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2025 Genre-ary: Documentaries

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2025 kicks off with our third annual Genre-ary. We started with Sci-Fi movies. Then we did Musicals. This year, we will be doing Documentaries.

Again, this will be documentaries that are movies or shorts. There will be no doc series such as the Jinx. Of course, it is a DailyView which means I will be watching a movie every day in the month of January that I have never seen before.

I have compiled a list of documentaries from over the years that I have not seen before. Some will be well known ones, some will be ones we have never heard of before. I will be including some 2024 films instead of waiting for the June Swoon.

I will keep the tally of the Genre-ary on this page.

2025 Genre-ary: Documentaries

Wednesday, January 1: The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (2024)

Thursday, January 2: The Amazing Jonathan Documentary (2019)

Friday, January 3: The Turnaround (2024)

Saturday, January 4: An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Sunday, January 5: Remembering Gene Wilder (2023)

Monday, January 6: ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black (2018)

Tuesday, January 7: The Blue Angels (2024)

Wednesday, January 8: In-spi-ra-tion (2023)

Thursday, January 9: Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of The Dana Carvey Show (2017)

Friday, January 10: ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (2019)

Saturday, January 11: Nature Boy: 30 on 30 (2017)

Sunday, January 12: Hoop Dreams (1994)

Monday, January 13: Will & Harper (2024)

Tuesday, January 14: Have You Seen Andy (2007)

Wednesday, January 15: The Rocket on the Roof (2016)

Thursday, January 16: Bigfoot: Fear in the Woods (2020)

Friday, January 17: 65 Roses (2019)

Saturday, January 18: Daughters (2024)

Sunday, January 19: Amy (2015)

Monday, January 20: MLK/FBI (2020)

Tuesday, January 21: The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Wednesday, January 22: MoviePass, MovieCrash (2024)

Thursday, January 23: Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (2016)

Friday, January 24: American Tragedy (2019)

Saturday, January 25: Whitney (2018)

Sunday, January 26: Misha and the Wolves (2021)

Monday, January 27: Last Breath (2019)

Tuesday, January 28: There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane (2011)

Wednesday, January 29: Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

Thursday, January 30: Invasion on Chestnut Ridge (2017)

Friday, January 31: Girl in the Picture (2022)

What If…? S3 E6

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Spoilers

“What If…1872?”

What If in the Old West.

Shang Chi and Kate Bishop make their returns to the MCU in this cool Western story as they chase after The Hood, a character that the MCU has not yet introduced (although he is coming in Ironheart next year).

The pairing of Shang Chi and Kate Bishop worked for me as they pursued the Hood for their own reasons. The show did keep the characters at a surface level, depending on your enjoyment of the previous uses of the character to pull you in. For me, that worked.

The action of the episode was top notch with some awesome animated martial arts fights. The opening scene featuring John Walker, voiced once again by Wyatt Russell, was a neat set up for what we were going to get.

Shang Chi in search of his sister, who he had believed had been taken by the Hood works as well. Having her be the Hood in the end was a nice twist that I did not expect.

Walter Goggins reprised his role as Sonny Burch from Ant Man and the Wasp. Here he was a very sinister second hand man to the Hood. To be honest, he was much more memorable here in What If that he was in Ant Man and the Wasp. I like that they brought him in for this role.

1872 was a limited Marvel Comics series that placed Marvel characters in the Old West. Steve Rogers was the sheriff of the town and Wilson Fisk was the big, bad businessman. Fisk wound up feeding Steve Rogers to the pigs in a scene that stuck with me since I read it. I do not remember much else about 1872, except for that moment. This What If…? episode did not include those characters but I could see it being something going on in another location in this world.

There are only two more What If…? episodes left. With the final scene being the other Watchers confronting Uatu, and his interference will be a major arc to wrap up the series. The Watchers have sworn an oath to only watch and to not interfere, but we have seen our Watcher interfere several times over the three seasons. I am curious to see how this will all wrap up. I know the trailer had Captain Carter and Kahhori in it, so I expect to see them during some kind of conflict with the Watchers.

E2 What If Agatha Went to Hollywood?

E3 What If The Red Guardian stopped The Winter Soldier

E6 What If 1872?

E5 What If the Emergence Destroyed the Earth?

E1 What If the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?

E4 What If Howard the Duck Got Hitched?

Getting Lost

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What a treat.

I think I had a knowledge in the back of my mind that there was a documentary in the works for LOST, but I had not gone looking for it. Then, I was on social media (I do not remember if I was on X or Facebook or Bluesky to be honest) and I found someone talking about the documentary being available on Prime for rental. I rushed over to Prime immediately to see if I could find it. And there it was.

I have to explain this. I have never been as connected to a TV program as I was with LOST. It was at the very heart of my being. When it ended, I felt like I had a hole in my heart that I just could not fill. It was a physical gap that had an emptiness about it. All these years later, I still think back on the show with so much love.

I was excited to watch this documentary and it immediately grabbed my attention. It had interviews with nearly everyone in the cast, producers, writers, fans and they were talking about all of the major aspects about LOST, from the cultural significance to the influential impact on TV to the importance of the show on people’s lives.

They talked about the pilot and how they were making the pilot without any expectation that it would ever be picked up. They talked about the Tailies, “The Constant,” Not Penny’s Boat, Charlie’s Death, “We have to go back,” Walt, the finale etc.

The documentary did not shy away from controversy either. They addressed how the finale is a divisive episode that split the community apart. They talked about the report a few years ago stating that the LOST writer’s room was filled with bullying, racism and sexism (which I had not heard about before this) and they asked Damon Lindelof about it. Matthew Fox did not appear via an interview for the doc and there was an ending moment where J.J. Abrams asked if they did not get an interview with anybody and the voice off camera said Matthew Fox. Abrams said, “Seriously? You never got Foxy? Come on, really?” and then said “That’s too bad. His loss.” I wonder if there was something contentious going on there. Dominic Monaghan apparently also declined an invitation to talk.

Filmmaker Taylor Morden included some specific details about the LOST fan community, including the podcasts that sprung up and also some of the charitable work done by the LOST community, especially dealing with cancer. There were some famous fans that were interviewed such as Samm Levine and Bobby Moynihan.

I loved this documentary. I may not be the most unbiased when it comes to my thoughts on it, but I do think that they went out of their way to include everything about the series, even the bad things.

AND IT WAS NOT PURGATORY! THEY WERE NOT DEAD ALL THE TIME!

Um.. sorry about that.

EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week

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December 26

This is the final EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week for 2024 as next Wednesday’s NEW COMIC BOOK DAY is January 1st. And since it was the last week, of course there were about eight books in the contention for these three medals.

Shout outs to the runners-up that did not make the medal round: The Creeping Below #2, Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #3, Hello Darkness #6, Sabretooth: The Dead Don’t Talk #1, and Metamorpho #1.

The final medalists for 2024 are…

Bronze Medalist

X-Men #9

Cover art by Ryan Stegman, JP Mayer, & Marte Gracia

What a cool use of the Wolverine claws, showing him facing off with Psylocke. The claws almost pop off the page.

Silver Medalist

Absolute Wonder Woman #3

Hayden Sherman & Jordie Bellaire

Boy does Wonder Woman look bad ass. The grey background looks awesome and the red symbol stands out wonderfully.

Gold Medalist

Redcoat #8

Variant Cover B

Cover art by Brad Walker & Brad Anderson

This variant cover is soooo cool with the red background and the way Simon Pure’s coat blended right into the background. Then, the big ass gun is a great example of perspective. I picked this off the stand today, replacing the cover A that I had in my pull box. This is the final gold medalist of 2024. Congrats!

Silo S2 E6

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Spoilers

“Barricades”

Silo streamed its sixth episode the other day and things continue to be happening. This episode spent most of the time in our original silo, with only a few minutes at the end of the episode with Juliette and Solo.

Sheriff Billings takes a stand after finally getting to be able to talk to Shirley, Knox and Walker. He showed himself that he was willing to follow the law and not worry about whose side he is on. He also seemed to discover that his shakes from the Syndrome were gone despite not taking his herbs for days. What does this mean for the people of the silo? Is it just one more lie that has been used to maintain the status quo?

Bernard is feeling like he is losing control of things as the revolt below him in the silo has been picking up steam and his attempt to starve them out has failed. He realized that he has lost the sheriff, who is going to follow the law and not just blindly follow what he says.

Things are going to go crazy when Juliette is able to return to her original silo. It’s coming…

Dexter: Original Sin E1-3

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Spoilers

“And in the Beginning…”

“Kid in a Candy Store”

“Miami Vice”

I watched Dexter on and off when it was one. The season with John Lithgow was one of the best seasons of TV ever. But I did not watch much of the last few years of the show nor did I watch the return series from a few years ago. I liked Dexter, but I did not go out of my way for him.

When I spotted this new series, Dexter: Original Sin, on Prime, I was interested. Telling the story of how things started off with Dexter and his Dark Passenger seemed like a great story, and the use of Michael C. Hall as the narrator worked in a lot of different ways.

Of course, the casting of Dexter and Debra would be key to any series and I think this new show got them right with Dexter being played by Patrick Gibson and Debra was played by Molly Brown. Both seem to fit these characters without being just an imitation of the originals.

We have a living Harry Morgan here as well with the one and only Christian Slater taking that role of Dexter’s adoptive father. He is on the force, but we know that Dexter’s murders would eventually take their toll on Harry. Harry’s rules are a major part in the character of Dexter’s life and code, no matter how bizarre it was.

Sarah Michelle Geller is on this show too as Tanya Martin, Dexter’s first boss at the Miami Metro and is the CSI chief. It’s cool to see Buffy once again, but she is just listed as a “special guest star” so I do not know what that means.

Dexter is an excellent character, a heroic one who would feed his darker impulses by killing people who were bad. Yes, there is all kinds of morally grey area in here. Yes, Dexter is not really a hero. Yet, he does seem to be more than just another serial killer. The influence of Harry is clearly the reason for that.

At this point, Dexter has been dumping his two kills in a swampy area with some alligators. Thing is … at the end of E3, an arm was left floating. Obviously, Dexter will develop a better manner of body disposal that he takes into the future with him. We will see how he avoids the trouble with the arm (because obviously he is getting away with it).

I liked these first three episodes. It did take a little while to remember about the characters from the original series and how they are used here, but it was fun getting through it. I will continue to watch this series and may even give a chance to the new Dexter series called Dexter: Resurrections coming in 2025.

EYG Favorite Comic Cover of the Week

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Week of 12/18/24

We have a couple of more weeks in 2024, and we have already named the cover of the year and the cover artists of the year. Congrats to Spider-Man: Black Suit & Blood #2 (Variant) and Alex Ross respectively.

That means that this week’s medalists are the old too late for the date. They will just have to settle for medalist presented this week.

Bronze Medalist

Plastic Man No More #4

Cover art by Alex Lins & Marcelo Maiolo

The Plastic Man series has had some excellent covers. The way he is melting is a very distinct look. The reflection of the timer in his goggles are very intriguing too. Close in to his face is very compelling too.

Silver Medalist

Parliament of Rooks #1

Variant Cover B

Cover Art by Abigail Jill Harding

This new book from Ablaze is a beautiful cover in black and white. Black and white is not used as often in cover art, but this is so wonderful with the creepy birds and some kind of creature behind the man on the stairs. It’s a beauty.

Gold Medalist

House of Slaughter #28

Cover art by Jorge Fornes

Broken glass is a very compelling image and the colors are fabulous. There is just so much to look at on this cover and it does not feel like a typical House of Slaughter book. I noticed this one immediately, and knew it would be this week’s gold medalist.

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.

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

2024 Year in Review: The X-Mas Movie of the Year Award

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I was struggling with this award this year. This is one of the most recent awards we give out during the Year in Review. It came around because I wanted to give Violent Night a specific award.

Here are the list of winners

The X-Mas Movie of the Year

Previous Winners: Violent Night, The Holdovers

You can see there has only been two winners so far. I could have gone back and retroactively given this award out to films such as Netflix’s Klaus, Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, The Muppets Christmas Carol, Scrooged or (sorry Bruce) Die Hard. Heck, I could have named this award the Die Hard Memorial X-Mas Award (I really wish I had done that).

Looking at the Christmas movies that I had watched this year, all I had was Red One. Red One was disliked by a lot of people. I did not hate it, but it was not very good for sure. There was an animated movie on Netflix called That Christmas which was in consideration, but sadly I only thought it was passable too. The second half of that movie was really great to be fair, but I was bored through the beginning.

I chose to go to a film today because I did not have a distinct choice for this award. It was a film that I had no interest in seeing, but had a great Rotten Tomatoes score. I had a lazy Sunday planned and there was a 9:15 AM showtime at Cinemark and I thought that would be a good opportunity.

The movie I saw this morning is officially the winner of this award…

Winner: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

Based on a novel, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever was funny, well written, and full of interesting characters who have to decide what Christmas means to them. This was a really solid movie and it works extremely well as the winner of the….

Hey, a good idea is a good idea!!!!

From now on, this award will be known as this.

Ho-Ho-Ho

Creature Commandos

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Spoilers

“The Collywobbles”

“The Tourmaline Necklace”

The DCU is officially underway!

James Gunn’s DCU kicked off with an animated series on MAX based on one of the strangest properties in the DC Comics, The Creature Commandos.

That is a bizarre choice to kick off the DC Studios, aka the DCU. Still, DC animation has always been a strength and perhaps this will play into that well.

These two episodes, which both dropped on MAX were fine. They may not have been as awesome as I thought it could have been, but with a bunch of basically unfamiliar characters, the show was entertaining.

I think my favorite character so far is The Bride, and so I did think more of episode two, which looked at her history and her back story with Frankenstein (voiced by David Harbour). Of course, the backstory does twist the Bride of Frankenstein movie around a bit and it does take some chances with the story.

The feel of this was more like Invincible than it was any of the other DC animated projects. That may be about the blood, violence and sex (this is not a show for the kids). I thought that Invincible became too needy with the blood and went over the top with it. X-Men ’97 had some blood too, but I thought that was a much better use of it than Invincible. I may not have too many people agree with me, but I felt as if the blood in Invincible goes too far. Creature Commandos is not too bad, but feels as if it would be more like Invincible with blood.

Of course, at some point, G.I. Robot must kill some Nazis.

It did have a definite Suicide Squad feel to it, but I do think this has a lot of potential. The episodes were short, but packed quite a bit into them. I think the show has room to grow and I do believe that James Gunn is going to bring the goods.

EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week

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Week of December 2

Well, this was an easy week to pick the medal winners.

See, I got to Comic World today and a huge section of the shipment was missing. Everything from Diamond was not delivered. Okay, apparently, there was an attempt at a delivery with a holiday driver that turned out very badly.

Making a long story short, I only wound up with four books this week. Two weeks ago I had over 40. If the Marvel, Image, Boom etc. don’t come til next week, I dread the pile for next week.

Until then, we have two DC books and one from IPI Comics as the medalists this week.

Bronze Medalist

Sherlock Holmes: The Dark Detective #2

Cover art by Dave Elsey

This is a really creepy cover with Sherlock looking out a dark window. He sure seems to be a dark detective.

Silver Medalist

Two-Face #1

Cover art by Baldemar Rivas

I picked this one up off the rack because I did not have very many books this week. This is a cool cover with the focus on the coin being flipped. Again, I love the white background with the red of his face and title.

Gold Medalist

Absolute Superman #2

Cover art by Rafa Sandoval & Ulises Arreola

The cool new Absolute Superman looks great and the Peacemakers all around him make a great counter. The cover creates a great bit of what is going to happen. Looks excellent.

Silo S2 E3

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Spoilers

“Solo”

The best parts of this episode came from the interactions between Juliette and Solo. Solo is the person locked in the vault that we met last week. He told her that if Juliette tried to open the vault again, he would kill her.

However, we discover that Solo is not quite confident in his mental acuity. He was not sure if Juliette was real, so he put some soup out for her. When she gulped it down, Solo realized that she really was real.

Steve Zahn played the off-balanced survivor and he did a great job of spending most of the episode acting with his voice (and perhaps every once in awhile with his eyes).

Discovering the secrets of this other silo, Juliette wanted to get back to her own silo (Silo 18), to warn others of the dangers that brought this silo (Silo 17) down. She was stifled on how to make that happen since her own suit was torn to shreds.

This led to Solo exiting his vault when he feared that Juliette was going to not return. I am not sure where this goes, but Solo feels a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs to me.

The stuff happening back in the original silo was not as compelling for me. We get a bunch of trouble from a group planning a potential rebellion. We get questions about Juliette’s actual choice about wanting to leave. The Mayor continues with his machinations. Judge Meadow who is starting to figure out how she can leave the silo and The Mayor seemingly helping her (though I don’t trust him one bit).

Silo S2 E2

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Spoilers

“Order”

I figured that this episode would be this way. After last week’s episode featuring Juliette exclusively and her exploring of the other silo she found, I assumed that this week’s episode would be focused on what was happening back in the silo we all had been introduced to in season one.

This technique was used a lot in other shows like LOST or The Walking Dead where we switch POV and tell the story of what was happening in a different location, but same time.

Back in the original silo, Mayor Bernard Holland was coming up with a lie to use to squelch the potential uprising among the people who saw Juliette climb over the hill in the finale last year. They made the assumption that the world outside was safe after all. The Mayor made an effective lie about tape used on Juliette’s suit to keep the people in control, but he knew that this was not going to last forever.

We also saw the beginnings of a revolution brewing among some of the people, especially those connected to Juliette. The seeds were planted and slowly began to see signs of growth.

Judge Meadows agreed to help the Mayor, but she wants to go out of the silo. He tried to keep her from saying such things, but she was feeling too oppressed by the silo lifestyle. Meadows is going to help him but she expects the Mayor to let her go. Not sure that is going to hasppen. I do not trust the Mayor at all.