Monday, April 21, 2014

The balls you didn't know I juggled

Last month I announced my decision to cut back to blogging every other Monday and why I came to that conclusion. Well there were two reasons that I wasn't at liberty to share then that I can now.

I've been doing guest posts for The Fictorians for over a year now. Last month they asked me to become a full member. I know it doesn't make sense to cut back on one blog just to post on another but my posts for them have been well received, and I have a lot of respect for the other members. I'm honored to be among their number. I'll only be doing one post a month for them so it won't cut into my schedule too much. Next Tuesday (29th) my first post as a Fictorian will up on the site so make sure to mark it on your calendars.

The other reason is that I'm returning to the stage. I auditioned for and was cast in Albany Civic Theater's upcoming production Avenue Q. I'll be playing the role of Christmas Eve and I'm so excited! I'm excited to be back on stage, I'm excited to work with this amazing cast, and I'm so happy to check one more show off my bucket list. I've wanted to portray Christmas Eve for years and I'd never forgive myself if I passed up this opportunity. She's such a fun character. So if you're local I'd love to see you in the audience. Just remember that this isn't a family friendly show.

So why did I withhold this information? Well when I made my announcement I hadn't been officially instated as a Fictorian. As for Avenue Q the auditions hadn't taken place yet. I did take it into account when I made my blogging decision, even though it wasn't guaranteed I'd be cast. Doing a musical takes a lot of time and energy and I wanted to be certain that I wasn't overloading myself. My conclusion was that if I stayed with a weekly blog schedule it would be exactly that. They were the weights that tipped the scale. Now that both items are official I'm glad that I took them into account and acted accordingly. It's going to make the next four months doable.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Captain plot hole and the repetitive threat

(SPOILER WARNING)

I saw Captain America: the Winter Soldier on Saturday night and even though I enjoyed it immensely there were a few plot holes that prevent me from calling it the best Marvel film of all. Yes, the predecessors in the franchise all had their flaws too (I'm still trying to forget the first Thor film) but I don't feel that their flaws were as far reaching as CA2's. Remember that I still liked the film. The action sequences were excellent and I love Steve and Natasha's interactions. I also loved the congruity with the TV show. However, those delights didn't compensate for the rest of the film being poorly written.

Two of my friends have commented on their blogs that Hydra's presence within S.H.I.E.L.D. should have been discovered years prior. They're right. Someone would have let something slip in conversation or an intercepted communiqué that would have started an internal investigation. I also have problems with Hydra's reasoning, as explained by Zola. He claimed that the only way for them to succeed was to have the people freely surrender their liberty but when they were allied with the Nazis that's exactly what they had. Not across the entire globe of course though they had enough of it. If that approach had already failed than why try it again?

I also had big problems with the Winter Soldier. First was that he had supposedly been operating for fifty years without anyone catching him or discovering his identity. Again, someone would have found something in all that time. They also eluded to his having been repeatedly frozen, thawed, and had his memories forcefully repressed. Unless he possessed the healing powers of Wolverine he shouldn't have been able to survive that. One freeze and thaw, sure. But a repeated course over fifty years? No way. And since we're on the subject of his abilities wouldn't the changes resulting from the Hydra experiments have manifested during the many operations he, Steve, and the rest of the team carried out in Europe during WWII?

My second problem with the Winter Soldier was that he was Bucky. In the first Captain America they used him for the gut-wrenching plot twist. That they did the same thing with the same character a second time is lazy. They could have expounded on Steve's dissolution with S.H.I.E.L.D. or the fact that the Winter Soldier was a Hydra operative and that would have been enough, I think. The fact that they went ahead with this copycat twist when they took the time to give Thor and Iron Man new and interesting conflicts is appalling. Especially when they negate all Steve's "I don't want to fight my friend" stance in the final fight scene. If Steve was so against it why did he throw the first punch?

The last plot hole that should have been addressed was Zola. If his mind and the algorithm was so essential to Hydra's operations why hadn't he been uploaded to a more modern interface? Those circuit boards shouldn't have been operable and the speed of modern components would have made the transfer worth the risk.

In any other film all of these flaws would have made me call it a massive failure. Fortunately for them the first class fight scenes made me a very happy bloodthirsty girl. Oh, and the relationships and the continuity with the TV show. But mostly the violence.