One Man Reviews Agents of Shield: The Girl in the Flower Dress

Rejoice sycophants, slatterns, slobs and slores, your most humble and most exalted fearless leader Dane Barbados Jr. can finally declare that "Agent's of SHIELD" has finally, finally, produced an episode that one could designated as "good."

"The Girl in the Flower Dress" delivered on most fronts with only a scant few teeth-grindingly poor moments. A return to an overarching plot? Check. A villain with actual powers? Check. A massive cutback on Whedonspeak and snark? Good Lord Barbados Check. Muzzling Skye and putting a bullet in the back of her head? ...Not quite. Yet.

This was perhaps the first episode of SHIELD that managed to fully distract Dane Barbados Jr. from a spirited session of motorboating the supple buttocks of a comely young lass. To dispense with the bad first, yes unfortunately Skye still exists and draws breath, remaining the weakest link of the show, moving through her scenes with a palpable air of vapidity. Luckily for the viewers, and Dane Barbados Jr's kidney punching hand, her amount of dialogue and, most pointedly, the ridiculous outdated teenaged valleygirl snark of that dialogue were both dialed down in spite of her having a major part of the episode's storylines.

Skye's sideline activities with (ugh merely typing the following word causes your humble narrator a slight nosebleed of suppressed rage) "hacktivist" group The Rising Tide are finally exposed with our intrepid Agents pursuing a member of the group who turns out to be an associate of Skye's with a more personal connection. And by "personal connection" We mean "fuck buddy." A post-coitus scene between the two provides one of the episode's worst and best moments. The worst being Skye mentioning returning to her fellow Agents lest she be "screwed" with her smirking knob of a paramour replying "There's a joke here that I'm struggling not to make," which is a mildly amusing aside, before following up with "It involves the word 'screwed.'" Which is not only poor writing, but also serves to illustrate how feeble Skye really is that her crotch comrade felt that he had to explain such a simple concept to her. But we were saved from a shallow sea of mediocrity as, in a nice callback to the pilot episode, as fan favorite character Agent Melinda May popped up where Skye least expected (because she's a savant-like drooling idiot) in one of the episodes's best bits.

One would think that Agent Ward catching Skye nearly bare-assed and red-handed, collaborating (and, ugh, "screwing") with a cyber-terrorist, not yet having washed off the post-drilling musk of her traitorous escapades would completely extinguish the sophomoric, One Direction-fueled, romantic tension betwixt them but Dane Barbados Jr. has a sneaking suspicion that it will only increase it in the long run. Because that is what is most predictable.

The other half of the night's narrative centered on a young Chinese street performer, Chan Ho Yin, who possesses mild pyrokinetic abilities played well by Louis Changchien, endowing him with a sense of genuine wonder and enthusiasm about his aiblities and the potential that they possess and a certain Barbadian swagger (in the classic sense of the word cretins) and charm. Unfortunately, in another questionable bit of writing, he was also given one of most generic and least-interesting codenames imaginable with "Scorch."

The writers wisely used Chan and his storyline to shed light on a number of things including the villain group Centipede from the pilot episode, their plans and more workings of the extremis derives super-soldier serum that they are developing, name dropping Captain America himself; the way SHIELD handles the super-powered individuals that it discovers, and, rather bafflingly, confirming the seeming absence of mutants in the Avengersverse. Last episode the existence of psychic powers was treated as implausible and this week's episode states that SHIELD keeps and Index of super-powered individuals but that the list is small. How this will work with notable mutants Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch appearing in the next Avengers film is yet to be seen.

The episode also had some of the series' best special effects with some impressive work being done on Chan's fire abilities, including a graphic bit where a person is burned down to ash before our very eyes. On a character front Agents May and Coulson did most of the heavy lifting with Ward providing backup support and Fitz/Simmons wisely remaining on the ever-ridiculous plane. This benefited the episode hugely as May and Coulson are easily the most likeable and interesting characters on the show and the actors seemed to relish the opportunity for a little action giving great performances including Coulson amusingly delivering a bit of fisticuff action in his trademark gray suit. Ward, if not the third most interesting character then the third least annoying character, performs his usual action duties of any given episode but benefited from being less "goofy" and more serious, doing a lot of acting with his facial expressions when dealing with Skye after her duplicitous nature was exposed. The titular Girl in the Flower Dress and back-stabbing Centipede agent deserves mention for being played by Ruth Negga who was also Misfit's teleporting temptress Nikki, and anything that reminds Dane Barbados Jr. of Misfit's fantastic early seasons earns bonus points.

All in all The Girl in the Flower Dress marked a drastic improvement in Agents of SHIELD. By upping the level of drama and lowering the level of snarky dialogue and faux-wit the show managed to deliver genuine tension without trivializing the characters. Including a super-powered main villain and returning to the Centipede storyline played to the strengths of the Marvel Universe and separated it from scores of procedureals unlike last week's episode. The special effects and sets were much improved and characters who are clearly not combat oriented such as Skye and Fitz/Simmons are sagely kept out of combat situations, playing to their respective strengths of hacking and miscellaneous TV science tasks but forgoing the tritely named scanner-bots. For the first time in the series' run Dane Barbados Jr. can fully endorse an episode of Agents of SHIELD. Bask in it. Now, faithful readers, if you will excuse your immanence Dane Barbados Jr., there are a supple set of female buttocks in need of attention.

Post scriptum: Go watch Misfits. It's not only much better than Agents of SHIELD, or any other super-hero oriented show on your American broadcasts, it's also one of the best, most interesting and best looking shows that could be put into the genre with superior characters, drama, acting, directing and emotion than anything your networks have to offer. And there's ample profanity and some nudity so there is that as well. Series 5, the final season, premiers tomorrow but you would be best served stopping after Series 3.

Post post scriptum: Spoilers for tonight's episode of Agents of SHIELD.

One Man Reviews the BET 2013 Cyphers

It is time again, gentle readers, sycophants and plebeians for the BET Hip-Hop Awards to grace us with the annual rap Cypher.

What's that?  You're expressing astonishment that your ever humble narrator, fist-fighter of sharks and conquistador of the bedchamber, Dane Barbados Jr. is a fan of hip-hop?  If only the scientists being paid an exorbitant amount of currency had perfected their commission to create a way to administer the divine kidney punch through a computer monitor then you would be paid for your ignorance.  Truthfully the music of your America is one of the few things that suprasses the grace and majesty of Dane Barbados Jr.'s verdant and pristine native shores.  Alas, we have naught but primarily harpsichord and lute music and that, dear readers, is not music for one to, as you say, "bump their heads to."

We will begin our examination of this year's Cypher with group by group.  Let us begin.

Wax, Rapsody, Emis Killa, Rittz & Jon Connor:

This group begins with Washington DC rapper Wax who delivers his verse with a steadily paced, staccato flow.  The lyrical content of his verse is pedestrian however name-dropping the Kardsahians and dropping upon us such gems as "But I made a plan to kick the game in its smelly rectum, and I don't deviate like a healthy septum.  I'm the truth and it hurts fools, now go and type 'Wax' on your YouTube search tools...and buy some merch fools."  A healthy sense of humor is generally a plus in the hip-hop world, but begging is not.  No Wax, I think I'll forgo typing your name into my YouTube "search tools."

Next up is Rapsody from North Carolina, pairing her thematically misspelled name with a clumsy and occasionally off-beat flow delivering a random string of rhyming words that are so inconsequential that Dane Barbados Jr. can find nothing worth quoting here.  Her verse is also conveniently short enough to ensure that it quickly exits the memory with a minimum of retention.

Then we have Emis Killa from Italy.  Mr. Killa has the misfortune of rapping in Italian, which, in his favor, lends some personality to his standard mid-tempo flow but also utterly destroys the flow for typical monoligual American's who must read subtitles to see what his is saying.  Also points lost for using "I've got so much swag that if we go around people don't know what to see: the panorama or my shoes."  It's 2013 Mr. Killa.  It's time to let "swag" go.

Following is an extra from your television's "Duck Dynasty" whom goes by the name of Rittz and hails from Georgia.  Amusement emerges right off the bat as one of Rittz's first lines is "Well I hate the word swag" directly after his group-mate used the word "swag."  Not much team unity.  Rittz utilizes a quick southern flow, showing his ability to mix up his cadence and the ferocity of his voice on the fly, he also shows that he fits into this group of MC's quite nicely as he proceeds to say nothing that matters for the next 45 seconds including name-drops of both Paula Deen (whom he assures us he wasn't raised by) and Nas.

Last at bat is Jon Connor from Michigan who exudes an air of a real battle ready MC as he approaches the mic, mixing up his flow first slower then faster having all the appearance of a classic, vicious, rapper dropping a clever rhyme comparing Andre the Giant to Daniel Bryan before eroding the aura he had built up completely with "Somebody tell Rita Ora(?) that I sorta got feelings for her, got a crib out in Georgia, we can raise a son and a daughter or we can go out to Florida where the weather is just as gorgeous" and  "Hol' up, it's gettin' out of hand, because in a year I'll be saying I'm not her man doing the 'you are not a father' dance." Blech.

Overall there were some nice flows and a bit of good stage presence here and there but each MC on the docket mixed so-so lyrical content with some baffling rhyme choices and overall each verse was so short that they they left little to no lasting impression.

A$SP Mob:

A$AP Ferg starts this cypher, delivering a short, mushmouthed verse with a reggae-tinted flow over after the group-dropped hook over the worst beat in the cypher.  "No Limit soldier with a bunch of little tanks, and hit 'em where it hurt, make them dudes feel the pain. Blood stain, no rubber man got two gold chains, white gold on my gums like cocaine."  ...Yeah.

A$AP Twelvy then rises up spitting a hard hitting, energetic, impact flow, dropping pedestrian brag-rap content: "World wide residential, all started with a pencil, laid up wit a bad chick, that never had shit, 40 diamonds and guns, she think I'm mad rich."  Major points lost for dropping "jiggy" into a cypher made in 2013.  For shame Twelvy.  For shame.  To the corner with you.

A$AP Nast enters the fray with a flow that's aggressive and unpolished and says absolutely nothing of note in his 30-second section of the cypher.

Baltimore native A$AP Ant then steps up name dropping Baltimore twice in 30  seconds as well as making sure that he's "got a white chick who loves giving brain" and that "peanutbutter inside be the wood grain."  Dane Barbados Jr. struggled against this auditory Nyquil

Last up is Harlem's own A$AP Rocky showing that there is some actual talent in A$AP's cypher dropping concept and wordplay with lines such as "This is Huey Newton with the uzis shootin', the trill Marin Luther fittin' to spark the Luger, Malcom X's Muslim army marchin' till your block'll bring the choppa till your preacher screamin' 'hallelujah!" and "They say lords never worry, no hopes for the kids young blood was a thug caught slugs from a crip."

Another short cypher filled with short verses, as expected Rocky showed the most talent, best lyricism and most variation in flow, rising above his peers and adding some spark to an otherwise dull performance.

Slaughterhouse:

The Slaughterhouse crew opens up with Brooklyn native Joell Ortiz who drops some clear shots across the bow at one Mr. West with "I never tried to be cool, it's just finesse.  But as a man there's a few of your moves I must address. Not trying to judge but oooh I must confess, I never thought I'd see hip-hop dudes under a dress."  and ending with "BET thank us again for another hard moment"  Now, as Dane Barbados Jr. does everything in the name of fairness, similar points were raised by Lord Jamar's track "Lift Up Your Skirt" way back in February but it is nonetheless nice to see some battle put back into battle rap.

Crooked I comes in with some nice wordplay and and substantially more complicated flow than much of what has been seen in many of the cyphers, and dropping battle raps peppered amongst the typical hip-hop self-aggrandizement: "Listenin' to you rap you ain't said nothin',  You talkin' bread stuntin'.  You talking Red Buttons.  I'm pushing them red buttons.  And all my weapons, goin' Korinne Stephans, that mean they head huntin'.  Homie you garbage, you prolly learned to rap at "I see UC college."

Hip-hop favorite Royce Da 5'9" surprisingly underwhelms with a sloppy flow that struggles to stay on beat, even as simple as the beat is.  He does throw the obligatory dishwater-weak shot at Drake with "now all I'm tryin' to do is give Halle Berry a baby today, then I'm outie tomorrow, maybe Drake can adopt it" perhaps the only shot fired that could be softer than Drake himself.  Royce is a good rapper and a favorite for a reason but he has left Dane Barbados Jr. sorely disappointed.

Joe Budden then suffles onto the beat to close, sleepwalking his way through a few bars, lazily Mr. Droopying his way through the track and lobs a softball at the world's easiest target: "All that beef and scrappin'?  Like Miley Cyrus twerking, somethin' supposed to be shakin' I just never see it happenin'."  Topical.  But not to worry because Mr. Budden assures us that he's "quick on his feet" he can "moonwalk sideways."

Expectations were fairly low for the Slaughterhouse set, but Dane Barbados Jr. still held some hope that Royce Da 5'9" would show up with some fortitude to truly, in the parlance of the medium "rip the mic."  Instead it was Ortiz that delivered the best punches and Crooked I with the best flow and wordplay.

Action Bronson, Starlife Breezy, Travi$ Scott, Tiffany Foxx & Lil Kim:

Truthfully, Dane Barbados Jr. doesn't even know.  The sights and sounds of the current amorphous, Ms. Piggy-like blob that refers to itself as Lil' Kim temporarily obliterated all time and all thought, rendering your ever resolute Narrator, with the constitution of Herakles himself, gibbering and incoherent at the sight of her quivering bleached, stretched, squashed and stuffed visage clogging the 81-inch frame of my television screen.  81-inches of Lil' Kim spitting chipmunk rhymes straight from the dumpster in her helium voice.  The female companion that attended to Dane Barbados Jr. for the evening quietly excused her self to retire to the water closet and retch into the golden curves of the commode.   Lil' Kim used to be a sex symbol.  BET has earned the eternal enmity of House Barbados for the countless nightmare filled sleepless nights that they have inflicted your humble narrator with.  The rest was all B-team entries that deserve no mention.

Last but absolutely not least, TDE:

Schoolboy Q hailing from South Central steps up to drop his bars over the legendary "Shook One's" beat.  He doesn't stand out but he doesn't disrespect the beat until he loses it a bit near the end.

Jay Rock steps up with the attitude and aggression that you want to see in a good hip-hop cypher, immediately dropping "I ain't no backpack rapper, I ain't no lyricist, and if he ain't talking to you, mind your business then," "It's chopped off, we runnin' rap. Wack rappers, Fila, reason we don't run with cats."  He isn't the best pure lyricist showcased but delivers his wares with a flow and respect of the beat that actually lends excitement as opposed to the overly laid-back and poorly crafted versed on display elsewhere.

Fellow California native Ab-Soul steps up with a flow not unlike none can hear performed by any number of slightly drunken, slightly stoned youths on any street corner in the city.  Next.

Tennessee Native Isaiah Rashad is next and his verse is okay, but Dane Barbados Jr. could not concentrate on it being distracted by Rashad's wild gesticulations which would give Mac from "Always Sunny in Philadelphia" a run for his money.

And then we come to the real show, Kendrick Lamar.  Everyone was hyping his performance, the TDE cypher had a #KendricksVerse hashtag before he even opened his mouth, hip-hop fans waited on the edge of their seats with anticipation...and were not disappointed.  Not only does Kendrick have the longest verse in the show at nearly minutes but is also delivers a nonstop barrage of shots fired, raw aggression, and punchlines.  Rhyming in a lower register that he uses in most of his studio work Kendrick makes his stance with such likes as "Your career ain't shit unless its got some Kendrick in it" and "Shook. You scared to death and scared to look when Kendrick up in your mirror,"

Truly if Dane Barbados Jr had to list every notable line in the verse then he might as well just detail the entire thing, which he shan't do as hip-hop of this calibre deserves its proper due.   He will, however, leave you with this:

"And nothin's been the same since they dropped "Control," and tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes.  Ha-ha, jokes on you.  High five, I'm bullet proof.  Your shots will never penetrate, pin the tail on the donkey boy, you been a fake."

Somewhere a Canadian is weeping softly into an pink monogrammed silk kerchief.  And Dane Barbados Jr. laughs.

One Man Reviews Agents of SHIELD: Eye Spy...and vaguely remembers last week's episode.

So your ever reliable and urbane narrator Dane Barbados Jr. did not review last week's episode of SHIELD.  Had the review been missed because Dane Barbados Jr. had something better to do it would not be worth mention, however the sad fact is that despite being eternally young, panty moisteningly handsome and extremely rich even one such as Dane Barbados Jr. is beholden to the vile capriciousness of Comcast.  Mother.  Fucking.  Comcast.  And a service interruption that encompassed two city blocks claimed my viewing of the episode.

When the episode was finally seen it just as quickly vanished from the memory of your humble narrator.  Not much happened, long time Marvel comics villain Graviton got an origin and that was all of note.

Onto this week's episode, entitled "Eye Spy."  A quick synopsis can be written quickly and efficiently: "Skye is an offensively vapid slattern and Dane Barbados Jr. would enjoy to see naught but her being eaten alive by gamma irradiated gila monsters because I truly fucking hate her."

Skye is almost single-handedly sinking the proverbial stupidly multi-winged ship that is the show.  She's so incongruous to whatever is happening around her, so out of place she feels like she was transplanted from another show.  As the only character the uses it the limitations and irritations of Whedonspeak become apparent.  That idiosyncratic style of dialogue, which lent a since of youth and charm to shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. is grating and nut-crunchingly teeth grinding in SHIELD.  Primarily because it all comes from one character.  No one else talks like a bubble-headed, sun bleached, idiot from the shores of your southern California.  And really, it has little place in a group of highly funded, somewhat professional secret agents.  If the character was played by a plucky teen it would be a whole different brand of scarlet tinted fury but it would at least be believable.

Outside of that the episode, while not exactly bad judged by the lofty standards of one such as I, still ended up sucking by virtue of being exactly what Agents of SHIELD should not be: just another procedural.  This week's episode, with extremely minor changes, could have been 60 minutes of NCIS.

Rouge agent trained by the straight-faced lead agent of our heroic, government employed, protagonists.  One of our team members wants to take her out but team leader has a suspicion that all is not what it seems and that rouge agent is being coerced.  They predictably are but are being monitored and will be killed if there is an issue  Race against the clock to discover the mastermind behind it while simultaneously attempting to disable the fail-safe threatening to kill the rouge agent.

How many times have you seen that on television already?  Replace "government employed" protagonists with "peace enforcement officers" and ask yourself that question again.  There are scores of procedurals on television.  The American television populace has been inundated with them since "Law & Order" got its first spinoff in 1999, from medical procedurals to police procedurals to government agent procedurals to supernatural procedurals with Fox's "Sleepy Hollow."  SHEILD being a government procedural with science fiction elements will not cut it in a world in which "Fringe" existed.  Tony Stark mugging at the camera or Samuel L. Jackson making a dry quip every fortnight isn't a requirement but finding a way to embrace the more fantastic elements of the Marvel universe, within budget, is a necessity to separate from an endless, grasping sea of similar shows, particularly at a point where procedurals' popularity is finally starting to wane.

Even within the show other supposedly highly intelligent characters show astounding lack of logic, reason and intelligence.  When discussing the failsafe within the rouge agent with our resident geeks Agents Fitz/Simmons , Agent Coulson says of it "It could be a bomb, it could be poison gas, we don't know." Once the failsafe is removed what happens you may wonder?  Well one of our highly intelligent agents, the female one, (dare not ask Dane Barbados Jr. to remember their individual names.  If the show doesn't care if they're distinct, than neither shall I) deposits it into a small blast chamber where there is a small puff and some smoke or vapor.  Five seconds later she opens it, smoke / vapor pouring out, sticks her face over and peers in.  Good thing for her it was a bomb and not the gas.  Bad thing for us perhaps.

On the good end Clark Gregg put in his usual solid performance as Agent Coulson and there was another plot hit of what happened to him after the Battle of New York, though hopefully this won't be the season's big mystery as if all as it appears it will serve as a massive anti-climax for readers of the comics.  He also got to show a little more range and emotion than usual.

Guest star Pascale Armand as rogue agent Akela Amador was a fine addition being able the range necessary to pull off someone who has been at turns abandoned, manipulated and then rescued, with a question about Coulson near the end of the episode being played quite well.  She also puts in a good action scene against Melinda May.

Ming-Na Wen continues to just barely skirt the right side of the line between "completely empty cypher" and "quiet deliverer of asskickery" with little things like her interactions with Coulson early in the episode and effortlessly dodging a knife thrown at her head with a slight tilt of the neck and a stone-faced glare played out extremely well.

Most surprisingly Brett Dalton's Agent Ward finally got to show some actual personality beyond "gruff military man with hidden soft side" in this episode, having to infiltrate a facility posing as the rogue agent.  His small moment with a burly and surly Russian guard was a rare genuinely fun moment.

All in all this wasn't a bad episode, and "Agents of SHIELD" isn't a bad show, but both were numbingly average leaving little that lasts in the memory and not much to separate if from its many similar peers.  Very similar to your girlfriend if Dane Barbados Jr. remembers correctly.

One Man Reviews Iron Man 3

In honor of the New York City Comicon your ever humble narrator, Lord of Lords and sower of the precious seeds of House Barbados across the faces of many of your girlfriend's upthrust bosoms, Dane Barbados Jr. himself has decided to finally watch the much maligned Iron Man 3.

Despite making a legion of comic book fanboys viciously angry over the treatment of the Mandarin, which we shall come to, Dane Barbados Jr. found this film to be an enjoyable romp from nearly start to finish.  Iron Man 3 is a much more focused and directed character piece, as helmed by director Shane Black, having less spectacle and more introspection, shining a light on Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark and his issues following the Battle of New York as depicted in "The Avengers", feeling like it had less hands involved in shaping the film.

As always, Robert Downey Jr. completely embodied Tony Stark still being a brash and charismatic jerk while still displaying character growth over the character displayed in the previous two Iron Man films as well as the Avengers, crumpling into panic attacks at the mere mention of New York or wormholes, burying himself in his work, churning out hastily constructed armors (from Mark VII in the Avengers to Mark 42 at the start of IM3).  Despite his personal difficulties Stark is still able to snark with the best of them, delivering one-liners and retorts with wild abandon.

Gwyneth Paltrow sleepwalks hazily through her role as she is want to do in almost any role she appears in but the character of Pepper Potts has much more to do in this film, managing to handily escape the bounds of a mere damsel in distress.  Jon Favreau, though in the film less than in the past iterations still retains his innate likability.  It may have something to do with him apparently packing on an additional 15-20 pounds between films.  Fat people generally have an air of jollyness Dane Barbados Jr. has found.  Don Cheadle as Jim Rhodes, the newly christened "Iron Patriot," effortlessly dispels all memory of that role's former occupant, making it all his own, dishing out believable action moments and comedy in equal measure.  Guy Pierce is also surprisingly believable both as the broken and nerdy Aldrich Killian and the suave, fit and confident businessman he becomes, still showing the vulnerability of who he was before and possessing none of the more cartoon like qualities of Iron Man 2's Ezekiel Stane.  And then there's Ben Kingsley.

Iron Man 3 also has the distinction of being a comic book movie released this year that is not afraid to show color, humor and heart, all three elements on display front and center, shown most heavily in a section of the middle of the film with an armorless Tony Stark befriending a young boy (Ty Simpkins) who puts in a rare non-annoying performance, somehow able to make a a child on film somewhat endearing.  

And then, we have the Mandarin, the focal point of the rage of a million virgin nerds.  In the realm of comics the Mandarin has over the years emerged as one of Tony Stark's oldest and most dangerous villains, a Fu Manchu-like yellow peril villain possessed of ten magic rings created by aliens shaped like giant, wingless, dragons wearing purple short pants.  How, exactly, was this expected to be translated in modern film?  A modern film with substantial Chinese financial backing no less?  An impossibility declares Dane Barbados Jr.

What we have instead is an ambiguously brown terrorist leader with an american southern accent and a Chinese name capturing and utilizing the tricks of media and theatre to deliver his message of terror to the United States.  Except we didn't have that at all.  We had a loopy, drug addled, British actor portraying the character of the Mandarin, delivered in a wildly hilarious performance by the aforementioned Kingley, acting as a front for the true mastermind, Aldrich Killian.

All of this was brilliantly foreshadowed throughout the film.  In the introductory scenes we are told that Killian is helming a new start-up scientific think-tank called Advance Idea Mechanics, or AIM, a long standing villainous faction from the books and a clear tip off to readers of the comics.  Astute eyed viewers will see Killian sporting a multitude of rings, foreshadowing him as the true leader of the Mandarin's Ten Rings organization.  It is in the climax where we are told, by Killian himself, that he is the true Mandarin, a fact illustrated (literally) by the tattoos of dragons that look suspiciously similar to the creators of the comic Mandarin's rings adorning his chest to cement that yes comics fans your Mandarin is here.  A shady and sophisticated businessman who prefers to operate from the shadows, just like the most current incarnation of the character in the book.  Kinglsey, as the "the Mandarin," himself sums it up in one of his terror videos, citing the fortune cookie as not Chinese, but an American invention, hollow and full of lies, much like himself.

Past that the film is loaded with allusions and shout outs to the books, from as obvious as the inclusion of the Iron Patriot armor from Marvel's Civil War event and aftermath to as subtle as a scene near the end where Stark transfers from armor to armor moving from the Silver Centurion suit, to the classic red and gold to a  charcoal colored suit reminiscent of the War Machine armor, giving a tribute in minutes to decades of Stark's armor progression.  The film also picks elements from several notable stories in the book including Warren Ellis' "Extremis" arc as well as Matt Fraction's recent "The Five Nightmares" arc.

All in all, gentle reader, Dane Barbados Jr. can offer a sincere recommendation of Iron Man 3.  It isn't perfect, as nothing is but the finely chiseled form of Dane Barbados Jr., but it does contain solid acting, directing and cinematography.  Plenty of laughs and a surplus of exciting action.  It stands to reason that anyone seeing an Iron Man film would be a fan of the armors and if so the climactic battle is truly a rollicking good time.

In conclusion: there's a reason why so many of your comics nerds have never been face to proverbial face with the beauty that is the female genitalia.  If they have as unrealistic expectations for the opposite gender as they do films then they shall ever remain encased in the crusty tube sock that is their own virginity.

Post Scriptus:  There are spoilers.  I suppose I could have mentioned that at the start.  I just didn't care.

One Man Reviews Pacific Rim

"It is a beautiful poem to giant monsters and robots" -Gullermo Del Toro

Good day faithful reader, your liege lord and perennial better Dane Barbados Jr. arrives on the scene to tell you that Gullermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim does not contain a single original moment.  Your ever humble and ever superior narrator correctly surmised every, single, plot-point within the first 10 minutes.  Dane Barbados Jr. is also here to tell you that the previously mentioned points matter as little as your opinions to me, as my lessers, because Pacific Rim is an absolute fucking blast from start to finish.

Pacific Rim is a perfect summer action blockbuster.  A stylish love letter to anime, the closest thing to a successful live action anime that this author has seen, and considering that this author has seen everything that matters, that is truly quite the feat.  It really does say something about the abject stupidity of the American movie-going populace that Michael Bay's Transformers films were rousing successes while Pacific Rim languished domestically and didn't come alive until the foreign box office receipts hit.  

And truly, "Pacific Rim" is the antithesis of "Transformers" with Del Toro effortlessly and casually illustrating, by way of comparison, why he is a master of near-Barbadian calibre and Bay is a typical hack.  "Pacific Rim" has no wasted moments, every single scene is in the service of entertaining its audience and moving forward the action.  There are no scenes of robots wise-cracking, no robots humping a female's leg, we do not spend 40 minutes with a selfish loser or 30 minutes with parents and pot brownies, there are no middle-aged men in thongs, there are stereotypes but no racism, no shoe-horned in romantic arc, there are no scenes of a vapid, meth addict looking whore grinding suggestively against a motorcycle.  In fact, "Pacific Rim" actually excels in it's depiction and treatment of women in general.  There is absolutely no pandering to the crass, uncivilized, lowest common denominator that comprises the majority of you mouth breathing simpletons.

Every held breath is warranted, every laugh is earned, the awe that the audience feels is genuine in this film.  The plot, such as it is, is basic, well worn and tried and true; giant monsters (dubbed "Kaiju") emerge without warning from the waters of the Pacific Ocean to wreak havoc.  We, in turn, construct Jaegers, equally giant robots, with a staggering range of names that exude pure badassness and function on a unique two-pilot, mind-sharing system, to fight them.  Over the years the Kaiju get bigger and stronger, adapting more capable tactics and overwhelming the Jaegers leading to a final, desperate, push to close off the breach on the ocean floor that births them into our world.  That's the gist of it, glossing over some of the more detailed plot points.

And it is a testament to Del Toro and his team's skill how little of this is explicitly said.  We aren't told that the Kaiju are getting smarter and the upgrades in their tactics aren't directly pointed out every scene.  Perhaps an overestimation on his part but Del Toro elevates the intelligence of what could be a purely mindless action flick by allowing the audience to inherently realize what's going on when we see Kaiju begin to specifically target cockpits and reactors, when they evolve attacks that directly target the electrical systems of the Jaegers, or gain the ability to fly and excrete powerful acid when faced with a seemingly insurmountable wall.  It is all on the screen.

The fight scenes are an orgy of movement impact.  Del Toro forgoed utilizing motion capture technology to animate the Jaegers as he felt that human movements would not scale up realistically to that size.  It proved to be a wise choice as the Jaegers and Kaiju have a heft about their movement that lends a stunning sense of weight to each punch thrown.  One can feel the hits, throws and tanker ships used as baseball bats as they connect.  The figures on screen do not come off as animated creations as much as real presences which is quite the feat.  In addition the action is framed in such as way where one can actually see what the fuck is transpiring on the screen with no quick cuts, no Wayne's Worldian zooms, epitomizing the excessively poor fight choreography that's come out of Hollywood for the last decade.  Dane Barbados Jr. did not have a 81-inch curved Ultra HD OLED installed into the wall of his palatial penthouse to look at a mess of thrashing pixels that are supposed to be two robots fighting or count the sickly ribs in Megan Fox's sides and the pockmarks on her cigarette smoke saturated face.

And, to Dane Barbados, perhaps the greatest visual feast for the eyes is the amount of glorious, saturated, cartoon-like, color on display.  So many movies have gone the way of the Nolan-helmed Batman movies or Zak Snyder's Man Of Steel which sap all color and life making films nearly monochrome and as lifeless as Megan Fox looks like she would be in bed.  There is more color in Pacific Rim, a film that takes place almost entirely at night and in the rain, than in most of this year's non-animated blockbusters combined.

Then, we come to the cast.  If you are a fan of character actors then this is the film for you with a veritable who's who of the greats:  Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy, near unrecognizable without the beard), Idris Elba (The Wire, Luther, Prometheus, Thor), Charlie Day (Always Sunny in Philidelphia), Burn Gorman (Torchwood), a vocal performance from Ellen McLain (GladOs of Portal) and titans of industry Ron Perlman and Clifton Collins Jr. who have been in more things than I care to list.  Everyone puts in exactly the performance that is needed, imbuing just the right amount of character and archetype into their superbly badassly named characters.  Idris Elba stands out as Marshal Stacker Pentecost bringing just the right amount of emotion into the standard cool and controlled commander archetype, exuding the authority and confidence that a name like that would command.  Female lead Rinko Kikuchi also shines as the intelligent, courageous and ass-kicking Yeager technician Mako Mori, portraying a rare cinematic female that is assertive and strong without coming off like a crotch-stomping feminist or crumbling like a leaf at the flex of the male lead's pecs.

Dane Barbados Jr. could spend all day extoling the virtues of the film and noting the expertly crafted details Del Toro included, like the all diegetic lighting, how the weather gets worse as the character's situation does and improves as the tables turn, dedicate a paragraph to Clifton Collins Jr's hair and sideburns but alas, to your eternal disappointment no doubt, such things just cannot be as Dane Barbados Jr. has money to spend, chilled vodka to quaff from the small of a nubile young handmaiden's back and a call to make; if the military of your ever-humble narrator's distant and subservient homeland has not begun the development of a rocket punch for his personal usage, then they surely need to, for Pacific Rim has inspired him. 

"It is my duty to commit to film the finest fucking monsters ever committed to screen and it is my duty to create the greatest fucking robots ever committed to screen." -Gullermo Del Toro

"Mission Accomplished" -Dane Barbados Jr.

One Man Reviews Agents of SHIELD "0-8-4"

Ah faithful readers and lowly plebeians "Agents of SHIELD" is quite the quandary.  Much like a gorgeous young super model with a really long second toe your humble narrator Dane Barbados Jr. wants to like it but is increasingly unable to conceal his disgust.

Tonight's episode begins with our gang having delightfully cliched bickering on their ridiculous aeroplane.  In short order we find our plucky group of heroes on a much too obvious soundstage masquerading as Peru.   Whilst there they find an ancient MacGuffin of doom in a temple.  Rebel soldiers show up.  Then aging, matriarchal, "hot" soldier arrives upon the scene with her crew.  Of course she has a previous past with our Agent Coulson because otherwise it would not be a cliche.  Haphazard gunfight, more cartoon quality bickering, Ming-Na Wen's impressively stone-faced and boringly emotionless Melinda May performs some action with her fisticuffs.  Cue escape to the previously mentioned ridiculous airbus with a handful of Peruvian soldiers, their attractive grandmother of a commanding officer and the MacGuffin in tow. 

Now one may assume that Dane Barbados Jr. has glossed over the entire first act of the episode, and one would also be a seething mongoloid, deserving of a blow to the jaw of near decapitory force and a shower of invectives for assuming such.  No, Dane Barbados Jr. paragon amongst men and scion to a new age of masculinity and prosperity has merely paid as much attention to the first third of the episode as the writers and director themselves, treating it as the threadbare means to an end, a simple mechanism to shuffle the players into place that it was.

Once on the "plane" the predictable shenanigans continue.  More well-worn bickering amongst the team, the unwanted, lamentable and chemistry-free insertion of a romantic subtext betwixt Agent Ward and still-annoying hacker Skye.  Dane Barbados Jr. decrees this a minor achievement as Agent Ward somehow manages to have less personality than Melinda May who is constructed to have no personality.

Everything plays out exactly as you knew it would play out thirty minutes prior if you are possessed of enough firing neurons to rub together, which Dane Barbados Jr. concedes may be a bit generous.  There is an obvious betrayal, a "let us put aside our differences and put our heads together" bonding moment between the bickering Agents that is a plot point as tired and worn out as your girlfriend after a night of sexual discovery with Your Humble; easily foreseen mook deaths and some more nearly wordless ass-kickery by Melinda May, who has the woeful codename of "The Calvary," which is laughable on many levels.  The villains are defeated, the heroes win and Dane Barbados Jr. struggled to pay attention to the episode as opposed to the nude female Greco-Roman oil wrestling match taking place at the foot of his olympic sized bed.

That synopsis is as nanofilament thin as the plot of the episode itself.  Skye continues to be an annoying Genki Girl alternating between annoying wide eyed wonder and annoying cynicism, wholly divorced from the behavior and actions of a healthy minded adult human.  But not being entertaining.  Never that dear reader.  Agent Ward, meanwhile, still labors to develop any actual character traits beyond surly and scowling.  It is a testament to the ineptitude of the writers of your American television shows, or you American television viewers, that a romance arc has to be shoehorned into every production, even if it's between two ostensible human beings with no depth or character and less chemistry between them than is displayed in five minutes of your delightful Beakman's World which was imported and translated to Dane Barbados Jr.'s vibrant and enlightened homeland during his childhood.  Fitz and Simmons, who are actually referred to as "FitzSimmons" in the show are also still miring as television paupers, possessing between them the personality trait of "quirky" and nothing else to warm them, feed them or to call their own.

The episode, and by extension the show itself, however, is not all bad.  Despite the fact that for all intents and purposes Ming-Na Wen's Agent Melinda "The Calvary" May has the least amount of actual character out of anyone on the show, which is truly saying quite a bit with this show, she manages to be entertaining.  A large portion of that, the illustrious and infallible Dane Barbados Jr. surmises, is because she has the least amount of speaking lines of the principal cast, helping her to avoid a mealy mouthful of inane and cliche nonsense.  She has no personality whatsoever, but that helps her function as a Terminator-like force of nature doling out heaping helpings of ass kick at her leisure.

And, of course, there is Clark Gregg, who continues to illuminate every scene that he is in as Agent Phil Coulson.  Coulson, alone amongst the main cast, possesses layers and is able to accurately portray an actual range of human emotion.  Which in and of itself fills Dane Barbados Jr. with a perverse glee as the outrageously heavy foreshadowing continues to point to him being the least human of the group (a plot point that will result in a reign of kidney punches that will rival the punishment of the gods if it is stretched across the entirety of the first season, or Barbados help them, beyond).

Gregg almost single-handedly is the reason that Dane Barbados Jr. will continue to keep Agents of SHIELD playing in the background whilst wearing a pair of lithe and supple thighs as earmuffs and, as you say, "dining at the Y."  Agents of SHIELD is not the worst show Dane Barbados Jr. has ever seen, he did torture himself by watching two seasons of HBO's "Girls" after all, destroying a finely crafted television every other episode in the process, but it hasn't as of yet, emerged as good.  But much like that disgustingly long-toed supermodel, Agents of SHIELD can still hide it's offensive imperfections beneath the cinematic guise of close-toed high heels and thigh high socks and earn its way to being worth the full attention of one such as myself.

Now, Dane Barbados Jr. has thought of "Girls" and must dine on a freshly shorn vagina and bestow many screaming orgasm to wash the taint of it from the pristine and hallowed landscape of his mind.