TV
Is it just me, or is the Netflix series Jessica Jones just a hard-drinking darker version of Veronica Mars (2004–2007)?
I was recently able to catch up on the Starz series Ash vs Evil Dead and am happy to say that it’s GREAT. Horror comedies like Ash vs Evil Dead must be hard to pull off since there sure aren’t many of them. Let’s see, there’s the Evil Dead series, What We Do in the Shadows and Shaun of the Dead movies, parts of Tucker and Dale vs Evil and … well, that’s about it.
And Ash vs Evil Dead isn’t JUST horror/comedy either, it’s got a lot of heart too which surprised me.
The one thing is that I’m not quite sure how Ash vs Evil Dead fits with the Evil Dead cannon as a whole? It’s almost like in the Ash vs Evil Dead universe The Evil Dead (1981) didn’t happen but Evil Dead II (1987) did. And either they’re ignoring Army of Darkness (1992) or they just haven’t gotten to the part where Ash is, “Trapped in time, surrounded by evil and low on gas,” yet.
Movies
Star Wars: The Force Awakens: I was really excited about this one when I saw the first trailer. It seemed that Disney and J.J. Abrams were taking what made the original trilogy great and and molding this into a new film series. After seeing The Force Awakens, I thought the movie was really good but my two complaints are that a lot happens in the film that’s pure coincidence and The Force Awakens is essentially a remake of Star Wars: A New Hope with a dash of The Empire Strikes Back but with everything being BIGGER and more bombastic than before. Most of the beats from A New Hope are present in The Force Awakens which is fine, but I just wish Abrams had gone and done more of his own thing than making a “greatest hits” movie like he did here. B+
Ex Machina: It took me a while to see this one even though several friends highly recommended it to me the last few months. Writer/director Alex Garland is one of the best voices in realistic sci-fi/horror like with 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd and he continues his winning streak with Ex Machina, about the creation of the first artificially intelligent being that might be a little too intelligent for mankind to contain. B
Fantastic Four (2015): Do we really need any more superhero origin movies? Not that we don’t need origin stories for superheroes, just that is there really a need anymore to devote an entire movie to origin when there’s plenty of more interesting ways to do that? Like Iron Man is an origin story but is told in such a way that much of the origin is covered in the first half of the movie and the more recent Ant Man handles his origin by having it be something that’s slowly uncovered over the course of an adventure rather than devoting an entire film to it which Fantastic Four does.
In fact, the actual Four don’t get together until nearly the end of the movie. It’s the film that’s essentially an advertisement to the forthcoming sequel that looks kind’a interesting that’s never going to happen since the first movie didn’t do well enough at the box office.
Fantastic Four isn’t a bad movie, it’s just that in an era of great superhero movies it doesn’t stand out in any substantial way. C
Books
I got the books Sketching from the Imagination: An Insight into Creative Drawing and Art of He Man and the Masters of the Universe this year for Christmas. Sketching from the Imagination is a look at the sorts of techniques different artists use when sketching for fun or work while Art of He Man is a visual history of all the art generated behind the scenes when coming up with a toylike then maintaining it over the years with new toys and playsets.
