Fish and Cherries Productions

Greetings from Disneyland, everyone! Here for Galaxy’s Edge and I just learned that today is Stitch Day (he’s Experiment 626 and it’s June 26), so let me dole out a double feature.

Dark Phoenix
Murder Mystery

Just under the wire, let’s look at the next of what will hopefully be the very long Jordan Peele oeuvre.

Us

Back to Netflix, as the theaters have been a bit dry lately. I’m not complaining, as even the worst Netflix movies have something interesting about them. Now let’s see what to make of this one.

Sierra Burgess Is a Loser

So from talking to some of my relatives, it seems that my Worst of 2015 list got swallowed by the Flight of Fire post and thus not a lot of people saw it. That’s fair. The Flight of Fire Kickstarter needed our full attention. But I’d hate for that list to be lost at sea because I’m really proud of it and I’d love you guys to read it while I work on the Best of 2015.

So without further ado, here’s my Top 9 Worst Movies of 2015.

Sorry folks, no new Snippet today as it’s been the day of travel to get home after Thanksgiving (if you’ve ever done that you get it). Regularly scheduled postings and updates resume this week so stay tuned…

I’m not quite done yet. I’ve still got some Scribbles to share.

A spaceship is passing by our solar system.
Hello, my name is Lizbeth Pierce. I’m a courageous biochemist.
How Do You Define “Family?”

http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/news/131478-dc-using-spurious-logic-to-screw-creators-out-of-royalties-and-credit.html#

I’m no fan of underpaying creators or throwing the ever insulting “do it for exposure and be happy” at them, but outright cheating them out of their money is completely despicable. I choose to stand by my decision to boycott DC’s comics and movies and encourage you all to do the same. Also, I will not be covering any more of their animated movies in my Reel Snippets. It may not be much of a hit to their exposure, but at least it will be a weight off my conscience. The Outhousers don’t always have the best satire, but this isn’t satire. This is a call to action, one that needs to be answered.

Creators deserve better.

YOU deserve better.

Originally recorded on November 16, 2014.

Join us in our first podcast as we discuss Marvel’s diverse creative choices, the cosmos, and why we’re here.

Tonight’s players:
Colin Eldred-Cohen
Tim Lindvall
Bradley Monajjemi
Andy Reyes

Pacific Rim is a rare type of summer blockbuster that not only delivers on visuals and action, but on story and characters as well. Admittedly, the story is very simple and straightforward, but the world they build around the story makes it feel a lot meatier. It could have been very easy for the movie not to take itself seriously and go into self-parody, but doing so would have robbed it of a lot of the heart that I think makes it work. That is not to say the movie does not have fun with itself sometimes; there’s an amusing bit involving the mecha’s fist and an office decoration, Charlie Day of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia fame is part of a great comic relief duo that works really well off of each other, and Ron Perlman’s outfit is absolutely impossible to take seriously. The only problems I had with it were that I wished they had done more with some of the other Jaeger (the giant mecha the humans used to fight back) pilots and there was a bit at the end that could have either been a plot hole or an oversight on my part. That said, it is still a very strong action movie that had me invested all of the way through with one great thing going for it: the lead guy and girl do not become a romantic item! Doing so could have broken the movie and I am glad they avoided that. Mr. del Toro, take a bow.

Title: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain
Author: Richard Roberts
Type: Novel
Genre: Superhero

Summary: Remember how I said that being the kid of a former superhero was tough? Well, now imagine that both of your parents were former superheroes that were well-respected in the thriving community. Now imagine that that you’re also going through the troubles of high school while your powers are slowly emerging. And to top it all off, imagine that amid various happenstances, your new alter-ego is recognized by the community… as a supervillain.

That’s the life of the young Penelope Akk, the daughter of Brian and Beatrice Akk, and her best friends Claire and Ray. After their fight with a superhero’s sidekick is caught on camera, the three of them are labeled as a supervillain team call The Inscrutable Machine. Luckily, their identities remained secret, so they must lead double lives so that (most of) their parents don’t find out until they can publically and believably turn hero. In the meantime, they fight cosmic entities, intermingle with the supervillain community, and discover that being a villain can be… fun.

And that’s the greatest strength of the book: that it’s fun. A lot of superhero fiction tries to be taken seriously by being overly grim and severe (including mine, which I’m slightly ashamed of after reading this). Penelope’s adventures relish in the inherent absurdity of a world with superpowers and they don’t rely on outrageously high stakes about the world being in mortal danger. She just has to worry about the normal stakes of her abnormal teenage life.

Consequentially, Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain doesn’t go into extremely minute detail of how everything in the world works or even on the backstory. Oddly enough, the way this is written, you don’t really care that it doesn’t. You’re always given glimpses and small tastes of a larger world that leaves you wanting more, but your focus is so captivated on the rich elements that the lack of an exposition dump is just fine. Are Lucyfar and Gabriel actually incarnations of their Biblical namesakes? Who was the Conqueror and why did he/she/it/they invade Earth? What’s the story behind Apparition, Marvelous, and Generic Girl? All these questions and more will not be answered in this book because they’re not important to Penny’s immediate story and concerns, which is precisely the kind of thing the first person narrative exists for.

Even without a lot of exposition dumps, the story does throw a lot at the reader, but in fairness, pretty much all of it is memorable. I remember all the characters, like Mech, Ifrit, the Bull, Mourning Dove, Chimera, She Who Wots, The Librarian, and so on, as well as colorful places like Lost World Comics and the supervillain-run Chinatown. Everything sort of comes together to make the world feel so alive and rich. The author is writing a sequel entitled At Least I Didn’t Blow Up OUR Moon and if it’s anything like this wonderful piece, I’m really excited for it. Any chance to explore this world further is greatly appreciated. I don’t know that a lot of people know this book is out there, but they really should. It’s a fun read and a fantastic story, so if you’re reading this, you should definitely check it out. But please don’t tell my parents I’m promoting a supervillain.