Batman #7

/ / Comics

batman-new-52-7-cover"After his hallucinatory drug-induced experience in catacombs of Gotham City, Batman finally makes it back to the Bat Cave and immediately goes to work dissecting the body of Talon for answers into the secrets of the Court of Owls. What he founds, however, only leads to more questions.

On examining the body Batman discovers the man turned into a killing machine is actually Dick Grayson‘s great-grandfather. He also uncovers the fact that Dick was handpicked by the Court of Owls to be one of them but his parent’s death, and his adoption by Bruce Wayne put a crimp in their plans.

There was no real reason to tweak Dick’s to include the Court of Owls (which is further explored in this week’s Nightwing #7), but it’s how Batman informs him (by backhanding him so hard he looses a tooth and nearly conciousness) that I found troubling. Like much of this story arc, the latest issue of Batman is a mixed success with many more Court of Owls stories on the way. Worth a look.

[DC, $2.99]

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Carnage

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Carnage
  • IMDB: link

carnage-blu-rayAdapted by director Roman Polanski and writer Yasmina Reza from Reza’s play God of Carnage, Carnage gives us two couples (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) discussing a recent altercation between their sons when one strikes the other with a stick in the park.

What starts as civil discussion of the events soon leads the couples turn on each other and then their own spouses as all pretense is washed away. Think of it as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf Lite.

The story would probably have worked better for me on stage where the characters are forced to remain on stage in the apartment where the audience can continue to watch the action unfold. The attempts at civility used to keep both couples together don’t work as well on film where we know the camera can follow them out, and there are more than a couple of moments that should bring events to a close.

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In Plain Sight – Four Marshals and a Baby

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: In Plain Sight – Four Marshals and a Baby
  • tv.com: link

in-plain-sight-four-marshals-and-a-baby

Things do get any less complicated for the Albequrque office of WITSEC this week. While Mary (Mary McCormack) struggles without a suitalbe babysitter she must also dealing with a witness (Jennifer Elise Cox) who Delia (Tangie Ambrose) discovers has been hiding an aggressive hoarding habit from the Marshals for years.

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Justice League #7

/ / Comics

justice-league-new-52-7-coverThere’s so much wrong with the latest issue of Justice League it’s hard to know where to begin. First, following the success of the team’s first mission we skip 5 years ahead to present day, but the team still acts like they’ve only been working together for all of five minutes.

The conversion of Hal Jordan into early Booster Gold seems now complete as not only is Green Lantern used mainly for comic relief but he goes so far as to hit on the ex-wife of the biological warfare specialist during the fight with the spores he’s been exposed to.

The art by Gene Ha at least saves us the characters posing and looking in different directions (mainly) but it’s also dirtier and somewhat sloppier than the title’s first six issues. And Geoff Johns dialogue continues to be so mindnumbingly bad it’s getting harder and harder for me to defend him and blame it on DC Editorial. The fact that the story is also told from the perspective of Steve Trevor, a character who no relation to the team so far, seems oddly out of place as well.

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Fairly Legal – Start Me Up

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Fairly Legal – Start Me Up
  • tv.com: link

fairly-legal-start-me-up

Still reeling from the news that Justin (Michael Trucco) cheated on her while they were married and the fact that the boat she was living on recently exploded, Kate (Sarah Shahi) gets a new job mediating a case between a hospital and the FBI who used their influence to bump a dying patient on the donor list in favor of an important witness for a case against the New York Yakuza.

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