Five Disappointing Villain Comeuppance’s

When you have a good villain there is always something satisfying in their defeat. Whether they be a super villain or some generic bully, we always love to see the bad guy get his. Sometimes however, the final punishment for the villain is not satisfying. It’s either because there is hardly any punishment, or it goes so far the other way and you almost feel sorry for the poor person rather then happy to see him get his just deserves.



Now sometimes the villain defeat will be kind of small, but it can still work. The best example is from The Wizard of Oz. The Wicked Witch just gets water thrown on her, accidentally! But Margaret Hamilton owns that death scene. Her screams of “I’m melting!” are almost iconic, everyone knows it and says it. Same for Superman II. While I have my issues with that movie, the scene where Superman out thinks Zod isn’t big but it is sooooo sweet!


Here are five examples of what I mean. When the villain defeat was unsatisfying. There are spoilers of course and, just my opinion.




The Dark Knight Rises
I loved what that did with Bane, especially after what they did to him in “Batman and Robin”. Tom Hardy was fantastic in the role and every scene he was he ruled…until that last one. What a let down, not only is it revealed Bane is really just a glorified henchman for Talia, but he is defeated soooo easily! It’s one thing everyone pretty much agrees with, that scene sucked!

15 Favorite Movie Posters (and a couple stupid ones)

 

So after I posted my article on The Truman Show I looked at the poster of the movie I used. It’s a really cool image, made upf several hundred small pictures to form Jim Carey’s face. Then it occurred to, have I ever discussed movie posters here?

Oh sure I’ve shown them in connection with movie’s I was going over, but I’ve never really done my favorites. I’ve discussed magazine covers, TV Guide covers, and more than a few comic book covers but never movie posters. Comic Book covers and movie posters share the same purpose, when done well they tell a story all on there own to make you interested enough in the product to make you want to check it out. Sure some would say trailers do that, but the thing with that is trailers don’t last. Oh ok in this modern cell phone age you can watch a trailer 10000 times if you want but in my day you saw it once or twice, and unless it left a MAJOR impact it was up to that poster image to remind you of the movie and make you want to check it out. Back in the stone age when we had video rental stores, the covers of the boxes were always displayed prominently to get your attention to either remind you of the movie or pique your curiosity and want to learn more.

 

Now I wanted to make this my favorite, video box covers or movie posters that I always loved and remembered. So obvious iconic choices may be missing. Like I said yesterday, this is not an analysis just for fun. And I will try to keep it to actual posters used when the movie came out in theaters or VHS for the first tine, but considering all the variants to some of these I may slip up.




Back to The Future

This is a perfect one to start with. Not only is it my favorite movie, but the poster was designed by Drew Struzan who is a name you should know. He’s an artist who has done some of the most iconic movie posters of all time. And yes there will be more of them coming. As for this one, the cover is so simple it’s perfect. I’m not usually a lover of painted images but Struzan gets the likeness’s so perfect how can you resist?

Five Things I Liked in "The Truman Show"

Yeah nothing to celebrate this year. Not as if it’s the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite movies of all time. Sigh. I think I’ll check before I say that in the future. Anyway……

Hard to believe how little I’ve talked about this seeing how it really is one of my favorite movies ever. But then again it is a movie that’s a little hard to get a grasp on. It’s more of an artsy film and normally I hate those. This one works. I was surprised to see people hating on this movie but when I read the reviews I see what they’re saying. It’s not a “normal” movie which can be off putting. The pacing is slow, the plot a tad farfetched, and there’s almost no story structure. People who don’t want to read anything into a movie, they just want straight forward comedy or action plainly stated, will hate this movie.  Others hate it because it doesn’t try enough, but I disagree. If you’re willing to look a little deeper than it’s worth it.

 

Normally in these articles I pick on five things I hate in a movie I love, but the heck with that. Not only is that hard to to do here, but it’s time this movie gets some praise. So here are five reason I love this movie. And no this is not an in depth Analysis. I wish I were smart enough for that. I’m just a fan and this is for fun.





The Soundtrack

This is the one thing I talked about once before but damn is that sound track perfect. Every piece of music helps to enhance whatever scene it’s in. My favorite is the march while Truman is wandering the town square trying to figure what the hell is going on.

Top 5 Favorite PSA Commercial Mascots

When I was a kid PSA’s were all over the place. I talked before about how PSA’s were often tacked onto the end of cartoons, but sometimes a PSA would be its own thing with a cute or memorable character that managed to make it popular. Here are five of my favorite PSA mascot’s. The one rule here is that these have to be original characters created for the PSA, not existing characters. That’s another subject my friends.






#5.Time for Timer

Am I the only one who remembers? It feels that way, it was on all the time on Saturday mornings! Ok I talked about this a looonnngggg time ago but here we go again. Timer was a cartoon character who looked like a matzo ball. He basically promoted stuff like healthy eating habits and personal hygiene.I remember one where was inside the human body talking about how food is processed for energy. One was set in a western setting and he sung about cheese as a good snack (this was a long time ago!). Another he sung about a healthy snack called sunshine on a stick. It’s orange juice frozen in an ice cube tray. You put sticks in the juice, and voila you got homemade orange Popsicle! And yes, I tried this.

Underratd Trek:The Assignment (DS9)

Welcome back to Underrated Trek, where I take a special look at Star Trek episodes that I love…which may not be the most popular or even liked by most.Today though I want to try something different. There are lots of DS9 episodes I never saw, as I’ve said was never a loyal fan, so for fun I thought I’d watch one of those episodes and give my thoughts on it. This is…

I’m actually a fan if O’Brien episodes, for the most part, and I am not sure how I missed this one. Did I miss a gem, or was it a good episode to skip? Let’s discuss it

Ten Memorable Sitcom Marriage Proposals

There are lots of life events that almost every TV shows will give us, from child birth to  weddings to marriage proposals. After all these are supposed to be “real” people so its only right we see them go through these experiences. And when done right, they make us as happy as the characters are. And we even cry at them! The wedding proposal is a huge one, since it can go either way. But when it is a yes, especially when it is done with a couple we have been watching for seasons, it’s a true moment of joy for the audience.

One thing, these are proposals that took. Also this NOT a TOP list because there are only so many clips online I could find and a few I’d have had on here in a second are not available. That being said, here are ten memorable  sitcom proposal’s.




 #10.Frasier
I'm unable to find a clip of Niles proposing to Daphne, so instead here is Martin proposing. Though it sounds less like a marriage proposal and more like a business proposal. 

Top 10 Favorite “Arrow-Verse” Characters

A few months ago I teased an article about memorable villain introductions in movies. Problem is, I couldn’t really come up with any. I guess my memory of these moments is a bit inaccurate. So instead, let’s discuss the DC TV Universe.

When Arrow came around I scoffed, it sounded like such a stupid idea. Especially after the way Smallville had recently portrayed the character (I give that show a of of credit but not for that). But it’s actually pretty darn good and has spawned three successful show’s. Two of them direct spin-offs. I watched Flash mostly due to nostalgia for the old 90’s show, but it was good!  At first Supergirl was its on thing until the crossover events (which are awesome) tied her into the Arrow-Verse as it’s been called. Yeah it’s more girlie but so what? And while Legends of Tomorrow is a silly show, the characters are strong and the show is fun in a goofy way. Even the creators get that considering what they did in the season finale!! So while Marvel has it’s cinematic universe, DC has managed to corner the TV side of things.

I have discussed this here and here. Like my “way to long” article on Flash’s first season and Supergirl’s. I also discussed the crossover “Invasion” two years ago, but that’s all I’ve really discussed. So today let’s go over my favorite characters, the one’s that keep me coming back. By the way I did see “Crisis on Earth-X” and while it wasn’t perfect it was pretty damn good.

Oh and since Black Lightning isn’t an official part of the universe I am not counting that show (which I have no watched). And yes Constantine is a part of the universe but I never watched that either. And to avoid this going on forever only the main characters, and no villains.




#10.Cisco and Kaitlyn
If you read my extensive review of Flash Season 1 you may note that I was a little harsh on Cisco, I just did not like him when he first came around. And while I always liked Kaitlyn I like her more as the series evolves and she was able to kick ass as Killer Frost. Flash works because of its strong supporting cast, including Tom Cavanaugh but I didn’t have room for him here. And we have Joe West who is always crying, and his son Wally who isn’t bad as Kid Flash. Oh and yes we got Elongated Man this year who grew on me also, curious to see what they do with him next year.

A Look at Garfield Merchandise and Commercials

Continuing my look at Garfield’s 40th birthday and there is only one more thing to really discuss. And that is all the merchandise and commercials the cat has been in. Garfield was a merchandising machine. In fact there’s a while company devoted to it called Paws. In 40 years Garfield has become a major part of pop culture.


He has appeared in everything from Happy Meal’s

to amusement parks (where he has roller coasters named after him)


and yes even being a balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade (several times).                       .
 






In fact Garfield is such a pop culture phenomenon that one of the biggest phenomenons o the 1980’s was this :

Yep, no joke.  This plush Garfield “stuck on you” was accidentally made for car’s and people adored them. So much that the company couldn’t keep up with the demand!! These were all over place and the image has been homaged to death.

Though to be honest, I am not sure how safe it is to have a something blocking a portion of your back window. Still, it’s GARFIELD!!!!  These were so popular in fact that there were reports of people vandalizing cars just to get their hands on the plush toy. Check this ad out:

We’ll get back to these ads in a bit.
Garfield has permeated pop culture so much there are references to him all over other media. Here are some quick examples : 

THE SIMPSONS

Top 12 “Q” Episodes of Star Trek

I’ve talked about Q a few times, of course he was played the awesome John DeLancie, but with one or two exceptions I’ve never really discussed the episodes he was in. So I thought it would be fun to do a quick rundown of all of them. And rather than just go through them, why not order them from worst to best? And this is only including canon appearances so no Star Trek:Borg.

 

And he was in 12 episodes, hence the odd number. By the way any episode with Q is a decent episode, I am just ranking them for the fun of it there are no bad episodes here. With that said, here are my top 12 Q episodes.






#12.The Q and the Grey

Ok one exception to what I just said, This is painful. In “Death Wish”, we’ll get to that one, the recreation of the Q continuum as a road in the dessert made a simple kind of sense. The metaphor worked and the scene was good. Here we get a Civil War backdrop which makes no sense and is just lame. The Civil War stuff doesn’t hurt the episode, it assassinates it. It starts a comedy but gets real stupid.