Stuff We Like This Week: November 20 Edition

Stuff We Like This Week: November 20 Edition

Nov 20

In an effort to combat our occasional…okay, okay, near-constant negativity, we give you a regular feature full of nothing but love — Stuff We Like This Week. Appearing every Friday, SWLTW will recap the things that have set our little nerdly hearts aflame within the past seven days.

This week:

Matt lurves Star Trek!
Sarah falls in love with geeky TV ladies!
Chris digs a couple of new comics!

Matt: Picking up the new Star Trek flick on DVD has reawakened my passionate love for the film and made me appreciate anew just how damned clever and respectful it is. It’s absolutely a stand-alone sci-if action vehicle with a heavy dose of humor, but if you’re a Trekker/Trekkie/basement-dweller then it works on a completely different level. The special features on the two-disc edition just underline how carefully the creative team approached this franchise, and their hard work and care is evident in every single frame of the film. In fact, the bonus features approach the film almost completely from the creative angle, even when they’re talking about aliens and music and casting; it’s not about the technical challenges of making a modern blockbuster, or about how wacky and fun and brilliant all these wonderful ACTORS are, but about how every decision was influenced by serious creative discussion about what would work best for the story, for the characters, and for the franchise.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit being as I’m a grown-ass man with a mortgage and toddler, but I gotta be real. “Love” is too weak a word for what I feel about Trek 2009; I luuurve Star Trek, you know, I loave it, I luff it, two F’s.

Sarah: This week, two nerdy-type TV ladies had me giggling and falling hopelessly in love. First of all…Suzy Pepper. Played by the divine Sarah Drew (who you might remember as Sal’s adorable beard-wife on Mad Men — or, reaching a bit farther back, Everwood‘s Hannah), Suzy was this week’s weirdo “Glee” guest character. She didn’t sing a note and she stole the entire show. It seems to me that Suzy — with her social awkwardness and near-deranged dedication to her obsession of choice (Matthew Morrison’s Mr. Schuester) — is a cousin of sorts to Popular‘s brilliant Tuna twins. Rock on, Ryan Murphy — no one does out-and-out lovable weirdoness quite like you. The other winner of my undying devotion is Aubrey Plaza’s pitch-perfect April on Parks and Recreation. Her bone-dry readings of such lines as “I gave my gay boyfriend’s boyfriend a hickey and it totally made my gay boyfriend jealous” give new meaning to the term “deadpan.” Plus, she’s got kick-ass bangs.

Chris: This week, I am mostly enjoying, Beasts of Burden (by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson), which is like Scooby-doo, only the Gang are all dogs, and Scooby is a cat. Sort of. And it’s actually scary and people die. I am also enjoying Victorian Undead – It’s a comic about Sherlock Holmes versus zombies, which means this book appeals to me on a very basic, primal level. I can only hope Holmes picks up a shot-gun and goes to town at some point. And here I thought I was all done with any WildStorm comic that wasn’t Planetary.