With summertime approaching, once again Hollywood will be happily engaging us in our desire for death and destruction that ranks an 11 out of 10 on the apocalypse meter. Indeed, our appetite for all things end of the world seems to know no bounds or ages whether its superhero blockbusters, the weekly trials of the survivors of The Walking Dead, or even books aimed at young people like The Hunger Games and Divergent series. Maybe it has something to do with the fantasy though, maybe it’s fun to live vicariously in a broken world for a couple of hours through the magic of the screen, or the written word. After all, you can’t live in a post-apocalyptic world in real-life, can you?
“I don’t care what the critics say,” is a refrain you hear often when it comes to popular media be it movies, TV series, musicians, and yes, even books. When if comes to the literary world, no one gets more grief than those who write or enjoy the works of the romance genre. In the snooty world of books, even the literati need someone to look down their noses at, and sadly, romance is the bottom of the food chain. The documentary Love Between the Covers aims to shake those assumptions though. Probably every reader in their time has made a joke at the expense of the romance genre, but Laurie Khan wanted to look at those kinds of books in a new way. What if we celebrated them?
How do make a movie about an artist whose craft traverses cartooning, graphic design, puppetry, comic books, model-building, and interior design? Here’s a better question, how do you make a film about this person and condense it down into 42 minutes? Seth’s Dominion is not an exhaustive documentary about the work of Canadian cartoonist Seth, but it’s almost exhausting as you bounce around the various thoughts, works, and biographical details from Seth’s life as covered by director Luc Chamberland. Seth’s Dominion is a 42 minute whirlwind that really neither asks nor answers anything of its subject matter, but it may be best viewed as kind of film sketchbook, a rare look inside the thought process of an artistic renaissance man.
The Blacklist returns with Liz pushing to find the Fulcrum while Red fights for his life after being shot by those that don't want its secrets revealed.
It's not exactly who killed Laura Palmer, or what happened to Mulder's sister, but the question of what happened to Melinda May that earned her the reputation of being a one woman army is one of the unknown mysteries of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Although we know the broad strokes of how Agent May became known as "The Cavalry," any threat of the episode named after her becoming somewhat anticlimactic was washed away thanks to a solid script that plausibly tied together flashback action and the story in the present day. It also allowed Ming-Na Wen to put on an acting clinic as we watch May transform from a talented agent and wife eager to start a family, to the steely face of determination and dependability.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. chased its two main stories this week by introducing some new faces and welcoming back old friends, but with this episode, the second season is now two-thirds over and the series isn't giving up any hints as to how it will bring together all the various threads. Will the Inhumans be brought into conflict with S.H.I.E.L.D.? Will the two halves of S.H.I.E.L.D. come into conflict (a civil war?) as to how they'll react to the Inhumans? And in the short-term, whose loyalty will go where?
