Tag: observations

Thoughts on Cobra Kai S2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Disclaimer: there will probably be spoilers.  Despite the fact that this has little chance of being public for a long time.

Over the weekend, I shotgunned through season 2 of Cobra Kai.  I admit that I liked season 1 more than I thought I would, but it had no shortage of some eyerolling moments that were both funny, but tickled the nostalgia factor to where it was somewhat acceptable. 

However, after the first season, I was very dubious and had plenty of doubts about the direction of the show going into the second season.  As clever as the writing of the first season was, it was somewhat predictable, and I had some very strong predictions going into S2.  Needless to say, given the fact that I had low expectations that were surpassed going into the first season of the show, I was kind of back to being skeptical about the quality of the second.

Ultimately, the vast majority of the things I predicted about S2 of Cobra Kai, basically came true.  The return of John Kreese at the end of S1 meant that there would be something of a faction system within the dojo.  The cheesy love triangle between Samantha, Miguel and Robby came true, although it kind of turned into a square with the introduction of the pleasantly surprising Tory character.  Johnny would get involved with Miguel’s mom, and Daniel LaRusso would have some personal struggles balancing his hectic professional life with the world of karate.

I had all of these predictions, and every single one of them came true.  The writing of the first season basically laid the groundwork down for each of them, and the it’s been so linear, that it’s almost more impossible to deviate from it than let it ride its course.

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Love Death & Robots was incredible

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I sat down with no real objective other than to see what I could find to watch.  I selected Netflix, and although I usually think the auto-playing of whatever featured thing was being recommended to me at that very moment is pretty annoying and I wish could be turned off, Netflix squared up and hit my sweet spot for once.  After letting it auto-start the first episode of Love Death & Robots, I didn’t switch to anything else until I had finished the entire series.

To cut to the chase, Love Death & Robots was pretty much the best thing I’ve watched in a really long time.  That’s not to say I abhorred everything I’ve seen between like, Black Mirror and Love Death & Robots, but it’s the shows that really spark all my senses and most importantly get me thinking and analyzing that tend to stand out for me.  And it’s a little by design that I mentioned Black Mirror, because the easiest way for me to describe Love Death & Robots is that it’s kind of like an animated version of Black Mirror, in the way that it’s an anthology of self-contained stories that are well written, entertaining and provoke a lot of thought.

I know after the first film, the Matrix receives a lot of flack and is a constant source of ridicule, but I will admit that I was a big fan of the Animatrix anthology released in the midst of the film series.  In the same vein as Love Death & Robots, it was various animation styles on display, but they were all thematically tied together in some way shape or form, all relevant to the whole concept of the Matrix.  And although Love Death & Robots has no central theme, and every single episode is a self-contained storyline, the various forms of animation were all mind-blowing, ranging from obvious Unreal engine movie making, traditional cel animation, to some of the most realistic looking CG cinematography I’ve ever seen.

Seriously, I look back to things like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and the Polar Express, and remember all the skeptics of CGI declaring that the fallacy of computer graphics would never ever be able to capture the humanity of live action in CG.  Claiming that no matter how realistic the people looked, their eyes would always look dead and soulless, and be incapable of conveying the subtle nuances of human emotion that real life people do.  Such is not the case in Love Death & Robots, where there are some episodes where I had to really narrow my vision and really look hard to be able to tell that certain things were actually CG.  Seriously, episodes like Shape Shifters and Lucky 13, are so realistic looking, that if I weren’t wearing my glasses, I’d probably imagine that they were live action.

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A Morbius film sounds pretty bottom of the barrel

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Just a few days ago, I saw Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.  It was fantastic.  I felt it captured a lot of what the series has been trying to convey over the last decade, that Spider-Man was more of an idea, and not so much exclusively Peter Parker, and that it’s entirely possible for absolutely anyone, regardless of race, gender or any other difference, to be, a Spider-Man (or woman).

Even more amazing was the fact that Into the Spiderverse was a creation under the Sony Pictures banner, with no affiliation whatsoever to the Marvel Cinematic Universe under the Disney overlords; because it was actually good; unlike the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man sequels, and although I have little interest in watching it, I heard Venom was a turd too.  Needless to say, it’s impressive that Sony actually created something of significant quality with the Spider-Man property, because they’ve demonstrated a surprising ineptitude with it previously.

Without question, into the Spiderverse is the crown jewel of Sony’s collection of Marvel films released, and if they’re smart, they really stick with the formula of creating quality animated films.

So with that said, I just found out that Sony is releasing a spinoff film, based on another Spider-Man villain: Morbius the Living Vampire.  Much like the Venom film, it doesn’t seem like there’s any real tie-in to any Spider-Man properties, and honestly, I have no idea what Sony thinks they’re doing by releasing stand-alone films about Spider-Man villains without actually tying them into any Spider-Man storylines.

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The fallacy of judging player contracts before they’re finished

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With the news of Bryce Harper signing the most historic mega-deal in baseball history comes a whole lot of interesting things:

  • All the bitching and moaning coming from MLB (union) players like Justin Verlander, Evan Longoria, Kris Bryant, and Adam Wainwright among others, about how free agency is busted, owners are crooked, and the system being broken have just had all of the wind taken out of their sails; the last week alone has seen Harper sign his historic 13-year/$330 million dollar contract, Manny Machado signing a 10-year/$300 million contract, as well as Nolan Arenado signing an 8-year/$260 million dollar extension. Free agency is not busted, it’s just the financial game within the game has changed, and it’s just taking longer.
  • A whole lot of discussion about Harper’s intentions, considering the fact that despite taking the aforementioned deal from the Phillies, in the process he turned down a ridiculous shorter-term contract from the Dodgers which would have had him making around $45 million a year for four years as well as a 10-year/$300 million offer from his former team, the Nationals, where they would have deferred the last $100 million of the deal, where he would have been getting paid, with interest, until like 2053, which probably would have equated to over $330 million, frankly.
  • Every Nationals fan who had been a Bryce Harper fan over the last seven years has now become massive Bryce Harper haters
  • Every Phillies fan who had hated on Bryce Harper because he played for the division rival Nationals is now the greatest Bryce Harper fans that have ever lived

Amidst all of these things, are and will be many more, articles that will be examining the finer details and the minutiae of Bryce Harper’s deal with the Phillies.  And in a previous time in my life, I probably would be one of them, and be ready to declare it “a bad deal” because of the hypothetical likelihood that by the time Harper is 38 years old and hobbling into the final year of his deal in 2032, he most certainly won’t be playing like a guy that will be getting paid like $28 million dollars, and how long-term free agent deals pretty much always fail, because players rarely contribute the statistics necessary to justify their salaries.

Such could very well become the case by the time 2032 rolls around but the bigger question really boils down to “but did the Phillies win a championship(s) in those 13 years?”

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Thoughts on True Detective S3

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

*There will likely be spoilers mentioned in this post, not that it matters considering the whole “I’m still offline” thing

Now that the third season of HBO’s True Detective is now in the books, I feel the compulsion to write some words about it.

Firstly, the show has completely redeemed itself from the terrible celebrity circle-jerk known as the second season of True Detective.  Although this line was pretty classic, there’s no mistaking that it was an utter bomb, especially in comparison to the first season.  I can’t really take Vince Vaughn seriously, and there’s no doubt he always has to try to get in some wisecrack into whatever role he’s doing, no matter if he’s supposed to be a cold and callous hustler.

Frankly, when I saw the initial teasers for season three, and how it only seemed to have the star power of just Mahershala Ali, I thought to myself that this might have some promise.  I’d been high on Ali after how much screen presence he demanded in Luke Cage and House of Cards, and I figured he seemed like the just right balance of recognizable actor without making himself bigger than the show itself.

Overall, I will say that S3 of True Detective was pretty outstanding.  Considering the plot of the show was basically three different timelines, several of the show’s actors like Ali and Stephen Dorff were playing triple-time, and really flexing their acting chops portraying their characters in three different decades.  For me, their scenes together really capture the bond between two men who have served, been partners, and lifelong friends on top of it all, and I felt that the show’s strongest moments often involved the two of them having intense and meaningful discussions.

The story did an excellent job of slow-releasing the characters and the revelations of the multiple plots going on throughout three different decades, all trying to solve the same murder/disappearance case, and at the end of every episode, I would always proclaim that “all the pieces of the puzzle haven’t been revealed yet!”  And despite the fact that the series took place in three different eras, all the clues were still drawling a pretty linear path towards the same goal.

However, as much as I enjoyed the season as a whole, it wasn’t without flaws; obviously this is talking about the ending of the series that left me about as satisfied as eating 95% of a Willy’s burrito – the show never really finished, because there were some pretty large things left unexplained!

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Not sure how to feel about RE:Netflix

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back in 2002, I really, really enjoyed the first Resident Evil film, starring Milla Jovovich.  What I really liked about it was that it was almost an entirely independent story that took place inside the RE world, with unique characters, and only featured tertiary concepts and adversaries from the game itself.

And then with each successive sequel, the franchise began shoe-horning more and more actual RE characters into a storyline that wasn’t really intended to have them be a part of in the first place, and the series as a whole began to get really ridiculous, disjointed and have Swiss cheese sized plot holes, not to mention the casting of all the actual characters seemed so very inappropriately bad in most cases. 

Needless to say, my enthusiasm for the series dwindled with every sequel, and by the time The Final Chapter came about, I didn’t even see it in a theater, and watched a pirated copy of it on the internet for free, and still wanted my money back afterwards.  It was the movie-watching epitome of a mercy kill, and the only real good thing about it was the fact that I could have closure to the movie franchise, and wouldn’t have to watch this any later in the future.

That being said, when I found out about how Netflix wants to release a live-action Resident Evil series, my blood kind of goes cold, and I’m left with this crippling feeling of not knowing how to feel.

In one hand, I’m still scarred from just how poorly the movie franchise (de-)escalated into this abominable avalanche of bullshit, and I never want anyone in existence to ever try to act out the story of one of my favorite video game franchises in history.

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Thoughts on 90 Day Fiancé season 6

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I knew 2019 was off to a great start when we discovered that the TLC Go app had opened their doors to our cable provider, thus allowing us to access to watch TLC programming, completely on demand.  That being said, I don’t often have to worry about not having something to watch at any given point with the vast majority of TLC’s library now available to me with the push of a few buttons.

Obviously, shows like My 600 Lb. Life are among the marquee shows that I favor the most, and classics like Extreme Cheapskates and Extreme Couponing inexplicably didn’t get renewed for anything beyond two seasons.  But if I had to pick one show that stood out above all others as my go-to for TLC programming, it is and has always been, 90 Day Fiancé.

I’m not ashamed to say it, but I’ve literally watched every season of 9DF.  The irony is that I’ve really liked a lot of shows in my time, but eventually everything falls to the wayside for whatever reason(s).  Archer, The Walking Dead, and American Horror Story come to mind as shows that I’ve at times gotten lukewarm with and allowed them to slide over to the back burner.  But not 9DF.  Nah dog, I’ve literally seen every single episode (of at least the core series), and I’m fairly certain I can name every single person who’s been on the show if shown a picture.

So I just recently finished season 6, and I was thinking that I was playing some major catchup; little did I realize that I basically caught up to season’s actual air dates, and probably wrapped up the main episodes right as the season was winding down with its typical tell-all episodes at the end.

Needless to say, there have been some real trainwrecks throughout the series, but I think season 6 really outdid themselves at finding some truly tv-worthy couples this time around.  I mean, every previous season always had one kind of anchor couple, or layup couple, as in the one couple that anyone could tell was the stable one, vanilla one, bland one, or rather the couple that everyone knew was going to be fine, even after the cameras stopped rolling.  Usually, they were the one where one or both of the couple were religious, and it was pulling teeth trying to get any sort of drama or entertainment value out of them.

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