Battlestar Galactica S3 E15

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Spoilers

“A Day in the Life”

This was a really solid episode dealing with Adama and his relationship with his ex-wife Carolanne. It was his wedding anniversary and the show tells us that Adama does a lot of reflection on this day, so much so that he would imagine being able to talk to and visit with the spirit of Carolanne.

Meanwhile, Chief Tyrol and Cally get stuck in an air lock that had a leak. This came after a fight between them over the amount of time that they had to devote to Galactica in comparison to their baby son. The air was dropping in the air lock, making this a life v. death struggle.

The rescue attempt by the pilots was really tense and filled me with doubt. I could see something happening to one or even both of Tyrol and Cally. The rescue mission was a success, but Tyrol and Cally were in pretty bad shape from decompression sickness.

We get some good scenes between Adama and Lee as they share their own POV of Carolanne. Lee had a much more negative memory of her as her actions were very difficult to deal with after Adama had left.

The episode continues to tease a potential relationship forming between Adama and President Roslin, and, to be honest, I am here for it. I think they make a very interesting pairing. I’m just not sure that they will ever be able to get past their jobs or themselves to make a relationship work.

Silo S2 E4, E5

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Spoilers

“The Harmonium”

“Descent”

Boy, some big things went down on Silo over the last two weeks.

I did not realize that I was a week behind when I pulled up the series on Apple TV +, but there they were. Then all the crap happened.

  • The Mayor killed Judge Meadows. Poisoned mushrooms. I knew fungus should not be eaten.
  • Solo is going crazy…okay, maybe he is already crazy.
  • Knox and Shirley framed for the murder of Judge Meadows.
  • An angry mob chased after Knox and Shirley.
  • The whole Juliette going underwater to go find a suit was tense and crazy.
  • Juliette collapses from her infected injury on her arm.
  • Is Solo the real Solo? Who is the Solo that Juliette knows?
  • Sims is made a Judge. Not Bernard’s shadow though.

Things are building for a really exciting second part of the season. I can’t imagine what is happening with this rebellion when Juliette makes it back to her home silo.

2024 Year in Review: Comic Cover Artist of the Year

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This year, we started a weekly post called Favorite Comic Covers of the Week. I wound up giving our Gold, Silver and Bronze medalist every week for the best comic covers (in my opinion) of the week.

I decided that we then could give out the Comic Cover Artist of the Year and use what we have done this year to determine our medalists.

I kept track of the medal winners each week. If they received a Gold medal, they earned 3 points. Everyone listed as working on the cover each got three points. If they received a Silver medal, they got two points and a Bronze would earn them 1 point.

If there was a tie, the number of gold medals was the first tie break and the second tie break was how many artists worked on the cover. A solo artist gets the edge over the duos.

Spoiler alert, both of those tie breaks came into play.

Year in Review: Favorite Comic Covers of the Year

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2024

In 2024, I started something new. It was a weekly feature in which I would choose the best comic cover of the week on NEW COMIC BOOK DAY. After a few weeks, I adjusted the concept so that I was giving three awards, and I connected them to the Olympic medals (Gold, Silver, Bronze). That way I could honor more of the great covers that was coming out every week.

I reviewed my list of winners and I picked out the best of the best and gave them the year end medal.

I decided I would give out the top three regular covers (Cover A) and I would give the top three variant covers from the gold medalists from this past year. Then, I would give an overall medal (Platinum) for the Best Cover of the Year.

Let’s kick it off with the…

Medalists for the Regular Covers (Cover A)

Bronze Medalist for 2024

Ice Cream Man #38

Cover Art by Martin Morazzo & Chris O’Halloran

Silver Medalist for 2024

Amazing Spider-Man #45

Cover art by John Romita Jr., Scott Hanna, and Marcio Menyz

Gold Medalist for 2024

Zorro: Man of the Dead #3

Cover art by Dan Panosian

Medalists for Variant Covers of the Year

Bronze Medalist for 2024 Variant

Namor #1

Cover art by Alex Maleev

Silver Medalist for 2024 Variant

Hello Darkness #4

Cover Art by Jenny Frison

Gold Medalist for 2024 Variant

Spider-Man: Black Suit & Blood #2

Cover art by Mitsuhiro Arita

Platinum Medalist (Best Overall Comic Cover of 2024)

Congrats to all of our Medalists.

Runners-Up: (Cover A) Get Fury 34, Swan Song #6, Star Wars: Mace Windu #1, Uncanny X-Men #1, Fantastic Four #26, (Variant) Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver #3, Spider-Boy #7, Resurrection of Magneto #1, Ice Cream Man #39

EYG Comic Cavalcade #129

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December 14, 2024

Comics were delayed again this week. I did not expect them to be in on Friday so I had decided that I would go to Kraven the Hunter at a 4:20 PM show. Todd gave me a call as I was on the way to the movie with the news that the books had arrived Friday after all. I couldn’t turn around and head to Dubuque as I was on the way to the Quad Cities.

However, Saturday was going to bring us some icy weather and I was not sure when I could get to the shop. I made a decision. After I would get done with Kraven, I would leave Cinemark and drive to Comic World to get the comics that night. I left the theater at about 6:47 PM and wound up at Comic World before 8 PM. I made good time, with only a minimal amount of speeding.

As I said, there was ice coming today and I had nowhere I planned to go in the morning and I was able to sit down and read the comics. It was a nice morning and I made it through the week’s books.

Here are this week’s books:

Grommets #3-6. I picked up these books from eBay and I have really enjoyed the series. It took a darker turn as our young skateboarding heroes wound up at a party that got out of control. The series has taken time to dive into these kids feeling and desires and I have found it to be very compelling so far. There is only one more issue to go and I am excited to finish this series off.

Space Ghost #8. Written by David Pepose and art by Jonathan Lau. Cover B art was by Jae Lee & June Chung. General Metallus is here, with his Thanos-like plans bringing a terrible memory back to Space Ghost. Sadly, Space Ghost got his butt handed to him.

Storm #3. “Impending Doom” Written by Murewa Ayodele and art by Lucas Werneck. Cover art was by Mateus Manhanini. Storm is dying, but Doctor Voodoo helps her with some magic. But magic has a cost and she cannot use her powers for seven days. So she decides to sleep with Wolverine. Um… oh, yeah, and Dr. Doom comes calling.

Dazzler #4. “Homecoming” Written by Jason Loo and art by Rafael Loureiro. Cover art was by Terry and Rachel Dodson. Dazzler’s world tour is coming to an end with a concert in New York City! We discover the person behind the sabotage of her shows before and guest stars NYX help her wrap thing up. This is the final issue of this Dazzler series which was fun, if lgithweight.

Batman: Dark Patterns #1. “We are the Wounded Part One.” Written by Dan Watters and art and cover art by Hayden Sherman. A new Batman series which tells a story from a past time in the Caped Crusader’s life. Alfred is still there and James Gordon was only a Lieutenant. It included a weird and wild villain that I had never seen before involved in some kind of serial killing. I am worried that I have been picking up more DC books than I have before. I already get a ton of comics a month. However, this issue was solid.

The Terminator #3. “Apocalypse Then: Part Two.” Written by Declan Shalvey and art by David O’Sullivan. Cover C art by Cat Staggs (Bronze Medalist). The story from Vietnam concludes as the Terminator chased Duggan across the land and even into a helicopter.

Ultimate Universe: One Year In #1. Written by Deniz Camp and art by Jonas Scharf. Cover art was done by Rafael Albuquerque. We follow Nick Fury and we meet the members of the Council. They all do not seem to have the best of intentions. There is a couple pages at the end of the book featuring a prologue of Ultimate Wolverine.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1. Written by Christos Gage and art by Eric Gapstur. Leonardo Romero did the cover art. This is the prequel series for the upcoming Disney + animated series of the web head. This is meant to be a very young, just gaining his powers Peter Parker. There were some differences to the origin, laid out here, that may alter the character.

Incredible Hulk#20. “Wolves of the Old World” Part One. Written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and art by Danny Earles. Cover art was done by Nic Klein. Werewolves are everywhere and Hulk and Charlie are having to deal with them. Jack Russell is here too.

The Infinity Watch #1. Written by Derek Landy and penciled by Ruairi Coleman. Cover art was by Salvador Larroca and GURU-eFX. The Infinity Stone Bearers come together to form their own team, but things do not go well immediately. I wonder if the shocking final page sets us up for what this series has up its sleeve. Love having Coulson in the book though.

Uncanny X-Men #7. “No Walls Can Hold Us” Written by Gail Simone and penciled by David Marquez & Edgar Salazar. Cover art by David Marquez & Matthew Wilson (Gold Medalist). Rogue’s team of X-Men are heading into Graymalkin after their two team members but Cyclops really wants them to hold off. What this lead to? That’s right… big mutant fight!

Laura Kinney: Wolverine #1. “All the Places You Will Go.” Written by Erica Schultz and art by Giada Belviso. Cover is the Variant Cover Logo issue. New series featuring Laura Kinney was a great start. I enjoyed this first issue with Laura. The issue does a fantastic job of giving us insight into the character of Laura and what drives her. This was a great start.

Amazing Spider-Man #63. “Tick Tick Tick.” Written by Justina Ireland and art by Gleb Melnikov. Cover art was by Ed McGuinness & Marcio Menyz. The 8 Deaths of Spider-Man rolls on as the constant fight as the Champion is getting to Peter Parker. He actually yelled at Aunt May. The Scions of Cyttorak have been watching him, trying to figure out what makes him tick.

The City Beneath Her Feet #1. Written by James Tynion IV and art and cover art by Elsa Charretier. This is a love story… as we are told at the very beginning in a fourth wall break… but not that kind of love story. This was a bizarre story that was quiet entertaining and unexpected. I am a big fan of James Tynion IV and the writing of this was great. Elsa Charretier’s work is very much similar to her work on Love Everlasting.

Scarlet Witch #7. Written by Steve Orlando and art by Lorenzo Tammetta. Cover art was done by Russell Dauterman (Silver Medalist). Wanda, Amaranth, Tommy and Billy go to New Salem to try and save the town from a curse. Turns out that there is a tie to Agatha Harkness in the town.

Minor Arcana #4. Written, illustrated and cover art by Jeff Lemire. Theresa takes her mom for her cancer appointment, and sparks fly. She then winds up back in the magical realm after doing another tarot card reading. She realizes that it is tied to her deceased grandpa. Mainor Arcana is a fascinating book and Jeff Lemire is always great in his creativity.

X-Factor #5. “Prisoners of the Fun Room” Written by Mark Russell and art by Bob Quinn. Cover art was by Greg land & Frank D’Armata. X-Factor has to fight off the terrorists led by Darkstar known as X-Term. This series has shown to be a very deadly one as another of the team winds up dead in this issue.

Phoenix #6. Written by Stephanie Phillips and art by Marco Renna. Yasmine Putri did the cover art. Phoenix teams up with Nova, but she is having a crisis of faith, doubting that her arrival in space was the right move to make. Oh, and Thanos.

Other books this week: Skin Police #3, Petpool Pool Party#1, Spirits of Vengeance #4, Ultimate X-Men #10, Deadpool Team-Up #4, Alien: Paradiso #1, and Transformers #15.

2024 Year in Review: Comics

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It was a big year for comic books. The massive amount of independents were out, Marvel and DC both found great success with their “Ultimate” and “Absolute” books respectively, and some of the best artists and writers plied their trade across the companies.

EYG continued our post EYG Comic Cavalcade looking at a bunch of books over a week period, and we added the EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week, giving out a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal each week.

There were a lot of difficult choices to be made for these Comic Awards. The Comic Cover of the Year and the Cover Artist of the Year will be coming at a later date. However, here are the comic awards for EYG this year.

Best Marvel Series: Ultimate Spider-Man. Peter and MJ happy with children? Yes, please. More of that. This has been a solid series all year long as Peter finds his fate in the spider costume.

Best DC Series: Absolute Batman. One of the hottest, most successful selling books in a long time, the story is also solid.

Best Independent Comic: The Deviant. This was the single most difficult choice to make because there were so many potential choice. Saga returned. Feral. Something is Killing the Children is always a classic. Grommets. Ice Cream Man. But I finally settled on the James Tynion IV penned book about a serial killer and a man trying to make a comic about it. It has kept readers off balance all year.

Best Character: Erica Slaughter, Something is Killing the Children. Eric has been consistently one of the best characters in comics since her debut. Some of the flashback issues this year have really helped give even more perspective to Erica.

Best Writer: Jason Aaron. Jason Aaron has had a great year including Absolute Superman, Namor, Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime, and he may have written the best single issue of any comic issue this year, in my opinion, with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1.

Best Artist: Mark Spears. I wasn’t sure whom to pick for this award, so I asked Todd, and he suggested Mark Spears. As soon as he did, I knew that was the proper pick. He has had a great year this year, hotter than most any other artist and his Mark Spears Monsters book is as sought after as any.

Best Graphic Novel: Bad Dreams in the Night. I only have seen a handful of graphic novels this year and that makes things tough for this category so I chose a recent one that was a series of horror shorts that were extremely entertaining. This was a great graphic novel.

Best Issue #1: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1. As I mentioned in the Jason Aaron award, I think this is the best single issue of the year. I was not a reader of TNMT, but I grabbed number one because of the buzz and I LOVED that issue. It had me completely hooked and I continued collecting the series. That is what a number one is intended to do.

Best Surprise: Blade was behind Blood Hunt. I did not see that one coming. Sure, it turned out Blade was controlled, but it did not dull the shock of seeing Blade bury his fangs into Doctor Strange’s neck. Blood Hunt was a surprising crossover and this kicked it off on the right note.

Under Appreciated: Ryan North. I have not heard enough about this writer, who has been on the Fantastic Four this last year and has given us some of the best FF issues in a long, time. He was also the writer on Deadpool Wolverine Weapon X-Traction #1 which was really fun. North has been great and I want to see him with other Marvel heroes as his career moves on.

Best One Shot: Doom #1. I was actually not a big fan of this issue, but I know it was a huge hit and, because of that, I think it deserves this award.

Best X-Book: Uncanny X-Men. Gail Simone has brought some of the best X-books to the franchise in years. Plus, she has one of the best lineup of characters around with Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Gambit and the leader Rogue. I look forward to Uncanny every month.

Relationship of the Year: Tony Stark and Emma Frost. Yeah, I know a lot of others did not like this, but I really enjoyed this pairing. So much so that I was sad when they left each other as you knew they would. Emma and Tony had a great chemistry and held each other in a deep regard, more than either wanted to admit.

Crossover of the Year: Blood Hunt. This was just going to be an excuse for Marvel heroes to fight vampires, but it turned out more entertaining than that. With Blade as our villain and with Doctor Doom taking over as Sorcerer Supreme, there are some definite major implications for the Marvel Universe. Oh and Miles Morales was turned into a vampire too.

Trend of the Year: Horror Comics. Horror comics have always been around, but this year horror seemed to explode. Books such as Mark Spears Monsters, Ice Cream Man, Hello Darkness, DC Horror Presents, Creature Commandos, Displaced, The Deviant, the Universal Monsters series, Blood Hunt, Feral, Something is Killing the Children, The Nice House By the Sea, House of Slaughter, Dark Ride, Arkham Horror, Killadelphia, Plastic: Death and Dolls are just some of the books available in 2024.

Comic Character MVPs for 2024: Batman, Miles Morales, Redcoat, Deadpool, Space Ghost, Blade, and Frankenstein.

Best Individual issues (in no particular order)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1

Uncanny X-Men #1

Swan Songs #6

Ice Cream Man #39

Big Burn #1

Grommets #6

Fantastic Four #17

Something is Killing the Children #37

EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week

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Week of 12/9

It is Friday night and my usual Wednesday night post of the comic cover of the week is finally out. Yes, there was more difficulties with the shipment from Comic World, as well as several other shops in the area. The shipment did not arrive until today so I was able to get the books tonight (except for the DC books, which were on time…Transformers too oddly).

With the holidays, I am sure that is a big part of the issue with the delivery, so I would not be surprised to see this happen a few more times in December.

However, be on the lookout for the special Year in Review Favorite Comic Cover of the Year, which is coming soon. We will present Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for both the best regular covers and the best variant covers. Then, we will name the best cover of the year. That is coming soon.

Here are this week’s medalist…

Bronze Medalist

The Terminator #3

Variant cover C

Cover art by Cat Staggs

Quick glance made me think this was Dr. Doom. I can see now that the Terminator is in some leaves. So maybe Predator? I like the green surrounding.

Silver Medalist

Scarlet Witch #7

Cover art by Russell Dauterman

Oooh, spooky looking Wanda image on the cover. I love the colors across this cover. The colors really make this cover pop.

Gold Medalist

Uncanny X-Men #7

Cover art by David Marquez & Matthew Wilson

You can never go wrong with two teams of X-Men facing off with each other. Love how this looks.

Kraven the Hunter

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Kraven the Hunter is the final film in the Sony Extended Spider-Man Universe, which has included the Venom movies, Morbius, and Madame Web. And I think I can speak for everybody when I say, THANK GOD!

I had a lot of hopes that Kraven could be an exception for the Spider-Man-less films. Unfortunately, this was the rule instead.

Kraven the Hunter was terrible.

I am not sure what this movie was supposed to be. The story was all over the place and the film jumped about willy-nilly.

Where to start? I mean… everything that we saw in this film made no sense and the film did not seem to care much about making it make sense.

There was a tremendous cast here that somehow brought some of the worst acting you have ever seen. Aaron Taylor Johnson was okay as Kraven, but Russell Crowe and Ariana DeBose, both who had won Oscars, gave some of the worst performances I have ever seen. How does this happen?

Part of it was that the writing was some of the worst of the year. The dialogue was horrendous, laughable and did no favors for any of these actors. It was on the level of Madame Web which was one of the worst of the year.

Another part of the dialogue that was terrible was all of the ADR. This is a thing when the movie will have voice overs, re-recording scenes for whatever reason. The fact is that the ADR is done really poorly. I swear the character The Foreigner never moves his mouth. It was very noticeable and distracting. All movies do ADRs, but why does the Sony Spider-Man movie do this so badly (because Madame Web was terrible too).

There were some action that was okay, particularly a chase scene with a car and Kraven on foot. However, most of the action of this movie were average, at best. With the action being okay, the film needed it to be much better to overcome the other negatives of it.

Sadly, it feels like Kraven the Hunter has joined the race for the worst movie of the year. There are legit 6 films that could be in that number one slot at the end of the month for my Worst Movie List. There was just no life or any sort of joy here. Every time Kraven cracks a quip, it was totally flat and felt out of place. Some of the CGI was as poor as you would expect. There just is not much to enjoy about Kraven the Hunter. He has always been one of my favorite Spider-Man villains, but this does not work on any level.

0.9 star

Creature Commandos S1 E3

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Spoilers

“Cheers to the Tin Man”

The third episode of Creature Commandos focused on G.I. Robot, taking us back to World War II where he was programed to kill Nazis and fought beside Sgt. Rock.

We also saw the acts of fate that led G.I. Robot to wind up with Task Force M. Sean Gunn voiced G.I. Robot and he does a great job giving the single-minded robot some serious complexities.

Complexities and just a whole bunch of violence. Blood splattering violence.

Circe looked really tough for a bit… and then got brought down hard… I mean HARD…by Weasel and Doctor Phosphorus. So hard that Rick Flagg even grimaced, leading The Bride to say, “You wanted monsters, you got monsters.”

Oooft

The animation is great and I love the voice cast. I just hope it does not just become a big violent excuse to smear blood all over the place. I need more than just that. I already have Invincible for that.

EYG Year in Review 2024: In Memoriam Part 2

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James Earle Jones

Bill Walton

Chuck Woolery

Dabney Coleman

Kris Kristofferson

OJ Simpson

David Harris

Doc Harris

Dikembe Mutombo

Louis Gossett Jr.

Amir Abdur Rahim

Alan Rachins

Gena Rowlands

Joe Flaherty

Mandisa

Kenneth Mitchell

Richard Lewis

Roger Corman

Phil Lesh

Chi Chi Rodriguez

Cissy Houston

Donald Sutherland

Sergio Mendesi

Greg Kihn

Ole Anderson

Tony Todd

Ron Hale

Joe Bonsall

Shrinking S2 E10

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Spoilers

“Changing Patterns”

Okay, so perhaps this is not the season finale after all.

I really thought that this was the season finale. But when I pulled up the show on Apple TV +, I saw episode 11 listed for next Wednesday. So I guess this is not the final episode of the season. I do not know how many there are.

That does not bother me much because Shrinking is consistently one of the best written and entertaining shows on TV.

I had been wondering where this show was going as it seemed like most of the storylines were wrapped up over the last couple of episodes, but there were a couple that came raging back into the forefront.

In particular, the whole Louis/Alice friendship came back hard and heavy this week. Alice found out that Jimmy had told Louis to not see Alice again and that crushed her. Apparently, there are more legs to this as Alice told her father that he ruined another birthday.

Oh yeah, it was Alice’s 18 birthday. She was a little unfair in this situation in my opinion. I mean, Jimmy did find her a car just like his wife. Sure he can be blind in a lot of ways, but to say that he ruined the birthday felt a touch harsh.

There are some great development with all of the other characters too. Paul, Liz, Derek, Julie, and Gaby had solid arcs within this episode, but they all paled in comparison to the birthday escapades.

I wonder how many more episodes the season has for us?

2024 Year in Review: The Kurt Russell De-Aging Award

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Every year, the technology becomes more amazing and it opens up stories possibilities. The days of putting bad wigs on actors to try and make them look younger are over.

De-Aging and virtual actors is a technique that is increasing. And this award goes to the year’s best

The Kurt Russell EGO De-Aging Award

Previous Winners:  Robert DeNiro (The Irishman), Mark Hamill (The Mandalorian), Alfred Molina (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things season 4), Samuel L. Jackson (Secret Invasion)

Some of the best de-aging of the year included Michael Keaton from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Ian Holm was brought back to life in Alien: Romulus. Pat Morita made an appearance in the middle section of Cobra Kai. It was a shocking moment. Connie Nielsen was de-aged in Gladiator 2.

But this year’s winner is in a film that was, at best, okay, but was well known for its gimmick.

Winners: Tom Hanks and Robin Wright (Here)

There was a lot of de-aging in this film, and at several different levels. We stick with these characters through years in this house from this one camera angle and Tom Hanks and Robin Wright are at the center of much of it. And they look great as their younger selves. The problems Here had was not their de-aging.

Skeleton Crew S1 E3

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Spoilers

“Very Interesting, As An Astrogration Problem”

Crimson Jack?

Okay, this was another episode that was a lot of fun. Throwing these kids into a Star Wars universe was a great idea and bringing in Jude Law to be the scallywag “helping” them find their way back to the hidden planet of At Attin works on so many different levels.

Can Jude Law be trusted? As Jod Na Nawood, he was not the Jedi as Wim thought he was. His response of “I never said I was” is a masterful manipulation. I do like how the kids were not completely taken in by this guy. Sure Wim was full on hero worshipping him, but the others all had their doubts. I do like how they seemingly forced him to come with the truth. But did he? I’m not sure.

Loved the Kim owl-ish creature that Jod Na took the kids too as a way to try and find the coordinates of At Attin. Retrieving Sm-33 was great too, and this droid is one of my favorite parts of the show so far. His scenes with Jod were funny and revealing for both characters.

We got some back story on At Attin too, although, again, as with much of this show so far, what is believable and what is true?

Episode three was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to next week.

The Outsiders (1983)

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At my school, I had a chance to teach The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton this year. I had not taught the book since 1999. After we finished the unit, we watched the movie. So over the last two days I watched the Francis Ford Coppola film three times. I knew that I had not seen this movie in a long time so I figured that I had never reviewed the film. This is the chance.

Honestly, I did not love this. My memory was that the first time I watched this, I thought this was better than I did this time.

According to IMDB, “It is 1961, and Tulsa, Oklahoma is divided in two along social lines. The youths of each side form gangs in line with these two camps: the working class Greasers and the wealthier South Side gang, the Socs. The two sides use any opportunity to niggle each other and whenever they meet, there is friction. Then one night, a gang of Socs attack two Greasers with a knife. This sets off a chain of events“

There were several things that bugged me about this movie. Top of the list was probably the performance from Matt Dillion as Dally Winston, which felt about as over the top as it could possibly be. His overacting really bothered me in most of the scenes he was in.

The second thing I noticed was the horrendous sound mixing. There are several times that I couldn’t understand or hear certain lines of dialogue from characters because of the music or because it was just too messy.

I also feel like they did not do a service to a bunch of the characters from the book. Sure, I understand they wanted to focus on the main characters, but Sodapop was neglected and he should be a more vital part of the story. I do not feel that they did a good job of connecting Johnny to any other character outside of Ponyboy and Dally.

I do think that C. Thomas Howell was excellent as Ponyboy, and I loved Ralph Macchio as Johnny. I thought Macchio was really consistently good for the scenes that he was in. I will say though, one of the moments of the church fire, Johnny moved through just like Daniel LaRusso moved through the storm in Karate Kid II. That was funny to me. Anyway, Macchio was really good as the doomed Johnny.

Patrick Swayze had some good scenes, but could have used more time. Tom Cruise was in the film, but he was basically a background guy. Emilio Estevez was in the film as Two-Bit and, again, was just a shadow of the character of the book. I understand there is just not enough time for every character to be illuminated, but I do think we should have a bit more from these major characters.

It felt too melodramatic for my tastes. It was still a decent movie, but I found it to be nowhere as effective as the first time I watched it years ago.