[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 6 "The Mirror in Darkness"

"At the Showcase, we haven't seen a hero go this dark since that episode of Street Hawk where Jesse Mach howled in fury as he opened his machine guns on a dock full of goons, and while this moment doesn't go quite so far, it still goes to lengths rarely seen in children's entertainment pre-Batman: The Animated Series."

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[Deconstruction is Magic] My Little Pony, episode 12 "Call of the Cutie"

"And I like how they get deeper into it, presenting a 'blank flank' as a crisis of identity, as Applebloom is continuously reminded that she doesn't know where to fit in or what her future is going to be going forward. In a society so clearly defined by a person's literally marked role, that can be a tough obstacle to face, and I love that it's not resolved by the end, that Applebloom is taught to embrace her present lack of definition as it just means she has what the others don't: potential. It's a comforting lesson to learn, and one that I think further appeals to the older fans of the show."

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[Castle Rock Companion] Golden Years: episode 7, the DVD cut, and final thoughts

"Ultimately, I don't mind the note we go out on. Was it worth the build? Not really, but at least it gives me some closure, completes character arcs that I enjoyed watching amidst this morass, and ends with a quote from David Bowie. It's really the best I could have hoped for at this point."

To read more, check out our latest post.

Castle Rock series index.

[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 5 "A Fire in the Dark"

"And I still don't get Mentor. I mean, I get the idea of Mentor, but he's pretty elaborate for something they rarely use, and there's nothing he's done so far (mapping coordinates, analyzing viruses, sharing history) that couldn't be better delivered as actions from our core group of five heroes and further characterize them with additional skillsets."

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[Masters of Carpentry] Monthly Feature #9: Better Late Than Never (1979)

"The first hour is a very different movie than the last half hour. The last half hour just kinda comes out of nowhere, where it's like suddenly they're escaping, and stealing a train, and going cross-country, and breaking through police blockades, and almost colliding with another train, and there's heart attacks and finding the ghost town, and pathos. It's just such a suddenly weird third act."

"Yeah, it becomes Easy Rider, and then the last five minutes just undoes all of that. It's like the end of an A-Team episode, where you're like 'Here we go, again!' "

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[Deconstruction is Magic] My Little Pony, episode 11 "Winter Wrap Up"

"Now, everything about the song said, its still an absolutely magnificent episode. The animation is top notch throughout. The characters are all spot-on, without any of the forced, over-exaggeration that has plagued past episodes of characters getting themselves sorted out. There's wonderful visual gags throughout. The biggest laugh of the series so far has been, 'The nest designer is horrendously behind! We need several hundred, and she's only made one!' cut to Rarity as Twilight's nest completely destroys her."

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[Castle Rock Companion] Golden Years, episodes 5-6

"OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST GET ON WITH IT."

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Castle Rock series index.

[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 4 "Pariah"

"Hawk gets to stand in the spotlight this time around, and I think he knocks it out of the park. He's just doing his usual hero thing, when his jetpack is blown out and he finds himself gradually succumbing to the symptoms of the plague. Yet the dude keeps fighting, keeps strategizing, keeps putting the rescue of this child above his own safety. I'll admit that his "Mitch! Mitch" gets a little tired, but the backstory of him having a lost son out there adds additional weight to a guy with an already deep backstory."

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[Deconstruction is Magic] My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, episode 10 "Swarm of the Century"

"I like that Pinkie is being show as the solution to needlessly destructive pests after she herself is first established in the episode as a needlessly destructive pest of Mrs. & Mr. Cake, ruining their hard work even as she watches them continue toiling at said hard work while laying in wait to ruin more of it. Yes, she has the Pinkie self-justification of wanting to make sure everything tastes right, but it does feel off that she'd do it in such a harmful way, even as I find it an amusing thematic link to the problem they all soon face."

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[Castle Rock Companion] Golden Years, episodes 3-4

"And then we get more Dr. Toddhunter being Toddhunter, and wow, they just keep pushing it. He's fine in the first couple of scenes, playing his crazy more subdued as he studies the only surviving mouse from that fateful day, but then he gets all creepy, shielding the mouse from others as he strokes against the glass, packs up several of its girlfriends with it to smuggle to his home, and then... oh Angie is going to love this scene... he goes to his father's grave, digging up a lunchbox full of broken watches as he goes on and on about his obsession with the limits of the time we each get... then curls up for a nap against his dad's gravestone as he tells his father how much he loves him. Why did we need to go here! Ugh!"

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Castle Rock series index.

[Short-Lived Showcase] Captain Power, episode 3 "Final Stand"

"When you think about 80s children's television, you typically don't imagine a massive bruiser in post-apocalyptic punk leather smashing a cinder block across the cheek bone of a bronzed and bare-armed Brawny paper towel man of an Austrian bodybuilder, but that's exactly what we get this time around."

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[Midnight Movie Exchange] Episode 8: Disorderlies (1987)

"It is what it is. It was a cheap vehicle to just kinda sell the Fat Boys, basically by ripping off Three Stooges movies, and it's not good. It gave me a few chuckles in a few scenes here and there, but it kinda falls flat. And yet, it's largely harmless. It's not like a horrible 'oh dear god why' trainwreck of a movie, it's just this kinda bland thing that came, went, you can see why it was there, why they were trying to sell these guys. And, to be fair, it does actually sell the Fat Boys for what they were. That was pretty much their schtick."

To hear more, check out our latest post.

[Deconstruction is Magic] My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, episode 9 "Bridle Gossip"

"Remember how I was complaining about past episodes where, in order to learn a lesson, a key pony had certain traits cranked up to such an exaggerated degree that it felt like an artifice there just to tell a false, forced story? Here, we don't get that from one pony, we get it from FIVE PONIES, as they’re all character assassinated into cowering xenophobes huddling in the shadows as they look out at a foreigner, a Zebra (gasp!), and pick apart every single aspect of her persona as something to sneer and shudder at: her look, her clothes, the decor of her house, her actions, the way she talks, her utter outsiderness. There's such a cloud of undeserved fear of something just for being different that you'd think this was written by H.P. Lovecraft."

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Blackbelt (1992 script/film)

Don "The Dragon" Wilson series index


Chronologically, the gloriously titled Future Kick would be the latest in my watch-through of films by Don "The Dragon" Wilson, but it's been a little tricky to obtain, and I have a special occasion down the road I just may want to save it for. Heck, if that doesn't happen, I'll use it to cap off the project as a whole. With a title like Future Kick, it should be worth waiting for. I hope!

[Castle Rock Companion] Golden Years, episodes 1-2

I rejoin the project as Angie and I begin looking at Stephen King's original works for film and television.

"For the most part, what kills this show is the pace. It's ridiculously drawn out, not just in King's typically long-winded writing, but the filming of the scenes themselves have no momentum, no drive to keep the narrative moving. At multiple points, I kept thinking we had to be at the final scene of the episode, but it kept going on, and on, and on. And the lingering pace also made it very clear how poor the direction was at times, with awkward blocking where you can see actors shifting over to marks on the floor, like when the agents show up at Gina’s front door and make an instant beeline down a hall around a corner and into another room."

To read more, check out our latest post.

Castle Rock series index.