Movie Catching Up, Part Two

Welcome back to the return of regular blog posts! Hmmmm...well, that may be asking for a bit much, but at least I'm getting these movies out of the way. After this I have three more that I saw in theaters and two more via On Demand.

So Jason Bourne came out of hiding. Just skipping over whaterver happened in the Matt Damon-less C-less "Bourne Legacy," this sequel finds him in hiding but recovered from his amnesia. What brings him back this time? He's contacted by the former CIA operative (Julia Stiles) who helped him in the past and is now also on the run. Through computer hacking she's discovered files about how Bourne became part of the program that turned him into a killing machine -- and it involves his father. Soon they're both being hunted by CIA assassins. The action sequences are what you'd expect, but the film gets bogged down a bit by a subplot involving privacy rights and a secret deal in which the CIA is funding a social media venture to use it to spy on everyone. My grade: B.

Suicide Squad is one DC comic book that I've never been interested in, and in the wake of the film that hasn't changed. The premise: government operative Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) assembles a team of imprisoned villains, either wiith special skills (Deadshot, Will Smith), metahuman powers (El Diablo, Jay Herndandez), or just plain psycho (Harley Quinn, Margot Robbie), who are coerced to participate The team's job is to do whatever it takes should someone like, say, Superman (currently still dead in the movies) decided to destroy the planet. Soon there is such a threat and the "team" is sent into action. But secrets and lies threaten everything.

Having Harley Quinn in the mix led to adding the Joker, and there are a couple of cameos by Ben Affleck's Batman. (Meaning all of this takes in the DC movieverse DC Extended Universe alongside Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, etc.) And Jared Leto's Joker is awful, annoying in every scene in which he appears. Oh, Heath Ledger, why did you have to die?

And too many of the Squad members leave no impression as characters. They're just along for the ride or to serve to move the plot a bit. Fortunately, Robbie's Harley Quinn is a live wire, and Amanda Waller proves to be a total badass -- a term that fits Viola Davis as well. And a scene inserted into the credits makes me glad she's part of the DC movieverse DC Extended Universe. My grade: C.

P.S. I suddenly want to go see it again.

My Week In Comics 8-24-11

The end is near...so, so near...more on that in my next comics post. For this one we have the finales of two "Flashpoint" tie-ins, the end of four regular series and two specials.

Flashpoint: Lois Lane and the Resistance 3 (of 3)
Flashpoint: Project Superman 3 (of 3): I hazarded a guess that I had to read the Lois Lane book first, and I was right, because events in that book were followed up in the Project Superman book. After all, you can't keep Superman (even if his existence has been radically altered by the Flashpoint phenomenon) and Lois Lane (even if her existence, etc.) apart for long. The Project Superman series was well-done, though. Both of these lead to the conclusion of "Flashpoint" and the end of the old DC universe.

Action Comics 904: Like many of the other books, it ends with a heartwarming feel-good moment. In this case, it's Lois and Clark having dinner after Superman and the others end the threat of Doomslayer and the Doomsday clones. The curtain is drawn on the final act of their marriage, since the new DC has decreed that in the new universe they were never married. Sadly, this title will never get to the magic number of 1000 issues (unless, at some point in the future, DC decides to renumber their books again -- they did this recently with Wonder Woman, adding previous series together so they could give her series an issue number 600).

Teen Titans 100: Speaking of books hitting milestone numbers, here's one now. This is an example of my "completeness" issue. Since I bought the previous two issues for the storyline, I ended up buying the last one. Meh.

Gotham City Sirens 26:

My Week In Comics 6-29-11

I haven't posted anything in a few days. I find myself once again in a bit of a rut with this whole blogging thing -- but at least I'm not backed up with movies to write about. (What, you think I'm going to see that Transformers crap?) I do plan to post about how I spent the 4th of July. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you already have an idea. For now, though...

Flashpoint: Lois Lane and the Resistance 1 (of 3)
Flashpoint: Project Superman 1 (of 3): The Lois Lane book was actually released a week earlier but I skipped it. After taking another glance at it I decided to try it. Since everything in this Flashpoint universe is changed, these two books aren't actually related. Lois is still a Daily Planet reporter, but to her disgust she's stuck covering Fashion Week in Paris instead of hard news (along with Jimmy Olsen). Then fate intervenes, in the form of Emperor Aquaman's flooding of western Europe as part of the Atlantean hostilities against Wonder Woman and the Amazons. Olsen is killed but Lois survives and is taken by the Amazons to New Themyscira (the former Great Britain), where she ends up (thanks to her possession of Jimmy's camera) joining the resistance movement. Meanwhile, the Project Superman book takes place in flashbacks, starting 30 years ago, when a U.S. soldier arrives at a secret underground facility in Metropolis (with a certain General Sam Lane in charge), having volunteered to undergo treatments that would give him superpowers. Ummmm...isn't this more of a Marvel thing? Anyway, the goal is to have a powerful hero who can also present himself as normal-looking to the world -- all the better for the good old USA. But things don't quite go as planned, and a few years later our super-soldier is kept locked up in the facility, until meteors crash into Metropolis, and on the last page we see that one of the meteors is actually...you guessed it...a rocket carrying a baby. Which brings up a question: how would the changes in Earth's timeline caused by the Reverse-Flash cause the ship from Krypton to crash-land in Metropolis instead of on the Kent farm in Smallville? This seems more like a random change done for plot purposes, unless the coming DC Universe reboot in September is even more drastic than I imagine.

Batman, Incorporated 7:  Meanwhile, in the unchanged (for now) DC universe, we have a story that doesn't have a lot of Batman. It centers around one of those he inspired, Man-of-Bats, who fights crime on his reservation along with his son, who's called Raven. But unlike Bruce Wayne, Man-of-Bats doesn't have unlimited resources, and the Leviathan criminal outfit is making things on the reservation much tougher.

My Week In Comics 5-25-11

This week I bought two DC books and two from Bongo Comics. However, after some news broke today, I'm not sure I should even bother writing about the books of one of these companies. (I will, of course, but not in this post. If you follow the comic book publishers' doings, you already know what I'm talking about. If the news hasn't gotten to you and you don't care to go searching for it, I will enlighten you in my next comic book post.)

Action Comics 901: So "Reign of Doomsday" has actually turned into "Reign of the Doomsdays." There are four of them now (plus the original, who's incapacitated at the moment), thanks to Lex Luthor. Each has powers similar to the Super-person it went after (for example, Superboy's Doomsday has tactile telekinesis). A new character is introduced, and some of Superman's dialogue is off. Can you ever imagine him answering a question with "Ha! What can I say? Busted!" And now this whole thing, dumb dialogue and all, is threatening Earth. Not that it will matter in a few months...

Gotham City Sirens 23: The Joker and Harley Quinn are reunited...and it feels so good, unless you're in Arkham Asylum with them. As chaos reigns, Poison Ivy arrives to break up the happy couple, while Catwoman tries to stay out of it. Bonus: both Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson in costume. Two Batmen for the price of one! Not that it will matter in a few months...

Simpsons Summer Shindig 5: Let's see...we have the Springfield Bear Patrol in action. Remember the "We're here! We're queer! We don't want any more bears!" chant? Apparently this was an outgrowth that hasn't been explored

My Week In Comics 2-23-11

Imagine that: a post about my comic book purchases on the very same day I got them. I know it's a radical departure for me, but I only picked up two books today and I have a spare moment, so why not?

Action Comics 898: That wacky, greedy Larfleeze is back, and the Orange Lantern is after Luthor. It wasn't quite as wildly lunatic as the Larfleeze Christmas special; then again, it shouldn't be. Luthor is nearing the end of his quest to change all of the black energy spheres, thus somehow acquiring power. And, as Larfleeze learns (as did the Joker last issue), something terrible is going to happen when it does. The last-page reveal of the being controlling the Lois Lane robot pretty much explains why Superman will be back to deal with all of this in issue 900.

Gotham City Sirens 20: At the end of last issue we found that Harley Quinn has decided to kill her old boyfriend, the Joker. In this issue, with narration coming from her serious, Dr. Harleen Quinzel side, she gets started on her plan. This story is effective in many ways, except neither of the other stars of this series make the slightest appearance, and it's completely devoid of the humor that was a selling point for the series. Maybe they should have done a Harley Quinn miniseries separately to tell this story.