Blog Archives
JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time
JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time 2014
This is a movie you might not have heard about until recently even if you follow DC Animation, it’s a bit of a stealth release, only popping up on people’s radars when it was included in Target’s mailer last week as it is a Target DVD exclusive. One thing I immediately found out about it was that it is something much lighter in tone than many of the recent DC Animated movies. It’s much more in line with an updated version of Super Friends so I was excited because it was something that I could watch with my daughter Jena without worrying if there was too much blood in it. I’m always a fan of a time travel story and this has some very fun moments without bogging itself down with the nitty gritty details of it. The movie mainly follows a couple soon-to-be-members of the Legion of Super-heroes 1,000 years in the future: Dawnstar and Karate Kid. But back in the present, there’s also plenty of the Justice League and the Legion of Doom with many of their classic Super Friends roster with the addition of Cyborg who was only in the tail end of the Super Friends. I had a lot of fun with this movie and so did Jena.
Read the rest of this entry
Justice League: War
Justice League: War 2014
Taking a quick break from the non-superhero comic book adaptations I watched a couple brand new DC Animation releases: Justice League: War and JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time. My review of Trapped in Time will be up in a couple days, but first I’m going to talk a bit about Justice League: War which is the first Animated offering from DC’s New 52 timeline offering up yet another Justice League origin story, though I haven’t read any of the New 52. Fortunately, even though a lot of it is the same thing we’ve seen more than a couple times, it’s still a fun ride. After the very dark turn in DC Animation with Dark Knight Returns and The Flashpoint Paradox, War lightens things up quite a bit while not going all the way around to being too shallow. There’s still plenty of action to be had here and they sneak in a single swear word, but the blood is kept to a minimum. It was also a nice change of pace to add Shazam into the mix, as he’s not usually one of the regulars in these movies.
Read the rest of this entry
Superhero Shorts: Superman vs. Hulk
Welcome back to another edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a superhero themed short film and ask a few questions of the filmmaker. Today I’m talking with Mike Habjan and his animated fight sequence between Superman and the Incredible Hulk which he has been working on for several years now and still isn’t fully finished. You can watch the most recent section of the fight below, or you can see all of his animations on his YouTube Channel, or through the playlist which I set up.
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies 2009
Happy New Year! There hasn’t been a lot of voting in my “what I should watch in 2014” poll, but the winner in both the poll and the comments was non-superhero movies. So at least here in January, I’ll be watching some more varied movies that are still based on comics. But today I’m doing what I thought I did a couple months back until I realized that there was still a DC animated movie that I had yet to review, even though I had seen it before my website days. Public Enemies was the first of these movies to really focus on the Batman/Superman team up, and while I didn’t like it as much as Apocalypse, I still had a lot of fun with it.There’s a ton of cameos of various supervillains and some lesser known heroes, but it brings back the ever familiar voices for Batman, Superman, and Lex Luthor which is always a good sign even if it has a couple odd patches here and there.
Read the rest of this entry
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…
Read the rest of this entry
Filmwhys #16 North by Northwest and Persepolis
I’m back once again with another episode of Filmwhys, aka the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast. This week my guest is Pat McDonnell of 100 Years of Movies who asks me the question why haven’t I seen North by Northwest, Hitchcock’s classic Cary Grant movie featuring the famous scene of him being chased by a cropduster in the middle of an open field. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen the animated graphic novel adaptation of Marjan Satrapi’s autobiographical Persepolis where she follows her early life living in Iran during a revolution and a war and the oppression of the Islamic Fundamentalists while she is an outspoken woman who eventually flees to spend time in France.
Read the rest of this entry
Batman: Gotham Knight
Batman: Gotham Knight 2008
It had been a long time since I visited this movie so I figured it was overdue for a revisit. Gotham Knight is one of the more unique entries in the DC Animation canon. It’s an anthology consisting of several short films loosely tied together and all featuring Batman in one way or another. While they did try this again later on with Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, this one is done by different anime directors with very different styles while Emerald Knights all shared the same style as they were done by a single director within DC Animation. While there are a few high points, and a few weak spots, overall it’s quite enjoyable and Batman generally translates quite well to an Anime style. The only thing I don’t think translated quite as well is that Bruce Wayne is generally shown in a Bishounen style, as in he has a more effeminate look to him which is very different from the very masculine style in western animation and comics. But aside from that, it was an enjoyable movie and a welcome departure from the traditional animation style without going too far into typical Anime philosophizing and introspection that plagued the recent Iron Man anime Rise of Technovore.
Read the rest of this entry
Persepolis
Persepolis 2007
While I still have plenty of straight up superhero movies to go, I thought it was a good idea to branch out into non-superhero movies based on graphic novels. And of course, this black and white, animated tale of the life of an Iranian woman living through a revolution and a war, dealing with prejudice at home and in France, was originally a graphic novel by the same name. Even though it’s in black and white, the animation is visually striking, not only that, but the story itself is very engaging. Not only does Marjan suffer through a lot of strife, but she also has plenty of moments of joy and is always surrounded by people who care about her. It’s a really great movie and well worth your time to watch.
Read the rest of this entry
Batman: Year One
Batman: Year One 2011
After first hearing about these DC animated movies several years ago through Kevin Smith of all places (based on the fact that he has a one-liner in Doomsday referencing his well-known work on the scrapped Superman Lives script), watching several of them before starting this site and loving every single one of them through varying degrees, I’ve finally watched every single one of them that has currently been released. I still have to re-watch Gotham Knights and Justice League: New Frontier so I can review them, but I have seen all of them until Justice League: War comes out next year. You can expect a top ten list in the near future. But for now I’m just talking about Batman: Year One, based on the Frank Miller run about both eventual Commissioner Jim Gordon and Batman’s first year in Gotham. It shows how deep the corruption runs in Gotham from the outset but while it is called Batman: Year One, I almost think it should have been called Gordon: Year One, and I’d be perfectly ok with that. It has some weak points, but it’s still a great addition to the library of animated DC titles.
Read the rest of this entry
DC Animation Should Make a Theatrical Feature and it Should be The Killing Joke
I’ve said before to anyone who would listen that DC Animation should release a theatrical feature. They haven’t done one since practically their first all the way back in 1993 with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm which was more or less a spin-off of Batman: The Animated Series and had a fairly limited theatrical release. Since then, they’ve released several other spin-off movies for Batman: TAS, Batman Beyond, and Superman: TAS before releasing their first stand-alone Superman movie Doomsday in 2007 based on the Death and Return of Superman comic book arc. Their very next one, Justice League: The New Frontier would be their first PG-13 rated feature. In the following years, they’ve released 15 other straight-to-home-video animated movies based on other popular comic book runs as well as a handful of short films included on some of the DVDs. The stories they tell in these animated features are much more like what you would find in a Japanese Anime movie, these aren’t kids films, they are grown up stories based on well written comics. They are done on a direct-to-home-video budget, but it is used efficiently and often has some amazingly high quality animation, as well as a superbly chosen voice cast. Marvel is dominating the box office while DC is hit and miss, and I think a well placed animated movie could be a great selling point for DC.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 