2.5 Razors

Shadowhunters – Beside Still Water

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Shadowhunters – Beside Still Water
  • wiki: link

Shadowhunters - Beside Still Water television review

Shadowhunters closes its Third Season by wrapping up the Valentine (Alan Van Sprang) storyline, laying the foundation for multiple conflicts next season, reigniting old passions, and (temporarily) killing a major character. Armed with the Mortal Cup and the Mortal Sword, Valentine travels to Lake Lynn to complete his master plan. The villain is successful in raising the angel Raziel, but he won’t live long enough to see his dream of a world without Downworlders come to fruition when he’s cut down by his daughter (rather easily concerning how easily he was throwing her around like a rag doll only minutes before) who uses the one wish granted by the angel to restore Jace (Dominic Sherwood) to life.

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The Shadow #1

/ / Comics

The Shadow #1 comic reviewWriters Simon Spurrier and Dan Watters are not the first who have attempted to update The Shadow and bring the vigilante into a more modern storyline. It’s a problematic decision as the world of the Shadow, including the age in which he was born and prospered, is very much tied to the core of the character. The first issue gives us stories of the Shadow, a legend half-forgotten. Our narrator is not either Lamont Cranston nor Margo Lane. The later doesn’t appear in the issue (which, aside from flashbacks, may be true of the former as well).

Instead The Shadow #1 is told from the perspective of a nurse relating the legend of the vigilante to a burn patient who she believes to be the vigilante who once saved her life. Could this broken man truly be the Shadow? While that’s a question the series will have to decide on, for this first issue the answer doesn’t really mater. All that does is that nurse Mary Jerez believes the unnamed patient to be the Shadow.

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Hooten & the Lady – Ethiopia

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Hooten & the Lady – Ethiopia
  • IMDb: link

Hooten & the Lady - Ethiopia TV review

After Ella (Jessica Hynes) is kidnapped and help for ransom, Lady Alex Lindo-Parker (Ophelia Lovibond) borrows an artifact from the British Museum and heads to Ethiopia. Tagging along, albeit disappointed in the lack of treasure, is Ulysses Hooten (Michael Landes). Playing on established themes, the episode features a dangerous woman (Katja Hopkins), villains in search of treasure, bickering by our two intrepid adventurers, and artifacts and clues meant to lead to some long-lost archaeological find – this time belonging to the Queen of Sheba.

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Guilty Pleasure – Teen Wolf

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Teen Wolf
  • IMDb: link

Teen Wolf Blu-ray reviewAlthough it’s hard by any objective standard to classify 1985’s Teen Wolf as a “good movie,” the star vehicle for a young Michael J. Fox written by Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman is undeniably entertaining.

The story centers around average high school student Scott Howard (Fox) who discovers he’s a werewolf. Rather than hiding this fact, which gives him speed, agility, and power for the first time, Scott brings out the wolf on the basketball court making the sorry team instantly better, and turning himself into a celebrity – something his best friend Stiles (Jerry Levine) is only too happy to exploit for profit.

If you remove the werewolf, Teen Wolf is a pretty generic high school film. We get a good kid, the hot girl he lusts for (Lorie Griffin), her evil boyfriend (Mark Arnold), and the girl (Susan Ursitti) who likes him. Between scenes of the werewolf surfing on top of a van and playing basketball, there’s also Scott learning a life lesson about accepting himself for who he is.

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The Circle

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Circle
  • IMDb: link

The Circle Blu-ray reviewThere’s an interesting premise to this adaptation of the Dave Eggers novel about a woman forced to redefine concepts like privacy and community after being hired by one of the world’s largest technology companies. The Circle (think Apple meets Facebook, but more cult-ish) provides Mae (Emma Watson) with all she’s every wanted, including healthcare for her ailing father (Bill Paxton). However, the level of intrusiveness the company not only engages in but celebrates opens the door to some big questions (which, unfortunately, the film doesn’t really do much to explore).

It would have been very easy for The Circle to be a thriller about the invasion of technology and destruction of privacy, an evil corporation out to do bad things with data, and a world seeming unaware at what they are giving up. The film, however, has bigger aspirations than that, bringing some intriguing questions to the forefront while constantly fighting off the tendency to fall into easy cliche.

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