Yes, yes, this week is all about Superman, as we debate whether or not Man of Steel was actually good. But there’s always room for Batman! Hell, I know that Superman is supposed to be our great American hero and all that, but I swear I saw way more Batman shirts in the theater for Man of Steel than I did Superman “S” shields.

Anyway, this is part one and part two of a video series where Batman inserts himself into a whole variety of movie scenes, you know, because we won’t be seeing him in another movie for god knows how long.

It’s as hilarious as you might expect, but nothing will ever beat this video for me.

4 out of 5 stars

A new Superman film was always going to face an array of challenges. It would be a movie pulled in many different directions, and could easily suffer because of it. Would it adopt the lighthearted, joke-happy Marvel model that’s turned Iron Man and his Avengers into cash machines? Would he go for that now infamous buzzword, “gritty,” making Superman dark and tormented the way Man of Steel’s producer Christopher Nolan made Batman? Or would they attempt to slavishly devote themselves to Richard Donner’s original films, the way Superman Returns did, and suffered because of it?

Surprisingly, the answer isn’t any of the above. Rather, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel manages to not feel like a copycat of anything that’s come before it, either in the modern age of superhero blockbusters, or the treasured years of Donner and Reeves. And really, it’s not like any of Snyder’s other films as well, filled with slow-motion action and rather nonsensical dialogue.

What we have is a film that manages to bring new life to our most prized superhero, one somehow we’ve deemed as rather boring over the years. How interesting can a character really be who can’t be killed, or really even hurt? We tend to like our heroes most when they’re vulnerable to some degree, not completely invincible, or literally bulletproof.

Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is many things, but rarely boring. It’s visually astonishing, even if it didn’t utilize his famous slow motion action sequences, though it can be dramatically hollow at times. It’s a thrilling film as you watch it, and hard to find fault with initially. It’s only later when you start to reflect that the cracks start to show. Continue Reading »

Right off the bat, I need you to understand, I do not mean good in terms of Shawshank Redemption good. Good is a very open term, and it tends to be directly proportional with whatever is being discussed at the time. That out of the way, Rampage, when compared to all other Uwe Boll movies, is f*cking Shakespeare. And while this movie has been out since 2009, so I am sure a good deal of you already know this, I only just made myself sit down and watch it this week (because I, literally, have pretty much watched every other movie ever) and I cannot recall being more surprised by a film recently. I know that sounds odd, but to say I detest Uwe Boll movies is to still pay his films a compliment. I don’t detest them. I am at the point when that exerts too much energy. No, rather, I pretend they don’t exist and am much better for it. But like I said, I was out of movies to watch and had just enough weed that I knew I would be able to atleast TOLERATE a Uwe Boll movie. Thing is, when he does violence and horror (for example, Seed), the guy is pretty relentless, so I figured a movie about a disgruntled kid who goes on a killing rampage might be watchable. 90 minutes later, I am trying to rationalize how Uwe Boll actually made a decent movie, yet no one talks about it.

First off, for those who don’t know, Uwe Boll is the outspoken German director known for buying video game licenses and turning them into (god awful) movies. From Alone in the Dark to Bloodrayne, and even decent stories like Far Cry, he just loves to put the stink of shit on already existing properties. And he ties up all his finances in such a way that, somehow, every time, these terrible films turn profit, allowing him to make another one, and another one, and so on. And he is FAMOUS for his hatred of “journalists” like me, who he has, no lie, challenged to fights and hilariously, won. Seriously, that was the first thing that made me look up and say “maybe this dude isn’t so bad”. Continue Reading »

Sure, it’s possible to teach your kid the alphabet with the traditional boring, “A is for Apple, B is for Banana” song and dance, but if you want to spice things up a little, there’s the Harry Potter alphabet from Australian Illustrator Kayla Pyke.

She went through all 26 letters and found a character that represents each letter. The best part are her descriptions, some of which you can see above, and the rest are below. My favorite? “N is for Neville, fearless snake-killing mother****er.” Neville always needed more credit.

Check out the entire rest of the alphabet below: Continue Reading »

I’m already in the early stages of mourning as I prepare to be let down by Man of Steel, currently sitting at a rotten 59% on RT. Perhaps the critics are wrong and it’s amazing, but the site, by in large, paints a pretty accurate picture when it comes to movies like this. Though it’s especially worrying given that these same critics scored Superman Returns a 75%.

ANYWAY, I still wanted to feature these rather fantastic prints from Mondo that they’ve crafted for the film. Even if it doesn’t pan out, that doesn’t make the art on these any less badass. You can buy them for a limited time starting yesterday I believe, and this page has more info about that. That’s Martin Ansin’s design above, but there’s one more below from Ken Taylor.

Here’s to hoping the critics are wrong. I’ll find out in a few hours. Continue Reading »

This is perhaps a bit outside the bounds of the usual content on the site here, but I thought it was a rather touching way that fiction met real life, or unreality met reality, if you prefer.

Perhaps the most powerful moment in last year’s Les Miserables came when the cast came together to sing the revolutionary anthem “Do You Hear the People Sing?” whether they were dead or alive in the story.

Now, the protesters attempting to gain similar freedoms in Turkey adopted the song for their own, and gave a rather moving performance of it which you can see above. Perhaps this seems silly to feature, but I found it oddly touching.

When you fall in love with a certain actor or director, the first thing you do is watch everything they’ve ever done.  Invariably, you’ll come across some movies you’ve never heard of.  There are just too many movies out there for all of the good ones to be part of the zeitgeist, so it’s entirely possible that you’ll run across a movie that a) Has an actor you really dig, b) is actually a good movie, and c) you’re the only person you’ve met who’s actually seen it.

That’s a pretty good day, if you ask me.  Here are five movies that meet all three criteria.  Not only that, but all five are available to stream on Netflix!  So there’s really no good reason why you can’t watch these immediately unless, you know, you have better things to do.  But let’s face it, you’re scrolling through Unreality when you should be doing something productive, so you obviously have some time on your hands.  There’s absolutely no reason the next movie you watch (today!) shouldn’t be…

Continue Reading »

It’s the battle of the new school nerd fanbases versus the old school ones. Game of Thrones vs. Star Wars. But why fight, when you can simply combine the two?

That’s the idea that artist Andrew Spear had (via TMS), as he took a bunch of our most prominent (original trilogy) Star Wars character and gave them each their own Game of Thrones slogan. Catch phrase? Motto? Words? What are those things called anyway? I know the animals are sigils.

Anyway, most of them actually fit pretty well, though I’m not quite sure why Boba Fett “does not sow.” Check them all out below: Continue Reading »

At the MCM Expo London Comic Con, JapanUnderground spotted this young chap wheeling around in what might be one of the coolest wheelchair based costumes in existence.  He’s tricked out his chair to be Vader’s TIE fighter, and I don’t want to hear about how it’s not accurate because Vader’s TIE had a different wing shape than the others. IT’S FINE JUST LET IT GO.

Anyway, it would be awesome if about five feet in front of him there was another one of his wheelchair buddies in an X-Wing chair. And then five feet BEHIND him was one in a Millennium Falcon. Now that I think about it, I would totally watch a sweded movie trailer starring these guys.

The apocalypse is old news at this point. It seems like there’s a new movie about the end of the world every week, or if not, we’re almost certainly watching a post-apocalyptic shows or playing a post-apocalyptic video game. Hell, I even wrote a post-apocalyptic book.

So it’s really going to take something special to jar us out of apocalypse fatigue, and This is the End aims to do just that by making light of the death and destruction that accompany the end of the world.

This easily could have gone awry. It could have been something like Apocalypse Movie, a Scary Movie spin-off I’m stunned doesn’t exist yet, full of obvious jokes and nonsensical humor. Parody is a tricky thing and it easily can go wrong.

Hollywood needed to put their best men on it, so they did. All of them. Continue Reading »

For those of you who don’t know, 300 is without question my greatest guilty pleasure move of all time. I understand that it’s complete nonsense for the most part, but I love it nonetheless, and it remains one of my favorite action film. Though is an action film really an action film when 90% of it is in slow motion? That sort of runs counter to the term itself.

Anyway, I have literally no idea how they’re making another 300, given the end of the first film, and after watching this first trailer for 300: Rise of an Empire, I’m still not sure. I heard it was a prequel, but with Lena Headey showing up, and the plot being about “revenge” on Xerxes, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The rest of it I can’t really decipher, but it does look like 300, and that’s more than enough for me to check it out, even if Zack Snyder is producing, not directing.

In related news, Man of Steel is at 60% on RT, hovering dangerously close to “rotten.” That makes my heart hurt, as I really had high hopes for it. Keep in mind that Superman Returns ended with a 75%, so that doesn’t bode well.