2010 Media Journal 1

Hey all, this year I'm going to attempt to post once a week with my thoughts about new comics/books/movies/TV shows I've read and seen each week. I probably won't post too many full-on reviews, but mostly just random thoughts associated with what I've been up to. Mostly this is to help me remember what I've been up to and also help organize my thoughts.

Comics

It was a slow week this week, with only one new release, but I took the opportunity to pick up a few books I had been eyeing.

20th Century Boys Vol. 2 - The near-universal acclaim that has been following this book on the internet made me very excited to pick it up, but the first volume left me kind of cold. It was certainly good, but it was a rather slow burn of a story and I didn't feel compelled to keep on going. Vol 2 still didn't make me a full-fledged addict, but it definitely has e eager to grab volume three. The only thing that bugged me about this volume is that it used a story-telling trick that has always bugged me. A character has information that is pertinent to the plot, he even tells other people this information, but the author covers up what he's saying so that the reveal is hidden from the reader. I understand that it's important to show the reader that the information has been discovered, but it just feels like such a tease.

Sugar Shock One-Shot: The shop was giving this one-shot by Joss Whedon & Fabio Moon out for free during their New Year's Eve Eve sale and it's a fun little book (collecting stories that were originally put up on MySpace). The story is about a punk-rock band called to perform (maybe) at a galactic battle of the bands and it reads lie The Amazing Joy Buzzards had it been written by Whedon. There's not to muc heft there, but certainly worth the price I paid.

TV

Doctor Who: The End of Time 1 & 2: Though I'm not a huge Doctor Who fan, David Tennant's run on the series has been a favorite of mine and these final two episodes were certainly very good, if a tad melancholy. A lot of people on twitter were complaining that the Doctor came off rather unheroic as he met his end, especially compared with his direct predecessor, however it felt fitting to me. Tennant's Doctor always was the reluctant hero who seemed that he'd always prefer be out having fun instead of saving the universe, so his final words seemed right to me. Also, Timothy Dalton chewed the hell out of the scenery in that episode and probably took some home in a to-go container.

Re-watched the ending of Battlestar: Galactica this week and was still really impressed with it, though I could have done without the "present day" coda. Still, really good.

Can't think of too much else I watched other than a few bowl games and repeated watchings of this one episode of The Batman that my youngest has become fascinated with.

Movies:

For Christmas I got myself a Blu-ray player that also is compatible with Netflix Watch Instantly, so I'm going to be watching a lot of movies, some of which will not be very good, such as:

American Ninja: BeaucoupKevin was twittering about watching this yesterday ad so I threw it on late last night, thinking I'd be asleep in a few minutes. But shit, it was fascinating. In discussing it on twitter, Kevin said that it was "such an artifact" and it was. It hearkened back to watching awful movies just like it on cable on at my friends' houses back in grade school. Plus, there was a ninja that shot lasers at the end, that shit was off the hook.

Chocolate: The plot of this Thai martial arts movie: an autistic girl is able to repeat just about any movement she sees someone perform, so fo course she watches a bunch kung-fu movies so she can go collect the money owed to her former-gangster-mother in order to pay for her mother's cancer medicine. It was shockingly not nearly as exploitative as I thought it would end up being and was quite a good movie.

So that's about it for this week. Hopefully I'll have more for you in seven days.