Review: 'Luke Cage' Is The Gold-Standard For Superhero Television

Smart and relevant writing, exceptional performances, compelling characters with engrossing arcs, plenty of surprise revelations, and lots of thrilling action entertainment combine to make Luke Cage yet another Marvel-Netflix series representing the gold standard in TV superhero/comic adaptations. Featuring one of the most diverse casts of any series on television, set in Harlem, addressing myriad modern social issues facing communities of color, Luke Cage is bold and unapologetic in its willingness to portray realistic situations reflecting both past and present cultural and political truths— and the convergence of the past and present. This is storytelling at its finest, luck enough to have a cast and crew bringing it to vivid, inspired life as it deserves.

Mike Colter delivers a powerhouse performance as Luke Cage, one of the few superhero performances on TV to demonstrate significant character arcs in each and every individual episode as well as the overall series from start to finish. It’s a magnificent portrayal, the sort making it hard to imagine the actor in real life is any different from the persona he’s created on screen. Cage is filled with an intense sense of morally certain righteousness at the same time he is consumed by overwhelming guilt and desire to fade away and live his life silent and unseen. Yet he cannot remain silent in the face of injustice, even if it means eventually being seen in the bright light of day. He is still, however, a man of extremely conflicted emotions and motivations, to a degree that makes him among the most human and relatable of any live-action superhero......

Simone Missick’s portrayal of Misty Knight, the police detective swimming upstream against a tide of corruption in the police department and government while surrounded by a growing criminal threat that requires intervention by superhuman citizens, requires a deft touch. Luke Cage and other superheroes go against everything she believes in — namely, the rule of law and the importance of rooting out corruption within the system rather than going outside the system for solutions, because the more we rely on external answers the more we allow the decay within the system to remain and grow stronger. Her position is hard to argue against, yet she increasingly struggles with the simple realization that her view is idealistic in the face of a world where such idealism seems powerless to change anything.

Missick makes Knight sympathetic as one of the few untainted people in positions of power, and as a voice of reason shouting, “Am I the only one who realizes how screwed up all of this is?” in a world spiraling out of control. She recognizes the dangerous appeal of embracing superheroism and extra-judicial solutions, and the need to try to not just resist it but to also accept reality and reach out directly to those involved in superheroism and ask them to work with people like herself to fix what’s broken in the system. And in that regard, she represents a wider concept in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and television world, where superheroes are increasingly confronted with the question of whether they will use their powers in service to legitimate authorities and institutions of power even if those authorities and institutions aren’t always reliable, trustworthy, or morally right.

Each new Marvel-Netflix series finds a radically new approach and impressive ways to top what has come before, and Luke Cage continues that trend. It is the best of Marvel’s series to date, and that’s something I didn’t expect to say after the remarkable quality of Jessica Jones. Showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, a great producer and writer in his own right — as evidenced by the series Southland and Ray Donovan, for example — has assembled a knockout team of writers in Charles Murray, Kayla Cooper, and Nathan Jackson. The dialogue is filled with so many great little moments sprinkled throughout all of the big moments, with deeply layered subtext and subtle callbacks. I hope Netflix-Marvel make the show’s scripts available soon, as I’d love to spend a few days reading through them. This is that sort of show, making you want to not just watch it but to also go back and experience the written words, to see those simple pages of dialogue that breathed so much life into the characters and story even before they literally came to life via actors and directors and sets.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2016/09/30/review-luke-cage-is-the-gold-standard-for-superhero-television/#109612c24106

Trump: At least you know l'm up at 3am

Is that supposed to be comforting?

Hillary will address Machado tweets today at rally.

Just announced by the HRC campaign.

Hillary: What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies?

Hillary just now on Twitter caliing Trump out on his late night/early morning rants.

Trump: 'Check out sex tape' of former Miss Universe

Donald Trump went after a former Miss Universe in a string of early-morning tweets Friday, encouraging voters to “check out” an alleged “sex tape” of Alicia Machado, who has been on the offensive against the GOP presidential nominee all week.

During Trump’s first debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton on Monday, she mentioned old comments he made about a Miss Universe contestant, whom he complained gained weight after she won the crown.

Machado has since given a series of interviews slamming the real estate mogul as sexist, but Trump says Clinton was “duped” into ever bringing her up.

Machado was photographed topless for Playboy and appeared on a risqué reality TV show, but fact-checkers have rated the claim that she appeared in a sex tape as "mostly false."

Trump has struggled with female voters throughout his campaign, a weakness Clinton, the first woman nominated by a major party, has repeatedly sought to exploit.


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/298645-trump-check-out-sex-tape-of-former-miss-universe

Raphael Saadiq - Good Man (VIDEO)

Prof. Michael McDonald: Early voting looking good for Dems. in NC and Maine

Dems do look good in NC and ME CD1/statewide.


https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/781337396730290176

Poll: Clinton holds 7-point lead in Michigan

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has moved to a 7-percentage-point lead in Michigan over Republican Donald Trump in a statewide poll conducted after the candidates’ first debate Monday night.

Clinton leads Trump 42 percent to 35 percent in a four-way race and maintains a seven-point lead in a two-way matchup against the New York billionaire, according to the poll commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV.

About 9 percent of likely voters said they favor Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, 3 percent are siding with Green Party candidate Jill Stein and 9 percent remain undecided in the poll of 600 likely voters conducted Tuesday and Wednesday by Glengariff Group Inc.

After Monday’s debate, 62.5 percent of voters said Trump is unqualified to be president, compared with 57 percent who believe Clinton is qualified after years in the public spotlight as first lady, U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state.

“The problem for Trump is the debate was the prime opportunity to shift that perception that he wasn’t qualified,” said pollster Richard Czuba, president of the Glengariff Group Inc. “That should have been their No. 1 goal in the debate to come off as a qualified, calm leader.”


http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/29/clinton-leads-michigan-poll-trump/91304744/

Donald Trump And Howard Stern Talked About How ‘Vagina Is Expensive’

n a January 1997 interview with Donald Trump, shock jock Howard Stern relayed some crude marital advice that the brash businessman gave him before his second trip down the aisle, with Marla Maples. (The couple would separate a few months later.)

“Donald pulled me aside at his wedding,” Stern said in comments that had not resurfaced until now. “He said, you know I am getting remarried, but Howard, vagina is expensive. I will never forget those words. The guy is right. Those were the exact words!”

Trump, who had earlier in the interview discussed the spending habits of his first wife, Ivana Trump, seemed to laugh along without protest. Under the noise, the words “that’s pretty close” are barely audible, apparently in response to Stern’s insistence that the quote was a direct one.

A Democratic source shared the interview with The Huffington Post. Neither Trump’s campaign nor associates of Stern returned comment, though the entire exchange was hardly atypical for a radio program that built its reputation and audience on salacious material.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-stern-vagina-expensive_us_57ed20cfe4b082aad9b97ea0

Gingrich on former Miss Universe: 'You’re not supposed to gain 60 pounds'

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich backed up Donald Trump’s weight-based attacks against a former pageant winner, telling an audience Wednesday night that “you’re not supposed to gain 60 pounds during the year that you’re Miss Universe.”

The woman in question is former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who was thrust into the spotlight of the presidential election at Monday night’s debate when Hillary Clinton brought up Trump’s long history of derogatory remarks about women. The former secretary of state said Trump had called Machado “Miss Piggy,” because he believed she gained too much weight after winning her crown, and “Miss Housekeeping,” a dig at her Hispanic heritage.

“Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado,” Clinton said at the debate. “And she has become a U.S. citizen and you can bet she is going to vote this November."
Trump admitted in an interview on Fox News the next morning that Clinton’s decision to recall his history with Machado got under his skin a little bit, but also doubled down on his attacks against her weight. He said Machado was “the worst we ever had” at the Miss Universe pageant because “she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”





http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/newt-gingrich-miss-universe-alicia-machado-228884#ixzz4LhbgL06E