#this man was so insignificant to the story he was only needed to give exposition like 3 times

[zevranunderstander]

hate how scared modern liberal movies are of making characters of color into antagonists of any sort? like i know it depends on what kind of story you want to tell, but if it's a "colorblind" story that's just like, "regency era, but diverse" or whatever and all of the people of color are the kind supporting cast, just go fuck yourself I'm sorry

#persuasion 2022 was sooo dirty w this #like... let actors of color play rancid people too? idk man i want to see characters. #i dont want to see you did the bare minimum and hired a few actors of color #like. in THE BOOK persuasion lady russell was lowkey a mean classist bitch #and they just.... didn't make her a mean classist bitch and just made her a kind mother to anne for nooo reason? #like also. sorry i didn't really super like gl*ss onion #(censoring just so it isn't in the tag) #bc like i get they wanted to critique billionaires. but... i dont think the movie was very smart to be honest #like it has a lot of nice funny details. but like. its all very on the nose and the pacing wasn't that great #and tbh i was like 'woah ballsy move to make leslie odom junior play some guy whose a complete suck up to a billionaire' #but like. he really was theeeeeee most harmless of them like. #this man was so insignificant to the story he was only needed to give exposition like 3 times #same w the politician woman like she had no fucking purpose to the plot #but especially with his character i felt like this could have been a great role but I think the director was too scared #of coming across racist to do anything interesting with the character at all? like what was he there for? #and like ive seen this man act this man is a fucking powerhouse of an actor you know #i was soooo excited that he was in the movie and he played like 'lowkey unimportant character number 3' like i was sooo mad abt that #like did viola davis perform her soul out on god knows how many seasons of how to get away w murder #just so that mainstream now is too scared again to cast people of color in non-'kind supporting cast 🥺' roles??? #like i hope i dont sound insane but i am sooo tired of this

[canvaswolfdoll]

CanvasWatches: Id: Invaded

Okay, what if we could catch serial killers by entering their subconscious minds (referred to as an Id-Well), where the amnesiac avatar of a investigator must search for clues while also solving a murder mystery created within the bounds of a fantastic, mind bending world? Isn’t that an amazing premise for a combination platformer/puzzle video game?

Anyways, Id: Invaded is an anime. The only major complaint I have is how I would much rather be playing it than watching the proceedings, which probably just means it’s got a good concept.

Uh… it’s a mystery show with a season long arc and character progression so… spoilers? It’s a good show if you’re into that stuff. Handles grit and mature themes well, but… well, mature themes and violent images abound. So be careful of that.

So that’s the spoiler warning.

After watching the first episode and learning the basic concept, two truths were immediately evident: the young-looking police girl (Koharu Hondomachi) hearing the exposition is going to kill someone so she’ll be a candidate to dive into the id-well, and the elderly director guy overseeing the project is 100% the big bad.

Still, just because a couple things are easily solved by knowledge of narratives doesn’t mean there aren’t surprises. Like trepanning is a plot-important element in this for… some reason… it gives a secondary character superpowers!

Don’t… don’t blindly emulate your media, kids.[1]

The first couple of episodes telegraph what elements to pay attention to pretty clearly. Hondomachi is wide-eyed and overly interested in the Id Well machinations, and asks about how one becomes a candidate for entering the machine, and doesn’t look put out by the need to be a killer.[2] She also headbutts a drill to assist in the capture of the first serial killer of the show, so she’s not hesitant to take extreme measures. Which leaves the question: will she kill with the intention of joining the Id Well delving team?

Meanwhile, Takuhiko Hayaseura appears only long enough to be marked as important, but he doesn’t take an active part in the plot. Then the mysterious John Walker Phantom appears with similar old man body language, those dots are connected and you just have to wait for the plot to catch up.

Finally, our protagonist, Narihisago, dwells on wanting to save the perpetual victim of these murder dinner parties he’s investigating, signalling that Kaeru is more than a prop of the gimmick. I didn’t have enough details to take a guess at what her larger role would be, so the reveal in the later episodes was a successful twist.

There is a small tragedy with the structure of the anime course. While I typically prefer the 12 to 24 episode style, as it allows for limits for the artists to work with (like a trellis), and means that the series maintains a consistent narrative without flailing about to maintain momentum until given permission to die, we occasionally get a show like Id: Invaded where the central gimmick lends itself so well to an episodic, killer of the week style stories that I just want to watch the variations and not care too much about the myth arc. Because it’s set to conclude with episode 13, the show can only play with the gimmick for about half the course before having to buckle down and start telling the larger narrative, leaving me yearning for more new id wells and mysteries.

If the show were twice as long, it would’ve been able to play with the gimmick more, and have space to flesh out the investigative team to have actually interesting characters.

The first episodes introduce six characters watching Narhisago and analyzing the world around him to deduce the actual identity of the serial killer, but they have very little dialogue outside of exposition, and their mystery is opaque to the viewer until they solve it. The team could’ve been cut in half without losing anything.

But if Id:Invaded had two cours to stretch out and tell stories, the investigation team could have subplots and character revealing dialogue. But there’s no space for them, so… lost potential.

In fact, if this story was told as a video game,[3] there’d be plenty of space for the Wellside team to have incidental dialogue to develop them. The audience/player can also get more direct satisfaction out of solving the gimmick of each Id-Well, as they get to directly utilize the solution to complete the level. If the hypothetical game takes a page from Pheonix Wright, which is the game I most mentally aligned with the show, there can also be a section after the level where the clues found within the level can be analyzed and the player gets to piece together who the killed is.

It’d be fun.

But… er… the actual story.

It’s fine. The characters make a lot about learning who this John Walker fellow is, but the obvious culprit is sitting right there, so the viewer is just patiently waiting for the characters to catch up, amusing themselves with the episodic portion of the story.

Then, a twist: they find the device used to enter Id-Wells within an Id-Well. So, what would happen if someone used it?

So our protagonist does, and finds himself seemingly back in the real world, though before the death of his wife and daughter. He can set right what once went wrong!

Although… he knows this can’t be real. He remembers everything that led him here, so surely this is permanent.

But what if it is?

First order of business: Narihisago sequence breaks and puts a stop to the serial killer who murdered his daughter early, the fight placing him in the hospital, where he finds… Kaeru? Except her name’s Kiki, and when she sleeps, those around her experience her dreams.

Dreams where she’s constantly getting murdered, often in very brutal fashion. Huh.

Despite the characters attempting to lean into the mysterious nature of the machine allowing them to place people into Id-Wells, I took it for granted and assumed it wouldn’t need explanation.

Instead, we learn Kiki’s power is being exploited to enable the gimmick, which I should have seen coming considering how much the anime is built on women suffering.[4]

Eventually, Narihisago and Hondomachi (the girl who becomes a second Id-Well diver partway through) are able to use the time and space given in this recreated past to find a solid lead on who John Walker is. Just in time for the system to kick them out and for them to climb back out to actual reality.

Hayaseura, learning the jig is up, releases Kiki from the hidden chamber she’s been in, and lets her loose, where her powers rage out of control and pull everyone in the building into various Id-Wells.

He then goes to the chamber with the machines allowing the well-dives, and upon being confronted, he activates a machine to take him in as he shoots himself, intending to wreak havoc in the collective unconscious or whatever.

In hindsight, they probably could’ve just unplugged him and moved on to resolve the Kiki problem. Instead, our nominal[5] heroes follow him in for the final confrontation!

Then Covid-19 struck, and I had to wait three months for the final episode to get dubbed!

All my dubs are delayed. Which is fine. It’s fine and fair. I don’t want anyone to risk themselves just for my entertainment, but I’m allowed to be a little disappointed by fate.

So after a three month delay, I sit down to watch the final episode, not bothering to rewatch anything because I’ve waited three months and a not insignificant portion of my motivation was to just finish the dang thing.

The final episode was okay. The two detective characters work together to outwit John Walker, sending him to the time displaced universe via a machine in the Id-Well of someone who’s now dead.

Which… upon reflection, isn’t a permanent solution. Both Narihisago and Hondomachi went through that experience, and eventually got ejected to their original Id-Wells, and the death of an Id-Well’s owner doesn’t collapse the place (as proved by Hayaseura/John Walker using his own Id-Well to jump about despite being dead himself.

Outside the Id-Wells, the leader of the Wellside Team puts on a prototype suit version of the machine to attempt to get Kiki to stop making a mess of the building. He meets up with her, refuses to shoot her, and they all agree to put her back and maybe try and solve her problem.

So, at the end of the series, we’re mostly back where we started: using an applied phlebotinum girl to chase serial killers. Which keeps the premise open for a sequel,[6] but they’ll need to write a new overarching plot, as I don’t thinking curing Kiki’s dream projections lines up as a murder mystery. It’s possible, but I find it unlikely.

In the end, I enjoyed the show, and I’m glad I watched it. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a more obscure anime after getting through the Canon of the artform. Still, the amount of female characters suffering, to the point that the plot itself operates off a woman’s suffering is uncomfortable. If there is more, hopefully they can lean off that element.

Also, let me reiterate one last time how Id:Invaded would make a great video game. I buy that Visual Novel in a snap.

Kataal kataal.

-

[1] Not that kids should watch this one. [2] The reason for this limitation is not explained, and is likely unimportant. [3] A desire I wasn’t being facetious about. [4] Most of the murder victims are woman, and there’s a worrying tendency for the killer’s methods to be based on maiming. [5] All three are killers: one a serial killer killer, a second a killer due to self-defense, and the last just a straight serial killer who happened to be useful. [6] And, indeed, a manga continuation started at the same time as the show, so the premise lives.

#CanvasWatches #id:invaded #anime #CanvasReviews

[ohdeerlings]

mushi hime rant hahahhaahfdsjh

just posting my long-winded summary i typed immediately after finished reading to talk about how bad it was; it ended up a lot longer than i intended and now i feel like i should at least keep what i put effort into typing =___=

so it starts with this guy who's been getting recurring nightmares of a girl who shapeshifts into a monster with a huge mouth and teeth eating him

one day a transfer student comes in and looks exactly like her(already outplayed trope of having dreams for no reason of reality that doesnt ever get explained, and it happens lots of times throughout

)around the same time strange events start happening around town: ex, truck driver found by police with markings of a mass insect attack, dogs and pets all getting attacked by swarms of ants and filling up the vet hospitals

the narrative goes back and forth btwn:

- the guy's (Ryoichi's) POV in class where he's just not approaching her and wary of her bc of his dream; he's Not Like Other Boys who get all horny over her bc she's perfect (beautiful, smart, mysteriously quiet, physically adept)

- and btwn this stereotypically wacky/eccentric scientist who was consulted by the police with the first caseturns out the scientist has been tracking down a series of seemingly unrelated murders that follow a clear path ending at Ryoichi's town

throughout the story there's some not so subtle dialogues about the earth going through global warming and species dying

the scientist spiels to some insignificant characters about how humans arent long for this earth, etc etc and how insects are amazing because of their adaptational abilities

he seems to know the transfer student girl, Kikuchi and is trying to track her down

meanwhile kikuchi is character-developed as some clearly dangerous but morally compromised monster-human hybrid who Only Preys on Bad Guys or people around at the wrong time

she gets hit on by some lecherous perv who asks her to karaoke and she actually agrees

there she straddles him and starts kissing him and then these tentacle things come ouit of her throat and go into his mouth

he slumps over and she leaves

the scientist-investigator duo are closing in on her and find the security camera tapes, from that they get a picture and show it around town to try to locate her

meanwhile Ryoichi is still like wow she's Scary and I'm Not Like Other Boys

then he happens to see her just as the old man from the karaoke bar (who seems to have not been killed and is just stumbling around acting drugged) finds her and attacks her

a fucking needle spike comes out of her arm and she defends herself by stabbing him and puncturing his skull and killing him

he sees all that and shes like well guess you're my hostage now and takes him to his house

she's also attracted to him inexplicably, partially because He's Not Like Other Boys and shes like WHY ISNT HE SECRETING PHEROMONES FOR ME(she can smell that

)then there's a weird "erotic" scene where she forces him onto the bed and deep throats him with her mouth tentacles

then there's just a LOT of dialogue thrown at us at once with the scientist just explaining a shit ton to his investigation partner whose character clearly only exists for hte sake of exposition

turns out he had a colleague when he worked on a super secret gov funded experiment called biosphere 2 where they sealed off a forest and bombed it with radiation and pollution n shit

they found that it endured a lot at first and it was because of the bugs (?) that it did until the bugs disappeared and were nowhere to be found, then the forest just died

they looked around and found mutated bugs sleeping inside the earth

his colleague had a daughter back then with a terminal illness so out of desperation he injected the dna of the mutated insects into her, hoping their resilience would change her body to survive the illness

so she lived but she was clearly not human, farming off of her dad - she wasnt able to produce endorphins anymore so her tentacle things would secrete an enzyme to get hte host to produce lots of endorphins and she would take it, creating a dependency

bc she was the only of her species to exist she felt a need to procreate so she also kept trying to mate with her dad 

then we find out that her dad had an identical twin who was raised by foster parents - and thats Ryoichi's dad, making Ryoichi and Kikuchi technically cousins, and genetically half-siblings

so thats why she was Inexplicably drawn to that town, and to him

she was wandering through japan because at some point her dad tried to kill her for humanity's sake, but bc of a random flood their town was wiped out and he wasnt able to kill her and she disappeared/survived the flood thanks to her ability to mutate in environmental changes

meanwhile she's been keeping him hostage to feed off of his endorphins and creating a dependency in him for the enzymes she would give him

until his mom accidentally comes into his room and sees, then she runs away and dies falling down the stairs lol

then he's all like ytou're a monster!!!!! and she threatens to kill the girl-next-door character in his friend group who seemed to have a thing for him/vice versa

so he's like: ill do anything just spare her!!!! 

so she forces him to answer the door when his friends are like why havent u been going to class and tell them to fuck off/be a dick to them

while theyre walking outside after to go somewhere else the scientist sees the girl (Chiken) and is like hEY you look sad and depressed there's nothing possibly else that could make u feel like that except having your childhood crush abducted by a halfhuman-half locust succubus

he shows her the picture and she recognizes her and leads him back to the house

then he gets a rifle to try to shoot her and theres a whole fight scene where she uses her pheromones to call upon the insects to swarm

ryoichi is useless because he found his moms corpse lying in the bathtub getting consumed by maggots she asked to fully decompose the body

then the scientist gets a couple shots in and fends her off, meanwhile random police get in the way to stop what looks just like a home invasion and she disappears

they take ryoichi into the hospital bc all the endorphin harvesting and brain fuckery has him weak

then ryoichi's dad comes in and is like how do you recognize who i am!! to the scientist who explains

oh yeah that's the point at which we find out ryoichi and kikuchi are related

and then he's still having dreams where she vores him and he's both horrified and wants it

meanwhile entire city is getting swarmed by insects in a disaster scene with society breaking down etc etc

kikuchi tracks them down by following ryoichi's scent (?)

then they have one last battle where they try to use the dad as a distraction bc he looks identical to her dead father

and somehow the scientist just FINDS specific chemicals/enzymes to throw on her and weaken the part of her thats an insect

also earlier before she got there he  whips out the mutant insect dna out of nowhere? like the extremely valuable dna that he should have no business just finding/still carrying around

and is like

hey lets inject ourselves with this because humanity is getting wiped out and attacked by insects rn anyway, the only way to live i sto adapt

but no one does it (lmao pointless inclusion) 

then they defeat her in a big struggle with ryoichi getting farmed on by her again and instead of just taking it has a Miraculous realization past the drugs that oh no this person is killing everyone i love

and CHOMPS on her tentacle thigns while their mouths are connected

scientist injuects her with more random dna he has to compromise her mutant dna and the insect swarming stops bc of the internal biological shit happening and she's writhing oon the ground

then looks like she dies

they try to escape the basement theyve been in because its suddenly flooding (no reason lmfao)

on the way out they get stopped by a teacher that she pricked with her spike earlier on who's been missing from school and his "insect bite" changed his behavior/ultimately made him into a different part human part bug who tries to kill them

then kikuchi who -surprise- hadnt died!@!! shows up again but now she's blond and looks almost exactly like Ryoichi (who is blond) because the thing the scientist injected in her enabled her to adapt to the water and she's still a  mutatn but Less Evil Somehow and he's like i thOUGHT U DIED.... I ACTUALLY LOVE YOU.. 

then epilogue is the scientist goign through his life normally and the city is recovered from the insect swarm and he sees another random global warming thing in the news and is like

“its only a matter of time before humanity perishes, but now is not that time....we're good.............,,,,,,,for now...and i know somewhere underwater something of humanity's legacy will live on”

and it cuts to ryoichi and kikuchi hugging in a very Shape of Water way underwater with tentacle thigns cause they went to live in the ocean

then there s a bad window for a sequel showing the teacher guy - SURPRISE - not actuially dead and crunching on humans in a sewer somewhere

STILL A FUN READ

#summary #review #manga #insect princess #mushihime #mushi hime #trashpost

[tube-thoughts-blog]

Vol. 10

zero stars - terrible, 1/2 a star - dull, 1 star - folly, 1 1/2 stars - lacking, 2 stars - fair, 2 1/2 stars - decent, 3 stars - terrific

Killer Couples: Toybox Killings *An interstate prostitute escapes from a Truth or Consequences, New Mexico "rape dungeon" after being held hostage by a near retirement park ranger party animal and his much younger but still nearing middle aged yet still a white trash party girl at heart lover and willing accomplice. Oxygen network thrives on this kind of investigative murder porn, but gives mixed signals when the show's main sponsor is Oxygen's previews for a feel good family sitcom featuring Damon Wayans.* either zero or 2 stars

Breaking Greenville: You Are Now Safe *An orange tanned, obnoxious news anchor goes weird on the air and starts having a midlife crisis while talking inappropriately to the viewers about his pending divorce. The same guy brings together his news crew, in his small apt, to give them facial masks and it gets surreal looking at newspeople being reality tv stars buying for fifteen minutes of fame with these strange painted faces. Then, a nerdy meteorologist gives an awkward report from a tornado bunker, followed by a spunky morning reporter trying her hardest to be serious for a story of a church burning. A news veteran, with a walrus mustache, gives the spunky reporter advice, while inhaling a chocolate covered donut, to cover more stories about happy topics like food.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Plastic Surgery, Nip-pocalypse *Put a bag over your head, if you must, but don't put a butterfly tattoo on your ankle.* close to 3 stars

The Ben Stiller Show: Season 1 Episode 12 *"There's nothing like being part of the team. That feeling that you're just an insignificant part of a much larger scheme." All for one and one for all. You can't handle the truth or pull the sword from the stone. "Human flesh is the ultimate fun food."* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Look Around You: Ghosts *They're there in their room.* close to 3 stars

Hippies: Muddy Hippies *Pitching a tent with the socialist state, landing in doo doo, and selling out to the bank.* 2 1/2 stars

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Season 1 Episode 4 *The original Gong Show had acts more absurd and interesting than 20 something hipster nerd that's kind of good at yo yo or stripper catholic school chick lesbo act that's entertaining only at bachelor and frat parties.* running from 1 to close to 2 stars

=== Ghosts Adventures, Aftershocks with Zak Bagans: Zozo

*D-bag Zak puts on a sports jacket over his muscle shirt to give some former haunted people, from the show, a bit of paranormal therapy, Dr. Phil style.

The poor sap on this episode gets hammered with accusations that his conjuring of a demon via a oujia board (available at toy stores and gag gift shops in malls nationwide) led to his ex-wife having an affair with the nasty spirit and to her current stay in jail.

You can't make this stuff up. Oh, wait... you can, and they did, and it's as laughable to watch as it sounds.

Also, and I'm not making this up, there's some kind of contention, that needed to be explained by host and guest, about said lady's crotch odor actually not being her fault and instead was a sulfur smell from the pits of hell.

No kidding.*

1 star

-----------------------------------------

---- 12:01 Beyond --- Episode #5 --- Love Is Sex Misspelled ---------

*RKO cartoon - Cupid Gets His Man: An all out Cherub amorous assault on an old maid and an old bachelor.* 2 stars

*Old school, praise-filled promo for the cult classic Dr. Caligari 1989.* 3 stars

*Mr. Lobo sends one out to the lovers who like to "cop a feel."* 2 1/2 stars

*"Eavesdrop on America's darkest secrets." Intimate Secrets "Adults only. $2.00 per minute. Classic sleazy 900 number phone service.* 3 stars

*Ninja the Mission Force - "N" Is For Ninja: "Keep your money in your shoe." and your heart off your pajama sleeve.* close to 3 stars

*Super retro anti-drug cartoon circa late 60s or early 70s from Hanna Barbera.* 3 stars

*Republic Pictures Serials - The Crimson Ghost in Chapt. 5 'Flaming Death': Collision course on a collision course.* 2 stars

*Ballroom Dance Floor (interesting music video inspired by the Great Gatsby.* 2 1/2 stars

*Grindhouse trailer showing an "Oath of Green Blood."* 2 1/2 stars

*Mr. Lobo romances a potted plant.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

*A big costume heart shows up and sings to Mr. Lobo and his potted lady.* 2 1/2 stars

*Tom Sizemore in "Bad Love": Tom is Lenny -a lowlife, jealous, pathetic, controlling, abusive, mostly terrible lover/boyfriend to this short-haired city chick, who could do much better but is too dumb to try, in a saxophone and soft piano filled skid row setting softcore sex in the mid 90s romance flick.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Videotape advertisement for satellite signal descrambler to have "American eXXXtasy" available to all those using a video cipher 2 for only a few hundred bucks. Get all the porn you want, same as an average schmoe in a trucker hat and a plaid shirt.* 3 stars

*A colorized King Kong goes car shopping for a Volkswagen to haul his captive sweetie around in a 1960s or early 70s car advertisement.* close to 3 stars

*Mr. Lobo can't get any privacy or satisfaction from the invasive Heart mascot, a cloud of poisonous urinal cake gas, or a post-apocalyptic plant lady mishap.* 2 stars

*Classic TNT Monstervision theme song, sung by Joe Bob Briggs, intro video where Joe Bob can't get any love from the hot, white trash bimbo TNT "Mail Girl."* 3 stars

*"Red Nightmare": Jack Webb stands on suburban street corners, staring into windows, abducting family men, who won't get in line and act like a good American, sending them to Soviet society where their freedoms are stripped away. Jack Webb is too ignorant to see the irony of his own thoughts and actions.* 1 star

*Superman in "Jungle Drums": "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!" Superman saves Lois from stereotype African savages who are trying to sacrifice her for not spilling top U.S. Navy ship location secrets to the savages' Nazi overlords." 3 stars

*"Women fear being raped, but it's double the fear if it's in outerspace and by aliens." in this grindhouse quality trailer for "Insemenoid."* 3 stars

*Colorful, quirky, scale model filled XXX outerspace adventure with horny space women, Harry Potter look-a-like with his Hogwarts professor sidekick, and overtly gay alien ship's computer voice. "Spaced Out." a grindhouse style trailer.* 3 stars

*"Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders" another retro trailer.* 3 stars

*Mr. Lobo is the last man on earth, left to his own devices -licking telephone receivers.* close to 2 1/2 stars

*Zero stars for the annoying voice over lady who complained during everyone of her intros. Was an enhancement the first few episodes of 1201, but for this episode it was a real detraction. Not sure if it was part of the act, or if it was a legitimate show of feelings. Either way, it sucked. Get rid of it, and her, if necessary.*

===========================================================

VH1 sneak preview "Hot Grits" *Another insipid reality mess featuring "good looking" people, this time the cast being overprivileged 20 somethings from the southern United States (A number of other cable networks have similar shows. So, it's already a tired premise.) and VH1 really is daring its idiotic viewers to "hate watch" the awful people and antics on this steaming vomit, served in a bowl, excuse for a tv show.* zero stars

Red Letter Media presents Best of the Worst: Blood Debts, The Tomb, and Undefeatable *Generic Charles Bronson with a tiny cannon and a wife named simply "his wife" in the movie's credits, then a Indiana Jones rip off that has nearly zero action... limited stars' screentime... and phone filled exposition, followed finally by a mom jeans karate lady in a universe where everyone knows karate and an eyeball ripping out serial rapist is on the loose.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

American Horror Story - Asylum: Continuum *Communal state of delusion.* 3 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Hellphones versus Interthreat *Electronic etiquette.* close to 3 stars

Forensic Files: Bitter Potion *Poisoned by Pie. Scratch that. Poisoned by Coca-Cola. Better yet, poisoned by a member of MENSA. A real 'Walter White type' chemist / former meth cook.* 3 stars

Weird Science: Fatal Lisa *"Getting it on (on the hood of a Dodge Viper, which is true love)" with a genie who won't take no for an answer.* 3 stars

Wizards and Warriors: Night of Terror *For the night is long and filled with spiders.* 3 stars

Swamp Thing: The Prometheus Parabola *John Wayne and Arcane have a tech-war shootout showdown.* either 1 or 3 stars

Viper: Firehawk *"Beware the Bandersnatch" Urban assault and compromising situations of a vehicular nature.* either 1 1/2 stars or close to 3 stars

Spicy City: Manos Hands *Redbeans, bongo musica, and bruja? brewha?* close to 3 stars

X Files: Darkness Falls *Pitch black.* 3 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Mother Earth Bitch *Throwing a live chicken, wearing a jet pack, into the air is not pollution.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Forensic Files: Fatal Fungus *Mold takes hold in the ghetto.* 2 1/2 stars

Gargoyles: Reawakening *Castle and community.* close to 3 stars

Hill Street Blues: Gatorbait *Passive aggressive "Prelude to oblivion."* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

Robocop the series: Trouble In Delta City *Strange side effects. Tame violence and hokey characters are just fine when the satire is funny and biting.* close to 3 stars

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Season 1 episode 5 *This show is so far removed from the spirit of the original Gong Show that it reminds one of a skanky Hard Rock Cafe amateur talent night. Adam Sandler's production company "Happy Madison" is in charge of the show, so that says something about the quality and the reason why this episode featured two unworthy, obnoxious female friends of his who were also "actresses" in one of his terrible movies (Something something Zohan).* 1 1/2 stars

Everything Is Terrible -----------------

*Family Easter Hell!: "Because he lives, we can face tomorrow. Now, here's an egg." A decorated egg.* 3 stars

*Christ Or Die: Too busy to hear about salvation? Think it's nonsense? Boom, comically horrible death without redemption.* 3 stars

*Jesus Has A Big Dick!: #BOING!# "That's right!" Gitty up, little doggie.* 3 stars

----------------------------

VH1 Classic --- Pop Up Video --- Episode 3

*Meredith Brooks - "Bitch": A female dog was the first earth creature to orbit in outerspace.* 3 stars with pop ups 2 1/2 stars without pop ups

*Gin Blossoms - "Allison Road": According the the U.S. Census Bureau, you are watching television right now.* 3 plus stars with pop ups 3 stars without pop ups

*Madonna - "Take A Bow": Madonna wanted to get knocked up by Dennis Rodman. True fact. And true that she is as pretentious as this gorgeous 90s artsy music video.* 3 plus stars with pop ups 3 stars without pop ups

*Milli Vanilli - "Girl You Know It's True": The only thing true about Milli Vanilli was they were both lip syncing.* 3 plus stars with pop ups 3 stars (guilty pleasure) without pop ups

*Bobby McFerrin - "Don't Worry, Be Happy": "Happiness is a psychiatric disorder."* 3 plus stars with pop ups 3 stars without pop ups

----------------------------------------------

Look Around You: Sulphur *"9 hundred billion, billion, billion, billion matches."* 3 stars

Twitch City: People Who Fight Too Much *"Alleged spontaneous nature of..." dynamics.* 3 stars

Crossballs, the debate show: Voting, Electile Dysfunction *Don't "Rock the Vote!" More people coupon than vote. Voting should be fun like the lottery or the Pepsi Challenge.* 3 stars

The Ben Stiller Show: season 1 episode 13 *"Doomed souls wander the earth, unfit for either Heaven or Hell." Special guest Howie Mandell, and a Jeffersons reunion.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

"Bad Dudes Versus Dragon Ninja" (A Data East arcade game) *In 2015, Islamic terrorists are beheading innocents, Hillary is once again running for the highest office in the land, and a moron lands a gyrocopter on the lawn of the capitol building. In the 1980s, we had a president named "Ronnie" and he was kidnapped by ninjas.* close to 3 stars

"Shaq Fu" (*Brought to us by PEPSI and ego*) *Shaq wanders into an Oriental antiques shop, the kind that would sell a Mogwai to a stupid Westerner. The little old man sends him to retrieve a golden child from an ancient realm where Shaq ventures across what looks like the map from Super Mario World for the SNES and there he beats up voodoo women, cat women, and stereotype Universal style monsters.* 2 stars

Hippies: Disgusting Hippies *Young punks think Simon Pegg's hippie newsletter editor character is a cunt.* 3 stars

Weird Science: Killer Party *"Did you just turn my parents into teenage party animals!?!"* 3 stars

The Greatest American Hero: Reseda Rose *First off, it's crummy being an 80s kid with a flakey parent who won't spend her weekend with a kid at the zoo, 'cause she's too busy with her acting in commercials career. Then The Greatest American Hero breaks Superman's privacy rule by using his x-ray vision powers to peak through walls at a cocktail waitress hogtied by Russian undercover spies.* close to 3 stars

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Season 1 Episode 6 *More b list celebrities flirting with Las Vegas "rawker" looking skanks and trying way too hard to be edgy talent/comedy routines.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

Bob and Margaret: The Dental Convention *Oral hypnotism. Bob's "matter of fact" attitude charms the masses and puts off his smarmy, new age dental clinic dental school classmate at a dental convention in Frankfurt, Germany.* close to 3 stars

Flinch (Vertigo - DC Comics) ------

*Mostly White: Women lose their small child during the insipid panic surrounding a big department store's Christmas rush. Reminds one of a more bleak Storm of the Century by Stephen King.* close to 3 stars

*The Harvester: Surgery of harvesting a deadbeat's organs goes through, even with the moral dilemma of the supposed braindead deadbeat not being dead.* 2 1/2 stars

*Sitter!: A neurotic slacker gets stuck babysitting his thug friend's wrapped in plastic dead stripper girlfriend's body that he shows up at his apartment with.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

-----------------------------------

--- The Ben Stiller Show: Unaired Sketches

*An absurd and kooky wrestling characters battle royale. Ben dresses up like a deformed Ron Perlman and along with Bob Odenkirk and Andy Dick predicts the sad, pathetic lives of what would become "furries" in a mascot competition.

'Hard Edition,' a Hard Copy tabloid tv show parody keeps catching a horny, teenage Andy Dick whacking off to nudey magazines.

Three's Company era Don Knotts portrayed by Andy Dick joins a spandex wearing and lasso swinging Ben Stiller infomercial workout expert and his dominatrix.

Bob Odenkirk is a creepy, conspiracy theorist sitting on a bench in a park rambling about cancer, Dick Clark, Elvis, adult diaper cartels, tainted peanut butter assassinations.*

(I can see why some of these didn't make the cut, but still funny.)

3 stars

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crossballs, the debate show: Sex Battle USA *A flamboyant pansexual Matt Besser character gets bitchy with a conservative reverend who believes the sexes should act their sex. A feminist has to explain the 1964 Civil Rights act allowed for women's rights not to be sexually exploited in the workplace. Ha. A business consultant thinks that the WNBA should dress their ladies like the Lingerie Football League so that they'll stop be unsuccessful in the ratings and attendance. A crazy inventor presents a robot vagina for the workplace.* close to 3 stars

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (SNES) *So we've got an evil sorceress Latoya Jackson look-a-like, a turkey behind a computer terminal, and a jacked up toad zipping its way through hordes of pig-beasts wearing amateur wrestling singlets and viking helmets, raccoons with magnets, moles on checker board pieces all through fast flying obstacles and platform puzzle levels, like one where the toad has to hang on for a ride on the back of two tropical snakes through the holes of their tunnel nest. A rare gem alongside Donkey Kong Country and Rayman.* close to 3 stars

Death Rattle #18 (Kitchen Sink Comix) -------

*Bulto the Cow Camp, Thirty Years Later....: Historical and allegorical tales of ancient deposits of precious minerals sought by 19th century men of manifest destiny with gold and silver twinkling in their beady eyes.* 3 stars

*The Old Wisconsin That I Knew: Musings of an early 20th century bigot thinking back on when he and the white man could exploit and show unpunished cruelty to the red man out in the frontier of Wisconsin. Thanks to nature's natural ways, a cruel fate meets the old bastard in the most bleak and darkly poetic way possible, spilling his guts before his eyes and leaving his bones to be drenched by pounding rains and dried by the menacing sun.* 3 stars

*Small Acts of Revenge: A loner, whose overbearing parents still haunt him from the grave, tries to escape reality into the grotesque world of Tales from the Crypt style comics. That is when he's not being haunted by the gruesome visages of the victims of his wrongfully applied revenge.* close to 3 stars

*When I Grow Up: Kids playing make believe, on a suburban lawn, see a shooting star. A somber girl makes a wish, and strangely they begin aging and acting out the drama of their teenage through adulthood to middle age and death life sorrows.* close to 3 stars

----------------------------------

The Angry Video Game Nerd: Atari Porn *In the early days of videogames, designers were happy just to be able to pixelate  penises, humping, and ejaculating. It was that immature. Take history's tragic a-hole, General Custer, and have him dodging arrows so that he can poke a naked Indian chick tied to a cactus. Have a guy jerking off on top of a building with willing naked bimbos below to catch his falling semen. How bout a topless witch squirting milk to men with their goobers poking out of their pants? Or even a juvenile fantasy of a poorly pixelated naked chick stalking a neighborhood and breaking into houses to hump men in their sleep?* 1 star for the shitty games 3 stars for Nerd enduring the absurdity of it all

Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City (Electronic Arts for Super Nintendo) *When Michael Jordan was the most exciting athlete in the world, he was careful about how he had his image used. He'd play Larry Bird in a ridiculous game of h-o-r-s-e for a Big Mac or Pepsi, and he'd sell overpriced sneakers in an arthouse commercial co-starring and directed by Spike Lee, but you couldn't live out your dreams of being like Mike in basketball videogames like the awesome arcade dunkfest NBA JAM. No. At the time, you could play this game and bounce a basketball around a haunted, flooded, bat infested house / dungeon to platform hop and rescue Michael Jordan's NBA All Star team-mates.* 1 1/2 stars

Look Around You: Music *Don't play the forbidden notes.* 2 1/2 stars

Obscurus Lupa Presents: Pocket Ninja *If you were an 80s or early 90s kid, you were a martial arts spazz. You watched Ninja Turtles, you watched 3 Ninjas (barf), Surf Ninjas (laughs). and you were a threat to kick another kid or adult in the nuts while stupidly attempting karate. This one, Pocket Ninja, is a relic of its time. It's a cheap and direct to video IMDB bottom 100 "movie" featuring poor editing, awful slapstick in place of entertaining chop sockey, bad acting 90s brats, and a lot of taking itself not serious at all while thinking it's funny when it's not.* 2 1/2 stars for Obscurus Lupa's review and 1 star for the movie clips

=== Dead Rising *2006* (All story cutscenes in movie form)

*I'm not here to discuss the sandbox gameplay.

The cutscenes play like any other zombie outbreak flick, and nicely, with the usual mad science government conspiracy gone wrong.

This time with a theme of Americans' insatiable lust for red blooded meat and the abuse of the third world to get it.

Like with their Resident Evil series, Capcom nails the ambiance of a survival horror story with the crawling up on your shoulder sounds and music cues, and the mall setting is a nice homage to Dawn of the Dead.

Expect over the top acting performances from the CGI created stars and voice actors.

But unfortunately like more recent Capcom survival horror games it strays off the path with too big of a narrative scope and not knowing when to stop and what genre to stay in

(zombie wasps, Oriental stereotype psychopath butchers and grocery store managers gone mad, and an ending involving a military jeep battle with a tank commanded by the type of military a-hole like in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket).

Other than that it fits in nicely with the zombie revival craze of the 2000s.*

2 1/2 stars

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Xenophage, Alien Bloodsport (Story Mode) *A "faces of meth" David Duchovny look-a-like, in a Canadian tuxedo, along with a Gillian Anderson look-a-like, both get abducted by the United Federation of Planets & Hokey Outer Space Martial Arts Tournaments. Nick (Duchovny) is midly disturbed by this. Think Mortal Kombat meets Celebrity Deathmatch levels of uncanny valley faces on the two humans. Of course, these two everyday Joe and Jane pair can hurl energy blasts from the palms of their hands, as requirement by all fighting games. The lizard / insect alien creature designs are at least visually interesting and deserve to belong in a better mid-90s sci fi PC game.* 1 star

River City Ransom (NES) *This game lives up to its name. You pretty much walk along the streets, by a river, in a nice Japanese (posing for American, I guess?) city, getting hit in the back of the head by "student" thugs, with street gang weapons, as you try to rescue your girlfriend from a high ranking crime lord named Slick. Sounds like the plot for many other 80s beat 'em ups / karate movies, and it is. Charming little title with the bite sized NES and cute little Japanese flare, including a bad side of town called "Generic Guy Territory" or something along those lines. And don't worry about the enemies, because our hero has a superfast kick attack that would make Street Fighter's Chun Li's loins quiver.* 2 1/2 stars

"No Exit" (Amiga) *A 2D fighter that looks like it pre-dates both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. More like Mortal Kombat, though, and a possible influence (?) on the series. It contains small character sprites but they can perform special moves like turning into killer fish and screaming banshee faces. There's even a hilarious finishing move sequence where the loser walks around headless, with the head floating just there, before they collapse into a  pool of blood and electric sparks. The backgrounds are dark and gothic with demonic statues and menacing trees with faces, again like Mortal Kombat. Also there's an intro screen / possible box art with a regular Joe street fighting man set against a dark and gritty cityscape with the 'Satanic-goat-horned' image of what must be the main villain against the background, and that's just pure exploitation goodness for ya.* 2 1/2 stars

Everything Is Terrible: 2 Minute Super Soul Brother *"Doing it" in the name of science (?), money (?), bulletproof skin, mad science midgets, and big tittied blonde women.* 3 stars

Mortal Kombat: Defenders of Stupidity *Kombat krazy white chick special operative in gymnastics attire, untrustorthy ninjas of all kinds of variety, bumbling super computer wizard Native American stereotypes, and a black dude with bionic arms who calls a Thunder God the unflattering insult name of "girlfriend."* 3 stars

Eternal Champions (Sega Genesis) *A 1920s gangster, who knows kung fu, is teleported to a mystical martial arts tournament after his death. Fight against trident wielding mer-men, prehistoric brutes, neo ninja chicks, and cyborg dudes in a colorful Street Fighter 2 clone.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

Red Letter Media presents Best of the Worst ---------

*Ghetto Blaster: An urban warfare expert returns to his home city and finds it full of crime. After the convenience store robbery death of his dad and the brutal burning to death of his old black man friend (and his alley cat), the guy decides to take action. Pulling off mildly harmful clown pranks on the goofy acting gang bullies around town.* either 1 star or 2 stars

*Terror In Beverly Hills: "Terrorists have kidnapped the President's daughter and are holding her hostage in the old bean factory." (PfffHAA!) Cue keyboard cat-lady and Frank (totally not Sylvester) Stallone.* either 1 star or between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

*Killing American Style: Elephant Man look-a-like Robert Zadar and his gang of escaped convicts and sex perverts pull off a violent / half assed home invasion "thriller" at the home of a Rico Suave look-a-like and Steven Segal martial arts expert.* either zero stars (uncomfortable family murder / rape), 1 star, or 2 stars

Red Letter Media agrees that Terror In Beverly Hills is Best of the Worst

-----------------------------------------------------

Natsume and Milton Bradley present "Abadox" *Imagine Metroid for the NES, only with monsters ripped from the minds of H.R. Giger and Clive Barker.* 3 stars

"Guardians of the Hood" (Atari Arcade) 1992 *Some Jersey Shore rejects battle their way through a poorly digitized bad side of town filled with hookers and gangbangers and flashing perverts. Cheered on by a haggard looking gym owner similar to Mickey from Rocky. And unconvincingly menaced by a lipstick wearing model in "guy drag." In a tacky twist ending (to go along with the tacky rest of the game), the "Big Boss" (the model) takes off her old school gangster disguise and has a final fight with our steroid muscled and orange tan heroes while she wears dominatrix attire.* 1star

Everything Is Terrible: 3 Minute Bulletproof *Gary Busey invents and overuses the catchphrase "butthorn." Whatever that means.* 3 stars

"Kakuto Chojin" (X-BOX) *In the early 2000s, industrial techno noise & nu-metal guitar riffs were a grating chorus to America's bleeding eardrums, and the same "xtremez" who enjoyed this were likely to take Fight Club literally. This game represents the kind of turn of Y2K, gritty, urban fist to face revivals supposedly going on in back alleys and parking garages across cities nationwide. Gritty, but pretty in the same way Ninja Gaiden could be on the X-Box hardware. And featuring a nice presentation effect of having the camera do a 360 degree slow motion pan around each KO. The most memorable thing about the game is the controversy around one character's Muslim extremist dialogue in the game. This lead to it being pretty much dead on arrival in the American videogame climate of the early days after 9/11.* between 2 and 2 1/2 stars

"JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" (Dreamcast) *Over the top manga presentation style with characters drawn in the same way mannequins' faces are both appealing and appalling. Each fighter fights alongside a spirit / avatar being / creature. It's like the Monty Python cartoon, but creepier, cousin to all the other highly animated 2D Japanese fighting games of the 90s. Funniest moment, that I witnessed, being when a steam-roller gets dropped on a pug sized dog character and the opponent begins pounding the steam-roller, with his fists, as the dog whimpers beneath.* 2 1/2 stars

"Dark Edge" Sega 1992 (Arcade) *Set in a sprite art pixelated and nifty cyberpunk dystopia. Battle it out as leather clad ninja chicks on hoverboards, mech dudes with missiles and flying torpedo dive attacks, biological monsters, another guy in a monkey-fighting-style inspired mech suit, and a final boss that's a techno ghoul nightmare like out of Frank Miller's Ronin. Fighters can move around each other giving the illusion of early 3D gameplay, and featuring the upbeat style of 90s Japanese video game music and bad "Engrish" phrases like "Wound One" instead of round one.* close to 2 1/2 stars

"Strider" Capcom (Arcade) *"All sons of old gods die!" Pretty dramatic, eh? Well, if Emperor Palpatine made a deal with space pirates, Amazon women, and robotic commies you wouldn't need no Jedi, Wonder Woman, Captain America, or Flash Gordon to save the day. Just take one arcade token and about 15 minutes and let a wall climbing ninja do what the galactic rebels couldn't do in a trilogy of movies.* close to 3 stars

Everything Is Terrible: 3 Minute Netforce *'So dated that it's funny' fearmongering about the dangers of global e-terror during the early days of the internet.* 3 stars

---- Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (Nintendo 64)

*The world of pro wrestling is a niche part of entertainment culture.

Fans watch it for a variety of reasons:

kids who enjoy the heroic action, adults (who never grew up) for a more nostalgic reason, fandom fans who admire the celebrity surrounding the hunky dudes and buxom babes of the sport (er... sports-entertainment), and the internet wrestling community who dissect the current product and the past eras of the product and consider it an artform with varying degrees of level of quality of product and performance.

Well, you can't get more niche than a Japanese version of pro wrestling and a pro wrestling game that was made in the late 90s.

The popular AKI "No Mercy" wrestling engine featuring a legendary wrestler and anime character "Tiger Mask Number 2" and portrayed by a legendary Japanese wrestler (Misawa) who tragically died while performing his "art."

In this game, it's made weirder by the fact the game features a crowd of cardboard cut out Japanese wrestling fans.

Yeah, pro wrestling is niche, and weird, but it's fun, just like this wrestling game featuring great action and a great game engine that's had a lasting appeal of fun gameplay to play or watch for close to two decades.*

3 stars

============================================================

"Buriki One" (SNK) 1999 *Remember that scene in the movie "Lost In Translation" where Bill Murray couldn't get the tone right for his Japanese whiskey commercial? That's sort of what this game is like and that weird period of time when combat sports mayhem was trying to figure out just how to go about what would eventually become mixed martial arts like the UFC. Different styles of throwdown meet here, on the mat, including everything from karate to pro wrestling to low impact elderly ancient Chinese exercise technique (jk). It's interesting, but it works about as well and is almost as boring as the first time these different styles of sport met when boxing clashed with karate in the infamous Ali versus Inoki fight where one challenger, afraid of the other's fists, chose to lie on the ring floor and kick at the other like a scared rabbit.* either 1/2 a star or close to 2 1/2 stars

"3 Count Bout" (SNK) *Superficial and on the surface is a stigma when it comes to video game graphics. As soon as developers could make 3D and fans could get their hands on it, we entered into a trying time. Blocky and often ugly characters replaced sprite animation because it was the new thing. Dreary attempts at 3D environments were as fun to look at as getting about an inch away from a dirty, grey concrete wall and cracking your skull against it. Things have improved from those early days of 3D graphic experimentation, but at the time, I would have rathered stuck with something like this game. An early 1990s arcade button smasher featuring colorful kabuki ninjas throwing big bad Mad Max movie inspired bruisers around & into electrified deathtraps in a cheesy, and dated, --beat'em up-- 'eye candy' grappler.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

---- "Real Bout Fatal Fury Special" --Level 7 Ultra Hard-- (SNK Arcade)

*Playing as a Jacki Chan inspired Hong Kong super-cop wielding a set of nunchaku through a series of scantly clad karate babes, little old sensei who morphs into huge muscle bound badass, and dance fighting dudes from the Caribbean.

Finally beating the purple haired Euro-dictator-themed final boss, one would think that an arcade battler would be done munching one's quarters.

But think again. During the celebrating credits, the music changes to a wind instrumental samurai movie sounding theme and one is transported through a  series of sliding open doors featuring beautiful classic Japanese artwork of feudal warriors.

It stops at a martial arts badass with his back turned towards the camera and standing amidst huge samurai warrior oni statues in a menacingly eerie flame lit dojo.

It's secret final boss, by the name of Geese Howard, who looks like a handsome American corp executive or presidential candidate and is ripped with muscles and decked out in kung fu threads.

The screen reads the bold words "Nightmare," as he precedes to backfist you in the mush and charge up monster truck tire sized energy blasts to pummel and embarass you with and make you feel like a loser, even though you beat the game.

It's cheap, you feel like a klutz, but it's pure unadulterated martial arts tournament cliche movie/game exploitation goodness to the last clud to the floor in agonizing defeat.*

3 stars

=========================================================

"Ninja Master's" (SNK/ADK) 1996 *From an artistic eye viewpoint, feudal Japan was one moody place. In this setting, one might witness a lone swordsman standing in a rainstorm with a flash of lightning to reveal ninja assassins creeping up on him, or a samurai sword clash in front of a desolate and overgrown farm overran by crows, then maybe another bloody encounter on a lone pier watched over by a willow tree above other trees in the newly flooded river with mountains in the distance, an honorable duel to the death might come in a cave filled with bats, and moonlit temples often played host to battles with evil samurai overlords like the dreaded Nobunaga and his sentient, burning blade.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

"Weaponlord" (Namco for the SNES) *Long before Namco mastered weapon based combat games with the Soul Calibur series, they jumped in on the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat 2D fighter action. What it boils down to is stone aged brutes bashing other stone aged brutes, Viking women, and demonic brutes in the skull with swords, axes, and huge rocks tied to huge clubs with leather. Featuring  an artistic style similar to a Frank Frazetta drawing -thanks to comic arist Simon Bisley who is famous for his dark fantasy artwork in Judge Dredd & Lobo. Eyecandy for fans of 1980s heavy metal album covers, sword and sorcery flicks of the same era, and readers of Conan the Barbarian pulps and comics.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

---"Sexy fights and brutal deaths in" **The Black Heart** (indie) *An indie (Mugen, a form of online fighting game mashup creator and sharing service) 2D fighting game with over the top super moves similar to Marvel vs. Capcom. However, darker than Capcom's own horror based fighter Darkstalkers. Inspired by the more bloody Silent Hill, Hellraiser, and the Japanese ghost genre of The Ring. It does feature a few comical characters like a twig man who smokes pot and wears a green suit like another silly horror villain in Warwick Davis's Leprechaun. Also there's a sexy "fan service" spider-lady who looks like something out of a Tim Burton stop motion movie.* 2 1/2 stars

"Abobo's Big Adventure" (New Grounds & I-Mockery) *The alternate history imagined tale of a random baddie from the arcade and NES classic "Double Dragon." The bald, mean faced, and lovingly dumb, newly protagonist murders his way through tons of classic NES game characters. It's a tribute / parody with a very morbidly entertaining sense of humor.* 3 stars

"Martial Masters" 2001 *Playing like a brightly colored cousin to Capcom or SNK fighters, but featuring a setting and cast from China of old. Gorgeously pastoral with scenes of old men sweeping the floors of temples as cranes pose gently near about, a monkey boy and his actual monkey friends dancing around, and children sitting in a meadow playing with and feeding a panda that's rolling to and fro for their amusement, along with the typical market scenes of the genre. For fans, like myself, of Shaw Brothers kung fu movies and modern fare like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.* close to 3 stars

Everything is Terrible: 3 Minute Unborn 2 *Overly dramatic bad horror movie about a killer baby that's such a horrible looking prop that it's even harder to take seriously than it already would be. Ends with mom having had enough and elbowing monster baby in the face, several hard times, before blowing herself and junior (and even more unbelievably the house) up with the old homemade explosive device in the microwave trick.* either 1 star or 3 stars

Dave's Nostalgia Trip: "Big Bang Pro Wrestling" (SNK) Neo Geo Pocket Color --2000-- *For a handheld wrestling game this has a nice presentation. The crowd is lively, the tunes have a headbobbing gentleness that's not so grating, and the action packs a bang (even if the game is bite sized). Any pro wrestling game where you can pull off a top rope moonsault has an instant fun factor.* close to 3 stars

Weird Science: Sex Ed *"You don't understand the meaning of the words funky cold medina, shoop a doop, zoom uh zoom zoom in the boom boom."* 2 1/2 stars

Manimal: High Stakes *Wild horses couldn't chase as much tail as Manimal.* either 1 star or close to 3 stars

Ed the Happy Clown: Issue 6 of 9 (Drawn & Quarterly Publications) *A micro-dimension has been discovered when the tiny head of another dimension's Earth's president Ronald Reagan appears as the penis head of a loser named Ed. Tiny pygmie savages, of the city, want to worship it as a penis god. And a tv show/government agency of science wants to investigate this other dimension, but they turn against the whole idea, rather violently, when they discover the only way to again contact this other dimension is to put the other dimension's Ron Reagan into a dimensional gateway that also happens to be the anus of a dead man. It's not the necrophillia that they have a problem with, it's the homosexuality.* 3 stars

"Burn: Cycle" (Phillips Compact Disc Interactive) --1994-- *"Sol Cutter has something on his mind... ...in two hours it's going to explode!" You kind of know what to expect from a dated full motion videogame when you hear something like that as a tag line. This one has all the cliches of the cyberpunk 90s genre: cityscape right out of BladeRunner only with poor 90s cgi, flying cars, high tech espionage plot, sinister new-age cult, cyber addiction, hipster nite club with neo-jazz music, and a main character who narrates his broken down in the gutter life like a noir tragic figure. It's like Johnny Mneumonic (sp?) with an "Everybody betray me!" Tommy Wiseau level of bad acting, yet dull.* between 1 1/2 and 2 stars

Super Star Wars --SNES-- (Lucas Arts) *Storywise, it's the even more juvenile imagined parts of Episode 4 turned into a run and gun sidescroller. But in reality, it's set in a galaxy far, far away. A very long time ago before the edited special editions and prequels killed most of the magic of the series. And before Disney dug up the holy corpse to cash in on it. It's Luke blasting first and asking questions never, pulling an Annie Starkiller and wasting countless lives of Jawas, Sandpeople, and Stormtroopers. He hadn't really got a handle on the whole more peaceful side of the force yet. You can get Chewbacca (for a more whimsical approach) or Han (for a more morally ambiguous path). Still, it feels rather repetitive and very Duke Nuke'em instead of Jedi Knight or loveable space rascals.* 2 stars

"Mace: The Dark Age" (N64) *Some would say this 3D brawler wants badly to be either Killer Instinct or Mortal Kombat. Especially with a voice announcer who demands "Execution!" after the final round. But you can't totally dislike a game that puts a dwarf in a steampunk powered war-mech built out of ale barrels and carrying a Thor hammer and spiked mace as weapons.* close to 2 1/2 stars

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Season 1 Episode 7 *It all feels a little too rehearsed. Everyone of the contestants has an edgy or alt-2000s carnival act. Where are the true weirdos and not these phonies?* 2 stars

Spicy City: Tears of a Clone *One in a million girl with a one in a million genetic code. But not anymore, and hardly worth the trouble. Still, you kind of feel for her.* 3 stars

From Dusk Till Dawn, the series: Self Contained *Owed a soul and a crossing over.* close to 3 stars

Farscape: Family Ties *A cross between the lunar landing and Return of the Jedi, only more bleak.* 3 stars

Attack On Titan: Episode 1 *Taking the tired concept of refuge from a horde of cannibalistic humanoids (zombies) and turning it on its head. This time instead of thousands of zombies clawing outside a wall or a building, it's giant, mindless humanoid cannibals clawing outside a giant wall. The people inside are shaken from their sense of comfort when one is big enough to bring even the huge walls down for the first time in a 100 years or something. Made even more entertaining by the grandiose over the top anime style acting and voice performances. Also, this show reminds me of SouthPark, for some reason (maybe the kids?), and that's definitely a good thing.* 3 stars

Everything Is Terrible: 3 Minute Death Drug *Angel Dust makes Miami Vice's Phil Michael Thomas go crazy and destroy a supermarket.* either 1 star or 3 stars

"Nasty Hero" circa 1980s or officially 1987 via 'The Private Movie Company Inc.' (ooh fancy) *A real Neandertal is released from the slammer after being framed for a crime he didn't commit. Now he's out for ridiculous action movie revenge. He always wears a dirty wife beater or mechanic's shirt (hence the name Nasty Hero, I guess). He'll have to take down the blackmarket sports car ring of obnoxious yuppies out to make his life a living hell. The main douchebag is even after his old flame Yolanda (*snickers*). Set in the "So 80s it hurts!" time period in the thousand flushes blue toilet bowl of America that is known as Florida. And featuring a ton of bad movie cliches and homo-erotic moments. Still, the cheese and action goes down easy.* close to 2 1/2 stars

Heart She Holler: Fear Is Dog Spelled Bassackwards *Perversion of the conversion. Regular folk, n-word, chicken dinner.* 2 1/2 stars

Kung Fu, the series: The Soul is the Warrior *A rose grows beyond the wall.* 3 stars

--- "Daraku Tenshi, The Fallen Angels" (Psikyo) 1998

*Usually fighting games don't have a uniting theme when it comes to stages.

If they can animate it, then they'll fight anywhere from the jungle to outerspace.

Even if it doesn't make any sense.

Here is not the case. The setting being a decade after a major cataclysm leaves a west coast city, with an obvious Asian influence, in the climate of a cesspool and never recovering from the disaster.

It makes sense then that a dirty karate master, who is followed around by flies, would fight in a dingy back alley near the trash dumpsters in which he'd fight cats for his supper.

Or a somber, rainy graveyard which would be filled with victims of the earthquake.

The criminal element, like crazed kung fu dudes in leather jackets and hired gunmen, would go for the little bit of human blood left in encounters in dingy bars that are in disrepair and haven't seen a patron in years.

Fat, mutated freaks would fly into fight in tire filled junkyards with the rubble of the never cleaned away destroyed city as the backdrop skyline.

It really has a beautiful art style.*

3 stars

====================================================

"Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe" (Warner Bros.) --2008-- *Most modern videogames play like movies, but they often find a hard time defining whatever generic protagonist is the lead. The lead usually designed by committee to fit the bland tastes of a mass audience. Fighting games and superhero comics don't have the problem of generic characters. They're usually bold. This game plays like a movie and has an ensemble of really bold characters. But these two "universes" don't mesh together out of a "Gee, what if?" concept put down on paper. I applaud the cinematic effort, which the MK team would improve on somewhat in the sequel/reboot (Mortal Kombat 2011). Still here, it's awkward and filled with unintentionally funny moments and dialogue (a lot of it laughed at by The Joker who almost seems in on how ridiculous it all is). either 1 star or close to 2 1/2 stars

---- "Samurai Showdown" II thru V-Special (SNK)

*In my early teens, during the 90s, I was an Mortal Kombat fan.

I wish I would have had better taste. The gore and juvenile humor and dark fantasy appealed to my angst ridden desires.

At my local arcade, no one crowded around the Street Fighter machine. Even the Marvel versus Capcom series didn't appeal to me, though a few years earlier, I was a big fan of the X-Men cartoon.

Nope, me and the neighborhood kids craved blood, guts, farts, glimpses of titties, gangster rap, Beavis & Butthead, Summer blockbuster movies, alt-rawk.

In my early 20s, I started appreciating Samurai movies on cable, and in my later 20s, I began reading Lone Wolf & Cub samurai manga.

During the 16 bit 2-D fighting game craze, I wish I had been sopisticated enough to have taken notice to this highly artistic, and yet still bloody and fun, take on Samurai and a fighting game.

It does a lot of what made Mortal Kombat appealing to my teen tastes, but with a master stroke that has the lasting effect of standing the test of time as true art and not mindless "junkfood" fun that really has more of a nostalgia appreciation value (like Mortal Kombat).

3 stars

=================================================================

--- Jason Vorhees special guest character in "Mortal Kombat X" --2015--

*My generation had a lot of movie boogeyman.

They were so much in our young, collective conscious that they were almost urban legends seemingly lurking in the woods at the end of the street.

Kids, today, could care less. When, the internet "nerd culture" began reporting on this horror icon coming to a fighting videogame, the comments sections below the articles read something like this, "Laaame, LOL, who'z this f@g, no one wants thhis hockey face lozer INOURGAME!!!!"

To that I say, this guy invented "fatalities," kid.

He was figuring out ways to dismember long before there was even a Mortal Kombat or the outrage of a fatality in a videogame.

More than that, you were probably not even alive or were in diapers when Mortal Kombat was originally popular.

Jason even had a videogame that was terrible, but still gave my generation, including me, nightmares.

I remember, to get nostalgic again, the first time I saw it. It was at my weird next door neighbors.

The dad had an artificial leg and beat his kids and made them go to bed before dark.

But for some reason he was nice to any kid not his. Even weirder he had an NES that seemed to be more his than his kids.

He showed me, and another neighbor kid (not his), the Friday the 13th NES game, and seeing a hockey mask wearing purple-boogeyman stalk victims in 8-bit had me eyeing the door to escape not just the creepy one-legged neighbor but this pixelated killer.

Cheers to Jason's return to videogames and to the collective conscious of dumb, videogame playing youth everywhere.

Even if they don't appreciate it.*

2 1/2 stars

=================================================================

"Tattoo Assassins" (Data East) 1995 *This "game" strived for infamy, and fell into obscurity, never being released. Out of shame, I'm sure. Surprisingly, Back to the Future screenwriter Bob Gale came up with some ideas for it. It almost shows in a tongue in cheek way. It all seems like a big joke parodying the 90's over the top media in the same way almost that Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers did. Except this is more Looney Tunes than anything with racial stereotypes and absurdity out the wazoo. With characters based off the likes of tabloid trash like Tonya Harding and boasting to have thousands of supermoves like turning an opponent into a famous painting, farting random objects from one's anus, and comic nudity. There's also some nonsense about magical tattoos that thought tattoos wouldn't be tacky enough so they're the cause of the supermoves and are animated like they were created using Microsoft paint by a special needs person. Also, the game's mascot is a sad-faced eastern looking religious figure in an adult diaper.* 1 star (so bad it's almost good)

=== Wrestling Society X (MTV)

*For a brief moment, in the 90s, pro-wrestling was "edgy."

As absurd as that sounds. "The Rock" & "Stone Cold" were household names, much to the disappontment of concerned parents groups and tabloid hysteria news.

Pro-wrestling's punk rock moment all seems ridiculous now in retrospect.

The WWE went back to a family friendly product in order to sell t-shirts and toys.

So, who was to satisfy the wrestling dreams of backyard idiots who were jumping off of grandma's house onto a pillow filled with rocks?

MTV stepped in with its timeless formula of stupidity for the youth.

They aired, again briefly, an "underground" wrestling tv show filled with constant explosions, constant loud music, and constant shouting....

Goth kids, pregnant teens, musclehead niteclub douches, rednecks amped up on Mountain Dew, and wiggers across America, in the mid-2000s, rejoiced...

well, maybe not rejoiced.

More like they barely took notice with all their attention disorders, or skateboard trick injury videos taking place, and myspace photo sessions in the bathroom mirror.*

zero stars

============================================================

"Bad Street Brawler" -NES- (Mattel Inc. & Beam Software) --1989-- *"Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you!" Trouble, I guess, means a metrosexual "badass" with a yellow flat-top hairdo, black sunglasses with the yellow city lights  reflecting in them, a yellow tanktop, wearing only yellow underwear (no pants), and cute knee high yellow boots. Hello Yellow! Most of his attacks look like danceclub moves and he spends a lot of time fondling enemies and dogs.* either 1 star or close to 2 1/2 stars

"Dead Man Calling" --Junji Ito-- (Manga) *The ghoulish projection of a death row inmate haunts the family of his victims. Seeking forgiveness. A nightmarish meditation on grief and revenge.* close to 3 stars

Forensic Files: The Blood Trail *A failing farmer, in the quiet English countryside, stages a bizarre seies of crimes, around his property, including blowing up his wife in a homemade carbombing, putting a severed sheep's head and threatening note on his own fence, and poorly attempting to make it look like his "deranged" neighbor visited one evening and tried to kill him with a boxcutter, forcing him to shoot the neighbor in "self defense" with a shotgun.* 2 1/2 stars

Freddy's Nightmare: Freddy Something ----------------

*A jobless yuppie, with an extreme fear of the dark, goes nuts working in the sewers for the eccentric old guy from Gremlins.* 2 1/2 stars

*A lowlife owner, of a 1980s videostore, gets "Scrooged" by a self-help Billy Ocean wannabe that the lowlife ripped off in his typical jerk fashion.* 2 1/2 stars

--------------------------------

Forever Knight: Dance by the Light of the Moon *A black-hearted seductress tries to manipulate our reformed from evil detective, much like she does with every other poor male.* between 2 1/2 and 3 stars

----- Croooow Plays: Way of the Warrior (3DO)

*Video-blogs used to play videogames for a blogger's web audience are called "Let's plays."

Let's get that out of the way.

I personally prefer video reviewers like SpoonyExperiment, AngryVideoGameNerd, ObscurasLupa, and so on.

The reviewers take the time to find something' interesting about the game or movie to actually critique and even write jokes, scenarios, pick out certain clips from what they're reviewing, and put it all into a usually enjoyable package.

"Let's play" bloggers seem to have a level of vanity where they think they can just sit down and roll the camera and do it "on the fly."

It hardly ever works, and is often annoying, frustrating, and dull.

They struggle to play the game and find something interesting to talk about it, other than their ineptitude or frustration, and their random attempts at humor are painfully bad.

One "let's play" celebrity named PewdiePie has hit stardom with his awful brand of yelling unfunny nonsense while playing a game live, unedited garbage and SouthPark took notice satirizing it and him.

It's almost as bad as when during the 90s hack videogame programmers took the cheap digitized graphics craze to its overkill by hiring their handful of what I'm guessing were party friends or the local community theater rejects to be physical "actors" as horribly over the top generic stereotype characters in shitty disc format vidja lames.

Our let's player, Croooow, struggles to "let's play" and also entertain in his "let's play" video.*

zero stars for the game

and 1/2 a star for Croooow

===========================================================

Forensic Files: Charred Remains *A male stripper cremates a former playboy playmate over a cocaine sharing night gone wrong.* 2 stars (zero for the exploitation of the cremated remains)

American Horror Story - Coven: Protect the Coven *Fried green blood fetishes.* 3 stars minus 1 star for the Twilight romance feel good ending

#killer couples #breaking greenville #crossballs #ben stiller show #look around you #simon pegg hippies #gong show #dave attell #ghost adventures #best of the worst #spicy city #x files #robocop the series #Tattoo Assassins #River City Ransom #Martial Masters #Weapon Lord #Mortal Kombat #Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm #No Exit Amiga #Eternal Champions #Natsume #Abadox #Guardians of the Hood #Kakuto Chojin #JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Dreamcast #Dark Edge Sega #Strider Capcom #Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 #Buriki One

[hecknopoohsadventures]

Weekenders Adventures of Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

And now, a technological breakthrough in Pooh's Adventures history - a classic unnecessarily reworked with your favourite cartoon characters, unnecessarily reworked with your favourite cartoon characters! The infamous Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a.k.a. Why Paramount Should’ve Kept Those Rights in the First Place, was the closest a corporation-based animation studio could get to channelling Pooh’s Adventures as it so commonly stands - deliberate exposition that dumbs the original mains down, absolutely no reason for the guests to be there other than comic relief, a villain confrontation scene where there shouldn’t have been, dialogue tampered with to bring up these newcomers, you name it.

So of course Poohphiles would enjoy it enough to slap even less time-consistent cartoon characters onto that and make them twice as useless by having them direct every pratfall the cat and mouse stumble into as usual. This might just be fan fiction, but this is still what storytelling shouldn’t be. And so, without further adieu, let’s bite into Weekenders Adventures of Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I can’t believe I just pasted that either.

Part 1

0:15 His most diabolical scheme yet.

0:28 Implying this is artful enough to be transferred onto celluloid.

0:43 Tiff is about to request that the volume be increased, but all Dedede ironically shushes her. All he wants is Kirby's suffering.

1:18 Originality truly is dead.

3:00 As terrible as the original, uh, Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka is, at least Spike Brandt chose characters who knew when to shut up.

3:49 Oh my god.

4:30 OH MY GOD.

7:13 Why are they paired up with these two again?

7:28 How not to script a crossover vs. how absolutely not to script a crossover.

7:42 Charlie didn't even ask...

7:57 ...neither does he care.

8:17 If you're not as starving as they were, YOU SHOULDN'T BE IN THIS MOVIE.

8:24 What's in your wallet?

8:34 Charlie's ignoring you.

9:08 How about offering some, you greedy fucks?

9:14 How about using some of your contract "more"?

9:17 It can't be that hard, right? ............Right?!

Part 2

0:59 Are every single one of them that foolish not to bring just the slightest nickel on their journey?

1:05 You can say that over and over again.

1:27 Says the girl who will just give over to temptation anyway, including booping what should not be booped.

3:01 You've got a better cartoon to attend to.

5:04 Clearly someone hasn't heard of a term called "surprise".

5:47 Bravo. Just coming out clean rather than saving yourselves jail time.

6:10 You know, at least Brerdaniel would probably treat Tom and Jerry as goofy pet sidekicks rather than have a bunch of usually-independent chatterboxes follow suit.

6:19 That's what the mouse was mentally suggesting, faithful student.

7:07 Alright! What delicious spells has Star conjured up ready for blas- Oh. Never mind.

7:31 As for the rest of you, welp, you're screwed.

8:12 Worse than tobacco?

8:57 And whoever else is surrounding the desks but doesn't matter in the slightest.

9:58 Something with more artistic merit than this.

11:46 Some kid that has lifted dicks up for generations somehow.

12:11 How..................am I barely riffing on two well-known cartoon characters' extensive presence in a movie they're not supposed to be a part of?

12:42 And how are they not noticing that creepy old man on TV? A gaping flaw in the dumbest of Pooh's Adventures implemented into a corporate, Korean-co-produced film from WB. Welcome to 2017 in cinema.

13:27 *grumbles* I know, right?

14:04 And just like Pooh's Adventures, an extra guest just had to be thrown in.

Part 3

0:18 Lor, you're in 7th grade. That, and you're mentally stable. Think about what you're saying.

0:20 Diverting gender norms, are we, Nobita?

0:31 Physically, you're not helping.

1:03 Unless Star could use her noodle arms to pick it straight out. 

2:09 Those poor Koreans.

3:03 Star's not not feeling it lately.

3:32 You don't ask that the very moment you bump into one.

4:12 It's the 90's all over again, and some millennials just happen to be in the scene as Slugworth turns Veruca's song into a goddamn reprise.

9:40 They're the only two guests dancing. Remind me what the point of this crossover is again?

11:47 And you only just noticed?

11:49 Even Twilight Sparkle herself wouldn't figure it out so accurately. She may be a god, but she's no psychic.

12:28 Or, you know, just hop onto the sidewalks.

13:00 And one of you could've just tucked it firmly into your pocket, you lazy fucks.

14:59 A simple "excuse me" would suffice?

Part 4

0:02 And the rest? They all sneak in somehow without being detected. 

1:25 See how boring and clueless these people now are?

1:49 I can understand Tom and Jerry squeezing through a pipe, but everyone else?!

2:44 In a shopping mall, no less.

3:30 But in clown garb!

4:23 tfw when a mouse can silently explain the situation better than you can.

5:00 Speak for yourself, all you're doing is standing there.

5:20 I'll say.

5:52 Hiding yourselves, on the other hand...

6:31 ...beyond "kinky".

7:23 Christ, at least Tom and Jerry are doing nothing to interrupt not-Gene-Wilder’s soothing melody.

8:00 How did nobody in the guest team accidentally push one of theirs into the river trying to rescue him?

9:07 Who now?

9:39 Why is Star so aggressive in this crossover? Her religion is unicorns and rainbows, you’d think she’d giggle and dance around non-stop being in the same team as Princess Twilight Sparkle.

11:35 This is wasted fetish potential.

11:51 Oh, finally you give a shit.

12:24 Wha?!?!?!?!?!?!?

13:31 ALL of you?

Part 5

0:02 She looks like she's seen this before. Hmm.

0:46 For once, censorship actually makes the source material less awkward.

1:01 Oh, please, this ain't close to worthy of a montage. You could have seen a live chicken being chopped up.

3:09 She came straight out of nowhere. EXPOSITION. LEARN IT.

5:03 Truly wasted fetish potential.

7:22 Every other guest concurs.

8:18 *slow clap*

8:31 He already had a dog by his side, no need to make every line of dialogue politically correct.

9:18 INCREASED fetish potential.

10:16 And like many Pooh's Adventures creators, the writers do not understand independent thinking.

11:06 Um, Marco............... Oh, fuck it.

11:34 HE'S IGNORING YOU.

11:57 UNBEARABLY wasted fetish potential.

12:30 What, you want to kill him?!

16:48 Good.

Part 6

0:33 And it really should've been you all.

0:48 GO DIE IN ANOTHER FIRE.

3:36 Which is more than I can say about everyone following him.

4:39 See what at least happens when you have every character in the frame? SEE HOW BORING THAT MAKES YOUR CROSSOVER IF YOU SPLICE IT WITH IMOVIE?!?!?!?!?!

5:18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUEd6gPjIsY

6:55 Sunset Shimmer fires Megan. Meme videos at their finest.

7:42 But how does even Wonka automatically recognise their names?

9:20 Well, certainly not Megan, whoever she was. Why was she in this again?

9:46 Star's response is priceless.

11:08 Of course we have crack shipping in this thing. Sunset is technically a horse.

11:53 Story of a Poohphile's YouTube career. Wonka knows what he's smirking about.

15:25 You're telling us.

15:28 SMART CHOICE!

15:30 Who has already spun fast enough in his 2016 deathbead.

Outtakes

And finally here's some outtakes, because someone thought bloopers could work in Pooh's Adventures. Prepare to cringe like you've never cringed before.

Unoriginality: 

Illiteracy:

Tom and Jerry’s baffling superiority:

Bonerkills:

At least it wasn’t made by Yakko:

Overall: 7.2/5

-0.44/10. This is the epitome of pointless, and a chilling reminder of the potential devolution of storytelling now that it’s possible to build stories out of emojis and Slenderman. This being simple-minded, inoffensive fan fiction by a couple of guys with needs hosted by Google Drive and linked to in one out of 27,000 wiki pages, of course it’d be insignificant to the community compared to what you can pay money for right now, but as far as innovation goes, and I say this as a film critic in progress, it’s misguided, aimless and devoid of any substance of any form. I’m just saying, with plenty of much-deserved scholarship, maybe you could be writing far more intricate prose than "Tom, Imagine when a chocolate mouse appears." I know Time Warner didn’t get some when they commissioned Gene Grillo to write Tom and Jerry into Roald Dahl. If someone else is planning to put a few (or a thousand) more cameos into Tom and Jerry’s gonzo Wonka trek for fun and not for profit, you bet I’ll be ready-ish.

#the weekenders #my little pony #star vs. the forces of evil #blazing dragons #doraemon #tom and jerry #disney #hasbro #warner bros. #other #animation #anime #poster

[ineffablecolors]

Blunders and (happy) Beginnings [1/?]

So that went faster than expected. Fingers crossed next chapter comes in a week or two. Please excuse any period inaccuracies, let me know what you think cuz I’m excited and most of all enjoy! 

Blunders and (happy) Beginnings; CHAPTER 1; ~ 3, 000 words; FF.NET || AO3

The result of too much Jane Austen and associating everything with Captain Swan. 

Such stories tend to start with a lengthly chapter or six that have no other purpose but to introduce the characters’ affableness (or lack thereof), fortune (or lack thereof) and current ambitions and desires (which, we must all know, no one can be accused of lacking). But for the benefit of the characters, rather than the reader, who are much too eager to start their pursuit of those aforementioned ambitions and desires, we will constrict those chapter or six into the following few paragraphs and pray to not be accused of anything harsher (such as laziness or neglect or simply a short span of attention) than having our characters’ best interests at heart. So, without further ado, let us be acquainted with:

Lady Ingrid Chillton of Arendelle

Affableness. Undeniably high as proven by her having taken under her protection not one, not two but no less than three orphaned girls. Admittedly, all three of good fortune, high status and perhaps even greater beauty and higher intellect, and yet with the undeniable defect of being all about the same age and thus certain to need and engage all her Ladyship’s careful attentions (and nerves) in their coming into society, meeting all the right people and being pursued by all the best of those – all at more or less the same time.

Fortune. Enough to make her Ladyship more than perfectly comfortable without ever even entertaining the idea of matrimony and yet perfectly able to encourage the entertaining of that very idea in any young ladies of her acquaintance.

Ambitions and desires. To promote the already heavily hinted at, most felicitous marriages of all three of her charges but to maintain the highest degree of elegance and non-obtrusiveness while doing so.

Miss Elza Froster of Arendelle

Affableness. Satisfactory, thanks to her perfect manners and education, and only slightly impaired by being more than occasionally accused of accute reserve and the art of ‘chilling people to the very bone’. It is only fair to note that those accusations have most often been submitted by her own sister and only very rarely by her aunt. But, again in the interest of candidness, it should be pointed out that most other people are suspected of being too affected by her cold manner to dare comment on it.

Fortune. Sizeable as can be expected of the eldest daughter of a late baron and baroness. Further benefitted by being one of the three aforementioned charges of Lady Ingrid. And yet further by her family’s most favourable name and history.

Ambitions and desires. To avoid the fulfillment of the ambitions and desires listed under her aunt’s name without causing her too much disappointment.

Miss Anna Froster of Arendelle

Affableness. Indisputable, aided by an exceptionally lively and cheerful disposition. At times faulted for taking ‘cheerfulness’ to the level of ‘impropriety’. But this mostly by her sister and one might suspect mostly to repay the slight injury to the latter’s own affableness.

Fortune. Refer to the information provided under Miss Froster’s name and take into account her absolute resolution to share all blessings with her sister equality, while distributing any burdens rather unevenly and in no way to the misfortune of Miss Anna.

Ambitions and desires. To have everyone in a good humour at all times. Perhaps to meet a suitable match and that preferably in the most romantic and somewhat dramatic of circumstances but mostly to be in good and abundant company at all times and promote her sister’s happiness (and somewhat manage to reconcile the seeming impossibility of those two occurring at the same time).

Miss Emma Swan of Misthaven

Affableness. Questionable since she has proven to possess neither manners as refined as Miss Froster’s, nor disposition as pleasing as Miss Anna’s. But in order to be fair to Miss Swan’s character, it must be said that she also possesses neither the former’s alleged coldness, nor the latter’s alleged impropriety. However, she has been sentences by those same ladies to an alleged ‘prickliness’. A verdict that no other acquaintance has gone to great lengths to disavow.

Fortune. Comfortable and one she has wished numerous times she could replace for still having her parents with her.

Ambitions and desires. To completely, once and for all, erase the adjective in the ‘poor Miss Swan’ address which she has been on the receiving end of ever since losing her parents at 4 years old. In addition, to convince her friends and guardian that she does not crave a home of her own (and the husband attached) above all else. And, lastly, and only to herself and even that very rarely, to recognize that perhaps she wouldn’t mind falling into those most romantic and somewhat dramatic circumstances Miss Anna always talks about.

Mrs Mary-Margaret Nolan of Enchantings

Affableness. The most genuinely affable person one has ever met – being the most devoted daughter before her parents’ death, the most unaffected creature while encouraging the attentions of her future husband, the most resolute woman in ignoring her stepmother’s displeasure with said gentleman’s meagre fortune, the most capable mistress, loving wife and, since recently, indulging mother ever since.

Fortune. Of no importance, she will say with a benevolent smile. And, yet, it is known, that the truthful answer is – one of the largest in the country.

Ambitions and desires. To promote in everyone the absolute felicity that she has found with her own self-proclaimed True Love and, when possible, to encourage the dissolution of the institution of loveless marriages. And, more specifically and most recently, to find the path towards her intimate friend Miss Swan’s happy ending (and shove her on it).

Mr David Nolan of Enchantings

Affableness. Second only to his wife’s and possessing the added advantage of having no relations with great pride and pretentions and having been raised in a home unaccustomed to unnecessary pomp and circumstance.

Fortune. Insignificant in quantity before his marriage and still insignificant now in the role it plays in his happiness and good humour.

Ambitions and desires. To be forced into unpleasant and condescending company as little as possible (especially that of his step-mother-in-law). To fulfill each and every one of his wife’s ambitions and desires and preferably without having to draw his sword on any of Miss Swan’s potential suitors.

Captain Liam Jones of Jewel Hall

Affableness. Much higher than expected from a man who’s spent so many years at sea, undiminished but somewhat restrained by a slight over-politeness of manner but even that only on his first few meetings with a new acquaintance before giving them the benefit of his genuine warmth and good humour.

Fortune. A tad smaller than expected from a man who’s spend so many years at sea, generally attributed to his overly generous nature and rather spontaneous, if not unwise, manner of making any and all arrangements.

Ambitions and desires. To fix up Jewel Hall and tame those spontaneous displays, that his self-aware nature has made perfectly noticeable to himself, by finally settling down. And yet to avoid feeling tied down by such settling. And, above all that, to restore his younger brother to at least some degree of his previous cheerfulness and affableness.

Captain Killian Jones of Neverland

Affableness. Lost, as hinted by its presence among the older Captain Jones’s ambitions and desires. Said to have existed at one time in his life but hardly traceable in any of his interactions but those with his closest creatures (a list limited severely to his brother and his dog Smee and very occasionally admitting the presence of Mr and Mrs Nolan).

Fortune. Undeserving of notice and consisting almost entirely of his rather small estate. In part due to the captain’s lifelong lack of interest in accumulating such a fortune, in part due to former years of imprudent, one may even venture to say destructive, habits, in part due to his current lack of need for a larger fortune, explained by his insufficient interest in keeping much company or engaging in many (or any at all) leisurely activities that involve more than a book or a gun.

Ambitions and desires. To always have just enough to do about Neverland as to successfully avoid his bother’s and the Nolans’ schemes for the ‘promotion of his happiness’ and to promote said happiness himself by a never failing supply of good books and equally good rum.

 Now it is unwise and unfair, and altogether not sensible at all, to presume that this miniature exposition is to be the whole of our gallery of characters for the future. But as they have already seen it fit to run along and start making progress on achieving their wishes or rather going back on them and contradicting everything we have just learnt, we are forced to leave off here and quickly get at least a glimpse of their current situations so as to not be entirely too shocked when we catch up with them next.

 “Upon my word, Nolan, you would be the best shot in the country, if you’d actually aim to kill something.”

“Mary-Margaret doesn’t like it when I bring in birds.”

“Then, by all means, give them to me, but do not go wasting bullets like that,” grunted the younger Jones as he hosted his gun over his shoulder one-handed. “It’s shameful.”

“You are one to talk, little brother. I remember a certain vixen last week-“

“I’m your younger brother and she had little cubs. I’m a sportsman, not a-”

“What’s shameful is that you didn’t even need me to specify that I was talking about hunting.”

Captain Killian Jones shot and didn’t miss. Much like he hadn’t all day. Then he lowered his gun and turned to his brother so he could have the full benefit of his less than impressed visage and rolling eyes.

“And it is not at all shameful that you would like to have your brother in the company of a woman that has earned herself such a title as ‘vixen’?”

Captain Liam Jones continued cleaning the gun he had barely shot on their little party and raised his own eyes to the heavens in exasperation.

“If you’d spent a little less time in the company of books and a little more in the company of, oh say, people, perhaps you wouldn’t attach yourself so to my precise wording and will instead comprehend my meaning.”

“Ah, but you see, the very reason I prefer books to people is that I can shut them up whenever I please.”

At this the older Jones was left with little to do but shake his head and cast a half-amused, half-suffering glance at Mr Nolan. A look which made up a great percentage of his expressions when in the company of his brother.

“I say we head back now, Nolan, I can’t manage him when he gets like this. And, if experience is to be believed, Miss Swan might be the only one who can shut his book.”

“Oy!”

 “Miss the ball! For shame, Emma!”

Miss Emma Swan tried to huff and mutter as quietly as possible. As strange as the sight of five respectable women, three of which with bows and arrows in their hands, was, Emma had learnt the hard way that Mary-Margarent’s back-garden-turned-shooting-range was not a place for petulance and bad manners even if it was a place for mastering a deadly skill.

“When is the last time I missed a ball? Surely you can manage without me this once?”

“Are you feeling unwell, my dear?”

Lady Ingrid’s sweet but predictable reaction came from the side where she and Miss Anna were enjoying what at this point Emma was sure must be a ball-threatening quantity of chocolate-covered strawberries.

“I’m quite well, ma’am. I simply do not feel like it.”

“Not feel like it!” exclaimed Miss Anna with the level of disbelief that only she could demonstrate after having known Emma and her decided lack of excitement for balls for all her life. “You are a pretty woman of 24 in possession of a good fortune and a bareable temperament. Balls are given to make you ‘feel like it’!”

“’Bareable’ temperament?!”

Emma swung around, bow in hand and arrow drown back, towards Anna a bit too quickly for Mrs Nolan and Miss Froster’s comfort.

“Aaaand I believe this is enough practice for today,” announced Miss Elsa with self-imposed cheerfulness as she extracted the weapon from her closest friend’s grip and handed it to their hostess. “An absolute pleasure as always, Mary-Margaret.”

“Oh, I’m most happy you don’t find it too extravagant and have been so kind as to join me. David gets tired of shooting at unmoving targets so fast. Or so he says. Captain Jones will assure you that he simply gets tired of having me best him every time. Indeed he has good aim but a bow doesn’t seem to agree with him quite as much as a gun.”

“Much as I hate to align myself with Jones, on any subject, I’m certain he is in the right here, Mary-Margaret. But could we maybe return to that moment in time when dearest Anna here classified my temperament as ‘bareable’ and none of you bothered to correct her.”

Four pairs of amused eyes turned on Miss Swan and gave her such pointed looks that she felt like she had turned into one of Mary-Margaret’s practice targets. Finally, it was Miss Anna who decided to have pity and clean up some of her own smear, albeit with a twinkle in her eye.

“I also classified your looks and fortune as ‘pretty’ and ‘good’ and, really, Emma, you know quite well how little temperament matters when those two are so well-provided for.”

This time Emma’s huff was no stifled thing and her sarcastic mutter delivered archly and clearly to all.

“Ah, yes, and it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a husband.”

“In want of a ball, at least!”

“’Want of a ball’! I thought we were to attend just such a thing tomorrow.”

Mr Nolan’s booming voice, along with his wide smile and even wider footsteps towards them, followed by the brothers Jones, dissolved some of the air of stubbornness that had engulfed Anna and Emma.

“We certainly are. It’s just that dear Emma seems to find such an occupation not engaging enough,” Lady Ingrid kindly supplied the necessary information.

“Ah, of course, she does! I know how it shall be now. We shall all go to the ball and have a jolly good time and her and Killian will have a contest in who can find the thickest book and the darkest corner where to hide from all society.”

It is certainly a testimony to the closeness and tight bond between all the persons present (despite the Froster sisters and the Jones brothers having known each other a mere month) that Captain Liam Jones’ comment was received with nothing but easy smiles and deep chuckles. Except from his brother, who suddenly found his hostess’s targets, that he had shot at hundreds of times, absolutely fascinating and thus forced Miss Swan’s eyes to bounce off his back as they darted around and settle challengingly on his brother’s.

“My conduct compared to your brother’s! Congratulations, Captain Jones, you have found the way to secure my presence at this now too-talked-of ball.”

“Fortunate us! Perhaps I can use my momentum and secure the first two dances as well, Miss Swan.”

“How sly of you! Alas, you are much too aware that I never secure dances in advance. It gives people much too great a power over one’s enjoyment of the evening.”

Liam sketched her an exaggerated bow, admitting his defeat.

“Now, Killian! Your brother has persuaded Emma with his usual tricks and wit. You must allow at least equal power to my hope and sincerity.”

Killian took another second to admire the ruffled feathers before pulling out the arrow that protruded straight from the center of Mrs Nolan’s target and addressing the lady herself.

“Indeed it is much greater,” he admitted with a tight smile, making something of a show of presenting Mary-Margaret with her arrow. “For your ‘hope’ you know I have no taste and little understanding but your sincerity I can never doubt and thus, unfortunately, never convince myself to refuse you.”

“Your sacrifice will go down in history I’m sure, Captain.”

Killian whirled around to face and respond to the blonde who had made the biting remark.

“There is, of course, also the need of presenting the conduct in opposition to which Miss Swan will base all of her own.”

The miss’s conduct at the present moment looked like it would not be all too favourable to him but, fortunately, this was much too apparent (and expected and not at all out of the ordinary) to everyone in attendance and David and Liam wasted no time in pronouncing themselves famished.

Lady Ingrid proceeded into the house with all her girls following suit, Miss Elsa having taken some considerable pains to convince Miss Emma to let Captain Jones have the last word ‘just this once’ and taking her arm to prompt her to take her eyes off the back of his head while he had gone back to his self-imposed task of retrieving Mrs Nolan’s arrows.

It was only this last lady which did not immediately follow the rest of the party into the house but advanced rather in the opposite direction.

“Just so there’s no doubt – I fully appreciate and recognize the compliment of your sacrifice, Captain Jones.”

Killian’s eyes moved first to the small, snow white hand on his shortened left forearm, wondering for a second at the fact that these delicate fingers had imbedded the arrow he was grasping in his right hand so deep into the target that he had to put quite a bit of strength into pulling it out, and then looked up into the kind green eyes that took all the sting out of the horrid term ‘sacrifice’ and induced it with that sincerity he could never doubt.

“It is why I shall make it.”

Tagging some people who seemed interested :)) @julieta-tas @lizacstuff @piratesails @lenfaz @katie-dub @acaptainswaneternity @blackwidownat2814 @jemmaacarters @jackieorioncat @fairytalewhispersinmyheart @once-uponacaptain @walkerfairytales 

#captain swan #frozen jewel #snowing #cs ff #cs fanfics #period CS #so... here we go #i hope #B&B

[mst3kproject]

Monster from Green Hell

Monster from Green Hell is a Giant Atomic Insect movie – I'm pretty sure that alone makes it MST3K eligible, but there are also some less-than-illustrious names involved.  Although the film was surprisingly not directed by Bert I. Gordon,  it was produced by Al Zimbalist, whose name you may remember reading in the opening credits of Robot Monster. Oooh, and remember Pepe the Latino-Transylvanian janitor from I Was a Teenage Werewolf? Actor Vladimir Sokoloff is in this, too, playing Dr. Lorenz the missionary!  Scared yet?

The opening narration explains to us that before mankind can venture into space, he must find out what exposure to cosmic radiation will do to a life form.  To this end, Dr. Brady and his colleage Dr. Morgan have collected an apparently random assortment of life forms and are launching them into space on board stock rocket footage (some of which I'm pretty sure we've seen before, perhaps in King Dinosaur). One of the rockets goes off-course and comes back to Earth in central Africa.  Six months later, there is panic in the area – although Dr. Lorenz dismisses the stories of 'Green Hell' as some kind of superstition, in the very next scene we see animals at a watering hole being terrorized by a giant mutated bug!

The bugs are hilarious. How do I even describe these things?  They're supposed to be mutant wasps but they look kind of like an ant drawn by a seven-year-old with a microscope, with a bee's wings and a lobster's claws attached just for fun.  They have nostrils. They buzz constantly even though they never fly, their size varies from 'horse' to 'house' depending on the shot, and the film-makers seem a little unclear on which end of the wasp has the stinger in it. The puppets are detailed enough that they would honestly be kind of impressive if they weren't so silly-looking, and watching them eat hapless extras is a real hoot.  At this point the audience settles back with a smile, figuring this movie is going to be awesome.

Then it pulls the rug out from under us.  Rather than delving directly into the scientist's quest to destroy the monsters of Green Hell, we follow them through Padding Hell on the way.  After speaking to a territorial agent who looks weirdly like Josef Stalin, Brady and Morgan sit around in a hotel for a week and then set off on a month-long trek across the stock footage savannah. On the way they are menaced by natives, nearly die of thirst when they find a contaminated waterhole, and then come down with some kind of fever while they sit out a monsoon.  There are a couple of amusing things in this part of the movie, like the incredibly dramatic way the baggage men 'die' when struck by arrows, but that's not what the audience is here to see.  By the time the party reaches the Mission, the movie is more than half over.

They arrive there only to learn that Dr. Lorenz was killed by one of the bugs, so it’s off into the mountains to find and exterminate them.  So now we're finally gonna get some action, right?  Wrong again!  The group does manage to lob a few grenades, but these do nothing to their targets except annoy them, and the heroes end up trapped underground when the angry wasp queen causes a cave-in.  Time for more padding, as they wander in the dark trying to find their way out!  Luckily they discover an escape route before the Mole People can kidnap them... and moments later the local volcano erupts, destroying the hive.

At this point, we realize... we just followed these characters halfway across a continent, only for their story to end in a deus ex machina?  Oh, fuck off, movie!

This is becoming a personal pet peeve of mine, actually – heroes who don't do anything.  There are an awful lot of them in these movies.  Mark English in Devil Doll never did anything. Cabot in Outlaw never did anything.  Nobody in The Mad Monster ever did anything.  Was this some kind of trend? Because all it does, as I've pointed out before, is make us wonder why we bothered watching this.  Imagine if, I dunno, Star Wars ended when the Death Star was hit by a meteor.  That would be really, really stupid, wouldn't it?

A coincidence can be a powerful ending for a story as long as it has a meaning.  The War of the Worlds ends with the aliens dying of diseases to illustrate the true insignificance of human beings.  It works because the protagonist we’ve been following isn’t trying to defeat the invasion, only to survive it.  The Lord of the Rings ends with Gollum slipping and falling into the volcano because the point is that the Ring ultimately destroys itself.  These are satisfying endings to the stories that came before them.  The ending of Monster from Green Hell just looks like the writers ran out of ideas.  The characters stand and watch and observe, “nature has a way of correcting its mistakes”, but that makes no damn sense either.  The wasps weren't nature's mistake, they were created by humans blasting random shit into space for fun!

This is doubly annoying because Monster from Green Hell starts off pretty well.  The exposition gets out of the way quickly, and although we are disappointingly not treated to a rocket crash, it's not long at all before we get to see the monsters causing panic on the savannah.  These are just the right kind of deliciously awful that we stick around hoping to see them again.  Only slowly do we come to realize that we're never going to get what we really want, which is an actual fight between the heroes and the monsters. The grenade-tossing is fun, but it's not a substitute, and then there's the anticlimax of an ending in which we don't even get to see the wasps overcome by the lava – they're merely superimposed on stock eruption footage while the characters watch.  The movie was seventy percent irrelevant bullshit and now it's over, and the first ten minutes or so did such a good job of getting our attention that we feel like we've been tricked. How dare you, movie?  How dare you!

There's also a totally useless romantic subplot with Dr. Lorenz' daughter Lorna – and when I say useless, I mean fucking useless.  Not only does it not add anything to the story, it doesn't even take anything away.  The romance in Terror from the Year 5000 was useless because it wasted time that could have been spent on the actual plot.  The romance in Monster from Green Hell doesn't even get any time spent on it.  We see that Dr. Brady and Lorna have met, and she keeps running into his arms every time things get intense, but one gets the impression that this only happens because somebody went, “oh, wait, we need a girl in this movie” (and she is, literally, the only woman with lines).  Lorna doesn't even get the minimal plot function that would be imparted by needing rescue.  Why did they bother?

There are a couple of things in this movie that aren't bad. It's not too terrible in an aesthetic sense, at least.  Some of the sets are pretty nice: we open on a matte painting of a desert that isn't really convincing but is still very pretty, and the equipment we see the rocket scientists using is not too laughable.  Dr. Lorenz' mission looks convincingly ramshackle, and I like that it's actually more primitive than the native village we see at one point.  The monsters are stupid but a lot of effort clearly went into building them, and there's a fun bit where one of them fights a stop-motion python.  There's a lot of stock footage but it's usually well matched with the stuff shot for the production – we never find ourselves looking at lions on a savannah while the characters are supposed to be in a trackless jungle (*cough*leechwoman*cough*).

There's also a fairly interesting dynamic between Dr. Lorenz, scoffing at 'native superstition', and his liason with the local tribe, Arobi.  Rather surprisingly, the script permits Arobi more dignity than the entire cast of Voodoo Woman put together. He and Dr. Lorenz like and respect one another, but Arobi resents the scientist's accusations of superstition and argues against them quite effectively.  At the same time, he doesn't want Dr. Lorenz going into the area called Green Hell to investigate the reports.  He is willing to go himself, despite his own fear, and reminds his friend, “I'm much younger than you.”  Vladimir Sokoloff and Joel Fluellen manage to give the impression of having known each other for years, and their relationship is the only one in the movie that rings halfway true.

One final observation I have is here is another movie that seems deeply pessimistic about the possibilities for human space travel.  Some of the experimental animals we meet were exposed to cosmic radiation for less than a minute, and yet they still show signs of mutation.  The monsters, we are told, mutated from ordinary paper wasps in a mere forty hours.  That's not even two days, and it took the Apollo astronauts three days to get to the moon – never mind the time they spent there and the trip back!  In the world of Monster from Green Hell, I imagine that the space race was scrapped before it even began, when Dr. Brady and his colleages submitted a report explaining that the effects of cosmic rays on living tissue were far too dangerous and unpredictable to risk manned spaceflight. We'd be trapped on Earth, the stars forever beyond our reach.

I guess it's a better excuse than being too cheap to fund NASA.

If you’re wondering, the reason the title card for this review doesn’t match any of the other screenshots is because the full title of the movie is never on screen all at once.  I had to grab the title from a trailer on YouTube.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #monster from green hell #boy are we in africa! #50s #giant arthropod hours

[totesmccoats]

Dark Nights: Metal #3

The heroes have lost. Barbatos has risen, and he and his dark knights have dominated the Earth, plugging people into giant towers that will power the planet’s descent into the Dark Multiverse.

Meanwhile, Superman has been dreaming – dreaming that he’s fought Barbatos dozens of times, and died dozens of times. But in one of those dreams, he won; and even though that one too ends with Barbatos’ ultimate victory, Clark hears Bruce – the real Bruce – calling out to him from the darkness.

Woken from his dreams by Wonder Woman, Superman tries and fails yet again to take the fight to Barbatos, but is rescued by Dr. Fate, who has gathered the Earth’s remaining heroes in a secret location to hide from the Dark Knights and plan their perpetually less likely resistance. But their chances are bolstered when Green Arrow reveals that the Knights have a weakness – Nth metal – and while most of it has been destroyed, Fate and the Plastic Man egg (I’m still not really sure either, tbh) reveal four locations where more might exist. Green Lantern and Mr. Terrific take the Plastic Man Egg to coordinates in an empty part of space; Aquaman and Deathstroke search in a secret and sacred location under Atlantis; and Wonder Woman, Dr. Fate, and Kendra Saunders seek the Rock of Eternity.

Meanwhile, Superman, the Flash, and Steel venture to the fourth location, into the Dark Multiverse itself, where Superman believes he might find Batman.

I wanna tell you guys a few things that are in this book to convince you that Metal is the most insane, balls to the wall comic ever published by DC:

Batman sends a message to Superman encoded in the ‘66 Batman theme song.

Superman races to fight Barbatos in Gotham only to find Barbatos, many stories high, on top of a mountain lined with the soul-drained bodies of Gotham’s citizens, and flanked by dragons with the Joker’s face. That’s just a deathmetal album cover right there. That’s straight up bonkers. Capullo and Glapion make almost every page an album cover, aside from the aforementioned Batbatos scene, we also get the Dark Knights on horses while the world burns behind them, like something out of Revelations.

Superman says, and I quote, “If we open a portal with the Phantom Zone Projector while we super-charge the antenna with the Speed Force, Steel’s connection to the Nth metal might create an energy link to the Dark Multiverse, and Batman himself.” That’s the single most comic book thing I have ever read.

Snyder’s writing has some of the same issues it’s always had. This issue has some awkwardly placed narrative and thematic exposition delivered by the Batman Who Laughs while Superman gets curbstomped by Devastor Batman – but that is a small nitpick considering just how much this book straight-up rocks.

  Mister Miracle #3

While on leave from the war between New Genesis and Apocalypse, Scott gets a visit from the Forager, who tells him of the millions of Bugs sacrificed by Orion on the front lines of the war, and how many more will die during Orion’s planned invasion of Apocalypse. Forager also tells Scott that the Bugs admire and respect him over his brother, and that they will follow his, not Orion’s command. But as soon as he makes his vow, Forager is killed by Lightray for treason. Scott is relatively nonplussed, and heads back to bed, needing the rest before an escape show the next day.

After his show, and a quick lunch with Barda, Scott is summoned back to New Genesis for a meeting with Orion, to whom he admits he thinks he may be infected by the Anti-Life equation, and whom punishes Scott for questioning his authority.

King begins the issue with an jaw-droppingly dark parable that Scott tells Barda Granny Goodness would tell as a bedtime story. It involves a kid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands who accidently reveals that his family has been hiding Jews in their basement. It doesn’t have a happy ending. But it really does set the tone for the issue. War isn’t hell, war is worse. Hell punishes people for their wrongdoing, war forces them into situations where there’s no option but to do wrong. This is reinforced when Scott watches Lightway murder Forager right in front of him, doing nothing to prevent it, and too numb afterwards to do anything but crawl back into bed.

King once again leans on the 3-by-3 grid to keep the comic’s pace, but damn if it doesn’t work. This issue is neatly split into four parts, which are as easily distinguishable by color palette as verbal content. Gerad separates the issue into four distinct tones: red, grey, blue, and yellow to tell each chapter.

The Nazi parable is in red, highlighting the menace and cruelty of war while depicting Orion beheading the corpse of Granny Goodness.

The meeting between Scott and Forager is the grey of Scott’s apartment at midnight, broken by the almost garish red of Forager’s costume, and eventually by Lightray. I also loved Scott spooning the much larger Barda when he climbs back into bed, almost evoking the famous portrait of John and Yoko.

Scott’s stunt, and the lunch afterwards are framed by LA’s bright blue sky and the wall of the restaurant. The pacing in this chapter is maybe the most remarkable part considering how seemingly insignificant it is to the story. It takes Scott two pages to climb up the crane holding the box he’ll escape from, and another page for the box to fall to the ground.

And the last chapter, taking place in Orion’s chamber is framed mostly in yellow, but falls into a digitally artifacted mess by the end, as Orion beats the snot out of Scott.

  Ragman #1

Rory Regan hasn’t been the same since coming home from the war. He’s been anxious, paranoid, believing himself to be watched by monsters. Besides PTSD, it’s survivor’s guilt. He was the only man of his squad to return home after a tomb raiding expedition went south. But he didn’t come home alone.

One night Rory wakes up covered in rags, the rags he found in that tomb, and hanging off the side of a building in Gotham. The rags speak to him in the voices of his fallen friends, and tell him to hunt and absorb a monster for strength. It won’t be the first monster.

I’ve honestly never been too familiar with Ragman, though I know the basics of his character. Always the sole survivor of some sort of accident, has a costume made of rags which absorbs the souls of the evil and can act independently. This new version keeps all that, as well as the connection to Jewish mysticism – the rags are found in Israel – and adds a bit of Moon Knight to the mix.

Unfortunately, unlike Moon Knight, the existence of the rags takes away from the question of Regan’s mental state rather than muddle them as with Marc Spector’s. The book isn’t ambiguous about the rags and what is real, and with that problem solved, Rory doesn’t demonstrate any weird mental hangups. Well, it’s only issue one.

I do kinda love what Miranda does with Rahman, particularly in with his movement. It’s very reminiscent of Spider-Man, with his waking up stuck to a building in an unfamiliar costume leaning heavily into symbiote territory. But it’s an effective style that communicates how Rory is being pulled through the city by the suit instead of his own will. The suit is tossing him around. This new costume, and the movement, is also really creepy looking, bending Rory into almost inhuman acrobatic poses.

  The Flash #32

Kid Flash is helping train Flash to use his new powers, but things are still difficult between Wally and Barry. After stopping a robbery and leaving Black Spider to be picked up by the cops, Barry goes to his first day at work at Iron Heights Penitentiary with Kristen.

They’re given the tour by Warden Wolfe, a no-nonsense and ruthless keeper of his prisoners. When a fight breaks out, Wolfe lets the two prisoners – Heatwave and Godspeed – beat themselves tired before sending in his mecha-suited guards, the Pipeline, to finish the job. Wolfe doesn’t believe there can be redemption for anyone who ends up in Iron Heights, so chooses to punish them for their bad deeds. Kristin is appalled, but Barry is surprisingly ok with it – better the bad-guys get hurt than countless innocents.

Meanwhile, a war between Central City crime families is beginning to break out, and Copperhead doesn’t even know the name of her enemy.

For all intents and purposes, Flash is back to it’s mostly sunny disposition; marked as much by Duce’s clean linework and Plascencia’s bold saturated colors as Williamson giving Barry and Wally jokes to crack while foiling a robbery.

I really hope this story continues to have things to say about inhumane treatment of prisoners. Places like Iron Heights and Arkham Asylum have always been big parts of the superhero mythos, and there’s a lot the genre could say regarding prisoner rights and rehabilitative vs. punishing incarceration. Am I expecting an ACLU-level treatise? Of course not, but any amount of advocacy means something, especially from a genre of book all about crime and justice.

  Wonder Woman #32

ARGUS confirms that the energy that killed Hercules is Apocolypse-ian, and from that Wonder Woman is able to piece together that Grail is behind the murder of Hercules and dozens of other Gods that ARGUS has found. Wonder Woman leads Steve Trevor and his Oddfellows into the Paris Catacombs to pick up on Grail’s trail, only to find a nest of Parademons which she quickly dispatches, only to find no clues. This leaves one last thread to follow, Blake Hooper, the executor of Hercules’ estate.

After coming off a bit soured by the Robinson’s first issue, he does a lot in this one to assuage those worries. The issue begins with Wonder Woman kicking all sorts of Parademon ass, and having Trevor and the Oddfellows comment on how they don’t even really need to be there. The issue still eventually focuses on another dude rather than Wonder Woman herself – and Diana is still the only named woman in the issue – but at least this issue focuses enough on Diana to show the force of nature she can be.

There’s no denying the influence the recent movie has had on the way Davila renders Diana on the page, and he draws her way closer to the warrior she is than just a pretty face. As she cuts through the Parademons, you focus way more on her strength – the force with which she slams into them with her shield or flings them into each-other using her lasso – than how pretty she is while doing it. And Fajardo’s bright reds and blues really make Diana pop from the yellow-brown background of the catacombs and Parademons.

Things get less interesting, plotwise and visually, after the catacombs, when Diana is put into a brown trench-coat to speak with Blake Hooper about Hercules’ Will, but brighten up at the end when she sheds it to fly out onto the Mediterranean to find her lost twin brother.

  Amazing Spider-Man #789

Following the Clone Conspiracy incident, the revolution in Sokovia, and the attempted takeover by Hydra, Parker Industries has collapsed, leaving Peter destitute and crashing on Mockingbird’s couch. Having also betrayed SHIELD in Sokovia, she’s found a new apartment and job, but Peter hadn’t found the energy. Every time he turns on the TV or picks up the paper, all he sees is people calling him a failure for running his company into the ground and costing thousands their jobs and millions of dollars in lost stock value. Ashamed, he’s been avoiding his friends and Aunt May, too.

He does, however, finally leave Bobbi’s couch to go over to the Bugle to call out Joe Robertson – a trusted friend – for a piece he wrote about Parker Industries, only for Joe to put Pete in his place about being over his head in running a multinational company, which ain’t false. Going back to Bobbi’s even less confident in himself, Bobbi drags Peter out on patrol with her to get him back in the swing of things. And while they do find a baddie to beat on, they also find that the public turned on Spider-Man, who they still believe to be working for Parker Industries. Back to square one.

Rule one: Nothing in comics ever really changes. After playing Tony Stark for a bit, Peter Parker is back to being poor and jobless, and Spider-Man is back to reaching for any bit of social approval he can find. If anything, it’s at least impressive how Slott can make it feel different while effectively running Peter in place. The collapse of PI may but have been his fault, but it is his responsibility; and he’s responding to it with the classic Parker self-destructiveness, mostly through avoidance. But, as corollary to the Parker luck, he always inexplicably has an attractive woman nearby who really wants to help. In this case, Mockingbird, who realizes that what Peter really needs is to forget Parker’s problems by going out as Spider-Man for a night. This, by the way, is also a really sly way to bring back the classic Peter or Spidey conflict: the idea that only one of them can be happy at any given time.

Immonen continues his amazing work on the series, and how he dresses Pete in this issue is on point, with the baggy sweats that scream “I’ve given up.” And bringing back the “Ask me about my feminist agenda” shirt? *mwah*

  Ms. Marvel #23

Kamala hasn’t acted as Ms. Marvel since her encounter with Josh, having a crisis in confidence in her own ability to judge other people or otherwise act in a way to benefit others instead of cause more harm. But a runaway train is exactly the sort of disaster that overwhelms her fear with a sense of responsibility. And even though the train is only running at a leisurely 25mph, she still has no way to stop it; but luckily, she’ll have some help from the Laal Khanjeer, the hero she met in Pakistan, who recently came to Jersey to study abroad.

This may be the lowest-energy we’ve ever seen Kamala, who can barely muster a smile through the entire issue, much less her usual level of witty banter. Laal Khanjeer picks up a lot of that slack, energetically leaping into action, and making sardonic remarks about the low quality of America’s rail infrastructure as he get his first-hand tour from the top of a slowly moving train.

Diego Olortegui makes a brilliant debut on the series, drawing all his characters with soft detail and illustrating lots of little jokes and reactions, like Kamala completely flattening herself on the top of the train to duck under a tunnel, and giving her a real sense of bounciness as she jumps against a drawbridge in order to lower it in time. In smaller detail, the way he illustrates Kamala’s face perfectly captures her current low-energy. Besides not smiling, her eyelids are almost permanently half closed, and she looks at other characters mainly out of her periphery rather than directly at them.

  Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #25

The second page of this issue has Nancy give Squirrel Girl Superman’s “world of cardboard” speech from the Justice League cartoon as a suggestion to cut loose to beat Ultron, and it is everything I didn’t know I needed from this comic.

Also, Squirrel Girls’ knuckle-spikes (which is a power she’s apparently always had. comics!) go “snukt.”

While Squirrel Girl attacks Dino-Ultron head on, Nancy and Stefan lead the other programmers on the island to program a virus to infect Ultron’s code with – and to get it done before the entire island gets destroyed by the volcano Ultron set off. Luckily, they’ll all get some help by Kraven the Hunter and his dinosaur allies.

Squirrel Girl spends almost the entirety of the issue in a pelt bikini, and it’s just so rad how buff Henderson draws her. She’s practically a Mapplethorpe model, all muscle, arms almost as thick as her waist.

The issue continues the series run as one of the most purely fun Marvel books, and is still full of the sort of programming and self-referential meta-humor as it’s ever been. For instance, Ultron wants the kidnapped programmers to update his software with X-ray vision; not so he can see through things, but so he can constantly project harmful radiation. And this book eventually has Dino-Ultron fight off an army of other Dinosaurs, so really, how can you not like it?

  The Wicked + The Divine #32

This issue begins with almost the exact same three panels as last issue, only instead of being bored, Sakhmet walks in on a smoking Laura to tell her she’s killed Ammy. Same lack of reaction, too. At first. But she’s got a secret. Meanwhile, Dio wakes up and uses the last of his strength to try to stop Woden from hijacking his crowd for his own nefarious purposes. And eventually, Laura and Cass catch-up after their six months apart, and make a breakthrough.

Woden is the current champion of little shits in comics right now. What’s the first thing he does after hijacking Dio’s crowd? Brag about his thirteen asian girlfriends…because of course he does. It’s the sort of line that really makes us root for Dio as he fights his way through the crowd towards Woden, his neon pink shining against and apart from the neon-green of Woden’s mind controlled masses. The entire sequence plays like an abstract light-show.

The eventual fight between Laura, Sakhmet, and Baal is much more visceral. It begins calmly enough, with Laura and Sakhmet lying in bed together, talking about why Laura betrayed Sakhmet, and gets bloody as Sakhmet deftly weaves between Laura’s vines, clawing at Baal and attempting to gouge out Laura’s eyes. And it ends with a punch to the gut and yet another dead god.

The issue ends with Laura and Cass, who have yet another fight, but a mostly verbal one. And through it, they discover yet another secret that either Woden or Ananke’s successfully kept hidden, successfully ending the issue on a comedic beat of all things.

The next issue is the end of Imperial Phase, and we’re going into it full throttle. Between this issue and the last one, the series is certainly carrying less weight.

  Redlands #3

An unlicensed bounty hunter, Laurent, goes to the station to collect on a bounty, and then back to his home in the swamp where he prepares a freshly killed deer. But he’s interrupted in the middle of the night when he hears a boat puttering through the swamp, driven by a naked man who smells of the blood of at least five different women. So, he does the responsible thing and calls the Sheriff, Bridget, to pick the nude man up.

Three issues in and I still cannot get a beat on this book. The serial killer plot from the last issue is seemingly finished in this one by a character introduced in this issue who seems like they may be important; but considering another main character may have died this issue, it’s hard to say who or what will end up mattering.

And while the issue has some enjoyable moments, like a chihuahua chomping on a man’s genitals to keep him from killing his owner; it really doesn’t hold up on it’s own without the context from the last issues, either. It is neat though that the book is unafraid to show the actual genitalia, though it does raise some flags for me regarding whether this book will indulge in sexposition.

But most perplexing is the last quarter or so of this issue, which consists of newspaper clipping following the trail of the Gator-man, a Redlands cryptid related to our new bounty hunter; and a guide to field dressing and skinning a deer which is just kinda there. The issue itself is well written, and still hauntingly illustrated enough, and I’m still curious enough to pick up the next issue, but I’d really like to be able to expect what that issue may contain.

Comic Reviews for 10/11/17 Dark Nights: Metal #3 The heroes have lost. Barbatos has risen, and he and his dark knights have dominated the Earth, plugging people into giant towers that will power the planet’s descent into the Dark Multiverse.

#batman #dc comics #marvel #metal #mister miracle #ms. marvel #ragman #redlands #spider-man #squirrel girl #the flash #the wicked + the divine #wonder woman