Monthly Archives: March 2020

Super Comics: Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) – #27

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Sonic the Hedgehog (the comic book series) and all the images you see in this recap are owned by IDW and SEGA of America

Welp!  They’ve finally done it!  After months of repetitive drama and convoluted storylines clogging up this series, we FINALLY have an issue that I didn’t hate!  Sure there’s a bit of bitter irony in the fact that this series finally decided to lighten up a bit at the same time the world decided to turn into a nightmare (I give it six months before Death Stranding’s science fiction becomes more than speculative), but how have they managed to put a smile on my face after spending this much time so firmly hitched to the Walking Dead bandwagon?  Did they finally realize their error and went off in an entirely new direction, or have they found an angle within this miserable story arc that actually had some appeal to me?  Let’s find out!!

The issue begins with Tails and Amy working their butts off to outsmart, or at least outrun, their chosen Zeti opponent Zomom who is proving to be more difficult than they were anticipating.  It’s a fine chase with a few good twists and turns but I’m not too keen on the constant big foolish fat guy jokes, though I guess IDW has to work with what Sonic Team gives them and it’s not like Zomom showed much depth of character when he was swinging that hoagie around in Sonic Lost World.

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This guy has even less dignity than The Greedy from that Raggedy Ann movie.  At least that dude could sing!

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Super Wrestling: AEW Dynamite (03-25-20)

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AEW Dynamite is owned by All Elite Wrestling, Shahid Khan, and TNT

We back with week two of AEW Aftermath: The Post-Apocalyptic series where the whole world is gone except for these brave heroes putting on shows in an empty arena for all the zombies and mutants still roaming the wastelands!  I mean good on them for putting out another episode, but I’m not sure how much longer they’re gonna get away with doing this live every week as things seem to only be getting worse in this country.  Still, as long as we have Dynamite I’ll be here to let you know about it!

The episode begins with Cody, Kenny, and Tony in the announcer’s booth.  Apparently JR and Excalibur couldn’t make it for whatever reason; though we are assured that they everyone is fine.  In addition to the lack of announcers, we also don’t have a crowd of wrestlers outside the ring like we did last time.  Instead we have like five dudes in some sort of back room watching the show that we occasionally cut back to.  I don’t want to dock the show for things it can’t control as they clearly had trouble getting as many people as they did, but the people outside the ring cheering and jeering as the matches went on was such a big part of what made last week’s episode work as well as it did.  Thankfully Tony and our rotating cast of announcers try talking AS MUCH as possible during the matches so that it never gets too quiet.

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Cody Vs. Jimmy Havoc

I haven’t been keeping up with Dark, so maybe Jimmy’s been showing up there a few times, but damn has it been a long time!  I remember he was getting a decent enough storyline with Tony Kahn, but I get the feeling that his drunken scuffle with Excalibur halted that right in its tracks.  Still, desperate times call for desperate measures, so I guess Jimmy’s back in good graces for now.  The story of the match is that Cody isn’t really taking Jimmy seriously, and frankly neither is Kenny who’s calling this match with Tony.  They see him as nothing more than a sparring partner to keep Cody in shape between now and the eventual Blood and Guts match which is not a bad idea for a story, but I still don’t feel like Jimmy is proving Cody wrong ENOUGH for him to really start taking him seriously.  Still, Jimmy is a good worker and is willing to get rough and dirty with the biggest Face at the company which is not nothing, and I think a less flashy style works better in an empty arena when there isn’t a crowd to play to.  Cody didn’t get that message however as he does that thing where he runs to the back and then runs back at full speed to do a lariat on his opponent.  It’s a good move, but without a crowd it doesn’t hit as hard.  What DOES hit hard though is when Jimmy takes something called a Reverse Suplex from the top rope which to ME looks an attempt to MURDER the guy by dropping him on his head that he just barely escapes from.  Cody follows that up with two Cross Rhodes which feel rather muted since there was no applause when he hit it, and then he gets the pin to similarly muted effect.  Not a bad match given the circumstances, but just didn’t have the same oomph to it like the matches from last week.

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Super Recaps: The Twilight Zone (Fair Warning)

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The Twilight Zone and all the images you see in this recap are owned by Warner Bros Television and based on the series created by Rod Serling

Directed by John Kretchmer

It has certainly been a while, but we are BACK with another episode of everyone’s least favorite Twilight Zone series!  Considering that I’m somehow spending even MORE time cooped up inside, it seemed like the perfect time to stop procrastinating on this series and give you the details you’ve been waiting for on a show that hasn’t been on the air for over fifteen years!  Is this a fantastic episode to return to, or were we all better off leaving this series in the dustbin of history?  Let’s find out!!

Our story begins with Tina Bishop (Taryn Manning who was one of Britney Spears’s best friend in Crossroads a year prior to this and would later go on to portray Tiffany in Orange is the New Black) who’s the owner of a humble little flower shop that she runs with her friend Gwen (Kandyse McClure) and she spends her evenings with her boyfriend Ryan (Preston Cook) who looks like the drummer in a Papa Roach cover band, but seems to be a decent guy otherwise.  Someone who DOESN’T seem to be a decent guy however is her next customer; some dude in a blue shirt with George on his nametag and MURDER in his eyes!  Creepy George then begins to relay a timeless story of love at true sight between a man and a woman at a laundromat where the saintly princess bequeathed a cup of detergent to the lowly white knight, and it was then that George knew that she was THE ONE!  The one he will love, and the one he has to protect… from himself.  He begs Tina to stop him from killing here which I don’t know about you but seems like a particularly BRIGHT red flag, and so Tina runs to the phone to call the cops… but when she looks up, George has disappeared!

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“No, no!  Not me!  I’m just here to do the spooky intro.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Bloodshot

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Bloodshot and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by David SF Wilson

Is it just me, or did anyone else think this movie was about a vampire?  I mean it’s not like BLOODSHOT is some sort of household name to rival that of Iron Man and Thor, and with a name like that I’d have pegged them as a Blade knock off more than anything else!  Well whatever this movie is about (a ROBOT vampire maybe?), it’s yet another vehicle for Vin Diesel who’s really had a bad luck streak in recent years as he’s been trying so hard to escape the Fast franchise to do his own thing but to no avail, and now he has to pretend that John Cena is his brother or whatever the heck is going on in that move that we won’t be seeing for another year.  Just when he thought he was out, THEY PULL HIM RIGHT BACK IN!!  Is this the one that will be the new franchise starter that he needs to escape the shadow of the Fast and Furious franchise?  I mean… probably not, but let’s find out!!

Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) is your typical action movie hero.  He works for a SUPER SECRET SEAL TEAM SIX type outfit for the US military, and he’s covered in all sorts of scars that his beautiful wife (Talulah Riley) lovingly caresses whenever he returns from another world saving mission.  Sounds about right for a typical action flick, but where’s the motivation for vengeance?  WHERE’S THE INCITING INCIDENT THAT CALLS OUR HERO TO VIOLENCE!?  Oh wait, there it is!  Some dude (Toby Kebbell) kidnaps him and his wife looking for information, but when Ray doesn’t have the answers he’s looking for he kills the wife and puts a bullet in Ray’s head; an act that would kill a lesser man, but Vin Diesel isn’t about to be put down by a small amount of lead to the cranium!  Instead, he manages to survive the shooting and his body Is recovered… somehow by SUPER SCIENTISTS working for Dr. Emil Harting (Guy Pearce) where it’s brought to his SUPER SCIENCE company and is fixed up good as new by basically turning him into Million Ants Man; only instead of ants it’s NANOBOTS!!  With this new power he can recover from ANY damage, can punch things REALLY hard, is able to connect to basically any computer… BUT WILL THAT HEAL THE HOLE THAT IS LEFT IN HIS HEART!?  Of course not, so almost immediately he starts to search for the man who killed his wife and plots his revenge despite the consternation of Dr. Harting and his rag tag group of cyborg buddies including Katie (Eiza González) who has a robo-lung and seems to be hiding more than just her giant chest mounted ventilation system.  Will Ray find the man responsible and bring him to justice in a very violent fashion?  Why did he kidnap Ray and his wife in the first place considering he didn’t have any information to give him, and is there more to this horrific act of violence than Ray initially suspects?  Why the heck is even called Bloodshot!?  Is it REALLY just because he has red eyes sometimes?

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“Hey buddy, do you need help or something?”     “All I need is to bath in the blood of my enemies and hear their screams as they take their last painful breath…”     “Okay… well how about some eye drops?”     “I mean… I won’t say no if you have some.”

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Super Wrestling: AEW Dynamite (03-18-20)

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AEW Dynamite is owned by All Elite Wrestling, Shahid Khan, and TNT

Welcome back to another week of AEW which will more than likely be the LAST one we get for a while!  I mean we’ll probably still have SOMETHING on Wednesday nights to fill that timeslot, but unlike WWE who’s got a performance center to keep the ship going with empty arena shows, AEW has no such facility to get them through this COVID19 outbreak and I doubt any arenas will be keen to letting them host another show; nor will the talent be all that jazzed about going to new states week after week in the middle of all this.  Personally I’d suggest TNT to just put on a mix of Dark and PPV matches for the new few weeks, but before we contemplate what the future holds for this company, let’s see what they’re putting on right now!

We begin the show in the middle of an empty arena with Cody under a spotlight in the middle of the ring.  He doesn’t dance around the obvious and gets right to the elephant in the room which is this virus that is affecting everyone and how we need to be aware of what we need to do to protect ourselves and others.  This segues from a pep talk to the audience at home to a direct message to both Adam Page and Matt Jackson; both of which have been bickering for the last few weeks and need to resolve their differences in light of these trying times and in the face of the upcoming Blood and Guts match between The Elite and The Inner Circle.  Matt, Page, and even Kenny Omega eventually come out and TRY to work on their difference with Matt Jackson going so far as to swallow his pride and asks Adam Page to stand with them, but Adam’s got some serious drinking to do, so he doesn’t give them an answer just yet.  Not exactly a surprise considering his behavior the last few weeks, and Kenny tries his best to lighten the mood by telling the crew to hit the lights, start the music, and fire off all that pyro they’ve got saved up to kick this show off right!  It was certainly an interesting segment and the empty arena did lend a lot of eerie gravitas to it all that made the realities of the day as well as the schism in The Elite all the more apparent.  Let’s hope that the matches find a way to work with the circumstances as well as this segment did.

Before that though, we HAVE to check on Tony Schiavone who’s interviewing MJF to find out what he’s even doing here.  It turns out that he’s not here to wrestle but is instead here to watch the undercard losers duke it out… as well as place some bets with Shawn Spears, but that’s on the hush hush!  Speaking of which, the setup is definitely unique and kind of ingenious given the circumstances.  I haven’t seen the WWE shows yet so I don’t know how they set things up in their empty arena, but here they had a very small audience mingling on the barricades made up of AEW talent like Sonny Kiss, Joey Janela, and even Jake the Snake Roberts with his new protégé Lance Archer; all hooting and hollering as much as possible to bring a bit of life to the show.  They also filmed the show at a very different angle as the primary camera is typically placed perpendicular to the ramp but they decided to move it to so that it’s facing both the ring AND the ramp.  I think it works for the most part as it covers up the fact that there is next to NOBODY there, and it’s certainly different from anything I’ve seen before on a wrestling show.  Anyway, onto the first match!

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Cinema Dispatch: The Hunt

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The Hunt and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Craig Zobel

Boy does this movie want us to think it has a chip on its shoulder!  I haven’t seen negative review quotes used this liberally since Freddy Got Fingered, which… okay, that might actually be a good sign because I do like that movie purely on its utter absurdity (THIS IS A FANCY RESTAURANT!!), but is not the usual calling card of studio confident in a film on its own merits.  Then again I can’t imagine Universal having any other bright ideas after the thing got pulled from theaters and certain segments of the media decided that THIS was the thing that’s going to destroy the fabric of our society.  Personally, I think we already got that film with London Has Fallen, but whatever it is that hyped this movie up so much, is there any way that it can live up to those expectations?  Let’s find out!!

A bunch of people wake up in the middle of a field with no idea where they are or how they go there.  They start to slowly move towards the center of this big field with a giant crate right in the middle that contains a whole lot of weapons and a pig for some reasons; the implications of which they don’t have long to ponder because they are immediately beset by gunfire, booby traps, and all manner of lethal armaments!  Some of them seem to carry themselves well enough (Betty Gilpin) while others are showing themselves to be MASSIVE jerks (Ike Barinholtz) who may or may not have it coming for various reasons; the least of which being that they’re in a horror movie and that’s usually the way things go.  Eventually though, it’s revealed that their attackers are a bunch of liberal yuppie yahoos (including but not limited to Glenn Howerton and Hillary Swank) who seem to be taking their 2016 frustrations out on a bunch of red necks and scumbags through a game facilitated by their massive wealth.  Is this all just one big excuse for that whole class warfare thing I’ve been hearing about to become literal, or is there more going on than what we’re initially led to believe?  Is this like Saw where the main villain has justifiable reasons for taking these people prisoner, or is it like Saw 4 where things just get ridiculous and asinine for no good reason?  Seriously, is it POSSIBLE for Ike Barinholtz to not be a scumbag in everything he plays?  I’d give fifty-fifty odds on some rich fool actually BELIEVING this guy to be monster and throw him in one these death games for real!

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“When I signed up for a sequel to Blockers, I was NOT expecting this!  WHERE IS MY AGENT!?”

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Cinema Dispatch: Onward

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Onward and all the images you see in this review are owned by Pixar and Walt Disney Studio Motion PIctures

Directed by Dan Scanlon

It’s no secret that I’ve been pretty down on Pixar this past decade.  On the one hand, we DID get Coco and I guess Inside Out was just fine, but this was also the decade that brought us redundant sequels that I just failed to connect with; particularly Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 which everyone else seemed to enjoy a heck of a lot more than I did.  Because of this and the somewhat underwhelming trailers we got (It’s fantasy AND modern AT THE SAME TIME!?), I’m not exactly looking forward to seeing this kid friendly version of Bright, but that’s just the pessimistic side of me talking and maybe this really will be another return to form for the venerable studio.  Is this a road trip for the ages and the sequel to Brütal Legend we’ve all been secretly hoping for, or is this a mythical folly more disastrous than that Warcraft movie you’ve already forgotten about?  Let’s find out!!

Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) is your typical Elf teenager; aspiring to be Legolas but more like The Elf on a Shelf.  He’s gangly, really quiet, and to some people he might come off as a bit creepy considering his lack of social skills.  VERY different from his brother Barley (Chris Pratt) who is basically the unholy offspring (in the cool Rock N Roll sort of way) of Andy Dwyer and Jack Black; spending most of his times talking theatrically, creating cool-tastic stories for his knock off D&D campaigns, and decidedly not getting a job or moving out.  Some of his arrested development issues as well as Ian’s social anxieties can be traced back to their father who died of an illness right before Ian was born, and there’s a lot of unhandled baggage there despite the efforts of their mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus ) to make a happy home and the stern if bumbling guidance of their mom’s new boyfriend Officer Bronco (Mel Rodriguez).  On Ian’s sixteenth birthday however, that all changes when their mother gives him a gift from his late father that she was instructed to hold off on until this day, and it turns out that their dad was a wizard who came up with a spell to bring him BACK FROM THE DEAD for one day so that he can see how great his sons turned out.  Sure!  Just ask the Elric brothers how well this worked out for them!  Well it KIND of works out as Ian is only able to bring back the bottom half of their dad and they now need to go on an EPIC QUEST TO FIND A NEW GEM FOR MAGIC STAFF, and cast the REST of the spell before the 24 hours are up.  Can Ian and Barley find the mythical Phoenix Gem and see their father one last time?  Who exactly WAS their father and how far does Ian want to go with these new magic gifts that he’s discovered?  Will Barley put him through the Rocky Training Montage of his life!?  He certainly has the right music for it!

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“You’ve gotta say it bro!”     “Sigh… This is my big staff, this is my wand.  This is for casting, this is for fun…”

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