TV Dad of the Year: True Detective's Colin Farrell

True Detective Season 2 debuted Sunday night on cable programming juggernaut HBO. The business behind Fraggle Rock, Tales From the Crypt, Band of Brothers, Entourage and Game of Thrones have carved out their own niche of television that is nearly unrivaled in terms of quality, innovation, sex and fan following. Sunday saw the launch of several new series joining TD like the "Entourage with sportsball" Ballers and some show with Jack Black about the government. While I hadn't seen the first season of Detective, I've only heard good things. Season 2's cast and premise intrigued me much more with a trio of Los Angeles cops (Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch) getting involved with a murder and a gangster turning businessman (Vince Vaughn) falling somewhere in between. Basically each cop is fucked up in their own way (Farrell is crooked and drunk, McAdams has hard sex and alienates everyone around her while Kitsch can't get it up and resorts to extreme danger to feel alive).

It only took one scene to guarantee my return viewing and that included one Colin Farrell along with a set of brass knuckles. Basically, Farrell's Detective Ray Velcoro is trying to be a good dad to a kid that was the result of a seemingly unsolved rape. But his kid is his kid even if the parents are separated. When a bully messes with said kid's new shoes, Velcoro goes to bully's house, slips on some knucks and proceeds to pummel the father while making bully son watch as a lesson. It's as horrifying as it is hilarious, a real vicarious experience for anybody who's ever dealt with an asshole.

A talented and likable actor, Farrell has become a Hollywood fixture even if he's never quite been able to crack it. Early films saw him working with the likes of Joel Schumacher and Steven Spielberg opposite Tom Cruise, Al Pacino and Bruce Willis. A fun performance as Bullseye in Ben Affleck's Daredevil was followed up by popcorn leading man vehicle S.W.A.T. but 2004's ill received Alexander and 2006's Miami Vice showed an eclectic and perhaps unfocused career path reflected by his booze and women filled Hollywood lifestyle. In Bruges showed he could still be funny yet sensitive but 2012's big budget Total Recall was pretty lame. I didn't even know he was in it but his portrayal as a day dreaming, alcoholic father in Saving Mr. Banks is arguably the most impressive. Detective debuted to mixed reviews comparing it too closely to the first season while drawing in a solid 3 million plus viewers. See you next week!

(Jon)Snow Screen: Game of Thrones IMAX

It's a blizzard in parts of the country this weekend with over a foot of snow falling on states like Illinois, Ohio and New York. It's never really winter here in Los Angeles as it's sunny and in the 60's and 70's but you know, I need themes for these posts.  I was a tad chilly in a tee shirt, jeans and flip flops walking around Universal Citywalk though when the sun wasn't out and the wind was a blowing.  Super Bowl weekend is notoriously slow at the box office but it's started to pick up in recent years with genre and counter programming titles like Taken, Dear John, Chronicle, The Woman in Black and Warm Bodies ringing in $20 million plus opening weekends.  American Sniper, the polarizing war story keeps on trucking as it set a SB record taking in $31 million.  Popular HBO show Game of Thrones hit IMAX for specially formatted episodes and a sneak peak at April's season 5.  Thursday night attendees received limited edition posters but I'm just too old for a 10:00 o'clock movie on a weeknight.  For episodes that aired last year and have been online since, the special event still managed to bring in a decent $1.5 million from 205 locations.  The exclusive trailer didn't stay exclusive for long as someone posted a bootleg copy online Friday so HBO just went ahead and put out the real thing.

Of course you know I have a love-loathe relationship with GOT.  It started off so slow with so many characters, dead ends and annoying leads that I just didn't care.  Like many subscription channel shows, it made it's mark with a mix of sex and violence with lots of oral and from behind action then stabbings and beheading galore.  Once they hooked audiences, the sex steadily declined while the violence is still a major part of the show.  That's America, I guess.  Nearly 40 hours later and some of the plot lines are starting to pay off, finally. Episode 9's The Watchers on the Wall focuses on bastard son and Night's Watch member Jon Snow as they battle 100,000 united Wildlings beyond the Wall.  Dog Soldiers and Centurion director Neil Marshall returns to helm after last season's stand out episode Blackwater which was filled with battles, castle storming and naval warfare.  The episode moved quite fast as the outnumbered and untrained Night's Watch faced off with the wild, crazy and hungry tribes of Wildlings with Kit Harrington's Jon Snow taking control after one of his leaders is killed and the other loses his nerve.  Holding back giants and wooly mammoths, the show continues to ramp up it's supernatural elements that already include dragons, resurrection, witches and three-eyed birds.

I wondered if they'd edit the two episodes together into a seamless 100 minutes but nope, we get the full credit sequences along with HBO's logo.  Not sure if it was done for the episodes screened or we just missed it on TV because we fast forward the opening credits, but only the names of the actors in the particular episode were shown versus the entire regular cast.  Episode 10, The Children, wraps up with the rest of the story lines as we get the dragon queen figuring out what to do as ruler and her deadly pets, the evil Lannister clan and their messed up family issues coming to a violent end, skeleton warriors killing that kid from Love Actually while Brienne and The Mountain duke it out on a mountain over Ayra Stark.  That fight scene raised many an eye brow last year with it's brutality and outcome and it had even more cringe worthy impact on a real IMAX screen.  Sword fighting, punching, kicking, ear biting and spitting out, rock slamming into the head and being thrown off a hillside, oof! The episodes looked great on the big screen besides the pixelation of titles and text with vast landscapes of snow and green country side and spotting who in the cast had braces as a youth and who didn't.  The teaser trailer for season 5 was just that, a quick glimpse of more shit going down, more people dying, getting it on and maybe that battle of the 7 armies will finally start to happen...yeah right!

Comic Shop of the Day: Things From Another World

It was a Universal Studios Citywalk Saturday as we ventured north to check out Game of Thrones on real IMAX then feasted at Karl Strauss and walked around the always nice but not too busy Citywalk.  It's been a while since I was here and was pleasantly surprised to see that the comic shop had moved to a larger space.  Things From Another World was always a stocked but stuffy joint in it's former location.  Now they've got all kinds of room to show off a life size Iron Man and all the toys, games, shirts, merch and comics you can shake a stick at.  As this area is a tourist trap, this is also how comic shops should be, slinging all the things you love to look at and might even buy.  From action figures to statues to mini toys, patches, keychains, playing cards, etc Things has you covered on the merchandise side but also has racks of graphic novels and new comics.  Big Trouble In Little China is already up to # 8!  Yeesh, will have to catch up sometime.

Check out all the goodness from their old store but imagine more of it in a larger space:

Con-Man: Emerald City Comicon

In case you didn't know, Comic/Nerd/Pop Culture Conventions are hot shit.  San Diego Comic-Con welcomed tens of thousands for years before selling out Saturday in 2007.  Since then, it's been a mad rush to be one of the 130,000 attendees.  Local Los Angeles show Comikaze expected 10,000 goers at their inaugural show in 2011 but welcomed 35,000 on it's way to 50,000 attending in 2013.  Not to be outdone, Seattle's Emerald City Comicon has been running strong since 2003 where 2,500 fans showed up.  In 2008, the show moved to the Washington State Convention Center with a crowd of 10,000 and 2013's edition brought in a whopping 60,000 attendees.  The organizers have put together quite an event with Emerald City taking over the entire convention center as well as the local Cinerama movie house hosting flicks/Q&A's then an additional theater for podcasts and more events.  This would be my first year attending but I'd definitely come back again, albeit with much more preparation.

The Convention Center is smack dab in the middle of Downtown Seattle, there's shopping and eating for days nearby.  Things got confusing almost immediately as we didn't prep for the show much and did not realize it would take place over so much of the center.  I didn't see the usual table of flyers and programs nor was there any staff handing them out so I ended up grabbing a discarded one off the top of some cardboard boxes by the trash.  What we came to realize was that the exhibition floor was on one part of the 4th floor, continuing across a bridge to the other side AND on the 3rd floor beneath the North side.  Then all of the celebrity centric panels were on the 6th floor.  Only problem was, there was no direct route to travel between levels.  Escalators marked on the map did not exist in real life so you had to walk across a section, get on an escalator or two then walk somewhere else.  Talking to some veterans, they all let us know that the show had blown up year after year so that lead to some of the confusion.

Show wise, it was great.  A lot of exhibiters with some awesome swag ready for purchase.  Since we were flying, I had to be conscious of my buys since plane space would be a premium.  Besides, we're going to Wonder Con in our backyard soon so I'm pretty sure I can get most of the same stuff.  We ran into artist Tomas Overbai again, whom we met at Comikaze.  He had some new artwork for sale so we bought some postcards featuring Arnold, Nathan Fillion, Robocop and Jean Reno from The Professional.  At another booth I spotted the Thermal Vision Dutch from Predator action figure.  You know, where he's lit up like a rainbow the way a Predator sees him through his mask?  Turns out, the gentleman selling was from Cape and Cowl, a store in Fountain Valley, CA, 5 minutes from my family in Orange County.  We'd seen him at shows and in the store before, it's a sweet spot, check it out.  A few issues of Buckaroo Banzai later and we headed up to the 6th floor to check out the Main Stage where a reading of Empire Strikes Back was in session featuring various voice actors famous for their animated roles.  Next door was also the Celebrity signing area where Michael Biehn, Karl Urban, Ron Perlman, Eliza Dushku, Alan Tudyk and many more were meeting fans.  Expensive ass Richard Dean Anderson didn't have much of a line I saw.

My goal for the day was to secure birthday presents for two of my best friends.  If you're one of them, stop reading right now.  Basically, I hoped to get a sketch from Ed McGuiness but he was all booked up on commissions.  Down the row was former Udon Comics' Street Fighter artist Alvin Lee to save the day.  Lee was super cool and chatted it up with everybody in line while he cranked out full sketches of Dark Phoenix and X-23 with a My Little Pony motif.  Yeah, he didn't get it either and the guy who asked for it didn't know anything about My Little Pony but randomly had an issue of their comic with him.  Don't know what else to say.  While in a perfect world I would have commissioned a piece featuring the Hulk and Doc Samson or Guile and Ryu doing the Predator handshake, Mr. Lee was only doing headshots.  He did throw in a thumbs up for me though as an extra Happy Birthday to my friend.  Across the floor was former Filmation and Masters of the Universe artist Thomas Cook.  I hoped to get a sketch of He-Man for the other gift but Mr. Cook sketches at night and delivers the next day.  I had to settle for a print and birthday greeting.

If 3 show floors, a celebrity signing area and main stage weren't enough, Emerald City also included a Game of Thrones themed art gallery done by artists near and far on the 2nd floor.  Then even more was in the lobby as there was a Lego exhibit featuring renditions of the Batcave, Rivendell and child sized statues of the Avengers among many more.  After nearly 5 hours of checking out the show, we decided to skip out on any panels and hit the streets of Seattle to find some grub and booze.

See ya next year, Emerald City! 

Grudgement Day: George RR Martin

"I mean, The Flash is actually managing to do moderately well,

despite the fact that it is appallingly bad."

     - George RR Martin, circa 1990

Welcome to Grudgement Day, where I call Bullshit on things I just think are Bullshit.  People sometimes think I have an anger issue but I don't.  I just have a critically low tolerance for Bullshit.  Today, let's talk about Game of Thrones author George RR Martin.  In the 80's and 90's, Martin was working in television on shows like The Twilight Zone, Max Headroom and Beauty and The Beast.  While trying to prep a super hero centric show, he made the above disparaging remark about CBS' big budget adaptation of DC Comics' The Flash.  Now, everyone is entitled to their opinion and I'm entitled to mine.  Martin's show never saw the light of day and with his TV career stalling, went back to novels and in 1996, A Game of Thrones was published.  Four novels have followed and in 2007, cable juggernaut HBO purchased the rights and here we are, a month away from the launch of season 4.

I've seen every episode of the show thus far and my lady has read all the books.  While it has it's merits, interesting characters, shocking moments and whatnot, overall you know what?  It's fucking Bullllshittttttt.  Nothing happens.  The entire show is based on who holds the throne and who will control the lands while centering on the death of Eddard Stark, head of the Stark Clan and ruler of Winterfell.  But what has happened in 30 hours of programming?  Has anybody taken revenge for Eddard?  Hell no!  Has the much mentioned battle for the throne happened?  Yeah right!  Stark's bastard son cries, gets sent to a wall, cries, escapes, cries, gets kidnapped by marauders, cries, escapes from them, cries some more.  Stark's youngest daughter is all about taking revenge for her dad but when she's asked by Batman/Ninja like soldiers who she wants dead, does she name anyone responsible for her father's death?  NO!  Then they invite her to come train with them at Batman/Ninja school, you know, where she could learn how to 187 the fools who killed her father and tore her family apart...and she refuses so she can wander around the woods some more.

Another issue with the show is that there's so many God Damme characters in it whose storylines amount to diddly squat.  Squat!  Rob's one friend who takes Winterfell with 20 soldiers in 5 minutes then gets kidnapped by some random guy who cuts his deal off? Ok...Instead of actually moving forward in the Stark or Dragon Queen story line, we just get more characters, more subplots and more BS deaths that take things nowhere.  Hey, what's the difference between Twitter and Game of Thrones?  Twitter only allows 140 characters.  Season 3 needed TWO full episodes just to catch you up on all of the frigging storylines taking place.  When I ask if my issues have been resolved in the 5,000 pages of novel, I'm told the answer is no.  So it's double bullshit.  Sorry I'm not sorry The Flash could actually tell an enjoyable/exciting/funny/dramatic story in each episode with only a few lead characters and a handful of supporting players.  Sorry I'm not sorry that they didn't try to lead the audience on waiting for a payoff that you know will either not be forthcoming or be worth the wait.  But hey, people love to stand in line for 30 minutes for hot dogs and hamburgers yet talk down on McDonald's so I guess they deserve the circle jerking.

Smooches.