Category: 2000
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Another issue in and I’m fine not having read Luba’s Comics and Stories in line with the Luba series. I was worried about it before, but this issue features a direct continuation of Fritz’s flashback reveals from last issue and has a character who dies in the Luba run appearing. So it’s like old home…
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Creator Beto Hernandez released Luba's Comics and Stories simultaneous to the regular Luba series, which I knew when I was reading Luba, but didn’t attempt to read both in publication order. I’ve been a little worried about it, and, based on the first issue, it certainly seems possible there are going to be connections I’ll…
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O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a frustrating, adequate success. There’s some excellent filmmaking and even better performances. Still, the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey is at times too stringent and, at other times, narrative spaghetti on the wall. The falling pieces are co-stars John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson, who spend the…
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It’s a funny idea, and it would explain a lot about Love’s Labour’s Lost, but I don’t think screenwriter, director, and co-producer Branagh cast Alicia Silverstone on a bet regarding whether or not he could get her to deliver an okay monologue. He succeeds and she succeeds, but just okay, and it takes most of…
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Hot Pursuit is the second of two season seven “Frasier” episodes credited to writer Charlie Hauck. Considering the job he got on this one, it’s understandable he wouldn’t be back. It doesn’t seem fair to give a new writer an episode about Kelsey Grammer and Peri Gilpin wondering if maybe they ought to just get…
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Whine Club is half a regular “Frasier” episode, half a “mythology” episode, meaning working on the season’s low-burning arc about Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and Daphne (Jane Leeves) getting serious about other people when they should (?) be getting serious about each other. It’s also got an excellent subplot for John Mahoney where he and…
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I’m not sure where to start with this episode. Jay Kogen’s got the writing credit, and he’s had his name on some good episodes in the past. But why they ever thought they ought to do an episode like Dr. Mary. Dr. Mary is played by Kim Coles, a Black woman (and possibly the first…
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As usual, I regret not keeping better track of writing credits. Joe Keenan gets the credit this episode; he’s been writing “Frasier” since season two with numerous big successes, but based on Out with Dad, I’d have thought him a newbie. The episode picks and chooses plot points from outstanding—and memorable—episodes and mixes them a…
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Oh, “Frasier: Season Seven,” why do you continue to taunt me? This episode has Jane Leeves and David Hyde Pierce cooking together and being adorable for the first time since Leeves found out about Hyde Pierce crushing on her. It’s a good scene, with Hyde Pierce getting to more fully participate—previously and problematically, these scenes…
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I’m feeling a little like the boy who cried wolf, on the lookout for “Frasier”’s inevitable, impending fall; the show’s two episodes away from the “mythology” two-parter, and those two episodes have been excellent. This one’s all about Kelsey Grammer going overboard while composing a theme song for his show. Station manager Tom McGowan wants…
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Despite the unfestive title, RDWRER is the third “Frasier” in a row to do a holiday. Two episodes ago, it was a birthday episode (sort of) for Kelsey Grammer, then last episode was a Christmas episode, and now this episode is the New Year’s. There’s no specific mention of the new elephant—Jane Leeves knows David…
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This issue’s got three stories, but thanks to creator Beto Hernandez’s structure of the second one, it feels like four stories. The first story is the Luba story, though something in story two (and a half) calls back to one of her solo stories even though she’s not actually in it. Beto just opens with…
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I was initially lukewarm about this issue—well, as lukewarm as one can get about an expertly executed, inspiredly plotted comic—but I’ve come around. Sort of. The issue’s got two big features, with the Luba one coming in at fourteen pages (give or take a splash page), which is the most space creator Beto Hernandez has…
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Part of me wants to know how creator Jaime Hernandez came up with Penny Century’s arc. The series began with the return of Ray Dominguez, revealing he had a previously unrevealed history with Penny Century, going halfway through Love and Rockets: Volume One. Throughout the series, which mainly dealt with the death of H.R. Costigan,…
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Hitman: Closing Time opens the only way it can (or should) following the previous collection’s gut-wrenching conclusion, which saw Tommy’s surrogate father, Sean, die protecting him. It starts with a Lobo crossover. And writer Garth Ennis spends the entire issue shitting on Lobo. It’s a done-in-one crossover with art from Doug Mahnke. The art’s perfectly…
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Hotel Splendide is based on a novel by Marie Redonnet. She doesn’t get any credit in the film, director Gross instead taking the full writing credit. Guess the WGA is good, actually. The film having a novel source explains a few things, principally why Hugh O’Conor is narrating the movie. O’Conor’s ostensibly an aquaphobic staying…
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Back in the early days of comics collections—and I'm talking mid-to-late eighties, pre-Dark Knight Returns, pre-Watchmen—there were occasionally collections on themes. Hitman: For Tomorrow feels very much like a collection of Hitman comics based on the theme. It's writer Garth Ennis leaning in on taking Tommy and friends out of their comfort zones but into…
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Best in Show is a masterpiece of editing. Guest’s direction is spectacular as well—the way he creates space for the performances—but it’s all about how Guest and editor Robert Leighton construct the narrative. Even in the second half, when Best in Show becomes a singular tour de force of buffoonery from Fred Willard, it’s all…
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Ginger Snaps is almost there. Karen Walton’s script is almost there, Fawcett’s direction is almost there, Emily Perkins’s lead performance is almost there, Katharine Isabelle’s is… okay, it’s not almost there by the end, when Isabelle’s acting through latex makeup, but she’s good in the first act. Ginger Snaps coasts on the first act for…
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Rather terrible–but still on some levels competent–serial killer thriller about Keanu Reeves terrorizing Chicago in general and ex-FBI agent James Spader in specific. Really bad performance from Reeves (who did the film to fulfill a forged contract obligation) and Marisa Tomei (as Spader’s therapist and, natch, love interest). Rather elaborate Chicagoland filming but completely inept…
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Beautifully directed “man in [madcap] crisis” movie with writing professor Michael Douglas dealing with his wife leaving him, his girlfriend getting pregnant, his agent snooping for his overdue and overlong new novel, one student trying to seduce him, and another student killing his boss’s dog. All those threads overlap too. It’s a bit of a…
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Either Evan Dorkin’s got the Eltingville TV rights back or whoever has them is a complete numbskull because the book’s so relevant you could subtitle it “An Incel Fable” and it’d be totally appropriate, narratively speaking. But it’d be somewhat intellectually dishonest, as Dorkin started The Eltingville Club long before the incels had a self-identity…
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I have no idea how I’m going to talk about Small Favors; it’s my first “erotic” comic. Possibly ever. (The first edition of Lost Girls is sitting on my shelf, still unread). The collection’s subtitle is “The Definitive Girly Porno Collection.” I’m just worried what kind of SEO I’m going to get from frequent usages…
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If Unbreakable wasn’t a one hour and forty-six minute self-aggrandizement from wannabe mainstream-auteur (notice, not mainstream auteur) Shyamalan, it’d somehow be even worse. Because at least if Shyamalan is intentionally doing all these things, making all these choices, it’s a cohesive flop. If he’s not, if the mishmash elements are actually mishmash (like, you know,…
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The Window opens with a crowd on the street, looking up. There’s a title card, so it’s a good bet they’re all looking at a window. Pretty soon the cops show up–it’s set in Flatbush, Brooklyn–and ask what’s going on. Some people see Jesus up in the window, some people don’t. But it’s a big…
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Shadow of the Vampire opens with some title cards explaining the setup. Well, it opens with some title cards explaining the setup after what feels like nine minute opening titles. In reality… it’s six. Vampire ostensibly runs ninety-five minutes. Anyway. The title cards setup the making of Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s highly influential 1922 vampire film.…
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As a musical, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle might have worked. When there’s the big Pottsylvanian national anthem scene, director McAnuff finally seems comfortable. He needs a stage; Rocky and Bullwinkle is a road movie. There aren’t any stages. The occasional set piece hints at potential for the format–CGI animated moose and squirrel opposite…
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Dave Gibbons does the most art on World’s Funnest. It’s not exactly the standard Dave Gibbons art, either, it’s Dave Gibbons doing Silver Age and it’s awesome. What writer Evan Dorkin taps into with World’s Funnest is the experience of being a Batman and Superman fan in the late eighties and early nineties; it’s practically…
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For all intents and purposes, there’s nothing nice to say about Highlander: Endgame. Maybe there’s an almost all right moment between Lisa Barbuscia and Adrian Paul. They’re married, but estranged. They’re both immortal, something he didn’t tell her before killing her to bring about her immortal existence. It’s terribly handled in the flashback sequences and…
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To say Godzilla vs. Megaguirus is good for a while might be a stretch, but it’s definitely okay for a while. It’s a Godzilla movie with a lot of CG, whether it’s the giant monster itself swimming or the millions of prehistoric dragonflies out to sting him. Director Masaaki tries hard to integrate various effects…
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