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Marvel's The Defenders Review | Chamorros Watching TV
Hafa adai and welcome to Chamorro Cinema! Today I'm talking The Defenders, Netflix's valiant attempt to craft an Avengers style team on the small screen. Was it good? Bad? Maybe a little of both? Let's discuss Marvel's The Defenders!
On the TV front, I think Marvel has been trailing behind DC for a while now. DC has a whole slew of successful shows that aren't afraid to create their own immersive worlds and aside from avoiding a few sacred cows they are allowed to play in there own low budget sandbox. The Arrowverse and Gotham have really done a fantastic job at being their own thing and creating their own mythology.
Marvel's shows trump the CW in sharp visuals and budgets; however, the shows seem like that annoying kid, who swears up and down that they are secret best friends with the most popular kid in school, they slavishly, and at times annoyingly, refer to their awesome best friend, even though the best friend refuses to acknowledge them publicly. Marvel has the tough job of trying to tie in the TV shows without messing up the secret sauce that is keeping the film universe pumping out the hits.
The Netflix shows have taken a different approach, they keep things street level and barely acknowledge the films. I think it's that independence from the main MCU has made them far better received than their network brethren. They have been stylish, edgy and violent. Not quite hard R but definately harder than PG-13.
I think it was a valiant effort starting off strong with Daredevil. Wilson Fisk was an engaging villain the fights were brutal and Matt Murdock's guilty conscience made for some interesting drama. The show was a few episodes too long and could've done better without the Stick and Hand stuff. The show worked best when it was more street level and less...comic booky...I know blasphemous right.Daredevil season two is where things start to go a little bit off the rails. Daredevil season 2 had a tremendous first half, with the anti-hero Frank Castle squaring off with Matt Murdock and really challenging his commitment to non-lethal crime fighting which perfectly mirrors Matt's crisis of faith which is a central theme to the show...then the Hand show up and the show starts it's steady decline. The Hand is just boring...it feels forced and the show suffers for it.
Netflix continued with it's strongest series to date, Jessica Jones. Killgrave is far and away my favorite MCU villain and his relationship with the PTSD addled Jessica is creepy and really draws you in. Jessica Jones did a great job introducing Luke Cage and superpowers into the mix without beating you over the head with it. In fact you could remove the superpowers from Jessica and the show would still be awesome. The subplot with Nuke was the weakest part of the series and like Daredevil's Elektra subplot seems to be shoehorned in for both fan service and to set up something else down the line.
Iron Fist was really poorly done. Not only was the casting way off, and I'm not talking about white-washing I honestly don't mind the fact that Danny Rand is a white dude...he's always been a white dude. Finn Jones just was not good as the character. I didn't buy him as a great martial artist or as a man trained to be some great warrior he seemed like an aloof stoner to me. Like all the Netflix series it really should be 6-8 episodes. The villains are once again The Hand. For a group of evil ninja assassins they are just kinda boring. Colleen Wing is introduced and proves herself to be a much stronger protagonist than the title character. This entire season did very little to make me a believer in this series.After a disappointing Iron Fist and a ho-hum ending to both Daredevil season 2 and Luke Cage I really was hoping for a better outing in The Defenders than what we got. The series opens with Iron Fist and Colleen fighting a woman in the sewers and then goes through the obligatory introductions of the main characters...unfortunately it then takes 4 episodes before they get together. The villains are the Hand led by Sigourney Weaver are forgettable at best and un-intimating at worst. truly a disappointing team up in a world of Avengers
Best Handheld Mics for YouTube | Chamorros Reviewing Tech
I buy a lot of Fifine products. They're low cost and have a solid build quality across the board. This mic is an improvement over the previous model in both aesthetics and sound quality...all except for the redesigned USB dongle. I'm not a fan of the larger dongle, fans, or the glossy plastic and the new logo. That said I'm sure the fins help with heat dissipation and the larger size probably makes for a better sound card. The gun metal color and black mesh are a vast improvement over the cheaper looking silver mesh that was on the last one. The digital display is nice but I don't know how useful it is to the average home user. I would definitely buy a few of these mics for karaoke night!
Budget Voice Recorder for YouTube| Yemenren R5 Digital Voice Recorder Rev...
This recorder packs quite a punch! I buy budget recording equipment all the time, but until now I have always needed to use my phone to record interviews and ambient noise for my YouTube channel. Well, all it takes is one dead battery right before an interview to teach me my lesson. I needed a voice recorder and I needed one now. The biggest hurdle for me was cost and convenience. I needed something that I had a price point that was consumer friendly (Translation: Cheap) and convenient...meaning it has to easily be transferred to my computer.
The Yemenren did all I needed in spades. The quality of the recording is awesome! The VOR mode actually worked except when the voices are too similar, and playback sounded really good. And at the end of the day, these are the biggest promises a recorder needs to deliver on and it definitely does.
There are a couple of drawbacks. The first is that it lacks any audio inputs so you can't partner it up with a lapel mic. Second, the menu isn't as intuitive as I'd like and lastly and the worst offender is that, often times I had to change the file extension from .WAVA to .WAV in order to import it into my software which was a big nuisance.
For what I paid for my recorder I couldn't be happier with my purchase. I will certainly be buying other products from Yemenren in
NBC's Powerless | Nerds Reviewing Television
Hafa Adai! It's me again Island Boy Manuel Reviewing NBC's Superhero Comedy, Powerless, so is it good? Bad? Maybe a little of both? Let's find out as we review Powerless.
For those of you not in the know, Powerless was supposed to be the DC version of The Office... an office of regular ol' insurance agents dealing with the clean up of super battles. Unfortunately, after Bruce Wayne witnessed this first hand after the events of Man of Steel, he decided to take that into his own hands in BVS...or at least that's the best guess I have as to why scrapped the pilot that creator/showrunner Ben Queen debuted at Comic-con and decided to replace it with this new concept by Justin Halpern & Patrick Schumacker.
The cast is a dream and they really are doing their best to be slightly different versions of characters from better shows - Hudgens has a great demeanor as the Leslie Knope type, Tudyk is perfectly suited to play the Michael Scott character, Pudi is always fun to watch and even though it's the polar opposite of Abed he should be able to excel as the slacker April type, Funches is definitely the lovable Andy Dwyer of the bunch and Wendy is the socially awkward one.
For those of you not in the know, Powerless was supposed to be the DC version of The Office... an office of regular ol' insurance agents dealing with the clean up of super battles. Unfortunately, after Bruce Wayne witnessed this first hand after the events of Man of Steel, he decided to take that into his own hands in BVS...or at least that's the best guess I have as to why scrapped the pilot that creator/showrunner Ben Queen debuted at Comic-con and decided to replace it with this new concept by Justin Halpern & Patrick Schumacker.
The original concept was grounded, funny and would easily fit into the void left behind by The Office and Parks & Rec; Instead, the new concept focuses on Wayne Security, it's like giving a show to Q from the 007 movies or making a companion film focusing on Bruce and Lloyd from Get Smart, and nobody would ever greenlight that film...right? At the end of the day the cast now gets to make gadgets and give a few Batman themed shout-outs here and there... sounds good right? No I don't think so either.
Vanessa Hudgens stars as the naive and like-able Emily Locke, the new head of R&D who has to get slackers Teddy (Danny Pudi), Ron (Ron Funches) and Wendy (Jennie Pierson) cranking out new ideas to combat their rivals at Lexcorp. Her boss is Bruce Wayne's hapless cousin Van, played by Alan Tudyk. The unsung hero of the cast is the mean spirited Jackie, played by Christina Kirk doing her best Jane lynch impression.
The cast is a dream and they really are doing their best to be slightly different versions of characters from better shows - Hudgens has a great demeanor as the Leslie Knope type, Tudyk is perfectly suited to play the Michael Scott character, Pudi is always fun to watch and even though it's the polar opposite of Abed he should be able to excel as the slacker April type, Funches is definitely the lovable Andy Dwyer of the bunch and Wendy is the socially awkward one.
The writing in this is...well lazy. None of the characters seem to have any depth and none of them stand out at all. Van is too aloof and lacks the heart that Steve Carell brought to his boss role. By episode 5 Van gets a tad better but he's still very one note. Pudi is given absolutely nothing memorable or quirky or that takes advantage of his physical comedy skills. The rest of the cast is serviceable, Ron is a plot device to throw in the ol' "you people" type shtick (again lazy low hanging fruit), Jackie gets to be mean and crude by delivering every line super fast and under her breath a la Jane Lynch, and Wendy is essentially Fat Amy from Pitch Perfect meets Chloe O'Brien so her one trait is that she is blunt and overly sexualized and that's supposed to be funny because she's not a typically attractive person...never seen that joke before...ever.
The theme of laziness carries into the comic bookiness of the story...I don't know why this in the DC Universe...seriously apart from a few name drops and the appearance of Crimson Fox...don't worry you can wiki who the eff she is, I'll wait...this could take place in a spy themed world or any other genre and it wouldn't change a darn thing.
At the end of the day it's a pleasant show with some easy jokes thrown in here and there. It's not offensively bad, but it's not anything you'll miss if it goes away. It's just good enough for the network to sandwich between better shows so you don't change channels...Strangely it's after Superstore and before Chicago Med..so the strategy seems to be start funny and ramp it down before the drama starts. Anyway, let me know what you think about Powerless airing Thursday nights on NBC.
The theme of laziness carries into the comic bookiness of the story...I don't know why this in the DC Universe...seriously apart from a few name drops and the appearance of Crimson Fox...don't worry you can wiki who the eff she is, I'll wait...this could take place in a spy themed world or any other genre and it wouldn't change a darn thing.
At the end of the day it's a pleasant show with some easy jokes thrown in here and there. It's not offensively bad, but it's not anything you'll miss if it goes away. It's just good enough for the network to sandwich between better shows so you don't change channels...Strangely it's after Superstore and before Chicago Med..so the strategy seems to be start funny and ramp it down before the drama starts. Anyway, let me know what you think about Powerless airing Thursday nights on NBC.
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