Tagged: review
Comic Book Cover of the Week: Matt Murdock’s Crappy Christmas!!
I love digging up cool comic books that took place around Christmas time and Daredevil #229 fits that bill quite perfectly! This is an especially rad cover of a time when Matt Murdock went homeless on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen due to the Kingpin ruining his entire life. This has got to be one of the lowest points in the characters history as Murdock is down on his luck in this grim story arc written by Frank Miller before he turned into a crazy douche bag. This issue also has one of the most brutal fights between Murdock and the Kingpin as they go head to head in Fisk’s office. It’s bloody and Matt gets his ass kicked big time…damn I’m feeling as I type this the urge to read these issues again immediately! The cover is brilliantly drawn back in 1986 by one of my fav artists David Mazzucchelli and clearly shows how crappy Christmas was that particular year for Daredevil….
Comic Pick of the Week: Hellboy & The B.P.R.D. #1!
I have been looking forward to Hellboy and The BPRD #1 for quite some time now and this first issue was a real treat for any fan. I’ve missed Hellboy (and Abe Sapien for that matter) in the pages of BPRD now for quite sometime and this series is giving us a first look at his first adventure ever with the team!
Mignola and John Arcudi (one of my favorite writers) team up again this time with Alex Maleev making this an epic event. I’ve been in love with Maleev’s brilliant artwork since his legendary long run on Daredevil he did years ago with Brian Michael Bendis. He’s easily one of my favorite modern comic book artists and his work on this book thus far doesn’t disappoint. This is also the perfect time for anyone who was thinking about getting into the Hellboy universe to get on board, as the universe is at this point pretty vast. This shows us what the red devil was like on his first paranormal outing with a team.
The story is a simple premise thus far. Professor Trevor Bruttenholm assembles a team of human BPRD agents to take a younger Hellboy on a mission to the jungles of Brazil to investigate a series of over thirty murders. They head out to a small village where the townsfolk claim a strange creature has been blamed. The team, a bit reluctant about bringing Hellboy along find refuge there near a huge ominous castle.
This is a great set up issue, with awesome artwork, creepy locales and a cool mystery brewing. This is the kind of book I love. The series is planned to cover each year, in 2015 covering 1953 and so on. I can’t wait to see who we meet along the way as the BPRD fills it’s ranks with likely more odd characters, so buy this book and maybe we’ll get that third Hellboy flick we have been waiting for!
The Lucas Special Edition Teaser for Star Wars Episode VII-Best Thing Ever??!
So I haven’t weighed in on the new Star Wars “The Force Awakens” Teaser yet! I’ve gotta say when I first saw it I wasn’t particularly impressed. It didn’t look terrible and it honestly didn’t really give us a helluva lot to reeeeally get super pumped about. At first I thought it may have been too CG heavy, but perhaps what we are seeing isn’t actually all CG? Perhaps it’s utilizing the models and practical effects that it promised and it just looks damn good?! So my conclusion, thus far it seems like it’s on the right track and we won’t really be able to tell how good this could really be until the proper trailer drops. I just hope that droid rolling like ball isn’t a “Jar 2D2” type character!
But then today I saw the “Lucas Special Edition” version of the trailer, obviously a joke, but a damn funny one it is! The truth behind it is that the “Lucas” version really might have probably looked something like that if he had his hands on it for real! Seeing this actually make me appreciate the real teaser much more, because it reminds me to quit bitchin’ because if Lucas was directing it could be a heck of a LOT worse potentially! Check this shit out, it’s pretty amazing-I’ll be watching this Lucas version of the teaser more than the real thing!!
Also this totally blows my mind, that Lucas did have this shit planned since back in 1983 as you can see in this old interview clip from Hamill! Color me totally impressed George!!
Housebound – One of the Most Cool & Creepy Flicks of 2014!
Housebound has got to be one of my favorite movies of 2014, easily one of the best “horror” comedies I’ve seen in quite some time! This splendid little flick from New Zealand is filled with a ton of mystery, some great scares, creepy cool atmosphere and a lot of laughs. This one kinda plays out like a twisted Scooby Doo adventure. It’s a simple premise here, our troubled heroine Kylie gets caught trying to rob an ATM and is soon sentenced to home detention back to the house she grew up with her mother. And what a large creepy house it is!
It doesn’t take long before things get weird as Kylie one evening insists on using the phone, while her chatty mother tells her she’s taking an important phone call. Leading to one of my favorite moments in the movie, as Kylie heads of flustered into her bedroom she turns on the radio to a station that’s got a “Coast to Coast” style paranormal program in progress. She notices they’re taking a live phone call from a woman who sounds oddly just like her mother, claiming that the house she lives in is haunted.
From here the story gets incredibly interesting taking twists and turns galore and to give away anymore of the plot would be a crime! Housebound is a nonstop thrill ride and will have you guessing right up to the very end. It’s a crazy little adventure, with real heart at it’s core. That’s not to say it’s devoid of scares or even gore, this one has it all tightly wrapped into one helluva humorous yet creepy package. The house where much of it takes place is pretty awesome as well, filled with more than enough odd rooms, long hallways, creaking doors and mysterious closets and cabinets! It’s also got a great sequence with a Teddy Ruxpin type talking bear that’s pretty damn incredible as well as the most genius use of a cheese grater you’re likely to ever see. So I highly recommend checking this one out if you’re looking for a great Saturday night popcorn flick! A ton of fun & one of the best flicks I’ve seen all year…
Jurassic World’s Special Effects Don’t Look So Special!
I just watched the latest trailer to the heavily anticipated Jurassic World, the fourth film of the franchise. I’m a huge fan of the first movie, it completely blew me away back in 1993. It was the first time I truly felt like I was seeing a real living breathing dinosaur on film.
I was blown away and much of the reason for that was the film’s special effects, which at the time were groundbreaking as CG was taken to a whole new level. But it really wasn’t all because of the CG, it was the way it was used along with incredible practical effects from Stan Winston. Winston actually built giant animatronic dinosaurs to use for many of the shots, they used CG only when needed and blended it together seamlessly. Check this out, it’s pretty mind blowing…
This is why the dinos were so damn believable. Then the second and third movies followed, and though not nearly as excellent as the first, I enjoyed them both. Now it’s 2014 and you might expect that over 20 years after the original we’d be more than amazed by the dinosaurs of Jurassic World, however after watching the trailer this certainly is not the case. Thus far this movie looks like pretty much any glossy blockbuster with the standard lazy CG we’ve grown used to over the years. I’m hoping there’s some magic here in Jurassic Park, I can’t help but wonder if it’s really missing Stan Winston’s genius…what do you think?
Was ‘Dumb and Dumber To’ Dumb Enough?!!
I am a big fan of much of Jim Carrey’s 90’s comedic roles, I love the Ace Ventura franchise, Liar Liar was brilliant and of course Dumb and Dumber is one of my favorite comedies of all time. I was thrilled to hear that a real sequel was finally going to happen for Dumb and Dumber, let’s try and forget that there was a low profile prequel back in 2003 called “Dumb and Dumberer” (great title though) which did not star Jim Carrey or Jeff Daniels and it was pretty terrible. So now we’ve got a reunion of sorts nearly 20 years later with the new movie. It’s always a tough call on whether or not they can recreate the magic of previous works, whether it be a band reforming or team of actors and directors targeting our nostalgia. 
So did Carrey, Daniels and The Farrelly brothers give us a worthy sequel? I’d have to say they gave it a decent shot, and there were some genuinely funny moments but in the end I think the movie tried a bit too hard with a much too complicated, almost carbon copy of the first, weak ass plot. This like the first in many ways, takes our two favorite aging numbskulls on yet another road trip. It places them in a completely ridiculous story that seems almost as unnecessary and dumb as the leads. I like stupid, but I love it more when Harry and Lloyd are placed in a more believable world and they interact with people who aren’t necessarily in on the joke as well. Just seeing what the two of them are up to these days would have been good enough for me without involving a ridiculous murder plot with characters that are equally as stupid, but not nearly as funny as and Harry & Lloyd. That being said there’s no shortage of the crude humor of the first and in many ways it goes even further down the truly “dumb” route. Exactly what you might expect from these two morons who appear to have aged quite a bit but remain the same mentally as they were 20 years ago. 
Now don’t get me wrong I totally think Carrey & Daniels still have the chemistry and had the plot and writing been more solid the movie would have been a real winner. It’s great seeing Carrey back at what really made him shine, ridiculously stupid characters, because no one can do it quite like him. The two of them are clearly having a great time onscreen together. That being said I feel perhaps the real problem here is maybe the Farrelly Brothers, I mean think about it, what was their last genuinely funny movie? I’d say they have three, Dumb & Dumber, Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary- were all excellent and those were also their first three movies. I hope that this spawns a third film for the real Harry and Lloyd, I’d honestly like to see these two get another shot with different directors and writers, because even though this one missed the mark their still two of my favorite movie idiots of all time. I’d say this one is worth a view but don’t expect the riot of the first flick!
‘Late Phases’ Promises Old School Werewolves!!!
Great werewolf movies are pretty damn hard to come by these days but it looks like we finally have a winner coming our way soon! ‘Late Phases’ looks like a full on no BS old school werewolf movie just the way they were meant to be. The last truly great werewolf flick I saw was the incredible Dog Soldiers, which I can say without a doubt is one of the best werewolf movies of all time. The wait may be over though as Late Phases already looks like it’s got the genre by the horns, boasting incredible practical effects with a downright freaky ass looking werewolf!
The movie was written by Eric Stolz who also penned the impressive monster flick “Under the Bed” a couple years ago and directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano who directed the creepy ass “Here Comes the Devil”. I am excited to see if this one can bring back the genre to the classic feel of movies like The Howling & An American Werewolf in London. The synopsis goes something like this:
“Crescent Bay is not the ideal place to spend one’s golden years, especially since the once-idyllic retirement community has been beset by a series of deadly animal attacks from the ominous forest surrounding it. When grizzled war veteran Ambrose McKinley (Nick Damici) is forced into moving there by his yuppie son Will (Ethan Embry), the residents immediately take offense to Ambrose’s abrasive personality. But that take-no-prisoners attitude may be just what Ambrose needs to survive as it becomes clear that the attacks are being caused by creatures that are neither animal nor man, and that the tight-knit community of Crescent Bay is hiding something truly sinister in its midst…”
Count me in! It’s been too long, I can’t stand anymore handsome CG werewolves!! Look for this one in limited theaters November 21st!
Captain Kirk Gets His Groove On!! “The Enemy Within” Video Drops!
Finally! We drop the new video by nerdcore dancehall superheroes Mister Saturday & Ensly Mogul! This one takes the duo on board the USS Enterprise where they sing the intergalactic anthem “The Enemy Within”!
Check it as they literally beam aboard to observe the mayhem that ensues on this classic adventure! Evil Captain Kirk just can’t seem to get enough of that damn brandy!! Download the song for free right HERE!
Punktendo: Play Nintendo as Classic Punk Icons?
So it looks like someone decided that it’d be cool to recreate some of the classic Nintendo games with punk icons in the roles of your favorite video game characters. I guess this is kinda neat, a bit random & pointless maybe but still an interesting twist. You can play these games for free on Punktendo.com.
You can play as Milo of The Descendents in “Milo-fu”, you can play as the fan punching Fat Mike in a game of Golf, You can be Danzig in Mega Man or you can be Mikey Erg (not quite a punk icon, but maybe the creator’s friend?) in Super Mario Bros. as well as a few other non punk games like “Gay Popeye” etc.
I’d have been a bit more pumped if these games had more original concepts behind them, like a nerd revenge game with “Milo in Milo in College” taking on jock bullies would be a fun one. If anything though these are worth a play or two just for kicks- check it out! Oh yeah and this happened a day or so ago, Fat Mike kicked the shit out of one of his fans at a NOFX show who jumped on stage to sing along to one of his fave tunes! now this could be a great video game concept- Fat Mike’s ‘Fan Attack’! In the video game happy NOFX fans could storm the stage in joy and you could control Fat Mike as he beats their asses to a pulp!! I’m thinking kinda like Robotron: 2084 maybe? Damn I should be making these games-they’d be a helluva lot more interesting!!
Paperless Table Top D&D: The Ipad Takes Over the Dungeon?!
So I arrived at my weekly D&D session this last sunday, ready to play a brand new adventure, stepping down from the throne of being the Dungeonmaster & eager to finally play a game as a PC! As I entered the room I saw the usual suspects getting the table set up for the first night of the new game, however something was different, there were four Ipad/tablet stands set up on the table in from of each seat where there might usually be some folders a stack of papers and some players handbooks, monster manuals etc. At first sight it kinda shocked me but then I quickly realized my group had decided to make the tech savy switch from the middle ages straight into the modern world!
I had sat down with my stack of papers and newly hand drawn pictures of my character, the rest of the group said “Check out this app we are using for d&d now it’s amazing!” they all began to show me their characters, all neatly on their Ipad screens and I’ve gotta say it was quite impressive. No more pencil scribbles, wine stains or candle wax upon a weathered piece of paper. Press the tabs on the screen and it tells you all you need to know, instantly calculates your hit points, heck it even rolls a dice on screen for you when you press a tab! The next question was “are you gonna bring your Ipad and get this App or what?!” I responded that I spend enough time as it is looking at computer screens, smart phones and my Ipad at home that I wasn’t quite ready to integrate it into my world of D&D just yet!
So what’s the damn problem huh?! Should I just drop this old school pen and paper attitude already?! Get with the damn times with my D&D? I mean, does anyone even use pen and paper for table top RPG’s anymore?! Do people even roll real dice? The last game I DM’d I had a giant stack of papers, and a ton of books piled around me! It was a frantic scene of animated movement as I paged through books checking rules while role playing all the NPC’s like a damn madman! So now our new DM is equipped with an Ipad and stated the fact that in this day and age you don’t even need books to play the game anymore. It’s true, but part of that make me a bit sad in a way. There’s something quite charming about the old school pencil and paper game, where you might have to add and subtract on a piece of paper, erase some stuff with a rubbery eraser or write down your new magic item with a page number next to it.
In a way it feels like the only way to play for me, I almost imagine myself transported back to 1970’s when the game had some mystery behind it still and the religious fanatics thought it was causing people to worship Satan. But It clearly ain’t the 70’s and I suppose it’s only a matter of time before I get on the ol’ Ipad bandwagon and bring my trusty hi-tech tablet along to the game of swords & sorcery. Paper books are surely on their way to becoming extinct, all music now is downloaded, comics are headed to digital downloads and let’s face it there a motherfuckin’ “app” for pretty much anything and everything you can imagine these days. For the mean time, I know I’m dying breed of D&D player, a bit like I’m actually living in the dark ages and for the moment i’m going to relish in it, but man I gotta admit those Ipad apps sure do look slick…now if I really wanted to be shocked I guess I could have walked into this:
Universal Dork 