Happy films!

Saw Guardians of the Galaxy this week, which was jolly good fun and featured judicious use of both ’80s hits and, as in The Iron Giant, Vin Diesel. The Marvel films are usually a breath of fresh air for me; perhaps it is wimpy of me, but, for something I do in my leisure time, I prefer something light-hearted. I went to see Under the Skin, which was incredible, when it came out, knowing only that it was a sci-fi and featured Scarlett Johansson naked. That is not a light-hearted film. Although there was this one scene where you see what happens when the men who follow Scarlett Johansson stripping into the black goo when they sink into the black goo and it reminded me of this Monty Python sketch.

One of my pet hates is Man of Steel, because from the go I was very cynical about a Super Man reboot with the tone of the Dark Knight films — even when I watched the Justice League cartoon, which I really like, Batman and Super Man together in the same story, in the same world was just ridiculous to me. For this reason I assumed that the Amazing Spider-Man films were a bit of an apology for Man of Steel. There were two quite sweet little moments — along with the ‘HI THERE TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ANTHROPOMORPHIC SUPER-POWERED LIZARDS’ scene — from the first one that I really liked:

1. Peter Parker leaving his camera at the scene of a botched reconnaissance trip, leading Lizard guy discovering his secret identity, wherein he growls, “Peter Parker…”, but the scene cuts before he can say, “… your label maker spells DOOM!”. They also didn’t show his resultant dramatic and I’m sure highly dignified entrance into Peter Parker’s school via toilet.

2. Evil lizard vlog scene. Many character arcs in the Amazing Spider-Man films culminate with a vlog, which is bloody modern. This one is particularly brilliant because as he is saying lots of troubling power-hungry insane things, in the background is a conical flask containing green liquid bobbing away on a turntable type thing to stop it coagulating. It was very distracting. I’m sure they put it in to show HE A SCIENTIST, but it was bobbing away just over his shoulder, the rest of the frame was sort of drab grey-ish colours, and this was a bright green bottle bouncing about in the background. It wasn’t even a scary swamp-monster green, it was a lovely apple green.

I’m slightly cross I missed Groundhog Day: SKREEEEEE, starring Tom Cruise as Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt as Commander Shepard.

You are at the end of cake.

In the end I didn’t finish Dracula. I got distracted by the arrival of most of the Watch books of Discworld in the post. My dad and @ohnomoogle have always loved the Discworld books; I think we got The Fifth Elephant for Papa because it had elephant in the title and that’s of paramount importance when you’re little. Then they were amazing. Having now read them as a grown-up with a fully functioning brain (mostly), I remember now that @ohnomoogle used to read them out to me while I was playing Soul Calibur. I’ve nearly run out of Watch books, so then I’ll get back to Dracula. After Turn of the Screw by the man with two first names.

I also got distracted by the SCP archive. I was curious about the game SCP-087-B and a quick google search took me to the SCP archive, a collection of short stories presented as case files from a fictional organisation responsible for capturing and retaining strange, possibly dangerous, objects. There are currently over a thousand, and there’s some real gems of short stories in there; they’re very Lovecraftian. The game is based on SCP 087; I think there could be a really amazing game from SCP 093. I was stupid enough — as a person who, even when it’s swelteringly hot and I cannot bloody sleep it’s so hot, must have a bit of duvet on me ‘cos… you know… MONSTERS — one about a shadowy hand that appears at the foot of the bed when someone goes into REM sleep if there is any foot and/or leg exposed and… well… I shouldn’t have clicked on it. Neither should you.