If people got their panties in a bind over “Big Bang Theory,” try watching the Syfy show “Fangasm.” It’s staged, well edited, and saccharine. And yet, I may keep watching anyway. But then I’m a sadist. You can really see where most of the show is set up and conveniently edited, and you really don’t have to look all that carefully. The premise is seven geeks working for Stan Lee for his Comikaze convention. Lee doesn’t even show up to greet his interns, really, but hey George Takei does. So that’s something (?). How convenient that two of the interns are humongous trekkies, right?
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Even with Marvel now owning Disney, and “The Avengers” making money hand over fist in 2012, “Agents of Shield” is still a risky spin-off. So the writers have to basically depend on lip service to “The Avengers” without depending on it wholesale. Even with the fan loyalty Joss Whedon sports with all of his series, “Agents of SHIELD” is a risky venture. They’re still third tier characters in the movies, and the last time we saw them in on TV, they were being led by David Hasselhoff and battling an evil bouncing ball. So, the series does everything it can to ensure audiences this is a Marvel universe series, without seeming similar to other shows about big agencies.
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
If you had a problem, and this problem meant the destruction of your life and reputation, and family that you hold so dear, what would you do to get rid of it for good? Though Woody Allen is a brilliant director, he’s an even better writer who knows people and how they work in reality. He knows how to compose human personality, and our own inner-desires. Allen breaks down a crime and studies it with the most human of reactions. If you’d had a lover and she threatened to destroy your life if you didn’t return her love, what would you be willing to do to make sure she didn’t talk? The ultimate question Allen observes is how far we’d go to protect ourselves.
Prince Of Darkness (1987) (Collector’s Edition) [Blu-ray]
John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness,” the second leg in the “Apocalypse Trilogy” is a horrifying film about the apocalypse and one of the many Carpenter films where good fights evil and evil wins. Again. And again. It’s interesting that “Prince of Darkness” is almost a precursor to the found footage film boom of the mid aughts, as director John Carpenter stages a series of dream sequences void of cinematic flare. Through fuzzy hand held cameras, he manages to stage numerous horrific dream sequences signaling the coming of the anti-god, and the anti-Christ, all the while using it as a means of expressing how imminent the apocalypse is. The thirty second dream sequences are much more horrifying than most found footage films I’ve ever seen.
Memoirs of a Gay Porn Critic
I’m a gay porn critic.
No, not really. I’m not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I used to review porn, but that’s beside the point.
A long time ago I got in to a bit of a verbal war with their Asylum Entertainment’s most noted director who engaged in a back and forth with me for a long time, and even took exception to my bashing of his films on a major independent film website. Often I spent my days on another message board on my online haunts discussing the terrible movies coming from the Asylum, and often times I was inundated with attacks from people in the studios.
Monday Movie Pause: Honest Trailers: World War Z (2013)
Not that Honest Trailers needs the promotion (we’re huge fans), but I appreciate their destruction of “World War Z,” a movie I hated not just because it was an adaptation of the book in name only, but because it was tame, boring, poorly written, and turned a story about humanity coming together in to a jingoistic video game. Thank you, Honest Trailers.
Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels: The Complete Series (DVD)
Pretty much all of the later series from Hanna Barbera included a group of snot nosed teens solving crime along with some odd sidekick. After “Scooby Doo” the company repeated the successful formula thirty times with varied results. Often times it was incredibly awful like “Jabberjaw” and sometimes it was fun like “Space Ghost.” One of the last Hanna Barbera shows to feature that awkward laugh track addition, “Captain Caveman” mixes the studios odd fixation on the stone age, with crime solving teens, and the whole “Scooby Doo” formula to create a pretty decent animated adventure show.


