Yeah, seeing Tom refer to it as “not a classic” felt blasphemous. I think that if it was more available (i.e., streaming on Netflix), its reputation among the general public would ascend to the “classic” status that it seems to already enjoy among comic book fans.

I thought it was very good, but not great. Part of that is the huge amount of hype that critics had built up, though. I expected a transcendent A++ movie experience and felt like it was “only” an A- film.

I have been a Cleveland sports fan my entire life, but I honestly didn’t pay any attention to basketball until my late teen years when LeBron left Cleveland. I hated the guy, and I became a big Mavericks fan in 2011 and a Russell Westbrook fan in 2012, etc. At my first internship, I remember talking with another guy…

JLA is excellent, and so is Seven Soldiers as a whole, but I have to warn you that the Mister Miracle component of Seven Soldiers is probably its weakest part. I really like it now, but it actually doesn’t make much sense if you haven’t read Final Crisis (which came out years later).

The real story of Escalante is, in my opinion, way more fascinating than the movie version. Understanding the insane amount of work Escalante put into developing his calculus program and the sheer volume of bureaucratic BS he dealt with reframes the point of the story for me - it’s not really about whether kids can…

Man, I’m an easy mark. Give me any moment of Petra being a nice person or Rogelio showing real vulnerability and I’m going to get a little lump in my throat. This was a good episode with some very affecting moment and some great jokes as well.

I personally quite liked Grant Morrison’s overarching saga of JLA/Mister Miracle/Final Crisis, but I can understand people disliking the latter two and considering the New Gods to be minor supporting characters in the first project. The other writers who put the New Gods to good use were Giffen and Dematteis, but they…

In the forty-five years since Kirby wrote them, I’ve only seen about three and a half writers utilize the New Gods passably at DC (and some of the best comic book writers of all time have tried their hands and failed). I’ve also seen WB utterly screw up characters like Superman and there Justice League where there are…

Honestly, Oprah playing against type as Granny could be amazing. Like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder level.

JR is undoubtedly having a down year, but I think he’s still clearly a good player. When Rodney Hood started in his place, he didn’t look too hot. So did Dwyane Wade during his brief stint as the starting shooting guard in Cleveland.

For the most part, you are right. However, I would say that if you polled jazz bassists who broke into music after McCartney, an overwhelming number of them would cite him as an influence. Stanley Clarke, for example, has a mutual admiration thing going on with Sir Paul. I don’t expect Steve Swallow to have much of an…

On one hand, Isaiah Thomas is factually right. On the other hand, I don’t see how you get the nerve to make those statements when you take Jose Calderón’s spot on a team and quickly prove yourself to be a downgrade from Calderón.

It proved that a (relatively) big-budget adaptation of an independent comic book could be financially successful enough to spawn a franchise. The Crow arguably did spawn a franchise (and a reboot may even be currently in the works), but Hellboy and its sequel were really high-quality. Would studios have been as eager…

If you look at the list Tom linked to, it’s interesting how there are actually a surprisingly-large number of decent quality superhero films even in the nineties. Darkman, The Rocketeer, Mask of the Phantasm, Blade, The Crow, The Iron Giant... heck, I’d even throw The Mask of Zorro in there. 1997 was packed with…

I never cared for Shailene Woodley before Big Little Lies, but she killed it in that show.

I cannot fathom how any human could watch both The Boss Baby and The Lego Batman Movie and prefer the former. Lego Batman was never going to win the Oscar (it’s not as well-animated as Coco and doesn’t have the emotional heft, although the themes in both movies are surprisingly similar), but it was leagues better than…

This is such a baffling report. I guess if I was in a slump at work, I’d be extra-sensitive and I might lash out at a small annoyance in frustration, but Love is the least of the Cavs problems. Was the team also outraged when he was the only Cav to stay on the court and practice shots after their near-loss to Orlando?

I’m not going to lie, the fact that the first episode featured a 30-second conversation about Moebius vs. Kirby is enough to get me to watch this whole series.

Kevin Love seems to be a pretty good guy. Not many people would go from a #1 option to #3, completely retool one’s game, and endure incessant trade rumors and constant scapegoating from fans without letting the ensuing feelings bubble out in a bad way on the court or in the media. I’ve been impressed with his play…

Great article. I think that it is pretty important to make the distinction between directors and films, just as you would distinguish between a CEO and his or her company. For me, the mark of good direction is when the way that a story is told on the screen is different and more creative than how I would visualize it…