By Roy Mathur, on 2023-03-12, at 22:59:30--00:49:49 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show, Listen
Like I said in the previous episode, I am sorry I was away for so long.
You might have noticed frequent changes in the podcast description. I was considering spitting this podcast into distinct shows, but have since changed my mind. It's too much hard work.
Technical difficulties persist, so this and the last episode of CRRRRS will be delayed while I wait for editing equipment to arrive. In addition, enjoy the sound of my Shure SM58 because the esses were hard to handle on the SM7B.
To make up for what you missed in my absence, this episode is filled to the brim with geeky content, and I don't spare the spoilers.
I had an urge for the James Herbert's novel about the sole survivor of an airline disaster, so I ordered it. While waiting for it to arrive, I started to rewatch the film adaptation and... I can't remember it being this bad. Perhaps I was more forgiving when I was younger.
I have an extremely soft spot for Jenny Agutter, in spite of a few stinkers she has starred in, but even her delightful co-star presence and that of the star, the excellent Robert Powell, failed to rescue the film.
The landscape looked weird, the light was too bright, the accents were off, the cars were wrong, until I realised they had transplanted the story to Australia, and then I was out. Add a boring plane crash scene (how is that possible?), boring soundtrack, and treacle pace, and I was doubly out.
I read that Jame's Herbert hated it too.
Rowling doubles down yet again on her views in her own podcast---The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling---taped from her castle no less. The title of which makes her sound like she is playing the victim instead of yet another celebrity who turned out to be a cad who's punching down. How utterly predictable and dreadfully disappointing.
She said she doesn't care about legacy in a tone of what she probably thinks is punk rock and ironic, in the light of how Warner Brothers distanced themselves from her in the game Hogwarts: Legacy by featuring trans character, Three Broomsticks bartender Sirona Ryan, but it just sounds like she's too stuck in her ways to change. Thankfully, her greatest legacy is her writing that I love and that legacy is greater than its creator.
As if it isn't enough that J.K. Rowling goes off the deep end, Scott Adams recently made some terribly racist remarks. His creative input, both artistically and on his YouTube channel, has veered unpleasantly in recent years, so while this news does not come as a great surprise, it is a grave let down.
I not willing to give this article any more column inches, so I'll end by saying that, like most techies, I love the earlier Dilbert cartoon strips. That won't change, but I have no more time for its creator.
M. Night Shyamalan's latest apocalyptic movie is based on Paul G. Tremblay's The Cabin at the End of the World.
In the movie a disparate group of weirdos---four reasonably dressed humans chosen to be the four horsemen of the apocalypse---visit a family in the woods and demand that they make a terrible choice; either sacrifice one of their own or the world dies.
Though Shyamalan is Hindu, he had a catholic Christian education, which I suppose somewhat explains his latest venture in Abrahamic mythology. My own background echoes his, but in an even more complicated way, though my over-familiarity with Christianity has made me shy away from it creatively.
I find it puzzling that the burning cabin effects were so poor when the scenes of planes crashing to the ground were very good.
It's a tense, unpleasant, depressing, and extremely unbelievable film, only spared by Dave Bautista's solid acting which sells the premise.
The only movie worth talking about since the last episode is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Yes, the film that all other geek sites in the nerdverse have already reviewed. I should remind listeners that I don't get to see many films on first release. Over the pandemic the situation worsened and remains difficult because my parents who live with me are still shielding. I can't tell you how frustrating it is, not just not seeing a movie when it comes out, but also avoiding trailers, reviews, and social media about the film. One thing made did make it easier though, and that was that my social life was decimated during the worst of Covid-19, so at least I didn't have friends' spoilers making the rounds.
That was the situation, let's talk Wakanda Forever. This is 2022 Marvel/Disney sequel to 2018's Black Panther, starring the late Chadwick Boseman in the title role. In the first movie we learn of the secretive African technological superpower, Wakanda, and it's King T'Challa/Black Panther. The plot is largely about him ascending to the throne and the role of Black Panther, after his father, T'Chaka, is killed by the terrorist, Baron Zemo. There's also a lunatic pretender to the throne, Killmonger, to contend with. At the end of the movie T'Challa engages with the rest of the world.
Let's start with something slightly tangential. I have mixed feeling about actors with important roles in international blockbusters, who might be role models the young, but publicly behave disgracefully. Everybody's allowed a pass, even a checkered past within reason, but it's time to shape up when you step into the spotlight as a superpaid star playing a superhero. I'm talking about Shuri actress Letitia Wright questioning the COVID-19 vaccine, but I could be talking about Ezra Miller in the upcoming The Flash, and his real life penchant for violence and firearms. It seems the buck stops here, means only that the most important thing is the buck. I've said often enough, even in this episode, to love the art not the artist, but that is becoming an awfully difficult position to defend. Am I asking too much of people? Maybe.
And now Wakanda Forever. Circa 242 minutes passed by quickly. Right from the start this is a emotionally wrenching and hugely entertaining film. The silent credits with pictures of Boseman as T'Challa are a fitting and touching tribute to the actor.
And so, mirroring the death of Boseman, we find out that T'Challa has died. Then there's the topical plot of the acquisitive French and American's greed for the super element, vibranium, echoing greedy western colonial exploitation of Africa and most of the rest of the world.
We are introduced to Namor the Submariner, a charming but very hostile underwater monarch determined to seek bloody revenge on the surface dwellers for trying to steal vibranium from his domain. We witness his murder of Wakandan queen, T'Challa's mother; an ambiguity of character reflected in the comics, in which he is occasionally a violent eco-warrior. Tenoch Huerta is fantastic as a Mayan Namor. It is a clever conceit---setting his origin at the time of the conquistadors---that worked well in the plot, but I wish his civilisation had far more ancient roots as they do the comics.
The action is spectacular and non-stop and there are huge battles, the plot is topical and relevant, there's a character who appears to be the new Iron Man, and by the end Shuri becomes the new Black Panther and ruler of Wakanda.
Finally, I loved the Mayan hiphop song played in the end credits. It was refreshing to hear a language and instruments you don't hear much, to the point where it sounds both familiar and very alien. Seek out Laayli' kuxa'ano'one by ADN Maya Colectivo.
With nothing else to tickle my fancy, I watched the rest of the Netflix 2022 show after saying that I had no further interest. What a hypocrite, eh? Mountebank!
Part of the reason I never got into the original comic was its on-the-nose goth style characters in the art that so appealed to goths, utterly irritated me. This is absolutely hypocritical, given my predilection for black clothes, horror, and many things goth-like and goth-adjacent. My annoyance stems from snobbery and the fact that I was into this stuff long before the post-punk goth label. Ask my horror-averse father about taking his weird son to the London Dungeons---at what age?!
Guess what? Maybe I should have stuck it out earlier because enjoyed it. The metamorphosis top trumps duel with Lucifer was a bit naff. I expect more from such a fight. Maybe murder chess? I made that up, but you get the picture. That's a small criticism though, as this is excellent fantasy, horror, comedy, tragedy, with a heavy sprinkling of magical realism; the usual Gaiman gamut.
To recap, The Sandman is a Netflix adaptation of Neil Ghaiman's comic. The Sandman AKA Morpheus AKA Dream, is trapped by an incompetent wizard played by Charles Dance. Without the Sandman, many humans become comatose, trapped in a never-ending dream, whilst a nightmare escapes to become a serial killer in the real world.
Gwendoline Christie is a intimidating, sad, cool, angry, sexy, scintillating Lucifer. The swelling music, Grant Morrison's Doctor D (David Thewliss), the Angel of Death (I sincerely hope she is as pleasant to me when the day inevitably comes), a lonely Morpheus making a friend is heartwarming, and the Corinthian; a nightmare made corporeal and with the appearance of an evil version of Horatio Caine from CSI Miami. The cast is thankfully very diverse, unlike the exceedingly white comic book, which is another thing that somewhat put me off back in the late 80s.
The depth of dialogue and interpersonal connection in the script, and the sheer talespinning feels influenced by work such Mike Flanagan's Bly Manor, but it never feels too flabby.
I gobbled it up. Even the cheaper production value than glossy slick American Gods is endearing, like a fantasy TV series from my childhood. BBC's The Phoenix and the Carpet (1976) series springs to mind, so does Ghaiman's own Neverwhere; one of the few works of his I love. Writing adapted from the comic's stream of consciousness style, mystical word salad with a side order of purple, a dollop of really nasty horror, and so emotionally cutting that it was bandages on standby at Castle Royenstein: I should hate it. I don't hate it. I don't hate it at all. A strong factor in this redux turnaround is my current physical and mental state, but so what? We change, and thus do our minds.
Recommended.
2023 SyFy TV series about a colony space ship stranded in space and running low on provisions after catastrophic accident which kills senior crew.
No complaints about the acting, but this is a boring idea for a story with appalling low production values, probably worse than the original Battlestar Galactica. I survived about twenty minutes of the first episode.
Servant is a 2019 and continuing, M. Night Shyamalan (Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan) produced Apple TV horror suspense.
Ludicrously hot woman from the sticks, given the mousey treatment by makeup and wardrobe, is hired to nanny a baby substitution doll of recently bereaved parents. One day, a real baby replaces the doll.
The servant gets the worst room, is perved over by the husband and brother-in-law, and even a pair of shoes she buys with an advance are immediately borrowed back by the wife. There's a lot of social commentary.
Even without the cannibalism, the cooking scenes are like Hannibal. I don't care that I'm an ex-Londoner, but any dish with eels can get stuffed.
Nell Tiger Free is an exceedingly pretty and exceedingly creepy nanny and Rupert Grint is good as the monied, slightly disreputable brother-in-law.
Well done, Shyamalan, cast, and crew.
I watched the first season of NBC's sci-fi, in which people fall into the distant past through time warp in the hole left by the collapse of LA's La Brea tar pits. (Been there, done that).
Survivors far from rescue, in a mysterious land of dangerous strangers and dangerous prehistoric wildlife. No, this isn't Lost with megafauna, though that is a recurrent meta-joke in the script.
I liked the family show and the first season ends on an intriguing cliffhanger, but not enough to sustain my future interest.
The final season of Picard is upon us and in four episodes so far, we were treated to non-stop delightful fanservice. We are going out on a bang. Beverley! Beverly Crusher looks fantastic! Riker! Riker looks fantastic! Worf! Work looks fantastic, and funny too, with a new uncharacteristic vice; camomile tea, to add to his love of prune juice and Ferengi teeth sharpeners.
The plot? Picard, partnering up with Will Riker, answers a distress call from Beverly Crusher and her other son (Jack Crusher), is pursued into a dangerous pulsating nebula by a sinister bounty hunter with a crazy portal weapon. It's very all very Moby Dick is space. While Raffi, with Worf's help, investigates a dastardly terrorist attack. Changlings appear to be behind the villainy.
Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction's Honey Bunny) is a good but very obvious piece of stunt casting as a villainous, cackling bounty hunter. Can you believe I didn't know she was Christopher Plummer's (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country's General Chang and all-round actorly bigwig) daughter?
The script is run-of-the-mill, arguably a good thing after the debacle of robot Picard. The effects, fanservice, and acting are all great. Michelle Hurd should be congratulated on providing such a complex character study of Raffi; a tightly wound ball of addiction, paranoia, and mania, that forever threatens to unravel.
We are two episodes into season three. The Mandalorian is back with Grogu in tow. He first blows up a massive shelled crocodile attacking his clan. (That croc is like our own Sarcosuchus imperator from 110 million years ago, only with an armoured shell). Gaining the approval of the Armourer, they go on a quest to reverse his apostate status by bathing in the mines of devastated Mandalore. They pit stop on Nevarro to ask Greef Karga for IG-11 and try to repair it, Kalevala where Bo-Katan is sulking like a sad Conan, Tattoine to buy a droid from Peli Motto, before finally making it to Mandalore. Phew. Din cack foots his way into a trap, later drowns, and is rescued twice by Bo-Katan. Give that lady the Darksaber, she's earned it.
It's good. It's very Star Warsy with many creatures, including Kowakian monkey-lizards, a whole engineering shop of Anzellans (Babu Frik's species), and the mythical Mythosaur. There's also an deadly asteroid field battle with space pirates, one of whom has a Robert Newtonish accent and actually says, "Avast, Mandalorian." As if that's not piratey enough, his captain looks like Swamp Thing crossed with Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. I'll spare you the "argh!" mateys.
Also, known as La Guerre des Mondes, the Anglo French dual language, loose but creative adaptation of H.G. Well's classic science fiction story is in it's third season. Having completed the first back season in 2019, which ended in a shock reveal (reviewed in 288), I watched the remaining seasons.
It is an intriguing take on the high tech diseased aliens of the novel. The massive invasion as seen by Europeans is also an unintentional and stark foreshadowing the future 2022 Ukraine war. It's a tense, absorbing drama that does not shy away from the violence of all out existential warfare. The many corpses strewn about like bags of bones drive the grim point home. Like the best sci-fi, future developments are extrapolated from the tech and cultural zeitgeist of today. Most iconically and dystopically, there are super intelligent versions of Boston dynamics' robot dog---with a captive bolt pistol built into their heads---roaming around and efficiently disposing of human beings. Gabriel Byrne plays a pivotal, but ruthless and possibly evil human scientist, who may be our last hope.
On a lighter side, my nerd self was thrilled with the scene in which a library in the lovely French alps could indirectly save humanity.
When I finish that, there's also Legion, Jessica Jones, and The Punisher to wind up too.
As I said earlier, Christopher Plummer's daughter, Amanda Plummer, is great in Star Trek: Picard.
This may, however, have piqued your interest and now you want to know how astoundingly incestuous Hollywood is. If so, read Nate Jones fascinating, fantastic, and insanely detailed article for Vulture: An All But Definitive Guide to the Hollywood Nepo-Verse?
BBC journalism drama based on the true story of an American novice reporter, who becomes the Yakuza's favoured man with access to their inner workings, whilst working for the biggest Japanese newspaper; Yomiuri Shimbun.
It's interesting, but the slow pace and an improbably good-looking protagonist put me off. It didn't sustain my interest past a couple of episodes, despite the occasional presence of excellent Ken Watanabe who plays a grizzled cop.
The mostly random order of episodes was interesting; a bit like a branching game I once made. The oft criticised plot point that money weighs a lot is addressed too. But this is also a very conventional high concept heist mini-series on Netflix, with a payout that doesn't pay out.
On the other hand, crooked gun nut lawyer Paz Vega is lovely and Giancarlo Esposito? Why, this chap could run for the US presidency with that voice.
Absorbing BBC dramatisation of the Brinks-Mat job and subsequent laundering of the loot in 1983, when robbers of a secure warehouse at Heathrow stumbled on twenty-six million in gold rather than the million in cash they were expecting.
I found the catalogue of luck followed by cock-ups and self-destructiveness fascinating. If you enjoy gritty TV series like The Sweeney from the 1970s, with tough villains and coppers with working class London accents then you'll like this, even if some of the actors seem like they're trying too hard to sound hard.
Corrupt cop has a change of conscience in this initially gripping BBC drama that descends into the most improbable cloud cuckoo denouement, when the baddies suddenly throw in the towel and hand themselves in.
After the fiasco of YouTube Podcasting, which just turned out to be just videos, YouTube are trying to be a podcast platform again, this time on YouTube Music, which turns out to be, hold your breath, just videos. Then there's Google itself, who own YouTube, also has it's own platform called Google Podcasts.
YouTube Music Podcasts is apparently going to funded by ads, which one assumes means all the baggage of the YouTube's content rules that do not burden us podcasters at the moment. While I'd like to earn money from my content, I don't want my Google account banned because I broke their rules.
Many times before I've heard that so-and-so is going to be the next big thing for podcasters (Spotify) that I'm not holding my breath.
Aches, pains, headaches, stress related to trying to out my non-existent finances, and especially backaches, led me to try an experiment. It's not yet Spring, but global warming meant I could start gardening early by attacking my hedges. The heavy work did nothing detrimental to my back, not immediately anyway. Discomfort returned later, though I'm not sure if exertion was the cause. Let's see what the MRI reveals.
However, it wasn't all roses. It set off allergies, particularly around eyes, which are already zinged by eczema (though I have a yet another new cream to apply thanks to a consultation). More brain oxygen from exertion, plus stress made my migraines spike and blessed me with almost non-stop nightmares for several days. I recently noticed the fence is in an appalling state, so the garden is sick too. Since then things have got even worse, and Mum's under the weather too with an abscess and sciatica. Whammy cubed.
This sounds like gardening is a bad idea. It is not. It is a good idea. It is making my creaky old joints more mobile, strengthening my muscles and heart, and putting me into nature. It's preparing me for a summer of activity and re-engaging with the outside world, both personally and professionally. I'll talk about that soon.
Usually, I hate to let down listeners, but truthfully my feedback and listener interaction has become so low to non-existent that I don't feel much guilt.
I do feel bad about being away for month with no clear plan though. If it was a scheduled break, it would not bother me. However, this was me stewing; a far more negative state.
I want to end on saying I will continue to bring you geekly content, but if you enjoy this podcast, please don't take my work for granted and get in touch, comment, rate, review, and support me, and other creators like me.
I've been mangling titles for years.
For example, the title of CRRRRS 467 from 2022-12-20 was The Wizard and the Sea, showed my love for wizards and water. It also informed the image; Helen Mirren as Prospera in The Tempest (2010).
Or, like today, when I have too many topics, I may conflate.
A very slightly belated Happy Mauritius Independence Day to any Mauritians listening.