All posts by Adam Popovich

I once shot a man named JR. Incidentally it was in Reno, but it wasn't frivolous, it was for many deeply personal, guarded reasons I shall not share.
TV

At Long Last! The Season 3 Trailer For ‘Game of Thrones’ is Here!

Leave a comment

This is it, the last month before Season 3 of Game Of Thrones premieres, and with it hopefully there an end to the updates, previews, snapshots, preview pics, and other ultimately meaningless little teasers. We’re now hitting the home stretch and that is officially marked by the long-awaited full trailer to Season 3. A trailer I had been waiting for not only because holy crap am I tired of looking at or writing about set pics, but because it gives us (me) a glimpse at how they’ve further adapted the books. Show only fans of course, will get a glorious preview of the King Beyond The Wall, and most obviously, GODDAMNED DRAGONS! Book fans will see other little things they’re familiar with, and revel in the endless amount of terrible, awful things they’ll be waiting to watch their Show Only fans to see in due time. Or if you’re like me, you’ll tease them with fake spoilers about the show and watch as their jaws drop in disbelief/hatred. It’s hilarious!

Well, aside from being incredibly short, the trailer does show a few things I recognize from the books, and as the series has progressed away from the books, a few things I don’t recognize at all. Though I suppose that could be my fading memory. The bummer about this is it’s being interpreted as the “first” trailer for Season 3, so this means there will be more soon coming. Of course there will be, why shouldn’t there? It’ll keep going on and on until the show starts, and then it’ll be replaced by speculation endlessly about what the show will be doing to adapt, or change its source material, until the season ends. Then it’ll be replaced by more teasers and updates endlessly for the next season ON AND ON OH GOD MAKE IT STOP I JUST WANT TO WATCH IT ALL RIGHT NOW.

Is it bad thing if a one minute trailer for a TV show drives you to the brink of madness? Probably right? Probably.

TV

NBC’s ‘Hannibal’ Adds Talent to Cast!

Leave a comment

Now I know I already bashed the entire show and concept of NBC’s Hannibal pretty badly last time, but it’d seem that things about it keep looking better and better the more I hear about it. The brilliant casting of Macklemore Mads Mikkelson as Dr. Lecter is great as I previously mentioned, but now the big news is about Gillian Anderson returning to TV after several years of being off the small screen. Gillian Anderson as you’ll no doubt remember, played FBI skeptic Agent Dana Scully on The X-Files. Now she’ll be coming back to TV for multiple episodes in the show, playing Dr. Lecter’s own therapist.

Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson

[quote] In a multi-episode arc on the upcoming NBC drama, Anderson is going to play Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier — murderous psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s (Mads Mikkelsen) own therapist.

“Every therapist needs their own head examined and we are ecstatic that Gillian Anderson has chosen Hannibal to mark her return to American television after 10 years to portray Dr. Lecter’s personal psychiatrist,” Fuller said in a statement. “Her intelligence and sophistication, not to mention her pedigree of ground-breaking TV, make her the perfect actress to match wits and psychological manipulations with one of the greatest villains of pop culture. I couldn’t be more excited.”  [/quote]

Whoa whoa whoa, HOLD UP. That’s all find and dandy, yay X-Files whatever. The REAL news in that quote is the statement made by “Fuller” about the show. Which Fuller could that be? Well it’s Bryan Fuller, a name you may not recognize, but whose work you definitely will. He’s only the guy who made Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, the underrated Wonderfalls, and helped write the best parts of the first season of Heroes, aka the only good season actually worth watching.

Here he is pictured with a fox for some reason.
Here he is pictured with a fox for some reason.

His pedigree alone has me interested in the show, even though it’s so drastically different from all of this other work in tone. Needless to say, the cast and creative team behind this show are certainly looking to be a home run, so maybe it’ll actually be really good? All I can say is that it’ll probably get canceled. Just like all of Bryan Fuller’s other shows.

In other casting news, Canadian comedy fans might recognize another name – The Kids in the Hall star Scott Thompson. Thompson will play Jimmy Price, the third member of the FBI crime scene investigation team headed by Laurence Fishburne’s Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI’s behavioral science unit.

tada

Movie News & Opinions

‘Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes’ Finds Director and Star…

Leave a comment

I’m a pretty big fan of all the Planet Of The Apes movies. There really isn’t a series that so effectively blends commentary of the nature of humanity, humanism, war, death, time travel, and apes as those movies have. It’s a pretty equivocally known fact that no matter what, if you add apes to it’s almost immediately made better. Apes are magical in that way, providing us with an effective metaphor to really talk about ourselves. In the end isn’t that all we are anyway? Just big, smart, hairless apes? Just whatever you do don’t call Apes monkeys. They hate that.

Continue reading ‘Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes’ Finds Director and Star… →

TV

Hannibal: Dr. Lector Now Coming to NBC! First Trailer for New Show…

Leave a comment

Quick! What’s the weirdest, stupidest, most nonsensical idea for a network television drama you can think of? Is it a story about sub-trans-dimensional mice cross breeding with a race of intergalactic spiders in a horrifying plot to steal all of Earth’s cheese? No? Ok. Was it a watered down TV version of the infamously non-TV appropriate cannibal/murderer/insane character Hannibal Lector? Then BOY HAVE I GOT GREAT NEWS FOR YOU!

So let’s pretend for a minute that the idea isn’t inherently flawed, and instead focus on what could be good about this. Firstly, Mads Mikkelson as Hannibal Lector is pretty excellent casting, and anybody who’s seen the Pusher movies or Valhalla Rising knows the guy has the chops to pull off the role. The problem with that is it’ll inevitably create a terrible vacuum as he’ll be the only good thing about the show, and almost everything else will be awful. I mean, I don’t expect Laurence Fishburne to stay on the cast for long. If there was ever a character who reeked of “Shocking Surprise Death!” it’s him. The whole show seems like a doomed idea, because Hannibal just doesn’t seem suited for any sort of long form serialized medium, and especially the medium of network television. Will he suddenly just NOT be a cannibal? Or will they skirt around it with implications and whatnot? Furthermore, the whole thing looks like somebody saw Silence Of The Lambs, Red Dragon, Manhunter and Hannibal and said “MAKE IT A SHOW DAMMIT!”

Pictured: Macklemore.
Pictured: Macklemore.

On top of that I have a weird personal problem where I keep getting Mads Mikkelson mixed up with recent hip hop artist Macklemore. Well, not literally. I just got really drunk once and couldn’t say “Mads Mikkelson”, and kept slurring his name until “Macklemore” came out, and eventually I started insisting that Macklemore was actually an actor and was really good in Casino Royale. It annoyed everyone.

TV

Game Of Thrones: S3 – New Stills and Only 53 More Days to Wait!

Leave a comment

Let’s be honest here, you’re probably as sick of reading little tidbits about Season 3 of Game Of Thrones as I am about writing them. We both just want the show to come back on, for all of us to watch it, and depending on how many of the books you’ve read, bitch about the differences, lack of characters, inclusion of characters, the similarities, and everything else in between. It’s an agonizing wait that’s certainly not made any easier by these pitiful little teaser photos that HBO keeps putting out every few weeks, just looking to drag us back in bit by bit until we can’t take it anymore. I suppose in that regard it’s a good strategy, since if I was catching up on the show and knew it was coming back on TV soon, I’d be ordering my HBO subscription right this minute.

It stands to reason if you’re reading this you’ve got some cursory knowledge or interest in the show, and thusly are prepared in some fashion for the idea that there are spoilers, and while these photos aren’t necessarily spoilers per se, some people are extra super sensitive about that sort of thing and just can’t take knowing ANYTHING about the show coming up at all. That being said, the photos are of particular interest to those who’ve read the books, as some characters are showing up that I certainly would have thought were being cut. The Reeds for instance are particularly surprising, since Osha seems to be so far fulfilling their role in the series, but either way Bran getting the info on his green dreams is something I’ve long looked forward to see in the series.

Then of course there’s the entire character progression of Lord Beric Dondarrion, along with Thoros of Myr, who book readers will know play a small but incredibly significant role in the evolution of… let’s say the nature of the world in Game Of Thrones. I don’t want to spoil anything, but lets just say that the world changes pretty dramatically from Book 1 to Book 5, and I don’t just mean Whitewalkers and dragons. But I digress. Fans here should be excited to find out who these characters are, or look forward to seeing them be portrayed excellently, (or poorly, depending if you have bad opinions or not) by the good folks working for HBO. All I can say is, PUT THE DAMN SHOW ON TV ALREADY YOU’RE KILLING ME.

Below is a slideshow with 22 photos from the new season, enjoy.

Uncategorized

Comic Rack! Spider-Men 2 Planned, The X-Files Returns & Channel 52 Debuts!

Leave a comment

Welcome to Comic Rack! My pick of the top five comic news stories in no particular order…

Smallville Writer Is Kickstarting His Own Graphic Novel

Smallville was one of those shows I always had a love/hate relationship with. I remember being WAY into it when it first started, because it was sort of like Ultimate DC, but before Ultimate Marvel was even really a thing. Then it got progressively sillier, and Lana Lang became one of the must frustrating characters on all of television history, and no amount of watery eyes and doughy pouty lips could save her from fans hatred. Regardless, I did enjoy it as a guilty pleasure. When I read about Bryan Q. Miller trying his hand at his own comic book, it makes me wonder if what I liked was his writing, or just the Superman stuff?

Comic Rack 1:30:13- Earthward- Cover

On top of that, I really like how Kickstarter has actually given a relatively stable platform for budding indie artists and writers to get funding for their books to be published and read. It’s far superior to other traditional publishing venues in that it’s being paid by and directly given to the people who want to read it. Well, the book itself is called Earthward, and takes place in the future on a spaceship and that description alone already has me. The fact that it’s all ages is good too, because I really enjoy comics and shows that are meant to be all ages, but don’t dumb themselves down for the kiddie’s sake.

Find out more here.

DC Bringing All The News, Some Of The Facts With Channel 52

One of my favorite things about comics when I was younger was the letters/promo section at the end. It always felt like after you finished your comic you got a little bonus there, and if you were lucky enough you could write in and get your letter featured in an upcoming issue, and that concept is something I still really like and wish was more prevalent in the industry. Well, at the very least the promo side of it is being retained by DC, who are changing things up. Previously there used to be the All Access pages towards the back of the book, detailing different tie ins or what have you, and lately there’s been the DC Nation that functions in the same way. It looks like DC is looking to change it up once again and have the section be re-branded and interpreted in a new way, as “Channel 52”. It’s a move that looks like it’s establishing their own set of characters, and looks to be a bit more narrative based, so as to give the impression of being more of an extra, rather than just a collection of promos. Hopefully it ends up being as interesting an idea as they want us to think it is.

Comic Rack- 1:30:13- Channel 52

Find out more here.

The X- Files Returns! In Comic Form!

The X-Files is one of those shows I remember fondly from my youth. I remember coming home on a Friday and being too scared of the shows opening sequence to actually finish the rest of the episode sometimes. When I was younger aliens and cryptids and things like that all really scared the crap out of me. Now as a staunch skeptic I find them silly, but my love for the show still remains. The ideas behind the show, and the possibilities behind the world not being the boring bit of doldrums we see it as every day is an enticing, refreshing thought. The X-Files also seemed like one of those shows that could have gone on forever, if it didn’t get bogged down with it’s own weirdo mythology, and the increasing fan pressure for Mulder and Scully to drop their platonic friendship for something more. Then there were those two movies that weren’t so good. Hopefully the comic can bring back some of that old goodness in comic form.

Comic Rack 1:30:13- X-Files- Comic

Find out more here. 

Spider–Men 2 Is Officially Planned

Last year the Ultimate Spider-Man and the Marvel Spider-Man had a whole story dedicated to them meeting up and having shenanigans.  It was called Spider-Men and I didn’t read it, because you know, Spider-Man. (For those not familiar with this column, I’m not a Spider-Man fan. Sorry.) But I can see the appeal. A lot of folks did, because it was one of the best reviewed and received books of the year, and Brian Michael Bendis is looking to continue that story this year with obviously titled Spider-Men 2. Now I’m sure a more knowledgeable fan could provide better speculation or even answers but I’m wondering how this is going to tie into the recent revelations from Superior-Spider-Man? I’m guessing it’ll just be another Spider-Man to throw into the fray of Spider-Men, and it’ll be an all out Spider War! Which reminds me, I have a pitch for a new reality TV show to write.

Comic Rack 1:30:13- Spider-Men Cover

Find out more here.

Action Comics 17 & 18 Now Supersized

Comic Rack 1:30:13- Action-Comics-Cover-#18

So there’s good new and bad news about Action Comics this week. The good news is that it’s going to be a dollar cheaper than expected. With the original price at $4.99, and the digital copy combo going for a whopping $5.99, the prices are coming down to a slightly more reasonable $3.99 and $4.99 respectively. The bad news is that the price comes down because they’re being cut from 48 pages to 40, but are still being advertised as Super-Sized, which is confusing. The other bad news is of course, Grant Morrison is leaving the book. By far my favorite writer out there, the fact that he’s leaving the Superman character is depressing, but all good things have to come to an end eventually. Action Comics was one of the books that at the beginning of the New 52, showed me that new things could still be done with iconic classic characters, and really made Superman seem interesting and new again while still being familiar and the same. It’s one of the better Superman books I’ve ever read and I’m really hoping it’ll stay that way once Morrison leaves.

Find out more here.

That’s all for this week’s edition! We’ll see you next time at the Comic Rack!