The common iteration of the word “Opa” is said to mean that something is exciting or thrilling. However, if you look at the origin of the word, it comes from Greek word for “whoops” or “oops”. That seems like more of an apt interpretation of the word as My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is predictable and somewhat pointless. Whoops.
Just the idea of a sequel seems farfetched, but the original film did make $241 million. With that in its corner, a sequel doesn’t seem so strange. What is strange is, why did they wait so long? If they had intended on doing this sequel, why not strike while the iron is hot? Regardless of the reason for the delay, Nia Vardalos is back as Toula, and her family is as saccharine and in your face as they were in the first film.
What’s interesting this go round is the film’s focus is less about Toula and more about the family. In fact, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is the first true ensemble comedy of 2016. Vardalos is only a small part of the story as she shares the screen with about a dozen other characters. John Corbett returns as Toula’s husband, who’s still the subject of ribbing from his Greek relatives. Micheal Constantine and Lainie Kazan are back as Toula’s parents (Gus and Maria) and are as engaging and hilarious as they were in the first film. Andrea Martin also returns as Aunt Voula, and she’s still willing to dish out advice.
The sequel finds Toula in a midlife crisis. She’s coming to grips with the idea that her only daughter (Paris) is moving on to college. Her travel agency has shut down and the only place she can find work is at her parent’s restaurant. In the midst of work and her constant need to solve everyone’s problems, it seems that Toula and her husband have hit a rough spot.
As this drama is unfolding, Toula’s parents find out that they aren’t legally married, so they plan to fix that. Paris is starting to feel pressure from being part of such a large family that she now is talking about wanting to go to college next year thousands of miles away. This, of course, leaves her family distraught (especially her mother) and the family conspires to try and get her to stay home for College.
What was crucial in this film was the need to effectively connect various plots which each other and Director Kirk Jones does a great job with that. The film doesn’t drag at a little over 90 minutes. Vardalos’s screenplay has some sharp one-liners but is weighed down with so much predictability in the script that it detracts from the overall product.
The performances are what you’ve come to expect from this cast. Nothing completely earth shattering. Even in the face of all of these elements that detract from the film, I can’t say that I hate My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. This is the type of film where predictability is to be expected
‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ is upon us, and the reviews are polarizing. Matthew Sardo and EJ Moreno discuss the good and the bad of the film, and the future of the DC Comics Cinematic Universe.
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Never heard of Matt Sardo?
For starters, he made the Kessel Run in less than 11 parsecs. Prior to that, he gave Doc Brown the idea for the flux capacitor and led the Resistance to victory over SkyNet – all while sipping a finely crafted IPA. As a radio host, he’s interviewed celebrities, athletes and everyone in between. He’s covered everything from the Super Bowl to Comic-Con.
Being 10 days away from Wrestlemania, the world of sports entertainment and professional wrestling is gearing up for the biggest weekend in the business. However, the WWE isn’t the only company out there so let’s took a look at some performers you may or may not have not heard of, but may want to look out for.
Rich Swann
Recently in the EVOLVE and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla promotions, Swann brings cruiserweight flash and a main event personality. He’s competed against many international superstars like The Young Bucks and Kevin Steen (now IC Champ Kevin Owens in WWE). In his first two appearances for PWG, he faced off against Roderick Strong and El Generico (NXT’s Sami Zayn). Swann has recently made his debut in NXT, facing off against Baron Corbin and a non title match against current NXT champion Finn Balor. His signature moves include a standing 450 splash and the Chicken Fried Driver, a spinning suplex pile driver.
Dalton Castle
Citing “Macho Man” Randy Savage as a main influence, Castle takes theatrical to a whole new level. Beginning his career in Chikara Pro Wrestling as “Smooth Sailin'” Ashley Remington, Castle quickly became popular with the fans due to his over the top personality and the ability to suplex anyone within arm’s reach. Castle has since moved on to Ring Of Honor, showcasing a personality close to that of Gorgeous George or David Bowie, but don’t let the act fool you. Castle has laser focus and is currently riding a winning streak to compete for the ROH World Title.
Moose
Moose with the Hit Stick on an opponent photo: Ring Of Honor
Quinn Ojinnaka played for 4 NFL teams from 2006 to 2012 as an offensive tackle and guard. After not finding his place in professional football, Ojinnaka decided to give professional wrestling a try. Beginning training in 2012, he would make his ROH debut and adopting the name “Moose” would proceed to tear through anyone and everyone put in front of him. At 6’5 and weighing in at 295 lbs, Moose brings the power game, but is quite agile for a big man. His spear and top turnbuckle dropkick are equalizers, the dropkick coming when his opponent is seated on the top rope.
Princess KimberLee
Princess KimberLee captures the Chikara Grand Championship photo: Chikara
Debuting in Chikara during their King Of Trios Tournament in 2014, KimberLee was an instant hit with the Chikara audience. 2015 was a solid year for Lee as she would compete regularly in singles and tag competitions with Jervis Cottonbelly and Los Ice Creams, and racking up unexpected victories along the way. In December 2015, KimberLee would become the Chikara Grand Champion and is currently the only female performer to hold the top singles title in a major independent promotion.
Joey Ryan
Ryan has been a part of independent wrestling for the better part of the past two decades. He is a founding member of Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, which is a showcase for some of the marquis independent wrestling talent throughout the world and has even wrestled for the WWE. While not the biggest performer, his solid moveset and personality turned up to 20 have made him a go-to performer for many independent organizations, and it appears that Ryan is finally getting his due. He has recently made his debut in Lucha Underground and the raucous crowd in the Temple is right behind him.
The Turnbuckle Bandwagon is MFR’s semi regular column on the world of professional wrestling.
Did we miss someone? Have an honorable mention?
Let us know in the comments or yell at me on Twitter at @MatPDouglas
Jonah Hill and Miles Teller are a couple of scumbag war profiteers in War Dogs, the new film from Todd Phillips. The two play David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who lowballed their way into a gun-running contract with the Pentagon in Afghanistan.
The true story of two young men, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America’s allies in Afghanistan.
Looks amusing, and Jonah Hill also looks incredibly large here. This has potential, but be wary of modern-day Todd Philips. Those last two Hangover movies… oof.
Film and television actor and incredibly underrated comedic genius Garry Shandling has died at the age of 66.
According to the report at TMZ, Shandling was not suffering from any immediate illness, at least not one that anyone knows at this point. So the passing must have been sudden. There was reportedly a 911 call made to Shandling’s home and the actor arrived alive to the LA hospital before passing away.
Garry Shandling was an understated, comedic genius whose breakout role came on HBO’s 90s comedy The Larry Sanders Show. One of his more underrated roles came in the ensemble drama Hurlyburly opposite Sean Penn and Kevin Spacey, and Shandling has popped up in brief roles as Senator Stern in Iron Man 2 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Anime rarely makes me laugh in a general sense of the word. Most of the time I tend to lean towards a smile and rarely have any kind of genuine laugh. So when a show comes along that can get me to laugh out loud, let alone do it consistently throughout a series, that’s something I need to address. Even shows last year that I thought were really funny like Monster Girls or Prison School, rarely did I laugh out loud. And before you think I just don’t have a sense of humor, believe me when I tell you that I laugh on a consistent basis at the most stupid things. It really isn’t that hard to make me laugh, but for some reason Anime rarely makes me. Which now that I think about it is probably a topic for another time.
Series Synopsis (courtesy of Anime News Network)
Kazuma Satō is a hikikomori (shut-in) die-hard fan of games, anime, and manga. A traffic accident brings his disappointingly brief life to an end, or it should have, but he wakes up and sees a beautiful girl who introduces herself as a goddess. She asks him if he’d like to go to another world but he can only bring one thing with him. Kazumi chooses to bring the goddess. With that, he is transported to another world and his great adventure subjugating the demon king begins, but first the hard work of finding food, clothing, and shelter begins. Kazuma wants to live in peace, but the goddess raises one problem after another, and then the demon king’s army has its eyes set on him.
Series Review
As we all know over-saturation can ruin almost anything. Recently I’ve been trying to get my friend to watch School-Live! but he doesn’t want to watch it because of being burned out by zombies. This is super frustrating since its such a great show, but I do get where he’s coming from. Enter Konosuba, or KonoSuba – God’s blessing on this wonderful world!!, a series that by all rights I would have thrown to the side solely on its generic light novel premise. However, this season I gave every show one episode and Konosuba was no exception, at first I thought it would be a gimmicky show I would watch for a few episodes and then drop once its gimmick wore out, sort of like Himouto Umaru-chan. That didn’t happen though. In fact exactly the opposite occurred and it steadily grew into my favorite show this season. This kinda makes me wanna kick my past self for not putting this on my watch list for this season. If I had waited for the second episode it would have surely been on there. Which you may find odd given it’s totally generic and overused premise that we see too much of in todays anime. Premise however doesn’t make the show, which I explained in my School-live! review and will now explain about Konosuba.
Konosuba makes its bread and butter on its characters, which are all enjoyable in the exact opposite way you would expect light novel characters to be. Usually light novel characters are the epitome of wish-fulfillment girls and guys who have little to no noticeable flaws or relatability. Konosuba follows nearly irredeemable characters with tons of flaws, all getting themselves into undesirable and miserable circumstances one after another. Basically its a show watching these people tormenting and being tormented by this fantasy world they all live in. So what about these characters makes their hijinks so fun to watch?
Like I said before, all these characters are super relatable in the way they think and go about things. They personify how real best friends act, and while most of the situations are blown out of proportion for comedic effect, I find myself laughing at how on the nose they get it. They provide a cathartic release of how shitty we like to be sometimes. Whether it’s being super petty over something your friend did, making fun of a friend for something they are embarrassed about, begging for money, or just hanging around them for so long that they get annoying.
Konosuba takes those mean feelings that all the characters act on and follow them to their logical conclusion, most of the time having things backfire on the instigator of whatever childish prank one of the main characters is trying to do. Almost everyone gets their just-desserts and its the timing and out of left field delivery that makes me laugh every time. I believe comedy is 90 percent timing and tone. Konosuba knows this and delivers when you are most off your guard and knows how to follow-up with a joke and when to let one go. Never did I feel something lingered too much, and at the same time when running jokes would come back I found myself laughing out loud at how they related to past jokes. Every joke usually gets at least a smile out of me, most get a chuckle, and quite a few get a laugh. A good ratio considering I don’t speak Japanese and don’t get the bonus of understanding where the inflection on certain words is being put. This is quite important when it comes to comedy in general, which is why I usually prefer to watch comedies in english if I can.
But just-desserts isn’t enough to make a show, no matter how good they are. At the end of the day you have to care about the characters and what they are doing. Konosuba surprisingly manages to give each and every character enough of a personality and motivation to where they seem interesting enough that I want to see where their adventure will take them. It’s a matter of taking whats great about their character and showing how that causes them to act in certain situations that makes the show funny and heartwarming at the same time. It’s a matter of giving them actual chances of humanity that makes them endearing. For all their shitty and apathetic decisions, Konosuba’s characters manage to show true friendship every now and then giving us a reason to root for them. Theres signs of growth and again, that on the nose portrayal of how we would act with our own best friends. All these endearing scenes are still well within character and come with punch lines consistent to the shows tone. It’s this steady balance of endearing and cruel that keeps the audience on their feet when it comes to the punchline.
When it comes to the world that these less than upstanding adventurers find themselves in, it more than fits the tone the show is going for. We are presented with a (while still fantastical) more realistic version on what it would be like being an adventurer once you take away the abstraction of video games. And it kinda sucks. And it kinda rocks at the same time. It takes some of the concepts you would find in video games and plays around with the logic of them and how people would really go about spending their time in this type of world. A lot of genuine comedy isn’t necessarily witty hijinks, but how the characters either can’t deal with the world their in, or how they come to love the world in a Stockholm Syndrome way.
Konosuba is a horribly simple show with a simple goal that doesn’t demand too much of its viewer. But I honestly think that similar shows try to fit in too much and the overall show ends up feeling like a tonal cluster. Konosuba sticks to what it wants to do, puts all its efforts into doing that one thing and that’s what makes it awesome. The only thing I think is holding this show down is its use of meta tropes. Though it does spin these tropes on their head from what you would expect, and that’s where most of the comedy comes from. It takes a person who’s seen a lot of these tropes to pick up on what they’re doing. This is to be expected given the satirical nature that Konosuba is trying to portray towards the “stuck in a video game” genre. Buts its something to mention if you aren’t necessarily anime savy, and just like to watch casually. Not all the jokes require anime meta knowledge to be funny but there are enough that I feel it needs mentioning.
Like the main character points out, Konosuba’s story doesn’t follow the usual anime adventuring beats you would expect from a fantasy RPG kind of story. And while the main character teeters between whether this is a good or bad thing, it certainly is funny and refreshing. Overall its a show that would be seen as good by the average fan, and a satirical masterpiece from the veteran anime fan. A comedy for everyone, which is something that’s hard to come by. So go check it out. Konosuba is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.com.
Rotten Tomatoes has never been as top of mind as it is this week. The early critic reviews of Batman v Superman came pouring in Tuesday, and the Tomatometer for Zack Syder’s DCEU kickoff picture has been in a free fall ever since. It’s somewhere in the 30s right now, and there’s no certainty it won’t drop even further.
That happens, sure, but here’s the incredibly uncomfortable part: Zack Snyder and his cast are right in the thick of a press tour surrounding the film, and a “brave” Tom Butler with Yahoo! decided to broach the subject with the director, Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, and Jesse Eisenberg. The result is hard to watch for the most part. Cavill, being super British and all, handled the question with aplomb, while Affleck sat quietly, just short of steam escaping his ears. Even though he isn’t any stranger to these sorts of reviews.
“The interesting thing is that we get the critics who have their personal opinions. And the thing about personal opinions is that they always come from a place. And there’s a preconceived idea which you have to get past a critic before you start writing your article or your review, and that affects everything,” said Cavill.
“What is really going to matter, I believe, is what the audience says. Because they’re the ones who are buying tickets, they’re the ones who want to see more of this kind of story or not and so the audience’s voice is loudest and after this weekend the audience, at least partly, will have spoken,” said Cavill.
Snyder tried to dance around the subject, and Adams threw out the “we made this for the fans” narrative. What else is she supposed to do? Here’s a link to the interviews. Cringe away:
You gotta hand it to Tom Butler for having the nerve to confront these typically defensive megastars with so much on the line in Batman v Superman. And the thing about fans liking it, that sounds good. But the Tomatometer isn’t the only thing steadily falling over at RT. Fan response is wobbling as well.
Whatever the case, expect Batman v Superman to earn all the money. At least, this weekend, as word of mouth might put a dent in the chase to $1 billion plus…
The new trailer for Last Days in The Desert depicts Jesus’s forty days of fasting and prayer in the middle of an endless desert. Ewan McGregor is Jesus, and through his journey he must fend off the devil and his own inner turmoil.
Check out the trailer:
Here is the official synopsis from the website, in big bold letters…
EWAN MCGREGOR IS JESUS – AND THE DEVIL – IN AN IMAGINED CHAPTER FROM HIS FORTY DAYS OF FASTING AND PRAYING IN THE DESERT. ON HIS WAY OUT OF THE WILDERNESS, JESUS STRUGGLES WITH THE DEVIL OVER THE FATE OF A FAMILY IN CRISIS, SETTING FOR HIMSELF A DRAMATIC TEST.
The fil is directed by Rodrigo García and costars Ciarán Hinds and Tye Sheridan, who is also headlining Steven Spielberg’s upcoming adaptation of Ready Player One.
Last Days in The Desert debuted at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and was well received overall. Finally it has found distribution, and will hit theaters May 13 in a limited release.
Wonder Woman fights her way through Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice this weekend, but Entertainment Weekly looks to future and the hero’s solo film directed by Patty Jenkins.
In the image below you have the family that raised Wonder Woman. Diana’s mother, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), and her two military aunts — General Antiope (Robin Wright) and Antiope’s lieutenant, Menalippe (Lisa Loven Kongsli).
“She is the only child they raised together and their love for her manifests in a different way for each of them.”says Jenkins.
Wonder Woman is directed by Patty Jenkins from Jason Fuchs’ screenplay. The film stars Gal Gadot as Diane Prince, Chris Pine as Captain Steve Trevor, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Ewen Bremner, Saïd Taghmaoui, Elena Anaya, and Lucy Davis.
The Amazonian Princess descends on theater June 23, 2017.
AC/DC had to postpone their U.S. Tour after lead singer Brian Johnson discovered he was in danger of total hearing loss. Well, it seems ambassador of rock and roll Axl Rose has stepped up and decided to fill Johnson’s shoes. At least according to credible reports.
The news first popped up when an Atlanta DJ mentioned AC/DC and Axl Rose were in talks, but nothing has been confirmed yet. “Axl was meeting with the AC/DC group, because it’s all but a done deal that Axl will front AC/DC for the 10 remaining shows,” the DJ said. “They’re in town, they were auditioning people for the job, and then they flew Axl in. Again, this is from my source.”
AC/DC gave a press release that didn’t really clarify Rose’s involvement. “Nothing official to announce. Will update you if that changes.” This isn’t a denial, so there’s that.
Also, when did Axl Rose become this super nice guy who wants to tour with Gn’R again and help out fellow rockers?
