Author Archives: bookshelfbattle

Apr 21 2019
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Movies, Uncategorized

Movie Review – Hellboy (2019)

God, this movie sucks.

Let’s get this review over with.

I rarely give a movie a bad review.  After all, I’ve never made one before so any movie is better than my non-existent one, but this one is pretty bad.

The original two were great.  That was largely due to Director Guillermo Del Toro’s ability to make the scary and macabre seem beautiful.  The plots were well paced and succinct and you cared about the characters.

The reboot is garbage, like the writers weren’t sure what they wanted to do so they just threw a bunch of random crap into a blender and pushed the on switch.

It’s not just the deviation from the source material.  Though fans will be disappointed to see Abe and Liz didn’t make the cut in this one, I’d be totally willing to be cool with the franchise going in a different direction.  The problem is it went in like, 50 different directions.

David Harbour plays the titular demon gone good this time.  There’s a wrestling match with a vampire and a team of giant hunters.  The literal Alice in Wonderland and a were-cheetah are Hellboy’s companions.  There’s a ridiculous amount of exposition and large chunks of backstory are simply spoonfed.  There’s way too much telling and not enough showing.  Somehow, this all leads to a battle royale with a witch (Mila Jovovich) and a pig man.  How they are all interconnected?  Your guess is as good as mine.

I might be willing to forgive all of this.  Sometimes there are great properties that come out as steak and years later, all the studio is willing to give it is the potato chip treatment.  Potato chips are good, now and then.  At least they are tasty.

The problem is that amidst the lack of surety of which plot point the movie wants to focus on, there’s also some confusion over what it wants to be.  The entire theme is juvenile.  A big dope with filed down horns with potty humor galore.  That’s not necessarily bad, but then the F bomb is dropped with reckless abandon, often for no added effect, just because they could do it apparently.  I’m not against a good F bomb when it is timed right, but the first two put story over shock value while this one relies on swears and grossness.  At least Del Toro made the grossness beautiful.

Ultimately, it’s a simpleton movie with ghosts and goblins that is the kind of stuff that is geared toward kids but then again, it’s riddled with gratuitous cussing so you can’t take a kid to it.  This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem because shows like “True Blood” have taught us there is room for adult themed horror but the problem is the movie is so dumb that the adults who can handle the swearing aren’t going to enjoy it.  It’s too dirty for kids and too dumb for adults so who this movie is for I don’t know.

Ian McShane, who appears as Hellboy’s father, appears lost in this drek.  At one point, there’s a scene where his face gets grafted onto a monster and one wonders if he either fired his agent or decided the money is worth it.  At any rate, he’s too good for this and frankly, David Harbour is too.

I’m always sketchy about reboots, but done well, they can be great.  And I always try to leave room that updates to long beloved properties are done to reflect youthful tastes and I’m not the target audience.  Still, this just sucks.  Hellboy is better than this and if he sees this movie, he’ll probably bash it with his rock arm.

STATUS:  Not-shelfworthy.

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Apr 18 2019
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Game of Thrones, Uncategorized

Who Will End Up On The Iron Throne?

My guesses:

#10 – The Knight King, because screw ’em all, they waited too long to come together.  George RR Martin comes out at the end while munching on a bag of cheese doodles and reminds Republicans and Democrats that the real White Walker is climate change…or possibly Russians.  Or weather controlling Russians.

#9 – Jon Snow and Khaleesi marry.  Both have major claims to the Iron Throne.  They consolidate the claims and the infighting between Khaleesi and Jon over him being King in the North because now they are married so they run it all.  No one cares Jon is an Auntie Fucker because it is olden times.

#8 – Cersei beats everyone.

#7 – Everyone dies, no one is left.

#6 – A few seasons ago, Arya made mention of a land far beyond the sea that is rumored to be there but no one has seen it.  I wonder if this is like the GOT version of America and people who are sick of the Westeros fighting will leave and start a new nation in fantasy America.  I guess this isn’t so much explaining who is king than it is giving a possible ending.

#5 – The Khaleesi, of course.

#4 – Jon Snow, because now he knows it all.  (In 5 or 4 that means only one either lived or lived but the other could not rule for some reason be it death or they didn’t get together.

#3 – Bran is the Knight King seems to be a popular theory so if he controls the Knight King then he rules.

#2 – Hodor.

#1 – OK, this is actually going to be my best guess.  Jon and Khaleesi either don’t make it or decide that the monarchy has had its day.  Either way, wise men like Tyrion and Varys start a democracy.

Also – I could see them giving some sort of flash forward to a steam powered Victorian Age or Modern Age.  That would be cool.

Also – none of these and something we didn’t think of.

What do you think 3.5 readers?

 

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Apr 15 2019
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Game of Thrones, TV, Uncategorized

Game of Thrones Recap – Season 8, Episode 1

Well, 3.5 readers, the final episodes are here.

I’ve been blogging about this show since this fine blog began.  Come to think of it, HBO probably owes all their success to me, since I sent my 3.5 readers their way.

So now, the end begins and we begin to watch the end.

Spoiler alert.

Jon Snow and Khaleesi are in Winterfell and the Northerners don’t like all the new people.  Jon learns that his bae is also his aunt so now he is an auntie fucker.

The dragons aren’t eating enough, the White Walkers are at the door, Cersei’s still a bitch.  I don’t know.  That’s about it.

My, how fast the past decade has flown.  This show has always been a welcome favorite, something riveting enough that I was always able to turn it on Sunday nights and for a brief hour, get lost in another world.

Six episodes doesn’t seem long enough to tie up the loose ends, but here’s hoping they will be.

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Apr 15 2019
2 Comments
Movies, Uncategorized

BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

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This is a stick-up, see?

BQB here with another classic movie review.

After watching The Highwaymen, Netflix recommended that I watch the 1967 “Bonnie and Clyde” and who am I to argue with a streaming service’s AI?

I’d heard rave reviews over the years but personally, I’m not sure it holds up to modern standards.  Then again, it’s interesting as a snapshot in time and most likely pushed every boundary in place in 1967.

Faye Dunaway is epically boner inducing as truck stop waitress Bonnie Parker.  An early scene where she is close to in the buff makes me wish I’d worked out more and gotten more money so I could have nabbed a dame even half as hot but oh well.  Que sera, sera.

And that near nudity was probably pushing the envelope in the 1960s.

Meanwhile, having hailed from Generation X, I’m used to an older version of Warren Beatty, so it was interesting to see him so young and full of life here.

The writing is a little lackluster.  It almost seems like there was a checklist of known info about the infamous, murderous bank robbing duo that they had to get through.  Sometimes some leaps are taken and we’re left to guess what happened in the interim.

Clyde, for some reason, is unwilling to schtup Bonnie and that’s a shame because she is so schtuppable.  I’m not sure what the implication is there.  Perhaps it is meant to say he’s gay, though he’s never seen chasing after men.  That would probably have been too much for the 1960s.

Then again, it may not have been to say that he’s gay, but he just had some intimacy issues.  He does seem to like women but maybe he’s afraid to get too close or something.  We just see several scenes where Bonnie throws herself at him, he refuses, says he’s not a loverboy and the meaning we are left to guess at.

Rounding out the gang are Clyde’s brother and sister in law, Buck and Blanche Barrow (Gene Hackman and to my surprise, a young Estelle Parsons who I had only known as Roseanne’s grumpy mother) and Michael Pollard as dopey mechanic CW Moss who comes along for the ride to service the multitude of cars stolen by the gang.

The gang dynamic is basically Bonnie and Clyde started a gang, felt they had to invite Buck along to join the family business, and Blanche just seems to get in the way as she doesn’t really want to be in a gang but followed her husband for the ride because long ago, women just did whatever their husbands told them to do.  Her constant screaming is annoying but that is the point.  She wasn’t down for that life.

On one level, the movie is not all that realistic.  Bonnie and Clyde are presented as just a couple of country kids who had it rough and made a living the only way the Depression Era would let them.  They’re portrayed as taking steps to avoid shooting cops and feel great remorse when a mistake in a robbery’s execution leads them to having to shoot an officer.  Most accounts differ though and it seems pretty clear that the gang had a grand old time shooting and robbing their way through life, that they racked up a pretty needlessly high body count and never lost sleep over it.

On another level, the movie’s main contribution to the cinematic world is realism.  In most movies, even today, deaths are throwaways.  Someone is shot and they’re down, off screen, never seen again.

Here, we see death in all its brutality.  Buck is shot and attended to as he dies slowly, wailing in pain.  Bonnie and Clyde’s car is riddled with bullets.  We see the look of fear in their eyes when they realize they’ve walked into an ambush, the grim realization taking hold of them that their jig is up.  We see the bullets tear holes in the car, tear holes through their bodies, their lifeless bodies torn apart.  This was definitely another line crossed in 1960s cinema and ironically, is a line that is even rarely crossed today.

Also noteworthy is these two were basically America’s first reality stars.  They took photos and wrote poems about themselves, sending their own media to the newspapers and with it being the Great Depression, robbed banks didn’t get a lot of sympathy.  However, I prefer “The Highwaymen” portraying the officers as the real heroes.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.  Every man should have their own Faye Dunaway.

Apr 15 2019
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review – The Best of Enemies (2019)

And they say the Klansman’s heart grew two sizes that day.

BQB here with a review of The Best of Enemies.

Making this movie was a gamble in this day and age.  It’s based on the true story of how, in 1971, African American community organizer and civil rights activist Ann Atwater (Taraji P. Henson) and Ku Klux Klan leader CP Ellis (Sam Rockwell) came together and became unlikely friends and allies while working together on a committee that would decide whether or not to integrate a school in Durham, South Carolina.

Understandably, in this day and age, there is no forgiveness for racism, even for a racist who claims to have seen the light and claims to be reformed.  Ergo, while movies such as this or “The Green Book” have stories about a racist jerk who abandons his racist ways after spending time and coming to care about black people, an ex-racist isn’t going to get a medal today.  Sorry, but we live in a time now where you know not to be racist from the beginning.

Despite all that, the story does have a message that is worth noting, especially in today’s toxic political environment.  In the past, school integration was such a divisive issue that you might recall the Army had to be called in to watch the backs of African American students regarding the case of Brown vs. Board of Education.

In 1971, the community of Durham took a different approach.  It was decided to hold a two week meeting in which community leaders, black and white, got together to discuss their differences on the topic of integrating the local school in the wake of a fire that made the school for African American students unsuitable.

CP Ellis, the local head klansman, naturally hates the idea.  Meanwhile, Ann Attwater, a tireless voice fighting for the rights of African Americans, argues the community can’t expect African American kids to learn in a burnt out husk of a ruined school building.

As the two weeks long discussion group progresses, both sides get to know each other and the underlying lesson is that if enemies would just sit down and break bread, they might realize the other is, despite all their flaws, human and compromise might be had.  True, asking for a compromise with a klansman is pretty unreasonable to say the least but the message seems to be that because both sides sat down and talked rather than meet on picket lines to hurl insults, progress was made.

There’s no redemption for Ellis in today’s woke America, and no one’s arguing there should be.  Still, as he sits with his arch nemesis Ann and gets to know her as a person, and then starts to get to know other African Americans, he starts to learn their plight and how wrong his actions as a klansman have been.  Meanwhile, though Ann is the underdog hero in the fight and doesn’t have anything to prove to Ellis, she does get to know him and when she learns of some of his personal problems that led him to become such a hardened bastard, she starts to pity him.

I don’t know.  The movie is a tough sell and the idea that a klansman could ever be welcomed back into polite society isn’t going to win much applause.  However, the message that political opponents should stop hurling insults and threats and start sitting down and actually talking and finding out just what it is that the other side fears, be those fears rational or irrational, a path toward a solution might be presented.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Apr 13 2019
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review – The Highwaymen (2019)

Nyeah, a couple of old cowboys are going to take down Bonnie and Clyde, see?

BQB here with a review of Netflix’s The Highwaymen.

It’s the 1930s and murderous boyfriend/girlfriend duo Bonnie and Clyde are tearing through the country and Texas in particular, machine gunning their way to fame and fortune one bank at a time.

You’d think people would be disgusted by that sort of thing but remember, it was the Great Depression, and many an American had been ousted out of their home by the banks.  Ergo, Bonnie and Clyde were cheered on as celebrities, a new version of Robin Hood, though they didn’t give their dough away to the masses and they gunned down a multitude of lawmen, often in instances it wasn’t necessary for escape but they just thought it seemed like a fun thing to do.

Enter Frank Hamer and Maney Gault (Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, respectively), a couple of old cowboys in a world that doesn’t want them anymore.  In their younger days, they rode the open range on horseback as Texas Rangers, roaming all over the American territories, jurisdiction be damned, just to get their man.

Both are old men living quiet lives but wracked with guilt over the blood they spilled in the name of justice.  Frank married a rich younger woman and works as a security consultant for an oil company.  Maney didn’t luck out as well.  He lives on the couch in his grown daughter’s house.  Depression has got the best of him and he feels like a burden.

With the introduction of cars and interstate travel, America has entered into a sort of Wild West Part II phase.  Cowboys like Hamer and Gault may have tamed the West, but now, with multiple jurisdictions, state lines, and highways that can take a driver anywhere, the powers that be are clueless how to stop a two-person murder crew.  Even worse, they can’t or won’t share information with each other.  Add in the FBI with modern tech (for that day) and you’ve got a lot of people investigating but not communicating.

Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, the governor of Texas at the time (Kathy Bates) begrudgingly allows Hamer and Gault to be reinstated, even though the Texas Rangers are considered an old relic of a long forgotten past.  Hamer and Gault are old, achy, sore, in rough shape and Gault needs to stop every five minutes to take a leak but they are experts on one thing that the younger breed of lawman isn’t, namely – tracking.  Find a clue, follow it to another clue, then follow that to another one…and follow it across state lines if need be.  After all, no one claimed a jurisdictional beef on their horseback days, but now, they’ll have to sneak around the backs of the Feds, Sheriffs, police chiefs, etc. as they move state by state, keeping their investigation to themselves as Bonnie and Clyde have been known to buy the loyalty of many a corrupt official.

Bonnie and Clyde themselves are seen very little, and that’s likely by design.  Although the two with their tommy guns are iconic, there have been movies before where the duo are romanticized as free love birds sticking it to the man.  This one is more on the nose, that they’re just two assholes who don’t want to work and are having fun and don’t value human life enough to not gun down whoever crosses them.  Thus, to give them big scenes where they’re tearing up scenery with their gats would probably be to give them more attention than they deserve.

Accordingly, this one’s on the duo who caught them, and perhaps even an ode to the old folks who are struggling to keep up with a changing world yet are still needed because they remember how to do things that aren’t done anymore – which sounds useless until you need that thing done.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

 

 

 

 

 

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Apr 12 2019
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Game of Thrones, Uncategorized

Who Will End Up On The Iron Throne?

Hey 3.5 readers.

The last six episodes of Game of Thrones starts this Sunday.

I fear the ending will blow goats, largely because so many threads have been pulled and six episodes just isn’t enough to tie them all up.

We’d all hoped for Khaleesi but I think it will be something we didn’t expect.

At any rate, in the beginning, I blogged a lot about GOT and that’s how I got some of my first readers.  If you’re still around, thanks, and I hope things get better so you don’t have to keep wasting time reading my blog.

Apr 11 2019
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Uncategorized

I Hope You Are All Doing Well, 3.5 Readers

That is all.

Apr 09 2019
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Uncategorized

What’s the Best Look for Chupacabra Pimp?

Hey 3.5 readers.

I’ve been having fun the past couple weeks writing Disco Werewolf. There are a lot of plot points I need to tweak but it has been fun. If you enjoy it you come back for more.

I’ve especially been laughing myself silly over recent chapters involving a character called Chupacabra Pimp, who as you might expect, is a 1970s street pimp with a bunch of ladies of the evening in his employ who turn tricks in exchange for live goats…because Chupacabras love goats.

There are two looks for Chupes in pop culture. One is a lizard like creature with bug eyes surge other is like a really emaciated coyote type creature .

Which would be funnier in pimp clothes?

Oh and his ladies are Aliens. Spoiler .

Apr 08 2019
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top ten lists, Uncategorized

Top Ten Reasons Why You Smell So Bad

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Just a quick list, 3.5 readers.  No snappy introduction.  No exposition.

I’m not saying you DO smell bad, I’m just saying, IF you do, here are some reasons why:

#10 – You farted.

#9 – Someone near you farted and you caught second hand fart stink.

#8 – You burped.  Burps are the farts of the mouth.  Meanwhile, farts are the burps of the butt.

#7 – You forgot to shower for 50 days.

#6 – You just got back from a visit to a cow farm.

#5 – You ate onions.

#4 – You had to cut open a large animal and hide inside its carcass for warmth during a blizzard.

#3 – You smeared old, rancid mayo on yourself then sat outside to bake in the hot sun all day.  Don’t ask me why you did this.  You’re the one who did it, idiot.

#2 – You tripped and fell head first into the cat’s litter box.  While you were down there, the cat didn’t notice you and pooped on your head, then scratched your face in a vain effort to bury the offending poop.  The entire time, you were too polite to not move and/or notify the cat of his/her mistake.

#1 – A stink bomb went off in your pants.

As far as I know, these are the only reasons I can think of as to why you might smell bad.  If you think of more, leave them in the comments.

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