Filmland - The House at the End of the Street

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This Friday marks the premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s latest opus to surrealist quasi-horror Mother!  The film promises to be another bizarre and terrifying offering from Aronofsky, who has built his career on similar works like Pi and Black Swan, but it also seems like something of a return piece for Jennifer Lawrence.  I’m hard-pressed to think of an actor that embodies the kind of rise and fall we only really see in New Hollywood like Lawrence.  

First emerging onto the critical radar in 2010 with Winter’s Bone she managed to claw her way into the realm of true movie star thanks to starring roles in X-Men: First Class and The Hunger Games.  However, her fame was not really to last as almost immediately after 2013 everyone started getting a lot sicker of her. 

Partly it was roles, I don’t think Silver Linings Playbook or American Hustle really did her any favors, also the Hunger Games series abruptly dropped in influence and importance after the second film.  Really though, it was Passengers that sapped the public interest in her, partially from the content but mostly it’s because this seems to be where we all soured on her projected persona as America’s platonic crush/bff.  

Since then she’s rolled back a ton on her public image and Mother! looks to be taking her style of films in a radically new direction…well, maybe not entirely new.  Yes, back in 2010 before anyone really knew who she was Jennifer Lawrence made another horror film and we’re going to look at it today with The House at the End of the Street. 

Panel Vision - 10 Possible Wonder Woman 2 Developments

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So, Wonder Woman has become the seminal superhero of 2017 and will probably the ambassador of the entire genre for the next few years.  What’s more, the sequel has been now locked in for 2019 with Patty Jenkins set to return and heavy rumors it will be some kind of Cold War set story.  That could mean a lot of things in the long run so I’ve compiled a list of 10 heroes, villains, storylines, and developments we might see in Wonder Woman 2.  

Pretty much anything and everything is on the table at this point, especially with how the first film opened with 3 villains so it’s not like there’s a clear formula for how to proceed.  What’s more, Wonder Woman’s franchise history has always been kind of a much so there’s really not as much source material to draw from as you might think, though there’s certainly plenty of very interesting and rewarding directions they could take- here are 10 of them. 

Cover Story - Top 15 House of Mystery Covers

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This year has marked the second season for Syfy’s shockingly excellent new horror anthology series Channel Zero, a show that takes Internet Creepypastas and transforms them into riveting, experimental, and challenging horror stories.  It’s really an excellent show and this season’s story, The No-End House, has managed to surpass season 1 in every way.  Given that it’s a show blending together a creepy haunted house and horror anthology I figured the time was right to dig into one of my favorite comics: The House of Mystery. 

The House of Mystery was a horror/weird science anthology comic published by DC Comics starting in 1951 and running to 1983.  During the ‘50s the anthology format ruled the comics medium and House of Mystery was a very popular title.  Eventually, the format shifted from horror stories to superhero tales in the ‘60s when the book started publishing Martian Manhunter comics.  However, when the ‘70s rolled in and comics became a bit freer and more mature the book returned to its horror roots with a vengeance and that is what I come to honor today. 

Sony Considering Nightwatch Film

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So, one of the developing superhero universe stories of the late 2010s has been that Sony is looking to continue their own movie-verse that’s adjacent to Marvel’s.  If you haven’t been obsessively following superhero copyright disputes and rights agreements, I’ll try and provide an abridged version.  Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man as well as his attendant mythos of characters but the box office failure of the Amazing Spider-Man films coupled with the North Korea hack eroded the studio’s confidence.  In the wake of dwindling returns, Sony elected to strike a shared custody agreement with Marvel Studios and Disney whereby Marvel would produce a new Spider-Man as part of their universe and Sony would get a share of the profits. 

However, the rest of the Spider-Man stable of characters would have their rights determined on a case-by-case basis, which means Sony can make movies out of those characters without sharing the profits with Marvel/Disney.  So far Sony’s confirmed they’re making a Venom movie with Tom Hardy and Gina Prince-Bythewood is on tap to direct a Black Cat & Silver Sable film.  Now the latest hero rumored to be added to that line-up is a bizarre blast from the past in the form of…Nightwatch. 

The Flash S4 adds Hartley Sawyer as Elongated Man

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One of the best things about CW’s stable of superhero shows is their willingness to add swaths of additional superheroes to their single hero programs.  The name of the show might be Arrow or The Flash but both series also feature a rotating cast of supporting superheroes that help the world feel larger and more engaging.  It’s an approach that took Smallville years to stumble on but now they’re doing right out of the gate, like with Martian Manhunter appearing as a supporting character for Supergirl season 1.  And they aren’t slowing down, either, with new heroes joining the shows all the time and now we’ve got another name to add to that list.  The most recently announced new hero joining the CWnivere is Ralph Dibney, the Elongated Man, who will appear in The Flash season 4 and be portrayed by Hartley Sawyer. 

Neil Sandilands cast as The Thinker in Flash S4

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After three seasons I think it’s fair to say that The Flash may have done all it can do with evil speedsters.  That’s not a slam against the show by any means- Reverse Flash was a really fun season 1 antagonists buoyed by the incomparable Tom Cavanagh, Zoom was a cool and menacing super speed Bane for S2’s Knightfall riff, and Savitar worked well as a super speed Apocalypse for S3’s X-Men riff.  

So it makes sense that season 4 would adopt a non-super speed bad guy as the new series antagonist, though it raises some interesting questions about who that will be.  A lot of Flash’s biggest antagonists are already on the show in more relegated roles like the Top, Captain Cold, and even Gorilla Grodd.  That doesn’t leave a terribly deep bench to draw from but The Flash season 4 has dug deep into the Flash’s history and pulled out a whopper of a bad guy- The Thinker, played by Neil Sandilands. 

Adrian Pasdar Joins Supergirl as Morgan Edge

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Probably one of the strangest after effects of the 2016 election has been the direction taken by CW’s Supergirl.  While the show had previously had a political subtext as a series about immigration, refugees, illegal aliens, and government operations must, season 2 became infinitely more overtly a political allegory.  Even though the show never bothered adding a direct Trump allegory it very much became a show about confronting the ugly and bigoted attitudes that’ve come to infect American life in the late 2010s. 

So far it’s been unclear if the new season will walk a similar path and while I’m sure they’ll dial things back a bit as they refocus on a new bad guy I also don’t think they can really un-ring that bell.  For better or worse Supergirl IS the superhero politics show now the same way Captain America is the superhero politics movie franchise.  Now, as the new season looms, the shape of that new era seems to be forming as season 3 adds a new villain in the form of Morgan Edge, played by Adrian Pasdar.

Panel Vision - 7 Things to Expect from Spider-Man: Homecoming 2

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So, did you see Spider-Man: Homecoming yet?  Chances are you probably did given the film’s had a big box office success, more or less everyone is praising it, and Marvel is more or less our culture’s cinematic guardian.  What’s more, it does feel like Marvel has poured a lot of time and effort into establishing Tom Holland’s Spider-Man as a new standard bearer for the company.  He’s not quite there yet, mainly because of how much he’s defined by his junior Avenger status, but give him about 3 years I get the sense Spider-Man is going to be one of the faces of the MCU come 2020 along with Black Panther and Captain Marvel.  

As such, and given that the film itself was loaded with references, it’s not too early to start talking about what we might see in a sequel to Homecoming.  Spider-Man’s always had one of the most expansive single character mythos in the entire Marvel brand and a lot of that has already started showing up in the MCU proper so let’s dive in to see what we might see in Spider-Man: Homecoming 2. 

Panel Vision - The Humans

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It’d be fair to say 2017 has been a curiously good year for monkeys, by which I, of course, mean all variations of ape and primate because this is a colloquial essay and not an academic one.  But anyway, between Kong: Skull Island and War for the Planet of the Apes monkeys are having a very big year at the box office, if only because TWO ape films at the theater is two more than you’d normally expect.  Obviously, apes have had a long, proud, and storied history in comics going back to the days of DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz’ famous maxim that “Apes on comics sell comics.”  

This definitely won’t be the last time I talk about ape comics this year but it will probably be the only time I really focus in on the actual comics themselves rather than just the covers, mainly because most ape comics are weird old ‘50s stories that the only kind of hold up.  Not so for today’s offering, the supremely bizarre and delightful offbeat indie oddity: The Humans. 

Tala Ashe to play Isis on Legends of Tomorrow S3

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Of all the CW superheroes shows I’d count Legends of Tomorrow as one of the most impressive through its dedication to keeping a rotating cast from season-to-season.  It’s a bold approach but one that has worked well for the show as it’s turned in two very enjoyable seasons.  I’d actually count it as the best Star Trek show on the air right now, though we’ll see how Discovery turns out later this year.  Season 3’s upcoming cast rotation sees Rip Hunter exiting the main character ranks for a more antagonistic role while Citizen Steel and Vixen will be returning to the crew of the Waverider.   The newest member of the team comes to us from a relatively new direction for the series- the world of magic, although the ties to Ancient Egypt put her at least in tune with Hawkman and Hawkgirl from back in season 1.  The latest Legend to join the team is Isis- to be played by Tala Ashe.