'Widdershins' is a fun steampunk romance

Widdershins (2018)
Starring: Brian Cox and Jam Gray
Director: Simon Biggs

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A bored and lonely gentleman (voiced by Cox) living in a perfectly ordered world where humanity has subjugated themselves to clockwork automatons finds excitement when he crosses paths with a rebellious woman (voiced by Gray). 

For a short film set in a steampunk utopia-turned-dytopia, "Widdershins" is amazingly sweet and touching. Every character in it is appealing in its own way (even the robotic butler that occupies a space in the story that swings from comedic sidekick to borderline villain to mildly pitiable pet) and each is provided touches that economically communicate their strengths and weaknesses and desires. In short, even the robot character gets some humanizing touches over the 10-minute span of this film, and it makes it an absolute joy to watch.

The animation is simple--perhaps a little too simple at times--but it's all energetic and well-matched to the fast-moving story. The music is very effective as well. 

If you like steampunk and/or quirky romance tales, I think you'll find the minutes spent in the world of Mr. Widdershins and the Mystery Woman will be enjoyable ones. Click below to start watching!

This film was called to our attention by a reader of the blog. If YOU know of a film you think we need to watch and call attention to--so others can enjoy it--send us a link at stevemillermail@gmail.com!

In observance of International Cat Day

We just learned that August 8 is "International Cat Day". Here's a small gallery of pictures in celebration!

Musical Monday with Primus

On this Musical Monday, Primus reminds us with song and video that people were doing stupid, dangerous things for public attention long before TikTok came along. They just had to work harder at it in the old days.

Over the Falls (1997)
Starring: Les Claypool, Larry Lalonde, and Brian Matia
Director: Les Claypool
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Stok's Un-Sweet Black Cold Brew Coffee

As I write this, we're having a heat wave, I don't have A/C, so I'm not going to make matters worse by drinking hot coffee. Yet... the reviews must be written and the addiction must be fed. Enter--cold brew coffee from the grocery store!


STŌK: UN-SWEET BLACK COLD BREW COFFEE

Cold-brew coffee is alleged to be less bitter and more caffeinated than the coffee we use making our trust coffeemakers, or otherwise run boiling water through ground coffee. Cold brew coffee is made by steeping beans in cooler liquid for 10-15 hours, drawing the flavor and caffeine more slowly from the beans and thus producing the magic juice we love so much.

Allison is wondering if this coffee mug is big enough.
We're wondering if ANY mug big enough when it comes to coffee.

While I've had cold brew coffees in the past (most recently an offering from Starbucks called Iced Cold Brew Chocolate Cream or something along those lines), I've not yet put one through the review process here at Shades of Gray. As a result, I could only say that I'd enjoyed the Starbucks drink but couldn't give a "formal" evaluation of the claims made about cold-brewed coffee. So, with it being summer and too damn hot to make and drink traditional coffee, I got myself a bottle of Stok Coffee's Un-Sweet Black Cold Brew from Safeway.

Stok is a Colorado-based company that brews coffee, but does not appear to roast their own beans. They exclusively use Arabica beans and offer a dozen or so different cold brew variants, including blends that are unsweetened, semi-sweet, chocolate- and vanilla-flavored. A common claim for all their blends is that they are "bold" and "flavorful".

As for the Un-sweet Black cold brew, I may have a different idea of what "bold" means, because I would define it as very mellow... flavorful, yes, but mellow and even a little sweet. Frequent readers know that I am attracted to flavored coffees, because the bitterness present in most roasts is not something I care for. In the case of Stok's Un-Sweet Black, I enjoyed it refrigerated, straight out the bottle. There was a distinct coffee flavor, but the bite I expect from black coffee was not present at all. In fact, this blend reminded me more of a blonde or light roast instead of the dark-roasted beans that I am led to believe form the foundation of cold-brewed coffee. It appears to be absolutely accurate that the cold-brew process pulls all the flavor and none of the bitterness from the coffee beans. The result is great tasting coffee, whether it's consumed cold, over ice, room temperature, or hot. (Since cold-brewed coffee is intended to be consumed hot or cold, I microwaved a couple mugs-worth and found that the Un-Sweet Black blend was as versatile as it was delicious.)

This was a coffee that worked equally well with all the standard mixers I use when reviewing coffees--Unsweetened Almond Milk, Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, and sugar-free Italian Sweet Cream creamer. The resulting drinks were each wonderfully smooth, mixing with the coffee flavor in their own unique way. 

Since the basic coffee was so smooth and mellow, I branched out and tested it with some of the creamers I am trying to a future article with some creamer reviews. Whether it was the Coconut Creme-flavored creamer, Rice Krispies Treats-flavored creamer, the sugar free Chocolate Caramel-flavored, or the sugar free French Vanilla-flavored creamer, the result was tasty and pleasant. Similarly, when I tried this coffee with vodka, and with vodka and the sugar free French Vanilla creamer, and with the Unsweetened Vanilla Almond milk, the results were also each unique and pleasant.

If I had to mount any complaint about Stok's Un-Sweet Cold Brew Coffee, it's that when I first started drinking it, it kept me up at night. I do have trouble sleeping at times, but it has never been anything I've been able to trace back to coffee, so this was intially a little confusing to me. The confusion lifted once I discovered that cold brew coffee has a higher caffeine content than even light roasts do. (And this is, of course, not a a REAL complaint... it's just something I need to be aware of when it comes to what coffee I choose to drink in the afternoon.)

For the past several months, I've usually had a bottle of Starbuck's Unsweetened Blonde Roast Iced Coffee blend in my fridge; it's been my go-to when making iced coffee or when I made my own variation on the White Russian mixed drink. However, I find that I like Stok's far more and that it mixes so wonderfully with everything I've tried so far. I may not know what "blod" means in the context of Stok's Un-Sweet Black Cold Brew Coffee, but I know that I love it!

Space Girl Adventures, Part Twenty-seven

 

SPACEGIRL

By Travis Charest

What Has Gone Before: Spacegirl is in the clutches of the ruthless alien crime lord, Mongo Badd. She must do... or die!

To Be Continued...

One of the best 'Alice' entries is still weak

Alice the Whaler (1927)
Starring: Lois Hardwick
Director: Walt Disney
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Alice (Hardwick) is the captain of a whaling vessel operated by a literal zoo crew of cartoon animals.

 The "Alice Comedies" (also referred to as "Alice in Cartoonland") was an early series of 50+ short films by Walt Disney. It merged live action footage with animation in a fashion similar to the "Out of the Inkwell" series from Max Fleischer, but much cruder in execution.

"Alice the Whaler" came toward the end of the series, and it's one of the better ones I've watched so far... but it's also incredibly inconsistent in the level of quality as it unfolds. There are some really nice bits of animation with flying birds, some of the crew antics are fairly complex and funny. On the other hand, there are some jokes that get drawn out well beyond the point of being funny and there's some cheaply and lazily executed animation sequences, and the live-action Alice is barely incorporated into any of the cartoon action. 

What really ruins this cartoon, though, is the ending. It involves Alice's whaling ship successfully harpooning the whale, and, given how this is set up, I can't believe that even 100 years ago audiences would have found that turn of events amusing or entertaining. Either Walt Disney conceived of one of the worst endings to a cartoon ever, or the full ending has not survived to present day. (The only satisfying finale *I* can think of for this one, would have seen Alice's ship smashed to bits and she and her zoo crew bobbing in the ocean, clutching flotsam.)

But don't take my word for it--click below and watch for yourself. Aside from the completely botched ending, this is a pretty cute cartoon. The music is also matched nicely to the action.

Batgirl will always be here...

 Last year, we celebrated the announcement of a new Batgirl movie entering production, with Leslie Grace playing the title character. Today, we announce that the movie has been unceremoniously shelved, with the reason given that it's not high-budget and glitzy enough.

That's one of the dumbest reasons we've ever heard given for a movie not being released, and we share the sorrow of those who were looking forward to seeing this film (as well as the hundreds of people whose hard work may never seen by audiences).

BUT!

Batgirl will always be here at Shades of Gray, whether in the form of the lovely Yvonne Craig, or in drawings from artists famous and obscure! And we hope heartbroken Batgirl fans will be able to find some solace in this small gallery of art!

We also think you'll find some Batgirl joy in the absolutely, long-running gag strip by Mike Maihack starring Babs and her bestie, Supergirl. Click here to visit Mr. Maihack's website and be ready to smile.
 

Happy birthday, Evangeline Lilly!

Today, Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly--perhaps best known for her role as Hope Van Dyne in the "Ant-Man' movies--celebrates her birthday!

 We don't know what she wants as presents...

... but we think she needs a skirt or a pair of pants.

Happy birthday to Madeline Smith!

British actress Madeline Smith is known to Hammer Horror fans for her roles in films like "Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell" (1973) and to action movie fans for her turn as a secondary Bond Girl in "Live and Let Die" (also 1973), but has also been seen in TV roles, large and small, for more than five decades.

Here's a very spicy photo of Ms. Smith from her Hammer Horror days, in observance of her 73rd birthday!

Musical Monday with Ethel Merman & Betty Boop

Screen Songs: Let Me Call You Sweetheart (1932)
Starring: Ethel Merman, Billy Murray, and Mae Questal
Director: Dave Fleisher and Shamus Culhane
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

After a nanny (Betty Boop, voiced by Questal) turns down his advances, a police officer (Bimbo, voiced by Murray) proceeds to rape her while putting the baby she's supposed to care for in deadly danger. Meanwhile, Ethel Merman invites viewers to join her in singing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart".

 I watched "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" twice, with four days between viewings, just to make sure I hadn't been in a dark frame of mind when I viewed it the first time. I hadn't been.

The cartoon sequences are among the most disturbing I think I've ever come across... because the sense is that there's nothing wrong with the fact that Bilbo is a police officer who forces is "affection" on a clearly-not-interested Betty Boop. Also, we're clearly supposed to find it hilarious that Bilbo, while setting about to rape Betty,  intentionally kicks the baby carriage she was tending, sending it careening down a hill where it and the baby ultimately plunges and sinks into a pond. Although the baby doesn't die (no one really thought that it would, did they?) and is saved via some visually amusing cartoon antics, the circumstances under which it is placed in danger are so distasteful it was hard for me to enjoy it. Just to make the Betty and Bimbo sequence as repulsive as possible, the animators later show them in a state of blissful embrace--Betty really wanted it all along, see?--where we should have seen her standing over Bimbo's broken and twisted corpse.

For all my irritation at main animated sequence of this Screen Songs installment, I can also see a possibility that it was intended as an ironic juxtaposition of the featured song, "Let Me Call You Sweetheart", because the on-screen lyrics get really crazy type-setting wise toward the end. The animated sequence after the Ethel Merman sing-along section supports this idea, as it features a predator singing "Let me Call You Sweet-heart" while chasing down its prey. (Bimbo and Betty being shown in a loving embrace after he forces himself upon her in a brutal fashion undermines that interpretation though. Unless one assumes they were "roleplaying"...)

Although I had a very hard time enjoying this cartoon, I recognize it's well-animated with some amusing visual, quickly paced, and features a pleasant song, hence the Seven-Star rating. I just can't get past some of the messaging. (Oh... and while I can't think of a way to do rape "right", the creators of this cartoon and this one did present child endangerment in a fashion that was more amusing than troubling.)

But are the flaws of "Let Me Call Me Sweetheart" are severe as I feel they are? Take a look for yourself and let me know!