shrewd.buddha

Is there any reason that Klaus would not tell the others that Ben's ghost was there? I know Ben and Klaus are not getting along, but that was a dick move.. Having a ghost helping you investigate things would be a huge benefit. ..but I suppose the characters can't make smart decisions that would interfere with the plot. But the music is fun! (Tho the musical dance number in the hair salon felt like a weak attempt to repeat the much better one of season one.)

I am hoping that this becomes the more accepted theory with regards to the possibility of time travel. I have grown weary of time travel stories (and there only seems to be more of them lately. Though I did enjoy Dark on Netflix, for the most part. ) I feel that most adults no longer buy into the 'Back To The Future' concept of jumping to the past, giving your grandparents stock market info, then you return to your current time where you were born into a rich family and your girlfriend/boyfriend is a celebrity model. So, basically, any attempt to change the past is pointless - - that timeline continues as normal - - while you have only jumped into another timeline or alternate future. You have not saved anyone who died. You have not stopped the apocalypse. You only disappeared from your original timeline and created an alternate one.

We finished .. finally. I would have preferred this season to be shorter, actually. And that was because it was so, so serious and such a downer, episode after episode. I would classify this as a type of misery porn. (When I discovered that Frank Miller was involved, it made more sense - - that guy is not into happy endings or glimmers of hope.) The Fae people: Are they just there to be cannon fodder? Do they only have mostly elderly people, women and children whose bodies end up strewn out in the fields after constant raids? Why don't they have any mystical abilities to help them? The Weeping Monk: At least the show managed to kill off one villain: Father Carden. .. And Uther's crazy mom got off'ed .. But trying to redeem the Weeping Monk guy?! No way. That guy straight up killed hundreds of people, including Nimue's mom (I think) -- and the Fae people who tried to rescue Squirrel Boy. ("But I never killed children .. I just killed the adults trying to protect them and watched as my fellow Red Paladins slaughtered the children.") I fear that given enough time, this guy might even become one of Nimue's potential love interests.. Ugh. Please, no.. Percival, Lancelot and the rest: If you re going to just start grabbing character names from the Arthur legend and handing them out at random, why not get creative and use all the copyright free stuff? Next season we could meet a Dracula and a Captain Nemo.

I must say, the music, set design and cinematography are top notch. The visuals at the Umbrella Factory and during Diego's fight were well done. I wish I was as impressed with the characters.. All of the Hargreeves siblings are a hot mess. They never seem to ask obvious questions (Vanya and Luther). They never seem to use their abilities in subtle ways when it could help (Allison). They are completely self-absorbed and never learn from their past mistakes (Klaus). They don't seem very bright when it comes to the potential consequences of changing major historical events (Diego). If Diego wanted to prevent the assassination of JFK, there are many ways of doing that without confronting Oswald - - maybe some anonymous phone calls to the FBI, CIA, police, etc. It seems as if Diego might be more interested in trying to figure out if the assassination was a conspiracy or the work of a lone gunman. (What if stopping Oswald did not prevent the assassination? - what if more than one shooter was involved?) And is Diego so amateur that he couldn't avoid getting put into a psychiatric hospital? - - and then not be able to escape whenever he wanted? From here on, I am resolving to try to turn my brain off and just enjoy the wacky hi-jinks...

I think that Umbrella Academy is a bit too "out there" for my tastes - - and I think I am sort of over shows that are based on timey-wimey jumps, resets, etc. (We just recently finished up 'Dark'.) But I do give the show credit for swinging for the fences. Just some observations: Would Allison's 'rumor' powers really work that way (heads exploding).? And would her powers work on someone who doesn't speak English or is deaf? Will every season be based on trying to prevent an apocalypse in 8 or 10 days? I am hoping this season they don't do another "day that never happened" reset after significant events have happened. That always feels like a cheap stunt with time travel shows. For the record, Number 5 has never managed to stop an apocalypse. In season one, he managed to change the circumstances a bit - - but it still happened - - he just escaped it at the last second. His siblings have died in two timelines so far - - depending on whether you think new timelines are created or there is just one and things can actually be changed by altering the past.. I wonder why no one bothered to look for their 'Dad', who should be alive the 60's. Maybe they did and that will be addressed. I think I am going to miss the Umbrella Academy house, Pogo the chimp and robo-Mom. But with timey-wimey shows, anyone can come back at any time ( I feel certain that Hazel will still be around).

Locations: The ruins where Minue and Merlin met; the spider caves; the Mill set up for an ambush; the camp of Cumber the Ice King; the Fae sactuary; all these places feel as if they are a hour or so walk/ride from one another. There is no sense of distance from any one place to another. And you can tell the Fae sanctuary is just ripe for invasion and slaughter. C'mon fairie people! Don't you have any special forest magic to help cover your tracks or use the birds and woodland creatures to help with surveillance and scouting ahead? Well of course the midwife's family is slaughtered by the assassin who has been sent to kill Merlin - just as she had disappeared without saying good-bye to spare them any problems. How could we expect to go an episode without a grassy field strewn with the bodies of women and children?

About that .. I guess Nimue needed to see the memories in order to trust Merlin. That's understandable. But why never ask where the sword came from and how it managed to get stuck inside of Merlin? How was Merlin able to bend over with that thing in him?! The extraction scene was pretty gross - - the show may go cheap on the CGI, but it really excels at blood and guts. I knew that Arthur's new fae friend was too wide-eyed and enthusiastic to live for long. For a sword and sorcery rehash of the King Arthur legend, this show is a real downer. They never let up for a moment on the constant torture, genocide, be-headings and racism. Even the fae are racist toward humans.

In these challenging times (tm), beggars can't be choosers, so it is exciting to have any new movie available. I was impressed that it had a few A-list actors on board. It reminded me a lot of the previous Net-flic 'Extraction' - - but it seems as if all the action movies lately have main characters fighting their way thru a nameless, faceless para-military squadron of mercenaries, as brutally and violently as possible. The baddest bad guys are saved to be killed last, of course. I wonder if these nefarious companies include some fine print on their security guard applications that read: Possibly evil enterprise. Amoral agendas. Please be prepared for military assault situations in workplace hallways. The evil pharma-tech company certainly seemed willing to lose a lot of employees in order to get their hands on the never-die DNA - - hope they provided good life insurance plans. It was fun. My one quibble with the movie was that at the end it felt like a Mission Impossible movie that had no mission. Everything seemed to revolve around the Old Guard being set-up, captured and escaping - - they never got a chance to save anyone other than themselves. Since the team members were vulnerable to being drugged, it seemed as though there would have been many, many ways for the traitor of the group to achieve his plan without so much violence and bloodshed. ..but as Ryan George explains why it happened that way in his youtube Pitch Meeting videos: "so the movie can happen".

Unfortunately, there was too much running and cowering and not much evidence of being resourceful or trying to help anyone else but herself. For that, I mostly blame the writing and directing. (And why does her hair always seem to hang perfectly over her shoulders? ) I'm guessing at some point Nimue will unleash her powers in a big way, but for now she is supposed to be still discovering them. It just seems as if she would have had a little curiosity about what she could do since the age of 5 or so - - especially with all the alone time she had because she was the village outcast. But the scenery is lovely..

It's not unwatchable, but it is very uneven. Nimue looks like an 18 year-old but behaves like a 12 year-old, with all the running away and hiding and seeming to be clueless about almost everything. In those times anyone over 16 years old would act like and be considered an adult - - but I'm sure Netflix isn't going to get hung up on historical cultural inaccuracies. Random observations: Nimue hates everyone in her village and everyone hates her (except her mom and Squirrel boy) - maybe that's why she seems pretty unconcerned when they get wiped out..? The Arthur guy that Nimue meets in the town - - that can't be the Arthur , right? I suppose Nimue is going to grow into her abilities over the course of the season ... but it seems as if her mother, being a Fey leader, would have encouraged her to learn a little about her abilities. Thus far, Nimue's personality seems to mainly consist of sulking and self-pity. (Like some bad stereotype of today's high-school teen.) I'm not psyched about the prospect of a wacky, drunk Merlin. I think there was already a version of that in one of the Transformer movies. (Which sadly fit the tone of that movie.)

Finished the series: thoughts ... and spoilers: 'Warrior Nun' is a bit of a misnomer: Ava isn't a nun or a warrior. Did the show runners decide they needed a character who could be free to curse, party and have sexy times? I suppose they could fix the warrior part with a 5 minute training montage .. but Ava did very little with regards to fighting or action sequences. It seemed as if the writers pulled of a great misdirect with the reveal of the actual person who planned the assassination of the previous Warrior Nun. But thinking back, I'm not positive if that character's actions fit with the surprise reveal. And the reveal about Adriel and the halo - - it felt like the classic trope of a villain needing to explain their elaborate plan to the hero before leaving them to die... That was probably the fastest selection of a new Pope, like ever.. The Warrior Nun's plan to get in and out of the tomb was around 30 minutes - and that supposedly happened simultaneously with the election of the Pope (2 votes) and all the stuff happening at the lab. Sure. The sudden disappearance of JC and the diversified squatters felt abrupt. But that was nothing compared to the moment the show runners decided to end the season on a cliffhanger. It made the episode feel as if it was padded out for time.

I think the scorched earth(s) approach by Claudia/Jonas was the only satisfactory outcome to all the timeline pollution done by so many of the characters. There didn't seem to be any typical heroes in the show and no real sympathetic characters - - except, maybe, young Jonas and young Martha. But old Jonas/Adam and old Martha/Eva were really horrible, cold-blooded murderers. There was also a lot of characters who murdered their own parents or their own children: Claudia, Jonas, Kathrina's Mom, Martha's nameless son(s), etc. A big chunk of season 3 felt like a killing spree. And no version of Martha seemed that attached to the son that she was supposed to be trying to preserve by saving her world's timeline.

Finished episode 4: thoughts ... and spoilers: As far as hallway fight scenes go, the one with Sister Beatrice (?) was pretty good. Maybe it is my own prejudice, but I would be happier if the Warrior Nuns appeared to be more of a well-oiled fighting machine and less of a bickering group of semi- mean girls. From all the books in Ava's room at the orphanage, it seems as if she would have given some thought about what she would want to do with her life if given the chance .. but she really seems to be bumbling around and bouncing from one thing to another. Maybe some of her booksmarts with come to light later. I guess it's because of our current culture that we have to endure Ava constantly obsessing over whether or not she is being repeatedly rescued by a boy. .. a boy who she has a crush on .. Does it make her less of a damsel in distress no matter the age, gender or sexuality of the people constantly rescuing her? So Ava has found insta-crush-love with a world wandering boy named JC ... could it be that J.C. ?!? .. I don't think this show is going for subtle or coincidence. I do appreciate that the show has a somewhat even amount of adult characters versus pretty young people with problems. .. even tho most of the adults are business and religious megalomaniacs with nefarious agendas ..

We were looking for a fun distraction and are two episodes in .. but this seems to be mainly aimed at the CW network crowd. (Which is fine, really.) I'm not heavily invested and may stick around to see how things go .. or not .. The snarky voice-over narration is difficult to bear. Random impressions: Ava has had a hard-knock life in an orphanage (which seems to have only two children) - - yet she is both naive and tough-as-nails. Suddenly free from being a crippled, abused orphan, Ava's main pursuits appear to be dancing, drinking, party drugs, dressing up and hooking up. Miraculously (appropriate for this show?), Ava instantly meets her possibly one-true-love and falls into a ready-made, diversified group of youths who live like pirate party kings .. while managing to convince themselves they are morally superior to 'society' and adults. Ava, The Chosen One, is being pursued by the Warrior Nuns, who are protecting the world from EVIL-with-a-capital-E. Only about four of the nuns manage to get names and personalities ... but they appear to be somewhat petty and prone to giving one another side-eye. This could be a fun show. It shows potential for being outrageous and irreverent. Plus, it is set in Spain(!) Too bad the powers that be decided to weigh down the beginning with so much baggage. I suppose it is cheaper to produce a show with an emphasis on teenage angst as opposed to action adventure. Eh, c'est la vie.

I think that things felt more contained when the time travelling was done with the tunnels - and everyone was confined to time periods that were 33 years apart. When all the time-travel devices came into play and everyone (and it felt like everyone) started jumping all over the time/place, things started to get really convoluted.

Mild spoiler alerts ahead - if you haven't watched all 3 seasons: I agree. I will say that the show provided a lot of entertaining speculation and discussion, but we were left with a nagging feeling that some things just didn't add up. And when it got to the point of Jonas and Martha 'putting their soldiers into position' ... and younger Jonas and Martha being snatched away in time - - right before the time they had time-jumped previously - - I sort of gave up and just let it wash over me.. A few things that were sort of confusing/annoying: Martha#2, in the beginning of season 3, had a cut under her left eye. But later, and when she first got the cut with Jonas, it was under her right eye. Was there any point to that? About halfway through season 3 there seemed to be a lot of the same dialogue: "You can't trust Adam, he lied to you." "Martha is lying - don't trust her." "Claudia is lying - - she has her own plan." Basically, all the old time travelers were liars. There seemed to be way too many time-travel and dimension/time-travel devices - along with time travel tunnels. And everyone seemed to be experts at setting their destinations without any instruction. At the end of season 2, it felt like all the characters were jumping around in time. Old Adam and old Martha just seemed to be hanging out in big rooms a lot of the time, waiting to explain/lie to whoever was being brought to them. What had they been doing with all their in-between years? And who was building all those time-travel devices? It was sort of convenient that all (?) of them were created from plans sent back from the future ... the Bootstrap Paradox Overall, the scope of the series was impressive: the large cast, with three versions of each character in some cases, and all the interconnections, past, 'present' and future. There must have been some massive white board meetings with the show runners.. To me, it felt as if the story that was started in season 1 did not flow very smoothly into the story of season 3 .. with the themes of Adam and Eva ... and Claudia trying to save Regina ... and things coming back around to the clock-maker, who really didn't seem to be an important character for most of the series. .. but even so, it was a fun ride ..

It was fun as a wacky, dark rom-com, but it did not do well with the sharp turn into violent action adventure, along with Nathan becoming a hacker extraordinaire. How did the murder of Fran Booth never come up? Her death was pretty public - Nathan should have heard about it. This first season was entertaining and mostly engaging .. but the idea of dragging out the status of Nathan and Nora's relationship is not appealing. (And having an 'uploaded' BFF might be nice, but why would anyone encourage an actual romantic relationship between the living and the dead?)

I am surprised that Nathan is not more interested and involved in looking into his own murder. It is not as if he has a lot of other things to do. (Probably just an inconvenient time for the plot, I guess.) I know this is a dark comedy, but Nathan's girlfriend is the worst. Why would someone like her latch on to someone like Nathan, whose resume appeared to be part-time model and barista?

If nothing else, I appreciate that Upload is demonstrating that a possible digital afterlife is not the utopian wonderland that most sci-fi stories make it out to be. Like most things, it would be limited to those who could afford it. And those that participated would be at the mercy of whatever company designed the digital universe - who could also pull the plug at will. Nathan appeared very alert and healthy despite being near death - which was either a swipe at corporate manipulation or the show taking liberties to get the plot where they wanted it. It does seem strange that Nathan would not be in contact with his friends and family, since that appears possible. And it would be a great scam to create a digital afterlife. Who could prove that it actually existed - or was instead populated by very sophisticated AI's impersonating the deceased?

Those scenes feel extremely repetitive. How many times does the show need to remind the audience that Lacroix is an absentee dad whose wife died serving in the military? It feels as if Lacroix 's family life was designed to check off as many socially relevant boxes as possible. All the conversations revolving around hawks are getting old, too. Why not show some private life moments of some other team members?

Meh... Jonathan Pryce is a good actor but this episode was just ponderous. It was a bit comical that Grandpa gets a phone call from his doctor telling him he only has a short time to live. Months? Weeks? Days? And what is the cause of this death? Plot-itis?

He literally only had the clothes on his back. He is walking and stops at a roadside diner at night. How is that going to end when he makes plans to stay in contact with the new guy? At least it didn't end on a completely depressing note. These episodes are loaded with atmosphere and that's all well and good, but there are lots of unanswered questions: Two gay gentlemen living on a farm with no tractor for 10+ years and nobody does any farming? Gaddis#1 lives in the guest house in his reality, but owns the farm land and the tractor? Will anyone from Loop Inc. notice that their security guy is missing?

As usual, this episode felt like it lingered on and on.. it almost makes you feel hypnotized by the slowness, wondering where things will end up. But it is a safe bet that the end will be bittersweet ( leaning mostly towards depressing). All the old, yet advanced, technology feels like a bait-and-switch trick. There are compactor robots controlled by wireless harnesses - - but no cell phones and no camera surveillance systems. And clearly the guy would have done better by getting a dog - at least he could have slept at night. I was more struck by how this guy's kids are ruining his life, emotionally and financially, by blatantly lying to him and skulking around his house at night. The medical expenses of keeping his son's body alive could easily be shifted over to The Loop Inc. if all the facts were known.

Just rented it over the weekend, VOD, and thought it was okay. I was surprised at how low budget it seemed - it did not feel like a major motion picture 'super' hero movie. It seemed like something Netflix would have made. It reminded me of Deadpool - to a point. But none of the action sequences were close to those of the first Deadpool. Even the car chase felt pretty tame. Although, there were some impressive fight choreography moments. And the soundtrack was good. There were a lot of odd choices, such as calling itself "Birds of Prey" when it did not feel like a team movie. And this did not have what I know to be the members of BoP - - so the name was doubly misleading. It was also weird that no one in Gotham mentioned Batman, the one thing everyone associates with the city of Gotham. Maybe it was the directing, staging, or lighting - but Harley Quinn did not come across as a larger-than-life character. The early scenes of Harley in the bar just looked like a ordinary drunk person at a bar. I think the movie would have benefited from some 'grand' entrances by Harley. I think a director like Tim Burton could have done something special with the character.

There were so many significant, immediate, plot points left hanging. Things that could have been given just a quick line or scene instead of ignoring completely. But no, instead, the show wanted all that time for maudlin good-bye scenes with Picard, then mourning soon-to-be-alive-again-Picard, and more fireside chats between Data and Picard professing their love for one another. There was way too much emphasis on the super, BFF, unique connection between Picard and Data. I watched TNG and that was never the case. Data and Picard became friends when Data became a popular character. This show made it seem as if they were practically soul mates. Maybe it was the result of binge watching, but the Data drama was over the top ... and that goes for *all* the Data worship by so many of the characters. And did everyone forget about Lore? That felt like a waste of time. I won't even bother complaining about everything nonsensical with "Look! We made you an 80-year old body with no advantages to your previous body, besides not being dead." I would prefer if ST:Picard was a stand-alone series, to be followed up by ST: Geordi or ST:Seve-of-Nine, etc. So now the Federation knows that there are über-synths somewhere out there. You know who won't be able to resist trying to explore that?: Starfleet.. The introduction of the magical, imagination-powered, fix-it tool was probably a good representation this series. It claims it wants realism when it comes to being grim and pessimistic - - but then it gets silly when it comes to the science part of sci-fi.