Redford is kind of a smaller-scale Babel or Magnolia in that it involves three stories that are all connected.  Redford is a professor at "a California college" who meets with a student (Andrew Garfield) to encourage him to stop slacking.  He mentions two former students (Michael Pena and Derek Luke) who dropped out against his advice to join the Army in 2003.  Pena and Luke are now in Special Forces and sent to take a mountain in Afghanistan, but their chopper is shot down and they wind up separated from their platoon.  Both are badly wounded and Taliban troops are moving in.  The soldiers were dispatched thanks to a new strategy conceived in part by a senator (Tom Cruise) who is revealing this strategy to win the war to a veteran reporter (Meryl Streep) who is disillusioned at being used as a mouthpiece for the administration, military, and a potential presidential candidate.  Most of the characters (except Redford and Cruise really) have hard decisions to make.

The movie isn't bad but obviously in 2024 it feels pretty dated.  It also sometimes feels melodramatic and it's about as subtle as a two-by-four to the head.  Yet a lot of it remains true.  Obviously none of our genius strategies for Afghanistan ever really panned out.  The media is even more a tool of right-wing politicians and rich assholes than back then.  Meanwhile the poor get used as cannon fodder.  I think a lot of us have felt Andrew Garfield's cynicism at how the system works--or doesn't work.  In the end I don't think the movie has many answers to offer.

While it probably would have been better to watch it back in 2007-2008, it's still a bit relevant as I mentioned.  And there is a lot of talent involved.  Most people say Tom Cruise just plays himself, but in this case he doesn't have to do a lot more than act kind of smug and glib.  Streep doesn't get a lot to do beyond being horrified by Cruise.  Luke and Pena bring the blue collar heroism that really is the heart of the movie.  Perhaps the most moving part is the end credits where it shows various common scenes in silhouettes and people start to disappear to indicate the people lost in two disastrous wars. (3/5) (Sad Fact:  Redford explains the title by explaining to Garfield that in World War I, German soldiers admired the British soldiers (the lions) but mocked their pathetic, cowardly leaders (the lambs).  It's hard not to think of us in a similar situation where we have so many brave men and women but they're being led by politicians who really don't know anything about war.)

What Just Happened:  I don't remember hearing about this back in 2008 though it seems like it should have been on my radar.  It's directed by Barry Levinson and stars Robert de Niro, Robin Wright, Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, and Kristen Stewart plus Sean Penn and Bruce Willis as fictionalized versions of themselves.  That's a lot of talent for a movie I hadn't heard of until I saw it on Hulu weeks ago.

My way to describe it is it's like Altman's The Player only not interesting.  De Niro is a movie producer and has some issues.  A movie with Penn has a bad test screening, mostly because it brutally kills a dog and then Penn.  So convincing the director (Michael Wincott cosplaying Keith Richards) to change the ending is his first problem.  There's another movie starring Willis except Willis refuses to shave a beard he's grown, so that's another problem.  There's also his ex-wife Kelly (Wright) whom he still kind of loves but he finds out a writer he knows (Tucci) has been sleeping with her.  And his first daughter who's 17 (Stewart) was in love with an agent who killed himself.  The Willis issue gets solved but the other stuff doesn't really go well.  But it ends before we can learn if de Niro can find a way to turn things around.  So what was the point?  Not much.

Overall for all the star power, it really doesn't amount to a lot.  I guess it was better off forgotten. (2.5/5)  (Fun Fact: I was mostly interested in this because I wrote The Leading Men in 2002 about a TV producer and much later I wrote Casting Change about a movie producer in the 60s who has to become his lead actress.)

The Rewrite:  This movie is from 2015, involves the movie business, features a pretty well-known cast, and I had not known about it before I saw it on Hulu.  Unlike the previous movie, I actually enjoyed this one.  

Hugh Grant is Keith Mitchell, a screenwriter who had a big hit in 1999 but hasn't had much since then.  With the power in his apartment turned off, he decides to take a writer-in-residence job at Binghamton College in central New York state.  Soon Keith meets his boss (JK Simmons), his co-worker/neighbor (Chris Elliott), and runs afoul of the head of the department ethics (Allison Janney), and also runs into Marisa Tomei who is a single mother of two kids who also works 2-3 jobs as well as taking classes.

Keith doesn't want to actually teach so when JK Simmons says he has to pick ten of the 30-page script samples submitted, he pretty much picks the most attractive girls and a couple of nerdy guys who won't spoil his game.  And then his first class he tells them to finish their scripts and come back in a month.  Which does not go over well with his bosses, so he has to actually start teaching.

Maybe you could guess where this goes from there.  Keith starts to like teaching his students while also seeming to make progress with Marisa Tomei.  Though he faces some trouble from one of the other students, whom he slept with his first night in town and a few times after that.  She gets jealous and goes to Allison Janney to get him fired.  Really all that was missing was a moment where the students get on their desks to say, "O Captain, My Captain!"

Still, I enjoyed the movie while I watched it.  It's so light and good-natured (which just a little bit of an edge in the sexual content) that it's highly watchable.  Only after it's done might you start thinking how cliche and formulaic it all was.  Or how cynical and a little sexist it is that in a class that's 90% women, it's one of the nerdy guys who writes a big hit that stars a "kick-ass woman." (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Chris Elliott's character goes out with a State Farm agent; really they should have made it Farmer's Insurance since JK Simmons represented them.)

Misconduct:  This is the kind of thriller where it seems like the director took all the script pages, threw them into the air, and then pieced them back together.  It starts in sort of the middle with Anthony Hopkins as a pharmaceutical CEO who finds out his much-younger girlfriend (Malin Akerman) has been kidnapped and a supposed meeting to give the kidnappers the ransom goes wrong.  Then it jumps back to a driven lawyer (Josh Duhamel) who is contacted by his old girlfriend Akerman while his wife (Alice Eve) is estranged the last year or so after a miscarriage.  Then we move forward to where Duhamel meets with the head of a big law firm (Al Pacino with a Foghorn Leghorn accent) to use information stolen by Akerman to sue Hopkins for killing patients.

And then there's an assassin (Byung Hun Lee or Storm Shadow from the first 2 GI Joe movies) who kills or beats up some people.  And Duhamel finds Akerman dead and is seemingly framed for her death and...lots of stuff happens but the movie really, really overestimates how invested I would be in actually figuring it all out.  I mean, I don't really want a bunch of jigsaw pieces to try to assemble into some kind of picture.  Maybe if Duhamel, the center of the movie, wasn't kind of an asshole who cheats in his cases and seems to cheat on his hot wife I would have cared about figuring things out more.  Simplify, movie!  It's too bad because there's a decent cast that could have done a much better movie. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Also in the overly talented cast is Glen Powell of Top Gun 2 and Hit Man as Duhamel's friend.)

Code Name Banshee:  Hulu had been recommending this to me for a while now.  I finally got to that point of just saying "fuck it" and watching it.  It's a straight-to-streaming thriller that probably could have been better if it had built up the titular character a little more.  Banshee (Jaime King) is some kind of assassin/spy for hire.  Years ago a CIA(?) guy named Greene seemingly killed her father and his best friend/her mentor Caleb (Antonia Banderas) framing them as selling secrets to the Russians.  Banshee has since been trying to track down Greene and anyone else responsible.  

She finally gets a lead on Caleb, who owns a bar in Connecticut.  He also has a house and daughter.  But just as Banshee starts to get reconnected with him, Greene's people track her down and then there's a big, long shootout/fight at the house.  It's really the kind of thing that just sort of drags after a little while but I suppose they didn't want to spend a lot on locations.  King does an OK job as a cut-rate Black Widow but like I said, they don't give her a lot to work with.  Banderas lends some gravitas and professionalism to the production as the only big name attached.  Basically it's OK but if I had not said "fuck it" and watched it then I wouldn't have missed much. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  For some reason I kept thinking it was Ruby Rose playing Banshee; I guess I wasn't paying attention during the credits.  In the end credits it says not only did Antonio Banderas have a driver but also an RV driver.)

Wanted Man:  Dolph Lundgren writes, produces, directs, and stars in this pretty obvious movie.  Dolph is a cop named Joe in southern California who was caught on tape beating an illegal immigrant suspect and calling him a "filthy Mexican" or something like that.  When two women who survived a DEA bust gone wrong are found in Mexico, Dolph is assigned to pick them up and bring them back as sort of a reverse Joe Don Baker in MST3K/Rifftrax favorite Final Justice where he had to take a bad guy to Italy.

Anyway, he goes to Mexico and soon some bad cops ambush him and Dolph has to go on the run with one of the women.  And wouldn't you know he starts to bond with her and her family?  And he has to sneak into the country with some illegals?  I'm not a Trumper screaming about "wokeness" but this was really too obvious.  Though I can understand where Dolph, an immigrant himself, would feel sympathetic on this issue.  It just could have used a better movie behind it. (2/5) (Fun Fact: One plot hole to me is earlier Dolph uses his cell phone and that allows the bad guys to find them.  Later the woman's family has him use his phone and then they have a nice, leisurely dinner.  And guess what happens?  Bad guys show up.  It seemed pretty obvious.) 

The Best Man:  A bunch of mercenaries are hired to rescue a woman, which they do, but at the cost of losing a few guys, including one named Axel.  A year later, Cal (Luke Wilson) is going to marry the girl they rescued.  He chooses his cousin (Brendan Fehr) to be his best man.  And there's also Dolph Lundgren, who shambles around, drinks, and plays piano.

The wedding is to be held at the Mountain of the Gods resort in New Mexico.  The bride's father rents the whole thing so it will only be wedding people and staff.  But then Axel shows up with a bunch of goons to take over the place.  Luke Wilson, Brendan Fehr, and Dolph have to fight back.  It was pretty blah and not that interesting.  It's the kind of thing where you wonder if the notable names just did it for a free weekend at a fancy resort.  They definitely could have used someone better for the father of the bride; even a lot of older country music guys could have done better than this guy.  I'm just saying. (2/5)

Section 8:  I had watched 2 Dolph Lundgren movies already on Hulu, so when I saw this, I thought, "Why not go for 3?"  And the answer is:  because it sucks.  This is that lame kind of straight-to-video action movie that advertises Dolph, Mickey Rourke, Durmott Mulroney, and Scott Adkins, the more attractive and less popular Jason Statham.  But guess what?  Each of those guys is in maybe 10% of the movie.  Most of the work is done by nobodies.  Bait and switch! 

So the real star (some guy) is named Jake and he was in Afghanistan with Dolph.  He comes home and marries a girl and has a son and lives in way too expensive a house while working in some crappy garage in a crappy neighborhood.  The garage is run by Mickey Rourke, who's getting shaken down by some gangbangers.  Jake beats them up so in retaliation, they kill his wife and kid--a 2-for-1 fridging special!  Jake kills them and goes to jail.  Five months later, someone from "Section 8" recruits Jake to join them, which he does.  But when he objects to some things they do and runs off, they send hitman Scott Adkins after him.  And boring "mayhem" ensues.

I started losing interest in this pretty quick.  Besides the opening flashback, Dolph doesn't show up until close to the end.  Rourke pops up in a couple of scenes, as does Adkins.  Mulroney chews some scenery as the evil head of Section 8, so like I said, most of the real work is done by nobodies who really can't carry a movie, but if we put Some Guy and Some Woman on the cover, who would buy/rent/stream it?  It's kind of a Catch-22.  (1/5) (Fun Fact:  In M*A*S*H, Section 8 was a certification that a soldier was crazy and could be sent home; Klinger wore dresses in the early seasons hoping to get a Section 8.  How this relates, I don't know.)

Body Melt:  This was a pretty oddball Australian horror-comedy from 1993.  Basically there's an evil vitamin company calla VillaVille or something.  Their drugs are supposed to do...stuff, but mostly they seem to make people explode--not so much melt.  In the Outback is a Hills Have Eyes-type group of freaks who have something to do with stuff.

It was pretty weird and sometimes gross, though maybe not as much as I thought.  The problem is other than two cops whose names I don't really know, the rest of the characters are basically a parade of easily-replaced victims.  There was really no one to focus on.  And the soundtrack often sounded like crappy exercise video music.  Anyway, I doubt many of my Phantom Readers would want to watch it. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Unfortunately the movie wasn't captioned, which would have maybe helped with some of the Australian dialogue.)

The Veil:  This anthology series only had one episode come out the year before The Twilight Zone.  The remaining 10 never aired until they were packaged into three movies. It's sort of the same thing as TZ, with a host (Boris Karloff) introducing a story with a paranormal twist.  The differences are that Karloff participates in most of the episodes and the twists are very mild, sometimes to the point of being unnoticeable.  Like in the first episode where a guy has a dream about his brother being murdered and comes home.  That's it, that's the twist.  Others are better like one where Karloff owns an airplane delivery service and brings his son home to fly for him.  The son starts seeing a ghostly face telling him to go somewhere and discovers some secrets from his father's past.  There are some other episodes that are pretty good but nothing that ever rises to the level of the best TZ episodes. (3/5)

Thriller:  This is not related to the Michael Jackson album/song/music video of the early 80s.  It's sort of a remake of The Veil; this 1960-1961 series features longer episodes, many of them more crime stories or I guess Hitchcock-type stories than Twilight Zone stories.  Though the one I watched called "The Return of Andrew Bentley" from the middle of the second season was more of a TZ story and the teleplay was written by Richard Matheson, who wrote some TZ episodes.  Boris Karloff appears at the beginning to do the introduction and to introduce the characters; I don't think it was one of the 5 episodes he stars in.  The episode is that old trope about a guy and his wife inheriting his rich uncle's house so long as they stay in it and monitor the uncle's crypt.  Eventually some low-key mayhem ensues.  Like with TZ, expanding these to 50 minutes usually leads to a lot of tedium--and organ music. (2/5) (Fun Facts:  Google said the rest of the series was on Freevee (nope) and Xumo (nope...though it's hard to tell since their app kinda sucks for that) but JustWatch.com says it's on Roku Channel so maybe I'll find it there and watch some more.  According to the Wikipedia page Bill Shatner is in two of the episodes and there are some other actors who went on to do better stuff as well.  And also a lot of TZ writers and actors and such are involved in this show; in this episode the guy who played a Nazi death camp Kommandant in one episode and a criminal who freezes himself for 100 years only to die of heat stroke was one of the characters.)

The Master:  Not the movie about the Scientology guy starring Joaquin Phoenix.  This 1984 NBC series is partially familiar to MST3K fans as the first four episodes were put together into two "movies" dubbed "Master Ninja 1 & 2."  But really there were 13 episodes in the show's only season.  When I heard this was on Tubi, I decided to watch the whole series.  It's not bad if you liked similar fare from the time like Knight Rider, The A-Team, The Fall Guy, or Airwolf.  Or maybe if you liked Kung Fu in the 70s.

The plot involves the titular "Master" who is named John Peter McCallister.  He's the only white guy to ever become a ninja master.  He learns he has a daughter back in the States and so leaves his order to find her--but the order doesn't want to risk him divulging their secrets so they send another ninja (Sho Kosugi) to kill him.  In America, McCallister runs into a young hothead living in a van named Max Keller (Tim Van Patten--son of Dick).  They team up with Max becoming the master's new student.  They go around helping people and occasionally trying to find the daughter.  Sometimes the evil ninja will show up.  Sometimes he doesn't.  It jumps around from small towns to big cities like "Las Vegas" or "New York City" that were probably not those actual cities.  Unfortunately when the show ended, the daughter had not been found and the evil ninja was still out there. (And obviously they're not going to do a revival after 40 years and Lee Van Cleef being dead 35 of those years, so I guess we'll never get any answers.)

Like I said, if you liked other 80s action-adventure shows then you'd probably not think this is too bad.  I didn't hate it, but there are a couple of obvious problems.  Lee Van Cleef is good when the Master is just doing normal stuff, but he's too old and out-of-shape for anyone to believe he's in the ninja suit jumping around and kicking guys.  And the show makes very little effort to disguise the stunt double, who looks Asian from the glimpses shown.  Sometimes when the Master is in regular clothes it's obvious they have the stunt double in a bald cap.  It's not convincing at all.  They probably should have cast someone a little younger than 59--and a well-traveled 59 at that--who actually died 5 years later.  And maybe find someone who could enunciate better than Tim Van Patten.  I kind of wonder if the focus on a ninja was a little ahead of its time; I think it was still a few years before GI Joe became all about ninjas for instance. These days we'd call having a white ninja cultural appropriation but it was the 80s, where you could still have someone in blackface (Trading Places, etc.) or brownface (Short Circuit) or use racist accents (A Christmas Story).  (3/5) (Fun Facts:  The first 4 episodes feature some pretty decent guest stars like a young Demi Moore, Claude Akins, Clu Gulager, young Crystal Bernard, and Aussie James Bond George Lazenby--along with the Aston-Martin spy car.  After that, there aren't as many, though a couple like Robert Pine--Chris's father who when you watch it now you can see the resemblance--and Marc Alaimo, aka Gul Dukat on DS9.)

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