Fishing in the Discount Bin - Jaws

And here we are, once again, with Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly watch of something in my DVD collection.  Today, we get to one of those classics that I'm stunned I'd never seen before...Jaws.  This entry is dated in my notes at September 8, 2012.  

Superman Unbound Review

Well, for the past few weeks, I've been watching every Star Trek movie as part of my own personal preperation for Into Darkness coming out this Friday.  Given it takes me about 5 months for things to move from my notes to this blog, look for my epic 11-part series on every Star Trek movie in Fishing in the Discount Bin some time this fall.   But, now that that's done, I can start working my way through all the other new DVDs I've acquired over the past few weeks, such as Warner Bros. latest straight-to-DVD DC Comics movie...

Superman Unbound

Directed by James Tucker

Starring the voices of Matt Bomer, Stana Katic, John Noble, Molly Quinn, Diedrich Bader, Frances Conroy, Alexander Gould, and Stephen Root.

  

Backstory:  While I generally enjoy these DC films, I am starting to grow weary of them being about nothing but Batman and Superman.  But still, Superman seems to be a little bit tricky for most, and these films seem to be the best way to explore other facets of the Superman mythology, other than just the Batman vs. Lex Luthor or General Zod that we only seem to get at the movies.  So this latest one is based on the storyline Brainiac from a few years ago, which gave us a gritty reboot for Superman's  nemesis Braniac, and re-introduced many beloved aspects of the Superman universe, such as the bottled city of Kandor.  And it's nice when the spotlight is shone on other members of Superman's rogues gallery.  So let's see how this one fares.

Plot:  A mysterious probe falls out of space and lands in Arizona.  Superman goes to investigate and does battle with this alien android.  When he takes the wreckage back to the Fortress of Solitude for analysis, Supergirl is quickly able to identify it as one of the robot drones of Brainiac...a ruthless alien cyborg who travels the universe, collecting information on whole planets, capturing their cities to be archived, and then destroying the planet and moving on.  Supergirl knows all this because she was there when Brainiac came to Krypton and took their capital city of Kandor.  Hearing all this information, Superman heads into deep space to take the battle to Brainiac before he reaches Earth.  It's a journey that will put Superman back in touch with his heritage, Supergirl face-to-face with her demons, and the fate of Metropolis in the balance. 

What I Liked:  Lots of great outer-space action.  A great subplot for Supergirl, as she is truly traumatized at having witness Kandor's destruction and the threat of Brainiac's return.  Great voice acting all around.  Matt Bomer makes a great Superman.  Stana Katic is perhaps the sassiest Lois Lane we've seen so far in these films, and it's a great laugh seeing her give Brainiac the finger.  And it's nice to see that the big screen superhero movie trend of the post-credit sequence has made its way to these animated films.

What I Didn't Like:  Just can't shake the feeling that I've seen this all before.  For example, it seems like Clark Kent and Lois Lane's domestic squabbles are always the subplot in these Superman films, and it's just starting to get so repetitive.

Final Verdict:  Just a solid Superman adventure

3 Nibs

 Bonus Materials:  On this Blu-Ray, we get a running commentary with the director and several DC bigwigs, a featurette on the history of Brainiac, a featurette on the history of Kandor, 4 bonus episodes of Superman: The Animated Series, a digital comic excerpt from the original Brainiac storyline, and a preview of the next straight-to-DVD film, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox. 

I'm kind of looking forward to the next one.  As I said, I'm growing tired of the Superman/Batman dynamic, but Flashpoint, despite having Justice League up front, is very much a Flash story, so it's nice to see the Flash taking centre stage.

And hey, DC, since you've come to adding digital comics as a bonus feature, how about making it an actual digital comic, that you download to your digital comic app?  And not just projecting the pages of the comic on your TV?  Just a thought. 

Prairie Sentinels

So I've recently become fascinated with grain elevators, mainly because Westlock has one, and I'm walking past it every day.  We've all heard the tales by now, about how these once dotted the landscape across western Canada, but now, they're almost gone.  Every small town from about 1850 on had one.  Farmers would bring their grain in there, where it would be loaded up onto rail cars and shipped off to market.

They started going away in the 1990s or so, as it started becoming cheaper and easier to truck the grain off to market.  The railways started pulling up their short lines to all these rural towns, and the grain elevators started getting demolished soon after.  Which is why Westlock's is so fascinating.  It's still operational.  It's still viable.  As you can tell by all the silos next to it, it's so thriving it's been added to several times over the years.

I wonder how technologically advanced it is.  How automated and computerized are grain elevators these days?  I mean, the last instance I know of of a new grain elevator is when I drove by one when I was kid in the 1980s.  And since they started going away in the 1990s, I imagine that grain elevator technology really didn't advance much past the 1980s.

Don't get me wrong, I know how they work.  I've spoken with the interpreters who man the grain elevator at the Ukranian Cultural Heritage Centre, I've seen the demonstration of the grain elevators interior at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum.   Hell, working in a grain elevator was one of my Dad's first jobs off the farm and he'll gladly tell you stories.

So, yeah.  Not much more to say, nothing really profound.  Just as so many begin to feel nostalgic for these old prairie skyscrapers, I just feel lucky that I have one in my own backyard. 

And in case you've never been to one of the many places where they explain how a grain elevator works, here's a neat old documentary about grain elevators I found on the National Film Board of Canada website.  Just play the sound of a 16mm projector in the background, and it's just like movie day in school!

Grain Elevator by Charles Konowal, National Film Board of Canada

Big Hero 6

Like a lot of geeks, I feel that animation and superheroes are a medium and a genre made for each other.  Who needs to worry about fancy special effects?  Just draw it.  No more nerd rage over who the perfect actor is.  Just draw the perfect guy.  It's just so easy.

So, of course, when Disney bought Marvel back in 2009, people came up with wish lists a mile long as to what Marvel heroes would best be given the Disney animated treatment.  And, earlier this week, Disney made the announcement as to which Marvel hero is coming to the big screen in animation first.  And that is...

Big Hero 6.

Big Hero 6 follows the adventures of Japan's first group of state-sanctioned superheroes.  It's the Alpha Flight of Japan.  However, the film will mainly focus on one member of the group, Hiro Hamada, a robotics prodigy, and his prize creation Baymax, a humanoid robot who can transform into a giant dragon.  And the film will follow the adventures of Hiro as he goes out to recruit the heroes and save the day.

Disney is already saying it's "inspired by" the original comic, so that means there's going to be lots of deviations from the source material.  The man behind it is Disney animator Don Hall, who co-directed Disney's last attempt at traditional 2D animation, Winnie the Pooh.  No word yet on who's doing voices or any of that, but Disney's already hard at work on it.

Earlier this week, they released concept of art of "San Fransokyo," the San Fransisco/Tokyo mash-up that serves as our film's setting.

And they also released this test footage of a San Fransokyo flyover.





I'm interested in this.  As I said, I love superheroes in animation, and the fact that Disney is finally being turned loose on the Marvel library is intriguing.  But still, it's very early.  Who knows what can happen?

Big Hero 6 is scheduled to come out November 2014. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - A Couple of Star Trek Episodes

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly look at one of the many DVDs I own.  Something different this week, as we take a look at a couple of individual Star Trek episodes that I've accumulated over the years.   This entry was originally written on September 8, 2012.

Iron Man 3 Review

So, where do we go after The Avengers?  That film was just so big, so grand, so over the top, that the question of where Marvel goes with their Phase II was one that I was really wondering.  Could they go bigger?  Do they save "big" for The Avengers now, with each individual hero's film now smaller?  Really, where do we go from here?

Well, Marvel is kicking off Phase II with the guy who started their run at the box office in the first place, Tony Stark, back on screen with Iron Man 3.  There were a few creative changes behind the scenes.  Jon Favreau, director of the first two films, steps down as the director this time, although he does reprise his role of Happy Hogan, Tony Stark's chauffeur and bodyguard (and now head of Stark Industries security).  ("You know what people would do when I told them I was Iron Man's bodyguard?  They'd laugh in my face!"  A great line in the film, explaining why he chose his new vocation.)  Taking over in the director's chair is Shane Black, the legendary Hollywood screenwriter who pretty much invented the cop-buddy genre when he wrote Lethal Weapon back in the 80s, and kind of launched Robert Downey Jr's comeback with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang back in 2005.  With promises that Iron Man's arch-enemy the Mandarin would finally be rearing his head, the game was set for Phase II to begin.

It's a few months after the events of The Avengers, and Tony Stark is still rather stressed out from the experience.  He's having nightmares about the battles, has become prone to panic attacks, and not even he can answer the #1 question people ask him, "So how did you get back through that wormhole?"  As such, he's become obsessed with the idea of protection and spends his nights in his workshop producing bigger, better armors.  His friend and sidekick James Rhodes, recently re-branded as the Iron Patriot ("War Machine sounded too aggressive.  Iron Patriot tested better in focus groups.") is on the hunt for the terrorist known as the Mandarin, who has launched a series of attacks on American soil.  And Pepper Potts is being wooed, both personally and professionally, by her old employer Aldrich Killian to come back and work for him.  When one of the Mandarin's attacks puts Happy Hogan in the hospital, Tony takes on the mission to track down the Mandarin.  This leads Tony Stark on a mission to confront demons from this past, battle his personal demons, and finally bring the Mandarin to justice.

As always, Robert Downey Jr thoroughly owns the role of Tony Stark.  He's so full of charm and swagger and pithy one liners that you just can't help but love the guy.  In the mid-section of the film, he actually even picks up a kid sidekick, and their banter with one another is priceless.  It's nice to see Gwyneth Patlrow even gets to get in on some of the ass-kicking as Pepper Pots this time around, as she does get a little more to do than just be the damsel-in-distress.  Don Cheadle is great too as War Machine/Iron Patriot.  Seriously, give him his own movie at this point.  And the Mandarin...oh my God.  There is a great plot twist concerning the origins of the Mandarin, and the way it's revealed in the film is just so damn funny...I don't want to give it away, but trust me, it's fantastic.  

I also want to give props to Brian Tyler's score.  One of my main complaints about the dearth of superhero films over the past 15 years is there's been a true lack of iconic superhero themes that I'd put alongside John Williams' Superman theme and Danny Elfman's Batman theme.  And while Tyler's Iron Man 3 doesn't reach that iconic status, you can at least pick it out of the soundtrack. 



However, I did find that the film slowed down a bit in the middle.  It kind of dragged on for a bit while , and Tony Stark's swagger is about all that kept it going.  What can I say?  I wanted to see more men in suits blowing stuff up.  And also, sometimes, I did find it tough to follow what was going on.  I mean, I saw it in 3D, right?  And we all know now that when you put on those 3D glasses, everything goes dimmer.  So why on Earth then, when they make films in 3D, do they keep putting all the action scenes at night?  Made it very tough to know what was going on.  

(I also found it tough to follow what was going because, at the very crowded theatre where I saw it, the 8-year old girl I sat next to grew restless and kept checking her cellphone, wandered down the aisle to check on her father and brother who were sitting 5 rows down, and all other kinds of restless kid stuff.)

All in all, I find it was a very good and very entertaining film, if only it lacked more "men-in-suit" action.

3 Nibs

Oh, and I've got to hand it to Jon Favreau and what he started.  The truth is, when Nick Fury popped up at the end of Iron Man's credits, Marvel wasn't planning their "Phase I" yet.  Favreau just thought it'd be a cute post-credits scene.  But the post-credit scene has now become such an ingrained part of the superhero film genre.  Back in 2008 with the first film, it was just me and the other half-a-dozen people who usually sit around until the end of the end credits.  And now, the entire dang audience stayed riveted to their seats to the post-credits scene this time around. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Fantasia 2000

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly peek at one of the many, many DVDs in my collection.  Today, we finish off what we started last week.  We cap off Disney's Fantasia franchise with Fantasia 2000.  This entry is originally dated September 2, 2012.