Trending: JL8

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

Every now and again I get sucked into really specific obsessions.  Lately that obsession has been webcomics, all thanks to stumbling upon JL8: a webcomic that reimagines DC's expansive cast of characters as eight-year-olds.  It's adorable, hilarious and endlessly addictive.

As of this article, the series is 200 comics of concentrated awesomeness.  After coming across it one night after a closing shift, I stayed up until after three in the morning: reading them all in a single sitting.  I told myself when I started to hear the birds rousing outside that I was going to go to bed after just one more strip, but that clearly didn't happen.

The thing about JL8 is that it is hopelessly earnest.  It's a heartfelt slice-of-life comic with strong silver-age sensibilities and a true understanding about what makes each of its characters tick.

Bruce and Clark are friends, even if they don't see eye to eye on most things.  Barry and Hal are the immature pranksters, even if one's more of a clown and the other's basically Benny from The Lego Movie.  Diana is a princess who hates the idea of being some kind of damsel in distress, while Karen wants nothing less than to live inside of a fairy tale.  J'onn is the icing on the cake: an exchange student from Mars who plays the straight man to everybody else's increasingly zany antics.

While the strip does wax from adorable to joke-of-the-day, the focus generally on larger story arcs, most of which clock in at around 50 strips.  The first narrative arc has the boys incredibly self-conscious after a local newspaper refers to them as kids (exacerbated by the 4th grade bullies - Toy Maker, Bane, Poison Ivy, Cheetah, Lex Luthor, Captain Cold and Joker - picking on them).  Their solution?  Get super serious by changing into their New 52 costumes, a change that doesn't sit well with Clark.

The second - and my personal favorite - takes place in the days leading up to Wonder Woman's birthday party.  Antics include Bruce giving Clark advice on how to pick up women (specifically Diana), Diana trying to set Karen up with Clark, Barry eating all of the snacks and Bruce's crippling fear of clowns.

The most recent arc - concluded just before the comic went on hiatus in May - has Hal going on a camping trip with his boy scouts-themed Green Lantern friends.  Barry and J'onn tag along to go Bigfoot hunting and win a bet against Bruce.

The comic is short enough to read in just one setting (or several smaller ones if you don't have a single stretch to read them in) and well worth the time you invest into it.  Casual fans of DC comics will still find a lot to enjoy in this Peanuts-styled comic strip about adorable children finding their way in the world.  More dedicated fans, however, will find tons of in-jokes and on-point references that greatly enhance the surface-level narrative.

Although currently on hold, new strips should start cropping up sometime in the next couple of weeks.  Feel free to check them out here.

So what are your favorite versions of DC's heroes and villains?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trending: Cartoon Network's New Anti-Bullying Ad

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

It used to be that cartoons were expected to teach moral lessons to kids on the down low.  They'd dazzle them with punches, kicks and explosions, but always bring things back around to serious issues by the end of its run time.  Who could forget Roadblock's warnings to not give strangers your address, He-Man telling kids to stay away from drugs and Sailor Moon reminding her viewers to stay true to themselves?

Children's programming in recent years have generally distanced themselves from the preachy moralizing of generations past.  I have to imagine that part of this has to do with cartoons' perceived demographic expanding beyond the very young.  Both Adventure Time and My Little Pony have devoted adult followings and teenagers are generally tuning in as frequently to animated programs as their younger brothers and sisters are.

I get it.  Nobody likes being lectured to, especially when they think that they've gotten it all figured out.  The problem is, though, that man of the kids that think that they understand the way things work are missing out on lessons that would have been a given ten, twenty and even thirty years ago.

This is why Toonami's recent anti-bullying ad has gotten such wide-spread attention.  It hearkens back to a bygone age of proselytizing animation: where kids are educated by their favorite TV characters about real-world problems that too often get swept under the rug.  Check it out here.

I'd go so far as to argue that this latest revival of the generally defunct PSA ad is more powerful than the ones of the old Saturday morning cartoons.  It's not something that's tagged at the end of an episode in order to contextualize what kids just got through seeing (most of which just changed the channel or turned the TV off before in the middle of it).  This was an introduction to a programming block: something that kids had to sit through in order to see what they came for.

Furthermore, it didn't just limit itself to one particular series.  This wasn't He-Man's take on bullying, or Roadblock's, or Sailor Moon's or Lion-O's.  It didn't just draw on the events of any one show.  It was a pastiche of the entire programming block: a single message supported by a myriad of clips that anybody tuning into could find something to connect with.  Whether it was humanity's fear and hatred of Erin Yaeger or Vegeta putting Gohan down into the dirt, there was something for everybody.

And in the end, this wasn't some preachy message spoken from on high.  It felt earnest: life advice from somebody who seemingly went through the exact same thing in his robo-youth.  Tom tells kids not just to stand up to their bullies, but to enact the greatest revenge of all: refusing to believe them and living well.

The biggest shock for me was when Tom spoke about how bullies often do so because they are insecure and bullied in their own lives behind the scenes.  And while, yes, this is something that I was already aware of, it was the specific show that he paired it with that took the wind out of me: Dragonball Z.

While the Saiyan Prince always had the most dynamic and emotional character arc of anybody on the show, I never quite made the connection with his interactions as a member of Frieza's army and bullying before.  Mocked, harassed and living with the very real threat of extermination on a daily basis, Vegeta is the very model of victim cum oppressor.

This is the exact kind of thing that children's TV needs to bring back on a more wide-spread scale.  Regardless of whether it's viewers even want it, they often need it, and that's justification enough for me.  I also love this new model that Cartoon Network developed: broad, inter-series appeal, prefacing - rather than chasing - the shows that they center around.  Other networks owe it to their viewers to follow this example and bring back these cartoon-based PSAs.

So what do you think of Cartoon Network's anti-bullyin ad?  Do you believe that they should be brought back by other networks as well?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trending: Power Rangers vs the Cookie Monster

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

It feels like cheating: addressing a year-old video for this particular article series.  The thing is, though, that it only just now showed up on my news feed - showed up in virtual droves - to the point where I thought that it was a response to, or at least inspired by, the slightly more recent Power Rangers fan video.  I guess some things - like ultra-violent Power Rangers reimaginings - are simply timeless fonts of creativity.  Check it out here:

While Power/Rangers took the idea of a gritty, dystopian, Michael Bay-esque Power Rangers seriously, this takes the same basic idea to its comic extreme: pairing up a new generation of Rangers against a deranged, Grendelian Cookie Monster.  It eases us in with everything that we've come to expect from the franchise: flashy flips, kicks and punches, epically drawn out transformations and the rockin' 90's theme song.

Things take an unexpected turn, however, when the Cookie Monster's blood lust leads to the a-characteristically bloody dispatchment of the entire team.  The Red Ranger gets his leg shattered shortly before being decapitated.  The Pink Ranger is beaten to death with his own dismembered arm.  The Green Ranger makes a hasty retreat when it's obvious he's about to go down, only to be ripped out from the sky and have his spine broken.

The coup de grace, of course, is that the girl that the Rangers were trying to save in the first place has made no move to escape during this entire escapade.  She sat there nervously eating her cookie, making her easy prey to the now unoccupied Monster.  When she offers him what's left of the cookie in a desperate bid to save her life, he rips out the rest of the cookie from her stomach: cutting out just before he gorges himself on the bloodied treat.

Being the random fan video that it is, it naturally succumbs to all of the failures that you'd expect of its genre.  It has perhaps some of the worst use of shaky cam that I've ever seen, with rapid zoom ins and zoom outs that make it difficult to see what's going on half the time.  What's more is that it's obvious that these techniques were employed to make it artificially more exciting and mask what little they had to work with (over-sized costumes, toys and some recycled transformation clips).

The thing is, though, that it didn't need to cover its inequities up with distracting camera movements.  It's a video about guys in Power Rangers costumes being brutally murdered by a guy in a Cookie Monster costume over a Subway cookie.  The internet takes these things at face value.  In fact, its obviously non-existent budget is what makes the concept buyable in the first place.

Give the same people a million dollars to do the exact same thing and it becomes unbearably stupid to watch.  Why?  Because the idea is basically just bad fan fiction taken to a hilariously absurd degree.  That's fine for a YouTube video, but nobody wants to watch another Twilight.  Reshoot the same video, with the same bargain bin props and costumes, only without the camera and you end up with a far superior end product.

That being said, however, this is probably one of the funniest internet videos that I've seen in a long time.  The actors' acrobatics is actually really impressive, the premise hilariously absurd and the violence successfully toes the line between gruesome and laughable.  I'd actually love to see the same group of people work on other videos in the future.

So what's your favorite Gen X parody video?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trending: What If Man of Steel Was in Color?

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

Dawn of Justice's recent trailer got me thinking about Man of Steel.  Now, I would be lying if I said that I didn't like Man of Steel: liked it, in fact, more than I ever thought that I would like a Superman movie.  The only issues that I took with the movie were purely aesthetic, and apparently I'm not alone in thinking that:

Despite being a surprisingly great movie, the one thing that always bothered me about Man of Steel was that it never once looked like a Superman movie.  It adopted a Dark Knight aesthetic that was nothing short of depressing.  A character who literally wears a symbol of hope on his chest shouldn't adopt the same color scheme as a guy who wears a symbol of fear on his.

That's why this video took me so strongly by surprise: because there actually was a gorgeous-looking movie underneath its drag, post-production color palette.  The skies were sunny, the suit was bright and you could actually see what was going on during those allegedly daytime scenes.

The difference between the two frames is absurd.  One is colorful and pleasant to look at.  The other is drearily overcast and actually wears pretty heavily on your eyes after a while.  One is a movie that I want to see, and the other is one that I'll put up with seeing.  One looks like a Superman movie while the other looks like a Batman movie.

While I have to tip my hat to Snyder's consistency in vision across these movies, I absolutely agree with the video's narrator that there's a great opportunity here to visually contrast these two heroes with their coloring.  Superman can be bright and cheerful while Batman's allowed to brood in the shadows.  Why does DC have to shoehorn its movies into a "one size fits all" tone?

That is unquestionably one of the many things that Marvel has going for it in the inevitable showdown between the two movie franchises.  Marvel allows each of its movies to adopt a tone and genre that is appropriate for what its trying to accomplish.

That's why The First Avenger is colored by misty-eyed nostalgia while The Winter Soldier is a dark, Nolan-esque spy thriller.  It's why Iron Man is a good-natured action-comedy and Guardians of the Galaxy is a manic, balls to the wall space opera.  Marvel is confident that its properties are enough to hold people's interest, while DC's wary of anything that isn't Batman.

DC just needs to accept that Superman isn't Batman.  He's Superman.  That means sunlight, blue skies and, yes, a lot of color.  I'll say this about the original Superman movies: they might not have been the best movies ever, but they looked and felt right.

So what do you think of DC's monochromatic aesthetic for its superhero movies?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trending: Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe Expanding Too Quickly?

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

So I was all set to review the latest episode of Really that Good when I came across a Cracked video that I knew that I just had to address.  I figured that I'd already reviewed Die Hard itself this week, so my core thoughts on the matter were already out there.  Besides, this was something that I knew that I had to get out ASAP.

As much as I've always loved Cracked's highly addictive articles, I've always felt that their video content was vastly more substantive.  Sure, they lost a lot of humor in the medium shift, but they addressed current entertainment issues with a great deal more analysis than the printed content of the site.  When it comes to this particular episode, however, I can't help but feel that they're entirely off base.

The issue that they address isn't so much the speed at which the MCU is expanding, but the medium-spanning growth of phase 2.  The MCU isn't just about the movies anymore: it's about TV series, one-shots and original Netflix series.  They're not upset about the fact that we have far more franchises than the four that made up phase 1, but that in order to stay up to date on everything you need access to theaters (for the movies), DVDs / BluRays (for the one-shots), ABC (for Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter) and Netflix (for Daredevil, Iron Fist, AKA Jessca Jones, Luke Cage and The Defenders).  You can't simply coast by anymore on the latest sequel to Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America anymore.

But is this really a problem?  The one-shots, while awesome, don't really do a whole lot of substantive world-building.  They're fun little throwaways like Coulson thwarting a gas station robbery in New Mexico or the World Security Council's failed attempts to recruit The Abomination for the Avengers.  The only one that ever had any larger implications to the MCU was "All Hail the King," and that was made to appease piss-off Iron Man fans who hated the Mandarin twist in Iron Man 3.  Besides, five shorts weighed against 12 films - most of which are available on YouTube - doesn't really amount to much of a barrier to entry.

The TV series are even less of an issue than the one-shots.  They do more peripheral world-building than anything: developing events or characters introduced in the movies in ways that rarely circle back to cinematic importance.  When Thor fought Malaketh in London, the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were the ones that cleaned it up.  In the aftermath of the Dark Elves' assault on Asgard, Lady Siff had to recapture an escaped Asgardian prisoner that fled to Earth.  Agent Jasper Sitwell, who appeared in both Thor and The Winter Soldier, developed as a key player within S.H.I.E.L.D. before finally being ousted as a Hydra agent.

I'm not saying that there won't be major blow back from the series in the future, just that there hasn't been any yet.  Coulson's continued existence will undoubtedly be revealed by the end of Phase 3, and key characters from the series have been revealed to be the Inhumans.  But do you honestly think that Marvel will just sit back and hope that everybody shelling out money for tickets has already seen the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and not need to explain anything to anyone?

The answer that you're looking for it "no."  These will be addressed in the movies in due time, but they'll need to be explained to the characters as much as they'll need to be explained to the audience.  Coulson being alive will be as world-shaking of a revelation as Fury being alive, and they seemed to handle that reveal just fine.  I can assure you that you will never be required to watch a TV series in order to follow what's happening in the latest movie.

The Netflix series are probably the most problematic expansion to the MCU, by which I simply mean that you need to subscribe to Netflix to get it.  Really, though, is that honestly any worse than shelling out money to buy a movie ticket or going to ABC's website to get the latest episode of Agents of SHIELD?  The majority of MCU fans have access to the streaming service (either through family, through friends or simply because they pay for it) and its hardly an expensive or a narrowly wrought service.

And if Daredevil is any indication, then just like the televised series, they build upon what the movies already establish and not the other way around.  If there is a crossover with one of the movies (such as Kingpin squaring off against Spider-Man), then I have every confidence that the movie will take the necessary time to explain his presence to the audience in the same way that somebody's going to have to clue Spidey into exactly who this guy is that he's fighting.

When all is said and done, I cannot endorse the idea that Marvel's developing its cinematic franchises too quickly.  The movies are still the core of their business model, they've just found other markets to exploit with their branding.  They've proven that they're "big enough to go small:" that they are confident and skilled enough in their properties to make use of less movie-friendly heroes in mediums that highlight their strengths.  And even if you just stick to the movies, you're not going to be missing out of anything that you're likely to care about.

So how do you think that Marvel's non-movie franchises measure up against their cinematic ones?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trending: Captain America's Loose Canon

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

I've been a fan of Lindsay Ellis' Loose Canon ever since the Starscream episode.  I'm stoked to see the series finally start to come into its own, given just how original and inherently interesting its premise is (analyzing a character's changing portrayal over time).  And since I can't regularly look forward to Nostalgia Chick episodes anymore, I'm more than happy for any excuse to see Ellis in analytical action.  Check it out here:

The problem with the Starscream episode was purely one of its subject: Starscream simply isn't that interesting of a character.  The Hades episode solved this, but came off as being a bit overly broad for my taste.  The Wicked Witch episode solved both of these issues, but didn't really come to any kind of conclusion pertaining to the character's storied history.

With Captain America, however, the series finally found its analytic stride.  Cap's an incredibly interesting character with a lot of unique interpretations, portrayals and canon to parse through.  The analysis was specific enough to focus on a few iconic versions of the character while still broad enough to cover  50-odd years of publication history.  The episode furthermore rounds out its roughly 30 minutes of measured scrutiny with a pretty spot-on conclusion that explains the character's enduring popularity and social significance.  The fact that it hits the internet the same week that I planned on reviewing The First Avenger is just icing on the cake.

As with the best film criticism, Loose Canon brought up a good number of points that I'd never once considered about the character.  I never really considered Captain America: The First Avenger's revisionist stance on history: both how it featured a notably integrated army at a time of profound discrimination and how it minimized Hitler's involvement in World War II (although this last point is perfectly understandable, as Hydra is shown as a super-powered extreme of Hitler's fascist ideology).

While I always understood Rogers to be the physical embodiment of "the greatest generation," I hadn't realized until she said it how the MCU, and especially Cap', fail to romanticize that period of American history.  When recruited for the Avengers, Rogers dismisses his old uniform as "a little old fashioned."  When asked in The Winter Soldier if he missed the good old days, he has a surprisingly measured take on the issue: praising polio vaccinations and the internet just as much as he bemoans the fact that serving his country's "just not the same."

But the real kicker is that I somehow missed the connection between Cap's moral stance in The Winter Soldier when confronted with issues of government transparency and Edward Snowden.  When he finds out that Hydra's running the show, Cap' doesn't side with the government (you know, because he's Captain America).  He doesn't try to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D. (and implicitly the moral infrastructure of the United States) like Fury wants him to.  He dumps all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s databases onto the internet and lets the rest of the country sort it out: forcing hard truths and moral transparency on the world simply because it's the right thing to do.

At the same time, however, there's plenty that I disagree with regarding her take-away on particular periods of Cap's canon.  While The Winter Soldier admittedly did over-simplify the causes of destabilized international politics, I would hardly call the mid-movie reveal that Hydra nurtured this socio-political instability over the last seventy years as "extremely lame."  It's a perfectly natural progression to not only Cap's personal narrative (representing the American ideals instead of the American government), but also Phase 2's post 9-11 metaphor.

In order to fit with the thematic and metaphoric narrative that Marvel wanted to tell, there was an admitted trade-off.  Yes, rather than addressing the complexities of "misfortune, bad people and short-sighted international policy made in America's own self-interest" devolving into the geo-political mess that is the 21st century, they tidy up the ends and blame Hydra.  But to simply call it a day when you reach that conclusion is to ignore what a scathing critique The Winter Solder actually is of jingoistic, Post-911 American politics, particularly every domestic and foreign policy thought up by the Bush administration (see: The Patriot Act).

When all is said and done, however, I can officially sign off on the fact that Loose Canon is easily one of the best web series running today.  Like Really that Good, it almost makes it worth the fact that we're not getting any new Nostalgia Chick episodes.  Expect to see more of this series cropping up in future Trending installments, especially if Death wins out for the next episode's topic.

So what is your favorite version of Captain America?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trending: 5 Epic Rap Battles that Need to Happen

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

As fun as AdapNation is and as much as I love writing reviews, I think that Trending is officially my favorite article series at the moment.  In addition to just being an absolute blast to write, it features an absurdly deep pool of topics to choose from every week.  Last week I covered Bob Chipman's new web series Really That Good and next week I'll probably focus on Lindsay Ellis' latest episode of Loose Canon.  On top of that, I already have installments planned featuring Dragonball Z Abridged, The Big Picture, Cinema Snob, Death Battle, Game Theory, Hilariocity, Honest Trailers, Movie Defense Force, Nostalgia Chick, Nostalgia Critic and Smooth McGroove.

Epic Rap Battles of History has been an internet favorite for years now, and for good reason.  Whether its pairing off Romney and Obama or Doc Brown and The Doctor, everybody loves a good verbal smackdown,

In a video released earlier this month, the group behind the rap battles called on their fans for suggestions for the six remaining episodes in the show's fourth season.  And while there are any number of battles that I would love to see - even the jokingly suggested Teddy Roosevelt vs Robocop from the video - these are without a doubt the five that are highest on my list.

5)  Bruce Banner vs The Incredible Hulk - The best rap battles have always been the ones that exploited a pre-existing rivalry or conflict between those squaring off in the videos.  This is why Goku vs Superman, Tesla vs Edison and Spielberg vs Hitchcock vs Tarantino vs Kubrick were such memorable episodes while nobody really cared one way or the other about Mario Bros vs Wright Bros.

The whole shtick behind Banner's character is that he is constantly at war with himself: struggling in vain to control the raging beast inside of himself: the one that destroyed his life and threatens the well-being of everybody around him.  A rap battle between these two aspects of his character would inherently draw upon that deep well of conflict, providing more than enough verbal ammo for either side.  I am especially fond of videos featuring transformations (Goku vs Superman, Doc Brown vs Doctor Who), and Banner vs Hulk would be another perfect example of this.

4)  Bill Clinton vs Hillary Clinton - Despite the series' name, Epic Rap Battles of History rarely feature historical figures.  Those that do often pair them with invented characters, such as the both Hitler vs Vaders, Columbus vs Captain Kirk and the aforementioned Mario Bros vs Wright Bros.  This leaves a huge swath of perfectly rapable rivalries largely ignored in favor of an equally deep well of pop culture pairings.

Not only would a battle between the Clintons be a perfect opportunity to dredge up the Lewinsky scandal and Hillary's perceived coldness, but Bill's realized presidency compared to his wife's failed run against Obama.  The issues are timely enough to have all happened during many viewers' lifetimes, and even the youngest viewers would be familiar enough with them to follow along.  It would likewise make an excellent successor to the similarly politic-themed Obama vs Romney video.

3)  J.R.R. Tolkien vs George R.R. Martin - There are few literary rivalries popular enough to warrant a rap video, even if there are plenty vicious enough to keep with the spirit of the series.  This one, however, seems is perfect for the web series, given the incessant popularity of the two authors' fantasy series and both stories' immensely popular cinematic adaptations.

Like Clinton vs Clinton, it would be a rare pairing of two actual historic figures, which is always welcome in the increasingly fantastical series.  The authors' stark differences in writing style, content, tone and inclusion of sex would all be great sources of musical insult and comparison, as would the innate differences between adapting them into films versus a television series.

2)  Batman vs Superman - With Dawn of Justice coming out early next year - potentially as early as six months from now - the showdown is certainly timely enough.  Like the previously suggested Hulk vs Banner, it'd be based on a highly popular comic cum movie, with a deep well of canonized conflict to dredge up along the way.

Even though Goku already squared off against Superman in Season 3, the series seems happy enough to redo Hitler vs Vader nearly every season, so squaring Kent off against a DC-branded opponent shouldn't be all that much of a stretch at this point.  And while Superman and Goku's rivalry was always centered around power in combat, Batman's rivalry with Superman was always the more iconic brains vs brawn: giving DC's flagship character a new angle to both attack and be attacked.

1)  Iron Man vs Captain America - You had to have seen this one coming, especially after reading the Batman vs Superman suggestion.  This is the Marvel-branded twist on that previous rap battle pairing, and would be awesome for almost the exact same reasons.  The rivalry is a popular one and will be prominently featured in the third Captain America movie next year.

But whereas Batman and Superman focused more on physical virtues - strength vs smarts - Cap' and Iron Man's conflict has a far more political edge to it.  It'd be like the love child of the Obama vs Romney video and the Goku vs Superman one: two superpowered titans verbally duking it out over civil liberties vs patriotism and hardware vs software.  We've even already gotten a sneak peak into their blooming cinematic rivalry in the first Avengers, itself a prime source for rap material.

So what Epic Rap Battles do you want to see round out season 4?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Trending: Is Ghostbusters "Really That Good?"

In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.

Welcome to the first installment of Trending - a weekly article series which will be dedicated solely to the online spheres in the same way that my other series generally focuses on cinemic ones.  Some issues might be dedicated to certain hashtags or trending topics (such as the recently popular #AskHerMore, #90sTen or #OscarsSoWhite).  Others might be dedicated to web-based series and short films (such as Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Power/Rangers or Dragon Ball Z: Light of Hope).  Still others will address issues of online criticism (such as episodes of Nostalgia Critic, Loose Canon and Jimquisition).  It all depends on what's most compelling to talk about during any given week.

When Bob Chipman announced his departure from The Escapist, the sole consolation that I took with the transition was his promise of new and varied content, starting with Really That Good: an independent web series dedicated to dissecting and deeply analyzing films whose quality and inherent value have been taken for granted by the culture at large.  While I was certainly stoked to have more Bob-produced content to watch - Escape to the Movies and especially The Big Picture being the only two "shows" that I refused to miss every week - my excitement was specifically founded in how it ultimately spoke to the position that I try to take with my own brand of criticism.

As he states in the series trailer,

The Internet can be a pretty negative place, especially when it comes to discussions of art, entertainment and popular culture.  We live in a cynical age where we value tearing things down far more than we do building things up, where we spent so long deconstructing we're actually running out of constructions [...] Even when done with the best of intentions, when the only approach we have toward art, media and popular culture is to deconstruct, dissect and focus on flaws, it's just not healthy for us as individuals or as a culture.

I try to enjoy every movie I see.  After all, why would I bother sitting through it in the first place if I expected to dislike it, never mind me actively wishing for it?  Sure, I hated The Phantom Menace and The Matrix Reloaded as much as everybody did, and The Room is just as hopelessly inept as its reputation suggests, but I actually went into Insurgent hoping for a good movie, or at least for one as reasonably entertaining (if as innately flawed) as Divergent.

In short, Really That Good as a concept spoke to me on a far more personal level than similar shows of film criticism have, especially those shows that focus on nostalgic - or at least non-recent - movies.  And while I admit that I had a brief twinge of doubt when the first episode turned out to feature Ghostbusters, a non-favorite of mine, it paid off in true Bob fashion before I ever had the chance for a second doubt.  If you haven't seen it already, please check it out here.

I'll admit it.  I never really thought all that deeply about Ghostbusters.  I loved the movie when I first came across it, and the spinoff TV series was actually far better than it ever needed to be, but both the movie and larger franchise just never really gripped me in the same way that, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Shawshank Redemption have.  In my mind, it was always few steps up from Caddyshack, but just as many away from Christmas Vacation.  It was, in short, a superior comedy, but not "really that good."

But every time I watched Really That Good's premiere episode (once when it first posted, once with Becky and once in preparation for this article) I've had to stop myself from immediately going out to buy - or to at least rent - the movie, so infectious is Bob's love of it.  Thankfully Becky was not so resistant to his charms as I was, and it should arrive in the mail in time for next week's From the Vault.

Not only does he inject some much needed positivity into the cinematic discussion with this series, but he does so with grounded and deeply intelligent analysis of a film that I will fully admit having taken for granted.  It's not that there wasn't anything substantive to discuss in Ghostbusters.  Bob's proven beyond any doubt that there's plenty to discuss in the movie.  It's just that I never considered the movie long enough to get at any of those big issues that he astutely addressed in the video.

I never really considered the implicit narrative of man meeting his spiritual overseer and not only defeating it, but doing so with all too human technology and tactics.  I never gave any thought to the notion that kids encountering the movie like I first did might take away a practical message about confronting the nebulous fears lurking in their closets or under their beds.  I didn't even give it its due credit for resisting the typical scripting conventions of big budget Hollywood productions.  It was just some funny movie with a cool plot that I could whip out and watch no matter who I was with at the time.

If they prove to be as substantive and entertaining as their pilot, I honestly can't wait for Bob's future installments of Really That Good.  This especially goes for episodes covering movies that I've never been especially fond of (like the Caddyshack or E.T.), because it means a second chance at loving movies that everybody else always seemed to get more than I did.  As much as I'll miss having The Big Picture every week, these longer, more in-depth episodes are definitely something that I can get used to, even if I have to wait a bit longer to see the latest one.

So what movie would you love to see featured on a future episode of Really That Good?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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The Weekend Review: League of Super Critics Part 1 - The Best of Nostalgia Critic

In which I review a selection of last weekend's entertainment.

The reason why this installment of The Weekend Review is so late largely comes down to not knowing what to write about.  I didn't see or play or read anything especially memorable this week.  The movies I rented were either extremely "okay" (Return of the Living Dead, Conan the Barbarian and The Exorcist III) or were pushed back until during the week (ie, Cloud Atlas).  I'm slowly working my way through Alpha Sapphire right now, but really don't have much in the way of a review about it right now.  Work aside, it was just a lazy weekend that I mostly spent web-surfing.

Aye, now there's the rub!  The majority of my aforementioned web-surfing came in the form of catching up on the League of Super Critics: in particular Nostalgia Critic, Nostalgia Chick and Cinema Snob.  After all, this article series isn't about big-budget entertainment - just entertainment in general, which means that these minor internet celebrities are legitimately on the table for discussion.

But why limit myself to just one critic when there are so many to choose from?  So for the next three weeks, I will be reviewing the best of the best: the best videos featuring the Nostalgia Critic, Nostalgia Chick and Cinema Snob.  So now I present the short-list for the best video's featuring the League's headliner: Nostalgia Critic.

5 - The Lorax  Despite the incredibly weak film that he chose to review, Nostalgia Critic's review of The Lorax is surprisingly filled to the brim  with a combination of incredibly entertaining scripted material and incredibly warranted criticism.  It's the first time that we are introduced to recurring nemesis Hyper Fan Girl: a weirdly endearing character who not only features in videos that barely missed the grade (Old vs New: Spider-Man Movies), but also on a video which appears higher up on this list (spoilers).

The narrative framework for the episode features two pandering network executives who produce cheap, disposable and ultimately forgettable schlock to a dumbed-down, focus-grouped audience simply to generate as much profit as quickly as possible.  And while their interactions with Critic are hilariously droll in of themselves, it does lead to a surprisingly reassuring reveal (especially when other critics would pessimistically write off the film at best and doom-say the end of quality childrens' movies at worst).

While adaptations such as The Lorax (and The Grinch and The Cat in the Hat) are all invariably terrible, they do serve an unseen social function: popular enough by themselves so that they're widely seen and discussed, but terrible enough to draw that same audience back to the books upon which they're based.  While Dr. Suess' body of work is exceptionally written (despite being aimed at children), it's a fact that is largely taken for granted.  People need to be reminded of the classics, even if reminding them means making a terrible movie based off of them, because watching a train-wreck on screen will invariably draw people back to the books that got the story, characters and even basic premise right in the first place.

4 - Princess Diaries 2  This video takes Nostalgia Critic's relationship with Hyper Fan Girl to its logical extreme.  She abducts him under threat of violence in order to force him to review Princess Diaries 2 with her and, invariably, fall in love with her in the process.  She even seduces him with a veritable treasure trove of testosterone-fueled nostalgia - comic books, trading cards, VHS action movies, retro video games.  They play off of each other with practised ease, and their friendly neighborhood hit man varyingly provides over-the-top seriousness with his gruff voice and over-sized gun as well as carefully timed interjections of narratively subversive humor.

But even with so much attention and screen time devoted to the frame story, the commentary on the film - which can only be described as God-awful - is some of the entertaining that Critic's ever put to film.  Parsing through Princess Diaries 2 in the intensive detail that they do leads to a surprising revelation about cinema:"it's not about giving people what they want, it's about helping people discover what they need [...] to balance out excessiveness with variety and intelligence," even if that just means watching Expendibles 3 while reading Jane Austin.

3 - Top 11 Underrated Nostalgic Classics  In a lot of ways, I think that Nostalgia Critic is better known in the annals of the internet for his top 11 lists than he is for his reviews of individual movies.  It's easy to see why: the lists are essentially a condensed series of mini-reviews that, owing to the absence of Critic's usual brand of elaborate scripted comedy, are often much shorter than his typical episodes.  Of these, his list of underrated classics is both his best and most memorable.

While I generally think of Nostalgia Critic as a comic first and a substantive critic as a distant (although still valid) second, this video highlights the critic in him best.  Divorced from stagy, hit-and-miss humor, he gives succinct and insightful reviews of a sizable number of films that are admittedly overlooked far too often.  Of course I don't agree with every inclusion, it struggles with the same issue that I did when reviewing Oliver & Company: is a movie really underrated if everybody agrees that it's underrated (or, conversely, if it was a popular success when it first came out?

2 - The Shining Mini Series  As I mentioned above, Nostalgia Critic is prone to excessive, elaborate, stagy, hit-or-miss humor.  That's not to say that it's bad at all, just that it falls flat as often as it meaningfully connects with me.  Even within an otherwise great set-up (like Princess Diaries 2), there always seems to be a joke that falls flat at just the wrong time (when Hyper Fan Girl blows up like Wile E. Coyote because she didn't update her software before replaying the movie).  His review of The Shining mini series, however, suffers from none of this: being truly and consistently hilarious throughout its 42+ minute run-time.

Critic is also substantive in a way that he rarely is outside of his lists, not just reenacting extensive scenes from the film to comedic effective, but comparing and contrasting it with the original Stanley Kubrick film.  In the end, he even admits the relative strengths of both adaptations, and that, at least in respect to portraying the psychology of its protagonist, the mini series was superior to the more viscerally thrilling film.

1 - Sailor Moon  This is unequivocally my favorite Nostalgia Critic video.  Although his frame narrative doesn't compare favorably against The Shining or Princess Diaries 2, it is not only funny, but avoids the pitfalls that his frame narratives often suffer from.  It even takes a few comedic swipes at other formulaic - if well-remembered - tv series like Full House and Home Improvement.

Despite the weaker framework, this episode best combines humor and criticism in an organic way that actually highlights exactly how funny and how insightful his commentary is.  His digressions concerning the age of the characters on the series, as well as the age of consent in Japan, are single-handedly the funniest he has ever been: even taking self-referential issue that he included the title character on his list of hottest animated women.

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