The Living Room

Wonder Woman

2017-06-07T13:09:00.001-07:00

With Man of Steel and Batman v Superman being huge disappointments, I went into WW with quite a bit of reservation. I hoped it would be better than those 2, but was not expecting it to be all that great either.

Fast forward 2 hrs, and I'm walking out of the theater feeling completely fulfilled and a bit teary eyed at the ending.

Wonder Woman does something that the previous 2 movies failed to do: it makes you care about the characters it builds them up, and walks you through there personalities and shows you their growth on screen. Wonder Woman actually makes the super hero movie secondary to the character driven story.

It also understands that dark and brooding does not always work with these characters. The movie is really colorful, and fun during many scenes and only gets dreary and washed out in the war scenes. There's good lighting and you can see very well what his happening unlike BvS.

It has really well choreographed fight scenes all around that are not edited to oblivion and back. They have flow, continuity and let you understand where the characters involved are in relation to the other characters they are fighting.

For most of the movie CGI is kept to a minimum and done so well you can hardly tell its CGI. Its only the last 3rd of the movie that gets CGI heavy, and most of it still really good. There are a few scenes where you can tell Gal Gadot went out for coffee and its just her CGI double doing the impressive feats, but overall its Gal doing many physical stunts and fights

Gal Gadot takes what she gave us in Batman V Superman, and cranks it up to 11. She owns the role as both the naive Diana, and the powerful fighter Wonder Woman is.

She has really good chemistry with Chris Pine, and gets you to feel what she's feeling with her eyes and subtle facial expressions which director Patty Jenkins frames really well in well designed close ups.

The music score is expertly designed for both the super heavy action scenes and the more slow paced story development scenes. In the intense battle scenes the music pounds and makes you feel like you are right there. In the more slow paced and sensitive scenes it mellows down and really sets the mood for the scene.

Wonder Woman also manages to create something no other female super hero movie has been able to do. It creates a strong, fully defined female lead without having the make characters be useless or insulting. It creates a well developed character that does not depend on the shortcoming of the other characters to look stronger. She is in her own right stronger, and all her own.

Chris Pine also works really well opposite Gal providing a strong male lead that works around the already strong female lead. He's not weak and useless, he's not threatened by her strength, he does not have to be saved. It makes the relationship between them really believable and fun to watch.

The weakest part of the movie is unfortunately the villains. Though really they aren't bad, they really aren't Doomsday bad from BvS, but aren't quite up to par with the rest of the movie.

Ares is a bit of a let down honestly, and the plot twist feels a bit tacked on.

In the final fight it falls apart slightly with the CGI and how it was all laid out. It feels like there was a scene cut out, but all in all its a fairly decent final act with a lot of action

All in all Wonder Woman shows what a good director, a good script, and some really good actors can do for a superhero movie. Gal Gadot does for Wonder Woman what Robert Downey Jr. did for Tony Stark, and owns the role. You can tell she is really into the character and her development. I cannot think of anybody else that would be able to take on the role of Wonder Woman after seeing Gal Gadot's take.

I can only hope this movie lets WB understand what a good movie can be like and move away from the dark and dreary Man of Steel and BvS design. This movie is serious, heartfelt and full action but knows really well when to insert moments of levity and humor.

One of the best if not the best super hero movies of the decade so far.

4.5 out of 5 lassos of truth.

Oscar Night Predictions

2017-02-26T12:31:00.000-08:00

The Academy Awards night is once again upon us and this year there seem to be several very strong candidates for Best Picture that have made the prediction process a little harder.

But to not upset the trend, here are my predictions for this years Oscars:

Best Cinematogrpahy:

While Arrival showcases breath taking scenes from Montana, and the masterful depiction of the inside of the space ship is "out of this world", pun very much intended, it seems its not quite on par with La La Land's complex dancing scenes which require a more masterful control of the camera for the long unbroken pieces, and how it interacts with the actors as they move. This is much more complex to get right than a lot of the other cinematographic challenges in the other movies as it requires much more spacial awareness and movement pathway design before shooting even can begin.

For that,best Cinematography should go to: La La Land.

Best Supporting Actress:

While I give really high marks to Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea, and Naomie Harris is supremely engaging in Moonlight, I really have to give Viola Davis the golden man simply because of her ability to convey such a character believably and so much removed from her other roles in things like How to get Away with Murder, and even Suicide Squad. Its a completely different thing, and she inhabits the role masterfully.

Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis

Best Supporting Actor:

I would love for Jeff Bridges to win this year, as he owns the character and makes it believable and interesting, however I have to say it unfortunately pales in comparison with Mahershala Ali in Moonlight. The complexities of the relationship with the boy as he ages has to be a much more intense acting challenge. Ali pulls it off impeccably, and convincingly.

Best Supporting Actor: Maherhsala ALi

Best Actress:

Meryl Streep again proves she is one for the finest actors alive today, and while her performance is in no way less than Oscar worthy, I would like to see Emma Stone be the one to take it home tonight. Not only did she need to act the part, but she needed to do it while dancing and singing. This is a role that could have ended up being over-acted to balance the singing, and dancing, but its not.

Best Actress: Emma Stone, though Meryl Streep has more of a chance at it.

Best Actor:

Casey Affleck, Denzel Washington and Viggo Mortensen all deliver powerful performances with very little to complain about, but Andrew Garfield delivers an awe inspiring performance all the while having to do a southern drawl, which is not an easy thing to do when you are British. He also has to bring the performance out physically and emotionally as well while concentrating on the accent. That is something not easily done as well and as intricately as Garfield does it.

Best Actor: Andrew Garfield, though Denzel is probably going to get it.

Best Director:

Director's aside, the Directoral Challenge of a musical seems to have many more technical and design challenges than anything else which would seem to mean that Damien Chazelle would be an easy win. However, I think Mel Gibson manages to do something with Hacksaw Bridge that is hard to explain.

Best Director: Mel Gibson, though I'm pretty sure Chazelle will take it.

Best Picture:

All the entries this year are phenomenal, however, its seems that this year heart wrenching melodrama is the thing and I can understand it. However I go to the movies to have fun, and melodrama is not my cup of tea, which is why I would love to see La La Land as the winner. Lots of fun, and entertainment to be had, and a well crafted story and musical sets. Its just a lot of fun to watch.

Best Picture: La La Land.

Macgyver 2016 Mid Season overview

2017-02-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

MacGyver 2016- Mid Season overview

I grew up with Macgyver in the 80's and 90's. It was and still is one of my favorite shows. The original series went on for 7 seasons, and 2 direct to TV movies after it ended. So when they announced a remake for 2016, I was skeptical at first to say the least.

How has it fared 16 episodes in, as of this writing? Let's take a look:

Cast:

Macgyver:

For this remake, the producers decided to go with a much younger Macgyver. Richard Dean Anderson was 35 when they cast him as MacGyver in the original series; for this version they went with 26 year old Lucas Till fresh of off X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past success as Havok / Alex Summers.

Lucas manages to capture the MacGyver "i'm pretty handy with engineering, chemistry etc..." -isms rather well. I'm sure its good acting on the part of Till, and he does many times remind me of RDA in a good way. He gets the light comedy as well as the science and does both very convincigly while still keeping his own spin on the character. I do believe now, he was a good casting choice for the character even if I was not sure about him when he was first announced.

Jack Dalton:

Played by George Eads of CSI fame, this is a completely different character arquetype to his Nick Stokes on CSI. While Nick was serious and uptight, Jack is laid back, and funny much like his 1980's counterpart. Unlike the Jack Dalton played by Bruce McGill in the original show however, he's not a schemer and pranskter, he's an EX-CIA operative now working with Mac as his partner. George Eads really digs down into his Texan roots to give us a Jack Dalton that while still retaining much of the original Jack's general personality, make it all his own. Jack is now expert in hand to hand combat, weapons, and covert missions.

Patricia Thornton:

Played by Sandrine Holt, this is a complete departure from Dana Elcar's Peter Thornton. Sandrine is neither here nor there in that role, quite bland unfortunately and not very likeable. This is an update that simply does not work, and I think the producers realized this.

Beyond that, the producers decided to add two brand new characters to the midst. Riley Davis, and Wilt Bozer.

Riley Davis:

Played by Tristin Mayes, she's your typical movie hacker, and its annoying to no end. Their hacking inevitably devolves into a couple of random keystrokes and some technobabble that makes no sense most of the time. This part of the character unfortunately is poorly executed, and laughably researched if researched at all. It seems the writers just make her whatever she needs to be for the episode at hand. It simply does not work and its very unfortunate because her chemistry with Jack and Macgyver is pretty good. More work needs to be put into her hacking skills, otherwise its just plot convenience 101. She can do whatever they need her to do by hacking into something always. It just ends up being too unbelievable in a show that already stretches your suspension of disbelief quite a bit. Tristin does a good job at the relationship with Mac and the banter between Riley and Jack. But the hacking sequences are starting to be more of a crutch than a helpful tool. The writers need to tone down the hacking, make it less important. Riley should have other computer and tech skills that can help Mac and Jack outside of hacking.

Wilt Bozer:

Played by Justin Hires, is... how can I put this nicely, supremely and impossibly annoying and unnecesarry in every plot he's in. His character is just a very annoying and badly done Chris Tucker impersonation. He really adds nothing to the team other than mildly amusing comedy at best and high unlikeability at worst. It really seems like he was just conceived to exist as a recurring character rather and than a main one. In later episodes he's shoehorned into missions he has no business being in just so he can have some annoying exchanges with Riley about their non-existant relationship. As I'm writing this I just realized he takes on the role of the annoying friend with weird schemes that they removed from George Eads' Jack Dalton. While Bruce McGill's Jack in the original could get annoying he was kept as only a recurring character, so the lesser doses of it helped to diminish the annoyance and highlight Bruce's comedic talents. Bozer just seems to be in your face the entire time and adds nothing for most of it.

Mac and Jack work pretty nicely for me, with their banter, and onscreen chemistry. It does feel like they've known each other for a while. Thornton is just bland and her only purpose seems to be exposition. Riley and Bozer need a lot of work. The writers need to really make them functional and believable otherwise you just want to get rid of them the entire time, and that really does not make for a show you want to keep watching.

Plot

The plot is essentially un-changed from the original show. Mac works for a government organization as a covert agent most of the time, and takes on missions to save the world or recover some stolen item of the week. Unlike the orginal however, Mac is now part of a team. I understand why they did this, as Lucas Till may still be a little green to be able to carry the entire show on his own, so a few more characters help the show move along.

Beyond that, there's nothing earth shattering about the show's overall plot, but removing the nostalgia goggles for a minute, the original did not have that much plot either. Adventure of the week is the name of the game here, as it was before and it works.

Many are claiming this pales in comparison to the original, but again removing the nostalgia goggles, the original one could be very silly, and bland at times with really weird plot lines, and some out there stories through its 7 year run.

Nods

The show pays a lot of homage to the original series in every episode. MacGyver's voice over from the first season of the show is present in several of the episodes, but like the original show, it seems to have been reduced or even outright removed for later episodes. Not sure if this is intentional to mirror the original's use and subsequent phasing out of the voice over, or sometimes show don't tell works better and writing the voice over is just not working at the end of the day.

Peter Thornton's covert agency from the original show, the DXS, Department of External Services make an appearance in the first few episodes and is then transformed into the Phoenix Foundation, Mac's employer for most of the original show.

Unlike the original show however, Macs first name is widely known, and he does not appear to have an issue with it. Or at least they have not really made a point of it in 16 episodes. Its there, even Mac uses it frm time to time, but there's no major issue with it unlike the original show which had us guessing until several seasons in.

The writers have also chosen to showcase many of the secondary / recurring characters from the original show in slightly different ways. We've seen the likes of Penny Parker, Nikki Carpenter, Murdoc, and even the Coltons, the family of bounty hunters that was supposed to be spun off into their own show in the 80's but never materialized.

So far this has not worked all that well. The Murdoc episode was not only bland, it was ridiculous in how Murdoc simply chooses not to kill any one even though he has ample opportunity. While David Dastmalchian is a decent actor and offers and interesting take on Murdoc, sadly he does not have the character and charisma of Michael Des Barres in the original show. Michael's take on that character made him unique, and so much fun to watch. David Dastmalchian needs to up the ham (really, hammier is better in this case) a bit more for Murdoc to work. We get it, he's evil, but he also needs to be very theatrical, something David's interpretation lacks.

Penny Parker is so far just there for the name in one scene of one episode, and Nikki is now friend or foe depending on what the writers need her for at the moment. Hopefully this will get corrected and finalized in upcoming episodes as so far her motives and background just have not worked out as they probably expected them too.

Overall

The show is not terrible, but its not great either. I can tell you the first season of the original show was not all that great either, and most people remember it not for its first season, but generally for seasons 2 through 5 where the characters were established, interactions worked out and defined, and the format and function of MacGyver was at its best shape.

I'm pretty sure this version should find its way later on as the writers find more things that work, and remove things that don't. Currently its a work in progress that seems to be receiving steady ratings for its first 16 episodes. Hopefully they can improve the writing and characters as it goes along for the remaining 7 episodes, and hopefully it gets a Season 2 to let them develop these characters more and move away form the shadow of the original show.

The only thing I wish they kept from the old show is the intro theme. As it stands they made a new more modern adventurous theme that starts off like the original did but then devolves into really unlikable sounds with no real feeling to it. Good thing its short though. They definitely need to rework that intro.

Its good to pay your respects to the original, but sometimes you need to just go out and do your own thing. With the crossover with Hawaii Five-0 coming up, its a prime opportunity to learn from the Hawaii writers how to take a good premise, and do it your own way. There's a good reason Hawaii Five-0 is now in its 7th season and still going strong.

Doctor Strange

2016-11-01T09:20:00.001-07:00

Doctor Strange has made his debut in Marvel's cinematic universe. Played by Benedict Cumberbatch, this is Marvel's 14th entry into its shared cinematic universe. Sticking rather close to Strange's comic book origins, Strange is a cocky, neurosurgeon with expertly steady operating hands. So much so, that he is able to remove a bullet lodged in a man's skull free-handedly and without apparently causing any brain injury.

However he is extremely conceited and cocky about his abilities. He can never lose, or so he thinks. Unfortunately on the night he is to give speech at a conference, he crashes his car, and severely injures his hands. This causes him to be unable to operate any more as his hands now shake uncontrollably.

In his quest to find help for his hands, he finds an old woman played by Tilda Swinton, known only as the Ancient One. She agrees to teach him the ways of the Mystic Arts. He learns, things happen, and he eventually comes to terms with being the Sorcerer Supreme, protector of earth from other-worldy threats.

Much like Robert Downey Jr when he first took the role of Tony Stark, Cumberbatch has managed to expertly translate Stephen Strange from the comic book and still make it his very own. Like Downey, Cumberbatch has created a character that only is a great representation of the comic book counterpart, but is fits him perfectly and is very very much his own. Having seen the movie twice now, I cannot think of anybody else in this role now.

The movie is expertly driven two thirds or three fourths of the way by director Scott Derrickson, but then is somewhat derailed in its final act.

For the better part of the first hour, we just get to know Strange before he meets the Ancient One. Before he has any powers. Just a tragic story of a man so full of himself he drives himself literally into a carrier ending accident. Then the movie takes another 30 to 40 minutes to explain how the mystic arts work, and shows us Strange learning, and how he needs to let go of what he thinks is holding him back before fully embracing his newly acquired powers.

But then the last portion devolves into a more traditional Marvel action movie with the big fights, and the really over the top finale with a super powerful enemy. Surprisingly the slower exposition heavy parts of the movie are the best ones. The action in some way takes away from Strange's journey.

For those that know Strange, they already know who his general nemesis is. For those that don't, the evil entity known as Dormammu, and extra dimensional being wants to merge his world with ours. Dormammu was a bit disappointing as was the end "fight", if you can even call it that.

Yes it shows Strange finally coming to terms with actually losing, but really the overall final act is not as good as the preceding ones.

Generally speaking its a really good movie, well crafted, with some good fun moments, and some legitimately funny quips from Strange, that unfortunately falters a bit at the end.

I'll give it 4 out 5 Eyes of Agammotto.

Retro Toons #4: Spider-Woman

2016-05-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

The 60's saw several Marvel Comics Characters make the jump to animated series. Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, The Avengers; which incidentally where more like motion comics than actual animated series, were the first ones to make the cut. With stories and artwork, lifted straight from the comic book panels it was like watching the comics books come to life, in a sort of stilted, popup book kind of way.

By the 1970s, the animated series landscape had become devoid of Marvel's characters beyond reruns. No new animated series were made until 1978 when a new Fantastic Four cartoon was released.

In 1977 however, then Marvel Publisher Stan Lee, decided they needed to trademark the name Spider-Woman, if just for the sake of having it, since anybody could come around and put out a Spider-Woman character and work of off the popularity of Spider-Man. So they did just that; writer Archie Goodwin created her general character and origin, while artist Marie Severin created her look and design. After a successful debut in Marvel Spotlight #32 featuring Nick Fury, she got her own ongoing comic book series, and a couple years later, in 1979, got her very own Saturday morning cartoon.

Created by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and Marvel Comics Animation, the cartoon was aired on ABC from September of 1979 to January of 1980, and altered Spider-Woman from her comic book counterpart. While she retained her general spider-like powers like wall crawling and webbing; and her name, her origin was altered, got all new powers some extrapolated from Spider-Man, and she received the necessary sidekicks every cartoon at the time had to feature.

Spider-Woman / Jessica Drew is voiced by Joan Van Ark, of Knot's Landing fame.

The cartoon's intro offers quick recap of her origin: As child she was bitten by a very poisonous spider in her father's lab. Him being a scientist, uses an experimental Spider based serum and presto, spider-powers.

While she shares some powers with Spider-Man, Spider-Woman however, is not simply a female version of Spider-Man. She is by her own right a strong female lead with powers of her own. She was her Venom Sting, which allows her to project energy blasts from her hands. Her Webbing which projects small white tendrils from her finger tips, her enhanced spider-sense which can let her see future events unfolding, Flight with the aid of her under arm web wings and several other convenience based, or script driven powers depending on the situation; including but not limited to, Arachnid telepathy, where she can communicate and control spiders telepathically and web based air bubbles to breath under water.

Uncharacteristically for a 1970's cartoon, Jessica is portrayed as a strong independent single woman that holds a high profile job. Quite the role model even if the writers have her play down her own strengths when in the Jessica Drew guise for some reason.

The cartoon also grabs some inspiration from other shows of the time such as Jessica Drew's transformation sequence into Spider-Woman, where she spins much like DCs Wonder Woman, and is transformed in a flash of light.

The cartoon lasted all of 16 episodes before being summarily cancelled. Through the run she only really battles 3 Marvel villains. The Evil demon Dormammu in the episode "Realm of Darkness", The Kingpin of Crime in "The Kingpin strikes again" and Marvel's Dracula™ in the episode Dracula's Revenge. None of which are actually her enemies in the comics. Dormammu is a Dr. Strange villain, Dracula has faced off against a number of super heroes, but the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman is not one of them, and the Kingpin is more a Daredevil turned Spider-Man villain than her own.

As is customary with 80's cartoons a super-hero must always have sidekicks. In this case, Jessica Drew is paired with photographer Jeff Hunt, and her nephew Billy. They act as the "damsels" in distress for Jessica to save every week, and really offer very little in terms of character.

Along side them, Spider-Woman does get help from Spider-Man in a couple of episodes, though she almost always has to save him too. Voiced by John Mayer, who voiced him in the 1967 - 1970 animated series Spider-Man is pretty similar to his 1960's design, except for the yellow eyes instead of white.

The show also had something very few other shows got back then. While its intro was not bad, it really was nothing memorable in relation to Spider-Man's classic intro, and other cartoon intros of the time. However in the early 1980's it was dubbed and released in Latin America, where it got one of the best intro songs you could expect for it.

Chilean pop singer Juan Guillermo Aguirre better known by his stage name "Capitan" Memo (Captain Memo) recorded an intro song that would go down in history as one of the top Spanish cartoon intros along with He-Man and the original Spider-Man cartoon.

You can view the cartoon's Spanish Intro below:

And here is the complete 3 minute "Mujer Araña" song by Capitan Memo.

The show was decent enough, and had some fun episodes even if it only lasted for 16 episodes. Some like Realm of Darkness were quite good, and others like "The Kongo Spider" where just cheesy.

The Spider-Woman character has since then suffered many many changes, and has had several other Marvel characters take up the name including both of Spider-Man's love interests in the comic books, Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson.

The series was released on DVD, in a 2 disc set in 2009, and while it was a U.K. only release you can still find a copy, albeit a bit expensively last I checked, on Amazon, if you really want one. If you can find some episodes online, a couple are on Youtube, give them a watch, its an interesting often forgotten animated series that was quite ahead of its time with its portrayal of its female lead, while still being lighthearted and many times just out right silly.

Other shows you may like:

Captain America: Civil War

2016-05-02T10:08:00.001-07:00

Let me start this review with one single little phrase:

DC/Warner Brothers got schooled!

Some Spoilers ahead, read at your own risk

Captain America: Civil War, revolves around the government requirement of making the Avengers a sanctioned group.

Several of the Avengers are in favor of this regulation, while others oppose it. At the helm of each side, Tony Stark / Iron-Man, and Steve Rogers / Captain America.

The movie also has to deal with the introduction of a new character to the cinematic universe: Black Panther; and the introduction of the newest Spider-Man to this universe. It does both in a way that not only serves the general story of the movie, but does not feel forced or shoe-horned in. It works within the context of the movie and because of the way its laid out.

This is the way you do a film that needs to handle several things at once.

The most forced inclusion in my view is Paul Rudd's Ant-Man. He's cool, and we get an extra surprise there for comic fans, but it did feel a little forced. Not too much.

Getting into the movie a little more, the Russo's bring back a character from an unexpected place to play somewhat of an antagonist. General Thaddeus Ross, last seen in the Incredible Hulk movie, is again played by William Hurt now as Secretary of State, and promoter of the accord to sanction super heroes.

Captain America, opposes the accords, and goes on the run, to try to find Bucky a.k.a the Winter Soldier, after Helmut Zemo re-activates Bucky's brainwashing at the hands of the Russians, to get information out of him about the Winter Soldier Program, and the other subjects that still exist in a bunker somewhere.

After helping Bucky escape, Captain America and his team go to an airport to get a Quinjet to go after Zemo, who is thought wants to thaw the rest of the Winter Soldiers, and reactivate them for some nefarious purpose.

The entire super-hero bonanza is unleashed as Team Cap, and Team Stark duke it out at the airport. Eventually Cap and Bucky make it to the Quinjet, and take off.

The rest of team Cap is captured and imprisoned, by Secretary Ross.

Stark, realizes that Bucky was framed, after the real doctor's body is found in a hotel, and Zemo's Bucky disguise is found. Stark manages to get Falcon to tell him where Cap is going, and immediately leaves for Siberia.

As they arrive, Cap and Bucky, discover that Zemo has killed the frozen Winter Soldiers, as he never wanted to activate them, he was preventing any more super-powered beings from roaming the earth. As he believes it the super powered ones that caused his family to be killed during the events in Sokovia with Ultron.

Zemo, plays a video where Bucky as the Winter Soldier kills Tony Stark's parents in one of his missions. This sends Tony over the edge, and he tries to kill Bucky. Cap intervenes and again they duke it out. Eventually Cap and Bucky overpower Stark, though Bucky loses his cybernetic arm in the process.

Cap leaves with Bucky, and Stark takes Zemo in, after Black Panther prevents him from committing suicide.

The movie really shows how you can juggle several threads, and dozens of characters at the same time, without seeming detached, forced or awkward. In the end it does not really set up much for the next Avengers movie, but delivers a fun experience overall. Even though its 2 and a half hours in length, it never feels boring or dragged. It even manages to give a heartfelt farewell to Agent Carter in the middle of everything.

Yes, DC / Warner Brothers released their movie Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice just a few weeks ago, and Marvel just schooled them on how you do super hero fight movie properly.

The overall setup is the same, two powerful people duke it out, for different reasons. Dawn of Justice tried to throw too many things there instead of sticking with the main story which was their fight. Captain America: Civil War, focuses magnificently on what is driving both people, and it never seems forced, or artificially manufactured. There's also the dialogue; Captain America, always tries to talk to Tony and only resorts to physical interaction when there's nothing more to do. Unlike Superman in DoJ.

In all respects this is a much much better movie than BVS:DoJ. It handles its plots well. It does not go out of its way to create a fight. It gives each new character enough time to get to know them and even has focus scenes for both Black Panther and Spider-Man to showcase what they do.

I wasn't so sure about another recast of Spider-Man, as I felt Andrew Garfield had done a great job with it in both films. But that second film again tried to do to much and tried to set up too much. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how well Tom Holland works with the character, and am really excited to see the stand alone film with him as Spider-Man in 2017.

All in all, I think this movie works great, its a lot of fun, delivers in a lot of aspects, and still has time to not take itself too seriously, joke around a little, and gives a sold new entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Let Phase 3 begin.

4.5 of 5 Cap Shields

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Review

2016-03-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

Seeing the holy trinity of comics come together in a live action film has been every DC fan's dream since comic book characters started making the leap to movies. How does it fair? Lets take a look.

Warning lots and lots of Spoilers. Don't read if you have not seen it.

It starts out with a short recap of Man of Steel that adds Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne to the mayhem caused by the battle between Zod and Superman at the end of that movie. Bruce is caught in the destruction, and saves an employee, and a little girl form falling debris.

Then the movie feels the need to tell us Batman's origin story again. Because, maybe someone forgot how Batman came to being since the Nolan Trilogy ended.

Eventually, after around 30 minutes of setups, and explanations it gets around to its main plot.

This movie again gets caught up in what other comic book movies have suffered from in the past, and that is too many villains, which does not allow for proper setups to all the villains and one unavoidably feels like it was just plopped in there to offer up action. Spider-Man 3 suffered from this, Amazing Spider-Man 2 suffered from this, Fantastic 4: Rise of the silver Surfer suffered from this. Adding more villains is never the answer.

The movie in reality gives us 3 villains. Yes I'm counting Batman as the first one. Because he is throughout 75% of the film a direct antagonist to Superman, more so than Lex is in that time span.

Lex is heavily suggested to be plotting against Superman all through the movie, but we don't really see it. All we see is an egotistical kid with delusions of grandeur, trying to get the military and the government to do what he wants. Which is to give him access to Zod and his ship, and the green mineral found in the crash of the device Superman took out in the Indian ocean in the previous movie. Its only 30 minutes from the the end when he follows through and eventually Lex Luthor becomes an actual threat to Superman, by kidnapping Clark's mom and forcing him to fight Batman.

For the rest of the movie its Batman facing off against Superman, and shown prepping to face him. He's the bad guy here. He's distrusting of Superman for no real reason and acts on it. That's fine. Batman is supposed to be distrusting. He does need to research and get to know Superman before trusting him. But he doesn't do it at all. The Detective part of Batman seems to be ignored in this movie.

The Movie is Batman v Superman, so stick to it. We don't need extra antagonists. We want to see Bruce try to fight him, lose, and realize superman is not a threat

So Batman and Superman fight, in a very bland fight to be honest. Batman has some gadgets he's prepped to take him down, including a kryptonite spear. They fight, he tells Superman he's too dangerous etc... The fight goes on for way too long.

Then after almost 2 hours of movie, and 30 minutes of fight he just does a 180, and all is fine between them. Its like he just read the script that said, and now Batman is best friends with Supes, so they can take on another villain, End scene. The worst part is, it looks like the writers were going to make Superman just shrug off Batman's attempts and continue to try to talk to him, but then decided: "Lets have Batman break a sink over his head" for no reason, after which he suddenly just stops with no explanation, unless you call having their mothers share a first name an explanation. Then its like we're BFFs now, I'll go save your mother. You stop Lex. Bye!.

A couple other things happen, and we then get a final scene of Batman and Superman now joined by WonderWoman fighting Lex's Doomsday, made from the corpse of General Zod, and a bit of his own blood for some reason. No explanation is given as to why this is required or works, or why it creates Doomsday out of Zod.

This was really unnecessary. Lex had been plotting against Superman through the entire picture, and Doomsday is simply tossed in with a throw-away line from Zod's ship's computer about the process being banned in Krypton. No explanation as to why Zod's body turns into this, nothing about why we should suddenly feel this thing can take on Superman.

If you've read the comics you know what Doomsday can do but he was setup through several issues and went through several heroes before getting to Superman, he was built through out many issues as a real match to Superman and as a real threat. Here, and if you have not read the comic books and have no idea who Doomsday is, we're just expected to believe he is a threat simply because the movie says so without supporting it at all.

In my opinion having Lex build his all so traditional armor, with shards of the Kryptonite chunk he was trying to import would have worked much better, would have made Superman less of a threat in a more organic way, and would have allowed WonderWoman and Batman a bit more involvement in the fight. As it was they were pretty much just spectating. More so Batman, as WonderWoman does get in a few hits here and there.

It would also have been enough to show the armor being prepped at any point in the movie, a 5 second scene and we get he's building an armor. He owns a tech company, he's researched the aliens, he can do this, and its easily and believably explained.

But instead we get a scene where he is just able to control the ship, we don't know why, and without any explanation he immediately knows how this device works that will create a monster for Superman to fight.

At the end of the day, the movie which would have been a great setup for the future, is left sort of disappointingly lackluster as a sequel to Man of Steel, as a Prequel to the Justice League Movies, and as a standalone movie.

Again a few changes here and there, and the movie could have been great. Doomsday had no business being here at all. Why they felt they needed to kill Superman, is beyond me.

I will give kudos to Jesse Isenberg for a really fun and out there portrayal of Lex Luthor. Its not your typical Evil Businessman portrayal, but it does eventually get across how big of a threat he can be. He is very smart, and is very creepy at times. It was a lot of fun to watch him. He really steals every scene his in, specially with Ben Affleck's and Henry Cavill's cardboard-ey line deliveries at times.

All in all, a disappointing movie, that was hyped a little too much in my opinion, and could not live up to expectations even without all the story driven issues it has.

3/5.

Some Movies you may like:

Fant4astic

2016-03-17T11:22:00.001-07:00

Fant4astic is to 20th Century Fox what the unreleased FF movie in 1994 was to MEG.

A little background first. 20th Century Fox obtained the movie rights to several Marvel Properties in the 90's. These properties included Daredevil, the now very profitable X-Men, and Fantastic Four.

Fantastic Four is now infamous for having had a movie made that was never supposed to see the light of day, and was only made to keep the movie rights to the property for a now defunct company. This was unsuccessful however and the movie rights reverted to Marvel soon after. Marvel put them up for sale again, and this time 20th Century Fox picked them up. Fantastic Four sat in development hell for almost 10 years, with writers coming in and out, and directors being attached, and then dropped several times. Finally in 2004, Tim Story was attached, a rewrite of the then current script was made, and the 2005 FF4 started production in April of 2004.

The 2005 release starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans (Yes that Chris Evans), Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon, was to put it mildly: barely O.K.

It was not the best comic book movie, but it was certainly not the worst. It did in hindsight however mirror the dark future the FF would have in its main villain's story arc. However it was a fair attempt at adapting the source material. It may not have seen the success that Iron Man would see 3 years later, but it still garnered enough attention and box office earnings to warrant a sequel.

The sequel however would turn out to be much much worse. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer chose villains that were really beyond anything seen before, and then mistakenly tried to ground them in reality. If you are going to pick Galactus as your main villain, then you need to go all out and embrace the ludicrousness of it. Otherwise pick someone else, say, The Mole Man for instance. The movie had issues... lots of them... and turned out to be quite bad.

After the Silver Surfer failed in 2007, Fox debated about what to do with the FF. In 2009 they announced a reboot. Yes, a mere 2 years after the Silver Surfer flop, and during the time period where Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic universe was beginning to emerge, Fox decides its best to start again from scratch. Again going through several directors, writers, potential cast members and screen plays, they finally found Jeremy Slater to write the screenplay.

Jeremy Slater is a guy who has exactly 4 credits to his name in his IMDB page, and they hire him to write a screenplay for a Movie about 4 of the most important Marvel comic characters in existence.

In what I can only assume to be a move to offset this decision, they paired him up with Writer/Producer Simon Kinberg of the good X-Men movies.

But then, in comes Josh Trank, a guy who up until that point had only 2 other directorial credits to his name. 5 episodes of a Tv series, and the found-footage movie Chronicle which he also wrote. It was a decent attempt, but the filming style is really annoying, at times makes no sense and is not really a good movie in the end.

I know FOX was running out of time, but really this is the team you assemble for this? You had 7 years to do this.

Anyway, in 2014, Trank, Kinberg and Slater, begin actual production of this movie, and it all went down hill from here.

So lets take a look at Fant4astic.

In what was apparently an effort to distance themselves from the previous movies, the producers decided it would be best to take a new approach to the FF. Basing there new story on the Ultimate version of the FF4 was seemingly a decent idea.

The Ultimate (Universe) as its called by Marvel was an attempt to start fresh with many well known Marvel characters and allow new readers to come in without having 40+ years of stories and lore that they needed to be familiar with to understand the books. Instead giving these characaters a fresh new take on their origins, and making them there own distinct characters even if they did still share many key elements with the originals. This gave the producers a brand new clean slate many people would not be familiar with.

However as the movie progresses you realize they made some really strange decisions.

The movie begins with Reed as a child working in his garage on what he calls a Matter Transporter along side Ben Grimm. He is apparently successful as the transporter brings back some dirt and rocks from somewhere.

Several years later, he attempts to present this transporter as his science fair project in high school, only to be shot down by his science teacher. The same one that shot him down years earlier when he gave his presentation about it as a kid.

Incredibly enough in comes Franklin Richards who somehow was scouting the seemingly normal science fair for child geniuses. And I know this is inline with the comic book story, but its the one thing that makes absolutely no sense. Here is this big shot government scientist walking around a children's science fair looking for potential recruits? They could not have made it so Sue was at that same science fair and her dad was there because well that's what dads do?

Anyway, Reed is recruited and brought to a laboratory where *gasp* they are working on a similar matter transporter to his own with Victor heading the research. Reed is able to help them finish it and for a first test they send a monkey which successfully arrives at what they call planet Zero, and is returned safely.

The government officials decide its time to send actual trained humans. This causes discontent among the team which leads Victor to suggest they go before the NASA guys do. They setup their trip, and Reed calls Ben to participate and is able to easily infiltrate him into the Baxter building a apparently secure government building, the night of their trip. Sue stays behind to monitor the test.

During their trip to Planet Zero, disaster strikes as explosions happen and Victor is left for dead when he falls into a pit of green energy. The pod is bathed in this same weird green energy giving them all their super powers. As they return an energy discharge occurs and Sue is bathed in this energy gaining her powers.

The Government officials decide to hold them for further study, but Reed escapes through the ventilation ducts and promises to return for Ben who is now encased in rock. Reed never really does this, which causes Ben to bear a grudge against him which is immediately forgotten.

As time passes, Ben free of the rock encasing, Johnny and Sue are trained to use their powers as government agents to take part in what they call covert missions, one of which has Ben destroy a tank in broad daylight and in full view of everybody. How is that covert?

Eventually they track down Reed, and convince him to help them rebuild the transporter to go back to Planet Zero. He agrees reluctantly, and completes the new transporter which sends a new team to Planet Zero where they encounter Victor now transformed into a metallic being with the green energy coursing with in him. He collapses before them, and so the take him back to Earth. Where he awakens and starts killing people. Out of nowhere he decides he wants to go back to Planet Zero, and will destroy Earth if required to do so Planet Zero. He is shown to have really strong telekinetic and telepathic powers going as far as exploding the head of the head government official with his mind.

Eventually he gets back and opens a large black hole that will suck earth into itself. The team is sent back to planet Zero to fight him in the most underwhelming final battle ever put to film, and when Victor suddenly forgets he has all these powers, simply lets Ben clobber him into his black hole.

This apparently destroys him, and the black hole for some unexplained reason, and all is well.

The 4 are given a new facility in which to explore their powers and Planet Zero more in depth after reed out right threatens the top brass in a meeting, and the movie ends.

The movie goes by really fast and neglects to answer even the most basic of questions about these characters. Also the romance between Sue and Reed is so incredibly forced its annoying, and finally the actors cast to play teenagers are in their late 20's or early 30's as is the case with Kate Mara who plays Sue and Miles Teller who plays Reed. She's a talented actress, and very beautiful, but a teenager she is not.

Overall the movie feels rushed, and slow at the same time. I'm pretty sure they were expecting a sequel but that is very unlikely at this point in time.

Fant4stic is again clearly a cheap attempt at keeping the movie rights to these characters for a bit longer. But 20th Century fox has proven they cannot make a good FF film to save their lives. So why doesn't Marvel simply take back the rights?

I would expect Marvel to attempt to get the rights back and make one themselves likely after Phase 3 is completed.

For now the FF will live in infamy as their 3 films have been major disappointments. The sad thing is with a better director and a tweaked screenplay this reboot could have worked very well. It has lots of potential but is all squandered in strange decisions. Its very very sad when the best thing about a movie is its Blu Ray packaging. I'll give it 1.5 out of 5 reels.

Mortal Kombat XL Review

2016-03-09T11:36:00.001-08:00

Mortal Kombat XL is Netherrealm Studios update to their smash hit Mortal Kombat X which was released last year.

XL offers several new features over the vanilla X version.

It includes a brand new stage named The Pit.

The Pit has been featured in many previous MK games and in all has offered a gruesome way yo kill your enemies, by throwing them off the narrow bridge, and onto some bloody spikes at the bottom.

The Pit in MK XL is no different. However its general appearance is more a kin to the Pit II featured in Mortal Kombat II, than it is to the original Pit found in the first Mortal Kombat.

The XL update also brings with it 2 more Stage Fatalities for existing stages. The Kove, and The Refugee Kamp. The Kove now lets you uppercut your opponent into the water and see them sink to the bottom getting pulled down by a large tentacle.

The Refugee Kamp has you uppercut your opponent into the air, where several commandos quickly shoot at the opponent turning him or her into a bloody mass.

Beyond these extras, come several adjustments and balancing to the fighters and their combos and damage output. For instance, Kung Jin's easiest combo: 1 1 1 D B 3 now does 1% less damage overall. So his flashy 1 meter, 38% combo now only does 37%.

Also it seems the timing for some moves has been changed, as I've been getting the Bo Flame more often now instead of Bo Swing or enhanced Bo Swing when trying to chain from 1 1 1 into Bo Swing. Either I'm pressing 1, one too many times or something changed with the timing.

The update also allows allows owners of the original game access to 4 new characters.

Bo' Rai Cho, Triborg(Tetra-Borg), Alien Xenomorph, and Leather Face From Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Though these characters have to actually be purchased separately to be able to be chosen directly, you can get a feel for them without buying them by playing through certain Living towers.

I got the Tarkatan Purge Living Tower, which auto selects the Alien and you actually play as him through the tower. Its selected Variation changes as you go along the tower letting you experience most of him before buying. It actually did a pretty good job, since I'm now pretty convinced I'd like to buy him while initially I was not really drawn to him.

The other character I find most interesting is Triborg. Bringing back the player acclaimed Cyborgs: Cyrax, Sektor, Smoke, and yes Cyber Sub Zero. Each cyborg is a variation of the overall character. With Cyber Sub-Zero being slightly hidden, since you need to select him via the hidden variation option and pressing 2 while hidden.

It offers a bit more than your standard fighter, and while $4.99 is still a little steep, it is a little less egregious than $4.99 for Bo' Rai Cho for instance. I thin a general price of $3.99 per character would work better.

While I did end up picking up Kombat Pack 1 when it went on sale for $9.99 right before this update got released, I don't think I'll be doing the same next time. Jason and Predator were much better characters than Bo and Leather Face are right now.

With that said, Netherrealms in my view got it right with their update, as opposed to what Capcom ever did with their SSFIV updates. Charging for the update for those that own the previous release is low class.

Giving owners a free update with some new stages, and stage fatalities, and then letting them choose what characters to buy is a much better experience, than having to dish out $15 or $20 from the get go to get everything.

You can totally go and get a cheap copy of MKX right now, and get a free update to XL, and a menu of a total of 9 extra characters to choose from, with some decently priced packs as well.

All in all a pretty good Update.

MK X & XL are a much better deal than SFV is currently being on PS4.

Oscar Predictions

2016-02-28T17:00:00.001-08:00

Here are my Oscar predictions:

Best Supporting Actress: Rachel McAdams
Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone
Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu
Best Actress: Cate Blanchette
Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio
Best Picture: The Revenant

Let's see how well I did:

Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies
Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu for Revenant
Best Actress: Brie Larson for Room
Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant
Best Picture: Spotlight

Let's talk about 4K

2016-02-16T11:00:00.001-08:00

Lets Talk aboutL 4K Ultra High Def

The 2016 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas came and went in early January, and there were quite a few things shown off. For this blog, the most interesaitng bit, was the reveal of several new 4K devices including: 4K Tvs. 4K blu ray players, and 4K streaming services.

But really, to the average consumer looking to buy a TV to watch movies and shows on, what does this actually mean? Should you care? But more importantly should you dish out the cash for these devices, and services, or stay with yur current setup?

To answer these questions, we need to discuss several things first. now if you are a Hi-Def audio-video buff, you probably already know this. But I'd like to explain it to those who don't.

What is 4K?

Videos have always been classified accoridng to their physical dimensions. How big they actually are in relation to a screen. The best example of this is Youtube currently. Where many videos are limited to certain resoltutions because that's there physical size. 360p, 480p, 720p etc... all refer to the video's physical size in pixels. More precisely its actual height. 360p is used for a video that is 640pixels wide and 360 pixels tall. 480 is used for videos that are 480 pixels high. Youtube uses a 4:3 aspect ratio video that is 640 x 480 pixels as its SD version of videos that can support it. Resolution continued this trend with 720p HD and 1080p Full HD markers by using the vertical height of a video or screen as the basis. 4K however now changes that.

4K, technicaly short for 4000, is the nomenclature given to video sources, and playback devices that deliver content in a resolution of 3840 pixels × 2160 pixels because 3840 is conveniently close to 4000 lines of horizontal resolution. This is a change from previous resolution markers like I explained above where 1080p and 720p actually used the vertical resolution instead. i.e 720p was in reference to the 720 pixels found vertically in videos that had a dimension of 1280 x 720 pixels. Or the 1080 in 1920 x 1080 in HD videos.

So in reality 4K, is the next step in the "P" resolutions coming in at 2160p. But ince that is not as marketable as 4K, marketing departments decided to go with the much cooler sounding 4K.

But 4K, is not just a marketing strategy. It is also a reference to the fact that 4K video actually has 4 times as much video area as 1080p. So 4 times as many pixels, or video information making 4K video technically 4 times as detailed as 1080p. Why you may ask? Well this is all in the math. 720p video has 1280 x 720 or 921,600 pixels worth of video area, while 1080p video has 1920 x 1080 or 2,073,600 pixels worth of video area. In contrast, 4K has 3840 x 2160 or 8,294,400 pixels of video area which is exactly 4 times the video area of 1080p.

So at the end of the day 4K is a larger more detailed video format. But of course to view this more detailed format screens need to be able to display all these pixels. This is where 4K devices come in.

4K TVs

4K TVs have been around for a while now, but 4K sources have been rather limited, so basically you were left with a great Tv but no real content to utilize its capabilities. Yes regular 1080p blu rays looked awesome, and watching a football game in glorious HD on a 4K tv is impressive, but your were still watching 720p or 1080p on a 4k Tv. The Samsung 55" Curved UHD 4K Tv is a pleasure to watch. The SuperBowl looked fantastic on it. But at the end of the day it was still a 1080p image up-scaled to 4K by the TV and not actual 4K content. Still there are tons of 4K Tvs on the market to suit any budget and space constraints, but sources are not quite as abundant yet.

4K video sources

As mentioned above true 4K sources where hard to come by before, but that is beginning to change. Several streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and even Youtube are starting to offer 4K video sources to enjoy in your 4K TV.

However, this is not without downsides. Not only do you need the Premium version of those services in the case of Netflix and Amazon Prime, but you will absolutely need a robust internet connection to view this correctly.

How Robust of an internet connection do you need? Well, a 1080p HD movie requires a good steady 8 to 10MPB connection. That's not hard to come by, but for 4K you need close to 4 times that to get a generally decent stream and maintain the 4K-ness of the video. That means your download bandwidth needs to be over 30MPBs and closer to 40MBPs if at all possible.

Even in the U.S.A this is not easy to come by in many places. The connection needs to be very stable, as it needs to sustain the over 30MBPs speeds to get the full 4K picture quality. If your connection teeters down, Netflix will auto adjust down to 1080p instead if settings allow it, or will simply buffer continuously since it cannot keep up with playback. Either would make the extra cost you are paying for the 4K service pointless.

4K Hardware

So you have a robust internet connection, what options are there for 4K streaming now? As mentioned Netflix streams in 4K in its Premium package as does Amazon, but you need devices for this.

Unfortunately the Apple TV is out of the question, as even the new 4th Gen Tv cannot do 4K. However, there are other options, the Roku 4 for instance now offers full 4K support for services like Netflix. Amazon also has their new Amazon Fire Tv 4, with 4K support for their Amazon Prime 4K service, as well as Netflix

But what if you are like me, and like your movies in physical discs. Well, several companies revealed 4K players at CES this year, while some 4K movies have started to trickle out now in Blu-Ray format in anticipation of these players. Players shown at CES include the Samsung, Phillips, and Panasonic

How they'll perform in reality will have to wait until they are released. We can, however, anticipate, the battle for the best performance and display will be a healthy one.

Here are a few links to up-coming options for these new 4K players:

These players need to offer lots of features, but also competitive loading times. Blu-Ray movies made this painfully obvious in certain players which could take several minutes to load up the movie. My first Blu-Ray player, was a Sony BPD-s360 which took an excruciatingly long time to load a movie from disc. As the tech progressed, the loading times got shorter in newer players. My Samsung BD-F6500 loads movies lightning fast. For 4K movies, with 4 times more data to load for a movie and undoubtedly more special features available and higher resolution menus for the 4K market, loading times will be a key item to take note of.

Conclusions

It is a good time to start thinking of updating to 4K options if you are planning on buying a new TV. They aren't that much more expensive than regular HD screens, but will offer the next step in video quality.

Also, with movies now starting to come out in 4K Blu-Rays a 4K player will be a necessity if you subscribe to the physical media side of movie watching and HD content.

On the other hand, if you are o.k, with your 1080p Tv, and Blu-Ray player, and watch movies off of things like the Apple Tv then a 4K setup may not make much sense.

4K Ultra High Definition Video is here, and its time to start looking at the landscape.

4K Blu-Ray Movies

Living Room Tech: Apple Tv and Audio Receivers

2015-11-26T10:21:00.001-08:00

With the release of the 4th generation Apple Tv, many Hi-Def Audiophiles were left in the wind when they realized Apple had removed the Optical SPDIF audio output from the Apple Tv.

Many people with high end Audio systems that relied on the Optical output to connect the Apple Tv to their equipment were left wondering why Apple would leave them in the cold like this.

The main reasons, were cost and actual numbers. Basically, it would have added extra cost to a device which was already expensive enough, and Apple simply did not feel they could recoup the cost form the limited number of people that actually use the SPDIF out in previous models.

But fear not, all is not lost. There are a few ways you can still use that expensive high end audio equipment, and we will explore them here.

#1. Get a new Home theater or audio receiver that supports HDMI

This is basically: the replace your equipment or add an extra piece scenario

You'll need to go out and find a new receiver that can take HDMI input as its source. Things like the Yamaha RX-V479.

Alternatively, you may want to find something that offers an optical SPDIF audio output such as the Octava 4x1 HDMI Switch with Optical Output and chain it from the Apple TV to your current optical audio receiver. These however can be very expensive. And add complexity to home theater setup.

#2 The HDMI decoupler / splitter option.

These are little interface boxes you can place between the Apple Tv 4th gen and your high end audio receiver, and will split or decouple the audio stream for the HDMI video stream, enabling you to pipe it to your receiver's optical audio input. One such option is the Panlong HDMI Audio Extractor

#3. Use your TV's optical out.

Most HD TVs today include an optical SPDIF audio output option. You can plug your Apple Tv directly into an HDMI port on the Tv, and your high end audio receiver into the optical audio output of your TV. This is the easiest, and cheapest option. Since all you really need is the SPDIF cable from the Tv to the receiver.

So if you still have a high end optical audio receiver you want to keep using, or you are looking for options to use with the new 4th Generation Apple Tv, there are options out there for almost any setup.

Amazon Links for the above products:

iOS Gaming: The Room

2015-11-25T11:28:00.001-08:00

Not to be confused with Tommy Wiseau's opus, which incidentally, has been pegged as the worst movie ever, The Room for iOS devices is an award winning point and tap, adventure, puzzle solving game developed by FireProof Games.

In the vein of such classics as Zork, and Myst, The Room is a puzzle solving game. And while it takes place in a room, this room plays pretty much no part in the game.

You are tasked with the opening of a puzzle box or safe as its called by the mysterious person who apparently summoned you here.

You can interact with the box in many different ways. Being an iOS game, swiping, sliding, pinching etc.. are the primary ways to unlock the secrets of the box.

Solving the puzzles will involve moving levers, placing items, opening latches, sliding panels etc... The interactions and movement around and with the box are very organic and intuitive. It almost feels like you are handling a real box

Successfully solving the mind bending puzzles of the box will gain you access to secondary box inside the first one again with several puzzles to be solved, and upon completion again a new box to solve

While this may sound tedious and monotonous at first, the developers have managed to keep the puzzle solving interesting and fresh through each chapter of the game. Each box being completely different to the previous one, yet familiar in its operation.

It took me about four 20 to 30 minute sittings to complete it. You really don't want to put it down as it keeps pushing you to solve each puzzle to find out what this is supposed to be.

The ambient sounds and background music are eerie and a little unnerving at times, but fits perfectly with the overall tone of the game

I Have chosen not put up screenshots of the game beyond the title screen, and the first box, so as not to ruin the surprise. Its a great game, really a lot of fun, and challenges your mind in amzingly great and unexpected ways

All in all I'll give it a 5 out 5 tablets. Not long but worth the current 99¢ price tag on it.

The developers have already made 2 sequels. I will be checking them out eventually.

The Room on the iTunes App Store:

The Dark Knight Trilogy Ultimate Collector's Edition

2015-11-23T13:11:00.001-08:00

Let's Take a look at the Dark Knight Trilogy, Ultimate Collector's Edition.

Packaged in a white box, featuring the smash through Bat logo. The Numbered Limited edition sticker is on the bottom right corner.
Mine is number 30,042 out of 141,500. So really, not all that limited.

The first thing you find inside is the Digi-Book, with all 6 discs.
As a note, the Movies come directly from their stand alone releases, so Batman Begins is a single disc, while the Dark Knight and Dark Knight rises are the 2 Disc releases.
The 6th Disc is a Special Features Disc, exclusive to this set, from what I can find.
Photography in the Book is quite nice, and is made to match with the artwork on the Blu Ray discs.

Like with the Bond 50 collection, the slots are hard and plastic-ey. Why can't they make them soft, to avoid potential scratches?
Next up, is an Exclusive, glossy Photo book. It contains stills from the movies, production shots, and memorable quotes. Pretty nice.

Following is a letter from Christopher Nolan, talking a bit about these movies. It is signed at the bottom by Christopher himself, it looks a lot like a stamp though.

Next, you find a black envelope containing a set of 5 prints featuring all 5 villains from the movie. R'as Al Ghul, Scarecrow, Two-Face, Bane, and The Joker. Each has a quote related to them.

Finally, you get the three vehicles from the movies in diecast and plastic, made by HotWheels. They are pretty well detailed, though they are not to scale with each other. The Bat-Pod features a movable seat for some reason, and the Bat comes with a tiny stand that pegs into a socket on the bottom.

All in all, the set is pretty good. Its got lots of interesting stuff, and is a good way to get all 3 movies. There are of course other sets with less stuff. But if you are a fan of the Nolan trilogy, this set is for you.

Get it and other Dark Knight Trilogy sets at Amazon:

Man of Steel Limted Edition Giftsets Unboxing and Review

2015-11-18T11:57:00.001-08:00

This time we'll be taking a look at two Limited Edition Blu Ray Giftsets for Man of Steel.

First up, is the Limited Edition Collectible Figurine Gift Set.

It features 2 well detailed 6 inch statues of Zod and the Man Of Steel himself. They are well painted, and each is attached to a display stand in the form of each of their shields.

The movie is presented in the standard 3 disc Blu-ray set. 1 Blu Ray movie disc, 1 DVD movie disc, and 1 Blu-Ray Special Features disc.

Overall the gift set is nice, but the figures don't add much really, unless you are into small statues.

Next up, is the Numbered Limited Edition 3D Blue Ray Gift Set.

My particular gift set is #33059 out of 50000.

The set comes in a metal box shaped like Superman's shield. Inside you find a cardboard case that opens up to reveal the 4 discs. 3D Blue Ray, Regular Blu Ray, DVD and Special Features Blu Ray.

Underneath the discs is a plexi-glass stand you need to put together. It comes in 2 pieces. The Base shaped like Superman's shield, and the support arm. The support arm pegs into a rectangular slot on the base, though on mine its a little tight and has caused a stress mark on the base. The support arm has three magnets that hold onto the metal shield case and let it sit upright.

Both versions include an Ultra Violet Digital copy code

The resulting display is very nice and showcases the metal box very well. It does take up a bit of room on the shelf, but it still a very cool display piece.

All in all, the Metal Case stands out much more than the figurines, and as such this is the one I would recommend hunting down.

Get yours at Amazon.com:

Collectible Figurine Set:

Limited Numbered Edition Metal Case:

Back to the Future The Complete Adventures Video Review

2015-11-18T10:26:00.000-08:00

Let's take a look at the Back to the Future The Complete Adventures Flux Capacitor unboxing and review.

Get yours here:

Celebrating Five Decades of Bond 007 Unboxing and Review

2015-11-18T10:09:00.000-08:00

This time we'll be taking a look at the "Celebrating Five Decades of Bond" collector's Gift Set.

The Set, is a Wide style gift set featuring all 6 Bonds on the cover in a gold trim.

2 wide photo books slide out.

The first one features the "BOND 50" name in back and white, while the second has the same in gold.

The first book contains blu ray discs for the movies from 1962 to 1981:

Dr. No
From Russia with love
Goldfinger
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice
On her Majesty's Secret Service
Diamonds Are Forever
Live and Let Die
The Man with the Golden Gun
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only

The second book contains blu ray discs for the movies from 1983 to 2012:

Octopussy
A View to Kill
The Living Daylights
Licence to Kill
Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is not Enough
Die Another Day
Casino Royale
Quantum of Solace
Space for Skyfall
Bonus Disc

The second book also contains a space for Skyfall, which at the time had not yet been released into home video formats, as well as a bonus disc.

All in all a very nice set.

Watch the video review for a closer look.

Get your own at Amazon.com here:

Second release with Skyfall

Spider-Man Limited Edition Collector's Edition DVD Gift Set

2015-11-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

Taking a look at the Spider-Man Limited Edition Collector's Edition DVD Gift Set, and everything that comes with it. This is my first foray into video reviews / unboxing so be gentle.

If you want it, you can find it at Amazon very cheap now:

Big Miracle

2012-09-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

I wasn't really going to review this movie for the blog, but then I had to. It's strange...
I came in today to work, and being the resident movie buff at the office was immediately asked what I watched in the weekend and if it was any good. I was about to tell them, when suddenly I drew (no pun intended) a blank. I could not for the life of me remember what I watched.

The movie was so bland, I forgot it almost as soon as it ended. But why, why was it so bland? So unmemorable? So utterly average that it left no impression on me whatsoever. Well lets try to find out as we dig into Big Miracle

The movie features many good actors, an interesting story based on real events, and a coming together of the most unlikely allies to get through, but yet the movie just never gets past a low murmur in terms of pacing and storytelling

The story is based around the endeavor to save 3 stranded whales in Northern Alaska. you would think this would make for a compelling heart wrenching story, and that the main focus would be the whales, but no. They are relegated to circumstantial participants, and the movie focuses on everything but them.

We start off as an on site reporter played by John Krasinski has broadcast his final story to his CBS network news show in Alaska, and is getting ready to leave the tiny town in search of more stories to cover throughout Alaska. Suddenly he finds 3 whales trapped under the ice, with only a small hole that lets them come up for air. The next available surfacing area is to far away for them.

So he transmits his story, and lo and behold his crazy environmentalist ex-girlfriend played by Drew Barrymore sees it, and angrily calls him up demanding to know why he did not call her up there. Once there she manages to get the owner of a big Oil company, played by Ted Danson, that's getting ready to dig for oil there to help her out.

Peter Jennings (actual footage of him) turns the situation into a Nationwide event when he airs the story, prompting tons of reporters to flood the tiny town. Eventually the media coverage forces president Raegan to call up then USSR president Gorbachev too loan them an ice breaker to cut through the massive ice wall blocking the whales' path.

Meanwhile with the help of the local Iniut tribe they cut breathing holes for the whales out to the massive Ice wall, and get them to swim there while the ice breaker arrives to smash the wall.

That's the basic premise. There are more small arcs, and plots that get brought up, and then immediately resolved or forgotten, but nothing of consequence ever happens. The story is very linear, there is no feeling of urgency or the possibility of failure. The movie simply tells the facts straight, but makes no effort to make them interesting or engaging. The characters don't evolve, most of them are quite unlikable and at the same time forgettable. Its just bland.

At the end the movie is o.k. but there's just nothing there to make it memorable. The cast had little to work with, and even though Drew Barrymore gets to be slightly annoying, as the environmentalist, she quickly drops that aspect, and is just bland. All in all whatever minor character traits and build up there was, seems to be ignored for the final act. At the end the real reason its forgettable, is because nothing ever happens that invests you in the movie, and the characters are so 2 dimensional there's nothing there to relate 2.

2.5 out 5 but note the blandness of it.

The Grey

2012-09-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

The movie seems to promise quite a bit, but never really delivers.

It seems the movie makers weren't quite sure what type of movie they wanted to make, and ended up making something that is neither here nor there. Liam Neeson stars as a sniper hired to kill wolves and other dangerous animals in an oil field in Alaska. His character starts off ready to off himself, because he no longer feels he has anything to add to the world. This is a good starting point to develop his character, but he seems to do a 180 almost instantly without any explanation when the plane they are on crashes in the wilderness. There's really no development here that suggests he would immediately want to do this. He just does it.

Then the movie grows grim and grey as the title suggest killing off characters one by one without giving us the time to actually get to know them, and expects us to be sorry they died.

Nothing really happens with the story they started to tell, it just sort off vanishes off into thin air, all the while keeping Neeson's character in the same exact moral spot he was at the beginning. Even the character tries to fight it, but the story just doesn't let him escape his pre-planned doom. Which by the second act is painfully clear where this is headed.

At the end everybody dies. And Neeson realizes it has all been in vain. Yes 2 hours of the viewers life wasted, because there was no point to this movie.

Of course this is all an issue with the story line, but there's more in this movie to cringe about. The survival of these workers is hampered not only by the atrocious weather, which doesn't seem to affect them more than just making it difficult to move, the frostbite, the pneumonia, etc... that can be caused by this weather are never addressed, except for a throwaway scene with one of the survivors coughing up blood; there also a pack of CGI wolves which is systematically hunting them. The wolves which are massive, almost bear sized, rather than large dog sized seem to think that attacking these humans is a good idea. The movie makes it a point that they aren't eating them, so why do the wolves seem to be intent on killing them, if they haven't even so much as approached them. It just seems to be a device to artificially add suspense to the movie.

Then there are the plot holes. The survivors gather what they can from the wreckage, and try to make it to some trees in the distance to escape the wolves. Eventually reaching a chasm they need to cross. They do that by making one of them leap off the edge of the mountain and land on a nearby pine tree and tie a rope around it so the others may cross. Once at the bottom, they find the wolves there too. So where did they come from, are these now rappelling wolves? Flying wolves than can just get down a 100 foot chasm that seemed to pose a near impossible vertical climb to the men, but the wolves can happily find a way down faster?

At the end only Neeson is left alive, cursing at god, for not doing anything to save him, and he realizes he just walked in to the wolves den, and is about to get mauled alive. Then the movie ends.

If this was supposed to be a movie about hopelessness, an pointless antics, it succeeds, but what throws it off is the fact they were establishing something totally different at the beginning. Personally this movie could have been about survival, and about a man's journey from despair to hope, but ultimately its just as gray as its title.

Unless you like to spend 2 hours with characters that just die in awkward circumstances, and are ravaged by horrible CGi wolves this movie is very skippable.

2.5 out 5

Top 12 Most Anticipated Movies for 2013

2012-08-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

The time of year is here once again, its August, and you know what that means... err o.k so its only the second time I do it, but its going to be a tradition now. This is my list of the top 12 most anticipated movies for next year. Why do I do it in August when most people do it in December? Well because I dare to be different.
As I said last time:

Most of these are still under development, but since IMDB has them slated for 2013, I can consider them. Granted some may not see release then but one can hope.

So strap on, these are my top 12 most anticipated movies for 2013:

#12

Hitchcock

For some reason, this movie attracts me. I'm really not a huge fan of the lord of mystery and suspense, but I have enjoyed his movies, and for some reason found myself watching his TV series: Alfred Hitchcock Presents when they chose to rerun it as a kid. So I'm kind of curious about this one. Starring Anthony Hopkins as the title character it looks to be an interesting ride.

#11

The Wolverine

I know, I know, Origins was a mess of a movie, but what can I say; I guess this is just morbid curiosity of how they'll further screw it up. And what characters they trample over this time. I hope I'm wrong and it turns out to be a good movie, but I'm not harboring much hope.

#10

The Tomb

The Return of Arnie to the big screen. Being such a big fan of his movies, I'm eagerly awaiting this one. Hopefully we'll get to see the implausible Arnie at his best. This should be an action fest like Eraser or Total Recall.

#9

The Hunger Games: Catching fire

Not much to be said about this one, other than I hope it lives up to the first one.

#8

Man of Steel

Superman Returns was everything we did not want or expected in a Superman film, so I don't think this one can do any worse. Hopefully it will reignite the Superman torch and gives us a few more entries into the blue boy scout's cinematic saga.

#7

Untitled Star Trek Sequel

J.J. Abrams tore through the Star Trek universe with little regard for the established continuities and created his own. With the Help of Roberto Orci and his partner in crime: Alex Kurtzman, they created a wonderfully convoluted reason to have a new fresh universe they could work with. Don't know exactly why they felt they need to do that. Still Kurtzman and Orci have delivered some of my favorite TV shows, so it baffles me when they can produce crap like the Transformers movies. Though part of that credit needs to go to Michael Bay, but still... I can't help but wonder what they'll do to Star Trek this time.

#6

G.I. Joe: Retaliation

What can I say, I really want to see the continuation of this story. The anticipation was only made worse when they pushed back the release date to run it through the 3D conversion process. Personally I think its unnecessary, but 3D is in so much vogue right now, everybody wants to be in 3D.

#5

Robocop

Yes this remake has me on the edge of my seat. Robocop 1 & 2 were the personification of what 80's R rated action films were all about. Blood, gore, violence and awesome heroes that wasted bad guys left and right in really gruesome ways. This Robocop is supposedly going to keep the R rating which just makes me giddy with anticipation for it.

#4

Chronicles of Riddick: Dead Man Stalking

Ahh Riddick... from little Sci-fi horror movie, to Sci-fi icon... He's the man with the silver eyes. Hope this sequel is a good one. Looking forward to it.

Top 3

#3

Iron Man 3

This is an obvious one. I'm a big fan of Marvel movies, loved the first 2 Iron -Man movies and thoroughly enjoyed Avengers, so of course I'm really anticipating this one.

#2

Pacific Rim

This one caught me totally by surprise. Being the big fan of Guillermo del Toro that I am, when I found out he was making this as a homage to giant robot anime, and giant monster movies from Japan, I was thrilled. This promises to be an awesome film, if his previous work on Hellboy and Blade are any indication. It could also open the door for more Giant robot movies. Who wouldn't love to see Mazinger Z or Voltron live action movies???

And the number one most Anticipated film for 2013 is:

Mortal Kombat

O.K. Lets get it out of the way first: Mortal Kombat 1 was a decent movie. Mortal Kombat Annihilation was crap. Pure and simple Crap. This new iteration is inspired by a short film starring Michael Jai White as Jax Briggs, and Kerry Ryan as Sonya Blade. The short film eventually led to a web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, and has now made it possible for New Line Cinema to green light a new theatrical version. The premise of the short film is centered on the real world, were the MK characters are all alternate versions of the themselves. The short film was received positively, though it caused a bit of confusion. This theatrical version has some promise if you look at the short film. Hopefully it will turn out to be a good movie, with a functional plot. I'm really looking forward to this movie, as it could be the way to bring MK lore to the fore front, and have some good movies made.

WTF Mention:

Triplets

While researching the movies coming out next year I found this little gem of WTFness. Back in 1988, comedy director, and Ghostubusters producer Ivan Reitman teamed up Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito for what would be the first of several comedy movies for Arnold. That movie was Twins. Arnold and Devito play twins separated at birth and wackiness ensues. now who really sat at a movie studio meeting an said: "You know what we need? A sequel to Twins!" That movie was awesome, we need a sequel to expand upon the story of Julius and Vincent. Not only that, we need Eddy Murphy to play the titular triplet. Yes, their third brother is going to be Eddy Murphy. Just let that sink in.

WTF!!!

The Dark Knight Rises

2012-07-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

What can I say about this movie... Avoiding Spoilers this is my review of The Dark Knight Rises

Direction, camera movement, story, dialog everything is excellent. The characters work, the story work, the plot admittedly has some minor issues here and there, but overall is quite solid.
There's quite a few nods to the comic books from which this story is taken. And they are executed quite well in my opinion. For an almost 3 hour long movie, it never seems slow, or boring, there's always something happening, and surprisingly most of the movie does not involve Batman. For the parts he's in its awesome, yet it doesn't feel as if he really needed to be there more. There are good reasons for him not being there. There's quite a lot of time invested in Wayne, and it shows just how multi-layered the character can be.
There is a very nice surprise, for all those fans of the comic book, which I'm not going to spoil, but suffice it so say, you'll be whacked in the face with it at the end, and yet feel like it was the right thing to have done. I do have a few nitpicks like Bane's overall position in the movie, but it can be overlooked for the marvelous web of story and character development Christopher Nolan manages to create in this movie.
All I can say is if you liked the previous movies you'll love this one, and if you remotely find Batman interesting this movie will blow you away. Its truly a great example of what a comic book based movie can be. Is good, its well edited, awesomely directed, and fantastically set up. This is one movie that's going to become a favorite of many. One of those you can't forget. And a movie you'll want to go back and see again.
4.8 of 5 Bat Symbols

The Punisher Returns?

2012-07-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

The Marvel Comics character The Punisher, has seen 3 iterations on the big screen. The Punisher (1989) starring Dolf "Ivan Drago" Lundgren, The Punisher (2004) starring Thomas Jane, and Punisher: WarZone (2008) starring Ray Stevenson. The Thomas Jane version is arguably the best of the bunch, and even got an extended Cut released on DVD. Jane has never been shy about his love and respect for the character, and his wish to return to the role.

To prove it, and as a homage to the character and a gift to the fans of Frank Castle he debuted a short film entitled Dirt Lanudry where he again plays Frank Castle and takes out several low life drug dealers in what can only be described as an awesomely violent and gory 10 minutes worthy of the Punisher name. Hopefully this will help Marvel execs green light another Punisher Film with Jane in the starring role. Considering the movie rights to the character have reverted to Marvel it may just be the perfect time for this short to be released. The film features another comic book fan Ron Pearlman as the store keeper.

With the success of other marvel properties, its a good time to give Frank another shot at the limelight. I'm sure with a decent script, the Punisher can be the dark, violent and grimy movie fans of the character have been wanting since Thomas Jane put on the skull shirt.

UPDATE

Seems it worked in some form, as IMDB now was a The Punisher movie in production set for 2014. The Punisher (2014)

The Amazing Spider-Man

2012-07-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

As you can probably guess by many of my older posts I'm a big Spider-Man fan. I read the comics as a kid, I had the toys, I played the games, and I watched the cartoons. Anything Spider-Man was awesome to me. Yes I even saw the campy 70's live action version. As you can no doubt imagine, I was really disappointed with Spider-Man 3 and its treatment of certain characters. So when this movie was announced, and Andrew Garfield was cast I was less than impressed. However I chose to not watch any trailers, or read anything about it. I was decided to go into this movie unadulterated. I wasn't expecting much, but I must say I was pleasantly surprised. As always if you haven't seen it and wish to avoid spoilers jump down to the rating and final thoughts.

The Plot

The Movie intertwines several different Spider-Man stories into one seamless arch. You have the inevitable origin story, the romantic interest story which in this case is Spider-Man's original love interest in the Comics Gwen Stacy, and you have the evil antagonist's story. Each of them is taken from a different moment in Spider-Man lore, and worked together to create a fun, action packed movie that's actually of decent length at Two hours and change.

Uncle Ben

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

The first story we are introduced to is the mysterious past of Peter Parker's parents. Taken from a late 90's story arch it doesn't really delve much into it, before moving on to the present. We then move on to the prerequisite origin story for Spider-Man which in this case is changed around enough to be different, from the Toby Macguire version, but still retains certain elements of the original comic book story so its recognizable. However I did find the message got lost without any actual spoken confirmation from Peter until the very end of the movie. Also, I may have missed it, but the required quote from Uncle Ben is never spoken for some reason. I was expecting it to be heard in the voice mail Peter kept replaying. The Villain story in this case focuses on Dr. Curtis "Curt" Connors, a.k.a The Lizard. While not Spider-Man's earliest foe, as that honor goes to Chameleon, The Lizard is one of his earliest ones. Appearing for the first time in issue #6. Connors is a scientist researching reptilian DNA in an effort to harness their ability to regrow severed limbs. He transforms himself into a giant humanoid Lizard when he uses a serum he developed on himself. The story is fairly faithful to the comic book, and works well. Finally we have the Love interest, nothing major here, though we do get to see Peter's original love interest from the Comic Book in a better light than what was done to her in Spider-Man 3. Spider-Man meets his love interest in school, and she also happens to intern as a lab assistant for Dr. Connors. Gwen is likable, her father Captain Stacy is a momentary threat to Peter, but becomes an ally rather quickly. All in all the character architecture for these 2 works as it should in the movie. They are there, play important parts, but don't get in the way of the rest of the movie. The story works well in its setting, and the characters are well developed. Having a single villain instead of 3 in a movie helps give it the proper time. It seems the story was edited down a bit though, as certain places it feels a little rushed, or simply cut off. All in all the plot is quite good and manages to keep you reeled in for the duration of the movie.

CAST

For pete's sake people, the word "cast" has no past tense. I hear so many movie reviewers say "casted" in their videos its ridiculous. There is no such thing as "casted". Its used the same for past and future. With the only slight variation being the present in the form of "casting".

Three movies ago Sam Raimi cast Tobey Macguire as Spider-Man

Some director will cast some actor in some movie in the future.

Spielberg is casting Jude Law in his current film

Casting for the movie really surprised me in that it worked so well. Garfield as Parker/Spider-Man is spot on, and he really works to give Spider-Man his trademark witty banter during fights, and Parker's vulnerability outside of costume. Also, with him being British, I have to praise his american accent as being pretty good, and not distracting at all. Gwen Stacy also worked for me fairly well. She is portrayed as a smart independent 17 year old (may be a little too much), but manages to not be the damsel in distress. She actually fends off the Lizard on her own, and manages to help Spider-Man stop him. Uncle Ben and Aunt May: At first I was totally thrown off by Martin Sheen and Sally Fields in those roles. But as I continued to watch, they worked more and more. At the end, I realized that Sally field really is now the new younger Aunt May, and it works for this Peter Parker, since he's supposed to be in school still. The biggest surprise however was Dennis Leary. He's awesome. He really is a commanding presence n screen. And even though you may think of him as the harsh loud mouthed comedian, he pulls off the refined and slightly stuck up Captain Stacy perfectly.

Cinematography and CGI

The Movie looks amazing. The city shots are huge, the CGI buildings are really well done, and the overall look of NY is just breath taking. Spider-Man's athleticism is captured also perfectly, and many of his signature poses from the comic book are recreated albeit in CGI in the movie. The movie looks overall really awesome, and captures the essence of Spider-Man from the comic in many ways better than Sam Raimi did. The CGI Spider-Man moves both fluidly, but with weight. It doesn't look like CGI, and it shows girth, and weight in its actions.

Costume

The costume takes some cues from the early 2000's Spider-Man costume. However,I i feel it lacked a certain something. At the end of the day, it looked like Spandex. Something the Raimi version managed to avoid. It looks cool for a costume party, it just wasn't all there for the movie.

Overall

The movie was quote good. Its a lot of fun and doesn't seem all that long for over 2 hours. It makes good use of the characters, and explores them well. It also leaves potential story arches loose for future movies to explore. The comparison with the Dark Knight may be a little too much, but the ambiance, and the overall feel of it is of a much darker tone. It does not however take itself too seriously, and it allows itself to have some really funny moments. Of course the always necessary Stan Lee cameo is present, and got a chuckle out of the audience. All in all a really fun movie to watch, up there with the likes of Avengers, and Iron-Man. I hope we get a directors cut, or extended version on Blue Ray as it seems there is more to tell that got left in the cutting room floor. 4 out of 5 reels

The Avengers

2012-05-01T15:39:00.000-07:00

Finally... after 4 years of waiting for it, and being teased at the end of 5 different movies about it, the summer event Blockbuster has been released.

This is The Avengers:

Backstory

In 2007 after a few less than stellar productions *cough*FF*cough*... Marvel took the reigns of their own cinematic production company and began work on one of, if not the most ambitious cinematic projects ever undertaken.

5 different movies spanning 3 years of production, all leading up to a sixth movie to crown the production. All had to contractually keep the stars in for the 6th one, and they all had to stand on their own as well as deliver connections between them and the final movie.

It all started with the one that is arguably the best of the lot. Iron Man. At first stirring controversy about the casting choice, Downey Jr. soon put all the nay sayers to rest making the character his own, and yet still keeping him close to the comic book counterpart.

Then there would be the Incredible Hulk. In an homage Bill Bixby's Incredible hulk TV show they took that concept and idea and implemented it pretty nicely into the movie. Though the end result was good it left audiences wanting more as it paled in comparison to Iron Man.

Iron Man 2 was the next installment and again proved to be nowhere near as good as #1, but still entertaining and well executed.

Their next installment would try to go all out by hiring Kenneth Branagh as a director but ultimately felt rushed and lost its pacing in an effort to actually set up he premise for the Avengers movie.

Captain America again felt prey to underdeveloped characters and villains not used to their fullest extent. It really had little set up for Avengers other than making Cap available for it and producing our main plot contrived deux ex-machina device for Avengers: The Tresseract. The Cosmic cube for all those Marvel fans out there.

Finally 2012 arrives and we get The Avengers... hyped to its fullest with posters, adverts, promotions etc... does it really live up to all this build up?

Lets take a look:

Plot

Obviously some spoilers here

Thor's Half brother Loki in an attempt to take revenge on Thor for taking the throne of Asgard away from him decides he's going to conquer earth and destroy it. With the help of the Tresseract and a mind controlled Dr. Selvig, played by Stellan Skarsgård, he opens a portal to another dimension to bring an army of aliens know as Chitauri. So the 4 main heroes must join forces with Nick Fury, the Black Widow, and Hawkeye to take down Loki and his minions.

The Good

The story is well laid out if a little contrived, but works in the grand scheme of things. The actors have had time to settle into their roles and now feel more comfortable with them. Specially Robert Downy Jr. He takes the entire movie and really overshadows everybody else. But he's so good at it you don;t care, you just want to see more of his quick banter with Banner and Thor.

The use of iconic shield technology including the massive Hellicarrier is geek-gasm material . Any Marvel fan will squeel like a little girl at every little nod they put in the movie.

The Bad

The contrivances used may put some people off as they create a few plot holes here and there... Such as Thor's convenient return from Asgard after it was established it was near impossible to do so in his own movie.

The new Captain America costume really is a little ridiculous compared to the one used in his own movie. There they tried to make it look functional, here its little more than blue spandex. They seriously couldn't use a suit similar to the Cap movie?

The underuse of Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye is kind of bothersome. He's an important part of the team, and yes I know he was a bad guy in the comics, but was it really necessary to have him be controlled by Loki's do it all staff? Why not keep him in the team, perhaps have some other agent be controlled by Loki. He really doesn't do anything requiring Hawkeyes abilities while under his control so....

At the end though these are minor gripes... the main issue I have with the movie follows:

The Ugly

The completely insane use of the Hulk totally made me do a double take and go "Huh???"
I thoroughly disliked Mark Ruffalo's portrayal of Banner and worst still was the completely incoherent use of the Hulk throughout the movie. They establish him as a raging beast from the get go, and then do a complete 180 at the end when the plot demands it. There was enough time to show us Banner can control the Hulk, there's even precedent in the comics to base off of were they could say Hulk is completely under Banners reigns and he can be useful in a team. But no, they tell us he's raging, destructive, and a danger to others going as far as showing us a specially constructed cage on the Hellicarrier for him and then completely ignore it. And suddenly we have a Banner who can control Hulk just fine, even changing into him on command, and yet he still talks about him as if he is a burden.

Yes I know in the comics they made him coherent enough to talk while he was part of the team.. but they need a better explanation here. For you Marvel fans out there I have three words. The.. Professor... Persona.

Overall

Overall the movie is a lot of fun, and has some really funny moments and some high tension ones as well. It delivers what we've been promised for 4 or 5 years, and although it has its strange choices and moments, its still highly recommended for Marvel fans. The regular viewer will still enjoy it even if many things aren;t really explained.

I saw it in 3D and it was a good show. With enough 3D to make it worth it, but not too much to make you dizzy.

4 out of 5 Captain America shields.

Teasers

As usual stay till the end of the credits for a spectacular teaser. Any Marvel fan should immediately identify the character and what the teaser implies for a potential sequel if there is one.