The Return of Chris Tucker

Let me start off by saying that I am a fan of Chris Tucker.  Back in his Friday’s/Fifth Element/Money Talks days he was the go to black comedian.  Then came the Rush Hour series which helped to cement his name in Hollywood.  However somewhere in between the making of the Rush Hour trilogy Chris Tucker decided to take a break and concentrate on more philanthropic endeavors.  Which is great, but we missed seeing him on screen. 

Now we have his Netflix Comedy Special titled Chris Tucker Live which was actually filmed here in Atlanta at the Fox Theater.  What can I say, I love Chris Tucker, and although his comedy has toned down a bit, he is still funny.  You can tell that some of life’s experiences have dictated the change in tone of his comedy, which he touches on a bit when he discussed his trouble with the IRS and his friendship with Michael Jackson.    He discussed rumors of him doing another Friday’s movie, but I think he pretty much said that it was not going to happen.  He still has the Chris Tucker humor which made him a star.  Even though his movie projects are few and far between he is still a gem of a comedian.   

His Netflix Special is worth checking out, especially if you are a fan.   I am looking forward to seeing his next movie project, which I think is going to be Rush Hour 4.

Here’s to seeing more of Chris Tucker in future projects!



The Female Perspective

Don't I know you from somewhere?

I was checking out an article the other day about actors that pop up in everything.  This caused me to  think back to a conversation that I had in reference to this subject matter.  At the time of this conversation, I discussed about 5 actors that seemed to be in darn near everything from TV shows to movies, but yet most people did not know them by name.

This started when I kept seeing Juan Guzman in everything.  I think for a straight year he was in every movie that came out.  I kept saying to myself, damn this dude has a great agent.  These character actors fit in this category because you know them by face but not by their name.  They jump from TV to movies seamlessly and most have at least 3 or 4 projects going at the same time.  You will recognize them in a project and then perhaps turn the station to another TV show and there they are again or see them in a movie at the theater and then go home and see them on a TV show.  You will find yourself saying “Hey, didn’t I just see that dude in something else.  These actors have been around for years and jump from one medium to another.  They are great character actors who deserve recognition but for the most part go unrecognized at least by name, however you will recognize their face:

 Luis Guzman

 

 James Remar

 

David Constabile

 

William Fichtner

 

Zeljko Ivaneck

 

Dean Winters

 

Robert John Burke

 

Brett Cullen

 

Garrett Dillhunt

 

Will Patton

 

This is an honorable mention, for playing the black mother and father in damn near everything else.

John Witherspoon

 

Jennifer Lewis

 

The Female Perspective

Is it worth a Redbox rental: Ex Machina

This week's movie of Is it worth a Redbox rental is Ex Machina.  I am going to need to be very careful with this review without spoiling too much of the movie.  In a phrase, "hell yes" this movie is well worth your $1.50.  This is probably one of the better sci-fi movies I have seen in the past 3-5 years.  I label it sci-fi but its probably more of a psychological thriller than a standard sci-fi flick.

The premise of the movie is based on the singularity.  This has been touched on by every movie and television show that fools with AI, or Artificial Intelligence.  The singularity is when robots, or machines based in AI become more wise than their creators and begin to make changes and possibly eliminate and replace their human creators.  You saw this in the Matrix,  I, Robot with Will Smith and if you are not watching Humans on A&E, you should be,

The movie deals an eccentric billionaire named Nathan,  who has created an AI robot named Ava and he needs someone to test her abilities in interacting with humans.  The billionaire picks a coder from his company, named Caleb, and fly's him out to his remote compound where he works on his machines. Caleb and Nathan have a complicated relationship on how to test Ava properly and once Caleb begins to test Ava, Caleb finds her interactions beyond AI and that she has fully reached the singularity.  So much so, Caleb finds himself falling in love with Ava and begins making decisions while in his feelings.  All the while, as you are watching, you are not sure who is actually controlling the puppet strings.  Again, I do not want to give away too much because it would spoil the movie.

So I highly recommend this movie.  This is not for the kids!  Lots of bad language and nudity galore so keep the young ones away.  But if you are a fan of this genre, this is a great movie and well worth a Redbox rental.!

-The Producer

Not at Comic-Con Podcast

Did you not make it to Comic-Con? Neither did we!  But we reviewed all the big information coming out and review it for you in this weeks podcast.  Join The Producer, Big Hutch, and the Female Perspective as we break down all the Nerdly news out of San Diego!

Not at Comic-Con Podcast

Comic Book Review: Storm and the Mohawk

With all these pictures popping up of Storm in Age of Apocalypse rocking the mohawk( I will leave the purple man alone on this post), it got me to thinking about how the mohawk came about.  Because we have cartoons and movies to keep us satiated on our hero fixes, sometimes we forget about the comics that started our love for all things nerdy.

Since I am married, with two kids, my comics do not get a prominent spot in stately producer manor. To get to these back issues, we are going to need to go through the crates- which are located in my attic.  Now, I live in Atlanta and the average temperature this past week has been well over 90 degrees so my attic is baking! Luckily, I had just read these books with my daughter this spring and I know exactly what long box they are in.

Digging in these crates like Pete Rock

Now the backstory before the mowhawk debut is very Chris Claremont complicated.  This is looking at issues post -death of Jean Grey/Phoenix which hit Storm very hard as she considered Jean a sister.  Storm is now the leader of the Xmen. Scott/Cyclops had left the team briefly to mourn the loss of Jean Grey.  Claremont introduced a new character in this time named Kitty Pryde and Storm took a motherly/protector role to Kitty and this plays out through the debut of the mohawk. This is a turning point for the character Storm in the comics.  Before she was presented as very serene and often timid.  As she becomes leader of the Xmen, she has some doubts to if she could lead as well as Cyclops but begins finding her voice over the course of several issues.

In one of two main story arcs leading to mohawk Storm, the Xmen are in space as Professor Xavier is continuing his complicated relationship with Lilandra, rule of the Shi'ar Emprie.  Once again, her crown is being challenged-this time by her sister Deathbird.  Deathbird aligns herself with a powerful alien race called the Brood.  The Brood infect their hosts with their eggs and this turns them into Brood themselves.  This was some scary stuff reading this when I was 12 by the way.  The entire team gets infected, including Cyclops who has come back to the team.  Wolverine because of his adamantium and healing factor is the only one who is able to reject the Brood egg. This leads to a massive battles over the course of many issues.  There are also crazy space aliens straight out of Star Wars. The ending result is Storm, who is so pro life, she is worried about the crazy alien living inside her, turns Brood but is later healed by some whale looking space creature.... Claremont was smoking some major dope back then apparently!

The 2nd of the two arcs, the one I think actually more leads to the confident Storm that we know and love, is when she becomes leaders of the Morlocks.  Angel gets captured by the Morlocks and in the Xmen's attempt to rescue him, Storm fights Calisto, for leadership of the Morlocks( no powers allowed). Storm defeats Calisto and proves how much of a leader she is and really steps out of Cyclops' shadow at this point( who was off marrying doppelganger Madelyn Pryor and was the leader of X Factor at the time). But Storm becoming more lethal and vicious leads to her starting to lose grip of who she is and this begins to affect her powers.

The battle with the Brood and the fight with Calisto changed Storm and her thoughts about who she was becoming started to make it difficult for her to control her powers  This internal struggle is weighing on her strongly.

 The team, now joined by Rogue, who left the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants because the lack of control of her powers, is off to Japan to see Wolverine get married.  On that trip, Storm meets one of Wolverine's exes, Yukio who was watching over Wolverine at the time from an attack from the Silver Samuri.  In her escape, she almost falls to her death but is rescued by Storm.  She encourages Storm to embrace her wilder side and Storm is intrigued by her.  And in a subsequent battle, Storm loses control of her powers.  All the while, Yukio is encouraging Storm to embrace the madness and Storm  is even more intrigued.

Finally, on Wolverine's wedding day, Storm becomes a new person/character!  It is not accepted by all, especially her surrogate daughter, Kitty Pryde.

There you have Mowhawk Storm in a nutshell.  The Storm character in the book, post new haircut, goes through alot- most notably losing her powers when Forge shoots her with a weapon that takes away her powers.  But even then, Storm remained leader of the Xmen and even when Cyclops' punk ass tried to come back and take the leadership, she defeated him.

With this, you can see why some people are always bothered by the portrayal of Storm in the movies.  In the books, she is so strong and such a leader and we do not get that in any of the movies.  It will be curious as to how they handle it in Age of Apocalypse and moving forward.  Just having the mowhawk is a start but hopefully they let her shine a bit more in these new movies.

-The Producer

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Storm in AoA is rocking the Halle Berry in the comics

Pryde of the Xmen

For those of us who have reached a certain age, we recall the many different times our favorite mutants actually made it onto the small screen.  This is long before the idea of having an Xmen movie( let alone 7) was a possibility.

Our first run in with the Xmen in cartoon form( discounting the 60's cartoon. I ain't that old, was on Spiderman and his Amazing Friends.  If you are of a certain age, you know that Saturday mornings were all about cartoons.  They started early and you spent most of Saturday in your pajamas watching cartoons all morning and eating whatever sugary cereal that your parents allowed( I was a Captain Crunch Berry guy back then). Since there were no DVR's at the time and #growingupblack- there was no VCR, you needed to be and in front of that TV at the appropriate time or miss your favorite show and have no idea when or if it was ever going to come back on. This show actually only has 24 episodes so seeing a repeat was rare but not that rare.

Spiderman and his Amazing Friends did two episodes with the Xmen.  The first one was called: A Firestar is born.  For some reason the Xmen are having a reunion party and Iceman and Firestar, both whom are mutants, are summoned back to the mansion for a party. The Xmen team at the time consisted of: Cyclops, Angel, and their newest members, Storm and Wolverine.  Wolverine appears to be from England or Australia based upon his accent.  This was super cool back then because of Wolverine and even tho he gets tossed and thrown all around by Juggernaut, it was awesome to see him in animated form.

The 2nd one was called the Xmen Adventure.

 In this episode you get an Xmen team that consists of Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Warpath.  Probably at this point Wolverine was considered to be too dangerous for Saturday morning cartoons.  But it was still cool to see the Xmen use their powers in cartoon form.  The episode, like all of them NOW, is super cheesy, with horrible dialogue.  But you couldn't tell 12 year old me that this wasn't awesome and I have watched this episode probably 30 times, including once more before writing this.

These episodes ran from 1981-1983 and then into reruns for even longer than that.  Big Hutch and I watched them all over and over again, but always sat up to attention when the Xmen episodes came on.  But all things change and you get older and cartoons on Saturday morning were soon replaced by watching rasslin' on Saturday mornings- with cartoons sprinkled in a little.  While waiting to watch rasslin( UWF), an episode of Xmen came on.  I'm like, "what is this"?  I had never seen it before.  It looked different and the animation was more rich and complex than what we were used to seeing. This was Pryde of the Xmen!

We get an Xmen team now of Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Dazzler, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine.  They are led by Professor Xavier and are fighting the Brotherhood of Mutant Terrorist- led by Magneto and consisting of the White Queen, Pyro, Blob, Juggernaut, and the Toad.  Reading the history on this pilot is that Marvel was looking to have an Xmen cartoon and commissioned this pilot.  The show never came around because of Marvel's shaky business dealings so its the only episode ever made and its really show of legend.  Since its a one off, you had to wait around for it to come on again and it did not show up often.  We had a VCR now, but you had to record Spiderman and his Amazing Friends and then go back to see if they actually showed Pryde of the Xmen.  My best friend Aaron, missed it showing many times and my phone calls to tell him it was on, led him to only see the heroes standing on the Earth at the end.

The plot is standard for a pilot and cartoon. Magneto wants to destroy the Earth, the Xmen need to stop him.  Each character gets a chance to show their powers and its all Kumba ya at the end. The episode is well received in the Xmen community of fans and it even served as the basis for a 90's video game.

If you have never seen this pilot, I would highly recommend you see it.  If you have seen it, go back an reminisce  for 22 minutes about a time when your Saturday mornings consisted of TV and cereal.

-The Producer

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Comic review: Lando #1

Before he was the leader of Cloud City and before he was a member of the Rebel Alliance, Lando Calrissian was just a hustler and smuggler trying to make his way in this big, dark galaxy far, far away.

This first issue from Marvel comics shows us our lovable, swag filled pirate as a man who is in deep trouble and debt with a Bounty Hunter.  In an agreement to pay off that debt, Lando has seduced a royal governor of the Empire to steal an ancient artifact that he will use to pay off his debt . Lando, being the playa that he is tho, confess to the woman that he is stealing the artifact and her heart but he is being upfront about it- knowing that she is going to now be looking to hunt him down. Of course he makes the steal and the confession AFTER he handle his business between the sheets!

With artifact in hand, Lando meets up with his loyal sidekick, Lobot.  They refer to each other as, "brothers" throughout the comic. Not sure if that is a term of endearment or they are going to flesh out they are actually related to one another. Lobot has grown tired of the hustling and gambling ways of Lando and they are going to turn over this artifact to the Bounty Hunter to settle the debt and start a live of clean living.  Of course, thieves being thieves, the Bounty Hunter double crosses Lando and only cancels 10% of his debt and forces Lando to complete one more job to erase his debt.

Lando's job is to take control of a ship and return that ship to the Bounty Hunter.  He assembles a team of himself, Lobot, and 2 ninja assassins and they take control of the ship in a job that was too easy!  Little did they know that the ship they stole winds up being a ship that was under the control of Emperor Palpatine!

Of the main characters of the original trilogy, Lando's backstory probably has the most to mine for potentially good story's.  His life before becoming the leader of Cloud City, how he met Han Solo and Chewbaca, his time as a smuggler with the Millennium Falcon..... There seems to be a great backstory there with a beloved character from the Star Wars Universe.  Whether they reveal this in this comic or make Lando a character in the announced Han Solo movie, I think we all would like to see and read more about the only brotha from the original Trilogy!