Hmm, surprisingly I haven’t watched too much stuff this month.
Eigasai I watched a Japanese film at Eigasai in UP Diliman for the first time ever, upon the invite of some friends. We saw One Cut of the Dead a comedy zombie film. It was great and it was hilarious, although you must make sure not to lose patience with the first thirty minutes. I went in blind not knowing anything about it other than “Japanese comedy zombie movie”, so you should too!
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I was travelling for most of the past two months, so this covers both June and July, and I guess I haven’t been able to watch too much. Maybe? IDK, we’ll see.
Since I was in the US, I took the opportunity to finish watching Voltron: Legendary Defender which only had two seasons available on PH Netflix. Pretty good adaptation, lots of fun callbacks to the old series. Some annoying filler eps, especially in the middle seasons onwards.
I know I already made a whole post about the MCU after Endgame came out, but after the MCU Phase 4 announcements this past weekend at SDCC I was a bit hyped. I thought it would be fun to look back at the past 10 years of MCU Phase 1-3 and see what I wrote about the movies.
Iron Man (2008)
Surprisingly, I had written nothing about watching this film at all, and I don’t remember going to the cinema to watch it.
First, the spoiler-free review, then more spoilery stuff afterwards.
I watched Far From Home while I was… far from home. great movie, lots of fun, and the stakes are a lot higher than the Vulture just stealing some tech off Tony Stark basically a story of Peter Parker the high school student trying to juggle his Spider-Man problems with his high school life, which was one of the best eras of comic book Spider-Man the movie gives us a look at what the world looks like post-Endgame and how weird it is for everyone if you’ve seen the trailers, you know who the “villain” is and you have certain expectations coming in.
The big TV thing of May 2019 was of course, the much maligned finale for Game of Thrones. I’ve written about that separately here.
Most of the US TV series also ended their runs in May. Arrowverse show seasons were littered with poor writing as usual. I rank the seasons in this order:
best is Legends of Tomorrow season 4. The reason Legends is the best is that they’re not afraid to be outrageous.
I’ve already written extensively about Avengers Endgame, but there are other things I watched this month too.
Shazam came out early this month, and while it was unfortunately sandwiched between MCU blockbusters, it was a fun adventure romp and surprised me in a few ways. I wrote a short spoiler-free review over on Tumblr.
TV-wise, I’ve been on a rewatch binge of 30 Rock that unfortunately started with season 4 due to Amazon Prime’s weird way of presenting things.
I already wrote about Avengers Endgame a bit in yesterday’s post, but that was a bit rushed and I had more thoughts, so here we are. I figured I might as well get everything out. There will be unmarked spoilers for Avengers Endgame and Agents of SHIELD.
Before even going into the movie that was seemingly sold out everywhere despite being on almost every cinema screen in the Metro, I was thinking to myself what a phenomenon.
Two endgames to discuss in one post! MTG War of the Spark and Avengers Endgame spoilers ahoy!
Endgame #1: War of the Spark
The latest Magic set has been a home run in terms of lore and flavor and storytelling, bringing the last three years worth of MTG lore to its conclusion as the villainous dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas aims to complete his plan to achieve omnipotence over the multiverse. The set is packed with planeswalkers summoned to Ravnica by Bolas’s schemes, which means mechanically that a lot of new planeswalker design space is being explored.- I liked this movie, it had good heart, fun kid-friendly humor, and a strong message about family- basically the story of a kid with a messed up life being stupid and trying to be better- john glover is here! does he now hold the record for portraying the most number of parents of bald supervillains? that’s not a spoiler right? - this movie is kid-friendly, aside from the violence and the occasional swear word- there is a mid credits scene and the post credits scene.
The big one this month was Captain Marvel. I posted the usual spoiler-free review over on Tumblr, but I have some more spoiler-y thoughts over here:
Click to toggle spoilers While I thought the movie was ok, I was underwhelmed by the third act and specifically the lack of any serious threat for Carol to defeat towards the end of the movie. As this tumblr post explains more clearly than I ever could, perhaps the issue is that the narrative is not something targetted towards me as a man, who has not experienced the emotional gaslighting IRL that many women are exposed to.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I watch a lot of TV shows, rarely on TV itself though. I outgrew scheduled television maybe more than a decade ago. I’m reminded of this because I was going through some old disks and found burned episodes of stuff like Smallville, Heroes, The Simpsons, various anime, and so on.
Those were from the days before streaming though. These days an abundance of content is available online via the streaming services, no need to store all those episodes yourself.
Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow:
I watched Alita: Battle Angel, with the friend who introduced me to the series in the first place. The movie looked fantastic and the fight scenes were great. Plot was supercondensed, several books’ worth of story combined into one. Ended in a weird place, kinda? Easily the best western live action anime adaptation by far.
After watching I immediately passed by a friend's house to borrow these.
The quote is from the 1980s cult classic Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I didn’t include this movie in my top 10 movies post, but it and the sequel Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey are still among my childhood faves. These wise words are give by the Wyld Stallyns band composed of the epnoymous Bill and Ted, and form the philosophical basis of the future utopian civilization inspired by their music.Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow:
Bumblebee only came out over here in January (thanks to the usual MMFF shenanigans), and I decided to watch it on a whim. Pretty decent soft reboot, read my spoiler-free review over on the Tumblr
The first half of Young Justice Outsiders is out, and it’s pretty good. Focus is back on a smaller group after the larger team in YJ season 2.
The first trailer for Spider-Man Far From Home dropped last week. I used to pretty hyped for superhero movie trailers, but I haven’t bother watching this one yet. MCU still has two more movies coming out before this one, and I’m already hyped enough for those, I don’t think I have hype to spare for a third one.
My brother was complaining to me about the trailer, saying he was spoiled about some elements.
Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow:
I very much enjoyed Elseworlds, the Arrowverse crossover this year. I mean sure, a lot of it didn’t make any sense, but it was like a love letter to DC fans. I actually consider myself more of a Marvel fan than DC, but I still loved it! I wrote a spoiler-free review over on the Tumblr.
Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow:
For some reason, I watched two biopics this month. The first one is Hidden Figures, about three black women who were instrumental during the early days of NASA leading up to the Friendship 7 mission piloted by John Glenn. The movie is fairly interesting if you are even remotely interested in either the challenges faced in black history or math and science or the early days of the space program competition between the USA and Russia.
Some things I’ve been watching lately, aside from the usual TV shows I follow:
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (on Amazon Prime) – surprisingly good, even if I’m not too familiar with the Jack Ryan stuff. I only know John Krasinski from The Office,
Spoilers for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan:
Click to toggle spoilers - The story starts with Ryan tracking down Suleiman’s network via financials, but they never follow-up on who was financing his group - I’m not sure what was the point of the whole drone pilot side story (including the weird trip to the casino and the night with the couple), although it was admittedly kind of entertaining Daredevil season 3 (on Netflix) – I enjoyed the season a lot.
This started as one of those silly Facebook memes where you post one thing every day and didn’t have to explain and you tagged other people and they continued with the meme. I was very bad at following the meme instructions, but I did find the exercise interesting. I found it difficult to identify 10 specific movies, and since I didn’t explain during the FB posts, I thought I’d make a blog post about them instead.
When Game of Thrones entered its sixth season in 2016, it was true spoiler territory for those of us who had read the GRRM books before HBO’s TV adaptation turned the property into a worldwide phenomenon. Due to the author’s glacial writing pace, at this point the TV series went past the point that the novels had reached. Thus nobody – book readers or tv viewers – knew what events would unfold in the story.
Last weekend I watched Aureus Solito’s movie Pisay at the UP film center with a couple of friends (both of whom were my Pisay batchmates of course).
For the uninitiated Pisay is the nickname for our beloved _Philippine Science High School. _It’s a system of government-run schools with a special focus on science and math subjects. There’s a highly-competitive entrance exam and we’ve always been told that students who make it in are considered the “cream of the crop.
First, the spoiler-free summary (spoilers after this part):
overall a very entertaining movie to sit down and watch popcorn and to enjoy the jokes and the space battles and the different colored lights and the tiny adorable tree creature GOTG’s humor was one of its strong points and for the 2nd movie, they push the comedy up a notch, perhaps a little too much in some places. Lots of funny gags and one-liners I felt like some of the character/background development stuff was pushed a bit too hard as well the movie’s plot also felt a bit thin and straightforward.
I’m not a fan of scary movies. I don’t appreciate the idea of paying money to get surprised by jump scares or whatever.
Back when I was a kid I remember my dad watching a Betamax copy of The Gate back home and me and my younger brother were watching with him and the movie seriously creeped me out. There was this one scene where a demonic eye manifested on the lead kid’s palm and that scene stuck with me for a while.
"Everyone knows the third movie is always the worst" -- Jean still too much focus on Jennifer Lawrence/Mystique some great soundtrack choices Quicksilver scene maybe just a tiny bit too long. Tradition of defying the rules of physics continues (I hope someone does the math on how fast he was probably moving) nice 80s wardrobe lol not particularly faithful to the source material plot is all over the place, a lot of WTF moments here and there.
So Metro Manila is at the peril of heavy rains, flooding and traffic again (as often happens this time of the year) and I thought I’d do some actual blogging for a change.
I didn’t want to brave the rush hour traffic last night so I finally got around to watching X-Men First Class (luckily it was still showing at Mega). I had actually seen Green Lantern first despite X1C showing two weeks before the DC movie.
I had actually read the much-acclaimed graphic novel only last year. And while I found the story decent enough, I wasn’t sure whether to like it or hate it. Undoubtedly it was an important point in the history of “superhero” comics, but I was never entirely sure about it’s point.
So of course I saw the movie, and it had remained roughly 85-90% loyal to the source material, which made it a bit boring for me since I generally knew what was going to happen most of the time (except for you know, that thing about the bad guy’s master plan… ).
I had time to kill before going to see my brother’s art exhibit at megamall, so I went and watched Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.
It was so bad. I could’ve been able to forgive the fact that they roughly 80% of the story shied away from Street Fighter canon, had the movie’s storyline actually been good. As it is, you can expect short, unsatisfying fight scenes, ridiculous background stories, disjointed plot/scenes (reminds me of Smallville and/or Heroes writing =/), terrible wigs and the ridiculous sight of Michael Clark Duncan getting beaned by a pineapple.
On a whim, my brother and I went to Trinoma to see Eagle Eye, barely catching the last full show (including the trailers of course, we love watching trailers). Our mom had said we’d like the movie and she still owed us one since it was her fault we watched Big Stan. So we’re giving her a chance to redeem herself.
The spoilerless review:
Since Eagle Eye trailers seem to be everywhere, you probably have some idea of at least the start of the story.
I caught Groundhog Day for the Nth time today on HBO (N roughly around 50). My father claims it’s his favorite movie of all time; high praise considering he watches every movie that comes out EVER. I’m not actually going to talk about the movie; it’s awesome, if you haven’t seen it, you should. You’re missing half your life.
If you had one day of eternity, what would you do?
Wow. Best superhero movie EVER, hands-down.
This has been a good month for movies. I saw the following in cinemas:
Kung Fu Panda – complete AWESOMENESS. I drank the Kool-Aid all the way on this one.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – classic Indy goodness.
Incredible Hulk – Edward Norton is cast brilliantly here, a choice on the same level as Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man. And they addressed the issue of Hulk’s stretchy pants!
Watch it, and be blinded by awesomeness.
For added effect, imagine it’s really Jack Black doing everything the Panda does.
So I saw _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull _last Friday. Two days later I also watched for the first time _Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
_
Instead of doing a lame movie review, here’s a double header feature!
(Warning: Spoilers for both movies follow)
As a big Transformers fan back in the day, I have to say: the movie is okay. Action-packed and a fun popcorn flick. The story’s nothing to win an oscar over, but everything looks SO COOL!
Some questionable things though:
Spoilers!
Why does the all-spark only create violent, gun-toting robots? Where the hell did the Autobots come from? I don’t recall seeing the Decepticon symbol anywhere, was it there? How come Soundwave can survive getting his head chopped off, but Jazz can’t take being split in half?
Pretty good movie, as expected. The story is what you’d expect from a comic-book movie, but the mid-air fight scenes are really great.
The whole Sandman thing is basically fluff, the movie could have been done without him. He was like a cheap pop to make the whole “dark side” thing easier to start off, but then they had trouble resolving his story. It’s not like he’s a major Spidey villain anyway.
if you’ve ever lived in the Philippines during the summer months, you’re well aware of the sweltering heat. Not being in the mood to feel like french toast during this Sunday noontime, my brothers and I decided to troop to the nearby mall and catch a movie – in this case the return of those childhood stalwarts the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the big screen.
Now, as my youngest brother asked, what were we doing there?
Mostly due to my antisocial nature and my laziness, I haven’t actually seen a movie in a theater since… forever. I broke that fast mostly because of the hype surround 300, the movie based on Frank Miller’s comic book retelling of the Battle at Thermopylae.
Everyone who’s seen the movie has the same thing to say: it’s really good. So I went to see it with a brother of mine. And it was good.
There’s only one thing I have to say about the third X-men movie: Totally unexpected.
Comic book series fans will enjoy it more, as it fundamentally screws with what such a fan would expect from an X-men movie.
Good stuff.
I’m not sure what some Church leaders are thinking. Calling for an outright ban on _The DaVinci Code _movie just makes it more popular. At the very least, it’s insulting to the intelligence of their flock – are they saying Catholics don’t have the ability to distinguish fact from fiction by themselves? But then again, this is a nation of Catholics who tend to elect action stars to high office because of all the goody-goody roles they portray in the movies, so maybe the priests have some sort of point.
One of the things I’ve been wanting to do during this hiatus was to watch more movies — we’ve got a ton of DVDs downstairs I haven’t seen yet. Since I had just finished the fifth book of Stephen King’s western fantasy, I started this task with Sergio Leone’s western opus, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
I haven’t watched many westerns before. This is probably the first one I completed.
One word: Suxxor.
Well, not really. It’s okay I guess. When I first heard they were making a Fantastic Four movie, my first reaction was, “Uh… that can’t be good.”
The plot is barely servicable… the thing that really made me think “suxxor” was how Victor von Doom’s role was handled. I mean, in the comics, Doom was a monarch, ruler of Latveria. He wasn’t a madman bent on revenge. He was a madman bent on world domination!
Awesome. Definitely better than the all the other Batman movies. This movie is no kids’ movie either. The movie is less about Batman’s crimefighting adventures and more about Bruce Wayne’s journey from being a angry, confused rich orphan to the billionaire playboy/costumed vigilante popularized by the earlier films.
The movie captures the essence of Batman’s character perfectly. It’s all about fear — Bruce overcoming his fear of bats and eventually turning that fear into a symbol to strike terror into the hearts of criminals.
I should’ve thought of this as soon as I got DSL: I went ahead and downloaded Transformers the Movie.
Transformers was of course, the epitome of my youth. Unlike most other guy kids, I preferred the Transformers to G.I. Joe. I guess I preferred high-tech fantasy over soliders back then, with the war of the heroic Autobots and the Evil Decepticons appealing more to my young mind than soldiers trying to fight terrorists.
We saw Revenge of the Sith at the Gateway mall in Cubao. It’s less than a year old, and it’s target audience is a higher class than the usual malls. It’s like it’s trying to be something like the Podium, which makes it a bit out of place in Cubao. The mall is good anyway, as you’d expect. Not my type of place to hang out, but has the comforts you’d expect of such a mall… clean, not much of a crowd, and people greeting you when you get off the taxi.
The circle is now complete. The whole tale has been told. Revenge of the Sith completes Lucas’ space opera. And the Force is strong in this one.
Highly enjoyable movie, if you take the time to push away your inner critic and look past the spotty acting, the so-so dialogue, and all the little flaws and inconsistencies you spot throughout the movie. Get past all of that, and it’s a decent enough ride, and a fitting conclusion to the Star Wars epic.
I suppose everyone and their mother has had a chance to voice their opinions on Spiderman 2 by now, so here’s mine: Some parts are hokey, some parts are cheesy, some parts are gratuitous Hollywood crap, it has quite a few inconsistencies and plot holes but overall, it’s a hell of a ride, and I found it considerably more ‘fun’ than the first one. That being said, I’m not entirely excited about the Goblin making an obvious comeback in Spiderman 3, but the only other Spidey nemesis worthy of being in a movie would be Venom… and bringing alien symbiotes in the equation would completely change the feel of the movies.
Good plot twists you could see from a mile away.
Unfortunately, we had arrived at the theater too late to catch the start of the last showing of Gangs of New York, so we had to settle with the second choice. _The Recruit _didn’t get as much critical acclaim as Gangs, but what the heck, Al Pacino in a spy thriller? How could I lose?
The story is simple enough. Colin Farell plays James Clayton, a young man just out of MIT, recruited by CIA agent William Burke (Pacino).
The Bourne Identity A new action hero is Bourne
I was a bit anxious to see this movie, as I had thoroughly enjoyed the book of the same name a long time ago, and I was hoping the movie would give me the same satisfaction. The Bourne Identity stars Matt Damon as rogue CIA agent/amnesiac Jason Bourne. In his quest to uncover his own identity, Jason travels all around Europe pursued by the CIA’s agents and dragging along an innocent gypsy girl who just happened to be his best shot for a ride to Paris.
For some reason, I keep wanting to update this site. I’m actually doing this more often than studying for the board, studying game development, studying Japanese or writing anything else. I wonder why? Anyway, I added a humor page and a special “Who Am I?” page. Check ‘em out. Also the Anime ROMs site should be fully operational by now.
So I went and saw Lord of the Rings last Friday.
Roy Tang is a:
- programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart
- Frustrated writer and sketch artist
- Magic player on weekends
- Randomly amazed
- Software developer since 2003. If you’d like to work with me, take a look at my resume.
roytang.net is a personal site; I post about a random assortment of topics that interest me including software development, Magic the Gathering, pop culture, gaming, and tech life. This site is perpetually under renovation.