Last weekend John DiMaggio was one of the media guests at Planet Comicon in Kansas City. Listen to the renown voice actor discuss Futurama, Adventure Time, Kansas City traffic, and the hardest role he’s ever attempted.
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John DiMaggio – Planet Comicon Panel 2017 Read More »
The last two episodes of Arrow get down to basics as they deal primarily with the relationship between Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards). While “Dangerous Liaisons” put Ollie and Felicity on opposite sides as she continues down a dangerous path in helping Helix break out an A.R.G.U.S. prisoner who can help them find Adrian Chase (Josh Segarra), “Underneath” traps the pair in the Arrow Cave forcing them to work together and deal with their emotional baggage to make it out alive. Mirroring the tension between the pair is that of Diggle (David Ramsey) and Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson) as the Green Arrow’s sidekick gets more than one suprise about what his wife has been up to since taking over A.R.G.U.S.
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Arrow – Dangerous Liaisons / Underneath Read More »
Spinning out of the events of the (pretty damn awful) Spider-Man event The Clone Conspiracy which brought Ben Reilly back from the dead, although this time as villain rather than hero, Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider #1 begins a new chapter for character who doesn’t seem to quite belong anywhere in the current Marvel Universe.
The first issue of the new series picks up with Reilly wearing a stolen cosplay costume and attempting to resume his old moniker the Scarlet Spider in Las Vegas. Haunted by both his good and evil halves, who appear to him as hallucinations, this version of the character lacks any of the heart of the original and returns to a somewhat heroic path only because he has nothing better to do.
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Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider #1 Read More »
Less ambitious than the original film, the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy attempts to focus a bit more on relationships and family while, of course, still leaving plenty of time for hijinks and misadventure. As he proved in Guardians of the Galaxy, writer/director James Gunn is right at home with the later, but if the sequel has a major weakness it’s that more subtle emotion isn’t his forte.
Not to take anything away from the sequel which proves to be an enjoyable summer romp, but Gunn struggles mightily during emotional beats which are hamfistedly repeated, underlined, bolded, recalled, and given at least three exclamation marks. While this works for the bawdier humor, exploring the relationships between Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and her sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) or Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and relationships to both his long-lost father (Kurt Russell) and his surrogate father Yondu (Michael Rooker) in repetitive exposition leads to some awkward scenes that drag on far too long. And, because there’s not much to the script other than a focus on these relationships, it’s hard not to be at least a little disappointed in Vol. 2.
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Read More »
Writer/director Oren Moverman‘s film, based on the novel by Herman Koch, is a claustrophobic acting exercise that would seem to be more at home on stage than in a movie theater. The film centers around four unlikable people brought together at a ridiculously posh restaurant discussing, or rather talking around and avoiding discussing, events of recent days concerning a horrible act committed by the two couples’ teenage sons. The more time we spend with the two couples and their sons the less likely we are to care what happens to anyone involved.
Our cast includes Congressman Stan Lohman (Richard Gere) and his second wife Katelyn (Rebecca Hall), the politician’s brother Paul (Steve Coogan), a former teacher suffering from some form of early-onset dementia, and his wife Claire (Laura Linney). Other characters come and go including various wait staff (Michael Chernus, among others), Stan’s ex-wife (Chloë Sevigny), and the politician’s aides (most notably Adepero Oduye), but everyone aside from these four core characters (including the flashbacks to the boys themselves) prove to be superfluous to the plot.
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A Four-Course Meal of Pretentious White PrivilegeRead More »
A Four-Course Meal of Pretentious White Privilege Read More »
