The Amazing Spider-Man 2

10 Saturday May 2014

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by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Marvel Comics

“I hate Spider-Man.”

That might be a popular sentiment in a place like the (no-doubt continually shrinking) Daily Bugle offices and from its often-tyrannical editor-in-chief, but I actually heard that from the owner of Edmonton’s biggest and most popular comicbook store. “If [he] wasn’t so whiny all the time, I’d probably enjoy him,” he finishes telling me.

Anyway.

It’s always been my contention, given what we know and can reasonably assume about society, that Spider-Man has the best overall powerset for the real world. Flight’s always been a popular choice, speaking to our fundamental need for freedom, but it’s also a power you’d have to be really careful with. Just like Pa Kent contends in last year’s Man of Steel, if people found out there are people with powers, that there are people who can fly, it would change everything. And I wouldn’t really want to do that. Continue reading →

GR Dailies: Game of Thrones – First of His Name

05 Monday May 2014

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by Grace Crawford

game of thrones poster

All Game of Thrones images courtesy of HBO.

4×05: “First of His Name”

So when I was first watching this episode, I thought it was about resignation. Then I thought it was about the decisions that people make. And then I figured, maybe it’s not anything that complicated. Maybe it’s just some really good action setting the stage for the events of the rest of the season. And that’s the theory I’m gonna go with when I break it down for you.

Daenerys receives word that her cities, the ones she freed from slavery, are back under the thumbs of slavers. This causes a crisis of confidence, because how can the people of Westeros trust her to be their queen when she can’t even hold onto Slavers’ Bay? So Dany decides to stay in the Bay and rule as queen there. And I think that’s pretty big of her, given how much she’s lost in the course of her young life. She’s placing the needs of her people above her own needs, and that’s one of the qualities that’ll make her an awesome queen of the Seven Kingdoms, assuming she ever gets that far.

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The Amazing Spider-Man

03 Saturday May 2014

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by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

I don’t think it’s possible to talk about The Amazing Spider-Man without first talking about the Raimi-Maguire-Dunst-Franco movies that preceded it by a mere five years. In fact, I know it’s not.

I’ll never forget how it felt as I watched the Green Goblin, sputtering away on his now-damaged goblin glider, barely escaping his first encounter with the man who would become his mortal enemy, and proclaiming, “We’ll meet again, Spider-Man!”  I’ll never forget that definitive, pinpoint moment where I knew that we’re still going to have to settle for the same old superhero movies. Because nobody would say something like that in real life.  Not even supervillains (and don’t even try to tell me that supervillains don’t exist in real life).

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GR Dailies: Game of Thrones – Oathkeeper

29 Tuesday Apr 2014

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by Grace Crawford

game of thrones poster

All Game of Thrones images courtesy of HBO.

4×04: “Oathkeeper”

Ah, here we are: the mid-season slump. Of course that’s completely expected, especially given the fact that this is about three-quarters of the way through A Storm of Swords and very little in the way of excitement happens between the Purple Wedding and the attack on the Wall (oh, please, they’ve only been leading up to it since Jon and Ygritte’s messy breakup).

But one thing I wasn’t expecting when I sat down to watch this episode was to keep cocking my head to the side and repeatedly whisper to myself, “I have no memory of this place.” Maybe it’s just a long time since I read the books, or maybe the writers added new stuff that I forgot about, but I tremendously dislike being one of you Muggles and not knowing what’s happening now or what’s going to happen next.

How do you people cope?

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Blade Runner review

28 Monday Apr 2014

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by Grace Crawford

All Blade Runner images courtesy of The Ladd Company and Warner Bros.

All Blade Runner images courtesy of The Ladd Company and Warner Bros.

In my second year of university, I took a short fiction class. My teacher was an incredible woman who got passionate about our readings, which came from a little paperback called Darwin’s Bastards that for some reason I was embarrassed to read on the bus. This lady was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing, and she taught me one important thing that I’ve carried with me into everything I write: the idea of aboutness.

After our first reading, she sat down on her desk and asked us, “What was this story’s aboutness?” Someone began by recapping the plot, but she said, “No, I didn’t ask what the story was about. I want to know what its aboutness was.” Of course none of us had any idea what she meant, so she went on to explain.

When you look at a story, you can look at the plot, think literally, and say, “This story was about a police officer chasing robots.” You can also look at theme, which is a general idea that encompasses the work, whether that’s something like justice or the responsibility of a creator or the meaning of emotions. But if you want to know the aboutness of a story, you have to look deeper. You have to analyze the characters and what makes them tick, and you have to look at the world and why it is the way it is, and you have to pick and poke and delve deep until you find the heart of the story and understand what it’s truly about.

Blade Runner is a story that makes you think about aboutness, and there’s a very good reason for that: it’s impossible to follow the plot, so you have to wax philosophical if you want to stay awake. Keep reading and hear me out.

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GR Dailies: Game of Thrones – Breaker of Chains

24 Thursday Apr 2014

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by Grace Crawford

game of thrones poster

All Game of Thrones images courtesy of HBO.

4×03: “Breaker of Chains”

This week’s episode picks up right where last week’s left off: with a beautiful shot of Joffrey’s horribly distorted dead face. And it’s a good place to begin, because most of the episode is about the aftermath of the Purple Wedding–and the rest is about relationships.

While Cersei is screaming for blood, her dead son in her arms, Sansa is whisked away by Ser Dontos, who is in the employ of–this shouldn’t surprise anyone, given how low profile he’s been lately–Lord Petyr Baelish. He’s busy hanging out on his creepy murder ship, and after Ser Dontos is filled full of crossbow bolts, he turns his charms onto Sansa. Gross.

Baelish tells her that Dontos only saved her because he was paid to, that the only person left in the world who cares about her is himself. Sansa is in a pretty awful situation, because after everything she’s been through lately, she’s gotta be inclined to believe him now that she’s safely (maybe) out of King’s Landing. So it’s pretty creepy to see him leering all over her, poised to take advantage of that trust simply because she’s her mother’s daughter and some people can’t get over failed childhood romances.

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Total Recall (1990)

20 Sunday Apr 2014

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by Grace Crawford

All images courtesy of Carolco Pictures, StudioCanal, and TriStar Pictures.

All Total Recall images courtesy of Carolco Pictures, StudioCanal, and TriStar Pictures.

At some point in every person’s life, no matter how happy they are, they wish they were someone else. It could be an eight-year-old in math class, dreaming of being a knight fighting off a fearsome dragon in the days of kings and queens. It could be a single mother of three, wanting to be a successful business owner and providing for her family. It could even be something as simple as walking down the street and seeing someone more attractive than yourself, and thinking, “How nice would it be to look like that?”

No matter where we are in time and space, every person wishes, however briefly, that they could walk in someone else’s shoes. So it’s not surprising that Dennis Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the main character in the 1990 classic Total Recall, wants that too.

A regular joe, Quaid has a surprisingly slammin’-hot wife played by the ever-foxy Sharon Stone, a job in construction, and constant dreams about him and a brunette woman standing on the barren surface of Mars. His wife pleads with him to forget about Mars, but Quaid can’t shake the desire to walk on the surface of the red planet.

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GR Dailies: Community – Basic Sandwich (Part 2)

18 Friday Apr 2014

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

5×13  “Basic Sandwich” (Part 2)

So… that was… something.

It’s hard to describe what I’m feeling right now as disappointment, even though that’s pretty much accurate. It’s not quite true through, and putting it that way would almost feel like a betrayal, so I don’t think I’m going to. But I’m certainly not satisfied.

If there’s one central theme that Community tends to gather around and circle through its five seasons, it’s the idea of accepting people for all of their quirks. That may not translate to welcoming people with open arms (see: Chang or Todd or Jack Black’s Buddy), but there’s a slow, yet tacit admission throughout the series that every one of our Greendale Seven (and various newcomers and hangers-on) have significant issues and hang-ups (if not outright social disorders). Continue reading →