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Review: Supernatural Season 10 Blu-ray/DVD Box Set

supernatural_s10_blu-e1442357780604-8584516Even though Supernatural has been on for 10 seasons, I only started watching last August.  Though I quickly became a devoted Supernatural fan and by June I wrapped up Season 9.   I figured, “Hey, I’ll just wait until season 10 comes out on Netflix,” but when they announced that the Season 10 DVD would be coming out in the Fall at the Comic Con panel, I was like, “No!”  And when I got the Blu-Ray (which was released on September 8th), I watched it all in like, a week, because that’s what I do.

The Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Blu-ray, Digital HD and DVD release of Supernatural: The Complete Tenth Season is well worth owning. It contains 23 episodes and over four hours of bonus content.  It picks up after Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) was transformed into a demon and cursed with the Mark of Cain.  And of course, Sam (Jared Padalecki) & their angel buddy, Castiel (Misha Collins) must help his brother. This is the detour on the Road to Recovery.  Well the scenic route on the road to curing the Mark of Cain.  We also get family drama with Crowley, the King of Hell. You probably need to watch Season 10 a couple times. There’s a lot to little stuff in there that you notice after you KNOW the episode.  It’s the stuff the internet is filled with.  You can’t properly fill the world with Tumblr gifs without watching these episodes many times.  This is why you need to own the Season on DVD or Blu-Ray.

Plus the quality is great.  In HD, you can see each and every one of Jensen’s freckles.  And some might enjoy seeing how silky and soft Jared’s hair looks.  Not me, necessarily, but I did notice the Impala changing from a 2-door to a 4-door periodically.  What the what?  Though maybe you could see that on the regular DVD too.

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For those who want to watch on their phones or laptop (out of habit, maybe or because you don’t have a Blu-Ray player in your room and you need to watch with your door shut so your family doesn’t bother you), there is a code with the Blu-Ray to get the episodes on Ultraviolet. You can then watch on all compatible devices & take the Winchesters with you on the road. Yay!

There are lots of bonus features on the discs, like the much awaited gag reel, unaired episodes, episode commentaries, the ComicCon 2014 preview for the season, stuff on mythological influences this season, and more. I was most excited about the behind the scenes for the 200th episode. You should most definitely buy this on Blu-Ray or DVD if you are caught up and start watching the show if you are not. The 11th Season will start this Fall on The CW, so you might want to hurry up. Remember these are the Winchesters, not the Losechesters, so you can’t lose with Supernatural: The Complete Tenth Season.

Maddy’s Commentary & Synopsis of Season 10: For those not afraid of some potential Spoilerishness

Okay,  as far as a Season, this one was so amazing!  We picked up where we left off in Season 9 with the Mark of Cain turning Dean into a demon after his run-in with Metatron (where he died again), so now Demon!Dean and Crowley are living it up singing karaoke in bars. Meanwhile, Sam’s going nuts and torturing demons, trying to find his missing brother, not knowing he’s a demon, so there’s that. Once Sam finally gets to Dean after being kidnapped by some dude, he locks him up in the Bunker and cures him of his demon-osity. And while all this is going on, our angel buddy Castiel’s stolen grace is fading and his fellow angel, Hannah, hunts down rogue angels while she tries to get Metatron to reveal where the rest of his grace is, but to no avail.

After an episode of regular hunting, we reach my favorite episode: “Fan Fiction”. This is the fabled episode where my two favorite things, theatre and Supernatural, come together.  An all girls school performs a musical version of the Supernatural books by Carver Edlund (a.k.a Chuck Shurley) and people who try to shut it down are captured by Calliope. Also in this episode, Sam and Dean are introduced to the popular concept of Destiel (if you read The Tweeks’ column on shipping, you know it’s the Dean/Castiel ship).  By the way, you can download the Supernatural: The Musical soundtrack!  I also really enjoyed the the next episode, “Ask Jeeves” which is like Clue meets Pretty Little Liars. Everyone is a Liar and they’re solving a murder in a mansion with a bunch of rich people, it’s rad.  All the old rich ladies love Sam. 

Let’s move on to “Girls, Girls, Girls”. Enter Rowena, a ginger witch who has enemies in high places in Hell’s monarchy, as shown when there are loads of demons chasing her and eventually taking her to Hell’s dungeons. At the end of the episode it is revealed that she is Crowley’s mother and she abandoned him as a child.

In “The Hunter Games,” The Winchesters and Cas attempt to torture the cure for the Mark of Cain out of Metatron who agitates everyone and leaves a cryptic message—“The river ends at the source”. Well, okay, crazy angel scribe. But then next up is an episode where Charlie, my fave, has returned from Oz after fighting a war. She had split her soul in two, good and bad, and she teamed up with the boys to help defeat her rogue bad side.

Then we get some regular hunting episodes, but I want to mention one of them, “About A Boy”.  The witch from Hansel and Gretel turns Dean into a teenager, which is very funny. But the fun doesn’t last for the next ep. Castiel discovers that Cain’s been killing people and Crowley,  Cas, Dean, and Sam work together to kill Cain. This is when things start to get rough. Sam can tell that the Mark is overpowering Dean and that he’s trying hard to fight it.

The stories move on with more hunting and a continuation of the Rowena sub-plot. Rowena has been banned from practicing magic by the Grand Coven, so Crowley captures Olivette, the High Priestess of the Grand Coven so Rowena can make her case to practice magic. After, she turns Olivette into a hamster and puts her in one of those hamster cages with the wheel that they run around in. Sam decides that he and Cas should sneak around behind Dean’s back to try to find a cure. YOU GUYS DO THIS EVERY SEASON! Can’t you ever learn that none of the Winchesters like being kept from things?  But still, they decide to go try and torture the information out of Metatron who reveals that he doesn’t know how to cure the Mark and his message before was utter nonsense. Thanks a lot, Metatron. The only thing he was good for was leading Castiel to his grace, which had a good and a bad side. Cas got his grace back, but Metatron got the angel tablet. Booooo.

After that, Charlie is back, and she has found The Book of the Damned, a book that is believed to hold a cure for the Mark of Cain, but apparently it belongs to the Styne family and so they track Charlie down. I won’t spoil it, but what happens is what drives the rest of the season.  There’s some drama about the Book. Dean wants it destroyed, but Sam wants to keep it because he’s still trying to find a cure for Dean even though his brother has given up.

In the midst of all this, Crowley has kicked Rowena out of Hell. Sam brings the Book of the Damned to her and asks if she can read it. She says yes, but in return she wants Crowley dead.  She also says that she needs Nadya’s codex. She said that the Men of Letters took it from the Grand Coven’s archives and it’s in their archives. Easy, right? Nope, this is Supernatural. The codex is locked in a box which is protected by a very powerful spell. When you open the box, everyone else in the vicinity starts to hallucinate and is driven to suicide. Creepy. Sam doesn’t know this and so he opens the box. Guess who’s in the house with the box in it? You guessed it: Dean. Also the owner of the house who opened the box when she was a teenager and killed her family. Dean starts to hallucinates that he’s in Purgatory with his vampire friend Benny. Ah, Purgatory. Season 7 was nuts, man, with all those Leviathans.

In the next episode, Sam gives the Book to Rowena who says that Nadya was a very selfish witch and encoded her codex. Sam decides to bring in the big guns to help crack the code. Welcome back, Charlie! The boys have captured one of the Stynes, Eldon, and are trying to get information out of him. He reveals that Syne is not their real name, they are actually the Frankensteins. They had to change their name after Mary Shelley discovered them and wrote a book. Rowena eventually drives Charlie nuts, so she asks Cas to let her out. He says no, but she sneaks out anyway, because she’s Charlie. She cracks the code, but Eldon escapes the Winchesters and starts to attack Charlie.  R.I.P Charlie. You were my favorite ginger to ever grace my television, except for Amy Pond, but I’m sure she’s your favorite too.

Dean and Sam give Charlie a proper hunter’s funeral and Dean orders Sam to stop searching for a cure for the Mark of Cain. Sam calls Castiel to tell him of Charlie’s grim end but discovers that her last act on this earth was emailing the code to Sam. He decides to keep going behind Deans back (?????) now that Rowena can read the book. Dean has vowed to kill the entire Frankenstein family and slaughters most of them, then returns to the bunker to find the last three raiding the archives. He kills two of them and listens to the youngest plead for his life, then kills him. This shows that the Mark is truly changing him because the Dean we have gotten to know for ten years would have spared his life. Castiel then shows up and tries to talk to Dean but Dean beats him up and comes very close to killing him while simultaneously breaking my fragile nerd heart. Here we are, the end of the line. The last episode is honestly the best one. There’s this one part where Dean feels like he’s trapped in a place where he doesn’t feel guilty for hurting his friends and after a vampire kill he washes his hands. He does a whole insane Lady MacBeth “Out damn spot” thing. I love Shakespeare so I recognized it immediately. He looks up into the mirror and sees his friends that he’s hurt all bloody and scrubs his hands harder and harder for each person. God bless the writers. He then summons Death, whom I love, and demands that he kill him. Death says that he cannot but he can send him away so he can’t hurt anyone ever again. He then decides to kill Sam so he doesn’t try to rescue him from this far away place. Death hands Dean his scythe to kill Sam, but he kills Death instead. Who knows what this means for people? Is everyone immortal? Rowena then casts the spell to cure the Mark of Cain, which unleashes the Darkness, a pre-Biblical force that is released when the Mark is removed. End of season. Major cliffhanger here, people.

What is the Darkness?

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Dennis O’Neil: 50 Years 50!

kirby-thing-hannukah-6337589There’s probably a lot going on just up the road, at the Temple Beth Torah. This is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and, apart from whatever community and religious value it has, it’s a pretty big personal marker for me. Just 50 years ago, on this holiday, I arrived in Manhattan after three days on the road to begin what would prove to be a new life – and, my friend, I’m talking a seriously new life.

In those 72 hours, give or take, I went from being a small town reporter, and something of a local pariah, and a bachelor, and a Missourian, to being a comic book writer in New York City who hung around with peaceniks with an eighty dollar a month apartment in what was then a slum. Pretty soon, I added husband and father to the list, and then freelancer and then a dude with “detox” on his resume and then…

What a long, strange journey it has been.

The business I stumbled into, on a sunny September day, has changed, which may be what the universe intended it to do. It’s still recognizable – the callow me whom Roy Thomas introduced to Stan Lee that sunny day would recognize today’s comics as comics – but there has been gigantic evolution. The product – those comic books – is slicker and skinnier and costs a lot more and the fiction they purvey is far more sophisticated, both in subject matter and structure. And – believe this! – it has become respectable. No fooling.

Comics were still in the spiky shadow of the witch hunts of the 50s when a lot of folk thought they were, you know, evil or something. Ah, but now. we get invited to speak at big universities – heck, some of us teach at those institutions. We shake hands with celebs and politicos. Our work is covered by the other media (Today: two items in Yahoo’s news column about what kind of costume actress Chloe Bennet will wear on a television show derived from comics stories Stan and Jack Kirby did when I was a newbie.

Which brings us to the television programs and the movies. Four weekly shows featuring comic book superheroes (and I may be forgetting one or two) coming to a screen in your living room within the next few weeks. And movies? Oh, shucks – if you’re bothering to read this you know about the honkin’ big movies. Most of them do damn well at the box office and some do damn well in the billion-dollar arena and that profit margin may be a reason we comics geeks have attained the aforementioned respectability. Anything that’s reaping those bucks has to be good, right?

Back then, 50 Septembers ago, I could not imagine that one day I would be doing copy for a computer-sourced venue and if I thought of computers at all, I probably called them something like “electronic brains.” And, what’s more, I’m using one of those electronic brains to produce the copy. But here I am.

Wondering, a little, what to do next. I’ve been electronically braining this column for a few years and maybe, just maybe, it’s time to do something new with it. Or maybe not. I might just decide that it ain’t broke and don’t need no fixing.

Meanwhile, Shana Tovah.

Molly Jackson: Saved By The Bell – Fun For All

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Last week I was browsing my way through one of my many NYC comic shops, Carmine Street Comics, when I spotted the Saved By The Bell graphic novel. This book is out from Roar Comics/Lion Forge and IDW, and written by Joelle Sellner, with art by Chynna Clugston Flores and Tim Fish. When they first announced it, I was more than excited. It was a huge piece of nostalgia for me.
It was short stories very Archie-esque based at Bayside High, featuring the original cast we all remember. Screech chasing Lisa, Zack and A.C. fighting over Kelly and everything else, and the gang banding together when someone needed them. The setting is updated, with better phones (bummer!) and the Internet even being featured in the story lines. Personally, I’m eagerly awaiting the beach club volume and the Kelly and Jessie disappear for most of it volume.
When I picked it up to buy, some of my friends teased me a little about it. It’s a kids (albeit marked for teens), licensed book from an old TV show. Piffle!
While not all licenses books are great, this one was exactly what I wanted. A fun read using some great characters I have warm fuzzy feelings about from my childhood. And frankly, what’s wrong with “kid” comics?
Way back when, almost all comics were all ages and were enjoyed by all ages. You could pick up and read Batman or Spider-Man no matter what age you are and still be entertained. The term “All Ages” now has the connotation of being for kids. As comics evolved and readers matured, a lot of franchises became too much for a younger reader to comprehend.
Well, that’s just bollocks. Pure and simple. Comics are entertainment. All ages comics are some of the most entertaining works on the shelf and shouldn’t be ignored. Don’t get me wrong; darker comics have their place in the industry. Just don’t ignore and belittle the fun stuff just because of the all ages label.
So all my ’80’s and ’90’s kids, go pick up Saved By The Bell. Read it, and then go share it with a kid. Or an adult. Or someone in-between.

Mike Gold: Four Comics Things That Piss Me Off

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Number One: Bitch Planet

Bitch Planet ran only five issues. I know it’s coming back in a new mini-series story arc thingy, but nobody – not even Valentina De Landro and Kelly Sue DeConnick – have any business producing such a compelling series and not publish it every damn month for the rest of their lives. And I’m counting string theory afterlife dimensions.

I mean, look folks, characters like Batman, the X-Men and My Little Pony are being published weekly under a variety of titles. Marvel’s pumping out so much Deadpool that even Emily S. Whitten has a hard time following them all. So is it so much to ask that we get Bitch Planet at least once each month? These are two incredibly talented cartoonists. I’m sure they have lives and loved ones and such, but I don’t care. October will come and go without an issue of Bitch Planet, and that is wrong.

Number Two: Roots of Evil?

SvengoolieLast week, the courageous and gifted Svengoolie ran the movie Monster On The Campus on his Saturday night Me-TV show (a great channel, usually on one of those digital side channels the broadcast stations use to fill out their bit of the broadband spectrum). It’s about a not-mad scientist – although at times he’s rather testy – named Doctor Donald Blake who imports a honking big fish that’s been frozen for over one million years. Blake gets pricked by one of the fish’s humongous teeth. It turns out the fish was preserved with Gamma rays for some reason that kind of made sense when they said it. Donald Blake temporarily gets transformed into a gigantic hairy monster who is violently cantankerous.

Seeing as how this is a website named “ComicMix,” three facts probably leap out at you. First, the dude’s name is Doctor Donald Blake. Second, the major plot point is that he transforms into something mighty. And, finally… Gamma rays, huh?

This movie was made in 1958. The Incredible Hulk got his dose of Gamma rays in 1962. Doctor Donald Blake first transformed into The Mighty Thor that same year. My question: is this an incredibly amazing series of coincidences (Ian Fleming would have called it “enemy action”), or did Stan Lee happen to see it and those elements impregnated his imagination? Or did he simply borrow the material, never thinking (logically) anybody would ever see that movie again? Probably not; Stan always had a lousy memory.

Sven did mention both Donald Blake and Bruce Banner during his always-brilliantly-silly studio segments.

Number Three: Color Everywhere

Boris The BearNow that small print runs of color comics are economically feasible (well, feasibler) we seem to have a drought of black and white comics. That’s annoying. The so-called independent comics movement started out in black and white – Elfquest, Cerebus; even Dark Horse’s first title was in black and white. By and large, the Warren magazines (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and particularly Blazing Combat) featured some of the best artwork by many of the best cartoonists ever, all in glorious black and white. Whereas they weren’t quite up to Warren’s level, the Marvel Comics magazines were pretty damn good and I think Conan in particular looked great in that medium.

Number Four: What’s Black and White and Dead All Over?

And let’s take this one step further. Many of the few surviving newspapers, perhaps most, have been coloring their daily comic strips for several years now. This is also true of the newspaper strip websites GoComics.com and ComicsKingdom.com. Here’s a news flash: guys, you’re not helping. By and large – there are notable exceptions – the coloring is dreadful. Comics are not coloring books where everything is cool if you just stay in the lines. Color is a storytelling device. That’s why the great color artists deserve the big bucks.

Note I did not say “the great color artists are getting the big bucks.”

That’s four. There will always be more. Get off my lawn!Bloom County

 

Box Office Democracy: The Visit

the-visit-1139445It’s frustrating watching a movie where the direction is so far and away better than the script it’s stuck with. This is an infinitely more frustrating problem when the director and the writer are the same person but such is the case with M. Night Shyamalan’s latest effort The Visit. It’s a fine movie, it’s definitely a scary movie, and it’s sometimes a funny movie but not as often as it wants to be but it sort of feels like a bunch of great parts struggling to make a coherent sum. Despite these frustrations The Visit is a credible start to the fall horror movie season and a kind of fitting latest entries into the catalogue of one of Hollywood’s most maddening auteurs.

The story of The Visit is rather simple and I don’t mean that as a slight, the more complicated your horror movie plot gets the closer you are to becoming the later Nightmare on Elm Street films. Two teenagers (young teenagers it should be noted not slasher movie teens) go to visit their estranged grandparents and then thing literally start going bump in the night. The kids try to play detective and are generally bad at being detectives because they’re kids but it helps the film bounce from tense set piece to tense set piece which is good fun. All of the solutions to problems seem to fall from the sky instead of developing but I’m willing to let that go for an effective scary time.

I’m not entirely sure what’s so intrinsically terrifying about The Visit but whatever it is it works for me. Maybe it’s the empathy I feel for children being sent to a strange house, I never much cared to stay with relatives, the space always felt a little uneasy. Maybe it’s just a general fear of strangers or unease around the elderly, especially older people who are clearly not doing as well. It might just be as simple as dark places and sudden noises, the Paranormal Activity special if you will. I’m not 100% sure why but I haven’t been as uncomfortable watching a scary movie in a theater in years. The last movie that made me so uneasy, that made me watch the movies through the corners of my eyes as I stared at the wall of the theater was Mama two and a half years ago. I can’t put my finger on why The Visit was so scary but it was dreadfully so, perhaps so much that I struggle to recommend it.

The Visit is, through and through, an M. Night Shyamalan movie and I firmly believe the hate has gone too far on Shyamalan in the last few years. It’s been a while since he’s put out a good movie but that’s a deficiency of M. Night Shyamalan the screenwriter and not M. Night Shyamalan the director. Shyamalan is an excellent visual storyteller and he consistently gets solid performances out of his actors (with the exception of himself) and The Visit is no exception in that regard. It might be a little too cute to have Rebecca as an aspiring filmmaker call out the techniques Shyamalan will later use to attempt to terrify the audience but I can forgive a couple slightly flat jokes if it otherwise delivers and The Visit does. I also quite enjoyed Shyamalan playing with audience expectations with regards to plot twists. I know that one is coming (really the narrative here demands it as something must be amiss) but because it’s Shyamalan I’m looking at everything, grasping at every straw, so when the twist in this movie is a little simpler I didn’t see it coming at all. It’s good work from a good filmmaker and it’s probably time to stop demanding he constantly live up to the excellence of The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, that isn’t going to happen.

And so the cycle continues. The Visit quadrupled its budget at the box office this weekend so, barring catastrophe, Shyamalan will be back with another movie in a year or so and we’ll all be back here again with jokes about twist endings and how disappointed we all were with Lady in the Water and, unless it’s another After Earth, it’ll probably be a well-directed film that doesn’t quite have a script up to that effort. Hollywood really is out of new ideas.

The Point Radio: Why Ron Perlman Loves TV

After six award-winning years on SONS OF ANARCHY, Ron Perlman is back on series TV with a new project on Amazon Prime called HAND OF GOD. What was so special about this show that it drew him back?  Ron explains it and his love for the craft of acting plus meet the hosts of CRAZY TALK. Reality TV boiled down to just the cool stuff, all by Ben Arron and Tanisha Thomas.

Be sure and follow us on Twitter now here.

REVIEW: Homeland The Complete Fourth Season

homeland-s4-e1442263942481-8223366Homeland has been a strong drama series that has tackled timely issues mixed with interesting personal drama. However, its third season meandered a bit so it was refreshing to see the fourth go round return to stronger, more dynamic storytelling. With the Nicholas Brody (and his family) thread now neatly snipped off, the focus has returned to driven, flawed Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and the shadowy world of espionage.

Homeland The Complete Fourth Season is now out on a three disc Blu-ray set from 20th Century Home Entertainment. The revitalized series picks up with Carrie now in Kabul as a station chief, using reliable intelligence fed to her from a resource to target terrorists and take them out. That is, until one attack destroys a civilian home, amidst a wedding celebration no less. The target escapes and the groom has also survived and becomes the fulcrum upon which the season’s major arc revolves.

Carrie is a great field operative but not much of a station chief, barking orders and doing nothing to build relationships with her team. Life in Afghanistan is busy enough but things change when Pakistan chief Sandy Bachman (Corey Stoll) uses bad intel that results in a civilian home being destroyed. When Bachman is attacked on the streets and killed in a retaliatory action for bombing the house, a guilty Carrie gets involved in the investigation, forcing her way into becoming his replacement where she repeats her bad management and lack of trust. This means that rather than trusting and using her team, she winds up working with those form her past including Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin), who has his own issues with Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham), Fara Sherazi (Nazanin Boniadi), and of course the enigmatic Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend). In fact, Quinn’s story arc this season started off strong and petered out once he was caught up in Carrie’s magnetic pull.

There’s a lot of plotting, moves, and countermoves but it all builds to Saul getting kidnapped and his attempts at escape while target/Taliban leader Haissam Haqqani (Numan Acar) is executing his own plot to infiltrate the CIA base and extract its secrets. The pacing is tight and builds to a nice crescendo in the final episodes as everything comes together. The larger issues reflect the contentious relationships in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and those who resettled from those lands in America along with how American diplomats have to tread a fine line between frenemies. Carrie may also have met her match in Aasar Khan (Raza Jaffrey), Pakistan’s counter-terrorism expert.

There prices to be paid all around as allies die and Carrie is made to feel guilty for not being in America to raise her child. However, once the dust settles, Carrie comes home and even reconciles with her mother while Quinn is off on a dangerous mission that apparently does not set up the soon to launch season five. But it does leave Carrie and Saul far apart, which is a shame since they work so well together. But trust and friendship remain collateral damage in the very dangerous game they play.

The high definition AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 is perfectly fine as is the lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. There aren’t many special features to entice you and they are fairly perfunctory. You have a few nonessential Deleted Scenes (10:52), Character Profiles (16:56) featuring Peter Quinn, Aasar Khan and Fara Sherazi; and, From Script to Screen (23:17), the most unique feature.

Emily S. Whitten: Randy Rogel, the Music of Animaniacs & More!

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If you’re any sort of regular reader of my columns, you’ll already know that I’m a big fan of Animaniacs. I’ve also had the privilege of interviewing several of the main voices for the show; including Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, and Maurice LaMarche. One of these days I hope to meet the amazing Tress MacNeille as well!

One thing I’ve noted before as a favorite component of the show is the well-composed and clever song segments that are woven throughout the episodes – songs such as Yakko’s World; I’m Mad; Variety Speak; Noel; and There’s Only One of You. The songs are catchy, they’re fun, and they’re often educational to boot. And as it turns out, a great many of them were written by one man – Randy Rogel. That would be amazing enough on its own; but the cool thing about Randy is that he’s also a script-writer, theater actor, singer, and pianist. His work includes Batman (both the animated series and the movie SubZero), Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, Danger Rangers, several Looney Toons properties, Tarzan, House of Mouse, The Emperor’s New School and Histeria! He’s also won a slew of awards, including three Emmys (and ten Emmy nominations), a Peabody Award, two Annie Awards, a Promax Gold Award, and an Ovation Award. Oh, and he can also do <a href=”

.

As I mentioned last week, I was privileged to meet Randy at Dragon Con this year. I was also lucky enough to have a front-row seat for his panel with Rob Paulsen, “The Music of Animaniacs,” in which they discussed the creative process and performed Animaniacs songs live, and to also get to chat one-on-one with Randy about his life and work. And now, fortunately, I am able to share those awesome experiences with you!

FIrst off, if you aren’t super familiar with Randy’s work, here’s <a href=”

little playlist of some favorites that I could locate on YouTube, consisting mainly of Animaniacs music, with a sprinkling of Histeria! and Bravoman thrown in. Give it a visit so you can marvel at Randy’s awesome talents.

Second, I was able to record the songs from the live show, so if you want to see what Randy and Rob are like live, hop on over to <a href=”

playlist.

And finally, I had a ton of fun doing this <a href=”

interview with Randy, wherein he talks about all kinds of cool things, and so I highly suggest everyone head over and give it a watch.

And then I suggest everyone gather some friends and have a nice Animaniacs singalong. I’ll be over here joining in by humming, “A quake; a quake…” And hoping that until next time, you Servo Lectio!

REVIEW: The Big Bang Theory The Complete Eight Season

1000539270brdfltuv_3c431a50-e1441556140725-5052917While one of the strongest ensembles on television today, The Big Bang Theory has come to revolve around the socially awkward Sheldon (Jim Parsons), so it makes perfect sense that the eighth season began and ended with the brilliant scientist. Sandwiched in-between, the series slowly advanced the cast of characters through their lives and thankfully Chuck Lorre has not prevented them from growing.

Warner Bros Home Entertainment releases The Big Bang Theory The Complete Eighth Season this week and the combo pack contains all 245 episodes on Blu-ray and Digital HD. We open with Sheldon, 45 days after leaving on a train, only to call Leonard (Johnny Galecki) to come rescue him from Kingman, Arizona. Accompany him is Amy (Mayim Bialik), who has been hurt by Sheldon’s actions, which remains a recurring theme through the season, setting up the finale, where she puts their relationship on hold just as he was about to propose.

While their relationship foundered, the real winner this year has to be Penny (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting) since she has come to realize she won’t make it as an actress and gives up waitressing to become a pharmaceutical salesman. And guess what? She’s good at it and is finally making money so we see how this does and does not change her as she and Leonard keep talking about their impending marriage.

 

The character who may have grown the most this season was Raj (Kunal Nayyar). Not only has he felt comfortable speaking to women, but he has endured one breakup and is now involved with Emily (Laura Spencer). At first, we think it’s an odd but sweet pairing but by the finale, we realize just how creepy she is which apparently propels Raj’s arc in the coming ninth season.

The season is also one of loss. First, and perhaps to foreshadow matters, the team clean out the office of a decease105193_wb_d0551r-e1441556184805-7490799d professor and find a bottle of champagne he had stored for the day he made his big discovery, which never happened. And then, just as Stuart (Kevin Sussman) reopens the comic book store, Howard (Simon Helberg) learns of his mother’s death (prompted by the quick death of actress Carol Ann Susi). The remainder of the season follows the repercussions of her absence culminating in the wonderfully touching “The Leftover Thermalization”.

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The season is filled with all the usual supporting players without losing the focus on the core characters, as the guests serve as foils such as when Wil Wheaton and Penny discuss the horrible film they made together. In some ways the strongest episode of the season is a result of the combustible meeting between Mary Cooper (Laurie Metcalf) and Beverly Hofstadler (Christine Beranski). And the geek quotient may have been diluted by the various romantic entanglements, it is not gone. The impromptu visit to Skywalker Ranch was a highlight.

The season-long threads come to a head in the finale which sees Sheldon and Amy in crisis while Leonard and Penny are ion the process of eloping. If there’s a false note in any of the brilliance, it’s Penny’s overreaction to the news that Leonard had a drunken kiss with a colleague while in Antarctica. Given her sexual past, her reaction, spilling into the season premiere in a few weeks, rings falsely.

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Still, the series has sustained its premise and become a rich, endearing, and still uproariously funny series. The high definition transfer and audio are superb. There are six special features spaced between the two discs. We have the 2014 Comic-Con Panel, which is interesting for archival purposes, and Shooting Stars: BBT on BBT, a cleverly named bit about Billy Bon Thornton’s turn as a lecherous doctor.

It’s a Quark…It’s an Atom…It’s the #BBTSuperfnas! Which shows the winners of the international contest brought to the soundstage. While engaging, it would have been nicer to show us how they won and the challenges that earned them the points. Best is the loving tribute Here’s to You, Carol Ann Susi and cast and crew talked about the unseen actress’ impact on them and their characters. Finally, there’s a lengthy Gag Reel showing that the complicated dialogue is quite difficult to master.

Mindy Newell: The United States of Theocracy

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I am angry.

Just finished reading School Daze, Martha’s latest column.

I clicked on her last link.

Are you fucking kidding me?!

Everybody knows about Kim Davis, but how many of you know about Charee Stanley, the United Airlines ExpressJet flight attendant who refuses to serve alcohol because she is a Muslim? The problem was handled a while by the other flight attendants who shared flights with Ms. Stanley; they served the drinks while Ms. Stanley did other duties. But eventually another employee filed a complaint, and ExpressJet suspended Ms. Stanley (administrative leave for 12 months without pay) for not fulfilling her expected duties; if there is no satisfactory resolution by the end of that time period, Ms. Stanley will be terminated. She has filed a complaint with the EEOC (Equal Opportunity Commission).

Newsflash, people. The United States of America is not a theocracy.

So the simple answer to Kim Davis and the flight attendant is “Get another job.”

But is it so simple?

Aside: Though my gut reaction is to say, “yeah, it is simple, get another job,” I was born on the cusp of Libra, (Justice) and Scorpio, (The Scorpion). So although my gut reaction, my stinger, is to say, “yeah, it is simple, get another job,” my intellect is constantly balancing the scales.

What if a superhero refused to do his or her job because of religious reasons? I have previously stated that I believe that Wonder Woman, for all her stature as a modern feminist icon, is firmly in the anti-abortion, pro-life camp, owing to her own miraculous birth on an island where the usual biological procreation of children is impossible, and has been since the Amazons arrived on Themiscrya. How conflicted would Princess Diana be in upholding Roe vs. Wade? Very, I think.

And let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Kitty Pryde has become shomer Shabbat, which in modern lingo means a Jew who has “returned,” after living an assimilated or non-practicing life, to following the commandments honoring the Sabbath and God as laid down in the second book of the Torah (Deuteronomy), i.e., an Orthodox Jew. Would Kitty be right in refusing to aid the other X-Men in a fight against the Brood if it happened to be a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, or Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism, spent in fasting and prayer?

Uh, actually, no. The preservation of life, the act of preserving life, is, in fact, the most important principle of Judaism superseding all others and all commandments. “The Mishna says: “’Whenever a human life is endangered, the laws of the Sabbath are suspended’. The more eagerly someone goes about saving a life, the more worthy he is of praise.” (The Babylonian Talmud, tractate Yoma, page 84b)

So what’s the answer?

I don’t know, but I’m glad I live in a country in which Amendment I of the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

And I’m glad I live in a country in which Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution says that “The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court…”

Despite what Mike Huckabee says.

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