By Roy Mathur, on 2019-08-09, at 23:30:13 to 00:28:15 BST, for Captain Roy's Rocket Radio Show, Listen
The show is still the show, the show still exists, the show hasn't gone anywhere, but I'm writing and doing writing related tasks, so time for podcasts a little thin lately. I haven't forgotten about Doctor Who, so do not fret, though a little creator encouragement, like an email, would be nice.
This is confusingly a sequel of Gareth Edwards's dull Godzilla (2014), not Kong: Skull Island (2017). It's confusing because Kong: Skull Island, the other Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse movie, teases both the M.O.N.A.R.C.H. organisation and King Ghidora, while Godzilla doesn't (or at least I can't remember if it did). Anyway, it took me a few weeks after the release to understand that, not that it really matters.
Gojira! Mothra! Ghidora! Kong! There were also some other monsters, that I, as only a casual fan of the kaiju genre, didn't know, or like Rodan, only recognised by name.
In a nutshell, and with minimal spoilers, M.O.N.A.R.C.H.'s plan to stop the destruction wrecked by the giant monsters goes terribly awry due to the machinations of a mad scientist and a mad terrorist.
Good? FX, creature design, acting, and the fan service; all the monsters, the mythos, and the technological silliness like the oxygen destroyer weapon stolen from the very first film Gojira (1954)is a warm and fuzzy thing, like the deliberate re-misuse of "parsecs" in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Bad? Script, direction, jump cuts, editing, exposition are all, cross the board, terrible. The actors made the most of the unholy mess they had to work with, but it still felt like an awful waste of the budget and talent.
Damning with faint praise: I really enjoyed the big operatic score. It's an ear worm and I wouldn't mind owning the album. The Blue Oyster Cult mashup was okay, but the main score really rocks.
If this fired you up for more Godzilla action, we talked about the 1954, 1998, and 2014 films in episode 52.
On someone's recommendation, I recently boxsetted and enjoyed the BBC's very Black Mirror-ish series about future dystopic Britain.
The drama seen from the viewpoint of a single family, looked at everything from the rising acceptance of right-wing populist extremism to grinding (i.e. cyborg modification), and ultimately a cloud upload version of the singularity.
Oh, and it also features that very same actor from the first episode of Black Mirror, playing another repugnant character.
This is a biopic of the man behind Cabaret (1972).
Sam Rockwell's portrayal of Bob Fosse is more honest and much less flattering than Roy Scheider's looser Joe Gideo---a thinly disguised version of Fosse in All that Jazz---because who would not want to be played by Roy Scheider in a biopic?
And I know it's a minor not major point, but the guy who briefly appears playing Dustin Hoffman playing Lenny Bruce looks like neither. I mean, he really, really looks like neither. Won't I look stupid if someone tells me that's the actual footage from the Lenny Bruce biopic? I'm too lazy to look that up.
I also found it fascinating, because of other characters like Paddy Chayefsky; a name I only know because of his creative involvement some of my favourite films like Network and Altered States.
It's great, though much as I love the works of Fosse and Verdon, there's a limit of how much musical theatre I can watch at one sitting, so I'm spreading this one out rather than boxsetting.
I'm not one for the ice-pick to the ear wit of stand up comedians and I had my reservations. The show's probably not for me, nevertheless, I enjoyed the first episode with the British comic visiting Zimbabwe.
I upgraded to BT Infinity recently (278), and was expecting problems. Those problems arrived immediately in the form of progressively more frequently disconnections to more than 10 disconnections a day.
The phone support guy said the line was a little noisy and according to BT's fault tracking system, OpenReach will resolve the problem by today.
Sure, Infinity's it's much faster than ADSL, but boy is it unstable. I've already bought a Roku, so it's too late to go back out without losing the GBP 60 I paid for the stick to get iPlayer and the other free UK channels.
Addendum: I unplugged every extension, moved the router to the BT master socket near the outside door, and now the signal seems slightly more stable. I say, "slightly", because I lost WiFi and dropped a Skype call a few moments ago. I only found out about the master socket thingy after Googling between disconnections. Fingers crossed.
It works, the set up is easy, the UI bearable, but the free channels, apart from established UK ones like BBC, ITV, C4, C5, and UKTV, are mostly terrible. It also gets hot, really hot. Who would have thought encasing a quad core processor in thick plastic to stream 1080p to 4K would make the device a tad warm? Who designs this stuff? One would assume to avoid a US class action suit, Roku acknowledge this while not accepting any actual responsibility and recommend you request their free HDMI extender to move the device further from the TV. Does anything ever actually work at all? Ever?
Usually Jessops in the UK is great. The old shop and the new boutique shop, usually have pretty good staff. Unfortunately, when I enquired about a higher powered diopter for my aging eyes, the beardy told me that he was sure that manufacturers do make something, but he could do anything for me as he didn't personally make the cameras. Surprisingly, I did not respond with a sarcastic, "Really?" because rudeness wasn't what I expect in Jessops; I suppose there's a first time for everything. I don't usually excuse businesses, but in this case I will, because I had pretty good experiences in Jessops in the past. I'm guessing this twit will not be long in the job.
I also asked in John Lewis, but my answers were, "Did you look on the internet?", "I don't know", and "You could try in Skears, Northampton or Grays, Westminster".
It makes you question why shops bother with specialist staff or departments anymore. Either that, or I've reached the stage where I just know more than the staff, like a geeky customer who knows more than an Apple Store Genius.
Like band names or domain names, all the good ones seem taken. While I don't get writer's block, I'm certainly still mulling this one over. Why can't I think something up?
The book is done, the cover is done, it's just getting a last-over from Mum.
As I mentioned in the last few pods, I'll record a show dedicated to this topic the moment the book is available on the Kindle.
I have been minimally updating my writer profiles on social media, but given the complete lack of retweets of the book cover on Twitter, my low opinion of social media is reinforced.