By Roy Mathur, on 2023-04-15, at 23:56:25--01:43:31 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show, Listen
Sorry, I know a classic Doctor Who revisit is scheduled, but there is so much to talk about that I had to record one of these "everything including the kitchen sink" pods.
Due to a cockup involving a timer app ringing throughout the recording, unbeknownst to me because I don't monitor the audio, this is my second attempt a day later. Monitor your audio, Roy!
I'm back on the Shure SM58 tonight. I again found the Shure SM7B meant less, but also much more difficult, editing. I also noticed that it was both a bit muddy and very essy (sibilant) on my voice.
With the big mic gone, I took down its boom arm because it whacked me on the skull; not a common problem, I warrant you.
I'm still taping into a recorder, not my PC, but that's yet another problem for yet another day... again.
This is Warner Bros. 2023 sequel to 2019's Shazam!, which, as far as I remember, I quite liked and said so in pod 262 (2019).
The movie is about Shazam/Billy Batson and his family fighting the supervillainous Daughters of Atlas, who are gods who want their powers back.
I enjoyed the quippy humour of the main adult character and the FX were okay, but the film was long, bloated, lacking in engagement, and the Skittles product placement was cringingly heavy handed.
Shut Eye is a 2016 Hulu TV series about a failed magician working as a psychic, whose visions start to come true. As a hobbyist and highly sceptical strictly only-for-fun Tarot card reader (each episode of the first season is named after a card) and a fan of stage magic, how could I resist a drama with a premise like that?
I have watched a few episodes so far and found the show to well acted, well plotted, but surprisingly grim. All the characters, grifter or otherwise, were highly unpleasant. I was expecting something lighter like Psych or The Mentalist, but I got a psychic mafiosa network. It was too Breaking Bad, a show that was of its moment, a moment that has long passed, and that has been endlessly copied. Shut Eye was cancelled after two seasons and I'm okay with that.
By the way, "shut eye" refers to psychics who believe their abilities are real. As Houdini said at the 1926 congressional Fortune Telling Hearings, 'A "shut-eye" is one who believes everything any medium tells him or her. An "open-eye" is one who is a trickster and know it.'
Amazon 2023 crime/horror in which a stalkerish fan's best friend and flatmate kills herself after moving out and rowing with her boyfriend. The fan kills the terrible boyfriend in a fit of rage and goes completely off the rails.
Good in that it's a mostly black cast, with a female protagonist. However, Despite that it's supposed to be a comedy/horror, and while it's almost Robert Bloch Hitchkockian, it's not quite as funny, and I found it too depressing to deal with.
Back in 253 (2019) I talked about the Jordan Peele's 2019 CBS All Access reboot and said it's not perfect, but it is stylish, engaging, and original.
Since then I drifted away as I didn't find it quite engaging enough.
I enjoyed the last episode in which Greef Karga presents Grogu with the gift of a mech suit made from the salvaged IG-12. I loved how, to attract Grogu, the robot's control knobs are shiny chrome, like the one in Din's ship that he is obsessed with. The constant robotic mischief and repetitive "Yes" and "No"'ing was hilarious. It reminded me of how annoying, but also funny I was as a small child, and all as young children can be.
The rest of the episode was good too. Moth Gideon was particularly sinister in a shiny new black beskar alloy suit that flies. Poor old Vader could have done with one of those.
In the latest episode, I discovered my deep cut, that Jack would be a Species 8472 sleeper agent from Voyager was completely wrong. Instead they pulled out the less original but narratively more important Borg.
Oh well, but the fanservice in Picard's last outing, as I have repeatedly said, is excellent. Watch it for that and let the endorphins flow.
Star Wars Celebration was held from April 7--10, at the ExCeL Exhibition Centre, London this year. (I've visited the venue when I attended my first MCM London Comic Con a few years ago; pod 180 2017). During the event, a barrage of upcoming Star Wars films, TV shows, and a game were announced.
James Mangold, the director of Logan, has a film planned about the, "first Jedi to wield the Force".
Dave Filoni, co-creator of The Mandalorian and director of The Clone Wars is working on a film about the conflict between the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant. It will tie up The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, etc.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy of Ms. Marvel has a movie set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker, in which Rey sets about rebuilding a New Jedi Order.
The Ahsoka TV series is coming in August. We also get confirmation, via a view of the back of his head in the trailer, that Grand Admiral Thrawn from Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire books will finally hit our screens. I have read at least the first book and even before that I was already a fan of Timothy Zahn's previous Blackcollar and Cobra sci-fi books series. The role is to be played by Lars Mikkelsen (Mad's brother), who voice acted him in Star Wars Rebels.
The Acolyte TV series, scheduled for 2024, is set 100 years before the Phantom Menance during the High Republic. It is a detective story centred on a former Padawan.
Skeleton Crew is a TV show coming later this year. It stars Jude Law and is about four children trying to get home.
Anime shorts Star Wars: Visions is renewed. Season starts 2023-05-04.
Animated series The Bad Batch returns for a final Season 3 in 2024.
Finally, a third person single player game called Jedi: Survivor is to be released on 2023-04-28. In it, Cal Kestis from Fallen Order returns five years later as a Jedi Knight, fighting and exploring the Star Wars galaxy.
I mistyped "Harry Pooter" into the shownotes. That should tell you how I feel about this new 10 year TV show; cynical, boring, cash grab, nonsense, and, adding insult to injury, with JK given an executive producer credit.
The books and the films are enough for me.
I don't sleep well, so when I do, I dream vividly. I had a nightmare on Good Friday about accidentally injuring, instead of killing an octopus I was going to cook. (I don't eat actually octopus). I felt very guilty and sorry for the octopus sitting bedraggled at the bottom of the tank and staring at me with wide expressive brown eyes, so I decided to free it in a rock pool at the beach.
I had this dream because the subject of sentience has been in my mind lately. I talked about self aware bees and plants in 481, and it got me thinking about how awful the Star War's galaxy is for some of the smaller creatures, not just for humans, Mon Calamari, Sand People, clones, droids, etc. living in enslavement, under the Imperial boot heel, in dire poverty, or as a food source; the Ewoks were going to eat Han and Luke in Return of the Jedi; furry little bastards!
Do you remember Din Djarin walking past Kowakian monkey lizards being roasted at a market stall on Nevarro, watched by a living and terrified one in a cage, in The Mandalorian Chapter 3: The Sin? Or how about the fluffy little Porg birds of Luke's hideout on Ahch-To, snacked on by the mighty Chewbacca, until their big eyes did a number on his conscience in The Last Jedi?
I love Star Wars, but it is one of the most unpleasant fictional universes ever created. I'd hate to live in it, or buy food in it. Back in the real world, from now on I'm going to avoid seafood restaurants that serve octopus.
I rewatched Peter Kosminsky's adaptation of the late Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall historical novels last week. The 2015 BBC series follows the rise of Thomas Cromwell, Henry the VIII's Chancellor, etc. (Not the blood ancestor of Oliver; more of an honorary great great grand uncle).
It's an excellent period drama, only let down by the odd bit of anachronistic dialogue, dramatic licence; Cromwell wasn't quite the poor Putney boy, and the depressing subject matter of how to get ahead by making others lose theirs. It closes with Cromwell flavour of the month with Henry, after arranging Anne Boleyn's execution to free the king to marry Jane Seymour. What the series doesn't say is that the wily Machiavellian was later beheaded for arranging Henry's marriage to Anne of Cleves. I don't know why that is funny, but it is. It reminds me of Birbal the Clever's comeuppance in Afghanistan.
From the show I learned all about what a bloody miserable time the Tudor period was. Some historians say it was a brighter post-Black Death time, but we were ruled by the feudal system and the judicial system included torture, burning at the stake, and beheading. When I once partook of a historical reenactment, there were a few fellow reenactors who thought the old days were the goode olde dayes. Look, the climate is crashing, but at least I'm not going to be burned at the stake for criticising a toff or some religious humbuggery.
Hulu 2021 comedy/crime about grumpy, uptight New York apartment dwellers in posh building embroiled in the death of a neighbour. They investigate and start a true crime podcast.
The visual metaphor of stuff floating seemed cute at first, then turned distracting and cloying. Steve Martin's apartment looks a lot like Jerry Seinfeld's, but probably isn't.
I found it mildly engaging, but not enough to stick it out.
Late review! In 354 (2020) I said I enjoyed season one (2020), but please don't do a sequel. They did in 2022 and sometime last year I started watching the HBO Max follow up.
It was okay, but without the novelty and main mystery of the first season. That is fairly systemic of all second seasons that don't end on a proper cliffhanger and so, unfortunately, the show didn't sustain my interest.
Don't ever forget this is a right wing popularist government. It is fueled by the standard alt-right fakery that scapegoats migrants and refugees with nasty slogans like "Stop the Boats".
Now the Trumpian voter fraud narrative has also somehow taken hold on this sceptred isle and led to the requirement that we present photographic ID in order to vote. This is despite no convictions as of 2021.
This wouldn't be part of a scheme to disenfranchise the voters least likely to vote for the Conservatives, like the disabled, homeless, or very poor, etc., would it?
Here's what I've been keeping under wraps regarding a return to an old hobby. On my About page I say how one of my hobbies is being, "...on, under, or next to the big blue H2O.", but I haven't dived, sailed, or canoed in years.
Luckily, I still have some gear from the aforesaid inactive watersports. I found a natty pair of unused No Fear neoprene gloves in my kit bag to clad my achy old hands. And so on Good Friday I went for my induction into a nearby canoe club and, neoprene gloves still in pocket, immediately fell into the lake. The last time I did that was about a millennia ago when I lost my glasses during an Eskimo roll. At least that did not happen as my glasses and hat were tied on this time. I did, however, learn of the delightful and occasionally fatal Weil's disease sometimes found in dirty water. Fantastic.
If I stick with it---it took me three days to recover from the excitements---I'd like to get a canoe sailing rig and finally fulfil my hitherto unfulfilled dream of boat ownership. (My blog contents page has a photograph of my old unsailed and unrestored boat). A sailing canoe isn't quite the blue water cruiser I wanted to explore the world in, but it's something you can stick on a car and just go. There's also my giant and frighteningly powerful Sutton Flow Form kite I might trial as a sailing rig, when I'm competent enough not to get sucked into space.
Expect classic Doctor Who next time with my revisit, recap, and review of The Visitation from 1982.