Blog Archives
TV Nights: This Week in Superhero TV 10/13 – 10/14
Yes, I know it’s a short week based on the title of this article but I’m technically only covering the shows that came out on Monday and Tuesday as I haven’t caught up with Arrow and Constantine doesn’t start until next week. Instead of cluttering my site with all of these shorter articles covering the superhero TV shows that are coming out this year, I decided to put my thoughts on all of them in a single post. Though Constantine’s pilot will get its own post next week. It’s been a good week with all the shows firing on all cylinders for the most part, either continuing their high standards, or in the case of Gotham showing some improvement. It’s a close call as to which show I like the most as both the Flash and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are really nailing what it means to be a superhero television show.
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Graphic Horror: Ritual
Ritual 2002
While a lot of people are familiar with the great television series Tales From the Crypt that ran for seven seasons on HBO, there are slightly fewer people who realize that they made a feature length film towards the end of their run called Demon Knight. Even fewer people realize that they made another movie the next year starring Dennis Miller called Bordello of Blood. And not even I realized that they had a this as a third movie to round out the trilogy. But when Bordello of Blood was a disaster at the box office, those plans were scrapped and the film, possibly still at the script stage was sold to Universal who stripped out all the references to the Cryptkeeper and Tales From the Crypt and released it as a solo film several years later. It wasn’t until even later that the Tales From the Crypt presents was restored when it was released on DVD and the Cryptkeeper scenes added back for the release, albeit with a very low budget version of the Cryptkeeper puppet that was also used in the DVD release of the television series which was around the same time. And after all this passing around, was the movie actually worth it? Not really. It felt like one of the mediocre episodes of the show drawn out into an hour forty-five. Mysteries were confusing for the sake of being a reveal closer towards the end, but it just made things confusing rather than interesting. And the final payoff was pretty weak anyway. I almost would have rather seen the Tales From the Crypt name left off of this movie.
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Graphic Horror: Tales From the Crypt Season 1
Welcome to my look back at one of my favorite horror TV shows of all time, Tales From the Crypt. While I never actually saw the show while it aired on HBO, instead I caught up with it several years later when it was airing late at night on Fox. And while I imagine that little to none of the blood and gore was cut out of the show, I did miss out on the plenty of sex and language that’s present throughout the show. When the show came out, it was an interesting experiment that throughout its run showcased many notable directors and actors. And while it was still on a somewhat smaller budget, especially during the early seasons, it managed to showcase some great special effects, especially when it came to the animatronic Cryptkeeper that opened and closed every episode with John Kassir’s iconic voice.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 