Dan

The Warburton series is something I really enjoyed, and yes, a big part of that was that it ended JUST as it was starting to get tiresome.

Strangelove.

One of the things I liked about the pilot was its tone - the world was relatively straightforward (considering the fact that superheroes/villains were a thing), but the Tick himself was the same OTT explosion of ridiculous insanity he usually is, and the juxtaposition was intetesting. This looks sillier, but that may be because it's so Tick-centric. Either way, I'm gonna give it a shot.

Milana Vayntrub will be Squirrel Girl in the New Warriors series that I forgot was even a thing.

The movie wasn't bad. Pretty fun. Tom Holland, however, was terrific. Maguire was a great Peter; Garfield was a decent Spidey (in two not-very-good movies). Holland nails them both.

Yeah, I don't feel too bad for Chuck.

He's been threatening to do it for years, but Chuck Rozanski and Mile High Comics is finally skipping SDCC this year.

The Mask.

JLA Classified #4-9: Or as it's better known, I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League. To date, this is the last time Giffen, DeMatteis, and Maguire revisited their take on the JL. It's a continuation of Formerly Known As the Justice League, outside mainstream DCU continuity, and as such it's a lot of fun that doesn't require a lot of deep investment. The actual story (such as it is) doesn't even start until the third issue; before that it's two solid issues of BWAHAHA; this is by no means a bad thing. Eventually, Booster's general idiocy sends the Super Buddies to Hell or something close enough to it, then an evil Mirror/Mirror dimension, then the story is very suddenly done and you're kind of wondering what happens next. There's an attempt to inject a little seriousness about halfway through (JLI isn't remembered for this, but Giffen/DeMatteis were extremely capable of more than just goofy humor and there was always plenty of drama as well), but it doesn't fit here and feels very out of place. But overall, this is a fun thirty to forty-five minutes.

Deliverance (It's not just that one scene), The Longest Yard, Smokey and the Bandit, Mystery, Alaska. Cannonball Run if you're up for really dopey self-indulgence.

Same. All the Silver Age Marvel hardcovers would make young me stroke out. Also, I'm looking at my bookshelf and realizing that I had to have spent roughly $1k on Omnibuses alone.

Truly, I'd just let him loose in my house, going through all the movies and comics and collected editions that A) exist in this utopian future of 2017 and B) it turns out I can get since I'm an adult with a job, and wait for him to hyperventilate himself into unconsciousness.

I've said it before: if I had a time machine and could go anywhere I wanted, I would visit 10 year old Dan and regale him with all the amazing comics shit that was going to come out in the next few decades. "Seriously, there's going to be movies and TV shows about Marvel characters, and most of them are actually going to be GOOD!"

I have been trying really hard to keep an open mind. But that is hugely unimpressive. Don is 100% correct. Inhumans should be epic. This looks super low budget. Network TV is not the right home for this property.

Saying "MASH has some problematic elements" is like me saying "I have some concerns about the state of my government at the moment"; the movie is riddled with stuff that would never fly in 2017 and I'm not sure there's a single scene without something in it that could be considered objectionable. (Trapper John got his nickname from that time he sexually assaulted someone! Ho ho! We have fun!) While I'm not defending the Painless scene - believe me, I'm not - I don't see it as conversion, because it's pretty obvious he's not gay, and that everyone knows he's just wildly overreacting to a stupid article he read "explaining" why he has so much trouble keeping his dick out of women.

I didn't love it. In fact, I wasn't super wild about season 5, period. They scrapped pretty much the whole premise of the show in the last year, barely utilized their best supporting players in Ellie and Awesome (and Alex, who I always liked), the big bad was kind of a washout, and they clearly panicked after having Chuck and Sarah get married and pounded the reset button so hard it broke almost everything. Turning Sarah EEEEEEEVIL as they were saying goodbye was a huge mistake, and then leaving the ending a question mark was just wrong. This was a goofy, fun hangout show, and honestly it needed a more clear-cut happily-ever-after.

The shift from "generic snarky Marc Maron character" to a real guy with reasons for being the way he is happens so slowly you almost miss it. A lot of that is down to the writing. And yes; that was a brilliant "come to Jesus" moment.

Very true. Hopefully there isn't also an RTD style incredibly disappointing resolution to said cliffhanger. Because wow, that cliffhanger.

Alison Brie is amazing. She was always a fearless comedic performer on Community who was game for virtually anything, and her stint on Mad Men showed she could do drama, and here she has the opportunity to go down both those paths and crushes it. And I love that she does something shitty early on, and whereas most shows would show her life falling apart as a result, here it's not quite as pronounced because her life wasn't all that great to begin with, and Ruth is shown to be a not-very-good actress without telegraphing it wildly to the audience. And who the fuck knew Marc Maron could act better here than on the show where he's ostensibly playing himself? And for Community fans, it's always nice to see Annie's Boobs* put in an appearance. (*not the monkey)

We just burned through the first six. It's terrific.

I finished a marathon rewatch of Chuck over the weekend. This was pretty much the prototypical Monday night "my week just started and I can't do anything heavy or substantial right now, hey look, goofy spy guy's pants fell down" kind of show. And at a time when Big Bang Theory was regularly getting mentioned as "finally, nerd culture is being treated respectfully" (a claim that has long since been correctly called out as total bullshit), Chuck as a character is who he is and enjoys the things he enjoys, and the show never judges or mocks him for it. (The same can't be said for most of the peripheral nerd types, many of whom are stereotypical socially clueless creepers with entirely unfounded arrogance, although best friend Morgan improves remarkably over the course of the show.) The main cast is uniformly strong. Zachary Levi, who really does come across as potentially the nicest guy in the entire world, slots into the main role pretty much perfectly, combining enthusiasm, terror, real growth and the constant feeling that he doesn't entirely know what's happening at any given moment. And to be honest, I had (and still have) a very difficult time reconciling the utter shitbag Adam Baldwin has revealed himself to be in recent years with the unbridled ball of entertainment he is here. The weak link (to a degree) is Yvonne Strahovski; this was her first major acting job, and it kind of shows, although she grew tremendously over the course of the series (to the extent that her recent work on The Handmaid's Tale was a goddamn revelation). However, for the longest time, her job was to get into knife fights in her underwear. (The T&A is pushed to a clearly absurd degree and is obviously meant to be tongue in cheek to an extent, but if the show doesn't push it far enough, it's just kinda weird and gross titillation, and honestly that also happens a lot. Also, some producer on this show is somewhere between Joss Whedon and Quentin Tarantino on the "boy, do I sure like feet" scale.) She's not really allowed to be funny until season four. A major problem is the very premise: Chuck works at a big box electronics store as a cover for his spy life, and the juxtaposition of the two settings provides a lot of the humor and conflict. However, the show has no goddamn idea what to do with the Buy More, ever, and virtually entire seasons go by where Chuck doesn't even set foot in the store. Rather than scrap it and figure out a different take, the series chose to almost turn this into two shows: Chuck learns how to be a spy, and another show chronicling the adventures of retail employees that virtually never interact with each other. I don't get it. Don't get me wrong, there was some funny stuff at the Buy More (almost none of which involved Jeff and Lester, two thoroughly unlikable characters who never had a point and somehow always seemed to have a C- or even B-plot in every show), but when it stopped having a useful purpose in, like, episode three, it probably should have been written out. Chuck stayed on the air as long as it did due to fan campaigning, mostly through the show's chief sponsor Subway. Since Subway was footing the bills, the product placement comes at you hard, and to be honest, I almost admire the degree to which they leaned into it. It's almost as if the producers said "You know what, we gotta plug Subway, let's just straight up do commercials and almost look right into the camera while we do it." It's so blatant. Guest casting is always fun. Any time a major recurring character is introduced, the show will bring in "that actor from that geeky pop culture thing you also like". So of course Chuck's parents are Sarah Connor and Dr. Sam Beckett. It does make the "guess who the bad guy turns out to be from the opening credits" game a little too easy though; when this episode guest stars a familiar character actor, someone you don't know, and Timothy Dalton, you can be pretty sure James Bond turns out to be eeeeeeevil. (Incidentally, Dalton is clearly having the time of his life on this show. He straight up owns all of Season 4 and is enormous fun.) Overall this is a very fun, super lightweight show that's one of the most bingeable series I've ever seen (it was not unusual for me to look up and not realize four episodes in a row had just zipped by).

The Crow (1994): Honestly better than I remembered. It feels like a somewhat higher-budgeted-than-average direct to video flick, but it looks great, and Brandon Lee is terrific. It's also a lot funnier than I remembered it being. But most of all, Ernie Hudson is on fucking fire.

The Mummy (1999): or, What If Raiders of the Lost Ark knew precisely how silly it intrinsically was? This was derided for years as a deeply stupid, empty nothing of a movie, and that's not totally wrong, but in recent years (especially since the recent Tom Cruise debacle) it's had something of a reappraisal. Yeah, you don't want to think about it too hard, but it's a hellishly fun couple of hours with a great cast, entertaining setpieces, and interesting use of CGI at a time when movies were really figuring out how to use it well. Brendan Fraser is great in this; he really suffered from Alec Baldwin Syndrome, in that he was a charismatic character actor with serious comedic chops trapped in the body of a leading man, so it was always very hard to take him seriously in lead roles (and he never got Baldwin's second act, which is a shame; Gods and Monsters alone showed how talented the guy is), but he's just about perfect in this. And John Hannah just about walks away with the movie. Seriously fun stuff. Glad I ran across it.

OH THANK GOD THEY GOT THE OTHER SIDE AND IT'S JABBA