Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

    For as long as I can remember I have loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My first exposure to them was through renting the VHS videos that I would find in my local King Soopers. I loved everything about it, the premise, the characters, the action, the villains, the humor, I loved being a turtle fan.

   But it wasn't until I was around seven that my older step-brother showed me the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and it blew my tiny mind. The turtles were in live action, there was swearing, there was Casey Jones, there was Shredder and Splinter and the action was sweet. It was everything a seven year old turtle fan could want and it's one of my favorite memories I have of watching a movie and one of the best memories I have of watching something with my older step-brother.

   


    So when I heard that a brand new turtles film was in development, I got pumped! And then over the months the pumped feeling went from "I'm so excited" to " This could work I think" to "Okay I'm not sure" to "Can it at least not suck too bad?".

    Yes I am one of those people who has been dreading the arrival of this film. From Transformers director Michael Bay producing the project, to hack movie maker Jonathan Liebesman directing it, to plastic actress Megan Fox starring in it, to the design of the Turtles looking absolutely awkward and ugly, I was going into the film with the lowest of low expectations. And while the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film is not that bad, as a whole it is still a horribly wasted opportunity.

Guardians of the Galaxy

      If anyone were to come up to me years ago after the first Iron Man movie and asked me what Marvel properties were going to be made into mega blockbuster films, Guardians of the Galaxy probably wouldn't have been anywhere near the top top of that list. Indeed the idea of a Guardians of the Galaxy movie sounds ludicrous in the first place. A movie set in the Marvel cosmic universe starring a band of obscure C and D list characters that is deeply steeped in Marvel history, artifacts and lore. That is the kind of crazy talk that would usually only get brought up if someone was looking to lose their job. But here we are, August of 2014 and a full blown Guardians of the Galaxy movie has been made and put in theaters for all to see. But how is it? While the film can fumble on occasion, it's an incredibly enjoyable film that is both one of Marvels best and one of the best films of the summer.

The Lego Movie

   Sometimes movies really do just come out of left field and surprise the hell out of you. It doesn't happen often but when it does, it really makes you appreciate what you just watched.

   So many things could have gone wrong in The Lego Movie, but didn't. It could have been nothing but a mindless toy plug. It could have been a half assed animated movie someone crapped out for the kiddies to watch over the weekend. It could have been so easily weighed down with awful joke after awful joke. The cast could have phoned it in. It could have been the heartless business toy commercial everyone was expecting. But it wasn't.

   Some sort of miracle must have happened when this film was pitched. A film made in half CGI half stop motion that would be entirely focused on a world made out of Lego that both about the eternal appeal of the brand but is also a touching story of learning to use your creativity despite who you may be or what others may tell you. I don't care how much money directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller made you already with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street Warner Brothers this film is something I just didn't think you would be willing to take a chance on. It is a film that takes chances and that is probably the last thing I ever expected to say coming out of the movie about the tiny building blocks.  But good on you Warner Brothers for taking the chance to let The Lego Movie be made in this way because with it's arrival I can say that the first truely great movie of 2014 is here.

Ms. Marvel #1

   Throughout the years many misconceptions have risen up in the modern comic book industry and most notably in the superhero comic book community. Misconceptions that are much more issued by the comic book publishers themselves rather then the common fan. Many of these have been addressed in forum post after forum post, tweet after tweet, angry letter after angry letter. From the idea that marriages ruin or destroy a superhero's appeal to the notion that superheroes are not allowed to have happy social lives. But one of the biggest and most prevailing arguments is for how superhero comic book publishers treat both their female audience and their female characters.

   Notably Marvel and DC comics have been accused both in the past and in the present of mishandling their best female characters and of just how poorly they can present them selves to female readers. It almost seems like the concept of having female readers is entirely lost to them until they are reminded by the press or the occasional outraged fan. Both of the big two companies are guilty of treating their female demographic like crap in the last few years, Marvel for instance had that large gap of time when they had absolutely no female centric books and when they did have one they almost never promoted it. And DC comics in the last two years has pretty much tried everything to make sure they have the smallest female audience in the history of comic books, from Starfire and her let me have sex with everything attitude to the time they wanted Gail Simone off of Batgirl to the time they wanted a fan to draw Harley Quinn trying to kill herself.

   However when it comes to which one is really trying to make amends for their past mistakes, Marvel seems to be trying damn hard to appeal to both their regular 18 - 45 single male demographic and the budding amount of interested female readers who already are or want to start reading comic books. Marvel comics is set to release not one, not two, not three but five ongoing series starring female superheroes in an effort to appeal to the female marketplace and interest younger girls in the medium.

   Elektra, She-Hulk and a renumbered Captain Marvel series will all be kicking off later in the year and their first female centric series already started last month with Black Widow #1 (which is a comic that i recommend, especially for any fans of the current Hawkeye series). Now all these series are based on already well established heroes, each already has their own fan base ready and willing to jump on board for their adventures. However amongst these other four series only one book is starting off with a completely new hero set for her own adventure. She is Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel, and if her first issue is any indication, I am thinking I'm going to like Kamala quite a lot.

The Best Films of 2013

   When it comes to 2013 and genuinely good movies, I feel like it was quite a lackluster year. The sign to me that a year is genuinely good and a successful year is when memorable good films are released throughout the year and not just in the final 4 - 5 months. Look at just last year in 2012 and the release line up of movies. In Spring we had both great big and small movies like Chronicle, Jiro Dreams of Sushi and The Raid: Redemption, Summer of course we had our big blockbusters like The Avengers, comedies like Ted and small films like Killer Joe. And rounding out the year was awards season with films like The Master, Django Unchained, Wreck It Ralph and Flight all being released. That kind of line up is what I call a successful year.

   When looking at 2013, nothing really outstanding happens until around the middle of March and I feel the first noteworthy decent larger release movie was released (The Croods). After that through the next few months there were a few noteworthy movies that ranged from Good (Iron Man 3, Mud) to meh (Star Trek:ID, This is the End) to god awful (After Earth, Only God Forgives and The Purge). It picked up a little more in July with films like The Conjuring, The Worlds End, Blue Jasmine and a certain other film that will be on this list but once August rolled around it was pretty much a nose dive into disappointment and mediocrity with films like Jobs, Elysium and Kick Ass 2 coming and going through theaters and films like The Butler being released pretty much begging the Oscar season to begin.  And after that awards season hit full force which is to be expected at this point. It's usually the most memorable part of the year for good reason and it definitely was this year.

   Now while it wasn't that great a year all around for films that of course doesn't mean that nothing of interest or note came out. There were at least 5 films that managed to impress me so much that they stopped it from being one of the most forgettable years. As with every year though I have not seen everything so films that I'm sure many would put on a list like this probably wont be on mine. I have not seen a number of the most popular choices like Her, Rush, Nebraska, Blue is the Warmest Colour, Inside Llewyn Davis and Dallas Buyers Club so they will not be appearing on this list. And lastly this is my own list, if you don't see something you wanted on the list then that means that I probably didn't feel the same way about it like you did. With all that said let's move on to the Top 5 Best films of the 2013 after the Jump.

The Top 5 Worst Films of 2013

        So it's the end of another year and with it comes time to do the end of the year top tens. Last year I only managed to get the top ten video games list out and never managed to finish the movies list until it was so far into the new year that releasing it would have felt pointless. This year however I have sworn to work more on my blog and on my reviews. And I thought what better way to start off the new year then with a pair of top fives and how about we start the year with the list's I wasn't able to make last year?

     Now I'll be honest, in my opinion this wasn't a great year for movies. Sure there were of course bright spots, most notably that Marvel proved that it's franchised movies can still stand on their own legs after the big team up movie. And of course there are the good movies that are out there.
   But for every bright spot, there seemed to be a spot of disappointment. Many movies failing to live up to expectations, the return of Schwarzenegger and Stallone to their action movie roots mired by awful scripts, Man of Steel failing to live up to expectations yet somehow it's good enough to springboard a Justice league franchise, the fact that movies like Grown Up's 2, The Smurfs 2 and Movie 43..........exist, and in my opinion a very lackluster Oscar season all lead up to this very over whelming feeling of "eh it was kind of a good year I guess".
 

   Never the less I've come up with my Top 5 Worst Movies of 2013, it was alot easier choosing the worst of list but the one's that are on the best are so good that they save this year from being completely forgettable.
 

   Now I want to make something clear, I'm not going after easy targets for the worst of list. That means no Grown Up's 2, Smurfs 2, Movie 43 and no direct to DVD offerings. Most of those choices are obviously bad and you don't expect any of them to really be any good. With that said let's move on to the worst of list after the jump.

Man of Steel

Anticipation has long been one of my many great follies. As a new movie or game or comic etc. is announced that can even slightly peak my interest, I start getting excited for it. As the months go on towards the release, more and more info on the film will be put out by the media to build hype for it and I eat it up with a spoon.

One of my most anticipated movies for about the last 2 years has been the new reboot of the Superman movies. Not only was it a brand new movie starting one of my favorite superheroes but it was being worked on by Zack Snyder, a man that I have usually thought could really bring Superman's superpowers to life very well. However I did grow a little perplexed at the idea of Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer being involved in the project. Nolan has said before that he didn't really care for the more unrealistic and fantastical elements of superheroes and comic books which made the choice to make him producer and writer all the more perplexing.

I did however understand the choice of Goyer to write it, as his film "Blade" kicked off the superhero movie craze and "The Dark Knight" is one of the highest rated superhero films to date, but his other films (including the last Batman movie) have been extremely mixed.

Well we are finally here, The new Superman movie entitled "Man of Steel" has been released. Did this all star trio manage to finally create a successful Superman movie that will finally give DC comics a chance to build their own superhero movie universe? Did it successfully bring Superman back to the big screen? And most importantly, Was the movie any good? All of these questions can be answered with one word, kinda.