Blog Archives
Superhero Shorts: Wolverine’s Claws Suck
I was very happy with the first article in this Superhero Shorts series and I will definitely be continuing this series every Saturday. I’ve also gotten some good responses from filmmakers talking about their short films. This week I take a look at another comedy video by the YouTube filmmakers Greg and Lou. Wolverine’s Claws Suck is their only superhero themed comedy video made in 2009 with over 2 million views on YouTube. Lou from Greg and Lou graciously answered a few of my questions about their video, but first let’s take a look at it.
Batman: The Movie
Batman: The Movie 1966
I had been considering watching this movie sometime this month because Jena has been very much into Batman more than any other superhero, and while I wanted to save the two Nolan Batman movies for just before the Dark Knight Rises, I figured I could watch the others early. It was Saturday evening and Jena was going on about Batman while we were trying to figure out something to watch, so I looked this movie up. The Batman TV show was a bit before my time, so I had never seen any of it aside from a few YouTube clips, but I was familiar with how campy it would be. It still managed to go above and beyond my expectations and it was hilariously fun to watch.
Are Fantasy Heroes “Super”?
As usual, I’m starting this off with a little bit of an update. I was really happy with my first Superhero Shorts article, taking a look at a brand new video that has just come out, and I’ve gotten to talk to two other video creators. This Saturday I’ll be featuring the video “Wolverine’s Claws Suck” by the video team of Greg and Lou from YouTube, and next Saturday I’ll be featuring Batman: Dead End by Sandy Collora. I’ve been really happy with the people that have gotten back to me and answered my questions, I hope the trend continues. As far as upcoming movies, Thursday is Batman: The Movie. I’m hoping to have another video with my daughter Jena talking about it, but I haven’t filmed it yet, so she might not cooperate, and I haven’t yet decided what two movies I’m going to watch to finish out the month, though I may end up watching Sky High and Zoom. But today, I’ll be talking a little bit about a couple other movies.
Darkman
Darkman 1990
So I mentioned The LAMB in an earlier post and one thing that I find pretty neat is that they have featured topics that they will collect blog posts about and then list them all together. For a niche site like this one, it’s been hard to find one that I can participate in, but finally one came along that fits right in. Sam Raimi, LAMBs in the Director’s Chair which gets posted at the end of this month. He’s the man behind the Tobey Maguire Spiderman movies which would have been my first instinct. But there is a new Spiderman movie coming out this year and I thought I would wait to re-watch those movies until shortly before the new one to prep myself. But they aren’t the only superhero movies that he’s responsible for, there’s one other one that he not only directed, but also wrote: Darkman. I had never seen the movie before so I thought it would be a perfect fit, I’d heard good things about it, and I like most of what Sam Raimi’s been involved in, so I was in.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time 1993
It’s Thursday night, and we’re halfway through our stack of movies from the rental store. All that’s left is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time and Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Jena was ready to watch this one and enjoyed it a lot. I fell asleep during the last 20 minutes of it and had to rewatch it a few days later. This movie was tough to really figure out what they were trying for, it seemed like it was pulling itself in too many directions. It felt like it was trying to be more dramatic, and yet it also seemed a lot more childish and cartoonish in its humor. The nostalgia definitely wore off on me by this point, as I found the jokes to be less funny, and a lot of the action to be less interesting. But there were still a few spots of fun to be had here.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze 1991
It’s Wednesday night, we had just watched the first live action Ninja Turtle movie the night before and I thought it would be easy to get Jena interested in watching the next movie in the series, The Secret of the Ooze. And at first she seemed really into it, but about halfway through the movie she lost interest, and then towards the end we convinced her to come back to finish the movie with us. Like before, she liked all the fighting and overall thought the movie was “great”, her favorite turtle was “the red one” also known as Raphael. Compared to the first movie, I thought the fights were much better, I could tell that it had a larger budget, though I wasn’t quite as fond of all the humor in this movie, especially the Vanilla Ice cameo. Maybe the nostalgia is starting to wear off. I imagine it will be almost completely gone by the time I finish the last movie.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990
It’s Tuesday night and our stack of movies from the video store is not getting any smaller so I decided it was time to put in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action movie. I have seen all three turtles movies when they first came out, probably in theaters but I don’t remember for sure. I had also watched and loved the cartoon series, so the worse parts of this movie may very well get glossed over with nostalgia, just a fair warning to anyone looking for a hard hitting review. And this movie has a lot of nostalgia and some surprises to my less than stellar memory. It’s a lot more violent than you may first expect, but it still has a lot of that late 80’s and early 90’s style humor.
Bolt
Bolt 2008
It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m looking forward to catching up on my movies… well not technically catching up, but getting back to being ahead of schedule. And what better way to do that than with a bunch of movies that I can watch with my daughter. A lot of last month’s movies were rated R so I had to find a time to watch them when Jena wasn’t around. I also don’t have any specific schedule so it’s just whichever movie she is more willing to watch at the time, and tonight it was Bolt. She’s been watching it a few times last week, but I haven’t had the chance to watch it with her until now. It’s not exatcly what many people would think of when they think of a superhero. One one level it’s an animated kids cat and dog movie where they travel across the country to get back to their home. Based on that it sounds more like Homeward Bound than Krypto the Superdog. But it’s a totally fun movie with a good mix of action, comedy, and heart. And Jena absolutely loves the entire movie from start to finish. The entire rest of the day she was talking about Bolt and Penny.
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 2012
So once again, I’m watching a movie late into the night just before my own personal deadline of midnight Eastern time. Hopefully it’s the last time for a while since I’ll be getting back to two movies a week instead of three. Anyway, I spent this evening watching the new Ghost Rider movie and let me tell you, I’m not even sure where to begin. It was something else that’s for sure.
So anyway, this movie takes place what seems like a few years after the first movie, and it has a little animated recap of what the Ghost Rider is and how Johnny Blaze came to gain the rider’s curse. They have a brief mention about how he thought he could control the curse which was how the first movie ended. He had the chance to close the deal and become a normal human again, but instead he chose to keep his curse and try to use it to do good. Apparently that didn’t work and now he wants to get rid of it again. And don’t you know, there’s a black French guy that tells him he knows some religious guys that can get rid of it for him. Of course, that’s not the whole story, apparently there’s also a half devil kid that’s set to bring on the apocalypse or something along those lines. But it’s all good.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 