Author: sokorra

A thirty-something Graphic Designer and writer who likes to blog about books, movies and History.
Posted in book vs Movie, film, movie reviews

Movie Review: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

Posted on by sokorra

Title:  Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (2016)
Rating: PG-13

My Rating:  ….Ambigious.

You see,this movie is both bad, and good.  Its got some great chemistry between actors, and some of the alterations of characters due to the circumstances are really interesting.  It also has the occasionally good line.  I adore Matt Smith’s Collins, and Lena Hedly’s Lady Catherine makes you less likely to dispise the woman.  Charles Dance plays Mr. Bennet.  I knew Lily James as Ella, from the Live-Action Cinderella but didn’t realise she was Elizabeth untill I read the credits.  It also has some faces I’m unfamilar with like Sam Rielly and the rest of the cast I haven’t already mentioned.  I will say while his Darcy isn’t what I usually picture Darcy being, it fits within the scope of this film and he and Lily James work well off of one another.  It also gives some of the characters usually passed over in the original novel (Namely Mary Bennet) a chance to be shown a little more.

On the other hand some of the dialogue is very very cheesey and at times awkward (Example:  When Darcy, watching Elizabeth kick Zombie ass, realises that she’s not that bad looking after all, and starts explaining this to Bingley whose basically “Dude, Zombies.”). It also brings the hard question – If women are being trained for battle, why is it so off set with the sexism of the day?  Shouldn’t it have changed some of it?  Some of the interjection of the original material by Austen is a bit awkward.

So its hard to grade this movie.  I will say I enjoyed it, and I’ll probably purchase it eventually.  It really doesn’t make me want to read the novel (The one the film was based on, not the original P&P, which I have read).However, its the type of Zombie movie I enjoy.  The kind where there is a mix of genre (Action & Adventure, but also comedy and a touch of romance) and there are some surprising twists.

Posted in film, movie reviews, Uncategorized

Movie Review: Antman

Posted on by sokorra

Title: Ant-Man (2015)
Rating:PG-13

My Grade:  A

So I finally got a chance to watch Antman this past week.  I’ve been meaning to see it for awhile now, but never got to it.  Paul Rudd, as usual when I watch his movies, is great.  The movie in general isn’t bad, and the casting seems excellant.  I remember there being some concern from comic fans about elements of the story (mainly Hope’s mother) but as someone whose never read an Ant-man comic, I am unaware of what those concerns are and if they materialised in the film.

While there is nothing really about the movie that sticks out to me as the-best-thing-ever  (apart from some hilarious one-liners by supporting cast and a Thomas the Tank-engine cameo), nothing really stands out as particularly bad either.  I look forward to the next movie, which might contain a little less explaining of what is going on.

Spoilers below:

Continue reading “Movie Review: Antman” →

Posted in film, movie reviews

Movie Review: X-Men: Apocalypse

Posted on by sokorra

Title:  X-Men: Apocalypse (Third in the First Class series).
Rating: PG-13

My grade: B-

I enjoyed the movie, though I don’t think it quite lived up to the hype they tried to build for it.  Apcoalypse himself came off really as that creeper who won’t say no for an answer combinded with a televangelist.  Alex Summers appears, but I thought he was dead, so clearly a rewatch of the first movie is in need.

I did enjoy the cast, who I think did a great job with what they were given.

I’m going to put the rest under a read more because it will contain spoilers.

Continue reading “Movie Review: X-Men: Apocalypse” →

Posted in American History, history

Memorial Day

Posted on by sokorra

This weekend is Memorial day weekend.  I wanted to stop for a moment and thank all the men and women who have served this country in its armed forces or diplomatic corp who have worked hard to keep our country free and safe. Thank you for all you have done.

graves-1277181_1280

Memorial Day has been celebrated for over a hundred years, developing in the years following the Civil War as a day to pause in remembrance of the men who died during the War. At the time it was called Decoration Day, in reference to the fact that it involved people deocrating the graves of deceased soldiers.

It is not clear where the celebration started (Although Waterloo, NY likes to claim it was them, and others say Charleston, NC) but it soon became something celebrated across the nation.  However,the first purposeful celebration of it happened in Columbus, Georgia, where a group of women decided that on the anniversy of the final surrender of the confederate army, April 26, they should make sure to go out and decorate the graves of vetrans with flowers.  They mailed letters out to various newspapers across the country, and it became a national, abit southern, effort in 1866.

It soon was reported in Northern Papers after the southern women made a point to also decorate the graves of Union soldiers burried in the south and people began to join in on the activities.

On May 5, 1868 General John Logan, who was national Commander of the Grand Army at the time, declared that May 30th would be dedicated to the decoration of graves of those who died for their country.  He choose that day to avoid choosing a date of a battle.   However it wasn’t till 1873 that states started to recognize the day (starting with New York) and it was largely only celebrated on Logan’s date by the North.  Southern States continued to celebrate on dates of their own choosing.

After WWI, the day went from celebrating simply those who died in the civil war to those Americans who died in any war.  In 1971, Congress passed the National Holiday Act and set Memorial Day as a three day weekend, making Memorial Day the last Monday in May as well as making it an offical Federal holiday .  Southern States started to observe Memorial Day after WWI, but also kept seperate days to celebrate those who died as Confederate soldiers.

 

The Story Behind The First Memorial Day 

Memorial Day History

History.Com Memorial Day

US Department of Veteran’s Affairs:  Memorial Day History

Posted in film, Star Wars, Uncategorized

Star Wars Aniversery

Posted on by sokorra

Today is the 39th aniversery of Star Wars’ first theaterical debut in 1977.  Since I wrote a post about Stargate a few posts ago, I figured I’d spare a post for another favorite franchise of mine, Star Wars.

I was a late-in-life Star Wars fan.  (My father holds true to the idea that Star Wars is Lame, one should only watch the Original series of Star Trek).  In sixth grade I started watching Return of the Jedi, and was mostly confused.  Which can happen when one watches the last 30 minutes of the third movie in a triology.

Anyway, I decided at that point to go to the video store (because they were still around), and rent the four Star Wars movies that were out at that point.  I watched them in chronological order of story, not release, so the first SW movie I watched in full was The Phantom Menance.  I think this altered how I veiewed Star Wars movies.

Many of my friends are of the opinon that the prequels suck, and only the originals are any good (although they have favorable feelings about 7, but I haven’t seen that so no opinon there).  Unlike them, I’m more neutral to favorable on the prequels.  Most of the issues I saw was George Lucas tried to retconn things he had wanted to change from the original trilogy.  Even as a fan of the prequels there were some moments where I wanted to ask him what he was doing.  (Namely the Owen Lars situation.  My friends have heard me rant about this.)

Still, the prequels weren’t as bad as I think popular culture likes to protray them as.  They still continued to break box office amounts, and people still watch them.

Now I just have to watch Episode 7, so I can call my watching complete.  Well, until Episode 8 comes out.

Posted in book reviews, bookit, history

Bookit Review: While You Were Mine

Posted on by sokorra

Title:  While You Were Mine
Author: Anne Howard Creel
Publication date: April 1,2016

My Grade: B-

My Review:

This book is a sweet historical romance.  It takes place during the day following World War II in New York City.   The main character is Gwen, the nurse in the infamous Life magazine image.  She is raising the daughter of her former roommate who has abandoned her daughter. As the book begins she returns home to find the child’s father waiting to be reunited with his daughter and wife.

The book deals with post traumatic stress disorder ( though it is called shell shock), different types of relations including three mothers who take different paths with how they deal with it.

It’s a good book for a lazy afternoon, although I think sometimes the author spends too much time describing Mary’s baby clothes when it could be moving the plot line forward.  Also it has a weird pov situation, with most chapters in Gwen’s first person PvP with three or so chapters in third person focused chapters for John. 

My final grade is a B-.   Good for a lazy read but could be better.

Posted in food, general, rant

Brofixes. A Pet Peeve.

Posted on by sokorra

I wish Male-focused Marketing would stop renaming things.  They make it sound like men need to be told that its manly to be able to enjoy thigns.  It drives me nuts, even more so when I get an unnecessarily gendered product geared for women  Like Bic for Her .  Its a pen. I don’t need to say Lady or be in pastel to know I can use it.  But do read the customer reviews, they make its existance almost worth it.

But lately I keep seeing things that have prefixes added on to them to make them more palatable to men.  Bronuts (That would be donuts, which I’m pretty sure I saw men eating long before someone thought to make money making it bro), Brogurt (that article annoys me on several levels beyond the brogurt name),Man bun, Man braids, and most recently Man Perm.

Its a freaking Perm.  Learn to enjoy what you enjoy and not let it effect how you few your gender expression.  If you want to braid your hair, go ahead and do it.  If you want to eat healthy and get a yogurt, go ahead and do so.  But please don’t do so because somehow adding “Bro” or “Man” to it suddenly makes it socially acceptable to be seen doing.

I also find it hard to believe, going back to brogurt category, that people think women wouldn’t like bigger containers of yogurt.  So I feel no threat to my femininity to go out and purchase something that says bro- or Man as part of the title.

Mainly I think this is an excuse to charge people more money, and fed on social norms to do it.

But seriously, stop calling things “Man-”  just to take a thing done all the time and make it more suitable because you are a guy.  Its a braid, a perm or a donut.  Enjoy it.

There is way too much unecessarily gendered products out there.  And I feel marketing has just continued to push gender seperation to get us to pay more just because it makes you believe that something is more feminine (the so called woman’s tax on bathroom and personal products) or masculine (the urge to rename ordinary items to make it more palatable to men).

On a happier note, there is a bronut I will happily consider, and that is Bronuts a company that makes donut holes that was founded by a pair of brothers (so the name actually makes sense and has less to do with who eats them as much as who made them).

Also I learned not to click on the Urban Dictionary links because sometimes there are completely different answers on the page and some of them I really wish I could unsee and also makes me detest the terms .

 

 

Posted in Star Trek, Television shows

Star Trek: Enterprise 15th Anniversary.

Posted on by sokorra

Today and yesterday marks the 15th anniversary of Star Trek: Enterprise being announced.  Star Trek Enterprise is my favorite of the franchises.  Not a completely common thought, but there is a group of us who really enjoy the show and have active interaction together.

It also gave me some of my greatest friendships.

I grew up watching Star Trek.  My father was a fan of the original (TOS), my mother of The Next Generation (TNG).  There were marathons on Saturdays from a WV channel that just happened to manage to get far enough that we could catch it on our TV.  They would tape it, and years later my sister and I would enjoy the commercials with brick sized cell phones and news about Boris Yeltsin making a trip to DC.

But I didn’t really get into Star Trek till I was in high school.  I had started to get into sci-fi when I found a box with my mom’s old books by Anne McCaffrey, and so when I found the old marathon tapes I decided I might as well.  So I watched, and enjoyed.

So I decided then that I should netflix Enterprise, as it was available as it had only recently gone off the air (so about the time I graduated high school).  I had heard odd reviews about it.  About how the finale made no sense (Which admittedly it does not, but that is a post for another day), how there was this weird cannon couple no one liked  (Not so true) and in general it wasn’t as good (also not true).

Enterprise has the disadvantage of being a prequel.  Prequels are harder to manage because you have to make sure it doesn’t change the story already out there.  Enterprise managed to do this, though it had some growing pains.  It also had the disadvantage of 30 years of technological development which meant that to look futuristic to the time they were airing, they also had a problem with looking more advanced than the ships that came after them.  And there was 9/11 to deal with, which also caused the theme of season 3, which was a bit more heavy-handed on the social commentary then perhaps other shows went.

I also think it suffered from a sense of crew exhaustion.  Some of these writers and crewmen had been working on the franchise for almost 20 years.  TV viewers had been watching Trek for as long.

Enterprise is a good show.  I believe if it had been given a fifth season we would have seen more connections to TOS, and later shows.  Season 4 is probably their best, yet many had already given up on it, especially TPTB.  So the show only got 4 seasons (oddly, still more seasons the TOS, which my father uses as the golden standard).

Again, we won’t go into the awful finale.

If you are a Trek fan, or sci-fi in general, I recommend you watch Enterprise.  Its a fun show, although like any it has its high and low moments.  I personally love it.

 

Posted in American History, history

Mother’s Day

Posted on by sokorra

Happy belated Mother’s day to all the readers who are mothers.

I was trying to figure out something to write about today other than perhaps my evolving theories around Tony Stark’s mental state (which don’t sound so much as theory as rambles, so I threw that one out) and went to look at “This Day in history.”

On this day in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first national Mother’s Day.  So its only been a holiday for 82 years.  Some states had such a holiday for a couple of years, but Wilson made it into a national celebration, declaring it mother’s day every second sunday in May.

Another interesting note about the day is that one of the leading supporters of making a National day for people to celebrate their mothers, Anna Jarvis, eventually hated the holiday, feeling it had been removed from the initial idea of individuals using the day to celebrate their mother’s sacrifices into a day celebrating all mothers and commercialism.  I’m not sure how different celebrating all mothers is different then everyone celebrating their own mothers, but I do get why she might have felt it had become overly commercialized.

 

It seems to me that most holidays have lost their meanings in the rush of cards, candy and gifts.  Religious holidays like Christmas and Easter have almost completely separate secular ideology.  Some holidays like Veteran’s Day and Memorial day have just become picnic occasions and less about honoring our armed forces and their sacrifices.And it does seem like there are new holidays popping up to be an occasion to purchase a gift or a card for someone you care for.

Not that I mind the gifts or cards, but sometimes I think remembering the reason the holiday was put in place would be a good idea too.