Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Suicide Squad

 


This is a movie that quite unfairly gets shit on (mostly by critics), as most of the DCEU movies have. That said, it is not a perfect movie and would have been better (I think) if they would have stuck to director David Ayer's vision and not tried to make it a clone of Guardians of the Galaxy, and just had a bunch of misfits that quip at each other.

The story is that ARGUS, headed by Amanda Waller (played wonderfully by Viola Davis) forces a bunch of inmates, some with metahuman abilities to covertly battle threats that the government cannot handle, knowing that the government can disavow them and throw them under the bus if things go sideways. And, to force their cooperation, nanite bombs are implanted in their necks, in order to kill anyone who wants to try and escape. The movie is set after Batman v. Superman and references Superman's death, and Ben Affleck does have a couple of cameo appearances as Batman. And, the movie does do a bit of setup for the Justice League movie. 

The movie is mostly an origin story for the character of Harley Quinn (played by Margo Robbie) and to some extent Deadshot (played by Will Smith), and partly a mission story of the team trying to take down a 1000-year-old witch (played by Carla Delevingne). The team is headed by Special Forces officer Rick Flag (played by Joel Kinnaman, best known for the series The Killing), who tries to keep the bad guys in line. The movie also reintroduces the live-action Joker, played by Jared Leto, whose take on the character was totally different from any prior version of the character. Almost a punk rocker version of him. Leto was apparently pretty crazy devoted to the role in real life and did a very good job being psychotic. 

The big controversy over the movie is the extensive reshoots that WB forced Ayers to do to make the movie more like an MCU movie. His version would have had much less comedy, no pop songs, and would have been much more of a dark drama/action combination. After the Snyder Cut of Justice League was actually released fans are now clamoring for an Ayers cut of this movie. Whether it will actually come to pass, remains to be seen.

For those who get the Blu-Ray, the movie looks and sounds great in HD. There are over an hour's worth of extras including several making of and behind the scenes features and a gag reel. Definitely, a lot if you like going through the bonus material. There are also two cuts of the movie, the theatrical version, which clocks in at just over two hours including the credits, and an extended version that really just has some extended scenes in it, that adds about 12 minutes of footage. 

Overall, the movie is much better than it was made out to be. I do think WB would have been better served to follow the MCU format of introducing the main characters in stand-alone movies before they got to the team-up movies. I think this movie would have worked a lot better if there was a stand-alone Batman movie that introduced this version of Joker and Harley Quinn in order to set up her capture, and then had the Suicide Squad movie be a follow up to that, instead of just throwing a bunch of new characters into a movie that only fans of the comics or Batman the Animated series would be familiar with. That said, it is still a good movie that could have been great if the studio would have left it alone and let Ayer make the movie he wanted to.

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