Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first Hellboy. It was an outstanding superhero movie, with great characters, great design. Director Guillermo Del Toro also managed to adapt the comic in a way that he made Hellboy his own while completely respecting the original material. So just a little lighter, but stil with the Chtuluesque monsters.
The only flaw is that it came after Spiderman and was treating a bit on its territory, so it didn't felt as fresh as it should have.
Anyway a movie coming amongst my favourite in this genre.

So hopes were high for this sequel, as Del Toro was back on.
Well he followed on with the usual sequel rules: bigger & better, with great effect!

The movie follows the characters were the 1st movie left them. So people who tought that the first one wasn't dark enough, this one won't have you more satisfied s the tone is more or less the same. In my opinion thought it's a spot on mix of humour action and darker moments.
The production design is astonishing: the sets are varied and epic and you get to see a huge gallery of varied monsters (maybe more impressive than Star Wars).

The whole enterprise drips cool and poses like any superhero movie should do. It's like Ironman but with monsters instead of young billionnaires.

The action also takes it up a notch from the previous installment with some great set pieces and choreographies.
Ron Perlman still inhabits its roel perfectly as Hellboy and Luke Goss (previously seen in Blade 2) is a worthy (and bad-ass) villain.
The 2ary characters (especially Abe Sapiens) gets a bit more development, which is great and you get some very interesting new ones (Joahnn Krauss is excellent).

So Del Toro did it again, with a film in all aspects better than the first one (like Spiderman 2 was to Spiderman 1).
Bring on the 3rd! :)

Some art in writing...

http://fontpark.morisawa.co.jp/

A great idea this...
Thinking about it, since kanji already are sorts of drawings, it just takes the idea a bit further...
Very fun! (and cool and beautiful)

I have made mine (very quickly) here.

La brute.

Un petit jeu marrant style tamagochi mais en plus rigolo (parce que ca fritte): labrute.fr

Pas d'inscription necessaire, il suffit de trouver un nom...

Devenez mon disciple ici... :)

UPDATE: apres y avoir "joue" quelques jours, c'est vraiment sympa! Et les combats sont bien foutus (y a pas mal de coups), y a souvent du suspence, pour un peu j'encouragerait ma brute!

The Dark Knight.

I have always been a fan of Tim Burton's take on Batman and therefore has always been a bit protective about it.
So when Batman Begins was announced, I wasn't too enthousiastic, despite the fact that Christopher Nolan, one of my favorite directors, was set to direct and that the cast was stellar...
They wanted to kind of bury the previous films, I didn't like that... Sure, the last 3 need to be forgotten, but not the Tim Burtons...
Anyway it turned out to be a great movie, great reboot and well worth it. And it actually didn't tread on Burton's field, as it had a different vilain and all.

So they announced that they wanted to take on the Joker in the next one. That again arose a mixed feeling for me: this time they really wanted to redo something that had been done. And Jack Nicholson as the Joker was memorable... Why?
Again a sort of remake. It's annoying!

Well I got my answer. And I have to say that again, it was well worth it...
This time I can just tell myself that reboots in comic books are very frequent, so why should comic book adaptations in cinemas be any different?

Anyway the take on this is completely different from Burton's Batman. It is a complete reinvention. From the characters to the underlying themes. The term "masterpiece" is way overused these days, but it really springs to mind here.

It feels like a "true" Batman movie: you get the high-tech gadgets, the explosions, the fights but it also manages to be more than that.
It deals with icons and the power they have.
And by the end of the film, its complex and multilayered plot gain really epic proportions.

Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker has been much talked about and rightly so. He deserves to be remembered just for that one. Here, the Joker becomes more a thug, a gang leader (yet a genius one). He comes from nowhere. He's chaos. And you get sense of dread each time he's on the frame.

But this is a BATMAN movie, so you get to see Batman quite a lot (and Christian Bale is of course excellent) and his arc is very well handled and interesting. It's quite satisfying to think that for as many characters you have in this movie, they all get a worthy treatment. The story is incredibly well balanced.

And everything weaves into the final and bigger picture...

For something that is marketed as a "summer blockbuster", it is incredibly dark and demanding. And it feels so good to me that it actually works, that the public follows, as it's breaking records around the world! It's great! It might open the road to a new wave of "blockbusters"...

This is the kind of remake/sequel/reboot I like to see. Because it's not like anything that was done before...

As much as I enjoyed Ironman and am looking forward to Hellboy 2, if you only have to see 1 superhero movie this year, I'd say it has to be this one...