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Chilli season 2024 is go!

I have just planted some seeds. Many appendages crossed they turn into plants 😁

The Boy and The Heron / Next Goal Wins

Last week I went and saw the latest Studio Ghibli movie, The Boy and the Heron which was exactly what you'd expect from them - a beautiful anime with a very trippy and confusing plot. A boy loses his mother in a fire during WWII and a few years later moves to the countryside with his dad to live with his aunt who is now his step-mother and carrying a future sibling. A magical heron/spirit/man tells him that his mother is still alive and off he goes on an weird adventure full of magic and wonder to rescue his her.

Today I saw Next Goal Wins, which was very funny and reminded me a lot of the first movie I ever saw in the cinema as an independent person - Cool Running. This movie is based on the true story of the American Samoa internal football team. A team who probably still retain the biggest loss in football history - 31 to nil - in a Worldcup qualify many years ago.

Season's greetings

Merry Christmas you filthy animals 😁

Star Wars - original trilogy

Not sure if I have ever done it before, but I have now watched the original trilogy of Star Wars in the cinema. Not the theatrical cut unfortunately, but I imagine Lucas has burned all versions except for his CGI'd monstrosities. I don't much see the point in doing a review given how old they are now. Mostly it was adults enjoying the nostalgia watching them, but there was at least 1 parent educating her kid. I've no idea why the cinema was showing them now though...it is 40 years since RoJ came out, but they celebrated that back on Star Wars day.

Aquaman - The Lost Kingdom review

I've also recently watched the final film in the (first) doomed attempt by DC to copy what Marvel are doing - Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom.

The first Aquaman movie was OK. A good solid foundation for an extended universe. Except DC had their building plans upside down, and it came after what should have been the culmination of several other foundational movies. This movie is OK too, but not overly amazing. Kind of like how we felt about Iron Man 2, or Thor 2, this sequel doesn't live up to its predecessor.

This time they've decided to take a new plot and have Black Mantis try and kill Aquaman. He teams up with an Atlantian king who gifts him powerful tech. And the king wants to wipe out everyone. Hmmmm, ok, maybe it ain't so different after all. Which is pretty much the problem with this movie. It also reuses classic tropes like "losing" a place cos it was evil because the best way to deal with such things is to have them stricken from all records, so when they are "found" no-one has any idea about them. Or having a place use necro in their name - always a clear sign that the place is evil.

But it is still vastly better than The Flash and fine as just a popcorn "switch your brain off" kind of movie.