Weekly Blog Update (April 30th, 2020)

Hey guys. How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Thursday morning. Sorry this post is later in the week than I had planned, but the weather was really nice out yesterday and on Tuesday, so I chose to go outside instead of working on the blog. I also got distracted with YouTube videos. So I don't have a whole lot to tell you this week, but I thought I'd do this post anyway since it's become a staple of this new version of The Review Basement.

Last week I announced that I was starting an entire series of reviews on VHS tapes. I decided to still do it, but I've narrowed it down to just three series of tapes. I've eliminated the Walt Disney Classics line and the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection line and will focus just on The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, Barney and the Backyard Gang, and Disney Sing-Along Songs. This way there won't be any repeats and I can actually talk about the episode or show that's on the tape without going through five or six different iterations of a movie before I get to the actual movie. So I'm going to just incorporate the movies from the Walt Disney Classics and Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection into my movie reviews since I have access to most, if not all of the movies thanks to Disney+. I'll be starting with the Teddy Ruxpin VHS tapes that Vincent sent me the digitized copies of next week, on either Monday or Tuesday, depending on when I feel like watching the first tape.

As you may have noticed I went off brand with my comic book review this week and reviewed Batman #501 from the Batman: Knightquest trade paperback. I have so many comic books that I want to talk about from all eras that I didn't think it was fair to pigeonhole myself into just reviewing the comic books that I had as a child and teenager. However, I'm going to reviewing single issues only, whether I have them in floppies (the single issues themselves), or in collected editions. With the older comics that I have facsimile editions or reprint editions of, I'm going to use the original cover image for rather than the reprint or facsimile edition of.

For my movie review this week I'm going to be watching Dick Tracy (1990). Unlike The Rocketeer, which I reviewed last week, I may or may not have seen Dick Tracy when I was a kid. It's possible I at least saw bits and pieces of it at the hospital, but I don't remember watching it and I don't remember seeing the whole movie. So hopefully I'll enjoy it when I sit down to watch it on VHS tomorrow night.

I think that's all I wanted to tell you guys this week. I'll be back on Saturday with my review of Dick Tracy and then I'll be back on Monday with my review of The World of Teddy Ruxpin Volume 1: The Treasure of Grundo, the first tape in the original Teddy Ruxpin VHS series. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later.

Batman (1940) #501 Comic Book Review

Batman #501 is a classic Batman story that you might find in a comic from the '70s, except it stars Jean Paul Valley as Batman and his relationship with Commissioner Gordon is much more tense than it was back then. Following his defeat of Bane in Batman #500, the new Batman is looking for a new challenge and decides to take on Gotham City's crime families. But they've banded together and hired an assassin to take out Batman instead. You know, the standard mob stuff you'd see in movies in the '40s.

I think it would've been a lot cooler if the crime families/crime bosses were ones we were familiar with. Like the Falcones, or Rupert Thorne or someone like that. Instead we just got generic bosses that don't do anything in terms of realizing that Batman has changed since Bane nearly killed him back in Batman #497. Which is one of the things that I enjoy about the Jean Paul Valley era of Batman comics. The big villains like the Joker and Catwoman realizing that this isn't the same Batman they're used to facing. That's not something you get with the small time crooks or the new supervillains like the Trigger Twins or the Tally Man.

I love the scene between Batman and Gordon. This is where Gordon slowly begins to realize that this isn't the Batman he's worked alongside of for several years. Though he isn't sure whether it's not the same man in general, not knowing Batman's secret identity, or if he is the same man, but changed after his encounters with Bane. The reason I love this scene is because Gordon, the only person to know Batman really well without knowing his secret identity, tells Batman that he knows how to make a tight case against the criminals he takes down and that he also knows how to blow a case when there's not enough evidence for the cops to take the bad guys in. Which has no effect on the new Batman, because, well as he admits in narration, he hates detective work, which has always been at the core of how Batman operates. Which Gordon knows very well and one of the reasons he trusts Batman so much.

The assassin the crime bosses hire is super generic. His design makes him look like a generic robot from a comic published by Image Comics in the '90s or by Marvel Comics in the same decade. Even the new Batman's Batsuit is more inspired by Spawn and Deadpool than any other character being published in 1993. I think DC was trying to make a point with their killing off of Superman, their replacing Bruce Wayne with Jean-Paul Valley as Batman, and their leading Hal Jordan into madness, that there's a reason that the traditional superheroes like Batman, Superman and Green Lantern are still around and that not everybody likes the '90s "superheroes" that were appearing in books published by Image and Marvel at the time. Oddly enough that case is still being made today. Not just in the comics, but in the movies and on TV too.

The artwork in this issue is pretty good. Mike Manley is the artist on this book and I like his work. I think the first time I ever saw his work was when I got Batman #506 back in 1994. I'll be talking about that issue in the near future.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall Batman #501 is a pretty good issue for it's time. The artwork is great. However the generic bad guys and Jean-Paul Valley himself aren't the greatest characters, and I found myself comparing Jean-Paul's Batman to Bruce Wayne's the entire time I was reading this issue. As I do any time I read an issue from the Knightquest: The Crusade era of Batman comics. Oh and it's also part 1 of a two part story that continues in Batman #502. I'm going to give this issue a 7/10.

The Rocketeer (1991) Movie Review

The Rocketeer is another movie for me that I had never seen before I popped it into the VCR to watch for this review, but was legendary. It came out in 1991 and at the time I was four and a half years old. We never rented it, we never owned it on any home video format, and I never saw it at the hospital. Yet I vaguely remember seeing a clip of Cliff Secord, played by Bill Campbell, in full costume at some point in the '90s. I don't know if it was in an opening for The Wonderful World of Disney or if it was an actual commercial for the movie that played on TV.

I talked to my buddy, Aaron, last night after I finished watching the movie and when I asked him if it was blasphemy to think that The Rocketeer is a better movie than The Dark Knight (2008) or any of the MCU films and he said no it's not. Which is good because I honestly do believe that The Rocketeer is a better movie than The Dark Knight at least in terms of my sensibilities. The tone is perfect where it's not too dark and serious, but it also isn't too over the top and goofy to the point where it undermines the seriousness of the situation that Cliff and Jenny, played by Jennifer Connelly, find themselves in. It feels like a movie. It's fun, it's exciting and I never felt bored while I was watching it.

The cast in this movie is phenomenal. Jennifer Connelly and Timothy Dalton were big names at this time as Dalton had just come off of playing James Bond in the successful The Living Daylights (1987) and the more controversial Licence to Kill (1989). And of course Jennifer Connelly had starred in numerous film genres ranging from Horror to Comedy to Fantasy. The rest of the cast is like a who's who of Star Trek cast members or soon to be Star Trek cast members. Bill Campbell played Captain Okona in the Star Trek: The Next Generation season 2 episode, "The Outrageous Okona", Max Grodenchik would go on to play Rom on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Tiny Ron Taylor would go on to play the Grand Nagus's servant on DS9 as well as a Hirogen commander on Star Trek: Voyager, both Terry O'Quinn and Paul Sorvino would appear in season 7 of TNG, O'Quinn as Admiral Pressman in "The Pegasus" and Sorvino as Worf's step brother, Nikolai Rozhenko in "Homeward", Clint Howard of course appeared as Balok in season 1 of TOS in the episode "The Corbomite Maneuver", and Ed Lauter appeared in season 5 of TNG as Cadet Joshua Albert's father in the episode "The First Duty". So you have a lot of Star Trek cast members or soon to be Star Trek cast members in this movie, which is pretty cool.

One of the things that Aaron warned me about before I watched the movie was that Cliff's girlfriend in the comics was named Betty, was a nude model and was inspired by Betty Page, an actress and pin-up model. That knowledge wasn't even on my mind as I was watching the movie, because Jenny, Cliff's girlfriend in the movie, is pretty great and Jennifer Connelly plays her extremely well. Unlike Vicky Vale, Kim Basinger's character in Batman (1989), Jenny isn't a completely useless damsel in distress. Which is pretty cool for a movie made in 1990 and released in 1991. Plus it's an adaptation of the comics, not a direct translation from one medium to another, and so changes are to be expected. Especially since Disney was involved and Jeffrey Katzenberg was in charge of the Walt Disney Studios at the time, so of course things are going to get changed as the movie was being released through Walt Disney Pictures, rather than Touchstone Pictures. So while other people don't like that Betty replaced with Jenny, it's not something that I have a problem with within the scope of the movie that was made, and the studio that produced and released it.

The director of the movie is Joe Johnston, who directed a lot of movies that I've seen over the years. He directed Willow (1988), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), The Pagemaster (1994), Jumanji (1995), and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and he worked on other movies such as the Star Wars Trilogy, the first two Indiana Jones movies, and Howard the Duck (1986) in the visual effects department. So I thought he was the perfect person to direct this movie.

Also the movie's score is pretty great too. James Horner did the score for this movie and so the music during the action scenes and the end credits is very similar to the music he composed for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). Which was an interesting choice, but again it's a choice that worked for the movie because of it's reverence for the old movie serials of the '30s and '40s.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall The Rocketeer is a very underrated movie that harkens back to a time when movies were made purely for entertainment purposes, not for quick cash grabs like so many movies are made for today. The cast is excellent, the action is stellar and even the special effects hold up pretty well despite them being early '90s effects. There was no CGI used in this movie at all. And I love this movie. I'm giving The Rocketeer 10/10.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102803/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures (1988) #34 Comic Book Review

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #34 is a confusing story. It's also the first Ninja Turtles comic I ever owned. The story being confusing probably stems from the fact that this issue continues a story that began in issue #33, one that I've never had in my collection and have never been able to track down a copy of. Because of that I'm actually missing half the story.

The Turtles, Master Splinter and a new character named Ninjara are in Tibet so that Splinter could visit his old friend, the Charlie Llama, only to find out that he's missing. Also there's a pregnant woman named Jang La who goes into labour as the Turtles are about to go rescue the Charlie Llama, who also happens to be a midwife. Yeah, this is a weird comic with way too many coincidences. Oh and all of this is linked to a petty Tibetan dictator.

Honestly, when I got this comic as a kid, I obviously didn't care about whether the story was good or not. I was just excited to have a Ninja Turtles comic. The early '90s was a weird time for the Turtles. The 1987 cartoon was starting to come down from it's height of popularity, but the Turtles were still hugely popular because of the live action movies that came out in 1990, 1991, and 1993. So while I missed the initial wave of Turtlemania, I still ended up having a few of the action figures, and saw the cartoon a few times though it wasn't something that I watched with any regular frequency like some of my classmates did.

One of the things that I like about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures is that they weren't afraid to create characters for the book, which never appeared in the regular book being published by Mirage Studios and didn't show up in the cartoon. They were there for the book and that's it. Which is something that The Batman Adventures, which started publication around this time, never did, as they used characters that were created for Batman: The Animated Series, like Harley Quinn, or had been created by DC Comics for the Bat family of comics. With the exception of characters like Jean Paul Valley (Azrael) and Tim Drake (Robin). Regardless, TMNT Adventures was great at being separate from the cartoon it was based on, after issue #7 or so, maybe a little bit later than that. To the point where Shredder and Krang hardly show up. They still show up occasionally, but the writers find plenty of ways for the Turtles to face adversity instead of just pitting them against Shredder, Krang and the Foot Clan constantly. It's almost as if Archie Comics didn't want to just do an adaptation of the cartoon. They wanted to make a Ninja Turtles comic book that could stand next to what Eastman, Laird and the guys at Mirage were doing with the main Turtles book. And while this particular issue isn't great, the decision that the guys at Archie Comics made definitely puts TMNT Adventures above other comic book adaptations of cartoons.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall this isn't a great issue. The pacing is super weird and it actually feels like this was supposed to be a single issue story, but the writer ran out of pages last issue and so they had to end the story in this issue. I've never read TMNT Adventures #33 so I don't actually know how much of their story they managed to tell in it. All I know is is that there wasn't much of a fight in this issue and nothing actually came of the Tibetan dictator. I'm giving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #34 a 6/10 simply because it was the first Ninja Turtles comic I ever got and the artwork is actually pretty solid.

Announcement and Weekly Blog Update (April 19th, 2020)

Hey guys! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm on Day 6 of my antibiotics and things are slowly starting to get back to being what I like to call "pandemic normal", as in the status quo that was in place for me before I ended up in the hospital last weekend. Right now I wanted to come on and talk to you because I have an announcement to make.

Thanks to YouTube and Vincent Conroy, the webmaster for the Grundo Gazette, a Teddy Ruxpin fan site, I've decided to begin a series of reviews on specific series of VHS releases. There are five series I'm going to tackle. They are: The World of Teddy Ruxpin, Disney Sing-Along Songs, Barney & The Backyard Gang, Walt Disney Classics, and Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection. The Teddy Ruxpin tapes are just the episodes of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin TV series. Vincent provided me with digitized copies of the series, so I can watch the tapes I had as a kid and watch the ones I didn't have for the first time. So thanks definitely goes out to him for providing me with those.

YouTube has the Disney Sing-Along Songs and Barney & The Backyard Gang tapes as well as the openings for all of the movies in both the Walt Disney Classics line and the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection so that's where I'll be watching them.

For the Walt Disney Classics and Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection I'm going to watch the openings for the tapes I don't have and and don't have the movie on any other format and the full tapes for the ones I do. However several movies overlap between the two lines so for the ones I have the VHS tapes for, I'll watch those regardless of which line they're in and review that movie when I get to that point in the line. If I don't have that movie on VHS I'll review the movie and include the full movie review with the earliest release in that line. For example, for Robin Hood, I only have it on Blu-ray, so I'll review the movie when I talk about the first VHS release it had in the Walt Disney Classics line, which happens to be the first movie released in that line, so Robin Hood will be my first Disney movie review on the new blog.

I'll also be starting with the series that started getting released first. As the Walt Disney Classics line began coming out in 1984, that's the series I'll be starting with and then I'll finish with the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection sometime next year as this will be a weekly series, rather than a daily one. This series is going to be in addition to my regular movie reviews. I just figured it was a good way to slide the kids stuff in there without long breaks in between them or without just doing them without any other movie review around it. So that will be starting next week.

This week I'll be playing catch up and reviewing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #34 and The Rocketeer. Both reviews were supposed to be up over the Easter weekend but as you know, I ended up in the hospital and things just kind of went south from there. So they'll be going up this week instead. I think that's all I wanted to tell you about this evening. Have a great week and I will be back later in the week with my review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #34. Later. 

Animorphs (1998) TV Show Overview

Animorphs is another show that is of it's time and could never be made in this day and age the way it was made 22 years ago. While it shares the name and characters of the book series created by K.A. Applegate, Animorphs has more in common with Power Rangers than it does the book series it's adapted from. Five teenagers gain special powers from an alien to protect the planet from evil aliens, the evil aliens are incompetent fools, the teens go through daily struggles all the while not addressing whether their parents are concerned about their children's behaviour, and a sixth member joins the team at some point during the series.

Many fans have criticized this show for not being faithful to the books. While I can see where they're coming from realistically a more faithful adaptation of the book series simply wasn't possible back in 1998. Not just because it didn't have the budget. When looking at Animorphs you also have to look at the period surrounding it's airing as well as the network it was on at the time.

Animorphs first aired in 1998 and ended it's run in 2000. At the time the superhero movie was just starting to become popular and successful with movies like Blade (1998) and X-Men (2000) but the landscape of superhero movies was extremely small back then. Superheroes on TV was another story entirely. The most successful superhero property on TV in 1998 was Power Rangers. At least in live action. In animation Bruce Timm and Warner Bros. Animation were having a string of successes with Batman: The Animated Series (1992), Superman: The Animated Series (1996) and The New Batman Adventures (1997). While Marvel was having a string of successes with cartoons based on Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four. Sailor Moon was also pretty popular on the Anime side. So superheroes were dominating in animation.

As I said, in live action, it was only Power Rangers that we really had by 1998 as Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman had ended and nothing else was on the horizon from DC or Marvel. And with the Animorphs book series starting out as a superhero series, with the more horrifying war elements not entering into the series until the books reached book #30 or so, Nickelodeon was going to play it safe and take more influences from Power Rangers than from the books themselves. Which is ironic considering that Nickelodeon has been airing Power Rangers for the last ten years.

I rewatched a bunch of the show recently, and I'm okay with this. Not every superhero TV show has to be dark and gritty, even if it's based on something that is those things. Now that's not to say that every superhero TV show needs to be goofy and lighthearted either. But I felt at the time, and now going back and watching it as an adult, that Animorphs did very well at balancing the serious moments with the funnier ones. As much as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers did. Even if I can't take that show seriously anymore.

I don't remember if I started reading the books first or watching the show first, but I remember the first episode of Animorphs I ever saw was Episode 2, "My Name is Jake, Part 2". Here in Canada the show was on twice a week. On Sunday mornings on Global, right before Men in Black: The Animated Series and on either Thursday night or Friday night on YTV. I watched it both nights. I also remember taping the season 1 finale, "Face Off" and rewatching the scene where Tobias grabs the Andalite disk, gains his morphing powers back and morphs into his human form again. I realize now they only did that because season 2 had it's already low budget slashed and they couldn't afford to use the Hawk they were using for Tobias all the time anymore. But still, having Tobias back in his human form again was pretty cool (I hadn't read book #13 yet at this point).

I do wish we'd seen more of the Hork-Bajir and other alien races that were featured in the books. But with the budget that this show had I'm just glad we actually got to see Ax and Visser Three's Andalite forms, the one Hork-Bajir that we saw and the Yeerks outside of their host bodies that we saw. Not to mention we actually got to see the Animorphs morph.

The cast of this show is amazing. Though sadly, Shawn Ashmore (Jake) and Paul Costanzo (Ax) seem to be the only ones who are actually known for anything. Brooke Nevin (Rachel) has mostly been in independent films and smaller TV shows that don't garner much notice. Same goes with the rest of the cast pretty much. My favourite actor on this show is Christopher Ralph. The way he portrays Tobias is awesome. Tobias was always my favourite of the Animorphs with Ax coming in at a close second. I could always identify with Tobias and Ax more than I ever could Jake or Marco, or Cassie or Rachel. So to see an actor portray both characters really well on screen was awesome. Oh and Eugene Lipinski as Visser Three was amazing too. In fact when I first saw him on screen as Visser Three's human morph I recognized him from the 1996 movie Harriet the Spy. The last thing I saw him in was in three episodes of Arrow during that show's first two seasons as Oliver's contact with Bratva operations in Starling City.

I know fans of the books don't like this show and I understand why. Adaptation is a difficult line to walk, but honestly, I still love it. Not as much as I love the books, but it's still a fun show for me to watch. For years I've been watching crappy versions of the episodes on YouTube because there's no DVD release, only the four VHS releases. But the entire series is on iTunes now so I've bought a few episodes from there and watched the three episodes that are included on the first VHS release so far. It's still one of my favourite shows that aired on YTV in the late '90s and early 2000s.

Having said all that it would be interesting what a new TV adaptation of Animorphs would be like. Especially if the series was picked up by Netflix and given a much larger budget than the original TV show did. It could be more faithful to the books in terms of the direction the story went in the books. We could also see a much larger variety of animals that the kids could morph into. We could see more ships and open up the universe a lot more. I doubt it will ever happen though since as I said at the beginning of this post, Animorphs, both the book series and the TV show, is of it's time. It appeared long enough for people of my generation to latch onto it and then disappeared into the ether for us to remember fondly and revisit from time to time. Despite Science Fiction having a resurgence on TV right now and superheroes being popular, Animorphs doesn't have an appeal outside of the kids who read the books and watched the show in the mid-'90s to early 2000s. As was proven almost a decade ago when Scholastic tried to update and re-release the book series. Nobody bought it. At least we have 65 books to read and 26 episodes to watch. And that suits me just fine.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154147/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Andromeda (2000) TV Show Overview

Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda or just Andromeda as it's commonly shortened to, is a show that I watched all the time. I was not quite fourteen years old when the show first aired and there was something about it that I latched onto. It wasn't Star Trek nor was it Star Wars. It was something else entirely. Aside from Kevin Sorbo, who I vaguely remembered as Hercules from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, I didn't know any of the cast though Laura Bertram (Trance Gemini) was one of two leads on the Canadian teen drama series Ready or Not from 1993 until 1997.

One of the things that I loved about Andromeda is that it blended the morals of Star Trek with the fun, simplistic action of Star Wars and presented us with something entirely new. That's because not only was the original story idea created by Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, but it was developed for TV by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who had been a writer on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Gene Roddenberry's widow, Majel Barrett, who also had been involved with every incarnation of Star Trek until her death in 2008.

Another thing that I liked about Andromeda is that it came at a time when Star Trek had started to die down following it's huge success in the late '80s and throughout the '90s with two TV shows on at any given time and a movie coming every two to three years. By this time both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had ended, the movies weren't doing quite as well at the box office as they had done in the '80s, and Voyager was just about to end. So Andromeda arrived at the perfect time to fill that void that the lack of Star Trek on TV was creating.

My favourite characters on the show were Tyr Anasazi, played by Keith Hamilton Cobb, the Nietzschean mercenary that joined Dylan's crew, and Trance Gemini, basically a Goddess. I've heard fans of the show say that Tyr's betrayal at the end of season 3 and his behaviour in season 4 were inconsistent with how he was written and portrayed in seasons 1 and 2. Honestly I very much thought that they were consistent with the character. Tyr always looked out for himself. He was about surviving and doing whatever it took to ensure HIS survival. Betraying Dylan and the crew of the Eureka Maru was something that he felt was necessary at the time. It goes all the way back to the second episode where he easily moved from the side of Gerentex, the Nightsider who had hired Beka and her crew to salvage the Andromeda from the black hole in the Hephaistos System in the pilot, to the side of Dylan and the crew of the Maru, despite the fact that Gerentex was paying Tyr and his group of mercenaries. It also goes back to the show's fifth episode "Double Helix" where Tyr seemingly had switched from the side of the Andromeda to the group of Nietzscheans, the Orca Pride, just as easily as he had switched to Dylan's only three episodes earlier.

The reason I liked Tyr so much is because you never knew what he was going to do next or how he was going to handle any given situation. I also liked that he was calculating and waited to act until the time was suitable for him to do so. He always thought about his actions before he did them and was never impulsive. Luckily for the first three seasons Tyr's goals matched Dylan's goals. Otherwise things might've gone south for Dylan a lot sooner.

The reason I liked Trance is because she was so mysterious. Right from her introduction in the pilot episode, she seemed like this simple, thoughtless, sheltered girl at first glance. However you quickly realize there is far more to her than meets the eye even though she kept quiet about where she was from and her past. It wasn't until midway through the second season when the original Purple Trance was replaced by future Gold Trance that she starts to become less of a mystery. At least to the audience. Even right up until the series finale at the end of the fifth season, Dylan and the crew aren't quite sure what to make of Trance. I also liked that she was generally a friendly person, but could get quite mean if you crossed her a certain way. Particularly after she became Gold Trance.

I've also heard people online talk about the shift in tone and change in storytelling direction midway through the second season when Robert Hewitt Wolfe left the show and Kevin Sorbo replaced him as showrunner. Successful or not, every show that is on long enough for there to be a change in showrunner and writing staff will have a tonal shift and/or shift in storytelling direction because every showrunner is different and have different storytelling sensibilities. Even Star Trek: The Next Generation had several shifts in storytelling direction between Gene Roddenberry, Maurice Hurley, Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor. Arrow also had several showrunners during it's eight year run and each one tried to change the tone of the show from the darker tone set by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim in season 1 to the weird tone set by Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle in season 4.

Personally I didn't really notice the change mid-season 2 as I always felt that Andromeda was never trying to be like Star Trek and so was never trying to be sophisticated like Star Trek was at the time. I think it was just trying to be lighthearted and entertaining. Which I appreciated since Star Trek was starting to get darker with Star Trek: Enterprise a year after Andromeda started.

Recently I bought a few episodes of Andromeda season 1 on iTunes and I watched them while I was in the hospital. They actually held up after almost 20 years. Which is pretty awesome. Oh sure they're cheesy as hell but they were cheesy when they aired almost twenty years ago so in that regard they hold up for sure.

Overall I still love Andromeda after 20 years. Only the first season is available on iTunes so I'll definitely be tracking down the DVD sets for this show once the COVID-19 stuff is all over and done with. I'm not rating the things I'm talking about over the next few days as they aren't really reviews, just discussions about certain TV shows that I want to talk about while I'm confined to my bedroom.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213327/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Weekly Blog Update (April 14th, 2020)

Hey guys! How's everyone doing? I'm okay. I had a really rough weekend and ended up spending most of it in the hospital with a bad infection. Which is why my reviews of TMNT Adventures #34 and The Rocketeer didn't come out at the end of last week. I'm not sure when they're going to come out at the moment because, while I am now at home, I'm staying in my bedroom for a few days to make sure I didn't bring any viruses home from the hospital, which is why I'm doing this blog update.

Because I'm going to be in my bedroom for a while I'm not going to have access to my stuff in the basement until I'm out of here. I'd still like to put out content for you guys though. So over the next few days you're going to see four posts from me. The first is going to be a post about Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda a TV show that aired from 2000 until 2005. The second is going to be about the TV adaptation of the mid-'90s to early 2000s book series, Animorphs, the third is going to be about the first VHS release of the Animorphs TV show, and the fourth is going to be about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The Andromeda post will be out tomorrow, the Animorphs TV show post will be out on Thursday, the Animorphs VHS release post will be out on Friday and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers post will be out on Saturday.

That's all I wanted to mention in this week's update. I'll be back tomorrow for the Andromeda post. Take care.

The Magician's Land (2014) Book Review

The Magician's Land is one of those weird third acts of a trilogy that is pretty unnecessary until the third to last chapter. At least when it comes to Quentin. The rest of the story was pretty cool. Especially the heist that Quentin, and new character, Plum find themselves involved in at the beginning of the book. The Magician's Land is like Return of the Jedi in that the first few chapters of the book, like the opening sequence of the movie, has nothing to do with the rest of the book. At least we, meaning the readers, think it doesn't while we're reading those chapters. As the book goes along though we discover that the first several chapters of the book has everything to do what's going on with Eliot and Janet in Fillory though it takes quite a while for that connection to be made.

As Dan Fogler's character said in Fanboys, the greatest thing Luke Skywalker ever did was destroy the Death Star in the first Star Wars movie. Unlike Luke, Quentin doesn't even find his Death Star, meaning the thing he's supposed to do as the hero, until the third to last chapter of the book and he's been the main protagonist of this trilogy since the first paragraph of the first book. Which is fine because Grossman wanted the series to last for three books, so he had to stretch the story out to cover three books, even though two books would've been just fine. My problem stems from the fact that every single character in this series is more interesting than the one we're supposed to be following.

I know I've been ragging on Quentin in every review I've done of the series, but there's a very good reason for it. Lev Grossman, the author of these books, is a journalist first, and a novelist second. Which means that his writing sensibilities comes from that occupation, rather than from a literary standpoint. While The Magicians wasn't the first novel that Grossman wrote and got published, it's still early enough in his writing career as a novelist that he was still writing as a journalist, who dealt with facts, research and investigation, rather than daydreaming, creating and developing characters into reasonable facsimiles of actual people. As a result, Quentin, who acts like a real person, isn't written as someone who is interesting. Everyone else in the sizeable cast is. For example, Julia was written beautifully in The Magician King while Eliot, Janet and Plum are written beautifully in this book. But for some reason there were enough characters that Grossman couldn't pay attention to all of them in every book, and he also had difficulty making sure his main character, our eyes into this world of magic and fantasy, was interesting enough for the readers to justify wanting to follow him.

As I was reading the book I thought the flashback chapters for the events leading up to Plum and Quentin's expulsion from Brakebills were unnecessary and took away from what was going on in Fillory and was taking away from what was going on with Quentin and Plum in the present day. But I finished the book on Monday night and since then I've been thinking about it further. The flashbacks weren't unnecessary as it informed us who Plum is as a character and how her time at Brakebills shaped her into the person she becomes by the end of the book.

I love Plum. She's everything that Quentin should've been by the end of the first book. She's motivated, determined and we know why she is the way she is. I won't spoil it for you in case you haven't read the book yet, but Plum has a connection to certain characters in the book that I actually didn't really see coming just because it's the third/final book in the trilogy and it's the kind of connection that Grossman should've given to Quentin when he created the character in the mid to late 2000s. That's all I'll say about that.

While Eliot and Janet have a lot more to do in this book than they have in either of the first two books, sadly my three favourite characters, Julia, Josh and Poppy are sidelined for much of the book. Josh and Poppy provide some witty comments and not so helpful suggestions, but otherwise they don't do anything. Like I know Poppy is pregnant, though she doesn't actually have her baby by the end of the book, but I wish Grossman had given her a lot more to do than sit on her throne all day. In a way The Magician's Land is like Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith in that way as George Lucas sidelined Padme Amidala in that movie because she was pregnant with Luke and Leia. And just like in The Magicians Julia doesn't appear for much of the book and only shows up right before Quentin saves Fillory in the way he saves it, which I also won't spoil for you in case you haven't read the book before. I'm more okay with that though because I feel like Julia's story finished at the end of The Magician King. However I still feel like Josh and Poppy had more to do.

Final Thoughts and Overall Rating: Overall The Magician's Land is a really well written book. While I have a lot of problems with it, I absolutely enjoyed reading it. The same thing goes for The Magicians Trilogy as a whole. While I have a lot of problems with it, the trilogy is an awesome series and I would highly recommend it. Having read the entire trilogy now I would have to say that The Magician King is my favourite book in the trilogy. While The Magicians and The Magician's Land work better with The Magician King to connect them and function as a three act piece of storytelling. I'm giving The Magician's Land 7/10 stars simply because the ending was good, I liked how a certain character, who returns in this book, calls Quentin out on his crap. I'm giving the trilogy as a whole 9/10 stars because it's an incredible piece of fiction when put together into a single piece with each book complementing the other two in the trilogy.

Weekly Blog Update (April 8th, 2020)

Hey guys! How's it going? It's time for the weekly Review Basement update where I talk about what's going on with the blog this week as well as what I've been reading and watching. Obviously nothing is going on in my life seen as how I'm still in protective isolation and the rest of the world is basically shut down right now. But I'm still watching a lot of YouTube.

I've also been watching some movies on VHS outside of movies I'm reviewing. So far I've watched Jetsons: The Movie (1990), and Batman: The Movie (1966) and tonight I'm going to watch Star Wars (1977). Then later in the week I'll be watching The Rocketeer (1991) for the first time ever so that will be interesting to see whether I like it or not. That's pretty much it for what I'm watching this week since none of the shows that I watch on a regular basis are new episodes this week.

I just finished reading The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman and am about to start The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Book 1 - The Ring Sets Out as well. Otherwise I'm just reading comic books and blogs and things like that.

This week on the blog I'll have a review of The Magician's Land up tomorrow. Then on Friday I'll have this week's comic book review, where I'll be leaving DC Comics and going over to Archie Comics so I can review Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #34 which was the first Ninja Turtles comic I ever got. Finally on Saturday I'll have a review of The Rocketeer up for you as well. So it's another quiet week here at The Review Basement.

That's it for this week's update. Like I said, there's nothing going on in my life right now with the world basically shut down. Once all of this is over, I'm sure I'll have a lot more to talk about in these posts. I'll be back tomorrow with my review of The Magician's Land. Talk to you later.

Blazing Saddles (1974) Movie Review

Mel Brooks is probably my favourite filmmaker of all time even over George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Before last night I'd only seen two of his movies but every time I sit down to watch one of them I am never disappointed. Blazing Saddles was no different. While it's not as funny as Robin Hood: Men in Tights and not as good as Spaceballs (no Mel Brooks movie is as good as Spaceballs), Blazing Saddles is a hidden gem in the Brooks pantheon of films. Oh it's not a movie that could be made now any more than The Dukes of Hazzard could be made now, and it's pretty offensive with the amount of racist jokes, but it's offensive to EVERYONE, not just a certain group or demographic. Honestly that's part of it's charm.

The cast is pretty great. This is my first time seeing Gene Wilder in anything besides Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory and it was pretty startling at first to see him play a character who is much calmer than Willy Wonka is. But at the same time it was cool. The rest of the cast was actually pretty recognizable. Slim Pickens (Taggert) played the villain in The Apple Dumpling Gang which I've only seen clips of on different Disney documentaries, Burton Gilliam who I saw play a bad guy in the season 1 finale of The Dukes of Hazzard, I've heard Madeline Kahn's voice in An American Tail and Dom DeLuise in An American Tail, Spaceballs, Oliver & Company, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. So it was neat seeing all of them in other things.

The plot is pretty much a plot from an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard but instead of Boss Hogg and Roscoe trying to cheat the citizens of Hazzard out of something or framing Bo and Luke for a crime, it's Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) and Taggert trying to run the people out of the small town of Rock Ridge by any means necessary, including making Bart (Cleavon Little), a black man, the sheriff of the town, which is populated entirely by white people. Except each scheme blows up in Lamarr's face, just like all of Boss Hogg's schemes did. Come to think of it, this plot has also been in numerous comic books over time as well. Particularly early issues of Superman and Action Comics.

My only gripe with this movie is that the physical comedy gets in the way of the rest of the movie. You can only laugh so much at people hitting their heads or getting tripped or whacked on the head or whatever the gag is before it gets boring. At least for me, because I'm not much of a physical comedy guy. I prefer spoken jokes, snide remarks and other forms of verbal humour. Also the end of the movie was a bit confusing as well. When Bart shot Lamarr in the crotch, in front of the movie theatre, because they literally broke the fourth wall, did Lamarr die? Nobody says whether he was killed by that shot and we don't see him again as that's pretty much the end of the movie, aside from Bart and Jim riding off into the sunset in a limo. Yeah, that ending is weird.

Probably the funniest thing for me in Blazing Saddles is that everyone in Rock Ridge has the last name of Johnson. I don't know if Brooks put that in there as a comment on the stereotype of inbreeding in small towns, which I'm pretty sure doesn't actually happen in real life, or what, but I don't care because I thought it was hilarious. I thought it was the best joke in the entire movie. I don't even know why, it just is.

Final Thoughts and Rating: While it's not as good as Spaceballs or as funny as Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Blazing Saddles is still an amazing film that had me laughing (quietly mind you) the whole time. As a Mel Brooks movie should. I can see why it's a beloved movie by fans of Mel Brooks who have seen more of his movies than I have. It's fantastic. It's offensive, but it's not as offensive as it could've been given the time it was made in. It's not a movie that could be made now that's for sure though. I'm giving Blazing Saddles 9.9/10 stars because I'm just not a fan of physical comedy and I feel it was overused in this movie.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071230/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989) #33 Comic Book Review

Staying in 1992 for a little while longer, Star Trek: The Next Generation #33 is the first in a three issue story arc where Q turns the entire crew of the Enterprise, except for Worf and Data, into Klingons at what is probably the worst possible time he could do that as the ship is transporting a Ysalanti delegation to a peace conference being mediated by the Federation. The Ysalanti don't like other warrior races, including the Klingons, so Worf has to stay out of sight, despite being Chief of Security. So then Q turns the crew into Klingons after he overhears Picard tell Worf that he wishes he had a hundred like Worf. You'd think Picard would know by this point (early to mid season 5) that Q can listen in so he should be careful about what he says. But no, instead he goes and says that, inspiring Q.

I always assumed that Q listens in on the Enterprise crew from time to time, but due to the budgetary restrictions that TNG had back in the late '80s and early '90s, they could never portray that. Instead they would have him appear out of nowhere rather than showing him floating outside the ship as. Which is why Q makes a great character to have in a comic book. Just because you can do so much more with him that the show couldn't do either because of budgetary restraints or because of the limitations of the Human body.

Having said that this issue, and the two that follow it, are comics that fall more into the category of fan fiction rather than a story that could plausibly be canon. Not because the comics are never canon, and not because Michael Jan Friedman is a huge Star Trek fan though. The thing about this story is that even if Q ever had transformed the crew into Klingons on the show, he couldn't change their personalities or their internal structure to be Klingons. It would be a superficial thing only. And so the only problem would be that Worf would still be the only Klingon and the Ysalanti would only be looking at people who look like Klingons, not actual Klingons. This is something I'll be getting into again in three weeks when I review part three of this story arc in Star Trek: The Next Generation #35. In this issue La Forge would never be that aggressive, and even as a Klingon, Doctor Crusher would never perform surgery outside of the operating room, and she would never perform it without anaesthesia. Yeah, those two things happened in this issue.

The artwork is much more solid in this issue than it was back in issue #31. You can actually see what location the characters are in, be it a corridor, Engineering, the Transporter Room or the Bridge. Like the artist of issue #31, Ken Penders enjoys taking shots directly from the show and translating them into comic book form. But unlike the artist of issue #31, Penders does it with the Enterprise rather than with characters. There are several shots of the ship in this issue that look exactly like they were taken from the show. He even included a shot of the ship jumping to warp from the same angle as we see it in the opening title sequence. I even imagined that Picard was saying his opening monologue over the shot. The other two are simply two of the stock footage images from the show. So I thought that was pretty cool.

The only other problem that I have with this issue, apart from the story feeling more like fan fiction, is the layout of some of the pages. The panel layout is fine, but some of the story is told left to right, and some is told right to left. It gets a bit confusing, but it's only with four pages in total. Not enough to make the book unreadable, just enough to make it a little jarring if you aren't expecting it.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall, I wouldn't recommend that you read this issue unless you grew up reading the comics of the '90s. It's a good story, but like I said, it feels like fan fiction and just defies plausibility as a Star Trek story. Q would definitely turn the crew into Klingons on the show if he'd had the chance, but it wouldn't be like the way it's portrayed in this issue. I'm giving this issue 5/10 as the artwork is gorgeous and for the fact that it is a good story even if it isn't a good Star Trek story. 

My Favourite YouTube Channels and Blogs

Hey guys! How's it going? I'm doing alright. Today I'm here to talk about my favourite YouTube channels and blogs. Originally I was going to just talk about my favourite YouTube channels, but I do read a couple of blogs as well, and I thought I'd talk about those too. I'll include links to all of the things I talk about at the bottom of this post. Also, these aren't in any particular order so this isn't an actual top whatever number list or anything like that. These are just the channels and the blogs that I enjoy watching and reading.

The first YouTube channel I would like to talk about is called Geekvolution. The channel, headed by Captain Logan, is a geek centric channel that tackles comic books, movies, TV shows, and just pop culture in general. It started out back in 2009 with the first episode of Superhero Rewind, a show where Cap reviews superhero and comic book based movies and has grown from there. I started watching the channel back in 2013 while Superhero Rewind was on hiatus because Cap was doing a web series called Spawn Year, which is another review series where Cap reviews nothing but the Image Comics series Spawn and related media, but it's wrapped in a narrative that's actually pretty cool. Cap can be long winded, but he's so detailed with his movie analyses that you never feel like he missed something in a review.

Another general geek related channel that I love is Stefan Homberger's channel. Stefan is very much into geeky nostalgia. Particularly stuff from the '90s. He collects VHS and Laserdiscs, which is pretty cool. However, the thing I like most about the channel is that Stefan is only a few months younger than I am. Most of the other YouTube channels I watch are run by people who are older than I am and so they grew up more in the '80s than in the '90s. Whereas Stefan and his wife grew up in the '90s and grew up with a lot of the shows, movies, books, comics and video games that I grew up with, even though there are some divergences in our experiences. So when he talks about R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series or about watching Star Trek in the '90s, or the video games he was playing at the time, I can relate to that a lot better than I can to the people who grew up watching The Transformers when it was brand new, rather than in reruns. Which is really cool. I also like how he and his wife talk about books without being a BookTube channel.

The next channel I'm going to talk about is one that I've actually been a guest on and have been mentioned on a few times on in the past three years since I discovered it. That channel is The Sentai Review hosted by Bill, Seth, Scott, Shane and Nick. They're actually a podcast, but they host it on YouTube so we can follow along with the pictures they're looking at. The focus of The Sentai Review is Fandom, particularly Tokusatsu shows such as Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and Power Rangers. They look at the costumes and Mechs from these shows and rate them just by looking at pictures of them on the computer, even if they haven't actually seen the series the pictures are from. They also make fun of the things they see. Take a look at their Power Rangers season and movie overviews, they're pretty hilarious. These guys are amazing on air, and they're also really cool people in "person" as well (I've only met them online).

A side note to this is Bill's channel, Fandom with ReploidBill. This is where Bill talks about everything from comics to movies to video games to Star Trek, which encompasses all of those things. Sometimes Bill has some radical ideas, but he tells it like it is and when he feels something is ridiculous, he'll talk about it. Oh and if you have kids, it's probably best that you don't watch these channels with them as they are decidedly not for children.

A channel that I love and is more comic book related, though covers a lot of other geeky topics, is Near Mint Condition. Omar, Maddie, Tina, Rob, Dan, and Amanda (sometimes) are the hosts of the channel and they cover comic books and comic book related topics extensively, but also dip into toys, Anime, movies and TV shows as well. Maddie is relatively new to comics so she and Omar do a show called Old Reader, New Reader where one of them chooses a collected edition of a comic book story arc or run that the other hasn't read and they talk about it live on Tuesday nights. Amanda was part of this show as well at first, but life happened and it became just Omar and Maddie. Omar talks about collected editions, not single issues, so if you're looking for info on single issues, this isn't the channel for you, but if you're into collected editions (trade paperbacks, hardcovers, omnibus editions) then definitely check this channel out.

The next channel I want to talk about is CinemaSickness. Dave goes to thrift stores and hunts for movies for his collection as well as for his online store, It Came From CinemaSickness. Oh and his movie is insanely huge. His entire basement is a multimedia library that is set up like an actual library. Like it's unimaginable to me to have a collection THAT massive of anything let alone movies.

And the final channel I'd like to talk about, before I move onto the two blogs that I read on a regular basis, is the HappyConsoleGamer channel. Johnny Millennium, his wife Kim, and his best friend Rob talk about video games. Not just games for current consoles, but games going all the way back to the '80s and consoles like the original NES and Sega Genesis. They also talk about Anime of all sorts. One of the reasons I like the channel is that it's so positive, but it's so real too. This isn't the Angry Video Game Nerd, or one of those channels. This is a cool dude who loves video games and wants to share that with his audience. Oh and they're Canadian too, so that gives people the Canadian perspective.

The first blog I would like to talk about is Cool Comics in My Collection by Ed Gosney II. Every week Ed writes about some cool comics that are in his collection, or were in his collection in some cases, and some of them are even ones you don't normally hear about. Which is what I like about it the most. There's also a Facebook group for the blog that I'm a part of and Ed has made it very collaborative. He allows us to present our own work on the page, including blogs that we have. He's even opened his blog up for us to contribute to as well, which is really cool of him.

The second blog, and final item I want to talk about is a blog called Longbox Junk. Run by Atom, Longbox Junk is a comic book blog full of reviews that nobody has ever asked for. That is literally the blog's tagline "Comic book reviews nobody has ever asked for...". Most blogs and YouTube channels that focus on comic books focus on the big storylines, major issues, and popular series. Not Longbox Junk. Atom reviews the stories, issues and series that aren't as popular with the comic book reading community or aren't as well known or completely forgotten about. Which is awesome.

Well that's going to be it for me for today. I hope I've given you some cool YouTube channels and blogs to check out while you stay home during this global pandemic we're currently facing. What are some of your favourite YouTube channels and blogs? Let me know in the comments so I can check them out. Take care and stay safe!

Links

Geekvolution

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ5AQws-5GJ00VT9olftURQ

Stefan Homberger

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMErFg5ZyVeDZZCQN3Ke7ag

The Sentai Review

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5h_jOFWVtEftLM3qf5wsig

Fandom with ReploidBill

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu-IW5WO-F7Ts5G4hP6-R_g

Near Mint Condition

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUX6kqTUFzQaKJKBaqzuNdg

CinemaSickness

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPBZ2o_LbXU1ySanH5o1Kyg

HappyConsoleGamer

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2vUKoTGIwNYq4LO0YWKPIg

Cool Comics in My Collection

https://edgosney.com/http:/edgosney.com/category/cool-comics/cool-comics/

Longbox Junk

http://longboxjunk.blogspot.com/

Weekly Blog Update and What I've Been Watching and Reading

Hey guys. How's it going? Are all of you doing okay? I'm doing okay. It was my friend's 30th birthday yesterday so I talked to her on the phone for a bit yesterday afternoon, which was nice as she and I have never actually talked on the phone before. She's called me a long time ago when we first started hanging out, but we mostly text or talk on Facebook or in person. So that was cool. I decided to come on here and talk about what I've got planned for the blog this week as well as what I've been watching and reading.

Tomorrow I'm going to be writing a post about my favourite YouTube channels and maybe turn you onto some new channels to watch during this time of isolation. On Friday I'll be putting out this week's comic book review where I'll be talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation #33, the first part in a three part story arc involving Q. So that'll be a good time. Then on Saturday I'll be doing my review of the classic Mel Brooks movie, Blazing Saddles, which I have on VHS. I've never seen it before, so it should be interesting to see what I think about it. It's a Mel Brooks movie though, so I don't think I'll hate it.

As for what I'm watching and reading, there are a few things. I'm still reading The Magician's Land, the final book in Lev Grossman's The Magicians Trilogy. Aside from my weekly comic book reviews, that's actually all I'm reading right now. I'm watching a lot of YouTube though, which is why I want to do a YouTube channels post this week. Both Supergirl and DC's Legends of Tomorrow are on hiatus until the end of April for some reason or another. However I did watch God Friended Me on Sunday and I have new episodes of The Goldbergs and Schooled tonight. Other than that I watched The Terminator on VHS last week so if you haven't already, please check out my review of that movie which I posted on Saturday. That's all I've watched in the past week, but I'll be watching more movies on VHS. I'm also planning on getting some time in on the Super Nintendo as well in the next few days. I tell you it looks like I live in the '90s or 2000s down here. Which is awesome and just what I need to help pass the time since I can't go out with friends or have friends over even right now.

Anyways guys that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow with my YouTube Channels post. So until then stay safe out there in this crazy world we live in now. Bye.