The New Mutants – Movie Review

Produced by 20th Century Studios and released in 2020. It’s directed by Josh Boone who cowrote the screenplay with Knate Lee. It’s loosely based on the Marvel comics series The New Mutants. It stars Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt, and Henry Zaga.

The movie is about five teenage mutants being kept in a “hospital” of sort and looked after by a “doctor” who not only tends to their physical needs but their mental states as well. All five have killed people whether by accident or on purpose. They are all quite powerful though Rahne Sinclair is the lowest on the scale with her werewolf alter ego. The most powerful is Danielle “Dani” Moonstar whose psychic abilities are on par with Jean Gray pre Phoenix.

I am a big fan of the comic book series this movie is loosely based on, and I can tell you they mucked up the backstories on ALL of the characters. Illyana is very powerful in the comics and she’s also the youngest of the group. Her dragon, Lockheed is real and not a sock puppet. Illyana, in the comics was never abused in any way, she’s actually a devilish little git with the ability to go to hell and control demons.

In short, the comics are way better than the movie as far as stories go.

Still, the show had a decent plot, and the action was good. The actors were okay too, nobody really stood out as an Oscar winner – not to me. Still, it’s better than a poke in the eye.

As always, don’t take my word for it. See the movie for yourself and then, let’s chat about it. I love discussing things with people, even if they have different opinions than mine – even more so in fact.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

Ready Player One – Movie Review

This is a Warner Bros. film that is based on the book by the same name. It was directed by Stephen Spielberg. It stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Phillip Zhao, and Win Morisaki. It was released in 2018.

This movie is a futuristic sci-fi set in 2045. The world is overcrowded and pretty miserable. They use online games as a way of escaping as well as a worldwide hub called Oasis. Oasis is a pure world for gaming, no ads, no marketing just fun. It provides access to even retro games like Adventure Quest and Pong. Avatars are fully customizable and can be anyone/anything the player wants.

The creator of the game died and willed that the winner of a contest he designed would win control of the Oasis and all it’s games. The contest has clues leading to three keys, and each key leads to another area of the contest with its clues and keys. The clues are based on the life of the creator and all sorts of data on his life is available in the Archives of the games should the players want to go through them. The clues are very tricky as are the games you have to beat.

I was with my gentleman friend when it was on cable, and we only caught the last 30 minutes of it. We had fun trying to identify as many of the avatars from our days playing old school games, and there were quite a few of them. The main character uses an avatar that looks a lot like those used in the Final Fantasy franchise.

Just recently, I was able to watch the entire show, and I quite enjoyed it. I liked the plot, and the idea behind the movie. It was geared more towards kids I guess, but it was still a great movie to watch. The actors were quite good and though I didn’t recognize any of the kids, I did recognize two of the adult male actors. They did fantastic jobs in their supporting roles as the antagonists.

I highly recommend seeing this game if just for the fun of seeing old games from your past – if you’re older than 40 anyway. 🙂 Don’t take my word for it, check it out, and I hope you have as much fun watching it as I did.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

Scrivener: Writing Program Review

Many years ago, I was one of the winners of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which is held every November and has participants from around the world. That year, one of the prizes for winning was a free copy of Scrivener. That was about ten years ago, when I wrote the rough draft for Crimson Knight.

I have only had to update and pay for the right to use the program three times, and the program has gotten better in many ways and in others, it needs more work.

One of the issues I’ve found with it is that you practically have to take a course to learn how to use the program. In fact, there are quite a few online classes as well as books teaching you how to use Scrivener. I didn’t have those resources so, I wasted quite a few hours learning how to do things correctly. It was a lot of trial and error, mostly error, and I am still not fully sure of what I’m doing.

That said, let’s talk about the program a bit.

What is Scrivener?

Scrivener is a program designed to help writers write. Sounds like a word processor from back in the day, but it does a great deal more than that. In addition to helping you format your work using either the presets provided or custom elements, it also:

Assists with editing during the writing process by highlighting words spelled incorrectly and missing punctuation.
Allows you to choose how you want to set up your project by choosing either a blank page for a custom project or choosing presets like manuscript, recipe, play, journal, etc.
Saves your work as almost a dozen different formats including .docx and .pdf

Manuscript Production

This is the main reason I chose to use Scrivener many years ago. Once you decide to write a manuscript, it allows you to choose which kind: fiction or non-fiction as well as play/movie script. Then it:

a. Set up Title Page and Chapters

b. Separates Chapters into Scenes

c. Provides a Corkboard view so you can check each scene individually with ease

d. Has places for notes and research

e. Saves everything in one file so you don’t have to worry about losing your notes or forgetting where you found something.

f. Compiles the finished project according to choice: print or e-book.

My Experiences

My main issue was learning how to format and make sure all the formatting was done to the entire body of work. I have found you have to preset all the formatting vales before you start writing because if you don’t, it’s a major headache having to go back and fix everything.

Also, formatting for an e-book is much different than formatting for a print book, and you have to pay attention to the space around your text so you don’t use more than an e-book creator program will allow you to. Same with print, many self publishing programs have boundaries on the book pages you can’t put anything in because it will be damaged during the printing and cutting process.

Conclusion

Scrivener is a great program and despite all my issues learning how to use it, I don’t want to use anything else. The only error in this program that I’ve found is user error. I suggest buying a book and taking a course to learn how to use the program unless you’re hands on like me and don’t mind finding out how to use it on your own.

Don’t take my word for it, of course. Try out the program for yourself. I think there are trial versions available. If you like it, it’s well worth the price of the licensing.

If you already use the program, feel free to let me know your thought/feelings about the program. I’d love to hear from you.

Before I go, I want to remind everyone of the raffle I have going on for a few more days! If you’re new here, check out the full story at the link below:

https://wordpress.com/post/bkgriffinsnest.com/1546

Thank you so much for reading down this far!

See you on the flipside and forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

Movie Review: Daybreakers

I found this movie on Peacock, and I decided to watch it because I had never heard of it before.

This film was originally released during the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009 and later, produced and distributed by Lionsgate in Australia and the United States in 2010. It was written and directed by The Spierig Brothers, Michael and Peter.

It stars Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Karvan and Sam Neill.

According to Rotten Tomatoes “Though it arrives during an unfortunate glut of vampire movies, Daybreakers offers enough dark sci-fi thrills — and enough of a unique twist on the genre — to satisfy filmgoers. “

Set in 2019, most of the world’s population are vampires, and they’re running out of humans to harvest for blood. Ethan Hawke plays a vampire hematologist looking for an alternative. He meets some humans and a former vampire who are trying to recreate the process that changes the vampire (played by Dafoe) back into a human when there wasn’t supposed to be a “cure” for the condition. Sam Neill is a very powerful man and Hawke’s boss, and he is intent on keeping his wealth and power as a vampire at any cost – even the life of his daughter who didn’t want to become a vampire. As the supply of blood dwindles starving vampires are turning into something that looks like Nosferatu with bat ears, bald heads and wings.

I watched all the way up until Ethan is being recruited by Dafoe and his humans. They even show him their base even though he hasn’t committed to their cause. The movie was a bit slow for me and seemed to struggle. Dafoe wasn’t his usual powerful self either, most likely because he had a supporting role and couldn’t do more than the leads. I was quite disappointed in Hawke’s performance.

The movie has a good plot, but I just couldn’t get into the story in general.

As always, don’t take my work for it. Check out the movie for yourself and if you like it, great, if you don’t, it’s still all good. I am not an expert on movies though I have seen a great many vampire films, good and bad. It’s all a matter of personal taste.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

YouTube Tuesday: Wizardry Workshop

This fantastic channel is run by Danny who is a big fan of Harry Potter. 98% of what he creates is related to Harry Potter, and he looks like he knows what he’s doing! He also does unboxing videos of items that are also Harry Potter related so if you’re into HP, this channel is for you! Check out this video below to see what I mean:

If you like Wizardry Workshop, be sure to subscribe and let him know by dropping a comment on the videos you like!

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!

Movie Review – Burlesque

Has anyone else seen this movie??? It was released in 2010 by ScreenGems. The screenplay was originally written by Steven Antin and it was revised twice, first by Diablo Cody and later, by Susannah Grant. It starred Cher and Christina Aguilera. It was Cher’s first musical – this surprised me because I’ve seen her in movies before and just assumed she’d done some musicals I’d never seen. This was also the first film Aguilera had ever been in.

I’m not a big fan of Aguilera’s music or her singing, but she did pretty good with her acting. Cher did a great job in her supporting role, and I really wish she’d done more singing. The movie itself was fantastic, all the dancing, singing and even the little risque comedy routine during one of the shows. I really enjoyed the movie. I recommend it to anyone who likes comedic musicals.

Don’t take my word for it, check out Burlesque starring Cher and Christina Aguilera!

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!

The Limehouse Golem – Movie Review

This movie is a Victorian era horror movie starring Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke, among others.

It’s a fantastic movie. The creep factor is high, but it adds to it. The movie shows the reality of the society in that era. At one point, there was a little Irish girl who spoke only Gaelic. She was a witness to one of the murders, and she was being brought to speak to the police without understanding what was going on. The detective was using a nun to translate, and the little girl told her to tell him she wasn’t for sale. She said her mother had a gentleman coming for her on her next birthday. That was the reality of the lives of the poor of that era.

It’s this attention to detail that made this movie so good! The acting was superb as well. It has a fine cast. The story was well written, and the action was engrossing. Yes, I really liked the movie.

I give this movie five stars and strongly recommend it. I found it on Hulu.com, but it’s also on Amazon, VUDU and iTunes. Don’t take my word for it, of course, see it for yourself!

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!

The Osiris Child – Movie Review

This movie came out in 2016, and it’s original title suggested this was to be more than one movie. I have yet to see anything about a sequel, but it does explain the ending of the movie. The movie is a futuristic science fiction thriller written by Shane Abbess and Brian Cachia. It was produced by Eclectik Vision Studio.

The movie stars Kellan Lutz as Sy Lombrok; Daniel MacPherson as Lt. Kane Sommerville and Teagan Croft as Sommerville’s daughter, Indi. Other members of the cast are : Temuera Morrison, Isabel Lucas, Rachel Griffiths and Luke Ford.

Lt. Kane Sommerville works for an off world military contractor called Exor helping them terraform and colonize a new planet. There is a prison on the planet already, and the prisoners there are being used to help with terraforming. Or so everyone is being told… He is a father who never married his child’s mother and is always having to fight to get to see his daughter. He is working hard to improve his life so he can get legal access to his child.

Sy Lombrok is a prisoner on the planet. He was a trauma nurse, but he was made an example of after he broke public trust in his profession. His wife and daughters were brought into his ER after suffering a horrific car crash – his daughters were DOA and his wife died in front of him before they could help her. The drunk driver who caused the accident was brought into the same ER and when Sy found out, he killed him. Sy is haunted by the deaths of his loved one and doesn’t care about himself any more.

Indi Sommerville is a child who only wants to spend time with her dad. She’s bored on the planet, but she’s willing to wait until Kane is done working so they can visit. She’s staying planetside waiting on her dad to join her from the miliary flotilla in orbit above the planet where he lives.

Kane finds out everything is not what he’d been told, and he escapes the flotilla to try to rescue his daughter from the disaster striking the planet. He’s shot down, and he happens upon Sy who has managed to escape the prison with fellow inmates who have gone their own ways. Reluctantly, Sy agrees to help Kane get to the city and Indi. The pair don’t get along well, but they do manage to get to the city, with help from a couple in an armored bus. I can’t say more without giving things away.

The movie was okay. I’ve seen better, but I’ve also seen worse. Some of the action scenes were good. I empathized with Indi and Sy, not so much with Kane. The dialog was decent. Acting was pretty good. I like Indi’s work, but others with bit parts did fine jobs as well. The soundtrack was nice. I enjoyed it, and I think it added to the overall feel to the story. Costuming was great considering this was a non CGI movie. It’s made in Australia, and I think they did a bang up job making it look realistic and believable. Kudos to them!

I’d rate this movie a 3 star. I found it on Hulu so didn’t waste any money renting it. It’s a good time killer. I’m hoping there will be sequel but after all this time, I won’t hold my breath. Still, don’t take my word for it, check the movie out for yourself and make your own decision.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!

No Movie Review Today – Sorry

I got involved with binge watching Supernatural and working on my large filet crochet project which still has a loooong way to go. 😦

I am glad I did watch one episode tonight because I finally figured out where I’d seen an actress on Lucifer(on Hulu and a great little show!) before. She was in Season 2 Episode 16 which is titled Roadkill. She plays Molly. It had been bugging me for a while now and seeing her on that show made me feel better.

Anyway, no movie review tonight – sorry. I am looking to watch Altered Carbon in the next few days so I’ll have a movie review for you then.

See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver. If you’re feeling scared, bring along a Winchester or two!! 🙂