Starro and the Metal Men--new Batman Brave and the Bold!

The best part of the new Batman Brave and the Bold was the opening team-up. After Aquaman and Batman defeat their foes, Aquaman heads back to Atlantis to his wife and son--only to find them with Starro starfishes on their faces! He battles his family but is soon overwhelmed by the population of Atlantis, all taken over by Starro! We are left with yet another "to be continued," which makes me quite excited for where they are taking this story. I figure it must be the big storyline at the end of the season.

Now for the main story, I was a little disappointed. I loved that Batman teams up with the Metal Men. It was really cool to see them on the screen. The writers and designers did a great job of getting their looks and personalities right, even with Dr. Magnus. Unfortunately the story was just not that great. I found myself getting bored and not paying attention.
Dr. Magnus' former lab partners have returned as living gas and have kidnapped Magnus. It's the Metal Men and Batman to the rescue but unfortunately it's just not very exciting, bordering on silly and not silly in a good way.

Regardless, one or two mediocre episodes in thirty or so great episodes is not bad for any TV series, let alone an animated series. Besides, any cartoon that brings is Starro is worth watching in my opinion!

Batman Brave and the Bold airs on Cartoon Network Fridays at 7:30 pm. You can catch up on episodes on cartoonnetwork.com.

Soft Review

Recently, I watched a short movie as part of my journalism studies - a class that focused on reviwing that week, interestingly enough. Unfortunately I couldn't just hand in one of my previous pieces of work, and so this review came about.

Soft is a short film, a medium that is surprisingly underrepresented when it comes to reviews. I haven't seen a lot of short films myself, true, but the few I have seen (such as Paths of Hate, or The Facts in the Case of Mr Hollow) tend to be finely made, with a certain visual flair to leave a lasting impression. Few such movies are over 15 minutes long, and so tend to be far more focused on grabbing the audiences attention. For many directors, a short film is their chance to garner attention and potential backing from financers for a ful length feature.

Soft is fairly typical in this respect - it is an urban drama exploring the issues of bullying and violence in youth. Some reviewers, like Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian Film Blog favourably compare it to A Clockwork Orange. The plot revolves around a father, his son, and the gang of teenagers who harass them. The course of events is almost entirely predictable, starting off with the son being assaulted and fleeing home, before the gang intimidates the father and then besieges the pair of them in their house. That's about it really - it's readily available on Youtube so feel free to check it out for yourselves.

There is a nice variety when it comes to techniques in this movie - camera phone footage is used in key sections, particularily when the gang is dealing out violence, whilst the rest of the film is presented in a typical fashion. To put it simply, there is nothing new or groundbreaking in this film, but it is a well crafted story told in a minimalistic way, and does a LOT with very little.

Made by Simon Ellis, this short movie has won the International Short Filmmaking Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2008. Like many short movies, it's readily available on the internet, so do check it out.