A.V. Club

TV: TV Club: Young Justice, “Beneath”

Oliver Sava — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:30:00 GMT

It’s astonishing how much this show has improved in its second season, and “Beneath” continues a streak of great episodes. Shifting the focus to some of this season’s new faces, Brandon Vietti balances the spectacular action sequences with the non-costumed drama that we don’t always see on this show. In El Paso, Jaime gets a call from his friend Ty Longshadow, who is running away from home after a fight with his mom’s boyfriend. When Jaime goes to meet up with Ty and talk him out of his decision, Ty is grabbed by a shadowed figure, and Jaime spends the rest of the episode figuring out what happened to his friend.

While Jaime does his best Walker, Texas Ranger, impression, a team of female heroes (Miss Martian, Bumblebee, Batgirl, and Wonder Girl) heads to Bialya to investigate an uptake in boom tube activity. Nightwing is hoping ...

Film: Great Job, Internet!: Behold, a Joker-only supercut from The Dark Knight

Marcus Gilmer — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Rumor has it there’s a new Batman movie a-coming this summer. While that last Batman flick was pretty stunning all-around, the film’s greatest claim will always be Heath Ledger’s creepy, epic turn as The Joker, a role that won him a posthumous Oscar. But, as is often pointed out, Ledger actually had a small amount of screen time in a film that clocked in at two-and-a-half hours. In fact, you can squeeze it all into one 10-minute YouTube video, which someone has already done below. [via The Daily What]

TV: TV Club: The Adventures Of Pete And Pete, “Saturday”

Marah Eakin — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:00:00 GMT

“Saturday” (season 3, episode 13; originally aired 12/28/1996)

Endings are inevitable, but that doesn’t always make them any easier. Sure, sometimes you want the door to hit an ex on the way out, but other times, if you really care about something—a job, a relationship, a loved one—then it’s hard to say goodbye. There’s no good way to do it, really. Is it better to know in advance that something’s ending and then really think up a heartfelt goodbye? Would that be enough? Or is it better to just, one day, have something disappear and hope that you let that thing, person, or, in this case, TV show, know that you truly cared about its time on this Earth.

“Saturday” is the last episode of The Adventures Of Pete And Pete that ever aired, and it burned off on a random Saturday ...

DVD: Newswire: Amazon opens "Never Before On DVD" store, mostly collects stuff already available

Todd VanDerWerff — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:45:00 GMT

The shift toward on-demand production of DVDs of unavailable titles in the past few years has been one of the most welcome moves in home entertainment, even if the number of titles available still lags. Now, Amazon has launched its own service, which combines many of the already available titles (from companies like Warner Brothers and Fox) in one place and adds a few that weren’t available before. To be sure, this is mostly just a place where the company can get all of the, say, Warner Archive titles in the same space, but having multiple titles from multiple companies in the same store will be a boon to those who just want to see what’s out there. Fans of TV on DVD will also have reason to browse the “Never Before On DVD” store, as unavailable titles from Viacom, including shows from MTV, Nickelodeon, and CBS Networks ...

Music: Newswire: Danzig says he was asked to play Wolverine, wouldn't have done it "as gay" as Hugh Jackman

Marah Eakin — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:45:00 GMT

There had been rumors around for years that Danzig was once approached to audition for the part of Wolverine in the X-Men movies, despite the fact that he's not really an actor, but all of that seemed a little dubious at best until LA Weekly asked him about it in an interview that ran this week. In it, Danzig says he was, in fact, approached—for what that's worth—but that he's glad he didn't do it because the movie was terrible. He has apparently not seem X2.

The real classic Dan-zinger comes when the reporter asks the Misfits frontman how he would have played the role differently than Hugh Jackman. The response? "It wouldn't have been as gay."

Danzig also points out that the director's original choice for the role was one-time '90s buzz dude Dougray Scott, who "had a falling out with ...

Music: This Was Pop: May 26, 2012

Steven Hyden, Genevieve Koski — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:00:00 GMT

A.V. Club writers Genevieve Koski and Steven Hyden have decided to explore the Billboard charts every month in search of the good, the bad, and the ugly of contemporary pop music in all its forms. Today, they take a look at the rock songs chart for May 26, 2012.

Linkin Park, “Burn It Down” (No. 1)

Genevieve: We here at This Was Pop Industries decided to take a break from the Hot 100 this week to take a look at what’s happening with its angry little brother, the Rock Songs chart. Steven, you tend to like these little modern-rock detours we take every so often, but I’ll freely admit that I react to modern-rock radio the way many of our readers seem to react to the Hot 100: Who would listen to this generic, overproduced crap? At least most of the songs on the Hot 100 keep ...

Film: Great Job, Internet!: Tim Burton caketrope is scarily delicious looking, wants to eat you

Marah Eakin — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Alexandre Dubosc, a filmmaker who is apparently also not too shabby at making pastry, has put together a new, appropriately weird tribute to Tim Burton. Dubosc's caketrope—a zoetrope, but in cake form—celebrates the director's oeuvre, signature spooky style, and love of things like old trees and jack-o-lanterns. Being a filmmaker, Dubosc made a short film about the construction of the cake, though the slideshow of pictures on his site are potentially more illuminating about just how the entire thing came to be and, sadly, the fact that it's not actually an edible cake at all, but instead just fondant and decorations attached to Styrofoam.

[via Flavorwire]

TV: TV Club: Buffy / Angel, “Power Play”/“Not Fade Away”

Noel Murray — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:00:00 GMT

The story so far….

So there’s this vampire, named Angelus, who’s been “cursed” with a soul. He’s changed his name to Angel, and has become a demon-fighter, “helping the helpless” as a way of making up for his past misdeeds. He traveled the world, then settled in California, in a small town called Sunnydale, where he had a romance with the modern embodiment of an ancient heroic force known as The Slayer; and then in Los Angeles, where he started a detective agency with the help of a prophetic demon and an aspiring actress. Over the years Angel has lost some allies and gained others, including two skilled demon-fighters—one raised on the streets, one trained by experts from a prestigious institution— a timid Texas science student with a generous heart, and a green-skinned demon who can sense both who people really are and what they’re ...

Film: Newswire: Turns out John Waters was hitchhiking because he's writing a book about it

Marah Eakin — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:45:00 GMT

Earlier this month, Brooklyn band Here We Go Magic picked up John Waters hitchhiking somewhere in Ohio and the entire Internet freaked out. It seemed, well, magical, this idea that cult directors could just appear from nowhere on the side of the highway and ride with unsuspecting motorists and pop culture nerds for hours at a time. In the public's mind, John Waters was a rebel who did what he wants when he wanted to. Well, as it turns out, John Waters is out thumbing it on the open road because he's writing a book about the process.

In an interview with The New York Times, Waters said the book, Carsick, is about going from coast to coast in eight days, and will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, who published another book of his back in 2010. Specifically, the book is about Waters' "over-scheduled" life and "what ...

Film: Movie Review: Chernobyl Diaries

Scott Tobias — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:16:00 GMT

Horror films are often the first to comment on the mass-scale traumas of the real world, but those traumas are usually sublimated in metaphor, like George Romero’s zombies or the killing floor in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. There’s a good reason for this: Directly evoking an ongoing human tragedy—like, say, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster—for a few ghoulish scares might be in questionable taste. And yet here’s Chernobyl Diaries, scripted by Paranormal Activity creator Oren Peli, which posits that there are survivors in the abandoned city of Pripyat (woo-hoo!), but they’re deranged, cannibalistic mutants ([sadface]). Though Diaries mostly abandons the vid-cam aesthetic of the Paranormal franchise, in all other ways, it’s The Hills Have Eyes meets The Blair Witch Project, a flashlight tour through a stupid urban legend, with the unseemly authenticity only real devastation can provide.

Even without the faux-doc trappings, Chernobyl ...

Film: Movie Review: Virginia

Sam Adams — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:15:00 GMT

While it might not rival the story of a small-town boy of uncertain parentage whose schizophrenic mother is involved in an S&M relationship with a married Mormon sheriff, Dustin Lance Black’s What’s Wrong With Virginia has a tangled history of its own. The film, his fourth feature as a director, was shown not long after Black won an Oscar for his Milk screenplay at the Toronto Film Festival, where it was savaged by some and forgotten by most. Taking his critics to heart, Black withdrew the film, recut it, and changed the title to boot, shortening it to the inoffensive Virginia.

In a way, it’s a shame, since all Black succeeded in doing was to turn what was, by all accounts, a memorable mess of a movie into a forgettable, somewhat tidier mess. Having Jennifer Connelly, a bottle-blonde single mom destabilized by a lifetime of mental ...

Film: Cannes Film Festival: Cannes 2012, Day Nine: The director of Precious drops another prestige stinkbomb and an unfilmable novel gets filmed

Scott Tobias — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:41:00 GMT

No film festival is complete without an unmitigated disaster, and Cannes 2012 finally served one up yesterday morning in the form of Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy,the most repugnant and inept movie to be inexplicably treated like high art since…whaddaya know, since Precious (Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire), the last film directed by Lee Daniels. Combining the lurid grotesquerie of exploitation quickies with the patronizing self-seriousness of middlebrow prestige dramas, Daniels has created a genre of his own that I can only term “degradebait”; judging from the rave reviews and multiple Oscars doled out to Precious, that sensibility isn’t as nauseating to most others as it is to me, so you might want to calibrate accordingly if you’re a fan. The Paperboy is also more wackadoo, in a potentially so-bad-it’s-fun kind of way, than was Precious, so I imagine it’ll be a major ...

Music: For Our Consideration: Reconsidering Codeine, a ’90s band frozen in time

Jason Heller — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:00:00 GMT

A lot has changed since Codeine broke up in 1994, not long after the release of its second full-length, The White Birch. Similar groups like Low, Red House Painters, Bedhead, and Seam helped popularize an indie-rock subgenre dubbed “slowcore,” though none of them embraced the term. Codeine didn’t embrace it, either. Then again, Codeine barely even embraced itself. Singer-bassist Stephen Immerwahr and guitarist John Engle have had little to say about the trio’s legacy, and they haven’t made any notable music since. The group’s two drummers have had the most enduring musical careers after leaving Codeine: Chris Brokaw in Come and the Codeine-influenced, ex-Bedhead outfit The New Year; Doug Scharin in the pioneering math-rock group June Of 44, among others.

In spite of all that, Codeine has been coaxed out of retirement. Like a hibernating mammoth, the group will emerge from the depths of its own ...

Games: The Gameological Society: Author Dennis Cooper loves ’90s CD games and Epic Mickey’s trippy claustrophobia

Drew Toal — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:30:00 GMT

In What Are You Playing This Weekend? we discuss gaming and such with prominent figures in the pop-culture arena. We always start with the same question.

Dennis Cooper has authored dozens of acclaimed novels, poetry collections, and works for the stage. His most recent books include The Marbled Swarm, Ugly Man, and The Weaklings. His 2005 novel, God Jr., is the story of a man who, stricken with guilt over the death of his son Tommy, explores a video game once inhabited by Tommy and is pulled progressively deeper into his own psyche through Tommy’s saved games.

The Gameological Society: What are you playing this weekend?

Dennis Cooper: I’m trying to finish off Epic Mickey, which I had started playing early last year, then put aside, along with gaming in general, because I was in crunch mode completing my last novel. When I’m in that mode, basically ...

TV: TV Club: Duets

Jessica Jardine — Fri, 25 May 2012 09:45:00 GMT

The passing of the torch from FOX’s elder statesman American Idol to NBC’s newcomer The Voice has indicated what many knew to be true: Audiences are ready for a new permutation of reality singing competition that keeps the sport of watching unpolished singers stumble and shine mixed with mini-concerts by Billboard chart toppers. The success of The Voice has rocketed its celebrity judges from middling spots on the charts back into the limelight, landing them magazine covers and hit singles galore. It’s even freed Christina Aguilera up to freely ditch wearing pants on national television.

ABC’s foray into the field is a clear nod to the NBC hit, with its panel of star singers—Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles, Robin Thicke, John Legend, and Kelly Clarkson—and the concept of pairing up a hopeful newbie with one of the veteran performers. There are no spinning chairs or ...

TV: TV Club: Eagleheart, “Beat Shack”

Kevin McFarland — Fri, 25 May 2012 09:15:00 GMT

Eagleheart specializes in the ability to craft a tangential B-plot that progresses parallel to the central idea of an episode. Seemingly unsatisfied with the ability to earn laughs with the marshals and their exceedingly violent exploits, each episode is like a challenge to find a jumping off point for a surreal exercise in extraneous characters. This week, it’s Susie’s neighbors (including Doc Shades, while he's wearing the shades), who attempt to record a new hit song called “Sex Rash” after misinterpreting the violent noises coming from her apartment as loud intercourse. Not only do the neighbors attempt to record the song, but they give up halfway through because something doesn’t click, until inspiration strikes right at the end and they’re able to finish the song with another tangential recording session. It’s a structure that fits somewhere between the animated comic strip sensibility of Robot ...

TV: What's On Tonight?: Our long journey through Joss Whedon's Angel is at its end

Todd VanDerWerff — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Friday, May 25, and Saturday, May 26. All times are Eastern.

TOP PICK
Angel (1 p.m., Friday): It’s only taken him the better part of four years, but Noel Murray is at the end of his long journey through Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel, as he watches the final two episodes of the latter today. We assume he’s not going to pick up the comics and review those, but who knows? As for us, though, we’re just going to assume that this is it for Noel and Joss Whedon… at least until he starts reviewing Firefly with Donna Bowman next week. (Also, is it just us, or is the Angel finale even better than the Buffy one? Discuss.)

REGULAR COVERAGE
Young Justice (Cartoon Network, 10:30 a.m., Saturday): While most everybody else takes ...

TV: The Catch-Up: Six Feet Under, season one

John Teti, Steve Heisler — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

In The Catch-Up, a longtime fan and a newcomer discuss a TV show, movie, book, music, or other pop-culture item. In this installment, Steve Heisler and John Teti discuss the first season of Six Feet Under, Alan Ball’s funeral-home family drama.

Steve: When I was growing up, HBO series were things my parents watched, because they were intense and dramatic and not for me. This wasn’t exactly about how old I was, because when Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under debuted in 2001, I was already in college and had seen my fair share of really messed-up art. This included Ball’s American Beauty in the theaters as one of the first R-rated movies I didn’t have to sneak into. It’s just that I was at an age where if my parents liked something, I questioned its validity because I was super-hip and special. When I ...

Music: AVQ&A: Best experiences with ephemeral art

The A.V. Club Staff — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d like us and the readers to answer? E-mail us at avcqa@theonion.com.

What’s the best song, movie, play, etc. that you are sure you’ll never see again? I don’t mean that in the “there will never be anything like this” sense, or the “I just can’t bring myself to listen to that again” sense, but literally: Not everything gets videotaped, preserved, and saved. Theater, for example, rarely does, so a really standout small production is kept only with those who saw it. I’ve been to some open ...

Books: This Week In Local: Die Kreuzen, Teen Daze, and musician tributes to pro wrestling

Marcus Gilmer — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

The A.V. Club has a smattering of local sites, and every day, writers in these locales are posting about music, films, and other events and news happening in their cities. Whether you live in one of these cities or elsewhere, there’s plenty of great local stuff that’s worth a look. Here’s a roundup of what caught our attention this week.

• In honor of the band’s reunion, Milwaukee put together an oral history of punk rockers Die Kreuzen. [part 2 and part 3]

• Toronto talked to electronic musician Teen Daze about the release of his first official full-length.

• The Twin Cities ran down several musicians’ tributes to pro wrestling, including Lil Wayne and ICP.

• Chicago chatted with Batman Incorporated artist Chris Burnham on breaking into the industry and his role in DC’s “New 52” initiative.

• With the Indianapolis 500 here, Indy explored five entertainment options ...

TV: Podmass: May 17-May 23

Fri, 25 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“No seriously, I’m going to do a terrible job at it. I don’t understand it. I gag a lot. It’s gross. I think the texture is weird.” —Jason Mantzoukas on why Alison Brie shouldn’t proposition him for cunnilingus, Comedy Bang Bang

“I was driving through Little Ethiopia the other day, listening to Dio. A woman walked by, laughed at me, and I gave her the horns. So that’s where I’m at.” —Dave Anthony, Walking The Room

“I lost my baby and my husband this weekend. How? Well, my baby was tossed from her basinet. My husband was tossed from his mancave barstool. They both passed. I’m having a double funeral this weekend. Thanks, China.” —Seth Romatelli on recalled Chinese products, Uhh Yeah Dude

NEW (TO US)

How To Do Everything
Produced and hosted by two dudes—Mike Danforth and ...

Music: Playlisted: King Tuff

Chris Mincher — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:55:00 GMT

We get a lot of records sent to us here at The A.V. Club. Fortunately, we end up liking some of them. In Playlisted, we share our latest recommendations.

Album: King Tuff by King Tuff (out May 29 on Sub Pop)

Press play if you like: Free Energy and re-creations of ’70s glam rock; off-kilter garage-pop outfits; slapdash, distortion-heavy indie rock.

Some background: King Tuff is Vermont native Kyle Thomas, better known as the frontman of Happy Birthday and vocalist for J. Mascis’ band Witch. His 2008 debut as King Tuff, Was Dead, revealed a natural preference for garage rock over the heavy-metal aspects of Witch, and in 2010 he moved in an even lighter direction with Happy Birthday’s lo-fi fuzz pop. For King Tuff’s self-titled follow-up, Thomas has returned to classic-rock territory. With a bluesy swagger and thick reverb gloss, Thomas pays loving homage to T ...

TV: TV Club: So You Think You Can Dance, “Auditions #1 and #2: Dallas and New York”

Oliver Sava — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:50:00 GMT

“All year long your television has been dominated by singers. Isn’t it about time for a little dance?”

The opening line of the ninth season of So You Think You Can Dance? is essentially how I feel from September through early May, as the networks battle it out for singing show domination. Also, I don’t consider Dancing With The Stars an actual dance show. DWTS is the equivalent of Miss Jackie’s Toe-Tapping Tots down at the local grade school, and SYTYCD is the American Ballet Theatre. This year, SYTYCD is a completely different animal with a couple of major changes. First, the results show has been cut, which means only one episode per week, but hopefully much less padding. As much as I love watching the contestants tell me about how Gatorade G-Force 12 changed their lives, cutting the results show should mean fewer of those filler ...

TV: TV Club: Awake, “Turtles All The Way Down”

Zack Handlen — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:00:00 GMT

I enjoyed watching the first season of Awake, and I’m glad the show was cancelled.

This is an odd feeling. And it’s not really useful to any of you out there on the other side of the computer screen, but I mention it because it’s the best way I can describe my reaction to “Turtles All The Way Down,” my reaction to this entire season of television. There were some great episodes in there, a terrific lead performance from Jason Isaacs, and some empathetic, soulful observations about the nature of loss and the way we try to come back from it. At the same time, there was also a more than fair amount of predictable cop drama plotting, and two realities which never cohered enough to be anything more than props. As Todd suggested in his review of the first episode, the question from the start was ...

TV: TV Club: Rookie Blue—“First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life”

Myles McNutt — Thu, 24 May 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Rookie Blue’s third season premieres tonight at 10/9c on ABC.

In an era of cable television, new television in the summer is hardly a novelty: USA, TNT, AMC, HBO, and Showtime—among others—have made summer a key space for original scripted programming, However, new television on the broadcast networks (ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS, The CW) is considerably rarer when it comes to scripted fare. While major reality franchises like Big Brother or America’s Got Talent thrive on the networks in the summer months, none of the major networks have taken a chance on programming scripted content year-round.

Although the rest of ABC’s summer schedule relies on reality fare—see: tonight’s debut of Duets—cop drama Rookie Blue stands as the rare summer success story. It is the first scripted program in recent memory to air exclusively in the summer months on a broadcast network ...