Blog Archives
Follow Friday: Hard Ticket to Home Video
Welcome to another edition of Follow Friday, where each time I feature and interview a fellow blogger and follow their suggestion to another blog to feature next time, which is currently monthly-ish. I prefer this over a blogroll because it gives each blog their own time to shine, plus I personally rarely click on blogrolls so why would I expect you to? Not only that, but I get the chance to check out some great blogs I might not have found otherwise found, talk to some great people, and share the conversation with you. Of course, if you would rather see something like a blogroll, I have collected all of my previous Follow Friday sites in list form which you can find right at the top of the page. Last time I was directed by Isaac from The IPC to check out a site I already enjoy Hard Ticket to Home Video.
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Superhero Shorts: Wolverine the Musical
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts, where I feature a superhero themed short film and ask a few words of the filmmaker. This time around I’m talking with Vincent Bova, who along with his partner in felt Damien Eckhardt-Jacobi who created Wolverine: The Musical… with puppets. As always, you can view the short below or you can check it out on their site Glove and Boots or their YouTube channel where they have a ton of fun videos featuring their usual characters Mario and Fafa the Groundhog.
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The Flashpoint Paradox
The Flashpoint Paradox 2013
While I haven’t been able to make it to the theaters these past couple weeks to catch up on a lot of the big superhero movies, I did manage to watch DC’s latest animated venture The Flashpoint Paradox which manages to continue The Dark Knight Returns’ trend of pushing the limits of a PG-13 rating with a very adult story and some graphic violence. That said, I’m a big sucker for time travel, and especially timeline altering movies. I always loved those episodes of Star Trek, and I even quite liked the first Butterfly Effect. This is right alongside one of those with a great alternate timeline brought about by Professor Zoom using his super speed to go back in time and alter something, and somehow the Flash retains his memories of his former life, but not his former powers. In this reality, his mom is alive, but Aquaman and Wonder Woman are fighting a war that’s about to destroy the entire Earth. The scale of this movie is pretty epic, the violence is devastating, the themes are mature, and it does great justice to the character the Flash. This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, and it probably won’t be the last, but this has come close to being my favorite DC Animation once again.
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The Top Ten Bad Superhero Movies
After finishing up the Toxic Avenger series, I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of the top ten bad superhero movies. That is to say, ten of the cheesiest, worst, and yet amazingly fun to watch superhero movies. There are no good movies on this list, but I think every single one of them are a blast to watch, even more so if you are in the company of like minded friends and/or your favorite mind-altering substance. So sit up, kick back a few cold ones, and enjoy these monuments to bad moviemaking, with capes.
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Filmwhys #8 Seven Samurai and the Toxic Avenger
Coming right back atcha with episode 8 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film podcast where my guest is Nick Jobe of Your Face! who asks me why I haven’t seen Seven Samurai, a great classic film by Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. And I ask him why he hadn’t seen The Toxic Avenger, one of the more entertaining of Troma Films B-Movies, and the reason why I ended up watching all of the Toxic Avenger movies.
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Toxic Crusaders
Toxic Crusaders: The Movie 1991
Just when I thought I was done with the Toxic Avenger I noticed that they had collected some of the cartoon episodes and made it movie length. Not only that, but it’s currently available to watch on YouTube on Troma’s official YouTube channel, though for some reason the four live action Toxie movies aren’t available anymore. It’s a weird concept to turn a campy movie with so much sex and violence into a children’s cartoon. Something similar had been done before with Rambo having been made into a cartoon, but this at least has a superhero angle going for it. The animation is typical low quality like many of the mass produced cartoon properties of the 80’s and early 90’s. The writing is very formulaic, the voice acting is generally below average, but it’s sprinkled with moments of humor that hit me in just the right way, and the formulas fell right along with many of the cheesy cartoons I grew up with and I didn’t hate watching it by a longshot.
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Citizen Toxie
Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV 2000
This is the most recent Toxic Avenger movie to come from Troma films, at least until the slowly developing sequel Toxic Twins finally gets made. Apparently the writer/director suffers from procrasti-pation, a cross between procrastination and constipation, at least according to the teaser. But anyway, this movie feels like it already exists in practically a different universe. There’s no direct follow up from Toxie part 2 or 3, in fact his girlfriend is back to being blind. There are plenty of other additions to the movie that make it seem like they’ve been there all along, like Toxie’s sidekick Lardass or his ability to change into a hot bikini babe. There’s also a lot more nudity in this movie, there are more breasts in part 4 than there were in parts 1 through 3 combined, though there’s always a layer of crass humor to undercut any possible sexiness. This movie also has plenty of “star” power, ranging from Stan Lee who voices the opening and ending narration, famous porn star Ron Jeremy, Troma property Kabukiman, and not-exactly-stars-but-I-recognized-them stand up comedians the Skylar Brothers. And also more than any of the previous movies, this film is filled with humor that is based on being offensive. It is still a cheesy B-movie, and as far as my enjoyment level goes, it is much better than parts 2 & 3, though I’m not sure it captured the original intent or charm of the first movie.
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The Toxic Avenger Part III
The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie 1989
After the drop in entertainment quality between the first and second Toxie movie, I didn’t expect very much from The Last Temptation, and aside from a couple minor moments, it follows along the exact same path as Part II. There’s the childlike exposition narration, the usual over the top hammy acting, though another thing I noticed this time around was the horrible pacing. Even though the effects are nothing to write home about, they often linger on them as if they were a multi-million dollar set piece, complete with reaction shots of crowds gasping and screaming as if they’re watching something absolutely horrifying, and while a case could be made for that, they’re often watching something that they should be cheering for in an odd way, rather than screaming in terror over. I’m hoping that what I’ve heard holds true and the final installment brings it back up a notch, if not in actual movie quality, at least in entertainment value, which as fans of bad movies know are not always the same thing.
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Filmwhys #7 Rocky and Under the Red Hood
I’m back with another episode of Filmwhys, or the Why Haven’t You Seen this film podcast. This time around my guest is Joe Guiliano from Two Dude Review and The As You Watch Podcast who asks me why I haven’t seen the Stallone classic Rocky, and I ask him why he hasn’t seen one of DC Animation’s best movies, Under the Red Hood.
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The Toxic Avenger Part 2
The Toxic Avenger Part 2 1989
Since The Toxic Avenger was Troma’s first real hit, it’s no surprise that it became a sequel, and when that sequel originally ended up being over 4 hours long, it turned into 2 sequels. There are a large number of changes from the first movie to the second. Almost the entire cast was changed up, everyone from Toxie’s mother and girlfriend to Toxie himself, even being changed within the movie. The tone more or less remains the same gore-filled action comedy with hammy acting and cartoonish sound effects, though I didn’t have as much fun watching this one as I did the first one. I think they realized what they had and tried too hard to recreate it, giving it a much less charming feel to it. There’s also some odd choices in budget, while it feels like they spent more time or money on Toxie’s makeup, the fake eye moves occasionally, and there are some added effects used later in the movie. And yet there also seems to be less money spent on the other effects. A few people get shot, but there are no gunshot wounds or any blood at all, and the gory death scenes felt much tamer and sillier. If there wasn’t also a larger amount of nudity, I would almost think that they were considering to aim for a PG-13 rating. There are still some laughs to be had, but it’s far less entertaining on the bad movie scale.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 