‘Justified’ ‘Devil You Know’ brings back some favorites

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When you’re playing with as enjoyable a cast of supporting characters as the writers of “Justified,” you can spread the attention around.

In “The Devil You Know,” the episode of “Justified” that aired on FX tonight, the great supporting cast of lowlife bad guys — Dickie Bennett, Dewey Crowe and Devil, the Boyd Crowder subordinate who took a cast iron skillet to the puss a few weeks ago, all have plenty to do.

Dickie and Dewey get broken out of prison — well, Dewey comes along for the ride — when a group of crooks want Dickie to lead them to a cache of money that belonged to Dickie’s beloved late mama, Mags Bennett.

Meanwhile, Devil decides he’s going to rebel against Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), the series’ wild card and strong suit. Devil learns, the hard way, that crossing Boyd in favor of Quarles — the slick new out-of-town crime boss who wants to muscle in on Kentucky crime — is a bad idea.

I haven’t mentioned Raylan Givens, the U.S. marshal and central figure of the show. He’s seen here tonight doling out some justice with his federal-issue vehicle and visiting Loretta, the youngest and smartest of the Bennett clan that dominated the show’s second season.

There’s also a nice scene with the marshals and Limehouse, the leader of a black community and his own prosperous criminal organization.

“Justified” is having a lot of fun this season, setting up a new pack of bad guys and strengthening old favorites like Boyd. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

‘Amazing Spider-Man’ has an amazing trailer

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Just a couple of days after the commercial for “The Avengers” — “We have a Hulk” — became my favorite minute of the Super Bowl, along comes a spider.

Well, a Spider-Man anyway.

The trailer for this July’s “Amazing Spider-Man” debuted online today.

Maybe I’m getting to be a soft touch, but I wasn’t looking forward to this movie at all and the trailer sold me.

The Spider-Man seen in the trailer for Marc Webb’s reboot is a familiar one to Marvel Comics readers. He’s young and smart and, maybe most importantly, kind of a smart ass. The Spider-Man from the comics was — and is — a quipster, the kind of guy who is prone to lobbing insults and sarcastic remarks as often as he shoots webs or throws punches.

Admittedly, it’s not the equal of having Spidey insult the Kingpin, but the moment in the trailer when our hero makes fun of a thief’s outfit seems like vintage Spidey.

I liked Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” movies just fine (at least the first two) and I’m not sure we needed a reboot. Sony apparently thought otherwise, launching the remake in part to keep a handle on the big-screen rights.

And I’m not sold on the “mysterious origins” of Peter Parker and his parents. I almost wish they hadn’t remade Spidey’s origin at all, or had simply retold it over the opening credits.

But anyway. The trailer is dynamic enough, and visually pleasing enough, that I’m now looking forward to this, right along with “The Avengers.”

‘Alcatraz’ widens its mystery

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I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Tonight’s “Alcatraz” — the Fox show about how 300 prisoners and guards disappeared from the island prison in 1963, only to reappear in the present without aging a day — took the show in a new direction, and that’s a good thing.

As intriguing as the first few weeks of the show have been, “Alcatraz” threatened to turn into “returning prisoner of the week.” A guy shows up in modern-day San Francisco, commits a crime, the team of investigators recognize him as one of the former prisoners, they track him, catch him and throw him in a creepy modern-day version of the prison, out in the woods somewhere.

In tonight’s episode, “Guy Hastings,” the first returning guard shows up. Hastings is a good guy but initially seems as bad as the escaped prisoners, roughing up and kidnapping investigator Rebecca’s (Sarah Jones) beloved Uncle Ray (the equally beloved character actor Robert Forster).

Thanks to the change-up and an expanded role in the story for Rebecca’s grandfather, an Alcatraz returnee who’s up to something, the episode felt pretty fresh.

And the series benefits immeasurably from the presence of Forster, a veteran of B-movies and cult classics like “Jackie Brown.” It’s startling to see how Forster has aged — gracefully certainly — but his appealing mug and gravelly voice are reassuring as anything on TV right now.

The show has apparently been doing pretty well in the ratings and the producers have recently promised that future episodes will continue to mix things up, deviating from the prisoner of the week stories.

“Alcatraz” still has me hooked.

Yeah. This is ‘The Avengers’

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Is the Super Bowl still going on? Because I stopped watching and went straight to my computer after the commercial for “The Avengers” aired.

We’ve seen some of the footage to be found in the “Avengers” Super Bowl commercial before, and a little bit — the repartee between Tony Stark and Loki — was convention footage.

But the best part of the spot? That shot of the team assembled, back to back, facing down a threat.

How many days until May 4?

Elmore Leonard’s ‘Raylan’ a new take on the ‘Justified’ cop

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If you’ve been watching and enjoying “Justified” the past couple of years, you probably know that the FX series about the U.S. marshal dealing with hillbillies, meth dealers and killers in the hills of Kentucky is taken from the work of Elmore Leonard, one of the most beloved writers of crime drama.

The lead character in the show, Raylan Givens, has appeared in a couple of Leonard novels, “Pronto” and “Riding the Rap,” and “Justified” itself is based on a Leonard short story, “Fire in the Hole.”

Leonard has returned to Kentucky and the world of Raylan Givens in “Raylan,” a recent novel that some “Justified” fans will find familiar.

“Raylan” follows Givens as he deals with a marijuana-dealing family, a double-dealing coal company representative and a card-dealing poker player who happens to be a Butler University student from Indianapolis.

A couple of those plot points should seem especially familiar if you’ve watched the show, but Leonard — who apparently shared some storylines with the writers of the series — threw in a few twists. Marijuana-dealing brothers Dickie and Coover don’t answer to their mother, Mags Bennett, but to their father, and they’re involved in organ-snatching. And Carol, the coal company executive sent to Harlan County to persuade property owners to give up their mountain, is more dangerous here.

To be honest, the book feels a little half-baked. Is it because I knew and loved the TV versions of these stories and characters first? Maybe. But the coal company story goes nowhere and the storyline about the card-playing college student feels truly tacked on.

As much as I loved seeing Boyd Crowder, Raylan’s longtime friend and sometimes nemesis, in the book, he doesn’t have a lot to do.

And frankly I can’t imagine the Raylan Givens I’m familiar with doing some of the things Leonard has his character do in this book.

What happens when an author’s characters take on a life of their own? Well, Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes when he became something more to readers than to the author.

I’m sure Leonard — who wrote genre classics like “Get Shorty” and “Out of Sight” — can live with the TV incarnation of his Kentucky lawman. And thanks to the TV show, viewers can embrace whichever they prefer.

‘Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter’ a great read

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Trust me on this one.

“Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” is a terrific book.

I know. That title. “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” might be the best-executed (no pun intended) work of fiction with the cheesiest title since “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

It might be easy to confuse Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2010 novel with the author’s own “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” or other historical fiction/horror fiction mashups. It’s not that at all.

Grahame-Smith’s book is a fantastic (literally) but well-told story based on the premise that Lincoln, the Midwestern farm boy and rail-splitter who grew up to be the country’s 16th president, waged a secret battle against vampires for most of his life.

In the book, Lincoln learns that his mother’s death was at the hands of a vampire after his father failed to repay a debt. The future president discovers that areas of the still-young country are rife with vampires.

The novel’s best conceit? Vampires are a huge part of the Confederacy, which slaves traded in part so they can be used to feed vampires.

Young Lincoln learns much from Henry, a mysterious, all-knowing stranger who befriends him and then trains him in the art of vampire killing. Needless to say, Henry has a secret.

The book has been made into a movie written by the novel’s author. It comes out in June.

The novel treats Lincoln and Henry, as well as the story itself, with grace, reserve and dignity. There’s not a hint of camp. Lincoln is just as tragic a figure in the book as he was in real life.

Sure, it’s bizarre to think of our nation’s greatest president hunting and beheading vampires. There’s a shock value to the title that the story can’t match.

“Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter” is as preposterous-sounding as can be. But it’s a fast-paced, witty tale told well.

Okay, so no Spider-Man in ‘The Avengers?’

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Joss says no.

We’ve mentioned in this blog lately the Interwebs rumors — based on a random comment in an interview with actress Jenny Agutter — that Spider-Man would make a cameo appearance in May’s “Avengers” movie.

This got everybody who wasn’t looking at porn on the Internet very excited.

Then, on Wednesday, during a Twitter chat with a few “Avengers” cast members, director Joss Whedon said this in response to a question about Spider-Man being in the movie:

“There is no Spider-Man cameo. But the Avengers do turn off the dark.” (Ha Joss! Broadway humor!)

Okay, on the face of it, that would appear to settle the matter. Joss says no Spider-Man cameo. And that’s perfectly reasonable. After all, different movie companies, yadda yadda yadda.

And I think he’s telling the truth.

But …

This is the devious genius behind the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” TV series, after all. The guy who devised, or at the very least approved, the addition of fan favorite Amber Benson, who played Tara, to the show’s opening credits … on the same episode in which she was killed.

Talk about bait and switch.

So Joss says no. No cameo.

He didn’t say anything about an appearance of more substance than a cameo, however, did he?

Nah. Couldn’t be.

 

Yes, more pop culture on Twitter

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You know what the world needs even more than a blog about pop culture, with an emphasis on the fun, geeky and goofy?

A Twitter feed about pop culture, with an emphasis on the fun, geeky and goofy.

I’ve been on Twitter for my job for a couple of years now and I love the 140-character-at-a-time, headlines-and-links nature of Twitter. It is, in many ways, the most direct way of communicating on the Interwebs.

So I’ve decided to start a pop culture Twitter account.

If you’re so inclined, check it out at @Pop_Roysdon on Twitter.

‘Justified’ scores with ‘Harlan Roulette’

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The third season of FX’s “Justified” continued tonight with “Harlan Roulette,” mixing equal parts humor and backwoods mayhem.

U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) was almost a supporting character in tonight’s episode, and that’s okay when you consider the strength of the Kentucky lowlifes who routinely pass through this great series.

And the emphasis on bad guys is perfectly in keeping with the work of Elmore Leonard, the crime fiction author upon whose work “Justified” is based.

Tonight’s episode featured Pruitt Taylor Vince as a cold-blooded pawn shop owner who is cornering the market on painkiller Oxycontin in Harlan County, Kentucky. He’s working for Quarles (Neil McDonough), the unflappable Detroit mobster who’s come to Kentucky to set up shop.

Besides Vince, who is funny and vicious, and McDonough, who is cool enough to smile when Raylan is taking his picture, the episode features not only Walton Goggins as everybody’s favorite, Boyd Crowder, Raylan’s longtime friend and frenemy, but Mykelti Williamson as Limehouse, a cold-blooded homegrown crime boss.

“Justified” continues to have a strong, strong season. The show is sharp and funny and appallingly violent at times. Raylan and Boyd are great antagonists and protagonists and the show’s bad guys — from meth heads and Oxy addicts to guys like Quarles, who alternates between talking on the phone with his kid and showing off the gun literally up his sleeve — are the best on TV.

 

 

‘Alcatraz’ developing key mythology?

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True fans don’t have to be reminded, unfortunately, of TV series that loaded up on their own mythology only to disappoint fans before the end.

How bizarre was it that “The X-Files” — once one of my favorites shows — spent several seasons establishing that FBI agent Mulder’s sister had been taken by aliens … only to throw all that out the window with a late-in-the-series revelation that Samantha Mulder was kidnapped by a plain old human killer?

How inexplicable was it that “Lost” — once one of my favorite shows — spent several seasons laying out what seemed to be an intricate backstory for the island and its occupants … only to ignore most of it, explain the rest away and, most mind-bogglingly of all, prove its early Internet critics right by declaring in the final episode that the characters we had grown to love had been hanging out in limbo after all.

So upon watching “Alcatraz” tonight, I found myself hoping that the series’ makers really do have the key to the mystery they’re developing.

If you haven’t watched this show, which aired its fourth installment in three weeks tonight, the basic plot is that more than 300 prisoners and guards disappeared from the island prison of Alcatraz in 1963. They’re reappearing in modern-day San Francisco, they haven’t aged a day and most seem to be on some kind of quest. Not to mention that they’ve returned to their old habits of bank robbery, kidnapping and murder.

Tonight’s episode, “Cal Sweeney,” introduced a bank robber whose objective seems to be an old-fashioned key. It’s the second of these keys that have shown up. Now they’re in the hands of federal investigator Hauser (Sam Neill) running the inmate recovery project.

I’m really hoping there’s some meaning to the keys, just like I’m hoping there’s some meaning to investigator Rebecca Madsen’s (Sarah Jones) discovery that her grandfather was a convict and is now roaming the present.

As for researcher Diego Soto (played by lovable “Lost” grad Jorge Garcia)? I’m just enjoying his amiable presence.

The show is teasing us with several little mysteries, including characters who seem to be represented in both time periods.

But if those keys mean something now … they damn well better mean something later.

Or Samantha Mulder’s ghost just might step out of that flying saucer and open up a can of suspension of disbelief.