Redone Blog

I took several years off yes, but I was quite busy with work and grew disgusted with Google/Blogger.  I recently fired up a new blog with some ported content at my new local:
https://www.toadlickgames.com
Catch me there.

Airplane Movies

When trapped on a plane, one can find themselves sitting through schlock that they never would on their couch:

Star Trek Beyond

Plenty of time to catch on email while watching this movie.

This movie is notable both because it was the least bad of the bunch, and so memorable that I had to use Google to find it because I couldn't remember it at all (I knew I had watched a movie...).  Through the whole thing there are moments of great creativity and incredible stupidity (such as when the story uses the most contrived circumstance imaginable to cram a play back of the Beastie Boys Sabotage in yet another Trek film).

X-Men: Apocalypse

Blue without you...

That first X-Men movie from years ago was the best of the bunch, and even then it was just OK.  In this, yet another reboot, a bunch of characters no one cares about half destroy the planet in a quest to do...something.  The ten second cameo of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine almost stole the film; the only reason anyone shows up for X-Men is Wolverine.

Jason Bourne

Matt Damon's face through the whole film.  No kidding, check Goggle images.

Really?  After all these movies there's still CIA guys left alive that want to kill Bourne?  This is essentially a repeat of the second and third movies, which weren't all that good to begin with.  There's lots of entertaining chases and fisticuffs, but not enough to fill the empty void that is the rest of the movie.  (As a note the movie ends with yet another mix of Moby's Mysterious Ways, which at this point is every bit as worn and tired as everything else Bourne related, fitting).

Terminator Genisys

Probably better in a language that you can't understand.

WTF?
It's kind of like the movie Clue, but with more Terminators and less humor.  Two sandmiches because the plane landed before I could partake in the entirety of this travesty.

Chick Flix

Bunny Love

Not a movie, but first we have this offering from a Chinese version (of sorts) of Amazon:

The best thing that can be said for these is that they're significantly less disturbing than the other animal heads on there which look to be made for bizarre Adult Swim bumpers.

Cinderella

The entire time that I was watching this I puzzled over why this movie exists; it's not as if there'a dearth of live action Cinderella knock-offs.  The answer of course is in the movie theater full of cheering women: printing cash for Disney.  Women apparently can't get enough of the "loser babe scores alpha male" story which is refreshing in it's own way since such sentiments run so counter to PC "mores" and feminism generally.  So hooray for Cinderella and the Disney money machine that helps keep lefty extremism at bay despite their own efforts.  But as a guy, yeah, I don't need to see another Cinderella movie again, ever.

The Snow White Murder Case

Quick: pick out the ugly one, the pretty one, the one that was murdered, and the killer, and some are one and the same.  It's easier than you think.

This Japanese movie was sold to me by Sally as being a real plot-twister of a murder mystery.  Fifteen minutes in though I was reminded of when Memoirs of a Geisha came out ten years ago and there was much consternation over the fact that Japan couldn't field any decent actresses so Hollywood had to go with Chinese actresses ("All you people look the same to me").  The accusation at the time was that the animated form had stunted the ability of the Japanese to put together live-action productions.  I made this remark to Sally and she asked what was wrong with the movie and I said "well, the acting,...the directing, um, the cinematography, the script, and, well, yeah it's like an over-funded high school movie project".  I can capture the movie's faults in one screen grab, where, in a rather important scene someone thought that it would be a good idea to put a color-shifting bowl of rotating water, a transparent LED toilet of sorts, in the background:

It doesn't help that the bowl is more interesting than the actors

The movie did have a few strengths.  For instance, what was of mild interest, and what the movie should have concentrated more on, is the absolute pettiness that can accompany large groups of women working together.  Lots of 'fun' was on display such as women putting each other down for their clothes, making efforts to steal the office alpha-male (or what passes for one in a Japanese office), petty thefts, backstabbing, exaggerating stories told in confidence so that they can be crafted into a self esteem killing barbs, etc.  Yes it's all in there and it goes to show that for as much as women may love the workplace, they rarely like working with, or especially for, other women.

It's a shame that a movie that was so close to succeeding in being a cautionary tale on workplace feminization turned into such a hot, unfocused mess.  (Actually the movie could have just been about any one of the four things it tried to be about and it would have been better).

Empresses In The Palace   

The costume drama to end all costume dramas

While in China I may have mentioned that there was a historical soap opera of sorts that played nonstop on one of the channels.  Weighing in at a hefty 76, 45 minute episodes, it is a lot to take in, perhaps...

I bring this up since the series can now be viewed on Netflix in a truncated format: 6, 90 minute episodes.  Talk about a hatchet job!  How one edits this down without translating the whole thing I don't know, so I'm unsure what the point of the exercise is.  The series is meticulous with their set design and costuming and is filmed on a set which is a recreation of the Forbidden City and is a tourist attraction in its own right.

The problem with the native series, not that I could understand any of it, is that at least 90% of it is women talking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about palace intrigue BS (the other 10% is women boring men to tears with palace intrigue BS).  "No wonder they were always overrun by barbarians", I thought while watching.  Sally complained that the Netflix series doesn't make sense in its heavily edited format, but I can easily believe that a version of this series could be trimmed down to an even hour for male viewers.

Phillip K. Dick Books

Mrs. Sandmich bought me a Kobo at the going-out-of-business sale at Borders.  I was rather unenthused, until I got the idea that my primary 'shopping' site for intellectual content, PirateBay.org, might have some content that I could put onto the device.  It wasn't long before I had sucked down my primary target, a handful of Phillip K. Dick novels. 

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This post has actually been sitting in the ol' draft bin for quite some time and the Kobo has been dead for more than a year now at this point, but since a buddy of mine expressed a possible interest in some PKD novels, I figured I'd finally wrap this thing up.  Below is are my brief thoughts on various PKD novels, but I should point out that there are many that I have not read, and will probably not get around to reading.

• The Simulcara.  John Derbyshire had once written that short stories are the natural format for sci-fi which I've found to be true.  Coming up with one clever idea is hard enough, but coming up with enough clever ideas to pad out a whole novel is a bit of a challenge.  In this effort Dick gets around the restrictions by basically going 'Pulp Fiction' and cramming the novel with a bunch of short stories that eventually intertwine.  The only downside is the ridiculous number of characters, but it is one of the few PKD novels that doesn't go off the rails into la-la land towards the end.  It's interesting too in that it pokes fun at various tropes that he uses in his other novels.
• Lies, Inc.  This was a particularly egregious example of a PKD book straying far 'off the plantation' since it spends basically the back half of the book leaving the reader ungrounded to anything that happened earlier.  Late in the book Dick uses a literary device to provide a back story to the current events which in themselves make little sense, but by then it's too late.  Right when the rubber was hitting the road I turned to the next chapter hoping to see the novel finally form into some sort of coherent mess only to see "About Phillip K. Dick".  Huh?  It turns out the novel was originally presented as two parts and then a bunch of extraneous material that was near and dear to Dick was stuffed in as well.  Needless to say, it reads exactly as it sounds.  One interesting tidbit was that a pinch hitting author had to be brought in for one of the original reissues because some of the original pages were missing (I get the impression that the full version of the novel was the last thing published with Dick's name on it); that poor dude, it'd be like trying to graft a outboard boat motor onto a motorcycle.
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (i.e. Blade Runner).  I'd once heard that if anyone had read the novel, that they would know that Decker in Blade Runner was a replicant.  I can firmly say that anyone who says that is full of themselves.  By the end of the novel it's gets hard to tell if Decker even actually exists, let alone if he's a replicant. 
• Our Friends from Folix 8.  While The Simulcara may be my favorite of the bunch, I have a soft spot for this one even though it's chock full of typical PKD devices.  Since the story revolves around efforts to bring down a corrupt government run by tyrannical, above-the-law elites, you may see why it has appeal to me.
• A Scanner Darkly.  A cautionary tale against drug abuse, this story is basically a retelling of some of PKD's own experiences with a slightly futuristic spin.  The last few overly introspective chapters should have been trimmed down though; I found myself skipping whole paragraphs lest I fall asleep while reading it.  (The movie adaptation is notable for making the mistake of sticking very close to the text of the novel).
• Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said.  Essentially a tear down on celebrity status, the few good sci-fi ideas (different grades of genetically engineered humans, drugs which allow a person to bend reality) sadly are only briefly touched upon.
• The Crack in Space.  One of his better efforts at time travel/alternate reality stories.
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.  There was a lot to like in this story about an intergalactic villain (Eldritch) and not very altruistic businessman's efforts to thwart him; but by the end I couldn't help but think that the story might have been better told by someone else.
• Time out of Joint.  A good example of PKD's novels which view the future from a 50's "present" and follows a man who is trying to unravel a world in which he may be being manipulated.  This novel's most notable point is that since a lot of PKD novels become unglued towards the end, the ending of this novel is pretty much a mystery right up until the end.
• Ubik.  Another novel where PKD uses a futuristic literary device to allow him to write about a past about which he is more familiar.  Although by this point, nonsensical story lines had become familiar to me in PKD's novels, this one went on for far too long and it probably should have been edited down to a short story.
• The Man in the High Castle.  A clever story that revolves around an alternate history where the U.S. never entered WWII and the Axis powers are hunting down a man who wrote a story about an alternate history where the Americans did enter WWII and the Axis powers lost.  It's a very good take-down of this Pat Buchanan novel, though written several decades earlier.  It must be said though, that the novel really isn't sci-fi.

Notable short stories:

• Minority Report.  It's interesting that the awful movie reversed the plot of this great  conservative law and order story into a liberal mess of 'release all prisoners now' gobbledygook.
• Pay Check.  John Woo directed the movie which is about the only thing that I can fault it for.  This adaptation sticks pretty close to the excellent short story and actually improves upon it.
• We Can Remember It For You Wholesale (i.e. Total Recall).  The short story is good (and rather short for even a short story), but if someone didn't know that the movies were based off of it, only the most careful reading would reveal that fact.

A final note, although some may find PKD tropes (perverted old men, mind altering drug use, poor editing, etc.) annoying, none is worse than when he goes on page-long rants in German.  If you encounter these, just skip them as he rarely explains what it means; I guess he expects his readers to be fluent in it.