The Crackpot Book Club: Jingo

I've been tearing through the work of Terry Pratchett for the last few months. I've become a huge fan bordering on disciple. He's so charming and so understated. He waits for you to get lulled into a false sense of high fantasy satire then BAM. He dumps a bucket of ice cold humanity all over your head and you love him for it.

America has had a rough week and I think I have just the thing. A proverbial mug of calming tea with a bitter aftertaste. I'm only a few hundred pages into Jingo (city watch) and from that title you can guess where it's going. It's about being good police in a time where citizens are taking up arms for selfish, deluded, causes. It stares racism down and laughs in it's face the way only the English can. So polite... yet so brutal. It's helping me through a difficult time in the American south and I'm going to shut up now and let it speak for itself:

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

-Terry Pratchett

C&C episode 84: Our EMOTIONS!!!

 

An Emotional Episode.

 

The table is being set for the return of Hannibal.

American Gods was... ok. Splitting the book into 2 seasons was a bad idea mostly because there was barely enough material for the first. That and the last half of the book is the weakest. It's just not Gaiman's best work at the end of the day. I got the sense that he doesn't think much about American culture even though he tried REALLY hard to appreciate it. All the American gods are pale intimations of their international betters and all the new gods are essentially villainous. I mean, you don't see technical boy boosting AIDs research through crowd sourcing, do you? Anansi was the sh*t, though. It was like Orlando Jones was waiting his entire career for that speech.

So thank christ the talks for Hannibal's resurrection are moving forward. This was Fuller's most inspired work by far and it deserves another chance at an ending. Hopefully we'll get some closure for Bedelia at the very least.

Conversations couldn't start until 2 years after the final airing of season 3. @neoprod has started those conversations. This takes time.

— Bryan Fuller (@BryanFuller) August 9, 2017

Cinematography of Preacher Vol. 2

 
Back by popular demand: season 2 episode 8. You keep the Hitchcock homages coming and I'll do my part, Preacher.

So I gave Warframe a shot...

Sometimes the randomizer hits gold. So help me if I'm tacky, when in Rome.

...it is not for everyone. It's free to play for a reason, if I had dropped more than $20 on it I'd be pretty bummed. But it is absolutely free and it is interesting enough for me to spend a weekend with. It's destiny on speed. You walk faster than most games sprint, the aiming is flawless, and the jumping/light platforming is smooth as silk. Though enemies are bland turtle people that look and sound like sh*tier versions of Andromeda's already underwhelming rock jerks.

This here bag? She's mixed, but did I mention the roguish class has Max Payne's strafe jump but with a jet pack? You can just glide around corners going 60 mph and reasonably pull off head shots. I'm already having more fun than I did with Destiny. People rag on that game's storytelling but Warframe makes it look like Doctor, f**king, Zhivago.

But it's free. Sooooo free. $5-$20 for new costumes and weapon skins, so the ethical kind of free. But it really makes you appreciate games like Borderlands who put so much more effort into WHAT you're shooting even though Warframe makes it more fun to actually do that. Shooting, that is.

Thrones was pretty good tonight!

And it gives me an excuse to bug everyone with a cruelly forgotten Queen song:

Yeah! How you like me now?!

I'm sorry Beddy, but the headboard connectors were drilled in at an angle and... you just frustrate me sometimes.

The manliest thing I've ever manned.

99.9% MAN SWEAT. 00.1% anguish tears.

Moving sucks. Especially if you can't afford for someone to take apart your stupid fancy bed for you and you have to beg your dad for help. We gave up last night when his electric screwdriver got fritzed; but by god I was going to take apart all the load bearing lug nuts before we tried again tonight. I did it. The last lug alone took me 28  soul crushing minutes, but I finally got the f**ker. Now we can load these 3 easy pieces into the truck and be done with it. There's no way putting it back together could be MORE complicated.

...Right?

Who am I kidding? I can't stay mad at you, Beddy.

C&C Ep: 83

Ok, the geisha/spiderbot fight wasn't half bad.

I was absent this week, busy buying my sister drinks for getting an interview at JOHNS HOPKINS so we can listen to it together. Pyre sounds neat and yes, Ghost in the Shell is a rank mess. I can't wait to hear all the ways Chance and I agree.

Different Kinds of Love

The Cinematography of Preacher

People just ain't talkn' bout' Preacher like they should. To me at least. It's like the perfect storm of Tarantino and Breaking Bad. It's got an air of violent immaturity but it sobers up when it needs to. What it says about faith and particularly evangelicals walks a fine line of respectful disobedience.

But more to the point, I think its the best looking show on TV right now. Thrones is looking more and more exhausted while Preacher is hungry and eager to prove itself. These screen shots are all from a mid season placeholder episode. Keep that in mind. 

 

 

Where the hell is Ruth Negga's Emmy?

 
  

Review Improv.

Thanks, Jaume Cullell!

This week's episode... I'm not particularly proud of. I try to review LoveCraft Country off the top of my head and near the end I start rambling about a half remembered anecdote neither host, or you, could understand. But Chamberlain and Chance are great! Stay for them and read Lovecraft country before Jordan Peele makes an awesome anthology series out of it.

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Morning in America.

And what a good morning it is...

I promised not to get political here and I intend to keep that promise. So I'm just gonna talk about how calm I am today and how much more faith I have in the system now than I did even 9 hours ago. I'm drinking the same Kona blend coffee I always drink and yet it tastes so much stronger today...

Rest in Peace, June Foray.

Flying Squirrel, Roadrunner, Soviet Honey Trap, and grand dame of voice acting. She was 99 and her last credit was in 2015. She wasn't just an incredible multifaceted performer, she was one of the hardest working actors who ever lived. She may only get a tombstone, but American pop culture owes her a Mausoleum.

Here's an excellent longform review about Stranger Things.

backwrdblackbrd (NSFW)

In case you didn't know... I absolutely motherf***ing love Stranger Things. Apparently so does this guy:

A personal favor.

I love the finale of Dark Souls. Did it come out of nowhere? Yes. Is the boss some random dude introduced in the last DLC? Unfortunately. But! BUT! The actual fight is fantastic. The idea behind that fight turns whatever "honorable" notion you may have had about what you as the player are doing inside out. You are both sad, decrepit, monsters squabbling over power that cannot help or change anything. This series' commitment to being a stone cold bummer is now final.

But personally? The fight has the best  track in the series. Way back in 2010, Demon Souls actually made me snicker with how thunderously sh*ty it's soundtrack was. I wanna thank FromSoftware for keeping enough money in their coffers to give Dark Souls the full choir experience to bring it all home.

So here it is, the curtain call:

The End.

Man... that was fun.

I've beaten each boss every SoulsBorne game has thrown at me. Feels like closing a book I've been trying to understand for years, finally enlightened. Guys, I am going to miss these games so goddamn much.

Oh, Hey Stranger Things!

Been a while. Bigger CGI budget this year, that right? Nice going getting another season before puberty hits. I think they're talented enough to survive, but the gods of adolescence be fickle and cruel. Break a leg, guys!

Floccinaucinihilipilification.

Sometimes a word has more syllables than it's definition. Sometimes people think they can handle an intro when they have no idea. Sometimes I feel like posting episodes of the podcast I guest on.

But only sometimes.



Chamberlain and Chance - Floccinaucinihilipilification!

War for the Planet of the Apes Review: The Hate Escape.

Caesar... is... sad.

They did it. They really did it. They made a near perfect trilogy of films after changing directors a third of the way through. They pioneered a motion capture tec so convincing I forget I'm looking at FX 10 minutes in. They managed to fit a touching amount of humanity and nuance in a story told in broad, vibrant, strokes. What these films have to say about politics, war, and civilization deserves to become immortal. This is Shakespeare with gorillas and guns and by god it all works. 

Whoo! I'd better slow down a bit, don't want to sound like this is the be all end all. I don't see a screenwriting oscar in it's future. Still though, these films are so good and so unique I can't help but trip over my own words while I evangelize them. They always play against my expectations. When I expect to see apes conquering the fading world of man; I see apes struggling to stay alive while man does a fine job killing itself.

In the aftermath of Koba's rebellion, his former faithful kowtow to the last bastion of military strength in America. Wouldn't you know it, it's a skin head militia. War wears its incendiary politics on its sleeve. It shines a spotlight on this country's biggest social issue and screams "All these people want is a world where they're in charge. Get it?!"



These "donkeys" are branded and sent to work as dishwashers and pack mules. They betray the future of their own kind only out of spite for their old leader. Subtle ain't it? Naturally, Caesar and co. want out of the Red Woods ASAP. Their scouts found a way, but how do you sneak 200 odd apes around an army?

Caesar is a lot more tired now, his fur snowy with age. He's ready to give his life to make sure his people get out. The dirty secret is this movie isn't about a war at all. It's about the torture and suffering required for leadership. Uneasy lies the head and all that.

I'm sure there was a version of this script with a more Christ-like Caesar but thank god this one is anything but holy. He is consumed by betrayal and it gets him nothing but trouble... and a mute blonde kid. It's fun to see them work in the original's use of mute humans, though this time it's cause is viral instead of surgical. The single best scene is all about Woody Harrelson's skin head commander facing the silent future of humanity and tragically losing his sh*t.

So emotional...

There's so much more I want to talk about. But they've managed to keep the last 2 acts a complete secret and I'll be damned if I spoil what this movie is really about. Serkis is still tremendous as Caesar, Maurice is still the world's most lovable orangutan, and Steve Zahn singlehandedly saves the film from being a complete bummer. No small feat.

I'll need to see it again to see how it stacks up against Dawn, one of my 10 perfect movies, but right now they're pretty close to each other. It's rare to see movies that understand intrigue, politics, and humor all at once. Even rarer to see those movies get top spot at the box office. Let this be a lesson to all aspiring filmmakers. This trilogy had it's "thinking man's sci fi" cake and ate it too. So can yours.

Kentucky's favorite son.

This TranStar mug's pretty great:

Thanks, Otrix!

Internet Gold: Hunt for the One Nostriled Man.

One of the best things about the information age is that you can think of something that should exist (a music video of Weird Al's Albuquerque using footage from Breaking Bad) and poof! There it is, perfectly realized: