December 2012

Nikita – Season 1

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Nikita – The Complete First Season
  • tv.com: link

nikita-season-one-dvdIt’s always interesting going back and start watching a show from the beginning after picking it up sometime during a later season. I decided to give Nikita a chance this year and enjoyed the show enough to pick up the First Season on DVD.

Based on the French film of the same name and the American remake, Nikita stars Maggie Q as government trained assassin on the run from the shadowy organization who trained her. Rather than give us a new take on the character’s origin story the series opens with Nikita reemerging after the events of the films with a plan to take down Division, the agency which trained her, with the help of a new Division recruit (Lyndsy Fonseca).

Most of the first season deals with Nikita staying one-step ahead of Michael (Shane West), the man who trained her, and Division strike teams, as Alex (Fonseca) slowly works her way up in Division feeding Nikita inside information to help destroy the agency that murdered her family years ago.

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Leverage – The Long Good-bye Job

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Leverage – The Long Good-bye Job
  • tv.com: link

leverage-the-good-bye-job

In the series finale Nate (Timothy Hutton) is approached by his son’s former physician who needs his help to save another patient in danger of dying of the same condition of that killed Nate’s son. To retrieve the drug the company refuses to release means breaking into a facility with government level security given the building also houses a federal law enforcement Intenet hub server housing backup files for the FBI, CIA, DEA, and Interpol.

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Masks #2

/ / Comics

masks-2-coverWith New York City now a police state controlled by corrupt new government of gangsters known as the Justice Party, The Shadow, The Green Hornet and Kato, and The Spider find themselves overwhelmed by the enhanced technology the criminals have gotten their hands on to keep control of their city.

Issue #2 also introduces the Green Lama and Black Bat who begin to fight back against the oppressive new government as well. The story of the young artist on the wrong side of the government’s new oppressive regime continues as well foreshadowing, I’m guessing, the eventual birth of a new Zorro.

I thought the first comic worked in trying to throw all these characters together in an unusual situation that required them to work together. Masks #2 isn’t quite as good, forced to rely more on fleshing out a story than just introducing the concept. There’s far more talking about doing something than actual action, and some “necessary” awkward introductions among the heroes take up way too many panels. Hit-and-Miss.

[Dynamite Entertainment, $3.99]

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Doctor Who – The Snowmen

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Doctor Who – The Snowmen
  • IMDB: link

“Carnerverous snow meets Victorian values, and something terrible is born.”

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Alone since the loss of Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), The Doctor‘s (Matt Smith) travels have led him to 1892 England into semi-retirement… at least until he meets an unusual young barmaid/governess named Clara Oswin Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman) and a miser (Richard E. Grant) mysteriously tied to killer snowmen which feed on the thoughts and fears of human beings.

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Tarantino Unchained

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Django Unchained
  • IMDB: link

django-unchained-posterWith Inglourious Basterds writer/director Quentin Tarantino strode a fine line between between drama and revenge fantasy in his depiction of a select group of Jewish soldiers taking on the Nazis during WWII.

With his latest, Tarantino returns to the well of his revenge fantasy, the theme he’s been stuck on for nearly an entire decade (since 2003’s Kill Bill Vol. 1), to push the envelope even farther with a blaxploitation western that leaves good taste in the dust. If there’s ever a film that so thoroughly argues for a director to be shackled to studio pressure it’s the inarguable trainwreck that is Django Unchained.

Jamie Foxx stars as Django, a slave freed by a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) in need of his help to hunt down and kill the Speck brothers (James Remar, James Russo). After Django shows promise, Shultz (Waltz) agrees to train the newly freed slave in the art of bounty hunting and help retrieve Django’s wife (Kerry Washington) from a ruthless plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).

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