Year: 2017

Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #21, Batman ’66 Meets Wonder Woman ’77 #11

3 May 2017 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Well. Just as geeks and geekettes were starting to worry that Warner Bros had abandoned Diana and weren’t going to promote Wonder Woman, everything’s gone and changed.

For starters, we can all start buying tickets for the movie now. If you’re in the UK, there’s a web site giving you the cinemas nearest you that will be showing the movie. Have you booked your tickets yet? Mine are IMAX 3D…

Meanwhile, if you’re in the US and you have an awful lot of spending money, the Regal movie chain is currently offering the anodised steel ‘Wonder Woman Ultimate Ticket‘. Costing a mere $100, it enables you to watch the movie once a day, every day, during the movie’s initial release, in any format you want (even IMAX 3D). It’s also personalised with your name so you can keep it.

But on top of that, there’s been a new flurry of marketing activity. Nascar driver Danica Patrick will be driving a Wonder Woman car for two races this season. Four new stills and behind-the-scenes photos have been released, too. 

However, what we’re all really after are not just the shiny new poster for the movie…

New Wonder Woman poster

…but its four new TV trailers that Patty Jenkins, Gal Gadot and a little TV show called Gotham have recently provided us. There’s some old footage and some new footage, too, but notably one of them is called ‘Goddess’ – the nu52’s not as dead as everyone thought after all, it seems…

Meanwhile, if you’ve not been in Athens praising Aphrodite and the rest of the gods now that Hellenismos is once again an official religion of Greece, you’ll have been off reading some comics, won’t you? This week (La, la, la – I can’t hear you! There have been no new comics released today!), you might have perused either Wonder Woman #21 or Batman ’66 Meets Wonder Woman ’77 #11, so let’s talk about them after the jump.

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Netflix’s Marvel’s The Defenders are in action at last

3 May 2017 Rob Buckley Post a comment

We’ve been teased to death so far, but finally we have an actual, proper trailer for Netflix’s Marvel’s The Defenders, the show that unites Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist at last. Not quite as exciting as seeing all of The Avengers together, but this is actually pretty exciting and funny stuff. And not just because Sigourney Weaver is the Big Bad of the piece. How’s about that hallway fight scene?

What have you been watching? Including Saving Mr Banks, Lucifer, Doctor Who and The Flash

2 May 2017 Rob Buckley Post a comment

It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently and your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching.

Easter’s over, we’re entering May and while Captain Squarejaw might be depressed about the whole thing, TV networks around the world are waking up, filled will the joys of spring, and starting to send us a whole batch of new shows to enjoy.

Elsewhere, I’ve already reviewed the whole of Seven Types of Ambiguity (Australia: ABC), as well as the first episodes of Great News (US: NBC) and Genius (US/UK: National Geographic). Later in the week (I’m guessing Thursday), I’ll be casting my eye over the first few eps of The Handmaid’s Tale (US: Hulu) and American Gods (US: Starz; UK: Amazon), but there’ll probably be a few other shows I haven’t noticed yet that I’ll try to review as well (eg Dear White People). 

After the jump, though, I’ll be reviewing the usual regulars: The Americans, Doctor Who and Silicon Valley. Joining that list are the returning The Flash as well as the long-absent Lucifer. Hoorah! I’m assuming that’s what I heard you all saying just now, anyway.

I also watched a movie over the weekend.

Saving Mr Banks (2013)
Dual biopic about the making of Mary Poppins, in which a reluctant ‘PL Travers’ (Emma Thompson) is convinced to give Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) the rights to adapt her famed book. Coming over to Hollywood, she then has to deal with the fact the movie will be a partially animated musical that’s less than identical to the book and characters as she envisioned them, with the likes of Bradley Whitford and Jason Schwartzman having to show her just how supercalifragilisticexpialidocious it’ll all be if she just lets them to their thang.

Meanwhile, a second parallel plot flashes back to Travers’ upbringing in Australia with her delightful but chronically alcoholic dad (Colin Farrell), suicidally depressed mum (The Affair‘s Ruth Wilson) and suspiciously Poppins-like aunt (Rachel Griffiths), so that we can see what meaning Poppins might have had to Travers and how it made her so precious about her creation.

Obviously, you have to know Mary Poppins quite well to get the most out of everything, with Amadeus-like scenes depicting prototyping of characters and songs that require you to know what the final result should be like in order to see the difference. There are some very weird accents in the Australian portion of things, while Hanks’ performance is less than sparkling. The ending is also a bit of a fudge, since Travers still hated Mary Poppins when it came out.

Yet, the film, despite playing around with time, place and people, still gives us a Disney who isn’t whitewashed and Thompson’s Travers is marvellously acerbic (Travers insisted on having everything recorded, so much of the dialogue is what she actually said, not just conjecture). The recreations are also quite lovely, while Travers’ childhood is heartbreaking. If you have an interest in classic movie production, Saving Mr Banks is far more interesting than the average documentary and is full of laughs and pathos.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Saving Mr Banks, Lucifer, Doctor Who and The Flash”