This is honestly the best Superman I’ve seen in years if not decades. He actually saves a cat in this first episode!
Superman, but he’s still discovering his powers and not yet invulnerable is always a ghood setting and having him, Lois and Jimmy be Daily Planet interns is even better. Loved the chemistry between Lois and Clark, who are clearly attracted to each other from the start. What I also liked is that she played as big a part in winning the fight against the giant robots as Clark himself. Jimmy was a bit of a third wheel but he was just as obnoxious as the original version. Which is great. Can’t have a Jimmy Olsen not be annoying.
There are tons of little homages and references hidden in this. Lois has a Vicki Vale article up on her bedroom wall. The Newsboys Legion reference. Having Superman fight actual giant robots, like in the Fleischer cartoons. That “who are you” at the end from Lois, surely a reference to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. This seems to be a series that knows its history. Art and animation wise it’s all good. The action scenes all popped and the character designs are nicely streamlined. A good start and I hope My Adventures With Superman can keep it up.
Because some dipshit Dutch comedian apparently had started whinging about how there’s no more edgy comedy because everybody’s getting CaNcElLeD, here’s that clip from James Acaster again:
What makes it even better is he’s doing it — accidentally or deliberately — decked out in the trans colours. He perfectly nails the attitude as well. The only thing missing from it is the self inflicted martyrdom.
That’s what annoys me the most, actually. “You cannot say anything anymore without being cancelled”, says the edgy comedian as he hosts his fifth comedy special on Netflix. People like Ricky Gervais, like Dave Chappelle want to do their lazy, racist, sexist, transphobic material and want to be praised for it. They want to be called brave but suffer no consequences for their ‘bravery’. Fearless speakers of truth, but the least criticism has them sobbing in the newspapers how unfair it all is.
On October 4, 1961, Bruce was arrested for obscenity[45] at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco, where he had used the word “cocksucker”, and said that “to is a preposition, come is a verb”; that the sexual context of ‘come’ was so common that it bore no weight; and that if someone hearing it became upset, he “probably can’t come”.[46] Although the jury acquitted him, other law enforcement agencies began monitoring his appearances, resulting in frequent arrests under obscenity charges.
[…]
On December 5, 1962, Bruce was arrested on stage at the Gate of Horn folk club in Chicago.[48] That year, he played at Peter Cook’s The Establishment club in London, and in April the next year he was barred from entering the United Kingdom by the Home Office as an “undesirable alien”.[49]
In April 1964, he appeared twice at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, with undercover police detectives in the audience. He was arrested along with club owners Howard and Elly Solomon, who were arrested for allowing an obscene performance. On both occasions, Bruce was arrested after leaving the stage.[46]
A three-judge panel presided over his widely publicized six-month trial, prosecuted by Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Richard Kuh, with Ephraim London and Martin Garbus as the defense attorneys. Bruce and Howard Solomon were found guilty of obscenity on November 4, 1964. The conviction was announced despite positive testimony and petitions of support from—among other artists, writers and educators—Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and James Baldwin, and Manhattan journalist and television personality Dorothy Kilgallen and sociologist Herbert Gans.[50] Bruce was sentenced on December 21, 1964, to four months in a workhouse; he was set free on bail during the appeals process and died before the appeal was decided. Solomon, the owner of the club where Lenny was arrested, later saw Bruce’s conviction overturned.[51]
Last year’s PreCure was a bit of a disappointment for me, the first one since I started watching it seasonally that I did not finish. Neither the theme nor the characters interested me and honestly it was clear from episode one that it wasn’t one of the good PreCures. Not that I’m anywhere near the target audience of course. This year’s entry, Hirogaru Sky Precure, looks a lot more promisingly from the very start. Sora is badass even before she becomes a Precure as that parkour scene shows, not hesitating to put herself on the line for a stranger’s sake. Which means when the villain kidnaps the baby princess of Skyland just as she arrives at the capital, she immediately sets up in pursuit. The villain escapes with his hostage through a weird portal, Sora immediately follows him and rescues the baby, only to find herself, well, here:
A good PreCure series needs a good sense of humour as well being able to handle its action scenes and this was hilarious, a proper Loony Tunes moment. Sora is a great protagonist and her meet cute with Mashiro, literally dropping out of the sky on her, was great too. In most PreCure series Mashiro, the ‘normal’ girl, would be the protagonist, so having the outer worlder Sora be it instead will be interesting. Looking forward to seeing Sora and Mashiro interact in day to day life as well.
for those of y’all still claiming Germans don’t have a sense of humour, let me introduce you to Bernd das Brot:
An anthropomorphic loaf of bread with short, stumpy arms and a pessimistic, cynical personality, Bernd comes from a German children’s tv series and has become a bit of a mascot for KiKa, the channel this was broadcast on. KiKa is aimed at children and only broadcasts between 6:00 AM and 9:00 PM, which means there’s a lot of dead air. So they decided to fill this air time with short movies like the one above, in which Bernd is basically put through a series of psychological and existential torture in Der KiKa Lounge. His attitude with which he undergoes these trials is what makes it hilarious and this particular one had me especially giggling. It’s just all very…
(And for all the nerd mockery on display in this video, it’s in the end actually very respectable.)
So if you’re ever in a German speaking country and late at night you’re flicking channels and come across a boxy, stubby armed muppet undergoing strange tortures in a white room, you now know what it is and no, it’s not a hallucination brought on by too much bratwurst and dunkelbier.
