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Non-Review Review: Green Lantern – Emerald Knights

In many ways, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights can be seen as a counterpart to the earlier Batman: Gotham Knight. Beyond the fact that both contain “knight” in the title, both animated films were released as promotional tie-ins to major motion pictures featuring the characters in question, and both are structured as vignettes rather than one continuous storyline. Don’t let that fool you. Unlike the incredibly uneven Gotham Knight, Emerald Knights is actually quite a worthy little movie.

Good to the Corps...

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First look at Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman In The Dark Knight Rises! (And Thoughts…)

The first images of Catwoman from The Dark Knight Rises have been revealed, and – as with everything about the movie – they’re stirring a considerable amount of controversy. There’s an official still below and a photo of a stunt double in action below. I have to admit though, I genuinely love it.

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Modern Movie Meloncholia: Why “Nostalgia” Can Be a Dirty Word…

Do you know what I hate? I hate it when people ask, completely seriously, “why don’t they make movies like [insert classic here]?” anymore, or whenever anybody goes on about the “mindless franchise trash”that Hollywood pumps into cinemas year-in and year-out. It tends to happen quite frequently, when you hear movie commentators or viewers discuss the latest crop of empty and disappointing summer blockbusters, with the default position seeming to be an attack on modern Hollywood as an institution, bemoaning the decline of movie-making standards and an unchallenged assertion that old movies are – undeniably – better. I’m not arguing that Hollywood can’t do better, but I find this fixation on things past to be quite disconcerting – and, I’d suggest, rather depressing. Why are we more focused on what Hollywood was rather than what it could be?

Frankly my dear, I think it's a depressing outlook...

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Pottering Away: Reflections on the Harry Potter franchise…

It’s quite strange, considering a movie series as opposed to its independent constituent elements. It seems like in taking in the broad tapestry of adventure allows the viewer a completely different appreciation for the story being told, especially when measured against considering each individual film on its own terms. With the Harry Potter series finally ending, I had an excuse to go back and dig through the old DVDs, watching each and every instalment in the series as a means of saying one final goodbye. However, despite the fact that some of the films may have been less impressive than others, or the fact that the plots didn’t always flow consistently from one film to the next, I still think that the eight films taken in their totality represent a rather wonderful accomplishment for all involved.

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A Bluffer’s Guide to the Dark Knight Rises Rumours…

This week has been a bit of an early Christmas for movie geeks such as myself, with Warner Brothers unveiling both the teaser poster and the teaser trailer to The Dark Knight Rises, the much-anticipated closing chapter to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. When we know a bit more later in the year, I’ll dig into the movie in a bit more depth, but it occurred to me that a lot of fans on-line are throwing out concepts and references that might seem a bit foreign to the uninitiated. I can’t imagine how strange it must be for a non-comic-book-fan to hear titles like Knightfall or “Lazarus Pits” thrown into casual conversation. So I’ve put together a bluffer’s guide to all the speculation and rumours, so that you can hopefully understand a bit more of what nerdy geeks like myself are talking about when we casually reference stuff like “I will break you!” It should be stressed that all these are 100% rumour, and not meant to reflect the film, but to help understand geeky references in discussions about the film. Sort of like a handy guide to the “offside rule”in soccer or such.

Welcome to underground comcis culture...

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Discussing The Dark Knight Rises’ Teaser Trailer: Long Day’s Journey Into Knight…

The trailer for The Dark Knight Rises has been doing the rounds on-line, as Warner Brothers try to keep it under wraps. Originally supposed to premiere before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II, I reckon it’s a matter of time before the studio officially releases it on-line. When they do, I’ll post it up here, but let’s actually talk a bit about the teaser and what it tells us – especially about this instalment as opposed to the previous two entries in Nolan’s superhero franchise.

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The Dark Knight Rises Teaser Poster Has Arrived…

… and it is awesome. It’s done in that rather minimalistic approach as the early Dark Knight posters.

And we get a teaser this week. I am really excited, and I hope it’s half as effective as the teasers for Batman Begins or The Dark Knight, both of which were perfect examples of trailers that spurred interest and intrigue without giving anything away.

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June in Review

It’s been a heck of a month. It has also been while since I’ve done one of these “wrap up” posts, which are probably more for myself than for anybody else, when I pop onto the blog in my old age and want to laugh at what a foolish young man I was with all manner of crazy and poorly-thought-out ideas. So I try to post one of these at the end of point out some of the stuff that I wrote that I’m kinda happy with – the stuff that I might want to read first if I ever look back on this so I don’t despair of the man I was. Or some nonsense like that.

Anyway, just last night I was delighted to submit a last-minute article on Transformers 3 to the superb Morality Bites blogathon. It’s always great to be asked to take part, even if I’m rarely the most organised person taking part.

Anyway, this was the month when I was lucky enough to end up on the IMDb Hit List twice… in the space of a single week. I still can’t understand how that happened, but am genuinely humbled by it. As I’ve said before, it’s an honour to be noticed by the kinda people who love what you love – it’s a huge source of pride that the on-line film resource thought that my hastily-collected gibberish was worthy of attention, and I am still a little bit giddy and star-struck. There’s nothing like being acknowledged by the guys who do what you do… but 1,000,000x better. Sorry, this is a long rambling waffle.

The first post to be selected was a post on this year’s Comic Con that wondered if the move away from the event could foreshadow a fading interest in the geek audience

Then, a few days later, I happened to get up there again for a piece I am honestly glad that people noticed, something about Pixar. Because I genuinely love Pixar, and I don’t get to talk about them often enough. And because Cars 2 is getting a lot of criticism, and sometimes I worry we ignore the really good stuff in life…

… I was especially honoured when the wordpress team also freshly pressed the very same article. The guys are exceedingly wonderful to let myself and all the other bloggers a platform to share our (sometimes haphazardly formed) thoughts with the world, and it’s really great when they do notice something you’ve written. It’s good to know that maybe the people who work hard to offer you a service like this one got a little enjoyment from your effort – like you’re giving a very tiny something back. It is an absolute joy to be listed in such a way.

But that’s the end of the month. Plenty of stuff happened before hand.  I was really looking forward to Green Lantern, only to be a little let down by it. I also wrote a geeky article for another site I occasionally write for about the links between Grant Morrison and Christopher Nolan’s Batman, which I’m also a little bit geeky proud of.

Outside of nerdy stuff, I wondered about classic films I hadn’t seen (one (and a bit) to cross off: Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Now Redux), and if even a great film can be far too long. Oh, and when we start thinking of the family of famous celebrities as their own individuals rather than extensions of their relatives.

So, it was an awesome month. I can only hopt the next is nearly half as good.

Farewell to Nerds: The Big Studios & Comic Con…

Last year, around this time, I was discussing how great it was to be a nerd or a geek. Hell, Comic Con in San Diego seemed like an obligatory stop-off point for the major studios promoting their latest blockbusters to an overly geeky crowd, debuting the trailer for Tron: Legacy or announcing the cast of The Avengers, not to mention footage and panels based around any number of big-screen blockbusters designed to cater towards the geeks and nerds in the movie-going audience. So it feels like a rather dramatic shift that very few of the major movie studios appear to be planning much for the iconic (or, at least, briefly iconic) Hall H in San Diego this year.

Does this mean that the era of the geek is over?

Will Stars stop Trekking to Hall H?

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Requiem for The Wolverine: Why Darren Aaronofsky was the Perfect Choice to Direct The Wolverine…

I was actually really anticipating what Darren Aronofsky could bring to The Wolverine, the sequel to the rather lackluster X-Men Origins: Wolverine. So I was actually genuinely disappointed when it was announced – rumoured to be for the inevitable creative reasons – that Aronofsky would not be directing the film after all. While it’s great that this affords Aronofsky complete creative freedom on the next film he works on, and while I certainly don’t want a film that has been subject to Fox’s executive meddling, I can’t help but regret what might have been.

Blades of glory?

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