Green Phoenix - Blazing Saddles Review

 

Comedy films, in my opinion, have always been difficult to objectively review due to the inherently subjective nature of comedy itself. Not everyone finds the same things funny. However, there are aspects and themes that a comedy can touch upon that help to transcend it beyond your average run-of-the-mill kneeslapper into a piece of historically significant art. Today's film is one such piece.

Director Mel Brooks 1974 satirical Western Blazing Saddles has become almost legendary as "the film that could never be made today" due to its heavy racial themes and subjects. As I will go into further detail, I believe who make this claim are missing something very fundamental about the film that helps to elevate beyond a simple parody of Western films into an entire critique of American race relations as portrayed in media and the very notion of American exceptionalism that is exemplified in the Western genre as a whole.

For how crass and vulgar the film was then and now, it is easily one of the smartest and most subversive comedies that has ever been made and, in my opinion, represents the absolute best of what Mel Brooks could do directorally and what film parody can become. I love watching and referencing this movie often and was extremely excited when I realized that I could review it. So here we go guys...the most controversial film I've reviewed thus far, Blazing Saddles.

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Power Rangers - Top 5 Ranger-Like Allies

 

These are heroes that aren't technically Power Rangers, but still part of the team. This should be a more fun list. Click "read more" for my full article. (Debatably, a couple of them made their way onto the Black Rangers lists, but I considered those 2 rangers.)

Power Rangers - My Top 5 Misc. Colored Rangers

Some ranger colors, mainly purple, are so rare that they don't even have 5 to pick from. So, let's scrape together some of them and see what kind of top 5 this will be. Click "read more" for the full article. One rule, a different shade doesn't count. So, no navy or darker reds.

Green Phoenix - Let's Talk...Mineta from My Hero Academia

 

Hello everyone! Let's get into yet another edition of "Let's Talk", my free-form editorial series where I discuss a subject that is on my mind all off the cuff and from the heart. This time we will discuss a topic that is tangentially connected to something very near and dear to my heart. If you are a fan of the anime My Hero Academia, you may or may not be surprised by what I have to say. But we will get to that in a moment.

It will probably be something of a hot take, but I feel like I do have something to say on the subject.

For those of you who follow my content outside of this website, you would be familiar with my very personal connection to fandom and fan content, including for the purposes of this article: fanfiction. I started reading fanfiction through the My Little Pony fandom, before then expanding into Steven Universe, Game of Thrones, and the subject of today's article, My Hero Academia,an anime written by Kohei Horikoshi that takes place in an alternate future Earth where most people develop superpowers and become superheroes. The show is incredibly good and I find that the prospect of superpowers to be a fascinating breeding ground for great fanfiction stories.

As of writing this article, the show is starting its 5th season, which you can watch subbed on CrunchyRoll. While I do plan on watching it when their are more episodes available for me to begin bingeing, I felt like this was the perfect opportunity for me to discuss an aspect of the fandom that severely disturbs me and that I want to discuss with some measure of detail. If you read the title of this article and are familiar with My Hero Academia and its fandom in any capacity, you likely already know what I am going to talk about.

So let's talk about the Fresh-Picked Hero: Grape Juice (otherwise known as Mineta Minoru, the pervert of Class 1-A) and why the fandom hates this character so much and why that's kind of a bid problem.

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Power Rangers - My Top 5 Blue Rangers

Now it is time for the blue rangers. This is one of the more variety options to choose from as blue rangers have been the brains, the brawn, the girl, second in command, and sometimes ex-red rangers. So, I'll give it my best shot, click "read more" and let's see if this gives you the blues.

Green Phoenix - 1634: The Galileo Affair Review

 

I have covered several books in the 1632 series on this channel and made plans to review the rest of the series, even possibly including single reviews of the anthology stories found in the Grantville Gazettes. While I contend that the series is overall very good and remains my favorite series of all time, today's book stands as the first in the series that I'm not super crazy about. As I will explain in the review proper, this is the first book in the franchise that I don't go out of my way to read when the re-reading begins.

1634: The Galileo Affair was published in April 2004 as a collaborative work between lead series writer Eric Flint and Andrew Dennis. Narratively the book reintroduces characters established in "To Dye For", "Between the Armies" and "A Matter of Consultation" from the first Ring of Fire anthology book, as well as a few stories from the first Grantville Gazette, and begins the so-called Southern European thread of the 1632 series.

The story tells the tale of the Stone family, Americans from Grantville, who move to Venice in order to help teach the "modern" Europeans about American medical practices while also working to open up a trade route to the Middle East. Whilst in Venice, one of the younger Stone's gets involved with the daughter of a local political firebrand who has become a fan of American political philosophy and gets wrapped up in a plot to save Galileo from his religious trial in Rome, being presided over by the pope himself. Little do they know that an assassin is planning to use the scheme as a way of killing off the pope in the name of Protestantism, all while the pope is caught in a conundrum over the theological impact of modern Catholic doctrine coming through the Ring of Fire and how this should impact the future of the church.

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