Review: Dungeons & Dragons - Honour Among Thieves

Dungeons & Dragons:
Honour Among Thieves*¹
Cert: 12A / 134 mins / Dir. John Francis Daley / Trailer

Six years feels like a long time for a film to be in development in this day and age. When I say 'development', I mean everything after that day in 2017 when the Hasbro exec in charge of D&D watched Jumanji and hollered "GUYS why aren't WE doing that?". Because evidently that happened...

And so it comes to pass; the very archetype of furrow-browed geekdom for half a century stripped of sharp edges and gatekeeping, retooled as a kid-friendly action comedy starring familiar faces from some of the entertainment world's most successful franchises. And, pleasingly, it works very well.

BARD

Chris Pine leads a pack of mythical adventurers as Edgin the bard (one of only two characters to get any significant backstory work), joined by Michelle Rodriguez's Holga the barbarian (she's the other one), Justice Smith's Simon the wizard, and Sophia Lillis' Doric the druid. Together they try to remove the reins of power from Hugh Grant's Forge (a former ally but perennial con-man) and Daisy Head's Sofina the evil wizard. Chloe Coleman also stars as Edgin's teenage daughter with abandonment-issues. Honestly, that girl doesn't have any luck.

All of these performances are fantastic on individual levels*², although the chemistry between players is lacking somewhat. It's unclear whether this is down to slight miscasting or the challenge of working under two directors. The script, meanwhile, manages to hold the whole thing together, and the film's strength is that its writer/directors have penned this as an action-comedy first and foremost, with the branded tie-in opportunity taking a back seat (Hasbro get their name in the titles, so shifting units from toy shop shelves is down to them now).

The storyline itself is a more standard 'break into the castle / steal the treasure / realise the treasure wasn't the most important thing' affair, which makes up for its shortcomings by deftly spinning the plates of showcasing its characters. While the movie certainly borrows tonally from both its parent-franchise and the wider genre, there are relatively few nods to the mechanics of roleplaying games themselves. But at the height of Act III we do get what initially appears to be a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to the iconic 1980s cartoon iteration*³, although this is hammered home a little more firmly in the following minutes to ensure value for money.

CHAT GPT

At its funniest when it really leans into its gags (the extended necromancy scene is delightfully inspired), for all D&D's throwaway quality it's not without a few moments of meta-smartness. A particular favourite comes in the second act where it's suddenly crystal clear than Hugh Grant is playing his slimy, boisterous con-man by doing a 100% impersonation of Boris Johnson, and perhaps because the directors hadn't twigged what he was doing (and because this works for the part anyway), it stayed in the film untouched.

Of course there's a finale to be had, and Honour Among Thieves gets messy in places, not least when it tries to raise its dramatic intensity. Coincidentally, that's also when the film is at its most ordinary as a popcorn-flick. Naturally it will hold the door open for sequels, but providing they expand upon this world rather than just rehashing gags, there's the potential for real greatness in the future.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves is good. In some places it's almost great. But the elusive Epic Quality™ needed to elevate fantasy films to all-timers is just out of reach here.

Decent work though, lads.
Now do Gauntlet...

*¹ Okay before anything else, I'd like to add how quietly impressed I am at the UK distributors Entertainment One rebranding this with the British spelling of Honour for the United Kingdom promo materials. Because that means there's been a meeting about it pretty high up, and a grammar pedant has absolutely lost their shit until they got their way, and I am here for that.



^{[ BACK ]}

*² Genuine credit to Californian actor Justice Smith, whose movie-long British Accent™ is admirably close enough to work for the majority of viewers, but just subliminally wrong enough to be distractingly off-kilter to vocal nit-pickers like myself. ^{[ BACK ]}


*³ Spoilers, highlight-to-read: Seriously though, I thought that the cartoon reference was going to be Sofina attaching the red-wizard's horn onto one side of her shaved head to channel Venger and attain ultimate power. Alas not. Shame. [/ENDS] ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

Shazam! Fury of The Gods
Cert: 12A / 130 mins / Dir. David F Sandberg / Trailer

So turbulent days aboard the S.S. DCEU mean that it's arguably not the best of times to be dropping the latest chapter in a continuity which may or may not be continuing and which has always regarded itself as, at best, advisory. But it's March and the rest of the calendar is full, so Shazam! Fury Of The Gods is here. The plot is as follows:

Something something, magic staff;
Something something, power.
Something something, superheroes vs gods;
Something something, Helen Mirren chewing the scenery like it's made by Wrigley's*¹.

True to form, DC and Warner Bros have turned out a product which is simultaneously trying too hard, and also has no idea what it's supposed to be doing. The vast majority of 2019's cast return for the sequel, and their performances are as assured as last time, if somewhat hampered by a weaker script. The undeniable strength here is that it's all firmly family-friendly, but any film doing that and bolting on a moral message runs the risk of being too patronising into the bargain. Shazam is no exception to this, and in a few places it feels like the message is being delivered by a touring theatre company to a school assembly.

The main problem though is that David F Sandberg is trying to re-capture the lightning-in-a-bottle which made the first entry so surprisingly great. The deadpan humour has the edge over the overtly scripted gags this time round, but the overall hit-rate is more patchy. Without the origins-story structuring the run-time, this quickly becomes a generic good/evil headbasher; fine if you haven't seen that before, but there are few people in 2023's audience who fit that description.

The film is as accomplished as you'd expect from a studio this size, but also with absolutely no restraint. The visuals veer wildly between High School Musical, Doctor Strange and Hogwarts, sacrificing its identity in the process. The third-act battle for Philadelphia feels like a white noise migraine where the effects teams have been told to do whatever they want because none of this matters any more.

Unfortunately, Fury Of The Gods doesn't have the energy or conviction of its predecessor, too mired in its own mythology to do anything interesting with the storyline. But for a kids' film it's fairly decent, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise, it absolutely is...

*¹ She's a bonafide national treasure of course but god bless Helen Mirren, who appears to have confused leading the vanguard for mature actresses securing prominent roles in Hollywood, with blithely casting aside all dignity for a quick and easy paycheck. You know for a fact that she's watched Blanchett and Hopkins in Thor and thought 'I could do that'. Well yes Helen, you probably could. But not with a DC script, as you have now discovered. It's less Shakespeare, more Mother Goose. Still, spend the money wisely, yeah? ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: 65

65
Cert: 12A / 93 mins / Dir. Scott Beck & Bryan Woods / Trailer

In a month seemingly dominated by sequels and franchise entries, it makes a refreshing change to see a film that's standing on its own feet. Of course, when that film is a transparent mashup of After Earth and Jurassic Park by way of Passengers, it's debatable how much originality is actually allowed to seep onto cinema screens these days, but points for trying.

COACH

We meet Adam Driver as Mills, essentially a prehistoric alien coach driver who's tasked with transporting cryogenically frozen passengers on a two-year interplanetary journey while struggling to deal with separation from his terminally ill daughter (Chloe Coleman). When his transport runs viewport-first into an uncharted asteroid belt, the ship is forced to crash land on a primitive jungle planet, killing everyone except Mills and a young (and now orphaned) girl, Koa (Arianna Greenblatt).

Separated from a rescue-shuttle by 12km of uneven ground and the array of dinosaurs who live and hunt there, the pair have only a day to make it to their escape vessel because a larger asteroid is about to collide with the planet. Because that planet is Earth, 65 million years ago. And yes, it's that asteroid*¹.

SLEDGEHAMMER

At 93 minutes this film is lean, and the screenplay dosn't mess about in setting up its stall. The pacing is brisk by necessity but never feels rushed (if anything, viewers are more likely to want the two central characters to stop dawdling with bugs and berries). Chris Bacon's score (with contributions from Danny Elfman) is bombastic and suspensful in turn, and Salvatore Totino's cinematography is very solid considering how much of 65 takes place at night or in dark spaces. The production design is accomplished throughout, even if the ship-interiors immediately look like they're from about a hundred other mid-budget sci-fi films.

What's perhaps more surprising is how emotionally competent the film is. Greenblatt balances fear, panic and trauma while retaining her character's humanity*² (and, essentially, her likeability) in a performance which is far better than the film technically needs. Likewise, Driver initially feels miscast despite his sincerity. We've seen glimpses of Adam's action-chops before, and he holds up his character well as a pragmatic do-er who has no idea how to deal with his situation or how he feels about Koa effectively becoming a surrogate daughter. But the bottom line is that any other version of this film would have starred a gurning Mark Wahlberg or Gerard Butler, so I suspect we got the good end of a deal here.

For the most part what writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are doing isn't great, and yet the film is pretty great at doing it. Considering how inherently silly and pedestrian it all is, this works surprisingly well. The script takes its characters and threats seriously enough for them to matter, but never tries to convince the audience that this is anything more than perfectly serviceable, perfectly disposable fun.

65 won't be world-changing (unless you're one of those dinosaurs), but it's far better than it probably has any real right to be.

*¹ It's okay, I know. You don't have to tell me it's classed as a meteor once it enters the planet's atmosphere. I know that and you know that. It just doesn't feel right to blithely flip between asteroid and meteor in the same paragraph while expecting everyone else to be familiar the similarities and distinctions between them. Grammar vs science I suppose, and paper beats rock this time round. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² I mean 'humanity' in an emotional sense. SPOILERS, highlight-to-read: The characters aren't human; this isn't a Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy tribute where the pair get accidentally stranded on prehistoric Earth and end up inadvertently kickstarting humanity. Apart from anything else that would be deeply weird since Koa is supposed to be around nine years old. But Mills and Koa are played by humans here (without colour-tinting or sticking gills etc on their faces) because that's the best way of selling the performances. Just buy into the fact that they're human-looking aliens with no humans around for direct comparison and you won't go far wrong. [/END] ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Creed III

Creed III
Cert: 12A / 116 mins / Dir. Michael B. Jordan / Trailer

Funny old game. Michael B Jordan gets punched in the face for two hours and I'm the one who leaves with a headache. My memory tells me that I largely enjoyed the first Creed movie and mostly disliked the second, but written records suggest that I just found both grindingly average. Credit where it's due then, for a threequel which is nothing if not tonally consistent...

Jordan himself directs Ryan Coogler and Zach Baylin's screenplay*¹, and by now the scripts have ceased any attempt at actual character development outside of ham-fisted cliché (successful Punching Man is Sad™; maybe he just needs to do more punching again?), with everything not taking place in a boxing ring acting as a clockwork placeholder between bouts*². The worst thing is that the cast are all superb performers and utterly wasted here*³.

There is a certain visceral thrill to the fight choreography of course, but if this film can't get that right then there's no point in any of it. Jordan also attempts some interesting framing in the climactic match, but the real bonus at this point is at least there's no mumbled dialogue.

It's true that people come out of Star Wars and Marvel movies with much the same complaints, and they obviously have every right to do so. I'm very aware that this was not made for me, but I'm also certain that the series has far more dramatic and emotional potential than it's been able to realise. Because nothing says a character is going to have a stroke later in the film like having that character wryly say "I promise not to have a stroke tonight; maybe tomorrow though".

Ultimately, Creed III is an unapologetic pantomime of monosyllabic, paranoid, fragile masculinity; but all too often this is reduced this to deafening punchertainment rather than any sort of useful parable*⁴.

It is true however that the film knows what it is and knows what its target audience wants. This much is to be respected, even if actual enjoyment seemed a little further out of my reach...

*¹ The plot? Well, The Good Man from the first two films has been successful at punching people and winning special belts so he has now given up punching people and just owns a gym and branded clothing line instead. He's not happy, though. Then one day A Bad Man who he knows from the old days turns up acting like a bit of an arsehole. The Good man thinks The Arsehole might his friend, despite a) remembering him being An Arsehole through a series of vivid flashbacks, and b) literally everybody else in the film pointing out that he's An Arsehole and always has been. Then it takes an hour and a half for The Good Man to realise that The Arsehole is in fact An Arsehole, so he comes out of retirement and arranges a punching competition to settle once and for all who is the best at being violently upset. It is The Good Man. He Wins. And all credit to this film, The Good Man wins by punching The Arsehole until he cannot get up again, rather than that thing from before where neither of them actually win and a man behind a desk just decides who his favourite was. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² You know The Good Man is good because he has a wall-sized picture of himself in his house, like we all do. The Arsehole, on the other hand, doesn't even have a proper house. The Arsehole has a manual toothbrush, whereas The Good Man has an electric one. I mean, The Good Man doesn't know how to correctly use an electric toothbrush but he does own one, so that has to count for something. I imagine. Hashtag success. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ I swear to god, fans of punching-films are going to tell their friends that Creed III is arthouse cinema because of the deaf kid's sign language subtitles... ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ To make matters worse during Creed's quiet talky scenes (like the ones where Mrs Creed tells Mr Creed that perhaps he needs to talk about his feelings rather than punching people, before Mr Creed goes on to win at the film by punching people), the auditorium's fittings were audibly rattling from John Wick playing in the screen next door, reminding me that I could have just been watching that again instead; a film which is far more violent and with a far worse script, but one which is also far more fun... ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: John Wick Chapter 4

John Wick: Chapter 4
Cert: 15 / 169 mins / Dir. Chad Stahelski / Trailer

Much like the Mission:Impossible series, I always seem to forget quite how much I enjoy John Wick movies until I'm watching one. Keanu Reeves returns for a another outing in Chad Stahelski's needless-yet-welcome fourquel about the put-upon hitman who hoped he was out, but no he's still back in again. No, again-again.

And, as one would hope and expect, it works well, a sort of live-action cartoon and brutal ballet which embraces overtly comic violence to rival classic Tom & Jerry. The film spends an admirable amount of time lining up its plot points, considering the audience are really here just here for the lensflare, blood-plumes and shell casings.

HANDLE

A fine and rounded supporting cast*¹ handle the bulk of the exposition, with the series learning from its past misdemeanours as good ol' Keanu only seems to have around 90 words of dialogue throughout the entire movie, which helps everyone immeasurably. Along with Neo and Morpheus in attendance, sly nods to The Matrix continue to trickle in*², with grandiose staircases, slow-mo nightclub scenes*³ and Bill Skarsgård channelling an adolescently pouting Merovingian.

At a tad under three hours, there's an overall steadiness of pace which doesn't feel so much like padding, but it's definitely an earned self-indulgence. Many have accused the film of being too long, but in all honesty this is just Stahelski enjoying atmospheric breathers between the violence. There is nothing in John Wick: Chapter 4 without beauty or purpose.

MAKE A STAND

Yet once again, the real stars of the movie are the cinematography*⁴ and fight choreography. A pleasing number of cut-free sequences of the former allow the latter to flourish, and just watching this is an exhausting experience in the best possible way. There are few belly laughs in the script, but chuckles aplenty.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is enormously satisfyingly fun. Sure it's More Of The Same, but when The Same is this well executed, is that such a bad thing?

*¹ As much as I enjoyed this, every scene with Hiroyuki Sanada made me wish I was watching Bullet Train again, and every scene with Donny Yen made me want to revisit Rogue One. But then, I am incredibly suggestible. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² I like how Laurence Fishburne will keep coming back for walk-on roles in John Wick, but apparently won't touch The Matrix< with a sh!tty broom handle. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Although Scott Adkins' performance as rent-a-villain nightclub owner Killa feels like Steve Coogan playing Rick Waller in a Bond parody. There, I said it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Seriously, the only thing more dazzling than the lighting in this film is Ian McShane's veneers. Good lord. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Scream VI

Scream VI
Cert: 18 / 122 mins / Dir. Tyler Gillett & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin / Trailer

Being a relative civilian at these things and not having perused the film's IMDB page in advance, I wasn't far into Scream VI's runtime before the thought occurred to me that 'oh, that's why this was double-billed with the fifth movie'. Because this new entry features a lot of the prominent (and crucially under-developed) characters from last time, whom I would have otherwise completely forgotten about in the intervening fourteen months. Emotional continuity dictates recent re-watching, here.

It's also worth noting that many of these players were not standing waving in the final frame of that film, suggesting that the Scream-verse is now closer to the Marvel model where central characters apparently never actually die. Not ideal for a slasher. Bonus casting-points should be awarded for the traditional semi-detached opening sequence starring Samara Weaving and Tony Revolori, suggesting that Scream has become Last Of The Summer Wine for millennial actors. Still, fans of arch scripting will be pleased with the line where Courtney Cox explains that Neve Campbell won't be showing up for this one, with all the subtlety of Christopher Lee being announced out of Return Of The King...

GUY

But I digress. To New York now, as 5quel scribes Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt return with directors Tyler Gillet and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin for a tonal reboot of the spiritual reboot which does exactly the same thing but different. Basically, a slasher movie which is in love with itself. And yet with the exception of the first act's Annoying Film Studies Geeks™, the extraneous structural introspection of the last outing is all but jettisoned as the film commits to continuing the storyline of 5, and bringing 4 closer into the ongoing continuity. Because there's little time for meta-smartarsery when you're crafting a convoluted whodunnit*¹.

Ironically, this stripping-down makes Scream VI a far better movie for not constantly talking about how the movie will unfold, but also a more ordinary slasher and arguably far worse Scream movie as a result. I guess you can use that knife to cut the cake but the mask means you can't eat it, or something.

DOLL

And it's... okay. Engaging enough all the time the film is playing, but most viewers will take little away from this. The action and the set-pieces work well (earning that 18 certificate with gleefully exploitative violence), but as welcome as Hayden Panettiere's return is, the whole thing feels like it's running on fumes. Like a series which was relaunched Because Of The Money is already desperately scrabbling around for ideas to justify its existence. Convention would dictate at least one further entry under the title (just to act as a trilogy for this set of characters*²), but it already feels like there's little actual need for that. Not that need was ever an obstacle to a property's rights-owners.

Crucially, Scream V had a superbly climactic ending. This doesn't. It's as muddled and nonsensical as everything leading up to it, where the only redeeming feature is the enthusiasm with which it's executed (much like Ghostface's unfortunate victims).

Ultimately, Scream VI is absolutely fine for an audience who aren't expecting very much, although that hardly feels like the energy to be bringing to part six of an ongoing series (sorry, 'franchise', my bad. I'm never to proud too be schooled by characters smart enough to know they're in a movie, but dumb enough to repeatedly trip up a masked assassin and then run away instead of immediately stoving in his/her head with the nearest fire extinguisher, or at the very least use that to break their wrists or elbows or something, the one flaw of slasher-lore that even this lot haven't noticed).

But hey, those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to reboot them...

*¹ Without wading into spoiler territory, it was quite delicious to watch the scene unfold where Ghostface uses a gun to despatch victims in the convenience store, not least because that same moment in the trailer threw up an online spat with some fans arguing this was out of character, against others pointing out that in the first movie he'd used a garage door as a weapon. In the film itself, it's revealed that this particular iteration of Ghostface isn't really Ghostface which works as a get-out, until you think about the wider format of the movies and realise that this actually is Ghostface in a very real sense, because they all are. That's the point. This, and discussions of collective vs individual identity thereafter, is probably the most interesting thing that Scream VI does in its entire run-time, because it's also the thing the film barely seems to notice has happened, never mind actually spending the time explore it... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² It does seem weird that 2023's Scream VI is scripted to be set one year after 2022's Scream V, and yet all of the returning school and college students from that movie now look about 30. Where were they studying, Rydell High? ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Scream V (second-pass)

Scream V
Cert: 18 / 114 mins / Dir. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett / Trailer

And so, the double-bill to unveil the sixth entry in the Scream series involved a re-screening of the 2022's soft-relaunch*¹. That this Wednesday-night fanfare attracted a little over a dozen viewers*² might say something about the property's popularity, but that fact that its necessity would not be unveiled until the second half says far more about the creative direction as a whole.

Over-scripted, over-soundtracked and over-directed with deliberately intrusive sound design, there is, unfortunately, not much more to expand upon after watching this the first time. The film's high-points are every bit as triumphant, whereas the explaining-how-sequels-work schtick feels even more like shameless padding. While there's little to actively dislike in a movie crowded with two screenwriters and two directors, 2022's outing could only be more self-absorbed if it had a fictional director's commentary playing over the top.

That said, if all of the coy introspection was removed, the film would be around half an hour long. Quite frankly it's a miracle that the finale is as gloriously satisfying as it is*³, although that seems as much of a tribute to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood as 1996's Scream. If Scary Movie hadn't already been run mercilessly into the ground, you'd swear blind this was a parody of itself.

Ironically, 2022's Scream is far better at being the simplistic slasher it thinks it's better than, than being the intellectual thing it wants to be and that everyone's expecting anyway. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but ultimately the kitchen-knife is a far more brutal critic than the Media Studies nerd. A lesson for us all, there...

*¹ So back in 2022 Paramount 'rebooted' the line (according to the film's own script) and called this simply "Scream". Fine, except that a) it's not a reboot it's definitely a sequel, and b) the subsequent lack of distinction between the first and fifth entries is uninspired and unhelpful. Fast forward to 2023 and this film's sequel is then called "Scream VI" which, by very definition, turns 2022's Scream back into Scream V by default, hence the title of this review post. Although fuck knows where the roman numerals have appeared from for number 6, because Screams 1-4 weren't that pretentious. But number five definitely is, hence the title of this review post. I mean, if they can work "VI" into the M of Scream for the sixth movie's logo design, it stands to reason that just putting V in there for the one before is a piece of piss. But apparently not. All in all, needlessly messy, Paramount. Do you see what you made me do? ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Yeah, this all happened at the beginning of March; yeah this review is landing at the end of March. To paraphrase Dr Ian Malcolm, "life finds a way... of fucking everything up for itself and leaving little time - never mind concentration - for frivolities such as writing about what films you've been watching". Still, back now... ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Yeah look, as much as I've got Opinions™ about Scream V, I defy anyone not to enjoy the last fifteen minutes, even if that carnage is just a cathartic release from all of the cinematic onanism which has led up to it. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.