The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight 2008
Or as it might more appropriately be called when compared to the recent movie, “The Dark Knight Falls”. Not because of the quality of the movie at all, but just because of what happens to Batman at the end of the movie, especially with where he starts the new movie. Ever since this movie came out in 2008, it has moved to the top of nearly everyone’s list of favorite superhero movies, and with good reason. The most memorable thing about the movie is definitely Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. He was able to create something different than we’ve ever seen before, something much darker, close to many of the comics, and yet still likable. But there’s more to the movie than just the Joker, the overall plot is extremely tight and engaging, and the level of realism is really bumped up from what we saw in Batman Begins. Not only all that, but even the relationships between the characters are all very strong, and the movie still manages to have a huge heart in it. It really is one of the best superhero movies of all time, if not the best.
Superhero Shorts: Disassembled
Superhero Shorts: Disassembled
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 Junaid Chundrigar and his animated short film Disassembled. While the Avengers movie was all about how the heroes assembled together to form their team, this is what happens on a bad day when they get disassembled. It’s very Robot Chicken-esque with a bunch of very quick mini-scenes. And it’s not just the Avengers that were featured in the movie, it also features several other famous Marvel characters, many of whom I believe were also Avengers at some point in time. As always, you can watch the short right below, or you can watch it at Junaid’s YouTube Channel
Follow Friday: Fog’s Movie Reviews
Fog’s Movie Reviews
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 Scott over at Front Room Cinema to check out The Velvet Cafe. But since she’s on vacation this week, I decided to feature the site that inspired this column in the first place, Fog’s Movie Reviews.
Batman Begins
Batman Begins 2005
I am equal parts overjoyed and annoyed by all of the Batman reviews that have been popping up these past couple weeks. I especially enjoy it when some of the lesser reviewed gems come out of the woodwork, like a review of the first season of Batman: The Animated Series, or some of the DC Animated films. But I’m also annoyed because one of the reasons that I started this blog as a niche review site instead of a general movie review site was to stand out, and yet now I’ll be blending in as I take another look at Christopher Nolan’s already legendary Batman Trilogy. Today I start with the beginning, as that’s typically the best place. This is yet another origin story, but it’s unique in the fact that Batman is one of the few superheroes that kind of skipped over the whole origin story. Yes, Tim Burton’s Batman movie has that pivotal moment in Crime Alley where his parents are murdered, but when the flashback is over, he’s Batman in full force. This is the first time that audiences actually got to see how Bruce Wayne turned tragedy into vigilante.
New look, & Top 5 Most Original Superhero Movies
As you can probably tell, at least if you’ve ever been here before, I’ve gone and given this place a little bit of a makeover. I recently took part in a Brutally Blog Blustering over at the LAMB where you submit your blog, and people give constructive criticism anonymously. One thing that many people mentioned was the disjointed URL, so while it is a bit long, I couldn’t think of anything else more appropriate than FlightsTightsAndMovieNights.com. I will continue to renew Bubbawheat.com because I’ve had that name for more than half of my life at this point, and I doubt I’ll be changing it any time soon. I also went and made a more comics appropriate background that is hopefully not too distracting and looks good on most screen dimensions. I even adjusted my header image a bit to give it a more consistent and comics related font, as well as adding a few randomly changing taglines. If you’re wondering, there’s four. Which one do you like the best? I will be making a couple more tweaks to how my sidebars and pages are set up over the next week or so, but nothing too major. While several people complained about my lack of a blogroll, oftentimes even while praising my Follow Friday, I will be making a page collecting all of my Follow Fridays into a blogroll page of sorts. But enough about that, this week’s topic is a list of the five most original superhero movies. There’s tons of superhero movies out there, but so many of them are basically different takes on the same formula, or one of a select few formulas. But every once in a while, a movie comes out and does something completely different. It may not always work 100%, but I respect their efforts for trying.
Mystery Men
Mystery Men 1999
I more or less just picked a random movie to watch today, I guess it does share a lot of similarities to both Dr. Horrible and Scott Pilgrim, especially to the latter as it was a box office bomb, grossing about half of its sixty million dollar budget. I think it’s considered somewhat of a cult classic, though I think it’s mostly just forgotten. One of the few things it has going for it is its unique cast, mixing offbeat comic actors like Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, and Paul Reubens with Geoffrey Rush and William H. Macy. There are all sorts of big, or at least moderate budget effects combined with a large number of fart jokes. It’s hard to tell exactly what audience this movie was aiming for, but I generally enjoyed it.
FTMN Poll: What series should be rebooted?
The superhero/comic book/sci-fi landscape right now is filled with reboots, from Spider-Man, to Judge Dredd, to Robocop, to Total Recall, to Superman, to Green Arrow, and even Beauty and the Beast. Some may be good, some may be crap. And on top of that, some of the original’s are hard to live up to. I have no doubt that the new Dredd will be better than the original Judge Dredd, but Robocop is going to be a tougher sell for me. So far, I’ve liked everything I’ve seen from the reboots I’ve listed, although Beauty and the Beast feels like the weakest one for my tastes, they’re just moving too far away from the original Linda Hamilton/ Ron Perlman version and making it for the pretty faces of the CW audience.
But what I’m asking today is what series would you actually want to see a reboot of? I’ve listed several choices from the misguided take on Spawn, to ones that haven’t seen action outside of TV like Wonder Woman. Is there a comic actor today who could bring new life to the Mask or the Tick? The Ninja Turtles may have been squashed for now, but do they deserve a true to their origins style reboot? What about the Punisher, they’ve tried a few times and haven’t quite gotten him right yet? There’s also reboots of Fantastic Four, The Crow, and Daredevil in the works, though they’re all still pretty early in their productions and may still fall through, do any of them deserve a chance? Is there any others that I’ve failed to mention? Let your voice be heard, tell me what you think.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog
Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog 2008
This may seem an odd choice to review, it’s a musical, the main character is a villain, it was made to appear on the internet, and it’s only 42 minutes long. It actually seems much more like a choice for a Superhero Shorts. But it’s become such a phenomenon that I had to give it it’s own review. It was made during the 2008 writer’s strike over a very short period of time and yet it somehow managed to become this incredibly popular thing that really helped pave the way for all of the internet media we have today. I mean, there’s lots of people that actually make a living from revenue earned from their web series and videos that they post on YouTube. I won’t go so far as to say that Dr. Horrible made all that happen, but it did help prove that it could happen. When you look at it now, it can be hard to see why it was so popular, it was a musical, it was about a villain created for this short, none of the stars were very big names, and it was going to be released for free on the internet. But one person was able to make it a success: Joss Whedon. His talent and his online following helped make it what it is today. I’ve watched it over a dozen times, and I love it every time.
Superhero Shorts: Gremlins 3 Warm Up
Superhero Shorts: Gremlins 3 Warm Up
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 Sacha Feiner who created an absolutely astounding fan version of a scene in Gremlins 2. In the movie, there’s a scene where the film breaks and it turns out that the Gremlins are messing with the projector in the theater. For the original VHS release, that scene was updated so that it looked like the VHS messed up and the Gremlins invaded a John Wayne movie. But for the DVD release, they just went back to the original version. Sacha decided that it needed a version that was made for the DVD release, so he made one. But it wasn’t just a simple thing, he actually created brand new Gremlins based on the original designs and had them cause a ruckus in other movies. But don’t take it from me, check it out right below.
Follow Friday: Front Room Cinema
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. This week I was directed by John over at The Droid You’re Looking For to check out Front Room Cinema aka FRC which is a great site with a tons of interesting features and reviews.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 