By Chris and Jordan
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review to be named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
The Event is a comic mainstay that brings characters from multiple books together to handle a crisis too big for any of them to tackle alone. Events are huge sales generators and generally drive the universe wide narrative forward in inventive and important ways. As such, comic book companies tend to rely on them fairly often, up to yearly. Here are ten events from the last ten years worth remembering.
10. Secret Invasion (Marvel)
Following the destruction of the Skrull Empire in Annihilation (scroll down for more on that event), a slow and steady infiltration of Earth by the Skrulls occurred behind the scenes in several Marvel books, before the invasion becomes clear and it is revealed that many beloved members of the Marvel Universe have been replaced by Skrull impersonators. Watching some of the world's greatest heroes deal with these seeming betrayals and with their failure to prevent a full scale invasion of Earth is compelling stuff, but Secret Invasion is most memorable for the huge changes it created in the Marvel Universe. Tony Stark is removed as head of S.H.I.E.L.D. following his failures, the organization itself is shut down, and former Green Goblin Norman Osborn becomes the head of National Security, ushering in the next era of Marvel Comics, known as the Dark Reign. None of the great story lines contained under that moniker would have been possible without Secret Invasion, and while the story itself is often less than stellar, what came after makes it a vital event to experience in order to understand the current state of the Marvel Universe.
9. 52 (DC)
Directly following the mediocre Crisis on Infinite Earths and filling in the "missing year" created by the one year jump all books took after that event, 52 was a landmark event if only for its format, which had a new issue released every week for a year. The longest weekly comic book in history, this was the first time DC had tried to do a weekly comic since the 1980's, and in that sense, the series was vastly successful. A sprawling epic that spans the globe and spotlights a huge ensemble of lesser characters from throughout the DCU, 52 begins with the disappearance of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, who have retired their costumed identities after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. While there are duds among the multiple plotlines the series intercuts between (the subplots involving Animal Man, Starfire, Adam Strange, and the entire Black Adam saga are all kind of boring), the series gives some smaller characters, like Booster Gold, Ralph Diby, Renee Montoya a chance to shine and new roles to play in the DCU. Wildly ambitious and mostly very successful, 52 played so well with its ensemble of minor characters, we almost didn't miss the Big Three during their absence. Almost.
8. Civil War (Marvel)
The idea of splitting Marvel's super heroes down the middle and having them actually battle each other sounds like the stuff of childhood fantasy, a "Who would win: Captain America or Iron Man?" hypothetical writ large and writ real. It was an ambitious idea and an exciting one. After the deaths of a young, fame hungry super hero team the New Warriors results in the destruction of the city of Stamford, Connecticut the government decides to pass the Super Human Registration Act, which requires all super powered individuals to register with the government, revealing their identities and becoming paid employees akin to police officers. Iron Man believes this is reasonable and supports the act following its passage. Captain America sees it as a violation of civil liberties and the privacy of those who need to keep their identities secret to protect family or friends. And so the sides are chosen for a civil war in the super hero community. While the pro-Registration side is never as fleshed out or believable as the anti-registration side, and Iron Man in particular comes across as almost villainous at times, Civil War makes this list for originality and daring, even if the execution often lacked a bit compared to the other events on this list.
7. Blackest Night (DC)
Death is fairly circular in superhero comics, a fact that can be annoying at times as we discussed in our Top 10 Characters in Comics Who Should Have Stayed Dead list. Blackest Night attempts to deal with death in comics directly, bringing legions of the dead back to life and causing a fight between the living and the dead for the fate of the Universe. After being built to in the pages of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps for nearly five years, the event encompasses all of the DC Universe as dead superheroes begin to rise as Black Lanterns. Following the creation of seven armies, each representing a color and an aspect of the emotional spectrum, the event introduces Black Lanterns who represent death and White Lanterns, who represent Life, and culminates in a final battle that pits some of the greatest heroes and villains from within the DC Universe against those they have killed and failed to save. Smart, suspenseful, and action packed, Blackest Night is an event that did much more than just drive up sales. It was an event that mattered.
6. Annihilation (Marvel)
Set in Marvel's criminally underrated cosmic line, Annihilation brings together underused characters like Nova, Drax the Destroyer, Silver Surfer, Super-Skrull, and Thanos into an epic battle that changed the face of the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe and lead to the destruction of the Skrull Empire. Complex, inventive, and massive in scope, Annihilation is everything you could ever want out of a cosmic event.
5. Messiah CompleX (Marvel)
Following another mediocre event, House of M, only 198 mutants remain and hope for the species is at an all time low. So when the first mutant birth since M-Day occurs, a race to possess the child between the X-Men, the Purifiers, the Acolytes, The Marauders, The Reavers, and Predator X begins and grows increasingly dangerous as each side increases in desperation. Desperate to preserve what he sees as the only chance for the continuation of his species, Cyclops wrests control of the X-Men from Professor X, creates an assault team authorized to do whatever is necessary to rescue the child, and prepares to violate his own personal code to ensure the child's safety. The race against time builds to a final conflict between Rogue and Mystique, and leads to the death of Professor X and the dissolution of the X-Men. Taut, tense, and propulsive, Messiah CompleX put Cyclops in charge of the X-Men and showed him just how far he would have to go to keep his race going, a problem he has been struggling with ever since.
4. The Thanos Imperative (Marvel)
While the Guardians of the Galaxy debate whether to kill Thanos, Nova pursues the false Quaasar to the Fault--a new rift in space-time that opens up the doorway to a universe where death itself is extinct. Dealing with the possible destruction of the entire universe, and with questions about Thanos and his place within that universe, The Thanos Imperative again demonstrates the strength of Marvel's cosmic stories, and shows that they can be as layered and complex as their superhero-centered counterparts.
3. Second Coming (Marvel)
A follow up to Messiah CompleX and the less successful Messiah War, second coming has the now teenaged Hope returning from the future with Cable to take her place among the X-Men. Of course this is not as easy as it sounds, especially with Bastion and his associates and X-enemies Bolivar Trask, Steven Lang, William Stryker, Graydon Creed and Cameron Hodge beginning their final campaign to ensure the complete extinction of the mutant species. For much of Second Coming there is a palpable feeling that this is actually the darkest period in mutant history, which is a huge achievement considering how long the books have been running. As the X-Men struggle to keep Hope, and their entire species alive, Cyclops is forced to make moral compromises, reveal his creation of the X-Force (which has been killing enemies of mutantkind under his orders), deal with the deaths of several mutants including his old friend Nightcrawler, and finally come up against an impenetrable sphere that encases all of the mutants and most of San Francisco, and is slowly filling up with Sentinels who come from a mutant-less future and hope to ensure that future starts immediately. Second Coming starts strong and never stops, delivering one of the most compelling and memorable events of not just the last decade, but of all time.
2. Identity Crisis (DC)
Following the murder of Sue Dibny, wife of Ralph "Elongated Man" Dibny, the Justice League rallies to find her killer, with Doctor Light a prime suspect from the first. Dibny and Batman, thetwo most prominent detectives in the DCU, investigate the murder as the wives and families of other super heroes are targeted for execution. Identity Crisis highlights the importance of investigation in the DC Universe and also delves into an important ethical quandary, as various members of the Justice League agree to wipe the minds and alter the personalities of villains to force their reformation. Featuring the death of Jack Drake and the revelation that Batman's memory has been wiped by this contingent, Identity Crisis is a thrilling examination of the lengths these heroes are willing to go to in order to protect their own, and whether they are going too far to retain the moniker of hero.
1.Final Crisis (DC)
The final chapter in a trilogy of crises, Final Crisis is Grant Morrison's love letter to the DC Universe, beginning with the death of a God and ending with the apparent death of an icon. Following a plot by Darkseid to destroy reality, Final Crisis features the "death" of Batman, the release of the anti-life equation, and a final battle involving Supermen from throughout the multiverse, making it an endlessly fascinating and phenomenal journey through the past, present, and future of one of the most prominent comics companies and the lives of the characters it has created.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
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Showing posts with label Random Pop Culture Top Ten List. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random Pop Culture Top Ten List. Show all posts
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Random Pop Culture Top Ten List: Top 10 TV Shows to Make it Past the Season Five Mark Without an Abhorrent Drop in Quality
By Jordan and Sam
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
There is an unwritten rule of television that five seasons is kind of the perfect length for a television show. Less than that may leave the show feeling incomplete, with remaining loose ends or a rushed feel to it (look, for example, at two cancelled shows, Arrested Development, which is near-perfect but feels rushed toward its end, and Dollhouse which aimed to run five but was cancelled after two and forced to shove four seasons of development into its 13 episode second season). More than five, and the show tends to run off the rails, jumping the shark or losing track of its narrative structure and eventually tarnishing its legacy (look to Scrubs, 24, How I Met Your Mother, Dexter, which will soon join this crowd with its sixth season, or any number of others for examples of this). Plenty of shows have lasted exactly five seasons, and end right when they should have (like The Wire, Six Feet Under, and Angel). Here are a list of ten shows who made it over this mystical lump and kept producing at the same quality for seasons afterwards.
10. Saturday Night Live
The longest running show on the list could have very well could have ended after its first few seasons and secured a spot amongst the most influential comedy programs ever. But Saturday Night Live was brilliant in that it's built to have a rotating cast of performers and writers which has made it a still relevant franchise over 35 years after its debut. Some may point to that original cast that had the likes of John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner as the best the show ever had. But you can't scoff at a show that has produced stars like Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Bill Murray and Will Ferrell. Years after its fifth season it has continued to produce some of the industry's biggest stars (for better or for worse) and while fans may always lament the quality of the show, it still remains an important part of the comedy landscape. Whether it's covering an election or lampooning a celebrity, SNL has remained an overall funny show throughout the years. Today, the show is typically hit or miss but overall it's been an up year. The cast boasts some excellent performers like Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig and it makes us glad that this show will always be live from New York.
9. The West Wing
This is a slightly controverisal pick for the list, as many fans of the show will tell you it was never as good after Aaron Sorkin left at the end of season four. And they aren't really wrong. The West Wing was at its worst during season five, when John Wells turned in a very dark season of the show, both literally and figuratively (the government shut down, Josh almost quit, Donna was hurt when a convoy was attacked, and the directors seemingly didn't know how to light the set after Tommy Schlamme left). Yet the show had a huge comeback in its last two seasons, focusing on the upcoming presidential election, a battle of wits and wills between Congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). It may have had an off-year, but any real fan of the show will recognize that sending Josh out to run a campaign, turning in a live debate episode that felt more energetic and informative than any actual presidential debate, and giving a loving goodbye to the characters we'd loved for seven years (except Toby, who got kind of screwed) kept the quality of the show plenty high as it went on in years. But seriously, CJ becoming Chief of Staff was just ridiculous.
8. South Park
When South Park debuted in 1997 it was unlike anything people had seen on television. It had the road laid down by The Simpsons and took the animated sit-com to the next logical step. Incredibly crass, foul-mouthed and often incredibly violent, South Park never pulled any punches. A tribute to the shows strength is that it continues to this day and not only did it avoid an "abhorrent drop in quality" it got better after its first five seasons. We've been introduced to more fantastic characters (and had some great development from stalwarts like Stan's Dad, who has become one of the greatest characters in the show's later seasons), have had a movie and even switched the sex of a central character--South Park still works. Because of the shows quick turnaround, masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone can make sharp satirical episodes about very current events, something that only Saturday Night Live was able to do before (and they didn't even have to animate anything). Talking shit and a Jesus Christ that's packing heat to save Sant-y Clause's balls is now par for the course. The only times we would say that South Park strays from hilarity is when it gets lost in it's episode's concept. But there's no reason to think that South Park can't continue in the path of The Simpsons and continue to pump out new, and high quality episodes for years to come.
7. Frasier
Spinning out of Cheers, which had just ended a pretty solid 11 year run (and would have made this list if only Shelley Long's Diane Chambers hadn't left at the end of season five, signifying the end of the show's golden years), there was nothing to imply that Frasier would be in it for the long haul. Yet a change of locale, a great premise that found neurotic psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer, who won four Emmys for the show) hosting a call-in radio show and trying to live with his recently retired and completely uncultured father (John Mahoney), while continuing the endless rivalry with his even more high strung brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce, who also racked up four Emmys during the show's run and was nominated for EVERY SINGLE SEASON), who was in love with their father's physical therapist Daphne (Jane Leeves). One of the smartest comedies of all time, Frasier won a record five Best Comedy series Emmys in a row for its first five seasons, but the show managed to stay just as good for six more years after that, eventually winning 37 Emmys and finishing with a last season so strong, it boggles the mind to think this was the eleventh time the show had pulled it off. Stellar from start to finish, Frasier managed to beat the "five season curse" and then some.
6. Futurama
From the mind that brought you The Simpsons and the mind that wrote many episodes for the show, Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's Futurama always had the label of being the classic show's little brother. But Futurama did something that many people forget-it was better than The Simpsons. Let me clear that up a bit. It was better than The Simpsons when both were on the air. But Futurama holds a distinct honor for this list. It was cancelled. A tribute to the quality of the show is that it had a strong (not Family Guy strong mind you) DVD following and eventually the green light had been given for three Futurama direct-to-DVD movies. This sent fans into a tizzy. A show that had been legitmately dead in the water, had been given a second chance. To make things better the show would return to surpass its five season mark on Comedy Central. The movies were later broken up and shown as "episodes" on the channel but it was the summer return of the show that was really a pleasant surprise. There were rumblings that there would be a scab voice cast brought in because of contract disputes with Comedy Central, but the right thing was done where Billy West, John DiMaggio, Katy Segal and the rest of the original cast was brought back. Thankfully, while the show had to shed some staff to save money, the quality was there. Last season brought back that mix of humor and heart the show does so well. And if you disagree with us you can bite our shiny metal asses.
5. I Love Lucy
Perhaps the first truly great television show, I Love Lucy set the standard against which every subsequent sitcom would be measured. Running nine seasons and 194episodes (if the revamped, hour long Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour which kept the same cast, characters, and setting is counted), the show never had an off season and very rarely even an off episode. Kept fresh by a changing premise that had The Ricardos and The Mertzes spending a season in Hollywood, trekking across Europe, and finally moving from New York City to rural Connecticut, the show never abandoned its ace comedic set up that had Lucille Ball scheming to get into the show, out of a jam, or into contact with her favorite celebrities, with some of the greatest physical comedy of all time. The show's sixth season, and the final in the half hour format features some of the show's best and most famous moments, including "Lucy Meets Orson Welles," "Lucy and Superman," and the all-time classic "Lucy Does the Tango" (which boasts the longest studio laugh in sitcom history) in which Ball is forced to practice the titular dance with a blouse full of eggs. Even when the show doubled its length (and did far fewer episodes a season as a result) it still managed to turn out some unforgettable comedy, including the Lucy-Ricky origin story "Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana," the fantastic guest spot "Milton Berle Hides Out at the Ricardos," and the hilarious "The Ricardos Go To Japan" which finds Lucy and Ethel dressed as Geishas. The show is so classic and influential, it has literally never stopped airing over its 60-year history, and no matter what season an episode comes from, it is almost guaranteed to be hilarious.
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
For a little while there, it looked like Buffy the Vampire Slayer was only going to get five seasons, when the WB refused to renew the show's contract. In a bit of a bind as he looked to continue the show elsewhere, show creator Joss Whedon prepared for the show to end in case it was never picked up by another network. In one the the series' best episodes, the season five finale "The Gift," (SPOLIER ALERT) the show came to a tentative end with Buffy's sacrificial swan dive off of a tower to close a tear in reality. His protagonist now dead, Whedon got a two year pick up from UPN to bring the show back. Some fans will argue that Buffy was never as good again, and while season six is admittedly pitch black and nihilistic for much of its run and season seven occasionally cavalier about its plotting and mythology, the show also turned in some of its best episodes in the last two seasons, including the stellar musical "Once More With Feeling," the experimental "Normal Again," the appropriately dour "Conversations with Dead People," and the stellar examination of parental relationships and their tendency to form lasting scars, "Lies My Parents Told Me." The Buffy the Vampire Slayer that aired on UPN was different than what had come before, but rather than a marked drop in quality, the last two seasons of the show were bold enough to take some big risks, and occasionally reaped fruitful rewards for their efforts.
3. The Sopranos
As much as I Love Lucy set the standard every sitcom would measure itself against, The Sopranos has become the gold standard of what a serialized drama should try to be. Fans of the show's violent gangster drama side were often disappointed with the back half of the show's run, which was often less whacking and more quiet examination of moral ruination, yet the show's sixth (and longest, clocking in at 21 episodes in two partS) season is an essential part of its narrative, making some bold choices and ultimately ensuring that The Sopranos will forever hover near the top of "best television show of all time" lists. Whether its Tony's time in limbo, Vito Spatafore's brief moments of freedom in New England, or the all out war between the families, the show's final season had something for every type of fan: plenty of psychological symbolism, tests of moral rectitude, subtle character interactions, and bloody mob violence to keep any and every fan of the show happy with at least parts of what the last season was doing.
2. Seinfeld
Contrary to many of the shows on this list, Seinfeld was actually in the midst of its prime when it passed the season five mark. Sure, season four gave us the plot about Jerry and George pitching a show very similar to the one we were watching, and season five had "The Puffy Shirt" and "The Dinner Party," but the show was still primed to turn out excellent episodes for the remainder of its nine season run. The last four seasons of the show include such classics as "The Fusili Jerry," "The Soup Nazi," "The Bizarro Jerry," "The Yada Yada," "The Muffin Tops," "The Merv Griffin Show, "The Frogger," and "The Puerto Rican Day." Not only did Seinfeld stay as good after season five, there's a pretty great chance your favorite episode of the show came from its last four seasons.
1. The Simpsons
The Simpsons has an interesting palce on this list in that it did absolutely maintain (and depending on who you ask, even exceed) the quality from its first five seasons but at the same time, no show has been more complained about in terms of a drop in quality. When The Simpsons hit season 10 or so, fans declared worst season/episode/Homer-Marge story/continuity error EVER! But for that first decade or so it was the tighestest comedy writing in television history as far as I (Sam) am concerned. Season 6, or the season where things often go to hell for TV shows, brought fans one of the most storied pair of episodes in Simpsons history, Who Shot Mr. Burns Part I and Part II to start the seventh season. Take away seasons 6-10 and you'd make many nerds convulse in rage. Say what you will about seasons 11-48 (just wait) but those first ten rival any comedy in television history.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Got ideas for future installments of Random Pop Culture Top Ten List? Well let us know! Follow us on twitter @reviewtobenamed (follow us here), or shoot us an e-mail at reviewtobenamed@gmail.com.
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
There is an unwritten rule of television that five seasons is kind of the perfect length for a television show. Less than that may leave the show feeling incomplete, with remaining loose ends or a rushed feel to it (look, for example, at two cancelled shows, Arrested Development, which is near-perfect but feels rushed toward its end, and Dollhouse which aimed to run five but was cancelled after two and forced to shove four seasons of development into its 13 episode second season). More than five, and the show tends to run off the rails, jumping the shark or losing track of its narrative structure and eventually tarnishing its legacy (look to Scrubs, 24, How I Met Your Mother, Dexter, which will soon join this crowd with its sixth season, or any number of others for examples of this). Plenty of shows have lasted exactly five seasons, and end right when they should have (like The Wire, Six Feet Under, and Angel). Here are a list of ten shows who made it over this mystical lump and kept producing at the same quality for seasons afterwards.
10. Saturday Night Live
The longest running show on the list could have very well could have ended after its first few seasons and secured a spot amongst the most influential comedy programs ever. But Saturday Night Live was brilliant in that it's built to have a rotating cast of performers and writers which has made it a still relevant franchise over 35 years after its debut. Some may point to that original cast that had the likes of John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner as the best the show ever had. But you can't scoff at a show that has produced stars like Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Bill Murray and Will Ferrell. Years after its fifth season it has continued to produce some of the industry's biggest stars (for better or for worse) and while fans may always lament the quality of the show, it still remains an important part of the comedy landscape. Whether it's covering an election or lampooning a celebrity, SNL has remained an overall funny show throughout the years. Today, the show is typically hit or miss but overall it's been an up year. The cast boasts some excellent performers like Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig and it makes us glad that this show will always be live from New York.
9. The West Wing
This is a slightly controverisal pick for the list, as many fans of the show will tell you it was never as good after Aaron Sorkin left at the end of season four. And they aren't really wrong. The West Wing was at its worst during season five, when John Wells turned in a very dark season of the show, both literally and figuratively (the government shut down, Josh almost quit, Donna was hurt when a convoy was attacked, and the directors seemingly didn't know how to light the set after Tommy Schlamme left). Yet the show had a huge comeback in its last two seasons, focusing on the upcoming presidential election, a battle of wits and wills between Congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). It may have had an off-year, but any real fan of the show will recognize that sending Josh out to run a campaign, turning in a live debate episode that felt more energetic and informative than any actual presidential debate, and giving a loving goodbye to the characters we'd loved for seven years (except Toby, who got kind of screwed) kept the quality of the show plenty high as it went on in years. But seriously, CJ becoming Chief of Staff was just ridiculous.
8. South Park
When South Park debuted in 1997 it was unlike anything people had seen on television. It had the road laid down by The Simpsons and took the animated sit-com to the next logical step. Incredibly crass, foul-mouthed and often incredibly violent, South Park never pulled any punches. A tribute to the shows strength is that it continues to this day and not only did it avoid an "abhorrent drop in quality" it got better after its first five seasons. We've been introduced to more fantastic characters (and had some great development from stalwarts like Stan's Dad, who has become one of the greatest characters in the show's later seasons), have had a movie and even switched the sex of a central character--South Park still works. Because of the shows quick turnaround, masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone can make sharp satirical episodes about very current events, something that only Saturday Night Live was able to do before (and they didn't even have to animate anything). Talking shit and a Jesus Christ that's packing heat to save Sant-y Clause's balls is now par for the course. The only times we would say that South Park strays from hilarity is when it gets lost in it's episode's concept. But there's no reason to think that South Park can't continue in the path of The Simpsons and continue to pump out new, and high quality episodes for years to come.
7. Frasier
Spinning out of Cheers, which had just ended a pretty solid 11 year run (and would have made this list if only Shelley Long's Diane Chambers hadn't left at the end of season five, signifying the end of the show's golden years), there was nothing to imply that Frasier would be in it for the long haul. Yet a change of locale, a great premise that found neurotic psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer, who won four Emmys for the show) hosting a call-in radio show and trying to live with his recently retired and completely uncultured father (John Mahoney), while continuing the endless rivalry with his even more high strung brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce, who also racked up four Emmys during the show's run and was nominated for EVERY SINGLE SEASON), who was in love with their father's physical therapist Daphne (Jane Leeves). One of the smartest comedies of all time, Frasier won a record five Best Comedy series Emmys in a row for its first five seasons, but the show managed to stay just as good for six more years after that, eventually winning 37 Emmys and finishing with a last season so strong, it boggles the mind to think this was the eleventh time the show had pulled it off. Stellar from start to finish, Frasier managed to beat the "five season curse" and then some.
6. Futurama
From the mind that brought you The Simpsons and the mind that wrote many episodes for the show, Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's Futurama always had the label of being the classic show's little brother. But Futurama did something that many people forget-it was better than The Simpsons. Let me clear that up a bit. It was better than The Simpsons when both were on the air. But Futurama holds a distinct honor for this list. It was cancelled. A tribute to the quality of the show is that it had a strong (not Family Guy strong mind you) DVD following and eventually the green light had been given for three Futurama direct-to-DVD movies. This sent fans into a tizzy. A show that had been legitmately dead in the water, had been given a second chance. To make things better the show would return to surpass its five season mark on Comedy Central. The movies were later broken up and shown as "episodes" on the channel but it was the summer return of the show that was really a pleasant surprise. There were rumblings that there would be a scab voice cast brought in because of contract disputes with Comedy Central, but the right thing was done where Billy West, John DiMaggio, Katy Segal and the rest of the original cast was brought back. Thankfully, while the show had to shed some staff to save money, the quality was there. Last season brought back that mix of humor and heart the show does so well. And if you disagree with us you can bite our shiny metal asses.
5. I Love Lucy
Perhaps the first truly great television show, I Love Lucy set the standard against which every subsequent sitcom would be measured. Running nine seasons and 194episodes (if the revamped, hour long Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour which kept the same cast, characters, and setting is counted), the show never had an off season and very rarely even an off episode. Kept fresh by a changing premise that had The Ricardos and The Mertzes spending a season in Hollywood, trekking across Europe, and finally moving from New York City to rural Connecticut, the show never abandoned its ace comedic set up that had Lucille Ball scheming to get into the show, out of a jam, or into contact with her favorite celebrities, with some of the greatest physical comedy of all time. The show's sixth season, and the final in the half hour format features some of the show's best and most famous moments, including "Lucy Meets Orson Welles," "Lucy and Superman," and the all-time classic "Lucy Does the Tango" (which boasts the longest studio laugh in sitcom history) in which Ball is forced to practice the titular dance with a blouse full of eggs. Even when the show doubled its length (and did far fewer episodes a season as a result) it still managed to turn out some unforgettable comedy, including the Lucy-Ricky origin story "Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana," the fantastic guest spot "Milton Berle Hides Out at the Ricardos," and the hilarious "The Ricardos Go To Japan" which finds Lucy and Ethel dressed as Geishas. The show is so classic and influential, it has literally never stopped airing over its 60-year history, and no matter what season an episode comes from, it is almost guaranteed to be hilarious.
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
For a little while there, it looked like Buffy the Vampire Slayer was only going to get five seasons, when the WB refused to renew the show's contract. In a bit of a bind as he looked to continue the show elsewhere, show creator Joss Whedon prepared for the show to end in case it was never picked up by another network. In one the the series' best episodes, the season five finale "The Gift," (SPOLIER ALERT) the show came to a tentative end with Buffy's sacrificial swan dive off of a tower to close a tear in reality. His protagonist now dead, Whedon got a two year pick up from UPN to bring the show back. Some fans will argue that Buffy was never as good again, and while season six is admittedly pitch black and nihilistic for much of its run and season seven occasionally cavalier about its plotting and mythology, the show also turned in some of its best episodes in the last two seasons, including the stellar musical "Once More With Feeling," the experimental "Normal Again," the appropriately dour "Conversations with Dead People," and the stellar examination of parental relationships and their tendency to form lasting scars, "Lies My Parents Told Me." The Buffy the Vampire Slayer that aired on UPN was different than what had come before, but rather than a marked drop in quality, the last two seasons of the show were bold enough to take some big risks, and occasionally reaped fruitful rewards for their efforts.
3. The Sopranos
As much as I Love Lucy set the standard every sitcom would measure itself against, The Sopranos has become the gold standard of what a serialized drama should try to be. Fans of the show's violent gangster drama side were often disappointed with the back half of the show's run, which was often less whacking and more quiet examination of moral ruination, yet the show's sixth (and longest, clocking in at 21 episodes in two partS) season is an essential part of its narrative, making some bold choices and ultimately ensuring that The Sopranos will forever hover near the top of "best television show of all time" lists. Whether its Tony's time in limbo, Vito Spatafore's brief moments of freedom in New England, or the all out war between the families, the show's final season had something for every type of fan: plenty of psychological symbolism, tests of moral rectitude, subtle character interactions, and bloody mob violence to keep any and every fan of the show happy with at least parts of what the last season was doing.
2. Seinfeld
Contrary to many of the shows on this list, Seinfeld was actually in the midst of its prime when it passed the season five mark. Sure, season four gave us the plot about Jerry and George pitching a show very similar to the one we were watching, and season five had "The Puffy Shirt" and "The Dinner Party," but the show was still primed to turn out excellent episodes for the remainder of its nine season run. The last four seasons of the show include such classics as "The Fusili Jerry," "The Soup Nazi," "The Bizarro Jerry," "The Yada Yada," "The Muffin Tops," "The Merv Griffin Show, "The Frogger," and "The Puerto Rican Day." Not only did Seinfeld stay as good after season five, there's a pretty great chance your favorite episode of the show came from its last four seasons.
1. The Simpsons
The Simpsons has an interesting palce on this list in that it did absolutely maintain (and depending on who you ask, even exceed) the quality from its first five seasons but at the same time, no show has been more complained about in terms of a drop in quality. When The Simpsons hit season 10 or so, fans declared worst season/episode/Homer-Marge story/continuity error EVER! But for that first decade or so it was the tighestest comedy writing in television history as far as I (Sam) am concerned. Season 6, or the season where things often go to hell for TV shows, brought fans one of the most storied pair of episodes in Simpsons history, Who Shot Mr. Burns Part I and Part II to start the seventh season. Take away seasons 6-10 and you'd make many nerds convulse in rage. Say what you will about seasons 11-48 (just wait) but those first ten rival any comedy in television history.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Got ideas for future installments of Random Pop Culture Top Ten List? Well let us know! Follow us on twitter @reviewtobenamed (follow us here), or shoot us an e-mail at reviewtobenamed@gmail.com.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Random Pop Culture Top Ten List: Top 10 Pop Culture Commentators You Should Be Reading (not counting us)
By Jordan and Sam
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
We here at Review to Be Named are admitted purveyors of pop culture commentary. We write reviews and features examining an ever increasing segment of our cultural landscape. But before we are cultural commentators (amateur though we may be) we are fans of pop culture, and of great pop culture commentaary. This website wouldn't exist were we not fans of cultural commentary and criticism, and as a result, we all read a lot of it. Assuming that you, our loyal readers, are also big fans of great criticism and commentary, we present for your pop culture edification a list of those we consider the pinnacle of pop culture commentary. Enjoy them, as we do.
10. Steve Hyden, The AV Club
Recently named the music editor at The AV Club, Hyden has been writing music reviews for the site for quite some time, and recently completed a fantastic feature, Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation? a detailed journey through the 1990's alternative rock movement from its early '90s grunge fueled rise through Woodstock '99 when some argue the movmement literally went down in flames. Mixing wry observations with personal anecdotes about his own childhood living in a small town and his growing love for music as the movement he explores began to lose its soul, the feature is a fantastic musical journey and a great complement to Hyden's music criticism. With that feature out of the way and his new position secured, we hope to see great things from him in the months to come.
9. Chris Hardwick, The Nerdist Podcast
Chris Hardwick hosts The Nerdist Podcast along with his buddies comedians Jonah Ray and Matt Mira. These three fray from the rest of our list in that they’re not critics but they do devote two hours a week to pop-culture worship. Since the podcast is hosted by a bunch of comics it’s no surprise that most of the podcasts are with comedic guests. But The Nerdist makes the list for all the pop-culture goodness that they recognize that does not fall in the comic category. The likes of director Rob Zombie, former Star Trek child star (and childhood friend of Hardwick) Wil Wheaton, The Muppets and The Mythbusters (!) all have been guests to the show and marvel at the wonderfully nerdy pop-culture obsessed world we live in. The show now runs twice a week with a guest-less podcast one day (or as they refer to those shows, “host-full”) and are joined by a squee-inducing guest the next. The Nerdist Podcast lets pop-culture fans feel like they're hanging out in their living room with hilarious comics and awesome guests.
8. Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker
Having written for Slant, egotrip, Hit It And Quit It, The New York Post, The Village Voice, and The New York Times, before settling into his current position at The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones is an electric and passionate music critic who manages to pin down his opinions with shocking incitefulness and a brilliant knowledge of the musical form. In addition to his reviews of music (which are brilliant pieces of criticism whether you agree with him or not), Frere-Jones also comments on the state of music in general, having written excellent pieces on the future of hip hop, the state of the modern indie band and how it has diverged from "classic" conceptions of rock and roll (in his controversial and excellent piece "A Paler Shade of White"), and pretty much infinite amount of other subjects on music and the culture that creates and consumes it.
7. Noel Murray, The AV Club
Ok, we recognize this list is chock full of writers from The AV Club, but that's only because the site is so excellent and so diverse. Noel Murray is a film and television critic that ranks among the best in the field. Currently writing weekly reviews of Fringe and The Chicago Code, along with retrospective reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (which any Whedon fan should consider must reads), weekly film reviews, and A Very Special Episode, an examination of television episodes that represent something distinct or fascinating about the medium in general. Endlessly academic in his pursuit of pop culture and extremely prolific without losing an ounce of his analytic quality, Noel Murray is a man of ideas with the eloquence to present them well.
6. AO Scott, The New York Times
The chief film critic for The New York Times since 2004, AO Scott has also served as part of the most recent hosting duo on At the Movies (alongside the also excellent Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune prior to the show's unfortunate cancellation last summer). Scott's film criticism ranks among the best you can find today, and is an absolute go-to for anyone looking to read intelligent, well thought out opinions on any new release. But beyond writing excellent reviews, Scott aalso takes up important issues in cinema on a regular basis, whether he's debating co-chief critic Manohla Dargis on the crisis in modern film, examining the old classics and analyzing what they meant then and what they still mean today, or looking at whether Awards ceremonies matter, Scott is always at the top of his game and at the forefront of smart, passionate film criticism in our age.
5. Todd VanDerWerff, The AV Club
While Alan Sepinwall may be more important in the grand scheme of television criticism, Todd VanDerWerff oversees the most extensive television recap site on the web in AV Club’s “TV Club”. Of course VanDerWerff doesn’t write a recap for every single show but he picks up the holes in the exhaustive list if someone is unavailable. Currently he is taking on the likes of Community, Archer, Glee, and Lights Out, as well as doing justice classic episodes of the X-Files and Spaced, in addition to his currently on hiatus reviews of The Sopranos, which stand among the best of all television criticism. Each recap he does is a combination of plot description, speculation, and detailed analysis that boggles the mind with its excellence. This is the type of determined and thorough work that we’d all love to achieve someday, yet with all he's pulling off on a weekly basis, we have to question if Vanderwerff is even human.
4. Alan Sepinwall, Hitfix.com
Hitfix.com critic Alan Sepinwall is widely credited with being the founding father of modern television criticism. He made a name for himself in the Newark Star Ledger writing weekly recaps which would later become the norm for television critics everywhere. In some ways, his critical approach to television has legitimized the medium to something close to or even on par with film. Now with cable television's quality escalation, the line between the cinematic and the glass teat is blurring. Sure, Sepinwall isn’t responsible for shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men (though he has written excellent reviews of both and is often credited with the success of the campaign to keep Chuck from cancellation) getting on the air, but we’re sure glad he’s there to cover it all. If it weren’t for him we may not have the likes of other members on the list, and we almost certainly wouldn't be able to do what we try to every week.
3. Nathan Rabin, The AV Club
The headwriter of our favorite one-stop-shop for pop culture commentary,The AV Club, Nathan Rabin is a film, music, and television critic, the whole package. While Rabin is an insightful and humorous critic in all mediums, his most lasting contributions come in the form of the features he writes for the site. An admitted masochist, Rabin turns in hilarious and intelligent looks at movies that failed either critically or commercially, examining why they did not succeed or recontextualizing them as "secret successes" in his ongoing feature My Year of Flops (a collection of which was just released in book form)and examines the detritus that clouds the pop music landscape through the lens of the NOW series of pop compilations in THEN That's What They Called Music, both of which are hilarious and constant sources of inspiration to us here at Review to Be Named. Rabin also wrote the excellent memoir The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture which looked at the way his experiences with pop culture have shaped him as a person. Perceptive, hysterical, and prolific, Nathan Rabin is a writer and pop culture commentator every fan should keep their eyes on.
2. Chuck Klosterman
He's written for more magazines than it would be prudent to mention and on more topics than it would even be possible to list here. Whether he's discussing music, movies, television, sports, celebrities, or political trends, Chuck Klosterman has an uncanny knack for putting his subjects into a cultural context and explaining what they say about our tastes and about the way we experience entertainment. Whether he is interviewing Britney Spears about how conscious of her status as a sex object for middle aged men she is, discussing what Saved By The Bell tells us about how "important things are inevitably cliche," examining the porn industry and how it ties into our innate need for celebrities, or telling us that romantic comedies are training us to fail in our actual love lives, Klosterman has his finger on the pulse of pop culture and perhaps more than anyone else around has the gift of being able to diagnose society's ailments and explain its quirks through the lens of pop culture. His books include Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota (a memoir that doubles as a history of glam metal in the midwest), Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (a collection of his essays), and Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (a collection of essays including several interviews), all of which come highly recommended from us here at Review to Be Named. Klosterman is clever, witty, and understands pop culture and its ties to human nature better than just about anybody.
1. Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
Known as one of the “Two Thumbs Up” seen on movie posters for decades, it’s easy to forget that Roger Ebert is one of America’s most important film critics. With age it seemed Ebert may have grown to be a bit out of touch but his influence is undeniable. Over the last few years, he has become the most relevant he’s been since his glory days sitting opposite fellow critic Gene Siskel. Since falling ill, he’s been thrust back into the spotlight and has started to reach a wide audience on his prolific twitter account. Thanks to his 140 characters, film fans not only get links to his latest reviews, but the ever more fascinating blog entries that cover all facets of culture. Today Ebert takes on a variety of pop-culture topics ranging from the artistic value of videogames to the cinematic hate crime that is 3-D, all while continuing to turn out movie reviews on a regular basis. There's a reason the man is a living legend of the critical community, and if you don't already know what it is, it is time you found out.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Got ideas for future installments of Random Pop Culture Top Ten List? Well let us know! Follow us on twitter @reviewtobenamed (follow us here), or shoot us an e-mail at reviewtobenamed@gmail.com.
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
We here at Review to Be Named are admitted purveyors of pop culture commentary. We write reviews and features examining an ever increasing segment of our cultural landscape. But before we are cultural commentators (amateur though we may be) we are fans of pop culture, and of great pop culture commentaary. This website wouldn't exist were we not fans of cultural commentary and criticism, and as a result, we all read a lot of it. Assuming that you, our loyal readers, are also big fans of great criticism and commentary, we present for your pop culture edification a list of those we consider the pinnacle of pop culture commentary. Enjoy them, as we do.
10. Steve Hyden, The AV Club
Recently named the music editor at The AV Club, Hyden has been writing music reviews for the site for quite some time, and recently completed a fantastic feature, Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation? a detailed journey through the 1990's alternative rock movement from its early '90s grunge fueled rise through Woodstock '99 when some argue the movmement literally went down in flames. Mixing wry observations with personal anecdotes about his own childhood living in a small town and his growing love for music as the movement he explores began to lose its soul, the feature is a fantastic musical journey and a great complement to Hyden's music criticism. With that feature out of the way and his new position secured, we hope to see great things from him in the months to come.
9. Chris Hardwick, The Nerdist Podcast
Chris Hardwick hosts The Nerdist Podcast along with his buddies comedians Jonah Ray and Matt Mira. These three fray from the rest of our list in that they’re not critics but they do devote two hours a week to pop-culture worship. Since the podcast is hosted by a bunch of comics it’s no surprise that most of the podcasts are with comedic guests. But The Nerdist makes the list for all the pop-culture goodness that they recognize that does not fall in the comic category. The likes of director Rob Zombie, former Star Trek child star (and childhood friend of Hardwick) Wil Wheaton, The Muppets and The Mythbusters (!) all have been guests to the show and marvel at the wonderfully nerdy pop-culture obsessed world we live in. The show now runs twice a week with a guest-less podcast one day (or as they refer to those shows, “host-full”) and are joined by a squee-inducing guest the next. The Nerdist Podcast lets pop-culture fans feel like they're hanging out in their living room with hilarious comics and awesome guests.
8. Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker
Having written for Slant, egotrip, Hit It And Quit It, The New York Post, The Village Voice, and The New York Times, before settling into his current position at The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones is an electric and passionate music critic who manages to pin down his opinions with shocking incitefulness and a brilliant knowledge of the musical form. In addition to his reviews of music (which are brilliant pieces of criticism whether you agree with him or not), Frere-Jones also comments on the state of music in general, having written excellent pieces on the future of hip hop, the state of the modern indie band and how it has diverged from "classic" conceptions of rock and roll (in his controversial and excellent piece "A Paler Shade of White"), and pretty much infinite amount of other subjects on music and the culture that creates and consumes it.
7. Noel Murray, The AV Club
Ok, we recognize this list is chock full of writers from The AV Club, but that's only because the site is so excellent and so diverse. Noel Murray is a film and television critic that ranks among the best in the field. Currently writing weekly reviews of Fringe and The Chicago Code, along with retrospective reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel (which any Whedon fan should consider must reads), weekly film reviews, and A Very Special Episode, an examination of television episodes that represent something distinct or fascinating about the medium in general. Endlessly academic in his pursuit of pop culture and extremely prolific without losing an ounce of his analytic quality, Noel Murray is a man of ideas with the eloquence to present them well.
6. AO Scott, The New York Times
The chief film critic for The New York Times since 2004, AO Scott has also served as part of the most recent hosting duo on At the Movies (alongside the also excellent Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune prior to the show's unfortunate cancellation last summer). Scott's film criticism ranks among the best you can find today, and is an absolute go-to for anyone looking to read intelligent, well thought out opinions on any new release. But beyond writing excellent reviews, Scott aalso takes up important issues in cinema on a regular basis, whether he's debating co-chief critic Manohla Dargis on the crisis in modern film, examining the old classics and analyzing what they meant then and what they still mean today, or looking at whether Awards ceremonies matter, Scott is always at the top of his game and at the forefront of smart, passionate film criticism in our age.
5. Todd VanDerWerff, The AV Club
While Alan Sepinwall may be more important in the grand scheme of television criticism, Todd VanDerWerff oversees the most extensive television recap site on the web in AV Club’s “TV Club”. Of course VanDerWerff doesn’t write a recap for every single show but he picks up the holes in the exhaustive list if someone is unavailable. Currently he is taking on the likes of Community, Archer, Glee, and Lights Out, as well as doing justice classic episodes of the X-Files and Spaced, in addition to his currently on hiatus reviews of The Sopranos, which stand among the best of all television criticism. Each recap he does is a combination of plot description, speculation, and detailed analysis that boggles the mind with its excellence. This is the type of determined and thorough work that we’d all love to achieve someday, yet with all he's pulling off on a weekly basis, we have to question if Vanderwerff is even human.
4. Alan Sepinwall, Hitfix.com
Hitfix.com critic Alan Sepinwall is widely credited with being the founding father of modern television criticism. He made a name for himself in the Newark Star Ledger writing weekly recaps which would later become the norm for television critics everywhere. In some ways, his critical approach to television has legitimized the medium to something close to or even on par with film. Now with cable television's quality escalation, the line between the cinematic and the glass teat is blurring. Sure, Sepinwall isn’t responsible for shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men (though he has written excellent reviews of both and is often credited with the success of the campaign to keep Chuck from cancellation) getting on the air, but we’re sure glad he’s there to cover it all. If it weren’t for him we may not have the likes of other members on the list, and we almost certainly wouldn't be able to do what we try to every week.
3. Nathan Rabin, The AV Club
The headwriter of our favorite one-stop-shop for pop culture commentary,The AV Club, Nathan Rabin is a film, music, and television critic, the whole package. While Rabin is an insightful and humorous critic in all mediums, his most lasting contributions come in the form of the features he writes for the site. An admitted masochist, Rabin turns in hilarious and intelligent looks at movies that failed either critically or commercially, examining why they did not succeed or recontextualizing them as "secret successes" in his ongoing feature My Year of Flops (a collection of which was just released in book form)and examines the detritus that clouds the pop music landscape through the lens of the NOW series of pop compilations in THEN That's What They Called Music, both of which are hilarious and constant sources of inspiration to us here at Review to Be Named. Rabin also wrote the excellent memoir The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought To You By Pop Culture which looked at the way his experiences with pop culture have shaped him as a person. Perceptive, hysterical, and prolific, Nathan Rabin is a writer and pop culture commentator every fan should keep their eyes on.
2. Chuck Klosterman
He's written for more magazines than it would be prudent to mention and on more topics than it would even be possible to list here. Whether he's discussing music, movies, television, sports, celebrities, or political trends, Chuck Klosterman has an uncanny knack for putting his subjects into a cultural context and explaining what they say about our tastes and about the way we experience entertainment. Whether he is interviewing Britney Spears about how conscious of her status as a sex object for middle aged men she is, discussing what Saved By The Bell tells us about how "important things are inevitably cliche," examining the porn industry and how it ties into our innate need for celebrities, or telling us that romantic comedies are training us to fail in our actual love lives, Klosterman has his finger on the pulse of pop culture and perhaps more than anyone else around has the gift of being able to diagnose society's ailments and explain its quirks through the lens of pop culture. His books include Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota (a memoir that doubles as a history of glam metal in the midwest), Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (a collection of his essays), and Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (a collection of essays including several interviews), all of which come highly recommended from us here at Review to Be Named. Klosterman is clever, witty, and understands pop culture and its ties to human nature better than just about anybody.
1. Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times
Known as one of the “Two Thumbs Up” seen on movie posters for decades, it’s easy to forget that Roger Ebert is one of America’s most important film critics. With age it seemed Ebert may have grown to be a bit out of touch but his influence is undeniable. Over the last few years, he has become the most relevant he’s been since his glory days sitting opposite fellow critic Gene Siskel. Since falling ill, he’s been thrust back into the spotlight and has started to reach a wide audience on his prolific twitter account. Thanks to his 140 characters, film fans not only get links to his latest reviews, but the ever more fascinating blog entries that cover all facets of culture. Today Ebert takes on a variety of pop-culture topics ranging from the artistic value of videogames to the cinematic hate crime that is 3-D, all while continuing to turn out movie reviews on a regular basis. There's a reason the man is a living legend of the critical community, and if you don't already know what it is, it is time you found out.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Got ideas for future installments of Random Pop Culture Top Ten List? Well let us know! Follow us on twitter @reviewtobenamed (follow us here), or shoot us an e-mail at reviewtobenamed@gmail.com.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Random Pop Culture Top Ten List: Top 10 Musicians Who Seem Impervious to Heroin
By Ashley and Jordan
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
There’s an old cliché that says life in music is all sex, drugs, and rock and roll. While that saying is so over used at this point your grandma probably knows it’s uncool, the reason it was popularized in the first place is because of all of the sex and drugs that musicians tend to get themselves involved in. Hell, Little Richard has spent half his life as an evangelical preacher and was still known to be involved in orgies and drugs in the ‘60s. Drug overdoses have claimed far too many amazing artists before their time. Yet while that is sort of to be expected with the amount of chemicals these people pump into their bodies, what is actually shocking is how many of them have survived in spite of extended use of the hardest drug of all: Heroin. The following are ten people who probably should have died a long time ago, but have somehow managed to stick around, quite possibly because they’re just impervious to the stuff.
10. Eric Clapton
When people discuss the theory that drug addiction sometimes improves musical performance, one of the oft-cited examples of an artist losing their potency after getting clean is Eric Clapton. After his habit broke up Derek and the Dominos and he notoriously passed out on stage during the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, Clapton eventually dealt with the heroin addiction that dominated his life in the 1970s. But while his releases in the late 70s and early 80s were largely regarded as disappointments, audiences may have been misguided in blaming his sobriety for the creative lapse; Clapton had also reportedly conquered addiction by finding Jesus Christ, a life decision that has killed more careers than rehab.
9. Nikki Sixx
Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe was just as debauched as everyone else in a band known far more for their partying than their music (which was pretty mediocre with occasional flashes of genius), but he was the only junkie. His addiction proved so influential that he titled his 2009 memoirs The Heroin Diaries, in which he recounts at least six overdoses, one of which resulted in his clinical death for two minutes before he was revived with adrenaline shots to the heart, and another in which his dealer left him in a London dumpster. Somehow, he managed to survive the 80s, and now claims to be clean.
8. David Gahan
Maybe not coincidentally, Depeche Mode frontman David Gahan pierced his taint around the same time he got started on a nasty heroin habit. He overdosed several times in the 90s, once pulling a Nikki Sixx and dying for a few minutes before a talented paramedic revived him. Perhaps more tragically, his addiction seems to be indicative of a lifelong struggle with depression: he notoriously slashed his wrists in 1995, which made 1984’s “Blasphemous Rumors” sound like a strange self-fulfilling prophecy:
Miraculously, Gahan has survived to the present day, and continues to make music and tour with Depeche Mode.
7. Ozzy Osbourne
The “Prince of Darkness” rose to prominence as the lead singer for Black Sabbath but has also had a shockingly successful solo career in the decades since he left the band. While he’s certainly famous for his contributions to heavy metal, at this point he’s probably nearly as famous for being a drug addled mess for our entertainment on The Osbournes. The drugs have taken their obvious effects, to be sure, by Ozzy is still standing and still, for the most part, functioning as a human being. Considering he has admitted to imbibing LSD, cocaine, peyote, mushrooms, Quaaludes, glue, cough syrup, rohypol, klonopin, vicodin and heroin, it’s a minor miracle he’s managed to survive this long. So much of a miracle, in fact, that researchers at Cofactor Genetics in St. Louis recently conducted a study of Osbourne in an attempt to isolate a gene that makes him so resistant to drug use. Their results were inconclusive (though they did discover that he’s a Neanderthal) and so it remains one of the greatest mysteries of our time why Osbourne has managed to punish his body for 40 straight years and walk out smelling like slightly mumble-y roses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq6RtN397WA
6. Anthony Kiedis
All of Red Hot Chili Peppers have been heroin users at one point or another and the band’s first guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose in 1988. Kiedis has probably been using it the longest, though, claiming to have started in his early teens. After Slovak’s death, Kiedis claimed he would never shoot up again, though he relapsed in 1994 and used on and off again until Christmas Eve 2000, which is reportedly the last time he shot up. Red Hot Chili Peppers’ most famous and popular song, “Under the Bridge” is about heroin use, and many of the band’s other songs reference drugs and drug use. Yet despite using heroin on and off for almost 20 years, Kiedis is still standing, and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ next album is supposedly coming out later this year. Kiedis may have drew some blood under a bridge down town, but fortunately for us all it wasn’t enough to fell this drug-resistant modern rock legend.
5. Pete Doherty
Pete Doherty has become so much of a tabloid sensation that his talent as a musician has been largely forgotten. Though his relationship with Kate Moss garnered the most press, he’s become just as renown for his unrepentant love of heroin. Doherty arrived on the scene in the early 2000s, when he rose to prominence as a frontman of the English garage rock revival band The Libertines, a position he shared with best friend Carl Barat. By 2003, the relationship between Doherty and Barat had grown volatile due to the former’s addiction, a dynamic they summed up in in the downright tragic second single off of Up the Bracket, “Can’t Stand Me Now.” The band inevitably broke up in 2004, and Doherty’s addiction worsened to the point that that many wondered whether he would join the famed 27 Club by overdosing in 2006. But against all odds, he’s survived to 31, with at least six drug-related arrests, two rehab stints, and countless appalling YouTube videos under his belt:
4. Lou Reed
Perhaps no one has extolled on the feeling of heroin as poetically or as awesomely as Lou Reed. His band The Velvet Underground were a huge part of the drug fueled atmosphere at Andy Warhol’s the factory, and several of the songs on their stellar debut album (the old adage goes that few people bought the album, but every one that did formed a band) are about using or trying to score the drug. Reed didn’t slow down when he went solo, writing the glam rock concept album Transformer, a bleak love story centered on two junkies. His career took some hits as the drugs started to take their toll in the late ‘70’s, and like many people on this list, Reed finally kicked his heroin habit in the early ‘80’s, continuing to be a rock god and an elder statesman for decades afterwards. If you laid money that the man who wrote the epic rock masterpiece that is “Heroin” would make it to old age, you’ve probably come into a windfall of cash by this point: Reed turned 69 this week and is still going strong. Maybe he really IS Jesus’ Son…
3. Scott Weiland
If we lived in a rational universe, Scott Weiland would have died in 1995. But in a twist of fate that Weiland publicly attributes to yoga and meditation, he’s survived to form that shitty supergroup Velvet Revolver. But back in his Stone Temple Pilot days, Weiland was the junkie to end all junkies, with numerous arrests and tour cancellations to his credit. To date, he’s been to rehab over ten times, and has at least eight heroin-related arrests under his belt. But like many of the other musicians on this list, Weiland was really talented back in the day, especially at the height of his addiction:
Ahh, Sarah Michelle Gellar and creepy rabbit things. A simpler, better time, for Weiland and us all.
2. Iggy Pop
The name Iggy Pop is almost synonymous with heroin use at this point. His song “Lust for Life” became a users anthem and was even featured in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. His band The Stooges initially broke up in the early ‘70’s because of the severity of his heroin addiction. When the band reunited, they were again driven apart by his heroin use and his own career stalled for several years. He checked himself into rehab, but had his friend David Bowie smuggle him in cocaine the whole time he was there. It wasn’t until the mid-80’s when Pop finally took a three year break and, with Bowie’s actual support this time, finally kicked the addiction that had plagued and inspired him for over a decade. He went on to a recurring role on Nickelodeon’s Pete and Pete and to what no long-term heroin addict should ever see coming: old age. Though, after a stage diving accident last year at the age of 62, he said he probably won’t do that anymore. So maybe his decades of drug abuse have slowed him down a little.
1. Keith Richards
Keith Richards is a legend, not just for being a member of one of the greatest bands of all time, but for how unkillable he seems to be. The man has been arrested for drug possession five times, including the time in Toronto in 1977 that he was arrested for trafficking after being found in possession of 22 grams of heroin. He got that charge plead down to simple heroin possession because, come on: he’s Keith fucking Richards. He was going to do every god damn gram of that stuff. He claimed in his recent biography that he kicked his heroin habit in 1979, and finally stopped doing cocaine in 2006, saying “I think it gave me up.” It isn’t just that Richards did mountains of drugs and has made it, only slightly worse for the ware, into his late 60s. There’s also that persistent rumor (which, from the evidence we have here might very well be true) that he cannot be killed by conventional weapons.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
There’s an old cliché that says life in music is all sex, drugs, and rock and roll. While that saying is so over used at this point your grandma probably knows it’s uncool, the reason it was popularized in the first place is because of all of the sex and drugs that musicians tend to get themselves involved in. Hell, Little Richard has spent half his life as an evangelical preacher and was still known to be involved in orgies and drugs in the ‘60s. Drug overdoses have claimed far too many amazing artists before their time. Yet while that is sort of to be expected with the amount of chemicals these people pump into their bodies, what is actually shocking is how many of them have survived in spite of extended use of the hardest drug of all: Heroin. The following are ten people who probably should have died a long time ago, but have somehow managed to stick around, quite possibly because they’re just impervious to the stuff.
10. Eric Clapton
When people discuss the theory that drug addiction sometimes improves musical performance, one of the oft-cited examples of an artist losing their potency after getting clean is Eric Clapton. After his habit broke up Derek and the Dominos and he notoriously passed out on stage during the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, Clapton eventually dealt with the heroin addiction that dominated his life in the 1970s. But while his releases in the late 70s and early 80s were largely regarded as disappointments, audiences may have been misguided in blaming his sobriety for the creative lapse; Clapton had also reportedly conquered addiction by finding Jesus Christ, a life decision that has killed more careers than rehab.
9. Nikki Sixx
Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe was just as debauched as everyone else in a band known far more for their partying than their music (which was pretty mediocre with occasional flashes of genius), but he was the only junkie. His addiction proved so influential that he titled his 2009 memoirs The Heroin Diaries, in which he recounts at least six overdoses, one of which resulted in his clinical death for two minutes before he was revived with adrenaline shots to the heart, and another in which his dealer left him in a London dumpster. Somehow, he managed to survive the 80s, and now claims to be clean.
8. David Gahan
Maybe not coincidentally, Depeche Mode frontman David Gahan pierced his taint around the same time he got started on a nasty heroin habit. He overdosed several times in the 90s, once pulling a Nikki Sixx and dying for a few minutes before a talented paramedic revived him. Perhaps more tragically, his addiction seems to be indicative of a lifelong struggle with depression: he notoriously slashed his wrists in 1995, which made 1984’s “Blasphemous Rumors” sound like a strange self-fulfilling prophecy:
Miraculously, Gahan has survived to the present day, and continues to make music and tour with Depeche Mode.
7. Ozzy Osbourne
The “Prince of Darkness” rose to prominence as the lead singer for Black Sabbath but has also had a shockingly successful solo career in the decades since he left the band. While he’s certainly famous for his contributions to heavy metal, at this point he’s probably nearly as famous for being a drug addled mess for our entertainment on The Osbournes. The drugs have taken their obvious effects, to be sure, by Ozzy is still standing and still, for the most part, functioning as a human being. Considering he has admitted to imbibing LSD, cocaine, peyote, mushrooms, Quaaludes, glue, cough syrup, rohypol, klonopin, vicodin and heroin, it’s a minor miracle he’s managed to survive this long. So much of a miracle, in fact, that researchers at Cofactor Genetics in St. Louis recently conducted a study of Osbourne in an attempt to isolate a gene that makes him so resistant to drug use. Their results were inconclusive (though they did discover that he’s a Neanderthal) and so it remains one of the greatest mysteries of our time why Osbourne has managed to punish his body for 40 straight years and walk out smelling like slightly mumble-y roses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq6RtN397WA
6. Anthony Kiedis
All of Red Hot Chili Peppers have been heroin users at one point or another and the band’s first guitarist Hillel Slovak died of a heroin overdose in 1988. Kiedis has probably been using it the longest, though, claiming to have started in his early teens. After Slovak’s death, Kiedis claimed he would never shoot up again, though he relapsed in 1994 and used on and off again until Christmas Eve 2000, which is reportedly the last time he shot up. Red Hot Chili Peppers’ most famous and popular song, “Under the Bridge” is about heroin use, and many of the band’s other songs reference drugs and drug use. Yet despite using heroin on and off for almost 20 years, Kiedis is still standing, and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ next album is supposedly coming out later this year. Kiedis may have drew some blood under a bridge down town, but fortunately for us all it wasn’t enough to fell this drug-resistant modern rock legend.
5. Pete Doherty
Pete Doherty has become so much of a tabloid sensation that his talent as a musician has been largely forgotten. Though his relationship with Kate Moss garnered the most press, he’s become just as renown for his unrepentant love of heroin. Doherty arrived on the scene in the early 2000s, when he rose to prominence as a frontman of the English garage rock revival band The Libertines, a position he shared with best friend Carl Barat. By 2003, the relationship between Doherty and Barat had grown volatile due to the former’s addiction, a dynamic they summed up in in the downright tragic second single off of Up the Bracket, “Can’t Stand Me Now.” The band inevitably broke up in 2004, and Doherty’s addiction worsened to the point that that many wondered whether he would join the famed 27 Club by overdosing in 2006. But against all odds, he’s survived to 31, with at least six drug-related arrests, two rehab stints, and countless appalling YouTube videos under his belt:
4. Lou Reed
Perhaps no one has extolled on the feeling of heroin as poetically or as awesomely as Lou Reed. His band The Velvet Underground were a huge part of the drug fueled atmosphere at Andy Warhol’s the factory, and several of the songs on their stellar debut album (the old adage goes that few people bought the album, but every one that did formed a band) are about using or trying to score the drug. Reed didn’t slow down when he went solo, writing the glam rock concept album Transformer, a bleak love story centered on two junkies. His career took some hits as the drugs started to take their toll in the late ‘70’s, and like many people on this list, Reed finally kicked his heroin habit in the early ‘80’s, continuing to be a rock god and an elder statesman for decades afterwards. If you laid money that the man who wrote the epic rock masterpiece that is “Heroin” would make it to old age, you’ve probably come into a windfall of cash by this point: Reed turned 69 this week and is still going strong. Maybe he really IS Jesus’ Son…
3. Scott Weiland
If we lived in a rational universe, Scott Weiland would have died in 1995. But in a twist of fate that Weiland publicly attributes to yoga and meditation, he’s survived to form that shitty supergroup Velvet Revolver. But back in his Stone Temple Pilot days, Weiland was the junkie to end all junkies, with numerous arrests and tour cancellations to his credit. To date, he’s been to rehab over ten times, and has at least eight heroin-related arrests under his belt. But like many of the other musicians on this list, Weiland was really talented back in the day, especially at the height of his addiction:
Ahh, Sarah Michelle Gellar and creepy rabbit things. A simpler, better time, for Weiland and us all.
2. Iggy Pop
The name Iggy Pop is almost synonymous with heroin use at this point. His song “Lust for Life” became a users anthem and was even featured in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. His band The Stooges initially broke up in the early ‘70’s because of the severity of his heroin addiction. When the band reunited, they were again driven apart by his heroin use and his own career stalled for several years. He checked himself into rehab, but had his friend David Bowie smuggle him in cocaine the whole time he was there. It wasn’t until the mid-80’s when Pop finally took a three year break and, with Bowie’s actual support this time, finally kicked the addiction that had plagued and inspired him for over a decade. He went on to a recurring role on Nickelodeon’s Pete and Pete and to what no long-term heroin addict should ever see coming: old age. Though, after a stage diving accident last year at the age of 62, he said he probably won’t do that anymore. So maybe his decades of drug abuse have slowed him down a little.
1. Keith Richards
Keith Richards is a legend, not just for being a member of one of the greatest bands of all time, but for how unkillable he seems to be. The man has been arrested for drug possession five times, including the time in Toronto in 1977 that he was arrested for trafficking after being found in possession of 22 grams of heroin. He got that charge plead down to simple heroin possession because, come on: he’s Keith fucking Richards. He was going to do every god damn gram of that stuff. He claimed in his recent biography that he kicked his heroin habit in 1979, and finally stopped doing cocaine in 2006, saying “I think it gave me up.” It isn’t just that Richards did mountains of drugs and has made it, only slightly worse for the ware, into his late 60s. There’s also that persistent rumor (which, from the evidence we have here might very well be true) that he cannot be killed by conventional weapons.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Random Pop Culture Top Ten List: Top 10 Characters in Movies Who Stay Alive Just Long Enough To Deliver A Speech
By Jordan
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
Throughout the history of cinema, certain characters, in spite of being mortally wounded, manage to stay alive just long enough to give one last speech. Sometimes they need to tell the main characters important information. Sometimes they need to say something sweet so we'll be sad that they're dying. And sometimes they just have to drop some awesome wisdom on us before shuffling off this mortal coil. This week, we will look at the ten best instances of this, whether for sheer ridiculousness or sheer awesomeness (like last week, the fact that this list contains SPOILERS should be pretty self evident, but consider yourselves warned).
10. The Mask, The Mask
The Mask may feature Jim Carrey's best performance from his mad-cap mid-'90s period, but it also features a fairly spot on parody of the "death speech scene." When The Mask (Carrey) confronts the gangsters that have been behind all of the mischief throughout the film (including framing him for bank robbery), he is shot at multiple times, dodging all of the bullets through sheer wackiness. Yet eventually, apparently tiring of pulling out pop-culture reference after pop-culture reference, he feigns getting shot, falling into his assailant's arms and delivering an extended riff on the final speech, mocking Old Yeller, The Wizard of Oz, A Christmas Carol, and Gone with the Wind, among others. Sure, The Mask doesn't really die in the scene, but its the thought that counts, and clearly, he put a lot of thought into that "final speech."
9. Prince Rosenberg, Men in Black
The plot of Men in Black pretty much hinges on Guardian of the Galaxy Prince Gentle Rosenberg (Mike Nussbaum) surviving long enough to explain everything to Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and Agent J (Will Smith). See, he hid an entire Galaxy on his cat's collar, and if it gets into the hands of a bug calling himself Edgar (Vincent D'Onofrio) then Rosenberg's race will destroy Earth to keep him from accessing it. Its all sort of complicated for a pretty standard Will Smith comedy, but effectively, if Rosenberg hadn't lived just long enough to explain everything to our heroes, the entire Earth would have been destroyed.
8. Shepherd Book, Serenity
In Joss Whedon's big screen adaptation of his little watched but much loved space western Firefly, it was pretty clear he was going for broke. While Whedon initially spoke of creating a trilogy, he likely always knew the movie would be his last foray into the Firefly universe. So he used it to tear our hearts out a few more times before we had to say goodbye to the characters. The most senseless of the major character deaths (though not the most heartbreaking by a sight) had to be Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), the mysterious former passenger on the ship who is murdered, along with the rest of his peaceful colony, as a show of power by The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a malevolent government agent bent on capturing River Tam (Summer Glau), one of the ship's passengers. Despite being surrounded by dead bodies and being mortally wounded, Book lives just long enough to give spiritual counsel to the wayward Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) one last time before heading off to that big rodeo in the sky.
7. Bill Carson, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Another instance in which the death speech is essential to the plot, Bill Carson is the man who reveals to Tuco 'The Ugly" (Eli Wallach) and Blondie "The Good" (Clint Eastwood) that there is $200,000 in stolen confederate gold buried in Sad Hill cemetary. At the time, Tuco is preparing to kill Blondie for leaving him in the desert, and the dying Carson asks Tuco for water before naming the grave in which the treasure is buried. As Tuco runs to get water, Carson dies, but not before revealing the name of the grave to Blondie, who Tuco now must keep alive in order to get to the money. The death speech itself isn't even shown, yet without it, the movie would be over before the real adventure even began.
6. V, V For Vendetta
The end of V for Vendetta has V (Hugo Weaving) engaging in a huge gun battle with most of the corrupt government officials, including party head Peter Creedy (Tim Pigott-Smith). After being shot an insane amount of times, V manages to kill every last one of them before stumbling back to his lair to give a final, heartfelt goodbye to Evey (Natalie Portman) his long-reluctant co-conspirator. How does he manage to survive the ridiculous amount of bullet wounds long enough to say goodbye to his love? Because ideas are bulletproof, of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGGPufySwZ4
5. Jimmy Malone, The Untouchables
Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) is selected to help Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) bring down Al Capone (Robert De Niro) because Malone is "uncorruptible." So of course that means he won't survive the movie. Using his uncorruptible nature, Malone manages to discover the whereabouts of one of Capone's accountants and calls Ness to come over and hear about the location. Before Ness arrives, Jimmy is attacked by a knife-wielding thug, who he forces out his back door (because he's a bad ass) only to be mowed down by a tommy gun. Malone is done for, but he lives with his wound just long enough to tell Ness where to find the accountant, and to die in Ness' arms, giving Kevin Costner the chance to yell "No! Nooooo!" Which is really enough reason for a man to die, right?
4. Trinity, The Matrix Revolutions
Sure, Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) almost died in Matrix Reloaded, but apparently it was decided it would be much better if she lived just long enough so that Neo (Keanu Reeves) would be blinded by the time she died. Personally, I think this was done to explain why Reeves couldn't muster up tears at the death of his beloved. Trinity gets stabbed by a shit ton of ship parts during the crash into Machine City, but manages to survive for a nearly five minute long speech about how she totally loves Neo and believes in him and stuff. Sure, her injuries are nearly identical to the ones that killed Wash (Alan Tudyk) in Serenity pretty much instantly, but The Matrix Revolutions wasn't bloated enough already, so she kind of had to give a five minute speech, just to fill the runtime out.
3. Roy Batty, Blade Runner
This one makes the list, and is this high, not because its ridiculous, but because its a shockingly beautiful end to the movie. After Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) has spent the entire movie tracking a band of escaped androids, he finally tracks Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) to a dingy apartment building where Roy fights furiously for the chance to live just a little while longer. Androids have reduced lifespans, though, and Roy begins shutting down during his struggle with Rick. As his last act, Roy saves the life of the man who has spent the whole movie trying to kill him, and then tells him of all of the beauty and experience that will be lost with his death. Then, as self aware and wise as always, Roy delivers the perfect last words: "Time to die." Its a poignant, mournful final speech from a man who wanted nothing more than the chance to live and be free.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw
2. Qui Gon Jinn, Yoda, Anakin's Mom, Star Wars
Good God does George Lucas love to use the improbable death speech. At the end of The Phantom Menace, Qui Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) is killed by Darth Maul (Ray Park), but manages to survive his lightsaber wound until Obi Wan (Ewan McGregor) can cut Maul in half and rush to his side, where he dooms the galaxy with his last request: That Obi Wan train Anakin in the ways of the force. In Attack of the Clones, Anakin returns home, only to find out his mother has been kidnapped by Sand People, and is being raped to death somewhere in the deserts of Tattoine. Anakin gets there and kills the whole villaige just in time for his mother to tell him she loves him before dying from ovrexposure to Sand People penis. Finally, in Return of the Jedi the 900 year old Yoda (who by the way aged incredibly quickly between the prequels and the originals)waits until Luke returns to Dagobah to die in his arms, but not before telling Obi Wan, and the audience, one last crucial detail: "There is...another...Skyyyyyyyywaaaaaaaaaalllker..."
1. Boromir, The Fellowhip of the Ring
We've previously discussed the ridiculousness of this scene in our Blemishes on Otherwise Great Movies list, but its worth revisiting. Boromir's death is a huge deal in the narrative of the Lord of the Rings, but by the time you watch him get shot a million times before he finally keels over, his final moments are more likely to illicit laughter than tears. He gets shot. Then he gets shot again. Then he gets shot again. All of this is prelude to his gasp heavy final speech, in which he redeems himself for trying to steal the ring and gets his guy love on with Aragorn. Farewell, sweet Boromir. You lived like 15 minutes longer than you should have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYoJhkiJ7zY
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
Throughout the history of cinema, certain characters, in spite of being mortally wounded, manage to stay alive just long enough to give one last speech. Sometimes they need to tell the main characters important information. Sometimes they need to say something sweet so we'll be sad that they're dying. And sometimes they just have to drop some awesome wisdom on us before shuffling off this mortal coil. This week, we will look at the ten best instances of this, whether for sheer ridiculousness or sheer awesomeness (like last week, the fact that this list contains SPOILERS should be pretty self evident, but consider yourselves warned).
10. The Mask, The Mask
The Mask may feature Jim Carrey's best performance from his mad-cap mid-'90s period, but it also features a fairly spot on parody of the "death speech scene." When The Mask (Carrey) confronts the gangsters that have been behind all of the mischief throughout the film (including framing him for bank robbery), he is shot at multiple times, dodging all of the bullets through sheer wackiness. Yet eventually, apparently tiring of pulling out pop-culture reference after pop-culture reference, he feigns getting shot, falling into his assailant's arms and delivering an extended riff on the final speech, mocking Old Yeller, The Wizard of Oz, A Christmas Carol, and Gone with the Wind, among others. Sure, The Mask doesn't really die in the scene, but its the thought that counts, and clearly, he put a lot of thought into that "final speech."
9. Prince Rosenberg, Men in Black
The plot of Men in Black pretty much hinges on Guardian of the Galaxy Prince Gentle Rosenberg (Mike Nussbaum) surviving long enough to explain everything to Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and Agent J (Will Smith). See, he hid an entire Galaxy on his cat's collar, and if it gets into the hands of a bug calling himself Edgar (Vincent D'Onofrio) then Rosenberg's race will destroy Earth to keep him from accessing it. Its all sort of complicated for a pretty standard Will Smith comedy, but effectively, if Rosenberg hadn't lived just long enough to explain everything to our heroes, the entire Earth would have been destroyed.
8. Shepherd Book, Serenity
In Joss Whedon's big screen adaptation of his little watched but much loved space western Firefly, it was pretty clear he was going for broke. While Whedon initially spoke of creating a trilogy, he likely always knew the movie would be his last foray into the Firefly universe. So he used it to tear our hearts out a few more times before we had to say goodbye to the characters. The most senseless of the major character deaths (though not the most heartbreaking by a sight) had to be Shepherd Book (Ron Glass), the mysterious former passenger on the ship who is murdered, along with the rest of his peaceful colony, as a show of power by The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a malevolent government agent bent on capturing River Tam (Summer Glau), one of the ship's passengers. Despite being surrounded by dead bodies and being mortally wounded, Book lives just long enough to give spiritual counsel to the wayward Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) one last time before heading off to that big rodeo in the sky.
7. Bill Carson, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Another instance in which the death speech is essential to the plot, Bill Carson is the man who reveals to Tuco 'The Ugly" (Eli Wallach) and Blondie "The Good" (Clint Eastwood) that there is $200,000 in stolen confederate gold buried in Sad Hill cemetary. At the time, Tuco is preparing to kill Blondie for leaving him in the desert, and the dying Carson asks Tuco for water before naming the grave in which the treasure is buried. As Tuco runs to get water, Carson dies, but not before revealing the name of the grave to Blondie, who Tuco now must keep alive in order to get to the money. The death speech itself isn't even shown, yet without it, the movie would be over before the real adventure even began.
6. V, V For Vendetta
The end of V for Vendetta has V (Hugo Weaving) engaging in a huge gun battle with most of the corrupt government officials, including party head Peter Creedy (Tim Pigott-Smith). After being shot an insane amount of times, V manages to kill every last one of them before stumbling back to his lair to give a final, heartfelt goodbye to Evey (Natalie Portman) his long-reluctant co-conspirator. How does he manage to survive the ridiculous amount of bullet wounds long enough to say goodbye to his love? Because ideas are bulletproof, of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGGPufySwZ4
5. Jimmy Malone, The Untouchables
Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) is selected to help Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) bring down Al Capone (Robert De Niro) because Malone is "uncorruptible." So of course that means he won't survive the movie. Using his uncorruptible nature, Malone manages to discover the whereabouts of one of Capone's accountants and calls Ness to come over and hear about the location. Before Ness arrives, Jimmy is attacked by a knife-wielding thug, who he forces out his back door (because he's a bad ass) only to be mowed down by a tommy gun. Malone is done for, but he lives with his wound just long enough to tell Ness where to find the accountant, and to die in Ness' arms, giving Kevin Costner the chance to yell "No! Nooooo!" Which is really enough reason for a man to die, right?
4. Trinity, The Matrix Revolutions
Sure, Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) almost died in Matrix Reloaded, but apparently it was decided it would be much better if she lived just long enough so that Neo (Keanu Reeves) would be blinded by the time she died. Personally, I think this was done to explain why Reeves couldn't muster up tears at the death of his beloved. Trinity gets stabbed by a shit ton of ship parts during the crash into Machine City, but manages to survive for a nearly five minute long speech about how she totally loves Neo and believes in him and stuff. Sure, her injuries are nearly identical to the ones that killed Wash (Alan Tudyk) in Serenity pretty much instantly, but The Matrix Revolutions wasn't bloated enough already, so she kind of had to give a five minute speech, just to fill the runtime out.
3. Roy Batty, Blade Runner
This one makes the list, and is this high, not because its ridiculous, but because its a shockingly beautiful end to the movie. After Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) has spent the entire movie tracking a band of escaped androids, he finally tracks Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) to a dingy apartment building where Roy fights furiously for the chance to live just a little while longer. Androids have reduced lifespans, though, and Roy begins shutting down during his struggle with Rick. As his last act, Roy saves the life of the man who has spent the whole movie trying to kill him, and then tells him of all of the beauty and experience that will be lost with his death. Then, as self aware and wise as always, Roy delivers the perfect last words: "Time to die." Its a poignant, mournful final speech from a man who wanted nothing more than the chance to live and be free.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw
2. Qui Gon Jinn, Yoda, Anakin's Mom, Star Wars
Good God does George Lucas love to use the improbable death speech. At the end of The Phantom Menace, Qui Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) is killed by Darth Maul (Ray Park), but manages to survive his lightsaber wound until Obi Wan (Ewan McGregor) can cut Maul in half and rush to his side, where he dooms the galaxy with his last request: That Obi Wan train Anakin in the ways of the force. In Attack of the Clones, Anakin returns home, only to find out his mother has been kidnapped by Sand People, and is being raped to death somewhere in the deserts of Tattoine. Anakin gets there and kills the whole villaige just in time for his mother to tell him she loves him before dying from ovrexposure to Sand People penis. Finally, in Return of the Jedi the 900 year old Yoda (who by the way aged incredibly quickly between the prequels and the originals)waits until Luke returns to Dagobah to die in his arms, but not before telling Obi Wan, and the audience, one last crucial detail: "There is...another...Skyyyyyyyywaaaaaaaaaalllker..."
1. Boromir, The Fellowhip of the Ring
We've previously discussed the ridiculousness of this scene in our Blemishes on Otherwise Great Movies list, but its worth revisiting. Boromir's death is a huge deal in the narrative of the Lord of the Rings, but by the time you watch him get shot a million times before he finally keels over, his final moments are more likely to illicit laughter than tears. He gets shot. Then he gets shot again. Then he gets shot again. All of this is prelude to his gasp heavy final speech, in which he redeems himself for trying to steal the ring and gets his guy love on with Aragorn. Farewell, sweet Boromir. You lived like 15 minutes longer than you should have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYoJhkiJ7zY
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Random Pop Culture Top Ten List: Top 10 Characters in Comics Who Should Have Stayed Dead
By Chris and Jordan
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
Geoff Johns, writer of Green Lantern, and its death-obsessed event Blackest Night, once said, "Death in superhero comics is cyclical in nature, and that's for a lot of reasons, whether they are story reasons, copyright reasons, or fan reasons. But death doesn't exist the same way it does in our world, and thank God for that." Characters in comics die and return so frequently that the death of a famed character can sometimes be rendered completely meaningless, so obvious is it that they will return in a matter of time. The following is a list of characters who died, and really should have stayed that way (this should be evident, but SPOILERS follow).
10.Danny Noonan's Junk, Young Liars
David Lapham's brilliant and all too short lived creator owned series Young Liars gave us one of the weirdest and most disturbing narratives in recent memory. The protagonist and narrator Danny Noonan, as most of the characters were as the title suggests, was a liar. This lead to the status quo and continuity of the series changing often, and usually these changes would blatantly contradict events we had seen earlier in the series. At the close of the first story arc, Danny and his friends were ambushed by a band of assassins, and one particularly uber violent dwarf overpowered Danny, raped his friend Cee Cee, and then castrated Danny. A few issues later, everything was back to normal including Danny's genitals. While this didn't hurt the overall flow of the story, uncastrating the protagonist took away a dimension of the story which Lapham never really had a chance to explore.
9. Hawkgirl (Kendra Saunders), Hawkman
Ok, the Hawks are a bit of a continuity quagmire that it would take us several flow charts and at least a bottle of extra strength tylenol to adequately explain to you. Long story short, in Ancient egypt, two lovers were cursed to be reincarnated again and again, only to die once they rediscovered each other and re-embraced their immortal love. Over time, they would remember their former lives. In the modern time, they were reborn as the super heroes Carter Hall, Hawkman and Shayera Hall, Hawkgirl. They both eventually died, cuz that's pretty much what they do, and returned as Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Only this time there was a snafu. Carter Hall returned with full memory of all his past lives, but Shayera's soul found a home in the body of Kendra Saunders, a young woman who attempted to commit suicide, and woke up with all of Kendra's memories. Kendra went on to take up the mantle of Hawkgirl, but when she was reunited with Hawkman, she rebuffed his advances, having no memories of their previous lives together, although she had an unexplainable attraction to him. Kendra hated the idea of fate and shared destiny, and wanted to feel like she had control over her own life. This was a much more interesting twist on the saga of the Hawks, and lead to a number of stories previously unseen, such as during Brad Meltzer's brilliant run where a growing attraction blossomed between Hawkgirl, and Red Arrow, the former sidekick of Green Arrow, a fellow hero who took great pleasure in pushing Hawkman's buttons. During Blackest Night, the Hawks were killed (again), and resurrected (it's like Wolverine's healing factor, only suckier), and Hawkgirl returned with all the memories of Shayera Hall, thus reestablishing a much less interesting and less dramatic status quo.
Of course this might be a moot point now, cuz DC killed them off again last week in Brightest Day, (honestly they must draw straws in the JLA Watchtower to decide who has to organize their funerals THIS week).
8. Warren, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8
Warren Mears was pretty much the King of the Creeps on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Introduced after he abandons the sentient sex robot he built, Warren became the center of The Trio, Buffy's most human adversaries. While a part of The Trio, he used mind control in an effort to rape his ex-girlfriend, made Buffy invisible, framed her for murder, corrupted his generally well-intentioned fellow geeks, and murdered Willow's girlfriend Tara. So it was a sick sort of justice when a grief-stricken and vengeful Dark Willow, overcome by her anger, actually flays Warren alive near the end of the shows sixth season. A fitting death for a heinous human being. Yet Warren's work was apparently not done, as he returned in the series' canonical comic continuation as the magically resuscitated boyfriend of Amy Madison. There's no real reason to have him back except that it provided a great twist to end an issue on. And by the end of Season Eight, Warren is dead again. We think it would've been much better to not bring him back in the first place. He murdered the love of Willow's life, and he got what he deserved as a result. His presence in the comics did nothing to improve upon the series, and served no real narrative purpose. Hopefully, this time his death takes.
7.Captain America (Steve Rogers)
When Steve Rogers was assassinated at the end of Marvel's Civil War, in the midst of Ed Brubaker's brilliant and critically acclaimed run on Captain America, it was a shocking moment that ushered in a new era of darkness and unpredictability in the Marvel Universe. Tony Stark who was already carrying a heavy burden following the tough and unpopular choices he made in the Civil War, was further crushed by the death of one of his closest friends, and the conscience of the superhero community. Eventually it was revealed that Steve wasn't actually dead, but lost in time thanks to the manipulations of the Red Skull. Steve's return ushered in a new Heroic Age, where he took on Nick Fury's traditional role as director of world security (a brilliant new status quo, and one that has allowed us to see a very different side of Steve Rogers). Steve Rogers is in the minority on this list, as he is a character who has been used very well since his resurrection, and we genuinely look forward to seeing what the future holds for him. However, when thinking about the road not traveled, we can't help but wonder if the dawn of the Heroic Age, and the subsequent stories that followed would have been filled with more drama and tension, had Steve not returned, and the heroic community been forced to mend relationships with the death of Captain America still hanging over them as a constant reminder of their greatest failings, and to forge ahead without Steve's iron clad set or morals to guide them.
6.Aunt May, Spiderman
This is more of a case where the character should never have been killed in the first place. Death is something of a revolving door in super hero comics, however the great suspension of belief required where resurrections are concerned is made a bit easier when the character already has super powers of somepoint. Aunt May was a 70 year old woman whose heart was always one missed dose of Bayer Aspirin away from shutting down faster than your local Long John Silver's when the health inspector comes a calling. So I can't really explain why the decision to kill Aunt May was made. I can tell you that the resurrection what a mess. It was revealed that the woman who Peter thought was his Aunt May was actually a dying Actress (really Pete, you didn't notice her missing a few key memories and personality traits?) disguised by Norman Osborn and switched out when he kidnapped the real Aunt May with no real practical endgame in mind, at least not one that would have been more effective than actually killing Aunt May right in front of Peter. Getting away from the poor decision to kill her, and the even poorer explanation for the resurrection, Aunt May should have stayed dead, because in a time where one of the biggest complaints regarding the character of Peter Parker is that he is an adult stuck in a weird limbo of adolescence, the death of his parental figure could have really allowed for Peter to come into his own as a self reliant adult.
5. Ra's al Ghul, Batman
One of Batman's greatest nemeses and the father of one of his most fascinating romantic interests (Talia al Ghul, mother of Batman's son Damien), Ra's al Ghul is a terrorist and an assassin without rival in the world. He is so bad ass, he leads an organization known as the League of Assassins. Leage. Of. Assassins. Need we say more? A fantastic villain at the center of several great Batman stories (including "Son of the Demon," "Contagion," "Legacy," and "JLA: Tower of Babel"), Ghul was struck down in a plot orchestrated by his estranged daughter Nyssa, who planned to kill Superman with Kryptonite bullets and then turn on her father. Surprise surprise, Superman lives (thanks to Batman saving his ass), but Ra's is mortally injured. As he lays dying, he reveals to Batman that his death was part of his own masterplan to convince Nyssa and Talia to accept their destinies as his heirs. One of Batman's greatest enemies revealing that his own death was part of his larger plan to ensure that both of his daughters take his place and continue his efforts to destroy the world. The death of Ra's al Ghul was pretty much the ideal end to any villain's story, and gave him the last laugh in his struggle with Batman.
So why did DC honchos decide to bring him back two years later with a half-baked retcon that had Ra's consciousness hiding in another body and him attempting to take Damien as his own new body? Ra's al Ghul was much better left off as a great villain who scored a final victory in death.
4. Jean Grey, X-Men
Jean Grey was never a particularly interesting character. One of the original X-Men, she was the weakest member of the team until the infamous "Dark Phoenix Saga" made her by far the most powerful. She was also the love interest and eventual wife of Scott "Cyclops" Summers, a relationship so staid and lifeless that the only thing to shock it into being interesting was Jean's suicide at the end of the Phoenix Saga. Allowing a once fairly weak character to evolve into a godlike force of ultimate pyschic power, be with her beloved, and die sacrificing herself to save her friends and the entire Universe seems a fitting arc for the character to end on, and a great excuse to get rid of a pretty boring presence on the team. Unfortunately, Jean did not stay dead, returning to the comics (and bizarrely retconning the best story she ever took part in, claiming that the Phoenix Force took her form and her essence, but that she was alive the whole time) to take part in X-Factor, which reunited the original X-Men. This time around, she got to marry Scott and train a new generation of mutants before being "tragically" struck down by Magneto. Jean was never a great character, and her last words to her husband, "All I ever do is die on you" were pretty accurate. Though it has widely been hinted that her return is imminent, we really hope that this time she stays in the ground. Cyclops, and the X-Men, are much more interesting without her.
3. Magneto, X-Men
Magneto is arguably the greatest villain in the history of comics (at least IGN thinks so, placing the character at #1 in their "Top 100 Comic Book Villains List"). A Jewish Holocaust survivor bent on ensuring that Mutants don't share the same fate, and willing to go to any means to guarantee it, Magneto has been the X-Men's arch nemesis from the very first issue in 1963.
From his debut attacking an American military base, to his formation of the Brotherhood of Mutants, to the brutal torture of Xavier's love Moira MacTaggart, Magneto has been at the center of many of the worst things to ever happen to the XMen. He once ripped the adamantium clear off Wolverine's bones. He single-handedly created the Mutant sanctuary of Genosha. In what would have been his last story arc, under the guidance of brilliant writer Grant Morrison, Magneto infiltrated the XMen under the guise of Xorn, became addicted to the power-enhancing drug Kick, killed Jean Grey, re-crippled Xavier and devastated New York City, turning it into a human concentration camp. His reign of terror ended when, in one of the most bad ass moments in comics history, Wolverine decapitated him. A modern masterpiece of the form, Morrison's run on XMen gave their greatest villain the final arc of a lifetime. But comics are terrified of change, and of course Magneto was "resurrected" almost immediately, with a retcon implying that Xorn was a separate entity that has impersonated Magneto (though why he would impersonate Magneto infiltrating the Xmen doesn't make any sense...) and that the real Magneto was actually just hanging out on Genosha the whole time his name was being sullied by a different genocidal megalomaniac. Sigh. A great villain (maybe the greatest) was given a great end. But no. Comics are infinitely ongoing and terrified of giving anything a real ending, and so Magneto had to return. He should've stayed dead, and gone down as the greatest villain of all time.
2. The Flash (Barry Allen), The Flash
Barry Allen was the Silver Age Flash, and his introduction rejuvenated the concept of the Superhero and ushered in the Silver Age of Comics. Unfortunately for Barry, (and his Silver Age contemporaries, Hal Jordan, and Oliver Queen), there came a time when DC didn't know what to do with their silver age characters, and started to view them as anachronisms. Barry especially found himself in hot water as his moral code was very similar to Steve Rogers and Clark Kent, causing some fans to view him as something of a boy scout, and a bit of a dull character, and after a few misguided attempts to darken Barry up by having him murder his arch nemesis The Reverse Flash, DC decided to kill him off as the major death of their Crisis on Infinite Earths event. Barry died a hero, saving the Universe from destruction at the hands of the Anti-Monitor. Barry's death allowed for the rise of a more interesting and relatable Flash, Barry's former sidekick Kid-Flash, Wally West. For the first time in mainstream super hero comics, a sidekick took up the mantle of an established hero. Wally was forced into a situation where he was expected to stand shoulder to shoulder with the biggest names of the DC universe, and do so while trying to live up to the saintly legacy of Barry Allen. Wally is a much more relatable character than Barry because we can all identify to the idea of trying to step out of the shadow of our parents and striving to realize our full potential as adults. While Barry's return has been handled well, it has forced Wally back into the background, and regressed a character whose hook was the journey of personal growth readers invested themselves in for over 20 years.
1. Jason Todd, Batman
The death of Jason Todd effectively ushered Batman forward into the modern age, taking the darkness of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's The Killing Joke and bringing it into the mainstream book itself. An unpopular replacement Robin after Dick Grayson assumed the name Nightwing, Jason Todd so annoyed fans that a phone poll was conducted to determine whether he should live or die. The result was 1988's A Death in the Family which found Todd beaten to death by the Joker and left to die in an explosion. His death formed perhaps the largest mark on Bruce Wayne's psyche since the deaths of his parents, and became an equally important part of the Bat mythos. That Batman could let Joker live after he had killed Jason Todd was an ethical choice the character has been judged on ever since, and his failure to save his protege haunted Bruce more than anything else in his life. So it was actually insulting when Todd returned as the antihero Red Hood in 2005's Under the Hood. Apparently Jason Todd was returned from the dead when Superboy punched reality (which is apparently a thing that can be punched) and spent the next decade or so training with Ra's al Ghul (see? great villain!) before returning to Gotham to act as a vigilante willing to use lethal force. The return of Jason Todd unwrote the greatest tragedy in Batman's life, took away one of Joker's biggest victories, and undermined two decades of Batman storytelling. Jason Todd's death was one of the most historic events in comics history. Bringing him back may go down as one of the medium's biggest missteps.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
Geoff Johns, writer of Green Lantern, and its death-obsessed event Blackest Night, once said, "Death in superhero comics is cyclical in nature, and that's for a lot of reasons, whether they are story reasons, copyright reasons, or fan reasons. But death doesn't exist the same way it does in our world, and thank God for that." Characters in comics die and return so frequently that the death of a famed character can sometimes be rendered completely meaningless, so obvious is it that they will return in a matter of time. The following is a list of characters who died, and really should have stayed that way (this should be evident, but SPOILERS follow).
10.Danny Noonan's Junk, Young Liars
David Lapham's brilliant and all too short lived creator owned series Young Liars gave us one of the weirdest and most disturbing narratives in recent memory. The protagonist and narrator Danny Noonan, as most of the characters were as the title suggests, was a liar. This lead to the status quo and continuity of the series changing often, and usually these changes would blatantly contradict events we had seen earlier in the series. At the close of the first story arc, Danny and his friends were ambushed by a band of assassins, and one particularly uber violent dwarf overpowered Danny, raped his friend Cee Cee, and then castrated Danny. A few issues later, everything was back to normal including Danny's genitals. While this didn't hurt the overall flow of the story, uncastrating the protagonist took away a dimension of the story which Lapham never really had a chance to explore.
9. Hawkgirl (Kendra Saunders), Hawkman
Ok, the Hawks are a bit of a continuity quagmire that it would take us several flow charts and at least a bottle of extra strength tylenol to adequately explain to you. Long story short, in Ancient egypt, two lovers were cursed to be reincarnated again and again, only to die once they rediscovered each other and re-embraced their immortal love. Over time, they would remember their former lives. In the modern time, they were reborn as the super heroes Carter Hall, Hawkman and Shayera Hall, Hawkgirl. They both eventually died, cuz that's pretty much what they do, and returned as Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Only this time there was a snafu. Carter Hall returned with full memory of all his past lives, but Shayera's soul found a home in the body of Kendra Saunders, a young woman who attempted to commit suicide, and woke up with all of Kendra's memories. Kendra went on to take up the mantle of Hawkgirl, but when she was reunited with Hawkman, she rebuffed his advances, having no memories of their previous lives together, although she had an unexplainable attraction to him. Kendra hated the idea of fate and shared destiny, and wanted to feel like she had control over her own life. This was a much more interesting twist on the saga of the Hawks, and lead to a number of stories previously unseen, such as during Brad Meltzer's brilliant run where a growing attraction blossomed between Hawkgirl, and Red Arrow, the former sidekick of Green Arrow, a fellow hero who took great pleasure in pushing Hawkman's buttons. During Blackest Night, the Hawks were killed (again), and resurrected (it's like Wolverine's healing factor, only suckier), and Hawkgirl returned with all the memories of Shayera Hall, thus reestablishing a much less interesting and less dramatic status quo.
Of course this might be a moot point now, cuz DC killed them off again last week in Brightest Day, (honestly they must draw straws in the JLA Watchtower to decide who has to organize their funerals THIS week).
8. Warren, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8
Warren Mears was pretty much the King of the Creeps on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Introduced after he abandons the sentient sex robot he built, Warren became the center of The Trio, Buffy's most human adversaries. While a part of The Trio, he used mind control in an effort to rape his ex-girlfriend, made Buffy invisible, framed her for murder, corrupted his generally well-intentioned fellow geeks, and murdered Willow's girlfriend Tara. So it was a sick sort of justice when a grief-stricken and vengeful Dark Willow, overcome by her anger, actually flays Warren alive near the end of the shows sixth season. A fitting death for a heinous human being. Yet Warren's work was apparently not done, as he returned in the series' canonical comic continuation as the magically resuscitated boyfriend of Amy Madison. There's no real reason to have him back except that it provided a great twist to end an issue on. And by the end of Season Eight, Warren is dead again. We think it would've been much better to not bring him back in the first place. He murdered the love of Willow's life, and he got what he deserved as a result. His presence in the comics did nothing to improve upon the series, and served no real narrative purpose. Hopefully, this time his death takes.
7.Captain America (Steve Rogers)
When Steve Rogers was assassinated at the end of Marvel's Civil War, in the midst of Ed Brubaker's brilliant and critically acclaimed run on Captain America, it was a shocking moment that ushered in a new era of darkness and unpredictability in the Marvel Universe. Tony Stark who was already carrying a heavy burden following the tough and unpopular choices he made in the Civil War, was further crushed by the death of one of his closest friends, and the conscience of the superhero community. Eventually it was revealed that Steve wasn't actually dead, but lost in time thanks to the manipulations of the Red Skull. Steve's return ushered in a new Heroic Age, where he took on Nick Fury's traditional role as director of world security (a brilliant new status quo, and one that has allowed us to see a very different side of Steve Rogers). Steve Rogers is in the minority on this list, as he is a character who has been used very well since his resurrection, and we genuinely look forward to seeing what the future holds for him. However, when thinking about the road not traveled, we can't help but wonder if the dawn of the Heroic Age, and the subsequent stories that followed would have been filled with more drama and tension, had Steve not returned, and the heroic community been forced to mend relationships with the death of Captain America still hanging over them as a constant reminder of their greatest failings, and to forge ahead without Steve's iron clad set or morals to guide them.
6.Aunt May, Spiderman
This is more of a case where the character should never have been killed in the first place. Death is something of a revolving door in super hero comics, however the great suspension of belief required where resurrections are concerned is made a bit easier when the character already has super powers of somepoint. Aunt May was a 70 year old woman whose heart was always one missed dose of Bayer Aspirin away from shutting down faster than your local Long John Silver's when the health inspector comes a calling. So I can't really explain why the decision to kill Aunt May was made. I can tell you that the resurrection what a mess. It was revealed that the woman who Peter thought was his Aunt May was actually a dying Actress (really Pete, you didn't notice her missing a few key memories and personality traits?) disguised by Norman Osborn and switched out when he kidnapped the real Aunt May with no real practical endgame in mind, at least not one that would have been more effective than actually killing Aunt May right in front of Peter. Getting away from the poor decision to kill her, and the even poorer explanation for the resurrection, Aunt May should have stayed dead, because in a time where one of the biggest complaints regarding the character of Peter Parker is that he is an adult stuck in a weird limbo of adolescence, the death of his parental figure could have really allowed for Peter to come into his own as a self reliant adult.
5. Ra's al Ghul, Batman
One of Batman's greatest nemeses and the father of one of his most fascinating romantic interests (Talia al Ghul, mother of Batman's son Damien), Ra's al Ghul is a terrorist and an assassin without rival in the world. He is so bad ass, he leads an organization known as the League of Assassins. Leage. Of. Assassins. Need we say more? A fantastic villain at the center of several great Batman stories (including "Son of the Demon," "Contagion," "Legacy," and "JLA: Tower of Babel"), Ghul was struck down in a plot orchestrated by his estranged daughter Nyssa, who planned to kill Superman with Kryptonite bullets and then turn on her father. Surprise surprise, Superman lives (thanks to Batman saving his ass), but Ra's is mortally injured. As he lays dying, he reveals to Batman that his death was part of his own masterplan to convince Nyssa and Talia to accept their destinies as his heirs. One of Batman's greatest enemies revealing that his own death was part of his larger plan to ensure that both of his daughters take his place and continue his efforts to destroy the world. The death of Ra's al Ghul was pretty much the ideal end to any villain's story, and gave him the last laugh in his struggle with Batman.
So why did DC honchos decide to bring him back two years later with a half-baked retcon that had Ra's consciousness hiding in another body and him attempting to take Damien as his own new body? Ra's al Ghul was much better left off as a great villain who scored a final victory in death.
4. Jean Grey, X-Men
Jean Grey was never a particularly interesting character. One of the original X-Men, she was the weakest member of the team until the infamous "Dark Phoenix Saga" made her by far the most powerful. She was also the love interest and eventual wife of Scott "Cyclops" Summers, a relationship so staid and lifeless that the only thing to shock it into being interesting was Jean's suicide at the end of the Phoenix Saga. Allowing a once fairly weak character to evolve into a godlike force of ultimate pyschic power, be with her beloved, and die sacrificing herself to save her friends and the entire Universe seems a fitting arc for the character to end on, and a great excuse to get rid of a pretty boring presence on the team. Unfortunately, Jean did not stay dead, returning to the comics (and bizarrely retconning the best story she ever took part in, claiming that the Phoenix Force took her form and her essence, but that she was alive the whole time) to take part in X-Factor, which reunited the original X-Men. This time around, she got to marry Scott and train a new generation of mutants before being "tragically" struck down by Magneto. Jean was never a great character, and her last words to her husband, "All I ever do is die on you" were pretty accurate. Though it has widely been hinted that her return is imminent, we really hope that this time she stays in the ground. Cyclops, and the X-Men, are much more interesting without her.
3. Magneto, X-Men
Magneto is arguably the greatest villain in the history of comics (at least IGN thinks so, placing the character at #1 in their "Top 100 Comic Book Villains List"). A Jewish Holocaust survivor bent on ensuring that Mutants don't share the same fate, and willing to go to any means to guarantee it, Magneto has been the X-Men's arch nemesis from the very first issue in 1963.
From his debut attacking an American military base, to his formation of the Brotherhood of Mutants, to the brutal torture of Xavier's love Moira MacTaggart, Magneto has been at the center of many of the worst things to ever happen to the XMen. He once ripped the adamantium clear off Wolverine's bones. He single-handedly created the Mutant sanctuary of Genosha. In what would have been his last story arc, under the guidance of brilliant writer Grant Morrison, Magneto infiltrated the XMen under the guise of Xorn, became addicted to the power-enhancing drug Kick, killed Jean Grey, re-crippled Xavier and devastated New York City, turning it into a human concentration camp. His reign of terror ended when, in one of the most bad ass moments in comics history, Wolverine decapitated him. A modern masterpiece of the form, Morrison's run on XMen gave their greatest villain the final arc of a lifetime. But comics are terrified of change, and of course Magneto was "resurrected" almost immediately, with a retcon implying that Xorn was a separate entity that has impersonated Magneto (though why he would impersonate Magneto infiltrating the Xmen doesn't make any sense...) and that the real Magneto was actually just hanging out on Genosha the whole time his name was being sullied by a different genocidal megalomaniac. Sigh. A great villain (maybe the greatest) was given a great end. But no. Comics are infinitely ongoing and terrified of giving anything a real ending, and so Magneto had to return. He should've stayed dead, and gone down as the greatest villain of all time.
2. The Flash (Barry Allen), The Flash
Barry Allen was the Silver Age Flash, and his introduction rejuvenated the concept of the Superhero and ushered in the Silver Age of Comics. Unfortunately for Barry, (and his Silver Age contemporaries, Hal Jordan, and Oliver Queen), there came a time when DC didn't know what to do with their silver age characters, and started to view them as anachronisms. Barry especially found himself in hot water as his moral code was very similar to Steve Rogers and Clark Kent, causing some fans to view him as something of a boy scout, and a bit of a dull character, and after a few misguided attempts to darken Barry up by having him murder his arch nemesis The Reverse Flash, DC decided to kill him off as the major death of their Crisis on Infinite Earths event. Barry died a hero, saving the Universe from destruction at the hands of the Anti-Monitor. Barry's death allowed for the rise of a more interesting and relatable Flash, Barry's former sidekick Kid-Flash, Wally West. For the first time in mainstream super hero comics, a sidekick took up the mantle of an established hero. Wally was forced into a situation where he was expected to stand shoulder to shoulder with the biggest names of the DC universe, and do so while trying to live up to the saintly legacy of Barry Allen. Wally is a much more relatable character than Barry because we can all identify to the idea of trying to step out of the shadow of our parents and striving to realize our full potential as adults. While Barry's return has been handled well, it has forced Wally back into the background, and regressed a character whose hook was the journey of personal growth readers invested themselves in for over 20 years.
1. Jason Todd, Batman
The death of Jason Todd effectively ushered Batman forward into the modern age, taking the darkness of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's The Killing Joke and bringing it into the mainstream book itself. An unpopular replacement Robin after Dick Grayson assumed the name Nightwing, Jason Todd so annoyed fans that a phone poll was conducted to determine whether he should live or die. The result was 1988's A Death in the Family which found Todd beaten to death by the Joker and left to die in an explosion. His death formed perhaps the largest mark on Bruce Wayne's psyche since the deaths of his parents, and became an equally important part of the Bat mythos. That Batman could let Joker live after he had killed Jason Todd was an ethical choice the character has been judged on ever since, and his failure to save his protege haunted Bruce more than anything else in his life. So it was actually insulting when Todd returned as the antihero Red Hood in 2005's Under the Hood. Apparently Jason Todd was returned from the dead when Superboy punched reality (which is apparently a thing that can be punched) and spent the next decade or so training with Ra's al Ghul (see? great villain!) before returning to Gotham to act as a vigilante willing to use lethal force. The return of Jason Todd unwrote the greatest tragedy in Batman's life, took away one of Joker's biggest victories, and undermined two decades of Batman storytelling. Jason Todd's death was one of the most historic events in comics history. Bringing him back may go down as one of the medium's biggest missteps.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Random Pop Culture Top Ten List: Top 10 Pilots That Aren't Pilots
By Jordan
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
The pilot is a weird and wonderful thing, simultaneously the birth of a television show and often one of its worst efforts. Most importantly though, a pilot is a chance to introduce the potential audience to the world of the show and to give them an idea of the major themes the show will explore every week. A great pilot should put us in the world of the series and leave us clamoring to come back next week. Sometimes, however, that feeling is replicated by something in pop culture that is not intended (or in some cases on this list, not directly intended) to be the pilot for a television series. Sometimes we are left wishing that something we just encountered was actually going to be a television show, and thus give us the opportunity to continuously come into contact with these characters and enter the world. Here are ten instances where we were left wishing something was a tv pilot:
10. The American President
Ok, so technically Aaron Sorkin wrote The American President as sort of a test balloon to prove to networks that he could make people interested in the day to day lives of White House staffers and thus enable him to create his magnum opus, The West Wing. But it worked. Ostensibly a romantic comedy, the film follows President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas), a widowed Commander in Chief who falls for lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening). And while thir courtship is the perfect example of the sort of romantic tension Sorkin would utilize perfectly after his move to television (and would have probably worked about as well extended to a season or seasons long relationship), its the stuff around the edges of the film that left us begging to get back in that White House next week. From the complex and endearing relationship between Shepherd and his Chief of Staff (Martin Sheen, who would go on to play President Bartlet on The West Wing) to the smarmy but charming Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox, clearly a Josh Lyman prototype), to the President's relationship with his precocious teenage daughter Lucy (Shawna Waldron, who would later be Elizabeth Moss on The West Wing), the film is filled around the edges with characters and relationships that simply beg to be fleshed out. And, when the President prepares to deliver the State of the Union at the film's end, it is bound to give you chills and leave you wishing there was more where that came from. Fortunately, in this case, there was.
9. "Amends," Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Another example where our dreams of a pilot came true (and was in fact planned before this episode), "Amends" acts as a sort of pre-pilot for Angel, delving into his past, exploring his tortured soul, and ultimately giving him a reason to stay alive and keep fighting the good fight. Joss Whedon brought Angel back from a Hell dimension for the sheer purpose of prepping him for the spin-off the WB had offered the character, but "Amends" is perhaps the first time that Angel, a compelling character and an excellent performance by Boreanaz, seemed like he could really carry a show that wouldn't have his romantic tension with Buffy to fall back on. One of the best episodes Buffy ever did, "Amends" exists as the series' only Christmas episode, true, but more importantly it puts Angel once and for all on his own path toward redemption for his past sins. And while we had to wait nine long months for the show's actual pilot (which used footage from "Amends" in its theme song), Angel proved well worth it.
8. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Pretty much any of David Sedaris' books could be adapted into a television show (and in fact any such show would probably draw from every one of his books), but Me Talk Pretty One Day seems to lend itself most readily to serialization. Imagine a show built around Sedaris' move with his partner Hugh to France, and his bumbling attempts to fit into the French culture and learn the language while adapting to a totally new lifestyle. Unlike Outsourced, though, the show wouldn't devolve into a series of xenophobic gags so much as it would likely be a witty fish out of water story. Plus, any Sedaris centered show would be rife with flashbacks to his dysfunctional childhood and his life back in America (many of which could be drawn from the essays in the first part of Me Talk Pretty One Day) and just begging for visits from his family to his new home. The show could be completely episodic, but could also easily develop a serialized narrative as Sedaris slowly reconciles his childhood and the life he had in America with the man he is becoming in France.
7. "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase, " The Simpsons
Actually a parody of the idea of spinning off characters from a hit show for little apparent reason, "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase" is successful in mocking how terrible and contrived many spin-offs are, but also left us wondering if any show could possibly have more fruit for a spin-off than The Simpsons. Along with "22 Short Films About Springfield," this episode is a reminder of how strong many of the supporting characters on the show are, and while all of the spin-offs presented in this episode are intentionally awful, there's a chance that during its heyday, the show could have come up with something brilliant to do with its humongous cast of characters. Now, though, its probably best they stay on The Simpsons to give the writers enough material to keep the juggernaut running for another 45 years.
6. Gun, With Occasional Music by Johnathan Lethem
People love procedurals, right? Well, if Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music became a TV series, it could singlehandedly merge prcedural television with more experimental, David Lynch-esque fare, and draw in fans of science fiction to boot. The novel follows Conrad Metcalf, a pretty standard hard boiled private-eye type, except for the fact that he lives in a dystopian future where some children, called babyheads, are hyper-evolved to be more intelligent, and thus more cynical than most adults, where animals can also be bioengineered to possess the intelligence of humans, where psychology is seen as a fringe belief that makes adherents akin to Jehovah's Witnesses, where asking questions is seen as rude, where everyone is on some type of behavior modifying drug, and where people can trade erogenous zones in order to experience sex as someone from the opposite gender (a procedure which has left our hero with his ex-girlfriend's parts after she skipped town with his). If this doesn't sound like the weirdest possible twist on the detective procedural you've ever heard of, there's plenty more strangeness at hand in Lethem's brilliant book. Taking the standard noir tropes and throwing them into the future has been done many times before (and has a whole genre, neo-noir, pretty much dedicated to the idea), yet never with such transcendant absurdism as in Lethem's book. Tuning in every week to watch Metcalf solve a mystery would be a blast, but watching the world he lives in become more fully realized and the conspiracies behind it slowly unravel would make for the perfect masterplot to back up the show's procedural elements.
5. Boogie Nights
Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling epic about the porn industry in the '70s and '80s examines a huge cast of characters and spans decades, giving it more than enough scope to hold up as a full television series. The film centers around Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), a naive young guy with a "gift" that makes him best suited for the industry. And while Diggler's loss of innocence and growing ego would hold as a compelling center for a series, there are pretty much infinite possibilities for character development and storylines already built into the movie. The family dynamic of Jack Horner's (Burt Reynolds) band of misfits, the friendship between Diggler and his new best friend/partner in crime Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), the dysfunctional and ultimately futile marriage between cuckolded Little Bill (William H. Macy) and a porn star (Nina Hartley), the maternal tenderness of Amber (Julianne Moore), who comes with a tragic backstory involving a failed marriage and lost custody of her children, and the sexually free Rollergirl (Heather Graham) would all have plenty of conflict to examine more in depth, and if the show ever got tired of examining the porn industry, there are already other avenues to look into available to it, like the dynamics of Maurice Rodriguez' (Luis Guzman) club, the music industry and Dirk and Reed's attempts to break into it, and even the growing drug market, with the compelling Rahad Jackson (Alfred Molina) just begging to be allowed to grow as a character. Just writing about it makes me pine for the movie to be expanded to series length.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
The pilot is a weird and wonderful thing, simultaneously the birth of a television show and often one of its worst efforts. Most importantly though, a pilot is a chance to introduce the potential audience to the world of the show and to give them an idea of the major themes the show will explore every week. A great pilot should put us in the world of the series and leave us clamoring to come back next week. Sometimes, however, that feeling is replicated by something in pop culture that is not intended (or in some cases on this list, not directly intended) to be the pilot for a television series. Sometimes we are left wishing that something we just encountered was actually going to be a television show, and thus give us the opportunity to continuously come into contact with these characters and enter the world. Here are ten instances where we were left wishing something was a tv pilot:
10. The American President
Ok, so technically Aaron Sorkin wrote The American President as sort of a test balloon to prove to networks that he could make people interested in the day to day lives of White House staffers and thus enable him to create his magnum opus, The West Wing. But it worked. Ostensibly a romantic comedy, the film follows President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas), a widowed Commander in Chief who falls for lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening). And while thir courtship is the perfect example of the sort of romantic tension Sorkin would utilize perfectly after his move to television (and would have probably worked about as well extended to a season or seasons long relationship), its the stuff around the edges of the film that left us begging to get back in that White House next week. From the complex and endearing relationship between Shepherd and his Chief of Staff (Martin Sheen, who would go on to play President Bartlet on The West Wing) to the smarmy but charming Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox, clearly a Josh Lyman prototype), to the President's relationship with his precocious teenage daughter Lucy (Shawna Waldron, who would later be Elizabeth Moss on The West Wing), the film is filled around the edges with characters and relationships that simply beg to be fleshed out. And, when the President prepares to deliver the State of the Union at the film's end, it is bound to give you chills and leave you wishing there was more where that came from. Fortunately, in this case, there was.
9. "Amends," Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Another example where our dreams of a pilot came true (and was in fact planned before this episode), "Amends" acts as a sort of pre-pilot for Angel, delving into his past, exploring his tortured soul, and ultimately giving him a reason to stay alive and keep fighting the good fight. Joss Whedon brought Angel back from a Hell dimension for the sheer purpose of prepping him for the spin-off the WB had offered the character, but "Amends" is perhaps the first time that Angel, a compelling character and an excellent performance by Boreanaz, seemed like he could really carry a show that wouldn't have his romantic tension with Buffy to fall back on. One of the best episodes Buffy ever did, "Amends" exists as the series' only Christmas episode, true, but more importantly it puts Angel once and for all on his own path toward redemption for his past sins. And while we had to wait nine long months for the show's actual pilot (which used footage from "Amends" in its theme song), Angel proved well worth it.
8. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Pretty much any of David Sedaris' books could be adapted into a television show (and in fact any such show would probably draw from every one of his books), but Me Talk Pretty One Day seems to lend itself most readily to serialization. Imagine a show built around Sedaris' move with his partner Hugh to France, and his bumbling attempts to fit into the French culture and learn the language while adapting to a totally new lifestyle. Unlike Outsourced, though, the show wouldn't devolve into a series of xenophobic gags so much as it would likely be a witty fish out of water story. Plus, any Sedaris centered show would be rife with flashbacks to his dysfunctional childhood and his life back in America (many of which could be drawn from the essays in the first part of Me Talk Pretty One Day) and just begging for visits from his family to his new home. The show could be completely episodic, but could also easily develop a serialized narrative as Sedaris slowly reconciles his childhood and the life he had in America with the man he is becoming in France.
7. "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase, " The Simpsons
Actually a parody of the idea of spinning off characters from a hit show for little apparent reason, "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase" is successful in mocking how terrible and contrived many spin-offs are, but also left us wondering if any show could possibly have more fruit for a spin-off than The Simpsons. Along with "22 Short Films About Springfield," this episode is a reminder of how strong many of the supporting characters on the show are, and while all of the spin-offs presented in this episode are intentionally awful, there's a chance that during its heyday, the show could have come up with something brilliant to do with its humongous cast of characters. Now, though, its probably best they stay on The Simpsons to give the writers enough material to keep the juggernaut running for another 45 years.
6. Gun, With Occasional Music by Johnathan Lethem
People love procedurals, right? Well, if Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music became a TV series, it could singlehandedly merge prcedural television with more experimental, David Lynch-esque fare, and draw in fans of science fiction to boot. The novel follows Conrad Metcalf, a pretty standard hard boiled private-eye type, except for the fact that he lives in a dystopian future where some children, called babyheads, are hyper-evolved to be more intelligent, and thus more cynical than most adults, where animals can also be bioengineered to possess the intelligence of humans, where psychology is seen as a fringe belief that makes adherents akin to Jehovah's Witnesses, where asking questions is seen as rude, where everyone is on some type of behavior modifying drug, and where people can trade erogenous zones in order to experience sex as someone from the opposite gender (a procedure which has left our hero with his ex-girlfriend's parts after she skipped town with his). If this doesn't sound like the weirdest possible twist on the detective procedural you've ever heard of, there's plenty more strangeness at hand in Lethem's brilliant book. Taking the standard noir tropes and throwing them into the future has been done many times before (and has a whole genre, neo-noir, pretty much dedicated to the idea), yet never with such transcendant absurdism as in Lethem's book. Tuning in every week to watch Metcalf solve a mystery would be a blast, but watching the world he lives in become more fully realized and the conspiracies behind it slowly unravel would make for the perfect masterplot to back up the show's procedural elements.
5. Boogie Nights
Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling epic about the porn industry in the '70s and '80s examines a huge cast of characters and spans decades, giving it more than enough scope to hold up as a full television series. The film centers around Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), a naive young guy with a "gift" that makes him best suited for the industry. And while Diggler's loss of innocence and growing ego would hold as a compelling center for a series, there are pretty much infinite possibilities for character development and storylines already built into the movie. The family dynamic of Jack Horner's (Burt Reynolds) band of misfits, the friendship between Diggler and his new best friend/partner in crime Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), the dysfunctional and ultimately futile marriage between cuckolded Little Bill (William H. Macy) and a porn star (Nina Hartley), the maternal tenderness of Amber (Julianne Moore), who comes with a tragic backstory involving a failed marriage and lost custody of her children, and the sexually free Rollergirl (Heather Graham) would all have plenty of conflict to examine more in depth, and if the show ever got tired of examining the porn industry, there are already other avenues to look into available to it, like the dynamics of Maurice Rodriguez' (Luis Guzman) club, the music industry and Dirk and Reed's attempts to break into it, and even the growing drug market, with the compelling Rahad Jackson (Alfred Molina) just begging to be allowed to grow as a character. Just writing about it makes me pine for the movie to be expanded to series length.
4. "The Cowboy And The Frenchman"
Made for French television as part of the series The French as seen by... (a five part show that asked major filmmakers including Werner Herzog and Jean Luc Godard to exhibit their views on the French and French Culture), David Lynch's "The Cowboy And The Frenchman" has such a unique blend of iconography and absurdism that it will leave you wishing it was the first episode of a show. The short follow the capture of a Frenchman (Frederic Golchon) by a Cowboy (Harry Dean Stanton) and his ranch hand (Jack Nance) who are shocked by his strange ways until they see the french fries he is carrying and determine he must be from France. While the short concludes itself by having the Frenchman find success in America as a country singer, a series could easily be drawn from the completely insane and often surral farm on which the short takes place, whether the French character stayed around and the show became a twisted parody of culture clash television (like Perfect Strangers and Outsourced) or whether he disappeared after the pilot and left us with the almost entirely deaf Cowboy and his incompetent, doltish ranch hand, just following their adventures in David Lynch's hyper-stylized mockery of the American iconography of the Wild West.
3. "5 Years" by David Bowie
Imagine a pilot in which newscasters came on the air and announced that scientists had discovered the planet earth only had five years left before it would explode, killing everything on it. Pretty dark stuff, right? And yet, a show based around the opening track of Bowie's Ziggy Stardust could go in absolutely any direction with that premise. It could follow an average man trying to decide how to spend his last five years on Earth. It could follow government officials trying to keep order in a society that has no reason left to play nice. It could follow a team of scientists trying to save the Earth. It could follow a team of inventors trying to develop a way to get us off the planet before its destruction. It could even intersperse all of these stories. Any number of science fiction books and movies have taken place after the destruction of the Earth, yet following humanity as it faces the spectre of its certain demise, and documenting how people, and society at large reacts to the news could make for compelling television.
2. "Gone to Texas" Preacher
Garth Ennis' stellar comic book series would make a fantastic television show. Following Jesse Custer, a preacher who's lost his faith, but gains immense power when he is bonded to Genesis, a half-angel half-demon that gives him The Word of God, an ability that forces everyone to do exactly what he says. Along with his gun-slinging ex-girlfriend Tulip O'Hare and a hard drining Irish vampire named Cassidy, Jesse decides to take his greivances to God himself, but not before coming up against a litany of maniacs and supernatural forces desperate to get their hands on Genesis and use Jesse's power for their own sick ends. Pitch black, depraved, hilarious, complicated and flat out bad ass, Preacher would make for an excellent examination of the role of religion in America, the iconography of the south, and the unique brand of American insanity. The series' first arc, "Gone to Texas" introduces the series main characters, puts them up against a terrifying killer, and gives us a glimpse of both the quorum of Angels desperate to stop Jesse and the weapon they plan to use, the immortal, unstoppable Saint of Killers. Basically, it sets up everything you might need to launch a series that would be controversial, sure, but also intelligent, quick witted, scary, and all around incredible.
1. Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek, you may or may not know, was already a series back in the '60s that has launched countless spin-offs, movies and fan conventions. Yet in the age of the reboot, its kind of shocking that J.J. Abrams film-reboot wasn't just made as a reboot of the original series. Written and directed by a man who cut his teeth in television (with Felicity, Alias, and Lost under his belt), Star Trek spends its runtime getting the crew of the Enterprise together and sending them on their first adventure. The film ends with the crew finally all in the places we know they belong, and with the newly christened Captain Kirk commanding the crew to head off toward their next adventure. We're not even Trekkies, here at Review To Be Named, but we left the movie so jazzed on the mythos and the dynamics that we couldn't wait to see where it went next. Sure, the budget would have been drastically smaller in a television version, but if Abrams nailed the character dynamics as well as he did in the movie, we would have been watching the series eagerly every week, probably reviewing it rhapsodically here, and maybe even becoming converts to perhaps the geekiest cadre around. And Sam probably would've gone to a few conventions. Just Sam though...Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Random Pop Culture Top Ten List: Top 10 Scientologists We're Willing To Forgive
by Jordan and Sam
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which Jordan and Sam take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
Scientology is an insane "religion". According to its tenets, we are all immortal and only die because we've forgotten this. It also teaches that Earth was the center of an alien genocide and that we are now all filled with alien souls that must be removed by paying the church vast sums of money. Also, for good measure, it was invented by a science fiction writer who notoriously said that if you want to be rich invent a religion, it rejects all notions of psychology, and it keeps its actual beliefs hidden from members until they ascend to high enough levels to hear the shit the "Church" is shoveling and not break out in laughter. And yet, in spite of all of this madness, scientologists run rampant throughout Hollywood. Whenever we hear that someone we like is a scientologist around Review To Be Named, we're immediately disappointed and inherently think less of the person. Here, however, are ten people awesome enough to allow us to look the other way:
10.Jason Lee
Over the last couple of years Jason Lee has fallen out of favor with many of his fans thanks to his tepid television career playing Earl of "My Name is Earl" notoriety and now some detective on TNT or is it USA? It's all the same. But before that he was a darling of the Kevin Smith cult. He's appeared in Mallrats, Dogma and Chasing Amy to just to name a few. He's earned major cred by starring in The Incredibles as Syndrome. Anyone who's cool enough to hang out with the Pixar folks can't be that insane, right? So we'll give Jason Lee another shot even though he's a nutty Scientologist.
9.Candice Bergen
She may believe that aliens are inhabiting her skull, sure, but Bergen is also a class act and a first rate comedienne. While she has turned in solid work in Carnal Knowledge, Starting Over, and Gandhi, she is also part of what made Miss Congeniality a vaguely watchable movie. On the television side is where she really shines, though, winning 5 Emmys and 2 Golden Globes on Murphy Brown and turning in a stimulating, scintillating, hilarious and shockingly sexy performance as Shirley Schmidt on Boston Legal. She has also done memorable guest star work on Seinfeld (playing herself on Murphy Brown), Sex and the City, Law and Order, Will and Grace, and House. But most importantly, she plays well with Muppets, and we just can't stay mad at someone like that.
8.J.J. Abrams
Some people may hate the creations from the mind of JJ Abrams, but one thing's for sure--he's very good at what he does. Whether it's masterminding a genius marketing campaign for a pretty shitty movie (Cloverfield), rebooting a beloved franchise without compeltely alienating a base while still allowing newbies into the club (Star Trek) or creating one of the most watched and water cooler worthy shows ever created (Lost). Sure he's dabbled in Scientology, but how could we not forgive someone who gave us Desmond and Penny, Simon Pegg as Scotty and the world's most famous smoke monster? Today, Abrams remains one of the most powerful producers in the industry and hopefully he'll have some cool television and movies in store for us.
7.Will Smith
Perhaps the most beloved Scientologist, he is certainly the biggest box office draw. He pulls in probably upwards of around $20 million a picture. But that's not why we could forgive him for his Scientology connections. Nor is it becasue he's unleashed his children on Hollywood. For our money he's been in some great blockbusters like Independence Day and Men In Black. Sure it seems like he has a propensity for alien flicks (Welcome to Earf!) but he can also act when he feels like it as he's received critical acclaim for playing that homeless dude in The Pursuit of Happyness (We can't forgive that spelling though) and Muhammed Ali. Hopefully Smith can take on some more serious roles in the future because, seriously, he needs to make up for that whole Willow and Jaden thing.
6.William S. Burroughs
That Burroughs rejected all organized religion later in his life helps us to forgive him for his time working with thetans, though he still called the teachings of Scientology "highly valuable" until his death. What really allows us to turn our heads the other way when he goes in for some auditing was his literary work, most specifically Naked Lunch, his subversive, graphic, obscene and sometimes nauseating look at addiction and human degradation. Burroughs weathered an obscenity trial (which he won) and gave the world a lasting and realistic look at the depths of the addicts soul and at the darkness and moral depravity that lies at the outskirts of our society. At the end of the day, the book is more important than the man, but the power of his work is so striking that we're willing to ignore the whole "crazy religion" aspect of his personality. Or at least forgive him for it.
5.Jeffrey Tambor
He may have some very strange beliefs, but at the end of the day, Jeffrey Tambor is just too damn funny to hold it against him. And while City Slickers, There's Something About Mary, Eurotrip, Hellboy, and The Hangover all show off his chops to varying degrees, he really shines in his extended roles on The Larry Sanders Show and most especially on Arrested Development. Being involved in arguably the greatest sitcom of all time is enough to be forgiven for pretty much anything (we let Will Arnett's involvement in the genocide in Darfur slide, didn't we?), and Tambor's work as the selfish, oblivious, horny and desperate patriarch of the Bluth family was always top notch. He was so hilarious that his character, who was originally supposed to appear only in the pilot and on a very recurring basis thereafter was added to the main cast immediately. Basically, if you make us laugh enough, we'll let pretty much anything slide.
4.Leonard Cohen
The pride of Canada, Leonard Cohen is truly one of the all time great singer-songwriters and also a famed poet. His music has been covered by scores of other musicians with the most popular one being "Hallelujah" which any artist worth their weight has coered at some point in their careers. It's truly a beautiful song. It's one of many, wee just wish most of them hadn't been written while he was a Scientologist. But he's not anymore and his music is timeless and can be found in many a movie and television show. Don't think we won't post that song:
3.Jerry Seinfeld
Following the Jeffrey Tambor Principle that comedic skills let us overlook a lot of wrongdoings and missteps, we can't very well hold Jerry Seinfeld's Scientology against him (especially since he claims not to be an adherent, despite continuously taking classes in Scientology and defending it whenever he's asked by journalists). The man was a visionary stand-up comedian who made observational comedy the thing for several years. Beyond that, he was instrumental in the creation of one of the best sitcoms of all time, the eponymously named Seinfeld, and was its most underrated cast member during the show's legendary 9 year run. He was never the strongest actor, but his ridiculous reactions and straight-man capabilities kept the lunacy going on around him in perspective. His stint on the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm also reminded us just how much we liked Jerry and how great his chemistry with Seinfeld co-creator and head writer Larry David continues to be even a decade later. Sure, we have to ask, What's the deal with Scientology? But we're betting he'll give us a pretty funny answer to the question.
2.Neil Gaiman
The premier fantasy writer of our time, Gaiman transcends the usual low brow strictures of the genre and turns in brilliant, fully realized and thought provoking work on a regular basis. His books American Gods, Anansi Boys, and Stardust all play with the genre in interesting ways, and his short children's novel Coraline stands up to the work of Roald Dahl for sheer creativity, verve, and a refusal to talk down to children. But the crowning achievement of his career is Sandman, his epic comics series that along with Allan Moore's Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is credited with raising the quality of comics and giving them artistic merit for the first time in their history. Sandman is philosophically fascinating, brilliant, intricate, sprawling and flat out phenomenal in its exploration of the nature of mortality and grapples with whether anyone can ever really change. Before Sandman, people scoffed at the notion of a "serious, adult comic." After it, DC Comics created the Vertigo imprint for adults only, and many people (including a few of us here at Review To Be Named) ignored the distinction of comic entirely and placed Sandman among our favorite books of all time. After writing that masterpiece, Gaiman could believe that the world was going to end in 2012 and we'd still forgive him for it.
1.Nancy Cartwright
The news that Cartwright was a Scientologist hurt many Simpsons fan. When news surfaced she had recorded phone messages in her patented Bart Simpson voice to try and sell the wacky cult to people, we were downright angry. But whe is Bart Simpson, the character that has brought millions of Simpson fans joy throughout the years. To her credit, she is also a fantastic voice-over artist who has worked on many cartoons over the years. I guess that may be more to the credit of the fantastic writers on the show over the years, but Cartwright gets a pass for being a part of the creation of one of television's greatest characters.
Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here
Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which Jordan and Sam take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.
Scientology is an insane "religion". According to its tenets, we are all immortal and only die because we've forgotten this. It also teaches that Earth was the center of an alien genocide and that we are now all filled with alien souls that must be removed by paying the church vast sums of money. Also, for good measure, it was invented by a science fiction writer who notoriously said that if you want to be rich invent a religion, it rejects all notions of psychology, and it keeps its actual beliefs hidden from members until they ascend to high enough levels to hear the shit the "Church" is shoveling and not break out in laughter. And yet, in spite of all of this madness, scientologists run rampant throughout Hollywood. Whenever we hear that someone we like is a scientologist around Review To Be Named, we're immediately disappointed and inherently think less of the person. Here, however, are ten people awesome enough to allow us to look the other way:
10.Jason Lee
Over the last couple of years Jason Lee has fallen out of favor with many of his fans thanks to his tepid television career playing Earl of "My Name is Earl" notoriety and now some detective on TNT or is it USA? It's all the same. But before that he was a darling of the Kevin Smith cult. He's appeared in Mallrats, Dogma and Chasing Amy to just to name a few. He's earned major cred by starring in The Incredibles as Syndrome. Anyone who's cool enough to hang out with the Pixar folks can't be that insane, right? So we'll give Jason Lee another shot even though he's a nutty Scientologist.
9.Candice Bergen
She may believe that aliens are inhabiting her skull, sure, but Bergen is also a class act and a first rate comedienne. While she has turned in solid work in Carnal Knowledge, Starting Over, and Gandhi, she is also part of what made Miss Congeniality a vaguely watchable movie. On the television side is where she really shines, though, winning 5 Emmys and 2 Golden Globes on Murphy Brown and turning in a stimulating, scintillating, hilarious and shockingly sexy performance as Shirley Schmidt on Boston Legal. She has also done memorable guest star work on Seinfeld (playing herself on Murphy Brown), Sex and the City, Law and Order, Will and Grace, and House. But most importantly, she plays well with Muppets, and we just can't stay mad at someone like that.
8.J.J. Abrams
Some people may hate the creations from the mind of JJ Abrams, but one thing's for sure--he's very good at what he does. Whether it's masterminding a genius marketing campaign for a pretty shitty movie (Cloverfield), rebooting a beloved franchise without compeltely alienating a base while still allowing newbies into the club (Star Trek) or creating one of the most watched and water cooler worthy shows ever created (Lost). Sure he's dabbled in Scientology, but how could we not forgive someone who gave us Desmond and Penny, Simon Pegg as Scotty and the world's most famous smoke monster? Today, Abrams remains one of the most powerful producers in the industry and hopefully he'll have some cool television and movies in store for us.
7.Will Smith
Perhaps the most beloved Scientologist, he is certainly the biggest box office draw. He pulls in probably upwards of around $20 million a picture. But that's not why we could forgive him for his Scientology connections. Nor is it becasue he's unleashed his children on Hollywood. For our money he's been in some great blockbusters like Independence Day and Men In Black. Sure it seems like he has a propensity for alien flicks (Welcome to Earf!) but he can also act when he feels like it as he's received critical acclaim for playing that homeless dude in The Pursuit of Happyness (We can't forgive that spelling though) and Muhammed Ali. Hopefully Smith can take on some more serious roles in the future because, seriously, he needs to make up for that whole Willow and Jaden thing.
6.William S. Burroughs
That Burroughs rejected all organized religion later in his life helps us to forgive him for his time working with thetans, though he still called the teachings of Scientology "highly valuable" until his death. What really allows us to turn our heads the other way when he goes in for some auditing was his literary work, most specifically Naked Lunch, his subversive, graphic, obscene and sometimes nauseating look at addiction and human degradation. Burroughs weathered an obscenity trial (which he won) and gave the world a lasting and realistic look at the depths of the addicts soul and at the darkness and moral depravity that lies at the outskirts of our society. At the end of the day, the book is more important than the man, but the power of his work is so striking that we're willing to ignore the whole "crazy religion" aspect of his personality. Or at least forgive him for it.
5.Jeffrey Tambor
He may have some very strange beliefs, but at the end of the day, Jeffrey Tambor is just too damn funny to hold it against him. And while City Slickers, There's Something About Mary, Eurotrip, Hellboy, and The Hangover all show off his chops to varying degrees, he really shines in his extended roles on The Larry Sanders Show and most especially on Arrested Development. Being involved in arguably the greatest sitcom of all time is enough to be forgiven for pretty much anything (we let Will Arnett's involvement in the genocide in Darfur slide, didn't we?), and Tambor's work as the selfish, oblivious, horny and desperate patriarch of the Bluth family was always top notch. He was so hilarious that his character, who was originally supposed to appear only in the pilot and on a very recurring basis thereafter was added to the main cast immediately. Basically, if you make us laugh enough, we'll let pretty much anything slide.
4.Leonard Cohen
The pride of Canada, Leonard Cohen is truly one of the all time great singer-songwriters and also a famed poet. His music has been covered by scores of other musicians with the most popular one being "Hallelujah" which any artist worth their weight has coered at some point in their careers. It's truly a beautiful song. It's one of many, wee just wish most of them hadn't been written while he was a Scientologist. But he's not anymore and his music is timeless and can be found in many a movie and television show. Don't think we won't post that song:
3.Jerry Seinfeld
Following the Jeffrey Tambor Principle that comedic skills let us overlook a lot of wrongdoings and missteps, we can't very well hold Jerry Seinfeld's Scientology against him (especially since he claims not to be an adherent, despite continuously taking classes in Scientology and defending it whenever he's asked by journalists). The man was a visionary stand-up comedian who made observational comedy the thing for several years. Beyond that, he was instrumental in the creation of one of the best sitcoms of all time, the eponymously named Seinfeld, and was its most underrated cast member during the show's legendary 9 year run. He was never the strongest actor, but his ridiculous reactions and straight-man capabilities kept the lunacy going on around him in perspective. His stint on the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm also reminded us just how much we liked Jerry and how great his chemistry with Seinfeld co-creator and head writer Larry David continues to be even a decade later. Sure, we have to ask, What's the deal with Scientology? But we're betting he'll give us a pretty funny answer to the question.
2.Neil Gaiman
The premier fantasy writer of our time, Gaiman transcends the usual low brow strictures of the genre and turns in brilliant, fully realized and thought provoking work on a regular basis. His books American Gods, Anansi Boys, and Stardust all play with the genre in interesting ways, and his short children's novel Coraline stands up to the work of Roald Dahl for sheer creativity, verve, and a refusal to talk down to children. But the crowning achievement of his career is Sandman, his epic comics series that along with Allan Moore's Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is credited with raising the quality of comics and giving them artistic merit for the first time in their history. Sandman is philosophically fascinating, brilliant, intricate, sprawling and flat out phenomenal in its exploration of the nature of mortality and grapples with whether anyone can ever really change. Before Sandman, people scoffed at the notion of a "serious, adult comic." After it, DC Comics created the Vertigo imprint for adults only, and many people (including a few of us here at Review To Be Named) ignored the distinction of comic entirely and placed Sandman among our favorite books of all time. After writing that masterpiece, Gaiman could believe that the world was going to end in 2012 and we'd still forgive him for it.
1.Nancy Cartwright
The news that Cartwright was a Scientologist hurt many Simpsons fan. When news surfaced she had recorded phone messages in her patented Bart Simpson voice to try and sell the wacky cult to people, we were downright angry. But whe is Bart Simpson, the character that has brought millions of Simpson fans joy throughout the years. To her credit, she is also a fantastic voice-over artist who has worked on many cartoons over the years. I guess that may be more to the credit of the fantastic writers on the show over the years, but Cartwright gets a pass for being a part of the creation of one of television's greatest characters.
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