May 20, 2014

Godzilla 2014: Less Boring Humans, More Monster Mayhem Please!

I saw Godzilla last night and my expectations were set quite low, because it’s a Hollywood Blockbuster reboot of yet another classic movie franchise and we all know how well this idea was executed back in 1998! So here we are, Hollywood is ready to take another stab on cashing in our nostalgia and this time I’m ready to bite the hook. So how well did the big lizard fare with Universal Dork?

I had a decent enough time with this one when it first kicked in, but around mid point my mind started wandering, thinking about other stuff like D&D the night before and that I was going to run out of licorice candy at any moment. Yeah the human plot line of this movie was pretty flat and boring. Which in a sense keeps in tradition with most classic Godzilla flicks. You have the boring human plot that somehow drives the movie and then you get a bunch of ass kicking monster battles. This time though I think Hollywood could have really improved on the boring human plot, a soldier trying to get back home to his perfect family while giant monsters awaken and threaten the planet. Yeah, it’s a touching hallmark-esque story that’s boring as fuck. So you really gotta appreciate it when some giant CGI monsters finally get on screen and break up this shitty monotony.

The only real problem was there wasn’t enough monster mayhem. In fact until maybe the last maybe 5-10 minutes, they tease you constantly and show you a beginning of a monster fight, like Godzilla getting ready to throw a punch and then switch to some shitty boring human drama. Seriously this gets old real quick and its actually quite irritating. The movie had some fairly decent special effects especially if you’re into giant CGI creatures smashing CG buildings into oblivion.

This is clearly much different than classic man in suit Godzilla and I’m not sure honestly that it’s that big of an improvement on the old movies effects wise. Don’t get me wrong the old Godzilla flicks have some crappy ass special effects, they however improved immensely over the years. It to me always felt a bit like monster WWF wrestling when I was a kid and I loved it. This however was real slick and much of the fun that the old movies had is almost entirely lost here in 2014. By this time I’m already feeling my attention span waning for glittery, bloated, CG infested, often heartless Hollywood Blockbusters and it’s really not even summer yet! Ughh!

I’d say if you really want the best CG monster battle movie skip Godzilla and just watch Pacific Rim. It’s a heck of a better time and about ten times more interesting. It’s looking like we’ll most definitely be getting a sequel here so perhaps next movie we’ll get some better monster battles? Maybe they can insert some human characters that aren’t quite so stale? Until then this has inspired me to check out some of newer Godzilla films I may have missed through the years. And for the record Gareth Edwards first flick “Monsters” was a far more superior movie…..let’s hope Godzilla 2014 doesn’t get the treatment that Zilla did in Final Wars!!

May 17, 2014

Will M. Night Shyamalan Right His Wrongs With His Top Secret Flick “Sundowning”?

I really love the the first few M. Night Shyamalan movies, heck I even liked The Village and yes Lady in the Water!! Get over it people, Lady in the Water was corny but a ton of fun! I think the order in which his movies were made go from best to worst, which is kinda interesting. Once one of the most well respected directors in Hollywood, Night now rarely even gets his name mentioned in ads for his most recent movies. The Happening, The Last Airbender and After Earth were three big time stinkers that most people just want to forget they wasted their time watching. I’ll even admit I’ve serious doubts that the guy can craft another hit or something as intriguing as his first couple films! Yet recently it has been reported that Night wrapped up a top secret micro budget film called “Sundowning”. It has a super small cast and sounds like a possible return to form for him. All we really know about it is that it involves a single mother with two kids visiting their grandparents out in the country during winter when things go terribly wrong. Sounds interesting to me and I’ve always thought Night was a master of mood & atmosphere.

I’ve always hoped he’d give us a full on horror movie, you know without all the preachy-ness he he somehow always seems to insert into the endings be it relgious or philosophical. Now a micro budget is where a lot of these big time directors should be spending their time. What I wouldn’t give to have someone like Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi return to a small budget flick and be forced to make something truly incredible again So this could be Night’s chance to amaze people once again, far away from the flashy effects and overblown plots.

I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I think there’s a good chance he could blow some minds with this one. If it’s rating is revealed to be an R, there’s a good chance otherwise we could be getting his tame family friendly recent styles. However the term “Sundowning” reveals some truly spooky possibilities, this is it’s definition: “a psychological phenomenon associated with increased confusion and restlessness in patients with some form of dementia. Most commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease, but also found in those with mixed dementia, the term “sundowning” was coined due to the timing of the patient’s confusion.” This sounds to me like it could be a truly creepy endeavor. How about you? Are you willing to give Shyamalan one more try?

May 10, 2014

Fan-Made AKIRA Trailer Should Not Be Missed!!

Akira was an amazing comic book and one of the best animated feature films of all time hands down. If you have never seen the movie or read the book you’re missing out big time and maybe have been living in a cave for your entire life! So we’ve been hearing for years that a live action Akira movie is on the plate for Hollywood and we all know there’s a fifty fifty chance that the movie could be totally butchered in this day and age, paying little attention to fans or the source material.

What we have got today is a completed fan made trailer made by The Akira Project. Here’s a little more info on how this came to be and what this really is:

“The Akira Project is a crowd-sourced, non-profit project meant to create a live action fan trailer of AKIRA, the renowned manga-turned-anime film from the late 1980′s; a stunning example of both mediums as art forms. While Hollywood has been working on a live-action Akira movie for a few years now, we, as fans, wanted to take a shot at making our own adaptation. A chance to stick as close to the source material as possible. A chance to do Akira Justice.

We launched an Indiegogo campaign in July 2012 as part of a crowd sourcing effort to make this project come to life. Many people contributed not just financially but offered their time and talent to help the production that was shot in Montreal, Quebec from November 2-5th 2012. What started out as a simple idea between two guys having a beer (Hey! It’d be cool to see Kaneda ride his bike around Neo-Tokyo!), became a global endeavour, filled with adventures and hurdles, involving more than 40 artists in 12 different countries.

After a year and a half in post-production, we are proud to present the project to Akira fans the world over. We hope to have done justice to the timeless work of Katsuhiro Otomo and look forward to, someday, seeing the full scope of the Akira story translated to the big screen as a live-action.”

I say these guys should do the real movie! Check out the trailer!

May 9, 2014

The Woods #1: One of the Best Debut Comic Books of Recent Times!

As far as debut issues of comic books go these days I’d say the Boom! Studios debut issue of ‘The Woods” is one of the best! It’s a great little sci-fi/horror story that involves an entire High School (yes the building and all of the students and faculty) being transported to a strange forest seemingly on another planet. That’s the least of their worries though as they soon find out they are not alone there. With no idea how or why this happened students and faculty go head to head with each other trying to figure out the best plan of survival. This is a great start to hopefully a great series, the first issue has a little bit of a “LOST” which I adore, being a giant fan of that tv series. It also reminds me a bit of the tv show because of the mysterious situation, which for the time being there is no explanation for that they have found themselves having to deal with. It leaves me wondering what’s next and longing to read the next issue. It’s a lot of fun, with fair parts of horror, gore and comedy mixed in at just the right amounts.

The artwork done by Michael Dialynas is also alot of fun here and adds to the strength of this debut. It’s a really great to find a good solid first issue and a new series to look forward too. I’m finding it harder and harder to find books I want to stick with by Marvel or DC. I actually realized that at the moment I am not reading ANY tltles by the big two. Now that could easily change at any moment, but it’s a bit shocking that I’m not absorbed into any title right now that they are offering and at four or even five bucks a pop now a comic book better be good!I am open to suggestions also because at that price it’s not exactly easy to sample the platter, as comic books can easily add up every week at these prices. So here’s a little comic I think is a safe bet, The Woods was a damn fine fun ride-check it out!

May 8, 2014

Universal Dork Weighs in on “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”!

Alright so there are a bout a billion reviews up online everywhere about the Amazing Spider-man 2, so I’m not going to spend a whole lot of energy here on this one. The movie really doesn’t need another review or any more hype at this point, but what the hell it’s my blog and I shelled out a Fandango gift card on it! Ok, so first let me state that my expectations weren’t very high for this one as I wasn’t a real big fan of the first flick. As I always do though, I try my best to go into a movie with an open mind. Besides this is Spidey we’re talking here, a guy I’ve loved dearly since being a lil’ whipper snapper!

I’m thinking now, that maybe if I’d seen this one as a little kid maybe my mind would have been blown. The Amazing Spider-man 2 is a huge ass movie. Two hundred million dollar budget. It’s close to two and a half hours long. It’s loud, flashy and jam packed with intertwining story lines. That’s my first problem with it, there’s too much going on. There’s too many subplots. The movie goes on a few too many tangents and then decides to go on a few more after that. Sony is clearly trying set up more movies (ala The Avengers syndrome) from this one and honestly it didn’t have a smooth flow to what should have been a nice tight knit compelling story.

Which leads me to my second problem, the writing. Spider-man 2 suffers from some seriously terd-tastic writing. Everything from Peter Parker’s stale on again off again relationship, to Paul Giamatti’s corny ass Rhino, to the awful Jamie Foxx Electro to Harry Osborn’s overnight meltdown. They’ve really managed to create some paper thin excuses for people to turn into supervillains these days. Foxx did his best with what he was given, but his dialogue was painful to watch and his reasoning for going evil was just plain uninspired. There was nothing believable about his character, I felt absolutely nothing for him nor cared of his motivations. His entire existence in the movie was rather idiotic to say the least.

Then we have The new Green Goblin, played by Dane Dehaan. He did quite a fine job in the role and clearly he’s got the acting chops. However his character’s motivations were also pretty flimsy. His all too quick transformation from good guy into an evil raving lunatic was a bit ridiculous. The prison scene where he recruits Electro to help him break into Oscorp was one of the worst team up moments I’ve ever seen on screen or in the comics. “You need ME? You need ME?!” Also I might note that once again I wasn’t a fan of the Goblin’s look onscreen. Sorry I just can’t get behind that robotic body armor schtick. It just well…sucks!

Lastly the action scenes, which there actually really weren’t that many of, were decently executed, but really took me out of the movie. It’s like watching a live action movie suddenly turn into Toy Story 2. The CGI in this flick was great, if the whole movie had been done that way (which they maybe should consider doing) and the last final Electro battle looked straight out of an Xbox game with not a real human actor in sight for at least over five minutes. No thank you. If I wanna watch a video game I’ll go play one at home.

On a good note I have grown to kinda like Garfield as Spidey. He’s a good actor and really did put his heart and soul into what he was given to work with. He’s a more convincing Spider-man, who’s really grown into the part. If someone could get a good script for a Spider-man film it’d be golden with him as Peter Parker. However what we get once again is an even more bloated, glittery, mindless mess of a summer blockbuster. That’s not to say I hated it, but I wouldn’t want to see it again. I like seeing images of Spider-man on a screen in front of me, but at best that’s about as far as this movie appeals to me. Oh yeah and what the fuck was that lame ass mid credit X-men advertisement?! The movie was called “The Amazing Spider-man 2” not “X-men: Days of Future Past” last time I checked….that was a low blow. Don’t do that again. Can we just hurry up on that Avengers sequel already?!!

May 3, 2014

Let’s Appreciate Bill Sienkiewicz on his Birthday!

Today is Bill Sienkiewicz’s Birthday and it’s as good a reason as any to celebrate the man’s existence as one of the best comic book artists of all time! To say his artwork is unique would probably be the biggest understatement you could come up with in the comic book universe. His jagged, frantic and often abstract work is unmistakable. Whenever you’d get a comic book cover or let alone an entire issue filled with his artwork you always knew you were in for a treat.

His work became a staple in the early 80’s where he drew black and white back up stories of Moon Knight in The Incredible Hulk magazine size comic books. He continued on with some of his most famous work for titles like The New Mutants and the legendary Elektra: Assassin miniseries amongst many others. So happy birthday Bill! Thanks for the incredibly original art all these years-Here’s hoping for much more of it in 2014! Here are a few of my personal favorite pieces of his comic book art!

May 1, 2014

What If The Spider-man Movie had Real Stunts? Check This Out!

The Amazing Spider-man 2 is coming at us this weekend and though I’m going to see it I wouldn’t say so it looks like anything truly amazing. Another shiny Hollywood Blockbuster overflowing with glittery video game style CGI and extremely limited real life stunt work.

This pic really has nothing to do with this post-I just think it’s rad seeing 1970’s Spidey on a skateboard.

But what if suddenly Hollywood wised up a bit? What if they decided to use CGI only where necessary to enhance imagery and went with some actual real choreography to put together the action sequences for everyone’s favorite webhead? Well this recent video of parkour master Ronnie Shalvis will certainly prove that Spider-man doesn’t need to be a largely CG character in his action sequences. Of course you’ll never see something this cool in a Spider-man flick these days, check out what Spider-man might really look like in a real world setting doing real stunts…it’s breathtaking!

Check out the behind the scenes video-normally I’m not a fan of drones, but I’m totally cool with them being utilized this way!

May 1, 2014

The Most Awesome Remote Controlled Robot Spider Ever!

Wow, talk about cool shit, check out this incredible little video featuring the Robugtix remote controlled Spider! This thing is beyond cool and it better be for $2950.00! Think about how much fun you could have with this thing at night time on a side walk – seriously creeping out any passerby.

Someday when I’m rich blogger I’ll get one of my own, in the meantime I’ll have to just watch the videos- check it out!!

April 28, 2014

Handmade Monsters From Portland Oregon!

I had to take a moment here to share with you a little something awesome I stumbled upon recently! Being a giant fan of anything and everything monsters it was to my surprise to pleasantly find out about Nightmerriment!

Nightmerriment is a one man operation out of Portland Oregon run by Matthew Hopkins. Hopkins is a puppet/monster maker and his creations are incredibly creepy, cute and fierce all at the same time. I guess when I first got a glance of his work I pictured him working in the Jim Henson Workshop, putting together monster puppets for movies like The Dark Crystal or Labyrinth. Self described as monster art somewhere between sculpture and puppetry, his creations look like they could come to life at any moment despite being showcased like taxidermy on wooden mounts.

Most of his creations from what I understand are for sale, so in fact we all could own a little creature of our own! Hipsters aren’t the only thing found in Portland these days, now we’ve finally got something real cool to brag about-hand made Monsters!

Check it out and Nightmerriment’s facebook page and follow his creations!

April 24, 2014

The Walking Dead #126 – My Final Thoughts on “All Out War”!

Ok first off let me tell you there’s SPOILERS here, so if you aren’t caught up with the series stop reading now! Ok then, yesterday I read the final chapter of the “All Out War” twelve issue story arc of The Walking Dead. First I am going to state that the finale did not go the way I predicted it would which is actually a good thing. However, it seems to me that the series is stuck in the mud at this point. It has been for a while I think. This finale didn’t really offer up any real excitement, what I did predict was that Rick’s slicing of Negan’s throat in in issue #125 was certainly not going to be fatal. I enjoyed the fact that Rick is letting Negan live and trying to push the world in a better direction, trying to fix the mistakes the previous world made with war, revenge and killing. Very admirable Rick. However now that he has Negan as a prisoner that means that we’re going to have to have that character around for even longer!

I’ve heard from many people that Negan is their favorite character, that “he’s like the greatest villain to ever grace the pages of a comic book”. To me he’s unbelievable, annoying and just not that interesting. So I guess now what we’re most likely going to see is the gradual change of Negan from a villain into a part of the crew. I am guessing that he’s going to develop into some sort of anti-hero. That being said, where can Kirkman really take this series? Are we going to meet another Negan/Governor? I’d say that’s likely. To me though that’s also a bit boring.

I’d like to see this book go in some new directions dammit! Let’s face some new threats that aren’t a bunch of asshole humans, add some mystery to the book, search for other people in other parts of the world-I mean isn’t anyone interested in what might be happening elsewhere on another continent? Wouldn’t finding a plane be a priority? Or chartering a boat? I’m just not that interested in seeing Rick become the next President of the USA!! What do you think? Are you all satisfied with the direction the book has been stuck on?