Man vs Pop Culture Week 4/23-4/28

Another week, another pop culture roundup.

In light of recent events, I re-read the most recent arc of Chris Roberson and Mike Allred's monster mashup iZombie from Vertigo.  The story is, by necessity, ramping up to a conclusion (it's due to end with issue 28), and it's nice to see the various plot threads, including random throwaway bits from earlier issues, tying together.  Plus, there's a panel where guest artist J. Bone gets to draw Zombie Abraham Lincoln fighting Nazi werewolves.  I'm gonna miss this book when it's gone, but it's been a heck of a ride, and I'll be re-revisiting it after it wraps up.

After hearing about Kagan McLeod's Infinite Kung Fu on War Rocket Ajax a while back, I decided I'd check it out.  Finding out it was on sale last weekend only clinched the deal, and I spent a good chunk of the weekend blissed out in kung fu goodness.  Though I'm not familiar with many, many martial arts movies, I knew enough (would you beleive I heard about the Five Deadly Venoms in an old RPG sourcebook?) to appreciate the feel of what was going on.  For those who still need convincing, get a load of this trailer:

On the movie front, I got to check out Tucker and Dale vs Evil, which I had been meaning to see since I heard about it last year.  It's usually good to see Alan Tudyk in stuff, and Tyler Labine was fun in Reaper, and they had pretty good chemistry here, too.  The joke in the central premise had the potential to wear itself out, but it hit all the right story beats that I didn't mind.  By the time the college kids get the sheriff involved, you know what's going to happen next, but it's still funny as hell when it does.

Next week, I dig into a long-forgotten comic genre!

Man vs the Mobile Post

I'll make this quick as I'm typing this post from my phone.  For a long time I've resisted ebooks; now I have the Kindle app.  For a long time I resisted digital comics; now my weekly haul is through Comixology.  That doesn't mean I'll eschew paper entirely, but digital isn't so bad. So I'm only a little bit behind the curve.

Man vs Pop Culture Week 4/16-4/23

Better late than never, here goes...

I rewatched Christopher Guest's folk mockumentary A Mighty Wind.  I didn't realize that Guest, McKean, and Shearer actually performed as the Folksmen before the film by a couple of decades (and even had them perform as the opening act for their other alter egoes, Spinal Tap), but they fit right in here.  However, they take a back seat to Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara as the duo of Mitch and Mickey.  Levy especially sells his role as the perpetually shellshocked Mitch.   It doesn't hurt that the songs (all written for the film!) are catchy.  I had "Never Did No Wanderin'" stuck in my head for days after.

I also finished up the brief run of Hawkeye & Mockingbird.  I've been a Hawkeye fan since Kurt Busiek's run on Avengers, so I caught this series when it came out originally, but forgot most of it since, so it was nice to revisit this.  The two had something of a rocky relationship ever since their time on the West Coast Avengers, so it's good to see them back together, even though it doesn't last.  And, yes, it also ends with a teaser for the crossover with Black Widow that eventually just became the (sadly, unread by me) Widowmaker mini after both books were canceled.

I also re-acquainted myself with another avenging pair of super-spies: John Steed and Emma Peel.  I dug up the  DVDs of ITV's The Avengers.  These were some of the first DVDs I bought, back in 2000 (I got a DVD player for Christmas '99), thanks to some Barnes&Noble (or was it Borders?) gift cards.  These sets have gone out of print, I think, so I doubt I'll be able to continue the run.  (I only ended up with one and a half sets after all was said and done, thanks also to the newer-at-the-time Amazon.)  I watched a couple of episodes from the 1965 season, including a personal favorite, "A Surfeit of H2O." (Rain as a weapon!  A sinister winery!  Local eccentric builds an ark!  Young Geoffrey Palmer!)  Now, I don't even recall why I bought these, since I never actually watched the show before, but I'm glad I did.  The combination of wit and spy stuff reminds me of another ITV favorite that got a bit more airplay on one independent channel or another, The Saint.  Plus, 1960s vintage Diana Rigg?  More, please!

Man vs Pop Culture Week : 4/9-4/15

Now that I am mostly settled in the new apartment, I am ready for regular posting.  Taking a cue from Siskoid, I am posting various nerdy, genre, and pop-culture accomplishments from throughout the week.

Primarily, I watched the final two series of British sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look.  Some of my favorite sketches poked fun at television, not as parodies of specific shows (which runs the risk of alienating overseas viewers), but of television in general.  Witness the Gift Shop Sketch, as (over)produced by the fictional "False Jeopardy Productions", or the increasingly desperate Quiz Broadcast, which shows that even after an unspecified apocalypse, television endures.

I also read the full, short run of Marvel's Black Widow series.  The first arc, by Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuña, was pretty solid and atmospheric, but after the creative team changed, the second arc focused on a different PoV character and ended up with a cliffhanger tying into the Widowmaker mini, which was initially conceived as a crossover with the even-shorter-lived (but more fun in this blogger's opinion) Hawkeye and Mockingbird series.

More to come in weeks ahead!