Andor

by on September 22, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I watched the first three episodes of Andor, and I have to admit that it is a good series. Filmed well. Very dramatic. Good stuff. Just like Moon Knight, Kenobi, She-Hulk, WandaVision, and the other recent Disney TV series. I’ve generally liked all of them, though my like has always been with reservations. I could point to individual issues, but an overall issue nagged at me that I could never nail down. I finally nailed it down with Andor. The Disney TV series are serious. Like Rogue One, they are telling a serious story and they do it seriously. The problem is that the movies that made those franchises great all had a certain amount of humor in them. Most of them had plucky heroes mouthing off and joking as they fought the bad guys. Coming up with pithy comments and jazz. The movies did not take themselves seriously. They were telling a serious story, but they did so in a light-hearted manner. I enjoy that. I do not like losing that joy when watching the shows.

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Moon Knight

by on September 21, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I recently watched Moon Knight, and I have to say that it is not at all what I expected. I’m a total newb to the Moon Knight franchise, so went in with a blank slate. The end result is that I was impressed. It was a very good origin story for a hero who was already a hero. It works because Oscar Isaac plays a man with multiple personalities, and is mostly shown from the viewpoint of a personality that has no idea that another of his personalities has sworn an oath to a moon god. We discover the depths of that oath throughout the series, and Oscar is what makes it work. He is an amazing actor. You can tell what personality he is by his facial expressions, his accent, and a dozen other subtle clues he emotes with perfection. He carries the series and nails it from his first confused look at the world to the very last final act as the camera fades to black. If nothing else, the series is worth watching just to see him show everybody else a master class in portraying characters.

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Thor Love and Thunder

by on September 20, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I just watched this movie and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would based on the reviews. The story narrator is a bit of a jolly idiot, an unreliable narrator telling a campfire story to children. Because of that, a lot of stuff is ramped up to stupid levels of funny or dumb, but things that would look or sound cool to a child’s sense of humor. It’s definitely not a story for everybody, but enjoyed it. So for me, Thor Love and Thunder easily gets one thumb up. Maybe two, but the second one is situational, depending on what kind of movie I want to see.

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Dreaming

by on September 19, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Dreams can help us deal with issues we haven’t dealt with or didn’t recognize in our waking hours. Our mind can use them to relax, or imagine going places we’ve never been. I had a dream this weekend that was so normal it was amazing. I don’t normally remember my dreams when I wake up, because I slowly come up from sleep to wakefulness, and the dream fades before I’m conscious of it. This weekend I went back and forth between wakefulness and dreaming so seamlessly I had no clue I was dreaming or not until the LAST time I woke up. And I remembered everything. Dream logic is odd, but I was dealing with mom’s death by reliving finding out she was dead through a different context. It was surreal and emotional, something my logical and rational mental processes generally try to avoid. Which I’m certain is why I ended up with the date in dreamland to go over the issue. Listen to your dreams, kiddos. Sometimes they have something important to say to you. 😉

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Dawn

by on September 18, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Dawn DeMarco was absolutely one of our secret weapons during the long Hyades Campaign. She devoted herself to winning hearts and minds one party at a time, and her parties were legendary. I don’t know how news traveled in the Hyades, but the locals somehow knew about those parties before we even arrived. We’d come in, we’d drive off the Chinese garrison, install a new government to start the rebuilding process, and when we asked if the locals had any questions the first question often was when Dawn was planning the liberation party. They asked about her by name. And they usually had liaisons ready to work with her when she arrived. It was amazing. They could give two hoots about who their new designated overlord was, but Dawn they welcomed like visiting royalty. And she had a way of treating with them exactly as they wanted to be treated. She was always amazing like that.

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