#other characters look ok or passable. theres a few that even look good.

[prompt-master]

The worst part about the modern detco animation style is that it feels like they through all the budget into the backgrounds

[curly-q-reviews]

ROAD TO THE OSCAR MAYER WIENER AWARDS 2K19

Black Panther, 2018 (dir. Ryan Coogler)

Nominated for: Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

ok y’all lets get this party started with a movie i didnt get to catch in theaters (i think i ended up renting it) but people were absolutely raving about it all of last year, and for good reason i gotta say!  it was one of the better marvel films that came out last year (though in my humble opinion Infinity War takes the gold)

speaking of marvel lets talk about it for a spell!  lets have a lil sit-down chit-chat shall we!!  cause its kind of insane how much of an american media phenomenon marvel has become, they are arguably single-handedly responsible for reviving the superhero movie subgenre and now these types of movies bring hollywood more dineros than they probably know what to do with (besides make more superhero movies).  what used to be a niche market where only your most hardcore of nerdy types dared to dwell has been embraced into the mainstream wholeheartedly, and now its hard to imagine the american film industry without them. 

from a film critique standpoint, marvel movies seem to be a hit-or-miss as far as quality, however i cant really think of a particular marvel movie that i thought was a total piece of hot garbage (the first two Thor movies come close but they were more boring than anything else).  however last year was a real success for the studio, they just kept pumping out quality movies left and right and once disney managed to get its grubby lil mouse paws on Spider-man it was a done deal baby.  DC and other companies have tried again and again to recreate the success that Marvel has managed and so far they’ve failed to various degrees.  Marvel’s just got that special something with their cinematic universe, some magical combo of great actors and creative directors and an ever-expanding budget that keeps them staying at the top every time.

so whats my stance on superhero movies???  well theyre not my usual cup of tea but i gotta say they’re real damn entertaining.  i kinda view them like a high-speed ride at an amusement park, super fun and thrilling and exhilarating and just a real good time!  but thats about as far as it goes for me, and im sure thats the same for a lot of people.  to be honest its kinda refreshing to have movies that quality-wise are up to my standards that i dont have to think too hard about.  so for me the movies i typically go for are like museums, whereas superhero movies (and action movies in general) are like a carnival.  both entertaining and fun, but the latter is just all about letting loose and not wondering about the why’s and how’s.  when i think about it, this kinda mindset is for sure a factor in how these movies got so popular, because with the shitshow that is our current government and the potential imminent death of our planet people are once again looking for movies as a form of escapism, rather than a way to get deep and philosophical and ask the tough questions and see something profound. 

with that being said, despite some exceptions that have proven me wrong to my utter joy and delight (im looking at u Logan), i expect movies that are nominated for wiener awards to be more like museums than like carnivals y’know what i mean?  u catchin my drift???  u takin what im dishin out????  the academy awards have a long history of prestige, of nominating the best of the best of any given year. quite a few movies that won oscars are now considered to be timeless classics.  which is why superhero movies, at least the typical marvel types that are chocked to the brim with CGI and epic massive fight scenes and explosions, dont really strike me as anything that could eventually become a timeless classic.  the amount of computer-generated effects alone will make these movies feel really dated as soon as like five years from now with how fast technology is progressing.  i just dont see it happening.

and that brings us to the first wiener award nominee ill be talking about, Black Panther.  this isnt director Ryan Coogler’s first time at the rodeo; his first feature film Fruitvale Station received critical acclaim in 2013, and the spiritual Rocky sequel Creed actually got nominated for some oscars a few years ago.  so we’ve got a promising and talented director at the helm which is a great start!  we’ve also got a stellar cast with the likes of michael b. jordan (who has been in all of Coogler’s films so far), lupita nyong’o, angela bassett, and forest whitaker in the bunch.  it also has the astronomical financial backing of Supreme Overlord Disney so u know this is gonna be some high-quality shit.

so i’m gonna tell y’all why i think this movie got nominated for so many oscars, because in a way i do think this movie is deserving of noms from the academy.  theres no denying that it is very groundbreaking for a movie of this scale and magnitude to have a black director and a nearly all-black cast.  in fact, i think a lot of the crew members (including set and costume design) were black as well.  thats fuckin huge my guy.  and this movie was by no means a flop either; it ended up being one of the highest-grossing films of 2018 and stayed in theaters for a loooong-ass time.  and not only were the people on this project mostly black, the movie itself is a story praising and showing off the beauty of african culture without exotifying or demeaning it in any way.  like i can say 100% without a doubt that this movie deserves its best costume design nom cause holy shit the outfits in this movie are stunning, just the perfect blend of ancient/current tribal african aesthetics and a more futuristic sleek style that any fashion enthusiast can drool over.

i cant say much about best musical score or best sound mixing or anything like that cause it all seemed like typical marvel stuff to me and wasnt all that memorable.  however i can say that the production design on this movie, while it didnt impress me as much as costuming, did still impress me.  the one thing i gotta knock it on is all the fucken CGI, like whole entire towns and landscapes were digitally rendered.  i wouldve been a lot more impressed and would agree more to the production design nom if they used more practical effects and real sets/locations. 

so.  best picture.  this is where i feel the most conflicted.  cause this is where i now have to look past all the pretty fancy visuals and music and look at the actual meat of this movie, its story and characters.  usually best picture noms also get noms for things like best actress, best script, and best director, cause those are all really important elements of a good film.  ur movie can look and sound as pretty as it wants but if the storys shit and the characters are shit and the actings shit then u dont have much going for u.

and by no means am i saying that Black Panther was shitty in these aspects, it was just well.  passable.  it was ok.  but nothing to write home about

we got some good performances from newcomers letitia wright and chadwick boseman, lupita kills it as always, but then everyone else was like.  okay.  michael b. jordan didnt really do his best in this and idk if its the script’s fault or something but it was weird.  and speaking of the script it was uuuuhhhhh well.  not great.  every time i think about that “what are those” reference i die a little inside.  and the story overall wasnt really anything new when u break it down, just another “son of king struggles to take his place” narrative.  and that aspect of the story couldve actually been more developed into something interesting, i found myself really intrigued with the political scenes.  but there just wasnt enough of that cause they needed to make more room for the PEW PEW POW EXPLOSIONS

granted, movies with lots of shimmer but little substance have been nominated for best picture before (just look at James Cameron’s Avatar which is apparently getting a sequel now????????).  and its not even that this movie is completely devoid of substance cause theres some interesting things going on plot-wise, and some stand-out characters too (shuri is the boss and no one can tell me otherwise).  its just, u know, a good superhero movie.  nothing really profound about the story itself except for the cultural, historical, and social context behind it.

so lemme get back to why i think this movie got a best picture nom.  i think the academy wants to keep up their appearance of being #woke now by continuing to nominate more than one poc-heavy project each year, but they seem to be caring less and less about the actual overall quality of these movies.  and theres even some movies on the noms list that i think actually have what it takes to be a strong oscars contender, like If Beale Street Could Talk and BlacKkKlansmen.  but i think in Black Panther’s case, they were under a lot of pressure to give it top noms (or any noms at all) because of the intensely positive response this movie got, as well as the accusations of racism to people who didnt think it was as great as fans were saying. 

also i have no doubt that Supreme Overlord Disney like threw piles and piles of money at the academy like they tend to do (cause i’d bet good money thats the only fucken way Incredibles 2 got nominated for anything)

well anyway ive gone on long enough about this, lemme know what y’all think.  really the only nom im iffy about when it comes to this movie is Best Picture, but the others i think are well enough deserved, especially costume design.  so i guess the one thing i struggle with is this: does a movie becoming a pop culture phenomenon and being groundbreaking in its cast and crew count as enough for it to be nominated for the top prize of the wiener awards, despite any fallbacks in script, direction, and acting?  idk man im just hoping it doesnt get the award by default or something but then again maybe after watching all the other nominees it may turn out that the rest of them were worse than Black Panther i guess i’ll have to find out

stay tuned for my A Star Is Born review y’all stay fresh and funky eat ur vegetables stay in school u dont need drugs when ur high on life

[edge-lorde]

Relic and Relic II: Resurrection

by Jonathan Brookes

relic and its sequel (could be a part of a series?) are sci-fi books set in modern times where the american military, with aid from a contracted private company, have decided to start a program to clone neanderthals with the eventual goal to use them as soldiers. information leaks, military personnel gone rouge, and civilian meddling cause this plan to go awry.

but why do this thing in the first place? a few reasons. 1: the military assumes neanderthals won’t have human rights. theyll be able to completely control their ‘Thal population (yes they do use the term “’Thal”) and everything they do, including when they die, without violating human rights under the Geneva convention. 2: theyed be able to eventually replace all modern human soldiers with ‘Thal clones that would have no families back home and thus save “human” lives and prevent human suffering. 3: they could, through multiple generations, breed 'Thals to be the perfect soldiers, which they cant do with modern humans cause of human rights.  

believeability: 8.5. i think the authors reasons as to why the military would be interested in making a soldier class of clones they could have complete control of is sound. however, some of the finer points arent that believable, like that a pathologist at a morgue knows how to determine if DNA is neanderthal or not. 

idk because both books make jokes about how “this sounds like a crazy sci-fi plot!” but if your reading a sci-fi book you’re expecting that. its ok for the premise of a sci-fi story to be crazy as long as the science is explored, which i think it is. there are actual 'Thals in these books, though one of them has no lines and then dies and the other is a literal newborn baby who does little besides sleep. a baby who sleeps and eats? unbelievable! 

ive read a lot of neanderthal books now, and they come in 2 main flavors; prehistoric and sci-fi. the former speaks for itself. the latter usually has a plot where people are reacting to getting a hold of a live neanderthal, be that through cloning, time travel, or just discovering they never went extinct. relic definitely falls into that sphere, no doubt about it, what makes it unique is that it doesnt really explore those themes at all. the ‘Thal who dies? DNA saved for cloning and then cremated. no explanation as to how he even exists, he was just a college professor with no family ties or close friends who just *happens* to have enough neanderthal DNA to effect his appearance and has ‘Thal mitochondrial DNA. they just took samples of a few things and cremated him with out a second thought, zero calls to look into anything about him or save the body. the baby? treated as an asset to a company by both the “bad” military guys and the “good” civilians. the people with her best interest at heart wanted her to be raised as a normal child and essentially forgotten about by science, which i dont think ive ever seen before in this sub-genre. 

i actually think this makes the ‘Thals MORE believable, in a way... 

characterization: 9. like i said above, the neanderthals dont actually do much in the story, but when they are doing something its pretty human like. the baby does baby things. the college professor had autism, which has been proposed by real scientists to have some sort of neanderthal connection before, but is still up in the air as far as i can tell.

one of the civilian characters thinks that the reason ‘Thals would be better soldiers is that the military wouldn't have to feed them, they could just eat the enemies they were assigned to kill and generally terrorize the countryside. but he is the only character to bring that up so i dont think its reflective of the actual thal canon in this story. the baby isnt eating solid food yet though, so the jurys still out. at one point the military people decide the 'Thals will probably make better scientists than soldiers too. 

hybrids: 1.5. it acknowledges we interbred at some point so that counts for something. im going to count the college professor as a hybrid, and i guess the baby counts too. shes not an exact clone of a neanderthal specimen, shes got the profs mtDNA and test results said she was a 95% match for neanderthal DNA, so maybe theres some other stuff in that last 5%. 

interspecies sex: 1. in the broad sense, since we interbred. other than that, nothing. the prof didnt even have a girlfriend. 

accuracy: 7. this story is nothing if not researched, though still written by a layperson. most tidbits of information about 'Thals come from some published article. like the profs description, and the babys got red hair-- not accurate that all ‘Thals would have had red hair, mind you, but perhaps she is the clone of the specimen that is thought to have had red hair? passable. what is not passable is that the baby is said to look like a mixture of Asian and Caucasian, which, idk how your supposed to discern on a newborn in the first place, and second buys into a concept of race that would not have existed at the time neanderthals were around. shes also got blue eyes, which we currently dont think neanderthals had because our blue eye mutation happened after they went extinct, but it could be that the color will change as she grows, or 'Thals had their own blue eye mutation we dont know about yet. and there was something about the baby having pigmented sclera, though when it said her eyes were blue that didnt come up again so maybe the author dropped that. 

the baby was born a month premature but full size and healthy, could be an insinuation that neanderthal pregnancies were shorter, which i dont know if thats substantiated or not. she also needs to eat more than a normal baby and needs more protein and fat in her formula, but that one at least seems plausible. could be a glimpse of more voracious tendencies to come though, as the cannibal theory comes from danny vendramini’s body of work, no i wont link it. i dont think the author was going that way though. 

a lot of the actual science is glossed over too. like theres this one scene where a guy is trying to show a doctor how he knows the baby is a neanderthal and the book is like “he brought up some charts and talked seriously, then he brought up some other charts and compared the two.” 

OH and there was that whole deal with mitochondrial DNA. apparently the reason it was so important to get some from the prof is that mtDNA is harder to extract than nuclear DNA (i dont think thats true) and if you try to clone a neanderthal and give it modern human mtDNA it will age rapidly and die because the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and modern human mtDNA doesnt tell the ‘Thal mitochondria to make enough energy. thats gotta be bullshit if i ever heard it. 

kind of hope the author writes another relic book. the second book was vastly better written than the first, so i can only hope the authors growth is exponential, and the second one ended on kind of a weird note.