On DVD this Week…(04/26/11)

The Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes Vol 1 & 2 Marvel’s recent cartoon series looks pretty decent; I especially like the way they apparently incorporate a ton of comparatively obscure villains, obviously following the wake of Bruce Timm’s Justice League Unlimited. That’s probably the problem, though. The Timmoverse of cartoon series serves as both my favorite (by far) discrete version of the DC universe, and raises the bar for this sort of thing probably higher than Marvel can match. Still, episodes are available on YouTube and the like, so I should give them a look. Another issue is that, as with the movies, Marvel has in the past farmed out the animation rights to some of their most popular characters, so that Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four (or whoever) can’t appear on this show. Still, I really should give it a look. Not a super fan of the animation style, though.

Other TV this week includes Larry Sanders Show S3; South Park S14.

The fine folks at Code Red have released a new “Uncensored English Version” DVD and Blu Ray of Argento’s Deep Red.

Speaking of Blu Ray, the surrealist classic El Topo hits that format today.

A short time ago Roger Corman’s Sharktopus hit DVD, now it’s time for his Dinoshark. Also available is another SyFy ‘original movie,’ Mongolian Death Worms. They are also (ha!) both available on Blu Ray.

Sacrifice Remember that big action flick with Oscar Winner Cuba Gooding Jr., and co-starring Christian Slater? Well, no, of course not. I’m not sure they remember it. Here it is, though.

Spy Kids Trilogy These films don’t get a lot of respect in some quarters, and I don’t know why. They’re pretty fun, and I really like the fact that Rodriguez will make one of these one moment, and then make something horrendously bloody, like Machete, the next. (And put Danny Trejo in both.) Why not? More power to him. Anyway, good stuff for kids, but like most good family films, really anyone can enjoy them.

If you buy any of this stuff from Amazon, you might consider clicking on one of Andy Borntreger’s links, or one of the other B-Masters, now that I can’t do that myself.

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Reed

Ken, you owe it to yourself to check out the Avengers cartoon. I am a huge Avengers fan, although I have stopped reading Marvel since Civil War. I really don’t like, um, the new chief editor whose name I can’t remember at the moment. In any case, the cartoon is way better than I ever expected it to be. They include a lot of elements from the new story lines (like the Breakout as the origin of the Avengers), but they are pretty dang good. I am buying this thing muy pronto.
fish eye no miko

Reed said: “I really don’t like, um, the new chief editor whose name I can’t remember at the moment.”

Joe Quesada?
Reed

That’s him. Mr. Quesada and I exchanged e-mails several years ago on the (at the time) direction of Marvel comics. Let’s just say that we cordially agreed to disagree.

I then tried an experiment where for a year I read only DC comics. Still not a DC man.

Now I get my comic fix by reading Marvel Essentials; quite possibly the best value comic product to ever hit the market.
Rock Baker

I avoided the Spy Kids movies for two reasons when they came out. 1) the kids just looked like they’d be the typically annoying brats who used up-to-the-minute-slang and thought themselves superior to all adults. In other words, they looked too much like real kids, you could say. 2) I love spy movies. The genre is very special to me, and these did not look like ‘spy’ movies, even satiric ones.

I have heard good things about the thrid film, however, and I like Sly and Ricardo, so I may yet give the films a go one of these days.
Reed

I liked Spy Kids 1 quite a bit. It’s very surreal and fun. Spy Kids 2 didn’t do much for me, but I wasn’t sorry I watched it either. Never saw 3.
BeckoningChasm

I liked Spy Kids 1, the rest just didn’t have the sense of discovery that the first one had. You can’t really be innocent a second time. I thought the series should move into a larger storyline, but I guess that might have aliened the intended audience (kids).

Oh and hey, for you Hanna-Barbera fans, “Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles” is available at Warner Archives. Like all their stuff, really pricey. Maybe the Herculoids aren’t far off.
Meekrat

The Fantastic Four actually did show up in an episode, and the Thing and Human Torch aided the Avengers against some ice dragon things.
Mr. Rational

Having seen Spy Kids 3-D…Ken, really. It’s the Rocky IV of kiddie flicks, man! The first two were cute, but the third is just freakin’ awful.

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