Archive for the Jeff Holland Category

« Older Entries

5 Questions I Have RE: The Philly Comic Con Lineup

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on May 23, 2012 by braak

Wizard World Philadelphia‘s coming up again, and after looking at the guest lineup, I have a few follow-up questions:

1)      Do you think if I pay a little extra, I could get a picture where I’m hugging Stan Lee? That’s sort of been a goal of mine for a while.

2)      How, exactly, does one fill up a 45-minute Q&A session with Hayden Panettiere? She didn’t write Heroes. She can’t answer any burning questions left dangling. Hell, the actual writers of Heroes can’t do that because they didn’t give a stone cold fuck in the first place. So…I guess we just ask what it was like on the set of I Love You Beth Cooper, and then she tells us how awesome dolphins are?

3)      Is Chris Hemsworth’s agent just a complete dick or something? Why was this man not informed that at this stage in his career, he’s a couple notches above “appearance at regional comic book convention”?

4)      Do the sagging, aged former pro wrestlers on one side of the autograph alley look at the wrestlers on the other side of the alley and think, “At least I don’t look as bad as THAT guy!”?

5)      Would it be wrong to ask Lisa Gleave (Suitcase #3 – “Deal or No Deal”) if she’d developed some kind of back story for her character? And if she cries herself to sleep every night, or only most nights?

8 Comments »

We Need Gruffer iPhone Commercials

Posted in Jeff Holland, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on May 10, 2012 by braak

“Siri, is it raaayyyning?”

So begins iPhone’s new “Celebrities who use Siri on their iPhones are just as annoying as your friends who use it” campaign.

I mean, at least Samuel L. Jackson uses his as a kitchen aid to set a timer, lest he have his date night ruined with the dreaded HOTspacho. In fact, he actually chastises his phone. He’s arguing with his phone because it asked him what time he’d like to set his timer for. That’s a little odd.

Meanwhile, Zooey Deschanel – an actress who I actually don’t mind, I have told people to watch “New Girl” and everything! – uses hers to not look out a window, to order TOMATO SOUP (aka, hotspacho) delivered, and to listen to cutesy music in her cutesy pajamas instead of cleaning up her roomful of ukuleles and books (books, presumably, about unicorns and rainbows).

(I like to think of it as an inside look at Zooey Deschanel’s deteriorating homelife following her divorce. Apparently Deathcab was the one who knew where in the pantry they kept cans of tomato soup.)  Read more »

16 Comments »

Avengers Ramp-up! ‘Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD’ is Also Hilariously Awful

Posted in Action Movies, comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on May 2, 2012 by braak

To get psyched (well, more psyched) for this weekend’s Avengers, I’ve been spending a little time catching up with the previous films. Y’know, Iron Man 2, Incredible Hulk, Nick Fury…

Oh, have you not watched Nick Fury? Because son, you are in for a treat.

Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD is what happens when a not-all-that-bad-actually script by David Goyer meets the two things that can utterly destroy it: Soap opera actors and a mid-90’s TV-movie budget of I’m assuming about five hundred bucks.

I imagine Goyer’s initial enthusiasm upon hearing his script had gotten picked up (“Oh man, first Blade and now Nick Fury? Things are finally looking up for ol’ Lucky Dave! What’s next, BATMAN?!”) was crushed pretty completely fairly early on, but I’m not sure which piece of information would’ve really done it:

“Well Dave, it’s gonna be on Fox. And even though this format hasn’t worked for Doctor Who or Generation X, they seem to want to keep on trying.”

Or

“And we’ve got David Hasselhoff attached. He’s got some interesting ideas on how to play Fury. Something about ‘crazy, sweaty, a bit drunk, and walking around in this weird bowlegged crouch like he’s got a load in his pants.’”  Read more »

3 Comments »

The ‘Wonder Woman’ pilot is hilariously awful (Part 2)

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on April 26, 2012 by braak

Previously, on Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman stole a dude’s blood, scorned due process, got weepy watching The Notebook, publicly accused someone without any evidence to back up her claim, read her board the riot act after Wonder Woman dolls came back with boobs that were too big, and then I’m pretty sure Elizabeth Hurley made a fellatio pun. ONWARD!

Here we come to part two of “Wonder Woman’s Vigilante Reign of Terror,” where, after stopping in to check on the ill black teen, she pops over to another hall of the hospital, where the Perp From Act I is being kept under guard.

First, she threat-flirts with the tiny police officer. “Do you like my outfit, officer? This outfit opens doors for me.” I don’t even know what her goal is there.

Then she’s grudgingly let in to see the guy by a hilariously bedraggled (oh, how loosened in frustration his neck-tie is!) detective, who literally tells the little cop to “Beat it!” and gives Wonder Woman her “just ten minutes” with the bed-ridden, arrested Perp.

This is where shit goes from a 50/50 hilarious/awkward ratio to full-on 100% Are-You-Kidding-Me.  Read more »

4 Comments »

The ‘Wonder Woman’ pilot is hilariously awful (Part 1)

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , on April 25, 2012 by braak

I was having a bad day. So oh man. It’s a good thing tonight was the night I decided to track down that Wonder Woman pilot that NBC passed on.

Tracked down…oh, I’ve grown wistful of the days you’d actually have to dig around comic-cons for a bootleg VHS of that awful Justice League pilot, or hope to catch a screening of Roger Corman’s  low-budget Fantastic Four movie. Now, failure is so easily accessible.

The geek-kids today have it too easy, is what I’m saying.

Anyway, yes, there is no greater pick-me-up than the Wonder Woman pilot, which almost plays as a parody of superhero TV shows in how Totally Wrong-Headed it all is. And while there are many, many problems, and oh, I will get to them, but the biggest one is this:

David E. Kelley seems to think Wonder Woman is Batman, if Batman was an attractive young woman in a shiny halter-top.  Read more »

3 Comments »

Why ‘Alcatraz’ Deserves a Second Season

Posted in Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , , , on March 30, 2012 by braak

I’ve had the good luck lately to be on the winning team, pop-culture-wise. I don’t have to worry about other people liking The Hunger Games, and ABC seems to have found a genuine hit in Revenge, so I don’t have to be an advocate there, either.

Which means I might’ve gotten a bit lazy, since I figured the mix of J.J. Abrams’ name, the post-House time slot and the 50/50 combo of cop-procedural/time-travel mythology would’ve been enough to get people to stay with Alcatraz, without me constantly banging a drum in a vain attempt to get people to tune in again.

Of course, I figured wrong. And so Alcatraz wraps up its first and potentially only season, with a ton of unanswered questions, because people aren’t generally trained on how to watch television these days. Which is to say, the rule is: “You gotta power through the first six episodes, because they’re probably not gonna be all that good, but there’s potential, which usually only gets reached in season 2, so please be patient.”

(With the caveat: “…If you liked the pilot at all.” Which is my way of saying, “You don’t have to support every damn thing just because you hope it’ll get better than crap.” Which is really just my way of saying, “Grimm is stupid.”)  Read more »

7 Comments »

We Have Seen ‘Ghost Rider 2′ and Now You Must Feel Our Hate

Posted in Action Movies, comic books, Jeff Holland, reviews, Threat Quality with tags , , , on February 21, 2012 by braak

Haaaboy. Ghost Rider 2. OK, let’s just get into this, with a series of thoughts on it, since I don’t feel it’s worth a whole review-type post.

To say Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is better than its predecessor (which the movie only barely concedes actually happened – it even rejiggers the scene where Johnny Blaze sells his soul so that it looks…well, so it looks more like if Neveldine/Taylor had done the first film featuring a guy who is not Peter Fonda Satan) isn’t just damning with faint praise. It’s implying that the film doesn’t have a whole host of its own problems, so I guess if GR1 got a 1 out of 5, then GR2 gets a 1.5 out of 5.

That’s because the couple things it does right ARE massive improvements over the first film, but even that’s debatable (in that Braak and I debated over whether or not they were actually better).

Non-arguable point 1: Setting the film on the desolate, barren roads of Somewhere In Eastern Europe is much closer to the spirit of the character than having him drive through Dallas or Houston or wherever the first one was set, and having Ghost Rider deal with city cops, which is just kinda stupid.  Read more »

8 Comments »

Ghost Rider’s Satan: Best Dad Ever?

Posted in Threat Quality, Jeff Holland, comic books, Action Movies with tags , , , on February 20, 2012 by braak

In preparation for tonight’s surely 100% positive viewing of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, I decided to sit myself down and watch 2007’s Ghost Rider, just to make sure there weren’t any nuances of the narrative that I’d failed to notice last time.

I ALSO decided to skip past the prologue, wherein a young man learns his agent thinks he looks like a young Nicolas Cage enjoys a carefree life in the carnival, and also fast-forward past any moments that aren’t necessary to the plot – which meant pretty much every scene involving Eva Mendez and Donal Logue.

This meant I watched a 45-minute cut of Ghost Rider the other night. And…it still wasn’t all that good.  Read more »

Leave A Comment »

Gullibility, abortionplexes and the skinwich

Posted in crotchety ranting, Jeff Holland, Politics, Threat Quality with tags , , , , on February 17, 2012 by braak

The recent news that a Louisiana congressman posted the Onion “Abortionplex” story to his Facebook page, believing it to be an actual thing that Planned Parenthood is up to, rankled me a little.

I mean, it’s one thing for your great aunt to forward a story outraged over the wasteful spending of Obama’s pledge to give everyone a parrot, but when this is the level of critical thinking employed by an elected member of government, that’s quite another thing.

Please note: Louisiana currently ranks 47th in education. So it does stand to reason that even their elected officials are coming from a background of some of the worst education in the country.  Read more »

3 Comments »

‘Before Watchmen’ – Holland’s Take

Posted in comic books, Jeff Holland, Threat Quality with tags , , , on February 8, 2012 by braak

I had written a three-pager about the announcement that DC was moving ahead with prequels to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic work, but honestly, there’s no sense bloviating about it.

Not about Alan Moore’s relative moral high ground when so much of his work is predicated on previously-existing characters himself, whether DC’s within its rights, as owner of the copyright, to publish what they damn please since they are in the business of making money, what Jack Kirby has to do with any of this, the ins-and-outs of creator-ownership contracts, or…any of it, really.

All this boils down to is: Don’t buy it. See? See how simple it all is?  Read more »

4 Comments »

« Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,014 other followers