Most shows get worse the longer they go on, but Seinfeld was one of those rare shows that got better with age. Many of its most iconic episodes come toward the end, such as this one from season 7 where Jerry and friends subjugate themselves to the whims of the infamous Soup Nazi.
What can we learn from this episode?
When you’re at the top of your game, you can be a prick. When you’ve got something people want, you can be outrageous with your demands. The Soup Nazi makes the best soup in all of New York, nay maybe the world and with a constant line around the corner outside his shop, he can afford to send any customer who offends him in the slightest way packing. Meanwhile, customers who love his food that much are willing to endure the abuse just to get a taste of his magnificent creations.
Another Seinfeldian metaphor for life? Think about what you want, all the hoops you had to jump through to get it, how the slightest mistake took you off track. In a way, we’re all just customers in the Soup Nazi’s line, hoping we’ll figure out the right combo of moves to make to get ourselves through the soup line successfully and get home with a nice cup of piping hot soup in hand.
What’s the deal with blogs that are only read by 3.5 readers? You’d think a blog would have 3 readers or 4 readers but how do you get .5 of a reader? It makes no sense!
BQB here with yet another Seinfeld review. I’m down the rabbit hole now and I’m going to watch them all, sadly.
I’d say this one is up there with The Chinese Restaurant episode as one of the series’ funniest/most memorable. While other sitcoms gave you special episodes and heartwarming lessons, one Mr. Jerome Seinfeld and his BFF Larry David dared to give us a comedy about nothing and yet, in the way it lampooned the ridiculous little absurdities of life, it gave us anything.
Sidenote – if you youngsters ever want to know what the world was like before everyone started carrying cellphones, this episode is your window.
The premise? Jerry and Friends take a Saturday afternoon drive to a mall in Jersey to help Kramer buy an air conditioner. Whilst there, Elaine picks out two goldfish to bring home in a plastic, watery bag. Alas, the crew can’t remember where they parked their car and go on an endless quest in search of it. Time is of the essence as Kramer can’t carry this big appliance forever, George is due to go out to dinner with his parents and if he’s a second late they’ll make his life a living hell, Elaine’s fish are going to be goners if they don’t get into a fresh water bowl STAT and damn it, Jerry has to pee!
Hard to believe we once lived in a world without instant communication. The group makes the mistake of splitting up in the hope of covering more ground. Today, you can do that and just keep in touch with your phones. Back then? Bad idea. Someone finds the car but now where the heck is everyone else? Do I leave and search for them? What if I can’t find the car again? Today you can just call everyone else and tell them where to go. Back then, not so much. Honestly, if you got separated from your group back then, the best thing you can do after searching for a while is just go home and hope they go home too and call you later.
I have also suffered the pain of getting lost in a parking garage, unable to remember where I parked. Today, I always take a photo of the level number, the space number, whatever identifying clues will help me get back there.
Another purgatory type episode that Seinfeld loved to do. Is it a metaphor for life? How long must we endure this misery before we can get where we need to be?
BTW…I also have THE SPOILERS! So don’t read on if you don’t want them.
BQB here with a review of Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation: Part 2.
Boy, there was so much internet backlash over Part 1. Remember that? Seems like forever ago now. If you forgot about it because you’re an adult with limited time to worry about cartoons, I don’t blame you. Basically, He-Man gets ganked in a fight where Skeletor also croaks in the first episode, and then the next few episodes are He-Man’s BFF Teela wandering about, trying to make sense of it all.
Critics called it a bait and switch. How can you call it a He-Man show without He-Man? Then again it wasn’t called He-Man, it was called MOTU, so that probably should have been a hint from the beginning.
Some even felt this was a product of woke-ism run amuck. Perhaps some Netflix exec decided it would be awful if a super straight, uber macho, musclebound, blonde white hetero male got to be the lead of a show so they put out a hit on America’s favorite 1980s cartoon barbarian.
While I get all the worries, they seem all for naught after watching part 2. The second part has a lot of Prince Adam, one episode of a feral He-Man, and one final episode where He-Man kicks ass and takes names, true He-Man style.
Kevin Smith explained in interviews he was trying to make a show that would appeal to kids and adults. A lot of today’s adults often think of their favorite 1980s cartoons through adult eyes, i.e. they think they were very sophisticated with their older brains, only to go back and watch reruns and realize this was nonsense created for mushbrained babies.
My only complaint is Smith almost accomplished his stated goal. It is something an adult could watch with their kids and neither would be bored…EXCEPT in one of the part 2 episodes, Evil-Lynn distracts Skeletor, offering to give up her evil booty as a means to swipe the power sword (which itself is discussed by way of a double entendre.) This part seems a bit much for a kids show and it could have been toned down to just, say, she gives our favorite baddy a smooch-a-roo whilst grabbing the power sword…yes, the power sword, not the….btw did we need to learn that Skeletor is anatomically correct from the neck down?
Speaking of Old Bonesy, it was cool to see He-Man and Skeletor team up against a larger threat. Meanwhile, Cersei Lannister aka Lena Headey really does steal the show as the voice of scary sorceress (with a gooey good center) Evil-Lynn. The whole show pretty much rests on her shoulders.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. The complaints about a He-Man bait and switch are much ado about nothing when the series is viewed in its entirety. People just need to be patient. Also, another season is teased at the end, so that looks fun. Even so, if Evil-Lynn isn’t a focal point…IDK. Overall, as an old geezer, I enjoyed the 1980s feel in a cartoon that isn’t totally for mushbrained babies and it attempts to do something other than sell toys (although toys are selling now at your fave toy store, get yours while supplies last!)
SIDENOTE: Other than TMI about Skeletor sex, my only other complaint is the SPOILER Teela is the Sorcereress’ daughter and becomes the new sorceress herself thing comes out of the blue. Unless I missed something, it was never teased or alluded to. This is a show about revelations, where all the characters lay their cards out on the table and divulge the secrets they hid during the original show so…a simple allusion to Teela wondering who her mother is in Part 1 might have alleviated this. Part 1 has her become angry and jaded over discovering that He-Man was Prince Adam all along and he never told her so…wouldn’t she also have questions about her mother’s identity? Just a thought.
BQB here with a review of the Netflix series, Cowboy Bebop.
This is a live action reboot of a classic anime series. Anime has never been my cup of tea, though Netflix has rebooted other Japanese cartoons in live action format and Death Note was one of my favorites. I’ve only watched the first two episodes thus far but I am hooked.
The best description I can provide is that it’s as if Quentin Tarantino took all the elements of a Western and a space opera, put them in a blender, hit puree, then added his patented hipness and his unbridled fascination with the 1970s. Tarantino was not involved with the production but whoever was must have been a huge fan.
The plot? In the future, humanity has colonized a number of worlds, making them look just like Earth, but for some reason, Earth as it looked during the 1970s. Space ships, space ports, space guns and so on contribute to an eye dazzling special effects bonanza, yet cars look like something Steve McQueen would have driven and buildings/decor look like Nixon and Carter are still president.
Intergalactic crime is so rampant that police put contracts out on the worst scum, creating a booming bounty hunter (called cowboys) business. Partners Spike Spiegel and Jet Black (John Cho and Mustafa Shakir) travel about in their spaceship, Bebop, looking for bounties to cash in on. It’s all very sleek and stylish and while the music, banter and gunplay are all straight out of Tarantino’s playbook, sometimes there is a cool weapon or device, such as a black hole creating gun that casino robbers use in the first episode to suck everyone and everything not nailed down into the vast nether regions of space.
Spiegel and Black are a typical odd couple. Spiegel wears a flashy suit with a turned up collar, always listening to music on his headphones with a care free attitude. Black is serious, constantly worried about the little details. He bounty hunts so he can raise enough money to provide for his daughter.
So far, at least in my watching, we’ve met Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda), a cowboy (cowgirl?) who vies the dynamic duo for a prize only to team up with them. I understand that, at least if the original series is to be adhered to, there should be a plucky data hacker and an intelligent Corgi dog on the way.
Their main enemy? The Syndicate, an evil space mafia that has its vile tentacles in everything.
Space + campiness = Cowboy Bebop. It’s not quite as campy as 1960s Batman, but there’s definitely a fun campy vibe that no one else has brought to space before. You may have never thought too much about how there’s a lack of campiness in space before, but now that it’s here, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.
STATUS: So much of Netflix’s offerings are doody, IMO, but this one caught me. The special effects are great, yet the throwbacks to old Westerns and 1970s culture are fun. I haven’t watched the entire first season yet so I can’t guarantee that it holds up but I’m into it so far and feel like this is going to be a winner if Netflix gives it what it needs to thrive and grow. At times it can be a little confusing, and it might merit a rewatch, but then again, it’s good enough to deserve a second watch.
I don’t know how it’s possible for a movie starring The Rock, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot to be a boring stinkfest but darned if Netflix didn’t find a way to make it happen.
BQB here with a review.
I don’t know how Netflix tricked me again, seeing as how I’ve written about how Netflix has tricked me before. They put out promos for awesome looking movies with big stars and you can’t wait and then it drops and it stinks.
The way I see it: Apparently, Netflix can hire big stars or great writers, but it’s rare for the company to bring both together.
Ironically, the plot sounds as awesome at the stars. Rival art thieves (Gadot and Reynolds) go to war over Cleopatra’s (she of Ancient Egypt fame) prized golden eggs, with FBI agent The Rock caught in the middle. Double crosses, triple crosses, globe trotting, heists, explosions, and Nazi secrets abound and yet…YAWN.
Why? Heavy on the exposition dumps. I hate exposition dumps. You hate exposition dumps. Writing 101. Show us. Don’t tell us. We go to movies for entertainment, not to be given a bunch of facts up front that we have to commit to memory so we can understand the plot later.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m too hard on these movies because Netflix made them but I don’t think so. If one really strikes my fancy, I’ll give it its due, like I did recently with Army of Thieves, but I think when it’s billed as a film with three top stars, you go in expecting a lot of razzle dazzle and instead well…imagine if like, a sophomore English major banged out a movie script in an hour but for some reason, was rich enough to hire The Rock, Reynolds and Gadot to star in it…maybe its not THAT bad but still. I expected more. I expected these three would look at the script and be like, “Um…keep the money. I don’t want to be in sucky movies.”
To be fair, the film has its moments, as many do. Its a fun distraction to eat popcorn to but there’s zero character development and I get it. Most of these flicks don’t have any character development but at least there’s an attempt. The biggest question left on the floor is how did a musclebound FBI agent end up as an art expert? What convinced him to use his art knowledge to fight art crime?
I do have to give it some points in that it let Gadot be the villain, which is a big change for her. Even so, Reynolds rattles off his “Who, me?” one liners. The Rock kicks ass. Gadot is that rare person who is both beautiful and kind, such that even when she applies an electro shock device to The Rock’s nards, it’s hard to believe she isn’t secretly concerned for her adversary’s safety.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy, but I’m wise to this scam. From now on, I won’t get excited by these streaming service blockbuster ads because I know deep down, they’ll spend big on the special effects and actors, but skimp on the writing, so I will never again watch a…OH MY GOD! DISNEY PLUS JUST RELEASED A NEW HOME ALONE MOVIE?! I GOTTA GO WATCH THIS THING! THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!
I’m good at everything except the things I can’t do, 3.5 readers.
BQB here with a review of this super creepy, uber violent yet oddly addictive pop cultural phenomenon.
In my mind, I view most Netflix TV show greenlight sessions as a chimpanzee in a suit tossing bundles of cash to any old drunk hobo who shuffles in off the street with a half-baked idea for a show. Thus, when I saw this in the line-up of my Netflix account about a month ago, my response was a solid hard pass. All I knew at the time was that it had dudes walking around dressed up like pink Playstation controllers and if that doesn’t sound like a show dreamed up by a hobo and greenlit by a chimp then what does?
Flash forward to this past weekend and SNL parodied it. That and some mumblings motivated me to give it a try and down the rabbit hole I went, instantly hooked.
First off, it’s a Korean produced show and the actors’ voices are dubbed over in English, sometimes to comedic effect. I’ve found some foreign language gems on Netflix – Donnie Yen’s Ip Man series or the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo made in Sweden. With those, I preferred to read the subtitles and listen to the actors speak in their language but here I think there’s so much going on that you don’t have time to read and you have to go with the English dub, even though sometimes the words don’t quite match up with the lips – not to mention there are cultural differences, differences in phrasing, word choice – sometimes things don’t quite translate but whatever. It’s good and I tip my hat to the voice over artists, especially whoever did the voice of the crazy eyed lady.
Moving on…the plot! As it turns out, life in Korea isn’t all that different than life in America. Everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs yet everyone still wants more, more, more. When a group of 456 people suffering from enough financial woes to choke a horse are transported to a remote island to compete in a series of kids’ games (the titular Squid Game being a Korean kids’ game, kind of like a combo of hopscotch and football is my best attempt at a description) with the chance to win a big cash prize (you can try to figure out the exchange rate between won and US dollars or just be lazy and assume it’s a lot like I did)…they think their prayers have been answered.
Ah, but nothing in life is that simple…or free. When the losers of a game of Red Light Green Light are shot dead, the competitors realize they have signed up for a far more dangerous experience than they bargained for. Deception, betrayal, intrigue and infighting breaks out amongst the players with everyone trying to cheat and connive their way to the top.
Sadly, the BLAM! of the guns packed by the video game themed guards looms large over the series like a sinister presence, as a simple mistake is all it takes for a contestant to be fed a heaping helping of hot lead. In the true show don’t tell style that all good writers must adhere to, the series never quite comes right out and says it, but the point is clear – life is like a game, and while a mistake, in most cases, won’t (thankfully) lead to a video game man in a pink coat blasting you in the face, said mistake could cause you to lose your house, spouse, kids, career, livelihood, money, friends, family and more. All it takes is one moment of bad judgement and boom, your broke, penniless, outcast and shunned and no, it’s nowhere near as bad as being shot by the pink dudes but there might be times when you find you have screwed up so bad that you might pray for the pink dudes to…no, wait, it’s never that bad, right? I mean, even if you’re a fully grown middle aged man living with your mother, it’s still not that bad, right? Right?
Enter Gi-Hun (Greg Chun) as the protagonist who holds it all together. Somehow, despite being the quintessential nice guy who always finishes last (one time he did something noble and his reward was to lose his wife, daughter, job and end up living with his mother who as mothers go is pretty nice but still, no self respecting single dude wants to live with his mother) will have to find a way to survive against contestants adept at cheating to get their way…another life point as unfortunately, rare is the person who goes through life without having to get their hands dirty, who doesn’t have to do something that leaves a bad taste in their mouth and those who don’t sometimes end up as noble yet poor and alone, wishing they’d done X dastardly deed back in the day so they could be rich now.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Not for the squeamish as it does put the U in ultraviolence, such that Stanley Kubrick’s droogs might even clutch their pearls at the scenes that lie within. Life is definitely cheap in this competition, the underlying argument seeming to be that life is treated rather cheaply in the real world as well. Heartbreaking, as it might dredge up your old memories of times when you had to put yourself over others and neither option felt totally kosher.
Finally, I’ll just say this. It’s been two long years since Game of Thrones ended and since then, I’ve felt like a stranger in a strange land when it comes to TV. There just hasn’t been anything with the same chutzpah or level of storytelling, that trail of breadcrumbs that lures you in and rewards you by tying up all of those pesky loose threads.
So ultimately, that’s what I’m saying. A bunch of plucky Koreans in track suits playing kids’ games to the death somehow adds up to the best TV show since Game of Freaking Thrones…at least in this humble blogger’s opinion.
But do think twice before watching if you are squeamish.
SIDENOTE #1 – I have to give props to this show for not only allowing the hero to be played by a man in his late 40s, but to actually come right out and say that Gi-Hun is 47. His childhood friend/competitor Sang-Woo is also in his late 40s. The ages of the competitors run from early 20s to 40s and one very old man but I assume this is a cultural difference between America and Korea. In an American reboot of the show, Gi-Hun’s character would be like, a worldly 21-year old who somehow has seen it all and done it all and is very wise despite being twenty-freaking one. (Honestly, in my own personal experience, I’ve found that life sends the equivalent of the pink coated video game guards to blast you in the face the second you hit 30, 35 tops. Had I known this when I was 21, I would have pushed myself much, much harder but unfortunately, I was dumber than a box of rocks when I was 21…not like all the super wise all knowing 21 year olds on TV today.
All I’m saying is kudos to Korea for supporting a show where a 47 year old character isn’t treated like a useless piece of trash ready for the dumpster. I mean, his family, friends and potential employers still treat him like that, but competition wise he hangs in on those games with the best of them.
SIDENOTE #2 – Often when a show or movie takes off overseas, it is treated to an American reboot, often with disastrous results. Ironically, Netflix is one of the chief perpetrators of such reboots. Since the show has become popular in its own right, I doubt you’ll see an Americanized reboot. I’m not dumping on American movies/shows but it’s just…sometimes something is good in part because of the world in which it is created and it was interesting to learn about Korean life as I watched the show.
SIDENOTE #3 – If I’m reading the figures in other reports right, it cost $21.4 million to produce but raked in 900 million for Netflix. Mmmm boy that’s a good return on investment!
I want to say this is the harshest movie review I’ll ever write, but the year is still young and so is the decade and who knows how much blogging time I have left…even so…
…what a horrible piece of crap this movie is. Don’t even bother…to watch it. You can still read my review if you want.
When this one popped up on Netflix, I saved it until a weekend afternoon when I could give it my full attention. It looked great, with Jake Gyllenhaal as a benched cop assigned to 911 operator duty while he awaits the review of recent allegations of wrongdoing. He takes a call from an abduction victim and attempts to use his detective skills from his desk to solve the case, even though he’s really just supposed to relay the info to the actual investigators and stay out of the way.
The film is a remake of a Danish film of the same name, though I immediately felt it was somewhat of a ripoff of the 2013 film, “The Call” starring Halle Berry. That movie was actually pretty good, largely because it plenty of cut shots, scenes that showed what was going on with Halle at the call center as well as what was happening with the victim – the villain’s evil-doings, attempts by good Samaritans to intervene, the police chase, etc.
Here, we get none of that. If you were hoping for an extended film that is just the Jakester sitting at a desk, arguing with various voices on the phone, then have fun. Oh wait, I forgot, sometimes he gets up and moves to another room where he can yell at the voices on the phone in private.
I have to wonder who thought it would be a good idea to release an all Jake, all the time film, without any glimpse into what’s going on with the victim or the baddie whatsoever. Then again, that might have been the point. Netflix and other streaming services are trying to build their platforms, churning out tons of product, trying to give subscribers a lot of bang for their buck i.e. “Look at all the movies we’ve got!”
Problem is, I’ve found a lot of these Netflix flicks that look like they rival the theatrically released summer blockbusters often just end up with one big star in a film with a shitty script. I could cite Charlize Theron in The Old Guard or Ryan Reynolds in Six Underground….except I can’t because those had one big star, a shitty plot, but a lot of special effects and action that were at least fun to watch.
Here, it’s just a dude sitting at a desk. I guess the one saving grace is eventually I realized I could putter around the house and do my busy work, treating the film like a podcast because all I needed was to hear Jake and the various voices on the other line.
It’s just…sad…and it does make me wonder about the future of movies if theaters are ever, God forbid, shuttered permanently. I mean, seriously, theaters are a check on Hollywood because surely, if you ever put a movie this shitty in a big city, packed house movie theater, there’d be a riot, or probably not far but a mild insurrection. Rabble rousers would definitely throw popcorn at the screen and demand some cut scenes showing the police chasing the bad guy while Jake is on the phone. If streaming services take over completely, it will just be a non-stop spew of crap.
Surprising because not only is JG the lead, but it is directed by Antoine Fuqua who gave us Training Day and screenwriter Nic Pizzolato of True Detective Fame. I dunno. All three have given us great stuff to watch but it feels like they sold out to create a real turd here.
STATUS: NOT-SHELFWORTHY! Truly, the most devastating rating I can give a piece of work on this fine blog. I really thought this would be good because it had an actor who has starred in good movies, but then again, Netflix got me with Charlize Theron, Ryan Reynolds, etc. It’s like Lucy holding the football. I always say I’m not going to run at that ball and then I do it anyway.
Thanks for making me look like a blockhead, Netflix.
I HAVE THE POWER…to write this review, 3.5 readers.
BQB here to check out Netflix’s sequel series to the popular 1980s cartoon, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
3.5 readers, perhaps you’ve heard there is a bit of controversy behind this show. Rather than do a straight up review, I’m going to organize my thoughts into PRO and CON but beware, SPOILERS abound. Frankly, I wish I had watched it before reading about it online, so if you haven’t read about it, here’s your chance to go watch it first, then come back and praise it or kvetch about it, or both, whatever your preference. Believe it or not, I fall into the “or both” category.
THE CONTROVERSY:
Fans of the series were totes stoked that He-Man was coming back in a Netflix series helmed by Kevin Smith, a comic book auteur known for keeping it real when it comes to comics. If K-Smitty is behind it, it must be good, for he’s an OG comic fan from way back and would never, ever sell out to The Man just to make a quick buck.
Alas, in the first episode (BIG TIME MEGA SPOILER) He-Man and Skeletor (the trash talkiest villain of all time, basically imagine a combination of your mother in law, a sassy drag queen, and Donald Trump in their ability to pinpoint and throw shade on your flaws and put them in a skeleton man costume) have the final duel that has been forever in the making. At first, this seems awesome but then, they kill each other and for the rest of the series, the show is helmed by Teela, the longtime friend, confidante and lady bodyguard of Prince Adam, He-Man’s true identity and alter ego.
To boil it down further, there is very little He-Man in a show where He-Man is the main draw.
PRO:
#1 – Teela is voiced by Sarah Michelle Geller which makes me happy as a Buffy fan.
#2 – Kevin Smith’s argument is that he made a show for adult fans of a kids show – people who loved a show when they were little but are now in their 30s and 40s. Often, adults tend to look back at things they loved as kids with rose colored glasses, only to revisit them as adults and realize it was kind of dumb and silly. For example, I like He-Man as a kid. It wasn’t my favorite show, for that role went to GI Joe, but I generally like the show. As an adult, I went back and looked at old clips of He-Man only to find it is campy and silly AF, lots of bad puns and goofiness and what have you.
Ergo, Smith tried to make something where the stakes are real, in other words, where there are consequences and yes, where characters can actually die, as opposed to the show we got when we were kids, where He-Man and Skeletor would just wail on each other for a half hour each week and then the next week, they were fine and ready to go at it again.
He makes a good point. The show has a great musical score that puts me back in the 80s and it has that 80s feel while not being a campy romp. It has about as much of a plot as a fantasy show about warriors battling over the control of a planet’s magic can have and though I was sad to see He-Man go, I did want to find out what happens next. The five episode run is short and bingeable.
#3 – Lena Headey steals the show as Evil-Lynn, a sorceress who rivals Skeletor in her ability to throw shade. He Game of Thrones co-star, Liam Cunningham, is also pretty great as Man-At-Arms, Eternia’s resident weapons-smith.
#4 – The show isn’t a reboot. It starts where the series left off, just with a flare that is more adult yet can be watched by children. In the 1980s, comic book type shows and movies were considered silly by adults, and presented as silly for the kids with the idea that comic books are silly and should be presented as silly for the kids. Today, see the Marvel movies as an example of how it’s almost as if the studios think about the adults first and the kids second when it comes to comic book movies. This is a show with a plot that will appeal to adults yet kids can watch it. Whether or not today’s kids will enjoy it though, I have no idea. I’ll admit I wasn’t enough of a He-Man fan to keep up with it over the years and I had forgotten its main plot points, though the show quickly reminds who in the beginning who everyone is and what they do, what the world and the war is all about.
#5 – To the show’s credit, it is called Masters of the Universe: Revelation. In other words, it’s not called “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” as it was originally titled. This should suggest up front that a) there was a reason why they didn’t include He-Man in the title and revelation means something you didn’t expect is going to happen.
#6 – The show survives by plugging up past plotholes. Namely, Teela never knew that Prince Adam was He-Man and feels betrayed so many of her friends knew and never told her. King Randor never knew either. An ongoing plotline was Teela and the King thought Prince Adam was a wimp and if only he could be half as brave as He-Man. The King’s rage at being lied to leads to a big shakeup in the kingdom. Teela becomes so jaded that she dons a butch haircut and travels the world as a merc, giving a middle finger to honor and duty and just being in it for the money and herself.
#7 – The show pits magic against technology. With magic in short supply as a result of Skeletor’s chicanery, Eternians turn more to tech, which seems like a commentary on the modern age, i.e. people turn to religion for comfort yet are more reliant than ever on tech.
CON
#1 – MOTU without He-Man is like buying tickets to an Insane Clown Posse concert only to arrive and find that ICP took the day off and have been replaced by Flo from the Progressive commercials strumming a ukulele. It’s like turning on a new Batman movie only to discover Batman has decided to go to a spiritual healing retreat while Robin takes over for 2 hours. It’s like showing up to a Mets vs. Yankees game only to discover both teams have gout, and the only entertainment will be Mr. Met dancing the Macarena for 4 hours. It’s like showing up at the alter, ready to marry your beloved, only to pull back the fall and discover she has been replaced by a chimpanzee in a dress.
In short, when He-Man and Skeletor buy the farm so early in the show, you can almost hear the WOMP WOMP.
#2 – I’m not 100 percent sure this was the case here, but in today’s super woke world of ultra woke wokesterism, it’s hard not to believe that some suit at Netflix HQ didn’t decide that there was no way a show helmed by a character who is a super muscular stud-muffin blonde barbarian man who is so frigging straight and macho that he probably bangs hot chicks two at a time in between sword battles was going to fly unless he gets straight up ganked in the first episode and is replaced by a female character and said female character needs a butch makeover. I mean, for Christ’s sake, He-Man is so freaking macho and manly that his name is literally the combination of HE and MAN (which hey, by 1980s standards, the dude put his pronoun right in his name and in retrospect was hella woke) but no way such a macho sumbitch can be allowed to be in charge in this day and age. I’ll admit, that was my first reaction when I learned He-Man kicked the bucket early but then I admit once I started watching, I was intrigued.
#3 – I’m not sure what to think of K-Smith’s involvement. It feels like he was brought on board to give the series that OG Comic fan street cred. As of late, he’s been ranting online about how the fans are being jerks yet a comic guru like himself should realize you can’t just waste He-Man without there being some blowback.
#4 – Eighties kids have been through this already. Corporate suits loved to straight up murder characters we loved all the time, often just to sell toys. The Transformers movie ganked both Optimus Prime and Megatron and their top cronies, all for them to replaced with all new characters, which little kids of the day openly realized was just a cheap marketing trick (though we demanded our parents buy us those toys anyway.)
The Transformers move was so poorly received that Optimus had to be revived in the show and the GI Joe movie had to scrap storyline where Duke dies and it ultimately went to release straight to video. In short, we didn’t like it when our TV show cartoon pals died as kids and we don’t like it as adults either.
BOTTOMLINE – Whenever I want to criticize a show or a movie, I take stock and admit that hey, at least they made something, which is more than I did. I’m a frigging adult, so it’s not like I’m crying over the demise of He-Man. Though he is the main draw, I did binge the show because I found the storyline interesting and wanted to see where it went, so perhaps ultimately Smith and Netflix found a way to get the show a lot of free press and to draw viewers in. Would a show where He-Man wields his sword and kicked ass while Skeletor mocks his loin cloth been just more of the same? I don’t know.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy, though I’m not sure where the show goes from here. A MOTU show without He-Man and Skeletor probably can’t last forever and yet, if you bring them back with a magic wand wave, that sort of cheapens the idea that this show has adult level stakes. As much as I have enjoyed watching Teela’s storyline, I wonder if, in the long run, you do need the buff barbarian and the trash talking skeleton to go at it because really, who doesn’t want to see more of that?
Wow, 3.5 readers. It’s official. The Russkis have entered the comic book movie world.
BQB here with a review.
So like the rest of you, I was scrolling through Netflix’s Top Ten the other day and came across a film by the above name. I thought it sounded like a dumb name for a movie but then again, when I scroll through most of Netflix’s original offerings and read the titles and descriptions, it makes me feel like their entire greenlight strategy is that there’s a chimpanzee in a business suit in the basement of Netflix HQ throwing darts at various words and phrases and whatever the darts land on ends up being the next show.
But I digress.
It turns out this is a Russian movie. It’s dubbed in English but you can tell it’s a bit off, i.e. it might make more sense if you knew Russian and saw it in the original Russian, but then you’d also have to know Russian expressions, manners of speech, accents, colloquialisms etc. Sometimes I wonder if these movies are better not dubbed. For example, I thought the IP Man movies were better with the subtitles and lost something when they got popular and were dubbed with English speaking actors. With the subtitles, you could find out what they were saying but then also hear what is emphasized, what isn’t in the native language even though you don’t understand it.
Anyway…
Bubble Studios is behind this, a name I’d never heard of until coming across this movie. After looking it up, it turns out they’ve been bringing American style comic books to Russia for the past ten years, with the ultimate goal of making a movie and this is it.
It stars some Russian guy as the titular Major Igor Grom (yeah I’m not looking up all the actors and stuff I am too lazy), a St. Petersburg police detective with a reputation for being tough on crime, not afraid of skirting the rules if it means putting a bad guy behind bars. The beginning sequence and aftermath, where he chases down a van of bank robbers by wrecks half the city while doing so, only to end up getting yelled at by his captain makes me think some Russian film executive somewhere is a fan of the Lethal Weapon series and all the cop movie tropes that come with it.
Moving on, after the obligatory, “Give me your badge and OK you can have your badge back we have bigger problems!” sequence, we learn the son of a powerful billionaire has, in a most crooked manner, been released on charges stemming from him running an orphan down with his fancy sports car. From this incident, the vigilante known as the Plague Doctor is born. In olden times, Plague Doctors, with their big long beak masks, would treat the diseases, sometimes setting fire to afflicted areas if need be.
Here, the vigilante sees corrupt rich oligarchs as the modern disease that he must burn with the fire shooting fists of his elaborate costume.
Naturally, Grom must investigate, with a nerdy rookie sidekick in tow and a love interest in the form of an intrepid lady journalist on his arm. Sometimes he stops to eat a burrito (I think it is a burrito unless it is a Russian treat I don’t know about) to give him personality.
Overall, the movie is very silly, laden with plot holes, and sort of reeks of Russian film execs saying, “Hey look! We can sell out just as hard as the Americans!” A lot of stylized action and so forth, a lot of explosions and special effects and the occasional attempt at humor or plot explanation.
There are some things will come across as odd to Americans. For example, the Plague Doctor becomes popular on social media, leading some to ask why the government doesn’t just shut his postings down – after all, he’s hamming it up for likes and might stop if his attention goes away. Clearly, the Russian government has a greater power to do that than in the US. The freedom of speech becomes a key plot point – if we pick and choose who can speak, pretty soon the government will warp that into just shutting down any and all governmental criticism. Still, sometimes people say things that are pretty awful. In America, we’ve accepted that we have to accept people saying awful things as the cost of saying everything else we need or want to say, and of course, one person’s awful thing to say is another man’s firmly held believe so where does it end and where does it begin?
There are also some cultural differences that some American viewers might question. For example, Yulia, at first a thorn in Grom’s side as a journalist who keeps bothering him and later a love interest, obtains her goals through trickery and deception, for she lacks Grom’s muscles which he uses to smack the answers he needs out of most of the film’s goons and henchmen. In an American film, Yulia would just smack the goons around herself, the 300 pound brutes being flung wildly through the air upon a single kick from her tiny high heel shoe, although to the film’s credit (SPOILER) she does get to mace a couple of baddies so that’s fun. At any rate though, my brain registered a few moments where American feminists might be rattling off a curtly lettered complaint letter to…I’m not sure where such letters go in Russia…probably some bureaucrat in Siberia I guess.
Long story short, this is probably something I never would have watched if we a) weren’t in a pandemic where Hollywood has scaled back and new, blockbuster American films are few and far between lately and b) if Netflix didn’t put it in front of me. I would have never gone in search of Russian comic book movies. It was fun and I suppose the rub is now that I watched one I’ll probably watch a sequel.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy, though I do worry about the implications of the Russians entering the global blockbuster type popcorn munching movie market. The movie is fun and makes Russia seem like a nice place to live where tough guy cops like Grom have the citizen’s back. However, I’m not sure these movies ever would ever criticize the Russian government or Putin. Maybe there are Russian legal reasons why they can’t or maybe, more understandably, they just won’t because they don’t want to wake up cracking rocks in the gulag one day. I’m not sure what life is like for the average Russian and info coming out of that country seems to be scarce. My gut tells me its probably better than it was during the Cold War but not as good as it could be. Somewhere in there but what do I know? All we know is Putin has been president for what? Twenty something years? There isn’t a true democracy that would keep anyone in power for twenty something years. Add to that how Putin’s critics have a tendency to go belly up and well…I just worried a growing trend of Russian action/comic book movies might leave Americans thinking, “Hey, look! It’s a lot of fun over there! No need to worry about human rights abuses and so on.”
Putting the obligatory geo-political worries aside, the movie is fun and it isn’t lost on me that Grom has no powers other than he punches bad guys in the face, then eats a burrito while his girlfriend and nerdy sidekick do all the paperwork, which let’s be honest, is probably the Russian version of having a superpower.
BQB here with a review of Liam Neeson’s latest action flick.
Did you ever wonder what would happen if Ice Road Truckers was turned into a movie? This is it. Ice road trucking finally hits the silver screen.
Liam, who apparently does 100 old man action flicks a year in his sleep now, stars as Mike McCann, an old trucker recently fired after punching out a fellow trucker who was making fun of his brother, Gurty, (Marcus Thomas) a war veteran who suffers from PTSD and aphasia, meaning everyone’s trying to put the poor guy in a home which would be a waste as he can take apart and reassemble a truck engine like nobody’s business.
Long story short, a bunch of miners get trapped in a mine after a gas explosion caves them in. Holt McCallany, the toughest tough guy to ever come out of Netflix, plays the head miner who has to keep the other miners from flipping out while the company assembles a rescue team.
Said team takes the form of Liam’s Mike and brother Gurty, Tantoo, a sassy Native truck driver Tantoo (Amber Midthunder) and Laurence Fishburne as Jim Goldenrod, who must drive a three truck convoy over the icy roads that traverse various bodies of water in the icy depths of Canada. As we are told in great detail, ice road trucking is a dangerous feat, for to drive too fast or too slow or to make any mistake, really, will result in a big rig and its driver plunging into the ice, never to return. One wonders why anyone does it in the first place, though I suppose those who dare are super macho and deserving of much praise.
Ah, but there is danger afoot as evildoers want to stop the convoy from bringing the much needed rescue equipment to the collapsed mine. Much to my surprise, Matt McCoy is the villain of the film, and I haven’t seen that guy in a movie since he played Mahoney’s replacement in the later installments of the Police Academy movie series.
Overall a fun film, though you might have to suspend disbelief and not ask yourself questions like, “Wouldn’t a professional mining company already have life saving equipment on site?” and “Would anyone really want to stop a life saving convoy from reaching its destination?” and “Has Liam Neeson made a deal with the devil that allows him to play the tough guy in every action movie until he turns 100?”
It is pretty cool that Netflix made this movie. Their flicks have been a little lackluster as of late, so this one’s worth a watch.
Bookshelf Battle 