Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher
Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher 2014
Last year when I watched the Marvel Iron Man anime movie Rise of Technovore, the best part of that movie were the bits featuring the Punisher, so while that movie was ok but fairly middling, I had quite a bit more hope for this one. But what I ended up getting was more of the same. I do think that the way this movie handles the Punisher as a character is much better than the way he is handled in any of the other live action movies, but I wasn’t as fond of how it handles Black Widow. There are plenty of well done fight scenes, but they had a little too much anime flair to them and some of the voice acting fell a bit flat except for one role who played it overly animated. The plot kept things interesting and while I didn’t like everything in this movie, there was plenty enough to keep me in through the end of the movie. A step up from last year’s Technovore, but only a small step.
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Filmwhys #26 District 9 & Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Welcome back to another episode of Filmwhys, episode 26 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is Shala Thomas from Life Between Films who asks me why I haven’t seen District 9, the surprising sci-fi debut of Neill Blomkamp about an alien spaceship stranded above Johannesburg where the aliens get placed in a slum on the outskirts of the city and eventually become a hotbed of racial tension and xenophobia. And in return, I ask her why she hasn’t seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the Joss Whedon experiment in web content during the writer’s strike from several years ago about the rise of a super-villain done as a catchy musical.
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An FTMN Thank you for 100,000!
I wasn’t originally planning on doing one of these posts, sure I would share the news on Twitter and whatnot, but I didn’t think I needed to write a blog post about this milestone. But I was thinking about it a couple days ago and there were things that I’m grateful for that I wanted to share with my regular readers, and I thought that this milestone was a perfect time to do just that. So first off, I want to say a big THANK YOU to all of my readers that have helped me reach 100,000 views. I really enjoy watching all these movies, writing about them, and talking with all of you in the comments, on Twitter, and on various podcasts, both mine as well as others. So on this milestone, I wanted to share some of the things that I’m pleased about when it comes to what brings people to this site.
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Graphic Horror: The Cell
Graphic Horror: The Cell 2000
When I first decided to run this Graphic Horror blogathon, I was planning on only covering the movies that were actually based on graphic novels, but when no one jumped on the Cell, I couldn’t let that go considering that this was pretty much the first movie that I thought of when I came up with the entire idea for the blogathon in the first place. When I was younger, I never really got into horror movies much, but after seeing Seven there was a while where I would seek out these not-quite-horror movies focused on serial killers. I was also a big fan of artistic music videos like Nine Inch Nails and a couple of Madonna’s videos and this movie looked right in line with that surreal, dreamlike music video style, though honestly I don’t think I’ve revisited this movie since that time. But it has still always stuck with me as an interesting concept with beautiful visuals even though the other things like the plot never really stuck with me as closely. I had even forgotten that Vince Vaughn had a significant role in this movie.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #15
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. week #15
Episode: Yes Men
Original airdate: 3-11-14
Wow, two weeks in a row, what a shocker! But seriously, it’s nice to see some regularity, too bad it’s not continuing for very long. At least next week there is a Marvel related thing going on. Not only did we get two episodes in a row, but we actually got a real tie-in to the Thor movie rather than the weak tie-in involving a spear and an Asgardian, neither of which featured in the movie at all. This time around we get an actual Asgardian from the movie with Jaimie Alexander’s Lady Sif and a villain that is from the Thor comics. Not only that, but there is a great shift in the team dynamics within the main cast that really helps to further some of the characters. There isn’t too much humor, but there’s a lot of drama and a lot of action in yet another great episode. Not to mention the fact that it’s really taken me this long to realize how much of a strong female cast this show has in general. Fully 50% of the team is made up of women, and they are all just as strong as their male counterpart. It’s something that’s great to see, and maybe I just don’t read enough other viewpoints on the show, but I certainly don’t see it getting a lot of credit for that aspect. The fact that the team is pretty much whitewashed is a different story, but there is at least a fair number of ethnicities when it comes to the other characters and villains that pop up.
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Stan Lee’s Mighty 7
Stan Lee’s Mighty 7 2014
I just happened to stumble across this a few days ago and since it was pretty short at just about an hour long I decided to check it out as a bit of a sorbet between horror bites. It’s basically an extended TV show pilot though I haven’t read if it is going to become a show or not. The movie centers on Stan Lee as a caricature of himself, or at least the personality he portrays as his somewhat public persona. He stumbles upon a crashed ship of aliens, including two essentially space cops and five until recently captive fugitives which he eventually gets to sign a contract so he can use their likenesses in a new comic book sold as a reality superhero show. It originally aired on the Hub network and it is pretty obvious that it is aimed at kids, but there is a bit of fun to be had here and there aside from the cliché storylines and silly humor. I seriously doubt that it would be anything that I would find myself watching on a regular basis if it did become a full fledged cartoon series, but if there was another short movie like this I would check it out.
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Graphic Horror: Filmwhys Raw #5
Welcome to another episode of Filmwhys Raw where my guests are Jay Cluitt from Life vs. Film and Matt Stewart from Simplistic Reviews and we bring my blogathon into podcast territory and talk about some horror movies that we all think would make great graphic novels, including one or two that I might end up adding to my own list of movies to watch & review this month so keep an eye out for that as well. Click here to listen and as always I appreciate it if you subscribe on iTunes, PodOmatic, or Stitcher and give me a rate, review, and/or feedback. I always enjoy hearing what the listeners have to say. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Graphic Horror: Vault of Horror
Vault of Horror 1973
Following up from the Tales From the Crypt adaptation the year before comes yet another adaptation of several of the EC Comics stories from their various horror comics like Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear, and others. It follows basically the same format as Tales From the Crypt with a frame story about several people coming together and telling tales of their demises. The difference is that this time they are all taking an elevator that brings them to the sublevel instead of the ground floor, and they are talking about these vivid dreams they’ve been having, and also there is no curator inviting them to speak, instead they bring up speaking on their own, and there is no woman in this group. There’s also something about the stories in general that weren’t as interesting overall as several of the ones in the Tales From the Crypt anthology. I also found it interesting, even though I’m not a Doctor Who fan at all but I noticed that Tom Baker is one of the main characters in one of the stories.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #14
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week #14
episode: T.A.H.I.T.I.
original airdate: 3-4-2014
It feels like it’s been forever since there’s been a new episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I also just read that this episode has had the lowest ratings of the season which is disappointing because I think the show has been getting much stronger these past several episodes. It’s unfortunate that it’s been hurt by both a weak starting few episodes which lost a lot of viewers, and these past two months which have been strewn with frequent hiatuses. Two weeks off, one week on, three weeks off. I almost think it would have been a better idea to have just taken six weeks off so there could have been a continuous string of new episodes. There seems to be a lot invested in this show so I hope that there are strong streaming numbers that help this show get to a season 2 because guest star Bill Paxton sure didn’t bring any viewers.
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Graphic Horror: Born Dark Comic Kickstarter
Born Dark Issue: 0 Kickstarter
We’re just in the beginning of this Graphic Novel Horror Blogathon, but it’s not just about horror movies that are or should be graphic novels, it’s also about graphic novels that could become movies. And there’s a brand new one looking for funding for their issue #0 which will propel them into a full fledged series. It’s doing quite well at the moment, but still has a ways to go. It’s called a “dark fantasy” but it also delves into some horror elements. And I’m not just trying to convince others to back this project, I’m excited enough about it that I have backed it myself. And to help tell you more about this comic, I asked a few questions of the writer, Lela Gwenn. Click here to visit the Kickstarter page, or click any of the images to go there as well.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 