The House with a Clock in its Walls

It’s Halloween !!! So for this special occasion I’ve decided to put up a review of The House with a Clock in its walls, which came out in September of 2018. I wrote this after seeing it in the theatre and it helped put me into the mood for the season. So here it is.

Just got back from house with a clock in its walls. It was pretty good. It was delightfully fun, eccentric, quirky and weird. The acting was all good, as were the characters. Jack Black is fun as always, and Kate Blanchett was as well. The characters were all good and the storyline was ok. All the production stuff was great and it started with the old Universal and Amblin studio intros which was nostalgic and great. The sets, costumes, and ideas were all good and whimsical. The villains were ok, a bit of an afterthought but still ok nonetheless. The score was great giving it a sense of the era as well as giving off that magical feeling. Overall it was a fun movie. It’s a good Halloween movie for those that aren’t much for horror movies and love the whimsical and magical nature of the season. It’s a fun ride, two thumbs up. Go see it

After a year I still feel the same way about it. I think its an underrated movie that in time could become a part of the fun halloween movie family, with movies like Halloweentown or Hocus Pocus. It’s a fun movie made for a younger audience, but it doesn’t talk down to anyone and people of any age can enjoy it. Which nowadays is kind of rare, especially these types of movies. It’s still a fun movie that’s worth putting on at this time of year.

Why aren’t Comedy Movies being made anymore?

This is going off of stuff I talked about in my post about PC culture. For a reminder, that post was a response to a lot of criticism I’ve seen around the internet about PC Culture with focus on Joker director Todd Phillips’ recent comments about comedies not being able to be made because of said PC Culture. To me comedy movies aren’t being made as much anymore because of the advent of the internet. The internet has effected the way comedy could be made in this day and age. For a movie to be a comedy now it needs to have another genre with it, it needs to be a movie that’s also funny. I feel this way as the internet has massively changed the way we consume our comedy. As the internet, streaming, and social media have become increasingly prevalent in our daily lives, and increasing number of people are turning to the internet to make a living. One of the biggest ways to do so is to do comedy. People love to say that comedy as a career is dying because everyone gets offended or that pc culture is killing it. In reality that’s a load of shite. Comedy is one of the most prevalent forms of entertainment on the internet. It’s just that there’s so many people out there doing their own comedy out there that traditional comics aren’t able to keep up. If you look at the popularity of gamers online a lot of the time they’re popular because they’re funny, not because they’re good at games. So many channels that started as gaming channels have transitioned over to doing all sorts of other content because they are funny and make people laugh. So much of the internet is devoted to making people laugh. Why pay to go see a comedy show when I can go online and find funny stuff online that tackles a lot of different topics.  Comedy is a very subjective thing, people aren’t always going to agree on what is funny. Comedy also changes all the time, with the rise of the internet that has become very much apparent. The internet has created an environment where our attention span has changed, and that’s for everything including comedy. The internet has created a world where everyone can through their opinion in and create whatever they want. The greatest example of this is memes. Memes are probably the most popular form of comedy on the internet. There are a lot of people out there that make their living off of creating and reacting to memes. Memes are the fastest trends out there as within weeks something can go from being seen everywhere to being forgotten about within the blink of an eye. Memes themselves have changed over time as people try to find more and more things to make into a meme, memes from 5 years ago are completely different than the ones found out there today. Even outside of the memes, the ability for anyone to make anything has allowed a situation where people don’t need to go through the traditional routes to have their comedy seen, they can just go online and make videos. So to me it makes sense to me that  comedy movies aren’t being made as much anymore, everything that the writers would be able to do is online already. It’s also why I say that PC culture stuff is BS because there’s some dark offensive comedy online that gets nothing. Theres a lot of dark humour, weird humour, and random humour out there that movies or comedians just can’t compete with. There’s so many memes that are work off other memes and bring back old memes to work with new memes. It’s insane. No comedian is going to be able to match the creativity or just weirdness of the internet. Even then, comedy movies are still being made and will always be made, they’re just not as prevalent anymore. 

Dark Nights Metal

This is my most recent review, written in September of 2019. It is about the DC Comics event that was published from June of 2017 to April of 2018. The event is about the DC universe discovering the existence of a lower multidimensional multiversal plane, where the failed universes go to be wiped from existence. These worlds are basically nightmare versions of the main universe where all the negative emotions and fears become real. This event focuses on several evil versions of Batman from this multiverse, called the Dark Multiverse. The thing that made this event so popular is that it doesn’t just look at evil versions of Batman, it looks at evil versions of Batman who has become evil due to taking abilities and properties from other characters. An example being the one with the main focus is the Batman who laughs, who is a perfect mixture of Batman and the Joker. This event had a few tie-ins, mainly a prequel before the event started, a comic focusing on some of the other characters during the early stages of the event, and comics showing the backstory of all the shown dark knights. The comic uses stuff established in earlier comics, such as the character bartbatos from Batman’s journey through time after being sent back by Darkseid’s omega beams in Final Crisis. With all of that established let’s move on to the review.

So I just finished reading through the main dark nights metal event and I have to say, that was a blast. It’s a fun read the builds nicely on stuff that’s been happening in the multiverse since final crisis back all those years ago. The series builds it’s stakes really well, with an interesting threat to the heroes and the earth as a whole. It’s got this weirdness to it, establishing this new aspect of the multiverse and things that will come into play in future stories. The comic is over the top and knows when to have it’s fun, whether it’s silly like with baby darkseid or starro coming back, or cool like with that team-up battle between Joker and Batman vs The batman who laughs. It’s a wide-reaching and multiverse spanning event, that is still able to be focused on the story that it is telling. The villain is pretty good, although he’s another one of those “I’m evil and want to drag the world into darkness because I want to and I let you do this so I could do this” guy like a surprising amount of event comic villains are out there. This event is obviously batman based, as the main story is all about bats and the main villain is bat themed and the villains are all mostly evil batmen. I think that the main story could have given more time to the other dark knights rather than focus specifically on the batman who laughs, as they aren’t really used in a lot of the big events in this comic.  Over-all this was a fun and epic read, well worth getting. 

While this is still pretty recent, some stuff has changed a little for me. I’ve actually read the tie-ins to the comic. I guess we can get a little review of those and what those are. I am going to talk about them as they are in the collected editions as that is how I have read them. Starting with Dark Days: The Road to Metal. This comic is about setting up the event and giving the readers the backstory to the events about to happen. It also gives us the origin of things that is going to happen in this event. It establishes why this is about to happen, what caused this, and what the focus of the story is on. A major focus of the story is the power in metal, as the use of certain powerful metals caused this, and can help solve this. The villains’ power is in metal and their weakness is in metal. It shows how Batman is the reason for this problem. He brought them here due to his obsession with a mystery that has eluded him for years and how he might not be that far from the other batmen. This can be seen when he’s avoiding the Justice League while trying to solve this mystery. Over-all its pretty good and pretty integral to fully understanding metal.

The next one is The Resistance. This collects the tie-in issues from a number of DC comics that deal with a small gathering of heroes and villains from the Suicide Squad and Teen Titans in Gotham during the early stages of the event. It’s an important part of the story as it shows what has happened in Gotham and the earth while all the main issues show more of the adventure aspect of the comic. It shows how powerless the humans are, with their best weapons being shown empowering the dark knight known as The Merciless. It also gives us what happened to the surviving characters seen later in the Event as it could be a little confusing as to what has happened since then. The comic gives us more of the dark knights and shows just how powerful they are and how dangerous they are. And the last one is The Nightmare Batmen. This comic gives us the origins and backstory of the dark knights in the event. It shows us how they were created, the moment they became them, and their recruitment. These are all pretty cool as we get to see different worlds and how they’ve gone to crap. My only issue with the comic is that characters have certain abilities that don’t make sense to me, maybe its because they aren’t complete universes so the laws and rules don’t apply as much to them. The two I take issue with are The Dawnbreaker (evil Bat-Green Lantern) and The Drowned (evil Bat-Aquawoman). They have abilities that kind of don’t make sense. The Dawnbreaker was created by Bruce Wayne becoming a Green Lantern on the night of his parents’ murder, and he somehow over powers the ring to kill Joe Chill and somehow lets the “dark” in and now the ring has dark abilities to it. The Drowned gets her abilities by getting surgery done to be able to fight and kill Aquawoman, but she also has the ability to summon dark water and an army of undead things through her mouth somehow. It’s weird.

So this became a review of the event as a whole. Over-all it’s a fun event with large stakes for the universe going forward with recurring villains and a major change that the universe will be dealing with for a while. One thing I haven’t talked about yet is that they actually released a Dark Nights: Metal metal album which is actually pretty good. My only wishes are that they showed more of the other dark knights as even with all the tie-ins the one who laughs is still the main focus. He is the most popular of the knights and still has roles in the comics. I wish we get to see more from this dark multiverse, it would be cool to see different evil nightmare versions of other characters. The artwork for the event is all amazing, Capullo does an amazing job with giving these characters unique and interesting designs. It is able to depict dark scenes completely covered in black and still be colourful and fun. After this I’m going to try to keep it more focused but we’ll see. Over-all it’s an even that’s worth reading fully as there’s not that much out there, unlike some other events. It lives up to its name, it’s dark, full of knights and nightmares, and is metal.

Thoughts on “PC Culture”

Starting off strong here, but I figured why not, also because this is the most recent thing I’ve thought about so let’s begin

So Todd Phillips recently talked about how pc culture has ruined comedies. But here’s what I think about that. Comedy films still come out all the time, it’s just that raunchy comedies aren’t as popular as they used to be. It’s in a down time, all genres go through this.  But outside of that I think it’s a load of rubbish. The only people I see out there are the ones that complain about pc culture and “SJWs”. By that I mean that I’ve seen way more people complain about “political correctness culture” for a long while now over people talking about something that offended them. I just laugh whenever I see people complaining about it, because it’s usually the people who created the culture in the first place. If ‘pc culture” is a real thing, then somebody had to put the idea into our heads. I mean we grew up in a time where when someone didn’t like something it was evil or corrupting the youth and should be banned. Whenever they didn’t like something they created a parental group to try to change stuff. Such as in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers when Lord Zedd became silly because parents complained that he was too scary for their children. It’s a thing that’s been going on for a long time, it goes back to popular music and how jazz or rock n’ roll was corrupting the youth so we have to stop playing it. Even then, times change, things we used to find funny aren’t that funny anymore. 

With the internet we have an easy way to educate ourselves on to why people find things unfunny or offensive. The internet has allowed more people to have their voices and opinions heard and so when people don’t like something or find it offensive they can get their feelings out there much more than in the past. Even then offensive comedy still exists in this day and age, South Park is still on the air, Always Sunny is one of the longest lasting sit-coms of all time, Family Guy is still on the air. Heck we live in a time where so many comedians have been able to make money off of complaining about pc culture. Offensive comedy is one that a lot of people try to do, but is it really worth it? I mean if the joke comes off wrong or doesn’t land like you want it to, you’re now an asshole. All that matters is the execution of the joke, intentions don’t matter, all that matters is how it comes off and how the audience responds to it. You could have the best intentions for a joke, but unless those intentions are laid out before hand, than the only thing that matters is how it’s received. People now just aren’t as willing to receive jokes like that anymore. Outside of that, comedies just aren’t being made as often anymore because of the variety of content out there on the internet. Why pay to see a movie when I can go to YouTube for free to see all kinds of stuff. Even then, comedy is a genre that is really subjective and what kinds of comedy people found funny even a year ago, could change to today. Even then, you can be funny without having to put someone else down. At least nowadays, when it comes to this stuff there’s a dialogue created around it, it’s not just “this is bad and so should be banned” people are talking about what offended them and why. We’re in a better place to deal with this stuff than we were even 20 years ago. I mean just look at the constant suggestion of banning violent video games because parents don’t want to listen to what the ESRB says about the game. It just takes me back to the amount of times I’ve heard “oh, who knew the generation that grew up with South Park would be so sensitive” over the past few weeks and months. I mean I don’t get why being sensitive is a bad thing, it means you’re thinking of others and allowing yourself to feel emotions for others and thinking about others when you do and say things. I don’t know, i think it’s a societal thing to work on as a whole.

Wow this got into me rambling pretty darn fast, in the future I’ll try to be more organized when it comes to posts like these. I might also be coming back to make some edits or additions to this post going forward.

Introducing Myself

Hello, my name is Andrew and this is my blog

I am a student, and have been for a long time, and now technically a filmmaker. I am a fan of many things, including pro wrestling, comic books, movies, tv shows, toys and more. I decided to start a blog to be able to organize myself and the things I think about all in one place, as well as to get my thoughts out there. I have been posting movie reviews on my personal facebook for a few years now and I’ve finally decided on giving them their own place to be. This blog will feature all of my interests as they all relate to each other. I have blogged in the past for school projects that are still up if you want to see them. I wanted to keep posting on them but I fell out of it quick. So I’ve created this blog to try to keep myself creative and to give myself something to do. I’ll probably be constantly changing and editing stuff as we go along to get my posts and the blog itself to a point where I’m happy and proud of it. So join my on this ride as we go throughout my mind.

My First Blog Post

So I finally decided to do it. I finally made myself a blog. This blog will be a place for me to organize and share my thoughts to those that want to read them. The content I’ll be putting here will be whatever I want it to be, from movie reviews, comic book reviews, toy reviews, to just random rants and ideas I have on the daily. So strap in and we’ll see where this takes us. Before I start posting, a lot of the stuff I’ll be posting, especially early on, will be reviews that I have been building up over the past few years on my personal social media pages. Although I will be adding to them in a post sense to see how I feel about the film this many years later.