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, January 31, 2023

4k-UHD/Movie Review: American Assassin

 


This is a 2017 film based (very loosely) on the series of spy novels written by the late author, Vince Flynn, centered on the character of Mitch Rapp (played in the movie by Dylan O'Brien). The book series started out with the novel Transfer of Power, which was actually Flynn's second novel, but the first to feature the character of Rapp. In that book, Rapp was a 31-year-old off-the-books CIA agent who hunted down terrorists in the prime of his career as a spy/assassin (think Jack Bauer in the series 24). After writing about 11 novels set around the older Rapp, Flynn wrote two prequel novels, "American Assassin" and "Kill Shot", which basically filled in Rapp's origin story. 

This movie is loosely based on the novel American Assassin (and to some extent Kill Shot) but changes elements of the story significantly (such as how Rapp's college girlfriend is killed which set him on his path to the CIA). Some elements from the book do make it into the movie, but it basically tells its own story (largely involving a rouge agent). While the movie does include character traits and heavily adapted plot elements from the books, it does not use the actual storylines from either of the books as Vince Flynn wrote them. 

For those who get the 4k disc, the A/V quality of the UHD disc is very good, and all of the extras are included on the UHD disc, although you do get a regular blu-ray disc as well. The extras include a making-of featurette that runs about 10 minutes, a featurette on casting O'Brien as Rapp, a featurette on the character of Stan Hurley (played by Michael Keaton), and a featurette on the main antagonist. Then there is a featurette on the stunts from the film, and one on the locations in which the movie was shot. Finally, there is a Q&A session with O'Brien and Taylor Kitsch, that runs almost a half an hour (and is the longest of the extras). All totaled, you get about just under 90 minutes of bonus material.

This is a good action movie, but it is definitely better if you have not read the books and are not already invested in the characters. I had not yet read the books when I saw the movie, but now that I have started reading them, I can definitely tell why some fans really felt that the movie did not do enough to hold true to the books. I remember Flynn being interviewed when he was negotiating the movie rights before he passed away and basically admitting that he would have to give up control of the story and that if the characters made it to the big screen, the stories would be a lot different than what he wrote. That is absolutely what happened and I think if the movie would have been more faithful to the book, and been set in the late 1980s, it would have been better received by the fans. That said, I think O'Brien did a very good job as a young Mitch Rapp, and Michael Keaton was great as Stan Hurley. Since the movie pretty much bombed in its theatrical release, the chances of there being a follow-up movie or a franchise of movies are pretty slim, but as a stand-alone action movie, it is definitely worth watching if you can accept that you are not going to get the story from the book.




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