Author Archives: Bubbawheat
As You Watch #2: Dick Tracy
Welcome back to the second 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 second episode we talk about our movie of the episode: Dick Tracy. But we also cover today’s new releases on DVD and Blu-Ray, including The Lucky One and Battleship, and this weekend’s new theatrical releases, including Lawless. We also cover our own personal top three gangster movies, avoiding some of the biggest titles in that category. Since Dick Tracy was my pick of the week, I’m hosting the podcast, so leave any feedback and suggestions right here and everybody will be able to see them. In two weeks, we’ll be watching I Saw the Devil, so if you want to watch too, be sure to check it out. If you write a review of the movie, we will gladly add a link to it in our podcast post. And special thanks to the band Jelly Project who allowed us the use of their song “Crazy World” to open our show.
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Superhero Shorts: Captain Planet Trailer
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a different superhero themed short film and get the creator of the film to answer a few interview questions. This week I’m talking with Noah Baron, Matt Kohler, and Robert Santiago, three actor-turned-producers who came up with a different take on the classic 90’s cartoon Captain Planet. Instead of amping up the campiness of the old cartoon, they turned it into a much more realistic and gritty movie trailer that looks seriously good. You can watch it below, or you can see it on any of their own sites.
Return of Captain Invincible
Return of Captain Invincible 1983
This isn’t quite the start of my new schedule just yet. I’m still trying to figure that one out. I know I’ll be watching another movie this weekend and I’ve got a promising new Superhero Shorts interview lined up, I think it’s a pretty good one. But for now I’ll just talk about this awesome 80’s movie that Morgan over at Morgan on Media pointed out to me. It’s called Return of Captain Invincible and it’s an 80’s, musical, superhero comedy. You heard that right. Not only that, but it stars Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee. It has a very Rocky Horror Picture Show vibe to it and it is extremely ludicrous. The songs range across a wide variety of styles and quality, and there is a surprising amount of Benny Hill-ish shirt-bursting moments, and even some brief nudity, which actually surprised me a bit, I always forget that ratings back then were actually more lenient on PG ratings. The movie overall was quite enjoyable for me, and for a couple days at least you can see my live tweets while I was watching the movie, covering some of the better moments.
Yep, it’s just a blog post folks
Yes, it’s come to this. I had a feeling it would happen sooner or later, but I figured it would end up happening later. First off, I have to mention that I still enjoy every part of this site and I’m not giving it up by a long shot. But I do have to say that I’m kind of down about it for various reasons and will be slowing down for a little bit. Instead of posting every day, I’ll be posting about every other day or so.
Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy 1990
Before I get into some more classicly bad and/or cheesy superhero movies, I picked this movie for our new podcast. I won our first game and next Tuesday will be the second episode of the As You Watch Podcast. You can be involved too. If you want to watch Dick Tracy and review it on your site, I will gladly link to your reviews so we can all discuss it together. Anyway, Dick Tracy came out on the heels of Tim Burton’s Batman movie and tried to cash in on that first wave of Superhero movies, but it was fairly short lived as nothing besides Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles seemed to have any pull with audiences at the time. Dick Tracy was inspired by a classic comic strip that dates back to the 30’s. Warren Beatty pulled a lot of his influence to make this pet project, initially getting it greenlit under a moderate budget before ballooning it to almost double before he was done. The results were fairly impressive for the time, with all the bright colors and unique characters that looked like they were almost taken directly off the comic book page. But while there are still a lot of great things about the movie, it just doesn’t quite hold up as well anymore, at least in my opinion.
FTMN Poll: What’s your favorite type of “bad” movie?
Bad movies, some of them are hard to watch, but others transcend that barrier to become a real treat. I just got done watching several that I totally didn’t like and will shortly be moving on to a few that I predict I will enjoy a whole lot more, so I have to ask “What kind of ‘bad’ movies do you like the best?” Is it the ones that are cheesy and campy which make the bad jokes incredibly charming? Or is it the ones that try to take themselves seriously, but are either so over the top or just cheaply made that their piss poor efforts are hilariously bad? Vote, share some of your favorites, enjoy!
Almost Super: Die Hard
Almost Super: Die Hard 1988
I was never a big fan of the huge action movie franchises when I was younger. I think out of all the well known movies by the big action stars of the 80’s and 90’s, I had only seen Total Recall and Last Action Hero. It was only a couple years ago when I finally saw Die Hard back to back with the first Lethal Weapon after watching Live Free or Die Hard, mainly because I’m a huge Kevin Smith fan and try to watch almost everything he’s been involved with. That reason was also what made me watch Roadhouse – in the special edition DVD, he and Scott Mosier do a really fun commentary track for it. I never did go on to watch any of the sequels, but of the four films, the original Die Hard was head and shoulders above the other three in terms of quality. There’s a reason that for years and years after this movie came out, action movies like Speed were referred to “Die Hard on a Bus”. It was the benchmark of a great action film, and over twenty years later, it still holds up as a great flick. It is well crafted twists and turns with just the right amount of comic relief without being too silly. And John McClane himself is practically a superhero in his own right, taking on an entire pseudo-terrorist-cell all by himself.
Superhero Shorts: Batfan
Superhero Shorts: Batfan
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a different superhero themed short film and get the creator of the film to answer a few interview questions. This week I’m talking with Anders Wotzke about his Batman parody, Batfan. Where he takes a simple concept and goes all the way with it, coming up with something pretty funny. As always, you can watch it right below, or you can check it out on his YouTube channel along with his many video reviews, you can also visit his movie site MovieDex.
Follow Friday: Flixchatter
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 Castor over at Anomalous Material to check out Ruth’s blog Flixchatter
Superhero Movie
Superhero Movie 2008
I was hoping that this would be the last bad movie I watched for a little while, but then Morgan from Morgan on Media pointed out this bizarre 80’s Australian superhero parody musical called the Return of Captain Invincible starring Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee, and after I looked up the trailer, it’s making me want to get back to some more classic cheesy superhero movies. At least after I watch Dick Tracy for our upcoming podcast, As You Watch. Which I should also mention that if you want to join in, I will gladly link any reviews to Dick Tracy so you can watch along with us, your deadline to get links in to me is Monday, August 27th. But back to today’s movie. I remember it being promoted as essentially a parody of all the superhero movies that were out at the time, though it primarily focused on the original Spider-Man movie, which was pretty dated even at the time considering that Spider-Man 3 came out before Superhero Movie. All of the other Superhero movie references are all just brief one-scene cameos, though the movie does stick with only parodying Marvel properties. I wasn’t much of a fan of the style of humor either, which basically consisted of playing a scene as close to Spider-Man as possible, then throwing in a sex/fart joke at the end.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 