Monthly Archives: August 2015

Fear the Walking Dead – So Close, Yet So Far

31 Monday Aug 2015

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by Thom Yee

Fear the Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC.

Fear the Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC.

1×02: “So Close, Yet So Far”

One of the first things I noticed when I began watching The Walking Dead was just how dirty and hot and dark the whole thing was. Something you don’t always pick up on in the comicbook version — especially because it’s in black and white — is just how grimy things would be in this world, where the blood is flying and the brains are exploding and the Atlanta heat is beating our heroes mercilessly, and even in TV scenes that were direct lifts from the comic, it really was striking to see just how horrible the zombie apocalypse would be in real life. Continue reading →

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Fear the Walking Dead — Pilot

24 Monday Aug 2015

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Why I’m Watching… Fear the Walking Dead

by Thom Yee

fear-the-walking-dead-one

All images courtesy of AMC and Fox International Channels.

Because I already watch regular The Walking Dead?

Ultimately that’s pretty weak reasoning, but it’s also the type of base reasoning that makes spinoffs possible: hope for a minimum guaranteed audience. Breaking Bad fans watch Better Call Saul. Cheers fans watched Frasier. Friends fans watched Joey. Actually, nobody watched Joey.

In its earliest incarnation as an indie comicbook (aaaall the way back in 2003), The Walking Dead wasn’t a horror story, but a what-happens-after-the-horror story that wasn’t concerned with where the geek/walker/biter/rotter/roamer zombie virus came from, how it took over, if it could be cured, or when things would go back to normal because the real monster is man himself…! Continue reading →

Fantastic Four (2015)

15 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Films

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What the ‘FF’ is everybody’s problem?

by Thom Yee

Fantastic Four images courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Fantastic Four images courtesy of 20th Century Fox

We live in a dismissive culture.

Deriding people staring at their smartphones.

Telling people their video games are a waste of time.

Throwing away our children’s’ comicbooks.

Locking all the doors and throwing away all the keys, whether we’re doing it consciously or simply as a reflex, because there’s surely nothing important on that screen, nothing to learn from video games, and no meaningful stories in comicbooks. There is only us and what we value, not you and yours, and when everyone says a movie is terrible, we pile on without care, without question, often without even witnessing, always so happy and only too eager to have found something new to reject. Continue reading →

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation

08 Saturday Aug 2015

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You’re getting old, Ethan Hunt

by Thom Yee

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

It feels like it’s been a while since Tom Cruise has done anything all that weird, and by now, even the most ardent KSW-questioning, couch-preservationing, short-person-hating, parents-should-spend-time-with-their-kids-believing critics should be able to admit that he’s made some pretty solid movies lately. And what more can we ask for than that? I don’t go to a Tom Cruise movie to watch him defend Scientology or explain why his last marriage didn’t work, that’s not why I go to movies and those subjects aren’t all that interesting even outside of movies. I go to movies to watch something entertaining and hopefully engaging, and in that way Tom Cruise continues to be the perfect action movie star.

The perfect 53-year-old action movie star. Continue reading →