Blog Archives
Mystery Men
Mystery Men 1999
I more or less just picked a random movie to watch today, I guess it does share a lot of similarities to both Dr. Horrible and Scott Pilgrim, especially to the latter as it was a box office bomb, grossing about half of its sixty million dollar budget. I think it’s considered somewhat of a cult classic, though I think it’s mostly just forgotten. One of the few things it has going for it is its unique cast, mixing offbeat comic actors like Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, and Paul Reubens with Geoffrey Rush and William H. Macy. There are all sorts of big, or at least moderate budget effects combined with a large number of fart jokes. It’s hard to tell exactly what audience this movie was aiming for, but I generally enjoyed it.
FTMN Poll: What series should be rebooted?
The superhero/comic book/sci-fi landscape right now is filled with reboots, from Spider-Man, to Judge Dredd, to Robocop, to Total Recall, to Superman, to Green Arrow, and even Beauty and the Beast. Some may be good, some may be crap. And on top of that, some of the original’s are hard to live up to. I have no doubt that the new Dredd will be better than the original Judge Dredd, but Robocop is going to be a tougher sell for me. So far, I’ve liked everything I’ve seen from the reboots I’ve listed, although Beauty and the Beast feels like the weakest one for my tastes, they’re just moving too far away from the original Linda Hamilton/ Ron Perlman version and making it for the pretty faces of the CW audience.
But what I’m asking today is what series would you actually want to see a reboot of? I’ve listed several choices from the misguided take on Spawn, to ones that haven’t seen action outside of TV like Wonder Woman. Is there a comic actor today who could bring new life to the Mask or the Tick? The Ninja Turtles may have been squashed for now, but do they deserve a true to their origins style reboot? What about the Punisher, they’ve tried a few times and haven’t quite gotten him right yet? There’s also reboots of Fantastic Four, The Crow, and Daredevil in the works, though they’re all still pretty early in their productions and may still fall through, do any of them deserve a chance? Is there any others that I’ve failed to mention? Let your voice be heard, tell me what you think.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog
Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog 2008
This may seem an odd choice to review, it’s a musical, the main character is a villain, it was made to appear on the internet, and it’s only 42 minutes long. It actually seems much more like a choice for a Superhero Shorts. But it’s become such a phenomenon that I had to give it it’s own review. It was made during the 2008 writer’s strike over a very short period of time and yet it somehow managed to become this incredibly popular thing that really helped pave the way for all of the internet media we have today. I mean, there’s lots of people that actually make a living from revenue earned from their web series and videos that they post on YouTube. I won’t go so far as to say that Dr. Horrible made all that happen, but it did help prove that it could happen. When you look at it now, it can be hard to see why it was so popular, it was a musical, it was about a villain created for this short, none of the stars were very big names, and it was going to be released for free on the internet. But one person was able to make it a success: Joss Whedon. His talent and his online following helped make it what it is today. I’ve watched it over a dozen times, and I love it every time.
Superhero Shorts: Gremlins 3 Warm Up
Superhero Shorts: Gremlins 3 Warm Up
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 Sacha Feiner who created an absolutely astounding fan version of a scene in Gremlins 2. In the movie, there’s a scene where the film breaks and it turns out that the Gremlins are messing with the projector in the theater. For the original VHS release, that scene was updated so that it looked like the VHS messed up and the Gremlins invaded a John Wayne movie. But for the DVD release, they just went back to the original version. Sacha decided that it needed a version that was made for the DVD release, so he made one. But it wasn’t just a simple thing, he actually created brand new Gremlins based on the original designs and had them cause a ruckus in other movies. But don’t take it from me, check it out right below.
Follow Friday: Front Room Cinema
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. This week I was directed by John over at The Droid You’re Looking For to check out Front Room Cinema aka FRC which is a great site with a tons of interesting features and reviews.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 2010
I have heard all sorts of praise for this movie since it came out, even though it seemed destined to become an immediate cult movie. It was a pretty dismal failure at the box office, making just over half of it’s fairly impressive $60 million budget. I find that it’s actually rather fitting that I watched this movie after watching Unbreakable. Because it’s like different sides of the same coin. Where Unbreakable was understated, slow paced, and ultra realistic, Scott Pilgrim is over the top, fast paced, and extremely stylized. Yet it can be said about both of them that there is no other movie out there quite like either of them. I went into this movie knowing very little about it. I knew the basic plot that Scott falls in love with an alt chick and has to fight her seven exes, and there’s a resounding comic book slash classic video game slash anime influence. That’s putting it mildly. It’s like an anime ate a comic book while playing a video game and had a love child with a superhero movie and this is the resulting child of that event. It’s definitely not a movie for everyone, I wasn’t sure where it was going at the beginning, but once I got into it I really enjoyed it.
Are reboots of comic book movies more forgivable?
Before I get into today’s topic, I want to give a quick shoutout to At the Back who passed me the Versatile Blogger Award. I really do appreciate the award for what it is, he thinks this site is in his top 10 list of blogs. But I’m not going to participate in the meme. If you follow me on Twitter, you did get to hear 10 random facts about me, but that’s as far as I’m going with it. I’ll stick with my Follow Fridays to share the blogging love. But today I wanted to go back to The Amazing Spider-Man. It’s a great movie, did well in the box office, though not quite as well as any of the Raimi movies yet, and was received rather well critically. But the thing hanging in the air in almost every single discussion about the movie was that it was too soon for a reboot. So my question for today is, should we be more forgiving of reboots of comic book movies?
Unbreakable
Unbreakable 2000
I’ve been a fan of M. Night Shyamalan a lot longer than most. He snuck onto the scene in the nineties with a pair of low budget independent movies (Praying with Anger and Wide Awake). But in 1999 he made The Sixth Sense and was instantly hailed as the next Hitchcock. Instead of another psychological thriller, as everyone anticipated, Shyamalan followed with Unbreakable, an understated, ultra-realistic, and altogether atypical take on the superhero origin movie. Although it went on to earn more than $100 million at the box office, many still considered it failure since it didn’t live up to the $300 million take of The Sixth Sense. Unbreakable shatters the mold created by previous comic book adaptations: there are no big budget effects or action sequences, no costumes or masks, and no secret identities. Nevertheless, it is every ounce a superhero movie, and easily claims a spot in my personal top ten.
FTMN Poll: What should I watch next?
Click here for the poll on Facebook. The Polldaddy polls used by WordPress weren’t working the way I wanted them to, but on Facebook it’s very easy to add your own option so list whatever you want. It’s time once again to ask that age old question of what I should watch next. I’ve left this poll wide open, so just type in your choice, or pick a choice someone else has already put down. I have two other options because the system won’t let me create essentially a blank poll. Tomorrow’s movie will be Unbreakable, but it’s wide open after that. If you need some suggestions, check out the List – by Date for a big list of superhero movies. Or you can check below for DVDs that I own, but haven’t reviewed. Many of them I haven’t even watched yet because I bought them from the bargain bin for the specific purpose of watching them for this site. Note – I have both Nolan Batman movies, but I’m saving them for just before Dark Knight Rises.
The Amazing Spider-Man
The Amazing Spider-Man 2012
So I mentioned before back when I watched the Avengers, that it had been four years since I had been to the theaters to see a movie, and this movie has been the second one so far this year to drag me out of my house even in this crazy heat to go to the theater and watch on the big screen. It was totally worth it. This was also a different experience for me because I managed to make a split and let Jena and her mother watch Brave the next theater over while I watched Spider-Man with one of my friends. I think one of the biggest questions anyone has about this movie is if it is too similar to the Raimi movies to make a difference on the audiences. I personally think it managed to take most of the best parts of Spider-Man 2, leave out some of the weaker parts of Spider-Man, and add in things from the comic that never made it into the original trilogy and come out with something at least as good as Spider-Man 2, which was my favorite of the original 3. I think it’s a worthy start to a new series and I’m all for the Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 