Science Fiction

Rick and Morty – The CuRicksous Case of Bethjamin Button

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Rick and Morty – The CuRicksous Case of Bethjamin Button
  • wiki: link

As Rick (Ian Cardoni) takes Morty (Harry Belden), Summer (Spencer Grammer), and Jerry (Chris Parnell) to an alien theme park based on Earth which if far less bizarre and crazy than he claimed, the episode’s B-story features Beth (Sarah Chalke) and Space Beth de-aging themselves back to kids in an attempt to rediscover the joy that both have lost. The main story is a thin excuse for the show to get as crazy as possible when the park beneath the park is revealed. It’s the Beth storyline of the pair working out their ennui and pained frustrations to both their lives and their father that has a bit more meat on the bone. It also provides a couple of interesting nuggets in revealing how batshit-crazy-awful Beth was as a kid and the lengths Rick takes to try and control their neighbor Gene‘s (Tom Kenny) response to the number of bizarre and crazy things he’s seen over the years.

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Foundation – When a Book Finds You / The Stress of Her Regard

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Foundation – When a Book Finds You / The Stress of Her Regard
  • IMDb: link | link

As the Mule‘s (Pilou Asbæk) influence on Kalgan continues to grow, something which Han Pritcher (Brandon P Bell) gets a glimpse of for himself, “When a Book Finds You” and “The Stress of Her Regard” develop the partnership between Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton). Flashbacks explore how their conversations began while the current crisis forces Dawn into a difficult decision heading into a cliffhanger with not one but two Cleons abandoning their posts as Demerzel‘s (Laura Birn) actions to end his his problematic romance to a woman who worships robots which in turn forces Brother Day (Lee Pace) to leave the palace as well. As one heads to the stars to a future he can’t fathom, the other dives deep into the planet in search of  something lost.

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Fantastic Four: First Steps
  • IMDb: link

The fifth time’s the charm? With the exception of The Incredibles, Hollywood has had a pretty bad record adapting a good Fantastic Four to film. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is easily the best attempt (even if the bar is ridiculously low). The first thing director Matt Shakman, writers Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, and Jeff Kaplan, and producer Kevin Feige get right is capturing the proper setting for a film as we open a world set in the kind of 60s futurism that spawned the original comic book. From its opening moments to its closing credits we believe this is a world where the Fantastic Four could thrive, where a robot like H.E.R.B.I.E. would help babyproof the Baxter Building, where you could see the Fantasticar pass by, and where the fate of the world would rely on a family coming together to save the day. A strong argument could be made that the look of the film is its unsung hero.

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The Fantastic Four

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Fantastic Four (1994)
  • IMDb: link

After holding onto the movie rights for nearly a decade, and with the clock ticking down, German producer Bernd Eichinger reached to Roger Corman to produce a super-hero film on the cheap for only $1,000,000. With only a month of shooting, but several months of post-production, the film seemed to be ready for Labor Day 1993, until it wasn’t. Parties disagree whether the film was ever meant to see the light of day, or simply as leverage to keep the rights in Eichinger’s hands, but either way the film was pulled and never release theatrically. And so the stories began about The Fantastic Four movie that never was. And yet, speaking before Fantastic Four: The First Steps hits theaters, one could make a case that it’s better, or at least certainly not worse, than any of the FF films that did get released over the next 30 years.

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Foundation – Shadows in the Math

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Foundation – Shadows in the Math
  • IMDb: link

“Shadows in the Math” opens with a narrated montage filling in some of the history of the Second Foundation by showcasing Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) and Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) awoken from cryosleep for a few weeks at a time teaching Psychohistory to the generations of the hidden Foundation, working to help the Foundation grow and weaken the Empire, and preparing them to fight the Mule (making another huge divergence to the original source material where Seldon’s original calculations didn’t account for unpredictable mutations like the Mule pulling the ebb of history so far off his predicted path). Eventually, Seldon chooses to stay awake at longer intervals to keep things on track prior to his death before the show bounces back to the “present” and the time of the Mule (Pilou Asbæk).

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