Category: Movies

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Geoff Johns Broke My Heart!

the-flash

So according to GreenArrowTV.com Geoff Johns confirmed what I had been hearing for awhile now, and that is that the DC Movie Universe and the DC TV Universe will not be crossing over with each other at all.  It kind of makes sense because it frees both groups up to do what they want with the characters, but I can’t help but be disappointed.  It would have been so much fun to have the superheroes on TV interacting with the ones on the big screen.

I guess the one upside of all this is that even if the movie is trash it will not affect the good work the TV people are doing.  It is just a shame we will not see the Oliver Queen we have all come to know and love up on the big screen kicking but and taking names.  Though maybe that means we will get some more mainline comic book characters getting their own shows in the future! (Shmee crosses his fingers for a Stargril show!)

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Netflix Gets Into Anime With Knights Of Sidonia!

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I used to watch a lot of anime, but since I have consumed most of the decent material, my viewing has slowed down.  However since Netflix imported Knights of Sidonia only months after it finished airing in Japan, I thought I would give it a try.  It has been fun to watch some anime again, and the 3D animation can be cool sometimes, but this series is fairly generic.

Just by looking at the promo shots most anime fans could tell you the plot without even having to read the description.  A teenage boy, who is kind of a looser, is the last hope to vanquish an alien foe.  Only he has the skills to defeat the Gauna, giant alien monsters who destroyed Earth, and protect the last of humanity.  Yes the way he defeats the monsters is to shoot and poke them with his robot suit of armor, and of course the remnants of humanity are floating around in a giant gun shaped spaceship.  Do all the girls like him even though he is a weirdo?  Why yes they do!

Thankfully this show cuts down on all the fan service, and the wondering about the meaning of life and what it is to be human, to focus on why we are all watching this show in the first place: Watching robots and monsters beat crap out of each other.  Thanks to the 3D animation it looks really cool too.  Sadly what the 3D animation doesn’t do well is allow the human characters to interact with each other.  They are stiff, and they don’t emote well.  I think this is why the show doesn’t focus on that a lot.  They just didn’t have the money to do that part right.

What also struck me while watching this show is how close it is to Battlestar Galactica.  Then I realized that since this show is a generic anime, that all Battlestar Galactica was is a long live action anime.  I mean it had sexy robots, space battles, the last of humanity on a spaceship, and a lot of questions about what it means to be human.  Crazy I know.  It blew my mind!  Anyway back to Knights of Sidonia.

I have enjoyed watching Knights if Sidonia, but it is not really a great show.  Just a watchable one.  It is generic, and due to the poor 3D animation the character interaction lacks a little punch, but watching giant robots versus giant monsters is always fun.  If you are not an anime fan this show will not win you over, but if you are, it is a fun diversion.  I hope Netflix keeps directly importing its own anime because that is one way to insure that I keep renewing my subscription.

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Shmee Watched Fast & Furious 6!

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I was going to review Fast & Furious 6, but you know what?  I have decided against it.  It is the sixth movie in a series, so either you know that you will like it, or you know to stay away.  It contains pretty people driving cool cars really fast while blowing stuff up real good.  If that appeals to you then you have probably already watched this movie, if not then you should.  If that sounds kind of lame to you, you shouldn’t.

It is a fun movie, but at this point the series has stopped finding ways to wow me.  I know what I am getting, and the film delivers.  It is like getting a cheeseburger at McDonald’s.  It is fine for what it is, but it is hard to be super excited about movies seven and eight plus The Rock spinoff since they will be pretty much the same thing. Still, sometimes I get cravings for a McDonald’s cheeseburger, and I will be back.

This series has a legion of fans, and the movies do really well, so I am sure you will be able to find them at your local Mega-plex for years to come.

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Shmee Tries To Walk Hard!

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Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is a spoof on the biopic genre, but mostly the film Walk The Line the Johnny Cash biopic.  Since all biographical movies follow the same basic flow it is an easy genre to make fun of, and for the most part the Judd Apatow written and Jake Kasdan directed film lands it jokes, but the film can be slow at times.

The story follows the titular Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) from his troubled childhood through his hard living but successful career.  Along the way he is always trying to write his masterpiece.  This movie mostly makes fun of the Johnny Cash film, but the movie also makes fun of all sorts of rock legends including Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Elvis, and The Beatles to name a few.

While the movie copies and lampoons the basic biopic style, the real stars of this movie are all the great songs they wrote.  My favorite is a Bob Dylan style song about dwarf solidarity.  It is perfectly cringe worthy.  However when they are not singing the movie can slow down, since not all of the standard spoken jokes and site gags land as well as the musical ones.

John C. Reilly really throws himself in to this role, playing a believable over the top musician.  Since there have been so many of these musical biographies made he must of had a lot of material to use to get ready for this film.  Cox’s two wives played by Kristen Wiig and Jenna Fischer are both very funny, and this movie manages to cram just about every notable comedian in to this film plus few real rock stars.

It is a shame this movie didn’t tighten up the script a bit because with its level of talent and the great songs they wrote this movie could have been a classic, but instead it is just a funny if uneven film.  To be sure their are much worse spoof movies out there (all the Scary Movies), but it is no Spaceballs that is for sure.

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Transformers 4 Proves That Pandering To Geeks Is Pointless!

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If you ask most people that consider themselves to be somewhat of a nerd, they will tell you how awful the Transformers movies are, but despite that they continue to gross about a $1 billion worldwide each.  With Transformers: Age of Extinction earning over $300 million in its first weekend it should get close to that number as well.  That is not counting DVD and Toy sales.  These movies are massive business.

That being said, every time a movie studio is developing a new movie based on a comic book or some other geeky property, geeks will line up to tell everyone that will listen that they will not support it if it is not true to the source material, or that if it is they will see it like fifty times.  They will point to the success of Disney’s Marvel movies as proof of their importance, but they are sadly mistaken. If having geek approval insures success then Dredd would have been a blockbuster.  It sadly was not, and it struggled to even break even.

Disney’s Marvel movies do well due to great marketing, and a producer (Kevin Feige) who makes sure that they keep up a certain level of quality.  The Marvel movies are built with laser focus on how to be profitable and successful.  If that meant ticking off the fans, you had better believe they would do that, but luckily that is not the case, and we all get to be happy.

Transformers is also laser focused, but what it is focused on has nothing to do with the Transformers we came to know and love throughout our childhood.  It knows its target audience so well that it can get the worst reviews in the world, and have Transformers fans scream about how pathetic they are, but they will still earn money.  Lots of it.  Worse, those fans that complain about how bad the movie is will go and see it anyway to confirm that the movie was not up to their standards.

All people like to think that they are important, and that they have influence over the things that they love, but unfortunately in this case we geeks don’t account for that much cash.  When it comes to blockbusters, cash is king.