Josh's Geek Cave's Halloween Special

 Hey everyone! Happy Halloween! I hope you all had a spooky night tonight. I decided to do a little Halloween special where I'll be talking about a TV show and a movie that I've watched over the last three days. It's been raining for the past two days so I stayed in and watched TV and a movie. Let's get into it!

On Wednesday and yesterday, I watched seven episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on DVD. All six Halloween episodes, and then the episode of the 7th season that would've been a Halloween episode (season 7, episode 6), but wasn't for some reason. Seasons 4 and 7 are the only two seasons of the show that I'd never seen any episodes from before yesterday. While I'd watched seasons 1-3 on TGIF when they were on, I'd managed to catch a few episodes from seasons 5 and 6 when I was up at the cottage in the early 2000s. My grandparents had satellite TV up there in the late '90s, the 2000s, and the early 2010s. So, they were able to pick up the nearest broadcast of The WB in the U.S. Which means I got to watch a few shows that I either didn't get on channels available to me at home, or watch shows I did get on their original American channel. Which was cool.

Watching these seven episodes reminded me of how much fun it is to watch Sabrina. It was my favourite TGIF show of the ones I watched in the late '90s. I think it's because it never got as heavy, or as preachy, as Boy Meets World tended to do, and it lasted longer than any other TGIF show that aired between 1997 and 2000. 

Sabrina herself, played by the lovely Melissa Joan Hart, is so sarcastic, witty, and the kind of girl I wanted to be friends with at the time I watched the show originally. same with Sabrina's friend, Valerie, played by Lindsay Sloane, who was introduced in season 2. Jenny was okay in season 1, but I liked Valerie better. And of course I wished that both Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda were my aunts because they were also lots of fun. I don't think I'd want Salem as a pet though. He's too sarcastic. 

The Complete Series boxset is interesting because like all DVD boxsets released by Paramount Home Entertainment in 2006 and later, the modern CBS Television logo is at the end of every episode instead of the original Viacom Productions logo, so the episodes from seasons 1-3 weren't exactly how I remembered them, but they were still fun. DVDs and Blu-rays are a fun way to watch your favourite shows from the past. Particularly the cartoons us '90s kids grew up with like Batman: The Animated Series and Rugrats. They're also a great way to revisit your favourite TGIF shows like Sabrina. I'm definitely gonna do a full watch through of the show in the very near future.

  

Tonight for Halloween proper, I watched Casper on VHS. I talked about this movie in my recent post on movies we '90s kids watched growing up, but I wanted to go a bit deeper here because I didn't talk about my memories of watching it on VHS back in the '90s. 

I was probably 10 or 11 when I finally saw this movie. I think we'd already moved to the house we lived in in Greely before we moved to this house when I saw Casper for the first time. I definitely remember watching it in that particular family room, rather than in the play area that my siblings and I had at the log house, or in the basement or the family room at the house on Greely's main road. So it had to have been in our third house in Greely that I saw this movie in. So it was 1997 or 1998 when I saw it. 

We didn't always rent or buy a movie as soon as it was released on VHS. Sometimes we waited a couple of years before doing so. Especially once we moved out to Greely and the nearest video store was 30 minutes away. And it'd take a while for the local gas station or convenience store to get a copy of the movie in. Moreso with the VHS releases, but as DVDs became the dominant home video format, the gas station became faster at getting brand new releases in for rental.

My favourite scene in this movie is the end when Casper had been turned into Devon Sawa so that he and Kat, played by Christina Ricci, could dance at the Halloween party, and Dr. Harvey (Bill Pullman's character) got to see his deceased wife, Amelia one last time, ending his quest to find her ghost form. Not only are Kat and Casper dancing to "Remember Me this Way" by Jordan Hill, but all the characters got what they wanted. Casper and Kat got friends, Harvey got to see Amelia, and the Ghostly Trio got rid of Carrigan and Dibs, who are the only characters in the movie who DON'T get everything they wanted. 

I still love this movie. I said in the review I did five years ago on the Review Basement blog that this wasn't a good movie and that it's stupid kids movie, which I loved anyway. However, watching it tonight, it's the perfect Halloween movie for those of us who don't like Horror movies. And just remembering seeing the movie on VHS in either 1997 or 1998, put me back into the '90s for a night of ghostly fun. I am in love with this movie, and it's absolutely on my list of movies to not only watch on Halloween every year, but to watch all year round, because of how much fun it is.

And that my friends, concludes this year's Halloween Special. I have no idea what my next blog post is gonna be on, but it'll be something fun for sure. I got a busy week coming up next week though, so it might not be until Wednesday or Friday that I'll be back here. But, until then, have a great rest of your night, a great weekend, and I will talk to you all later. Take care! 

Four Halloween Movies We Watched in the '90s and Early 2000s

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. It's the week of Halloween and I thought I'd come on here and talk about four Halloween movies that '90s kids watched in the '90s and early 2000s. I've personally seen all four of these movies, but I only saw two of them when I was growing up in the '90s. As you know I'm not a fan of horror movies, so this is the closest thing you're going to get from me during spooky season. Also, these movies aren't in any particular order, they're just random. Let's get into it.

First up is Hocus Pocus. I only saw this movie when I did my review of it two or three years ago. Oddly enough this movie wasn't very popular when it first came out in 1993. As I stated in my review, there could've been any number of reasons for that. I think part of it is because it came out in July, and despite kids being off school for the summer, the movie had some very stiff competition as Jurassic Park would've still been in theaters, and Free Willy came out the same day, and kids weren't interested in a Halloween movie in the middle of summer. While it has a cult following now, it didn't happen until the movie came out on DVD in 2002, despite being on home video starting in 1994. It's a fun movie though and I quite enjoyed it.

Next up is Casper from 1995. This movie stars Christina Ricci as Kat and Devon Sawa as the titular character in his human form at the end of the movie. It was successful at the box office, but critics were mixed on it. It used '90s CGI to portray Casper and the Ghostly Trio. We all remember the dance scene between Casper and Kat. Of course for some people Devon Sawa and Christina Ricci were their first celebrity crushes, so seeing them in a movie together was probably the most amazing thing ever. I own it on VHS, because, why not watch this '90s gem on VHS, even after 30 years?

Then we have Ernest Scared Stupid. Ernest P. Worell is a stupid, but beloved character, who had a series of barely successful films in the late '80s and early '90s. This one came out in 1991, in October. It didn't do well at the box office, nor was it popular with critics. But I suppose it could be considered a cult classic, but I think it's just popular for those of us who don't like super scary/full on horror films because Ernest is so innocent and, well, earnest. I never saw this growing up, but I did watch it for the first time last year when Katie from the VHS Club Podcast, sent me a 3-film DVD set of Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Scared Stupid, and Ernest Goes to Jail. I really enjoyed it and I'm definitely going to be watching it again this week.

Finally, we have The Addams Family, also from 1991, and also starring Christina Ricci. I remember watching this one on VHS at my grandparents's place when I was pretty young. Also, I feel that this movie is the reason we are still in love with Gomez, Morticia, Fester, Wednesday, Pugsley, Thing, Grandmama, Lurch, and Cousin Itt to this very day. Mainly because the comic strip was long over by the time the movie came out, and the original TV show had been over for over 20 years, leaving only a cartoon series in the '70s, which also wasn't airing in reruns by 1991, so I feel that audiences might not have been aware of the original 1964 television series, or the 1973 cartoon or even the comic strip had this movie not come out. And we certainly wouldn't've had Wednesday or any of the other shows and movies that have come out thanks to the success of this movie.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for tonight. I'll be back soon with more blog posts. I just thought I'd get this post up since it's Halloween on Friday, because, again, I don't do horror movies. Until next time, have a great night and I will talk to you all again very soon. Take care.

How Fandom Has Changed since the '90s

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I wanted to come on here and talk about something that's been on my mind since I watched a documentary on the Smallville: The Complete Sixth Season DVD set, that talked about the fans of Smallville and how they showed their fandom in the 2000s. And that's how fandom has changed since the '90s, and how it's stayed the same. I'm going to stick to movies and TV shows for this just because being a fan of certain TV shows and movies inevitably spins-off into the other branches of fandom, like reading comic books and playing video games. Let's get into it.

When I was a kid in the '90s being a fan of a show like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or a movie like Batman Forever or Clueless meant more than watching the show every week (or every day in the case of TNG and MMPR) on TV or going to see the movie in theaters. It meant watching the VHS releases, whether you owned them or rented them from whatever your video rental store of choice was, or you taped episodes off the TV. It meant reading the novels and comics, playing with the toys, listening to the soundtracks on either audiocassette or CD (or both), playing the video games, and collecting the trading cards. Oh and talking to friends and family members who were also fans of the show or movie.

If you were a teenage fan or an adult fan of these shows and movies, it also meant interacting with other fans on the internet message boards that started to pop up before the official websites for Star Trek and Star Wars became a thing. Same with going to fan conventions either locally or internationally, and writing fan letters to the casts themselves, or to fan magazines.

When I was a teenager in the early to mid 2000s, none of that changed. Except, instead of watching the show on VHS, you could watch your favourite show on DVD, as the latest DVD season set would come out between seasons of the show, ensuring you could refresh your memory before the next season started airing in the fall, or ensuring that you could still watch the show on the weeks where there wasn't a new episode airing on FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, The WB, or UPN. Or whatever channel you were watching the show on in whatever country you're from. 

By then you also had MSN Messenger and AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), so you could talk to your friends about your favourite shows on one of those platforms. It also became easier to post your fan fiction online in the 2000s as well. Before the advent of the internet, fans would send their fan fiction to fanzines, which were fan owned magazines not authorized by the networks and studios making these shows.

Nowadays the only differences in the way we show our fandom, is the introduction of social media and video sharing sites such as YouTube. That and specific fan conventions outside of the authorized ones like Star Trek Las Vegas, Star Wars Celebration, and Power Morphicon no longer exist. Broader pop culture conventions such as San Diego Comic-Con, New York City Comic-Con, Fan Expo Canada, and Ottawa Comiccon (to name a few) have become the preferred conventions for fans to interact with one another. We also don't have MSN Messenger or AIM anymore, but Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and other social media sites all have messenger features that do pretty much everything that those Messenger sites did in the late '90s and early 2000s.

We don't even have most of our fandom magazines anymore either. Star Wars Insider and Doctor Who Magazine are pretty much the only ones left now. Aside from Star Trek Magazine and Star Trek Explorer the rest of them, like Disney Adventures, Wizard Magazine, Starlog, Cinemafantastique, Fantasmagoria, MAD Magazine, and Nintendo Power all ended in either the late 2000s or the early 2010s.

So I guess Fandom hasn't changed, we've just had new avenues in which we could share our fandom with other people, and new options for how to access our favourite shows from yesteryear, as well as our favourite shows from today. Using my first two examples, both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers have toys and comics being made for them. MMPR doesn't have novels anymore, but TNG does. They also both still have DVD releases for them coming out, though they are re-releases of their Complete Series DVD boxsets that first came out over a decade ago. TNG is also on Blu-ray.

I find it fascinating the different ways fans of a TV show or a movie or an entire multimedia franchise like Star Trek and Star Wars express their fandom. I'm especially fascinated by how fandom has developed over the decades. Just because a lot of it is the same, but some of it is different nowadays than it was 20 to 50 years ago. The internet has given us ways to share our fandom with other like-minded people. Which is pretty cool.

I think that's gonna be it for me for today. I just wanted to come on here and talk about fandom for a bit because that documentary on the Smallville sixth season DVD boxset got me thinking about fandom in the 2000s, particularly in that 2005-2006 period, where we had the internet, but social media, including YouTube, was still a year or two away from becoming a thing. 

I'll be back soon with more blog posts. Next week is the season finale of the fifth season of Only Murders in the Building, so I might come on here and talk about that for a bit. Mainly because I think it's the final season of the show, but I can't find anything on whether it actually is or not. It's certainly been feeling like a final season. Anyways, I might come on here and talk about that on Wednesday next week. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Snow White (2025) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. It's been a busy week here in the Geek Cave, so I haven't had a chance to come on here and do any blog posts this week. However, since The VHS Club Podcast aired this week's episode a night early, I went on Disney+ to watch the live-action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs last night. So that gave me something to write about this week. There will be some minor spoilers, but nothing super major since it's a relatively new movie. Let's get into it!

My history with Disney's live-action remakes of their classic animated features has been mixed. While I enjoyed Beauty and the Beast (2017), Christopher Robin (2018), and Aladdin (2019), I'm too much of a fanboy of the 1967 animated original to have enjoyed The Jungle Book (2016), and I saw no point in watching the other ones, though I did try to watch both Mulan (2020) and Cruella (2021), but didn't finish either one. However, even though I didn't want to go to see it in theaters, I did have an interest in seeing Snow White just because the original animated version is so old and dated (I still enjoy it though), that I was intrigued to see what a live-action remake could be, being that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first animated feature film produced by Walt Disney in the 1930s.

Despite my interest though, I was still skeptical. Afterall this was the same studio that did a CG animated remake of The Lion King, and then dared to call it "live-action", even though it's a photorealistically animated movie. I was pleasantly surprised though to find that I found myself enjoying the movie to the point where I was smiling and singing along to the classic songs that appear in the movie, such as "Heigh-Ho", "Whistle While You Work" and "The Silly Song (Dwarfs's Yodel Song)". I couldn't help myself, because two of those songs have been part of my childhood since before I ever saw the 1937/1938 animated movie on VHS after 1994 (it didn't come out on home video until 1994), as I had the Disney Sing-Along Songs: Heigh-Ho VHS tape when I was a kid, and both "Heigh-Ho" and "The Silly Song" are both on there.

The cast was interesting. Gal Gadot was the only member of the cast I've seen in other movies...namely three (out of the four) of the DCEU films she appeared in as Wonder Woman. I enjoyed Rachel Zegler's performance as the titular character, and Andrew Burnap as Jonathan, the stand-in for the Prince Charming character from the original movie. I also enjoyed the performances of the actors who voiced the Dwarfs. Including Dopey. Which was weird to me, because Dopey was always this mute character, but it made sense that they'd change that since the Dwarfs aren't as comedic in this movie as they are in the original animated one. 

One thing that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me is how the Queen knew where Snow White was before she disguised herself as an elderly woman to give Snow White the poison apple. In the original animated movie, the Magic Mirror told her where Snow White was staying, but in this version, it didn't. And being that none of the Queen's soldiers knew where she ended up being after their fight with Jonathan and his Loyalists (they fight the Queen's men in the name of the King, Snow White's father), I don't know how she could've known where Snow White was. Maybe it's in one of the deleted scenes that are on the movie's Blu-ray release? Who knows.

I do appreciate that they expanded the story so that we meet Snow White as a little girl and see what her parents were like before her mother died, and her father married the Evil Queen, so that we see what happened after Jonathan (Prince Charming in the original) kissed her to break the sleeping death spell the Queen had placed on her through the poison apple. It also meant that the Queen's death can happen after that, instead of by chance after the Dwarfs had been chasing her, like in the animated movie. Even the original story by the Brothers Grimm had more in it than the original animated movie did.

In a way, the movie felt like what the animated movie would've been had Disney made it in the '90s, during the Disney Renaissance era (1989-1999), instead of the '30s. It had some of the same story beats as Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994) did. Maybe that's why I enjoyed it so much. It felt familiar and interesting in a way that the other Disney live-action remakes haven't been before. This doesn't mean I'm going to go back and watch all of the other Disney live-action remakes, even the ones I've seen before, but I enjoyed the movie.

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. It was fun, hopeful, interesting and the songs were great. Between this and Superman (2025), I'm beginning to feel hopeful that Hollywood is starting to inject hope and fun back into the movies, while sending very good messages through the power of cinema, because it really hasn't felt that way to me for a very long time. While the movie didn't do very well at the box office, it has found its audience on Disney+, so I recommend giving it a watch, even if you're not a fan of the Disney live-action remakes.

That's gonna be it for me for today. I might be back tomorrow to do a review of The Hobbit, as I'm almost finished re-reading it (for the hundredth time), and I did review The Lord of the Rings early last year or late the year before. In the meantime have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Iron Man (2008) Movie Memories

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday night. It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada this weekend and I have absolutely no plans. I was supposed to be playing D&D with the family this weekend, but those plans changed, which is fine. Tonight I'm here to talk about Iron Man. The movie that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2008. But, this isn't a movie review, and I didn't watch the movie before coming on here. On this night, 17 years ago, I sat in my living room with a friend in my program in college and we watched the movie together as neither of us had seen it yet (I hadn't started going to the theaters with Brad on a semi-regular basis yet when Iron Man was released). So let's talk about the night of Friday, October 10th, 2008.

Released on May 2nd, 2008, Iron Man started what is now known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and made $585.8 million at the box office. At the time superhero movies hadn't become as popular as they were in the 2010s. Marvel had done well with the X-Men movies at 20th Century Fox and the Spider-Man movies at Sony Pictures, but both franchises had started to lose steam with X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006 and Spider-Man 3 in 2007. Other Marvel movies such as Daredevil in 2003 and Fantastic Four in 2005 hadn't done very well, and none of the movies based on DC Comics characters besides Batman Begins (2005) had done very well either in the 2000s. 

Starring Robert Downey Jr. as the titular character, the movie was hugely popular, despite the character of Tony Stark/Iron Man not being a hugely popular comic book character, despite having an animated series in the '90s. However, the crazy thing is is that while Kevin Feige and Jon Favreau hoped to launch a shared cinematic universe, something that hadn't really been done since the Universal Monster movies of the '30s and '40s had stopped coming out, they knew it wouldn't happen overnight and made the movie so it stood alone incase it didn't do well enough to fit with The Incredible Hulk, which Universal was releasing basically a month after Iron Man came out.

During this time I was in college. I had just bombed in the Radio Broadcasting program at Algonquin College, and was licking my academic wounds in the special winter semester track of the General Arts and Sciences program where students who either flunked out of other programs or hadn't been able to start in the fall semester of the school year could still take classes even if they didn't know what they wanted to do next. So I was really busy with schoolwork and wasn't paying too much attention to the news coming out about the movie at the time. I may have seen the trailer on YouTube or had seen a TV spot for the movie during episodes of How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) and The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019). But, being that I'm not a fan of Marvel in general, and at the time, knew very little about Marvel Comics outside of three Spider-Man comics I'd gotten when I was a kid, and the X-Men and Spider-Man movies, as well as having seen everything else besides the Punisher movies up to that point. I didn't really know who Iron Man was or anything like that. And, while the movie looked cool, I personally just didn't care.

Fast forward to October, 2008, I was fully integrated into the media stream of the General Arts and Sciences (GAS) program at Algonquin, having recovered enough academically to not completely wash out of college. By this point Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk had finished their theatrical runs, with Iron Man faring much better at the box office than The Incredible Hulk (which only made $265.6 million against Iron Man's $585.8 million) did. It also fared much better with critics and the audience than The Incredible Hulk did, and Iron Man had just come out on home video formats (this was before streaming kids), with The Incredible Hulk joining it later in October.

I'd made a friend in my new college program. Her name was Jackie, and we got along pretty well. I'd explained to her that it would be difficult for me to stay at the college after classes to hang out, but, I invited her over for a movie night, complete with pizza. She accepted and we made plans to hang out at my place on a Friday night in early October. This was the semester that we had Political Studies class on Fridays at like 5 pm and were usually out by 6:30, even though the class was supposed to be two hours long, ending at 7 pm. We even had a test that day, so we were out of class even earlier. While I was in class, I'd asked my mom to stop at the gas station and see what she could find in the way of movies to rent for us. I think I'd asked her for something specific, but I don't remember what it was. I just remember she couldn't find whatever movie it was, so picked up Iron Man instead.

Jackie had agreed to drive me home since she was coming over after class anyway, so we stopped at Little Caesar's in Manotick and got ourselves a pizza on our way back to my place. Jackie was the first friend from college I ever had over at my place. The first of two. The other being Andrew, whom I've talked about on the blog during my movies I saw in theaters in the 2000s post a few years ago. Jackie had a boyfriend, so I knew this was just a fun one on one friend hangout rather than the potential for something romantic to start. 

Of course, by 2008 VHS had gone the way of the Dinosaurs, so the only format available at the gas station was DVD, it was also the only format we could watch since my parents hadn't bought a Blu-ray player, with Blu-ray still being relatively new at the time (just a little over two years old at the time). So my mom had rented Iron Man on DVD for us. We ate our pizza first, because I had dogs at the time and had we tried to eat our pizza in front of the TV, they would've tried to steal the entire pizza from us. And then we put on the movie.

I remember liking the movie, but, being that I wasn't a Marvel fan, I had no idea what it meant when Samuel L. Jackson showed up in the post-credits scene as Nick Fury, since I had no idea who Nick Fury even was. I just didn't know that having Fury showing up to recruit Tony for the Avengers Initiative meant something big if the movie did well and Marvel Studios was allowed to start the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

I had fun hanging out, watching the movie, and eating pizza with Jackie that night, but that was kind of where my Marvel movie watching journey ended. The next Marvel movie I saw ended up being X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009. That movie was the first Marvel movie I ever saw in theaters. I'd missed The Incredible Hulk entirely, and the next time Marvel Studios released anything that was part of the MCU was Iron Man 2 in 2010, so I think that two year gap between The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 kinda quelled the Marvel hype for a while. I don't know for sure because I wasn't locked in on the online geek scene at the time, being that I only watched YouTube for music videos at the time, wasn't part of any Facebook groups, didn't have any other social media accounts (Instagram wasn't even a thing yet, and wouldn't be until October, 2010), and didn't participate in any online forums, except for one Star Trek forum. All I had were the friends I hung out with, and I don't really remember if Brad and I even talked about anything Marvel was putting out aside from going to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009 and then Iron Man 2 in 2010. I just remember him being surprised the day we went to see The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012, when I told him I hadn't seen Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger (both having come out in 2011), or The Avengers, even though I'd also enjoyed Iron Man 2.

Being that he was the only friend I was seeing movies with in 2011-2012, and I hadn't made plans with him, or either of my siblings, to see those three movies, I really don't get why he was surprised that I hadn't seen them. Especially since I didn't have friends over very often to watch movies with, video stores had started closing, and gas stations were close to getting rid of their movie rental sections by that point (Netflix was a thing by then too). 

Alright my friends, I think that's it for me for tonight. I just wanted to come on here and talk about my memories of seeing Iron Man for the first time being that it was 17 years ago, to the day, that I first saw the movie. I had seen it in my memories on Facebook on Wednesday, as I'd been excited to have Jackie over on the Friday, and I think we'd just finalized our plans for that day. 

I think that's it for me for this week as well. I'll be back next week for sure though. So until then have a great night (or whenever you're reading this blog post) and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Empire Records (1995) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I just finished watching Empire Records with the gang from The VHS Club Podcast, and this week is already pretty crazy, so I decided to write my review while the movie was fresh in my mind. I may include minor spoilers, but, as usual, I'm not going to go through every plotpoint or anything crazy like that. Let's get into it!

Released on September 22nd, 1995, Empire Records takes place in a record store of the same name, over the course of one day. It stars Anthony LaPaglia, Liv Tyler, Renee Zellweger, Ethan Embry, Debi Mazar, and Robin Tunney, among others. 

So tonight was my very first time seeing this movie. With it having come out in late 1995, it wasn't a movie I would've gotten to see as I was 8 years old, going on 9, when it came out. Knowing this is one of Katie and Nat's favourite movies, I was excited to see it. I really wasn't sure what to expect going into the movie. I really enjoyed it though. It did get heavy at times, talking about mental health in a way that most '90s movies shied away from. However, I think it did a great job of handling it.

The cast is spectacular. Liv Tyler and Renee Zellweger's characters, Corey and Gina, were my favourite characters, as well as Ethan Embry's character, Mark. There was just something about them specifically that I really grabbed onto. Mark was just this goofy kid, who worked at the store, and both Liv and Renee played the meltdowns of Corey and Gina during their big fight really well. It was raw and emotional, and very well done.

Robin Tunney's character, Deb, also caught my attention. She very much reminds me of people who have been part of my life. One very close friend in particular, who is still part of my life today. Thankfully. Deb explaining that she wanted to die because she felt invisible hit me deep because of that friend, and another friend who hasn't been with us in 18 years (as of July). I'm not familiar with Robin's work, but she did a wonderful job playing Deb.

The moment that really endeared the movie to me was at the very beginning where Lucas (played by Rory Cochrane), A.J. (played by Johnny Whitworth) walk to the store, entering the one next to it, and you see a Super Nintendo in the store's window. Reminding myself that this movie came out in 1995, and was most likely filmed in 1994, it still surprised me to see it since the Sega Genesis would've still been the SNES's competitor at the time (the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation hadn't come out yet when the movie was filmed). So it was cool to see it in a store window in a movie set in the '90s that was also made in the '90s.

The music in this movie is fantastic. The only songs I actually recognized in the movie were "Romeo and Juliet" by Dire Straits, as it appeared in at least one episode of The Goldbergs during its ten year run, and "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. All the way back in 2007, when YouTube was first starting I looked up the music video, knowing it was the first music video that aired on MTV in the U.S. back in 1981, which my Communications Technology (Commtech) teacher told me at some point during my last two years of high school. So, even though I wasn't around in 1981, I still have fond memories attached to that song and its music video. The rest of the soundtrack was great. Particularly when Gina sings "Sugar High" by Coyote Shivers, who also plays the character, Berko, in the movie, who sings the song with her.

It sucks that Empire Records bombed when it originally came out, but, like so many movies do, it found its audience on home video, starting in 1996 when it was originally released on VHS. 

I really enjoyed the movie. You couldn't get away with making it today the way they made it back in the '90s, but that's what makes it so interesting and so much fun to watch. It's a time capsule of 1995. It also reminds me of going to places like HMV (defunct Canadian mall music store chain), Sunrise Records (its successor), and Odds & Sods (a smaller, independent, local, media store). Just because of how the Empire Records store looks. Honestly, if you've never seen it, I definitely recommend giving Empire Records a watch. It's currently streaming on Disney+ here in Canada, and is available on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. 

Alright my friends, I think that's going to be it for me for tonight. I've got a pretty busy day tomorrow, so I don't think I'll have another blog post out tomorrow. But, there's one I'd really like to do on Friday. I won't say what it is now, but it's going to be a good one. Until then, have a great night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Superman (2025) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm talking about the 2025 Superman movie, which I picked up on Blu-ray and watched for the first time last night. There might be some spoilers, but I won't be talking about every plotpoint or character in the movie. So, let's get into it.

After the decade of broken promises, constant change in direction, lack of interest from the people at the top, and the absolute mismanagement that plagued the DC Extended Universe, I was extremely skeptical when it was announced that James Gunn and Peter Safran were chosen to be the heads of the DC Studios (formerly DC Films). I'd never heard of Peter Safran before, and I wasn't a fan of James Gunn's work. I liked the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but the second one left me unimpressed, and Gunn is a director I haven't generally been interested in going back and watching the back catalogue of. Also, knowing how badly Warner Bros. managed the DCEU, between rushing through a Superman movie to doing a Batman vs. Superman movie, with Wonder Woman and Doomsday killing Superman immediately, and then going right into a Justice League movie, I did not have high hopes for this new Superman movie or Gunn's plans for the new DC Universe movies.

Superman is a great movie. Unlike Man of Steel (2013), this movie understands who Superman is and what he, as a character, embodies, not just for the DC comic book Universe, but for everybody who has ever picked up a Superman comic or seen any of the previous movies and TV shows. This is the case, not just because the people at the top, in this case, James Gunn and Peter Safran, are fans and understand the character, but because everyone else who worked on the movie, from the cast to the visual effects studio, to the music composer, is a fan as well. Even if their fandom comes from watching the original movie made by Richard Donner, which came out in 1978, or watching Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997) and Superman: The Animated Series (1996-2000) in the '90s and Smallville (2001-2011) in the 2000s (as I did). Which really does make for a better movie when everyone involved is a fan of the character they're making a movie about, but also isn't so attached to a certain previous version of the character that the movie ends up being an homage to that version, like Superman Returns (2006) ended up being.

David Corenswet is not just a great Superman, but also an amazing Clark Kent. One of my biggest criticisms of Henry Cavill's version of the character in Man of Steel (2013), Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and Justice League (2017/2021) is that we never got to meet Clark Kent. Even in BvS, where we got the most of Clark Kent. It always felt like he was Superman and Clark Kent was just a facade that he played when in public. Corenswet, even though we didn't get a whole lot of him as Clark Kent, always made Superman and Clark Kent feel like one person, a singular character that we see throughout the movie, which is how I feel that Tyler Hoechlin portrayed the character on Superman & Lois (2021-2024). To paraphrase Batman in Batman Forever (1995), "I'm Superman and Clark Kent. Not because I have to be, but because I want to be".

I love Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane. Having been spoiled by a great Lois Lane on TV with Elizabeth Tulloch's version first in the Arrowverse with the Elseworlds and Crisis on Infinite Earths crossovers on Arrow (2012-2020), The Flash (2014-2023), Supergirl (2015-2021), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (2016-2022), and Batwoman (2019-2022), I was relieved to see that Rachel's version was as close to the comic book version of Lois as Elizabeth's portrayal was, but also stayed away from just homaging what Margot Kidder did in Superman (1978), Superman II (1981), Superman III (1983), and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), and staying away from the version played by Amy Adams in the DCEU.

Lois needs to have chemistry with both Superman and Clark Kent, whether she knows they're the same person or not. Which means that whoever is playing Lois Lane has to have chemistry with whoever is cast to play Superman/Clark Kent. Which David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan have in abundance in this movie, and Henry Cavill and Amy Adams did not in the DCEU. It almost felt like the Corenswet/Brosnahan versions could easily meld right into the Hoechlin/Tulloch versions on Superman & Lois because each version is at different ends of the lives of Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Which I love.

Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor is the most unapologetically evil version of the character that I have seen in a movie or on TV since John Shea played the character on Lois & Clark. Not to say the versions of the character we've had in those mediums since then have been bad portrayals but they haven't always been good either. Hoult's version isn't as scary as Michael Cudlitz's version in the fourth season of Superman & Lois, but he's just as dangerous, which Lex Luthor should be, rather than the sympathetic version that we got on Smallville.

The rest of the cast was great. I don't like Guy Gardner as a character, nor am I a big fan of Hawkgirl (or Hawkman for that matter), but I loved Mr. Terrific in this movie. He's not a character that I've ever encountered in the comics, only in seasons 5, 6, 7, and 8 of Arrow, and that version was...interesting to say the least. As for the staff of the Daily Planet, they were awesome. They were also the classic '80s and '90s version too. Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Steve Lombard, Cat Grant, and Ron Troupe. The Daily Planet was noticeably absent from Superman & Lois, the Arrowverse, and had very little screentime in the DCEU, which is most unfortunate, so I'm glad that Gunn included them here.

I've talked a lot about the characters in this movie, but I'd like to talk about the way the movie was filmed and the special effects. Gunn and his crew filmed on location, they built complete physical sets, including the Fortress of Solitude, did wire work for the stunts (embellished with some CGI for things like Superman flying, among other more difficult stunts), and practical suits for Metamorpho, the rest of the Justice Gang, and Superman, as well as the villains. They shot the exterior shots of the Fortress of Solitude/the Arctic in Norway like Lucasfilm did for Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), they had Cleveland, Ohio, where Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster first created Superman back in 1938, stand in for Metropolis, and built the offices of The Daily Planet inside a bus station. So I thought that was really cool considering most movies don't go to that much effort to produce the film, preferring to do everything on the computer in conjunction with the big holodeck like device known as the Volume, which was first used on The Mandalorian (2019-).

I'm glad I got Superman on Blu-ray because there are several really cool bonus features on it. One of them is a 58 minute documentary on the production of the movie, including the casting. I don't think I've ever seen a movie, that wasn't a Star Wars movie, where everybody who worked on the movie was a fan of the franchise the movie was based on. I mentioned this earlier in this blog post that even the people who composed the music for the movie are fans of Superman. But you can really see it when the production designer talks about designing and building the Fortress of Solitude interiors, or the costume designer talks about how the decision to include the classic red trunks to the Superman costume came about, or how the music composers talk about using John Williams's "Superman Theme" from the 1978 movie as the main theme for this one, along with composing new pieces of music for the movie.

There aren't any deleted scenes or commentaries on the Blu-ray, unfortunately, but what we got in the documentary and the other featurettes is pretty spectacular. It felt like watching the DVDs that we used to get in the 2000s, that, even if they were only a single disc release, it'd still be full of bonus features. So I thought that was really cool. Superman is also available on DVD and 4K Ultra HD for those of you who are physical media lovers, and it's streaming on HBO Max in the U.S. and on Crave here in Canada, AND is available for rental on Amazon and Apple TV.

Overall I had a great time watching Superman. It was a really good movie, and I recommend giving it a try if you haven't already seen it. Parts of it made me feel like I was watching the 1978 movie, parts of it made me feel like I was watching episodes of Superman: The Animated Series, parts of it made me feel like I was watching episodes of Superman & Lois (not just because I watched it on a Tuesday night), and parts of it made me feel like I was reading a Superman comic. 

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more blog posts coming your way. Until then, have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.