The Quite Nerdy Blog

Batman V Superman has promised to be one of the biggest films of this year, if not the last decade. The question on everyone's lips then is: is it actually any good? Let's find out I think I'll start with the story but the real difficulty is going to be which story I start with but I'll get to that. The main thread (I think) is that Bruce Wayne is trying to get back at Superman for destroying Metropolis, Superman is trying to stop Batman's vigilante style of justice, Lex Luthor is trying to get the two to fight like they're his little action figures who are one puberty away from exploring each other, Lois Lane is trying to find where a bullet came from after it was fired at her, the American justice system is trying to work out what action should be done regarding Superman and his powers and The Daily Planet is trying to fight the failing sales of newspapers. As you can tell, that's a lot of story and I didn't even bring up every story thread. There...

Batman VS Superman: Dawn of Justice comes out later this week and to try and get myself excited for it, I watched Man of Steel. Makes sense, it's the same Superman, the same director. If this is great, then BvS will be great as well, right?  Man of Steel is yet another Superman origin story because the consumers clearly want more superhero origin stories. It tells the story of Kal El being sent away from Krypton moments before its destruction and landing in Smallville to be raised by the Kents as Clark Kent. It's a fairly standard origin story and the rest of the movie seems to be waiting for that bit to be over so the rest of it can begin. The other stories here are a revenge story from General Zod who wants to rebuild Krypton on Earth's ashes and then Lois Lane who is trying to find out who Superman is to get a really good news story. The story tries to be more dramatic than it is and at the end of the day, the origin story of a near immortal alien isn't the mos...

This is the 100th post on my blog so I decided to do an entirely self indulgent post about the best episodes of Community. It's pretty much certain that the show is now over and with the sixth season out on DVD soon and the fact that I'm entering my sixth (?) total rewatch of the show, now is the perfect time. I figured it'd be a pretty simple list but my short list consisted of a fifth of the episodes made so I had to cut 24 down into 7 honorable mentions and my final 7 picks. This was hard and you've probably stopped reading by now. If you're still here, I'm sorry. You don't have to stay, this is just for me and the two other Community fans. So, honorable mentions. Advanced Gay- The one where we meet Pierce's dad, Jeff kills him and we learn the significance of wet wipes to the gay community Modern Warfare- The one where a simple game of paintball assassin turns into a parody of every action movie but mainly Die Hard. Also, Jeff and Britta finally ...

*sigh* Alvin and The Chipmunks: The Road Chip is the fourth (?!?!?) film in the Alvin and The Chipmunks franchise that has so far consisted of the first one, the Squeakuel and Chipwrecked. It features singing Chipmunks who are entirely animated and humans who can't act despite being talented and failing to interact with the animated 'munks. This particular film has them trying to sabotage Dave's wedding because they don't like the new Mum's son. It's an excuse for hijinks and a poor one at that. At least it's entertaining hijinks though, right? Wrong. I guess I should talk about the acting. Dave, or Earl from My Name is Earl, is the Dad of the chipmunks. After four films, he should be able to stare into blank space and pretend there are balls of fur there but he just can't. He isn't funny and he just can't act. They got some big names for the Chipmunks but I don't know why because they're squeaky, furry hellspawn and it doesn't...

As part of Film Studies (which is a real subject) I am studying the part of film known as Film Noir. It's strange in that it's not really a genre because it's so vague. It's usually got crime in it, often a femme fatale and that's kind of it in terms of constants. Despite this and the fact that I'm studying it and picking it apart, I really quite love it. It isn't perfect and I don't love or even like everything that falls under its broad umbrella but I think there's a lot to love about it. I'll start by saying that Classic Noir is pretty patchy. The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep are both competently made films that are technically pretty good but they're just not entertaining for a modern audience. They stretch their hour and a half run times into pretty long films that don't seem to go anywhere. Where classic noir does shine though is in Double Indemnity. It proves to be one film from this era that has aged like a fine wine. Even s...