[TV] Star Wars: Rebels - Season 4 Review

As is often the case with shows that I love, I had somehow missed out on writing a proper review for the final season of Star Wars: Rebels because needless to say it was amazing. And it always begs the question of whether or not one should review just the season or the season in the context of an effort to wrap up the season and come up with a decent ending to things.

If anything this show remains a testament to the vision of producer Dave Filoni and his obvious love for the Star Wars franchise that is very much evident in every show he creates. He has a particular way about crafting a story that nicely marries old references without making it feel like you know nothing. He nicely balances the Legends side of the fandom alongside the newer fans learning about Star Wars for the first time through animated features like this.

I wasn't overly keen on the show when it began but by this final season I totally didn't want things to end. But at least it's a show that got a proper ending unlike Star Wars: The Clone Wars before it.

[TV] Amo: Season 1 Review

So Netflix has finally started to include original Philippine content in their library. One such inclusion was the critically-acclaimed Birdshot. Another was the surprising choice of Brillante Mendoza's Amo.

Originally created for TV5, the 13-episode series is a rather controversial look at the current "war on drugs" in the Philippines from man who has been pretty vocal about being pro-administration. Had it remained on local network TV5, we probably would not have paid attention to it.

But now it has a much wider distribution thanks to Netflix and thus this particular take on the supposed drug situation and that has some people squirming in their seats. Duterte's war on drug makes a lot of assumptions about the state of affairs in the Philippines and this show perpetuates them and presents them as the truth, if you buy into the premise of the show.

And while I was not interested in supporting this particular project, I figured that I neded to see it in order to make a proper review with all the facts in hand rather than just rely on other opinions out there. I bit the bullet and watchced the series from start to finish between other tasks.

[Movies] Avengers: Infinity War (2018) Review

Well, we've finally reached this point. After 18 movies in the official Marvel Cinematic Universe organized in 3 distinct phases, things have finally come to a head with Avengers: Infinity War.  The movie was originally announced as being "Part 1" of a duology of movies but for its actual release they've dropped the number from the title. Who knows what they're going to call the next movie, eh?

Never in my life did I imagine that anyone could make a proper movie to capture even part of the scale of the original The Infinity Gauntlet storyline as the introduction of the insanely powerful Infinity Stones represented such a major shift of power in the Marvel Universe. And it gave a heck of a lot better focus for the character of Thanos versus his earlier incarnations.

Somehow this movie managed to check a lot of those boxes and found a way to find a balance between the "rules" of the MCU thus far together with the established lore from the comics. They also somewhat bridged the gap between the difference in tone for how Jim Starlin would write the character of Thanos veruss his more recent incarnation in comics penned by the likes of Jonathan Hickman.

[Books] Postcards From The Edge Audible Review

Carrie Fisher has been a major player in my Audible adventures. As she has written many memoirs about different parts of her life and has also read the audio book versions of these books, they have made for interesting content to listen to.

Postcards From The Edge is her first work of fiction that I've had the opportunity to listen to. This may still be "cheating" in a way as the book obviously draws a lot from her own life in crafting the story,  but it's still a piece of fiction that is distinct enough from her own life to be original.

Every new audio book that I listen to makes me miss her even more and makes me feel just a little bit creepy for collecting them. I know I'm probably overthinking things but there's something about hearing an author read her own words. It makes things somehow feel a bit more personal even though we've never met.

[Books] Star Wars: Ahsoka Review

My love for Star Wars: Rebels oddly solidified when Ahsoka Tano was revealed to be the mysterious informant Fulcrum at the end of the first season. She went on to be quite the epic character including her massive duel with Darth Vader at the end of the second season. More than anything, the show helped confirm just how far along she has come since her rather tragic end during Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Naturally there's a rather large gap between her leaking the Jedi Order and becoming the intelligence asset for the fledgling Rebel Alliance. And outside of the fictional side of things, there were a lot of untold stories meant for the succeeding seasons of Clone Wars before the show was cancelled. This book, Star Wars: Ahsoka, aims to fill in some of that void with an exciting adventure focused all on her.

And the book naturally makes for fascinating reading as the Ahsoka that we come to meet in Rebels is a lot more confident and self-assured versus the Padawan she once was. Beyond that she also had a more balanced view of the Force that speaks of a lot of growing up.

[Games] Tiny Epic Galaxies Review

The words "tiny" and "epic" don't seem be two terms that can work well together but the line of games that are a part of this odd little segment of games are more and more proving to be an interesting effort to balance both. The game does manage to cleverly capture the sense of galatic conquest using such a small set of components.

I wasn't sure how to take this game at first but it turned out to be quite brilliant indeed. And the way the game plays out with multiple paths to victory has made this one of the few dice games that I'm willing to play on a regular basis.

[Theater] Arsenic and Old Lace (Repertory Philippines) Review

Completing Repertory Philippines' season of straight plays is Arsenic & Old Lace, a surprising black comedy that uses the tropes of the farce to great comedic effect. I figured from the title alone that this would be a place involving murder somehow but the way things play out was beyond my wildest imaginations. And thus the source material alone already gave a great basis for a good comedic play.

The cast of talent brought together for this production was larger than most plays of this nature, at least versus prior productions in recent memory. But everything came together quite nicely and resulted in a highly entertaining afternoon for me and Tobie.

This just goes to show that investing in a season ticket for Repertory Philippines continues to be one of the best investments one can make when you're into live performances of this nature. Musicals are fun in their own right but these plays find ways to use their words and other methods at their disposal to deliver a pretty solid theatrical experience.

[TV] A Series of Unfortunate Events: Season 2 Review

The first season of Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events was a revelation in itself. I was a little nervous that it would just be a weird rehash of the Jim Carrey movie adaptation. But it managed to find a way to be a completely different spin on the story and one that is pretty darn amazing.

The second season of A Series of Unfortunate Events continues the miserable adventures of the Baudelaire orphans well beyond what the movie had been able to cover. And thus things can only get worse as we are right in the middle of a relevision adaptation of a 13-book young adult series of rather dark novels.

And this second season is quite the meaty one as it tackles more "books" than the first season did with an equal amount of love, devotion, and punny humor. So many annoyingly clever puns.

It's hard to get to explaining why this is brilliant entertainment coming from a paragraph like that, but here we go!

[Books] The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-Time Audible Review

During my initial Audible trials, one of the books I figured would be interesting to listen to was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, as I had already enjoyed the original book and so this was just another way to celebrate a story I already liked.

So it was sort of ironic that this was not the first book that I listened to and it took me a few months into my now regular Audible subscription to finally listen to this book. It was worth waiting for.

As the story was one that I was already familiar with, it certainly made it easier to focus on the performance related to the story and possibly any additional nuances of meaning one might glean from a repeat reading of a story.

[TV] When We Rise Review

When the docudrama series When We Rise was announced, I figured it would be a sort of more serious version of Pride, which in itself was still serious but also quite entertaining. When it comes to tackling LGBT content, I find that the US entertainment industry can hit things pretty heavily when they decide to go for a serious tone.

When We Rise was pretty serious indeed and tried to anchor the narrative of the rise of the LGBT rights movement by focusing on a specific set of characters who get to witness different parts of the story as things come together. It's a seemingly traditional approach to things but it applied quite well in this story.

I sort of expected things to end with maybe the first march centered around the Stonewall Riots but it actually went on for much longer. This may or may not have been a good decision but it remains a largely powerful piece.

[Games] Rick and Morty: Total Rickall Card Game Review

Cryptozoic Entertainment has been pretty busy with creating games based on various popular television franchises. And their efforts in support of the ever popular animated series Rick and Morty have resulted in some rather quirky games.

Of course it makes sense that they'd come up with a game based around one of the show's most popular episodes, Total Rickall, which involved the family being locked in the house with memory-altering alien parasites. And how that translated into a game concept is kind of bonkers.

[Movies] Troop Beverly Hills (1989) Review

Because of NewNowNext's dedication to celebrating the anniversary of the movie Troop Beverly Hills every year, I recently discovered that Tobie had never seen it for one reason or another. As this movie has long-played an unusually memorable part of my growing up, I had to make sure that he'd get a chance to watch it as well.

This movie is an unusual artifact from the late 80's that totally reflected a lot of the eccentricities of 80's culture, Los Angeles life and a lot of Shelley Long. I can't quite explain how these different elements came together as a movie about girl scouts, but it did and it all oddly worked out.

Now don't get me wrong, this is hardly the best movie of its time nor is it something that everyone liked when it came out. But it's just one of those quirky experiences that have managed to garner a rather niche cult following over the years. It's not an easy movie to recommend, but it has its appeal for those of a similar mind.

[TV] Voltron: Legendary Defender - Season 4

So the third season of Voltron: Legendary Defender felt unusually short and even a little underwhelming, but that's what you get I suppose. More and more I'm feeling that the show is somewhat on thin ice as they're cutting it up in this manner as the combined episodes of Seasons 3 and 4 really could have constituted a full season together. Instead we have two bits that don't quite feel as strong as the second season.

But there's still a lot of good reasons to keep watching the show as they have taken the franchise into an interesting direction even though it's pretty far away from how the original story went. And being different isn't a bad thing in this case as they've certainly taken steps to truly enrich the back stories of different characters to make something pretty unique.

[Books] I Am Spock Audible Review

I was pretty young when I read Leonard Nimoy's prior memoir, I Am Not Spock, and I was kind of bothered by the title at the time. As a fan I felt a little hurt to see that his book seemed to imply that he didn't want to be associated with his character. But of course this was not how he actually felt and the book went into detail about his complex relationship with his character. It was actually a great read and it provided good insight into Leonard Nimoy as an actor.

I Am Spock is the sort of follow-up to that first book and a more direct reminder to fans that he loves his time as Spock and a sign that he has a wry sense of humor. So it was just a little shady but in an elegant, clever manner.

In line with my recent love for audio book versions of biographies, I picked up this title as another way to celebrate the man that is Leonard Nimoy. And like my feelings over hearing Carrie Fisher read her own memoirs, it was pretty emotional to hear him talk about his life.

[Movies] Ready Player One (2018) Review

When I read Ernest Cline's Ready Player One a few years ago, I ended that read-through with a smile on my face. I found the book to be a lot of fun and a quirky celebration of geek culture with a boatload of obscure references to various bits of pop culture. If anything, it mostly felt like a book that was meant to be a movie should anyone figure out the complex licensing requirements needed to pull things together.

Ready Player One now exists as a movie and it seems everyone and their dog are deteremined to poke holes in it for one reason or another. And while the source material wasn't exactly perfect, I don't necessarily think all the virtriol and backlash is fully warranted.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie when the trailers first hit, but I was pretty optimistic. The team behind it seemed like the right mix of talent to see things through and the final result was pretty fun.

[Games] Dinosaur Island (Deluxe Edition) Review

There's something about dinosaurs that brings out the kind in many of us. Maybe it's because it's they're most fascinating to us when we're younger. Maybe it's because of animated features like The Land Before Time or popular movies like Jurassic Park.

But whatever the reason, Dinosaur Island as a game seems to tap into this dinosaur magic whenever we present the game to friends for the first time. And that sort of reaction is rather fascinating given how often it happens.

I never imagined that we would ever game a game that can best be described as "competitive Jurassic Park" but that's exactly what this game is. And the delight of this game keeps on giving once you get over the hump of explaining the game.

[Comics] The Ultimates 2 Review

I was rather disappointed when I got to the end of the first volume of The Ultimates to find out that the team had been disbanded because of silly human drama reasons, for lack of a better term. They were one of my favorite things to happen since the likes of The Annhilators, which was an extremely strong team that tried to deal with threats in a proactive manner. The Ultimates were just the smarter version of that.

But lo and behold we get The Ultimates 2, with the team coming back together in secret in order to continue their big mission of keeping Earth safe by going out to find possible threats. And as this is the team that managed to turn Galactus from the world-eater to the life-bringer, so they're nothing to be sneezed at.

I was not expecting the level they were going to take this book based on how the first one had gone. I felt the events of Civil War II had really muddied things up for a lot of comics at the time and it sort of shifted the storytelling. This second volume isn't so constrained and manages to takes things to an entirely new level indeed.

[TV] Jessica Jones: Season 2 Review

As fun as Daredevil was when it first came out on Netflix, I feel like Jessica Jones had a bigger impact when it hit. I guess it was largely because she was a protagonist who wasn't actually a hero. She was principled and perhaps good at her core but hardly a model citizen. She was presented as what happens when you have super powers, but not enough to be fully super.

Given given how great the first season one and the rather shocking way things were resolved, I wasn't sure where they were going to go in a second season. After all, David Tennant's portrayal of the Purple Man was a truly memorable one and thes show is somewhat diminished with his loss as a villain.

But this season went in a different direction and worked on further developing the stories of the supporting cast around Jessica as she pursues her latest investigation. It does result in some interesting character twists by the end of the season but I'm not sure if it did enough to help Jessica move forward as well.

[Books] Hamilton: The Revolution Audible Review

I have working classifications for the sorts of books and related material that I purchase. There are books that I want to see on our shelves and so we need physical copies. There are things that I feel I'll only read on my Kindle or as a digital comic. And more recently there are Audible audio books that I listen to while walking.

For one reason or another, Hamilton: The Revolution ended up being classified as something I'd secure as an audio book because...reasons? I guess it's not something I imagined that I would ever get around to actually "reading" and so it's now something that I've listened to instead.

It did prove to be an interesting enough experience and a nice change of pace from my usual audio book biographies.

[TV] The Big Bang Theory: Season 10 Review

Well, The Big Bang Theory keeps on going and while it's tone largely remains unchanged, it feels like more and more folks are using this lack of change as an opportunity for greater criticism about the tone of the show and how it doesn't handle certain gender issues well. We're in that point in our lives.

For me, well, my desire to watch the show has waned somewhat and it's no longer something I rush to see but something I might consider watching once seasons hit streaming services much later in life. Currently I rely on iflix for episodes of past seasons in part of my catch-up efforts to write this review.

I've long said the show feels like Friends with geek trappings around it and that remains all the more true given the expanded primary cast. It has decent moments and I still root for the girls more than the boys but I can see that the writers aren't doing too well in terms of balancing development for all characters and making things less cringey in terms of how it writes things for women, especially in relation to the guys.

[Games] Alien Artifacts Review

My love for Portal Games has led to quite a number of purchases from their online store. And in recent years I've also been participating in their Kickstarter-style pre-order campaigns for new games including interesting stretch goals.

Alien Artifacts was my latest purchase of this nature and it's one that I was fairly curious about during the campaign. After all it is a game that promised a 4X style experience somehow and that was an intriguing concept.

The game shares some similar systems with Imperial Settlers and other Portal releases but the system is significantly different enough to feel original in itself. The clever card mechanic related to the double-sided cards that make up the main part of the game do make for some interesting play experiences.

[Comics] The Ultimates Review

Ever since Marvel's Annihilation comic event, I had become rather enamored with the more "cosmic" side of the Marvel Universe. It's this side of the creative environment that lead to the development of the Guardians of the Galaxy after all and so there's a lot of good to be found here.

One of the more recent efforts to continue telling stories at this level of Marvel's narrative is The Ultimates, which is a distinct effort to have some of Earth's mightiest heroes take a better stab at hitting above their weight class, in a manner of speaking.

My biggest complaint about recent Marvel stories has been the increasing frequency of having the Avengers and other very Earth-based heroes get involved in big unvierse-spanning events involving some very powerful artifacts. It's not impossible but isn't the most logical direction to take things. But comics like this one seem to be a direct answer to this as it features heroes who stand a chance of having a more galaxy-spanning perspective on things. It's not perfect, but it was pretty fun.