Doctor Who is BACK!

Let's hope Peter Capaldi doesn't muck it all up, shall we?

'Guardians of the Galaxy' Is The Space Epic We've Been Waiting For

"When we are in our infancy, we look to the stars. We look to the sky, stretched out above us, full of mysteries unexplored, dangers untold, and thirsts unquenched. Space is the future; space is hope; space is where all the cool people are hanging out without us." -  Helen Keller

It would be an astronomical understatement to say that I really love Guardians of the Galaxy, the most recent – and buoyant – film in the Marvel franchise. Following a ragtag group of underdogs as they fight against seemingly unbeatable foes, the film is a love letter to movies about space, movies about friendship, and movies about kick-ass soundtracks.

The ragtag group in question is led by Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), a Terran (film-speak for 'from Earth) who, after his mother dies of cancer, is abducted by a race of bluish, alien thugs and grows up as a thief,  with an awesome mix tape as his only keepsake of home. He's joined by a  sassy raccoon named Rocket (Bradley Cooper), a somewhat-sentient tree named Groot (Vin Diesel), the overly-literal and revenge-bent Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), and the genetically-modified assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana, joining yet another space-film franchise). The plot is dense, and pretty MacGuffin-laden, but basically there's a super-bad dude named Ronan (Lee Pace, completely unrecognizable without his lustrous eyebrows) who's aided by Gamora's quasi-sister Nebula (Karen Gillan, a little out of her depth here) and an even badder dude named Thanos (who will feature heavily in many of the Marvel movies to come). Though their motivations are murky and full of backstabbing and frontstabbing, they all basically want to get their hands on a mysterious orb, which Quilly has just stolen, in order kill a bunch of people. Oh, yeah, and for a fun bit of back-story, Thanos killed Drax's family and happens to be Gamora's adoptive father. The 'Guardians' have to band together to stop Ronan, and save an entire planet of people, including a bunch of space cops holed up at the base of the Nova Corps, which is run by the stellar Glenn Close.

Now, I really liked this movie, but I'm afraid that, if I start to review it, I may never stop talking about it. So, instead, here is a list of  points worth talking about:

Birthdays Make Me Feel Like a Dying Eva Perón

Today is my birthday (and Neville Longbottom's...and Lisa Kudrow's), but it isn't a particularly important one. I'm not allowed to do or drink something that was previously, legally unattainable. There will be no celebration of a new half – or even quarter – century. Heck, I even woke up today in the same decade of my life that I was in yesterday. Still, birthdays have a way of feeling important, even if they're only important to one person. So, when someone wishes me a Happy Birthday, be it via Facebook post, text message, phone call, or even *gasp* an actual, in-person interaction, it's definitely some sweet icing on the cake of life. 

1999-era Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch Rock a Two-Woman Show

I'd like to take you back 15 years, to the year 1999. It was a simpler time. The Millenium was just around the corner. Y2K was a legitimate fear. Women were getting impregnated with children who are now freshman in high school. Cher's "Believe" was at the top of the charts. People still wore cargo jeans. Jennifer Lopez was just starting her singing career. And amazing, funny people Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey had a two-woman sketch show called Dratch & Fey. Until this week, I'd only heard rumors of this comedic collabo, happy to hear whispers of it on the wind and watch the few sketches I could find on YouTube. But now there's, like, a full night of Dratch & Fey, and it's in a convenient, 47-minute-long video!

Once you get past the poor video quality and bad haircuts, what you're left with is a super solid collection of sketches that weave in and out of one another with seamless panache. Plus, you get to hear Tina Fey sing a song about her vagina while operating a whale puppet, and you get to hear about the suicidal tendencies of Rachel Dratch's half of a pair of guitar-playing Siamese twins.

It's...pretty great.

RIP Elaine Stritch

Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here [Harry Potter]

Everyone reunites for a fun game of Quidditch and fan service.

Just when the world was beginning to forget about Harry Potter (sort of), J.K. Rowling swings back into the fray with a brand new bit of writing to get everyone's attention. A 1,500 word 'news report' from Rita Skeeter made its way onto the Pottermore website yesterday, and it follows a quasi-reunion between members of Dumbledore's Army at the Quidditch World Cup. Like the much-discussed epilogue in the last book of her hit series, the article reads more like fan fiction than actual, canonical text –  Rowling loves long sentences of expository writing. Honestly, if this were a real article, the wizarding world would probably be confused as to why, when attending a live event, Skeeter decides to write a piece with as much life and energy as the Wikipedia page on Mulch.

Hit or Miss: Quick Movie Reviews 8: 4th of July Edition

You guys! Here in America, it's Independence Day, which means it's time to celebrate 'Merica the only way we know how: drinking too much, eating a variety of meats, prank-calling anyone named Tim Howard, and spending a long weekend watching movies. To help you make the decision on what movie to see, I have spent the last few days watching a crap-load of movies. Like, I don't know how I do it. It's staggering. And since you can't spend this whole weekend in a cinema, I'mma tell you which ones to HIT the theater to see, and which ones you can MISS:

'Weird Al' Yankovic as Adolf Hitler

Thank you, Drunk History, for this weirdness.

That is all.

Talkin' About Philly Comic Con, With Square Peg

Tableau and Square Peg Take On Comic Con

This weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Philadelphia Wizard World Comic Con with my good friend (and occasional Guest Blogger) Square Peg. It was may first Comic Con, and, though we only attended for one day, we were able to see a lot of events, panels, and art:

And So I'm Back...From Outer Space...

So, I've been away from my blog for over three weeks. My computer went in for repairs, and with it went my ability to draw any pictures/post and thoughts. I was without an outlet, and there was so much going on.

There were so many things that I wanted to write about in the past three-odd weeks, but it just wasn't an option. I had no Personal Computer! And I feared what would happen if I used my bizness computer for non-bizness needs (jk I'm rolling deep in Facebook 24/7). Anyway, I'm officially back, rested, and ready to start blogging again. So, before I go into the crap that's happening in the world now, here are some things I missed talking about in a timely manner:

Maleficent

After what seems like a year of press and trailers, this re-imagined take on a Disney classic finally hit theaters. I was primed to love this movie, being a fan of Disney and Angelina Jolie, but the whole thing was a big old nothing.  All the spectacle in the world couldn't save a movie that involved a woman losing her agency through rape and then attempting to regain that power by avenging that rape only to forget about it 15 minutes after. The film takes one of the Disney villains with the baddest ass and reduces her to a beautifully cheekboned wimp with confusing and poorly executed convictions. Angelina Jolie was pretty much born to play this part, and she does as much as she can with the material, but the whole movie is as half-baked and ill-conceived as the cake that Aurora's fairy guardians attempt to make for her. It both ruins a lot of the original Sleeping Beauty (which is gorgeous and simple and musically rich) and adds a whole bunch of Tim Burton-esque nonsense for seemingly no reason. Also, there's a really terrible narrator who adds nothing to the proceedings.

Jay Leno is Getting The Mark Twain Prize for American Comedy

I can't roll my eyes hard enough. This is embarrassing for comedy, it's embarrassing for Mark Twain's ancestors, it's embarrassing for anyone who has ever spelled the word Mississippi.

Orange is the New Black Season 2

Obviously, the most important thing that happened in my absence was the return of OITNB, basically one of the best shows on television that isn't really on television. Netflix's strongest original series (yeah, you heard me, lackluster House of Cards) came back into my life with another batch of 13 cracker-jack episodes that expanded the universe and focused the narrative. While race relations between the inmates were always in the background of Season 1, that hot-button topic becomes the focus of the second outing and is spearheaded by the season's Big Bad AKA Taystee's mother-figure Vee, played with lioness realness by Lorraine Toussaint. She's electric. Also, by downplaying Piper and Alex's love story from last season and putting the spotlight on the secondary players, OITNB was able to make huge strides creatively. Especially welcome were episodes that focused on Morello, Poussey, and Taystee, and it was great to have expanded time with Red and Gloria and the entire kitchen crew. Not everything worked, and the conclusion to the season was both incredibly satisfying and troubling for the world going forward. Still, I love Jenji Kohan more and more with each episode of television, full of complex female characters and relationships, that she creates. If she kills off Larry and Polly in Season 3, that's just gravy.

Neighbors

The closer it got to the release date for the Zac Efron/Seth Rogen comedy, the more convinced I was that it was going to be terrible. Instead, it's pretty great. Seth Rogen's in fine form and Zac Efron finally gets to put that weird, soulless face of his to good use. The writing is solid, and it's just a really good college comedy. Especially fresh is Rose Byrne as Rogen's wife, who gets to be a person outside of her husband and stays away from the 'nagging wife' trope that so many movie wives fall into. Is it the best comedy I've seen in the past two months? You can Bet On It!

Louie and the Complicated Relationships Therein

Louie and Amia

Louie, the FX comedy from Louis C.K., has been one of my favorite shows on television for the past few years. It's experimental, occasionally gorgeous, maddening, and thought-provoking. It's so many things, and this season brought more to love and more to find troubling. Louis C.K. seems like a good guy, but "Louie" the character consistently pushes things into unbearably uncomfortable places. He is especially hard to watch this season, as two of his romantic relationships include some form of forced intimacy (I swear this isn't a rape-themed post). His girlfriend, Amia, who doesn't speak English and can't seem to articulate how to say no to his sexual advances, is pretty-much forced into a strange, possibly unfulfilling sexual encounter.His longtime friend and unrequited love, Pamela, is trapped by Louie in his apartment. She keeps insisting that she doesn't want him to kiss her but is still met with Louie's super aggressive, wet kisses of sadness. She even shouts "This would be rape if you weren't so stupid" in the midst of the encounter, in theory to cut the tension but really just adding to it. It's disturbing enough that both of these scenes follow a lead character who is supposed to be likable, but it's even worse that he's forgiven for both of these transgressions by the women he transgresses. Amia takes him back in time to have a sweet farewell (she's leaving the country), and the season ends with Louie and Pamela in some kind of screwed up relationship, the awkward quasi-rape just an unremarked-upon prelude to their actual relationship. I still really like watching the series, and this season had a lot to love. There were great, hilarious meditations on co-parenting after divorce and trying to raise a kid to not make the same mistakes of the parents, and there's the episode with the monologue about 'fat girls' that I found fascinating. There are truly wonderful guest performances from Sarah Baker, Charles Grodin, Ellen Burstyn, Pamela Adlon, Jeremy Renner (who is usually the personification of the lack of charisma), and Amy Landecker. Still, the two instances of physical, sexual abuse are hard to get over. Maybe it's because C.K. is a dude, and therefore any conversation about rape seems poorly conceived. Maybe it's one of those cases of an interesting idea being poorly executed. C.K. isn't some infallible god -- he's more than capable of screwing crap up. I dunno. I'm still trying to figure this one out. All I know for sure is that it doesn't sit well, even weeks after the incidences.

Maya Rudolph Joins the Already Amazing 

Tina Fey & Amy Poehler Sister Comedy

With Maya Rudolph joining The Nest, the comedy written by former SNL scribe Paula Pell and starring Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, it's clear that it is her time to shine. Poehler and Fey are playing sisters returning home after a long absence, and Rudolph will reportedly play their childhood friend. Get Rachel Dratch in this thing and I may never need to see another movie ever again. THE RUDOLPH REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN!

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Phew! It feels good to get all of that out there. Now it's time for some regular posting. Or semi-regular. I don't know.