Stop Frame

No sense in playing coy, this is a great film. I’ve seen it twice and while I don’t quite love it in the way I love the first, original John Wick , it’s my #2. It’s a little overlong, has some wasted space and time, has one absolutely pointless and useless character, and generally ignores the realities of firefights, falling, getting shot, hit, etc. All that notwithstanding, it’s a great action flick, has a genuine emotional core, and is well worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing. Like I am. Summary: John Wick (Keanu Reeves), last seen saying he was fed up with the High Table, goes to war to obtain his freedom. Some of the most incredible action scenes ever filmed ensue, culminating in a very satisfactory finale and a devastating post-credit scene. The first Wick film was a surprise hit. It was a simple, straight-forward tale of vengeance told in a simple, straight-forward manner. Where it stood out was its devotion to human stunt work, on exploiting long camera shots that

Wow, it’s been over a year. What a way to get back to this blog because… Are the films of the MCU getting worse? It’s a serious question because the latest that I’ve seen, Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania , are strong arguments that the answer is “yes.” Summary: Ant-Man & Ant-Family get sucked into the quantum realm, where skullduggery is afoot. A load of crap ensues. I’m an Ant-Man fan. I loved the first film despite its flaws. It would have been wonderful to see what Edgar Wright may have wrought. It was clear, though, that replacement director Peyton Reed kept some of Wright’s ideas alive. The result was one of the MCU’s most intimate films, a straight-forward tale of a Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) desperate to remain in his daughter’s life while being “gifted” the life of a superhero. Ant-Man and the Wasp sorta stayed that course, but naturally, because this is the modern MCU, we had to have a female superhero take over, the titular Wasp (Hope van Dyne,

Some time ago, there was video called  The Marvel Symphonic Universe , regarding how terrible the music in the Marvel (MCU) is. It seemed to place the blame on an overreliance on temp scores, those little snippets of random music that a director uses to work with his editor to finalize the cut of the film. They become so enamored with these snippets that they insist their composer warp their music to match. I found this gentle counter opinion, A Theory of Film Music , which rightfully noted that temp scores have been around roughly since the dawn of sound in film. It suggests that the source material being drawn from is an ever shallowing puddle, and film music is seen more as musical landscape, a la Hans Zimmer, rather than melodies and themes. Both of these led me to consider the problem from my own point of view, which from time to time I’ve mulled over. I find bits and pieces within each that I agree, but feel that both miss the main point. That point is simple: The majority of fil

The entire Joe Rogan controversy is an example of the kids being left in charge and the adults refusing to teach them any better. I’m not a regular consumer of podcasts. There are a couple I listen to from time to time, but nothing on a regular basis. While I’ve caught a few minutes of the Joe Rogan Experience on YouTube, I’ve never listened to his podcast. One of the primary reasons for that is that you have to subscribe to Spotify to do so, and I prefer Qobuz, Tidal, or even Amazon Music. Rogan is behind Spotify’s paywall and that’s that. But the nature of the fight is about more than who does or does not listen to Rogan. This fight goes to the very nature of the First Amendment and the fundamental concept of the United States. And yes, I understand that cuts both ways. What’s his name and Joni Mitchell are free to yank their creations from Spotify, no ifs, ands, or buts. I’m not denying their right, I’m questioning their reasons. Rogan talks to people. He does so largely unfiltered.

Back in mid-2021, Apple made “news” by upgrading all subscribers of their Apple Music service to lossless audio. They, of course, used their own, proprietary ALAC format. Several services, among the Amazon Music HD, welcomed them to the club (though Amazon uses the open-source FLAC format). Apple's going lossless at no extra charge to its subscribers was heralded as a major sea change. It did have one immediate benefit for me: Amazon made their HD (lossless) tier "free" with their basic subscription, thus saving me a couple of dollars a month. Thanks, Apple! Beyond that, and in the months that followed, it stirred an on-going debate about the audio quality that we've all come to expect and, more to the point, accept. This debate is bound to grow now that Spotify has delayed the rollout of their lossless service, leaving their premium subscribers "stuck" with lossy MP3s. Because of the Bluetooth codecs Apple uses, its existing wireless ecosystem doesn't s

We now come to the time when we begin looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4 films and let’s just start with the worst: Eternals . Summary: Immortal beings who live among us are called once more to defend humanity against an ancient threat that has returned. But who are the heroes and who are the villains and when all is said and done, do I really, truly care? A resounding answer of “No!” ensues. Eternals should have been a very different MCU film. It poses intriguing questions. It wants to examine those in an action/superhero film context, which is fine. Unfortunately, it’s an action/superhero film within the MCU and that means it has to tie back to the 25 films that preceded it while at the same time setting up characters and events for future films. In the right hands, with a studio willing to create something outside of its established universe, it might have worked. Or maybe not. It’s a surprisingly lifeless affair. No one demonstrates any real sense of passion. The few