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. 

Thursday, August 3, 2023

Book Review: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore – The Complete Screenplay

 


This is the third book/screenplay in the Fantastic Beasts series, which is, of course, a prequel to the Harry Potter series, set during the 1920s. The story details the attempt by Grindelwald to be elected leader of the Wizarding World and Dumbledore's attempt to stop him, with the help of Newt, Jacob, and a bunch of new characters. 

I have not yet watched the movie, but I have seen the first two movies and read the first two screenplays, and those pretty much tracked word-for-word. So, if you have already seen the movie, I suspect this will be exactly what you saw in the movie. As the title of the movie suggests, we learn more about the history between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and we get the full account of Creedence's origin. The story also includes a lot of Dumbledore's brother, Aberforth, who was a relatively minor character in the last couple of Harry Potter novels and films. However, the character of Tina is pretty much non-existent in the story until the very end. Samantha Waterston, who plays Tina in the movie has speculated she was written out of this one because of the comments she made criticizing J.K. Rowling's stance on transgender individuals. Whether that is true or not we will probably never know, but the character could have certainly been included in the main storyline and was definitely sidelined.

The hardcover version of the book is only about 350 pages long and has a lot of illustrations (which are really good) that are almost storyboards for what (likely) appears in the movie, so it is actually much shorter than that in terms of text. There are also quotes about the story and the characters from the cast of the movie included throughout the book. If you are a fast reader you can easily get through this in a few hours. The story is good. It ties up some of the storylines and definitely sets up at least one more movie and book.

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