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. 

Friday, August 16, 2024

4k-UHD/Movie Review: Venom

 


Venom is a 2018 Sci-Fi action movie starring Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Scott Haze, and Jenny Slate. It is an MCU-adjacent movie that exists in the world of Spiderman, but the decision was to use it as a stand-alone movie without using the black suit version of Spiderman to introduce Venom (as was done in Spiderman 3). Therefore, in this version, multiple symbionts were brought to Earth from a space mission that killed all but one of the astronauts. They were discovered by the head of the company that funded the mission called Life Sciences (played by Ahmed), who then began experimenting with bonding the symbionts with homeless and drug-addicted humans. Tom Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a former reporter who was fired and now doing freelance work. Of course, one of the symbionts joins with him to form Venom.

The movie is a great blend of action and very dark humor. Because they did not use Spiderman, Venom is introduced as the anti-hero version of the character, doing bad things (mainly eating) bad guys. Michelle Williams plays the ex-wife of Eddie Brock. She does a really great job playing off Tom Hardy and brings a lot of comedy to the movie, which is outside her usual acting roles. The best part of the movie is the discussions/arguments/bickering that goes on between Brock and Venom, mostly in Brock's mind which makes it look to everyone else like he is talking to himself. It also requires Hardy to do a lot of physical comedy, which he turns out to be great at.

The 4K set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc. On the UHD disc, there is only the movie and a preview of the movie Into the Spiderverse. All the other extras are on the regular Blu-ray. Those include several deleted scenes, including an extended version of the end credits scene which teases where the next movie will go, assuming it gets made, then about an hour's worth of making of and behind-the-scenes material mixed with some featurettes on the history of the Venom character. So there are a lot of good extras.

I cannot say everyone will like the movie, and it definitely pushes the PG-13 rating to the limit, mostly because of the language. There is a lot of swearing and some sexually suggestive jokes. It is closer to Deadpool than it is to, say, Avengers. But it puts a different twist on the MCU movies and sets up a good possible franchise to exist in that universe. It is worth checking out.

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