The Parking Lot Escalation

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The Big Bang Theory – The Parking Lot Escalation
  • tv.com: link

“Don’t try to change the subject. This is about a parking space, it has nothing to do with cars.”

Despite the fact that he doesn’t own a car, has never properly learned to drive, and has never used his university parking spot, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) becomes incensed when the university reassigns it to Howard (Simon Helberg) without his knowledge. The fight escalates quickly bleeding over into Amy (Mayim Bialik) and Bernadette’s (Melissa Rauch) girl’s night out with Penny (Kaley Cuoco).

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The Shadow #8

/ / Comics

the-shadow-8-coverWith his business in Nepal complete, Lamont Cranston slowly makes his way home with his pilot Miles through Istanbul and Rome bringing him to the streets of Paris where the interest of The Shadow is piqued by the murder of an elderly French couple, the Spanish Civil War, and the beguiling Major Esmeralda Aguilar of Spanish Military Intelligence.

After an exciting night with the major, Cranston returns to his investigation leading him to stow away on a cargo ship full of gun runners making its way from France to Spain. When the gun runners are ambushed while unloaded their cargo The Shadow makes it out of the port by the skin of his teeth, eventually rejoining Miles in Barcelona where fate leads him to the real reason behind his arrival – George Orwell.

Writer Victor Gischler does a good job setting up several pieces of a larger mystery without giving us, or The Shadow, a clue as to the true purpose of his journey to Spain. I’m not as fond of Aaron Campbell’s art as Herbert‘s work from last month’s issue but it’s not enough to stop me from coming back to see how this story plays out. Worth a look.

[Dynamite Entertainment, $3.99]

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Anna Karenina

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Anna Karenina
  • IMDb: link

“Sin has a price, you can be sure of that.”

anna-karenina-posterAttempting another historical adaptation of classic literature, while re-teaming with leading lady Keira Knightley (with whom he collaborated on both Pride & Prejudice and Atonement), director Joe Wright delivers the unexpected with an evocative and dazzling adaptation of Leo Tolstoy‘s legendary novel Anna Karenina.

Limited by budgetary considerations and an unwillingness to repurpose locations other adaptations of Tolstoy’s work, or those used by various recent historical dramas, Wright hit upon an extraordinary idea to breathe new life in the staid genre by staging a setting that transforms around its characters. The result is a game changer in how movies like Anna Karenina are told and a serious contender for the best film of 2012.

Set in Russia during the late 19th Century our story concerns rich socialite Anna Karenina (Knightley), her marriage to an honorable but bland government official (Jude Law), and her temptation and eventual affair with the far more dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).

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Here’s a little rant about Jack & Diane

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Jack & Diane
  • IMDB: link

jack-and-diane-posterJack & Diane, sadly unrelated to John Mellencamp’s 1982 hit, is a regrettable piece of filmmaking. It’s regrettable that writer/director Bradley Rust Gray wasted four years trying to get the film made. It’s regrettable that young actresses Juno Temple and Riley Keough are wasted in thankless roles. And it’s regrettable for anyone who has to sit through what is arguably the worst film released in theaters this year.

The story centers around teenagers Diane (Temple) and Jack (Keough) who meet and share a rather tepid and unremarkable romance over the course of a summer. Gray intersperses the emotional and sexual aspects of their relationship with horror imagery meant to underlie the animalistic nature of their attraction (which we see little evidence of on-screen).

Gray’s metaphor is ill-defined and sophomoric at best. The only positive to the various scenes involving monsters, growing hair, and various pulsating internal organs is a welcome relief from the relative boredom of the rest of the movie.

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Arrow – Muse of Fire

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Green Arrow – Muse of Fire
  • tv.com: link

“Isn’t the man in the hood fighting to set things right? Why is your vendetta more valid that mine?”

arrow-muse-of-fire

Starling City gets a little crowded on the vigilante front when an armed assassin on a motorcycle kills a business man (John Cassini) in broad daylight while he was talking with Moira Queen (Susanna Thompson). Not-so-surprisingly the death of the businessman with mob connections to the Bertinelli crime family coincides with Oliver‘s (Stephen Amell) attraction to a young woman named Helena (Jessica De Gouw) harboring her own painful past and dark secret. That’s right boys and girls, it appears the Huntress has come to Starling City.

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