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GOO Reviews

~ An Edmonton-based movie blog

GOO Reviews

Monthly Archives: May 2015

Tomorrowland

30 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Thom Yee in Films

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Fell in love with a girl robot

by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

When I was a kid, by the time I was ten years old I had already been to Disneyland three times. And I don’t know why. For a kid from Edmonton, Canada, three times to Disneyland strikes me as a lot, almost like my parents were intentionally overloading the front half of our family vacations to prep me for future holidays that would never see us leave Canada again.

I liked Disneyland well enough, but I was a pretty cynical kid even during those pre-ten-year-old years, so most of my specific memories of Disneyland have more to do with the shock I felt at how much everything cost.  Probably the most vivid memory I have of my Disneyland adventures was the time I accidentally ruined the day’s pictures by exposing the film in our old Pentax. That one’s on you, Mom and Dad, did you really expect me not to be curious about pulling that ‘open’ tab on the back of the camera?! You could have told me what would happen! You… you could have told me… Continue reading →

GR Dailies: Community – Wedding Videography

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Thom Yee in Television

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×12: “Wedding Videography”

I realized that up until recently my Community reviews had regressed into a pretty stable formula:

  1. Make some odd, but broadly related statement;
  2. Lay out the episode’s premise;
  3. Talk about how the episode is kind of good but not really;
  4. Make reference to some bit of season one or two esoterica that’s long lost its validity;
  5. Lay out my complaints; and
  6. Conclude in a way that suggests profundity in the absence of having anything profound to say.

It was while writing my review of “Basic Email Security” that it really hit home how routine covering Community’s sixth season had become as that whole review spilled out almost fully formed, completely from the stream of consciousness I had during a quiet period at work. It took about fifteen minutes to write. That’s what Community had become at that point: routine. Continue reading →

Pitch Perfect 2

25 Monday May 2015

Posted by ghcrawford in Films

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by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of Gold Circle Films and Universal Pictures.

Images courtesy of Gold Circle Films and Universal Pictures.

Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d never become a writer. I like to pretend I could’ve been an artist, an actor, or a singer. (Never anything so pedestrian as a doctor or lawyer, if only because you don’t need good grades to go into the arts.) The only problem is, much like my boy Justin, I’m mediocre to middling at all of those things.

Even though — and maybe even because — I lack the kind of superstar power that could help me succeed in any of those fields, I love them like crazy. I love art, I love theatre, and I friggin’ love a well-sung piece of music. And you know what I really extra especially love? When that music is just voices and nothing else. Yes, this is me freely admitting that I like a cappella music.

Unfortunately, my radical, all-encompassing love for a cappella didn’t extend as far as Pitch Perfect 2, and I’m going to tell you in my usual exhaustive fashion exactly why that is.


Continue reading →

GR Dailies: Community – Modern Espionage

20 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Thom Yee in Television

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×11: “Modern Espionage”

It’s been two years since we’ve had a paintball episode, and four since we’ve had a good one. The first two — “Modern Warfare” from season one and the two-part “A Fistful of Paintballs”/”For a Few Paintballs More” from season two — are episodes that helped to define the early years of the show and still stand as some of the greatest episodes in the series. You can’t just close every season with “a flawless, postmodern homage to action-adventure mythology” under the guise of a campus-wide paintball game, however, so it’s a genie that’s largely been back in the bottle ever since the end of season two. We did have the gas leak year’s failed attempt to refresh Community paintball (an attempt [and year] best left forgotten) and last year’s thematically similar “Geothermal Escapism”, a game of hot lava that engulfed much of the school grounds, but for the most part, paintball as a concept has been allowed to rest and recharge its batteries until a true and proper successor could be produced. Words like “rested” and “recharged” are far from what I would choose to describe most of what we’ve seen this season, but mercifully, the decision to pick the lofty mantle of paintball back up here, near the end of season six (and quite possibly the series), turned out to be the right one. Continue reading →

Avengers: Age of Ultron — A Review from an Allegedly Normal Person

18 Monday May 2015

Posted by ghcrawford in Films

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Tags

Action, comics, Marvel, MCU, superhero

by Grace Crawford

Images courtesy of Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios.

Images courtesy of Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Last week, the sweaty nerds — or one of them, anyway — had their say about Avengers 2: Age of Ultron. It was a review dripping with both sweat and unbridled nerdiness. It was a review jam-packed with self-referential prose about the movie-watching experience, wonderings about the Marvel cinematic universe, and well-thought-out arguments against popular critical positions.

And you should be aware that I, supposedly a normal person, agree with most of it.

Continue reading →

GR Dailies: Community – Basic RV Repair and Palmistry

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Thom Yee in Television

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×10: “Basic RV Repair and Palmistry”

So pretty much nothing happened in this episode. In fact, I had to go back a couple of times just to fully understand what was happening, with the story beginning in media res and taking place over only a few hours inside Elroy’s RV. In terms of plot or character development, this week’s episode is probably the least active of the entire season so far, so it’s weird that it’s also probably the most important.

Community has always been a weird, self-referential show obsessed with and consumed by contemporary pop culture, but at its best it’s also used its eccentricity and self-awareness to insightfully find essential truths and drive home its thematic meanings. Continue reading →

Avengers: Age of Ultron — A Review from a ComicBook Nerd

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Thom Yee in Films

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Tags

Action, comics, Marvel, MCU, superhero

With great power comes great… wait… different franchise. Never mind. Not relevant.

by Thom Yee

Avengers: Age of Ultron images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Avengers: Age of Ultron images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Age of Ultron represents a sort of anniversary for us here at GOO Reviews. It was nearly three years ago that Grace and I set off on this endeavor to review pop culture in all of its minutiae (or at least the parts we could be bothered with) after seeing an already overcrowded and thoroughly well served market of online reviews and saying, “Us too!” We launched with a spate of reviews, of movies and TV shows and novels and comicbooks, but the first out of the gate was a review of a particularly special movie – The Avengers. We’ve come a long way since 2012 and those lowly days of 3G iPhones, Large Hadron Colliders, and misinterpretations of Mayan calendars. We’ve reviewed more than 100 films, provided week-by-week coverage of several popular television series, and witnessed the Marvel Cinematic Universe grow from mewling quim to roaring froth. Some of us have graduated college, moved out of our parents’ house, and are well on our way towards marriage and adulthood, while still others have also graduated college, had already moved out of our parents’ house, and are continuing on our lonely, vengeful, blood-red path, with marriage, fulfillment and contentment still nowhere in sight, hoping that the next leap will be the leap home. Continue reading →

GR Dailies: Community – Grifting 101

06 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Thom Yee in Television

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

Community images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television.

6×09: “Grifting 101”

Something that’s been hard to track throughout the last two seasons of Community is the progression of the school year. Without the benefit of a year-round/fall-winter release schedule, thirteen episodes can go by relatively quickly in about one semester’s time, and this year and last have also been without markers like a Halloween or Christmas episode. When the topic of picking new classes from this semester’s new course catalogue comes up, as is the starting pitch for this week’s “Grifting 101”, the whole thing sort of feels out of left field. On the other hand, we’ve already gone pretty far in abandoning the central conceit of school uniting our characters anyway; classroom settings rarely show up even as framing sequences anymore. And since when was Chang a student again? Hasn’t he been the math teacher since last year? And even then, along with photography and martial arts, shouldn’t that assignment have gone against every fibre of the mysterious, inscrutable nature he may have but doesn’t want to have any conversations about? Maybe I’m just living in the past (I miss 2009, when twenty years ago was still the 80s). Continue reading →

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