The Joy of Zach: December 6, 2010

Welcome back to your one-stop shop for the writing of Zach Oat! This week it's pretty much all Television Without Pity, since I've been inactive on the LAW Blog and the Pop Sculpture Blog, where Tim has been posting his multi-part Jacob Marley bust tutorial. However, since it's Krampus Day, I just started updating the @MisterKrampus Twitter account again! Naughty boys and girls, beware!

- My latest movie reviews for TV Without Pity are The King's Speech and Black Swan, which is probably my favorite Aronofsky film so far, and in support of that I came up with a list of star Natalie Portman's best and worst roles. Putting The Professional on the "Worst" list was painful, but it was something I had to come to terms with.

- The first season of The Walking Dead ended on Sunday, and it also marked the end of the writer's room on the show -- going forward, it's going to be all freelancers under showrunner Frank Darabont. God only knows how that'll work out, but at TWoP we're pretty much all in agreement that the show needs new writers. I was chosen to express our reasoning in song. Well, singable prose.

- Last weekend we lost a great actor in Leslie Nielsen and a great director in Irvin Kershner, so I wrote a couple of posts, one about Nielsen's greatest roles and another about Kershner's other two great sequels that aren't Empire Strikes Back.

- I knew it was too unbelievable to be true when I heard that the Farrelly brothers were going to try to relaunch the Three Stooges in a feature film starring Jim Carrey, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro... and it was. The movie changed studios, and Penn and Carrey left, so I decided to re-cast the roles. My buddy Jon Abrams had his own ideas -- but we agreed on one Moe, kinda.

Next week: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Tron: Legacy!

'The Spirit' Has Broken My Spirit

I used to love Will Eisner's The Spirit. I had all of these Warren magazine-sized comics from back in the '70s, plus some of the Kitchen Sink reprints, and even the new DC stuff by Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone wasn't so bad. Frank Miller's The Spirit, however, is a train wreck. Just watching the trailers depressed me so much that I never saw it in theaters, only recently watching the DVD. And it's awful. My brother got me a Spirit T-shirt for Christmas, and I will wear it like a brand, like a scarlet letter that will remind me to never let anything that horrible happen ever again. I've written about my five big problems with the movie, and what could have been done to make it better -- mediocre, even -- over at MoviesWithoutPity.com.

The Spirit: What Could Have Been Done to Save It

Bond, Glorious Bond

I love James Bond movies, but I have to admit -- they're a little ridiculous. Even the last two, with their heavy dose of gritty, Bourne Identity realism, had their share of preposterous moments. So I went out and picked up the new DVD of Quantum of Solace and wrote up a guide to the most unbelievable things that happened in the film, complete with the time stamp for when each item happens. Check it out at MoviesWithoutPity.com!

Quantum of Solace: Bond's Most Preposterous Moments

Bring the Payne

If there was an Oscar given out in the category of Video Game Movies Starring Mark Wahlberg, Max Payne would win hands-down. For a movie that takes place almost entirely at night, is based on a Matrix rip-off and stars Mila Kunis as a Russian assassin, I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I'll tell you why it succeeds in the face of adversity over at MoviesWithoutPity.com. (Warning: Film may contain trace amounts of Chris O'Donnell.)

Max Payne is Better Than It Has Any Right to Be

Primeval DVD Review

I really have no idea how many people watch Primeval on BBC America. I probably wouldn't even know what it was if I hadn't seen a banner on the side of a city bus, and subsequently gotten in touch with someone at BBC America to get me some episodes on DVD, because I don't get the channel at home. But I'm glad I did, because it's a lot of fun, and probably has the biggest budget of any British television show, except maybe Doctor Who. The effects are pretty great, the actors aren't bad at all, and the stories are only mildly ridiculous. I reviewed the Volume 1 DVD set, with Series 1 and 2 on it, for TelevisionWithoutPity.com.

I Sing the Extras Primeval

Back to the Futurama

I'm a huge Futurama fan, so when I found out I could get someone to send me the new DVD movie, Bender's Game, by offering to review it for MoviesWithoutPity.com, I was super-psyched. I only got the disk in a little sleeve, and not the awesome box seen above, but the extras packed into that little disk are still amazing, and the movie is hilarious. Lovers of Dungeons & Dragons or Mazes and Monsters or Lord of the Rings must buy this movie. But you can check out my review of the extras at MWOP if you're still not sure!
Futurama: Bender's Game DVD Review

Raargh! Hulk DVD Smash Expectations!

After seeing Iron Man, my already-low expectations for The Incredible Hulk dropped a little bit more. How could anything possibly be as good as Iron Man? Well, the commercials don't lie -- the new Hulk is every bit as good as Iron Man, and the DVD set ain't bad either. Read about the Captain America cameo, the deleted scenes, and the Tim Roth commentary at MoviesWithoutPity.com!

My Incredible Hulk DVD Review