Chindie

I would be disappointed if journalists weren't digging into this. End of the season, Villa have a disastrous campaign, and note they're being sold to a Chinese buyer, which is unusual, who nobody knows anything about, which immediately should have inquiring minds want to get digging. There's nothing special about us that's making journalists want to look deeper in this. It's the intrigue of what of actually happening.

Preacher got off to a good start... comes to something when the main issue I have is Arseface not looking Arseface-y enough.

Decent episode. I'd heard it was great and... it isn't. Couple of interesting moments and obviously the reveal at the end was fantastic but other than that... meh. I continue to not particularly like Bran's plot, and the more they do with it the less I like it.

I can certainly echo those recommendations (and am hoping to soon add Absolute editions of V for Vendetta and Watchmen to my shelves...) but just picking up on Y... I'd heard all the praise for it and then was told that it's aged fairly badly, and the art is very marmite. Having had a quick browse through the first collected edition of it subsequently, I can see where that criticism is coming from. But the concept is great so if you like the art that might drag you through it until the hooks are in. Whilst we're talking comics that are of their time, Sandman. It's awesome. But damn it couldn't get late 80s/very early 90s Gothic new romantic if it tried! Each issue basically has a mental soundtrack from prime The Cure. But it's so good.

X-Men Apocalypse isn't terrible but isn't particularly brilliant either. It's a second draft of a movie. The balance is all over the shop, the film feels like a 2 hour opening act with a half-baked final conflict tacked on that hadn't really been fully fleshed out. It introduces new characters and then has them do basically nothing - Psylocke only seems to be in the movie to fill the numbers up for instance. And then they did her wrong anyway. Oscar Isaac does what he can with Apocalypse which is ultimately not a great deal, Quicksilver steals the movie, Fassbender continues to be a good Magneto, everyone else either has 3 lines of dialogue or phones it in terribly, except for Sophie Turner who is dreadful as Jean Grey. Despite that it's not bad it just isn't much cop either. There's not that much action, not much really happens, what does happen is fine... but nothing more.

The Invisibles is worth a mooch. Grant Morrison jumps off the deep end with a barking mad drug fueled epic of aliens, secret societies, government conspiracies, magic, militant lesbians, other dimensions and everything in between. It's very mid 90s so feels a little dated but I genuinely don't think I've read anything that comes close to how bizarre it is. Not quite finished the saga myself but so far it's never been less than interesting. It's referenced a lot by Last Podcast on the Left who actually did a couple of episodes about a place that features in the series fairly prominently... I'm slowly continuing my trawl through the Hellboy Library Editions, which has remained enjoyable. And, since I always recommend it, Warren Ellis's run on Moon Knight is fantastic. 6 issues, no overarching plot, fantastic art and reinterpretation of the character that risks becoming the definitive one. You can read all 6 issues in an hour and it's never short of brilliant. Ellis left after 6 issues and the following 6, whilst still good, weren't quite to the same standard. The next collected issues were, sadly, a real step down, but the comic is still being run so might have legs for a while at least. Also is very likely to become a Netflix show in which case they will use this new run as it's basis I'm sure. Moon Knight is a really daft character but this reboot wipes that away and just turns him into a badass who wears a white 3 piece suit to deal out night time vigilante justice because he likes his enemies to see him coming... I'd also recommend Supergods. What if the nations of the world in the Cold War decided to produce weapons in the shape of enormous god like creatures that represented them? Very interesting limited series.

From The National members Bryce and Aaron Dessner's enormous Grateful Dead compilation of covers by various artists in aid of HIV/AIDS research, Day of the Dead, out today.

Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson and Karl Urban have joined Thor 3 as Hela, the Grandmaster, Valkyrie and Skurge respectively, joining Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner. Thor: Ragnarok is going to get bloody weird on the basis on those. But makes sense in the scale of things with this film apparently doing a bunch of legwork for Infinity War. It's being directed by Taika Waititi of Flight of the Concords and What We Do in the Shadows to add to the oddness.

I don't think he'd heard of Aston Villa 18 months ago.

I think those things you go with and accept as part of the universe, even if it it's completely unrealistic. They even make jokes about how the shield doesn't obey any law of physics by now. But the timelines don't quite fit and you can't get round it. You can't really handwave how character ages and eras work, so they bank on you not noticing.

It is revealed in to Cap in the second movie. He's briefly shown a headline and photograph in that montage. The photograph causes a slight issue with the timeline but frankly the moment you start to consider timelines in the Marvel series it quickly falls apart.

You could wring the martinis out of him like a wet towel.

Seems they will be looking for a new Bond. Craig has supposedly turned down obscene money to carry on for another 2 movies according to a bunch of reports today. Hiddleston is the front runner with the bookies but, much as I like him, I don't see him as Bond. He'd be a fantastic villain for Bond, but he's too... Posh nice for Bond himself. Fassbender, Dan Stevens, or, never in a million years, Hardy would be great in the role.

The plane apparently swerved sharply before it crashed. Could be anything. Mechanical failure leading to loss of control, hence the swerve, if it was a bomb and it broke up large sections of the plane can dramatically change course and still be picked up on radar, could be the pilot... etc etc. 3 Egyptian security service guys on board as well. Edit - as per usual, the media loving this. Sky News at the moment, have an aviations expert on, and completely expectedly, the host is desperately pushing the idea it was a bomb, even with the expert basically saying 'here's all the things that say it might not be a bomb'.

It's usually a toss up between 2 and DOFP as the best. 3 is poor I'll agree there. I think I'd disagree on all on those points (though I can't recall any of the jokes) so they're probably just not for you. Deadpool is a weird off shoot, it's relationship to the other movies is fun but slim.

You're really against the grain on that one as said before What is it about the X-Men series that you don't like particularly? I'm obviously partial to this stuff but I don't like them that much really, but I'd struggle to sit down and list out why someone might hate 2, unless they just hated anything of that sort. There's nothing that I can think of that's genuinely bad about it.

This, along with Asylum, are being re-released in July for current gen consoles with all DLC, if anyone cares.

X-Men franchise... X-Men 1 - decent early modern comic book fair, bit undercooked but good ideas and a good cast (generally). And some famously dreadful dialogue. X-Men 2 - Genuinely good movie, takes the good from the first film and ramps it up, picks up a common thread from the comics, that mutants are subject to discrimination from normal people, and makes a good yarn out of it, with Brian Cox making for a decent villain X-Men 3 - Bryan Singer leaves, Brett Ratner takes over, they decide to take another of the series big ideas (a mutant cure) and ramp up the spectacle, and it's shit. First Class - Reboot back to the 60s. Originally 2 movies, First Class and Origins: Magneto, generally good cast, the Magneto stuff is genuinely excellent, First Class less so, undercooked again but gets away with it due to the charm of the cast of Fassbender/McAvoy dragging it along. Days of Future Past - Take a classic time travel story, smash the old cast and new cast together, and it works. Really good. Origins: Wolverine - Absolutely, entirely without merit. Dreadful. Awful CGI, rubbish plot, weak cast, takes the Deadpool character and completely bins it.., hopeless. The Wolverine - Decent Wolverine yarn, gets increasingly silly but a fun ride. Deadpool - budget R-rated satire of a comic book movie whilst being a comic book movie, great but absolutely divisive. The series has basically been decent all along and occasionally great, occassionally dreadful, they stumbled on Hugh Jackman (it was originally going to be Dougray Scott playing Wolverine...) who despite being nothing like the character smashes it. That has become a flaw of the series that takes it away from it's roots, the X-Men have always been about the way their powers interact and as a result it's an ensemble, whereas the movies generally decided that Xavier and Eric are pretty much plot framework and Wolverine is the main character surrounded by some reasonably boring bit part additional characters. They've suffered for villains badly - Magneto is THE X-Men villain but his story and the performance by McKellen/Fassbender makes him too likable/understandable to out and out make him evil, so they pretty much fudge it, benefitting the character and his sparking off Xavier but killing his threat. Apocalypse was supposed to change that with a genuine big bad entering fray... unfortunately he's so 90s it hurts... I'm seeing Apocalypse this weekend, can't say I'm expecting much.

Look at this shit.

Anyway this veering off topic...

As said, we're not clean. I think we're better today than we were when settling Australia and I think were that to happen today the native Australians would be treated far better (I'm aware the Australian government has into quite recently treated them very poorly, and that's something Australia should be ashamed of) than we did over the years back then. But again... The Chinese Government is pretty much universally criticised for it's position on many things. Rightly so. Noone is clean in the fullness of time. Doesn't mean everyone's above critique in the cold light of day.

Nope, I definitely can see. It's just that, if I want to, today... In Birmingham, UK, I can do pretty much anything I want. I can criticise the government on anything publicly and not be imprisoned. I can research and educate myself using the gamut of the Internet's resources. I could decide I was any faith and not have that be a mark against my name and not have that potentially threaten me in anyway. I could plan for and have a family to any size I like. If I did do something wrong, the court would be a court that paid no mind to whether the Tories particularly like me or not. I wouldn't be executed. I'd have powerful and binding rights as a worker... Etc etc. We aren't saints. We can improve in many ways. But compared to us, China is a grim, grim state for it's people, who have little freedom and even less rights. Just because we aren't squeaky clean doesn't give China a carte blanche to be worse, whether them putting money into Aston Villa is good or not (if that is the case).

I'm not sure that because we may not be perfect excuses the Chinese government for it's significant stains on it's character. China in many respects makes us look like saints.

I think the shame at being owned by the Chinese government, should that be true and come to pass, is less to do with the financial good it does the club and more to do with the, er... character of the Chinese government.

Out, probably. I don't think the turnout will be particularly low however.