Tue
26
Jan

Kaye's Classic Comedy on the Blu that is True: Paramount's Court Jester

The Court Jester

The comedic genius of Danny Kaye shines no brighter anywhere than it does in his medieval musical with more castle intrigue than any film that's ever swashed a buckle or buckled a swash. Kaye plays Humbert Hawkins, a former carnival worker who left his job to join up with The Black Fox (Edward Ashley), a Robin Hood figure who rallies folks to help him defend the country against the tyrannical King Roderick I (Cecil Parker), who assumed the throne after he had his men kill the entire royal family.

Mon
25
Jan

Female Fury: Batwoman Episode 202, "Prior Criminal History"

Batwoman 202 Prior Criminal History

Alice (Rachel skarsten) takes the next step in her plan to bring terror to Gotham. As she leans over the dead body of her former cohort, Mouse, we get a flashback to a scene where bats invade her hiding spot so that we can be reminded that 'bats eat rats.' This is important to what Alice is doing now, which is catching a rat and duct-taping it to Mouse's dead chest so that it will attract bats to come take nibbles of Mouse as well.

Cut to two months ago, and a pre-Batwoman Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie) being rescued from a Halloween night mugging by Batwoman (in shadow, so it's not a Ruby Rose cameo). We then see Ryan interview for a security job and being turned down for it because she pled guilty to 18 months in Blackgate. This is all to establish more of Ryan's backstory to provide motivations for why she would want to take over the role of Batwoman and what she might do with the title.

Sun
24
Jan

Evan Morgan's The Kid Detective a Darkly Comic Evolution of a Genre

The Kid Detective

As a kid, Encyclopedia Brown and The Three Investigators (when they still were partnered with "Alfred Hitchcock and...") were a good chunk of my reading adventures. They were relateable to a young audience, and they caught the bad guys by being smart.

Evan Morgan's The Kid Detective evolves that concept by taking that innocence and charm and running it through the wringer of a few decades of reality. When Abe Applebaum was a kid (Jesse Noah Gruman), he ran a detective agency from his treehouse, solving little mysteries for a quarter with his best-friend assistant, the mayor's daughter Gracie Gulliver (Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato). He even got to solve a few locally high-profile cases and became enough of a name that -- when someone spitefully chopped down his tree -- the town gave him his own office downtown from which to operate.

Thu
21
Jan

Bullied Takes Brutal, Unflinching Look at Evolved Peer Torment

Bullied

Bullying has been around as long as social groups have formed. And there have been arguments made that some amount of that peer pressure can "toughen up" a kid, make them stronger or more aware. But over the years, bullying has evolved beyond taking the long way to school so Skut Farkas doesn't take your lunch money leaving you to bemoan your fate among your friends; it's mutated into levels of sociopathic venality, aided and abetted by the omnipresence of social media, into a nonstop hell escapable only by suicide.

Thomas Keith's documentary, Bullied, is a hard, brutal look at the increasing pandemic of bullying, its escalating physical violence and psychological sadism, and the impact it has not only on its singular victims but the ripple effect upon their families.

Releasing on Amazon Prime this February 12, Bullied is a film that will be hard to watch. Most important films are. Which is why you should watch it.

Thu
21
Jan

Pep Talk: Riverdale Episode 501, "Climax"

Riverdale 501, Climax

Riverdale makes its fifth season debut, picking right up with the mysterious videotapes being left around the town where every house apparently still has a functioning VCR in the living room. The last tape was saw featured a group of teens wearing plastic masks resembling Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica all killing a masked version of Principal Honey, who was disgraced out of his office. And while there was a lot of high tension to capitalize on, so much of it was burned through so quickly it didn't feel like it had time to fully impact the storylines.

Tue
19
Jan

Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? Remains Faithful to Source While Thoroughly Modern

Scooby Doo and Guess Who? Season 1

Scooby-Doo and Mystery Inc. have been an enduring franchise for several reasons, one being that the animation producers have been so open to innovation. One of these innovations early on came with The New Scooby-Doo Movies, a collection of adventures that revolved around Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby crossing paths with famous celebrities (who voiced themselves) or other popular cartoon characters.

Mon
18
Jan

How to Stay Healthy and Fit During College Semester

Being a college student is no walk in the park. There are plenty of things that require your immediate attention: classes, communities, parties – for many even jobs. It is easy to forget about healthy habits and start drifting. Regrettably, wrong choices can lead to life-damaging outcomes in the future, and now is the best time to prevent this.

Making a decision to stay healthy and well in college is halfway to success. These tips will help you to figure out how to do that.

Build a Healthy Eating Routine

Food is the main source of energy that helps us go through the day, stay active, and focused. For students, their academic progress and productivity largely depend on what they fuel their bodies with. That is why it is crucial to build healthy eating habits that will help you go forward rather than pull you back.

Mon
18
Jan

Doom Patrol Second Season Overdoses on Bizarre

With the second season of Doom Patrol, I was hoping to see the team come together in... well, in any fashion. We learned who they were as individuals in the first season, so now it was time to start actually using these abilities and getting the independent members to work as part of a team.

Sun
17
Jan

Female Fury: Batwoman Episode 201, "What Happened to Kate Kane?"

When Ruby Rose decided to leave the role of the lead character on the CW's BATWOMAN, it put the writers into a bit of a tailspin. The easy thing to do would have been to recast the character with a different actress. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the proper thing to do would have been to recast the role, because now you have to invent a whole new reason for why Kate's gone, who takes over being Batwoman, and next thing you know there'll be more actresses in the suit than have flown a Tardis.

Sun
17
Jan

Fatman Displaces Die Hard as Best Action Christmas Movie

Fatman Blu-ray

DIE HARD has just been dethroned as the ultimate men's adventure and action Christmas movie. FATMAN is a violent tale filled with dark comedy in which Mel Gibson plays Chris Cringle, a grumpy toymaker who lives in the far north. This is no allusory setup. The filmmaker's play it straight that this really is Santa Claus, existing and operating in a world that, for all other intents and purposes, is completely realistic.

Chris's problem is that he's producing fewer toys each year -- not due to any lack of production capabilities, but for the lack of deserving children. Unfortunately, the subsidy contract he has with the U.S. government pays him based on his production levels, and now he's not pulling in enough to survive.The solution comes to Chris in the form of another government contract -- one for the military. It's not an ideal situation for Chris, but as a temporary stop-gap, he's willing to take it.

Sat
16
Jan

Attack of the Killer Donuts a Horror/Comedy Serving Up Laughs by the Dozen

Attack of the Killer Donuts

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Herbert West from the Re-Animator series were to get a job at a Dunkin' Donuts? Well look no further than this low budget hidden gem from 2016 that won't leave you feeling glazed over.

The plot is a simple one: a chemical accident turns ordinary donuts into bloodthirsty killers. Now it's up to Johnny, Michelle, and Howard to save their sleepy town from...Killer Donuts!

Fri
15
Jan

Batman: Soul of the Dragon Casts Dark Knight into Grindhouse Kung-Fu Epic

Batman: Soul of the Dragon

A great deal of the Batman animated movies (and the live action ones, for that matter) have focused on the technological advantages Batman has and how he uses them to fight crime: the car, the armor, the gadgetry. "Where does he get those wonderful toy," indeed.

With BATMAN: SOUL OF THE DRAGON, the producers take Batman and make him a character -- and not even the central character -- of an animated grindhouse kung-fu flick.

Fri
15
Jan

You, Too: Penn Badgley Returns For Second Season as Hopeless Romantic Serial Killer

You Season 2

Things just can't go smoothly for poor Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), the earnest young man who just wants to fall in love with the right person -- someone he can protect from all the evil influences that would do them harm, even if it means killing them.

Thu
14
Jan

Red Sonja: The Superpowers

Red Sonja The Superpowers 1

Dynamite has, for quite a while now, been pulling off crossover comic book miniseries with their licensed characters -- most recently in the very entertaining zombie epic, Die!Namite. But with Red Sonja: The Superpowers (in conjunction with Vampirella: Dark Powers), it appears that Dynamite is building up something larger, and much more audacious: they're creating a cohesive multiverse, with Red Sonja a part of it.

The story opens as your typical sword-and-sorcery tale: Red Sonja has been approached and hired to remove an evil wizard who has been subjugating people who don't have the means to fight back. Sonja vows to do the deed, and battles the wizard's henchmen who have been sent to stop her. As she rages her victory cry to the sky, declaring that she is coming for him... things get weird. A strange lightning streaks across the night sky, and Sonja realizes that perhaps this wizard isn't your usual charlatan with tricks.

Mon
11
Jan

After Trapper's Passing, the AIMS Team Tracks the Wolves of West Virginia on Mountain Monsters

Mountain Monsters Wolves of West Virginia

The cryptid-chasing series Mountain Monsters returns to the Travel Channel, starting out on a somber note. The series went on a bit of a hiatus after the AIMS team leader, Trapper John Tice, passed away back in December 2019, and now the team prepares to move on without him. But though Trapper himself is gone, his leadership and guidance remain, as his daughters pass along to the team his journal, full of a lifetime's worth of information on cryptids and a special note for the hunters: if they want to continue, "Go to the blue marker and take it from there."

Thu
07
Jan

Geek Passion into Profit: Smart Moves to Make a Business

Geek to Business

 

Multi-million dollar businesses: Amazon, eBay, and even Harley Davidson all started from a passionate hobby. So it stands to reason that you can also tap into your geeky passion and turn it into a profit. Before you do so, however, you’ll need to know how to make that possible. Here are a few smart moves to turn your geeky passion into an actual business!

 

Mon
04
Jan

Purple Prose? Hue Better Believe It! Sonya Devereaux Returns as Violet Vixen

Violet Vixen - Starring Sonya Devereaux

The 306th Best Actress in America returns to show she's not just a sexy horror star, or a sexy western star, or a sexy sci-fi star -- she can also be a sexy superhero star! The name that's tanked a thousand ships is back on the screen, fresh from her performance in the widely lauded (as in "My laud, is this movie over yet?") production of Spider-Shark vs. Snake-Bear, as that voluptuous vigiltante of virtuous victory, Violet Vixen!

Fri
01
Jan

Netflix Drops Fourth Season of Sabrina in Time for New Year

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina returns to Netflix for a fourth -- and possibly fatal -- season. Following the events of the third season, where Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) faced the dilemma of either becoming Queen of Hell or remaining with her friends, the viewers get to bounce back and forth between two Sabrinas -- Sabrina Spellman and Sabrina Morningstar -- as the teenage witch solved the problem by splitting herself into two bodies. But this throws the cosmos into imbalance, and leads to the return of the Eldritch Terrors as the showrunners deliver up a love letter to Lovecraft.

Fri
01
Jan

Friday the 13th: Vengeance - The Sequel to a Sequel You Never Knew You Needed to See

Friday the 13th: Vengeance

Crowdfunded Fan Films are gaining traction… and FUNDS! Will Hollywood take notice?

Fri
01
Jan

Welcoming 2021 with a New Cosplay Bombshell: Meet Astra Void!

Astra Void Bombshell of the Month 01-2021

Okay, everybody. You don't need us to tell you that 2020 is a year that belongs in the dustbin of history. We did our best to brighten it once a month with some colorful positivity in the form of cosplay, and we're going to continue that on into this new year, in the hopes that things get better.

Every month the staff at Critical Blast combs the cosplay community for up-and-coming cosplayers who deserve to have a broader audience for their work, taking into account not only costuming skills and spirit, but also how they use that ability in service to others. Through this, we've not only met some talented cosplayers, but also some fine human beings.

So let's get this year started off right! Critical Blast is proud to introduce you one and all to 2021's first...

 

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