So, with all of the Guardians of the Galaxy hype, I decided to check out another James Gunn movie, Super. If you’ve never seen it, it stars Rainn Wilson as a guy who becomes a vigilante to save his wife from a drug dealer. Wilson becomes The Crimson Bolt, and Ellen Page is his sidekick, Bolty. It’s a really dark comedy, but I enjoyed it. I’m not so sure I’m cool with the ending, as there are a few unanswered questions, but it’s definitely worth checking out.
Girl Meets World has been renewed for a second season. This isn’t really a surprise, but I guess it’s good news for someone. I’ve watched a few episodes, but it’s nowhere near my new favorite show or anything. It’s way too schmaltzy, even for a Disney Channel show. I like when teens get into crazy adventures, while every episode of this show seems to have a heavy-handed message. Even Boy Meets World didn’t get as sentimental as this show. I guess I’ve been ruined by years of iCarly, where I expect every tween show to have snarky banter and food fights.
In other TV news, I caught the premiere of Partners. While it’s good that Martin and Kelsey are working again, this is a PASS. I miss the old, outrageous Martin, while he seems to be playing the straight man here. It just doesn’t work for me. It’s not that funny, and it’s certainly not Appointment Television.
James Corden may be Craig Ferguson’s successor on The Late Late Show. I tend to know my British pop culture, but I have no clue who he is. Moving on…
So, I caught Black Jesus last night, even though I expected the gates of Hell to open at any moment. My opinion of the show: it’s definitely something. I hate to say it, but I laughed. A couple of times. I do feel, however, that the funniest stuff in the show would still be funny without the Jesus angle. Plus, there’s the whole Is He or Isn’t He aspect about Black Jesus. I mean, he seems to be some bum who thinks he’s Jesus, but he does have powers. They’ll probably never just come out and answer it, as that would be the end of the show. I felt kinda bad about watching it, but I’ll probably watch it again.
Warner Bros shocked the geek world on Wednesday when it was announced that Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice would be moved from May 2016 to March 2016. This takes it out of competition with Captain America 3, but it also prevents Warners from being able to label it a “Summer blockbuster”. They also announced a slate of 11 movies scheduled straight through to 2020, but no titles or actors have been announced, so this was pretty much an empty gesture. This could be a sign of DC finally getting its house in order, but that’s now how it’s being perceived online. For all of their planning, DC will always be compared to Marvel’s cinematic success. When people hear about more Marvel movies, they tend to get excited. On the flip side, when they hear about DC’s movie plans, they suddenly get pessimistic. Maybe DC will actually pull this off and succeed. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Call off the dogs, as the cast of The Big Bang Theory has reached an agreement over their contracts. I know a ton of you were probably hoping that negotiations would collapse, but the show now has the actors locked in through season 10. The three leads (Galecki, Parsons, and Cuoco-Sweeting) will end up making about $1M per episode, in addition to some of the money on the back end (merchandising, syndication, etc). The next tier, comprised of Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg, will make 80% of what the leads make, and also get the same percentage off the back end. I was surprised to learn that the other women on the show make almost nothing when compared to the others. At the moment, Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik make about $30,000 per episode, and their new deals will have them making $100K per episode by the final season.
In music news, a friend of mine from my college days, Tat Tong, is now a songwriter hitting the big time. His most recent song, “Happy Little Pill”, for artist Troye Sivan, just hit #1 on the Billboard trending chart, as well as #1 on the US iTunes chart. It’s a hauntingly beautiful song, and I’m both jealous of and proud of him.
The new Ninja Turtles movie comes out this week, and my pals over at The Robot’s Pajamas have put together Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Week. Be sure to hop over there and check out all the great posts they’ve put up over the course of the week.
Links I Loved
My 30 Year-Long Man Crush Timeline – UnderScoopFire!
Some Highlights from This Weekend’s Lego BrickFair – Cool & Collected
The Urge to Purge – Pop Pop! It’s Trash Culture
Classick Team-Up! #11: Engineernerd of TV and Film Toys – Cold Slither Podcast Network
SDCC 2014 – Interview with the Cast of Power Rangers Super Megaforce – Awesome Toy Blog
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereal – Reborn – The Holidaze
In Case You Missed It This Week
Thrift Justice: YSE – Special Forces
Of course Guardians of the Galaxy had The West Week Ever! It’s a movie with a talking raccoon and tree monster that made $94 million in its opening weekend! While it was expected to be a modest success, nobody saw that coming. NOBODY. If you claim you did, I’ll call you a liar. I thought this was gonna be Marvel’s first bomb, but I’m sitting here, eating crow with Chick-Fil-A sauce. Chris Pratt’s on his way to being a big name, Batista’s gaining respect from the acting community, Marvel’s shutting down Etsy shops specializing in Baby Groots, and everyone loves Rocket. It’s been quite a 7-day run for Guardians, and it will probably end up winning the box office this weekend, too. I still think the plot was a bit thin, and the villains were barely fleshed out, but I won’t fight that it was a fun movie. I really need to see it again. In any case, for surprising EVERYBODY, Guardians of the Galaxy had the West Week Ever.
Welp, that’s it for this week, but be sure to tune in Tuesday when I’ll debut a brand new installment of “Reboot That Bitch”!
Nice recap of the week, Will! That overly photoshopped photo of the Big Bang cast freaks me the heck out.
The ending of Super is one of those things where it’s more important about the journey of the character than it was to make sense plot wise.
If you really think about it, he’d have been caught within days, because Bolty’s friends would have reported her being with a guy named Frank and they would have easily found him. Plus who didn’t get a picture of that car’s license plate.
Anyway, it totally works for me on a completed journey. Frank was not a happy person and he didn’t see the beauty in the world around him. One of his 2 times he was happy was his wedding, but his actual marriage didn’t seem that great. (As evidenced by his wife criticizing the hands on the pictures and not being flattered that he drew a picture of their wedding)
At the end he learned to appreciate even the very small things in life.
I think I have a lot more thoughts on this movie, but I need to process them. I frankly love it and I think it’s one of my favorite films of all time. Something about it speaks to me. I can totally see why people would completely hate it though.
Also thanks for the Turtle Week mention!
Jeez the math problem that you have to pass to leave a comment was a doozy today! Had to think about it for a minute. Another great post from the column I look forward to most each week. I gotta check out Super, been meaning to for quite some time and now evne more intrigued.
@Jenn – I know, right?! It’s like they were all taken from different photo shoots, and merged into that one picture.
@Vincent – Yeah, you’re right about it being about the journey. I usually hate those kinds of stories, but it works here. I guess I didn’t really factor in that he was finally happy at the end. To me, it was a “The Five People You Meet In Heaven” scenario. If you’ve never read it, the gist of it is that this one guy’s life had to suck so that the people around him could have better lives. I’ve always hated that notion, because what if MY life has to suck to better the people around ME? Fuck that noise! Anyway, I definitely need to watch it again because I really enjoyed it, and now I want to see some of the stuff in it that you saw.
@Howie – Yeah, I got a hard math problem, too. I almost had to Google it! Thanks for reading, and I loved the GIF Can We Talk today. That garbage man was MAD!
I’m not very much up on my UK pop culture but I do know James Corden from him being on Doctor Who, but that’s about it.
I was at Boston Comic Con yesterday and saw someone cosplaying Black Jesus, although I had no idea it was a show until reading this post.
I didn’t know Guardians was going to come out swinging but I was damn hoping it was going to be a Star Wars for the youngins. In that respect, I think it was a little more crass than it needed to be language-wise. On the other hand, it makes it less Disney-fied.