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?
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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…
Dancing in my room
I think it was about noon
Want to remember
It’s getting harder
to understand how you felt
In my hands, in my-
I was so blinded
Could you be a pretty girl?
I was such a fool.
I really don’t know where to start with this movie, I went into it expecting the unexpected and it still managed to wow me.
I just don’t know how to even classify Zahler’s movies, they’re like if David Lynch and Tarantino had a baby raised by David Ayer. His movies sit in this weird place between cartoony violence and absurdity verging on surrealism and gritty hyper realism.
Somehow he manages to catch this almost like documentary level of gritty realism in his movies which is done purely so that he can hit you with a sledge hammer of goofy shit in the third act and it works so well that three movies in I have no idea what to predict from this guy.
It’s film making that just leaves me thunder struck nonstop and I can’t even think to react, I can’t tell if it’s just really good slocky nonsense like Taratino or genius levels of nonsense like Lynch.
His movies just leave me at a loss for words because I’ve just never really seen anything like them before and that’s high praise alone.
This is Zahler’s third movie as I’ve said, I think he did a puppet master movie but I couldn’t give a fraction of a fuck about that. I tried to get into the puppet master movies but even me, someone that loves shitty horror movies couldn’t get into it, the series is pure garbage. They’re just movies made because someone made some cool puppets then thought it would be cool to make a movie about them. None of them have enough stories to fill an episode of tales from the crypt and the characters are just garbage. They’re awful movies and I really tried to like them, I watched like four of them before I just gave up on the series.
Although if anyone can make them good it’s Zahler, so I might have to watch his version.
So his other movies are Bone Tomahawk, which is like Open range meets the hills have eyes, I’m not kidding. It turns from a totally realistic western into a campy grindhouse horror movie and it’s awesome, Kurt Russel, Patrick Wilson and Mathew Fox from lost was especially great in this movie.
Then there’s the instant cult classic Brawl in Cellblock 99, hands down his best movie. Vince Vaugn plays a stone cold mountain of a man bad ass who goes to prison and has to save his family from gangsters from behind bars. Starts off as a gritty crime/prison drama turns into a fucking grindhouse videogame by the end and it’s awesome. Like more awesome than you would think possible in this current generation. Hands down the best action movie for ten years because there’s almost no competition except marvel cape shit and fast and furious and John Wick and those movies don’t really count in my mind. They’re more like post ironic spectacle movies as opposed to actual movies. They’re self referential to the point of parody.
Is it time to discuss this actual movie now? I think so, yeah so I liked it, obviously, The end.
Ok so seriously, it’s a slow boil movie and its pretty long, I see people complaining about that but honestly it could’ve been three hours and I would’ve been fine with that, it uses it’s length really well, it never feels like it drags and you know the pay off is going to be something special, because that’s just a Zahler movie. Long build up to epic pay off, and he doesn’t disappoint.
The story is about, well it’s about three stories colliding (technically four). So the first is about this ex con who gets out of prison and I guess he’s supposed to be the main character because we’re introduced to his story first. But the guy is pretty unlikeable honestly and there was more time spent on the other characters. He’s sort of meant to be a thug with a heart of gold but he just came off as a total asshole to me haha. From one total asshole to the other.
But I guess all the characters are sort of flawed, I just identified more with the flaws of the other characters.
Obviously it goes without saying Mel Gibson is the best character, it’s fucking Mel Gibson, you put him in anything, he’s gonna be the best thing in it hands down. And he’s sort of going through a bit of a resurgence right now in the action genre, between this and Blood Father, he’s doing pretty good and I hope to hell he keeps it up. I personally want to tear down heaven and earth for the travesty of not casting him in fury road over political bullshit cuckery. I don’t give a shit what the dude says when he’s drunk you don’t just take a shit on your movie franchise to avoid ‘bad press’. Obviously dumb people still liked it because it had ‘big splosions and fire breathing guitars’ *soyboyopenmouthsmile.jpeg. I just thought it was ok and Tom Hardy just delivered his standard ‘I’m here for my cheque’ performance tippified in venom. But I mean I was never a huge fan of Mad Mad anyway, there’s like one good Mad Max movie in a list of four, it’s hardly good odds.
Mel plays an embittered old cop who’s been passed over for promotion over and over because he’s too much of an un-pc loose cannon who doesn’t know how to ‘play the game’ of politics, more acquainted with ass kicking than ass kissing. And Vince Vaugn plays his suffering partner, honestly I still want a Brawl sequel, I don’t care, bring motherfuckers back from the dead haha.
Mel gets caught on someone’s phone being a little too rough with a gentleman of colour and he’s suspended. But he’s living in shitty neighbourhood full of dark skinned gentlemen who are harassing his teenage daughter. I mean if anyone is gonna have a teenage daughter pushing sixty it’s the immortal Chad Mel Gibson. The only man to portray my favourite book character with any justice (it still wasn’t perfect but he made it his own, he was ‘Porter’ not Parker), don’t talk to me about Jason Statham’s Parker, he just turned it into a generic action movie like all his others.
He needs money and he stumbles upon plans for some kind of robbery and decides with his partner they’re going to rob the robbers. So that’s the movie basically. I mean fuck, can you imagine making a movie with this premise in 2019. Fuck imagine casting Mel Gibson as a cop suspended basically for manhandling brown people who wants to rob people so he can live away from said brown people, this is anti political correctness they couldn’t get away with in the seventies. Even Charles Bronson had to shoot some white muggers in Death Wish. I mean come on.
So just imagining the set of balls it took to make this movie has me at a loss. And it’s all delivered in a way that makes me feel like it’s not really trying to push a message either way or just trying to be edgy for the sake of it. It just seems matter of fact. The ending was also slightly infuriating, which I won’t spoil.
My main criticism of the movie is that I think it could’ve been longer honestly. I think the bank robber characters were well set up but didn’t have a very satisfying pay off. I wanted them to have more screen time, it just feels like that part was rushed a little and more could’ve been done there with their characters.
Ok well *spoilers* Mel Gibson dies at the end which sucks, it sucks double because the sort of unlikeable main character gets all the money and tosses his family a few gold bars to say like “sorry I killed your old man for basically no reason lol”. But it isn’t delivered in a punitive way. The movie never takes a moral position, he’s not being punished for being a naughty racist which he kind of is and isn’t. He just wants his kid to not be harassed and live in a shitty neighborhood, he never uses the gamer word or comes off particularly prejudiced. But I mean what is Mel Gibson famous for other than Mad Max and Lethal Weapon, it’s for saying crazy racist stuff while drunk off his ass haha. So you have to think his casting and in particular this role is for a reason.
He’s not playing this cuck who has to suck black dick like in some gay Tarantino cuck movie about racial vengeance, he’s just a guy trying to get some money for his family. So I never felt like the movie was political, it’s just a fun cool hard hitting movie that pulls no punches.
I really could talk about this fucking movie for days, there’s just so much there, there’s layers upon layers from the weird fucked up scene with Jennifer Carpenter to the awesome ending shootout. There’s just so much I can get into and I can already see this stretching to the 2k mark so I’ll leave it there and just say, see this movie asap.
See you…
Long time no listen to my drivel.
It’s nothing dramatic, just lots of boring day jobbing sucking up my time and soul. Still trying to find a new job, not holding much hope for that honestly but I keep soldiering on nonetheless.
Personal and work life aside, my consumption of product in terms of media is pretty great recently. My ascension to escapist sci-fi incel is complete haha. I’ve been watching farscape recently to give the expanse a rest because the seasons are short and I was running out of them now I can’t say which I like more because farscape is sort of more silly but I feel more connected to the characters and their chemistry.
But I love the expanse for the realism and story but I love farscape for the characters and the puppets and all the physical effects which are literally Jim Henson puppets. So this is like sesame street in space except not aimed at children even remotely haha.
I would kill to see an escape of sesame street with Rygel haha.
Wait is Jim henson sesame street or muppets? Are they the same thing???
So I’m hooked on that and there are four seasons of like a billion episodes so I’m set for stuff to watch while I lift heavy things and grunt. My product consumption is set and I’m excited for next product.
On the book front I didn’t notice I did this but I actually stopped reading the Parker the books when Richard Stark stopped writing them for like twenty fucking years for some reason haha.
Just totally an accident. But I started reading his nineties books now and they’re pretty solid. They haven’t dipped in quality at all, the first one was not my favourite style of his books. I notice that he has like two styles of Parker books and considering the subject matter it doesn’t surprise me that it has these limitations. You either get a situation where Parker is just finishing a job and it went right or it went wrong then someone betrays him or it goes wrong and the rest of the book is him trying to deal with the new development and get away with the money.
Or my personal favourite where it starts with Parker getting the job and then spends forever autistically setting up the job only for it then to go wrong from some unforeseen circumstance which he then has to deal with and get away with the money. I like these ones purely for the great build up and excitement. I tend to think the first style is just laziness, where he can’t be bothered to come up with a clever heist so he just skips it and gets into the meat of the story which he’s great at and the action is always really great. But it’s just a way of getting the heist out of the way, I see why he does it because normal people are bored by ages of tedious planning and setup. But I think we’ve established I’m far from normal.
The first book is actually the peak of the first trope, a heist goes really badly wrong, his wife betrays him and shit gets fucked up haha. Watch the movie Payback if you can’t be bothered to read the far superior book. The book wasn’t about heisting, even thought here was a heist in it. It was about Parker being this unrelenting force that was going to get what was his nomatter what. It was setting up this character that would step on the devils dick to get what he wanted.
But the second book is what gave shape to the mythos in my opinion because it’s all about that anal setup, like half the book is about him getting this truck which he is used for like a few seconds to block off the view from the road in this armored car heist. But it was just this fantastic build off to an amazing pay off that really set the tone for the rest of the books as well establishing new characters and worldbuilding.
The nineties era books (I’m not sure what era they’re actually set in because Parker and his pals haven’t aged it seems) the first is the epitomy of the first kind, the book starts where they’re in the middle of the job which goes right. But then they’re betrayed and shit happens, looking back it was ok, not amazing. The next book I’m on now is like a mix of both kinds which is weird.
It starts with the action at the end of a heist that goes sort of wrong because Parker is climbing out of a wrecked car but he has the money and he gets away leaving one guy there stuck in the car.
The real story comes in where this guy had another job set up which now falls on Parker when this guy dies. So we have all this good set up which pleases my autism all while shit from the previous job is encroaching on the latest job. So he’s really mixing it up with this one. That and he brings back a few fan favourite characters from the roster, not my favourite characters, I really want to see Grofield and Handy Mckay come back and I’m saving the Grofield books for when I finish the Parker series. I really wanna see Grofield because he wasn’t in good shape in the last book, as far as I remember he’s missing a few of his fingers. But it’s not like Stark really gives a shit about continuity I mean he brought back Ed Mackey from being literally dead without even an explanation. I guess he just forgot.
I mean I was planning to read all the Parker books again in graphic novel format but I can’t find a good place to pira- I mean buy them at an affordable and price from a reputable source.
Come on! Richard Stark is dead he doesn’t care if his books make money. I mean fuck, pirating these books about a master thief is some ultimate irony surely. The closest I come to being Parker is downloading comics for free and possibly lots of movies and games if I was a pc master racist.
So yeah content, finally some content and it doesn’t totally suck, yeah well ok it kinda does but it’s fun to write and until my unusual form of writers block passes it’s really all I can muster. My inspiration is in short supply right now and I can only church out ironic crap. But I think I’m gonna just throw all my other books either up for free or onto muddy boots so it at least gets out there and maybe makes some money.
I hope is that my ultimate punishment is that the worst book I’ve written, the zombie book I wrote as a joke gets put up as a humiliating netflix show.
One can only hope.
See you…
–
A little boy with a blank expression stares off into the distance as his head is lathered and shaved in preparation for his training.
A crude clownface is painted over his dull lifeless face.
Sitting before the elder clown master. The elder’s legs crossed, his eyes closed solemnly puffing on a pipe, a few bubbles coming out of the end of it as he thinks to himself.
“My young one, you are now a clown in appearance but not one in spirit, a clown does not have to smile on the outside, but in his heart there must be laughter.” The old man put his pipe to one side and leaned forward. “Once you can take this nose from my face your training will be complet-“
Before he could finish the child ripped the nose from the old man’s face, the sound it made was a ridiculous honking as he squeezed it in his little hands.
“You didn’t let me finish” The old man spat “What I meant to say was ‘your training will be complete when you can take the red nose- without it honking.” He said as he took the nose and popped it back on his nose with a loud honk.
“Now the first part of your training will be to enter that tent over there-“. The old man raised a wrinkled tattooed arm pointing towards a large tent covered in strange graffiti clown markings. Lots of ‘Ha-ha’s and ‘why so serious?’s and other edgy stuff like that.
The boy quickly began to rise without changing his expression “Hey- let me finish will ya?” The old man scowled “On your hands” He smirked.
The child looked sceptical at the old man for only a moment, not sceptical but surprised and then accepting. As if he was about to listen to a ridiculous story but been told it was ‘based on real events’.
“Only those who can walk on their hands can truly say they know how to walk on their feet.” The old man smiled. “No man in that tent walks on his feet, to do so would shame the holy ground”.
–
The orange dust settled on a road side flea market bizarre selling all manner of goods and trinkets. The merchants wore long ragged clothing and hunched to display there wares on rickety stands made from refuse metal and wood. Their hands clasped as they sharply eyed customers over their long hawkish noses.
Pookie had agreed to accompany Riki on a quick supply run for the tent commune thing.
“Thanks for coming with me” Riki said over his shoulder.
“I had nothing better to do” Pookie said as he picked up a weird nick nack of a clown with green hair and yellow skin.
He pulled the string and the doll said in a strange mechanical voice “I’m crusty the clown hahaha”.
Pookie sneered at the little doll before putting it down and saying “Never heard of you.”
Riki continued looking forward and talking as if to no one. “You must be wondering about Jersey, what’s she’s doing with a bunch of guys like us.”
“Not really.” Pookie said prodding a stuffed dinosaur toy with one of it’s legs missing.
“It doesn’t strike you as odd a young woman like that would be in the company of all these men?”
“Take a look at me guy, ya think anything strikes me as odd?”
Riki turned to look Pookie up and down and said “Hmm, I guess not.” He smirked. “But you have been thinking about her?”
Pookie was flustered for a second before he said “What, no!”
“She came to us much like you did.”
“I didn’t come to you, we’re just passing through.”
“Passing through huh? I like that.” Riki laughed. “She had nowhere else to go, the wastes churn out so many like her, no families, no friends, no hope. We’re all like that in some way, but it’s good to find others, ya know what I mean?”
“Not really” Pookie said.
“Sure” Riki laughed as he turned back around and dipped his head to smiled with his arms behind his back.
Pookie let him walk on a little further while he messed with some beanie babies he had no intention of buying. With the no money he had before he heard an off putting whimpering sound.
“Look kid, I’ve already told you, I’m not a teacher and I don’t have time for this crap ok.” Riki yelled.
“Please master, I beg of you accept me as a student, I wont take no as an answer. I’ll wait night and day out in the acid rain and the radiation, I’ll do anything.”
“Try going away.”
“Good evening sir? Maam?”
“Who are you? Some other nutjob that wants me to train them?”
Pookie sighed exasperated and decided to go over and see what was happening.
The scene was an unusual one. That weird fumer kid from before was on his knees begging Riki to train him, on the verge of tears. But more pressing was the tall gaunt man standing just behind Riki in his blind spot.
He was slim and ghostly looking wearing a weird multicolored wrapping around his head with an unusual gem in the centre. His face seemed dark and brooding despite the bright time of day. Atop his lip was a neatly trimmed pencil thin moustache and soul patch below. The look in his eye was piercing but also seemed like a chameleon looking everywhere at once.
“I have heard you are very skilled, I would like to put those skills to the test in a duel.” The man said, his voice rising eloquently, a slight tinge of accent running through his words.
“And who are you?” Riki asked defiantly.
“I am but a humble warrior mystic who wishes to put his skills to the test. I have travelled all over this world and learned very many interesting techniques, I’d like to see how they stack up to someone such as yourself.”
“Is that a challenge?” Riki smiled.
“You can call it that” The man laughed.
All the while the young fumer Brandon was looked back and forth between them in some form of incomparable awe at the two figures and the aura they gave off.
It seemed as if the air pressure changed as these two unusual men studied eachother.
–
Read the rest of the chapter on inkitt.
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