Cranky T-Rex's Blog

Every year we get one artsy, weird, and largely original scifi flick that everyone says is just the best thing ever put to film. This year it's called Arrival.   Ostensibly it's just another alien invasion movie, this time featuring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner trying to decipher the aliens' language before they destroy us, we destroy ourselves, or something equally terrible happens.  However, this movie is not quite what it seems. It was tough to review a movie like that without giving away spoilers, but I did it for you anyway.  Take a listen:

The following is a guest post by my good friend Jett Atwood. You may know her as Sarjex, the creator of the awesome cartoons attached to many of my posts. Like many she has some thoughts about this election and its aftermath. Here they are, presented without comment or modification: First, I was not thrilled at the thought of a President Hillary Clinton. I was equally not thrilled with the thought of President Donald Trump. This election was like being forced into a dumpster fire and told I had to eat either a poop sandwich or a vomit salad...and by the way, I was still going to be trapped in the dumpster. With that said, this country against all odds mounted and survived a revolution against the world's only superpower winning our freedom to enact the world’s greatest civic experiment: Can people govern themselves?

Right about now most of America is trying to figure out what just happened because against all odds, Donald Trump is going to be the next President.  While I didn't think he'd win in the end, I don't wonder why or how he did, nor do I need to join the myriad of people trying to explain it.  I already did that way back in August of 2015 both here on my blog and over at HotAir . It's been a long couple years in that regard. I've spent an inordinate amount of time arguing with people who are wrong on the Internet.  I spent even more time trying to convince people of the importance of things like #GamerGate, which we now just watched play itself out all over again in the form of a national election. (Unsurprisingly, most of the people who seemed to really get what was happening with Trump are the same people who followed the happenings of #GamerGate.) And as much as I would love to just spend a whole post gloating, I think the real question worth talking about is,

Take one relatively unknown Marvel character, add some trippy visuals, sprinkle in some Benedict Cumberbatch, and stir it up with actual magic instead of the usual pseudo science and you get the latest entry in the Marvel movie juggernaut called Doctor Strange . Everyone thought  Guardians of the Galaxy might just be the bridge too far for Marvel's comic book movie universe what with a talking tree and raccoon in it, but it was still a smash hit.  Then they gave us Ant-Man , which just straight up sounds ridiculous, and even that movie was a fun ride that raked in box office cash.  Now they've taken a turn for the outright mystical with Doctor Strange and the only real question is: has Marvel finally jumped the shark?  Or have they hit another one out of the park?  Here's what I thought: