Alan Rapp

Anne Hathaway’s Wrecking Ball vs. Emily Blunt’s Piece of My Heart (Lip Sync Battle)

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Lip Sync Battle
  • IMDb: link

Still full of far too much filler and not enough actual content, last night’s Lip Sync Battle raised the bar a bit by pitting good friends Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt against each other. The two verbally sparred back and forth for most of the evening but Hathaway stole the night with her performance of Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” (watch Blunt’s reaction in the background to her performance).

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Convergence: Batgirl #1

/ / Comics

Convergence: Batgirl #1DC Comics sure isn’t wasting much time to turn me off of Convergence. Despite being the exact target audience for this particular issue (It has Stephanie Brown as Batgirl! It has Red Robin in his Dr. Midnight pre-New 52 costume! It has Black Bat! And it even has Catman! CATMAN!) I still walked away disappointed.

First off the reveal of Convergence being nothing more than the unimaginative DC equivalent of Capcom Vs. doesn’t inspire much confidence in the storyline. Yes, it was fun seeing Stephanie back where she belongs, and I like the trio of Steph, Tim, and Cass together but none rang true to me as Steph’s giddy introspection is replaced with mopey narration (and what world is this exactly where Stephanie has never heard of Catman?).

It also doesn’t help that Convergence: Batgirl #1 might be the worst drawn mainstream super-hero comic I’ve ever read. The characters are ill-defined looking more lack slap-dashed artist sketches than a finished product, and the inking and coloring is haphazard resulting in numerous panels that appear out of focus. What the hell, DC? Pass.

[DC, $3.99]

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Woman in Gold

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Woman in Gold
  • IMDb: link

Woman in GoldDirector Simon Curtis‘ Woman in Gold is an odd film not good enough for awards consideration but also choosing not to become an action-suspense film about stolen Nazi art. Much more a straightforward drama, I’d compare it to 1998’s A Civil Action, a more engaging film with a similar arc of a lawyer whose money-first philosophy is changed by taking on an emotional case he can’t possibly win.

Based on the true story of Maria Altmann‘s (Helen Mirren) attempts to regain possession of her family’s lost masterpiece from the Austrian government, Woman in Gold is a slow-moving drama starring Ryan Reynolds as the lawyer hired by Maria to take on a foreign government. Reynolds and Mirren work well together as the unlikely pair to take on Austria (even if Reynolds casting seems like an odd choice). Well-acted and shot against the backdrops of Vienna and southern California, the story is intriguing if never fully engaging. Despite its cast (which also includes Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jonathan Pryce) Woman in Gold is a good film that never fully lives up to the promise it offers flashes of early on.

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Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Afterlife

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Afterlife
  • wiki: link

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Afterlife

The latest episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is broken into three storylines each born out of the current S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. arc. A familiar face returns to join Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Hunter‘s (Nick Blood) attempt to find Skye (Chloe Bennet) and put things right. Divided loyalties within S.H.I.E.L.D. force Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) to leave, Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) to make a hard choice, Bobbi (Adrianne Palicki) to question the organization’s assessment of Skye, and Gonzales (Edward James Olmos) to find a way to kinda-sorta entice May (Ming-Na Wen) into betraying Coulson without actually betraying Coulson. And Skye struggles to get used to her new life among the Inhumans with the help of a man named Lincoln (Luke Mitchell) who keeps at least as much hidden about the group as he explains.

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