Alan Rapp

Community – Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Community – Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality
  • wiki: link

Community - Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality

The night doesn’t go as planned for anyone as “Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality” features several forced pairings in an episode with several fun moments but doesn’t ever quite click (although it does offer some fun character interactions along the way). With the departure of Donald Glover, it appears Buzz Hickey (Jonathan Banks) has been drafted into duty as Abed (Danny Pudi) new sounding board as the pair bond over the course of the evening when the whackadoodle faces Hickey’s consequences for accidentally destroying several of the professor’s cartoon duck drawings.

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Psych – 1967: A Psych Odyssey

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Psych – 1967: A Psych Odyssey
  • wiki: link

“Whatever it takes.”

Psych - 1967: A Psych Odyssey

Chief Vick (Kirsten Nelson, who also directed the episode) returns to Santa Barbara to say goodbye by announcing she’s taken a new position in San Fransisco. One group hug later, Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) rounds up Shawn (James Roday), Gus (Dulé Hill), Juliet (Maggie Lawson), and Henry (Corbin Bernsen) to investigate an unsolved 1967 homicide in order to impress Mayor Swaggerty (John Kapelos), whose uncle was the victim, and become the SBPD’s next Chief of Police. The cast does double duty by playing various roles in 60s flashbacks (including Hill performing as the lead singer of the lounge band) as Lassiter attempt to piece together the case with the help of the remaining living witnesses (Loretta Devine, Peggy Lipton) while becoming increasingly obsessed with solving the crime.

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Batman/Superman #8

/ / Comics

Batman/Superman #8After pretty much hating the first issue of Batman/Superman I’ve given the comic a wide berth and haven’t looked back. However, the recent cross-over with Worlds’ Finest involving the Huntress and Power Girl revealing themselves to this world’s versions of their relatives begins here so I found myself picking this issue up (along with Part 2 of the story in Worlds’ Finest #20 also released this week). I was pleasantly surprised.

Despite an art style by Jae Lee that doesn’t really mesh with much of anything in the New 52 (which from one perspective can certainly be seen as a good thing), writer Greg Pak gets the beats right as Batman is confronted by his daughter from another world who he inherently trusts (but doesn’t necessarily trust that he feels that way).

We also see Superman‘s first meeting with an out-of-control Power Girl who he is determined to help whether she wants his help or not (or whether such efforts could endanger himself). I’m curious to see where this storyline will go. Worth a look.

[DC, $3.99]

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Perception – Curveball

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Perception – Curveball
  • tv.com: link

Perception - Curveball

Perception returns from its mid-season break with Kate Moretti (Rachael Leigh Cook) bringing Daniel Pierce (Eric McCormack) in on a case involving an autistic train-obsessed teen (Nate Hartley) who is facing murder chargers after he stole a train and ran over a train yard security guard (Andrew Lawrence). Although Pierce sees no intent in the young man’s actions he is forced to go to Donnie (Scott Wolf) for a legal excuse to save the young man from a life sentence (which turns out not to be necessary as the episode quickly abandons the autistic killer plot thread in favor of a more complex, but ultimately less original or interesting, murder).

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The Wind Rises

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Kaze tachinu
  • IMDB: link

“All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.”

The Wind RisesOver a lifetime in animation Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki has made a name for himself as one of the premiere filmmakers of his generation. Although I haven’t always loved his films, I found Princess Mononoke too bizarre for my tastes and a bit unwieldy with its 133-minute running time, it’s impossible to come out of any Miyazaki film without a profound respect for the talented man who brought them to the screen.

For his final film Miyazaki delivers a love story to aviation in the fictionalized biography of Japanese aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi (Hideaki Anno), a young man with dreams of building beautiful flying machines who would design the Mitsubishi A5M and Mitsubishi A6M Zero which Japan used during WWII. Adapted from the novel by Hori Tatsuo, The Wind Rises may not quite be the all-ages adventure some might be hoping for, but it beautifully captures the fire of imagination that drives Jiro in his designs and the lively but ill Naoko (Miori Takimoto) whom he falls desperately in love with. As he approaches his life’s ambition he feels the other great love of his life slowly fading away.

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