Category: 2008
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I’m going to assume Dan Dare had a future-sword in the original comics or whatever, because otherwise, writer Garth Ennis has even more to answer for. This final issue is oversized, which I’d been gleefully anticipating, but it turns out it’s too long. It’s fluffed up with lots of double-page spreads and it’s still too…
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As I feared, Gary Erskine continues to fall apart on the art this issue. As I assumed, it doesn’t really matter. Writer Garth Ennis is doing such a phenomenal job with the script, Erskine gets a pass. He’s got exceptional problems with depth—I don’t even know how to describe it but somehow, although Erskine’s figures…
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Writer Garth Ennis has a good issue with this Dan Dare, but artist Gary Erskine seems to be struggling to keep up. The issue downshifts the series a bit, with Dan and newly appointed companion Ms. Christian butting heads with the Royal Space Navy or whatever they’re called. Back on Earth, Home Secretary and former…
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I’ve never read any Dan Dare besides this series. I assume it’s some British Silver Age book about British derring-do in a sci-fi setting. So I don’t know if writer Garth Ennis is doing some homage with the pacing of this issue or just the plotting of the series in general. Here’s what the first…
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It’s an absurdly good issue, starting with Dan Dare having a showdown with the little shitheels currently calling themselves British officers. He and companion Digby are on a desert planet, trying to evacuate the civilians before they and the garrison have to shoot it out with literal monsters, and some officers are whining about their…
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There’s not much good to say about The Ramen Girl, except the Japanese cast does pretty well. They don’t get actual story arcs, and they’re only around to service the vanity of narcissist protagonist Brittany Murphy. But their acting is good, even though director Ackerman is terrible with their scenes too. Murphy is a trust…
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Departures suffers for its DV photography. Suffers. Hamada Takeshi cannot figure out how to light for the video and, as a result, the film never looks good. Maybe if director Takita were somehow taking it into account, but no, Takita just pretends it doesn’t look like an ornate Hi8 camcorder production. With some competent mise-en-scène,…
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Journey’s End opens with one of the series’s biggest cliffhanger cop-outs–and “Who” is all about the cliffhanger cop-out, so it’s actually a surprise. If the opening titles hadn’t already given it away, I guess. This episode reveals the villains’ master plan and features them seemingly defeating Doctor David Tennant at every turn. If writer Russell…
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I started The Stolen Earth with some reservations thanks to the previous episode—a de facto prologue—which managed to both waste and diss Catherine Tate simultaneously, but the first scene won me over a bit. It’s an exterior street scene with Tate and David Tennant and it’s actually shot well. There’s no telling how much better…
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Welp, figured out what Catherine Tate was doing while last episode filmed and David Tennant was on his own… she was filming this episode, with Tennant now the Superman III Margot Kidder. Tate goes to a fortune teller (Chipo Chung, in a particularly inglorious return to the show after she was a major supporting character…
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Midnight is kind of great. Also kind of not. It’s a strange episode for a couple obvious reasons. First, the Doctor (David Tennant) doesn’t have a companion with him when he needs one. He and Catherine Tate are on a pleasure planet resort and she wants to sunbathe not go on a tourist outing. It’s…
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During this episode I made two very unfortunate observations. First and more unfortunate but less damaging… Euros Lyn has really not been keeping up with the latest “Who” narrative devices. It just feels different. When it shouldn’t. It’s weird. But not too damaging to the episode overall. It’s a lot, it’s not a surprise Lyn…
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Silence in the Library is writer Steven Moffat’s first episode since last season’s big deal killer stone angels episode starring movie star Carey Mulligan. No movie star guest star for Silence, rather “she made it in Hollywood on ‘ER’ and now she’s back in the UK” Alex Kingston. I mean… it was pre-streaming. It was…
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Again, not going to look into it, but I’ll bet there’s some kind of story with the Susie Liggat-produced episodes. She does like three a season, then nothing until the next season. And they sometimes more involve women, sometimes not. This one seemingly more involves women because the done-in-one companion is Agatha Christie, played by…
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It’s the most successful “Doctor Who” in a dozen episodes (ish) and succeeds by giving Freema Agyeman her own arc, Catherine Tate pure supporting to David Tennant, and another potential for Tennant. So apparently the show needs four leads. If they could keep up this level of success. And The Doctor’s Daughter is a great…
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Despite some good acting and fine direction, The Poison Sky is unambitious for even an unambitious “Doctor Who” two-parter resolve. A lot of the plot hinges on teleportation and maybe teleportation really is just one sci-fi genre shortcut too many. “Who” can’t handle it. And then this episode’s (relatively) out of nowhere cliffhanger is a…
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Based on the teaser—which spoils Freema Agyeman’s return—I wasn’t looking forward to The Sontaran Stratagem. Mind you, I also didn’t know the Sontaran were a return alien race from the original series so maybe if I was a Sontaran fan…. They’re all right, though they’re functionally really similar to the rhino guys without being adorable.…
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“Doctor Who” is sometimes a tad British. So when we find out this episode David Tennant didn’t realize the Ood were a slave race the last time he encountered them (season two) even though Billie Piper had a whole subplot about it… and saying they’re just too British assuming positive intent. There’s the much darker…
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It’s a big episode of “Doctor Who,” at least in terms of getting some of the show’s time travel “rules.” At least in the current series; I’m not sure about the original (though David Tennant implies there may be different rules between now and then). When Tennant and Catherine Tate find themselves in Pompeii, the…
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Despite the previous season taking place over four or five days (as they play out in the show’s present), this episode doesn’t rush Doctor David Tennant reuniting with perfect companion (and pre-last season companion Freema Agyeman) Catherine Tate. Tate was the previous year’s Christmas special; a fill-in between Billie Piper and Agyeman. But now it’s…
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According to Internet lore, Marvel once tried to get George Clooney interested in doing a Nick Fury movie with Garth Ennis’s original Fury MAX miniseries. Clooney pushed it away disgusted. Makes you wonder if anyone tried giving Morgan Freeman a copy of Valley Forge, Valley Forge, or if maybe Ennis and artist Goran Parlov were…
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I’m going to go out on a limb and say having Howie Chaykin do an issue of art—the fiftieth Punisher MAX, so for the collectors’ who got anniversary issues–having Howie fill-in was a mistake. Maybe if the rest of it weren’t regular artist Goran Parlov, like if it’d been all guest artists. But Howie ends…
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It would be wrong to describe Justice League: The New Frontier Special as hack work. Darywn Cooke’s art on the feature, even his plotting of it, is not hacky. Neither is the Robin and Kid Flash story’s art, courtesy Dave Bullock and Michael Cho. Even the Wonder Woman and Black Canary go to a Playboy…
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A lot about The League is impressive. The filmmakers do a good job creating a stylized 1960s Chicago on a very low budget–director Higgins has some great overhead shots where they change the light saturation to hide it being modern cars on the streets below–and there's a definite attention to detail for most of the…
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Ennis opens with a war story–well, at least a few pages of one–and it’s nice to see he and Robertson doing it. Ennis’s zeal for the genre (along with his cynicism) play well in The Boys‘s flashback, as the Legend tells Hughie all about the history of superheroes. This issue covers until the Vietnam War…
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Watching The Business of Being Born, one has to wonder about the structure. It starts as an investigation into the way hospitals deliver babies in the United States (the responsibility is not entirely with the hospital, of course; the film opens discussing Manhattan mothers scheduling their cesarean sections). But the narrative changes course once director…
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Role Models is shockingly good. It fuses the inappropriately blunt comedy genre with a listless thirties white men growing up genre. The result is a constantly funny film–I mean, it’s Seann William Scott swearing at kids… from the two minute mark–with a solid emotional core. And it’s never artificial. Scott isn’t the lead (though he…
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Maybe there’s a longer version of Blindness where they explain what happens to all the cast members who fall away from the film. Or what happens to them while the film’s busy on other stuff—like Danny Glover, who disappears for a large portion of the film, only to return in an integral part at the…
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Factory Farmed is a great example of how digital video has made it possible for anyone to put together something great looking without actually having the previously requisite levels of talent. It’s a harsh statement—and I actually would rather have made some comment about auteur Edwards assuming everyone cares about his silly sci-fi premise (it…
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My history B.A. informs my first observation about Homeland—writer Marv Wolfman identifies a disputed point in the history of the formation of Israel as a state—and I appreciated it. Wolfman takes the rockier road. A lot of Homeland does take the rockier road, working very hard to be not to be jingoistic. The knocks one…
The Stop Button 