Reviews

Things are starting to heat up on Season 5 of Nashville, with plenty of new drama introduced on Thursday night’s (Feb. 2) episode.

High Valley celebrated the release of their new album Dear Life at Warner Music Nashville on Monday (Nov. 21) with an intimate album release party surrounded by friends, family and members of the industry.

Kacey Musgraves' A Very Kacey Christmas is just as strikingly original as the rest of her recorded work, and "Present Without a Bow" is a solid example of that.

While any night at the Grand Ole Opry is special, Wednesday (Oct. 26) was a particularly special show, as the Band Against Cancer: The Sarah Cannon Tour made its final stop at the historic venue. Martina McBride is at the helm of the tour, raising money for cancer research organizations including Sarah Cannon Fund at Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and Be the Match.

Monday night's (Oct. 24) Garth Brooks concert in Nashville promised special guests, and the world's only seven diamond album-certified singer didn't disappoint. In fact, even Brooks was surprised by a few of his collaborators.

With Should I Be Reading… ?, ComicsAlliance hopes to offer you a guide to some of the best original ongoing comics being published today. This week, we're focusing on fantasy comics as part of a week of articles looking at the very best in the genre. From urban fantasy to high fantasy, from the sword and sorcery of Conan to the magic and madness of Doctor Strange, the fantastical has always offered a rich vein of imaginative worlds to explore, and we're putting the spotlight on some of the very best. Started in 2012, The October Girl is a Monkeybrain Comics series by Matthew Dow Smith that explores the world of reality, fantasy, and everything in between.

Rising country singer Mo Pitney triumphed at the release party for his debut album, Behind This Guitar, at the Station Inn in Nashville on Thursday night (Oct. 6).

The Final Station challenges the player with scarcity and survival and weaves just enough context to make the world built around it interesting.

Now in the third year of the newest console generation, Madden NFL 17 finds itself served well by the combined efforts of the past as well as a number of great small improvements.

The toy-collecting world may have had its fill of Kylo Ren this past winter when the leader of the Knights of Ren and wannabe Sith Lord was one of the few characters you could find in abundance at retail, but the character is still too important a part of the new Star Wars trilogy to completely ignore. That's why this fall, he'll be returning in the latest Star Wars Black Series wave in an unmasked version that shows Ben Solo as he truly is beneath the helm. Of course, if you happened to be at Star Wars Celebration Europe or San Diego Comic-Con this year, you had an opportunity to get a hold of this new Kylo Ren early in a deluxe package. The new figure was part of Hasbro's cheeky convention exclusive plan to offer two Bens --- one being the original Jedi Knight, Ben Kenobi, and the other Han and Leia's jerkface son, Ben Solo. Though many Black Series collectors and Star Wars fans likely already have a Kylo Ren on their shelves, this one is actually the best of the bunch so far.

It's no secret that, before he came to comics, Paul Dini worked as a writer in animation on series including Batman: The Animated Series and, before that, Tiny Toon Adventures --- both from the then-resurgent Warner Bros Animation studio. Dark Night, his new graphic memoir detailing a traumatic event from that time in his life, is premised as the Dini of 2016 pitching the story as he might have pitched an animated episode, pinning sketched-out storyboards to a wall before an unseen audience that will have their say when his presentation is over. The elaborate narrative set-up isn't the only unusual thing about Dini's Dark Night. Unlike the vast majority of comics memoirs, in which the memoirist is also a cartoonist and thus writes and draws the story, this one has the more traditional division of labor/creation of superhero comics, with Dini scripting and artist Eduardo Risso handling the art. And it's also got Batman in it. A lot.

A long, long time ago, a massive spaceship crashed on Earth. Thanks to an opportune volcano eruption, the inhabitants of the ship were woken up just in time to enjoy the '80s. Unfortunately, not everyone on the ship is a good person... or robot. While the Autobots befriend the humans they encounter in the hopes of finding a way back to their home planet, the Decepticons immediately set to work on a plan to eliminate the Autobots, take over Earth and return to Cybertron to rule. Over the years, the story of the Transformers has taken many forms, from different animated series to movies, comics and games. One thing always holds true though --- Autobots and Decepticons really can't stand each other. That rivalry serves as the backbone for Hasbro's newest mobile game, Transformers: Earth Wars. A base-building strategy game, Earth Wars follows suit with Clash of Clans and Rival Kingdoms, putting you in charge of creating the perfect base for your faction and working to stop the other side. The formula might be similar to what you've seen before, but Earth Wars has enough new wrinkles to make it stand out beyond the license.