Bingowings

I finally saw Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Like the first one it’s very colourful. Visually interesting. Big handsome beardy man hits computer generated things with plastic trident. Like The Flash it’s troubled production history is infamous. The end result is actually okay. It’s on par with the last Thor movie where a handsome beardy man hit computer generated stuff with a big plastic axe. It the sort of distraction my brain can cope with as the world order melts before my eyes.

Keaton was mostly great (I didn’t like him quoting the Burton film for no reason). Maybe I’m biased because I look like his wild Bruce Wayne at the moment. I thought Supergirl was very good I would have liked to have seen a stand alone with her interpretation. The multiverse effects were apparently a stylistic choice. Obviously it back fire if true. They could have leaned more into diorama effect to make it look obviously a style decision if that was true. Instead it looks like a PS2 game cut scene which is an insult to everyone. The Bat Girl romance in Killing Joke didn’t work. If anything it felt creepy. Teacher/mentor relationships should never be sexual. The power dynamic is way off.

Finally got around to watching Black Adam and not Black Madam which is probably a very different film. It’s a kind of sidequel to the Shazam films. It lacks the screwball charm of those moves. It’s the usual silliness that can only be resolved by computer people slapping eachother. Pierce Brosnan looks cool as Dr Fate.

I finally got around to seeing Shazam: Fury of the Gods. More harmless silly nonsense. Probably the most in your face product placement in a major family movie. Chops to Helen Mirren for chewing the scenery with relish. Not as much charm as the first one.

I finally got around to seeing Shazam! It’s very silly but well intentioned. If it was an 80s film it would have been huge. Touches of Big, Howard the Duck, Golden Child a bit of Neverending Story. It set at Christmas as well. It was goofy and inoffensive.

I finally got around to seeing Blue Beetle. It’s a little bit cheesy in places but I think it’s one of those films that might get revised opinions should Trump and his minions finally fall. A scene of masked armed men surrounding a US family of Mexican origin and attempting to drag them away could have been so much more powerful if the film didn’t give itself as much licence to be silly. The 8Os style synth theme was the highlight for me. Susan Sarandon is deliciously villainous.

I finally watched The Batman. Once again you can see the occasional bit of Glasgow if you know where to look. I enjoyed it. It’s like Se7en with all the pretentious nonsense taken out. Obviously a big dollop of Zodiac. The riddles were pretty bad though.

I have been trying to watch more light hearted material to match the season. I finally got around to watching Superman. Yes it’s a well made film. Well acted, witty, but it had a mean streak something that in these vile times made me frustrated rather than in awe. They do something with Jor-El that could actually play into the Western obsession with migrants that I found very distasteful. I can see the message they were trying to send but I think it might have backfired. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it. Maybe I am overreacting.

Finally got around to seeing The Flash. I went in with very low expectations. I’m fully aware of it’s troubled production history and there are some very iffy CGI moments but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s another one of many films recently where you see a bit of Glasgow distorted by computer wizardry and have to do a double take.

Finally got around to seeing The Fantastic Four :First Steps. It was pretty darn good. Discovered that I can fancy even a pile of rocks if he has bushy eyebrows and beard.

I finally watched The Thunderbolts* It was okay. I had heard good things and wasn’t a waste of time though it was a cludgy handling of mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder. Depictions of that kind are rarely handled well. One character that’s really amazing in the comics gets almost as poorly treated as Adam Warlock. Worth a watch though. Could have been so much better.

Darth Muffy said:

Youtube Link

With recent AI advancements has there been any attempts to improve this already great deepfake any further?

I am disappointed that with all the AI Slop kicking around on the tubes that nobody has experimented with fully or partially replacing Tarkin with an AI model. With so many Cushing performances to pool from and a fine actual acting performance as a base there is no excuse now for the character looking so jarring.

Raiders, Dial of Destiny, Last Crusade, Temple of Doom, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

My favourite is Lion in Winter. Stellar cast, incredible script. It’s Christmas just as I remember it.

SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

You could alter the one exchange between Anakin and Palpatine in TPM to something like:

“And YOU, young Skywalker, maybe we can do something about freeing your mother.”

He freed her…forever😬

Bingowings said:

Yeah but what about the blue milk?😁

Woah there, Bingo, only one blue topic at a time!! 😄

All I can say is Mrs Wan is very progressive letting Ady work on all these blue movies.

Yeah but what about the blue milk?😁

Forgive me if this was fixed first time round but is the notorious blue milk hand switch repairable? For those unfamiliar with when it’s when Owen is telling Luke to take Artoo into Anchorhead to have his memory erased. Once you see it you can’t unsee it but I’m not sure how it could be fixed.

In ANH when we see Vader toe Ben’s empty robes we see Ben”s ghost sneaking away in the background but he is totally nude. Every time we see a Force ghost in the the rest of the films they are similarly nude.

Even US Presidents need some Bubbalovin’.

G&G-Fan said:

Bingowings said:

The rich blue sky looks better, though I understand the reasoning behind having a slightly greenish sky’s on a planet of yellow and orange sand but it’s not a science fiction film so aesthetics are a higher priority.

I’ve never seen a version with a greenish sky. The official blu-ray looks grey and Ady’s looks blue.

I’m seeing a pale greenish tint to the sky in the Blu-ray version which might be justified as particulates in the atmosphere but doesn’t look anywhere near as good as Adywan’s rich blue. And as I say Star Wars isn’t Science Fiction.

The rich blue sky looks better, though I understand the reasoning behind having a slightly greenish sky’s on a planet of yellow and orange sand but it’s not a science fiction film so aesthetics are a higher priority. Loved how you have reflipped and reframed Threepio. I noticed this from the original ANH:R but just adding the blue eye light to Artoo makes him more Artoo. Everything looks sharper. The Battle droid cameo is as subtle as it originally was. Hopefully you will manage to sneak at least one Rogue One style Imperial battledroid onto the Death Star.

Yesterday I saw Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (another film I’m a very tiny blurry cog in). It’s not 100% faithfull to the book but it is still mesmerising. On set the creature design didn’t look like much but earlier in the film the creature has no hair and he looks like a beautiful classical statue shattered and reconstructed by a museum. The film has the appropriate emotional weight. Even if some of my favourite aspects of the book are missing. Well worth a watch.

She also had a guest appearance in Babylon 5 but didn’t have scenes with Bill Mummy who played Will in Lost in Space.

The last movie I saw was I Swear(2025) I have to declare an interest or two here. First of all I was a supporting artist on this one. Though my contribution is probably trimmed to a couple of nanoseconds. The other is I have Tourettes myself so there was the strange situation where lead actor Robert Aramayo was doing a fine job of playing a man from Glasgow with a tic disorder and doing a great job making the tics look authentic, in the same room as myself playing a man from Glasgow without a tic disorder and hopefully doing a great job repressing my urge to tic.

The film is a slightly reordered and condensed telling of local hero John Davidson. Starting with his childhood, the onset of his illness and the events of his life with a still much misunderstood neurological condition. If it’s playing near you it’s well worth a watch.