***
I actually really enjoyed Daredevil. I wasn’t enthralled by the previews and, after reading several negative reviews, I was expecting to be disappointed. But I came away from the theatre smiling and I had a great time. The scene where Bullseye breaks the stained-glass window, catches all of the fragments, and then hurls them at DD took my breath away—and very few stunts do that. I enjoyed the fight scenes. All the commentators were saying it was Matrix style—I didn’t see that at all. To me, Matrix-style combat is where the characters freeze in time as the camera circles around or do moves that simply defy the laws of gravity in this reality (Charlie’s Angels had Matrix style combat). Daredevil seemed to have more of a standard martial-arts movie combat style—but I thought it worked fine. My only regrets are that Foggy Nelson and Matt Murdock received less screen time and that the DD/Elektra romance seemed hurried.
***
I guess I’m one of the few people who didn’t like The Two Towers as much as The Fellowship of the Ring. Although the large-scale war scenes in Towers were amazing, the movie just didn’t have the character-bonding and development that really made Fellowship come alive
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I picked up a pack of eight DC Heroclix figures, plus Blue Beetle and Booster Gold (my personal favourites). Although the figures are nice and I can see why people would want to collect them, the game itself just doesn’t do much for me—I could maybe see it as the tactical part of a larger role-playing game, but the combats themselves just strike me as empty.
***
Well, it’s been confirmed that this is the last seen of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Like a lot of people, I’m very sad to see it go but I’m glad they are doing such an awesome job of ending the series on a cataclysmic note. I’m a late-comer to Buffy (having been converted by someone loaning me the season one DVD in the summer after season six aired) so I still have a lot of episodes to catch up on. Still, I’d be more than willing to watch another Buffy spin-off. As far as I’m concerned, anything Joss Whedon works on is gold. Firefly was my favourite new series of 2002 and I was bummed when it was cancelled. In fact, Buffy has to some degree supplanted my comics collecting hobby—I’ve been spending a lot of money on Buffy merchandise, such as novels, action figures, and posters.
There’s a lot of reasons that Buffy has quickly become such a great show in my eyes. Obviously, there’s some fun characters on the show. The writing is witty and always manages to either avoid the obvious cliche or twist it about for a surprise. The special-effects and fight-scenes are well-done (especially when compared to other television genre-dramas). Finally, and more important than most people realize, the strong continuity between episodes and seasons is a large factor in my love of the show.
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I’ve now had a chance to see the entire season of Birds of Prey. I think the show had a lot of potential and was worth watching. The writing was often mediocre and much of the characters too one-dimensional. Still, the series finale was one of the best finales I’ve ever watched—the scene where the heroes crash the windows of the Clocktower made me grin with delight.