ADH lives... Sort of.

A New Level of Irresponsibility

2010-02-05T15:46:00.001-08:00

Apparently Indianapolis is starting school two hours later on Monday in anticipation of school related employees (everyone from bus drivers to super intendants) being hung over and needing time in the morning to recover. Furthermore there are whispers of moving the Super Bowl to Saturdays so that this will not be a problem in the future.

Wow.

It seems people everywhere are living up to the defiant cries made to their parents about how they're going to be different when they grow up. Instead of sucking it up and being responsible the plan is to get ridiculously shit faced even though you have to work in the morning and just make it so you can go into work later.

A few months ago Dethklok was playing here in Milwaukee on a Sunday night. The next Monday I knew well in advance that I was going to have to be in early for meetings that would be helping to lead. So I skipped Dethklok because I'm responsible like that.

So suck it up world. A little responsibility won't be the end, tomorrow will always come.

9

2010-01-18T15:33:00.000-08:00

When I first saw the trailer for 9 I was excited. Having read Hellboy for years I am familiar with the idea of the rebirth of mankind so I immediately pieced together that as a major plot point of the movie. However everything else I was able to piece together on my own just from the trailer is about all we were given.

Visually 9 is a treat. The character designs and animation are absolutely wonderful, both the doll creatures as well as the mechanical monsters. The drab, muted colors of the post apocalyptic world somehow manage to pop and create a wonderful landscape for the story to take place in.

And that story is where the problems lie. A main flaw is that it is almost entirely action with very few slow downs which makes it feel like the chapter of one story instead of one story broken into three chapters, though the ending is clearly the ending (though of course there’s a possibility of a sequel).

Another flaw is that when things do slow down, no one seems to ask the very obvious question: Where did these creatures (the dolls) come from? It is revealed that they all remember everything about their lives from the moment they awoke, but that’s it. They know plenty of the world and how it came to be the way it is, but none of them even seem remotely curious about where they came from, why they were created, and in the end they find out by sheer coincidence. And coincidentally this fact is a primary key to their survival and future. Plus it wasn’t even difficult for them to learn as they more or less stumble across it while looking for something else.

It’s not a bad story, but it’s not gripping either. However I have no doubt that especially with the addition of Tim Burton as a producer, teenagers will love this movie until they get old enough to realize that it is a very flat story with cool visuals and nothing else. Heck even I’ll admit that I would’ve loved this as a teenager. The problem is that in the grand scheme of things, depending on the simple mindedness of teenagers to like a movie is no excuse to tell a poorly executed story with a lot of potential.

Where Were You?

2009-09-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

So my first post in months is a little cliche. Oh well, we'll all get by.

Eight years ago, where were you?

I was sitting in psychology 201 waiting for my professor to show up when a girl came into class saying something about a plane flying into a building in New York being on the news. Completely understating the situation, leaving the impression that perhaps a biplane hit a random sky scraper. And it didn't help that she just came in and sat down.

Ten minutes of sitting there a few of us ventured out to see if we could find out anything about our professor, when walking past the cafeteria was saw a large group of students gathered around the televisions and upon further inspection I discovered what was actually going on. And in case you're curious, my professor has a brother who worked at the Pentagon so she was out because she couldn't get a hold of him to find out whether or not he was alive, which he was, so happy ending there.

So there, just wanted to get that out there. No ironic self evaluation (ironic because I was in a psychology class, and yes I'm using the word ironic properly), just wanted to say where I was.

Guilty Pleasures

2009-01-06T20:17:00.001-08:00

In case you haven’t noticed I’m a huge fan of movies. Love’em. And I’m not one of those elitists who thinks I’m special for knowing about a good movie that no one else does. In fact when I know about a relatively unknown movie that I think someone will love, I pimp the hell out of it. Well it recently occurred to me that a few of my favorite under appreciated comedies have been getting a lot of air play on cable channels recently, so for no particular reason I figured I’d do some brief promotions for them. NOTE: These are turn off your brain, guilty pleasure comedies so don’t read on with high expectations.

Out Cold
Main man Rick falls in love with a French girl, she vanishes, his heart’s broken, years later she shows up in his bar where she tells him that she left because she was already involved with someone all those years ago. No I am not just describing Casablanca, this is indeed the main plot for Out Cold, a snowboarding movie filled with references to my all time favorite film, Casablanca. Except instead of Nazis the bad guy is the Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors. It’s just a fun movie about a group of friends who found a life that makes them happy and then suddenly that life gets interrupted. If you haven’t seen Casablanca, watch that first then enjoy just how clever Out Cold despite being formulaic.

Great Line - Rick: Pig Pen, when I want advice about a good Planet of the Apes film or maybe how to get the resin out of my bong I'll come to you, ok? But I am not gonna take romantic advice from somebody who cannot spell “romantic” or “advice”... or “bong”.

Grandma’s Boy
I was sitting around with about two hours to kill before work one day, and I had two movies to choose from: Munich with a running time of approx. 160 minutes, and Grandma’s Boy with a running time of approx. 80 minutes. Grandma’s Boy wins.

Whoever promoted this movie should be banned from ever working in the movie business on any level ever again. No I take that back, this person should be forced to be Andy Dick’s personal assistant for the rest of his/her life. All of the commercials just make it look like it’s about a guy who lives with his grandmother and throws a big party. In reality it’s about video game programmers (though the main character does live with his grandmother due to being evicted from his apartment because his roommate likes the whores) having fun. This is shut off your brain comedy at its best and it’s about freakin’ video game programmers. While not a huge market demographic it’s certainly untapped. Again, Andy Dick’s personal assistant.

Great Line - Dante: I’m way too baked to drive to the devil’s house.

Undercover Brother
I believe the main thing that held this back from being bigger than it should be is that at first glance people probably think, “Oh, another movie by black people making fun of white people.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact I would say they make fun of black stereotypes but it’s done in a way that says, “we have to stop taking ourselves so seriously.” Sort of like friends just riffing on each other. Highlights include: Dave Chapelle as Conspiracy Brother, a stoner who comes up with outrageous conspiracy theories, Neil Patrick Harris as the only white guy working for The Brotherhood due to Affirmative Action, Billy Dee Williams somehow not laughing as Chris Kattan dances like an idiot in front of him, and of course my favorite, a very, very Funk heavy sound track. And every time I watch the seen where Denise Richards is introduced as Black Man’s Kryptonite, I laugh harder because when watching this with some friends, one of them who is black said, “Hey,” then stopped himself, hung his head and finished with, “ok, yeah, they’re right.”

Great Line - Conspiracy Brother: Jesus Christ; black man. Babe Ruth; black man. Madonna;... slept with black men.

Josie and the Pussycats
I’ll give you a moment to recover from the confusion over my recomending Josie and the Pussycats. All better? Good.

Easily the most under rated comedy on my list, JatP while another very formulaic movie, is also quite clever. Poking fun at the pop music industry while at the same time not being preachy, not taking itself seriously, and having a ridiculous amount of fun. Even Tara Reid is tolerable, possibly because she plays an idiot but I try not to read into that too much. And on top of that it has a pretty solid soundtrack, and I’m not a fan of pop rock, of course that may be helped because of vocals provided by Kay Hanley from Letters to Cleo, and she has a great voice. Seriously though, some of the lyric structures are ridiculously good. And if nothing else the DVD should be rented by all to watch the Du Jour video. Du Jour being a boy band composed of Seth Green, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, and Alex Martin (don't worry, I don’t know who he is either).

Great Line - Josie McCoy: Puppies grow into dogs that get old and DIE!

Grizzly Man
You read that right. This is the most unintentionally funny movie I’ve ever seen. A documentary about a completely delusional ex-actor (read: failed actor) who moved up to Alaska to protect its bear population. And the area he’s protecting? Well it’s already a nature preserve for the bears. And what does he know about bears? They’re big and furry. Seriously, I know more about bears than this guy. I can not put into words how crazy the man (Timothy Treadwell) is, you really must see it for yourself. Now it is possible that Werner Herzog (the director who completed the project) actually put this documentary together to show just how far a man can fall psychologically but just billed it as a documentary the highlight Timothy’s life. If so, kudos to him for pulling it off.

Great Line - Sam Egli: That bear, I think, that day, decided that he had either had enough of Tim Treadwell or that something clicked in that bear's head that he thought 'Hey, you know, he might be good to eat.'

Just an observation

2008-11-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

At the grocery store that I frequent on the way to work for food stuffs, I noticed that the condoms are placed beside Thank You cards and baby diapers/food/etc. Just found it funny.

Book Review: Tigerheart by Peter David

2008-11-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

If you read comics through the 90’s you undoubtedly read something written by Peter David. For me I had been reading him for years before I realized it, going back to find that my favorite titles and stories were penned by him. He has the ability to make even the most far fetched worlds and characters relatable like no other. On top of that he is the Bart Star of the comic world in that no matter how good of a person you think you are, every time you hear a story about him, you feel like a jerk.

So one night as I was killing time in a book store (as the wife was shopping for clothes and mercifully left me off of my leash) I saw his name on the dust jacket above a beautiful illustration of a pirate ship sailing in the night. I grabbed it without hesitation, since to this day I have never been disappointed in anything Mr. David has written.

Tigerheart is my favorite form of story telling; pure. It is filled with a charming innocence that is needed every now and then these days where most stories have a cynical or dark edge. That’s not to say those kind of stories can’t be enjoyable, that’d just be silly coming from a man who’s favorite author is Richard Matheson. But no, Tigerheart is fun, full of humor, adventure, and most of all, adventure.

The story follows the adventure of Paul Dear, a young boy who’s father raised him with tales of the Boy, or as we know him, Peter Pan. But what everyone doesn’t know is that Paul has met the Boy several times and because of the Boy, Paul knows how to talk to animals and fairies, and play all the best games of the Anyplace (Neverneverland). See Paul’s mother is incredibly sad so he heads off to the Anyplace to find what his mother needs to smile again (I’m being purposefully vague there to not spoil anything).

The book is full of slight changes to names, Captain Hack instead of Captain Hook, Gwenny instead of Wendy, Vagabonds instead of the Lost Boys, all of which is explained at the end of the book along with a notation that all proceeds from the book were being donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, the same children’s hospital that was given the copyright for Peter Pan from J.M. Barrie. Note: Peter Pan is in many ways free of copyright laws so technically Mr. David had no legal obligation to do this. And just typing that made me feel like a jerk.

The only cautionary note I can place with this is that twice I had to stop reading because I started to choke up. And at the same time that is praise for the book’s ability to pull you in and make you feel for the characters. There were also several moments where I caught myself taking a gasp in shock only to realize how silly that must seem to any observing me. But the greatest praise I have for this book is that it may possibly now be my favorite book, replacing The Princess Bride which anyone who knows me has undoubtedly heard me go on at length over how amazing it is.

If you love pure story telling, read this. If you love being taken on an adventure, read this. If you love stories that make the child that still takes flight to the Anyplace as you sleep dance in excitement, then you should definitely read Peter David’s, Tigerheart.

Music Review: All That Remains - Overcome

2008-09-22T10:07:00.001-07:00

One of the worst things that can happen to a band is to put out multiple albums that get progressively better (I can listen to their last album, The Fall of Ideals, non-stop) only to drop a fourth that take ten steps back.

What All That Remains has going for them is that where this album falls short isn’t the lyrics or the music, but the production (note: they had a new producer for this album). I am a huge fan of metal with actual vocals mixed with great screaming like In Flames, Killswitch Engage, and Nothingface (who also suffered on their fourth release), but the clean vocals on the entire album are just too clean. While it’s clearly still Phil screaming, the clean portions sound generic and more suitable for modern pop-rock radio music, and while voice layering is nothing new here it’s over used and very distracting. Additionally there are many, many places where it’s obvious that instead of just letting Phil sing the entire song, he instead often recorded individual lines that were then laced together (as opposed to past albums where you can often hear him taking a breath which adds to the vocal passion).

But while the vocals are the most distracting disappointment the music suffers as well. From the beginning, even before I heard the first scream from Before the Damned I couldn’t help but notice that the drums sounded like they were synthesized, and once everything kicked in fully it felt like it was all synthesized. To make things worse the levels of all the instruments feel like they’re all being pushed to the limits all the time instead of balancing them out so it actually sounds like a band instead of a computer.

You can still tell that their music and song writing abilities are still there making this album all the more tragic. I’m sure that all of these songs will actually sound better live, but as of now the album sounds more like a band trying to sound like All That Remains. And if this indeed were a new band and this their first album I would have written them off before the end of the second track.

Added Note: I posted this review over on Amazon just for the hell of it. It's funny how almost all of the reviews are from people who claim to be metal fans but then go on to admit that the vocals are radio friendly and that's what they like about it. Well guess what people, you're not metal fans, you're hard rock fans.

Not All Commercials Suck, But These Do

2008-09-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

People hate commercials. That’s nothing new, but I would like to call attention to some recent ones that I find particularly infuriating. See I actually don’t mind good commercials, those being ones that are very entertaining (most Captain Morgan ones) and/or informative. But just like with movies and television shows, if they’re poorly written and/or make no sense, the people responsible should be canned. NOTE: Most if not all of these can be found on YouTube.

Trojan Condoms
The scene is inside of a restaurant/bar and all men are being portrayed as pigs. That part I can deal with because most guys who go to bars to pick up a chick are pigs, but one of the pigs is hitting on a girl who’s clearly not interested, he gets up, goes to the bathroom and gets a condom, comes back and suddenly she sees him as an attractive man even though he looks like a gay Enrique Inglesias with an Emo hair cut. So we’re supposed to believe that 1) She somehow magically knows that he bought a condom. Given her expression as he left one can assume that he did not tell her that’s what he was leaving to do, and 2) Buying a condom somehow makes him less of a douche bag suddenly.

Levi Jeans
This one’s very new. Two kids staring into each other’s eyes nervously, the girl asking the guy if it’s his first time as they slowly undress only for it to be revealed that they’re jumping off a high pier into water. Now to me it’s obvious from the get go that we’re being given a red herring because for starters it’s a commercial and the kids are out doors. But while both kids could be 18 and just looking young, they both look like their 15 at most and the way the commercial is filmed is like porn for a pedophile. It’s so uncomfortable to watch that I have to change the channel whenever it’s on.

Twix
Whoever writes these commercials hates women or at the very least thinks they’re all morons. I’m all for sexist jokes, aimed at men or women, but only when they’re so over the top that it’s obviously a joke. These are just painful. The newest is a guy talking to a woman at a party. The woman is going off on some pretentious rant and at a pause the guy asks her back to his place (showing that he also is an idiot), she gets offended and he crams a Twix down his maw to give him time to think of something to get him out of trouble. He then creates some equally pretentious, and obviously made up story about wanting to be alone to continue their retarded conversation back at his place, she smiles, feeling like an idiot for jumping to what was actually an accurate conclusion and leaves with him. So to recap, in the Twix universe, all women are gullible and stupid.

Scion
Hundreds of various cars and SUV’s drive across the country for obviously days, coming to a perfectly carved out auditorium style crater and park with all their lights on as a guy in a hooded sweat shirt steps up to a microphone and gives an embarrassingly unimpressive 15 second speech (yes I timed it) about how, “It’s what makes us different that brings us together.” I already don’t like Scions. Their first two models were boxes with wheels and I’m baffled how they made any money to survive longer as a company. But this commercial, clearly designed to be inspiring, is just painfully lame from the actual words used to the weak voice of the guy giving the speech. I picture the writer sitting in a room with his friends and family, showing them a DVD with his first commercial ever, and from there on it plays out like that scene from the Poochie episode of the Simpsons.

Paintball Dave’s
Ok, this is a local radio commercial that drives me crazy. It opens with a guy talking about being the best man at eight weddings in six years, but it’s not because all those guys are his best friends, it’s because he plans “the most amazing bachelor parties,” involving going to Paintball Dave’s. I can not put into words how enraged I am by the shear stupidity of the idea of someone being picked to be a best man at a wedding based solely on their ability to plan a great bachelor party.

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

2008-08-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

Hot off the heals of the mega-successful and first cohesive Marvel Movie-verse film Iron Man, came The Incredible Hulk. Unlike Iron Man however, the early production news of Hulk was painful and depressing. First was the decision to pretend the first movie never happened, which while understandable it did not give a sense of comfort. Secondly was announcing the Zak Penn, the hack who wrote X-Men 3, would be writing it. And then lastly was announcing that Louis Leterrier, director of The Transporter 2 which featured some astoundingly ridiculous action scenes, would helm it. But then a funny thing happened, Ed Norton was cast as Bruce Banner and all of my fears vanished. A little known fact is that Ed Norton has a clause in his contracts that allows him to re-write scripts as he sees fit and while that may sound like a d*ck move all writers who’ve worked with him have said that typically he works very respectfully with the writers and actually brings added reality to the characters. And according to many interviews and other blurbs, Norton and Leterrier rewrote the pretty much entire script.

(SIDE NOTE: Why do I think Zak Penn is a hack, aside from the entirety of X-Men 3 that is? In an interview about the movie he stated that the character of Emil Blonsky would not be called Abomination because it’s a silly name. Yeah, because casual movie goers are going to be turned off by a silly name like Abomination. Because Magneto, Professor X, Doctor Octopus, The Thing, Doctor Doom, Silver Surfer, Punisher, Spider-Man, Sandman, Mr. Fantastic, and even Batman, Superman are in no way silly. Actually Abomination is less silly then every single one of those. Again, Zak Penn is a hack.)
But did it work?

Hell yes!

I still enjoy the original, the way they addressed the inner demons idea to the Hulk and what not, but this movie was THE perfect Hulk movie. A fantastic move in that the origin is told via images and small clips played during the opening credits therefore allowing the story to pick up with Banner already on the run. Plenty of action, incredibly well laid out characters, a couple great cameos, many references to the original TV series, and some actions that are now considered classic Hulk staples such as the Hulk Clap (not an STD). Everything about it felt pure and true to the comic while at the same time telling a pretty original story.

All the actors brought their A game which to me helped to further eliminate the pretentious idea of, “it’s just a comic book movie.” Tim “Mr. Orange” Roth is absolutely polarizing as Emil Blonsky every time he’s on screen, even in scenes where he’s just sitting and waiting for something to happen you can just feel this urgency inside of his character. William Hurt does a phenomenal job of making General Ross a complete @$$hole who honestly believes that what he’s doing is the right thing, something completely lacking from the very likable portrayal by Sam Elliot in the first one. Liv Tyler, though not on the same level as Roth or Hurt, did bring an added human feel to the character of Betty Ross that I just can’t put my finger on how to describe, it just felt natural and real. On that same note Ed Norton was of course awesome taking over the roll of Bruce Banner.

There are plenty of geek out moments such as the introduction of Dr. Leonard Sampson (though this can be missed) and Samuel Sterns (if you don’t know who that is and you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil it for you). Also they reference a few Marvel-verse things such as certain World War II points of interest as well as another S.H.I.E.L.D. reference (which is impossible to miss), and of course a line that were horribly lacking from the first movie. I’ll leave you to guess what it was.

Marvel Movie Score: 9.5

Why This?: It is impossible to make a fun Hulk movie. Well it is possible but that’s not what the Hulk is about. Since it’s about inner demons and what not it’s going to have to be a little dark and therefore not as fun as Iron Man, and therefore it’s the only reason I can’t give it a 10. But obviously I believe it to be a great movie and I’m sad to hear that there may not be a sequel because they really set one up, though depending on how they do the Avengers movie that could easily work as the sequel. Additionally Ed Norton had a little bit of a disagreement with Marvel Studios as he wanted the final cut of the movie to be a little more story driven and a little less action. Hopefully he now understands that they were really gun shy about doing this after the fallout of the first movie.

It's Finally Over!

2008-08-07T06:41:00.000-07:00

So Favre is a NY Jet now, and I couldn’t be happier. Well I could be because he could be playing for a better team, but still.

Don’t get me wrong I am a Packer fan and originally Favre’s retirement was part of my New Old Stuff article, but now his legacy has been tarnished in my mind and it’s his own fault. He retired, changed his mind, and then played the victim when the Packer organization didn’t welcome him back with open arms after they gave him every chance in the world to consider and re-consider his decision before announcing it to the world. And the theory that he may have done this on purpose to get to another team just further tarnishes his legacy if it’s true.

As for why I’m glad he’s not coming back as a Packer, aside from being incredibly irritated at his drama-queen like personality of the past few years; Brett Favre is destined to have one of the worst seasons in his career not just because he has to learn and adapt to a whole new offensive game and a new team, but he will suffer the full brunt of the Madden Curse. If you don’t know what that is, it’s the theory, supported by a lot of convenient circumstances, that when a player appears on the cover of a John Madden football game they will then have either a bad season or suffer an injury that keeps them out for most of the season. Favre in Packer jersey is set to appear on the cover of Madden ’09.

I hope within a decent amount of time I’ll be able to again look back at how great Favre was, but as of now that’s difficult to imagine. But right now he does get some of my sympathies because Favre is showing a lot of classic signs of a form of serious depression, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Hopefully someone close to him takes note of all the people saying it and convinces him to get help.

I Have Returned!!!

2008-07-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

I know that all of my readers (that’s right, all three of you) have been wondering where I’ve been and why no updates in months. Well coincidentally shortly after my Iron Man review work became incredibly busy to the point where I was regularly working 50+ hours a week leaving me tired and stressed regularly and therefore uncomfortable trying to write anything remotely creative.

So now that my project is pretty much wrapped up and a regular 40 hour work week seems like it’s par for the course again and my stress vanished quicker than the theatrical release of Postal (yes it was released in theaters, look it up if you don’t believe me), I can get back to doing what I love, writing. Now a few things of note have occurred in the months of Marvel Movie reviews and my absence due to work, but I have kept notes of things I want to touch on, most of which is stuff I’m sure no one even remembers. So I present you with…

New Old Stuff

Sharper Image Self Destructs
Like many people, I really detest Sharper Image. They regularly took mediocre-to-cruddy merchandise like a $40 CD player, put their name on it and then charged $250 for it, and then rich assholes would buy it thinking it’s top of the line shit. Now if they were just doing this to sucker rich people, that would’ve been fine, then I’d just be upset that I wasn’t in on the scam, but clearly they thought of themselves as legitimate. Another great example to this fact is that a few years ago an independent study was done on home air filters. This study found a few inexpensive, “no name” brand models to be incredibly effective, and that the Sharper Image ones were absolutely terrible. Sharper Image then sued the study group. Fortunately nothing actually came of it since they had no grounds, but the papers actually were drawn up and delivered.

Patrick Swayze Diagnosed With Pancreatic Cancer
Now I’m not a Swayze fan per say. His being in movies I’ve watched has been coincidental, but I’ve always found him to be entertaining. On top of that he has always seemed like an easy going and fun guy. A fun note is that the story was broke by the National Inquirer who had one hell of a scoop on their hands but instead of just reporting it as is, they over embellished/lied about it, further insuring that they will never have any credibility as a legitimate news source. For any one reading this who doesn’t know, the National Inquirer reported that he was diagnosed and projected with only 2 weeks to live. Several people close to Mr. Swayze, including his doctor, his agent, and his mother, immediately came to the media to say that it’s no where near that bad and that at this point the cancer is minor, was caught early and is responding well to treatment. In any case, at some point in the near future I will be toasting the man’s life with a double feature viewing of Steel Dawn/Red Dawn. Wolverines, indeed.

Anotherdarkhole.com Officially Laid to Rest
The site is completely down, stripped away to an error page. I’m partially interested to see if someone else picks up the domain name years down the line. On the plus side I still have all the articles and what not saved on my hard drive for reflection. It’s only in retrospect now I realize that in paying for the domain service I was technically a self published writer for a time. Thanks to Caleb, the Rubicon, SNM, Pimp, everyone who’s ever visited even by accident, and everyone who in any way influenced anything we did. My only regret was that we never got to do a Random Celebrity Random Showdown featuring the Wall from American Gladiators, which was included in our list of events for the sole purpose of making a joke about the original Siren, who was deaf.

Rick Flair Retires
When it comes to wrestling, he truly is The Man! Yes greats have come before and will yet keep coming, but no one, absolutely no one will match the legacy that is Rick Flair. And on a personal note, my introduction to him was through absolutely amazing feuds with one of my personal childhood favorites, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat. Wrestlers today can only hope that their best matches can be as good as Flair and Steamboat’s worst ones. Thank you, Space Mountain for giving 100% every time you stepped in that ring. Wooooooooooo!!!

Iron Man (2008)

2008-05-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

NOTE: Since this is a review for a movie still in theaters I’ve adjusted my usual style of addressing very specific parts of the story to a general review staying a vague as possible so as to not spoil anything major.

So Marvel finally realizes they can and should control their own movie properties and this is their first outing. Not a good start, which is tragic because I really enjoy John Favreau’s work and Robert Downey Jr. has become a frighteningly entertaining actor since sobering up. And then we get this turd pile.

Nah, I’m just messing with you, this movie was so awesome I can’t think of a proper metaphor to express it, and I’m a master of ridiculous metaphors.

I’ve already seen it twice, the first time was planned and then the next day a group of friends was going and invited me along so I went with them planning to try and find something wrong with the movie. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only flaws in this movie could only be pointed out by someone purposely being a complete d*ck. For example; a scene where Iron Man is flying and is knocked out of the air sending him crashing into the ground from at least 100 feet up. Of course his suit could survive but technically he’d be jelly inside. Who the F cares, right?

The entire cast is through and through, perfect. Robert Downey Jr. not only looks the part of Tony Stark but he perfectly translates a man who learns that his irresponsible behavior has caused a lot of pain in the world and now must use a second chance in life to fix it all the while retaining at least some of that reckless behavior. Terrence Howard absolutely rocks as James Rhodes, Tony’s best friend who will eventually don the armor himself. Funny thing there is that apparently they cut out a lot of his scenes which is mind boggling because of how perfectly he’s used. Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane, possibly the most changed character from the comic version, is absolutely brilliant as a cold hearted, self serving villain. And even Gwyneth Paltrow who I’ve always been indifferent about, is incredible as the very capable, loyal personal assistant, Pepper Potts.

The story is so mind blowingly perfect that I can’t believe they pulled it off. Of course this may have something to do with a lot of help (and uncredited due to him doing it for free) from Shane Black, writer of such movies as Monster Squad, Lethal Weapon, and Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. The whole movie is technically beginning to end an origin story but it never feels like it’s taking too long to tell it. And along the way there are plenty of little Iron Man (and Marvel Universe in general) comic history bits, such as John Favreau playing the part of Harold “Happy” Hogan, Tony’s chauffer and bodyguard.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that they sort of give into a Marvel Movie standard, but it’s done in a way that unlike Spider-Man 3, makes perfect sense, and that is showing our hero and villain with their masks off. It comes at the very end of the movie where Iron Man and Iron Monger are basically out of steam (Iron Man more so) and just pulling out all the stops to win the fight. Iron Man manages to disable Monger’s optics giving him reason to open up the armor so he can actually see. Just before this, Monger threw Iron Man off ripping off his helmet in the process. It works perfectly and in no way feels forced just adding to how awesome the movie is.

Marvel Movie Score: 10

Why That?: A new standard has been set. From here on every Marvel Movie will be judged by Iron Man’s complete perfection. It’s a perfect combination of Fantastic Four’s fun and Spider-Man’s seriousness. And I feel I should mention just how awesome Robert Downey Jr. truly is: Since a large portion of the story takes place in Afghanistan, a reporter asked Downey his opinion of the war in Iraq. Downey’s response was, “Shut the f up and let me enjoy my blockbuster.” Amen, brother. Now bring on the sequel!

Fantastic Four 2 (2007)

2008-05-07T17:04:00.000-07:00

And so in the wake of two, third installment movies, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer steps up to show us what a fun movie is supposed to be. Seeing the potential for it the producers decided to make this movie PG and geared towards families, and it’s pulled off well as it never really feels watered down though there are a few moments in the film that I’m surprised didn’t push it to PG-13.

Though not watered down, it does feel a bit campier than the first, but again that just adds to the fun of it. The oddest of these however is a scene at a dance club where Johnny has dragged Reed for his bachelor party. Reed is sitting with a group of women and explaining the Big Bang theory. Since it’s a family movie I can let this slide, however I just find it odd that Reed happened upon this many women who clearly have no idea what the Big Bang theory is. I imagine this was done for the sole purpose of letting Reed do some showy things with his powers, but still it would’ve made more sense if he was explaining something complicated like what the theory of relativity actually is, or quantum physics. Either way this is nitpicking. It does lead to a small scene of two girls getting Reed to loosen up and dance with them, again showing off his powers. This scene just feels off to me as the expression on Reeds face becomes way too self confident and uncharacteristically smug. But again, nitpicking.

On the front of things that aren’t nitpicking is the sudden decision to use a muppet to play Sue Storm. Oh wait, my mistake, that’s still Jessica Alba, they just decided to make her hair incredibly blonde and to give her blue contact lenses that make her look like a Barbie doll. Seriously, it’s very distracting and never stops being so.

Doctor Doom also makes his return and it looks to be very promising as he shows up getting his mask sawed off of his face, the skin beneath properly scarred. This is quickly done away with as he confronts the Silver Surfer and is somehow healed. Though they do armor him up better later, it’s just sad that they felt they couldn’t leave him scarred and just have him walk around fully armored.

Lastly I must point out the product placement for Dodge is just painful as it’s suggested that the Fantasticar is powered by a Hemi, leaving us to assume that for some reason a super advanced personal flying craft (that splits into three separate crafts) is powered by a combustible engine.

Aside from that the movie is yet again just incredibly fun and though I may have gone into length about what I didn’t like about the movie, the fun factor makes up for every bit of it.

Now a lot of fans complained about the appearance of Galactus, shown to us as a large cloud in space. Yes this is incredibly ridiculous in theory but upon further thought it has since become apparent that this cloud was meant only to represent the process which Galactus uses to absorb a planet’s energy.

The Silver Surfer himself is awesome, as is Stan Lee’s cameo as himself. Even the final fight scene with Johnny and Doom is awesome even though a major factor of Johnny’s involvement doesn’t make sense. Just like the first one you’re enjoying yourself too much to care.

Marvel Movie Score: 8.5

Why That?: This movie is a perfect companion to the first and hopefully they make a third and not drop the ball like Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man did. It seems really evident that everyone involved just wanted movie goers to have a good time, and for me they succeeded. Oh, and it isn’t over two hours of people crying and moping. If they officially make a Spider-Man 4, the writers and producers better watch this movie first.

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

2008-05-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

Some say the mark of a great story is when the audience feels the emotions of that story’s characters. To laugh when the characters laugh, become angry when the characters become angry, to cry when the characters cry. Well with Spider-Man 3 the audience sure did cry, but less than half as much as Peter Parker.

Spider-Man 3 is a sad moment in movie history for a few reasons, most notably being such a horrible follow up to two incredible action movies, and it marks a very low point for one of my favorite directors and personalities, Sam Raimi.

I could go on and on and on about all of the painful flaws of this movie, but since they are all incredibly obvious ones like wanting to yell, “Stop crying!” and “Keep that damn mask on!” at Parker, I will place some focus on the good things.

Two of the three villains were done superbly. Harry’s decent into madness has been built up perfectly and I loved the idea of him just bluntly attacking Peter physically totally out of nowhere (from Peter’s POV that is). The ensuing memory loss and return was done nicely as well, changing his tactic from physical to psychological attacks. Of course the only thing that absolutely sucked about his story was the scene with his butler. It didn’t have to go completely, but the whole reasoning given during it makes absolutely no sense.

Then there’s Eddie Brock/Venom. Though given little screen time as Venom, the necessity for more was done away with by establishing Eddie as being completely insane. The guy is obviously lost in his own warped reality, and that’s not sarcasm on my part. He had coffee with Gwen Stacy once and immediately acts as though they’re a serious couple. He consciously commits a massive act of fraud and doesn’t get why he should be fired for it. Back to Gwen Stacy for a moment, he sees her on a date with Parker (the only one they go on and that ends horribly) and he thinks Parker stole her from him. It was perfect.

Sadly those are the only high notes in the movie aside from J.K. Simmons stealing every scene he’s in for the third time running. Sure the Sandman looked cool, but did he really have to be such an overly sympathetic character? And did you know that his first appearance in the comics was showing up at Peter’s high school and demanding he be given a high school diploma? Yes I am being incredibly serious. Ah the innocence of the 60’s. Plus using him to drastically change Spider-Man’s origin was just lame. I get how what they did didn’t completely change things, but there was no reason for it other than to make Peter mad.

I honestly believe a lot of story elements would be forgivable if it wasn’t just all rehashing what’s already been told in the first two movies. This entire movie is another chapter to Spider-Man’s origin story so no matter how cool the action scenes are, the story went no where. It was just another tale of, “Why is Peter, Spider-Man?” and trying to balance his personal life with his responsibilities. And it was hammered into our heads, too, unlike the first two movies that just flowed. Peter even flat out says, “We always have a choice.” Additionally it ended the same way as the first two; Mary Jane gets kidnapped by the villain, Spider-Man has to save her and gets a severe beat down in the process. This all goes to disprove the old adage of, “Third time’s a charm.”

A saving grace for Sam and Ivan Raimi (who wrote the movie) is how much pressure they were under from producers to keep throwing in more and more characters and story lines from the comics, primarily Gwen Stacy and Eddie Brock. One producer went as far as to talk out of her ass about how the fans wanted to see Gwen. Yeah we did, in the first movie before the introduction of Mary Jane just like she was in the comics. I have absolutely no problem with them starting with Mary Jane, skipping over Gwen completely, but to claim that the fans want the story to go backwards? Plus, her character is completely wasted here versus what she meant in the comics (read Spider-Man: Blue by Jeph Loeb).

Obviously compared to the previous movies this one falls short. To give a colorful analogy it’s like the three movies were in a long jump contest together. 1 and 2 landed at the same distance, breaking a world record, but when 3’s turn came up, it forgot to jump, running straight into the sand, tripping, and falling onto its face.

Marvel Movie Score: 4.5

Why That?: The fight scenes are awesome, I love the looks of all the characters, yes even Harry’s “New Goblin” outfit. And clearly it had potential, who knows what would’ve happened if there was a different writing team and producers had backed off as they did for Spider-Man 2. In the end, it was barely decent.

Ghost Rider (2007)

2008-04-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Michael Steven Johnson’s sophomore Marvel movie attempt stars Hollywood middleweight, but comic fan psychotic middleweight, Nicholas Cage as one of the most visually enticing comic character, Ghost Rider. Seriously, it’s a guy with a skull absolutely engulfed in flames, a motor cycle with flaming wheels, and he fights with a flaming chain. Just thinking about it paralyses me from awesome, so how could this go wrong?

While not a terrible movie, Ghost Rider ends up falling short on a lot of points. The one thing they did a fantastic job with is the origin, showing young Johnny Blaze, who lives with his father in a circus, selling his soul to the Devil (Mephisto, actually just a demon of a hell like dimension in the comics) to save his father from cancer, only to loose his father to a motorcycle stunt accident. The one thing they actually did better here than in the comics is they made Roxanne, the love interest, the daughter of another circus family, where in the comics Johnny is raised by Roxanne’s family after his father dies and his mother leaves, thereby giving him and Roxanne a weird brother/sister type relationship.

Years go by and Johnny becomes an Evel Knievel level stunt rider, selling out stadiums just to watch a single stunt. Yes I typed that with a straight face, but you go ahead and get your giggles out. Anyways in all that time Mephisto never came to collect, but now suddenly the moment Roxanne comes back into Johnny’s life, Mephisto’s “son,” Blackheart, decides to try and usurp daddy’s throne by taking power of a thousand corrupt souls that have been hidden since the Civil War. Also at this point it becomes confusing as to whether or not they’re trying to be an action movie or a horror movie as Blackheart is introduced walking through a barren wasteland with sudden single frame flashes of his eyes glowing red along with a quick loud noise to make people jump in their seats.

So now Mephisto comes to collect, transforming Johnny into the Ghost Rider in order to hunt down the hidden souls, or rather the scroll/contract with all of their signatures, and stop Blackheart. Blackheart sensing the awakening of the Ghost Rider recruits the aid of three elemental demons of Earth, Air and Water (sorry, not fire or heart). And here’s where things start to fall apart like a Jenga tower after five hours of drinking, but at the same time go a direction few super hero movies of this sort have.

First the good. While not happy with his new situation, Johnny doesn’t become self loathing and despondent about his new powers, instead he tries to learn, understand and control them so much so that he can access elements of them while in his human form. Kudos for that.

Now the bad. Ghost Rider stomps through all three demons without any problem. They attack him one at a time every night for three nights, and the most trouble he has is figuring out how to kill a guy made of wind, a problem that he solves in less than a minute. Until the last fight with Blackheart there is actually no real challenge for him, and even that’s mostly because they’re fighting during the day so Johnny can’t fully transform unless he’s in the shade.

Other shortcomings are Sam Elliot’s character as the Caretaker, who’s literally a caretaker of a cemetery and turns out to be [drum role] the previous Ghost Rider who was also a cowboy making this Sam Elliot’s *1,000 time playing a cowboy. (*this number is in no way accurate and is used for joke purposes only. A fact though is that Sam Elliot is awesome) The shortcoming actually comes at the end when the Caretaker transforms into his Ghost Rider form, complete with horse that leaves a fire trail like the Fire Mares in Krull, for one final ride to lead Johnny to Blackheart. After leading Johnny to a church, he turns back into his human form and rides off, presumably fading and going to heaven (or hell, I’m not sure as that whole thing is very vague). He doesn’t stay to help and fight or anything. Lame.

Then there’s Ghost Rider in general. It feels like their hands were really tied with budgeting the special effects because he really has no personality. He just kind of shows up, rides around, fights for a couple seconds then transforms back into Johnny. While I can only imagine how hard it is to inject personality into a skull that can’t really express emotion, the producers should have considered that before green lighting the project.

And lastly, the end just doesn’t make any sense what so ever. Blackheart is defeated but the souls are basically unaccounted for. Technically they should still be out and about in the world but no one seems to think that that’s a bad thing. Also Mephisto shows up to congratulate Johnny on a job well done, blah blah blah, you’ll serve me well in the future, blah blah standard set up to Johnny saying basically, I’m going to use these powers to fight you from now on. So why doesn’t Mephisto just take them back?

Extended Cut Note: It exists, but I haven’t seen it, nor do I know anyone who has. However it only has 9 extra minutes so I can’t imagine it being any better.

Marvel Movie Score: 4.5

Why That?: I could watch it again. The problems don’t hammer you over the head that much, the acting is good, and all in all it’s descent. However I believe this movie shows that Mark Steven Johnson should stick to directing. As much as I respect movies that are written and directed by the same person, his writing is still pretty weak while the visuals are very sharp and perfect for what he’s trying to do. Also for those of you who enjoy crazy like I do, rent this and watch the special features for a new found appreciation for Cage’s insanity.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

2008-04-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

X-Men 3 is an exercise in incompetence and was so before filming even started. Originally Brian Singer was going to hammer Superman out and immediately get back to Fox to do X-Men 3. Instead Fox turned into a 3 year old who doesn’t get their way and fired him, thereby giving Singer all the time in the world to ruin Superman. They then hired British director Matthew Vaughn, who had directed the fantastic gangster flick L4yer Cake. However Vaughn quickly left stating that he didn’t want to be away from his family, but this absolutely stunk as PR chafe. A little digging found that Fox was rushing production to try and get their movie out before Singer’s in yet another childish move. So their next move was to create the ultimate in Hollywood Yes-men team of Brett Rattner directing and Zak Penn writing.

Every success in X-Men 3 is also a failure. We finally get to see a Danger Room sequence that includes Sentinels, but all we see are their eyes glowing in the dark until Wolverine has Colossus throw him at a Sentinel where we hear claws striking metal and a large head comes crashing down with Wolverine still attached to the back of it. One scene, three failures: 1) as mentioned you never actually see a Sentinel. 2) Colossus throwing Wolverine is a classic X-Men thing called a Fastball Special, but the way they do it just looks utterly silly. 3) when the Sentinel head crashes down, Wolverine is very clearly not hanging on to it but then it slides to a stop and he suddenly walks out from behind it.

New characters are introduced on both sides. For the X-Men we get Hank McCoy, Beast (played by Kelsey Grammer), which is easily the one thing they got right in the movie, massive credit to Grammer for that. Then there’s Warren Worthington III, Angel, shown heavily in trailers, a very major character in the history of the X-Men, and terribly wasted here. They try to use him to tell a moral story but I’m not sure what that is. See his father is the primary financial backer for a new mutant cure and wants his son to be cured. His son doesn’t want to be cured so he flies from California to New York to seek shelter within the Xavier institute. Then he disappears until the end when he saves his dad from falling to his death. This actually leads to another MAJOR problem but I’ll get to that in a moment.

On Magneto’s side of this whole thing we’re first re-introduced to Pyro who’s now suddenly a psychopath. Then we meet a bunch of supporting mutant characters that exist just to make comic fans angry. There’s Calisto who in the comics only has heightened senses and is a strong fighter, now she can move really fast and has the incredibly plot convenient ability to locate mutants and know what their powers are. There’s Kid Omega and no one knows why he’s called that since all he can do is sprout spikes. Even later then we get to meet the Juggernaut, now apparently a mutant who’s back story has nothing to do with Charles Xavier where in the comics they are step-brothers and Juggernaut isn’t a mutant. And to close we also get Jamie Maddrox, the Multiple Man, who as one would imagine can create duplicates of himself and in the comics has never been a villain. He’s only used for one scene after this and it’s painfully plot convenient since Magneto met Maddrox by coincidence while freeing Juggernaut. To sum up, the amount of plot convenient powers in Magneto’s little army is ridiculous.

Getting back to the problem brought up at the end of Angel’s description, there are two primary locations in this movie; the X-Mansion located in upstate New York, and Magneto’s base camp located in San Francisco, California, yet somehow people regularly travel back and forth between the two in a matter of minutes. I can let a lot of things slide, but this is just flat out stupid. It’s so stupid I can’t even think of a witty joke about it. And the fact that it happens more than once is absolutely infuriating.

Another key plot point in this is the return of Jean Grey, now known as the Phoenix, an alternate personality her mind developed at a young age. I’m just going to skip over all of that stuff though since I really want to get to the heart of the matter; the final fight. The money shot. The one thing that should make every horrible thing in this movie worth sitting through. Instead it’s just a cluster fuck of nonsense. At this point Magneto has gained Phoenix as an ally and located the source of the cure, a young mutant he openly plans to kill. He’s being kept on Alcatraz so Magneto gathers his army of idiots onto the Golden Gate Bridge and breaks off a chunk of it to transport his army to the island, where he could have just as easily moved the chunk of the bridge with nobody on it, and dropped it on the building. Then he sends his army to fight the soldiers sporting plastic guns (so that Magneto can’t stop them) that shoot darts loaded with the cure, because they’re just pawns thereby showing that Magneto does care about mutant kind (that’s sarcasm, by the way), and when his army starts loosing he yells at Phoenix to do something, because apparently he didn’t actually have a plan for her other than to get her on his side. Oh and did I mention that Magneto wanted to stop the cure because he knew the government would make a weapon out of it, while the government wasn’t forcing the cure on anybody but did develop the guns that shoot the cure for the sole purpose of defending humans from aggressive mutants, specifically Magneto? I didn’t? Well there you go. The whole final attack by Magneto actually proved that he’s wrong and incompetent.

This movie completely feels like it was done by a different crew. The only thing linking it to the previous movies is where the story picks up. The things that didn’t make sense in the first two were things that dawned on you when you think about it, but in this everything is just falling apart immediately.

Marvel Movie Score: 3

Why That?: While I honestly believe that I can actually find more flaws in this movie than Blade Trinity (as usual I did not name nearly all of them here), it had just enough things to give it just one more point. I think it’s because it’s easier to watch and more fun to pick apart. Also of note is the revelation that Singer’s version was going to gently shift the focus away from Wolverine and bring it to Jean and Scott in the same way that the Phoenix Saga did. At least one good thing came out of X-Men 3, and that’s this image of Famke Janssen as Jean Grey that was put on the backer board of the Jean Grey action figure. Show me your “Oh” face next, Miss Janssen.

Fantastic Four (2005)

2008-04-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

Another brief history lesson: In 1994 a studio got Director Roger Corman to film a Fantastic Four movie as fast as possible as they would have other wise lost the rights if they didn’t begin production by a certain date. Corman got it made in time and within budget, but it was never planned to actually see any form of official release. Which is good for him because even by Corman standards (seriously, read up on Roger Corman, his entire film career is incredibly interesting) this was a horrible movie that is honestly so painful I can’t sit through it beginning to end, which is saying a lot because I love bad movies and Mystery Science Theater 3000 (a show that featured many Corman movies).

So round two with the first family of comics shows us how to make a good, bad comic book movie.

The bad: Some little plot holes, missed opportunities, and HORRIBLE portrayal of one of the most loved villains in the Marvel Universe, dare I say of all comics even.

The good: Of all Marvel movies up ‘till now (and so far since) it’s the one that is the most fun. It’s not bogged down with unnecessary emotional storylines (see Spider-Man) or pseudo social commentary (see X-Men), it is just a damn fun movie.

Hands down every comic fan’s biggest complaint about the movie is the portrayal of Dr. Doom. In the comics he is unbearably arrogant (always refers to himself in the third person, made a deal with the devil only because he was so full of himself that he knew he’d be able to break the deal with no consequences), powerful, charismatic, brilliant, and answers to no one. Oh, and he’s not really a doctor as he never actually graduated. In the movie however he’s a quick talking, manipulative business man (and a bit of a scientist though this is only implied), head of Doom Industries, always looking for the best way to line his wallet even at the expense of others. Despite this I think Julian McMahon did a good job with what he was given.

However this all leads to a missed golden opportunity. In the comics whenever anything goes wrong, no matter how obvious it is as to whose fault it is, if something can be remotely linked to Reed Richards, Doom will indeed blame Richards. In the scene where the space station is hit by a cloud of cosmic radiation due to an unforeseen miscalculation by Reed, it would have been absolutely perfect if Doom had instead had the space station secretly moved prior to their arrival so that they wouldn’t have to wait so long for the storm. After which he would have still have blamed Richards.

As for the rest of the cast, kudos. Everyone did a fantastic (HAW!) job, even Jessica Alba, who was clearly cast just to bring in more fanboys. Ian Gruffudd seemed very natural as a genius still not sure of himself. Steeling the show however is a toss up to both Michael Chikalis as Ben Grimm, the Thing and Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. The toss up is partially due to how well they play off each other and how perfectly it mirrors their comic counter parts, Johnny always antagonizing Ben, Ben lashing back, but the minute things become serious you can tell that they would fight to the death for each other.

A couple plot holes I feel MUST be addressed: The movie goes right from the cosmic storm hitting the station and knocking everyone out, to the crew being back on earth without even a hint as to how that happened (see Director’s Cut notes below). A quick rescue is a ridiculous idea, but it’s better than nothing. And then there’s Sue turning invisible and stripping on the bridge to get past a barricade. The idea is that somehow her being invisible will allow her, Reed, and Johnny to get passed the police, but all she does is turn invisible, strip (turn visible again so we can see her in her underwear, then turn invisible again), then she pushes through the crowd while Reed and Johnny clearly just sneak around the side of an ambulance.

But as a sign of just how fun this movie is, few people even noticed that there’s only one fight scene in the entire movie, and it’s at the very end. Sure there’s some action here and there, but nothing spectacular. That one fight scene at the end, though short, is very fun, starting with a couple minutes of the Thing and Dr. Doom just beating the tar out of each other and culminating with the Fantastic Four really working as a team.

Director’s Cut Note: If you have the option, see this version. There are three new scenes of note; the first showing what happened after the cloud crashed through the station and how they get back to earth, the second adding to the relationship development between Ben and Alicia so now instead of her showing up at the end as Ben’s girlfriend suddenly, we now know something of what happened between them, and a scene of Johnny coming to grips with himself and his immaturity.

Marvel Movie Score = 8

Why That?: The horrible treatment of Dr. Doom is unforgivable. Sure they did it this way to save on time, but this character deserves better. But in the end the movie just pulls it off somehow, unlike X-Men where all of its short comings are irritating to watch over and over, here they’re just easily ignored. Also aside from a couple of slightly questionable scenes this makes for a good family movie, leading to the sequel to be rated PG as they clearly have decided to make this franchise family friendly.

Man-Thing (2005)

2008-04-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

I contemplated whether or not to review Man-Thing for quite a while since it’s a) made for TV, and b) horrible. However when it first went into production, in fact while it was still being filmed, it was intended for theatrical release so I decided to go for it and just keep it short.

Another history lesson: Man-Thing and Swamp Thing were actually created by two roommates who started down the same path and then each put their own spin on a basic idea. They then amicably took their ideas to the two different big houses of comics, DC and Marvel, and sold them off.

When watching Man-Thing it’s hard to believe that it was ever intended for theatrical release as almost every aspect of it screams, “Made for TV.” While I’m sure they wouldn’t have advertised it as a Marvel film, since the character is fairly obscure, it still doesn’t really work as a horror movie. Most of the plethora of lame PG-13 horror movies to come out in the past few years, are scarier than this. However it does start exactly like one would expect a lame slasher flick to start; a couple of teens getting it on get slaughtered mysteriously. Here’s the lame thing about that, Man-Thing doesn’t just kill indiscriminately like that. In fact being part of nature you’d think he’d encourage one of the most natural instincts of all living creatures, but whatever.

Oddly though the story is taken from a Man-Thing comic story, where in a rich land developer is trying to buy up all the land of the swamp the Man-Thing protects, killing anyone who gets in his way. Unfortunately this story follows the new sheriff in town, you know, the one from the city who clashes with the locals and their set ways, and we don’t even really see Man-Thing until the end of the movie.

Marvel Movie Score = 0.5

Why That?: Mostly because it’s not as bad as Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four. In fact if it weren’t based on a Marvel Comic, it’d be a decent made for TV movie. Still a bad movie, but decent. Really the only thing this movie has going for it is in the beginning when the two teens are killed, the girl has a great rack. And considering I don’t give a rat’s ass about nudity in film, that’s saying something.

Elektra (2005)

2008-04-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

And so Mark Steven Johnson (writer/director of Daredevil) is out of this follow up to Daredevil, only to be replaced by Zak Penn, a name that now invokes tremendous rage inside of me. This is Zak’s first Marvel Movie as head writer (he helped a bit on X2). It’s sad because before this he wrote PCU, one of my favorite comedies, of course before that he worked on Last Action Hero, but I digress.

Now you don’t have to have seen Daredevil (to be called DD from here on) to understand what’s going on in Elektra, actually Elektra makes less sense if you have seen DD. In fact this movie feels like it was written without any consideration to Elektra’s already established character, where she was very strong willed but at the same time compassionate. Now she’s a killer with an obsessive compulsive disorder and a somewhat Spock like, emotionless speech pattern. Now this could have been explained easily by saying that her being brought back from the dead left her changed, but instead it’s just how she is. This is also a little odd because DD ends with Matt discovering a necklace left for him by Elektra to let him know that she’s alive, which to me is a sign that she’s still compassionate.

On its own merit Elektra can best be described as weak. It’s not horrible, but everything they try to do to make you either care about someone or to surprise you with some sort of twist just doesn’t work at all. In fact I actually rewatched this with my wife and a couple times she thought she missed something because the reveals had such little impact.

However they did do an excellent job of introducing us to the Hand, a centuries old order of evil mystical ninja (and yes, the Foot from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a spin on the Hand). They also introduce Stick and the Chaste, the good version of the Hand. Stick is portrayed perfectly by Terrence “Kneel before, Zod,” Stamp, as the blind bad-ass leader of the Chaste. They even got his outfit spot on which gave me a much needed smile.

They do fall short on the portrayal of the Hand’s elite soldiers, trying a little too hard to give Elektra overwhelming odds to over come. A major disappointment comes in here as they really waste three characters. They have a large man named Stone who as you can guess is really strong and had solid skin. However this character is actually supposed to be a member of the Chaste. Now while that may seem like nitpicking, Stone was actually a significant character so this isn’t something that would go unnoticed. Then there’s Typhoid who was apparently supposed to be Typhoid Mary, a long standing villain in the Marvel Universe. However this Typhoid character has only one thing in common with the comic version; they’re both women. That is it which is tragic because Typhoid Mary is a really interesting character. And lastly there’s Kinkou who isn’t based on anyone, but all he does is get killed in one of those big reveal moments. Apparently he’s supposed to have incredible speed and agility through perfect balance, but they do absolutely nothing to show this and I had to learn that by looking it up online. There were two other elites but the leader was well developed and the other was a guy named Tattoo who had living tattoos and was used as perfectly as a character like that can be.

Also no thirteen year old is as annoying as the girl in this movie, and yes I have met a lot of thirteen year olds in the past years. The question then is, has Zak Penn? The breaking point for me is when Elektra is trying to teach her how to meditate and immediately all the girl does is fidget and wave her hands in front of Elektra’s closed eyes.

Director’s Cut note: I haven’t seen it but there is one out there. The reason being is I don’t know anyone who owns it and finding rental versions of Director’s Cuts is very uncommon but something tells me that this one is more like the Blade Trinity Extended Version than the Daredevil Director’s Cut.

Marvel Movie Score = 1.5

Why That?: Like I said it’s not a terrible movie, but through out the entire thing I just flat out don’t care about any of the characters or any of the plot points they tried to hammer into me. The fact that they seemed to ignore the character already developed in DD just took me out of the movie a bit as well. Plus the inclusion of the Chaste/Hand stuff in this movie just annoyed me that they weren’t used in DD instead, however this same stuff is the main reason to actually see this movie.

Blade Trinity (2004)

2008-04-02T16:48:00.001-07:00

And so the Blade series brings us another first for Marvel movies; the first trilogy entry. Oh yeah, it was also the first trilogy entry to suck horribly on levels that no analogy about sucking can do justice.

Blade Trinity marks David Goyer’s second writer/director film, but it’s his first big budget theatrical one (the first was direct to video, Zig Zag, starting Blade’s Wesley Snipes) and feels like something I would have wrote in high school, and yes I just insulted myself. It has dozens of really unnecessary plot devices and characters, and above all it has my deep hatred for the “what you know about vampires (in this case Dracula specifically) is wrong” plot device, which is a shame because Drake, which is apparently Dracula’s real name, is played by Dominic Purcell who is a fantastic actor.

Also there’s a good amount of unnecessary swearing, a good portion of which just doesn’t make sense. Here’s an example for you, this conversation takes place as HHH (yes the wrestler) introduces a captured Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) to his genetically altered vampire dog:

Hannibal King: Well, that depends who you ask. Because clearly, this dog has a bigger dick than you.
Jarko Grimwood: And when the fuck did you see my dick, fuck-face?

Seriously, no one talks like that, anywhere.

This movie feels like Goyer filled the script with a bunch of ideas that sounded cool to him but no one stopped and said, “David, you know a lot of this really doesn’t make any sense at all.” Here’s a list of such things, created as I realized that my first attempt at this review was getting REALLY long because of all the horrible things I wanted to address:

- The opening line of the movie is this - Hannibal King: In the movies, Dracula wears a cape, and some old English guy always manages to save the day at the last minute with crosses and holy water. But everybody knows the movies are full of shit. The truth is, it started with Blade, and it ended with him. The rest of us were just along for the ride.
Yes it sounds cool, sort of, but it doesn’t make sense.

- Cool equipment like high power hand guns with video cameras in them (and mini DVD burner), bullets with electrical components, and something that looks like a bow but has a high concentrated UV light instead of a string, used to slice up vampires. This UV light is, and I quote directly, “half as hot as the sun.”

- A pissed Abigail (Jessica Biel) readies herself for the final assault by target practicing with her bow and arrow, firing through something that reads speed and power of each arrow. Somehow while using a compound bow, which has a limit on how far back you can pull the string, the speed and force of impact goes up with every shot.

- The Nightstalkers have a biochemist who’s a single mother and blind. This is clearly done to try and make us care about the character, and fails miserably because she has maybe 5 minutes of screen time. However she is played by the bat-shit crazy Natasha Leone; check out the special features on the DVD where she talks about doing research for this role by spending time at a school for the blind even though her character being blind is pretty damn inconsequential plus unrealistic.

- Use silver in a gas form to rescue Hannibal King (it’s pumped into the room he’s being kept in). More specifically it's colloidal silver, which within two seconds of research I discovered is very bad for a human to inhale.

- Abigail likes to listen to her iPod while fighting, with ear buds and all, which would make it ridiculously easy for a vampire to sneak up on her.

I literally could go on and on for several pages, but I think I’ve made my point.

Honestly the only thing that makes this movie remotely tolerable is Ryan Reynolds. While Jessica Biel isn’t terrible, her role is just too bland and not developed enough.

Unrated Version Note: There is honestly nothing worth watching in the unrated version. All of it belonged on the cutting room floor, what incredibly little there was that is.

Marvel Movie Score = 2

Why That?: I had to rewatch this movie since my first viewing was so forgettable, but the entire time my mind couldn’t help but pick every scene in the movie apart. So that 2 is all for Ryan Reynolds keeping me from turning the movie off and giving up.

Daredevil Director's Cut (2004)

2008-03-18T09:35:00.001-07:00

In November of 2004 Marvel entered a film into the ranks of the often despised Director’s Cut DVDs. It’s hard enough releasing a Director’s Cut of a good movie as the average buyer doesn’t want to fork out for another copy of a movie they already have no matter how good it is, let alone one who’s core audience hated the theatrical version. But with just a little word of mouth a fire spread. I’ve already established a little note on several reviews relating to Director’s Cuts/Extended Editions, but this one is so drastically different that it deserves its own review.

The differences between the Theatrical and Director’s cuts are ridiculous and go a long way to show how producers can ruin a movie. While the annoying voice over in the beginning and playground fight scene are still in the movie, there is plenty of other stuff to make up for it. For starters there’s an entire subplot that was cut from the theatrical version that involves a man framed for murder that Matt Murdock is defending. At first this subplot just feels a little tacked on but then surprisingly it ends up being very key to the main plot and at the same time is very entertaining (including a scene with Murdock driving a crooked cop’s car with the cop in it freaking out).

Also with just a few scenes there is far more character development for damn near everyone, even a couple really short ones involving the nearly unused character of Karen Page (who in the comics is a very, very important character in Matt’s life) and Foggy Nelson. It is truly stunning how much character development there is for them in just two very short extra scenes of interaction. Equally short and equally effective is an awesome introduction of the Kingpin that clearly establishes that this is not a guy to fuck with.

But my favorite change is that Matt and Elektra never have their Hollywood-style (see, I told you this comment from my Daredevil review would make sense) “We’ve known each other for an hour maybe, I love you, let’s go boink!” moment. In the theatrical version when Elektra asks Matt to stay while he hears a guy getting mugged (that she can’t hear) he lets the guy get mugged and goes to get some. In the Director’s Cut he just apologizes and walks away to kick the thug’s teeth in (this scene was used in the theatrical version, just in another spot), no doubt with a little extra aggression for the cock-block.

Marvel Movie Score = 5

Why That?: The theatrical version is an embarrassment compared to this. In fact directly compared to the theatrical version the Director’s Cut would be an 8, but the fact is it’s a little hard to gauge how it would have been received if it was released in theaters and no one had ever seen what we got. Still its high points are good and it’s definitely worth seeing.

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

2008-03-12T16:20:00.001-07:00

What does it take to balls up and make a sequel to a perfect super-hero movie? Balls up and make the sequel perfect as well.

In Spider-Man 2 even the opening credits are perfect. Well not the credits themselves, but the included paintings that retell the entire story of the first movie. Add in the fact that they were painted by comic art legend Alex Ross! We go right from that to a movie that just loves kicking Peter Parker in the crotch. The first thing that happens; he’s delivering pizza, stops to save some kids, ends up being late with the delivery, and as a result gets fired. That is just a brutal way to start a movie about a kid trying to do the right thing.

Skipping over a lot of other depressing stuff in Peter’s life, we’re introduced to the pre-villain Otto Octavious as he and Peter begin to bond over their love of science and the idea of finding one’s soul mate. Of course things go wrong with Otto’s big experiment so he and Peter have to punch each other to work things out. Isn’t that always how it is?

Ok, so more specifically we get a great origin story for Dr. Octopus where his life’s work nearly killed all of downtown New York therefore ruining his credibility, and on top of that the accident ended up killing his wife, the only person he had in the world. Because of this we get the first Raimi-esque scene in years. As surgeons prepare to remove the metal arms fused to Dr. Octavius’ body, the arms begin defending themselves and we’re shown this through several quick cuts, fast zooms, people screaming, blood flying, humorous focuses, and stylish lighting. As a HUGE Evil Dead/Army of Darkness fan I almost wet myself because of how cool this was.

While they did skip on showing Spider-Man fighting random street crime, the fight scenes between Doc Oc and Spidey are plentiful and fantasticalnominal. This does lead to my only complaint for the movie; Spider-Man has super strength yet he can land a punch to Dr. Octopus’ face without it just caving in. Not only that, but his sunglasses remain intact. A small gripe but I figured it should be mentioned.

The rest of the cast really stepped it up for this sequel as well, especially James Franco as we watched Harry Osborn slowly go more and more insane because of his belief that Spider-Man killed his father, a father who he was always trying to receive approval from. This culminates in not only brilliantly setting up another sequel but also a very surprising, though brief, return of Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn, now a psychosis induced vision of Harry’s.

And to take a brief step back to the depressing stuff that keeps happening to Peter, this goes a long way to mirroring the comics where Peter is constantly struggling to keep every aspect of his life from falling apart. In the movie Peter gives up on being Spider-Man under the assumption that everything’s going to be fine from here on out, but the first thing we see as he walks happily without a care in the world, is him tripping/falling on the sidewalk. Raimi has made sure that everyone should understand one simple thing: It sucks being Peter Parker.

Much like X-Men 2, this sequel flows perfectly almost to the point where with a little modification to the closing of the first and the opening of the second, it could be one really long movie.

Version 2.1 Note: See this! If not for the extended train fight sequence, then for a new scene of JK Simmons TOTALLY hamming it up and stealing the show!

Marvel Movie Score = 10

Why That?: Like the first one the only faults are so minor it’s ridiculous to even address them. And I really don’t have much more to say about it because it’s just kicks so much ass.

The Punisher (2004)

2008-03-07T17:39:00.000-08:00

A brief history lesson: In 1989 Marvel licensed the film rights for the Punisher to New World Pictures. However Marvel would only let them use the names “The Punisher,” “Frank Castle,” and the basic origin story. They weren’t allowed to use the famous skull symbol at all or use any existing stories as a basis for the movie. Staring Dolph Lundgren, the film never saw an American theatrical release due to New World Pictures going bankrupt. However the movie actually has a lot of really good dialogue very befitting of the Punisher and a very high body count.

So the first Marvel movie of 2004 was The Punisher, and man did it rock. And it rocked despite the inclusion of John Travolta as a crime boss villain. I don’t think there are two scenes in the entire movie where he’s acting as the same character in each. He goes from over the top to dead pan to weaselly and never in a manner that feels like that’s what the script/story was calling for. So to sum up, he was terrible.

Thomas Jane on the other hand made this movie! He looked and he acted the part perfectly, of course it helps that he’s a legitimate comic fan who is very familiar with the character. He started out as a man who was letting go of a hard job and ready to be happy with his wife and child who he loved more than anything, and he very quickly becomes a man with a very hard, but to him necessary mission all the while seeming lost. Like I said, perfect.

Like the comic (these days more so), the movie is more of a crime story, as everyone is lacking super powers. It’s just one complete badass taking down an entire criminal empire one bullet at a time.

Now a lot of people complained about the supporting cast of the neighbors in the apartment, but what they don’t realize is these characters are very well translated from the comic story “Welcome Back, Frank,” which was a key story in the return of the Punisher character to his roots after someone had thought it’d be a good idea to kill him and have him come back as an agent of Heaven who can pull high tech weapons out of his coat at will. Yes I do wish I was making that up. But I digress, these characters helped to flesh out the change of Frank to the Punisher, showing him that he still has people to fight for, the innocent who can only fight so hard before they need help.

While at first I really disliked the scene where Frank is fighting for his life against the Russian, because of it being offset by the neighbors listening to opera music and trying to have a good time, it’s grown on me. The fight itself takes on a couple somewhat comedic moments, but in the middle of such a serious movie it lets you breath for a moment.

Director’s Cut Note: While I thought it was interesting and well done how they expanded just how the Saint’s discovered who Frank was, it ended with a very uncharacteristic move on the Punisher’s part of forcing a friend to commit suicide while Frank watched.

Marvel Movie Score: 9.5

Why That?: Thomas Jane had a lot of points to make up for Travolta’s horrible performance, but he did it with ease. And they never once tried to make the Punisher into a real hero. He was flat out killing bad people for the bad things they did and not making any apologies for it. It’s too bad Jane is off of the sequel as he thought the script was too comic book-y. This lowers my expectations drastically.

Hulk (2003)

2008-02-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

This one is a mixed bag as I both loved it and hated it. It was very long, very drawn out, too stylistic, and very few action scenes. However at the same time they did a great job of telling the Hulk’s origin by going beyond it being a guy hit by gamma radiation. They delved deep into the psychological reasons for Bruce Banner’s (brilliantly played by Eric Banna) repressed rage, which is something that has become very important in the comics. However they also added in a somewhat silly idea of his father planting the seeds of the transformation by performing genetic experiments on himself before impregnating his wife.

The entire casting was perfect and they did a tremendous job of fleshing them out effortlessly. However the inclusion of Josh Lucas as the slimy, money loving military contractor made it impossible for them to portray General Ross properly. In the comics, Ross has nothing but hate for the Hulk right from the get go, and is thoroughly convinced that the only option is to kill the Hulk. Now in the movie he does come across as a no nonsense kind of guy, but he treats the Hulk like a human, wanting to save Banner if possible but ready to kill him if that’s the only option, of course with him being played by Sam Elliot you immediately want him to be likeable. But this does have a lot to do with the fact that General Ross’ daughter, Betty (played by the ridiculously beautiful Jennifer Connelly) is Bruce’s co-worker/ex-girlfriend. Here’s where things start getting tedious as Betty tries to help Bruce figure out what’s going on inside his mind and we’re walked, or rather dragged through what feels like hours of flashbacks where we already figured out what happened.

As mentioned before there are very few action scenes, but when there was one it was awesome. Though it was a little dark, I can watch the scene of the Hulk fighting those dogs over and over again and never grow tired of it. In a fight against the US military they addressed the fact that once he gets moving, the Hulk can run fast and jump far, something a lot of people don’t know about (I’m not sure about now, but in the beginning he could jump three miles with no running start). And then there’s the last fight scene against his father…

Another silly idea was to make David Banner transform himself into the Absorbing Man of sorts. But on the plus side this did lead to an amazing climax with David attempting to absorb the energy created by the Hulk’s rage only to discover that there was too much, causing David to explode. I immediately translated this as awesome because I know that the Hulk’s rage is infinite and uncontainable and this was a great way to show that.

Marvel Movie Score = 7

Why That?: I enjoy the movie, I really do, but it is really long, drawn out, and in no way as filled with action as a movie about the Hulk should be. However I do believe that spending so much time delving into the Hulk’s origin opened the ability to make a sequel pretty much all action. Marvel has instead decided to do what people are calling a “requel,” with The Incredible Hulk (now staring Ed Norton), starting the story with Banner on the run so that in ways it feels like a sequel, but at the same time it technically will have nothing to do with the original. Got that?

X-Men 2 (2003)

2008-02-21T19:31:00.000-08:00

By the time X-Men 2 (aka X2, aka X-Men 2: X-Men United, but sadly not aka X2: Electric Boogaloo) rolled around, I had not yet become as disillusioned with the first one as I am now. Sure it was starting to form, but barely, so opening night I was there with my gal and my friends waiting to be blown away again.

In it’s first viewing the movie suffers the same way the first movie did, where the ending just doesn’t make any sense, but I’ll work my way to that. The movie opens up with Wolverine searching the area that Professor X had told him about at the end of the first movie, where he discovered information about an abandoned military base in Canada. But now there are just ruins so Wolverine heads right back home. The problem here is there is still a very active military base within walking distance of the old one, they’re even connected by underground tunnels, yet somehow Wolverine with all his military training and heightened senses, is completely unable to pick up on this.

Fortunately between that and the end of the movie things were pretty good, including Wolverine stabbing soldiers (resulting in guys sitting next to me in the theater acting shocked that Wolverine, a trained solder, was killing people breaking into the mansion) and even a cool fight scene with Cyclops to show off that he is a trained fighter (note: I’ve always been a Cyclops fan so this made me gitty).

Midway downfalls would be the Storm Nightcrawler sappy crap, which was only beefed up because Halle Berry was complaining about wanting a bigger part, and a moment where Rogue tries to stop Pyro by absorbing his powers which takes WAY too long and barely took the guy off his feet. The second one wasn’t that big a deal, but really the sappy crap with Norm (see what I did there?) was just annoying.

So we wrap up the movie with the X-men trying to make their get away, their jet engines not starting up while it’s parked in a valley beneath a cracking damn. Jean Grey, who’s been showing signs of the Phoenix throughout the movie, hobbles out of the jet on an injured leg to save her friends. She simultaneously holds the water back with a force field, starts lifting the jet out of the way, blocks Nightcrawler from teleporting to save her, and projects her thoughts through Xavier to communicate her goodbye to Cyclops. So for dramatic purposes they seemed to ignore a couple more logical endings. For starters there seemed no reason that Jean had to get off the jet to do this. Secondly, and way more importantly, Iceman was on the jet. A kid who less than an hour ago made a two foot thick wall of ice out of air molecules in a second’s time, and now there’s solid water rushing at them. I’ve said this many times; Iceman could have frozen the whole thing solid and the X-Men could’ve celebrated by playing a game of hockey (they were in Canada after all).

As far as sequels go, it was a good follow up with everyone and everything feeling and looking like an expansion of the first movie. Unfortunately that’s where the problems stemmed from.

Marvel Movie Score = 6.5

Why That?: While the action scenes stepped it up, and it did have a good story, the ending was just so horribly botched that I can’t get over it. It has really made me start to question Bryan Singer and his writing team’s (as he works very closely with him) actual talent as they seem to just forgo logic for the sake of telling their story. This becomes way more apparent in Superman Returns, which can not be reviewed as a Marvel movie.

Daredevil (2003)

2008-02-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

It is true what they say; all good things must come to an end. And so ends Marvel’s streak of great movies (from the POV of not being annoyed with X-Men just yet) with Daredevil. The funny thing is the acting was very good all around (Sidebar time: I’ve never understood why people don’t like Ben Affleck so much. I don’t think he’s the greatest or anything, but I do enjoy him), the visuals were fantastic, and I even enjoyed the costume design. However everything else is so tragically flawed that it makes my head spin.

It feels almost as if Mark Steven Johnson (writer/director) thought the people in the theater would be blind just like our hero, as the first half hour or so is a flashback to a young Matt Murdock with a voice over from the elder version describing to us exactly what we’re looking at. Movies are a visual medium, Mr. Johnson, I trust that when I see a kid looking for his dad, that he’s indeed looking for his dad. Included in the flashback is a scene of bullies thinking a blind kid is a coward for not fighting them and yes they know he’s blind. Now I’ve met my fair share of bullies, but even the dumbest of them isn’t that dumb. He’s f’ing blind!!! And then there’s the name dropping, oh the name dropping, with a crooked boxing promoter naming off boxers who all happen to be named after people who’ve worked on the Daredevil comic at one point or another. Get it? It’s clever.

Fast forward to by far the dumbest scene in the entire movie, where our blind hero, Matt Murdock, spars with Elektra, who walked into a coffee shop smelling nice so Murdock went to talk to her, she then got up as if she was just leaving anyways and leaves so he follows her to get her name. Yes, basically she walked in, sat down, and walked out. Now back to the fight. They’re on a play ground full of kids and Matt, who the world thinks is completely blind, spars full force with this woman. Yeah, cause that won’t draw ANY attention to Matt. Oh, and of course this eventually leads to them taking the meat boat to tuna town later that night after they’ve known each other for maybe four hours, thanks Hollywood (this comment will make sense soon, just not in this review).

I can’t think of a good way to segue over to the supporting cast, so I’ll just use the awkward sentence I just typed. The supporting characters are cast perfectly. Michael Clark Duncan does a great job as the Kingpin, Colin Farrell basically plays himself but is a murderous psycho, and John Favreau as Foggy Nelson is hands down the only thing in the movie that is without flaw.

Want to read about more insipid things in this movie? Good, I have plenty.

So Kingpin decides to kill Elektra’s father for betraying him. He succeeds. He then sends Bullseye after Elektra because, “the Kingpin doesn’t just kill you, he kills your whole family.” Way to really stick it to the guy. Kill him and THEN take away what matters to him most in the world.

And then there’s the line that actually challenges Storm’s “Toad that’s hit by lightning” bit from X-Men:

Kingpin: How do you kill a man without fear?
Bullseye: By putting the fear in him.

Really? That actually makes sense to someone? Seriously there is no more expansion on that idea, they change topics of discussion after that to killing Elektra.

And while the effect of how he sees looks cool, it’s wrong. Clearly how he sees in the movie is sonar, in the comics it is clearly a radar sense that he has honed through a lot of meditation and training. But with the way it is in the movie, he is ridiculously susceptible to sound interference, which one would think his sensitivity to would just lead him to being deaf by now.

Lastly, Daredevil’s a ninja, not a brawler, oh and he doesn’t kill people!!! @$$holes.

Marvel Movie Score = 3

Why That?: The fight scenes were pretty cool, and like I said the acting was good. Also to be honest, Jennifer Garner got the movie two good points all on her own. Booyah! But there is hope in the near future… Stay tuned.

Spider-Man (2002)

2008-02-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

In the wake of 9/11 America got a pick-me up in the form of Spider-Man (but deprived an awesome trailer featuring the WTC). Directed brilliantly by Sam Raimi (an all time favorite of mine) and staring the second best casting since Patrick Stewart as Prof. X, Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker.

This movie is near perfect. The power of the origin story is undeniable with Peter growing up so fast from a nerdy high school kid who desperately just wants to be considered cool and admired by the girl next door to accepting full responsibility for what happened to his uncle and using that as his motivation every day of his life from there on out. Sure a lot of people complained about the organic web shooters, but I agree whole heartedly with Raimi in that it helped make Peter a little more normal and relatable. Yes he’s a science whiz, but he’s not so smart that he can build a high tech piece of equipment that no one in the world has ever thought of before or since, and then never invent anything else.

The casting was superb even with Kirsten Dunst’s mediocrity as Mary Jane Watson. But to be honest, with the way they wrote the character it didn’t really matter who was cast. Willem Dafoe was amazing as always, the scene of him talking to himself in the mirror is absolutely brilliant and a sign of why so many people love DeFoe as an actor. But hands down the show stealer was JK Simmons as J Jonah Jameson (that would be the third most perfect casting ever).

I realized something in writing this review, when a movie is amazing it’s very difficult to flesh out a review without feeling like you’re just rambling about all the things you liked about it. I'm sure after I post this I'll think of some things I could've said to make it longer, but that's just how this stuff works.

But to be fair, my only complaint for the entire movie comes from when Spider-Man goes back into the building to save the woman screaming, who turns out to be the Green Goblin, but his Spider Sense never goes off and he gets punched in the face, though now that I read that sentence it sounds pretty funny.

Marvel Movie Score = 10

Why That?: No matter how many times I watch it, I still think it’s perfect. I didn’t even mind the mock up of the Gwen Stacey/Green Goblin thing now including Mary Jane (and her surviving). The action scenes were perfect, including rarely seen scenes of the super-hero taking out just random criminals on the street. But most importantly beginning to end it was ridiculously fun.

Blade 2 (2002)

2008-01-24T18:36:00.000-08:00

Just as Blade was Marvel’s first foray into big budget Hollywood movies, Blade 2 was Marvel’s first foray into bigger budgeted sequels, and it showed. Another important factor of this movie was the inclusion of director Guillermo del Toro. While this wasn’t his first American movie (that being the easily forgotten Mimic (1997)) it was a movie that made a lot of people take notice.

Picking up shortly after the end of the first movie, it opened just as the first one did with a fight scene. Though not nearly as cool as the rave fight, it was still very nice to have it open like this. Very quickly it became obvious that the budget for this movie was jacked up remarkably with the vampires’ lair and even Blade’s base of operations being incredibly complex compared to the predecessor. Del Toro, with help form Mike Mignola (Hellboy) as a visual consultant, and again David Goyer writing, crafted a world of stark shadows and creepy atmosphere that looked perfect.

As its own movie, Blade 2 was good, even though it was incredibly predictable that the super vampires would turn out to have been created by the vampires and what not. To me the only real plot hole was that even after Nomak succeeded in his mission, and after he claimed that he and Blade were on the same side, they still had to fight at the end instead of Nomak simply letting Blade kill him to end his suffering. They did however do a good job of not necessarily creating a romantic relationship for Blade so much as a counter point to his obsession with his mission of wiping out all vampires when Nyssa points out and honestly lives by the idea that those born as vampires didn’t have a choice to be what they are. Cheesy, yes, but also well done.

Comparing it to the first Blade however it’s a drastically different movie. The bigger budget, bigger story, bigger special effects (including costumes and weapons) moved it from looking gritty and realistic to dark and a bit sci-fi-ish. This actual alienates it from any relation to the first movie in terms of watching them back to back but does not ruin it on its own merit.

Marvel Movie Scale = 8.5

Why That?: While becoming a little more unbelievable and strange, it’s a gorgeous looking movie with again great fight scenes. It’s a fun ride, at many points not taking itself seriously and just having fun (Blade gives a soldier a stalled suplex while giving Ron Pearlman a dirty look) while at others being very serious without being overwhelming, and all without ruining each other.

X-Men (2000)

2008-01-17T16:01:00.000-08:00

The year 2000 brought with it not just relief from Y2K freaks, but also relief for X-Men freaks! The months leading up to it were wrought with fanboys having heart attacks over everything they could think of, from the leather costumes that they considered dominatrix-y, to the guy who plays Wolverine being too tall (for those who don’t know, in the comics Wolverine is 5’4”). On opening night none of that mattered as theaters around the country were packed with as many nerds/geeks/dorks as they could support, and there was much rejoicing.

I was one of those. Not one of the nay sayers, I understood that you shouldn’t put effort into finding a really short guy to play Wolverine. And out of it we got Hugh Jackman (sorry, Dr. Cox). I also understood the costume thing, addressed a little obviously by Cyclops at one point in the movie. So I was one of those there on opening night gitty like a kid on Christmas. However I’m not a big fan of Wolverine. Sure I think he’s a fun character, but as a comic fan he’s just been saturated into the comic world, be despite of this I didn’t mind how much the movie focused on him. In fact in the end it made a lot of sense to focus on the new guy coming in from the cold to this already formed family/team. Besides it would be hard to focus on the whole team as much as say the Fantastic Four, since the FF are and have always been a family. So in the end it worked, and again Jackman was awesome. In fact all of the casting was amazing, none beating Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier, but I think it’s safe to say it’s impossible to ever do a better casting job for any comic character ever after him.

Now years later it has become nearly impossible for me to enjoy this movie if I watch it alone and I honestly feel it has a lot to do with Singer as the problems just become worse in his following movies, but I digress. Up until the end I don’t really have a lot of problems with it, but the end just falls apart into inconsistencies (and of course Storm’s great line about toads) that are just too great to ignore.

First of all note that I am not complaining about Rebecca Romijn being practically naked throughout most of the movie. In fact anyone who thinks I’m complaining is a communist. There, I said it. But for a movie that’s trying to make mutants believable in the real world, it’s just so hard to believe that a shape shifter can be so good as to imitate clothing and accessories on that clothing that no one would ever notice. In honesty this is something I’ve always found a bit absurd about Mystique, even with the explanation of unstable molecules in the comics. But the thing that bothers me most is how she was able to kick Wolverine’s ass. Great martial artist or not, he has two hands with three double sided blades on each, the fact that the only damage he did was cut off her fake claws (which somehow didn’t cut off anything of her mass when she reverted to normal) is ridiculous. Approaching it as a knife fight, rule number one is control the hand that has a knife and cause as much damage with the rest of your body as you can. Rule number two is if the person has a knife in each hand, run. Oh, and let’s not forget that Wolverine is a trained soldier whether he remembers it or not.

Then there’s the big one of the Rogue/Wolverine/Magneto ending. It has already been established that from just a few seconds of contact, Rogue’s powers put Wolverine, a guy with a healing factor, into a coma for a few hours, yet Magneto just get’s a little sleepy and still has full use of his powers. How did no one stop to notice that that didn’t make sense?

So they stop the machine and Rogue is sitting there dead, Wolverine crawls to her in tears (because crying is cool) and tries to get him to absorb his powers again so she’ll revive. It works but this means Wolverine no longer has a healing factor and all his wounds from the recent fights open up. That would be the wounds that are completely healed already. That’d be like lying in bed one day and having a ten year old surgical scar completely revert to its worst state of being from said surgery without any sort of reason for it.

Marvel Movie Scale = 7.5

Why That?: It’s an enjoyable movie up until the end, and even that is mostly enjoyable if you can keep yourself from thinking about things too much. When I first saw it I would’ve given it a 10, but that’s just something that happens with movies that actually aren’t that good, eventually people realize it.

The Marvel Movie Scale - Blade (1998)

2008-01-14T17:19:00.000-08:00

I’ve been wanting to do this for a long while now, back when I was updating ADH at least once a month, but single movie reviews never felt right there. You’ll notice that whenever we did do movie reviews it was a list of a few at a time and more of a recommendation system. Then of course my life got a little more complicated with the whole getting a real job, getting married, and buying a home thing which all led to not having enough time to maintain the necessary upkeep on ADH.
(NOTE: Katie, hon, when you read this know that I’m not blaming you for its death. ADH was a really fun ride and all but obviously I was also growing out of it )

Having some downtime now and I figured I’d finally do it, review every single Marvel movie released ‘till now. I have to wait ‘till May for Iron Man, and then a few more months ‘till Incredible Hulk and Punisher: War Zone, so I should have time to get caught up with all of them by the end of the year.

You may be asking, “Luke, just what is this Marvel Movie Scale you talk about?” Well even if that’s not what you’re thinking, I’ll tell you. I rank my Marvel Movies on a scale of 0 to 10, while it may seem strange that I would start at 0 instead of 1 you have to understand that so far the only movie to get a 0 is Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four (1994), a movie so bad that even I can’t watch it all in one sitting. As a contrast to that the first movie to reach 10 is Spider-Man, so while telling may spoil your expectations of my review of Spider-Man you now have an idea how just how the scale works.

I’ll be going in chronological order here so you’ll notice a pattern once I reach sequels. I’ve decided to first judge each sequel by its own merit and then do a review of how it fits in with the previous movie(s). Oh, and I will not be doing the made for TV movies such as Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. staring The Hoff, no matter how fun it would be to review.

So let’s do this thing!

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BLADE (1998)
In 1998 Marvel started its foray into big budget action movies with the surprise hit, Blade, but at the time hardly anybody knew it was based on a comic character let alone one owned by Marvel. I can recall several times of people being shocked when I mentioned it while naming all of the Marvel movies currently released. Two things defend this:

1) Blade was never really popular before the movie. He was created in the 70’s and was a little black-sploitationish and actually started out as a human only much later in the 90’s being turned into a hybrid of sorts after being bitten by Deacon Frost.

2) Considering the lack of spandex and a story revolving around vampires instead of a standard super villain it’s easy to understand why people wouldn’t think it to be based on a comic (see 300 and Sin City).

Directed by Stephen Norrington and written by David Goyer, Blade was dark and realistic looking, almost feeling like it had no budget and therefore needed to rely on pre-built sets to film on. The story was also straight forward: a group of eviler than normal vampire punks are sick of the old ways and want to take over the world by releasing an ancient vampire god. Standing in their way is the good guy who happens to be a freak of nature that shares their strengths. Not a whole lot of surprises with manipulative governments or being unsure of who the bad guy is. Just here’s the good guy(s) and here’s the bad guys. Then they threw in some awesome fight scenes, the first one in a blood soaked rave party is to this day one of my favorite fight scenes ever, with Blade just showing up in the middle of the crowd and without saying anything just proceeds to wipe out every vampire that he can.

Even with some very predictable plot elements, my only real complaint is of N'Bushe Wright. The human caught in the middle that seems to be there to give us someone to relate to, but her acting is just way too wooden for me to care. On the plus side the character in general didn’t feel forced in there, though near the end her presence felt a little too dues ex machina for my liking as right when the bad guys look like they’re going to win, she is able to free Blade and let him drink from her (because she trusts him) to regain his strength and save the day. But again aside from her acting just alienating me, any problem I have with the movie is nitpicking.

Marvel Movie Scale = 8

Why That?: The rating has nothing to do with the drastic character change from the comics because nobody cared about that, to me it just felt like a good action movie and for my part, good action movies rarely rate higher than 8.

2007 In Review

2008-01-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

One of the more common hold ups to getting the Golden Monkey Head Awards posted on ADH was simply all the problems that came up trying to think of people to give certain awards to, especially worst album and video as I try my best to avoid music I will remotely dislike let alone listen to a whole album of it, and do they even still show videos anymore? So now I don’t have a format to stick to so I’m just going to go on a little rant about the best and the worst of what Hollywood and the media gave us in 2007. And like usual this is all based on things I’ve seen/read/heard myself so if you’re shocked that I don’t have an opinion on something, I probably just haven’t seen/read/heard it yet.

Movies
As usual the bad ones stick out in my head the most: Transformers, I already explained what I didn’t like about that one, Ghost Rider was really lame with a lot of great possibilities they hint at but never do anything with, and Rescue Dawn though very well acted just felt really hallow and pointless.

And the biggest disappointment for me this year was Spider-Man 3. While I didn’t hate all of it, I just have a lot of issues with it. I absolutely loved everything with Eddie Brock as they did a great job of making him absolutely insane, and I mean that in the truest sense. He had a cup of coffee one night with a girl and his mind honestly translated that into an “incredible night” and had him believing they were then in a relationship. I am also one of the few who really liked the new goblin outfit and the tandem fighting at the end. However that’s about it. Fortunately I don’t feel I need to explain what I didn’t like sense everyone else on the interweb has already said it, but here’s a break down of topics: Keep your mask on (same goes for Venom), stop crying, why did the butler wait ‘till people were almost killed several times over, Sandman should be a villain through and through, there was no reason for Gwen Stacey to be in there, and why was evil Peter sporting an emo haircut when he’s not going to cry when he’s evil.

Now for the good stuff.

Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer while it had a few plot holes, they were easily forgivable because it was a fun movie. If they make a Spider-Man 4, the people doing it need to watch this movie. Lots of action and not a lot of drama, they trusted the audience to have figured out the characters well enough from the first movie to not shove character development down our throats and just let us enjoy it. Shoot’ Em Up was so perfectly over the top cliché that it’s delicious. Super Bad was another “shut down your mind and just enjoy it,” movie for me. And despite a horrible director (they invented steady cams for a reason you pompous @$$), the Bourne Ultimatum was a fantastic addition to the Bourne story which started as a total sleeper hit.

But my hands down favorite movie of the year is easily Knocked Up. Combining a fantastic story about growing up and becoming responsible with honest humor and raunchy humor, this movie was just perfect to me. Judd Aptow is slowly working his way into my ranks of favorite story tellers with people like Jim Henson, Mike Mignola, and Dwayne Gay.

It looks like we’re going to be in for a real treat in 2008 with both Iron Man and The Dark Knight! There are a few other movies coming out that look interesting, but these two should be the standout hits of the year.

Television
Much like with music, I try to avoid things I know I won’t like. But this year I picked a few duds to watch; Bionic Woman, Flash Gordon, and Moonlight. The best of the three was Bionic Woman, which isn’t horrible, it’s just bland and I in no way care about any of the characters. Woman gets bionic parts from clandestine military group, woman helps said group run covert ops because she can, that’s it for motivation really. Flash Gordon is one of those shows that’s related to the source material in name only. No space ships and a ridiculously unimposing actor for Ming the Merciless are just the two most obvious problems. And Moonlight is just another attempt at, “vampires are real but what you think you know about them is wrong,” and yet it’s painfully clichéd with the vampire falling for a human. That same vampire also works as a detective and refuses to drink blood directly from humans (he picks up bags from a coroner).

On the same note there have been three stand out hits for me this year: Human Weapon, the Dresden Files, and Burn Notice. What I love most about Human Weapon is the history they cover, and the ancient forms of training they go through. The Dresden Files was an incredibly fun show about magic and monsters in modern day Chicago (see Other Stuff for why I said “was”). And Burn Notice, man, everything about the show is just fantastic, and it’s a lot of subtle things that do it for me. Like how nearly every episode is book ended with things involving the over all story arch. I’m so glad Bruce Campbell is in this or I may have not heard of it, but as huge a Campbell fan as I am even I’ll admit that him being in the show is just an added bonus because Jeffrey Donovan is simply amazing. My favorite subtle moment of the first season was when Donovan’s character is talking to his new Russian land lord and the land lord says, “So you’re the real Michael Weston? The KGB tells stories of you; they say you make too much trouble to be just one man.” Now while that may seem like a lot when you read it, they presented it in a way that it seems like casual conversation between the two of them yet it goes a long way towards establishing just how good Weston is in the spy world.

What I can’t wait for in ’08 is the return of Burn Notice, the new season of Doctor Who, and finally getting the third season of The Venture Brothers!!!

Music
I honestly don’t remember what came out this year because there is only one album that mattered: Dethalbum by Dethklok, the Metalocalypse soundtrack. Such an insanely good album from a “fake” band, and to me nothing is better than when you can tell a band is really having fun making an album. This has that in spades with phenomenal music coupled with goofy lyrics.

Now I’m not sure what’s in store for the music scene in 2008 other than a new album from Weezer, which I hope is fantastic because as a long time fan I was very disappointed with Make Believe.

Other Stuff
The only book that I read that came out in ’07 was Baltimore: or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire by Mike Mignola and Mark Compass, which was fan-freaking-tastic. A dark yet beautifully told vampire story set during the post World War I flu outbreak in Europe, and at the same time a reflection of The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Anderson, and still so much more.

The sports world gave us more than our share of train wrecks. From Barry Bonds breaking the home run record with the help of more drugs than I have fingers (and an arm brace that actually enhances his swing) to the sick tale of Michael Vick and the resulting humor from those defending him (especially Deon Sanders) or showing concern for his career, and oh so many other things that make the NFL forcing the cancellation of Playmakers because it portrayed football and athletes in general in a bad light, all the more funny.

Over at the Sci-Fi Channel, studio president Bonnie Hammer showed off why a lot of people think executives, producers, and presidents live in a reality all of their own. Even though it constantly got tremendous ratings the Sci-Fi Channel cancelled The Dresden Files after its first season because those ratings came in from “the wrong demographic.” So it was getting better ratings than they thought they would, but since it was with a different group of people than they thought it’d appeal to, they’re cancelling it. And who the heck did they think the show would appeal to? It clearly isn’t a family show, and it feels like it was very much geared to males from 16-50, that’s a wide range there, and as far as I know that’s who was watching it. So instead they shove the new Flash Gordon down our throats, where everyone I know who were looking forward to it, stopped watching after 3 episodes (and they only watched that third to remind themselves why they wanted to stop watching after the second).

And since it is no secret that I love self induced train wrecks I must send a shout out to the person who provided more entertainment than anyone: Britney Spears. Because even though I love hearing about train wrecks, I hate the idea of actually putting effort into finding out about them through trash magazines and gossip shows. However she has been such a complete wreck that I find out things through my normal, casual daily activities. For my part she capped off the year perfectly with her release of a new video where she takes shots at the paparazzi, you know the people she herself calls before she leaves the house so they can follow her and take pictures of her, oh and one of whom she is currently paling around town with. Fantastic. Simply fantastic. But look out Britney, the year has ended with your sister ramping up the crazy and could take your throne by the end of ’08.

I must throw out an honorable mention to my friend Kristen’s former neighbors though. My only regret is that she had to deal with them. Here’s the breakdown: moving in a few apartments down from Kristen was a woman and her two kids. Moving in on the floor below her was the father of those kids with his girlfriend who turned out to be a legitimate pimp and ho duo and were arrested for such in Minneapolis. Though I feel bad that there were kids involved, the stories Kristen told such as coming home to the guy’s belongings being thrown out onto the front lawn during a fight kept me smiling for weeks on end.

So here’s to you 2008, and the inevitable train wrecks you will contain. With an election there in, you know it’s going to be good.

EDIT: I wrote this blog up on December 28th, making only a couple adjustments over the following days, mostly grammatical, but after this morning I have to throw this information in: HAPPY FREAKIN’ NEW YEAR TO ME!!! Britney Spears has gone completely insane!!! Three hour stand off!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!

My Holidays

2008-01-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone. Just a little update of what my Christmas and New Years were like.

My Christmas this year was very interesting as this was the first year that Katie and I were completely alone and left to make our own plans. It was a very pleasant and surreal experience that I loved. The Saturday before Christmas we gathered some friends together over at our friend Chuck’s place (as he has a bigger place than us) where Katie organized and cooked us all dinner (with help of our friend J and other’s bringing munchies) that turned out fantastic. We then exchanged gifts and watched the New Zealand comedy/horror flick Black Sheep (which was fantastic). And of course some Rock Band was played.

Christmas Eve was spent with Katie’s other family (long story) and then we spent Christmas Day just sitting on the couch watching Doctor Who all day. It was fantastic.

And then the following weekend is when we did things with my family. Caleb and his girlfriend Cass staying with us a few nights while my parents stayed elsewhere, so that was awesome as I don’t get to see Caleb nearly often enough. All in all, a great time.

And now a breakdown of everything I am incredibly thankful for receiving:

Other
Katie got me a lot of much needed clothing
FM Broadcaster for our portable DVD player
Funny Page a Day desk calendar
CD player for the shower with a fogless mirror
Scene It - Marvel Comics edition

Books
World War Z
Serenity Found
The Prestige
MST3K Amazing Colossal Guide

DVDs
The Master (the TV show staring Lee Van Cleef)
Spider-Man 3
Fantastic Four 2
Ratatouille
The Dresden Files complete series
Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Vol. 2
Pixar Shorts Vol. 1
And a box set of 50 old Sci-fi movies from the 50’s-90’s

For New Year’s Eve we went out to dinner with Mike and Lauralye at a place called Cameron’s Steakhouse. This was my third visit there so I knew what to expect. I was wrong. Our waiter screwed up so much stuff that I could write an entire blog about it. But even if the service had been perfect like it was on my previous two visits that would not have changed the fact that the lobster bisque that Katie ordered didn’t agree with her stomach so we just went home and spent the night in bed watching TV (which was honestly very nice).

On New Year’s Day we did the standard evening at my Uncle Wally’s (actually my dad’s uncle, but you get the idea). Caleb and Cass had actually gone home for New Year’s Eve but they came back up for this which was cool. They then joined Katie and I in out own New Year’s tradition of going to see a movie. We saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets and we all enjoyed it.

So that was my holiday and bad dinner aside I had a fantastic time with family and friends. I hope you all had the same. Have a wonderful ’08 everybody!

Random Randoms

2007-12-12T19:03:00.001-08:00

Well it's been a while so I figured I'd throw in some random Good/Bad updates on what's been going on in the world of Luke.

Good: My birthday was a couple of weeks ago. Caleb and Cass ended up coming into town that night instead of the following afternoon so I got to spend some time with him before heading up to visit the parents for the weekend.

Bad: Packers lost to the Cowboys not so much because Favre got injured, but because they played absolutely horribly.

Good: While visiting the parents they took us to a "Paint your own ceramic thingamajig" type place where I painted a coffee mug and got a lot of compliments. It has been many years since I've done an art piece so it felt good.

Good: On the way home we stopped to visit Mike and Lauralye so Caleb could finally meet Hayden. Within seconds of Caleb holding Hayden for the first time, Hayden threw up on Caleb and then laughed.

Bad: Last Friday (12/07/07) Katie rolled our SUV while on the way to work. She hit a patch of ice on an off ramp and went over the side, rolling down the hill 3/4 of a full roll leaving it resting on the driver's side.

Good: Katie was completely unharmed. Not a single cut or bruise. Later in the day her right thigh was a little sore but that's all. Seatbelts save lives and miracles to happen. Also the insurance agent working with us has been amazingly helpful.

Bad: Despite the damage looking minor a lot of little things added up and it would just be way too expensive to fix our beloved Harley Quinn. Chuck put it best, "Goodbye Harley, we harley knew you."

Good: After the insurance pay out we discovered that we owe WAY less on the SUV than we originally thought, giving us more breathing room for buying a new vehicle and soon. Plus this means we won't have to struggle to buy Christmas presents for friends and family, though they are obviously all supportive and understanding of our situation.

Good: The day after the accident Mike and Lauralye asked me to be Hayden's Godfather, and I couldn't be more honored.

Halloweens

2007-11-08T16:56:00.000-08:00

Halloween, that time of year where kids wear costumes that make them as cute as a bug's ear, and teenage girls wear costumes that make them look like whores. I fortunately don’t fall into either category, but I do love Halloween. It’s just fun to think of a creative costume and go out to have fun in it. This year I had the good fortune to go out on two separate Saturdays to have fun.

First on October 27th, Katie and I went out to a bar with Mike and Lauralye. This was sort of last minute thing as Mike and Lauralye were unsure if they’d be able to make it. As such my costume wasn’t nearly as cool as I wanted it to be. Now I wouldn’t even mention this weekend if not for two particular occurrences. First this is what Katie wore:

While that may not seem to be a big deal, when you know Katie’s personality you know it’s very out of character for her to wear something like that. We never pinned down what she was supposed to be. We thought of “demony chick,” “Red Ridding Hood’s Evil Twin,” and Mike’s favorite, “Slutty Slut.” Personally I didn’t care what she called it, I just called it “Hot!”

Now here’s a group picture of all of us. I was a Sith Lord (again, missing a lot of stuff I wanted for the costume), Mike was a Ninja, specifically his alter ego, Vomitron, this is important for later, and Lauralye was Drunko the Clown.

And now the second reason I’m even mentioning this evening: Mike and Lauralye pre-gamed at my place to save money at the bar. On the drive to said bar it started to become obvious to everyone, including Mike, that the booze was starting to hit him way harder than we planned. When we made it to the bar Mike had already switched to Vomitron mode and within the span of two hours had only 2-3 drinks and was starting to stumble around drunk coming very close to getting us kicked out. Fortunately J was there so he was able to help us convince V-Tron that we needed to go home (this of course took another half hour).

Him being as trashed as he was, and Lauralye in no condition to drive herself (though she was at least coherent) they crashed at our place, Lauralye on our ridiculously comfortable couch, and Mike/Vomitron on an inflatable mattress. I even gave him a bucket in case he needed to hurl. When we made our way downstairs they had left (which we heard earlier) and while the bucket was empty, Mike had already done his best to clean up the signature hot pink stomach churn from our sheets and placed them in a plastic bag.

Thanks V-TRON!

So the weekend after that we went to some friends for a party. Katie dressed as a nerd, and I again as a Sith Lord. However this time I was ready. Behold:

The lightsabers are a Darth Maul toy I purchased years ago that while I was out of town, Mike accidentally broke over J’s forearm. I wanted to use them because the telescoping blades actually lock in instead of extending all the time. Also I didn’t want to carry them all the time, so I built a harness for them. I bought a belt for a tool belt and found some clips for mounting electrical piping and then found corner boxes for electrical piping to screw them on to. I lucked out in that these boxes had removable backs that I then slid the belt through. The harness turned out better than I could have imagined, hence my joy of sharing it. I then purchased some “Knight Leg Guards” and spray painted them black, as well as a flowing black cloak that looks perfect. To top it off and give myself that Sith edge, I painted a black and red line around the edge of my face to allow for this back story for the costume.

Name: Darth Zod (that’s right, I slipped in a Superman reference, too)
Story: My first mission as a Sith Lord was to kill a Jedi Knight. As sign of my devotion to my dark art I killed him, cut off his face and then cut off my own, replacing it with his.

Good times were had by all.

Those Whacky Japanese

2007-10-24T21:10:00.001-07:00

Goodnight every body!

Transformers: Because “Humans Who Happen to Meet Robots” doesn’t have the same ring to it

2007-10-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

A few years ago the nerd community exploded in joy at the announcement that one of the quintessential properties of our childhood was finally being made into a live action movie. Then the joy continued with the announcement that not only did Dreamworks get the rights to it, but that Steven Spielberg himself would be producing along with Tom DeSanto. And then it was announced that Michael Bay would be directing, and the nerd community let out a collective “FUCK, we were so close.”

So I finally watched Transformers a couple nights ago, and again more evidence arises to prove that I can indeed read certain movies really well without actually seeing them. Now I did go into it trying to keep an open mind, watching it as both a Transformers fan (Notice the name; Colossus Prime) and as a casual viewer who’s never heard of Transformers. But it was to no avail as I was just terribly disappointed from two points of view.

One advantage I had about watching it on DVD instead of seeing it in theaters was that I was able to make this distinct observation: It was one hour into the two+ hour movie until we had a name for any Transformer. Before that the movie had a few fight scenes, all containing humans being attacked by Evil Giant Robot #1 and #2. And RIGHT before the hour mark we had the chance to finally see some robot on robot fighting when Evil Giant Robot #3 tries to run down our leading male (I’ll admit though, Shia LaBeouf did a great job) and Bumblebee comes to the rescue, tackling EGR#3 off a bridge and that’s the last we see of the fight while Mini Robot who can’t stop making little noises that no one seems to be able to hear when he’s sneaking around, is chasing down LaBeouf and his girl-friend-to-be. So as a casual viewer I was an hour into a movie about humans who interacted with a couple of generic giant robots (15 minutes of that being actual interaction) and as a Transformers fan I was an hour into a movie about HUMANS instead of kick-@$$ Giant Robots!!!

I could seriously go on and on for several pages stating only the problems that are signs of mass incompetence and skipping over any nitpicking which there’s even more of (seriously, how hard is it to stop and fact check things like what the deepest part of the ocean is), so here’s a quick breakdown of some that just piss me off to no end:

- Was it really necessary to make the Transformers keep spinning and rolling around all the f’ing time? It doesn’t look cool, it looks femmy.

- Apparently Transformers can change their mind about what they want to look like whenever they want. Bumblebee upgrades himself and the little guy changes from a boom box to a cell phone, both in an instant.

- A scorpion looking Decepticon is being blasted hard core by an air strike, yet for some reason doesn’t retreat into the sand until the SECOND air strike hits him. Then he never reappears. “What,” “the,” and “Fuck”!?

- There’s a clear reason why Cybertron fell to the Decepticons; Autobots are about as smart as an inbred child who’s family tree is a straight line, as proven by the 10 minute shtick of them “hiding” outside the Witwicky residence.

- I counted 6 zoom in to someone saying a one or two word expression of fear and disbelief. No movie should have more than 2 unless it’s titled Zooming in on People Saying a One or Two Word Expression of Fear and Disbelief.

- There was pretty much zero character development for any of the Transformers except Bumblebee, and that’s only because he was in more of the movie than anyone else, and even then we just know he’s a scrappy do gooder since he can’t talk. Other than that we know Optimus Prime is a caring leader, Iron Hide is a stupid gun nut who wants to shoot everything (and I don’t mean gun nuts are stupid, the guy used any excuse to ask if it was ok for him to shoot something), Jazz speaks like a white poser (I swear to God, his first words are “What’s crackin’ little bitches?”), and Ratchet has no tact. Decepticons… man… Megatron was the only one with any development and as a Transformers fan I can tell you that it wasn’t Megatron, it was Galvatron. Just trust me, it makes sense.

- Was Bumblebee “lubricating” on John Turturro really necessary? This is a PG-13 movie and no one 13 or over should find that funny. I’m actually shocked that they got away with showing Bumblebee flipping open a hatch in his crotch to spray the lubricant.

- Megatron owns Optimus, it wasn’t even close. What the heck is up with that? The only reason Optimus should loose to Megatron is that Megatron fights dirty. Here though, fair fight and Optimus doesn’t stand a chance.

- The only thing great about the movie was getting Peter Cullen to voice Optimus Prime (but at the same time they loose points for skipping over Frank Welker for Megatron). And ok, the scene where Prime dispatches a Decepticon by cutting off his head was bad-ass!

Seriously, that’s me holding back. From a fan perspective it was outright stupid and lazy, from a non-fan’s it was just lame. But there is hope, a few positive reviews I’ve read from fans have the same feeling that the positive reviews for Star Wars Ep1 had. Where they seemed like they knew it was terrible but just hadn’t realized it yet, and then when it came out to rent and people started talking more and more about the flaws, they suddenly realized, “Wait a minute, that movies was crap!”

This is one of those movies that I think everyone should see at least once just to build up more anger and less tolerance for horrible, HUGE blockbuster movies. Especially ones that ruin already great stories.

Danger just keeps on happening!

2007-10-18T18:28:00.000-07:00

Not my style of musice but totaly my style of video!!!

JJ Abrams: Proof that I’m Not Completely Pompous

2007-10-16T19:33:00.000-07:00

Despite what it may look like by my writings, I try to be completely open minded about movies and TV show. There are a very, very select few of them that I dislike so much that I think anyone who likes them is a complete idiot. Now this isn’t going to turn into me saying that I think anyone who like JJ Abrams is an idiot. Far from it, this is about me thinking JJ Abrams is a painfully over rated writer even though I’ve never seen anything he’s written/worked on, and yet I have had people agree with me when talking about him. People who think I have seen his stuff.

His big burst onto the scene was Alias (yes he worked on things here and there before this), which brought Jennifer Garner into our hearts, and eventually Ben Affleck’s bed. Now when I first heard about the show I really wanted to see it, but I got busy and before I knew it had ended up missing the first few seasons. But I did catch commercials from time to time and noticed something: Everyone in the show is lying and everyone changes from bad guy to good guy seemingly every season, giving a sense that no one knows where they want the show to go. I ran this past some people who I knew watched the show, and they all agreed with how contrived that bit of the show was.

Then came Lost, one of the highest rated network television shows ever. When I first heard about this show I again was really curious, but that’s because I originally thought it would be a mini-series. As soon as I found out it would be a regular series I didn’t even try to watch it. Why? Because the premise of the show is people trapped on an island. That’s it. Yes there’s weird stuff going on, but right away I knew that there’s no way they ‘d answer all the questions within the first season, and by halfway through the third season I would find myself yelling “I get it! They’re trapped on an island! Now tell me why!” Now despite the good things I’ve heard about the END of the third season, it appears (at least according to friends I have who are fans of the series) that they found themselves yelling "I get it, just tell me what's going on." And now they’re going to stretch it out to five seasons. I can’t imagine how many people will die from embolisms from the frustration before the series finale.

And now for the mother of it all. My most recent discovery where JJ Abrams makes me never want to give any of my time to anything he’s worked on. No not Mission Impossible 3 (which I heard was just painfully underwhelming). No, not his new unnamed monster movie (what kind of asshole takes this long to just tell people what his movie’s officially called!). No not even his new Star Trek movie about a young Captain Kirk. As it turns out, before Bryan Singer gave us a horrible Superman movie, JJ Abrams wrote a script that made Singer’s version look like the freakin’ Citizen Kane of super hero movies.

Now his planned Superman movie has been long leaked to the world, and blasted by the likes of Peter David, Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, and Mike Mignola, so I will actually not comment on it too much, but it needs to be known by more people just how bad it was. I will say however, if it weren’t a Superman movie, it’s actually a pretty intriguing idea.

In a rather large nut shell: Kal-El (Superman) is the son of Jor-El, the ruler of Krypton (this makes Superman a prince), is rocketed to earth so that one day he can return to free Krypton (which doesn’t get destroyed) from the evil Kryptonians and their robot army. He grows up normal on Earth until he discovers a container that holds a symbiotic battle suit (like Venom in Spider-Man, but it’s Superman’s costume) that gives him all of his powers (so he puts it on and takes it off a lot). As he appears on the scene, FBI Agent Lex Luthor, head of an FBI division that specializes in strange phenomenon (like in the X-Files) tries to convince his superiors that Superman is a dangerous alien who will turn on Earth and take it over, so they need to capture him. Luthor’s desires are shot down, in the meantime a couple evil Kryptonians finally track down Kal-El and show up on Earth. Luthor confronts them to reveal that he himself is a Kryptonian agent sent to gather information on Earth so that Krypton could conquer it with ease. So they team up and Superman must fight all three of them. Then there’s a big climatic fight scene at the end where an army of good and evil Kryptonians fight in the skies above earth. Not just fight, but using a form of Kryptonian flying martial arts, Sky-Fu if you will (I came up with that when going on this rant out loud one time. Feel free to use it).

One of the best things is that after getting blasted mercilessly, Abrams tried to defend himself saying that he didn’t want to make a Superman movie that was based on the comics. It’s freakin’ Superman!!! Show the S-shield to some kid in Malaysia and he’ll say “Superman!” He’s a global icon for THE good guy! Unless someone was pointing a gun to your head, there is no excuse for calling something that insipid, Superman.

Now do I think Mr. Abrams is completely incompetent? No. Just that up until this point he’s been ridiculously lucky. Heck, this “Cloverfield” and Star Trek movie could actually be good. But it’s sad how right I have been so far without ever seeing anything he’s worked on.

Kaiju Big Battel: Danger Happened!!!

2007-10-02T19:15:00.001-07:00

This Blog is specifically for my Kaiju lovin’ co-horts out there. So if you’re just outright confused click on the link I have posted for Kaiju Big Battel and join in the fun.

For those of you looking at these from the Kaiju page, enjoy!

Note: I post on the message boards there as Bones666, a really old handle I used to use. Anyways, somewhere over there I posted a breakdown of what is below.

The Joys of Text Messaging

2007-09-28T16:25:00.000-07:00

The following is a text conversation I had with my friend Chuck.

CHUCK: Anyone talk to J lately? Is his phone off?

ME: He sent a mass txt last Friday. That's the last I've heard from him.

CHUCK: Last I talked to him was Sunday. Maybe the American Gladiators got ahold of him.

ME: I blame the deaf chick.

CHUCK: Deaf chick?

ME: One of the female gladiators was a deaf chick.

CHUCK: Deaf rapists can't hear you say "no."

Goodnight everybody!

Heroes From Our Past - Not Just a Kick Ass Dropkick Murphys Song

2007-09-25T19:22:00.000-07:00

Subject: Marcel Marceau
The world’s most famous mime ever passed away this past weekend and like most I passed it off as the loss of an entertainer who entertained millions, just not me. I knew he was a mime, I knew that as a further sign of Mel Brooks’ genius he had the only speaking role in Silent Movie. Then I started hearing odd things here and there about him and with a little research discovered he was a hero.

Since anyone can look up this stuff for themselves, I will keep it brief.

Marcel Marceau was Jewish and living in France during World War II where his father was arrested and later murdered at Auschwitz, even before that happened Marcel was already working with the French Underground, notably working as a direct liaison with General Patton.

I haven’t done any more research into his war record, but for my money, the French Underground was incredibly brave and integral in the defeat of the Nazis and therefore mime or not, Marcel Marceau was indeed a hero.

It's Just How I Roll

2007-09-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

Like nearly every other blogger out there I plan to write a review from time to time, however I’d like to establish a familiarity to my style/thinking so to save me from explaining certain things over and over again when I write one.

I try to keep an open mind about things. I realize that my opinions are just that, my opinions and I always try my hardest to present them either in a fun way or very matter of fact to insure that it’s very clear why I feel a certain way. On that same note I realize not every movie/book/TV show is designed to win an award. Casablanca is one of my all time favorite movies, but so is Army of Darkness. Clearly the first is deserving of accolades while the other is pure mindless entertainment gold. But again, there isn’t a single movie in the world that everybody thinks is perfect.

What follows is a quick breakdown for the different genres I will be touching on from time to time:

Movies
Movies are my strongest passion and to me what makes a great movie is one where all the key players convey their own passion for the material. Also the things absolutely necessary for me to enjoy a movie are first off the writing, that the story actually be either well thought out whether it be gripping or just genuinely fun(ny). Second then is the acting as I want to feel like the people who were paid to entertain me actually cared about what they were doing. Where directing, special effects, etc. falls all depends on how the first two do. There are some movies that are great stories but don’t have a noticeable directed style so it’s pointless to fixate on it. See, that’s simple enough.

Comics
My second passion; comics, and yes it is a legitimate form of literature. Comics have come a long way from the Golden Age/Silver Age which is often considered hokey and geared towards kids. Yes in books you have to craft an image with words so that the reader’s mind can see what you want them to, but with comics a writer and artist together (sometimes both the same person) actually show you their story in beautiful panels of ink that can make your jaw drop. I always judge comics on those two things separately: the story (does it flow well, does it make sense, was it pretentious) and then the art (does it convey the story well, does it fit the mood, is it pretentious). True either one can make or break a book, but the story is the reason I actually want to read the book.

Books
The written word is powerful, and I love feeling that power. There are few things better than reading a book and not being able to put it down because you care about characters that are typed out in front of you. To me a good book has to be able to do that. I want to feel like the author actually cares about his creations, not just throwing a story together with a bunch of facts he/she happened to read about while writing the book and trying to seem smart (::cough::DanBrown::cough::).

I won’t touch on music since even though I feel passionate about music, too, I don’t really like writing about it. And as for TV shows, we’ll see, but it falls along a lot of the same lines as Movies.

Obviously feel free to agree or disagree, just be clear as to why, not some stupid High School or IMDB comment like:

Rand0mIdi0t69: The Day the Earth Stood Still, sucked!

MrSensible: Why do you say that?

Rand0mIdi0t69: Because it did!

Seriously, IMDB makes me consider forcibly regulating internet access, however it does give all the spazzes somewhere to go and leave me alone.

A Probin' We Will Go

2007-09-19T16:52:00.000-07:00

Alien: Well since this is your first time I suppose I can let you choose which one you get first.

_____________________________

Toyfare (a magazine about toys) used to do these things called "Big Shots" in their price guide. They were one panel comics of pretty much random toys thrown in front of strange backgrounds and then had funny (sometimes not) speech balloons or captions. They also had a "Caption This" contest every month with just a picture and then fans went on-line to come up with the funniest caption (they still do this every now and then). This developed into what's known as Twisted Toyfare Theater, which then paved way for the Adult Swim show, Robot Chicken (two of the producers are in fact former employees of Toyfare who worked on Twisted Toyfare Theater).

Anyways I was going through some stuff and came across this Alien figure (from Hellboy) and this shot immediately popped into my head. Unfortunately I didn't have anything to use for a back drop so there's a horrible shadow. Oh well. Feel free to post a funny comment of your own. And yes that is a Tuskernini figure from Darkwing Duck.

I'm an "Uncle"

2007-09-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

Last Wed. (9/12/07), Hayden Michael Rollins was welcomed into the world (at 7lbs. 13oz, 21" for those who may ask). He is the child of my best friend Mike and his girlfriend Lauralye. Mike and I have been best friends since 8th grade and I couldn't be happier for him and Lauralye. I myself can't stop beaming over the fact that I'm going to be able to help them raise this child.

I think it's funny that me and the four guys I consider brothers all have something that can be refered to as "God's way of compensating" for the often stupid things we do. I'm ridiculously knowledgable of pop culture. Caleb (who actually is my brother) is ridiculously book smart. J is a crazy good chef. Chuck is hands down the most genuinely nice person I have ever known. And Mike is great with kids.

And one more for the road. Welcome to Earth, little buddy:

Failing to Succeed

2007-09-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

As an inspiring writer and a fan of most pop-culture a recent major pet peeve of mine is Hollywood’s ability to fail spectacularly at the simplest of tasks, making a movie or television series based on a long standing pre-existing property.

Movies based on pre-existing properties, stories and characters that have been well established in the media for years, should be ridiculously easy to make in a way that will appease almost everyone. The formula and characters are already are there, all you have to do is translate it to a 2-3 hour screenplay (as the case is these days). Now I understand the need to modernize things, maybe give it updated little twists, but what you shouldn’t do is change everything but the most basic of things like names. At that point it’s no longer a re-imaging; it’s a new idea that simply plagiarizes some characters and story elements.

This past summer of 2007 we were given the big one, Transformers. I will admit that I have not seen this movie yet, but it’s because nothing other than the name appeals to me. The story; almost completely different from the cartoon. The characters; almost completely unrecognizable as the characters I loved as a child. As robots, they no longer look like they should transform into cars and trucks, which was one of the greatest appeals of the show. And the worst part, Michael Bay could not stop talking about how he was a huge fan of Transformers. Saying this has become a warning sign that the movie will have little to do with the source material, just look at Aliens Vs Predator. In recent months I’ve discovered that Bay’s incompetence went deeper than just making the Transformers look stupid. Originally none of them were going to be able to speak English, just beep and what not to communicate with each other (apparently this idea was kept for Bumblebee) and Optimus Prime’s trademark windshield chest plate was no where to be seen, leaving only his head to make him recognizable as Optimus Prime (though eventually they got Peter Cullen to do the voice, the only saving grace for my part). Fortunately Hasbro/Takara (the toy company that owns the rights to the Transformers universe) put a stop to this.

The reviews I’ve read have relaxed my apprehension about this movie being remembered as an outstanding action flick as they ring with the all too familiar feelings of reviews of Star Wars Episode I after it came out. Where even when talking about the things they liked about the movie it is all stuff that’s related to insignificant things that have nothing to do with the actual story, and even then are hollow and defensive. So with any luck like Star Wars Episode I, in about two years people who loved it will start to realize that it actually is terribly flawed in the exact same ways.

Now because of Transformers we’re getting a GI Joe movie. The idea of GI Joe has been around long before I was born (1942). And what is the full title for GI Joe, boys and girls? It’s “GI Joe: A Real American Hero.” My putting “American” in bold should give you an idea of what the main idea for the movie is: GI Joe is now a multi national task force based in Brussels. And so far that’s all we really know about the movie. There are a few rumors that make it seem like they’re combining Cobra Commander and Destro into one character, but that’s just a rumor for now, but that doesn’t matter since already they took a basic concept and absolutely ruined it in the simplest way possible, just to make it appeal to a worldwide market more. So at this point even if Steven Sommers wasn’t directing it (he wrote and directed Van Helsing, the first movie that I can ever remember turning off because it was so bad), I do not want to see it because it will not be GI Joe in anyway other than the name.

Now a note on television series. I have not seen it yet, but I hear that aside from some down time now and then, Battlestar Galactica got it right (I saw the pilot/movie and was very unimpressed so I didn’t hop on the series that apparently got really good really fast). This opened up doors and now we’re getting things like Flash Gordon and The Bionic Woman. While the pilot of Bionic Woman is out there, I haven’t seen that yet, but already the head writer/producer has quit due to the network and other producers ruining his vision. Not a good sign. But the main thing I wanted to address if Flash Gordon.

Flash Gordon is another property that’s been around longer than I have (1934) and was a great adventure series involving space ships, aliens, alien worlds, and heroes fighting odds far greater than themselves. So a remake using the same formula as Battlestar Galactica would be awesome, right? Yeah, that would’ve worked if they did that. Instead we get a story about a long distance runner in a small town who randomly jumps back and forth to a planet called Mongo via a very Sliders like mechanism. No space ships. No huge laser gun fights. And the main villain just does not have the presence to be called Ming the Merciless. Just average looking blond guy, no Machiavellian appearance at all! I will say this, the acting is very good, it’s everything else that sucks.

So Hollywood I’m going to give you something free of charge. Go ahead and take the idea and run with it. And keep in mind I’m writing this as I think about it, I originally planned to write something about the A-Team but came up with this just now.

Knight Rider: The Movie. Michael Knight and his wife, Katie “Kitt” Knight, are scientists working on a massive AI program that uses pre-existing brain patterns of a living person. The company funding them is actually a front for a massive illegal arms merchant specializing in high tech weaponry, hoping that the Knights’ new computer system will be their biggest money maker ever. After stumbling on this, the Knights’ try to escape with their research, only to be killed, or so it would seem. They barely survive the explosion designed to kill them in an “accident,” but Kitt is barely breathing, but gives Michael enough time to transfer her thought patterns into the onboard computer of a prototype car they originally thought was being designed for police. Together again now as a man thought dead and a car with sophisticated machinery and non-lethal weapons, they set out to get bring down the corporation that tried to kill them, and who’s very existence threatens the American way. Just think about it: Car chases, techno babble, a non-lethal weapons system on the hero making it more marketable to younger viewers.

It’ll be a gold mine. And for the grown-ups there’ll be a tender moment in the movie where they stop thinking about their mission and give into their deep, true love that they still have for each other, expressing it in the most pure and beautiful physical way possible; Michael fucks the car (this has to be done with implication shots since it will be PG-13). It has to be edgy, you know.

Putting it to rest

2007-09-17T17:40:00.001-07:00

As the few people who still look at it already know, AnotherDarkHole is pretty much dead. I haven't updated it in over a year and a half. It's not that I or any of those who wrote for me have run out of things to say, I just don't have the time to do all the file managing required for that page. As I so often point out, that may not be the case if I knew anything about HTML or webpage building in general.

But what I do know is how to have fun. At least I think I do. Or hope. No, think. Hope is mankind's folley, and thought I'm not sure what that has to do sound effects, I'm certainly not a party to it.

So now I will do my thing here instead. I still have a MySpace page for ADH that I check, but pretty much never use it so, here's the place to be. It was a really fun ride working with my brother and a few of our friends just to try and make people smile, developing from a completely disorganized mess of a personal page to a completely disorganized mess of a comedy page. I look back at my first works and just shake my head. It's almost as bad as when I look at stuff I wrote in high school that I thought was amazing at the time.

Oh well, time to have fun.