I'm not even going to attempt to play catch-up, and write some kind of summary of the events over the couple of months since I last wrote anything here. Way too much has been happening, both at home and at work. I'm really kicking myself for not even writing up the movies I've seen recently, so here's a brief summary:
I actually liked Batman v Superman far more than I'd expected to, given the travesty that was Man of Steel (even assuming that movie was made purely to set up BvS, it's still exceptionally poor) not least because BvS is basically the first time we've seen, on film, Batman-as-Detective, and some more serious discussions between Bruce and Alfred about the 'need' for Batman. Sure, he kills a bunch of people along the way, but Hollywood has always had trouble with Batman's 'no killing' policy, and always plays fast and loose with it. Granted, the means of pitching the two against each other is tenuous at best, but it worked in the context of the movie. The biggest problems, from my point of view, were Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor (or Lex Jr., I'm led to believe) who never managed to be the sinister, threatening mastermind he needed to be (although the "Grandma's Peach Tea" bit was awesome!), and the superfluous monster in the climactic battle. It wasn't perfect, by any means, but I actually enjoyed it.
Meanwhile, Captain America: Civil War suffered from the same malady as Avengers: Age of Ultron, in that it tried to cram far too much story into a single movie. What needed to be a deep insight into the difference of philosophy between Rogers and Stark, with far-reaching consequences in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was boiled down to a family argument that led to fisticuffs in an airport. Yes, there were consequences... but this was a story that needed to unfold over time, whereas the threat - the division amongst the costumed heroes, much like the rise of Ultron and his clones in AoU - deserved time to grow before being solved with a few all-star punch-ups. This situation is less 'solved' than Ultron, granted, with the Cap basically in hiding and Tony Stark still kind of seething about everything, but it's the kind of story that either needed to be split across a couple of movies, or to be turned into a TV series. Plus, is it just me, or was it more of an Avengers movie than a 'true' Captain America flick? Sure, there was some focus on the Cap and his attempts to rekindle his bromance with Bucky, but too much else was going on... Perhaps, what they should have done was have Civil War movies devoted to the key characters (surely there's another Iron Man movie coming along soon?), rather than one movie for the whole event...
In other news, the weird dreams still come along now and then. I had one where my computer went very seriously wrong to the point where I switched it off intending never to turn it on again, then another which involved a kidnapping in the Star Trek universe - am I right in thinking there was an episode of The Next Generation where someone was beamed away from a planet/ship the moment they were beamed there, giving people the impression that there had been a transporter malfunction, and the person had been 'lost'? This was a lot like that... I don't recall who was kidnapped, but the investigation was pretty exciting.
Other big stuff: There was a plan for my girlfriend and I to take my niece for her first visit to the Science Museum (other uncle got the Natural History Museum, last year), which didn't go according to plan for several reasons. We arrived a good 15-30 minutes later than niece and family, and the day was already so rigorously timetabled that she started getting flustered when she wanted to keep playing on some of their edutainment games when we were supposed to be heading off for a guided walk around the space section. We left quite early in the afternoon, and she was pretty uppity - due to being tired, mainly - for the remainder of the day.
On the subject of the NHM, though, my girlfriend and I recently went to the Otherworlds exhibition - photographs of (and, in some cases, from) other planets in our solar system - and were thoroughly impressed... Though the day got off to an interesting start because we were in the cue behind a certain Hollywood star and his family...
Weird thing about this blog. I'm very conscious of the fact that it will have been going for ten years, come October. I'm also very conscious of the fact that I repeatedly neglect it for ages on end. I tend to find that, living with my girlfriend, I'm not so prone to the sort of introspection this blog has embodied for the last ten years. For the most part, I can't even be bothered to write about movies, TV shows, even books that I used to enjoy writing about. One of my other blogs is getting most of my attention, so I'm not stopping... I just kind of feel that the portion of my life that brought this blog into being is pretty much over, and that either I need to start something new, or just take a break from personal blogging (which I've basically been doing, intermittently, for the last couple of years).
Watch this space...
...Or, more likely, don't...
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