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Samurai Jack #2

/ / Comics

Samurai Jack #2Samurai Jack‘s quest to gather the remaining Threads of Time leads him to a small village ruled by a pair of perfectly synchronized warriors known as Dis and Dat whose twin attack is too much for our hero.

After facing defeat, Jack discovers the source of the twins perfect synchranicity: Threads of Time woven into both of their tunics allowing the pair to act as one. Challenging Dis and Dat to a rematch, Samurai Jack severs the link and quickly dispatches the two ruffians and freeing the local people from constant fear.

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Thor: The Dark World

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Thor: The Dark World
  • IMDb: link

Thor: The Dark World

Trading in directors and screenwriters (only one of the six credited here for story and screenplay were involved in the first film), Thor: The Dark World proves to be a solid follow-up to director Kenneth Branagh‘s 2001 origin story for Marvel Studios’ version of Thor. With nearly the entire cast of characters already introduced in the first film director Alan Taylor and his half-dozen writers can take the time to delve a little deeper in the supporting cast and give several characters from the previous film stand-out moments in the sequel.

I keep mention the number of writers on Thor: The Dark World because the script itself does feel like an odd mix of concepts and mashed-up designs that don’t always quite work. There is plenty to question in both film’s villain (Christopher Eccleston), an odd amalgam of Star Trek and Lord of the Rings, which to be fair so is much of Thor’s lore which jumbles sci-fi and fantasy with relish, and His quest to destroy all of creation with magic floaty water (that is shown mostly as smoke because apparently the CGI folks couldn’t decides what the “Aether” should actually be).

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Samurai Jack #1

/ / Comics

Samurai Jack #1IDW’s new Samurai Jack comic continues the hero’s quest to find a way to return to the past to his own time, defeat Aku, and erase the future in which he still finds himself trapped. The comic’s opening arc introduces the idea of the Rope of Eons which Aku shredded after using it to learn to control time.

Learning that the various Threads of Time can be rewoven to return the samurai home, Jack follows the directions of a less than trustworthy source who neglects to inform the samurai to win the first thread he will have to defeat an array of champions in the bottom of a gladiatorial pit.

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Escape Plan

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Escape Plan
  • IMDB: link

Escape PlanSylvester Stallone thrown into prison at the whims of a madman is hardly a new story (the plots of both Tango & Cash and Lock-Up include these themes). In Escape Plan, Stallone stars as expert prison escape artist Joe Bresslin who has been working for the last several years to find holes in various prison systems, 14 of which he’s successfully escaped.

After a brief introduction involving Breslin’s escape from his latest job, he and his associates (Amy Ryan, 50 Cent, Vincent D’Onofrio) are approached by a CIA agent (Caitriona Balfe) offering $5,000,000 to Breslin to test out the government’s top secret, and privately run, new rendition facility for those criminals too dangerous to house on U.S. soil once Guantanamo Bay is closed down for good.

Breslin accepts the job, despite the fact that his location will be kept completely secret from his team, meaning he will be going in blind without back-up (breaking all of his usual rules). Of course, it doesn’t take long before things go wrong.

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Kick-Ass 2

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Kick-Ass 2
  • IMDB: link

Kick-Ass 2The work of comic writer Mark Millar (Wanted, Kick-Ass) is an acquired taste. Although he writes super-hero comics, complete with brightly-colored masks and spandex, his gritty nihilistic visions often don’t paint a very rosy picture of the world which he seems to believe are predominantly filled with irrevocably fucked-up human beings.

Realizing this, the original Kick-Ass movie made some big changes to the source material. The choice to undercut some of the more gruesome elements with humor worked in its favor (as it does with the sequel). However, the sequel is also stuck with a couple of large plot changes that have to be addressed in Kick-Ass 2.

The first movie saw Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) get the girl (something not even considered a remote possibility in the original work). The problem of what to do with Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca) is easily handled as the movie quickly, much to my disappointment, writes Fonseca’s character out of the movie never to be heard from, or spoken of, again.

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