Casting Internets

It was quite the busy weekend, wasn't it? I missed out on Big Apple Con, which was a bummer, but it's hard to spend money at a show when you don't have any spare. Rickey did head down and I'm jealous of all the cool stuff he got and pics he took.

io9's rundown of the Marvel Animated movies matches up almost perfectly with my own opinions, though I haven't seen Next Avengers (I intend to) or the Wolverine portion of Hulk Vs. (it's sitting on my to-watch pile). Iron Man and Dr. Strange were just bad though.

This might be the coolest toy of all time. Head over to Sideshow for all the details on this Hot Toys 13.5-inch $200 behemoth. If either Sideshow or Hot Toys would like a review, I'd gladly do one :)



These MiniMates are pretty rad too. Toy News International showed off the Back To The Future Enchantment Under The Sea 2-pack and the third wave of Ghostbusters. I think this might be the first Mate to wield a guitar!




[post does not go on]
Oh, DO go on.

Casting Internets

Just as I finish one of these things, something awesome comes out that I just have to share. Moments after hitting the Publish Post button, /Film
killed me with this video of Snoop Dogg trying to answer a Watchmen movie question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

My buddy Jesse tipped me off to this amazing Twitter account called shitmydadsays. I don't generally read Twitter accounts (is that even what they call them?), but I think I'll be coming back for more pearls of wisdom from this crotchety man in his 70s. I think he's my new hero.

Hopefully my fellow horror fans are already familiar with Stacie Ponder's Final Girl blog. She just posted awesome movie poster friday - the LESBIAN VAMPIRE edition!
. She found some great posters like this one, my favorite of the batch.



There wasn't much real information, but according to a Toy News International post, Sideshow's going to be doing statues and dioramas based on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. If they're even nearly as cool as NECA's figures, we're all in for treat.

In other toy-related news, Ian at The Autumn Society posted this awesome piece he did for the Cave Drawing Ink sketch contest this week. I wasn't familiar with CDI before, but I love the idea of doing weekly sketch contests on a single pop culture theme. These week's it's Joe!


Oh, DO go on.

Green Lantern: First Flight

As luck would have it, on the same day that my Blackest Night theory was confirmed, we got the animated Green Lantern: First Flight DVD and watched it. And I liked it, a lot. I haven't seen Wonder Woman yet, but GL was far better than all the other animated movies I've seen from both DC and Marvel.

But, of course, I have a few fanboy complaints that I'd like to get out of my system right off the bat. I have no problem that they didn't get into the emotional spectrum and only briefly mentioned how yellow and green are opposing colors, but I thought it was kind of strange that, given that, the floating cities on Oa were yellow. This is pretty picky, but it bothered me (to be SUPER picky, the planet Oa was red). There was a ton of yellow in the movie actually that seemingly had no effect which is why I was surprised when they got into the yellow vs. green stuff later on.

This might dip into SPOILER territory, but I didn't understand why Sinestro, once he got the yellow ring, had the Sinestro Corps symbol on his chest, but the yellow battery and his ring had the Green Lantern symbol (what's even weirder is that the actual Green Lantern power battery did not have that symbol).

Okay, fanboy bitching aside, this movie was rad. Within five minutes of the movie beginning Hal Jordan has received the ring from Abin Sur and, soon, he's approached by a cache of GLs including Kilowog, Boodika and Tomar-Re. After that he's off-planet on Oa getting hassled by the Guardians (who are more dottering old guys than omnipotent schemers) for being human and not worthy of the ring (we don't ever get told how the rings are divvied up). Sinestro offers to back him and the two of them go off in search of Kanjar Ro. We get hints of Sinestro's crazy strictness and desire for order and then the story flips to a GLs vs. Sinestro while Hal's ring has been stripped away for reason I don't want to spoil. So, there's kind of an Iron Man like set-up at the end (depowered hero fighting fully functional villain and still winning), but I thought it was done a lot better.

I was also surprised at how adult the movie was even though it's rated PG-13. I mean there's not hardcore sex (or any sex actually) and head splattering violence, but there are a few swears and one particular death towards the end that reminded me of that dude getting "screwed to death" in Jason X. I was shocked by that one actually. There's even some neck snaps and all that. SPOILER. The final battle itself doesn't exactly get bloody, but there are literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of implied GL deaths due to suffocation in space. Yeesh.

For GL fans, the movie doesn't quite get into the specific details that Geoff Johns gets into in Rebirth (like how Kilowog's constructs are the only ones that make a sound), but we do get great characterizations of all the characters (though Boodika fans will probably not like how she's portrayed either visually or her character). And a huge part of the characterization is thanks to the voice actors. I especially love Victor Garber as Sinestro. He's the dad in Alias and plays a somewhat similar character (I think they even based aspects of Sinestro's face on Garber as I could literally see him). I also really dug Michael Madsen as Kilowog, though it's not a casting choice I would have ever thought of. The biggest head scratcher for me, though was John Larroquette as Tomar-Re. It's a pretty small part and Larroquette's a fairly big deal, so I wonder how he got involved in the project. Maybe he's a big fan?

An interesting note about the aliens is that they actually changed a lot of their looks. Abin Sur has chin horns, the Weaopners of Qward are spider-like (maybe a Spider Guild reference?) and Kanjar Ro has a squidish look. I was scratching my head about this changes when I realized that, in the comics, those are all just regular looking dudes who happen to be pink. The redesigns end up looking pretty cool and the artists seem to have had a ton of fun creating all kinds of new ones to throw in the background.

There's been a lot of talk about getting a Sinestro Corps War animated movie (in fact, I've written at least two wish list-style bits on the subject myself for ToyFare and Wizard) and I think this might be a pretty good set up. By the end of First Flight you've got a status quo that could easily lead into a stripped-down version of SCW that would work pretty well. My finger's are crossed.

Also of note, there's a special feature on the DVD where Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi all talk about Blackest Night. Johns actually explains an aspect of the Black Lanterns in it that has been hinted at, but not full stated in the series so far. SPOILER? So, you know the scenes where the BLs see which emotion their targets are giving off? Well, apparently, they actually feed off of that energy and the more there is the more powerful they become. Cool, right? I was wondering when they were going to get around to explaining why they kept analyzing peoples' placement on the emotional spectrum (this may have been explained in another interview somewhere, but I've been keeping away because I don't want anything spoiled).

Oh, DO go on.

Conan The Boring

Netflix is a funny thing. I have no idea why I put Conan The Destroyer (1984) on my queue, though it's probably because I had never seen it before. Even more mysterious is why it was at the very top of said queue. Anyway, I got it in the mail right before we left for Disney World (I'll probably do a post with some pics later in the week) and actually thought it was the first one (Conan The Barbarian). But, hey, it's an 80s action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (even though I copied his name from IMDb, it's creepy how good I'm getting at spelling his name) with swords, so how bad can it be right? Well, pretty bad.

Unfortunately, Destroyer is just a boring movie. Maybe I've been spoiled by ridiculously fast paced action sequences like those in Crank or Dark Knight, but I was astonished at how slow Arnold attacked some of his foes. It was like the squared off against each other, circled a time or two and then leisurely swung swords. Sure there are some cool decapitations, but overall the action just felt kind of stale.

Another problem I had with the story is that they give away the double cross in the beginning of the movie. You see, this witch lady tricks Conan into helping a young girl get her hands on a gem that will allow her to get a horn that will bring a god to life. She tells Conan that he can bring his dead lady (I'm assuming she's from the first movie, which I haven't seen in a long, long time) back to be his queen. Conan agrees to help the girl find the gem and then, right after that, the witch tells the girl's bodyguard (played by crazy-tall sex machine Wilt Chamberlain) that, once the girl has the horn, he can kill Conan. That's about 15 minutes into the movie. Didn't they have spoiler warnings back in 1984? I think simply cutting that scene and revealing the double cross later would have been a lot more dramatic.

One more problem I saw was the huge cast. In addition to the girl and Wilt, Conan's hanging out with the annoying thief who also acts as comic relief (though he's nowhere near as annoying as Chris Tucker in Fifth Element), freed bandit Grace Jones and a magician dude who mostly seems to just put his hands together in odd configurations and chant (he voiced Uncle Iroh in the incredible awesome Avatar cartoon). I got excited after the team was assembled because I figured they would start tearing shit up, instead, most of them just stand around pointlessly. Why couldn't you have combined the non-character of the magician with the comedy relief? It's called economy of story folks (I may have just made that up, but it makes sense in my head).

Overall, I can't say that Destroyer is a bad movie because, even though it's slow and boring, it delivers what you'd expect: super-buff Arnold killing all kinds of people/stuff/glass monsters (don't even get me started on how a monster made of reflections shouldn't turn to glass when it dies), Grace Jones and Wilt Chamberlain doing their own thing (you know, being scary and being tall respectively). Seriously, seeing Wilt standing next to his charge is hilarious at certain times as she only comes up to his waste. All that being said, I also can't say it's a good movie. So, if you're already a Conan fan, like Jim Gibbons , this might be right up your alley. Or it could be kinda boring.

Oh, one last thing I wanted to point out for my comic book fan readers. You may have noticed that I included the Comic Movie label for this post. That's because Conan comic writers (who also happen to be big time comic writers all around) Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway got credited for the story, but apparently disliked the finished script so much that they turned their script into a graphic novel called Conan: The Horn of Azoth through Marvel and just changed some names. Cool huh? Maybe I'll check that out, I bet it's rad.

Oh, DO go on.

13.5 Quick Movie Reviews

2009-01-17
5:32:32 am

Hey gang, sorry again about my complete lack of posts lately, things have been crazy. I have been keeping myself busy with movies though, so here are 13 short reviews about some flicks I've seen lately, plus one movie I didn't watch.

SIX STRING SAMURAI (1998)

I really liked this post apocalyptic-like road trip movie with a samurai Buddy Holly. The howler-monkey kid got annoying fast, but the action and snappy dialogue kept things moving along at quite a clip. Much better than I thought it would be.

OUR MAN FLINT (1966)

Flint's a swinging secret agent int he 60s more worried about having a good time than stopping an international incident (at first at least). Great, campy 60s spy fun, that both pokes fun at but also sets itself up in the same universe as James Bond. A lot of fun, can't wait to check out the sequel.

THE MAJORETTES (1986)

I don't actually remember too much about this movie other than it involved some maniac hunting down and killing high school cheerleaders. It's a way lower budget movie and apparently very little of the money went to snag actors who can, you know, act. Skip this one unless you're a horror completist or you're looking to cross another movie off in your copy of Creature Feature (like me).

DAY OF THE DEAD (2008)

I was actually pretty impressed with this remake-in-name-mostly of Romero's Day of the Dead. I'm not a huge fan of the original or anything, but I wasn't expecting much out of this flick and was surprised. The story moves along the same speeds as the fast Zack Snyder/28 Days Later-like zombies, but my favorite part is seeing actual people I recognize like Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon and Ving Rhames killing and becoming zombies. When was the last time you saw a non genre actor semi-famous person in a horror movie after they became famous? Hopefully it's a trend that will continue. I'm actually kind of surprised that they didn't release this movie in theaters. Oh well, a pretty good zombie movie all said and done, though not a classic.

THE SHADOW (1994)

In my opinion, it's hard to go wrong when you populate a movie about a pulp hero with actors like Alec Baldwin, Peter Boyle, Tim Curry, Ian McKellen, James Hong and Jonathan Winters and luckily The Shadow held up my opinions. I'm not all that familiar with pulp heroes, especially the Shadow, but I like the idea of him having a network of people all over the city (usually people he has saved) who help him out. There's all kinds of cool stuff like secret labs and ancient forces of good and evil. Oh and for 30 Rock fans, I highly encourage you to think of these as the early days of Jack Donaghy.

LAST MAN STANDING (1996)

A pretty cool story about a gangster-era hitman (Willis) holing up in a ghost town populated by two rival gangs, gets slowed down with a little too much back and forth back stabbing. I definitely don't remember all the details about this one, but I'm a Willis fan. Michael Imperioli plays pretty much the same role he always does and Walken stars as Willis' main competition and they fight which is cool. Can you imagine Walken fighting now? Aside from a dance fight I mean. Oh, also Walter Hill of Warriors fame directed LMS, so it's gotta be pretty good, right?

FOXY BROWN (1974)

So far my experience with blaxploitation films as been hit or miss, but luckily Foxy is enough of a hit. In the plus column, Pam Grier cuts quite the figure, plus she kicks ass. I also like the idea of a group of inner city dwellers taking the law into their own hands and creating their own kind of police force. I'm not a big fan of the sexual assault stuff, but I guess that's all part of the exploitation riff. Too bad Foxy and Shaft never got together. That would have been a great flick.

LEATHERHEADS (2008)

I'm not sure if I've professed my heterosexual man love for George Clooney on the blog before, but I'm a big fan. I think we'd get along smashingly. I do know that I've talked about how much I like the American Office, so you probably know I'm a John Krasinski fan. So, Leatherheads was a good flick in my book. It doesn't make my top 10 sports movies of all time (well, maybe, I'd have to come up with that list actually), but it's fun and it offered up a look at a period in professional football that I am completely unfamiliar with, so that was cool. Of course, it's a comedy, so I'm not sure how accurate it was, but who cares? Like I said it was fun. Has similar story elements to League of the their Own (which probably would make my top 10 because I'm a huge softy). Not groundbreaking by any means, but worth a watch.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (2008)

I liked Leatherheads more than Journey, but it's not a terrible movie (even if it is very predictable). The special effects bounce back and forth between boderline okay, pretty good and not so great, but the effort is there. I really wish I would have been able to see this bad boy in 3D. I missed out on the phenomenon in the 80s and have gotten a taste for it by watching Superman Returns (ugh) and Nightmare Before Christmas in lame separate the background from the foreground 3D. I can't freaking wait to see My Bloody Valentine 3D!!!

KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (1988)

Holy crap I loved this movie. Rickey got me a subscription to a horror movie mag called Horror Hound that's not expertly edited, but still offers up tons and tons of horror goodness. One such bit of goodness was a whole feature on Klowns. The movie is just so much freaking over the bigtop fun. I really can't believe that a studio made this movie. Please, do yourself a favor and check it out. Also of interest on the DVD is the Chiodo brothers' home movies from when they were making monster movies as kids. Pretty impressive stuff for pre-teens with a 16mm camera.

VAMPIRE EFFECT (2003)

The combination of Hong Kong action and vampires drew me to this flick pretty quickly on Netflix. Heck, it's even got Jackie Chan in a roll that's more than him just walking on and being called Jackie (which he is). As with a lot of movies like this that I've seen, the special effects and fight scenes are sick, but the story itself is nothing new. I did really like the cool retractable whip/sword weapons they used. I think I designed something very similar what I was younger.

LICENSE TO DRIVE (1988)

If you thought Corey Haim could have been a little bit smoother, though still pretty spazzy in Lost Boys and Corey Fledman from the Burbs could use a little mellowing out, then License to Drive is the perfect 2 Coreys vehicle for you (puns!). Haim fails his driving test, but still tells a young (though still 18 by my math) Heather Graham that he can pick her up. It's basically like an episode of a sitcom, but stretched to 90 minutes and definitely edgier than your average Saved By The Bell. Good stuff. Next up from the Coreys? Dream a Little Dream (which I have absolutely no knowledge of).

LEGEND (1985)

Legend is one of those movies that I don't remember at all, but have since come to find that it's kind of a big deal (to some people). I knew that Tim Curry was in it, but had no idea Tom Cruise was. I thought it might be kind of a funny movie, but when I saw Tom prancing around the forest or whatever I clicked this badboy off and deleted it from my queue. I am no fan of fantasy movies.

JOHNNY BE GOOD (1988)

I'm becoming a pretty big fan of Netflix's recommendations. I started watching Johnny after digging License and wasn't disappointed. It's got an older and more confident Anthony Michael Hall and a completely goofy Robert Downey Jr.. There's a good deal of goofiness to this movie, which focuses on Hall as a football star getting courted by and visiting different colleges that want him. Downey plays his wacky best friend, but what struck me about the movie is how real it can be at times. Hall and Downey sell their characters like they're up for an award. Oh, it's also got Uma Thurman as Hall's girlfriend and Jennifer Tilly has a quick role. If you're an 80s movie fan, or just curious to see what Downey might have been like back in the late 80s give Johnny a look.

AUGUST RUSH (2007)

Sometimes you've got to add a movie for your lady to the ol' queue. I was pleasantly surprised with August Rush, not because the story is all the unique (you've seen the broad strokes before plenty of times), but because of it's view of music. The way they show the young boy experiencing music in everyday life, what it means to him and how he's eventually able to play it in his own unorthodox way really struck me. If you've got to watch a chick flick with your girl and you're a music fan, this is a good choice. Also, Keri Russell is in it and looking good.

KING OF KONG (2007)

If you haven't seen this documentary about the surprisingly competitive world of classic arcade high score competitions, please stop reading and watch it right now. This one makes it into my top 10 movies of 2007 (should a list ever actually exist). First off, it shows off a world I've never seen, which you know I love. Also, that world is full of deceit, greed, cowardice, heroics, villainy, triumph and defeat. The way the story is put together feels like a really well scripted feature film, though the events and the ups and downs are completely real. If you've ever liked anything I've written about on here, watch this movie.

SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY (2007)

Seeing as how The Death and Return of Superman is the story that got me collecting comics in the first place (and how deeply and utterly I bought into the idea that any of the four subsequent people could be the real Superman), I was very excited when I heard a few years ago that DC/WB was going to make an animated movie about that very event, I was psyched. I figured it probably wouldn't have EVERYthing that made the comic so cool (Superman turning back to save a family instead of finishing Doomsday off, that very 90s JLA facing off against Doomsday, an eyes-swollen-shut Guy Gardner asking his teammate to aim his fist at Doomsday so he could blast it, not to mention the four other "Supermen"), but that it could offer up a cool new look on the idea. And it's definitely a different look. I would have preferred them either go straight with the established look and continuity of the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini-verse or have a drastically different art direction on the project as little things like Superman's cheek lines become distracting. I was also distracted by the different voices for these characters that I recognize from a specific other incarnation that looked very similar but sound completely different. Even at 77 minutes it felt kind of slow, but the fight scenes are pretty great (though they don't hold a candle to JLU). I still hold on to my dream of one day seeing an epic, animated incarnation of the Death and Return of Superman though. A boy can dream, right?

Oh, DO go on.

Wanted: My Third Favorite Comic Movie of 2008

2008-12-16
3:41:04 am

Yup, I said it. Of course Dark Knight and Iron Man were the cat's pajamas, but what movie holds the third spot in my heart for this year? Well, without thinking about it too much (and not doing any real research), Wanted, which I saw for the first time this weekend on DVD easily takes the bronze cake. I also saw Incredible Hulk, which I found to be generally boring and mostly uninspired, and Hellboy II, which Rickey just watched. I share his sentiments and you can check out my comments over there for a few specifics.

Even though I liked Wanted for all of it's action movie craziness, I gotta say, I'm not a fan of the comic. I'm not a big fan of the idea of raping various women showing how much of a bad ass you are. We get it already, he's not held by society's rules. Plus, I found the end of the comic to be pretty dull, even though we were kind of influenced by it for the recent Secret Invasion TTT over in ToyFare.

Fun fact for those of you who might not know already, the screenwriters actually started writing the script after the first issue came out, but before the rest of the issues. They apparently came up with a lot of the same themes and plot points which I found very interesting. If you're interested in hearing them talk about their experiences writing the script check out the interview done with them on the Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcast via iTunes (I've enjoyed a lot of the podcast interviews on there). Anyway, that explains the differences in the plot, which include them not being supervillains among other things.

So, what I liked about the movie is that they just kind of went crazy with it. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole "loom of fate" idea, but whatever, it's just a goofy plot point that didn't bother or intrigue me, it just kind of sat there. I've always been a fan of stories where it turns out that a normal dude is actually really special (and in this case a born assassin) and Jame McAvoy plays the roll very well, going from schlub to annoying new guy to total badass (how can you not love the scene where he tells off his boss?). But beyond that, I also really like just how good these assassins are at their craft. They're not just good enough to shoot a dude from what looks like hundreds of city blocks away, but they can flip one car over another and shoot a dude through the sun roof. It's just a lot of fun and I had fun watching it.

Of course, it's not a perfect movie. It would have been cool to see them as villains, but hey that's just my inner geek talking. There's also a scene where James is chasing this dude who he thinks killed his dad and out of nowhere all of the other assassins that we know (Common, Angelina Jolie, a few others, but not Morgan Freeman) and things just go crazy. Why were they there? I really didn't get that and I don't think that it got explained even with the twist ending (which I was expecting, but Em even called it before the reveal). I also thought the twist got a little confusing. If he did what McAvoy says he did, then who's to say he wasn't lying about the other ones? That will make sense, if you've seen the movie and you're thinking of the library scene towards the end of the movie. Oh, also, McAvoy's assault at the end is freaking sweet even if I'm still not quite sure how he got them to explode.

I guess I should comment on the other stars. Morgan Freeman definitely elevates what's probably not a very good role on paper (as you'd expect). Common's pretty cool as the Gunsmith. I think this is the first movie I've seen him in. I wouldn't mind seeing him as Green Lantern John Stewart, as he was potentially cast in the Justice League movie. And then of course there's Angelina Jolie. She's one of those actresses that I'm not a big fan of until I actually see her in something. I've got this kind of mental block about her (probably because I don't like the person I see on TV and whatnot), but then I think about Hackers and Gone in 60 Seconds and I dig those movies, so I guess I like her.

So, in the end, congrats to Wanted for getting my coveted (heh, who am I kidding?) third place in my 2008 comic book movie list (I'm sure I'm missing something, but maybe not). But watch out, I still haven't seen Punisher: War Zone, which I'm hoping will fill the same kind of niche (I love Dolph's original and it looks like WZ follows in its footsteps pretty well, though without the Shakespeare-quoting drunk bum).

Oh, DO go on.