Category: Tweeks

Tweeks: My Favorite Martian Complete Series DVD Set Review

As fans of shows like Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and Mork & Mindy, we already knew we enjoyed the sitcom stylings of magical mishaps in real life, so we were kind of excited to check out this 60th Anniversary DVD collection by MPI Home Video of My Favorite Martian. For those of you who don’t know (because we didn’t), My Favorite Martian aired on CBS from 1963 – 1966 and pretty much started the whole genre of fantasty/sci-fi TV comedies. The show is about Tim O’Hara (played by Bill Bixby), a newspaper reporter who meets a Martian (played by Ray Walston) and keeps him as his “Uncle Martin.” For three seasons, chaos and hilarity ensue as Uncle Martin’s Martian magic powers get in the way of living a regular Earthling life.

This is the first time all the episodes (107 of them – all unedited & digitally re-mastered) have been put together in the same DVD set. It’s pretty cool for full family watching and also has a bunch of special features for those who might have been big fans of the show back in the day. There’s stuff like Behind-The-Scene Home Movies, Original Commercials, Spaceship Miniature Test Footage, Ray Walston Game Show & Talk Show Appearances, and a radio show interview with Bixby and Walston talking to Lucille Ball. This week Anya reviews it all and Maddy lends a hand in answering Anya’s tough questions like “Who decided Martians have super powers on Earth?” and “Are Aliens real?”

Tweeks: Supergirl Review

Supergirl premiered on CBS Monday night setting a Fall series record of 14 million viewers. It was an undeniable teen hit with both boys and girls. And of course we watched it too.

But as critical fans of all things being superhero-y while female, did we enjoy it? Duh. But was her costume Tweeks Approved too? How does this show stack up against Agent Carter? Considering the middle school pressure to blend in would we keep their superhero powers a secret? Watch our review to find out the answers.

Tweeks: Top 13 (Not Scary) Halloween Movies Part 2

This week we close out our Top 13 (Not Scary) Halloween Movie List with the numbers 6 through 1.  We disagree about Hocus Pocus, but come together on all things Tim Burton and Winnie The Pooh.  You’ll also find out in this week’s episode what food Anya should dress up as for Halloween and learn about her famous Pants Dance.  There’s also some girl crushing on Wednesday Addams and a our favorite non-musical Disney Channel Movie series.

 

Tweeks: Dr. Oblivion’s Guide to Teenage Dating Vol. 1 Review

This week we review Dr. Oblivion’s Guide To Teenage Dating Volume 1, by Jeff Pina. It’s the first three sold out issues (plus extras & a couple one-shots) about Dr. Oblivion, super villain AND dad of a teenage daughter…who happens to be dating the town’s superhero. Spoiler Alert: We absolutely love it! But you’ll want to watch the video anyway because you’ll learn a couple things like how Maddy is very protective over Black Widow’s superiority over all other female comic role models and how Anya will find any excuse to talk about Park and Rec so that she can steer the conversation to Chris Pratt.

Oh, and by the way….here’s the link to read the first part of Dr. Oblivion’s Guide to Teenage Dating

Tweeks: Banned Books Week & More

We truly vlog this week as we catch everyone up on what we’ve been doing since we turned 13 (Birthday Week included Kaaboo and Mickey’s Halloween Party at Disneyland) before we talk about what we learned while being in charge of our local library’s Banned Books Week display.  Want to know why Winnie The Pooh was banned?  We’ll tell you that.

Tweeks: Interview with CBLDF’s Betsy Gomez

Next week is Banned Books Week! This means now is your chance to take everything you learned in our 8-Week #ChallengedChallenge and use that knowledge to fight the good fight. Let every one know about why banning and challenging books is bad. Maybe even go to your local library or book store and find a banned book to read. (We’ve created a great display at our local library for next week & we’re sure others will have them as well).

And if you are one of those people who don’t trust a couple of kids about such a serious subject, we’ve brought in the big guns. At San Diego Comic Con, we spoke with Editorial Director, Betsy Gomez from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund about why people try to ban books and had her show us some of their resources available to help those who find their reading rights are being taken away. Hey! And if you are a libraian or teacher this video is a great resource too, btw.

Tweens No More!!

tweeks mlpSince you are reading this, that means Rob Ernst aka The Tweeks’ Dad has failed at his attempts this week to build a time machine. And therefore, Maddy and Anya, ComicMix’s resident Twin Tween Geeks, have turned 13 today! Making them our resident Twin Teen Geeks!

The girls started their birthday celebrations at Long Beach Comic Con when they were gifted a photo op with John Barrowman, whom they adore.12027111_1716090328621736_77376547346959877_o

The birthday fun continued this weekend, when Maddy & Anya along with their mom, Jen, attended the 3 day posh Kaboo Festival. Headliners included No Doubt, The Killers and Zac Brown Band.

Happy happy 13th Birthday Maddy and Anya from your ComicMix family!!

Tweeks: Long Beach Comic Con 2015

Last weekend, we attended the Long Beach Comic Con. Yeah, it was pretty amazing.  We met John Barrowman and Baby from The Hillywood Show Supernatural parody.  Yeah we fangirled! Here’s a recap of the con with interviews from some great comic creators like Barbara Dillon from Fanboy Comics (Penguins  Vs. Possums), Sara Banning (Find Kelley Green), and D.J. Kirkbride (Amelia Cole and the Unknown World).  We also talk to the owner of The Beee Hive about her super cool Marvel themed jewelry and show you  Cosplay Corner (lots of Deadpools, as always).

Review: Supernatural Season 10 Blu-ray/DVD Box Set

Supernatural_S10_BLUEven though Supernatural has been on for 10 seasons, I only started watching last August.  Though I quickly became a devoted Supernatural fan and by June I wrapped up Season 9.   I figured, “Hey, I’ll just wait until season 10 comes out on Netflix,” but when they announced that the Season 10 DVD would be coming out in the Fall at the Comic Con panel, I was like, “No!”  And when I got the Blu-Ray (which was released on September 8th), I watched it all in like, a week, because that’s what I do.

The Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Blu-ray, Digital HD and DVD release of Supernatural: The Complete Tenth Season is well worth owning. It contains 23 episodes and over four hours of bonus content.  It picks up after Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) was transformed into a demon and cursed with the Mark of Cain.  And of course, Sam (Jared Padalecki) & their angel buddy, Castiel (Misha Collins) must help his brother. This is the detour on the Road to Recovery.  Well the scenic route on the road to curing the Mark of Cain.  We also get family drama with Crowley, the King of Hell. You probably need to watch Season 10 a couple times. There’s a lot to little stuff in there that you notice after you KNOW the episode.  It’s the stuff the internet is filled with.  You can’t properly fill the world with Tumblr gifs without watching these episodes many times.  This is why you need to own the Season on DVD or Blu-Ray.

Plus the quality is great.  In HD, you can see each and every one of Jensen’s freckles.  And some might enjoy seeing how silky and soft Jared’s hair looks.  Not me, necessarily, but I did notice the Impala changing from a 2-door to a 4-door periodically.  What the what?  Though maybe you could see that on the regular DVD too.

IMG_2768

For those who want to watch on their phones or laptop (out of habit, maybe or because you don’t have a Blu-Ray player in your room and you need to watch with your door shut so your family doesn’t bother you), there is a code with the Blu-Ray to get the episodes on Ultraviolet. You can then watch on all compatible devices & take the Winchesters with you on the road. Yay!

There are lots of bonus features on the discs, like the much awaited gag reel, unaired episodes, episode commentaries, the ComicCon 2014 preview for the season, stuff on mythological influences this season, and more. I was most excited about the behind the scenes for the 200th episode. You should most definitely buy this on Blu-Ray or DVD if you are caught up and start watching the show if you are not. The 11th Season will start this Fall on The CW, so you might want to hurry up. Remember these are the Winchesters, not the Losechesters, so you can’t lose with Supernatural: The Complete Tenth Season.

Maddy’s Commentary & Synopsis of Season 10: For those not afraid of some potential Spoilerishness

Okay,  as far as a Season, this one was so amazing!  We picked up where we left off in Season 9 with the Mark of Cain turning Dean into a demon after his run-in with Metatron (where he died again), so now Demon!Dean and Crowley are living it up singing karaoke in bars. Meanwhile, Sam’s going nuts and torturing demons, trying to find his missing brother, not knowing he’s a demon, so there’s that. Once Sam finally gets to Dean after being kidnapped by some dude, he locks him up in the Bunker and cures him of his demon-osity. And while all this is going on, our angel buddy Castiel’s stolen grace is fading and his fellow angel, Hannah, hunts down rogue angels while she tries to get Metatron to reveal where the rest of his grace is, but to no avail.

After an episode of regular hunting, we reach my favorite episode: “Fan Fiction”. This is the fabled episode where my two favorite things, theatre and Supernatural, come together.  An all girls school performs a musical version of the Supernatural books by Carver Edlund (a.k.a Chuck Shurley) and people who try to shut it down are captured by Calliope. Also in this episode, Sam and Dean are introduced to the popular concept of Destiel (if you read The Tweeks’ column on shipping, you know it’s the Dean/Castiel ship).  By the way, you can download the Supernatural: The Musical soundtrack!  I also really enjoyed the the next episode, “Ask Jeeves” which is like Clue meets Pretty Little Liars. Everyone is a Liar and they’re solving a murder in a mansion with a bunch of rich people, it’s rad.  All the old rich ladies love Sam. 

Let’s move on to “Girls, Girls, Girls”. Enter Rowena, a ginger witch who has enemies in high places in Hell’s monarchy, as shown when there are loads of demons chasing her and eventually taking her to Hell’s dungeons. At the end of the episode it is revealed that she is Crowley’s mother and she abandoned him as a child.

In “The Hunter Games,” The Winchesters and Cas attempt to torture the cure for the Mark of Cain out of Metatron who agitates everyone and leaves a cryptic message—“The river ends at the source”. Well, okay, crazy angel scribe. But then next up is an episode where Charlie, my fave, has returned from Oz after fighting a war. She had split her soul in two, good and bad, and she teamed up with the boys to help defeat her rogue bad side.

Then we get some regular hunting episodes, but I want to mention one of them, “About A Boy”.  The witch from Hansel and Gretel turns Dean into a teenager, which is very funny. But the fun doesn’t last for the next ep. Castiel discovers that Cain’s been killing people and Crowley,  Cas, Dean, and Sam work together to kill Cain. This is when things start to get rough. Sam can tell that the Mark is overpowering Dean and that he’s trying hard to fight it.

The stories move on with more hunting and a continuation of the Rowena sub-plot. Rowena has been banned from practicing magic by the Grand Coven, so Crowley captures Olivette, the High Priestess of the Grand Coven so Rowena can make her case to practice magic. After, she turns Olivette into a hamster and puts her in one of those hamster cages with the wheel that they run around in. Sam decides that he and Cas should sneak around behind Dean’s back to try to find a cure. YOU GUYS DO THIS EVERY SEASON! Can’t you ever learn that none of the Winchesters like being kept from things?  But still, they decide to go try and torture the information out of Metatron who reveals that he doesn’t know how to cure the Mark and his message before was utter nonsense. Thanks a lot, Metatron. The only thing he was good for was leading Castiel to his grace, which had a good and a bad side. Cas got his grace back, but Metatron got the angel tablet. Booooo.

After that, Charlie is back, and she has found The Book of the Damned, a book that is believed to hold a cure for the Mark of Cain, but apparently it belongs to the Styne family and so they track Charlie down. I won’t spoil it, but what happens is what drives the rest of the season.  There’s some drama about the Book. Dean wants it destroyed, but Sam wants to keep it because he’s still trying to find a cure for Dean even though his brother has given up.

In the midst of all this, Crowley has kicked Rowena out of Hell. Sam brings the Book of the Damned to her and asks if she can read it. She says yes, but in return she wants Crowley dead.  She also says that she needs Nadya’s codex. She said that the Men of Letters took it from the Grand Coven’s archives and it’s in their archives. Easy, right? Nope, this is Supernatural. The codex is locked in a box which is protected by a very powerful spell. When you open the box, everyone else in the vicinity starts to hallucinate and is driven to suicide. Creepy. Sam doesn’t know this and so he opens the box. Guess who’s in the house with the box in it? You guessed it: Dean. Also the owner of the house who opened the box when she was a teenager and killed her family. Dean starts to hallucinates that he’s in Purgatory with his vampire friend Benny. Ah, Purgatory. Season 7 was nuts, man, with all those Leviathans.

In the next episode, Sam gives the Book to Rowena who says that Nadya was a very selfish witch and encoded her codex. Sam decides to bring in the big guns to help crack the code. Welcome back, Charlie! The boys have captured one of the Stynes, Eldon, and are trying to get information out of him. He reveals that Syne is not their real name, they are actually the Frankensteins. They had to change their name after Mary Shelley discovered them and wrote a book. Rowena eventually drives Charlie nuts, so she asks Cas to let her out. He says no, but she sneaks out anyway, because she’s Charlie. She cracks the code, but Eldon escapes the Winchesters and starts to attack Charlie.  R.I.P Charlie. You were my favorite ginger to ever grace my television, except for Amy Pond, but I’m sure she’s your favorite too.

Dean and Sam give Charlie a proper hunter’s funeral and Dean orders Sam to stop searching for a cure for the Mark of Cain. Sam calls Castiel to tell him of Charlie’s grim end but discovers that her last act on this earth was emailing the code to Sam. He decides to keep going behind Deans back (?????) now that Rowena can read the book. Dean has vowed to kill the entire Frankenstein family and slaughters most of them, then returns to the bunker to find the last three raiding the archives. He kills two of them and listens to the youngest plead for his life, then kills him. This shows that the Mark is truly changing him because the Dean we have gotten to know for ten years would have spared his life. Castiel then shows up and tries to talk to Dean but Dean beats him up and comes very close to killing him while simultaneously breaking my fragile nerd heart. Here we are, the end of the line. The last episode is honestly the best one. There’s this one part where Dean feels like he’s trapped in a place where he doesn’t feel guilty for hurting his friends and after a vampire kill he washes his hands. He does a whole insane Lady MacBeth “Out damn spot” thing. I love Shakespeare so I recognized it immediately. He looks up into the mirror and sees his friends that he’s hurt all bloody and scrubs his hands harder and harder for each person. God bless the writers. He then summons Death, whom I love, and demands that he kill him. Death says that he cannot but he can send him away so he can’t hurt anyone ever again. He then decides to kill Sam so he doesn’t try to rescue him from this far away place. Death hands Dean his scythe to kill Sam, but he kills Death instead. Who knows what this means for people? Is everyone immortal? Rowena then casts the spell to cure the Mark of Cain, which unleashes the Darkness, a pre-Biblical force that is released when the Mark is removed. End of season. Major cliffhanger here, people.

What is the Darkness?

supernatural-season-10-poster-hd-138631