The local “we show weird and forgotten” movie gathering I go to played Gleaming the Cube this month. Early Christian Slater movie billed as a skateboarding film that’s actually a neo-noir. Nothing prepared me for the sharp turn at the end of the first act that informed me the movie is pretending to be serious – while still having moments of angry skateboarding when Slater’s character needs it. (Turns out I would have known better had I seen the trailer. It’s much better if you go in unprepared, though.)
Before I went, the only thing I had heard about the movie was from a podcast years ago. Some guy joked the movie up until that point hadn’t been released on DVD due to a soundtrack licensing issue. There’s a song on the soundtrack called “Saigon Angel” that I can’t find anywhere. I know I probably heard it in the movie, but the song isn’t on YouTube, the artist performing it (The AVT Trid) doesn’t produce any hits online, and the soundtrack as a whole is just unavailable. It leaves me with the question of what is the story with this song?
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I finally got around to watching Invincible Presents: Atom Eve. Was not prepared to hear Lance Reddick. Wouldn’t be surprised if there were more animated projects featuring him that are just trickling out.
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Yeah… it’s just… what are they thinking the outcome of making it difficult to get their content for non-subscribers is going to be?
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What’s the final verdict on Secret Invasion? Worth the time to watch or no?
I think I’ve seen a majority of the MCU stuff out there but I skipped Agents of SHIELD, Iron Fist and the later seasons of Jessica Jones, Punisher and Luke Cage without feeling like I missed anything important. Is this one of those kind of deals?
I personally bailed after 3 episodes - sorry, my Khaleesi! It pissed me off that they fridged Hill just to have such a dull show. Maybe it gets interesting, but all I could think about was “if I was Fury and married to a Skrull I’d be like “how about circa-1973 Pam Grier tonight, honey?”” 
The best Marvel show is Legion
Edit to blur spoilers, sorry!
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I feel like you dropped more spoilers than were strictly necessary there but OK.
I am not a representative sample. I liked it.
This was about spies, but not the James Bond/Salt/Atomic Blonde sort of spies, like what Black Widow is riffing off.
Nick Fury is a spymaster. He has wheels within wheels and plans within plans, and still has to extemporise when everything goes to hell, which it always does. He is one of the most famous people on the planet, and still does most of his work where, if he’s successful, nobody will ever know.
And his enemy is not just someone who is as good at this as he is, but someone who is even more ruthless in achieving his goals. And this is a mess that Fury created (or at least, it wouldn’t be a mess in this way if he hadn’t done what he did to solve a previous mess). And yet, Fury isn’t a superhuman. He has weaknesses and failings, and he knows it. So how does he deal with a situation where his enemy is also a spymaster, and a general, and a leader of a people, and single-minded to the point of genocide, and superhuman?
It’s also set up a lot more tension on Earth going forward, and looks to be setting the stage for a version of Excalibur. The scuttlebutt is that Henry Cavill has been tapped for Captain Britain.
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It’s OK, I was leaning against watching it anyway so no harm done.
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Just like the best Marvel movie* it’s wasn’t made by Disney.
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I finished watching it today. After all there were only six episodes. But that ending!!
That was so rough to watch. So compelling. The actors really did a fantastic job but it made me sad all day long. Poor Crowley pours his heart out and ends up leaving alone. I read an interesting article on Mary Sue about the coffee. That maybe it was poisoned or something to make Aziraphale act that way. During the credits you can see them going their separate ways and I swear towards the end that Aziraphale smiled?!
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No. If they took that whole thing and condensed it into a 2 hour movie, then my opinion would be different. Six episodes was too long. Their attempts to make everything that happened more personal to Fury unfortunately fell flat by failing to develop any characters other than Fury and the antagonist. The climatic fight fell short in many ways. And, as I complained about before, the whole thing makes Fury look like far less of the super spy we were made to believe he was.
It ends with a suggestion of a major change in the MCU status quo, but we’ll see. And supposedly this feeds into the Armor Wars film.
(You skipped Agents of SHIELD?! I’m not surprised since most people did. It gets better later on. Especially when it eschews any pretense of attachment to the MCU and chucks a reoccurring antagonist.)
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What can I say? I got shit to do. If a TV show doesn’t have my interest by the second episode then they’ve lost their window. I skipped all the recent DC television shows for the same reason but I know some of those accrued very dedicated followings too.
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I get that. SHIELD and the DC shows all showed up around the same time, which is when I had a new baby and lived in a city we could barely afford to live in. My general rule is to try to give a show at least three episodes. I might have been extra lenient at the time, too.
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Yeah, once they started to get into the relationships between the characters and the connection to the Inhumans, Skrulls, and Kree, I was seriously emotionally invested. It turned out to be a pretty good series.
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The Chosen is not a series I’m watching, but it’s worth noting that the production was exempt from the strike and so may be one of the few new shows on TV this fall. Note that this is from Angel Studios, which brought us The Sound of Freedom (and a streaming site that shows censored versions of mainstream films). This will potentially continue their narrative of conservative media triumph.
We finally managed to watch the documentary Kedi, about the cats that live in the streets of Istanbul, the capital of Turkey. I was impressed by how Turkish people in the capital are fond of animals, especially the cats that roam the city. Felines don’t belong to anyone, they are cherished and treated by the community.
“It is said that cats are aware of God’s existence but that dogs are not. Dogs think people are God, but cats know that people act as middlemen to God’s will. They’re not ungrateful. They just know better.”
I think I wanted to visit Istanbul.
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I agree! Ive seen that twice, wonderful cats and people, beautifully filmed too. 
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