THIS WEEK'S PULL-LIST
STAR WARS CLONE WARS TP VOL 02 CRASH COURSE (I have been buying the monthly but haven't committed to the digests just yet.)
LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #49 (Almost to the end. I've liked what I've read of Shooter's run and it's the first time I've actually collected a Legion book in years. Wonder if it will last past the reboot.)
FANTASTIC FOUR #562 (This is just good comics.)
And that would be all she wrote, folks. I hope you have a happy new year and a great Wednesday at the LCS.
Later!
mike
"Gateway to Infinity!" kicks off with our intrepid hero airborn and on his way to London. His purpose there is to assist with a very important translation job relating to an artifact found in one of the Stonehenge blocks. In a scene reminiscent of the Lao Che Air Freight incident from Temple of Doom, Indy runs afoul of the Germans whose interest in the artifact leaves Dr. Jones, once again, a Nazi target. After taking a dip into the English Channel, Indy gets picked up by a Navy patrol boat and manages to keep his date with British intelligence.
I just finished watching the feature film and the first two episodes of the brand-spanking-new Clone Wars animated series and, I must say, I am very much impressed. More by the show than the film, really, but when you think of my biggest complaints with the prequel trilogy being the fact that we did not spend enough time with Anakin to give a rat's ass about his fall, this whole endeavour is just a godsend, you know? All we saw were the whingy bits with Anakin pining away for Padmé and none of the bonding with Obi-Wan, or the heroic efforts he made during the Clone Wars to rate 'potentially greatest Jedi ever', so having the opportunity to go back and spend some time with the guy is something I'm looking forward to.
For example, while doing work at home I've been listening to the audio commentaries for Heroes, something I attempted back when I bought the Season 1 set but never really kept up with and eventually abandoned. If you know anything about me, you know what a features whore I am, particularly for audio commentaries, so it was unusual for me to give up on them. Listening to them now, I do find a few of them to be senseless and lacking in any interesting information (that often happens when it's just a bunch of actors in a room) but there have been a couple of exceptional commentaries, the main stand-out being the one for "Company Man" which features the director, Allan Arkush, writer, Bryan Fuller, and actor, Jack Coleman, otherwise known as HRG. I generally like listening to anything Bryan Fuller has to say, so I'm sure that influenced the experience somewhat, but it was also neat to see what you got when you mixed one of the actors with behind-the-camera crew. In earlier commentaries, Coleman would joke around and talk about how cool everything was on the show, but when sitting next to the writer and director, suddenly he's talking about composition, narrative, lighting, themes, character and acting. It just brought the whole quality level up, like, 110%.
Next up is a show that has never impressed me much, but I just got it in my head at some point that I was going to watch it, in its entirety, no matter how much pain it causes or how long it takes. That show would be Highlander: The Series and I don't think I'm understating things when I say that the first season is a perfect example of everything that was wrong with syndicated television in the early to mid '90s. You could put virtually anything out there on the market as long as you did it cheap enough, there was always someone who wanted to fill up their broadcasting slate. Having the Highlander brand probably helped put this one on the air and keep it there beyond season 1, but it's still no excuse for the quality of some of these episodes.
A big surprise for me was getting the original Twilight Zone DVDs from the library. I knew I'd enjoy them, I knew I was picking up something that was timeless and fun, but I didn't anticipate just how much I am loving these shows. My memories of the shows consisted only of the stories and how they made me feel and not how well shot and written they were. Looking at these episodes on DVD, they look fantastic. The lighting is amazing, the acting, surprisingly good. The direction classic but brave enough to shed traditional angles and techniques when necessary. And although the writing is not always perfect, there's an energy there you can feel. A young Rod Serling (who wrote, like, every episode) pouring his heart out on the page week after week and giving us stories that still resonate to this day with the occasional genuinely creepy moment thrown in for good measure.
Finally, I've re-immersed myself into the world of Steed and Mrs. Peel. Last year, for my birthday, my mother gave me the Complete Emma Peel Avengers set. A 17 disc treasure trove of Avengers episodes featuring my ultimate feminine ideal, Mrs. Emma Peel, played by the inimitable Diana Rigg. I've always loved the show, but I'm always reminded how great these were every time I go back to the show after a long absence. They're so witty, offbeat and damn sexy. I can see how scores of pubescent young boys' lives were forever changed by watching this show.
About a month and a half ago, one of my favourite bands, Sloan, released a new album called Parallel Play. Normally, this would be great news in the Jozic household but I found this new effort a little lackluster in early listenings, a little less cohesive than some of their earlier releases and not quite eclectic enough to attain the status of their last album, Never Hear the End of It. Not a complete throwaway of a CD, just not what I was looking for, hence no CD review or comment about it one way or another (in all fairness, I did link to it at Amazon in the sidebar).
I had heard of 
