Civil War good! iPad bad!
May. 7th, 2016 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverBehind the cut, though I'll go very light on the spoilers. Actually, there really aren't any. But still, cut.
Just plain and simple: Captain America: Civil War is a fantastic movie. My husband liked it okay - to him, it was too talky. But that's just the way he is; he doesn't want his superhero movies to be talky. Basically, the movie set up the central conflict between Cap and Tony very well, made it believable, and then escalated the conflict in a realistic manner, while including a lot of great fight scenes.
I'm not going to compare this to the other "Civil War"-type movie that came out recently, mostly because I haven't seen it. What I will say, though, is that one of the reasons why Civil War succeeds where the other failed is that it doesn't sacrifice its characters for spectacle. Cap is not Tony or Thor. He's the idealistic defender of peace whose struggle is meshing with a world that has changed so much while he was under the ice, and his movies are far more serious in tone. He's not flashy like either of the other two, and a flashy Cap movie just isn't right. On the flip side, this type of story doesn't work well for Iron Man or Thor. And Marvel isn't trying to shoehorn the characters into the wrong type of movie, or changing them to fit.
One surprising thing about this film is that it manages to stuff in hordes of characters without shorting any one of them. Yes, it's true that some of them get few lines and no character development, but it's clear why they show up - they're not just cameos to make the comic book nerds squeal - and everyone gets a piece of the action.
And then the flippin' iPad.
So, due to being a bit busy, I haven't had any time to write for the past two days. If you didn't know, I do my writing on my iPad, using Google Docs, usually sitting on my bed. So this morning, I pulled out my iPad and launch Docs, and it crashes when I try to open a document. Try again, same thing. Hard-close the app, open it, open a doc, same thing. Grrr.
I look up the Docs app in the App Store, and yes, they updated it on 5/4; I hadn't used it since 5/3, so there's the culprit right there. There are a couple of mentions of crashing in the App Store reviews, but obviously not enough to get a lot of attention on it. Well, I tell myself, I'm running an old version of iOS. What's the first thing we tell customers to do? Update to the latest software. I don't really like some of the changes to iOS 9, but fine. I upgrade.
When it's done, I turn on the iPad, and the Docs icon is missing. There are two new icons - Find Apps and Find Friends. This is the reason I hate iOS upgrades: they always put more useless crap on my device. I don't need to find friends. I don't like friends. (Except all you lovely people. ;) Okay, so Docs is missing. Let's go to the App Store to get it. I find Google Docs on the App Store and it has an Open button, but not a Download button. That means my device thinks it has Docs on it. I check the apps list in Settings. It has Docs listed there, but when I tap on it to pull up its information, the top line says, "Allow (NULL) to access". That "(NULL)" is where the app name should be.
So, the bottom line is that the device thinks that Docs is installed but it really isn't. I'm working with Google tech support right now to try to get this fixed, but I expect I will have to contact Apple, and I wouldn't be surprised if I have to wipe the device. Maybe I should just cut out the middleman and do that. In the meantime, either I write at my computer with my husband in the room, which makes me very uncomfortable and unproductive, or I don't write at all. I'm far more upset about this than I thought I might be.
Just plain and simple: Captain America: Civil War is a fantastic movie. My husband liked it okay - to him, it was too talky. But that's just the way he is; he doesn't want his superhero movies to be talky. Basically, the movie set up the central conflict between Cap and Tony very well, made it believable, and then escalated the conflict in a realistic manner, while including a lot of great fight scenes.
I'm not going to compare this to the other "Civil War"-type movie that came out recently, mostly because I haven't seen it. What I will say, though, is that one of the reasons why Civil War succeeds where the other failed is that it doesn't sacrifice its characters for spectacle. Cap is not Tony or Thor. He's the idealistic defender of peace whose struggle is meshing with a world that has changed so much while he was under the ice, and his movies are far more serious in tone. He's not flashy like either of the other two, and a flashy Cap movie just isn't right. On the flip side, this type of story doesn't work well for Iron Man or Thor. And Marvel isn't trying to shoehorn the characters into the wrong type of movie, or changing them to fit.
One surprising thing about this film is that it manages to stuff in hordes of characters without shorting any one of them. Yes, it's true that some of them get few lines and no character development, but it's clear why they show up - they're not just cameos to make the comic book nerds squeal - and everyone gets a piece of the action.
And then the flippin' iPad.
So, due to being a bit busy, I haven't had any time to write for the past two days. If you didn't know, I do my writing on my iPad, using Google Docs, usually sitting on my bed. So this morning, I pulled out my iPad and launch Docs, and it crashes when I try to open a document. Try again, same thing. Hard-close the app, open it, open a doc, same thing. Grrr.
I look up the Docs app in the App Store, and yes, they updated it on 5/4; I hadn't used it since 5/3, so there's the culprit right there. There are a couple of mentions of crashing in the App Store reviews, but obviously not enough to get a lot of attention on it. Well, I tell myself, I'm running an old version of iOS. What's the first thing we tell customers to do? Update to the latest software. I don't really like some of the changes to iOS 9, but fine. I upgrade.
When it's done, I turn on the iPad, and the Docs icon is missing. There are two new icons - Find Apps and Find Friends. This is the reason I hate iOS upgrades: they always put more useless crap on my device. I don't need to find friends. I don't like friends. (Except all you lovely people. ;) Okay, so Docs is missing. Let's go to the App Store to get it. I find Google Docs on the App Store and it has an Open button, but not a Download button. That means my device thinks it has Docs on it. I check the apps list in Settings. It has Docs listed there, but when I tap on it to pull up its information, the top line says, "Allow (NULL) to access". That "(NULL)" is where the app name should be.
So, the bottom line is that the device thinks that Docs is installed but it really isn't. I'm working with Google tech support right now to try to get this fixed, but I expect I will have to contact Apple, and I wouldn't be surprised if I have to wipe the device. Maybe I should just cut out the middleman and do that. In the meantime, either I write at my computer with my husband in the room, which makes me very uncomfortable and unproductive, or I don't write at all. I'm far more upset about this than I thought I might be.
