Gotham Knight Review

The not-too-common but done often enough trend of anime between-the-movie filler content continues with this month's release of the Gotham Knight DVD. Much like it's predecessors, like the Matrix animes and those Van Helsing / Chronicles of Riddick animated DVDs, this is not essential viewing material for the movie, but is it something you're going to want to watch if you're a Batman Begins fan, foaming at the mouth in anticipation for the Dark Knight in just a few short weeks.

This collection of shorts, all done by different artists / crews, bridges the gap between Begins and Dark Knight, showing a bit of the Batman cracking down on those ever-present cowardly superstitious types in his not-so-fair city of Gotham. They do a good job of throwing in some goodies here and there to keep things interesting, because what is Batman without his Rogues gallery? Aside from the usual mobsters and thugs, we're treated with appearances from Scarecrow, Killer Croc and Deadshot. It's cool because these are characters that just wouldn't fit in the world of the new Bat movies. It's sort of a way comic nerds can have their cake and eat it too, since the Begins movies are just too deeply rooted in reality to have a guy like Killer Croc running around in them.

So actually getting down to the critique, this is a pretty enjoyable package they're offering up here. Multiple different takes on the Dark Knight, whether it be from skater kid bystanders, Gotham Cops, or the Bat's own perspective, you really do come out of this with some more background on the man behind the mask. And speaking of representaton of character, they brought back the only man to ever truly capture the voice of the Bat perfectly (in my opinion, but I know I'm not alone here,) Kevin Conroy. Also, the essential man behind the Bat-toon, Bruce Timm is back in the Producing chair. If you're new to the animated aspect of the Batman, I'll just lay it down for you and tell you, it's hard to do wrong with those two on-board. That being said, I feel this could have been better, but it isn't bad. This could be due to unfair judging on my part, but I'll let you decide for yourself.

The format of this collection of shorts is what really holds me back from giving it a solid thumbs up. Since they decided to make it a collection of shorts by different people, they don't really do the story aspect that well. It's just a bunch of one-two punches here and there in different scenarios. The stories don't all add up to something. They bleed into each other a bit here and there, but no story has a feeling of a completed story arc at the end of it. Now, again, this could be an unfair judgement because it isn't meant to be the next movie itself, it's just a glimpse at what happens between the movies. Either way, just because it didn't give me a warm "Story Over" feeling in my tummy when it was all said and done doesn't mean that the journey from beginning to end wasn't a fun one.

This movie had some fun moments, whether it be kids' overactive imagination portraying Batman as a Robot, Spirit, or actual Man-Bat creature, or just watching the Bat take on villains like Croc, Scarecrow and Deadshot while jacking up mobsters and hoods all over the place, helping out Lieutenant Gordon and getting help from Lucius Fox. This movie is worth dropping that hour and a half of your life that you'd otherwise spend sitting on your couch watching an CSI marathon or whatever. The scenes that really make it are when Croc and Bats meet up and have it out and then when the Bat takes on Deadshot. There's gold in them scenes, kids. Anyway, long story short, I give this a B-, It's definetly worth a watch, just don't buy it. Do what my friends and I are gonna do. Get tickets to the midnight screening of the Dark Knight, rent this, and then before you all go to the movie, set aside a few hours to all get together and re-watch Begins, then watch this,then get you jollies in the theater watching what reviews are already calling one of, if not the best movie of the summer. Happy watching kiddies. Until next time!

Iron Man 2 News

So....I have to say I'm shocked that I haven't read this anywhere, but I have some pretty substantial Iron Man 2 news to reveal, and all parties involved in the production of the second movie have been amazingly sneaky about this...

Well let me catch you up to speed in case you don't troll the nerd lairs of the internet that cover subjects like comic movies and whatnot. Pretty soon after they released Iron Man Terrance Howard (who played James Rhodes aka War Machine-to-be) and asked him when they were going to start filming the second film, which Marvel slated to release in 2010 paired with Thor. He responded saying he hoped to start filming withing a few months' time. This was cool to hear because the sooner they start shooting, the sooner we can start to scrounge up all sorts of set reports and images and see how the movie is shaping up. Well a few days after John Favreau came out and said in an interview that he had no idea where Terrance had heard of this shooting schedule and that he wasn't even sure he was going to be able to adhere to the ambitious schedule Marvel had laid out for him. His reason for this was because it took 3 years to make the first movie and he wanted to make sure that it was going to be a good movie, thus needed to be able to take that necessary time. This was understandable but still disheartening to hear. Well my friends, it seems that is all a ruse.

While I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, catching up on how he's doing, he relayed an interesting story to me that occurred while he was shooting a music video for a friend of his in Griffith Park (where the Hollywood sign is). A park employee was showing them where they were going to be shooting, and while walking past a certain trail, the park employee asked them politely to be quite in that particular area. They asked him why and he said "Iron Man 2 has been shooting here for three weeks." Apparently Tony Stark's new humble abode is going to situated right on the other side of the hill where the Hollywood sign resides. So, understandably, my friend gets excited and starts asking questions. The park guide said that the previous weeks had seen a lot of Iron Man suit tests and even mentioned that he had seen what looked like a "Stealth Iron Man Suit" that had a lot of black on it. WAR MACHIIIIINE!!!!!!!! Well apparently this all went down a little over 2 months ago, so that would mean they've been filming Iron Man 2 for about 3 months now. I find this amazing since nobody seems to be saying anything about it. Now I know what you're saying, my friends didn't see anything themselves, this guy could have been just messing with them. Well earlier that day while walking along a road down toward the bottom of the hill they saw none other than Robert Downey Jr. drive by in a limo. Sounds good enough for me, I'm gonna call this one of the sneakiest moves in geek film history. I love Favreau for already being in production on this thing.

They must have known how good this movie was going to do in theaters and started pre-production for this as soon as principle photography was wrapped on the first movie. I have a personal theory. If you recall when the movie was first being discussed, Favreau said that the Mandarin was going to be the villain in the movie. It's possible that they just beefed up the original script they had and cut it in two. Think about where the last movie ended. He beat Iron Monger and then confessed to being Iron Man. BAM. End of movie. It wasn't a bad ending, it just wasn't a huge definitive ending. I think they fleshed it out and doubled down on production ala Lord of the Rings of Pirates 2 and 3. Yay for Favreau. Yay for Iron Man! Yay for nerds everywhere, for the Iron Man Cometh....again!!!!

The Incredible Hulk Movie Review

So here it is. The Jade Giant returns to theaters in a reboot only 5 years after the previous film, and this time they seemed to have cued into what the Hulk is really about. Smashing stuff. What I felt were the major flaws of the last film were that the Hulk only ever really fought 3 mutant dogs (one of them being a freaking poodle...), and Nick Nolte as the Absorbing Man, who wasn't anything other than somewhat of a glorified Parasite. That's awful. I understood that what the Ang Lee was trying to really display the conflicted character of Bruce Banner / the Hulk by focusing on his child abuse and anger issues, but that's only one side of the coin that is the Hulk. The other side, which is the shinier, more brain-dead and broadly appealing side is the fact that he's A GIANT EXTREMELY STRONG BALL OF PUNY noun SMASHING RAGE. Neglecting that is a stupid mistake. Louis Leterrier (who showed up at the beginning of the showing my friend and I attended in person to thank us for going on opening night, :-D) definitely didn't make this mistake. The Hulk smashes in this movie. He does it big and he does it a lot. Every act of this movie has at least one Hulk action sequence that's amazing for just turning your brain off and watching. And at the end, HE FIGHTS A GUY WHO CAN TAKE HIM ON. Congratulations Mr. Leterrier. You've figured out what makes an entertaining Hulk Movie.

Now make no mistake, this is no Iron Man. Not saying it isn't good, but it just isn't great. I was worried about this movie kinda doing what happened when Disney pulled the theme-park ride-movie summer, when they came out with Pirates of the Caribbean and then a few months later they came out with the Haunted Mansion, leading with the superior movie and then using that as a hook to get people into the other, weaker movie. This isn't the case with the Hulk. It does a good job of standing on it's own and being a fun movie. It's a Blockbuster. It's pretty to look at and has some cool action sequences in it. The acting is decent. I'd actually wish I could say better since Edward Norton (Banner) is one of my favorite actors, but this movie just wasn't the kind of movie that showcases acting skills. It's just all about the explosions and the projectile forklifts.

The movie is faithful to the old tv show more than it is the comic, but not in a way that necessarily detracts from the comic-core. The flashback sequence that shows the Hulk's origin is pretty much a shot for shot recreation of the intro to the tv show, which is fun. Also, David Banner is an alias Bruce uses at one point in the movie. The "Lonely Man" theme even pops up. These are just a few call-backs to the show, but the best one is the playful riff on the "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry" line, but I won't spoil it for you.

Man, this review is scattershot, let me try to reel it in: This movie is what a hulk movie should be. It's big, it's bombastic, it's got a lot of the Hulk tearing things up and fighting things that are actually able to go toe-to-toe against him. The acting is good, the special effects are great, it's faithful to it's origins and is worthy of a Hulk fan's approval. They even drop the seeds for The Leader! The only thing I had a huge problem with was the end to the Hulk / Abomination fight at the climax of the movie. It isn't bad, but it could have been a whole lot better. But it is good. And it will tide any comic geek over until the main course of the summer when the Dark Knight opens up. I give this movie a solid B, but I have to say it's on the "Fun to Watch" scale, not the "All around fantastic movie" scale, like you'd find a movie like Fight Club on.