OMG I can finally talk about Sandman!! (We've been watching the press screeners all week and finished last night but it was embargoed until today, so!)

Anyway, I really loved it EXCEPT for the actor who plays Dream, who is way too much of a human person for what that character needs. (I imagine it was a nearly impossible role to cast, given that actors are, in fact, human persons, but the ratio of Dream Of The Endless, Infinitely Old And Powerful Monarch and Dream Of The Endless, Stubborn Emo Brat was not quite correct for me here.)

Fortunately, they more than made up for it with Death. And Lucifer.

I have been pleasantly surprised by how well they are doing little things that I expected to just fall by the wayside like stars in eyes. Also, I am needing substantial pauses between episodes to absorb and adjust.

Prey was much better than I expected it to be.

Also had some excellent photography of some gorgeous locations.

I'm only two episodes into Sandman, but so far Cain is the only false note to me. Not a fan of the casting there, while loving who they got for just about every other role.

I loved Sandman. I was a huge fan of the comics, and I'm happy with just about all the choices they made in transitioning to tv.

Me too. There were more than a few actually perfect moments and none that really made me say “I wish they’d done that differently“ which really beats the odds.

Edited to add the disclaimer that I purposefully did not reread so I wouldn’t be too focused on seeing it as an adaptation, I will have to reread and rewatch at some point but I think that will probably be enjoyable as well.

Prey is out on Hulu, has been since Friday. It's the new Predator movie and it is AMAZING. Seriously I'm slightly biased because it features the Comanche tribe, and that is my people, well I'm a member of the tribe barely because of minimal blood, but my from my mother's side, her father was half Comanche and his father was full blood. So I'm biased to like this...

The movie is gory but it doesn't come across as gory for just shock value. The animals that the predator kills are done the same way as the people and it feels kind of over the top for a movie but it's not just gore for the sake of it. Spoiler information for anyone who wants to get a heads up:

there is hunting of animals by the Comanche and the predator and that is bloody. The predator skins the animals and guts them so that is a thing. There are French trappers and there are buffalo corpses that have been skinned. And then there is the gore against the people. Fair share done by predator to the humans and by humans to each other and the predator. There are limbs that are cut off and a pretty graphic scene of one being treated. Then when Naru has a hunter she finds , she knocks him out and he wakes up-and she's cut off his leg, or part of it and there are.. rats.

It's good. I've seen one review that didn't like the first part and felt that Naru, the main character, wouldn't have been the one to be the main character because she wasn't a good enough prey for the predator and she wasn't a good hunter in the beginning. But the the reviewer misses a bunch of facts like Spoilers

the predator doesn't see her as a threat until she directly attacks him. Also , I think she wasn't the best at ending a hunt because she hesitated but she was smart and strategic and willing to fight dirty. Like in the fight with Wasape she used everything she had even if it wasn't conventional. When she needed to she was willing to adapt her weapon to better suit her. she was never going to over power the predator so she did the strategic and smart thing- set traps, got him bleeding and worn down and used the element of surprise. Now I want to go and watch the first two movies to see how the the fights went there.

She's being trained by her mother to be a healer so she knows how to make medicines and she is very observant and you can tell she's always thinking and planning. Where as others are very reactive and fall on their training and confidence in their abilities Naru doesn't seem to have that confidence and kind of over thinks things but you can see when she has to actually act with no time to over think she doesn't get in her own way.

The lighting is good for this the night is never really dark so that helps and the fight scenes are shot clearly, which is a big bonus.

There are Hand Signs used. I think my uncle still knows a few that my grandfather taught him, interestingly my grandfather said that the Hand Signs varied from band to band (the Comanche divided themselves into divisions and then bands and then various family groups).

Also Naru encounters some French trappers and in the movie they speak French and there were no subtitles in the film so if you don't know French you don't know what is being said.

And in case you didn’t notice, Hulu has a Comanche language dub of the movie.

I've heard it's really good, but those spoilers for violence are a super hard nope for me, unfortunately.

[edit] And I really do appreciate the spoilers, askye!

I was SO WORRIED the entire film that the dog was going to die, but thankfully they did NOT go there.