DC Showcase Original Shorts Collection

DC Showcase Original Shorts Collection is the latest of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies, many guessing released because of the long wait between Superman/Batman: Apocalypse and All-Star Superman. The shorts collection features every animated short made thus far, The Spectre, Jonah Hex, and Green Arrow, as well as a new short advertised on the box art, Superman/Shazam! The Return of Black Adam. I haven't reviewed the shorts in the past, other than Green Arrow getting my seal of recommendation. Each short will get a short (ha) review and it's own rating out of 5.

Superman/Shazam! serves as an origin story for Captain Marvel, often confused for being a superhero named Shazam because of licensing issues DC Comics has with Marvel Comics. Marvel has their own superhero named Captain Marvel, created both before the name change to Marvel Comics and the creation of Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel. The origin story is summed up in 22 minutes while Superman is along for the ride mostly to keep the action going while Billy Batson is powerless and to exploit his weakness to magic so that Captain Marvel is shown as being Superman's physical equal, only to be outdone by Superman's maturity and extraneous superpowers.

George Newbern and Jerry O'Connell reprise their roles as Supes and Capt. Marvel from Justice League Unlimited. Newbern sounds as great as ever, but at this point it's almost impossible to distance him from Sephiroth, a voice he has been very careful to make sound like an evil version of his Superman voice. Superman sounds almost menacing at times, but that's really based on hearing new dialogue from him as Superman for the first time in 4 years and mostly hearing him as Sephiroth for those past 4 years. O'Connell sounds great as Captain Marvel again, but the voice actors who steal the show are Zach Callison as Billy Batson and James Garner as Shazam. Callison has a bright future ahead of him if he chooses to pursue voice acting and Garner does a great job transitioning to voice acting.

Final Score: 5 SHAZAMS! out of 5
The longer than usual run-time serves the story fantastically, the voice acting is stellar, and the animation kicks ass as usual. I just wish Superman wasn't there just to have more action going on throughout.


The Spectre is about a superhero who is so obscure, most people don't know Jerry Siegel, the co-creator of Superman, created him only 2 years after he and Joe Shuster created the Man of Steel. The Spectre is Jim Corrigan, a murdered police detective who is refused entry to the afterlife and becomes an avenging, undead figure who takes the lives of those who have taken the lives of others. The short stars Gary Cole as The Spectre, who does a fantastic job given the style of the short, a 70s detective story. He also changes his voice to a more serious tone as the Spectre.

Final Score: 5 Ghost Cars out of 5
Cheesy dialogue, film grain, Gary Cole, it all sounds like the making of a really bad B-movie, but the story is so excellent that even in good fun it's a solid movie. I only wish it were 22 minutes like the Captain Marvel story.


Jonah Hex is about a cowboy bounty hunter with a facial injury who lives by his own morals, but fights for justice. He also had an infamously bad movie this past summer starring Josh Brolin and Megan Fox which should in no way stop you from enjoying this story. Jonah Hex seems to just not work at all in live action and should be restricted to comics and animation. Hex is voice by Thomas Jane, the runner-up for the live action role of Jonah Hex in a better performance than the one done by the DCAU voice actor. Linda Hamilton voices the antagonist of the story, a prostitute who kills Johns for their money and hides their bodies afterwards.

Final Score: 4 Unsettling Scarred Mouths out of 5
Although the story is pretty bland, the action, voice acting, and music is fantastic. Just sit and enjoy the ride.


Green Arrow is about a superhero who is similar to Batman in many ways, but different enough to be considered a very different superhero. While Oliver Queen is a billionaire playboy who uses different gadgets as the Green Arrow and a young sidekick, he is known for sporting a blond beard, being an environmental activist, not having a depressing origin story, and having a stable relationship with Dinah Lance, the Black Canary. The short is a rather simple story about the attempted assassination of a young crown princess from a fictional country, but it mostly serves as a story to showcase (ha, another pun) Green Arrow's MO. The end features him getting rescued by Black Canary and he proposes to her.

Final Score: 3 Canary Cries out of 5
It's pretty sub-par for a Bruce Timm production, but not nearly as bad as Wonder Woman was. Neil McDonough was probably the worst choice for Green Arrow I could ever think of, Malcom McDowell gets less than a minute of dialogue, and Steve Blum is relegated to voicing incidental characters. The story is bland and overdone, and the action is incredibly sub-par. This doesn't mean Green Arrow is bad by any means, it's just not as good compared to the other shorts.

Final Final Score: 4 Bruce Timm Commentaries out of 5?
I couldn't think of a better measurement other than the 4 commentaries by Bruce Timm, done for each and every animated short. Despite the shorts having differing qualities, Bruce Timm's commentaries are always entertaining to listen to and well worth getting the collection. Also included are episodes from the DCAU featuring each superhero from the showcases with the exception of the Spectre who was not animated until Batman: The Brave and the Bold (which is featured). It's worth getting just for the Captain Marvel short and the Bruce Timm commentaries, but it's hard to justify the price for the blu-ray version, other than the sound is unbelievable in the Captain Marvel special.

My Thoughts on the First Trailer for Green Lantern

For starters, here's the trailer.

I am so glad the Green Lantern outfit doesn't look like that godawful costume on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. I'm rather surprised they chose to go with a bright green rather than what seems to be the norm these days in making superhero colors much darker thanks to the success of Batman. Hal Jordan's character is much more party than he was in his original appearances, but that's a good thing given how a lot of comic book fans view Jordan as the most boring of the Earth Green Lanterns. There are reports that John Stewart (the black Green Lantern, not The Daily Show host) will make a cameo at some point during the movie, hopefully setting up the introduction of Guy Gardner as well. The comical visual effect of a giant green punch attacking some thugs is exactly what I wanted out of this movie, nothing like what Justice League did to John Stewart.

There were some negatives, though. I've never been a fan of Blake Lively and I'm even less a fan of her being Carol Ferris. If she is to ever become Star Sapphire, I'm going to declare the future franchise dead. Some of the visual effect characters are fantastic looking, like Kilowog and Abin-Sur, while others like Sinestro looks like crap. Yes, the movie is still far from release, but hopefully the studio will listen to fans and increase the budget for the CG effects. Hal Jordan's domino mask is... well I'm still not a fan of the shape, it's alright.

Everything is progressing well and hopefully we will see a superhero battle of epic proportions as Thor and Green Lantern are released around the same time.

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition

A few years back, I did a very foolish thing. I bought GTA4 for my Xbox 360 instead of for my PS3. Once I played it, did I realize the game was originally programmed for the PS3 and then later ported to the 360. While it's definitely one of the best looking 360 games because of that (alongside FFXIII), it also suffers from a problem that FFXIII would later suffer: unbelievable lag in high activity areas. Unfortunately for the 360, GTA4 has unbelievably high draw distance and cannot maintain constant, lag-free motion. I still thought the game had a fantastic story, better than GTA3 or Vice City, but not as good as San Andreas, but the lag was just unbearable. Once I made the decision to sell my 360, I made it based on every game I owned I could either get on PS3 or PC, or there were games I never thought I would play again, such as GTA4. If only I had gotten the PS3 version originally...

Some fans were a bit disappointed to see how GTA4 only covered one city, even though the in-game map was actually larger than San Andreas'. To quell some of the nitpicking by fans, such as lack of clothing options and extravagant missions, they planned two episodes of Downloadable Content, Lost & Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. L&D was very well-received, but there a few complaints about the rather high price of $15 for only a few hours of content to a pre-existing game. TBoGT was even better received, but again, the price was far too high given the amount of content at $20. Microsoft was given these two DLC packs months earlier than the PS3 version as a deal made by Rockstar to give the 360 version something the PS3 version did not. Eventually, a stand-alone disc titled Episode From Liberty City was released for 360 and PS3, allowing gamers to play the DLC packs without owning GTA4 or having a hard copy to take to friends' houses. Finally, the definitive version of GTA4 was released, Grand Theft Auto 4: The Complete Edition. Touting both GTA4 and Episode From Liberty City, it was basically packaged as a cash-in for people who had either still not gotten GTA4 or had traded in GTA4 and chose not to buy the DLC packages.

In my case, this was the first time I had ever played the PS3 version and holy hell I am kicking myself for having bought the 360 version instead of the PS3 version. I've only encountered one instance of lag, in the middle of rush hour at The Triangle, the Times Square equivalent, but that was to be expected. Lost & Damned is great from what I've played so far, a pretty cool expansion of the GTA4 universe. The Ballad of Gay Tony is also great, too and it has incentives to re-do missions and aim for the best performance possible with scores given after completing missions. The price for the this whole package was very well worth it.

My only complaints are that in order to switch from either L&D or BoGT to GTA4, you need to quit and restart the entire game and after playing one of the DLC episodes, there is a glitch upon auto-loading a GTA4 save file that requires you to start a new game and then manually load the save file. Other than that, everything is fantastic and the story is actually better once you know what will happen next, something the other GTA games were not able to do.

If for some reason, you don't have GTA4, go get the Complete Edition, you won't regret it.

The Big Update

Holy shit it's been a long time since I've been able to make a decent post about my world! I finally have my computer here and I can get back to rolling off blog updates almost every day now!

Baseball

First off, we have to begin with the biggest news of them all, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series! Even now, it is very hard for me to sink in how... well, to put it frankly, how easy it was. The toughest challenge along the way ended up being the Phillies who didn't put up much of a fight. While Roy Halladay was touted around ESPN and Fox as being this God of Pitching, the Giants easily dismantled him. Most people were shocked to see that not only was the Giants pitching staff the best starters and bullpen in the entire league, but that their hitters were damn good too. The Texas Rangers, to this date, are only known for two things: being owned by George W. Bush before he became the governor of Texas and for foolishly trading away Alex Rodriguez to the Yankees.

A bit of back-story on how/why the Rangers even contended in the playoffs. After the 2009 World Series when the Yankees defeated the Phillies, the Phillies decided to make what was heralded by ESPN as the highest profile trade in baseball since Babe Ruth was traded to the Yankees. The Phillies traded away their ace pitcher, Cliff Lee, to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for their ace, Roy Halladay. Note that at this point in Lee's postseason career, he was undefeated and Halladay had never been to the playoffs. In mid-season, the Mariners did an incredibly stupid thing and traded Lee to the Texas Rangers in exchange for junk players because Lee had an expiring contract and the Mariners did not want to pursue re-signing him. With Lee as the new ace of the Rangers and some mid-season trades for power hitting, Nolan Ryan assembled the best hitting team in baseball alongside one of the top 5 starting pitchers. Once reaching the playoffs, the Rangers did the unthinkable and finally won a game in Dallas for the first time in the 50+ year old team's history. Shocking the media even more, the Rangers defeated the defending champion New York Yankees.

And then these guys came along. I guess even Japan feels Giants fever!

In Game 1, the Giants served Cliff Lee his first career postseason defeat. In Game 2, Matt Cain pitched a shutout while the Rangers bullpen collapsed after C.J. Wilson exited the game with a blister on his finger. During that Game 2, a pitcher who shall forever be known as str8edgeracer (his twitter account), pitched 11 balls in a row. Then he finally pitched a strike. Oh, but then he threw a 12th ball and walked his third man up at bat with 2 outs. The Giants absolutely obliterated the Rangers bullpen and the Rangers fans started getting worried as the World Series was headed to Dallas for the first time. In Game 3, Jonathan Sanchez couldn't quite pull it off and the Rangers won 4-2. In Game 4, Madison Bumgarner served the Rangers their 2nd shutout and became the youngest pitcher in history to pitch more than 6 scoreless innings. In the epic climax of Game 5, Tim Lincecum, reigning two-time NL Cy Young winner, tied the record for most strikeouts in a World Series clinching game at 10 strikeouts and Edgar Renteria joined some big names by delivering the series clinching RBI, the 2nd time he has done so in the World Series, joining the names of Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig.

Basketball

The Miami Heat continue to have inexplicable supporters in the sports media... or so they did until they blew a 22 point lead against the Utah Jazz and trailed the entire game against the Boston Celtics. Most people have found the very obvious flaws in the Miami Heat's "super team," most notably three of them: 1) An elite point guard like Rajon Rondo, Deron Williams, or Chris Paul is capable of scoring easily on the Heat by driving to the basket. 2) They have a serious lack of length at the 4 and 5 positions coupled with Chris Bosh vastly under-performing. 3) The Heat bench cannot gel together whatsoever and in order for the Heat to get in any kind of rhythm, one of the "Big Three" must be on the court.

Paul Millsap was the kryptonite for the Heat, scoring 46 points and making 3/3 3-pointers.

The Lakers have been playing almost effortlessly in the first 9 games of the season, managing to get a record of 8-1, losing their first game against the Denver Nuggets by 6 points in a game that Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom had poor shooting nights. If they didn't declare their alliance before the season, most people are now giving the Lakers a guaranteed 4th consecutive trip to the NBA Finals.
The biggest surprise, however, has been the New Orleans Hornets beginning their season at 7-0. While there have been some rumors of a Chris Paul trade, the Hornets haven't let it stop them and they're doing all they can to start and hopefully end strong. It was quite unfortunate to see their season crumble last year with Chris Paul's injury, but I'm glad now they have returned to form and give the Lakers a good challenge in the playoffs!

Comics

The big event is finally over! Bruce Wayne is finally in the present and has once again donned the cape and cowl. In order to return to the present, Wayne had to have his memories tampered with so Darkseid's Omega Effect could not affect him to the original effect. In order for him to regain his memories... well I'll leave that detail hanging until my review of The Return of Bruce Wayne #5-6. In the world of Supergirl, she managed to defeat the threat to Bizarro World in an unexpectedly long story arc that was actually very well written and speaks to who exactly Supergirl is. Expect reviews for all these comics in the near future.

Video Games

So, the Playstation Move and Kinect are on store shelves now... Not sure what to make of that other than the Wii is still going to be the number one seller at Christmas time. I recently downloaded a bunch of sports games demos, so I guess I can give my 2 cents on those.
NBA 2K11: Like the previous NBA 2K games, 2K11 is too fucking complicated to pick up and play. While incredibly realistic, it's also impossible to enjoy unless you put in hours of practice to learn how to play.
MLB The Show 10: I downloaded this mostly to see how it plays in 3D and it's not a very good 3D effect in place. What makes things worse is that the pitching is impossible to pull off and I couldn't figure out how to swing. Allegedly, the "swing" button is either square or cross, but neither fucking worked.
MLB 2K10: After playing The Show, I had to check out and see if MLB 2K was any better. It was miles better than The Show. The pitching was a bit tricky to figure it out at first, but after walking 2 guys, it was became easy to get consistent strikes. While difficult to hit consistently, I eventually learned to not swing at everything that came my way (like in real life!) and managed to get a single! One problem I encountered was playing in the outfield could use some improvement. When the MLB 2K11 demo hits in a few months, I'll have to give it a try and see if the outfield play is improved at all.
Madden NFL 11: Madden NFL 10 didn't impress me whatsoever. After Madden 11 promised to make things quicker, simpler, and deeper, I had to be a little curious to see how they could finally make a football game easy to play without miles long pages of playbooks. Well, Madden 11 managed to do it. Playing QB is easier than it's ever been, rushing is realistic, kicking field goals and punting takes into account several factors, and playing defense is incredibly rewarding. I am extremely tempted to go out and buy this game because it's actually a very good video game, not just a good sports game.

Movies

Basically the only update here is that I saw Jackass 3D (loved it) and I bought the Back to the Future trilogy on blu-ray. Hopefully, Jackass 3D will finally kill the 3D genre forever and push movie makers to return to making movies without resorting to advertising OOH SHINY 3D LOOK!

Well, that's what things have happened in a nutshell. Updates to come in the coming days!