2016....as re-enacted by Jack Torrance

I've noticed a lot of people doing "Me at the start of 2016 / Me at the end of 2016" memes, so I decided to up the ante with a run through 2016 from beginning to end...as played by The Shining's Jack Torrance.

And so, 2015 ends and a new years begins. What could go wrong..?

 

All The World Is Waiting For You

It's a-comin'....

So here we are, one month away—as of this writing—from Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Not only that, but we've also gotten info on Wonder Woman's own individual movie, which has already begun filming.
So with the home stretch upon us, I thought I'd offer some thoughts on recent information regarding our Amazon heroine and her upcoming film debut.

Let's get rambling....

...uuugggghhhh...

Shortly after I first started this blog, I made a post discussing Wonder Woman's powers—specifically her endurance and stamina.

In this post, I discussed how Wonder Woman's ability to take/endure damage is often portrayed inconsistently and how that's a real problem with the character.
In particular, when it comes to poison gases or toxins, and I mentioned how there's something ludicrous—and extremely lame—that we have a god-like character who can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Superman, but can get knocked out cold by sleeping gas or chloroform.

So then there's THIS bullshit I happened to stumble across today....

The Miscalculations of the Star Wars Prequels

Huzzah, the first installment of the new Star Wars trilogy, The Force Awakens, is (as of this writing) just around the corner. And I thought I'd commemorate this occasion by......beating a dead horse and going on about the Prequel Trilogy.

Yeah, yeah, I know...pretty much everyone and their mother has critiqued the Star Wars prequels. We've now reached a point where most think-pieces on them fall into one of two categories: "The prequels really weren't THAT bad," or, "No, the prequels really did suck."

Personally, I'm in the camp that the prequels were not particularly good. So if you're expecting a defense of them here, you're out of luck—a lot of what I'm going to write here are my thoughts on why the prequels don't work.
However, don't expect cries of raped childhood or parroting of Red Letter Media either. I'm not interested in repeating the obvious complaints of too many special effects or poor dialogue or wooden acting. It's been done.

Overall, when I think of the prequels, what I see more than anything are creative miscalculations by George Lucas—hence the title. Because one thing I've noticed when people discuss the prequels is the question: have we any right to question George Lucas's vision, and was it ultimately impossible for him to meet the fans expectations?

Halloween: The Shape, Michael Myers, & Cthulhu

Full disclosure...I would be very hesitant to call myself a fan of the Halloween series.

That isn't to say I have no appreciation for them. I definitely recognize and respect the original for being such a ground-breaking film. As a fan of Friday the 13th, I certainly know those movies wouldn't exist without Halloween. And whenever the Halloween season comes, and AMC or some other channel has its inevitable marathon, I usually end up watching most or all of them.

Except Resurrection. Fuck that movie.

But of the big slasher icons—as I've mentioned in previous posts—I've always been a Jason guy.
Even back when I was young enough to actually be scared of these movies, Michael Myers just never hit me.

A lot of that can be chalked up to personal taste. I just found the atmosphere and background music of Friday—especially the earlier ones—scarier than that of Halloween. For whatever reason, I thought Jason's hockey mask more intimating than Michael's Captain Kirk.
Different strokes and all that.

But I think the biggest thing that always kept me from really getting into the Halloween movies and Michael Myers as a characters was, frankly, I just didn't buy him.

Top Nostalgic Movie Villains

And now for something a little different...from me anyway. A lot of people do "Top whatever" lists—I just haven't until now.

Everyone loves villains. Everybody loves a good "bad guy." There's that old adage: "A hero is only as good as their villain."
I wanted to do a top ten list of villains, but that's far too broad, so I decided to narrow it down to the villains that stand out from my childhood watching movies. I'm not going to pretend this is objective in any way, but these are the characters that, when I think of them, push that personal nostalgia button and take me back to my youth.

So let's bring on the bad guys...

Movies, Doomsday, & Salt

Heyyooo...figured I'd get some thoughts out about recent developments in the land of Wonder Woman. No real united theme or point, just catching up on recent stuff and news.

So let's get rambling...

The Movies

I suppose the appropriate place to start would be on Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, what with the San Diego Comic-Con and I haven't touched on the subject since they cast Gal Gadot.

First...how she'll look in the movie. Quite a few months ago, we got the first official image of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman: