Celebrating the Resurrection of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"

In the right format, the Ninja Turtles are pretty damn incredible. There’s just something about anthropomorphic human sized mutant turtles that are ninjas and know Ninjitsu that is just so darn appealing. What’s more is that there’s just something about the concept that is just so entertaining. Even when Eastman and Laird never intended for the series to be for kids, the Ninja Turtles always seemed destined to become icons for childhood superheroes who fought bad guys while entertaining tweens and all audiences alike. The eighties was the golden age of the Ninja Turtles where they were household names. There was just nothing but an avalanche of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles merchandise and clothing that you couldn’t fit it all in one giant warehouse.

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Continuum: Our Thoughts So Far

Syfy’s newest Canadian import garners some of my favorite aspects of fiction. There’s a Utopian future. And Rachel Nichols. There’s time travel. And Rachel Nichols. There’s futuristic villains and clandestine organizations. And Rachel Nichols. And of course, there are plays on time travel paradoxes that “Continuum” has a lot of fun playing with. And there’s Rachel Nichols. One element of the initial storyline revolving around season one of “Continuum” is the inevitability of time and fates and what happens when time travel is used. Could going back in time and tinkering with the fates of others alter the timeline? Or is there an already preset path that can not be stopped no matter how much you attempt to destroy it? If our mind predetermines our actions, wouldn’t that be applied to time travel? If heroine Keira never traveled back in time to thwart the efforts of Liber8, would she have ended up in her life? And what effect does two existing Keira’s in the universe ultimately have?

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Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)

From what I’ve read, Dimension has the right to Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” property and wants to remake the film series. But the ever troubled production has reached the point where the rights have run out. To keep the rights, Dimension basically rushed out a cheap shoddy sequel to the original “Hellraiser” series. This is a movie so horribly made and poorly constructed that the iconic Doug Bradley opted out of his star making role as the horrific Pinhead, due to his salary being chopped down from the low budget film. In his place is Stephan Smith Collins a poor bastard who has to live up to Bradley’s gravitas as Pinhead in every conceivable way and wages a losing battle from the very beginning.

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We Love "Hulk"

Being a pure comic book geek I was most surprised to discover that not only did The Incredible Hulk steal one of the biggest movies of 2012, “The Avengers,” but that the man who played him, Mark Ruffalo, has been the best Bruce Banner so far. The Hulk has been in two movies prior to “The Avengers,” and the limited screen time of The Hulk has warranted renewed interest in the character.

The Hulk is now going to have yet another new movie series in the work and is set to debut on television once again as Hollywood misses the point. Once again. The Hulk is excellent. In limited doses. In either case, while the first two cinematic efforts to give the Hulk a series have failed, I do have to admit one thing about the prior films.

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The ABC's of Death (2013)

14L7J0EOne aspect of “The ABC’s of Death” that many audiences will acknowledge. Even when it’s bad it’s really damn unique. “The ABC’s of Death” isn’t always a home run, and I will in no way consider it a masterpiece of modern cinema any time soon, but as an ambitious experience bold enough to include various themes that are normally considered in bad taste for mainstream cinema, I was fond of it. I appreciated its ambition. I respected its originality, and I really did love its sense of humor.

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Our "Exposure" to Short Films

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Back in the golden days of cable television, Syfy–known as the Sci Fi channel–was rather entertaining. I’d sometimes sit down in front of the television and watch it all day long basking in stuff like “The Twilight Zone,” that horrible show “Sightings,” and “Lost in Space,” while Saturdays brought cartoons, and anime. These days, though, I barely ever want to watch it unless there’s a marathon of “Firefly,” or a crappy television movie on, and even then it’s debatable. I don’t WANT to see “Lake Placid 6,” but… I couldn’t keep from watching it when it premiered! The reason for my hatred of Syfy is because, I have them to thank for my exposure to short independent films.

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TekWar: The Movie (1994)

MV5BMTUxMzczMDIwOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzYwMjAzMQ@@._V1_SX214_Boy can your memories lie to you. I fondly remember watching “Tekwar” back in 1994 when I’d watch literally anything that was on TV. The station WPIX in New York launched a slew of television movies that were destined to become television shows in the immediate future, and “Tekwar” was one of them. Based on the novels by William Shatner, “Tekwar” began as a series of television movies, then it became a comic book series (I was never that desperate for comics), and inevitably became a television series. Since watching it twice in 1994, I only fondly remember the robotic hockey player who, at one point, has to battle Greg Evigan’s shady police officer character in a hockey rink.

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