Carl Alves's Blog, page 25

The Walking Dead: Sing Me a Song

After watching yet another lackluster episode of The Walking Dead, I can only come to one conclusion—every single character on this show is a complete moron. And we have lame writing to thank for this. Let me elaborate on how stupid these characters are. Carl was so gung ho about killing Negan, yet he had about six different perfect opportunities to kill him in this episode and chose not to do so, the most obvious being when he was on that truck, and Negan walked in front of him, and all he had to do was pull the trigger. The rank and file members of the Saviors are idiots. Negan treats them like complete garbage, making them kneel in front of him, making them get points for food, and yet none of them figured out that they could easily kill him. It’s not like he has bodyguards surrounding him. Negan, himself, is a fool, because history has shown that when people are starving they will rise against their oppressors. Finally, Rick and every member of Alexandria and all of these other communities are complete tools because it makes no damn sense to stick around without weapons for protection to live in a place where you have to scavenge for Negan, and he just might kill you on a whim. Any person with a quarter of a brain would leave and relocate far away like the community of women from the last episode.

Carl

I suppose some might laud Carl for his bravery, but that hardly makes up for his sheer stupidity. Why in the world would you risk so much to kill Negan, but then when you had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to kill him you do nothing? It makes the comment he made about Negan jumping out the window so that he could save Carl the trouble of killing him ring hollow. He could have taken Lucille and bashed his brains in when he was holding Judith. The writers would be doing millions of viewers a favor if they killed off Carl.

Negan

Negan has become a character who is evil for the sake of being evil. The governor, by contrast, was more like an actual human being than just being an evil monster. If Negan had even a mediocre level of intelligence, he would realize his people would rise against him in a half a second by the way he treats them, unless he had a horde of people protecting him at all times, which he doesn’t. Not to mention, that having communities give you things that they don’t even possess is not sustainable. But he doesn’t have to worry because Rick and all the other characters are apparently dumber than he is since they haven’t realized that they could just leave and not have to deal with this megalomaniac.

The bottom line is that this show is getting harder and harder to watch. The writers treat the fans of the show like simpletons, and they have managed to neuter Rick. Rick has always been a character that was easy to root for but not anymore. Now he is soft and weak and stupid. The show is on a serious decline that may be difficult to climb out of.

Movie Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Although it was fun to be back in the world of Harry Potter, where J.K. Rowlings has spun many exciting tales about the boy who lived, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them didn’t quite deliver in the manner I would have hoped for. Set in 1926 New York, Newt Scamander is tracking down magical creatures, which he is cataloguing for a book that he is writing. The first half of the book really didn’t have much of a plot. It seemed like an exercise in trying to squeeze in as many magical creatures onto the big screen as humanly possible. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t fun watching it. It just wasn’t particularly fulfilling.



The second half of the movie finally gets to the real meat of the story. An Obscurus, which is a malignant force created by children who are forced to suppress their magical abilities, is wreaking havoc in New York. Newt and fallen auror Tina Goldstein, who have very little on screen chemistry, are joined by Tina’s sister and a muggle in trying to learn the identity of the Obscurus and stop it from destroying the city.



I didn’t care for Eddie Redmayne cast in the lead role. He had a constant flow of obscure mannerisms. It seemed like for half the movie he was hunched over. In general, the characters were weak. The only one I liked was Jacob, the muggle. The ending smacked of cheating the audience. There was definitely some entertainment value in this movie, but it pales in comparison to the Harry Potter films.

The Walking Dead: Swear

This week featured yet another disappointing episode of The Walking Dead. It’s no accident that the show has seen its lowest ratings since season 3. This season has flat out sucked so far. I fail to see why they would spend an entire episode on a character so minor that I completely forgot she was still on the show. This was the ultimate throw away episode, designed to fill space. With only two episodes remaining for 2016, I can only hope that it will get better and this once great show will be restored to its former glory.

Tara

Who exactly are you? Oh, Tara. I sort of remember her as being Dr. Denise’s girlfriend. Tara and Heath stumble onto a hoard of zombies while scavenging. While trying to escape, Tara goes over the bridge and into the water to be washed ashore in a community full of women.

There were so many aspects that I didn’t like about this episode. First of all, this entire community doesn’t make sense. They shoot any visitors on sight? Seriously? That’s hardly a sustainable way to live as a community. I also don’t buy their entire existence. Apparently, the Saviors killed every one of their men folk. And here I was thinking they just didn’t like guys. But I digress. There’s nothing in the Savior’s history that makes this remotely believable or consistent with the way they operate. In all of the other communities, they don’t kill off the men, so why would they do so here? The only thing that made sense about this community is that they fled in the middle of the night. I don’t understand why every single one of the communities don’t flee. It’s hard enough to live in a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies, but to live under the insanely oppressive thumb of Negan where he will kill you at any point you don’t meet your quota is just flat out stupid. Why wouldn’t all of these groups flee as far as possible? The only logical conclusion is that they are a complete bunch of buffoons.

In the end Tara escapes only to promise that she won’t reveal to anyone their location or their very existence. Poor Heath. We don’t even know if he survived. This was a forgettable episode that I would like to forget ever happened. At least they had a fun scene where they had to bust through a horde of zombies on the bridge.

The Pariah by Graham Masterton

The Pariah is a bit of a ghost story with some American folklore and mythology mixed into it. In the novel, John Trenton is living his life in a fog after his wife and unborn child die in a car accident. Still grieving, he begins to see the apparition of his wife. He finds that he is not alone. His Cape Cod town of Granitehead turns out to be a hub of supernatural activity where the dead come back to stalk the living for the past few centuries. The origin goes back to the Salem witch trials and the remains of a demon that were transported to the town. Now John must find a way to put the ghost of his wife and the rest of the dead to eternal rest as people in the town fall prey to these spirits.



The writing is professional and well done, which I come to expect from a proficient writer like Graham Masterton. The plot is more interesting than I find with typical ghost stories, which tend to be similar to each other to the point where I can hardly remember any that stick out. That’s the result of the history and folklore injected into the story. There are strong horror elements in this novel and for the most part it was enjoyable. There were a few shortcomings. The novel could have been edited better, which isn’t a reflection on the author but on the publisher. Also, I thought the novel was overly long. It would have been more effective if about a quarter or a third of it were trimmed off. As it is, there are spots in the novel that drag. The other is that although John Trenton is a likeable character, he makes really dumb decisions that make it hard to root for him at times. Those are minor quibbles. Overall, this was a strong novel that readers of horror fiction will enjoy reading.

The Walking Dead: Go Getters

I was glad to get away from Alexandria, as the episode entitled “Go Getters” focused on Maggie’s arrival to the Hilltop community along with Sasha. It also marked the return of the characters Jesus, who has a strong resemblance of the deity in Christianity and also has some ninja fighting and tracking skills to boot.

Maggie

The whole Negan debacle started with Rick and company trying to get medical help for a pregnant Maggie and ended in Abraham and Glenn’s death. Well, Maggie finally arrived at the Hilltop and was able to get the medical attention she needed. With the baby doing fine, she and Sasha have to cope with the loss of their respective loved ones. That doesn’t mean that they still can’t crush a horde of zombies in their state of mourning, as highlighted by Maggie running through about a dozen of them with a tractor in the most fun scene of this season so far. Sasha is now her protector and determined to have them be able to stay at Hilltop for the duration of Maggie’s pregnancy.

Jesus

We only briefly got to see Jesus on the screen last season. His initial episode with Rick and Daryl was a bit silly, but it gave a glimpse of the skills he brings to the table. Apparently, the Hilltop community consists of a bunch of cowards since only Jesus, Maggie, and Sasha were out fighting the horde of zombies let into their community courtesy of the Saviors. I enjoyed this zombie crushing scene where a car blasting music was let into the gates with several fires set, attracting the nearby zombies. Although those three characters came off strong, the rest of the community couldn’t appear weaker or more feeble.

Gregory

What’s with this community anyway? I’m not sure how many people live at the Hilltop, but I find it hard to believe that they can’t come up with a better leader than Gregory. He was so utterly clueless and cowardly, yet still manages to have a really high opinion of himself. He tried to sell out Maggie and Sasha to the saviors, and wound up losing a case of Scotch in the process. I’m guessing that Gregory doesn’t survive long in this world.

Carl

I’m not a fan of either Carl or Enid, so their torrid teen romance and roller skating around the apocalypse didn’t do a whole lot for me. Carl is starting to grow up and develop some backbone, but I get the strong feeling that he’s overmatched going after Neegan and will only slow down Jesus as he tries to track Neegan’s location.

We started to see the beginning of a movement to fight back against Negan, although Rick is squarely not in this camp at this point. It’s sort of like the rebel alliance in the original Star Wars movies. Other than Jesus, I’m not seeing anyone at the Hilltop that could come close to doing anything to the Saviors. It will be a long, uphill struggle for them.

The Walking Dead: Service

If you read my blog post from last week, you knew how much I hated the Daryl episode entitled “The Cell.” Well, I thought this was even worse than last week. In fact, this was probably the worst episode since the Morgan backstory. After a strong start, The Walking Dead is on the verge of running off the rails. The fact that it ran ninety minutes made it all the worse. I realize there is a certain level of shell shock regarding the Glenn and Abraham execution, but Rick’s group had been nomadic since the beginning of the show, travelling from place to place. They found Alexandria, and thought, oh this might be a decent place to settle down at. Look, it’s got walls and relative safety. The people seem decent. However, all that is gone under Negan’s brutal, totalitarian regime. They are no longer safe. Negan can kill any of them at any time. They have fewer people, and now they don’t have any guns to protect themselves or fight back. It’s a hopeless situation. So why stay? Exactly. Why in the world would this group remain in Alexandria? Death is a better alternative than their present situation. Yet, we’re supposed to suspend disbelief that this group would just bend over and take it. It’s ridiculous. I have never been this down on the show, and can only hope they find their way



Negan



With all that’s going wrong with the show, Negan remains a strong character. Dwight, on the other hand, is a completely inconsistent character. I kept reading about how sympathetic he was supposed to be in the last episode. But he’s hardly that. He’s a whiny, mealy-mouthed nothing of a character. Negan, on the other hand, is a mean nasty bastard, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a great job of portraying this. Having said that, it’s also completely illogical that Negan would suppress Alexandria in that way. That’s an open invitation to rebellion or for the residents to flee, both scenarios going against his stated goal of having the people of Alexandria produce for him. A dictatorship can be brutal, but it can’t be so onerous that the people would no way in hell be part of it. Death is a better alternative.



Rick



Rick has become completely useless. His leadership skills have eroded to zero, and he’s a shell of himself. This isn’t the character I have come to root for, and before long I and many other viewers will stop caring about him. I actually found Spencer to be sympathetic, even though he’s a selfish character, when he got in Rick’s face. Get it together, Rick.



I have no idea why they went ninety minutes. I thought the episode was boring and annoying. I lost interest about an hour into it and found myself doing other things, which is the first time I’ve done that for a Walking Dead episode. After this, I look forward to watching Carol, King Ezekiel, and the Kingdom. Sadly, it has become the most interesting aspect of this once great show.

Spotlight: The Door Into War by Andrew Richardson

Archaeologist Rachel McKenzie expects the excavation of a World War One bunker to yield routine results – until she uncovers modern artefacts among a handful of skeletons in British uniforms. DNA testing provides evidence of a government scheme to address Britain’s shortage of soldiers in 1918 by abducting 21st century citizens and sending them back in time to fight the Germans. The authorities from both eras are desperate to keep ‘Operation Trench’ secret, and ruthlessly stamp down on anyone who might expose them.

Despite her scepticism about time travel, Rachel needs to persuade the public that ‘Operation Trench’ is much more than a conspiracy theory dreamed up by cranks. Battling against ever increasing odds to expose the plot, Rachel endangers herself and her colleagues as the government ruthlessly culls those they suspect are privy to their plan.


In the words of Andrew Richardson

‘The Door into War’ is a story set in 2018 against the background of the British and allies’ manpower shortage in 1918, towards the end of World War One a hundred years before. The premise is that modern British politicians and senior civil servants help the war effort by sending undesirables back a hundred years in time as cannon-fodder to boost the army’s numbers.

The germ of the story came a few years ago when British politicians were caught out in a couple of scandals. Mass fiddling of expenses saw some jailed, and around the same time one political party broke a key election pledge to vote against a rise in university tuition fees almost as soon as the election was decided.

That led me wondering how far politicians would go to feather their own nests. ‘The Door into War’ explores the issue, with senior civil servants able to make money by sending citizen back in time to die, if their consciences let them – and if their scheme isn’t discovered by a coincidently-timed archaeological dig.

The Walking Dead: The Cell

After back to back strong episodes to start off season 7, I found myself thoroughly disappointed with The Cell. I don’t need every episode to be action packed and have long lasting impact, but this episode was a complete dud that I took no enjoyment in watching, despite the fact that Daryl, my favorite character on the show, was the focal point of the episode.

Dwight

Dwight got as much or more screen time as Daryl, which was part of the problem with the episode. I don’t find him to be at all a compelling or interesting character. When we first saw him, he and his wife, Sherry, were escaping Negan and the Saviors. Instead of taking Daryl’s help, he took his crossbow and motorcycle and returned to Negan. Fast forward to now, and he’s one of Negan’s top lieutenants. That entire sequence of events didn’t make a damn bit of sense to me. I don’t see why he would go through the process of escaping only to give himself back up, have to go through physical and mental punishment, and oh by the way, have to give up his wife to Negan. What would be the point of even continuing under those circumstances? Escape would be the much better option. The common thought is that Dwight and Daryl will work together in the future, but I certainly hope not. Dwight working with Daryl isn’t something I want to see on the screen.

Daryl

Among my complaints about this episode is that we didn’t need to see nearly a full hour of Negan breaking down Daryl. After the first couple of scenes, I got the idea. I’m sure he will be back on his feet at some point, but it wasn’t the most pleasant viewing. At the point toward the end of the episode when Negan gives him the option of towing the line and joining him by asking Daryl who he is, if I were in his shoes, I would have told Negan what he wanted to hear. Then I would bide my time and wait for the opportune moment to kill Negan and escape, but that would have gone against Daryl’s character, so I think when he responded saying that he was Daryl, I thought that may have been the best part of the episode. He was staying true to his character, which is why he remains the most popular character on the show.

Negan

Negan is a complete a**hole, but unlike Dwight, his character is compelling and consistent. That makes for a good villain, whereas Dwight is a villain about as interesting as watching paint dry. Eventually, Negan will get his, but it won’t be any time soon. He is going to haunt Alexandria and Rick’s group for some time to come.

This was a very forgettable episode (at least I want to forget about it as quickly as possible) but next week we move back to Alexandria and the aftermath of the deaths of Glenn and Abraham, which should make for some entertaining watching.

That Which Should Not Be by Brett Talley

That Which Should Not Be is a novel that heavily borrows from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Set at Miskatonic University, the hub of all things supernatural and the occult, Carter Weston is given an assignment by his professor, Dr. Thayerson, to retrieve a book that controls the inhuman forces that control the world, the Incedium Maleficarum. When he arrives in Anchorhead, he meets a group of men at a tavern who share their own supernatural stories. They are old tied to the Old Ones, the Elder Gods who once ruled the Earth and await to return one day. These stories are tied into the overall narrative of the story and a plot to resurrect Cthulhu and the lost city of R’yleh.



I have to confess that I’m not much of a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, which is sacrilege in the horror community. However, I am a big fan of Brett Talley, who I consider to be the best up and coming author that the genre has to offer. He managed to spellbind me and enwrap me in a tale in a way that Lovecraft never could. For me, Lovecraft’s failings are due to his arcane language, poor dialogue, unrealistic characters, and stories that all sound the same. This novel suffers from none of these things. The writing is top notch. The characters are well-crafted. The plot was well-designed. For a debut novel, this was a terrific effort and really shows what Talley is capable of producing. Buy this novel. Read this novel. You will not regret it.

The Walking Dead: The Well

The Well was an absolutely necessary episode after the season 7 opener of The Walking Dead. That was about as deflating and depressing an episode as I’ve ever watched. In this episode, we take a break from the Negan chaos (although the Saviors were in this episode as well) and get introduced to The Kingdom and King Ezekiel.

Morgan

If you’ve read my blog postings in the past, you know that I’m no fan of Morgan, who has the distinction of being my least favorite character in the show. In this episode, Morgan has brought Carol to The Kingdom. He seems to have settled into the place when King Ezekiel asks him to train Ben to fight. Ben seems to be a bit too soft for the post-apocalyptic world, and I don’t see him lasting very long. I do like that Morgan seems to have a change in philosophy. His pacifism has angered me to no end in the past, but he appears to have in part to have dropped his belief that nobody should be killed.

King Ezekiel

King Ezekiel comes off as a bit of a clown in the beginning of the episode. I agreed with Carol’s assessment that this was all silly, make believe that didn’t belong in the post-apocalyptic zombie world, but when he sat down with Carol and had that conversation with her, it made some sense. He took advantage of circumstance and opportunity (that he happened to have a tiger since he was a zoo keeper and he has some acting experience) to create this character that others wanted to follow. Part of it might by self-gratifying in that he wanted to become important, but part of it was to fill the void in the lives of these survivors. The community is in much better shape than Alexandria, although I don’t understand how he can be a king if he’s subservient to Negan.

Carol

As Carol recovered, she once more adopted her happy homemaker persona that she has used successfully to fool people in the past, but Ezekiel saw right through it. I still don’t understand the direction of her character. Just where exactly did she think she could go to escape the ugliness and evil of this world? That place doesn’t exist. The whole moving to a house outside of The Kingdom seemed non-sensical. I see Carol and King Ezekiel developing a romance, something that was well-telegraphed in this episode
Unlike the last episode, this isn’t one that will be memorable, but I think it was a good and necessary episode after that carnage. Ultimately, I think what will happen is that Alexandria will have to join into an alliance with the Hilltoppers and The Kingdom to overthrow Negan, but I don’t think it will happen quickly. I see this storyline going on for multiple seasons.