Wow. These two episodes were fire. I have to say, they felt more like a series finale than just a season finale. Most of the main storylines were wrapped up ion the eighth episode.
E7: “Review”
E8: “Braciole”
Episode seven was amazing, but I swear it was over like a snap. I paused writing this to look up the run time for the episode and it was only 20 minutes. So much was packed into that 20 minutes though that it really had a frantic pace, which really emphasized the breakdown that the characters were having in the show. It was set in real time and that added to the nature of the chaos happening in the restaurant.
The end was as anxiety-filled as the entire episode as I couldn’t believe that it was over. I had just mentioned how the crew had been starting to really blend as a team heading into this episode, but that went straight out the window.
“Review” was an outstanding episode and, probably, the best episode of the series so far.
Then, episode eight had some amazing work too. First, we kicked off with one of the best monologues you are going to see on TV from Jeremy Allan White. His seven minute monologue was so powerful and filled with amazing character admissions that had been building all season.
White had another astounding moment when he accidentally set the stove on fire and he was suddenly lost inside his head. You could almost hear his thoughts thinking that this would end the problems of the restaurant.
Richie had wound up in jail waiting to see if he would be charged with manslaughter because he had punched a guy who was tearing up the restaurant and the guy had hit his head. Thankfully, the guy awoke and Richie was not facing a manslaughter charge. You could see how this affected Richie and he made some realizations of his own.
Then Richie gave Carmy the letter he had found a few episodes ago from Michael. Another dramatic moment from White as he finally opened the letter.
It read “I love you dude. Let it rip.” and then on the back was a recipe for the family spaghetti and that which indicates that they should use smaller cans of tomatoes for their taste.
Another thing I had speculated on earlier in these posts was what Michael was doing with all the money that he had been borrowing or taking in. We discovered that answer here as when Carmy had opened up the tomato cans, he found bags of money in it.
Closing down The Beef and announcing the soon-to-be opened The Bear was very satisfying as a closing scene. Episode seven and eight really work well together and highlights the best parts of this series.
Season two is next up, featuring 10 episodes instead of the 8 like season one received.
Fifty posts in the EYG Comic Cavalcade! Of course, when I reached fifty posts in the Comic Catch-Up, I rebooted into this current format. I am not going to do that this time. We will continue to push forward with the EYG Comic Cavalcade moving ahead.
It is a good time to reflect on what I have done over the last year or so. I have gotten through a ton of the piles sitting around my house. The books are being bagged, boarded and boxed. I am in the process of reorganizing everything, which is a massive chore.
The comics I read on a weekly basis are really some of the best I have read in my years of collecting comics. I still consider myself a mostly Marvel guy, but the increase in my independent collection cannot be ignored. I would guess that Something is Killing the Children was the initial emphasis of this new push, though one can not deny that Jeff Lemire’s Gideon Falls had a lot to do with it too.
Some of my favorite Marvel books over the last few years are more than just Spider-Man books. It was unexpected, but I loved Hellcat, a few of the variations of Jessica Jones, and Loki. It always seemed that when I really started to enjoy a book, it would end. Now, with the limited series being the norm, it is easier to deal with.
I am still not into DC much, but I will admit that I am enjoying the Knight Terrors event. This week there were only five issues as things are starting to wrap up. My order of favorites this week would be Knight Terrors: Nightwing, Knight Terrors: Superman, Knight Terrors: Wonder Woman, Knight Terrors: Catwoman, and then Knight Terrors: Punchline. Punchline has been one that I have had a hard time getting involved with since I did not know the character prior to the event.
Other books that I completed this week:
Void Rivals #1. Written by Robert Kirkman and featuring art by Lorenzo De Felici. Ryan Barry and Mike Spicer did the cover art. What an unexpected pleasure this was. I had no idea that this book was tied into the Transformers at Image thing that is happening. Yes, the cover looked like a Transformer, but I did not make the connection. This would not be the first character that looked like a Transformer. Not only was this a Transformer, but it was Jetfire. Jetfire was my favorite Transformer character on the 80s cartoon (he was called Skyfire on the show), but his appearance here caught me completely off guard. I was interested by the two characters the book introduced at first, but when Jetfire showed up, the book truly started to pop. Void Rivals made me interested in checking out Transformers #1 from Image, something that I had not been before.
What If…? Dark: Moon Knight #1. Written by Erica Schulz and drawn by Edgar Salazar. The new Dark What If series of books have been interesting and this new issue deals with Moon Knight… at least a little bit of Moon Knight as he does not last long in the story. The whole ending with Marlene becoming a luminary of Ra and being taken over by Ra was weird, but fit well in the nature of the What If series.
Loki #3. “The Liar: Chapter Three.” Written by Dan Watters and drawn by German Peralta. Dustin Nguyen was the cover artist. Remember when I mentioned that the limited series allow me to know a story isn’t going to last. This one caught me unexpected when the final page said it would be concluded next issue. Four issues was not what I thought. I did enjoy the reunion with Loki, Wiccan and Hulkling.
Something Epic #4. Written and illustrated by Szymon Kudranski. The latest issue of the book that does more to celebrate creativity and the imagination of comic books than just about any book out there came out this week once again. It is working on creating the mythology of this universe with the existence of ‘epics’ and has placed Dan into almost a video game like situation. Something Epic is continuing to be the most original book I read.
X-Men: Days of Future Past-Doomsday #2. The prequel to the major X-Men story from the 1980s continues here as we get several of the mutants dying and Colossus and Kitty Pryde taking the chance to express their love for one another. The series is dark, but I did appreciate how it took a moment to find the joy inside the grief.
Star Signs #4. Written by Saladin Ahmed and art by Megan Levens. The people with their star sign powers continue to join together, finding where they belong. It was a close call for the group to escape Mister Duke, and things look to be getting worse as we meet Libra.
Ghost Rider #17. “Part 2: Demonology” The team up between Ghost Rider and Wolverine is in full swing as they search for the young boy Bram. We get a flashback to where Logan and Ghost Rider meet for the first time too. The next part of the story takes place in the issues of Wolverine, which I do not get so I am not sure where this will go for me.
Marvel Voices: X-Men #1. This is a compilation of a series of shorts featuring the X-Men characters. I have to say I do not usually read these Voices books too closely, but I did enjoy this one and read it through. Bernard Chang & Marcelo Costa did the cover art.
Iron Man Annual #1. “Contest of Chaos: Part Two.” Written by Jason Loo and drawn by David Cutler. I had a variant cover drawn by Felipe Massatera. As we saw in the Spider-Man annual earlier this month, two heroes wind up fighting with each other and the winner winds up being taken. In this annual, we get Iron Man vs. Storm. There were some snipping going on through the book and it was a pretty solid fight between an X-Man and an Avenger. We also see a final few pages with Spidey and Jessica Jones heading to see Clea to look for answers.
Dark X-Men #1. “There is a Kingdom.” Written by Steve Foxe and featuring art by Jonas Scharf. Madelyne Pryor, the ruler of Limbo, returns to the forefront as she is helping some mutants escape the persecution of Orchis. She is also involved with Alex Summers, aka Havok. A bunch of interesting X-Men characters are in this book and it was a fun read.
Money Shot Comes Again #3. Written by Tim Seeley and drawn by Gisele Lagace. I have to say, this book is weird. I feel a little dirty reading it.
Here is to fifty more posts in the EYG Comic Cavalcade!
The latest DC movie dropped this weekend as the superhero known as Blue Beetle made his big screen debut. I do like Jaime Reyes, the most recent version of the character of the Blue Beetle in the DC Comics.
I also liked the new Blue Beetle movie, though I did not love it. It was extremely watchable and worth the time.
This is basically the origin of Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) and how he came about having the Scarab, a powerful alien artifact that gives Jaime a dangerous weapon and armor. Kord Industries head Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) wanted to possess the Scarab as well and she had a plan to use it to create weapons for sale.
Xolo Maridueña was wonderfully cast as Jaime. Maridueña, one of the main stars of Netflix’s series Cobra Kai, has a charismatic presence and carries himself as a star. Some of the over-the-top acting in the third act was not the best from Maridueña, but it did not pull me away from the film.
Jaime’s family was a huge piece of the film, and brought some of the most emotional aspects of the story. Uncle Rudy was played by George Lopez. Rudy was distrustful of the government and was experimenting in his brother’s home. Alberto and Rocio (Damien Alcazar and Elpidia Carrillo), Jaime’s parents, his sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), and his grandmother Nana (Adriana Barraza) all lived together.
The idea behind this family is very much Latino and I did not relate as much to them as I might have. Some of the cheesiest aspects of the movie were centered around the family especially including some of the unexpected skills shown by Uncle Rudy and Nana. The movie required the audience to really extend the suspension of disbelief. It is something that you really have to get past in order to enjoy the movie. I was really not a fan of the character of Milagro at first, but I came around to her as the film went on. The family grew on me as the film went on and I was able to get past the strangeness.
The special effects are pretty good and the action was really fun. There were some times when I had a difficult time hearing what Jaime was saying, but that was the only drawback to these scenes.
I mentioned earlier about some emotional scenes and there were some very powerful ones and these very some of the best scenes of the movie. No spoilers to the content of these scnes, but you’ll know them when they come around.
The humor of the film was hit and miss. Again, as with several of the other criticisms I have levied with this movie, the humor was not something that stuck out as a major flaw. The criticisms I have of Blue Beetle were all just things that did not bother me that much.
Blue Beetle was a decent film that introduces us to a new super hero that is charming and fun to watch. It may not be the best comic book film ever, but it is an enjoyable one.
Typically, movies that focus on pee, poop, puke and penis jokes are not my favorites. However, when a film has those jokes and it is funny, I can excuse that style of jokes.
Strays is not an example of that. I found little funny about this movie.
Cruel owner Doug (Will Forte) hated the little dog Reggie (Will Farrell) that he got to impress a girl. When the girl was gone, he would try to dump the dog in different locations, but Reggie always found his way back home. When Doug took him to the city and deserted him, Reggie met other stray dogs, Bug (Jamie Foxx), Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park) who befriend Reggie.
There were a couple of potentially funny moments in the film, but all the one that were potentially funny were shown in the trailers. The rest of the film may have had a couple of chuckles, but nothing that were worthy of laughs.
I will also say that the voice acting was spot on for these characters, which one would expect from the talented crew doing this work. I also thought the relationships between the four strays were solid and developed well, providing some good moments of heart to he story.
It was just too crude in many instances and the crude humor was just not funny. Because of that, it felt to be too dull of a story and the unfunny bits were more corny and disappointing than anything else.
It was a short run time, yet I felt like I was ready for it to be done early on. There were some good character moments, but nothing that held any real depth to it. when the crude jokes did not hit, which was most of the time, the film had little else to fall back on.
It has been awhile since I attended a RiffTrax Live show, and tonight, I was able to go to the latest film being riffed by the three gentlemen. That film is the 1986 BMX bike film, Rad.
RiffTrax includes Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett who watch the movie with an audience (this time with the actual star of the film, Bill Allen, who played Cru, was in attendance in the audience-no pressure guys) and the three comedians take turns cracking jokes about the film.
The last couple of RiffTrax events were okay, but did not reach the level of some of the classics such as Manos: The Hands of Fate, Birdemic: Shock and Terror or The Room.
Rad, however, was very funny and I found this one to be well worth the time. To be clear, the RiffTrax Live show is never bad. Just some are funnier than others. Rad presented the guys with a plethora of humor.
Plus, Rad had some “big” names in the cast including Rocky’s Talia Shore (which had one of the best riff line of the film: as she looked down on screen, ‘I was in the Godfather.’), Olympic medalist Bart Conner, and Lori Laughlin (who received a ton of riffs with the scandal about paying to get her kids into college).
I will admit that some of their jokes tend toward being out of date, but since their jokes feature allusions that fall right in to my generation, I catch more than I miss.
Fathom Events presented this night once again from a theater in Tennessee. I have always wondered if the show was truly live, but it seems as if everywhere I looked indicated that it was live and streamed across the nation.
They warmed up the audience with two short films, both featuring Gumby and Pokey animated films. Neither of the Gumby shorts were great, but it served its purpose.
I look forward to the next time they get together to riff a film.
Things have changed. Yes, the summer is over for me. I went back to start school today at the middle school where I teach. No students yet. We have a week of prep, meetings and organizing to get ready. Because I was back at work, that meant I did not get the chance to go to Comic World and hang out and read a bunch of books today.
I went after school was over, but I was not able to do any reading at the store. When I got home tonight, I did some reading here, but it means that this post is not going to be as long as it has been after NEW COMIC BOOK DAY!
With the schedule busy lately, I will be working on finishing up the rest of the pile of new comics during the weekend. I wanted to get to this EYG Comic Cavalcade tonight anyway.
Starting off, I want to talk about Messenger. This is a graphic novel that I received in the mail from Amazon on Monday of this week. It deals with the life of Muhammad Ali. Written by Marc Bernardin and drawn by Ron Salas, Messenger: The Legend of Muhammad Ali is an interesting book. It is a beautiful black-and-white book that is a fairly quick read.
Marc Bernardin is a personal favorite of mine. He does a podcast with Keven Smith called Fatman Beyond and being able to match the personality of Kevin Smith is a tall order. Marc Bernardin is one of the few who can accomplish it. I wanted to order this book when I heard him promote it on an episode of Fatman Beyond. He said on the podcast, as well as in the forward of the book, that some of what appears in the book was true, but a lot of it is made up, or mushed together. It is told more for the legend of Ali than the entire truth. It’s more of creating a feel of who/what Muhammad Ali was than being tied to a narrative of what actually happened. It picked out some of the biggest moments of Ali’s life and gave us an idea of how it affected The Greatest. If you are an Ali fan, you love this. I have only a passing knowledge of the champ and this was a fun read. Check it out.
Other books I have started off with this week…
Uncanny Avengers #1. “Truth & Justice.” Written by Gerry Duggan and art by Javier Garrón. Captain America has taken a step to try and help out mutantkind once again by re-creating the Unity Squad including Psylocke, Deadpool, Quicksilver, Penance, and Rogue in an attempt to bring the rogue Captain Krakoa to justice.
Antarctica #2. Written by Simon Birks and featuring art from Willi Roberts. Hannah comes face to face with someone who is an exact duplicate of herself. Is she from a different dimension? Not sure, but there are some really weird things going on in the Antarctic.
Groo: In the Wild #2. Written by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier and illustrated by Sergio Aragonés. Groo is still hungry and in search of the meat of the ortix. Sadly, it is extinct, but Groo does not understand that. And his very presence is causing all kind of trouble for King Putrio.
Daredevil #14. “The Red Fist Saga: Conclusion.” Written by Chip Zdarsky and art by Marco Checchetto. Chip Zdarsky’s run on Daredevil comes to a close with this issue. Foggy, North and Elektra have been going on with their lives for the past six months, mourning the death of Matt Murdock. They see him everywhere. When Elektra wound up at a church, she found a certain blind priest there that will be setting up the next arc of the character of Daredevil. Chip Zdarsky has been one of the greatest Daredevil writers of all time and he will be missed on this series.
Spider-Man #11. “Marvel Tales” Written by Dan Slott and art by Luciano Vecchio. Mark Bagley & Edgar Delgado did the art for the cover. Spider-Boy tries to convince Peter that he is Peter’s sidekick. He tries to convince him by telling him about several stories that Spider-Boy claim have already happened, but that Peter has forgotten. It is a strange idea, but it really works well. I have enjoyed the character of Spider-Boy so far.
Something is Killing the Children #32. “Showdown at the Easy Creek Corral, Part Two.” Written by James Tynion IV and drawn by Werther Dell’edera. Erica and Cecilia come face to face and share their mutual dislike for one another. However, there is someone they both hate even more, and that showdown is coming soon.
Alpha Flight #1. “Divided We Stand- Part One“. The Canadian super hero team has returned to dive directly into the whole Orchis-Mutant conflict engulfing the Marvel universe at the moment. One team of Alpha Flight members team up in order to try and capture Northstar and Aurora, as well as capturing any mutants still here. Or is there more to the story?
I watched the next two episodes of The Bear from season one tonight on Hulu. This show has been cooking (ooh, bad pun, I know).
Episode 5: “Sheridan”
Episode 6: “Ceres”
I would say that I really enjoyed episode five a lot. This was the first time where I found that the whole group of characters started working as a team without any troublemakers (except Richie, of course). This episode saw just about anything that could go wrong, go wrong from the toilet exploding to loss of electricity and gas lines. Yet the staff pulled it together to still serve the food.
They do a great job of letting us know the stakes involved in the show. You believe that there is no way that they can survive shutting down their restaurant because they just can not afford to lose the money they would have made. I really enjoyed seeing how they were working together to overcome this series of events that were potentially overwhelming.
Sydney brought the fire in both this episode and episode 6. In six, she is able to calm down a possible gang fight outside of the restaurant by arranging to give them some leftover sandwiches. While she was taking care of business, Richie was running around the restaurant looking for his gun.
Richie is showing his own weaknesses in each episode, even though in five he comes through in a sense. When Carmy discovers that Richie has been selling cocaine out the alley behind the restaurant, he is extremely mad, but he needs Richie to sell some one more time to pay for a repair that they had to fix. After this, though, it does feel as if everyone in the restaurant is feeling their place except for Richie.
In episode six, we get a flashback where we see Michael for the first time, played by Jon Bernthal, telling a story to Carmy, Richie and Sugar. Bernthal is an outstanding actor and seeing him as the mysterious older brother makes me very anxious to see what events or emotional situations led to Michael’s suicide. Richie does imply that Michael was the person who told him to sell the cocaine in the first place, as a way of gaining money for the restaurant. This makes me wonder considering how much money Michael had borrowed from Oliver Platt’s character, what was happening with the money.
There are only two more episodes from season one and I expect them to be fire.
The third episode of the third season of Only Murders in the Building dropped last night on Hulu.
I have to say, so far this season is a little slower than previous seasons. The episode focused more on Oliver’s attempt to transform his Broadway play from Death Rattles to a musical called Death Rattle Dazzles. Sure the killer is suspected to be among the cast, but there was not enough detail on the case and too much on the play itself, for my tastes.
Not to say that this was a bad episode. Not at all. In fact, I did enjoy much of what they presented us, thanks mainly to the talents of Steve Martin and Martin Short. There was a lovely song sung by Meryl Streep too. Mabel was able to do some actual investigating making some progress with the documentarian, Tobert.
I just hope that they do not make Meryl Streep the killer in this season. It just seems too played out to have a woman who is involved with one of our two leads be the culprit again.
The show is starting off by hinting toward Kimber (Ashley Park) as the first suspect. She had been emotional about the death and she had lost her hankie that Ben had given to everyone. We know that Ben wound up with a hankie in his hand after falling to his death and that it was not his own, because the stalker had the hankie that belonged to Ben.
Kimber seems to clearly be the red herring at first. I’m more interested in the brother at the moment.
There are ten total episodes of the series this year so we a just about a third of the way through.
I was looking for something to watch this afternoon and I came across a TV series that I have heard all kinds of positive things about. It was on Hulu and it is called The Bear.
I know The Bear is one of the top comedy-dramas on television right now, with a Hulu/FX release and that they have produced two seasons. I also knew that the show was based around food. I thought this was a good show to watch.
It will not be a daily watch like I did for The Twilight Zone this summer. School is starting very soon (this week for teachers) so I cannot commit to the daily view. Still, there were only 8 episodes of season one and ten episodes of season two, so it did not feel too overwhelming.
I watched the first four episodes of season one today. They included:
S1 E1: System
S1 E2: Hands
S1 E3: Brigade
S1 E4: Dogs
I started by trying to learn who the main characters were and the place where the show started us off at. Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (James Beard Award) returned to Chicago to run his brother Michael’s restaurant, The Original Beef of Chicagoland, after Michael had committed suicide.
Carmy had been working as a chef in one of the most successful restaurants in the world and he came to the Original Beef and started to shake things up, which alienated the staff and Michael’s best friend Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), who had been running the restaurant prior to this. The staff was unhappy to be changing their system that was already in place.
Carmy hired trained chef Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri) to help him organize things, which placed her in an unpleasant situation as well.
There are some definite funny moments in the show, especially when Richie accidentally puts his Xanax into the Ecto punch that they made for this birthday party they were catering.
Richie is very loud and abrasive, but you can see deep down that he is a caring person who loves his family. I still wanted Richie to just shut up after a while though.
The ensemble at the restaurant were a motley crew of characters. My personal favorites were Tina Marrero (Liza Colón-Zayas), who was a line cook that was pretty stubborn and hard-headed about the changes and Sydney, in particular. There was also Marcus Brooks (Lionel Boyce) who spent several parts of these episodes learning how to make donuts and cake.
Oliver Platt appeared in a couple of these first two episodes, who was a friend of Carmy’s late father, and who lent Michael a ton of money for the restaurant.
Some of the characters were difficult to like at first, but it feels like a show where the characters will grow on me, as I like a few more already.
And James Beard Award is excellent as our lead character. He has a ton of early depth and I am anxious to see how he deals with his troubles. At one point, he sleepwalks at his house and starts cooking wrapped up meat on his stove, leading to a fire that could have burned down his place.
I can see why people are saying that The Bear is one of the top shows on TV. I am excited to see where they take it and I expect that some of the issues will come to the forefront as the series progresses.
I picked up a trade paperback of the first four issues of Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour. I had heard plenty about this series and, with my recent entry into the independents, I wanted to check it out. I loved that trade paperback a lot. That sent me to eBay to look for the whole series. They arrived in the mail and I worked through issues #5-20 that remained.
However, when I finished issue #20, it was strange. There was no mention of it being the final issue and there was even a mention of #21. It did not feel like a finale issue as the story was not wrapped up in a truly satisfactory manner. Was this series not done? What was going on? I searched for #21 on eBay and found that it was not there. So I went to Google to search about the series and I discovered the ugly tale.
Apparently, co-creator and artist Jason Latour got himself in trouble with the way he handled himself, specifically with several women accusing him of sexual misconduct and harassment. He seemingly dropped off the map around 2020 and has only recently come back to do some conventions.
There have been hints that maybe the series would come back and I found a comment from Jason Aaron that implied that the fans should not forget about Southern Bastards.
Switching gears from the negativity surrounding the series, the actual story was sensational.
You have some of the most interesting and yet most horrendous characters populating this small county that apparently is run by the local high school football coach, Euless Boss. Coach Boss was a deep character with a horrendous back story which made the readers understand the violent choices that the coach made.
There were shocks throughout. The series introduced a character named Earl Tubb who absolutely felt like the protagonist of the series, only to kill him off in the fourth issue, by being beaten to death by Coach Boss in the street. We see a younger Euless Boss shoot his own father in the head for a local criminal in order to wind up as the coach. There was a black, blind man named Big, who was a sort of savant in football. He helped Euless when he was trying to originally make the football team and stuck beside him as his defensive coordinator until he blew his brains out.
I do not think that you need to be a football fan to enjoy this series. Football is at the center but it is also a deep character piece as well as a serious crime drama.
I do hope that they are able to return some day and put a finishing touch on the series so it does not end up with #20. Issue #20 was a good issue, but it did not serve as a sufficient finale for such a fantastic series.
Today I went back to AMC in Dubuque for the first time since prior to the pandemic. AMC had a film that I had never seen advertised anywhere. It was a sci-fi story called The Pod Generation.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, “In a not-so-distant future, AI is all the rage and nature is becoming a distant memory. Tech giant Pegazus offers couples the opportunity to share pregnancy on a more equal footing via detachable artificial wombs, or pods. But at what cost? Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a New York couple, are ready to take their relationship to the next level and start a family. Rachel’s work gives them a chance to fast-track to the top of the Pegazus waiting list. But Alvy, a botanist and devoted purist has doubts. Nonetheless, his love for Rachel prompts him to take a leap of faith. And so begins the wild ride to parenthood in this brave new world with all its twists, turns, and bumps along the way.“
Honestly, the sci-fi aspects of the film were very odd. The film felt very modern with the exception of this weird pregnancy thing.
I found this to be overlong. It was almost two hours and I think it needed to cut that down to about an hour and forty minutes or so. Some of the early scenes were dull at times. Then the ending came out of nowhere and it was just done. I’m not sure the main plotline was fully dealt with.
However, I loved Chiwetel Ejiofor in this. He was remarkably charming and relatable in every scene as he bonded with the pod. Without him, this would not have been an enjoyable film at all. Emilia Clarke was solid too. I liked how it played against type having her not immediately bond with the pod and seeing how other pregnant women, especially those who were having the natural way, bonded with their child. That was clearly lacking for Clarke and she played that confusion well.
I do think that the movie had some really big ideas with its themes, but I do not think that the film reached those goals at any point in the time. It feels like a film that could have been better with another run or two through the editing bay.
Still, Ejiofor is great and does have some good chemistry with Clarke. There are some funny moments and the film gets credit for trying something different.
I have been a Los Angeles Dodger fan since I have been a fan of baseball.
I remember when I became a Dodger fan. I was in fourth grade and two of my classmates asked me who I was cheering for in the World Series, the Yankees or the Dodgers. I had no idea. My parents were not sports fans so I was not exposed to baseball. I remember hearing Dodgers so I responded the Dodgers. They both said ‘Yeah!’ and ‘Alright!’ so I figured I made the right choice. From that point on, I became completely engaged in the sport and the history of it. I learned everything I could about baseball and the Dodgers.
One of my favorite players of all time is Fernando Valenzuela. I will always remember his amazing rookie season and how much I was behind him. Fernandomania was massive and created a unbelievable culture among the Mexican-American community of LA and nationwide!
Tonight in Los Angeles at Chavez Ravine, the Los Angeles Dodgers retire Fernando Valenzuela’s number 34.
The Dodgers have had a rule that the only numbers that are retired were members of the MLB Hall of Fame. The only numbers retired by LA have been Jackie Robinson’s #42, Pee Wee Reese’s #1, Tommy Lasorda’s #2, Duke Snyder’s #4, Gil Hodges’ #14, Jim Gilliam’s #19 (an exception to the rule as Gilliam was not a HoF member), Don Sutton’s #20, Walter Alston’s #24, Sandy Koufax’s #32, Roy Campanella’s #39, and Don Drysdale’s #53.
Nicknamed ‘El Toro,’ Valenzuela was a left hander who brought one of the more devastating and unusual pitches to the forefront of baseball, the screwball. Plus, during his windup, Valenzuela would look to the sky, and then close his eyes…before delivering his pitch to the batter. How difficult it had to be to be the batter and know this guy isn’t looking at you.
Fernando had a career record of 173-153, and, in his rookie season of 1981, went 13-7 (after winning his first 8 games), had 20 complete games (which is unheard of today), won the Rookie of the Year Award, the Cy Young Award and helped lead the Dodgers to the World Series victory.
Fernando is currently working as one of the Dodgers’ broadcasters on their Spanish broadcast.
He is one of my favorite players of all time and he deserves the honor that he is receiving tonight in Los Angeles. It is way overdue.
So this film turned out to be much different than I expected it to be.
Milton (Ben Kingsley) is an older man living alone, beginning to show signs of forgetting things that worries his daughter Denise (Zoe Winters). One day, a spaceship crashed landed in Milton’s backyard and he finds an alien on his back step. Taking the alien inside, Milton bonds with the silent spaceman despite some of his comments to other people in the town lead to Denise doubting whether Milton could take care of himself anymore.
There are some parts of the premise for this movie that made me iffy about it. Specifically, the choice for the alien, eventually named Jules, to be silent is always a challenge. With one character that is verbal and the other character that is non-verbal makes it difficult to connect. However, the film does a smart thing and gives Kingsley two verbal connections in the film in Jane Curtin and Harriet Sansom Harris, as the characters of Joyce and Sandy respectfully, to interact with.
Truthfully, this film is not about Jules. It is about the three human characters and the loneliness that they feel. Jules is just the catalyst of the plot to bring Milton, Joyce and Sandy into their own orbits and to examine their personal issues at a deeper level. Each of the three characters brought a different set of troubles that were very familiar to any person, especially those of an advancing age.
I absolutely loved Harriet Sansom Harris in this film. She was such a warm and loving person who seemed to find such a connection with Jules, something that she was missing in her life. Harris is a great actor and she had excellent chemistry with Ben Kingsley. Kingsley was also excellent here as a lot of his acting came with some specific non-verbal moments, with glances and looks that told more than just his words could. Jane Curtin had less to do in the story, but she did knock home what she got to do.
The relationships were the key, but the plot itself was not working near as well. In fact, a lot of the plot of the film seemed just in the way, in particular part of the story that involved a government agency. There was also a story beat involving cats that was simply weird.
So while the film does not come together very well, the strength of the ensemble really works. This is much more of a character piece than a sci-fi movie. There are some funny moments and some deeper than expected ideas. Though everything does not necessarily work well together and I may not have loved the ending, the strength of Kingsley, Harris and Curtin made me want to know what was to become of these characters and that is a success for a film.
Dracula returns in a manner in which we have never seen him before in the latest horror film called The Last Voyage of the Demeter from director André Øvredal, known for 2010’s Troll Hunter and 2016’s The Autopsy of Jane Doe.
This story is adapted from a chapter of the original Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, detailing the voyage of a ship that transported Dracula from Romania to London. This film goes into more specific details of the crew of the Demeter and the victims of the ill-fated ship.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter creates a creepy atmosphere and goes all-in on some choices that were surprising and unexpected in the narrative. It basically took the character of Dracula and looked at it more as a monster that the crew of the Demeter were desperately trying to survive.
The film, for the most part, looked really great. Its dark mood was translated with the use of the shots on the ship and it built a hopeless feel with its claustrophobic setting. The full shots of the ship on the sea was consistently beautiful giving us the feel of how trapped the sailors must have been.
Most of the performances were well done. Corey Hawkins was the lead protagonist, Dr. Clemens, who had a strength throughout the film. The Demeter captain, Eliot was played by Liam Cunningham, who brought a soulfulness to this character, trying to maintain his leadership through a terrible loss. David Dastmalchian played Wojchek, the second in command. Dastmalchian never fails to be excellent. The young actor Woody Norman, who played Toby, has some difficult scenes to carry out and does an admirable job of it. I should also shout out the performance of Stefan Kapicic who has some of the best and most frightening scenes of the film.
Now, there are some problems with the film. It is about 15-20 minutes too long. There was a repetitiveness that comes from the length. Even shaving off about 10 minutes would have helped the narrative. The finale of the third act was not as well done as the remainder of the film. Some of it just felt like they needed to end with a big confrontation and it did not all work.
There was a lot of really positive things in the film, but a lot of it just does not tied together too well. One of the issues I had was that none of these people, even the Cambridge-educated doctor, seemed to be very smart. Maybe I brought my own Vampire-lore knowledge into the film and these people would not have the prior background knowledge I had about vampires, but it seemed as if there was enough physical evidence that occurred during the film that they could have formulated a better, more effective plan than the silly one they eventually came up with at the end.
The movie was the most effective when it focused on the psychological aspects of the situation instead of the action beats.
Still, I found it to be mostly entertaining, included a great character design for Dracula and some truly brutal moments that were bloody and a couple that hit hard.
Whoa, I have been working hard on my comic collection. Bags. Boards. Boxes. It’s been insane. I decided the other day that it was time to dive into the piles of comics around here in an attempt to get everything boxed and boarded and organized. It is quite the chore.
I bought four short boxes at Comic World just yesterday and they are basically accounted for, though I am still filling one with completed series. The box I am working on right now has Web of Spider-Man (2021), Savage Spider-Man, Sinister War, The Conjuring: The Lover, Silver Surfer: Rebirth, Ben Reilly: Spider-Man, Namor, Heroes Reborn in it so far. The biggest challenge is finding these complete issues. I know I have them, but who knows where they are boxed.
I pulled out a short box last night and it had a ton of issues from other series in it, with no organization at all. I have a bunch of boxes to go through that are already bagged and boarded and some that are not.
When I get through with this, my hope it to go into the older part of the collection and re-box/bag/board those books as well. That however, is down the road. A long term goal, if you will.
Yesterday was also the last day this summer that I could go to Comic World on NEW COMIC BOOK DAY and spend the afternoon reading and hanging out with the employees there. My friend Todd, who has been a regular character in the Comic Cavalcade, has made my Wednesdays a lot of fun. I’m going to miss it when I have to head back to school next Wednesday. Of course, I will head down to Comic World after school next Wednesday to pick up my comics. Still, it will not be quite the same.
Update: Good news this week because Haunt Your to the End #3 was in my box at Comic World. It was the most recent issue 3 that was out this week. It is a pretty decent horror story, with the characters in search of ghosts to prove their existence. However, the issue three trauma remains as I am still missing The Seasons Have Teeth #3. I have #4 in my hands right now, but three is still a mystery.
This week’s DC Knight Terrors issues were really good. Night Terrors #3 was really enjoyable despite one of the ugliest variant covers I have seem. Knight Terrors: Robin#2 was excellent with Jason Todd and Tim Drake working together. Knight Terrors: The Flash #2 was probably the weakest of the issues, but told a good story with Barry and Wall. Knight Terrors: Zatanna #2 was very good too. I liked the pairing of Zatanna and Robotman. Knight Terrors: Shazam #2 featured Mary Marvel and showed her strength. Finally, Knight Terrors: Green Lantern #2 was ok. Probably down with Flash this week.
By the way, the Marvel books this month are honoring the life of John Romita Sr. who passed away earlier this year. They have three pages at the beginning of their books highlighting some of his classic work. RIP John Romita Sr.
Here are the rest of the books this week…
Amazing Spider-Man #31. Written by Zeb Wells and drawn by John Romita Jr. & Emilio Laiso. Cover art was by John Romita Jr., Scott Hanna and Marcio Menyz. This featured the attempted wedding of Robbie Robertson to Beetle. Crime lords of New York all were in attendance and things only went to crap. Very good story. There are also a bunch of shorts at the end of the oversized issue (the Legacy number was 925 so I guess it’s time for a celebration. All the shorts deal with things that are going to be happening in the Spider-family books over the next few months. My favorite was the one with Ms. Marvel and Spidey talking about her death.
The Enfield Gang Massacre #1. “Chapter One: The Bad Death of Bill Barley.” Written by Chris Condon and featuring artwork by Jacob Phillips. Set in the world of That Texas Blood series that I loved so much, I was really excited to see this new issue and I was not disappointed. The time frame was earlier than the other series, but this moved quickly as we learned about the man known as Montgomery Enfield and the death of Bill Barley. The best part of the comic was the design. It had a definite feel of an old time comic. The pages seemed like I was reading an old comic. it even had the smell of old paper. It was a cool reading experience.
Barnstormers #2. “Chapter Two” Written by Scott Snyder and drawn by Tula Lotay. Bix and Tillie find themselves in trouble after they were found by her former fiancée. Until this moment, they had been bonding and falling for each other as they continued their air show. Big trouble arrives at the end of the issue setting up for a dramatic conclusion next month.
Damn Them All #7. Written by Simon Spurrier and illustrated by Charlie Adlard. Elle and her bad behavior returned to search for the coins that possess the demons from Hell. A new wrinkle has arrived though in the form of angels.
Swan Songs #2. “The end of… a Marriage.” Written by W. Maxwell Prince and art by Caspar Wijngaard. This anthology series about apocalyptic moments focused in on the falling apart of an actual marriage and how these two people fell in and out of love. And how they wind up fighting each other forever. Neat twist on this book.
House of Slaughter #16. “Alabaster Part One.” A new story arc for this book. I had a little difficulty getting into this one. Here’s hoping that I will be able to grab more of an interest as it moves along.
Ghost Rider Wolverine: Weapons of Vengeance #1. “Sympathy for the Devil.” Logan and Johnny Blaze team up to pursue a child possessed by some monster/demon. The child had come to see Professor X, but was turned away as he was not a mutant. We get some look at Logan and Blaze’s past and their beginnings.
Guardians of the Galaxy #5. “Last Stand at Torment Pass” Written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing and illustrated by Kev Walker. Marco Checchetto did the cover art. The Guardians have come together and are trying to find a way to save Groot. Things do not look like it is going very well.
Ghostlore #4. Written by Cullen Bunn and drawn by Leomacs. Lucas and Harmony are heading their separate ways… or at least that is what Harmony has decided. As she was writing a letter to her father, Lucas is dealing with a spirit in his church that was tied to a witch execution in the past.
Silk #4. Written by Emily Kim and art by Ig Guara. Dave Johnson did the cover art. Cindy Moon is out of the movie-inspired dream world and is facing off with the monster that Saya Ishii has turned herself into. Silk is doing a dream storyline too at the same time as DC’s Knight Terrors is happening.
Red Goblin #7. Written by Alex Paknadel and drawn by Jan Bazakdua with Rafael Pimentel. Normie can not control his symbiote, Rascal, who is out of control in his attempt to save Tim. Can Miles Morales help out?
Miles Morales: Spider-Man #9. “Spun Out Part Two.” Written by Cody Ziglar and drawn by Federico Vicentini & Federico Sabbatini. Dike Ruan & Alejandro Sanchez did the cover art. Miles and Starling go into a deep battle with Hobgoblin.
Captain Marvel: Dark Tempest #2. “Part Two: The Spooky Case of the Girl with the Pocket Portal.” Carol Danvers and a group of kids try to survive in space as the new villain Nada and Nitro are trying get revenge on Carol.
Children of the Vault #1. “Tomorrow’s Children.” Written by Deniz Camo with art by Luca Maresca. Variant cover by Betty Cola. My variant cover featured Loki’s Miss Minutes, which was fun, but not tied to the book at all. We got a bit of a team up with Cable and Bishop along with a group of characters that I did not know at all. I liked the MIss Minutes cover, but the rest of the book was iffy at best.
Spider-Man Annual #1. “Contest of Chaos: Part One.” Written by Stephanie Phillips and drawn by Alberto Foche. R.S. Silva did the cover art. The Contest of Chaos is a storyline that will be carried over the annuals in Marvel. This one found a fight between Spider-Man and Wolverine over a mysterious orb. It is tied to the newly young Agatha Harkness. It looks to cross over with all of the annuals moving ahead.
Avengers #4. Written by Jed MacKay and art by C.F. Villa. Stuart Immonen did the cover art. The Avengers are facing off with the new force called The Ashen Combine, and they are being pushed to their limits.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 