Step UUUUUPPPPP!

It's amazing how similar these movies feel while being different in the set up.

A dudebro is depressed about not being able to kick off his dancing career, and sees an ad for a contest to get a show at Las Vegas, so of course we now have our plot. First, they need a video dance, then they get there for a (quick montage) of initial dancing, then go on to dance in the finals and such. There's a revelation about how the entire thing is a set up, so they decide to go all out and claim the victory for their own. Now, I haven't seen it, but I'm fairly sure they violate several of the conditions of the contest, but no-one cares about that.

So, yet again we have a dude-bro story... can we get a woo-girl story some time? At least the second one nearly was... speaking of, Andie is back, because... the producers offered her money? And Moose, of course, because we must have Moose. But it's really about Sean, a complete dudebro.

This feels more random than others. Let's have a dance, but then change the story up and have another dance, then move things around for a different dance, and so on. And the production is just ridiculous, and there's no way to justify some of the dance transitions in the movie. Give it up, and just put on the dance.

That's it for this set of movies, although it's time for the next one?

[END]

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TP 3.1

Another new season, so of course another new telepath has to break out. How many ways can we tell that story? This is Secret Weapon.

The breakout is just an excuse for the military to join up with a reluctant parascientist to investigate the TPs. Reluctant, that is, to join with the military, when he's now getting friendly with the TPs. The military, as exemplified by Colonel Masters, nicks the new kids (Tyso), Stephen, and even gets Elizabeth to work for him. In order to stop this, John must let other authorities find out about them, and it's amazing how easy the PM is to kidnap.

Despite this being the introduction of Tyso, he's hardly in it outside of the first episode. And the main impression I get is... give the kid a haircut! Stephen also gets put aside quite quickly, leaving it to Elizabeth and John. Considering how much of a vunderkin Stephen generally is, this is quite different.

On the commentary track, we have Peter and Nicholas as usual, but also Ann Curthoys (Tricia Conway), who I think comes back in a later episode. I have watched all these stories before, but I'm quickly running out of the ones I remember.

[END]

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Rouge One

I put off seeing this immediately. And with the irritating prats who also saw this movie with me, I should have waited longer. Just because there is loud music doesn't mean your commentary goes unnoticed!

We start with a ruined childhood, because apparently you can't be a major character in a Star Wars movie without having something screwed up happen to your parents! From there on it... we get a heist story. I'm not surprising anyone with this, but then this movie isn't surprising any body with this either. This feels middle of the road, it's almost more like an episode of the Star Wars Rebels cartoon (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this was an adapted script from that series, some of the characters felt familiar).

And yeah, the experience wasn't great. There a group of kids not too far away that liked to talk during the loud action scenes (so often), I could hear them talking but not what they said. And there were a few "jokes" in the movie that just got too much of a reaction out of one of them. Calm down mate! I don't want to go on about "movie etiquette" but damn!

The acting was all fine, but nothing too amazing, and the production was fine and... WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?? Peter Cushing's "performance" is straight from the depths of hell of the uncanny valley. I've seen too many video game cut scenes in my time to accept it for even a moment. And was I the only one to keep mishearing "Erso" as a particular swear word?

So yeah, not overwhelming, or even whelming (...which is actually the same thing...).

[END]

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Doctor Who X.X

Stephen Moffat takes on comics, and provides his usual style of take. Ready for an hour of references?

Because of a stupid plot device, a kid gets superpowers, and now we are directly ripping off Superman. Not even slightly subtly, not with any particular new thing to say about it, just normal Superman story that you've already seen in the movies. Not even going into the comics, just the movies will give you more than enough to understand this!

Not content with that, we get an alien invasion in which people are replaced with aliens to take over their insides... wait, did Moffat decide to take on RTJ and redo the Slitheen? The Doctor references zips in heads, so Moffat clearly did this deliberately, and...

This all culminates in a story that really does nothing special. In many ways I was also reminded of Partners in Crime, with an evil corp trying to possess the world, although that was mainly the opening (non-boy) part. But we are so quickly introduced to characters, Grant and Lucy, that we are supposed to care about... but these are the cliches I can't bring myself to care in the slightest for. And then there's Nardole... really, did we need Matt Lucas back? Did he hold something over Moffat to return? Was this always the plan to give him more of a role? He's just there for the Doctor to talk to (which is the point of him... but that's the whole point of him, there's nothing else to his character). Can we bring back the lettuce?

I couldn't really believe I was watching this. What the hell, Moffat? What? The? Hell?

Next time: Bill comes in... and we get the same stories we've already had?

[END]

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He is MY Doctor

Strangely enough, in a way that's not strange at all, I read Doctor Who biographies. So of course I would read Peter Davison's Is There Life Outside the Box?

This has moments of his past year while he is acting and writing the book and is used as segues back into the past to get into his history. We get the standard chapter about his parents and then onto his life. While we do get a lot of his acting career, we don't get everything (do we really need it?), and for Doctor Who... there is a chapter on it, but it's treated lightly. As Peter points out, he's been interviewed about it so much, and there's all the DVD commentaries, etc., there's nothing more he can really say that hasn't already been covered. From there we go on to his death... I mean this year, with him being affable and just present in his families lives... but he is still acting!

This is an easy read, in that the pages flowed by seamlessly as I was reading. I enjoyed all of it. Of course, I could have had more Doctor Who reminisces, but I can understand and agree with his reasoning. Also I did want to read about All Creatures and his other work. I should get around to watching that some time, as well as Campion (which I'm slowly listening to).

However, he is only 50, so there might be another volume? (Perhaps with more DW to fill the gaps?)

[END]

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Step UUUUUPPPP!

This movie seems to take one moment from the second movie, and then make the entire movie around it.

Over in Miami, there is a dance crew breaking out flash mobs in the city, in order to get those YouTube hits. In the second movie, it was merely a way of saying "hey, we're here", but here's it's all about getting the views to get 10 million (although the view count doesn't work as the movie thinks it does). As well as this, a rich daddy's girl wants to be a dancer (I'm surprised they took until the fourth movie to get to this), and she joins up with the crew. But some people take it too personally and threaten to undo everything they wanted to say. (The link to the previous movie is by having some of the Pirates turn up for cameos.)

There might be more plot that than the previous movie, and I'm not going to make any racial references ('cos pretty much everyone in any leading in this movie is white... in Miami...), but let's talk dance numbers. Or rather, fully professional set up set pieces. And the crew are talking about needing to get money from the competition, but with how much they must be splashing out to set up their mob routines, I don't think they'll going to make any kind of profit.

As ever, the dance sequences are good, but in no way can be justified in the fiction. I'm waiting for one of these to have the movie just be one long dance number.

[END]

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TP 2.3

This is a Stephen heavy episode, and also features him in a kilt. From the commentary of other episodes, there may have been other factors behind this being written. This being The Doomsday Men.

There's a big peace treaty being signed, but the Doomsday Men aren't interested in this happening. The TPs find out about it, and that the grandson of the head guy is at a school, so Stephen is sent to join and find out secrets. Which he manages to does very easily, even given that the plot must of course have it happen. It turns out they intend to take over a space station, and threaten the earth. The Men manage to do that, but the TPs turn his grandson against the idea and it quickly falls to pieces.

And I mean the model does. Not literally, but the effects in the last few minutes of the episode are extremely terrible. Yes, dated effects and all that, but it looks extremely silly when the they are on a platform with (unbelievably) large gears turning the station, which are jammed and then we see the whole model suddenly start spinning. It works about as well as the comedy traffic cop (ie that doesn't work either).

Then there's the big plot whole whereby in the previous story they made a big deal about how they can wear AE suits with camouflage and comfortable environment controls, but make Stephen dress up in an actual kilt. (Which the commentators point out.)

That all said, this is a decent story where the world is saved because of the TPers. Again, it could have been edited down successfully, but what we have is worth watching.

[END]

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