Spooktober: Shaun of the Dead

Shaun of the Dead
Genre: Zombie Parody
Directed by: Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield
Released: 2004

It's weird that when I first watched Shaun of the Dead I didn't really care for it. Even putting aside my love for the zombie genre, especially then in it's hey day, I'm just kind of disappointed in myself for not enjoying a thoroughly entertaining and, mostly, clever movie. Of course, I quickly grew an appreciation for it over the course of several rewatches, thankfully.

The Phoenix's Roost

The Phoenix's Roost

For a while now I've been interested in expanding the scope of my projects that actually see the light of day. Thanks to a good friend of mine coming together with me one of those projects has finally taken flight. The Phoenix's Roost is a podcast that focuses mainly on video games, but much like this blog, will cover anything that really suits our fancy. Join my friend Mattt and I for a casual chat about things we, mostly, love.

The first episode focuses on Overwatch. Due to figuring out scheduling, this was recorded two months ago (August 2nd) at this point, so if some things seem dated, that's why. Most of what we said still holds true though, and if you like what you read here, it's worth checking out. Please leave any feedback you might have, and if you like it share it with anyone who might be interested!

You can find the podcast on Podiant.

Cinephilia: The VVitch A New England Folktale

The VVitch A New England Folktale
Genre: Supernatural, Horror, Period Piece
Directed by: Robert Eggers
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
Released: 2015

Blair Witch was doomed to fail. The whole gimmick of "this is actual found footage" unraveled almost immediately, and without that aspect a lot of the impact was lost. Found footage is a dead genre in my honest opinion, the whole premise is almost always just going to irritate viewers and even if the climax gets interesting it almost never makes up for the inane opening bits. The VVitch is nothing like Blair Witch, but it manages to capture that eerie feeling of something living out in the woods.

Spooktober: Freddy vs Jason

Freddy vs Jason
Directed by: Ronny Yu
Starring: Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger
Released: 2003

A burnt child murderer vs an immortal super strong mentally stunted lad. Not much of a match up. After rewatching this movie with a friend I described it as an unfortunate child of it's time, and I think that's the best way to put it. Freddy vs Jason is an interesting movie, that could have lead the way for more fun horror crossovers, but didn't. Jaws vs Terminators! C'mon!

Spooktober: Misery

Misery
Directed by: Rob Reiner
Starring: Kathy Bates, James Caan
Released: 1990

While I'd known of this movie through references for years I'd never sat down to watch it. I was pretty sure it would appeal to me, but it's just one of those movies that I never went out of my way for. I was a fool.

Spooktober: The Devil's Rejects

The Devil's Rejects
Directed by: Rob Zombie
Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie, Sid Haig, Bill Moseley
Released: 2005

I remember when I saw the first trailer for this movie and was immediately enticed. I believe I watched this first, then went back and watched Rob Zombie's earlier House of 1000 Corpses, which, like all of his other movies, was terrible. Somehow though, The Devil's Rejects shines through in all of it's absolutely disgusting splendor.

Road to Justice: An Unjust Path

Simply put, I just don't give a shit anymore.

Twelve Days of Christmas 2015

Merry Christmas all (or whatever holiday you partake in)! I hope the season has been treating you well! I don't usually do too much for Christmas, just spending time with family really, but this year my mum and I have been watching Christmas related things to get into the spirit of things. And I'll use anything as an excuse to write more on the old It Is A Title. We switched off picking what to watch each day, leading up to finally watching A Christmas Story on Christmas Day, because what else would you watch? So without further ado, here's our Twelve Days of Christmas for 2015.

Road to Justice: Catwoman

Catwoman
Directed by: Pitof
Starring: Hallie Berry, Benjamen Bratt, Sharon Stone, Alex Borstein
Released: 2004
Watched: December 21st, 2015

Thoughts Before: A long time ago I made a vow to never watch Catwoman. It looked awful, I've heard terrible things about it from basically everyone who was unfortunate enough to have witnessed it. Tonight, I broke that vow. I set out on this Road to Justice to celebrate DC comics in all of their cinematic outings. My god. They've failed overall so hard, but this. THIS. If I hadn't decided to idiotically sit through every single DC movie in preparation for Dawn of Justice I would have turned this off. This was probably only the second or third movie where a feeling in my heart of hearts told me to turn it off, but I resisted that urge and saw it through. Granted we did watch it at 1.5 times speed so it was shorter but that only worsened the horribly awkward transitions and made the fight scenes sickening.

Road to Justice: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Directed by: Stephen Norrington
Starring: Sean Connery, Naseeruddin Shah, Peta Wilson, Tony Curran
Released: 2003
Watched: December 21st, 2015

Thoughts Before: I remember this being a fairly standard action movie. I'm not expecting much, but after the last several movies it can't be that bad. I know they used some pretty ugly CGI throughout, and that it doesn't fit the comics very well (though I haven't read those yet, but have been meaning to).  Reasonably speaking though, after Justice League of America, things can only get better from here.

Road to Justice: Justice League of America TV Pilot

Justice League of America TV Pilot
Directed by: Félix Enríquez Alcalá
Starring: A bunch of schmucks
Released: 1997
Watched: December 17th, 2015

Thoughts Before: So, we got off track with this. I can't deny it any longer. It's been such a long stretch of shitty movies, and my friend's life has been rather hectic, so it's kind of been sliding back further and further. We're three weeks behind now, but we will make it up. The movies are going to start (mostly) getting better from here (I mean Catwoman is coming up still...) and things are smoothing out for him, it seems, so hopefully we can get this road back on track. Anyway, this couldn't be THAT bad.

Road to Justice: Steel

Steel
Directed by: Kenneth Johnson
Starring: Shaquille O'Neal, Annabeth Gish, Judd Nelson
Released: 1997
Watched: November 25th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I have no idea how a Steel movie got made in the 90's. Steel isn't a bad character, but he's never really done much aside from assist around Metropolis when Superman is away, and honestly, after four Superman movies that all left me disappointed and a just as bad Supergirl movie I'm a little nervous when it comes to movie's starring characters revolving around the man of steel's city of choice. I never saw this, and aside from having seen pictures of how terrible his armor looks I have no idea what to expect.

Double Justice: Batman Forever and Robin

Batman Forever/Batman and Robin
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey/George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, Alicia Silverstone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman
Released: 1995/1997
Watched: November 13th, 2015/November 20th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I watched these as a child, as such I've only ever really viewed these movies as more than cartoons. They've become known for being notoriously bad movies, and I have to agree. Forever sees Batman meet up with his ward who becomes Robin while fighting off Two Face and Riddler. Batman and Robin introduces Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and even Bane for the dynamic duo to fight, and not only that, but Batgirl shows up as well! How could they possibly ruin this? Joel Schumacher.

Double Justice: Batman and Returns

Batman/Batman Returns
Directed by: Tim Burton
Starring: Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger/Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny Devito, Christopher Walken
Released: 1989/1992
Watched: October 30th, 2015/November 6th, 2015

Thoughts Before: At some point in my youth my mother made an awesome decision to show me all the great movie series. She wound up kind of dropping the ball (still haven't watched Back to the Future for example) but overall I ended up experiencing a ton of fantastic movie series'. The first series we went through was Batman, and damn, what a disappointment. I'll get to that over the next couple of weeks, but the first movie was fantastic. It was one of the first times I was subjected to the greatness that is Jack Nicholson. His Joker is one of my favorite portrayals of the character (don't worry Mark Hamill, no one can top you), even Heath Ledger's Joker couldn't compare (though I think he did great too). This movie still stands up, Tim Burton's vision shines through and really helped this film stand out. Returns on the other hand feels as though they turned the Tim Burton aspect up to eleven. It isn't the worst of the series, but definitely sets up the soon to come massive disappointments to follow. At the very least Catwoman is always entertaining in this movie.

Road to Justice: The Return of Swamp Thing

The Return of Swamp Thing
Directed by: Jim Wynorski
Starring: Dick Durock, Heather Locklear, Louis Jourdan
Released: 1989
Watched: October 22nd, 2015

Thoughts Before: After the original Swamp Thing movie, I'm not expecting much. On the other hand, there is almost no way this movie could be worse than the Superman flicks I've been subjected to as of late. Oddly, this movie wound up leading to a 72 episode television series. Apparently this movie tried to be a bit more humorous, and the show went with the original's "darker" themes. I'm morbidly curious about the TV show, they even managed to get the same guy to play Swamp Thing from the movies in the show.

Road to Justice: Superman IV The Quest for Peace

Superman IV The Quest for Peace
Directed by: Sidney J. Furie
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Mark Pillow, Margot Kidder
Released: 1987
Watched: October 17th, 2015

(Apologies for the delay, these posts are going up on October 21st, but are being posted under their intended date. Life got in the way.)

Thoughts Before: From what I can gather, this is the least respected most looked down upon of the Superman movies. I can understand a movie series falling apart by the fourth movie, but how does a series that was never good manage to last that long. Yeah I said it. The Superman movies are fucking terrible. Every last one of them has been a boring mess with very little going for it, other than Christopher Reeve being a pretty damn good Superman/Clark Kent. Really anyone managing to pull off that dynamic well deserves praise. I just wish he had been given better movies to work with.

Road to Justice: Supergirl

Supergirl
Directed by: Jeannot Szwarc
Starring: Faye Dunaway, Helen Slater, Hart Bochner, Peter Cook
Released: 1984
Watched: October 8th, 2015

(Apologies for the delay, these posts are going up on October 21st, but are being posted under their intended date. Life got in the way.)

Thoughts Before: Yet another movie I haven't seen yet, all I know is this is supposedly pretty bad. I don't really know what expect, and especially coming off of the other Superman movies my expectations for this are incredibly low. An 80's flick starring a female superhero with very little ground to build off in regards to the superhero genre? Yikes, things aren't looking up for our maid of might! (No really, they called her that once upon a time...)

Road to Justice: Superman III

Superman III
Directed by: Richard Lester
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Richard Pryor, Robert Vaughn
Released: 1983
Watched: September 28th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I know nothing about this movie other than it's apparently bad and that one time Superman hung out with Richard Pryor. Strange. I don't really know what to think, and I don't think an established villain even bothers showing up. Before deciding to start down this road of justice I thought I'd never watch this movie. I'm a little disappointed that I'm breaking that vow. When do we get to the good stuff?

Road to Justice: Swamp Thing

Swamp Thing
Directed by: Wes Craven
Starring: Ray Wise, Dick Durock, Adrienne Barbeau, Louis Jourdan
Released: 1982
Watched: September 24th, 2015

Thoughts Before: Having never watched this I'm not sure what to expect. Actually, writing this led to me finding out Wes fucking Craven wrote and directed this. So I guess this is in memorial to him. I assume this is going to be a corny monster movie, I saw the suit by accident earlier. I'm not expecting much.

Road to Justice: Superman II The Donner Cut

Superman II The Richard Donner Cut
Directed by: Richard Donner
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Terence Stamp
Released: 1980 (2006)
Watched: September 17th, 2015

Thoughts Before: This one I remember a lot better, there were some silly moments to be sure (specifically that weird cape attack..) but I've never seen the Richard Donner Cut. It's kind of interesting. Back in the day Donner got kicked off the project for whatever reason, and Richard Lester finished the original version. Eventually though, some lost footage was found, and someone decided to reedit the film to be as close to Donner's vision as possible. I'm excited to see the changes, but hopefully it doesn't make the movie more similar to the first...