Thor: Ragnarok / Justice League / Crisis on Earth-X

I’m currently on a vacation at home – or as it called now: staycation – and on Monday I had lunch at one of my favourite Italian restaurants (Actually, it’s an Italian deli that also serves warm food and it’s soo good!). Upon driving home in the early afternoon I thought to myself: what a wonderful world what now to do with the rest of the afternoon. And it just so happened that I drove past a local movie theatre. So at 3 in the afternoon on a Monday I decided to check out what was playing (I had a decent enough idea going in though). And what have you: At 3.15 an airing of Thor: Ragnarok. And at 6.00 an airing of Justice League. Quick calculation: Is Thor done when JL starts? Probably. OK, so both tickets were bought. Both movies were in German dubbing because watching O-Ton as we call it would have required a bit more planning (not every theatre shows them and only on specific times).

At the Thor airing we were three people in the theatre. A mom with her kid and I. Which is not suprising considering it was the afternoon of a regular workday in week 4 of the movie. Justice League at 6pm was also only watched by six people (including myself) in week 2 at a bit more accessible time.

Then two days later I had also caught up with the episodes of Supergirl, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow to watch the big crossover event (Arrow being the fourth show to cross). And so I watched Crisis on Earth-X.

And here’s what I thought about all of them:

Thor: Ragnarok

Plot: Thor’s long-lost sister Hella comes back and wants to destroy Asgard. Thor gets banished to an intergalactice waste disposal and has to find his way back.

I liked the first Thor movie. I don’t remember much about the second one. But nor do I remember much about the second and third Iron Man movies. To be honest, I don’t remember much about any MCU movie that doesn’t have Loki in it, except maybe for the Norton Hulk movie.

That’s one of the issues of the Marvel movies. They are great fun while you watch them (and that’s where and how they make their money) but they are not for the ages. They’re like a good rollercoaster ride. You remember the thrill but you don’t remember the details.

The same will be true for Ragnarok. The villain was once again pretty forgettable and to be perfectly honest not really needed at all for the movie. Because the best parts of the movie took place on the waste planet. Especially all the interactions with Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster (Gamemaster? Whatever.).

I did have a problem with the jokes. Not any one in particular, most of them were at least amusing. More with the frequency of them. Sometimes this felt like it tried to be a laugh-track comedy were every sentence had to have a punchline. IMHO, that was a bit too much. In this regard I loved the more sporadic approach of the first movie where he’d just randomly smash his glass after he’d emptied it, praising the brew within.

As for CGI, Marvel has this part down. Although I could have sworn that the Hulk looked different than before, even a bit smaller. This nagged at me for a bit. Also, I noticed that for the sake of the plot the pathway to the Bifröst was changed, especially what’s supposed to be – or not be – under it.

I loved that Thor wised up for once and predicted Loki’s inevitable betrayal. When I saw that scene, the opening scene of Firefly sprung to my mind:

When I saw Karl Urban, I just thought: You’re in this, too? Considering how small his part was, it was astounding – or depressing depending on the point of view – how much more developed his character was in comparison to Hella’s. And at least he had a part to play in comparison to the disposal of the Warriors Three.

All in all it was once again an enjoyable ride but again no deeper meaning to be gained from it.

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Purchase Diary 2015 – September to December

Butter (2011)


Sep 19th – €3.99 @ Media Markt

Collection no. 1218

Auf Achse: The Complete Series (1980 – 1996)
(Auf Achse: Die komplette Serie)


Sep 19th – €29.99 @ Media Markt

Collection no. 13014 – 13025

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)


Sep 19th – €12.90 @ Media Markt

Collection no. 1219

Two Night Stand (2014)


Sep 19th – €9.99 @ Media Markt

Collection no. 1220

Dumb and Dumber To (2014)


Sep 24th – €9.99 @ Drogerie Müller

Collection no. 1221

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Purchase Diary 2015 – January / February

Longmire: Season 2 (2013)


Jan 6th – €0.00 ($39.98) @ Amazon.com (paid via gift certificate)

Collection no. 12884 – 12886

Polizeiruf 110: Der Kreuzworträtselfall (1988)


Jan 6th – €11.99 @ Amazon.de

Collection no. 12887

Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey (2014)


Jan 9th – €21.72 ($19.99) @ Amazon.com

Collection no. 20041 – 20044

Home Improvement: The Complete Series (1991 – 1999)


Jan 15th – €32.97 @ Amazon.de

Collection no. 12888 – 12915

Arrow: Season 2 (2013 – 2014)


Jan 16th – €21.52 ($19.99) @ Amazon.com

Collection no. 12916 – 12924

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The Flash

The Flash @ Wikipedia
The Flash @ IMDb

Synopsis: No, not that one. 😉
The Flash is a spin-off series of The CW’s Arrow where it started as a sort-of backdoor pilot until it got an actual pilot episode.
In Arrow‘s second season police lab technician Barry Allen visits Oliver Queen’s home town Starling City and actually meets the vigilante.
Back in his own town an experiment in a nearby research facility goes horribly wrong and puts Barry into a coma.
When he wakes up, his body is going into overdrive, allowing him to move and heal at incredible speeds.
But the accident changed other people as well and not all of them are such decent citizens as Barry.

My Opinion: They basically re-used the idea that Smallville had when Clark’s arrival on Earth did not just bring Clark but also the meteor shower that caused mutations and gave Clark enemies to fight against.
But that’s not such a bad thing. This way you don’t need to explain where suddenly all these people with weird powers come from, so that the Flash has something to do week after week.
I also enjoyed the cameo casting of John Wesley Shipp who used to be the Flash in the 1990s (also Barry Allen*).
To be honest I was a bit sceptical when Barry appeared in Starling City because I thought he looked a tad bit too young.
But over the course of these two Arrow episodes and the pre-released pilot episode of The Flash he already grew on me and I will be tuning in when it actually begins.

*The person carrying the moniker “The Flash” is not always the same person, just like there are different Green Lanterns. There were at least for people who used that name: Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West and Bart Allen. Smallville‘s version of the Flash (who went by “Impulse” in the early days) was Bart Allen.

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Purchase Diary 2013 – November / December

Banana Joe (1982)


Nov 9th – €7.99 @ Drogerie Müller

Collection no. 1072

Trinity: Good Guys and Bad Guys (1985)
(I Poliziotti dell’ Strada)


Nov 9th – €7.99 @ Drogerie Müller

Collection no. 1073

They Call Me Trinity (1970)
(Lo chiamavano Trinità)


Nov 9th – €7.99 @ Drogerie Müller

Collection no. 1074

Trinity is Still My Name! was released twice in German theatres. Back in 1971 in the original release year and then in 1982, this time with a new (more funnier) dubbing and slightly cut (1:58 instead of 2:05). Both versions have their merrit and give the same movie a completely different tone.

Trinity is Still My Name! (1971)
(…continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità)


Nov 9th – €7.99 @ Drogerie Müller

Collection no. 1075

Trinity is Still My Name! (1971)
(…continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità)


Nov 9th – €7.99 @ Drogerie Müller

Collection no. 1076

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TV Junkie: A History

I watched a lot of TV shows over the years. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. And I watched accross the board.

Keep in mind that I’m only 35 years old.

I watched The Guiding Light for two years straight (it’s a soap opera whose German title was the Springfield Story). I watched medical shows like Trapper John M.D. and lawyer shows like L.A. Law. I watched the 80s action shows from MacGuyver to Riptide. I even watched Love Boat every weekday on one of the first private channels in Germany: Sat.1. I got up at 6am on every Saturday morning to watch Rawhide (Tausend Meilen Staub, lit. “A Thousand Miles of Dust”) with a very young and pre-Fistful Clint Eastwood. I knew who Daniel Boone was around the same time I met the Cartwrights as well as the men from the Shiloh Ranch.

And last weekend I binge-watched the first Netflix show House of Cards (Big recommendation! Kevin Spacey is a brilliant Magnificent Bastard!) and I got curious as to how many shows I watched intently over the past two and a half decades.

With the help of the list on the German site Wunschliste.de I created a list of “my” shows.

I only counted live-action fiction shows, no animated shows may they be Saturday morning cartoons like Yogi Bear or Scooby-Doo or evening shows like The Simpsons or South Park. No scripted reality (which I’m avoiding to 99% anyway with the exception of Comic Book Men). In this list are only shows which I followed for more than a year unless the show itself didn’t last that long.

And the answer was: 244 246 247. Two hundred and fourty four six seven different shows I watched with active interest since I’ve started watching television. And the worst thing is: Of most of these shows I watched 90% or more episodes at least once.

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Arrow

Arrow @ Wikipedia
Arrow @ IMDb

Five years ago a yacht sank in the middle of the ocean. Aboard were billionaire Robert Queen and his son Oliver, the girl Oliver was sleeping with (who’s not his girlfriend) and at least one business partner of Robert’s. Only Oliver survived and he washed up on the shore of an island where he lived for the following years.

Now he’s back in his hometown but his life has changed. On the surface he’s still the same playboy that he was before the accident (if it was one) trying to get back into the life of the high society and to reconcile with his former girlfriend Laurel who lost her sister on that yacht.

Beneath the surface Oliver has come back with a mission: To free the city of the corrupt and powerful who are destroying it. He becomes the Green Arrow, a mysterious vigilante who hunts down the people on his list until they’re either properly prosecuted by the law or dead.

Both his lives aren’t made any easier by the fact that his mother is somehow involved in the accident but also hired a trained bodyguard for her son (which makes it harder to slip away) but also the fact that his former girlfriend Dinah “Laurel” Lance is a district attorney and her father (who lost a daughter that fateful day) is a police detective who holds a serious grudge against both Oliver and the Green Arrow.

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