5 DC Characters Deserving of Their Own Film.

In recent years, Marvel comics have been kicking total ass in the film world. Most of the X-Men and Spider-Man movies have been pretty good, but they've all been under different studios, so the quality of most Marvel properties have been highly variable. The recent creation of Marvel Studios has allowed for less popular characters like Iron Man and Hulk to theaters in a more quality-assured structure, being overseen more directly by the publisher. Since these characters are under one studio, crossover is possible, just like in the comics. We've seen Tony Stark in the Hulk movie, Nick Fury in the Iron Man film, and soon Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Hulk will be appearing together in an Avengers movie. It's a great time to be a Marvel fan, so long as you aren't actually reading the comics, which are pretty poor right now.

But what about DC? They've got just as massive a roster of heroes worthy of cinema, plus the ownership of media powerhouse Warner Brothers to help realize a rich intertwining film universe. It seems obvious, yet we've seen nothing but two Batmen and a half-assed Superman film in the last decade, plus a couple of out-of-universe projects like Watchmen.

The future's looking brighter for DC heroes, but not by much. Green Lantern begins filming very shortly, another Superman has been announced, a Flash movie is rumored, Wonder Woman has been on and off for the last 10 years, and another Batman movie is inevitable. Still, there are a lot of smaller names in the family that won't see recognition for a long time. Let's get to the part where I list them, shall we?

A hypothetical conversation with Michael Cera

I like Michael Cera. Pretty much any actor who starred or even featured in Arrested Development gets a lifetime pass from me. I don't care if he seemingly plays the same character in every movie he's in, I like the character. Hell, I wouldn't care if he literally played the same character in every movie. George Michael Bluth, wearing the Bluth's Banana Stand uniform in Superbad, Juno and what all else. Tell me that wouldn't be great. He'd be some kind of inter-dimensional traveller, only all of the dimensions would be really similar.

So, today I was thinking, "what if I ran into Mr. Cera some day?" What would I say to him? Would I compliment him on his work? Discuss how great "Scott Pilgrim" is? No and no. I would spend the entire conversation greeting him with a string of long and increasingly ridiculous puns on his name, not letting him get a single word in, then I'd say goodbye. Maybe I'd shake his hand the entire time, not letting go. Maybe not. Anyway, here's what I've come up with so far:

Breaking down the trailer to Toy Story 3

I was going to embed this, but mean old Disney won't let me.

Sheeeee-it, you guys, are you excited? I'm excited. Above is the latest trailer to Toy Story 3. I've watched it about a dozen times since it was released earlier today, and I've noticed a few things I think are worth mentioning. So click that link, pull that sucker up in another window, and follow along as I point out some bits of interest at various times in the trailer.

The 1st Annual Academy Awards Predictions Blog Post

It's been said dozens of times before, but award shows are bollocks. Most are just the entertainment industry patting itself on the back whilst beautiful people show off their latest designer gowns, designer spouses and half-assed activist pet projects. There are maybe three or four even remotely notable, those being the Emmys (even though television is a dying medium and has less worth celebrating every year), the Grammys (even though they're always five years behind the latest developments in music), the Tonys (even though nobody outside of New York has ever seen the nominees) and the Academy Awards. I'm here to talk about the latter.

With nominations just released today, I thought it would be totally rad and not at all cliche to dedicate a post to my predictions. I'll stick to a familiar "will win, should win" format, with "shouldn't win"s wherever appropriate or wherever James Cameron is nominated. Let's go!

My thoughts on 2009, Part Three

Top 4 Most Disappointing Movies of 2009

4. X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Now, it's not like I ever expected a movie about the least-interesting, yet inexplicably popular X-men to be any good, but I had expected something more than this. This was such an empty, careless effort. The story is "Wolverine walks from fight scene to fight scene as decades pass with no consequence" and you can almost taste the apathy from everyone involved. It's like the writer, director and cast all suddenly realized that they were in a movie about Wolverine.

3. 9 - As my previous movie lists have established, small-budget movies make me drool. I wanted "9" to be good, but it isn't. It isn't bad. It isn't anything memorable or notable. It's a sequence of pretty cool action scenes and occasionally-beautiful animation with terrible dialogue and a story that starts nowhere, goes nowhere, and ends nowhere. I felt like I was watching a video game I couldn't play, but would have liked to.

My thoughts on 2009, Part Two

Okay, let's get back to it.

Top 7 Movies of 2009 I Haven't Seen Yet (I Swear There are Only Two or Three More Movie Ones)

7. Fantastic Mr. Fox - Typically I can't stand Wes Anderson films, but I'll admit that the trailers for this one charmed me. Hearing how little actual directing Anderson did only made me more interested in this one.

6. World's Greatest Dad - I love a good dark comedy, and Robin Williams playing the failed author father of a kid who died of autoerotic asphyxiation and then forging a suicide note for him, which becomes famous, forcing him to forge an entire diary to finally find success as a writer sounds like an absolute winner to me.

5. Dead Snow - As Much as I love zombies, I'll admit that I'm growing tired of them. There are only so many things you can do to them, really. However, "undead frozen Nazis thawed out and angry" is something I haven't seen before and very much want to.

My thoughts on 2009, Part One

Initially I was going to do the cliche thing and make a series of "Top -X- -Ys- of '09" lists for music, movies, video games, and what all else, but there are numerous things going against that. I only purchased two new albums this year, and only played three or four new video games worth discussing, so I couldn't pick a uniform number. Also, even if I could, I just don't care enough too. It's a lot of effort naming and ranking things for a list I doubt anybody will actually take too seriously.

Let's try something else instead, a countdown of lists. This way it's unique and interesting and I don't have to do as much work. So here we go:

Cameron's Top 9 "Top n-1" Lists of 2009, and Note That I am Aware That There are a Lot I Have Not Seen/Listened to/Whatever.

Top 9 Movies of 2009

9. District 9 - Impressive visuals and an excellent sci-fi allegory done cheap and done right. The declarations of this "stealing 'Avatar''s thunder" were hyperbolic but understandable.

8. Adventureland - "Superbad" director Greg Mottola has solidified his place as the new John Hughes with this warm and relatable, if not always laugh-out-loud funny comedy.

7. The Hurt Locker - Very few movies have been made on the War on Terror, but this intense depiction of bomb diffusing in Iraq does a lot to fill that void.

All I got for Christmas was a chance to beef up my site content.

"It's a Pagan holiday, Charlie Brown."

This blog's still in its early stages, so just bear with me while I fiddle about with posting links, editing images, and giving readers more lists of things to skim through for their/my amusement.

Anyway, I hope everyone reading this had a kickin' rad Christmas/whatever holiday you celebrate/honestly, it's probably Christmas, right? I know I did. Honestly, this was one of the better Christmases in memory for me. I didn't sit around bored all day in a silent room with a silent family, since now that I'm in college suddenly my relatives and I have things to discuss. It's always good to see aunts and grandparents and cousins and a great aunt? whose name I can't remember (but it's alright, I don't think she knew mine either).