Into the Longbox

We have now come to the end of this new Star Wars trilogy. I have taken some time to let it sit with me before I wrote about it. I had some very strong feelings afterwards and after a few days, I still have them. What you are about to read is a severe nitpicking of some of the elements of this movie. I only do that when I have turned on a movie. Although I did not find this movie objectively bad (re: The Last Jedi), I still have problems with it. I will warn you before you go further. There will be a lot of spoilers here. I can't make my main complaints/compliments without mentioning specific moments in the film. There, that's your warning. After this point, it is on YOU. I will be up front and say I thought it was okay. I did not love it (Force Awakens) or hate it (Last Jedi), so this falls in between. While I like J.J. Abrams, I think he and Disney tried to do two things with this film. Right the wrongs of Last Jedi and also double down on the nostalgia and history o...

It has been a long time since I have written on this blog and I come out of my hibernation to talk about a months old "podcast"?? Look, it is what it is, okay? Anyways, I finally finished "Wolverine: The Lost Trail" and these Marvel podcasts (the new buzzword for Radio Drama apparently) are really good. I know I had my gripes  about Richard Armitage as Wolverine, but I take that all back. He is pretty good here. What's even more, they have expanded the cast in this story to include Gambit. You can't be in New Orleans and not bring in our favorite Cajun. The voice actor for Gambit sounded a little older than how I would imagine it in my head, but he was still good nonetheless. Equally impressive is the actor for the new character, Marcus Baptiste. The relationship between Wolverine and Marcus is akin to Wolverine and Jubilee or Wolverine and Kitty Pryde. I guess I'm trying to say that Wolverine seems to go through more child sidekicks. The differenc...

X-Marks the spot with this series! (Ugh. I know. Sorry about that) Last week, the last issue of Jonathan Hickman's X-men two mini-series came to an end. His return to Marvel was billed as a big event that would change the landscape of the X-men forever (until the next big thing). I can say definitively that he has done just that. If you read comics, I get that Hickman is not everyone's cup of tea. He tends to write grand, long spanning, complicated stories. Separately, the pieces do not make sense, but they come together as a whole at the end. There is a brilliance in the way that he writes because he is well aware of what he is doing and you just have to wait till the end. I say all that to say that each issue of his book went from confusing to masterful. Now that it is all done, I can say it is definitely masterful. He has definitely reshaped the X-Men. Their mission is now different. I truly enjoyed this series and there were genuine, mouth wide open surprise moments...

If I hear send in the clowns one more time... I wanted to write this up as soon as I could while my memory is still fresh. I will start off by applauding DC for trying to do something different than it's normal super hero fare. With that being said, this was not a movie that we needed. This is the kind of origin story I don't want, especially for the Joker. As I think about this movie, there were many things that I thought were problematic. I swear I will have a few good things to say, but let me start with what I didn't like. This movie is extremely slow. I get they are trying to do a slow build, but time is money and this movie wasted both for me in the first half of the movie. We follow around Arthur Fleck, who will become the Joker. He is the saddest of sad sacks, with aspirations to be a comedian, but missing that thing you need. Good jokes. We spend too much time in his day to day as he lives with his mom and tries to chase his dreams. They try to make him s...

My apologies. I should have written this a few months ago when I actually finished the show. I would have had a much hotter take then. Since then, I've moved on with life, watched other shows and almost forgot I had watched this. Not in a bad way because I thought the show was very good. What's funnier is that people really do have a read on me now. I had a lot of people asking if I watched this show (before I actually watched it) because it's about super heroes. Maybe I have been too transparent and need to pull back. What a time we are living in when you can be a nerd out in the open and NOT get made fun of. This kind of stuff I would have had to keep to myself when I was younger. Anyways, I digress. The Boys. Let's talk about it. I never read the comic book series it is based off of. I know OF it, but didn't care to read it. Back then, I was not ready for Garth Ennis or his various series that pushed the limits of what was explicit in comic books at the ...

Just when it seemed like we just had season 1 less than a year ago, along came season two of Cloak and Dagger. Since I already talked about this show before (Season 1), I won't sit here and bore you about how I'm a fan of the characters, blah blah blah. You've heard me do that enough on this blog. It won't stop me, but I won't bring that into THIS review. So yeah, season two. I still love this show. As I've gotten older, I've gravitated more towards these YA type shows (Runaways, Riverdale, etc.) and I really don't know how I should feel about it. Oh, I know. I am comfortable in my own skin and I will like what I want! Ahem. Ahem. As I thought about it, it's hard for me to explain why I like this show so much, but I'll try to explain. I really loved that they moved the characters from New York (in the comics), to New Orleans. It gives the chance to have a unique style to the Marvel shows in the same way that Runaways does. This season, Ta...

At the suggestion of a friend, I downloaded "Wolverine: The Long Night" from iTunes. Although billed as a "podcast", this was like an old school radio drama. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect. After getting through all ten episodes, each averaging about thirty minutes a piece, I can give an honest opinion. I was surprised at how much I liked it. It is a very well produced radio drama. It has moody music in the right places, it has good sound design in that they mimic when people are across the room and good sound effects. I thought the setting of Alaska was a perfect backdrop for this particular story. Wolverine in the wilderness or being that stranger in a sleepy town is definitely on brand. He is the guy that is trying to mind his own business, but gets drawn into events because he is a hero. I also liked the methodical pace of the story telling and the mystery that unfolded. It wasn't too fantastical and none of the other X-Men make an...