Tv Show Watch, Star Trek Discovery(S1,Ep1)

“The Vulcan Hello”

I have forgotten about this show, around summer time last year, I remember watching an episode of season 2 or maybe 3, and thinking that it looked great even though I had almost zero clue about what was going on. Now I decided to watch it from the beginning and it was a pleasant surprise.

We open with a bang, we get to see the Klingons and they look menacing, mean, strange, alien…just amazing, it book me up right there, I know right away that the show would look great and that’s the start that I needed.

Then we are on an alien planet with the Captain Georgiou, played by the amazing Michelle Yeoh and her First Officer Michael Burnham. I love the concept that the Federation can’t interfere with a civilization, even though in the end, they almost always do, for “good reasons” as they tell themselves. We get to see the ship in action pretty early and it looks badass, the show looks amazing by the way, the special effects are top notch.

Not long after that, we get to see the ship’s inside, here named Shenzhou, and it follows the look of the show, good looking stuff. We meet some of the officers but the most interesting one is Saru, he is a science officer and a very pragmatic one. He has a great quote later on the episode explaining a bit about what his species are known for, the were breed and seen as prey for some predatory species that lived on his planet, so he mentions that he has the ability to sense the coming of death.

We get to see the First Office Burnham’s past a bit as well, we see her with Sarek, who is famous as being Spock’s father, he is kind of teaching her and later one she asks him for advice, it’s cool to have a character that we know already a bit about it.

If I have one small grip with the episode, it is Michael Burnham as one of the main characters, I can’t really pinpoint why but I didn’t enjoy her acting as much as the others on the show, but maybe it’ll change, I’m not sure. I did like that she is not just a “yes sir , no sir “ officer, she is very much opinionated and that can be a good and a bad thing as well, as we kind of see in the end of the episode.

I liked the plot, the look of the show and it made me want to see more of it, specially because of the Klingons, they have to be explored a lot because they just mailed the look of them and they look as mean as they should look and be.

Rating :

4 out of 5

Tv Show review: Grimm Season 1, Pilot

Grimm is a drama series from 2012, that is inspired by the classic Grimm’s Fairy Tales, so hopefully it’ll be full of creatures and lore.

The Pilot was a great watch, I did know a bit about that show but I was pleasantly surprised how good it was. The show looks amazing, the acting is solid and the plot is a fun one, being a fan of paranormal/supernatural things, makes this show right on my alley.

Nick BurkHardt, the main guy on the show is the Grimm, he is also a homicide detective in Portland, the location is already a plus with the show, it looks great, the shots around the park, the houses, the cars….it really helps with the atmosphere. Nick being a homicide detective makes the show even more interesting, not just we get to see the conflicts between “humans” and the creatures disguised as humans, we see a pretty interesting murder investigation, which it adds a lot to the show.

Nick as a Grimm, can “see” beyond the human form and look into the creatures that hide in plain sight, he has a partner, Hank Griffin and they have amazing chemistry together. They are investigating a murder where the girl was torn to pieces and Nick has to navigate his new “powers”, being able to see some creatures that to him used to be fairy tale.

The action is well choreographed, for a Tv show, it looks top notch, the special effects are well done too, the “creatures” look good, it doesn’t have that cheap look that many Tv shows have when dealing with monsters and such.

The characters are unique and the actor do a great job, I can see that the relationship between Nick and his police captain ( Sean Renard ) will be a good one to follow.

Nick meets another person that ends up helping him with the investigation, someone that can give him a better insight about what Nick is and can be, hopefully they’ll have more of that “friendship” in the future.

Overall a great Pilot episode, the murder mystery is solid and the show looks like a fun one, the Brothers Grimm tales are something that I don’t know much about it besides that it has a lot of lore in it, so the show has a lot to offer because of that.

Rating:

4 out of 5

The Tv Shows that tickle my bone

I watch a lot of shows, I work sometimes on the graveyard shift, that is the lovely n name that some give to overnight shift, so a couple days of the week I’m at work around 2am looking for some shows to watch.

Many of these shows I have watched before, not all the way from the first to the last season, shows like Fringe, Lost, Star Trek, The Wire, Breaking Bad…are some of the end that I watch sporadicly, but I decided to finally follow a show from beginning to end, and I chose 3 Tv Shows, that I have readily available on the streaming services that I subscribe, to watch, from the very first episode to the last one, doesn’t matter how many seasons there are.

The first one is Fringe, I love the concept and how it reminds me of The X-Files. I have watched a bunch of episodes and I’m curious to see where the story goes in the end.

Another one is Start Trek, the original series. I have watched so many clips of it, and I love Sci-fi, so it is only fair to watch one of the most classic Sci-fi series of all time.

The last one is Supernatural, I have watched some of that show and heard great things about it, I know about having vampires, werewolves and other creatures, which I love, so Im excited for that.

I’ll be posting some episode thoughts here and like I said, I’ll be in for the long ride!

Book Haul

I’m a big fan of the Kindle, being able to carry that thing on my pockets while I’m at work, it’s so practical, game changing to someone like me wants to find time to read more, a lot more.

But still, my love for holding a physical copy of the book still there, especially mass paperbacks, I can’t pinpoint why but I just love them, one factor for sure are the great cover art in many of them, so damn cool.

So I’m always in the lookout for old mass paperback horror and sci-fi books. Here is a small haul from some thrift stores and a bookstore that had a huge sale last month.

The Unwanted and Sleep Walk , both by John Saul . I have never read any Saul’s book and just looking at the cover art, I’ll give The Unwanted a try first.

Alien and Aliens , both by Alan Dean Forster . I love the Alien franchise, even the not so good movies, so I have been looking to buy the novelizations for some time, excited to see the extra stuff that wasn’t in the movies.

The Doctor Who books are a attempt to start a collection, I’ll try to read all of them as well, I’m a big Doctor Who fan and I feel that I’m missing out a lot by not reading more Doctor Who books. They are like the show, weird, campy, fun and with some over the top plots…and that’s great!!!

The Interstellar book is strictly because of my love for that movie, I just feel that it is an amazing sci-fi story with stunning scenes and great acting. Like the Alien books, I want to see if the novelization has any extra stuff for me to enjoy.

I loved the Sherlock Tv series from BBC, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman were just perfect as Sherlock and Watson. I want to read more Sherlock adventures, even though I heard that some of the novels are very slow, I feel that it is time to read some of the famous cases of Sherlock Holmes.

Whirlwind by Charles Grant will be my first time reading a book from my all time favorite TV Show, yeah, I love Sherlock, Seinfeld, Doctor Who, Lost….lots of shows but The X-Files will forever be my #1.

And then I got my first ever Michael Crichton novel, The Terminal Man. I really want to read the Jurassic Park novel but I got this one for like $2 dollars, I couldn’t say no.

So this is my small but juice book haul, can’t wait to dive into them.

Photography, a new passion.

Some years ago, I got a 35mm film camera, found it for $20 and bought it right away. But only this year, after watching some Youtube channels about photography, got me thinking about taking some shots. Here I have a couple of them.

This one was right at the place that I work, I love the snow and the trunk of the trees contrast.

This one I took last August, I love trees and I thought that the shades of blue of the sky and the light would hit the green grass nicely.

Musings about Spoilers

I’d like to have a quick word about the reviews of books , movies , comics or anything that I will write here. As a consumer of fiction, one of the things that really gets to me it is someone spoiling a plot, character or anything to that matter.

So I’ll always try to keep my posts here spoiler-free, but because I’m such a newbie when it comes to writing about things that I liked or not when it comes to fiction, I want to apologize in advance if someone feels that I spoiled anything to them.
Again, it is never my intention to do so.
So with that out of the way, hopefully you are all well and having fun out there with a good book, movie, show or anything that brings you joy !!!

Book Review: The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay.

Book Overview:

Published in June 2018

309 Pages

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake.One afternoon, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault”. Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”

What a great premise, Im a sucker for “end of the world’ media, and this book sounded like it would be just what I’d love to read, and I did like it, even though it wasnt the type of “end of the world” flavor of ice cream that I ordered.

So I liked the concept a lot more than the execution, I wonder how many times we as readers have the same problem, too many I’d say, especially if you’re like me, someone that creates high expectations because a well written blurb or a review.

But even not meeting my expectations( which were exaggerated ), it was a very good read, the characters are solid and the book is on the shorter side of things, it never felt like dragging or anything.

Wen and Leonard were the starts for me, they hooked me from the start and every time that they were “talking”, I had my ears glued to the book and listening with gusto, they were the driving force moving me towards the end. It’s not that I didn’t like Andrew or Eric’s character, it is just that sometimes they felt too similar to me, as much as Tremblay’s attempts to make them feel unique from each other.

I enjoyed Redmond as well, he brought some of the “horror” elements that the novel lacked, for my taste but I wish that we had more of him in the novel, I think that his character could have been explored a lot more.I didn’t care much for Sabrina and Adrianne, I thought that they were too bland and too much alike, maybe they could have been cut down a bit and we could have had more time with Redmond in the novel.

Still, a very good novel but it lacked a better ending, a more decisive one . I wanted to have more “horror “ in in the end, but I’m not coming out of the book thinking it was a bad experience.

I can see why Paul Tremblay’s books are praised by many, I felt that his writing style is very smooth and without many fluffy stuff that can drag a novel. I will definitely read more of his books in the near future.

I know that a movie was made recently, called Knock at the Cabin, I’ll watch it as soon as it hits the streaming services and hopefully it will be edgier than the novel was.

Rating:

3 out of 5

Book Review: Revenge of the Judoon, by Terrance Dicks.

Book Overview:

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Martha to Balmoral in 1902. Here they meet Captain Harry Carruthers – friend of the new king, Edward VII. Together they head for the castle to see the king – only to find that Balmoral Castle is gone, leaving just a hole in the ground. The Doctor realises it is the work of the Judoon – a race of ruthless intergalactic mercenary space police.

Published in January, 2008

102 pages

Around 6 years ago I watched my very first episode of Doctor Who, I got hooked since then and it took me almost a full year after that to realize that Doctor Who fans were blessed with a huge amount of novels ( short stories, novelizations, novellas , comics, magazines) about the show, and even more special was that it wasnt just the New Who, as the new series that began in 2005 after a hiatus of almost 20 years was called by some, but stories dating back to the early 60s, when the show premiered.

So I dived head first on that show and always thought about starting to read some of the novels, like many reading projects, I kept delaying year after year but now I made a promise to read them, and this is the beginning of that.

Revenge of the Juddon is a really short novel, it has one of my favorite Doctors, the 11th one that was played on TV by the amazing David Tennant, and Martha Jones, a companion that wasnt a fan favorite in the show but one that I did like and it was helped by the solid writing that was abundant on her season as the Doctor’s companion.

The plot is a pretty basic one when it comes to Doctor Who stuff, the Doctor is taking his companion on a little vacation when something very unusual happens when they get to their location, this time is the castle Balmoral where the King Edward VII resides disappears out of thin air, now the Doctor and Martha Jones have to scramble to solve the castle’s disappearance and hopefully save the King.

But as always, the Doctor and his companion are helped by some locals, in this case a Captain form the King’s guard and the famous writer Arthur Conan Doyle, which makes the novel, albeit very short, even more interesting.

One of the things that grabs me when reading or watching anything Doctor Who related, are the historical figures that from time to time join the Doctor in his adventures, it always gives some extra flavor to the plot and it just a fun addition to an already fun universe. The show uses the time travel premise as good as it can be used, never taking itself too serious or trying to be too irresponsible with it, to me, it has just the right balance.

The Doctor and Martha have to deal with the Juddon, a type of alien police force that are a race of rhino form humanoids, with a strict moral code and sheer strength. They are one of my favorites alien race in the Doctor Who universe.

Like I said, it is a short book, too short to be honest, so it makes it hard to give the reader enough content for them to care about some of the characters but the starts of the novel are the Doctor and Martha Jones, and so because they are already established characters when it comes to the Whoniverse, I didn’t mind the lack of depth of some characters so much. A very short and fun read and I recommend to anyone who wants to have a taste of the vast universe that is Doctor Who.

Rating:

2.5 out of 5

Movie Review: The Belko Experiment

Movie Overview:

Released in 2016. Runtime of 1 hour and 29 minutes

Cast: John Gallagher Jr, Tony Goldwyn, Adria Arjona, John C. McGinley

Director: Greg McLean

Writer: James Gunn

In a twisted social experiment, eighty Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogotá, Colombia, and ordered by an unknown voice coming from the company’s intercom system to participate in a deadly game of kill or be killed.

I came into this movie not knowing that it was written by James Gunn, one of the writers and directors of some of my all time favorite comic book movies. I was pleasantly surprised with the plot, when browsing around the Tube app for a good( most importantly free) movie to watch, the picture of the movie caught my attention, and soon after I read the synopsis of the movie, I was in.

The premise is amazing, I work at a place with dozens of coworkers, and as I was watching the movie, I couldn’t help but imagine what I’d do or who would have done some of the gnarly and extremely tough decisions that some characters have to make in the movie, to be honest, I think that I’d be one of the first to die.

Tony Goldwyn plays one of the main characters in the movie and he is great in it, being a newbie when it comes to movies that are not called Star Wars or LOTR, as soon as I saw him on screen, I was shouting ” that’s the guy from Ghost, wow !”, again, I’m sure that he was in a bunch of other movies/Tv shows after Ghost but that’s fine, it was great “meeting” him again.

The movie does a good job showing some of the “main” characters traits right away, and them it leads you to some surprisingly choices made by them, just when their day to day office environment gets turned upside down and they go from sounding very reasonable to making tough, selfish and sometimes cruel choices as soon as shit hits the fan.

It is hard not to spoil too much of the movie, I’m a strong supporter of going into a movie as blindly as you can after reading a bit about the synopsis of it, with that in mind, I’d say that if you read the premise and even for a minute think to yourself, “yeah, what if that happened to me where I work”, please watch this movie, it will be a fun ride and with a bunch a gory stuff sprinkled all over.

The characters are good, maybe some of them could have been explored a bit deeper but for a 90 minutes movie, it had the right amount of characterization and it made me care just enough for some of the people trying to survive that bonkers predicament that they got themselves into.

Overall it was solid movie and I highly recommend checking it out for free if you have the Tubi app.

Rating:

3 out of 5

Book Review: The Traveling Vampire Show, by Richard Layman.

Book Overview:

Published in May, 2000. 534 Pages

When the one-night-only Traveling Vampire Show arrives in town, promising the only living vampire in captivity, beautiful Valeria, three local teenagers venture where they do not belong, and discover much more than they bargained for.

This was my first time diving into the enormous pool of “horror” fiction from Laymon. In the past, I do remember hearing about Laymon’s fame of being many times a “bad writer’ and sometimes just downright creepy, not in the horror sense of being “creepy” but as someone that sexualize women( most of the time teenagers) in a very creepy and misogynistic way.

The novel is all about friendship, the bond formed amongst the three teenagers is what drove the novel forward for me, even though it was “supposed” to be a horror novel ( at least in my mind), felt at times like a coming of age story, the discovering of feelings, new sensations and fears from the young kids got me turning the pages.

The three kids in the novel are very well written, and you can clearly differentiate them, I liked that a lot, you can at times root for some of them but later on not agree with some of their decisions, I felt that they were fleshed out very well, even though the novel wasnt on the long side.

I did feel at times weirded it out by some of Laymon’s descriptions, mainly the female characters. I don’t think that it was a need to be extra detailed with some of their descriptions and I can see why he gets the fame of being “creepy” when it comes to that stuff, he certainly could have done the without that overly sexualization of some of the female characters, but he choose not to.

Overall I did enjoy the novel, the one thing that got me annoyed with it, was the ending. In my mind, I was ready for a more “horror” type of conclusion but I can’t fault the writer too much, it was me that somehow got my expectations too high in that department, thinking that because it was a Bram Stoker’s winner, the novel was full of killing, blood, terror ….it was not but that’s fine, still it was a solid and fun read, just not what I expected.

Rating :

2.5 out of 5