I have been rewatching Mercy Street again. Mainly it is because I am on a Mary Elizabeth Winstead kick, after reading that she will play the Huntress in the upcoming Birds of Prey movie.

I am halfway through season one, and I recognized one of the actors. The guy playing Tom, the injured rebel and bf of the young blond southern girl, is the same guy who plays Jerome - the Proto-Joker in Gotham. Now I just keep seeing him all Jokery.

What is your opinion of the show Gotham?

I only saw the first two seasons. I keep meaning to watch the rest. I just have not gotten to them yet.

For the most part I like it. Some of the plot points seemed a kind of dumb and/or unbelievable to me. And I was not overjoyed that the only gay characters are evil (Of course! Though granted, I am not sure if any one is actually 'good' in the show).

OTOH, the characters are usually interesting. Some are downright brilliant reinterpretations. I can honestly say this is the best Penguin and Riddler I have ever seen. Usually they are kind of campy, mediocre villains. Here they really shine. Likewise, B.D. Wong's portrayal of Hugo Strange was just awesome. I just love his chaotic streak. He creates psychotic supervillains and turns them loose, just to see what will happen. Harvey Bullock is perfect. Fish Mooney was a new character to me (I am not sure if they created her, or I just never came across her in the comics), and she was really cool. And I just love their version of Catwoman (or Catgirl at this stage).

The first season was basically a mob war, and pretty tight in that regard. The second season started with the Penguin on top of the mob. But it was really about the downfall of the mob in Gotham and the rise of the supervillains, which happened as a gradual shift. It ends with a whole bunch of supervillains being turned loose upon the city. I have not seen the rest yet, but I can see how the show is gradually moving toward the Gotham we know from all the Batman comics and films.

Yeah they are on the final season now. Khajiit believes Netflix carries the show.

Silent cinema buff that I am, I never got around to watching Haxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages)...until now. Someone linked it on the official Beth forums. The version linked includes a nifty, appropriate modern music score. I've not gotten very far in yet, but what I've seen is most impressive. Wish my hearing wasn't shot to better appreciate the music, but then I always wish that.

The music is gorgeous; but I couldn't read the subtitles. Nice link, thanks Decrepit!

Just finished Ralph Breaks The Internet. Like the first Wreck It Ralph, it was a lot of fun. This time the satirical look at the internet was really cute. Plus I loved the Disney princesses and the modern Disney characters, who were voiced by their original actors (Kristen Bell, Vin Diesel, etc...) Naturally there was tons of product placement. What was interesting is when they didn't use an original property, but instead made up a thinly-veiled copy instead. Most obvious was Slaughter Race, which is plainly Grand Theft Auto.

Anyway, lots of fun.

I watched The Mortal Engines. It was good, though not great. TBH, I think what held it back was the heavy steampunk elements. It just made it difficult to take a lot of it seriously. Especially the idea of the moving cities. I kept asking myself how they fuel these things? In the beginning we see the giant bad guy city literally devour a small 'good guy' city. The whole smaller city is carved up and tossed into some kind of furnace. But that makes no sense. Iron is not a power source. You cannot burn it like coal or wood to create energy. They never really did explain what powered anything in fact.

But there was a lot to like as well. The entire thing has a very epic feel, with a great expanse of a world our characters get to play in. It felt a lot like Lord of the Rings in the respect. Then I looked up the writers and producers - Peter Jackson and company. Later they get to the Chinese wall city, and it looked suspiciously like Minas Tirith. Which is not throwing shade. I love Minas Tirith.

The whole thing is set in a post apocalyptic future, over a thousand years from now. The Old World was destroyed by something called Quantum energy beams. We see more of that near the end of the film. The current world does not look apocalyptic at all though. It is nice green fields as far as the eye can see. Which is rather nice. But it also made me wonder why these people are living in massive rolling cities when they could just sit down and start farming anywhere. Given that Farms = Food = Life, that seems like a no-brainer.

There is also a lot of flying later in the movie. This stuff gave me a real Crimson Skies feel. They had some really cool airships, from sleek futuristic looking ones from the big city, to much wilder and more artsy ones from the non-rolling city people. There is even a neat Cloud City.

The Resurrected Man was a neat too. He's basically a cybernetic zombie. Very creepy. He reminded me of Persephone. I could tell there is a lot of backstory there behind where he came from, but the movie just could not get to it. Since this is from a book, I imagine there might be more in the novel.

The main characters are good too. I really liked that the main female character has a big scar going across her face. That is a big departure from normal, and a wonderful breath of fresh air. It is nice to see a woman who looks like a real person, rather than some airbrushed impossibility. There is some nice backstory, and a little character development. Sadly, that does come with a couple of really derivative scenes. One had me literally saying out loud "Really, you went there?"

All in all it was a fun, but flawed masterpiece.

Did the film makers NOT read Infinity War? Thanos's original plan to kill half the people in the universe was to impress Lady Death, not because he was an echo warrior.
-_-

Khajiit likes steampunk aesthetics and concepts, but he agrees with you that the giant wheeled cities were a bit much. Never saw the movie because of this.

The movies have never been direct adaptations of the original stories. They just draw from them.

Endgame trailer. Mad hype.

I started watching Andromeda. I never saw it back when it was originally out. I just finished the second episode, and I am enjoying it immensely. Interesting characters, an intriguing setting, and a two episode show opener with a fun plot. Lots of crosses and double-crosses. Granted, I saw them coming, but I still appreciate the effort. I am looking forward to more.

Trance Gemini...
... so pretty...

There is a lot of eye candy in this show. I am kind of partial to the Andromeda Ascendant's AI. And while I am not into guys, Kevin Sorbo is no hunk of man-flesh to sneeze at. Neither is the Neitzchean guy with the long hair.

Khajiit doesn’t really remember a whole lot about that show. Wasn’t it that Kevin Sorbo’s character was from the past and some how found himself a century or two in the future?

That was basically it. It was really well done, because they used real science to explain it. He and his ship were caught too close to a black hole. Time dilation caused by extreme gravity caused his time to move incredibly slow, while it moved at its normal pace everywhere else in the universe. So in just a matter of seconds for him, 300 years went by.

It would be nice if other sci-fi shows would actually try putting some science in with the fiction, instead of just making up techno-babble all the time. Yes, I am looking at you Star Trek...

Watching a longplay of Dante's Inferno I forgot how cool this game was.

I just finished the four parts of The Bronze Age Collapse. It was really well done.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Extended edition, of course.

Of course! The theater versions were not the real movies, just long trailers...

Beginning last night and finishing up this morning I watched what is billed as the fifth and "final" cut of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. This might be my first complete viewing of the film. I recall attempting it many years ago, but believe I found it un-enjoyable at the time and gave up part way through. Not this time. I was enthralled from start to finish.

I watched Captain Marvel. It was good. I liked that neither she, nor we, know very much about her at the start. As the movie goes on, we learn more as we delve into the past alongside her. That was well done. I was not thrilled with all the space stuff. I just cannot give a crap about Marvel's whole space setting. But thankfully most the story is set on Earth. Though aliens still figure highly.

There is some nice buddy-movie stuff with her and Fury. Plus the space cat is cute. One of the aliens had a really familiar voice. It took about half the movie for me to figure out it was Ben Mendelhson. Yes, Director Krennic lives again, still in space. I was scratching my head at how Jude Law looked human. I kept expecting him to have been using some kind of illusion field to make him look that way, and reveal that he was a Kree (which I think are the blue-skinned people). But he never did. Apparently there are humans in Marvel's space-verse?

I liked how they did her origin story. Though I read a mini-series from last year called The Life of Captain Marvel which I thought did it better. In that her mother is a Kree and her father is a human. What Marvel thought had been her origin was not a case of her being given powers, but rather her natural inborn abilities awakening due to stress. I liked that. I always prefer when a characters power comes from within themselves. Because anything that is given to you is not power. It can be taken away after all. That was something the movie touched on as well.

What I did find absent was the obligatory heterosexual sex scene. I mean, it is obligatory after all. It proves that the main character is heterosexual. So I guess that leaves it open that Captain Marvel might be a lesbian. Because, after all, she's not doing the mattress dance with a dude.

All in all a good movie.

Just finished Aquaman. It was a wild, fun romp. Pretty much what you expect from a James Wan movie. Visually, it is spectacular. I cannot imagine how much money they spent on just making the actor's hair wave around, and the other underwater effects. But it was money well spent, as everything looks just amazing, even on 4k, which breaks lesser effects like Mr. T in a china shop.

I really liked the world-building they did with Atlantis. It is not just one kingdom, but seven. Each has its own look, color schemes, and even its own races. Dolph Lundrgen plays the King of Xebel, and Mera is his daughter. They tend to greens, look human, and their technology is very organic in appearance. They even rode these really cool sea-horse things.

Atlantis itself is another kindgom that also has human-looking people. They tend to blues, ride sharks, and seem to have the most advanced tech, and are the most warlike. Aquaman and his mother are both from this kingdom, as is the main bad guy played by Patrick Wilson (who I have always liked since I first saw him in Watchmen).

The Deserters are not what you would think.Their kingdom was gradually destroyed when it dried out and became a desert, the Sahara. Which I thought was pretty cool. The Trench are Lovecraftian horrors living in... you guessed it, the Mariana's Trench. The Fishermen are a mermaid looking race, who are the peaceful, artist-philosopher types. The Brine are bottom-dwellers, who are crustaceans that harness lava. Finally The Missing Kingdom is basically The Land That Time Forgot, a Hollow Earth sea in the inner earth with dinosaurs. Plus one really awesome kaiju.

All in all a fun movie. It is nothing deep or life-changing. But give credit where it is due. Aquaman is perhaps the most mocked and underappreciated character in comics. I even thought he was lame when I was a kid, and I am trans and a lesbian. But Jason Momoa makes him a total badass. Which is no surprise, given that is how he was in Justice League.

Oh, and Temuera Morrison is his dad. Jango Fett and the Grand Army of the Republic make one heck of a father.

Khajiit wanted to hate this movie. The writing is mediocre, Jason Mamoa seems to play the same character in everything he does (this one is dreading seeing any of The Crow stuff with him in it), and it has one of the lamest villains Khajiit has ever seen in a film (Manta Ray or whatever he’s called). Yet, he found himself enjoying the film for the most part. It’s very pretty; the underwater battles are awesomely beautiful and most of the cast are very good looking too. Khajiit said earlier that Mamoa plays pretty much the same character in everything he does, but this one thinks the character of Aquaman really benefits from Mamoa’s usual combo of brawny bash’em smash’em stuff, sarcastic sense of humor, and broody cynicism. Let’s be real; the character needed to be reimagined into something a bit edgier with sex appeal if anyone was going to care about him in a movie, and Khajiit thinks they achieved this in spades. All in all a fun movie, certainly don’t regret seeing it, but this one doesn’t care to see the inevitable sequel.

One thing I forgot to mention about it was a nice little easter eggish thing in the very beginning. As the camera pans across the lighthouse interior, it goes past a copy of HP Lovecraft's Dunwich Horror. For those who are not HPL fans, the titular character and its brother Wilbur Whately are both half-breeds - part human, part Outer God (Yog-Sothoth apparently being the father). That was a nice touch, as the titular character in Aquaman is also a half-breed - half human, half Atlantean. Granted, he is not trying to destroy the world like the Horror and Wilbur were...

Oh wait, did I say Aquaman was half human? I meant half Mandalorian, given that is father was Jango Fett...

Turns out Manta has another HPL easter egg. When he shows up in Sicily he directly quotes Lovecraft by saying: "Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men." This is from the final paragraph of Call of Cthulhu.

Khajiit was too busy rolling his eyes whenever Manta was on screen to pay attention to what he was saying, lol
This one loves how he gets this super awesome Atlantean technology and his first action is to tear it apart.

Brooklyn 99. Love this show.

Episode IX Teaser.

Since it is on Netflix, I finally got around to watching Infinity War. I went into it expecting little. I was still underwhelmed. I just cannot make myself care about Marvel's space setting. None of it seems real to me, so I don't care about any of the people or places. I am so glad I never wasted my time with any of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Those characters seemed so awful. Well, Zoe Saldana and Karen Gillan were ok. But the rest just struck me as being idiotic.

Thanos was really bad. I had a negative opinion of him already, from the trailers and clips I saw. But John Brolin's voice acting really brought it down for me. He was just so lame. So dull and boring. He had no menace to him. He just struck me as a big, gangly, purple dork. I think of the ending of Rogue One, where we saw Vader do what he does best, and the differences are so stark (if you will pardon the pun). Vader is a villain who just exudes danger and menace. Thanos just takes up space.

His plan is also really bad. Now I am all for wiping out the human race (and any other intelligent life) in order to save the world. So I am not criticizing that. But his plan is so deeply flawed. Killing half the people in the universe is just a temporary measure. Population expands exponentially. So unless Thanos plans on snapping his fingers every twenty years or so for eternity, everything he did will come to naught.

I guess it would have been crazy for him to use his godlike powers to teach the people in the universe to use self-sustaining sources of energy that would not pollute and deplete the natural resources of their worlds. It probably would be equally horrific if he had used the same powers to decrease their reproduction rates, so their populations would not increase as such a terrific rate that it would inevitably outstrip said resources.

Finally, given that I am genre-savvy when it comes to comics, I know that the sequel will just end in an unsnapping of the fingers and restoring everyone, the ending just felt ho hum. It had no weight to it at all. Though I was glad to see most of the Guardians die. Good riddance. Unfortunately they will return...


OTOH, since it is also on Netflix, I saw Ant Man and The Wasp. It was a vast improvement over Infinity War. It was about damned time we saw the Wasp. She was just a founding member of the Avengers after all, and should have been in the first Avenger movie and had her own solo series a decade ago. (Joss Whedon wanted her, but Marvel wouldn't let him of course).

I really liked the villain in this one. Marvel has always had a problem with one-dimensional villains - Ivan Vanko, Yellowjacket, Malekith, General Ross, Justin Hammer, The Mandarin, etc... Ghost worked so much better, because she is not all about "Absolute Power!" She comes across as being very sympathetic. She is not so much a bad guy, as someone who's goals are simply contrary to the protagonist's. I was rooting for her as much as them. It felt so much more like reality than most Marvel movies.

I would have liked to have seen more of Michael Pena, and his awesome story-telling. I would like to see him get his own solo series too.

Joakin Phoenyx as Joker

Incarnation of Sheogorath in this world. CLOWN world.



btw, hello

Hey, milanius!

Heh, interesting that the the Joker and Uncle Sheo could be kin! Clowns for everyone! And clouds. Oh and cheese too.

Broadsword calling Danny Boy - guess what showed up in the mail today?

So did this!

MILANIUS! Dude! How did I miss seeing you swing by? (Face palm). Hope you are well.

Back on topic....

Secret Daughter

Get Shorty (the Epix series)

Working through the MCU movies- excepting Deadpool- because Mrs. Treydog is delicate....

Not a film/movie but instead a short and rather interesting bio of Mata Hari.

Now watching Shadow of the Vampire, a documentary on the real filming of Nosferatu...

Didn’t that have John Malkovich in it?

Yes, he was playing FW Murnau.

Ah ok. Who played Max Schreck/Orlok?

Willem Dafoe. He was brilliant!

Lol, aw man! Khajiit thinks he would be perfect for that!

Eating rice krispies treats and watching Moana.

Recent comments here enticed me to watch Nosferatu again. Didn't bother watching my DVD via the living room TV and six-channel audio system. That's a waste of time (and electricity) with my hearing as it now is. Found a good 720p YouTube upload with proper tinting and appropriate Erdmann music accompaniment. Am over halfway through now and happy with the presentation thus far.

There's just something about this film and its music that makes it very watchable.

Monday afternoon addendum:
Made it to the end. While I like and recommend this presentation, film restoration could be better. I think some of its tinting is incorrect...several scenes that almost have to be meant as night shots don't have night tinting.

That is much better than watching it with a techno score!

The best thing to come from a Saxophone in long time.

Keeping with our Nosferatu theme, here's a decent tour of Orava Castle in Slovakia, the Count's castle in the film.

Speaking of matters concerning the silent film era, Wikipedia's List of Surviving Silent Film Actors is sadly shrunk to a grand total of eight verified survivors, all child actors during the silent era. Three possible but unverifiable survivors are also mentioned.

I have not seen it, but it sounds like the new Godzilla movie is pretty good. It sounds like lots of kaiju smashing. The last Gojira movie was disappointing, as there was only 11 minutes of Godzilla in the movie, and almost no monster bashing action at all. It sounds like they learned their lesson, and finally gave us a movie filled with giant monsters slugging it out.

I really liked Kong Skull Island. It had lots of monster action, and 'little people' who were actually well done, that I could give a crap about. Hopefully this is taking a page out of that book. having Eleven from Stranger Things is a good step in that direction. It is weird seeing her with hair.

The GF and I are thinking about seeing this at some point. It’s got Charles Dance!!

On a different note, I just finished watching the Elseworlds crossover of the DC TV Arrowverse. This one was only a 3-way, with Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl. It was good though. A solid story with heart. It did not have the giant cast of last year's 4 way with Legends of Tomorrow thrown in, but the tighter focus served it well.

I loved seeing the new Batwoman. That was the high point for me. I was a little leery about the casting of Ruby Rose. I wasn't sure if she could live up to the role. But seeing this, I think she can. I look forward to seeing her in her own series.

Plus it gave me a new pic to use for Blood Raven in the Stormcrow fiction

So are you interested in the new Bat Girl show?