I watched a number of movies over the weekend:


John Wick Chapter 2 - Not nearly as good as the first one.  It seemed like one continuous gun battle.


Ghost in the Shell - Kind of dull.  It could have been a lot better.  I didn't think it was horrible, though.


Hit & Run - Dumb, but entertaining.


Smurfs: The Lost Village - I liked this one, probably even more than the live action films. 


Keanu - Dumb, but entertaining.


CHiPS - It  got better as it went along and was kind of crude.  I liked the original tv series a lot more.

I just watched Looney Tunes and now watching Spongebob

I watched espoide #1 of Riverdale on my new DVD player this morning.

I'm watching espoide #2 of Riverdale on my new DVD player.

I'm skipping around & watching Espoide 10 of Riverdale on my new DVD player.

I was watching Espoide #4 of Riverdale on my new DVD player before.

I'm watching Roseanne.

I'm watching espoide #4 of Riverdale on my new DVD player.

I'm watching Fifty Shades Darker.

A Dog Purpose

Batman and Harley Quinn (2017) - It's a story written by Bruce Timm, in a return to the style of animation of Batman in the 1990s, and seems to be set right after the last season of The New Batman Adventures (1997-99). I think it was done as a celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Batman: The Animated Series (1992), which was also the first appearance of Harleen Quinzel a.k.a. Harley Quinn. This one is rated PG-13 (LSV), and has Harley trying to reform, but Batman (Kevin Conroy) and Nightwing (Loren Lester) need her help to stop the team of Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue (a.k.a. the Floronic Man) from trying to recreate the Bio-Restorative Formula of Dr. Alec Holland (who became the Swamp Thing after a lab explosion doused him in the formula). In the original Batman animated series, Harley was voiced by Arleen Sorkin, but here she's voiced by Melissa Rauch (better known as Bernadette on The Big Bang Theory), who I think does a good job once I got over my initial disappointment that they didn't use Arleen (Arleen=Harleen, the character was named after the actress) as the voice of Harley. I used to love the DC animated DTV feature films, but in the last 5 years they've gotten pretty lousy, so I didn't know if this one would be any good. I took a chance because of Bruce Timm's involvement and because it looked like a throwback to the older-style features. I'm glad I did because it was great! There's a few PG-13 eyebrow-raising moments involving Harley and Nightwing, and a few big laughs as well as the usual adventure stuff. There's a scene where Nightwing discovers, completely by happenstance, that Harley is now working incognito as a waitress in a restaurant/bar called "Superbabes" (like "Hooters" if it were superheroine/supervillainess-themed) cosplaying herself, and there's another scene where Harley takes Batman & Nightwing to a dive bar/nightclub patronized exclusively by criminal henchmen in order to obtain information to track down Poison Ivy, and in exchange for the info she has to agree to perform on stage (she sings her rendition of Blondie's "Don't Leave Me Hanging on the Telephone", which is pretty good!) > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_4Czc_VxYI

Harley is really the star here, and she gets more character development than she did in the entire original series. I think it made me really understand her character a lot better, and even feel some empathy for her. Harleen Quinzel is smart and funny, but her acting out her hostility towards society is strictly a function of frustration endemic to her blue-collar roots, which is only really made obvious in this film, not in her prior appearances in Batman animated episodes. The way she talks and various clues to her upbringing that she drops make that clear, and as a result she's the exact antithesis of the typical "classy" femme fatale villainess. At one point she makes Batman stop the Batmobile, then leaps out and chases and starts beating up on a guy that she spotted, who once dated and then dumped her, yelling at him "You made my mother cry!". In this movie, Harley really is sincere in trying to reform, and helping stop Ivy's crazy plan to turn everyone in the world into plant-creatures, but she's angry because of the lack of trust or respect she's getting from Batman & Nightwing in return for her efforts, and you start to get the point that that's really her whole life-story. She made bad choices in her life because she was acting out of frustration and didn't feel like she was getting any respect or recognition. Towards the end, when the situation is looking at its worst, it's down to Harley to stop her BFF Ivy from using the replicated Bio-Restorative Formula to transform every human and animal on the planet into plant-creatures, and there's what I'd call a real "Betty & Veronica moment" between the two of them. At the very conclusion, when Batman & Nightwing have exhausted all of their high-tech armament in attempting to stop the powerful Floronic Man, Harley suggests the most simple and should-have-been-obvious solution that never occurred to them.

I see online where the movie got a lot of negative reactions from people who didn't like the fact that Harley wasn't voiced by original cast member Arleen Sorkin, and couldn't abide any "comical" humor in a Batman movie, while some claimed that the plot was weak. I felt like it was a nice expansion on the previously-existing character of Harley, and Melissa Rauch did a decent job of bringing her own qualities to Harley's voice. Humorless sticks-up-their-butts reviewers leveled charges of "juvenile humor", but that only indicates to me that they failed to understand the characterization of Harley Quinn. The humor present here is completely appropriate to that character, and doesn't "make fun of" Batman in any way, nor did I have any problem following the plot of the story, which made complete sense to me.



Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery (2015) - I liked it, but some things about it were kind of bizarre. KISS looks a little different in some of the different animated sequences as (I guess) animated by different groups of animators. There's yet another different backstory (I've seen several different inconsistent ones in various KISS comic book appearances) explaining KISS's connection to some cosmic dimension that effectively allows them to turn into superheroes at times. Gene (Demon) Simmons is funny as "the grumpy one" of the group. The strangest aspect of the movie by far is how Paul (Starchild) Stanley -- who was 62 at the time he voiced himself as a character in this cartoon -- is hitting on Daphne Blake (who has a starstruck fangirl crush on him -- and [I think] is still supposed to be a teenager), and at the end of it he gives her a big **SMERP!!**<3 <3. Well, we all know about rockstars and groupies (and presumably KISS had creative approval of the storyline of the film by contract) but I guess we're not supposed to think about the real KISS as a band (although in the movie, they play themselves as a band) but as a fictional band in a cartoon where they're also able to transform into science-fantasy superheroes. But still, it seems a little creepy/weird... 

Other than that, it's sort of a traditional Scooby-Doo mystery plot (the gang has to help KISS stop The Crimson Witch from haunting their amusement park, KISS World) apart from the fact that the science-fantasy/cosmic dimension aspects can't be explained away (although Velma does so anyway, because that's her schtick). There's some varying quality of different animated sequences (from excellent to average), and when the Crimson Witch gets ahold of the Black Diamond and uses it to summon "The Destroyer", he's like a Jack Kirby-esque floating head that's kind of an amalgamation of Galactus/Darkseid/Modok. I haven't watched a lot of the Scooby-Doo DTV features, but I kind of liked this one.

SPOILER ALERT!
















I just watched Batman and Harley Quinn, and it looked exactly like the original Batman Adventures, but something was...off about it. It was light-hearted in spots, almost over the top in that category, such as tapping the mid-60's Batman TV series. Heck, it was flat-out weird. What were the writers aiming for, I wonder? I anticipated Swamp Thing coming on the scene, and he did by rising out of the swamp water, but his merely giving a speech, then vanishing back into the water? Seriously? Huh?  Missing something, here....

I'm embarrassed to say it, since it was released several years back, but I just saw WALL-E, and I loved it! Best-looking of the Pixar movies I've seen, and a great storyline to boot! I've had plenty of time over the weekend to look at stuff, since I can't go back to work for the moment: I have the shingles, and it hurts like I'm on fire.... 

Quote from: SAGG on September 17, 2017, 07:17:00 PM
I just watched Batman and Harley Quinn, and it looked exactly like the original Batman Adventures, but something was...off about it. It was light-hearted in spots, almost over the top in that category, such as tapping the mid-60's Batman TV series. Heck, it was flat-out weird. What were the writers aiming for, I wonder? I anticipated Swamp Thing coming on the scene, and he did by rising out of the swamp water, but his merely giving a speech, then vanishing back into the water? Seriously? Huh?  Missing something, here....

Well, no... NOT seriously. People who had problems with the writers putting a few funny scenes into the movie are probably taking it far TOO seriously to allow the cartoon team to have any FUN. There's nothing in here that's mocking the characters, and it's exactly the sort of humor that's characteristic of Harley. Relax and just roll with it. Geez, somehow people can accept the idea of a nightclub/bar where ALL the criminal henchmen (and women) gather to party... but throw in a scene where one of Catwoman's henches tries to razz Batman by doing the batusi (and gets dropped by a quick & casual suckerpunch from Batman for his trouble), and all of a sudden, THEN it becomes too unreal to deal with. Yeah, because all the rest of the things that appear in a DC cartoon are so realistic and believable.

And yeah, the expectation that Swampy was going to put in an appearance was there the minute they mentioned Alec Holland. That being the case, we'd have been disappointed if he didn't -- and also if he just showed up at the end to provide the big deus ex machina ending (that probably should be "deus ex flora", for "God out of the plants"...) -- which would just leave us wondering why he didn't just do that in the first place, and save Batman & Harley all the trouble. Swamp Thing was always aware of what Ivy and Woodrue were doing from the very beginning, because they're all connected to The Green, except that Ivy & Woodrue have no conscious awareness of it, until they eat those mind-altering yams that sprouted out of Swamp Thing's body (which is a type of Holy Communion with the Savior of the Green).  Having Swamp Thing just wave his hand to make the problem go away (by turning Woodrue into a stump, like Harley suggests) would have been a cheat -- WAY too easy a resolution. If it's not down to Batman & Harley to solve the problem, then they probably should have just made a Swamp Thing movie (which I'm sure, for commercial reasons, would have been entitled BATMAN & SWAMP THING anyway).

It's a damn sight better of a movie than all of the crappy DC Universe films (13 by my count) that they've put out in the last five years. The last decent ones were Justice League: Doom and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in 2012.

MONSTER HIGH feature DVDs:
   New Ghoul @ School
   Fright On!
   Why Do Ghouls Fall in Love?
   Escape From Skull Shores
   Friday Night Frights
   Ghouls Rule!
   Scaris: City of Frights
   13 Wishes
   Frights, Camera, Action!
   Freaky Fusion
   Haunted
   Boo York, Boo York
   Great Scarrier Reef

EVER AFTER HIGH Specials:
   Legacy Day
   True Hearts Day
   Spring Unsprung
   Way Too Wonderland