Four Colors To Infinity: DC A-Go-Go

by Leonard Pierce

Comics fans are hardly unique in having a standoffish relationship with the medium they love.  (They are probably outpaced by sports fans in terms of the distance between the product on display and the character of the culture that has grown up around it, but that’s another story.)  Every genre, every kind of media, every author is capable of disappointing his audience.  But comics fans do have to content with one hassle that it shares only with advertising:  all of the medium’s greatest missteps, disappointments and botch-jobs have come after an announcement that everything is going to change for the better.

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Six Great Anna Faris Scenes

by Andrew Osborne

Despite some questionable career choices, Anna Faris may wind up following in the A-list footsteps of Cameron Diaz (the very actress she parodied in Lost In Translation with such dead-on, guilt-inducing precision). Why? Because the goofy blonde star of this week’s rom-com What’s My Number? has great moments in great movies, and even when the movies are bad, she’s still pretty great in them. Consider the evidence…

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NYFF 2011: Critic’s Notebook

by Vadim Rizov

The second act of Julia Loktev’s first narrative feature—2006′s Day Night Day Night—is a real time urban nightmare: an unnamed woman (Luisa Williams) wanders through Times Square with a bomb strapped to her chest, internally/inscrutably debating whether to detonate. When she decides, the movie inevitably gets less tense, but that first hour makes the film as a whole one of the most terrifying things I’ve seen: the lives at stake get to you less than the sense of a fragile, cringing person tensed up and ready to destroy themselves.

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Hayden Childs Recaps The Simpsons Season Premiere

New Simpsons episodes are so inevitable that they make Death and Taxes look like chumps. Chumps, I say. Back in the 1950s, it took a chess-loving medieval knight to make a chump of Death, but these days, Death gazes longingly at Homer Simpson, wondering if the goofy fat cartoon silly-man would be willing to wager over a short game, all the while knowing that He himself, Death, may be the personification of human fear of the great mystery that awaits each and every person who has drawn and will someday fail to draw breath, but Homer, on the other hand, has the Fox Broadcasting Company behind him, and Death cannot beat a corporation.

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Scott Von Doviak Recaps The Amazing Race

That totally inconspicuous Amazing Race bus making its way down the Pacific Coast Highway can only mean one thing: Phil Keoghan is somewhere nearby, performing his eyebrow warm-up exercises. That, and it’s time to meet the 11 teams that will soon be yelling at foreign taxi drivers for not being able to speak English.

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If You Like The Terminator…

by Scott Von Doviak

Release Date: 06/05/2012

The Terminator began life as a low-budget B movie seemingly destined for a short run at malls and drive-ins before blossoming into a billion-dollar franchise that launched the careers of director James Cameron and star Arnold Schwarzenegger. The original 1984 film not only spawned three sequels, a weekly television series, and countless novels, comic books, and videogames, it also redefined the science fiction genre with its blend of high tech and film noir.

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Scott Von Doviak’s Second Opinion of Unforgettable

This fall, we’ve got so many writers who’ve seen these pilots that we thought getting two takes on each show would be helpful to you. The first review is the “official” TV Club review, and the grade applies to it. But we’ve also found another reviewer to offer their own take on the program. Today, Todd VanDerWerff and Scott Von Doviak talk about Unforgettable.

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Hayden Childs’ Music Library: Okkervil River to Olivia Tremor Control

Okkervil River – Don’t Fall In Love With Everyone You See (2002), Down The River Of Broken Dreams (2003), Sham Wedding/Hoax Funeral EP (with Shearwater, 2004), Black Sheep Boy (2005), The President’s Dead (2006), and The Stage Names (2007). Okkervil River is a band that I like but do not love.  I wish it were otherwise, especially now that they have added the ultra-talented Lauren Gurgiolo to their line-up. Actually, that is unfair, as I have heard nothing from the new album, which the one she plays on. I might love it. These albums, unfortunately, have not given me much of an incentive.

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Scott Von Doviak Recaps Squidbillies

They said an animated series about a family of backwoods anthropomorphic cephalopods would never last, but Squidbillies kicked off its sixth season last Sunday night, proving all the doubters wrong. At least, I assume there were doubters.  Then again, considering that the show’s target audience appears to be stoned college students taking a break between rounds of Modern Warfare 3, maybe no one is really surprised Squidbillies has lasted longer than Twin Peaks and Arrested Development combined.

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Roy Devine, Jr.’s Emmy Tweets

Roy Devine, Jr. — one of five characters from the Image Comic Blue Estate (scripted by Exiler Andrew Osborne) who tweets on a regular basis — was rooting for Mariska Hargitay during last night’s Emmy broadcast!

To check out the full tweet-cast, click here!