Andrew R Gross

Everyone at the theater was having a blast, but none more than this guy. I ... I can't even. Going in, Tony and I discussed the hype.  I said that although I loved Thor: Ragnorak, I still felt its hype was overblown.  I told him that although I expected Black Panther to be great, I didn't think it could live up to its hype unless it matched Captain America: Winter Soldier, which I contend is the high watermark for standalone superhero adventures (The first Iron Man is comparable, although I think it's an apples-and-oranges comparison). Well... it did it.  Superlatives like "best" are subjective, and I'd still give give Captain America: Winter Soldier the edge in hand-to-hand combat choreography, but there's no denying that this movie is the first and only film I can think of that matches Winter Soldier, and surpasses it boldly  in world building.  That world building, man... shit.  Wakanda Forever . One reason I've always revered Winter Sold...

I recently saw The Great Wall.  It's honestly an interesting movie, because it is such a specific cultural artifact.  The movie is made to try and impress Americans with the resourcefulness and capability of the Chinese.  The result is meta.  The movie isn't really great, but it shows that Chinese producers, directors, actors, and special effects teams can produce mindless big-budget spectacle just like Hollywood.  And it's impressive in a purely technical way.  Additionally, the film itself is literally about a team of Chinese warriors engaging in a cultural exchange with a greedy European thief searching for treasure in the medieval orient.  Every shot is the fulfillment of stereotypes, both loving and hoke.  The Chinese general explains how her army is strong because of their selflessness and their discipline.  The American brags of his self reliance. Overall, it's fun.

It has been a wild month.  On the 13th of April, Julie SMASHED her leg.  Totally f'd it all to h.  Then on May 6, we went to see Captain America: Civil War in theaters, in costume.  I was Captain America. This is the third time we've dressed up (cosplayed, it's called) for a movie.  My mom asked, "Is that something people do?"  Kinda, Mom.  Kinda.  People do it occasionally, although for a movie this size it's not quite as common.  Still, the reaction is fantastic.  People take pictures with you and geek out.  It's a lot of fun.  It's better with more people, and this time we rolled deep: eleven people were in our group, five in costume. This costume was a real milestone for me.  I've always enjoyed making costumes for Halloween and such.  Usually, I've relied on resourcefulness and lucky finds at Goodwill.  Often, the key is distilling a character's look into a few key items/colors/shapes/icons etc to make i...

On Tuesday I went to see the new Batman Superman movie with Ryan and Jack.  It was truly abysmal.  I knew going in that the movie wasn't made for me, and so I tried to go in and watch it for what it was trying to be.  But boy did it stink. There are lots of movies that don't quite work.  2006's "Superman Returns" for example was another Superman film that flopped.  At the time, I was an apologist, because I could see what director Bryan Singer was trying to accomplish.  He failed, but I could appreciate that he had picked his version of the character and made his creative decisions, even if the pieces never quite fell into place the way he'd hoped. But this film... Zach Snyder and David Goyer join the ranks of George Lucas, M. Knight Shyamalan, and Damon Lindelof as creative minds with terrible taste and complete confidence in themselves. Like the other three, this writer director team created a movie which could only have come to exist because the dr...

I went on vacation several weeks ago and I intend to write about it soon.  In the meantime, Julie has already done so and posted lots of pictures, so you should check them out over at her blog, ialbatross.com . I actually need to leave for work in a few minutes but I thought I'd give a quick shout out to my recent media picks. The first is "The Martian", by Andy Weir.  I haven't seen the movie but I intend to.  The book is pretty fantastic.  It has that wonderful quality of good science fiction where you want to try living in the character's world.  It also inspired me to resume my secret project.  All the talk of engineering and ingenuity made me want to make a thing I've been planning for a few weeks.  I'm going to continue to keep it a secret however until I've actually started.  Right now I'm in a lengthy design phase. Secondly, Julie and I have been watching the first season of "The Knick".  "The Knick" stars Clive Ow...

I just finished watching Netflix's Marvel's Daredevil, and my final assessment is that it ranks as "guilty pleasure". It's fun to watch, but surprisingly hokey at times.  That is all.

I just finished "Perdido Street Station", a 2001 steampunk novel by China Mieville.  Overall, it was good enough that it captured my interest, although it doesn't rise to the title of "favorite".  The story follows Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, a scientist who is commissioned by a crippled human-bird hybrid to invent an anti-gravity field so that he can fly again.  This is all ancillary, though.  The central conflict is the looming catastrophe threatened by a quintet of gargantuan multidimensional psychic monsters which are unleashed by Dan der Grimnebulin accidentally during his investigations into flight.  The world is populated by numerous non-human creatures, of which birdmen are one.  Also, science is magic.  The major consequence of this manifests in the time it takes Dan der Grimnebulin to accomplish something:  He can't ignore physics at an instant with a wave of a wand, but he can if given about 6 weeks and a trip to the apothecary. ...