The Green Hornet Review

Yes, I know this is not really a "Comic Book" movie, but it's fucking close enough. I'm kind of still pumped from seeing the movie despite it having ended a couple of hours ago. That will probably provide for an inaccurate review, but I'll just update this later after I've watched it again. This movie was fucking awesome! I was mildly hesitant going into it, and I watched it with a friend who said he had next to no expectations, and we were both pleasantly surprised.

The movie starts at out moderately slow, and takes it's time to build, but it really does know how to build. It's not too much too fast, it takes it's time introducing you to this city, and these characters. And the comedy is pretty much top notch from the beginning to end. Now seeing it in the small town theater that I did, I felt like my associate and I were two of like three people in the theater laughing, and the rest of the crowd was full of dead people... maybe the comedy in the movie is weird... but I thought it was funny as fuck. I mean there were parts I had trouble not laughing at. The banter back and forth between the main two characters, Britt & Kato, is just too good. Also, there are a handful of Bruce Lee jokes thrown in that I not only thought was a great way to pay tribute to the old show and previous actor, but also were really funny too. Not only that, but the villain is pretty funny too. He's like this late aged crime boss who's worried about his image, so he's constantly trying to convince his cronies that he's still scary, and throughout the film reinvents himself as a super villain, mostly just to stay "scary" whilst fighting The Green Hornet. This character could have easily turned into a caricature of a villain, but instead turned into a nice satire of these anti-heroes as a whole, and made sense in the world they set up. The action starts out fine, not too over the top, and slowly climbs up the ladder. When it starts out the pacing is similar to the old TV show (yeah, I've seen a few of them before giving up when they fought aliens in one episode...), and by the end gets to over the top action that's more reminiscent of Shoot 'em Up or Crank, and afterwards you kind of forget where it happened. It felt very well done and almost seamless.

I couldn't decide which photo I wanted to use, so I used both!

There was stuff I didn't like, but I'm honestly going to have to nitpick to point them out. Cameron Diaz... alright I guess I'll elaborate. I didn't know she was even in the movie until recently, and when I found out I guess it just seemed like a last minute addition in my mind, despite whether it was or not. Her part in the movie is awfully minuscule,  and whenever she is the two main characters talk about how hot she is, and they both kind of have a thing for her. This might have worked 10+ years ago, but not so much anymore... Maybe it's just me, but she's kind of not hot anymore. Now I mean she's still a beautiful woman, but not in the "Leading Lady" way. She would be a smoking mom in a movie, but those aren't the roles I see her in, and it's kind of not here either. Britt Reid sleeps with some smoking hot lady in the first fifteen minutes of the film, and Cameron Diaz is the main love interest character? Not so much... I will say they handle it pretty well and don't go a conventional route with this love triangle, despite how awkward it feels... My only real other problem with the film was that some of the effects seemed a little cheesy. Not all of them, I thought most of them were very stylized, and looked awesome, but a few here or there I noticed. Which kind of makes me happier, if they spent less on the effects, maybe the film makes more money and I get to see a sequel? Probably not, but I'll hope...

Everyone who was worried that Seth "I'm the fat awkward comic relief guy" Rogen couldn't pull off a super hero, hopefully you're pleasantly surprised as I was. Rogen re-imagines the character here, and seperates the character from a number of other characters he could easily be lumped in with. I mean why is it totally cool when Chris Nolan wants to completely retool Batman, and everyone loves it, but when the guy who made Eternal Sunshine does the exact same thing to a character no one really gives a shit about in the first place, people throw a fit...? In my mind, The Green Hornet is no longer just another detective superhero with gadgets and a side-kick, like at least half a dozen others I could mention, now he's his own brand of unique hero, and I hope we all get to see more of this version of the character in all forms of media. This movie was everything I wanted out of the Kick-Ass movie (I'll elaborate in a later review), and not only does this character fit into that world pretty easily, but anyone who liked that movie might want to check this one out too!

Thanks for reading

(and seriously go check this movie out! There's really not much out right now that deserves to be seen more...)

The Punisher Vol. 1 - Dark Reign

So now that I've finished my Luna Brothers marathon, I thought I'd venture into something with tights. I really want to get to Franken Castle, so I'm reading the newest volume of The Punisher that was launched during Dark Reign. I'm not a huge Punisher fan, but now and then he tends to have stories that I like. The last volume, the one that was launched during Civil War, I liked a lot. My problem is with the character, a lot of times he can be kind of overly violent, so when  you're doing a kind of gritty "darker" version of the character there's nothing to relate to, it's just mindless killing. The Punisher I like is when he's so hyperviolent that the stories come off as comical, because then relating isn't as important, because you're in it for the fun. I have to say that I'm enjoying this series so far, because it hits this mark right on.

Basically Punisher usually just chases the D-lister villains who need to get a bullet between the eyes because they're wasting space in some bigger character's rogues gallery. I feel like he's one of those characters Marvel keeps around to get rid of loose ends of villains that don't quite gain notoriety. So the guys he's killing are usually pretty fucking lame, well during the Dark Reign of Norman Osborn he says, well who the fuck do I kill when everyone's a bad guy... the answer is everyone! He decides it's time for him to go after some real baddies. Not like Stilt Man, and Jack-o-Lantern, and lame ass characters like this, no he's going after the top dog and all of his cronies. But he's got to be smart about it. The volume starts with him saying you can't just walk up to a guy like that, you've got to do it right. So he starts taking out his and The Hood's operations one by one, and doing it in a rather flashy sort of way. I really liked this whole volume a lot. Something about the Punisher not being able to just walk up to some douchebag and shoot him, really is entertaining for me. It's almost like what if the Punisher were forced to think like Batman. I mean there are full scenes where he's running away from goons armed just as much as he is, or even full on squads of super Villains with powers and shit. And he just waits and bides his time until he can get the kill shot it. There's one scene where his side-kick guy tells Frank that there's going to be a lot of baddies towards the end of the book, and the next panel is Frank loaded up with miscellaneous pieces of other superheros gear, including an Ant-man helmet, what looks like a bunch of Hawkeye's arrows, and maybe one of Iron Man's gauntlets. This is the Punisher I Love! I don't want to ruin how that stuff comes into play, but it is an awesome pay off, and everyone who doubts me on whether or not shrinking is an awesome power will eat their words!

Also the art was really good from start to finish. I can't even point out what I liked about it, but the style was really nice, and I've never even heard of this artist before. This book has me wanting to go out and read more stuff from Rick Remender pretty much right away. The only thing is that the finale of the volume which is supposed to be a kind of cliff hanger/ teaser, and I could kind of care less about it... I'm going to keep reading because i liked the first volume so much, but I'll explain why I'm not as excited for two in my review, who knows maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised again! If you want to check this out for yourself you can Search Amazon.com for punisher vol. 1, or just click the box below!

Thanks For reading!

Dark Wolverine Vol. 1 - The Prince

So usually Marvel is pretty good about packaging. DC tends to be the company I give shit for it, but occasionally there is a title or two that Marvel just doesn't know what to do with. Dark Wolverine is apparently that title. The first volume of this book is five issues long. Two of which aren't about Dark Wolverine at all. They're just two issues that couldn't be collected into Old Man Logan, the previous arc in the Wolverine ongoing. So since these two are between old man logan, and Dark Wolverine get crammed here because they have no where else to go, which wouldn't be a big deal if they were given as bonus content, but they're not... The volume after the first is only four issues long. Now this might sound crazy... but wouldn't it make more sense to put all of that into one volume. The two random issues, the first arc which is three issues long, and the second arc which is four issues long? I mean that's a big volume, but then you just charge a tad bit more, and then you have a quality product. Instead of the whole run of this series being broken up and crammed into other books. I'm going to try and read them as best I can, I'm just a tad bit frustrated about it when I have to read and buy other issues I don't want to, and especially so when I have to purchase them if I want Dark Wolverine.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, the actual review of the content and not just how it's bundled: I liked the shit out of this first volume! Now the Back-up, or whatever you want to call it, wasn't as awesome. It's just a two-shot story that's kind of half assed trying to explain how Wolverine is in so many places at once. It doesn't really work, but it is kind of funny to see. Now Daken on the other hand... Now that Daken is in his own series, I thought I'd have reason to go back and read Dark Wolverine, and boy am I glad I'm doing so. This guy is cool as shit. He walks everywhere with this swagger. He dresses like it's noboby's business. He even has small differences in his powers that he uses to their full extent. I was worried before reading this, because I had been warned that his sexuality plays a big part in the book, because he uses it to his advantage so often. I had seen things like this done poorly before, and kind gritted my teeth and waited for the impact, so to speak. But it's really not that bad, and for the most part it's done really well. He's not just randomly fucking people with no regard. He does it when he wants to, and mostly when it serves him. Every thing he does in these first three issues is to serve a purpose, and I absolutely loved it. It's very reminiscent of DEXTER, if you watch it, where every action has an explanation, and an inner monologue that goes with it. And in some cases this kind of story telling could get annoying, but it's kind of the same as it is in DEXTER, if you like the character, you'll like it here. And honestly I don't see why you wouldn't like him. As far as plot goes it's a tiny bit hard to follow, and you have no idea what his true intentions are through the this first volume anyway, but they hint at it once or twice. Basically Daken is going around making as many double deals as he can. He's a double, double, double, double agent. Which really amounts to, he's out for himself.

This book is definitely worth reading, but how is the decision. If you like single issues, this might be one of the few cases, in my opinion, where you might be better off buying it one by one. But what about the rest of the run? You going to buy all 15 issues that way? If you don't mind paying for a full trade where the first two chapters kind of suck, and the last three are really solid, then I say pick it up, because that's how I'll probably purchase it. Especially considering that's how most stories go anyways. Instead of two issues of build up, you get two issues that aren't relevant. Six of one, half a dozen of the other... You can Search Amazon.com for Dark wolverine Vol. 1 or you can just click the box below. 


Thanks for reading!
James

The Sword Vol. 4 - Air

The final volume in a thus far mediocre series. I wasn't sold on this all the way for the first three volumes. They would go back and forth between over the top action, and boring dialogue and backstory that I could follow, but didn't know why I was. Well now seeing everything come together how it did, I'm totally down with this story, and I'm glad I stuck with it! 

The last volume ended with the "air bender" chick, Malia, going into times square and promising benevolent intentions and kind of calling Dara out in front of the whole world. Dara rushes to lay the smack down on that woman, and boy is it fun to watch. This book takes it's time letting Dara get to Malia, but does it in an interesting way. All the while giving you Malia's history, which in the previous two books I didn't like, because it kind of tried to make you empathize with them, but in this one it just makes her that much stronger of a villain, which I totally dug. When they finally do throw down, it's just as inventive as it has been thus far, except the Airbending sequences weren't all that awesome. When they say she has power over the element "Air" what they really mean is that she can fly, use telekinesis, and shoot lightning. But in this case I didn't mind reading it, because the action was still top notch. Then right when I thought I knew how shit was going down, I'm thrown another curve ball, and I absolutely love it. Where the Luna Brothers' previous two books, Ultra and Girls, ended in a cliff hanger and almost no epilogue, this story does a great job of wrapping everything up, even if it is kind of a sad ending. 

It sucks seeing the book end right when I decided I liked it and that it was worth the ride to get there, but it's better that than it to keep going and dive back into not as awesome land. I'm glad I kept reading, and if you read the previous three and had faith that these two gentleman would pay off, you'll be glad you stuck with it. Or who knows, if you didn't really like the previous books at all, this one might piss you off more. I always say that a bad ending can spoil a great story, and a great ending can save a bad story, and I think that's exactly what happened here. The end made everything make sense up until now, and I think everyone else should give it a shot too! You can Search Amazon.com for The Sword Vol. 4 - Air or you can just click the box below to check out this book for yourself!

Thanks for reading!
James

Girls Vol. 4 - Extinction

The conclusion of a series that has recently been added to my personal list of favorite comics. Obviously in this volume the characters are dealing with being kicked out of their main base of operations for the series thus far, and the ramifications of all the fucked up stuff they did in the last volume, and trying to bring this situation to a close.

Now in the last volume there were certain characters I fucking hated... like if I had been in this series, I almost certainly would have committed murder, or at the very least been killed for going off on my own. In this volume everything's not so black and white. Now while I wanted to hate the women all throughout this book, because they were all so fucked up to all the men, this is the volume where you get to see these ladies worst fears imagined. Now a lot of crazy shit still goes down, but it's hard to see whose side you're on because they're both very valid. See, the ladies are fucking crazy. They say the men are the problem, and in doing so it drives the men to be just as fucked up. So it turns into a self fulfilling prophecy on these ladies parts, but the guys are still fucked up for letting them be right! All it takes is a little willpower, some self esteem, and a damned conscience, and you're in the clear. But apparently no character in this book has all those things. And that's why I love it so much! All of these characters are humans. Because who knows, I could turn into any one of these characters that I hated and criticized throughout the book as soon as some shit like this goes down. So you'll hate one for a long time, and then right at the end of the book, you'll say "now i see, it all fits together, and I hate you significantly less." And in that respect this book is very similar to LOST. Now I know there are mixed feelings about that show, but it's not a show about answers, it's a show about characters. So if you want to know what the Black Smoke is, or these murderous girls in the case of this book, you're kind of SOL, but if you want to know what makes each of these characters tick, then you're certainly in luck.

The last volume set the bar pretty high for messed up shit that goes down, as far as the characters are concerned, and while this book doesn't raise that bar, it does skirt over it. And by that I mean that there is still quite a bit of depravity, it just doesn't get much worse. Which is a good thing, because I don't think I could stomach too much more from this book. I will say there was one sub-plot/mini sequence where the women survivors were hunting down the men to stop them from reproducing with the girls. Now that's not a huge deal, but the writers found a different way for each of the men to be hanging out with the killer girls... this felt a little forced to me, and I don't think every character needed to be, especially since the pay off is only shown for one or two of those characters. Also the main character Ethan starts to lose his shit a little bit. He starts having these weird dreams/hallucinations/visions, and it's good about making you not sure what's real and not until the end.

That being said I wasn't totally in love with the overall ending. It basically wraps things up all in one issue, and it felt as though it may have been done a bit too quickly, and overall this crazy event had no repercussions on the world as a whole, just a few of these characters in it... I didn't hate it, just didn't love it either. Maybe if they had a few more issues, or even just one more epilogue issue, I would have been alright. But for a series that had me dying to know what was next, the resolution was a tad bit lack luster...

Overall a fantastic series, and I highly recommend every volume. Go check it out, I've never read another story like it, and I can't remember a more original survival story! You can Search Amazon.com for Girls Vol. 4 Extinction, or you can just click the box below and purchase it for yourself!

Coliseum of Comics, Orlando FL

So it's been a while since I've posted. That's mostly because I didn't have a camera to take the few pictures I do actually like to take, and because my vehicle situation was a little unstable. Now that those two issues are resolved, more posts! So I'm starting my return post, along with a promise to do so more often, with a review of a pretty sweet shop! This is the Coliseum of Comics in the Fashion Square Mall in Orlando Florida. I've been visiting this shop for a while now, and it's one of my favorites to browse. If there's one thing these stores get, it's atmosphere. As soon as you walk in you're entrenched the comic book sub-culture. There are posters all over the walls, and some amazingly sculpted statues on display throughout the store. You could spend a lot of time just browsing through these things, especially considering they change them up moderately frequently. They also have a few televisions throughout the store playing whatever random nerdy movie they decided to play that day. I've seen anything from comic book movies, to cartoons, to Japanese flicks, to sci-fi films!

Their selection of comics is pretty good. I never have too hard a time finding what I'm looking for, with the exception of a few smaller indie books, and sometimes they even have stuff I haven't heard of, which is really nice. They have the books shelved and separated by their publishing company. I like this better than the books being all jumbled together, and probably the only way I prefer is them being sorted by author. They also have a pretty sweet selection of board games and toys and other things. More so on the board games, but I'll give them points regardless. There's a sizable t-shirt selection too, which is cool if that's your thing...

The one thing that probably stops this store from being my favorite near me is the customer service. Not saying that it's bad, it's just really mediocre. The employees never really look particularly excited to be there, and they'll rarely engage you in conversation. Now if you're the kind of person who can walk up to people and strike up a conversation, then you might have less trouble, but that's not exactly my strong suit. I guess I kind of expect them to be more engaging... Again, it's not bad, if you have a question they're always cool about answering, but I've had little to no random conversations being struck up due to common interests...

So I guess the final verdict is that you should definitely check out this shop! If you're at the fashion square mall, stop by and browse for a bit, and spend some money, because these guys deserve it, but it's not my first choice to make your home store. You know though, second place isn't so bad...

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Chocolate Movie Review

Alright, so I don't know why i chose this as my first movie review. There's a lot to say about this film, because where there are a lot of reasons that I really enjoyed this, there are a few that made me take a step back too. Anyway, here we have a Thai film that came out in '08. So right off the bat, this is one pretty sweet martial arts film, but it's all in Thai, so unless you speak the language you're going to be reading subtitles. To me that's never been a big deal, but I know it bugs some people, But in this film it might not be such a huge deal for you. I'll explain why as I break this review into two parts. One that consists of the actual film, direction, and acting. And the other where I want to talk specifically about the action sequences. 

So my beef with this film lies mostly in it's plot. It's kind of weak, and not really a whole lot happens for the first 15- 20 minutes, which isn't too bad, because it's getting the setup out of the way to make room for the action. Basically the film revolves around this girl who has pretty severe autism, but with that she also has some kind of of savant like martial arts capabilities. There were a few things that kind of bugged me about this idea. I don't really know why they chose to go with this story, when it would have worked just as well if they hadn't used the gimmicky story, but what evs. So she has the ability to pick up on martial arts moves as she sees them. That's fine to me, I've seen this a few times before, so it works for me as an ability. Like a more grounded believable version of Taskmaster or that girl in season 2 of  Heroes. But my beef with this is that I'm not sure that even if someone was able to mimic these moves perfectly I'm not sure that they'd know the perfect timing, especially if they had autism. Not only that, but footing is something that doesn't even factor in. If she's autistic how does she know how to keep her footing and how to do all these acrobatic moves and shit. I mean sure she could mimic them, but what if the ground is more slick than when she saw the move used? There's even once where she pulls her pants up a tiny bit, which is totally common if you're in a fight, but i'm not sure someone with as severe a grade of autism as she has would know that that would get in the way of her moves. It wasn't a big deal, just something i noticed and chuckled at the 2 or 3 times it happened throughout the film. The main character's acting is pretty good. She goes from playing this character that I didn't doubt once was autistic, and instantly flipped to a bad as shit, ass kicking machine. Everyone else it was kind of hard to tell. Again the film wasn't in English, so i can never tell how much of the cheesyness is poor acting or just inflection. 

So while you have a kind of weak platform to base these action sequences around, they really made the most of them. I'm not sure if the director and the action director were the same person or what, but it's almost like a different film when they go into kick ass mode. There's little to no wire work, and it's all realistic acrobatics, with what appears to the untrained eye, mine, pretty awesome martial arts. I mean just when you think they can't get more imaginative with these set pieces they keep doing things to one up themselves. I mean the first action sequence, twenty minutes in, was awesome, and everyone after that was better and better. I will say though, there's one scene where this random dude walks out to fight the main character and he appears to have turrets and he fights a lot like Voldo from Soul Calibur or something. It was a cool fight but if you think about it for more than 30 seconds it's a little fucked up that these two gangs are having two handicapped people do their fighting for them... Then right after that one dude just pulls out a gun and kills as many guys as he can with that one clip, and then switches over to a katana for an all out sword duel. I loled. This is followed up by a platforming/fighting combo scene that involves a building, a monorail, and signs extending from the building between them. I mean this is so inventive and awesome to watch, it kind of makes me wonder why we haven't seen something like it coming out of Hollywood for films like Prince of Persia, or a Mario adaptation, where it actually makes more sense. My only problem with this scene is that it's the final action set piece, and it doesn't really feel like it. It almost felt like the last two major fights should have been switched. Both scenes are none the less awesome, but it was just a bit weird as a last set.

Now my point from before is that if you're watching this movie, you're really watching it for the action, so there's not really a lot of reading when there is, and during the action there's next to no dialogue, so you can sit back and enjoy the show without having to read at all. I enjoyed the shit out of this film, and I plan on buying it for my collection to throw on for background noise so that when I see the action scenes I can stop and watch them, and walk away during the boring parts. If you like what you see, and want to check this film out for yourself, you can Search Amazon.com for Chocolate, or you can just click the box below.