Tag: movies

Radom Thoughts: Movies

So I’ve been watching movies of late. Netflix has dropped a whole bunch of (shudder) Hallmark style holiday romcoms and I (god I don’t believe I’m admitting this. I’m never going to live this down, am I?) have watched pretty much all of them. I could probably come up with a lengthy essay about that all on its own, but that’s not where I’m going with this.

I want to talk about the multiverse. You know, that theory that claims that there are many, many universes out there. All of them just like this universe, only a bit different here and there. Somewhere out there is another universe where you’re filthy rich and Musk is your personal toenail trimmer. Or where you are a small, intelligent duck named Roger who lives in his mother’s basement. Or where you’re a ferret herder in Canada. You get the idea.

Specifically I want to talk about the movie industry and the multiverse.

So let’s get back on track, shall we? One of the reasons why I was watching those romcoms was because I needed to do something to recover from watching the Deadpool/Wolverine movie that I’d watched earlier. After watching two hours of bad jokes, dozens of disembowelings, beheadings, and an eventual body count that that surpassed that of a small war, I needed to do something to get all that gore out of my head.

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last year or so, the biggest event in the movie industry (arguably) was Marvel/Disney dropping the new Deadpool movie on an unsuspecting public. And if you aren’t a fan of the franchise, you probably don’t know why this was such a big deal.

After the wildly successful Avengers movies, Marvel put out a few flicks that were, to be blunt, stinkers. The Eternals did badly. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was disappointing. Instead of following up the mildly successful Captain Marvel movie with a decent sequel, we got something called “The Marvels”. I’m still not quite sure what Marvel was trying to do with that movie. And as for poor Thor… The last time we saw Thor he’d been partnered up with a 9 year old girl. Seriously. They’re apparently trying to turn Thor into a kids show? The last Dr. Strange movie was – was just odd.

So basically Marvel needed to do something. They needed to do something big. And even more importantly, they needed to do something to make gobs and gobs of money because they got bought by Disney and Disney needs the money. Keeping Walt on ice in the secret vault under the Magic Kingdom ain’t cheap, after all. The only two superheroes whose careers Marvel hadn’t ruined yet and which were pretty much guaranteed box office gold were Deadpool and Wolverine. So, someone said, let’s team the two of them up! Our two most popular characters, the only ones who’s reputations and careers we haven’t driven into the muck yet, together in one massive blockbuster movie? Heck, they could have put DeadPool and Wolverine in tutus dancing in Swan Lake for two hours and a lot of fanboys would pay money to see it.

There was only one problem. Wolverine/Logan was very, very dead. A fact that was abundantly made clear when in the opening minutes of the movie we see Deadpool using Logan’s rotting corpse to dispatch several dozen bad guys in a variety of very entertaining ways.

No problem, though. This is Marvel, after all. Need to replace a hero who was killed off in the previous movie to make people all weepy and sad? Just trot off to an alternative universe and find a new one.

Yes, more “multiverse” crap. Sigh… Kill off your hero? No problem, just pop into a different universe and find the alternative version of said hero. There are apparently an infinite number of them. Just whip out your Walmart alternative universe twiddler and pop off and bobs your uncle. Take your pick…

Sigh… Look, okay, it was kind of neat the first time they pulled this stunt but it got old fast. Both Marvel and DC have been pulling this crap for years now and we’re getting tired of it. It’s hard to get movie goers to invest emotionally in the tragic death of a character when we know damn well that chances are good that in the next film they’re going to whip out another one brought in from an alternative universe.

So stop it. Just stop it. Okay?

Random Stuff

Sorry, Ain’t Gonna Happen Department

The Zuck VS Musk Fight. Artist’s rendition.

I’m sure that you were just as excited as I was to learn that two of the richest and most hated men on the planet were going to beat the crap out of each other on live TV. Come on, admit it, you’d have even paid money to watch that.

Alas, it isn’t going to happen. After Zuckerberg accepted Musk’s ill advised challenge, Musk, who is in even worse physical shape than I am judging from some of the photos I’ve seen of him without a shirt on in the Daily Mail, must have realized that challenging someone who is actually physically fit, trained in martial arts and is reportedly very, very good at it, wasn’t such a good idea and suddenly came down with “neck problems” that would require surgery. After numerous jokes and comments about alleged cowardice on the part of the head Twit, he said he would livestream himself driving to Zuck’s house and fight him in Zuck’s backyard. When Zuckerberg wasn’t actually home, I should point out.

Sheesh. With Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” concept being pretty much a total failure so far, and Musk’s issues with Tesla’s that allegedly stop steering and allegedly lying about battery capacities, exploding spaceships and the collapse of the social media service formerly known as Twitter turning into another Myspace you’d think these guys would have something better to do.

Ooo, Brussel Sprouts!

We got Sprouts!

When MrsGF suggested we grow brussel sprouts I said sure, why not? We’d never grown them before. And they are one of the weirdest looking things we’ve ever had growing back there. They look like some kind of mutant cabbage plant that was grown too close to the Kewaunee nuke plant. But MrsGF assures me that this is indeed what they look like and I’ll take her word for it.

How About A Flower?

There you go.

What? You want another one? Oh, why not…

The New Solar Panels

As I said before I replaced the 8, HQST solar panels with 4 Newpowa 220W panels a week ago so I have 10 of them out there now. And well, damn, they work good. Whenever you see the power ratings of a solar panel you need to remember that those numbers are produced with the panels in laboratory conditions that you will rarely see out in the real world. Especially up here in Wisconsin. So if I get anything even remotely close to the rated output wattage out of a panel it’s doing pretty darned good. And these have been doing better than good. By about 9 AM with some of the panels still getting some shade they’re putting out about 400W. By 10 AM when they’re in full sun they’re putting out about 1,000W or more. And at midday, under near ideal conditions they’re pumping out close to a full 2 KW. Let me run down in the basement and check some numbers quick. Don’t go away, this will only take a minute…

Okay, yesterday the inverters tell me the PV system pulled in 8.1 kWh, and the panels were switched on for about 6 hours. So the average per hour would be 8,100 divided by 6 = 1,350 per hour over those six hours? Egads, that’s not bad at all.

Still More Smoke

Once again we’re under an air quality warning here in Wisconsin because of the out of control wildfires in Canada. I feel so sorry for those people up here. These fires have burned something like 34 million acres so far and it it doesn’t look like they’re going to end anytime soon.

DC Tries Again

Supposedly there is a new Superman movie in the works. Even though I’m a sucker for superhero movies because I’ve been a comic book fan since i was like 5 years old, I’m not exactly thrilled with the idea of them taking another run at a Superman flick. Let’s face it, DC hasn’t exactly hit a lot of home runs with its attempts to adapt their characters to the big screen. The Justice League movie wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t very good either. And Black Adam… Oh dear. I felt sorry for the Rock because he really wanted to make this work and he ended up with a script that was, frankly, pure crap. I haven’t seen The Flash yet. What it all amounts to is that nothing that’s come out of the DC franchise in decades has done anything to excite me. Marvel has put out its share of stinkers but at least it has also put out a few gems that have kept people excited. At best what DC has been putting out has been mediocre at best.

Supposedly the whole DC multiverse is being “rebooted” yet again. The Batgirl movie, already completed and ready to roll, has been flushed down the toilet and will never be seen. I have to wonder just how bad it was that the company didn’t dare to even release it. New people have been brought in and there is a whole new “vision” for the Superman movie.

Hmm, I distinctly remember writing a Black Adam review but I can’t find it in the archives here. Did WordPress flush it? Did I delete it and I don’t remember? Sheesh…

David and Goliath

How about some peppers?

The tiny red one is actually supposed to be a jalapeno. I don’t know what happened to it. The ones in pots up front are just funny looking. Taste good, though. I associate tiny, tiny red peppers with intense heat but that one up there was relatively mild, even sweet.

The bell peppers are doing crazy good this year for some reason. We’re getting massive bell peppers bigger than my hand. MrsGF had to stake some of them up because the weight of the fruit was making the plants fall over.

Anyway that’s about it for now. We’re bracing for heat right now. The latest weather reports are telling us that we’re going to be getting up to around 101F tomorrow, the hottest it’s been up here in ages. We are not looking forward to it.

House Insanity

Okay, so the house just around the corner from our place just went up for sale. It’s small, about 1,200 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 2 of which aren’t much bigger than my walk in closet, just extensively remodeled. Virtually no yard at all. And they’re asking $350K for the thing. $350,000 for what is, I’m sorry to say, a 100 year old polished turd.

That got me and MrsGF talking about how utterly insane house prices have become in the last few years and speculating about what our place might be worth. We paid $85K for it about 25 years ago. The town appraises it now at $180K for tax purposes. Our insurance company claims it’s worth $500K. And if we look at real estate ads for houses with similar amenities, size and size lot in a nice neighborhood we’re seeing prices pushing up over $750K.

WTF is wrong with people? Seriously.

Reboots and Remakes

Screen Shot 2016 08 05 at 12 06 49 PM

Oh dear lord I’m so tired of the remakes and reboots…

But I suppose we should start with some definitions, shouldn’t we?

A remake is where they look at what was originally a perfectly fine, probably good, maybe even outstanding movie, and they just make the whole damned thing all over again for no good reason.

This is, of course, theft, but they call it homage so they get away with it.

But, well, why? I mean, really, why? The original was a fine movie, perhaps even excellent. Maybe even a true work of art. So why the hell remake it? Just watch the original, for heaven’s sake.

A reboot is something else again. A reboot takes a film idea and fundamentally alters it, transforms it totally. Basically it is the reboot maker saying the original was crap, the director was crap, the writers were crap, so I’m going to do it better. It is arrogant beyond belief. It’s the director and film makers claiming they can do it better. But everyone knows they can’t because if they had any creative talent at all, they’d be doing something original and not be digging through the archives looking for something to steal.

I call it theft because that’s what it is. Remakes and reboots are both essentially theft. Oh, sure, they legally own the rights, but it is still the taking of ideas that were not theirs to begin with.

It’s sort of like house robbery.

The remaker breaks into your house, steals your TV, but does the dishes for you, waters your plants and feeds the dog on the way you.

The rebooter breaks into your house, steals your TV, smashes your dishes, urinates in the potted plants and shoots your dog on the way out.