On the Netflix front, I’ve watched a few things, but we’ll get to most of that next week. This week, however, I did watch Lavell Crawford: Can A Brother Get Some Love? Most people are familiar with Lavell due to his role as Huell in the later seasons of Breaking Bad, or as a contestant on season 5 of Last Comic Standing. I’d heard about 1/4 of the material before, but it was still funny, as Lavell’s a funny storyteller. He does the usual “White people do this, but Black people do this” thing, but it’s not as trite as it usually is. I definitely recommend it.
My pal, Keith, came to town and we had an Amazing Spider-Thon. I’d never seen The Amazing Spider-Man, so we started out with that, and the next night we watched The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Why, exactly, do people dislike those movies? I really enjoyed the first one. I’d even go as far as to say that Andrew Garfield was a better Peter Parker than Tobey Maguire. I really liked his performance, and even though I’m a Mary Jane guy, I dug Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy. I mean, the reboot was completely too soon, but I liked what they did with it. I was telling Keith that I was dreading the familiar beats, like the death of Uncle Ben and the stupid wrestling part, but the movie threw a curveball at me and changed both of those aspects of the origin. I will say that the sequel wasn’t without its problems – mainly that I didn’t completely understand Electro’s motivation. I mean, he was invisible to people as a person, so he just wanted to matter. I get that, but why become evil? Considering he idolized Spider-Man, why not team up with his hero rather than try to fight him? It also suffers from Too-Many-Villains-Itis. I didn’t hate it, though; it just wasn’t as good as the first one.
Speaking of comic movies, The Rock finally confirmed what he’d been hinting at for months: he’ll be portraying the villain Black Adam in a Shazam movie. With everything being so PC these days, are they just gonna call him “Adam”? I don’t know anyone under the age of 60 who’d want a Shazam movie, but good for him.
In comic TV news, Matt Nable has been cast as Ra’ Al Ghul for Arrow‘s 3rd season. One of these days, I really need to get back to watching that show. Anyway, I’ve never heard of Nable, and folks are just gonna whine that it should’ve been Liam Neeson, in order to create some fantasy shared universe that doesn’t exist.
The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story aired on Labor Day, but I forgot about it. Luckily, I was able to DVR it later, but I still haven’t gotten around to watching it, so look for my thoughts next week. For now, though, what a terrible title! Couldn’t it have been something like “Behind The Bell: The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story”? It needs a name with some gumption to it!
If you curious, Karen Gillan’s Selfie is available to stream on ABC.com. I took some time out of my day last Friday and checked it out. I’m not quite sure how this is going to work as a series. I mean, it would’ve made a decent rom com, but a full fledged TV series? I have my doubts. Basically, it’s an update of My Fair Lady. Eliza Dooley (instead of Doolittle here) is a bit of a social media addict, with tons of Instagram followers. After one really bad day ruins her social media presence, she seeks out the help of a coworker (John Cho) to help rebrand her image. At the beginning, both characters are pretty unlikeable, as Dooley is more vapid than your average teenage girl, while Cho’s character seems to have a hard time fitting into the world around him. By the end, however, there are traces of heart in both characters, but I don’t know if we’re supposed to stick around for Eliza’s transformation or for the inevitable Will They/Won’t They they’re building up between the characters. I don’t see this getting a second season, but we’ll just have to see.
It was announced that Rosie Perez and former Bush communications chief, Nicolle Wallace, will be joining Rosie and Whoopi on The View this season. Rosie Perez? Really? So, half the hour is just gonna be folks trying to understand what she’s saying, right?
Multiple outlets are reporting that Toy Hunter may be over. I’m not shedding any tears. While I initially liked seeing all of the rare, old toys, I just couldn’t get past Jordan. In the first season, he was really lowballing folks. He improved over time, but then the show became saturated with D-list celebrity guests who didn’t really fit the show (DMC?). I love toys, but I never really loved the show (I did love the brief period when Julia Collier was his “assistant”). Hopefully, this will end the Toy Hunter Effect of making people think all their worthless attic junk is actually some priceless artifact that ever collector must have. There was definitely an increase in sale prices at toy shows and comic cons because of this mentality, and I’ll be glad to see it go. I know some folks will miss the show, but I’m sure something will come along to fill that void soon.
While he was in town, Keith introduced me to Kung Fury.There was originally a Kickstarter in order to help them raise the funding to make the full short film. They ended up making around $630,000, so something should be coming soon. As a fan of all things ’80s, I can’t wait to see the finished product.
Do you love Ghostbusters? Who doesn’t?! Be sure to head over to The Robot’s Pajamas, as this week is Ghostbusters Week, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the franchise. They’ve got a lot of great features, and they even dusted off the Robot’s Pajama Party Podcast to take part in the festivities.
Links I Loved
4 Reasons Chris Pratt is Totally the Next Tom Hanks – UnderScoopFire!
Marvel Legends X-Men Infinite Series Storm Review – Preternia
TMNT Targetgate – Crooked Ninja Turtle Gang
In Case You Missed It This Week
Ugh, I don’t really know how it came to this, yet here we are. Over Labor Day weekend, someone hacked into iCloud and leaked nude pics of several female celebrities, including Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Lawrence, McKayla Maroney, Victoria Justice and more. These pics were posted on 4chan, and later on reddit, under the heading “The Fappening”. While several of the nudes have been reported as fakes, many more were the real deal, exposing moments that were meant to be private. This has sparked debate on whether this was a simple invasion of privacy in the digital age or if this could even be considered a sex crime. I’m not Judge Judy, so I’m not here to get into all that. I will say, however, that it was like having Christmas, your birthday, and your Bar Mitzvah all at the same time if you were a net savvy teenage boy. The threads have since been taken down, but the damage has been done, as PR reps had their work cut out for them this week. Looking past all of the laws broken to get here, this was the stuff that teenage dreams are made of. Which is pretty sad and pathetic. People’s lives were derailed through an invasion of privacy, but these kids just don’t care. To them, it’s just “Yay, titties!” So, that’s why 14 year old boys had the West Week Ever.
No shed tears for me regarding Toy Hunter either. Way too edited and “reality TV” to bear watching much of. Then I saw how much he valued the carded TMNT stuff and I was out. Remember Collection Intervention? I only watched because of Elyse (hey at least i’m honest).
Thanks for including Targetgate in the links!
Shazam is being made because of the Sat.morning live action show, not because of the silver age comics, or the current comics. The black Adam storyline doesn’t fit in with the people that remember that show fondly. Toy Hunter was just like Barrett Jackson or Antiques Roadshow and those storage locker shows all it does is make people that have a little something think their stuff is worth that much more.
No more perfect name for this event than “The Fappening”. Whoever coined that name deserves a Webbie Award or something. Did you see where Reddit tried to donate proceeds to Prostate Cancer Foundation because it’s JLaw’s favorite charity, but PCF sent the money back? Trolls gonna troll.
ASM 2 was meh to me, but people walked out the theater tweeting it was the best Spidey movie EVAR as if SM 2 never happened.
Have fun at Baltimore Comic Con this weekend. Wish I could have joined you.
I believe that is the first time anyone has referred to my web venture as an “outlet” … so thanks!
Here’s some assorted musings:
RE: ASM/ASM2 — I agree in that the reboot was too soon, and in the end did nothing to expand the Spider-Man mythos on the screen. The forced world building in ASM2 gave me douche chills.
RE: The Rock — What’s a Black Adam?
RE: The Fappening — Remember when the only nude celebrity photos were in Playboy? Kids have it easy these days …
I read somewhere that DC said the movie and TV universes will be different things and they’re not planning on any kind of crossovers.
The Bell movie was not that good. Somehow “Jesse” was the person I was most interested in following.
@Cody – Oh, I remember Collection Intervention and I, too, only watched for Elyse.
@Darrell – Ya know, I’ve never actually seen that live action Shazam show. I’ve seen DVDs of it at comic cons, but have never watched it. Was it any good?
@Classick – they sent the money back? Man, that’s a statement! I pity anyone who thought that was the greatest Spidey movie. Stupid kids!
@Jon – Black Adam is just evil Captain Marvel, who looks like Captain Marvel, but wears black. At least, that’s what I’ve taken away from the character. The problem, however, is that anyone they cast as Captain Marvel is just gonna be overshadowed by The Rock’s star power. They should’ve just made him Captain Marvel.
@Dex – yeah, I also heard that the universes were supposed to be separate, but you know the whole Marvel shared universe has DC fans wondering “Why can’t DC do that?”, so they’re always looking for ways to make it happen. I still haven’t gotten around to the Saved by the Bell movie, but I, too, was only really interested in what happened with Jesse.