Fred and Loathing on The Internet

I’m reviewing a contemporary movie! A blockbuster smash who’s success I am told proves that the audience does not in fact have ‘superhero movie fatigue’. However big of a ticket selling smash this movie proved to be with the domestic and international movie-going audience, I do have superhero movie fatigue. Well… namely Marvel movie fatigue.

This movie did not abate that. If anything, it has evoked a bitterness in me that poisons the idea of enjoying another MCU film. Thinking about the fiscal nuts and bolts of what these Marvel movies represent hurts me in so many places. This distress easily overwhelms the visceral thrills I could get from seeing an on-screen Wolverine fight with comic accurate claws, with accompanying ‘snkt’ noise. This movie in particular, ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’, brought these ideas to the forefront of my thought. The movie's strengths are what lead me to discovering why I have Marvel movie fatigue.

The script uses meta hints about the real world to frame the conventional three-act story of super heroics that moves the story from scene to scene. The inner story of the movie is Deadpool and Wolverine are costumed superpowered humans dealing with their own ‘universe’ perishing, at the expense of ‘the main timeline’ that will absorb the acceptable remnants of these lesser universes. There is talk of an ‘anchor being’ to explain just how Deadpool and Wolverine will save the day somehow. I did not make too much effort to follow along...

It’s not all chit-chat about comic books or old sitcoms here at the fredlambuth.com blog!

This time it will be my thoughts on all +1000 pages of Judgement in Tokyo by Gary J. Bass. A mammoth single volume, published in 2023, dealing with the convening of a court made to find ‘justice’ after the Pacific War ended with the Empire of Japan’s defeat. I read these heavy history books to cram the smartness found among the author’s words into myself. This book offers plenty to cram in. Plenty of studied exploration into the repercussions of Japan trying (and failing) to become a global imperial power. Oodles of thought provoking ideas that come up when applying the hard scrutiny of a courtroom on to the high minded ideals the victors of the war professed when cleaning up their victory abroad.

As has been mentioned on at least one blog post here (the one about the Shogun miniseries), my affinity for Japan is higher than for most countries. I probably mentioned back then that this cultural enthusiasm stops where most ‘Weebs’ would begin to be interested. WW2 is around where my interest hits a deadend. Sure, my curiosities as a political science student and a Navy vet have had me peer into what Japan is up to geopolitically. WW2 is that crossing point in Japanese history that changes from ‘samurais’ to ‘crucial factor to the Pacific realm of the USA’s global hegemony’. My interest in Japanese history after 1945 is purely academic. Even though I am kinda...

Just who is Mary Tyler Moore? Who’s show is it? The titular character is Mary Richards. I suppose that means the lead actress is the ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ in question. An obvious answer I suppose, but one that confounded my simple brain when I was a child watching Nick at Night. Why not just use your own name instead of Richards? Perhaps Mary Tyler Moore had so much cache at the time that it was imperative to attach her name to what could be a good but not great workplace comedy.

I already had quite an impression of Mary Tyler Moore by the time I had even heard of this show’s existence. The Dick Van Dyke Show was another show I watched in heavy rotation on Nick at Night, where Mary Tyler Mooer made her first appearance to me. The curiosity of the show being called The Dick Van Dyke Show, starring Dick Van Dyke yet playing a character named Robert Petrie, who himself is a behind the scenes writer to a television comedy show called The Something Somethingson Show added meta layers that my young brain just could not appreciate. Anyways, name and titles aside, I had a juvenile crush on Mary’s character on Dick Van Dyke. When promos began for this show on Nick at Night, they had me somewhat hopeful for a whole new show starring her, or at least at the chance of seeing more of the actress.

These jumbles in actors playing themselves or versions of themselves had me believing that the Mary Richards entering Minneapolis at the start of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was...