March 2012

Carnage

  • Title: Carnage
  • IMDB: link

carnage-blu-rayAdapted by director Roman Polanski and writer Yasmina Reza from Reza’s play God of Carnage, Carnage gives us two couples (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) discussing a recent altercation between their sons when one strikes the other with a stick in the park.

What starts as civil discussion of the events soon leads the couples turn on each other and then their own spouses as all pretense is washed away. Think of it as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Lite.

The story would probably have worked better for me on stage where the characters are forced to remain on stage in the apartment where the audience can continue to watch the action unfold. The attempts at civility used to keep both couples together don’t work as well on film where we know the camera can follow them out, and there are more than a couple of moments that should bring events to a close.

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In Plain Sight – Four Marshals and a Baby

  • Title: In Plain Sight – Four Marshals and a Baby
  • tv.com: link

in-plain-sight-four-marshals-and-a-baby

Things do get any less complicated for the Albequrque office of WITSEC this week. While Mary (Mary McCormack) struggles without a suitalbe babysitter she must also dealing with a witness (Jennifer Elise Cox) who Delia (Tangie Ambrose) discovers has been hiding an aggressive hoarding habit from the Marshals for years.

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Justice League #7

justice-league-new-52-7-coverThere’s so much wrong with the latest issue of Justice League it’s hard to know where to begin. First, following the success of the team’s first mission we skip 5 years ahead to present day, but the team still acts like they’ve only been working together for all of five minutes.

The conversion of Hal Jordan into early Booster Gold seems now complete as not only is Green Lantern used mainly for comic relief but he goes so far as to hit on the ex-wife of the biological warfare specialist during the fight with the spores he’s been exposed to.

The art by Gene Ha at least saves us the characters posing and looking in different directions (mainly) but it’s also dirtier and somewhat sloppier than the title’s first six issues. And Geoff Johns dialogue continues to be so mindnumbingly bad it’s getting harder and harder for me to defend him and blame it on DC Editorial. The fact that the story is also told from the perspective of Steve Trevor, a character who no relation to the team so far, seems oddly out of place as well.

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Fairly Legal – Start Me Up

  • Title: Fairly Legal – Start Me Up
  • tv.com: link

fairly-legal-start-me-up

Still reeling from the news that Justin (Michael Trucco) cheated on her while they were married and the fact that the boat she was living on recently exploded, Kate (Sarah Shahi) gets a new job mediating a case between a hospital and the FBI who used their influence to bump a dying patient on the donor list in favor of an important witness for a case against the New York Yakuza.

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Super Dinosaur #9

super-dinosaur-9-coverAfter three months where storylines really seemed to stall writer Robert Kirkman and artist Jason Howard deliver an action-packed issue that finds Derek and Super Dinosaur teaming up with Squidious and General Casey to stop The Exile and his Dino-Men from forcing their way into Inner-Earth through an erupting volcano.

Super Dinosaur #9 also finally moves the storyline of Dr. Dynamo’s missing wife forward as not only does the doctor break Max Maximus out of prison for information about his wife but we are also given a glimpse of the woman held captive in suspended animation Maximus’ secret base.

Throw in Derek coming clean with Miss Finkle about performing his examination through a robot, plenty of action around an erupting volcano, and the first look at the face of the new enemy when The Exile is unmasked, and it looks like the series is back in full-gear and a whole lot of fun. Worth a look.

[Image, $2.99]

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