Review: Marvel One-Shot “Agent Carter”

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Arleigh

Ever since Thor was released on video (DVD/Blu-Ray) the people over at Marvel Studios have added as a special bonus to the video’s extras a small short film they’ve dubbed “Marvel On-Shot”. So far, they’ve either been about the adventures of fan-favorite SHIELD agent Phil Coulson or a brief look at a post-Avengers New York. The short films were cute, but nothing to really write home about.

With the release of Iron Man 3 on DVD and Blu-Ray we get a new Marvel One-Shot and it looks like the creative minds at Marvel Studios have decided to work a tad harder on making this new short film much better. It’s a flashback moment to one Agent Peggy Carter who is still grieving a year after Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) supposedly died trying to save New York from a HYDRA bomber full of tesseract-fueled bombs.

We see how she’s been relegated to doing paper work and kept from doing the field work she’s more adept at. This one-shot film actually shows in it’s short running time how even someone as skilled and heroic as Peggy Carter must still navigate and deal with a male-chauvinistic society that dismisses whatever accomplishments she’s earned in the past and seen more as a sort of “affirmative action” hire.

The film doesn’t try to force-feed this theme, but instead tries (and does so successfully) to blow-up the damsel-in-distress stereotype by showing Agent Carter at her best. And what she does best is doing the sort of field work that earned her not just the respect of the soldiers she worked with during WWII in Europe, but those of Captain America himself.

“Agent Carter” stars the original Peggy Carter in the form of British actress Hayley Atwell and she does a fine job of helping continue her character’s growth. She continues to show that she’s just as useful and skilled as Captain America which she showed in the film of the same name. In this one-shot we’re reminded of it and it also does an interesting thing in making it plausible to create a spin-off around her character.

Marvel has intimated that it’s something they’d be interested in doing and if the quality of this one-shot is anything to go by then a series (tv or web-based) starring Ms. Atwell as Agent Carter would be well-received by fans everywhere. This short film also showed that Marvel Studios has a new secret weapon to keep DC at bay. This was the first one-shot that truly belonged as a prologue to a feature-length Marvel film on the big-screen. Here’s to hoping that attaching future one-shots to full-length features not on video but in the theaters becomes an idea that Marvel Studios allow to happen.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #90: Hostages Episode 1 “Pilot”

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, after I got back from dance class, I watched the first episode of the new CBS series, Hostages.

Why Was I Watching It?

I spent the last three months watching and reviewing Big Brother for the Big Brother Blog. During every episode of Big Brother, CBS would show at least one commercial for Hostages. It was obvious that CBS was obsessed with the idea of making Hostages into the show that the entire nation would be watching and debating, a bit like a network TV version of Homeland or Breaking Bad.

The commercials, for the most part, all featured Dylan McDermott looking grim while Toni Collette frowned and, occasionally, some old white guy would tell Collette that she was the only doctor he trusted to operate on her and she would reply, “Thank you, Mr. President.” In short, the commercials made the show look terrible. The only question was whether or not Hostages would be intentionally bad or unintentionally awful.

Last night, I got my answer.

What Was It About?

President Paul Kinkaid (James Naughton) needs to have surgery and, of course, only one doctor can perform the operation. That doctor is Ellen Saunders (Toni Collette). Ellen is so concerned with the President’s health that she doesn’t realize that her husband (Tate Donovan) is having an affair, her son is selling weed, and her daughter is pregnant.

Meanwhile, Duncan Carlisle (Dylan McDermott) is a FBI hostage negotiator. When we first see him, he’s gunning down a bank robber and smirking while he does it. It turns out that Duncan needs money to take care of his sick wife.

Eventually, Duncan and a team of other black-clad operatives end up inside the Saunders home where they take the entire family hostage. They tell Ellen that, if she wants to save her family, she must assassinate the President…

What Worked?

The show turned out to be just as bad as I was expecting it to be! Whenever I saw the commercials for Hostages, I would think to myself: “That looks like it’s going to be a really boring, tedious series.” Judging from the pilot, I was right. It always feels good to be right.

That said, I do have to say that, alone among the cast, Dylan McDermott seems to understand that he’s playing a ludicrous character in a silly show and — much as he did in American Horror Story — he responds by giving an appropriately melodramatic performance. While the rest of the cast appeared to be convinced that they were appearing in the next Homeland, McDermott seemed to be enjoying a joke that only he and the viewing audience could understand.

What Did Not Work?

If there’s even been a show that would obviously benefit from an over-the-top, melodramatic approach, it would be Hostages. So, why did the pilot appear to be taking itself so damn seriously? As I watched last night’s episode, I found myself wondering if anyone involved in the show (other than Dylan McDermott) understood just how silly this all was. Instead, the show moved at an almost somber pace and all of the actors (again, with the notable exception of McDermott) delivered their lines with the type of gravity that one would usually associate with Jeff Daniels delivering one of Aaron Sorkin’s pompous polemical speeches on The Newsroom. Considering all of the melodramatic potential of this show’s plot, Hostages really has no excuse to be as boring and predictable as it was last night.

Toni Collette is one of my favorite actresses so it was kind of sad to see her give such a boring performance in the lead role of Ellen Saunders. Then again, as written, Ellen Saunders is a pretty boring character. It’s as if the show’s producers and writers were so proud of creating a professional woman that they didn’t notice that they neglected to give her a personality.

Finally, the President is just some boring old white guy. What’s up with that?

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

I was tempted to say that, like the family in Hostages, I would totally freak out if a bunch of people appeared in the house, pointed their guns at me, and announced that they were holding me hostage. However, it then occurred to me that nobody in Hostages really freaked out about being held hostage. They were certainly annoyed and occasionally, they even attempted to be defiant. But they never really freaked out.

Nor could I really see much of myself in the character of Ellen Saunders or her daughter. Since neither one of them came across as being anything more than a two-dimensional plot device, neither one of them was capable of inspiring any “just like me” moments.

I tried to relate to Sandrine Holt, who plays Maria, the only female hostage taker. However, Maria spent most of the episode carrying around a gun and, while I’m totally into the 2nd amendment, I’m not really into guns.

Then I remembered that, early on in the episode, Ellen’s daughter talks to her best friend. The friend takes one look at her and says, “Your eyes are puffy,” which is the exact same thing that I would say if one of my friends had puffy eyes.

So, that was my “Oh my God! Just like me!” moment.

Lessons Learned

Sometimes, commercials don’t lie.

Nitro+ Mascot Super Sonico Gets Own Anime Series

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Arleigh

Super Sonico.

Two words that literally will elicit either two reactions from fans of all things Japanese pop culture. One reaction would be a groan and a shaking of the head that a mascot for a Japanese software company will get her own anime series. For these individuals it’s bad enough that she’s flooded the collectibles’ market with everything Super Sonico from vinyl figures (even one that’s 1/2 scale), posters, keychains, bedspreads, pillow cases and uncounted more things made to separate an otaku from their cash.

The other reaction would be on the other side of the spectrum. A reaction of unrestrained glee. Super Sonico has almost become not just the mascot for Nitro+ but for the current trend in Japanese pop culture that goes by the label of moe. So, Super Sonico finally having her very own anime series was just the logical progression for a character that’s already on everything else sold in Japan and overseas.

From the press release from Nitro+…

“The staff of the Japanese software maker Nitroplusconfirmed on Saturday that a television anime adaptation of its Super Sonico mascot has been green-lit. Nitroplus already opened a website for SoniAni -Super Sonico the Animation-, which was first announced at the Nitro Super Sonic 2013 event earlier in the day.

Super Sonico is the mascot girl of the “Nitro Super Sonic” events held by Nitroplus. In her back story, she is already a photoshoot model, game character, and a musician, even as she studies as a college student. She is also part of a three-piece girl band named “Daiichi Uchū Sokudo” (Fastest Speed in Space) as the vocalist and guitarist.

The character already inspired her own line of games, and figures including a giant 1/2-scale statue. Super Sonico is also appearing in Namco Bandai Games‘ Super Heroine Chronicle for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita systems and even in a promotion for THQ’s Saints Row: The Third game.”

The question that should be going through the minds of fans until it’s announced would be which anime studio will do the animation and when the series will have a premiere date.

Source: Anime News Network

Artist Profile: Leo and Diane Dillon

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Dazzling Erin

The husband-and-wife team Leo (1933 — 2013) and Diane (1933– ) Dillon met while training at Parsons School of Design and married shortly after graduating in 1956. Over the course of 50 years, they collaborated on over 100 magazine and book covers. Among numerous awards, the Dillons won the Caldecott Medal in both 1976 and 1977, the only time that the award has been won consecutively.

6 Trailers That Are Better Than Last Night’s Episode Of Dexter

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s time for another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers. Now, usually, I would have the trailer kitties go out and track down six trailers to feature here. However, the trailer kitties were so upset by how Dexter ended that, for this edition only, I had to recruit a replacement.

Let’s see what he found for us!

1) The Lumberjack (2013)

2) Rawhead Rex (1988)

3) Grizzly (1976)

4) My Mom’s a Werewolf (1988)

5) The Kiss (1988)

6) The Guardian (1990)

What do you think, Trailer Lumberjack?

Well, that certainly explains all the trees…

Guilty Pleasure No. 13: Lambada (dir by Joel Silberg)

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last year, I was doing a search for dance scenes on YouTube and I came across a handful of scenes from a film called Lambada. The scenes all had an undeniably cheap look to them and featured a rather stiff dancer who was wearing one dangling earring. The scenes were so memorably bad that I promised myself that, if I ever got the chance, I would watch this Lambada.

Well, I got that chance last night when Lambada turned up on NUVOtv. I forced my BFF Evelyn to watch the movie with me because I thought I might want to use the movie for one of my What Evelyn and Lisa Watched Last Night reviews. However, as we watched Lambada, I realized that the only way to review this movie was to consider it as a guilty pleasure.

First released way back in 1990, Lambada tells the story of Mr. Laird (J. Eddie Peck), an idealistic math teacher in Beverly Hills by day and a sexy dancer at night. Did I mention that when Mr. Laird dances, he calls himself Blade? Because he so does!

However, Blade isn’t just dancing for fun or to deal with what appears to be a split personality. Instead, he uses dance skills to impress the poor kids at the clubs so that he can then lure them into a backroom where he helps them prepare to take the GED.

He’s a dancer with a conscience and who doesn’t love that, right?

However, eventually Mr. Laird is spotted dancing by Sandy (Melora Hardin, a decade and a half before playing Jan on The Office), one of his students from Beverly Hills. When he doesn’t respond to her crush, she reveals his secret and — for reasons that are never quite clear — this puts his job in jeopardy.

Why did Lambada turn out to be such a guilty pleasure?

Just consider the following:

1) Cast in the key role of “Blade” Laird, J. Eddie Peck looks good but gives a performance that almost epitomizes the concept of anti-charisma. When he’s teaching in Beverly Hills, he wears sexy glasses. When he’s dancing in the barrio, he loses the glasses and instead wears one dangling earring. When a female student in Beverly Hills hits on him, he awkwardly smiles. When he dances, he moves so stiffly that he resembles a mannequin on a treadmill. That’s about the extent of Peck’s performance.

2) Melora Hardin, on the other hand, is completely natural and likable in the role of Sandy but, even though this film was made 16 years before the premiere of the Office, Hardin has already picked up a lot of the techniques that she would use to make Jan Levinson-Gould such a memorable character. Every time that Sandy smiles nervously or looks annoyed by another character, it’s impossible not to be reminded of Jan struggling to manage Michael Scott. As Nathan Rabin pointed out in his review of this film over at the A.V. Club, Lambada really does feel like Jan Levinson: The Early Years.

3) If Lambada was made today, it would be called Twerking and, while watching, it was hard not to imagine Melora Hardin chasing J. Eddie Peck with a big foam finger.

4) An aggressively forgettable song called Set The Night On Fire is played about a hundred times over the course of the film. The song is so generic and forced, and everyone in the film has to pretend to be so in love with it, that it becomes oddly fascinating.

5) The club that Blade dances at has an upside down police car hanging from the ceiling. The club, itself, gives off a definite human trafficking vibe but that police car is pretty neat.

6) One of Mr. Laird’s Beverly Hills students is named Egghead. Naturally, he’s the smartest student and he’s obsessed with computers. Evelyn and I both found ourselves wondering if Egghead was just a nickname or if his parents actually named him that in order to force him to grow up to be intelligent. (Even Mr. Laird calls him Egghead, which — if that’s not the student’s name — seems a bit unprofessional for a teacher.) It may not sound like much but it provided us with hours of amusement.

7) There’s a scene where Egghead uses his computer to inspire an entire classroom to spontaneously start dancing. What makes this scene especially memorable is that the computer dances along with them.

8) Whenever Blade is teaching his GED class, the students respond to almost everything he says by cheering. If nothing else, I’m sure many teachers have fantasized about being as irrationally loved by their students as Blade.

9) Eventually, Blade’s GED students compete with the Beverly Hills students. No, it’s not a dance-off. It’s a math-off! That’s right — they’re competing to see who can correctly answer the most math questions. And, believe it or not, the future of Blade’s career depends on whether or not his GED students can win. Apparently, this is how the California educational system worked back in 1990.

10) Finally, the ultimate reason that Lambada is a guilty pleasure is because — regardless of how silly and ludicrous the film may seem to us today — it was actually produced and released into theaters. That means that, somewhere out there, there are people who actually paid money to see this movie. They may not admit it but they’re out there.

They’re out there.

Ten Years #23: The Tossers

Posted on September 21, 2013 by necromoonyeti

Decade of last.fm scrobbling countdown:
23. The Tossers (1,222 plays)
Top track (57 plays): The Crock of Gold, from The Valley of the Shadow of Death (2005)

My introduction to Irish punk was about as random as they come. I had “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners stuck in my head, and I could not for the life of me remember what it was called or who wrote it. I made a forum post asking “who wrote that song that goes too-ra-loo-rai-a?”, and someone–much to my persistent bewilderment today–responded with “Aye Sir” by The Tossers. It was through this cluttered back door that I first came to discover legends like The Pogues, The Dubliners, Dropkick Murphys, and Flogging Molly, and I owe a world of thanks to that forgotten forum poster for it.

A lot of my love for The Tossers is definitely nostalgia, because they introduced me to a world of music that has influenced my life tremendously ever since. But more significantly, I love The Tossers because they manifest an earthy side of Irish folk that bigger and brighter rock stars can never, by consequence of their fame, present quite so intimately. The drunken camaraderie, the sense of belonging, the singing and the dancing, all of the glory that one of the most persistently vibrant folk traditions in the world can bring–you certainly feel them all at a Dropkick concert, but with The Tossers it comes before an audience of a few hundred, most of whom know the songs by heart. They’re probably the best punk-minded Irish folk band drifting around America to have never made it big, and their live show is a blast every time.

Trailer: Last Days On Mars

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

My original attitude towards this film was dismissive. I’m not a big science fiction fan in general, the title Last Days On Mars felt juvenile, and I’ve had some issues with Liev Schreiber ever since I saw The Omen.

However, I then did some research and discovered that this film is an Irish/American co-production.

Therefore, as a proud Irish-American, I’ll give the film a chance when it opens on December 6th.

Trailer: Nebraska

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Director Alexander Payne is a perennial Oscar contender and this year, he’ll be offering up Nebraska. At this year’s Cannes film festival, veteran actor Bruce Dern was named best actor for his performance in this film and chances seem to be good that he will, at the very least, score a nomination when the Oscar nominations are announced next year.

AMV of the Day: The End of My World (Clannad/Clannad After Story)

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Arleigh

The latest “AMV of the Day” comes from the creative mind of one xDieguitoAMV.

“The End of My World” takes select scenes from the anime series Clannad and Clannad: After Story and combines it with the ambient stylings of the band The American Dollar. It chronicles the life of the Tomoya Okazaki through his experiences in both series. It’s told through his point of view as he meets Nagisa Furukawa who would have such a huge impact on his life. The video actually reverse the order by which he sees his life since meeting Nagisa. How she’s changed his outlook on life even if it meant that the happiness he has with her gets balanced out by heartache.

Anyone who has seen this anime knows how the two seasons were polar opposites from each other when it came to their tone and characters. All I can say that I’ve heard anecdotes that even badass, hardened, cynical men who club baby seals for sport have broken down crying like little babies once they’ve seen the series’ After Story. This video will probably relapse them back to that bawling state.