Monthly Archives: May 2013

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NYCC 3-Day Passes Are SOLD OUT!

Hopefully you read my post yesterday and purchased a 3-Day pass to NYCC, because as of this morning, NYCC is completely sold out of 3-Day passes.

With 133 days still to go until NYCC, this is the fastest ever that New York Comic Con has sold out of multi-day passes.

Single day tickets will be on sale sometime in June at newyorkcomiccon.com

If you missed out on the 3-Day and 4-Day passes, you’ll have one last shot at getting your hands on one in June. New York Comic Con announced on their Facebook page that Midtown Comics will be the exclusive retailer of a limited number of 3-Day and 4-Day passes. Unfortunately for those of you not local to NYC, if this year is anything like previous years, you will have to go to a Midtown Comics store in person to buy a pass. They don’t sell them through the mail.

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NYCC 3-Day Passes are Over 90% Sold Out!

New York Comic Con announced today that 3-Day passes are 90% sold out. Have you bought yours yet? I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re completely gone by the end of this week, if not by the end of today.
Buying a 3-Day pass is a bargain compared to buying 1-Day passes, as the 3-Day pass is only $15 more than the Saturday pass.
NYCC has barely begun announcing the line-up of guests and it already looks awesome. Scott Snyder, Dan Slott, David Finch, Felicia Day, Eve Miles, Adam Hughes and Jonathan Hickman will all be there.
If you’re planning on going to NYCC for more than one day (and why wouldn’t you?), don’t get locked out! Head to NYCC’s website and buy your ticket now!
Tuesday Night Movies will be at NYCC all four days providing coverage of the east coast’s largest comic book and entertainment convention!
Written by Billy Henehan, who would like it if you liked us on Facebook.
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The Exclusive Merch of Wizard World Philly 2013

Wizard World Philadelphia is this coming weekend. I was originally going to do a Top 5 Exclusives of Wizard World Philadelphia, like I did for Wonder Con. Unfortunately, looking over the list of show exclusives, I honestly can’t find five items to recommend. When it comes to cool exclusives, companies seem to be not as focused on Wizard World Philly like they are with NYCC and SDCC.

But if you do find yourself at Wizard World this weekend here are my Top 5 Top 3 Exclusives of Wizard World Philadelphia 2013!

Walking Dead #1 Philadelphia Comic Con Exclusive Variant Cover by Julian Totino Tedesco – FREE
I don’t usually get excited for variant covers, but this comic has two things going for it: 1.) That painted cover by Julian Totino Tedesco looks very cool. 2.) It’s free to all paid attendees.

White Phoenix Funko Pop! Figure – $20/$45
I really like Funko’s line of big-headed figures and bobbleheads. They’re just super-cute. For all you Jean Grey fans out there, there are two versions of this figure to be had at Wizard World Philly. The standard version will run you $20. If you’d like the glow-in-the-dark variant, you’ll have to buy a two-figure set that includes the standard and variant versions for $45.

Stan Lee Cologne – $25
That’s right. Stan. Lee. Cologne. Quite possibly the oddest convention exclusive ever offered. Have you ever wanted to mimic the musk of a 90-year old man? Now’s your chance! I’m picturing the cologne smelling like a mix of gamma rays and Brylcreem. If I make it to Wizard World Philly, EVERYONE is getting this for their birthday this year.

Did I miss something cool? Check out the full list here and let me know.

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The Great Gatsby – Review

4/5 – See this in 3D!

Here’s a piece of advice I never thought I’d be giving for a film adaptation of The Great Gatsby: see it in 3D. Seriously, no joke. See it in 3D. “But 3D is stupid! It never adds anything to the movie except three dollars to the ticket price!” you exclaim. Most of the time, I agree with you 100%. But it’s worth it with Gatsby.  Trust me. Baz Luhrmann makes very good use of 3D tricks to make a beautifully shot movie look even more beautiful. It’s not just people reaching out from the screen towards the audience, aka every other 3D movie. It’s the way Nick’s reflection shimmers in a window, or the way the green light from Daisy’s dock glows across the bay. This is 3D all grown-up, not the adolescent stunts it’s usually associated with.

The Great Gatsby is a very good movie. I doubted it, based on the trailer. And then the movie came out to middling reviews and I doubted it more. The trailer looked beautiful, but I worried Baz Luhrmann would give in to excess and make it too over the top. But instead, he strikes a great balance between energy and elegance. The entire movie is shot beautifully and paced excellently.

I think Leonardo DiCaprio has over taken Joseph Gordon Levitt as my favorite actor of the 2000s. Looking at DiCaprio’s track record from 2002 onward, when he starred in Gangs of New York opposite Daniel Day Lewis, you would be hard pressed to find a bad movie. Note: As of today, I haven’t seen The Aviator, Body of Lies, Revolutionary Road or J. Edgar. But even if those four movies were clunkers, the remaining films are all high quality. These days, you can pretty much bank that if you’re going to see a Leonardo DiCaprio movie, you’re going to see a good movie. How many other actors without the initials JGL can you say that about?

I don’t know anything about The Wolf of Wall Street other than Leonardo DiCaprio stars and Martin Scorsese directs.
I’m doubly sold.

I forgot that Carey Mulligan played Daisy Buchanan in this movie. While watching it, I kept thinking I was looking at Michelle Williams, and then at one point, I couldn’t tell if she was Michelle Williams or Katie Holmes in a blonde wig. She didn’t have Holmes’s signature half-smirk, but she sounded more like Holmes than Williams and looked more like Williams than Holmes. Then the credits rolled. Carey Mulligan. Huh. It turns out Carey Mulligan is who you get if Michelle Williams and Katie Holmes have a baby in some out-of-left-field Dawson’s Creek subplot.

Dawson, it turns out it wasn’t Pacey you had to keep an eye on.

See The Great Gatsby in the theater in 3D. Otherwise, you might as well wait to see at home.

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Beam Me Up, Von Scotty

Recently, my new husband and I were coming back from our honeymoon and, by a cruel twist of fate, we happened to be booked on a 23-hour, 3-flight trip from Croatia to New York.
The first of our two layovers was a 10-hour one in Dusseldorf, Germany. Being a fairly frequent budget traveler, I am no stranger to long, restless hours sitting uncomfortably in airport chairs around the world. (N.B. Sofia, Bulgaria has the worst of them; Amsterdam’s airport was one of the best).  My husband, however, wisely suggested we try and get a hotel room in Germany so that we could at least sleep for a few hours before getting on two more flights. Brilliant man.
Not so brilliant was the fact that despite having Wi-Fi for the entirety of our two-week trip, it wasn’t until the airport in Croatia that we realized that maybe we should have booked said hotel.
We managed to get onto the spotty airport Wi-Fi for about one minute, long enough to see that there was a Dusseldorf Sheraton that was – oddly – completely booked. But that there was also another nearby hotel called the Maritim Hotel. And, even better, I actually saw the hotel as we landed.
Perfect. We’d have dinner: traditional German fare at the Dusseldorf airport McDonald’s, of course. Get a room at the hotel. And then roll on out of bed at 5 AM the next day to walk right on over to our terminal for our 6 AM flight (we even already had our boarding passes).
Capital plan.
Except as we’re walking over to the airport, we start to see throngs of people congregating near the front door. I catch a couple of girls in some leather get-ups. But I think, “Hey, I’m in Germany” and shrug it off.
And that’s when we see it. The guy who strolls out of the hotel’s front door in a full Trekkie uniform and Spock ears. Immediately, my husband grabs my arm, glee in his eyes, as he asks me: “Do you know what this is?!”
Yup. We have somehow managed to wander into a huge sci-fi convention in the middle of the Dusseldorf airport hotel. We wander around in a daze as we see Star Trek and Syfy booths, lots of happy geeks and, in all fairness, a lot more leather than I’m used to seeing even at a convention. Turns out German geek chic is metal goes on the Enterprise.
Naturally, there were no rooms to be had at this hotel. Which, considering the fact that I was tired and that we had an epic travel day still ahead of us, might have led me to muttering some curses under my breath. Something like: “Come oooooon, geeks. I mean, you’re my people, but seriously?! The Dusseldorf sci-fi convention is today?!” But with more f-bombs.
We ended up having to grab a cab to another hotel that did have rooms available. Which was annoying as I had just perfectly used up all of my Euros. However, as I was muttering expletives at the hotel ATM, my husband took my arm and said, gently. “I know you’re pissed. But, seriously, can we just take a moment to realize how amazing this is.”
I looked around at the costumes, let myself soak in the excited chatter taking place entirely in German – which of course makes everything sound extra vital — and realized, he was right. It was amazing. Or, more accurately, wunderbar.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is why I married him.

Written by Sarvenaz Tash. whose debut novel, The Mapmaker and the Ghost , can be purchased at your local bookstore or with a few clicks of your mouse here.

 

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3-Day Tickets to NYCC 2013 Now on Sale…And They’re Over Halfway Gone

3-Day passes for NYCC went on sale yesterday at noon. Last night, New York Comic Con tweeted that over 50% of the 3-Day passes have already been sold. If you’re interested in buying one, do so NOW at New York Comic Con’s website. Today may be your last day to secure one. A 3-Day pass is cheaper than two 1-Day passes, so it really is worth it.

4-Day passes sold out from NYCC a few weeks ago. If you missed out, a limited number of 4-Day passes will be available at Midtown Comics in June.

Tuesday Night Movies is looking forward to covering all the awesomeness sure to be at New York Comic Con this coming October!

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Django Unchained – Review

4/5 – Django Unchained is Tarantino’s best movie in years!

Five minutes into Django Unchained, I said, “I already like this more than Iron Man 3.” That feeling stayed throughout the entire movie. That’s a long time to feel that way, as Django Unchained clocks in at close to 2 hours and 45 minutes.

But Quentin Tarantino pulled off an excellent take on the spaghetti western. Looking back the 10 feature films that Tarantino directed, I would call Django Unchained his third best film, behind Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (Note: I haven’t seen Death Proof). In other words, this is Quentin Tarantino’s best movie in 18 years. That said, the gap between Reservoir Dogs and Django Unchained is much larger than the gap between Django and next movie I’d put on that list.

The cast in Django is superb. Christoph Waltz definitely deserved his Oscar for playing Dr. King Schulz. He was easily my favorite character in the movie. Dr. Schulz is like an old west Danny Ocean. He has all the angles figured out, and is both the smartest and most charming man in the room.

I want Django’s jacket.
Jamie Foxx is wonderful as Django. He plays him as a soft-spoken force of nature who won’t stop until he’s reunited with his wife, Broomhilda, played by the stunning Kerry Washington. I haven’t seen many of Foxx’s movies, and this has me excited to see his take on the villain Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2.
The object of Django’s quest. His wife, and fellow runaway slave, Broomhilda.

In my review of The Help, I noted that southern racists and Nazis were very easy go-to Hollywood villains. It’s interesting that Quentin Tarantino’s last two movies have featured those two groups as their main antagonists. It’s also interesting how much I loved both of them. I found Django killing slave owners to be as cathartic as Lt. Aldo Raine hunting Nazis in Inglourious Basterds.  Inglourious Basterds, by the way, is my 4th favorite movie directed by Tarantino.

Definitely worth seeing.

There are funny scenes scattered throughout the bounty hunting and payback in Django Unchained. It’s the kind of humor that you would expect from a Tarantino movie. A group of white men in white hoods spend a few minutes complaining about the quality of the eye holes in their hoods before attempting to lynch Django and Dr. Schultz. Like the diner scene in Reservoir Dogs, it focuses on the day-to-day minutiae of these men. It’s not a scene you’d expect, and plays like a very good deleted scene. It was very funny, but you would understand if the director dropped it on account of time.

I thought Django Unchained was great from beginning to end. I only wish I had taken the opportunity to see it on the big screen when it was in theaters this past winter. I highly recommend watching it. One caution though, like me, you might find yourself humming the main theme for a few days.

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Iron Man 3 – Review

2/5 – The curse of three continues for Marvel franchises

The person next to me fell asleep early on during Iron Man 3 and woke up late in the movie. “What did I miss?” she asked. “The entire movie,” I responded, “and it’s terrible.” Okay, maybe terrible is an overstatement, but it is definitely a disappointment.

What is it with Marvel being unable to make a good third movie in their film franchises? X-Men: The Last Stand was terrible. Spider-Man 3 was all over the place. And now that Iron Man joins that club, delivering a very disappointing sequel with Iron Man 3.

I should have known it was going to disappoint when it was announced that Jon Favreau wasn’t returning as director. Or maybe when Robert Downey Jr and Gwenyth Paltrow said they didn’t think there would be an Iron Man 4 while promoting Iron Man 3. Tobey Maguire, James Franco and Kirstin Dunst all had the same attitude about another Spider-Man movie when they were promoting Spider-Man 3. Is Iron Man 3 Spider-Man 3 bad? No. But it was nowhere near as good as any other Marvel movie that Iron Man has appeared in to date.

There’s going to be plenty of spoilers in this post, so if you haven’t seen Iron Man 3 yet, you make want to not read further until you’ve seen the movie. 



The first two Iron Man movies are two of my favorite superhero movies. They were nuanced, with a great mix of action, plot and humor. Tony and Pepper had real chemistry. But here, their magic is gone. Yes, they care for one another, but the perfect banter they had in Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and The Avengers is gone.

Tony Stark is in a doldrums throughout Iron Man 3 because of “New York.” He’s questioning his place in the world because he’s now met gods, monsters and aliens. Are you kidding me? This isn’t Tony Stark. Tony Stark has one of the most curious scientific minds of any character in fiction. If he encounters things that fall outside the norm, he doesn’t retreat into a shell. He gets answers.

Remember that scene in the Avengers where Tony Stark is falling and the Iron Man races in and attaches itself to him? I thought it was awesome. Apparently, so did Iron Man 3 screenwriter Drew Pearce and director Shane Black. That scene happens over and over again throughout Iron Man 3. The armor attaches to Tony, to Pepper. The Iron Patriot armor vomits out the President at one point. Side question: Why is the President a generic crusty, old, white guy? Marvel knows that Mitt Romney lost in ’08, right?

Take a shot every time someone falls into or out of some armor.

And the Iron Patriot armor. Can we talk about the Iron Patriot armor for a minute? This armor was clearly put in the movie just to sell another action figures. At least the War Machine armor in Iron Man 2 was integral to the story. But in Iron Man 3, the Iron Patriot armor is brought in because “it tests better with voters than War Machine” and is then relegated off-screen until very late in the movie.

Iron Patriot was in the movie just long enough to get a good shot for the blister card.

But who has time to have Jim Rhodes in his new Iron Patriot suit? That would have taken time away from Tony Stark’s kid sidekick. That’s right, in case you haven’t seen the movie yet, IRON MAN GETS A KID SIDEKICK! I’m pretty sure this was the scene where I threw my hands up and said, “Oh, come on!” I didn’t realize those Verizon Fios ads were canonical. Iron Man, say hello to Cousin Oliver. He’ll be joining you for the next 20 minutes.

No, seriously. What the fuck?

When I first heard that Iron Man 3 was going to be pulling a lot of its story from the excellent Warren Ellis penned Extremis story, I was excited. But, wow, the Extremis bad guys in Iron Man 3 come across as if the producers asked “What if we cross the Human Torch with a T-1000?” Unfortunately, the answer is not “It’s awesome.”

The bad guy, Aldrich Killian’s entire motivation is this: Tony Stark ignores him when Killian tries to cock block Stark on New Year’s Eve with a botanist that looks kind of like Alanis Morissette . To get back at Stark, Killian gets really good looking and plans his revenge. I get “bros before hoes,” but this is a little extreme. In a plot twist that should have haters of Dark Knight Rises saying, “You know what, that whole Ra’s Al Ghul daughter thing kind of works,” Killian enlists the botanist that Tony Stark banged that fateful NYE 13 years ago to help him make human bombs.

Jagged little plot twist.

In another Batman-franchise move, the Mandarin and Killian’s relationship is ripped off from Ken Watanabe/Liam Neesan Ra’s Al Ghul plot twist from Batman Begins filtered through the 1960s Batman TV show and telegraphed very early on in Iron Man 3. It’s interesting that Killian is the true Mandarin. In the first Iron Man movie, Tony Stark is abducted by the 10 Rings, which leads to Stark creating his first Iron Man armor. That’s the Mandarin’s (aka Killian’s) organization. What the Killian/Mandarin Iron Man 3 plot twist reveals is that if Tony Stark didn’t snub Killian in order to have sex with a botanist, the world may not have Iron Man to protect it.

The Mandarin never reaches the coolness of this poster in the movie.

Did you stick around for the scene after the credits? The one where Tony Stark is telling Dr. Bruce Banner about all his problems, and Banner completely zones out. It’s like Banner just watched Iron Man 3 too.

Man, I really wanted to like Iron Man 3. But I just can’t. Looking at Twitter, I seem to be in the minority. People are raving about this movie. I just do not get the love that people have for this movie at all. I’m giving it 2 out of 5 stars and hesitating, because I feel like I might be rating it too high.