I support getting back to Persona 4.

That would be a bear-y good decision, sensei.

It'll probably make your head explode to learn they are going to do a MacGyver movie.

Where are you at in Persona 4 right now? I'm back at the bath house dungeon in my 2nd cycle.

“Teddie, I would like to set you on fire and send you straight to hell.”

Spoony's words. Not mine.

Kick Ass the movie was good. The comic was crap.

The sound track was awesome and inappropriate at times, but in an awesome way. Watching an 11 year old girl slaughter thugs to the theme song of “The Banana Splits” was somehow both horrifying creepy and undeniably epic.

As for watching the Nicolas Cage version of Wicker Man, I highly recommend it with the Rifftrax.

Which is itself ripped off from Saving Private Ryan, when Miller is shooting at a tank with his pistol and it unexpectedly explodes.

Or, “Simpsons did it!”

While mentioned arguments against Kick-Ass are totaly valid (main character taking a back seat, straying from the whole real-life superheroes concept towards the end with certain moves and equipment), it won't change my opinion of the movie.

I had a frickin' great time at the cinema watching this flick!

Loved the soundtrack, the jokes and the characters (might have wanted more from Red Mist though). Hit Girl is the showstealer in a truly creepy, yet totaly awesome way.

Good morning Spoony and fellow Spooners.

Well, given how big a fan of comics Mr. Cage is supposed to be, at least he got to star in a comic book movie that people liked. Superman Lives never happened, and Ghost Rider was one of those “Sure, it made a lot of money. But it isn't highly regarded.” movies.

I absolutely loved Kick-Ass! I haven't come out of an action movie with that big of a smile on my face since The Matrix. And I fucking love The Matrix, so that's a BIG accolade from me.

I know what your brother means about Hit-Girl stealing the show, but it wasn't that much of a problem for me. Her ultimate purpose in the movie was to show the other downside to being a vigilante; for Kick-Ass, it was how self destroying it was, for Hit-Girl, it was that she had this life forced upon her. I thought it did a really good job of questioning the morals behind raising this child as a trained killer.

Loved the vlog, Spoony, keep them coming.

I too have been followed by Nicholas Cage all weekend as well. I watched Con-Air on Cinemax, my baby cousin whom I was baby-sitting wanted to watch Astro Boy, and my Netflix movie was Vampire's Kiss. I am very much 100% sick of Cage now.

Eh, I wouldn't be in a rush to get back into Persona 4, at least not if it's your first run through it. I hated how very, very hard it was to max out all your social links in time, not to mention some of the more tedious boss battles. The 8-bit one in particular was pretty bad. The distribution of voice acting struck me as odd too; you'll get tons of it when you're just kind of messing around or repeating plot points for the fifth time, but if you're engaged in a really emotional, tear-jerking scene you get text.

I mean, overall it's a decent game, but it definitely has some low points. I've never had to do so much research just to make sure my precious nine months would be used wisely. And that's when I wasn't whisked away for obligatory week-long tests or camping trips.

I’m one of those persons that really doesn’t give a crap about moral values when it comes to movies. I thought Kick Ass was great because it is funny and the action is competely awesome.

It seriously wouldn’t have made a difference to me if Hit Girl was 11 years old or fucking 30. It really doesn’t matter to me who is doing all the killing as long as it looks just as cool. It just so happened all the awesome killing was done by an 11 year old girl, and I’m completely fine with that she looked fucking cool doing it.

But that’s just my two cents.

And to CrimsonDusk’s comment, I hate Boondock Saints because the movie is fucking stupid. I could seriously care less about the whole “Religious Fanatics” aspect of the film. All I know is that everything in that movie was bad, from the action scenes to the comedy, and not even Willem Dafoe could save it. The second one was even worse, with that new detective woman with the horrible accent and all the stupid chatty “I wanna be like Quentin Tarantino SO FUCKING BAD” kind of dialogue.

Nothing against Tarantino, btw. The guy is awesome.

See but that message is so downbeat and so cynical that it's actually irritating, and essentially demolishes what little sympathy and likability that character had.

Stuff like that is why I don't like Mark Millar. Except for Red Son, that wasn't bad.

I fail to see how kick ass promotes acts of violence for eleven year old girls. I don't even see how the movie promotes hit Girl/Big Daddy's moral values. It's pretty straight up about showing you how not normal they are. Also I can't help but feel you're suggesting they were trying to sexualize hit girl which I don't see how anyone could come away with that idea especially with a non revealing costume that was more like a combat suit meets hello kitty. I liked Boondock saints and I can see why some wouldn't like it much like how I can see people not liking Kick-Ass, but to say A=B with the moral compasses in these movies I don't think I'll ever fully understand

I believe Kurt Angle should only now wrestle on the TNA PPVs. The guy does need to take a break with how much he works and how borderline suicidal he is nearly every match. Making him wrestle only on important nights of the year seems more of a safe option. Not only that, but by making him only wrestle in PPVs its likely to make the matches seem more special to the fans which may actually lead to more sales to watch him wrestle. They could probably do the always prefered formulae of having a build up on the impact shows to Angle's PPV match over a month. But yeah, I'm with Spoony in that this Angle needs to fucking think about about what he's doing in that ring once in a while.

i loved the first hour or so of kick-ass, i read the comic and thought it was ok. i almost forgot about big daddy making the story up. the protagonists girlfriend seemed to show up as an important part of the story and than all together disappear, which was probably a good thing, hit girl and big daddy's relationship is much more heartwrenching but it went from being a peter parker kind of high-school loser gets famous movie to sin city. the last 30 minutes were so epicly intense that the film slowed down its own momentum. my best friend gave me a play by play of the wicker man while he was watching it, sounds awesome. thanks for the review spoony!

Happy 4:20!!!!

Well Spoony, I hope you remember, after any extensive amount of Cage viewing, you should always remember to put the bunny back in the box

Actually, Crank took that finger gun thing from an Ep of X-Files. In the Ep, a guy and his friend that could see through walls took money from drug dealers. The first guy would do the finger gun thing, and the guy who could see through walls would shoot the guys he pointed at.

I wouldn't be surprised if that happened before that Ep in something else though.

I'm not gonna watch Kick-ass, cos…it looks like the opposite of my kind of movie. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans on the other hand…hoho, yes. Maybe Herzog should have told Ferrera to load up on crack before watching it…

I have to disagree with you about Nic Cage. I actually had made a promise to myself to never watch another new Cage movie because I unfortunately watched three of his HORRIBLE fucking movies in a row. I saw Ghost Rider in theaters, followed by Bangkok LAME-gerous, and then Wicker Man. While Wicker Man is awesome in its horrificness, it's still a really bad movie. I guess Nic Cage's bankruptcy forced him to take any job available to him, and grow that horrendous mop of hair he sported for Bangkok Dangerous and Next, which I avoided like the plague.

*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*
As for Kick-Ass, it was okay. It was disappointing that the title hero got pushed to the side halfway through until the epic final scene, and I had some trouble believing that the girl would so readily have accepted him for being straight, considering he was rubbing lotion on her back while she was only in her undies at one point. Hit-Girl was marginally entertaining for me, sometimes I would get tired of her “I'm a cute girl, but I really love weapons & killing” personality. And when I had gone to the movie I was slightly “impaired” so I forgot Nic Cage was in the movie, and seeing him was jarring to say the least. I guess he did alright, and I did express some kind of concern for him when he got burned, but I couldn't stifle giggles at his lipless Joker face. While parts of the movie bugged me, the action and early scenes of Kick-Ass by himself made the movie acceptable

The Wicker Man was such a horrible fucking movie, but so goddamn hilarious, I loved it. Glad you brought up Bad Lieutenant, I meant to watch it a while back but I forgot about it.

is just me or kick ass is the first movie that shows someone opening a butterfly kinfe the right way…

Oh god, another vlog.

Spoony, you'd be good enough to sell your shit on the internet if it wasn't for two boat anchors weighing you down: vlogs and thatguywiththeglasses.com. Even SomethingAwful thinks you're a good reviewer (when you actually post content, that is).

Seriously, you literally sit in front of a webcam and blab for 30 minutes and don't even bother to bring the funny? Let me ask you something: How many other vlogs from other people have you watched? If none, then point proven. If some, then christ, your taste in internet content is awful.

Heh, funny thing about your comments on how monsterous the comics' version of Big Daddy is, but the previous Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, has almost the exact same gimmick except her father was training her from birth to be an assasin rather than a superhero. And people call him out on how horrible it was, and how horrible Batman was for using her skills for his own means rather than allowing her to get a normal life of some sort.

And when Cass' dad shot her he didn't bother giving her a vest either, she just had to learn to get out the way after shooting her in the legs, back and shoulders dozens of times (leaving her covered in disfiguring scartissue from the neckdown).

Essentially the character was meant to be the best martial artist in the DC comics unvierse, and being trained to only understand physical body language rather than written or spoke stuff gave her the ability to see what people are going to do before they do before they do it, but the downsides to this was that she was severely dyslexic, and could only had a vocabulary of like ten words until a psychic rewired her brain due to him not understanding what she was thinking.

A similar premise was used in a Thai movie… I think it was from Thailand, called Chocolate a year or two ago, which also had a character of Asian extract with a mental disablity who would copy and predict other people's fighting movies, and turns to fighting crime kinda thing.

Anyways, she has since been phased out of the comics though, due to a pallaver covered by Linkara in one of his videos… last year I think it was. Basically they got rid of her for a number of reasons, ranging from them bringing in a new Batwoman and they didn't want people to get the characters confused (people somehow still managed to get the redheaded, Jewish lesbian Kathy Kane mixed up with the Eurasian Cass Cain, so maybe they were right on that front) to them needing to give Robin a supervillain of his own, and essentially thinking “Who do we have avaliable? Cass Cain, her parents are both supervillains so she must be evil too, right? Eh, fuck it. Just get a writer in who hasn't read her series and call it a day”.

Anyhoo, I think that the sniper scene from the Losers comic in the first trade, I think, came out before Crank did… *checks* …the first two trades came out in 2004, while Crank came out in 2006.

Sorry for the run on post. Didn't mean to waffle.

You rule, and keep up with what you're up to. :)

Old Man Logan was pretty good, though I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, so that might just be me.

I just saw Kick Ass today. I liked it. I also liked the comic. I went into the movie, knowing that it would be different from the comic (I knew they wouldn't keep the meat mallet scene in the movie). There were really only two things I didn't like, first was Red Mists betrayal. I felt that it didn't have as much weight as it did in the comic, mostly because they flat out tell you that Red Mist is going to be a villain. But I can see why they did it differently, it worked in another way. The other thing was the jetpack. It felt a bit much. Sure, they do exist and work, but they are also extremely dangerous and difficult to fly (and let's not even mention getting fuel for it). But in the movie the price was actually pretty spot as it seems a jetpack goes for about $200.000, and in the movie they said $300k (maybe the extra 100k were for fuel =P ). To me it just felt a little too over the top.

I've got to admit, Big Daddy was a much more sensible (well… sort of) character than the comic counterpart, and it did work much better since Hit Girl is a mighty impressive fighter in this movie and there's no way that he could have given her that kind of training if he'd just decided to do because Kick Ass happened, like in the comic.

They should probably have put a little more emphasis on the fight between Kick Ass and Red Mist though. It was apparent that Red Mist was kind of a pushover in the movie, so Kick Ass should have been able to whoop his ass thouroughly if he'd just taken the damn jetpack off (it looked silly, the way he fought with it on…)

But still, it was a good movie, All in all, the movie did better with Big Daddy and Hit Girl, and the Comic did better with Kick Ass.

I've never heard of that one. I'll check it out.

Macgyver jokes do not die because macgyver is a classic and it's still classic. Seriously i grew up with macgyver reruns and kids are growing up with macgyver reruns even now. He's just that good.

His comment of him watching a couple Nicholas Cage movies back to back reminds me of how I did three Delroy Lindo movies back to back (THE ONE starring Jet Li, GONE IN 60 SECONDS 90's version, and DOMINO)

They're not just ripping it off from Crank, they're ripping it off from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The comic used it two years before Crank was released in cinemas.

“This guy is despicable” THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT. The point behind the whole comic is how depressed or deranged a person would have to be to be superhero. It's about the pointlessness of it all. The end in the comic book was a point on the nihilism of a situation where you attempt to impress someone by doing something crazy, and how this is crazy. The girl he likes thinks he's gay throughout the comic, he's also been lying to her throughout. So she goes out of her way to make him see that she doesn't like him by sending him… Well read it and find out it's kinda funny. The entire point of the comic is pointlessness, nihilism, or whatever. It's about how stupid it is to be a hero and how you are most likely to be killed doing it. It's about how people will go to stupidly extreme or insane lengths to attempt to break from the norm. It's not a master piece by any means I'll be the first to say that. But the movie changed the fundamental message behind the comic from the meaningless stupidity of doing something like being a super hero, to “Go ahead, be different you'll change things AND you get the girl.”

Is that Digital Devil Saga behind you Spoony?

holy shit nice rant about that port of call movie, jeez man, i have been waiting for his one for years, in a way. fuckin herzog and cage really going to town, getting down and dirty and relly letting it all hang out. aw yeah, this is why herzog came to hollywood! entertaining as nothing else and rewatchable, cuz cage rocks and every scene works. way better than herzog and bale in the jungle, in that rescue dawn thing… even though i liked that one. i gotta say, it scared me tho, cuz it felt so fucking tame! i mean, was herzog just gonna be another hack in hollywood? but hell no! well, also, this: cage performance here reminds me of mickey rourke as bukowski/chinaski in that awsome flick barfly, cause never have we seen a more broken but willfully stoic man on screen. just scenes of these men walikng around, all crooked with their hanging asses and bent spines, is memorable… and something that not many living acors could do. i remember being impressed by tom cruise, being a total dick in magnolia and making an ass of himself in tropic thunder, but this is something else.

cuz it’s like u say, herzog and cage force you to emphathize with this guy… and actually see yourself in these godawful situations, like the crack/shakedown/bordeline rape-scene… and we come out of the whole experience with a vague feeling of him meaning well for those he loves.

and fuckin X! him and cage, their scenes were beyond awsome to me… in the car, shoot him again and on and on… top movie o the year for me and a hugely pleasant surprise. and somehow i just knew you would be in my corner for this one. cuz this is a movie for ppl who have seen a huge amount of movies and crave something with both punch and subtlety.

Warning: what follows is a very long rant. Please skip at your leisure.

Kick-Ass. God the comic was depressing. It’s like the author sat down and thought “what are the most dysfunctional and deplorable aspects of humanity” and based an entire storyline on how you can never overcome them. That isn’t even really the problem. I’ve read comics and books that have done that and done it well, but the way it was executed in Kick-Ass was so clumsy, so pitiful, and so soap opera-Hollywood that I just wanted to burn the damn thing. It felt as if the writer didn’t have the talent to detail a worthwhile observation of the human condition so he just slabbed together some nihilistic, angsty and pathetic characters and tried to make it seem like he was marking some deep insights in a deconstruction of the whole “hero and villain” idea. This is funny, because I’ve read some of Mark Millar’s collaborative works and they’re not this bad.

The movie was much better by far. There is a very good reason why that is, it’s because the film-makers read the comics and went “Gee, this sucks” and took the few good elements from the comic and created a movie that strayed entirely from the original premise even while keeping the events that occurred relatively intact. I’m not talking about the whole “Katie relationship” thing, which feels more palpable in the movie but still is a little off-side (although in the comic it was damn near squicky, and Millar took the “Queen Bee bitch” idea to almost comic extremes), or even the whole “Big Daddy’s past” which works by virtue of being depressingly pathetic and sociopathically narcissistic in the comic (and unrealistic: because of course an accountant who had never done anything else but read comics his whole life would of course be able to evade the FBI and police that would get on his ass within hours of him having abducted his daughter from her mother and he’d know how to train the child to become a killer; and in any case a person with that kind of narcissistic disorder would be incapable of raising a child… although perhaps that’s the point), and works better in the movie by having a cop-gone-rogue vigilante-ism (which is actually far more realistic, as it actually HAPPENS in reality). The feel, style, and narrative story-telling is just different, with you actually LIKING the protagonist in the movie version.

The comic tries to copy the kind of social expansion and perceptive insight that movies like “American Psycho”, “Requiem for a Dream”, and “American Beauty” do so well and it FAILS. UTTERLY. There hasn’t been this much EPIC FAIL-age around since the first Twilight book was published or the time Firefly was cancelled.

That’s where you are, Mark Millar. You’re down in Tartarus swapping jokes with Stephanie Meyer and the executives who were stupid enough to axe one of the best sci-fi shows of the decade. You don’t get much lower than that without sinking into the special deep level usually reserved for those who sexually abuse children.

You can’t even keep a copy of this comic and Watchmen on the same shelf because to even position the damn thing within 20 feet of Alan Moore’s masterpiece is sacrilege. I mean, I could write a better story than that. In fact I DID write a 200-page manuscript that more effectively accomplished what this comic tried to do. And I am NOT a good writer, just a very persistent one. No, really. When you are writing stuff worse than ME you have reached the VERY bottom of the talent barrel and you’re just about to be hit over the head with it.

Okay, okay I’m done. Thankyou either Spoony or Disqus for not-having word limits on these posts. Ranting is incredibly cathartic.

I’ma have to respectfully disagree on your opinion that only Nicholas Cage fans should go see Bad Lieutenant. For the longest time I just thought of Nic Cage as this guy who mugs and the camera and slurs his lines to the camera but I never really thought he had any chops as an actor. Then I heard a clip from Bad Lieutenant on NPR and just hearing his performance made me want to see this movie because his performance was actually convincing to me. I’m not the biggest Cage fan but Bad Lieutenant made something of a believer out of me.

I liked Kick Ass a lot and have seen it 3 or 4 times. I have it on Blu Ray and just don’t get tired of it. I thought it was both funny and original. I have not read the comics, so I cannot compare it to those. I still loved this movie, though. I though Hit Girl was extremely badass, and it was one of my favorite movies of 2010

Season of the Witch….with American accent!! hilarious…

Cage and Hellboy kicking medieval ass!

Nic Cage is one of those weird actors. I personally love the hell out of the man’s performances. He single handedly made the movie Deadfall watchable. I thought Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was a fantastic movie not just because of Nic Cage, but because of Val Kilmer and Brad Dourif. If you are looking for other good Nic Cage movies to see, I recomend Snake Eyes, Kiss of Death(with David Karusoe), and 8MM. It is unfortunate to see some of the films he has done recently(Bangkok Dangerous, the National Treasure movies, and Trespass for example), but I still love the man to death. By the way, I am so glad that I am not the only one who actually like Neil Labutte’s Wicker Man( worth it just because of Nic Cage)