Tuesday, January 31, 2017

RANT: Doctor Who Betrayed me!!

Alright with the recent news concerning one of my favorite shows, I am disappointed and mad and betrayed by that show frankly. I have been watching the show regularly since about 2010 and needless to say as the years went on the show has been on a bit of a downward spiral in certain instances, not entirely but in...aspects. It's good to vent and I'm going to rant and rave for awhile so there is now a full SPOILER WARNING for this show.

So really I have been watching the show for going on 7 years out of a show history of now over 50 years. And the problems really started cropping up in the late Matt Smith era continuing full on with Peter Capaldi's tenure. And it all started with the monsters and how they have SEVERELY screwed with the lore of these creatures. Strike one, the Weeping Angels. Blink, what a great episode! The two part story The Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone, good story. The Angels Take Manhattan.....here we go. Now let me be clear, I am over the deaths of Amy and Rory, that is not the issue here. What is the issue is the fundamental betrayal and destruction of a fascinating and terrifying force. Blink in my opinion at the end makes the viewer ask the question of is every single statue a Weeping Angel? In my humble opinion I took it as not every statue is an Angel, but some could be. Angels Take Manhattan, every single statue on Earth including the fraking Statue Of Liberty is a Weeping Angel. Oh and you seriously expect me to believe not one person in New York City at any given hour does not have the Statue Of mother....THE Statue Of Liberty in eyesight??  Bulllllshiiiiiiittt!!!! And I guess you also expect me to believe statues can inhale oxygen to blow out a match? How about blow me? Jesus Christ. And then, and then after all of them are defeated one stray Angel, the magic bullet from the grassy knoll zaps Amy and Rory away. What a terrible episode. Again, I'm not mad they are gone, I am mad they had to break every rule of these things in order to get rid of them. But that was just strike one, we got a lot more to cover. Then we got Clara, not a strike against the show I quite enjoyed her character greatly but that waned over time but trust me we will get back to her. Strike two, the Cybermen. Now from when they were introduced I digged them, it showed a natural progression of how they adapted more and more throughout their appearances until Nightmare In Silver and then they screwed it up! They are way too powerful, before they had energy weapons in their arms, fine, but now they have firearms, they have super speed, super strength, the ability to detach limbs to kill others, tiny Cybermats to convert people, and the ability to fly!! I joked that the designs of the suit mirrored Iron Man to an absurd degree but they are quite literally Iron Man! They even fly like him, they got the repulsors in the palms of their hands and take off the same way. What a stupid choice! Now one single solitary Cyberman could convert the entire human race. It's the same problem as with zombies in select media, a single zombie should not be able to do much. They are supposed to overwhelm you in numbers, not be these superfast, unstoppable creatures. It pisses on decades of seeing them through different incarnations. Damn it! Oh yeah and apparently they don't have to be metal, they can be wood! The genius is mind boggling. I want to hurt people now. But wait, there's more! We can't screw over one classic monster, let's destroy the Daleks too. Beautiful, perfect! Now Daleks are just mutated creatures inside a metal shell, the metal shell is not supposed to be like a human body, with friggin' robotic white blood cells and digesting processed human bodies (fraking what?!), it just ruins the most classic villain in over 50 years of this show! But why stop there? Let's ruin the Master too. What's that? Her name is Missy? I don't care!! Mechelle Gomez why? Why did you do this? Your performance was brilliant, slightly off but brilliant until one of the biggest slaps in the face, not the biggest believe me it's moment is inching closer but I digress. Her performance was mysterious and there is a sense of danger and uneasiness in mystery, you don't know who this woman is, what her plan is, and it worked! You never knew much about the Master which is why he worked so well as a character. But then this, this campy, over the top performance ruins any and all dramatic potential and emotional climax I wanted. Now granted you could argue previous performances of the Master was over the top and in John Simm's case it was absolutely insane but that is why it worked. He joked and acted campy but he was insane, he still installed fear into the heroes, you never knew what he would do next. Then friggin' Missy comes busting out acting like a fool, and people accepted it. She could get away with anything because, welp she's crazy, she's a zany, kooky, weirdo, nothing she does has to make sense. You are a liar. There always has to be purpose and reasoning in a character's actions even if they are nuttier than a Pay Day bar! And her plan was absurd. So let me get this straight, artificially produced clouds, rain water on the graves of deceased people and then...the water singlehandedly transforms the corpses no matter how much in decay they are to become Cybermen? Cybermen need a brain in order to function! There's science, there's pseudoscience, and then there's insulting my intelligence. How interesting is that, both two part season finales with Peter Capaldi really fail miserably? Well, kinda. Heaven Sent was fricking brilliant! It was easily one of the best episodes of Doctor Who ever created. But before we head to the grand finale of this special little tyrade, let's touch on Clara. Great character at the start, Jenna Coleman was awesome, she was witty, no nonsense, had terrific chemistry with both of her Doctor's. But then it started to suck hard and I can pinpoint the exact moment. It was when she started dating Danny Pink. I hate him. I hate him with the fury of a billion suns. It's like if Mickey Smith had no character arc whatsoever, constantly stayed in the bitch phase and never grew to be a badass. He just bitches, and complains, and whines that ooh the Doctor is dangerous Clara! You need to stay away from him and always be with me, cause that's all you need in life! Boohoohoo! Are you f***ing kidding me with this guy? I can't believe it. And she actually believes him. Yeah, screw you individuality and character growth and I don't know, a female having her own opinions and standing in HER LIFE. Nah, she'll just listen to the man in her life and be the end of that discussion. I'm happy you got hit by a car and turned into a Cyberman you swishy little ****, just to turn into a complete emo prat afterwards. What did I say earlier? We were going to talk about Clara? Sorry, the bullshit is piling up so quick I need a bigger shovel. So anyway, Clara dies and wonderfully so. It was a sad, profound, and honorable death to a character that impacted the Doctor in such a severe way, more so than Amy and Rory, his only family left that he had so that should clue you in on how hard it hit him. How to f*** it up now? Wait, I know! Let's slap every fan in the face who ever watched this show, loved it, and has been a longterm fan of it by completely bending the show over and raping it to death! Yeah! Hell Bent...bravo. Congratulations, you have made me despise a show I once adored. Where do I begin? It didn't get atrocious until the last maybe 20 minutes of the episode. So the Doctor destroys the laws of time and saves Clara's life, completely destroying her character, the significance of her death and many many other companions. Then we meet up with Maisie Williams, who I really like as an actress but God I hate her character! She's like the great, great, great, great, great×100,000 grandmother of all ****s, she drives me insane! And guess what? She and Clara steal a Type 40 TARDIS, with the original console room seen in 1963 and fly it into space. You know, I kinda made it a rule not to explicitly swear on this show, and I've....kinda kept that rule unbroken today but this moment made me erupt into a stream of every single cuss word in the English language because of how fundamentaly wrong it is. Two human beings cannot fly a TARDIS, only Timelord's can. I do not care how basic the console of the ship is. It is impossible. I have never felt such anger and contempt towards any sort of media in my life. I am shocked to my core. That is strike 3, this show is over to me. And the cherry on top of this shit sundae is Peter Capaldi has announced his leaving of the show at the end of Series 10. I intend to watch Series 10 but only because of the sole intention to properly send Capaldi off and watch his tenure come to an end. For those select few who are reading this, you are beyond excellent. You are the greatest in the universe. You guys are troopers, you read through all this stuff and still remain here. I should send medals to all of you. Thank you for your time, have a great day, night, yesterday, and tomorrow. This is The Dude signing off.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Elvis & Nixon

Hey that was a cool movie man.


A simple movie at heart, with lots of charm and love towards The King, Elvis & Nixon follows the events up to the famous picture of the The President and The King in the Oval Office. When I first heard about this movie I really liked the idea, and wondered what it would be like in the end and I was very, very pleased with the movie. Michael Shannon plays Elvis with conviction and style, to the point where you sometimes forget it's an actor and not the real Elvis and Kevin Spacey as Nixon potrays the President as real as he was and does a hell of a fine job in the end. The movie takes place in the early 70s, so the soundtrack is a lot of fun, and even some of the shots look like it was filmed with a super 8 camera with film grain and all, it really solidifies the feel of the movie. The focus never takes off of Elvis and I would really recommend this movie for just two scenes, where it's pretty much a monologue of Elvis, one touching on the other side of the coin of being famous, how the real person gets lost in the identity of the star and what it does for that person, and also about the day of his birth that can easily tug at the heartstrings for some, including myself. The movie is not about the sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, which is why it is elevated to a much better movie, it merely tells the story of one of the most bizzare moments in the annals of American history. I expected a decent movie, and got something much more meaningful than I would ever have anticipated. Definitely check it out if you have the time.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

The Truman Show

I'm actually really happy I'm reviewing this. I can't believe I've put it off this long.


The Truman Show is a very well made film which showcases Jim Carrey's amazing dramatic acting skills and shed a new light on the actor. The story is weird and very metaphysical I would say, it centers around the life of an ordinary man Truman Burbank, who just lives his day to day life. But his whole life is a show, it is filmed for millions of people around the world who are enthralled to just watch an ordinary man live his life, broadcasted 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is a fascinating concept, and can be delved into very deeply, not just on a simple physical level but deeper into a psychological, ethical, and emotional point of view. Granted the idea of our reality being untrue and another lying beyond our knowledge is not new, but the way the film potrays it all and how it deals with the subject matter makes it very endearing to watch. Carrey's performance as I said is great, he can be a bit of a clown and have fun but when it hits hard you buy it, you totally buy the emotion. It's a great movie, and certainly should be viewed by lots more people in the years to come mainly because of the character of Truman Burbank and not the concept of a life being televised non-stop. The sets are exaggerated but work, the music is upbeat but can slather good dramatic and impactful pieces when needed, the humor is good but the drama is better. It's a movie greatly enjoyed by me, and hopefully you tune in to it whenever it comes on.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

Hooray, I'm back and with a really good movie!


This is easily the best work of Tim Burton I've seen in a good while. Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children is a charming, very well done, and slightly nightmarish film following a young boy named Jake who after years of hearing tales of monsters and a group of peculiar people, actually discovers that shock and surprise, they actually exist. But not all is well, the monsters are on the move again and to protect the children Jake must take up arms just like his grandfather before him. First thing I got to say is, I really enjoyed the tone of this movie. It's very difficult to describe but by God it has an excellent stride in it's story, characters, setting, and dialogue. The casting is so out there it becomes genius, we have Eva Green, Dame Judi Dench, Terence Stamp, and friggin' Samuel L. Jackson! What?? Brilliant! So obviously the major players are great, but how about the kids? I love them. I wish I could adopt them all. They are kind, considerate, some gushing with adorableness, but the movie never lets their peculiarities become the character. They have moments of doubt, sadness, anger, jealousy, and love. You really believe they do exist. I love the setting in this movie from a straight up Edward Scissorhands style suburbia, to the cold and dark shores of Wales, to the eponymous home which is very beautiful and is filled with much character. The soundtrack is beautiful to listen to, combining very creepy yet lovely music which does indeed make me want to track the soundtrack down. I got to say it didn't take much for me to want to see this movie, it wasn't Eva Green, it wasn't a new Tim Burton film, it wasn't even this strange and great looking new film, it took exactly two seconds of a tv spot showing skeletons with weapons, a la Jason And The Argonauts to make me say, yep I'm going to go see this movie and I am so glad I did. It's a very good movie with a quite frankly awesome mythology, characters who I cared about, and although it got nightmarish near the end, I would recommend it to families and children, I think they'll enjoy the world and characters very much like I did and might even enjoy watching it quite often. But we all know it's great just because of Grandpa Zod. Just kidding. Have a great night everybody, see you (hopefully) next week!

Thursday, January 19, 2017

So It Begins....

And the school year has begun. I have...mixed opinions on it. I enjoy getting back in there and progressing my education but with the schedule I have set up, the work haul is much greater than before, thus creating problems in terms of reviews. I'm going to be lucky if I get ONE review out this week! That shouldn't happen and regarding the fact that I don't have many movies and am concentrating on vast series with more than quadruple the run times of a standard feature film, hell even some extended films, it's going to become a bit of a problem to review them. Granted, I'm still going to try, I'm even taking a cinema class to better my analysis of media. Almost every action I take is going towards this! So know I'm not abandoning this site, these reviews, the people who take time out of their day to hear my ramblings and opinions, if I could do this full time and get paid for it, I would never stop. So I'm merely asking for patience in the following weeks at least until I get a good handle on this, I'm even taking a night class (Yay....) so it will take time to get used to and hopefully with the introduction of my cinema class, I can atleast get some new material. But if the gods are kind I can get a review out by tomorrow or Saturday. So bare with me here, and as always have a fantastic evening.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

The Lobster

What a weird movie. I liked it.


Wow. Oh my God. I'm sorry, I find it difficult to describe this movie. The Lobster is a drama I would say, with tiny bits of comedy peppered in centering around a society in the not too distant future where single people are forced to find love within 45 days or be transformed into a animal of their choice, which is where we meet our main character David who has just recently been divorced and must find love or be transformed into a lobster. What follows is both an absolutely brilliant satire on love, or rather society's viewpoint of what love is, how is it formed, how is it achieved and a truly disturbing view into the human psyche. The film has some great use of dark comedy though scant, but it is extremely adult orientated and deals with a quite frankly disturbing reality. Whether you have lost your loved one through either a break up, a divorce, or even death you are forced to go to a hotel to find a companion in a limited amount of time or be transformed into a animal, your entire being is stripped of all identity focusing on one unique trait whether it be fair hair or a limp to sum up who you are, you have no choice in how to express yourself through clothing or music, only what is ordained. Being a single person in this reality is considered a crime! You have to be with someone. I would not bode well in this society. It is fascinating to watch this movie, because it flat out mocks how people pursue and win love but also how the human mind copes with such a world as this one potrayed in the film. It almost takes a cynical and cold look at relationships which I have to applaud the film to some degree, you never see that in movies. I'm kind of speechless after viewing it because not of how odd and surreal it is, but of how true and thought provoking it is. I would certainly have to recommend it but to who? Who is the target audience of the film? I would say adults because of it's mature content and thought provoking messages but nothing is concrete about it. It could be teenagers but I think it would severely jade them on basic human interaction let alone romance. This entire movie is a complete mystery. What is it?? I mean I like it, I enjoyed it, it's a true solid film that needs to be seen by most people but it just confounds me as to what to call this movie. A human drama perhaps? A surreal romance? There's probably not a good title for it so I implore you to watch this just so we could discuss it with other people. Wow guys, um...this film is quite a special thing, I'm probably never going to forget this bizzare little movie and hopefully some of you feel the same.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Star Wars Rebels: Season 2

Now it's kicking off.

A vast improvement over the first, season two of Rebels picks up on all the elements that they did fairly well in the first season. Our crew of freedom fighters have now fully joined the Rebellion and have begun to slowly form the basis of their operations, with the Empire always hot on their trail. The action has been upped significantly, the character development continues in some cases brilliantly, we get a few familiar faces this season that never ceases to make me happy, and the finale alone is what brought Rebels on the map for me. If you made it through the first season and thought it was good, by the end of this season you will consider it to be great. Pretty much the season finale to season two combined with the trailer for season three is what got me to watch the show, and once I got the backstory and re-watched the final scenes of the finale, it got ten thousand times better than it already was. I'm excited to watch season three, it's only I think maybe three or four episodes until the end of that so I timed my watchings perfectly. Hell, maybe even in a week or two I can fully review season three! One thing I have noticed though is the big bad of the seasons are surprisingly not in it often, the main oppressive force is the Empire as a whole. The first season had the Inquisitor which was a basic but still interesting villain that appeared throughout the first season but at the end of season one it is very clear who is taking the forefront of the villain role, and yet...he's in it for two episodes, the first and last episode of the season. That kinda sucks but I'm amazed they got the original voice actor for the role which is just the cherry on top of this sundae, but you can forgive it solely because of the duel at the end. I just hope they don't follow suite for season three, I want to see the Grand Admiral in action often, because if you know anything about the Expanded Universe of Star Wars then you can understand my concern for this character. But needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this season of Rebels much more than the last. I'm excited to start watching season three and if all goes well, you can expect that review before the end of this month.

Friday, January 6, 2017

Star Wars Rebels: Season 1

I didn't have high hopes, but by God it's not half bad.

So Star Wars Rebels takes place a few years before Rogue One (I love how I can say that now.) following a group of smugglers who slowly transform from mercenaries/smugglers to freedom fighters battling against the Empire and creating the spark of rebellion. So the story starts off with this kid Ezra he just lives his life on his home planet until he runs across this crew sabotaging Imperial supply routes and this crew is very unique in the Star Wars universe, we have a Twi'lek pilot named Hera who pilots their ship the Ghost, Kanan who seems to be the leader of the group and has a bit of a past to him, a Mandalorian explosives expert who is a young girl named Sabine, a Lasat called Zeb who is like if Wolverine was an alien in Star Wars, and their astromech droid named Chopper who is a bit of a wise ass. Ezra soon joins the team as they go through a mish-mash of different missions almost all around being a nuisance to the Galactic Empire. It has interesting and unique character development which appears every now and then, granting significant growth as characters and not just being like, oh yeah Hera's just a pilot and that's about it. No, they build on them slowly but satisfyingly. Now the story follows in direct correlation with the previous animated series Clone Wars, now it's not pertinent to watch Clone Wars but it does help in the long run with this series. Now one thing I cannot avoid talking about is the art design. It is like a love letter to Ralph McQuarrie who did all the conceptual art to the original Star Wars movie, the series could not adapt it more if it tried. And I have seen many of the conceptual artwork of the original movie, and I greatly appreciate the look of it all. Now I have to admit, I did not start watching Rebels until this week, I thought it was just a dumb kid cash in on Star Wars on the Disney Channel, but when I saw the trailer to season 3 and heard much fan talk about it I decided to take a look. It's a kid show without a doubt, whereas Clone Wars was aimed more towards early pre-teen to teenagers (I was a teenager by the time Clone Wars really took off) and yet I never watched that show until a few years after it ended, because I watched the original Clone Wars mini series that came out between Episode 2 and before Episode 3 even hit theaters and I thought it was an unnecesary remake. My God, was I wrong. So wrong. I apologize to Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network. So yeah, I wasn't expecting greatness but I got a decent show and it got really good a few episodes before the end of the season. If you like Star Wars or have kids that enjoy Star Wars this is a decent show to put on.

As of today I am almost finished season 2 and will have the review up next week. I won't do just one review a week when it comes to television shows, so no worries about lack of content but I will probably have to cut it back to two reviews a week. Yeah, material is running thin but not entirely gone. Merely a setback but it does not dampen my spirits, I shall persevere and continue bringing you more recommendations and opinions. See you next week.

Happy New Year!

Alright, I'm back. All refreshed and ready for another year. Now as stated before my movie resources are almost dead, so I'm going to take as much as I can from other sources, mainly television. And we'll do it season by season as always, some stuff has changed but not to the point where I can't work here. I believe I have 17 new movies coming to theaters this year that have highly garnered my interest, and those are all peppered out through the whole year, but what do I do in the meantime? Well, why not television? I got a lot of shows to watch, catch up on, and finally end. I don't like the idea of going episode by episode even though it would fill time very quickly, I would post maybe 3 or 4 episodes a day and it would turn into a mess so I choose to do seasons so it can be concise, controlled, and tidy. It's a bit more of a challenge to write tv reviews since there is so much to cover and talk about while still not spoiling anything, so it creates this sort of challenge for me to write but I enjoy it nevertheless. I'm rolling with it. I ended the last few days of last year with Star Wars, and just this week I've been watching a new Star Wars tv series so I'd like to start this year with that. So you can expect that tomorrow. Until then my friends.