Legion Review: What Time is It?

The last 2 seasons of Fargo have given Breaking Bad a deadly serious run for their money. They were great self contained thrillers with deep characters, gorgeous cinematography, and a script so tight it might as well have been shrink wrapped.

Noah Hawley has new fish to fry. He's been given the reigns to the X-Men franchise and he has made something truly, deeply, weird. Schizophrenia isn't something to be taken lightly, that is something this show gets out of the way pretty early. David may be the most powerful X-Man in the world of comics, but here he's just another psychiatric patient. One thing I do admire is how this show doesn't shy away from how much David suffers. His breaks from reality into red tinged velvet hellscapes become almost painful to look at. I imagine they would be quite a bit more painful to live through.

Dan Stevens as David is a young Sam Rockwell. Contrasting his dangerous sociopath from The Guest to this it's not hard to see golden statues in his future. Then again, I'd have bet Rockwell would have at least one by now. At any rate, he nails the sweet spot of making David just relatable enough to be the protagonist, but you still understand why his fiancee left him. Up next is Rachel Keller as another possible insane mutant who can't be touched and with whom David shares an adorable platonic romance. I'll have to apologize to Aubrey Plaza, because as much as I loved her as April in Parks&Rec, I thought she was her only character. As Lenny she's an ADHD verbal racket ball who again; is just goofy enough to be funny, but you get why she's inside. IMDB only has her on for 3 episodes so I'm already going to miss her. That's how much fun she looks like she's having.

When Legion is at it's best it's a cocktail of The Prisoner and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's nest. When it's not it's... well, an X-Men show. The action finale was a huge let down. 5 minutes of stuntmen lining up politely to be blown away on wires. For a show that had been, I'll say it, visionary for the most part to become so predictable in the end really shook me. It's a good show and I'm gonna ride the season out regardless. But I'm not ready to love it. I need at least one great episode for that and I like my chances.

How do you feel?

Psychonauts Lives.

I think I'm too young for nostalgia, but I'm pretty sure what I felt when seeing Psychonauts 2 for the first time is what has been fueling the reboot craze for years. I squeaked. I squeaked like a squirrel on coke. I saw Psychonauts the way it looked in my head and not as an 11 year old adventure game. The swaying trees, the blowing leaves, and Raz's mosquito slapping idle animation all gave me a slight chill. It's real now. I've wanted Psychonauts 2 for a decade but I didn't believe it was all going to come together until this. This FIG business makes me uneasy, but if it gets us to Psychonuats 3... I don't really care how they pull it off.

Barring humanitarian crimes or something. Like a Team Bondi sitch'.

Calorie-fu

I'm an over eater, it's been that since middle school. The trick for me nowadays is eat the exact same amount of food I used to, but with a fraction of the calories. For instance, Kraft mac and cheese. A box of that junk fully prepared is about 1,300 calories. I've found a way to bring that down to around 800. I fill a skillet with a cup of water and two cups of skim milk. Cook on high for 5 minutes and simmer on medium for 6. I usually mix in some sauteed mushrooms or sweet peppers or sumthin' then. A dash of sriracha to thicken near the end and... yeah. Sriracha mac and cheese.

Positivity Playlist:

Adjusting to a new life can be tough. Adjusting to a new world order can be tougher, but I think I've got a grip on it thanks to my daily playlist. I'm not gonna lie, I've been binging on David Simon's work pretty hard. First, Generation Kill (...s'ok.) and then Treme. A lot of people came to Treme expecting something closer to the Wire and what they got was essentially a musical. It's no skin off my back because I frikkin' adore the music:

 How 'bout some Professor longhair?

What else puts me in a good mood.... hmmm.

Nation of laws biiiiiiiiiiiiitch!!!!!!

The Black Pawn and the White Queen

Today I'm faced with a dilemma. Can I still be an entertainment blog whilst also bringing up the soft executive coup that's given a 70 year old child emperor veto power? Maybe! Let's find out.

Spy thrillers are some of my favorite stories and lord knows the Iraq war era had nothing for that genre. They're about massive nations pulling off invisible, yet devastating, plots against one another. That's something terrorist cells could never provide. Finesse.

It's been a generation since America has been threatened by a nation that's got it's sh*t together and I think a hell of a lot of these recent events are part of a successful Russian op. A sitting republican president that praises the Russian leader is nuts. That is f%$king NUTS. It's the only talking point he has ever been consistent on. It would be more ridiculous if Russia didn't have sh*t on Trump at this point.

So going from the idea that Trump is compromised... how did that happen? We may never have the real story but we can speculate. What we fill the blanks in with may never be the whole truth, but I'd settle for some weak tea just to get my heart rate lower. I think I've found that tea.

An anonymous blogger spun one hell of a yarn on the 17th. It could be bull but it can't all be bull. I've been a political junkie since I had an hour long free period in 5th grade to devour the library's periodical rack. I haven't seen bi-partisan criticism of Russia in my life time and you best believe my John le Carre loving butt was looking for it. Sh*t is going down and this may be the answer. Even if it isn't, it's still one hell of a thriller:

 

patribotics.

 

How do you do that?

The real tragedy is that he never got a chance to be the greatest grandpa who ever walked the earth.

This... Hurts.

Sir John Hurt has left us and I'm... pretty crushed. There's simply no one waiting in the wings that could make dialogue sing the way he could. He had a marvelously articulate rage, no surprise to anyone who saw V for Vendetta, which is actually an excellent companion piece to his work in 1984. It was the little things I always admired most about him. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (still on netflix and well worth your time) he's a spymaster who ends up getting played by a mole and in the scene where the inner circle ousts him he shreds the line "I should have left you WHERE I FOUND YOU." That shouldn't be my favorite moment in the movie but through sheer force of will he made me love it.

My condolences to his friends and family. I'm going to miss him terribly.