The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Ed Catto: On the Road Again – Free Comic Book Day

Main Street Comics FCBD 8 Carl and WillSaturday was Free Comic Book Day, the amazing annual event where the world celebrates comics by giving away a few free comics to one and all. And by a few comics, I mean millions!

Fifteen years ago, Joe Field had a wonderful idea that was inspired by a Free Ice Cream Cone Day, and it became a reality. And now it’s grown each year to the delight of fans young and old. Kids, parents, teens, hardcore fans, casual fans, curious potential new fans, advertisers, publishers and retailers helped celebrate the 15th Annual Free Comic Book Day.

This year, I broke my personal record and visited eight amazing comic shops in northern NJ, just outside of New York City. And it was really nine if you count my visit to Main Street Comics on FCBD’s Eve.

Dewey City Lady BlackHawkIt was a great day, as witnessed in many stores.

Constant Cosplay

More than ever, cosplay was an integral part of Geek Culture. I could see that more this year than other years. It’s almost a given that every store will have some excellent cosplayers on the premises. The crowd oohs and ahs while taking photos. It’s all about celebrating the creativity and skills of the cosplayers while providing a bit of live theater.

But it doesn’t end there, as many fans, especially kids, are proud to bring their own cosplay to Free Comic Book Day.

All Ages Means ALL Ages

Main Street Comics FCBD 6 Spidey FanFree Comic Book Day summons fans of all ages. Families with young kids are a staple, but many of the comic shops, like East Side Mags and Funny Books, lured the curious into the fray from their respective downtowns. We used to use phrases like “the young and the young at heart” as a euphemism for “old”, but we don’t have to beat around that bush any more do we?

I saw more than a few older fans, and they were just as eager to pick up comics as the preschoolers.

Cool Folks Doing Cool Things

Dewey City Deadpool HarleySeveral stores, like A & S Comics, Zapp Comics and Dewey’s Comic City had artists on hand to provide sketches and drawings for fans. Other shops had some very interesting folks on premises, including:

  • Time Warp hosted Jennifer Lynn Parson, the editor of Luna Station Publishing, a line of books by female creators.
  • Region 99, a magazine that celebrates creativity through diversity, was also at the Time Warp store. Important to aspiring artists – Region 99 sponsors artists at New York Comic Con, and are now accepting submissions. It sounds like a great way for artists to get onto the convention floor.
  • The Einhorn’s Epic Cookies team was at East Side Mags, selling their unique cookie and comic product. I hadn’t had one in a while, and I was glad I did. Yum!
  • Comic Explosion hosted Mike Stein of the Starfleet, a Star Trek club that meets monthly across New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
  • Funny Books FCBD 1 Cap Batman EdParadox Comics offered their annual Coloring Contest – encouraging fans to bring back their colored pages in one week.
  • In the East Side Mags tents was Keiki Explorer’s Club – a summertime club that takes kids on daytrip adventures!

A Yearly Expectation of Geek Culture

Time Warp FCBD 3 Luna Station Jennifer Lynn ParsonsAfter 15 years, Free Comic Book Day is now at that point where all the fans seemed to get it. And they look forward to the fun in a patient way.

The fans seemed to understand that only designated comics were free. They all seemed to know where to go and how to navigate the stores.

But it’s also worth noting that by the 15th year, all the stores seemed very prepared for the crowds. There was plenty of staff on hand and just about all the stores seemed as geared up and ready to sell comics and other merchandise, as they were ready to give away free comics.

TIme Warp FCBD 6 BillAnd most amazing to me is the diverse crowd of comic fans and how they seemed to get along. And I don’t think that only happens on a day like today. There were so many different people attending FCBD, people that would not typically have the opportunity to speak to one another during a typical day. But here they all were – grabbing their comics, debating the latest comic book movie, marveling over the amazing discounts and sweet deals – and enjoying a moment with other people who share a similar passion.

It was a great event and a great party. I’m already looking forward to FCBD’s Sweet Sixteen!

For the record, I’d like to thank the following New Jersey comic shops, and their hard -working staff, for throwing some great parties today:

  • A & S Comics, Teaneck
  • Paradox Comics, North Arlington
  • A & S Comics FCBD 2Comics Explosion, Nutley
  • East Side Mags, Montclair
  • Time Warp, Cedar Grove
  • Dewey’s Comic City, Madison
  • Funny Books, Lake Hiawatha
  • Zapp! Comics Cards and Toys, Wayne

And one more thank you to Main Street Comics in East Middletown, NY and More Fun Comics and Games in Denton TX, where my brother and my nieces celebrated FCBD.

John Ostrander: Back to the Future Tense

legends-of-tomorrow-1821148

There’s a lot of time travel going on in pop culture these days. The CW has DC’s Legends of Tomorrow where a rag-tag group of misfits travel around with Doctor Who, excuse me, Rip Hunter Time Master, as he tries to stop the immortal villain, Vandal Savage, from killing his family. Oh, and to prevent Savage from really messing up the world… but mostly to save his own family.

In general, I like time travel stories and have ever since I saw The Time Machine (the 1960 one with Rod Taylor, not the 2002 version with Guy Pearce). A great variation on the H.G. Wells story was Time After Time, where H.G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) comes to (then) modern day San Francisco chasing Jack the Ripper (David Warner) and encounters the ever adorable Mary Steenburgen.

I like time travel stories in movies, books, comics, and so on. One of the best – and funniest – time travel comics I read was an eight pager by Alan Moore in 2000 AD. Witty and brilliant. Time travel stories can be difficult to pull off well, however. They need to be internally consistent and should jibe not only with the facts but the tone of the time era. That’s easier when the setting is the future or when the story has future travelers coming into our present.

The Back To The Future movie trilogy did this pretty well. The first and third movies were great; the middle one – meh. I don’t dislike it as much as some people do but it’s not quite at the same level. However, it does have a classic time travel conundrum when our hero, Marty McFly (played by the ever adorable Michael J. Fox), has to go back to the same era he was in during the first film and not meet himself. It’s done cleverly and is internally consistent.

One of the tropes in a lot of modern time travel tales appears to be the traveler is coming back in time to undo something to save the future times. That’s the basis of the Terminator movies, Twelve Monkeys, the aforementioned DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and others. It reflects one of the age-old questions of time travel – if you could travel back in time, would you kill Adolph Hitler before he really got going. (One of my favorite episodes of my favorite time travel series of all, Doctor Who, is called “Let’s Kill Hitler.”)

There’s lots of reasons as to why a given time traveler can’t or won’t kill Hitler – it would result in someone even worse or that time is like a stream and if you attempt to divert it it will find it’s way back to what was changed. One theory of time (and why you can’t change the past) was explained on a recent episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. One of the group’s scientists explains that time is like a block of Jell-O; it’s homogeneous in that it actually is all happening at the same time and it is only our perception of time being linear that separates one second from another.

I wonder if the prevalence of this “going back in time to save the world” is part of our current zeitgeist. Maybe we sense or feel that something is going badly wrong and the future is coming back to our present to keep a very dystopian future from happening. The event may vary according to your own beliefs and perceptions. Maybe they’re here to stop Trump from being elected or maybe it’s Hillary. (My money’s on Trump, but that’s me.) Maybe it’s George W. Bush and the Iraq War; maybe it’s Ralph Nader because he enabled the election of Bush. Maybe it’s to stop the effects of climate change before it’s too late.  Your versions may vary; these are mine.

I think what it reflects is that we all sense that something is wrong even if we can’t agree on what it is. As usual, our pop culture speaks to that underlying fear, picks up on our gestalt, our group subconscious, and tries to give it form. Art can do that. It can give a physical form to what we feel, to what we can’t elucidate, and shows it to us.

Shakespeare, of course, said it better:

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

  • Midsummer’s Night Dream. Act V, Scene 1

That’s also a form of time travel; words from hundreds of years ago still resonate and his voice still lives and speaks to us.

Or, as Doc says to Marty and his girlfriend at the end of Back To The Future III: “… your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one, both of you.”

Make it a good one, all of you.

Marc Alan Fishman: The Rebirther Movement

Ross DC

So, DC Comics is vowing – once again – to reset-ish their universe via the “Rebirth” event coming soon to a comics shoppe near you. And DC’s CCO Geoff Johns posted a heartfelt mission statement into the back of the current crop of DC comics to reannounce it, since Dan DiDio announcing it doesn’t count or something. Well, knowing that some of us snarky malcontents have long abandoned the ship, Newsarama was happy enough to reprint his plea. Let me paraphrase:

Dear Fans, remember when I wrote great books, and you loved DC? Well, pretend the New 52 never happened, and come back. We totally get that some of you got mad and left, but because of reasons… we’re making good books again. Because our creators have passion. And I wrote those ‘Rebirth’ books about Green Lantern and The Flash… so that name is synonymous with not sucking. You know, unlike ‘Crisis’ or ‘One Year Later’, or ‘Trinity’, or ‘Flashpoint’. So, come back. I swear it’s worth it this time, you cynical pricks. Love, Geoff Johns.

All my snark aside, Johns hits on some of the major cornerstones of what did make DC great for me as a fan not that long ago; legacy, a singular and understandable continuity, and solid stories that pit heroes against villains in new and interesting lights. The pre-New52 DCU was good. Maybe even great. The Flash had a veritable family. As did the Bats, and the Supes, and the multi-colored Lantern brigades. But as with all good things, the boardroom saw potential sales stagnation and slammed on the brakes. Then came “Flashpoint,” and a new universe was made. But you knew all this. And you knew/know that the entire purpose of the system shock was to place new #1s on the shelves; because that makes for temporary sales spikes. And new merch. And new opportunities for newness. Newness begets money. And so on.

Plus, Marvel kinda sorta did it too, and their movies are minting billions.

But forgive me Geoff. It’s all a bit “too little, too late”, isn’t it? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times? Well, I don’t know how the saying goes anyways. I just can’t shake the feeling that we’re doing the same dance again, and somehow expecting different results. As I stated previously, with Rebirth comes the same damned shit in new packaging. It’s enough to make me declare – ahem (and please excuse this harsh-but-necessary-language) – fucking stop it.

Once again Johns, DiDio, Lee, and the lot of DC execs are cramming specials, new #1s, and semi-monthly comic drops on us under the guise of “the continuing pursuit of giving our fans what they love.” And, sure, they changed the price point (a dollar less per issue, for an undisclosed page count per book), but that won’t matter when fans of a character are asked once again to invest more money per month to enjoy the adventures of a given character! And DC knows this. Because if you are a true fan, you likely would give a chance to all the new creative teams surrounding a character you like; sort of what DC hoped fans would give nearly every New 52 title at least a starting arc to pique their interest.

Rebirth? Hardly. Consider it just another rebranding. And as always: it’s a game of Darwinian survival; those books that don’t sell X copies will fall by the wayside, lest they be an upcoming movie or animated feature.

Deadpool 13And don’t paint me a complete malcontent here, folks. I loved DC comics from the moment I purchased my first back issue of Shadow of the Bat when I was 13. I followed the entirety of Kyle Rayner’s career until Hal Jordan rebirthed himself. I purchased coffee table books of Alex Ross art, and read the DC Encyclopedia until the spine broke. But a decade worth of decline beginning in my college years through my “spendy twenties” right up until I had a new mouth to feed and a mortgage to pay left me embittered to the cheap tactics of comics-by-committee.

A part of me doesn’t even blame a true fan like Geoff Johns for winding up in this place. He wrote (and still writes) amazing stories. His heart is seemingly pure. In his lament, he mentions terms like legacy, epic storytelling, and my favorite: honoring what’s come before while looking to what will come tomorrow. It’s everything I want to hear as a fan.

But, Mr. Johns, what comes tomorrow is more of the same: a litany of new series I’m supposed to drop coin for, full well knowing we’ll be right back to retcon city long before my son is practicing for his Bar Mitzvah. You know it. I know it.

Sorry, Geoff. Your words were hollow. And much like Rebirth to come? I’m not buying it.

Stay tuned next week, when I tell everyone what I am buying in place of “The Big Two.”

Martha Thomases: Men Don’t Have Breasts

avengers-black-widow-6955570

Looking forward to Captain America: Civil War? I am. Along with Free Comic Book Day, it marks the beginning of the summer entertainment season. It’s enough to make a person want to invest in popcorn futures.

(Is there even such a thing as popcorn futures?)

While I won’t defend them as pieces of art, I enjoy a good action movie. I like adrenaline and explosions. I like to watch attractive people pretend to fight each other and pretend to fall in love with each other, preferably with lots of adrenaline and explosives.

The main reason I enjoy these movies is that my inner seven-year-old can pretend that I’m doing some of the heroic actions, or maybe even the villainous actions. The same seven-year-old who believed that the right sneakers would let me run <a href=”

faster and jump higher.

Pre-pubescent kids have amazing imaginations. To be seven is to know, in your heart, that anything can happen, that the world is an awesome place and you can have it all. Unfortunately, as we get older, reality intrudes. We start to learn that we have limitations as well as talents, and we have to figure out how to make the best of both.

Boys grow up to be men, and I’m not claiming that is easy. Men face a lot of pressure to conform to a fairly narrow view of masculinity. They are supposed to be strong and tough and earn a living and support a family and never ever let anyone see them doubt themselves.

But they don’t have breasts. Breasts are wonderful body-parts, but they don’t necessarily appear at the most convenient time, nor do they come with instructions about how to fit themselves into a girl’s previous version of a normal life. According to this, breasts (or, more accurately, the way our society treats breasts) are responsible for too many girls dropping out of physical activities they used to enjoy.

I’m going to blame comics, at least in part. Especially mainstream super-hero comics.

Too many super-heroines go about their super-heroing business displaying their impossibly large breasts with no visible means of support. A girl with new breasts reading about Catwoman leaping around Gotham City without at least an underwire (and preferably in a sports-bra) isn’t going to think she can be Catwoman. The same girl, watching Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises, doing the same thing, will be able to relate.

Scarlett Johansson is a beautiful woman with womanly curves, and her Black Widow costume is entirely believable for the stunts she performs.

We might not be able to expect the same for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. According to Gal Gadot, the executives in charge of the film care way more about how her breasts look than about the script or any other aspect of the production.

In that regard, at least, Warner Bros. is keeping the comic book’s history alive. For all her decades of feminist cred, DC has most often treated the Amazing Amazon as tits and ass, a tradition that will carry on at least through the movie’s premiere.

Luckily, there are all sorts of comics that a girl can read that have characters who look like her and still accomplish amazing things. Some have characters she may already know and some she may not and some she may have heard about but not know the details. And if she ventures past the Big Two, there are so many choices telling so many different kinds of stories that don’t rely on sexualizing women’s bodies as objects to be observed, not inhabited.

You know, like the boys do.

Person of Interest 5th & Final Season Comes to DVD in July

POI Season 5This week, CBS began the twice-weekly airing of the final 13 episodes of Person of Interest. The series is dark, compelling, and addresses many of the privacy and cyber-terrorism issues we’re wrestling with in our world. They just do it with an attractive cast and solve things every 60 minutes. Here’s the official word on the final season collection.

BURBANK, CA (May 4, 2016) – Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) is set to release one of television’s most compelling, action-packed, crime dramas, Person of Interest: The Complete Fifth and Final Season on Blu-ray™ and DVD. Available July 19, 2016, the final season will include all 13 season five episodes plus the “Finale for the Fans” featurette, the show’s 2015 Comic-Con Panel and more bonus content. Season five finds the team of covert crime fighters faced with the potential demise of The Machine as its rival, Samaritan, begins to take control. The release will retail for $39.99 SRP for the standard DVD edition and $44.98 SRP for the Blu-ray™ edition. Person of Interest: The Complete Series is also available on Blu-ray™ and DVD on July 19, 2016, with SRPs of $169.99/$129.99.

For years, the Person of Interest team, consisting of tech genius Harold Finch (Michael Emerson – Lost), ex-agent John Reese (Jim Caviezel – The Thin Red Line), NYPD Detective Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman – Mystic River), cyber-hacker Root (Amy Acker – CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) and missing-in-action operative Sameen Shaw (Sarah Shahi – Chicago Fire), have been protected by The Machine. As worlds collided, however, and a rival AI known as Samaritan finally cornered The Machine inside the nation’s power grid, it was the POI team’s turn to protect Finch’s creation.

In season five, the cold war is over. The world might appear to look the same, but something has drastically changed. Samaritan’s lethal “correction” has initiated its control. Finch’s Machine is essentially dead. Shaw is still missing. And the team is once again hiding in plain sight. But with Samaritan’s invisible grip tightening everywhere, will Finch be able to rebuild and resurrect The Machine? And if he does, will it be the same Machine when it comes back online?

“Season after season, Person of Interest has kept viewers completely engaged. It was a brilliantly crafted series with intriguing story lines, complex characters and outstanding production that will definitely be missed. The premise of the show was timely, relevant and thought provoking,” said Rosemary Markson, WBHE Senior Vice President, TV Marketing. She added, “We are delighted to release the fifth and final season in addition to the complete series set on Blu-ray and DVD for devoted fans to be able to re-watch this action-packed series.”

Since the series debuted on CBS five years ago, Person of Interest has continued to captivate audiences and remains a consistent fan favorite among viewers.

Person of Interest was created by Jonathan Nolan (The Dark Knight trilogy) and executive-produced by J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Lost), Nolan, Greg Plageman (Cold Case, NYPD Blue), Bryan Burk (Fringe, Lost, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Denise Thé (Medium, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). Person of Interest is produced by Bonanza Productions Inc., in association with Bad Robot Productions and Warner Bros. Television.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

·         2015 Comic-Con Panel   
·         “Finale for the Fans” Featurette
·         Revelations of Person of Interest Featurette

13 (ONE-HOUR) EPISODES:

1.      B.S.O.D.
2.      SNAFU
3.      Truth Be Told
4.      6,741
5.      ShotSpotter
6.      A More Perfect Union
7.      QSO
8.      Reassortment
9.      Sotto Voce
10.  The Day the World Went Away
11.  Synechdoche
12.  .exe
13.  return 0

REVIEW: Remember

RememberWe 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.

Tweeks: April 2016 Loot Pets Unboxing

The April Loot Pets theme was Quest…for Bacon! Yeah, not only was Barkley excited, but we were too. You know how we love Adventure Time!

Watch Maddy unbox (with Barkley’s help) this totally mathematical Loot Pets box full of super cool stuff for both humans and dogs!

If you want to spoil your own furry bestie with totally awesome geek swag every month visit here.

Next month’s theme is Power! So, if you and your doggie are up for some Mega Man items including a toy and matching dog & human tees…make sure to sign up before the order window closes in 15 days!

Dennis O’Neil: Why Fix What Ain’t Broken?

keep-calm-if-it-ain-t-broken-don-t-fix-it-jpg-2609017A naked old man squatting near a small fire on a barren hillside, surrounded by children who listen as the old man’s voice enters the stillness…

A scene from a time near the beginning of storytelling as a communal activity, or hear the end, a time when myth and religion finally reunite, or a time before their sundering.

Here’s a few words from George Lucas, of Star Wars fame: “Mythology is a performance piece that gets acted out over hundreds of years before it actually becomes embedded in clay on a tablet or is put down on a piece of paper to be codified as a fixed thing. But originally it was performed for a group of people in a way in which the psychological feedback would tell the narrator which way to go. Mythology was created out of what emotionally worked as a story.”

And stories, you may not be astonished to learn, are the direct descendants of mythology or, if you care to change your angle a bit, stories are mythology. So, before theater and high-speed printing and radio and movies and television and, yes, comic books – before all the (as Steven King calls them) story delivery systems that cram our lives, performer and audience breathed the same air, exchanged responses, and in a sense, co-created the story.

We may be in the process of recreating that dynamic. When I crept into the professional writing dodge, 50-plus years ago, we had feedback from our readers, in the forms of snail mail (the only kind of mail to which we had access) and, eventually, sales figures. But these responses were too slow – in the case of sales figures, way too slow – to affect our whats and our hows. By the time were were reading somebody’s angry denunciation of the hero’s new purple boots, we were working on stuff that wouldn’t be in print for months and there was nothing we could do about those damn boots except change them back and that would take additional time…

Sales figures? Look for reliable ones in about nine months.

Now, however, social media have changed the game. A reader can be complaining about those boots within hours of their debut and maybe the creative team can get them fixed before the next issue. Alternately, the team can bask in praise because, well, doggone it, those boots have made a difference!

All good, right?

Okay, maybe not all. Sometimes people don’t know what they want until someone shows it to them and if the team’s work is entirely dictated by cheers and boos, they might either be afraid of changing something that seems to be finding favor, thus inviting stagnation, or giving a fair chance to stuff yet to find its audience. Or maybe a creator’s Next Great Idea never gets out of the notebook because…heck, what we’re doing is working fine and why fix what ain’t broken?

As for those kids gathered near the fire…maybe they’re entranced by the old man’s story. Or maybe they’re just enjoying the warmth of the fire.

 

Box Office Democracy: Keanu

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.

Fans invited to Star Trek Beyond Fan Event Contest

7EB8C515-A4E6-4F03-8C9E-5C07E1F190C7HOLLYWOOD, CA (May 3, 2016) – Justin Lin and Paramount Pictures invite Star Trek fans to “Go Beyond” with a chance to attend an exclusive STAR TREK FAN EVENT in celebration of the series’ milestone 50th Anniversary this year and the release of Star Trek Beyond this summer.

Beginning today through Friday, May 6, fans can submit a 50-second video to the official Star Trek Beyond Facebook page and Twitter account to share how Star Trek has inspired them to “Go Beyond.” Each day, the best 50 entries will be selected to receive a ticket to the STAR TREK FAN EVENT on May 20 at 7:00 p.m. at the historic Paramount Pictures Studios in Hollywood. The highest judged video of each day will be awarded the grand prize, a fully paid trip to the event.

The one-time-only event will include the premiere of the newest Star Trek Beyond trailer, an exclusive first-look of never-before-seen footage from the upcoming film, a Q&A with director Justin Lin and the cast and crew, special guest appearances, and other surprises.

How to enter the Star Trek Beyond Fan Event Contest:

On Facebook: Fans can share their videos as a comment on the Star Trek Movie Facebook Page with the hashtag #StarTrekContest. (For the US/Canada:www.facebook.com/StarTrekMovie; Australia: www.facebook.com/startrekAU; UK: www.facebook.com/startrek.UK)

On Twitter: Fans can share their videos and tag @startrekmovie with the hashtag #StarTrekContest.

Videos must be no longer than 50 seconds. The contest is open to residents in participating countries, while fans in other countries will have other opportunities. For more information and official contest rules, visit http://bit.ly/TrekContestRules.

Star Trek Beyond, the highly anticipated next installment in the globally popular Star Trek franchise, created by Gene Roddenberry and reintroduced by J.J. Abrams in 2009, returns with director Justin Lin (The Fast and the Furious franchise) at the helm of this epic voyage of the U.S.S. Enterprise and her intrepid crew. In Star Trek Beyond, the Enterprise crew explores the furthest reaches of uncharted space, where they encounter a mysterious new enemy who puts them and everything the Federation stands for to the test.

From Paramount Pictures and Skydance, Star Trek Beyond is a Bad Robot, Sneaky Shark, Perfect Storm Entertainment production. The film stars John Cho, Simon Pegg, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoë Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin and Idris Elba. Directed by Lin, the third film in the franchise series is produced by J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Lindsey Weber, and Lin; and executive produced by Jeffrey Chernov, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Tommy Harper. Based upon “Star Trek” created by Gene Roddenberry, the screenplay is written by Pegg & Doug Jung.

Star Trek Beyond opens in theaters beginning July 22, 2016.

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