Days 107 – 124

There’s been two new comic book days:

Which have had plenty of great reading. I also read Kaijumax S1 and S2:

Kaijumax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaijumaxhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaijumax) is a really great story, which quickly manages to make a world of giant monsters and science heroes believable, intriguing and fun. The characters all feel real and you care about what happens to them. If you’re not reading Kaijumax you should be.

I finished my re-watch of Buffy and Angel, I think my favourite line is “When was Wes in Virginia?”, there has been plenty said and written about Buffy and Angel, and I haven’t got any great insights to add, but if you have never seen Buffy and Angel you’re missing out on a great show. I’ve now moved onto Veronica Mars, a great show that deserved to last for longer than its three seasons (although the film and novels are nice cappers).

I also watched the ‘The Fog’ remake, Alien: Covenant, Underworld: Blood Wars, Cannonball Run I and II, Apocalypse Now Redux and Hearts of Darkness (and brought a load of DVDs I haven’t watched yet):

‘The Fog’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_%282005_film%29https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_%282005_film%29) was pretty bad, it keeps the same story, one hundred years ago a ship was raided and sunk by the inhabitants of an island and the ghosts of those on the ship come back to take revenge, but there was no suspense, very few scares and was missing internal logic. The film ends with the revelation that one of the modern-day characters is the reincarnation of one of the people on the ship and she transforms from flesh and blood into a ghost and goes away with the over ghosts. Yes, the film showed that she had a connection with the ghosts, but her suddenly becoming a ghost is out of left field and is not explained and everyone else is then shown to be going about their normal business, but just a bit sad or constipated (depending on which actor the film was focusing on). One thing that this film did well was highlight how good the original ‘The Fog’ is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog).

Alien: Covenant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien:_Covenant) is better, but not much, especially when compared to the other Alien films. The first hour or so, up to when they land on the planet and start to explore is really good – good at setting the scene, who some of the characters are (but some don’t get below red-shirt status) and building the tension ahead of when the Alien will appear – but then it goes downhill. There’s no further fleshing out of the characters, the proto-Aliens and the Alien aren’t scary and the film just builds to a cliffhanger for the next film, rather than give a complete story of its own which leads onto the next film. David is even more of dick than he was in Prometheus and there’s no follow up on Dr Shaw (just David explaining how he killed her and show us the grave). Also, there’s very little grace or suspense or horror in this film, when the others, ‘it could have been because it strayed too far from being an Alien film, but Alien: Covenant fails for the opposite reason, of being too much like previous Alien films, of being a megamix of the best scenes from the previous films.

Underworld: Blood Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underworld:_Blood_Warshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underworld:_Blood_Wars) was ok, if slightly confusing (humans know about vampires and Lycians now and are hunting them down, but there’s no mention of this). There’s some good fights and betrayals, but nothing to elevate it beyond being ok. 

Cannonball Run I and II are not as funny as I remember them. Cannonball I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannonball_Runhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannonball_Run) is the best, especially the parts with Roger Moore, sending up Bond, but there’s plenty, especially in Cannonball II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_IIhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_II), which underlines L. P. Hartley’s line that "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there".

Apocalypse Now Redux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now_Reduxhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now_Redux) and Hearts of Darkness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness:_A_Filmmaker's_Apocalypsehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness:_A_Filmmaker's_Apocalypse) were great. The added/restored scenes and running time of Redux really make you feel as though you are on the boat sailing into the heart of darkness as sanity loses its grip. While Hearts of Darkness adds an extra element to the sense of other worldliness that runs through Apocalypse Now.

I finally listened to ‘Drokk – Music Inspired by Mega-City One’ (https://drokk.bandcamp.com/), which I understand was initially going to be the soundtrack to the Dredd film (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreddhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dredd). It’s a great album and Wired (at https://www.wired.com/2012/05/drokk-a-soundtrack-to-a-film-that-doesnt-exist-but-actually-it-does/) does a better jo  than I could of reviewing it, so all I will say is imagine a mix of John Carpenter (circa Assault… and Escape…) and Tangerine Dream via Global Communication and you’re kinda there.

I’ve also brought a few other CDs which I haven’t had a chance to listen to yet:

mostly as I’ve been re-recording my vinyl to mp3, the first lot of conversions have come out a tad quiet, so this time I ripped them with more gain, so how I have to listen to both versions and decided which is best (or re-re-rip!). Of the ones I’ve listened to, some do sound better, but some sound worse!

On Saturday, I had a great time babysitting my nephew (who is nine), who was on great form. He watched a Simpsons episode where Bart gets a label maker and he (my nephew) spent the rest of the afternoon making snarky labels for everything.