Review: The Hunger Games (Film)

Battle Royale is a 2000 Japanese film based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Koushun Takami. The main plot revolves around a dystopian future where the government selects a group of young people to fight to the death for their cruel amusement-

What’s that? This isn’t Battle Royale? This is The Hunger Games? Huh. Okay.

The Hunger Games is a 2012 American film based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins. The main plot revolves around a dystopian future where the government selects a group of young people to fight to the death for their cruel amusement.

Alright, alright, it’s not exactly the most original of sentiments as far as this flick goes but the fact is if you’re even remotely familiar with Battle Royale you’ll be unable to shake the feeling that you’ve heard this idea somewhere before. Sorry Miss Collins but this is your fate. Anyway this film was directed by Gary Ross who has only directed two feature length films prior to this but they were Pleasantville and Seabiscuit which were both pretty critically acclaimed movies. Collins also wrote the screenplay, which is really goddamn rare in Hollywood when the author of the book also writes the script. So there’s that.

Now I joke about the Battle Royale connection but there might be a stronger case for similarities in tone and style to Twilight as they are both young adult novels and I’m pretty certain that it was Hollywood’s quest to find the “next Twilight” that led to this film’s existence. Going into this flick there’s a lot of things to be concerned with. But the film has been doing crazy well so that usually means it’s really good right?

 Haha, of course not! Full review after the jump.

Summer Movie Preview

(I forgot to mention earlier but I have a poll on side of the page.  If you haven't yet please take the time to answer it if you would be so inclined.)

For me at least Summer Movie Season starts in May. The summer of 2012 will be a good one of us nerdy folk as there’s a lot of sci-fi and comic book based flicks coming out. Today I decided to compile a list of some films coming out that appeal to my dorky sense and what exactly I think about them at this point. This is just for fun I’m not seriously reviewing these movies right now and I may have missed something. For the most part these are the films that have been on my radar. Notice of all these films the Fantastic Four reboot is missing. Back some time ago a new movie starring the First Family of Marvel was announced around the same time as the Spider-Man reboot and I was actually pretty excited to hear that. I guess while Amazing Spider-Man was fast tracked Fox kind of dropped the ball with the FF.

Click below for more.

Review: John Carter

No one remembers John Carter of Mars. Well clearly we kind of remember it now that it has a new film based on it, but certainly before the average citizen had no clear idea what the John Carter of Mars series was or that pretty much all modern science fiction is in some form or another derived from (Arguably). The book series was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs who also created a small, not well known character called Tarzan. That’s right; the guy who created Tarzan also created John Carter. Don’t feel too bad if you didn’t know this. As I said the world forgot that John Carter existed, and I’m no exception.

Which brings us to John Carter, the Walt Disney produced action/adventure film that ultimately bombed in theaters. But it shouldn’t have since it was directed by Andrew Stanton who also directed Wall-E which was one of the best films produced in the past ten years, probably longer. You’d think with that sort of prestige everyone who thought Wall-E was even slightly good would have been in line to see this film. Nope. Why did it fail? Well part of it has to be that critics did not seem to really enjoy it and while that doesn’t always affect a film’s gross (See: Michael Bay’s Transformers) but it can.

Weirdly the film is based on the original book, A Princess of Mars, but they opted not to use the name. Apparently it was because Disney feared that a film with the word “Princess” in its title would alienate boys. I’m not sure what I despise more: the sentiment behind that way of thinking or the fact that we live in a society where that way of thinking is valid. So they changed to name John Carter of Mars but then shortened it to just John Carter in order try to get a larger audience to go see it. Well played, Burroughs, your plan worked brilliantly. Wait…

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: There are some minor spoilers here.  But nothing too bad]

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #1

This is a comic that in one way is a cool idea and in another way a completely superfluous concept. On paper a comic that puts the X-Men against the Avengers seems awesome. What plot device could possibly force these two teams against each other? Well decades ago when the X-Men battled the Avengers it was over Magneto (And in the 60s every superhero pretty much would fight any other at the drop of a hat; no reason necessary). This time it’s over the Phoenix Force. And also, you know, Cyclops being a dick. Because it’s 2012 and Cyclops hasn’t been a nice guy since 2007. For a little bit of background on the Phoenix click here.

Anyway Avengers vs. X-Men, or AVX for some reason, is a twelve issue maxi-series that obviously pits Marvel Comic's two premier superhero team against each other. At this point the X-Men are pretty much where we left off in X-Men: Schism; the team is still split between Utopia, where Cyclops continues to run the mutant race like an army, and Xavier’s Mansion, where Professor Logan imparts his wisdom on the next generation of X-Men (God help them). Meanwhile the Avengers, after lengthy period of overly dark storytelling, have pretty much finally gotten back to their status quo from before Civil War meaning that Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor are all alive and back to being friends again and the team is unabashedly a force for good. This series is set to be more of a slugfest between the two sides rather than a complex series of story events…and I’m strangely okay with this.

Anyway this book was written by Brian Michael Bendis, the man responsible for revamping the Avengers into the darker, less fun team they became during the 2000s and also Ultimate Spider-Man. Artwork was done by John Romita, Jr. with inks by Scott Hanna and colors by Laura Martin. With my well-publicized disappointment over X-Men: Schism on the table did AVX do anything to win me back to Marvel’s side?

Click below to find out.

Nerd Rage #10: What the @#$% is the Phoenix Force?

Yes, this is exactly the type of thing you want on your planet

So sometime in the next few days I’ll review the first issue of Avengers vs. X-Men which is Marvel Comics’ latest big crossover. Originally I was going to write today about the events leading up to this book like I did with X-Men: Schism but truth be told I’ve haven’t really been keeping up with Marvel lately and I don’t really know the details well enough to write a whole essay about it. Basically this comic is exactly what its title says: a conflict between Marvel’s two premier superhero teams. Avengers: X-Sanction (Wherein former X-Man Cable turned out to be more alive than we thought and tries to kill the shit out of the Avengers) was something of a lead-in to this series but aside from that I really don’t have the chops to rant about what lead to all this.

Instead I figured I talk about the main source of conflict into his comic. Marvel has stated the series will focus on the return of the Phoenix Force as it comes to Earth to claim Hope Summers as its new host. Now the Avengers think that this is a bad idea because the Phoenix has a history of being pretty goddamn genocidal while the X-Men welcome its arrival and are trying to train Hope for her new role. It’s occurred to me though that the entity of the Phoenix has a long and convoluted history and that anyone reading my review that don’t have any idea what the hell it is. And really, after doing a little research on the subject, f**k the Phoenix!

 A new rant after the jump.

Review: Planet of the Apes

What can I possibly say about Planet of the Apes? No, not the disaster of a film directed Tim Burton in 2001 and starring Marky Mark Mark Walberg. I’m talking about the 1968 classic directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starring Charlton Heston. The film that started a franchise that will not die continues to this day it was based on the 1963 book La Planète des singes by French author Pierre Boulle. It may surprise you to learn that while I’ve seen the remake from 2001 and even reviewed the 2011 reboot I’ve actually never seen the original films, not even the first one. Apparently this is to the disgust of The Lady (Who hadn’t seen Star Wars until I forced her so I don’t think she really has any room to judge).

We all know how the film ends, both in story and real life. A runaway success the movie led to all sorts of sequels, spin-offs, parodies and, eventually, remakes. But the sad fact is that 1968 was a long time ago and things change. Is the film actually as good as its legend implies, or is it another example of overrated 1960s fluff?

Full review after the jump.

Anime Review: Ga-Rei Zero

Ga-Rei Zero is a 2008 anime prequel (As opposed to an adaptation) to the popular manga series Ga-Rei by Hajima Segawa. The cartoon was produced by AIC, the studio responsible for such classic anime as Green Legend Ran, Amitage III (Both among the first first anime I ever watched), Bastard!!, the Bubblegum Crisis series, the Burn-Up series and the Tenchi Muyo! series. It was dubbed by FUNimation Entertainment who brought it to North America in 2011. In the original broadcast it was advertised that this show would be a completely different story from the manga and featuring an all-new cast but that turned out to be a red-herring as the second episode firmly establishes it as a prequel story focusing on (From what I understand) the comic's secondary main character and initial villain before they were enemies. Or something. It's really hard to know for sure because Ga-Rei was never licensed in America. That's right; the anime spin-off has been brought to America but not the original source material manga. So, in a very real way, this anime is kind of pointless for us; it was almost certainly created to help bring more attention to the manga, or at least give readers better insight to certain key characters. However us Western viewers don't have any (legal) access to the comic so we don't get any of that. Thanks for nothing anime industry.

If you recall with our last anime review I mentioned I ended up watching three entire anime series back-to-back (Roughly eighteen hours) in one sitting, nearly driving myself insane in the process. This was the second of the three. As you may know I didn't exactly care for Demon King Daimao, so the question is did Ga-Rei Zero do anything to ease the pain.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: There are some spoilers here from very early on in the series (First two episodes).  If you would like to watch Ga-Rai Zero blind to capitalize on that fact do not read this article.  However I do not spoil the lot of the show so if you're cool with that full steam ahead]

Zombie Apocalypse NOW! Video (Shameless Self-Promotion)

In yet another instance of self-promotion here's a video I just whipped up of my band Zombie Apocalypse NOW! playing at an annual event in Holland, MI called "Wo-Stock". Check it out.

By the way the web address is slightly wrong. You'll want to click here for the Facebook page.