#22: Descendants 3

Sometimes you get early copies!

Without any further ado, some of this was hard to watch, especially the bits with Carlos (Cameron Boyce), who unexpectedly died in July.

This is Disney's third 'normally blue but now has a human skintone' character in a live action movie this year, after "Kim Possible" and "Aladdin".

One thing that continues to annoy me is the inconsistency of the characters between the book, webisode, and movie medium. Freddie Facilier doesn't exist in this verse, but Celia Facilier does.

Mal and Ben are getting married, and they're like...what, 17? You're a child. Stop.

Also, it took so long to film this, Doug, the son of Dopey, now looks like a middle aged man.

Essentially, you can sum up this movie as 'White girl from slums colonizes a black girl's birthright', but it wasn't really her birthright.But that's more an instance that this series was full of colorblind casting - Lady Tremaine is East Asian and her granddaughter Dizzy is white.

Though, there is a moment with a photo that shows a young Ben and Audrey...but the little girl is white, so. Well, I guess Disney hoped the fans would be as stupid and incessantly pro-white as they are for their Animated Canon princesses.

The songs, that's why we're here, right?

Book Look: Warcross by Marie Lu

It's amazing how many Marie Lu books I've come across but never picked up until now. Mainly because this cover is pretty, it was in the clearance section, and it was the only one signed.

The setup is similar to the stories of 'old', and by 'old' I mean 'circa 2009 - 2012'. Talented girl is tough but poor, exposes her talent, brought into a rich world, there's only one other female character with any kind of presence, falls in love with rich dude.

My cover is white and rainbow-y!

Book Look: The Mistmantle Chronicles (Again)

This post has more indepth than the post previous about this series. So I've deleted that one.

These books are more in the vein of the Redwall series, but with no animal species dictated as the 'evil' ones and others as the 'good' ones. There's a heavier slant on religion, a fake one, but religion nonetheless.

Spoilers for all 5 books.

Urchin of The Riding Stars

We are introduced to a lovely little place where animals work happily, ruled by a king and queen, there's fresh food and water everywhere. Boats and toys are made by otters by the coasts, moles dig tunnels, and peace is kept.

Until the crown prince is found dead and a captain is framed for the murder.

Late Stage Disney | Renegade Cut

Economic systems don't last forever...

#21: The Lego Ninjago Movie

This movie is amazing.

I have never watched a movie intended for children that felt so disjointed. Plot beats happened because the story writers felt they were supposed to happen. Not because they made sense.

Fun story: I paid to see this - and only got about 2 minutes in. The crowd was rowdy. I left and went to see "My Little Pony: The Movie" instead.

Better choice.

The plot itself isn't terrible - "What if the bad guy is your father? Every one knows it. But then you need his help, and maybe his training?", and for the first hour, that's 90% of what the movie focuses on...but it's not done in an interesting way. Or even a sensible one.

They want to throw the jokes at us that made "The Lego Movie" and "The Lego Batman Movie" so beloved. Most of them aren't funny. The only consistently funny characters are Zane (The Ice Robot Ninja) and Garmadon (The Bad Guy).

I will say that out of the Lego Movies, it looks the best. There's a lot less emphasis on outside elements (besides the cat) and more on enviroment design in a Lego style. It's Tokyo made out of Legos - and then jungle enviroments. It's pretty nice.

Book Look: Master and Apprentice by Claudia Gray

The cover art looks familiar...Alice Zhang?

The other Star Wars novel that came out in April of 2019.

Claudia Gray is the best Star Wars author in the present day, and I wish she had written the Padme novel "Queen's Shadow", even though E.K Johnson did a fair job. I'm reading it again, and I still feel that we don't know as much about Padme as we knew about Leia in "Princess of Alderaan" or "Bloodline".

I just LOVE Claudia Gray SO MUCH, but I'm so grateful we got anything to do with Padme at all. You know she's my favorite Star Wars character. I love characters like that, elected nobility who does their best by people and are constantly targets of assassination.

#20: Midsommar

I was spoiled for this movie about 5 times before seeing it, and after seeing it, I was still too afraid to go to sleep.

That, to me, is the mark of a great film.

Since the trades are gonna do it, let's do it too - If I had to pick one horror actress to be nominated or win this year, between this and Lupita ("Us"), I'm picking Lupita. She's playing two people, ya'll.

Florence is great, and goes through various stages of grief. But TWO PEOPLE.

Anyway.

It wasn't lost on me that the white dudes had to be horrendous people to be killed, but the ambiguously brown people and the black dude (Who fucked up. He did!) got killed under the guise of "Hey, a ritual!"

This is my first Ari Aster film (Though I did read the synopsis for "Hereditary") - the cultish aspect is far less random here.

The music and some of the early cinematography reminded me strongly of a sci-fi film instead of summer-horror.

#19: My Hero Academia Two Heroes

Again, not super huge into anime, but a lot of it seems to follow the same format. You get standalone movies like this that are simply extended episodes. Status quo doesn't change so the main storyline can continue.

I did watch 6 episodes or so of the first season of My Hero Academia, but like a lot of anime I come across, I find that it wasn't progressing much. Such is the difference of storytelling. To this day, there are only two works of anime I've watched in full and more than once.

It looks nice, it's fine.  Take the tower, stop the bad guy,  five layers of deceit, more endings than "Return of the King".

I'll pick a background character to get attached to in the main shows (Because I've somehow watched more OVAs than actual anime. Does this count as an OVA?), and I'm glad my choice here, Yaoyorozu (The girl with the kickass hair) got more screentime than what I saw in the main show. I was also fond of Iida ("Does a set schedule mean NOTHING to you people?") and Kacchan (& I know that's a nickname but I can't for the life of me actually find the name on IMDB).

Good Omens (2019)

Need to cop this sign for my main hustle.

My knowledge of Terry Pratchett & his books is thus:

I read The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents in 2nd grade.
I owned A Hat Full of Sky at one point.

That's really it. I was a Redwall / Mistmantle / Geronimo Stilton kind of kid on the talking animal side, and the usual suspects on the magical boy round.