Blog Archives
The 5 Obstructions Blogathon: #3 Super
I don’t do a whole lot of blogathons on this site, but Nostra over at My Film Views often comes up with some great ones, so it’s no surprise that I decided to take part in this multi-month blogathon called The 5 Obstructions. Basically it’s a series of 5 challenges, 1 a month that creates a writing challenge, or obstruction. It’s designed to take bloggers out of their comfort zone and think outside of the box when it comes to writing. The first one was to write a review of a movie that was the opposite of how you really felt about the movie, a positive review of a bad movie or vice-versa. The second one was the easiest for me as it was merely to include an interview along with the review and while I regularly feature interviews, most bloggers don’t. And that brings us to our third obstruction: write a review that consists entirely of sentences copy & pasted from other reviews of the movie. I chose the polarizing movie Super, or at least I thought it was polarizing. As it turns out, every review I picked mainly out of sites that I follow were quite positive. I did make a small handful of changes to pronouns to help readability a bit, noted by [brackets] and all the reviews I pulled these quotes from are linked at the bottom for your reading pleasure.
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Filmwhys #12 Rope and Planet Hulk
It’s time once again for another episode of Filmwhys, or the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film podcast where I have a returning guest for the first time, webnovelist Stefan Gagne from Pixelscapes who asks me why I haven’t seen one of Hitchcock’s more experimental films, Rope which is only the third Hitchcock movie that I’ve ever seen. And I ask him why he hasn’t seen one of Marvel’s animated offerings, Planet Hulk.
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Kick-Ass 2
Kick-Ass was a great hyper-violent superhero satire directed by Matthew Vaughn back in 2010, a few years later nearly everyone returns for the sequel minus the director. I was a big fan of the original Kick-Ass and had high hopes for the sequel following some fun looking trailers and the addition of Jim Carrey to the cast, despite his public disapproval of the film’s violence a couple months ago. The original had a nice commentary about some of the realities of real-life superheroes contrasted with some balls to the wall stylish action scenes involving an 11 year old girl and a not insignificant amount of blood. The sequel tries to bring back what worked in the original, but only hits its mark about half of the time. It’s still a good movie and it’s great to see Hit Girl back to kick some ass, but it just never reaches the original in terms of flair, humor, or message, and when it comes close it feels more like a rehash of the original rather than a return. There are a few possible surprises in this movie which I will mention so here’s your obligatory spoiler warning if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
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Planet Hulk
I’ve viewed and reviewed a lot of DC Animation movies, but I haven’t gotten around to nearly as many Marvel Animation features. There aren’t quite as many of them, and they aren’t quite as high quality as their DC counterparts, but they are still often times an enjoyable diversion. I saw Planet Hulk for the first time a couple years ago when I was on a big animation kick and was going through most of the Marvel and DC Animated titles that were out at the time, and of the Marvel releases, this one was my favorite, even though there was one major problem I had. This movie is Planet Hulk, and of course the Hulk is the main character in it, but it is not the Hulk that I’ve come to know. The story is not what I would expect the Hulk to fit into, and I don’t recognize any name in the voice cast outside of Kevin Michael Richardson. But it still manages to be a fun watch and worth a look while you’re waiting for the next DC title to come out.
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Filmwhys #11 The Godfather and Masters of the Universe
I think it will be hard top this one for quite a while because today for the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast my guest is Joel from the Lamb who asks me the biggest question, why haven’t I seen the Godfather, which is such a well known and well made movie that it really needs no further introduction. And in return I ask him why he hasn’t seen Masters of the Universe. In my defense, I’ve known that Joel has the occasional love of cheesy action movies and while not everyone can enjoy Masters of the Universe, I thought he very well might.
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Second Opinion: Lego Batman the Movie – DC Superheroes Unite
For a little while, I’ve actually wanted to allow other people to share their opinions about superhero movies more than just in the comments section. And while I’d rather not post someone’s opinion on a movie that I haven’t seen or reviewed yet because I am still adamant in my quest to watch and review every superhero movie I can find, I thought it would be interesting to get someone else’s opinion on a movie that I’ve already reviewed. I’m sure sometimes it will be quite different, and in some cases it will be very similar. If you’re interested in sharing your opinion on a superhero movie, just let me know, especially if your opinion differs from my own. But today’s opinion comes from someone with similar tastes as me, and I often use him as a good estimation of whether or not I will like a movie more than just the general critic consensus and he’s got plenty of reviews under his belt over at Today I Watched A Movie.
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Filmwhys #10 Brokeback Mountain and Megamind
I apologize for the lack of posts recently, I’ve been very busy at work this week and have had other things in the works that I wasn’t able to work on until this weekend. I’ve got a great post coming up in a day or two so keep an eye out. Until then, here’s another great episode of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film Podcast where my guest is an old friend of mine, Joel who asks me why I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s epic tale of forbidden love between two cowboys in the 60’s. And I ask him why he hasn’t seen Megamind, a great animated comedy that turns the concept of a supervillain on its head.
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R.I.P.D.
R.I.P.D. 2013
While I have heard all the generally bad reviews for this movie already, barring a couple, I went into this movie really wanting to like it. I felt like the MIB parallels would be there, but they wouldn’t really bother me. And while I was right about that part, the only problem I had was that the movie as a whole never really stood out as anything special. Not in the action department, the acting, the romance, not even the comedy. It was a generally mediocre movie that I do admit made me chuckle a few times so it’s not all bad. I’m also going to refrain from making any of the obvious play on words from the title of R.I.P.D. so there’s that.
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Filmwhys #9 Big Trouble in Little China and Kick-Ass
Welcome back my friends to the show that will probably eventually end, but for now it’s episode #9 of the Why Haven’t You Seen This Film podcast where my guest is Dan Heaton of Public Transportation Snob who asks me why I haven’t seen Big Trouble in Little China, which isn’t a typical classic or modern classic, but it’s a fun cult classic that’s right up my alley. And I ask him why he hadn’t seen Kick-Ass, a fun & violent superhero flick with a sequel coming out very soon.
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The Flashpoint Paradox
The Flashpoint Paradox 2013
While I haven’t been able to make it to the theaters these past couple weeks to catch up on a lot of the big superhero movies, I did manage to watch DC’s latest animated venture The Flashpoint Paradox which manages to continue The Dark Knight Returns’ trend of pushing the limits of a PG-13 rating with a very adult story and some graphic violence. That said, I’m a big sucker for time travel, and especially timeline altering movies. I always loved those episodes of Star Trek, and I even quite liked the first Butterfly Effect. This is right alongside one of those with a great alternate timeline brought about by Professor Zoom using his super speed to go back in time and alter something, and somehow the Flash retains his memories of his former life, but not his former powers. In this reality, his mom is alive, but Aquaman and Wonder Woman are fighting a war that’s about to destroy the entire Earth. The scale of this movie is pretty epic, the violence is devastating, the themes are mature, and it does great justice to the character the Flash. This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, and it probably won’t be the last, but this has come close to being my favorite DC Animation once again.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 