Comics Round Up!

I can be quite weak-willed when it comes to new things. Always have been. Its one of the reasons I stopped buying "floppy" comics, because that weekly trip to the comic story inevitably lead to purchases over and above whatever I was subscribed to at the time. I just couldn't walk into a shop full of geek catnip and then walk out empty handed. That was a few years back, and my range of collected editions has expanded happily, mostly bought safely over the internet where the smarter bits of my brain get time to kick in and stop me spending money I don't really have. However, recently that changed, because I signed up to Comixology, and now I have subscriptions again. Here's a quick run down of what I've subscribed to.

Movie Review: The Worlds End

I thought it a little odd much the team behind The Worlds End - director Edgar Wright, and stars Nick Frost and Simon Pegg - made of this being the final part of the "Cornetto Trilogy", a movie to cap off Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Aside from anything else, there isn't a lot to link the first two films, other than some vague thematic touchstones and the odd repeated gag. Touting this as something that will tie up those themes and cap them all off adds a weight of expectation to the movie on top of just "track record so far" and also, I think, sets a bar it needs to cross by it's own advertising. And I think that's a mistake, because The Worlds End is a decent movie, and a good send-off, but still the weakest of this "trilogy".

DVD of the Week: Life of Pi

Before we start on this weeks DVD, Life of Pi, I should mention that last week we also managed to watch Hansel and Gretel: Witchunters. I don't really want to waste any time on it, save only for this observation: of the two, apparently co-billed leads, the male one gets to generally kick-ass, screw the hot chick, and make quippy one-liners (or what passed for them in a generally weak script), whereas the female get repeatedly beaten down, almost raped, and repeatedly rescued from such peril by a male character. In movie whose basic plot is about killing women. So yeah, there's that. Onto happier things, eh?

Box Set Blues: Breaking Bad, Series 1

For Fathers Day this year, I got Breaking Bad, a story about a middle-aged family man who, when faced with a life-changing crisis, takes to criminal ways. Hmmm. Anyhow, its a show that comes hugely lauded, one of the TV shows of the age, it seems, and something I've meant to start on for a long time, so I can't really question it as a great choice of present. Sadly, it's only 7 episodes long, so just as it really gets going, we ran of out of episodes. But what episodes!

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

The big movie news this week seems to be that more Americans went to see Adam Sandlers latest cinematic hate-crime, Grown Ups 2, than Guillermo Del Toro's Robots punching Aliens epic, Pacific Rim. By any metric I'm far more disposed towards the latter than the former, but it does highlight that perhaps we are over-served in the big, loud, blockbuster area this year, with about six weeks (and six big releases at least) left to go, and reinforce the fear that franchise thinking is taking over. In a summer where sequels and remakes have coined it in, but original (for a given value of "original", obviously) movies have struggled, it's hard to look ahead and see some bleakly repetitive summers ahead. But I come to praise Pacific Rim, not to bury it.

DVD of the Week: Django Unchained

I've always liked Quentin Tarantino films, but I always seem to fall short of loving them. Its hard to explain, but I tend to see the trailers with hardly a quiver of excitement as shudders of anticipation fly around the movie-loving blogosphere and beyond. And then I watch them, and really, really enjoy them, but for some reason they're not films I want to go back to and pore over, despite the fact that Tarantino makes films that are ideal for repeat viewing and nerdy analysis. And so it was with Django Unchained, his attempt to do for Westerns what Inglorious Basterds did for war movies, a big-budget, star-packed homage to the which ever other movies and directors Tarantino was obsessing about next.

TV Review: Adventure Time

There is some strange stuff on kids TV. This has probably always been the case - certainly I have fond memories of trippy nonsense from the 70s - but in the last few years I've become more aware of it, thanks to Ewan's gradual evolution of tastes as he gets older. As good, geeky parents, we've always pointed him at the super-hero shows, which remain a hit, and have infected his younger brother with a fine knowledge of DC and Marvel characters, but now he's starting to get into the wierder, more "out there" stuff aimed at preteens, teenagers and, in many cased, adult geeks who should know better. Which brings me to Adventure Time.

DVD(s) of the Week: Frankenweenie and Fast Five

Cripes, a double header of movies this weekend! This largely due to absolutely nothing being on the TV that isn't Tennis, apparently, and needing to fill that gap between tea and putting the kids to bed so we could start on watching Breaking Bad. So, we had Frankenweenie via lovefilm-in-the-post and, because Ewan had expressed interest in wanting see Fast Six, we streamed Fast Five over lovefilm-over-the-internet for him. First, Tim Burtons latest.