Blog Archives
Superhero Shorts: Batfan
Superhero Shorts: Batfan
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a different superhero themed short film and get the creator of the film to answer a few interview questions. This week I’m talking with Anders Wotzke about his Batman parody, Batfan. Where he takes a simple concept and goes all the way with it, coming up with something pretty funny. As always, you can watch it right below, or you can check it out on his YouTube channel along with his many video reviews, you can also visit his movie site MovieDex.
Superhero Movie
Superhero Movie 2008
I was hoping that this would be the last bad movie I watched for a little while, but then Morgan from Morgan on Media pointed out this bizarre 80’s Australian superhero parody musical called the Return of Captain Invincible starring Alan Arkin and Christopher Lee, and after I looked up the trailer, it’s making me want to get back to some more classic cheesy superhero movies. At least after I watch Dick Tracy for our upcoming podcast, As You Watch. Which I should also mention that if you want to join in, I will gladly link any reviews to Dick Tracy so you can watch along with us, your deadline to get links in to me is Monday, August 27th. But back to today’s movie. I remember it being promoted as essentially a parody of all the superhero movies that were out at the time, though it primarily focused on the original Spider-Man movie, which was pretty dated even at the time considering that Spider-Man 3 came out before Superhero Movie. All of the other Superhero movie references are all just brief one-scene cameos, though the movie does stick with only parodying Marvel properties. I wasn’t much of a fan of the style of humor either, which basically consisted of playing a scene as close to Spider-Man as possible, then throwing in a sex/fart joke at the end.
Guest blogger: Is Spock a Superhero?
Welcome to the first guest post here at Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights. When I started this site, it was my idea to have it be a personal challenge to seek out, watch, and review superhero movies. And my overall goal was, and still is, to watch and review every superhero movie ever made. But this site has been growing and expanding as I keep getting new ideas and inspirations. I’m now on a daily schedule, and to help me meet that schedule, I could use a little bit of help. The first person that stepped in was Alan from The Great Movie Project. If you’d like to participate too, I’m accepting any “almost super” movie reviews for sci-fi/fantasy movies that aren’t quite superhero movies, but still have that heroic/comic book quality to them. I’m also accepting “second opinion” reviews, if you have a different viewpoint on a superhero movie that I’ve already reviewed. And finally, I’m accepting blog style articles like this one that takes a more general look at the superhero genre without being about one single movie. Today, Alan is looking at how Star Trek, and more specifically Spock relates to superheroes in cinema. And I’ll be back tomorrow (hopefully) finishing up my bad movie mini-marathon with Superhero Movie.
As You Watch Podcast #1
Our introductory episode where you can meet all of the hosts. Me, Vern from VideoVangaurd.com, Nick of Cinematic Katzenjammer, and Joe from Two Dude Review. We also talk about out top 3 films of all time, the movie releases for the week ending 8/17, and we play a little game. I hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back with episode #2 in two weeks. Click right here to listen to our premier episode. And tomorrow will be a brand new feature from a guest poster. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Name our new podcast
So we’ve got a new podcast coming out tomorrow, but we still haven’t decided on a name yet. I put up three of the most popular ones, so it’s up to you to vote on it, and you’ll be able to hear it tomorrow. So let’s hear those votes!
Update: Thanks for voting in the poll, but we ended up going with something different anyway. After much discussion, we named it “As you Watch Podcast”.
Son of the Mask
Son of the Mask 2005
After sitting through My Super Ex-Girlfriend, I thought I’d turn this into a mini marathon of bad superhero comedies. The Specials wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t that great either. And today’s movie trumps the both of them by a longshot. It rightly has a place on my earlier list of 33 of the worst superhero movies ever made. It shares some of the same mythology as Thor, and shares some of the same backstory as the Mask, but it goes in a completely different direction to try and make it into a more kid friendly, and seemingly therefore brainless, movie. There was not a single joke that made me laugh, I did not care about any of the characters, and the cartoonish action was a stale rehash of the actual cartoons that inspired it.
Superhero Shorts: #DirtyLaundry
Superhero Shorts: #Dirty Laundry
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a different superhero themed short film and get the creator of the film to answer a few interview questions. This week I’m pleased to say that I’m talking with Thomas Jane, who played the Punisher in the 2004 film, and reprised his role in a new short film created by his own production company Raw Studios. You can read our conversation below as usual, or for the first time, you can actually listen in. But first, you should check out the short film right below.
Follow Friday: Anomalous Material
Welcome to another edition of Follow Friday where each week I feature and interview a fellow blogger and follow their suggestion to another blog to feature next week. 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. This week I was directed by Bonjour Tristesse to check out Castor over at Anomalous Material.
The Specials
The Specials 2000
I continue with my spree of superhero comedies with a little known movie from 2000 called The Specials. It’s a low budget movie with a lot of moderately well known comedians or comic actors, like Rob Lowe and Thomas Hayden Church, playing what is essentially a third or fourth tier superhero group. It also seems to draw inspiration from other superhero comedies such as the Tick, where the majority of the plot revolves around what happens in between natural disasters and super villains. In fact, in this movie there’s not a single action scene, and only a slight hint of what the heroes powers actually are. Instead it revolves around what happens with their interpersonal relationship in a pseudo reality show format, complete with confessional moments talking directly to the camera. While it does have some funny moments, there’s really too much going on and too many characters to try and service, so it felt like most of the runtime tries to work all the characters into the plot more than it tries to be funny.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
My Super Ex-Girlfriend 2006
After watching Megamind the other day, I considered moving on to some more animated movies again, but I finally decided on a movie that’s been sitting in my collection for a couple months ever since I picked it up for two bucks at the used DVD store on clearance. I’ve been vaguely dreading the day I actually sat down to watch it because even from the trailers, I knew it was not my type of comedy, and boy was I ever right. Through the entire movie, there was only one moment where I wasn’t laughing at a joke because of how ridiculously stupid I thought it was. It also doesn’t help the movie that none of the characters are likable except for Anna Faris, and I don’t even remember her characters name, or any character’s names except for Jenny aka G-Girl played by Uma Thurman and Barry aka Bedlam played by Eddie Izzard. Which is why I will generally refer to the actors rather than the characters, because honestly they felt more like it was just the actors. The one saving grace, if you could call it that, is that it does feature a female superhero, which is quite rare in Hollywood. But it continues the trend set by all the other movies led by a female superhero by being a bad movie.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 