March - 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters, #91: Severus Snape

Joe Pace

Mar 31, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters, #91: Severus Snape

As we head into our first day at Universal Studios Florida, the immersive Harry Potter experience beckons. After Hermione, the definitive character from the HP universe is none other than than the grim, glowering potions master of Hogwarts. I loved Snape as skulking villain with small use for fresh-scrubbed young witches and wizards, eager to dole out punishments, unfairly favoring Slytherins, and doing anything he could to make Harry miserable. Yes, his arc is redemptive (th

Favorite Fictional Characters, #90: Clark Griswold

Joe Pace

Mar 30, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #90: Clark Griswold

As we get ready to board a plane with the kiddos for the cross-country flight to Orlando, my mind turns to Clark Griswold. Everybody has their favorite Vacation iteration - some are defiantly attached to Christmas, some to European, and even Vegas has a few fleeting moments. For me, I'm partial to the original. Maybe it's his idiotic, understandable flirtation with a very nubile Christie Brinkley, but it's also the sympathy we feel for a man who only wants to give his family

Favorite Fictional Characters, #89: Diana

Joe Pace

Mar 29, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #89: Diana

In the days before YouTube, Netflix, or even DVR, some things on broadcast TV qualified as "specials" or "events". V definitely fell into this category. The film and the series that followed were science fiction that hit us where we lived - not in a galaxy far, far away, not hundreds of years in the future, but now, on Earth. The Visitors were urbane, attractive, and ostensibly benign, but ultimately proved to be vicious conquerors. The scaly truth lurked right beneath their

Favorite Fictional Characters, #88: Frank the Tank

Joe Pace

Mar 28, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #88: Frank the Tank

I'm not a huge Will Ferrell fan. He's kind of the same joke, over and over again. That said, it's a pretty funny joke, and he actually shows up on this list more than once. Today's entry is Frank the Tank, from the slapstick frat-boy gutter-fest Old School. There's not much plot to recap - sad, aging men try to recapture lost youth through collegiate hi-jinks - but the laughs are frequent, if guilty. Vince Vaughn brings his lacerating, pitiable verbal diarrhea, but the most p

Favorite Fictional Characters, #87: Officer Judy Hopps

Joe Pace

Mar 27, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #87: Officer Judy Hopps

We brought the boys to see Zootopia yesterday, so this is fresh in my mind. Plus, a bunny for Easter! Though not, as Judy herself would strenuously point out, a dumb bunny. Judy is instead a barrier-busting pioneer, an ambitious rabbit intent on fulfilling her dreams. And she does it in the lush, richly imagined landscape of Zootopia, as fully-realized and hilarious an animated environment as we've seen in a long time. The movie is a fun and unapologetically pro-social one, w

Favorite Fictional Characters, #86: Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy

Joe Pace

Mar 26, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #86: Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy

So much of the dynamic of the original Star Trek focused on Kirk and Spock, on their friendship and tension, on the balance of body and mind. But the vital third part of this triad was Dr. McCoy. Where Kirk represented instinct and Spock intellect, McCoy was wisdom. Where Kirk personified the physical and Spock the mental, McCoy was the emotional. Together, the three embodied the internal struggle of humanity, and our reliance on these three aspects of our selves. The origina

Favorite Fictional Characters, #85: Mr. Hand

Joe Pace

Mar 25, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #85: Mr. Hand

Fast Times at Ridgemont High is an absolute classic, and the reasons are legion. Star-making early performances by Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Forest Whitaker, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Even young Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, and Anthony Edwards show up. An iconic poolside scene from Phoebe Cates. Endless quotable lines, a score thick with 1980's nostalgia, and even some thoughtful social commentary. My favorite part among many enjoyable pieces has always been Ray Walston's acer

Joe Pace

Mar 24, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #84: Gru

The minions may be the ubiquitous canary merchandising faces of the Despicable Me franchise, but they're not the reason for its success. Case in point: the minions movie sucked. They're funny enough, sure, as throwaway secondary distractions, they make toddlers laugh, but there's not enough there to carry a Saturday morning cartoon, let alone a feature-length movie. The reason the Despicable Me movies work is Gru. Voiced perfectly by the incomparable Steve Carrell, Gru is the

Favorite Fictional Characters, #83: Yoda

Joe Pace

Mar 23, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #83: Yoda

The wizened little green freakshow in the swamp. The syntax-scrambling zen puppet (and yes, puppet > CGI). The tiny twirling lightsaber maestro. The ancient Jedi Grand Master, font of wisdom, trainer of younglings, surly, snappish, obscenely strong in the Force. Everybody loves Yoda. Along with other Star Wars characters, he became iconic in pop culture. Hey, when Weird Al Yankovic features you in a song and they make you into a Magic 8 Ball, you've arrived. Yoda was, and is,

Favorite Fictional Characters, #82: Ash Williams

Joe Pace

Mar 22, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #82: Ash Williams

My first taste of the Evil Dead movies came at a Splendor cast party in Angus Merry's basement twenty-four years ago. The original Evil Dead seemed standard cabin-in-the-woods horror fare, demons, zombies, yadda yadda. But sometime during the sequel, Evil Dead II, Bruce Campbell became Bruce Campbell, and the horror began to give way, grudgingly, to comedy. By the time of the iconic third film, Army of Darkness, Ash has fully shed his everyman cloak of incompetent victimhood

Favorite Fictional Characters, #81: Norman Dale

Joe Pace

Mar 21, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #81: Norman Dale

With basketball season front and center, let's make one thing clear: Hoosiers is the best sports movie ever made. Oh, there are others in the top five that can make arguments based on narrow criteria (Caddyshack is funnier, etc.), but Hoosiers delivers on everything you want from a sports movie. It has the underdog team chasing improbable glory, the eccentric reluctant star, the obligatory cast of colorful local characters (Hopper is brilliant), even the standard wet-blanket

Favorite Fictional Characters, #80: Mockingbird

Joe Pace

Mar 20, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #80: Mockingbird

I came to the Marvel Universe in the mid-1980s, when most of the established characters and teams had 20-25 years of back story. I poured my young energies into the X-Men mythos, leaving the Avengers to another day. But when Earth's Mightiest Heroes set up a southern California franchise with the West Coast Avengers, I got in on the ground floor, starting with the four-issue limited series and then the series proper. They had Hawkeye and Iron Man for presence and power, as we

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