Short Review Roundup – Netflix MCU Edition

I am a little behind on my Netflix MCU shows, but I might actually be caught up by the time Daredevil season three drops on Friday.  Not that any of that is an exciting prospect.  The Netflix MCU shows have been getting worse, not better.  Almost every season is too long.  Which is one reason why characters tend to be better in someone else’s show (e.g., Luke Cage in season one of Jessica Jones, the Punisher in season two of Daredevil, the Iron Fist in season two of Luke Cage).  There is a definite tendency toward the writers handling themes ham-handedly.  I can say, though, that I was pleasantly surprised by season one of Iron Fist.

Also better than the title characters: the female secondary characters

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Throwback SF Thursday: Mortu and Kyrus in the White City by Schuyler Hernstrom

“You may talk of cities and justice all you wish.  Tonight, the pagan wins.  My anger will be sated and these wicked people brought to ruin.”

Mortu and Kyrus in the White City is a new novella out from Cirsova standout Schuyler Hernstrom, the first in a planned series equally sword and sorcery and far future post-apocalyptic.

Speaking of Cirsova, congrats to Donald Uitvlugt on winning the Cirsova no. 9 giveaway!  Check out Donald’s own work.

Short Review Roundup – Movie Edition, part 4

It has been awhile since I’ve done one of these.  So long, in fact, that I am pretty sure I watched all of these movies before no-angel was born, and she is six months old now.  But I haven’t been to the theater since Infinity War, and I’ve been watching a lot more non-SF (including Die Hard knock-offs Under Siege and Sudden Death).

Throwback SF Thursday: The Right Hand of Doom, Red Shadows, Rattle of Bones (Solomon Kane)

I finally settled on a Hallowread for this October.  I will be rereading and posting on Dracula.  I will probably also do a post on the 1931 movie.  But I don’t plan on doing as many posts as I did for, say, Frankenstein two years ago.  Although, hey, maybe this is my chance to finally write a post on the Blade movies.

In the meantime, though, I have been reading the Del Rey collection of Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane stories.  They make for a pretty good Hallowread.  A few were included in the horror collection I covered last October, after all, and every story I’ve read so far includes some spooky elements.

September 2018 Month-in-Review

September was a hectic month with the start of the new semester.  I actually did okay reading, as I finished six books.  But I also started seven and acquired seven.  And I have been in kind of a weird reading slump.  I’ve been reading, but I haven’t been super motivated to pick up the next book.  I want to pick up a new book, I just don’t have any clear motivation for what is next.  I did finally decide that Dracula will be by Halloween read, so you can expect at the very least a post on the book in October.  I may also do one or more Dracula movie posts.

It wound up being a slow month for Every Day Should Be Tuesday after wrapping up Tolkien 101.  Between taking a breather after closing that major undertaking and shifting more attention to Hillbilly Highways, posting here was limited, and it showed in my numbers.  Hillbilly Highways, though, had its best month ever.  Overall numbers are still far lower, but my top two posts at Hillbilly Highways actually beat out my top two posts at Every Day Should Be Tuesday.

I’ve also been busy teaching no-angel the finer points of artillery

Amazon Gives The Wheel of Time the Greenlight!

That Amazon has had a TV adaptation of The Wheel of Time in the works has been the worst kept secret in SF over the past several weeks.  The showrunner, Rafe Judkins, has been working on scripts and teasing various bits about the show via his Twitter account.  Just last week he tweeted that he had just hired an assistant.  Speculation was rife that the series had been “amberlit”–i.e., approved to move forward but with the official announcement delayed.  Amazon has been gobbling up the rights to a lot of SF, but it looks like they will be focusing on their Lord of the Rings adaptation and their The Wheel of Time adaptation with this announcement and recent indications that they passed on a Conan adaptation (given that the Conan show was supposed to directly adapt Robert E. Howard’s original stories and given that the LotR show is going to adapt about half a page from the appendices, I was more excited about the former).

First Trailer for Dark Phoenix

The X-Men movies just aren’t as good as the MCU movies.  But I still prefer them, because the X-Men are what I grew up reading and because the X-Men are simply better grist than the Avengers.  For all its faults, I still like X-Men: Apocalypse because it reminds me of the X-Men comics I grew up reading.

Apocalypse is also obvious in setting up what will be the movie franchise’s second crack at the Dark Phoenix Saga after badly bobbling it in X-Men: The Last Stand.

Check out the first trailer for Dark Phoenix below the jump.