Tag: movies

Morbius bad film??  How can that be??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker of the century: Morbius starring Jared Leto is not garnering favorable reviews

Who would’ve imagined that??  (Me)  That a film based on Morbius the Living Vampire, a D-class Spider-Man villain would have any modicum of success, especially in a film universe where it will have nothing to do with, Spider-Man?

I mean Jesus Christ, this was about as predictable as the internet exploding over Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars.  Anyone who had any inkling of idea of what these properties originated from, or even just followed comic books or movies in general probably knew that Morbius was a terrible idea from the start. 

It was the very definition of scraping the barrel looking for ideas to make into films, and someone over at Sony was probably like, “eh, who’s this Morbius guy?  He’s in Spider-Man, and he’s a vampire!  People like Spider-Man and maybe people are still into shit like Twilight, so let’s green light this!”  But having zero idea that Morbius is a fifth-rate villain and basically was more of a vehicle for Blade to come in than anything else.

Regardless, the project survived the pitch and concepting and actually came into fruition.  And to nobody’s surprise, the reviews are not doing so hot, and are currently at the time I’m writing this, on a historically bad pace, but again, it’s more surprising that gas prices have actually dropped below a leading 4, than finding out that Morbius is garbage.

In the past, I used to makes jokes about how I wouldn’t see this thing even if it were pirated, or I’d watch something pirated and state how I wanted my money back despite seeing it for free.  But with as little time I have these days, it would be a tremendous offense for me to even consider wasting any bit of my precious free time on a turd like Morbius.

But this post still must come to fruition to point out the obvious fact that I called this two years ago when it was announced, but Hollywood most certainly doesn’t let perception, facts or just plain bad ideas stand in their way of their pursuit for a buck here and there.

Just because it’s a Marvel property doesn’t automatically make it a key to the money printer.  And as more and more major properties get gobbled up by the film industry, there are bound to be more and more Morbius-shaped turds to come into existence in the future.  The bar appears to have been re-set by Morbius and it’s anyone’s guess to what the next shitty Marvel installment will be; but at least Jared Leto is off the table for a little while.

I feel as if I’m being disrespected

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

True to my word, I have begun hitting the gym again, beginning the journey to combat the give-up-on-life body that I have transformed into over the last two years to hopefully get to a point where I can have the less flabby dad bod that I had back in 2020.

The fitness center in my building is fairly bare, with mostly machines, but there are still enough dumbbells and other tertiary equipment available for me to still have adequate workouts and work on getting back in shape, regardless of the fact that I won’t really be able to do the true squats and deadlifts anymore without there being any barbells available.  But it doesn’t cost me anything, towels, shampoo and soaps are all included, which makes is super convenient for me.

The best part about it, though, is that the place is practically deserted.  Whether it’s the pandemic, the hybridized schedules that the company is utilizing or perhaps a combination of both is that there’s hardly anyone in the gym, and in just the few times I’ve been inside it, I’ve had plenty of time in which I’m literally the only one in there, free to workout in solitude.

However, I use phrases like practically and hardly, because in the two workouts that I’ve done to shake the rust off and go through the requisite soreness of exercising for the first time in an eon, despite the general quiet of the fitness center, I’ve still come across other human beings.

The first day, a duder walks in, about a half hour into my own workout.  Our eyes meet, and I give him a nod.  The nod is not reciprocated.  He changes clothing and comes back out and promptly begins his workout on the rower, which I think is very appropriate seeing as how he looks like Donald Trump, Jr. and is about as white.  As I’m changing in the locker room I can hear weights being dropped, confirming the douchebag I thought he was for not returning my nod.  He was also unmasked.

Day two, I enter the gym, and there’s a different guy, limbering up, prior to getting onto the treadmill.  As I begin lifting, he has an even more pitiful adventure on the treadmill than I had just days ago, and I don’t think he even ran more than five minutes, and had to take numerous breaks.  He then proceeds to get on a mat, and do some crunches.  As he heads back to the locker room, our eyes meet and I give him a nod.  The nod is not reciprocated. 

He emerges minutes later, back in work clothes, and the time it took indicates that he also didn’t shower.  This guy is also white as Reindeer Games.  He too was unmasked.

At this point, I’m feeling like I’m being disrespected by these guys that aren’t acknowledging my acknowledgment.  This is the epitome of a first-world problem, but at the same time, I don’t think I’m asking for a corporate bailout or anything, I’m just trying to be polite and acknowledge the respect for other people trying to better themselves through exercise.

It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve got the opportunity to organically relate to Gordon Liu and the entire aesthetic of my brog, because this treatment over the last two days has made me think about the scene in Kill Bill, where David Carradine waxes poetic about Pai Mei, and how he murdered a Shaolin temple solely based on the fact that a monk failed to reciprocate a nod when crossing paths.

Pai Mei…in a practically unfathomable display of generosity,
gave the monk the slightest of nods.

The nod…was not returned.

Now, was it the intention of the Shaolin monk to insult Pai Mei?
Or did he just fail to see the generous social gesture?

The motives of the monk remain unknown.

What is known…were the consequences.

The next morning, Pai Mei appeared at the Shaolin temple…
and demanded of the temple’s head abbot that he offer Pai Mei
his neck to repay the insult.

The abbot, at first, tried to console Pai Mei.

Only to find Pai Mei was…inconsolable.

So began the Massacre of the Shaolin Temple,
and all sixty of the monks inside, at the fists of the White Lotus.

I like to think these two clowns didn’t acknowledge me because they’re racists, or because I was wearing a mask which is still kind of a little racist in a way, but there’s also the possibility that they’re just being territorial pricks and annoyed that their gym is needing to be shared with someone else.  Joke’s on them though, there’s literally nobody more dedicated to going to the gym than I am, and they will be seeing me just about every single office day I have, health and schedules permitting.

White Men Can’t Jump – the 2022 National Champions, Georgia Bulldogs

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s easy for me to say after the fact, but no matter how pessimistic I may have verbalized my predictions that Alabama had owned Georgia to the tune of never losing to them since like 2007, I kind of had this feeling that Georgia was finally going to win this one, even in spite of all the tragic history that had befallen the Dawgs over the last 13 years.

  • The game was not in Atlanta. The vast majority of these matchups have always happened in Atlanta, the home of the SEC championship, as well as one prior National Championship matchup a few years ago.  Even aside from Alabama, for whatever reason, Georgia just can’t not shit the bed in their home state, and I feel like there’s an added pressure of playing “at home” that Georgia just struggles with, that would not be in play, being in Indianapolis.
  • Georgia’s defense was truly otherworldly this year. I’m not a diehard Dawgs fan, but it’s impossible for a sports fan to not know what’s going on with them, just through natural sports fan osmosis.  I’ve witnessed every Georgia season come and go since I’ve lived here, and this Georgia defense was on a pedestal above them all, and as the old adage goes, defense wins championships.
  • Alabama beating Georgia twice in the same season just seemed too much ask anyone. Georgia and Alabama have never once, played each other twice in a single season.  Either one of them misses the playoff, or Alabama misses the SEC championship but gets in the playoff.  And with two teams as good as these, it didn’t seem likely one of them would win both games.
  • And of course, baby luck. Yes, it was still in play.  And weirdly, sports success tends to cluster together, regardless of the sports.  Boston had their renaissance period where the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots and Bruins were winning championships.  When the Eagles won the Super Bowl, Villanova’s basketball won the National Championship shortly afterward.  Tampa Bay had both the Bucs and Lightning win championships just a year ago.  And with the Braves having broken the cycle of suck in Georgia, it seemed appropriate that the Bulldogs follow suite and finally win something themselves too.

And in spite of how poorly Georgia came out of the gate during the game, I had this sense that all was not lost.  Sure, the first half turned into a glorified soccer game, where kickers were the only contributors to the score, but the thing is, Georgia at no point was ever out of the game.  Their defense, as taxed as it was, bent but didn’t break, and held Alabama within striking distance the whole time.

Contrary to the narrative of most prior Georgia-Alabama games, the script of this game just felt different too.  Georgia wasn’t racing to an early lead, where they would then screw themselves up in the second half, collapse and fall victim to yet another Atlanta/Georgia sports team collapse.  They were instead screwing themselves up in the first half, with penalties and unfortunate calls against them, and I made a joke to mythical wife who gets to hear all my mansplaining of hunches and gut feelings, that they still have a chance.

And then with ten minutes to go in the fourth quarter, Georgia sprung to life, almost as if they were deliberately sharking Alabama for the prior 50 minutes of game time, and decided to hit the NOS and actually start playing football.  Stetson Bennett IV, whom I was making jokes about the whole game for having the whitest name in existence, suddenly stopped playing like a little bitch and in like 4 plays that covered like 81 yards, drives down for a touchdown, capped off by this bomb to the end zone, and I’m just like, where the fuck has this guy been for the first three quarters?

Basically, it’s like Georgia was Woody Harrelson from White Men Can’t Jump, where he was playing like a patsy for a little bit, but when it came time to actually play, Stetson Bennett IV turns his hat backwards, pumps up his Reeboks and starts delivering big plays for big scores.

And then the most astounding thing is that Georgia, only up by 8 points, was still in striking distance of a textbook Alabama heartbreaking-dagger-to-the-heart play to tie the game up and win in OT, they are the ones who stand strong for the first time in 13 years, and haul in a pick six, which was hilarious to watch as Kirby Smart is screaming get down get down, but Kelee Ringo’s just like lol fuck that, I’mma be on the cover of Sports Illustrated and next thing we know, when the confetti is falling, it’s not Nick Saban under it all for the 50th time, but finally, Georgia.

Much like seeing the Braves win the World Series, seeing Georgia actually win a National Championship was also up there on the list of things that I wondered if I’d ever witness in my life.  Not that I’m a huge fan of the Dawgs, but I live in Georgia, and I know the success of the team can really boost a lot of people here’s spirits, so I’m quite pleased.  I guess all that’s really left in the bucket of hopes and dreams is Virginia Tech (LOL) and maybe seeing some Korean national teams win something major in baseball or soccer, but they’ll be on their own.

Pretty sure with this, the baby luck is now exhausted, and I ain’t having no more kids.  But the Braves and Bulldogs, not bad for reinforcing my superstition.  You’re welcome, Georgians.

Among the list of reasons why I’m leaving my job, continued

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t really intend on doing another post about this, but I had an idea of an analogy in mind, but I never actually got to it, because when I get into the writing zone my fingers take over, and before I knew it, I had blathered on about stocks and I didn’t feel like making some bloated mega post about it and adding this into it when I could separate it and boost my post count instead.

There’s this film on Netflix I saw a while back, called The Platform.  I believe it was a Mexican film, but it was a rather good film, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something fresh and unique to rehashed American cinema and doesn’t mind reading subtitles or can understand Spanish.

The film is about this, for lack of a better term, prison, that is an indeterminate number of floors, where every single floor has two people occupying them.  In the center of every single floor is a big, square shaped hole.  Every single day, a large platform descends the hole, sequentially stopping on every single floor for like two minutes.  On the platform is a massive spread of a elaborate feast, and the people on the floors ravenously stuff their faces and eat what they can before the platform descends to the next level below.

Naturally, this means those at the top of the prison have the advantage of having the most available, and cream of the crop foods available to them, and as the platform sinks lower and lower into the prison, eventually runs out of food, leading to those in the lower levels to become violent and homicidal from hunger.

Spoiler alert, here’s the kicker: the amount of food on the platform could modestly feed every single person in the entire prison, if all the people could get on the same page and agree to only eat a set amount.  However, naturally that is an impossibility when you have so many different personalities, so it’s a system perfectly designed to ensure chaos is always maintained.

So, back to the analogy: at my job, every single department has a pool of money (the platform) in which employees typically get their seemingly given, annual 2.5% cost of living wage increase, at the very minimum.  There is a nominal amount more in the pool, for deserving employees to get a little bit than 2.5%, but for the most part, these pools are set so that pretty much everyone could get their, at the very least, their cost-of-living increase, because the world is always getting more expensive, and that 2.5% goes a long way with keeping up with society.

Over the last two years, I’ve received 1.68 and 2.2% wage increases, in spite of all the contributions I’ve made to my team.  I’m not trying to inflate my contributions to the team, but I did design the exact workflow and process that kept my entire fucking team afloat for the last three years, and steered the car steady despite it being a volatile and explosive Ford Pinto, so I think I would’ve at least, deserved my fucking 2.5%.

I’d like to blame my shitty bosses for these shitty raises, but to their credit, the problem is actually those within the prison that exist higher than all of us.  They’re basically wolfing down all of the food from the platform by giving themselves and their cliquey accomplices elevated raises, and by the time the platform gets down to my level, there’s barely anything left to give me, or my subordinates.

As shitty as my wage increases have been, I’ve had to go the last two years trying to explain to my reports why they’re now getting these sub-2% raises when they’ve all been getting 2.5%+ every year before the recent ones.

The difference is, in The Platform, floor assignments change randomly every single week, and pairs could be on floor 4 one week, and then be on floor 201 the next.  At my job, those who are at the bottom of the prison usually remain there, and short of some dignity-robbing ass-kissing and joining the cliques of the company, is usually impossible to get to a higher floor to where there might be some food left on the platform.

Aside from the shitty raises, my primary reason for leaving is simply the fact that I’ve identified that within my department exists something of an inner circle of people, to where pretty much every position of power within it, is occupied by someone in it, and those not in it, don’t seem to be able to climb the ladder.  I’ve watched people who came into the company at the same time or later than me, rocket past my position in the company, and it’s not difficult to see how, based on the people they fraternize with.

I actually tried to make a move within the department, during a re-org.  I identified a position under a boss I used to work under, and I thought it would be a good fit.  However, when I learned that the interviewing would be done by several people, among them being some inner circle people, I kind of knew that my chances were dust.

In essence, I should thank the experience, because it was upon getting that rejection did it dawn on me that I should probably consider that I should be the one who needed to leave the company.  The clarity gained has been invaluable, and fuck the stocks and the shitty raises, I have succeeded at getting the fuck out of a toxic environment, and hopefully the next chapter of my career will prove to be a successful upgrade.

Spider-Man: No Way Home thoughts

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It goes without saying that there are going to be spoilers galore here.  Short of saying it was a fun movie and I enjoyed it a lot, it’s going to be difficult to really talk about the film without there being any spoilers.

So, it was a fun movie, and I did enjoy it a lot.  This was the first film that I saw in a movie theater in over two years, and I couldn’t have picked a better film to go out and feel like a human being, albeit masked one, for an evening again.

Continue reading “Spider-Man: No Way Home thoughts” →

You know, Hawkeye’s not that turrible

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s really no surprise though, considering how often chicken shit is spun into palatable, digestible chicken salad in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I started watching Hawkeye recently, and three episodes in, I have to say that it’s not the worst property ever turned into a show or movie.

Let’s be real here, it’s not uncommon knowledge that Hawkeye is one of the lamest Avengers in the history of the Avengers, and by himself among the lamest IPs of the Marvel universe.  When it became apparent that just about everyone in the phase one of the MCU was going to get some degree of spotlight, one of the most common queries was probably, “even Hawkeye?”

And most likely in the spirit of equitability, we have a Hawkeye series, which is kind of ironic seeing as how the longform storytelling of a television series seems far preferable to a standalone film, and it’s hard to believe that of all the guys to get a prominent spotlight, Hawkeye would be among them.

But if there’s anyone who is aware of the stigma of the lameness that is Hawkeye, it’s the show itself, all the way from the writers, show runners and characters themselves.  As a whole, everyone seems very aware that Hawkeye is lame, to where it’s so far been kind of a theme of the show itself, and by doing so, actually earns a little bit of credit and endearment from watchers like me just waiting for the show to even sniff jumping the shark or wrestling with DJ Tanner, to get ready to point the finger and say I told you so.

By doing such, the show seems to earn a little bit of bullet protection from harsher criticisms, and it doesn’t hurt that the show really isn’t that so much about Hawkeye as much as it’s about Clint Barton the man, and his former alter-ego in Ronin, as well as sharing the spotlight with Kate Bishop, who serves to be the personality sidekick that Barton need to not give into the lameness so often. 

I’m only three episodes in, but it hasn’t been all that bad.  The show moves at a steady pace and doesn’t feel too drug out, and regardless of what the title of the show is, all MCU television series are all concurrently working towards larger storylines, so it’s only a matter of time before some hard hints, or a cameo or appearance from another property crops up to make viewers react like they’re NBA players watching a dunk contest when it becomes apparent of what is in the works.

As I’ve said before (I think), in MCU we trust, because if this is any indication, those writers and show runners really know how to make even the lamest properties tolerable.  The Netflix crew demonstrated it by making Iron Fist watchable, and now the Disney+ squad has made even Hawkeye tolerable.  That, is pretty impressive, and makes me not feel pessimistic about the remainder of the series.

Zombie shark, est. 1979

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I saw the clickbait headline on social media for this, I of course clicked it, but I already knew that this was going to turn into a brog post: Dr. Mario releases what ultimately becomes a zombie shark, off the coast of Spain

To horror fans, all one has to do is say the words “zombie shark,” and literally only one thing pops into their minds: Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 film, that very notoriously, contained a sequence, in which a zombie takes on, a shark.

Spoiler alert, as if anyone’s going to read this, drop what they’re doing and rush out to go find out how and where to watch Zombi 2, but the shark rips off the arm of the zombie and more or less “wins” in the sense that it swims away still living.  However, the zombie definitely succeeds at ripping a chunk off of it to eat, but it’s fairly unclear that it landed any actual bites onto the shark, since sharks skin are pretty tough.  But the zombie is all over the shark for some bit of time, so it is presumed that it probably had to have gotten some bites in before its arm is ripped off and the conflict is over.

Well, it only took 42 years but it looks like we’ve got our answer to that specific scene from that documentary.  Clearly, the zombie got some bites in, or perhaps it’s by virtue of the shark ingesting some of that wack-ass green zombie blood, but it clearly got turned, was caught by Dr. Mario, presumably studied because it was a fucking zombie shark, and then released into the wild, where some other sharks whooped its ass, leaving it to actually, ultimately die, finally.

Really though, I’m not sure why it’s some sort of shocker that a shark that’s all mangled open is still searching for food.  When they’re at full health, it’s all sharks do in the first place, I’m not sure why one being practically ripped open would behave any differently, than to seek out food before it eventually succumbed.

All the same, good on the internet for giving all us zombie fans reason to make the never-not entertaining reference to Fulci’s zombie vs. shark, because even to this day, there’s never been a more wildly insane fight sequence than this was.