Archive for the ‘Comic strips/Super heroes’ Category
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
I was thinking the other day: I wonder if super hero movies are the westerns of our time? A genre that’ll dominate for a while and then after a generation or two of being done to death it’s put off into storage, except for special occasions, like the fancy silverware. If so then I think we’re a little early with all these super hero deconstructions, these different versions of “what would really happen if somebody tried to be a super hero?” WATCHMEN and the upcoming KICKASS are the expensive, fantastical versions of that kind of idea and then there’s this slew of low budget indie ones like SPECIAL, DEFENDOR and MIRAGEMAN.
MIRAGEMAN stars Marko Zaror, the Chilean martial artist. If you’re not familiar with him his claim to fame used to be that he was The Rock’s stunt double in THE RUNDOWN. Then, like Tony Jaa over in Thailand, Zaror and his team decided to start making movies, first the fantasy KILTRO and then this. He also has one called MANDRILL playing the film festivals and he’ll be in UNDISPUTED III with Scott Adkins. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Marko Zaror
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 17 Comments »
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
COMIC CON EXCLUSIVE:
VERN HAS SEEN THE WATCHMEN DVD
(that came out last week)
My fellow Watchmaniacs: People like me and you, being huge comics book “geeks” and true fans for life, we could tell each other exactly where we were the first time we saw those historic Watchman comic strips in 1986, when they exploded onto the scene just like the explosion that happens at the end that Doctor Manhattan was blamed for or whatever it was that happened at the end. I remember LA Law had just debuted on TV, and Pinochet had escaped assassination in Chile. CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD was capturing the national consciousness. I was wearing an anti-Khadafi novelty t-shirt, listening to Falco on my Walkman tape and solving a Rubik’s cube when my eyes first fell upon its graphic novel cover at the graphic novel stand. And remember you were there too and we looked at each other like “uh huh” and we nodded because after seeing all those adventures that the Watchmen were having and everything, you knew this was history, this was the motherfuckin Hindenburg exploding into the moon on top of JFK’s motorcade. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Crudup, Carla Gugino, Darren Shahlavi, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman, Matthew Goode, Patrick Wilson, Zack Snyder
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 243 Comments »
Friday, July 17th, 2009
Man, it’s so sad to think about all these artists who get real good and then die in their twenties. How interesting would it be to hear old Jimi Hendrix recount the recording of Electric Ladyland, to see James Dean playing a father, or a grandfather, or Heath Ledger playing a character like Ennis at the end of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, but without aging makeup? That guy would’ve grown up to be rugged, but he didn’t have enough time. There’s such a long list of these guys who died after a period of fierce innovation, or seemingly on the verge of greatness. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alex Proyas, Brandon Lee, Michael Wincott, Tony Todd
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 63 Comments »
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
In my review of BLACK DYNAMITE I talked about how happy I was for its star, Michael Jai White, and I mentioned that one of the obstacles he overcame was that his first big starring role after TYSON was “one of the worst comic book movies ever.” (Weirdly he’s also in DARK KNIGHT, one of the best comic book movies ever.)
“One of the worst comic book movies ever” is a serious accusation, though. This is a lenient genre that allowed the creation of BATMAN FOREVER, BATMAN AND ROBIN, FANTASTIC FOUR, DAREDEVIL, GHOST RIDER, etc. I mean there’s some good ones and there are just some shockingly horrible ones, that’s the type of deal we got here, the Two Face coin could land on either side.
Since I threw it out there I figured it was only fair that I go back and force myself to watch SPAWN again to make sure it really was the unmitigated crap I remembered it as. Turns out I remembered right, there was no mitigation at all. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen, Michael Jai White
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 112 Comments »
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
By special request, and because I was planning on doing it anyway, here is my review of X-MEN 4: X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE: THE PREQUEL.
Word on X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE has been toxic ever since some prick leaked it onto the internet a month ago. Nerds hated it, critics hated it, my buddy who was looking forward to it as much as I was hated it. I heard nothing but bad news. When I checked the San Francisco Chronicle for a followup on that kook that says her dad was the Zodiac I instead found a WOLVERINE review with the headline “Lower your X-pectations.” So I did. And it was a bummer because I genuinely had been X-cited. I enjoyed the X-MEN pictures… ALL THREE OF THEM. Do you find that shocking? EVEN PART THREE, MOTHERFUCKERS. I am 33% more into X-Men than most nerds. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Hugh Jackman, Scott Adkins
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 68 Comments »
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
Long before PUNISHER: WAR ZONE there was THE STORY OF RICKY, another hilariously violent, ridiculous movie based on a comic book. This is a lower budget Hong Kong movie, though. Raw and scrappy, not stylized. So it’s even more ambiguous how serious or goofy it’s actually supposed to be. I like that.
The movie starts with John Carpenter-ish keyboards and a bus pulling up to a prison. Ricky is a new fish who sets off the metal detectors, not with a random titanium knee like Seagal in HALF PAST DEAD, but with 5 slugs he keeps in his chest as a souvenir. (What’s wrong with one of those smashed pennies?) You know the rule: 5 bullets in the chest = tough. Hell, 50 cent only had 3 and I think one of those was in the ass. (read the rest of this shit…)
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Martial Arts, Reviews | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Not too long ago it was in the nerd-news that Samuel L. Jackson had signed on to play the character “Nick Fury” in as many as nine Marvel Comics movies. Some people said, “Well, that’s not surprising. Samuel L. Jackson will sign onto anything!” But that’s not really fair, they were probaly just actors who were bitter because they didn’t get the roles in THE SPIRIT, CLEANER, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, S.W.A.T., SOUL MEN, JUMPER, HOME OF THE BRAVE, FREEDOMLAND, FARCE OF THE PENGUINS, BASIC, CHANGING LANES, SPHERE, LOADED WEAPON 1, etc.
Where does this Nick Fury come from? Probaly some comic book, but in my opinion mainly from this TV movie starring David Hasselhoff. I actually have wanted to see this for years because it was written by David Goyer in the same year he did BLADE, but they rarely showed it on TV. One time I happened to catch part of it on cable so I checked to see when it would air again – never, it turned out. That was the one and only scheduled airing. But that was before Fury Fever swept the nation, so now it’s on DVD. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Hasselhoff, David S. Goyer, Marvel Comics, TV movies
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
Yes, as you’ve heard by now, THE SPIRIT is a terrible movie. But don’t fall into the trap I did. Just because almost everyone agrees that it’s terrible doesn’t mean it’s funny or interesting to watch. I thought it looked bad from the trailers and really had no interest until I started seeing some of these reviews comparing it to various landmarks in bad movie history. The more vicious the reviews got the more I started to think shit, I kind of want to see that. People acted like it was some bizarre Ed Wood type shit that they couldn’t believe they were seeing.
Well, there are a couple weird touches. For some reason Samuel L. Jackson’s villain character, The Octopus, talks about eggs all the time. Seriously, he just keeps bringing them up – “I beat you like an egg,” “I don’t have egg on my face,” etc. etc. It’s worse than Tarantino’s obsession with feet. Also there’s a part where SPY KIDS style home computer effects depict a little tiny head attached to a foot that hops around on a table in front of him and he keeps saying it’s “plain damn weird.” I kind of wish writer/director Frank Miller was in the theater to experience the uncomfortable silence as the scene milked the “joke” over and over again for a couple minutes, clearly convinced it was hilarious. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eva Mendes, fiascos, Frank Miller, Gabriel Macht, green screen, old timey super heroes, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, self-indulgence, the Nerdening of America
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Punisher War Zone? More like Punisher BORE Zone!
Nah, that was not sincere punning. Actually I was not bored and in fact enjoyed this stupid movie. What I mean to say is “The Punisher? More like The FUNisher!” But you know how it is, people tend to prefer negativity to positivity. That’s why there’s three movies called THE PUNISHER and not a single one called THE REWARDER. So I went the extra mile, I gave you both types of puns. Merry Christmas.
The Punisher is a unique motion picture phenomenon. Not too many characters are in movies three times, with three different actors, three different directors, three different approaches. Not sequels or remakes, each one is a do-over. I can relate to this type of series because I myself am a unique motion picture phenomenon: I am the rare individual who sort of enjoyed all three versions of THE PUNISHER. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ray Stevenson
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 81 Comments »
Sunday, July 20th, 2008
I got an email from Scott L. requesting a review of THE DARK KNIGHT, because he’s seen all these HYPERBOLIC!!!!!!!! reviews that have been springing up on all the websights and thought I might be a good outsider perspective to temper his expectations. I was happy to oblige because I liked the BATMAN BEGINS movie so I was already planning to see this one at a midnight show with a bunch of kids dressed up as the joker and jacked up on Monster and Mountain Dew High Voltage.
This story is about Batman, the caped vigilante of Gotham City, who is trying to stop some crime. There are many other characters such as Bruce Wayne, etc. I won’t give away who is Batman because I’m gonna try not to have spoilers. Also if you were a little confused because “Batman” is not in the title you are not alone. I kept wondering “is this a Batman movie?” Pretty weird. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christian Bale
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 112 Comments »
