Blog Archives
Can a Kaiju be a Superhero?
It used to be that the only people that knew the term “Kaiju” were either the extreme Japanophiles or the extreme B-movie geeks that watched all the old classic monster movies. Now it feels like many more people know the term, either because of the shrinking of the world through the ease of communication, or because of the anticipation of Pacific Rim helping draw attention to the term. In case you don’t know, Kaiju is a term used for a giant monster used in a monster movie, the most iconic being Godzilla. Now, I have to admit that I have seen very few Kaiju movies, most of those have been the MST3K versions, especially the Gamera series. It’s hard to forget “Gamera is really neat, Gamera is full of meat, we believe in Ga-me-ra. And one of those has been the 1998 Americanized, or should I say the Emmeriched version. But one thing I do know, or at least am pretty sure of, is that often Godzilla is the “good” Kaiju battling the “bad” Kaiju. So, does that make Godzilla a superhero?
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Filmwhys #5 Run Lola Run and The Punisher
There’s never enough time to watch all the movies I want to, but now that Filmwhys is weekly, I’m working on it that much quicker. In this episode of Filmwhys, the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast, I’m joined by Dylan Fields of Man I Love Films who asks me why I haven’t seen Run Lola Run, the unique 1998 German film with a unique premise, pseudo-time travel, animation, and running. And I ask him why he hadn’t seen the 2004 Punisher film starring Thomas Jane.
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Superman & Batman Apocalypse
This movie was sort of billed as a sequel to the animated Superman/Batman Public Enemies, although it really is a stand-alone piece with only a brief callback to President Luthor’s impeachment to tie it to the previous movie. I hadn’t really heard much about this movie compared to some of the other DC animation so I really didn’t know what to expect, other than Darkseid considering the title of the movie is Apocalypse even though they went with the traditional spelling of the word rather than the typical comic book spelling of Apokolips. But even with the Superman & Batman title, this really could have been called Supergirl: Apokolips, as she is the main focus of the movie and Batman doesn’t get much screen time at all. But I am a big fan of Supergirl as a character so I really enjoyed this movie and it quickly rose as one of my favorite DC animations. From the great tone that’s set early on to the amazing action sequences towards the end, it’s really an all around great movie and one to check out if you haven’t seen it yet.
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Filmwhys #4: The Deer Hunter and Super
I’m back again on my journey to fill my large gaps in movie watching. In this episode of Filmwhys, or the why haven’t you seen this film podcast, my guest is Stefan Gagne, a web author who writes at StefanGagne.com who asks me why I haven’t seen one of Robert DeNiro’s early works The Deer Hunter. And in return, I ask him why he hasn’t seen James Gunn’s Super.
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FTMN Spotlight – Building Better Superheroes Infographic
Just last week I shared a Superman infographic and shortly afterwards I received another e-mail from someone else who made a superhero-related infographic. Eddie takes a look at various superhero reboots along with a few bits of trivia and decides which one is better. I don’t think I agree with his estimations 100%, but it looks pretty sweet and I’m happy to share it with you. Click to view the original at his site. Enjoy!
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My top 5 Superman movies
I had been planning on writing this for a little while now, but I decided to wait until Man of Steel had come out in the chance that it would take one of the spots on the list. For a little while I considered adding television shows into the mix, but I’m a bit of a completist and it’s been too long since I’ve seen the animated series and I’ve never seen the classic George Reeves Superman series. But considering that I’ve seen all of the major animated releases, I will of course be adding some of them.
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How Much is a Movie Allowed to Change
aka when did “Canon” become a bad word?
Obviously, I just watched Man of Steel this weekend, along with a ton of other people, but not everyone was happy with the way Superman was represented on screen. Of course with 75 years of different writers, artists, comic books, TV series, and movies there’s bound to be some discrepancies, but when does it become too far removed that it no longer resembles what the original character is supposed to represent? Personally, I’m on the side that is much more forgiving of liberties with the character. In music, I’m a big fan of remixes and mash ups, and in a way I think this translates to some of these characters. I like both the Sam Raimi and Mark Webb Spider-Man movies for different reasons, just how I like both the original Christopher Reeve Superman as well as Dean Cain’s Lois and Clark, Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel, Tom Welling’s Smallville, and several of the various animated incarnations. They are all very different from each other even though they are essentially the same character.
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Man of Steel
Man of Steel 2013
More than any other movie this summer, the one I’ve been looking forward to the most was Man of Steel, and at least right now just getting home from the theater, it did not disappoint. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but my hopes were high coming off of all the glorious trailers and the incredible cast. Even though it was treading on yet another origin story, I was willing to go with it. With Zack Snyder behind the helm, I was hoping for some visually amazing battles, and with Christopher Nolan overseeing the story, I was hoping for some real character depth. In my opinion, I got both. There may be some problems that come into my head after the fact, but at the moment I just had an amazing time at the movie theater, this review will likely have some spoilers so if you haven’t seen the movie. Go see it! Then come back and read my thoughts on it.
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Follow Friday: Isaacs Picture Conclusions
Follow Friday: The IPC
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. 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 Chris from Film Hipster to check out Isaacs Picture Conclusions aka the IPC.
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5 Obstructions #1: Batman & Robin
Obstruction #1: Write a good review of a bad movie
When I saw this blogathon I immediately thought it was a great idea, in fact, I even had the idea for the first “obstruction” a while back. For full details, check out the overview post over at Nostra’s My Film Views. But basically the idea is five writing challenges inspired by a movie that challenged the filmmaker to make the same movie five different times, each time with a different challenge, or obstruction. For the first obstruction, I figured I could easily find a bad movie that I’ve seen recently and I decided to make that challenge into a “sell out” review. That is to say I am writing this review as if I had been paid by the filmmakers to give it a good review, and I figured the best place to use that marketing double-speak is for the film Batman and Robin. Enjoy.
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