Author Archives: Bubbawheat
The Dark Knight Returns Pt. 1
The Dark Knight Returns Pt. 1 2012
No, this isn’t a typo of some shortened cut of the Dark Knight Rises, instead it’s a brand new DC animation. There are a few similarities, but in this version Batman retired for 10 years, not 8. He was in his sixties, not his forties. He’s fighting the Mutant leader and the Mutants, not Bane and the League of Shadows. I believe this also in some way follows Under the Red Hood, as they refer to Jason’s death, who was the second Robin. I’ve been a fan of DC animation for a while now, and they haven’t personally let me down yet. I know there are some people who have issues with the way they don’t entirely follow the comics in some of the features, but since I don’t follow the comics, they’re all fresh to me and just plain amazing storytelling. The movies just keep getting better and better and this one is no exception. I especially like the fact that while this movie is labelled with the sometimes accursed “part 1”, it doesn’t feel like only half of the story. There is a full fledged story told entirely within this one movie, but it also does a great job at laying the groundwork to make you excited for the upcoming part 2 next year.
Follow Friday: Morgan on Media
Welcome to another edition of Follow Friday where each week I feature and interview a fellow blogger and follow their suggestion to another blog to feature next time. I prefer this over a blogroll because it gives each blog their own time to shine, plus I personally rarely click on blogrolls so why would I expect you to? Not only that, but I get the chance to check out some great blogs I might not have found otherwise found, talk to some great people, and share the conversation with you. Of course, if you would rather see something like a blogroll, I have collected all of my previous Follow Friday sites in list form which you can find right at the top of the page. Last time Le0pard13 of It Rains… You Get Wet led me back to Radiator Heaven so it allowed me to have my own choice, and I picked Morgan on Media.
Daredevil: Director’s Cut
Daredevil: Director’s Cut 2003
I was quite surprised when I heard the news of Michael Clark Duncan’s passing, so I did the only thing I could really think of to do my small part to honor his memory: watch one of his movies. And while Daredevil is near the bottom of the recent comic book movie heap, derided by many fans and movie lovers alike, and the director’s cut is widely hailed as the much improved version, if often grudgingly, that was the movie that I decided to watch. Ben Affleck was an interesting choice for the role of Daredevil, and I thought he did a passable job. The rest of the cast was pretty impressive too, with some small controversy about the race swap of the Kingpin. Or at least I remember it being a point of contention with at least one of my friends, who is a big comic book fan. I had no problem with it personally, I couldn’t think of a single white guy with the sheer mass to pull off the role as well as being able to act. I think the biggest fault of the movie is that it didn’t really have a singular tone. In some places it was very darkly serious, in others it was cheery and hopefully romantic, and in others it was over the top campy. Personally, I enjoyed almost every minute of it. I could see the faults of a bad film peeking through, but I looked past it into an enjoyable little flick.
As You Watch Podcast #3 I Saw the Devil
Welcome back to the third episode of the As You Watch Podcast, featuring myself, Joe from Two Dude Review, Nick from Cinematic Katzenjammer, and Vern from Vern’s Video Vangaurd. In our third episode we talk about our movie of the episode: I Saw the Devil – A 2010 Korean revenge movie. But we also cover today’s new releases on DVD and Blu-Ray: What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Snow White and the Huntsman, and this weekend’s new theatrical releases: Resident Evil 5 and Finding Nemo 3D. We also cover our own personal top three revenge movies, avoiding some of the biggest titles in that category. I Saw the Devil was Nick’s pick of the week so you can check it out and leave any feedback at his site, Cinematic Katzenjammer.
Update and a couple upcoming Superhero Shorts
I’m sure you’ve noticed the lack of regular posts lately. It’s a combination of a lot of things. It started due to being down by the lack of growth with the site lately, but it turned out that it was really more about writing burnout. It has actually been much nicer for me to be able to spend less time working on this site. On top of that, there’s a lot of real life stress. I’m moving at the end of this month, and it’s been fairly hectic trying to get things prepared, packing, and some things are still a little uncertain, so I imagine the schedule will remain much more sparse through the entire month of September, and possibly on into October a little bit. I’ve also been rather slow in posting the Facebook minimalist posters, and I’ll probably remain somewhat slow on those too.
Barb Wire
Barb Wire 1996
Ok, so first off I should probably mention that it’s taken me about three days to write this review. It’s not that it’s a terribly complex movie, or that I’ve wanted to go on and on and on about it. It’s just that for about two days, I’ve been sitting with this post open on its own tab, and I’ve been finding any and every online reason to distract myself from writing it. I do have to admit that it’s been very refreshing to essentially take a break from blogging. I went from being quite disappointed that my traffic wasn’t increasing at the same rate it had been for a handful of months, and that it was way lower than several other sites that had started around the same time, and that posting daily was way more taxing than I realized and after a few days, I realized it wasn’t having a huge effect on traffic. I’m obviously getting less traffic than I was when I was posting daily, but it’s not a huge drop. And if I really cared that much about traffic, I would simply review more popular movies. But taking this break has helped me focus on what this site has really become for me, a way to seek out and share my thoughts on a little niche genre that I enjoy, a way to find the undiscovered little gems that others may get a kick out of. But before I go way off topic (too late), let’s get back to the movie at hand. Before I started looking into it, all I knew about Barb Wire was that it was Pamela Anderson’s attempt at acting, an adaptation of some comic book, and Pam Anderson showed off quite a bit of her body in it. After I started looking into it, one of the first things anyone mentioned about it was that it was essentially a remake of Casablanca. Now Casablanca is one of the few black and white classic movies that I’m a big fan of. I’ve seen it three or four times (which is a lot for me, I rarely re-watch movies unless it’s a favorite), so I was curious how many similarities I would be able to catch, which did kind of make it more interesting to watch, if only a little.
Sting of the Black Scorpion
Sting of the Black Scorpion 2002
This is one of the many rarities and lesser known straight-to-DVD superhero movies I found at my local rental store’s bargain section. It is actually three episodes of the Roger Corman produced television series on the Sci-Fi channel called Black Scorpion. I looked it up and the show ran for only 22 episodes and spawned one other movie called “Return of the Black Scorpion” which was released a year before this one, but I couldn’t tell if it was a newly made epilogue for the TV series, or if it was a similar collection of episodes. There was also two made for TV movies several years before featuring the same characters, and with Roger Corman attached to it. But I couldn’t find much more information on them either. This show is rather akin to the classic Adam West Batman TV series, although it feels like it’s almost trying to be a serious show. Where Batman was almost nonstop camp and silliness, this movie plays sometimes for laughs, and sometimes more seriously. And it also has Frank Gorshin, who played the Riddler, as Clockwise.
Goodbye City of Heroes
One of the things it says right in my profile is “City of Heroes player”, and even though I haven’t played much at all since starting this site, I still keep an eye on what’s going on over at the City of Heroes forums, and I still have quite a few CoH players following me on Twitter. One of the reasons why I originally bought the game about five years ago was because I wanted to get a game that my wife and I could enjoy together. At the time, she was addicted to Sims, and spent most of her time in the create-a-sim rather than actually playing the game. I knew that City of Heroes boasted the most elaborate character creator of pretty much any game out there next to Sims, and it was superhero related, which I knew I would enjoy. It didn’t take too long for her to get bored with the character creator, but I ended up getting hooked on the actual game. I had specifically avoided MMOs up until that point because I had a feeling that I would end up spending too much time playing it, becoming one of those WoW addicts spending all their free time playing the game. It did end up happening for a while there, but I’m not here to talk about that.
Follow Friday: It Rains… You Get Wet
Follow Friday: It Rains… You Get Wet
Welcome to another edition of Follow Friday where each week I feature and interview a fellow blogger and follow their suggestion to another blog to feature next week. I prefer this over a blogroll because it gives each blog their own time to shine, plus I personally rarely click on blogrolls so why would I expect you to? Not only that, but I get the chance to check out some great blogs I might not have found otherwise found, talk to some great people, and share the conversation with you. Of course, if you would rather see something like a blogroll, I have collected all of my previous Follow Friday sites in list form which you can find right at the top of the page. This week I was directed by Ruth over at Flixchatter to check out Michael aka Le0pard13’s blog It Rains… You Get Wet.
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 1993
When I first made my superhero movie list, this one was absent from it. I had actually seen it before, back when it first came out even though I think I waited for home video. I always remembered it as more of a sci-fi movie than a superhero movie. But then I watched a great episode of How it Should Have Ended with Super Mario. “I’m just like you, I’m a superhero. I rescue the princess. You are Superman, I am Super Mario, we are the same.” And it won me over, and I was hoping for another “so bad it’s good” superhero movie because this one has bad written all over it. They took the overall concept of Super Mario, pulled out a handful of names, and a couple designs, then threw it into a generic connected dimension sci-fi movie. Instead of making the mushroom kingdom into a bright, colorful, whimsical place, they made it dark and dystopian. It had some pretty poor action, poor comedy, and a poor plot. There were a handful of fun moments, but not much in the movie clicked with me, and it also never quite transcended into over the top bad fun, it was just lazy.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 