Glenn Walker is a writer who knows pop culture. He loves, hates, and lives pop culture. He knows too freaking much about pop culture, and here's where he talks about it all: movies, music, comics, television, and the rest... Welcome to Hell.
The Island of Dr. Moreau ~ In prepping to watch Lost Soul, the documentary about writer/director Richard Stanley's aborted attempt to make this very film - I sought out and watched the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau for the first time. I must confess that I have not read the H.G. Wells novel it's based on, one of more than a few holes in my Wells reading, but I have seen the 1977 version, and I know the basic story.
First, this is a period piece that has been updated to modern times, introducing the idea of genetics into simpler concepts of Wells' beast men. Sometimes change is not good. Other than the idea of genetics this updating does little for the story. I was disappointed in the make-up, primitive even for 1996, face masks not much better than the 1977 movie.
With the inclusion of Marlon Brando as the titular role of Dr. Moreau, comparisons can't help but be made with Apocalypse Now, in both character and story. In fact, these similarities drove a wedge between once friends H.G. Wells and Joseph Conrad, who wrote Heart of Darkness, on which Apocalypse is based. The presence of Brando, as well as his performance, do not help that situation one bit.
I was also very disappointed in the cast, Val Kilmer and Fairuza Balk simply walk through the film. David Thewlis, so wonderful as Remus in the Harry Potter movies, has no charisma as our POV character, and the great Marlon Brando is... is... I don't know what the hell Brando is in this movie. I never realized until seeing this how dead-on the "South Park" parody of Dr. Mephesto was. Wow.
I was also surprised that I saw nothing special or spectacular here visually. I usually enjoy John Frankenheimer's work, in fact, I think this is the only one of his movies I did not love. Now I can't wait to watch Lost Soul, to see what may or may not have gone wrong. Because this, is so wrong.
Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 ~ The film seems to take the first few minutes to completely undo the happy endings of its predecessor, almost as if it didn't want to think about it, or acknowledge it, or possibly the flick was written without knowledge of the first movie. This struck me as a bit odd as both were written by star Kevin James and frequent collaborator Nick Bakay. It's okay however, as this is a whole new adventure for Paul Blart.
Despite its juvenile comedy reputation, I was quite fond of the first Paul Blart Mall Cop movie, with its cunningly subtle remaking of Die Hard. In this installment, six years after the original, Kevin James' Blart has been invited to a security officers convention in Las Vegas. He thinks he'll be a star because of his actions in the first movie, but that was a long time ago. He's joined by a cadre of oddballs in his field, including his former "King of Queens" cohort Gary Valentine with a very disturbing hairpiece.
Besides dealing with his daughter trying to leave the nest, a less than exciting B plot, there is also something funny going on at the Wynn Hotel (getting lots of free publicity), as a gang of art thieves are planning a major heist. Yeah, hilarity ensues, and only Paul Blart Mall Cop and his new comrades can save the day. Kevin James is adequate, Valentine steals all the scenes he's in, but Ana Gasteyer and Loni Love are criminally underused here.
I did have a hearty laugh a few times at Blart's comic book superhero kryptonite weakness of hypoglycemia. And I loved the Mini-Kiss cameo. Beyond that however, this was still a decently amusing passage of time. The heist scenes are top notch. Good for the kids.
Don't forget to check out my interview with the director of this flick, Andy Fickman, here at Biff Bam Pop!, and be sure to see his new movie, The Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.
As I began watching this episode of "Arrow," I had momentarily forgotten the scenes of next week's episode at the end of the last episode. "Restoration" didn't start with the usual bang. Green Arrow and Diggle were fighting the H.I.V.E.'s ghosts and not getting along as per usual this season. They need to grow up if you ask me. Even in Nanda Parbat, it was business as usual with Nyssa trying to kill John Barrowman's Malcolm Merlin as the new R'as Al Ghul. This was all old territory.
Even when Laurel and Thea arrive at the lair of the League of Assassins with the body of Sara in tow, the situation is neutered. We know Sara is going into the Lazarus Pit and coming back to life because we've seen her in the trailer and other scenes from the upcoming "Legends of Tomorrow." Please don't give pretense to suspense that just doesn't exist, and especially do not prolong it.
Luckily we get something new when Diggle arrives home to find an A.R.G.U.S. agent in his house. He says Lyla hired him to track the folks behind the death of Diggle's brother. The prime suspect is a Mina Fayad, who's just flown in from Markovia to help Damien Darhk with his vigilante problem in Star City. She's brought a recent nasty from the Flash's comics Rogues Gallery named Double Down.
While Diggle tracks Fayad on his own, Green Arrow goes solo against the scary metahuman Double Down. In the comics he was once criminal Jeremy Tell who got mixed up with a cursed deck of cards that bonded to his skin, and later he developed the ability to hurl these razor edged cards at opponents, simultaneously scaring the crap out of them as he peeled them off his skin. This frightening villain was created by writer Geoff Johns as a longtime inmate of Iron Heights, possibly inspired by the Golden Age Flash story, "Deal Me from the Bottom."
The TV version of Double Down is a victim of the particle accelerator explosion in Central City over on "The Flash." Rather than supernatural in origin and visceral in visual, this Double Down's powers are more like turning tattoos into physical objects than peeling off skin. Essentially he's more Tattooed Man than Double Down.
Over and above the Nanda Parbat subplot with its constantly changing Lazarus Pit rules, and the Oliver and Diggle finally working together to find Mina Fayad, or even the mind-numbingly boring Flashback Island stuff, the real action is with Double Down. Felicity, just as Oliver did seasons ago, goes to her employee for help on a case. In this case, she goes to Curtis Holt with one of Double Down's cards.
Not only do we get some intriguing explanations on how Double Down's powers work, we also get a peek at the prototype of what will become Mr. Terrific's T-Spheres. The card however not only leads Double Down to them, but also down to the new Arrowcave. Curtis gets a crash course in his employers secret life, and I absolutely loved when the villain takes him down Elevator Action style. And in a nice change of pace, Felicity fends off the meta.
Over on/at Nanda Parbat - where is this place anyhow? I always had the sense it was in the Himalayas, but in the "Arrow" series, it seems like it's just a few blocks away because it takes no time at all to get there and back. Regardless, Malcolm finally agrees to put Sara in the Lazarus Pit, and she emerges a savage animal. Sigh. Yeah, they are going to prolong this.
I must say this episode was a bit of a refreshing change of pace. Usually the A story with the super-villain is boring on "Arrow," with the gold nuggets coming in the subplots and character bits. Here, I loved the parts with Double Down, and wish there had been more.
With the mystery of who's in the grave at the end of last episode still lingering, we enter a new age on "Arrow." The Green Arrow and Speedy patrolling the streets of Star City, wow, that's just enough to put a smile on this fanboy's face. Add in a Black Canary and a T-helmeted Guardian and I'm all in. The war against the ghosts of Damien Darhk continues.
I liked the bit in the opening where Felicity wants a codename. Even though she's effectively Oracle, she can't really take that name, or can she? She also suggests that Diggle needs a codename as well. Guardian, as I hinted at above, would be nice. The T-helmet however might be more indicative of a new character introduced in this episode - Echo Kellum's Curtis Holt.
Initially introduced as the smart guy at a Palmer Technologies board meeting, he is much, much more than that. He's the live action TV version of Mr. Terrific. In the comics, Michael Holt is the second hero to hold that title. The first is one of my favorite Golden Age superheroes. A polymath, a renaissance man, the man of a thousand talents, and the third smartest man in the world, Mr. Terrific just rocks. Sadly, Mr. Terrific is not here yet, and Diggle is probably not him anyway. It'll be Curtis Holt.
Then there's the mayoral distraction. It's become a bit of a joke that anyone who wants to be mayor of this city dies. So when Queen family friend Jessica Danforth (played by an aging Jeri Ryan) steps forward, we already know she's in trouble. An assassination attempt is made on the new candidate by yet another Batman villain, this time, it's Anarky, not one of my favorites, this relic of the grim and gritty anti-hero eighties is of course working for Darhk and H.I.V.E. In a nice callback however, it's mentioned that used to work for the Bertinelli crime family.
This whole mayor thing may seem to be leading to a place from the comics where Oliver Queen runs for mayor, but I'm going to say it doesn't happen, despite how it feels at the end of this episode. The showrunners know better. We live in a nation that is unfortunately divided near-violently by politics. If Oliver runs, he would have to declare a party or at least leaning, and the last thing a TV series wants to do is alienate half of its audience. So, I'm saying it's not going to happen.
Apparently the madness that comes upon folks dipped in the Lazarus Pit has a cumulative effect as opposed to an immediate effect when it comes to the TV version. Thea is going slowly 'pit crazy' along the way. The brother/sister tension increases as Oliver brings it up to her. Laurel volunteers to talk to Thea, and try to get her to relax, but once alone, it turns out she has other plans.
Laurel, finally learning what the Lazarus Pit really is, has decided to bring her sister back from the dead. We know it's probably going to work because of the presence of the 'White Canary' in "Legends of Tomorrow,' but that peek inside Sara's coffin was not a hopeful one.
Speaking of coffins, we're back to the question of who is in that grave at the end of the last episode. Let's mark off the possibilities. Quentin Lance is number one on my hit parade. As the Larry Lance analogy, and pissing off Darhk this episode, we know his time is limited, but is his time up yet? There's also Diggle, who would add to the angst and guilt already in Oliver's wheelhouse, especially since they haven't quite made up yet. It's not Felicity as many folks believe, because, let's face it, Barry would cry like a baby if it was her. My bet is on Lance, then Diggle.
Speaking of the Flash, the baddie of the week next episode is a Geoff Johns addition to the Flash's Rogues Gallery, a rather bizarre and creepy one, if I may say so myself…
Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher ~ This animated feature comes to us from Madhouse, the folks behind Iron Man: Rise of the Technovore, and the four Marvel Anime series - "Iron Man," "X-Men," "Wolverine," and "Blade." I wasn't too fond of the feature, but I liked the first three series quite a bit. I was initially a bit conflicted seeing this one because as happy as I was to finally see the Black Widow get some time in the spotlight, I am not a Punisher fan.
This feature does not hold back on the violence, and is definitely not for the kids. As a matter of fact, the opening scene with the Punisher, a graphic bloodbath gunfight, is everything I hate about the character. My heroes don't wholesale murder dozens of individuals just because they're in the way. No matter his motivation, even if there's a heart in there somewhere, to me, the Punisher is a murderer and a villain, no better, if not worse than the 'scum' he 'punishes.'
Most irritating of all, regarding the sequence, is that the Punisher doesn't kill the big bad in charge, a fellow named Cain, but allows him not only his life but to escape as well, after killing dozens of his underlings outright. Punisher's murder spree is interrupted by Black Widow, Nick Fury, and S.H.I.E.L.D. They manage to only distract the killer. The Punisher in this feature is superhuman, almost supernatural, as if the animators were unaware of the character's origins and 'power set.'
A deal is struck, Punisher's freedom for his cooperation in the SHIELD mission that collided with his criminal massacre. Forced to work together, the Black Widow and the Punisher pursue Leviathan, a Russian offshoot of Hydra, who were among the big bads in the first season of "Marvel's Agent Carter." When Widow describes Leviathan to the Punisher, it's startling to hear his hypocritical care for dead civilians. Again, I reiterate, villain.
Now there's some weird stuff going on in this story. There's a character who's a mish-mash of both the original Red Guardian and Hank Pym foe Egghead, an anime stereotype version of Amadeus Cho staying at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Istanbul headquarters for some reason, and cool cameos of old school Marvel villains like Count Nefaria, Baron Zemo, Taskmaster, and others. The Hulk shows up as well, ridden by Amadeus Cho in a visual that conjures both the Imperial Guard's Warstar and Rankin-Bass' animated "King Kong."
And just so you don't think the Avengers part of the title is misleading - Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, and War Machine all show up late in the third act. They help wrap up Leviathan's bio-soldiers as well as Graviton, and the Griffin, and the other villains. Quite a finale, and I would love to see more anime Captain Marvel.
Now there is a nice evolution in the Black Widow and the Punisher's partnership. They go from opponents, to bickering couple, to the Widow actually teaching him something about mercy. So I didn't hate him as much at the end as I did at the beginning, but I still have intense dislike. The score by Tetsuya Takahashi needs to be mentioned also as its one of the best parts of this feature.
The animation is spectacular, visually stunning, and the kind we've come to expect from the company who also did "Death Note," Batman: Gotham Knight, and The Animatrix. And as much as it's not the Punisher we know, it is kind of cool seeing his eyes glow in combat. As I said, it's pretty violent, but worth seeing for comics fans, and Punisher fans will probably love it.
And if you'd like to hear more discussion of this feature, or my feelings about the Punisher, please check out this week's episode of The GAR! Podcast.
With the inclusion of Marlon Brando as the titular role of Dr. Moreau, comparisons can't help but be made with Apocalypse Now, in both character and story. In fact, these similarities drove a wedge between once friends H.G. Wells and Joseph Conrad, who wrote Heart of Darkness, on which Apocalypse is based. The presence of Brando, as well as his performance, do not help that situation one bit.
