Random Song of the Week -- Presidents of the United States of America -- Peaches

It's stupid, but I like it. And it has ninjas. Look out!

-Deceptisean

Batman

O.K.


I've been meaning to write this post for a while.  JoBlo decided to have a little debate on its website over whether Tim Burton's Batman or Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins is better.  For the record, my vote is with Tim Burton.  J-Man weighed in and he got a couple of replies.  One guy said who cares about Batman in comics and the other guy submitted his resume and expounded basically that unless you think Batman Begins is superior, you know nothing about Batman.  Here is my rebuttal and I'm not posting it on that website because I may get a nasty reply one or both of those individuals, which will probably cause me to track down both posters and wring their necks.  Make no mistake, it is preferable to get snotty with J-Man than with me...he'll insult you sure, but he is too mature and wise to go beyond that...while I will happily go looking into the kitchen drawer for available carving knives...


Anyhow, my anger management issues aside, for the purposes of the post, I will dismiss the person who said who cares about Batman in comics.  This post will be about Batman in the comics (in a way), so that opinion has no merit here.  Likewise, if you're reading this post and have the same opinion, stop reading and shut down the page.  You won't care about what I have to write and you'll be wasting your time and my breath.  For the second person, he reminds me of a guy I ran into once online.  He had the same attitude as this guy (for all I know, he is the same guy) and the only thing I would have to say is you are a sad, sad individual.  You cannot have a normal conversation or friendly debate without insulting someone.  By the fact you had to make it personal, you both showed the ignorance of your opinion and that you obviously don't even believe that opinion yourself, because if you did, you would find no need to get personal in the first place. 


Anyhow, jackass posters on JoBlo aside, I have an interesting idea about Dark Knight.  Not Batman Begins, but Dark Knight.  Now, I want you to think about the movie.  Got it?  Good.  Now remove any mention of Batman, No Batman.  Okay?  Good.  Now, replace him with Green Arrow.  You know, Green Arrow, millionaire Oliver Queen, he has the arrows and all that, he's a DC character.  Good?  Now, think about it.  Would it not be the same movie?  It would?  Okay.  Now, here's my problem.  If you have made a good Batman movie, you should not be able to replace Batman with anyone.  In The Dark Knight, there is nothing uniquely Batman.  No cave, no car, no detective work, nothing.  He is a masked vigilante who they call Batman.  He bares some resemblance to the comic book character.  There are none of the character traits that uniquely make him Batman.


Now, wait a minute.  Do not start rocketing hate emails to me.  "Eff u, Dark Knight is the best, u go to hell!" I did not say it wasn't a good movie.  Christopher Nolan has made nothing but good movies (with the exception of Insomnia and even then, I've seen worse).  The man is bad movie proof.  He is a damned good director.  There is no doubt.  However, there seems to be this ground-swell since Batman Begins and Dark Knight Rises is around the corner, that Christopher Nolan has made the definitive Batman movie.  I beg to differ.  If you said Marvel has made the definitive Avengers movie, well, I would be more inclined to agree.  But Nolan?  No.  His movies are set in Batman's world and there are ideas that seem to be pointing towards Batman, but these are not Batman films.  They are films that are a spin on Batman, a different take.  Sure, fine, I'll buy that.  It's not Batman though and if you try and shovel that crap on me, you'll get it back in two fistfuls.  


So the debates rage as Nolan's trilogy wraps up.  I for one would be interested to see how people remember Nolan's films twenty years later.  People still fondly remember the Tim Burton films (or film as Batman Returns seems to me to be a tad unloved), but will people remember these films just as well?  For my money, the answer will be no and once again it has nothing to do with the quality of the films, but the spirit of them.  Nolan's trilogy is technically sound and impressive-looking, but lacks the passion for the source material.  I detect no love in them, just the mechanics of good filmmaking.  For people to declare that these are the best Batman films of all time shows an equal amount of dispassion for Batman.  I'm not saying that you have to be a Batman fan to enjoy the film.  But for a kid who grew up buying Batman comics off the rack simply for the experience of another great Batman adventure, I think I deserve something better than I have received. 


- Stephenstein

Total Film's 50 Most Hated Films of All Time # 32 - Crash

Did anyone see the Academy Awards for the year 2004?  Just wondering.  Because if you had seen these awards, you would have seen the movie that won BEST PICTURE for 2004.


Crash.


Yup, apparently Total Film has decided that the film that won BEST PICTURE in the year 2004 is one of the most hated movies of all time.  I cannot even begin to explain the rationale. 


On a personal front, I never watched Crash.  J-Man and Decepitsean both came back from viewing the movie with less than stellar reviews of the film and quite frankly, I was not surprised.  I saw the trailer and it did not grab me.  Now, when this happens, one of two outcomes take place: 


1) Someone sees it, tells me it was better than the trailer, at which point I catch it in some manner or form.
2) Someone sees it, tells me it's as bland or garbage as I thought it would be and I never watch it. 


You can file Crash in slot 2.  Nevertheless, I do not agree that this film should be on the 50 Most Hated Films of All Time list.  This viewpoint may shock you, but you should probably hear me out before you start protesting how utterly over-hyped the film is. 


Quite simply, Crash cannot be hated.  If it is overrated, then it must have been highly thought of to begin with.  Nowadays, more than ever in fact, the Academy Awards are a popularity contest.  That is not to say that I think all the films that win awards are garbage.  All I'm saying is that the film that gets the most campaigning from the studios wins.  So, it is enough to say that at the time that Crash won, it was the most popular choice amongst the movers and shakers in the film industry to win the Academy Award.  You can't win the BEST PICTURE award and then seven or eight years later proclaim that the movie is suddenly hated.  Like it or not, this film won Best Picture in a popularity contest in Hollywood.  That alone shows this movie is not hated and this inclusion on Total Film's list is a result of bias on the part of the person who produced the list, not an actual census. 


Rating: Worth the hate?  The little gold statue in Paul Haggis' room proves it's not hated. 


- Stephenstein

Dark Shadows - Movie Review - Johnny Depp / Tim Burton

Iron Man: The Complete Series (1994-1996)

In the wake of The Avengers storming movie theatres around the world, I recently re-watched my copy of Iron Man: The Complete Series (1994-1996). It’s a weird but fascinating show. I remember not being impressed by it when it came out in the mid-90's. They were doing the whole “good guy team” vs. “bad guy team” like G.I. Joe vs. Cobra or Autobots vs. Decepticons, but Batman: The Animated Series was big at the time and redefined the action cartoon series and I just thought the Iron Man cartoon would feature Iron Man fighting a villain an episode from his rogues gallery, highlighting each villain and making them shine like Batman: The Animated Series. Instead we get a good guy team made up of Spider-Woman (black costume), Scarlet Witch (without her trademark crown thingy), War Machine, Hawkeye and Century (an obscure Marvel character who receives his big TV break in this show, and he’s accurate too!), all lead by Iron Man. Everybody is pretty exact to the comics except for Scarlet Witch’s lack of a helmet. The team is almost like the old short-lived Force Works comic where Iron Man lead a team much like this one, but with U.S. Agent and Wonder Man in place of War Machine and Hawkeye (yes, Century was a part of Force Works).

The bad guys consist of pretty much every Iron Man villain ever, lead by Mandarin (who is green in this series – seems like every time cartoon producers had to deal with a villain based on an Asian stereotype, they just turned them green. For another example, see Ming the Merciless from Defenders of the Earth). The villains include M.O.D.O.K. (done serious, as opposed to his Super Hero Squad version), Blizzard, Backlash (a.k.a. Whiplash. He had both names in the comics.), Whirlwind, Grey Gargoyle, Titanium Man, Crimson Dynamo, Ghost, Living Laser, Dreadknight, Fin Fan Foom (!) and some made-up villain named Hypnotia. Justin Hammer is all over this show too. I think I’m missing some villains in this list, but the list is effin’ crazy! They're all one big happy evil team in this show, like the Legion of Doom from Superfriends.




Later in the series, Marvel changed production companies and the show became more 90’s with Stark fighting one villain at a time, much like Batman. They also managed to include S.H.I.E.L.D., with Nick Fury (the real one, not the Sam Jackson version), and Dum Dum Dugan showing up, and another episode with Hulk and Leader. Of the 26 episodes, the ones from season 2 are by far the best (episode 14 onward). Mardarin and Fin Fan Foom teaming up in The Beast Within, an appearance by obscure but cool Marvel villain Madame Masque in Beauty Knows No Pain, some appearances by tech-terrorist group A.I.M., an adaptation of the classic Iron Man saga Armor Wars, and Iron Man vs. the Hulk in the episode Hulk Buster.

The show is simplistic at times, mostly in the first season which tries to ape old 80's cartoons and becomes repetitive really quickly), but I love the bright, colourful artwork and fast pacing. And really, if you're a fan of Iron Man and Marvel in general, it's crazy to think that there's a show out there that pertty much incorporated most of Iron Man's villains, had origin episodes for Mandarin and Iron Man, had most of Iron Man's allies (for eff sakes, Century is in this!!), incorporated Force Works, had Armor Wars, and even Fin Fan Foom!!! If you’re an Iron Man fan you MUST own this, if for no other reason than for the sheer awesomeness of its amazing cast of characters.

I don't know why Iron Man wasn't one of the more popular characters in the mainstream before the movies came out, but the current Iron Mania is well deserved and a long time coming.

I give the DVD 3.5/5.

-Deceptisean

Total Film's 50 Most Hated Movies of All Time #33 - The Spirit

For those who don't know, The Spirit was a comic book created and written by Will Eisner.  If the name sounds familiar, yes, it's that Will Eisner.  As in the guy whose name is on a bunch of comic book awards that are the comic book version of the Oscars.  So, let's just say, The Spirit is pretty pumped up, as is its creator.  Hell, on the 94th anniversary of Eisner's birth, Google changed it's iconic Google title on it's page into The Spirit icon (they do that on special occasions).  So, I don't know if you would say The Spirit is a popular comic (though they were re-printing Eisner's originals in the mid-2000's and Jeph Loeb did a one shot of Batman with The Spirit), but it's creator is legendary, so it stands to reason there is a base of fans out there who love The Spirit.  So, if this movie was a terrible representation of The Spirit, I can understand the hate. 


Hold on though, if you think this is the end of it, you're sorely mistaken.  I know a big fan of The Spirit comic: J-Man!  That's right, you're very own video blogger who is one of the creators of this very website, as well as its most frequent poster happens to be a big, big Spirit fan.  So, if you want the acid test, then you throw an actual fan of something into a movie and see how they react to the source material.  In this case, I know for a fact that J-Man is a big, big fan of this movie.  So, there you have it, a true fan of the original source material is equally enthused and excited about the film.  In my book, that's all that counts.  However, you could also say that the movie in general sucks.


That's where I come in.  I don't know a hell of a lot about The Spirit, I never collected the comic and never got the re-prints or anything (though I wouldn't mind checking it out) but I know good movies and crap movies and this is NOT a crap movie, it's a good one.  I know everyone is horny for "gritty movies" these days.  They think that they can't enjoy a movie unless it's aimed specifically at them and their problems in life.  Of course it's that sort of egocentric, self-centered thinking that pisses me off in the first place and shows a serious stunting of the imagination.  I think one of the great things about humankind is that we are more than what we are now, because we can actually dream of something better and as someone once said (it may have been me, I don't know), you cannot attain unless you dream of it first.  However, with people's attitudes towards movies (and life in general), dreaming has taken a back step to accepting how things are and moaning about your lot in life instead of actually dreaming of a better set of circumstances and then actually working to achieve that dream.  


The point is, The Spirit is a fantasy and Frank Miller (who knows a thing or two about comic book writing and adapting comics to the big-screen...see Sin City, which everyone loved) did it as a tribute to its creator. It is unabashed about its fantastical elements and you know up front, this is a movie about imagination, not grounded in reality.  To hate a movie specifically on these grounds shows a lack of understanding of genre in film, a lack of imagination and a deficiency in tolerance for other people's views and how they think.  Not every film can be The Dark Knight and not every film should strive to be so, either.  There's enough room in the world for everyone, even the idiots.


Rating: Worth the hate?  Nope.


- Stephenstein

Axel Braun's latest porn parody: The Dark Knight XXX

Not that I've ever seen one in full, but the trailers I've seen for these porn parodies of everything from sitcoms to comic book properties have been respectful (at least in design) to the source material. With that said, it would be obvoius to throw in Catwoman and Poison Ivy into a Batman porn (see below). There's supposed to be a teaser next week-ish, but for now here are some pics of some of the characters of The Dark Knight XXX:

Giovanni Francesco as Batman (that's a frickin' awesome Bat-suit by the way):

Aiden Ashley as Catwoman (looks more like the 2000's Catwoman of the comics, but more slutty):



Dani Jensen as Poison Ivy (a la Batman and Robin):

Brendon Miller as The Joker (spitting on Heath's grave I guess):

Derrick Pierce as Bane (with Axel Braun directing him):

Looks as icon-bending as Braun's other work.

-Deceptisean