10 years? Wow! I saw today that the Super Cafe from How It Should Have Ended debuted 10 years ago. I don’t think we’ve been watching it for that long… but I do think that HISHE is one of the earliest “shows” on YouTube that we had watched, years ago. And the Super Cafe absolutely keeps us coming back!
They pulled together all of the Super Cafe – enjoy!
Posted in Online / YouTube
Tagged Batman, HISHE, How It Should Have Ended, Super Cafe, Superman, YouTube
We saw the Lego Batman Movie a couple weeks ago, and I’m not quite sure what to say about it. It was good. We enjoyed it.
It ends up as a pretty good answer to the question of “what is it like in the realm of one of the master builders?” Because that’s how you make a stand-alone movie that’s also a sequel to the Lego Movie. Batman makes for a good hero, since he was a hilarious secondary character in the original.
It also ends up a pretty good movie for exploring the question of, “who is Batman? And who is Batman in relation to others?” What Batman needs is a family. What he has no idea how to deal with is a family. This movie explores that pretty well, with the young ward, with Batgirl and the relationship with the police, and even exploring the relationship with Alfred.
All-in-all, it seems like not much to say. If you’re a Batman fan, check out the movie. If you’re a Lego Movie fan, check out the movie. But all of that also seems pretty obvious. It was good. It didn’t blow me away like the Lego Movie did, but that was probably impossible.
And then, the review circuit gave me something to talk about.
There’s a review that said that a simple running joke in the movie was in fact an insidious hidden political agenda. The joke is simple: when Batman is confronted by Robin about how his adopted father, Bruce Wayne, should be consulted before he runs off to be a superhero… Batman lies. Rather than reveal his secret identity, he claims that he adopted Robin along with Bruce Wayne.
It is mentioned a few times, so it becomes a running joke. There’s not really any discussion of what relationship Bruce Wayne and Batman have – just that Robin has two fathers.
In my opinion, the joke is that Batman tells an obvious lie and Robin buys it hook, line, and sinker. The joke is that he doesn’t get it. And the joke relies on the audience knowing full well what the truth is – so the audience knows, completely, that it’s not true. So any young people who might get brainwashed by any subliminal messaging there… they know it’s a lie.
But still, there’s that thought that – because no one corrects Robin of his belief in his two fathers – it’s normalizing the idea of having two fathers. But the joke relies on the absurdity of that claim – so does it actually normalize anything?
Or is it just a joke playing on the blind trust of Robin, the naivety, and the cold Batman who won’t let anyone in?
I’d love to know what you think, about this or about the movie in general!
Posted in Movies
Tagged Batman, Bruce Wayne, DC, Lego Batman, Legos, Movie, Review, The Lego Batman Movie
This month there seems to be some more shuffling of collections of movies to different or new streaming sites, including what looks to be the movement of most of the Bond films to Amazon’s streaming service. We also see several Batman films coming to HBO, just in time for them to premiere Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Other than that, it’s a slightly slower month, but that’s okay, since we have several exciting movies coming to the big screen this month in time for the holiday season, namely Doctor Strange on November 4th and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them on November 18th.
A Netflix original chronicling the early days of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign in the United Kingdom. Netflix has generally delivered wonderful original content, and if you like history or are an anglophile, this definitely looks to be worth watching.
If you grew up reading Paddington Bear and the Knickerbocker Rainbow or one of the others, this film adaptation should be worth a watch for nostalgia sake. I know I missed it in theatres and am looking forward to a chance to see it on Netflix.
A fantastic ensemble cast heads up this espionage thriller, so to speak, directed by the Coen Brothers. One of my absolute favorites, if you haven’t seen it and are a fan of the Coen Brothers’ peculiar sense of humor, this will be a perfect fit.
You’ve probably heard that the Gilmore Girls are coming back to Netflix, and finally, this is the month! Also, just in case you still need to catch up or see what all the fuss is about, the entire series is currently available for streaming in every region.
An interesting coming of age drama that was the “darling” of the awards circuit, Boyhood is fascinating for its premise. Made over the course of twelve years, filming for a few days or a week each year, so that the actual growing up and changes that are seen in the cast are changes that happened naturally. If indie film is your thing, check this one out.
The live action version of The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau, will be coming at the end of the month. Part of Disney’s effort to revive their classics as live action, and the first non-princess one to debut. Definitely worth watching if you like the original.
This AMC miniseries is based on John le Carré’s novel by the same name and stars Tom Hiddleston as the titular character. If you missed it when it premiered on AMC like I did, check it out when it starts streaming on the 1st. It’s supposed to be a well-crafted, well-acted thriller, and also…Tom Hiddleston. Need I say more?
The second Addams Family movie was available until recently on Netflix, and I’m very happy to see it returning to a streaming service. If you’ve never seen it and love the Addams Family, give it a watch. This may be a case of the sequel being better than the original.
Too many to name, and so I’ll just say…it looks as though the Bond collection has moved to Amazon! Everything except for the Daniel Craig films will be available, and what better way to spend some of your holiday weekends than doing a Bond movie marathon?
If you missed this in theatres but have access to HBO streaming, rejoice! Because now you can watch this mediocre jump start to a franchise without having to pay movie ticket prices. Bring out the popcorn, or something stronger, if you’re like me.
Ahhhh, the ’90s Batman movies. (Okay, the ’89 Tim Burton version too…) These will all be available on HBO, and if you feel so inclined, you can relive the campy nostalgia of mainstream Batman. Although I will say, the ’89 Batman is very good; Jack Nicholson makes a fantastic Joker.
Also available if you need even more Batman fix, some of the Batman cartoon films will be available as well:
Want to see the full lists of everything streaming in November? Check out these links:
http://screencrush.com/new-amazon-prime-instant-video-releases-november-2016/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/whats-new-on-netflix-shows-movies/
Posted in Watching
Tagged Addams Family, Amazon Instant Video, Batman, Batman v. Superman, Bond, Gilmore Girls, HBO Go, HBO Now, James Bond, NetFlix, The Crown, The Jungle Book
Captain America and I are overwhelmingly, completely done with politics and this election season. I mentioned needing a break in last week’s post and this week has been no different. Of course, that’s hard to tell from my Twitter (shameless plug) and Facebook feeds, but I find I’m too opinionated to keep quiet on certain issues, et alors c’est la vie. But on debate night, we found ourselves in dire need of something more fun to do. Whereas the first debate we played a drinking game in which we had to take a sip every time we talked back to the TV (it did not go well…) we decided that was too dangerous for a Wednesday and the last debate, and wanted to avoid it entirely.
His birthday was recently, and a friend gave us Lego Dimensions and an additional game pack (Doctor Who for the win!) as a present. If you’re not familiar with the idea of Lego Dimensions, let me tell you, we weren’t either when we received it. After a lot of “oh I guess you do this and…oh you build the Legos and then play hooked up to them?” discussions that made us sound really old and confused, we decided building the main portal piece, the characters that come with the main game (Batman, Wyldstyle, and Gandalf), and then playing some video games sounded like a perfect way to pass the evening instead of torturing ourselves with the debate.
So we sat over dinner, building Legos together because WE’RE TOTALLY ADULTS and how hard could it be after building an entire (not an exaggeration) house full of IKEA furniture together? If our marriage can survive IKEA instructions over the course of two whole weeks, it’s essentially immune to everything else life throws our way. So we spent dinner cracking jokes about building things together and drinking wine, and after dinner we were ready to hook up the cool portal pad to our PS3 and start playing. We were super excited to see how this thing works, and what the levels would be like. That’s when we discovered that apparently the game has been out long enough that there’s already a patch that took 45+ minutes to download and install before we could play it.
And that’s the story of how I ended up watching the debate anyway.
Since then, I think it’s safe to say that we have maybe played 15-30 minutes of the game itself. After the debate we began to, but Dimensions involves building other pieces as you go. For example, the starter box comes with the pieces for the Batmobile piece, but not the printed instructions. You get those at a certain point after playing the game, and it’s a literal part of the story/game to build it before continuing. After starting up the game finally once the download of the patch completed, we dove into the game only to almost immediately come upon the need to build the Batmobile. Captain America was already falling asleep and needed to get up early, so we had to take a break. We tried playing again last night, and almost immediately after building the Batmobile the game froze and we had to restart our PS3. We booted it back up and started playing, and then Captain America started yawning and we called it a night after maybe only twenty minutes. I’m looking forward to trying again this weekend, because it’s definitely a cool concept and I think it will be an incredibly fun game. So far my takeaways are this:
-Download the game/patch while building the portal! You can wait until you start up the game to build the portal, but it comes with printed instructions and we preferred building it first. If only we’d known about the patch, we could have avoided the debate. Sigh…
-The portal and its pad are actually important as you play through the video game; so far we’ve already come across a boss fight that included having to move character pieces upon the portal pad as a component of the fight to avoid bad stuff thrown by the boss. Sit near the pad while playing so you’re not going “oh crap!” like we were.
-The ability to add on different universes, excuse me, dimensions, is actually really fun because it allows customization and also a possibly never-ending game. Think of the expansions! Also, interestingly enough, if a character in a game add-on you do not have is needed for special abilities, say destroying silver Lego pieces to get at special items, the game gives you the option of “renting a hero” for 30 seconds, and it only costs in-game money. A fantastic solution to a game that involves adding on levels and characters through real world money so that those who cannot do so can work to solve problems in game instead. Brilliant!
Posted in videogames
Tagged Batman, Doctor Who, First Impressions, Gandalf, Lego Dimensions, Legos, Review, Video Games, Wyldstyle
Welcome to the Comparative Opinions podcast! This week hosts Holly and David tackled one of their favorite topics, time travel. In particular, the conversation revolves around stories where there are multiple time travelers or time travel events happening at one point in history – thus “compounded time travel.” Bunches of small spoilers, but for recent things, definitely spoilers for Terminator Genisys, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Flashpoint.
Comparative Opinions is a weekly half-hour-ish podcast hosted on ComparativeGeeks.com. Subscribe for new episodes every Sunday!
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Music is by Scott Gratton: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Scott_Gratton/Intros_and_Outros
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