Comic Review: Batman/The Shadow – Murder Geniuses

I’ve been a fan of The Shadow for a long time. I’ve enjoyed his outings in the pulps, the radio plays, and even the film featuring Alec Baldwin. However, at least in the late ’80s and early ’90s on, comic book writers haven’t quite known what to do with him. The best depictions of the character after that time I’ve encountered have effectively skipped over any idea of characterization for the character, in favor of making him a force of nature, or an unknowable cipher, instead of giving him grounded motivations. Read more

Anime Review: Record of Grancrest War

One of my favorite works of anime fantasy is Record of Lodoss War. It’s a show that I try to watch at least once a year, and due to my appreciation of that, I’ve sought out the various works by its creator, Ryo Mizuno, which have gotten a US release, from the Lodoss series onwards. In any case, when Record of Grancrest War was announced, and that even more it was related to a tabletop RPG that Mizuno had created, I was definitely onboard to check this out.

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Movie Review: Terror in Beverly Hills (1989)

When it comes to bad action movies, there are some names in action films that can be reasonably taken as a warning sign that the film you are approaching is a stinkburger. Frank Stallone is one of those names. Frank Stallone started his career as a musician and composer and has had a reasonably successful career at that. However, as his older brother Sylvester became one of the action juggernauts of the 1980s and ’90s, Frank kept also getting action movie roles, presumably on the basis that he looks enough like Sly, that if you put “Stallone” in large enough letters on the poster, people won’t look closer and recognize that it’s actually Frank. Read more