Nite Kwart

So I've been (re)watching Night Court... I didn't know it was nine seasons long! That's a lot of episodes!

Judge Harry Stone runs the Night Court, in which cases come in front of him during the night shift with Defender Christine Sullivan and Prosecutor Dan Fielding giving the defense and prosecution. Mac handles the paper work (and wears sweaters) and Bull Shannon stands large, and Roz with him. And there is a lot of comedy.

First off, are night courts an actual thing? I could look it up, but where's the fun in that?

This show changed a lot over the first few seasons. The first two had different Defenders entirely from season to season (heck from pilot to season) before Christine became the defender (although she did cameo in an early episode in a previous season, clearly the producers liked her and brought her back). Also the guard with Bull was an elderly lady, whose actress passed away, to be replaced by another elderly lady, whose actress also passed away, before ending up with Roz. Very much the same idea of the cynical "seen it all" voice across all characters, but clearly the producers were a bit shy of another incident.

The bulk of the seasons were very much the same. It wasn't until very late that actual constant changes happened, with Christine getting married and having a child being the main one, and Dan's lacky passing away with that plot line going through things. Then we get the end of season nine (the last season) with a two parter that basically sets off characters in a new direction (I presume they knew it was the last season, so dealt with them). Then we get the actual final episode, which I assume was a special instance of some kind, as it was otherwise a generic episode that could have been in any previous season.

And then it was all over. In all, some good television. Some obvious episodes dealing with issues (some not well, hello 80s), but overall I'm glad I indulged again. I can't immediately think of another series that did the mix of law and comedy like this.

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Blak Phon

From the concept, I thought the person was kidnapping like 10 year olds. Nope, these are teenagers, so we get kids who can actually act.

The idea is the lead gets kidnapped, but it takes a while to get there. Once we do, we get him connecting to the previous victims and they help him to escape...

And this worked a lot better than I thought it would. Partly because the kids are older, but also because the script doesn't hang around too long with wasted side plots but just gets on with it. Yes, Ethan Hawke is in this, but we spend more time with Mason Thames and he does a good job as Finney.

So with this movie scoring higher for me and a movie that, while it starts slow, does get there, it's one to check out.

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It Just Raises Too Many Questions

I've been listening to Ed and Lorraine Warren books and... I have questions.

Ghosts

They say that ghosts come about because people's lives are cut short for one reason or another. While not everyone who dies early will become a ghost, we would expect the same chance of becoming a ghost across all situations, which means... We are about to hit 8 billion people, and some percentage should be ghosts... so there should be more ghosts than ever before? Where are they then?

Demons

If you do bad things, you get demons. Try a ouija board? Demons. Acknowledge Satan? Demons. Do any kind of bad thing? Demons. But it's not just what you do. If you are somewhere where someone else did bad things, then you might still get Demons. So again... they should be everywhere? Unless there's only like five demons in total for everywhere? Or does so many people being atheists mean the demons get to hide? But then highly religious places should be acknowledging demons all over the place.

Religion

But that that relies on culture acknowledging demons. Which, according to the Warrens, can only be fought by calling on Jesus Christ. So... a Shinto Priest would have no effect? Asking Mohammad to intervene does nothing? Pleading to Shiva is entirely useless? Phew, just fortunately we got at least some of it right to hit on the right religion 2000 years ago.

Evidence

The Warrens say they have plenty of tape, both audio and video. Let's see it then. Lots of things flying around, okay, show us. Lorraine got the highest ESP score at Berkeley, oh yeah, where's that then? Ed says you can photograph tombstones and ivy grows on there in the form of the buried people's faces, sounds great let's do a double blind test around that then!

Technology

With all our phones and such around, we should have more video than ever. Although with how easy it is to manipulate video, I will acknowledge that this is tricky. But still, should still have tons of video.

One person they cite is William James: "Why do so few 'scientists' even look at the evidence for telepathy, so called? Because they think, as a leading biologist, now dead, once said to me, that even if such a thing were true, scientists ought to band together to keep it suppressed and concealed. It would undo the uniformity of Nature and all sorts of other things without which scientists cannot carry on their pursuits." ... Who is this leading biologist who said that? Who would even say that?? We want evidence, give it to us!!!

Yeah, some questions.

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Captain Scarlet - wah wah waaah waaah

And not about that silly animated series!

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Love and... Thunderstruck!

Hey. new Marvel, so new Marvel review!

First off, a lot has been made of this "just" being two hours, and yet... that works. It's amazing these days that you can tell a superhero movie in under ten years, but this gets a lot done in that two hours. Okay, some things are summarised or tokenised into one example scene, but mostly those are background details to get to the actual story being told.

Which is... pretty good. Thor goes on a journey to confront aspects of his past, but that could be any movie. The focus here is, of course, Jane Foster and it's great to see Natalie Portman back with something decent to do, so sure, more of that. That said, it would have been nice for Tessa Thompson to have more to do as well. I didn't even recognise Christian Bale beneath that makeup, but there's no mistaking Russell Crowe eating all the scenery.

One critique, Taika lays on the humour a little too much at times. Sure, the fun is funny but can adversely undercut some moments.

I'm sure y'all gonna go see this, but one final point of note: the running time seems to be either 119 minutes (google) or 126 minutes (imdb). As far as I can tell, mine was 119 (including credits), but maybe there might be different cuts around.

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Horseplay!

Behold the power of three people who don't have anything to do, do absolutely nothing! We wander around, sort of do something, and nothing comes of it. Although I do quite like what happens in hour two, that's something innovative that occurred to me, and it worked! Wow!

And as for my question at the end "what have we done in the meantime?" ... NOTHING! This is the third to last adventure of the season, and as yet, three years later, no more seasons have happened. Logan lost interest and that is always a sign of nothing is going to happen and if something does it'll be a brand new universe of stuff. So that might happen some decade...

It's one of those titles that just comes up without effort. It just had to be.

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Foul Sense

If you talk about movies and are a New Zealander, sooner or later you talk about Peter Jackson, and refer to his earlier works. Now, I have seen Meet the Feebles, but not his earlier pieces... until now, I have seen the first one shot over four years... and it shows.

Cannibal aliens have come to New Zealand (as they do) and it's up the Boys to put paid to them. Which involves a lot of guns, brains, and splatter.

And it starts off in Maraka Bay! Don't tell me that's not where they are, I was just there a few weekends ago... it hasn't changed much. But then they head to the hills and there are certainly plenty of them around, but I can't say I recognised any particular other locations.

This has a high splatter and gore... but I have to say I expected more. Maybe when I watch the next one. But hey, cheap budget! And as for the script... no, there wasn't one. And yeah, I can tell. Lots of random scenes that feature running around. But again, first feature. And then there is the bad audio overdubbing. Ah, the earliness of it all!

Maybe I've had this overhyped but I can't say I was that overtaken by this. Even taking the age into account. It's... fine.

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