Of BVS, or.. holy shit, have I got THOUGHTS about this thing...

BVS...

Back after a while. Life got in the way. But on to the movie.

True Love Is Forever. Give Us Your Money.

I GOT OPINIONS. AND SPOILERS. LOTS OF THEM. If you haven't seen this movie and want to have as close to a virginal experience when watching it (down to the subsequent disappointment) please proceed.

Right below here, champ!

Holy shit this movie...

Where do I even begin??

This movie is INFECTED with problems. And they aren't so much plot related as they are a succession of mechanical ones. If I were to make a hypothesis, I'd say that the film's script had an original okay shape and all was good. Happiness was had. But it was unloved. So the powers that be called the hooded men that operate the hacksaws of synergy and the duct tape of market shares to work on it. Then its loving parents had to put it back together... but then the hooded men were called again. And I believe this little episode repeated a bunch of times at different stages of its rushed development, and what they ended up with was a misshapen monstrosity bred to endure eternal pain. Said pain manifests in a bunch of individual scenes that should work fairly well on their own, without one having to resort to chemical aid for understanding, yet, they don't mesh together into a cohesive whole very well without one having to resort to chemical aid for understanding. Watching this movie feels like injecting several episodes of an expensive tv show that were edited down to just the cliff notes and then pasted in quick succession right through your eyelids.

Here are some quick examples of what happens to your eyelids:

-Batman watches the shit in Metropolis go down. This was good.
-Superman and Lois Lane have a pointed conversation about what she does, what he does, and then they kiss and make up. They do the sex after.

Exactly -- this is not the post to come to if you are looking for grownup commentary of adult relationships.

-A junior senator played by Holly Hunter has issues with Lex and Supes. She's in this movie for two things: 1) make Lex's life difficult, 2) dig (her) grandma's homemade jam, which is then used to scare the shit out of her before she is blown up by a suicide bomber and then the whole incident stops mattering (kind of).
-Lex likes candy. Gets the Man to give him EVERYTHING he wants about EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Alien starship? Naturally, Lex -- there you go; Alien dead body? Of Course, Lex. Why? I don't know -- he's just not creepy at all (Jesse Eisenberg! lay off the PCP!). And plot device. Plot device. Did I mention plot device? Shut the fuck up. Stop thinking that. You don't know anything.
-The Other Martha Not Bats's Mom that Is Supes' Mom tells Supes "You don't owe this world a damn thing." Which made me want to tell her "Actually, lady, thousand of people dying horrible, ignominous deaths because he decided to have a fist fight in Metropolis would be to differ. If they could. So, you know, think 'bout that..."
-Batman going "YOUR MOM'S NAME IS MARTHA? MY MOM'S NAME IS MARTHA!! WE'RE FRIENDS NOW!!!!!" Bit just after delivering an epic beatdown for the ages on Supes. That was... odd.

For a movie that failed so hard at sticking to a linear narrative while having a linear narrative, it did manage to launch a successful campaign of TOTAL WAR against subtlety while, at the same time, becoming completely enamored by the allure (and conveniences) of EXPOSITION. What do I mean by that? This: if this movie wants you to know something, it won't simply show it to you -- because it doesn't trust you enough to know what it means you fuck. You see, they spent too many millions of orphan hearts during the making of this movie  -- you will know because it will TELL you. Using different characters. And it will even reiterate the exact same point you deduced ten to twenty minutes ago, ad nauseum... and if that wasn't enough, if that notion hadn't been hammered past your skull and deep into your gray matter, THEN it will show it to you. But not before. The storytelling technique this movie employs will provide the exact same experience as this paragraph you are reading right now telling you how redundant it is.

This. Exactly like this. And you will know it. In 3D. Maybe.

Eh...

Yep. Exactly like this.

What -- you think we're done? We're NOT done. If I was not clear, I will reiterate it for you in terms that make more (less) sense: I'm talking about a movie that contains insane levels of wanton, wacky shit of the kind that almost manages to make this shitton-million dollar endeavor blissfully transcend into the realm of arthouse disaster...

HERE'S THE BASIC PLOT OF THE MOVIE!!!!!

Pulitzer Prize winner and reporter extraordinaire Lois Lane gets caught up in a CIA sting operation (?!) where people get shot, that has immediate ties to Lex Luthor's evil evil super master plan at the start of the movie. It involves him supplying an African dictator with a PMC force to do shenanigans so as to endanger Lois (whom he, I assume, lured there under the guise of a legit story) and lure (huh?!) Supes into action and... frame him of some people dying/getting shot/something, while at the same time he's digging a big kryptonite motherload from the bottom of the ocean (without the movie naming it as such, or they get sued) as a front to fool the U.S. government into thinking he wants to make badass super weapon as deterrents against Supes -- which he kinda does -- when in reality he wants to fool Batman into making an elaborate super master plan to steal it from his well armed henchmen, so that he can then fashion it into his own brand of Kryptinian ass kicking tools, all so that he can then go and kill Superman for him because he's shouldering some hardcore angst that Lex has been feeding by deliberately fucking with some handicapped guy's life that used to work for him and was just in the building that collapsed at the beginning of the movie-- NO. I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP. And THEN he abducts Supes' Martha (MOM!!) to blackmail him into fighting Bats or he will have a Russian guy burn her with a nasty-ass flamethrower... That is ALL in this movie. Because obvy Lex knows Supes' and Bats' secret identities, by the way (YUP). And we're haven't even touched upon Doomsday yet... because there is something much worse before he even shows up.

What?! This is too out of context for you? Get ready:

There is an INFOMERCIAL in this movie.
I shit you not.
There is a legit INFOMERCIAL.

The answer to that last question would be the last of my remaining shreds of dignity left after watching this monstrosity.

Somebody thought it was a great idea to have the film literally STOP so that the audience could watch not one, not two, but THREE shorts about some characters that will be starring in their own Warner Bros financed movies some time in the future.
Yes.
And it has the gall to try to to make this appear to be an organic development in the plot.
It fails. Shit -- it fails double-hard because it doesn't want you to notice, but you do. You can't not. And you simply know what that this is the work of the hooded men, and it is jarring, and weird, and you feel dirty when watching it. Your loins feel dirty when watching it. It makes even less sense than that buff squirrel above...

But back to the plot! 

Lex creates Doomsday through the powers of Zod's spaceship which houses some kryptonian swimming pool, his blood (?!), and the forbidden arts of alien technology-powered plot holes.

No. I didn't make that up.

BUT... at least Wonder Woman is awesome. She is the shining beacon of light in this thing. She even gets a kickass theme tune courtesy of Hans Zimmer!
That said, she's the one that gets stuck watching said infomercial and no amount of strenuous acting on Gal Gadot's part can make this shit palatable.
None.

But not everything was a trainwreck.
At least the fighting was solid?
Yes. The fighting is buckets of fun. Don't let salty reviewers sour you on this fact. And, hey, even Doomsday was solid in how he was used... yes, he was a bit of a letdown in the end in spite of them giving him some weird extra powers for no reason and the fact that he went down like a bitch... all you have to do is ignore that Lex wanted him to use him to kill Supes yet had no way of dealing with him, once he did...
But at least he was a legit, credible threat. And they made use of his original power set quite ably, imho.

On that same not-quite-as-disastrous breath, there were also a multitude of interesting moments including some interesting character beats.

In short: this movie was was a MESS. A low. Painful, hyperactive MESS. I even feel bad to bring up the old adage of "style over substance," but that is exactly the problem with this movie. Every one of its individual parts work just enough -- it is only when you try to build a coherent narrative with all of them where everything starts falling apart and that is a shame.

All THAT said, the flick wasn't without interesting themes, or even a couple of solid ideas or starting points for their characters. That is all IN there. they tried.

Examples:

Supes.- ranging from how people would deal to the introduction of an Outside Context problem in the presence of an alien demigod like Superman; the fact that even though he's perceived as this deity-like figure, the only way he knows of helping people is extremely fallible, and there's people he's hurt and he doesn't initially know how to deal with that... but what we do get is a musclebound constipated man who is a) pretty dense about all the shit going around him, and b) bad at his job. Like, at his day job. Guy is simply a bad reporter.

 
Bats.- here's this guy whose entire worldview (or lack thereof) was shaped by a single, tragic happenstance of the most arbitrary kind. He dedicates his entire life to fighting crime only to, twenty years later, come out of it depleted, cynical, and cruel. Then he watches the whole thing happen again but in a mass scale. And this time, he knows the man that is (in his eyes) responsible. But, yet again, the execution falters... what we do get is a musclebound, angry middle aged man that likes to burn criminals with his expensive toys... like guns.

But, still, I even thought that using the bit where Supes' and Bats' moms share the same name, as a plot device, was a solid choice. In principle.


You can see that at least some of the people that put this together, at least cared about trying to ape some of the comics' most iconic moments. Sadly, even that felt completely unearned, so, in the end, that didn't work either.

This is what happens when you take your best material and you a metric ton of extraneous bullshit collapses under it...
That said, and if it wasn't clear enough by now, it is time for an admission: I like the take on this universe.

YES. I LIKE the confused, kinda asshole Superman (YES, I do). I even like serial murderer fascist Batman (oh, yes, he "manslaughters" a bunch of people). I LIKE this world. But it doesn't work. Nothing in this movie  works in this insane 2-and-a-half hour window. It just doesn't. The pieces simply don't fucking fit.

Here's a suggestion for someone with moxie and technical know-how: RECUT THIS THING and use the material herein to tell the story in a collection of SHORT FILMS. Remember Agent Carter? The original Marvel short. Like THAT. Make contained mini-episodes and have them complement each other organically to move a story along. IMO, it IS doable, and it would make more sense. And I assure you than you can't fail harder than the people that made this thing.


To close the review: the ideas here are -- I think -- GOOD. But it was either the studio, or the director (or both), that possibly are NOT... sorry.

The grade: I give this movie a dangerous, rotting zombie cow out of TEN (ten what?).

'Til next time, kiddies and may Cthulhu have mercy on us all...

--ACJ.

P.S: did I mention there is a vague-as-fuck time travel element in this movie? No? OK. Bye!

About The Rover

Don't mistake the beard. This ain't about the bible.

The Rover is pretty much like JAWS but instead of a shark it is a swarthy, crusty, Australian bearded nightmare, and instead of the sea we have the dusty-ass Australian Outback sometime during the post apocalypse to creep us the fuck out... along a score of clanging metals and wavy synths.

  I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum (change things a bit) and, also, keep this thing short. Here we go.

  The setup for this flick is rather simple: guys goes for a drink. Fuckos stole his car when he wasn't looking. DICKS!

  Thus the stage is set for man-Jaws to do what man-Jaws does, and he don't give a fuck. He's like Bart after his elephant. Dude is ripped as fuck, mad, uncomfortable, and he won't quit. I mean... his car just got stolen. During the post-apocalypse.

You done fucked up son.

  I should, at this moment, take the time to say Robert "Twilight" Pattinson shows up in this movie in a co-starring role as a mentally handicapped person. And he looks like shit. And I mean... dude looks like actual bodily excretions. He doesn't look alright, which, I guess, was the hole point? Anyways,  here he's acting the shit out of every scene he's on like a champ.

Yo.

  He is only eclipsed by Pearce's mighty facial hair, but that is to be expected because that bad boy does more than three quarters of the acting in this whole movie.

Emotions.

  If you hear these words: "I'm looking for my CAR. It's got three people/men in it -- have you SEEN it?" chances are that wither shit is about to go down, or stuff will get plain uncomfortable... I mean, remember the Hugh Jackman movie? If you wanna describe the world of THE ROVER, well...

AIN'T THIS.

YEP...

In this little movie, danger lurks at every corner: it lurks on the road, it lurks in whore houses, lurks in the market, at the door, even at the doctor's  Not even the DOGS are safe. It's MAD MAX if everyone everyone had ashtma and not a single person knew how to drive properly.

  At some point, the flick takes the very confusing form of sorta watching an older man (Pierce) drag around a mentally challenged damsel in distress up and down (Pattinson) with very little regard for anything other than showing whom owns whom or what... so... in a way, it is kind of a LOT like Twilight. Except for this movie being actually GOOD and having some actual unexpected twists. There's a cool element of what resembles a battle of wits between Man-Jaws and Twilight... and I say resembles 'cause you just know someone's out of his depth, here. And he doesn't know it...

Keep fightin' the good fight, son...

  All in all, the flick is akin to takig a snapshot of a very, very fucked up mundane situation and squeezing it until the very last drop of drama spills out of it. And that is all I got 'cause I don't feel like spoiling this little flick.
  In short: watch it. Watch the beard deliver the science of acting. Watch for Pattinson's best rendition of Bella Swan you could ever ask for. Watch for the nice, little twist at the end.

GANGSTA episode 1. REVIEW.

Long time. Welp. Not dead yet. No. This is not about rap. But yes. There is a rap reference in here somewhere.

Either way, here goes.

Gangsta is an anime. An anime made by some guy named KOHSKE (shrugs). About... well, about how boys ought to view the men they fantasize about being. What? Yesh, as Sean Connery would say. But wait, it makes some sense. Keep reading you fuck...

EDIT: Plot twist: KOHSKE is not a GUY. KOHSKE is a LADY. Oh, boy! Dun-dun-dunnnn!

The approach isn't inherently problematic. It is, after all entertainment, escapism, make believe, and what-have-you. What it is, however, is a domewhat interesting view into a world as seen through the lens of how fantasies shape it. Hipster logic? Kinda. But wait, there's more to this.

The story takes place in the city of ERGASTULUM, a seedy-ass hellhole of a place where gangs rule, life is cheap, the law is bent, and people do what they can to get by. In a town like this it is simply best to sometime just take a step back, cough some dough, and hire some "handymen," meaning people who will go and take care of your shit for you. Shit is so bad that even the cops do it.

Fertile ground for manly men to man around like men, I say. The boys should be excited.

'Sup fuckers. Enticed, yet?

Don't they look man as fuck to you? They should, as evidenced by the hard features of their design, an intentional departure from the standard of the medium... unless they are the villains. But nope. These are your protagonists. And that is fine -- the art is fucking amazing in an economic sense I personally enjoy, if only slightly goofy.

The blonde motherfucker with an eyepatch and a penchant for guns and threatening/joking around plus torture? His name is WORICK ARCANGELO (oh, yes).

The other motherfucker on the left and of assumed Asian descent and with a penchant for swords? His name is NICOLAS BROWN (yup). Interestingly enough, the dude speaks in sign language to his buddy Worick when he's not delibering raspy proclamations of MAN using his actual voice, which ought to connect to some phsychologically scarring episode later on, I'm sure.

Both guys fit the hyper stereotypical mold they are meant to. They are the paragons of MAN for the audience to relate to. They are so manly that they even get to be recognized as "dog tags," (whatever the fuck that means) by an unfortunate someone, and only for the express purpose of communicating to the audience how these are not ordinary manly men. They are bad, bad motherfuckers straight out of whatever proclamations you can deduce out of a DMX song.

So, again, this is a story about bad motherfucking men who answer to nobody.

The first episode is mostly expository stuff. After cleaning some alleyways of shit people and getting paid, our homies get a new job by the police: there's a new gang that moved into town and is doing nasty stuff. They want them dealt with.

So they go do it the only way they know how, which means they get to go and leave piles dead bodies and wax bro-logic in their wake. They even get to check every wish fulfillment item from the Boy Fantasy list:

-Kick ass and take names? Check. But only to bad people.
-Get recognized by fearsome reputation? Check.
-Appear to be tormented just enough about their actions or past experiences to not come across as wholly irredeemable inhuman shits that kill for money? Check.
-TELL IT TO THE MAN ( aka The One Keeping You Down)? Oh, they do. Even though they hired them to do their dirty work.

FUCK DA POLICE!!!!

Why? 'Cause they were being lippy. See, they can't just be talked down like that, not my two homies Yorick and Nicolas. And yes, of course they got paid.

How could you not? Look at them rascals!

They are so awesome they even get to recue a superhot shapely hooker (as she's supposed to be) named Alex. She fucking hates her job (also as she's supposed to) and is so fucking bummed with life that she cries on the regular while in the middle of her job (also, also as she's supposed to).  She's fallen on hard times and is pegged to be in lieu with the leader of the gang, who pimps her out and treats her like trash.

Don't judge her. She's had a bad day...

But fear not! The good guys totes save her. They claim her as "spoils," after some good killing. See, they kinda had to so as to help her out of her jam and to keep the police from having to kill her. She's the reason the police car gets kicked in the first place. Shit, the homies even give her a job at the end, apparently. They promote her from your standard rinky-dink alley hooker to full fledged secretary of their comely murder business.

Dreams do come true: Alex. Winning at life.

It isn't a BAD thing necessarily -- for whatever it is worth: the original manga (with which this humble blogger is not too familiar with) has quite the worldwide following already, enough to warrant some kind of spinoff manga so we know SOMEONE likes it and its sense of aesthetics. However, this first episode of this particular anime adaptation does present a couple of elements going forward that could be interpreted as either boring, lazy, or both; for example: a) copious female objectification of the boring kind, and b) stereotypical dudes doing duder things. I'm not sure how deep into people's characterization we are supposed to get in this series after a while, or how well it will juggle narrative strands that end inevitably popping out, but the show does appear to be primed towards the old "one for you and one for me," school of character development as far as everything with a vagina seems to be concerned -- as if saying "Here, have some gravitas and some motivations, darling, but, now? Now it is time for you to shake the moneymaker. So get to it. If not, then you just be quiet and sit over there." Then there are the gruff dudes who do seem poised to follow the old "I am so tormented and shaky. Hold me. No, don't hold me you cunt. I'm sorry. Let's make up. No, forget it. I'm tormented, can't you tell from my silence and stillness? I'ma do my thing, now. But I'm sorry... Okay, I'll be back later. Have dinner ready. If you're not finished with it by the time I show up I might lend a hand... or not. It is up to my level of torment at the time."

NOW, as I said: it isn't a bad thing. Not necessarily. Mileages vary just as much as taste does. And this is still a starting point (albeit a very shaky one). The premise is set and so are the characters and the setting. Now it is all about moving forward and seeing whether it coalesces into something more or not. As of right now it appears to be nothing but tons of dodgy characterization and bad trope abuse plus meh plotting stitched just well enough that the story can plod along. Can it turn said tropes on its head? Will Alex grow a spine? Will she have some pride? Will the duders do something more than posture and act tough as we wait for their inevitable tragic backstories to unfold? How will they react when their past catches up to them (because it always does in these stories)? It remains to be seen.

Now, is this show good so far? No. In fact, this first episode blowed worse than Alex ought to blow Johns. But, fuckit, maybe we can give this thing a shot, see where the chips fall for at least a couple more episodes. And I fucking hope Alex at least does something more than fucking mope and bask at being "saved" by her murder friends/bosses, and I hope the fellas get to do slightly more more than enact power boy fantasies with stupid amounts of gusto.

Laters, taters.

So, Witchblade...

So, Witchblade...

  Why Witchblade? Becuase I know jack squat about Top Cow's property save for disjointed summaries I've read online that make it seem like Alien had sex with Spriggan and its baby grew up to have sex with Spawn, who then walked out on the resulting baby (YES, WTF?). It had a tv show at some point but got cancelled -- the girl from Hard Target was in it.

See? Hard Target!

  This is about issues 1-8: here we go... Oh! Here Be Spolers, people. Of course.   I should, in theory, be falling into this thing with a beginner's mind, and I'm gonna be making it up as I go. Honest.
  The thing feels like a strange nineties comic.

  To open things up proper (just past the beginning) we are welcomed by noirish [sic] monologuing beat cop Sara Pezzini (or "Pez" to the guys) tackling an undercover bust while dressed as a "slut" for no apparent reason... and that is all you need to know about this comic's initial approach to aesthetics: pretty girl, big plump breasts, round butt, tiny waist. She is a brunette bombshell of a woman, just so you know, guys. The proud owner of long, shapely legs, brown long hair, and a pink thong under that red hooker dress -- you know all this before you even see her face.

  She's also a hothead with a strong sense of justice who knows how to carry herself in a fight, but you only find about this later, after the comic has showcased her assets for a good while.
  Part of me thinks this whole insane sprint right out of the gate was meant to capture audience attention as fast as possible, because the story about Sara getting into insane situation after insane situation -- her partner dying, she mortally wounded but rescued by a weird-ass globe (Witchblade!), murdering a bunch of people before losing consciousness, taken to the hospital, getting out of the hospital, grabbing the glove, trying to revive her dead parner and zombifying him and freaking the fuck out and getting rid of the glove, going on an angry workout and looking hot, getting abducted, getting shot, wearing the globe again, burning some more people with it, and getting her ass kicked by a long haired weirdo she found attractive (because she likes "bad boys"), ETC. -- all happens at so fucking slow a pace that, maybe, they just felt like they HAD to fall on the tittays and booty just enough to warrant going into the long haul and make more issues.

  I assume. Because, again, the thing is really, really weird. The script has groan inducing lines like "The pistol is like part of my hand and I'm a super-hero... blasting the badguys with my fireballs of justice," as narrated by Sara when she shooting a poor bastard's kneecap in the opening moments of her character's intro -- all mid a gymnastics tumble, legs spread, ass raised...

Yeah. That looks so functional... wonder where she learned that.

  Ok? Ok... but all that comes after she's done relaying the audience a story about her childhood and how she ended up becoming a cop and why. Not uninteresting stuff. Just jarring, considering the visuals.

  Furthermore, the thing is extremely fond of the big no-no in illustrated storytelling known as MASSIVE. WALLS. OF. TEXT, as if it wanted real bad to be a novel but settled for what it ended up as.

  The more you know: The comic book adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by BOOM! Studios many years later does share a similar look, though the latter was made with the specific intention of adapting prose and images. No shit. Coincidence? Who knows. 

  Michael Turner's art is able for what it is trying to do yet when looking at everything put together it is easy to tell each page is cluttered as fuck and quite the eyesore.

  Boobs and letters, I call it.

  Though the girls are real pretty to look at... in an insane sort of way -- a live girl would quickly find her ass wholly incapacitated due to severe back pain if she were to attempt but one of Sara's numerous poses, and same goes for any of the other females for that matter; the guys are your usual shade of grimacing, slack-jawed 90's roided musclemen who, like the women, all tend to look kind of same-ish.

  So it isn't that much of a stretch to say that Witchblade sought to rely on a very particular audience demographic for support: adolescent young males nearing adulthood with coin to spare... so, *girlies*, this was not, from the very outset, meant to cater to your tastes without quite frequently annoying you -- not visually at least.

  That is not necessarily a bad thing so long as the source material is clear about where its aims lie.

  But Witchblade is anything but clear in that department.

  On one end it constantly parades a presumptively perfectly assembled object (of many) for men to project their lustful wants and gawk at -- on the other lies the developing story of a confused, angry person holding on to her life by a thread as it's turned upside down and pummeled into shit because someone, somewhere is obsessed with some ugly-ass sentient glove. And shit is earnest.

  To further confuse matters, sprinkled across Sara's conflict with creep-fest Kenneth Irons (or, as I call him: Asshole Magic Batman) are disses at men's sexist pseudo protective behavior towards females, issues of women in the workplace, jabs at the fashion industry, and some mockery aimed at scientology thrown in for good measure.

  As it urns out, the sentient glove in question, the Witchblade of the title, is an item of "great power" and yadda-yadda -- it has been worn by many women through the ages and now Sara is the current wearer. If this sounds like Buffy to you then you are correct but, despite the similarities, Sara Pezzini came *first* as a fully featured character -- not accounting for the silly movie, of course. And her budding adventure isn't wholly nonsensical: things happen organically and the characters are not complete and utter morons which is a surprise (because nineties).

  Right from the very start, somewhere between all the boobanies and flexing, this comic aims to be so much more than mere escapism. Because in the world of over-muscled, over-sexed super heroes of 1995, someone seemingly wanted to throw a story about a self-sufficient woman in there. She goes through harsh-shit with no easy path in sight and pulled into every other direction save the right one... she suffers unwanted homicidal attention, gets stalked by a manipulative older man who, making the best of her vulnerable state of mind, butters her up with sweet words and lavish gifts, turning her into a docile, less assertive, poutier version of herself... and manages to make her feel *GOOD* about it... kinda like Twilight...

He even bought her a dress, because that oughta melt bitches right up, don't it? Uh-huh...

  But, lo and behold, Sara Pezzini overcomes the asshole's ploys, and then she overcomes HIM by going back to what really defined her in the beginning (thematically at least) and making the right choices, starting with trusting herself and asserting her independence and self reliance. She even learns a valuable life lesson along the way: his pearl necklace wasn't for her! Wait, wha... is that subtext hiding somewhere in there?? I dunno, maybe? She was still half naked when going through her epiphany thingie so, yeah... guess I'm confused about it.
  There is a female empowerment message running through all eight issues, but it is kinda awkward to guess where, exactly, it comes from when your powerful, assertive heroine tends to look like this whenever she has to power the fuck up:

Feelin' empowered, girl? Or maybe just cold, I dunno...

  And that is why things revert back to the plain weird so often because the plot, obviously, does not come from a malicious place -- it is just too damn complicated for it to be a throw away joke.
  So far the comic feels like a disjointed mess, both visually and thematically, and a PAIN in the eyes to read, but it does enough things right that it holds my continued attention. Maybe it improves? We'll see.

Moar on the Witchblade at a later time... twats.

Words to take to heart: "...It is not wise to remove a fly from a friend's foreheead with a hatchet!!"

Tai Chi This...

  Turns out Keanu Reeves is a good director... excellent, even... okay, bad pun. But he's good at it, for realsies.

  The story is about a fellow named Tiger Chen (because why the fuck not) who does Tai Chi -- but not your grandma's kind of calisthenics and rather the wet dream of wuxia aficuonados everywhere. And he does it for peanuts too.

  What? Yes, dude is dirt poor because an old fat bastard in his pj's (his "master") somehow convinced him that it is "not honorable" to make an honest living out of his talents and so poor tiger has to work a frustrating dead end job as a courier for the Chinese version of Fed Ex (I guess... did I mention I watched this thing with no subtitles on?) and so is forced to get his fighting fix by partaking in pussified amateur bouts for no monies against the kung fu equivalents of redshirts. And there's a love story angle with a cute girl somewhere in there but it doesn't really matter... because manly and breaking things (peole, really).

  Kinda sucks to be the guy, really.

  But not all is lost for him. His ability does get noticed by Keanu Reeves's shady businessman in DONAKA MARK (because fuck yeah?) who offers him a lucrative "job" beating fools inside a small room in what he calls... REAL FIGHTING (or just 'real fighting' because Keanu Reeves is emotionless).

  Homie takes him up in his offer because fuckit, he wants some coin to make ends meet. Keanu smirks about this and many other things -- but mostly because he's, like, so evil and likes to troll the cops and secretly fuck with Tiger's life.

  Dramaz happen. There's a cop subplot, too.

  It's actually a really decent flick if you're into this kind of stuff, more akin to what would resemble a character study of a classic protagonist in these kinds of movies than it is about the nominal macho fare that permeates the genre (it's not an accident that the main character looks like a really, really ugly woman... what?), yet it respects its roots... and that is its problem.

  Fight scenes are the standard flashy, stylized stuff you've come to expect, and they are very well directed BUT... sadly I suffer from the ailment I have termed "faitfanitis," which means, basically, that I like to watch full-contact sports.

  But who cares about any of that? I do, becuase the ailment has ruined my appreciation of these kinds of flicks. No longer can I enjoy movies like this one without finding them extremely silly. It is all just so... lame. Especially this one, because its whole narrative rests over the absurd conceit that there are people out there who would pay to see people fight "for real," which is absolutely true -- but the problem is that this is normal and already happens (see UFC, PRIDE, K-1, etc.). In boxing, MMA (mixed martial arts), or kickboxing.

  In the magic world of this movie there are no injuries (unless they are magical!) or need for proper training regimens like sparring, dieting, etc. People get kicked in the head over and over again, not one needs to preserve his cardio, or put weight on their punches.

  Everyone, and I mean everyone, waifs around at the plot's discretion, screaming like dancing little girls on a steady diet of nothing but sugar and cocaine. And I won't even get started with the unsettling undercurrent of validation of the already-proven-obsolete concept of the "Martial Arts Master" because I will shit a large, square brick.

  But keanu Reeves menacingly hisses at the camera sometime during the movie, which is awesome. But then he pulls a somewhat polt twisty-twist out of his ass near the end which had me kinda scratching my head and totally turned my outrage on its head.
  Yay, I guess.

  Now, bias aside, this movie is definitely not shit. It boasts an honest attempt at decent character development, an assured hand when it comes to shooting action, and a genuine intention at being more than just about said action -- which may well be enough.

If anyone is interested in watching a somewhat short flick that has jack squat in common with real fighting but an earnest heart, they could do way worse than giving this one a spin.

Into the Wonder of Boy Wonder.

Brought to you by Michael Morrisey. Yeah, I have no clue of who he is, but netflix.

A few keywords 'bout it:

Weird an contemplative.
Disturbed child.
Dead mommy.
This is Batman.
No money.
No ninja.
A whole lotta balls.


Michael Morrissey, the director, is doing Batman, on a budget. He even spared some for throwing Gordon in there! He's a she, now, but whatever.

Our Batman, or Boy Wonder... okay, his name is Sean. He's gonne to the school of hard knocks so he's turned into slow burned, angry super nerd. Who does some justicin' [sic] come night time. Like Buffy, but without the super powers.

This kid has done away with ol' Bats' crusade dedicated to the constant punching of the underclasses and taken a step towards employing more, um, more permanent, messy means of solving his problems where he gets his shit kicked in. A lot.


"That guy...saved my life. Sent out by god to save me," says one of his, well, charity cases, to Gordonette.

 Homie does murderin' for in the name of da lord, which is a-ok, I guess. On bat-moralizing to be found, here.

She also tells Gordonette that she's not gonna help them arrest him (forgot to say: she's a witness on one of our young hero's night outs, so she oughta know something) and it doesn't nab him an obstruction of justice charge at the least.

It all comes together to form a pretty sweet setup that makes sense for the movie, actually.  Though it does feel like the Crow, at times. Or, Batman as a serial killer hooked on painkillers.

Like other movies of the genre, it also asks us to, for the millionth time, give some leeway onto believing that the cops we know, who have, in some way, interacted with the main character before, are gonna get tangled in the mess he creates. Because there's nothing else to do, obviously.

Though, the film chooses to go down the Batman chest of implausible wonders with the inclusion of "Triceleron." The resident magic Mcguffin substance with plot related properties.

In moar Batman parallels, Sean gets called a detective, and to conform it he delivers the appallingly awkward line that sort of goes like "There's a sadness in your eyes... blah-blah-blah. I are so smart. I pay attention. Let's talk about your sob story, but mostly about mine. And look at me, I speak Chinese--the hardest language in the world--and am unbalanced like the real Batman, the one with money and better hair. Fuck him and his hair. I'm sullen. I don't like due pricess either."

This is a fun, engaging flick so far but, darn, if it isn't prone to mind farting at the weirdest of times--okay, okay, that was not the actual line, but bear with me, I'm writing this as I'm watching it and am all over the place so, yeah...let's see if the Joker makes an appearance down the line.

Now Gordonette is looking for angsty boy. Yay! But she's keeping some shit from her lovely racist partner. And she's kind of a bitch, it turns out, b/c she's career oriented, the cunt -- she's also called "The Wonder Woman from the Bronx."

Turns out people have issues with her, left and right. B/c "the kid has issues," (yeah, Sean, they mean) and "she don't know shit."

It bares mentioning that Boy Wonder, who is so not totally racist for assuming an asian kid has to be Chinese, goes apeshit on a mentally handicapped individual who is actually totally racist and sexually harassing a poor girl. JUSTICE! Also, brass knuckles.

Sean is also steroid junkie, too.
The moral of this story is don't try to be Batman IRL. Shit ends fucked up and you end up killing Alfred for, literally, no reason.

This was nonsense. Have a nice night. Apologies?

Spring Break. Forever. That's not a good thing.

An indictment of the idiocy of those pesky Millenials.

Let us turn our brains off for a moment: Spring Break isthe escape from the meandering and the mundane for misguided post-teens who just discovered cardboard existentialism.

Of course it is all bullshit, and that is kind of the point.

That's the message buried deep beneath all the crotch shots, scantily clad displays of NUBILE FLESH (you guys!), and gun imagery (Because Chekhov's gun, you guys!).

The story follows complete idiots who have, at least legally, attained a degree of expected maturity in the digital era. But they are so fucking out of control! Because society and immaturity, bro.

"Seeing all this money makes my pussy wet," says Vanessa Hudgens' character after the girls finally get their much needed cash to finance their existential imperative, via robbing a diner no less. Because Spring Break. And proving once and for all that millenials can't verbalize complex thoughts (double totes).

What follows is, again, a heavy handed indictment of the stupid-ass post adolecents in one-too-many montages as they have a great deal of fun and power trips to bad techno music.

If only that shit lasted forever, huh?

Enter James Franco 

The fake grill adds to the artsy.

So shit goes on where grown ups monologue each other sounding like children, sexy time is had, and guns are fired. Also: expletives! So this is, like, real dark shit, fellas. Deep stuff.

You know already know where this is gonna end, even if you haven't seen it. You have seen this story in countless other places that teaches you that if you are gonna have fun and misbehave, the story gods from the older generation have to punish your decadent ass in stupid fashion before gifting you a completely illogical ending.

Now, what is good about this thing? The Imagery. Pretty pictures play on the screen continually, perfectly colored, framed, and shot. A bunch of 'em. I'm positive you could build an entire different narrative off of these and it might actually turn better than whatever this was. Also,excising almost most of its fluff could trim its total running time to half an hour, maybe even less. Seems perfectly doable.

What results is more an exercise in filmmaking than a film. It's as if somebody made a whole movie entirely out of half baked ideas and fantastic cinematography, suddenly realized what a bind he was in, and then stuffed it with aggressive redundance disguised as ambiance.

This is the kind of thing that happens when somebody decides to tell the story of a bunch of people he doesn't understand.

To close:

"Just pretend it is a fucking videogame!

You can't be scared of shit!

You have to be hard!

Just get this fucking money and go away on Spring Break y'all!"

Speak the truth, sisters! Yeah...