[Movies] Doctor Strange (2016)

I was very skeptical when it was announced that Phase 3 of the big Marvel Cinematic Universe included the magic-centric title Doctor Strange, but I was certainly open to see what they might accomplish with the character and his part of the Marvel Universe.

The tricky bit about Doctor Strange is that his narrative has always been a quirky one. On the surface his origin story is very close to Iron Man as he is also an entitled, affluent white man who goes through an ordeal and finds wisdom through an Asian mentor. The series involved a lot of characters narrating their own actions and naming the magic spells being used every single time. And that sort of a routine would look pretty silly on the big screen.

But at the same time, a lot of that silliness is really part of what defined the series in the early days and gave it a distinct feel. Figuring out how much of that was really essential to the character and thus important for the movie was the main challenge of the development of this movie, I expect.

[Books] Battletech: Blood Legacy

When I was collecting Battletech books in my much younger years for some reason Blood Legacy was terribly hard to find. No one wants to miss the middle of a trilogy but that's the situation that I found myself in given I had a copy of Lethal Heritage and Lost Destiny but I did not have the middle book of the Blood of Kerensky trilogy of novels.

Blood Legacy is a very important part of the story since it covers that key tuning point that helped the Inner Sphere stand a chance in terms of defending itself against the continued advance of the Clans and it also covered the period of Phelan Kell's return to the life of a warrior as he is reborn as Phelan Wolf. And so it hurt me that I didn't have a copy of this book immediately on-hand.

Over the years I repeatedly read Book 1 and Book 3 of the Kerensky trilogy yet having no success finding the second book. That changed when they started re-releasing the various Battletech books in Kindle format, although even that had a bit of back and forth over the legality of publishing those infamous "unseen" mechs. But it's still one heck of a story.

[Videos] 11 Best Halloween Cartoon Specials

Holiday themed special episodes for various shows and cartoons is not a new thing however one has to take note that a lot of the best cartoon moments tend to take place during Halloween special episodes even if they tend to exist outside the established canon.

And while we all love the many, many, many Simpsons Halloween specials over the years, they aren't the only cartoon series to go down that road. And it's nice that Channel Frederator has decided to come up with a list of 11 of the Best Halloween Cartoon specials - and it's a pretty good list.


11 Best Halloween Cartoon Specials (ToonedUp #197) | ChannelFrederator

[TV] Haters Back Off: Season 1

I've been petty open to exploring the various original creative ventures that Netflix has been churning out in order to make their content library that much more attractive to customers. Trying to get other content creators to make a deal with you is one thing, but creating your own content is that much easier and still pretty lucrative..Of course this assumes that said content actually work.

Haters Back Off is the product of efforts of making the most of a YouTube personality and hoping that it'll work. The math seems  to make sense since the working assumption is that the concept of the show has already tested as successful with YouTube fans and so bringing it to television format would be the safe bet.

But it seems the jury's out on this shows as there's a wide range opinions about it and whether or not it's really a test case for successfully translating a YouTube personality into a small screen heroine. And frankly, I'm not exactly on the side of the supporters of this project. Maybe it's just not my flavor of weirdness.

[Videos] 107 Facts About Voltron Legendary Defender

While I had a lukewarm reaction to the first season of Voltron: Legendary Defender, it wasn't a terrible show. A lot of folks remind me of the involvement of various alumni from the various Avatar animated shows, there's something about the series that just didn't quite draw me in.

But hey, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't be interested in hearing more about the show and learning more about how to be. Plus I've (obviously) become quite the sucker for these 107 fact videos by Channel Frederator.

But the jury's still out on this new series for me. And yet I'll probably take the time to watch the second season of this show when it comes around.


107 Voltron: Legendary Defender Facts (ToonedUp #195) | ChannelFrederator

[Books] Battletech: Wolf Pack

Despite the many, many, many different books  that I'm reading or planing to read, I still make time for my explorations of the classic Battletech novels, which are called Battletech Legends books these days. It's nice to see that more of these books are returning to publication, at least on the Kindle Store and other online formats as they strip out older "unseen" content that can no longer be published under current licensing efforts.

Wolf Pack is another book focused on the famous mercenary company Wolf's Dragoons. They've always been a fascinating aspect of the classic Battletech universe and of course for the longest time they were the mercenary company that everyone wanted to be like or to become a part of.

Little did we know that it wasn't just as easy as enlisting for the group given their ties to the Clans and all that jazz. Ah the history of Classic Battletech remains as fascinating as ever. And it's such a joy to continue to explore theses stories through these books.

[Movies] Mascots (2016)

While Netflix gained popularity for becoming a content distribution service for various TV shows and movies, in recent years they've invested more into creating new content of their own in order to give subscribers more reasons to sign up. Initially they just made content deals for shows being cancelled on network television. But now they're making award-winning TV shows and some interesting documentaries and movies.

Mascots is one of those original movies and the first Netflix movie that Tobie and I opted to get into. The trailer was enough to get me curious plus the fact that there are so many familiar faces among the cast of this production. I just wasn't all too clear on what the premise was supposed to be about.

But hey, I do have a bit of an appreciation for the mockumentary style comedy. I like British humor. I like quirky concepts. This movie promised a lot of these things and I was really looking forward to it. But at the same time it wasn't quite a home run so we just made the most of it.

[Videos] Considering Third Party Candidates

If the Philippines has nuisance candidates, the US has third party candidates - independent candidates hoping to gain the presidency while shunning both the Democratic and Republican parties. They're really easy to dismiss out of hand, but then there has to be a reason why they felt they stand a chance of winning, right?

In this week's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver decides to give a few third party candidates a closer look including reviewing their polling numbers, reviewing their platforms and all that fun stuff. But since this is John Oliver, the truth of the findings of his research team is both hilarious and terrifying.


Third Parties: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[Comics] The Beauty Vol. 1

So I got into The Beauty similar to how I got into The Wicked + The Divine - blasted comiXology sales. Sure my wallet feels back when I give into comiXology's marketing techniques but I do come out all the better for it given some interesting titles that I get to explore. Totally no regrets there.

The Beauty was a title I picked up since (1) it had been nominated for awards and (2) the covers were hauntingly beautiful. I had no idea what the comic was about and I actually made a decision to get the first few issues solely based on that limited logic. Quite the risky maneuver on my part.

But I got lucky here and the end result was me enjoying a very, very interesting comic. It may not be the greatest thing since sliced bread and I can see how this may end up having a some ups and downs based on the limited quirks of the core plot idea.

Then again, I could be totally wrong. After all, I doubt I could have ever conceived the core plot of this story, so kudos to the team.

[Videos] 107 Facts About Adult Swim

When I was growing up, MTV's Liquid Television was one of the most amazing TV shows that I've ever seen and such a strange exploration of the medium of animation. But over time it disappeared and I felt a void in my pop culture heart.

Enter Adult Swim, Cartoon Network's first foray into original programming. It wasn't quite as risque or mind-blowing as Liquid Television, but it was certainly interesting and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I had eventually fallen in love with shows like Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law and of course Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

So I was pretty happy with Channel Frederator's 107 Facts video for Adult Swim, where most of the video explores a lot of the early shows on the "channel".


107 Adult Swim Facts (ToonedUp #192) | ChannelFrederator

[Comics] The Wicked + The Divine Vol. 1

Whenever we get around to the comic book awards season or around the time of various comic book conventions, you can generally expect Image to put their top titles on sale over on comiXology. And such instances have become prime opportunities to add to my collection, even just in a digital sense.

I had heard a lot of good things about The Wicked + The Divine from other geek friends but it took me a while to get around to reading the comics. Case in point, I think I had the issues that make up the first two volumes of the series way back in March but only read the comics this past weekend. Such is the way of my neverending reading queue. But I get around to them sooner or later.

And I must admit, the series was blown me away in how it approaches story and I've been more than happy to read issue after issue in quick succession. At the rate I'm going, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to burn through my limited collection of issues much sooner rather than later.

[TV] The Real O'Neals: Season 1

With the success of shows like Modern Family, it feels like the nuclear family sitcom is really making a resurgence as of late. The only real quirk is the determination to make each family as "real" as possible by finding a way to shake things. Hence shows like Fresh Off the Boat have done well by exploring a sort of niche of the whole family experience.

I recently stumbled across a mention of The Real O'Neals because of a tweet by RuPaul about having a cameo on the show and that got me curious. Plus it felt like one of those shows I'd keep hearing while watching Fresh Off the Boat or something.

The premise of the show alone didn't necessarily hook me but the convenience of its availability on iFlix made me give the show a shot. I wasn't expecting too much but I think I got more than I had expected from the show but not as much as I would have wanted, if you get my drift.

It's not a terrible show, but it's not great either.

[TV] First Looks at Netflix's Black Mirror (Season Three)

It was a bit of surprise news that Netflix manged to win the broadcast rights for Black Mirror away from Channel 4 and it was only this past weekend that we finally got our first look at the new series. Given the show has always been structured as an anthology of different stories about technology in the near future, it's not like there's some major continuity to worry about. The only real concern I had was whether or not the tone of the storytelling would change given the shift. But the first trailer does show a lot of promise:


Black Mirror | Official Trailer - Season 3 [HD] | Netflix
With the new week they've also started to release teaser featurettes about some of the six stories promised in this season. These videos help me maintain hope that this show is going to be just as good as the prior seasons.


Black Mirror | Playtest Featurette [HD] | Netflix



Black Mirror | Nosedive Featurette [HD] | Netflix

Are you ready for October 21? 

[Books] Days of Tao

Wesley Chu's Tao series of books was one of my earlier reads after joining the Angry Robot Army book review program. There was a pleasant honesty about his writing plus he had quite the flair for action sequences that really made the books a lot of fun to read.

Three books later, I'm pretty much hooked and I've done my best to purchase all the books that I had previously reviewed for free. In this case I received a copy of this book for my birthday earlier this year and I was pretty keen on getting around to reading The Days of Tao.

Sure, this is more of a novella and not a full novel, but it was nice to revisit our favorite cranky alien and his now very young host. And Chu managed to setup a tight little adventure for the pair to go through that made the most of the limited format. And on its merits as a shorter work of fiction, it was certainly a fun read and an interesting glimpse of a point in young Cameron's growth and development.

[TV] Sigourney Weaver in The Defenders

This past weekend was New York Comic-Con and naturally we got a lot of interesting news about different geek franchises. But one of the bigger bits of news (even how much bigger Charlie Cox's body is getting) is the first full trailer for Iron First. Not quite mind-blowing but it still shows promise.


Marvel's Iron Fist | NYCC Teaser Trailer [HD] | Netflix
But beyond that and fun Defenders cast photos clearly meant to appeal to the fans. But then the Netflix-Marvel team had an even bigger surprise:


Marvel's The Defenders | NYCC Surprise | Netflix
Yes, SIGOURNEY WEAVER has joined the cast of The Defenders! All the news outlets report that she is expected to be the villain of the show, but it's not easy figuring out who exactly she's meant to represent And given how the Defenders comic included a very diverse rotating cast, it's hard to determine who the big villain might be. Although with Dr. Strange (a traditional Defenders mainstay) off in the movie world, it seems safe to assume that we won't be facing any of his villains. Maybe.

[Books] Fix ('Mancer Book 3)

And here we are, the last book of Ferrett Steinmetz's 'Mancer series. It has been an interesting exploration of obsessions and geeky passions being used as a focus for magical ability. The first book explored the nature of this magic and how it had so many different flavors. The second book explored the consequences of magic.

The Fix is the third book in the series and it ends up exploring a whole new side to things - the Unimancers that have acted as the mysterious and ominous threat hounding our protagonists since the very beginning. They had been presented as mindless zombies who had lost all signs of humanity as their unique magics had been absorbed into the hive mind. This book challenges that notion and reveals more about how their organization works, thus turning things around entirely.

And while at times this book felt significantly different from the other titles, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. There was clearly some serious effort to further flesh out other aspects of the world depicted here and to avoid the trap of making things totally black and white.

[TV] Luke Cage: Season 1

Tobie and I may not have all the time in the world to binge on Netflix shows all day, but do make time when we can. And there are certain shows that gather so much hype about them that it almost feels imperative to to get through the season in order to avoid the growing threat of spoilers online.

So that's how we managed to get through all 13 episodes of Marvel's Luke Cage within a week of the series hitting Netflix in an effort to avoid precisely that. And I can't blame folks since the Netflix family of Marvel shows have been pretty awesome and this series has been no exception. We also had a few hours of downtime over the weekend, most likely related to everyone watching the series I expect.

Luke Cage as a series wasn't too flashy and tried to tell a pretty solid story. Some parts felt a little cliche in terms of movies that focus on African-Americans but after the first few episodes the narrative matured into a very complex look at race relations using superheroes as a lens of sorts.

[Google] A New Push Into Our Homes

Google has made some big announcements this week, most of which were hardware-focused instead of software. In recent years we've all been watching Google attempt to push deeper and deeper into the hardware market, bringing the company in direct competition with both Apple and Amazon.

There were some fluffy announcements that weren't all that exciting like the new Chromecast that adds 4K video and HDR support and more visually appealing VR headsets instead of the old cardboard stuff.

We had also expected the announcement of a product like Google Home, which is designed to compete with Amazon's Echo before Apple can get something out into the market. They've also positioned Google Assistant  as the central force driving a lot of these devices as part of going from, "mobile first to AI first" thinking. At least Assistant will have more value than just a part of the weird mobile-only messaging app Allo.

Google WiFi is an interesting entry into home networking with what is essentially an effort to create user-friendly WiFi extenders. Sure we noted Google experimenting in this area with OnHub but this still feels like something outside their core mission. It's just an effort to cut out the middle man and do their best to facilitate better WiFi for accessing Google services but to what end?

The central piece to this new wave of products is the new Google Pixel phone, a device that is touted as being fully designed by Google instead of through old Nexus partners like HTC and Huawei. Google Assistant is a key feature of the device in a clear effort to better match Siri versus the comparatively more passive Google Now. I do feel bad that Pixel also silently represents the retirement of the old Nexus brand, but what can we do? This is the future.

I'm not sure how I feel about a more hardware-focused Google. They're very late to the game and this is well outside their core areas of expertise. And while it promises some exciting new things for us, we can only wonder how far these products will go. Or will they join the ranks of other Google experiments, leaving users deprived of services they may become accustomed to in time.

[Books] The Legends of River Song

Every year I share my Amazon Kindle Wish List for books during my birth month in case friends and family want to add to my reading queue. I get a few good books this way and I'm forever grateful to everyone who takes the time to donate. As much as it's a curated list of books that I like, naturally not all books are te same.

One of the more interesting titles that I had included was Doctor Who: The Legends of River Song, as both the partner and I are major River Song fans and we do wish she'd return to the show. But at the same time we recognize that for the most part her story arc is done and there's no value in pushing things too hard.

But then you have the world of books and their questionable position in canon - all of which open up new possibilities. Sure, the stories here may not be considered to be "official" and can be dismissed out of hand, but at least we get some fun moments with a beloved character anyway. Such is the power of the expanded options provided by fiction.

[TV] Will & Grace Coming Back?

One of the lighter moments in the current US Presidential campaign was the surprise release of a Will & Grace webisode of sorts all about the 2016 US Elections. The episode in itself was hilarious and I think a lot of us felt that pang off longing to see this crazy crew on TV again.

But was that it? After so much social media hype building up to this release, it seems like a waste of good media mileage to leave things at that.

For one, they clearly had more footage than what was used to create the production. That last scene with Rosario felt like a longer bit that had been edited down. Sure they only had so much time, but they also put in the effort to write more content.

Then there's the fact that they recreated the set to a high degree of accuracy. It would have been simpler to stage the scene at a location not necessarily iconic to the show but already ready thus no need to stage. And this is more than just digging stuff out of storage. By now they would have needed to rebuild stuff.

At the very least it makes for a great test case to feel out potential audience reception before producers invest for the long haul.

Ultimately, this all hopeful speculation from another Will & Grace fan and I'm more than ready to support and sort of revival effort, even if only for some sort of a mini-series if a full broadcast season isn't feasible. We can hope, right?

[Movies] Metro Manila (2013)

One of the best thing about iFlix is the diverse collection of award-winning independent films it has in its library, particularly a lot of Filipino movies or at least movies that feature the Philippines as part of the subject matter. So I've been enjoying periodically revisiting old favorites and watching others that I had missed in the various film festivals.

Metro Manila is one such movie - an interesting case of it being a British film about our sprawling metropolis. Such movies rarely get to focus on the happier side of life in the big city, but then that's just how the movie world goes. But at least this movie still felt like more than just your typical poverty porn release.

The movie is pretty compelling given it has a pretty good story at its heart. I'm not just saying this because it was foreign-produced or something. The story was just interesting without getting overly littered with other bits. If anything, I didn't immediately feel like it was a foreign piece - it just felt a like a very good local one given some of the releases in recent years. And that's still a good thing.