Projects – Page 71

Geekly TV: January 16, 2015

We’re waiting until most of the shows are back on the air before we switch back to our twice a week TV review schedule. Until then, you’ll have to settle for TV review Friday. Enjoy.

Bob’s Burgers

Kyle’s Review

This season of Bob’s Burgers has given us some great shows based on movies and “Speakeasy Rider” is no different. The title also tells you what the episode’s about. The Belcher children replace Easy Rider’s motorcycles with go carts (and go cart racing), while the parents exchange the bootleg hooch of a speakeasy with Teddy’s – illegal to sell at a restaurant – home brew.

We get less of Tina. That’s a good thing since I was suffering from Tina-fatigue. Don’t get me wrong, I like Tina as a character, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. This episode balances the characters to near perfection.

The kids get equal time as do the parents and while Teddy’s bumbling antics add spice, I loved the triumphant return of Hugo the health inspector. We haven’t seen him for at least one full season and while tension has waned since Hugo has moved on from his deep like of Linda, he still proves that he’s as good of a foil for the Belchers as Jimmy Pesto.

Verdict: A solid episode after last week’s hiccup.

Marvel’s Agent Carter

Kyle’s Review

I’m still digging this miniseries. The setting feels right, Peggy serves as a strong female lead, and Jarvis is a great sidekick. I’m glad to see him as more than a computer program.

Sousa remains the sole island of acceptance in the SSR’s ocean of chauvinism, but at least the waters were calmer this episode—until the end, that is—and the biggest issue I had with this episode was the ending. We get a somewhat touching scene where the director has to call an agent’s wife. Before the director leaves our periphery, another agent says that he’ll call the agent’s girlfriend.

Really? It’s one thing to have adultery in the office but calling an agent’s girlfriend is condoning the behavior. There’s no love lost for the fallen agent, but this one action loses any kind of sympathy for the agency as a whole. What’s worse is that the agent calls the mistress before the director can get to his office, so the mistress will know before the agent’s wife.

Other than that one gripe, this episode was another solid one. Too bad Agent Carter is only slated for eight episodes. I see the Howard Stark’s toys are on the loose having some real legs. We see where Tony gets his ideas through his father. Hopefully, this miniseries will serve as a testing ground for an extended series.

One last question: What’s up with demoralizing Sousa? One of the agents tells Sousa that he won’t ever get with Agent Carter because there’s no way she’d go from Cap to a guy who uses crutches. This is insulting to both Peggy and Sousa. Dial down this dialog and then you’ll have a show that could have a longer shelf life than Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.

Verdict: Looking good so far.

Timeline: Comic’s Bronze Age Villains

We gave comic book’s bronze age heroes their due last week and now we’ll show the villains some love. Can you name these comic book villains in the order in which they first appeared?

Quiz Answers: Timeline Comic’s Bronze Age Villains

Comic book’s bronze age saw some intergalactic, planetary villains. Let’s see how we did.

All 6 correct) Look who has a shiny new glove of infinite love.

4-5 correct) Did you take this by yourself? Or did you ask your clone for help?

2-3 correct) Bad news. You fell off a cliff. Good news. A Lazarus Pit was waiting for you at the bottom.

0-1 correct) These answers are wrong. The seventies were an illusion.

Clue

Designer: Anthony E. Pratt
Publisher: Parker Brothers
Date Released: 1949

Number of Players: 3-6
Age Range: 8 and up
Setup Time: 10-15 minutes
Play Time: Around 45 minutes

Game Mechanics:
Grid Movement
Hand Management
Memory
Paper and Pencil
Roll/Spin and Move

Game flow:
Players assume the role of a character invited to a mansion, but a murder has occurred. Someone has killed Mr. Body, and it’s up to the players to figure out who killed him, what weapon they used to kill him, and in which room the murder occurred.

Players receive character, weapon, and location cards after the top card from each card type is secretly placed in the confidential file in the middle of the board. Players must move to a room and then make an accusation against a character saying that the character did it in the room that the accuser is in with a specific weapon.

The player to the accuser’s left must prove the accuser wrong if they can by showing a card that disproves the accusation so long as the card exists in the player’s hand. Through deductive reasoning (and a handy notepad with which to take notes) each player must figure out which character, weapon, and location are in the confidential file.

Once a player believes they’ve solved the murder, they attempt to solve the case by declaring their solution at the end of their turn. If they’re right, they win. If they’re wrong, they’re eliminated and play continues. The first player to successfully guess the right combination of cards in the confidential file wins.

Review:
Clue has aged better than a lot of other early modern tabletop games. Its classic gameplay has inspired several whodunit games since and even a 1985 comedic movie.

Despite the untarnished core gameplay, Clue still suffers from the roll/spin and move mechanic. Any time a game resorts to this mechanic, at best the game has eliminated one possibility for a strategic element for the randomness of rolling a die or worse, tempted players to manipulate the rolling of said die.

Regardless, the elegance of obtaining clues, the bluffs that ensue (which leads to many strategies), and the colorful characters lead to a fun game that doesn’t take as long as you might think. Clue isn’t Monopoly. While a game could take longer than an hour, most games clock in at forty-five minutes or so. But like Monopoly, Clue has seen its share of marketing tie-ins.

Verdict: This evergreen suffers under roll/spin and move but delivers enough fresh game mechanics to keep it relevant in today’s tabletop game market.

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Shattered Timelines

Designer: Christopher Badell, Paul Bender, Alex Franklin, Bryan Graham, and Adam Rebottaro
Publisher: Greater Than Games, LLC
Date Released: 2013

Number of Players: 2-5
Age Range: 13 and up
Setup Time: Less than 10 minutes
Play Time: 10-90 minutes

Game Mechanics:
Cooperative Play
Hand Management
Variable Player Powers

Game flow:
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Shattered Timelines is the third expansion for the popular comic book themed card game. I won’t go into detail with the base game flow. If you didn’t catch our Sentinels of the Multiverse: Base Game review, you can read it here. In short, Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative card game, where players team up with each other to beat the stuffing out of a super villain—which has a dummy hand similar to Bridge. Now let’s get to the new stuff in this expansion.

Review:
Shattered Timelines adds a couple of strong heroes to the Sentinels canon. Omnitron X tends to get overpowered. It has a lot of global effects and can negate damage of every type (plating cards). Chrono-Ranger takes a little longer to set up, but he too can get overpowered once he gets going, and he offers a little bit of everything. A little specialization would help set Chrono-Ranger apart. After we picked up this expansion, everyone gravitated to one of these two heroes, so that’s a good sign that the heroes have a lot of firepower, but the game’s balance may be skewed.

You also get an interesting mix of villains in Shattered Timelines. La Capitan and Kismet are forgettable, but that may be due to the fact that Iron Legacy and The Dreamer get introduced in this expansion, too. The Dreamer introduces a new game mechanic in that you don’t want to take her down. She’s an eight-year-old girl whose dreams become a reality. The only problem is that she’s having a nightmare. This changes the flow of combat just enough to keep the game fresh. And then there’s Iron Legacy, who doesn’t look like much at first with his relatively low HP, but don’t let that fool you. He packs a huge punch early in the game, and you’ll have to play for a comeback.

Time Cataclysm and The Block are a great addition to Sentinels of the Multiverse gameplay, too. Time Cataclysm is one of the most even handed environments to date. I’ve both won and lost because of it. The Block feels like a secondary battle takes place – between prison inmates and prison guard – and the heroes and villains on this environment are in the crossfire.

Shattered Timelines is better than Rook City but doesn’t quite live up to Infernal Relics.

Verdict: Shattered Timelines shakes up Sentinels of the Multiverse gameplay to earn a spot as the second best expansion to date—just behind Infernal Relics.

Know Your Roles: Marvel Movies I

Marvel did us a solid by announcing the phases to their upcoming movies. As a result we got a lot of actors confirmed in various roles. Some of these names (actors and roles alike) will sound familiar, but hopefully, we picked some castings you haven’t heard of. We’ll start with cast members from the Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man and a couple of cameos from Captain America: Winter Soldier.

Can you match the actor with the role they have or will play?

Actors:

Roles:

Quiz Answers: Know Your Roles Marvel Movies I

Corey Stoll/Yellowjacket

James Spader/Ultron

Evangeline Lilly/Hope Pym aka Red Queen

Elizabeth Olsen/Scarlet Witch

Paul Bettany/Vision

Aaron Taylor-Johnson/Quicksilver

Top 5 Animated TV Shows Based on Comics

Cartoons have given us some of the best portrayals of super heroes. Until recently, the only way to get a good look at a guy or gal with super speed was to animate them. There are so many animated TV shows based on comic books, but which one’s the best?

JK Geekly will give you the skinny on these shows in a bit, but let’s cover some ground rules.

1: As with our best live-action TV shows based on comics, cultural relevance plays a role as does overall quality.

2: Some of these shows’ animation doesn’t stack up to even its contemporaries, but they’re outstanding just the same.

3: We’ll have to stick with one show from a franchise because we wouldn’t want a list of nothing but Batman and Spider-man.

5) Teen Titans (2003-2006)
Be honest. When you read Teen Titans, you sang the theme song.

This fusion of Japanese anime and western comics exploded on the scene in 2003 with its light hearted style and self-referential humor. But not every episode was zany. An Easter Egg on the season 3 DVD revealed that the Japanese version to the theme song meant that the following episode would be silly, while the English version to the theme song meant the show would be serious.

And if you caught a serious episode, you had the chance of meeting Deathstroke. Even though he’s the main foil in the first two seasons of Arrow, Deathstroke got his start in the Teen Titans comic book. The creators wanted to see how Robin would react to an even darker Batman—one who would kill. Teen Titans might not have reached that depth, but it isn’t all fluff and you see some great characters – like Raven, Cyborg, and Beast Boy from The Doom Patrol – who don’t always get the credit they deserve.

You know that a show’s popular when it gets rebooted. Teen Titans got its reboot a few years after the original ended with a straight-up comedy version of the show Teen Titans Go!

4) Spider-man (1994-1998)
You might think that the Spider-man cartoon of the nineties is a strange addition to this list, but it edges out the classic sixties and eighties versions because of its importance as Marvel Studios first and only cartoon production.

The animation wasn’t the best, and Spider-man suffered from heavy censorship. Spidey couldn’t even through a punch. But no other Spider-man cartoon has spanned the full spectrum of the character like this series, and since it was Marvel Studios first production attempt, the studio used it as a proving ground.

Spider-man had crossovers with all other Marvel properties that had cartoons at the time – The X-Men, The Hulk, Iron Man, and Fantastic Four – and the Marvel Studio gained first-hand knowledge on how to develop several characters, leading to the writing and creative juices behind the Avengers movies.

3) X-Men (1992-1997)
Like the Spider-man series before it on this list, X-Men didn’t have the best animation even for its day, but that didn’t matter.

If you caught the interview between past X-Men creators on a Pizza Hut VHS, you’d find out why Stan Lee thought X-Men was so unique. “You had youngsters, oldsters, men, women, black, and white (on the same team).” The characters drove this series, and you couldn’t have a show based on a comic steeped in tolerance without having a diverse group of characters. The X-Men had this diversity.

In fact, the first episode of X-Men gave significant air time to three X-Women: Jubilee, Storm, and Rogue. That’s odd due to Wolverine’s status as Marvel’s most popular character at the time. But the characters were so rich that no one cared.

X-Men broke a lot of rules. They killed off a character in the first episode – well, it looked like they killed off a character – and this shocked parents enough that it led to the heavy censorship of the nineties Spider-man.

X-Men didn’t shy away from the comic’s epic tales either. Days of Future Past and the Phoenix Saga made appearances. It was X-Men’s willingness to commit to the source material that has led to familiar tales on both the small and big screens.

2) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987-1996)
Sure, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (also known as TMNT) was a little known Eastman comic before it became a cartoon, but the cartoon brought relevance to the comic.

All the other entries on this list had a successful comic to its name before it hit the screen. These totally tubular teen turtles are only famous because of their Saturday morning cartoon that became so popular, it moved more plastic than an eighties cosmetic surgeon.

Seriously, if you had one of the turtles (action figures), you had to have the other three plus Casey Jones, April O’Neal, Shredder, and a few Foot Soldiers. Unless you played like my neighborhood and you had a B.Y.O.F.S. (bring your own Foot Soldier) policy.

This show differed from its comic in several ways. In the comic, the turtles didn’t have colorful headbands to tell them apart, they were foul mouthed, and while they were fond of pizza, the pizzas didn’t have vibrant toppings like chocolate ice cream and anchovies.

The ensuing live action movie may have pulled a lot more from the original source material, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon of the eighties and nineties makes this list as most people hear “He’s a radical rat,” “Turtle power,” and “Cowabunga!” whenever they think of TMNT.

1) Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995)
Was there any doubt? Batman: TAS tops our list because of its beautiful visuals, on-point voice acting, and superb writing.

It doesn’t matter that Christian Bale and Ben Affleck have worn or will wear the suit. Kevin Conroy is Batman to generations of fans. Mark Hamill was finally able to shed his Luke Skywalker clothes only to put on Joker garb, and the character Harley Quinn (who got her start in Batman: TAS) became a constant fixture in DC Comics long after the show ended.

Batman: TAS also inspired a Superman: The Animated Series, built interest for the Justice League series (which Conroy reprised his role as Batman), and even had a cartoon that jumped the storyline decades into the future with Batman Beyond. Conroy played Bruce Wayne yet again in Batman Beyond, and we considered that show – since it’s highly underrated – for inclusion on this list, but according to rule three, we can only have one show from a franchise. So, we had to stick with the original.

And when you think of Batman: TAS’s opening sequence, the word that comes to mind is original. That opening, featuring Danny Elfman’s music from Tim Burton’s Batman, marked the first time that any TV show or movie began without the title on the screen. You just see Batman in silhouette atop a skyscraper. Lightning flashes and you see full frontal Batman for a second, and then he’s back in the shadows. The perfect beginning to a perfect Batman.

Did we get the list right? Let us know which shows you’d include in this Top Five or suggest ideas for new Top Fives.

Top 5 Live-Action TV Shows Based on Comics

We all love to see our favorite super heroes – and other comic book characters – don spandex and burst on our small screens in weekly installments. Regardless of whether you share my spandex fetish or not, without TV we’d have to wait years between a super hero’s exploits, so it’s a joy to see so many shows based on popular comic books today. But which live-action TV shows based on comics are the best of all time?

JK Geekly will break down these shows in a bit, but we’ll set a few ground rules first.

1: Cultural relevance plays as much of a factor as overall quality. This could mean that the show inspired another show, directly led to another show or has even been parodied.

2: Some of these shows haven’t aged well, so the quality of the show’s effects will be graded on a scale.

3: Only one show from a franchise makes the list. Sorry, Superman. Lois and Clark, The Adventures of Superman, and Smallville can’t all make the cut.

4: Longevity plays a large role, too. A show doesn’t necessarily have to last a long time, but a series with only one season doesn’t cut the mustard.

5) The Walking Dead (2010-Present)
Who doesn’t like a good zombie apocalypse? Viewers of the AMC phenomenon sure do. When this show first aired, fans couldn’t get enough of the deep characters and the moral dilemmas they faced while trying to survive.

Despite not having many likeable characters – there was strong support for Rick’s wife Lori to die – this ragtag group struck a chord with viewers, and it remains a ratings giant that should continue for the foreseeable future. It will accomplish this feat, even though anachronisms abound:

a) How could a new model Kia exist in a world that stopped producing them ten years ago?
b) How many people died from zombie attacks while keeping every lawn manicured?
c) It’s nice to see that women still shave their arm pits, even though they don’t know where they’re getting their next meal.
d) Don’t get me started with the physics behind a helicopter landing on the roof of a building and there’s no strain on the roof, but you add 100 pounds of zombie and TIMBER.

But who cares about reality? The Walking Dead does a nice job of capturing the tenor of the Image comic on the small screen and deserves a spot on our list. It also spawned a talk show, The Talking Dead that airs afterward and raises awareness of its host Chris Hardwick (who also hosts Comedy Central’s @midnight). And that’s a great thing.

4) Arrow (2012-Present)
Arrow tells two stories at once. One is set in the present while the other ventures into the titular Ollie’s past. The two storylines converge in satisfying ways – for the most part – and ask questions about what it means to be human and a hero.

While these morality tales can be heavy-headed or preachy, they work for a comic book character that dispensed his philosophies to anyone who’d listen. Let’s face it. Green Arrow/Green Lantern got preachy at times, but it was one of the best comics of the silver age, and Arrow captures that magic.

The sledding hasn’t always been smooth. It took Arrow mid-way through its first season to find the right balance between the flashback story and the one told in real-time, and the third season has had some hiccups, too. But Arrow is the harbinger of a new and improved DC Comics TV Universe.

Despite being the most junior member on this list, Arrow has already had a spin-off show The Flash, and introduced cast members of the upcoming Suicide Squad movie. That’s not bad, considering that most comic fans viewed Green Arrow as a tertiary character.

3) The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982)
The Incredible Hulk of the seventies, eighties, and nineties was the only successful live-action Marvel hero TV show or movie during its time. That’s odd to say when you consider that the two Hulk films of the new millennium tanked, and we’ve had three Hulks in nine years since. But Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno teamed up to be David Banner/The Hulk for the TV show, and then reprised their roles for multiple made-for-TV movies that stretched into the early nineties.

The effects were cheesy to downright horrific – Ferrigno’s makeup in particular was ghastly the first few episodes – but The Incredible Hulk absolutely nailed the characters like no other show on this list. When the theme song is “The Lonely Man,” you know you’re dealing with an isolated character, and the heart-wrenching music matched Banner’s feeble attempts at human contact. You felt his pain as the new-age Jekyll and Hyde.

This show has been parodied many times, and the movies of the 2000s borrowed somewhat from it. Banner’s father from the 2003 Hulk movie was named David as a tip of the hat to Bixby’s character, but the second movie made a stronger attempt to capture the tenor of the TV series. Unfortunately, neither film could ground the character like Bixby.

The Incredible Hulk gets our nod as the third best live-action TV show based on comics because of its acting performances and no other show on this list can hold a candle to its guest stars. Both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (co-creators of most of the Marvel universe) made appearances.

2) Smallville (2001-2011)
When you ask the Superman of a generation Christopher Reeve to green light your Superman project, you stand a good chance of making the Man of Steel for a younger generation. Smallville did and in turn handled the Superman mythos with style and grace.

Smallville gave the then WB (CW today) its greatest debut for a series at 8.4 million viewers. It chronicled a young Clark Kent on his journey of becoming Superman and showed him struggle between personal desire and obligation. Something few live-action Superman stories have done. In fact, the character was so well-grounded; you’d believe a man could fly. Just not in this show. Smallville had a strict “No tights, no flight” policy.

But even though it didn’t show Superman flying about, Smallville weaved elements of the greater DC Comics Universe into its storylines, providing the blueprint for shows that came after it like The Flash and Arrow. And speaking of Arrow, it should come as no surprise that the CW chose the Green Arrow as their first main character for rebuilding the DC Comics TV Universe. Oliver Queen was in Smallville.

Smallville has garnered countless awards (including Emmys), but it almost didn’t happen. When the series was first pitched to the WB, the creators wanted to show what happened to Bruce Wayne after his parents were murdered. The WB thought that was a terrible idea and chose Smallville over Gotham.

1) Batman (1966-1968)
Okay. This one’s graded on a sliding scale in terms of its special effects, make-up, and writing. The Batman TV show of the sixties was a product of its time. It didn’t even have that long of a lifespan, but it “biffed,” “bammed,” and “boomed” its way into viewers hearts at the same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Batman’s greatest charm is Adam West’s delivery. Halfway between earnest and sardonic, West’s portrayal of the Caped Crusader remains an E. Nigma wrapped up in a Riddler, and West has used this delivery to great effect in other shows: Family Guy, and The Boondocks to name a couple.

Every generation takes something different from Batman. You may suffer from nostalgia. The show can be considered surrealist pop art. It’s been accused of being art by means of camp. Or you could think of West as one sarcastic SOB and love it when he Batusis. The creators of Bob’s Burgers loved Batman’s puns so much that they use similar tortured puns for the show’s burger of the day.

It may sound like Batman hasn’t had that much of an impact on other comic-based TV shows, but there isn’t a live-action TV show or movie based on a comic book that doesn’t use the Batman scale to determine whether or not an idea is too silly. Too bad they went the other way with the Batman and Robin movie.

And Batman has affected change in comics. When the producer of Batman saw the comic that would inspire him to make the series, the issue in question was eight or nine year old and had The Riddler on the cover. That comic just happened to be the last appearance of The Riddler at the time before Batman reintroduced The Riddler as a major part of the Dark Knight’s Rogues Gallery.

Did we get the list right? Let us know which shows you’d include in this Top Five or suggest ideas for new Top Fives.

Geekly TV: January 9, 2015

Some of these reviews are a little late. We’ve been having some technical difficulties but we hope these issues have resolved, so without further ado, here’s our first Geekly TV for 2015.

Marvel’s Agent Carter

Jim’s Review

Agent Carter’s first episode managed to hold true to the titular character, and add some charm with a few supporting characters. Jarvis works well as a side-kick here, and the Sousa character gives us someone else within the agency to pull for.

Speaking about the rest of the agency, that’s where the writing irks me. They use the retro, post-war setting well, but the other characters’ relentless chauvinism goes a bit too far. It makes the show feel like it’s trying too hard to make a point. That was made even more so by the use of the Captain America radio broadcasts that kept popping up.

The use of Cap as a background figure can be tricky. The show is meant to take place a year or so after the events of The First Avenger, and so it stands to reason that Peggy would still mourn Cap’s loss, but if it keeps up, they could run the risk of leaning too heavily on the movie to sell the show.

With a few concerns in mind, I’m optimistic that the show can even out through the duration of its run. Oh, and full disclosure; I am of the opinion that Hayley Atwell is the reason saxophone music and slow motion were invented, so I’ll be watching the show regardless.

Verdict: It’s a pretty good start.

Kyle’s Take

I love the use of setting and most of the supporting characters. I enjoy the main character a lot – comics can use as many strong females on the big and small screen as they can get – but I have to admit that they use a Gang Busters of this is a man’s world. They need to tone this down as well as the Captain America references.

I don’t think this led to Agent Carter’s lower ratings (6 million viewers compared to the Agents of SHIELD pilot’s 12 million viewers). The show didn’t get poor ratings, but I think Agent Carter isn’t helped by being a midseason replacement and it doesn’t help that audiences last saw Peggy Carter in the first Captain America film.

Since then, Avengers has been released and there’s been a second Cap movie. We’re even less than four months away from a second Avengers movie. Yay! But talk about striking when the iron’s ice cold. Nonetheless, this was a good start for Agent Carter, and I foresee a lot of cold showers for Jim on Tuesday nights.

Bob’s Burgers

Kyle’s Review

I’ll preface this review by saying that this episode of Bob’s Burgers suffers from airing after a string of seven fantastic episodes. If it had aired any other season, it might have fared better. It gave me some chuckles but not at the level prior to the midseason break.

The biggest issue is that the main story makes little sense. Tina’s about to receive a promotion as hall monitor – I vaguely remember an episode two seasons ago where she was a hall monitor – when she fails to deliver Zeke to the principal’s office. Tina lies and covers up her failure in order to keep her promotion. This is very un-Tina.

Tina’s the girl whose conscience got the best of her during an insurance scam dust-up, perpetrated by a character voiced by Bob Odenkirk. She was the only honest person in a sea of lying adults (her father Bob included) and now she lies to keep a promotion as hall monitor. I could see Tina lying to protect her Thundergirl status, but this has been touched on in the past, too—in fact, it was done right before the midseason break. Tina lying to protect her hall monitor status doesn’t track.

What also didn’t track was Regular-Sized Rudy’s admiration of Tina. He’s hardly had any airtime with her, so this came out of nowhere. Kind of like the secondary story in this episode of Bob as a terrible artist. Why does he care if he can’t draw a burger?

Let’s hope this episode is a speed bump to an otherwise stellar season.

Verdict: A shaky episode to put it mildly, but this may be due to some Tina-fatigue. Yes. Tina’s a great character, but we need more Louise, Gene, Linda, and the rest.