Batson's Blog

I finally jumped on the super heroes on TV bandwagon.   I’ve been watching Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for 2 seasons (I still need to catch up on season 3), but I hadn’t been watching any of the other series on the small screen.   There’s Gotham , The Flash , Agent Carter , D.C.’s Legends of Tomorrow , and, now, CBS’ Supergirl .  That's not counting Netflix's Daredevil and Jessica Jones (I watched both of those over the Christmas holiday, so expect blogs on both coming soon as well). Last Black Friday, I decided to give Arrow a shot.   I could’ve just watched it on Netflix, but, the beauty of Black Friday are those nice DVD sales.   Series like Gotham , The Flash and Arrow were all on sale for $10 each, as opposed to the usual $15 - $40 range. Finally, I had some time to watch the first season of Arrow . As much as I like super heroes, I’m not familiar with the Green Arrow character and his backstory, so this was kind of like a fresh, n...

Earth Day seemed like a good day to blog on something I've been thinking about for a while: would it be possible to make a credible Captain Planet movie? Long before the Lord of the Rings movies, the Planeteers made powerful rings very cool. The Captain Planet television series was definitely geared towards kids. I remember watching it when I was between 7 and 10 years old, but even then there were times that I thought, 'This is kind of hokey.' Would it have to be that way though? I think it's possible to create a much more realistic version of Captain Planet, specifically for the big screen. There are rumors that a Captain Planet movie is in the works , which is a very smart thing to do. Super hero movies are huge right now. Iron Man, Spider-Man and Batman have proven, several times over, to be money-makers at the movies. Take a look at Transformers. 4 movies and counting so far. Even historical figures have been reincarnated (to some success) on the ...

Well now that we know the world isn’t going to end (whew!), we can focus on next year. As the new year approaches, it’s natural to wonder what the next 365 days has in store. You could choose to focus on which new year’s resolutions to make. Or maybe pat yourself on the back for successfully accomplishing items on this year’s list. There are other important things to think about though – like which 2013 movie is going to be the most awesome. I’m strictly talking super hero movies here. There’s quite an impressive list that’s scheduled for release in the next 12 months. Here are the standouts in my mind: 6. Thor: The Dark World (Nov. 8) Chris Hemsworth reprises his role as the God of Thunder next November. After Thor’s decent original outing at the boxoffice and 2012’s super-successful Avengers, I don’t think the Marvel executives have too much to worry about with this one. It’s pretty much a guarantee that it will do well. Tom Hiddleston is returning as “Loki” and P...

When The Amazing Spider-Man was first released in the early part of July, it wasn't on my list of movies to see in the theatre. I'd just seen The Avengers in May and The Dark Knight Rises , which was on my must-see list, was going to be released just a couple of weeks later. Unfortunately, the new version of Spider-Man was the summer super hero flick that didn't fit into my checkbook. That changed last Tuesday though. I was trying to figure out what to do with my evening. I noticed that Cinemark 10 , in Matthews, was showing The Amazing Spider-Man. I'd never been to Cinemark 10, but it was the cheap theatre, from what I'd heard. I figured watching Spider-Man on the big screen would probably be more fun than watching the DVD on my 20" Vizio television at home. I got to the theatre and it was pretty much deserted. I was literally the only person in the lobby. I purchased my ticket from a machine. It took me a few minutes to get the ticket be...

DC vs. Marvel. The Green Lantern and C aptain America: The First Avenger . I haven’t seen a superhero movie that I haven’t liked so I figured The Green Lantern and Captain America were two good choices. ( Warning! Superhero geek mark-out mode here) Batman will always be the best, but I remember wanting a shield like Captain America when I was five-years-old. I started off with The Green Lantern . As big a fan of the comic book heroes as I am, the Green Lantern is one back-story I wasn’t familiar with. I knew he had the ring and it had some sort of power, but, beyond that, I didn’t have a clue what to expect. Unfortunately it fell a little short of what I would’ve liked. It was a little more corny than epic, a little more predictable than exciting and, with the heavy use of computer animation, a little more video game than movie. It felt a little bit like they were going through the motions with this one. Ryan Reynolds was a good choice for the part, but it seems he wa...