L O W B R O W M E D I A

Best of 2011 - Films of the Year

2012-01-15T22:38:00.000-05:00

Welcome to part 3 of Genres & Judgements' Best of 2011 lists, this bad boy is for the ten best films I saw last year.

Soooo... once again, I didn't finish this article as soon as I wanted. Hopefully you're still interested in lists of this nature this late in the game. There were plenty of movies I missed out on for one reason or another, but I know that these 10 are still worthy of being listed. May I impart once again that this is a list of what were the best films of the year to me. TO ME. Carry on.

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10. Super 8

No other movie in 2011 packed as much old-school cinematic magic as JJ Abrams' love letter to his childhood did. Accompanying buzzwords "Spielberg" and "Goonies" are spot on. This has to be the best collection of young actors is some time. Extra special props go out to Elle Fanning (she isn't gonna be known just as Dakota's little sister for long). Unfortunately, those kids and Kyle Chandler couldn't save its third act from leaving quite a bit to be desired, as it keeps the movie from being entirely mint. That and those damn lens flares (seriously, dude. Stop.) But there's so much fun to be had here, I just couldn't leave it off the list.

9. Page One: Inside

The New York Times

I didn't get around to watching any other documentaries in 2011, but this one was phenomenal and probably would've made this list even if I had seen others. This film gives an inside look at how the Times operates and how it has dealt with the decline of the newspaper industry, increasing budgetary constraints, new-found competition and living up to its own reputation. A perfect recipe for a journalism junkie like myself.

8. Attack the Block

Oh, man, this movie was fun. Going in, I was led to believe this was going to be a comedy. It does have its funny moments, but this is essentially Die Hard with aliens in the South London projects, which is so so so so much more AWESOME. The aliens aren't going to blow you away with their design, and I believe that's the point. Their makeup is the antithesis to all the Predator-esque aliens chasing their prey movies we've had for so long. While Abrams spent 2011 embracing his childhood, Attack's director, Joe Cornish, celebrates the now with these kids, some of whom are pretty hard to like at first. Coupled with some dashes of humor, we get plenty of energetic action scenes with those creepy aliens delivered with constant style. The best part is that it just never stops - just a wonderful job at pacing in a genre film. SEE THIS.

7. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Yes, this is a summer-blockbuster movie. But it doesn't insult its audience or dumb much of anything down (at least not more than a movie about apes taking over a major American city has to). Look, I'm a big Planet of the Apes nerd. Like, really big. Like I had a PotA poster on my wall as a college freshman. (Still not sure why I didn't get laid often then.) So when word came out that this new installment was going to be a "reboot" of 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth and best of the original series, I was juuuuuust a bit excited. While Rise is not a full-blown remake of Conquest, it shares the similar plot of revealing the beginnings of the advanced ape population we see in the remainder of the series. Rise excels in making these intelligent apes realistic by employing the great Andy Serkis (in another CGI performance capture he's been so wonderful at in recent years) as Caesar and by utilizing modern science as a basis for the rapid advancement of the apes' cognitive abilities. All of this adds up to an intense action movie with a lot of brains behind it.

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Find out my top six after the jump...

Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes - "Face Off"

2012-01-15T16:52:00.001-05:00

Finally, after many moons, here's your context- and commentary-free moments from this season's finale.

"Face Off"

Episode 13, Season 4

airdate: October 9th, 2011

"I won."

- Walter White

What? You think there was a better one? Put it in the comments.

See you next season.

Previously

"End Times" - Episode 12
"Crawl Space" - Episode 11

"Salud" - Episode 10

"Bug" - Episode 9

"Hermanos" - Episode 8
"Problem Dog" - Episode 7
"Cornered" - Episode 6

Best of 2011 - The Year In Television

2011-12-24T01:30:00.000-05:00

Welcome to part 2 of Genres & Judgements' Best of 2011 lists, this one is for the ten best TV shows of the year.

There is so much good television on these days, especially comedies. When I started to think about the shows I was going to have to leave off this list, I almost turned it into two -- one for comedies, another for action/drama shows -- but 10 is just such a nice, simple number. And I'm lazy. Who knows, maybe next year! Onward...

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10. The League (FX)
What a transformation The League has made. It's always been good for some laughs, but a few adjustments made in season three -- namely fewer plots revolving around fantasy football, more Nick Kroll and dropping that bizarre requirement of earlier years of a Jon Lajoie musical number in nearly every episode -- it's gone to the next level (evidence). There were also a bevy of well-placed guest stars throughout the season, including Eliza Dushku, Seth Rogan and Sarah Silverman, but none were better than Jeff Goldblum's turn as Ruxin's father (during the best Thanksgiving-themed episode for any show ever). It doesn't matter if you don't follow football or even play fantasy sports. The best parts of The League have little to do with that stuff.

9. Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
While most of the best dramas in 2011 built themselves into a fury before ultimately pulling back the reins during that final episode to the colossal disappointment of their audience (I'm especially looking at you, Sons of Anarchy), Boardwalk did no such thing. If anything, they went further than I ever dreamed they would. The reason this show is sitting this low on my list is because the early episodes continued the first season's slightly tedious plotting. But that changed in a hurry during the final slew of episodes. It'll be interesting to see if the show can continue at this level with the necessary changes as a result of the finale; I hope it can.

8. Parks & Recreation (NBC)
It's pretty safe to say this is the most consistent comedy on TV; it never ceases to make me smile a few times an episode, and that's between when I'm bursting at the seams laughing. The supporting characters are the best part about the show, especially Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson who never fails to kill his scene ("You had me at meat tornado."). The latest stretch of episodes haven't been quite as good as when season three ended in the spring (hence its drop in my hierarchy), but with recent events in the show, it appears that the less-interesting subplots have been excised. See what the gang in Pawnee is up to here to see what I mean.

7. Doctor Who (BBC)
Matt Smith's second year in the TARDIS was even better than the first. That said, this year's Who was one of the victims of building more anticipation for a grand ending than the show was able to deliver upon. However, in this case, the small stories away from the larger story arc of the season were mostly outstanding and still enabled to maintain its position in my good graces. And that big story... man. Is anything better in the Who-verse than River Song? There's so much magic evident when Alex Kingston and Smith share a scene. I know more River means less Amy and Rory, and would spoil us with too much of a good thing, but dammit if sometimes I want it anyway. Enjoy the Christmas special this week because it'll be a while until we get more adventures with the Doctor -- Fall 2012.

6. Game of Thrones (HBO)
What a debut season. After some slow plotting early on, Thrones failed to yield from my attention once it got going. Any other complaints regarding this fantasy action-drama are likely to be nit-picks. Having recently finished the novel which this inaugural season is based upon, I can attest that they really trimmed most of the fat from the narrative, leaving all the best parts to play out on screen. What's most exciting about this series is to hear from fans of George RR Martin's novels that the best is yet to come. We'll get at least three more years of Thrones, as they're already making preparations to split book three, A Storm of Swords, into two television seasons. Winter is coming, indeed.

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Did I leave your favorite show off? Got any guesses as to what the final five are? Find out after the jump.

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Best of 2011 - Albums of the Year

2011-12-15T19:10:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to another end-of-the-year extravaganza with the first of Genres & Judgements' Best of 2011 lists. Even more-so than last year, I took it upon myself to listen to a ton of new music this year. I was a little lazy from September until mid-November, so if there's anything I missed, it probably came out during that period. That said, I'm feeling pretty confident about this list.

Some of you may wonder why some albums were left off the list, and the quick answer is that, for me, they just weren't good enough. For example, you'll get no argument from me that Adele's 21 wasn't great, but I only listened to most of the tracks twice (according to the stats in iTunes), and not since the beginning of the year when it came out. So for me, I have to be drawn into repeat listens for an album to qualify as one of the top releases of the year. Plenty of good albums met this fate, including new ones from three of my favorite bands: Wilco, Explosions In The Sky and Radiohead.

What follows are the 10 albums I couldn't stop listening to in 2011. Click on the links to stream a track from each album.

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10. Nostalgia, Ultra
Frank Ocean
This mixtape was released for free download on Ocean's Tumblr page in the spring, and blew more than a few of my friends away, as the fervor on my Facebook feed could attest. With this release, it's safe to say he's established himself as one of the cornerstones of the new R&B movement going on right now.
Track 12: American Wedding

9. Blood Pressures
The Kills
Jack White's supergroup The Dead Weather released one of my favorite albums last year, which led me to checking out Alison Mosshart's main band for the first time. This is probably an oversimplification, but with Blood Pressures, The Kills often come across as a less-intense version of The Dead Weather. (Yes, I know The Kills have been around for far longer, but I discovered them after TDW.) But this isn't to say it's a weaker album. There's intense drive of anxiety from Mosshart's primal howls and Jamie Hince's gritty guitar riffs streaming throughout this album that makes you come back for more.
Track 2: Satellite

8. The Rip Tide
Beirut
While a bit less adventurous as previous efforts, Beirut mastermind Zach Condon managed to solidify his place as an indie folk darling while still managing to achieve popular success. It's a short album, clocking in at under 35 minutes, but that trimmed a lot of fat from what could have been a bloated effort with less-worthy songs tacked on.
Track 3: East Harlem

7. Cults
Cults
Being that this is mid-December, I really can't convey enough how fantastic of a summer album this is. Just makes you wanna put the top down, drive and smile.
Track 2: Go Outside

6. Watch the Throne
Jay-Z & Kanye West
There probably wasn't a more anticipated release this year than this one. While Throne lacks the breakaway hit you might assume a partnering of this magnitude would produce, there isn't a dud track on it. Some complaints that this is just a Kanye album with lots of Jay-Z on it seem weak to me; West has always struck me as the stronger producer of the two and it's reflected here, but Jay-Z's lyrics are almost always superior. In other words, the collaboration works, with each feeding off the other's strengths. Rumors have already been floated for a sequel.
Track 2: Lift Off (feat. Beyonce)

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Wanna see what else is on the list? The remaining five albums are after the jump.

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A Good Man Is Hard To Find - A Genres & Judgements Mixture

2011-12-08T11:25:00.000-05:00

Right now I'm in the in the final stages of putting together my Best of 2011 lists. And since the year's about over, I started rummaging around my music database for some tunes I could write to, and found a ton of banging stuff I had completely forgot existed (as you'll notice in the upcoming Albums of the Year post, I slacked off with checking up on new music big time once September got under way).

This one starts off on the sparse side with a fascinating remix of an older Radiohead song by Julianna Barwick, but I promise there's some action after that, highlighted by Trent Reznor and Co.'s rendition of probably my all-time favorite Led Zeppelin track. These were released in 2011, and The Black Keys and Lana Del Rey songs have only been available for about a week, so there really is nothing stale about this mix.

And the title of this bad boy? I have a Flannery O'Connor collection on my bookshelf and, even though the girl in that picture and these songs don't have much of anything to do with her short story, I couldn't excise that phrase once it popped into my head.

Track list and streaming links available after the jump.

Lou Reed & Metallica's LULU - Merely The Worst Album Of 2011 Or The Most Egregious Collection Of Music Created In Recent Memory?

2011-10-28T14:51:00.000-04:00

This is not a joke. It's really that fucking bad. I can't recall anything else comparable released by established artists. Will make a great Christmas gag gift though.

Feel free to stream it for yourself at their site.

You have been warned.

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While I have your attention, there are some reviews for a few flicks that were in theaters recently that will come your way soon, as well as Jonathan Hickman's time-travel, fighter-pilot comic The Red Wing, and the return of the Best of the Year series in December and (probably because I'll get behind again) early January. And, yes, I know I haven't completed the final Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes post for this recently concluded season.

Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes - "End Times"

2011-10-03T12:28:00.000-04:00

Context- and commentary-free moments from this week's episode.

"End Times"

Episode 12, Season 4

airdate: October 2nd, 2011

"Skyler, I have lived under the threat of death for a year now, and because of that, I've made choices. I alone should suffer the consequences of those choices, no one else. And those consequences... they're coming. No more prolonging the inevitable."

- Walter White

"All I know is when he tells me your employer took him out in the desert and threatened to murder his entire family, I sat up and took notice. Because, hey, what am I if not family?"

- Saul Goodman

"I've been waiting all day. Waiting for Gus to send one of his men to kill me. And it's you."

- Walter White

"No. I'm gonna do this one way or another, Mr. White."
"Then let me help."

- Jesse Pinkman, Walter White

Previously

"Crawl Space" - Episode 11

"Salud" - Episode 10

"Bug" - Episode 9

"Hermanos" - Episode 8
"Problem Dog" - Episode 7
"Cornered" - Episode 6

Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes - "Crawl Space"

2011-09-26T12:53:00.000-04:00

Context- and commentary-free moments from this week's episode.

"Crawl Space"

Episode 11, Season 4

airdate: September 25th, 2011

"I don't want to talk about it - to you or to anyone else. I'm done explaining myself."

- Walter White

"I'll tell you what this is about Mr. Beneke. This is about you and me doing our best to keep Huell happy."
"Huell? Who's Huell?"
"This is Huell. Huell, you happy?"
"Reasonably."
"What would make you unhappy?"
"This little mofo not doing what he's told."

- Saul's other A-team member (played by Bill Burr), Ted Beneke, Huell

"Does the laundry have to be dirty?"
"No."

- Walter White, Tyrus Kitt

"Last I asked for your help, you said, 'I hope you end up buried in a barrel in the Mexican desert.'"

- Jesse Pinkman

"If you try to interfere, this becomes a much simpler matter. I kill your wife. I kill your son. I kill your infant daughter."

- Gustavo Fring

"It was an act of God. Ain't no account for no act of God."

- Huell

Previously

"Salud" - Episode 10

"Bug" - Episode 9

"Hermanos" - Episode 8
"Problem Dog" - Episode 7
"Cornered" - Episode 6

Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes - "Salud"

2011-09-19T16:31:00.000-04:00

Context- and commentary-free moments from this week's episode.

SPOILER WARNING: Do NOT read the last quote before watching "Salud."

"Salud"

Episode 10, Season 4

airdate: September 18th, 2011

"Tell this asshole if he wants to learn how to make my product, he's gotta do it my way. The right way."
"I speak English."
"So you understand what 'asshole' means. Now go get me my phenylacentic acid, asshole."

- Jesse Pinkman, Cartel Chemist

"I made a mistake. It's my own fault. I had it coming. It's all my fault. I'm just... I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

- Walter White

"Celebrities have to get their cars washed like everybody else."

- Saul Goodman

"Remembering you that way wouldn't be so bad. The bad way would be to remember you the way... the way you've been this whole last year. At least last night you were... you were real."

- Walter White, Jr.

"Salud."

- Gustavo Fring

"Make yourself useful -- find a gun."

- Hitman Mike

"Don Eladio is dead. His capos are dead. You have no one left to fight for. Fill your pockets and leave in peace. Or fight me and die!"

- Gustavo Fring

Previously

"Bug" - Episode 9

"Hermanos" - Episode 8
"Problem Dog" - Episode 7
"Cornered" - Episode 6

Reel Low: Contagion [2011]

2011-09-18T00:37:00.000-04:00

Just in time for flu season, Steven Soderbergh brings us a film that will make you seriously consider extreme couponing for hand sanitizer. Contagion [2011] explores one of the bleakest scenarios imaginable -- a disease so powerful, it decimates the population as it escalates into a worldwide pandemic. However, the film does so with such intelligence and command of the subject and drama, that you won't even mind being overcome with germophobia.

We live in a world where the transmission of a new disease has the potential to plague the entirety of humanity in little over a day. So rapidly can it travel the globe and infect millions -- roughly a quarter of the population -- the spread of it even outpaces progress in the search for a cure.

But this blight isn't the only danger sweeping through the world of the film. If one out of every four people are contracting the disease, at least twice that number were fully infected by panic, allowing the moral fabric of society rip apart with rampant looting, rioting and even more extreme measures (like kidnapping and murder) to assuage that fear. These events were often fueled by rumors -- some of which had merit and others entirely unsubstantiated -- but all of which are just as impossible to control in the times we live in as the it would be to cease the spread of a disease of this magnitude. The ripples of terror passing around globe were just as epidemic as the virus itself.

Infused with a barrage of stars and supremely talented character actors in minor roles, Contagion is a vehicle for everyone involved shine. The movie is comprised of multiple storylines, but ultimately they all spin out of one of three main threads. The first is driven by a CDC official played by Laurence Fishburne who is leading the charge at containing, understanding and curing the disease. There's also Matt Damon's portrayal of a husband and father who's painful personal account leads us through the decay of social order in suburbia. And finally the journalist/blogger, conspiracy theorist, and ultimately shrewd opportunist played by Jude Law, who through his incessant rejection of mainstream news leads him to and beyond the horror of the disease from the very beginning.

Unsurprisingly, Soderbergh handles this web of crisscrossing characters and plot masterfully. He ramps up tension early, making you cringe at even the thought of someone coughing on the other side of the theater. And although the film is never quite as suspenseful as those early moments again, it refuses to let your attention wane. At seemingly every perfect moment, he switches to another subplot as you become invested even deeper into the revolving door of the afflicted. Complimenting this progression is the magnetic industrial score from Cliff Martinez, as it made taut scenes even more uneasy and sometimes downright disturbing precisely when it needed to.

However, more than anything else, I adore how Contagion treated the audience as adults. There are a multitude of scenes where highly technical, sciency virus jargon is being dicussed, and thankfully Soderbergh doesn't inject some government stooge in a suit asking, "Explain that in English" at the end of them. Thankfully, he realizes that if you believe the characters understand what they're talking about and they're scarred shitless, we will be too. More filmmakers should take note of that technique.

Forget the Roland Emmerich and Michel Bay CGI extravaganzas of the last 20 years -- this is the sort of disaster movie I prefer, but that's probably because it's more of a procedural than traditional apocalyptic flick. The events depicted are completely plausible, a testament to the stellar script and strong cast. Contagion will creep you out; I know I used my sleeve-covered palms to open the door on my exit from the theater. This is real-world horror on screen.

Pardon me while I seek out a flu shot.

The 2011 Summer TV Report Card

2011-09-14T13:44:00.000-04:00

Unlike last summer, I didn't have the time to start up any new shows or catch up on what I am behind on, so there will only be a recap of shows that finished recently. Period dramas and slice-of-life comedies were the prizes of what I was taking in this summer, but there was other good stuff too, as you'll read.

This edition covers shows having ended after June 15th, where my last recaps (part 1 & part 2) ended, through September 12th, 2011.

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The Borgias
(Season 1, Showtime)
Who doesn't like a little bloodshed and sex with their papal dynasties? Or, in the case of this show, a lot? Based on the actual exploits of the Borgia family in the late 1400s, Jeremy Irons plays patriarch Rodrigo Borgia with empiric sliminess. I know I should despise him -- you know, with all the nepotism, simony, promiscuity and torturing he engages in -- but ultimately can't. Even more impressive is François Arnaud's performance of eldest son, Cesare, whose good intentions tend to go horribly awry, not to mention his nefarious ones. The season started off strong, and before rebounding in the final few episodes, wandered excessively amongst infidelity and familial strife a bit too often for my taste. A second season has been ordered by Showtime.
B

Camelot
(Season 1, Starz)
What began as an interesting twist upon the standard Arthurian legend we've seen numerous times over the years on film, quickly descended into a barely watchable clusterfuck in the span of 10 episodes. Plagued by dull writing and poor casting -- particularly with Jamie Campbell Bower as Arthur, who was often outright unlikable as our hero -- and those twists quickly lost their luster. Joseph Fiennes (Merlin) and Eva Green (Morgan Le Fay) could only do so much with what they were given, and usually shone above the remaining elements of the show. However, after the great James Purefoy's early exit, it was largely downhill going forward with too much emphasis on Claire Forlani as Arthur's mother (if anyone knows what the hell happened to her face since the late '90s, please let me know in the comments; botox alone can't be responsible for that mess) and the Arthur/Guinevere tryst epically failing to place two of the three involved in that love triangle in a positive light. However, Camleot's ultimate fate was likely decided when HBO's Game of Thrones, which happened to be airing at the same time, proved to garner vastly superior ratings and critical acclaim. Considering these developments, it's little wonder a second season was not ordered.
C

Curb Your Enthusiasm
(Season 8, HBO)
Dare I say this wass the best season yet? I really think it was. If you're not a fan of Larry David's humor, nothing here is going to change your mind about him. But for the already converted, revel in his continued brilliance. Single Larry continues to be the great driving force behind the show's resurgence, begun a few seasons ago. The year was also boosted by the mid-season relocation to New York, which gave a slight twist on typical Curb scenarios.
A-

Entourage
(Season 8, HBO)
Thank God I can finally stop watching this. Had it not been the final slew of episodes, I would've tossed it aside. There were parts of these final eight installments that were actually pretty good (the idea of Bobby Flay as Ari's nemesis was freaking hilarious while it lasted), but most of what I was prepared to applaud was negated after an extremely sloppy finale that was more interested handing out happy endings to our heroes instead of earning them (Drama's and, I suppose, Ari's were acceptable; the others were awful). Had they begun the resolution to these stories a few episodes sooner, I could've bought into them. That's how easy it would've been to get me to buy into it. But the fate of these characters were left to the genius' who didn't think something might be amiss to play Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" as their private jets took off from L.A. in the final moments of the show. *Sigh.*
D+

Falling Skies
(Season 1, TNT)
There's a lot to like about this post-alien invasion drama produced by Steven Spielberg. Decent cast, decent writing and decent production value. Overall, it's a decent show. Nothing wrong with that. The creature work and special effects are pretty darn good actually, which was a nice touch. But I was never excited to see the next episode, probably because it generally played it safe. Battlestar Galactica it is not. It is, however, family friendly and feels like a Spielberg production, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preferences. I dug the cliffhanger at the end of the season, and it will be back next summer, so you can expect another report on the show in a year's time.
B-

Game of Thrones
(Season 1, HBO)
Summarizing this one is a challenge. Packed with plot and unafraid to do horrible things to characters you adore, every episode of Game of Thrones was thoroughly enjoyable -- even the ones where you find yourself yelling "NO!" at the screen. This entire season was based upon the first novel in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series. (I've begun reading it because I'm dying to know what happens next. The differences between the book and show are minor, although the book predictably contains more detail. I still have about 200 more pages to go, however, so that may change.) It's a fantasy series, but not really much like Lord of the Rings and definitely not like some of the other period action/dramas cable pay channels have been broadcasting in recent years. Curiously, much of the show probably can be boiled down to people literally sitting around talking about shit that went down 20 years ago (without the aid of flashbacks, no less). But even when Game of Thrones does this, it somehow remains riveting. I really think it has something for everyone. There's so much character depth and development for an almost exhaustive list of cast, and they're presented with suburb performances, cinematography and direction. This has quickly become a must-watch show.
A

The Hour
(Series 1, BBC)
For some reason this was billed as a British Mad Men by mainstream reviewers. Aside from being set in a comparable time period (in this case a few years earlier, in the mid-1950s), being well written and produced, and everyone smoking all the time, there is really nothing the two have in common. A better comparison would probably be to look at it against some of Aaron Sorkin's work. While not at that level, what The Hour excelled at was driving and peppering the narrative with (usually) strong and eloquent dialogue, although not necessarily realistic. But there's a elements of murder mystery and espionage genres mixing in with the forefront subjects of television journalism ingratiating itself with global and national politics of the time. And, since it's a British production, social class is an ever-present theme as well. It was great to see Dominic West (Jimmy McNulty from The Wire) do good work again as on-air anchor Hector Madden. But, for me, Romola Garai stole the show as Bel Rowley. With the Mad Men set up, I immediately identified her as this show's Peggy Olsen, which is an apt correlation, but I found her character to be far more interesting (and you know I love me some Peggy Olsen). Most of the rest of the cast was fantastic as well, and the next installment of the show is high on my watchlist.
B+

Louie
(Season 2, FX)
As much as I enjoy Curb Your Enthusiasm, the formula Larry David utilizes for each episode is highly transparent, which is why I can't give it a higher rating. Not so with Louie, which is always unpredictable and constantly hilarious, even in the most gut-wrenching moments of Louie CK's blackest humor. This second season has solidified this show amongst the elite comedies on the air now, and it looks like it'll remain there for the foreseeable future. There's really no need to re-watch previous episodes if you're coming around late to the show, as there's no continuing plot to be concerned with. That is, of course, if you're okay with denying yourself awesome television.
A

Torchwood
(Season 4, BBC/Starz)
After two mixed bag seasons and a third brilliant one, the Doctor Who spinoff returned with a slew of changes. Unfortunately, the American version of this show really just didn't work for me. It wasn't until I sat down to write this that I realized how much I didn't care about anything that happened on Torchwood: Miracle Day this season, and kinda hated most of the new characters I was supposed to root for. The season's plot -- suddenly no one in the world is able to die and mass chaos ensues, hence the "Miracle Day" subtitle -- was initially an intriguing one, but as the source of that disaster was revealed in such cartoony fashion, it was hard to take any of the real-world implications presented seriously. That said, there was one amazing episode (written by the always great Jane Epenson) shoe-horned into the middle of the season that sorta made watching the others worth it. But it was a flashback episode that ultimately only gave us the first kernel of what the big bad reveal ended up being, as well as a giant red herring that cost another episode, and little else. If Torchwood is to return, could Russell Davies please embrace the time-traveling, tri-sexual adventures of Captain Jack Harkness? I can't imagine I'm the only one who would rather see those than the haphazard yet dull exploits of the new Torchwood team. Hell, let them travel with him if you want to keep it a team show; just make it more interesting. The peices are already there for you. Stop merely alluding to them and make use of what you've created. Whoops. How'd I get onto this soapbox?
C+

Treme
(Season 2, HBO)
This is not a show for everyone. While season 2 improved upon stabilizing the narrative structure presented last year, it's still a bit scattered, mainly because there are so many characters covering just about every major walk of life in New Orleans and a few in New York City as well. You could make the argument that David Simon intended to make the show's scrambled nature in season 1 slowly come together mirror life in post-Katrina NOLA, but I think you're giving him a little too much credit. There is no villain. There are just clusters of loosely connected people trying to live their lives in the wake of one of the greatest tragedies to strike our nation in recent memory.
B

True Blood
(Season 4, HBO)
As much as The Walking Dead tried to make zombies the new vampires last year, those bloodsuckers aren't about to be dethroned just yet, especially if they continue to give us gratuitous action and sex scenes as True Blood is so fond of doing. (And have we really gotten to the point where we want to see nekkid zombies? I think not.) Following last year's expansion of supernatural creatures with werewolves, the addition of witches and magic to the forefront was an excellent decision. There were still usual missteps, most notably spending an insane amount of time with that baby all just to explain that Lafayette had lots of magic mojo, which was obvious before this season anyhow. But to my complete surprise, the show actually wrapped up most of its storylines in satisfactory fashion and set up some of next year's as well (it finally looks like some good Terry and Andy stuff is on the horizon in season 5). All in all, this was the strongest season of True Blood yet, and there's still plenty of things they could improve upon.
B+

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I'll be checking back in at the close of the year with what should be another great collection of returning fall shows, including Boardwalk Empire, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and, of course, Breaking Bad.

There are some new ones that seem interesting and I'll be checking those out as well (but who knows if they will stick in my rotation), namely Person of Interest, Terra Nova and the American version of Prime Suspect.

Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes - "Bug"

2011-09-13T00:41:00.000-04:00

Context- and commentary-free moments from this week's episode.

"Bug"

Episode 9, Season 4

airdate: September 11th, 2011

"Should I even ask?"
"I wouldn't."

- Walter White, Hitman Mike

"Can you walk? Then get the fuck outta here and never come back."

- Jesse Pinkman

Previously

"Hermanos" - Episode 8
"Problem Dog" - Episode 7
"Cornered" - Episode 6

Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes - "Hermanos"

2011-09-06T11:26:00.000-04:00

Context- and commentary-free moments from this week's episode.

"Hermanos"

Episode 8, Season 4

airdate: September 4th, 2011

"This is what comes of 'blood for blood,' Hector. Sangre por sangre."

- Gustavo Fring

"Pollos Hermanos, where something delicious is always cooking."

- Gustavo Fring

"It wasn't until the, uh, 5th grade that I found out that she liked me too. But by then, her family had moved to Scottsdale, so... (sigh). Carpe diem, okay?"

- Saul Goodman

"What if this is like math? Or algebra? You know, you add a plus douchebag to a minus douchebag, then you get, like, zero douchebags."

- Jesse Pinkman

"Look at me, Hector. Look. At. Me.
Maybe next time."

- Gustavo Fring

Previously

"Problem Dog" - Episode 7
"Cornered" - Episode 6

Fuzz Box - A Genres & Judgements Mixture

2011-09-01T03:19:00.000-04:00

Hey, look! A post without "breaking" in the title.

Had to make a sudden trip out of town, so I won't be able to devote much time to this week's post as I had planned. Fortunately, a reflection upon the state of Marvel's Ultimate Comics line can wait a little while. So here's a quick mix of songs I've been listening to over the last month or so instead. I needed to put some tunes together for my trip anyhow, so yadda-yadda...two birds. The next mixture will get a proper breakdown of each song, I promise.

Description and track list available after the jump.

Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes - "Problem Dog"

2011-08-29T12:07:00.000-04:00

Context- and commentary-free moments from this week's episode.

Actually, there were probably more great parts of the episode that occurred in silence this week (Walt's demeanor in the parking lot, Skyler's face in the carwash office, Hank's DEA boss' raised eyebrows when he passed over that final file), but that's not what we do here.

"Problem Dog"

Episode 7, Season 4

airdate: August 28, 2011

"Big doings today. The order of the day is 'eyes open, mouth shut.'"

- Hitman Mike

"You pick up the rock, you go right to the dark side. Anything can happen."

- Old dude in group therapy

"I made you my bitch. You accept?"

- Jesse Pinkman

Previously

"Cornered" - Episode 6

Breaking Down the 2011 Television Season (Part 2)

2011-08-25T20:37:00.001-04:00

As promised, here's Part 2. Missed Part 1? No problemo.
Breaking Down the 2011 Television Season (Part 1)

This edition covers shows having ended after January 1st, when my last recap took us up until, through early June 2011.

------------------------------------

Justified
(Season 2, FX)
Damn. As much as I loved the first season, Justified took itself to another level in 2011. Raylan Givens is still an uber bad-ass, and continues to take unconventional approaches in administering the law. This year's big bad was played by longtime character actress Margo Martindale who was simply brilliant as the ruthless matriarch of the backwoods Bennett clan. (Normally I'm not an advocate for such things, but if she doesn't win the Supporting Actress Emmy she's been nominated for, I'd be impressed to see who outdid her onscreen.) And thankfully last year's lead villain didn't leave us either, as Boyd is still causing problems in Harlan County through his good intentions and old habits. In addition to all the great tough-guy moments that are never in short supply on the show, this year the emotional tones took a giant leap forward, as Raylan had a seemingly constant barrage of tough decisions and intense hardships presented before him throughout the season. In my mind, Justified is one of the elite shows on television today and has the potential to get even better in subsequent seasons.
A+

The Killing
(Season 1, AMC)
The most disappointing series of the year? Pretty much; I can't think of another. Which is such a shame because although the first three episodes failed to explain much more of what happened to Rosie Larson than the rest of season ended up revealing, there was a delicious mystery teased in such a fascinating manner that I was completely drawn in then. And given AMC's track record, I was guilty of assuming that we'd get answers by the end like Rubicon gave us. Not so. Which is why it's so curious that The Killing will actually be back for season 2. As lame as the first season ended up being, there was enough groundwork laid that another 13 episodes could fix the those missteps. I plan on giving it a chance to right the ship. I don't know if many more of the original audience be joining me though.
C+

Lights Out
(Season 1, FX)
A modern boxing drama that initially played into many of the genre's tropes we've seen in various movies over the years, but later revealed some well-plotted storylines that were expertly executed onscreen. At times, this was a freaking great show. Unfortunately, it never gathered up much of an audience and had some missteps as the season went along before FX finally KO'd it. (This just in: I'm hilarious.) The season has an amazing ending, one of the boldest of the year. Amazingly it was written and shot before they knew if they were renewed or not. How they would have gone forward after that would really have been something to see unfold. It worked wonderfully as a series finale, but probably would have been my favorite season finale had a second season been ordered. Lights Out joins both Terriers and Rubicon as the new shows I wish had made it this year; it belongs in third place on that list. Even though it was cancelled and had some consistency problems, I still feel it's worth watching down the road.
B+

Modern Family
(Season 2, ABC)
A good first season was followed up by a good second season. I'm a little disappointed it wasn't better than the first season, but I guess not everything can be Community. The achievement this year was rounding out young Luke into an actual character instead of the dumb kid who ran into the sliding glass door. Now he's basically a mini version of his dad. Everyone else was pretty much the same as they were the year before with some slight tweaks. I think the level where the show is at now is where we can expect it to remain for awhile -- good laughs each week, but nothing that's gonna blow your mind.
B+

Mr. Sunshine
(Season 1, ABC)
This mid-season replacement comedy was cancelled after its only season, which wasn't much of a surprise. Matthew Perry ran the Sunshine Center, an arena that housed sporting events, concerts and other special events that are brought in to arenas. He's the least quirky employee in the place. Allison Janney (The West Wing) was surprisingly funny as his crazy boss, but otherwise there wasn't much interesting going on.
Sigh. I can't even make this show sound interesting when I'm trying. Whatever. Next review...
C-

The Office
(Season 7, NBC)
So. No more Steve Carell. He was great as Michael Scott, but his departure is probably a good thing for the show's chances at continued longevity, as the recent seasons have been treading water at best. To its credit, the show bounced back a little this season, especially with Michael's own action movie, Threat Level Midnight; it reminded me how good this show was at one time. Hopefully James Spader can give the show a much-needed shot in the arm. But I don't think anyone can blame him if The Office finally closes next spring.
B

Parenthood
(Season 2, NBC)
Hmm. I'm having trouble remembering what actually happened during this season. I think the show coasts on the likeability of the actors from their previous projects as opposed to the audience being drawn in by the current quality of the show. It's starting to tip ever-so-slightly to the heavy drama plots with each additional episode, as I feared it would. Still highly watchable, but it has proven that it's not essential viewing at this stage, and isn't particularly memorable either.
B-

Parks & Recreation
(Season 3, NBC)
Hard to believe a show that stumbled so greatly when it first premiered would be able to pull off the its own complex meme of Lil' Sebastian to perfection. Out of all the fake-documentary shows airing now, this is the best one. (Btw, how much footage do these assholes need? Or is it just Mr. Brainwash behind the lens?) I think it's the relationships that really glues this show together. Leslie & Ben. Andy & April. Tom & Jean-Ralphio. Ron Swanson & red meat. It took its time getting there, but Parks & Rec has become worthy of inclusion in the best-comedies-on-television discussion.
A-

Shameless
(Season 1, Showtime)
This is the American version of an apparently very successful British show (there have been 8 seasons and counting) about the Gallaghers, a low-income family in west side of Chicago. Well, maybe "low-income" is too generous; these six kids and their deadbeat dad (the great William H. Macy) are basically a no-income family, doing every oddjob and pulling as many scams as they can to get by. That probably sounds too depressing to start watching. But know that Shameless doesn't take the route of over-examining the socioeconomic struggles of these hopelessly downtrodden people. If anything, there are more moments of pure joy on display than the woe-is-me attitude they easily could've gone with (even when they are engaging in morally bankrupt acts, like stealing food out from the back of delivery truck). And that happens because these kids are smart (literally brilliant in one case) and ultimately they just want to be kids and have some fun. Meanwhile, Macy plays Frank Gallagher as more than just the drunken, deadbeat father he is -- he repeatedly has clownish moments and sometimes even Shakespearean-esque soliloquies. There's really nothing else like this on American TV right now.
B+

Smallville
(Season 10, CW)
After 10 years, there's no more weekly adventures featuring Clark Kent. Sad. I'll miss it and there doesn't seem to be a cheesy replacement of good constantly triumphing over evil these days. Too bad. (Edit: Mike tells me SyFy's Alphas is a contender.) Curiously, Smallville became a better show the more they allowed themselves to play in the sandbox of DC Comics, which is funny considering how much they avoided it in the early years. By now, if you're not a fan, you're probably not going to watch it. I don't know that the early seasons would still hold up now anyhow. But it worked wonderfully at the end. To see Clark Kent finally become SUPERMAN...man. It was awesome. I didn't expect it, but I actually shed a few tears during the final sequence. I guess when a show pulls off pretty much the perfect ending, it'll do that to you.
B+

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
(Season 3, Cartoon Network)
To give you a sense of how much better this show has gotten since that, well, unfortunate theatrical release in 2008, I actually look forward to watching The Clone Wars when it airs each week. Even the Padme and (amazingly) the Jar-Jar episodes are tolerable. A few years ago, I was a big fan of a couple of the expanded universe comics written by John Ostrander that Dark Horse was putting out. While the show hasn't quite gotten to the quality achieved there, it's clear the creators of this show are paying more attention to the good stuff from those expanded universe tales than they are to the drab prequel films. Quinlan Vos even showed up for an episode, albeit with a surfer-dude voice. But after my initial disappointment in that decision wore off, I realized at the end of the day this is a kids show. Basically the lesson here is Star Wars continues to be great the further away from the hands of George Lucas it gets, which is good news for the long-rumored live-action show I've been reading about for so many years.
B

Supernatural
(Season 6, CW)
For some reason I was under the impression that this would be the last year for Winchester boys to kill all sorts of evil monsters, and it actually held up as swan song season for the most part. But after getting solid ratings yet again (by CW standards), we're going to get another one. The past three seasons have built on the show's Christian mythology, which is a lot more interesting to me than chasing after vampires, ghosts and yellow-eyed deamons every week. Now their challenge is to make Sam wholly likeable again, but that shouldn't be too difficult as long as they don't suddenly abandon the show's formula.
B

Underbelly Files
(Made-For-TV Movies, Nine Network)
These three, mainly self-contained stories have only passing connections to the first three seasons of Underbelly. But that's all they need to have because, overall, they're still interesting little crime stories in Australia's extensive criminal past. Tell Them Lucifer Was Here details the long search for the killers of two police officers who were gunned down while in the line of duty. It's the weakest of the bunch, but has the strongest connection to the main series, featuring one of the great villains of season 1. Next was Infiltration, where one detective spent many months on a deep undercover mission trying to expose the dirty deeds of a branch of the Calabrian mafia. Next there was The Man Who Got Away, about a brilliant criminal who has a penchant for escaping prisons and eluding the police at nearly every turn. Probably because I enjoy when the bad guys win more than I should, The Man Who Got Away was my favorite of the three. The better news, however, is that season 4, this time called Underbelly: Razor just started up this past week. Look for a report on that in the end of 2011 recap.
Tell Them Lucifer Was Here: C
Infiltration: B
The Man Who Got Away: B+

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Since I took such a long time to write these last two entries, you'll only have to wait another few weeks until I'll be posting my reviews of the shows from Summer, which will include Falling Skies, The Hour, Louie and Game of Thrones.

Awesome BREAKING BAD Quotes - "Cornered"

2011-08-22T13:51:00.000-04:00

A new feature for your pleasure debuts at LowBrowMedia today. Awesome Breaking Bad Quotes -- context- and commentary-free moments from this week's episode. As I contemplated which of these lines a TV Tweets entry was going to center around, I realized that was dumb. F that; they're all worthy of getting some play. Thus, a new feature was born. Feel free to discuss them or offer up another quote from this episode in the comments.

"Cornered"

Episode 6, Season 4

airdate: August 21, 2011

"Bogdan. As is."

- Walter White

"I like to think I see things in people."

- Gustavo Fring

"Someone needs to protect this family from the man who protects this family."

- Skyler White

Breaking Down the 2011 Television Season (Part 1)

2011-08-19T17:47:00.000-04:00

In about a month, it'll be fall. So I'm finally getting off my tuchas and writing about some shows that began nearly a year ago. As a result, some reviews will be intentionally vague as my memory hasn't retained all the details for something that I last saw seven months ago.

This edition covers shows having ended after January 1st, when my last published recap took us up until, through early June 2011.

------------------------------------

30 Rock
(Season 5, NBC)
After a bit of a down year in season 4, Tiny Fey's baby rebounded this past year. They're still using sharp humor to cut through pop culture and they're obviously not afraid to bite the hand that feeds them with the constant prodding of Comcast stand-in, Kabletown. Alec Baldwin continues to be absolute perfection as Jack Donaghy, while I think they struck a better balance of utilizing their strengths as a show more often (Fey, Baldwin and Tracy Morgan) and toning down the presence of the quickly tiring roles of Kenneth and Jenna. It may not be quite as good as some of the other Thursday comedies on NBC these days, but it still has some quality laughs left in it.
B+

Archer
(Season 2, FX)
Wow, what a gem this animated wonder is. On the surface, it's a spoof of the espionage genre, taking to task the Bourne and James Bond franchises as well as Get Smart, among others. But more exacting examination displays the same reoccurring humor that Arrested Development rewarded its devoted fans with by carrying over jokes from previous episodes to new ones. As a result, the show continuously improves. Or at least has thus far.
B

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
(Season 1, Disney XD)
This is a really fine adaptation of the Marvel Universe. Good for kids, but also developed with older audience members in mind as well. If the recent Marvel movies (Iron Man, Thor & Captain America) have whet your appetite for these characters and diving into the continuity of the funnybooks is too daunting, this is for you. And I think well-established fans of the comics will enjoy them too. I certainly did.
B

Big Love
(Season 5, HBO)
Sigh. This show lost me the previous season, and I grudgenly forced myself to watch this final string of episodes. Well, if you consider achieving three stars on every level of Angry Birds while listening to the last four or five installments as "watching," that is. Kinda amazing how nearly every character became unlikeable by the end. Frankly, it's not worth carving out the hours in your life to get through the remainder of the series if you haven't yet. I'm sure there's a good episode of "Real Housewives of Whatever City They're Doing That In Now" you could watch instead. Probably near the same sense of accomplishment would be had in doing so.
D+

The Chicago Code
(Season 1, FOX)
Shawn Ryan had a rough year in television. This and the wonderful FX show Terriers both got cancelled while he was at the helm. For a network police drama, The Chicago Code was pretty damn good. But it still seemed to utilize the usual tropes for police dramas on the big four. However, Jason Clarke, who I enjoyed on Showtime's Brotherhood a few years ago, stepped up his game to a new level here; he was unquestionably magnetic onscreen. It was also nice to see that Matt Lauria, who was so earnest on latter seasons of Friday Night Lights as farmboy Luke Cafferty, has some acting chops as well as a rookie officer. But beyond those two, there wasn't much to get excited about. I would've watched another season had it returned, but ultimately there was nothing much to lament with its departure.
B-

Community
(Season 2, NBC)
Simply put, this is the best comedy on television. POP-POP! There were some missteps, most notably the largely unfunny claymation Christmas episode that had so much potential. But overall, Community is just so angry. But it's intelligent with that furor, something far too uncommon among network comedies these days. One of my favorite example of this was when they showed how easy the Modern Familys and The Offices of today's television landscape are able to manufacture cheap laughs through the injection of interview scenes within the main narrative during the editing process. Of course, in this case I'm analyzing the show from a craft perspective as I watch, which you probably aren't. Not to worry, as you can watch the genre-spoof episodes with as much pleasure as I take in watching the often genius comedic scenarios unfold. The two-part season finale was especially amazing this year, simultaneously lambasting and giving a great big bearhug to the Western and Space Opera. Can't wait to see what they do with paintball next year.
A

Doctor Who [2005]
(Series 6.0, BBC)
The first half of this year's Doctor Who was, as far as I'm concerned, absolutely brilliant. Matt Smith continues to impress as the 11th incarnation of the Doctor. I think it's safe to say he's now surpassed Christopher Eccleston as my favorite Doctor. Yeah, really. And considering he's already partnered with Karen Gillan's Amy Pond -- without question my favorite companion -- there's little for me not to love about what direction the show has gone these past two years. Even Rory has been allowed to grow into a character I care about with constant displays of bravado in the name of Amy, unlike the hopelessly dull Mickey of previous seasons, who was essentially a flesh K-9 placed in the storyline for little more than comic relief. Continued kudos goes to Steven Moffat, who between the past two seasons of Doctor Who and the recent Sherlock miniseries, is quickly becoming the British equivalent of Joss Whedon. Only he might even be better. The second half of the season returns later this month.
A

The Event
(Season 1, NBC)
Granted, I stopped the pain and gave up on The Event at the season's midpoint, but based on what I sat through, this was one of the worst pieces of episodic crap I've ever seen. The showrunners appeared entirely clueless as to where the story was going. Now, I've been told by a couple of people with far more patience than I who watch the series until it concluded that it improved after I jumped ship. But even their explainations of what happened afterward sounded like what was once a 10-pound bag of catshit was now 8 pounds of catshit. As far as I'm concerned, that's still a hella-lot of catshit.
F

Friday Night Lights
(Season 5, Direct TV/NBC)
Without question one of greatest dramas ever to be aired on television. And it ended perfectly. Not much more I can say. Watch it. Treasure it. Then re-watch it.

Texas forever.
A

Fringe
(Season 3, FOX)
Fringe is another show that continues to improve. If there was anyone left calling it an X-Files clone at the start of the season, they can't do so in good conscience any longer. The show has now fully embraced its own mythology, rarely offering an episode that doesn't largely contribute to the grander storyline. That decision hasn't been good from a ratings perspective as it's hindered the addition of new viewers, but creatively it was the way to go, and I applaud them for it. Definitely the best sci-fi show being produced in America right now. I was surprised it got a fourth season, but happily so. Hopefully it thrives in the Friday Night Death Slot it was placed into at the end of last season, and then maybe those X-Files comparisons will be apt again, albeit for different reasons as the adventures of Mulder and Scully was the last show with success in that time slot.
A

Human Target
(Season 2, FOX)
The first season showed promise, but it clearly needed some tweaks. On the plus side, the producers recognized this, too. Unfortunately their answer to that was Mrs. Pucci, who has to be one of the worst additions to a cast since Oliver on The Brady Bunch. Obviously she was brought in to make the show more female-friendly, but I found her presence insufferable and ultimately ruined the show despite its fairly impressive television stuntwork. Good riddance.
C-

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And thus concludes part one of this installment. Part 2, featuring reviews of Modern Family, Justified and Star Wars: The Clone Wars among others, will arrive ~~within the next week or so~~ AS SOON AS YOU CLICK THIS LINK!

Summertide - A Genres & Judgments Mixture

2011-08-10T03:16:00.000-04:00

Summer's been good to me. I'm finally rested up after what the first half of 2011 threw my way. I sense I'm about to get back into a posting groove in the coming days, especially delivering that embarrassingly overdue recap of the shows that have ended since my last write-up back in January (it might end up being 30 strong).

But first I needed a new slew of jams to help me focus. Thus, I give you Summertide.

Description and track list available after the jump.

Rivers Thaw - A Genres & Judgments Mixture

2011-03-05T23:53:00.049-05:00

Rivers Thaw is a 41-minute ode to moving on from winter told via 10 songs, nearly all of which have been unleashed upon our collective eardrums in these few weeks since the new year began.

Song descriptions and track list available after the jump.

'Member The Ed Lover Dance, Dawg? - A Genres & Judgments Mixture

2011-02-02T04:09:00.004-05:00

I don't have much to say about this batch of tunes. Other than "High School Lovers," which is an old favorite I re-discovered recently, all the tracks are new to me since my last mix. I spent a little longer crafting this one than my previous endeavors. Hopefully it shows.

Track list and listening links available after the jump.

Evaluating TV's Fall 2010 Semester (...Finally)

2011-01-28T22:23:00.002-05:00

I'm back with another breakdown of recently ended television shows, this time delayed roughly a month more than I had originally planned, and I apologize for that if you were waiting.
This slew of shows from the fall is almost exclusively comprised from AMC, HBO and FX, which are easily my favorite three networks. However, this is a bit of a mirage, as the big four networks broadcast their programming differently, and most of their shows will wrap up in the the late spring.

This edition covers shows having ended after September 16th, when my last recap was published, through December 31st, 2010.

------------------------------------

Boardwalk Empire
(Season 1, HBO)
When you hear Marty Scorsese directs the pilot of a new gangster show on HBO, you expect it to be good. And, unlike Treme, the other highly anticipated HBO show that debuted this year, Boardwalk didn't disappoint. That pilot was extraordinary, featuring great performances, writing and direction, as well as superb set and costume design. It looked more impressive than most big-screen period pieces do. That says a lot about how far television programming has come, as I doubt anyone would've been able to say that even five years ago. As fantastic as that Scorsese-directed episode was, the rest of the series never slowed down a bit in subsequent weeks. More often than not, blood, bullets and fisticuffs exploded onscreen with Great Depression-era culture and dilemmas. I felt the "slow" sections of Boardwalk were included more as a chance to let the audience catch their breath as oppossed to there being a lack of ideas in the writing room. Season 1 ended with a bit of a wimper in comparrison to the other events the series displayed thus far, but also showed promise of grander plots to come next year during the final minutes. A-

Bored To Death
(Season 2, HBO)
This show is simply a lot of fun. Jason Schartzman is a good straight man in all the hijinx his cases get him into. Ted Danson's aging, rich playboy facing cancer and Zach Galifianakis' brokenhearted comic artist trying to find happiness were infinitely more interesting this time around than they were in season 1. As a trio, they kill almost every situation they're in together. B

Caprica
(Season 1.5, SyFy)
The second half of the first season of Caprica was a welcome surprise. After underwhelming me and much of the Battlestar Galactica fanbase with the first wave of episodes, the new batch accomplished much of what I had expected early on. Season 1.5 no longer feared to associate itself with the BSG brand, exemplified by diving deeper into Tauron culture and making direct (albeit sometimes misleading) links to its predecessor. Wallowing in sorrow took up too much time in early episodes and turned off too many people, and unfortunately, the spinoff never recovered from it. At this point, it may not be worth it for disgruntled BSG fans to take a second look, but I was very impressed on where they took the show in those final few episodes. B+

Dexter
(Season 5, Showtime)
I am not a big Dexter fan, which I've discussed previously on the site. However, this may have been its strongest season yet. After an excruciatingly slow start, season 5 finished in explosive fashion. Each season the show finds a way to come up with a more interesting villain than the year before, and Johnny Lee Miller rose to the occasion this time. However, Julia Styles was the great strength this time out, as her portrayal of victim-turned-vindicator Lumin gave the show a spark it had never seen before. And I was happy to find that I didn't miss Julie Benz much at all. There's really no telling what's in store for the next season of Dexter, but I won't be surprised if it wins me over a little more than previous seasons have. B

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After the jump, I'll recap nine more shows that finished up their most reason season by the end of 2010, including Mad Men and The Walking Dead.
Read more »

The Best of 2010 - The Year in Television

2011-01-20T05:40:00.002-05:00

First off, my apologies if you were waiting for this final piece of my Best of 2010 trilogy. The holidays, work, intense procrastination, blah-blah-blah...
Second, writing about TV over the course of a calendar year is far more difficult than I realized it was going to be. It's simply not a natural time to do so. Most shows are in the middle of their current season at the moment, and if I get really technical about my analysis in this recap, I should take into account the second half of last season's episodes as well (which, because I'm a crazy person who thinks about this stuff too much, I do).
Anyway, on with the list.

------------------------------------

Terriers (FX)

This scrappy PI duo was the very definition of television bliss. Rarely does a show steadily improve over the course of 13 episodes the way Terriers did. The first three or so installments were nice, well-constructed hour-longs. You'd chuckle at the banter between Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James, and be pleasantly surprised that the plotlines weren't too obvious as they proceeded to solve that week's case. But there was a little something bubbling up underneath these two men and their predicaments. Then around the end of end of that fourth episode, you realized these mofos just Veronica Mars-ed your ass. You had NO idea that was going down, and from then on out, they never stopped hittin' the pleasure buttons as you fell harder for every character on the show with each passing week.
But I'm one of the few who watched it, and now it's gone. I haven't been this disappointed in a show's cancellation since... well, Veronica Mars. Have no fear, however, new viewers. While Terriers only lasted one season, it at least ends in a way you can still go on with your life, as there is no insane cliffhanger and the majority of the key storylines are resolved in a satisfactory way during that last hour. If you're going to watch anything on this list, let it be Terriers.

Mad Men (AMC)

Another stellar season from the always excellent Mad Men. In it's fourth year, the show examined lowest points of multiple characters, none moreso than Don Draper, as our favorite ad agency struck out on it's own in a new business endeavor following the series-altering events of season 3. Don't worry, there's still plenty of drinking, smoking, bad-mothering, racism, sexism and skinny ties to go around. We're introduced to a litany of ladies vying for the heart of Mr. Draper (a great guessing game over the course of the season as to who he'll end up with), Lane's father, Peggy's lesbian friend, suave Glen, new bitch-faces from Pete, Roger begging, and Joan riding a bus. Not to mention an astronaut. Season 5 can't arrive soon enough.

Community (NBC)

For my money, there's nothing more consistently funny on the airwaves than Community right now. In particular, the second half of the first season was amazing episode after amazing episode. The ensemble half-hour is at it's best when parodying classic genres, whether it be post-apocalyptic warfare, zombie infestation, space exploration, or the American mafia to name a few. I sell this show to friends and family by saying Chevy Chase is great in it, which he is. But really, he's the one I look forward to least. Community is comedy gold. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Friday Night Lights (DirecTV/NBC)
Of all the shows that are tricky to review based on it's scheduling, none pose more of a problem than FNL. Season 4 originally aired on DirecTV at the end of 2009, and then re-aired on NBC in the spring of 2010. Season 5 is in mid-swing on DirecTV currently, but most of you won't have access to it until NBC airs it later this year. Fortunately, any way you look at it, great television was aired in 2010 from Friday Night Lights. Season 4 was perhaps the show's strongest, and season 5 thus far has been no slouch. Despite its flaws (none of the kids seem to know what a text message is, and there's almost zero Latinos present in an entire Texas summon me to write such lofty claims, but this one does. I'm sorry that season 5 will be its last.

Justified (FX)

Based on characters from the great Elmore Leonard, Justified expertly combines well-scripted crimes, quirky characters and an Old West mentality in a modern setting, and is without question one of the highlights in television over the past year. After reading a lot of other reviews on the show from critics, there seemed to be a consensus that Justified was uneven at the outset of its first season and then improved steadily as it concluded. I suppose they're right, but I enjoyed it immensely right out of the gate. Great one-liners, intense glares and gunfire are never in short supply. I found myself rooting for the villains just as often as I was the heroes, which is no small feat. Season 2 starts in February.

Fringe (FOX)

Is this the best sci-fi show on television? Well, there are some other very strong contenders for that title at the moment (who have all made my Others Worth Your Time list after the jump), but I think the answer is yes. The second half of last season really threw the show into a new realm of awesome, and season 3 has only improved upon that high level. As dueling universes continue to battle, wrapping an already complexly wound mythos even tighter, Fringe is surpassing previous seasons work both in terms of storytelling and acting. Anna Torv in particular has excelled in this two-Earth format, displaying a range in her ability she'd never been given opportunity to explore previously. FOX has moved the show to Fridays in 2011, traditionally a timeslot where good science-fiction such as Firefly and Dollhouse have been sent out to pasture. However, the network execs say they believe it can be a longtime staple, ala The X-Files at that position on the schedule. Time will tell.

Louie (FX)

This harsh, often provocative new comedy from Louis C.K. plays up his existence as an aging, out-of-shape comic through his daily life, whether it be encountering obsessed fans, his family or the women he hopelessly attempts at dating. It's unconventional structure, sometimes tossing out as many as four loosely connected stories, may be a turn off to some, but I appreciate the subtlety he utilizes by constructing each of the vignettes into a cohesive episode. As I enter my 30s, many of these topics on the show hit pretty close to home, sometimes uncomfortably so. But I'm sure that's the point. The show's humor is rooted in truth -- philosophically, if not in actuality.

Lost (ABC)

Like it, love it, or loathe it, the final season of Lost was both memorable and entertaining. Personally, I've teetered back and forth whether I was actually satisfied by its conclusion. Regardless, it was an engaging end to a show many of us have labored with for years, and in my opinion was one of the best of the year.

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After the jump, my pick for Television Series of the Year is revealed, as well as some other extras.

The Best of 2010 - The Films of the Year

2010-12-17T10:20:00.004-05:00

What follows is a quick review on what I felt was the best film of 2010, preceded by eight others which were impressive in their own right. Beyond that, I've also taken a look back at some of the other movies I watched this year -- good and bad. If you're curious about any of the films I list here, each is linked to a trailer.

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The Town
The Town is perfect... just an absolutely perfect heist flick, that is. There's really nothing new going on here when it comes to this sort of story, but I can't think of another movie so successful in the execution of all these standard elements at once -- internally tortured lead character, engaging romantic interest, bucking against the pull of childhood friendship, FBI agents who aren't one-dimensional, great getaway/chase scenes and even better stick-ups. What a cast; everyone in this movie knocked it out of the park -- Renner, Hamm, Hall, Lively, Cooper, Welliver. And Affleck is solid as well.
People may scoff at me when they read this, but even with only two films under his directorial belt, Ben Affleck is starting to turn into this generation's Clint Eastwood -- a big-time actor morphing into a top-notch filmmaker. Pay attention to whatever it is he does next as a director. He's earned it.

Inception
At the surprise no one, Christopher Nolan continues to own our asses. I'm not sure what I can say about this film that hasn't already been posted somewhere on the internet. Maybe it didn't reach the heights of some people's lofty expectations, but I think even many of us who walked into the theater this summer hoping for a great film weren't disappointed. I recall being mesmerized for a few days afterward. The only legitimate critique I've heard regarding it was that it didn't go far enough within the dreams as it could have. Touche. Anything else seems to be obnoxious nit-picking.

Winter's Bone
This movie follows the trek of young Ree Dolly as she attempts to learn the whereabouts of her fugitive father in order to save her impoverished family from losing their home. Treading through both strained family history and violent locals, the teenage girl repeatedly sacrifices herself and her dreams in order to care for her young siblings and disturbed mother. The highly original setting in the Ozark Mountains gives this bleak drama a sense of foreboding I can't recall seeing in some time. Winter's Bone is haunting and harrowing during its most-intense moments, yet still has the ability to fill an audience with vigor by its conclusion.

The Killer Inside Me
Now THIS is some film noir, baby. Based on Jim Thompson's classic 1952 novel, The Killer Inside Me is the picture of a criminally warped mind encased in a community pillar of a small Texas town. Casey Affleck's portrayal of small-town sheriff and complete sociopath Lou Ford is brilliant. Now, this movie has been labeled as a work of misogyny, which I see the argument for, but egregiously overlooks and distracts from the film as a whole. You can't watch this movie and not have the violence burned into your memory. It contains scenes that, without a doubt, are some of the most brutal I have ever seen on film -- they are completely revolting, yet simultaneously mesmerizing. But, honestly, these assaults make up a only few minutes of the film, unlike some of the others I've referenced in this article (Kick-Ass and The Expendables in particular) and many entries from the filmographies of countless celebrated directors, such as Tarantino for example. Critics should give it another shot, because Michael Winterbottom pulled off this adaptation. At times, Killer is downright beautiful and should be recognized as such.

Kick-Ass
Everything you need to know about why Kick-Ass was phenomenal is in this clip.

The Ghost Writer
An excellent political thriller. Everything is top-notch here. Ewan McGregor delivers a necessarily strong performance as we weave along with him on a journey through a British politician's personal life and past. On the way to the truth, we're also given memorable scenes from Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach, as well as good work from Olivia Williams and Pierce Brosnan. The parts of this movie I'd normally delve into here are too spoilery for those who haven't seen it (which is probably most of you). This may not be a classic like Chinatown or as fun as The Ninth Gate, but The Ghost Writer shows Polanski is still at the top of his game.

Animal Kingdom
A simple, yet superb crime drama from top to bottom. After the death of his mother, confused teenager "J" Cody begins living with his grandmother and uncles, who are seeped in the Australian underworld. From there, his introduction into the criminal world takes his life and the lives of those he cares about into an uncontrollable tailspin. Guy Pearce is predictably fantastic as the cop trying to get the kid to turn on his family. Joel Edgerton oozes charisma as J's likable uncle (wouldn't be surprised to see him make an Eric Bana-esque splash in the next few years). And, man, what a performance from Jacki Weaver as the matriarch of the Cody clan. She makes Livia Soprano look like the mother of year. This crime drama is very curious in that there is barely any actual crime shown. Much of it is alluded to of course, but even then it's vague. But that doesn't take away from the story. If anything, it draws you in deeper. Highly recommended.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Soooooo much fun. I had a smile on my face the entire time. The editing and direction of this movie really deserve some sort of major recognition they'll undoubtedly fail to receive. I suspect Pilgrim will become regarded as an innovative movie for future filmmakers. Now I'm really looking forward to Edgar Wright's Ant-Man, which I believe is still in the works after The Avengers debuts in a few years from now.

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After the jump, my selection for Film of the Year, in addition to mentions of 28 other movies from 2010.

The Best of 2010 - The Albums of the Year

2010-12-10T09:47:00.004-05:00

Unlike the past few years, I threw a ton of new music at my eardrums in 2010, and a high percentage of it came out this year, too. So, while last year's pick of Yonder Is The Clock for album of year was unmistakably worthy, it may have been joined by some other selections had I actually made any effort to keep up with new music. That isn't the case this year.

What follows are the top eight albums I listened to this year. And, since I'm such a swell mofo, I linked a track from each one below the artwork for your listening pleasure.

Track 1: "Blue Blood Blues"

Sea Of Cowards
The Dead Weather
Another Jack White side project gone amazing. This album is angry, mysterious and subversive, all while rocking the f out.

Track 13: "When I'm With You"

Crazy For You
Best Coast
I was intoxicated by this group and their lo-fi surf rock for most of the summer. They remind me a little of a female-led version of the Ramones with early Beach Boys mentality seeped in today's world. Simplicity at its finest. Good luck not getting addicted to it.

Track 3: "Power"

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kanye West
Even President Obama recognizes he's a jackass, but the ridiculous celebrity antics can't stifle my ability to praise the dude's brilliance as a musician. Kanye sampled King Crimson's "21st-Century Schizoid Man" to perfection on "Power"; growing up with a father obsessed with that great prog-rock band, that's the previously unimagined highlight for me. Sit down, embrace and revel Kanye's narcissism. It's the best way to absorb this one.

Track 2: "Drugs"

LP4
Ratatat
I find it tough to classify this instrumental duo. Electronic tracks with a smattering of synthesized guitars is the best portrait I can muster up. Despite the lack of ability on my part to describe their music, the fourth album from these two dudes is the bomb. You're taken on a mini journey on LP4 (much as you were on LP3) as they drastically alter mood and atmosphere within virtually each song. Check it.

Track 7: "Cousins"

Contra
Vampire Weekend
Those preppy fuckers somehow one-upped their debut album with their second effort.

Track 4: "Kill My Baby"

Reform School Girl
Nick Curran & The Lowlifes
Nick Curran is a white dude covered in tattoos that has pipes Little Richard might be jealous of. Combine that with 1950s rock 'n roll song structure, a healthy dose of punk attitude and lyrics a more upstanding member of society might find tasteless, and this album is impossible to not enjoy. The title track is my personal favorite, but Curran and company didn't dump any filler on this album. There's plenty of good tunes to devour here.

Track 3: "Laredo"

Infinite Arms
Band of Horses
Another triumph. Well done, boys.

Track 4: "Howlin' For You"

Brothers
The Black Keys
This is a slight musical step up for the blues-rock duo, as they brought in additional instrumentation for some of the songs this time around to supplement the lone guitar and drum makeup of their previous five albums. But have no fear, there aren't any overly drastic changes going on here; you'll know this is a Keys' LP from the start with tales of wayward ladies breaking hearts and those gloriously fuzzy riffs they deliver so well.

More of the Best of 2010

The Films of the Year
The Year in Television

Drawing the Human Body - A Genres & Judgments Mixture

2010-12-08T23:41:00.004-05:00

Before hitting you up with the Fall TV report card and my end-of-year media rundown, here's a brief alternative to the plethora of Christmas music playing right now. This is more or less a burning-off of some cuts I've been digging of late, so ring in the new year with a crisp selection of tunes.

Track list and download link available after the jump.

And Thus Spoke The Graffito - A Genres & Judgments Mixture

2010-10-01T03:02:00.002-04:00

Been listening to some good jams lately, but hadn't sourced any into a playlist since my last endeavor. Some entries were relatively brand new to my ears since July, while others are long-forgotten favorites recently rediscovered via a shuffling iPod.

Whether it be a testament to a diversity of soundscapes or merely an example of musical psychosis, is for you to determine. Regardless, I implore you to enjoy.

Track list and download link available after the jump.

TV's Summer 2010 Report Card

2010-09-16T03:50:00.002-04:00

I'm back with another comprehensive recap of the past few months of my television viewing. Looking back, it was an excellent summer for TV. I mean, when the David Simon entry is the amongst the least interesting shows you've watched, I believe that's a sign you've surrounded yourself in some quality programming.

This edition covers shows having ended after June 1st, when my last recap was published, through September 12th.

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Breaking Bad
(Season 3, AMC)
Is this now the best show on television? In my mind, only Mad Men gives it a run for it's money. Season 3 was THAT good. A horse with no name. Gustavo. Hank slamming the SUV into reverse. The tortoise. Saul. Leg blood on a hospital floor. Motherfucking Badger's voice. The Chicken Brothers. Mike the PI/hitman. That one god-damned fly. And those are just the ancillary bits of Breaking Bad I get jacked up for. I don't think Mad Men, as phenomenal as it is, is constructed in a way that I can enjoy it as I now enjoy the trials of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. A+

Doctor Who
(Series 31, BBC)
What a blast this latest incarnation of Doctor Who turned out to be. Even if you prefer David Tennant as the Doctor, I think you have to admit Matt Smith did an admirable job taking over the reigns of the series. I feel he did a fantastic job and accepted him by the time the second episode of the season rolled around. And of course, there's the mega-crushable Karen Gilliam as Amy Pond, who is easily my favorite companion not only because she's a cutie pie, but also because she's intelligent, mischievous and . Rory was also a nice addition, and was in perfect doses. But let us not forget Steven Moffat, who I justifiable praise on this site constantly, taking over the show's direction from Russell T. Davies. A fabulously entertaining season resulted from mixing high concept science fiction, simple humor, and repeatedly tugging and tearing at our heartstrings as each week's story progressed. As much as I enjoyed this season, I expect 2011 to bring an even better one. A-

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After the jump, you'll find the nine other shows I watched to completion this summer, including Entourage, True Blood and some more fantastic imports from overseas.

Read more »

Summer 2010's TV Supplement

2010-09-01T01:49:00.017-04:00

There are only a handful of shows worth watching during the summer (a recap of those will arrive once True Blood and the other HBO shows wrap up). Compound that with the fact that other than Inception and Iron Man 2, I had zero interest in the cinema these past few months, I embarked on a massive TV binge this year, catching up on loads of shows I'd been recommended by friends and acquaintances, or just plain wanted to check out. Behold.

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Being Human
(Series 2, BBC)

This show continued to show great balance between horror, drama and humor wrapped into a well-crafted universe of the supernatural, and provided another strong season. For those of you who are not familiar, Being Human revolves around the lives of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost who live together in a flat (hey, it's British), and deal with everyday problems of existence in modern society in realistic, yet interesting ways relative to the show's context. They gave us a very nice cliffhanger this season, and series 3 is amongst the shows I'm most looking forward to return. In addition, there's an American version on the horizon via SyFy at some point, although I'm sure they'll find a way to f it up.

Charlie Jade
(Season 1, Canadian Space Channel)

A parallel universe jumping version of Blade Runner? While it certainly gave off that vibe in the early episodes, Charlie Jade didn't quite live up to my initial lofty expectations. Revolving through a trio of universes, this sci-fi tale had all the grand hallmarks of modern noir, while simultaneously warning of the dangers of big-brother commerce. Making its premiere the same year that brought us LOST (2004), this joint project from Canadian and South African companies probably was a bit ahead of its time in terms of widespread audience acceptance.Also, its inconsistent level of engaging stories during the middle portion of its lone season wouldn't have helped its changes of success much. However, it ended rather triumphantly, and had some nice little tales in spots. I wish the second season, which was written, had been produced. There was a lot of potential in those three universes, not to mention all the others they could've explored and exploited down the line.

Community
(Season 1, NBC)

As you'll see later on in this column, this was a very good year for new comedies, as Community joined the ranks of my favorites this year. I always enjoyed Joel McHale on The Soup, but he's even better in this format. Add in a rejuvenated Chevy Chase, Pittsburgh's own Gillian Jacobs (who I dare you not to develop a TV crush on), and Ken Jeong's Senor Chang who all highlight the cast, but certainly don't overshadow the ones I haven't taken the time to list, and I'm constantly laughing out loud. Easily graduated to must-watch status for me.

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After the jump, I liked some of what I saw from the highly recommend list of Dexter, Modern Family, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Arrested Development. But not all of them.

Read more »

First Heard in Summer 2010 - "You Are Not A Number You Are Many Numbers"

2010-08-23T01:11:00.005-04:00

When I woke up this morning, I wasn't planning on making a mix. My life is different now. Today, I heard my first Justin Bieber song.

I believe in maintaining a balanced media diet, consuming a mixture of high and low culture. I don't have any guilty pleasures, and I often get as much enjoyment, both sincere and anthropological, out of hugely popular entertainment as I do more "challenging" "art." I don't disparage people for being into stuff that I don't find substantive, and in fact I like to live vicariously through people who go apeshit over stuff like Twilight or professional sports. On TV, I run the gamut from Mad Men to iCarly. In a given movie-watching week, I could be taking in The Archers' "Black Narcissus" or "Step Up 3D" (make sure to grab some glasses before you sneak in).

Kelly Clarkson comes between Vashti Bunyan and cLOUDDEAD on my iPod. And I know Justin Bieber. But somehow his music eluded me. Until now.

Enter the internet meme of the week: a version of Bieber's "U Smile" stretched from its original 3:21 length into a 35-minute ambient drone. It's a funny idea, but I found the end result legitimately mind-blowing, and oddly moving. In a weird way, it amplifies, to absurdly epic proportions, everything that I love about "disposable" pop music. The original Bieber track is grating and overproduced, soulless but well-constructed. The 35-minute version moves beyond the bland sentiment of the vocals and allows you to appreciate the song on a subatomic level, to revel in its airtight construction. Its valleys and crescendos take on massive weight, it's like a Pixies song played by a choir of angels.

Above all, this song made me feel like I was on the beach in the middle of the night. And I got to thinking about the end of summer. So, Justin Bieber inspired me to make a mix of end-of-summer songs, some literal, most just appropriately wistful or angry. Plus, I included one of the best and most insane hip-hop boast tracks that I've heard in a long time, wherein Busta Rhymes uses the word "frankfurters."

001 Brian Eno - Spider and I
002 Cloud Nothings - Even If It Worked Out
003 Royce Da 5'9" - Dinner Time (feat. Busta Rhymes)
004 The Soft Pack - Down On Loving
005 The Chap - We Work in Bars
006 Tamaryn - Choirs of Winter
007 Janelle Monae - Tightrope (feat. Big Boi)
008 Arcade Fire - City With No Children
009 Gauntlet Hair - Our Scenery
010 Dum Dum Girls - Yours Alone
011 Pop Winds - Owl Eyes
012 Courier News - Empty Clouds
013 Sufjan Stevens - Heirloom
014 Justin Bieber - U Smile (Slowed Down 800%)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

TV Tweets: Aug. 14 - 20

2010-08-20T14:01:00.000-04:00

As always, you can follow me at LowBrowJon for an advance peak at my potentially forgone fallacies, as well as other LBM updates.

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Aug. 19th [Louie]

I find it kinda creepy that each ep of #Louie finds a way to slightly mirror my life more than it did the week prior.

Okay, so I don't have kids, I've never done drugs and I love my mom, but damn, lots of situations on Louie really hit home with me.

I love it.

Take this week's episode, titled "Bully." (Major spoilers for this particular episode follow, so some of you may want to skip ahead to the next portion of the article at the link below.) Louie is on a date with a woman way out of his league, but he's convincingly winning her over anyway with his humor, because we all know it's not his physique or what's left of that ginger hairline of his. In walks a group of rowdy high schoolers, who he yells at to be quiet. Things continue to look promising for the date. However, one kid walks over and eventually challenges Louie to a fight. Of course Louie doesn't fight him, but he backs down in such an overwhelmingly emasculating way, I wanted to bash my head in because I know there's a very good chance I'd do something similar. Seriously. Fight a teenager? Please. Now, maybe knowing there's woman across the table watching all of this would spring me into action, but if she weren't there, yeah, I'd let the kid run over me. However, Louie backs down, forever ruins his chances with the woman and is humiliated all at the same time. Then the next two-thirds of the episode unfold. Pure genius.

This new show from Louis C.K. is so fantastic, I'm happy Lucky Louie didn't catch fire during it's only season -- although it was rad, too. Oh, and the dude flipping off the camera in the foreground for a split second during the Louie intro is an added bonus each week. See if you can catch it before the censors do.

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For further reading, I offer you the opportunity to follow me after the jump, where you will find a mini discussion on Hung's exploration of American life amid the recession and Big Johnson t-shirts.

TV Tweets: Aug. 3 - 13

2010-08-13T22:41:00.002-04:00

As always, you can follow me at LowBrowJon to get my ostentatious oratory (so to speak), as well as other LBM updates.

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Aug. 9th [True Blood, Mad Men]

Ho-hum. Another week, another f'ed up sex scene to end an episode of #TrueBlood.

He's on a horse.

As is no surprise, True Blood continues gettin' it on with its sexually explicit self, which is as it should be. Although the Beeeeel/Sookie reunion was nowhere near as over-the-top as the Bill/Lorena escapade earlier this season (mainly because there was nothing comparable to The Exorcist this time), it still left me with an uneasiness all the same.
Overall, I've been enjoying this season. The Sam storyline is super annoying and lame, but the rest are at least entertaining, which is really all I expect from this show. Give me crazy creatures doing ridiculous things to each other, and I'll continue to be happy.

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After the jump, Mad Men rings in the new year, and the pieces of Rubicon get more interesting.

TV Tweets: June 1 - Aug. 2

2010-08-06T00:25:00.009-04:00

Welp, I done did it again. Been away for far too long. But my life changes appear to be over now, and hopefully I can get back into the groove. Here's a catching-up edition.

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June 16th [Breaking Bad]

Gah! #BreakingBad, you are some cliffhanging bastards.

Spoiler?

What an amazing season this was. Plenty of time to catch up before season 4 returns if you're not watching. Do yourself a favor and start it up sooner than later.

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After the jump, we'll delve into the Treme finale, the return of Mad Men and the BBC's latest incarnation of Sherlock Holmes.

Read more »

mojito - A Genres & Judgments Mixture

2010-07-20T00:36:00.005-04:00

Playlists used to be one of my grand specialties in another age, mainly of the 90-minute cassette tape. Hadn't made one for at least 5 years before this one, so I'm probably rusty, but dig it nonetheless.

This being a particularly sweltering mid-July in the Northeast, I had summer on the gray matter. So as I sat in my new apartment and somehow resisted turning on the A/C to keep my dollars in tow for autumn, I cobbled together some of the best music that was new to me in the last two or three months. And I only cheated once with The Explorers Club with that time frame, but they just scream summer and begged for inclusion.

There's a decent mix of styles here which I feel encapsulates the spirit of summer from the mad jam of a house party, to the longing crush you won't see for months, to the drink that tastes just a little better on a day with a high dew point, to the realization that fall's about to kick in and you better enjoy the heat while you still can. I tossed in two fantastic covers (Bob Dylan & Buddy Holly), and limited myself to only two tracks from Best Coast (my current musical obsession).

Btw, I just discovered blip.fm. So if you're feeling so inclined, become one of my listeners to see what music I'm into at any given moment. Without further delay, I present mojito.

Track list and download link after the jump.

Reel Low: The Last Airbender

2010-07-06T12:46:00.000-04:00

It’s hard to imagine a movie can fail in as many ways as M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” does. Given the apparent rich source material, it makes me question Shyamalan’s ability as a film maker and as a storyteller.

“The Last Airbender” is the first of what is presumably a trilogy of films adapting the three television seasons of “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, which tells the story of the boy Aang who is the last of the Air Nomads and prophesied savior of the world. Aang has been trapped in ice for the past 100 years having run away from his duties as the avatar. While he’s been on ice, the world has been devastated by war as the Fire Nation has moved to subjugate the world under its fist. Now that Aang has resurfaced, the armies of the Fire Nation and its dishonored prince pursue him to prevent him from thwarting their plans. Aang and his newfound friends, Katara and Sokka, set off on a journey so that Aang might learn to bend the other elements and become the hero the world needs.

A pretty standard setup that looks great on paper but is so poorly executed it makes me wonder how Shyamalan was unable to do anything great with it. The dialogue is poorly scripted and often gives characters lines describing actions the audience has just seen on screen seconds earlier. I like to think audiences haven’t become that inattentive. There also seemed to be some disagreement on how names and words should be pronounced, most being pronounced in a way that makes me think the actors were trying to sound either smart or Brittish.

The action scenes felt clunky and poorly shot with a lot of the wire-work standing out as wire-work. There is little about them that builds tension or excitement. The only thing about the action scenes and the movie in general that really worked was the music. Also, Shaun Toub’s performance as Uncle Iroh was one of the few shining points, breathing the only sense of humor into an overall dull atmosphere.

Before “The Last Airbender” came out, there was controversy over casting Caucasians in ethnic roles. Now that it is out, it can be said that is least of the film’s problems. This movie was lacking in so many ways that it’s (hopefully) doubtful that the other two seasons will get covered. If they do have a go at them, I hope they can bring someone else on board who might be able to salvage the mess Shyamalan has left in his wake.

TV Tweets: May 23 - 31

2010-06-01T22:37:00.007-04:00

As always, you can follow me at LowBrowJon to get my boisterous blips, as well as other LBM updates.

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May 24th [Lost, Treme]

Can the haters at least agree that the last #Lost was better than the #Sopranos finale?

I've discussed this show enough in the last 10 days.

Those trailers were a haunting sight. LaDonna probably just moved to the top of my favorite #Treme storyline list after this week.

As expected, Treme continues to be excellent. I'm sure I'll change my mind on my favorite storyline soon enough. Khandi Alexander's heartbreaking performance as LaDonna is the Treme character du jour, but there's just too much good here to stay fixated on one element for too long. Wendell Pierce is lovable. Steve Zahn is electric. Lucia Micarelli is pure talent. Clarke Peters is inspiring. Kim Dickens is a joy. And John Goodman cusses like no other.

May 25th [American Idol]

RT @simonsam Goodbye, Simon Cowell. I'll think of you whenever I see a guy in a t-shirt acting like an asshole, which is pretty often.

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After the jump, I say goodbye to 24, hello to Dexter, and am initially rendered speechless by Breaking Bad.

Grading the 2010 Television Season Thus Far

2010-06-01T00:52:00.007-04:00

As I've let the Lost finale marinate in my mind these past few days, I've been contemplating why we watch TV. For me, it's more than just passing the time. A finely-crafted, serialized story is probably the most enjoyable form of art I can think of. A great movie is a wonderful feat, but I prefer the evolving tales of a group of characters since it allows extensive exploration of plot and character if done well. Since there are just so many damn good shows on right now, I've felt the need to analyze and discuss them here on the site. All of that is a long way of saying that this week's Lost made me want to assess each show I watched since 2010 began.
It feels odd only looking at the shows which have just recently ended even though most began back in the fall, but I had to have a cut-off point. Plus, I know I loved shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm this year, but too much time has passed for me to properly rate them after nearly six months time has passed. As a result, anything that concluded before 2010 will be ignored.

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24
(Season 8, Fox)
Decent ending to a show that should've bowed out a few years ago. I know there's a movie in the works, but this felt rather uninspired for a series finale. This year, the show tried to pull new twists and brought back some old villains, but I think we've all become desensitized to everything 24 has thrown at us at this point after eight days. On a side note, I don't think they really ever topped that absolutely insane decapitation early in season 2. C

30 Rock
(Season 4, NBC)
Part of me wants to chastise them for using so many high-profile guest stars and instead focus on more great shenanigans for Jack and Liz, but when they come up with ways to use Jon Hamm, James Franco and Julianne Moore as they did, I have to remind myself to just enjoy the ride instead. Don't need to see Matt Damon again though. Best part of the show is still Alec Baldwin, who slays me each week. B+

Big Love
(Season 4, HBO)
I have never hated a main character of a show the way I despise Bill Henrickson right now. Part of me feels I should hate His power trips are purely for self glory; I don't buy this testament bull for a second. The politics angle struck me as unnecessary as it unfolded, but the end result has set up season 5 to have some truly extreme hardships for that family on the horizon. And, man, did I miss Roman this year. They got rid of him too soon. Although the result was more Alby, which I found to be fascinating storyline. B-

Caprica
(Season 1, SyFy)
Sadly, Caprica was not as great as I hoped it'd be. There's certainly room for it to improve, but measuring up to it's parent show, Battlestar Galactica, is probably not going to happen. Technically, season one hasn't concluded, which is fortunate since it's midseason finale was only mildly exciting. However, the sooner we all stop wishing it to be BSG, the better. B-

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After the jump, see the other 11 shows I covered that recently wrapped up.

Read more »

Reaction to the Lost Finale: Leon Takes Us Outside

2010-05-25T10:03:00.000-04:00

I’m not quite sure why I’m writing this. You see, I never really got into Lost, having been made to endure the first season a few years back on DVD. By endure I don’t mean that it was a wholly unpleasant experience, however with all of the build up that was heaped upon the show I was left with a very “meh” feeling after. It should also be said that I was made to watch it all over a two day period having spent three days on the road from Los Angeles for Christmas holiday. It’s possible that tainted my experience.

In any case, it’s kind of surprising the show didn’t hook me. It had elements that would have drawn me in otherwise. First, you had average people in extraordinary circumstances. Second, there were the oh so mysterious mysteries. Third, there was Terry O’Quinn who I loved in Chris Carter’s other TV show (no, not Harsh Realm), Millennium. None of these things helped me overcome the inertia I felt for the show. Even later when I dropped in for a few minutes with various episodes, I caught glimpses of things that probably should have piqued my curiosity but didn’t really do anything for me, “Oh, look, why is he turning that thing and why did the island just disappear?”

Now I’m immersed in the zeitgeist over the shows finale as familiar names are flung around, mingled with others that mean little to nothing to me. Is this the final straw? The one that makes me run out and buy/rent/borrow the multiple seasons that are available on Blu-Ray or DVD? Not just yet. I’m thinking that at some point in the future I might give this show a shot. Once all of the smoke has cleared and the ashes have settled to the ground, and everyone has stopped talking about it, I’ll quietly sit down and give it a go. Maybe then I can find myself Lost.

Reaction to the LOST Finale: The Stages of Loss

2010-05-24T16:26:00.019-04:00

Consider my Complete Series boxed set pre-ordered.

I am a little surprised by the negative feedback this super-sized episode is receiving in the forums, because for my money ($0, granted) the Lost series finale was every bit as emotionally and intellectually satisfying as I could have hoped, perhaps even more so. It was also frequently thrilling on a visceral level, as with that insanely epic showdown between Jack and Locke on the cliff face. I watched the finale as part of a 9-person group, which was an extremely enjoyable and enriching viewing experience, and we all lost our shit as Jack advanced on Locke, leaping into the air to deliver a knockout punch. We also exalted with nerd glee over pretty much everything Lapidus (!) said, including, "In case you haven't noticed, I'm a pilot."

But action-adventure and laughs aside, what really makes this show special is the ideas that it provokes, the discussions it fosters and the communal experience it creates. Lost is without a doubt an anomaly on network television. It is a singularly weird, creator-driven show that completely denies passive viewing and yet somehow became hugely popular. As such, it has transformed even the most conventional of TV viewers into dedicated followers. The images of Jimmy Kimmel and his audience watching the final moments of the show, tears streaming down their rapt faces, were surprisingly poignant and indicative of this odd shared human experience. I've experienced little in my pop culture life quite like the minute-plus of complete, reverent silence among my previously jovial viewing group after the final image of Jack's closing eye. Nor have I experienced much like the hour-plus of spirited discussion that emerged when the dust settled. And in response to this season's critical battle between character and mythology, we definitely weren't discussing food drops and Hurley birds.

I, of course, don't mean to discount the fun of getting lost in Dharma history and contemplating time paradoxes, but these ancillary diversions were always secondary to, and deepened by Lost's emphasis on character. This is a lesson that ABC has failed to learn as it scrambles to replace Lost, evidenced by the trail of cardboard mystery shows it has left in its wake. What seems to be infuriating finale viewers the most - the lack of a concrete explanation of the Island's power - is one of the things I liked most about the finale, and ultimately the series. It is infinitely more intriguing to think that anyone who could even approach understanding the source of the Island's ancient power is long, long dead, and the various characters who have stumbled across it over the millennia (from Jacob to the Dharma Initiative to Jack) are acting on guesswork and pure faith. The Island is in many ways an existential Rorschach blot, and the methods by which the individual characters attempt to interpret its mysteries are far more valuable than any rote "answer" Lindelof and Cuse could have provided as to where "The Light" comes from and who built "The Cork."

The controversial Flash-Sideways storyline follows through on the show's promise of a character emphasis. Just as the Flashbacks at the start of the series fleshed out these characters and hinted at their importance to one another, and the Flashforwards of mid-series emphasized just how much their experience on the island impacted their lives, the Flash-Sideways was an unexpected, moving and thoroughly appropriate coda illustrating the "Live Together, Die Alone" motto so prevalent from the start. Some are arguing that the "purgatory" aspect of the Sideways universe renders the Island reality meaningless. I disagree. As Christian tells Jack, everything that happened to him on the Island is real, and everything matters. So I still don't know why Walt was special. And I don't know who built the statue. I'm happy to theorize. We see the universe of Lost through the characters' eyes, and therefore we can only understand it as they do. And right now, as a fan, in the moment, I have no complaints. The show wasn't perfect, though it very frequently came close. But it didn't have to be perfect, it just had to feel like Lost. And all that really matters to me is that poor John Locke, eternally hopeful and just-as-eternally beaten down by the world, finally found peace. And Jack Shepherd, so emotionally-repressed and frustrated by his unfulfilled need for empiricism, finally let go. I could go on forever. And Vincent... You know, speaking purely as a dog lover, this show gave me everything I could ever want.

Reaction to the LOST Finale: A TV TWEETS Special

2010-05-24T12:38:00.000-04:00

Well, I just got home from a little Lost party and, other than the three other people I watched it with, haven't heard any other people's reactions as of yet. We all seemed a bit unsure if we completely liked it, but no one was outraged either. At this moment, roughly half of an hour after the wreckage on the beach rolled with the credits, I think I liked it. Here's why.

For me, Lost hasn't been about the puzzles or the monsters or the fantastic impossibilities for a while. Probably been two, maybe three years since I gave a shit about what those damn numbers meant. But I continued watching more out of just habit and water cooler sustainability. I wanted to see if Desmond was ever going to get to be with Penny. If Jin would ever get to meet his daughter. If Sayid could ever forgive himself. If Jack would stop trying to fix everything. And why were these people doing these crazy things in the first place?

Well, we learned last week that Jacob picked this group (excuse the paraphrasing) because they were flawed, lonely people. And what does Christian explain to Jack in that penultimate scene? That he will be with his fellow castaways, the people he loves, presumably forever in the afterlife. The journey they went on together forged deep bonds of friendship and love, the kind of relationships none of them had prior to crashing on that island. The group became greater than the sum of it's broken individual parts. And they got to be together, forever.

I'm sure there's a mountain of hate and nitpicking going on right now across the interwebs. But, in this moment, I like "The End." A lot. Chalk it up to the memory of that magical first season or my iPod striking a chord while very coincidentally playing Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Hesitating Beauty" on my trip home from that viewing party (key lines for me being: "By the stars and clouds above/We could spend our lives in love"), but in my book it was a fine ending. Certainly not perfect or as grand as we might have dreamed in 2005, but still satisfactory.

I think only the truly depraved amongst us wouldn't want to spend eternity with the most beloved people in our lives. Ultimately, what else is there?

The Longbox

2010-05-23T17:40:00.003-04:00

The Avengers

issue: 1

writer: Brian Michael Bendis

artist: John Romita Jr.

publisher: Marvel

Siege is over after what seems like four long months of event and tie-in books. Now Marvel begins what it calls The Heroic Age with a relaunch of one of its core titles, The Avengers. This first book in the series does not give the heroes much time to breathe before their first big threat is thrown at them.

The book starts out with a strong two pages as we see Immortus taken down by a group of heroes that bear an uncanny resemblance to the youngsters from the Next Avengers animated movie. Elsewhere/when, Steve Rogers, having taken over the position vacated by Norman Osborn and Tony Stark before him, is assembling a team of Avengers once again to protect and inspire the world. It isn’t long though before a super villain shows up to crash the party, namely Kang the Conqueror. It seems that Kang’s lifeline and all of reality are in jeopardy because the children of The Avengers (guess it really is the Next Avengers team) are wielding some kind of ultimate power. Kang charges the new team with building a time machine and stopping their offspring before all is lost.

I’m not as familiar as some are in regards to Avengers history, I’ve mainly been an X-Reader when it comes to Marvel books. Having said that, I found this new Avengers book to be instantly accessible and invoking a feeling of grand adventure that calls back to days gone by. There’s also that cool factor of having so many A-list heroes in the same room, on the same team. Bendis skillfully blends his brand of chummy super hero dialogue with some really great moments (the Spider-Man/Hawkeye exchange is pretty nice). Thor’s response to Kang’s arrival reminds us just what level of hero this team is on.

Here’s where I’ll probably get murdered by fanboys, but I’m just not a big fan of John Romita Jr. when he’s doing these kinds of super hero books. I love it when he handles more street level kinds of characters, like Daredevil, but with something like this, I’d prefer the talents of a George Perez or an Oliver Coipel Both of whom are just amazing at rendering heroes and action. Also, I’ve always thought Romita’s women look funny.

In the end, I liked how this book sets up not one, not two, but three different possible threats for the new team right out of the gate without it feeling strained or rushed. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other new Avengers titles bring to the table this month. Also, I might just have to check out Next Avengers.

Here is Jon's review of Next Avengers from last year.

TV Tweets: April 26 - May 22

2010-05-23T00:25:00.002-04:00

Well, maybe NOW I'm back in the saddle again since the last time didn't go so smoothly. It appears my technical issues are behind me with my new computer from Best Buy (always buy the service plan, boys and girls). Without further ado, away we go...

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April 29th [The Pacific]

I've watched 7 eps of #ThePacific and still the most exciting part each week is the charcoal pencil getting splintered apart in the intro.

Having finished this miniseries now, I need to make a slight addendum to that statement. Yes, I was incredibly dulled by this show. I could not understand why the perspective was constantly jumping from different groups of characters when I hadn't been given a chance to care about any of them. Then during the show's final installment, a bio for each character was flashed up. Somehow I had forgotten that these were all real people and the events were entirely based on historical record. Then the pieces came together. If it were a pure work of fiction, The Pacific would have been a colossal failure. I still don't think it was great, but at least I can understand why the story followed its course in the manner it did.
However, I really was most enthralled by that charcoal pencil during the opening credits. As well put together as the battle effects were done, they simply did not pull me closer to the characters as those first few minutes of Saving Private Ryan did so many years ago. The Pacific is well-made, but certainly not a must-see.

April 30th [Party Down, Happy Town]

Man, I forgot how good #PartyDown can be.

A really great comedy that pretty much no one is watching. Martin Starr's Roman is the man, and my True Blood crush on Lizzy Caplan has become as big as they come for a totally different skill set she unleashes on Party Down. A third season is a pretty remote possibility, so I'm gonna enjoy this great little show while it lasts.

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After the jump, you'll find if Happy Town measures up to Twin Peaks, one of the worst situations to watch The Office in, and how Lost spoiled the end of The West Wing for me.

Longbox Special: Under Siege: The Finale

2010-05-16T14:51:00.000-04:00

Here we are at the end my friends. The end of Marvel’s latest super hero epic. No longer will we be

I’m going to break with my usual format this time around and just go ahead and talk about this weeks final five books interchangeably. Where to start though? Let’s start with how much of a fizzle I felt Siege #4 was. Up until this point, Bendis had been ratcheting things up with each issue and giving us a little bit of pay off each time. This issue should have been the big pay off, the last boss battle, the part of the story that should have hit us hard in the face and make us want more after. It didn’t really deliver that feeling, it felt more like a disjointed sequence of events that didn’t really mesh well.

Opening with Loki’s plea to his dead father to help the heroes overcome the Void seemed to play against what Loki had been working towards all this time. The argument can be made that he didn’t think it would get as bad as all this but I have to ask just why would it matter to him? From what we’ve seen in the Siege: Loki one shot, he wanted to be free from all that Asgard represented. Doesn’t its fall mark the biggest freedom he could get from it? I can understand a desire to save his fellow Asgardians but he decides to power up the assembled heroes, leaving his brothers and sisters to simply stand by and watch.

Once the heroes are powered up, things really don’t improve much, mainly because there isn’t much difference in how they appear. We get little snippets of pretty cliche dialogue telling us things like Iron Man’s batteries are charged and his systems are online. Great. Iron Man is on par with my car. The battle itself is underwhelming with the heroes taking shots at the Void until the Void destroys the Norn stones and Loki along with them. Then a non-suped up Thor proceeds to essentially hit the Void until it doesn’t move anymore. Why didn’t he just do this in the first place when he had more power at his disposal? Finally, he kills Bob and whisks his body off to a burial in the sun which lacks any kind of emotional weight.

This lack of emotional weight carries over in The Sentry: Fallen Sun where heroes gather to remember The Sentry. The book plods along and is fairly unremarkable as a memorial or farewell to the character. Of course there are the hints that he’ll be back. Also, apparently he and rogue hooked up. Great.

Siege: Embedded also managed to fall flat for me. It was a lot of Ben Urich just watching stuff happen and reminding us how small normal people are in the face of an event of this magnitude. The problem was that the book just didn’t feel big enough and I wasn’t sold on Ben’s sense of awe. It does give us a bit more Volstaag, which has always been enjoyable in this book.

Finally, there are two books that wrap up their runs along side the final installment of Siege; Dark Avengers and Avengers: The Initiative. Of the two, Avengers: The Initiative is arguable the weakest. It attempts to tie up all of the loose ends of the three stories it’s been weaving throughout the past few months. It also tries to set things up for the book set to replace it, Avengers Academy (or whatever they’re calling it). I really liked this book when it was focused on Taskmaster simply because he seemed like such an unlikely protagonist for the story. Things got bogged down when they started putting focus on fairly uninteresting side stories.

Dark Avengers was the one book that gave a really good send off to itself. It’s also been the only book to really portray Norman Osborn in something that resembles a sympathetic light. The coda that Osborn gets at the end of the book is some really fantastic writing from Bendis. I wonder where that kind of writing was for the last issue of Siege? If I haven’t mentioned it before, Victoria Hand was also an up point of this book. I’m happy to see that she made it through this and will be around for what follows.

So that’s it, the end, fin, I’ve got no more to say really. I had considered throwing The New Avengers Finale into this week’s article but it technically isn’t part of Siege. Also, it was pretty lacking too. Siege built itself up pretty nicely as did some of the tie-in books but in the end it didn’t feel like it delivered the goods. Sure, things are set up for Marvel’s Heroic Age and all that, but it would have been nice to have a better end to Osborn’s Dark Reign. In any case, it was fun doing these pieces even though it pulled me away from doing proper comic book reviews (if one can call my reviews proper). Maybe we’ll do this again sometime. Maybe I’ll just drink myself into a stupor instead. Take care and be well...

The Longbox

2010-05-09T13:12:00.000-04:00

S.H.I.E.L.D.

issue: 1

writer: Jonathan Hickman

artist: Dustin Weaver

publisher: Marvel

I’ve been a fan of Jonathan Hickman’s work since I was introduced to Pax Romana a few years back by fellow LBM contributor Jon. He has a way of working together text heavy segments with visual storytelling to produce a dense piece of graphic literature. S.H.I.E.L.D. is another departure from that style, one that he started moving away from with Marvel in the pages of Secret Warriors.

S.H.I.E.L.D. opens with the enlistment of an ordinary yet strange young man named Leonid by a pair of agents we are led to assume are Howard Stark and Nathaniel Richards in 1953. Leonid is led to The Immortal City, an ancient city buried beyond deep underneath Rome. Here Leonid is brought before the High Council of the Shield where he learns a secret history of the world and its secret protectors.

Leonid is told that it all started with Imhotep at the dawn of civilization when he repelled a Brood invasion that threatened to take the Earth. He was the first and from him the organization and its eagle crest are taken from his shield. It is then that the council reveals to Leonid that he, like other great minds before him, will stand in the gap to defend humanity. However, Leonid’s father, the Night Machine, intervenes and sets Leonid on the path of finding his own destiny. A destiny that seems to be tied to that of Leonardo Da Vinci: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

While I love Hickman for his wordy books, this one does not suffer for the shift away from text heavy pages. This book does benefit greatly from what seems to be a fascination Hickman has for secret societies, history, and Rome. He skillfully puts together an issue that teases and satisfies at the same time. Questions are answered that only open up larger questions that you need to know the answers to. Who is this Leonid? Agents Stark and Richards? Night Machine? How is it then that the world ends?

Hickman’s story is deftly illustrated by Dustin Weaver whose lines and sense of pacing and action are spot on. He creates iconic panels and splash pages that punctuate and resonate with Hickman’s words. The image of Galileo preparing to divert a certain devourer of worlds is just fantastic.

While this is supposed to be an ongoing series, I sadly don’t see this going beyond five issues like other well done series of late (Doctor Voodoo, I’m looking in your direction). I can only hope to be proven wrong and that this title will at least see a year with this creative team. This book works in so many ways for me.

Longbox Special: Under Siege

2010-05-02T15:15:00.000-04:00

It does seem like forever since I last posted something here, don’t it? It’s been a busy few weeks and things had been a bit quiet on the Siege front, which seems to have changed for this week. Also, there was the Pittsburgh ComiCon last weekend and I’ve been busy with federal job testing and buying a new car. I completely spaced on the God Of War III/Clash Of The Titans reviews that didn’t get much further than a sentence, something I’d like to remedy here in the next few days. Anyway, without any further ado, here is this week’s

This time around I’ll be looking at six, that’s right six, books covering pre-siege, siege, and post-siege stories. One book wraps itself up, another gets ready for its last issue, while another is set to have its status quo shaken up... again. First, let’s tackle the one shots.

Siege: Spider-Man #1 is a brawl book that takes place during the siege before Sentry knocks Asgard out of the sky. The action focuses around Spider-Man musing about his place in the Avengers while taking down Venom on the streets of Broxton. Also, Ms. Marvel of the Carol Danvers variety shows up to lend a hand. Oh, and of course a secret is revealed.

For the past few months, Mac Gargan has been posing as Spider-Man on Osborn’s team of Avengers and Peter Parker has been wanting to have a crack at him. He gets his chance as the two engage in Asgard only to have their fight make its way out of the Norse city and into the human one. Ms. Marvel shows up to lend hand by pulling Mac out of the symbiote and winding up an inadvertent host.

In typical good-guy-absorbed-by-bad-guy tradition, Spider-Man must now try to smack the holy hell out of Venom while trying not to do any damage to Marvel. And of course, a way is found to free her only to have Mac Gargan become Venom again to continue the fight. Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel are able to send Venom flying back to Asgard to continue the fight away from civilians.

While it’s a pretty straight up action piece, the best parts of this book are the humor. Brian Reed delivers great dialogue and pulls from some Dark Reign material without making the story dependent on having full knowledge of what Venom has been up to. Also, he opens up Spider-Man’s doubts as he questions what a street level hero like him is doing in a situation like this. Ms. Marvel lets him know that she appreciates him on the team and that it’s entirely possible she has a super hero crush on him. Great.

Siege: Secret Warriors #1 puts its focus mostly on Phobos and how he reacts to the death of his father, Ares. We also get to see Nick Fury let Osborn know that is minutes are numbered as he and the Steve Rogers Captain America prep their counteroffensive.

Following news reports of the death of Ares at the hands of Sentry, Phobos moves to carry out what could be considered his father’s last wishes should he ever be killed. These wishes carry the young god of fear to the White House where he cuts through a seemingly endless supply of Secret Service officers in an attempt to get to the president. A target he ultimately doesn’t reach but leaves a clear message for. Meanwhile in Asgard, there is some flavor bits as Nick gets chummy with Cap in the middle of a fight.

Jonathan Hickman delivers the kind of dialogue that makes his stuff a joy to read. His characterizations are pretty spot on and while he doesn’t get to draw on history too much, his love of it does pop in here and there. I’m hoping some of this stuff carries over into the regular Secret Warriors title.

Thunderbolts #143 brings a conclusion to this book’s involvement with the event to a close and sets it up for what’s going to be coming after Siege. The issue picks up with Iron Man taking down Norman Osborn and Osborn’s attempt to get the Spear of Odin to hopefully win the day. Turns in the loyalties of team members are made and the Mighty Avengers continue in their attempt to stop the Thunderbolts.

Scourge, leader of the Thunderbolts, has possession of the Spear of Odin and is ready to deliver it to Norman in a last ditch effort to turn the battle. However, it seems that Paladin has had a change of loyalty in an extreme, shoot you in the face, sort of fashion. He pits himself and Ant Man against the remaining loyal Thunderbolts. Also, the Mighty Avengers are there to add more to the mix and ultimately provide the conclusion to the fight when Quicksilver shows up and reminds us just how badass he can be. In the end, the current team, minus Paladin and Ant Man, are taken into custody and those that aren’t are left to move their lives in new directions. The issue wraps up with the book pointing itself in a new direction as well as Luke Cage is shown preparing to take the helm of the Thunderbolts.

While the first part of these tie-ins was weak, the last two issues really pulled things up. It became less about the mission for the spear and more about the characters setting their own directions. Even though I’m still not so familiar with the characters, I found them to be humanized pretty well. Hopefully the book will carry on in a strong way with its new direction.

New Avengers #64 is another side piece that offers insight into the events in the main book. This time, Bendis focuses on The Hood and where he’s headed in the aftermath of the event.

The issue starts with a flashback to Avengers Tower and a meeting between Osborn and Parker. Osborn is interested in how Loki assisted Parker with the Norn stones. It’s the kind of back-room dealing that cost Osborn his initial cabal, but that he sees as a way of maintaining control of the situation. Things move back to the siege itself and Parker’s loss of power as Loki takes the stones back to power the heroes in their effort against Void. This leaves The Hood and Madame Masque in need to get as far away as possible. The fate of Mockingbird is also resolved as the fight shifts after the fall of Asgard.

This issue felt a bit like a hodge-podge of background material and last minute resolutions. I have to wonder at just how Bendis is going to wrap up this title next month. Maybe I’ll tackle that one even though it’s not a Siege tie-in.

Thor #609 continues to follow the Asgardians as opposed to the titular character, which doesn’t really harm the book much. I’m just glad that they left the Ragnarok character behind for now.

The issue opens with Kelda prepared to turn herself over to H.A.M.M.E.R until Asgard falls from the sky at which time the agents open fire on her. In Asgard, the troops begin to rally as Tyr is shown to be very much alive and Loki does his thing in an attempt to save his own hide. Back in Broxton, Bill’s family acts to protect Kelda by putting themselves in the line of fire. Kelda acts to protect them all and Volstagg cleans up the troops that decided to make a run for it before heading off to Asgard himself to deliver justice. Balder and Loki have words and Loki is exiled from Asgard.

This was another book that was sort of all over the place but not in a bad way. It’s been progressing the three stories of Volstagg, Kelda, and the Asgardians fairly well in during the tie-in without becoming too lost. I’m just glad that the book’s role is done and can hopefully get back to focusing on Thor.

Mighty Avengers #36 sees an end to the book and the current storyline, which is still somewhat confusing as to what it has to do with the event book. It’s Pym vs. Ultron Pym and his army of brides. There are flashes to the Mighty Avengers and what’s going on in Asgard but it’s mostly material transplanted from Thunderbolts #143.

Hank explains to Ace and One-Eyed Jacquie (agents of G.R.A.M.P.A) that the infinite mansion was constructed as a harness to maintain Jan’s form in Underspace and the Jocasta bodies were used to maintain her brain functions. This doesn’t sit well with Jocasta but the conflict with Ultron, now calling himself Ultron Pym, takes priority. Okay, things really start to break down as the whole situation is dealt with by Jocasta marrying Ultron and Hank using a ploy from an issue back to fool Ultron.

This book lost me at that point and the rest of it just seemed like a tacked on ending that felt uncomfortable. I can’t say this is the best way for a book to end but at least it’s over. I still can’t see why they bothered to include this title in the tie-in other than for the last few pages where the Mighty Avengers finally come back together in the eleventh hour of the conflict. I’m just glad the book is over.

And that’s it for this week! That was more tiring than I thought it would be. There’s only five more books in the Siege Checklist so soon I’ll be done with this and might be able to get back to talking about other stuff. Till the next...

First Heard in April 2010 - "raisin' heck"

2010-04-30T18:40:00.005-04:00

CONCEPT:

I have been listening to the same music since college, so I devised a little project that will spur me to actively pursue new jams. Each month, I will post a mix of the best songs that I heard for the first time within those 30 or so days. Won't you follow me on this journey? Thrill to the futuresounds? Mock me for being late to the party?

VOL 1.:

I couldn't stay away. I heard way too much good stuff this month and I have way too much fun making these mixes. So after a three-month hiatus, "First Heard in..." is back for 2010. Turn this one up loud.

TRACKLISTING:

001 Rafter - No Fucking Around
002 Cults - Most Wanted
003 Slothbear - Don't Taunt a Tiger
004 Secret Cities - Pink City
005 Deer Tick - 20 Miles
006 Dom - Burn Bridges
007 Deerhoof - Hitch Hike
008 Stars - Fixed
009 Big Boi - Shutterbug
010 Miike Snow - Animal
011 Sleigh Bells - Tell 'Em
012 The New Pornographers - Valkyrie in The Roller Disco
013 Fang Island - Daisy
014 Local Natives - Airplanes
015 MGMT - Someone's Missing
016 The Mynabirds - Numbers Don't Lie
017 Gayngs - The Gaudy Side of Town

Film Gauge - Fletch, The Archers and Orson Welles Kick Cinema's Ass

2010-04-29T22:43:00.027-04:00

I watch too many movies, and I want to write about all of them. This impulse usually results in me feeling overwhelmed, and by the time I have sorted out my feelings on new releases like Kick-Ass I'm worried that the national conversation has moved on (or stalled completely).

Suffice to say, I feel that Kick-Ass tried to have its cake and eat it, too, and ended up betraying the spirit of the comic with a boring action climax that squandered the movie's pretty strong start. I like Christopher Mintz-Plasse a lot, and the Hit Girl character plays to my affinity for angry but resilient fictional kids who are awesome in spite of a cruel adult world that is trying to destroy them at every turn. I just would have liked it had the movie not shied away from the sociopathy of Nicolas Cage's character, and Hit Girl's by proxy. Nicolas Cage was certainly playing Big Daddy as a kook, in yet another amazing feat of scenery-chewing. I just wish the script would have followed suit.

Anyway, from now on I'm going to narrow my focus and write up three movies a week. I'll try to keep it balanced between mainstream fare (depending on the release schedule) and one of the "film school" movies that I slept on and that are currently clogging up my Netflix queue. Finally, I'll round off the week with a left-field genre surprise like Christopher Smith's mindfreak thriller Triangle, which I loved and will write up soon. It's on Netflix Instant right now.

In the meantime, I'm catching up on the classics:

Fletch

I gave this movie a spin recently, flush with goodwill for Chevy Chase from his creative resurgence on NBC's Community and after reading an Entertainment Weekly article about the Fletch reboot currently languishing in development hell. Wow. A major studio nowadays wouldn't allow a movie of this kind to be so unfunny for such long stretches. I was surprised by how straightforwardly hardboiled this movie was, as it is mostly remembered for Chevy Chase concocting ridiculous aliases and daydreaming about playing for the Lakers. That's how I remember it from my childhood, anyway. If this were a Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller vehicle, Fletch would be a fucking moron much more often than a competent reporter. That being said, Fletch doesn't quite work for me. It's cool that Chevy Chase is often revealed to be the smartest guy in the room, but why is he also such an incompetent master of disguise? Is it just because he's an unrepentant smart-ass? But why would he endanger his investigation by hiding behind such a thin ruse? Why am I looking for verisimilitude in a Chevy Chase movie? It was interesting to watch this movie as an adult. I kind of respect it, but I can't really say that I liked it very much. Its disdainful view of the rich scores big points with me, of course. Put it on the Underhills' account!

I Know Where I'm Going

Watching I Know Where I'm Going, I was shocked to realize that this movie could very well represent the nexus point and pinnacle for modern opposites-attract romantic comedies as we know them. It bears a striking thematic resemblance to 2009's Leap Year, in particular. The film, an early effort from The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), follows a goal-oriented, upwardly-mobile young woman on course to marry a wealthy industrialist only to find love with a Naval Officer in a magical land called Scotland. Sure, that kind of plot was around long before The Archers made this movie in 1945. Furthermore, it's not exactly high-praise to compare it to an Amy Adams vehicle (which most likely traffics in regressive gender stereotypes staler than those on display here). The point is that 65 years later I Know Where I'm Going still feels fresh, infinitely fresher than the latest iteration of Katherine Heigl as a plucky single gal who falls down a lot. Powell & Pressburger were so ahead of their time both visually and in the way they directed actors that I Know Where I'm Going transcends the formal disconnect modern audiences feel when watching old movies. In many ways, it presages the "indie-quirk" of the post-Wes Anderson landscape. Again, I'm damning this movie while trying to praise it. Basically, it feels not like a product of 1945 but rather some sort of elaborate, Steven Soderbergh-ian pastiche. Star Wendy Hiller resembles Michelle Williams in period garb. I can't recommend Powell & Pressburger enough. Seeing The Red Shoes at Film Forum recently was a landmark movie-going experience, and Black Narcissus is next on my list.

F for Fake

What a delightful and, like much of The Archers' oeuvre, oddly prescient movie. F for Fake is a surprisingly ahead-of-its-time meta-essay film. Orson Welles re-edits and re-contextualizes documentary footage of famed art forger Elmyr de Hory and biographer Clifford Irving shot as Irving's exclusive biography of Howard Hughes was very publicly revealed to be a hoax. Welles paints Elmyr and Irving as magicians, charlatans, and the filmmaker spins this examination of fakery outward to include Welles' film itself, classifying film editing as a form of sleight-of-hand. Welles imposes himself upon the narrative, casting himself as a rogue-ish conman wandering the streets in a long, black overcoat. He discusses his own career as a cinematic charlatan in lightly egotistical fashion, but he is ultimately a charming and ingratiating host. He's like a fascinating, if overbearing party guest. Turning the camera on himself, Welles animatedly recounts to his dining companions the tale of Irving's meticulously-crafted hoax, occasionally stopping mid-sentence to ask the waiter to clear away some dishes. Bits of obviously-staged reality like these, while amusing, also subtly remind us that we're watching a movie, cleverly skewering the presumed veracity of documentary film. Unfortunately, the movie's lightning-paced editing and florid narration is so entertaining that it may have accidentally given birth to the lightweight pop-documentary bullshit of people like Morgan Spurlock.

TV Tweets: April 5 - 25

2010-04-26T23:05:00.010-04:00

So, yeah. I've been slacking. Hope to be back on track again, so here's three weeks worth of tweets for ya. I'll try to make it snappy.

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April 7th [Breaking Bad, Lost, Parenthood]

Has there ever been a show with more intentionally self-destructive people than #BreakingBad? No, #AsTheWorldTurns does not count.

Breaking Bad -- home to bald bad-asses.

Skylar is the obvious one to hate for what she's been up to...but Hank! Hank, who seemed so disposable the first time he appeared on screen as the annoying brother-in-law in season one is such a brilliantly complex character. I don't think it'd be possible to predict what has happened to him. This show blows my mind each week, and I'm particularly enjoying how they've given us some flashbacks this season to fill in the blanks, however minor they might ultimately prove to be.

Is it possible not to love the Desmond episodes? Toss in some Daniel Faraday, and it becomes a sure-fire, can't miss 45 minutes.

There can never be too much Desmond, which is why they don't give us enough of him.


Desmond getting his awesome on.

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After the jump, I discuss the uncomfortable sexual chemistry going on in Parenthood, what not to do during an episode of Fringe, the vampires, werewolves and ghosts (oh my!) on Being Human, why you can sue me over Glee, and add to the praise already hailed upon Treme.
Read more »

Longbox Special: Under Siege

2010-04-18T13:12:00.001-04:00

Instead of book tie-ins this week Marvel graced comic stands with three one shot books, each focusing on different players in the siege on Asgard.

Siege: Loki #1 was the most story expanding book of the three this week. From the beginning it was known that Loki was pulling the strings, pushing Osborn to take down Asgard. However, there was always the questions of how and why he would see it through.

We see Loki speaking to Osborn through the Goblin mask, creating the initial cracks in Norman’s already tenuous hold on his sanity. Loki then moves on to secure the service of the Disir, monsters just recently seen in New Mutants. With proof of the Disir, Loki moves to strike a deal with Hela, which he seals in a three-way agreement between the two two gods and Mephisto. To what end? Why, absolute freedom from destiny of course.

Siege: Captain America #1 dealt with Bucky and Steve and just how long it takes to resolve the Captain America issue. Ever since Steve Rogers came back there’s been some argument over who should wear the mantle of Captain America.

The thing I had to keep reminding myself of was that Steve has only been back for a short amount of time relative to the whole Siege event, but it just feels like Bucky has been going on and on about the whole thing for forever. However, this time around it is all internal dialogue as Bucky and Steve are called to help a man whose family is trapped in the rubble of Asgard. Both Captains and their points of view are juxtaposed by their responses to the crisis at hand and how they handle the addition of a super villain to the situation.

Siege: Young Avengers #1 takes a look at a group of unseasoned heroes and how they’re reacting in the dust of Asgard’s fall. In the wake of the destruction, the team of Young Avengers has been separated and a rescue effort has begun. Two are trapped, two face off against the Wrecking Crew, and another is working his ass off to be a hero.

Wiccan and Hulkling survey the destruction and Wiccan opens up a bit to his alien boyfriend about his Norse fanboy history and why it is the siege has wounded him a bit deeper than one would think. While searching the ruins come across the Wrecking Crew looting the place and the obligatory beat down begins. Elsewhere, Patriot and Hawkeye (the non-Bullseye, female version) are trapped under tons of rubble with little air and lots of hormones. Finally, Speed is out and about trying to rescue as many as he can while looking for his buried teammates. His efforts are only hindered by his own need to overdo himself. In the end, he receives some encouraging words from Ronin.

I was surprised that I enjoyed these three books as much as I did. However, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that the books are well written, pulling the talents of some good writers. These feel like they could have been easy, throw away chapters written over a weekend by a staff intern. Mind you, they weren’t excellent works of staggering genius, but they certainly add to the Siege experience. I’ll just be happy when the whole Captains America thing gets resolved.

First Heard in Spring 2010 - "Spring Hopes"

2010-04-16T15:01:00.004-04:00

Winter is over. It's no longer so cold as to burn your face off, and not yet hot enough to burn your face off. That means it's time to take to the streets and strut around with your headphones, making grand plans and basking in the renewing world. This mix went through a few drafts. The first was a non-stop compilation of strutting songs, the aural equivalent of sunshine on your face and piss and vinegar in your veins. Then I got more abstract in my definition of spring and started thinking about driving at night and the act's simultaneous mix of exhilarating intimacy and melancholic isolation. Then I saw an arc. I decided to structure this mix as a spring day. Big Star is like a rooster's crow transposed onto acoustic guitar leading into Sam Prekop's "C+F," an early morning pump-up song as delicate as a breeze. Neko Case is an afternoon nap, Bibio captures the feeling of heading out on the town. "Pablo and Andrea" is perhaps the quintessential soundtrack for end-of-the-party reflection. And then you're alone again with your thoughts, and with Karen Dalton before she was homeless.

001 Big Star - Watch The Sunrise
002 Sam Prekop - C+F
003 Wilco - I'm Always In Love
004 Emitt Rhodes - Fresh As A Daisy
005 The Modern Lovers - Modern World
006 Darwin Deez - DNA
007 Neko Case - Knock Loud
008 Love - Wonder People (I Do Wonder)
009 Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
010 Savoir Adore - Space Travel
011 Todd Rundgren - Wolfman Jack
012 Goldfrapp - Rocket
013 Salem - It's Only You (Part II)
014 Yo La Tengo - Pablo And Andrea
015 Karen Dalton - Something On Your Mind

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD.

Longbox Special: Under Siege

2010-04-11T14:27:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone! Miss me? I took a bit of a holiday last week what with Easter and the light reading week that it was for Siege. All the same, I started working on an entry for this thread but it never came to fruition. So here I am to assault your eyes and good sense with an abuse of the English language. It’s almost like it’s..

Last week’s entries were both of the indirect tie-in nature and were both of the character piece trends.

New Mutants #11 is kind of a confusing entry into the fray of this event simply because it really is only serving as a filler book to go between the Necrosha event and Second Coming. It’s another character piece that doesn’t much advance the story of the book itself and plays as a stand alone episode.

Way back during the Dark Reign/Utopia fiascos, Dani Moonstar went to Hela, the Norse goddess of death, to regain her powers as a Valkyrie to fight off Norman Osborn’s forces that were threatening the new mutant homeland. Well, this issue, Hela calls in the favor owed her and sends Dani out to gather the dead at the siege of Asgard. What Dani doesn’t know is that Hela is sending her there for a reason; to protect the fallen from Disir, Norse demons that feast on the souls of the dead. During the conflict, we learn that Tyr isn’t as dead as we were lead to believe and that Hela isn’t the bad guy she’s usually portrayed to be.

All in all, this was a nice stand alone piece but still one that is not essential to the larger picture of the Siege event. Dani is the only one of the New Mutants that sees any action here and so it might have just served them to do a Moonstar one shot book but this was probably more cost effective and didn’t burden the writer with having to come up with something for just one issue with Second Coming set to occupy the X-Books for a bit.

Dark Wolverine #84 wraps up Daken’s involvement with the Norns and the title’s tie-in with Siege. Previously we’ve seen that the Norns have been trying to manipulate Daken for their own needs and to lead him to being an engine for Ragnarok. Most of what’s been at stake has been Daken’s sense of agency, his own free will.

This books plays itself out pretty well within the context of the conflict and puts Daken at odds with another psychopath, Bullseye. Daken is inserted into a reality where his forces are burning and he plays at being a hero-type to little effectiveness. The read itself is a little hard to follow but is presented in a brilliant fashion with some well written dialogue and gorgeous art. I have to admit, I also really liked the scene where Daken gives Bullseye a pretty intense kiss.

Again, this book was a good read albeit a hard one to follow at times. This issue also wraps up things with the title’s involvement with Siege. I’m wondering if they’ll be turning the book back over to Wolverine proper once things have settled after Siege of if they’ll continue to follow Daken. He certainly has enough to carry himself for a bit in a limited series at least.

TV Tweets: March 29 - April 4

2010-04-05T10:34:00.005-04:00

As always, you can follow me at LowBrowJon to get my digital declarations, as well as other LBM updates.

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April 3rd [Fringe]

Thank you, sir; may I have another? JJ must've decided to get involved in TV again; first Richard Alpert & now Walter-nate Bishop. #Fringe

I think it's safe to say this week was the best episode thus far of Fringe. Many of the same aspects that made Lost so fantastic two weeks ago were accomplished here as well, primarily getting real answers about these great characters. The main difference being that these answers have laid the foundation for many more plotlines since we now have a concrete history base to move forward upon instead of being a piece to wrap up the massive narrative puzzle of Lost. I wish they'd have given us some of that info earlier, but we're getting it now. And John Noble certainly was at the top of his game this time out.

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After the jump, read up on the dreamers and schemers of How To Make It In America and the new crew for Doctor Who.

Read more »

TV Tweets: March 22-28

2010-03-29T09:58:00.007-04:00

As always, you can follow me at LowBrowJon to get my minute manifestos, as well as other LBM updates.

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March 24th [Breaking Bad, Lost]

The two unexplained bad asses on #BreakingBad = my new favorite mimes on tv.

Welcome back, Heisenberg! (Yes, I'm aware that I only had to wait three weeks between when I finished season 2 and season 3 started and the rest of you waited for much longer. It was still a long three weeks, dammit.)

See what happens when you ditch the flash-sideways, #Lost? You get the best episode of the season, perhaps of the series.

I probably went too far in suggesting it was the best of the series, but entire seasons of the show have gone by since I was last this enthralled by a single one. What made this episode focusing on the mysterious Richard so engaging was we actually got answers to long-asked questions that not only were satisfying and gripping, but simultaneously helped to further explain the ultimate inquiry of why this island is what it is. Plus, that was some stage-level acting from Nestor Carbonell, Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver.
The flash-sideways may end up being cool. All I know is they have been either boring me or pissing me off each and every week and, right now, seem to have no impact on the "realtime" narrative of the show. Once their purpose is revealed, I hope to go back and have as happy a re-watch experience knowing what I know then just as I was given this week.

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After the jump, read up on Human Target, Justified and the mid-season finale of Caprica.

Longbox Special: Under Siege

2010-03-28T13:49:00.000-04:00

So here we go again with another big week for Marvel’s latest big event book. This time around feels almost like a repeat of the last time they put out five books in a week. Two of them are fairly lackluster, two are decent entries, and the fifth book makes me wonder why it was included at all. Anyway, let’s have at it...

Might Avengers #35 is the book that made me scratch my head and wonder at why it’s being included as a Siege tie-in book this week. The main focus of the book is on Pym and the return, once again, of Ultron. The book skirts along side Siege but never gets itself directly involved. There’s a call to arms from Steve Rogers, Vision and the other Mighty Avengers have taken off to assist, and Jarvis is shown leaving with the mystery case, which was delivered to Tony Stark during last week’s entry into the main event book.

Otherwise, this book features Hank, Jocasta, and a couple members of G.R.A.M.P.A as they are attacked by an army of Ultron controlled Jocasta bodies. It’s all build up to a reveal that Pym built his Infinite Avengers Mansion on the body of The Wasp who it turns out is the sole inhabitant of Underspace, the opposite of Overspace, the realm where Eternity resides.

The book itself is fine for a Mighty Avengers story but I haven’t been following them for some time now. Supposedly the next issue is a Siege tie-in as well, but if it’s anything like this issue I have to wonder at why this book is being included. It forwards little to nothing of the main event story and serves mainly as a revelation to the fate of The Wasp.

Thunderbolts #142 is the book that Mighty Avengers #35 should have been. However, like the last installment of this book, there’s just not anything going on that I really find myself caring about. The action picks up where the last issue left off with the Mighty Avengers, sans Pym and Jocasta, fighting with the Thunderbolts who have been tasked with retrieving the Spear of Odin.

There is, of course, a lot of hitting and shooting and what not, all leading up to the eventual retrieval and fight for the spear. There’s some indication that not all members of the Thunderbolts are behind Osborn and would rather see him not come into possession of such a devastating weapon. Things get complicated when Asgard comes falling from the sky and the spear is lost in the rubble only to be recovered by an Osborn loyalist on the team.

I’ll admit that this issue wasn’t as bad as last but then again there was a lot more action and not so much talking going on. Still, there was really nice development with the Thunderbolts just in the reveals of certain characters and their loyalties. All the same, I could have spent my time better elsewhere.

Thor #608 wasn’t really that better elsewhere but it certainly picked things up a bit from last issue. A prophecy made last issue comes to pass and puts one of the Asgardians on the spot. Braxton is a battlefield for another pair of warriors, and Kelda visits with Bill’s family to break the bad news to them.

Tyr leads the Asgardians from the back lines terrified of a prophecy pertaining to the death of the god of war. Upon seeing the corpse of Ares, he faces his own cowardice only to engage with The Hood who is now wielding the Norn Stones. Volstagg and Ragnarok battle in the streets of Broxton until Volstagg retreats, the memory of Soldier Field still fresh in his mind. This battle concludes itself in the shadow of Asgard. All the while, Kelda has made her way into town to face the parents of Bill who take his death understandably hard and would rather have nothing to do with Kelda at the moment. H.A.M.M.E.R forces show up to take Kelda into custody, a request she seems willing to see through.

Of course this issue wraps itself up with the fall of Asgard, something most of the books address this week. It’s unclear if the floating city dropping on Ragnarok has taken him out of the fight or not. This is another issue that is a vast improvement on the last but that’s not saying too much considering how weak that one felt. Considering how key Thor is to what is happening, it’s surprising how distant this book feels from the heart of things.

Avengers: The Initiative # 34 splits its focus right down the middle of the book, starting up where the last issue left off. First off, the Avengers Resistance is busy trying to take down Camp H.A.M.M.E.R. Then, The Hood and most of his lackeys are called to Asgard, taking them out of one fight and into another.

Things look bleak for the team attempting to take down Osborn’s training facility, which is being overseen by a significantly powered-up Hood and his equally powered up thugs. It’s in the eleventh hour that Penance makes his move and joins the fight, seemingly evening the odds. This is all just in time for The Hood and company to be called by Osborn for back-up. The book follows them to Asgard as they join the fight we see in the main book. Constrictor and Diamondback suffer a bit of miscommunication as Asgard is brought down before she can reveal her affections for him.

Again, the fall of Asgard is the coup de grace for the events of a tie-in book but it’s an effective plot point to help tie in the events from one book to the next. This time around, it looks like they’re pulling focus away from Taskmaster and spreading it out. It makes me wonder if this is the beginning of the transition towards the end of this title.

Finally we have New Avengers #63 where two relationships are explored and, of course, Asgard goes boom. Bendis is still using this book to explore more of the interiors of characters as opposed to focusing on the events of the event book.

This time around we get a look at the couples on the team, first up is Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. They talk about being superheroes and parents, how those two things need to be prioritized in their lives for the sake of their kid. Next is Clint and Bobbi’s relationship, which has seen its fair share of strain since her return after the Skrull invasion. Her and Clint spend some time doing some old school hero stuff taking down a B-List villain and talking about the future. Both of these stories are juxtaposed against the team’s attack on Osborn and his forces that are moving against Asgard. With the city taken down, there are of course questions as to the fate’s of some of these characters.

New Avengers has managed to be a fine side book to the Siege event and plays itself very well as not being key to the events and more key to the characters.

Okay, there we have it, another week and another five books down. Soon we’ll be moving into April and with it, the end of Siege. I’m not sure how much I’ll miss writing these weekly bits up since I always seem to find myself at a loss in the how to address things. Mind you, Second Coming is starting up this next week in the X-Books and I do like me some mutant story events.

TV Tweets: March 8-21

2010-03-24T01:38:00.002-04:00

As always, you can follow me at LowBrowJon to get my calloused catharsis, as well as other LBM updates.

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March 17th [Lost]

So weird to see Sawyer and Liz Lemon hanging out, and on a beach no less! #Lost

That broad looked like Tina Fey. Seriously. To the point where my roomie and I debated if it was actually her guest appearing for a bit. Kinda figured it wasn't her when Sawyer pulled his gun on her and she quipped, "That's a dealbreaker!"

March 18th [Justified]

Damn, that was lots 'o racist rednecks gettin' pwned on #Justified. Jonny like.

This show has some serious promise. Aside from the ass-kicking, modern-day western goodness going on and the excellent casting of minor characters from other shows I enjoy (notably Walter Goggins from The Shield and Natalie Zea from Hung), the final scene in the pilot is what really gave me hope for the longevity of the show.

Longbox Special: Under Siege

2010-03-21T17:46:00.001-04:00

After not one but two weeks without any Siege material from Marvel, we get the main book, two tie-ins and all hell breaking loose.

Siege #3 opens with the White House reacting to the assault on Asgard calling for the arrest of Norman Osborn as Captain America and his Avengers show up to launch their counteroffensive. Thor engages Sentry on the streets of Broxton, which does not look like a fight that will end well for the thunder god. Meanwhile, with Osborn’s forces on the ropes, backup arrives in the form of The Hood and his gang and Speed of the Young Avengers makes a delivery from Steve Rogers to Tony Stark.

The action moves along a good clip as Cap and his team get an assist from the U.S. government as H.A.M.M.E.R forces are taken down. Iron Man shows up to neutralize Osborn’s armor and Norman finally makes the snap everyone has been waiting for. However, this doesn’t happen before he has Sentry disengage Thor and bring Asgard to the ground. The issue ends with a big cliffhanger and a new threat.

Bendis moves the action along really well in this issue and continues to portray Osborn as a fully dimensional character, not just a psychopath in power. Coipel’s art brings the action to life in a way I have only seen since Bryan Hitch. I’m very excited with the question of just how they’re going to wrap this up. Also, it was good to see Iron Man back in the game.

Siege: Embedded #3 continues Ben Urich’s adventure to the front lines of Asgard as he stows away as an embedded reporter on a H.A.M.M.E.R transport with Todd Keller, the apparent Glenn Beck of the Marvel universe who is on the side of Norman Osborn. Things go awry when the craft is hit by a thrown Venom and gets worse when it looks like all on board are on the menu for the monster.

A fortunately timed crash seems to save just about everyone on board, save those Venom already ate. Venom also seems to have taken off to rejoin the battle as Ben and Keller’s nonplused producer manage to dig Keller out of the wreckage only to be forced at gunpoint to set up a broadcast from the streets of Asgard. Meanwhile, Urich’s friend Will Stern has made his way to Asgard just in time to capture its fall on camera.

I’ve enjoyed how this tie-in book works the press angle and the fight that goes on via the news. However, I’m still uncomfortable with the Todd Keller character. He’s seemed very flat from the outset and doesn’t really get much depth. It would be nice if he at least got one monologue like those given to Osborn to help flesh him out and maybe make a touch more sympathetic as a person.

Finally, Dark Avengers #15 continues to reveal just how it is that Norman Osborn got not only Sentry but The Void into his pocket. The events of the Cabal meeting where Doom takes himself out of the mix is fully revealed and we see it’s The Void that was Osborn’s secret weapon. It is in the wake of this even that the problem of Bob’s wife Lindy is taken care of.

During the attack, Avenger’s tower is evacuated giving Hawk/Bullseye the opportunity to take Lindy out to sea and neutralize her. Upon his return, he relays that she couldn’t take her life anymore and jumped into the ocean sending Sentry off to find her. There is a follow up scene with Victoria Hand and Osborn as Norman tells her to relay that the attack on Avengers Tower was an act of Latverian terrorism.

This issue works really well with the main event book in that it gives just enough information to allow an understanding why Sentry is behaving as he is. It will be interesting to see just what they do with the next issue since I’m assuming it will be the last, wrapping things up with the wrap up of the event.

This was a good week for the Siege event and I’m interested in seeing they’ll be able to keep this level of quality through the rest of this month. I know there were a couple of weak books last month and this month we’re going to see some other titles brought in with Mighty Avengers #35 and New Mutants #11. I’m not sure what New Mutants is doing in there and it concerns me just a little bit with Second Coming just around the corner for the X-Books.

The Shortbox: The Brutal and the Abysmal

2010-03-19T02:38:00.006-04:00

Criminal: The Sinners (part 5 of 5)

writer: Ed Brubaker

artist: Sean Phillips

Marvel/Icon Comics, released 3-10-10
I love Ed Brubaker. I love Sean Phillips. And thus, as I've professed time after time on the site, I love Criminal. The Sinners, the latest miniseries from the pair, wrapped up two Wednesdays ago in predictably brilliant style.
The Sinners is another Tracy Lawless story, my favorite of the principal characters we've been introduced to thus far for a bevy of reasons, but most likely because of his similarities to Richard Stark's mastermind thief Parker from that series of novels. This time we join Tracy as he's still working off his debt to syndicate boss Mr. Hyde. This is going unsuccessfully, so Hyde taps him to figure out who is knocking off all the kingpins in the city, fearing he's next.
There's all the usual noir hallmarks -- dirty cops, dames, double-crosses, druglords and deadbeats -- but as Bru just about always does, he'll mix and match everything so you're full of genuine surprise as he pulls the rug out from under you again and again.
It's another stunning winner from this dynamic duo, and continues to be a must-read.

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Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 22: Ultimatum

writer: Brian Michael Bendis

artist: Stuwert Immonen

Marvel Comics, released 1-13-10

And then there is the worst comic I've read in -- well, I'm not really sure, but it's been a while.
Much as I unabashedly love Brubaker and Phillips, I love Ultimate Spider-Man. It is such a consistently fun and wonderful read. Or it was until it's swan-song edition.
The fault in volume 22 is that it's an addendum to the grand* event Ultimatum. It doesn't wrap up the series and barely has a discernible plot of it's own.
To be fair, this is Jeph Loeb's fault. I tracked down Ultimatum after finishing this collection because I had assumed some pieces in the puzzle would be put in place, and they were. Problem was, only some of them were, and not nearly enough.
Hey, look, here's some characters you love. Watch me destroy them for no rational or explained reason.
In other words, this was Loeb writing big, but without anything substantive behind it to there were yet more parts of the Ultimatum pie strewn around in the other Ultimate titles, but I'm not going to bother to read those. Ever.
Okay, so this isn't really very short for The Shortbox anymore, so I'll stop ranting and rambling.
Magus, who is an expert on all things in the Ultimate line, has assured me that USM has returned to form now that Bendis isn't beholden to Loeb's event plotline, and the other Ultimate titles are, ahem, ultimately better because of that shithole of an event. A red pill/blue pill situation if I ever heard one.
My advice is, don't read volume 22 of Ultimate Spider-Man. It makes me so sad to write that because almost all of the other 21 volumes are fantastic.
*[giant eye-roll]

**Note on The Shortbox: I'm not interested in giving ratings on comics any more (or any other media, for that matter), so any future entries will not have a rating included. I think you'll be better served by reading my opinion within the entirety of the review instead.

The Longbox: Mystic Hands written by Magic Fingers, it only sounds dirty...

2010-03-14T16:49:00.004-04:00

The Mystic Hands Of Doctor Strange

issue: 1

writer: Various

artist: Various

publisher: Marvel

Doctor Strange is one of my favorite Marvel Universe characters even though it seems like writers often have a hard time with him. Most time there is too much of a focus placed on the power and not so much on the man that wields them. A few years back, Brian K. Vaugn showed us what a Doctor Strange story should be with his miniseries The Oath. In the time since then, Strange has lost his Sorcerer Supreme title and has gone on to do a bit of soul searching.

While The Mystic Hands Of Doctor Strange sounds like the title of a low budget, high concept porn flick, the book is a fantastic collection of four throwback-type stories written with a modern sensibility and illustrated in “glorious black & white.” A lot of what these stories do is contextualize Strange’s history, addressing cultural movements of the time as well as addressing just who Stephen Strange is at different stages of his life.

The first story, The Cure by Kieron Gillen and Frazer Irving shows the mystical machinations behind the counter culture of the 70s and how Strange brings it to a close. Melancholia by Peter Milligan and Frank Brunner tells the story of Strange dealing with the effects of the work he does juxtaposed with the story of a man living with his real world regrets and how he seeks Stephen's magic to fix them. So This Is How It Feels by writer/artist Ted McKeever gives us a down and out Strange who has hit rock bottom and how a run in with a demon and the counsel of half a floating head turn things around for him.

The best part of this collection for me was the Mike Carey penned Duel In The Dark Dimension with illustrations by the man I feel defined what a Strange book should look like in The Oath, Marcos Martin. Duel is presented in the form of an entry from one of Strange’s journals and is an illustrated story as opposed to a straight up comic story. Carey chronicles the adventure of a novice Stephen Strange, still under the tutelage of the Ancient One, as he wanders off on the astral plane and how his arrogance is almost his undoing.

This book is certainly a welcome entry into the canon of Doctor Strange material. The recent miniseries Strange by Mark Waid was a bit of a let down to me both as a story and in its visual presentation. The structure of the stories also lends itself well to the casual reader who might not have a knowledge of the character and makes for a collection of fine character stories. Hopefully we’ll see more Strange stories of this quality in the future.

select button: Heavy Rain soaks you to the bone with compelling characters and story

2010-03-10T09:02:00.002-05:00

Review: Heavy Rain

In Heavy Rain the player rotates through four characters as each of them tries to solve the mystery of the origami killer, a serial killer who kidnaps young boys and drowns them leaving their bodies in remote parts of New Jersey with an orchid on their chest and an origami animal in their hand.

Ethan Mars is the separated father of Shaun Mars, the latest abductee of the origami killer. Having previously lost a son in a tragic car accident, Ethan is wracked with guilt and depression. His only chance to save Shaun is to carry out challenges set before him by the killer to obtain clues to the boy's location.

Ethan’s path crosses with that of photojournalist Madison Paige. She finds herself pulled into the mystery of the killer, looking for a story and hoping to clear Ethan who has been accused of abducting his own son.

FBI profiler Norman Jayden is sent in to assist local police in their investigation of the murders and to catch the killer. He finds himself at odds with the local authorities as well as with his addiction to triptocaine.

Retired police officer and hard boiled private investigator Scott Shelby is engaged in his own hunt for the killer on behalf of the victim’s families. He struggles with his own demons and the shadow of alcoholism.

The game world and characters are rendered both digitally and narratively as fully realized people and places which does a great deal to involve the player in what’s happening on screen. The controls deploy a logic of interacting with the environment in a way that feels natural. These two components work together to strip down the wall between player and game.

The strongest aspect of the game is the one that makes it the hardest to talk about and that’s the sense of agency the player is given over the characters. It’s never made immediately clear what actions will have what effect on the progressing story and what is simply added flavor. I know in talking with two other people who have finished the game, we all came to different endings for the game but we also created very different ideas of who these characters were by the actions we made them take.

The only issues I had with the game were in the voice acting and setting. While the voice actors were good, it became painfully obvious with some that they were trying to hide their French accents. Also, the game is never clearly located but is indicated to be taking place in and around New Jersey. In several scenes it felt as though the developers had never even been to the place (according to an interview with Fast Company, game creator David Cage based the nameless city on Philadelphia, which they visited). If they had placed the game in an actual city, it would have been one more way to bring in the player.

Heavy Rain brings a breath of fresh air to the art of games and storytelling and asks interesting questions of the medium and the player. This game is an important step in the right direction that could bring games to a whole new audience where story and mood are as important as action.

Reviewed on: PlayStation 3

TV Tweets: March 1-7

2010-03-08T10:27:00.002-05:00

As always, you can follow me at LowBrowJon to get my latest fingerful of characters, as well as other LBM updates.

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March 1st [Smallville]

I was not aware that Speedy was added to the ranks of #Smallville this season. Yes, I'm catching up with another CW show.


Clark finally got a costume	.

In it's ninth season, Smallville may finally be becoming something I'm not a little ashamed to admit I watch. They're finally embracing the superhero aspects of the DCU and letting the Clark/Lois romance blossom. The writers have begun making a little bit of sense of the unexplained messes created during earlier seasons, while cherry picking some of the best elements of the Supes canon to mix in. I think a great example is the inclusion of Mia (Speedy #2), which never would have happened a few years ago. She begins as a teenage prostitute, after all, and they didn't shy away from it too much. Later in the season we get another big superhero team-up on the show (I'll probably have something to say about it once I see it), which led to the news this week that there will be a tenth season. I wouldn't have been particularly happy to type that two years ago.

March 2nd [Big Love]

"These Boots Are Made For Walking" and....ALBY?!?!?! Also, that had to be the most intense game of tetherball ever filmed. #BigLove

March 6th [Parenthood]

So nice to see Lauren Graham on tv again, as she is as smokin' hot and talented as ever. #Parenthood

I guess the reputation of the cast made me want to check out this new dramedy, because it's not something I'd immediately gravitate to. It was a good pilot. I'm a little worried that it may become more drama than comedy, but as long as they maintain the balance, this may be a new addition to my weekly roster. But I really only tweeted about it because I wanted to post a pic of Lauren Graham.

Mission accomplished.