shrewd.buddha

The "science" is a bit weak. I have heard the same about the source material. You'd think PHD scientists could not help themselves from investigating how that little head mask could manufacture an immersive VR world - but no.. Young Yen Wenjie (?) seems to have a completely different personality than older Yen Wenjie. Can't blame her for thinking aliens could run things better than the government she was enduring at the time. It continues to be slightly intriguing and slightly slow. The Oxford grads who "love each other like family" is a bit much, but I suppose that was designed to make us care.

That seemed like an odd choice for for a Communist controlled government who killed college professors for being imperialists and spreading knowledge. Interstellar communication and travel require advanced intelligence and science - by humans and aliens: not exactly things that seemed to be valued. Whenever a series ends the first episode with a preview of "things that will happen during this season", it makes me think they are worried that people might not be excited enough to continue. (We skipped the preview spoilers) Our household will continue, but it may have more to do with knowledge of - and hype - of the book. This first episode was well made, but I wouldn't describe it as riveting.

Well, that was not a satisfying ending to the season. Maybe everything ends with zombies: Halo has morphed into a futuristic version of Resident Evil. Kwan, like John-117 and Makee, is now a chosen one with special abilities and divine destiny. Fantastic. It was surprising how casual people were when everyone was turning into homicidal zombies around them. Miranda put Halsey on ice as if nothing else mattered: no exit available and not worried that the entire facility would probably be nuked. No alarms were sounding.. Thank goodness Perez survived the entire season. Without her, there would be so few prominent female characters .. other than Cortana, Halsey, Miranda, Kwan, Makee, Riz, Kai, Admiral Parangosky, Laera and the mystical white-haired woman. At this point, I am not interested in seeing more Halo. .. never played the game, so there is no bias for or against the show for that. For me, it is just not a satisfying viewing experience.

How fortunate that Kwan happened to be there to help Halsey solve the puzzle to discover the Temple of Doom thing. Ackerson getting a pass for letting millions die because he "was just following orders"? I'm not really enjoying having the worst villains of the show be the leadership of the UNSC (is that the name?).

This planet has something for everyone: an artifact cave facility for Halsey, a Spartan child training facility for Soren and a Halo Key safeguard facility for Master Chief (!) What are the odds ..? She just looks so petite for a Spartan trainee.. It doesn't make sense. The writers were determined to keep the character and ignore everything else. And did the showrunners challenge themselves to see how many episodes they could have where Master Chief has no armor? The annoyances for this season are growing...

Good job by Vannak: not starting to rot after a week of being killed and not refrigerated. Maybe that is a Spartan quality. Soren seemed pretty useless in the search for his son. Typical bad writing trope: someone has to be dumb and useless to make another character (Laera) appear resourceful and strong. That area of the planet Aleria did not seem to have any trees - - not sure they could afford to have a bonfire funeral.. And now Riz is out. They seem to be dropping a lot of regular characters this season.

Between this episode and last episode's removal of Soren's pirate gang, the show has off'ed a lot of characters. Why doesn't someone just snap Dr. Halsey's neck? And kill the new guy Ackerson the next time they see him.? It's so annoying the way these type of villainous characters are tolerated by the other characters. (I do understand why the show keeps them around: drama.) I had no twinges of sympathy for Ackerson when he was fretting over his sick father. He basically left millions of people to die without warning of an attack. Why is it such a big deal that Cortana was stolen? They cannot cut off the AI's access to their computer network? Cortanta is not capable of refusing to give information?

Not really happy to see Kwan or Makee. Couldn't they have just moved on? In general, I am not really excited about any of the side stories. The Planet of Pirates just feels like fluff in order to have other things happening. I would prefer that the side stories dealt with the other characters in the Halo organization. One weird thing that got my attention was when Master Chief was upset that some guy was changing placards, indicating that the other Spartan team was on standby or something. Just the idea of this futuristic, high-tech organization needing a guy to physically change signs was hilarious..

It feels as if Season 1 was a long, long time ago .. Like others, I was also surprised there was no recap of Season 1 - - we were trying to piece together all the things that had happened, which was a lot. Not really enjoying the new smirking, sarcastic Dr. Halsey stand-in. How do these organizations even function with all the backstabbing, deception, competition and dislike between every single group of the military ..? We are doing a month of Paramount+ to watch this season. I enjoy a good B Movie type sci-fi show .. but they are laying on the tropes pretty thick..

As a taxpayer, I am outraged that we should now have to pay for a high security office, high-tech equipment, multiple monitors and an entire staff of employees!! The FBI:International operation was doing just fine with five agents using laptops in a dilapidated building. (joking) And what is the deal with European buildings always having chipped plaster and peeling paint? This episode was just okay, but required a good deal of suspension of disbelief. It's fortunate that the team rarely has to deal with a language barrier - everyone speaks English pretty fluently. And Jubal makes another appearance -- maybe to help boost the show? I don't think they even care about the time difference.

So many daddy issues in one episode: Jubal and son, Father of missing girls, and crazy PTSD abductor 'dad'. I also appreciated Isobel telling Jubal to, basically, "get off the cross so people can use the wood". Thankfully, in this Jubal-centric episode, he was not constantly on his phone with his wife during the case. There is also the troubling trend of past cases that Jubal feels guilty about for sorta dropping the ball - I hope the writers are keeping track. The FBI shows are always so heavy-handed about things, so that is expected .. but the pounding, not-really-background music felt over-the-top in this episode.

Just my opinion, but I feel that Deadpool was an exceptionally made movie: the direction, story structure, etc. The slow-mo opening sequence with sight-gags and sarcastic voice over was really well done. Ryan Reynolds was just a small part of that. Deadpool 2 was just a pale imitation of the first movie and did not perform as well - - not a good sign for a franchise. Some jokes get old fast and there were a lot of things that just felt like a rehash of the first movie. Based on recent MCU productions, there is no guessing how good the MCU Deadpool will be - or how succe$$ful. I might actually enjoy the trailers more than the full movie ... some things are more tolerable in smaller doses.

I would say I appreciated it but I'm not sure if I actually liked it. The prosthetics were striking, almost distracting. Also notable to the point of distraction was Bernstein's constant cigarette smoking.

It seems crazy that Deadpool will the the only MCU movie for 2024. And the behind-the-scenes news about the next Captain America movie does not sound good: major reshoots, poor screenings, etc. They are definitely going through a new phase - but probably not one they planned for. It is disappointing, because I was excited when Kevin Feige had said something along the lines of "we have thousands of characters and plan to explore them" - in response to the option of rebooting the top tier characters. I wondered if that was the reason recent releases have included lesser known comics characters (Kamala Khan, Cassie Lang, Riri Williams, America Chavez). It seems more than a coincidence.

See, this is a good argument for the usefulness of reviewers. I would have never watched this if I had not listened to a YouTuber reviewer .. who also had ignored it until reading his followers' recommendations in the comments. This was very well done and the animation was great. All the supporting characters had good story arcs also. The part where Mizu lived as a devoted wife felt a little out of left field. I would give it 7 out of 8: The last (8th) episode felt like they tried to hedge all their bets to set up another season. Mizu kills everyone except the one person she had dedicated her life to killing..? .. not even cutting off a hand ..? And single-handedly transporting Fowler and sailing a ship to London? Hmmm..

I feel that almost any 'hot' director with a good rep would balk at all the restrictions and cross-promotional mandates that Disney MCU would put on them. Maybe that's why some of the indie directors they hire are considered "director in name only". Do you think that the MCU would even consider making a low-budget movie that isn't heavily cross-connected? The current trend seems to be comic-book hero movies as wacky comedies - which makes it easier for me to disengage from it all - - or just wait for the streaming option.

Maybe 'stunt casting' is too strong a concept. But it feels as if they are constantly promoting their movies and shows as "The first [blank] to to ever [blank]." This was in overdrive during the Eternals promotion. Being a comics fan, maybe the algorithm targets me with more of the Disney PR and hype. For me, this contributes to the "fatigue" of it all. Angelina Jolie and Harrison Ford seem like excess celebrity cost for the roles they had (or will have). Even Zendaya seemed more popular than Tom Holland for her small-ish part in the first Spider-Man movie. So, yeah, the movie business is in the business of making as much money as possible... but Disney seems to prioritize marketing over creativity (artistic vision?) - - which may explain why some directors leave Marvel projects during the early phases of production. For example, did Wakanda Forever benefit from being a pre-promotion vehicle for a Disney+ show Ironheart? (which may not happen for a very long time) Would things be any better if the MCU had never been bought by Disney? Who knows.. However, Warner Bros.(The Flash) and Columbia Pictures (Morbius) don't help in making a counterpoint.

I have read some of the 'classic' Marvel comics from the 60's and early 70's - - and there is definitely room for improvement. There is potential for some inspired changes in the adaptations. But the Disney marketing machine makes every casting choice feel like a stunt. Maybe it's because they seem to start promotion before the script is even finished. I don't know if Disney/Marvel can afford to keep attempting to fix their messes with mult-millions dollar reshoots.

I suppose I was mainly considering the 'super-heroes' of the movies and not the supporting cast. There have been quite a few jabs at Marvel movies for always giving their main character heroes BFF's who are minorities. It seems like a no-win situation. ...but it is said “A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied”

The producers probably used ChatGPT to write the scripts during the writer's strike - and the writer's were too lazy to improve them before filming... ChapGPT, write me a script that incorporates Tiffany, terrorism and HR reviews - using the typical FBI tropes of foot chases, bombs and bad undercover work.

That looked like an Amazon delivery van to me. It felt very contrived letting the bad guy get away. This really wasn't worth a "to be continued" story element for Tiffany.

My personal takeaway: Yearly performance reviews are evil and may lead to people getting killed.

Checked in to see if the cliffhanger bomb 'shook up' the cast of this show. Kind of ..? but not really..? So many odd story choices. It seems this show is still trying to settle on some type of direction. Hot takes: Do NOT rush to exit the crumbling building until someone gets hurt. Raines is Vo's BFF, but for some reason Jamie is sidelined to fret over him. Smitty gives no f**ks about Raines and wants to get back to work. New York FBI's Jubal works 24/7, so the time difference is no problem. Jamie: "Later, losers! All my belongings fit in one carry-on and I'm leaving. Right. Now." Jamie, think about getting a tattoo of your sister's name instead of having to write it on your palm to keep the memories fresh. Forrester: I think we might replace one ponytailed analyst with another, younger, ponytailed analyst.

I admit it was satisfying. And I really hate the trope of a show having a high profile actor villain who kills lots of people -- but the heroes don't kill the person because they are "too valuable" (and the possibility of a rematch). It just seemed that Langston would have been the one that deserved the group effort overkill. ..not some guy they had not interacted with .. and who had not tortured and killed their teammates. Maybe A.M. was considered to be the evil mastermind of it all. I just didn't see him that way.

A.M. being killed by all four team members empying their guns into him felt like .. overkill. Those four were not aware of all the murders A.M. had committed during his travels - even if they did know about his crimes through Homeland Security. Unless A.M. was connected to their teammates murders, killing him should not have been so personal. There were quite a few "really?" moments on the helicoptor: a lot of actions that felt like forced choreography, where Reacher could have easily been shot or stabbed more effectively by Langston. And using the missile tech to take down the helicopter was 'cool', .. but .. what about the possibility of death and/or destruction from an exploding helicopter falling to the ground/water? I like that Reacher has neat, clean, all loose ends tied up seasons. The show provides a satisfying amount of righteous beatdowns of bad guys.