Blame Marvel and sell your soul to the Devil

Do you know that feeling of frustration and being torn inside when you REALLY should be doing supermegaimportant thing due for yesterday, but eating dinner you think that one episode of series you were quite looking for (can Marvel still do something fresh? will Charlie Cox prove himself as a superhero type?) won't hurt and you couldn't be more wrong? Yeah, putting aside watching Daredevil for two days was a torture and if I've just messed up my future I will blame Marvel forever.

I love these glasses. And Charlie. And Matt. And Daredevil. And the show in general.

In recent era of renaissance of comics' adaptations it may seem like we had everything. Retro righteous heroes, genius billionaires, numerous mutants, a quarrel in family of gods, spaceships, dance-offs, epic superhero unions, a slow realisation of  gigantic project of connecting all recent production and creating a coherent universe (DC is trying to keep up, but for now they don't sound even half these impressive), prolific outbreak of tv series which so far failed to share the success of cinema blockbusters and I really can see why. And here comes Daredevil - at the first look we get a blind lawyer(!), who enormously developed his senses and decided to use all of his skills (including the educated lawyer part) to make his neighbourhood a better place and  soon appears that Hell's Kitchen is filled up with more shadows than Gotham, villain completely different than we normally observe (plus we get a look into other angle of his live aside from "doing evil stuff, so we know who's the bad one here"), number of various, good-written characters of differentiated personalities and nationalities (I simply have a weak spot for shows, which contain a dash of foreign languages), hero's agenda that can be watched without yawing, maybe thanks to splitting it into bits and slowly introducing viewers to the past events, an eye-pleasing but not farcical fighting style.

Props for shooting fight scenes in which beating looks dirty and wearing for both of the sides. The biggest advantage of this show for me is how natural the characters seem to be - for the first time I don't perceive comic-based personages as unrealistic. It's a merit of great dialogues and script in general.

Even hero sometimes needs help. When Murdock gets hurt very badly there's somebody to patch him up.

It turns out that while for 2h long screening light, funny and glamorous style works very well, tv series with continues episodes has to develop much deeper insight and consistent characters and adding some darkness without throwing humour out completely. This darker side aspect is probably why Arrow, Flash and Gotham prospected better than Marvel tv series. Well, at least until now, because Daredevil goes into darkness much further - we see scenes containing a high dose of brutality, sometimes so high it makes turn my gaze away from screen. The effect is toughen by the choice of scenery, a lot of action is going on in dark, nasty and narrow streets and corridors and you actually feel how rotten Hell's Kitchen is.

Did I mention how great are the relationships in this show?

I can say that this is what I was waiting for, what I expected from all these productions before and what I had to put on hold for over 40 hours.


Edit: My laptop objects to publish posts. The war is on.
         In the meantime Daredevil's season two has been announced. Yay!

         And if you missed, there's also a trailer of Ant-Man. After success of Daredevil and serious attack of laughter after watching the trailer I am waiting for this movie much more excited.

Galavant! Let's juggle the conventions, sing, fight and love!

If I had to point out the worst enemy of my productivity, that would be stress and, believe me, in last few weeks I've been through enough drama material to make a proper movie, but now spring is coming, toxic people are cut off, I have roof above my head, not to mention a decent Wi-Fi signal. With bright look into future, let me tell you about tv series so positive, that the wind seems to howl cheerful tunes through the window.

Behold one of a kind - Galavant!

Gaaalaavaaaaant!

Series follows the journey of a knight errant and his companions cut into half-hour episodes filled with motives from fairy tales and original musical numbers. At beginning we're introduced with Galavant – a hero of his times, he's handsome (square jaw and perfect hair! cojones out to there*), strong, tough plus any other manly value, and madly in love with beautiful Madalena, who turns out to be a material girl and abducted by evil king, instead of eternal love chooses welfare and power and becomes an actual black character of the story. Galavant with broken heart loses his will to live, abandon hero life style and rot in bed with a pitcher of vine, then on his doorstep appear a princess in distress asking for help, trying to convince him that Madalena still loves him and needs to be rescued, which is a part of a trap for the hero prepared by the king. Nonetheless still being naively in love Galavant take his squire and head out with the princess for their adventure.

Timothy Osmond is faultless, his King Richard is absolutely brilliant - cruel, sissy and a comical master.

Honestly I haven't had this much fun watching anything since a loooong time. It's hilarious, it's brilliant, it's got musical numbers that aren't show stoppers, but carry on the plot, it's laughing at fairy tales schemes, but still is a fairy tale itself, although from time to time there are mentioned real conditions of living in the Middle Ages, they are presented in humorous, a bit Monty Python alike, way. The characters are wonderful, so expressive and replete, that you suddenly find yourself liking them. Well, it's helpful that they all have the screen (and often a song or two) for themselves at least for few minutes, so you get to know them and your heart is stolen not only by the main trio, as well as the evil king, but also his mousy cook, the heartless henchman and many more.

We get a princess worrior AND a female antagonist. How great is that?

The songs are catchy (at lease two days after every release, I'm wandering around room humming the tunes), funny and really well sang. The huge plus of production is that the main cast is composed from actors with musical career, so apart from their good looks, they have very pleasant voices. It has to be mentioned that in charge of composing the music was Alan Menken, who is known for music from Beauty and The Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Tangled, and words are written by Glenn Sleter who's credit for lyrics to most of the songs from Tangled - except here he could allow himself to make jokes that wouldn't suit Disney movies, what only did good for the Galavant.

Back to the casting, although most of the leading roles are played by unknown faces (unless you have better face recognition than me (gosh, I suck at it!) and connected Sid or rather Luke Youngblood with Lee from Harry Potter movies), as the story goes among the others we can spot Hugh Bonneville, Ricky Gervais or Anthony Head. A bit like Easter egg hunt. And there's also the king with his court who cannot be overlooked – Timothy Omundson himself! Last time I saw him playing Cain in Supernatural, quite change of air. On his side Vinnie Jones (shame on me, but I mostly recall him as this face in the background of every production) and Darren Evans (My Mad Fat Dairy).

Because of low tv audience Galavant's season 2 fate is endangered (seems to have more fans in the internet, maybe somebody will look in their direction and kindly notice us). And the first one finishes with cliffhanger, so feel warned!

*They got me. It's catchy. And you won't hear lyrics like these in a ordinary Disney movie.