Justice Delayed? The Snyder Cut, Reviewed

2017 feels like it happened way further in the past than it actually did, but it was only four years ago we got our first superhero team movie from the Distinguished Competition as Stan Lee liked to call them - Justice League.

I didn't hate the movie - in fact, I felt significantly more fondness for it than for its predecessor Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I thought Joss Whedon, brought on to finish the movie after Zack Snyder's adult daughter died by suicide during production, did pretty well for the movie world's version of a relief pitcher. I liked Whedon's attempt to humanize the characters, bring a little levity to the proceedings and add some rescue elements so that every setpiece wasn't just about fighting bad guys.

Boy, a lot has changed in four years, huh?

Recent revelations have pretty much destroyed Joss Whedon's reputation as a decent human, let alone cinematic comic visionary, there hasn't been a superhero release at the theatres in well over a year now, and HBO apparently gave original director something like $71M to finish making his version of the Justice League film, complete with reshoots, and are showing it on their streaming platform HBO Max (and Crave here in Canada).

I went into this viewing (at home, with Glory, while eating teriyaki chicken bowls and tempura from Tokyo Express) with a fair amount of trepidation. Snyder's grim, dull, and unnecessarily mature versions of Batman and Superman - characters, I feel obliged to mention, originally intended for young folk - never really resonated with me. As much as I enjoy his visual style, Snyder's disdain for "regular" comics (not enough sex or killing, by his own admission) asserts itself repeatedly in his other DCEU adaptations.

But a lot of fanboy clamouring about "release the Snyder cut" (which didn't actually exist, per se, until he recently made it) along with Cyborg actor Ray Fisher's assertions that Whedon was a bad person and also not a very good director got me curious enough to spend four hours checking out Snyder's version. 

What did I think?

Well, it is far, far too long - but it is also a much, much better film.

It is much more tonally consistent, and though still very dark in places, it makes all the heroes look, well, heroic, and not necessarily ruthless, which I appreciate. The villain is far more fleshed out, the teasing glimpses of his superiors on Apokolips are well-handled, and the jokey bits are much more restrained - maybe too much, but YMMV.

Most importantly, newer characters Flash and Cyborg are given much more expansive backstories and opportunities to shine. I am really hoping that Ray Fisher gets another crack at playing Vic Stone in a solo film, and Ezra Miller's Barry Allen is an awkward, cringe-y delight. More screentime for Victor's father, Silas (played by Joe Morton - T2's Miles Dyson), was welcome as well, and underscored the tragedy of their estrangement.

A couple of rescue scenes are handled by individual characters and not the team, but adding one line about Steppenwolf's base being in an abandoned city removed any trepidations I had about the final set-piece.

It all still feels a bit too ponderous for me, and some of that is due to the oppressive four-hour running time, but the whole effort would probably feel a bit more briskly paced if fully 10 per cent of the film wasn't shot in slow motion. 

There are some scenes that truly call for this treatment - pretty much any scene of the Flash using his powers where you want to actually see them, for instance, and scenes so full of action they would be incomprehensible at regular speed. But Lois Lane walking through the rain to Superman's memorial? We get it Zack - she is sad. Move along, please.

Likewise, I shared my friend Earl's indignation at undermining another character's tender, honest moment in order to introduce a character completely unneeded and irrelevant to this story. And without a direct sequel coming for this iteration of the JL, I really had a hard time seeing the point of it.

I am also grateful that Snyder got a chance to complete his vision for this movie, complete with retrospective changes, but I am even more glad that he is moving away from superhero movies. His next movie, a zombie-heist film called Army of the Dead looks very cool to me.

At the end of the day, is Justice League-The Snyder Cut worth seeing? That is a tricky question to answer. The Snyder Cut is by no means a superhero film for people who don't like superhero films. And despite most of us spending a lot of our time cooped up indoors, four hours feels like a lot to ask of a casual fan. Non-casual fans? Come on now, you've already seen it and you enjoyed the black Superman suit as much as I did.

But if you have the time and a bit of patience, and like the idea of these legendary heroes not only being larger-than-life but truly mythological in scope, facing a threat of Apokoliptic proportions, well, Snyder has made a movie that feels as operatic as it does adrenaline-fuelled. 

Most importantly, if you have as much fondness for some of these characters, these icons of pop culture with us for the better part of a century, then I suspect you will find the time well-spent.

But don't make a drinking game out of the slow-motion or you won't get very far.

A Nice Night Out (At Last)

A few weeks ago I came to a chilling realization: Glory's birthday was fast approaching and would be her second consecutive observance spent under pandemic measures - no outings with friends and no visitors for a party at home either.

This was a tough pill to swallow for me, so I went up to talk to her about it.

I told her how sad I was that she has not had a single opportunity to go out with her friends since she has turned 18 almost a year ago. She was not happy about the situation, obviously, but to her credit, has remained philosophical about it. 

"Well, I am not happy about it either," I confessed, "so here is what I am thinking - I feel, that before you turn 19, we need to go out, as a family, to a nice place, with a decent cocktail menu, have someone else bring us food and drinks and then take a taxi home. What do you think?"

She was completely onboard with the notion, and to my delight, she opted with the first place I suggested: Louisiana Purchase. It met all our criteria - great food, good service, not too far away, and with a robust cocktail menu.

So on Friday night, once she and I were off work, we spruced up a little bit, took the Flex over to St. Albert Trail, parked it close and were seated in the Chandelier Lounge. Our server, Maddie, was bright and friendly, and when we explained our motivations for being there, she carried off our order for a round of hurricanes and returned with them before we had even fully decided on our dinners.

There was plenty of spacing in the restaurant and diners are expected to wear their masks whenever they are away from their table, which everyone seemed to be doing.

Louisiana Purchase is a wonderful place and an Edmonton original (and c'mon, that alligator with a face made of cutlery is some A-1 design work too), so if you have an inkling towards cajun cuisine I can recommend it without hesitation. All the food was spectacular, from my blackened catfish to Glory's Pasta La Rocca. 

And the drinks! We were there long enough to follow up our hurricanes with Delta Ladies, Buffalo Sours, a Lynchburg Lemonade and a Louisiana Leprechaun and a fancy martini called a Scarlet O'Hara.

We had actually intended to skip appetizers so we could justify getting four different desserts and then trading bites but realized that not only do we not eat out very often any more (first time out as a family in well over a year) but Fenya pointed out that we almost never eat at places that serve alligator, so we made sure to order a couple of swampsticks at the start of our meal.

We still ordered four desserts of course - after all, there was a whole year to make up for! - and traded cheesecake, bread pudding and two different versions of bananas foster.

After all was said and done, there was a little trouble with getting our taxi home, as the automated systems send a car by default, and they can only carry three people under the protocols. But eventually a van was found and we made our way home, satiated and a little tipsy. 

Throughout the meal and long into the night, the sentiment that kept recurring was this one, from every person in attendance: "I am so glad we did this."

Thinking back, it was a milestone evening in a lot of ways - this was our first evening out together in over a year, thanks mostly to pandemic measures and our own caution, but it was also the first time the four of us sat down to a meal out where everyone at the table was of the age of majority, and able to drink if they wanted to. (Sorry, something in my eye - I think they are playing "Sunrise, Sunset" in the next room...)

It was, by any measure, a lovely evening with lovely people, and my only regret is that I can't say when we will be able to do it again.

Mental Health Saving Throw

This week will mark the one-year anniversary, for most of us, of the end of normalcy. 

It was the day before St. Patrick's day in 2020 when my employer closed its offices and got nearly 300 people working from home in less than 48 hours, kicking off a year of working from home, schooling from home, regular mask-wearing, zoom meetings and hesitancy about dining out and going to movies. For the past six months, we haven't even been able to have guests over from outside our cohorts, which has put paid to dinner parties, game nights or even just having someone over to watch a show together.

If I am being honest, our household has probably gained as much as it has lost over the past year. We are all currently employed, and although online undergrad classes are challenging, Fenya is grateful for the study time she has gained by not having to bus or drive to university. I certainly don't miss spending an hour each day on a busy freeway, wincing as rocks bounce off my windshield.

But we all miss our friends, and having company over, and going to the cinema or seeing a live musical act and a hundred other things. And even with the vaccine on the horizon, it will take time to get to us and even longer to have the kind of impact needed before there is any sort of return to normalcy. Or "normalcy," for that matter.

In the meantime though, if anyone asks what the single best tool for maintaining my sanity and keeping an even emotional keel for the past year, I can quickly give my answer: it's Dungeons & Dragons.

(And having grown up during the Satanic Panic in the 1980s that saw games like this blamed (baselessly) for anti-social behaviour, suicide, and occult shenanigans, I fully appreciate the irony of that statement.)

Within our local circle, it was pretty common for us to get together for gaming at least a couple of times per month, sometimes a roleplaying game like the previous edition of D&D or Spirit of 77, but often boardgames like Big Trouble in Little China or Cthulhu: Death May Die. We would also gather in the out-of-towners for a weekend of Gaming & Guinness once a year as well. 

Knowing things would get worse before they got better, I suggested we try one of the online D&D games, and soon enough eight of us were playing on a regular basis - far more regularly than when we met in-person, to be honest.

With fewer commitments in our lives and limited options for recreation, Sunday afternoons became a welcome respite from the world, where we could turn our collective attentions to the fiendish machinations of the Cult of Dragons.

And, yes, the recreation is great, and rolling dice and fighting imaginary monsters is all well and good, but honestly, it is the simple act of coming together for a focused but fun activity, and being able to hear and see each other while we do it. I have known some of these people since high school or shortly thereafter, and this connection, as whimsical as it is, has become an important tether, at least for me.

Now I find myself playing in four different campaigns - one as a player and the rest as DM, and one in-person (mostly) with the others on Roll 20. There is always an opportunity to chitchat and catch up on each other's lives when we play online, but in every case, we eventually get down to the business of rolling dice and celebrating or bemoaning the results.

Some of my players are very new, while others have played at least as long as I have, but everyone is committed to that same notion of shared storytelling where the real drama is left up to the dice. The 5th edition rules are simple but deep and there is always a chance to learn something new. And the things we learn about each other! I had no idea how much awesome magical powers appealed to some of my friends, or that one of my daughters absolutely revels in brazenly bluffing or intimidating her way past guards. Or how much theatricality that friends I've known for decades can bring to bear when describing their character's actions or motivations.

And you don't even need monsters! Some of the best laughs in our game on Friday came from one player's inability to roll above a 5 on a 20-sided dice over multiple attempts while piloting a small boat. This misadventure ended leaving one character needing to change his trousers after being dunked waist-deep in an icy lake while another one got knocked overboard - but into a smaller boat, thank goodness.

In between games I read up on the two different adventures I am DM for, write up a summary of the last adventure for yet another blog and paint miniatures in anticipation of joining players outside my family at an actual tabletop instead of a virtual one.

This weekend I have played three times since Thursday - a real treat, but not even the best part of the weekend. On Saturday afternoon, The Rare Hipster showed up on my step with a t-shirt, the brainchild himself and Jeff P., commemorating the completion of our first adventure, Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The front of the shirt displays the adventurer's collective sigil, while the back lists all the players and their characters (plus a DMing credit for yours truly).

The weather was beautiful Saturday, so standing outside and admiring the shirt, sharing a beverage in the 13-degree sunlight, was just what the doctor had ordered. 

In the current ruleset, there is a clever mechanic called advantage which lets you roll two dice and take the higher result when determining your success at something. When rolling a skill check, for instance, to see if you can read a language or pick a lock or force open a door, a nearby character can assist, granting advantage on that roll, and perhaps doubling your chances of a positive outcome.

To me, this describes the very effect gained by purposefully getting together with friends for this activity, and all the positive mental health benefits I derive from it - advantage on saving throws versus boredom, anxiety, loneliness and despair. And I am far from the only one who feels that way, it turns out.

Sure, I could schedule an online meeting every other week and maybe even suggest a topic for conversation, but without that compulsion to see what lies around the next underground corner or to discover the fiendish plots of the Dragon Cult (or, in my case, to delight in unfolding them!), would we all be so keen to make time for it? Would we still reflect back on conversations from ten-months past the same way we periodically lament poor Skollvog the Relentless rolling a 1 on his death save and perishing on only his third session? Would two of us have conspired to print up t-shirts celebrating a year of drinks & discourse?

It seems unlikely.

And so I will continue to pursue this strangely constructive escapism we call D&D, a game that requires more work than some, but comes with greater rewards than most others. A game in which no one player triumphs over the others, but in which everyone, including the gamemaster, can feel like winners.

Rock & Why

 I had to make a supplementary trip to Sobey's before supper and came home with a bottle of pop I hadn't encountered before. When I put it on the table, Audrey looked at it quizzically and asked, "what's that?"

"It's a Faygo Rock & Rye soda," I said. 

She looked at me for a moment, then said, "None of what you said actually means anything to me. Like, at all."

It occurred to me that even though I picked up this innocuous soft drink from a major grocery store that a lot of people might be in the same boat. Hell, I barely knew what a rock & rye was, and so down the rabbit hole I went.

For openers, Faygo is a (mostly regional) pop-maker based in Detroit. Tragically, their claim to fame from a popular culture point of view is repeated references in the song lyrics of Insane Clown Posse and their infamous fanbase, the Juggalos. I have nothing against ICP and find their sentimentally profane anthem "Miracles" to be a pretty solid expression of wonderment, but come on, man -  that is pretty short shrift for a company that has been around since 1907 (just two years younger than Royal Crown, makers of RC Cola!) and whose root beer was ranked as best in America by Bon Appetit magazine in 2009.

Anyhoo, apparently Faygo has been available in Ontario for years but has only started appearing in Western Canada since 2015 or so. Their flavour spectrum is considerable (their number one seller is a strawberry soda called Redpop) and updated periodically, so I can see the appeal for retailers, and had noted them at the nearby Sobey's for a while. Most of the flavours I saw were either conventional or had no appeal, but today I noted rock and rye, and immediately had to try it.

Up to this point, I think my sole exposure to rock and rye as a beverage was seeing one ordered by Boone at the Dexter Lake Club in Animal House: "Double rock and rye and seven Carlings." I think I assumed the "rock" was some kind of local mix reference, or maybe a beer like Rolling Rock, but it turns out this is not the case.

Rock and rye, I am reliably informed by Wikipedia, is a liqueur or cocktail made by combining rye whiskey with rock candy, a.k.a. crystallized sugar. Not too far removed from an Old Fashioned, I suppose, which is bourbon, sugar, orange peel and Angostura bitters. Or even a sazerac, which combines a sugar cube with bourbon, cognac, bitters and an absinthe rinse. 

Rock & rye is a drink whose popularity dates back to the 1920s (and Prohibition!), and is mentioned by one of my favourite writers of the period, Damon Runyon (Guys & Dolls) in his short story "The Three Wise Guys":

"...I step into Good Time Charley's on the afternoon in question, I am feeling as if maybe I have a touch of grippe coming on, and Good Time Charley tells me that there is nothing in this world as good for a touch of grippe as rock candy and rye whisky, as it assassinates the germs at once.

It seems that Good Time Charley always keeps a stock of rock candy and rye whisky on hand for touches of the grippe, and he gives me a few doses immediately, and in fact Charley takes a few doses with me, as he says there is no telling but what I am scattering germs of my touch of the grippe all around the joint, and he must safeguard his health.”

Truly, Runyon was a man after me own liver and kidneys, as the Old Man would have said, and yes - rock & rye was reputed to have health benefits, but I have my doubts as to any actual curative properties or verified instances of germ assassination.

At any rate, I am now very curious about trying a legitimate rock & rye. Bottled varieties are commonplace in the U.S. but less so in Canada, so I will have to console myself with the soda pop variety for the nonce.

So how is a non-alcoholic rock & rye soda? Well, pretty sweet as it turns out, reminding me a little bit of Dr. Pepper and other 'mixed tonics' and striking Fenya and Audrey as being closer to cream soda. Certainly tasty but not much of a quencher, and like many sweet drinks, I thought it might be better if it were enhanced with a touch of spirits.

There was rye in the basement, but brandy in the kitchen for the mushrooms we were cooking, so in a fit of expediency I poured a liberal amount down the neck of the plastic bottle and swished it around. The results? A still sweet but now warming highball that Fenya could not even detect the liquor in - make of that what you will.

Faygo Rock & Rye might be a good soft drink to have on hand for guests that want to try something new (you know, when we are no longer under pandemic restrictions and can actually have guests - sigh) or if you just want to change up your highball game. 

Most of their other flavours don't have a lot of appeal for me, but due to the accolades I do want to test out their root beer now (a product that used to be repped in commercials by cartoon cowboy The Faygo Kid), and given my love of the space program, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to try something called Moon Mist either, even if it is probably a Mountain Dew knock-off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv0OUmdOZu0