TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #9
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 9
Episode: Repairs
Original airdate: 11-26-13
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’m done with my turkey lunch, had only a five minute drive to my sisters where the rest of my family came together and am starting on a nice and relaxing 11 days off of work. And I’m ready to do some writing and movie watching. But first off it’s time to talk about this week’s episode of S.H.I.E.L.D. where it tries to take a bit of a creepy tone with some ghosts and another almost tie-in with Thor. The episode takes a closer look at Melinda Mays’ backstory and adds a little to several of the other characters as well. But I didn’t think the attempt at bringing a thriller/horror element to the show worked very well and it had a very annoying character that they were trying to help. The character moments were great, but the rest was quite lacking.
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My Top 10 DC Animated Movies
After watching and reviewing Justice League: The New Frontier, I thought I had finished watching and reviewing all of the DC Animated movies that have been currently released. After writing this list, I realized I still have one to review (Public Enemies), but I have seen it before so whatever. I’ve always enjoyed watching these animated movies from Marvel, DC, and even some of the other non-affiliated animated movies like Bolt, the Incredibles, or Megamind. But even though these are all released direct-to-DVD and have never gotten a theatrical run since going way back to the Batman: The Animated series spin-off movie Mask of the Phantasm (which I sadly have yet to see, but also don’t include in this series of Warner Premier original DC Animated movies), they are all done with quality writing, are often based on acclaimed comic book runs, have excellent voice casts, and high quality-within-a-budget animation. And what better way to wrap up these movies, so to speak, than with a list of my favorites, which started as just a top 5 list and when I kept finding titles I just couldn’t exclude, grew into a top 10 list, which is a bit over half of the currently 17 released titles with 2-3 new ones coming out every year. So, without ado…
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Filmwhys #18 The Mexican and Thor the Dark World
Apologies for the delayed post, but I’m excited to bring a slight change-up to my normal Filmwhys format. Instead of having my guest introduce me to one of their favorite movies that I’ve never seen, I decided it was time to share one of my favorite non-superhero movies to my guest that they’ve never seen. And this time around my guest is the Vern from Vern’s Video Vanguard and a few other sites and I ask him why he hasn’t seen the Mexican, one of Gore Verbinski’s earlier movies before he went on to direct the Pirates of Caribean movies with Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, James Gandolfini, and a really sweet looking classic pistol. And we both watch the current theatrical release Thor The Dark World.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #8
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 8
Episode: The Well
Original airdate: 11-19-13
The lead up to this episode from what I read about was a big deal that it was the tie-in episode to the theatrical release of Thor: The Dark World. I wasn’t really expecting something huge like a cameo from Chris Hemsworth or Tom Hiddleston, or even Kat Dennings though that could have been more likely. What could have been a possibility was something to do with the beast that was let loose in England during the battle. They might not be able to use the full quality as in the movie, but one might think that they could use it in some lower res capacity. What we got instead is a completely unrelated story about an Asgardian who came to Earth in the distant past and left an ancient relic that has been found. The tie in is mainly just a very brief montage of quick clips from the first two movies as well as starting the episode with the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents cleaning up a little bit of the mess left in England from the climax of the Dark World. As far as a “tie-in” goes, it was a bit of a let down. Looking at the episode apart from the marketing and it’s another fairly solid episode with a surprising guest appearance by Peter MacNicol, and finally a little bit of depth to Ward’s character.
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Justice League: The New Frontier
Justice League: The New Frontier 2008
I think one of the hardest part about watching and reviewing some of these DC titles is the fact that so many of them are in different, overlapping continuities and when there is that continuity that connects in a great way then it’s that much harder to connect with any different continuity. And that’s really my biggest problem with The New Frontier. It was one of the earlier efforts by DC Animation coming out after Doomsday and even though I watched it fairly early on it didn’t really connect with me then. And watching it again, there have been a few other animated projects that did connect strongly with me that now that I’m finishing my run of the currently released DC Animated movies, this is the one that tends to fall flat with me considering that almost all of the members of the Justice League represented in this movie except for possibly Martian Manhunter, I can think of another movie that represents what I think of as the definitive version of that character. But considering that this is one of the earlier movies, it still holds up well and has a lot more violence in it than I remembered it having, and yet still nothing near what has been in some of the most recent titles. It could be considered a sort of origin story for this incarnation of the Justice League, even though there is mention of the breakdown of the Justice Society, and there are a few origin stories laced throughout the movie for some of the individual members, but there’s also an underlying theme of trust and coming together for the good of us all.
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League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2003
I had heard a lot of the behind the scenes stories about this movie, it’s Sean Connery’s last on-screen role before going into retirement, and there were a lot of struggles between him and the director. It got a lot of negative press after it came out because the source material is very literate while the movie is much more of a dumbed down action movie that spells out any references it makes so that more people will catch the reference, like when they make the Around the World in 80 Days reference, and then points out exactly where it came from. But I did enjoy the movie then, and I still mostly enjoyed it now even though I recognize a lot more of the flaws in it this time around. I think it helps that I’m not actually familiar with the source material comic. It’s not an incredibly deep movie by any means, but it does have some fun bits inbetween the ridiculous moments.
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Superhero Shorts: Dark Knight Legacy
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts where I showcase a superhero themed short film and ask a few questions of the creator. This time around I’m talking with Cris Landa and his Nolan inspired short film that takes place after the Dark Knight Rises where someone needs to fill the void left behind by the absence of Batman and in his place comes The Red Hood and Night wing who differ on their opinions on how to deal with the criminal element. As usual, you can watch the video below or on the Machinima YouTube channel.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #7
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 7
Episode: The Hub
Original airdate: 11-12-13
It’s that time of week again for another recap of the latest Marvel TV episode. For the first time in several weeks I am not actually wanting to call this the best episode yet. Of course, this isn’t a bad thing because I’ve been enjoying the past several episodes very much and I think the overall quality has improved greatly over the first couple episodes which were good, but not great. All of the characters on the show are starting to flesh out a more well rounded personality, and this episode had a moment that made me laugh out loud, which doesn’t happen all too often and as a sidenote is one of several reasons why you will never catch me using the abbreviation LOL. Last week’s episode gave a lot of time to fleshing out Simmons’ character and this time around Fitz gets his time to shine. We also get to see a bit more of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s inner workings and how the organization operates. And finally, we get yet another hint into the mystery surrounding Skye’s past.
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Book Nights: Super Born: Seduction of Being
Super Born: Seduction of Being
by Keith Kornell
I was initially reluctant when I got an e-mail asking me to review a superhero novel, I was even more reluctant when I read the initial synopsis for it mentioning the main character as a single mom and a review blurb calling it “hypersexualized”. I also don’t own an e-reader which made me turn down a previous offer at reviewing a superhero novel, but even with my doubts they were still willing to send me a physical copy of the book. It was a rough start, I wasn’t fond of the overly sarcastic humor nor the frequent talk about sex which wasn’t helped by the cover that looked like I was reading a cheesy romance novel. The science mumbo-jumbo was equally over-specific and absurd, and the characterization of the superheroine main character felt like it was written by a man who was not a feminist by any stretch of the imagination. I soldiered on through the rest of the book was rewarded with much of the same, but underneath all of that there was an interesting plot that kept me wanting to know how it was all going to end up.
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Thor: The Dark World
Thor: The Dark World 2013
Choosing a specific genre for this site brought about some factors that I had’t considered when I first started it almost two years ago now. One is that “superhero” isn’t really a genre, I had briefly considered going for Fantasy as my genre of choice, but there are so few sword and sorcery fantasy movies out there, and even fewer good ones barring the Lord of the Rings. And another is the fact that because I don’t review everything, that means that the new releases that I review are very much dependent on the release schedule, and the superhero “genre” if it may be called that is something of an oddity. It tends to be very summer heavy, with over two-thirds of the big theatrical releases happening in that one three month period, and once the summer’s over there’s a giant dead zone until the next summer rolls around so it’s been almost 3 months since the release of Kick-Ass 2 which was the last superhero movie of the season. Not only that, but this Thor movie itself is a bit of an odd beast when you look at it compared to other superhero movies. It’s very different from the first Thor, where a large part of the film took place on Earth where Thor was the superhero alien god come down to Earth. This movie is much more of a fantasy movie with sci-fi elements where Norse gods and dark elves are fighting each other along with the occasional sci-fi gun and Earth only shows up once in a while. That said, it really played to my love of fantasy movies and I enjoyed every minute of it, from the fantasy battles, the Marvel humor, to the sci-fi monkey wrenches that made it that much more fun. As a note, I tend to avoid tiptoeing around spoilers, and there are a couple surprises in this movie that I will be talking about, you have been warned.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 