Saw Spider Man Homecoming....twice

[VIDEO] Spider Man Homecoming is a movie I enjoyed seeing twice. The iconic Marvel Comics superhero is essentially part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Tony Stark featuring heavily as something of a mentor to this young teenage meta-human. And yes for the most part comic book fans already know his origin.

When you think about it, this isn't an origin film. Basically the movie starts after Spider Man's cameo appearance in Capt. America: Civil War facing off against needless to say Capt. America and his allies. Then back to NYC where Peter Parker is juggling adolescence, superhero business, school, etc.

Even weirder Spider Man's suit is the coolest suit ever seen and near the end he had it taken away from him. Parker had to rely only on his meta-human abilities and identity essentially concealed by a homemade customer consisting of sweatpants and a hoodie. The suit is made by Tony Stark and has all types of cool bells and whistles which for a brief time was also taken away from him.

BTW, this movie's version of Aunt Mae, I'd be trying to gain favor from her also. The youngest and most prettiest incarnation of her ever. Although for most of her portrayals she had little clue of Parker's double-life. Time may tell if future movies go with this, but it looks like now she knows!

How this film was portrayed? Well you're reading the blog of a man who used to be a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I wanted to know martial arts like they did and wanted to be a hero. A kid likes to think about heroes and probably wishes they could be like Peter Parker with heart and the ability to beat bad guys.

I feel as if I gave away some plot points, but before that film leaves theaters near you go see it. Spider Man Homecoming essentially is the third superhero move of the summer. I was glad to see almost two months after a June release Wonder Woman is still going strong and having seen Guardians of the Galaxy which was also a good movie to see.

And I almost forgot about Logan which is a movie that rubbed me the wrong way. Main thing about that movie was that it ended on a depressing note and it was mostly a very dark feature. Although to be fair perhaps a fitting note to end Hugh Jackman's time as Logan/Wolverine.

Dunkirk

As briefly written at E.M. this film was my Saturday movie and one that was very heavily promoted in movie trailers for the last couple of months. Dunkirk is a French town near the Belgian border where allied forces of Britain and France were surrounded by forces of Nazi Germany. That situation and the Hollywood depiction of this battle were without a doubt bleak.

Knowing history you already know the conclusion of this story, however, just remember that in 1940 when these events took place the second World War wasn't looking very good. The armies of fascism and militarism had been expanding in Europe and the Pacific. With the collapse of France and Britain all alone with the United States staying out of the war yeah it was hard to say the Allies was going to win the war in 1945.

It became clear why it was very important for Britain to get their army back from Nazi occupied France, English military leaders recognize that they're next. The air Battle of Britain was coming after this and if the British couldn't hold their airspace soon Great Britain could be the next nation occupied by Nazi Germany. If you remember history, you also would know how that turned out!

The story was broken out in three parts to start the story began with the infantryman perspective, then we saw the airmen who tried to protect the ground troops from the air - and just think the troops on a beach waiting for evacuation were being harassed by German planes with bombs and bullets, and finally we see the story of one civilian mariner who set off for Dunkirk to do their part for Britain to help evacuate Allied troops from a bleak situation.

It seems many of Christopher Nolan's film masterpieces are known for being long at least over two hours. To my surprise Nolan kept this historic movie short at least slightly under two hours. It told the story it needed to tell and certainly it was wonderfully shot. The story was simple if the Allied forces fighting against the Nazis were to survive they needed to get out of France which had already fallen.

I would recommend this war movie if you will. Hopefully you'll go out and see it while it's out at a theater near you. Perhaps you should look up anything on Dunkirk before you purchase that movie ticket.

Saw the Tupac movie recently

Over at E.M. I wrote a post about seeing All Eyez on Me this past Friday. Many gangsta rap/Tupac fans were eagerly anticipation this biopic of Tupac Shakur who died so young in September 1996.

In that post at E.M. I start off by saying it's rare a negative post is written about a movie. Most of the time when going to the show it's about entertainment and you just go up find a movie to see and there's nothing groundbreaking about the movie. Instead you watch be entertained and then you just forget about it. It's not often you watch a movie that is entirely memorable.

I could compare this film with the hit movie from two years ago Straight Out of Compton. I'm not sure the Tupac film could even compare even if an important character included the infamous gangsta rap producer Suge Knight.

To be sure, though this film has brought back so many memories of the 1990s music scene. The young people are listening to vastly different music and some of it has very little meaning. Tupac at least started off with a message especially in providing a voice to the voiceless.

Here's hoping Tupac's story inspires someone, especially a young person to take up his mantle. Provide a voice for the voiceless through a variety of mediums whether social media or with art such as music, painting, sculpture, or writing.

Utilizing the platforms on the world wide web

Often on this blog I talk about the internet as it once was. Instead of blogs and social media sites people used to have their own personal web pages usually via their internet service providers. Many dialed onto the web with a dial-up modem using a phone line. There wasn't as many bells and whistles online back in say the late 1990s.

I vaguely remember this because for a brief time until my mother abruptly cut off our internet service after almost six months - she likely didn't see the point for herself at least and claimed it was starting to cost too much. As for that last part well I was taking to the internet more than she expected and just made the decision to cut it off and was in no rush during that ensuing period to bring it back.

Either way back in the 1990s where was no Facebook, Google was probably in its infancy, no Twitter, no Instagram, Blogger was likely also in its infancy. Basically if you wanted to connect with people you literally had to create your own platform  and there weren't many places back then that would provide one for you!

Blogger I now know was started in 1998. It was likely around when I attended a community college in downtown Chicago and had no idea about it although I spent a lot of time surfing the internet at school. During this period my interest was in creating this platform to connect with others or at least sharing information just had little idea or inclination to do the necessary work.

Anyway I only became aware of Blogger after perusing the forums over at ProtestWarrior. A blog was the perfect medium for me to share information of course the next step was readers which PW provided at the time. Then of course when Capitol Fax was beginning to grow by 2005 or so that would be more exposure.

Now in the 2nd decade of the 21st century a website isn't that important anymore. Social media is king today and the most popular sites to use is facebook, instagram, twitter, and YouTube. And in addition to websites or blogs we can use social media to supplement websites or blogs.

As of now this is my current challenge. If I wanted this blog or other blogs I created to be successful it hinges on utilizing those other platforms that exist today. Perhaps create a useful YouTube channel. Perhaps create an interesting ig account as I have for sixthward.us. Then effectively using twitter - both personal & sixthward.us to supplement the blog platforms.

I see now that utilization of various platforms can truly be beneficial, the question now is how to effectively utilize them.

2017 in the DC Extended Universe

Next month the next film from the DC Comics' Extended Universe will be released - Wonder Woman - starring Gal Gadot. Gal Gadot's rendition of this comic book heroine debuted in 2016's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. You will see a trailer for it below. [VIDEO]

As of now we are three movies into the DC Extended Universe and all of them have made money. Problem is all of them aren't exactly critically acclaimed. Batman v. Superman which is the second installment of this franchise seemed to have gotten the worst treatment from fans.

Personally it was a great Batman movie and surprisingly Ben Affleck did a great job portraying the caped crusader even if the story was lacking. Batman v. Superman is actually supposed to be a sequel to Man of Steel - the first installment of this franchise - however this story never seemed to be about Superman. If nothing else it was a response to Superman's arrival, debut on Earth, and essentially after fighting General Zod - a fellow Kryptonian - Batman's response to the man of steel.

Man of Steel wasn't bad itself that film too lacked in story, however, at least it was about the origin of Superman. Metropolis took a serious beating in this film being at the epicenter of an attempt to terraform Earth for the Kryptonians. Regardless the cool part of this movie is that we see how powerful an individual Superman and of course he wasn't always the boy scout we expected him to be. He's still however genuinely good.

The most recently installment was Suicide Squad. Basically a team of supervillians under the employ of the villainous Amanda Waller to be an expendable team of bad guys doing the right thing. In this one Harley Quinn joins the mainstream DC universe - she previously was a character of the Batman animated series from the 1990s. And we have a new Joker even if he wasn't part of the Suicide Squad.

As far as opening weekends the DC movies have done well unfortunately not enough for people to want to watch the movies beyond that. Especially if word of mouth goes around that many believe these movies aren't that good.

I'm hoping that the fourth and fifth installment of the extended universe will learn from the shortcomings of the first three installments. Looking forward to Wonder Woman next month and by the holiday season Justice League for which you will also see a trailer below. [VIDEO]

BTW, I've been watching some YouTube videos speculating on the shortcomings of DC movies in some respects many were spot on. In others I sometimes wonder if they're off-base. What do you all think?

I found one article about the top five things they like about the DC movies.

VIDEO: The new starship Enterprise design review

[VIDEO] I'm giving you a quick spoiler if you didn't see last year's Star Trek Beyond - the USS Enterprise as we've seen it since 2009s Star Trek had been destroyed. As you see above in the alternate timeline we see another USS Enterprise-A. So as the Star Trek franchise goes into the next 50 - 2016 was the 50th anniversary of the original series having first premiered in 1966 - there is a brand new starship Enterprise casting off in the next cinematic adventure.

In this above video we look at an artists conception of this new Enterprise and then shows what we saw in the STB. Basically a different design than the concept to be honest I hardly noticed, hell I hardly noticed a huge difference when the Enterprise was redesigned at the end of 2013s Star Trek into Darkness. Or admittedly all I noticed was the change in the impulse engines.

Either way this video wonders why they keep changing the basic design of the Enterprise making little tweeks here and there in each of the new JJ Abrams Star Trek film series. It seems to the author of this video gratuitous to make these changes.

Consider that many fans weren't that happy with the redesign of the original Enterprise in 2009, the original 1966 design by Matt Jefferies has never graced the silver screen. To be honest I wanted to see that ship on the silver screen only to see this new take on a TV classic. Whether tweaked or not, this Enterprise maintains the form we expect from Star Trek.

So I'll open the floor to "Trekkies". What do you think of this new Enterprise-A?

My review of #TheCircle

[VIDEO] Lately when I go to the movies most of them are just forgettable entertainment. You go in and be entertained, however, later you simply forget about it. There's nothing really groundbreaking about the movie itself or laugh, feel the adrenaline, etc. and then you leave.

That wasn't the case with The Circle. Now with that said I've seen the reception on its Wiki page and saw that so far there aren't many that like the movie so far. I never pay attention to Rotten Tomatoes and see that this film isn't rated highly.

Why does The Circle touch a nerve with me? It shows the scary effects of social media. Our hero Mae starts to work at this tech company which appears to be a cross between Apple and fb. It offers these small cameras that can be placed anywhere and unseen to the eye. And then there appears to be a social network attached to it.

Mae herself becomes a major show on this social network and likely billions log on to see how she's doing. Unfortunately some sad consequences come of it. Her friend Mercer comes to an unfortunate end as the latest online sensation. It seems the friend - Annie -who brought her to that company doesn't want anything to do with her although they seem to have an uneasy relationship as Mae's star begins to rise.

Mercer's strikes an unfortunate nerve. As Mae begins broadcast her life for her company her fans find out about Mercer's past and refer to him as a deer killer although he defends himself by saying he doesn't kill deer. It becomes a point where he as Mae's friend had to cut ties with her because of her new celebrity.

Unfortunately, later the crowd clamors for Mae to find Mercer - after she herself used the Circle to find a wanted fugitive. They do so and of course a comment about him being a deer killer. After keeping a low-profile and he flees. Without giving away much this is the point in the movie where I take off my ballcap. I was truly disgusted with the movie at that point.

To start we see a form of online shaming in this film. Let's say you find one piece of information about someone - whether that person posted themselves or not - and then it goes viral. Then it literally becomes a form of bullying and outright nastiness. Perhaps it's truthful or perhaps not, however, either way someone believes it and spreads it and for a moment it's like wildflower. Scary thing is, it might be a while before you find out about it.

I like how Mae turned the tables on her bosses at the Circle - Eamon & Tom - who egged on the many activities that led to what happened with Mercer. She got connected with one of the founders of the circle - he has a low profile because we doesn't like what's going on at this company - who helped her turn the tables. And we go back to one thing that they never wanted to give up for themselves - privacy.

They didn't truly want to be transparent, but everyone else should be. Mae's life was saved because she took a kayak got thrown about in high waves and almost drowned. Perhaps there is no right to privacy in a public place but how transparent does one need to be in the world. Beside we all should be embarrassed by something.

It lets me know, now that we live in a world with cell phone video cameras and we can broadcast those images live on Periscope, fb, ig, etc. we have to be more careful. Perhaps we might behave better if we're being watched - and yes that's not always true. At the same time at what point have we gone too far with this activity?

BTW, I never realized that this film was based on a book and see a vastly different story here. I got to find that book now and give it a read. Perhaps it'll tell me more about the story and the issues in real life that are shown.