Ryan Sinclair's travel vlog in a better timeline

The defining moment came at last for all the Marvel fans and MCU die-hards, when the official trailer for Avengers 4 arrived eventually, exactly at the time which we told you, earlier today. And the trailer also revealed the title of the most anticipated MCU film in the history. And it’s called Avengers: Endgame. Coming straight to the trailer and what it actually tried to tell us about the current scenario after the Snap by Thanos (or the Decimation, as its now being called officially), then the trailer was not action-oriented, but it was just about showing the huge impact of that Snap, on our remaining Avengers and the entire planet, and the universe. About 50% of all living creatures were disintegrated and died in Avengers: Infinity War. The trailer begins with Tony in a ship in which he’s trying to go back to earth. But as he says in his message which he records for Pepper Potts, his supplies are running out, like food, oxygen and other stuff needed for living in the space. He says that he will die soon as he travels through space, “Part of the journey is the end.” Read More: JOKER: Former DC chief Diane Nelson deletes Twitter account after angst from fans After that, the scene shifts to earth where Black Widow, Captain America, Thor, and Bruce Banner are shown discussing the loss of families, lives, and their own selves, after the Decimation. We also see a glimpse of Thanos, for only a few seconds and also of his costume hanging in a farm. Nebula also shows up in between, but this time we also saw Jeremy Renner’s Ronin’s first look, which is fantastic. He’s probably transformed into a more violent man now, as he lost his family too, after the Snap. [youtube Then comes the logo of the movie where the title of Avengers 4 finally gets revealed: Endgame. After that we also see Ant-Man/Scott Lang trying to contact Captain America through a video message, but Captain America thinks that he’s dead and seems to be skeptical about Scott’s message. But he also looks hopeful, along with Black Widow. And the trailer ends with this. Now the point is that this official trailer doesn’t live up to that kind of excitement of the fans for which they were dying for so long and the hype for beyond dope. But the trailer shows only that much which can satisfy the fans that eventually they have something officially coming about Avengers 4 movie. Although from the perspective of Marvel Studios and the story that currently appears to be, the trailer shows exactly the elements that needed to be there in the footage. Because the impact of Decimation has been huge in the entire universe which means a lot for all the characters. So only the traumatic state has been shown as of now. Maybe the next trailer will show them getting ready for the action and taking their revenge, eventually trying to win against the Mad Titan. But perhaps he’s not the main antagonist this time; something or someone even more threatening than him is coming, and which is unknown. Another most exciting thing that the trailer showed was the release date of the film, which, again, has been shifted for an early schedule of April 26th, 2019! Yes, it will be arriving one week earlier and that’s really great for every moviegoer. Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr., Josh Brolin, Karen Gillan, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, and Brie Larson, among others. The culminating movie consisting of a long storyline of ten years will be coming after the release of Captain Marvel. It will be distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Read More: Councillor exit interview: Bob Monette talks about ‘sentimental’ retirement from Ottawa City Hall

what are all the podcasts you listen to?

anon I'm so glad you asked

Since it is a pretty long list including synopses (stolen from the podcast feed or website because I'm Bad at summaries and in some cases it's been a while since I listened) I'm going to put it under a cut.

I've separated the list into "Complete" (either finished or cancelled) and "Ongoing" podcasts. Some have additional comments by me. Current favorites are marked orange. My eternal beloved are Our Fair City and Wolf 359.

Complete

ars PARADOXICA: "When an experiment in a time much like our own goes horribly awry, Dr. Sally Grissom finds herself stranded in the past and entrenched in the activities of a clandestine branch of the US government. Grissom and her team quickly learn that there's no safety net when toying with the fundamental logic of the universe."

Blackwood: "Five years ago, Molly Weaver, Bryan Anderson, and Nathan Howell started a podcast focused on the local legend of a monster called The Blackwood Bugman. Quickly, the investigation grew out of their control, as they discovered that, not only are the legends seemingly true, many people in Blackwood have turned up dead or disappeared without a trace." --> [this feels like the Blair With Project, but as a podcast. Didn't get a second season due to no funding, but it works as a standalone]

Dreamboy: "Dane, a spun-out musician spending the winter in Cleveland, Ohio, has two main goals: keeping his job at the Pepper Heights Zoo and trying not to waste all his time on Grindr. What he doesn’t expect is to get swept into a story about dreams, about forevers, about flickering lights, about unexplained deaths, about relentless change, and about the parts of ourselves that we wish other people knew to look for. Oh, and also a murderous zebra." --> [very NSFW; does cool things with music! Didn't get a second season due to no funding, but it works as a standalone]

King Fall AM: "...centers on a lonely little mountain town's late-night AM talk radio show and its paranormal, peculiar happenings and inhabitants." --> [cancelled after 100 episodes, ends on a huge cliffhanger]

Our Fair City: "A campy, post-apocalyptic audio drama." --> [I know the description sounds like nothing but just trust me, I love it so much]

Steal the Stars: "...is a gripping noir science fiction thriller in 14 episodes: Forbidden love, a crashed UFO, an alien body, and an impossible heist unlike any ever attempted."

Stellar Firma: "...a weekly Science Fiction, Comedy podcast following the misadventures of Stellar Firma Ltd.'s highest born but lowest achieving planetary designer Trexel Geistman and his bewildered clone assistant David 7. Join them each episode as they attempt to take listener submissions and craft them into the galaxy's most luxurious, most expensive and most questionably designed bespoke planets. However, with Trexel's corporate shark of a line manager Hartro Piltz breathing down their necks and I.M.O.G.E.N., the station's omnipresent and omniinvasive stationwide A.I. monitoring those necks to within 3 decimal places, they'll be lucky to make it a week before being slurried and recycled into raw human resources." --> [semi-improvised, I thought I'd have a problem with the improv bit because that's not usually my thing, but no, I absolutely devoured this]

TANIS: "...is a serialized docudrama about a fascinating and surprising mystery: the myth of Tanis. Tanis is an exploration of the nature of truth, conspiracy, and information. Tanis is what happens when the lines of science and fiction start to blur." [+ spinoff The Last Movie] --> [I have no clue what the hell is going on here]

The Black Tapes: "...is a serialized docudrama about one journalist's searc for truth, her enigmatic subject's mysterious past, and the literal and figurative ghosts that haunt them both."

The Magnus Archives: "...is a weekly horror fiction anthology podcast examining what lurks in the archives of the Magnus Institute, an organisation dedicated to researching the esoteric and the weird. Join new head archivist Jonathan Sims as he attempts to bring a seemingly neglected collection of supernatural statements up to date, converting them to audio and supplementing them with follow-up work from his small but dedicated team. Individually, they are unsettling. Together they begin to form a picture that is truly horrifying because as they look into the depths of the archives, something starts to look back…"

Time:Bombs: "...a new audio drama podcast about the hilarious world of bomb disposal. Ride along with EOD technician Simon Teller on the busiest night of the year for him and his team - when business is, quite literally, booming."

Wolf 359: "Life's not easy for Doug Eiffel, the communications officer for the U.S.S. Hephaestus Research Station, currently on Day 448 of its orbit around red dwarf star Wolf 359. He's stuck on a scientific survey mission of indeterminate length, 7.8 light years from Earth. His only company on board the station are stern mission chief Minkowski, insane science officer Hilbert, and Hephaestus Station's sentient, often malfunctioning operating system Hera. He doesn't have much to do for his job other than monitoring static and intercepting the occasional decades-old radio broadcast from Earth, so he spends most of his time creating extensive audio logs about the ordinary, day-to-day happenings within the station. But the Hephaestus is an odd place, and life in extremely isolated, zero gravity conditions has a way of doing funny things to people's minds. Even the simplest of tasks can turn into a gargantuan struggle, and the most ordinary-seeming things have a way of turning into anything but that." --> [starts funny, turns very intense]

Ongoing

Alba Salix, Roya Physician (+ The Axe & Crown): "A witch, her apprentice, and her fairy herbalist treat the ills of a fairy-tale kingdom." + "Gubbin the troll tavernkeeper deals with his clueless new landlord, his shady niece, and some new competition."

Archive 81: "A found footage horror podcast about ritual, stories, and sound."

Arden: "A (fictional) true crime podcast about cold cases and the reporter and detective who try to solve them."

Brimstone Valley Mall: "The year is 1999. Lurking somewhere between Hot Topic and the food court, five misfit demons from Hell kill time inciting sin in a suburban shopping mall. When the lead singer of their band goes mysteriously missing, the demons only have two weeks to find him before they play the biggest gig of the millennium - or face the wrath of Satan herself."

CARAVAN: "First rule of Wound Canyon: No one who gets in, ever gets out. So when a brilliant, ghostly specter flies through the sky amid the rain and lightning, Samir stumbles off a steep cliff and into a hidden world, one in which demons, vampires, and all other manner of paranormal creatures take sanctuary." --> [also pretty NSFW and horny in general]

Death by Dying: "The Obituary Writer of Crestfall, Idaho finds himself deeply in over his head as he investigates a series of strange and mysterious deaths… when he is supposed to simply be writing obituaries. Along the way he encounters murderous farmers, man-eating cats, haunted bicycles, and a healthy dose of ominous shadows." --> [I had to stop listening to this in public because it kept making me undignified laugh and snort noises]

Desperado: "Blood magic, Voodoo magic, old gods, new gods: We've got it all! Follow the story of misfits from all over the world, as they try to survive and protect their heritage from modern-day crusaders."

EOS 10: "Doctors in space, a deposed alien prince, a super gay space pirate and a fiery nurse who'll help you win your bar fight."

Girl In Space: "Abandoned on a dying ship in the farthest reaches of known space, a young scientist fights for survival (and patience with the on-board A.I.). Who is she? No one knows. But a lot of dangerous entities really want to find out. Listen as the story unfolds for science, guns, trust, anti-matter, truth, beauty, inner turmoil, and delicious cheeses. It’s all here. In space."

Janus Descending: "...follows the arrival of two xenoarcheologists on a small world orbiting a binary star. But what starts off as an expedition to survey the planet and the remains of a lost alien civilization, turns into a monstrous game of cat and mouse, as the two scientists are left to face the creatures that killed the planet in the first place. Told from two alternating perspectives, Janus Descending is an experience of crossing timelines, as one character describes the nightmare from end to beginning, and the other, from beginning to the end." --> [absolutely harrowing horror]

Love and Luck: "...is a fictional radio play podcast, told via voicemails and set in present day Melbourne, Australia. A slice of life queer romance story with a touch of magic, it follows the relationship between two men, Jason and Kane, as their love grows both for each other and their community." --> [soft and gay, feels like a warm hug]

Potterless: "Join Mike Schubert, a grown man reading the Harry Potter series for the first time, as he sits down with HP fanatics to poke fun at plot holes, make painfully incorrect predictions, and bask in the sassiness of the characters." --> [the only non-fiction podcast on the list]

Primordial Deep: "When a long extinct sea creature washes up on the shores of Coney Island, marine biologist Dr. Marella Morgan is contacted by a secret organization to investigate the origins of the creature’s sudden and unnatural resurgence. Soon, she and a team of experts find themselves living on the research station The Tiamat, traveling along the abyssal plains as they search for answers far below the waves. But there are dangers in these ancient waters. Reawakened, prehistoric monsters are rising from the deep -- jaws wide and waiting, and in the darkness, something is stirring."

Red Valley: "No one at Overhead Industries wants to talk about defunct research station Red Valley, and account man Warren Godby is out of his depth. When he meets Gordon Porlock, a disgruntled archivist with a bag of tapes from the station’s last known occupant, they will begin a journey to the limits of experimental science, confront horror and trauma from the past, present and future, and try to remember the cheat codes from Sonic the Hedgehog 2."

Rusty Quill Gaming: "An actual play podcast following a mixed ability group of comedians, improvisers, gamers, and writers as they play through the extended, tabletop roleplaying campaign Erasing the Line, an original game world of the GM’s crafting." --> [took me a while to get into because I have trouble focusing on non-scripted things, but eventually I got really hooked on the plot and attached to the characters. This podcast is really fucked up at times if you think about it]

SAYER: "A narrative fiction podcast set on Earth’s man-made second moon, Typhon. The eponymous SAYER is a highly advanced, self-aware AI created to help acclimate new residents to their new lives, and their new employment with Ærolith Dynamics." --> [feels like Welcome to Night Vale but narrated by GLaDOS from Portal]

StarTripper!!: "Join Feston Pyxis on a road-trip through the cosmos, as he leaves behind his old life in search of the best and wildest experiences the galaxy has to offer!"

The Amelia Project: "...is a secret agency that fakes its clients' deaths, then lets them reappear with a brand new identity! A black comedy full of secrets, twists... and cocoa."

The Big Loop: "...a biweekly anthology series. Each episode is a self-contained narrative exploring the strange, the wonderful, the terrifying, and the heartbreaking. Stories of finite beings in an infinite universe." --> [I don't like anthologies, except this one]

The Bright Sessions: "Dr. Bright provides therapy for the strange and unusual; their sessions have been recorded for research purposes." --> [think X-Men, but with therapy instead of a school]

The Deca Tapes: "Recordings have surfaced of ten people that are locked into the same space together. We don’t know where they are, or if they'll get out. But the answers must be somewhere on these tapes."

The Silt Verses: "Carpenter and Faulkner, two worshippers of an outlawed god, travel up the length of their deity’s great black river, searching for holy revelations. As their pilgrimage lengthens and the river’s mysteries deepen, the two acolytes find themselves under threat from a police manhunt, but also come into conflict with the weirder gods that have flourished in these forgotten rural territories."

The White Vault: "Follow the collected records of a repair team sent to Outpost Fristed in the vast white wastes of Svalbard and unravel what lies waiting in the ice below."

Tides: "...is the story of Dr. Winifred Eurus, a xenobiologist trapped on an unfamiliar planet with hostile tidal forces. She must use her wits, sarcasm and intellectual curiosity to survive long enough to be rescued. But there might be more to life on this planet than she expected." --> [think The Martian, but on a water planet]

Unwell, a Midwestern Gothic Mystery: "Lillian Harper moves to the small town of Mt. Absalom, Ohio, to care for her estranged mother Dorothy after an injury. Living in the town's boarding house which has been run by her family for generations, she discovers conspiracies, ghosts, and a new family in the house's strange assortment of residents."

VAST Horizon: "Nolira is an agronomist tasked with establishing agriculture in a new solar system, but when she wakes up on a now- empty colony ship, the whole of her plan disappears. The ship has been set adrift, with numerous mission-critical problems requiring immediate attendance outside of her area of expertise. Nolira is aided by the ship’s malfunctioning AI, which acts as her confidant and companion during the fight for survival."

Victoriocity: "Even Greater London, 1887. In this vast metropolis, Inspector Archibald Fleet and journalist Clara Entwhistle investigate a murder, only to find themselves at the centre of a conspiracy of impossible proportions."

We Fix Space Junk: "...follows seasoned smuggler Kilner and reluctant fugitive Samantha as they travel the galaxy, dodging bullets and meeting strange and wonderful beings as they carry out odd jobs on the fringes of the law."

Welcome to Night Vale: "Twice-monthly community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, where every conspiracy theory is true. Turn on your radio and hide."

Within the Wires: "Stories told through found audio from an alternate universe."

Wooden Overcoats: "Rudyard Funn and his equally miserable sister Antigone run their family's failing funeral parlour, where they get the body in the coffin in the ground on time. But one day they find everyone enjoying themselves at the funerals of a new competitor - the impossibly perfect Eric Chapman! With their dogsbody Georgie, and a mouse called Madeleine, the Funns are taking drastic steps to stay in the business…" --> [one of THE funniest podcasts I have ever listened to]

Do you have any podcast recs that are super easy for those of us with audio processing problems? For me specifically that means one voice (or maybe two if they’re very distinct) and minimal complexity in the soundscaping, though if you have recs that don’t fit those that you think might apply to other people w/ different audio processing issues you can talk about those too! :)

I can certainly try! I feel as though I should put it out there that I often have a difficult time gauging where a podcast sits re: audio processing/HOH listeners; the literal entirety of my day job is being good at telling what people are saying in audio, and my own audio processing problems mostly just result in my near-inability to keep up with actual plays, so if any of these are misjudgements on those terms I apologize in advance.

* means that I know there are also transcripts available for the podcast in question!

SAYER: scifi dark comedy/horror. In a morally questionable tech corporation’s moonbase facilities, advanced artificial intelligence SAYER directs employees about their daily routines; this then turns over time into possibly the best story about AI I’ve ever heard. Especially in the first three seasons, virtually all speaking is done by one voice. (Caveat that a few other characters come in later, and they’re actually all voiced by one guy with different filters, but the filters are pretty distinct and characters tend to identify themselves by default at the beginning of every conversation.)

*The Cryptonaturalist: comforting supernatural folksiness. The titular expert on all things strange and wonderful reads poetry, admires nature, and talks about wonderful creatures like foxes that live within library shelves, stick insects that camouflage themselves as whole trees, salamanders that swim in parking lot asphalt, and Owls.

*The Hidden Almanac: comforting supernatural weirdness. Hagiographer, avid gardener, and Mysterious Dude In Plague Doctor Getup known as Reverend Mord gives tidbits of the history of his strange and fantastical world, along with gardening advice. Sometimes his tequila-swigging accidental necromancer best friend coworker Pastor Drom shows up. Written by fantasy author Ursula Vernon and mostly voiced by her husband Kevin. Extremely relaxing to listen to; the show ended last year but they put out five-minute episodes three times a week for eight years so there’s plenty of it. The first year or so actually doesn’t appear on most podcatchers so maybe check out the website.

Everything Is Alive: poignant, heartfelt interviews with inanimate objects. While there’s a different object featured each episode, it’s mostly just them and the interviewer, plus occasional phone calls with an expert on some subject brought up during the interview. Hits so much harder than you could possibly imagine given the summary. You WILL be upset about a can of off-brand cola.

*Quid Pro Euro: bizarre comedy mockumentary. A satire of the European Union in the style of a set of instructional tapes for EU employees made in the ‘90s, predicting what the EU would look like in the 21st century. Their predictions are somewhat off. Only one voice and delightfully it is Felix Trench. I don’t know anything about the EU but I still think it’s hilarious.

*Glasgow Ghost Stories: spooky supernatural. A resident of Glasgow is unexpectedly able to see the many ghosts that reside in the city -- but the ghosts have started to notice her too, and not all of them are friendly. A beautiful and atmospheric single-voice show; plus the feed also contains the very good miniseries Tracks.

*Palimpsest: poetic and haunting. An anthology series about young women experiencing supernatural happenings, each 10-episode season tells a different story in monologue (I think there are literally two episodes with other voices in them). Poignant, gorgeous, and sometimes heartbreakingly sad in the best way. In season one Anneliese wonders about the strange neighbors at her new apartment. In season two, Ellen takes a new job as companion to a supposed fairy princess imprisoned in a strange showroom in turn of the century America. In season three, former codebreaker Josie begins to see the spirits of the dead on the streets of London during the Blitz.

*Within the Wires: alternate history scifi found footage. From a world where a calamitous global war resulted in the installation of a new Society where nations and family ties are banned, an anthology of voices telling their stories. Each season is a single voice. Season one, a set of relaxation tapes deliver unexpected instructions to a government prisoner in a strange medical facility. In sSeason two, a series of museum exhibit guides spin out the mystery of two artists and their work. In season three, a government employee dictates notes to his secretary and begins to suspect a plot. In season four, the traveling leader of a secretive cultlike commune leaves sermons for her followers, and instructions for her daughter.

*Alice Isn’t Dead: lesbian americana roadtrip weird horror. Keisha’s wife Alice was missing, presumed dead. Now Keisha is a trucker, traveling the vast American emptiness to seek her out; but she’s about to become embroiled in the same vast secret war that may have drawn away her wife, and she’s not alone on the roads. Starts with one voice, adds a new one each season for a total of three. Also is finished.

*Station Blue: psychological horror. Matthew takes a job as the lone caretaker of an Antarctic research station for several months. This goes about as well as you’d predict. Very much a slow burn, strange, brooding horror of isolation. Heavy themes of mental illness based on the creator’s experiences of bipolar disorder. 

*Mabel: dark, poetic faerietale horror. Live-in caretaker Anna attempts to contact the absent granddaughter of her elderly employer, the lone resident of a strange and ancient house in Ireland. A love story, a haunted house story, a fairy tale with teeth. This one might be hit or miss; it sometimes tends to the abstract a bit, and there’s more soundscaping and some other occasional voices besides the main two protagonists. Definitely worth trying out, though, this is absolutely an underappreciated gem.

*Janus Descending: tragic scifi horror. Two researchers, Peter and Chell, travel alone to a distant planet to survey the ruins of its extinct civilization. Unfortunately, they discover exactly how that civilization died out. Excellent if you like movies like Alien, and also being extremely sad. Only two voices. Really unique story structure: it’s told via the two protagonists’ logs of the events, but you hear Chell’s logs in order, and Peter’s logs in reverse, with their perspectives alternating. The result is a tragedy where technically you know the ending from the start, but it’s told so cleverly that just what happened and how remains a tantalizing, tense, heartbreaking mystery right until the end.

*I Am In Eskew: poetic, surreal horror. Only two voices and few sound effects. David is a man trapped in the twisting, malevolent city of Eskew, where the rain always falls, streets seem to lead the same way twice, and nothing can be trusted. Riyo is an investigator, making her way through rumors and questions in search of a man long missing and a place that seems not to exist. Maybe my favorite horror media ever? Deeply disturbing and yet even the most awful things are somehow beautiful. Like if Lynch, Escher and Mieville had a terrible, wonderful baby.

*Tides: contemplative hard scifi. When biologist Dr. Eurus is wrecked alone on a distant alien world shaped by deadly tidal forces, her struggle to survive also becomes a meditative exploration of the ecosystem around her, and a recognition that here, she is the alien. Mostly it’s Dr. Eurus; sometimes you hear from her coworkers. It’s got Julia Schifini, what’s not to love?

*Midnight Radio: ghost story/romance. A 1950s radio host who broadcasts a late-night show to her small hometown begins to receive letters from a listener and respond to them on air. I wrote this! It has a total of three voice actors and virtually no soundscaping. I promise it’s good.

Jurassic Park

I just saw Jurassic Park again. I don't mean whichever version of Jurassic World is out with Chris Pratt this week, I mean the original one, which is so old that I believe it used actual footage of dinosaurs because it was filmed in the late Triassic. The one that was released in, Gods help me, 1993, and is now being rereleased in certain places. If it's your burg, I'd recommend checking it out; I went for $12 and thought it was worth it. This was a sort of experiment on my part; I've seen the film about 400 times, and reread the book more than a few times (most recently in 2010); I went based on the recommendation/idea in the von Hoffman Bros. Big Damn Book of Sheer Manliness (yes, that's a thing), that said, of Apocalypse Now, "If you get the chance, see on the big screen, with theater-quality sound, it's a real slap in the brain-pan." Now, I've gotten my brainpan slapped more than anyone should in recent years (almost literally), so I thought I'd do it wth an old familiar favorite (but remastered), and, even though I liked it, there are a few things that you notice when you're trapped in an adult's body. First off, from a cellular biology perspective (and I've known about this one for years, so it's not a revelation), they jump from "reassembling ancient DNA" to "dinosaurs are back." We know from Dolly that it'd require an ooctye (egg) to kick off the cloning process. Crichton glossed over this in the book, too, but as an adult with a background in the field (sort of), it's incredibly - almost invitingly - lazy that this would go from book to screen (actually, it's not so surprising when you know that Michael Crichton is also the credited screen writer, and he's historically good at overlooking and committing to film his errors), when, to paraphrase "Thank You for Smoking," it's an immediate and easy fix, "Thank God we invented the [whatever] device." Ellie and Alan's relationship is amazingly dysfunctional. It's one thing not to want children, and it's one thing to have incompatible long-term goals. It's another thing entirely to verbally crap on your girlfriends' aspirations at every single point. It's unsettling and a little creepy; Alan Grant will go on, at length about the evils of children even when there are no children in sight and the conversation/dialog only casually touches upon it, but I don't think you make it past the fifth date with that attitude. To be fair, the filmmakers' manage to create the world's most unbearably annoying child characters ever (and, 20 years later, it is beyond weird to know that Tim, cast as Eugene Slede, will on day say, with utmost conviction, "I hope the Japanese don't surrender. I hope we get to kill every single one of them."). Alan also gets minus Chekov points for having a giant, shiny bottle opener on his belt in every single scene (go ahead and watch the movie again) without ever using it, even though he brings his weird velociraptor claw with him to dinosaur island, and keeps it with him after learning dinosaurs are back. Speaking of enormous shiny things that are visually distracting, let's talk Jeff Goldblum (the character is Ian Grant, but I'm sure it's all Jeff). I know that we've been conditioned by years of exposure to the Internet to hold the Great Shirtless One above fault (and the entire theater erupted into applause at the start of that scene), but he is beyond creepy toward Ellie throughout the film; touchy, quick-moving, and behaving in a way I wouldn't endorse for anyone not contemplating a nomination for Supreme Court. Depite every single adult male in this film being kind of rapey or astonishingly indifferent about Ellie (that would be Alan). the film technically passes the Bechdel test. Stick with me on this one. The Bechdel Test was originally put forth by Alison Bechdel as a test of feminism in a film (or a test of not-outright sexism, as the case might be). The test - and it's fairly simple - is that a film feature two or more female characters, discussing something other than a man, in at least one scene. Back to the feature at hand, you'll remember that all the dinosaurs in the film, according to Wu, are female. Even though they later learn that the dinosaurs, thanks to frog DNA, can swap genders (actually, that's more common in chordates than you'd think). There are three adult velociraptors in the film; let's assume for the argument that two of the three identify as female. Now, go back and watch that kitchen scene where the two raptors hunt the kids in the kitchen and are clearly communicating with each other. Admittedly, one of those two kids is Tim, but he's so annoying throughout  the film that I'd really rather not categorize him as "human," much less traditionally male. Speaking of the dinosaurs hunting the kids, every single character exerts themselves far more than necessary to achieve their ends. The paleontologists get on a helicopter with a man they literally met twenty minutes before (as the Too Long, Didn't Watch guys point out, this never, ever ends well in reality) because he offers to pay them; the lawyer (Gennaro) wears a tie and button-up shirt with shorts (as someone who has lived in the tropics, it's a very, very basic intelligence test to see how you dress when you actually have time to pack and plan ahead, and, even then, putting on pants to leave the apartment will have you cursing those vile missionaries who converted everyone to linen shackles); and Newman (technically Nedry, but, again, the degree to which every actor commits to their well-known characters throughout this film is impressive) works way too hard to steal way too little. First of all, there's a reason over 99,9% of initially-promising biomedical discoveries lead to a final drug or therapy; it's enormously costly to develop and safety-test a product at each point. Even the coolest, old-timey drug companies rarely discovered drugs for themselves, they patented or investigated promising prior research. Going from "Maybe that mosquito trapped in amber has DNA in it" to "brachiosaurus" would be cost-prohibitive. Especially when you consider that this was 1993; Bill Gates would've been able to buy and sell the island ten times over just a few years later. Michael Crichton predicted that this would restrict biotech companies to entertainment-related investments (he got that hilariously wrong, as I can testify to on a personal and professional level). He also predicted that exploitative employer/employee relationships would intensify (he got that one right) in the book, by making Nedry a programmer who had underbid his peers to get Hammond's contract, which was unfairly added to and amended until the character was almost driven out of business. The book also makes it clear that, despit Hammond's claims, the park cuts every financial corner it can, including hiring only the lowest-bidding contractors or least-qualified people (in the film, the vet doesn't even look at the triceratops' mouth until Ellie does, which is something even horse owners know is important). So, they wind up with Newman. Who, instead of simply embezzling the money (I refuse to believe my Step-Mom's nonsensical claim that Newman would be able to get access to the high-tech, uber-secret Embryo Storage Lair, but not have access to the payroll programming or pension fund data), creates the world's most convoluted scheme to steal Hammond's embryos and sell them to a competitor. This film also predicted the rise of vegans. I base that on Lex's line regarding the dinosaurs eating the goat ("I happen to be a vegetarian.")(as someone from the future watching that and hearing the line, "I'm a vegan;" it's kind of chilling). I also realized something weird and kind of dispiriting wih this viewing. I'm not really sure I'd want to travel and go out of my way to go to dinosaur island, because dinosaurs aren't quite as interesting at age 95 as they were when I was young. Don't get me wrong, I still love dinosaurs far more than the average man-child, but I've learned a few things since then. So, I've kept abreast of intelligence-measuring tools developed by modern science (I know, that's a shocker). We all know of the body mass: brain mass ratio; but we've since developed the encephalization quotient (EQ) which, I believe (and I might be wrong) is a comparison of the body mass: brain ratio for a specific animal with the expected ratio of a critter with similar mass. And, when we use that as the predictor, animal rankings look more like what we'd expect, intuitively - Humans, dolphins, chimpanzees, gorillas, and parrots are the top-five scorers. Using that tool, the smartest of dinosaurs were about as intelligent as the dumbest modern birds. I love chickens, but even the most ardent fowl-owner would admit that chickens are not exactly weighted down by brains. That might not seem like an epiphany, but I now own a goldendoodle who is possibly more clever than me (on my bad days). He's a great dog, but that ability to outthink and outorganize me makes him far more troublesome than all the dogs we owned before (and we had 10 huskies at one point). Same thing with dinosaurs, every creature you see has 70 million years' of evolution on them. The critters around today are better-suited to this planet and more interesting (speaking from a biology background)  than the vast majority of dinosaurs. If given the choice between a lifetime pass at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and one or two trips to dinosaur island, I know that we're not going to have elephants for much longer, which makes one clearly more appealing. Which, come to it, may have been the entire point of "Jurassic Park."

How to save “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”...post-release.

“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” is vastly underappreciated.  (It will likely only be in the dollar theaters one more week so go watch it today!)  Directed by the man behind “The Fifth Element”, Valerian isn’t lost in that comparison.

To Valerian’s investors, I would say, don’t give up on this as a revenue generator.

For the most part this is a very entertaining film.  If it had been released 2 years ago when society wasn’t politically at each other’s throats, I think this love-laced, “Euro SCI FI” movie would have done twice as much business, but I think the tone was just wrong for this moment.

Nobody appears to have hated the movie itself, although there is a fair bit of snark.  For a box office flop, it has currently got a 56% positive fan rating at rotten tomatoes.   That tells me that percentage is probably going to go up once it’s theater life fades to memory.  It is human nature that if a movie fails, critics have to assign a reason for it’s failure.

There is a lot less of that in the secondary markets, when the film is judged without that bias.

The movie is going to do well in the post-theater market, but that doesn’t change that fact that a lot of players invested heavily into this $177.2 M film and it grossed $223M world wide to date. Investors are pissed.  But I have a 2 step plan to turn things around.

1) Make the US video release a “director’s cut” and have Luc Beeson shorten some of the “touchy/feely” out of the end of the film.  This is Science Fiction from European creators and it SHOULD be more liberal than any American Sci- Fi besides Star Trek.  Leave the brilliant opening as is.

Where it hurts from liberalism is the Beeson contribution mostly at the end.  Beeson loves showing the power of love.  He did it too much in the fifth element but managed to pull it off.  He we went to the well too much in Valerian and it got kinda sappy at moments from an American perspective.

The big conclusion to Valerian was also a victim of liberalism (and although I am being critical along those lines, I am VERY liberal).  Liberals want to talk things out.  Conservatives want to see action. This is an action film that grinds to an overly verbose, slowly developing halt at the movies’s end.  Cut the final showdown...well final pontificating... down 5-10 minutes and this movie would become a lot more successful to a wide American Audience.

The power of love is a great underlying message....just don’t bludgeon us to death with it.

Valerian’s Military views vs. the power of love was a fantastic changeup that could have grabbed American Audiences that the rest of the final act totally gutted. (Please leave that in. That was a unique dimension.)

With that in place, I am fairly certain you could double your US Blue ray sales, but that is not significant enough to totally change the picture...but this is...

2) After you have had your blue ray sales, make it into a TV show with the movie as the pilot.

Think about Baylon 5. It lasted for years and generated a lot of money. Valerian was much better than the Babylon 5 pilot. 

Star Trek shows that there is an audience for feel good liberal Sci FI in the US...it’s just more of a TV audience.

With that kind of budget, there is a lot of unused footage kicking around to be salvaged for TV.  

The designs for the creatures are all fleshed out. it’s just a matter of making them do what you want them to do.  

Even the 3 bird creatures who sell information, who are kind of an ugly stereotype, could easily take a dark turn and become scene stealers on the small screen.

None of the stars are big names and most appear early in their careers.  I would imagine you could get most or all to sign on for a TV series budget. 

The movie is criticized in part because the leads are so young --- you couldn’t sell them to jaded older movie watchers who like their retreads.  Valerian and Lorelei are heroes for millennials.  Sell them a series they can watch on Netflix or Hulu over their Iphones.

Even the critics acknowledge that Valerian was immensely successful in fleshing out a universe --- that is the point of a pilot!

There are people who are fantastic at generating solid special effects on computer on a budget --- check out Christian Gossett’s 21 minute “Prelude to Anaxar” --- a fan Star Trek creation that was effectively so good, the studio sued him...  It was made for about 80K and it is better than 90% of what is on the sci-fi channel.

Give him Valerian!

Valerian has great source material in the comics that fleshes out the characters.  There is both large European audience that appreciates that and a good target US audience in the Star Trek crowd.  

The movie introduces a great cast for a TV show.  The whole military thing could easily come back to bite Valerian and Lorelei and create a distinct underlying tension that could take a Valerian show to another level.  Valerian’s world may be EURO liberal sci fi, but his beliefs are more in line with an american soldier.  There’s a little something there for everyone.

You set out to make a hit film and fell a little short of that, but Valerian could still be a cash cow for you.  Don’t give up yet!