Reviews - Captain America: Civil War, Rifftrax:Live Time Chaser, and Jungle Book! Plus A to Z Challenge Reflections and Writing Humor with Misha Gericke

Captain America: Civil War Review

The team is split by the Sokovia Accords, which grants the UN control of the Avengers. When the Captain’s pal Bucky is accused of bombing a UN building, the team is split further as Captain moves to protect Bucky and find the real villain.
The idea of accountability and control over powers is a fascinating conflict. (Also explored in Batman v Superman.) It raises a lot of moral and ethical questions on both sides. A lot of it comes down to standing for what you believe is right.
It’s tough to watch them fight, but you know they won’t really kill each other. (Except for Black Panther – he’s out for blood. And he is badass.)
The villain isn’t remarkable, but his cause is just there to drive the conflict between the characters.
The special effects are stunning. You do not want to miss this in 3D! Some of the best effects are the smaller stunts, like Bucky grabbing a moving motorcycle, spinning it in the air, and landing on it while still moving.
Like Winter Soldier, it does have a darker tone. This is offset by some great humor, especially from newcomer Spiderman (as chatty and dorky as the comic books) and of course Ant-Man, who steals almost every scene he’s in.
Visually stunning, this more character-driven story is a must see in the theaters. Highly recommended!

RiffTrax: Live – Time Chasers Review

Thursday, May 5 was RiffTrax night – and no way I’d miss it.

Time Chasers is not a memorable movie. It’s stupid and very bland. The guys did a good job with this sup-par offering of a film.

The film had an early 80’s vibe to it. Sadly, it was made in 1994.

And the time machine was a Cesna airplane. Yes, really! Made from a Commodore-64. No, I’m not making this up! Did I mention the film was done in 1994?

If you missed it, there’s a encore show on May 17 – get your tickets here.

Then prepare for June 28 and the RiffTrax:Live MST3K Reunion Show!

The Jungle Book Review

The animation in this film is beyond stunning. All of the animals and some of the jungle is CGI, but it all blends seamlessly with the real-life Mowgli. Oscar contender for sure. It remains faithful to the source and even manages to insert two songs into the retelling. Overall, I liked the story, but I didn’t love it. I just didn’t connect on that deeper level. However, for the special effects alone, especially in 3D, I highly recommend it.

Bringing the Humor by Misha Gericke

Thanks for having me over, Alex!

I love visiting Alex’s blog on my blog tours, but dang, I invariably find it hard to write a post for him. Why? Because of this little requirement that there has to be some kind of humor in the post.

Humor is a pain in the butt to write. Really. So I’m going to take this request for humor literally and just write about humor. (See what I did there? Huh? Huh? *shifty grin*)

My books usually have something dark in them, mostly because I don’t shy away from characters’ dark sides. Endless deals with two types of immortals, one of which is addicted to killing the other in order to be… well… uhm… more immortal. (Explaining will take up too many words and I only have 300, so read the book. Why yes, that is a shameless plug.)

At the same time, I didn’t want the book to be all doom and gloom. Humor is the perfect solution, except… I suck at writing humorous scenes.

So what’s a girl to do?

My recipe differs from book to book, but in Endless, my recipe went something like this.

Take one smart Alec main character. Add one snarky side-kick. Mix in scenes. Et voila.

The banter is endless. (Pun intentional? Totally. *Big wink.*) You know what else it is? Funny. There’s just something really amusing about having someone who always wants the last word in every conversation, combined with someone who has no limits to what he’s willing to say and when.

But enough about me. How do you bring humor into your writing? If you don’t write, what’s your favorite sort of humor? (Dark and bitter? Slapstick? Farcical?)

(Oh look! I came in at almost exactly three hundred words. These are the last five.)

Endless
“First, do no harm.” Blake Ryan swore that oath to become a doctor. Ironic, given that he spent most of his thousand year life sucking souls out of other immortals.
Find it at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Goodreads
Find Misha at blog, Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr

Six Strings

The latest issues of Six Strings is available! You can download it for free.
The world of soundtracks, scores, films, books, and more.
Put together by our very own Jermey Hawkins.

A to Z Challenge Reflections

This was my seventh Challenge and sixth time as co-host.

I want to start by thanking the Challenge Team who are responsible for making it all happen.

I won’t thank everyone, but I do want to say a big thanks to my Ninja Minions. Because without these awesome people, I never wouldn’t kept up: Rhonda Albom, Nicola Burggraf, Nilanjana Bose, Susan Gourley, Mason Canyon, Stephanie Faris, Yolanda Renee, Ann Bennett, Patricia Lynne, Melanie Schultz, Donna McDine, and JA Scott.

I’m going to keep this short. Most want to know how it went with A to Z Lite. While it helped I wasn’t returning a ton of comments every day, there were other issues:

The point of the Challenge is daily posting. Lite is not daily.

I still had to come up with posts for all of the letters. I made them shorter this year, but putting six together for the week made the posts rather long.

Everyone else was still posting daily and I still felt compelled to visit as many as possible…

So, if you were hoping for A to Z Lite next year, it’s just not a feasible option.

Who else saw Civil War this past weekend? Did you see Jungle Book’s amazing animation last month? Catch RiffTrax: Live? Picking up Six Strings? How do you put humor in your writing? And what were your thoughts on the Challenge this year, whether you participated or not…?

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