With Brie Larson winning the Oscar this year for Best Actress, she’s catapulted herself into the rarified air of A-List Hollywood. Her leading role in the forthcoming King Kong should help seal the deal, but it’s Larson’s ability to leave a significant impact even in small supporting roles that makes it an easy bet that she will likely …
Paris Belongs to Us defies genre and defies even the loose standards of the New Wave. It does, however, undeniably represent the cinema of Jacques Rivette.
By doing what he does best, Bear McCreary has broken a streak of intrigue and diminishing returns.
“This Ball of Mud and Meanness” is another landmark episode in the Bruce chronicle towards being Batman and delivers a story that is both revealing of Bruce’s character and a smart trajectory for his journey.
The really special thing about Jillian Tamaki’s illustrative and written works is the ability of each to convey feelings of sadness, nostalgia, regret, happiness, friendship, betrayal; an overall very melancholic approach to her cartooning and illustrating craft.
In this Cell by Cell, I look deeply into pages 9 and 10 of BITCH PLANET #6, appreciating and analyzing the story and artistic composition. Mr. Braxton appropriates culture ignorantly, as a set of symbols without deeper meaning or larger context, and then assumes he knows the value of it. His attitude is of the imperialist, exploring and claiming what he sees as his right. He manipulates the vulnerability he has found in Makoto in the interest of taking even more in his sense of privilege and power.
When the original Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare came out, it was met with some skepticism. EA turning a tower defense game into an online, kid-friendly shooter? Many imagined industry execs salivating at the potential for monetization. For the most part, it isn’t too bad, though, and there are quite a few nifty features that set it …
Vinyl, Season 1, Episode 5: “He in Racist Fire” Written by Adam Rapp Directed by Peter Sollett Airs Sundays at 9pm on HBO The revelation from last week’s episode of Vinyl was that the show can be hilarious when it wants to be. It was a necessary discovery, because Vinyl would eventually implode if it chose to …
A theoretically exciting Maggie-and-Carol episode can’t help but feel like a rote diversion.
Les deux amis Written by Louis Garrel and Christophe Honoré Directed by Louis Garrel France, 2015 There’s a lot of hand-wringing these days over a topic du jour I’m sure you’ve come across. It’s bandied about in op-ed scribblings, and now filmmakers are waking up to it too, and at its core is the snake person role-switch …
If you know fantasy artist Aly Fell from his pin up work, think again, he’s worked on covers for Heavy Metal and in recent times he’s done a cover for Buffy. It’s his work on the former that led to him working on an Elizabethan thriller The Shadow Glass, a mini-series that he’s writing and drawing for Dark Horse. Aly took time out of his busy schedule to talk to PopOptiq about The Shadow Glass, his career, and drawing women.
The best loot-based games understand the addictive cyclical nature of finding better gear and using it to improve your character in order to, well, find better gear. While The Division certainly isn’t without flaws, it absolutely understands how satisfying it is to finally find that high-end drop you’ve been looking for. Set in post viral …
In an era where video games (primarily those in ongoing franchises) are becoming more monotonous and studios elect to rehash the same properties over and over again, Ubisoft’s Far Cry Primal is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Sure enough, that light isn’t always clearly luminous, somewhat muddied by its own ambitions …
Batman’s iconic ride is as crucial a part of the caped crusader’s visual iconography as the costume, and each unique iteration of the character has had an equally unique Batmobile. From Batman: The Animated Series’ “shoebox on wheels”, to the garishly lit version from Batman Forever, to the tough, boxy “doesn’t look especially like a Batmobile” Tumbler from Nolan’s …
Somewhere amongst the harsh, arid terrain, which buckles and cracks underneath the pressure of the traitorous Sun, her believers are weeping. She has left them to the mercy of chaos, deserted them in a realm where vicious sand scarabs unleash their sting, and haunted spirits threaten to swallow their faith. A beacon of hope emerges …
At its center, “Night of the Hawk” makes a point about proving its central thesis—the thing that sucks about feelings is you realize how much you can hurt someone or get hurt
‘Knight of Cups’ is repetitive, heavy-handed, “First World” navel-gazing at its most self-indulgent. But my god is it beautiful!
Descender #11 is a dramatic conclusion to yet another satisfying arc. It’s got gorgeous, complex characters, and plenty of ways to pull out your heartstrings. Recommend for fans of science fiction with heart.
No piece of art happens in a vacuum. Everything we produce as a culture is, whether we like it or not, influenced by what’s come before. Film is no exception to this, and practically since the dawn of the medium, film makers have been drawing influences from the classical arts, chief among them painting. In …
The creative team continues to present a very playful and funny prison drama, parodying the genre in all the right ways so far. Switching Oliver’s fantasy sequences to more morose images was rather unexpected but definitely works with the ante going up and the action moving forward in this issue.
The fifth annual Sun Valley Film Festival runs March 2-March 6 in Ketchum, Idaho, featuring over 60 narrative films and documentaries, as well as special guests Oliver Stone, Mark Duplass, Bruce Dern and Amy Smart, and musical guests The Joy Formidable and Thunderpussy. Films are shown at local venues including the Sun Valley Opera House, …
With the beautiful color combinations and punk aesthetic, Black Canary offers a female-centric comic that doesn’t fall into Batgirl’s discussions of touchy-feely emotions and make-up tips. Though Dinah takes some warming up to, ultimately she proves layered and sympathetic.
Woman in the Moon is a sophisticated, successful synthesis of action with ideas, suspense with humor, and grand design with minute detail