Saw some good things this week

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy on Monday, and that proved a very good birthday present to myself. The MCU definitely is struggling to hold itself up to a good standard, and ever since hearing this new Daredevil is leaving out Foggy and Karen I've even had a reason to outright detach from it. But there still are people making movies in that universe that care about their quality and will do everything they can to make them good, and there are still those who succeed in spades. ( Where you start crying (or I did, anyway) when... )

Where are the end of the well-spun story, you still feel blown away. I don't know what will happen to any of these characters, especially since ( you know Gunn made the hard choice with one of them you can't trust the other creators to keep to... )

But the GOTG trilogy stands on its own, a highlight of modern pop/comic book/sci-fi moviemaking.
I also finally watched the first episode of HBO's The Last of Us. I watched a great deal of Brian's recent play-through of the game-enough to get a new level of appreciation for Ashley's acting ability and also anticipate the big moments of this hour and a half episode, long enough to be a mini-movie of its own-and have high standards for Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey both to meet. Bella's no Ashley, but they both did pretty well, and so did the episode in general, especially on expanding the world and story beyond what a video game will get the chance to do. I'm looking forward to the rest. Hell, I might just keep Max just to watch the second season.
And as for last night, oh man. ( Lots of stuff... )