A Very Harold & Kumar (3D) Christmas - There is nothing at all intellectual here, nothing remotely intelligent or fancy here.
This is stupid, immature, drug-based humor. It's juvenile and puerile and stupid.
And it's hilarious...good times, folks.
Bob Roberts - I remember this fondly from my high school days. I went back to the well one more time to see if it was still entertaining.
The movie sees Tim Robbins as a Bob-Dylan-esque folk singer pushing a very un-Dylan agenda, that of the far right wing, trading stocks , making millions, verbally smacking around immigrants and running for Congress against a overly one-dimensional 'good man' incumbent.
When I was sixteen or so, I saw this as a brilliant satire on both the folk scene of the 1960s and the money-hungry early 90's.
I don't see it that way anymore. Instead, I see it as over-the-top, a little mean-spirited, and not terrifically witty. If you're a Dylan fan who knows every one of his scenes up to the motorcycle accident, you'll find a lot of references to Dylan's
Don't Look Back. If, however, you're not a Bobcat, then I'd take a pass.
The Illusionist - Two magician flicks came out at roughly the same time back in 2006:
The Illusionist and
The Prestige.
The Prestige was excellent with a twist ending that didn't feel cheap in the least, that was intelligent and well-written.
The Illusionist has a cheap, impossible twist at the end and a montage that alleges to explain everything that's come along the way but doesn't. It wastes two good actors in Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti, both of whom are stuck sneering and overplaying this parts.
This isn't a good movie, and the ending is atrocious.
There have also been a lot of comic books in my past few weeks. Most of them aren't worth more than a few lines. Some were downright awful...
- Incredible Hulks: Planet Savage - I'm grooving to the whole Red She Hulk-green Hulk interplay. It's a fun little time. Heck, I'm grooving to the concept of a Hulk kind of family with the Warbound, the Abomination, Hulk's son Skaar, and even the red woman who I never figured out. Fun stuff here,but I would have liked to see the volume that came before this one with Hulk fighting Zeus.
- Avengers vs X-Men: It's Coming - Nothing new here, just sort of final issues from lots of other Marvel miniseries leading up to the current Avengers vs X-Men event. I actually felt okay reading these because most of them were ones I hadn't read before. If you've read all the volumes that make this up, there's probably no reason for you to show up.
- Marvel Knights 4: Impossible Things Happen Every Day - Moderately interesting stand-alone stuff here, especially the last one with the Impossible Man. That's some entertaining metacomics there with the comic book author just hired to write Fantastic Four comics and finding himself involved in the story. The rest is worth a glance but isn't going to rock your world.
- Arkham Asylum: Madness - One of the better turns of comic this go 'round. The volume avoids focusing on the inmates at Arkham. Instead it turns to the staff at Arkham who are, in this volume, at least, as trapped there as the inmates are. Good look at the small, terrifying everyday moments in this asylum.
- Ultimate Fantastic Four: Salem's Seven - Bad...poor...bad art (ineffectively titilating), bad characters, bad...
- FF: Vol 1 - It's a little odd to see the same introduce-Spider-Man-to-the-Fantastic-Four scene played by two authors and with two sets of totally different interactions, but that doesn't make this any less fun a volume. It's fun, light-hearted stuff. I particularly enjoy the interactions among the further-extended Fantastic Four family - the Richards children, their grandfather, and especially Dr Doom.
- Batman: Gotham Shall be Judged - Dumb...dumb...dumb...
- Captain America: Prisoner of War - The Black Widow breaks into a Russian gulag to save Bucky from having to pay for his brain-washed crimes. It's interesting how cold-war oriented this series still is and yet how enjoyable a read it can be.
- Fantastic Four: World's Greatest - Again, fun stuff. I appreciate the time-travelling plot line with the Fantastic Four fighting their only surviving future member and her allies. It's also a nice - but happily not obvious - twist connection between the two story arcs in this volume.
And then we come to
Powers: Vol 11-13
- Secret Identity - In which our detectives take on The Devil...I think.
- The 25 Coolest Dead Superheroes of All Time - Here's the drama I've been looking for. It's been a while since Deena get her powers via virus and she disappeared from the scene, leaving Walker in need of a new partner between his world-defending disappearances. Excellent wrap up to the arc.
- Z - There's way more of Walker's history here, back to the World War II and just-after ring-a-ding-ding days, back to haunt him.
Powers doesn't hit the same massively high notes that it did in the last definitive hardcover collection, but it's still the best stuff I read this go-round.
The last thing worth noting this week was the first volume of Robert Kirkman & Rob Liefeld's
Infinite.
This one deserves a big image because it needs to serve as a clear warning to everyone out there.
This is the worst comic I've read since
The Widening Gyre or
Cacophony. This is
Rob Liefeld at his absolute worst - no feet, hundreds of pouches, thighs bigger than chests, nonsensical backgrounds, ridiculously sized and twisted guns, stupid haircuts, squinty eyes, outsized muscular chests - and that's just on the frickin' cover you see above. From there the whole thing gets worse with every page, making less and less sense and avoiding any understanding of human physiology or laws of physics.
I have no idea how Robert Kirkman got involved in this messy piece of crap, because his stuff is typically solid if not entirely excellent (
Invincible, Marvel Zombies, Ultimate X-Men, The Walking Dead). This, however, is a shinola storm of epic proportions from the very first issue. It's a pretty 90's storyline with main character (giant guy up above) traveling back in time to recruit himself and his entire future team (but in the present) to fight the dystopian-future bad guy (who also travels back in time). It's a lot of 'we can't break the timestream' and 'how did they know we'd be here' and 'the plan isn't working, let's just blast our way out' at every turn.
This comic is horrible.
H
O
R
R
I
B
L
E
Avoid it...burn any copies of it you see...destroy it with extreme prejudice lest the 90's return to us.
Thank the heavens that the series
will never see a finish.
(And if you didn't click on that link of the
worst art ever from Rob Liefeld, do yourself a favor and click on it now. He's an awful artist, and I haven't the foggiest idea how he keeps getting work.)
