Blog Archives
Superhero Shorts: Batman’s Night Out
Superhero Shorts: Batman’s Night Out
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts, where I take a look at a superhero short film and interview the creator. This week I was able to get a hold of Sean Ward, the producer behind the recent short Batman’s Night Out which has gotten over 1 million views on YouTube. Below you can Toronto Batman interacting with the citizens of Toronto with amusing results. Enjoy.
The Shadow
The Shadow 1994
One thing that I’ve realized recently and yet still haven’t gotten in the habit of doing is to make this first paragraph of the film review an interesting little caption on what is to come in the rest of the review. It’s the first thing someone reads when they’re looking at the post from another page and yet just like I’m doing right now, I use this precious space talking about some random topic. But at least for the regular readers, I hope that’s just an interesting quirk that adds to my personality. Yesterday evening I looked up the movie to finish out this loosely themed collection of superheroes with guns and/or classic pulp heroes that started with The Punisher movies, and ends with The Shadow. I don’t remember when I first saw The Shadow, it has been many years since I’ve seen it but I remembered enjoying it. Watching it again now I notice a lot more little things that are an interesting little spin on the traditional superhero, it has a lot of noir charm, and an impressive cast of actors. The Shadow still holds up quite well in my eyes.
Will the Avengers be an origin movie?
It’s the middle of April and I want to take a quick moment here at the beginning of this post to say thanks. Thank you to everyone that’s been visiting and commenting on my site. I’ve tried to put a lot of work into this and seeing the site grow makes me very happy. I’d love to hear feedback on what you like, what you don’t like, and any ideas of what you’d like to see more of. I’m looking forward to getting ready for the Avengers next month and re-watching all the lead up movies including the only one I haven’t seen before, Iron Man 2. I could also use some help coming up with names, should this Tuesday blog post have a name? I’m also not sold on “Superhero Shorts” mainly because I most enjoy the interview part of the article, and “Superhero Shorts” does not convey the idea of an interview. I also love hearing suggestions on what I should watch next, got any ideas? Leave a comment, let me know what I should watch after the Avengers and before I start prepping for the new Spiderman. Speaking of which, that brings me to today’s blog topic, do we need more origin stories?
The Green Hornet
The Green Hornet 2011
I had never really been familiar with The Green Hornet other than the fact that I was aware of the old television series that had Bruce Lee as Kato, but I never knew if it was supposed to be a fun campy show or if it was more serious than the Adam West Batman television show. I’ve also been a big fan of Seth Rogen as well as Michel Gondry and I really enjoyed the movie the first time I saw it. Watching it again I noticed a lot more flaws than I originally saw, but it’s still a pretty fun movie. I was especially happy that I got the chance to watch this movie on blu-ray and I don’t that often get to break out the blu-ray player for something other than a DVD.
Superhero Shorts: City of Heroes Incarnate
Superhero Shorts: City of Heroes – Incarnate
Right down in my bio it says that I’m a City of Heroes player, the first superhero MMO, and the best one in my opinion. I’m currently taking a break from it partly because I needed a breather from it, and partly because this blog takes up a lot of free time that CoH used to occupy. One of the best things going for CoH that even those who don’t like the game can’t argue is the game’s community. They are a creative and friendly bunch. There are several players who make machinima videos for the game and one of the best and definitely the most popular is Samuraiko. I had many videos to choose from, but I decided to focus on the one that had the most narrative to it, was tied to the game, and is a pretty good watch by itself. It explores the moment when the lead Hero of the game, Statesman, and the lead villain of the game, Lord Recluse, gain their powers for the first time and become Incarnates.
Robocop
Robocop 1987
This movie wasn’t on my original list of movies to watch for this year, it’s not a traditional superhero movie, and I personally considered it more of a sci-fi movie. But I recently read what was originally intended as an April Fools joke at Fog’s Movie Reviews as one of his Movies That Everyone Should See. He thought that it wasn’t that great of a movie with too much cheese and too much violence, but he wrote the article very seriously expecting the commenters to balk at the movie’s inclusion alongside classics such as Citizen Kane, Big, and Stand By Me. But instead of balking, the comments heartily agreed with the inclusion except for a few outliers who realized it may have been an April Fools prank. It definitely made me want to see it, and so I did. As I mentioned, I was initially reluctant to include it, but it did spawn a comic book series, and when compared to a superhero like The Punisher, he’s got a better costume, similar firepower, and more of what could be considered super power. So here we are.
Why are there so many bad superhero movies?
I’ve gone back and forth so many times trying to figure out what to write this week. I’ve thought about writing on The Avengers, origins, sequels, and probably a half dozen topics that I’ve since forgotten about. I finally settled on this topic, why are there so many bad superhero movies? There are lots of great superhero comic books, and comic books are a visual medium, so you would think that moving from one visual medium to another would be easier than say adapting a novel, right? And yet it was so easy to come up with a list of the 33 worst superhero movies, and I can probably think of a dozen high profile movies that didn’t even make that list. The number of really great superhero movies, there are probably only a couple dozen or so, and many of those have only been made in the past few years.
The Spirit
The Spirit 2008
Finally getting around to watching our rental copy of Frank Miller’s The Spirit. It’s funny that I watch and write about all of these superhero movies, but as far as comic book artists and writers I don’t really know all that much. Although I suppose I know a heck of a lot more than the average person, I know exceedingly few compared to a comic book fan. I’m familiar with the name Frank Miller largely due to his work on Sin City with Robert Rodriguez, and then instead of Sin City 2 which seems to be in development hell as it was rumored to be worked on shortly after the release of the first movie and yet seven years after its release there’s still no word on it. Instead Frank Miller went on his own to create another movie very similar in style to Sin City, only it features a classic noir detective character called The Spirit.
Superhero Shorts: Super Powers
Superhero Shorts: Super Powers
In this series I’ve already taken a look at a good spectrum of different videos, a parody, a comedy, a serious video, a new video. This week I’m taking a look at a short series of videos from TheMrMenagerie which showcases various special effects done by himself with a bit of humor added to it in a series called simply Super Powers. Below I’m featuring the first episode featuring the power of fire. And once again I was lucky enough to get a hold of TheMrMenagerie to ask him a few questions which you can read below my review.
The Punisher
The Punisher 2004
I’ve been a fan of this movie ever since it came out, I’m not sure if I saw it in theaters, but if I didn’t, then I saw it shortly afterwards. I have yet to see the extended edition of this movie but I would really like to sometime. Extended editions aren’t always improvements to the movie, I know several times that I watched the extended edition of a movie without realizing it, and I know in the case of Superman: The Movie, it felt like it was too drawn out and I think I would have preferred watching the theatrical version rather than the extended edition. But other times, movies get cut down for other reasons and the extended edition is actually the preferred version, like in the case of Daredevil. But since I already own the regular version of this DVD, I went ahead and watched it tonight instead of watching The Spirit that we rented last night so I could finish up the non-trilogy of Punisher movies. There were a few scenes that I didn’t care for as much as I did when I first watched the movie, but I still enjoyed it a ton more than either of the other Punisher movies I’ve watched this week.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 