Professor

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Posts posted by Professor

  1. Captain America (1990) - Somewhere between below average to bad, with a healthy dose of being boring for a while.  I enjoyed the Reb Brown films more.

    Fantastic Four (1993) - Is it good?  No.  But it has a charm to it.  It looks like a cheap made-for-tv movie, but even a cheap one of those.  And it even plays out like one.  It sets up two reoccurring villains, bumbling comedic henchmen, and a couple supporting characters.  This would not have felt out of place opposite the 1990 Flash.  (But it feels outdated compared to Lois & Clark, which was made the same year. Which is weird as they both were only made 3 years after The Flash.)

  2. Watched the revivals of Animaniacs & Save by the Bell.  Thoughts are generally similar.  I would not have watched either if not for the name.  I am not the target demo for either of these shows outside of the nostalgia of the name.

    I think Animaniacs suffered from trying too hard.  The meta-ness was cranked to 11 and became too much.  I didn't like any of the Pinky & The Brain bits.  The exclusion of the other characters also hurt.  Even some "Good Idea, Bad Idea" type things would have mixed things up.

    Saved by the Bell on the other hand just went stupid.  Mainly it was the returning classic characters are played so over the top dumb that bothered me.  The kids are over the top as well, but at a level that felt more in-line with the original series.  And it must be said, Josie Totah is the best thing about this show.

  3. Wonder Woman 84 - A solid meh.  Plenty of little quibbles but overall I didn't think it was very entertaining for extended periods of time.  And being 2.5 hrs didn't help.

    Batman: Soul of the Dragon - Standard DC animated movie.  It's okay.  No point in Batman being involved.  Someone wanted to make a Richard Dragon movie but knew that wouldn't sell so Batman was shoehorned in.  

  4. Bill & Ted Face the Music - Saw this at a drive-in in the summer.  Still enjoyed it on rewatch.

     

    New Mutants - I wasn't looking forward to this after the first trailer.  Seemed like it was a horror film.  I don't like horror.  I don't know what happened between that first trailer and the 17 years it took to release the film.  Well, reshoots, because this is nowhere near horror.  Instead, we get an incredibly boring movie.  The cast tried, but there was nothing in the script.  

  5. A few months ago, I was listening to the New Day Podcast.  They had a trash tournament of the best action movies.  (I say trash because there was way too much "I've never seen it".)  But it did make me want to watch a few movies so, success?

    Bloodsport - Kinda disappointed.  Maybe it was undue hype, but I was expecting something classically amazing.  It was mostly cheesy fun, but nothing more.  I could see me loving this had I seen it when I was ten.

    The Raid - I really enjoyed this.  Has some issues (some of the camera work was too jittery, which I get was the intent, but hard to watch for me), but real fun action.  Don't think it is the best as the New Day declared, but glad a watched.  Is the sequel worth a watch?

  6. So, listened to Chris Jericho's podcast episode with the Classic Album Clash between Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation & Pump.  Now, when analyzing lyrics somethings are less obvious and songs can have different interpretations for different people.  That said, I don't know how Jericho came to the conclusion Janie's Got A Gun is about Gun Control.

  7. Wizard is something thing that I have a memory of great fondness for, but very little actual memory of the magazines themselves.  About once a month I would go to the grocery store with my mom (which was an hours long process).  I'd go straight to the spinner rack and grab everything and sit in the pharmacy chairs and read everything.  And Wizard was always the last thing I was reading when my mom came to get me.  And then I got ice cream. 

    Pretty much everything you guys talked about in this episode does not ring a single bell to me.  Strikes me as odd.

     

    And randomly, when Dan was talking about the Valiant covers and specifically Solar I got confused.  I have no idea why, but I always thought it was pronounced so-LAR.  The more you know.

  8. The Hurricane Heist - I wanted stupid fun.  It is about a heist during a hurricane.  That screams stupid fun.  The trailer even blasts Rock You Like A Hurricane while spewing horrible taglines.  This was just bad.  Uninteresting and worse, just plain boring.  And no Scorpions in sight.  Took itself way too serious.

    Peppermint - About as standard a shoot-em-up revenge film as you can get.

    Rocky - Not exactly sure what to think.  First time watching, yet I knew 75% of this movie (via general pop culture really).  A bit of a problem I have with most classics: if I know the ending, I get uninterested easily. 

  9. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood -  I got what I expected going in.  That is to say a movie about dealing with emotions and compassion.  Tom Hanks killed it as you knew he would.  But he wasn't the main character of the story, which I think was for the best.  This was never meant to be about Mr. Rogers (even tho the trailers heavily implied it was).  While I enjoyed it, I do think it went a bit '4th wall-y' in places.  But it also used model cities for transitions, which I loved.  The documentary was better insight into Fred Rogers, but this was a nice side companion piece.

    After reading some reviews, it seems like those who didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers had a vastly different opinion than those who did. 

  10. On 9/15/2020 at 8:02 PM, Dan said:

    Femforce #1-10: ..... but on the whole this was a waste of time and I can't believe this book lasted more than three decades.

     

    No past tense needed.  Still being published to this day.  Only reason I know this: my local shop has a spot reserved on the wall for these.  No idea why, as it looks like four issues a year come out.  Cannot imagine enough (or any) demand.

  11. Rookie of the Year - Finally clicked why I like this the least of the kid baseball movies.  And I quote everyone I met in Chicago when I went to see a Reds game in Wrigley, "Fuck the Cubs".

     

    Dealt - A documentary about card magician Richard Turner.  He just happens to be blind.  I was familiar with him from Penn & Teller's Fool Us and YouTube.  But this has little to do with his magic, and more to do with his relationship with blindness.  Can't say I was all that interested after a while.  Really repetitive in the storytelling.  Probably would have been a solid 45 minutes, and not the full 90.

  12. Finally got around to finishing Swamp Thing.  I watched the first eight episodes awhile ago and then not entirely sure why I didn't finish.  What I will say is that I remembered pretty much everything after a months long gap.  That doesn't happen often for me. 

    I enjoyed the show.  Probably the 'best' live-action show that DC Universe put out, but I enjoyed Doom Patrol more.  Just personal preference.  I can only think of two negatives.  The first being some bad CG.  Swamp Thing himself looks great, but thinks like blood are PS2 levels bad.  The other negative is the entire Ian Ziering plot feeling incredibly backdoor pilot.

    But an important positive for me was how they handled the behind the scenes.  Cutting down from 13 to 10 cannot be easy.  And it was way less cliffhanger-y that I had expected.

  13. A point made by Lance Storm:  What about someone like Xavier Woods? 

    Xavier Woods is his WWE stage name.  WWE owns that name.  That is clear and justified.  No issues. 

    Real name is Austin Watson.  WWE claims they own that too.  Big issue there, not sure if legal, but say it is. (I doubt that, but not a lawyer.)

    But Austin Creed is his online name.  Everything he does online is branded under the Austin Creed name.  Can WWE (falsely) claim ownership of that as well?

    What if he decides one day to put on a lucha mask & calls himself El Hijo Del Creed?  Or he changes it to GoldenGirlsFan4Life?

     

    The entire thing is stupid.

  14. Bill & Ted Face the Music - Was going to wait to watch, but it was at the local drive-in so why not?  General thought is I liked it, but it is the clear number 3 of the series.  But really, it was always going to be in my head because the other two are such a part of my childhood.  More specific spoiler-rich thoughts:

     

    Spoiler

    The surprise ending isn't.  The most obvious of twists that I am actually okay with.  Bill & Ted isn't really about deep plots.  It was about fun.  Yeah, I knew the ending, but I still enjoyed getting there.

    I do wish we could have gotten more interaction between the daughters with Bill & Ted.  The daughters basically going off to recreate Excellent Adventures was a nice idea, but meant that the four were separate for most of the movie.

    And the movie could have done more with the C plot of the Princesses.  They went on their own time travel journey and that could have been interesting.

    My biggest complaint is future versions of Bill & Ted.  They are the same guys 25 years later, but when they meet themselves, they suddenly turned into unlikable dicks.  Seems way out of character just to create conflict.

    Oh, and nice to have Missy back.

     

    Minions - The penance I had to sit thru to watch Bill & Ted.   I have no idea why these were paired together.  I don't think I have seen a worse movie in a theater (close enough).  I hated this.   Your mileage may vary.