The Adventures of a Digital Sensei
A little bit of my childhood died this week. Gary Owens, the voice of Space Ghost from the Hanna-Barbera TV series, passed away yesterday. While most people that know me or follow my website are aware of my Batman obsession, one of the things that they may not know is that Space Ghost was one of the first characters that got me hooked on the superhero genre.
Space Ghost was kind of a cross between Batman, Superman and Flash Gordon. His Power Bands and Continue reading “Good-bye Space Ghost!”
Santa was very good to me this Christmas! I got a leather Batman jacket that I had wanted for a few years. The wife a kids had heard me talk about this jacket and decided it was time to hook a brother up. And yes, I realize that a Batman jacket might seem a bit nerdy. But I don’t care. I intend to rock this jacket for as long as the weather permits.
Last night I schlepped over to Mama’s Place Studio in Astoria, Queens and guest hosted the weekly New York Cine Podcast. My co-hosts, Tom Seymour and Dave Leute, discussed the recent hacking at Sony Pictures, the new Star Wars and Terminator series trailers, and a whole bunch of other media and culture issues. I even introduced them to the Continue reading “New York Cine Radio: Sony and the Star Wars trailer”
I am probably the world’s biggest Batman fan so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I didn’t agree with the outcome of the most recent Super Power Beat Down fan film pitting the Dark Knight against the Dark Lord of the Sith. However one of the things that really ticked me off was how good the production was for the film. I was visually stunning. It was probably the best fan-film I have seen since Batman: Deadend.
One of the problems that I had with the video is that Bats had plans to the Death Star and the location of a lightsaber, but didn’t come up with a contingency plan on how to disrupt Vader’s force abilities. Keep in mind that this is a man so paranoid that during the JLA: Tower of Babel (or Justice League: Doom movie) storyline Batman developed contingency for neutralizing his closest allies in the Justice League. In the Vader scenario, Continue reading “Super Power Beat Down: Batman vs Darth Vader”
Ever since I was a little kid Christmas has been my favorite holiday by far. All of my family members have known this for years. I guess when all is said and done, I just love getting presents, and this Christmas I got some pretty cool stuff. The hat shown in the above picture is from the official Indiana Jones collector series. I also got the Obi Wan Kenobi lightsaber to finish out my Star Wars Ultimate FX saber collection. I already had the Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn models but I was missing Obi Wan’s saber. The Obi Wan model finishes out my Ultimate FX saber collection for now. I am still hoping that they make a Mace Windu saber.
As for the rest of my presents, my Continue reading “I love Christmas!”
Tom Seymour and the rest of the guys over at New York Cine Radio asked me to Skype in for their Halloween podcast special and do a small comic book and nerd culture segment. It was a new idea that they wanted to try out and the group thought that I would be the perfect person for the job.
I talked a little about the new Batman: Arkham Origins video game as well as some of the Continue reading “New York Cine Radio – The Halloween Podcast”
The other day I was talking to my old martial arts instructor, Kyoshi Giles, and musing over the fact that only fellow martial artists seem to understand how getting together with close friends to punch, kick, and stab one another over and over can be a beautiful thing. The camaraderie that can be developed by working out with other like minded individuals is not only fun, but also uplifting. I bring all this up because I had just returned from an early morning knife fighting class at the Krav Maga Federation and was feeling pretty good about getting back into the swing of training on a regular basis.
Over the past year or so I had made a number Continue reading “No more excuses”
After months of waiting Batman: Arkham Origins dropped tonight. The new Arkham is the followup to the wildly popular Batman inspired video games Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. I just picked up my copy from GameStop. There was a surprisingly small line for the game. It was nothing as crazy as the launch for Grand Theft Auto V, which made me happy and a little sad. I snagged the collector’s edition, and the season pass that has all of the character skins and downloadable content. I never usually get all the extras but this game is gonna be sick. I thought about
Matt Damon was recently asked about his take on the Ben Affleck as Batman controversy. Damon, who is a long time friend of Affleck, stated that “Bruce Wayne is the more challenging part of the role, and Ben will be great at that”. He then went on to say that “Batman just sits there with his cowl over his head and whispers in a kinda gruff voice at people. Now I understand Matt Damon is just looking out for his boy, but the comments he made about how Batman isn’t a complex character came off as being more than a little ignorant and dismissive of the genre. In fact he only hurts Ben case by reinforcing a commonly held belief that Affleck doesn’t really take preparation for his roles seriously. I am hoping that Affleck does not share Damon’s feeling on Batman/Bruce Wayne or we could be in store for another Daredevil.
The studio isn’t going to back down so we are probably stuck with Affleck. So if I was to give Ben any advice it would be this; Continue reading “Open letter to Ben Affleck, or please shut up Matt Damon”
The news was just released that Warner Brothers has chosen Ben Affleck to be the new Batman in the next DC Comics inspired movie. I am crushed by this news. Seriously. I try to stay relatively informed on important issues of the day like the NSA revelations, the deficit, the Middle East, stop and frisk, and anything to do with improving the educational system. All the I ask for is a small bone every now and then. Can a brother just look forward enjoying a frivolous movie about a childhood comic book hero without Ben Affleck and his massive cranium mucking up the works? No really, look at his head sometime. It is enormous. My only hope is that they will have to recast the part because they couldn’t find a cowl large enough to slide over that freakish mellon.
I have been a comic book Continue reading “Affleck is Batman??? What da…….”