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Black Hammer/Justice League: Hammer of Justice! by Jeff Lemire, Michael Walsh & Nate Piekos

Black Hammer/Justice League: Hammer of Justice! by Jeff Lemire, Michael Walsh & Nate Piekos

In the life of every licensed superhero comic, there will come an especially blessed day: Baby’s First Crossover.

This, my dear hearts and gentle people, is that blessed event for the unnamed super-team of Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer comics. [1] (See here for the previous volume and here for the first volume, if you’re unfamiliar.) Oh, you may quibble that they have already met quite a lot of other superheroes and villains, fighting and teaming up and generating a lot of Licensable Content. But all of those previous encounters were from Lemire’s universe as well; those calls were all coming from inside the house.

For the first time here, someone else deigned to have a play-date with Black Hammer, to let their toys play with the Black Hammer toys, to touch the dolls’ faces together to make them kiss. Those heroes are the current Justice League, the someone is DC Comics, and it is a bit like Barbie and GI Joe in the hands of an hyperactive eight-year-old.

The story is Black Hammer/Justice League: Hammer of Justice!, possibly the laziest possible title for this story. (The exclamation point might have taken a moment of thought; thus the “possibly.”) It’s written by Lemire with art by Michael Walsh and colors by Nate Piekos; I imagine someone on the DC side kibitzed editorially to keep the JL on-brand as well.

Amusingly to me, the Black Hammer gang are still their core ’80s incarnations while the JL is the current (I think) modern incarnations. Sure, separate universes don’t need to line up their timelines exactly, but wouldn’t it be more fun if Lemire had used the contemporaneous bwa-ha-ha era League? Or, possibly even better, the Detroit League? Ah, well.

In any case, the plot is the usual: a Mysterious Someone appears to both teams in their normal milieu (the BH gang grumping on the farm; the JL punching Starro) and swaps their places for making-mischief reasons. In a twist that is never explained, the JL immediately believe they’ve been on the farm for ten years, and mope about that, but the BH gang are aware of actual reality and spend most of their time squabbling with other Justice Leaguers.

The plot from there is…well, there’s that squabbling and moping, which takes up a lot of pages, then the inevitable Reveal of the Mysterious Someone, which is played up big but is one of the few obvious candidates and doesn’t really lead to anything, then, finally, as the play-date is ending, all of the dolls need to go back into their respective boxes separately, so they can stay in mint condition for the collector’s market. Lemire does throw out what may be a hook for another story, but it would need to be another DC Crossover, so let’s hope he gets good grades in school and does all his chores, so maybe there will be another play-date.

At the end of the book, we get what seems to be thirty pages of variant covers for the five issues of this miniseries, and I have nothing coherent to say about that.

I cannot take a single thing about Black Hammer seriously for a second, even while reading it. It is so deeply pastiche that there’s nothing substantial about it. If you are less cynical about superhero comics than I am, you may enjoy this on a more normal level. But it’s well-done – the characters talk like human beings and are drawn in a solid modern style – so it amusing on whatever level you can connect to it on. Black Hammer is not bad; it’s never been bad. It’s just deeply pointless and creepily incestuous.

[1] Black Hammer was a guy; he’s dead now. His daughter later becomes the new Black Hammer, and another woman who looks very much like her becomes another version a hundred years later. And I think there was one before the main guy, but Lemire hasn’t told any stories with the old dead one yet. This is superhero comics; names are just trademarks, and trademarks have to be used or they will be lost.

The team, on the other hand, has no trademark, no identity, since they’re drafting on the Black Hammer name and it’s far too late to create something new now, ten books in.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Bionic by Koren Shadmi

Bionic by Koren Shadmi

Victor is a geeky teenager, mildly bullied by the jockish types at his high school – but also smart and skilled enough to be rebuilding old game consoles to make a serious side income. He’s obsessed with Patricia (Patty), who is gorgeous and rich and blonde, in the way of a million boys before him, and has about as much chance as they do.

Maybe less of a chance, since I’d estimate nearly 5% of the panels of Koren Shadmi’s graphic novel Bionic  are of Victor looking at something, usually Patty, and if he’s not gaping open-mouthed and frozen every time, well, he’s close to it. This is very much a book from the point of view of a tentative young man who doesn’t know what to do, what to say, or even what he actually wants. It’s full of moments of Victor’s confusion and indecision and longing and desire: those moments are the core of the book.

There’s more to Bionic than that, of course, as the title and cover imply. Victor and Patty have an almost-relationship: they sit together for at least one class (this isn’t clear) and he adopts a pet from the shop where she works. That’s probably where it would have stayed, with Victor whining to his friend Gus about his crush and Patty getting deeper into her relationship with probably-not-as-much-of-an-asshole-as-he-seems Brian.

But then something happens.

Patty’s father is CEO of a tech company, and…you see that cover? That’s Patty, after the something that happens. Hence the title. She’s suddenly not as popular as she was: Brian isn’t interested in a half-robot girl, and her former BFF is now a queen bee angling for him and being casually cruel to Patty. But, then: these are all teenagers. They are casually cruel in any case, all of them, almost all of the time. Maybe they will outgrow it eventually, some of them.

There are other layers, but that’s the core: cruel teenagers, body transformation, sexual desire, with a bit of technological and capitalist paranoia lurking around the edges. Victor and Patty are both difficult people to like: Victor is horribly passive and whiny; Patty is oblivious before her change and horribly moody afterward. This could have been the story of how two imperfect people helped each other, but that’s not the story Shadmi wants to tell here: it’s much more conventional than that, with Patty as the figure of lust (in spite of her bionics? or, for Victor, even more so because of her bionics?) and Victor as the perpetually yearning horny teen boy.

There are a lot of conventional elements here, I have to admit. I haven’t even mentioned Patty’s relationship with her father, which checks off a couple of clichés by itself. The SF elements are equally as shopworn as the teen-crush plot, though both are handled subtly and well. But if you think you’ve seen this story before, you probably have – it’s that kind of story.

Shadmi has a soft art style, mostly mid-range colors (maybe with colored pencils?) over mostly thin, not overly dark lines. His people are a bit cartoony: the boys, especially the geeky boys, more so than the girls. Or maybe I mean the attractive people are less cartoony.

I don’t think Bionic is as new or different or interesting as perhaps it wanted to be, or thought it is. But it’s a solid story, set in the intersection of teen-drama and SF, that uses its familiar elements solidly and has a lot to admire.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Little Nothings, Vol. 3: Uneasy Happiness by Lewis Trondheim

Little Nothings, Vol. 3: Uneasy Happiness by Lewis Trondheim

If I wanted to be dismissive, I’d describe this book as collecting daily watercolor comics pages about French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim’s vacations in 2007.

And that’s not untrue, but it misses the point. The whole Little Nothings series, as far as I can tell, is about quotidian life: small moments in a day that are interesting or evocative or representative. Trondheim didn’t seem to do this diary comic every day, and I haven’t seen any explanation of when he did do it. My guess is that he did it when he wasn’t working on something else: in between other projects, on vacations or trips to comics festivals or just random days at home. Maybe because he did these in small notebooks, so they traveled more easily than his usual art setup; maybe for entirely different reasons.

In any case, he stopped doing these a good decade ago – again, for a reason I don’t know. There were seven books of the series in French, as Les petits riens, and four of them were translated into English. This here is the third one, Uneasy Happiness . I read all four back around the time they were published, lost them all in my 2011 flood, and recently went back to get new copies of The Curse of the Umbrella  and The Prisoner Syndrome .

There’s not a lot to say about the substance of diary comics: each page is a moment in a particular day. Trondheim does regularly construct sequences, especially when he’s somewhere warm on a holiday, but those are 2-5 pages at most, loosely linked with the same concerns, each one again a specific moment or interaction on a different day. It’s like anyone’s life: some things recur, or make us remember what happened yesterday, or we see the same things and have the same thoughts again and again.

Trondheim’s art is quick but assured: I get the sense he did these without fussing about them, and he mostly doesn’t go in for serious page layouts – just individual vignette panels, unbordered, almost scattered across the page, with lines that are never quite straight (I don’t think Trondheim has ever used straightedges or cared about being precise and level) and colors built on top of them.

In this book, Trondheim travels to Italy, Portugal, Reunion Island, and Fiji (including what seems to be some other islands in the same region of the Pacific), as well as Paris and some other destinations within France. He rarely explains why he’s going anywhere – the Angouleme festival each year is obvious, but mostly he’s just off somewhere with someone, and sometimes he shows himself at a signing (so it must be a comics festival) and sometimes he doesn’t (so it might or might not be) and sometimes he shows himself with his family (so it’s clearly a vacation).

The Fiji trip in particular is in company with another cartoonist, who I think is named Emile from some postcards on the last page of the book. Trondheim draws him as a panda, and never explains who he is or why the two are traveling together: was this another festival? did they just both want to go to Fiji and their families didn’t? were they working on a project together and could call this “research” for tax purposes? We don’t know, as we rarely know the details of other people’s lives. We just see some moments, react to it however we do, and then move on.

I found Trondheim a great diary cartoonist, and I wish both that he did more of it and the rest of his diary comics that do exist were published in English. But the things I wish for only very rarely come true. At least we have four books of Little Nothings: they may be little, but that’s not nothing.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Ruh Roh! Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! Haunts Homes in October

Ruh Roh! Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! Haunts Homes in October

BURBANK, CA (August 23, 2021) – Everyone’s favorite mystery-solving gang is back! Grab your Scooby Snacks and get ready to go undercover as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment releases Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! on Digital October 4th and DVD on October 18th. In addition to the 72-minute all-new original animated film, the DVD release also includes three bonus classic Scooby-Doo! episodes. Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! will be available to own on Digital for $14.99 SRP (US and Canada) and on DVD for $19.98 SRP ($24.98 in Canada).

Mystery Inc. has cracked the case to top all cases! They’ve tracked down Coco Diablo, the head of the notorious costume crime syndicate that colludes The Black Knight, Space Kook and the Ghost Diver. With Coco and her kitty in prison, Mystery Inc. thinks that they can finally enjoy a break. Wrong! Suddenly, menacing doppelgänger ghosts of the Scooby crew and favorite classic foes show up in Coolsville to threaten Halloween. Now it’s up to the meddling kids – and their unlikely new partner Coco – to unmask the latest scoundrel and save Halloween! For Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, with trick-or-treating on the line – this time it’s personal!

Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! features the familiar voice talents of Frank Welker as Scooby-Doo/Fred Jones, Grey DeLisle as Daphne Blake, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy Rogers and Kate Micucci as Velma Dinkley. Cecilia Aranovich (Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog) serves as producer and director from a script written by Mike Ryan (Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo! Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog). Sam Register (Looney Tunes Cartoons) serves as executive producer.

Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! will also be available on Cartoon Network and HBO Max during this year’s annual Scoobtober celebration.

BONUS EPISODES

  • El Bandito,
  • Headless Horseman of Halloween
  • To Switch a Witch

DIGITAL

Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! will be available to own on Digital on October 4. Digital purchase allows consumers to instantly stream and download to watch anywhere and anytime on their favorite devices. Digital movies and TV shows are available from various digital retailers including Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and others.

BASICS

Digital Street Date: October 4, 2022

DVD Street Date: October 18, 2022

Approximate Run Time: 72 Minutes

Bonus Episode Run Time: 71 Minutes

DVD

Price: $19.98 SRP ($24.98 in Canada)

1 Disc (1 DVD-9s)

Audio – English (5.1)

Subtitles – English SDH

Blackwood by Evan Dorkin, Veronica Fish, and Andy Fish

Blackwood by Evan Dorkin, Veronica Fish, and Andy Fish

All the most interesting people have the least-likely careers. (Says the man who started out as a SF editor and somehow ended up doing content marketing for corporate lawyers.) Evan Dorkin was a fiery young cartoonist in the ’80s and 90s when I discovered his work, writing and drawing id-fueled scrawls like Milk & Cheese  and The Eltingville Club . But somehow, along the way, his modern comics career is mostly about writing vaguely Lovecraftian-flavored fantasy/horror adventure stories for other artists to draw.

Like Beasts of Burden  or Calla Cthulhu  – or like this book: Blackwood , written by Dorkin with art by wife-and-husband team Veronica and Andy Fish.

Blackwood College seems to be just another mid-rank private learning institution, though it seems like all of their fields of study are specialized cases of anthropology with various cultural, occult, or religious bends. It’s not that simple, of course: Blackwood has Deep Secrets.

And four brand-new first year students, who have all been recruited to the secret college-within-a-college at Blackwood, are going to find out about those secrets the hard way.

Blackwood collects a four-issue series, so it gets going quickly – with some old guy who just did something magically dangerous and is now dictating his last words while Something happens to him – and keeps at a blistering pace throughout. There’s not a lot of room for the lore of this place to be explained, so the reader (and those four main characters) pick it up in bits and pieces as Dorkin tosses it out.

The last issue hits all of those Deep Secrets, some of which the reader will have guessed and some of which seem to come out of left field. (I wonder if this was originally planned to be longer – maybe six issues? and it got shortened somewhere in the process.) It all runs just a hair too fast and is a hair too generically Creeping Horrors for me, but it is fun and zippy throughout, and the Fishes make good artistic choices: they do grotesquerie well and Veronica’s chapter-break art is particularly atmospheric and spooky.

All in all, I wanted a little more How This World Works and a little less “ahh! the bugs are going to kill us!” but this is largely a Teenagers in Danger movie done as a comic, so what I wanted is somewhat outside the bounds of the genre. This is just fine for what it is, and sets up a world where there could be plenty of other stories – I know there’s at least one more already.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

E.T. makes 4K Debut for 40th Anniversary

E.T. makes 4K Debut for 40th Anniversary

Universal City, California, August 23, 2022 – Journey back to the magic and adventure of E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, the beloved masterpiece from Academy Award®-winning director Steven Spielberg, with this all-new release celebrating the 40th anniversary of the film, available to own on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-rayTM, and Digital October 18th, 2022 from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. There has never been a better time to relive this cinematic classic and four-time Academy Award® winner including Best Music by legendary composer John Williams. The anniversary release showcases over 45 minutes of all-new bonus features including a retrospective of the film and its lasting legacy and a featurette with Steven Spielberg reflecting on his career and the making of E.T. 40 years later. This release also includes all the original bonus features including deleted scenes, cast and filmmaker reunion, a discussion with John Williams about the iconic music from the film, and more. This E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL release is the definitive way to experience the heartwarming movie that is sure to thrill viewers of all ages again with its timeless message of trust, courage, and the overwhelming power of friendship.

Captivating audiences of all ages, this timeless story follows the unforgettable journey of a lost alien and the 10-year-old boy he befriends. Join Elliot (Henry Thomas), Gertie (Drew Barrymore) and Michael (Robert MacNaughton) as they come together to help E.T. find his way back home, E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL is “one of the great American films” (Leonard Maltin) that forever belongs in the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere.

Three premium limited editions will be available at select retailers for a limited time only:

  • E.T. THE EXTRA-TERESTRIAL 40TH ANNIVERSARY LIMITED EDITION GIFT SET (4K UHD + Blu-ray™ + Digital): Includes movie, collectible tin tote, thermos, booklet and certificate of authenticity (Amazon Exclusive)
  • E.T. THE EXTRA-TERESTRIAL 40TH ANNIVERSARY LIMITED EDITION (4K UHD + Blu-ray™ + Digital): Includes movie and collectible BendyFigs figurine (Walmart.com Exclusive)
  • E.T. THE EXTRA-TERESTRIAL 40TH ANNIVERSARY LIMITED EDITION STEELBOOK (4K UHD + Blu-ray™ + Digital): Includes three newly designed steelbooks (Target Exclusive)
  • For more information on these exclusives, please visit the individual retailer’s stores and websites.

BONUS FEATURES on 4K UHD and BLU-RAYTM for your collection:

  • 40 YEARS OF E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL – An all-new retrospective of the film and its lasting legacy.
  • TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL: AN EVENING WITH STEVEN SPIELBERG – The acclaimed director reflects on his career and the making of E.T. 40 years later.
  • THE E.T. JOURNALS- Retrace the day-to-day experience of creating E.T. from never-before-seen, behind-the-scenes footage shot by Academy Award®-winning cinematographer John Toll.  
  • DELETED SCENES
  • STEVEN SPIELBERG & E.T. – Watch an interview with Steven Spielberg, as he reflects back on the film and discusses his experience working with the actors, as well as his overall and current perspective on E.T.
  • A LOOK BACK – A special insider’s look into the making of E.T. featuring interviews with Steven Spielberg, the cast, and others intimately involved with the film.   
  • THE EVOLUTION AND CREATION OF E.T.
  • THE E.T. REUNION – The cast and filmmaker reunite to discuss their thoughts on the impact of the film.
  • THE MUSIC OF E.T.: A DISCUSSION WITH JOHN WILLIAMS – Interviews and footage focused on the long-standing relationship between John Williams and Steven Spielberg.
  • THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY PREMIERE – Composer John Williams played the score of E.T. live at the Shrine Auditorium for the re-release premiere of E.T.   This featurette gives us a behind the scenes look at this presentation.
  • DESIGNS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND MARKETING
    • E.T. Designs by Production Illustrator Ed Verreaux
    • E.T. Designs by Carlo Rambaldi
    • Spaceship Designs by Ralph Mcquarrie
    • Designs by Production Illustrator Ed Verreaux
    • Production Photographs
    • Marketing E.T.
  • THEATRICAL TRAILER
  • SPECIAL OLYMPICS TV SPOT

FILMMAKERS
Cast: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace, Robert McNaughton, Peter Coyote
Composer: John Williams
Edited By: Carol Littleton
Production Designer: James D. Bissell
Director of Photography: Allen Daviau
Executive Produced By: Amanda Lewis, Samantha Vincent
Produced By: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy
Written By: Melissa Mathison
Directed By: Steven Spielberg

TECHNICAL INFORMATION BLU-RAY:

Street Date: October 18th, 2022
Selection Number: 1000819017 (US) / 1000819019 (CDN)
Layers: BD 50
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen 16:9 1.85:1
Rating: PG for language and mild thematic elements
Languages/Subtitles: English, French Canadian, French European and Latin American Spanish
Sound: English (DTS Digital Surround 2.0, DTS:X for Feature and Dolby Digital 2.0 for Bonus Content), French European (DTS Digital Surround 5.1 for Feature), Latin American Spanish (DTS Digital Surround 5.1 for Feature)
Run Time: 01:54:27

TECHNICAL INFORMATION 4K UHD:
Street Date: October 18th, 2022
Selection Number: 1000819016 (US) / 1000819018 (CDN)
Layers: BD 100
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen 16:9 1.85:1
Rating: PG for language and mild thematic elements
Languages/Subtitles: English, French Canadian, French European and Latin American Spanish
Sound: English (DTS Digital Surround 2.0, DTS:X for Feature and Dolby Digital 2.0 for Bonus Content), French European (DTS Digital Surround 5.1 for Feature), Latin American Spanish (DTS Digital Surround 5.1 for Feature)
Run Time: 01:54:27

Punisher: War Zone Hits 4K with Steelbook Oct. 18

Punisher: War Zone Hits 4K with Steelbook Oct. 18

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
The Punisher is back and he’s on a killer mission when Punisher: War Zone arrives on 4K Ultra HD™ + Blu-ray™ + Digital SteelBook® October 18 from Lionsgate. Starring Ray Stevenson (Thor), Dominic West (The Wire), and Julie Benz (Dexter), Punisher: War Zone gives a new meaning to painting the town red as he wages his bloody one-man vigilante war. Punisher: War Zone will be available for the suggested retail price of $27.99 for 4K Ultra HD™ + Blu-ray™ + Digital SteelBook®.

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
Ex-Special Forces officer Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson, Rome) is back with all guns blazing as The Punisher, this time waging a one-man war on two fronts. While targeting the vicious mob boss, Billy Russoti, Castle horribly disfigures the gangster in a firefight that also claims the life of an undercover FBI agent. Seeking terrible vengeance, Russoti takes the name “Jigsaw” and begins recruiting the underworld’s most notorious criminals while the Feds form an anti-vigilante Strike Force. Now The Punisher must find a way to elude the law and decimate Jigsaw’s deadly crime army in this adrenaline-packed action-thriller.
CAST
Ray Stevenson                       ThorThe Three MusketeersKill the Irishman
Dominic West                         The Wire, The Affair, Tomb Raider, Chicago
Julie Benz                               Dexter, Hawaii Five-0, Defiance
Colin Salmon                          Resident EvilAlien vs. PredatorMortal Engines
Doug Hutchison                      The Green Mile, LostI Am SamThe Salton Sea
Dash Mihok                             Law & Order: Organized Crime, Ray DonovanSilver Linings                                                                           PlaybookThe Day After Tomorrow
Wayne Knight                         Jurassic Park, SeinfeldRat RaceDirty Dancing
STEELBOOK® SPECIAL FEATURE

  • Training to Become The Punisher
  • The Making of Punisher: War Zone
  • Creating the Look of the Film
  • Meet Jigsaw
  • Weapons of The Punisher
  • Audio Commentary with Director Lexi Alexander and Director of Photography Steve Gainer
  • Theatrical Trailer
Titans: The Complete Third Season Comes to disc Oct. 25

Titans: The Complete Third Season Comes to disc Oct. 25

BURBANK, CA (August 23, 2022) – After an explosive third season, the hit DC show will make its way to Blu-ray TM and DVD as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment gets set to release TITANS: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON on October 25, 2022. Featuring all 13 epic episodes from the third season with all-new bonus features TITANS: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON is priced to own for $24.98 SRP on DVD and $29.98 SRP for Blu-ray, which includes a Digital Copy. The show is also available to own on Digital via purchase from all major digital retailers and is streaming on HBO Max.

TITANS: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON has received rave reviews from critics and fans alike and has been renewed for a fourth season on HBO Max. According to the Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus, “With bolder storytelling and deeper characterization, Titans’ third season hits the show’s sweet spot to deliver the best season yet.”

In the explosive third season, Jason Todd’s journey as Robin comes to a gruesome end only for him to return to Gotham as Red Hood with a vengeance to take down his old team. Meanwhile, Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl and current acting Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department, is wary of the Titans now being back in Gotham, but her history with Dick Grayson leads her to accept their help in the GCPD’s investigation of Red Hood. Also assisting the investigation is Dr. Jonathan Crane, a onetime Super-Villain and current inmate at Arkham Asylum.

The series stars Brenton Thwaites, Mame-Anna Diop, Teagan Croft, Ryan Potter, Curran Walters Conor Leslie, Damaris Lewis, Joshua Orpin and Savannah Welch with Alan Ritchson and Minka Kelly. Jay Lycurgo has a recurring role this season.

Titans is produced by Weed Road Pictures and Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television and is based on the characters from DC. Greg Walker is the showrunner and serves as executive producer alongside Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Richard Hatem.

TITANS: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON BLU-RAY & DVD SPECIAL FEATURES

TITANS EXPANDED (All-New Featurette) – Sit down with the cast and showrunners of Titans as they cover all the new characters and elements of Season 3.
TITANS: WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS (All-New Featurette) – Step into the world of the Titans as we get a glimpse behind the scenes of how the look, feel, and texture of Season 3 came to life.
Training a Metahuman – A behind the scenes look at training the Titans, the young metahuman heroes, with Stunt Coordinator Larnell Stovall and cast members Brenton Thwaites, Mame-Anna Diop, Ryan Potter, Curran Walters, Damaris Lewis, Joshua Orpin, and Savannah Welch.
Looking the Part – LJ Shannon, Specialty Costume Designer, reveals her design process and explains how she worked to match the looks and actions from the comic books. This featurette includes executive producer Greg Walker and cast members Brenton Thwaites, Mame-Anna Diop, Teagan Croft, Ryan Potter, Curran Walters, Damaris Lewis, and Joshua Orpin.
Inside the Character: Red Hood – A behind-the-scenes look at the new anti-hero character Red Hood as portrayed by Curran Walters.
Inside the Character: Barbara Gordon – A behind-the-scenes look at the character of Barbara Gordan as portrayed by Savannah Welch.
Welcome to Gotham – A behind-the-scenes exploration of iconic Gotham City with cast members Brenton Thwaites, Mame-Anna Diop, Teagan Croft, Ryan Potter, Curran Walters, and executive producer Greg Walker, art director Khanh Quach, director Boris Mojsovski, and producer/director Carol Banker.

13 ONE-HOUR EPISODES

Barbara Gordon
Red Hood
Hank & Dove
Blackfire
Lazarus
Lady Vic
51%
Home
Souls
Troubled Water
The Call is Coming from Inside the House
Prodigal
Purple Rain

DIGITAL

Titans: The Complete Third Season is currently available to own on Digital. Digital purchase allows consumers to instantly stream and download to watch anywhere and anytime on their favorite devices. Digital movies and TV shows are available from various digital retailers including Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and others.

BASICS

Titans: The Complete Third Season

Street Date: October 25, 2022

Running Time: Approx. 600 minutes

Enhanced Content: Approx. 34 minutes

Price: $29.98 SRP

BD Audio: English 5.1

DVD

Price: $24.98 SRP

BD Audio: English 5.1

REVIEW: Jurassic World: Dominion

REVIEW: Jurassic World: Dominion

I remember how perfectly John Williams’ lush score for 1993’s Jurassic Park set the stage for what was to follow. That film was imaginative, funny, scary, and filled with interesting doings. Since then, every sequel has paled in comparison, lifting bits and pieces of the memorable theme and elements from the first film. What filled in the large gaps were just…more. More dinosaurs. More chases. More corporate stupidity. What was a noble, yet misguided plan was undermined by corporate greed, a theme that was exhausted by the time Wayne Knight was devoured.

The Jurassic World reboot with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard was entertaining enough and the CGI improved so we could see more nuance among the species that were now becoming a global ecological threat. Add in some genetic shenanigans with the arrival of Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), you have some new tones to play with.

Director Colin Trevorrow, though, couldn’t keep corporate greed out of the playbook. His Jurassic World, Fallen Kingdom, and now Dominion keep the treadmill spinning without adding enough new and interesting elements to keep things fresh.   

The best thing about Dominion, out now on 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray/Digital HD combo pack from Universal Home Entertainment, is reuniting the original three— Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Dr. Allan Grant (Sam Neill), and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum)—with Pratt and Howard. The storylines converge at BioSys, run by New Age CEO Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) who is not exactly greedy but blinded by his ambitions and unwilling to take responsibility for his actions.

Coming to their aid is mercenary pilot Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) and Ramsey Cole (Mamoudou Athie), Dodgson’s mentee who seems to grow a conscience as the film progresses.

The breathless film features several set pieces but they all have the same tired feel because we’ve seen man versus dino/raptor before. The pacing is such that there seems to be no time for our heroes to eat or sleep, rushing from place to place. Cole magically pops up just as he’s needed which is more plot contrivance than a convincing story.

The best parts have to be Maisie getting to know her birth mother Charlotte (Elva Trill) through video recordings and the subplot involving the raptor Blue and its genetic offspring Beta. So, while it was fun to see the characters mash-up, there was little to show for it. This appropriately rings down the curtain on the franchise (for now).

The film is offered to viewers in its theatrical form along with an extended cut that is about 16 minutes longer with more dino action. Both are looking pretty sharp in the 2160p/Dolby Vision UHD presentation. You definitely appreciate the CGI creatures with this level of color fidelity and clarity. A match or even better is the DTS:X soundtrack, perfectly capturing every gurgle and stomp.

There are just a few featurettes, starting with the 4K short film Battle at Big Rock (10:17), which is a vignette of a family camping where they think the dinosaurs aren’t.

Additionally there is A New Breed of VFX (6:16) and the more interesting Dinosaurs Among Us: Inside Jurassic World Dominion—Together for the First Time (5:26), Underground Dino Market (4:59), Mayhem in Malta (4:32), and Final Night (6:52)—which give you a glimpse into the production.

Scary Real Animatronics is a five-parter that looks at the creature effects in detail: Spit Take: The Return of Dilophosaurus (5:26), Inside the Dimeetrodon (4:38), Creating a Plague (4:30), Passing the Beta (4:19), and Giga-Bite (6:26).

The Time Traveler’s Wife Mini-Series comes to Disc Oct. 18

The Time Traveler’s Wife Mini-Series comes to Disc Oct. 18

BURBANK, CA (August 17, 2022) – HBO’s genre-bending drama series that captivated audiences all around the world travels to your homes as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment releases The Time Traveler’s Wife: The Complete Series on DVD October 18, 2022. Follow all 6, one-hour episodes from the series, plus almost 30 minutes of bonus content that goes behind the scenes of the series for the ultimate fan! The Time Traveler’s Wife: The Complete Series is priced to own at $19.99 SRP for the DVD ($24.99 in Canada). The series is also available to own on Digital via purchase from digital retailers and to stream on HBO Max.

The Time Traveler’s Wife: The Complete Series follows the intricate and magical love story between Clare and Henry, and a marriage with a problem…time travel.

Based on the best-selling book of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger, the series stars Rose Leslie as Clare Abshire, Theo James as Henry DeTamble, Desmin Borges as Gomez, and Natasha Lopez as Charisse. An HBO and Warner Bros. Television production The Time Traveler’s Wife: The Complete Series is executive produced by writer Steven Moffat (Doctor Who, Sherlock), director David Nutter (Game of Thrones); Sue Vertue, and Brian Minchin through Hartswood Films; and Joseph E. Iberti.

SPECIAL FEATURES

  • Chapters of a Relationship
  • Anatomy of a Scene
  • Time Traveler’s Wife: A Love for All Time

6 ONE HOUR EPISODES

  1. Episode One
  2. Episode Two
  3. Episode Three
  4. Episode Four
  5. Episode Five
  6. Episode Six

DIGITAL

The Time Traveler’s Wife is currently available to own on Digital. Digital purchase allows consumers to instantly stream and download to watch anywhere and anytime on their favorite devices. Digital movies and TV shows are available from various digital retailers including Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and others.

BASICS

Release Date: October 18, 2022

Presented in 16×9 widescreen format

Running Time: Feature: Approx. 360 mins

Running Time: Extra Content: Approx. 28 mins

DVD Price: $19.99 SRP ($24.99 in Canada)

2 Discs (2 DVD-9s)

Audio: English (5.1)

Subtitles: ESDH