Rumored for ages, it’s finally official. A tease to be sure, this looks to be what everyone expected. Holding off this long to show anything and giving a year out release must mean they are confident they can finish it by then. It takes Rockstar forever to make a game, but no one makes open world games like them.
Logan Trailer
This is the Wolverine everyone has wanted to see! They’ve kept things very quite while filming and I think it’s paid off.
October Horror
No, this has nothing to do with the election.
Tis the season! I’m way late to this. It was October 15th by the time I realized I haven’t watched any horror movies. I’ll try to knock out 4 more by Halloween. To start:
Krampus– Great, great movie. From the guy that brought us Trick R Treat, comes a story of a family with the misfortune to meet Saint Nicholas’ shadow, Krampus. From the folklore of Austria and Germany comes Krampus, a being that punishes bad children at the end of the year. Max, a boy around 10, is a good kid who loses his faith in Santa Clause when his immediate family comes to visit his home for Christmas. With his belief gone and a wish of ill will towards his family, Krampus hears it and comes knocking with his minions. What starts off as a Christmas movie along the lines of A Christmas Story and Home Alone, Krampus descends into a chaotic monster movie. The build up is just right, everything is calm and step by step the horror comes closer to the house. Stranded and alone, the once bickering family is forced to rally together to survive Krampus’ game of cat and mouse. There are some awesome practical creature effects and a rather surprising ending. I love how Krampus looks. Tall, but hunched over, horns, crazy looking hands. No dialog keeps him extra creepy and different masks hide his face (like the elves) but you can see his eyes and sometimes his real mouth. It’s rated PG-13 so the gore is very low, but there is some crazy stuff that will send younger kids running for the hills. Bonus points for the awesome animated segment for Krampus’ backstory. A great idea with phenomenal follow through (it looks fantastic), I recommend this one a lot.
Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father– This isn’t a horror movie. It’s a documentary. I’m putting this here because it’s real life horror and it’s so mind boggling it fits here. When Andrew Bagby is killed by his deranged girlfriend, his family and friends are devastated. His parents devote their lives to get justice for their son. The girlfriend flees to her native Canada and the parents follow her there when she’s arrested. With the start of the judicial process underway, it’s discovered that she is pregnant with Andrews child. Andrew’s childhood friend, Kurt Kuenne, a film maker, decides to travel the country to collect the stories of Andrew from all his friends and family. The goal is to show Andrew’s son, Zachary, who his father truly was through the dozens of people he touched in his life. While Kurt is doing this, the crazy woman was bailed out not once, but twice by the Canadian government. The reasoning by those in power defies logic. A lunatic was set loose and the results were so catastrophic that many people lost their jobs and new legislation has been pushed to reform Canadian bail law. Like all the best documentaries do, this one one stick to you long after you finish watching it.
Shameless S7E03
Home Sweet Homeless Shelter
An episode of growth (depending on your perspective) for Fiona.
It’s one problem after another and Fiona gets called into them all. She’s trying to keep the diner running and it isn’t going well. She’s cutting costs to keep staff and the food quality has taken a hit. Ian has a manic episode at work and she cuts out to go help him. When she gets back, the place is falling apart with the cook having walked out. Then she gets a call about Deb. Not caught stealing strollers like I thought, but shoplifting. The amount of stuff she tried to smuggle was ridiculous, she got way too confident in her skills. Fiona gets her out of getting arrested by claiming low IQ. A close call that Deb has to take on the chin.
Looking into the woman who owns the diner, Fiona gets inspired to take total control and put herself first. In a family meeting, the kids are soon to never forget, she tells them everyone (but Liam) has monthly rent to pay for or they are on their own. If they want to stay together as a family, they are now forced to prove it. The biggest line, she no longer wants to be the emergency contact for everyone. She can’t provide for herself if she keeps getting pulled in every direction at once.
Frank has taken on a different approach with his kids. He’s gotten new ones. At the local homeless shelter. On a mission with his new found inspiration of getting a “do over”, Frank scrambles to provide for his family. When the shelter they are in gets the notice of shutting down in a week, Frank sets up Gallagher’s Home for the Homeless in an open house down the street from his original family. Frank had a busy but rather successful day of grifting.
Carl gets hit with the ax from his first real love. When Dom’s father comes barreling at him for giving her gonorrhea, Carl looks for answers. He gets tested and it comes back negative. He turns to his older brothers who have to break the harsh news to him. Carl doesn’t take the news lying down. Let’s so how quickly he bounces back.
Kevin’s new business venture pivots to a different business model that turns out to pay way better for way less work. Svet’s dad makes a surprise appearance and that throws the trio’s relationship off. I like how the show keeps their plotlines weird and quick. It’s like getting updates on your neighbors that may or may not be more dysfunctional than you.
Very little on Lip this week. His internship sucks and he has to learn to suck it up.
My favorite moments on Shameless are usually between Lip and Ian. Brothers close in age, they have always been the closest and can relate to each other the best. The helpful ear Lip offers Ian was touching and greatly needed. I hope they continue to anchor each other because they both need it.
Movie Menagerie 5
Hitman: Agent 47– A middle of the road action movie based on a video game franchise. Not a bad movie, it just doesn’t do anything new or very interesting. I’ll give it good marks for casting Rupert Friend as Agent 47 (he looks just like the game character) and Zachary Quinto makes a good turn as a bad guy. Super soldiers made via genetic alterations, a scientist regrets his work and his daughter with all the answers hidden in her mind. Sandwich that in between good action set pieces (additional good marks for the elaborate assassination set-ups the franchise is known for) that are often marred by stuntmen turning into obvious CG ragdolls.
The Monuments Men– A team of men head into wartorn Europe to help secure as much of mankind’s greatest artwork as they can from the Nazi’s and return it to the rightful owners. It  was a staggering amount of art, in the millions of pieces. Just the amount of man power to move it all is staggering to think about. An interesting movie directed and led by George Clooney. The ensemble cast gets a fair amount of screen time as they spread out to chase leads and cover more ground. The risk was great as the went into active war zones. They were under a time limit as the Nazi’s were pushed back and got more desperate, often destroying caches as they retreated. The movie is largely upbeat (often oddly so with surprisingly goofy moments…the tone of the movie is rather disjointed) but also carries the weight of human sacrifice in the face of a terrible evil. An aspect of WWII that is I think often skipped over, Monuments Men is a story worth watching.
Keanu– If you’ve watched Key & Peele on Comedy Central, you have a good idea how this movie plays out. Taking the spin from John Wick of a man losing his dog to some very rude criminals, Keanu is about a dork who gets his cat taken and he goes with his cousin to find her.  It’s got it’s moments but the big laughs are few and far in between. Oddly enough my favorite moment is a complete throwaway line near the end of the movie. It’s a bring back from a character introduction and it’s there and gone in about 3 seconds. give them credit for finding enough material to spin into a full length movie that stays interesting and mixes things up as it goes (the crazy factor gets ramped up with just about every scene). Worth watching on a rainy day, especially if you’re a K&P fan.
ARQ– I saw this Netflix Original pop up on the service a few weeks ago and just got around to watching it. I thought it was going to be an outer space sci-fi movie but it’s all about time travel. Set in the not too distant future, Renton is hiding out with his girlfriend Hannah in an abandoned house. Seconds into the movie masked men barge into the room and drag him to the basement. Things get worse from there and he gets killed, only to wake up back in bed at 6:16am next to Hannah moments before the men come charging in again. As the time loops repeat, we watch as Renton and Hannah put the puzzle together of what’s happening to them. What starts out as a home invasion for money turns out to be much more. To tell any more would give away too much of what makes ARQ so great. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a movie like this so much since Primer. Time travel stories can get really messy but writer/director Tony Elliot keeps the story very tight and easy to understand (props to the editing and production design as well). Each added wrinkle is spaced out just right to keep away any monotony and expands the world that these characters live in to be much bigger than you think at the start. The production is kept small with everything happening in just a few rooms of the house. I really liked the cast too which helped make everything play believable. Great special effects when called for as well. Nice surprise, I recommend it to any sci-fi fan.
Halt and Catch Fire <> Season 3
Warning: Spoilers all over the place.
They could have named this season Flight of the Phoenix. The seasons starts with Mutiny starting to make a name for itself and not even by the end of the season, it’s all ashes.
Out of all of Joe’s failings, Ryan’s death was the worst of all of them. Ryan was young and inexperienced in just about every way. Like Cameron, brilliant, but he didn’t make it out the other end. Cameron got burned but her situation had a simpler path out of the rubble. Ryan never thought of (or knew of) how Joe makes his business moves in secret. This made him pull the trigger, for what he believed would be in helping and defending his mentor, when it actually was the worst thing he could have done. Plus, Ryan found out he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. That’s rough for a guy who thinks he’s the smartest person in every room. He thought he could cover his tracks only to find first hand that there was tech out there that he had no idea about.
Episode 8 I’ll call The Coup. Donna and Cameron had always been a great but dysfunctional team. They made it work for awhile, but those last few times where Cam would disappear (and she always held up progress on Mutiny because she insisted on doing everything herself) pushed Donna over the edge of tolerance. In this episode, Gordon is little more than a passenger, Voting Cameron out of the company is probably the best scene in the series so far. Intense and crushingly sad. Donna had her reasons and as everyone else did back her, it wasn’t a crazy idea. Cut off like a diseased limb, Cameron goes to Japan with Tom to work in the videogame industry.
Episode 9 sent me for a loop. They jump ahead 4 years to 1990. Donna’s plan failed. Mutiny collapsed. She’s divorced from Gordon and has made partner at Diane’s VC company. Gordon has managed to make the networking plan that he and Joe were working when Ryan killed himself to its fledgling status. Â Joe is all alone day trading stocks by the look of it. Cameron has been in Japan the entire time making Space Bike into a successful series with Atari. When Donna finds out Cam is going to be at Comdex, she reaches out to Joe to help get all of them together to discuss a new business venture.
It was great to see Joe and Cameron together and having fun. Their scars healed over a little too much. Seeing bullheaded Donna was quite a bit different. So the big idea is the World Wide Web. In 1990 the Internet was still tiny. A few companies had access to it, it was tiny and was more or less just for academia. These people, the visionary, the engineer, the coding savant and Donna could be the ones to build the door that gets the public online.
The contempt in the room is a hurdle, to say the least. Joe butts heads with Tom (everyone more or less does that with Tom) but the real sticking point is between Cameron and Donna. When Cam admits that she’s as much to blame for the implosion of Mutiny as Donna, is a big revelation and admission for her. Then the other revelation comes on just as strong: she can’t work with Donna again. A flip comment about ditching Joe if Cam wanted to was all it took. What they originally had, what made their work so fun and exciting, is gone. She can never trust Donna again. Given the ultimatum, Donna leaves only to book a flight to Sweden. This leaves the original trinity to work together, for now.
A lot happened this season and it was all pretty great. It’s confirmed that next season will be the last and the fallout from season 3 has me teed up and ready to go for it.
The Jungle Book (2016)
Jon Favreau is a hell of a director. He also knows how important a great cast and crew is. A reimagination of the decades old book and decades old animated Disney movie, The Jungle Book is an impressive movie and a technical marvel.
Found in the jungle as a very young boy by the panther Bagheera, Mowgli is being raised by wolves. Referred to as a “man cub” Mowgli has a hard time finding his place in the pack. When the tiger, Shere Khan, finds out a human is living amongst them he vows to kill him. In his journey to stay alive, Mowgli discovers fantastic characters, danger, and himself.
Right from the start, The Jungle Book grabs you by the eyeballs and guides you through a world that only great cinema can. From the Disney logo, we zoom away from Cinderella’s castle over the water into a river bed surrounded by foliage. Once through the film’s logo, the camera turns to the right and we’re in the Jungle Book. Mowgli is played by Neel Sethi, and aside from a quick scene with his father, is the only real life character in the movie. All the animals and 99% of the environment is computer generated. Cutting edge is putting it mildly. The animation on every level is amazing. The animals all have weight to them making them look that much more real. Even though talking animals is fantasy, it all looks right and is convincing to the point where my suspension of disbelief was locked in and I just believed that all of this was happening. The “Bare Necessities” song with Baloo (perfect casting Bill Murray) in the river is crazy. The finale is especially mind blowing.
The amount of care and planning to pull this movie off is impressive. Remaking a beloved classic is a daunting  task to start with and the way they pushed this story with new tech is daring. So much could have gone wrong.  The cinematography is genre defining stuff. It’s shot so well, the transitions are perfect and the soundtrack pulls everything together. With Favreau launching the MCU with Iron Man in 2008 and this, he is Disney’s golden goose. They’ll let this man do whatever he wants and we’ll all be waiting for it. This was a big surprise for me.
Shameless S7E02
Swipe, Fuck, Leave
This was a follow-up episode. With everyone’s paths on a certain track, we rolled along them to the next station.
Frank escalates his occupation by barricading the second floor of the house for his own use after Fiona knocks a hole into the bedroom door and throws all his things out. That starts a war of escalation where the kids cut off his water, he lets a raccoon loose in the house and the kids finally bust through his cement block walls. All the while Frank lets everyone know about his disgust with them and will be disowning them all.
Debbie continues her Craigslist steal and flip until she almost kidnaps a baby. The money has been so good I’m sure this won’t deter her, she’ll just be more careful. Every time she steals I’m shocked she gets away with it. As an aside, where Deb sleeps during Frank’s occupation is never mentioned. Best I can tell she was on the kitchen floor.
Ian has boyfriend trouble where he can’t come to grips with Caleb’s assertion that he isn’t cheating when he sleeps with a woman. This sends Ian reeling and actually sleep with a random woman to see if “no one is actually 100% gay” like Caleb says. Well, Ian is 100% sure he is 100% gay. Looks like his happy and healthy relationship is coming to an end.
Lip gets an internship at some new tech company and when the feds come a knocking to confiscate some servers, he witnesses one of the head guys deleting info. This makes Lip really curious and this could turn into Lip’s leverage to turn his internship into a paying gig. Not too sure of the play just yet. Meanwhile, he’s walking that narrow line of sobriety. When popping into The Alibi for a beer, as per his set rules, Frank comes in with Liam and that exchange convinces him to skip this drink. Later, he goes out with Fiona and her new employees…
Fiona gets total control of the diner. After a rather tense situation when going to Chad’s office she’s given full reign to get the diner in shape (or it’s being shut down). With that fire underneath her, she hires some new girls and fires off who she sees as dead weight. With new outfits for her new staff (short skirts!) Fiona is pushing to get the diner into the black at warp speed. She goes out with her new hires for the first time since her disastrous wedding day, gets plastered and uses Tinder for the first time. After having a successful night, Fiona goes to V’s to share her joy at 2am and V shuts her down, telling her it’s gotta wait for daylight. Fiona’s reaction was hilarious. Now about Lip. One of the new hires has the hots for him and it’s pretty clear they are so right for each other in all the wrong ways. He’s apprehensive about drinking in such an environment, knowing it’s dangerous for him. There will be no happy ending for these two.
Carl is on the mend and has to see his doctor twice after ripping his stitches. At the very end he hits his goal of 72 hours of healing and it’s game on underneath the stairs with Dom.
The neighborly threesome hits the rough patch. Kevin is given house husband duty while Svet and V work the bar. Feeling like he’s being put well below his station and not appreciated, he’s inspired to start a new business. Nook & Fannies might work! Might.
Korn- A Different World (ft. Corey Taylor)
Not sure what the narrative of the video is, but I’m all for stop motion animation.
Shameless S07E1
Hiraeth
Shameless is back three months early! I have no idea why but I’ll take it. We rejoin the Gallaghers a month after the season six finale. What are my favorite degenerates up to?
The title is a Welsh term for being homesick. That would be Frank as he wakes up from a coma in the hospital. After lamenting that no one came looking for him (he forgot he was tossed into the river) he wheels himself to The Alibi where the “transgressions” against him come flooding back. Insulted he heads home only to get dragged out of the house when Fiona finds him there. Frank is beyond insulted that his family has exiled him for simply “telling the truth.” Always the defiant one, he manages to hole up in Fiona’s room.
Liam! He’s grown up since last season but remains mute.
Lip leaves rehab and is now on the road to getting some sort of life back on track. He was expelled from school and has no intention of going enrolling somewhere else. He rolls the dice a bit to score an internship from Prof. Youens contacts. After getting into so much trouble with alcohol, he sets up all new rules to keep safe but still enjoy a drink. Or two. He’s Frank’s son so we can all see where this is going (as seen on the faces of V, Kevin, and Svet when he outlines it all). For money, he visits Fiona at the diner and she puts him to work immediately as a dish washer.
With Sean gone, Fiona has taken over manager duties at the diner. Working all the time with all the stress and little compensation, she manages to get a dollar raise an hour from the owner (or the rep for the owners I think. Pretty sure his name is Chad). She puts forth that she’s off of dating, she’s just going to focus on herself for once. With the relationship with Sean scattered on the rocks, you can’t blame her. She’s very busy but it looks like she’s in a good place right now. She continues to be oblivious of the trials and tribulations of everyone though (not like the Gallagher’s are great about talking to each other, so it’s to be expected).
Carl is going hot and heavy with Dominique but when she reveals she’s not a fan of his foreskin, he goes into investigative mode. I guess it’s good that the only thing for him to be concerned about now is how is dick looks, he’s doing okay on the Gallagher scale. He makes a rather rash decision with his rainy day fund. “I don’t feel a thing!” “You you will.” We’ll see if his oral experiences improve for him.
Deb is in full panic with Francine. Yup, being a single teen mom sucks! She’s exhausted and is struggling every single minute of the day. After almost giving up, she goes to the park to think and see other mom’s. After getting some shade from a well off mother, she notices how nice the stroller is this mean mom has left unattended….ladies and gentlemen Deb is now a kleptomaniac. She’s flipping the baby gear for series cash on craigslist and I give her a week before she’s nabbed for it. You can’t sell the stuff you steal in the exact same neighbourhood you stole it from.
Ian is going strong as an EMT and is still with Caleb. Things are great! Wait, nope. Suspion sets in when Caleb tells him he’s been meeting an old friend. It’s a woman though, so he has nothing to worry about. Ian doesn’t buy it and enlists Lip to help him follow Caleb. That’s where they scope him making out with this woman in public. Drama ahoy!
Finally the lovely menage a trois of V, Kevin and Svetlana. These three have things figured out. Their working as unit for The Alibi, the kids and each other! Everything is scheduled out and going well. With Svetlana being awesome with math, she’s been put in charge of the bar’s books. She fixes some stuff V can’t figure out and then V asks her to look at their personal finances. Svet comes to the quick conclusion that they are doing nothing for their future. Little income, no savings, no future plans. It’s time they think ahead.
Carl’s story is the real comic relief right now along with Frank being Frank. Deb has come up with her own scheme and her lack of experience at being shady is going to shut her down quick. I like seeing the start of Fiona putting herself first, but knowing her she’s going to start paying attention to Chad simply for some relief from her exhausting family. A girl needs an escape, which judging from the previews may be more literal than figurative.
Ash vs Evil Dead S2
The gang is back and they brought a few gallons of blood with them. We join our main trio enjoying the hiatus from hell that Ruby granted them at the end of last season. That comes to a screeching halt when the Evil crashes their party (with gruesome results).
Turns out Ruby isn’t as powerful as she thought. She’s lost control over her demon children and they’re trying to take the Necronomicon from her. That can’t happen so she’s got to turn to Ash for help. The attack in paradise ends their agreement and Ash is none too pleased to be roped back in. But when the survival of mankind comes knocking again, he doesn’t have a choice. Being with Ash, Kelly and Pablo don’t have a choice either.
The premiere is all Evil Dead so it’s great. More Ash, more mayhem, it’s giving me what I want. It’s a tough mold to screw up and this adventure is looking promising so I’m all in again.
Fear the Walking Dead <> S2
Sometimes I feel like I watch Fear more out of some strange sense of obligation than actual enjoyment. The show often just plods along. Being a spin-off of a zombie show, it checks the same zombie bullet points of the genre, just with a different set of characters (and location).
There seems to be more boring characters (less interesting anyway) than good ones and it’s like I’m just waiting for someone to deservedly get eaten. The writers do tend to eventually get to point and it’s enjoyable and that’s where the entertainment comes in.  I just don’t have that connection to any of the characters like I do with the main series. I wouldn’t be bothered if the whole cast got wiped out. I completely forgot about Ofelia. I don’t remember when she left the main group. So seeing her hoof it on her own sometimes gets nothing more than an “alright” out of me.
The last two episodes of this season were far and away the best. Chris’ story with his dad completed and turned out well. Significant character changes and it led to quite a bit of carnage and threw everything into the air again.
The laziness creeps up in this show too much. Those moments where they need something to happen (namely action) just for something to happen and it’s done all wrong. In this season, the random bad guys who show up to shoot a small horde on a wide empty road. Despite having long range guns and plenty of room to back up (or just get out of the way) they all die. Literally just stood there for the walkers to get to them. Brain dead stuff.
I keep telling myself to dump the show because I don’t think I’m going to miss anything. I never go through with it. Considering I liked the finale, I’m in for next years premiere. We’ll see how it goes.