Category: Mainstream Entertainment

All posts relating to general happenings in mainstream entertainment, where it’d be movies, television, music, or other things that fall within that bubble.

The Hobbit… In Few Words

Kevin Smith has more walking scenes to mimic in his future public speaking ventures if he wants to mock the Rings once more.

In all honesty, it looks decent. The battles were as well done as million dollar CG will allow, and the story was alright for the most part. However, it tends to drag at times and there were a couple of occasions where I was falling asleep. Sometimes, story decompression isn’t such a good idea.

Not a bad flick, but could have been shorter. We’ll see about the next one.

Ponies? No thanks…

Early in the morning, I decided to check out Netflix… Netflix apparently had the new My Little Pony animated series that are making so-called bronies everywhere act like jabronies. Feeling a bit bored, I decided to sample an episode of the show… and promptly shut it off after about five minutes…

I guess I’m not a bronie… I’ll stick with that other girly show about magical girls in sailor suits. At least it’s part of the same species…

Now… upon further study, I realize the above post needs a bit more context, so here’s the deal. This is not a “hate” thing or anything like that. I sampled about five minutes of a twenty minute episode of the show and decided that it was not for me. Kudos to all involved for producing a show that people like enough to gain some popularity; I’m just not one of those folks.

So I Saw Dark Knight Rises

Generally speaking, it’s almost on par with the previous two films in Nolan’s Bat trilogy. A near-three-hour movie might seem long, but there was never an instance where I felt like falling asleep and even the duller moments kept me interested in what was going on. Bale’s Batman still sounds like crap, but Tom Hardy did a good job with Bane, who finally got a proper cinematic treatment compared to the character’s butchering by Joel Shoemaker in Batman & Robin. And the movie’s end (won’t spoil it here) is a fitting, almost appropriate closure to the trilogy while leaving the door open for a possible return to that universe. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

So yeah. Rises was pretty damn good.

More Details On The Upcoming MMPR DVD Sets

Set to be released in August, the first volume of many Power Rangers DVD sets will contain the first thirty episodes of MMPR Season 1 and will be closed captioned. More details along with the cover art can be found at the following link:

Three DVDs with ten episodes each? Looks like the earlier seasons might be broken up into two halves, while the later Disney seasons will probably only need a single volume to contain the whole series. And it probably would have been a longshot for something a little extra to be included onto the pile.
Oh well… As long as the price is right, I might pick this up… or perhaps I’d be better off waiting for complete season sets when those eventually get released. In the meantime, I still have Netflix.

Before There Were The Hunger Games, There Was Battle Royale

Yeah, so last week, I picked up the Battle Royale Complete Collection. Have yet to see the second film or the first film’s theatrical cut, but the Director’s Cut was pretty damn brutal… in a good way. I’ve been wanting to see this film for ages (even settling for the manga at one point) due to its somewhat controversial nature and I’m pleased to say that it’s been worth the wait. Tremendously enjoyable with students killing each other in many brutal ways and I’m generally not into gory stuff in general. I’m not going to say a whole lot here; only that there’s a good story in there, there’s an insightful message if you’re willing to look deep, and it is a powerful haunting depiction of a future that could have been… and perhaps can still be.

Will shed some thoughts on the second movie when I get the chance to watch, but the original Battle Royale is definitely one that met my expectations and worth the long anticipated wait.