Firebreather (2010)

51_duncankaiju2Sure, at the end of the day this computer animated movie about a fire breathing teenager is really solely geared to preteens of the male persuasion. With a male character who looks like an anime character who is geeky and has superpowers, this is a movie that will really grab a hold of the young crowds. And sure, like all cable movies, this is a potential series, but I am a complete sucker for superhero movies. And in the same vein I am a sucker for underdog tales. I vaguely remember seeing an ad for the original comic book online a few years ago, so it was surprising to see a movie pop up that was based on a comic series I’ve yet to read or even fully be aware of. Researching the series, it’s story where the villain is taken on by Firebreather and Image characters like Invincible, Shadowhawk, and many more respective properties.

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Batman Beyond: The Complete Series (Limited Edition) (DVD)

Back when Bruce Timm’s critically acclaimed award winning groundbreaking “Batman: The Animated Series” finally bowed out after branching off the “Superman” animated series, Warner approached Timm and his creative team with a mission. They wanted Batman back but this time younger, and geared to a much less mature audience. And Bruce Timm obliged and by god, he gave them a youth oriented Batman show, but he did it his way and on his terms. And what Warner likely intended to be a fun hilarious goofy series, ended up being just as moody, adult, grim, and bleak as the original Batman series. “Batman Beyond” is one of the beloved relics of the late nineties entering in to the millennium that managed to completely re-think the Batman universe, but also stay true to the themes and adult nature of the original series.

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The Expendables (2010)

I grew up with two kinds of movie fans. One (my mom) was a hardcore horror buff, and the other was an unabashed action buff (my dad), so for most of my life before I sought out various genres, all I sat and watched were sleazy action flicks and gory horror films. “The Expendables,” while not a perfect movie, is a call back to the classic action films of the seventies and eighties when men were buff, grizzled, hairy and fired off huge guns while also getting the woman in the end, it’s a traditional action film that is also director Sylvester Stallone’s own version of “The Wild Bunch” about old cowboys who have one last stand to reclaim their dignity and self-respect. They do the missions because they feel as if they have to, and they don’t take in to caution their own well beings.

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Skyline (2010)

skyline_ver3_xlgI’m still trying to wrap my head around why the Strause brothers included a very superfluous prologue of Balfour’s character being sucked in by the bright lights of the alien ships and then suddenly zooming back to him and his girlfriend in a plane with the card reading “15 Hours Earlier…” Why is that opening scene important to know? What relevance did that have to anything? Did they feel the movie was so mind-numblingly stupid they’d have to lure us in from second one? “Skyline” (a movie Roland Emmerich would groan at) is the “Dragon Wars” of 2010, a movie with a great concept that fails on every conceivable level of entertainment, competence, and creativity imaginable. This is a movie–much like “Dragon Wars”–that should rightfully have been relegated to cable television but somehow warranted a theatrical release all for a PG-13 B grade science fiction movie about aliens consuming Earth and Eric Balfour… well you’ll see.

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Assassin's Creed: Ascendance (2010)

As I suspected going in to this originally, “Ascendance” is really just something of a sample of the upcoming game to whet the appetite’s of fans and isn’t really about telling a story as it is setting up the potential for the main arc of the new “Assassin’s Creed” game. There is a lot of foreshadowing, a lot of storytelling and dialogue that’s meant to reflect on events in the game, teases to events about to occur, and even a cameo by a major influential historical figure in the final scene. Admittedly I’ve never played the game nor am I familiar with much the particulars so “Acsendance” is a short film that will be polarizing to just about anyone who hasn’t played the actual game and are unaware of the sequel and its specifics.

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Our 10 Favorite Movie Space Ships

Spaceships are probably the nerdiest aspect of any fan boy’s repertoire and knowledge. I’m not one of those nerds who take pride in owning Millennium Falcon blueprints because unless I can board it, what’s the point of owning it? Even with Harrison Ford, George Lucas, and Chewbacca’s signatures, owning a blueprint of a fictitious ship is just above and beyond nerdy and pointless. But in honor of the slew of upcoming science fiction films storming theaters like “Skyline,” and “Battle: Los Angeles,” and the foreign import “Monsters,” and “Super 8,” (and whatever crap Eli Roth is planning with his alien movie) extra-terrestrials and spaceships are slowly becoming all the rage.

So we thought we’d cash in our final chances with a living breathing woman and list our ten favorite movie spaceships in order. If we’re never going to touch breasts again, we might as well be anal about it, right? Spaceships can be just as much a character as their alien pilots, and ninety percent of the time they’re even more complex characters than the denizens within them. Sometimes they’re beacons, sometimes ratty old rust buckets, and other times they can signal ultimate annihilation for a populace consisting of forty million city goers.

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Cura Te Ipsum (Webcomic)

In the interest of full disclosure, creator Neal Bailey is a former contributor of Cinema Crazed, and a long time close friend, but we’re reviewing his comic anyway because it’s entertaining.

Web comics are a tough sell. I know for a fact. There are thousands of them out there by many talented artists and writers (I’ve read more in my time than I could hope to list), all of whom have something unique or hilarious to give readers and sadly most of them are a dime a dozen in terms of entertainment. Sometime you’ll come across something original like Penny Arcade, Nedroid, or Movie Comics, and then sometimes… there’s stuff obviously drawn on MS Paint. In the same vein, if they’re stand alone comics that have a different story every day, audiences attention spans can waver and they tend to move on and wait for better comics.

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