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My Evening With Neil Gaiman!

When I bought a ticket for “An Evening with Neil Gaiman” in Seattle, I was unsure as to what I was buying.  Was he just going to read his stuff? Was he going to answer questions?  Was he going to talk about his current projects?  It turns out the answer was yes to the first two questions and briefly mention the third.

It was different experience because it was just him, alone, on stage in a large hall standing in front of a lectern.  While he was introduced by a local radio host and an accordion player, this was all about Neil Gaiman talking to his fans.  It was wonderful.  He has a warm English accent, and he brought his work to life as he spoke.  He read a story from his current book, Norse Mythology, and then several of his different short works.  My only complaints about the evening were that some of the questions asked of him were on the generic side, and that I wished he would have gone longer.  Apparently I was not the only person who thought that way because we clapped until he came out for an encore.

I am not sure how many authors sell out symphony halls and then get cheered on for just one last story, but believe me when I tell you that it all felt perfectly natural, and I had thought that it would have worked I would have cheered him on for a second encore.  It made me wish that we treated more of our authors like rock stars.  They fill this world with their creativity, but then we generally ignore them, or tell them they should get back to work because they are not writing fast enough.

If Neil Gaiman should come traipsing around your town, you should go see him.  I believe his next stop is Dallas.  It was a fun night, and not one that I am going to forget.  Now if only he would stop touring around the world and get back to writing.  There are novels I need to read that haven’t been written yet.

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The Paladin vs The Iron ZZZzzzzzz

Shmee is recovering from his night with Neil Gaiman (PHRASING!) so I’ve decided to actually write my review of Netflix’s Iron Fist.

It’s OK.

Now what to talk about?

Fine, I’ll tell you more. I went into this show knowing the reviews weren’t great, but I had read a few that gave me some hope that Marvel’s Kung Fu Master would be a worthy entry in the NMU (Netflix Marvel Universe). While both Daredevil Season 2 and Powerman weren’t as good as Daredevil Season 1 or Jessica Jones, they had that certain something that made you keep watching. Iron Fist does not have that certain something.

People have wanted to blame Finn Jones’ portrayal of Danny Rand, rich white kid, turned plane crash survivor, turned child forced to learn kung-fu, turned The Living Weapon, turned rich white guy again and while his performance isn’t perfect it is the best one can do with the character as he was written.

Danny Rand or the Iron Fist seem to change from episode to episode or even from scene to scene. There are moments were he is a standout character, like at the beginning when he’s shoeless and just wanting to talk to the Meachum’s. Then he’s the conflicted The Living Weapon. Now he’s in an insane asylum. Now he’s Buddhist. Now he’s suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. The character is far too scattered to make any sense.

The writers in wanting to not stray too far from the mold tried to shoehorn comic book ideas into a more gritty and broken NMU character and it neither makes him interesting or different from the other three. Iron Fist had the potential to be the more wild and free one, the CW’s Flash to the CW’s Arrow if you will.

Of course character and plot could have been ignored if the Kung-Fu had been excellent. I’m talking about Danny just walking down the street and getting jumped by a gang for no reason in the middle of the episode; just to have a fight scene. Iron Fist should have reveled in the Kung-Fu origin of the character and just had him fighting all the time, in all sorts of place. Danny’s eating soup at the soup kitchen? BAM! Fighting off the local toughs because they’re taking food from an old man. Iron Fist listening to his iPod in central park? BAM! Ninjas! The fights would be wild, constant, and at the end of it Danny would shrug his shoulders and move on.

Instead we got only a few fight scenes, usually very slow and not very interesting.

The rest of the cast do a great job though, so its worth watching it for them for the most part. Their characters also don’t seem to know who they are, except Clair Temple, she’s knows what’s up. But Jessica Henwick, Jessica Stroup, Tom Pelphrey, David Wenham, and Carrie Ann Moss all do their best with what they have.

About five episodes in I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish the show, but my wife actually enjoyed it and kept turning it on as soon as the kids were in bed. I’m glad I finished it, but I’m not sure I want more adventures with the Iron Snoozefest by himself. Hopefully he and all the others come together in an epic adventure in The Defenders.

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Legion Is My Favorite Show So Far This Year!

I am kind of mad.  Because besides Archer I never had a reason to watch FX, but now I can’t wait for the next season of Legion.  It was finally an X-Men show/movie about that wasn’t about superheroes.  It was just about mutants trying to figure out how to live in a hostile world.  Sure there was some hero-y stuff, but that is mostly because they have cool powers and they need to use them from time to time because bad people want to hurt them.

Another great part of the show is that because of David’s mutation and his disease Legion is unendingly weird and trippy.  It is like they let Stanley Kubrick take a crack that the superhero genre.  Every episode had something cool to show us, and because it was only eight episodes long it was relatively light on filler.

While this is definitely Dan Stevens’/David’s show, Aubrey Plaza as Lenny stole every episode she was in.  She was incredibly watchable.  The rest of the cast was delightful as well.  Though I did feel that Rachel Keller as David’s love interest Sydney could have used more to do.  However, she did serve as a good fill in for the audience taking in all the crazy things happening around her.  A non-comedic straight-man if you will.  Because things really did get super nuts.

We have twelve long months before Legion is back on the air, and now I have to figure out how to keep FX as part of my cable package.  Whereas before I could have lived without it, and they are making another X-Men show to compliment this one!  Curse you good TV!!!!!!!!  Oh well, I might as well enjoy it.  Queue the X-Men theme!

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Mass Effect: Andromeda Probably Doesn’t Review Well…

I am quite a bit further in to Mass Effect: Andromeda, and I am still having a great time.  Much better than the reviews and people who played the early trial would have led me to believe, so what caused this discrepancy?  I think it is the way reviewers have to play games, and the part of the game the trial members were locked in too.

In order to review Mass Effect: Andromeda before the embargo lifted, reviewers would have had to play the game for like eight hours a day or more just to see most of the content, and then because they need to review everything, they would have had to play all the crappy filler missions too.  That means they would have had to sit through every poorly written dialog tree, and encounter every bug the game has to offer for a full work day.  That wouldn’t be great.  I am surprised under those circumstances the reviews are as good as they are.

Meanwhile the user reviews on Metacritic are even worse, but when you read them, they all pretty much come from people who only played the ten hour one planet trial.  Again, the trial forced players to play only the worst part of the game.  Eos doesn’t even get good until the second time you visit it.  EA should have just skipped the trial, or allowed people to get as far as they could in ten hours, so they could have gotten to the good parts.  Locking people in to the worst part of the game did not help sell the game.

Listen, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a flawed game, but still a very fun one provided you can play the good parts and skip everything else, and there are plenty of good parts.  The people that gave the game its review numbers were not allowed to do that.  We as gamers are, so while your results may very, I think Mass Effect: Andromeda is worth playing, but I am not saying the reviewers were wrong.  They were just forced to play the worst this game has to offer.

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Valerian Looks Freaking Amazing In Trailer #2!

With all the comic book adaptations hitting the big screen these days it is hard to get excited about all of them, but holy smokes Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets looks fantastic.  It is a like watching an ice cream sundae.  I just want to dive right in!  Now I am hungry and excited.  July can’t get here soon enough!  While the last trailer gave us a glimpse of all the crazy stuff we were going to see, this trailer gives us Valerian’s mission: to stop something… Oh well, it looks too good to get too concerned about a generic ominous plot.