#REVIEW: SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

On December 15, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, movies, ReviewsLeave a comment

So.

Standard disclaimer, as always. Y’all have seen movie reviews from me before. You know what I’m like when I like something. And Miles Morales has, since almost immediately after he was introduced, been one of my all-time favorite comic book characters. He’s up there with the Hulk, Iron Man, and Superman. I have been waiting for a Miles Morales Spider-Man movie for a long time.

(Now I’m just waiting for a movie with goddamn Ganke in it, but that’s another story.)

So you already knew I liked this movie. There would have been a shift in the fabric of the universe if I hadn’t liked it and absolutely everyone would have noticed it. Did you notice a shift in the fabric of the universe last night, around 10:30, as I was walking out of the theater? No, you did not. Of course I liked the fucking movie. It’s Goddamned brilliant. It’s so good it made me forgive them for what I initially thought was the kind of dodgy decision to make Miles’ movie animated instead of live-action.

(It’s not dodgy. This movie would have been impossible as live-action. They made a better movie by making it animated. It needed to be animated.)

So put that all aside. I want to talk to the two or three of you who don’t care about superheroes or superhero movies and for some reason come to this blog anyway.

You need to see this movie because it’s one of the most amazing animated films ever made.

You need to see it as a cultural artifact, guys, of what cutting-edge technology can do in 2018. The movie could have been about anything and I’d be recommending it because of how absolutely incredible it looks. I was talking to one of my oldest friends about it last night– he was lucky enough to see it last week, and told me at the time that words couldn’t do it justice. Last night, he made the point that the movie is expectations-proof, because there’s nothing that can prepare you for what it’s actually like to see this on the big screen.

And you need to see it on the best, biggest movie screen you can reasonably get to. This movie needs to win about four thousand awards even before we get to the part where the story is incredible too. This movie gets Miles, y’all. It understands this character thoroughly. It understands Spider-Man thoroughly, in a way that most of the live-action movies maybe haven’t always. The voice acting and the casting are outstanding. The character design– this movie’s versions of the Kingpin, the Scorpion, the Green Goblin, and especially Dr. Octopus are fantastic. The music is superb. This movie succeeds on every level but one, which is that it’s gonna scare the crap out of my son so I can’t take him to see it.

Oh, and the stinger at the end and the tribute to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, both of whom passed away this year?

I am lucky enough to be married to a woman who is not only willing to go to this neverending series of geek movies with me, but who genuinely enjoys them. She called Into the Spider-Verse her favorite superhero movie last night. And this was one of those movies, I think, where she was mildly interested but might have skipped the movie were it not for me pushing to see it. I can’t be trusted; I know that. She can. This one’s something really special, y’all. And it ain’t like you’ve got anything else to do until next week when Aquaman comes out. Go see it.

Come see me at Laffycon Before Christmas!

On December 15, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

So, first things first: I’ve got an event tomorrow that I haven’t had time to publicize yet! Lafayette, I’m giving you another chance to come buy all sorts of stuff from me! I will be at The Laffycon Before Christmas at Carnahan Hall in Lafayette, IN tomorrow from 11 to 5, with the usual assortment of books and bookmarks and I dunno maybe some candy and stuff. These same folks also have a two-day event in April that I’ll be attending, but this is a chance to get your friends and family some Luther Siler books for Christmas! Great idea, right?

In other news: my desktop computer, which has served me loyally since 2011 (!) is trying to die on me, and an adequate replacement for it is going to cost more money than I have, so … yeah. Come buy books.

Also, I saw SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE last night, and a highly positive review is heading your way soon, along with a review of Michelle Obama’s book BECOMING. So. Busy weekend.

A bit of doggerel

On December 13, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I’m kinda proud of this bit of nonsense, so I’m preserving it here since it’s less ephemeral than Twitter:

https://twitter.com/voraciousbrain/status/1072726078073040896

https://twitter.com/nfinitefreetime/status/1073418504437723136

https://twitter.com/nfinitefreetime/status/1073420876417245185

I gotta move out of this neighborhood

On December 12, 2018December 12, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching4 Comments

(That’s a BB King song)

Today was fucking awful.

We had … I dunno, six fights in the building today? Let’s say six, it was close to that one way or another. One kid caught what I think is probably the worst ass-whipping I’ve ever seen short of Rodney King. I hope to hell the other kid is in jail right now. I don’t know why they don’t take you to jail when you attack someone at school; school is the only place you can just beat the shit out of someone and then expect to go home afterwards like nothing happened. This kid should be in jail. He should be there until he turns 18, frankly. But he’s not, because he attacked someone at school and not out on the street.

Go ahead; there’s six plus years of damn near daily blog posts around here. Hell, the running average is probably still more than one a day. I wrote a whole-ass book about teaching that you can look through too if you like. See if you can find another post where this kid needs to be in jail for what he just did is the topic. I can’t think of one. That rough of a day.

And I do not have a hard job, guys. I really don’t. There’s a lot of moving parts but I don’t have a hard job, not compared to what everyone else in the building is doing. And today was damn near too much for me anyway. I don’t know how the hell any of these people get up and go to work every day. I do know that there’s no way in hell I return to this building next year. Not if my life depended on it. Which means I get to start jobhunting again. There’s a chance to do the same job just in some other school but for various reasons (which I’ll probably get into eventually, but not now) is not as likely as I’d like it to be, so the best move is to start looking for alternatives now. Because I can’t be in a place with this rotted a culture any longer. I’ve never worked in a school this bad. Not even close. And I’ll make it to June, but I need to be gone after that, and if something good turns up before then I’ll jump ship. I’ll be burning this bridge for the last time, but I think it needs to be done.

(Then again, for fun, especially if you know me in the real world, think back over my life since graduating in high school and count the good decisions. Other than marrying my wife, there aren’t as many as I used to think there are. I’m actually not very good at this being an adult nonsense. I remember when I thought I was good at stuff; it was a while ago.)

And tomorrow I’ll get up and do it all over again. Six more days with the kids and then I get a couple of weeks off. I can manage this, I think. I don’t have much of a choice, one way or another.

I give up; don’t read this

On December 11, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking4 Comments

I have about 60 pages left of Michelle Obama’s book, which I’m enjoying more than I thought I would, and which I think is probably going to generate a review here once I’m done with it. I’ve been fucking around on Twitter for like an hour because I’m Going to Write A Blog Post Tonight and fucking around on Twitter is what I do when I’m waiting for my thoughts to gel enough to figure out what I’m writing about on any given evening.

I need to get the blog post written before I can read, because otherwise Not Blogging hangs over my head and distracts me.

Now, at some point, mentally healthy people realize “oh, blogging isn’t happening tonight,” and stop fucking around on Twitter and go do something that they’d rather be doing– like, say, reading a book I’d like to finish tonight, or playing Red Dead Redemption 2.

But apparently yr esteemed host is unable to do that tonight, so he’s just going to fuck around on Twitter until the blog post happens.

Even if the blog post is about fucking around on Twitter.

So maybe I can pick the book back up now. Hey, I told you not to read this. 🙂

In which I am sitting in the dark

On December 10, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Some nimrod drilled through a buried power cable, knocking my house and about six others off the grid, and there are giant trucks parked in my driveway because of it. We have flashlights but I really don’t want to be staring at devices because it’ll screw my eyes up and plus I have no way to recharge anything. Supposedly we’ll be back online by bedtime but I’m not holding my breath.

So short, boring post tonight. Spend the evening going through the archives, if you like.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On December 9, 2018December 9, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

I’m Luther Siler. I’m an author. Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I’ve written several books you might be interested in, ranging from short story collections to near-future science fiction to fantasy space opera to nonfiction, all available as ebooks or in print from Amazon. Autographed books can be ordered straight from me as well.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet. Here are the important ones:

Support me on Patreon! Just a dollar a month gets you access to exclusive stories, early access to new books as they come out, and more! $2 or more a month gets you access to CLICK, an entire exclusive book!
You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out, and Politics Luther is usually angry and profane. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

In which I watch commercials for movies and talk about them

On December 8, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, movies2 Comments

So this came out yesterday, luckily just in time for me to catch it during my last-minute Twitter readthrough on my phone before going into work Friday morning.

This is a thing I do, by the way. My son has to be at school quite a bit before I do. Every morning I take him to school, go to McDonald’s, get a Sausage McMuffin with cheese and a large coffee with five cream and five sugar, then drive to work and sit in the parking lot and surf my phone and eat my McMuffin. I am weirdly invested in the idea that I don’t just get out of my car and go to work just because I’ve arrived at work. I decide that it’s time to go into work. It’s an active choice. It’s a weirdly empowering thing.

Anyway, I watched this twice on my phone and then went inside, somewhat surprised that I wasn’t as buzzed as I thought I’d be. I mean, part of it is the tone; it’s hard to get super excited about a trailer that is so clearly deliberately designed to be a downer. But in some ways this is the only trailer they can actually make right now– this has got to be the hardest movie to do early promotion for ever, because so damn much about it counts as a spoiler, and even just showing most of the characters on screen is going to reveal substantial things about the movie that the filmmakers clearly don’t want us to know.

I note a couple of things that intrigue me:

Clearly there’s a timeskip. If Civil War was “years” ago, there was a timeskip. I know we all suspect time travel is going to be a part of this movie, but I love the idea that we’re going to even temporarily see what the world is like after the Snappening.
Thanos is limping and missing most of his pinky finger.
I want to see Shuri as the Black Panther.
There’s some griping online about the subtitle? I dunno why. It’s fine.
So, do you think that Pepper Potts is going to be suiting up as Rescue and collecting Tony, or is this where they introduce Captain Marvel?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still hugely excited about this movie. There’s little that’s going to change that. I’m just not bouncing off the walls about the trailer like I thought I would.

Meanwhile …