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Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Media Consumption: Hail Satan?, Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series, The Grand Tour, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind & Penguin Highway

By Jonathan Bilski

Are you hungry for content? Does your media belly need anime to get through the day. We're giving you a section devoted to what we're watching in bite-sized morsels. We'll give you just a taste and see if you're hungry for more.

Movies

Hail Satan?

I learned a lot about the Satanic Temple and so can you! I've actually bought a birthday gift pack from them, a great collection of goodies, which I can't find on their online store anymore. I didn't even realize what I bought was from them until I started watching the film.

As it turns out, the Satanic Temple, the main focus of the film, isn't really about religion, but more of a political movement in America on a number of issues with a tighter focus on separating religion from our government. It follows the history of the temple and how it grew over time...never really addressing how the founder has an eye that looks like something went bad at some point. I mean he's the the main voice in the film and they never address or ask, "Hey, what's with your eye?,"

Other than that, it's a doc that shows how little people read or really look into what they're afraid of. The group doesn't advocate the devil, it advocates for a better America, but at many times while wearing robes from Party City.

Hail Satan? is in theaters

Shows

Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series

The antics of the three idiots in a trailer park somewhere in Canada endures as animated series. The boys have gotten so high that the world looks like an animated cartoon and by the second episode they don't even mention it.

The animated version let's the cast pull off feats they would have never been able to do in a regular live action show, like a flash flood, going into space and a tape worm becoming a friend. Even though it's animated the horrible, yet funny trailer trash moments continue and the by-the-book sitcom "we're family", "let's come-together" moments happen every episode.

It's truly stupid, but it'll make you laugh.

Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series is on Netflix

The Grand Tour Season 3

The series just ended and I mean The Grand Tour as a show ends this 14 episode season. We're suppose to be getting specials and such, but the the show's format is over for now.

It's really a show to skip around in for the adventure. Because a lot of it is talk from the three hosts: Jeremy, Richard and James who really treat each other like crap. When these three British blokes visit a foreign country and travel around, exploring it, it's the best travel show to watch. The don't get along and they don't help one another. It's like children go a show where the just get to say how cool their car is and zoom past each other.

This season they visit Detroit and China with brand new problems for both places. Go on a horrible tour of  Route 66 and try to travel out of nowhere in Mongolia. And they do it many times on monstrosities on wheels.

When they get to the adventure portion of an episode, you'll stay for the journey and for British cussing at each other.

The Grand Tour is on Amazon Prime

Anime

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind

Dumb, insane and ultra violent it's the next season of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Your possibly watching the previous season on Toonami. This series shifts focus to a new group of stand users in Italy who happen to be gangsters in the mafia. Yes, the concept is way different than just some school kids with monster pets, this is about a group of young gangsters trying to protect the daughter of their crime boss.

If you've never watched any JoJo, let me say the world is filled with people with amazing and strange powers called Stand Users. Much of the time their  powers are manifested into a bizarre looking humanoid avatars. On top of that the artist behind the manga, Hirohiko Araki, loves fashion, so characters strut around and pose like their in ads for clothes.

The latest episode I watched had so far one of the strangest bits where an antagonist to the gang hears a phone call coming from well...a living frog. Even stranger is that he was really hearing the phone call in his head.

The show loves overly complex fights with reasons so far-fetched as to why things happen that you just have to keep watching to see what will happen next.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind is on Crunchyroll

Penguin Highway 

Set in a small Japanese town, a young boy finds himself captivated by two mysteries: why there's a sudden burst of penguins in his town and why he likes the breasts of the lady he befriended at his dentist's office.

You"ll probably like the analytical antics of Aoyama, whose just a little kid, but solves problems on a college scholar-like level. He starts trying to figure out why penguins are appearing in his town, but at the same time is growing up. Eventually, another strange mystery comes up (not the boobs) and it makes you wonder what exactly is going on in Aoyama's town.

The film isn't short, but it feels like a classic adventure or mystery on par with recent anime hits like Lu Over The Wall or Mary and the Witch's Flower. Though not as colorful as those two the film likes to craft a story with its own beats that will make it a memorable classic for its sense of humor.

What I liked most was figuring out the world along-side Aoyama. How he was speculating and researching was the best part as I too was trying to figure out what was going on. It's a mystery you'll have to figure out too if you watch the movie.

Penguin Highway is in theaters