- Benjamin Purcell Morris
© all material on this website is written by Michael McCaffrey, is copyrighted, and may not be republished without consent
Follow me on Twitter: Michael McCaffrey @MPMActingCo
On this episode, Barry and I don our superhero tights and talk all things Deadpool and Wolverine. Topics discussed include the value of Ryan Reynold's shtick and a multitude of multi-verse cameos, as well as the tenuous future of the MCU.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Episode 122: Deadpool and Wolverine
Thanks for listening!!
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT.
The Acolyte, the new Star Wars series streaming on Disney +, tells the story of a murder mystery and intrigue involving the Jedi during the High Republic era a hundred years before the Skywalker saga begins.
The series’ first two episodes premiered on June 4th and a third episode was released this week, with a new episode releasing once a week for the next five weeks.
The Acolyte has generated a great deal of conversation online because, according to its detractors, it shatters the lore upon which the Star Wars franchise is built and is copiously filled with an over-abundance of token diversity. In contrast, the show’s adherents cheer the show exactly because of its diversity and covert socio-political agenda.
While I have enjoyed, to varying degrees, the Star Wars franchise over the years, I’ve never been a super fan and so I really don’t have a dog in the fight between the old traditionalist Star Wars fans and the new progressive Star Wars fans. All I want is for Disney to produce good Star Wars series and films.
Disney’s track record on Star Wars, particularly the shows, is not great. On the bright side, The Mandalorian seasons one and two, and Andor, were phenomenal.
On the down side, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi Wan Kenobi, season three of The Mandalorian and Ahsoka were absolute trash.
After having watched the first three episodes of the 8-episode season of The Acolyte, I can objectively report that the show is a dull disappointment that dwells among the latter rather than the former.
The Acolyte is a perfect embodiment of everything that is wrong with Disney’s Star Wars output. The writing is egregiously bad, the staging, cinematography, fight choreography, production design, directing and acting are so sub-par as to be astonishing and outright embarrassing.
The show is created by Leslye Headland, whose previous claim to fame is the series Russian Doll and having been Harvey Weinstein’s assistant (yikes!).
Headland’s visual style is one of claustrophobia, as nearly every shot and every set is cramped and confined. The resulting affect isn’t one of dramatic intensity but of artistic bankruptcy.
Headland’s story, at least what is seen through three episodes, is completely ignorant of the power of myth and archetype, dramatically inert and narratively adolescent. The dialogue, in particular, is so puerile as to be painful.
Adding to the issues of Headland’s extremely limited artistry and stunted creativity is the fact that this show, which boasts an enormous $180 million budget, looks unconscionably cheap. The sets look like something borrowed from a drama school stage play and the costumes and makeup fare no better, as everything feels thrown together and lacks definition and detail.
One of the biggest issues with The Acolyte is the poor casting and consistently abysmal acting.
Amandla Stenberg stars as two characters, twins Osha and Mae, and she is truly terrible in both roles. She is awkward, unskilled and unathletic, and is so devoid of charisma and screen presence she’s as compelling as a dog turd baking in the hot sun.
Stenberg fails to make any distinction between her portrayals of Osha and Mae and thus you’re never sure who you’re watching in any given scene…which doesn’t add to the drama but only confuses it.
Stenberg isn’t helped by the childish script – which has her waking up breathless no fewer than three times in the span of about fifteen minutes or so, but Stenberg certainly isn’t ready to carry a series on her diminutive shoulders with her exceedingly minimal talent.
Lee Jung-Jae, who recently starred in The Squid Game, fares no better with the script. Lee, who learned to speak English specifically for this role, struggles to speak with any cadence or rhythm, and thus brings every scene he inhabits to a grinding halt.
The rest of the cast are equally incompetent, most notably the two actresses playing Osha and Mae as children. I know it’s difficult to find child actors but good lord these two kids are a train-wreck.
The one bright spot in the cast is Jodie Turner-Smith who plays a witch who is the “mother” to the young Osha and Mae. Turner-Smith is the only actor on the series who fills her character with an inner life and whose eyes project a dramatic meaning and purpose. While everyone else is play-acting, Jodie Turner-Smith actually IS acting.
Disney’s marketing plan for its Star Wars (and Marvel) franchise projects is to be aggressive in turning these traditionally male myths into female led stories chock full of diversity with minimal white male presence. Or as South Park so expertly said in its evisceration of Star Wars production chief Kathleen Kennedy and Disney, “put a chick in it and make it lame and gay”. Mission accomplished, Ms. Kennedy.
The reason for this “chick/lame/gay” approach is that Disney wants to politicize their franchise projects by turning them into referendums on culture war issues. This is meant to aggravate and alienate traditionalist fans (mostly straight white men), and arouse progressive non-fans (women, LGBTQ etc.) in the hopes of turning them into loyal fans. The idea being that the original fans will never leave, even if it means they hate watch, and new progressive fans will watch out of political loyalty turned into brand loyalty, rather than due to unabashed fandom.
When the traditionalists cry foul over a show or movie with a female lead or color-filled cast, the progressives, most notably in the media, will reflexively and instinctively rush to defend the show because if the “bad people” (white men) are against it…then it must be good. And even if it isn’t good, it must be defended because the fight really isn’t over the quality of the show but rather over the importance of the diversity on display.
The Acolyte, which has a gay non-binary woman of color as its lead, and which features – and this is no joke – a coven of lesbian witches who create human life without males (and this coven is involved in one of the worst scenes in any Star Wars venture – it’s during a ritual and it is like something you’d see at a junior high school drama club production at an all-girls school), and which is created by a lesbian (Headland) who has openly stated the series is the gayest Star Wars show ever, is the perfect example of Disney’s divide and conquer culture war approach.
The results are as you’d expect…critics from the establishment media adore the show, giving it a robust 85% rating. Meanwhile, audiences despise it having given it a 20% rating. Of course, the critics counter that the series is being “review bombed” by disingenuous audience members who they claim are “racist, sexist and homophobic”.
What the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Uber Alles brigade fail to recognize is that while the audience score may be a result of “review bombing” by a handful of troglodyte ne’er do wells, the critical score is also likely a result of “review bombing” by shameless shills and socio-political sycophants among the media establishment.
What is always amusing to me is that months after having rabidly defended the latest Star Wars or Marvel atrocity and having praised it for its daring diversity and inclusion these same critics will usually, and sheepishly, admit that the show or film actually really does suck but that it was still “important” because of its diversity and inclusion.
I have long said I don’t give a flying funnel cake about diversity and inclusion, my only priority is quality. Make a good show and it makes no difference to me who wrote it, directed it or starred in it.
For example, you never heard anybody bitching about Andor being led by a Mexican (Diego Luna) and being filled with a plethora of female characters. You know why? Because it was fantastic. That show was so expertly written and exquisitely executed that troglodyte trads didn’t bitch about diversity and critics didn’t have to lie about its quality. The female characters in Andor weren’t girl power tokens, they were complex creations with specific intentions and purpose, and are among the very best ever created in the history of the Star Wars franchise.
In comparison, The Acolyte, which by the way is a great name for a show – too bad it’s ruined on this piece of poop, is so atrociously made as to be criminal. The characters are paper-thin, the acting abysmal, the plot inane and the production astonishingly sub-par. And it’s because it’s so bad that’s why Disney and its media minions have turned it into ground zero for the culture war.
I, for one, am so tired of the endless and fruitless culture war, and by extension Star Wars and Marvel and the rest of our lazy and disingenuous pop culture, that I want to gouge my eyes out and light my brain on fire. And yet…here I am, once again, bitching about the same old culture war issues in a galaxy far, far away, that makes our own galaxy such a very unpleasant one.
The bottom line regarding The Acolyte, at least through the first three episodes, is that this show isn’t worth fighting over as it is simply bad television. I have no idea if it violates and upends the foundations of Star Wars lore and mythology, I just know it fails to reach even the most rudimentary level in regards to entertainment and storytelling.
If you’re a huge Star Wars fan you’ll probably watch the show because you watch everything Star Wars, and you’ll probably dislike it but not enough to break your addiction to all things Star Wars. If, like me, you’re a fair-weather fan, then you can definitely skip The Acolyte...because, to paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi, “this is not the Star Wars you’re looking for.”
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 57 seconds
There’s been a lot of gnashing of teeth in recent weeks because the box office has been so sluggish, most notably the failures of The Fall Guy and Furiosa, which both painfully underperformed in their opening weekends and beyond.
The Fall Guy had such bad box office numbers it actually went to VOD 17 days after premiering in theatres. Not good for a movie boasting two “movie stars” and a gigantic marketing push.
If one were to look at the dismal box office results this Spring and come away thinking the sky is falling, that would be understandable.
Ever the optimist, let me put your mind at ease though regarding the sky is falling pessimism. The sky isn’t falling regarding the movie business…because it’s already fallen. Many will point to last year’s duel strikes as a reason for this year’s box office gully…but that misses the big picture.
The movie business, like American empire, is a dead man walking. That doesn’t mean it’ll vanish off the face of the earth and never be seen again…no, it just means that it will continue its descent into irrelevancy year after year after year until a giant asteroid comes and wipes us off the earth.
The reasons for this are numerous but here are a few of the major ones.
The corporatization of Hollywood that began in the Reagan years is now complete. The corporate mindset has destroyed the mid-level budgeted movie in favor of blockbuster hunting, and that has led to bloated budgets, and bad movies. The stark decrease in the quality of cinema is pretty dramatic (with notable exceptions).
Another issue is that movie theatres and the theatre-going experience are both abominable. Theatres throughout the country, thanks again to corporate short-sightedness, are equipped with sub-par projectors which result in a greatly diminished viewing experience. Why go to the theatre and pay all that money when you can have a better visual experience at home on your big screen tv in a darkened living room?
As Sartre once taught us…hell is other people…and that is never more apparent than when you go to the movies. Dipshits and dumbasses talking and looking at their phone throughout a screening makes for a very tense and distracting movie going experience….another issue that is resolved by watching a movie at home.
Add to this that very, very few movies are so culturally compelling that people NEED to see them right away in order to stay in the loop. Barbie and Oppenheimer filled that bill last Summer, but those are definitely outliers. For example, would you be “out of the cultural loop” if you didn’t see Dune II in theatres this winter? It’s now streaming on Max just a few short months after premiering in theatres and you can watch it without all the bullshit of theatres, in the comfort of your own home…and go to the bathroom when you want without missing anything and not have to tell people to shut the fuck up or put their phones away. Will a big budget film like Dune II be diminished at a home theatre? One would expect the answer is ‘yes’ as it was made to be seen on a big screen…but considering when I saw it at a movie theatre I felt like I was watching it under three feet of water because the projector sucked so bad, my answer would be no.
The same is true of Furiosa. I like the Mad Max movies, but I’m not itching to go see Furiosa in the theatre because it isn’t mandatory in order to stay current culturally. So, I’ll see it when it comes to Max in a few months…or sooner.
The same is true for the glut of Marvel movies. For the longest time Marvel movies were must-see because everyone was talking about them….and now they’re not. Marvel movies ran its course but Disney keeps cramming them down our throat expecting the same results. I’m sorry but The Marvels isn’t moving the needle. No one cares.
Speaking of Marvel and Disney, another issue is that the massive success of the Marvel movies pre-2020 totally skewed the expectation IN HOLLYWOOD for what constitutes a successful movie.
Marvel movies routinely hit the billion-dollar mark and that became the standard for success. But that was then and this is now and studios and analysts are delusional about the box office potential for most movies. And that delusion gets baked into the cake regarding the budget for films.
Once again Barbie and Oppenheimer were outliers in this regard, and ironically have done more harm than good in regards to setting expectations for studio executives (and the general public).
For example, spending over $300 million to make a new Indiana Jones movie or Mission Impossible movie, is frankly nuts since neither of those creaky franchises are going to generate the kind of interest that will satiate a billion-dollar box office yearning.
The same is true for the new Marvel movies, as the stars of that franchise and the characters they played, are gone. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark is not walking through that door…and I’m sorry but Brie Larson isn’t going to fill that void.
The solution to the Hollywood problem is to change the corporate strategy, and instead of trying to make a billion dollars with a single blockbuster that costs at a minimum $250-300 million to make and another$150-250 million to market, is to make six or seven medium budget films for $50 million or less each with a focus on quality, in the hopes that one of those movies will hit big and fill the coffers.
Examples of what I’m talking about are movies like Parasite, which costs $15 million to make and brought in $262 million at the box office. I understand that Parasite is a remarkable movie from a brilliant filmmaker, but it shows what is possible.
The same is true of movies like Spotlight, which had a $20 million budget and made $98 million. Or even Good Will Hunting, which starred nobodies (Affleck and Damon) and was directed by a non-mainstream guy (Gus Van Sant) on a $10 million budget and raked in $225 million.
The key of course is that the movies have to be good and they have to avoid bloated budgets. The other benefit of making good movies is that more often than not if you make a good movie, it will get Oscar recognition and thus free marketing and a second life at the box office.
It goes without saying that Hollywood will not change its approach if for no other reason than corporations are allergic to actually thinking. And so, the studios will continue to relentlessly bang their heads against the bank vault door in the hopes one of these times it’ll open, even if just for a moment…like it did with Barbie and Oppenheimer, but if Barbie and Oppenheimer type success only comes along every five years or so, that won’t work as a business model.
The bottom line is that Hollywood fucked up their business and fucked up movies in the process…and we are all paying for it and will continue to pay for it for years to come. As a cinephile it gives me no pleasure in saying this but movies, much like popular music, is essentially dying as an artform and is too beholden to corporate interests to be able to save itself.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW HAS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Just an awful and idiotic waste of time.
Echo is the new Marvel five-episode mini-series streaming on Disney + and Hulu. The show stars Alaqua Cox in the title role, with supporting turns from Vincent D’Onofrio and Graham Greene.
Echo, in case you don’t know, is a Native American woman named Maya who is a master martial artist who is also deaf and has lost a leg. The character was first introduced to the MCU in the Disney + series Hawkeye.
I liked Hawkeye a great deal, and thought Echo was an interesting and intriguing hench woman. As a peripheral character she added depth to that show, but as the lead in a project she falls decidedly flat.
Echo is an absolute mess of a show. I’d call it an unmitigated disaster but disasters are more interesting.
The plot for Echo is laughably bad, the execution of it even worse. The action anemic and the acting atrocious.
Echo is categorized under the banner of Marvel Spotlight, which means it is supposed to be a stand-alone series, but if you haven’t seen Hawkeye, Echo will make absolutely no sense. Although to be fair, even if you have seen Hawkeye, Echo will still not make any sense.
Echo is set in Oklahoma, where Maya goes to get away from trouble in New York City and reconnect with her family and her native American roots.
The show leans heavily into Maya’s Native American lineage, and it is littered with flashbacks to the birth of Native people and the mysterious power Maya’s family has inherited from them. When these flashbacks aren’t incoherent, they are idiotic.
We also see flashbacks of how Maya lost her leg, and how a deep rift grew among her family. None of it is interesting or even adequately rendered.
Alaqua Cox stars as Maya, and she herself is actually deaf in real life, and also has lost a leg. One can only imagine the diversity, equity and inclusion orgasm Kevin Feige and Bob Iger experienced when they found a deaf, one-legged Native Woman to put in one of their projects. If Ms. Cox had been trans and/or queer too Iger and Feige’s loins would’ve gone thermo-nuclear.
Let me say first off that I’m glad that Cox has found acting work because it cannot be easy to be deaf and one-legged and get a lot of auditions. But it also must be said that Alaqua Cox isn’t exactly Meryl Streep as she is…by her nature, a very limited actress. The rest of the cast aren’t exactly the Royal Shakespeare Company either.
A major issue when committing to cast from a very specific ethnic group, in this case Native Americans, is that the talent pool is very, very limited. There are fewer actors to choose from and among that group there are even fewer good ones. Echo is populated by third-rate native actors and actresses that are entirely out of their league even on a silly series like this one.
The same thing happened with Martin Scorsese’s recent film Killers of the Flower Moon, where the Native actresses, in particular, were really dreadful. Lily Gladstone did solid work in the film, but besides her the cast is noticeably sub-par.
In Echo, Alaqua Cox is…not good, but she is someone who is Native, deaf and one-legged playing someone who is Native, deaf and one-legged…so she has that going for her. Besides that, she is quite wooden and impenetrable.
Graham Green is usually a very good actor, but even he is awful in this show. He plays a grandfather type figure to Maya and he seems to be fluctuating between sleepwalking and play acting.
My old friend Vincent D’Onofrio reprises his role as Kingpin in Echo and it is an embarrassment, not so much because of D’Onofrio’s acting, but because of how demeaning the entire enterprise is to the iconic character.
D’Onofrio was perfect as Kingpin in the Netflix series Daredevil, which for my money is easily the very best Marvel series ever made. But after a brief appearance in the Hawkeye finale, and now here in Echo, Kingpin’s status as a big, brutish badass, is in danger of being revoked.
Disney is reviving the Daredevil series and is returning the majority of the cast, but one cannot help but fear, if not expect, that they will completely fuck it up just like they’ve fucked everything else up in recent years. The castration of Kingpin in Echo points to the likelihood of the Daredevil series being neutered as well.
Disney is a disaster area and Marvel (and Star Wars) is in a state of such rapid decline and decay as to be shocking considering it stood at its apex just 5 years ago the culmination of its Infinity War saga.
Disney and Marvel’s addiction to feminization and diversity has sapped the MCU of its mythological meaning and its narrative and dramatic purpose.
Marvel has been turned into a weapon for cultural engineering instead of being a myth-making, and money printing, machine. Disney’s princess brigade has successfully castrated and feminized both Marvel and Star Wars, and both franchises are now left empty husks of their former selves.
As I have been saying all along, the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey are two completely different things, and you cannot simply replace a hero with a heroine and expect it to resonate in the collective consciousness. In other words, Disney/Marvel’s feminization/princess-ification of their franchises does not, as they hope, empower women, but rather strips the stories of all of their psychological, mythological and archetypal power.
Echo is a bad series not because it stars a twice disabled, Native American woman. No, Echo is a bad series because Disney/Marvel think that if a series stars a twice disabled, Native American woman that is all it needs. To Disney/Marvel, the show doesn’t need to be good…it just needs to be.
This is why diversity, equity and inclusion is such a cancer, it’s because diversity becomes the main focus, and quality is reduced to an after-thought if it is thought of at all.
In conclusion, Echo is a complete waste of time. The show is shoddy, shitty and stupid. I watched Echo so you don’t have to…and trust me…you really don’t have to.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2024
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Popcorn Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. If you’re desperate to be an Indiana Jones completist, wait until this underwhelming movie hits Disney + to watch it.
The Indiana Jones franchise gloriously burst onto the scene with 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, a deliriously entertaining throwback to early Hollywood action-adventure serial cliffhangers that was perfectly directed by Steven Spielberg and created/produced by George Lucas, which became a massive blockbuster and captured the culture’s imagination.
Raiders made Harrison Ford, who was already an enormous star for his turn as the charming rogue Han Solo in the Star Wars movies, a megastar for his portrayal of the swashbuckling, Nazi-punching archeologist Indiana Jones.
Now, forty years and four films later, Harrison Ford is back once again in the iconic title role in the new film Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which is the fifth, and maybe, probably, hopefully, the last film in the franchise.
The Dial of Destiny is the first Indiana Jones film to not be directed by Steven Spielberg. This time James Mangold (Ford v Ferrari, Logan) is at the helm and joining Ford in the cast are Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Boyd Holbrook, Mads Mikkelsen and Toby Jones.
The film tells the story of the incomparable Indiana Jones as he struggles to make his way in the modern world of 1969 as a retiring professor of archeology. His retirement plans get scattered to the wind when his goddaughter Helena shows up talking about an ancient relic called the dial of destiny…and so the adventure begins.
The Indiana Jones film series has, with one notable exception, been a case of diminishing returns as the franchise went along. Raiders was impeccable entertainment, but its sequel, 1984’s The Temple of Doom, was a major drop off from its predecessor. Thankfully 1989’s The Last Crusade, which featured a supporting turn by Sean Connery, got things back on track as it was nearly an equal to Raiders. Then fans had to wait 19 years for the next Indiana Jones movie, and that was 2008’s The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull…it was not worth the wait.
I had never seen Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but to prepare for Dial of Destiny I watched it and came away thinking that while the first act was fine, the second act was pretty bad and the third act was unconscionably awful.
As bad as The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was, and it really was bad as it was riddled with the most basic filmmaking and storytelling errors, believe it or not, it is still better than The Dial of Destiny.
I saw The Dial of Destiny a day ago and I cannot, for the life of me, remember a single frame from the film. While my cognitive decline may be partially responsible for that lack of recall, it isn’t totally to blame as the movie itself shoulders the majority of it.
The biggest problem with The Dial of Destiny, and it is riddled with a cavalcade of problems, is that it’s shockingly, unforgivably dull. The dial of dullness was turned up to 11 on this movie.
Why Ford, who is now 80 years-old, would dust off Indy’s signature fedora and bullwhip for this insipid script and lackluster movie, is beyond me. It’s not like he needs the money.
Indiana Jones has always had a partner in these movies, be it romantic or familial. In Raiders there was Karen Allen’s spectacular spitfire Marion. In Temple of Doom it was the awful Kate Capshaw as singer/actress Willie. In Last Crusade, of course, it was Sean Connery as Indy’s dad Henry. In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull it was Shia LeBeouf as Indy’s son, Mutt. And now in Dial of Destiny it is Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena Shaw, Indy’s Goddaughter.
As terrible as Kate Capshaw and Shia LeBeouf are in their Indy supporting roles, Waller-Bridge is, astonishingly, even worse.
Waller-Bridge is best known for her award-winning performance in the tv series Fleabag, which she also wrote. I absolutely loved Fleabag and Waller-Bridge in it. I thought she was utterly phenomenal as the self-destructive, self-sabotaging lead in the series.
But in Dial of Destiny, Waller-Bridge, who has not done much if any acting work since Fleabag, is exposed for simply not being ready for prime time. Her quirkiness was extremely appealing on the small screen in Fleabag, but on the big screen she is revealed as being a charisma-free, small, rather poor actress.
Waller-Bridge is remarkably wooden, if not leaden, in the film. As a comedic presence she is underwhelming, annoying and decidedly unfunny. As a physical actress she is uncomfortable, ungainly, ungraceful and unathletic, four things that individually are difficult to deal with in an action movie, but in unison are impossible to overcome.
Casting Waller-Bridge, who is, frankly, physically unattractive, and who runs like a baby giraffe with rickets and a club foot, as a co-lead in an action-adventure film next to a crumbling 80-year-old man, is so egregious as to be criminal.
At least with 80-year-old Harrison Ford they de-age him for the first part of the film so we don’t have to watch his decrepit body creak and ache for the full, and excruciatingly long, two hours and thirty-four-minute run time. Unfortunately for Waller-Bridge, and us, no technology exists that can alter her awkward, grating presence and unappealing appearance in this movie.
As for Ford, the truth is he has never been a particularly good actor. He’s certainly a very charming screen presence, but he’s always been pretty limited in what he’s able to do acting-wise. If you watch him in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull he’s actually egregiously bad, but in Dial of Destiny he has some brief moments.
For example, when Indy dutifully recites some exposition about why Mutt (his son from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) isn’t in this movie, it is actually quite moving…and is the most emotionally packed sequence in any Indiana Jones film and maybe in Ford’s career.
Unfortunately, that is the only moment in the entire film that has any life to it. The rest of it is generic action after generic action all riddled with derivative dialogue around a pointless plot.
Speaking of generic, the bad guys in this movie, Nazi scientist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) and Klaber (Boyd Holbrooke), are such cardboard cutouts I’m surprised they didn’t blow away in the wind. I like both Mikkelsen and Holbrooke but these bad guys have no depth or direction to them. Klaber in particular is totally incomprehensible and incoherent.
Another absurd character is Mason, a black, female CIA agent, poorly played by Shaunette Renee Wilson. Mason is a sassy CIA agent with a heart of gold and a strong moral compass. How realistic. That Wilson is unable to bring any life or depth to the character only adds to that undeniable sinking feeling whenever she’s on-screen.
In a recent article Wilson described how she got her character’s dramatic exit from the story changed because she thought it had offensive language in it and was unduly harsh. The ending that ultimately ended up on-screen is so banal as to be ridiculous so…congrats to Ms. Wilson?
It is also amusing that Ms. Wilson was offended by some language spoken to her character in her original final scene, which no doubt was racially tinged considering the scenes are set in 1969 and her opponent is the Nazi henchmen Klaber, but she felt completely comfortable using the term “cracker” on-screen. Apparently, what is good for the goose is most definitely not also good for the gander.
That James Mangold agreed to Ms. Wilson’s changing of the script speaks to not only his spineless and sackless nature but also his complete lack of understanding about drama. Kluber would’ve been a more compelling, interesting and comprehensible character if we could’ve seen his visceral hatred of Mason in the actual movie. But it was “offensive” so we have to deter to a no-name, third rate actress’s feelings instead. Good grief.
Speaking of Mangold, who I thought did fantastic work on both Logan and Ford v Ferrari, he brings nothing to the table on Dial of Destiny. The film isn’t even a cheap knock-off of Spielberg, which Spielberg himself already did on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it’s just an overly long exercise in bad decisions.
For example, why does Mangold shoot an underwater scene which is impossible to see and dramatically nonsensical? Why does he shoot so much at night, which results in bland visuals with no sharp contrast? These decisions, along with the decision to cast Waller-Bridge and Shaunette Renee Wilson, are inexplicable, and they are an albatross around the movie’s neck. And don’t even get me started on the character Teddy (Ethann Isidore), who is like Short Round (from Temple of Doom) but worse, believe it or not. Yikes.
Another enormous problem with Dial of Destiny is that its story undermines what made both Raiders and Last Crusade so archetypally compelling, namely, it eschews the magic and mysticism of religion in favor of “science”.
The plot of Dial of Destiny revolves around the Antikythera, a time travel device built by Greek mathematician Archimedes. There is nothing mystical about this device, it is supposed to be based on actual science.
Indiana Jones is himself a scientist, which is why his grappling with the magical religious powers of the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, in Raiders and Last Crusade respectively, is so captivating and compelling.
When Indy is faced with dubious science, as in Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny, it works at cross-purposes with the character’s archetype and mythology. In other words, it disengages the audience on an unconscious level, thus neutering the story and its dramatic power.
The Lance of Longinus or Holy Lance, which was used to pierce Christ’s side at the crucifixion, is a relic that is momentarily presented on-screen in the movie but then narratively disposed of in favor of Archimedes’ dial of destiny.
It seems to me that the Holy Lance was a better option to use as a narrative device in this film. It could have been presented as a way for the aging Indy to find both redemption and forgiveness for whatever sins he may be burdened with…like the ones regarding his son and ex-wife. And it could also have been a weapon of great power used by the usual suspects, the Nazis, to take over the world.
But instead, we get the rather flaccid dial of destiny, which Indy doesn’t even use to reverse the errors he’s made in his personal life, but only a really lame final act involving Archimedes himself that feels like a bad attraction at a second-rate amusement park. Sigh.
If I had the dial of destiny in my possession I would travel back in time and erase all of the Indiana Jones movies except for Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. I would also make sure the diabolical producer from Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, was never born, thus saving both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises from her malignantly evil grasp. I have no doubt that I would be received as a great hero to all people with good taste.
Oh, to dream.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****
My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A major disappointing season from this once terrific series.
Season one (2019) and two (2020) of The Mandalorian were as good as it gets in terms of Star Wars storytelling. So much so that a dear friend of mine, the biggest Star Wars fan I know, once waxed poetically to me about how the series’ creator Jon Favreau was the savior of the Star Wars franchise.
Whether you believe that about Favreau or not, the truth is that The Mandalorian undoubtedly set the bar very high for the bevy of Star Wars series that came in its wake. Unfortunately, the majority of them have failed to live up to the standard.
For example, the alarmingly awful The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi fell shamefully short of The Mandalorian’s high standards. Things were so bleak at Mickey Mouse’s money-making machine after the back-to-back egregious embarrassments of Boba Fett and Obi Wan, Disney’s Star Wars television ventures seemed on the precipice of annihilation like Alderaan on the wrong end of a Death Star blast.
Then the top-notch Andor arrived on the scene. Andor was able to equal, and in some ways exceed, season one and two of The Mandalorian’s high storytelling standards and Disney once again felt like the had righted the good ship Star Wars.
But now the roller coaster continues with season three of The Mandalorian, whose eight episodes concluded on Wednesday, which scuttled all the creative and artistic momentum of its previous two stellar seasons and of the superb Andor.
Unfortunately, season three of The Mandalorian feels more like an extension of the sub-par work of The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi than a continuation of the excellence of seasons one and two of The Mandalorian.
Season three is an exceedingly frustrating, irritating, incoherent, dull, lore-desecrating exercise that besmirches the once mighty legacy of The Mandalorian brand, reducing it to just another Star Wars piece of junk in a galaxy quickly filling up with Star Wars junk.
The storyline of season three lacks immediacy and consistency, and instead feels like writers/producers trying to sell Star Wars toys while they kill time waiting for other series, most likely the forthcoming Ahsoka, to carry the Star Wars narrative load.
The (spoiler-free) loose premise of the season is that Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his de facto adopted son Grogu – aka Baby Yoda, join with Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sakchoff) to try and return to Mandalore.
The premise never compels, and the villain (I won’t say who it is to avoid spoilers), once revealed, feels like a creative cul-de-sac that is repetitive and redundant and redundantly repetitive.
The series featured the worst episode (episode six – which contains cameos by Lizzo and Jack Black – God help us!!) in the history of Star Wars tv which is an astonishing accomplishment considering the staggering level of incompetence of The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi.
The season finale, while not a great finale, was an action-packed episode and was, to a point, entertaining, but it didn’t elevate the series or make it make sense.
As much as I enjoyed some of the action at times in the finale it was also ridiculous to the point of shameful, and it stretched Star Wars lore and the established rules of the series and the Star Wars universe beyond recognition.
For example, earlier in the season Mandalorians chasing a giant monster had to stop because their jet packs ran out of fuel after roughly a half mile. But in the finale, Mandalorians were flying thousands of miles and breaking through the atmosphere of a planet and into space with ease using their jetpacks.
Another example is that in the finale the villain/villains have great powers (I’m doing my best to avoid spoilers) and yet they end up being like every other dopey background actor stormtrooper who gets felled with ease by the good guys.
The biggest problem with season three though is that it felt like it was no longer about The Mandalorian but rather about the WOmandalorian. Female warrior queen Bo-Katan Kryze became the focus of the drama and the hero who continuously kept saving the damsel-in-distress Din Djarin from peril.
Making things worse was that Katee Sakchoff, an actress I loved on Battlestar Galactica, was dreadful as Bo-Katan. In season two Din Djarin worked with a bad-ass woman warrior Cara Dune, played by Gina Carano. Dune was really cool and Carano was great in the role, but then she said something on social media about Nazis that made the Nazis at Disney upset so they fired her. The reason I bring this up is because, and I never thought I’d say this in my entire life, but Katee Sackhoff is no Gina Carano, and The Mandalorian season three suffers under her relentlessly weak performance.
Which brings up another issue that is becoming glaring, and that is Disney’s princess problem. What I mean by that is that Disney made its bazillions by telling female-centric stories for girls about princesses. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and on and on. The problem is that they’ve purchased Marvel and Star Wars, two brands that tell archetypal stories about boys and men for boys and men.
Instead of embracing what made Marvel and Star Wars successful, Disney has reverted to form and gone about dismantling the male archetypes and replacing them with “princesses” - inadequate and inappropriate female characters.
So, in Marvel we get Thor replaced by Lady Thor, Black Panther replaced by Lady Black Panther, Hawkeye replaced by Lady Hawkeye, Iron Man replaced by Iron Heart aka Lady Iron Man…not to mention the cavalcade of female led-projects like Black Widow, Captain Marvel (who originally was a man in the comics) and now The Marvels. In Star Wars the most obvious example was that the center of the latest trilogy was a female, Rey, while the two previous trilogies focused on Luke and Anakin.
I understand Disney’s insipid impulse to feminize everything and even understand its insidious desire to socially engineer through its products, but what shocks me about this is Disney’s incredible misunderstanding of the basics of myth and archetype.
As Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung teach us, the woman’s hero journey (or heroine journey if you will) is very different from the male hero journey. Different narratives and archetypes are needed and necessary in order to tell the heroine’s journey, but what Disney (and most other modern storytelling) is doing is simply replacing men in the hero’s journey with women.
The reason why these stories, on the whole, fail is because they do not resonate in the collective unconscious due to their mythic and archetypal misunderstandings.
This does not mean that women can’t be leads in action stories…quite the contrary, but they must go on a heroine’s journey not a hero’s journey. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien is a perfect example of the heroine’s journey in an action role. Ripley is at her core a feminine mother character (in the first film this – among other reasons - is why the cat is so important – as Ripley must nurture and save it), just like the mother creature she fights.
Another example is Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) from the fantastic 2015 film Sicario. Macer is an FBI agent but she must navigate the brutal world of men all the while knowing that she, as a woman, is more vulnerable than the men she is surrounded by. As much as she wants to be “one of the boys”, she never will be and that is part of her journey…coming to understand the nature of things and the perilous, nearly indecipherable world of men.
While audiences, for social or political reasons, may support these Disney designed female-led hero’s journeys, on a very deep psychological level, they are agitated by them and often repulsed by them and that’s because they are the anti-thesis of our inherent psychological and mythological conditioning.
No doubt there are some who, again for social or political reasons, want to decondition audiences from what they would describe as an archaic view of men and women, but the human psyche and collective conscious and unconscious, don’t work that way as they have been built over thousands of years and don’t bend to whatever is fashionable in the decadent society du jour.
Back in 2015 right after the female-led The Force Awakens hit theatres, I was at a dinner party with a bunch of Angelinos and the movie came up as a topic of conversation. I chimed in and said I didn’t think it was very good and a woman sitting next to me, who was there with her maybe ten-year-old daughter, leaned over and whispered into my ear, “yes, but the message it sends to girls, and to boys about girls, is really important.”
I nearly bled to death biting my tongue in an attempt to avoid a social mis-step. What I wanted to tell this woman was that the privileged life she led, the big L.A. house she lived in with the “I’m With Her” sign in front, and the security of her existence, was built by…men. Many of them ugly, brutish men, who she would despise simply because they were ugly and brutish men. These are the same men who throughout history have eliminated any and all threats to her plush, decadent, million-dollar, echo-chamber existence.
This is the type of woman, a pampered princess, who demands “equality” for women and girls, but when push comes to shove, she only wants the kind of “equality” where she is awarded unquestioned deference and privileges due to her “victim status” as a woman which elevates her above by those deplorable men who intervene to protect her from the vicious darkness of the world.
If this woman lived in Ukraine she would, as did most of the Ukrainian women, leave to go live in other parts of Europe while all the men of fighting age (and well beyond and beneath fighting age) were forced, through force or conscience, to fight, and ended up being slaughtered by the vastly superior Russian military.
This is why Sicario is so impactful, as it shows in the bleakest, bluntest terms, that play-acting as a tough chick won’t cut it in the world of men. Men inherently understand this as we’ve navigated the perils of the brutal world of men our entire lives and know what the real deal is.
Yes, women have been on the receiving end of toxic masculinity…but they’ve also benefitted from men’s sacrifice and masculinity’s ability to protect them in a dangerous world to such a degree that they now feel safe and secure enough to incessantly bitch and moan about how all masculinity is toxic.
That’s a long way of saying that when Bo-Katan saves Din Djarin for like the fifth time in season three on The Mandalorian, it made me laugh at how ridiculous and shameful it was even for a silly, sci-fi series on a corporate streaming service hellbent on promoting a social-political agenda.
It is fitting that Disney now turns its Star Wars hopes to Ahsoka, which hits Disney plus in August and tells the story of the female Jedi who was once the Padawan of Anakin Skywalker. The girl power galaxy strikes again.
As far as The Mandalorian season three goes, it was a major letdown compared to season one and two. The series lost not only its cohesiveness and its competence, but more importantly its purpose and meaning, and there’s no telling if it’ll ever get it back.
Season three of The Mandalorian was so deflating, it left me wondering not only what the future holds for Star Wars, but if it has a future at all.
The cold, hard reality is that The Mandalorian, Star Wars, Marvel, and our entire culture in general, is an utter mess, and it needs to get its balls back and quick if it wants to survive.
As the Mandalorians would say, “This is the way.”
©2023
****THIS IS A SPOILERS FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. It’s a real spy drama that happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. Well crafted, and very well acted.
Andor, the most recent Star Wars live action series, finished its twelve-episode first season on Disney + this past Wednesday November 23rd.
The series, which tells the story of Cassian Andor and his introduction into the early-stages of the rebellion against the Empire, is a prequel to the film Rogue One and is set prior to the events of Star Wars: A New Hope.
To say I was reticent going into watching Andor would be a massive understatement. You can’t really blame me. The previous two Star Wars series, The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi, were both utterly atrocious. These series, most specifically Obi Wan Kenobi, were so bad as to be embarrassing, so one can understand why any fan would expect the worst when it came to Andor.
But then I tentatively waded into the series and was at first relieved, and then surprised and finally excited. Andor may very well be the best Star Wars series thus far – at the very least it’s equal to The Mandalorian, and the reason for that is because an actual professional, Tony Gilroy, whose career includes writing the Bourne trilogy and writing/directing Michael Clayton, created the series…and it shows.
Andor is certainly the most sophisticated Star Wars series to date. It’s a real show about a growing, underground rebellion that just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. You could set the story in modern-day Iran, China, US or Israel and you wouldn’t have to change all that much.
The acting in Andor is the best there’s ever been in any Star Wars story, be it movie or tv series. The cast across the board are truly phenomenal.
I’m not much of a Diego Luna fan, but he’s fantastic in Andor as the lead. His performance is contained yet kinetic. Luna reveals just enough, but never too much, of Andor, and it makes for compelling viewing.
Genevieve O’Reilly is spectacular as Mon Mothma, an Imperial Senator from Chandrila trying to thread the needle of her public image, personal politics and family life. O’Reilly is so good in the role, and Mon Mothma is such a fascinating character, that I was yearning for a series about her alone.
Stellan Skarsgard is also brilliant as Luthen Rael, a key figure in the rebellion who no one can seem to pin down. Skarsgard shines in the role because Rael, like the actor playing him, must constantly change the masks he wears and along with them his behavior. Skarsgard is a great actor, and having him bring his considerable talent and skill to a Star Wars series indicates how seriously the creators of the series took the story.
The rest of the cast, in big roles and small, are uniformly terrific, and it elevates Andor beyond the usual Star Wars fare and turns it into a legitimate spy drama.
For example, Rupert Vansittart plays Chief Hyne, a small supporting character, and in one small scene he is so good as to be astonishing. This is what happens when you cast skilled actors…everything gets elevated.
The overall aesthetic, most notably the set design, is also top notch. Each set feels real and not like some set on a studio backlot. Visually, everything has a visceral, tangible feel to it, and creates an atmosphere reminiscent of major science fiction like Blade Runner.
To be clear, not everything works perfectly. A few storylines felt forced and fell a bit flat, such as the odd relationship between Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), an ambitious supervisor of the Empire’s Security Bureau, and Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), a-down-on-his-luck security inspector for a corporate entity working with the Empire.
Gough and Soller are both very good in their roles, but the arc of their characters and their relationship rang hollow and felt superfluous, and their climax is easily the weakest part of the otherwise well executed series, and it isn’t even close.
From what I understand, Andor is not generating big numbers for Disney +. The situation is so dire that Disney is running the series on ABC in order to generate some interest in it. This is unfortunate but not surprising.
When you roll out second and third-rate garbage like The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re not going to generate trust from fans, and so they don’t give a series like Andor the chance it deserves.
A great friend of mine, let’s call him Doug, is the biggest Star Wars fan I know. He’s truly a fanatic. But as Andor’s first season wore on I kept asking him if he’d watched it and he said “no”. He said he hadn’t given it a chance because he “didn’t want to be crushed with disappointment again.”
That Doug, who literally gets dressed up in costume and attends opening night of Star Wars movies, is reticent to watch a Star Wars show because he can’t take anymore soul crushing disappointment, is a sign of major problems for Disney.
I think Disney knows it too, which is why CEO Bob Chapek is out and guru Bob Iger is back in. Iger retired in 2020 and left Disney, the company he built up into a staggering entertainment powerhouse with acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox, in the hands of his one-time protégé. But now he has some serious decisions to make if he wants to pull Disney out of its current tailspin - which includes a 40% drop in stock price over the last year.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Big Dick Bob Iger will wheel and deal his way out of trouble, maybe by buying Netflix, or maybe even by selling Disney to Apple.
Buying Netflix seems improbable to me because Netflix carries massive amounts of debt and brings nothing of note to Disney, which already has a robust streaming service.
Selling to Apple makes more sense, at least financially, as it would mean a boon for Iger personally as it would attach his vast Disney holdings to Apple, a Teflon tech company that isn’t going anywhere.
But these choices would simply be a distraction for Iger from the bigger decision he must make which is, he can either double down on the creative direction Disney is going now with its numerous properties like Star Wars and Marvel, or he can dramatically change course.
Doubling down means continuing with the cultural political stuff in Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel, which is a big part of the reason Disney is in such trouble at the moment. It would basically mean Disney deciding to stay the course and do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. In other words, it would be insane.
As insane as it would be, I could totally understand why it would happen. The Disney employees, like mindless cult members, truly believe in this woke stuff, and in their own righteousness. And the ruling class in the Disney executive suite live in the most isolated of bubbles that aggressively reinforces the importance of wokeness, and their own self-righteousness.
That said, Bob Iger is no moron. He has to know that his bottom line, and all of his personal stakes in Disney, are getting seriously damaged by the company’s embrace of wokeness, including denigrating and attacking fans as racist, sexist and homophobic who critique their product.
The other option is for Iger to reverse course and to go back to the middle of the road in terms of staying away from cultural politics. That’s no easy task, especially when his workforce and the social circles the executives run in, will put up serious resistance.
At this point the problem can’t be solved just by returning to making quality movies and tv shows, as evidenced by Andor being such a great series but no one tuning in. The disease of wokeness has taken deep hold and Disney is suffering from a stage four version of it, and it is killing the company by alienating customers.
Everything is trending down for Disney. The recent spate of dismal Star Wars series pre-Andor are seriously eroding fan interest. The same is true of Marvel, where the recent batch of movies aren’t just bad but underperforming at the box office…all while their budgets bloat beyond belief. Marvel tv shows are just as bad if not worse than the Star Wars shows, and they don’t pay any dividends anymore.
The reality is that the good ship Mickey Mouse was on its way to the utopia that is the Fantasy Island of Wokeness but it hit the Iceberg of Reality and is now quickly taking on water. It seems to me that bringing back Bob Iger to rearrange the deck chairs won’t solve any of the bigger problems.
Maybe I’m wrong and Iger will right the ship and Disney will be back to its robust self in no time. Or maybe Disney is doomed because it didn’t listen to Cassandras like me who were warning them early on that “get woke, go broke” was inevitable if they kept on the self-righteous path.
Regardless of all that, the truth is that building back trust from fans is a difficult thing to do and it takes years. There is no quick fix. But Andor, which is as good The Mandalorian, is a terrific first step.
Disney needs to put together a string of quality Star Wars series, and eventually Star Wars movies, in order to bring the bevy of Star Wars fans back safely into the fold. The same is also true of Marvel.
I hope they do it. I also hope you check out Andor, because it’s very well-made, and well-worth your time.
©2022
Oligarch Jeff “Sauron” Bezos is using craven culture war issues like “diversity, inclusion and representation” to deceive liberals/progressives into fighting for his diabolical corporation and the 1%.
The Agenda. The relentless, tedious, ever-present Agenda, has come to Middle-Earth.
Amazon’s long-awaited, highly-anticipated, extraordinarily expensive, Lord of the Rings tv series, The Rings of Power, has finally arrived, and thus far it is only notable for its artistic shortcomings and its slavish commitment to the insidious Agenda of diversity, inclusion and representation over quality.
Amazon’s Sauron-in-Chief, Jeffrey Bezos, wanted his own Game of Thrones type fantasy series, so he paid $250 million for the rights to the appendices from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and committed upwards of a billion dollars of his sweatshop empire’s gains for five seasons of elves, dwarves, hobbits (harfoots) and orcs.
The first two episodes of the series premiered on Amazon Prime Video Thursday September 1st, and they are, to be kind, rather uninspiring. The series may well improve dramatically over the next six episodes of season one, I certainly hope it does, but thus far it has been slow and rather unsteady going.
What is most enlightening about The Rings of Power though is that the heated discussion around the show is much more energetic than the show itself.
In case you haven’t heard, the series has a diverse cast of “actors of color”, and features three feminist heroines as its leads, which some argue is contrary to the source material written by J.R.R. Tolkien.
This debate around the show’s “diverse” casting and its centering of three female leads, which has infuriated some and delighted others, at least has passion, whereas The Rings of Power feels diabolically staid and sterile.
THE PLAYBOOK
As for that debate and the ever-insistent Agenda, the reality is that for Amazon, or any studio releasing a product into the public, controversy around casting “minority” actors and featuring female leads is a feature, not a bug.
This is all part of the plan and right out of a well-worn playbook.
The playbook is as follows.
1. Cast “actors of color” or women in roles that traditionally would be played by white actors or men and heavily market the “diverse and inclusive” casting.
2. Claim victimhood, which in our current era conveys cultural status, by alleging “racist/sexist attacks” on the diverse cast leading up to the premiere of the film or series.
3. Create the paradigm where liberals/progressives feel that supporting the film/series is a way for them to signal their virtue and believe they are being actively “anti-racist/anti-sexist” (in other words it makes them feel like they’re actually fighting injustice by watching a movie or tv show).
4. Stigmatize all criticism of the film/tv show by conflating criticism of the film/series with racism/sexism, which results in critiques of any kind from fans and professional critics being stifled and self-censored.
5. Claim all negative fan reviews on various review aggregator sites are the result of “review bombing” by racist/sexist trolls on have banned or banished.
6. As the controversy heightens, put out inflated viewership numbers as well as a carefully crafted statement declaring the parent company/studio “stands with” the diverse cast and against racism of all kinds.
7. Declare moral victory (“we did the right thing!”) no matter how spectacularly the film/tv show fails.
That’s the basics of the playbook, which Disney and Amazon in particular, have used extensively in recent years.
THE OBJECTIVE
These manufactured racial/gender cultural conflagrations and their paradigm of stigmatizing criticism as racism/sexism, are meant to trigger conservatives/traditionalist into attacking and liberals and progressives into defending.
The most troubling aspect is the libneral/progressives who are triggered into vociferously defending a corporate entertainment product, and by default unconsciously or consciously aligning with the nefarious corporation behind the film/tv product, all because a film/tv series is now nothing more than a proxy battle in the culture war.
In the case of The Rings of Power, the racial/gender casting issue is meant to inflame conservatives/traditionalist and actually distract liberals/progressives from a bigger issue. Instead of noticing that Amazon is a company that exploits its workers to a shocking and disgusting degree and that Bezos is one of the most deplorable people on the planet, liberals/progressives now go to battle for their ideological opponents, in this case Amazon and billionaire Bezos, rather than against them.
This distractionary tactic works incredibly well because liberal/progressives have been conditioned to downplay tangible economic issues in favor of more amorphous, emotionally resonant issues like race, gender and sexual orientation.
In addition, liberals/progressives have also been conditioned to never actually debate or discuss these topics but rather simply resort to bigoteering and calling anyone and everyone who disagrees with you a racist/sexist. In other words, no argument need be made, all one has to do is give a reflexive display of righteousness, virtue signal and claim victory.
The liberals/progressives currently baring their teeth to alleged “racists” and “sexists” over The Rings of Power, are the ones who should, in theory, be outside Bezos’ mansion with pitchforks and torches (think of how hyper-racialization in our cultural politics completely destroyed the Occupy Wall Street movement and spirit), or at least trying to hold Amazon’s feet to the fire in terms of unionization, not defending them.
THE EVIDENCE
Make no mistake, all of this outrage and controversy is staged and manufactured for corporate benefit. The playbook is obvious.
If Amazon had wanted to make gobs of money it could have followed the very clear path already cleared by director Peter Jackson, who made three Lord of the Rings movies and three Hobbit movies which in total made roughly $6 billion.
But instead, Amazon pushed aside Jackson and decided to go for social engineering rather than servicing Tolkien fans who have proven their loyalty and commitment to mostly faithful adaptations.
This is similar to how Disney continuously chooses to alienate its Marvel and Star Wars fans with social engineering instead of giving them what worked in the past, which is what they want and what they will gladly fork over their money for.
Also note how Amazon has flexed its muscles to get media outlets to rush out dubious sob stories from The Rings of Power cast about allegedly facing “racist” or “sexist” backlash prior to the series premiere, just like Disney does with every Marvel and Star Wars movie or series.
Also notice how Amazon, like Disney before them, shouts from the rooftops about the insidious racist “review bombing” against The Rings of Power on rotten tomatoes. Amazon has gone so far as to halt reviews of the series being placed on the Amazon website in order to stifle “racist trolls”.
Of course, there’s no proof that any review bombing is going on, or that people leaving negative reviews are racist…but that reality is inconvenient to Amazon and so it isn’t just ignored, but disparaged. And as an aside, why isn’t it ever considered review bombing when it is positive reviews inundating rotten tomatoes?
In keeping with the playbook, Amazon claimed without evidence that 25 million viewers watched the premier episode of The Rings of Power (this is contradicted by a SambaTV report with significantly lower viewership numbers – 1.8 million in US). Amazon also just put out a brave statement saying they stand with their actors of color and reject all “racist attacks” from deplorable fans – who they claim aren’t really fans at all. As Dan Rather would say, “courage”.
THE AGENDA
The fact is that Amazon sullying Tolkien’s timeless myth with the insipid cultural politics of today is not the least bit shocking considering that in 2021 Amazon Studios released its “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” playbook which lays out the rules and regulations regarding diversity quotas (50% of all creative roles must be women and/or from under-represented groups) on all Amazon Studio projects.
In other words, the plan all along was to turn Tolkien into tokens for Amazon and Bezos’ cultural political gain. They tried the same thing with their deservedly-much-maligned and ultimately ignored fantasy series The Wheel of Time. Of course, to speak this obvious truth is met with even more shrill cries of “racist!” and “sexist!”
Amazon’s “Diversity, Inclusion and Representation” playbook makes it very clear that the company is committed to a cultural/political agenda and is not interested in the quality of their product or…and this is still shocking to consider…how much money it makes in its entertainment division.
Of course, one wonders if Amazon and Disney and all the rest will hit a point where their social engineering becomes too financially untenable to continue?
The answer to that might be as simple as “get woke, go broke”. Either that or this social engineering is here to stay because these entertainment behemoths are too big to fail and will only expand their monopolies and eliminate all opposing voices. The current sorry, sycophantic state of professional film/tv criticism indicates they’re well on their way to snuffing out dissent.
THE LAPDOG
The easily manipulated liberal/progressive Pavlovian response to all things race and gender related is perfectly summed up in a review of The Rings of Power from LA Times critic Robert Lloyd. Lloyd reveals his inability to actually think, nevermind have an original thought, by regurgitating the most weak-kneed, shallow and vacuous drivel imaginable.
For example, Lloyd writes of The Rings of Power,
“And sometimes (some) fans defend the wrong things, as when attacking the production for its foregrounding of female roles and casting actors of color where Tolkien (and Jackson, following his lead) only saw white.”
Tolkien “only saw white” because he was writing a myth for Northern Europeans using folklore from those regions where mostly, if not all, of the people are white. It should also be noted that Tolkien created the entire Lord of the Rings universe…so it’s his and his vision. Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, only saw white because he was, shock of shocks, trying to stay true to Tolkien’s written word.
Lloyd then actually unintentionally makes the case that the fans now being labelled “racist” have made all along, that Tolkien’s work is clearly designed as a founding myth for Norther Europeans/English, and casting it with “people of color” undermines the author’s intent.
“Evidence has been advanced to show that Tolkien was anti-racist in life, but there is no getting around the fact that in his books, Northern European types save the day from swarthy types from the South and East, who are characterized with giant elephants and (as in Jackson’s “The Return of the King”) quasi-Arabic garb.”
Lloyd’s use of the term “anti-racist” is revealing, as it’s a nod to his political tribe that he has “done all the reading”, including Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s egregiously vapid book How to be an Anti-Racist.
It’s also telling that the haughty and insolent Lloyd still manages, despite “evidence…that Tolkien was anti-racist” to smear the great author as a racist in the same sentence.
Lloyd then lets readers know that he’s truly one of the good white guys when he writes,
“To be honest, I was a little worried the series would continue in that distasteful vein and happy to see that it did not; Tolkien, some would say, was just a man of his time, but these are different times.”
Bravo Mr. Lloyd on the virtue signal! It’s glorious how Lloyd rides in on his white steed and tells us that he’s glad that Tolkien’s “distasteful” approach when writing one of the greatest selling books of all-time, has been discarded, which makes him “happy”. Lloyd sounds like like a toddler getting ice cream after his tantrum forces his parents to take the filet mignon away.
Lloyd then makes his intellectual insipidness completely clear as he writes,
“(I reject out of hand all arguments that employ the word “woke” or use “diversity” in a negative sense.)”
Replace the words “woke” and “diversity” with “Jesus freak” and “Christ” and this is the type of thing you’d say if you were some backwards ass bible-thumper.
Rejecting the notion that “diversity” can be anything but good is an indicator of one’s blind faith and strict adherence to dogma, not someone with a serious and vibrant intellectual yearning. “Diversity” to the woke is like the divinity of Christ to the Christian. It can never be up for debate. It only just is…and it is always good.
God knows I fear nothing more than being dismissed by Lloyd as an unserious critic, but I must say, Lloyd’s blanket banning of the term “woke” and his refusal to consider the nuances of “diversity” clearly outs him as a devout member of the Church of Wokeness and a frivolous, insignificant thinker to boot.
What is most amusing is that Lloyd then follows this supercilious inanity up with an admission that The Rings of Power does, in fact, do what many of the alleged “racists” claim it does.
“The Rings of Power” does, in a few instances, too obviously adopt the language of modern American prejudice to make a point, but that is a matter of poor writing rather than a bad idea.”
Because Lloyd is so self-righteous and has spent so much energy signaling his virtue, he believes he can make the same complaint other people have made – that the show is too contemporary in its cultural politics, but avoid being labelled “racist”, even as he himself calls those people with the same opinion as him “racist”. Incredible.
CONCLUSION
In the final analysis, all of this venting and vexing about “diversity’ and “inclusion” and “representation” is just meant to divide and distract.
Amazon uses the same bigoteering, divide and conquer playbook as Disney and every other major corporation in America which were so quick to shout “Black Lives Matter!” when it was a convenient way to signal their virtue and cover their asses. This is the same playbook the ruling elite use to maintain the corrupt power structure by keeping the proles at bay and constantly at each other’s throats.
Divide and conquer has kept the oligarchs and the American aristocracy on the throne of power time immemorial. And will continue to do so because the myopic, historically illiterate American populace is being relentlessly indoctrinated by an insidiously deceptive corporate media day in and day out, thus rendering the majority of Americans, who are emotionalist fools, completely incapable of any critical thought.
Ultimately, the sub-par series The Rings of Power is not entertaining, but it is enlightening, because it’s an obvious example of the strings of power being pulled by the elites to manipulate people into fighting for their true enemy (Amazon and Bezos), rather than against them.
©2022
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. A clever twist on the Predator sci-fi action formula that results in the movie being the second best in the franchise.
Prey, the fifth film in the Predator franchise and a prequel to the previous films, made its exclusive premiere this past weekend on the streaming service Hulu.
The original Predator (1987), directed by the criminally (pun intended) under-rated, populist master craftsman John McTiernan (Hunt for Red October, Die Hard) which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger at the peak of his powers, and boasted a phenomenal supporting cast of hall-of-fame badasses, including Bill Duke, Carl Weathers and the scene-stealing future governor of Minnesota, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, with his classic line “I aint got time to bleed!”, was a supremely entertaining sci-fi spin on the ‘man is the most dangerous game’ premise.
The subsequent Predator films, Predator 2 (1990), Predators (2010) and The Predator (2018) were without Arnold and McTiernan, and were incoherent, cringe-worthy embarrassments.
Which brings us to Prey, which is written by Patrick Aison and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, and stars Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers.
Prey is, if nothing else, very clever. It’s premise, setting the challenge-seeking hunter Predator alien in the early 1700’s in a region where the Comanche live, is simple yet original enough to revive this moribund franchise.
The plot revolves around Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche woman and accomplished healer and tracker who yearns to become a hunter/warrior like her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers).
There is no doubt that Prey got greenlit because the film espouses the ‘proper’ cultural politics of the current age, and checks all the right gender and ethnic diversity boxes. For instance, Naru’s navigating of the “patriarchal” Comanche culture in which she lives and rising above the limits imposed on her gender was a storyline that must’ve sent thrills into the loins of the suits at Hulu/Disney. No doubt the movie’s majority Native American cast did as well.
And while the film does signal its cultural/political virtue much too often for my tastes, and those scenes of vapid feminist defiance are by far the worst in the movie, it still manages to be a thoroughly entertaining piece of movie-making despite all the incessant, eye-rolling, girl-power garbage.
The film also works because Amber Midthunder as Naru is a compelling and charismatic lead. The luminous Midthunder’s naturalistic style is never too much or too little as she effortlessly carries the movie from start to finish.
Dakota Beavers as Taabe is also excellent, as he brings tremendous nuance to a role that in lesser hands would’ve been caricature filled with empty posturing.
While some might feel that a flaw of the film is that Naru and Taabe are the only truly fleshed-out characters, which they are. I actually felt that minimalist approach to character development helped the film stay lean, focused and on point.
The best part of the movie though is that director Dan Trachtenberg and screenwriter Patrick Aison stick to the basics (protagonist gender swapping aside - which i admit is a major caveat) and make a Predator movie that would make Joseph Campbell proud due to its proper use of myth as its narrative foundation.
For example, like many coming of age stories or myths, Naru must cross geographical barriers, in this case rivers and ridges, to seek out the dragon that she must kill in order to ascend from childhood to adulthood.
Taabe, ever the dutiful big brother, has already made his own journey, and tries to mentor Naru, but there’s only so much he can do for her, as Naru must make the perilous journey herself.
Taabe’s pivotal role in propelling Naru on her journey and towards her destiny is right out of the Campbell playbook and will make fellow Jungians/Campbell enthusiasts knowingly nod in agreement.
Trachtenberg and Aison’s commitment to Campbell’s mythic storytelling fundamentals is what makes Prey such a psychologically satisfying film. It isn’t a great film but it is an entertaining one because it’s so satisfying to the audience’s unconscious mythic yearnings.
As for the movie-making itself, director Trachtenberg does solid work by once again staying true to storytelling fundamentals. He plants small seeds throughout the story and lets them grow to be useful later on in the story, and never deceives his audience or ignores the internal logic of the film. He also does a good enough job in visually telling the story, and despite some ups and downs he gives enough cinematic flair to the film for it to be worthwhile.
I also think that Disney’s decision to release Prey on Hulu is a wise one. The Predator franchise is on life-support, and it seems difficult to imagine a star-less Prey generating a great deal of box office at the moment. By releasing straight to Hulu, the film can build an audience slowly by word of mouth without the pressure of being labelled a box office bust. This approach will help future Predator films be viable for theatrical release.
Speaking of which, I couldn’t help but think about the potential future settings of the Predator franchise now that history is its playpen. Predator in Shogun era Japan, or in Mayan era South America, or Qing Dynasty China, or Aboriginal Australia, or early Zulu Kingdom Africa, or Ancient Egypt, Sparta or Rome. The possibilities are endless, and one can only hope that the Predator franchise stays the course and keeps making clever and interesting movies like Prey.
The bottom line is that Prey is the second-best Predator movie, a distant second to the original. If you like sci-fi action movies, and can tolerate a dose of vacuous, vapid and venal virtue signaling stuffed into a cool Comanche/Predator movie, then give Prey a shot, you might like it…I was pleasantly surprised to find that I did.
©2022
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A manic misfire of a Marvel movie. If you are a Marvel completist then save your money and wait for it to stream on Disney +.
In order to set the context for my review of Thor: Love and Thunder, which premiered in theatres Friday July 8th and is the newest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and the Marvel behemoth’s 29th movie overall, it’s important to note that I am an enormous fan of the film’s writer/director Taika Waititi.
Waititi directed my favorite Marvel movie, Thor: Ragnarok – of which Love and Thunder is a direct sequel, and also adapted his 2014 vampire comedy movie What We Do in the Shadows into my current favorite television show of the same name, which is set to premiere its fourth season on FX this coming Tuesday.
The reality is that Waititi’s distinctive comedic style is an acquired taste, and, like the new strain of Super Gonorrhea going around, I most certainly have acquired it.
Which brings us to Thor: Love and Thunder. As exhilarating as Thor: Ragnarok was, Thor: Love and Thunder is disappointing. Yes, it has its moments, but those moments are very few and very far between.
The film’s plot is relentlessly convoluted, and revolves around Gor the God Butcher, a surprisingly subdued Christian Bale, who seeks revenge on the gods for the death of his daughter. Gor kidnaps the kids of New Asgard, who are the perfect dream children for Disney’s human resources department because of their remarkable ethnic diversity, and uses them as bait to draw in Thor and his goofy companions.
The plot twists and turns make just about no sense at all, and the tonal shifts of the film are jarring to the extreme. Make no mistake about it, the film is a comedy, but it opens with a little girl dying and then puts other little kids in frightening peril as a key plot point. The comedic tone and the kids in peril plot mix together like birthday cake at a beheading.
Needless to say, this PG-13 movie is much too scary/dark to be suitable for kids under 13…and frankly, much too shabby to be worthwhile to adults with half a brain in their head.
There are some bright spots though, among them the brief appearance of the Asgard Players acting troupe, which features Matt Damon and Melissa McCarthy dramatizing great moments in Asgardian history on stage. As well as Korg, Thor’s sidekick (voiced by Waititi himself) repeatedly mis-stating Jane Foster’s name…a gag that made me laugh every time. There’s also an absolutely absurd appearance by a hammiest of hams Russell Crowe as Zeus. Crowe’s Zeus is a gonzo piece of bloated bizarreness but I found it amusing as hell.
Another very bright spot is Chris Hemsworth. Hemsworth is so good as Thor it’s simply miraculous. Hemsworth is, of course, buff beyond belief and impossibly handsome, but he’s also effortlessly charming and astoundingly funny.
Unfortunately, Natalie Portman is the exact opposite. Portman returns to the Thor franchise as Dr. Jane Foster, Thor’s ex-love interest, except this time, through some not very clear plot machinations, Dr. Foster is somehow turned into a Thor…and takes the title of The Mighty Thor.
Portman as Jane Foster/Mighty Thor is more wooden than a log cabin and makes a cigar store Indian seem lively in comparison. Portman pushes so hard to be frolicky and fun but she’s so stiff and unnatural that when she attempts to smile, she seems like a cadaver getting a colonoscopy.
Portman may very well be a talented actress, or she may not be, but what she definitely isn’t is a gifted comedic actress and that is glaringly obvious in Thor: Love and Thunder.
Other issues with the film abound. For example, Gor’s villainous minions are these shadow creatures that are so generic and bland as to be ridiculous.
These shadow creatures highlight the film’s other big problems, namely its lack of visual clarity and cinematic crispness, as well as its pedestrian fight sequences…in other words the movie features third-rate action sequences and looks like shit, which is criminal for a movie with a $250 million budget.
And last but not least, the movie, like seemingly all Marvel movies and tv shows nowadays, of course, features some heavy-handed human resources inspired social engineering and woke pandering and preaching. The previously mentioned rainbow of Asgardian kids being a perfect example. As is the cringiest of cringe scenes where Gor calls Portman’s Thor, “Lady Thor”, and she angrily responds “my name is The Mighty Thor! Or you can call me…DOCTOR! JANE! FOSTER!” My only wish was The Mighty Thor aka Dr. Jane Foster had been wearing a pink pussy hat in that scene for affect. That cringilicous scene along with the “female Avengers unite” scene from Avengers: Endgame, should only be legally permitted to be played in voluminous vomitoriums because they’re such gag-worthy, girl-power garbage.
On top of all that, the final act of the film is entirely rushed and completely devoid of any dramatic impact while being detached from narrative coherence.
Due to my love of Thor: Ragnarok and my Waititi fandom, I was looking forward to Thor: Love and Thunder. I was also curious to see if, after the cinematic and creative debacles (and for the most part, box office misfires) of the recent spate of Marvel movies, from Black Widow to Shang-Chi to The Eternals (God help us!) to Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, with the brilliant Waititi at the helm and the equally brilliant Chris Hemsworth in the lead, could stop the bleeding over at the Marvel money factory that pays for Mickey Mouse’s mansions. I am here to report that it doesn’t.
Thor: Love and Thunder will do fine at the box office, but it won’t signal a return to Marvel magnificence. The reality is that Marvel is in deep shit, and if they don’t realize that then they’re delusional. Their new movies are sub-par, their tv shows are cratering in quality (I’ll have a review of Ms. Marvel out late this coming week – here’s a preview…”YIKES!”) and it is now very clear that the Marvel monstrosity has lost the plot and has their head’s so far up their asses they’re incapable of finding it.
Marvel has dominated cineplexes and our culture for nearly fifteen years, but Thor: Love and Thunder is just one more piece of proof that the bloom is off the Marvel rose and I’m here to tell you that it ain’t coming back.
The bottom line is that Thor: Love and Thunder is nothing but a major disappointment. If you are a Marvel completist, then wait for Thor: Love and Thunder to stream on Disney + in a few weeks or months, and watch it then, because it simply isn’t worth your time and hard-earned money to see in the theatres.
©2022
****THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE!!!!****
Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Disney + money-grab of a mini-series has finally come to its miserable conclusion.
I wrote a wholly negative review of the first three episodes of the show and remarkably the series managed to make the last three episodes even worse than the first three.
A drunk toddler playing with its feces in a bathtub has more commitment to narrative coherence than the makers of Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s not hyperbole to say that Obi-Wan Kenobi is so illogical, idiotic and imbecilic as to be insulting.
For example, not once, not twice, but three times in this series, a character is killed/left for dead and then comes back to life.
Reva Sevander (played by the impossibly awful actress Moses Ingram) dramatically “kills” the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) by stabbing him with her light saber…and then he pulls a Lazarus and shows up again later. Darth Vader slices and dices Reva with his light saber but then, for some completely inconceivable reason, doesn’t finish her but just walks away and she goes on to no doubt get a shitty spin-off series (God help us!). And then there’s the Obi Wan and Vader battle where Obi-Wan vanquishes the evil one with some fine light sabering but decides to…you guessed it, just walk away instead of killing him.
To the show’s credit, the Obi Wan – Vader fight in the finale contains some of the few visually pleasing shots in the entire anemically photographed show, but for some ungodly reason they end up turning the cinematic light saber duel into a literal rock fight. Sigh.
Besides the apparent ineffectiveness of the light saber to kill anyone, other egregious inanities abound.
For example, in the finale Vader’s star destroyer is chasing and firing upon a transport vehicle filled with every single member of a rebel group, including Obi Wan. Obi Wan, in a cringy scene with O’Shea Jackson Jr., or as I call him Li’l Ice Cube, who is so bad at acting he makes his ham-handed father Ice Cube look like Sir Laurence Olivier, decides to leave the ship to distract Vader.
Obi-Wan then jets off in a small shuttle and Vader says ‘go after him instead of the rebel transport’. The Grand Inquisitor wisely retorts, ‘hey, we can kill the entire resistance right now if we go after the transport…’, and Vader says, ‘nah…let’s take this big star destroyer and follow Obi Wan instead’. Of course, anyone with half a brain in their head would say, ‘hey Darth, why don’t you go after Obi Wan in your own ship and we’ll kill the rebels?’ But no, that makes too much sense.
So then what happens? The star destroyer follows Obi Wan to some planet and then Vader says, ‘hey everybody, I’m gonna take my own ship down to the planet because I want to fight Obi Wan alone!’ If I were working on that star destroyer Vader would most definitely have strangled me because I would’ve told him, ‘Hey genius, why didn’t you do that in the first place so we could kill the resistance and finally put an end to all this stupid bullshit and put us all out of our fucking misery?’
It's this sort of clownish, childish storytelling that makes Obi-Wan Kenobi just not brutally bad but downright offensive.
The other absurd thing about the entire enterprise is that, as I stated in my initial review, it’s based entirely on false jeopardy. Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Leia, Luke and his aunt and uncle, are never in actual danger because we know they’re going to live to star the cavalcade of movies about their futures that we’ve all seen already.
The whole series is like an grown-up watching home movies of themselves at the beach when they were a kid and trying to convince themselves they might have been eaten by a shark. You know you weren’t eaten by a shark because you’re sitting here two decades later entirely uneaten watching videos of yourself playing in the sand.
And of course, the acting in Obi Wan Kenobi, sans a committed Ewen McGregor, is just as atrocious in the final three episodes as it was in the first three.
For example, I kept praying that they would just replace the terrible little kid playing Leia with Peter Dinklage in a wig. And I’ve already written much about the awfulness of Moses Ingram as Reva, and God-damn she is still utterly abysmal.
The thing that horrifies me about the monument to empty tokenism that is Moses Ingram’s acting career is that the ending of Obi-Wan Kenobi makes it perfectly clear that they intend to give this lackluster character and the talentless actress who plays her a spin-off series. One can only imagine the artistic and creative depths of the Disney/Star Wars septic tank that will be dredged to bring that turd to life.
In conclusion, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a great character, but Obi-Wan Kenobi is a truly heinous and atrocious, dead-on-arrival series which, if there is any mercy in the universe, will not see a season two.
If Disney does pull the trigger and there is a season two of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and/or a spin-off Reva Sevander series, the only sane response will be to simply say…May the Force Go Fuck Itself.
©2022
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. The first three episodes of this pile of crap feature some of the very worst writing, performances and direction in Star Wars history. So much so that I have lost all hope that the final three will be even remotely worthwhile.
We need to talk about the new Disney Plus series Obi Wan Kenobi. I just watched the first three episodes (the only three released thus far) of the six-episode series and holy shit. It isn’t just bad, it’s absolutely, ridiculously, insanely fucking atrocious. It is a gigantic monument to artistic, creative and narrative incompetence.
To set the context of my thoughts it should be noted that I am not a Star Wars fanatic or fanboy. I am not particularly well-versed in Star Wars mythology and lore but I do find it compelling and fascinating. That said, I have seen all the films and live-action tv shows but more out of pop culture duty and/or work obligations than anything else.
My aggravation over Obi Wan Kenobi has nothing to do with some betrayal of Star Wars canon, no my anger is because the writing, casting, directing and acting (save for Ewen McGregor – who, not surprisingly, does solid work in it) is so beyond amateurish as to be offensive. I mean, how can Disney pass this steaming pile of horseshit off on audiences and expect anybody to take it, or them, seriously?
Let’s begin with the basic premise of the show. Set in between The Revenge of the Sith (the third prequel film) and A New Hope (the original Star Wars movie), the series tells the tale of Obi Wan (Ewen McGregor reprising his role from the prequel films) as he watches over young Luke Skywalker, and eventually, young Princess Leia.
As a basic storytelling venture, Obi Wan Kenobi is already at cross-purposes with itself because if you put Obi Wan and Leia in danger in the show, viewers already know they’ll survive since there are mountains of movies in the storyline set after this mini-series that audiences have already seen which proves that point. As a big wig writer in Hollywood recently told me during a discussion about the show, Obi Wan Kenobi is based entirely on “false jeopardy”, which sounds like a direct-to-video Bruce Willis action romp. So, there’s no drama created when Obi Wan and Leia are put in jeopardy in the series because we all know they aren’t really in danger because we’ve followed their storylines for forty years.
Speaking of danger, the action sequences In Obi Wan Kenobi are the worst I can remember in a film or tv series. Deborah Chow directed the entirety of the series and she is so hapless and hopeless in the director’s chair that she should not only be banned from directing ever again for the length of her natural born life, but also, as a punitive measure, be banned from watching any sort of entertainment ever again.
An example of Ms. Chow’s incompetence is a fight in episode three, the details of which I will refrain from sharing for spoiler reasons, that is so visually and viscerally anemic and so devoid of any sort of narrative logic, that it looked and felt like something a mental defective child in a North Korean prison created while playing with straw action figures.
There’s also the absurd and ridiculous sequence where ten-year-old Little Leia runs away from three adult male kidnappers and it looks like parents letting their toddler score a touchdown during a family’s Thanksgiving Day touch football game so as to avoid a tantrum. The men (who are truly dismal at pretending to chase someone) in the scene keep running into fallen trees while pursuing Leia, who is apparently the most unathletic girl in the universe, as she “runs” away from them like she’s running under forty feet of water.
The girl cast as the ten-year-old Leia is nine-year-old Vivien Lyra Blair, who besides running like a midget with polio also happens to portray the most annoying character in the Star Wars universe since Jar Jar Binks. I know Leia grows up to be a hottie in a bikini at the end of Jabba’s leash in Return of the Jedi, but I kept wishing Obi Wan would just pull out his lightsaber and slice this annoying brat in two and put us all out of our misery.
The casting of an annoying nine-year-old who looks (and runs) like a four-year-old to play a ten-year-old, isn’t the only casting atrocity in Obi Wan Kenobi.
Moses Ingram is cast as the villain Reva Sevander and is the worst adult actor to ever appear in a Star Wars film or series, which is saying a lot considering even in Obi Wan Kenobi alone film director-turned-actor Benny Safdie and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea give abysmal performances in supporting roles.
Ingram’s Reva is a critical role, she’s supposed to be the big bad villain but she has all the presence of a tumbleweed. Ingram’s line readings are elementary-school-drama-class-reject level of God-awful and her inability to even remotely conjure some sort of menace is staggering to behold. The character of Reva would’ve had considerably more life to it if they had cast a cigar store wooden Indian in the role instead. The bottom line is that Moses Ingram’s performance is an absolute and utter embarrassment, so much so that, as insane as it sounds, I actually feel bad for her.
Adding to my discomfort for Ms. Ingram is the allegation that she has received racist comments on Instagram from Star Wars fans. If true, that is revolting and reprehensible. But I must say, I have my doubts about the voracity of those claims, not because I have some undying belief in the goodness of humanity…I don’t, but because I don’t trust Disney or its culture warrior minions in the slightest.
In the plethora of articles I’ve read about the alleged racist comments from rabid Star Wars fans, all but one has failed to actually share what any of the racist comments are, so I’ve yet to see them. The one article that did quote them said that Ingram has received “"hundreds" of racist and threatening messages, with one telling her "you're [sic] days are numbered" and another using the N-word.”
I find this less than compelling evidence that there is a cavalcade of racism coming at Ms. Ingram. I’m sorry but someone commenting that “you’re [sic] days are numbered” is not necessarily a racist attack, it could be someone saying that she will be fired for sucking at acting – which she should be because she does in fact suck at it.
The “n-word” comment is obviously repugnant, repulsive, egregious and disgusting, but if those two comments are the worst of the “hundreds” of allegedly awful racist ones – which the article implies that they are, then that seems like Disney and its stenographers in the establishment media and online are making a mountain out of a molehill by conflating criticism with racism.
Now why would Disney conflate criticism and racism and promote the idea that one of their minority actors is being inundated with racist attacks online? Because that helps Disney signal its woke bona fides as a diverse and inclusive company, and also acts as a way to limit any criticism of the show, even non-racist criticism, by creating the paradigm that being negative towards Obi Wan Kenobi is racist and being a supporter of the show is a way to signal anti-racist virtue.
I, of course, could not care less about the color of Ms. Ingram’s skin, I just care if she can act or not, and the evidence I’ve seen thus far is a very compelling indictment regarding her acting ability, or more specifically, her decided lack of it.
The Moses Ingram story aside, the reality is that Obi Wan Kenobi is an utter creative disaster for Disney and its Star Wars property. If this were a one-off error than you could brush it aside. But Obi Wan Kenobi being bad and boring comes on the heels of the series The Book of Boba Fett being bad and boring. The Mandalorian was a terrific series that I greatly enjoyed, but batting .300 will get you into the hall of fame in baseball, but in the Disney Star Wars universe will get you to the hall of shame…and this doesn’t even factor in the shitty the Star Wars movies of recent years.
The same is true regarding Disney’s Marvel behemoth, which, post Endgame, has been stumbling and staggering around like a barefoot drunk on a frozen lake. The Marvel tv shows have been mostly miss, and even the hits have been mediocrities, and Disney’s Marvel movies since Endgame have been relentlessly egregious misfires.
I could not care less about the health of Disney, but the truth is that they are perilously close to shitting all over themselves and both their Star Wars and Marvel properties, to such a massive degree that they’ll never be able to remove the stink.
If the next batch of Star Wars shows coming out this year, which include Andor and Ashoka, are on the same level of bad as The Book of Boba Fett and Obi Wan Kenobi, then Disney is in deep doo-doo indeed.
That will suck for Disney, but it will suck even more for the legion of Star Wars fans, who, alleged racist assholes aside, deserve considerably better.
©2022
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Popcorn Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A dreadfully dull stroll through the multiverse of mundanity where Marvel malaise rules the day. If you need to see it, save your money and wait until it hits Disney’s streaming service.
In the wake of having witnessed Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the 28th, and most recent film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I sat waiting for the usual end-credits scene and had a few thoughts.
The first of which was, if you’re the type of person who unironically uses the term “y’all”, I automatically think you’re a moron. I’m not saying that I’m justified in that belief, just that’s what I believe.
Another thought I had was if you pronounce words that begin with “s”, like “street” or “strange”, by adding an “h” to them and saying “shtreet” or “shtrange”, or if you’re so verbally lazy that you skip the pronunciation of “t’s” in words like “Manhattan”, and instead say “Manha’an”, or if you replace “th” at the end of a word with an “f” and instead of saying “mouth” and “breath” you say “mouf” and “breaf”, then you should drown yourself in a bathtub because you are so fucking stupid you don’t deserve to live.
The reason I was thinking about those rather random things is because a young white woman in her early 20’s sitting near me in the theatre was sharing her opinion of Dr. Strange, or as she called it, “Dr. Shtrange”, as the credits rolled and liberally used the term “y’all” and spoke about how the film was set in “Manha’an” and that it took her “breaf” away.
Unfortunately, “Dr. Shtrange” did not take my “breaf” away, although at various times throughout the movie I was wishing that I would stop breathing and be put out of my misery.
Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness opened on May 6th and, not surprisingly, has won the box office battle its first two weeks, raking in nearly $700 million worldwide against a $200 million budget. Marvel dominates modern movie going and it feels like we all have to pay our Marvel tax a few times a year just to stay on top of the cultural comings and goings, and I am no exception.
My relationship to Marvel movies and tv shows is that I am routinely underwhelmed by them but feel it my duty to watch. This says more about me than anything else, and what it says isn’t particularly positive.
Marvel’s new post-Endgame game plan seems to be to inundate audiences with sub-mediocre movies and tv shows with ever more complicated multiversal mania that are required watching if you want to stay relevant with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
For example, if you haven’t seen the truly dreadful Disney + Marvel wokefest of a tv show What If…? then you might be a bit lost while watching Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The same is true of Loki and even more true of the show WandaVision, which was an ambitious and mildly entertaining series starring Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, the character she plays in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
But rest assured, being up to date on Marvel’s required watch list doesn’t make Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness coherent, it just makes it slightly less incoherent.
The plot of Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so convoluted as to be absurd, just know that there isn’t a single universe in the multiverse that is even mildly interesting. This isn’t the multiverse of madness, it’s the multiverse of dullness.
Adding to the malaise in the multiverse is the fact that this film looks and feels cheap and rushed. For example, the visual effects are at times embarrassingly amateurish. Add in a scattershot script, generally poor performances and derelict direction, and you have a recipe for sub-mediocre Marvel movie mundanity.
What makes this movie so disappointing is that it’s directed by Sam Raimi, who you may recall, among other things, directed the three Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies from the early 2000s. Those films, particularly the first two, were very good and extremely well made (the third one was a hot mess…but two out of three isn’t bad!). Raimi is a quality filmmaker and yet on Dr. Strange he seems to have succumbed to the Marvel virus and made the most sterile and anti-septic piece of incoherent corporate comic book crap imaginable.
To be fair, the first Dr. Strange (2016) film was pretty forgettable too, but this sequel somehow feels even more inconsequential, which is unfortunate.
It’s unfortunate because of a few things, the first of which is that Dr. Strange is actually quite a fascinating comic book character. After seeing the first film I had a reader send me some Dr. Strange comic book titles to read and I thought they were terrific. The character, and his world, is weird, but not weird for weirdness sake. It’s a complex character and one worthy of a decent cinematic exploration.
Another thing that irritates about these Dr. Strange movies is that the films never live up to the stand out casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as the master of the magical arts and former Sorcerer Supreme himself. Cumberbatch’s Dr. Strange is a deliriously intoxicating combination of insecure smugness and aggressive arrogance that is pretty great to behold…but the stories they put him in and the movies that surround him are needlessly vapid, vacuous and abysmal.
Speaking of abysmal, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness boasts what may very well be the worst performance by an actress in Marvel Cinematic history, which is quite an achievement. Xochitl Gomez plays America Chavez, a young-women who possesses the ability to traverse the multiverse. The dead-eyed, charisma-free Gomez is so awful in the role that it was physically uncomfortable to witness. It was like watching a homeless person defecate under the golden arches in front of a McDonalds and then put it on a bun and serve it to an unsuspecting public.
Gomez’s character, America Chavez, of course speaks Spanish because we have to hit all the right demographic buttons, and on top of that box-checking bit of virtue signaling she also has two mommies. In a nod to Marvel’s supreme subtlety, the name of Ms. Chavez’s universe of origin where everyone is a Spanish speaking Latina lesbian is…the Utopian Parallel. I shit you not. Here’s hoping the woke brigade and their alphabet contingent at Disney can learn Spanish and move to the Utopian Parallel and churn out their shitty movies to their heart’s content and spare the rest of us in this miserable universe their insipid cultural politics.
Speaking of mommies, Elizabeth Olsen is a good actress who was absolutely phenomenal in WandaVision playing Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, but who is remarkably dreadful playing the same character in Dr. Strange. It’s sort of bizarre, but Olsen’s angry mommy on a multi-versal rampage just feels off here. Olsen seems completely uncomfortable on-screen as Wanda/Scarlet Witch, which manifests by her continuously being completely off-breath and off-voice throughout.
The rest of the cast, including some surprise cameos from stars playing Marvel icons - all of which will go unnamed so as to avoid spoilers, are pretty awful too. One is so horrendous that it genuinely shocked me.
As for the movie’s fate, Dr. Strange is undoubtedly going to dominate the box office for weeks on end and by year’s end will be one of the top grossing films, but that says less about the quality of the film and more about the crumbling nature of the entertainment business and the rapid decline in audience expectations. Such is life in this universe of corporate controlled, crap art/entertainment.
My advice is to avoid Dr. Strange in the theatre as it is most definitely not worth your hard-earned money. But if you’re a complete-ist and you want to stay on top of all things Marvel, just wait for it to stream on Disney + and watch it there. But even then it’ll still feel like a giant waste of time.
The bottom-line regarding Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is that it made me yearn to live in a universe where Marvel movies weren’t so reliably and relentlessly sub-par.
©2022
‘The Book of Boba Fett’ may be a warning sign of Star Wars’ creative bankruptcy.
The Disney Plus series was a miserable misfire, as it relied on nostalgia to cover up its incompetent storytelling.
‘The Book of Boba Fett’, the once highly anticipated spin-off series to the stellar Disney Plus show ‘The Mandalorian’, limped to its first season finale on January 9. To say the show went out with a whimper would be a massive understatement.
When the series premiered back in December, I wrote that the show was bursting with potential but got off to a very slow start. Unfortunately, ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ never morphed into a page turner as it got bogged down by atrocious writing, anemic acting, derivative direction, lethargic action sequences and second-rate sets, costumes and special effects.
Boba Fett has long been one of the most mysterious and beloved of Star Wars characters. Despite not appearing in the original film and only having four lines of dialogue in the entire original trilogy, Boba Fett became a fan favorite because he was such a mysterious and intriguing presence.
Boba sparked the imagination of Star Wars fans like few other characters could, but the series dedicated to telling his story has disappointed fans because their imaginations are no doubt more vibrant than the suits at Disney who saw Boba Fett as little more than a vehicle for flaccid fan service and a nostalgia delivery system.
It's an act of creative malpractice that ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ turned the bounty hunter Boba Fett from badass into boring, and considering that the character was the franchise’s most iconic and interesting untapped resource, wasting this storytelling opportunity is an egregious sin.
The failure of ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, and make no mistake the series is an abysmal failure, could be seen as merely a bump in the road, especially considering the dramatic success of its immediate predecessor ‘The Mandalorian’. But it could also be an ominous sign for the road ahead for the Star Wars franchise as a whole.
Despite hitting some major bumps in the road, like the cringe-worthy prequels and the woke-ified and feminized sequel trilogy, Star Wars has been a consistent cash cow for the 45 years it has been in existence. But you can only hit so many bumps before the wheels fall off the wagon, and in the wake of ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ one wonders if the franchise has an especially bumpy ride ahead.
As of right now Star Wars has no movies lined up to hit the big screens until December of 2023, a full four years after ‘The Rise of Skywalker’, and even that date might be optimistic.
So, the only thing for the Star Wars faithful to watch for the next two years are a bevy of Star Wars tv series which could be awesome or they could be awful.
‘The Mandalorian’ season 3 is set to premier in the second half of 2022, and if it’s anything like the previous two seasons, it should be terrific. Although, one of the most dynamic characters from the series was Cara Dune, who was played by Gina Carano. Carano was fantastic in the role but after she was labelled a heretic by the woke inquisition, Disney kicked her to the curb, and it remains to be seen if the show can adequately replace her and keep its creative momentum.
Also expected to arrive on Disney Plus this year is ‘Andor’, a prequel to the Star Wars film ‘Rogue One’ which tells the backstory of Rebel spy Cassian Andor. The series stars Diego Luna, and the biggest question is if, like Pedro Pascal in ‘The Mandalorian’, Luna can carry a series, or if like Tamuera Morrison in ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, he lacks the required gravitas to captivate audiences for a full series.
After ‘Andor’, the series ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ is scheduled to premiere in the latter half of 2022. The show is set ten years after ‘Revenge of the Sith’ and features Ewan McGregor reprising his role as Obi Wan from the sequel films.
With McGregor starring, ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ has no concerns about whether its lead is compelling, but there are still some concerning red flags. For instance, the series was scheduled to shoot in July of 2020 but Disney put it on hold because the scripts were so bad. Considering the abysmal writing for ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ passed muster at Disney, one can only imagine how god-awful the ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ scripts must have been.
And when you consider that the paper-thin story of Boba Fett could only be stretched out into seven episodes, two of which ignored the lead character, and that ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’ is set to be only six episodes, it’s easy to think that this series might be, like ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, nothing more than empty nostalgia.
Other series without set release dates which may or may not hit Disney Plus before December of 2023 are ‘The Acolyte’, ‘Ahsoka’, ‘Lando’, and ‘A Droid Story’.
Star Wars has always attracted viewers and always made money, but with Disney exploiting the fans desire for all things Star Wars by expanding the franchise, the very real possibility of overexposure, market saturation, and creative bankruptcy, which will lead to either fan disinterest or outright rebellion, exists.
If Disney goes for quantity over quality with its Star Wars tv shows and movies, eventually the brand will lose its luster and, like an imploded death star, be left a useless, hulking shell of its former self, as well as a stark reminder of the consequences of bad decisions by leadership.
A version of this article was originally published at RT.
©2022
Barry and I show off our new technical and audio prowess in this scintillating episode that is the season three premiere of everybody's favorite cinema podcast. The film discussed on this glorious episode is blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home. The wide ranging discussion touches upon such diverse topics as the Sony-Disney soon to be not-so-civil war, good guy Andrew Garfield, stealing from the Dennis Hopper film Colors, and dreams of The Flash and Jack Nicholson's price to reprise the Joker.
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota : Episode 57 - Spider-Man: No Way Home
Thanks for listening!
©2021
****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!! THIS IS AN ENTIRELY SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****
My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars
My Popcorn Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. A nearly perfect piece of pop entertainment that gives fans all they could ever want.
In preparation for seeing the highly-anticipated Spider-Man: No Way Home, which stars Tom Holland and premiered in theatres Friday December 17, I re-watched Holland’s two previous Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019).
Upon re-watching those movies, I found them to be even worse than I vaguely remembered. Far From Home in particular is just abysmal. I share that thought only to give context for my thoughts on No Way Home.
When watching a Marvel movie, one must temper their expectations. You know going in that you’re not going to see cinema on the level of Citizen Kane but rather an attempt at mainstream entertainment designed to maximize profit above all else.
The question then becomes not is Spider-Man: No Way Home a great piece of cinema, but whether it’s a good piece of popular movie making.
Having witnessed the movie the verdict is clear, Spider-Man No Way Home is not Citizen Kane, but it sure as hell is a phenomenal, nearly perfect, piece of pop entertainment.
I believe the best way to see this movie, and I definitely think you should see it, is to go into it knowing as little about it as possible, so I’ll refrain from writing about the plot or even the cast. Instead, I’ll try to describe why the movie works so well without ruining it, or even tainting it, for anyone who hasn’t seen it. (I will write a more in-depth, spoiler-filled analysis of the movie in the near future after more people have seen it.)
Let’s start at the beginning of this current run of Marvel movies.
Since Marvel’s twenty-three movie Infinity Saga, which began with Iron Man in 2008 and concluded with Avengers: Endgame in 2019 (Marvel claims it ended with Spider-Man: Far From Home but that is nonsense), came to a close, the Marvel movie behemoth has been creatively and financially floundering.
Part of the reason for that is the post-Endgame Marvel movies have often been more interested in preaching from the woke gospel than in entertaining their audience.
For example, Black Widow was little more than a middling movie designed to be a stiletto to the groin of the patriarchy.
Eternals, which boasted both a gay and a disabled superhero, was a miserable misfire of a movie dedicated to “diversity” and “inclusion” over coherence and entertainment value.
Shang-Chi was half of a good movie, but it too was riddled with a limp girl power narrative and empty woke sloganeering.
Disney, which owns Marvel, has obviously gone all in on the woke stuff, and that is reflected in the majority of their films and tv shows.
It’s important to note that while Marvel is owned by Disney, and Spider-Man is a Marvel character, he is not entirely owned by Disney. Sony actually owns the film rights to Spider-Man.
In 2015, Sony came to an agreement with Disney that allowed Spider-Man to be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and both studios have benefited from the arrangement. But the deal is clear, Sony finances, distributes and has final creative control on all the solo Spider-Man movies.
As explained earlier, the Sony produced Tom Holland Spider-Man movies haven’t been particularly good, but unlike the Marvel/Disney movies, they thankfully haven’t been aggressively woke either.
Which brings us to Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is entirely dedicated to fan service and obviously only cares about giving audiences what they want, as opposed to doing what Disney does which is giving audiences what Disney wants them to want.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is devoid of woke preaching or virtue signaling, and aside from a well-executed running joke that makes fun of Alex Jones and Infowars, there’s no cultural politics in the movie at all.
Instead, Sony delivers a deliriously fun movie that hits all the beats and delivers all the goods. No Way Home is so chock full of goodies for fans it’s nearly bursting at the seams and so gloriously deferential to fan’s desires one wonders how Sony or Marvel can ever follow it up.
Part of how the movie succeeds is that while being deliciously fun and funny it also takes itself and its subject matter seriously. For instance, the film is really about consequences and the permanence of consequences, so every action Peter Parker takes in the film has consequences that desperately matter.
The movie doesn’t try to have it both ways, it doesn’t short shrift its story or undercut its power by softening the edges, it commits to its reality and narrative and sticks with it through thick and thin.
The result is easily the best Spider-Man of the Tom Holland era, and also easily the best Marvel movie post-Endgame. Where it lands on the list of all-time Spider-Man movies and all-time Marvel movies will vary wildly from person to person, but I think it’s safe to say it’s at the very least in the conversation for the top spot in both categories.
No Way Home is set to make anywhere from $150 million to $240 million at the domestic box office on its opening weekend (potentially nearing $400 million worldwide). From my anecdotal observations I think the higher end of that projection is very likely. That is an astonishing amount of money for any movie to make, but when factoring in the pandemic and some people’s reluctance to go to a movie theatre, it’s all the more astounding.
As Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.” It’s good to see Sony profiting by using its great power responsibly by giving fans what they want with the terrific Spider-Man: No Way Home. Disney/Marvel would be very wise to learn the same lesson.
A version of this article was originally published at RT.
©2021
Marvel’s new series Hawkeye, at least so far, not only avoids virtue signaling and woke pandering, it’s actually pretty funny.
The show has its flaws, but it’s a breath of fresh air from Marvel, which has in recent years been more interested in preaching than entertaining.
In the wake of Marvel’s miraculous run of movies which began with Iron Man in 2008 and culminated with Endgame in 2019, Disney’s money-making superhero division has been searching for a creative way forward with their storytelling in both film and television.
That search has usually resulted in pathetic woke pandering and virtue signaling on social issues, or mind-time-world bending extravagancies, or an unwieldy combination of both.
For example, Black Widow boasted a shamelessly shallow girl power, patriarchy-busting narrative and Falcon and the Winter Soldier pathetically pandered on racism, both with lackluster results.
WandaVision and Loki, on the other hand, toyed with audience’s minds as they bent time and storylines, thankfully they were at least interesting.
And finally, What if? and Eternals both went all in on virtue signaling and off-world in terms of time bending, and ended up being excruciatingly laborious.
Now with the new six-episode mini-series Hawkeye – the first two episodes of which began streaming on Disney Plus on Wednesday with new episodes released every week for the next month, Marvel is trying a somewhat different approach.
After watching the first two episodes of Hawkeye I can report that thus far, thankfully, wokeness has not overtly reared its ugly head and no gods or time - bending wizards have showed up to mess with reality either.
In fact, Hawkeye is the most-grounded, most “realistic” and most authentic piece of storytelling in recent Marvel history, which isn’t a high bar to reach but at least they reached it.
Hawkeye tells the story of Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye – the family man and badass superhero archer from the Avenger’s movies, and Kate Bishop, a Hawkeye wannabe who stumbles into trouble. They both end up working together after the costume of the vigilante Ronin turns up and falls into the wrong hands.
The series, or at least the first two episodes of the series, is certainly flawed, but it’s also unique and interesting because at its core it’s really a droll comedy wrapped in the superhero cloak of an action-mystery.
Marvel has always had an undercurrent of comedy in their films, but that was always more a function of the impeccable comedic timing of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man and the glorious obliviousness of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, than anything else.
Hawkeye though is legitimately and genuinely funny in the most subtle, self-ware, un-Marvel way.
For instance, the series opens with Clint/Hawkeye in New York City for the Christmas season. As a treat, one that he quickly regrets, Clint brings his kids to see the big Broadway musical hit Rogers – which is based on Captain America Steve Rogers and the Avenger’s defense of New York, of which Hawkeye was a vital part.
The scenes of the musical are hysterical, like something out of The Simpsons’ (another Disney property) famous Planet of the Apes Musical starring Troy McClure, not just because they’re so dreadful, but also because they’re so horrifyingly believable.
This heinously egregious Captain America musical is a gloriously savage but subtle dig at the vapid and vacuous culture that made the insidious and insipid awfulness of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton a landmark achievement and rabid sensation.
Watching the theater muffin versions of the Avengers sing “Hulk…SMASH!” and “I could do this all day” literally made me laugh out loud, most especially because the corporate pimps at Disney are bound to produce either that exact same show or one frighteningly similar to it. It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure the painful image of say U2, who once actually wrote the score for a disastrous Broadway superhero musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, teaming with establishment darling and abysmal, talentless shill Lin Manuel-Miranda to make some corporate-friendly musical like Rogers: The Musical.
Other scenes, like the one where Clint and Kate see people dressed as superheroes and Kate opines on the superhero Hawkeye’s failure to resonate with the broader culture being a function of branding issues and poor marketing, or when Hawkeye himself goes to a LARP (live action role play) event, are Marvel making fun of Marvel to the most Marvel-ous degree.
The main reason for Hawkeye’s success though is that its stars, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Hailee Stanfield as Kate Bishop, are terrific in their roles.
Renner’s gruff, dead-pan delivery is deliriously good, and the luminous Stanfield is absolutely masterful with her comedic timing as well, like when she says the name of the Track Suit Mafia is “a little too on the nose.”
In Hawkeye, Renner and Stanfield are like some bizarro-world, asexual, Marvel version of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn…if Grant and Hepburn had to fight and shoot arrows at bad guys.
To be sure, Hawkeye has flaws. For instance, it can be a little slow at times and the few action sequences featured so far are not very noteworthy.
But with that said, I found myself pleased to see Marvel trying something new that didn’t involve overt woke preening and aggressive virtue signaling.
It would appear from the first two episodes that Marvel has given us a little early Christmas present this year, as the subtle, self-aware comedy on display in Hawkeye won’t work in too many other projects going forward for Marvel, but fortunately it does work well here.
We will see where the series goes from here, but thus far, I’m grateful that Hawkeye appears to be a little piece of harmless holiday fun. Let’s hope it stays that way.
A version of this article was originally published at RT.
©2021
****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Just a dismal, dull and dopey god-awful mess of a movie which is in the running to be the worst Marvel movie ever.
The new Marvel movie Eternals, written and directed by Oscar winning Best Director Chloe Zhao, and starring a cavalcade of stars including Angelina Jolie, is supposed to be the blue print for the newest phase of the multi-billion-dollar Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
Kevin Feige, the MCU mastermind who intricately weaved 25 movies into a coherent over-arching narrative that dominated pop culture for almost 15 years, said of the movie, “The impact Eternals will have on the MCU will be nothing less than redefining the cinematic universe entirely.”
That declaration should scare the crap out of Marvel fanatics and Disney executives alike because Eternals is as catastrophically atrocious a cinematic venture as Marvel has churned out in their 26-film run.
The film, which has an ungodly two-hour and thirty-seven-minute run time that often feels eternal, tells the story of the Eternals, a bunch of immortal super-beings sent to earth to protect humanity from the Deviants, a group of vicious, wiry monsters. Superhero movies are often only as good as their villains, and the Deviants are as generic as it gets.
I’d dive deeper into the plot, which frequently jumps back and forth in time, but it’s so convoluted as to be incoherent.
Think of the Eternals as sort Avengers Plus, as they’re more akin to ancient gods than they are to modern superheroes. The Eternals are comprised of Sersi, Ikaris, Thena, Kingo, Phastos, Sprite, Makkari, Druig, Gilgamesh and Ajak.
Unlike with The Avenger films, which featured well-known characters, many of which had already had multiple solo films to explore their background and inner life, part of the problem with Eternals is that the superheroes on display are not well-known to casual fans. So, the movie must try and develop the characters and the audience’s connections to them on the fly while also attempting to entertain. It fails miserably at all of these endeavors.
The blame for these failings falls on writer/director Chloe Zhao, who is utterly hapless and hopeless at the helm. Zhao, who is respected as a maker of small, intimate, introspective films like Nomadland, is completely out of her depth on the sprawling Eternals as she flounders in every aspect of the storytelling. The pacing is abysmal, the character development nearly non-existent and the dialogue forced, trite and overwhelmed with exposition.
In addition, the visuals of the film are flat, the CGI second-rate, and the action sequences dull, unimaginative and repetitive. Every fight sequence features someone being “unexpectedly” saved from sure death by the swift action of an unseen superhero off-screen swooping in at the last minute, and consistently throughout “Eternals assemble” type shots - where all the characters come together in a line in a movie poster pose, rear their manufactured head.
Another major problem with Eternals is that in our age of wokeness and corporate virtue signaling, it seems more concerned with waving the diversity, representation and inclusion flag than with making an entertaining movie.
The wokeness on display in Eternals is so inane as to be ridiculous. For example, in the comics, Ajak, leader of the Eternals, is a man, but in the movie he’s a middle-aged Mexican woman (an uncharismatic Salma Hayek). Latina box checked.
Makkari, the Eternals’ Flash-like superhero, is no longer a white guy like in the comics, but instead is now a mixed-race woman who is deaf for some inexplicable reason, and of course, is played by a mixed-race, deaf actress, Lauren Ridloff. Disability box checked.
In the comics, Phastos is a muscular bad-ass black man, but in the movie, he’s transformed into a frumpy gay guy played by Brian Tyree Henry. It goes without saying that a gay kiss is featured in the film, no doubt used to hit over the head the people too dense to pick up on Phastos’ homosexuality by the fact that he has a husband. LGBTQ box checked.
Considering that Marvel movies are usually populated by beautiful people in skin tight outfits, Henry is an odd choice to play the first openly gay character in a Marvel movie. Unlike his co-star Kumail Nunjiani, who obviously spent an inordinate amount of time in the gym transforming his body to look more Marvel-ish to play the comic relief character Kingo, Henry looks as if he’s allergic to exercise in general and barbells in particular. I like Henry as an actor, but he is woefully miscast in this role.
Speaking of the casting, the usually luminous Angelina Jolie just looks odd and bored as Thena, and the beautiful Gemma Chan is exposed as being rather anemic as the film’s lead Sersi.
The only bright spot was Richard Madden, who was surprisingly dynamic as Ikaris, so much so that I actually thought he might make a passable James Bond should the opportunity ever present itself.
As of this writing, Eternals has a well-earned Rotten Tomatoes critical score of 49%, the lowest in MCU history. Considering all the blatant woke pandering in the film, and critics’ consistent genuflection at the altar of all things “diverse”, the dismal Rotten Tomatoes critical score is even more damning.
Making money is currently baked into the Marvel cake, and Eternals will no doubt have decent box office returns, but the film is the poster child for Marvel entering the creative bankruptcy phase of its self-destruction.
If, as Marvel guru Feige claims, Eternals is the blue print for the next phase of the MCU, then “get woke, go broke” will be made manifest as Disney/Marvel are killing their cinematic cash cow by worshipping the golden calf of wokeness and sacrificing quality and entertainment at its altar.
Eventually, audiences will tire of this type of hackneyed and hollow identity-politics based pandering and shoddy filmmaking, and Disney/Marvel will have no one to blame but themselves.
A version of this article was originally published at RT.
©2021
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 12 seconds
Is TV too woke?
As someone who works with a lot of producers, writers and directors who all privately tell me that if their TV project isn’t woke in conception and rigidly diverse in execution, then it won’t ever move forward, the answer is eye-rollingly obvious.
Unsurprisingly, the epidemic of wokeness is just as virulent across the pond in the UK TV world as it is in Hollywood and New York.
Proof of this was evident at the Edinburgh TV Festival panel discussion of TV professionals unironically titled “Diversity of Thought: Is TV Too Woke?”
At the discussion, Ash Atella, the producer of The Office and The IT Crowd, admitted, “I’m in a lot of meetings now where people tell me, ‘This will never get on because it’s not woke enough.”
The reality is that any sentient being with eyes to see, ears to hear and a brain to think, can tell you that TV is so awash in wokeness as to be hysterical.
Whether it be ideologically biased, identity-obsessed news coverage, or entertainment featuring the performative absurdity of a black Anne Boleyn, the obscenity of white male erasure in Marvel’s What If?, or incessant LGBTQ cheerleading, the trend is clear, the woke revolution is most certainly being televised.
What’s interesting about TV’s woke affliction is that while it’s obvious to regular people, many industry insiders are either afraid to speak publicly about it or blind to it.
A specially commissioned Ipsos Mori survey supports this notion, and shows that the TV industry in the UK is wildly out of step regarding wokeness compared to the viewing public. The survey found that 62% of British TV viewers believe political correctness on TV has gone too far, while only 19% of TV industry professionals agreed. It also revealed that 40% of viewers were proud of the UK, as opposed to 20% of TV professionals, and that 23% of viewers were ashamed of the British Empire while 63% of TV insiders shared that sentiment.
Obviously, TV professionals live in an alternate universe to audience members, and that is reflected in the lack of ideological diversity we see on our screens. But TV doesn’t care about ideological diversity, only in the surface diversity of identity.
The Egyptian-born Atella, who is a big proponent of diversity in TV, gave voice to the reality of the pro-diversity agenda and its effect when he told the panel, “I’m amazed how fast the white people have thought, ‘We can’t get on television’, that’s come in hard and fast in the last two years, and it’s a bewildering experience to be in those meetings after 15 years of the opposite. Now white people think there’s no place for them.”
Well, “the white people” think there’s no place for them in the culture because news channels consistently label them evil and entertainment endlessly denigrates them.
The corporate behemoths that run Hollywood have made it very clear too that white people, straight white men in particular, are not welcome in the industry.
For example, Disney and Amazon have made their worship of all things “diverse and inclusive” official company doctrine with insidiously specific identity quotas that above all target reducing straight white males from the creative and production process.
The same is true of the Academy Awards, which have made racial, ethnic, gender and sexual orientation box-ticking, as well as straight white male exclusion, mandatory, in order to be eligible for awards contention.
The woke bias of other panelists in Edinburgh, such as Louisa Compton, Head of News, Current Affairs and Sport at Channel 4, was also exposed, as was a shocking level of contempt for the audience.
Compton first claimed that being woke is benign as it literally means, “being alert to injustice and not wanting to offend anyone, which seem like fairly important principles.”
Compton heads a news division and the fact that her fidelity is to the subjective principles of “being alert to injustice and not wanting to offend anyone” as opposed to searching for the objective truth, is alarming but illuminating.
Compton did admit that wokeness can “alienate some audiences who feel that the world is moving on faster and leaving them behind” and also claimed, “I don’t think anyone in TV would be surprised to hear that a lot of the people who work [in the industry] think differently to the audiences we’re making progress for.”
Broadcast journalist Mobeen Azhar shared a similar holier-than-thou attitude when speaking of the type of shows needed to “move forward the people who think PC’s gone mad, because it hasn’t.”
To Compton, Azhar and their ilk, wokeness is the proper religion populated by the evolved and the pious, and they and their fellow TV professionals are working hard to make “progress for” and “move forward” those knuckle-dragging barbarians in the audience who feel left ”behind”.
Wokeness is now the state religion and entertainment and news its propaganda wings, brimming with missionaries like Compton and Azhar, filled with self-righteous superiority and evangelical zeal.
To these people TV is just an indoctrination machine used to do the public service of spreading the good news of the woke gospel to help spur evolution among the filthy, backwards proles.
So, is TV too woke? If you don’t think so then either you don’t watch TV or you’re a self-involved, delusional TV executive suffering from a severe case of stage 5 wokeness. Hopefully it’s the former and not the latter, as that’s the decidedly healthier and more enlightened choice.
A version of this article was originally published at RT.
©2021
The new Marvel series ‘What If…?’ is a woke wet dream where white male superheroes are replaced by women and minorities
The Disney+ show presents itself as innocent entertainment. But its woke agenda is red meat to rabid race hustlers and the identity obsessed desperate to disappear the scourge of white men from popular culture.
‘What If…?’, the new animated Marvel series, follows in the footsteps of the recent live-action Marvel series ‘WandaVision’, ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’, and ‘Loki’ in expanding the storyline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The series consists of nine narrative-bending episodes, the first of which premiered on August 11, followed by the second on August 18, with new episodes available every following Wednesday.
If the first two episodes are any indication, ‘What If…?’ will devoutly pander to the newfound politically correct religious faith of Disney (Marvel’s parent company), as the show’s premise can basically be summed up as ‘What if the woke had a time machine and used it to destroy the Marvel universe?’
The first episode examines an alternative time-line where, during World War II, white guy Steve Rogers doesn’t turn into super soldier Captain America. Instead Agent Carter, a British woman, gets injected with the super soldier serum and becomes the superhero Captain Carter.
Captain Carter not only battles Hydra, Red Skull and the Nazis, but also the greatest villain of all… the patriarchy. She shows her true girl power by overcoming sexism and misogyny from condescending white males in the military power structure. You go, girl!
In the second episode, based on the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ storyline, the Ravagers are sent to earth in 1988 by the Celestial Ego to capture his child, Peter Quill, but they mistakenly take T’Challa, Wakanda’s child prince instead.
Unlike the selfish, stupid and white Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) from the movies, the black T’Challa/Star-Lord (voiced by Chadwick Boseman in his final performance) is so good, selfless and wonderful, he actually convinces Thanos to abandon his genocidal plans and join him on his noble Robin Hood-esque adventures.
The message is clear in ‘What If…?’: if Thanos’ genocidal plan killed just white men, all of whom are awful, then the woke would happily go along with it in the Marvel universe and our own too.
Episode two of ‘What If…?’ so inspired Dr. Jason Johnson, a black talking head on MSNBC, he wrote an article titled, “Disney +’s ‘What if T’Challa became a star-lord?’ is a repudiation of mediocre white men”.
Johnson declares the episode is “a total repudiation of the mediocre white men who’ve been centered in most of the Marvel movie’s blockbuster films.” This is a curious take as Tony Stark was a child prodigy scientific genius before he became Iron Man, Bruce Banner was a renowned physicist before he became the Hulk, Stephen Strange was a brilliant surgeon before he became Dr. Strange, and Thor is a Norse god for goodness sake. There’s not a whole lot of mediocrity on that list of white guys centered in Marvel movies.
Johnson then rants that he doesn’t like movies or TV shows “about selfish, privileged mediocre white men who stumble through life, making costly mistakes that invariably hurt others along the way, but somehow in the end they get to be the hero…” And yet he was a big fan of President Obama, a selfish, privileged black man who made costly mistakes, like siding with Wall Street instead of Main Street, that invariably hurt others, like working class people, but somehow ended up being a hero in mainstream culture.
Johnson adores ‘What If…?’ because it shows “what real heroism, through Black guy magic, can actually look like”, which raises the question: what the hell is ‘black guy magic?’ God willing it’s better than the cheesy white guy magic of David Copperfield.
Johnson’s inanity continues with, “White men are bombarded with messages every day telling them they’re special no matter what they have or have not done or earned.”
Are those messages subliminal? I certainly haven’t seen them in the cavalcade of commercials and TV shows where all white guys are punchlines, because they’re the one group that can be ridiculed without fear of cancellation.
As a white male who aspires to the impossible dream of mediocrity, I’ve never experienced this alleged relentless messaging about being “special” regardless of what I “have or have not done or earned”, and neither have any of the other white guys I know.
The irony of all this “mediocre white man” hating is that Johnson is the poster boy for mediocrity himself. He’s an unoriginal mid-wit who has carved out a career on TV and in academia through the sheer force of his kiss-assery and corporate leg-up programs desperate to put a black face on establishment talking points.
He shamelessly belches out mendacious and mindless talking points meant to protect the powerful and maintain the status quo, so that he can keep sucking on the corporate media teat. For example, he once argued with a straight face that billionaire presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, the oligarch’s oligarch, was “not an oligarch”.
He also got suspended by MSNBC and fired by The Root for calling the black women working on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign the “island of misfit black girls”.
It’s amusing that the Bloomberg oligarch defense and the egregious “black girls” statement sound an awful lot like something one of those mediocre white guys Johnson hates so much would say. To Dr. Johnson, physician of mediocrity, I say, “heal thyself”.
As for ‘What If…?’, I’d love to live on a timeline where corporate media clowns and race hustling hacks like Jason Johnson didn’t exist, and where wokeness didn’t ruin everything it touches. Unfortunately, that timeline doesn’t exist, and I won’t even get to see it imagined on some corny animated show either – it’s just too unbelievable.
A version of this article was originally published at RT.
©2021
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1917 Dazzles the Eye but Fails to Stir the Soul
Feminist Fleabag and Woke Critics
2019
Knives Out Sharpens the Blade of Anti-White Racism
Woke Hollywood Gets Burned By Charlie’s Angels Box Office Bomb
Game of Thrones Predicted the Zealotry of Extinction Rebellion Eco-Fanatics
Patron Saint of Incels? Woke Outrage Over Joker is a Bad Joke
Celebriphilia Epidemic Sweeps US: We Look Now to the Stars for Guidance
Meathead Beats the Dead Horse of Collusion
Undead Army of the Woke Will Make Sure Game of Thrones is the Last Show of Its Kind
Jussie Smollett’s Hate Crime Hoax Exposes America’s Shocking Skepticism Shortage
Toxic Femininity: ‘Badass’ US Women Demand Right to Torture and Kill for Empire…Just Like Men
2018
A Curious Case of Mystery Attacks, Microwave Weapons and Media Manipulation
In a Fit of Anti-Trump Pique, Liberals Shamelessly Embrace 'Deep State' Criminals
Guardians of the Galaxy Defeated by the Most Fearsome Super-Villain of All...Political Correctness
Captain America v Trump in Battle of the Useful Idiots
Hollywood's Self=Serving and Misguided Immigration Protests
Trump is Deadpool and We're All Doomed
Kanye Tweets He Loves Trump, Civilization on Brink
Hollywood's Malicious Propaganda Dehumanizes All Russians
The Pentagon and Hollywood's Successful and Deadly Propaganda Alliance
Profiles in PC Courage: Brave Millennials Attack 'Friends'
Echoes of Totalitarianism in #MeToo and Russia-Gate
2017
#MeToo Wildfire Rages Out of Control
Has Fear of Putin Seized Hollywood?
Stephen Colbert Heads For Russia Looking For Laughs; He'd Find Better Material at Home
What's Eating Gilbert Grape? Trump, That's What!
Trump - Griffin Scandal Underscores American Celebrity-Obsessed Culture
Suffering Children as Propaganda and the Jimmy Kimmel Story
Colbert Attacks Trump, Was it Homophobic? Hysterical? Or Both?
Oscars and Grammy Racism : Perception or Reality?
La La Land is Hollywood's Version of "Make America great Again"
Buzz Lightyear Claims Hollywood is Nazi Germany, Captain America to the Rescue?
John Oliver - Shameless Establishment Shill
Snoop Dogg Barks Up The Wrong Tree
Express Yourself? Madonna Don't Preach!!
Goodbye Ringling Brothers, Hello Cirque du Trump and Media Clownshow
JOHN OLIVER
The John Oliver Twist 1 : Court Jester as Propaganda Tool
The John Oliver Twist 2 : The Drumpf Affair and Little Bill Maher's Power Fetish
The John Oliver Twist 3 : Waxing Brazilian and Waning Credibility
The John Oliver Twist 4 : Out Trumping Trump on the Great Wall of Trump
John Oliver Twist 5 : Things Said and Unsaid
GENERAL
Irishness, Cultural Memory and the Curse of St. Patrick's Day
BOOKS
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Dreamland by Sam Quinones
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy
Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic by Barry Meier
American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts by Chris McGreal
Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America by Chris Arnade
Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the 60’s by Tom O’Neill
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Diary of a Superfluous Man by Ivan Turgenev
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
The Duel by Anton Chekhov
Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov
The Bishop by Anton Chekhov
The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Projecting the Shadow : The Cyborg Hero in American Film by Janice Hocker Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz
Re-Membering Frankenstein : Healing the Monster in Every Man by G.H. Ellis
Man and His Symbols edited by C.G. Jung
Modern Man in Search of a Soul by C.G. Jung
Under Saturn's Shadow : The Wounding and Healing of Men by James Hollis
Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano
Kill the Messenger by Nick Schou
Dark Alliance : The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb
Whiteout : The CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair
Boundaries of the Soul by June Singer
Jungian Psychology Unplugged: My Life as an Elephant by Daryl Sharp
Merton's Palace of Nowhere by James Finley
SHE: Understanding Feminine Psychology by Robert A. Johnson
HE: Understanding Masculine Psychology by Robert A. Johnson
The Problem of the Puer Aeternus by Marie-Louis Von Franz
Ego and Archetype by Edward Edinger
Scapegoat Complex: Toward a Mythology of Shadow and Guilt by Sylvia Brinton Perera
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
MUSIC
Centennial Collection by Robert Johnson
The Anthology, 1947-1972 by Muddy Waters
L.A. Woman by the Doors
Hendrix in the West by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Born Under a Bad Sign by Albert King
Burglar by Freddie King
Indianola Mississippi Seeds by B.B. King
Rhythm & Blues by Buddy Guy
The Complete Recordings by Mississippi John Hurt
Trouble in Mind by Big Bill Broonzy
His Best : The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection by Howlin' Wolf
Traveler by Chris Stapleton
The Nashville Sound by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
A Sailor’s Guide to Earth by Sturgill Simpson
A/B by Kaleo
Blue Train by John Coltrane
Yardbird Suite: The Ultimate Charlie Parker by Charlie Parker
Body and Soul by Coleman Hawkins
Go! by Dexter Gordon
Beauty is a Rare Thing : The Complete Atlantic Recordings by Ornette Coleman
Incesticide by Nirvana
Purple by Stone Temple Pilots
Mingus Ah Um by Charlie Mingus
Rearviewmirror by Pearl Jam
Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden
Dirt by Alice in Chains
Brown and Roach by Clifford Brown and Max Roach
Moanin' by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
Somethin' Else by Cannonball Adderley
Superfly (Deluxe Edition) by Curtis Mayfield
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison
Sea Change by Beck
Signs by Tedeschi Trucks Band
Walking the Line: The Legendary Sun Recordings by Johnny Cash
Misterioso by Thelonious Monk
Tenor Madness by Sonny Rollins
The Sky is Crying by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
Me and Mr. Johnson by Eric Clapton
The Story of Sonny Boy Slim by Gary Clark Jr.
Bootleg Series Vol. 8 : Tell Tale Signs by Bob Dylan
Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk by Jeff Buckley
Harvest by Neil Young
Email: mpmacting@yahoo.com
