Turns out the second trailer for Project Hail Mary is even better than the first.
And, heaven help me, this may actually be the movie which has me heading to a theater come March...
I'm more than a little shocked that the trailers are spoiling some of the things from the book that were kinda designed to be a surprise... but it still looks fun enough that it may not matter.
It's dreary and raining buckets here, but I'm not going to let that get me down... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Dating!
I know. I know. Playdate got savaged in the reviews and is generally considered a bad movie. But I loved it! Alan Ritchson's character is hilariously random...
This is the kind of off-the-wall stuff that makes Amazon Prime worth the price of admission.
• NEWSFLASH: Pasta at Twice the Price? Some Italian Producers Face Huge U.S. Tariffs. If I could find bronze-extruded, slow-dried pasta that was American made... then great. I'd buy it. Happy to purchase American if the quality is good. But I ain't going to buy shitty teflon-extruded, rapid-flash-dried crap that won't hold sauce and is just a slippery gawdaful mess. I'd eat half the pasta... but I'd gladly pay twice the price to get something good.
• FedExSNL! This morning I popped in my DVD of Feds, a film from the 1980's which is so much better than it had a right to be. Mostly because the leads were so flawlessly cast...
And I was like "I wonder what Mary Gross is up to now?" But could find nothing current until I found a podcast interview, which was quite a treat!
• Hand Me That Paperclip! ZOMG! MACGRUBER IS ON THE EPSTEIN LIST?? I was such a fan. But no more!
UPDATE: Somehow, something has gone terribly wrong with the Saturday Night Live YouTube Channel... videos from the past five months have disappeared? Bummer.
I lie. I still think MacGruber is one of the funniest SNL characters, and I loved his movie and limited series. I'd love to get more of that, but if Will Forte is going to pop by Saturday Night from time to time to keep the character alive, I can be happy with that.
• Death of a Penny! Does ANYBODY who's whining about the US Penny ending know how rounding even works? Amount ending in 1¢ or 2¢... round down. For example, you're paying out of your piggy bank and something costs 52¢ but neither you nor the store has any pennies, so you pay 50¢ — But for an amount ending in 3¢ or 4¢... round up. For example something costs 54¢ then you pay 55¢. In the end, the odds are 50/50 that something will go up or down and, given the value of a penny now-a-days, nobody is getting rich off rounding. BUT LISTEN TO PEOPLE GOING ABSOLUTELY MENTAL... "BUSINESSES WILL LOSE MONEY!" And it's like... yeah... 50% of the time they will lose 1 or 2 pennies. BUT THE REST OF THE TIME THEY'RE GAINING 1 or 2 PENNIES! And how many people are paying cash any more? Apparently it's enough that BUSINESSES WILL LOSE MILLIONS! Except to lose one million dollars, you'd have to come up short 100 million pennies in rounding transactions. Okay, boomer... I'll take not wasting money minting coins that are worth less than they cost to make. As for those states which "don't allow rounding"... guess they'll have to fix that. — As for me? I'M MORE UPSET THAT WE'RE LOSING THE HAVE A PENNY GIVE A PENNY, NEED A PENNY TAKE A PENNY TRAYS! BLASPHEMY! THE END OF DAYS ARE NIGH! TODAY NO MORE PENNIES... TOMORROW PAYING WITH THE MARK OF THE BEAST! BET! Guess we're just going to be another penniless third-world country. Like Canada.
• Edo! A video from nine years ago which I had never seen popped up this week. It was on the history of Japan, which fascinates me anyway, but this was by Bill Wurtz, whom I was a big fan of back in the day. Which is why I was so shocked that I had never seen it...
If you want a different take on Japanese history which is half as fun but twice as long, here you go...
• Ugly! I will not call anybody "ugly" based on their appearance. That's a pretty shitty thing to do. But I don't hesitate calling somebody "ugly" when it comes to what they show us that's on the inside. In that respect, Kim Davis is one of the most butt-ugly, awful excuses for a human I've ever seen. She wants to "preserve the sanctity of marriage" by refusing to do her job of granting marriage licenses... all while having been through multiple divorces and so-called scandalous behavior around those marriages herself...

It's like having a job at a steak house and refusing to serve meat because you're vegan in public, but you eat steak at home. Hypocrisy 101. If the job isn't suitable for you or your so-called beliefs, THEN FIND ANOTHER JOB... LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE DOES. But no. This repugnant pile of heinousness wanted the Supreme Court to give her license to shit on other people's happiness when the PURSUIT of happiness is SUPPOSED to be in this country's DNA. You did what made YOU happy when it comes to marriage(s), so let other people have that too. Or get fucked and go away. That works too.
And on that shiny note of perspective... enjoy the last of your weekend.
Diane Keaton, D'Angelo, and Drew Struzan have passed. All of them a punch to the gut.
But the one that hits the hardest is Struzan. His movie posters are iconic, and I have bought some of them over the years to hang up (including Back to the Future II and Blade Runner: The Final Cut)...


I've also got a couple of his books somewhere that I need to dig out.
Struzan's style is unmistakable, and it's no wonder that so many artists have tried to imitate it over the years. Some of the most famous films ever made were advertised with posters he created, And trying to cash in on that only makes sense.
You will be missed, sir.
Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day, everybody!
An episode of Will & Grace popped up while I was working tonight and it guest-starred Bruno Campos, who many people will remember as Quentin Costa on Nip/Tuck, but who most people will know as the voice of Prince Naveen in Disney's The Princess and the Frog.
"I wonder what he's been up to?" I thought. "I don't remember seeing him in anything recently."
A brief internet search revealed that the last thing he did was voice Prince Naveen for the Tiana's Bayou Adventure ride pre-show in 2024. Then I ran by his IMDB page to find out that he stopped acting in 2010, and the only work he's done past that was an occasional job for Disney when they needed Naveen's voice for something.
Turns out the guy quit acting to go to law school and works at a law firm in Washington, D.C.
Turns out that not only is he a native speaker of Portuguese and English, but he also speaks Spanish and Italian. Which might come in handy as a D.C. lawyer, I'd imagine.
Interestingly enough... his Italian also came in handy for playing Prince Naveen. The character is from the fictional country of Maldonia, where the language is based on Italian.
Isn't it great how you can learn random strange facts on a Monday evening?
I somehow forgot the reason why I didn't pre-order Fantastic Four: First Steps. Namely, they're charging $30 for it.
So when I got home and saw an ad that it was released, I actually got excited for a second. Then I saw $30 and was puzzled all over again. I will happily pay $20 for a movie I am dying to see. Might pay $25, if it's something special (like this one). But thirty fucking dollars?!?? No thanks. To rent the thing is $25, but I refuse to pay that much money for something I can't watch again whenever I want...

What's really weird is that Marvel is pricing the film like it was some box office smash that people can't wait to see (or see again). Sure it made a half-billion dollars... but it can't touch the nearly three billion that Avengers: Endgame hauled in. Seriously... thirty dollars?!??
I'm honestly trying to think if there's any movie I would pay that amount for. And I honestly don't think there is.
Oh well. I'm sure it will be on sale fairly soon.
The last thing I remember seeing Robert Redford in is Avengers: Endgame. Turns out other than a voiceover and an uncredited cameo appearance in a television show he produced, that was his last real role. I actually think that's kind of cool, but also quite sad, so it's tough to know where my head is at. On one hand, he went out in one of the biggest movies of all time and was awesome in it. On the other, it was a comic book movie, and his acting talent was so beautifully nuanced that I can't help but feel his last film should have been something else.
But anyway... Redford was Alexander Pierce in the Marvel comic book movies, and was absolutely wonderful in the role. Captain America: The Winter Soldier remains one of the best super-hero movies ever made, and that's due in part to his performance.
But the film which he will forever be remembered for by me is, of course, Sneakers.
I love that movie so much, and was thrilled that Redford's character was so flawlessly cast...

But then again, they were all flawlessly cast.
I think the first thing I ever saw Redford in was The Natural. But it might have been a VHS rental of All the President's Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Candidate, Three Days of he Condor, or perhaps The Sting.
But the thing I will always remember him for most are Sneakers, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Up Close & Personal, Indecent Proposal, and... Legal Eagles?!?

This Redford flick co-starred Debra Winger and Daryl Hannah... and was not great. Nor was it particularly memorable. I just remember it because I saw it on a date that didn't go particularly well.
And so... I'm going to work my way through the Redford movies I loved starting this weekend. Maybe a new favorite will emerge, but it's pretty tough to think that any of his movies could ever top Sneakers.
But who knows? I've never seen The Way We Were, Barefoot in the Park, or Out of Africa because they definitely don't seem like my kind of movie... but maybe if I'm adventurous enough, I'll find out
When you're having to lay on a heating pad from the time you get back from work to the time you wake up because you don't want to have to dig into the muscle relaxer pills for your back, you end up watching a lot of television.
Or, as in my case, YouTube videos.
Here's what occupied my time laying around last night...
First of all, this video right here is everything I love about YouTube. Clever, funny people doing clever, funny things. I've seen Isaac Carlton videos before (and probably shared them), but this one is a great example of what he does so well...
Next up... As much as I loved the original The Matrix, I loathed the sequels. They were outright shitty excuses for stories because they were so far up their asses trying to be esoteric and cerebral and "smart" between the action that they forgot to be entertaining (then we got The Matrix Resurrections, which was somehow even worse). But every once in a while I run across a sequence from the sequels that almost makes me want to watch them again. The highway chase from Reloaded being at the top of the list. Sure, some of the effects are badly dated (the Agent jumping on cars is hilariously bad), but it doesn't change what a cool action sequence it was. Especially for the day. It's just such a shame that it was sandwiched between such shit...
And lastly (because I've got stuff I need to get to, not because I only watched three videos)... I honestly do not understand how Josh Johnson can be this brilliant every time. He never seems to run out of material. Most comics would recycle the same routines over and over and over. With Josh he's just on to the next hilarious bit...
And there you have it. Hope you didn't fall into and Isaac Carlton or The Matrix or Josh Johnson rabbit hole from this post.
But there are certainly worse ways to spend your time.
Since I frickin' lost all the entries I had written for this week and am having to go back and remember what I must have been doing during this incredibly busy week.
Work, mostly.
And while I work? The many adaptations of Agatha Christie's fantastic murder mystery sleuth, Miss Marple. My mom was a huge Christie fan and I'd read the books she got from the library after she finished them. It was a natural progression from the Encyclopedia Brown books of my youth.
But anyway, back to adaptations...
My most favorite adaptation of Marple is the two TV movies starring Helen Hayes... A Caribbean Mystery and Murder with Mirrors. To this day I remain gutted that we didn't get another movie or six from her, because she added such a flawless and effortless air of mischief to the character.
Before Helen Hayes we got a different take on Marple by Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack'd. The movie was a good one, but Lansbury was much better suited to playing Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote (which my mom also loved). Alas, the movie didn't do well at the box office, killing a planned trilogy.
Joan Hickson is widely seen as the "definitive" Miss Marple by many, and her adaptations of the 12 novels are legend. What's bizarre is that Agatha Christie herself wanted Hickson to eventually play the character after seeing her in a play in the 1940's. It's bizarre because this series didn't start filming until 1984. Which means Christie was seeing the actor 40 years before she would play the role, and died before she saw Hickson realize her dream casting choice. Of all the adaptations made, this series is probably the most faithful (or, as faithful as it could be given that so much time had passed since the books were written).
And then we come to Marple... the adaptation which wasn't much of an adaptation which ran from 2004-2009. Granted, it's been so long since I read the books that I'm a bit fuzzy on details, but this series plopped Marple into stories she wasn't actually in and changed some major plot points of the books in which she did. As if that weren't enough, they invented details of Marple's life which don't remotely fit the character (she's always been a spinster, but this show gave her the back-story of having had an affair with a married man in the second episode?!?). Geraldine McEwan starred in the first three series and was fine... but the entire appeal of Marple is that she's a sweet old lady. Instead they wrote her as slightly more aggressive in this series, so the charm just wasn't there. When she retired and the role was taken by Julia Mckenzie, they kinda realized the error of their ways and reverted her personality back to the sweet old lady from the novels. Which is to say that I liked the final three series quite a bit more than the first three, and there were some excellent episodes. Even so, the Hickson series still manages to top anything we got here.
And now we're in 2025 where apparently we're getting new Miss Marple movie adaptations after the success of the Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot films. I'll watch them, of course, but I didn't think any of the three modern Poirot adaptations were as good as what came before. Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express) and Peter Ustinov (Death on the Nile) were sublime in their respective film adaptations, and David Suchet's take on Hallowe'en Party (which became A Haunting in Venice) is also my preferred adaptation. But still... I'll hope for the best.
No matter what happens, the books still exist*
*Albeit with the racism, antisemitism, and other bits edited out for modern audiences.
I've made no secret of my utter loathing of the "Snyderverse" series of films based on DC Comics characters. It was a dark, bored, joyless slog. Man of Steel was a horrifically bad take on Superman, which was a bitter pill to swallow given how much I loved Henry Cavill for the role. Then we moved on to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice which somehow ended up being even worse. There was a brief reprieve with the exceptional Wonder Woman flick, but then we got Justice League which is one of my most hated movies of all time.
And that was that. Other than a cameo in the atrocious Black Adam and a kinda-cameo in the even more atrocious Shazam!, Superman was done.
Until now.
As I said yesterday, I liked the movie quite a lot. I watched it again yesterday so I could write up a running commentary while my first reactions were fresh in my head.
If you're on the fence about watching the film, here's a look at one of the best comic book fight scenes you'll see on the silver screen...
Needless to say, I'll be spoiling the movie completely...

And now we wait for June 26, 2026.
Still recovering from a trip to the coast and back yesterday, but that's no excuse... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Super, Man! I loved pretty much every frame of Superman. Thank you, James Gunn for giving us a fantastic spectacle of a comic book movie that has me excited for new DC films. The one thing I don't get is how he could get everything so right with all the characters and the story... but saddle us with one of the most insanely weird takes on Jimmy Olson I've ever seen. I guess no movie is perfect... but damn. So close. And is it wrong that the reason I'm most looking forward to the Supergirl film is to see more Krypto?
And, oh yeah, I will be *very* upset if we don't get a Mr. Terrific series on HBO or HBO Max or whatever. NOT "The Terrifics"... I'm so done with "Team Arrow" and "Team Flash" and "Team Supergirl" and "Team Whatever" series... just Mr. Terrific. Maybe with an occasional guest star. But anyway... I'll put up a post with my full comments when I've had a chance to watch it again.
• Have it Our Way! Remember when Burger King actually let you "have it your way" instead of just saying you can "have it your way" but not really? BECAUSE MY WAY IS WITH EXTRA MAYO... AND YOUR NEW APP DOESN'T ALLOW THAT. You either get "regular" or nothing...

And notice how you can't see the ingredient you're altering. I can only guess that some bean-counting dumbass at corporate thinks that not allowing somebody to put an extra 2¢ worth of mayo on their fucking $8.19 Impossible Whopper is a good financial move. Well, it's making me not want to eat at your restaurant any more, so congratulations. I wonder if this dipshit is the same one in charge at Chipotle who thought raising prices and lowering portions at the same time would make their customers happy? What's so fucking stupid here is that I just asked for two packets of free mayo so I could add it to my burger myself, which most certainly costs more than just adding it from the giant mayo bucket. And speaking of this new app... did anybody at BK beta test it? I am assuming this third option is Coke Zero because the one before it is Diet Coke and there's 0 calories in it... but who the fuck knows?

There's absolutely no way to confirm it. And so I had to order for pick-up instead of drive-thru because I knew they'd hand me a cup and I could fill it with the correct Coke myself. Good Lord. Pathetic. This is the whole Sonos app disaster all over. Do these fucking companies ever learn?
• Via Variety: PETA Urges Nintendo to Remove ‘Mario Kart World’ Cow’s Nose Ring: ‘It’s-a Mean!’ To think there was a time I actually supported the dumbasses at PETA. What a fucking joke.With each new idiotic act, they make me want to go out and buy a steak...

And since I'm a vegetarian, that tells you about all you need to know.
• Pop Quiz, Hotshot! Take a guess...
And now I want Taco Bell. Which is about the only fast food restaurant left to me after this stupid Burger King fiasco.
• Via People: Plus Size Park Hoppers' Say Brutal Backlash Over Their Experiences at Disney Theme Parks Won't Stop Them. What is it with people? Just leave them alone. One of the more difficult things I witnessed at a Disney Parks was a couple who stood in line for over an hour to ride the Seven Dwarves Mine Car Ride. But when they got to the front of the line, the woman couldn't fit in the car. She asked if they could ride-swap so she could ride in a row by herself then her boyfriend could ride the next time, but they wouldn't let her because of the way the seats are built. — First of all, you'd think that Disney would have one row in just one car that is built for a larger person. And second of all, if the woman could have only visited a website which would have told her if she could fit, then she wouldn't have wasted an hour of her life for nothing and have to leave embarrassed and upset. — You'd think that assholes who make fun of these ladies or insult them would instead support them sharing this information, because you just know that they're in line complaining because they have to wait for larger people who are trying to see if they fit into the ride car.
• More Lies! As if we needed yet another video to point out how full of crap Ben Shapiro is. But here you go...
What a lying little shit stain. I have to wonder if he has ever been anything except disingenuous with his audience. This take-down is beautifully done. Elegantly pointing out that all Shapiro does... all he ever does... is lie.
• Via PBS: South Carolina lawmaker in jail on child sex abuse material charges resigns from office. Damn. These drag quee— WHAT? Yet ANOTHER anti-LGBTQ Republican asshole caught assaulting children? You know what... I'm beginning to think that drag queens aren't quite the threat that anti-LGBTQ Republicans say they are! They're just a convenient scapegoat!
And there you have it. I'm all out of bullets this fine Sunday.
