The Top 10 Disney Deep Cuts I Want to See on Disney+

If there's a booming cottage industry that's popped up in the past 10  years, it's YouTube channels dedicated to dissecting pop culture.  For years, I have watched those and figured I would love to do one myself, as I've got quite a few topics that I'd love to explore.  And now that I'm stuck in self-isolation, I realized that I've still got this blog, so let's do it like how they would have done it 10 years ago.  So I've been picking away at this for the past week, and I figured it would be time to share....

The Top 10 Disney Deep Cuts I Want to See on Disney+

When Disney+ first launched in November of 2019, it was one of the most heavily hyped streaming service launches in recent years.  Disney has such a wealth of material in their Disney Vault that it was pretty much guaranteed to be a game changer.  And while I'm excited for things like the Star Wars series The Mandalorian and all the upcoming Marvel TV shows, there's a ton of rare and obscure stuff in forgotten corners of the Disney Vault that I would love to see and revisit.  They tell us that, in due time, the entirety of the Disney catalog will be on Disney+, so we just might get a chance to see this all someday.  So I thought I'd share my list of some of Disney's overlooked gems that I would love to see pop up on the streaming service.  

News from Markworld: December 2018

As always, I am blogging my annual Christmas card letter, for those whose addresses I may have lost, or for long forgotten friends who may be googling me late one night, wondering what ever happened to me.

Hello, there!  Once again, it’s me, Mark Cappis, sending you a Christmas form letter to tell you what’s up with me! 

So much has happened since I last saw you!  I lost my hammer, like, yesterday, so that’s still pretty fresh.  And then I went on a journey of self-discovery, where I met you.  No, wait.  That’s from Thor: Ragnarok.  Great movie, if you haven’t seen it yet.

I forgot to write up one of these letters last year, and some were wondering why.  Well, last year, at around this time, I was really thrown for a loop.  There was a massive corporate restructuring, and my position at 97.9 the Range as afternoon host and music director was eliminated.  But, the Company still had a place for me.  Rising from the ashes of the Range was Real Country 97.9, and they offered me the job of morning show co-host and news reporter.  So, last year at this time, and for a good chunk of 2017, I was re-adjusting to getting up at 4AM to do the morning show, and spending late nights covering various events around Westlock and Barrhead.  On top of that, I managed to retain several of my administrative duties that came with the old music director gig.  It makes for long days a lot of the time.  But, it’s been a journey of self-discovery.  Guess I’m not too different from Thor after all.

But, as I’ve said in letters past, the older I get, the more I find that WKRP’s old description of the radio announcer lifestyle is pretty accurate:  pushing 40 and still living like a college kid.  Although, I’m not pushing 40 anymore.  I actually am 40, having hit that milestone this past July.  Now having reached that age, I’m wondering if still living like a college kid is actually worth it.  But hey, the journey of self-discovery is never-ending.  Or, this is what a midlife crisis feels like.

Anyway, best to wrap this up.  I’ve got my tickets to the new Star Wars movie, and by the time you read this, I’ll probably have seen it three times.  Yeah, I know I used that joke two years ago with The Force Awakens right around the corner, but remember what they say in radio:  it’s safe to re-use your material after 3 hours, because you have enough of a new audience by then. 
Merry Christmas, and all the best in 2018!


Mark Cappis

20 Years of an Online Presence

I was walking home from work last week, letting my mind wander, when it came back with the thought, "I've now had some form of online presence for 20 years now."

It was on a frosty November night in 1997.  Me and my best friend had just gotten back from Edmonton, where we were doing research for our top-secret project.  Well, it wasn't very top secret.  My best friend had just resigned from his position as editor of the school paper, with the grand design to produce the college's first TV show on the local public access station.  I was the first one he brought on board.  Not knowing how the real world of broadcasting worked, we decided to see if we could get tours of a real TV station and a real radio station, under the cover of writing an article for the school paper.  So, we spent the morning getting a tour of the A-Channel (now CityTV Edmonton) and the afternoon touring the Bear (now and forever the Bear.)

We spent that evening in the newspaper office, comparing notes and planning our articles.  "I'll let you write the one about the Bear, seeing as to how those are your people," I remember my friend saying, as a harbinger of things to come.  But as many a late night in the newspaper office with my best friend tends to go, our topic of conversation soon turned to whatever pop culture nuggets currently caught our attention.  This being the late-1990s, it was the advent of the Internet and the dot-com bubble.  "Man, I'd sure love to have a website to plug my radio show," I said.  "Well, I've already got one up for the TV show," said my friend.

And that's when he showed me all these free web-hosting services that had popped up, the one that he preferred, and their online tutorials as to how to build a website.  Before I left the office that night, chaosinabox.com was born, although I didn't buy the URL until about 5 years later.

I did the usual radio stuff.  Posted a weekly top 10 list, what the topics of this week's show were going to be.  As I was already doing an opinion column in the school paper to plug my radio show, it was no-brainer to start posting the columns to the website.  My much-desired online presence was born.

I started doing the movie reviews on the website the following summer.  I saw the late, great Roger Ebert on a talk show, and someone asked him the age-old question of how they can become a movie critic.  Ebert's response was, "Same advice I give anyone who wants to be a writer:  just keep writing.  Practice your craft."  He then went on to extol the virtues of the Internet and how it was giving voice to many an aspiring film critic as now anyone could post their review.  Inspired by that, I wrote a review of Deep Impact, posted it on my website, and I've been reviewing movies ever since.

Things started changing in 1999.  I graduated from college.  Without my opinion column in the college paper, or my radio show, I started growing desperate for some form of creative outlet.  That's when I started thinking, "But I still have the website...."  There was nothing stopping me from continuing to write my opinion column, and posting it to my website.  I don't think I had heard the word yet, but I had just launched my first blog.

Yeah, the blog got me into trouble over the years that I wrote it.  When I did my time in retail hell as a clerk at Extra Foods in Drayton Valley, I wrote a few stories about the idiot teenagers I worked with being idiot teenagers, and they were none too pleased.  When I was going to NAIT, a few of my instructors pulled me aside a few times and said, "Gee, you'd better watch what you say on your blog because there's a very realistic chance no one's going to hire you based on what you're posting."  I know that some of my friends lament that I no longer get deeply personal in my blog and write about the minutia of my life, but when my first boss at my first radio gig proudly told me that my blog as the first thing she read every morning, that put a scare into me, so I figured I should stop.

Besides, at that point, the blog was giving way to the podcast.  It took me a year after graduating from NAIT to land that first radio gig.  And I will forever be grateful to my instructors at NAIT because, during that  year, they were always letting me sneak in after hours to use the equipment and re-cut my demo.  And most of those evenings were spent chatting with the instructors, getting job hunting advice and fishing for leads.  One night, after saying that the number one thing that was coming up in my rejections was lack of experience, I was asking my instructors the age old question, "How do you get more experience when on one will hire you?"  And my instructor said, "Well, you've got that website.  Why don't you do a podcast?"

So, I started doing my research.  Looked up what a podcast was, and what upgrades I'd have to do to my website to be able to do it.  Once I had all that in place, the podcast launched.  I don't know if it actually did provide that much-needed experience I needed for my resume, but I landed that first radio gig a month after launch.

The podcast was fun, but again, I kind of drifted away from doing it.  I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that, even though I've got an OK set-up on my home computer, I preferred going into work after-hours to use the stuff at work.  I mean, if I have access to a semi-professional recording studio, why not use it?  But the problem with that was, once I was done recording the podcast, I'd go, "Well...since I'm at work, I may as well get this done.  Ooo, and I can get a start on that," and before you knew it, what was going to be a couple hours banging out a podcast turned into a full day of unpaid overtime.  So I figured it's best to sped my days off taking a day off.

"Now Mark," you're probably asking.  "You said you gave up the blog.  Then what is this that I'm reading right now?"  Well, this is my second blog.  I launched this one back in 2003, when I was still in Japan.  My laptop died on me, and I had no way to update my website.  But I still had to maintain that o-so-valuable online presence.  Most of my friends were using Blogger, so I went to Blogger, launched this blog, and that kept my online presence up-to-date.  This way, I could easily update things from an Internet cafe, or a library, or anywhere else with free Internet access and public computers.  I couldn't find anyone in Japan who wanted to attempt to fix my North American laptop, so the original blog started up again when I returned home that summer.  I kept doing this one, though, with the idea that the original blog would be for my "real" writing, and this would be for off-the-cuff comments.

And I hardly use this for off-the-cuff comments anymore, because that's what I use Facebook and Twitter for.  It's just so easy to whip out the smartphone and bust out 140 characters saying what I thought of a new trailer or the new burger at Wendy's than wait until I get home and see if I can get a page's worth of material out of it.

And it's all part of the industry, now.  Every radio announcer has a Facebook page and Twitter page, as it's been embraced as another way to engage with the listeners.  It almost makes my NAIT instructor's warnings seem passe.  Heck, last time we had a kid down at the station to job shadow us and put together his NAIT application, he revealed that making a viral video is part of the NAIT application these days.

20 years ago, developing an online presence seemed like such a monumental undertaking.  Now, it's a reality of daily life.  I asked my friend once if building an online presence would be as big a deal back then if we had the resource of today.  "Probably not," he said.  "We'd probably just launch a Tumblr page for our TV show and call it a day."  As for the TV show, sadly it never came to be.  I don't know why we drifted away from the project, but we did.  I wonder if my friend still has the test footage we filmed at the TV station one afternoon.  It'd be fun to stick that up on YouTube.

Where to Find Me

• Website:  chaosinabox.com
• This blog:  chaosinabox.blogspot.com
• Facebook:  @officialchaosinabox
• Twitter:  @chaosinabox
• Instagram:  @chaosinabox
• YouTube:  The Chaos in a Box channel

Catch-Up Info Dump

Well, I've been mostly separated from my computer as I've been off on vacation over the past week.  Well, not completely separated...I maxed out my data plan on Friday night, thus not allowing me to share all the cool stuff that was popping up online over the weekend.  So rather than flood my Twitter feed with a bunch of day-old news, I figured I'd just make a big list of everything here at the blog!

Of course, most of the news was coming out of D23, the official Disney convention that Disney puts on, as they went over their upcoming slates.  Things kicked off on Friday night with the most anticipated trailer of the evening that wasn't Star Wars or Marvel...the first trailer for A Wrinkle in Time.




Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay brings the legendary YA sci-fi novel to the big screen, with an all-star cast.  Young Meg Murray's father unlocks the secrets of the tesseract (not the Marvel McGuffin) to traverse time and space, but gets captured by something evil along the way.  Now, Meg must go on a quest to save her father, and is guided along the way by three celestial beings:  Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kailing).

I'm not too familiar with the book...all I really know was a friend in college cited it as one of her favourites growing up, and the last time they attempted an adaptation was a really crappy TV movie in 2003.  But this trailer has me intrigued.  It comes out March 9, so lots of time to check out the book at my local library.

Also on the live-action side that caught my eye was Disney has officially begun production on their live-action remake of Dumbo, from director Tim Burton.  How are they bringing it to live action?  More humans, of course!  Humans barely figured into the original, but now we've got Colin Farrell as Dumbo's trainer, Danny DeVito as the circus owner, and Michael Keaton and Eva Green as the ones who teach Dumbo how to fly.

I was about to give this a pass until I saw Keaton in the cast.  Tim Burton and Michael Keaton, together again since Batman Returns in 1992.  If they bring the wacky like they did in Beetlejuice, this just might be worth a watch.  Disney's aiming this one for a Spring 2019 release.

Over on the animated side, not much new.  Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, and Frozen 2 are all on track.  One of the show-stoppers was the first footage from Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2.  The plot:  when Sugar Crush, Vanellope's game, starts crashing, threatening Vanellope and all the denizens of Sugar Crush, it's up to Ralph and Vanellope to venture onto the Internet to get the parts to fix the game (i.e. download a patch).

The sequence shown was a very meta one, where Ralph and Vanellope stumble upon the Disney website and we get cameos by every Disney princess ever.  And yes, every Disney princess has their original voice actress, because that's how Disney rolls.  Wreck-It Ralph 2 comes November 2018.

Meanwhile, over at my beloved Pixar, they gave updates on Coco (this November), Incredibles 2 (next summer) and Toy Story 4 (Summer 2019).  And then...what comes next.

What comes next is a very personal story from Monsters University director Dan Scanlon.  Scanlon opened his presentation by explaining that his father died when he was very young, and as such, he never knew his father.  He only knows his father's voice thanks to a cassette tape of a family gathering that a relative gave him, in which his father utters just two words:  "Hi" and "Bye."  From that inspiration, Scanlon came up with this.

Set in a world populated with magical creatures -- fairies, elves, trolls, "anything painted on the side of a van in the 1970s" according to Scanlon -- these creatures actually abandoned magic long ago and embraced technology.  Two elf children who lost their father when they were very young decide to gather up what magic remains in the world to see if they can use it to spend one last day with their father.  Sounds like it could be an emotional gut punch.  No release date as of yet.

Meanwhile, over on the Star Wars side, we got a new behind-the-scenes glimpse for The Last Jedi.



Nothing really to add...still looking awesome. Still can't wait.  The other big news was the Star Wars Land now under construction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World has an official name:  Star Wars:  Galaxy's Edge.

And on the Marvel side, they showed the first footage from Avengers: Infinity War, and apparently, it's amaze-balls.  Thanos using the Infinity Gauntlet to literally pull down the heavens upon our heroes.  Nothing official has shown up online yet....just wait until after this weekend and the San Diego Comic Con.

And that's everything that caught my eye from D23.

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Over in non-Disney news, we have the Thirteenth Doctor on Doctor Who!




Jodie Whittaker is playing #13, and we have our first female Doctor.

I won't get into all the hate going on right now about how women can't be Doctors.  Let's be honest, they've been toying with doing this since the show's heyday in the 1980s, and with the phenomenal response to Missy (the Doctor's arch-enemy the Master, regenerated into a woman, in case you haven't been watching lately), you knew this was happening.

If anything, the comments I'm reading online are saying that a lot of people wandered away from the show during the Peter Capaldi era, and that this is the creative shot-in-the-arm to bring them back to the franchise.

And don't forget, we're getting a whole new creative team behind the scenes when #13 takes the stage next year.  I think there are very interesting times ahead, and it's going to be good.

We'll get our first look at #13 in action in the Christmas special, airing on Christmas!

---

So where was I the past week that I've got to play catch-up like this?  I was on vacation! 

I started things off by watching Spider-Man Homecoming.  Loved it!  The core theme was definitely people in suits, and whether it's the suit that makes the hero or not.  We've got Iron Man, who's Spider-Man's idol, and he's constantly trying to impress.  I loved that they turned the Vulture into a kind of "dark Tony Stark," and rather than just a pair of wings, his costume is his own Iron Man-esque suit that he's made from scavenged parts...a very literal reworking of his name and gimmick.  And in the centre of it all is Peter Parker, with a hi-tech Spider-Man suit that he's been given, trying to find his place as a hero. 

Tom Holland is great.  He brings the youthful exuberance that a high school aged Spider-Man needs.  And it's just nice to see Spider-Man in the Marvel universe where he belongs.

I'll write an official review on the main site in the days ahead.  But...3.5 Nibs.

And then I was off to the family reunion, down south, just outside of Red Deer.  It was a lot of fun, and good seeing so many family members again. 

The drive home was nice.  Normally, to get from the Red Deer area to Westlock, I just head straight north on Highway 2, using the Anthony Henday Drive to circle around Edmonton.  Normally, I go around the west side.  But, now that the Henday is complete, I decided to mix things up and go around the east side.

The east side of Edmonton is where Edmonton's oil refineries are, and it was quite the site.  Storm clouds were rolling through, so things were dark.  I don't know if it was smoke from the fires in BC, or just the exhaust from the refineries, but there was this orange haze in the air.  And it was dark enough that all the refineries were lit up.  I find a strange beauty in industrial sites at night...just these metal frames, all aglow with their safety lights.  And all enshrouded in an orange haze...it was like being on Cybertron. 

I was tempted to pull over and take a picture, but probably not a good idea on a busy freeway like the Henday. 

Anyway, I'm about rambled out and I'm getting tired of writing.  Time to head back to work! 

Wonder Woman and the Rest of Summer

Alright!  Last week, I went to the city to see Wonder Woman.  I've been putting off all week sitting down and writing my usual "I went to the city and saw a movie and did stuff!" blog entry.  But now, I've got some time set aside on Sunday night, so let's do this.

Wonder Woman is awesome and you should go see it.

The end.

Thoughts Drifting Off to Sleep

Just some random thoughts I had as I was drifting off to sleep last night, and they're a little too long to tweet.

Firstly, I can't believe how excited I'm getting for Spider-Man Homecoming.  The film's composer, Michael Giacchino, posted this to his Twitter feed a few weeks ago.  I've listened to it hundreds of times, and it always makes me smile.

Who's ready for your friendly neighborhood you-know-who?@SpiderManMovie @MarvelStudios pic.twitter.com/iSHk4IvVgk

— Michael Giacchino (@m_giacchino) May 19, 2017

Have you ever heard the classic Spider-Man theme sound so grand and epic?

Some 20 years ago, when I first discovered the Internet on a late night in Augustana's computer lab, the first thing I typed into a search engine was "Spider-Man Movie," and I just started reading every bit of news I could.  For those who don't know the history, back in the 1990s, the movie rights to Spider-Man were stuck in a legal quagmire.  It looked like a film that would never be made.  But finally, in the year 2000, the complainants were whittled down to just Sony and Marvel, who settled out-of-court, thus paving the way for Spider-Man to hit theatres in 2002.

So, yeah.  I'll never not get excited for a Spider-Man film, because I'll never forget those days where it seemed like a legal impossibility.

That being said, it always easy to look back with disappointment.  With my excitement building, I popped The Amazing Spider-Man into my Blu-Ray player last night and watched a bit of it.  After five minutes, my frustration started boiling to the surface again.  The Amazing Spider-Man films represent everything that's wrong with Hollywood's "gotta build a franchise" mentality.  Those films are just so overstuffed.  The entire attitude is, "Let's throw everything at the wall and see what pays off later."

When The Amazing Spider-Man was first announced, reaction was, "We'll be fine with it, as long as you don't rehash the origin story."  And what did they do?  They rehashed the origin story.  If they skipped the origin story...if they cut out that "mystery of Peter Parker's parents" BS...if they cut all that out and just focused on a proper "Spider-Man vs. the Lizard" story, it probably would have been a much more decent Spider-Man movie.

Same with its sequel.  For some reason, they decided to resurrect "the mystery of Peter Parker's parents" and tried again to make that work.  They awkwardly shoehorned in the Green Goblin just so they could work in the death of Gwen Stacey.  If they cut all that out and just focused on a proper "Spider-Man vs. Electro" story, it would have been a much more decent Spider-Man movie.

Which makes me wonder why Sony is pushing ahead with their "Spider-Verse" cinematic universe plans.  The Venom film has been resurrected, with Tom Hardy playing Eddie Brock.  The film about a to-be-decided-later female character from the Spider-Man universe is going ahead, with the female characters being Silver Sable and Black Cat.  And there's an animated Spider-Man film in the works, focusing on Miles Morales.

For what seemed like an impossibility for so long, we really are lucky to have so much to complain about.

---

The Mummy hits theatres this Friday, and with it, we get the launch of Universal's "Dark Universe," their attempt to create a new cinematic universe out of their classic monsters.  I'm on the fence about going to see The Mummy, as the Universal Monsters are a franchise I've always been indifferent towards.  Plus, I'm not so sure if I can commit myself to another cinematic universe.  I'll probably give it a few weeks, see what the reviews are like, and then check it out.
 
But, with that cinematic universe, things seem to be progressing nicely.  It was announced a few weeks ago that the second film will be a remake of The Bride of Frankenstein, from director Bill Condon, who just gave us Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast.  That's slated for Valentine's Day 2019.  With that came the announcement that Johnny Depp has joined the Dark Universe as the Invisible Man, and Javier Bardem is on board as Frankenstein's Monster.

And then yesterday was the announcement that, along with the best-known monsters like the Mummy, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and Dracula, they're going with some of their deeper cuts like the Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one where people are scratching their heads, as the Hunchback has never been portrayed as a monster.  But then, as I was drifting off to sleep last night, I had a thought.  Igor, Dr. Frankenstein's long-suffering assistant, has long been portrayed as a hunchback.  What if they're turning The Hunchback of Notre Dame into Igor's tragic backstory?   I mean, the original novel ends with the Hunchback being buried alive next to his beloved Esmeralda.  What if Dr. Frankenstein rescued Igor during one of his grave-robbing expeditions to get parts for his Monster, and took him in?  I guess we'll know for sure if/when we get to that chapter in the cinematic universe.

And then there's the Phantom of the Opera.  I don't know...I've got a little bit of bitterness towards the Phantom.  Back when I was a kid, the Broadway musical of The Phantom of the Opera was still new and a very big deal.  The Canadian touring show had just launched, and it's only Alberta stop was going to be in Calgary.

Now, back in Entwistle School, the Grade 9 class always gets to go on a massive year-end class trip called the Grade 9 Farewell.  When I was in Grade 8, the Grade 9 Farewell was going to be down to Calgary to see The Phantom of the Opera.  A few students pulled out, so the teacher in charge, Mr. Twerdoclib, decided to hold an essay contest among the Grade 8 students to fill those empty seats.

I entered.  I lost.

Don't get me wrong.  I deserved to lose.  I wrote the whole thing in the backseat of my family's car coming back from a weekend trip in Red Deer.  My bitterness stems from how Mr. Twerdoclib informed me as to how I lost.  One day, he pulls me out of my nice, comfy science class, brings me into his Grade 9 English class, puts me at the front of the room, and proceeds to dress me down as to how lame my essay was.  It was the kind of public humiliation that my 13-year old self never really got over.

I learned two things from that incident.  Firstly, the winning essay was about comparing various branches of the federal government to positions on a baseball team.  I thought to myself, "Huh.  Teachers really like this 'comparison' thing."  So I used that as the formula in every essay I wrote for the rest of my academic career and aced everything.

The second:  Mr. Twerdoclib is a dick.

Anyway, I see the latest touring show for The Phantom of the Opera hits Edmonton next month.  Maybe I'll go.  Get some closure.

Scarecrow Goes to IKEA

When last we left our intrepid hero, he came home from work on Thursday afternoon, ready to enjoy the Easter weekend, when he met tragedy in his living room.  The tempered glass top shelf of his entertainment centre had shattered, leaving broken glass all over his floor and one upside down TV.  Here's the pics, in our "pics or it didn't happen" world.  Once I got the glass cleaned up and verified that the TV was still functional, the question turned to needing a new entertainment centre.  So as one does in this day and age, I hopped on line and went to the IKEA website.  I found one I liked that was within my budget, asked my parents to meet me there (because things like "size" confuse me so I wanted to borrow my Dad's truck in case it was needed), and plans were made for a road trip!

Rolling into Edmonton, I was pondering the last time I went to IKEA.  It had to be when I was a kid...way back when IKEA was still in West Edmonton Mall.  Yes, Edmonton's IKEA was originally in West Edmonton Mall, way back when the Mall first opened in the mid-1980s.  The Mall has always prided itself on bringing in many retailers to Alberta for the first time, and I'm pretty sure the West Edmonton Mall IKEA was the first one in Alberta, if not Western Canada.  In the late-1990s, as the South Edmonton Common became a thing, they moved down there.  For those who don't know their West Edmonton Mall geography, IKEA was originally where the Sport Check and Bed, Bath, and Beyond currently are.

But no, they moved to South Edmonton Common, reviled by many in Edmonton for being the very definition of urban sprawl.  The massive, sprawling power centre, taking up a good portion of Edmonton's south side.  At least it's really easy to get to, now that the Anthony Henday Drive is complete.  Take the Henday all the way around to Gateway Boulevard, head north into the city, and BOOM!  It's your first exit.  I entered the Common and was instantly lost, as rather than the massive parking lot that most power centre have, it has built up its own maze of streets and avenues.  Luckily, IKEA is massive, so I just set my sights on the massive blue and yellow building on the horizon and drove towards it.

I arrived about a half-hour before my parents, and decided to browse the showroom while I waited.  As it was Saturday, it was understandably crowded.  The showroom was as I remembered from my youth, a winding maze taking you through many model rooms, showing you what the furniture looks like all assembled.  I spent a lot of time in the living room section.  I'm also in dire need of a new sofa, but even IKEA sofas are pretty pricey on a small market radioman's salary.  Hell, the only reason why I could afford the new TV stand was, in one of those strange karmic things that runs the universe, my tax refund arrived on the same day as the shattering.

I wandered over to the living room storage section, where I found the TV stand I had my eye on.  Looked like it would have fit in my trunk with no problem, so looks like I didn't need to invite my parents along.  Speaking of, that's when I got the text message from my mother that they had arrived.  Now came the most stressful part of my trip to IKEA...going against the flow of the people going through their showroom so I could get back out to the entrance.  Once I got back out to the front, took a moment to calm down, and met with my parents, it was back into the showroom, because they wanted to check out some stuff.

Seriously, though, I don't know if it was the legendarily high stress environment of IKEA on a Saturday, or me, because I was feeling pretty stressed out in IKEA.  Sometimes I think I should see a doctor about anxiety issues because I've never done well in big crowds, but it's getting worse as I get older.

Saw more great stuff in the showroom.  There was a nice glass display cabinet that would be prefect for my action figure collections, should I ever get a bigger place or more money.  They had bookshelves on sale, and I've considered getting a third one as my current DVD shelves are full and spilling out into little piles all over my floor.  Mom took down the number for that one in case I changed my mind by the time we got down to the warehouse.  And some mattresses as well, as my original IKEA mattress is starting to get pretty worn out.

Even thought I haven't been to IKEA in 30 years or so, a lot of my furniture is IKEA.  My armchair, my dining room set, my bed, my dresser, and my computer desk.  I have my parents to thank for that.  The standard housewarming gift that my parents settled on when me and my siblings all got our first places was $1000 worth of flatpacked furniture.  So within a week of being at my first apartment at my first radio gig, my parents and my brother showed up with all these IKEA boxes and we spent the day setting it all up.  I still use pretty much all of it because, well, I'm cheap and it works, so why not?  But the mattress on my bed is starting to wear out.  and IKEA's got some comfy ones.

We finished up in the showroom, the codes for my TV stand in hand, and it was time for lunch.  So we dined in the famous IKEA restaurant.  It really was a cafeteria, though, as you grabbed your tray and got in line.  I grabbed a glass to hit up the soda fountain, but while looking through the cooler full of bottled juices, I saw a juice box of an IKEA exclusive called "Elder Flower Juice."  Intrigued, and no doubt thinking of the classic insult from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I decided to grab it.  For lunch, I dined upon the IKEA specialty of Swedish meatballs with gravy and mashed potatoes.  It suffered from the standard cafeteria problem:  it had been sitting in the steam trays a little too long and had dried out.  But still, pretty good.  The Elder Flower Juice had a sweet, slightly tart flavour.  It tasted vaguely familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

With out bellies full, we went downstairs.  Here, IKEA turned into a more conventional store, as the shelves were lined with all kinds of housewares and other knick-nacks for your home.  As Mom remarked afterwards, she wound up spending more money there than I did, as she got some new lamps for the guest rooms, some new towels, and various other sundry items for the home.  It a situation where I'm definitely going to have to go back someday, and check out all the other neat stuff.  Especially the lamps.  Lots of neat lamps.

Now that Mom's shopping cart was full, it was into the warehouse to pick up my entertainment centre.  With their cutesy mock-Swedish names, my TV stand was the Besta.  But it turns out, the Besta is a modular system, with dozens of different variants.  Took us a while to go up and down the aisles, getting all the parts for the particular Besta I had seen in the showroom.  But we found them.  With those precariously placed atop our shopping cart, my mother said, "So...is there anything else we're getting?" as she pulled her notepad from her purse, with the numbers for the bookshelf I was eyeing.  I frightened my mother by responding with a Rick and Morty quote:  "Nobody exists on purpose.  Nobody belongs anywhere.  Everyone's going to die.  Let's get the bookshelves."

We got everything into the back of Dad's truck, and made our way out of the city and back to Westlock.  Mom and Dad volunteered to stick around for a bit and help with the assembly.  Dad and I got the Besta put together OK.  I did get a little worried when Mom told me to take a break and she and Dad got to work on the bookshelves.  There was a viral story not too long ago about a certain IKEA cabinet that a marriage councilor had dubbed "the divorce-maker" because of all the arguments it started as couples put it together. Luckily, my parents got through it unscathed.

As my parents left, my mother did have a few surprises.  Some of the new towels she bought were for me, and she also found a bottle of Elder Flower Juice concentrate so I could brew some at home.  As I was getting ready to mix up a pitcher, I had an inspiration.  I fired up my SodaStream, ran the Elder Flower Juice concentrate through it, and made my own Elder Flower Soda.

Guess what?

With bubbles, it tasted just like ginger ale.  That was the vaguely familiar flavour.  It was flat ginger ale.

This whole adventure happened to me about a week ago.  I've been enjoying my TV on my nice new Besta stand, and drinking up the last of the Elder Flower Juice.  Needless to say, IKEA was quite the journey.  And like many other stores, I think I'll be going back someday when I have more money.  

I Want Adventure in the Great Wide Somewhere....

I need pants.

Woke up Friday morning to see that I'd worn a whole in my favourite pair of jeans.  Going though my closet and taking inventory, I discovered that a lot of my favourite pairs of pants had holes worn in them.  And in a rather embarrassing place.  A man can't have no pants.  Last time I had no pants, I was asked politely to never return to that restaurant.  So, my Saturday plans were set:  go get some pants.

Luckily, pants were easy to find.  My size is usually difficult to come by, but this time, I managed to find three pairs in my size, so I snapped them all up.  Didn't have much else to do in the city, anyway, as this past Tuesday, I made a whirlwind trip into to the city to pick up Rogue One on Blu-Ray.  One of the benefits of being back on the morning show.  If, on a sunny Tuesday, I'm able to get out of the office by noon like I'm supposed to, I can make the quick drive down into Edmonton to snatch up the hottest new movies.

And, as I went about browsing, I noticed that the release of Rogue One seems to have brought out the newest round of Star Wars merchandise.  It looks like the third and final wave of Rogue One action figures is out.  Finally, the Death Trooper (those Stormtroopers in funky black armor) are finally available single-packed.  When they first came out in the fall, they were only available in a two-pack with some funky alien Rebel commando.  And the one Jyn Erso figure I wanted was finally out.  That's the one where she's wearing the black armor from that awesome shot in the trailer.  You know, the awesome shot that, like 90% of the awesome trailer shots for Rogue One, wasn't in the movie.

Actually, I read an interview with Rogue One director Gareth Edwards about the genesis of that shot.  It happened by accident as they were setting up one day.  He liked it so much, he made them do it again so he could get it on film.  He never intended to put it in the movie...he just liked it so much he had to get it on film.  And the marketing department liked it so much, they put it in the trailer.

Anyway, I passed on those figures, as I think I'm pretty much done when it comes to Rogue One figures.  Besides, with 2017 marking the 40th anniversary of the franchise, I saw that the 40th anniversary figures are out.  I passed on those, because they're currently marked at $30 each, and when I started collecting action figures back in my teen years, I vowed I'd never spend more than $20 on a figure.  I'm amazed at how I've been able to stick to that self-imposed budget over the years.

The closest I came to snatching up some Star Wars figures was over at the Disney Store.  The Disney Store's exclusive line of Star Wars figures is called the "Elite Series."  They're made of die cast metal.  Regular price $35.  On sale for $12 each!  I passed on those because I just couldn't decide which ones to get.  The Death Trooper?  Kylo Ren?  Jyn Erso?  Rey?  Because of JJ Abrams' obsessive secrecy with The Force Awakens, the Elite Series Rey is pretty much the only Rey that actually comes with a lightsaber.  Or how about the Riot Control Stormtrooper?  That's the one that stole the show in The Force Awakens by screaming out "Traitor!" and then unleashing the beast on Finn.  If they're still on sale next time I'm at the Mall, maybe, just maybe, I'll buy one.  Or two.

But then it was time for lunch.  And I had resolved to try something I had stumble across the last time I was in the city two weeks ago.  Harvey's, the legendary Canadian burger chain, the birthplace of Frings, now does rice bowls.  The rice bowl is a staple of Japanese fast food.  The name pretty much says it all.  It's a bowl of rice, with some tasty toppings.  The most common of which is the beef bowl, a bowl of rice topped with some thinly-sliced fried beef, a dash of onions, and a sweet sauce.  So I had to try a Harvey's rice bowl.

So the entire Harvey's bowl gimmick is currently known as the Build-a-Bowl.  Step one, you decide what you want it to be a bowl of:  rice, fries, or salad.  I went with rice.  Step two:  you add your meat:  beef or chicken.  I went with beef.  Then they asked me if I wanted regular or Angus.  I went with Angus.  All they do is take a burger paddy, chop it up, and add it to the bowl.  And for the final step, you add the rest of your toppings.  Just like good ol' regular Harvey's, you go over to their toppings station and tell the clerk what you want on it.  I went with lettuce, tomato, and the Asian sesame dressing.

And voila, a Harvey's rice bowl.

A post shared by Mark Cappis (@chaosinabox) on Apr 8, 2017 at 10:41am PDT

All in all, not too bad.  Not sure it'll be a regular fast food dining experience for me, but it may have inspired me to try making one at home.  I've never attempted to make my own beef bowls at home.

But anyway, with lunch in my belly, it was time to do what I always do when I hit the city:  movie time!  And I had one last March blockbuster on my wish list:  Disney's live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.

Beauty and the Beast was poised to become the monster hit it now is.  Not only are Disney's live-action remakes of their animated hits proving to be a steady franchise in its own right, but we're starting to hit the sweet spot for 1990s nostalgia.  Everyone who saw the original when they were a kid is now grown up with kids of their own and ready to share this definitive moment in their developmental years with their families.  It was something that was proven when the trailer set a new record for most viewed YouTube trailer.  It's been out for almost a month now, so the the theatre was only about half-full when I saw it.

I like some of the new additions they made.  They flesh out the backstories a little more.  We find out what happened to Belle's mother, we found out what the palace staff did to get cursed alongside the Beast and turned into household objects, and we get to see a little more villainy on the part of Gaston.  Some of the new additions seemed excessive, though.  I mean, Belle was already enough of an outcast for burying her nose in books instead of engaging in a provincial life...did she really need to be publicly shamed for committing the crime of sharing that love of reading with others?

But the performances are good, the visuals are spectacular, it's a real struggle to not sing along to your favourite songs, and I'll be damned if that Alan Menken score still doesn't give me goosebumps.




All in all,I found it to be a fun nostalgic trip.  I give it 3 out of 4 Nibs.  Full review on the website.

Actually, going through the reviews over on the main site, I'm mildly disturbed.  Reviewing my reviews for the past few years, usually by this point in the year, I've only seen 2 films, 3 max.  But so far this year, I've seen seven.  I don't know if I'll be able to sustain this rate financially.

But then, looking ahead, I see a lot of that had to do with how unusually loaded this March has been.  Logan, Kong, Power Rangers, Beauty and the Beast....  In fact, looking ahead to this summer, it almost seems like it's going to be a light summer for me.  Alien, Planet of the Apes, Pirates of the Caribbean...these are all franchises I'm pretty indifferent towards.  Yeah, there's a new Transformers, but I'm thinking I'm done with Transformers.  They've just done nothing new since the first one.  We've got a new King Arthur.  Maybe I'll take Mom to that one, because Mom always liked the Arthurian legends.  So, yeah.  Outside of the superhero films coming up -- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Man: Homecoming -- it looks like it might be a pretty light summer for me.

And also, thanks to all of the gift cards I got for Christmas, I have yet to actually pay for a movie this year with my own money.   

And thanks to the money I'm saving due to all these gift cards, I'll be able to do it all in stylish new pants. 

Christmas Time is Here

A friend of mine was asking me not too long ago what my biggest nostalgic trigger is.  "What instantly takes you back to that time when you were seven years old, and you were at your happiest?"  Truth is, it's always been going to the movies.  Especially that first thirty seconds when they're scrolling through the production company logos.  It's that feeling that you're about to be taken on a journey...that anything can happen.

I know, it may sound strange, but I grew up in a small town where the nearest movie theatre was an hour's drive away.  Going to see a movie was always an event.  And now, with the holidays right around the corner, going to the movies was always intrinsically tied to Christmas.  I mean, if you're going all the way into the city, you may as well make the most of it, right?  Weekends in December when I was a kid fell into a routine of a full day of Christmas shopping, hitting all the shops around Edmonton and checking people off our list, dinner at a really nice sit-down restaurant, and maybe, if there's time and the latest Disney family feature out, a movie.  Good times.

And I could use a little more of the good times right now.  I've been out-of-sorts as of late.  There's been some shake-ups at work, which has caused the Charlie Brown Christmas-esque holiday depression to set in a little earlier.  So I definitely need a nostalgic distraction right now.

Typically, when I blog about my days in the city, this is where I tell you about the stuff I bought as part of my retail therapy.  Well, given the time of year, most of the stuff I bought was my Christmas shopping, so to blog about that would be getting into massive spoiler territory for my friends and family.  Let's just say I made a really good start on my Christmas shopping and leave it at that.

So with the first round of Christmas shopping safely tucked away, it was time for a movie.  I decided to check out Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  Now, I'd always been pretty indifferent towards the Harry Potter franchise.  Read the first book.  Saw all the movies except the last two (Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2), but it just never grabbed me the way it grabbed a generation.  But, ya know, Fantastic Beasts being a spinoff and no prior knowledge of Harry Potter being required, I figured it'd be a pretty good jumping-on point.

Too bad that seeing Fantastic Beasts turned out to be one of the most unpleasant movie going experiences of my life.  There was this guy.  Firstly, in a half-full theatre, he decides he has to sit right next to me.  He has no concept of personal space.  He's hogging the armrest.  He's jabbing me with his elbow whenever he reaches for his popcorn.  He's sitting with his legs crossed and constantly kicking me when he adjust himself.

And then, the yelling started.  I have never experienced the person who yells things at the screen during a movie.  I was starting to think that it was just a hacky sitcom joke.  But this guy starts yelling at the screen.  The first fantastic beast we encounter in the film is called a Niffler.  And the guy shouts out, "THAT'S A NIFFLER, EH?  HE'S PRETTY CUTE!"  The next magical beast we encounter.  "LOOK OUT FOR THAT NIFFLER!"  And he just keeps going.  "MACUSA IS STUPID!  THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC IS MUCH SMARTER ABOUT THESE THINGS!"  "I WANT TO STUPIDIFY THAT GUY OFF A LEDGE!"  "I THINK HE'S THE OBSCURUS!"  "I HATE THOSE SECOND-SALEMERS!"

On a side note, I think he may have been mentally handicapped, because three-quarters of the way though the film, one of his friends finally turned to him and said, "Shh...shh...remember, we talked about this.  You can't talk to the screen here."

I should of said something.  Hell, at the very least, I should have moved and found a better seat.  But my standard response to an unpleasant situation has always been the "The is fine" comic, so I just said, "This is fine" and tried to watch the movie.

But other than that, how was the movie?  It was OK.  When my Harry Potter-lovin' friends explain the universe to me, I would always tell them that I'd be interested to see the Men in Black of the wizarding world...those wizards and witches who are sent in to cover things up when wizarding affairs threaten to break the barriers between the wizarding world and the Muggle world.  And my friends are like, "Dude!  Those guys exist!  They're called Aurors.  I tell ya, JK Rowling thought of everything!"  So it's nice to see Aurors at work and what they do.  They play a pretty major role as Newt Scamander's rampaging magical beasts threaten to expose the wizarding world.

In fact, just the interaction between the wizarding world and the non-magic world, as the villain's plot is to break down those barriers and declare war on the non-magic world.  I'd always been curious about the mechanics of how these two worlds co-exist.

That being said, I didn't think our new hero, Newt Scamander, was much of a compelling hero.  I get that he's kind of shy and timid, but that sadly means we don't really get a chance to know him or why he's dedicated his life to these fantastic beasts.

But I will give it this.  At least it works as a movie.  My biggest problem with these franchise starters these days (e.g. John Carter, Terminator: Genisys, Independence Day: Resurgence) is that they leave so many loose threads and unanswered questions with the attitude, "That'll be answered in the sequel," that you rarely get a satisfying ending.  This remembers that it has to function as a movie, and we do get an ending.  So, yeah.  It works as a movie.

I give it 3 Nibs with an asterisk, because that rude guy threw off my concentration so much, my rating may change when I see it free of distraction.  Full review on the website.

And speaking off full reviews on the website, I've been meaning to take to the blog and ramble off some of my off-the-cuff comments on Doctor Strange.  Yeah, I saw Doctor Strange a couple of weeks ago, but I never got around to doing my "rambling blog entry about my day in the city" that I typically do.  So, just some off-the-cuff comments on Doctor Strange that you won't find in the full review on the website.

I really liked Doctor Strange.  I know it's starting to get trendy to hate on Marvel for not taking any creative risks, but the other side of that is they've developed a winning formula that you know is going to deliver.  I mean, speaking as a frustrated DC guy, Doctor Strange is kind of what I wanted Green Lantern to be.  The way Doctor Strange uses magic to conjure up all manner of weapons, and do reality-bending combat...that's how Green Lantern should have been using his ring.  The way Steven Strange is all cocksure, but then learning humility is what sets him on his heroic journey...that's how Hal Jordan should have been portrayed.  The way Doctor Strange and Baron Mordo start out as friends and allies, but their differing philosophies eventually put them on opposing paths...that's how the relationship between Hal Jordan and Sinestro should have been portrayed, instead of Sinestro slapping on the yellow power ring in the post-credits stinger and going, "LOL, I'm evil now."

But yeah, Doctor Strange is another solid entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  3 Nibs.

Back to the present.  After Fantastic Beasts, it was time to head home.  But first, dinner.  As I've blogged before, I tend to avoid going to sit-down restaurants when I'm on my own, because I feel silently judge for being there by myself.  But strangely, I don't feel silently judged for going to animated films by myself.  (You're next on my Christmas blockbuster to-watch list, Moana!)  This time, though, I knew I had to brave the sit-down restaurants, all in the name of Star Wars.

I was mildly intrigued a few weeks ago when I saw the TV commercials, and learned that the fast food tie-in with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is with...Swiss Chalet.  Swiss Chalet's not a fast food place.  So, when I stopped at the power centre in St. Albert where I typically eat before leaving the Greater Edmonton Area, rather than Wendy's, I went to the Swiss Chalet on the other end.

It was very strange being there by myself, but I made the most of it.  This is the 21st century after all, so I could pass the time by burying my nose in my smartphone.  As I did that, I had to chuckle to myself.  Everyone laments how people burying their noses in their smartphones is destroying social interaction.  What would have happened if I started wandering around the restaurant, chatting with random strangers, attempting to make friends?

This being that time of year, I treated myself to Swiss Chalet's famous Festive Special...their quarter-chicken dinner served with stuffing, cranberry sauce, and a box of Lindt chocolates for dessert.  I think I stumbled through it with a minimum of social awkwardness.  And I was given my reward...a Rogue One collector's cup!  

A photo posted by Mark Cappis (@chaosinabox) on Nov 26, 2016 at 5:44pm PST

And for those already asking, yes, these are of a much sturdier construction than the flimsy ones that Subway was giving out last year. 

I returned home, and set about unwinding.  Thanks to my encounter with Captain Loudmouth, this trip to the movies wasn't quite the nostalgic trip that it usually is.  But, if I learned anything from this time last year, the biggest nostalgic trip to the movies will be when I got see Rogue One in about a month. 

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Well, a few weeks ago, I took a week off work.  Nothing fancy, no big plans, I just figured it's best to do it now instead of getting the terse e-mail from HR in January about how many unused vacation days I have.  So, yeah.  I pretty much just spent it around the house getting a few chores finished that had been piling up.

I really should have taken before and after pictures of my closet.  One chore that I'd been putting off was getting rid of all the old clothes I don't wear anymore.  See, anytime I bought a new shirt, I'd take an old shirt I wasn't wearing anymore, and just toss it onto the top shelf of my closet.  Well, my top shelf had become piled to the ceiling with stuff I wasn't wearing.  So, I went through it, kept a few for sentimental value, put aside a few for Mom, and took the rest to goodwill.  And I have a usable top shelf in my closet again.

You're probably wondering why I put aside a few for Mom.  Well, part of the impetus to do this was that my mother has taken up quilting as a hobby.  And she found the pattern for a quilt made of old T-shirts.  So, she asked that if I have any old superhero T-shirts (like a geek does) that I'm not wearing anymore, I should pass them along to her so she can try making them into a quilt.  Actually, going through all the old T-shirts I'll be sending home, she'll probably be able to make three:  superheroes, radio stations, and souvenirs.

Another of my chores was getting my car looked after.  You might remember me blogging about my car woes back in the spring.  Well, back then, I could only afford to get my car about 75% fixed.  With the help of the negotiating skills of my Dad, we worked with the mechanic to figure out what would wait for another day.  Well, I figured another day had come, and it was time to get my car up to 85%.  So, I finally got that new transmission filter and a transmission flush that the mechanic recommended.

I was also hoping to get that new cellphone I'd been wanting.  I'm the only one in the office not playing Pokemon GO, so I want to get on board with the fad.  I've been told I can play it on my iPhone 4s, but it'll be glitchy and slow.  Let me let you in a little secret:  everything on my iPhone4s is glitchy and slow.  It's showing its age.  And besides, my contract expired a year ago, so I've been thinking about upgrading anyway.

Anyway, during my vacation, the announcement I'd been waiting for came along:  the shiny new iPhone 7.  So now, I'm facing the debate I'd knew I'd have to face:  go for the shiny new 7, or the newly marked-down 6s?  As I've told others, I'll stick with iPhone, because I've bought too much shit on iTunes to turn back now.  Right now, it's just juggling the numbers, looking for something that works.  I've reached the point where I'm about done researching on the website...time to go into the store and talk to a human.  Only problem with that is I know I'll come out with something new, and I'm not so sure I can afford to right now.

It's funny.  Coming back form vacation, some co-workers were stunned that I didn't go see many movies.  We're kind of between blockbuster season right now, so there's not much I want to see.  Although, I was tempted to see Kubo and the Two Strings because the reviews are pretty good, and that stop-motion animation looked gorgeous.  But, more often than not, I find myself going through my old DVDs.

When I did get my car back from the shop, I thought I'd take a little test drive.  I got an e-mail notice from Amazon that my new Signature Edition of The Iron Giant, got back-ordered, so I figured I'd take a test drive into Edmonton to see if I could find it.  Sadly, it was really hard to find, but I eventually found a copy at HMV.

The Iron Giant still stands as one of my favourite movies.  I'll never forget when I first saw it.  Summer of 1999.  Still on a high from Episode I.  I had just finished college, and was spending the summer on my parents' couch, wondering what to do next with my life.  My sister had just finished high school, and after a summer of backpacking across Europe, was doing the same.  She wanted to go see Tarzan, because it was Disney's animated epic that summer, and she was of that generation.  So I said, "Hey, I kinda wanna see Tarzan, too, and I also wanna see this animated movie they're raving about online called The Iron Giant.  How about we see both?"  She agreed, and we were off to the city.

We saw Tarzan first, and we both agreed it was pretty good.  And then we saw The Iron Giant.  As the end credits rolled, we were both agog at what we had just seen.  My sister looked at me and said, "That was so...grown-up.  I wouldn't really call it a kids movie."  I went home that night, fired up the ol' dial-up Internet, and e-mailed all my friends.  "You have got to see this movie!" I exclaimed.  About the highest compliment I got was, as much as a year later, friends were still e-mailing me back going, "I finally rented it last night, based on your glowing recommendation, and I loved it!"

How much did I love it?  I saw it in the theatre twice.  You have to realize, growing up in a poor farming town in rural Alberta, seeing a movie meant a costly trip into the city.  Every movie was a big deal, and to me, seeing a movie twice in the theatre was something that's just unheard of.  Even as middle age dawns, the number of movies I've seen in the theatre twice is less than 10.  And the second one was The Iron Giant.  (The first was Episode I.  You need to understand the history...the whole world was nuts for Episode I in 1999.)

Sadly, I missed it during its limited theatrical re-release last year when they premiered the new "Signature Edition."  Director Brad Bird reunited as much of the original animation crew as he could, and they finished animation on two deleted scenes to put them back into the film.  Both versions of the film (original version and Signature Edition) are on the new Blu-Ray.

I like the addition of the new scenes.  The first one is a moment between Annie (Hogarth's mother) and Dean (the beatnik artist) earlier in the film.  You may remember we're introduced to Dean when he undoes his pants to let out a squirrel that's been running up his leg.  (I remember seeing that in the theatre for the first time and thinking, "This film's gonna be a little different, isn't it?")  Anyway, in this new scene, Dean comes back the next day to apologize to Annie, and they get to chatting about young Hogarth.  I like this scene.  I like that Annie and Dean's relationship is introduced earlier in the film.  This way, when they're thrust together at the climax, it seems a little less random.

The second scene is one of the more famous deleted scenes.  We're treated to a flashback to the Giant's origins.  We see an army of the Giant's kind laying waste to an entire planet.  The damage they cause is so great, that the planet literally explodes, and the Giant is sent hurling off into space.  It's some great, vintage, 1950s sci-fi movie stuff.  A wonderful addition.

Of course, there's some new bonus features on the disc, the crown jewel of which is a new retrospective documentary about the making of the film called The Giant's Dream.  It answers a question I've had about the film for the longest time.  At the very end of the end credits, there's a simple dedication that reads "For Susan."  I've wanted to know...who's Susan?

Susan, as it turns out, is director Brad Bird's sister.  She was shot and killed by her husband in a domestic dispute.  And as Bird explains in the documentary, working on The Iron Giant turned out to be very cathartic for him.  In fact, working through his grief is how he came up with his central thesis for The Iron Giant:  "What if a gun had a soul?  And didn't want to hurt people anymore?"

So...that's who Susan is.

All in all, I'm still singing the praises of The Iron Giant.

And then it was time to peruse the streaming video services.  Turned out I'd signed up for CraveTV.  I'm with Shaw, and I saw they had an offer to sign up for CraveTV.  I figured I'd do it, try my free first month, and see how I liked it.  Now, the website said I'd get a confirmation e-mail, telling me that it had gone through.  But I never got that confirmation e-mail.  I missed my free first month, and didn't realize it had gone through until my bill went up by $6 a month, and I started looking at the fine print to see why.  So, there it is, I'm on CraveTV now.

One of CraveTV's big selling points was they secured the Canadian streaming rights to HBO's off-air catalogue.  So any classic HBO TV series that's finished it's run is on CraveTV.  They've got The Sopranos, the Wire, Sex and the City, Band of Brothers, and many more.  And, as I noticed, that means they also have a wide selection of HBO's original movies.  So I finally indulged my curiosity and watched The Late Shift.

The Late Shift, based on the book of the same name, was one of HBO's more infamous original movies.  It detailed the behind-the-scenes shenanigans at NBC that led to Jay Leno getting The Tonight Show, and David Letterman moving to CBS to start The Late Show.  It was brought back into infamy a few years ago when Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien had their own tussle over The Tonight Show, and many started joking that HBO would be making a sequel. On Conan's second-last episode of The Tonight Show, Quentin Tarintino even jokingly offered to direct it.

But it was very interesting to see.  In that whole dispute, Jay Leno was almost a victim, as the true mastermind of him landing The Tonight Show was spearheaded by his ruthless agent Helen Kushnick.  And Letterman, too, was a victim, as he let The Tonight Show slip through his fingers as he didn't have an agent and had no desire to play those Hollywood games.

But as I blogged before:  there are two ways to do these kinds of films.  The first kind takes liberties with history so we get a better chance to know those people and what made them tick.  The second time is such a painstaking recreation of the events that we hardly get to know the people.  This is definitely the second type.  It would have been nice to get a clearer picture of Leno and Letterman as people, but this is more focused on the events, rather than the people involved.

Anyways, even though I just got it, I'm thinking about dumping CraveTV.  I mean, the big selling point for me was that it had every Star Trek series, and they're going to be the streaming service provider of the new series, Star Trek: Discovery.  But, every Star Trek is on Netflix now, and here in Canada, Star Trek: Discovery is going to be on Space, so what's the point?

Well...I did like The Newsroom and never got around to watching season 3.  So I'll dump it after I binge-watched season 3.

I've made the same deal with Shomi.  I said I'd dump it after I binge-watched Battlestar: Galactica, one of the bigger sci-fi shows of the 2000s, yet I completely missed it.  Flipping over to Shomi, I figured it was time to watch the cult classic The Warriors.  Once worked with a woman who proclaimed it the greatest movie ever made, but she left the company before she could loan me her DVD.

At a midnight summit of the biggest gangs in New York, one of the biggest and most charismatic gang leaders proposes they team up, citing that all of them together could run the city.  But then, he's gunned down by a rogue gang member just looking to stir up some shit.  This rogue blames our heroes, the gang the Warriors.  Now, with a price on their heads and every other gang in New York out to get them, the Warriors begin the perilous journey back to their home turf.

Well, this movie is pretty dark.  It is grim.  That's really all I've got to say about it.  Sadly, we don't really get to know many of the Warriors as individual characters, so we really don't get to know much about their personal plights, or what got them into this gang lifestyle.

Although, I do like any film that prominently features radio, and this has its iconic scenes of a radio announcer, broadcasting updates on the Warriors' actions to the other gangs.  All we ever see are her lips, whispering sweet nothings into that microphone.  And she was played by Lynn Thigpin, best remembered as the Chief on Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?  

But it does get pretty tense, and there are some good action scenes.

Anyway, I've rambled enough.  That's what I did on my week off at home. 

Thoughts for a Lazy Summer Afternoon

When I was a kid, my school had this thing called USSR:  Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading.  Every day, for the first 15 minutes after lunch, everyone would read.  It was a pleasant way to start the afternoon.  And it was one of those school assignments where there was no way to do it wrong.

Until I got to Grade 7.  A few months into junior high, my English teacher, Mr. Twerdoclib, asked me to stay after class one day.  It turned out he didn't like my choice of reading material during USSR.  For you see, I was still hooked on Choose Your Own Adventure books.  After having been my teacher for a few months, Mr. Twerdoclib couldn't understand why I was reading them.  "Your test scores show you're reading at a high school level, Mark," he said.  "Quite frankly, Choose Your Own Adventures are beneath you."

He then encouraged me to broaden my literary pallet.  "Read some science fiction, read some fantasy, read some mysteries, hell, even try some romance novels, just please stop reading Choose Your Own Adventures."

So I did.  Stopped reading Choose Your Own Adventures that day.  That led into the first time I re-read The Hobbit, and my first attempt at reading The Lord of the Rings.  Someday I'll finish reading The Lord of the Rings, but it still just bores me to tears.  For the mandated mysteries, I borrowed some of my mother's Agatha Christie novels.  A lot of my friends were dabbling in the Dragonriders of Pern series, so I gave that I shot.  Seeing that I was gravitating towards sci-fi and fantasy, Mr. Twerdoclib recommended the The Dark is Rising Sequence.  Made it through the first book, The Dark is Rising, but found it a little too confusing.  Since I had begun embracing Star Trek as my one, true fandom, I soon settled into a steady stream of Star Trek paperbacks.

But Mr. Twerdoclib's words still haunt me this day, especially that last bit:  "Hell, every try some romance novels."  And that's why, when I'm at the book store, or even my corner store, I find myself taking a moment to browse through the Harlequin romance novels.  Some day, I'll probably pick one up and give it a shot.  Because, hey:  Mr. Twedoclib said.

---

There's this phenomenon in Norway known as Slow TV.  NRK, the nation's public broadcaster, showcases these marathon broadcasts of the most mundane things.  They've featured twelve hours of knitting, eight hours of wood burning, and 18 hours of salmon fishing.  So imagine my surprise when I noticed that many of these marathon broadcasts are now on Netflix.

For the hell of it, I watched bit of the very first one, Berginsbanen -- Minnut for Minnut.  The Bergen Line is a very famous railway line in Norway, connecting the cities of Bergin and Oslo.  They have a camera mounted to the front of the train, and it's the entire 7-hour train ride.  Uncut and unedited.

As a guy who's always been fond of trains and rail travel, I found it to be one of the most relaxing things I'd ever watched.  It's such beautiful countryside.  It's actually pretty hilarious when the train goes into a tunnel.  The screen goes black, and all you hear is the white noise of the wheels on the rails.  Apparently, in the original broadcast, during these parts, they'd cut to some historical clips about the history of the railway.  But not here.  You're just on the train.  In the darkness.

I tell you, it's just amazing.  It helps that the Norwegian countryside is gorgeous.

I am reminded of the Travel Channel tried something similar.  They had a TV show about 10 or 12 years ago called Canada's Greatest Ride, which took you from one end of the country to the end by rail.  Just like Slow TV, the vast majority of the footage was filmed from a VIA locomotive, facing forward.  And to premiere it, for one week, they showed a marathon of all their raw footage.

That was actually...pretty boring.  When people think of going across Canada by rail, the first thing they think about is going through the Rocky Mountains.  I was so looking forward to seeing some amazing Rocky Mountain vistas from the rails.  But, for some reason, they decided to film the Rocky Mountain portions of the show at night.  So, all you saw, was darkness in all directions.  You only saw what the headlight saw.  Until you went into a tunnel.  Then that lone headlight would light up the tunnel magnificently, and you'd see an amazing tunnel interior.  And then back out into the darkness.

And I kept watching it to see if I'd catch a glimpse of train coming through my hometown of Entwistle  But it never came.  Finally, in one of the documentary segments, they explained.  Shortly after they left Jasper, their camera crapped out.  So they got no footage of Jasper to Edmonton!

I'd like to remake it.  Do it properly.  Full HD cameras.  Film it in daylight.  Start in Edmonton.  Head into the Rockies, through Jasper, down to Vancouver.  Then back into Alberta through Banff and into Calgary.  And back north to Edmonton to complete the circuit.

But until then, I've got my Slow TV on Netflix.  Might not dive back into the Bergen line, but they have some 1-hour episodes of Norway's shorter rail lines.

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There was some good news out of Edmonton this past week.  A construction project I've been interested in and have been following for a few years was finally declared finished!

It's the brand new Royal Alberta Museum in downtown Edmonton!



They've been trying to get this built for about 10 years now.  Originally announced by Ralph Klein to celebrate the province's centennial in 2005, it got shuffled around and put on the back burner and such until it was finally made a priority 5 years ago or so.  And now it's here!

Click on that link above to see CTV's video.  (For some reason, the embed code won't work for me.)  It's just beautiful inside.  Sadly, though, it's not open for business yet.  Now begins the 1.5 or so year process of moving everything in and building the displays.  The original museum closed up back in the spring to being packing.

And that's the question now that some people are asking.  What's to become of the original museum?  As they say in the news story, because of the process of packing up and moving, there's no immediate plans.  It's still a perfectly fine building.  The only reason why the Royal Alberta Museum is moving is because they ran out of room.  Something like 80% of their collection is in storage because they have no room to display it.

The government did ask for estimates to demolish it back in the spring, and was immediately met with public backlash.  Last time I was there, I marveled at what a magnificent building it is.  It truly is a product of its time.  Built in 1967 as a Canadian centennial project, the entire building just screams 1960s "fortress of knowledge."  You can just picture steely-eyed missile men inside, smoking their pipes and planning ways to beat the Commies to the Moon.  So it really would be a shame to lose it.

When the project was first announced, and people started discussing what to do with the old building, I heard several good ideas.  Alberta is one of the few provinces that does not have an official residence for its Lieutenant Governor, so one idea was converting it into the Lieutenant Governor's mansion.  Another idea was the City of Edmonton has acquired so many artifacts over the years, that it may be time to build a City of Edmonton Museum.

But I think my favourite idea was the Natural History Museum.   What's always been a centerpiece of the Royal Alberta Museum was its wildlife gallery.  Some of the finest taxidermied specimens of Alberta wildlife, displayed in elaborate dioramas showcasing their natural habitats.  Before the gallery received a massive refurbishment in the mid-2000s, it really was set up like an art gallery, as you walked down row upon row of those amazing displays.

So one idea that was floated was to keep all those dioramas at the original museum, and turn the whole thing into the Natural History Museum of Alberta.  That is one idea I could get behind.

But the point is, the original Royal Alberta Museum is too beautiful a structure to see demolished.  So let's make sure it gets preserved and reused into something wonderful. 

Going Backwards

Well, there's a new superhero movie on the horizon, and that means I'd better head off to the city and see it!  But then, as I looked back over my blog entries, I realized that, for the last few movies I've seen, I just ran into the theatre on the north side, and then headed home.  I hadn't spent a full day in the city just bummin' around.  It felt like I was due.

While perusing the movie times for Suicide Squad online, I noticed that the earliest show -- 11:30AM -- still had some pretty good seats.  So I was going to the early show.  I decided, then, to do things backwards.  Rather then spend the day goofing around and capping it off with a movie, I'd see the movie first and then goof around.

I went straight into West Edmonton Mall.  I do love arriving at the mall early, as the parking lot is pretty empty and it's easy to find a good spot.  I had just enough time to browse HMV before the theatre opened.  I always marvel at how HMV has changed over the years.  When HMV first opened in its currently location in the late 1990s, it was very much HMV's flagship store.  Both levels, nothing but CDs.  Rap, country, and a few other genres of music had their own rooms...pretty much like stores-within-the-store.  There was a listening lounge, which was the popular meeting spot for me and my friends.  But now, that's all gone.  The CD selection is getting smaller and smaller, and the focus is changing more and more to pop culture gift-ware.  Can't find the latest Criterion release?  Well how about a Game of Thrones coffee mug instead?

Still had some time before the theatre opened, so I hit the food court for an early lunch.  The only problem with hitting West Edmonton Mall so early is there's no place to have lunch.  It was 10:45, but most places didn't open or start serving lunch until 11AM.  About the only place open was New York Fries, so I treated myself to their Bacon Double Cheese fries.  It's their fries, with cheese curds, and then covered with cheese sauce, and topped with bacon bits and green onions.  Very cheesy.  Nothing like a cheese-coated cheese curd for some cheese-ception.

With a quick lunch in my belly, it was time for Suicide Squad.

Suicide Squad is a wonderful concept for the comics.  Super-criminals blackmailed by the government into becoming a black-ops group.  But, the sheer fact that they decided to make it into a movie struck me as very reactionary.  Specifically, a reaction to Guardians of the Galaxy.  When Guardians hit it big, I fully imagine that some Warner Brothers exec said, "Hey!  Doesn't DC have a wacky super-team of misfits that we can make into a movie?"  The reactionary attitude continued with the marketing.  When Deadpool hit it big in the spring, the marketing took a shift to make the film look more irreverent, like Deadpool.  And, truth be told, as the release date drew nearer, I was already burnt out on the film, as it seems like they'd been hitting us with trailers and behind-the-scenes footage and pictures and teases for years now.

With the rising influence of meta-humans in the world, ruthless government agent Amanda Waller hatches a plan:  take some of the meta-humans already in custody, and blackmail them into working for her.  Among those she recruits:  Deadshot, the world's greatest marksman; Harley Quinn, best known as accomplice and love interest to the Joker; Captain Boomerang, the Aussie bank robber who's skilled with his country's signature weapon;  El Diablo, a guy with fire powers and maybe possessed by a demon?  It's never really explained.  Anyway, one of Waller's earlier recruits, a sorceress known as the Enchantress, has gone rogue, is vowing revenge on Waller, and has begun laying waste to Midway City.  So, Waller's team -- dubbed the Suicide Squad -- is sent in to quell the situation.

I know the reviews haven't been very good.  But I didn't find the movie incredibly bad.  I didn't find it incredibly good, either.  It's only crime is mediocrity.  As superhero movies go, it's just overwhelmingly...average.  As many other critic has pointed out, I'm getting kind of tired of the "swirling vortex of doom that the heroes have to shut down."

But there is good in the movie.  Margot Robbie absolutely nails Harley Quinn.  She is so spot-on perfect in the role.  Will Smith is also really good as Deadshot, the hitman who's trying to be a better person for his daughter.  And Jared Leto is a great Joker..but we see so little of him.  In fact, the opening is great, where we're introduced to all of the Squad, and we see how they were apprehended (bringing in quick cameos by Batman and the Flash, to help build that cinematic universe).

But as soon as we hit Midway City and they set out to take down the villain...yeah.  It's just so average.

I give it three nibs.  Full review on the website.

From there, it was out into the mall to explore, and wander, and hopefully spend not too much money.  I made my way down to the Bay.  With the Olympics in full swing, and the Bay being the official outfitter of Team Canada, they were actually having a bit of a fashion show, showcasing all the Olympic clothing now on sale at the Bay.  I remember watching the Vancouver 2010 Olympics on TV with my Dad.  Dad mentioned he actually liked some of the winter gear that Team Canada was wearing, and actually seemed mildly disappointed that the Bay was the official outfitter and, as such, you could buy all that stuff at the Bay.

And, of course, there were the Pokemon GO signs all over the place.  When Pokemon GO came out and hit it big about a month ago, West Edmonton Mall had a brainstorm when they discovered that several Pokestops and Gyms were in the mall.  They actually printed up giant signs pointing out where exactly they are.  They've got a contest going on, too.  Post your pictures of your pokemon on the mall, hastag it #pokemonWEM, and you're entered into a contest.  I think this is a brilliant idea.  I see lots of my Facebook friends mocking the popularity of Pokemon GO, but the part of brain that lives in the station's promotions department, I'm always thinking, "How can I use this to plug the station?"  And I think West Edmonton Mall's idea is a good one.

A photo posted by Mark Cappis (@chaosinabox) on Aug 6, 2016 at 1:46pm PDT

Too bad I'm not playing Pokemon GO right now.  It won't run on my phone!  I currently have an iPhone 4S.  I've been told that you can play Pokemon GO on a 4S, but it's buggy and crashes a lot.  Let me tell you a little secret:  everything's buggy and crashes a lot on my 4S.  My contract expired back at Thanksgiving, so I've been looking to upgrade anyway.  The 6S is a little out of my budget right now, but then I see the SE has pretty much everything under the hood that the 6S has, it's just packed into a 5's body.  Or who knows?  Maybe I should just wait until the fall, because it looks like the 7 is coming out sometime this fall.  I don't know.  And as always, I stroll through the Apple Store just made me depressed that I couldn't buy one today.

Then I started browsing in Chapters.  I managed to find a trade paperback I'd been after for a while, and while I was at it, I nabbed a second one.

A photo posted by Mark Cappis (@chaosinabox) on Aug 6, 2016 at 5:14pm PDT

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Kevin Smith, and over the years I've slowly been acquiring his comic book work.  About 15 years ago, he did a critically-acclaimed run on Green Arrow.  His first story, Quiver, resurrected Oliver Queen from the grave and had him once again claim the mantle of Green Arrow.  His second story, The Sounds of Violence, is about Ollie re-adjusting to the world, and battling Onomatopoeia, a villain of Smith's creation.  Onomatopoeia is a serial killer who targets non-powered superheroes (e.g. Green Arrow, Batman), and shows up in Star City with Team Arrow in his sights.  His name comes from the fact that he only communicates by mimicking the sounds of his surroundings.  Anyway, I've had the trade paperback for Quiver for some time, but have never been able to find the one for The Sounds of Violence.  The one on the left is a new collection which has both of Smith's stories, so I finally got The Sounds of Violence.

The other one, Batman '66 Meets the Green Hornet, is much more recent...maybe two years old.  A few years ago, DC was doing a comic called Batman '66, which was a Batman comic continuing the adventures of the Adam West Batman.  Since Smith has written both Batman and Green Hornet comics, and is an admitted huge fan of the 1960s Batman, he seemed to be the natural choice to write a follow-up to the legendary Batman/Green Hornet crossover episode.  To help him out, Smith recruited Ralph Garman, an L.A. radio personality and occasional actor who co-hosts Smith's podcast Hollywood Babble-On, and is also a gigantic fan of the 1960s Batman.  And they whipped up a tale where the Green Hornet and Kato once again find themselves in Gotham City, and cross paths with the Caped Crusader.

It was kind of funny buying them.  When one of the clerks spotted me picking up a Batman comic, he started geeking out and telling me how he was at Anime-thon yesterday (the U of A Anime Club's annual anime festival), and how he was cosplaying as the Joker.  And then I got up to the till and that clerk must have been new or something, as no one had come through her till with graphic novels yet.  She stared at my purchases in utter fascination.  She pointed to the Green Hornet.  "Is this a superhero, too?  I've never heard of him," she said.  I replied, "Yeah, he was very popular in the 1960s."  "That would explain it," said she.

And at that, I started heading home with just a twinge of disappointment.  I was also hoping to pick up the Blu-Ray of Batman: The Killing Joke, which came out earlier this week.  As I've said, I've kind of grown bored with all of DC and WB's straight-to-video animated films, but since The Killing Joke is one of the most acclaimed Batman comics ever, I figured it was worth picking up.  But it was sold out at all my usual haunts, and since I'd spent so much money on the graphic novels, I didn't feel like going to my unusual haunts.  Besides, I still have too many new Blu-Rays in my "to-watch" pile on my coffee table.

And that was it.  My Saturday in the city.  Had a nice, leisurely drive home, and have been blogging ever since.  And now I see it's bedtime.