verushka70

Okay, so I got CA: The Winter Soldier from RedBox last night. And, because last weekend I finally bought the new model of the previous HD TV I'd bought that my ex took, I was able to watch TWS on my new 43" LED HD TV in Dolby surround-sound! Sweet! \o/

Foolishly (or not?) I also rented Avengers: Age of Ultron. So I sadly don't have time to re-watch CA:TWS, which I would like to. (Ideally I would have rented CA:TFA and CA:TWS together. But the first RedBox I went to didn't have CATWS, only A:AoU, so I rented that but I had to go to *another* Redbox for TWS -- and that one didn't have CA:TFA. Sigh! And there just weren't enough hours between then and now, when I'm taking both DVDs back, to watch superhero movie DVDs!)

I figured TWS would be all slashy -- Steve/Bucky slashy -- but interestingly the biggest slash vibe I got from TWS was Sam/Steve. Which is cool (and bonus: wingfic is canonical).

I haven't yet watched any of the Sebastian Stan stuff you recommended, but I'll put it in my queues. I want to rewatch CA:TFA and CA:TWS back to back first, though.

Y'know, I get that all comic book superhero movies are epic because the stories of the superheroes are epic. I'm happy enough with XM's (slashy) 'verse and the angsty tragic history of Wolverine. Whereas the whole Avengers 'verse is so populated now, it's hard to stay on top of all the movies, let alone the superheroes.

But I do like how each of these different comics 'verses address (directly or metaphorically/allegorically) the "otherism" that grips modern post-9/11 industrialized/first world societies. XM uses the fear of mutants as a metaphor for populist/conformist xenophobia/exclusion/marginalization/political control of minorities... whereas the Avengers' 'verse addresses the implications and consequences of modern security/intelligence-gathering/surveillance/pre-emptive policing vs. freedom/liberty.

Captain America is a great touchstone for that because of his pre-Cold War/pre-McCarthyism/pre-Viet Nam origin -- so he has that generation's more idealistic version of patriotism and can portray the dismay of that generation wrt modern "security" and blanket surveillance of citizens. Edward Snowden is never explicitly mentioned in TWS but I kept thinking about him -- especially when Natasha dumps everything from SHIELD onto the Internet.

Anyway, both TWS and A:AoU looked really fantastic on my new big screen LED HDTV. The new LED HD TV replaced the first big screen HDTV I bought myself 10 years ago -- the one I took with me when my ex and I split, when he got the new one that I didn't even want as a physical reminder of "us" and what I'd put into "us" and all for naught. My old LCD TV was an old, heavy, clunky 37" Olevia flatscreen for which I paid twice what I paid for the new one (go figure).

What's weird is both TVs have about the same dimensions but the old TV is about 4-5 times thicker (and much, much heavier). The new one fits a ton more screen space into the same dimensions because where the frame surrounding the old screen is 3.5-4.5", on the new TV the frame around the screen is a very slim 1" on 3 sides with maybe 2" on the bottom.

A long-time friend of mine's tube TV just broke so I'm going to give him my old 37" flatscreen. It seems pretty indestructible and there was nothing wrong with it. It just didn't have the color bandwidth(lots of banding when watching TV or DVDs), the HD resolution (only 720p, as opposed to 1080p), or frame and refresh rate (for high speed action) of the one I had bought for my ex and I.

Of course it's not just about the TV... at the end of this coming December, it'll be 2 years since my ex and I split. It was about time I "get back" the TV I bought "us" and gave up to him. Or get a new one. So I did the latter.
*fist pump*
Yeah!