ApathyMonger

This was much better than I expected, given everything. Not great, but not close to being in the bottom five X-movies. That probably says more about the franchise though. I’m glad it was at least trying something different, and it was far better than Apocalypse or Dark Phoenix. And only 90 minutes! Anya Taylor-Joy is a delight, and should get the chance to play more superheroes and supervillains. The Lockheed thing didn’t really work for me, but it was mostly worth the payoff. The accents in this movie are a lot. Charlie Heaton as Sam is especially rough. Was this originally supposed to be set in the early ’00s? There are a lot of indicators (the fashion, Buffy S4 DVDs on a CRT TV, Roberto seemed to have an old digital camera, the line about Dani being called Pocahontas a lot in fifth grade), but then near the end, Reyes just has an iPad. Yet another almost reveal of

I read the new David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue, about an up-and-coming band in the late 1960s. It's mostly a much more traditional novel than his last few, with the exception of one segment which goes fully into The Bone Clocks territory while also being a direct follow-up to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. That whole bit feel like it would be impenetrable to anyone who hasn't read The Bone Clocks. Outside of that, the book has a bit too much of the thing that happens in novels like this where the characters keep interacting with real-world musicians of the time. It mostly makes sense in context, but it feels a bit self-indulgent to have real musicians keep talking about how much they like and admire these fake musicians. It just happens too often, and it starts to lose its impact fairly quickly. Being a David Mitchell book, there's also a lot of interactions and appearances by characters from his other books. Some of these are obvious, like Like the real world celebrity stuff, it sometimes gets a bit too self-indulgent and unnecessary, where it occasionally feels like a character shows up just to say their name for recognition's sake without impacting the story at all, but it mostly worked for me. It's not my favourite of his books, but I was extremely happy to have another David Mitchell novel to read, and look forward to re-reading it already.

https://youtu.be/C9H_7O0pGho

A livestream of just the interstitials:

Onward is fun, if not top-tier Pixar. It starts out slow, and most of the beats are very predictable. It gets much better as it goes though, and the emotional stuff worked for me more than I expected. Chris Pratt is the best he’s been in years, and reminded me why I liked him in the first place. Octavia Spencer is great too. There’s lots of easter eggs for people who are into D&D, etc, many of which went over my head. I was slightly distracted in some scenes looking at all the background jokes. The Simpsons short before it is cute too. It’s only a few minutes, and there’s no dialogue so you won’t be distracted by how old the actors sound these days.

Season 2 starts April 3! https://decider.com/2020/02/21/harley-quinn-season-2-premiere-date-season-1-binge/

I watched the new Emma., starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn. Much more focused on the comedy elements than the other adaptations I’ve seen, and it mostly works. Bill Nighy is hilarious. It gets a bit too cartoony at points, especially the music, and the second half of the movie drags a bit. Still a lot of fun though, and the cast is excellent. Nice to see some of the Sex Education kids start to pop up in supporting roles. I was also surprised that it was written by Eleanor Catton, novelist of The Rehearsal and The Luminaries. I like her books, but they’re very different to this. I also watched the two 1996 versions before this. The Gwyneth Paltrow one is okay: A decent cast of then up-and-comers including Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor, and Alan Cumming, but it feels a bit flat. I liked the Kate Beckinsale TV movie more. It’s obviously a much cheaper production, but Beckinsale, Samantha Morton, and Mark Strong are great in the lead roles.

Well, that’s not what I expected. Very odd episode, in a mostly good way. Looking forward to the rest of the season more after that.

Patrick Stewart: good actor! I'm definitely on board. Very interested in where they are going.

The movie is making a lot of money, so the fourth one's definitely going to happen. The directors are moving on to Beverly Hills Cop 4 though, so they might not be back.

Not even cut sketches, there's a lot that has just never been on online versions. Looking at the episode lengths on Amazon, almost every episode from the 80s and 90s is cut down to 25-40 minutes. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B01EN8D8BC

Will it be the full episodes, or the cutdown ~35-minute versions for some seasons that have been around for a while? I assume there are issues with music rights for earlier seasons, but I hope we get some of those missing sketches that have never been online.

I didn’t like the first two Bad Boys movies at all, but Bad Boys For Life is a lot of fun. Not great, but very enjoyable. It feels like the movie that Hobbs and Shaw should have been, including an airplane scene as funny as the one in Hobbs and Shaw is terrible. The twist genuinely surprised me too!

I really enjoyed it. I rewatched all of CH this week in preparation, and was very happy to see everyone again, and in a show with a proper budget. I think Mullally was the only main cast member to not appear? I was slightly surprised Offerman wasn't there either, given that Owen's cop backstory was brought up so often. Also happy to see Randall Park and David Wain reprise their Newsreaders roles. I liked that spin-off. I didn't mind only sticking to one genre for the season, but I missed not having a "behind-the-scenes" ep with Lynn Williams, Just Falcon, Rory Spindell, etc. Those were often my favourites.

King Shark is still the best part of the show for me, but I love Queen of Fables. I'd never heard of her before the show, but she's great here.

Not a place expected to find this type of inclusion, but the Saved by the Bell reboot has cast Josie Totah as its lead: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/peacocks-saved-by-bell-sequel-finds-lead-josie-totah-1266269

Ooh, I did not care for that at all. The first half of the movie is just the characters going from place to place to find a map? That's a terrible way to structure a movie. We never spend more than a few minutes in each location, meaning the new characters we meet have basically no impact. There is NO reason for the Keri Russell character to exist. The whole C-3P0 mind wipe stuff is sort of funny, but also pointless. They get caught by the First Order so many times in such a short span of time, and that they survive each time just makes the bad guys look incompetent. Hated all the Palpatine stuff. Comes out of nowhere, and he does basically nothing. Going back to giving Kylo a boss after him taking over in the last movie felt like a dumb step back. The idea that Leia and Luke knew all of this all along, including about Rey, doesn't work for me at all. The Kylo mask stuff was very odd, especially dropping it again soon after. Given the Mandalorian stuff this week, I wonder if they didn't have Driver for all of the shoot, and that was a double during the scenes with Richard E. Grant, etc. Really hated the awful retcon to make Rey Palpatine's granddaughter. Completely reverses one of the main things I loved about TLJ. The Leia stuff felt as creepy and morbid as the Cushing stuff in Rogue One, and incredibly awkward. Every time she was onscreen I could only think about the loops they were jumping through to set up the few lines of dialogue they had left over from TFA. I'd much rather she had died at the very start or between movies. Incredibly annoyed by the way they completely sidelined Rose. She has barely half a dozen lines, and is basically an extra. Horrid. The Luke scene was okay. The Han scene was fine, but characters talking to ghosts who only exist in their heads is an annoying pet peeve of mine. The acting was mostly good, but Driver was definitely not as good as in the last two. Still good, but he didn't blow me away. The Hux-is-a-spy "plotline" was very weird and pointless. I've no idea what he was supposed to have done to help them, and I've definitely no idea why he did it. Richard E. Grant fulfils basically the same role as him anyway. Did Gleeson have to leave and do something else? The space battle scenes were okay, but nothing new. I'm really not a fan of all the mystical Sith stuff, so the Emperor's big plan just annoyed me. I didn't mind them stretching what the Force could do that much, even if it got a bit convenient in terms of the plot. All of the "secret Sith homeworld" stuff was dumb though, especially the dumb artifacts needed to find the way there. I've never been a huge Star Wars fan, as I never watched as a kid, but The Last Jedi truly connected with me and got my hopes up, and this was a crushing disappointment.

Enjoyable enough, but a bit too similar to the first one. The new locations and the cast playing different characters helps for a lot of the film, but by the third act that's mostly gone.

That was great. I'm definitely on board. The voice cast were all great, but I especially liked Jim Rash's Riddler. Meloni's Gordon is very different to any other version I can remember too.

He's not a doctor! He's an orderly!

Good Stephen King adaptation, and a decent horror story, with a great Rebecca Ferguson villain performance (which will make a good low-effort Halloween costume). All of the The Shining stuff weighs it down though, and it’s much better when it’s doing its own thing. Most of the callbacks to the Kubrick movie feel off, as this is tonally completely different. It’s a similar thing to Ready Player One last year, where it just comes across as odd fan fiction. The worst part is the early scenes, recreating parts of the original movie. Once it gets past that, it’s a much more enjoyable movie. Doctor Sleep is an awful title though. I had the same problem with the book, where the title is basically irrelevant to the story. It's just a nickname Dan is given early on, and never mentioned after! It's not even a good nickname!

Game Of Thrones Duo Exit Lucasfilm Trilogy: https://deadline.com/2019/10/star-wars-setback-game-of-thrones-duo-david-benioff-d-b-weiss-exit-trilogy-1202771184/

Even calling it a cameo is very generous.