DC 1000 Review

By Justin Hopkins

Going to go ahead and warn you all that this is going to be a little more spoiler heavy then I tend to like to go. I’m going to try and keep it down the best I can but I’m probably going to go a little further. So if you haven’t read it yet or are planning on picking it up. Click back and come back after because this was such a good read and don’t want to blow anything for you.

With that out, wow was this good. Had a little reluctance with this book because how let down I was with Action Comics. The had an all star class of writers and artists to come in and worried about how much they would get to put together their vision, and they all really delived. Worst being just okay and going up to just emotional charged and just perfect and reason why they are amongst the best. Giving us stories worthy being in 1000.

Kicking us off with the talented Scott Snyder, in the Longest Case. Which was a fun little tale of Batman closing in on him solving a case that goes all the way back to the start. Going into every bit of a process and walks in and finds that it has all been a test, and that his reward is exactly what he longs for and that is more riddles. It was a good, fun way to kick things off and got the book going in the right direction.

The three stand outs were Warren Ellis, Brian Michael Bendis, and Kevin Smith. Geoff Johns was pretty close but these three were just so epic for only 8 to 10 pages a piece.

Warren Ellis was just haunting at showing how methodical he was at taking down this group of criminals. Positioning them exactly where he needed them to be and the final showdown between him and the suicide bomber and his speech over already being dead and haunting the living was awesome. Just adrenaline charged from start to finish.

Bendis was just fun all the way around. Showing and old man penguin squaring off with an old man in a wheelchair. Telling the story of how he discovered Bruce Wayane was Batman, and how he was so close to simply killing him but didn’t. Going back and forth between that and the old men. Turning out the wheelchair bound man is I’m fact Bruce. Penguin getting to the point where he was berating him about being smarter then him and gets zapped by a stun gun from his chair. Sitting forward and called him a coward and he always knew penguin knew and didn’t ever fear him trying to do anything. Which was just funny and great wit and good middle story.

But in my opinion, the best story was Kevin’s Smith. Not going what happened because you need to experience it yourself, but was not ready for a heartfelt story that really hit home. Really got to the heart of things and made you feel bad for Batman and really just hit hard. Classic example of what drives him, and Kevin Smith is just a genius for doing so much with a simple action. If you check this out for one reason; this is it.

The art work was beautiful and everyone really brought their best out. Each unique style blended together so well and as much as I liked the Bat family picture they took together I loved the photo made by Jason Fabox and Brad Anderson. Had the heroes on the left and the villains on the right with Catwoman smack in the middle with the pages having her split in two. Which is what sells this picture for me. Such a fun small detail which was smartly utilizes her walking the fine line between them.

My only real negative is Paul Dini and it hurts just writing that. I love Paul Dinis work so much but this was just bad. The twist was dumb and the jokes fell flat and the last panel was cringe worthy. Wasn’t a bad story the playful art style and did Ivy and Harley well but expected more.

All around I strongly suggest you go out and pick it up. For the historical value alone. It’s 80 years and 1000 issues and was such a gift to us all. Stories were great fun. Action packed and had plenty of heart felt moments we have come to expect from these masterful story tellers. Go out and pick it up and tell me what your favorite story is, or better yet, what cover did you get. I got the Frank Miller 80s Dark Knight and it looks sweet.

Thank you for reading.

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Bird Box Review

By Paul Anthony

Over the last few months, I have heard so much about the Netflix film Bird Box. There was the movie itself and the stupid Bird Box challenge that was beyond dangerous. I kept pushing off the idea for a review of the film until now. I know it is a little late but I wanted to see this film and due to it still being popular I watched it. Now I have formed my opinion of the film and let me take a deep breath.

As I watched the film I started to be torn in half on how I actually felt about the film. There were parts of the film that blew it out of the park then parts there were parts that just hurt the film. For an example lets look at the cast. The cast was strong with some big names like Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich and B.D. Wong however they then have Machine Gun Kelly as a pointless character called Felix, Now Kelly can’t act and honestly looks like he was just busy himself which hurt the film because even when he spoke it just was bad lets put it that way.

With a movie like this in my mind when you add pointless characters added by people who can’t act, it really does hurt the film luckily his character wasn’t in the film long. Next part that I did like is the jump in time which if done right we know can help the plot which doesn’t seem to drag the story out and in this case they do a good job. We Sandra Character with kids by herself going down a river. What we don’t know how she came to be alone with the kids, the time jump helps explains why she is alone. The biggest thing I have heard about this film was it was a rip off of A Quiet Place and yes there was parts that are the same but there are parts that were different. These two films were no where a like with how Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down.

Overall we knew she would be alone but the Mass Suicide Sides were a great twisted touch. Now it was a cool touch to have the crazies as they call them to see these entities and live only to pass their message to the people the downfall was that this felt so random. The crazies weren’t in a lot of scenes, they little explain their reasons and besides that wasn’t around much.

With everything being up and down this Horror movie sits in the middle of the pack so with that being said i give it three out of five stars and would say if you have time and want something to watch then watch it!

Dance Moms Set To Return

By Paul Anthony

Can you believe Dance Moms is coming back to Lifetime! Okay Okay I know what you are thinking, you want to tell me to calm down. We can’t deny the show became a big hit in the first seven years to the point I am talking about it and I am not a fan of the Lifetime channel but when a show reaches the top the only thing it can do is go down and that is exactly what happen.

When a show gets to the top, the stars get to the top as well and that becomes a problem because the stars in this case were the dancers on the team that the show is based around. They have other talents and decided to explore that and that was step one of the down fall. The show made stars out of Maddie and Mackenzie Ziegler and the Sparky JOJO not to mention NiA as well. The show also belongs to the mothers of the dancers hence the title of the show is Dance Moms which these moms used their children talent to recapture their youth since they do nothing else but “manage their children”. We love to hate them to say the very least. But there is also another star of the show and that is Abby Lee Miller.

In season 7 Abby started to become distance and seemed frustrated even beyond the normal. Then we learn she was going to prison for bankruptcy fraud and it only got worse from there. After prison she was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphona then had emergency back Surgey and just last June she has Spinal Surgey and had to learn how to walk again.

It seemed like the show was over and then we got a shocker and that shocker was that after all this Abby lee Miller annouced that she would start filming season 8 at the end of january and the season will start on june 4th!

We know that there will be 8 new dancers which means 8 new moms which also means the same old drama but Abby lee also said she wants to get back to basics which I guess it means she wants the show to focus on the dancing and not the drama. However that may hurt the ratings which I don’t think Lifetime wants to see happen. However we are still a few months away so if your fan of the show then I bet you can’t wait to see what happens in this new season!

Captain Marvel: Review

By Paul Anthony

D.C. first big hit was Wonder Woman for their DCEU and Ironically enough Marvel released their first woman led heroine film. Which marks the first film for Marvel Studios. Let’s disregard the Marvel film Elektra since it was a Fox’s film which completely bombed and in my eyes hurt the heroine genre but now we know things have changed since then.

We knew going into Avengers: EndGame that Captain Marvel would be the X-factor to fight Thanos, well at least that is what marvel seems to be making us believe. If that is truly the case which I believe is the case, they needed to build her up, which would make sense to have her film come out way beforehand instead of 7 weeks before Endgame. With that being said they needed this film to be good and lets say Marvel didn’t disappoint us.

Like many first movies in what will be a series, it was a origin movie of sorts. This may be played out, so Marvel had to make it interesting and they did exactly that. We get carol with her powers already and on the StarForce team, what we don’t see how she got her powers and joined the team. This created a little of a Mystery which helped the plot of the film. Now instead of wasting a whole film they made it into one scene it worked out well.

The acting was on par with the other Marvel film, they do a great job with casting, Brie Larson fits the mold and made the role all hers. She spent time getting into the shape and with the sarcasm and good heart it felt different but she wasn’t the only cast member to stand out, we had Samuel L. Jackson as a young Fury and Jude law and let’s not forget a rookie Agent Coulson played by Clark Gregg.

As I watched this film it did feel like Captain Marvel and Captain America were the same person and film both were weak but had the will to keep fighting the good fight and in the end the hard work paid off. If Captain Marvel is the X-Factor this film needed to show her off what she is fully capable of. They exactly did that, from the start she was not afraid of using her powers and as the movie went on she only got stronger and more confident. The effects for her power was spot on and even the hand to hand combat was good.

We knew this movie was going to be a hit and barely a week in the movie has gross over 450 million dollars and the numbers will continue to go up though April is looking like a tough month, so the film will need to make its money this month. In the end I am giving it four stars and recommend everyone to go see it!

The R. Kelly Reign of Terror

By Paul Anthony

I don’t know what it is like to have women throw themselves at you, nor do I want to but I do know one thing messing with Underage women is wrong, the problem is R. Kelly does not. R. Kelly is famous for two things, one which is his music which shot him to stardom and for having sexual relationship with young women who are more like girls then women because of their age which the rumor is that the youngest one could be as young as 13.

As we know R. Kelly landed in jail last month when Chicago Prosecutors charged him with ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse which three of the four victims are in fact under age. If you don’t pay much attention to him, you may think this is something new but in fact it is not. Let’s go back to 1994 when Kelly who was 27 at the time wrote and collaborated with a new R and B singer called Aaliyah who was only 15 at the time, the song was called Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number, which seems to be Kelly slogan. Working together is one thing, sleeping together is another. Kelly was accused of forging a marriage certificate to make Aaliyah 18 so they could get married though they got divorced months later, Kelly claimed he never had sex with her, okay but yet you still married a little girl.

Aaliyah was the most famous one but that doesn’t mean she was the only one because she was there was countless of other girls who accused him of abusing them. Yet this was going on he mange to avoid trouble and work on his career which continue to grow and he became a bigger and bigger name in the music industry, things really came crashing on him in 2002, when he was charged with child pornography, it took six years for everything to end when he was acquitted of all charges. Still his career was going strong he was still producing hits and no one thought twice.

However we are now in a era where people can’t get away with the things he did or being accused of, in the 90’s he got away with it but now it’s different because fame can’t even save him, after being acquitted you would thing he would stop but now we know that’s not the case. Kelly got in trouble this time when someone in his camp turned a tape into police and the video shows Kelly with a 14 year old girl which during the video she refers to her private areas as 14 year old p****several times.

We know Kelly was abused as a child and we know victims offended become abusers themselves, this might be the case for him as well but it still doesn’t make it right or give him an excuse because now he is denying everything and blaming it on the families of the alleged victims. It’s one thing to deny but another to put blame on other people. We know this process will be a long one we can only hope that this is the end of his terror for good.

Oh Jussie

By Paul Anthony

When you are in show Biz, you realize that it is hard work to make it in Hollywood and sometimes the hard work is just not good enough. Recently a star of a hit show called Empire which is on Fox decided just to throw it all away. We don’t know why this person decided to do this but whatever the reason is we know that it wasn’t worth. Empire been on air since 2105 and Jussie Smollett has been apart of that show ever since it started. So if you live under a rock I will explain what he did and why it might have just ruin his career.

The reasons why he did what he did is still unclear but the biggest rumor has been the money, which Fox has denied which implies they believe everyone is getting paid the right amount and the fact no one else is complaining, but let’s start from the beginning Jussie Smollett reported to the Chicago Police that he was attacked by two light skin men who screamed MAGA, which stands for Make America Great Again which is the slogan President Trump uses. Part of the report also stated that, they threw a white Chemical substance on him during the attack. He also stated he was a target because he was black and gay. With this happening in Chicago where the racial tension is at a high which is the reports and nothing to truly back it up but in any case this didn’t help matters. The Police started the investigation and what they found was what no one was expecting. The “Attackers” weren’t light skin or white no, they were two African America men who are in fact friends with Smollett. After awhile they finally admitted that Smollett paid them 3500 dollars via check to staged an attack and that they are not racist by any means. Oh that chemical substance was nothing more than tyenol.

Since these are facts now Fox decided to cut Smollett character out the final three episodes of Empire this season and we are still waiting for them cut his character out all together which i am guessing they will do if he is truly convicted in this crime because he could face jail time in this case. This is one of those dramas that could follow him through his career if he still has one. Studios will think twice about casting him because of the fear of the blacklash they will get when they do cast him in a role.

I hope we do find out why he did what he did because he was willing to throw away everything he worked for. Did he want more money? Did he want a brealk from the show? These are the two biggest question of this whole situation. I never watched the show to be honest, I don’t know how big his character is or if he wanted more screen time and thought since he is gay, they were holding him, who knows but we will know soon enough.