Sci Fi in real life

The last two days I watched:

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

The Propaganda Game (2015)

Guardians of the Galaxy

This is such an amazing movie. it's one that can be watched over and over again. Before this movie came out I didn't know anything about the Guardians of the Galaxy, even the older teams despite my asperations of comicbook nerdom. Initially, when I heard they were making this movie, I thought they were going to make a movie about Cyclops' father who left Earth to run around as a 1970's style space pirate. His story could be an interesting movie if the last culture he had was from the '70's so he's very flamboyant in that way. In the comics a young Cyclops visits his dad in space for some great stories. His dad is a bit of a dirtbag and Cyclops has to try to pry him out of being a swinging bachelor to being a dad when they believe they are dying, stranded on a desert planet.

Also in the comics, there have been some great stories of this team of Guardians of the Galaxy. For a few episodes Tony Stark flys around with them, and they later meet other new characters who aid them. One of my favorite comics of recent years is of Nova, the last Nova Corps officer who takes the mantle by finding his missing father's helmet that gives him special powers to fly into space and fight space monsters. It's pretty fun, he's just a teenager from just outside Phoenix with a personality like Peter Parker's... except when he meets Spider-Man who think's he's just some kid getting in the way.

The Propaganda Game

This is a documentary on Netflix about a film crew that goes to North Korea to interview a Spanish born man who is enamored with the hermit country. This guy said his dream from an early age was to be in the North Korean military and he shows foreignors around and tells them about all the "amazing" things about their form of government. Documentaries that go into North Korea are always interesting, many of them are able to suss out new things, this one seemed to show a lot more different aspects of life than other films, but this one lacked narative focus. It seemed like it would be about the propaganda told by and about North Korea but the more interesting aspect was the Spanish man showing the filmmakers around. Then it seemed like it might be about misconceptions about North Korea but it had so many talking heads saying different things that it was hard to narrow down what the images were showing. There was also a bureau chief for CNN in China who seemed to say some things that made North Korea not seem so bad but it also seemed like he was being diplomatic to be able to retain access. It's always interesting to learn more about North Korea but this film didn't touch anything outside the capital city or the classes of citizens that aren't in the ruling class or the reports of rampant drug use for high percentages of the population. This documentary is of note because it seems to have much more access than other docs in recent years, they stay for over five days, they go into a huge museum with no guests, they go into a church the filmmaker thinks is an elaborate theater, and they see some celebration of a holiday.