3.5 Razors

Fair Game

  • Title: Fair Game
  • IMDB: link

Although Fair Game has the dubious honor of sharing a title with a truly awful Cindy Crawford/William Baldwin flick, thankfully that’s all the two movies have in common. Based on the true story of Valerie Plame, Fair Game focuses on the consequences of one man standing up for what he believes in, a talented woman who loses her job and reputation by no fault of her own, a government hell-bent on destroying the lives of two respectable citizens simply to change the news cycle, and how easily one piece of information can change everything.

Naomi Watts stars as CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame. After her husband Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) takes an information gathering assignment to discover if Iraq is buying yellow cake uranium from Niger, he’s horrified to learn the truth of his findings have been perverted to help justify the United States going to war with Iraq.

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Glee – The Substitute

  • Title: Glee – The Substitute
  • tv.com: link

She had me at “Conjunction Junction.” Last night’s episode of Glee, appropriately entitled “The Substitute” found Sue (Jane Lynch) temporarily in charge of the school and Will (Matthew Morrison) home sick in bed. Meanwhile, the Glee Club found themselves a new friend in free-spirit Holly Holliday (Gwyneth Paltrow) who earns the club’s trust by catering to their choice of music (as well as offering them everything from free tacos to marijuana).

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Doctor Who – The Complete Fifth Series

  • Title: Doctor Who – The Complete Fifth Series
  • tv.com: link

With the departure of David Tennant in “The End of Time Part 2” a new Doctor (Matt Smith) takes control of the series.

The season starts strong with “Eleventh Hour” which introduces us to the Doctor’s new companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), and ends with a great two-parter (“The Pandorica Opens” and “The Big Bang“) involving the end of the universe, but it does have some ups (“Amy’s Choice,” “Vincent and the Doctor“) and downs (“Victory of the Daleks“) over the course of the season. I also thought the other two-parters from this season (apart from the finale) with the Silurians and the return of the Weeping Angels weren’t as strong as the episodes which introduced the characters.

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Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science

  • Title: Atomic Robo Vol. 5 #1 (of 5)
  • Comic Vine: link
  • Writer: Brian Clevinger
  • Artist: Scott Wegener

Atomic Robo is back! The first issue of Volume 5 finds a very bored Robo stuck helping Nikola Tesla with his latest experiment only to jilted out of his malaise by a car chase and gunfight involving gangsters and a six-shootin’ vigilante.

It may be going too far to say Robo befriends Jack Tarot, Gunfighter, and his daughter Helen (after all the guy does shoot our robotic pal right in the face), but he does leave an impression (mostly by asking a series of only slightly less annoying questions than Nick Frost asked of Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz). As to the mysterious scientist and the secrets of the mysterious skull, we’ll have to wait until the next issue to lean more.

Fans of Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener’s off-beat character should feel right at home. Worth a look.

[Red 5, $3.50]

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Batgirl #15

Okay, if Stephanie Brown’s retelling of Bat-history doesn’t tickle your fancy there’s really no hope for you. Sorry. In-line with other Bat-titles, Batgirl gets back to basics with the return of Oracle, Stephanie’s struggles in college (and lies to her mother), and some zany antics.

Batgirl’s latest case involves the death of a student at the hands of a cult of robed figures, a missing flash drive, a new Gray Ghost, and Batgirl framed for murder.

That last part troubles me a bit as it seems were in for the proverbial “prove my innocence’ storyline all too many characters have to go through. Hopefully this two-issue arc will wrap things up as quickly as it began since there’s really no chance DC’s going to let Batgirl go full-vigilante and drawing it out serves no purpose.

Not as good as some recent issues of Batgirl, but the trademarks that make the character and comic work are still here. Worth a look.

[DC $2.99]

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