Katherine McNamara in Venice
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MacGyver – Banh Bao + Drill + Burner + Mason
- Title: MacGyver (2016) – MacGyver – Banh Bao + Drill + Burner + Mason
- wiki: link
“Banh Bao + Drill + Burner + Mason” offers two stories. In the first, MacGyver‘s (Lucas Till) uncomfortable meeting Desi‘s (Levy Tran) parents (Michael Paul Chan and Page Leong) turns into a mission to save Desi’s brother (Paul Yen) from those attempting to scare the medical examiner into falsifying a report. The storyline features your basic meet the parent moments while also cluing them in on both what Desi really does for a living and her boyfriend’s unusual skill set. The other involves Russ (Henry Ian Cusick) and Matty (Meredith Eaton) attempting to woo the next generation’s MacGyver, Eli Brown (Ben Wang), and then enlisting some unlikely support (Peter Weller) when government agents target the kid. I’ll be curious to see if we’ll get more of Eli or if this was a just a one-off performance. The idea of Team MacGyver introducing a talented kid into the group, and someone for MacGyver to mentor, offers some new avenues for the show to explore.
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Pieces of a Woman
- Title: Pieces of a Woman
- IMDb: link
Pieces of a Woman offers impressive performances by Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf as a couple who lose their baby during a lengthy home birth that kicks off the movie. The extended sequence, like the rest of the film, is too long while putting the performances of its actors over any narrative or plot.
Adapting their own play, director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber attempt to sell us on the situation rather than the underdeveloped characters with the idea that we should feel for the couple regardless of any of their other actions. While it is interesting to see the actors hit their marks, Pieces of a Woman works more as an acting exercise than a film.
The film viscerally explores how both characters deal with their loss. In so doing, it produces several strong individual scenes which are loosely tied together by a lot downtime as the film meanders absentmindedly to the next big moment. While Kirby’s character shuts down, LaBeouf and Ellen Burstyn look for someone to blame starting with the midwife (Molly Parker) who was unable to keep their child alive while waiting for EMTs to arrive.
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Miss Sherlock – The Missing Bride
- Title: Miss Sherlock – The Missing Bride
- IMDb: link
While Dr. Wato (Shihori Kanjiya) is distracted both by her feelings for Moriya (Ryôhei Ohtani) and her PTSD which complicates things, Sherlock (Yûko Takeuchi) takes a case involving the search for a missing bride who disappears between her wedding and reception. It doesn’t take long for Sherlock to see several people are keeping secrets. “The Missing Bride” offers some nice twists involving a sudden reappearance of the man suspected of killing the missing bride’s best friend and the reveal of the real reason behind the marriage. As for Wato, despite her feigned disinterest Sherlock helps push the woman she refuses to call friend toward Moriya helping smooth some momentary trouble between the pair.
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Usagi Yojimbo #16
- Title: Usagi Yojimbo #16
- Comic Vine: link
- Writer: Stan Sakai
- Artist: Stan Sakai
Usagi Yojimbo #16 offers the opening chapter of a new story of Miyamoto Usagi helping his old friend and teacher Sōjōbō, a dai-tengu, fight off lesser wood spirits known as guhin tengu who are jealous of Sōjōbō’s position and status and have returned to plague him once more.
As he does so often, and so well, writer/artist Stan Sakai weaves in an explanation of Japanese culture and folklore detailing the tengu and the different types, providing a background to the spirits while also offering flashbacks to Sōjōbō’s previous encounter with the guhin tengu which cost him a hand. He also draws some terrific reactions shots of Usagi talking with his friend that rank among some of my favorites.
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