Run run Runaways

I have been enjoying binge-ing (bingeing? binging?) Marvel's Runaways on Hulu, so much so that I've also read the first two trade paperback collections as well.  I like to know the source material, although I'm not a big comics reader.  I'm not well-suited to it: I read very quickly and I don't give the artwork enough attention.  But the television has been a lot of fun and I'm glad to have had both perspectives.

For those who don't know, Runaways (written by Brian K. Vaughn et als.) is about a group of runaway kids who discover that their parents are a secret and very evil cabal of Los Angeles millionaires.  After seeing their parents sacrifice a young girl, they run away and adventures follow.  The girls have superpowers - Nico is/becomes a witch, Gert has a telepathic link to a sentient dinosaur, Molly has super-strength, etc. - and the boys are smart and/or assisted by tech stolen from their parents.  Nico is my favorite character in both the show and the comics; I also like sarcastic Gert  (especially the show's iteration) and her dinosaur, Old Lace.

PC: Ars Technica

While the show hews closely to some of the source material, it varies wildly in some regards.  I'm being vague on purpose as I don't want to spoil anything.  In the show, the parents are much, much better developed.  I find this to be a double-edged sword, however: the character development makes them much better villains ... but I also resent time spent away from the kids.  I like the kids.

I only have one episode left and then I'm up to speed on the series.  I'm torn as to what to watch next.  It would make sense to move straight to Cloak and Dagger, as that is also based on a Marvel comic that has connections to/crossovers with Runaways.  But over on Netflix, the new Dark Crystal series is out (and I love The Dark Crystal) plus I'm starting to get in the mood for horror movies in advance of this year's Scarelicious October Movie Series.  What to do, what to do.

Vacation reading

Mr. Mouse, the new dog - a/k/a Boy Genius, for his propensity for accidentally locking himself in rooms - and I were recently down in the southern Utah desert for a week's vacation.  We did active stuff in the mornings (mountain biking and hiking) but hunkered down through the middle of the day, in the A/C and out of the sun, napping and reading.

I read all of the above books.  Well, technically I'm not quite done with Swan Song yet, and I didn't read Witches Abroad because I picked it up out of order.  But I did read the rest of them, plus the last two books of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, so that's a decent number of pages read.

Joe Hill's Stranger Weather is not his strongest outing; his other short stories are much better.  Similarly, his father's Elevation is a slight thing, a novella very much of its time.  I appreciate King's politics but this little book was a wee dite preachy.  The Girl With All the Gifts seems to be the novelization of the movie that stemmed from a short story.  I really liked the movie and am inclined to re-watch it, now that I've read the book.

Next up: back to the library to keep working my way through Discworld.

Bits and pieces

Progress report: the Discworld series has stalled - but I haven't given up yet - but I finished the available episodes of Legends of Tomorrow, got sucked into Pretty Little Liars somehow (??!?), watched two episodes of Good Omens (I know it's an unpopular opinion but: I don't love it, although I do love the book), and have one episode to go on S3 of Stranger Things.  The Mindflayer monster is SO GROSS - I love it.  Very The Thing and The Fly.

I've also watched, and loved, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.  I watch all the Marvel superhero movies but I don't read comics, so my knowledge of Spider-Man lore is broad strokes at best.  But that didn't matter.  Into the Spiderverse is a fantastic superhero movie and a damn fine movie even without the genre tag.  It is funny, heart-breaking and never lets up for a moment.  The voice cast is phenomenal - Mahershala Ali! Hailey Steinfeld! Chris Pine! Kathryn Hahn! Lauren Velez! Lily Tomlin! Nic Cage! Liev Schreiber! and the perfectly-cast Jake Johnson! - and the movie simply gorgeous.  You've never seen visuals like that in a superhero movie.  I plan on watching it again soon because I'm sure I missed a bunch, just sitting there agog.

New goal

Not only have I utterly failed in my easily-attainable goal to watch one movie a month (just one!) to post here, I completely neglected to post ANYTHING for the month of May.  Not cool, man.  My excuse is that I've just been so caught up in watching television series.  I got through the Scooby Doo episode of Supernatural, I've started the guilty pleasure that is Pretty Little Liars, I've been getting caught up on the most recent Netflix-able season of Legends of Tomorrow, I'm two episodes deep into S5 of Black Mirror.  It doesn't end there either:  the final season of Jessica Jones starts in just a couple days,  S4 of Veronica Mars is just around the corner and I haven't even gotten to start in on Good Omens yet, much to my chagrin.  Golden age of television indeed (give or take Supernatural and PLL).

So I am therefore resetting my goal to this: I want to read all of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series by the end of the summer.  I've ready several of those books already, randomly, but this time I'm going chronologically.  I've finished the first four - The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites and Mort.  I think I can attain this goal.  These are quick books for me to read - I just need to keep going to the library.

Other books I've read:  Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, a wonderful collection of short stories that cannot be kept to one genre, instead incorporating horror, comedy, feminism and fantasy; and The Troop by Nick Cutter, a body horror/zombie-ish/Lord of the Flies mash-up that's good enough to have a Stephen King blurb on the front cover.

For my viewing pleasure

In the last several weeks, I have

• Gotten halfway through S2 of The O.A.
• Watched all of the most recent season of Santa Clarita Diet
• Re-watched the first half and watched the second half of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Next up is to 

• Finish The O.A.
• Finish S12 of Supernatural (at which point I will have watched all twelve seasons in less than a year.  Yay?)
• Watch Hanna (on Amazon Prime)
• Wait impatiently for Good Omens
• Watch Red Riding Trilogy: Part 1: 1974

At some point I guess I should probably fold that huge mountain of clean laundry that is looming on the guest bed.

Public service announcement

This is a public service announcement:

WATCH RUSSIAN DOLL (on NETFLIX)

Natasha Lyonne is fantastic.   I've actually watched it twice already (despite having a huge list of other things to watch).  It's so good.

Mini movie review: Free Solo

Oh wow, you guys: Mr. Mouse and I went out to see a movie together.  Like, in the movie theater.  This is the first movie Mr. Mouse has seen in a theater since we moved to Utah ... 9+ years ago.  We went to see the Alex Honnold documentary, Free Solo - and before I say anything about that film, let me just digress about the movie theater.  It was playing in IMAX at the Larry H. Miller Megaplex in Sandy (not my usual movie theater) and it was like going to Las Vegas to see a movie.  There were twenty different screens and the whole place was like walking through the Vegas version of a town.  I can't imagine being there on a Friday or Saturday night when it is thronging with people.

Also: IMAX previews are played way, way, way too loud.

Ahem.  Now that I've gotten my old person reactions to modern movie-going out of the way, Free Solo was great.  The movie chronicles rock climber Alex Honnold's quest to be the first (and quite possibly only) person to free-solo El Capitan - 3,000 feet, without a rope - in Yosemite National Park, which is about the most insane thing a climber has ever done.  The filmmakers are also friends with Alex, so the fourth wall gets broken as they fear for his life in the midst of filming him.  This makes for a very personal film and even though SPOILER he doesn't fall off the face of the cliff and die, it's intense.

Photo: from National Geographic's Free Solo

I have already failed

I've blown my one resolution already: I am not going to get a movie review up here before the end of the month.  Sometimes life gets in the way.  Sometimes you're lazy and just want to turn your brain off to watch a bunch of Supernatural episodes.

I have watched Maniac but I truly have nothing coherent to say.  I just didn't get it.  I tried, I really did.  I like weird, trippy shows (Dirk Gently, Legion, to name a couple recent ones) but I just didn't understand Maniac.  I liked the way it looked, I loved Sally Field and Emma Stone.  I just didn't know WTF was going on more often than not.  I don't even think it really mattered that I fell asleep a couple of times either. 

Mr. Mouse and I, having just blown through all eleven seasons of Cheers [full disclosure: I prefer Rebecca to Diane by a long shot], were searching for something else that we both might like.  Seeing how we've watched all available/streaming The Good Place and Better Call Saul episodes, and Brooklyn 99 is not on Netflix (I can't stomach paying for more streaming services lest I start paying as much as when we had cable), we've started Schitt's Creek.  It's funny.  I find Catherine O'Hara a bit grating here but I really like the younger actors - the David and Stevie relationship, at least so far as we've gotten, which is halfway through S1, is tons of fun.

So that's where we stand.  Now shooting for a new movie review in February.  Wish me luck.

Resolutions

I am not a resolutioner but I feel the need to do something here, in public, to hold myself responsible for this little blog.  I started it all the way back in 2007 and while I have never been particularly prolific here (Octobers notwithstanding), I hate the way it has dwindled away since we gave up television and, thus, my television show recapping.  I haven't been reading much and I've mostly been watching Netflix television - Supernatural, Maniac (which I want to like but find a little boring), 3% (I liked S1 but S2 got ... a little boring), rewatching Jessica Jones and The Punisher and The Defenders because that's the mood I've been in.

So my promise/resolution is that I will watch at least one movie a month that is new to me and that I will review here.  I'd like to think that I'll do more like two or three, but let's start small and see how it goes.

But I'm going to finish S2 of JJ first.  Let's just be honest here.

Dumplin'

Y'all, I know I've been incommunicado (persona non grata?) around here lately.  There's been holiday stuff to get done and I have been in a Jessica Jones / The Punisher re-watch mood lately.  I've also watched S1 of 3% (Netflix, in Portuguese with English subtitles), a vaguely Hunger Games-ish dystopian science fiction show about poor Brazilians competing against one another to win a spot in a Utopian-community on an island off-shore.  I devoured the first season but have stalled out on S2 for the moment.  I also read and very much enjoyed The Library at Mount Char (recommended by a work friend who said, "It's weird.  I thought of you."): a violent fantasy pitting very special orphans against each other (and their adoptive father, who may be God) for control of the world.

But the real reason I'm making sure to post tonight is this.  Do yourself a favor.  Watch this video - which has glamorous drag queens (including one of my favorites, BenDeLaCreme) lip-sync to a remix of Dolly Parton's "Jolene," to advertise Netflix's Dumplin' - and then get over to Netflix and watch Dumplin'.  The chunky daughter of a former beauty queen enters a local pageant with several friends and misfits, first intending on taking it down/making a point, but instead embracing a Dolly-ism: "Figure out who you are and then do it on purpose."  Touching on (but not belaboring) friendship, loyalty, healthy body image and confidence, this little movie is very funny, real, honest and touching.  Plus drag queens!