11.24 The Bow Tie Asymmetry It would be unfair to say that The Big Bang Theory has been completely devoid of good episodes in these later seasons but, as with any show that’s run for more than a decade, truly great episodes are harder to come by. The series found gold in celebrating a milestone in Amy and Sheldon’s relationship with season nine’s Opening Night Excitation, and it’s done it again here....
ANYWAY (thank you, Chuck Klosterman, for this wonderful literary device), the Ninja Turtles soundtrack. It’s basically just a 1990 pop rap sampler, with the exception of the semi-dark “Turtle Power” by Partners in Kryme. That song was also the album’s “hit,” which is strange because it contains a lyrical fuck-up so insane I can’t believe Turtle fans didn’t rise up in protest and burn down the studio where it was recorded....
It’s similarly hard to believe that, following the success of the second gen console (their first, the Master System, released in 1986, sold comparatively poorly against the hugely popular Nintendo Entertainment System), Sega’s later systems failed to capture the public’s imagination. Sega muddied their reputation further with a series of ill-advised and ill-fated expansion units for the Megadrive; the Mega CD and 32X both failed to sell in significant numbers....
Fair’s fair, you can’t very well judge a film on how rough a time the actors had making it. But no one in The Finest Hours, Disney’s crack at re-enacting the US Coast Guard’s famous 1952 rescue of the sailors aboard the SS Pendleton, looks like they’ve had to go through much more than the inconvenience of having to dry their socks on the radiator afterwards, and it has an effect....
The Flash Season 2 Episode 22 Alarm bells started ringing within seconds of “Invincible” kicking off. For one thing, the “metapocalypse” (which is an inexcusable word) didn’t look all that intimidating. It looked less like Central City was under siege than it did a block or so in Vancouver. It was all downhill from there. “Invincible” was so poorly written as to be completely baffling. What in the world was the point of “healing” Barry in “The Runaway Dinosaur” only to take everything away from him again an episode later?...
The Flash Season 2 Episode 11 I couldn’t have been more wrong, of course. The Flash season 2 has been extraordinarily consistent. There haven’t been too many real lows, and it has delivered at least the same number of exceptional episodes that season one did around this time in its run last year. I’ll chalk up “The Reverse-Flash Returns” in the “exceptional” column. If anything, my only major problem with the season has been its occasional over-reliance on Earth-2 as a villain/metahuman engine, which isn’t really what the concept is best used for, and tends to make too much of a distinction between season one and season two, when most other elements of the show are still firmly developing (and improving upon) the stuff we got last year....
By now, most viewers will have learned that Claire (Natalie Zea) is still alive. She survived the knife attack last year and, in collusion with Mike and the rest of the FBI, she went into witness protection with Joey as Mike told Ryan—and presumably others—that Claire had died. It was a really cool choice from the writers and was also clever in that it allows a scene where Mike fills Claire in on everything that’s been happening....
The release of the first, The Hunger Games, is now just a couple of weeks away, and the initial bunch of critics have been allowed in to see it. They seem to be embargoed from posting full reviews for the time being, but have been granted a green light to post their brief reviews and thoughts to Twitter. Collider (@colliderfrosty)If you’re a Hunger Games fan, happy to report the film is great and you’re going to be very happy with Gary Ross’ film....
My neck of the woods seems to have been having quite a few power ‘outages’ of late. Maybe they have us in training for when the winter really sets in and the power-cuts wil be ‘real’ as opposed to the mere equipment failures that these seem to be. It is a strange phenomena that only seems to happen when you’re in the middle of doing something. You wish it had waited till you’d finished cooking, writing your ‘blog’ or even drawing....
Spoilers ahead If only Jay could catch a break and have a bisexual page 3 model fall into his lap, but for now he’ll have to make do with his sex- and drug-fuelled fantasy life. Simon, however, literally does fall into the lap of his new love, the cooler than him Tara, whom he tries to impress by telling her about the time he saw Take That with his mum....
First time I met Forry was way back in November 1975 at the Famous Monsters of Filmland Convention in New York City. I nearly didn’t make it. I was filming in Tres Arroyes, a little town about 200 miles south of Buenos Aires. The film was called El Lobo and was about a virgin and a wolf that was a devil in disguise. Type casting I thought. Things hadn’t been going so well on the set....
It was brilliant. As far as commercials for overpriced sportswear produced by child labour go, it’s only eclipsed by the Reebok advert where a man runs away from a giant hairy belly (“Belly’s gonna get ya!”). Imagine the vibe of The Warriors and Escape From New York branded with Nike logos, backed by Elvis Presley’s A Little Less Conversation and coloured with crazy showboating and superhuman soccer trickery. It was stylish and entertaining and it sent out the subliminal message: “Buy Nike boots and you’ll be cool....
Did you miss us? Did you miss Thack’s waffling between drug-induced delirium and operating-room genius? Did you miss Edwards taking out his frustration from losing a patient in his illicit clinic with his fists? I know you sure as shit missed old timey hookers performing insect-themed strip teases (why stop with a flea infestation when bedbugs were just as likely)! Thack plays a relatively minor role in this episode. He looks in on his nose-less ex-girlfriend....
However, it’s not even close to those two films. In fact, The LEGO Ninjago Movie is a bit of a dud. In this case, the brick don’t fit. When young Master Builder Lloyd aka the Green Ninja aka Dave Franco, and his team of secret ninja warriors are called once more to fight the evil warlord Garmadon (Justin Theroux) it looks like it’ll just be another victory for the warriors....
Life of the Party is the story of Deanna (McCarthy), wife to Dan (Matt Walsh) and mother to Maddie (Molly Gordon). Deanna has often felt confined in these all-consuming, often restrictive roles, but it has more or less been enough for her… until her husband, moments after dropping their child off for her senior year of college, informs her that he’s been having an affair. Oh, and he wants a divorce....
Frankie and Mike convince Axl to get a tutor to boost his odds of getting into college, but Frankie might need a little extra help herself. It’s her first week of dental assisting school, and after coming in late on the first day and cracking outspoken “mom” jokes, Frankie isn’t on the best terms with her professor. In typical motherly fashion, she tries to suck up to the teacher by bringing her a plate of snicker doodles....
1.3 Julie What a teasing game The Returned is playing. Just when you think it’s pegged out its corners as a handsome crime mystery with a spooky premise, it pulls a stunt of ball-tripping weirdness like that Victor/Serge merge, and has us all a fluster. Just what or who is Victor, and what is the extent of his powers? Off-camera, he did away with interfering gossip Mme Payet Serge-style, then left her to enact that cliché about single women who live alone being eaten by their cats....
3.10 The Fall The episode kicks off with some powerful stock images of humanity’s rise to undreamed-of technological prominence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Narrated by Setrakian himself, the intro serves as a reminder that mankind has survived a huge number of plagues to rise and achieve advancements that once seemed impossible. The intro also reminds the viewer that mankind has overproduced and now is in danger of being wiped out by the Strigoi, because in little over a month since the vampire invasion began, mighty humanity has fallen....
The Strain Season 3 Episode 8 Lately, we haven’t gotten much by way of mythology on The Strain. A few seasons back, we got the origin of the Master, and of course this season we learned the secret history of the Born known as Quinlan, but we really have only gotten hints and clues of the power structure of the strigoi. Every once in a while, Quinlan will visit the Ancients and we’d get some delicious hints and clues about the order of the strigoi....
