Category: recommendations

Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Part 1 (Spoilers)

On By E. A. SolinasIn random, recommendations, reviews, ruminationsLeave a comment

Since the Snyder Cut of Justice League is a mammoth four-hour-long expanse, I’ve decided to watch it in sections. This evening, I finished watching the first part of it, with no particular expectations – I’ve been avoiding Youtube videos about it for the past few days, so I could come in with fresh eyes.

And I can definitely say: it’s much better than the Josstice League cut.

Admittedly that’s a low bar – the theatrical cut of this movie was a mess, a mismatched Frankenstein’s Monster of two clashing styles that managed to make each other look terrible. Also, it didn’t feel very epic. It’s fine to have an individual superhero movie with smaller stakes – see Ant-Man and the Wasp – but for a team-up of A-list superheroes, you need everything to feel grand and massive in scale. Nothing about the theatrical cut felt like the whole world was in danger.

That is very much remedied in the Snyder Cut, or at least the first part of it. Things feel bigger, more intense, more expansive.

Flaws? Well, it’s a bit slow. The first part of the film takes its time and unfolds in a leisurely manner… and sometimes it’s a little too leisurely, such as when the Scandinavian women sing, or when Batman is very slowly crossing a mountain range. And yes, if Zack Snyder’s staples like slow-mo bother you, gird your loins, because he does use it.

However, most of the stuff I can note are positives. Almost everything in this cut was done better than in the Whedon cut – sometimes the changes weren’t drastic, but they were notable.

For one thing, there were a lot of smaller scenes that were inserted that make it flow more effectively, such as when the Amazon mother-box first activates – we see one of the Amazons reacting to it and investigating it, before ordering that Hippolyta be told. Or Cyborg sensing the mother-box in his closet activating.

Other scenes were clearly reshot, and frankly they seem a lot better than the ones in the Josstice League version. Batman’s entire conversation with Aquaman has a lot more weight – when Aquaman says “You’re out of your mind, Bruce Wayne,” there’s a subtle hint of menace there rather than humor. And thank God, Batman isn’t spouting Whedon dialogue. Batman should never say Whedon dialogue. Ever. In any situation.

One of the most notable is the scene where Wonder Woman defeats the terrorists and saves a bunch of schoolchildren. The scene is longer, more intense, and Diana feels more like she’s actually angry and disbelieving that people could behave this way. Furthermore, instead of simply throwing the briefcase up in the air, she actually flies through the ceiling a considerable distance, and then throws it. It makes the situation seem more dire that the explosion was so massive.

Furthermore… she seems like more of a badass here, fighting more effectively, flying into the air, and using her superpowers, including that bracer-clashing move of hers. Yet at the same time, the Snyder Cut also highlights her compassion by having her immediately reassure the children and ask everyone if they are all right.

Speaking of how women are depicted, it’s also interesting to me that Zack Snyder presents the Amazons in a far less sexualized manner than onetime feminist icon Joss Whedon, including removing the implied rape threat. Something to think about.

Actually, he depicts the Amazons better in almost every way. In this movie, they’re fiercer, more effective, and the enemy they face is much more imposing, so that their losses feel more earned. Having them all roar “We have no fear!” is a pretty awesome moment, even though you know they are afraid. The fight with Steppenwolf is much more destructive and epic – including a whole temple falling into the sea – and Snyder pauses to let their losses sink in before launching us back into some pretty awesome fight scenes.

Speaking of Steppenwolf, he looks a thousand times better here. This is a CGI render that someone actually finished, and he doesn’t just look like a weird gray guy in a giant hat. He’s bigger, scarier, his voice is deeper and more distorted, and he’s covered with an armor of living needles.

The movie has also been rescored, and honestly I prefer it. The scene of Lois visiting Superman’s memorial feels poignant and heartrending in a quiet, unobtrusive way, without being too on-the-nose with people doing criminal stuff or holding up signs saying “I tried.”

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the first part of Zack Snyder’s masterwork. It’s good, better than I expected so far. I’m hoping it will continue to entertain me. To be continued!

Recommendation: Ghost Hunt

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Like many people, I like anime. I’m not one of those people into super-obscure or niche stuff, but I enjoy anime like My Hero Academia, Bleach, Inuyasha, Fruits Basket, Fairy Tail, etc. I used to be into Naruto and Dragonball, until I realized that both of them were ass-numbingly long and I didn’t really like the characters very much.

And one of the lesser-known anime I love is Ghost Hunt, a series that adds a more professional, sometimes more factual aspect to the usual supernatural shenanigans of Japanese urban fantasy. It gets a little silly towards the end (one of the final episodes has a Catholic priest PUNCHING GHOSTS), but it’s an overall enjoyable series that mingles urban fantasy, horror, and a hint of romance.

It follows a young girl named Mai, who accidentally runs into a supernatural detective agency who are investigating a supposedly-haunted building at the school she attends. She accidentally wrecks some of their equipment and injures the assistant, so she ends up working for the paranormal investigator Kazuya Shibuya, whom she nicknames “Naru” because she thinks he’s a narcissist. There are also three other exorcists called in: the not-very-monkly Buddhist monk Hosho, the rarely-successful Shinto shrine maiden Ayako, and the perpetually mellow Catholic priest John Brown. Oh, and there’s a TV medium named Masako, who’s condescending and nasty and can’t take a hint that a man is disinterested in her, and Naru’s assistant Lin, who’s kind of weird and distant from Mai.

As a group, they investigate a number of paranormal cases, including a haunted doll and a child being terrorized, the seemingly-haunted school, a strict school where a girl threatened to curse people, a school game with potentially deadly consequences, a labyrinthine house, and a family being haunted by ancient spirits. There are also some slightly lighter stories, one of them about a child’s spirit possessing Mai, and a ghost that splashes water on couples. The last one is more funny than spooky.

Be forewarned: this series is in fact quite horrific at times, ranging from merely being uncomfortably eerie to having bloody ghosts emerging from walls in a cursed mansion. It’s also a slow-burner for most of its run, with long stretches of talking about equipment, psychic phenomena (and sometimes the fakery of it), psychology, Japanese folk magic, and so on. It’s not boring – there are strange occurrences fairly frequently, and the banter between the characters keeps the energy moving – but it’s not a big splashy anime. It takes its time, as it is a mystery show of sorts.

Youtube Recs: Townsends

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Over the last year, I’ve really fallen down a rabbit hole of historical food videos on Youtube, starting with the wonderful Tasting History show, and the Mrs. Crocombe videos that recreate Victorian recipes. But another show with a particular focus is the Townsend’s historical cooking channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr2d4As312LulcajAkKJYw

This is the channel belonging to Jas Townsend and Sons, a company in Indiana who sell 18th-century reproductions of clothes, cookware, food, and many other things. It’s not exclusively devoted to cooking – there is stuff about building a log cabin, not getting your panties in a twist over ephemeral politics, and so on – but a large amount of it is devoted to exploring the cuisine of 18th-century America, ranging from the culinary efforts of the enslaved to the recipes inherited from England.

Townsend is a very pleasant and soothing person to watch, and he chats with the camera about the historical context of his dishes as he makes them. Part of the appeal is just in how unpredictable and odd these dishes are from when you recreate them as accurately as possible. What was fried chicken like back then? Or mac’n’cheese? What recipes did Martha Washington have? And what is fried lobster like?

Recommendation: Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes

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The Avengers film series is about as mainstream as you can get today – I could argue that Avengers: Endgame was one of the most anticipated movies of all time.

But back in 2010 the MCU was just getting started, and at that time, we got the best Avengers show – and possibly one of the best Marvel shows – to date: Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. While it has some obvious influence from the recent Iron Man movies, this is mostly doing its own interpretation of Marvel’s comics, and it is glorious. It also has one of the most wonderful theme songs of all time. If you don’t believe me, google “avengers fight as one” and check out the music videos people have made.

But aside from the awesomeness of “Fight As One,” this show is amazing. Part of what makes it amazing is that… it isn’t strictly a kids’ show. It’s more a piece of superhero media that happens to be appropriate for children, but it’s serious and intricate enough that adults will probably enjoy it just as much.

The first half of the first season is pretty much about bringing the team together “as one.” You’ve got Tony already established as Iron Man, since the Iron Man movies had already put him in the public consciousness. But it gradually introduces us to The Hulk, Hawkeye, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Black Widow (who is a recurring ally/enemy rather than a full-on Avenger), Captain America, Thor, and sometimes Black Panther.

And for big Marvel buffs, it does indeed have characters that Marvel didn’t have the movie rights to in 2010, like the Fantastic 4, Wolverine, Spiderman, etc, as well as less prominent Marvel characters like Iron Fist and Power Man/Luke Cage, who are absolutely wonderful and deserved their own spinoff show. And it had the Guardians of the Galaxy before that group became big, as well as now-established characters like Vision and Miss Marvel (now known as Captain Marvel, and much more likable and relatable than in the live-action film).

Anyway, after a supervillain nearly destroys New York, Tony Stark decides to assemble the Avengers, a team that can recapture the 75 superpowered bad guys who have just escaped from SHIELD. So they all move into his urban mansion, and have some personal friction with each other. Just because they’re heroes doesn’t mean they all get along at first – the Hulk is grumpy and a little paranoid, Cap and Tony have differing ideas about technology and what’s important, Ant-Man despises Tony because he fights instead of rehabilitating criminals, and Hawkeye is a little pissed at SHIELD because he was framed.

But those rough edges, that friction, those personality quirks are what make the characters feel so likable and real. They’re not perfect, but they are likable, relatable and heroic. When they’re hanging out, or having conflicts, or making jokes, it really feels like they’re reluctant but fast friends.

The story arcs that follow include a lot of really fascinating conflicts, like a time-warping conflict with Kang the Conqueror, a gamma dome that mutates everyone inside it, invasion by the Kree, the Masters of Evil, the murderous android Ultron, a trip to Thor’s home realm of Asgard, etc. The second season has an overarching conflict with the Skrulls, who sow confusion and mistrust among Earth’s mightiest heroes and make things a lot more difficult for them, both amongst each other and towards the world.

Sadly, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes ran for only two seasons, when it was clearly laying out plotlines and groundwork for much more. Apparently Disney didn’t want a story with good writing, intelligence, all-ages appeal, great stylized animation and well-developed characters, so they gave us the bland, simplistic, messy and juvenile Avengers Assemble instead. Bleah.

So yeah, if you can find this series, definitely watch it. It’s packed with plot, excellent writing, and it’s as rewarding a watch for adults as for kids.

YouTube Recs – Ordinary Sausage

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Let’s sausage!

I love sausages. Make your sex puns now, get them out of the way. I will try all sorts of sausages, with all kinds of fillings, though my favorite is and remains Italian hot sausages.

Which brings me to Ordinary Sausage, one of the oddest and yet most hypnotic channels you will find on Youtube. It belongs to a very odd man who sounds like Peter Griffin, and who owns a meat grinder and a sausage maker. With that meat grinder and sausage maker, he endeavors to create sausages both divine and satanic, sausages that no sane mind would ever think of.

Sometimes he makes sausages out of various animal organs. Sometimes he makes them out of liquids. Or full meals from restaurants. Or just things like lobster or candy corn that don’t belong in a sausage casing, yet somehow end up in there.

And yes, the water sausage, which actually went viral. Why that one? I don’t know.

I find water sausage and air sausage and ice sausage to be the least interesting videos he’s done, because… you know what they taste like. There’s no suspense, no mystery. As opposed to, “What will a Slim Jim sausage taste like? Or a candy apple sausage?” where you really do not know what the answer will be.

And these videos are, to put it simply, quirky. It would be pretty dull if he just ground up ingredients and put them in a sausage, but he has funny running gags, rants, visual embellishments, songs, and of course sometimes his grinder just gives up and stops working right because he fed it nuts or a fish skeleton.

Once I found this man’s channel, I spent the next few hours watching every sausage tutorial he had. Hopefully you’ll do the same.

LET’S SAUSAGE!

Tasting History – Youtube Recs

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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.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsaGKqPZnGp_7N80hcHySGQ

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.

Recommendation: Murder She Wrote

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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.

Youtube’s Comic Tropes

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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.

Recommendation: Batman: The Brave and the Bold

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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.

A paeon to Tucker And Dale Vs. Evil

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WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

For some reason, horror movies seem to be particularly susceptible to parody and tongue-in-cheek deconstruction. I haven’t seen as many parodies of action movies or romances. Even sci-fi movies haven’t had as many parodies or deconstructions as horror. Maybe it’s because there’s tension both in horror and comedy, leading to sudden releases.

And people might point to Cabin in the Woods (Joss Whedon is an overrated ass) as a primo example, or the Scary Movie movies, or Young Frankenstein for a classic… but in my opinion, one of the greatest is Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil. This is a parody of slasher-killer/killer-hillbilly movies that also just happens to be a really good movie.

The reversal of the hero/villain dynamic is the most obvious way of lampooning the genre — in this, the protagonists are the hapless hillbillies who just want to go hang out at their decayed vacation house, catch some fish, and fix their new place up. Tucker and Dale could not be more amiable and down-to-earth, and the only reason they ever come across as creepy to anyone is A) Dale’s social awkwardness, and B) the college kids’ preconceptions of hillbillies as dangerous, disgusting and amoral.

Conversely, the college kids — usually depicted as hapless victims in horror — are mostly morons who accidentally kill themselves by doing things like leaping into wood chippers or splashing paint thinner on a fire. The antagonist, however, is one of these college kids, a psychotic hater of hillbillies who decides to declare war on Tucker and Dale after the two rescue the girl he’s hoping to molest.

So the subversion of horror is pretty well handled in its own right — it takes the stuff we’re familiar with and flips it on its head. But the movie wouldn’t be as excellent as it is if it were just “haw haw, it’s funny because they’re dying due to their own stupidity rather than because of killer hillbillies! It is funny because that usually doesn’t happen in horror movies!”

Because… the characters are almost all really good and well-handled, and everything that happens more or less organically flowers from who those people are. Even the less developed characters (such as the various college kids) have fairly consistent and sensibly-drawn characters (despite the blonde girl who’s dressed very badly for a woodland camp-out). Except for the psychotic guy, they all behave like… real people. Sometimes not very smart real people, but real people. For instance, one guy decides “screw this, I’m finding the police” and does just that. It doesn’t turn out well, but he does do the sensible thing.

And there are character arcs (Dale having to develop self-confidence and strength), developed character relationships (both romantic and platonic), several Chekhov’s guns (I won’t mention what they are, because some are spoilers), and it ramps up the tension gradually, punctuated by some hilarious accidental deaths.

I won’t go into too much detail about Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, but I will say that I really don’t think it would be as effective a horror-comedy/deconstruction/parody if it didn’t have such well-developed characters and such a solid plot.

Oh, and it’s insanely funny as well.