TV And Films

The shows and movies I like (or don’t).

Trolls Band Together

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Trolls Band Together (2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Continues to be a very enjoyable series. It’s bright, colorful, and cheerful, it has a lot of fun music, the humor covers the gamut from simple stuff that kids will enjoy to jokes for the adults that will fly right over the kids’ heads, and the animation and creature design is wonderfully cute (and occasionally amusingly horrifying; the RV in this one is a thing of hilarious nightmares), and the whole package has an ongoing current of hallucinogenic weirdness that I love. Particularly enjoyed the design of the antagonists and their entire part of the world, which was a clear homage to the art and animation styles of the ’30s, and whose clean balloon-like designs contrasted nicely with the everything-is-just-slightly-fuzzy world of the trolls.

Year 50 Day 318

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Me holding the 4K release of The Abyss.

Day 318: It’s Abyss day! The Abyss has long been a favorite film of mine (particularly the special edition cut), but the best quality release it’s had for years was the 2000 DVD release, which was a non-anamorphic presentation. Even at the time that was a disappointment, but as the years passed, and there was no word of an anamorphic release, and then no word of a Blu-ray release, it got more disappointing. As recently as 2020, many people figured that was all we’d ever get. So it’s quite exciting to finally have it released and in my hands!

Amusingly, it’ll likely be next weekend before I actually watch it. My only 4K drive is attached to my computer, and I use it to rip movies, not watch them directly. So before I can watch it, I have to get it onto my media server, and my particular process is, admittedly, somewhat time-consuming (rip both versions of the film in both 4K and HD, plus all the special features in whatever quality they are, extract the subtitles from all of them, OCR and correct the subtitles, compress the .mkv files to .m4p, and move everything onto the media server). I’ve waited 24 years for a better release, I can wait another week.

📚 Firewall by David Mack

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20/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

While Picard is (imho) overall the weakest of the modern Trek series, its literary side is doing quite well. This does a great job of filling in some of the time between when Seven returns to Earth with Voyager and when she appears as a Fenris Ranger, and exploring how the character changed in those years. It’s unfortunate that some are upset that this book discusses Seven discovering her identity as a queer woman; it’s neither propagandistic nor heavy-handed, but simply experiences that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if they were heterosexual. Also a lot of very pointed commentary about what happens when a major power that had been providing very necessary support for a region just up and disappears when something else catches its attention. Definitely worth reading if you’re a fan of the Picard series or (and especially) of Seven as a character.

Me holding Firewall

🎥 Meg 2: The Trench

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Meg 2: The Trench (2023): ⭐️⭐️

This was dumb. The first Meg was entertaining; still a big dumb monster movie, but at least with it you could (just) hit the point of suspension of disbelief and go along for the ride. This one took far too long with the setup for very little payoff, and just prompts eye rolls when it tries to be entertaining. Another one we’re glad we didn’t chance in the theater.

🎥 Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical

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Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022): ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was fun. While the songs weren’t such that I’m going to want the soundtrack, I really did enjoy the creativity of a lot of the lyrics. And somehow I hadn’t realized that Emma Thompson was in this (and made a marvelous Ms. Trunchbull).

Must admit, though — I actually think that the choreography for Revolting Children works better for this parody video than with the original music.

It Was All My Fault

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I was one of the first of my friends group to really get into “home theater” — at least, as much as I could in the mid-’90s on a financially questionable 20-something’s budget. Our apartment had a big-screen rear-projection TV (bought used, of course), later replaced with a (ridiculously huge) three-beam projector sourced from a bar that was closing down, an early surround sound system, and I started collecting widescreen movies with the special edition of The Abyss on widescreen VHS. I had a pretty decent widescreen VHS collection before finally upgrading to DVD.

At one point, Chad and I were sitting around, bored, and looking for something to watch. “I’ve got The Crow,” says Chad. Sounded good to me, so he went to grab it. And pulled out his copy — a home VHS tape, with the movie taped off of TV, over something else, in broadcast pan-and-scan, and probably in mono. He popped it in, and we started watching.

About ten minutes in, suddenly he turns to me and spouts off with a hearty and apparently random, “Fuck you!”

“What the hell?” I said.

“Until I lived with you, I didn’t care about widescreen, or surround sound, or any of that. I’d just watch the movie. You’ve ruined me!” And as I laughed, he turned off the movie in amused disgust. And it wasn’t too long before the widescreen DVD found its way into the collection.

(Originally posted to Mastodon, and prompted by the announcement of The Crow on 4K Blu-ray.)

🎥 The Marvels

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The Marvels (2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mostly suffers from the same problem that just about all of Marvel’s recent efforts are suffering from: too much required backstory. There’s simply no way to really understand everything if you haven’t already devoted hours upon hours to watching all the various series and movies that lay the groundwork for whatever is happening here (or even if you have, but don’t have an encyclopedic memory for it all and perfect recall).

The movie is at its best when it’s just the three primary women interacting with each other, whether the strained relationship between Danvers and Rambeau, or Khan fangirling over meeting Captain Marvel, or the three of them experimenting with their entangled powers. Iman Vellani in particular continues to be a delight as Kamala Khan. And the space station evacuation scene was an unexpected bit of hilarity.

But the action scenes are overly frenetic and difficult to follow, there’s yet another generic and barely fleshed out villain, and a whole lot of flashy effects that are pretty, but not much more than that.

On the whole, not as bad as some have said, but not as good as either the Ms. Marvel series or the Captain Marvel film.

🎥 The Last Voyage of the Demeter

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023): ⭐️⭐️

A clever concept that’s poorly executed. Not creepy, not scary, no real suspense because we know the end result, really needed about half an hour edited out (it dragged rather than being suspenseful), and then a ridiculous ending that seems like they’re trying to set up a sequel, which makes no sense. Very glad we didn’t spring for this one in the theater.