Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

Vox Day’s Alt-Hero Gambit

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Vox Day is an intriguing figure.  He is literally putting his money where his mouth is.  His right-wing entrepreneurial activities include (among other things) commercial endeavors in book publishing, video games and now comic books.  In just a few years he has impacted the cloistered and SJW infested world of the Hugo awards and spread the gospel of confronting social justice thugs with his books on SJWs.

His latest venture is the comic book kickstarter that garnered a quarter of a million dollars and has allowed him to hire some of the best talent from the pre-SJW converged past of DC Comics. (Chuck Dixon, the creator of Bane and Frank Fosco, a talented artist who has worked for DC and Marvel).  The effort will involve several separate imprints.  One imprint is called Alt-Hero and is explicitly aimed at combatting the politically correct conventions of modern SJW converged Marvel Comics with in-your-face right-wing heroes.  In addition, there is an imprint called Avalon which will be an entirely original work of Chuck Dixon chronicling the super heroes in his imagined city Avalon.  Dixon has said that Vox has given him free rein to create the Avalon universe according to his own creative vision.  And that is why I am very excited about this venture.

As I have stated previously, I’m in no way, shape or form a comic book enthusiast.  But I recognize how employing talented creators to work without the disabling effects of politically motivated orthodoxies has the potential of attracting the customers who have walked away from comics because of these very problems.  That is exactly what needs to be tried.  If it succeeds even on a limited basis it can act as a template for other areas of the culture that are currently strangulating under leftist control.  Vox’s Castalia House publishing business produces fiction and non-fiction that is unaffected by politically correct ideology.  I’ve enjoyed a number of these books.  And even though I don’t follow comics I did enjoy the Bane character in the third Batman movie (Dark Knight Rising).  He was wonderfully evil and an amazing agent of chaos.  I have to assume that Mr. Dixon has some amusing things to share in this Avalon story line so I intend to try it out when it becomes available.

My larger point is that Vox is demonstrating what needs to be done.  Look at the niches the converged industries provide for a right-wing alternative and give it a try.  The internet is the great leveler of all things entrepreneurial.  If you can imagine a thing that has a market you can market it there.  I’ll add Alt-Hero and Avalon to my list of Right-Wing Businesses.

Vox is an enormously polarizing figure.  But he is a trailblazer for anyone on the right who wants to be part of the solution to the vacuum that is all that’s left of right-wing cultural institutions.  Don’t like left wing news, then blog.  Don’t like the left-wing NYT Best Seller’s List, then patronize right wing publishers and authors.  Don’t want your kids to have to read about or go see a movie about gay Spiderman or transsexual Thor, then maybe buy a few of Vox’s comics for them instead.  To be consistent, I guess I’ll have to put my money where my mouth is.  Comic books?  Who woulda thunk it?

The Girl on the Train – A Movie Review

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This week Camera Girl picked a Netflix movie.  She remembered seeing commercials for the movie back in 2016 and so she had the impression that it was a good mystery.  Well, we watched it tonight.  Camera Girl will not be recommending movies for a very long time.

To say that this movie was awful would be understating just how bad I found it.  The star is an actress named Emily Blunt.  Along with the seven other main characters I can’t remember feeling even a twinge of empathy for any of them.  Even in the extreme case of one character discussing the accidental drowning of her infant daughter all I could think of was that she should have been prosecuted for negligent manslaughter.  The movie seemed to be a vehicle for building one of the male characters into a monster.  Apparently, all the women were either too stupid or too beaten down by the evil patriarchy to recognize this man for the ogre he was.

But even putting aside the anti-male strawman plot line, the movie is just a train wreck of other problems.  The first and most annoying problem is that the action is constantly jumping back and forth between different scenes in the past and the present.  It’s today, then it’s two years ago, then back to today and then four months ago, then last Wednesday, then Bastille Day (okay, I made that one up but you get the picture).  Eventually you lose track and finally you lose interest and in my case consciousness.

In addition to the flash backs, two of the actresses are very close in appearance.  So much so that at certain critical points in the plot you’re not sure who you’re looking at.  And this is even before the characters have been identified.  Basically, you really don’t know what the hell is going on.  So, the plot unwinds and slowly and painfully all the other explanations are exhausted and you’re left with the most hackneyed setup since “the butler did it.”

I will go out on a limb and say that most people will find this movie to be poor.  The movie is intentionally tinged with misery and psychosis.  In this environment none of the characters displays endearing or attractive or even admirable traits.  Even the victims come off as unlikable zombies.  I know it’s a cliché to say you want that two hours back but in the case of The Girl on the Train it’s entirely accurate.

Verdict:  This movie sucks.  Don’t watch it.

Legionnaire (Galaxy’s Edge) (Volume 1) by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole – A Science Fiction Book Review

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I read one of Nick Cole’s earlier books (CTRL ALT Revolt!) last year and liked it.  So, when I heard he was involved in a mil-sf series I figured I’d check it out.  It turns out it’s a dual authorship arrangement with Jason Anspach.  I ordered it (I like to read books on paper) and read it last week.

I like well-written mil-sf.  This is well-written.  The story chronicles an elite military unit involved in a supposedly routine diplomatic mission that devolves into a catastrophe.  It melds the feel of modern American military in the middle east (ala Black Hawk Down) with lineage going back to Rudyard Kipling’s India stories and translates it into a futuristic landscape of alien creatures, energy weapons and space cruisers.  But the technology is definitely beside the point.  The story is the camaraderie of men attempting to complete their mission and keep each other alive in an environment where bureaucratic amateur officers are just as dangerous as the enemy.

The protagonist (first person narrative for the most part) is an NCO in the “Legion.”  Through his eyes we see his comrades display various strengths and weaknesses and we observe the “regular army” that are combined with the legionnaires on this mission attempting to adapt to a combat role they are unprepared for.  And we observe non-combatants and the alien inhabitants of this planet at the “galaxy’s edge.”

If you like military science fiction you’ll probably like this book.  If you even just like war stories you might like this book.  It is volume one of a series but this book is sort of a stand-alone story.  The series chronicles the saga of the Galactic Republic through the eyes of the Legion as an elite force cleaning up the messes being perpetrated by an increasingly autocratic state over its subject worlds at the periphery of the galaxy.  Basically, it sounds like the Roman Republic devolving into the Roman Empire.  Or is it the American Republic?

As you can probably guess from my comparison with Black Hawk Down, it’s not a happily ever after kind of tale.  It’s a down beat story but if you like mil-sf then that’s probably no surprise.  If not be warned.

So, here’s my opinion.  This is a good stand-alone story.  The story develops and the action and the sub-plots unfold in natural way.  The characters are interesting and have enough development to allow you to cheer and boo the appropriate actors.  I can definitely recommend it.  For me the question is do I go forward with a longer series?  From what I understand the individual books are separated in time.  They document the history of this galactic civilization.  Implicitly this means none of the characters will carry over to the next book.  Can the authors generate enough new people to populate the series?  I think I’ll try the next book in the series and see how that works out.  I’ll report back on the next installment when I do.

 

Galaxy’s Edge – Galactic Outlaws – A Science Fiction Book Review

Converged Comics

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Vox Day has been called the most hated man in science fiction.  Well now he wants to be the most hated man in comics.  He’s publishing comics with a >$250K kickstarter and he’s pushing a right wing comic called Alt-Hero among other more mainstream fare.  A DC comic creator had an on-line discussion with Vox (see link).  I found it very interesting and includes Vox’s synopsis of his battles with sci-fi, game and comics SJWs.  Pretty interesting.

 

Science Fiction TV Series Review – Stranger Things – First Season

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Full disclosure, I am the only one I know who still uses Netflix for DVDs and doesn’t stream.  Oh, the shame of it all!  So last month the first season of Stranger Things became available to rent on Netflix (or as it’s now known DVD.com) and they sent me the two discs.  I was busy with life and the holidays so I watched it after the Christmas during some time off from work.  For anyone who hasn’t seen it but is interested or for anyone who wants my opinion here are my thoughts.

Let me start with the strongest impression the show left.  Almost everyone in the show is not particularly likeable.  Let me expand.  Many of the characters are annoying or worse.  In particular, the character who should most attract our sympathy, the mother of the missing boy, played by Winona Ryder, is hands down in the top three of the most annoying characters I’ve ever seen in a movie or tv.  Several times I was hoping the town sheriff would pull out his gun and shoot her or at least pistol whip her to make her shut up.  There was one character I liked.  He was a strong, caring, humorous, warm, responsible, regular guy who used good judgement and compassion to help a troubled runaway pre-teen.  He was shot in the head about six minutes after his first screen appearance.  After that it was annoying nerds, arrogant jocks, clueless suburban parents, alcoholic lawmen and nefarious government officials all the way down.  Eventually the hell-spawned creature makes some appearances, and interestingly, I found myself kind of rooting for him.  At least he didn’t blather on.

The season is eight episodes long and I finished them.  After reading what I just wrote, you may be wondering why I did finish them.  Well, surprisingly, I found myself sucked into the story.  Maybe this was an artifact of having all the episodes in front of me, time available to watch them and post-Christmas-Feast stupefaction.  But for some reason, at the end of each episode I wanted to see the next one.  And even after I knew how it would go I wanted to see it through to the end.

So, what’s my recommendation?  Well, guarded at best.  The plot is some kind of bastard spawn of Stephen King, Steven Spielberg and the X-Files.  The tropes are hackneyed and the characters, as mentioned, are mostly stereotypes and annoying ones at that.  Two episodes in you know how it will go and who will do what.  Honestly if someone had told me this ahead of time, there is no way I would have watched it.  But now that I have watched it I’m wondering if I should wait the year and watch Season 2.  My gut tells me that there is no way to make the next season even as mildly interesting as this first season.  And the thought of listening to Winona Ryder screeching at her unfortunate neighbors again is hard to justify.

I was starting to like how the sheriff usually settled difficult negotiations by punching people in the face.  His timing was really good.  The sheriff, played by an actor named David Harbour, is a big guy who drinks too much and sleeps around with the various lonelier ladies of the small midwestern town where the story takes place.  I found him the only character that I actually believed might exist in the real world.  But is seeing Sheriff Hopper pummel various “men in black” enough of a reason to sit through this thing again?  I doubt it, but it’ll be a whole year before I have to make that decision and pickings are so slim, so who knows.  Anyway, consider yourself warned, if a review that’s a year behind the times can be considered a warning.

American Greatness Post of the Day -Boychuk and Hayward Celebrate a Year of American Greatness

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Post of the day is actually a misnomer.  It’s a podcast from PowerLine where Steven Hayward interviews Ben Boychuk about the initial year of the American Greatness website.  I’ve been following them from the beginning but I learned a couple of things about them.  More importantly, I enjoyed their take on the Trumpocalypse and its current aftershocks.  Good listen.

Boychuk and Hayward Celebrate a Year of American Greatness

American Greatness Post for Today – Feminism Ruined the Last Jedi

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The pseudonymous Wayne Isaac has reviewed “The Last Jedi.” Since I brought my grandsons to see “The Force Awakens” I knew I wouldn’t be going to this picture. Suffice it to say that it’s worse than I feared. It turns out the “Force” is actually estrogen and that explains why Jedi Knights are so screwed up. They’re plugged into the wrong power source. Or rather they’re just not equipped to be heroes. Who knew? We’ll have to let Alexander the Great and George Washington know. Boy will they ever feel foolish. Anyway enjoy.

Feminism Ruined “The Last Jedi”

I Object – A Dissenting Opinion on an American Greatness Post

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Linking to American Greatness is usually easy for me.  I’ve found many articles that I’m proud to link to.  And the occasional article I don’t agree with I just chalk up to “nothing’s 100%.”  But today I read Henry Olsen’s “Four New Year’s Resolutions for Making America Great.”  The first three resolutions were unproblematic.

The fourth was tolerance.  Now he couched tolerance in terms of Christian patience as demonstrated by the early martyrs.  Basically what he is advocating is more losing.  Lose but be a good sport about it.  Turn the other cheek.  Call those who hate you friends and maybe they’ll let you be a slave after the last of your freedoms are stamped out.  I’m sorry, this won’t wash.  This was tried by George W. Bush.  He was demonized, pilloried and mocked for eight years by these friends.  Now that they’ve found a greater satan he’s become the beloved clown that they can point to as the exemplar for “good republican” behavior, a loser.

In the words of Cyrano “No, thank you. No! I thank you and again I thank you!”

I’m sure Mr. Olsen is a well meaning fellow but this is a war.  After the enemy is defeated we can talk about the surrender conditions.  Until then it’s us versus them.

Four New Year’s Resolutions for Making Americans Great