Blog Archives
TV Nights: The Flash #1
The Flash Week 1
Episode: Pilot
Original Airdate: 10-7-14
Even though I haven’t been watching Arrow, this was the show that I’ve been most excited for this season. I’m a big fan of the Flash and everything I’ve heard about this show before now has been pretty positive. They want to take it in a more sci-fi direction, they have John Wesley Shipp as an homage to the 90’s short lived Flash series which I’m glad I caught up with a few months back, and they have Danielle Panabaker who I remember from when she was in Sky High. It has a lot more of what’s missing from the rest of the superhero TV shows this season: fun. Yes, there are some serious moments, but there is a lot more fun in this show than Gotham, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., or even Arrow from what I gather. Those other shows do have their fun moments, and Flash has a serious side too, but this is the right way to do a superhero on TV right now. It’s the closest thing to a Marvel movie brought to the small screen, which is funny because it is a DC property.
Read the rest of this entry
TV Nights: Gotham #3
Gotham Week 3
Episode: Balloonman
Original Airdate: 10-6-2014
This will be the last week where I post my thoughts on each episode on its own post. Starting next week, I’ll be discussing Gotham, S.H.I.E.L.D., the Flash, and eventually Constantine on a combined post covering all the shows until I decide to stop watching some of them. But Gotham has been a strange creature these past few weeks. Each time I watch the show, I do enjoy it quite a bit. But then after the credits roll and I begin to think about it a bit in order to write my thoughts on it, I start poking holes in it. Whether it’s the Penguin, or Fish Mooney, or Jim Gordon himself, there’s a lot of elements of the show that just rub me the wrong way as it pertains to the Batman mythos, at least the corner of the mythos that I know about. This was the first episode where I started poking holes in the show as I was watching it, but at this point there is still enough good in the show for me to latch onto to stick with it for a while longer at least.
Read the rest of this entry
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #2.2
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 Week 2
Episode: Heavy is the Head
Original Airdate: 9-30-2014
Once again, I’m a bit late with this week’s recap of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Depending on how much I have to say about Gotham next week, I will likely start combining my thoughts on the superhero TV shows of the week into a separate post, though the Flash and Constantine pilots will still get their own posts. Anyway, S.H.I.E.L.D. continues strong into its second season as things continue to have been shaken up since the events from the end of the first season. The team still has a lot of rebuilding to do, and it has to reassess their threats from various sources including Hydra, the government, and yet another group who we get to see a little bit more of in this episode.
Read the rest of this entry
Graphic Horror: The Scribbler
The Scribbler 2014
For a couple years now I’ve avoided falling into the trap that nearly every other movie blog falls into during this time of year: reviewing horror movies for October. But since I started my Graphic Horror tag this past March, I thought it was due time to go further into the very shallow selection of horror movies and thrillers adapted from graphic novels and comic books. To kick things off, I’m taking a look at the movie that just released on VOD a couple weeks ago adapted from Daniel Schaffer’s comic the Scribbler. The story itself is a weird mix of Girl, Interrupted, Fight Club, and the Cell. Katie Cassidy in the lead role was one of the best parts of the movie, though I thought things got a little muddled in the direction. It also had a rather surprising and unusual turn towards the end that I will be discussing, so spoilers abound. Overall I enjoyed it, but the concept felt a bit stronger than the execution.
Read the rest of this entry
Mercury Man
Mercury Man 2006
It’s October, so you know what that means? Horror movies! And this year I am going to be no different, but before I get to some horror and thriller movies based on some graphic novels, I used my free month of Netflix to check out a superhero film that I didn’t have on my list and hadn’t seen around anywhere else. It’s a Thai movie from 2006 that could easily be considered a Thai variation of a Wuxia movie which I don’t cover here, but still draws enough inspiration from Western superhero movies that I thought I had to include it. It also follows pretty closely to the standard superhero origin story, though with a lot more martial arts fight sequences rather than superpower showcases. Also, while the film is mostly in Thai with subtitles, when the villains are speaking to each other, they tend to speak in heavily accented English for reasons I never quite understood. It was different enough to be a refreshing change of pace compared to most of the superhero movies I see, but in the end it still followed the same basic story arc.
Read the rest of this entry
TV Nights: Gotham #2
Gotham Week 2
Episode: Selina Kyle
Original Airdate: 9-29-2014
After getting through the first episode of Gotham I thought that it had some promise but ultimately suffered from Pilot Syndrome. It had too many plots, too many characters, and too many potential Batman villains that they introduced. But the potential was there, there are some great characters like Donal Logue’s Harvey Bullock, and the look of the show has a great feel to it. This second episode gave the show a chance to dial things back a little bit and bring things into a tighter focus. And while it was still drawing a few too many threads across Gotham, the overall quality of the episode was much better than the Pilot and I’m looking forward to seeing what Gotham will bring in the future.
Read the rest of this entry
TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #2.1
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 Week 1
Episode: Shadows
Original Airdate: 9-23-14
While I had a somewhat disappointing reaction to Gotham, I was very excited for the return of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and it did not disappoint. There was a lot of shaking things up at the end of the first season and it wasted no time in getting right to the heart of the action while still tossing in a few hints at a bigger picture. And on top of everything else, it took what happened into directions that I didn’t exactly expect it to, and opened with a taste of what’s to come with the other Marvel TV series showing up later on, Agent Carter. I’m glad that I stuck with this show from the very beginning, and I have high hopes for where it’s going to end up throughout the rest of this season. As usual, I won’t be shying away from spoilers so be warned if you haven’t watched the episode before reading this.
Read the rest of this entry
TV Nights: Gotham #1
TV Nights: Gotham
Episode: Pilot
Original Airdate: 9-22-14
It’s time to start the biggest superhero and comic book TV seasons in many years if not ever and Gotham is the first one out of the gate, though I’m probably one of the last ones out of the gate to get a post written about it. Based on the trailer, and what the show was going for I had high hopes for this show. I thought it could be an interesting take on the superhero trend, something along the lines of how Lois and Clark focused more on the relationship between the two rather than the superhero aspect. This show is supposedly going to take a closer look at the Gotham PD side of the equation rather than the supervillain side of things. And since this takes place when Bruce Wayne is still a boy and there is no such thing as Batman there should also be no such thing as supervillains yet. Instead, they are all still merely criminals before crossing the line once the door has been opened for the overly theatrical. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if they delve into some early theatrics later in the season, especially if they start struggling in the ratings department. Overall, I initially liked what I saw, but as I started reading other people’s negative reactions, I started to see more of the holes in the show and am actually a little glad that I have waited so long before writing this.
Read the rest of this entry
Sin City
Sin City 2005
After hearing the reviews for the disappointing sequel Sin City: A Dame To Kill For I had decided to wait to revisit the original movie until after seeing it for myself. I thought that doing it this way around would remind myself of how good it could have been rather than setting myself up for disappointment. And in that respect it worked exactly the way I hoped it would. There are still a handful of issues that I noticed in the sequel that were also present in the original, but for the most part, the original still holds up almost 10 years later while the sequel is the one that feels dated. I don’t specifically remember seeing this when it was originally in theaters. I was a fan of Robert Rodgriguez from Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn but knew nothing about the Sin City books. But I liked it enough to get the three disc DVD edition that has a version where you can see the four stories individually and extended. It also came with a mini reprint of the comics used in the movie so you can see how visually similar they ended up being. There’s just something about this movie that can be felt, the actors are better, the cinematography is better, there’s just a more intense feeling that everyone involved knew they were doing something different. This was an experiment in filmmaking, the digital cameras were fresh. Rodgriguez was able to change up his style of directing, letting the cameras roll continuously and let the takes flow naturally. There was just an unspoken buzz in the air that can still be felt, something that was absent in A Dame to Kill For.
Read the rest of this entry
Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro
Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro aka Samson vs. the Vampire Women 1962
It’s probably not too surprising that I occasionally bite off a little bit more than I can chew. And/or I am a very absent minded person and will easily forget things if I get distract- Squirrel! A few weeks ago, I agreed to take part in a blogathon hosted by Movies Silently called Accidentally Hilarious where bloggers would take a look at classic bad films that are so bad they are hilarious even though they were never intended to be comedies. There wasn’t a lot for me to choose from, and many of those early superhero films are hard to find, or are Batman which is an intentional comedy and also is just one year after the cutoff date of 1965. So I chose this film which is part of a long line of Santo films. This one is probably the most famous of them as it’s one of the only ones that got an English language dub and was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Santo is a Luchador superhero who may or may not actually have superhuman strength, but does occasionally battle supernatural forces of evil. I’m not sure if I’ll go back and check out other Santo movies, especially after watching this one. And while I did watch the English dub of this movie where he is constantly referred to as Samson, I will be referring to him as his original Spanish name, Santo.
Read the rest of this entry
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 