The Defenders Season One Review

Marvel's Defenders, finally the stars of the small screen team up in an Avengersesque style to take on the forces of evil. While this won't be a thorough review of the series, I will be discussing what I think about the series and where I think the series is going and what I hope happens. So let's dive into the good, the bad and the ugly and see where we go.

The Strange Review SPECIAL: Death Note

I've never expressed just how near (pun intended) and dear "Death Note" is to me. "Death Note" essentially showed me what anime could be if it wasn't trapped in it's need to be anime, if that makes any sense. "Death Note" at it's core is a detective story, pure and simple, the fantastical element of a notebook that kills anyone should their name be written in it is just icing on the cake. Light & L are characters that transcend themselves as they're archetypes of the perfect rivals, equally smart, equally driven and equally enthralled with each other and under different circumstances could have been friends. "Hannibal" was live action's answer to "Death Note", "Hannibal" being a show that showed me (a writer) that I had yet to realize what good writing was and it was going to show me.

My wife got me into watching "Death Note", she didn't know that as I watched it secretly behind her back and I surprised her by asking her if she knew Shinigami's liked apples. I adore "Death Note". And now here we are in a place we probably didn't know was coming but has nevertheless arrived. America has made their own live action version of "Death Note", the day is April. 7th (the day I began writing this opening paragraph) and a teaser trailer has dropped for "Death Note" to pretty much scathing reviews with profanity such as "Dragonball Evolution" being thrown about. I'll admit the teaser raised more eyebrows and questions for me as I've yet to get a solid handle on just how this will go but I am nonetheless thrilled to finally see it. Maybe thrilled is too strong of a word, more like anxious. Now that we have some images we can start to put this thing together and see what's what.

"Death Note" is NOT an easy property to adapt, let alone adapt to an American audience, let alone adapt for movie length running time. My wife has already expressed annoyance at the project and I don't blame here, L is one of her favorite characters and seeing as how he's not ANYTHING AT ALL like he is in the series is already eyebrow raising and for myself, annoying (as it raised issues of what I call "Blackmasking" and the fact that people are allowed to complain about Light being played by a White guy but you can't say anything about L being Black because racism..., right). But as it stands now, I'm remaining optimistic and eager to see how this story will go and if it'll hit all the story beats it needs to. Will this be it's own unique story or will they attempt to cram the full breadth of "Death Note" in a bite sized piece for us? Well, I guess we'll find out, so join me and my bag of potato chips and while I watch this movie, I'll take a potato chip and eat it...

STRANGE LOG: 8-24-2017

Here we are guys, once again I'm dropping another Strange Log, and it's all "Death Note" tonight, on the eve of one of the most anticipated (at least for me) movies coming this year. Anyways, I figured now would be a time to give you guys an update on what's going on in The Strangeverse.

DC Rebirth & The Doomsday Clock

It seems these day I very rarely talk about comic books and when I do talk about comic books I very rarely have anything nice to say. That being said, while I'm not gonna start saying anything nice now, I am going to talk about them and say what's going on thus far and offer some thoughts.

Anime RE-Claimed: Prison School

As my Anime RE-Claimed series continued I tried to figure out what would be the next anime I'd sink my teeth into. I enjoyed "High School Of The Dead", LOVED "One Punch Man", the less said about "The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya" the better, but unfortunately I don't go searching for anime. That is to say, I don't go out of my way to try and find anime. Usually what gets my eye is a really good cosplay, maybe a panel or two posted somewhere and a character who looks interesting and then I'm interested. "Prison School" got me for a number of reasons: for starters, I'm currently working on a screenplay with a similar premise but completely different genre and I saw some really good cosplays for it. And considering where I work (which pretty much is a prison) I figured this could be interesting, everything you need to know is in the title "Prison School". So here's what's up with "Prison School".

Project Canceled: The Event

"The Event"...*sigh*...okay so maybe I've been completely unfair to "The Event" back in the day but man am I NOT looking forward to this. Why? Okay, to be fair "The Event" did start off as an interesting show but ultimately devolved into absurdity and poor construction of plot. This is just going off of what I remember. "The Event" came out in 2010 during TV's "Post "L O S T" Complex Plot" Era where it seemed like every network was trying to capture the lightning in a bottle that ABC had with "L O S T" (this was even played up in the marketing campaign for it saying that if "L O S T" and "24" had a baby it'd be "The Event"). Sadly, "The Event" had two things working against it, for starters it was on NBC and second, Blair Underwood was in the main cast. Despite being religious (I am a Christian) I am far from superstitious and don't believe in ghosts or good luck charms but when it comes to curses, I'm more than a little hesitant to say they don't exist and Blair Underwood is the reason why.

Seemingly every TV show Blair Underwood finds himself in the main cast, it gets canceled shortly after. This list is staggeringly long to be considered a coincidence and he's on a list of individuals labeled "TV cancer". While I'm only half-joking, his track record saw very little success in TV, no clue why that is as Blair is a good actor. "The Event" came on the scene with a marketing campaign centered around a series of "events" that would take place in the show "an assassination plot", "a mysterious disappearance" and "a CIA Cover up" while "events" they are not "THE EVENT" in which the series takes it's name from. This was to build intrigue about the exact nature of the series.

To summarize;

"The Event" is about a series of aliens who crashed on Earth and are currently detailed in an Alaskan prison. While some were detained others integrated themselves into human life. Now those aliens are preparing to takeover the world when news reaches them that their sun is going nova. One man is able to stop them."

That's "The Event" at it's core but the telling of the story involves a President seeking to release to the detained aliens and let the world know about their presence and Jason Ritter's character attempting to find his girlfriend after she's been kidnapped. These events relate to each other and it's the overall conspiracy that drives the show. When it first aired, I was impressed but after witnessing the series as a whole, I definitely flipped due to some inconsistencies I noticed that were just too glaring to ignore. Maybe it was harder to follow because of the nature of the show and having to watch it on a week to week basis that made it seem like the failure it was but I seriously doubt that. However, this is one of those moments where I feel like I was too hard on it and maybe it's worth a gander. Going into this, I'm going to try and find the exact moment when I stopped caring and see if I can figure out an answer to a question I've had since the series aired, I won't tell you what that question is now but I'll address it later on. Needless to say the answer to that question does make up the majority of why this series failed, at least to me. So for "Project Canceled" we're gonna learn about "The Event" and find out where exactly this series failed if at all.

STRANGE LOG: 7-31-2017

Not a whole lot to say but I do have some projects coming down the pike and I want you all to get ready for those things and just to give you guys a general update on my life, let's get to it.