STRANGE LOG: Keep your Head Warm

So what's up? Let's talk about things for a bit. I changed jobs, W00T! I now work at a grocery store! Which means better hours and closer location and direct deposit! W00T! That being said a whole lot of nonsense happened lately, let's dive in head first, ya'll.

Watchmen S01E01"It's Summer And We're Running Out Of Ice" Review

"Watchmen", "Watchmen", "Watchmen"...one of the 3 comics DC unfortunately believes are among the only comics that matter ("The Dark Knight Returns" and "Death Of Superman" being the others) and oddly enough, "Watchmen" has been making something of a comeback. I won't attribute this entirely to the upcoming (or concluding) DC comics event "Doomsday Clock", which will (in some respects) serve as an honest to God canon sequel to Alan Moore's original "Watchmen" (for better or worse, I'll let you know after I read it), and I won't attribute this entirely to DC Comics having come out with prequel books for many of the Watchmen characters in the series "Before Watchmen", and I definitely won't attribute this to the 2009 film directed by Zack Snyder that brought "Watchmen" to the masses. I can't attribute this series to any of those factors because, in reality, a "Watchmen" series was always in the works WAY before a movie was.

"Watchmen" has been one of those hot properties for a long time now, the book came out in 1987 and that's a long time for something that literally shook the comic book industry to its core (not an exaggeration) to be sitting on the shelf. Before a movie was even proposed people talked about doing a mini-series, HBO was involved before But Alan Moore's work has largely been considered unfilmable, mostly by Alan Moore himself but that didn't stop people from wanting to do it and Zack Snyder managed to do it (and in my opinion, well). But I'm not going to belabor the history of "Watchmen", just pointing out that now we're about to have 2 (count'em), 2 sequels to the same series one for the canon story or the print version of "Watchmen" ("Doomsday Clock") and one for the film ("Watchmen" the HBO series). And while The HBO series doesn't consider itself a sequel to the films, let's be 100% honest and say the mainstream aren't going to care or be aware of the comic books.

So...going into this series...I'm gonna be 100% honest, I think this is going to suck, and I say that without an ounce of care because in all honesty, I don't care. I had no real expectations going into this and once it was announced I simply rolled my eyes and said "Whatever." because the idea sounds bad on its face. For starters, if "Watchmen" were to have a sequel, it'd have to be done IN PRINT (hence why I'm more interested in "Doomsday Clock" than I am this) and second, this won't feature the "Watchmen" characters, just greater ramifications of the fallout of the events of "Watchmen"...which again I'm not interested in. The ending to "Watchmen" is left ambiguous for a reason, did Ozymandias managed to save the world? The ending is left open for you to determine who's in the right...but sadly, in the words of Dr. Manhattan "Nothing ever ends." and that includes people's obsession with this series which brings us back to this series. Which I can only imagine was conceived because "Game Of Thrones" was ending and The HBO execs were like "Holy sh*t, we need to fill airtime! What other property can we produce that already has an established fanbase?".

So am I expecting this to be good? If by production and acting quality, absolutely, but that's about it. The cast is nothing to write home about apart from Don Johnson and Jeremy Irons (playing an aged Ozymandias, how he'll manage an American accent will be fun to watch) having played 2 DC roles (Alfred and now Ozymandias) and that's about it. The writer and showrunner for the series is Damon Lindelof...and he's a huge fan of "Watchmen", and I enjoyed "L O S T", but ever since then, at least in my opinion lightning really hasn't struck (then again I never watched "The Leftovers" which might have been good...wasn't interested, I'm not too keen of works adapted from books) so having him as writer for this...I don't know. I'm gonna dive into the pilot episode and give you guys my take on the series when we come out the other end, just know I go into this not exactly wanting to hate it, but not exactly looking forward to it. We'll see how I'm doing after the break;

The One Punch Man/Dragon Ball Debate

Why am I doing this? Why? I know why because I've had a lack of things to write about as of late and this is an article that despite the eye-ball rolling subject matter of this article this happens to be a topic I have much to say about...unfortunately...So let's get into the subject matter. Ever since his introduction "One Punch Man" main character Saitama (the eponymous One Punch Man) has been the subject of many debates, namely whether or not he'd be able to beat "Dragon Ball's" Goku. Both sides have their arguments and both sides aren't backing down from their initial claims, while these topics would be better settled by Death Battle (despite many disagreeing with many of the outcomes of their fights, myself included....Majin Buu would own Kirby) I doubt Death Battle will do Goku vs Saitama anytime soon and I think those results will still be contested (hell, people think Goku would beat Superman..and no...sadly, no). I hotbed for this debate is an Instagram channel I follow @dbz_exlusive where this debate is carried on, so I decided since I have no dog in this fight and could really care less, I'm gonna settle this debate and figure out who would win between Goku & Saitama. Let's dive in.

Mortal Kombat 11 Story Mode Review

So it's been a while since the game's release but better late than never, right? Now that I've had time to sit and let everything marinate and listen to a few perspectives on it, I think I'm ready to talk about "Mortal Kombat 11". I've said in my review of the previous game I was disappointed with "Mortal Kombat X"s story but I was interested to see where things were goings; new characters were introduced, new relationships were established and very different things were happening that altered the "Mortal Kombat" universe from the one we're familiar with. This game...*sigh* let's dive in.

STRANGE LOG: May Non Sequiturs Reign!! Vol. II

Okay, okay, okay. I get it! Yet ANOTHER Strange Log! *sigh* I know, there hasn't been any genuine articles on this site for a while and that's because I'M BUSY and #Dadlife! But I've got some downtime at work to burn through a few topics that are not worthy of an entire article, so let's dive in, yeah?

Why An AEW Weekly Show is a BAD Idea!

So it looks like AEW is well on it's way to being WWE's biggest rival as TNA or IMPACT Wrestling as it's called now is merely a footnote in the scope of wrestling. AEW has BIG dollars behind it with the Khan Family and some very talented minds involved in the process, Cody Rhodes and 2 major coups behind it with Chris Jericho and the now renamed (although it was previously his name) John Moxley (formerly Dean Ambrose) adding legitimacy to the new brand and 5 star match collector Kenny Omega as an Executive, AEW is an up and coming force to be reckoned with that the wrestling world has never seen before since Hall, Nash and Hogan formed The nWo. With that being said, AEW is still a new federation (or territory, as they're called in the biz) and with that they can learn from the mistakes of past territories and I'm here to explain why an AEW weekly show is a BAD idea. Let's dive in.

Rethinking Ari Aster

Okay, listen, I still think "Hereditary" sucks, let me be clear, the performances are great, the directing and cinematography is great, and aside from the wasted use of Gabriel Bryne, I'd say overall "Hereditary" is a technically sound movie through and through, but just because it looks good doesn't mean it is good and the story could have been told A LOT better, the characters could have been a lot stronger, especially Peter but unfortunately he turned out to be your typical high school senior obsessed with girls and smokin' pot, so when the bad thing happens to the poor boy you can hardly say it was that bad as the boy barely had character, to begin with. But I digress, all of these are issues I had with "Hereditary" and I'll be happy to discuss them with anyone but I'm not here to talk about "Hereditary", not entirely anyway, I'm actually here to talk about its writer and director, Ari Aster. Very few in Hollywood can claim both writer and director of their own projects and usually, when that happens it typically means the studios has quite a bit of faith in them.

"Hereditary" despite my best understanding has somehow managed to become a massive cult hit, and while I'm not the only one who doesn't like the movie, I'm the only one (that I'm aware of) who doesn't like the movie because of the story and how its told. But I digress, so Ari Aster's next film "Midsommar" which does look interesting enough to warrant my observation as details emerge is now on everyone's radar as being the next cult hit. So I wanted to take a look at Ari Aster's available body of work and stumbled upon his film "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" and this began my rethinking of Ari Aster. I'll explain what I mean after the break. Spoilers of "Hereditary" and "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" below.