With Korra, The Legend Continues
April 10, 2012
Ever since its debut in 2005, I have loved Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s a spectacular animated adventure filled with action and romance, martial arts and Buddism, environmentalism and spirituality. I thought I could never get enough.
Until M. Night Shyamalan…
Honestly, how hard is it to make a movie based on a great story with relatable characters and an awesome fan base? Shyamalan and co took some spectacular source material and adapted it into a 6% on Rotten Tomatoes. That movie is so mind-numbingly awful that it won Razzies in Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay and Most Eye-Gouging Use of 3D. They couldn’t even pronounce the main character’s name correctly, for Pete’s sake. But it’s not the fiasco of a film that I’m writing about; it’s the franchise I fell in love with… and not in that guilty-pleasure-80’s-TMNT-marathon-watching kind of way. Read on…
Talking the Walk: Episode 213 “Beside the Dying Fire”
March 19, 2012
And then there were none.
Welcome back for the 6th and final week of Talking the Walk, season 2 part 2. We’ve had some good times together: Rick and Shane beatin’ the hell out each other. Lori being awful. Carl being awful. Dale being awful… and then instantly missing him when cow-eating walker got him (then briefly entertaining the idea of zombie-cow). Ah, it’s all a warm blur now…
But before we pop the champagne, there’s still still one more episode to recount: Last night’s “Beside the Dying Fire”, picking up just as Rick and Carl finally killed Shane and a swarm of walkers descended on the farm. So don’t hang up those shotguns, scythes, and crossbows just yet – there’s still some slayin’ to do. Read on…
Talking the Walk: Episode 212 “Better Angels”
March 12, 2012
Welcome back, lumbering, bloodthirsty fanboys and girls to Talking the Walk! Can you believe it’s been five weeks already? It seems like it was only yesterday we were cursing the CDC, wondering where Sophie was, and still had no drop date for new Mad Men. But this is now! For weeks, The Walking Dead has floundered with episodes that had one or two major payoffs, but still tread water for 40 or 50 minutes at a time. It’s a relief to report that last night, the penultimate episode of Season 2, Part 2 “Better Angels,” fine tuned the series’ recent recipe and baked us up some nearly-perfect, blood-gurgling goodness. HUZZAH! So grab your crossbows and over-sized sheriff hats and let’s do this thing! Read on…
Talking the Walk: Episode 211 “Judge, Jury, Executioner”
March 5, 2012
SPOILERS yo!
Welcome back to Talking the Walk: WEEK FOUR! After week three’s made-you-look faux climax between Shane and Rick, I wasn’t sure what to expect from last night’s “Judge, Jury, Executioner.” Not in the nail-biting sort of sense, but in more of a “Hey, Walking Dead, our bus here is sleepily drifting into the breakdown lane and we’ve already had too many bathroom breaks,” sort of way. Last night’s episode let us know that for at least 15 minutes, The Walking Dead is, in fact, capable of having both hands on the wheel. Read on…
Talking the Walk: Episode 210 “18 Miles Out”
February 28, 2012
Forgive me for being late with Week 3 of Talking the Walk. I had obligations to watch the Oscars, and that… was an ordeal. Billy Crystal. Meryl Streep. Christopher Plummer. Silent movies. All night the Academy was raising figurative corpses of its own, youknowwhatI’msayin’? -waits for high five-
But it’ a shame that a big event like this overshadowed “18 Miles Out,” which, for most the most part, was a climatic season 2 episode. Rick vs. Shane finally came to a head… not quite in the way I had hoped. Rick and Shane drive a hooded and bound Randall (the Philly survivor Rick, Glen, and Hershel saved last episode) away from the farm to find a safe place to snuff him out. But at a crossroads (OH, SUBTLE), Rick pauses to clear the air with Shane, revealing that he knows not only about Otis’ murder at the school, but about Shane’s affair with Lori. Rick puts his foot down, staking his territory around Lori and Carl, and, to his credit, Shane takes responsibility, cites the circumstances, and all around observes the proper dude-bro code. Read on…
Talking the Walk: Episode 209 “Triggerfinger”
February 20, 2012
And we roll on to week two of Season 2, Part 2 of The Walking Dead! This has spoilers.
Last week’s episode was basically a summary of Part 1 of the season, leaving my recap a recap of a recap (BRAHHHHMMMM). But it ended strong with Lori flipping her car on the interstate in search of Rick, who was busy being pinned down with Glen and Hershel in an abandoned pub after the killing of two aggressive Jersey-sounding survivors from Philly. OH! Fugetaboutit! Gabagool! Racial epithet!
The first half hour of “Triggerfinger” might be some of the finest minutes of the series thus far. It opens with Lori awakening from her car crash, pinned inside the vehicle in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Scary enough, right? Nay! Zombies are also trying to push themselves through the mangled car frame, jagged glass peeling back their rotting, bloody skin. NOW YOU”RE SPEAKING MY BLOODTHIRSTY NERD LANGUAGE, AMC!
*HITS INHALER* Read on…