Creed

05 Saturday Dec 2015

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Can you take me higher?  To a place like Apollo Creed.
Can you take me higher?  To a place like Rocky III.

by Thom Yee

Creed images courtesy of Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Creed images courtesy of Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

The Rocky movies are beloved by many, many people, across a wide variety of generations, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Speaking to an essential part of our shared human experience of fear, self-doubt, and our hope to one day just have a chance at success, they’re also one of the few series of movies that manage to transcend film itself with two statues erected in the character’s honour that can be visited in real life in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps the character runs up during his early training also acting as an important tourist destination for the city. But, as with a lot of movie series, the first was the best and it told a strong enough and self-contained enough story that not only can you easily argue against the first Rocky needing a sequel, it’s pretty easy to argue that every one after the first takes place in an entirely different universe. Continue reading →

The Walking Dead – Start to Finish

30 Monday Nov 2015

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by Thom Yee

The Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC.

The Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC.

6×08: “Start to Finish”

For a variety of reasons, The Walking Dead can be a tough show to judge objectively. It’s really popular, there are a lot of things going on at once, some of which you might love and some of which you’ll just as easily hate, it’s not a situation most of us can fundamentally relate to (at least not at this extreme a level), and as a prestige-format specialty cable series, it runs on a shortened schedule that doesn’t stick around all year like most 22-24-episode shows on the major networks. For me, especially as a viewer of the show and a reader of the comicbook, it feels like we’ve been in Alexandria forever, but here at the midseason finale, it’s only been the last few episodes of last season and the first half of this season, and everything from this season has really only taken place over the course of a day so far. In that context, it’s kind of shocking the that things have changed so much in this little Safe-Zone since Rick and co. decided to drop in.

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The Walking Dead – Heads Up

23 Monday Nov 2015

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by Thom Yee

The Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC.

The Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC.

6×07: “Heads Up”

Between the Jon Snow Game of Thrones season six poster that debuted today and last night’s Walking Dead episode, what is this, the season of people not being dead? I mean, who else is gonna turn out to not be dead, Ned Stark? Derek Shepherd? Omar from The Wire?

So hands up, who’s surprised Glenn’s not dead? No one? No hands up? That’s what I thought. We were all hit pretty hard by Glenn’s seeming demise towards the end of “Thank You”, the third episode of this season, though there was a fair amount of skepticism about his death even back then, but the way not knowing what happened to Glenn has been strung out over the last four weeks made it increasingly clear to most of us that he wasn’t dead. Continue reading →

Back to the Future Part III

21 Saturday Nov 2015

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If you don’t enjoy this movie, you’re not thinking fourth-dimensionally

by Thom Yee

Back to the Future Part III images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Back to the Future Part III images courtesy of Universal Pictures.

There’s always been a strong argument against a Back to the Future sequel, and it’s an argument that still stands even now, twenty-five years after two sequels came out and both turned out to be at least okay. Beyond its obvious strengths, the original Back to the Future is simply a neat, tidy, and self-contained story, one that, because of its time-travel premise, rewards multiple viewings but also one that, because of its time-travel premise, begins to unravel the more you add to it with further installments. And for those of you who’ve always wondered (or have always misremembered), no, in its original showings it did not end with the famous “To Be Continued…>” title card.

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The Walking Dead – Always Accountable

16 Monday Nov 2015

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by Thom Yee

The Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC.

The Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC.

6×06: “Always Accountable”

It may have taken a full five seasons, but it was last season’s final episode that finally sold me on The Walking Dead as a television series. It was the sudden appearance of Morgan, saving Daryl and Aaron with a serenity and a respect for life and humanity, that finally convinced me that the show was, at least this one time, capable of selling some of the higher-minded thematic ideals it’s been trying (and too often failing) to play with throughout its run. And yes, I’m starting this recap talking about a character that doesn’t even appear in the episode.

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