Wonder Eleventh Falls

This is it! This is the one! The explanation!

But first we gotta get confused by pronouns. "Save him from her." So of course Jaye thinks she needs to save Eric from Heidi. And Heidi, from the perspective we is, is acting pretty sketchy, buying pills from behind the bar (although if you recognise the pills, you can see where this is going). As it turns out, while Heidi to effect Eric, it was only really a certain part of him. Jaye is rather upset by this and breaks into Dr Ron's office to interrogate the monkey (not a euphemism), and now can you guess who "him" is? And while Jaye does what she is commanded, it is because she will finally find out why they talk to her.

Because she listens.

That's it! This was supposed to have been called "Joan of Arc syndrome" and was going to form the basis of season three, but no...

After all this time, the explanation is simple, but it fits. And she is slowly starting to get other people to believe her, because a professional psychiatrist now believes that at least she believes this is happening.

Oh, but what we could have had in other seasons...

[END]

Read more!

Transfarmers

something something CGI something something Marky Mark something something racism something something shambling incoherent mess

So the heroes are hiding out in a junkyard, when the bad guys turn up and they have to leave. Then in Act 2, we are in England where Cade teams up with English Hottie to run around and go to miracles places for a MacGuffin. Fortunately in Act 3 they somehow manage to survive long enough to save the world.

There is a group that fights called the TRF, but I'm 90% sure they never actually explain what that stands for.

Oh, and there are some CGI blurs called robots hanging around, but no-one pretends they are important, or even part, of the movie. There were more than one moment I confused one grey mess for another grey mess and went "aren't they supposed to be...?" before remembering other grey messes existed. And physics takes a break so hard... I can't even think of a comparison to explain just how badly physics gives up towards the end (not that it ever really tried to hang in there much anyway).

Yeah, so given all that, what else is there to say? There is some actual interesting mythology set up, but it's not paid off, because we need to keep making movies, there were annoying cameos, there were good cameos, there were moments of racism and sexism... what did you expect?

[END]

Read more!

Destiny

Another Fritz Lang movie (although I still haven't seen Metropolis), this is Der müde Ter.

Two lovers arrive at a town, but it happens to be a town where Death lives. And Death takes the chap, because it's his time to die. The woman is rather distraught, and pleads with Death to give her love back, so Death says if you can stop these three deaths then that will happen. And so we get three different stories ending in deaths (with no obvious way the woman could have done anything). Then the woman sacrifices herself to be with her true love. Aw...

Bernhard Goetzke is really good at Death, and has a great grave face. He just does not give a, and is the sort of character you can believe does what needs to be done, despite what his own feelings might be (including, for example, killing toddlers).

The production is pretty good too, with four different lands well portrayed (if somewhat with stereotypes), and different script for each land too. There could have been a different colour palette, but I can see that becoming too garish.

Definitely a good watch.

[END]

Read more!

Doctor Who 10.11

Oh ye gods. I have complained before about set up episodes, but this...

Okay, there are a few problems. I do like the gravity/black hole means that time is different at the different ends of the ship, but this seems to be applied inconsistently. I suspect it passes differently at plot time, rather than at a scientifically sorted out rate.

But then why are we supposed to believe that the Cybermen came out of the skeleton crew? Yes, they are descendants, but they became so advanced medically they can do transplants? And none of them interacted with the blue guy to say what was going on? And they knew about time differential, so not hearing anything from the people going to floor 507 shouldn't be that strange? (And will that floor come back to mean anything next episode? I doubt it.)

And then there is Zathras or Kalid or whatever his name was. Why did the Mondasians put up with him? At the end, we gather he's in charge, but at no point do we see anyone being deferential towards him, so what's up with that?

However, none of this compares with the biggest problem... that this ENTIRE episode is made irrelevant by last weeks end trailer which what the end of THIS episode reveals!!! Yep, we spend over forty minutes getting to where we knew the trailer was taking us anyway! The only thing is that Bill is now a Cyberman, and the Master is real, but Mondasian Cyberman? Was waiting for them. The Master? Knew he was going to turn up somewhere.

Are the people doing the trailers aware of what should or should not be given away about the upcoming episode?

NEXT TIME: Well... we went back to the standard new model Cybusmen pretty quickly. And it looks like a team up is the order of the day.

[END]

Read more!

Eleventh Marx

Right, another middling movie, this is The Big Store.

Tommy wants to sell his shares in a big department store, but it is in financial trouble (not that he knows). And as it happens, Flywheel comes in as a detective/body guard, and soon he and Ravelli and Wacky get caught up in store business. Eventually things come to a head and a big run around to stop the evidence of the bad guys being bad guys from being given to the bad guys.

This movie gives a set up, the department store, then gets out of the way for most of the movie while we get various set pieces with the Brothers, and then the story comes in at the end to wrap things up. It should be obvious that I liked a good story through-line, and so most of this movie feels irrelevant. And we also get some musical moments that are, again, set up but entirely incidental.

And we are really getting less and less Groucho big verbal scenes. What's up with that?

[END]

Read more!

Wonder Tenth Falls

This is it, the return of Eric's wife Heidi, hinted at all throughout the series. And she's played by Jewel Staite!

The end of the last episode revealed Jaye getting to the bar to see Eric and Heidi kissing, with this episode showing the set up that it was just Heidi kissing Eric. Heidi spends the episode trying to get Eric back, and even pretends to have amnesia at one point. However... the voices are on the side of the two of them hooking back up, and Jaye finally gets to the church to find them getting married again, because Eric wants to give this a proper go. Oh noes!

This is the episode that breaks Jaye in many ways. Not only does she have to help Eric and Heidi, she also finally confesses to Aaron what's going on, and gets his help to free her from the animals. (He points out that her trailer is full of stuffed animal toys... which talk to her via their animal faces.) That doesn't stop the voices, which need to take advantage of other animal icons as they turn up, and they are all for Eric/Heidi.

This does feel like quite the stress, but I know where this is going so agree this is a good story direction.

[END]

Read more!

The Mummmy

Hey, it's tiny Jack Reacher! And he's in Africa releasing mummies!

A woman did bad things in Egypt and was mummified, and is released in the present day and causes more trouble. And Tom Cruise is her pawn, and we follow him around as he is Gormy McGormFace and stumbles from incident to incident until finally the CGI is used up.

So this is the start of the Dark Universe, with the Mummy kicking things off and hints of other monsters. And... they didn't try hard. We all know they want to jump into the multi-movie deals of other big studios, but... this just feels like they put out a movie because they felt like getting into it, as opposed to doing a project that they really wanted to do.

(Yes, there is a nod to the Brendan Fraser Mummy, and I want to go back and watch those again, because they are actually fun, unlike this.)

I do like the double iris eye effect (although I'm fairly sure there are shots where they didn't bother to adjust it). And... um... there were other things in there...

Not exactly an endorsement, but no doubt we'll get more pumped out yet.

[END]

Read more!