Archives for February, 2011
Directed by: Sam Liu
Starring: James Denton, Christina Hendricks
Superman is one of those characters that seldom gets the sort of introspective deep character analysis of characters such as Batman or Spider-Man. He’s unbeatable, he’s all American, he’s apple pie. Apple pie tastes good but it’s generally predictable. For the good and the bad that is All Star Superman it’s definitely not the typical apple pie.
The Movie
All Star Superman is based on the award winning limited comic book series of the same name. This is a fairly simple story. Superman puts himself in harm’s way to save lives and the result is that he has been exposed to too much of the sun’s yellow rays and he begins to die slowly. So, the Man of Steel basically cracks into his bucket list. That list mostly involves Lois Lane, who just happens to be having a birthday at this same time. Along with seeing Superman take care of unfinished business in his life there’s also a bit of a mystery involving Lex Luthor. As usual things aren’t always what they seem.
The biggest problem is that the story just seems to be looking for ways to make Superman fight. There are random monsters and even some random Kryptonians for him to fight and then save. Seeing Superman fight is definitely something you expect and probably want but those fights should be more important to the main story and not just beat downs as we, and Superman, wait for his coming death. There is a major villain at the end of the film too that overall is just ridiculous looking. That villain does lead to a powerful and surprisingly moving finale. Because so much of the fighting in the movie doesn’t seem to really matter to the overall story the middle of the film feels a little puffy.
The art design of the comic book series was not something I was a fan of but the character designs in the film work quiet well. The designs are a combination of the All Star comic and the classic designs from previous DC Comics movies. Superman The Animated Series featured a solid cast but DC/Warner Brothers has been bringing in different actors for these films lately and All Star Superman continues the trend. James Denton (Face/Off) and Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) take on the title roles as Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Both actors do a fine job. Hendricks gets the final emotional beat in the film and she delivers those lines particularly well. While it may get the films more attention to feature actors with some sort of fan base to play these characters I’d wager that the fan base for the actors who have filled these roles in various projects for the past several years is a fairly large one.
The drama in the film is really effective and the scenes between Lois and Superman are the best of the film. It would have been nice to have seen a little more depth and complexity in the Superman character during those scenes but what is here works. Superman has never dealt with the possibility of dying in this way before. While we don’t see what’s happening in his mind we do see his emotional response to the end of his life and the time he had wasted keeping his secret from Lois. The end of this film is moving and completely amazing. The score, the animation and the final voice-over from Christina Hendricks is near perfection. All complaints aside this is still one of the best Superman films ever made, even compared to the Donner films from the 80’s.
8/10
The Video
This 1080p HD presentation looks fantastic. The color pallet for this film is darker and it’s shifted more sepia than previous Superman animated films in order to match the colors in the comic book. -Even darker the colors still have a hi-res vibrancy and the blacks are deep and inky. The quality of the animation and the detail in some of the lesser characters wavers a bit and it stands out in this crisp presentation.
9/10
Audio
The DTS HD Master sound presentation here is fairly solid for an animated film. Most of the running time is spent in the center channel but there are some nice instances of surround speaker usage during action. Unfortunately the sub woofer sits really quiet most of the time. Dialogue, score, and sound FX are clear and well mixed aside from one line of dialogue at the end of the film that’s really tough to hear for some reason.
8/10
The Packaging and Bonus Features
There are some really great bonus features on this blu-ray/DVD. The best stuff is blu-ray exclusive too! There’s a feature commentary with the film’s producer Bruce Timm and the mastermind behind the comics Grant Morrison. These two combined have done some of the best DC Comics work in any medium and hearing them discuss this film is a must for any fan.
There’s solid featurette focused on where the ideas for the story came from and how they evolved to comic then to film. Next is a conversation with Grant Morrison about All Star Superman. The conversation and featurette overlap a bit but together they offer a really good overview on this story and how it has been told. There’s a preview for the next DC movie based on Green Lantern, and there’s a virtual comic book so you can read the story. Finally there are two episodes of Superman the Animated series handpicked by Grant Morrison.
No this blu-ray is busting with bonuses but what is here is all good stuff and will be much appreciated by fans of both the comic and the movie.
8/10
All Star Superman, even with its puffy middle act is still the best of the DC animated films yet.
Overall (Not an average) 8.5/10
The Review
The Movie 8/10
The Video 9/10
The Audio 8/10
The Packaging and Bonus Features 8/10
Overall (Not an Average) 8.5/10
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![Super 8 (Single-Disc Blu-ray Edition) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JFt1LlPoL._SL75_.jpg "Super 8 (Single-Disc Blu-ray Edition) [Blu-ray]")
Directed by Masayuki Sakoi
Featuring Voices by Andrew Love, Luci Christian and Brittney Karbowski
High-octane, super-powered muscle fight over the barren Tokyo landscape. Complete with school girls. …continue reading
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:20:56 — 74.1MB) | Embed
This week Mike’s out sort of, but we talk The Great Gatsby in 3D, Wonder Woman gets cast, Major League 2, Hershey’s chocolate, the Torch getting extinguished, and much more!
To enter our academy Awards giveaway that will include DVD’s and a bunch of additional swag check out last week’s episode and pick the host (Alan, Mike, Niko, or Stephen) that you think picked the Oscar Winners the most accurately and post it on the podcast page here. The entries that have the right answer will be entered to win!
Get the show anywhere anytime on your mobile device from the Stitcher Radio app!
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In the last year two of the nation’s largest home video rental retailers, Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery, have gone out of business and Blockbuster Video has filed for bankruptcy. Both of these not so surprising events have gotten me to thinking about the early days of the home video rental business. You see kids, there was a time before the internet and streaming video. And there was a time before dvd and even vhs. I know this is a radical concept but it’s true. Before the vcr became affordable (roughly $400) if you wanted to see a movie you had to wait until the studio decided to re-release it to theaters or one of the three (yes, only three) networks secured the rights to air a re-cut, sanitized version suitable for broadcast. This was both cool and maddening all at once.
I got to see a lot of classic movies in the theater. Some of them were first run (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and some of them were re-releases (all the classic Disney cartoons and seriously, I saw Stars Wars so many times in the theater it’s not funny). Once again, this was before the internet so finding out that these movies were coming back to theaters meant either seeing television spots or seeing the print ad in the movie section of the newspaper. Either of these finds would lead to massive discussion at the lunchroom table. The anticipation was intense. But then something happened. I started hearing about this new device called a vcr that would play movies on your television. This was the best news I had ever heard! Now I could watch Star Wars any time I wanted, kind of.
What the movie studios figured out was that a) they couldn’t make people pay to see their movies over and over and b) this meant they had to re-release these films one last time before finally releasing it to home video and possibly never seeing another dime of revenue due to this new technology allowing consumers to make illegal copies and distributing said copies to everyone in the world. Sound familiar? Through all this the accepted time frame for video release was about six months after its initial theater release. This model still exists.
The advent of the vcr also led to a lot of video stores opening and closing in a small amount of time. One other phenomenon was that grocery and convenience stores got into the home video business. I remember vividly the small convenience store at the end of my street having a modest rental section for a couple years. I also remember them always being out of the movies I wanted to see. Kroger also entered into the business and their video rental section lasted into the late nineties when dvds took control of the market.
As time wore on most of the smaller “mom & pop” stores closed or moved into the adult business. This was mainly due to the price of vhs tapes. The movie studios charged rental stores an ungodly amount of money for the movies. This coupled with the potential for someone to rent a movie the store paid upwards of $100 for and never returning the tape was a little too much risk for some retailers. The six months after release schedule was only for rental. To own a copy of your own there was usually another six month window before the price came down to a reasonable $19.99. It was several years before I finally had a copy of Star Wars for my own.
In the late nineties I worked for Movie Gallery. I never knew the movie Clerks was a documentary until I had that job. At that time the big two (Hollywood Video and Blockbuster) had an unbreakable hold on the industry. And it was a very popular and profitable industry. I remember having to work on Christmas day in 1998. I thought this was ludicrous. Little did I know that I would have a line waiting outside the door when we finally opened the doors at one o’clock in the afternoon. When I left that company in 1999 dvd was starting create a buzz. By the year 2000 dvd had established itself as the new media of choice. George Lucas saw a new way to make money.
Over the last decade the brick and mortar rental store has taken a massive hit and led to Movie Gallery buying Hollywood Video then both closing their doors forever. Blockbuster Video has also had many financial troubles and look to be on the verge of closing as well. With the current state of media flux the future of home video looks to be in the digital download. Although Blu-Ray is trying to keep a foothold on tangible media I think it is time to just accept Netflix as the future. But I do like to reminisce about those early days of the video store. I spent a lot of time browsing over the shelves in a store with walls covered in movie posters. And on those shelves I discovered a love of movies. A part of me feels like a piece of pop culture was suddenly silenced.
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Written and Directed by: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Starring: Yio Natsukawa, Shohei Tanaka, Hiroshi Abe, Yoshio Harada, Kirin Kiki
It always makes my day to open up a package with a film from the Criterion Collection that I haven’t experienced yet. Already a fan of director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s (After Life, Nobody Knows) work, I had high hopes as I opened the amaray case….. …continue reading
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:45:06 — 96.2MB) | Embed
So we survived the snowpocalypse to finally bring you episode 150! We talk Wonder Woman TV, Niko’s new porn obsession, Superman casting, Smallville series finale, official Spider-man film title, X-Men First Class movie trailer, Famke Jensen is a man, phones, tablets, and tons more in one of our longest ever episodes!
To enter our academy Awards giveaway that will include DVD’s and a bunch of additional swag check out last week’s episode and pick the host (Alan, Mike, Niko, or Stephen) that you think picked the Oscar Winners the most accurately and post it on the podcast page here. The entries that have the right answer will be entered to win!
Get the show anywhere anytime on your mobile device from the Stitcher Radio app!
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Written by: Lewis Carroll
Voices by: Richard Haydn, Ed Wynn, Kathryn Beaumont, Sterling Holloway, Bill Thompson
Finally, the original 1951 animated classic Alice in Wonderland is available on Blu Ray. Doesn’t that make you happy? Let’s explore, …continue reading
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Directed By: Theodore Thomas
Starring: Walt Disney, JB Kaufman
It’s 1941, the Nazi’s have control of most of Europe and their influence is spreading throughout the world. What can the U.S. government do to stop their influence from spreading to South America? Why, send Walt Disney and his animators on a goodwill tour of Chile, Brazil and Argentina. Of course!! …continue reading
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:47 — 422.4KB) | Embed
So the anticipation for episode 150 will just have to grow for another week as a sudden snow storm has locked our woefully unprepared city down for the night. We’ll be back next week with all the news, talk, jokes, and other various shenanigans that you’ve come to expect from the CineGeek team! If you haven’t picked the host you think has the best shot at getting the most Oscar winners head on over to episode 148 and do so as we will be sending a prize pack out to one of the listeners that gets the right answer!
Get the show anywhere anytime on your mobile device from the Stitcher Radio app!
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Directed by: Giuliano Montaldo
Starring: John Cassavetes, Brit Ekland, Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands
When you title a film Machine Gun McCain you establish a couple of basic expectations. One, a character named McCain and two; the character McCain exhibits a predilection for automatic weapons. While technically the film delivers on both of those expectations it doesn’t quite live up to the spirit of the title. Instead of a B level mafia exploitation movie what is delivered is a B level mafia drama. …continue reading
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Directed by and Starring Louis C.K.
Louis C.K.’s stand-up film that premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival is finally on DVD, and it’s basically the only thing on this DVD. …continue reading
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Top Shot, HISTORY’s hit competition series, is rearmed and reloaded. Sixteen fearless marksmen, carefully selected from thousands of applicants, will aim for the $100,000 prize package and the title of “Top Shot.” The all-new cast of 14 men and two women includes a 10-time NRA pistol champ, two former world shooting champs, a Texas cop, a Jersey shore Air Force sniper, a Bronze Star recipient, and representatives from four branches of the military. The 13-week series premieres Tuesday, February 8 at 10pm ET on HISTORY. Fans can check out exclusive content and play the Top Shot Reloaded Fantasy Game beginning February 7th on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HISTORYTopShot
Enter to win a TOP SHOT prize pack consisting of:
-Top Shot Season One DVD
-Top Shot T-Shirt
-Top Shot iPhone Case
-Top Shot Shot Glass
To enter hit submit below and send us your name and mailing address. We’ll drop one lucky winner on February 28th to win it all!
Submit
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Have you seen Black Swan? If not then you should because it’s easily one of the best films of 2010. It’s not a summer blockbuster but there are some amazing special fx peppered throughout the film and we have an fx reel to show how some of that magic happened in the film. Check it out below. Be sure and hit the full screen button to get a really good look!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:56 — 68.6MB) | Embed
This week we read some submissions for the Academy Awards contest, talk about Red State, Kevin Smith’s horror film, break down the new PSP and compare it to the 3DS, chat about new Superman, and much more!
To enter our academy Awards giveaway that will include DVD’s and a bunch of additional swag check out last week’s episode and pick the host (Alan, Mike, Niko, or Stephen) that you think picked the Oscar Winners the most accurately and post it on the podcast page here. The entries that have the right answer will be entered to win!
Get the show anywhere anytime on your mobile device from the Stitcher Radio app!
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SundanceNOW gives you the choice to rent or own the best of independent cinema with the click of a mouse. The SundanceNOW library encompasses classic titles and the newest releases from around the globe.
Every month they will highlight different films from SundanceNOW’s extensive collection. This month they’re featuring films that were favorites at the Sundance Film Festival, including Miranda July’s ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW.
Check it out here: http://www.sundancenow.com/
We’ll be taking the service for a spin and providing a full review ASAP!
