Saturday, July 28, 2018

Teen Titans Go! to the Movies

I've only watched a few episodes of the TV show while on vacation; the cartoon was sometimes funny, but it was often juvenile too, and I would have preferred to watch Scooby-Doo reruns. I was afraid that the movie would be too juvenile or too meta about Hollywood. (God, did I get sick of Hollywood navel-gazing satire in Arrested Development's season 4 Hollywood plots.) But actually the movie was pretty good and fun; the movie-making stuff actually figured into the villain's plans for world domination. It wasn't just for meaningless jokes.

Also, before the main movie there was a short, just like Pixar movies open with shorts, and this film was about Batgirl trying to join the other DC Superhero Girls in crimefighting. It was nice; I've seen a few webisodes of their series set in high school, and this was fun.

Will Arnett voices Slade, whose specialty seems to be "mind manipulation." At first he doesn't take the Teen Titans seriously, because his first few tricks (I mean, illusions) are misdirections like "look over there" and pretending to pull off his thumb. When the Teen Titans finally start not to fall for the silly maneuvers, Slade starts doing more impressive magic and fights competently. Meanwhile Robin pursues his dream to get a Hollywood movie, convincing his fellow Titans to help him go back in time and change origin stories so all the other superheros don't become heroes, leaving just them. However, that doesn't work out, so they go back and fix everything before returning to pursue their archnemesis Slade.

The movie is bright and hectic as expected, but has some genuine heart and some good songs. Overall, a very respectable, kid-friendly movie. Good job on Arnett for producing this; he needs more projects like this and less talking-dog movies. Though I do want to see him do more live-action stuff instead of always being a voice actor. I can understand making the most of his wonderful voice, but seeing his charming face is nice too.

Friday, July 27, 2018

Living Nightmare

In Israel they recently passed that law that they're a Jewish nation-state, and Netanyahu is saying that Hitler was pushed into killing Jews by the Grand Mufti. Because of course right now is the time to inflame hatred against Arabs. Fuck him. How is he not forced to resign over this or the corruption charges? [ETA: Apparently Netanyahu said that in 2015, not recently. But the point still stands; how is he still in charge?]

Is it the same reason that somehow Trump keeps hanging on after all his scandals and crime? The idiot started a stupid trade war with the whole world, and now because people thought his farmers' bailout was shit, he finally backed down and decided to make nice with Europe. And the deadline for reuniting the children passed, but he thinks he can get away with leaving a third of the kids separated because they're somehow "ineligible"? Glad the ACLU and RAICES are still on it, even if other people have moved on.

I don't know if it's the persistent triple-digit heat, or the stress of the world being on fire, but I keep waking up hours early and having really vivid dreams that seem to last forever. I feel physical sensations in them, like water flooding into my house, and a roomba (that I've never owned) zooming past my foot while I'm going through my closet. I thought that time had passed and I watched the last half of season 5, but I got really mad at how Mitch had ruined Arrested Development. And I thought that I was yelling and trying to calm down to write a blog review. After I woke up, it took me several minutes to realize that no, the dream didn't happen. It's very strange and disconcerting.

Meanwhile the summer TV press tour has started with more announcements. They might as well just make Comic-Con part of the press tour, because it's all the same marketing/hyping going on. At least I got to watch a nice interview about Crazy Rich Asians coming out soon. I can't wait.

Saturday, July 21, 2018

More Franchises

Anyway, it's apparently Comic-Con weekend, so there's all sorts of news and trailers coming out. I'm a little concerned that Greg Berlanti has signed on to too many comic book shows at once, though it is good to have more diverse heroes out there. There's even a Buffy reboot looking for a black female lead.

Apparently the director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies got fired for his tweets. It was orchestrated by the right as more revenge since they didn't get Sam Bee and Joy Reid fired. Yet they want to claim this is about PC culture and outrage. It's disingenuous but I don't really care about that guy anyway, especially since he used to think it was funny to troll and shock people. I don't care, just like I don't care about loudmouth Bill Maher. I hope Disney takes the opportunity to find a new director who's a woman or minority because we need for diversity behind the screens, not just in the casting. More diverse writers too.

No trailer yet, but some artwork for the She-Ra reboot came out this week. People are complaining that she doesn't look like her old self. I understand the characters are teens now, so it makes sense not to depict her has an adult. Will have to see the new She-Ra in action to really tell if it's good.

Sweltering

It's been fucking hot as hell lately, in the triple digits, such that it's like I'm living in Phoenix, not DFW. I feel sweaty and uncomfortable all the time, and my office is always too cold, so I'm going back and forth between the extremes. I don't remember a summer so hot before, and we're still only in July, not August.

It's been a horrible week starting with the debacle in Helsinki. Post-outrage, Trump tried to walk back the treason but the intelligence community is still rightfully pissed. If Republicans really thought Trump went too far, they should have voted to secure our elections from more attacks. At least they voted not to hand our ambassador over to Putin. So shame and resistance sometimes works.

Also, Tim Scott got a Trump-nominated judge to withdraw. If only we could get a similar outcome for the Supreme Court.

Saturday, July 14, 2018

Representation

Scarlett Johansson backed down from playing the transman after all, and said that she's learning. One can doubt her sincerity and think that she did this to save her Black Widow movie. I'm still side-eyeing her. There's a lot of clueless internet comments from people thinking that she was "bullied" into withdrawing from the part and that "sensitivity" has gone amuck. But that's bullshit. She didn't even fucking look like the guy she was supposed to portray. Not remotely.

Hollywood has been making movies and TV shows about trans people for years now, profiting off them and getting Oscars and Emmys for the people that Johansson's rep listed in her stupid comeback. How many fucking years are trans people supposed to sit by watching all these great parts go to cis-actors, while they in turn don't get to play cis roles? I'm even appalled that Louie Anderson is playing a woman on the cable show Baskets; all I ever see is critics praising him for doing a brilliant homage to his mother, and not one person questions why the hell he's stealing a role from older actresses, who have to fight for any meaty good roles.

Yellow face and black face in Hollywood's past isn't acceptable anymore, and that's what we're talking about, privileged people stealing from underrepresented minorities who never had the chance to play the lead character. It's like fucking Luise Rainer getting that part in the Good Earth instead of Anna May Wong, who paid her dues for years playing stereotypes and dragon ladies. She had to go to Europe and China itself to get anything worthwhile, because of Hollywood's racism. I mean you wonder why it took 70 years to get the first Asian woman nominated as a lead actress in a drama series? It's because 1) they don't write that many lead roles for Asians, of either gender, and 2) even when they write them, Hollywood wants to cast white actors for those roles instead. Sandra Oh thought she was reading for the receptionist role, not the fucking lead. That's how crappy things have been. And in the meantime, on the comedy side, Constance Wu still has no Emmy noms.

So telling Scarlett to get her head out of her ass is not "bullying" her; it's telling her to fucking drop the mask of her white privilege and start being an ally. 'Cause fuck, I read recently that the London pride parade had been spoiled by transphobic women spouting that right-wing shit that transwomen are just men who want to rape women in bathrooms. This fucking nonsense needs to be eradicated, and it's not helped by having trans people constantly be played by the wrong fucking gender. When is Hollywood going to learn its lesson?

Thursday, July 5, 2018

This and That

I read that a woman climbed the Statue of Liberty in protest. Aside from my being afraid of heights, that's much braver than I am. And she was doing it for the separated children. Thanks for keeping the resistance alive!

Also, a boys' soccer team in Thailand are trapped in a cave, but they've been found alive. Officials are trying rescue plans A, B, and C to get them out before monsoon rains flood the caves worse. It reminds me of the trapped miners in Chile, and I even read that one of the miners wants to go there to help. Good luck to them.

Meanwhile I'm glad that Private Eyes season 2 is now airing on ION. It's a perfect light summer mystery show. They take a variety of PI cases, not always murder, and they just added a new character to run their office. I hope she stays awhile unlike that babysitter character who disappeared off The Mysteries of Laura. So many networks do dumb reality shows during the summer.

Scarlett Johansson apparently didn't learn her lesson with Ghost in the Shell. She's signed on to play a transman in a biopic, and she defended herself by listing other cis actors playing trans, including freaking Jeffrey Tambor. It wasn't right with them either! She's really a garbage person; I won't be watching that Black Widow movie for sure.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Happy 4th

Well the rest of season 5 didn't show up on Netflix after all. It was just fan speculation and that "coming soon" tease. But after all, we had been hoping for episodes on Cinco, and they didn't come until nearly June. So maybe the second half will be weeks late as well.

There's an elaborate Cracked theory that Lindsay is Lucille Austero's daughter. While I'm glad to see people noticing that the Nichael birth certificate has the wrong gender, wrong birthdate, and wrong birthmother--basically everything on it is wrong--I think that Cracked's theory is farfetched and "cracked" if you will. After all, Lucille Austero could simply be dyeing her hair black because she doesn't want to have grey/white hair that makes her look old. There are other fan theories out there, like Tracey Bluth still being alive, or Murphybrown being Tony Wonder's nephew.

All these people think that these clues have been hidden and seeds planted in the way that Buster losing his hand was foreshadowed in seasons 1-2. And sure, AD does like doing long-range background jokes like that. But they've also retconned stuff and ignored Maeby and GM's marriage for two seasons now. They're not infallible and they mess up quite a bit of continuity at their convenience. (They're totally inconsistent on whether one family member --Tobias in season 2, Michael in season 5--can sign away rights for the whole family, or whether each person needs to sign the contracts--season 4.) And they do spiteful things like deporting Annyong for no reason.

Season 5 seems to be trying to hint that something happened in 1982, something blackmail worthy, and Lucille ended up bribing Buster by letting him ride in the July 4th parade that year. It's why Lucille objects to Ron Howard's TV series, because she thinks it will dig up buried family secrets. Apparently they've got something to tell us, but I'm pretty apathetic and almost expecting the secret to be a huge disappointment. Like the fucking staircar photo that makes not one ounce of sense, and becomes instantly moot because of Buster's prison escape. It doesn't matter who's in the photo, because now Buster's a fugitive!

Uggh. I'm not watching this show for some huge twist to be revealed at the end. I just want a wrapup of the murder mystery, a Gob/Tony ending, and some closure like the way that Development Arrested wrapped up the series in season 3. I don't want Lost conspiracy shit or the stupid "Live" gimmick Mitch talked about in his magazine interview. Mitch, doing that would mean that you officially became the idiot network rating stunt that you were parodying in S.O.B.s. Do you not see that? Why do you retread bad old jokes? Why can't you move the fucking story forward instead of spinning your wheels going nowhere? We fucking waited years for this. End the fucking movie you've been talking about all this time. Fix it, Mitch, and don't come back begging for a 6th season. I won't be there. I'm tired of these episodes not being worth it.