From MadCap's Couch - "Star Trek: Picard" (Season 1)

Oh, boy, here we go.

I haven't yet reviewed Star Trek beyond a few (that is, two as of this writing) of the movies and there's a very good reason for that - it's a franchise that has been going on for the past 50+ years and has an exhaustive and diverse range of ways it's been approached. Everything from the camp and cheesy,  Original Series to the camp and cheesy 80sness of The Next Generation, to the early camp going into serious and yet still occasionally camp cheesiness of Deep Space Nine going into the absurdZha campiness of...

You see where I'm going with this. There's a lot of ground to cover and there is plenty of goofy chipmunk shit to be found.

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Deathstalker" (1983)

I told you we'd be getting into some crap, did I not?

I had planned to be a bit more consistent with Sword and Sorcery 2020, but after viewing this...I just had to take a solid week off to recuperate. Luckily for me, the ongoing threat of the Coronavirus has seen my job and my school come to a (hopefully temporary) screeching halt, so I might actually be productive, and thus have content over the next few weeks! Shock of shocks!

So it is now that we come to Deathstalker, a film that shares a name with a series of science fiction novels that I'm fairly certain that have as much to do with this film as The Beastmaster did with The Beastmaster.

Weird coincidence, though, I'll admit.

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Dungeons & Dragons" (2000)

Ahhhh, here we are in the firm grasp of sword and sorcery bullshit!

This film is ironically brought to us by the same production company that would bring us The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. This film, is un-ironically, not as good as even The Battle of Five Armies. By 2000, the sword and sorcery craze of the 1980's was a distant memory with only smoldering embers stoked by Harry Potter (yes, I know Harry Potter isn't technically sword and sorcery, don't @ me) and direct to video releases before being later brought back to life by the aforementioned opus of one Peter Jackson.

This film, however, is an enigma. It's an enigma primarily because of why anyone thought that any of this was remotely a good idea. The best way to describe it, as given to me by EpicApathy (that handsome devil) is that it is a movie of improbabilities. Every single thing that could have been a bad choice was made, and it inevitably all went horribly, horribly wrong. It was as if someone had set a train wreck on fire, and the train was filled with glitter...and feces.

I know I don't post as much of it as often as I used to (MadCap's Tabletop Tales will be making a return at some point in the future, by the way), but I am actually a fan of table top RPGing and of Dungeons & Dragons in particular. Needless to say, a Dungeons & Dragons movie would be an exciting thing for me. Would be.

Wooooooooooooooooould be.

They fucked up.

They fucked up hard.

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "The Beastmaster" (1982)

My name is Madcap! I come from the low swamps!

...okay, got that out of the way.

The Beastmaster is a cult classic sword and sorcery film from the bygone age of the 1980's. Ironically, however, it didn't start out that way. The Beast Master was originally a novel written by novelist Andre Norton, details a Navajo man with the ability to communicate with animals who gets a job herding them on a distant alien planet and tries to avenge his father's murder.

So, naturally, The Beastmaster was destined to be a sword and sorcery epic.

What If...the Empire of the Wolf began in Tooth and Claw? (Part 4)

Last time, Jack Harkness and the Doctor managed to escape the insidious force of Torchwood, but not without some damage to the TARDIS in the process. With an emergency landing, they found themselves in a field...somewhere...in 2006 and with a mysterious statue standing nearby. Meanwhile, we saw the reveal of the true leader of the Torchwood task force and the servant of the Wolf Emperor - Rose Tyler. Time is starting to unravel. Will the Doctor and Jack be able to save the day?