The Penguin and Honey Bunny

TV Series that additional content to their respective franchises.

The Penguin

This crime drama is as dark as "The Batman" movie which it continues from. Here we follow Ozwald Cobb (wonderfully played by Colin Farrell) as he weasels his way from being a lowly underling to the crime boss better known as the titular Penguin. While there aren't so many action scenes the plot, acting and effects are very well done making this so far single season show really easy to recommend. You don't really have to know anything about Batman, Penguin or the movie preceding it to enjoy it either. Big thumbs up!

Honey Bunny

This is actually the second spin off for Citadel, but unlike the first one this is a prequel series set in India and they won't let you forget it with all the synth music tracks and silly Indian humor peppered through out. In it we follow a struggling actress who gets into the spy game and while there are some good action sequences in here the story itself is weaker than its peers. Combined with the fact that its all happened in the past makes it a bit of a non starter. Feel free to skip this one.

Piracy in the Age of AI

I'm very late (as per usual) compared to others talking about the feats AI can achieve these days, but given that I've now got a chatGPT level spam comment on one of my posts its a good time to get into it. Sure, making essays and stories might be one thing but what impresses me most is chatGPT is able to handle stuff like "make an HTML webpage with a form that lists these countries as a radio set, have character fields for name, email and comment and a submit button" and it will generate the code for you. I wouldn't be surprised if it could handle heavier programmatic requests either!

Then of course there's the AI art side of things where you just type in what you want to see and it makes it for you. For this one I'm using Night Cafe which has some excellent free to use capabilities (but pay for an expanded range of options). It certainly feels like cheating when you get an amazing artwork in under five minutes. This side of things still has obvious limitations especially when it comes to fingers or some requests like: "a spider wearing boxing gloves" which almost without fail produces some form of friendly neighborhood Spiderman. What I want to know is... are these almost-instant codes and artworks plagiarism and piracy? Should be no but also... yes? Regardless, I might start using some of these AI pics on this site just for laughs.

Speaking of actual sea faring piracy, the Chinese coast guard are keeping that alive when they harass Philippine soldiers at sea with swords and axes. Keep in mind both sides have firearms but I assume to keep things from escalating they just stick with medieval level weaponry. This practice isn't just for their ocean forces either as modern Chinese soldiers armed with spears testing their borders with India.

Infinite and Hotel Mumbai

Movies with a body count.

Infinite

Memories are a funny thing, especially if you can retain yours past death as you get reborn into a new body. This is the whole premise of this film which stars Mark Wahlberg as one such "gifted" individual who is self medicating his "crazy" but actually is the key to saving or ending the world. While the action is average, supposedly super knowledgeable characters make stupid decisions regularly which kind of breaks the whole fiction. Not recommended.

Hotel Mumbai

This tense movie depicts the night the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in India was attacked by terrorists, and isn't shy to show the violence enacted upon the people. Good points for realism and good acting too, especially by the bad guys who also get to goof around occasionally. I did find that they had a small "hotel" interior to work with though which meant sometimes it felt that the whole place was just four rooms, two hallways and a lobby but other than that, no significant complaints to be found. Recommended!

November 2022: NATO weighs in with words

With the war starting to spill out of the set boundaries "Defending Ukraine is defending democracy," says NATO and while the little country is finding ways to continue with power shortages as winter approaches, Zelenskyy has had more visitors in the form of Sean Penn and David Letterman while his forces continue to push East, capturing Kherson - the only regional capital Russia captured after invading in February. Here's an animated map.

Meanwhile Russia, whose economy is now truly in recession and dubbed a terrorist state by NATO, is aptly proving redditor Rhinomeat correct in his statement that "You cannot use logic or reason to dislodge someone from a position that they used neither logic nor reason to maneuver themselves into."

They are blessing their guns and vehicles to slay the Ukranian devils and are relying on ally North Korea to provide winter uniforms. Their other ally, Iran, has supposedly suffered some military losses too however they are currently busy beating up women at home and finding workarounds to their own laws which state they can't execute virgins. Lastly India has opted to continue to buy Russian oil, which in itself is a show of support for the Russians, right beside China who are currently experiencing their own riots.

These are more to do with the continued COVID lock downs though, which include being locked in theme parks, taxis and burning buildings. Regardless, their future war preparations continue as they have begun cloning drones being used in Ukraine and Russia. Just another reason for their rival the USA to not support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons while strong arming others to say the same. Global Second Amendment anyone?

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Extraction

Proves you shouldn't go easy on kids.

When the son of an Indian drug lord is kidnapped by his rival, freelance specialist Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) and his team are sent to retrieve the kid. Betrayals and lock downs make his job all the more difficult though, but they certainly make it more exciting for the viewer! With good action sequences and some particularly great chase and fight scene cinematography this is definitely a movie for action buffs.

If only I brought my hammer...

Acting wise the main players do their parts well and while the CGI is obvious in some places it gets a pass, but don't expect the plot to go deeper past the bullets and death. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and definitely want to watch it again. Highly recommended, at least for action fans or Chris Hemsworth fans. I give it 4 kids thrown off rooftops out of 5.

Lion

A tale of separation and reunion.

This is what happens when you fall asleep at the wrong time.

Born to an incredibly poor family, five year old thief Saroo (Sunny Pawar) manages to get separated from his family in India through some bad luck and a lot of bad decisions, to the extent that he grows up in Australia. Older Saroo (Dev Patel), despite having lots of supporters alienates them all when he eventually undertakes a personal quest to use Google Earth and try track down his hometown so many years later.

While the movie is sound technically and aesthetically, it does really show the worst of India and it might just be me, but Saroo is portrayed as an idiot for most of the film which didn't really make it easy to cheer him on. Anyway, if you like drama you still might enjoy this. I give it 2.5 trains out of 5.

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Blaugust Bonus: "What piece of content would you most like to have a sequel or reboot?" -JamiesVlogUK

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance definitely has earned a season two! Fingers crossed!

Civ VI: Not so Great Wall

[Part of the Civilization VI story]

With only two other civilizations competing against me for world domination, I turn my attention to China next. These peaceful tea drinkers have setup quite a good defense with their alliance with the city-state of Jerusalem, making good use of their medieval cannons and cannonades to kill General Rani and many of her troops.

In response I rush the development of one of our new mobile weapon platform, the tank, researched both by Dmitri Mendelev and Albert Einstein with the monetary backing from the merchants Mary Katherine Goddard and Levi Strauss. This new vehicle of war crushes the Western Chinese border, right through their "not so great wall" while newly developed machine guns tear down the center. The Eastern border falls to my ancient battering rams backed by infantry, the same siege machines used against India so long ago.

Apparently guys with rifles plus an ancient wooden battering ram is just as good?

As China falls I am sad as I could not field our new flying machines against them too, not realizing they have a leash range attached to their respective aerodomes. No matter, I will find a way to use them on my final rival... Germany.

Insight: In later eras moving across the sea is faster than most land travel.

Civ VI: The Warlord Ghandi

[Part of the Civilization VI story]

Led by their most violent war chief Ghandi, the Indian capital of Delhi was well defended with walls, elephants and archers! As this was our first experience against ranged weapons, my poor donkey carts were getting annihilated - I sent them around to raze the less defended Calcutta and Agra instead, angering them greatly! So much that the evil Ghandi proceeded to wipe out every donkey on the continent and rendering my donkey carts obsolete!

Elephant archers are pretty tough!

Knowing I must fight fire with fire, I too begin sending archers (as elephants were just too hard to master) using India's own tech against them! In response, Ghandi's allies in the city state of Zanzibar began marching on my capital with catapults but my spearmen guards hold the line. Finally, my two battering rams arrive at Delhi and after suffering tremendous losses finally capture the capital and the final village of Mysore where Ghandi is hiding. For his crime of donkey extermination, he is executed by being sat upon by one of his beloved elephants.

Seeing him literally crushed, Zanzibar quickly changes it's tune and names me its suzerain. It has the opposite effect in Delhi where a large band of warrior monks begin an uprising but all of them are easily and immediately put to death as my army is literally still standing there when they choose to act.

Insight: Being suzerain of city states lets you temporarily control their military which works well in times of war, and all you need to do is send envoys... more than anyone else has sent them anyway.

Civ VI: King of the Donkeys

[Part of the Civilization VI story]

In the beginning, there were donkeys and barbarians. Some of those barbarians decided to follow me, the great King Gilgamesh to fight the other nearby barbarians while others decided to follow women instead! What an insult! There in the West we found our first neighbor, a Queen Victoria who dared to offer us tea - so with my army of donkey powered war carts, we took control of London sending her fleeing to the nearby village of Sheffield.

Behold, the most dangerous unit at the beginning of time!

Hoping to secure peace, she then agreed to ally with us to fight her Northern neighbor Catherine de Medici and her French folk. With their warriors and scouts unable to stop my donkeys, Paris and La Rochelle quickly fell at which time I returned to capture Sheffield and their so called Queen. With their cities now flying my banner and both trouble makers sent to my donkey-harem, my legions swept to the Northeast where we would face our most difficult challenge yet... India and their elephants!

Insight: There are many ways to win this game, I'm going for the most boring: world domination! If you want a tale of how better rulers fared, be sure to check out the succession game on Time to Loot! :)