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A Slew Of DC Comics Annual Reviews For You: Green Lantern, Flash, And More

Posted 8/29/12 12:30 pm EST by in Comic Books, DC Comics, Reviews


As DC winds down its first year of the New 52, it's the perfect time to return to the yearly tradition of Annuals! Over-sized tales of the DC Universe that CHANGE EVERYTHING. Or sometimes, not so much. Here’s some quick-hit reviews of the one-shots hitting comic book stands today:

GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #1

If you want to go by “importance,” this issue is probably the most important annual hitting this week to the overall fabric of the DC Universe. It - somewhat - ties up the first year story arc featuring Hal Jordan and Sinestro as Cosmic Buddy Cops, and sets up the next few months of stories with the “Rise of the Third Army.” Plus, it brings writer Geoff Johns back together with penciller Ethan Van Sciver. If anything, that underlies the importance of this issue to DC, as the duo have worked together before on other big issues like "Green Lantern: Rebirth," "Sinestro Corps War," and "Flash: Rebirth." Read More...

Review: 'Phantom Lady #1' Brings The Fun And Sexy Back To Comics

Posted 8/29/12 11:30 am EST by in Comic Books, DC Comics, Reviews


Just like they did with DC Comics’ "The Ray," writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti simply and effectively capture what’s fun about reintroducing comic book characters for a new generation in "Phantom Lady" #1. And just like "The Ray" #1, they manage to up the quotient of male nudity in a comic book exponentially. If that’s your sort of thing.

Naked dudes aside, there’s a few things that make this first issue so much fun - and again, it’s the same things that made "The Ray" a blast to read, as well. First, Gray and Palmiotti have mastered the art of having exposition run alongside with action. The first few pages of the comic, we never get to see the main character. And essentially all she’s doing is telling us what her powers are, and how they work. But because of the breezy prose, and Cat Staggs clean, exciting art and panel layouts, the process is never boring. Read More...

Advance Review: 'Avenging Spider-Man #11' Is Probably The Best Team-Up Of The Year

Posted 8/28/12 10:00 am EST by in Comic Books, Marvel, Reviews


After blockbuster team-ups with Red Hulk, Captain Marvel, Captain America, and more, we finally get the Spider-Man team-up you all demanded: Peter Parker and Aunt May! Yes, that’s right: in Avenging Spider-Man #11, Aunt May once again becomes the Herald of Galactus, remembers that she used to live in Avengers Tower during the Civil War era, and together, she and Spider-Man fight... I don’t know, let’s say Ego The Living Planet.
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'True Blood' 5.12 Review: It's All Going To Hell, So 'Save Yourself'

Posted 8/27/12 5:22 pm EST by in HBO, Reviews, TV


When you separate out the individual elements of True Blood's fifth season, on the face of it, a lot of them should have worked. You've got Alcide's pack battle for superiority, exploring Terry's messed up past during the Iraq conflict, the Hoyt-Jessica-Jason triangle ultimately damaging each character in some way and providing some of the season's genuine heart, Lafayette saving the spirit of Jesus, and the introduction of the vampire Authority and their mostly unexplored mythology. And while it's necessary--important--that all of these elements be woven together into a cohesive story, season five instead feels like a mashup of plot bits, happening at seemingly random intervals. Storylines drop in and out (along with their characters), leaving the season without any real momentum or tension.

And while the finale introduces a couple of interesting turns, they come at the conclusion of a mostly meandering season that will probably go down as "the one where they lifted the blood god plot from the first Blade."

****spoilers after the jump****
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Advanced Review: Aquaman Gets the Business in Adult Swim's 'Robot Chicken DC Comics Special'

Posted 8/24/12 3:42 pm EST by in Animation, Cartoon Network, DC Comics, Reviews, TV


Following a trio of Star Wars specials and spoofs of everything from the 80's to celebrity, to films to well... the late 80's, it was really only a matter of time before Robot Chicken creators Matt Senreich and Seth Green took aim at another longer form episode.

This time, the Robot Chicken guys are rooting around in the DC Comics toy box for their half-hour season premiere special. Do they come up with DCU gold or just a big brick of Kryptonite?
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'True Blood' 5.11 Review: It's Nearly 'Sunset' For Season Five

Posted 8/20/12 3:54 pm EST by in HBO, Reviews, TV


Amidst gangs of ravenous new vampires on the loose, increased attacks on werewolves, Bill's descent into religious mania, and Tara's possible like-like feelings for her maker, True Blood delivers one of the most over-the-top, show-breaking scenes in the show's history.

****Spoilers after the jump****
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DVD Review: 'Young Justice: Season One, Volume Two' - Thrilling Secrets and Dangerous Lies

Posted 8/17/12 5:17 pm EST by in Animation, Cartoon Network, DC Comics, DVD and Blu-ray, Reviews


Having missed it during the first season's original run, I have to ask: when did "Young Justice" turn into a tense and thrilling espionage series? Because between all the secrets, lies, betrayals, reversals, and twists, the 14 episodes here are compulsively watchable, never boring, and a great extension of the source material.
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Advanced Review: 'Falling Skies' 2.10 - Will This Finale Shatter 'A More Perfect Union?'

Posted 8/17/12 1:05 pm EST by in Reviews, TV


We've seen the Second Mass pull a few Hail Mary plays over the first two seasons of "Falling Skies," but in this week's episode, they might have a chance of turning the tide in the war against the Overlord. In this kind of thing, you have to assume that someone isn't going to make it out alive. Working with a couple of twists through the episode--one expected, one kind of the stuff big sci-fi is made of--season two goes out on a high note.

****Mild spoilers after the jump****
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Blu-ray Review: 20 Cops, 30 Floors, Infinite Broken Bones in 'The Raid'

Posted 8/14/12 5:20 pm EST by in DVD and Blu-ray, Movies, Reviews


The premise of the Indonesian martial arts film The Raid (given the subtitle Redemption for its U.S. release by Sony) is ridiculously simple: a SWAT team hits an apartment block ruled by a drug kingpin in order to capture and bring him in. But in that premise, Welsh director Gareth Evans' film finds room to create a complicated symphony of violence set to the hard packing sounds of kicks and punches to the torso and the splash of blood on a grimy tenement floor.

It's not precisely about anything except for the tension of fresh violence and the horrible things one motivated can do to another's body, but in its own way, The Raid is a piece of fine art among modern kicking and punching movies.
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Blu-ray Review: Toothy, Sexy Horror With Hammer's 'Twins of Evil' (1971)

Posted 8/14/12 11:57 am EST by in DVD and Blu-ray, Horror, Movies, Reviews


Why can't we have nice things like Twins of Evil any more? I mean an unashamedly sexy, luridly violent, and well-produced horror movie shot with actors who weren't especially embarrassed to be a part of the bloody happenings on screen. This late-era Hammer film, stars Peter Cushing and twins Mary and Madeleine Collinson as the titular sources of evil and recently got a very, very nice release stateside courtesy of Synapse Films in an excellent Blu-ray/DVD combo that wonderfully exploits this piece of 70's sex and horror.
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'True Blood' 5.10 Review: Three are 'Gone, Gone, Gone'

Posted 8/13/12 10:28 am EST by in HBO, Reviews, TV


True Blood suffers a staff reduction as two vampires (don't worry, peripheral ones) suffer the true death while one human cast member bids farewell for parts north. Plus, Bill and Nora try to make a convert out of Eric as the American Vampire League continues its PR offensive convince the human world that things are fine, just fine (that's not stopping panicked humans from packing guns with wooden bullets, though). Then there's Tara, Pam, and the new Sheriff of Zone 5, while Sookie and Jason find a mysterious scroll.

Hey Sookie, no good can ever come of discovering a mysterious scroll!

****Spoilers after the jump.****
 Read More...

Advanced Review: 'Falling Skies' 2.09 - 'The Price of Greatness' is A Bullet

Posted 8/10/12 5:10 pm EST by in Reviews, TV


Apocalyptic fiction often comes down to the same idea: "communities are hard." When most of your cities are on fire or dust, it's hard to maintain the social contract, and some of the best end-of-the-world fiction deals with that. Look at Night of the Living Dead, which had a mismatched group of men and women jostling against one another when all the social structures around them seemed to have broken down. Who got to be in charge? Who had the best ideas for keeping them all safe? Who had leverage?

This has, of course, been an ever-present thread throughout Falling Skies, specifically with its historian-turned soldier hero Tom Mason. Tom is an idealist with clear ideas about the shape of history, and often in the show, he'll usually try to defend the course of action that honors our 200-plus years of western democracy. The problem is, when people are hungry, they don't really give a damn about the vote.

This week's episode sees Tom and his ideals up against the underground community in Charlotte, and unsurprisingly, their new safe haven has perils of its own.
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Blu-ray Review: 'Grimm: Season One' And the Same Old Story

Posted 8/8/12 3:16 pm EST by in DVD and Blu-ray, Reviews, TV


I want to apologize in advance for beating up on NBC's Grimm a bit in the following review for being the straw that broke the camel's back with this kind of thing. "This kind of thing" being these legacy hero shows and movies which have cropped up in the years since Buffy went off the air without really figuring out what to do when a modern, everyman (or woman) character is thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

But let me back up lay out the premise for Grimm and try to work out how it really only offers what we've seen before, only more awkwardly by way of supernatural procedural.
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Book Review: 'Edge' Conjures Horror in Number Theory and Physics

Posted 8/6/12 1:30 pm EST by in Books, Horror, Reviews


For anyone who's read author Koji Suzuki's Ringu (or seen the pretty close 1998 film adaptation by Hideo Nakata), you'll know that the author is less concerned with jolting you using sudden shocks or abrupt, violent scenarios; instead, Suzuki has a thing for gradually tilting the world for his characters and the reader, shifting the rules ever so slightly so that the certainties of our science can no longer be trusted. In the past, he's wanted to scare us by describing (often in great detail) how the natural world can break down and become hostile to us.

Vertical recently published his 2008 novel, Edge, which sees the author at his most instructive, the book acting at times as a brief(ish) treatise on nothing so much as the history since the Big Bang, the evolution of mankind, the fragility of our math, and all tied into the abrupt disappearance of a suburban Japanese family. As apocalypses go, this is an inventive one, and although Edge won't have you leaving the lights on out of fear of the dark, Suzuki's novel (which mixes that genre with sci-fi, journalism, and a little bit of reality TV) will probably have you keeping the lights on picking through some of the works in his extensively-sourced bibliography.
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'True Blood' 5.09 Review: 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World,' Some Wanna Feed Supes to Pigs

Posted 8/6/12 10:23 am EST by in HBO, Reviews, TV


You can feel the weight of season five nearing its end on this episode of True Blood--not quite in a "oh man this is so thrilling I can't wait to find out what happens way," and more of a "oh man, they went with that ending" kind of way. As two storylines reach their conclusion while the Authority plot kind of drifts in and out of the margins, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" has alternately made this season feel both rushed and thin up to this point. The ifrit plot and the human supremacist thing (and even the murder of Sookie and Jason's parents) feel like sideshows, drawing attention away from the protracted intrigues inside Authority HQ.

Why you want to keep taking us back to barns and pigsties, True Blood writers?

*****Spoilers after the jump.*****
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