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Topics - Professor Bear

#1
Film & TV / Carano, Whedon and all that
11 February, 2021, 01:22:41 PM
2020: Gina Carano being in The Mandalorian is SJW woke culture ruining Star Wars!
2021: Gina Carano not being in The Mandalorian is SJW woke culture ruining Star Wars!
#2
Other Reviews / MISTY! & scream 2020 Special
29 September, 2020, 02:10:00 PM
I see someone in editorial took all the bitching about the Misty logo being much smaller than the SCREAM! one on the covers of previous specials to heart, so never let anybody tell you that shitting your nappy on an internet forum about pointless nonsense that no sane adult should be concerned with doesn't yield results.  My time here is well-spent, and if anything I plan on becoming more crotchety and entitled.

Thief Of Senses - I love Henley's thick lines in this, even if it comes at the expense of detail.  Not sure about the muted colours as I think bolder contrast would have helped pick up some of it, but it's a decent short and spooky tale.
Bumps In the Night - ugh, another spooky clown story.  But it's okay, actually - possibly not for those who like their short fiction with zero flab and a punchy ending, but this reads like a Misty effort from back in the day, minus the verbose narrative captions, and that is No Bad Thing, surely?
Black Beth - fans of Windsor-Smith era Conan will likely find Dani's influences easy to spot.  I know this is yet another "ongoing", but it stands alone perfectly well.
The Dracula File - no spoilers, but this serves as a bookend to the series that began back in SCREAM! #1, and while I'm not sure it stands alone as best it could, Cavan Scott is to be commended for deciding to provide a good finale rather than hedging on yet another lukewarm reboot series being a given.  There's no replacing Eric Bradbury, but Vincenzo Riccardi channels the European artists of a similar vintage, with hints of Pino and Redondo here and there.  I imagine this story either negates the previous reboot attempt in the first Misty/Scream special, or renders it pointless, but either way it's probably for the best.
The Aegis manages to misjudge the tone of the rest of the book just enough to stand out, but it's unlikely to be a deal-breaker for anyone who likes Reina Telgemeier or similar yoot-oriented dramedy comics.  Grumpy old bastards on the internet will no doubt hate it.
The Black Max.  I don't think the publishing schedule has done this any favors, and I suspect has actually harmed the story, as this wrap-up seems rushed to me.  I would have thought this a good fit in the prog as an ongoing, but as a recurring serial appearing only in annual specials, it feels like it's been a bit of a miss, despite solid work from both creators.  I do have to say it looks great though, especially the eternal WW1 of Limbo/No Man's Land.

All in all, I have to say this was a bit too much of a mixed bag for me to not feel a bit thrown-together, though the stories are all good individually (as long as you don't mind the drastic differences in tone between stories) and the only major downer was probably The lettering on Bumps In The Night, as I figured out how to get pointy balloon tails, and I'm not even a comics lettererer, so HARRUMPH etc.  It's not that big a deal, really, as it's both perfectly legible and a stylistic choice familiar to readers of American comics aimed specifically at children like Adventure Time, but I also notice Oz' full name is Oz Ozbourne, and I didn't realise that Sharon had taken him to the cleaners so badly in the divorce that he to learn a completely new skill set at his stage of life, so fair play to our lettering prince of darkness for not letting anything stop him, be it the crossbar I rule or laws governing animal welfare and/or spousal battery.
#3
Film & TV / Vagrant Queen
29 April, 2020, 02:30:30 AM
SYFY have made another tv show about people in a spaceship and this one, just for a change of pace, isn't ponderous navel-gazing shit full of unlikable jerks in grey corridors, it's about a space queen on the run from an evil empire while shooting multicoloured lasers at feathered space monkeys on stilts.
Trailer HERE ("the comments have been turned off"), the makers are clearly aiming to get as close to Guardians of the Galaxy as they can with the budget they have (and by the looks of it, we aren't talking The Expanse money here) right down to a vaporwave aesthetic and cheesy 1980s pop songs - the cast singing Jefferson Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now becomes a plot point in the third episode and it's not even remotely the silliest thing that happens.
A lot of similarities to SYFY's own KILLJOYS, and reminds me a lot of Andromeda, only without a lead actor who's had a stroke and not told anyone so nobody is aware that they've secretly gone batshit insane and will start churning out Christian propaganda movies any day now.  There are other differences between Vagrant Queen and Andromeda, but I feel this is the one for which we should be most thankful.
#4
Okay, the trailer looks like pretty much any summer movie release of the last ten years, and it's still a flippin Transformers film so yeah there's that, but...

https://youtu.be/fAIX12F6958?t=7s

Sanity prevents me saying that anything associated with the atrocious live-action Transformers franchise might be "good", but I am willing to concede this does not look as abominable as the others did, thanks in part to the 1980s setting, the director being the same Travis Knight what made Kubo and the Two Strings, and the lead being a lady type, which now dangles the insane possibility of seeing live-action Transformers movie fanatics attempt to convince the world that the Transformers movies have somehow got worse by casting a female lead - I mean, they'll have a job convincing people Transformers movies could actually be any worse than they already are, let alone giving themselves the philosophical handcuffs of tying that concept to misogyny, so hopefully that will be entertaining and not just horrible like the Kelly Marie Tran thing.
#5
Apologies if mentioned elsewhere, but Down The Tubes is reporting that kiddie horror comics Scream! and Misty will have a co-ed special published later this year, featuring new material from 2000ad alum.

There's a good talent line-up in there, and I hope they go for an all-ages audience as I wouldn't mind seeing this sell to a wider audience than... well, us.
#6
If we're lucky, it'll be a bit more amusing than the okay-ish but laugh-free Pratchett adaptations that Sky 1 did years back, though it'll probably be most compared to the unintentionally hilarious Damien that recently ran on US telly, covering as it does similar grounds in telling the tale of the Antichrist, who unbeknownst to his angelic and demonic stalkers and overseers has accidentally been switched at birth with the child of a middle class English family.
Hilarity hopefully ensues.
#7
Film & TV / xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage
20 July, 2016, 11:40:29 PM
It will hopefully dispel the sour taste of the joyless, pretentious, and deathly dull Point Break remake and it's getting its own thread as a reward for being possibly the most abominably stupid thing coming our way in 2017, featuring as it does Vin Diesel skiing through a tropical jungle, and then surfing on a motorcycle - by which I do not mean he does handstands on a motorcycle while it is moving, I mean he drives a motorcycle across the surface of the ocean and uses a wave as a ramp.
#9
Film & TV / Colony (tv series)
22 March, 2016, 04:45:03 PM
Apologies if there's a thread already, but I just finished watching the first season of USA Network's Colony, which was actually quite good.  Made by Lost alum in front of and behind the camera, it also stars Rick's Wife from Walking Dead and OH HELL YEAH Carl Weathers, and while it won't win any originality awards - it cribs heavily from the original V miniseries - it does manage to take itself just the right amount of seriously without disappearing up its own arsehole.
There's not much in the way of sci-fi in it - [spoiler]the aliens don't actually appear onscreen and humans run the occupation[/spoiler] - so it's more the story of a city under enemy control.  Limiting the sci-fi element also arguably helps smooth over the cracks in the premise so you can concentrate on the backstabbing and espionage rather than wondering why aliens would build a giant wall to contain a colony of humans they don't seem to have much use for.
Confirmed for a second season, so might be worth a watch when it hits terrestrial telly.
#10
Film & TV / Childhood's End (2015 SyFy miniseries)
20 December, 2015, 11:04:09 PM
Possibly of interest to some forumites, Childhood's End is an adaptation of the Arthur C Clarke novel of the same name from 1953 for which SyFy have apparently splurged out big-time, though it actually looks cheaper in places than something like Fear The Walking Dead or the upcoming Colony, and poor Charles Dance has to have one of the weakest prosthetic suits I've seen in quite a while.

Non-spoilery review: I've not read the book, so I can't speak as to whether the story's been liberally cribbed-from over the decades since the novel came out or whether this is just a very trope-y adaptation, as it's heavily reminiscent of Earth: Final Conflict and the V remake, as well as taking a leaf out of Independence Day's book.  Not exceptional, but worth a look.
#11
Film & TV / Legends of Tomorrow - first trailer
14 May, 2015, 06:31:03 PM
First look at the superhero team show comprised of some very dull characters that the CW are making.  If you watch Flash/Arrow, it looks like more of the same, and I imagine that's good enough for most.
After 2:13 the trailer probably gets super-great but that's when I decided I'd had enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MubNoWQiSc as that's when Rory from Doctor Who shows up as the DC version of Doctor Who - no, really.  I think they might be making this to make the Supergirl show look better.  If so, job done.
#12
Help a brother pay random and arbitrary eBay and Paypal fees, often several times over to the point he's lucky if he sees penny one in profit, especially after their P&P price-fixing for his expensive Chrimbo by buying his tat off the internet equivalent of a pawn shop in a rough neighborhood: all issues of Sea Guy, The Filth, and Joe The Barbarian for five nicker, or for three nicker you can have some of that odd illustrated poetry Alan Moore does every now and then that doesn't feature men in spandex punching each other in the head for twenty pages, thus infuriating the internet further.

I'll also be bunging up lots of superhero bollocks as the days go by as I'm sick of the bloody sight of it, but some people seem keen on it so what the Hell.
#13
Film & TV / Z Nation
16 September, 2014, 12:18:46 PM
New to SyFy, the Asylum finds it's level as the no-budget mockbuster production company - whose CEOs famously went on record as saying the quality of their films was "irrelevant" - lowers itself further to make a tv show for a channel that famously hates its own fans even more than it hates spending money, and lawks but it's actually not that bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqbHm6RTHHM
Well, okay it's not actually not that good either and by God is it cheap-looking and acted like it's an afterthought, but if - like me - you're burnt out on the whole "we humans are the real monsters!" angle that has choked the simple gory pleasures out of the zombiepocalypse genre in favor of juvenile angst and just want to see a Lost castmember with a machine gun hunting a zombie baby - zombaby? - like it's the alien from Alien, Z Nation has got your back, brah.  Despite it being running zombies and hinging around a zombie cure McGuffin, the show returns to the fun-n-trashy b-movie roots that typified the VHS era of zombie flicks, so if that's your bag at all and you don't mind that it's shot in scrapyards and derelict buildings, it might be worth a look.
#14
Film & TV / Black Jesus
09 August, 2014, 03:38:04 PM
Adult Swim make a play for some cheap PR by combining racial stereotypes and blasphemy in one package, as the Son of God returns to South LA in new series Black Jesus, that's already been decried by internet asshole hangout One Million Moms for Reasons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQWtY30WfVg

The first episode is available on the web and the humor is surprisingly gentle for Adult Swim programming, though reliably obvious in places.  It isn't very offensive beyond the central premise (if you're even offended by that), and Jesus comes off as likeable and not a spiteful snob like he is in the Bible.  The show feels like a throwback to mid-90s gang movies and is probably the first time in at least 15 years that poor black LA residents have appeared on tv screens as anything other than Persons Of Interest in glossy cop shows or Heart-Throbs From The Wrong Side Of The Tracks in teen dramas.
#15
Off Topic / Alternatives to Amazon?
12 June, 2014, 08:25:28 PM
I've been using Amazon as a handy one-stop shop more or less since I first started using the internet, but I think it's time I took my money elsewhere.  It's not the poverty wages, or the tax-dodging, or the union-busting, or the price fixing, or the bullying of authors, or the dismantling of digital comic book distribution, or the blacklisting of books whose content they don't like even when they themselves sell books denying the Holocaust and giving practical advice to the discerning child-lover, or remotely accessing customer's tablets and e-readers and deleting content - it's all of these things and all the other things I can't be arsed to list here.

So like the thread suggests, does anyone have any recs for reliable online retailers?
#16
Music / Inevitable "crap music" thread
23 April, 2014, 09:00:36 PM
I try not to listen to the radio anymore because hearing modern pop music makes my brain angry at those responsible, but exposure is sadly inevitable: when I visit the gym and don't have my headphones in, when I'm out shopping in places where there's a radio going or that has a music channel on - it's unavoidable, so I'm going to bitch about it here when it happens rather than just putting the relevant names on the list I keep in my pocket of people I'm going to kill with a tank if I ever get diagnosed with a terminal illness. 
I throw the floor open to hear your thoughts on that racket the kids call "the charts", maybe you can even clear up something I don't want to Google: that Jessie J is a drag act, yeah?
#17
Film & TV / The 100
01 April, 2014, 02:55:33 PM
I thought I'd start a thread for rutting-teens channel The CW's foray into high concept pulp sci-fi, The 100, in which 100 juvenile criminals are forcibly exiled from a failing space station to the surface of post-apocalyptic Earth for Reasons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM_2LwEtgkg

Coming from the makers of The Vampire Diaries and 90210, it naturally doesn't really bear up to any kind of scrutiny, but then it has a cast-iron defence in that it is a show from the makers of The Vampire Diaries and 90210 and it's your fault for thinking you were going to get rocket science even in a show that is actually a little bit about rocket science, though if you don't mind The Tribe by way of Defcon 4 with a cast of twentysomething kids with thirtysomething parents, it's a decent enough sci-fi effort that cleverly compartmentalises its two casts (young adults and actual adults) to seperate settings and storylines, with the kids on the ground meeting mutants and cannibals and the adults in space politicking and plotting each other's murder.
Only two episodes in and so far it's fallen out of the Predictable Tree and hit every branch on the way down, the dialogue will not be winning any awards, and the characters are uniformly unlikeable, but it's still watchable if like me you have pretty low standards.
#19
Film Discussion / Was movie Dredd gay?
19 March, 2013, 03:42:25 PM
Honest question: We have discussed the comic version's gayness - or not - but given the (deliberately) scant nature of Joe Dredd in Dredd 3D, is it possible to take a gay reading of the character?

I take it as read that the lead of the '95 Judge Dredd film can - by inference - be seen as definitively heterosexual, as the relationship between he and Hershey was romantic in nature - I know a lot of fans weren't happy with that, but I think it's hard to get away from the fact that this was where the film ultimately went.  With Dredd 3D, though, it's clear there's no romantic subtext between he and Anderson, she speaks of "anger and something else" while reading him early in the film, and there's the usual elements of the leather and the strict and domineering aspects of the character if you are so inclined to see these as inherently gay rather than just fetishistic, but I am of the opinion that it is entirely possible that the Dredd of Dredd 3D is a gay lead - inasmuch as Dredd can be anything at all other than celibate and uptight.
#20
Creative Common / Rob Liefeld will draw your story
24 February, 2013, 09:52:10 PM
Apologies if mentioned elsewhere on the board, but I thought I'd throw it up in the creative common.
The Robster gets it in the neck from many comics commentators, but he's a name player and though quiet for the last few months after telling DC to go fuck themselves - and if you have followed his Twitter at all you will be aware that this is not a euphemism but a description of how he specifically tells people like Mike Carlin to go fuck themselves every other day - he's made an offer to wannabe writers to get a short comic story published in one of his comics.

http://robliefeldcreations.com/?p=3314

It's a work for hire gig, and if you've seen how he lets people work with his properties like Supreme, Prophet and Glory, you'll know you can pretty much do whatever you want from straight superhero scraps to deconstructionist tracts.  The 'catch' is you have to use one Liefeld's Extreme characters, but don't think that will limit your potential stories as I heartily recommend checking out Judgment Day, in which Alan Moore created Liefeld-verse analogues for pretty much anyone you can think of, and there's a handy rundown of almost all of them over here: https://sites.google.com/site/scarlettracesannotations/judgementday