To Squee Or Not to Squee, vol. 6

I began this blog as a college student in 2010, just for fun. Six years later, I’m still just doing it for fun and have no delusions that it’s ever gonna take off and make me into an internet celeb. As for my Cautious Enthusiasm series, it began as an excuse to write more lists (I’m way too addicted to writing lists), while providing future blog fodder. Again, nothing’s changed, but maybe I find comfort in the familiar act of blogging about nerdy stuff. Sorry to be so reflective; today’s my birthday, and let’s just say my age has a zero on the end.

Yeah. Anyway. Here are a parcel of things I’m rather excited about, though not without reservations.

CAUTIOUS ENTHUSIASM: REBOOTED, REVAMPED, REUPHOLSTERED

  
The Great Wall
WHAT IT IS: A monster movie, but with some exotic spices sprinkled in the recipe. Set in ancient-ish China, this blockbuster stars Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal as armored mercs who arrive to discover that, in this version of history, the Great Wall was built to keep out hordes of giant reptiles, or something. Sing with me: Let’s get down to business! To defeat! This shit! Did they send Matt Damon...when I asked...for Pitt?
WHY I’M EXCITED: Uh, I adore modern monster movies? I drooled on Pacific Rim and continue to defend the new Godzilla? However, what actually matters more to me is that The Great Wall is directed by Zhang Yimou, who makes unbelievably gorgeous movies. Drink in the wonder of Raise the Red Lantern, Hero, or House of Flying Daggers. Based on trailers, The Great Wall should be sumptuous and grandiose, again proving that you can mix high art with popcorn entertainment. Even if it’s a bad movie, it’ll be a sensory delight.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: When venerable directors take a more mainstream approach, it doesn’t always go well. Especially when your number one goal is to appeal to Chinese and American audiences hooked on Michael Bay. In other words, The Great Wall could represent Yimou compromising his usual flair in favor of mass appeal. Plus, everyone’s already mad about the main character being white, because we all have the luxury of being offended over shit that doesn’t matter. Yes, I’m getting more conservative in my doddering old age. I expect to have fun watching this, but given how high Yimou has set his own directorial bar, I really hope he hasn’t sold out.
SQUEE FACTOR: 7
DANGER LEVEL: 5

Yooka-Laylee
WHAT IT IS: Long, long ago, the Banjo-Kazooie games delighted us on the N64, before Rare defected to Microsoft and the franchise dissolved into a puddle of knockoff Legos and bitter tears. Now some of the original creative minds have crowdfunded their way to this spiritual successor, which follows the adventures of a chameleon and a bat as they attempt to save whimsical worlds contained inside books. So...it’s also a Myst sequel?
WHY I’M EXCITED: I’d say that the first Banjo-Kazooie might be the most perfect example of the “cartoony platformer” genre. And Yooka-Laylee simply and literally IS a Banjo-Kazooie game, just with new characters swapped in. Since I still like to power up the ol’ N64 and revisit the classics now and then, I’m so goddamned happy that shameless nostalgia has hopped into bed with gleaming modern graphics to produce this love letter. Thanks to this, we can just forget that repulsive Nuts & Bolts thing ever happened. I hope someone at Rare is really mad right now.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: First off, modern platformers never seem to recapture what made the genre so special in the 1990s. Worse, gamers tend to scoff, insisting that the medium has long since evolved past cute, furry heroes collecting golden thingummies. (I dream of an alternate universe where the blueprint for today’s games is Conker’s Bad Fur Day.)  The crowdfunding success of Yooka-Laylee bodes well...but, even so, the whole Broken Age letdown (see below) has made me highly disillusioned. It can’t just look and sound like Banjo-Kazooie. It needs cartoony-platformer soul. What does that mean? I’ll know when I play Yooka-Laylee and see if it has it or not.
SQUEE FACTOR: 9
DANGER LEVEL: 7

Furi
WHAT IT IS: This game is already out, but the more I’ve heard about it, the more I rub my palms together. It’s a very well-received indie hybrid of hack-n-slash and bullet hell, in which an archetypal Lone Warrior must carve and fillet his way through a string of powerful foes to unlock his memories, avenge somebody, regain his honor, or whatever cliché they’ve gone with this time.
WHY I’M EXCITED: Look, any game that consists entirely of boss fights broken up by peaceful treks through gorgeous scenery is going to remind me of Shadow of the Colossus. Which is my favorite game of all time. Have I not mentioned that in a while? Boss fights are often my favorite part of a game, and Furi’s showdowns look outstanding and unique. Plus the visuals remind me a bit of Killer7, another of my all-time faves. Was this tailor-made for weird, artsy little me?
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: This is gonna make me sound like the world’s biggest twerp, but...I tend to abandon really challenging games partway through. And not just because they have terrible gameplay elements. If playing a game starts to feel like beating my head against an Easter Island statue, it doesn’t maintain my interest. I was gonna put Bloodborne in the last Cautious Enthusiasm list, until I realized I’d likely give up after its first half-hour. Everything I’ve read about Furi confirms it’s quite challenging even for hack-n-slash experts. Of which I am not one. I so want to play this and my fingers are so tightly crossed that I won’t be utterly, wretchedly defeated by its difficulty. Sigh.
SQUEE FACTOR: 7
DANGER LEVEL: 9

Seasons 3 and 4 of Black Mirror
WHAT IT IS: Black Mirror emerged from Britain and quietly embedded itself in our collective consciousness with a mere seven episodes. It’s been compared to The Twilight Zone, but rather than dealing in aliens or the supernatural, it imagines different futures in which our relationship with technology and social media has evolved in strange ways. It’s bleak, satirical, and smart -- and Netflix has gobbled up the rights to make two more six-episode seasons.
WHY I’M EXCITED: I really enjoyed the original Black Mirror, and I’m pretty confident that the folks at Netflix are equally adoring of the property and will treat it with respect. It’s obviously calculated to hook the Stranger Things fanbase...but, hey, Stranger Things rocks just as hard. Thoughtful sci-fi and social satire are hot right now. And check out some of the cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Kelly MacDonald, Michael Kelly, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and that’s just for Season 3!
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: I am definitely not one of those pop culture hipsters who insist that Americanized remakes always suck. However, I will admit that Americanized remakes can suck. The first seasons of Black Mirror had that unique British mix of manners and outrageousness; will Netflix’s continuation have the guts to show, say, a major political figure fucking a pig? Will they maintain the trademark dark cynicism? (Every original episode of Black Mirror ends unhappily.) Or will producers and marketing departments insist that us fragile Yanks can’t handle that much feel-bad storytelling? Black Mirror has teeth; don’t pull ’em!
SQUEE FACTOR: 6
DANGER LEVEL: 5

Psychonauts 2
WHAT IT IS: Somehow I’ve never written much about Psychonauts despite the fact that it’s a fucking amazing game. It didn’t sell well, in part because of the aforementioned bias against platformers. But there’s nothing quite like it: a wacky, hilarious, and innovative adventure centering around a summer camp for kids with psychic powers. Creator Tim Schafer has turned once again to crowdfunding, and the sequel should hit us in 2018.
WHY I’M EXCITED: What a world we live in! My favorite games are getting new incarnations (Yooka-Laylee, Obduction, The Last Guardian, Silent Hills...wait, scratch that last one), but this isn’t a spiritual cousin or reboot, it’s a REAL SEQUEL. The first game ended with a cheeky cliffhanger and we never thought we’d see it resolved. There’s some sort of VR thing coming out as well, but I’m simply eager to step back into the heroic young Rasputin’s shoes, coast around on that awesome levitation bubble, set things on fire with my brain, uncover more evil conspiracies...aww, yeah. Trust me, there are a lot of cult gamers jizzing themselves over Psychonauts 2, and I am proud to be among those who require a change of underwear.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Because of Broken Age, that’s why. Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions already got everyone’s fervor whipped up for a crowdfunded game, and then they apparently spent most of that money on Twizzlers or something. Broken Age wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t anything special, either. Which was somehow worse. And Psychonauts 2 has even more riding on it, because the first game has such a rabid following. Imagine if they made a new season of Firefly but Adam Baldwin was the only returning actor. Broken Age gave us the kiddie-table version of a classic point-and-click adventure game. If Psychonauts 2 is similarly dumbed down, I’ll just be fucking done with crowdfunded dream projects. For a few months, anyway.
SQUEE FACTOR: 10
DANGER LEVEL: 8

There. That should give me a smattering of blog posts down the road. Not that I’ve become sick of writing this blog or anything. I may be aging but I’m no less nerdy, and hallelujah for that!

American Horror Story: Roanoke--Episode 5

Chapter 5

--Here’s your daily linguistic lesson. According to official sources, Gaga of the Woods’ name is actually “Scathach,” after a warrior figure from Celtic mythology. However, it’s surely no coincidence that the name is so similar to “Shachath,” the Angel of Death played by Frances Conroy in Asylum. Don’t ask for pronunciation; the internet can’t even agree on the correct spelling of “Thomasin.” But Frances Conroy (Frances Conroy Frances Conroy FRANCES CONROY) returned to AHS this week. And if you connect all these dots, they form a picture of a rubber duck!

--Seriously, though, Roanoke is aiming to be all seasons at once. There’s a Reddit theory that each episode chronicles the show thus far. Chapter 1 was Murder House: Fraught couple moves into a haunted mansion. Chapter 2 was Asylum: Creepy nurses and their ill-fated patients. Chapter 3 was Coven, with the introduction of witchy magic and the return of Leslie Jordan as a “magic user” of sorts. Next came Freak Show, tying Terrorbithia to the Mott family. And this week?

--Fucking brutal. The conclusion(?) to the Millers’ tale of woe was cruel, nasty, grungy, and brutal. And it wasn’t the stylized, borderline-goofy brutality this show often depicts. Horrible, vicious things happened to innocent people. Less Dario Argento, more Eli Roth. First, however, the Hotel allusion: we met the weirdo who built this year’s edifice of evil, and once again, he’s played by Evan Peters with a funky accent!

--Yes, Edward Phillipe Mott loved art, disliked human contact, and wanted a remote, isolated haven, a monument to himself, where he could enjoy his collection of priceless paintings -- and the attentions of his swarthy black lover. (“Let’s rouge each other’s nipples!”) So we did get Evan Peters naked, but we didn’t see his butt, so this season of AHS is not yet complete. When The Butcher and co. began their pranks, they targeted Edward’s art collection, and his resulting violent tantrum foreshadowed the lineage of shrill, entitled psychosis that would eventually culminate in Dandy Mott. That night, The Butcher sacrificed Edward in her usual over-the-top manner (impaled and burned alive), while the household staff starved to death, locked in the root cellar. Mean!

--We weren’t done with Edward yet, however. Still trapped, Shelby, Matt, and Flora had to fend off assaults from various phantoms, including a spidery little Asian girl in full-blown Ju-On mode. Shout-outs to specific horror genres are always welcome! Luckily for the Millers, Edward appeared in the basement and led them through some hidden tunnels, out of the worst danger. Briefly. In the woods, the Millers stumbled into the clutches of those damn dirty rednecks, the Polks. Remember them? Mama Polk made her appearance and was Frances Conroy! Hallelujah! She was only absent for one season, but it felt like an eternity! Also in attendance was Dr. Cunningham, who the Polks had kept alive just so they could eat segments of him. Mama ended his misery with a hammer to the face (mean!), so there goes my theory that he was a ghost. Mama also explained how her family had a deal with The Butcher...and sometimes brought her sacrifices. Well, FUCK.

--Yes, that’s Chaz Bono as the chubby, cognitively-impaired Polk. Proving that it’s possible to put a transgendered person onscreen without them being a cold, beautiful mannequin played by a Swinton or a Cumberbatch. Get a clue, Hollywood.

--Meanwhile, Lee spent 48 hours being grilled by her former fellow cops -- the span required to charge someone with a crime, and also a convenient time-delay for when you need a character to be offscreen for awhile. Free once more, Lee found a bajillion panicked messages from Matt on her phone. Here she comes to save the daaaayyyyy!

--Meanwhile meanwhile, Matt tried to escape the Polks’ clutches and killed one of them. In retaliation, Mama Polk obliterated Shelby’s fibula with a sledgehammer (MEAN!) before taking the Millers right back to Terrorbithia and the blazing bonfires and torture racks The Butcher had built for them. Alas, The Butcher did not comment on Mama Polk’s magical, ill-smelling horseless carriage emblazoned with the sigil of the god they call Chevrolet. Shelby, Matt, and Flora certainly looked doomed...and I even wondered if the big twist is that they did die, and the “real” Shelby and Matt are actually ghosts, telling their tale to a very ballsy documentarian. Nope! This time around, it was Ambrose who revolted, tackling his evil mother into the bonfire while Edward untied our heroes and Lee ran over the Pigman with a car. Badass. A flaming Butcher chased the Millers from Terrorbithia...and they never looked back. They got away with their mortal lives intact, and all that remains are the memories. And the nightmares.

--The End. But not really.

--I have not seen any promos for next week. And I don’t want to. I wanna be unspoiled, and therefore delightfully surprised (or disappointed) by whatever Roanoke throws at us next. I mean, this was definitively the finale to the Millers’ story, wasn’t it? What comes next? Hell, what’s even real? Keep in mind that we’ve been watching “re-enactments,” which means that everyone within them is a merely an actor, playing a role. A version of Shelby and Matt Miller’s tale, but not the real thing. So...all bets are off. Heh heh heh.

--PS: That lady historian at the beginning of the ep is an actual person, Doris Kearns Goodwin. No wonder she couldn’t act.

American Horror Story: Roanoke--Episode 4

Chapter 4

--“Only men with full bellies have the luxury of conscience.”

--“Honestly, I’d murder for a Coke Zero.”

--These two lines, both spoken in last night’s episode of Roanoke, seem to perfectly sum up the human condition, don’t they? Especially when you consider that the first speaker ends up savagely eviscerating the second speaker. The philosophers would surely cheer.

--I’ve noticed that these episodes are building toward a very obvious climax that should be arriving very soon. Like, next week. Which makes it all the more likely that Roanoke is going to massively redefine itself somehow. Here’s an interesting theory: What if it’s all fake? What if My Roanoke Nightmare is entirely fiction (within the fiction of AHS, I mean), and even the “real” interviewees are hired actors? But then, when they all head out to the North Carolina woods to film fake scares for their fake documentary, a bunch of real spooks descend? And one of them is Evan Peters and he’s naked? Eh?

--More on Thomasin White and her merry band. The word “Croatoan,” it seems, has magical power; it’s like a verbal talisman. The Roanoke folk carved it into a tree at the site of the original colony, apparently just to confuse future generations (and it worked!), before moving deeper into the island and establishing a far more successful colony. Fields of corn! Bountiful feasts! And all it took was the occasional human sacrifice. Poor little Priscilla getting her skull caved in was surely a small price to pay. Hey, didn’t Shirley Jackson write a short story about this? Anyway, Ambrose eventually got sick and tired of the murder and turned the colonists against Thomasin a second time. But then she was all like, “I’ve totally seen the true light of God!” and they were all like, “We believe you without question even though you’re obviously evil and insane!” and then Thomasin fed them all poisoned apples, hacked them to death (Ambrose first), and offered her own life up to her mentor, Gaga of the Woods. More on Gaga of the Woods in a sec.

--Back in the present, Matt and Shelby snuggled and made up after last week’s strife, but Terrorbithia’s haunts were about to ramp it up. The Pigman appeared and chased them around with a knife, but was foiled by none other than Dr. Elias Cunningham, still alive. He’d maintained ownership of Terrorbithia for years, trying to keep innocent people away, but then...something about tax fees...and it wound up for sale. Cunningham showed the Millers some examples of the house’s past victims: hunters who’d shot themselves; a family of Asian immigrants (who got way too much screen time...guess a show needs its filler); the psycho Jane sisters. All done in by The Butcher’s band. One very noteworthy fact: the house was originally built by a man named Mott. Yes, fucking MOTT. As in, those rich inbred psycho assholes from Freak Show. More key trivia: there’s a six-day period in October when the moon turns red and the ghosts, usually reduced to scampering around acting scary, can kill. And guess what, Matt and Shelby? The maraschino cherry moon is nigh!

--I have a sneaking theory about Dr. Cunningham. It occurred to me when he and the Millers were in the woods, looking for Flora. They did find her, playing and/or being tormented by various specters. During this confrontation, Cunningham was shot with arrows by some ghost or other -- not the first time we’ve seen him get maybe-killed. Okay. My theory is that Cunningham is already dead. He’s a ghost. After all, if he’s trying to keep people away from Terrorbithia, why the hell didn’t he turn up to warn Shelby and Matt sooner? He’s a good ghost, more or less, but trapped on the property just like the rest. I’m not sure how the “red moon” thing ties into the overall AHS rulebook about ghosts. I thought they could kill you whenever they felt like it. Could Cunningham be full of shit? Regardless, he was full of arrows, prompting the Millers to flee back to the house, where they were greeted by the hybrid spawn of Edna Mode and the grandma from the Addams Family. By which I mean Cricket.

--One popular theory about ghosts is that they desperately want their stories told. Gaga of the Woods certainly does, though she might be a magically enhanced immortal, not a ghost. Gaga took Cricket on a tour through history, and later, as night fell, she lured Matt out to the root cellar and magic-roofied him. Then we learned Gaga’s story: she was a Druidic lass from the British Isles who stowed away on an ill-fated voyage to the Americas back in, I dunno, the 1500s or something. After murdering everybody else (as usual), Gaga embraced the wilderness, and her own Druid faith combined with the natural, organic, GMO-free magic of the New World to form a brand-new flavor of vaguely-defined spirituality. And then she founded the hidden wizarding school of Ilvermorny, but that’s a screenplay for another day.

--In the present, Gaga’s goal was to have awesome sex with Matt, but he managed to stay faithful this time. He returned to Shelby’s side and they watched as The Butcher emerged with her torch club...and prepared to sacrifice Flora. Luckily, Priscilla was all like, “This is for killing me with a rock that one time!” and little-girl-punched The Butcher, allowing Flora to escape. So Flora’s safe, only not really, because she, Shelby, and Matt are still trapped in the house. The episode ended with the horrific death-by-disembowelment of Cricket, who, in the end, was a decent man who really wanted to save Flora. Not bad for a guy who looks like if Lucius Malfoy suffered a transporter malfunction with a cockapoo. Cricket’s death was one of this show’s cruelest ever, but just remember: under the laws of ghostdom, his spirit might still stick around, hitting on Uber drivers for years to come.

--So next week is apparently going to be very action-packed, and then...who the hell knows? Chapter Six is when we’ll find out what’s actually going on, maybe...and it’ll be directed by Angela Bassett! Recompense, perhaps, for giving her lame, pointless roles for the past two seasons. I know I wouldn’t want to be on Angela’s Bassett’s bad side. She can kill people with her upper lip.

American Horror Story: Roanoke--Episode 3

Chapter 3

--Sorry for the delay. I had a houseguest. AHS is hard to explain to houseguests out of context. “Yeah, that’s Lady Gaga getting fucked doggie-style by the guy from Jerry Maguire, and...hmm? A raw pig’s heart? Yes, I do believe you are correct, but lemme try and fill in the narrative gaps...wait, come back!”

--Anyway, I’m sure we’re all very excited and not at all exasperated by Ryan Murphy’s recent, puckish announcement that partway through AHS: Roanoke there will be a HUGE and MASSIVE twist that will redefine the entire season and make our fragile brainmeats go kablooey. Place your bets. Maybe we’ll go behind the scenes of the “reenactments” and meet, for example, the actress who is playing Shelby Miller and is played by Sarah Paulson (kablooey). Or maybe it’s all a book being written by Dr. Cunningham from last week. Or it’s happening inside somebody’s head. Or the real Shelby, Matt, and Lee are in prison after a shitload of murders were laid at their feet.

--This ep pleased me: it left behind the haunted house scares for a meatier story and the right amount of exposition. Flora still hasn’t turned up, alive or dead. For some reason, the cops let Lee wander around looking for Flora despite the whole kidnapping thing. She and the Millers found the homestead of those darn-tootin’ hillbillies, who were gone, save for a couple feral ginger kids suckling on a pig’s teats. Pigs, pigs, everywhere pigs. The kids only knew to yowl one word: Croatoan. Flora’s dad, Mason, was highly displeased with the entire situation and accused Lee of spiriting Flora away. Wouldn’t you know, that very night, Mason was found hideously burned to death. And Lee had been absent from Terrorbithia at the exact same time, and had no alibi. This rather significant hiccup was interrupted when the unholy love child of Andy Warhol and Zelda Rubinstein strolled in.

--Cricket. We need to talk about Cricket. I’m not sure how I feel about him, because A) he’s doing the “kooky psychic” archetype in a manner that edges past knowing homage and into the realm of the ridiculous, and B) he’s a cartoon character in a story that has been reasonably serious thus far. The sudden tonal shift was not entirely welcome, though I’d never ding this show for surprising me, I guess. As played by Leslie Jordan, Cricket is a fey, androgynous little gnome who you definitely wouldn’t want to share a train compartment with, but he looked capable of reading the aether and locating poor Flora. His candlelit séance was intended to conjure up Flora’s ghostly BFF, Priscilla; instead, it brought forth a window-smashing Kathy Bates, and, again, that word: Croatoan. Cricket figured out where Flora’d gone and was willing to help further...to the tune of 25,000 dollars. Lee and the Millers were livid; Lee even pulled a gun on Cricket before common sense intervened. But when Cricket...

--Quick aside. This ep was a tour de force for Adina Porter as the real Lee (“ActuaLee”). Holy shit, where has she been? Her brief turn as a cripplingly boring psych patient in Murder House did NOT showcase her talent. Also, when ActuaLee had a meltdown, we got a glimpse behind the scenes of My Roanoke Nightmare. Foreshadowing? Who was the male voice asking the questions?

--Cricket made a reference to Lee’s first daughter, who vanished at age four (more foreshadowing?), and that convinced Lee to pony up the dough. Thus it was Cricket who finally tied this season to the lost colony of Roanoke. We now know the weird tale of Thomasin White, aka The Butcher, whose husband initially led the Roanoke colonists. In his stead, Thomasin ruled with an iron fist, and, well, the time period was unkind to independent women. The menfolk -- including Thomasin’s son, Ambrose (Wes Bentley) -- exiled Thomasin and left her to die in the wilds. She was saved by Gaga of the Woods, kickstarting some sort of unholy communion and exacting revenge with a meat cleaver. So Gaga’s the ultimate origin of evil this season? Sure, why not? The Butcher led the remaining colonists inland, hence their ghostly presence around Terrorbithia.

--His palms greased, Cricket contacted The Butcher and promised to keep future mortals away from Terrorbithia if Flora would be safely returned. Meanwhile, Matt wandered off, and Shelby found him balls-deep in Gaga of the Woods while some pervy rednecks looked on. He didn’t remember this event later (just as Lee didn’t remember possibly roasting Mason like a goose?), but Shelby threw down the next hand by calling the cops and having Lee arrested. Shelby’s a bit of a shithead, but can you blame her at this point?

--The shifting between serious horror and quasi-parody is an issue, but still, these awesome episodes feel way too short. I find myself scanning them for clues as to what might really be going on. Is anything as it seems? How many layers does the story have, or am I giving AHS too much credit? I’m ready for big twists, all right. Make them epic.

American Horror Story: Roanoke--Episode 2

Chapter 2

--Dafuq are you doing, Cuba Gooding Jr.? You find a flaming effigy made of boughs and pig parts, and your response is to flail at it with a baseball bat? Do you want forest fires? Because that’s how you get forest fires. This isn’t Rat Race 2, guy.

--This season of AHS is my dream in terms of casting choices. Sarah Paulson is basically the main character, Angela Bassett’s finally playing somebody who fucking matters to the plot, and Lily Rabe is back full-time! (Though all she’s done so far is mumble in front of a gray backdrop. Lame.) As for Kathy Bates, she’s truly the queen of impossible-to-place dialects. Was that, like, Welsh or something? Kathy seems to be some type of tribal/colonial cult leader babbling about the mire and muck...or, as she put it, the MYRRRR and MOOOK. Picking up from last week, Shelby lurked in the bushes while Kathy and her torch club stuck a pig’s head on a dude and burned him alive. There’s the pigman from Murder House and the human/animal magic from Coven, so if you’re playing an AHS drinking game, knock a couple back.

--Funnily enough, our two main ladies switched roles this week. Shelby’s resolve hardened; the hauntings must be that dreadful redneck family playing pranks, and she’s not gonna turn tail. Good thing, because the Millers are stuck: they sunk everything into Terrorbithia and reselling would leave them destitute. Meanwhile, Lee has gone off the deep end. The trouble began when Lee’s daughter, Flora (Saniyya Sidney), came to visit. Kids in haunted houses, yikes. Sure enough, Flora began spending her free time in a closet under the stairs and talking to an invisible girl named Priscilla who claims that everyone in the house will soon be horribly slaughtered. Eh, I’m sure she’s just an energy-based life form struggling to understand us. Witnessing this, Lee’s ex-husband angrily dragged Flora away, and a despairing Lee hit the bottle hard. Cue the sad trombone.

--Lee also suffered some fresh scares, including bloody, squirming pig tails nailed to the wall, and a pair of unsettling nurses. Matt saw the nurses murdering an old woman. Mysteries abound! But not for long. A ghostly girl (Priscilla?) led Shelby and Matt to a root cellar in the backyard where they found a fresh VHS tape. On the tape: Denis O’Hare, bearded and babbling. He is Dr. Elias Cunningham, an author who moved into Terrorbithia to research past crimes. If you could follow his mile-a-minute exposition, you’d learn all about Miranda and Bridget Jane (Maya Rose Berko and Kristen Rakes), sisters who made Terrorbithia an assisted living home. Their true goal: to snuff residents in such an order that the first letters of their names spelled the word “murder.” That is such a bizarrely specific act of crazy that I really hope there’s an explanation for it. The Janes vanished, done in by a force even darker, and Dr. Cunningham’s video ended with him venturing back into the house and getting maybe killed by something-or-other. Matt tore down some wallpaper and found “M-U-R-D-E” inscribed on the wall. Key foreshadowing: the final R is missing. Has anyone with an R-name turned up yet? They dead.

--It would seem that every episode of Roanoke will end with a cliffhanger, which I like because it’s perfectly appropriate for the lurid TV documentary it aspires to ape. Fearful of losing custody of Flora, Lee essentially kidnapped her daughter and brought her back to Terrorbithia. Shelby and Matt did their best to clean up this hot mess, but Flora had enough time to vanish in the woods. Our three stooges went searching, and found Flora’s sweater hanging from the top of a very, very, very, very tall tree. Custody rights are now the least of Lee’s worries.

--Two eps in, and still going strong, though I’m getting a little sick of repetitive scenes in which people creep through hallways after strange noises. I’m glad they’re trying to have a logical reason for why Shelby and Matt don’t just move the fuck out (actual reason: they’re characters in a horror story). And, gosh, we still haven’t seen hide nor hair of Cheyenne Jackson or Evan Peters. It’d be funny if Jackson was the “real” Dr. Elias Cunningham in interviews. “Wait, I’m a bronze archangel of handsomeness and you have me played by Denis O’Hare the human ferret? Libel!”

--In the end credits, I noticed “special guest star” Lady Gaga. Apparently she was the crazed, antler-wearing person who scalped the guy in the first scene. Eh, she’s done weirder shit at the VMAs.

American Horror Story: Roanoke--Episode 1

Chapter 1

--Worst season of American Horror Story ever, am I right, guys?

--Hah. Not likely. But since hating on this batshit little show is probably more trendy than ever before, I figured I might as well throw a bone to the haters before making any serious effort to discuss the Season Six premiere. There is much to discuss, mainly because we had little to no idea what was coming. Like, at all. You may have heard: this year, the AHS showrunners decided to play a different gambit. Last time, it was all about the shameless stunt-casting of Lady Gaga. For Season Six, they went the other way, into the shadows. The great unknown, which is what scares us most, right?

--Yes, Season Six came shrouded in mystery, only slightly spoiled by leaked set photos and the online multitudes squalling, “It is Roanoke? IT’S ROANOKE! IT TOTALLY IS!” The posters and teasers hit us with a creative mishmash of red herrings, artsy doses of micro-horror that paid homage to the entire genre. We had spiders crawling from eyeballs, demon rednecks, amateur surgery, scarecrows, monsters, possessed dolls, Leatherface, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Children of the Corn, and Gordy, the talking pig from the ill-received 1995 family film of the same name. I may be misremembering that last one. But it was all intended to mislead and to get the hype machine a-chuggin’. What would Season Six really be about? And are we invested?

--Well. I’ve long said this show needed to really reinvent itself hard, and this may be the closest we get. The premiere felt pretty bare-bones compared to the blood- and sex-fluid-drenched spectacle of AHS: Hotel. Yeah, fine, this year it’s Roanoke. If you suck at history, Roanoke was an English colony established on a North Carolina island in the 1500s. The entire colony vanished without a trace, save for the word “CROATOAN” carved in a tree. It’s one of those mysteries that has more or less been solved (the colonists most likely moved elsewhere and intermingled with Native Americans), but enthusiasts of the paranormal love to speculate about aliens, time travel, etc. Roanoke is beloved by hack documentarians, which is quite appropriate...

--...because this season is a freakin’ mockumentary! Titled My Roanoke Nightmare, it provides a pitch-perfect homage to/parody of shows like Paranormal Witness, in which ostensibly real people recount their ghostly encounters and actors reenact the events they describe. I like it. It’s different. And I totally, sort of, a little bit, predicted that AHS might try this approach! So. Season Six (so far) is about the series of unfortunate events befalling Shelby and Matt Miller, played in the reenactments by Sarah Paulson and Cuba Gooding Jr. We also see interview footage with the “real” Shelby and Matt, played by Lily Rabe and André Holland. Confused yet? Shelby and Matt were happy as clams until a terrible gang attack and a miscarriage. Broken and reeling, they sought to reboot their lives.

--Thus, the Millers came to inhabit this season’s evil edifice, a very old colonial manse in the middle of a vast North Carolina forest. Nature! Peace and quiet! Shelby can do her yoga in the light of the pancreas-shaped windows and indulge her gluten-free diet in the way-too-huge kitchen! Buildings like this can’t not be haunted, and the Millers -- but mostly Shelby -- were soon experiencing spooky shit. Items moved by themselves. Something outside squealed and shrieked and flung garbage cans. In a very cool and freaky scene, human teeth rained from the sky. Unless Shelby was just off her rocker. She drinks a lot of wine, after all. And Matt was more inclined to suspect the gang of hillbilly stereotypes who’d also wanted to buy the house. Were he and Shelby being targeted because they’re an interracial couple? Maybe. Can AHS leave race issues alone for five seconds? Of course not! I did like how they nailed the subtle daggers of modern racism (that cop never would have drawled, “You her husband?” at a white man) while also making Matt a bit of a douche who was quick to take umbrage. The world of today, huh.

--Matt wanted someone to look after Shelby while he was on business, so he installed his sister, Lee, an ex-cop who got fired for her painkiller and booze addictions. How I smiled when Angela Bassett appeared. All is well in AHS land. Bassett is Lee in the reenactment and “real” Lee is Adina Porter, last seen all the way back in Murder House. Lee thought Shelby was a bit of a dumb honky. But she was more than reliable when dudes with torches started breaking into the house late at night. They, or somebody, left a video playing in the basement; it depicted a man hunting a humanoid creature with a pig’s head. Or was it just a pig mask? Ultimately, the torch club didn’t harm Shelby or Lee, but they did leave Blair Witch stick figurines hanging all over the house, as one does.

--Suitably hysterical, Shelby tore off in her car, only to run over Kathy Bates. We only caught a glimpse, but it was definitely Kathy Bates. Shelby chased Kathy into the woods and found more stick figures, then witnessed the ground itself breathing like it was blanketing some vast, slumbering giant. I dunno what to make of that, but it’s bizarre and neat, so I’ll roll with it. The torch club reappeared (one of them looked a lot like Wes Bentley), and the ep ended with Shelby screaming her butt off at a guy with his scalp missing and his brain exposed.

--So here we are with an inkling as to what Season Six is about, and a multitude of questions. My big concerns have to do with this mockumentary format and if it can last a whole season. Will they stick with it? Drop it after a bit? Weave in the stories of other rubes who tried to live in that remote colonial armpit? Shit, will we even get real opening titles? No clue. But the teasing, cryptic build-up to Season Six seems to have worked, because I had no idea what to expect and I really liked each new surprise and familiar face. Compared to the last, like, three seasons, this is bold. And scary-fun. Whether it will stay bold and scary-fun remains to be seen. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

--I need a name for the haunted colonial house. I’m gonna call it “Terrorbithia.” Heh.

To Squee Or Not to Squee: Kung Fu Panda 3

It’s another one from the Cautious Enthusiasm backlog! And before anyone says anything...yes, I incorrectly stated that Mads Mikkelsen and Rebel Wilson were in this movie, but only because, at the time I made the initial post, they fucking were. Blame fickle acting schedules.

Now. Let me make a confession for which I’m not at all sorry. I don’t like pandas. I don’t find them appealing. Yeah, they’re cute, but they’re also stupid, belligerent creatures that natural evolution does not favor. When you only eat one plant as food, when you can barely figure out how to fuck and tend to eat your own newborn cub because you don’t know otherwise...you’re at a dead end. And now we’re pouring oodles of time and resources into trying to save the wretched species from extinction, China is cheerfully bartering panda cubs to other countries in return for uranium (seriously. Look it up), and it’s all because we’re stupidly in love with pandas even though they are NOT WORTHY OF OUR LOVE. I don’t care who hates me for this. I don’t like pandas at all.

That said, I like the Kung Fu Panda movies a whole lot. Dreamworks doesn’t always produce winners, but with this franchise, they’ve got a really good formula and the boundless opportunity to produce gorgeous, exciting animation. The setting, a highly stylized version of ancient China, allows for every cherry blossom, lily pond, phallic mountain peak, and swooshy martial arts move to be given the attention it deserves. The KFP series follows Po (Jack Black), a corpulent panda who is chosen to be the Dragon Warrior and protect his valley from the forces of evil. Though he may seem a terrible champion, Po has his own unique brand of floppy, improvisational, oddly effective kung fu; one of his greatest strengths is that he can’t believe all the awesome stuff he gets to do. Assisting him are the Furious Five: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Crane (David Cross). Their mentor is the cranky, wisdom-filled, occasionally insecure Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman).

But you knew all that already. Recapping the premise is tedious, I know. The first two movies weren’t just beautiful and reasonably funny, they achieved a surprising amount of emotional resonance here and there. Po is the only panda in the world, as far as he knows -- raised from infancy by a loving duck named Ping (James Hong), who runs a noodle shop. Eventually, he learns the truth, and Kung Fu Panda 2 has one scene, in which Po remembers what happened to his mother, that actually makes me cry a little. Which is not what I expected from a movie full of fat jokes. The question is, could KFP3 possibly be as good or profound, given the tendency of animated sequels to get progressively lazier? Well...no. It’s not as good as the first two movies. But I figured. This time around, the valley's period of peacetime is broken by the arrival of undead bad guy General Kai (J.K. Simmons), who looks like a horned and hoofed Genghis Khan, who dual-wields swords on chains like he’s freakin’ Kratos, and who has a habit of vacuuming up the chi of other kung fu masters and turning them into skittering jade golems.

That’s all sorta cool, but Kai is not as compelling a foe as Tai Lung or Lord Shen from the previous films. He has a very perfunctory vendetta indeed, and Simmons voices him like a douchey college football jock. (The running gag is that Kai expects everyone to know who he is, and no one does.) Po and co. are all that can stand between Kai and blah blah blah. But, in the meantime, who should turn up but Po’s biological dad, Li Shan (Bryan Cranston), who reveals the existence of a secret panda village. Why, pandas are known for their ability to manipulate chi! Po can learn how to defeat Kai and reconnect with his species! Thus, a huge chunk of the film takes place in the hidden village, and...ugh. After three films, I have come to like Po. And Cranston is very good as Li. But we didn’t need an entire mob of goddamn pandas. They’re presented as genial, roly-poly nincompoops who live in their own private eden of gluttony, and they are not as funny or lovable as the filmmakers seem to think they are. At times, the endless fat/dumb/lazy jokes border on grotesque. Kate Hudson pops up as a she-panda who wants into Po’s pants; luckily, the KFP team seem to have realized what a terrible subplot that was and written most of it out.

A big issue with this series is that each movie’s plot is more or less the same. Po doubts himself, everyone else doubts Po, and then Po unlocks some new level of kung fu coolness to defeat the latest baddie. I was okay with KFP2 rehashing Po’s journey because of the time and respect given to the darker elements of his past. But...now what? Isn’t Po already the Dragon Warrior? What the hell else does he need to learn about himself? How to be a panda? Pandas suck, and this film doesn’t make me like them any more. The character I really relate to is Po’s adoptive father, Ping, who plays a prominent role here but doesn’t get enough real emotion. In the earlier films, we saw how devastated Ping was at the thought of losing Po. Here, he’s too often reduced to a comical worrywart. Still, they avoided making Ping and Li into rivals, which was nice, and by the time the film got to the line, “Po needs his two dads!” I realized how subversive things had become. Yeah, they went there. Sort of. Good for them!

Anyway, I should make it clear that this is still a really fun movie. It’s no less beautifully-animated than the first two, and by throwing in supernatural elements, they’ve taken their visuals to new, eye-popping heights. And the cast do a great job, when they can. The Furious Five are still given very little to do, sadly. But Hoffman’s Master Shifu has a meatier role here than in KFP2, and Jolie’s Tigress is still in a league of her own. Seriously, I fucking love Tigress. I love how subtle the animators make her, how she leaves things unsaid, how she shows her fondness for Po in tiny ways and knows exactly when he needs a pep talk or a kick in the ass. I bet these actors really enjoy returning to voice their characters.

I just hope their interest doesn’t wane. Because I’ve heard Dreamworks wants to make three more KFP movies. Why? Didn’t I just say that KFP3 doesn’t really add much to Po’s personal journey? Okay, yeah...it does bring his Dragon Warrior arc to a sweeping pinnacle. There is grandeur and emotional power to be found here...but practically every serious moment is interrupted by a lame joke or pratfall in short order. It’s an insult to our intelligence. We do get a pretty awesome climax (well, two climaxes -- the real one and the dumb, slapsticky one), and an ending that seems extremely definitive in terms of where Po stands and how happy everyone is. Three more films? How could they not seem forced? Just as the Shrek series should have ended after the second one, Kung Fu Panda really ought to be a trilogy and not a damn sextology. But it’s not up to me, it’s up to box office receipts, as usual.

But Kung Fu Panda 3 is good. It’s not quite on par with its predecessors, but it’s perfectly entertaining, visually outstanding, well-voiced, and not too lazy. And if, like me, you find its overuse of chubby, mentally deficient pandas to be obnoxious, keep in mind that I’m a bitter party pooper who wishes he wasn’t about to turn thirty. Ugh. At least kids these days have quality stuff like Kung Fu Panda as well as pandering, lowbrow shit like Angry Birds. It could always be worse.

VERDICT: The third squee in a series isn’t the loudest, but it’ll do.