Month: April 2014

Posted on

Could ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ Be Too Enamored With the Original Movies?

Could ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ Be Too Enamored With the Original Movies?

One thing that can’t be said about J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars at this early stage: it’s not reverential enough to the source material. With each new piece of information released about the project, it’s clear that Abrams and his collaborators have the earlier movies – and, most obviously, the original trilogy from the 1970s and ‘80s – in mind as both inspiration and target of aspiration.

In between getting more and more angry with Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD today, I also wrote this for THR about the dangers of nostalgia in making the new Star Wars.

Posted on

It’s possible that you might have thought that series like Millionaire Matchmaker and The Real Housewives of [Insert City Here] marked some kind of nadir for shameless reality television, but Bravo—ever the innovator in this area—has proven otherwise with the announcement of its new programming slate. After all, rich trashy women in America is one thing, but when you bring them over to London, that’s a whole other ballgame.

I wrote about Bravo’s new programming slate for Wired. It was therapeutic.
Posted on

After Watching The Winter Soldier and Agents of SHIELD…

I keep seeing interviews with the showrunners of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD where they explain that, of course, they knew about what was going to happen in the new Captain America movie and that the entire season was planned around that reveal. It’s not that I don’t believe them – the “Caterpillar” thing alone (a reference to Secret Warriors that I didn’t catch) convinces me of that – but it does make me think: If they knew what was going to happen, and they essentially had a ticking clock on the status quo, then how did they make such a boring show for all this time?

Also, given the overarching theme of The Winter Soldier, if SHIELD knew that was coming, why was the show so amazingly, disturbingly pro-Big Brother in its early episodes (and, for that matter, unthinkingly obedient all the way throughout)?

(While I’m at it, doesn’t last night’s episode of Agents of SHIELD… not exactly fit in with the timeline/events of The Winter Soldier? When, exactly, did Hydra send out a “reveal ourselves” signal? In the movie, Hydra is revealed by Cap, not by choice. Wasn’t Fury “killed” at least three days before the Hydra reveal, which puts it at odds with the Agents of SHIELD timeline?)

Ah, missed opportunities all ‘round…

Posted on

What is the most wrong you’ve ever been about a comics work in terms of your initial reading to where you stand on that work right now?

First time I read Jaime Hernandez’ work was a serialized version of “The Death of Speedy” in Deadline back in… 1991, maybe? But it did nothing for me at all, especially compared with the Hewlett/Bond showiness that was running the show and my aesthetic at the time. I didn’t go back to L+R for more than a decade afterwards, because I was entirely convinced that the two or three episodes I read had proven that it just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t’ve been more wrong.

More recently, not a particular work, but I had a visceral dislike of Ales Kot’s Wild Children, but Change and Zero completely turned me around on his work; these days, I think he’s one of the most interesting new writers straddling the Marvel/Image line.

(I was going to say Casanova, but I think my enthusiasm for the early issues based on my dislike for the most recent series has more to do with their particular content than me necessarily changing my mind.)