Before the final leg begins, Phil, like us, reflects on the fact that despite starting with a lot of promising teams, we somehow got down to a pair of bland nobodies, two irritating douchebags, an epic train wreck of a team, and a very nice couple that stands no chance. Unlike us, Phil tries to pretend that this is a good thing.

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “Monster Truck Heroes”"

Well, that was amazing. I mean, I have not seen that many unbelievable, awesome twists and turns in a long while. It was funny, it was exciting, it had a great finish that left me wanting more, and the fight scenes! Wow, just the fight between Skye and the redheads alone was…

Wait, sorry. I was thinking of the season finale of “Agents of SHIELD”. But yeah, the Race was pretty good too. Spoilers after the cut…

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “In It To Win It”"

Sorry I’m now officially a week behind on the Amazing Race with no Batfleck to make up for it; it’s been crazy busy this week, but hopefully I’ll be able to catch up for the finale. But that means that “last time” is actually two times ago, when we were all in Amsterdam together and Phil reminded us that Hayley and Blair still hate each other oh so very, very much, and that this was a non-elimination leg. Which means that this is an elimination leg…

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “Fruits of Our Labor”"

Previously in the Race: Phil sums up two hours of racing in under a minute with, “Everyone ran around Africa for two straight legs and Steve and Aly couldn’t get out of last.” Would that I could have done the same.

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “Can I Get a Hot Tub?”"

As you can tell by the double title, this is a double-length episode. The reasons they didn’t spread this out over two weeks will become increasingly clear as the episode goes on, but here’s a hint: It rhymes with “two granti-climactic jeppisodes in a row”. But before the airquote excitement starts, we get a reminder that Monaco was much harder than you’d imagine to navigate through for a country that’s only about one square mile, and Jeff and Jackie were eliminated as a result.

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “Back in Business/Moment of Truth”"

The Race recap is being delayed slightly this week due to its size (two hours long, six-day workweek, doesn’t mix) but I thought I might tide you over with some funny pictures. Take it away, BATMAN!

continue reading "Looking Forward to the Race Recap? YOU WILL."

Previously on the Race: Did we mention the new 2015 Ford Focus enough yet? Yes? Well too FREAKING bad. Oh yes, and Kurt and Bergen failed harder than 95% of the contestants ever.

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “Smells Like a Million Bucks”"

Previously on the Race, one night in Bangkok made the New Kids humble, and this time there wasn’t a non-elimination leg to save them. The Blind Date teams finally started getting down to the awkward truth that TV’s most brutally difficult reality competition is probably not the best way to start a relationship, and we had kitties. KITTIES!

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “Get In That Lederhosen, Baby”"

This week’s recap covers the fact that nothing much happened, since it was a non-elimination leg that involved one team being stuck at the airport for ages. But Phil makes it sound more exciting than it was, because he’s Phil!
continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “The Great Amazing Nasty Race”"

Last week on the Race, as Phil reminds us from the get-go, it proved to be an extremely dumb idea to take selfies next to a moving train. (Although not as dumb as taking them in front of one.) Team Broken Compass was eliminated, but they saved the obnoxious “peace out” gesture for this episode just to make sure we didn’t miss them!

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “#MurphysLaw”"

One of the big reasons I’ve usually resisted recapping ‘The Amazing Race’ is because I’ll be honest, I always felt like Television Without Pity already did the same thing and they did it better than I could. (You can feel free to jump in and boost my ego in the comments, but it’s not required.)

But now, there is no Television Without Pity. Entire seasons of the Race are going by, unrecapped by snarky commenters who have nothing better to do than explain what happened in an episode of a TV show to people without access to Hulu, Netflix, DVR or any one of thousands of bit-torrent sites! It’s a crushing injustice, and I’m here to correct it. On to Amazing Race 26, Episode One!

continue reading "Amazing Race Recap: “Great Way to Start a Relationship”"

And another season of ‘The Amazing Race’, the Light Side counterpart to ‘Survivor’, has now entered the books. This was advertised as the “Silver Anniversary” of the Race, and while that isn’t true from a strict chronological standpoint, there was definitely a sense that they were pulling out all the stops to make this a good one. As far as I’m concerned, they succeeded; this was quite possibly my favorite Race ever. Why? Follow me below the spoiler tag to find out!

continue reading "Amazing Race 25 Round-Up"

Recently, there’s been some controversial news regarding the upcoming rebooted Fantastic Four movie. Out of deference to those who don’t want to know anything until they go into the theater, let’s put this behind a spoiler tag, shall we?

continue reading "It’s Just One Interpretation (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fantastic Four Reboot)"

Since I drew the short straw, I’m here to talk to you about the coming avalanche of superhero movies. For those of you who missed the giant chart detailing everything, the next five years will bring roughly forty movies drawn from Marvel and DC’s extensive library of characters. This has, if nothing else, forced both companies to budge just a little on their policy of aggressively screwing over the creators of all these properties, so there’s that going for it. However, a lot of people have had questions and concerns about so many movies in so short a time. Here are some answers, drawn from my random conjectures and personal biases. So you know it’s useful!

1) Is this too many movies? Probably not. Or maybe. On the one hand, the summer blockbuster season has been gradually extending for years now, so that it starts somewhere in early March and continues on through to mid-September (with the caveat that anything someone drops in mid-September is something they realized was going to sink without a trace if they released it in the middle of the summer, so they’re probably lousy. September is to popcorn movies as January is to prestige pics.) Basically, there’s plenty of room to spread these out so that you don’t wind up dropping a hundred dollars at the movies in one week. There’s plenty of reason to believe that fans will turn out for as many good superhero movies as they can afford.

On the other hand, there’s also plenty of reason to believe that they’ll wait for it to show up on Netflix if they’re lousy. And the tighter you squeeze them into the schedule, the higher the standard people will apply when deciding whether to skip seeing a movie in the theater. It’s not as though we haven’t already been seeing this in recent years with non-superhero blockbusters. Then again, a lot of those movies have been lousy. Assuming we get five years of movies like ‘Avengers’ and not five years of movies like ‘Jonah Hex’, it won’t be a problem.

2) No, really, this has to be too many movies, right? This has got to be the point where the superhero movie bubble bursts and executives commit ritual seppuku, doesn’t it? Look, people have been predicting “the end of the superhero movie trend” since ‘Daredevil’ came out. Every time one of these movies gets announced, some movie critic chimes in with their personal belief that people have to be pretty damn sick of these things. They’ve been wrong. Even when there have been individual flops, like ‘Green Lantern’, they haven’t been enough to sink the entire genre. More importantly, Marvel’s strategy (which everyone else is scrambling to adopt) has bolstered the performance of its lesser-known properties; a lot of people went to see ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ on faith due to the studio’s track record. Even Fox has had good luck with its X-Men spin-offs. The strengths of the “cinematic universe” concept have outweighed any weaknesses to date.

That said, Warner Brothers and Sony are trying this whole “cinematic universe” thing for the first time, and nobody really knows if it will go as well for them as it did for Marvel. Certainly, Sony’s got a lot to worry about; with only the rights to Spider-Man and its ancillary properties, they’re going to be pushing out a lot of movies about second and third-string Spider-Man cast members in the hopes they’ll catch fire. Based on the buzz for ‘Sinister Six’, that might whiff hard for them.

3) So who has the most to lose here if this goes badly? Warner Brothers, plain and simple. Marvel has established themselves as the “blue chip” superhero franchise; they can withstand a few flops and move on. Sony can always drop their plans for a ‘Venom’ movie and just go back to pumping out a Spider-Man pic every two or three years; they might not be the kind of properties you can build a mega-franchise out of, but they’ve never been unprofitable. Keep recasting the major roles with hungry young actors who will work cheap, keep the budget down to a manageable level, and there’s no reason to think they can’t do this forever.

Fox, likewise, has only one thing to worry about–get the production on the next X-Men/FF movie started by Date X, keep the budget reasonable, and rake in the dough. They’re not being particularly ambitious, despite Mark Millar’s random pronouncements on Twitter. Why would they, when an evergreen franchise like X-Men used to be the Holy Grail of movie studios everywhere? Just because they’re sticking to a string of reliable James Bond-esque hits instead of going for Marvel’s new levels of crazy money-making doesn’t mean they’re settling.

But Warner Brothers…they have the character library to compete with Marvel, they need a string of mega-hits bad now that the sweet sweet Harry Potter cash is drying up, and they have exactly one shot at showing they can compete here. If ‘Batman v. Superman’ fails (either at the box office or in the Supreme Court, not sure) and ‘Suicide Squad’ tanks hard, they’re looking at possibly tainting their entire slate of superhero movies as crap. They’re looking at having to scrap the next eight movies from their summer plans through 2020. They’re looking at falling back on endless Superman and Batman reboots every six or seven years while Marvel/Disney rakes in billions. That’s a pretty humiliating possibility, there.

4) Why do you sound like you’re getting out popcorn when you say that last bit? Because I’ll be honest, Warner Brothers have had a terrible track record when it comes to superhero movies that aren’t about Superman or Batman. They don’t have an Avi Arad or a Kevin Feige who fundamentally gets the properties and has the clout to make other executives back off from inserting giant mechanical spiders into every movie. The result is ‘Jonah Hex’, ‘Catwoman’, ‘Green Lantern’, and ‘Batman and Robin’.

I don’t see this changing. I think we’re due for some epic flops, some hilarious nerdfights, and some executives having to exercise their golden parachutes (primarily because they were just pushed out of their penthouse offices). And yeah, I think that’ll be entertaining even if the movies aren’t, because I am perpetually fascinated by failure.

5) Um…so what about the diversity? That’s good, right? Yes. It is. We’re finally getting a Wonder Woman movie, we’re getting Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel, we’re getting a Black Panther movie, and we’ve been promised a Cyborg movie but I guarantee you that’s the first thing on the chopping block if Warner Brothers gets cold feet. These are all good things.

That said, there’s no reason not to greenlight a Black Widow movie–Scarlett Johansson has proven box office clout, and the character is popular and well-known. And we have no idea whether the Wonder Woman movie will be any good, or whether we’ll get another ‘Catwoman’. And I want a ‘Ms. Marvel’ movie, because “Embiggen!” has to be one of the best battle cries ever. But still, the needle is moving on this and it’s about damn time.

6) ‘Civil War’, huh? Didn’t you say that was going to suck rocks? Yep. Hope I’m wrong!

Recently, a rumor popped up in Variety related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since it is, whether true or not, pretty spoiler-y, I’ll stick it behind a spoiler break–everything after the break will discuss future Marvel movies, so don’t click on it if you don’t want to discuss.

continue reading "NERRRRRD-raaaaaaaaage!"