Tag: Movies

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Pop Culture

Shell-uloid! A ranking of TMNT movies and tv projects

Greetings! It is I, Josh “Thunder” Shaver, making my return to the printed page. Recently, I watched the new TMNT Mutant Mayhem film and actually loved it. I know a lot of purists out there are mad that things were changed, but when the multiverse is cannon, anything is possible. In fact, there is no actual TMNT cannon, as it changes with every iteration. Sometimes Splinter was previously a man, sometimes he was that man’s pet. In the original comics, April was a living drawing. For this ranking, I’m just looking at the movies, live action and animated, and the TV series too. Here they are in order from my least favorite to my most preferred version of the brothers. Let’s kick it off with the one movie I hate the most and a reminder that these are my own personal opinions.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)– I have so much disdain for this movie, I don’t think I will ever have anything nice to say about it. The boys don’t just look bad, they’re fugly. The story is slow paced and retcons everything to be aliens. I know my whole soapbox is there is no real canon but … Read More

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Podcasts

The Next Level Episode 34: Video Game Adaptations

In this episode, Brian & Josh discuss the various video game adaptations when it comes to movies and television along with some of their favorites as well as their least favorites.

You can listen to this episode right now below or you can head to linktr.ee/TheNextLevelPod to not only listen to this episode but also listen to all of our previous episodes by choosing from various podcast platforms such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more.

Please let us know what you thought of this episode below in the comments!… Read More

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Entertainment

Excessive Sequels: Terminator

It started as a R-rated horror movie and wound up as a PG-13 joke for several films, only to try to redeem itself as an R rated throwback to better days. What am I talking about? Terminator! In part three of my ever-continuing series about how too much of a good thing can get progressively worse, I will give my brutally honest rating of each Terminator movie. Not appearing here is the tv series as that fits into a different article series, also I never finished it and just now remembered it existed. In case you missed the other two articles (Friday the 13th and Leprechaun) I give two rankings based on a great analogy that I won’t repeat because I wrote it in an article about a much better franchise. Pepper mills are negative rankings and cheese graters are positive rankings, both scores out of a possible one to five with five cheese graters being the best and five pepper mills being the worst. Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times and now that everyone knows the rules, we begin our journey into the wild ride that is the Terminator Franchise.

The first two films … Read More

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Entertainment

Something Old, Something New… Part 2

Welcome back to a little series I like to call Something Old, Something new. I honestly didn’t know where to go next with this series, because it requires a lot of research. I originally wanted to cover Roseanne/The Conners, Full House/Fuller House, and Twin Peaks, but I’ve only seen one of those comebacks in its entirety and I need to do more research on the matter. I’ll get to those next time, but for now, I needed something I’ve seen and as the resident Horror Fanatic it just kind of came to me. Welcome to Something Old, Something New Part 2: the Slasher Edition. Here is my patented non-spoiler review of  Ash vs Evil Dead, Chucky, and Scream: The Series.

In the first installment of this series of articles,  I referenced how great ‘Chucky’ is. To be honest, I was kind of worried about how this series would do as a television series, but I’ll be upfront, it’s better than Bride and Seed of Chucky.  I’d say it’s better than the reboot Child’s Play movie but the best part of that movie was when it finally ended. Actually, I kind of liked the last act of that monstrosity… the first … Read More

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Entertainment

Excessive Sequels: Leprechaun

Welcome back to part 2 in this exciting series where I talk about the phenomenon that I shall dub “sequel-itis”. To recap the rating system, I take a comprehensive look at an entire film franchise and give two separate ratings pepper mills and cheese graters. If you missed the last article about Friday the 13th, I’ll clarify, cheese graters are to represent the highs and pepper mills are the lows. The analogy I used was going to a restaurant and yeah, fresh cracked pepper is nice but too much is a bad thing. However, I think we all make the person grating the cheese fear for their fingers. Apologies to those lactose intolerant readers, my heart goes out to each and every one of you. Currently I am only covering horror franchises but could look at others in the future. for now though, Leprechaun!

This series really isn’t your conventional horror franchise, as in the killer isn’t fueled by vengeance, some flesh eating creature, or criminally insane. In fact, most of the time hes just a dick. Okay, some times its about his gold, but that only seems to be the cause when the writers remember that. Actually, that’s how … Read More

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Entertainment Reviews

Fantastic Beasts 3: The Secrets of Dumbledore – A Brief No-Spoilers Review

Can you keep a secret?

Well, it’s obviously not a secret that Dumbledore’s been keeping secrets from people – the name of this chapter Fantastic Beasts storyline and an old Harry Potter clip worked into the trailers make it a little hard to ignore.

Mystery, misdirection, secrets… where were we anyways? Oh! Right!

PREVIOUSLY ON DRAGON BA-

er… no. That’s not quite right. Let’s try that again, shall we?

 

PREVIOUSLY ON FANTASTIC BEASTS:

We started out in 1920’s America with Newt Scamander, the world’s first and only ‘magizoologist’, doing some international smuggling and then playing some tag with his magical-animal-rescue-ranch-in-a-trunk …right in the middle of the bustling city of otherwise non-magical people who are mostly unaware of the existence of magic or the wizarding world.

Our socially awkward protagonist faces international bureaucratic turmoil, has some brushes with death, narrowly escapes romance, and sometimes even does both at once. All the while, he and his party of rag-tag witches and wizards try to foil the charismatic magic terrorist and his minions and save as many critters as they can in the process. The social and political landscape are cracking inside and out in the overwhelming state of fear, sparking not … Read More

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Entertainment

Excessive Sequels: The Friday the 13th Franchise

Have you ever been at a restaurant where someone comes around with a pepper mill and asks if you would like some? For the sake of my point, you say yes, they grind some pepper, you thank them and they move on. Now, how about the Italian places that have the Parmesan cheese and they tell you to say when and you give them your impression of Vincent D’Onofrio in the First Men in Black movie as you keep saying “more” until they finally walk away because your plate is now mostly Cheese? Okay, now that that concept and apply it to sequels. Most commonly this is a trope of the horror genre, which is what this article is about, but I think we all pictured Vin Diesel just now. However, that’s not the genre I’m talking about, and writing about them would mean I would have to watch them, and I’m not about that life.  For now, though, I’m talking about horror movies that kept coming back, way after they were dead.  The rating for this series goes on a scale of 1 to 5, twice, the Lower the Peppermill count, the better to rate the lows, and the … Read More

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Pop Culture

Scott Pilgrim vs Gen Z : A look at why this story gets so much hate these days.

Once upon a time in a land called Canada, there lived a writer named Brian Lee O’Malley. He wrote a fantastic 6 part series centered around 23-year-old Scott Pilgrim: Rating: Awesome. A movie was made, but it’s more of A-Cliff’s Notes, as movie adaptations usually are. Edgar Wright did his thang here, but as to be expected I highly recommend reading this 6 part opus to get the whole story. There is so much character growth across this series that not a single character is the same person as they are at the beginning, that this should be considered one of the great “coming of age stories”… so why has it been getting so much hate lately?

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (Volume 1) was released almost 20 years ago in 2004. It was a very unknown black and white manga-esque volume that was printed and published by Oni-press. Following that, a new volume was released almost yearly, I’m looking at you 2008. To Reminisce one more time, I remember the movie coming out one week before the last volume, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, and I was hesitant to go see the film on opening weekend, but at the time … Read More