The Week In A Bad Education Towers #37

This is being put together, mostly, as I'm sat in a Tim Hortons whilst my youngest is at a party at some Ninja Warrior adventure place. Yes I did walk down to Smyths first, but I came out without spending anything thanks to a genuine act of will. I mean come on, this looks awesome as does this. I'm only human.

Finally got around to seeing Guardians of The Galaxy vol 3 yesterday; me and the boys in a quiet Saturday morning screening and all of us throughly enjoyed it.

I really did. It's almost boring to say how the quality of the films since Avengers Endgame has tailed off. Not that the films have been terrible, but none of them have really knocked it out of the park. Eternals is probably the low point, and Ant Man earlier in the year had a few problems as well.

But this? This was brilliant. A cast that works so well together, a director firmly in control of what he wants to do, great effects, great action, it nails it.

The trailer put me on edge a bit, not in a bad way like whenever I see a trailer for a Transformers film, but the fact that it had such an overwhelming feeling of foreboding. Like, you knew going in that something bad was going to happen to someone, there was a good chance that not all of the Guardians would be getting out of this one.

And that gets into your emotions because, well it's the Guardians! It's hard to remember just how much that first film was a massive roll of the dice. A talking tree? Chris Pratt? A raccoon with guns? It shouldn't have worked at all, yet somehow managed to firmly embed itself in pop culture. And now here we with what is most likely the last film with this group of creators; Batista said he won't be back, same with Zoe Saldaña and we all know what James Gunn is up to. It feels like the end of a massive TV series, like Cheers or Friends.

And yet no one does die, despite the film faking us out a few times. Instead it does something arguably better and letting the characters mature and change and move on. Well, move on as much as you can do with a machine like the MCU.

That doesn't stop it from getting a few tears out of you, and not just from those teases of characters dying. Nope, it fills in Rocket's backstory which is heart breakingly tragic. You understand why he was like he was in the first film, and then the sroty allows him to process all that and move on.

Obviously, there's a villain in the way of him doing that and boy does this film have a doozy of a villain in the shape of The High Evolutionary played by Chukwudi Iwuji. He's genuinely one of the most evil characters with no redeeming features other than you love to hate him so much. It's a superb performance from him, going from controlled anger to operatic fury and back again. Hopefully we'll see more of him as it was a fantastic performance. Maybe another role could open up for him?

I saw a tweet my ages ago when the film first came out about how you could read this as a take on big corporations controlling ideas. Rocket is described as IP with his species copyrighted by a giant company. He's created by someone who can't understand Rocket's spark of invention and can't figure out how he does it so he can replicate it. Considering we we have a writers strike going on where a part of that is about film studios wanting to lock down writers work for training AIs to generate film scripts you can totally see that in Guardians.

But whilst you can read that in the film, you can also have a really great time with it, swept up in one last adventure with a great group of pals who you might not see again.

Oh, and Sean Gunn has probably the best line delivery in cinema this year. Maybe this decade. We'll see, but it'll be a tough one to beat.

You ever get something random just pop up in you mind for no reason? Had one this week; hanging up some washing and it just popped in there.

"The Butteess of Windsor"

No idea where it came from, but there it was and proper stick in there. The Buttress of Windsor.

After a Google turns out it's from a Tenacious D song:

No clue where that came from.

See that Confess, Fletch had dropped on NowTV this week so gave it a watch; I think it did get a cinema release but it was one of those couple of nights then done deals. Which is a shame, feels like if this came out in the early 90s it might have done well at the cinema; you've got John Hamm giving it his laconic best with a good support cast all wrapped up in a shaggy dog mystery story.

Nothing major, but a bit of fun you'd totally put along side something like My Cousin Vinny or The Hard Way or The Super. Not sure why Joe Pesci was in two of them but never mind.

I have seen the 80s Fletch with Chevy Chase, I feel like that was a bit zanier due to how Chase did his comedy at that time. I might go back so I can do a proper comparison. My gut feels like I'd enjoy Confess a bit more, its much more of mystery where in my mind the original was much more about Chevy Chase put into various situations with hopefully hilarious consequences. Its still worth a watch though, a good way to spend an hour and a half or so.

Finally, the SSD I had my eye on dropped in price enough for me to buy it and then stick it into my PS5. Ryan, you said the hardest bit was getting the panels off and you were right. I did film it so that'll be going up early next week, although the audio in it isn't great. Not sure why but there was a weird tinny echo on it that needed a bit of processing to sort out which wasn't 100% successful. Still, its another video and my PS5 has got loads more storage so they'll hopefully be way less juggling around of installed games from now on.

Well, probably for about ten minutes then it'll get full again but isn't that always the way?

Another game video!

Yep, a ropey early 90s platformer with annoying spikes in difficulty, so whilst it looks decent its a bit rubs in the end.

And another Conquistabores!

Alright, its an old one but we're catching up on the podcasts on the channel. I'm not sure how this'll work when caught up, because technically its a separate podcast feed from the main show? The main podcast goes up on Soundcloud, then that goes into a Feedburner RSS feed that goes off to Apple and Spotify and yadda yadda yadaa. I could automate it into YouTube once an episode goes up, so I guess that means its the same feed? I don't know, as long as it helps more people see (or rather listen) to it then all good.

And we did record the new show at the end of last week so expect that in your ears by the end of the month.

And thats your lot, back at home now so expect I'll be put to work doing more Power Washing by the youngest sometime soon. Don't even get paid for it, makes no sense.

Anyways, bye!