In SuperTeenTopia we learn that being a teenager and having super human abilities isn’t really how the other comic books makes it out to believe. It’s more a DIY kind of thing, indestructible costumes & high-tech gadgets aren’t easy to come by and sometimes you don’t even get to pick your own super hero name. These four teen super-heroes can only fight crime if they can find a ride and they don’t have to be at school.
Game of Thrones has certainly become a cottage industry, spewing forth all manner of collectible and universe expansion, all attempting to profit while filling the void as everyone awaits the sixth volume from writer George R.R. Martin. The next such offerings come from HBO Home Entertainment as they release the steelbook editions of seasons three and four on June 7.
Like the first two seasons, already available, these offer up a few bonuses for collectors or audiophiles. First, the Blu-ray sets are entirely the same as the already available sets with the one difference being that they have all been remastered to offer up Dolby Atmos, the immersive sound system. While PR surrounding the release says you need specific Atmos-enabled AV receivers, other models do access the new soundtracks to full effect (or so the experts tells me).
All ten episodes per season are present along with all the extras. If you don’t care about the Atmos soundtrack, then consider the steelbook packaging, complete with collectible plastic magnets. Consider this, the standard Blu-ray combo pack comes with the DVD and Digital HD copies listing for $50.99 while the steelbook version, without the DVD version, retails for $79.98. Now, yes, they will be heavily discounted but consider what you want as part of your video library.
Season Three, The Twins, comes with the sigil of House of Frey which is appropriate since this was the season of the memorable Red Wedding, drawn from the first half of A Storm of Swords.
The Wall, the Fourth Season, focuses on the Night’s Watch and the magnet here features a crow and Jon Snow’s sword, Longclaw. This season drew its material from the second half of A Storm of Swords, along with elements of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.
For the record, seasons one and two came out in November and offer the sigils of House Stark and House Lannister. All four magnets and the steelbook covers are all derived from the immensely watchable opening credits as designed by the Emmy Award-winning firm Elastic. Inspired by the maps that were found in each book of the series, designed by Jonathan Roberts, each episode spotlights different portions of the world that are featured in that episode. There are rules for their usage as outlined by the producers and a complete list of which countries appear on which episodes can be found at the Game of Thrones wiki.
The series certainly bears rewatching to enjoy the performances and relive thrilling moments. The story is rich enough that you can enjoy the foreshadowing and clues laying the ground work for what follows.
Hi Everyone! This week it’s just me, Maddy! And because it’s just me, I’m going to share with y’all my favorite web comic, Check Please by Ngozi Ukazu.
Eric Bittle is a pie-baking Georgia boy on an ice hockey scholarship at Samwell University in Massachusetts. That’s all you need to know….go read it! Actually, watch the video first, then go read it!
Oh, but wait….for our younger Tweeks fans or those who can’t abide “strong language” — this is about college hockey players, so there’s some questionable vocabulary in the comic and in the video.
If your internet life is anything like mine you probably saw one too many articles this week on Money Monster and what it meant for the election, or what it meant that George Clooney made this movie and is a Hillary supporter, or why this movie exists when The Big Short already came out. I found it completely exhausting and it wasn’t representative of what this movie actually is. Money Monster isn’t a real piece of analysis about any kind of systemic flaws in our financial system; it’s John Q but with algorithmic trading instead of health care bureaucracy and George Clooney instead of Denzel Washington. It’s a fantasy and an understandable one, but one that feel light on substance and, ultimately, a little garbled.
The big problem Money Monster has is with its casting. George Clooney is a proven commodity as the slick huckster with a heart of gold, and throwing in some Jim Cramer caricature makes it so much better. Julia Roberts is the quintessential put-upon hard-working career woman and she’s firing on all cylinders reunited with Clooney to do a slightly less sexually charged version of their shtick from Ocean’s Eleven. Clooney and Roberts are fantastic but they pull focus from the character the movie should be about, the guy who is so angry with the injustice of the financial system he needs to take hostages, Kyle Bludwell. Kyle is played by English actor Jack O’Connell, who you might know from his turn on the British drama Skins or his medium-sized part in 300: Rise of an Empire, but who you probably don’t remember from anything. He does a good job and is honestly acting his ass off at certain points in this film, but even in those big moments it’s hard not be transfixed by the bigger stars on the screen. It makes Kyle’s rage about the injustices of our system and the lack of accountability seem like the less important problems than the dining habits of a TV host, and that seems antithetical to the movie’s message.
If we ignore the central political issue, and it sort of feels like the film wants us to, there’s perfectly good filmmaking in here. The studio hostage scenes are tense and it especially does a good job focusing on the fear and menace that the gun represents. The mystery elements feel sufficiently twisty and surprising, although my fiancée pointed out in the car home that it all really gets solved by one person asking one question to the right regulatory body and maybe it all would have come out without the events of the film but I can let that go. There are even some good moments of levity, which can be hard to balance with a film that wants to be on the edge of overwrought all the time. It’s nice to see Jodie Foster back directing features and she gets good work out of her actors, it’s just a shame to see the parts add up to less than a coherent whole.
There’s no way anyone in Hollywood sat in their office and said, “we’re going to make a movie about the financial crisis and we’re going to cast George Clooney and Julia Roberts and it’ll get middling reviews and open in third place in mid-May.” That’s just not how anything works. The previews we saw before this movie were prestige films with festival accolades and pre-made awards pitches, and it was like seeing the potential Money Monster was going to fail to live up to. This could have been a powerful statement on any number of topics, but instead was okay with being a good thriller and an offbeat character piece. Money Monster wants to be a big and important movie but it doesn’t get there, it doesn’t have a strong enough point of view or clarity of vision.
Twenty years ago, our summer films were big budget and fun, with just a dollop of seriousness to give them weight. They didn’t take themselves too seriously and more often than not delivered good performances, fine special effects, and plenty of bang for the buck. In many cases, they were original efforts that weren’t serialized or drawn from comic books despite their “comic book” feel.
One of the best of that bunch was Independence Day which, honestly, didn’t hold up to a lot of examination but gave us popcorn thrills and was really a 1950s disaster pic updated for the ‘90s. It’s a guilty pleasure and one we invariably stop to watch whenever we find it on television. A lot of credit goes to cowriter Dean Devlin and cowriter/director Roland Emmerich. It was well cast and kept moving, interweaving numerous threads that culminated in a terrific dog fight across America.
Looking back, we adore Bill Pullman’s rousing “let’s win one for the Gipper” speech right before the climactic battle or Will Smith punching out an alien and saying, “Welcome to Earth” before chomping on a stogie. You have fun character bits from Judd Hirsch and Harvey Firestein and this catapulted Viveca A. Fox to notoriety and a blossoming bromance between Smith and quirky Jeff Goldblum.
Does it hold up to story scrutiny? Considering the alien threat is stopped by a human-written computer virus delivered via an Apple laptop, I would say no.
Does it hold up watching 20 years later? Yep.
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment serves up a remastered 1080p high definition transfer and two Blu-ray discs worth of goodness. The film is a treat to see with fresh eyes as the colors pop and all the details are evident. This is clearly the best it has looked since the theater. Promises of better aside, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless track that accompanies the visuals is just what you want.
Disc one comes with the theatrical release and an extended cut, clocking in at 2:33:33. The special features carry over many of the elements from the previous Blu-ray edition such as the dual audio commentaries.
The second disc does come with Independence Day: A Legacy Surging Forward (30:40) which reunites cast and crew to look back and reminisce. You also get Original Theatrical Ending (4:16), showing how Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) saves the day. We also receive a Gag Reel (2:05); Creating Reality (29:19); ID4 Invasion (21:57), with fake news coverage, The Making of ID4 (28:29), Jeff Goldblum guides us on a behind-the-scenes look; Combat Review (Random Destruction Clips) — AWACS Plane (0:14), Welcome Wagon (0:12), Los Angeles (0:36), New York (0:24), Washington, D.C. (1:12), Los Angeles Tunnel (1:19), Dogfight 1 (1:27), El Toro (0:17), Canyon (0:56), Dogfight 2 (0:42), Russell the Kamikaze (1:21), Mothership (0:18), and Random Destruction; Monitor Earth Broadcasts (Video Playback Newscasts), News clips created for the film — Static Report (1:35), Blue Acolytes (0:44), Sky News Russian (3:05), Team 1 Russian (3:46), Vox News Germany (0:47), Katja Scholl, Berlin (2:45), Farsi Report (2:52), Fields/Dunphy (2:54), Press Conference 1 (2:05), Press Conference 2 (1:38), Chinese Broadcast (1:40), Post-Conference (1:00), Engel on Fox (2:44), Hal Live: Modelmaker (2:48), Traffic Report (1:30), Russell Casse Arrest (1:58), U.N. Report (2:30), Alien Lovers (1:07), Rooftop Parties (0:35), Fields/Engel Debate (3:40), Welcome Wagon Report 1 (4:35), and Welcome Wagon Report 2 (4:40).
There are extensive Galleries covering Welcome Wagon Storyboard Sequences, Destruction Storyboard Sequences, Biplane Ending Storyboard Sequences, Alien Beings Conceptual Artwork, Alien Ships Conceptual Artwork, Sets and Props Conceptual Artwork, and Production Photographs.
Finally, we have three Teaser Trailers and the Theatrical Trailer followed by the various TV Spots — Super Bowl TV Spot (0:32), Apple Computer TV Spot (0:32), 15-Second TV Spot (0:17), 30-Second TV Spot 1 (0:31), 30-Second TV Spot 2 (0:30), 30-Second TV Spot 3 (0:31), 30-Second TV Spot 4 (0:31), and 30-Second TV Spot 5 (0:31).
Regardless of whether or not you liked the film, Deadpool and 20th Century Fox delivered the best marketing campaign in years, from initial teasers right up to the Cialis spoof for the Blu-ray release, which came out this week.
Let me say up front that I was never a fan of the Merc with a Mouth from his introduction in 1991 through his overexposure in the comics the last few years. He’s the answer to DC’s Ambush Bug and breaks the fourth wall so often that you just can’t take or his adventures seriously. Seeing him operating an Avenger today is staggering since it forces him to be a grounder player which operates against where he works best.
The film recognizes this and treats him as a live action Wile E. Coyote so there’s a manic feel from the first frame to the last. Everything is there short of the Acme anvil. Was Ryan Reynolds born to play this role? Probably not but he took a supporting role in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and made us pay attention. After a detour to space sector 2814, he’s back in costume and wreaking havoc.
The film takes nothing seriously or for granted and has a great time deconstructing the tropes of the super-hero film and summer blockbuster formula. That it opened in February seems to be part of the joke except the joke was turned on competitors as it owned the box office for weeks. For an R-rated film featuring a relatively obscure character for the non-comic reading masses, this was pretty audacious.
Deadpool also features Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapičić) so we’re grounded in 20th’s corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But even there they make fun so at one point, Deadpool is being taken for counseling by Charles Xavier, he asks “Stewart or McAvoy?” It even comes with a silly villain, Ajax, a.k.a. Francis Freeman (Ed Skrein) who was birthed at the same Weapon X program that turned Wade Williams into Deadpool.
Director Tim Miller and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick make us feel for Williams as he is horribly disfigured and has his life turned upside down. He takes on Blind Al (Leslie Uggams) as an unconventional roommate and continues to pine for Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), the hooker who got away.
The high definition transfer is deadly serious, seriously good and captures the film’s images just swell using an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track may be even better so this will stand up to constant rewatching at home.
The special features don’t quite live up to the film’s expectations but they do not disappoint. As one would expect, you have Deleted/Extended Scenes (19:14) complete with optional commentary from Miller. And there’s a Gag Reel (6:12); along with the appropriate From Comics to Screen…to Screen (1:20:00), five highly entertaining featurettes;, a Gallery with Freeway (1080p; 00:20), X-Mansion Hangar (00:20), Workshop (00:55), Shipyard (00:35), Costumes — Deadpool (00:50) Ajax (00:15), Colossus (00:25), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (00:15), Angel Dust (00:15); Storyboards — Freeway (16:56) En Route to Shipyard (3:50) Shipyard – Mercenary Fight (22:11) Shipyard – Aftermath (11:00) Pre-Vis (7:08) Stunt-Vis Shipyard (2:03). Deadpool’s Fun Sack (23:54) features Mario Lopez interviewing Ryan Reynolds and among silliness.
There are multiple commentaries that offer amusing insights in the production process and are worth a listen. You can try “Wade”/”Deadpool”/Producer Ryan Reynolds and Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick or Director Miller with Deadpool Co-Creator Rob Liefeld.
This week we talk all about Captain America: Civil War. And Anya gets mad about what she calls the 45 minute fight she says is in all Marvel movies…except this one. We also determine that a Sharon – Steve match up is wrong because Captain Carter is the OTP of all OTPs, so move over Lizzie & Darcy. Anya also learns that she can’t talk if she’s sitting on her hands. We also talk about the Black Widow movie (finally) and critique the pictures in the latest Rolling Stone article about Chris Evans. Yeah, there’s a lot of episode in here!
I hesitate a little sitting down to write a rave review of Captain America: Civil War because a year ago I wrote a rave review for Avengers: Age of Ultron, and when I rewatched that to make sure I was all set for this new installment I found it rather tedious. Are these, perhaps, movies that trick us into liking them with their big action scenes, clever dialogue, and sweeping scores— but only really play in a big theater with a bucket of popcorn? Are there no legs to these films? Will we be as embarrassed of them in 20 years as we are of Batman Returns now? The correct answer to these questions is a resounding “who cares?” It doesn’t matter if these are immortal treasures, the Casablancas or French Connections of our time, only that they’re fun to watch now and they are, perhaps the most fun this side of Fast & Furious, and we should cherish and celebrate them even if they might be a bit fleeting.
I was the perfect age to be completely enamored with the Civil War comic book series. I was finishing up my junior year of college and I could not get enough of any super hero comic book with a political allegory thrown in. If you wanted to have someone talk your ear off about how Margaret Thatcher influenced British comics in the 80s with not even a whiff of proper context I was your guy. Civil War the comic felt timely and provocative while Civil War the movie feels decidedly less so. We seem less concerned these days about government surveillance and intrusion in to our lives. There was probably a good pivot to be made to police militarization and violence, especially when Captain America learns that the order is to kill Bucky on sight, but there’s seemingly no interest in exploring this and it’s hard to blame them when Marvel is interested in making a billion dollars, not in being provocative.
They’re going to earn that billion dollars, too. Civil War is a crisp, effective, action movie that provides ample fan service without feeling overdone. Early in the film I thought I was completely worn out by super hero action sequences, and then they get to the big signature set piece where all the heroes fight each other and I was completely riveted. It helps that their big dramatic fight scene has a brand-new wisecracking Spider-Man and a welcome returning Ant-Man to keep things light and glib and just the utter opposite of Snyder-esque. The final fight scene has that overwrought gritty feeling creeping in, but by that point the stakes have been jacked up so many times that I was willing to forgive it. It’s a dark violent fight but it’s so well directed and the cramped environment makes it feel immediate, imposing, and fresh. Civil War has some fantastic character moments but it needs to live and die by its action sequences, and with the exception of one that felt lifted from The Bourne Identity it consistently hit the mark.
I’m beginning to wonder if the Marvel Cinematic Universe is starting to strain under the weight of its own continuity. The scenes between Vision and Scarlet Witch were generally charming but they mostly felt like they were setting things up for future movies rather than relating directly to the action at hand. Similarly, I was thrilled to see Chadwick Boseman debut as Black Panther and while he’s a riveting presence (and an A+ costume) it felt like they were saving all the good bits for his solo movie, and while I’m excited to see it that movie comes out in two years, I paid for this ticket now. I understand that this is bigger than any one movie, but I want these events to feel important and self-contained and not just part of some endless march to Thanos or whatever the endgame after that is. Comic book movies should be evocative of their source material, but should avoid the more glaring pitfalls of sequential storytelling with excessive continuity when they can.
I like so much of what they put on the screen in Captain America: Civil War and most of my complaints seem to be about the things they didn’t do or problems outside the scope of a movie like this, and while I do think a more timely, more self-contained film would have been more enjoyable it doesn’t take away from how good it is now. We are looking down the barrel of a rough summer when it comes to standard-fare action movies, and when I’m sitting through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows I’m not going to be thinking about how Civil War dropped too many hints— I’m going to miss how it could stage a compelling grandiose action scene and how none of the characters looked like expressionless CGI blobs. Civil War is as good as superhero action films get, or at least as good as they get with no Hulk.
Seriously, I feel Hulk-starved at this point.
We have probably reached the saturation point of fiction in film and prose about the Holocaust. While it remains an intensely personal tragedy for those connected with it, dramas about those horrific years have all begun to gain a sameness. Dark, moody, sad and when well done, incredibly affecting. That was certainly the way I felt when I first heard the latest entry in the genre, Remember.
What made it compelling to sample was the notion that this was largely going to be a two person drama and when those two happen to be Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau, you pay attention. Both bring decades of experience to the screen and in their twilight years, have a gravitas that adds to their characters. The film, from director Atom Egoyan, is about the Holocaust but it is also about friendship, memory, and justice. Heady stuff and overall, the movie works.
Plummer is Zev Guttman, a survivor of Auschwitz, and now a widower, living out the end of his days in a nursing home. Complicating his grieving is the Alzheimer’s that makes memory an iffy thing at best. His friend at the home is Max (Landau), who pokes, prods, and forces Zev to recall details of their joint incarceration at the Germany Concentration Camp and the guard Otto Wallisch, who Max blames for killing both their families.
As we learn, Max believes Wallisch escaped Germany and assumed the identity of Rudy Kurlander and he is making it his mission to find and expose the man. He has found four with that name and needs Zev’s help in determining which is the killer. Screenwriter Benjamin August adds in twists and turns to sustain the suspense up until the final scenes when he hammers the audience with a powerful, shocking and somewhat incredulous twist.
Most survivors of the Holocaust refuse to forget it but they also don’t dwell on it overly much. The subtext here is that Zev’s fading memories are all Max has for confirmation of his suspicions and both men are reliving days best left in the past.
August does a good job setting things up and establishing the difficult circumstances haunting both men. He is aided very much by the winning performances from the leads, who avoid chewing the scenery but relish the complex men they were given to portray. They make the film enjoyable to watch even if elements are far-fetched and Egoyan glosses over them with some nice shots.
It is especially fitting that Lionsgate Home Entertainment released the home video edition this week, being the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. The high definition transfer looks fine. The muted colors and rich shadowy detail is well captured in the high definition transfer. The film itself was shot digitally by cinematographer Paul Sarossy with Arri products and the result looks good. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is adequate for our needs if unspectacular.
The disc comes with just a few standard features including the Audio Commentary with Egoyan, Producer Robert Lantos, and August and an electronic press kit package, Performances to Remember (16:49), giving props to the stars; and finally A Tapestry of Evil: Remembering the Past (13:47), a look at the real history of efforts to bring Holocaust enemies to justice.
Keanu is a lot of things, it’s a very funny comedy, it’s a sharp piece of social satire, and it’s a telling mirror held up to the tropes of the contemporary action movie, but what it isn’t is the movie they advertise it as, a movie about a cute kitten. I understand the urge to run those advertisements—if the internet has proved one thing, it’s that there’s no end to human cruelty; but if it’s proved two, it’s that people love cute cats so much—but it seems to be a great way to end up with a theater full of people who are not getting the movie experience they thought they were getting. While it’s very easy to Monday morning quarterback these kind of decisions, it’s now clear that this wasn’t the secret to untold box office millions, and the actual content in Keanu is excellent and should have been given a chance to stand on its own.
The similarities between Keanu and John Wick are reportedly coincidental, but they’ve clearly leaned in to it by naming their film after Keanu Reeves and calling on him for a cameo voice role. On the surface the movies have a lot in common, people are inspired to gratuitous amounts of violence over the grief the feel over losing a newly acquired pet, but the comparison dries up quickly after that. John Wick is this sublimely misanthropic movie about how the good in the world is a facade and how we can never escape our baser instincts, and Keanu is full of redemptive arcs for all but the most sinister characters, everyone has a chance at a better life and there’s a feeling of hope. Maybe this is the difference between a live kitten and a dead dog but it’s probably a bit more than that.
On the face of things, Keanu is a lot like any comedy you’ve seen for your entire life— but there’s something deeper lurking underneath. Rell (Jordan Peele) is struggling to recover from a breakup and is looking to find his joie de vivre again while his more together friend Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) is more together but needs to find a way to advocate for his own needs and find time for himself. I’m sure these exact characters to this point have existed thousands of times in the history of film and thousands more on TV sitcoms, but they’re effective character shorthands. What Keanu uses these shorthand characters for is to discuss black masculinity, a topic I am wholly incapable of discussing in any sort of authoritative manner. I can say that when Rell tells Cameron that he sounds like “Richard Pryor doing an impression of a white guy” I laughed because I got the reference, but I can’t speak to the truthfulness of these observations. I urge you to seek out more insightful thoughts on this topic from black cultural critics or even from Key & Peele themselves in their interview for Sharp Magazine. I enjoyed it, I think it’s important; I’m too white to get further involved.
I very much enjoyed Key & Peele when it was on Comedy Central, so it’s no real surprise that I found Keanu generally hilarious. In particular, there’s a bit where Clarence has to convince a car full of young gangsters that George Michael is a black musician making music that speaks to their lives and situations that was easily the strongest bit in the whole film. It was cut with a remarkably weak scene with Anna Faris playing herself as a set of drug clichés that felt indulgent and overly long. It’s generally well paced and consistently funny and, perhaps most importantly, has the good taste to wrap up the movie before it gets boring. Keanu passes one of the most important tests a comedy can pass: I would 100% stop and watch it if I saw it was on cable.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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