Superhero Shorts: Batman Evolution
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a superhero themed short film and ask a few questions of the creator. This time around I have the fun short Batman Evolution where Eric Gable used his martial arts training and love of both the classic and modern styles of Batman to create a short that shows how Batman changed from the comedic and campy Adam West style Batman to the grittier modern Batman started by Tim Burton and taken even further by Christopher Nolan all while using authentic Ninjutsu techniques during the fight choreography. As always, you can watch the video below or you can visit their YouTube channel.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #16
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 16
episode: The End of the Beginning
original airdate: 4-1-2014
Thankfully we’ve seen the last multi-week hiatus for this show and it will now be running straight through till the finale and things finally seem to be ramping up to full speed with yet another tie-in episode to a current release movie. Unfortunately, unlike the Thor crossover and like most of this country, I have yet to see the new Captain America movie which I have heard from those who have seen it that there are events happening in some of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Facilities at the same time that the show is taking place. But I can say that it doesn’t take much away from the episode. This episode finally brings out the clairvoyant, and while I won’t spoil who it is, I will say that I was right when I thought it would end up being a woman. There’s a few questions answered, still several left unanswered, and all wrapped in a nice mix of action, drama, and tension.
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Filmwhys #27 The Simpsons and Jack of All Trades
Welcome to another episode of Filmwhys, also known as the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where things didn’t go quite as planned with my scheduling but I was glad to put this show up earlier than planned where my guest is Nick Jobe from Your Face! who asks me why I haven’t seen Jack of All Trades, a short lived comedy with groovy Bruce Campbell as a revolutionary spy/hero and in return I ask him the question that has been burning in my head ever since I found out that he had never seen the Simpsons, my all time favorite television show where I have seen nearly every episode, and all the classics dozens of times and often bring up episodes which have made me familiar with several of the movies I’ve seen on this podcast for the first time.
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Graphic Horror: 30 Days of Night
30 Days of Night 2007
This Graphic (Novel) Horror blogathon is coming to a close and I’m finally coming around to one of the movies that first came to mind when I was thinking about movies that I should cover. I saw it back when it was still fairly new and quite enjoyed it, but hadn’t seen it since then and have never seen the sequel. I always thought it was an interesting concept for a vampire movie. One of the vampire’s biggest weaknesses was the fact that they couldn’t be out in the sunlight, but in the Arctic Circle there’s a full 30 days of night without any sun, not only that but according to this story the town basically cuts itself off from any other town South of it for the duration of the darkest part of winter so this clan of vampires can essentially feed at will for a full month without any fear of being discovered and stopped by a larger force from outside of town. There are also plenty of great visuals along the way that really had a graphic novel feel to them, whether or not they were actually taken from the pages of the original comic.
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Superhero Shorts: Resignation
Welcome back to another Superhero Shorts where I feature a superhero themed short film and ask a few questions from its creator. This time around I’m talking with Joshua Caldwell, director of a multimedia web short called Resignation about a very well known superhero who decides to walk away from the responsibilities shouldered upon his hero persona and instead sit back and let the events unfold around him, no matter what the outcome may be. You can watch Caldwell’s director’s reel below, or visit ResignationSuperhero.com to get the full multimedia experience of the Resignation short film. You can also visit his blog Hollywood Bound And Down for more information on Joshua and his podcast.
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Graphic Horror: Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight
Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight 1995
The Graphic (Novel) Horror blogathon is coming to a close, but not before I manage to eke out a couple more horror movies here in March. Also, if you haven’t checked the main page for the blogathon recently, there are a couple updates with folks out on different blogs who have contributed their own articles so be sure to check them out. I was a big fan of the television show Tales From the Crypt, and even though it was around the time when this movie came out, I probably didn’t catch it in theaters, instead finding it when it came to home video and agreeing with the general consensus that the movie wasn’t nearly as good as most of the episodes made for HBO. I especially found it interesting in this viewing that I had a hard time finding good screenshots to take as there is rarely anything interesting happening on screen and the creature effects are mediocre at best. The movie eschews the show’s typical morbid twist and instead relies on a macabre fantasy/action plot with demons and a fun wraparound with the Cryptkeeper tying it in with the television show. There are moments of fun in this movie but they are few and far between.
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Superhero Shorts: Batman vs. The Terminator
It feels like it’s been a long while since I’ve had the chance to do one of these but I’m back with another Superhero Shorts and it’s a good one. This time around I’m talking with amateur animator Mitchell Hammond who spent 4 years working on this short completely by himself using digital frame-by-frame animation. He created a world set in the Terminator universe where Batman exists and is working with, or at least parallel to John Connor where he is trying to take down Skynet. As always, you can watch the short right below, or you can check it out on Mitchell’s blog along with other behind the scenes info.
300: Rise of an Empire
300: Rise of an Empire
I was originally going to wait until this came out on home video, but I recently got the opportunity to go to a Winter Soldier pre-screening event. As this was the first time showing up to one of these events I thought that an hour and a half early would be enough time to be able to get into the showing. Unfortunately I was wrong, by well over 50 people wrong. Not only that, but the theater wasn’t doing a very good job at communicating how many people actually were in the line ahead of us and it wasn’t until about 10 minutes before the showing was supposed to start when they finally came to us near the back of the line and told us the bad news and offered us tickets to any other movie showing at the theater. Luckily there was a screening of 300 starting right at that exact moment so that’s what I went with. So on top of seeing an underwhelming movie, it also has the detriment of being the movie that I had to see instead of Captain America 2. I was a fan of the original 300 and even own it on DVD (though I don’t think I’ve re-watched it since buying it. While this still had involvement with Zack Snyder, the direction was passed onto Noam Murro who seemed to think the best way to follow Zack Snyder’s style was to increase the amount of slow motion moments of blood flying at the camera.
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Graphic Horror: Alien
Graphic Horror: Alien 1979
This is something that I haven’t done very much since starting my Filmwhys podcast, and that is to go back and watch an essential movie that I hadn’t seen, only I didn’t do it to talk about during an episode of Filmwhys. (Instead I’m talking about it here in a review) Before now I had seen Aliens a few times, and somehow skipped ahead and watched AvP in theaters, but never went back to watch the original even though there’s always the debate over which is the better movie: Alien or Aliens. For my part, I don’t think I’ll ever like this one as much as Aliens, but it is still a great movie that I really enjoyed. And for the record, I did watch the 2003 Ridley Scott director’s cut of the movie instead of the theatrical release, although I didn’t go back and check to see what the differences between the two versions are.
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Graphic Horror Guest Post: Revival
When I put the call out for this blogathon, I was hoping for both people looking at horror movies that could become graphic novels as well as horror comics that could make the transition into becoming a movie. And Vic over at Vic’s Movie Den answered the call. But of course, since it’s Vic’s Movie Den and not Vic’s Comic Book Den, I offered to post his look at the horror comic “Revival”. So without further ado, I shall leave the rest of this post to Vic!
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 