The Big Finish Catch-Up January 2023

For those of you new to this section of the blog, I started listening to the Big Finish Doctor Who releases when they started back in 1999, getting them as they were released up to mid 2002 and release No 33 Neverland. At that time I left Uni and due to being a bit busy with life and what not I only heard one or two releases over the next few years. I started getting back into them around 2008 and was 6 years behind at that point. Due to wondering off into the Lost Doctor range and a relaxed listening pace I fell further behind. In order to catch up I'm listening to two releases a month (or more when its a 60 min single disc release, plus without seeing the cover or knowing anything about the story) and my mission to catch up continues; 

Army of Death, the finale of the 8th Doctor and Mary Shelley trilogy. A good fun played for laughs pulp story that is bags of fun 8.5/10. 

Deadline from the unbound range this week. Utterly harrowing and an all time classic 10/10.

Also Neverwhen from the War Doctor range. Bleak time war action and a good finale to the box set 7.5/10.

Avatar The Way of the Water - Review

By no means what I expected, both in terms of film and character. The level of everything between this and the first film is immense, like comparing Pac Man with Tomb Raider. The effects are amazing and the choice of moving things to a water based environment was a good one as visually it strikes gold. James Cameron also makes the brave choice of leaving the two lead characters from the first film in the background for large portions of the film. The younger generation introduced become the heart an soul of the film (something that the first film never had) to the extent that when the final act rolls around they are why we care about the outcome.

Director wise there's a lot going on, James Camerons choice of shot is spot on throughout the movie. By the time we get to the final act he's in his traditional element after excelling outside of his preconceived box for most of the film. We get a few jumps and shocks throughout the film and despite the wide openness of the film we get scenes of claustrophobia. There's a few nods to Camerons previous films - most notably a few shots that bring back memories of Titanic, the exo-skeletons that first appeared in Aliens are ever present as is the traditional industrial use of yellow around the human parts of the film.

Actor wise I really enjoyed the younger characters plus I think Sigourney Weaver should be in contention for Best Supporting Actress awards.

9.5/10 from me, only niggles are a few plot points that could have been tidied up. The big problem I had from the first film is that it should have been a video game and left no imprint on pop culture. This feels like a film yet the thing I think will make an imprint on pop culture was also something that was in the first "I see you."

The Empire Strikes Back - Review

The Empire Strikes Back 9.5/10

As a child this was the Star Wars film that wasn't as much fun as the other two, its improved with age. The sexual tension between the characters is fun, there is more overt comedy than the other early films - in particular Chewy, Yoda, R2 and 3PO, there are loads of cool bits I remember with the ships, effects and everything. In particular I loved the snow speeders as a kid and they still press my fan buttons. 

I'd forgot how tight this film was, from the sets to the plot its possibly the slickest production of the entire franchise. Hoth feels dangerous before the Empire turn up, the Rebellion are battling conditions, the conditions and at times even their technology. Harrison Ford has turned into a meme in recent times over how laid back and dry he is in real life but on screen he's carrying the sass and its up to everyone else to keep up. You take him out of this film and you take away the heart of the film.

I can't give this a full 10/10 due to the Dagobah stuff - it belongs in a series in a film format it doesn't work or at least needs a montage. Also some of the action sequences are a bit "Michael Bay" and the physical geography is a bit bonkers. Bar that it still stands up and I like it better than in my youth.

Oooh, those new effects though, I proper dig seeing more of Cloud City than just the corridors.

Heroes - Don't Look Back

Beware Spoilers...

This second episode reaps the reward of the first episode and is a more satisfying watch as a result. The repercussions of Peter jumping off the building in the previous episode hits deep. Nathan is denying it happened so it won't affect his political career, the mother is distraught and Peter is broken as he doesn't think he's special and now believes Nathan is. I spoke about the flight scene in the previous episode being a dog but the hovering scene goes the opposite way and is beautiful. Also the sketch is a good clue to what Peters true powers really are and is one of the elements that make a re-watch fun.

We're learning a few things about Claire and her family such as the fact that she's adopted and her caring nature. Already theres a feeling Claire is going to be a big factor in the series.

Niki's part of the episode is perhaps the most intriguing - I'd forgot what a slow burn the road to finding out what her power actually is and its fun. She's blacking out, seeing and odd reflection, it looks like she's killing people and from the skulls that pop up near the end she may have killed a lot.

Mohinder meets a new friend and finds a flash drive full of his fathers work, we also get the first appearance of Syler recorded on an answerphone and he gets a mention in another plot line of the episode. Theres a feeling that the show is getting the hooks out ready to hold us down for the long haul.

Matt Parkman played by Greg Grunberg pops up near the end of the episode and I'd forgot it took him this long to show up. By far the regular who went on to be the most recognisable imo. He discovers a hidden girl at a crime scene due to telepathy and is promptly arrested by Clea DuVall of all people - her of Girl Interrupted, Ghosts of Mars and The Faculty fame. I'd completely forgot she was in this!

Hiro after teleporting to New York finds out he's in the future by about a month, finds the dead body of Isaac, is arrested, witnesses an explosion and promptly teleports back to what we assume is the present. Blooming eck Masi Oka is absolutely charming as Hiro and should be doing more things that I'm aware of.

A brilliant second episode, sometimes a show just needs to get a tricky start out of the way so it can do what its designed for. In this episode see character arcs connecting, see more of their lives. This is without doubt near perfect TV and if you plan on watching the show I'd sit through at least this episode until you decide if you're in for the duration of season 1. I have to call out the one fault in this episode, I had no idea the dead body Hiro finds in the future is Isaac. One small yet pivotal lapse as the first time around I only picked it up from dialogue in later episodes.

The Boys Season 1 review

Every few years or so, a comic, movie or TV show poses the question, “What if superheroes really existed?” It’s a brilliant starting point for any direction you want to take the idea in, not just because the conventions of superhero stories are so ripe for parody, but by thinking  out how our existing governments & institutions might behave in a world with one big difference from ours an be an extremely effective way to criticise the way those institutions are behaving in the here and now.

The Boys is the latest show to have a go at this trope and while the idea may be familiar the execution is striking. On the one hand, The Boys is an expert deconstruction of superhero stories, with an appropriately winterish view of institutional power, be it corporate, governmental, religious, or caped. On the other hand, it’s an adaptation of a comic book series that launched in 2006 and is to an extent dated.

The most obvious thing that’s changed between the first issue of The Boys and its television debut is that superheroes have taken over pop culture. It’s hard to remember the before times now, but the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang influenced Iron Man didn’t kick off the Marvel Cinematic Universe until 2008, with the DC Extended Universe not arriving for five years after that. Ennis and Robertson assumed that superheroes would be monetized the second they appeared, but working in the heyday of Blackwater, the natural business model was defense contractors, not movie studios. The first shot is a Marvelesque sequence in which thousands of comic panels dissolve into the logo for the fictional Vought Studios, and the second is a bus advert for a superhero movie. As Madelyn Stillwell, a villainous executive played by Elisabeth Shue, says at a Vought shareholders meeting, it’s a good time to be in the superhero business. And the show’s professional sports-flavored vision of that business assigning crime fighters to cities in exchange for concessions from local governments that is more satisfying and more vicious than in the original Marvel Civil War storyline.

The show’s increased proximity to the entertainment industry lets Amazon’s version of The Boys address the #MeToo movement. In the pilot episode, Annie January (Erin Moriarty), an innocent kid from Des Moines, Iowa, who can shoot beams of blinding light from her hands, gets the full star treatment: She successfully auditions to join Vought’s premier superhero team; she finally pleases her stage mother (Ann Cusack); she gets flown to Manhattan and driven around in a limo; she gets a dedicated handler (Colby Minifie, oozing resentment); she’s promised television appearances, movies, merchandising, and astonishing amounts of money; she gets to meet her delightfully named childhood heroes - a Superman type called Homelander (Antony Starr), a Flash type called A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), a Wonder Woman type called Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott). Then out of left field  she gets blackmailed into performing oral sex on an Aquaman type called the Deep (Chace Crawford). In one of the show’s better throwaway jokes, she pukes afterward in one of Vought’s unisex bathrooms: It’s a proudly progressive company, except for all the sexual assault. That plotline exists in the comics, but it doesn’t cause much trouble between Annie and her employer. Instead, it’s mostly a device to cause tension between Annie and her victim-blaming love interest (played by Jack Quaid on the show). Employees have a few more cards to play now, and the show smartly incorporates that reality.

But when Annie starts playing those cards, the seams created by refitting a 2006 series for 2019 really start to show. Annie is an evangelical Christian, and she chooses to break her silence about being assaulted onstage at the “Believe Expo,” a youth revival where superheroes cheerfully explain that their superpowers mean they were chosen by God. The mood is extremely Bush-era, faith and imperialism and homophobia balled up into a soft-rock, white jeans nightmare. The endless sense of grievance that mysteriously appeared in much white evangelical discourse after 04/11/08 isn’t present. Even same sex marriage - something evangelicals have mostly abandoned fighting - seems like an open issue, judging from the merchandise booth. But the most striking thing is the way Vought endlessly defers to white evangelicals - keeping gay superheroes in the closet, making sure another superhero doesn’t admit she’s had premarital sex, letting one of their stars advocate “praying away the gay” - in a way secular media hasn’t really done since they discovered there was more profit to be made in inclusivity than bigotry.

Which brings us to the biggest challenge in adapting The Boys for television in 2019, one that Amazon’s show never quite overcomes: adjusting for the election wins of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. There’s a scene in the very first issue of the comic book that illustrates the problem pretty clearly: The director of the CIA, played by Jennifer Esposito on the show, says, with a completely straight face, “The President is a man of total moral integrity.” That statement is no longer operative, to put it mildly, and it’s not just because the living embodiment of gammon is living in the White House. George W. Bush and Maggie Thatcher were not moral paragons but their supporters kept up appearances in a way that now seems quaint and has been proven to be unnecessary. In the comic books it’s the president who’s a ruthless Halliburton stooge and the vice president who’s a moron, but everyone operates under the assumption that if the president’s corruption or the vice president’s stupidity were publicly exposed, it would hurt them. The public simply wouldn’t stand for it.

But the current Premiers Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are the complete package;  corruption and stupidity, with racism, misogyny thrown in as a bonus - and he’s headed toward his fourth year in office with a strong chance of at least four more. The main plot of The Boys, like every conspiracy thriller, superhero or no, is built around the idea that someone, somewhere would care if the conspiracy were exposed. Even the show’s subplots - closeted superheroes, performance-enhancing drugs, what really happened aboard a hijacked plane - depend on the idea that if the truth were known, something would happen. But nothing will happen. There’s one superpower that beats heat vision, superstrength, invisibility, and even the ability to communicate with fish: complete and utter shamelessness. Still, if you’d like to spend some time in a world where supervillainy can sometimes be countered by superheroism, you could do a lot worse than The Boys.

The Haunting of Hill House

I have finally finished watching last years Netflix hit miniseries The Haunting of Hill House and can fully recommend giving it a watch. Rather than being full of jump scares its a proper slow burn series which rewards viewers for paying attention and adding layers to earlier episodes.

In particular there are a few episodes that rank with the finest things I've ever watched.The three episodes The Twin Thing, The Bent-Neck Lady and Two Storms are not only powerful episodes but the highlight of the miniseries.

There are so many things in this show that I fully expect will get better with a rewatch, the little background details in scenes, plot points that are so delicate you only realise them two episodes after you should have. Unlike a lot of horror it also has a satisfactory ending, speaking personally I go into horror not giving two hoots about the ending but this one left me nodding my head in approval.

So lady and gentle viewers if you're looking for something to get your teeth into this Halloween and haven't seen it yet give The Haunting of Hill House a view.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Review

I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot?

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I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Good afternoon lady and gentle readers, this blogger decided to make the trip this fair fine Good Friday to the local cinema to watch the aforementioned film and here's what I thought;

I'm sorry to report that its a mess, not a fun glorious over the top mess but a stodgy mess that for a large proportion of the film doesn't get into first gear. I'm trying not to give away spoilers so it isn't going to be as detailed as other reviews. There are a few dream sequences in the film where it isn't really clear the character is dreaming until the events unfold, at one point there is an event in the film about to take place and I thought we were still in a dream. I had to nudge myself into clarity as it dawned on me the final act was about to take place, at that point it dawned on me that I was a bit bored and rather than excited I was relieved.

The film starts giving us a very good reason why Batman may not be on the same page as Superman, however however the story takes a while to show us why Supes may not be on the same page as Bats. As well as that other things are going on (including what looks to be the setting up of the film DC Universe) and its just to much. A lot of Superman's storyline is tied up with ramifications of his previous film which I didn't care about - certainly take something from the film and develop it but stop the endless referencing.

There are a lot of comic fan moments in this film - at one point I caught myself mentally squeeing at the sight of a SPOILER but a quick scan of those around me saw blank expressions. Its the kind of film where your going to need a geeky mate to explain things to you afterwards and most people will definitely need to look it up on wikipedia to explain some of the confusing plot elements. Visually the film is unclear and murky which doesn't help things - especially in the final act. Its without doubt a film for the fans I know full well a shed load of texts from non comic geek are going to be coming my way demanding explanations. There are some really good Easter eggs to keep your eyes open for and a lot of things to excite fans. Ben Affleck I found quite decent, Holly Hunter and Gal Gadot deserve plaudits and should have had more screen time. The rest I could give or take to a certain extent.

To sum up, this is purely for fans and theres a lot of good stuff for them in this, however as a film it looks a bit sloppy and I came away disappointed when I was really up for it. I give it five Bat signals out of ten.