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The Dead Don’t Die – Review

I’m really biased because I love all Jim Jarmusch movies he sits in this perfect spot between David Lynch absurdity and almost gritty boring realism of I don’t wanna say Tarantino because I already said this about S. Craig Zahler. But I don’t know how to describe his movies, they’re weird but never so weird that they’re unbelievable or downright farcical… until now haha.

He sort of makes weird semi-pretentious movies about nothing but they’re all really watchable and have great dialogue that just keeps you hooked even when nothings happening. Like watch a movie like Down By Law and tell me Jim Jarmusch is a wizard or something, it’s literally just a movie about three people talking in three different sets, that’s it but it’s so watchable and good and I can’t even tell you why. I’m sure if I went back to my film studies class I could tell you why haha.

His movies always really stand out and he doesn’t really have one genre he basically does them all and none at the same time. I mean what would you call Ghost Dog? Is it a samurai movie? A gangster movie? An action movie? It’s all these things and none of them.

I liked the Dead don’t die for a lot of reasons, mainly because it felt like a classic zombie movie or a fifties b-movie. The town that it was shot in was sort of the star of the show for me really, it’s just a really picturesque slice of middle america you only really see in old movies.

The movie feels really real in it’s setting which plays off how ridiculous the movie is and how dead pan the jokes are delivered. Because there are a few jokes but none are really played for laughs, there’s a lot of fourth wall breaking and poking fun at other movies. Like it has this really on the nose political environmental message intended to make fun of how unsubtle the messages are in Romero movies. Basically I guess fracking causes zombies, it’s never delivered seriously, it’s just a gag and for a minute I thought there was a joke about Trump supporters but there’s never any teeth to it where you feel like it’s barbed. It just feels like a prodding, its funny and light and the Trump supporter is played by Steve Buscemi.

So there’s pretty much no other director on earth that could assemble a cast more eclectic and fantastic as this. Tilda Swinton plays basically a parody cross between the bride from Kill bill to an elf from lord of the rings. She’s a scottish samurai mortician, I mean I’m just imagining her getting the script and just saying ‘Yes’ instantly.

Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Selena Gomez of all people, Danny Glover, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, RZA.

It’s just a great cast for a movie that was really good, like there’s a lot of effort that goes into this movie, it starts off like an old good zombie movie with a long build up of all these different groups of people as the zombies start to roam. It does a really good job of setting up the town it just sort of falters at the end in my opinion, it’s already like an hour forty which is a good length but I think it could’ve done with being the full two hours.

Some of the subplots didn’t really end in a satisfying way and I think a little more time would have fleshed out the ending a little more. I just think the ending came too soon because I was really enjoying the world it’s created and I could’ve stayed in it a little longer. It kinda makes me wish Jim Jarmusch would make his own Twin Peaks and just create this world we could get lost in.

Just checking rotten tomatoes and yes everyone hates it but I liked it and I get that Jim Jarmusch doesn’t really make movies to be good, he just makes movies period. He must’ve just been driving through this town once and liked how it looked and wanted to film a movie there and was just like “What kind of movie haven’t I done?”

I dunno how to feel about it honestly because it’s probably the only thing close to a good zombie movie we’ll ever get and he wasn’t even taking it seriously. He made it just to take the piss out of it as a concept and I love it because it’s literally the type of thing I would do and have done haha.

But it’s just such a well executed movie by incredibly talented people it’s almost sad that it feels wasted but I also think that’s kind of the point. He wanted to get these amazingly talented people together just to make some silly fun schlock and it’s great.

Even if you’re not a fan of Jim Jarmusch, you’ve never seen one of his movies before just watch this, you’ll have some fun at least watching Tilda Swinton decapitating the living dead in a little smart car before she goes back to her home planet, *spoilers* as if it matters haha. The movie has no story but it doesn’t really need one the characters and the town are just so likeable you just want to get lost in them. Well I did haha. I said I was biased, I love Jim Jarmusch movies and shitty zombie movies and this is both.

This review kinda sucks, can’t really get to the core of the issue. I just like this movie and I think it’s necessary, it like sits in this nice little gap between Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead and old school zombie movies like Zombi and Night of the living dead and totally sort of wrecks Planet Terror or grindhouse or whatever that crap was called.

I dunno, I get why people would hate it but just go see it for yourself, there’s nothing quite like it.  Say what you want about Jim Jarmusch movies, you will be entertained whether you like it or not.

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3 ring samurai part 3 chapter 5 ‘Pretty girl’

Yo bonjourno,
In a lot better mood recently because I have plans now, a new job in the works which I haven’t applied for but I got a guy on the inside so I’m sure to get it, although I’m not 100% sure I actually want it haha. It could be hell or it could be great, either way it’s gonna rob me of about six months of my life and if I decide to go back that’s my own decision, I’m obviously hoping I’ll love it and want to do it for a few years, I don’t see it as a lifelong thing because that would doom me to an eternity without any sort of family whatsoever and that would probably sound perfect to a lot of people but not me.
Specifically because I need this job to raise enough money to see the most important person to me on this earth. I’m hoping I can use the money to eventually buy a place where she lives and see where things go from there, but that’s probably a long way off. But it’s something and it’s more than I had yesterday. It’s gonna be hard work but I hope I can find purpose in it and look past it at my goals when it gets tough. 
I know I need to do this or something anything or I’ll lose my mind, the worse thing I can do is what I’ve already been doing which is nothing. It goes without saying it’s probably an end to blogging and writing for some time but this isn’t exactly going well anyway and leaving no audience behind isn’t that hard and shouldn’t be that hard to find again. 
I want to talk to her and tell her my plans but I’m afraid that I might chicken out and just slip back into despair, I’m afraid most of all of myself and my ability to just bottle it. 
I was thinking about when I was working abroad in france and how I totally checked out of that. But that was totally different to this, that was in the gaming industry which if you’ve worked in that industry you’ll know how full of shit it is. Plus I’ll actually be getting paid and everyone will speak english, probably. I basically had to get another job I had no time or the language skills to do or punch out and I chose to punch out because I couldn’t afford to stay and the job was total garbage for no money. 
It was an internship but I was supposed to have funding for it but it didn’t come through so I was working infinity hours at a job that sucked only to be bleeding money everyday just to survive. This going to be different and really exciting. I hope it works out.
As for content, I have it, sorta, yeah I do, pretty much these next few chapters are one elongated fight scene with mime ninjas, I know right, what other slice of the internet would you get epic battles between clown samurais and mime ninjas? Just what everyone in this age of infinite cape shit get excited for next cape shit needed.
Haven’t really been doing much else except writing and trying to like the shadow, I really really want to like the shadow but I read like a page and I can’t keep my eyes open. Doesn’t help that I read at night and I’ve been lifting really heavy recently so sleep falls on me like a tonne of bricks right now. But I .know when I’m reading something good when I can’t wait to read it and I want to stay up all night reading it.
Which is how I felt with the first conan story before I started reading the rest and got really bored with them. Still I wanna start reading the solomon kane stories next, also Elric because that’s apparently what the witcher is ripped off from and it can’t be much worse than that garbage.
Anyway, got shit to do, so see you…
–
Within a soundless second knives were hurled wildly in all directions. Ghostly white hands throwing them out and sometimes not. Half the hand movements seemed only to be mischievious imitations, feints. Feigning a knife thrown when in fact nothing but air was moved and no sound was made.
Canard stumbled stumbled backward sweeping his staff deftly. Moving knives out of his way like a cars windscreen wiper moving drops of rain. He paused to look down as he heard a mocking twanging sound as he saw one of the blades stuck into his peg leg. “Great” he sighed.
Pookie rolled without drawing his sword. The small thin blades arcing following his trajectory and flowing over his shoulder and head. They pierced the tent wall leaving pin pricks of orange glowing light probing into the dusty murk of the tent.
Before they could catch their breath and counter there was another distinct set of stealth ripping and lashing sounds. In moments there was a new perfectly rectangular door in the side of the tent. A pause later; knives were entering without warning in the same slap dash pattern.
Canard cursed as he span his polearm trying to deflect the flurry of knives aimed directly at him. A few of them slipped passed taking some skin off his arms as they flew by.
“Fucker!” He cried as his swept polearm around like a javelin and in anger launched it through the new gap in the tent. “How you like that?!”
The other assailant still hidden in the falling dust and murk was focusing all their attention on Pookie. From them came an unrelenting torrent of knives and possibly other kitchen implements. Leaving no room for a counter attack at all, there was no pause in the assault. He couldn’t even draw his sword without a knife aimed directly at his thumb. Pookie ducked down pulling his cot onto it’s side as makeshift cover.
He waited there for a second listening to the steady drum beat of knives embedding into the paper thin mattress.
Canard’s staff came walking through the doorway sticking out of the chest of a tall thin man wearing all black with a hood. His face painted ghostly white spattered red with the blood running from his lips. A knife clutched in his hand as he staggered forward his mouth agape with no sounds escaping his petrified face.
He stumbled into the room, his eyes wide and full of a muted hatred. He lurched forward throwing his last knife at Canards head before sagging his shoulders forward.
Canard awkwardly rolled forward on his one leg, his peg clattering on the earthen floor. Springing on his forward hand he swept the leg of the killer forcing him forward onto his staff.
The staff point poking out of his back like the tip of a lollipop someone bit off. The wooden staff bracing him against the ground like a kickstand as he flailed for more knives to throw.
Canard rolled to his feet and kicked his stack flipping the mime onto his back. He gripped the end of his staff ratcheting it as he tried to free it from the half dead mime writhing on the ground. The mime’s eyes still had a dim light in them and finding another sharp shank to poke with he stabbed at Canard’s good leg.
The acrobat shifted his weight quickly onto his peg and pirouetted away from the attack “Would you die already!?” He screamed as he turned about stamping his good foot on the mime’s knife hand. The mime grimacing in a silent scream revealing a stump where his tongue used to be between his blackened teeth.
Pookie sat behind his low cover waiting for the little thuds to stop rattling the cot, gap in the attack so he could act. They had to run out of things to throw eventually, but there was no way of knowing how many knives they actually had.
There, a brief pause in the angry rhythmic thuddings, Pookie waited for another gap, trying to see if there was a pattern. Two knives, then a pause, then three knives, they must be trying to preserve their ammo, which means they’re running low. Then one knife followed by a pause then two more.
Then it stopped ominously.
Pookie had his blade sheathed sitting next to him as he listened to silence. There wasn’t a sound, not even a breath.
Pookie looked over at the stupid grinning face on the butt of his sword and hatched a stupid idea. He didn’t really have enough room to draw his sword cramped up against the wall of the tent and the mattress. Which is fine because if he could he might’ve been tempted to just hop over the cover and charge headlong into the unknown. Which seemed to be working for him up until now. But without knowing the position of his attacker he could be royally fucked with a spork between his shoulder blades.
Holding onto the scabbard he poked the handle with the silly face over the top of the mattress. Predictably followed by a light thunk. He quickly pulled it back and plucked a literal sharpened spork out of the handle of his sword.
“Gotcha now” He smirked to himself.
He positioned himself low and listened “Fuck it.” He cursed under his breath as he gripped the lacquered sheath of his sword in one hand and the ring pull mechanism in the other. Holding it in front of him like he was holding onto the pin of a grenade.
“Gotta do this fast” He said to himself.
In one fluid motion he lifted his sword above his head and over the cover pointing that ridiculous smiling face in the direction the knife came from. He yanked the cord hard like he thought a parachute or a cannonball might shoot out or a thousand lawnmowers might start up with a jolt.
The sword flew through the air like a missile carried on the wings of the tinny laughter coming from the smiling devil face mocking life and death.
–
Using his staff still poking out of the mime’s chest as leverage Canard thrust his peg leg through the mime’s eye socket. A guttural squelching crunching sound as the leg widened out crushing and piercing the soft eye, cracking the skull. The dull emotionless face of the mime still staring up at him without uttering a sound.
Pookie listened and he heard a hard thud and a clash and clatter like someone tripped and pulled out a whole cutlery draw. Cautiously he poked his head over the mattress and saw the soles of shoes staring back at him. As the dust started to settle a toppled figure lying on the ground like a puddle of spilt milk appeared.
Pookie circled around the mattress and dragged his naked sword off the earthen floor. He looked down at the figure dressed in black, a mat of long hair covering their face.
“Die die die!” Canard cried as he stomped his peg leg repeatedly into the frozen ghostlike face of the mime. Blood and brains and shards of bone bursting up at him with each stomp until little remained except the hood and a few clumps of sodden hair and teeth.
“Would you stop fucking around?” Pookie said.
“What’s up?” Canard replied.
“I think we fucked up.”
“You don’t say.” Canard said as he limped over shaking a piece of scalp off his peg leg, some visible teeth embedded into the gnawed and splintered wood.
Pookie stood as he slid the sheath of his sword back into his pants. He pointed his sword at the face of the mime who tried to kill him. Using the pointy end of the sword he turned their face over.
“Well fuck me” Canard said.
“Jersey” Pookie said as he sheathed his sword.
–
Read the rest of this shit over on inkitt.
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Hellboy (2019) review – Future cult classic

If you didn’t like this movie fuck you, that’s all I have to say, end of review.

Haha ok no, might’ve been a little hasty there.

Yeah so like every other sentient being on this planet I saw this movie and I was just like ‘why does this need to exist?’ And it seems that that feeling has permeated to the core of the entire movie watching world so deep that they’ve forgotten how to actually enjoy a fun movie. In fact they wouldn’t even know one if it slapped them upside the head with a giant’s dong.

I’m one of these complete plebs that hasn’t read nor has any desire to read the hellboy comics so I wasn’t particularly interested in the Ron Pearlman movies. I thought they were kind of ok, they were watchable, like if they came on tv while I was cooking or something I wouldn’t turn them off because I liked the practical effects or whatever. They were ok, pretty much anything with like occult nazis and I’m interested but I was never really blown away by the movies. They were just sort of middling monster movies that were castrated for children, where all the gore became gunge or something. Not having read the comics I can’t attest to what demographic they’re aimed at but I hardly think a comic about a demon spawn killing monsters is aimed at kids.

Which is kind of ironic because the biggest criticism I see about this movie is that it’s a cynical cash in on the franchise during the superhero craze dying down now. But it’s not even aimed at kids, it’s a hard swearing gorefest hard R rating so which ones are the cynical cash grabs again? The ones made pg-13 to sell mcdonalds toys or the ones where hellboy cleaves a giants head in two with a sword the size of a minibus?

I dunno, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here, and if you swapped the original hellboy movies with this one in terms of the time period it would be Ron Pearlman getting his dick knocked in the dirt.

What I’m trying to say is like me everyone cynical prick (me included) and their grandmother was ready to hate this movie because super hero fatigue has set in hard and it’s here to stay and people were more ready to give the Pearlman movies a fair shake because at the time we were only getting the tip of the cape shit fuckening that was to occur soon after leaving us all feeling sore and deeply ashamed as a culture.

Because I’m sitting here watching this movie, ready to hate it every moment of it (and the beginning bit sort of sucked) but this funny thing starts to happen about the time where hellboy is fighting three giants straight out of trollhunter or attack on titan mano e mano; I start to have this funny feeling, this tingling sensation that some scientists have called ‘having fun’.

The movie is just fun as all fuck. It’s balls to wall action and gore and just bad ass. There are bits of this movie that just had me reeling, it was just so gorey and awesome looking I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. It blends practical and digital effects really nicely and I think the tone is really cool, where it’s kind of light hearted but then it’s as  violent and as gorey as a horror movie, so you get almost a black comedy vibe from it.

The movie is a good two hours long but there’s so much going on it doesn’t feel like a slog and even when you reach the halfway point so much has happened the first half could’ve been it’s own movie. In some respects the plot is a little rushed and not amazing but it has a solid structure where at the halfway mark he’s confronting the main villain and not having what he needs to defeat her he has to go back and measure himself.

The main cast are passable, I don’t know what accent Daniel Dae Kim was attempting the girl is kinda bleh, and it kinda wreaks of diversity woke squad where the only white man on the team is red. But David Harbour is great in this movie. The worst part of the original movies for me was the hammy acting from Pearlman. I like him, I think he has a cool voice and someone thought he’d be a cool hellboy but I think he was too old to play hellboy even then and now it would be ridiculous. You need someone old enough to be a tough cool Ron Pearlman character but also young enough to be a kind of a punk  kid sometimes. The bits where Pearlman is acting like a brat in the original movies is so forced and lame and his self loathing just felt silly, like he was doing a rainman impression. I think Harbour is a lot more realised as Hellboy, he brings a lot more consistency and personality to the role, I just felt like his interpretation was a more three dimensional character instead of just Ron Pearlman painted red. I felt like his struggle with his humanity was more potent and less shlocky.

I think the villains could’ve been better, I loved the changeling pigman he was awesome, when you first meet him it’s almost stomach churning the level of unbridled carnage he wreaks on people. You really feel like if you encountered this thing you would shit your pants. But Milla Jovovich as a villain was unremarkable, it was just Milla Jovovich being herself, she didn’t look particularly interesting, she was sort of too likeable as villain. But I guess the point of the story is that Hellboy is his own worst villain so it kind of makes sense that his villains aren’t as interesting as he is. Because the battle is between himself, either he gives in to his demon nature and conquers the earth or he beats his demonself and saves humanity from… himself.

Overall it’s just a solid fun, no nonsense, not giving a fuck movie I think will be a cult classic. And I don’t think it’s a cynical cash grab I think someone saw deadpool and logan and were like “Why don’t we do the hellboy movie we want to do where people say ‘fuck’ and get torn apart by a giant pigman in the most grotesque way possible?”

It’s a no holes barred action gorefest like that isn’t possible today, legitimately I’m not being objective. I’m holding this movie up against the sterile cynical mass produced comic book prepackaged action shlock we get today like every marvel or in some regards even the John Wick movies that don’t really take any risks, they just set up action set pieces and then string them together with a loose plot no one cares about.

What I’m trying to say is I don’t think this movie was phoned in, I can tell when someone doesn’t give a shit and I can’t look at a single frame of this movie and say that someone didn’t love this. Even things as simple as the sets and some of the shooting locations I just had to stop and say it looked good. This movie looks good, it’s fun, it’s action packed, it’s not neat, it’s not clean, you can’t take your mum or your girlfriend to it, you can’t have soylent drinking thin bearded will wheaton ass motherfuckers soy smiling while they tell you how bad ass it is when thor was playing fortnite. There isn’t some forced shitty joke mandated by their corporate office to be instituted every ten minutes, this movie isn’t made in a factory. I think we’ve been so programmed by these factory farm movies coming out of the comic book industry we don’t know how to watch a movie not made in that mould. This movie fucking breaks the mould and takes a demon sized dump on it. Actually fuck it, I think I might start reading the comics just to see which was a closer adaptation. That’s how you know you watched a good comic book movie, where you actually want to go read the comics it’s based on. You literally can’t do that with marvel because there are like a million different versions of every character. You can’t walk into to a comic book store and just ask to buy a spiderman comic without spending a couple thousand hours on wikipedia first to decide which fucking spiderman in which timezone in which dimension.

Don’t take my word for it, watch it and make up your own mind, and I guarantee even if you didn’t like it, you’ll have fun with it. I’m looking at this through the lens of the previous movies and the castrated garbage we’re force fed daily from the comic book empires, and it looks good.

 

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How long…

I don’t know how long…

Before I can see your face,

In my restless dreams

 

Sometimes I see you

You’re always smiling at me

But it never lasts

 

I’d do anything

Just to see you for a day

How long can I wait?

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Men in Black international review

This movie surprised me taking the lofty title of ‘most okayest movie ever’.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I went into this movie, I’ve seen all of the MIB movies but never been that impressed with any of them bar the first one and even then I just thought that movie was above average.

And then of course I stumbled on all the political bullshit surrounding this movie as it appears that Tessa Thompson is trying to topple Brie Larson from atop the totem of ‘most wokest person in hollywood’ which you’d think would be easy since she’s a woman and mixed race and is probably some made up gender she hasn’t fully made up yet (probably waiting on focus group testing for that one). But you’d be wrong, as nothing will top a huhwhyte wamen and her shrill white guilt from being the most woke person on earth nomatter how many african babies she has to adopt and then turn into some kind of gender experiment, looking at you Charlise Theron *shakes head*.

Yeah she was being a total nob and I guess trying to kick up controversy by saying it should be ‘People in black’ or something lame like that, you know just trying to ungender the language for some reason. When in reality ‘men’ is actually a neutral term which just means people and they added ‘wo’ to it to single out the distinction in people. Men classically is just a collective term for humans, you use women when you want to get specific on the type of human from the bog standard to the special one that creates other humans.

Putting the fedora away for a moment, that shit doesn’t really matter because facts never matter when you’ve got an agenda to push. But in all honesty the movie didn’t have a lot of politics in it, of course there were politics in it, can’t get a movie without it in these days in some form or another. It’s always there looming in the background of all movies in a way.

There are the odd subtle reference to immigration, well Tessa Thompson’s character at the start helps this cute little alien escape alien ice (MIB) and spoilers for this epic twist which is almost completely inconsequential to the rest of the movie and totally obvious to anyone five and above; the little alien is mildly relevant to the plot later. In that he’s like the enforcer to an alien arms dealer and because she helped him he helps her escape the arms dealer.

So I guess the moral of the story is you should help illegal aliens escape the law so when they become hired killers for other alien criminals they’ll maybe remember you and spare you when you end up in the clutches of said alien criminals. Not the best argument for immigration I’ve heard, but it’s up there.

Also not sure about this in the other movies but they referred to the aliens a lot as ‘refugees’. I don’t really get why alien refugees would want to flee to earth of all places when earth seems to be the focal point of a lot of alien fuckery and the first part of the movie is about how Hemsworth’s character has to take this alien dignitary around and show him some fun or his people will grind the earth into dust. So tell me again why it’s such an alien hot spot, of all the places in the galaxy why pick earth a planet where most of the people aren’t even aware of aliens? And also why aren’t people aware of aliens? What harm could it be to let people know that aliens exist? I mean aliens are aware people exist and they’re pretty chill about it, I don’t get why humans are the only people in the universe not allowed to know they’re not alone, it’s just levels of contrivance that shouldn’t be possible.
I was just thinking what would really change if people knew about aliens in this universe and the answer really is ‘nothing’. There’s a bit where they’re riding this alien hoverbike thing through the streets of morocco and they take the time to neuralise some of the people who initially see them but then they’re driving through the streets not bothering and I was like ‘so what was the point of neuralising those people if you don’t also subsequently neuralise everyone around you now?”. It’s just contrived and silly and like why bother neuralising people at all when there are supposedly aliens everywhere. It makes me think that people do know aliens are real but the MIB are just so stupid they don’t know everyone knows and people are just pretending they don’t know to humour these total retards who think camera flash bulbs erase people’s memories.

I get the whole point of it is to make us think that the MIB could be real and they’re keeping the existence of aliens from us but does that ever make it seem more real? Not really. I mean you had people planning to storm area 51 recently hoping to bone green women, do you think anything would surprise these people anymore?

Jesus fucking christ, I didn’t think I’d have anything to say about this movie and I’m already almost a thousand words in and haven’t said anything about it really haha.

Ok well, I kind of enjoyed it, I guess, it’s an ok popcorn flick to turn your brain off to, some of the jokes are ok, kind of post ironic humour bleh, but passable. The contrived origin story of Tessa Thompson’s character sucks though and I wish they’d skipped it, but it was thankfully very brief.

She’s just someone who saw an alien once and wanted to be in MIB and she’s ‘muh mary sue super wamen genius!’ and they have to let her in the MIB for reasons. She basically just shows up at MIB headquarters and they let her join for reasons. I thought it would’ve been more fun if they neuralised her and she had to remember and get back there. But this movie can’t be bothered with origin stories, because they have a bunch of other origin stories in a row to tell. Right after her origin story its Chris Hemsworth’s turn and then like a quarter of the way in it gets into the villains story. The villain was sort of bleh honestly. Just these two guys who looked like (and probably were) backing dancers in a *insert modern popstar idiot*’s music video.

But I expected Liam Neeson to be in it for like five minutes and he’s actually in it a lot longer than that. I liked some of the action, Chris Hemsworth is always pretty watchable and they actually cut some of the cringy stuff that was in the trailer which was great. Back to the political shit, there was a shit bit where the chick who is the leader of the U.S MIB is implying she’s trying to change the name to be more gender neutral and I don’t remember it being in the version I watched so that’s cool.

So the basic plot is Chris Hemsworth is basically 007 but goofier and with aliens and Tessa Thompson is his new rookie partner and they’re doing stuff. It’s not the best, the plot is mainly serviceable but it didn’t drag or feel poorly paced. I didn’t feel bored or unsatisfied. It’s length was just right in terms of it’s act structure, the characters were enjoyable, effects looked good.

Maybe I was just expecting it to be really bad and was just pleasantly surprised because I rather enjoyed it, it was just a fun popcorn movie. I’d probably never watch it again but I can think of worse ways to waste an afternoon.

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3 ring samurai part 3 Chapter 4 ‘Liquid swords’

Omg some actual OC, that’s original content, not original character, this isn’t a sonic forum for you to personify your mental illness into some weird hedgehog or something.
You better appreciate this absolute load of garbage because it took me much longer than it should have to write haha,
Been pretty busy recently but I think I found a new job, not as much of a step up as I wanted from my old job but I was put in a position where my options were to serve in heaven or become middle management in hell and I chose the former. So when I get this new job I’ll actually be out of the country most of the time and probably wont have time to waste on this stupid bullshit so the content apocalypse is coming. 
I may get the odd blog out just to justify the exorbitant fees I pay to have my very own website. But I’m gonna be working pretty solidly, should be making pretty good money, meeting new people, seeing new places, probably do a lot of reading or more likley drinking and playing nintendo switch games.
Think I wanna save to buy myself a house in barbados I probably wont live in most of the year for tax and visa reasons haha. Ya gotta have a dream and that’s the one I’m going with right now and it’s much more doable than all my other dreams haha.
Not 100% that I have the job but I know a guy who I work with now who said he’d put a good word in for me, he used to work at the place I’m applying to now. So we can see if that old adage is worth it’s shit.
Talking about reading I finished that peak Parker book and it was pretty good, not sure if I mentioned this already but it had the classic Parker B plot where it’s the anal set up followed by mopping up the mess of where it goes wrong because no job is perfect and if it was it would be boring to read.
This one in all honesty went a little too perfect, the stakes didn’t really seem high enough and the job basically went perfectly and the after part where it started to fuck up went almost comically perfectly.
Because basically what happens at the end is a comedy of errors akin to the three stooges where all the people trying to fuck over Parker end up killing eachother before he even shows up leaving only one a real threat to end the book on.
It just ended a little too neat, things just fell into place a little too perfectly, one party opposed to Parker killed the other, the reporter giving them trouble was neatly packed away never to be seen again, none of the crew were new so none of them turned on Parker. The guy who set the job up turned out to be nuts but then quickly killed himself then there was just one guy Parker had to kill and it was wrapped up.
With these books it’s the constant balance of realism and entertainment and I think it was a bit wonky here but altogether thoroughly entertaining book, I really like how much effort he puts into even side characters that are only important for small stretches of time but he gives you a good feel of them.
Now I decided to get back into the shadow which is proving to be a mistake so far, I’m reading the one that’s supposed to be one of the best but it’s so fucking slow already and are we supposed to not know exactly when the shadow is pretending to be someone else because it couldn’t be more obvious. The guy with the masklike face who doesn’t say much is obviously the shadow, how hard is this to grasp? It’s annoying now and the action is kinda bleh, its just kinda safe honestly, it’s not edgy enough and I’m gonna be so bummed after I finish the Parker books. I really need a recommendation of some chad crime fiction, I need another Dexter or Parker.
Anyway enough chit chatting got shit to do.
See you…
–
 
“That sound again”
 
There was only silence and darkness shifting like the curtains of an unlit stage. The sounds were a dull metronome blending into the ultimate silence rising slowly.
 
“Like a fucking trumpet from hell or something”
 
Through the darkness grey shapes gradually undulated in the mist. Huge figures with grey mottled flesh like a corpse, long noses and huge ears.
 
“What are you called? Hephalumps or something? I saw you in a book, I think. I thought you were all gone.”
 
More and more appeared out of the darkness, their eyes empty, only silence as they moved, all looking at Pookie.
 
“Wait didn’t we do this before? I guess the writer forgot this was supposed to be a recurring theme or something. It beats flashbacks I guess.”
 
“Are you having another flashback” The head elephant said.
 
“I said are you having another-“ Riki said, his voice pulling Pookie back into reality.
 
“Just a dream” Pookie said with his eyes closed “Completely unrelated.”
 
Riki nodded like that made sense, he paused and breathed out as he perched on the edge of Pookie’s cot. “That technique he used, it’s ancient, from the old old world, called the ‘spirit blade’.”
 
Pookie looked down at himself as he lay, doing an inventory. “That’s a cool name, how did you hear about it?”
 
Riki grinned “I’m just fucking with you, I just thought it sounded cool” He turned with a shit eating grin.
 
Pookie grimaced as he rose off his back into a sitting position. He felt stiff all over, he was lying in a bed in a tent he’d never seen before. his shirt off, he looked down at his hands, they were bandaged delicately, by a woman’s hand.
 
“He said he could read my mind” Pookie said queerly.
 
“Probably bullshit just to scare you.” Riki shook his head.
 
“…” Pookie just looked at his hands and thought about that, squeezing them lightly.
 
“If that was the case he’d be unbeatable, he’d see all your moves before you made them, you’d have to use something no one had ever seen before, even you.”
 
There was a moment he sat in silence contemplating his palms.
 
“So are you really dying or did you just want to see him use that weird shit on me first?” Pookie asked.
 
Riki smiled sadly with one side of his mouth.
 
“I see” Pookie sighed.
 
“But what do you care, you just met me.” He said laughing.
 
“She did this, that girl Jersey?” Pookie said more as a statement than a question.
 
“Yeah how did you know”
 
“I don’t know, I just had a feeling”
 
Riki laughed and got up from his stool “Well you keep acting all cool like that and she might just fuck you”.
 
Pookie sighed irritable and laid back down.
 
Riki just let out a little breathy laugh and started to leave.
 
“You think you can beat him?” Pookie asked Riki’s back.
 
“Maybe.” he sighed and said “But maybe I won’t have to.” He smiled looking up at the sky, the sun bleaching out his face and forcing him to close his eyes like a kid getting his photograph taken.
 
–
 
As the sun set the heavy flap of a tent a whole wasteland away was opened and closed noiselessly, inside a single candle burned.
 
The figure that entered walked over to the candle light, stopping just short of it so the light only licked the tips of his toes. Then without words he mimed the laying of a tatami mat at his feet and kneeled.
 
Out of the dimness a ghostly white face rocked into the light like a marionette operated by a drunk. The face was stoney and still. Painted white with black around the eyes and mouth resembling a dimestore wooden indian flaked with white paint.
 
The one kneeling nodded at his master.
 
His master began to speak with his hands miming his words.
 
(Subtitles read) “Report, why do you abandon your post guarding the swammy?”
 
The kneeling one began to reply in sign and mime, without making a sound. (Subtitles read) “Lord Cesare my master, during my time with the swammy I believe I have encountered the one they call ‘Pookie’. The fugitive sought by the ringmaster, what’s more his accompanied by a deserter and a strange girl. He is currently hosted by a group not affiliated with the circ-.”
 
Cesare the mime shogun put his hand out to stop him. (Subtitles read) “You talk too much Pepe”
 
The mime bodyguard froze (Subtitles read) “There’s more, your son.”
 
(in subtitles) “Brandon?”
 
The body guard continued (in subtitles) “It seems as if he wants to fall in with this strange lot but he was turned away. Humiliated by the man leading them, at least I think it’s a man.”
 
(subtitles read) “He brings great shame onto me and our clan, but his failings are my own. He was cocky and I fed into his cockiness, I paid strong warriors to fall before him, but soon he challenged one that would not be swayed by money and he lost. When he found out what I did he was lost to me, searching for purpose outside of the circus.”
 
(subtitles read) “What would you have me do my Shogun?”
 
(Subtitles read) “The one known as Pookie is not to be harmed, for now. He is of grave interest to the ringmaster, but these others, the outcasts, they cannot be allowed to live.
Although Brandon is my shame, it is not their right to dishonour him, his weakness is my own and it cannot be known. Speak no word of this to the swammy, take a detachment of Mime ninjas with you, do it swiftly and leave no trace.”
 
(subtitles read) “Yes sir”
 
(subtitles read) “The clown must not be hurt is that apparent”
 
(subtitles read) “Readily sir.”
 
The mime shogun retracted his statue like face back into the darkness.
 
–
 
Later that night Pookie left the safety of the tent feeling as stiff as an ironing board with morning wood. Riki was milling about outside leaning against a post watching as Canard and Efron frolicked with the other performers. Canard especially looked to be having a good time, evidently getting into their supply of grain alcohol. The two were laughing and singing with the oddly dressed men as the sun slowly set on the day.
 
Riki sensing Pookie in the opening said “Are you feeling better?”
 
“I asked you if you could beat him” Pookie said looking past him.
 
“And I said maybe”
 
“What happens if you die?” Pookie said softly.
 
“You mean to them? Probably nothing” He laughed and then paused looking at them “What about you?” He said tossing his head bac.
 
“What about me what?”
 
“What’ll happen to them if you die?”
 
He paused for a moment having never given thought to that. “Probably nothing, or they’ll die, who knows, I’ll be dead.”
 
“Does your life mean that little to you?” Riki smiled.
 
“Does yours?” Pookie sighed. “You know, sometimes it feels like I’m only just starting to get this world.” He said as he looked at Efron smiling and laughing horsing around with the drunken one legged man. “and then-“
 
“It’s all ripped out from under you”. Riki finished his sentence.
 
Pookie sighed again. “That’s not what I was gonna say.”
 
“Life sucks” Riki said “But it’s all we’ve got.”
 
“I guess so”
 
“Because we hope one day it’ll all mean something, that it’ll make sense, that’s why we keep going.”
 
“Do you really believe that?” Pookie asked.
 
“I don’t know.”
 
“Hmm”
 
“Anyway I think you should fight him.” Riki said wistfully.
 
“Why me?” Pookie scoffed.
 
“Because you’re the main character” Riki laughed.
 
Pookie frowned and said “I couldn’t even touch him, he’s unbeatable.”
 
“If you want to cut him you can cut him.”
 
Suddenly Pookie heard the voice of his master in his head and it sent a shiver up his spine. “What?”
 
“I can teach you if you’ll let me”
 
“Fat chance” Pookie scoffed and went back into the tent.
 
–
Read the rest of the chapter on inkitt, or don’t I don’t care haha.
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John Wick 3 review

IT WAS OK.

I find it hard to review these movies, which is probably why I didn’t review all the others haha. I dunno because I enjoy them but I can’t help feeling like I enjoy them ironically. Like I’m watching a school play version of an eighties action movie and it kind of resembles those movies but it’s a cartoonish self-referential post irony abomination.

And bare in mind I enjoyed this movie, but I can’t help think that if this came out in the eighties or early nineties people would laugh at it, it would be a blip. Rather than being something interesting with a unique spin on eighties/nineties action movies like The Guest or Upgrade (see these movies, they’re fucking awesome), it’s just a kind of an amalgam of that and a kung fu movie I guess where the weakest aspect is always the world building. The difference being those movies are usually set in the real world.

Whenever I’m watching a John Wick movie I have to take special care to ignore the stupid world building. Why the fuck wasn’t this movie just based in the real world? Why do you have to set it in this cartoony parody world where everyone and their nan is an assassin? It’s just totally immersion breaking and lame. It’s just fucking silly and makes the world kind of goofy and it takes away from a lot of the gore and violence because it just makes the whole thing a great big cartoon. I mean what’s so special about these magical coins and all this nonsense? What does it add to the non-plot?

I mean yeah these movies are meant to be dumb, there’s not a scrap of storyline you could cobble together from any of the films, the world building is weaker than in the Wanted movie where they get their assassination targets from a fucking sewing machine (which is less silly than the comic I might add). And it’s all set in motion by a dead doggo.

They’re less movies, than they are action set pieces strung together with light plot elements. And don’t get me wrong the action is awesome, the fight scenes and effects are masterful. Especially in regard to their use of physical and digital effects. They seem to use them seamlessly, where you have real squibs and then digital over the top for the more fucked stuff like stabbing people in the head. But it’s really just mindless violence without a plot holding it together.

So what’s this one about? Well John Wick has to survive or something, and I dunno Halle Berry is in it for some reason and she has lots of doggos and there’s like more really shit world building (ye-yaayy). Where he has to go see this ‘Elder’ who’s literally a guy that looks the same age if not younger than Keanu Reeves and do some stuff which he sort of doesn’t do and there’s another hook for a sequel. Which is fine, I’m glad they broke out of the trilogy bullshit. I was half convinced they’d do that stupid bullshit where it turns out someone killed his wife for reasons and tie it back to the first movie for a shitty conclusion.

I expected in this movie for John Wick to tear down the whole shitty house of cards world they’d built up which he doesn’t do but it makes me feel like they’re setting up for him to do that in the next movie and that makes it ok, I guess.

Again I enjoy John Wick movies, I just cringe everytime we have to cut to a room full of tatted grannies dressed like greasers working a switch board for assassins. So it’s like a world where everyone is an assassin, like surely we don’t need that many assassins? This is like anime logic, if everyone from the people who shine yours shoes to the people who make you sushi are assassins surely being an assassin is pretty mundane. It’s like someone who works as a waiter talking about his screenplay. “Oh yeah so I work here but my real dream is being the worlds top assassin, just waiting for my big break ya know.”

Every time I’m just like why? Why not just set it in the real world? It’s like trying to make it the matrix for assassins where it’s half in the real world and half in a shit anime and I’d almost like these to be a weird matrix spin off where neo and morpheus choose to re-enter the matrix as new people. Just remembering how bad those sequels were and retracting that statement.

And every fucking character he meets just imposes back story on him and is like “I’ll never forgive you for x thing that you did at y time, I’m really mad and you owe me or I owe or plot plot plot”. It’s tiresome, it’s like the movie is so aware how it has no story so it’s trying really hard to convince you to meme you into writing it in your head and you just can’t be bothered you just want him to shoot more people over a dog. So the John Wick universe could be amazing if only you could use your imagination and will it into being but you don’t because you’re shit and hollywood already stole all your imagination and sold it back to you as a snappy t-shirt.

It’s basically like the John Wick movies are a reboot to a once great franchise that doesn’t exist and expects you to make up in your head. So John Wick is basically skipping a phase, you’re supposed to make a series of popular movies before you make the shitty soulless cash grab reboot, this is just starting with the shitty reboot fanservice and expecting you to work backwards and think on fondly of a series of films that doesn’t exist in a genre that sort of doesn’t exist either anymore.

Because let’s face facts, action movies as a genre are pretty much dead, that’s why these movies are so popular because the only alternative are these neutered sterilised cucked capeshit movies where they can’t show blood and can only say ‘fuck’ once not in the context of actual fucking. And we get the odd throwback to when all big movies weren’t made exclusively to sell happy meal toys with Logan and to a lesser extent those garbage deadpool movies (yes they’re garbage, and if you like them your opinions are garbage and belong in a dustbin with all the other garbage, in fact why don’t you live in there with your garbage opinion?). But it’s not the same.

So again, I have to say I like these movies, I just have to add a caveat, you have to switch your brain off, you have to give this movie a pass on how fucking dumb it is, you have to watch it with beer goggles and just not notice the shit world and the stupid/non-existent plot.

These movies are like an exercise in learning to enjoy things. Just look at Keanu Reeves nice face and watch him brutally murder people because of a doggo and don’t think about it too much. CONSUME PRODUCT, GET EXCITED FOR NEXT PRODUCT.

Of course I’ll watch the next one predictably, but only because I like Keanu Reeves and it would make him sad if I didn’t. (Which is also why I’m going to watch the new Bill and Ted movie and force myself to like it, if it actually can meme itself into existence.)

 

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Always forever

You and me always

Could stay alone together

Always forever.

 

You know you’ve got me

You’ve got me in your pocket

Say you’ll stay, say we’ll

 

Never be severed

My heart is in your locket

Always forever.

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Gears of War another one… I mean 4

This just came out on games with gold and if you’re on xbox you’re well aware games with gold has been inundated with outright stinkers recently as Microsoft is trying to push the new gamepass ultimate thing so they’re trying to phase out gold as a thing by combining gold and gamepass into a pretty reasonable package but I still don’t want to pay extra to play like a handful of ok games buried under piles of indie garbage. Considering I only pay for gold so I can play warframe and payday 2 online and the gold stuff is just a bonus, I’m not that bothered by it but this just came on it and I thought I could rant about it a little since I’m still suffering what for all intents and purposes could be called ‘writers block’. Hence no content this week, probably next week.

So I started playing this game when it was on gamepass when I bought it for a month when it was a quid and I got bored of it before the third act and just decided it was a waste of time, none of the characters are really very interesting, not even the original characters.

There’s barely a story, it’s just ‘go save these people’, the plot is there just to push you into shooting galleries so you can sit behind chest high walls and take your turn shooting.

I played the first three games, I think, I don’t really remember if I played three, I just can’t stand cover shooters, they’re like turn based games without the strategy, you just have to wait til someone sticks their head out and shoot, it’s boring. It’s even more boring when the enemies are all just robots in the first part of the game.

It kind of reminds me of binary domain which is like a japanese rip off of gears where you fight robots, but the robots were satisfy to shoot because bits were constantly flying off them. The robots in gears just explode. So I got bored of fighting uninteresting enemies in shooting galleries and stopped playing only to pick it up again as a time killer on games with gold.

And this time I completed it and I regret that haha. I mean it was kind of fun but the ending and the laziness of the game just makes me mad and reminds me why I will never spend money on the series ever again.

This is probably the laziest sequel to a game ever conceived of, and the only reason it exists is money. Because I guess the first three games wrapped up nicely, they beat all the locusts and won the war. But this game is like “hey why don’t we just bring the locust back and pretend they’re completely new enemies when they’re the exact same character models except some have little bits of crystal coming off them?”

It’s so brazen I almost have to clap and be amazed at the stupidity of an audience that didn’t call this out.

It’s set I think twenty years on and you play Marcus’ son who’s basically a Nathan Drake clone in the shape of a fridge. All the characters are trying to be naughty dog knock offs, the banter is just bleh between them.
The first thing I noticed about this game is it handles the exact same as the 360 games, how is it still tank controls essentially, why in 2019 does it fell like the character is on rails? Why can’t he walk normally? Why does it feel like I’m controlling a giant block of tofu?

All the shooting is the same, the guns are the same with a few added guns which you’ll never have enough ammo for to really make them useful. You just use them up then switch back to the lancer and gnasher which are the same.

It looks nice, the only thing that’s updated seems to be the graphics but it’s a linear game with sky boxes so it’s not that amazing, you’re not rendering a huge open world, just linear levels.

The new mechanics are basically tower defence levels which were pretty fun, the game isn’t so bad when it feels like you’re playing the old gears game and locusts are still pretty satisfying to kill, much more satisfying than those shitty robots.

There’s also a really lazy mech sequence which is obviously just a reskin of your character made huge. It’s laughable honestly. it moves exactly the same as the character so you don’t feel like you’re in a mech at all you just feel like you’re huge and it’s silly.

The story is laughable, it’s just pointless, the ending was so bad I was honestly shocked when there was no level after the credits.

You just go looking for this chicks mom and then you find her, that’s the whole ending, that’s the whole game. The locust were gone then they came back but a bit different. The ending is so smug because it knows it’s getting a sequel so it’s like it didn’t need to try or really have any pay off or satisfying conclusion, it just ends.

And what’s worse is it tries to have emotional resonance just for the sake of it with characters we don’t care about or only met for five minutes and didn’t like. I didn’t care about saving this person, I was just playing to shoot more monsters. You’re supposed to be invested in what happens at the end and I didn’t give a shit.

And what’s worse is it kind of has a good set up, it’s set in the future where the cog is like an oppressive regime and you’re fighting them at first and that had promise. It could’ve been a completely different game about a civil war or a revolution but then they realised that the robots were boring to fight and they didn’t want you chainsawing normal people so they just brought back the locust but with crystals haha.

Because really what this game needed to be edgy was to have the balls to chainsaw other people, to have a civil war or a revolt would’ve been so much more interesting than just fighting more aliens but they went with the path of least resistance.

I think that says it all about this game, it’s just another one which is tacked on after they already finished their trilogy. And they’ll just keep pushing the series to disaster because microsoft has literally no other exclusives that are worth mustard.

Well that’s really all I had to say about it, I promise some actual content next week.

See you…

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