June 2012

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #10

/ / Comics

tmnt-10-coverWhile the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles worry and search for their missing master, Splinter finds himself kindapped by the Foot Clan and forced to prove his valor in a fight to the death. Although he is able to defeat his opponent, Splinter’s refusal to kill the ninja brings him face-to-face with an old enemy, Oroku Saki, in his new form as the leader of the Foot Clan – The Shredder!

As Leo and Donnie argue over mysticism and reincarnated Foot Clan, April gives the turtles a new base of operations when she decides to share an abandoned storefront with apartments above where they can rest and plan on how to save Splinter.

I’m a little surprised how quickly the Turtles have abandoned the sewers, but I’m happy to see that Splinter has finally confronted his old adversary (even if it does seem a little drawn out). Now he just has to make it out alive to give us the confrontation we really want to see – the first battle between the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Shredder. Worth a look.

[IDW, $3.99]

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Chronicle

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Chronicle
  • IMDB: link

chronicle-blu-rayI like super-hero movies but I’m far from fond of found footage films which present events from the perspective of characters documenting their own adventures. Chronicle stars out with a really good idea as it shows us what might happen if three high school misfits (Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan) found themselves with super-powers. However, the execution and thinly written characters produce mixed results for a movie that should have knocked my socks off as the shaky-cam pseudo-documentary style narrative is far from the film’s biggest problem.

The action sequences are impressive, especially the final battle between two of the super-powered teens, and the realistic way in which the kids used their powers (basically to screw with people and for their own enjoyment) worked well, but every time the film attempted to put the super-human powers on hold in favor of high school drama the film stalled.

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Batman Annual #1

/ / Comics

batman-new-52-annual-1For the title’s first annual as part of the New 52, writers Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV give us a new origin story for Mr. Freeze. Honestly, Freeze isn’t my favorite Bat-villain. I’ve often thought of him as a less interesting Captain Cold (who got his own reboot a couple months back). The only version of the character I’ve really cared for was the version from Batman: The Animated Series which balanced the tragedy and nobility of the character so well.

After Freeze escapes from Gotham he heads right to Wayne Enterprises for his revenge. Victor Freeze blames Bruce Wayne for shutting down the cyrogenics experiment which was his only hope of ressurecting his wife Nora and which caused the accident which turned him the man he is today.

I’m not fond of the idea of putting Wayne right in the middle of Freeze’s obession to the point where he personally shut down the project and was present for the accident (he is, after all, a very busy man), but the choice to change Nora from Victor’s wife into an unknown woman with whom he’s become obsessed is interesting.

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Gone

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Gone
  • IMDB: link

gone-dvdOne year after Jill (Amanda Seyfried) was kidnapped by a serial killer her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) disappears without a trace leaving the excitable young woman to believe the kidnapper has returned. The police (Daniel Sunjata, Jennifer Carpenter), who could find no physical evidence to back up Jill’s story of the first kidnapping once again believe the young woman with a history of mental illness is simply letting her imagination get away with her.

For Gone to work both stories need to be given equal weight, but despite Jill’s increasingly erratic behavior (which only grows because everyone refuses to help her) we know something has happened to her sister and Jill isn’t simply imagining the situation. The film follows the same movie logic of plenty of thrillers where dumb movie cops aren’t able to solve a crime for an entire year but one woman with no training is able to track the killer back to his lair in a single day. She also proves to have a remarkable ability to elude detection when an entire city’s police force is looking for her.

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Fairly Legal – Borderline

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Fairly Legal – Boderline
  • tv.com: link

fairly-legal-borderline

While attempting to resolve a jurisdictional dispute between state agencies delaying the building of a casino in Lake Tahoe, Kate (Sarah Shahi) an Ben (Ryan Johnson) find themselves wrapped up in an unsolved murder when buried remains of a missing 16 year-old girl are discovered on the building site.

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