Mockingjay 2: Tossing Out the Blockbuster Rulebook

From the moment I finished reading the Hunger Games novels back in 2011, as the first Hunger Games movie was already starting production, I worried about Mockingjay.  It's hard enough to make a PG-13 movie series about kids being thrown into an arena and forced to kill each other, and to expect general audiences to want to watch said series.  But to follow the story through to its fairly bitter and sobering end, and expect people to keep sticking with it, was beyond what I could imagine.  I was 34 when I read these books, and as I closed Mockingjay after finishing its final page, all I could think of was, I am a fully-functioning adult, and I feel like I need therapy right now.  How in the name of all that is holy could a 12 year-old read this and be o.k.??

At that point, all I hoped for from the the movie adaptations was for them to be decent, and to get enough of an audience that they could make all 3 movies (well, 4 - it's basically a given these days that studios will split the last book into 2 films for the extra cash-grab).  And then The Hunger Games was released in March 2012.  And it became the 11th highest-grossing (domestic) film of all time.  And then Catching Fire was released in November 2013, and it made even more money.  It was the highest-grossing film of 2013 (domestic), and surpassed the Hunger Games to become the 10th highest-grossing movie of all time.  Not only that, but The Hunger Games was a pretty damn good movie, and Catching Fire was flat-out fantastic.  All of this was about a billion miles past what I could have ever hoped for from this series.

'The 100' Analysis #2: Rubicon

If you missed my 100 analysis #1, you can catch that here.  By the way, I'm still in the phase where I call it "the one-hundred" instead of "the hundred" and I just can't seem to get out of it.  I need to convince some of my real-life people to watch so I can say it out loud more often, lol.  Anyway.

Just to re-iterate what I'm doing here, I'm examining this show from two very specific angles.  I'm delving into two key points in the series (or what has aired so far which is the first 2 seasons) when I realized that this show was not quite like anything else I had ever seen on TV ... or anywhere for that matter.  My first analysis was on "Spacewalker", and also on the entire Clarke/Finn relationship, and how it progressed from the pilot through Spacewalker.  For my second analysis, I'm going to focus on "Rubicon".

WARNING: Like my last review of The 100, this review contains SPOILERS.  LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS.  TURN BACK HERE if you have NOT seen the first 2 seasons of this series in its entirety.  Seriously.  If you haven't seen the entire show and you continue past this jump, you're an asshole.

The Plopper Discovers 'The 100'

Hey look at this fancy new show I've discovered!  O.k. fine, "new" might not be an entirely accurate description.  But it's new to me, and that's what matters.  It only took me 2 seasons to discover it!  That ain't so bad, is it?  It's not that I didn't know this show existed; I did.  As a matter of fact, Matt Barber, former editor of Chuck and coincidental friend-of-a-friend, was an editor on it in season 1.  It even got positive reviews from critics, from what I saw on Twitter.  So why was I so skeptical?  Well, it takes a LOT for me to get into a new TV show these days.  There are just sooo many shows on the air right now, how the hell does a girl decide??  What finally swayed me to check out The 100 was Mo Ryan, one of my favorite critics since the Chuck days.  She's always said good things about this show, and they only seemed to get better in season 2.  Plus, someone I know on tumblr started posting a bunch of 100 pics and memes and gifs recently, and it must have wormed its way into my brain.

Updates: Has Twitter FINALLY Taken Notice of TrollBoy?

A little over a year ago, I posted about Piper Perabo's Twitter stalker/harasser, who has been trolling, bullying, and harassing her and her followers for over 2 full years now.  My intent was to try to get the word out about how insanely pathetic Twitter's anti-abuse measures were.  At the time I made that post, in July 2014, to even call them anti-abuse measures at all was laughable, because these theoretical "measures" didn't actually exist.  Twitter had abuse policies, sure, but they were doing nothing to enforce them.  Like, literally, at least in our case, nothing at all.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  The policy was like, "Hey guys, don't do this stuff, k?"  "Oh o.k. so you're doing it?  O.k.  Oh well."

2014 Stuff I Liked: TV

O.k. now that I've done my music round-up for 2014, I'll get to the TV shows I enjoyed in 2014.  Again, like I mentioned in the music post, there is no way in hell any one person can watch EVERY one of the hundreds of TV shows that are airing and streaming simultaneously at any given time.  Let alone for an entire year.  So, I only saw as much TV as I could find the time for, and that's gonna be my frame of reference here.  But half the point of this is so that if anyone actually reads this, they can tell me what I missed and what I should check out.  I can already think of several shows off the top of my head that I still plan to check out in 2015.

Here we go:

Hour-Long Shows I Enjoyed in 2014

In the past, the hour-long shows would be mostly dramas and the half hours would be comedies, but it all blends together these days.  We've got a good number of dramedies that fit into both categories.  So I'm just gonna split this by hour-long and half hour shows.  In no particular order, for each.

Game of Thrones Season 4
 

I spent the first 3 seasons of GoT being convinced that the show was absolutely not for me.  I'm not really into the whole fantasy/medieval kings and queens and magical fairies and knights type stuff.  I was when I was a kid, but not so much as an adult.  But last year right at this time, during my Christmas break, something convinced me to finally try it out.  I did, and it sucked me in pretty much immediately.  There was no looking back.  You see, the setting of the show really doesn't matter ... it's the stories and the characters that suck you the hell in.  It's like what a soap opera would be if soaps were SUPER high quality and the characters and stories were way more awesome hahah.  And I say that as someone who looooved a couple of the classic soaps when I was a kid. I speak the language.

2014 Stuff I Liked: Music

I created this blog to use for basically anything and everything that I fangirl over, including TV, music, movies, books, whatever.  But I find that at any given moment, I only have enough time and energy to actually write about one thing I'm currently fangirling at a time.  I do Covert Affairs reviews over at GeekFurious that real people actually read and care about, which means I can't slack off on it.  So when I'm doing those every week, I don't have time for much else other than my day job and my actual life haha.

But Covert's season ended about a week and a half ago, which is good timing, because now I can do a couple posts about the stuff I fangirled in 2014.  I've never done one of these before, because I always feel like I can't make a "Top 10 Best" of anything, since I don't have time to actually see ALL movies, or buy ALL albums, or watch the hundreds of TV shows that are on the air and streaming simultaneously these days.  So instead I'm just going to do "Stuff I Liked," which just covers whatever I could actually get my grubby paws on this year.

This post will cover music.  So let's get to it.

Stuff I Loved in 2014

Deafheaven - Sunbather

I liken the listening experience of this album to attempting to hug/cuddle a beautiful fuzzy adorable kitten, while said kitten psychotically tries to scratch your face off.  I own a good number of albums that cannot physically be taken in all at once, in just one listening experience, due to the sheer punishment on your ears.  So that in itself is nothing out of the ordinary, but what this album has that most others don't is that fuzzy kitten it's using to deliver that brutal brutal pummeling to your brain.  It's just so ... pretty ... and evil ... all at once.  I literally cannot listen to more than 2 songs at a time hahah.  But I love it and it's a great album to put on when I'm feeling pissed off or frustrated or just kinda emo.

Covert Affairs Season 5 Review

You know what I love about Annie Walker?  It's that she can find herself face down on the pavement in a shady alley somewhere from a myocarditis attack while her mission goes completely sideways, bad guys left free to their own devices ... and yet, by the time she wakes up ... if she's lucky enough that someone has dragged her lifeless body somewhere safe ... she STILL manages to have all the attitude of someone who just threw a winning touchdown.  She gets up, she dusts herself off, and she's right back on the mission.