On Wednesday, May 25th, The Walking Dead creator/writer/executive producer Robert Kirkman went on the late-night comedy game show @midnight, hosted by Chris Hardwick. As Hardwick is also the host of Talking Dead, and with the season six finale being what it was, naturally the topic of who could have died came up. And Kirkman may have given the answer.
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILER?
Look, it’s quite likely not real. @midnight is a comedy show, so Kirkman was likely just having a laugh at all of our expenses. He knows that people are unhappy with the finale, and as the creator of The Walking Dead universe, he can sort of do whatever he wants. You can see him crack up as soon as he says the name “Carl.” And Carl being the victim of Lucille? It’s not impossible, but it seems unlikely. Negan threatened to pop Carl’s other eye out if anyone stopped his batting practice, and taking it out of a bloody puddle doesn’t make much sense.
On the other hand, Kirkman could very well be telling the truth. He says in the clip he doesn’t want to keep everyone waiting: “I’m not gonna make you wait all summer! I’m not an a**hole!” Which is as good a reason as any to leak the info. And there is a bit of reasoning why it could have been Carl. Carl’s not a pick many would have gone with – it seems like the general consensus is that Glenn was killed, much like the comics. But it’s not impossible that Carl was killed. We don’t have any visual confirmation of who died, and The Walking Dead has swapped character deaths before (like having Denise meet Abraham’s fate).
What do you guys think? Did Kirkman reveal the big twist, or is he just having a laugh? Seems we’ll find out in six months, on The Walking Dead, Talking Dead, and @midnight.
Curtis and Brock take a trip to the late seventies to discuss Shane Black’s newest film, The Nice Guys. Also find out the piece of Rock news that hits home for Curtis and what the guys think of the latest round of MCU casting.
0:00-4:37 Intro – YouTube star discussion
6:20 Movie News – Angry Birds, Thor Casting
13:15 UNseen classics – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest & Alien
19:37 What’s Cookin’ in The Rock’s Kitchen? – Janson Universe
23:38 Brock discusses hangin’ with Flo as the Kool-Aid Man
24:37 The Nice Guys Review
28:58 Curtis’ Nice Guys Soapbox Moment
1:02:42 The Witch and Satanists
1:06:21 ‘Hamilton’
Have a topic you’d like to hear UnPOPPED? Send any comments/love/vitriol to unpopentertainment@gmail.com
For once the description is actually accurate for the episode and not hiding any type of major plot spoiler for what is really happening. The whole episode is about Steven working to get the two new members of the Crystal Gems, Peridot and Lapis Lazuli to get along. This isn’t an easy task as the last time the two hung out, Peridot dragged her back to Earth against her will to use her as an informant against Steven and the team. Ah, reformed villains, they always have so much baggage to deal with.
From there it’s more of a comedy episode as the two Gems work to try and get alone. Actually, Peridot works to get along and Lapis just gives her the cold shoulder. Steven suggestions the use of sitcom plans to fix the problem such as drawing a line down the barn and putting up a curtain. These don’t work as Peridot is awkward when it comes to people so trying to connect with someone she’s wronged doesn’t exactly work. Apologies are not her strong suit. It’s interesting though, when it’s all over, they aren’t friends. Lapis is still bitter but she seems to be less so. So basically the pair don’t really get along but will be working on it for the rest of the season.
The ending is a bigger cliffhanger than the previous episode Same Old World. You’ll have to watch for yourself to see what happens but fans will definitely be eager for the next episode to come out. For now, Barn Mates is enjoyable and you should watch it for yourself to see these two Gems trying to get along in barn they now call home.
Jake Gyllenhaal and director Denis Villeneuve, who previously worked together on Enemy and Prisoners, are teaming up again for The Son, an adaptation of Jo Nesbo’s crime novel.
Villeneuve is currently tied up with the sequel to Blade Runner, which will hit theaters later in 2017, so The Son won’t be out anytime soon. But the synopsis of the novel sounds intriguing:
Sonny Lofthus has been in prison for almost half his life: serving time for crimes he didn’t commit. In exchange, he gets an uninterrupted supply of heroin—and a stream of fellow prisoners seeking out his Buddha-like absolution. Years earlier Sonny’s father, a corrupt cop, took his own life rather than face exposure. Now Sonny is the center of a vortex of corruption: prison staff, police, lawyers, a desperate priest—all of them focused on keeping him stoned and jailed. When Sonny discovers a shocking truth about his father’s suicide, he makes a brilliant escape and begins hunting down the people responsible for his and his father’s demise. But he’s also being hunted, and by enemies too many to count. Two questions remain: who will get to him first, and what will he do when he’s cornered?
What a fascinating crime thriller plot! Gyllenhaal and Villeneuve have done solid work thus far. Enemy is captivating, and Prisoners is one of the finest thrillers of the decade. Fight me on it.
After months upon months of HBO delaying Westworld for a myriad of reasons, the network has finally announced the adaptation will be on our television sets for our eyes to see THIS FALL!
At one point the sci-fi drama starring Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden, Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, and Ed Harris was rumored to be pushed back to 2017 after reshoots and delays through a wrench into things. Not so, as HBO said Westworld, as well as Sarah Jessica Parker’s next series Divorce would be on the fall lineup card. No specific date was set, but let’s assume it’s around October.
Here’s the teaser for the TV series one more time to rekindle the excitement:
Deepwater Horizon is the story of the BP oil rig explosion in April 2010 that, in some instances, irreparably damaged the gulf ecosystem. But we’re not here tot all about that. This dramatic retelling focuses on the rig workers who risked life and limb to save their friends and coworkers during the catastrophic explosions.
Here’s the trailer:
How about John Malkovich doing a southern accent?! That’s a welcome change. And Kurt Russell brings a toned down mustache game to the party this time around.
The dramatic thrust (if you will) of Deepwater Horizon is certainly compelling and the action looks intense. But, boy is that heroism really on the nose here. Kate Hudson telling Mark Wahlberg “you’re a good man” feels especially on the nose.
Nevertheless, Peter Berg’s film will definitely find a certain audience stateside when it hits theaters September 30.
I’ve got to be honest – I really don’t like either Gotham or Flash. I really wanted to when I began watching both programs, as their first seasons popped up on my Netflix homepage. Gotham had a very strong first half of its first season, hinting at key Batman personalities without jumping the gun. Flash was a welcome bolt of hopeful superhero antics, amidst a crowd of brooding violent anti-heroes. However, now that I’ve completed the two completed seasons of both shows, I must confess that I can’t stand either. They serve as examples of how you shouldn’t write a superhero show – hell, how you shouldn’t write ANY show. But while both shows have their critics, there are still plenty of others who love one or the other, and they will likely make their feelings known to me in aggravated Facebook comments. So is one definitively worse than the other? Let’s examine what each get right, and what they get so very, very wrong.
AND TO BE CLEAR, SPOILERS FOR BOTH SHOWS ARE COMING. SO BEWARE.
Note how Jim Gordon & Harvey Bullock were told to strike the EXACT same pose, facial expression and all
Both shows fell from what worked in their first seasons this year. Gotham decided hinting at Batman villains wasn’t enough, so they had to put them all in the show – and I do mean ALL of them. Mr. Freeze, Firefly, Azrael, Clayface, Hugo Strange, even the Joker – well, maybe. Flash, on the other hand, handicapped themselves by doing essentially the SAME plot at season one. Supposed ally turned super villain speedster who kills an Allen parent – that’s both Harrison Wells (I mean Eobard Thawne) and Jay Garrick (I mean Hunter Zolomon). Gotham’s major story struggles stem from running out of material, while Flash fails to keep up its pace and decided to just copy-paste its season.
The identity of MF Doom here was way too obvious of a reveal
Neither of the shows’ protagonists are all that compelling, either. Jim Gordon keeps yelling about how he needs to be the one stopping evil, but he also keeps yelling about how he’s got to do bad things to do it. Flash’s Barry is well-intentioned, but rather than struggling with a grim demeanor like Jim, Barry’s pretty dumb. He just gives Zoom what he wants every time – INCLUDING his speed, the only thing that gives him a chance at defeating him. And then this season’s finale highlighted his stupidity – Zoom killed his father, the metal-mask-man turned out to be a doppleganger of Jay Garrick/his dad, so with all this dead dad stuff haunting him, Barry goes back in time to save the life of his… mother? Wait, as in stopping the incident that made him the Flash? And the moment he finally found peace with in the one good episode of this season? Ah well, Kevin Smith/Zach Stentz, you tried. But Flash needs you two on every episode from now on to save it.
On the topic of writing, neither show seems all that capable of writing good female characters. I could go on and on about how bad of a character Caitlin Snow is (and I have), but none of the show’s female characters are well-defined. While the Iris-Barry train is back on track, Iris has spent most of the show popping in just to tell Barry he’s being stupid about something or other. Barry’s girlfriend Patti was set up as interesting, being a cop who lost her father to supervillains, but then Flash decided that she was TOO interesting for a female so, boom, she was written off and was sent away to Police School. Gotham at least wrote Lee off this mid-season before she could become as pointless as Iris – though her stressed importance feels strange. Lee pestered Jim about staying on the moral high ground, but never managed to stop him making his darker choices. And for a real life couple, Gotham found a way to strip anything resembling a spark from Ben Mckenzie and Morena Baccarain’s relationship.
One of the most infuriating things both shows have now done is their resurrection of characters. Flash has alternated from bringing in character dopplegangers to inventing some nonsense called “time remnants,” where speedsters just have carbon copies to chill with & kill. Thanks to Hugo Strange’s laboratory antics, Gotham oversaturated the show with its entire rogues gallery, and took away the legitimacy of death. Theo Galavan should have stayed dead, but instead he became a weird medieval ninja. Fish Mooney should have stayed dead, but instead she became a fish-powered (?) grilled-cheese-loving wacko. And who knows what’s happening with Jerome, aka maybe-Joker. Perhaps Gotham thought its teasing Joker would be a cheeky avoidance of doing every villain at once, but it was a pointless gesture that didn’t add anything new or interesting. And now reports say they might bring him back for season three? That’s idiotic.
Oh I’m back now huh?
While the two shows suffer from many of the same problems, Gotham seems to be the worst offender of bad writing/directing. Flash had some repetitive stories and horrendous dialogue, but Gotham didn’t even have the interesting Earth-2 interactions to help it. The Theo Galavan character was interesting, but all the Azrael/Strange/Freeze plots felt stupid and silly. The show’s trying to coast of Batman legacy and its Tim Burton-knockoff environment, along with some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it seems everyone was told to deliver their lines by either screaming at the top of their lungs, or belabored sentences ripe with odd pauses.
A great Flash moment, until Barry had to go and ruin it last episode
That being said, while I think Gotham is the lower quality show, I’m more disappointed with Flash than I am with Gotham. Being on the CW, the network quickly becoming the superhero channel, I know so many people who love Flash. They love the camp, they love the cheerier vibe compared to its sister show Arrow, and I guess they love that it’s trying stories about alternate earths and, presumably, Flashpoint next season. However, those general elements don’t excuse all the glaring writing faults this show has, and it makes me more discouraged. Gotham I can watch and laugh at, but Flash just makes me want something more.
Moral of the story? Gotham is garbage. Flash had better get good soon. And everyone should just watch Jessica Jones instead.
Yesterday, word filtered out that HBO and Nic Pizzolatto were likely scrapping plans for a third season of True Detective. The much maligned second season, a big, bloated, confusing mess for the most part, was met with a collective head scratching and overwhelming disdain from fans. The first season was a tremendous self-contained story, full of moral dilemma, supernatural madness, and terrific performances from Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.
Season two saw the impressive cast grow, the story shift from Louisiana to Los Angeles, and the promise swell following the early previews. But then, everything seemed to fall apart under the weight of an overwritten and poorly constructed plot. Performances from Vince Vaughn and Taylor Kitsch never came together, and each episode had potential to be brilliant or maddeningly idiotic, with no rhyme or reason as to which direction it was headed. It was a mess, mostly because of the departure of Cary Fukunaga and complete control being left at the feet of Pizzolatto.
So HBO is deciding to, more than likely, abandon ship. But they shouldn’t. True Detective is worth saving.
For starters, not everything in season two was a disaster. Colin Farrell’s disturbing performance, as hamfisted as it turned occasionally, was often soulful and engrossing. Rachel McAdams held her own, and a few individual episodes rivaled some of the best hours of television around last summer. As is the case with several shows and films, all the good has overwhelmed the bad in my brain. I’m left with oddly fond memories of season two, but the super weird nonsense is still tucked away in storage. It wasn’t all bad, and could have been fixed had Pizzolatto been told no from time to time.
But the merits of season two don’t really have anything to do with a potential season three. That’s the beauty of the structure of True Detective; the creators have the ability to wipe the slate clean. We wouldn’t be revisiting this convoluted world with these characters (because, well, they all pretty much died), but we’d be heading in an entirely different direction. The show isn’t about continuing stories, but continuing moods and themes. It’s a crime-drama and a pitch-black noir at heart, and TV can always handle one or two of those. These seasons have explored the deepest darkest parts of the human soul and framed these explorations around police procedural. It’s a timeless narrative, and it deserves a spot on TV. Name another hardboiled noir cop show. Is there one?
As for Nic Pizzolatto, well, he has good ideas for the series. We’ve seen them. He certainly missed the presence of Cary Fukunaga in season two and he’s built a reputation as a difficult collaborator. But now that season two fell flat, he doesn’t carry the same clout. Pizzolatto can either bring on a team with different ideas and approaches, or he can move along and another lead can come soon board. It’s worked over the years with things like, say, the Mission: Impossible films. And if we remember, M:I 2 was fairly disastrous in its own right. Imagine if Paramount had pulled the plug after John Woo slow-mo’d us all to death; we would have never gotten the incredibly solid later pictures.
Give True Detective one more shot, HBO. If it doesn’t work the third time around, by all means pull the plug and move on. But abandoning the series now seems like knee-jerk overreaction of the highest order. Lessons were learned during and after season two, so there’s no reason why these lessons couldn’t be applied to a third season. Streamline the story, shrink the cast, and don’t leave everything in the hands of a creator who clearly was in over his head last summer.
Title: Alice Through The Looking Glass Director: James Bobin Summary: Alice returns to the whimsical world of Wonderland and travels back in time to save the Mad Hatter.
I’m a huge Tim Burton apologist but I do think he’s already made his best movie (it’s Big Fish). That being said even I couldn’t apologize for Alice In Wonderland. It was one of those movies I saw and was kind of lukewarm on, but as time went on I started to hate it more and more. Now, so many years after the fact, I can hardly find anything that I enjoy in that movie. When I saw that they were making a second one I was not excited at all. In fact Alice Through The Looking Glass is a movie that sits with Jason Bourne and Star Trek Beyond as ‘high profile movies I keep forgetting are coming out’. I had low expectations going in so I hoped maybe I would leave ambivalent, if nothing else.
Alice Through The Looking Glass commits the cardinal sin of a movie based on text that was written by someone abusing drugs; it’s boring but visually uninteresting.
Ph: Peter Mountain
At this point most people know the history of Lewis Carroll who wrote the original Alice In Wonderland stories. The best way I’ve seen Carroll and his Alice books described is ‘long form love letters to underage girls written by a possibly drug abusing Oxford graduate’ which is pretty accurate. That is why one of the first things people keep asking me is “should I watch Alice Through The Looking Glass while under the influence of some sort of substance?” The truth is that there isn’t anything interesting enough going on to make the money you’ve spent on said substance worth it. There isn’t anything remotely interesting going on here that we haven’t seen better sixteen years ago in the video game American McGee’s Alice. This isn’t some wild and trippy movie that going to give you the giggles while you’re high; you’re going to eat your entire bucket of popcorn and fall asleep.
I can honestly say that I was bored by this movie ten minutes in. We open with a ship battle that looks like something out of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and it doesn’t become less convoluted from there. I’m more curious about why this movie is called Alice Through The Looking Glass when Alice (Mia Wasikowska) seems like a secondary character in this movie. In all of the promotional material it’s the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) that is front and center. The entire plot of the movie revolves around the Hatter. Alice doesn’t get pushed aside from the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) as much this time since Tim Burton is only a producer, but she still has a huge presence in this movie. Alice is the main character but she doesn’t seem to have any real motivation outside of “save the Mad Hatter” even after being warned that her actions could have real world dangers.
If it sounds like I hate this movie I don’t really. I only saw it less than two days ago and I can hardly remember a single thing that happened. The various CGI characters are completely underused, and if this is the last movie we get with the late great Alan Rickman it’s a shame he’s never given anything to do. The CGI characters wander around the movie a few moments while Mirana (Anne Hathaway) does her best fairy princess. The 3D doesn’t get too blurry but the movie is trying so hard to be wacky and out there that they try too hard. A movie that tries to make the 3D part of the experience instead of enhancing it usually ends up giving me a headache. It’s a two hour long movie that felt like it was never going to end.
Alice Through The Looking Glass is a movie that really only has one job, to be visually interesting, and it doesn’t even accomplish that. No one in the main cast is even trying and it feels like the only reason Disney greenlit this sequel is that the first one made a ton of money in merchandise. That being said, if no one else is willing to put forth the effort to made a halfway decent movie they shouldn’t expect you to waste your hard earned money seeing it; skip it.
