This Week In Review #TheWiz #BatmanvSuperman #NewYearCountdown
All pictures of Batman V. Superman and The Flash/Arrow are courtesy of DC/Warner Bros.
Wow! A lot happened this week that I didn't blog about. Sorry, I was
too fatigued from last month's posting marathon where I put out 30
posts in 30 days for NaBloPoMo (#NaBloPoMo). Not to mention I was
writing my future #1 bestselling novel TMOTR (#TMOTR) for #NaNoWriMo,
which took up far more time than I anticipated. After 118,000 words,
68 chapters, a ton of mysteries posed and solved, I finally finished
that about three or four hours before the midnight deadline before
December 1st. Have I edited any of it? No. I will actually move on to
another project before circling back and editing that sometime in the
new year. So stay tuned for more posts about it throughout all of
next year.
Back to this week. Some of the stuff I already covered at the
beginning of the week with Kobe announcing his retirement and, uh...
well that's about it. So what happened this week in entertainment?
Probably the biggest thing to happen this week came from the realm of
comic book movies.
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| What The Heck Are Those Flying Things? |
Monday night introduced a minute long clip from the upcoming Batman
v. Superman film (#BatmanvSuperman) due out in March 2016. If you
haven't seen it, you either have been living under a rock (high
Patrick from Spongebob; OK, lame reference. Sorry) or you really
don't care, in which case you won't care about what I have to say
about it anyway. But just in case you are a little curious, I'll link
to it as well as explain my take on it.
First off, for some reason a lot of journalists and bloggers alike
felt the scene came from a dream sequence. In it, we see Batman
hanging from a chain with others hanging on either side of him.
Suddenly, Superman lands at the end of the hallway in a flourish of
dust. Soldiers kneel as Kal-el swags his way down the hall toward
Batman. Mean, nearly snarling and a puggish face, he reaches to grab
the mask and cowl off Batman's head to reveal the man beneath.
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| Superman Being Mad |
As good as some of the theories on why this is a dream sequence are,
I can't bring myself to the same conclusion based on the other
footage we saw. For one, we've already seen the beginning of this
same scene. We've also seen Batman in the same garb in his costume
cloaked in a khaki-colored trench coat in what looks like a desert
landscape/base of some sort. Adding all the glimpses of what we've
seen of this scenario, it looks like it may take up three to four
minutes of runtime in the film, which I can't see being wasted on one
dream sequence with a huge battle scene in it, even if it is to show
the nightmarish predictions of what Bruce thinks might/could happen
when encountering an alien being.
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| Superman Being Contemplative |
To move on, two nights later Warner Bros. released an official full
third trailer for BvS on Jimmy Kimmel Live which I actually consider
very strange. Why? Because Kimmel works on ABC, owned by Disney who
also owns Marvel and just the week before released the Captain
America: Civil War trailer. I understand DC/WB don't have one
specific station they are highly affiliated with like Marvel,
however, it seemed a little strange for them to go to the
competition's stomping grounds to ask for help with the release. It
seemed like it might have served better for one of their other shows
like Supergirl or even going to Colbert on CBS where Supergirl has a
home or to Fallon, but I digress.
The trailer came and I was so... whelmed. That's right, I definitely
wasn't overwhelmed and I don't want to say I was underwhelmed because
it did have some good elements to it, however, I didn't like it as
much as I hoped I would. In comparison to the Civil War trailer
Thanksgiving week, it didn't wow me. Maybe that's because of the
music which I felt didn't properly build to anything like the trailer
music in Civil War did. I know that seems overly critical, but I only
point to that because of the previous WB trailers. For Man of Steel
they started to use bits of Hans Zimmer's score in the trailers. If
that music is part of the film, I don't know if we're getting the
best of Zimmer and Junkie XL (side note: I'm a huge original film
soundtrack fan ranging from The Notebook to The Dark Knight Rises so
I look forward to good memorable music). The biggest revelation came
in the form of Doomsday at the end of the trailer.
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| Doomsday? |
As rumored months ago, Lex uses the dead body of Zod to create the
ever-evolving monster for the crew to battle; in fact, it is shown
that Wonder Woman steps in the way of Batman and helps block a laser
beam from the creation. We also saw a little more of Luthor's
personality which still doesn't seem like Luthor but we'll see how it
fits into the tone of the film.
 |
| Batman's Gun Is Almost As Big As Wonder Woman's Sword |
As far as Batman and Superman versus-ing each other? We got a lot of
that. They were jumping on each other, shooting at each other (oh
yeah, Batman's got guns galore in this thing with guns on his
batwing, his batmobile and a big gun at the end; don't worry, I'm
sure they shoot something other than bullets) and snarling at each
other like crazy. Actually, the biggest controversy has come from the
final frame in which Batman holds a gun like a Russian muscle guy
mobster.
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| Superman Being... Mad Again? |
And for the way Affleck and Snyder are approaching the character, he
looks quite subdued even more than the other movies. I say that
because he looks almost as if he's sneaking into the big gala event
like a new but humble star not used to the fame. For once, I'd like
to see a more confident playboy Bruce who is a strong silent which I
don't think we've gotten even in the Nolan movies I enjoyed. The
tension between he and Clark is palpable. I'm also fearful we the
fans might get yet another dour, mopey Superman as was many fans'
chief problem with Man of Steel. In all the trailers I've seen so
far, I can't remember him smiling once. He's either pissed, offended
or contemplative. Where dat hope at?
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| All pictures of the Wiz courtesy of NBC |
Speaking of hope, NBC's rendition of The Wiz Live came on this
Thursday. Sigh! What can I say about this musical. I'll start by
saying that I thought it was far better than the Peter Pan Live that
they put out last year, however I thought it tied in quality with the
Sound of Music they threw at us the first year they did this about
two years back. I'll also say that I thought the casting was quite
good, especially Shanice Williams as Dorothy, Ne-yo as the Tin-man
and David Alan Grier as the Lion.
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| Picture courtesy of Universal and Motown Productions |
With that said, I'm highly disappointed. Listen, I understand that
The Wiz is just the Black (excuse me, African-American) version of
The Wizard of Oz but was supposed to be an updated "hipper"
version. The once Broadway musical did well for quite a while but
people tired of it and it went the way of Cats. Most people,
however, remember the film version of the same name from the late
1970s starring such big Black stars of the day as Diana Ross as
Dorothy (way too damn old) and Michael Jackson as the scarecrow (best
part of the movie) and I believe it was produced by Barry Gordy if
I'm not mistaken, though I'd have to fact-check that. However, the
movie was probably most memorable for its creative spin on the old
classic story.
With Judy Garland and the gang having already done a phenomenal job
on the original Wizard of Oz, especially with the
walk-through-the-forest and the fantasy realm and the middle-America
farmland, The Wiz went a decidedly different direction and placed it
smack in the middle of the urban landscape of Brooklyn, NY--where
Brooklyn at! Where Brooklyn at! This brought a fresher, more
relatable quality to the characters for many people of color and made
the use of the slang relevant.
Also, I would have preferred the wicked witch be uglier and the fact
that they thought Queen Latifah's Oz was a man when she clearly
looked like a woman the whole time really kinda ticked me off. They
did that just to fit in a feminism joke? Really?
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| Even I Don't Get How They Can't Figure Out I'm A Woman |
Again, I know that these are usually meant for the much younger kids
and I'm sure my cousins' children may have loved it. I'm also aware
that despite how ludicrously bad these live performances sometimes
are (Peter Pan was just... gahh!) people still enjoy tuning in for
them as The Wiz welcomed 11 million live viewers to ease on down the
road with them. But in some ways I felt awkward watching this. You
know dese fools had the nerve enough to use the non-word
conversate AND the all-too-familiar drug addict phrase "see,
what had happened was"--the same phrase addicts use when you let
them in your house and suddenly your TV and other electronic
equipment goes missing. I know it was supposed to be a comedy but a
family comedy.
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| Tied Carrie Underwood on the left; Wayyy better than Peter Pan on the right! |
You know what, I'm being too nit-picky about this. I'll say that it
was good for a few laughs, though it finally had me questioning why a
good witch would make a young girl wear some magical slippers that
everyone in the kingdom knew about and would want to kill her for.
Outside of my shock that they weren't Air Jordans circa 1998, did
this woman really show no concern about giving this child something
so dangerous? In all my years of watching The Wizard of Oz and The
Wiz, I never thought of that until now. The whole thing had me
yearning for a more urban take on it. If you were going to throw in
slang and attitude, go all the way and put her into a strange, urban,
yellow bridge road setting that made the movie unique. Otherwise, you
could have just down the white version but with Black people because
that is precisely how this played to me.
In the end, I do want to still support the Black community and give
props for them attempting to do The Wiz, but classic this is not.
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| Left to Right: Hawkgirl, Picture of Vandal Savage, The Flash, Arrow |
Another thing I wanted to talk about had, again, to do with comics.
The CW's The Flash/Arrow crossover proved a huge success, albeit more
for Arrow than the Flash. With them setting up their newest
incarnation/addition to the DC CW-universe, they introduced the
characters of Hawkman and Hawkgirl as well as the main villain Vandal
Savage who will be bad guy numero uno on DC's Legends of Tomorrow. In
the crossover, they included not only the near murder of the new
Wells by that cop woman that Barry is dating, but it also included a
look at Arrow's long-lost son he never had the chance to know about.
He's chosen to keep the child a secret from Felicity while Jay
Garrick--earth two's Flash--saved Harrison from dying by removing the
bullet. And Flash traveled back in time again to warn his friends of
Savage's impending leveling of the city.
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| Cisco between Hawkgril and Hawkman on the right. |
The takeaway was concerning the set-up for the new series, however.
We now know the back story of the main villain and two of the heroes
to join the already established heroes and villains from Arrow and
Flash. What we don't know is how Savage comes back to life after
being zapped by the heroes at the end.
There was some other stuff floating about in the ether that was none
comic book related but I completely forgot about what it was. Now
that I'm going to be going on a brief vacation, the posts will be
more sporadic as I work on editing some of my stuff and the holidays
take over. Also, I'll probably release a slate sheet of the works I
plan to release next year. For now, look for a milk chocolate recipe
coming in the next week or so as I unleash a few good holiday recipes
for you.
What did you think? Did you obsess over any big entertainment news
this week? If so, what was it? Did you watch The Wiz Live!? What did
you think? What about Batman v Superman? What are your theories about
that Batman hanging scene, those flying monster things in the desert
fight scene and Batman's gun? Let me know in the comments below
(hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).
If
you’re looking for a scare,
check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or
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Until next time, "won't you, ease
on down, ease on down the rooo-ad!"
P.S. Did anyone else notice some the notes they changed in the songs?
I especially noticed on the Scarecrow's "You Can't Win." I
did like the new song they added in when they were going to give up
on Dorothy. I think Ne-yo said he wrote it. Anyway, I'll think of a
better sign-off next time.
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