A Goth’s Month in Review: May 2013

This month I was a little unfocused with my various enthusiasms. We did a lot this month – far too much in fact …which resulted in too few reviews completed for my liking.

For Mother’s Day, my favourite teenager Miss_Tree and I attended Ottawa’s Comiccon. We met Felicia Day of The Guild and Buffy (She said she liked Miss_Tree’s hair). Then Nicholas Brendon of Buffy and Criminal Minds hugged us, and it was all I could do not to dissolve into a puddle of Buffy fanatic fan tears.

(Maybe I did).

Then we watched James Marsters (Buffy, Smallville) sing an acoustic set of wildly suggestive songs, with an amazing opening act of Montreal’s David Martel.

Day and Brendon’s signed photos on our wall, our newly-acquired steampunk goggles hanging from hooks, we didn’t watch nearly enough superhero, cartoon goodness to fill my quota for the month. Three short of the finish line, I know things will get back on track in the coming months.

So, here they are – the picks from this month of Comiccon-ery (then Borderlands 2 and Skyrim-ery) – my favourite, surprise, disappointment, least-liked, and one “show me’ chosen from the super half of our crime-fighting duo.

Spoon!

Favourite
Frankenweenie (2012) on 2013/05/15

* * * *

First of all, this movie is littered, crammed even, with all sorts of film geeky, horror buff references. First and foremost, there is Frankenstein. Loads of Frankenstein, great bleeding chunks, sewn together with loving stitches, and electrified. It is a beautiful homage.

Surprise
Afro Samurai (2007 – ) on 2013/05/19

* * * *

“Who would have thought the origin story would have so much blood in it?

Blood – Afro Samurai has it by the slurping, slopping bucketful. There are great arching spurts, pressurized arterial sprays, giant billowing gusts and ocean waves of blood.

There’s also heads popping off like the fourth of July.”

Disappointment
Watchmen (2009) on 2013/05/27

* * *

“It might be easy to simply dismiss Watchmen as style over substance, but doing so would be inaccurate. There’s more than enough substance here, perhaps even too much. The style is relatively weak, always ambitious, though not always successful. At least in reading the comic, the former issue is mitigated by time, since you don’t need to get through it all in the span of one sitting. The latter issue vanishes completely as the original works in its familiar medium, and needn’t compromise in transition to another.”

Least-Liked
Batman & Robin (1997) on 2013/05/23

* *

“I thought it deserved a single, cynical dismissal and little more but – seeing as I already did so this month with another terrible flick – I figured I should probably give it a hundred words per star.”

Show Me
The Incredible Hulk (2008) on 2013/05/30

* * * *

“I like this movie. A lot. Some lustre may have been lost, as I’ve seen it four times now, but it made me enough of a fan to have felt a bit wary leading up to The Avengers.

I don’t dislike Mark Ruffalo’s take. It’s simply until we saw him succeed, I feared what we’d lost in Ed Norton.”