Is Blade really a superhero?
AKA are Vampire/Witch/etc hunters superheroes?
With Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters out this past weekend, I’ve been thinking about the role of the supernatural hunter in the superhero genre. The obvious example in favor of the argument is Blade. He’s part of the Marvel Universe right alongside Spider-Man and Iron Man, and yet if you look specifically at the movies, they’re pretty much straight up vampire hunter movies, without a trace of superhero in them. And for the purposes of this post, I’ll be lumping together vampires, werewolves, demons, and witches under the term supernatural hunter, since many of them follow the same kind of formula. So where does that leave other supernatural hunters in movies like Ultraviolet, Underworld, Vampire Hunter D, or even Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters? That’s what I’d like to figure out.
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Constantine
Constantine 2005
Even though I have seen this movie before, about the only thing I remembered about it was that it couldn’t be called Hellblazer because it sounded too similar to Hellraiser. Now, I’m not a very religious person, I was raised Christian and went to church every Sunday, and even as a young adult I would go to a weekly church group, though more for the people than the religious aspect. I think a lot of what the church teaches is total nonsense, but there’s a lot to be learned in other ways. I mention that because this movie has a strong relationship to religion, specifically Catholicism. It also approaches it much more closely to Kevin Smith’s Dogma, with a healthy amount of irreverence, but much less comedy. I enjoyed it quite a bit with all the interesting characters.
Superhero Shorts: Hero Story
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts, where I take a look at a superhero themed short film and have a brief talk with the creator. This time I’m talking with Kaylon Hunt, writer, director, and actor in his superhero short Hero Story that’s not actually a fan film, it’s an original superhero story with a bit of action, humor, and special effects. The full version has been taken down, but you can watch the trailer below, visit the official site at HeroStoryFilm.com and check here to see if the video has been made public again.
Lambcast MOTM: Night of the Comet
While I’m no longer a regular member of a podcast, I did get a chance to take part once again in the LAMBcast over at the Large Association of Movie Blogs. Every month several members pick a movie and they all go into a poll on the LAMB site, the winner becomes the Movie of the Month and hosts that section of the weekly LAMB podcast. While my choice of Watchmen didn’t make the cut, I had still signed up for the episode. The winner was a fun 80’s movie called Night of the Comet picked by Kristen of Journeys in Classic Film. So head over to The Lambcast Facebook Page to listen to my full thoughts on the movie. Also, I’m championing a new movie for this month’s MOTM, so be sure to head over to the LAMB site and vote for Chronicle in the poll in the sidebar.
The Dark Knight Returns part 2
The Dark Knight Returns part 2 2013
It’s early into the year, and already time for the first superhero movie of the year, and it’s a doozy. I’ve mentioned time and time again how much I enjoy DC’s animated features, and the part 1 was quite good. Part 2 surpasses it in every way and easily overtook Under the Red Hood as my favorite of the bunch, and may even go up a couple notches on my overall top 10. Even though it’s an adaptation of a known comic book story, it’s one I hadn’t read and I was glad I hadn’t because it went to so many places I would have never expected for a Batman story. It’s the bloodiest DC movie I’ve seen aside from Watchmen, but it’s used in all the right ways. If you’re a fan of Batman at all, you must check this movie out, and while part 1 sets things up for what happens in this part, it can easily be watched as a stand alone piece with little confusion.
Watchmen
Watchmen 2009
This is a very close adaptation of one of the most revered and acclaimed comic book that I have never read. For the longest time, it was thought that an adaptation could never do the original source material justice without cutting out a lot of the good stuff, or making compromises to make the film more marketable to the mainstream. I can’t say for certain, but I believe Zack Snyder did neither. And on top of that, he made a damn entertaining movie for those of us who have never read the comics. It is by no means a perfect movie, there are still some flaws to it, but every time I’ve watched this, I’ve remained almost transfixed by the combination of striking visuals, complex characters, and interesting storylines.
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Tales of the Black Freighter/Under the Hood
Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter/Under the Hood 2009
Even though I’ve watched the Watchmen already, I’m not quite done with it enough to write a review of it yet. But since this is presented as somewhat of a stand alone feature, I’m going to go ahead and give it it’s own review. One of the first things I realized after watching this is that even though this is presented as somewhat of a companion piece to the Watchmen, it’s really much more like a bonus disc to the movie that you can buy on its own. If you’re a fan of the movie, it’s worth picking up, but the actual bulk of the movie is extremely short clocking in at just under half an hour. It felt much more like an animated episode of Tales From the Crypt. That said, it also felt like a really good episode of Tales From the Crypt. It’s dark, twisted, and you’re never quite sure where it’s going, although when it gets to the actual twist, its fairly obvious. There are a couple other things on the disc that I didn’t even realize were on there at first. The biggest thing is the not-quite-a-mockumentary “Under the Hood” which takes a look at the autobiography of one of the original Minutemen within the world of the Watchmen, along with brief looks at the other members of the original Minutemen. It’s interesting in that it fills in a lot more information for characters we briefly see in the Watchmen, but I wasn’t overly fond of the overall presentation.
FTMN Poll: What superhero/comic book movie are you looking forward to in 2013?
I’ve looked back at this past year, now it’s time to look to the future. As of my cursory search through IMDB, these are the comic book and superhero movies I found that are coming out so far in 2013. Which one are you looking forward to the most. Myself, I’m looking forward to Man of Steel. I’m not the biggest Superman fan in general, but I’m very curious if they can finally pull it off, which they haven’t really done since the first one.
Thanks for a wonderful 2012
Like many people, the holiday season has kept me busy, and away from the television for the most part. I’m currently taking in all of Watchmen for a hopefully epic post in the near future. I watched the theatrical version, and Tales from the Black Freighter, and plan to watch Under the Hood and hopefully the Ultimate Cut and some more special features before writing my post on it. But for now, I’ll join everyone else in taking a look back at what 2012 has brought me.
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Elf-man
Elf-Man 2012
I have to start off by saying that I’m not very big on the holidays, especially Christmas. I’m not a Grinch or Scrooge by any means, but it just doesn’t get me very excited. I dislike most of the Christmas music I have to hear at work or on the radio, and I’m not a big fan of very many Christmas movies. This year, I watched four. I watched A Christmas Story last week, which is my favorite Christmas movie. And then on Christmas day I watched A Christmas Story 2 which I had to watch just to see if it was as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn’t. Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near the quality of the original, but it was just fairly mediocre. I ended Christmas day with Christmas Vacation which I hadn’t seen in years and loved every minute of. And somewhere in the middle I fit in Elf-Man. It turns out that superheroes and Christmas don’t intersect very often. As far as I can tell there’s only this movie and Batman Returns which takes place during Christmas. If there’s any others, I’m not aware of them. This movie came out just this year and I figured Christmas day was as good a time as any to get it out of the way. Similar to Christmas Story 2, it wasn’t quite bad enough to enjoy it on a whole different level, but it’s also not the next Christmas classic either. For Jena’s part, who I realized I haven’t mentioned much in a long while, she enjoyed it quite a bit and has already mentioned wanting to watch it again.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 