Chinese Movies & TV: Wailing Unfit For a Baby

Talk. About. Overacting. William Shatner has nothing on these people. With all the rapid-fire yapping, they could at least inject sincerity into one out of every 100 lines or so.

Seriously, the crying's horrendous -- loud, hideous, grating, endless -- enough to embarass a newborn baby. Oh, as for the screaming ninnies, horror movie scream queens have nothing on them. By the way, plenty of this crying and screaming comes from Grown Men. Man up, dudes!

They've got music ripped from westerns and one movie even ripped melodies straight from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Is that something lame happening to the tune of epic music? Oh, the sacrilege!



Montages of romantic fighting scenes: Yes, really. And no, not hot and heavy sweaty-bodies-pressed-together stuff. Slow motion fully-clothed, flying through the air to clash swords in a field of flowers stuff. And sometimes flying past each other.

Beyond disturbing: Man leaping around articulated like a frog. Spark from fireworks hits old man in the eye for an instant kill. Man wailing like a baby for half the movie (and a good half the movie's dialogue; it was a lady's name).

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All-New Super Friends Hour/Challenge of the Super Friends

The All-New Super Friends Hour (1977) Season 2

They got tired of all the extra padding to make hour-long episodes. Yay! They made tiny segments with super cheesy code words and stuff. Boo!



In a safety segment, Wonder Woman lands her invisible plane mid-city to congratulate a kid for using the crosswalk.

5(C) Super Friends vs. Super Friends: Aquaman disappears mid-incoming message but reappears instantly after. Snuck off for a quick break?

Challenge of the Super Friends 1978-1979 Season 3

4(A) The Time Trap: In 70,000,000 B.C., the stuff in South Africa's diamond mines probably weren't even diamonds yet.

7(B) The Beasts Are Coming: Radiation changed Wonder Woman into a rampaging monster outside a military base near the desert. So basically she Hulked out near a base that looks a lot like General Thunderbolt Ross'.

8(A) Secret Origins of the Super Friends: Flash running back and forth through time? OK. Batman and Robin plus Black Vulcan having unexplained methods of time travel? Convenient. Hal Jordan just deciding to call himself Green Lantern? Ermmm... the Guardias on Oa must have had The green ring changing Luthor? Do the rings work for the unchosen?

8(B) Terror from the Phantom Zone: Ew, Jayna licked Zan to deactivate! Er, line the Supermobile with lead already. What's the point of Superman having a vehicle that does less than he can do by himself? It should at least protect him.

9(B) The Anti-Matter Monster: It sucks in oil with its crotch! Someone needs to teach the Wonder Twins about timing. It takes less time to dive out of the way than to use their Exxor powers to change.



13(B) Batman Dead or Alive: The water rose too fast for two hours (cue Scooby Doo physics). The Kryptonite cell had no floor so why not toss off the cage? The Wonder Twins deactivated without touching. You mean, they could do this the whole time? That would have come in so handy all those times they got locked in cages or whatnot. Then again, maybe they touched when we weren't looking; their ropes were tied differently later in the episode!

15(A) Super Friends: Rest in Peace: Anything could have killed Batman since he's human with no superpowers. As for this Noxium, it must be really powerful stuff. Really, they have a museum right in their headquarters where they also keep sensitive equipment and information? No one's ever in the establishing outdoor shots of the Hall so the museum must be very unpopular. No one bothered checking their pulses to see if they were still alive. Look, Mommy, Superman's sleeping! Their backup heroes need a lot more training.

15(B) Journey Through Inner Space: An infrared outline of Aquaman when he had a completely different physical shape? If it were that easy, science would have detected auras ages ago. Why not inject the shrunken heroes closer to the brain so the journey wouldn't take so long? Unless they were really hoping that they might not have enough time to save him... Wonder Woman was safe in the ship but over the radio, she sounds strained. Pretending she was doing the hard stuff?

16(A) History Of Doom: Luthor's pretty dumb for a genius. Massive solar flares destroy pretty everything like the ecosystems that sustain all human life, which includes bad guys. Couldn't the Super Friends go back in time and fix it themselves? They had at least three ways to time travel in a previous episode.

16(B) The Rise and Fall of the Super Friends: The department store was going to be demolished anyway, why bother going in to save anything? Revenge of Robin? LOL! A place of lots of books, how'd they guess Gotham City library versus Metropolis City Library or countless others?

Vampires Love Jailbait

Pretty much everyone prefers beauty, and of course, beauty's in the eye of the beholder and all that. The younger you start out with someone, the longer you get to bask in their beauty. Just guessing why it is that vampires generally love jailbait (I'm looking at you Edward Cullen of the Twilight Saga to your emo Bella Swan).

To be fair, this also applies to other immortal or long-lived types and not to the ones who prefer more mature adults (see Detective Nick Knight and Dr. Natalie Lambert of Forever Knight or Dr. Henry Morgan and Detective Jo Martinez on Forever). Some, of course, prefer comely younger women who are at least still adults (Dracula to Mina Murray, Bill Compton and Eric Northman to Sookie Stackhouse in the novels and True Blood, or Klaus Michaelson to Camille O'Connell on The Originals).



Yes, some vampires/immortals look like teens or young men but they're really hundred(s) or thousand(s) of years old. And generally, they go after teenaged girls which technically makes them creepy/dirty extremely senior citizens (eh-hem, Damon and Stefan Salvatore to Elena Gilbert of The Vampire Diaries, or Kol Michaelson to Davina Claire on The Originals). Sure, teen boys are usually soooo immature and there's something to be said about experience, but 100's or 1000's of years is a LOT of experience. Let's not forget angels like Bishop to Samantha in Michelle Rowen’s Nightwatchers series. Occasionally, some old girls get in on the act (see vampire Victoria and Aden in Gena Showalter's Intertwined series where there's also werewolf Riley and Mary Ann).



Other possibilities: Maybe these vampires are eternal manchildren. Or it really takes these guys 100's or 1000's of years to mature to the level of teenage girls (which is either an individual thing or a commentary on guys in general).



At least a few vampires actually don't live long lives and age more or less like humans so this whole thing doesn't apply. See Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy and Bloodlines series. Melissa de la Cruz's Blue Bloods series.



There's probably a ton more stories I haven't read yet and shows/movies I haven't seen yet. Please feel free to send some my way if you like. You know, just to prove me wrong / get my commentary / share because you're so awesomely nice or for any other reason at all.

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Cream Me, Baby. Er, I Mean, My Coffee...

Once I got my first sip of flavored liquid creamer, the plain powdered stuff might as well have turned into a spoonful of flour, a fine base for making something that wasn't coffee. Coffeemate original flavor? No, thank you. What is original flavor anyway?

Now Coffeemate's regular line of flavored liquid creamers? They have an impressively wide variety, only some of which work. You can taste a nasty tang in the others that make one long for a spoonful of flour. No wonder, given the long list of fake ingredients. Cinnamon anything is the worst and coconut the best. Pretty much all of it is artificial flavors.

By contrast, Coffeemate's Natural Bliss line with limited flavor variety: yum! International Delight makes richer and sweeter creamer with a fraction of the flavors of Coffeemate's regular line. Bailey's makes some of the richest and creamiest creamer with real dairy in a number of decadent flavors. And Dunkin' Donuts limited selection taste pretty good courtesy of International Delight.



Too bad none of the lines' Irish Cream is quite Irish enough and certainly won't make anyone tipsy. Not that you'd want such a thing when mainlining 20 cups in the morning or at work. Or maybe you do.




Now I just have to stalk excessive amounts of the shelf-stable stuff on Amazon.com. And the delicious flavored syrups used in coffee shops. But maybe that's just too deep an artificial flavor rabbit hole...

Super Friends Super Funnies!

TroublAlert: Where are these amazing cameras that somehow managed to find a tiny UFO? And show some random farmers. And show tons of things where cameras aren't installed. Man, Wayne Tech is goooood.

Marvin or Super Marvin - Less super (and dumber) than the dog. Except for one miswritten segment where they seemed to have switched his and Wendy's lines just to give him a chance. I guess his superleap

How'd he get selected for junior Superfriend membership anyway? No other eager, non-evil kids within biking distance of Super Friends HQ? Maybe he came as a package deal with Wonder Dog? Maybe he's one of the few people avid enough to visit the museum at the Hall of Justice. I mean, the grounds around the building are always deserted so they can't have many visitors.

Super Marvin + Wonder Dog = cheesier Shaggy and Scooby Doo only not quite as hungry. Wonder Dog even utters: "Ruh roh!" at one point. Stop stealing Scooby's shtick!

Robin: Holy idiots, Batman! Really, Robin's barely smarter than Marvin. It's a wonder he isn't a junior Superfriend too. Batman must have doubts as well, having to tell him, "Good job!" for a routine landing on a transom. Or scolding him to, "Keep off the grass" because they must obey all laws and signs everywhere, even if Robin fell on the grass by accident.

Colonel Wilcox, their government emergency liaison, uses a microphone a la TV news reporter. One episode, he changes to a nicer uniform. The very next episode, he gets mysteriously replaced by a younger model who is still called Colonel Wilcox. A la trading in for a younger wife. Is it his son? A nephew? Did he take a much-needed rejuvenating vacation? How can I book that vacation?

Wonder Twins: Oooo, I'm just a kid and can directly call for a superhero! Oh, no, wait, they're just junior heroes and not even cool superheroes for hire like Luke Cage or Iron Fist.

Zan gets carried around in a bucket by a monkey carried in turn by his sister, Jayna. Definitely not cool. Speaking of the bucket, where does Gleek keep it, under his cape?

Zan's lame power to turn into forms of water: Ice isn't strong enough to be used as a hammer or bolt cutter or whatever. They tried to make him cooler as ice rockets and such but what was the propulsion system, farting? Those are some fiery farts. Use for mopping should make him filthy. Where does he get the powder to make himself gelatin, carrying around Jell-O? Gleek: "Mmm, lime..."

Aquaman: Summons sword-fish to cut him out of ice or ships which they'd probably break themselves trying. Makes swordfish act as knitting needles to knit weak seaweed nets. Orders blowfish to blow air like bellows. Forces giant whales to push things which are probably too heavy. Rides giant seahorses. Insists manta rays plug up jagged holes in ships on which they could cut themselves. Way to treat your friends/subjects, King of the Sea.

Moving the Earth: Several times, Superman or Green Lantern move the Earth. Never shown are what should be catastrophic, apocalyptic consequences. Scooby Doo physics at work.

Inventing shrink rays: How many times can a shrink ray be invented? At least three times on the Super Friends' watch! It's no longer inventing after the first time, just copying. Or trending, to put it nicely. That goes for you too, Lex Luthor.wasn't too bad though, if cartoonishly unrealistic.