Blogging – Page 6 – Gillian's Notebook

“Love and Comets” and Other Stories Ebook

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My first collection of stories from my website is available on my Gumroad Store for the low price of $1.99. It contains forty stories I published on my website in 2016. Stories include:

“Love and Comets” – a slice of life space adventure featuring a trans woman
“What’s the Last Thing You remember?” – Just a normal story about a woman having her memories uploading into a clone after her death
“Our Ghosts” – a poem about space and ghost stories
“Watchtower at the End of the World” – post-apocaliptic fantasy story about a small group of people surviving
“How Long is Forever?” – a poem about an immortal pondering her life
“Hidden Trees” – a surreal story about hidden spaces
“The Day is Hot” – a story about an encounter I had on a hot day
and many more…

The first twenty five people who use the code “firstbuyers” get it free.

Gillian Reviews Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

#blog #review #movie #gotgvol2 #marvel #mcu

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a brilliant sequel. The first movie, of course, had to be an origin movie introducing not only several new characters but also the cosmic space setting. It was a colorful action packed funny and at times moving (“We are Groot.”) film. If it could be said to be lacking anything it was depth to the characters and their relationships.

This is where Vol. 2 shines. Did you want to know about Gamora and Nebula’s relationship? Did the reveal that Peter’s father is something unknown perk your interest? What about Yondu and the Ravagers keeping Peter from his father? Vol. 2 pick up these threads and runs with them. Every main character gets some time to breath and become more fully realized.

While this movie doesn’t directly involve Thanos or the infinity stones, I definitely feel the strings starting to come together for the Infinity War. One mid-credit scene promises to tie almost directly into it.

Stan Lee’s cameo and mid-credit scene are great.

I saw the movie in 2d and thought it looked marvelous. I definitely noticed some shots that seemed made to play up the 3d but they weren’t too annoying. I am almost tempted to see it again in 3d. Bottom line I loved this movie and will probably be going to see it again 3d or not.

Rating 5/5

Follow the link to my website for a few spoilerish musings after the review.

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Stan Lee’s cameo and mid-credit scene are great.

Rating 5/5

Spoilerish musings below. Continue reading “Gillian Reviews Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”

Tale of Two Trailers

Two trailers for two media properties I’m interested in were released recently: The Dark Tower movie and The Defenders.

Watch The Dark Tower trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjwfqXTebIY

Watch The Defenders trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h3m7B4v6Zc

I have mixed feelings about both. Let’s start with The Dark Tower.

Now, I’ve read all the original books at least once. Stephen King wrote another book after he “ended” the series that is an interquel that I haven’t read.

I honestly don’t pay a lot of attention to movie set pictures or read speculation about the story of things I’m interested in. I like to see one trailer and then see the thing. So, I’ve seen Idris Elba in costume, I don’t know how many months ago, and that’s all. I’m also aware that the movie is technically a sequel to the books but I wasn’t prepared for how far the story would bend from the books. It looks like a combination of the first and third books but a couple of major characters are missing.

I would have liked to see a seven or six movie series since the fourth book is largely a flashback to Roland’s youth. But I can see how hard it would have been to make such a series profitable. After giving myself a little time to let the implications of this movie as a continuation of the books sink in, I feel more at ease with the apparent story choices that have been made. Ka is a wheel, after all. We won’t know for sure how it pans out until the movie is released on August 4.

Now The Defenders. First some positives. Yay to Misty Knight returning! Yay to the return of Matt’s scarf mask! Yay to Jessica’s snark! Yay to Luke Cage’s reaction to Danny! Yay to Iron Fist getting a haircut! Yay to seeing these superheroes all together!

Now my concerns. Mostly, I’m not happy about The Hand being the apparent big bad that they all have to band together to defeat. I was talking to my roommate the other day about how I didn’t really like that Iron Fist was fighting The Hand in his series. The Hand was introduced as Daredevil’s villain so I feel like it should be dealt with in his series. I get that The Hand is a city-wide threat and it makes sense for them to all fight it but that could have happened in the Daredevil show via a series of guest appearances. The Defenders, I feel, should be about them facing something none of them have encountered before with Claire being the one to bring them together.

Also, I’m feeling like Daredevil season three is going to spin out of The Defenders which means it won’t make sense to watch season two and three back to back in the future. This is just like in mega crossover comic events where the last page of a comic tells you to read a completely different comic to continue the story. TV shows, like the CSIs or Buffy and Angel, occasionally have done this but only with one episode. To have an entire season of the story from one show in another show is unheard of.

But, like with The Dark Tower, all we have is a two-minute trailer so we won’t really know the story until the show comes out on August 18.

Boom Mics and Movie Mistakes

So back in 1999 I saw the Sixth Sense in the theater and thought it was great except for the boom mic popping in at the top. Later when I saw it on vhs the boom mic was gone. I never gave it much thought. At most I thought when movie had been cropped into the full screen version they had cropped those scenes in a little more.

Last night I was listening to episode #289 of My Brother, My Brother, and Me, in which one of the brothers talks about how he saw one of the Night at the Museum movies and the boom mics where clearly visible. The other brothers mock him for suggesting such a high budget movie would allow boom mics to appear in the frame. In the next episode they mention they got some emails explaining that movies don’t come pre-framed and it’s up to the theater to “letterbox” the movie correctly.

This practice is also the result of many movie mistakes wherein something that should be just offscreen is made visible by bad framing either in the theater or when transferred to vhs or dvd. For instance, in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure the gag of him pulling out an absurdly long chain is ruined by bad framing showing the chain entering the bottom of the container.

It boggles my mind that filmmakers would leave it up to thousands random people to make sure their movies were shown correctly. Like I wouldn’t publish a book and tell the readers, “Don’t read the paragraphs at the top and the bottom of the pages. They’re not part of the text.” I would guess there are mechanical reasons that the physical frame of film has to be a certain height and width to work with existing projectors but I don’t understand why the “letterboxing” wouldn’t be applied to the film before copying it and sending it out to the theaters.

Gillian Reviews “Dimension 404”

Dimension 404 is a six episode scifi anthology series by Rocket Jump airing on Hulu.

Ok, so this isn’t the Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits. The show is more akin to Black Mirror but with a lot less depressing consequences. Its episodes are centered around modern tech culture and pop culture with a scifi wrench thrown into the machine.

I’m going to be honest the first two episodes felt mostly average. Rocket Jump has made a lot of really smart and cutting edge shorts. I just didn’t feel these first two episodes live up to what I know Rocket Jump can produce. Even Patton Oswalt doesn’t elevate the second episode, Cinethrax, above good. From Wikipedia, I can see the first two episodes had several people working on the story and writing the episodes. The rest of the series has just one writer per episode. It looks like a case of too many cooks in the kitchen on those first two episodes.

The third episode,Chronos, is absolutely fabulous. A procrastinating physics student discovers that her favorite ’90 cartoon seems to have been erased. And then the main character from said cartoon appears in real life leading to an adventure through time. The writing of this episode is really good which can be be hard when time travel is involved.

The fourth episode Polybius is based on the creepy pasta about a video game cabinet from the ’80s of the same name that had some unusual effects on players. It’s set in the ’80s, the one episode not based in modern times. Another solid story but it does lean on the video game tropes a little hard.

The fifth episode, Bob, is tied with the third as my favorite. An Army psychologist about to head home for Christmas is tasked by the NSA to help the giant brain they’ve hooked into the internet with some performance issues. I especially love this episode because Jane the psychologist is shown talking to her wife and daughter at the beginning and no one ever says anything about it. There’s never a scene where she gets mistaken for straight. Also, I love how much diversity there is in this episode. Jane is played by Constance Wu. The NSA agent who picks her up is a woman, going by her actress’s nationality she’s Chilean. The Director of the NSA black site is a white woman and the technician who tends to Bob is black, played by Malcolm Barrett who also plays Rufus on Timeless(another show I love). The only white man of note, in this episode, is the terrorist Bob is trying to track down.

I really like this series and hope they continue it. There’s one more episode left in the series to air on April, 25, on Hulu.

Rating 4/5

Gillian Reviews Predestination

My roommate and I watched Predestination, a movie based on the short story “-All You Zombies-” by Robert A. Heinlein.

When I first heard of this movie and what it was based on, I was interested in seeing it. The one trailer I saw made the movie look action heavy and was focused on the Fizzle Bomber who isn’t a character in the short story. I assumed the filmmakers had taken the basic idea and changed almost everything else. The movie is actually very faithful to the short story and expands it without rewriting it into a different story. The Fizzle Bomber plotline shows up mostly at the beginning and end and a few scenes in the middle but it doesn’t overwhelm the story like I thought it would.

Even going into the movie basically knowing the entire story, I still really enjoyed it. If you like smart time travel movies, then you will probably like this movie.

Rating 5/5

Can You Give Away Your First Kiss in a Dream?

I dreamt I gave away my first kiss. I’ve never kissed anyone romantically, in real life that is, in other dreams I have but this was different. When I say “first kiss”, I mean it felt like the first time I had ever kissed someone. It felt real, like a different life that was my life.

The dream started as this team building exercise at a company I was working at. The first “game” was a simple scavenger hunt for one item which I found almost immediately and returned to the meeting room. A woman sat down next to me and said, “I’m glad to not be the only one here at the company anymore.”

“I’m sorry have we met?” I asked honestly unsure.

She didn’t say her name but she explained she was also a trans woman. We talked and she touched my shoulder and arm saying, “I miss being close to other trans girls.”

“I’ve never had the chance to be close with another trans girl,” I said.

She withdrew her hands at that but I reached out for her hand and we held hands fingers intertwined. She snuggled up close to me. Whispering into my neck. I turned to face her and our lips were so close. I hesitated unsure if I should. Then I took the plunge and closed the final couple of inches. It was my first kiss. My aim was a little low, I kissed her lower lip mostly, I didn’t know how hard to press or if I should open my mouth. I pulled back, she smiled and leaned in for another kiss.

The dream dissolves after that. There was a dance number I stayed out of. A game show of dangerous stunts which turned out to be harmless. A short film about the evolution of a Siberian zoo over the years. But none of it as memorable as “my first kiss”.

I feel like I’ve lost something. Part of me wonders if I wasn’t visited by a succubus or minor spirit because of how vivid and tactile the dream was. After I woke up, I cried because I was alone, then I wrote down the dream.

Cloverfield – Review

Ok, so I’m only like nine years late with watching this move but 10 Cloverfield Lane is on Hulu so I thought I’d watch Cloverfield before watching the “sequel”.

For starters, it has been a while since shaky cam has given me a headache, so long in fact that I almost didn’t realize why my head started hurting. I don’t know if newer movies have “fixed” this problem but it hasn’t been an issue for me for some time. Or maybe I just haven’t been watching movies with a lot of shaky cam.

Beyond the movie causing me actual physical pain, I was also in mental pain watching this so called found footage movie. Most found footage movies have a reason that the cameraman keeps filming. They’re making a documentary or they’re a journalist or they’re trying to document something specific. Hud, our cameraman, starts filming a party and when the giant monster attacks the city he just keeps filming. Not a bad premise but he films everything. He films when they’re walking along the subway lines, when they’re just standing around talking, when his friends are pushing against a door to keep out the little monsters; he just keeps filming. There are so many times when he should be using two hands to do something and he just keeps filming.

And once he’s dead you would think that would be the end of the tape. Nope cause then his friend picks up the camera from his dead body and starts filming everything. He films himself and his girlfriend huddling under a bridge. In that scene he has to be holding the camera up at eye level. Why? Why would he do that?

Another problem I had with the movie is near the end after they have rescued Beth from her building, where she was impaled on some rebar, And everyone starts running toward the military. Everyone is faster than Hud. Even the woman who was impaled through the chest can run faster than the cameraman. How is that possible? I understand it’s so the filmmakers can have a shot of everyone running to the military but come on.

I’ll admit the monster looked cool and when it was on screen smashing stuff the movie was enjoyable but these moments were short and fleeting.

So overall: shaky cam bad, cameraman motivation bad, monster cool.

Rating: 1/5

Review – Arrival

Twelve alien ships appear around the world. Louise Banks, a linguist, is brought by the army to one of the ships and attempts to communicate with the aliens.

I watched this movie last night and I am blown away. I love stories that play with the audience’s perceptions or preconceptions. I really can’t say more without spoiling the movie.

Rating: 5/5

One Year Website Anniversary

One year ago, I created my website Gillian’s Notebook, www.Gillian-Ybabez.com. I started off reposting older stories before posting a mix of new and older stories in March. By April I was posting three new stories a week and continued to do so through September. October and November I cut back to three stories every other week. And then I took a couple months off posting stories.

I’m doing things a little different this year. I’m posting two stories a week, eight stories a month, February through December, plus a couple to round out the total to ninety stories. My first story of this new writing year has been posted for patrons on my Patreon. It will be posted on my site a week later.

I’m still working on the anthology of revised and edited stories from 2016 that I plan to put up for sell in March.