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It is very much an early 90s era Carrey and I am assuming that when he got on set the director just said, "you do you." Ben Schwartz was also really good as Sonic and gave life to a character that really has been on fumes for the better part of 20 years.

I just watched Sonic, and I agree. Jim Carey was surprisingly decent.

I love Deep Sea Diver, I have all their vinyl and their early EP on cd. There's some great songs and I love her voice. I met Jessica a time or two years back when she was touring with Beck. She was very nice and it's been a blast to follow her band from early on. Back in around 2009 or 2010, they did this one show in Hermosa Beach I went to, which was crazy because it's not a place bands play and it was right near where I lived at the time. Turned out it was a charity benefit in the local auditorium and not many people were there and I watched them jam out up close too.

Loved Color Out of Space as well and was utterly suprised by how decent Underwater was. Also ended up really enjoying Sonic the Hedgehog and wondered why we can't have more of THAT Jim Carrey these days, as well as The Hunt which ended up being a pretty good action flick. If you've been playing as many games as I have and are on a Lovecraft kick, definitely check out The Sinking City which is set in the world and works of HP Lovecraft and goes about breaking down how kind of fucked up he was as a real person with his beliefs.

EGOT? Forget that, I’m going to be the first GOTEM: Grammy, Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Mesothelioma

Honestly, in terms of top ten for movies, not a lot stuck with me this year. Perhaps because everything I saw was on the small screen and all of the “great” stuff got so much critical hype that it felt a little flat (or I’ve missed it). Here are the ones I did like: Extra Ordinary, Color Out of Space, The Invisible Man, Shirley, Small Axe Mangrove and Lovers Rock (haven’t seen the rest of that series yet), Palm Springs, An American Pickle, American Utopia, The Assistant (although it’s so documentary-like and dry—it reminded me of when I interned at a small production company in college—that it’s hard to recommend to people who aren’t intensely fascinated by the subject matter). I know there are more, but I can’t think of them right now. Film that was most praised that I was underwhelmed by: She Dies Tomorrow (I think I’m getting burnt out on the art-house horror trend . Didn’t hate it but it just didn’t leave much of an impression). Film that was critically trashed that I was legitimately surprised how much I enjoyed: Underwater. It’s no masterpiece, but for an Alien knockoff, I liked it a helluva lot more thanPrometheus or Alien:Covenant. Top TV: Big Mouth, Good Lord Bird, The Queen’s Gambit, The Flight Attendant, Schitt’s Creek, Lovecraft Country (it was hit-or-miss, but overall I liked it), Search Party. There are more, but that’s what I remember. TV that was less than the sum of its parts: Devs. And the third season of Westworld sucked. I spent a lot of 2020 playing more videogames than I can count. There was a lot of music I liked this year, but RTJ4 and Fetch the Bolt Cutters were by far what I listened to the most. Finally, I will sincerely promote the latest album from Deep Sea Diver called Impossible Weight. They’re an up-and-coming Seattle band and —full disclosure—friends of mine. They were recently profiled on Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast and their album has a 79 on Metacritic.

I have questions about this too. Because I remember thinking, after seeing the CGI in the first WW, that their budget was significantly less than other DCEU movies. And I thought that was because they didn’t believe WW1 would do well. For comparison, “Man of Steel” had a budget of 225-250$. “Wonder Woman”s budget was $120 million. Now that’s still a huge budget but you could tell there were places Patty Jenkins had to make do. (Particularly in the fight with Ares at the end which Jenkins said she didn’t even want in the film.) And this second one had a higher budget, $200 million. But I want to know why Wonder Woman still isn’t getting as much money as the first Superman (which was awful) let alone BvS or Justice League. And that made me wonder if they pulled some last minute type budget stuff (song rights?, some editing) when they realized it would go to streaming and not theaters? Is this a conspiracy theory? Idk. But I feel like the Wonder Woman movies could be better than they are if they were given more attention. The second one needing more help than the first, obviously.

If I recall she mentions the original origin story of her being made out of clay by her mother, which was carried over in the AMAZING Brian Azzarello New 52 version of the character which was set around the Greek Pantheon in the modern DC universe. It is revealed later in both the movie and comic that she is an illegitimate child of Zeus, making her a demigod, though in the film it is done more for the reveal as her being a "god-killer" left by a dying Zeus to stop Ares, Zeus would also shield her homeland from Ares as part of his final act. As for the sequel, I liked it for what it was, as the leads were great and it had better villains than the first film, but damn you could tell how hard the shutdown had hurt production and they were just trying to make the best of a horrible situation. There were numerous shots of Wonder Woman "running" that looked worse than the original Superman film and I felt that the final confrontation between WW and the main villain was a bit lacking in oomph. Also how in the blue fuck do you have a movie set and promoted as being in the mid-80s and NOT HAVE A SINGLE licensed song from the era?