1 Razor

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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Justice League #7 Read More »

I Melt with You

/ / Home Video
  • Title: I Melt with You
  • IMDB: link

i-melt-with-you-blu-rayI Melt with You is a mess. The film gathers four 40 year-old friends (Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven, Rob Lowe, Christian McKay) together for a wild alcohol and drug-fueled reunion. Most of the film’s first hour is little more than stars acting crazy, drinking and snorting everything in sight, and trying to hide how bad each of their lives has gotten from their old friends.

As unstructured and pointless the first 50-minutes are, the rest of the movie is worse. The film takes a dark, and bizarre, turn when one of the friends commits suicide the others gather together to hold to a pact they made when they were kids. They hide the body from a curious local cop (Carla Gugino) who has begun to snoop around due to reports of their wild partying, and agree to carry out the plans their dead friend put into motion.

It’s impossible to care for the self-deluded bunch of assholes that are assembled here. The script does its best to strip anything likable from each of the actors in every frame of film.

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I Melt with You Read More »

Voltron #1

/ / Comics

voltron-1-coverSave me from re-imagined versions of classic characters. I don’t know what exactly I was hoping from Dynamite Entertainment’s new Voltron, but I guess having it make sense, have at least an once of joy, and not screw up the franchise was simply too much to ask.

In the original cartoon five pilots each fly a giant robot lion. The cartoon is set in undetermined future around the planet Arus which must be defended by evil King Zarkon (from planet Doom). When in dire straits the five lions could be joined to form the universe’s greatest weapon – Voltron.

The new version turns the plucky team into commandos (lacking any of the goofy humor from the cartoon), places them on Earth, in the year 2124, makes Zarkov an Earth scientist who may (or may not) have been involved in the creation of Voltron, and allows Voltron to fight the giant monster of the week without any of the team members actually being inside the robot.

Although Voltron looks pretty cool, the rest of the art by Ariel Padilla is mostly forgettable. The entire project comes off like bad fan fiction with way too much money behind it. Pass.

[Dynamite Entertainment, $3.99]

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DC Retroactive: Green Lantern – The 70’s

/ / Comics

green-lantern-70s-retroactive-coverGiven the fact that I’ve been less than impressed so far with DC’s Retroactive titles maybe I should have been prepared, but this is a 1970’s Green Lantern story told by Dennis O’Neil (although drawn by Mike Grell instead of Neal Adams). After the overall meh-ness of the Batman title (don’t even get me started on the crappy Flash one) my expectations were set pretty damn low for this one. Turns out, I was still expecting too much.

We get two separate stories here. The first has Hal Jordan discovering a relative of Abin Sur in a crashed spaceship in the middle of a war zone. The second involves a kid traumatized by seeing Green Arrow kill which has inexplicably morphed him into a world class archer and killer. Both stories go nowhere and are hastily wrapped up in a single page.

If disappointment has a face it very may well be the cover of this issue, or the entire DC Retroactive experiment. Other than the proposed Justice League International issue I’m done with spending $5 a pop on these poorly executed tales that actually make me like the source material a little less. Pass.

[DC, $4.99]

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Transformers 3 brought to you by Michael Bay and Lenovo

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Transformers: Dark of the Moon
  • IMDB: link

transformers-dark-of-the-moon-posterIt’s official, Michael Bay can now be legitimately named the serial rapist of my childhood. Three Transformers movies and the man still doesn’t know what the hell a robot is (let alone a Transformer). Short version: Despite showing a momentary early glimmer of promise of not totally sucking, the film wastes what little it had going for it by making a series of mistakes and beating you down with a level of stupidity it’s hard to believe was done on purpose. For the first, but certainly not the last, time in this review, let me just say: Fuck you Michael Bay.

What works? The special effects are well done. The 3D isn’t Avatar level but is still impressive. Everything else? Hold on to your seats boys and girls this is going to get messy. Spoilers be damned, I’ve got a hellova lot to talk about. You’ve been warned!

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Transformers 3 brought to you by Michael Bay and Lenovo Read More »