Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

Contents of Episode 181, brought to you by the Talk Nerdy Show and the AAA Network:

• Talk Nerdy Show Update: cast changes, recent interviews, upcoming plans; BONUS: Review of “Sucker Punch”!
• Game Reviews: Bulletstorm (People Can Fly, Epic Games, EA), reviewed by Ryan & Caitlin; Dragon Age 2 (Bioware, EA), reviewed by Felix
• Captain America: The First Avenger chatter: fighting back against “The Grand Director” (confused during the episode with “The Hate Monger”, a completely different Captain America villain) and negativity; plus, why both straight and gay gamers are apparently upset about particular characterizations in Dragon Age 2.

Below you’ll find the trailers for Bulletstorm and Dragon Age 2 (extended, bloodier “Director’s Cut” version) and the video recording of the podcast (w/ raw audio). Enjoy!

Dragon Age 2 Extended Destiny Trailer

Ustream video recording of PTG Episode 181

All-Star Superman
Starring the voice talents of John Denton (Clark Kent/Superman), Christina Hendricks (Lois Lane), Anthony Lapaglia (Lex Luthor), Ed Asner (Perry White)
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Based on the original comic series “All-Star Superman” by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
Directed by Sam Liu

It’s been quite a while since I reviewed the individual issues of “All Star Superman“, the award-winning limited series comic from Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely, for PTG, but I remember being very aware that I was in the minority in terms of my feelings for the book.

Quite simply, I didn’t care for it.

Unlike most Superman fans with a taste for more dramatic, thought-provoking storytelling when it comes to comics, I was not, in any sense of the word, “wowed” by what Morrison was doing. Truthfully, I often found the book off-putting in the same way I at times found his work on Final Crisis, Final Crisis: Superman Beyond and any other multiverse-spanning storyline of his off-putting. His “super-science” technobabble gobbledygook filling up dialogue at every opportunity, his off-kilter pacing, his sometimes bizarre characters and characterizations of particular characters all left me cold. It wasn’t all bad, per se–I remember finishing particular issues and thinking, “That wasn’t bad at all!” and then being disappointed a month later (or whenever the next issue came out) because he once again went off in another weird, wacky direction. More than once I thought particular issues felt like filler; perhaps I’d feel differently if I read the series in a consolidated form, but coming out month to month, some issues left me feeling as though I wanted those fifteen minutes I spent reading back to use more productively. Year after year it continued to win Eisner awards and praise within and outside the comic book community, and I just shook my head and felt dumb, because I just didn’t “get” it. It just didn’t work for me.

Thus, when Warner Premiere and DC Entertainment announced that All-Star Superman would be the basis for the next DC Universe Animated Feature series entry, my reaction was a very emphatic “Eh.” Once I had time to think about it, however, I became more intrigued with the possibilities, simply because due to time constraints, whatever screenwriter they got to work on the project would be forced to make cuts in order to make the narrative move more efficiently, and make the dialogue and exposition palatable to human ears (Morrison has even said recently that he deliberately writes superhero stories “with non-naturalistic, composed or heightened dialogue.”). In my view, the feature had a chance to be more compelling emotionally than its source material just because it would have to shear away all the gobbledygook in order to keep viewers engaged and not be three hours long.

Well, I was only partly correct. Writer Dwayne McDuffie (who passed away unexpectedly the day after this video was released) DOES eliminate a number of subplots and story tangents while still keeping a great deal of original story elements intact in his screenplay (more elements, in fact, than Morrison himself has admitted he believed to be possible).

Unfortunately, the work as a whole STILL is not compelling emotionally, which is truly remarkable, considering what we have in All-Star Superman is the story of Kal-El facing his mortality, facing imminent death and wishing to take care of a few last things before leaving this mortal coil. If anything, it should be the MOST emotionally riveting of Superman stories, and yet, it lacks, for lack of a better word, “punch.”

McDuffie is not to blame, certainly. He’s given us a faithful adaptation of an extremely complex piece of writing within the constraints of having to create an 86-minute long animated feature. He included all the most important story beats from Morrison’s tale, and incorporated a large amount of original dialogue from the comics. For those who loved Morrison’s story as it unraveled in the series, this adaptation will no doubt be a delight each time they hear remembered lines or experience beloved story moments in a completely new way. Visually, the animators clearly worked hard to replicate Frank Quitely’s distinctive character designs, and to bring to life the “gentle giant” quality he bestows upon the Man of Steel, and they are largely successful. In terms of fealty to the source material, this film is one of the most faithful yet.

And maybe that’s why, once again, it didn’t work for ME. Didn’t care for the original story, don’t care for the movie adaptation. Not so much of a stretch, right?

One thing I will say that I was truly underwhelmed by that had no connection to Morrison’s work was the voice cast for this particular feature. James Denton, perhaps best known for his recurring role as Mike Delfino on Desperate Housewives, takes a turn as Clark/Superman for this feature, but he doesn’t bring much to the table here. While watching the film I was reminded of Adam Baldwin’s performance as Superman in Superman: Doomsday, and how un-memorable it was, and the two are quite comparable. Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) does a credible Lois Lane, particularly during the few moments she banters with Clark, although I was reminded how much I detested Morrison’s characterization of Lois in this story, and that, no doubt, is coloring my opinion. Anthony Lapaglia (Without a Trace) brings Lex Luthor to life with just the right amount of intellectual arrogance and sneer to make you want to see him beaten by the end, and that would be a good thing IF we had a Superman in place that we felt like cheering for. Unfortunately, as pointed out earlier, Denton doesn’t make it work, and like Superman: Doomsday, when the lead character’s voice work doesn’t live up to the role, the rest has to struggle just to be mediocre.

Grade: C

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com

PTG Episode 150 (and this VERY overdue write-up) are brought to you by Heroes Landing. Todd and Stu had their Uncanny X-Force #1 party at the store this past week, and the pictures are up for all to see over at their Facebook Fan Page. Unfortunately, with all my “alter-ego” work piling up, I was not able to attend, but PTG will keep you posted about whatever the next celebration happens to be over there, and don’t forget, every Friday night at Heroes Landing the guys host Friday Night Magic, so if you’re a Magic the Gathering player in the Clermont area and somehow you haven’t found your way over to the store yet, tonight’s your opportunity. Head over there, and tell them you found out about it through PTG!

So we’ve reached the 150th episode milestone, and though we didn’t address it all that much during this episode or the hour that came after, I feel that now, in this space, is really the time for a bit of reflection, and a bit of honesty with you, the fans who have supported PTG for so long now. Since Episode 100 aired, it hasn’t been easy to keep the show running. Much has happened in that intervening time, and though quite a bit of it was good, including the making of many new friends and the fulfillment of quite a few of our New Year’s Resolutions, as your host I can now tell you there were several times when I truly considered potting down the microphone and hanging up the headphones for the last time, simply because continuing to produce a show didn’t make sense on a number of levels. Financially, the hole being dug with the production of each new episode just kept growing, with hope dwindling of ever catching up. In terms of the growth of our audience and our download numbers, we seemed to be plateauing, due in no small measure to the fact that we weren’t able to get out to as many events and make as many contacts as we might have wished. And though the quality of PTG is something I personally take quite a bit of pride in, I’d begun to feel as though I’d fallen into a rut creatively. Because we haven’t had new bits and segments, we hadn’t continued to grow creatively.

Those were dark days indeed. All melodrama aside, at times these realities seemed inescapable. But the idea of quitting, of giving up this labor of love that had become perhaps the most important thing in my life (to the detriment of other things in my personal life, other relationships, that should have been priorities), that idea was soul-crushing beyond words.

Thankfully, I could never bring myself to say, “I’m done.”

Instead, we made changes. With the support of SomaCow, we moved the show to a different night and that move has been greeted with approval for the most part (football fans find themselves torn, of course). We found new contributors and new podcasts to partner with in order to bring new dimensions to our show, along with fresh voices and opinions. And most important of all, we stayed committed to bringing you a program of consistent quality on a consistent basis. Yes, we’ve had to take more weeks off than we had to last year in order to keep costs from spinning out of control again, but we’ve never taken more than a week off, and we won’t ever do that, barring something truly catastrophic.

In short, PTG is still here, and we’re looking forward to the next milestone: 200 episodes.

THEN we’ll have a frickin’ party.

In this first hour with guest co-host Ryan MacDonald of the Talk Nerdy Show, we discuss the announcement of Wonder Woman being readied for a return to the small screen by one-time Ally McBeal producer David E. Kelley, Battlestar Galactica veteran Michael Hogan paying a visit to Smallville in the role of one of DC’s deadliest villains, the latest home video release in Warner Premiere’s DC Universe Animated Original Movies series, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, the premiere episode of ABC’s new superhero family drama No Ordinary Family, and last week’s new episode of Smallville, entitled “Shield.” It’s an hour packed with superhero goodness, so we hope you enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 146 is brought to you by The Comic Book Syndicate (who we erroneously referred to as ‘The Comics Syndicate’ during our live broadcast–many apologies!!), whose interview with award-winning comic book writer and artist Darwyn Cooke at Toronto Fan Expo a few weeks back garnered quite a bit of attention from comic book fans due to Cooke’s comments regarding the current state of the superhero comics genre and why he wants no part of it. We devote quite a bit of this hour to putting in our own two cents regarding Cooke’s observations, which we, for the most part agree with, save one notable exception. If you want to see the video and hear the words from Cooke himself, check out the clip below, and check out the Syndicate’s website, ’cause they deserve some love after scoring a gem of an interview like this!

In addition to our own response to Cooke’s observations, we put in our two cents about Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth entry in the Resident Evil film franchise. This is the second film in the series to be written AND directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (he served as writer and producer only on Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction), who we vehemently defend as a capable, if not all that innovative, filmmaker who does NOT, under any circumstances whatsoever, deserve to be compared to the director whose very name inspires either snickers or shudders from movie fans who might hear it, German film director Uwe Boll. This chapter in the story of Alice and her fellow survivors of the Umbrella Corporation’s zombie apocalypse had the biggest box office opening of any film in the series ($26.7 million), probably due in part to its being shot in 3D, and as a Resident Evil movie and a video game adaptation is fairly entertaining. Plot holes the size of battleships? Sure. Not a whole lot of acting? Of course not. But do we seriously go to these movies for solid plotting and thoughtful characterization? HELL no. More on that in the podcast …

We wrap up this episode with reviews of two new releases from DC Comics last week: Green Lantern #57 (Johns, Mahnke) and Batman and Robin #14 (Morrison, Irving). Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 139 is brought to you by Star Wars Celebration V. I’ll be spending quite a bit of this upcoming weekend at THE convention event of the summer, taking pictures, meeting up with Slacker and the Man and the Talk Nerdy Show, and hanging out at the Wolf Pack Elite’s UN-official Celebration Meet-Up on Saturday night, so look forward to reports on all of that stuff this Sunday night from 5-7pm, our NEW time slot at the SomaCow Media Network. We’ve already posted pictures from Day 1 of Celebration V on our Facebook Fan Page, so if you haven’t been over there already to check those out, please do so!

Before I get into what’s in Episode 139, let’s take one last look back at AFO 11 that took place last weekend, this time with video! Here are the videos currently posted on YouTube that I shot while at AFO–if you haven’t checked them out already, please do, and when you do, please rate the video and/or leave comments. Your feedback will bring more views, which helps to spread the word about PTG!

In this episode we bring you last week’s geek headlines, including some Smallville and V casting news and the passing of Hollywood writer/director Tom Mankiewicz, perhaps best known for his work with Richard Donner on Superman and Superman II – The Richard Donner Cut. We follow that with some long overdue TV reviews focused on USA’s Burn Notice and Covert Affairs, both of which are giving spy thriller fans great summer viewing fun in their own ways. We wrap up this hour with reviews on the latest entries of two ongoing event books at the Big Two, Brightest Day #7 (Johns, Tomasi, Reis, Syaf, et. al) for DC Comics and Shadowland #2 (Diggle, Tan) for Marvel. Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 117 is brought to you by Legendary. Yesterday we were proud to be among the first on the web to post the finished product created by the Legendary Chloe fan group, the Tribute to Chloe Sullivan that aired on KTLA in Los Angeles last Friday during Smallville’s 9th Season finale and will air again in New York on WPIX May 20th between 6 and 6:30PM during Inside Edition. But even though the commercial is finished, the work of Legendary is just beginning, as their media rep, Maggie Bridger, tells us on the phone during this hour of PTG. Keep checking back at the Legendary homepage and with us for updates on the group’s future work and plans–through their work and the genuine goodwill behind it they’ve already become ‘legendary’ themselves.

Also in this hour, the second in which Ryan Macdonald and Mark Brown of The Talk Nerdy Show sit in with me in the studio, we break down all the big announcements about TV show cancelations and renewals, including the demises of Heroes and FlashForward and the returns of Chuck and (surprisingly) V. We wrap the hour with our thoughts on “Salvation”, the Smallville season finale that began with a vision of Clark’s future that was sure to thrill die-hard Superman fans, as well as a final image that surely inspired groans from even the most stalwart of Smallville fans. Check out that pre-credits scene for yourself below, and enjoy the podcast!

Legendary: A Chloe Sullivan project (full commercial) from Legendary on Vimeo.

Fans honor CW leading lady & Smallville star, Allison Mack, with tribute commercial to air on WPIX 11.

Smallville fans have funded a professionally-filmed tribute commercial for CW leading lady Allison Mack and her TV character, Chloe Sullivan, to air once during the 6:00-6:30 p.m. time slot on Thursday, May 20, 2010, on the CW’s “flagship station” WPIX in New York City. Incidentally, this is the same day of Upfronts for the CW network.

Starring on Smallville since 2001, Ms. Mack has gained a large and devoted fan base as one of the CW’s most beloved stars. For the completion of her 9th year on the series, Smallville fans decided to celebrate Allison Mack and Chloe Sullivan, with a commercial project entitled Legendary. Scripted and funded entirely by fans, this is a first of its kind tribute ad, one that honors a specific actress and character on an in production series. Legendary was filmed in Los Angeles in late February with the director, Jon Michael Kondrath, at the helm. Together, cast and crew created a tribute commercial focusing on who Chloe Sullivan is and what she means to Smallville fans.

The ad highlights milestones in Chloe Sullivan’s journey on Smallville from her introduction as a high school student to being hired at the Daily Planet as well as becoming Clark Kent’s confidante.

To find out more about our project go to legendarychloe.com

Please join us in saying “thanks” and “congratulations” to Maggie, Liz de Razzo, director John Michael Kondrath, and everyone in the Legendary group for a job well done, and in wishing them continued success in their future endeavors. I know we’ll be hearing more from them soon, and I, for one, can’t wait.

*Our second interview with Maggie, recorded last Saturday night (5-15-2010), will be posted here tomorrow night, so be sure to check back with us and give it a listen!

The sold out event featured unique superhero and villain-inspired designs from IADT Students as well as celebrity judges from the current season of Project Runway. Though the event has already taken place and the results are already known, the students and celebrities that put the event together make it worth checking out even now as an example of a cool Orlando event put on in coordination with the ‘Out of This World’ Costume exhibition currently happening at the History Center through May 16th.

Please check out OETV–Michael’s doing fantastic work over there, so give him some love!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 96 is brought to you by Sci-Fried. Once again, we (and in this case I mean me AND The Man from Slacker and the Man, who co-hosted again with me this week) must thank Mike Jensen a.k.a KSV, Chuck Silver, Christine Evans (K’hetara), and Mike Folk a.k.a Walken of Sci-Fried for joining us and performing in studio during our 2/27/2010 broadcast. It was the first live music performance ever on PTG, and they made it unforgettable. During this hour of PTG they perform an acoustic version of “PX-75309“, their parody of Tommy Tutone’s immortal 80s classic “867-5309/Jenny,” which we hope you enjoy as much as we did. Also, PLEASE check out the video for the song, which features some great special effects and costuming work and truly showcases the geekiness that IS Sci-Fried. For your viewing pleasure, the video is embedded below!

Somehow during this hour packed full of Sci-Fried, we also found time to review the latest DC Universe Animated Movie to hit store shelves last week, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. Our review features some … insightful commentary from “Walken”, who joins the show late in the hour, and I assure you, it’s randomness at its very best. Enjoy!