Month: January 2014

Graphic Novel Novice: The Walking Dead Issue 3

Walking Dead Issue 3 cover The third issue of The Walking Dead starts to highlight the differences between the comic and the TV series. We meet all of the members of the camp and there are a few different faces when compared to the show.

Instead of Daryl and Merle Dixon, we get Allen, Donna, and their twin sons Ben and Billy. There was a Donna with a husband named Allen and a son named Ben that were introduced as a part of Tyreese’s group on the show but the names were really the only thing that they had in common with the comic book characters. The names were probably used as a shot out to the fans of both the books and the show.

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Golden Globes Preview: Movie Edition

The Golden Globes are upon us! We each have posts coming predicting the winners, but to prevent massive text overload, we’ve broken it into two parts. Here, for your enjoyment, is the movie half of the preview. Our TV predictions are here.

So, before any actual predictions, the biggest disclaimer in the world: I don’t know anything about the Golden Globes. What I know about the Golden Globes is that they split their categories weirdly and that they are the biggest ceremony before the Oscars, but don’t actually have a ton of predictive value. Therefore I am interested as far as eyebrow-raising inclusions in nominations and outlier winners, but I don’t pretend to know the trends or voting history. Unlike the Oscars, where I know everything. Obviously.

That said, let’s do this!

Best Screenplayher

Spike Jonze, Her
Bob Nelson, Nebraska
Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, Philomena
John Ridley, 12 Years a Slave
David O. Russell and Eric Warren Singer, American Hustle

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NFL Divisional Round Picks

NFL Divisional Round Playoffs

Last week I went 2-2 on my Wildcard picks, which should inspire veritable bucketloads of confidence in these picks. But the good news is that the Colts won, so you can all rest easy. These picks are for the games being played 1-11 and 1-12, 2014.

ALL TIMES ARE IN CENTRAL, BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE I LIVE.

Saturday afternoon, 3:35 pm, New Orleans Saints at Seattle Seahawks

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Sam’s Top 10 Movies of 2013

#Top 10 Movies of 2013

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Here are the 10 best films of 2013, according to me, which makes it true. I don’t have full reviews of all of these up yet, but when I do I’ll be sure to link them here.

I did not see the following movies that have appeared on many other Top 10 lists: The Wind Rises, Mud, Leviathan, Beyond the Hills, Computer Chess, or Spring Breakers. I mean, there were a lot of movies I didn’t see last year, but those are the most highly regarded ones I can think of off the top of my head.

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Announcing the Veronica Mars Watchalong

Veronica Mars with a cameraIf you watch one episode of Veronica Mars per day starting tomorrow, Thursday, January 8, you would reach the series finale on Thursday, March 13, the day before the movie premiere. Challenge accepted!

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be working my way through all three seasons of Veronica Mars at the pace of an episode per day. Each Friday, there will be a post on the previous week’s episodes. The first post will be on Friday, January 17, and will cover eight episodes and every subsequent post will be on a Friday and cover the seven episodes I watched in the week leading up to it. I promise, this totally works out. The last post will be on Friday, March 14, where we can celebrate the end of the watchalong and squee about the opening of the movie. Let’s do this, marshmallows! The schedule follows.

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This Week in the Box: Mutiny on the Bounty

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Note: This Week in the Box is a year-long series where Sam works through the entire Warner Brothers 50 Film Collection box set. To find reviews of the other films in the series and see the complete list, click here.

1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty was directed by Frank Lloyd and stars Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Charles Laughton’s eyebrows. It was based on the 1932 historical novel of the same name by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.

The facts of the actual mutiny are comparatively unclear; while the ship’s captain wrote a lengthy account of the events, his version is inherently untrustworthy considering he was the one mutinied against. Perhaps it is not in his best interest to present the facts exactly as they were, considering that others allege that it was his extreme cruelty and lack of compassion that led the mutiny. The captain, for the record, attributes the mutiny to the men being swayed by the idyllic life in Tahiti and wanting to return there. Being a film adaptation of a fictionalized novel based on the actual mutiny, the events in this film are at a third-degree remove from any kind of reality. That gives the screenwriters more than enough artist license to do away with any gray area and write exactly the straightforward story they want to.

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Graphic Novel Novice: The Walking Dead Issue 2

Walking Dead Issue 2 CoverThis issue started out a little slow for me. Once again, there were many frames of Rick moving through the world without much text. He runs out of gas and can’t manage to get more but fortunately, he finds a horse. The horse provides the exciting chance for exposition, where Rick tells the story of the day that his son is born. We learn that his wife is named Lori and that his son is named Carl (finally).

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Life According to Sam

lifeaccordingtosam2Life According to Sam is a documentary about Sam, (obviously), who has progeria, and the web of related topics that naturally follow. In this case, those are progeria itself, how hard a mother will work to save her son’s life, and how the medical establishment and the FDA handle drug trials and experimental drugs.

Progeria is an incredibly rare disease that basically causes the body to age way faster than it’s supposed to. The average life span is something like 13 years of age, but the cause of death is almost always something primarily associated with the elderly- these kids die of heart disease and stroke while their peers are learning what it means to have a crush on someone. The fact that a kid with progeria will get as far as tweendom and no more is particularly heartbreaking; while losing a child at any age is painful beyond my ability to conceive as a non-parent, the film clearly shows that watching your little boy grow up almost like normal for more than a decade makes knowing that his time is inescapably limited that much worse.

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