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What Have You Watched Recently?


Susano

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With my movie plans for the day frustrated (How was I to know a Sondhiem musical would sell out a 1:30 showing before the doors even opened?), I tried to catch up a little bit on some of the My Little Pony I missed. (All four seasons are on Netflix). I was sure by now it would have gotten tired.

 

But it hasn't. I watched in a row the Season 3 finale and the first three episodes that followed. Given the major development of Season 3's finale I had no idea where it could possibly go from there. The rest of this post will be spoiler-tagged.

 

 

The season 3 finale started with a basic comedy-episode plotline, with the Cutie Marks and professions of all Twilight's fellow Harmony-wielders switched around -- don't forget these are ponies who work for a living -- leaving them miserable and bad at what they do. Twilight realizes this was the result of a spell Celestia had asked to research and, after agonizing over her guilt, figures out what to do about it and saves the day with about half the episode left to go.

 

Then the twist. Twilight promptly vaninshes from the tree-library in front of everyone, into a starscape where Celestia meets and congratulates on discovering a new kind of magic and that nothing will ever be the same for her again. Then she finds herself back in Ponyville with something she never had before.

 

Wings,

 

Twilight had transformed into an "Alicorn", with  both Pegasus flight powers and Unicorn magic. Not only that, but because of it she had become royalty -- a Princess and the social (but not yet political) equal of Celestia and Luna despite the lack of a blood relationship. That would normally be the note on which a TV series would end, but MLP was too popular to stop there.

 

So the next season opened with a two-parter in which the Everfree Forest starts to encroach on Ponyville while, at the same time, Celestia and Luna disappear leaving Twilight as the only available Princess. Knowing the two events are connected, she flies home (which is what she now considers Ponyville) to investigate. The ponies naturally suspect Discord is responsible, which he emphatically denies (John DeLancie sounds like he was having fun with this, and so were the animators). Only when she receives a mental time-travel potion from Zacora (the zebra shaman who lives in the forest) does she realize that the problem is that the tree from which the Elements of harmony were extracted more than a thousand years ago is dying and and no longer hold the growth of the forest in check -- and that the only way to save it and Equestria is for the Mane Six to give it back the elements.

 

The interesting thing about it is what the time travel elements show us about how Equestria became what it is. We see Celestia's heartbreak when she is forced to exile her sister to the Moon (as well as the origin of Nightmare Moon, Luna's deranged alter-ego who nearly succeeds in murdering her sister). We also see how Discord was defeated the first time by the Princesses. Most importantly, though, we see how Twilight's new status puts the relationships she values so highly at risk, which I suspect will be an ongoing theme for the rest of the season. When the others decide to send her "home" in the middle of their mission to locate the tree because Equestria would be leaderless if something happened to her, Twilight realizes just how delicate and vulnerable her position is.

So it turns out there are places for the story to go from here....

 

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"Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special" on Netflix. I don't think that it was meant to be seen sober (and from the behavior of some of the guest stars, my guess was they weren't when they did it).

 

"Duck Soup". It's a spy thriller set in the small country of Fredonia on the eve of war. With the Marx Brothers.

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Part one of Brave and Bold season two Detective Chimp and Bwana Beast were handled awesomely as well as Aquaman on vacation.

 

24 episodes of A certain magical Index. High school kid resolves problems with magicians and psychics by punching them in the face.

 

The last three episodes of NCIS season 9 with Harper Deering as the villain. You would think with all the research he has done he would realize that most of the people who attack NCIS that Gibbs goes after winds up dead.

CES

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Just saw Interstellar after a long delay. There's a lot of good stuff in this movie, both visually and in terms of ideas (Actual ideas in a science-fiction movie? Inconceivable!), which makes the glaring flaws all the more annoying. Especially since it is cursed with one of the silliest endings I've seen in a long time -- an ending that nearly undoes all the smart things that have been displayed previously by its sheer wooden-headedness.

 

I am reminded of a novel David Brin wrote called Earth. It too involved a dying planet and a question about saving the human race -- but the central question of the novel was not so much can Mankind be saved as should Mankind be saved. In other words, if Earth dies should we die with it -- especially if the catastrophe is the direct result of our own actions?

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Watching part of the Scientific Railgun series that is part of Magical Index. Espers kids as police trainees, dangerous felons, and a computer program that turns Espers into component parts and an appearance by Touma from the parent series doing what he does best, annoying the Railgun, and saving the day with his imagine breaker.

CES 

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Robocop(2014): Why did they bother?

Battle of the Five Armies: Decent flick....ambiguous lame ending.

Godzilla vs. Gigan(on blu-ray)- Typical 70's kaiju fun.

Two episodes of the new Flash show- Not bad actually.

3-4 episodes of Agents of SHIELD-I'm a bit lost. I thought Cap 2 eliminated Hydra. How does the show fit in...all BEFORE Cap 2?

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Robocop(2014): Why did they bother?

Battle of the Five Armies: Decent flick....ambiguous lame ending.

Godzilla vs. Gigan(on blu-ray)- Typical 70's kaiju fun.

Two episodes of the new Flash show- Not bad actually.

3-4 episodes of Agents of SHIELD-I'm a bit lost. I thought Cap 2 eliminated Hydra. How does the show fit in...all BEFORE Cap 2?

For Shield, depends on the episodes you saw. Some were prior, most the ones involving Hydra aren't. All Cap did was bring them out in the open, not eliminate. He cut off the heads he new of, but there are many leaders of Hydra. season 2 was basically Hydra and Coulson;s in a race to find something. I won';t spoil what.

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Watched Sabotage with Arnold Schwarzenegger. A DEA team steals ten million dollars during a raid, but after sitting through a review of their actions, start getting picked off. It's a decent mystery with the reveal coming in the third act after most of the team has been killed.

 

Watched part of Iceman with Donnie Yen. Four Ming Dynasty guards are frozen in an avalanche and revived four hundred years later. The party that found them wants to get them back and find a key to time.

CES

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The ending to Iceman was the reveal that the commissioner chasing Hei Ying was one of the four, he captures one of the others. Ying is tranqued and falls into the ocean from a bridge. The last guy jumped into the water after him. The love interest is shown committing suicide by walking into the ocean from a beach. Then Ying wakes up surrounded by water.

 

Did he live? Did he save the girl? What happened to the third man? Where is the key to time? Is there a sequel?

 

Watched the end of the Railgun series on youtube. The villain almost has everything in her grasp with the intention of destroying the city only to be stopped by the meddling kid heroes, especially the nonpowered one that she wrote off.

 

Watched Tangled. Best part is the sword fight between Flynn and Maximus where only one of them has a sword and it isn't the human

CES

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Watched the entirety of Marvel's Agents of Shield, Season 1. Figured I had to give it a chance since I heard so many good things about the later episodes. Turns out the episode after I initially quit watching was the first one I actually got into this time around. Now I have the problem of not having watched any of Season 2 and it is only available from episode 6 or something. 

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