Category Archives: Reviews

Review Flashback: Buffy The Vampire Slayer: “Some Assembly Required”, “School Hard” and “Inca Mummy Girl”

So here’s another batch of reviews I had queued. I watched these last summer and wrote these reviews and I’m posting now, really.

2×2 “Some Assembly Required”

Another non-vampire episode after the puppet one.

Angel is asking whether Buffy is serious or “mating” with Xander. The vampire Korshak comes out and then they find someone’s been removed from their grave.

Buffy goes to the Library with Xander and they talking about pick up lines and dating Ms Calendar.

It seems that two of the students at school are corpse stealers. I thought I saw tension between Xander and Buffy. Cordelia is on with Buffy & co as they are going to investigate. Buffy doesn’t want Angel to help them so she hasn’t let him know.

The two students are about to attack Cordelia after her cheer-leading session, but Angel shows up and she lets him know that Buffy is at the cemetery. She finds a hand from a corpse..

Why do those terrible things happen to me” – Cordelia. A great quote.

Karma cough cough” – Xander

And Angel gives Cordelia a lift home.

The students were intending to create some Frankenstein girl made up with parts from different dead girls’ corpses.. for some Frankenstein-like monster who was one of the students’ brother.

One of them tries to capture Cordelia at school but Buffy intervenes, only for her to be captured during the game (which Giles attends with Ms Calendar). I like to see Giles with Ms Calendar, they are a great couple.

Buffy and Co rescue Cordelia just in time, in the old school lab, when a fire starts.

Giles ends up getting a second date, Angel and Buffy talk some more…

2×3 “School Hard”

The Master is dead and the anointed kid is in power now.

The ‘new’ headmaster is angry with Buffy and some other student, so he tasks them with taking care of Parents’ Night  (the Sunnydale equivalent of our Parent’s Day) including the refreshments. What could go wrong, Xander asks, and of course it’s the introduction of the evil vampires Spike and Drusilla, who seems to have something unearthly about her. She’s a princess she says, before kissing Spike. They’ve moved into the anointed one’s lair. Dru wants Spike to kill Buffy. Nice to know that Dru’s actress has read my reviews.. wow that’s encouraged me to write some more.

Buffy’s mum is hoping that Parent’s Night will bring her closer to Buffy. They had to move once because Buffy got in trouble at school.

Buffy is afraid that slaying will get her expelled.

Spike tells Buffy he will kill her this saturday, after she fights and kills a vampire.

Spike plans to restore Dru with the Hellmouth and to burn the town down.

Spike has captured the other student who was silly enough to follow him, and gives her to Dru to feed on.

It’s nice to see Cordelia helping the group with preparing to fight the vampire Spike, just before the Parents’ Night.

Spike’s original name was William the Bloody, it turns out. He has killed two Slayers this century.

Suddenly Spike and his vampires – of course he couldn’t take Buffy on his own – attack the Parents’ Night.

Snyder thinks that the vampires are a gang on PCP, and that’s the official police statement after the vampires are defeated with Angel’s help and Spike escapes. Angel had sired Snyder, kind of like being his Yoda. Spike puts the anointed one in a cage and kills him. This marks the start of a different enemy for Buffy.

Buffy’s mum is very proud of her, how she helped others.

2×4 “Inca Mummy Girl”

The lovely Ara Celi (“Looking for Lola”, “American Beauty”, “Machete”) plays the 500-year old  mummy girl Ampata..

Exchange of cultures is nice“, says Xander, and I agree. Something people need to hear I think what with this brexit, trump and isolationism. Rodney Marson (check) is a bully.

I don’t always use violence. Do I?‘ Buffy asks.

So the group is at a museum and they are demonstrating an incan human sacrifice.

The mummy grabs Rodney and kills him. Or it looks like it.

The group is talking about the dance again. Xander isn’t interested in kissing Willow’s lips – he tells this to Buffy and Willow overhears the conversation.

The group goes to the museum to find Rodney who is missing and are attacked by some creature. Willow looks at the mummy and now it resembles Rodney.

It’s time for Buffy to pick up the exchange student Ampata from South America. He might help translate the seal, too.

The original mummy – kisses the exchange student (killing him, mind you) – and the mummy now becomes a beautiful young woman calling herself, Ampata, the dead student’s name. Now Buffy and co believe Ampata to be the exchange student.

Xander is becoming close to Ampata.. she likes his jokes.

Ampata and Xander. Source: Buffyverse

Giles discovers that Rodney’s killer might be the mummy. He was freeze-dried.

The bodyguard of the mummy attacks Xander and seeing Ampata, falls down, so they manage to escape. He wanted the seal.

Ampata is asked out by Xander, she accepts his invitation to the Dance. In between she kills the bodyguard in the ladies’ restroom, mummyfing him.

Later, he is discovered, and Giles and Buffy find the corpse of the real exchange student in Ampata’s baggage.

Meanwhile, Ampata and Xander dance, with Willow looking on in a rather sad way.

Seth Green (I keep thinking of him as Dr Evil’s son) notices the “eskimo girl” – Willow.

Buffy and Giles are on the way to the school dance.. and things heat up.

It’s a great episode and fun to watch.

Review Flashback: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”, “Prophecy Girl” and “When She Was Bad”

I continued my viewing of Buffy episodes. I tend not to watch in one go but I prefer to post a flashback summary.

1×11 “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”buffy-season1

An ok episode about an invisible girl who tries to kill Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) and her friends. Not vampire related. Could have been more interesting as I’m not sure why she wanted to take revenge. It wasn’t their fault she became invisible in the first place.

 

1×12 “Prophecy Girl” is the final episode of year one. It shows the trio – Buffy, Willow and Xander – starting to unravel, the way I see it. SPOILERS for this part: Continue reading Review Flashback: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”, “Prophecy Girl” and “When She Was Bad”

Review Flashback: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “I Robot You Jane”, “The Puppet Show” and “Nightmares”

So I watched another block of 3 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not all in one go actually.

1×8 “I Robot You, Jane”buffy-season1

This was not scary. It was however an exaggerated tale of a demon trapped in antiquity inside an old book, which gets scanned by Willow releasing the demon into the Internet where he can leave a trail of evil, controlling geeks in Summerdale.

I did think it was ok but it’s really too exaggerated compared to the rest. You have to keep in mind the time when it was produced, though.

1×9 “The Puppet Show” is not bad at all, unlike what most people think! I enjoyed this tale of a demon hunter becoming trapped in this puppet. We get to see the new headmaster, Principal Synder played by Armin Shimerman (known for playing Quark on Star Trek Deep Space 9). I actually thought he would turn out to be the demon, but this was not the case. I really thought Giles would end up dead, too. Worth watching.

1×10 “Nightmares” is a scary episode if you can say that. Everyone’s nightmares come real in daytime. Xander ends up naked in class. Willow has to sing in the Opera – in italian – but cannot.  There’s a big bad vampire too. It’s all connected to Lucky 19, who is a hospitalised kid in a coma. The girl who goes for a smoke in the school basement but gets attacked by the vampire is reminiscent of one of the Smallville meteor freak of the week episodes. Buffy’s nightmare is of becoming a Vampire and buried alive. I enjoyed this too.

Review Flashback: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date”, “The Pack” and “Angel”

buffy-season1

I’ve been going back to Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer lately! I’ve never watched it more than a few episodes in Season 1, so I thought I would watch some more.

1×5 “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date” isn’t bad at all. It’s good, really, we see Buffy meet Owen and they end up having a date. Almost. Because Vampires abound and a Slayer, well has to slay them. Giles wants Buffy to step up with her patrols whereas she wants to have a date. She tells Giles “Clark Kent has a job, I just want to go on a date.”

This really makes her seem like a real person and a likeable one.

Finally they break up because poor Owen is too addicted to danger.

1×6 “Pack”

There is this school outing at the nearby zoo (not sure why a school outing in america would just go to a very nearby zoo where you can walk to the school from the zoo in a few minutes). Some school bullies enter a section with some hyenas which is off-limits. Xander follows them and they all end up possessed by the Hyenas’ spirits or something.

It’s fun to see such a different Xander. Behind the possession, was the zookeeper who wished to be the one getting possessed.

Principal Flutie ends up dead, killed by the students (except Xander). I didn’t expect that to happen.

The school itself is vague in these episodes, there are few regulars except for Giles the school librarian. Smallville had a much better representation of a school.

1×7 “Angel” is a good introduction to this character which I wasn’t familiar with. He was, or rather is, a vampire, however he has suppressed his vampire longings by getting back his soul. There’s the vampire trio of the Master (no not the one from Doctor Who), young boy Colin and sexy Dara who longs to entire Angel back to vampirism. The way she plans on this is fascinating: she pretends to be a friend from Buffy’s school, bites Buffy’s mum Joyce and she practically throws Buffy’s mum into Angel’s arms in the moment Buffy is returning home. This way she hopes that Buffy will end up fighting Angel.

There are some smart character moments in this episode.

Review Flashback: Sliders 2×02 “Love Gods”

While here in Malta we have been hearing a lot about Panama papers and even political “gods”, in this episode we see our heroes (except Wade Wells) being seen as sex “gods” ! This world’s men almost all died out to a viral infection leaving this world with a huge crisis of having many women but almost no surviving men at all.

Continue reading Review Flashback: Sliders 2×02 “Love Gods”

Avengers Age of Ultron Review

The-Avengers-Age-of-Ultron-movie-wallpaperSCIREV

So, here we are, Marvel Avengers: Age of Ultron weekend, it was the free comic book day weekend too and I went to watch Age of Ultron in 3D.

It was worth the wait since the past Marvel movies. But how does it measure up? Was it entertaining? Yes! Of course as comics fans we will notice the little differences to the original stories (especially the plotlines from the 60’s, 70’s etc). Director/writer Joss Whedon does a great job, bringing them up to date and up to scratch. The baddie Ultron is as evil as you can depict on screen, a challenging enemy for our heroes. My only question is that Iron Man shouldn’t have been able to control his own armour after Jarvis has been taken over. At the very least it was not explained how his armour kept running. Did he just control it without an AI?

The love angle between the Incredible Hulk and the Black Widow was very credible and a high point of the movie. How the story ends with the hulk is reminiscent of some 90’s Hulk issues I think.  Very inspired and should lead in to a Hulk movie I hope, perhaps one where we get to see Jarella now..

The rest of the movie? Amazing fights, great story and character developments. We see the heroes’ dreams (and we see Peggy Carter again) and nightmares. We get to meet War Machine (Rhodey) and the Falcon again, a nice touch. Too bad the Falcon had nothing to do, but hey, he shows up twice..

And the endings are a lead in to a fight with Thanos. Where’s Captain Marvel? (the original I mean, I hope he isn’t just replaced by Ms Marvel as Captain Marvel.. PLEASE don’t)

Another touch I liked is the treatment of civilians. Civilians get evacuated to safety, at least some of them. In comparison with the recent Superman movie, where Superman doesn’t care at all for them. (Is that why many dislike Superman today? he’s no longer the boy scout, at least in the movies and new 52 comics)

I think it’s worth watching, and the 3D works great. And we get our first two mutants in the Avengers movies, but there are losses which mean certain stories won’t happen (too bad 🙁 )…

 

 
Starring:
Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark / Iron Man
Chris Hemsworth as Thor
Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / Hulk
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Captain America
Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton / Hawkeye
James Spader as the voice of Ultron
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
Don Cheadle as James Rhodes (Rhodey) / War Machine
Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Pietro Maximoff / Quicksilver
Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch
Paul Bettany as Jarvis / Vision
Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill
Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson / The Falcon
Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter

IDW Star Trek / Doctor Who official crossover comic review

Wow! This site got a mention at TrekMovie.com.. thanks to the Doctor and the Enterprise which is hosted here.

 

Star Trek Doctor Who assimilation2I’ve been reading the crossover IDW released, called Star Trek / Doctor Who Assimilation 2.. My thoughts are quite simple really, for the most it’s a good read, it’s the first such official crossover, however the ending is a let down to me when you consider what the Doctor says at the end and Guinan’s comments about the normal flow of time being disturbed in  issue 4 are never followed through. So the Doctor says the 4th Doctor’s encounter with Captain Kirk will not have happened, but there’s no reason for this since they didn’t go back in time to prevent their encounter with the Cybermen in the first place… So it looks like it was hastily written.. or the writer wasn’t too clear on what was going on.

You can buy this crossover from the amazon.co.uk links below:

Steve Jobs Bio!

So I lately took a look at the late Steve Jobs Biography… I think it’s worth reading. Without spoiling anything, this is a fascinating book which is worth reading…

Steve Jobs was born on the 24th February of 1955, to 2 Wisconsin University graduate students who decided to give him up for adoption.
The intelligent Steve Jobs tried different avenues before he decided to start up Apple Computers company with Stephen Wozniak, and he did this in his garage.

The iPod touch / iPhone / iPad are all devices created by Steve’s genius….

Steve Jobs The Exclusive Biography
Steve Jobs The Exclusive Biography

Continue reading Steve Jobs Bio!

Review: Doctor Who – Mara Tales (Kinda)

Here’s a review of the classic Doctor Who series episode Kinda which has been released as part of the Mara Tales Box set.

The episode, my favourite classic episode, has recently been released on DVD. The picture quality is superb, having been digitally restored. There are even new CGI effects which can be chosen if one prefers. The story was well known for its not so good rubber snake… 🙂

The recent James Cameron movie Avatar was influenced very much by this story, even though Avatar was too pessimistic and anti-human, while Kinda is pro-human and a much more positive story.

It’s worth watching indeed. The enemy is the evil entity, coming from the collective unconscious, known as the Mara. I wrote my first fanfic from which the WhoSliders series emerged as a sequel to the Mara stories in Doctor Who, so it’s worth viewing if you read my fics. It takes a spiritual and anthropological approach to sci-fi pioneered by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Humans from earth are about to colonise planet S14, known to the locals as Deva Loka (the location is revisited in my fics too and Hindle becomes a WhoSlider). And the ancient evil known as the Mara emerges in the subconscious of the Doctor’s companion Tegan (played by the wonderful Janet Fielding). Nyssa is kept out of the story as she is recuperating.

The episode features Peter Davison as the 5th Doctor, Janet Fielding as Tegan, Matthew Waterhouse as Adric, Nerys Hughes as Todd, Simon Rouse as Hindle and Adrian Mills as Aris. It was directed by Peter Grimwade and written by Christopher Bailey. It is really worth getting on DVD and viewing. You can get from the following Amazon uk link..