For some reason a lot of people I knew were saying how the movie had a slow start. I missed the first five minutes or so cause I was still getting drinks at the theatre bar but even without the slight amount of movie I missed, I thought things started up and got going right away.

I just finished watching The French Dispatch for the third time. I love that show.

Finished Peacemaker.

The story was solid, overall, but the rewatchability of it is close to 0.

The first 3 episodes were terrible but once you learn what Butterfly means that is when the show stopped sucking. Feels like there was a solid 5 episodes and then they went back and tacked on some crap to get it to 8.

Leaned too heavily into TV-MA for my taste. Felt immature and too "inside" although it was interesting to see the parts they smartly edited out stuck in the credits showing it could have been worse. Really, the level of profanity is better when it is a character trait vs everyone sounding the same.

I could see what they were going for - but it made me appreciate the PG-13 rating of Guardians of the Galaxy and even the R-rated Suicide Squad- vastly superior shows that would have been weakened with an 'anything goes' mentality. Felt like it was targeting the animated Harley Quinn show - a show I bailed on after about 3 episodes.

Just my opinion.

It’s funny how that works sometimes, isn’t it? How a rated R/TVMA superhero project can feel more juvenile and puerile than the mainstream alternative you can watch with the kids. The more over the top with the “this is only for grownups” the content goes, the more adolescent it feels, and that’s not just limited to the hard-R stuff like Deadpool.

It’s weird. I feel like “this superhero story is only for grownups” feels very often like proof positive that it isn’t just audiences that struggle to understand that just because something has gore, f-bombs and breasts in it doesn’t make it mature.

I saw The Batman and it was okay.

I really enjoyed Jeffrey Wright as Gordon. He nailed it. I only wish he had been given more to do.

And great job by Dano.

Some TV offerings:

The World at War (1973) - A 26-episode British series about WWII. I highly recommend this. Each hour is dedicated to a theme, and the theme varies between geopolitics, day-to-day existence for some period during the war (in specific parts of the world) or campaigns/theaters of war. I won't pretend that each hour is an in-depth scholarly study of given topic, but for the various parts for which I've done some study, I recognize those hours as being relatively representative of my own study... in other words, nothing feels "wrong" about this. I highly recommend it. I watched it in high-def 4:3, but I gather that there are re-mastered and "cropped" 16:9 versions to view.

The Boys: Diabolical (2022) - this is an 8-episode series of animated shorts from "The Boys" Universe. I thought they were a little uneven, but overall it was a classic "The Boys" treatment. Not all episodes have any ties to the TV series. They are all short, so this series didn't take much time to watch.

Some older stuff: Adult Swim has almost every offering from On Cinema at the Cinema now available, which is a Tim Heidecker/Gregg Turkington joint that started about a decade ago. For me, there is a grey area between cringe comedy and absurd realism that I enjoy, and I have found the early episodes of this to be enjoyable.

I also finally finished Arrested Development Season 5... and yes that was a thing. There were some very funny and well-delivered bits, but I found this to be a pretty weak effort all around.

That trailer for Ms Marvel is really excellent. My wife is as interested as I am, and that's rare with superhero stuff.

I am not particularly pleased with the Green Lantern powers. It's one thing to change out the Inhuman aspect of her origin, I get that, but to completely and drastically change what her powers actually are? I don't like that at all.

It'd be like if they decided that Bruce Banner doesn't transform into the Hulk, he just projects a monstrous-looking shell of psionic energy around himself that allows him to smash. Or like if Spider-Man controls a massive army of microscopic spiders that allows him to emulate his spider powers.

I don't like it. Let Kamala be stretchy. Let her EMBIGGEN! Let her grow and shrink and change her shape. Projecting cosmic force fields that are shaped according to her imagination is just wrong.

At least they seem to have her personality intact, but come on! Her powers are a part of who she is.

The Batman

Awful.

4/10

I finished Season 4 of Star Trek: Discovery, which I watched more-or-less weekly. There were a few choices in the finale that didn't sit right with me, but otherwise it was a decent landing. I liked this season's narrative (and "bad guys") much more than those of the earlier seasons. This felt like a Sci-Fi story that wasn't just recycled from other science fiction.

It felt as if there was a rather serious adjustment mid-season to remove most of the (seemingly endless) inter-personal drama that was weighing heavily on the series. It was nice to see the "below the line" players getting some significant screen time. It may not be fair to the actors who were shuttled off-screen, but their stories were getting painful to endure.

Just watch it "I want you back", funny, sad. funny, sad.

HOW could you, I mean, really HOW?!

Season 1 was horrible.
Season 2 was awesome with Pike.
Season 3 I vomit every episode and I left 3 episodes before the end. I find out what happened on the end and I vomit more.

I watched 15 minutes of one episode of season 4 and I vomit even more and finally said "life is too short to suffer free so much". I will never watch it again, unless if have an actor or character guest that could justify to vomit again.

watched first episode ever of black mirror. was disgusting, but is an antology show I hear so much good that I think I will enjoy. I will keep watching.

Watching Picard. Kinda Love it. I'm so thankful to even have Picard back.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It leans HARD enough into SJW territory that the show sometimes feels like it is going in circles, but some SF drama is going to be on that extreme edge so I'm not bothered by the representation aspects. There is an argument to be made that the current show is simply carrying forward the IDIC tradition.

As for the SF stories, like I wrote: I liked the 4th season the best. I can repeat my hot takes (from memory).

Season 1: Every story with Klingons and the Mirror Universe is basically fan-fiction. I'm sure that there are devotees of Ron Moore that are preparing for Mek'ba upon my declaration, but I've been "real-time" engaged with Star Trek since the Animated series, Dell comics and James Blish novelizations... I don't believe in a coherent narrative for these "Star Trek Universe" elements. It was also nice to see one in the endless line of "Starfleet captains/admirals gone bad" for more than a single episode... and to understand the crazy(?!) motives.

Season 2: Proof-of-concept of a true ST prequel, with a couple of TERRIBLE tropes as the foundation. I didn't care for this. Stealing concepts and plot points whole-hog from other SF at this scale is criminal.

Season 3: Still stealing plots from other SF, still tropey, but fun. This was also the first genre series that I felt like David Ajala really got to carry his weight and show what he can do.

For me season 2 fixed ALL the mistakes of season 1 (why the klingsons look like that, why the tecnology is different etc etc), so mix and match.