When your father is a god, your life is bound to be pretty interesting. As a result, it is never less than astonishing how often the story of Hercules ignores the rich source material, transplanting the demigod to whatever environment is currently in vogue with diminished results. Twice this year, we were treated to variant…
It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to a movie as cold as I did for Nightcrawler. I hadn’t seen a trailer or even had it described to me. I think I’d seen a poster but it wasn’t terribly clear what kind of movie I was getting in to even as the lights went…
How to Train Your Dragon was an immensely successful adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s charming children’s book. The story ended nicely and had we never revisited the village of Berk, we would have been satisfied. However, in film, success demands milking the cow as far as audiences allow so we now have a sequel. Unlike so…
We’re now in the first sweeps period of the current television season and its fair to say that while several new series are entertaining, few are measuring up to our increased expectations. As a result, it’s refreshing to see that in one week, one of the smartest shows is returning albeit for a truncated final…
Gregory Maguire had no idea what he was unleashing when he wrote Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West in 1995. Since then, a tremendous amount of energy has been spent on revisiting the antagonists from fairy tales to modern fiction in an effort to explain their motivations. Quite often,…
Some will say they knew all along, and some are still scraping their jaws off the floor A big surprise, a BIG surprise. DARK WATER By Steven Moffat Directed by Rachel Talalay Deciding to come clean with her boyfriend Danny, Clara begins to bear all to him over the phone, only to have the call,…
A great actor once said “never work with children or animals.” This episode features both, and once again, the axiom proves true. The students of Coal Hill School have a sleepover in the museum of natural history, and wake up… IN THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT By Frank Cottrell-Boyce Directed by Sheree Folkson London, and…
With Walt Disney releasing Maleficent on disc next week, they have offered us a Bonus Clip from the special features found on the Bu-ray disc. The Angelina Jolie-starrer arrives November 4 as a combo pack containing the Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD versions o fthe liv-action retelling of the classic fairy tale. Our review will…
The Warren Commission Report By Dan Mishkin, Ernie Colon, and Jerzy Drozd Abrams ComicArts, 160 pages, $29.95 Conspiracies are everywhere if you know where to look. Over the last century, Americans have increasingly looked for dire machinations behind the unbelievable. Much as our ancestors sat around campfires telling mythic tales to explain how the sun…
As we approach Halloween, The Tweeks have a feeling some of you still haven’t planned out your costume. Never fear! This week we offer up a variety of easy, quick, simple Percy Jackson themed costumes you can probably find in your closet! We also model our Hunters of Artemis costumes, explain Amazons, and Maddy reviews…
There is a scene near the end of Birdman’s second act where Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) delivers a brutal tirade against the idea of theater criticism. He talks about how safe the life of a critic is and how audacious it is of them to judge the work of actors. This puts me in a…
It’s the premise of a classic short novel by a Shakespearian scholar and at least a half dozen EC Comics. What happens when beings based in a differing number of dimensions interact? Usually it’s the higher dimensions assaulting us, but if the invasion comes from the ground up, one would hope your defensive wall could…
