There are a lot of online cooking shows that focus on foods from other countries, or relatively obscure foods, such as EmmyMadeInJapan.
But I recently found out about a relative new Youtube show called Tasting History, which focuses on relatively obscure dishes… because they’re from centuries or even millennia ago, as well as often from different cultures. Ever had syllabub, a foodstuff that sounds like it was named by a drunken Wolverine? Wonder what King Alfred burned? Want to make super-historically-accurate tortillas? Want to know the authentic way to prepare the drink of Grecian heroes?
And our host doesn’t just show us how to prepare these dishes, he gives the history and context of the dishes, as well as highlighting the obscure ingredients that were common at the time. For instance, in one episode he prepares Parthian chicken, and not only explains the importance of the unusual ingredients like lovage and asafoetida, but also the significance and the societal role of the Parthian empire.
So give his videos a try, and be sure to subscribe if you like what you see. He seems like a cool guy, and I’m still checking out his backlog of videos.
Which also brings me to Griffin and Liang’s complaint about Eowyn having her “happily ever after.” They managed to completely miss the entire point of everything that the good guys do at the end of the war. Eowyn turning away from her fighting days at the conclusion of the story is not just about her becoming a wifey. It’s about her choosing to embrace life rather than death, about creating something new and good and wholesome rather than seeking out martial glory.
Again, this is a thing that all the male characters do. Aragorn is rebuilding Gondor after its devastating war; Faramir is doing likewise to Ithilien; Legolas brings in a bunch of Wood-Elves to help fix the place up, and Gimli brought in Dwarves to fix up the war damage to Minas Tirith and Helm’s Deep and build a whole new kingdom. And of course, the hobbits return to the Shire and find it’s been wrecked by Saruman and his human lackeys, so once they drive them out, they have to restore the Shire to its former glory, which Sam plays a big part in, since he has a box of special Elven dirt and a mallorn seed. He literally causes the Shire’s plant life to return.
This is what Tolkien thought should happen after a war: not more fighting, but repairing the damage from the war and building things that are better and more noble. Everybody in his book takes part in this. So why is the woman expected to stay a warrior and keep slaying, when all the men are busy fixing stuff up and moving past the killing and death to peaceful lives?
Eowyn’s character arc is not about how she becomes a warrior and stays one forever because WOMAN FIGHTING EMPOWERED. That way, in Tolkien’s world, just leads to decay, blood, death and loss. Instead she embraces a new life of rebuilding and growth and life, which includes embracing romantic love. She even says at the end,
“I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King
Faramir even highlights this plan by saying,
“And if she will, then let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden. All things will grow with joy there, if the White Lady comes.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King
Furthermore, a sane person would not see Eowyn getting married as being somehow a bad thing. Not only is it her embracing life rather than her suicidal rush towards death, but her relationship with Faramir is depicted as being one of equals. He respects her both as a woman and as a warrior, seeing no conflict between those two things, but wanting her to be happy and fulfilled in a way that fighting ultimately won’t make her.
Their relationship also makes sense because they were both recovering from similar experiences when they died: feelings of alienation and rejection, seeing their civilizations crumble from the corruption of outside forces, the recent death of father figures, and the Black Breath. Yeah, Tolkien could have outlined their relationship more, but her connection with Faramir goes a lot deeper than Liang’s contemptuous “Tolkien thinks women should get married to ANY man available.” They have a lot of similarities to build on, and unlike with Aragorn, she gets to know him as a person and not just crush on him because he’s an easy way out of a life she can’t stand anymore.
At the same time, Faramir is a more optimistic and sunny person than Eowyn, who tends to be kind of dark and moody. He lifts her up. He also provides a perspective for Eowyn beyond that of the Rohirrhim, where great deeds in battle are glorified. Gondor’s a little more sophisticated, and gives her an opportunity to learn to be something more positive than a warrior.
Faramir makes her a better, happier person by being who he is, and that’s ultimately a sign of a healthy, good relationship. Turning aside from being a shieldmaiden and marrying Faramir are part of a whole “deciding to live” change in Eowyn’s personality. You know, character growth. Something you don’t find in a lot of poorly-written characters that Griffin would define as “strong female characters.”
And even if Tolkien wanted to marry off his characters for a happy ending… so what? Is that so bad? Would Griffin and Liang have preferred it if Eowyn had just been miserable and lonely at the end of the trilogy? I already outlined why the “Eowyn stays a warrior and goes around killing stuff” thing was not going to fly in Tolkien’s world, so precisely why shouldn’t she get married?
This is why interpretation of a text from a particular political perspective is not the sole way you should look at it. Unless you’re very well-informed and dedicated to fairness and research, you can end up attributing motives and attitudes to the text and the author that are not fair or just, and you can end up bitching about things that are not actually problems. Like when you get upset when a female character does something that THE MEN ALSO DO, or when you totally ignore how a character’s actions dovetail with the attitudes and beliefs of the author.
That’s ultimately why I can’t take Griffin or Liang’s outrage seriously. Their feminist analysis is so shallow, so blinkered. They don’t think deeply about why Tolkien would have written Eowyn this way, they just condemn it because it doesn’t slavishly follow “strong woman” cliches and have Eowyn turn into Xena.
Seriously, how am I supposed to take “scholars” seriously when they can’t think outside of an incredibly narrow political viewpoint, or interpret a text by actual analysis? Major fail, you guys.
J.R.R. Tolkien is sometimes criticized for his female characters not being numerous or prominent enough. Despite this, he created the character of Eowyn, a warrior woman who disguises herself as a man so she can ride into battle alongside her brother and uncle, and was actually Aragorn’s love interest in earlier drafts. I read somewhere that Eowyn was created by Tolkien so his daughter would have a character to look up to, but I haven’t been able to find a source for it.
Anyway, Eowyn was an interesting and well-developed character that Tolkien clearly had some affection for. And she was treated with respect: her yearning to go fight and the unfairness of being left behind is treated sympathetically by both Tolkien and his characters, and never once is she dismissed because of her gender. Hell, she’s given the honor of killing the second most powerful bad guy in Middle-Earth (once Saruman lost his power) — even Aragorn didn’t get a memorable kill like that!
But when I glanced at her wikipedia page, I saw that feminist Peggy Griffin apparently claimed that Eowyn almost qualified as a “strong female character” (her exact phrasing) but didn’t because she decides to turn away from fighting and marry Faramir. The sneering implication of her text is that Eowyn is just being shoved into a romantic role with some random guy (not one of any importance), now that she’s done “playing” as a warrior.
What. A. Crock.
First, I do NOT like the stock “strong female character who wants to be a warrior, wears armor and defies authority” as an archetype, because it’s increasingly antithetical to good writing. It produces characters like the live-action Mulan, who has no flaws, no weaknesses, no identifiable qualities, no real obstacles to overcome, and thus flopped epically as a character because she was being compared to the well-developed, intelligent, hard-working, likable character from the 1990s. I’m not saying the “strong female character” archetype can’t be done well, but she needs to have more than “I rebel against all authority and I dress like a dude! Me so empowered!”
A female character should be written to be a good character first, and a woman second. Female characters should have to work for their triumphs, train, struggle, persevere, and work against their personal flaws in order to grow and become better (or if villains, possibly worse) people. Same as male characters. A good example is Leia from the original Star Wars trilogy: she was smart, capable, dynamic, strong-willed and an excellent leader on and off the battlefield, but she also had some personal flaws she had to overcome before she could find happiness. She had a bad temper (presumably inherited from her father) that often made her very snappish, and she had difficulty in Empire Strikes Back with expressing her deeper feelings that she has to work past (which she has, by the beginning of Return of the Jedi, which also coincides with the subsidence of her anger).
So it pisses me off that Ms. Griffin dismisses Eowyn’s journey just because it involves falling in love and retiring from the battlefield. You know why that isn’t an antifeminist thing to do?
Because all of the men do it.
Okay, not all the men get married at the end, but a substantial portion of the cast does. Aragorn gets married within a year, as does Faramir (obviously, since he married Eowyn), and Sam. Even Eowyn’s brother Eomer immediately starts sniffing around the Gondorian ladies in order to find himself a queen as fast as possible. Merry and Pippin didn’t get married to their wives right away (especially since Pippin is still technically a kid when the war ends) but they do settle down and get married, and later become the respective leaders of their clans.
And precisely why should Eowyn make being a warrior a way of life? All the men stop fighting when the war ends. Sure, some of them have to have some small-scale, brief conflicts because they have kingdoms and the Shire, and bad guys will inevitably attack. But none of the male characters continue fighting as a lifestyle after the war. And yet Griffin and her sneering cohort Liang claim that the ONLY reason a woman would quit her martial pursuits and get married is because she’s being forced into subservient domesticity under the patriarchy.
That’s because neither of them understand how Tolkien thought… and I suspect that is because neither of them has ever been a soldier, or even probably talked to one. Tolkien was a soldier, in the most hideously wasteful, pointless, poorly-handled wars in the history of the human race. He did not think that war and fighting were things that people — male or female — should do as a full-time pursuit, as a way of life. He thought that after the war was over, then people go home, get married and live peaceful lives.
Eowyn is literally being criticized for being treated exactly the same as the male characters. It probably never would have even occurred to Tolkien that he should write her eschewing marriage, donning a metal bra and riding around looking for people to kill. Not because he wanted to deprive a female character of power, but because it literally would not have occurred to him that anybody should do that. It’s not a matter of male vs. female, it’s just how he thought everyone should live.
That’s because Tolkien didn’t think of fighting as empowering, because he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that being a warrior was not just dangerous, but painful, messy, and capable of taking a terrible toll on a person (presumably he witnessed the shellshock victims after the wars). He knew that some people might find fame and honor on the battlefield with impressive deeds, but he didn’t believe that fighting should happen for its own sake. The male characters of Lord of the Rings only ever fight to save the world, not because they think it makes them look awesome.
Consider this quote:
“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend…”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
That quote, by the way, is by the male character that Liang dismisses as “any” man as if he had no importance. I think being the author’s mouthpiece on the morals and purpose of war is probably something reserved for important characters. Especially when the author specifically says that he identifies the most with that character… but hey, I’m not a “feminist scholar.” I just do research.
(Tolkien also didn’t have Eowyn dress as a man as some kind of feminist political statement — her dressing like a guy was purely practical, because she had to blend in with a force of men)
They also managed to miss the fact that Eowyn’s lust for battle-based glory is not depicted as a good thing. Eowyn’s longing for glory on the battlefield is at least partially based on suicidal depression and her frustrations over having to take care of her aged uncle, while her cousin died and her brother was exiled. Eomer suffered the same experiences, but he was able to go out and do something productive about it, because he was a man. By the time Eowyn kills the Witch-King, she’s pretty screwed up from months or YEARS of this treatment.
She’s not trying to fight from a healthy head-space — she’s trying to go out in a blaze of glory, after being trapped by her struggles in a country threatened with decay, because she sees nothing worthwhile in the life of a protector and leader off the battlefield. Aragorn explains in the Houses of Healing that she her crush on him was because he represented escape from Rohan and a chance for great deeds. That is not healthy.
And yet Tolkien is still completely sympathetic to her desires and wishes, even though they are not really in tandem with his own views on warfare.
“But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
I can’t say for sure, but Tolkien probably saw a lot of women who wanted to do things, and had the spirit and inner strength to accomplish them, but were constrained by society’s gender roles. Hell, he worked at Oxford — he probably saw a lot of this sort of thing. And he clearly had sympathy for them and their struggles.
And yet, Griffin and Liang just see it as “herp derp, woman fighting good, woman getting married bad, fighting is empowering, herp derp!”
I have some murky memories of certain TV shows my parents watched when I was very small, and sometimes I didn’t even recognize what these TV shows were until I saw them as an adult, and went “Ah, that’s where I saw it!”
But one TV show I never had trouble identifying was Murder She Wrote, the murder-mystery series that followed English-teacher-turned-mystery-writer Jessica Fletcher. Jessica has to be one of the most prolific writers in the history of literature, because she seems to be writing a new book in almost every episode. She is the Bella Forrest of mystery writing… except I’m pretty sure Bella Forrest is a pen name for multiple people.
Anyway, there were basically two different kinda of MSW mysteries. One kind was that Jessica would travel to some other city, town ranch, archeological dig, convent, billionaire’s mansion, circus, or perhaps stumble across a murder on a plane or bus. And there was an enormous amount of variety in the places she would go, and the stuff she would do. For instance, one episode has her impersonating the almost-victim of a murder attempt, and discovering that the woman has inherited… a brothel. Or she goes to New Orleans and witnesses the murder of a jazz musician. Or she’s at a ski resort where someone is shot with an arrow during a blizzard in mid-jump.
The other kind of episodes are the ones set in Jessica’s hometown of Cabot Cove, Maine. This is your basic small town with a crotchety doctor, eccentric spinsters, sheriffs of varying temperament, gossipy older ladies, a mayor who really contributes nothing, and lots of locals who are just colorful enough to be memorable without being too ridiculous… well, most of the time.
And honestly, as wonderful as the episodes where Jessica goes to exciting places and meets new people are… I always loved the Cabot Cove ones the most. Despite the obvious high murder rate, Cabot Cove feels like one of those cozy places that that would be relaxing and pleasant to live in. Not flawless, but a place where most of the people are pretty nice and likable, and where you could hide from the unpleasantness of the rest of the world.
That is a big factor in why that proposed MSW reboot that was being waved around some years ago was never embraced by anyone. I actually would have accepted a new actress and a new fresh attempt to tell MSW stories if they had kept the core consistent with the older series… but no, they wanted to switch her from Cabot Cove to some large city, and make her a doctor instead of an English-teacher-turned-writer (because… I don’t know, being an English teacher is too stereotypically feminine or something?). Thank God, public disapproval killed that reboot. If you’re going to remake MSW, it has to have Cabot Cove and it has to make her a writer. Those things were the core of Jessica’s character.
Okay, I was slightly incorrect in saying that there were only two kinds of episodes, because admittedly they did switch up the formula every so often. For instance, some episodes featured Jessica “presenting” a mystery starring someone else, either a real mystery that happened to one of her billions of friends or loved ones, or a fictional story she had written. Another episode was revealed (spoilers!) to actually be an elaborate dream that Jessica had when she dozed off at a dinner party, starring the other people at the table.
I will say that it has aged somewhat, especially in how it deals with technology. There are some episodes that deal with the development of CDs, desktop computers, VR video games, and stuff like that, and it’s… kind of quaint. Like “aww, they were just developing email,” and stuff like that. Personally, I can imagine that today Jessica would probably have a trusty smart-phone and iPad with her at all times.
Angela Lansbury is really the reason this show was as good as it was, because… her Jessica is just an incredibly likable person. She’s this very dynamic woman of maybe sixty, intelligent, well-educated, generous, compassionate, funny and clever. It’s always fun to see her navigating the sometimes-insane situations she ends up in, and encountering the weird people that shock her.
Anyway, fans of mystery TV may enjoy Murder She Wrote, if they can enjoy the aesthetics and storytelling of the mid-eighties to mid-nineties. It’s not a perfect show – it had its fair share of bad episodes – but it’s a fun, lovable series for me, and something I return to again and again.
Currently you can watch it free with ads on Amazon Prime and IMDB, so if you are subscribed to that service, I would recommend giving it a look.
On Youtube, I’m subscribed to a few comic-book related channels (Linkara, obviously), and I recently stumbled across a guy called Comic Tropes, who does retrospectives, reviews, histories and trope analyses of various comic books. Not just DC and Marvel, although obviously he focuses mostly on those.
He’s got a lot of energy, and he does some fun little self-competitions like when he counts the tropes in a given creator’s comic book, and he drinks something weird whenever an individual trope comes up. In one video, for instance, he drinks different flavors of moonshine. And he’s very fair-minded, such as when he examined whether Rob Liefeld had improved over the years.
If you enjoy Linkara or ComicsDrake or other such reviewers, then please check out this guy, and preferably subscribe.
Once upon a time, in a far-away land called England, a handful of British lads (and one American) came together to create some of the greatest comedy in the history of…. well, comedy.
Of course, I’m referring to the comedy troupe known as Monty Python, who pushed the boundaries of comedy with their astoundingly funny series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” The complete series is gross, naughty, sometimes quite offensive to modern sensibilities – and because of these things, it’s also gloriously witty, strange, subversive, and intensely weird. Not to mention full of glorious spam, wonderful spam.
For dozens of episodes, these guys served up skits on every insane subject you can think of: defense against fresh fruit, the Ministry of Funny Walks, sitcoms based on the family life of Attila the Hun, lupin bandit Dennis Moore, obscene children’s books, semaphores, racing twits, village idiots, goats, psychotic barbers, Vikings, “ALBATROSS!”, killer sheep, lobotomies, pantomime horses, Tudor pornography, Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things, the dirty vicar, and giant alien blancmanges who are turning people into Scotsmen.
Certain sketches have reached the point of immortality, especially John Cleese’s “dead parrot” sketch, in which he plays an increasingly peeved guy who is trying to return a parrot that was “nailed to its perch.” Also Eric Idle playing the obnoxious guy who constantly thinks of sex, and refers to it as “wink wink, nudge nudge… say no MORE!” And of course, THE SPANISH INQUISTION, whose chief weapons are fear, surprise…
There are also some running jokes, like the pantomime Princess Margaret, and a mysterious knight who walks through hitting people with a dead chicken. And of course, Terry Gilliam’s cartoons interspersing the skits — goofy, surreal, sort of like Saturday morning cartoons if Dali were doing the animating. Somehow the use of photographs to animate these little interludes makes them even more bizarre and wonderful.
Okay, not every skit is funny — the “Mouse Problem” sketch takes a great idea and stretches it thin. We get it, it’s like they’re talking about gay people, but it’s actually about guys who feel like they’re actually giant mice. But more often than not, they ARE quite funny. They also mock just about anything, from government officials to art to censorship (unsurprisingly, since they themselves were often censored) to the military (“Real guns, sir. Not toy ones, sir. Proper ones, sir. They’ve all got ’em. All of ’em, sir. And some of ’em have got tanks!” “Watkins, they ARE on our side”).
And all of this by men who often dress up as the world’s most unattractive girls (John Cleese being the most comically ugly of them), with only a tiny budget and minimal cast. The 70s production values are omnipresent, and they are decidedly unpolitically correct. But in a weird way, these only make it even funnier than it would have been otherwise — the writing and acting are pure, raw, unrefined comedy, not caring what anyone else thinks.
Probably the most memorable actors here are Cleese and Idle. Cleese does his psychotic shrieks better than anyone, as well as having that rubbery lanky body that twists itself into Silly Walks. And Idle not only has amazing comic timing, but he can adjust his voice and body language to… anything, from domestic goddesses to sleazy TV hosts. But the other actors are quite good too, especially Michael Palin, especially when he’s playing someone timid or crazy.
This classic comedy series not only became a pop culture staple, but it’s still fresh and funny more than thirty years after it was made. “Monty Python’s Flying Circus: The Complete Series” is definitely a must-have.
Almost twenty years after “Star Trek” was cancelled, it returned to television screens in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” This series was set many decades after the original, on a brand-new starship.
And while the first two seasons are fairly awful (peppered with some brilliant jewels), “Star Trek: The Next Generation” eventually came into its own, weaving together interstellar political strife with some very entertaining stories. Indeed, it boldly went where science fiction had not gone for quite some time, creating epic conflicts that were easily combined with the smaller-scale problems-of-the-episode, and distinguishing itself from the original “Star Trek” without losing its sense of wonder.
The year is 2364, and the Enterprise-D is being launched under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). But as the ship proceeds towards Farpoint Station to pick up the rest of their crew, they are waylaid by a seemingly-omnipotent alien creature who calls himself Q (John DeLancie). Q decides to put the human race on trial for past savagery, so the crew of the Enterprise must solve the rather obvious mystery of Farpoint Station to prove themselves.
Over the seven years that follow, the Enterprise-D crew has a wide array of strange and mind-blowing adventures, including time-travel to the 1800s, the discovery of a humanoid android like Commander Data (Brent Spiner), assorted murder mysteries, a hologram that conquers the ship, a witchhunt for spies, a probe that beams ancient memories into Picard’s head, ancient traps left behind by dead worlds, and strange life-forms that look like grains of sand, giant snowflakes, nanites, space jellyfish, imaginary friends and other such creatures.
Furthermore, they become deeply enmeshed in the politics of alien races. Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) becomes the central point of a conspiracy that might spark off a civil war in the Klingon Empire, and the tenuous relationship between the Federation and the Romulan Empire threatens to start ANOTHER war, especially when there is talk of reunification of the Vulcans and Romulans. And thanks to Q, the Enterprise-D encounters a terrifying enemy in a far-off corner of the galaxy — the biomechanical Borg, who sweep through and assimilate every civilization they encounter.
“Star Trek: The Next Generation” is one of those rare spinoffs that managed to create an identity of its own, and to distinguish itself from the original series without being drastically different. Much of this comes from the arcs that are lightly woven through the seasons, which often finds the Enterprise-D crew finding themselves trying to maintain a delicate balance of peace and morality, often with outcomes that don’t feel right, but are necessary to avoid devastating warfare. Yes, the Cold War ended during this show’s run. Why do you ask?
What are its flaws? The first season… well, to be frank, it sucked. It was smug, obnoxious, hypocritical, uncreative and poorly-written. The second season sucked somewhat less, but it was still badly flawed. And though all the seasons that followed ranged from very good to brilliant, they had a few clunkers in there as well (“Genesis,” “Rascals,” “Sub Rosa,” etc), including most episodes with the Ferengi.
But after those first two seasons, the complexity and depth of the writing bloomed along with the plotting. The stories often dealt with some serious ethical issues (euthanasia, drug addiction, terrorism versus freedom fighting, loyalty to an old commander, McCarthyesque witch-hunts), and had some very clever stories that could be wrenching and thought-provoking, such as the brilliant “The Inner Light” (where Picard experiences a whole lifetime on an alien world) or the action-packed, harrowing “Best of Both Worlds” two-parter, in which the Borg are poised to destroy the Federation.
Despite a rough start, Patrick Stewart’s Picard becomes a warmly endearing character over the course of the series — he’s a reserved, intellectual man who is also kind of an introvert, but also a brilliant orator, a compassionate man, and one who commands respect whenever he speaks. He also was backed by some truly excellent supporting characters — Jonathan Frakes does quite well as the first officer, even though Riker is kind of controlling and slutty; Gates McFadden is the endearingly passionate Doctor Crusher; and LeVar Burton as the endearingly earnest, awkward engineer Geordi LaForge. Just ignore Wesley Crusher.
But probably the two breakout characters were Data and Wolf, played respectively by Brent Spiner and Michael Dorn. Every Star Trek series needs its oddball, and these two shared the duty — Data is a childlike, literal-minded android whose encyclopedic knowledge doesn’t give him understanding of human emotions or actions, while Worf is a warrior alien raised among humans, not fully belonging among his own kind or among his adopted people.
“Star Trek: The Next Generation” had a bumpy start, but gradually blossomed with the introduction of the Borg and the exploration of truly creative, unique science-fiction stories. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, and they are (mostly) astonishing.
Some movies about Superman are excellent. Some are… rather ungood. And “Superman: Man Of Tomorrow” is intensely, spectacularly, memorably…. okay.
It’s just okay. It’s hard to really find anything to love or hate about this animated origin story for everybody’s favorite blue-and-red Boy Scout — nothing about it is too bad or good, from the serviceable but unexciting animation to the pleasant but not particularly gripping characterizations. It dabbles with some deeper stuff, like Superman’s temptation to live a quieter and safer life, but ultimately it mostly focuses on explosive spectacle and a bit of horror.
Clark Kent has just come to Metropolis to work as an intern at the Daily Planet, where he discreetly uses his superpowers to just kind of fly around in a thrift-store disguise. But after he saves the city from a runaway spacecraft, budding journalist Lois Lane becomes fascinated by “the Super-Man” and is determined to corral him into an interview, on HER terms.
But then Star Labs is attacked by a yellow-toothed space-motorcycle-wearing thug named Lobo, who reveals he is here to nab Superman in order to secure a massive bounty on the last Kryptonian. Who put forth this bounty, and therefore knows that he exists? We never find out. It’s actually just kind of forgotten. Supes doesn’t even seem interested in knowing who wants him captured and/or killed.
This battle is a turning point for Superman in several ways: his costume is destroyed, a Martian appears out of nowhere to defend him, and an innocent janitor is accidentally consumed by purple alien goo. Before long, a new enemy is stalking through Metropolis, sucking the very life-force from everyone it comes across. To stop it, Superman will need to ally himself with a man who may just become his greatest enemy… and also Lobo.
“Superman: Man of Tomorrow” aims to tell the story of Clark Kent’s formation into Superman – how he got his costume, how he got his name, and how he made the conscious decision to be Earth’s protector. None of it is too deep or dramatic; don’t expect lots of introspection and contemplation here. The choice is simple, and we know more or less what he’s going to choose, but the question is HOW Supes is going to make his official debut. And it’s kind of cute to see him do things like tie a blanket around his shoulders to see how he’d look with a cape.
The story itself is a pretty straightforward one, confronting Superman with obstacles – he keeps encountering stronger and stronger foes, both physically and mentally. But it occasionally gives us quieter interludes with the Kent family, or the janitor’s family. Perhaps the biggest problem is that during the climactic conflict, Superman decides to introduce himself to the entire crowd watching it, rather than dealing with the horrifying potential-world-ending threat behind him.
At the same time, we see him getting to know Lois Lane, who’s exactly what you’d expect – she’s kind of arrogant and convinced she’s already the best, but it’s intriguing to see her interact with Clark, growing closer to him even as he grows in confidence. Clark also contrasts wildly against the amoral, crazed Lobo, who livens up the script with his antics (such as telling Lois stories that reduce her to screaming, “Stop! What’s WRONG with you?!”).
As for the animation, it’s a mixed bag. It looks very simple and kind of cheap at times (I was reminded of “Archer” during some scenes, and that show isn’t exactly known for its beautiful animation), but I suppose they were saving the money and skill for the fight scenes, which are sometimes pretty dynamic and fluid. It’s not bad exactly, but it’s not particularly good.
If you’re hoping for greatness, “Superman: Man of Tomorrow” will surely disappoint you with its profound okayness. It’s just okay. If watched for a just-okay everything, it will probably satisfy.
Venom is probably one of my favorite movies that is not… very good. I fully acknowledge that it isn’t a particularly good movie, but I do find it very entertaining and diverting.
A lot of that is due to Tom Hardy in the dual role of Eddie Brock and Venom, which is… really good. His accent is strange, but he does a really excellent job with the odd performance required of him.
However, it does show some signs of being a rewrite of a rewrite. For instance, the beginning of the movie sees the symbiote Riot in the body of a dying American astronaut. He’s loaded into a Malaysian ambulance and is being driven to the nearest city, when he decides to hop into the body of the accompanying EMT, presumably because the astronaut is too far gone. So far so good.
But for some reason, the first thing he does after possessing the EMT is… kill the driver… while the ambulance is still moving. Unsurprisingly, the ambulance is wrecked. Why did he do that? If he had just possessed the EMT and sat there patiently, he would have gotten to the nearest city (his intended destination) in a very short amount of time. By killing the driver and causing the vehicle to flip, he made it so he has to WALK to the nearest city, which takes a considerable amount of time and energy, especially since he has to fix the EMTs broken leg.
And of course, there’s the infamous timeskip error. After reaching the nearby city, Riot consumes some eels and kills various innocent Malaysian townspeople, only sparing an elderly lady. He swaps bodies (for some reason), possessing the elderly lady… and there’s immediately a six month timeskip. A few scenes later, we see Riot-as-elderly-lady again, at an airport. What WAS he doing for those six months? Playing shuffleboard? Griping at the grandkids with their Twitters and TikToks? Talking about how much better things were in her day?
Riot’s questionable choices kind of continue when he gets to San Francisco, now in the body of a little blonde girl who just… walks right into the Life Foundation building. Wouldn’t it be easier to swap out into a security guard and not have to worry about someone trying to stop Riot on the way in, and possibly setting off the alarm?
Then again, the security at the Life Foundation is not very good, since obviously Eddie was able to break all the way into the cells with the alien-infected people. Eh, I guess they just wanted the creepy factor of a possessed little girl sauntering up to Riz Ahmed, rather than Carlton Drake being chased through the building by a burly security guard.
But now, something positive.
A lot is said about the relationship between Eddie and Venom, and I’ll admit that it is a wonderful odd-couple relationship. But I also like the interactions between Eddie and Dan, the man is now dating Eddie’s former fiancee, Anne.
Now, in most movies, the Other Man is a douchebag of some kind. He has to be a bad person, because that’s the most immediate and cheapest way of showing that the Love Interest should ditch him and get back together with Our Hero. Of course, it makes the Love Interest look like an idiot for dating him in the first place when he’s so clearly a douchebag, and it’s completely unrealistic because people who date your exes are likely not bad people, but…
Anyway, I really like that except for a bit of awkwardness when they first meet, there’s no jealousy or assholery in the relationship between Eddie and Dan. Dan is depicted as a genuinely good, kind, unselfish person who admires and wants the best for Eddie, and even keeps Eddie from being hauled away by the police by claiming that Eddie is his patient. There’s zero hostility towards a man who was engaged to his girlfriend six months ago.
And Eddie, in his turn, clearly wants Anne back, but shows zero hostility towards Dan. Like I said, he seems a little awkward when they first meet, but he’s never antagonistic, and he never says a mean thing about Dan. He meekly accepts Dan’s medical help, and even asks for his advice. In fact, when Venom attacks Dan, Eddie blurts out, “I’m killing you! I’m so sorry!”
So yes, Venom has some flaws, and I fully acknowledge that these are flaws even though I like the movie. But it also has some good points that many “good” movies don’t possess, and I really do like the depiction of Dan.
I love Batman. I love Batman media, from the Adam West TV show to the dark gothic animated series, from The Batman from the early aughts to the Christopher Nolan trilogy. I fully expect to love The Batman (movie, not series). No, I do not love, or even like, the Joel Schumacher movies, but I do sometimes watch them if I want to laugh and cringe at the same time.
But one show that seems to get overlooked sometimes in the world of Batman media is Batman: The Brave and the Bold, an animated show that aired from 2008 to 2011, before being sadly cancelled in order to make way for Beware the Batman. Not that Beware the Batman was bad, but it didn’t have the heart and soul of Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
And this heart and soul are easy to identify: the people who made this movie not only love Batman and his history, they love the entire DC Comics universe. Not just the major heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman (who are only introduced in the final season), but characters obscure (the Metal Men) as well as iconic. And old as well as new – lots of characters from decades ago (Adam Strange, Wildcat), alongside newer characters like the third Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes (who has many appearances as a fledgling hero who needs Batman’s guidance) and Ryan Choi (the third Atom).
And it’s all done with immense respect and liking for these characters, whether they’re good or evil. For instance, one of Jaime Reyes’ first episodes sees him trying to investigate the legacy of past Blue Beetles, which allows the makers of this series to pay homage to the previous iterations, especially Ted Kord. You can feel all the love they have for DC’s whole history and all their characters, including the goofy and weird ones. Like, I had never heard of Gentleman Jim Craddock before this – I know technically he appeared in one of the DCAU series, but I honestly don’t remember him because he wasn’t put center stage. Or Red Tornado, who just doesn’t get as much attention as his earnest little robot self deserves. Or the Weeper. There’s actually a supervillain whose signature is CRYING.
Basically, every episode features Batman teaming up with some other superhero (sometimes a group of them, like the teen rebels known as the Outsiders) and dealing with a problem on other planets, or in another time period, or on Dinosaur Island, or England, or parallel universes, or in Batman’s own body (Aquaman and the Atom go on a Fantastic Voyage to cure Batman of silicon-based critters). Sometimes we don’t even know how Batman came to be where he is, such as when he pops up in the Old West to save Jonah Hex (who promptly insults his supersuit).
Okay, the focus isn’t always 100% on Batman and his team-up. One whole episode is about Aquaman going on a family vacation, during which he is forbidden to superhero. It even highlights the nature of Batman’s mythos and his fandom in some fourth-wall-breaking encounters with Bat-Mite.
And it’s wonderfully bonkers, and very much embraces the corniness (Diedrich Bader says the most hilariously cheesy things) of old comic books. It wants to be fun, and it IS fun, balancing out plot and characterization with the need to entertain. I mean, one episode has a sitcom version of Aquaman’s life! Another one was clearly dreamed up just because they wanted Batman to team up with Sherlock Holmes.
But it’s worth noting that not all is funny and goofy. There are serious conflicts in here, such as the invasion of Starro that spreads across the second season, and which ends with a truly heartrending loss. Or the ongoing battle against Equinox, a force that seeks to balance out order and chaos, and is willing to do horrifying things to make that happen. There’s also Chill of the Night, a really magnificent and totally serious episode in which Bruce Wayne’s soul is literally held in the balance, as he discovers who was responsible for his parents’ death.
It also has a great voice cast – you’re guaranteed to be a big fan of at least one person who had a hand in this. Diedrich Bader is an outstanding Batman (probably why they brought him back for the Harley Quinn show), and it has homages to Batman’s past by having Adam West and Julie Newmar play the Wayne parents, as well as Kevin Conroy playing an alternate-universe Batman.
So if you’re a fan of Batman, or even just of DC comics and its history, then this series is one you definitely need to see. Even if you don’t normally watch lighter incarnations of the Dark Knight, this is clever and well-written, and its love and joy are infectious.
The Forest 