The Justice League: A Super Friendly Tour (Part 10)

The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians

In 1985, the final iteration of Super Friends aired, dropping "Friends" from the title completely. The team consisted of Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Hawkman, a one time Flash and El Dorado cameos, the return of teen Firestorm, and the debut of new teen sensation, and focal character Cyborg (more prominently featured in the Teen Titans animated series).

Also notable in the season were the first and only appearances by The Joker and The Penguin as well as the first ever onscreen depiction of Batman's origin. The season consisted of eight 30-minute episodes (2 of which contained 2 short episodes).

Availability: On DVD.

Up Next: Justice League of America (TV movie)

The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure * Super Friends * The All New Super Friends Hour * Challenge of the Super Friends * Legends of the Superheroes * The World's Greatest Super Friends * Super Friends (Shorts) * Super Friends (Lost Episodes) * Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show * The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008) - Film Capsule

Heroes: Hellboy, Liz Sherman, Abe Sapien, and Johann Krauss

Villains: Prince Nuada

Diabolical Scheme: Nuada, Prince of the Elves wants to reunite pieces of an ancient crown which will enable him to command an unstoppable army of mechanical soldiers.

Coolest Moment(s): Those pesky tooth fairies, the trip to the troll market (being the best example of incredible effects) and the fight with the golden army.

Worst Moment: Abe's infatuation with Wonder Twin B. C'mon Abe, you can do better.

Comic Book Logic: How are Hellboy and Liz genetically compatible. The thought of their conceiving a baby is pretty revolting.

Opening Weekend: $34,539,115

Total Domestic Box Office: $75,986,503

Review in 50 Words or Less: Incredibly underrated. You never thought a group of such strange looking oddballs could ever be accused of character development Creative and formidable monsters, top notch effects, and a story balancing equal parts action and heart propel these freakish heroes into a rare sequel which far outshines the original.

The Dark Knight Remains the Champ of BO

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opened last week and made a serious run for the biggest 5-day opening record currently held by The Dark Knight. When the dust settled, the giant robots mustered $200.1 million, just shy of Batman's $203.8 million record (in actuality, the film earned something like $198.3 million, but the studio fudged their numbers to make it look like they eked out $200 mil, oh the games they play with numbers) . The weekend take included a $60.6 million opening day, also falling short of The Dark Knight's $67 million record. Considering the great buzz built up by Batman and the toxic reviews for Transformers, it seems like TF2 is likely to fall short of last years biggest film total as well. Though the $400+ million the movie does take in will probably be plenty to make all involved quite happy. Perhaps the Man of Iron will give The Dark Knight's opening a run for its money come 2010.

Meanwhile, Wolverine has reached a nearly $178 million cume, good enough for 6th place for the year so far. The total looks like it will also be enough to hold off Night at the Museum 2, giving the X-Man Fox's biggest hit of the summer - a fact that may help to green light future X-Films for the struggling studio.

In non-heroic box office news, Up hit $250 million and wrangled the #1 spot away from Star Trek (currently at $246 million), which it will hold for a couple of days until it inevitably gets eclipsed by Transformers. Up will wind up as the #2 biggest Pixar film to date and looks to land somewhere around $290 million.

The Justice League: A Super Friendly Tour (Part 9)

Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show

Brought back to life by an all new Kenner “Super Powers” toy line was yet another incarnation of Super Friends. The show returned to Saturday mornings in 1984 with a makeover and a new title. The show now consisted of two 11-minute stories per episode. This incarnation featured the core team of Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman (but not Aquaman), continued with the Wonder Twins and Gleek as well as other made for the series Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, Samurai, and El Dorado, brought back guest Green Lantern, and added for the first time Firestorm, who got more than his fair share of the spotlight.

This series also focused more on nefarious comic book villains, particularly a redesigned more robotic Brainiac (who still appeared in humanoid form in the title credits) and Darkseid (though power suit Luthor also appeared).

The program lasted one season and contained 8 episodes (16 11-minute segments).

Availability: Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show on DVD


Up Next: The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians

The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure * Super Friends * The All New Super Friends Hour * Challenge of the Super Friends * Legends of the Superheroes * The World's Greatest Super Friends * Super Friends (Shorts) * Super Friends (Lost Episodes) * Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show

My Super Ex-Girldfriend (2006) - Film Capsule

Heroes: Jenny Johnson AKA G-Girl

Villains: Bedlam

Diabolical Scheme: The villain, Barry EDward LAMbert aka Bedlam, just wants to get back at the girl who broke his heart back in high school. The only "bad" thing he did during the movie was dangle her current boyfriend from the Statue of Liberty in a savable state.

Coolest Moment(s): Not sure cool is the right word, but it was entertaining. Besides, I never done seen an indoor shark attack before:



Worst Moment: Super bed breaking and wall shattering "love-making." Fortunately we got two such scenes. But now that I think of it, the flying while doin' it scene may have been worse.

Comic Book Logic: If touching a meteor gives super powers, why does touching it again take the powers away, and touching it a third time restore the powers? Is it one of those freaking touch lamps? And why is altered hair color a super power?

Opening Weekend: $8,603,460

Total Domestic Box Office: $22,530,295

Review in 50 Words or Less: Does the idea of a clingy girl using super powers to get back at her ex-boyfriend sound awesome? No!? What if she threw a CGI shark at him? Interested yet? What if that was the best part of the movie? Yikes. Maybe The Spirit wasn't so bad after all.

Airbender Teaser Wafts In

I have to admit, its only the last few seconds of this teaser that excite me. But seeing the enormous Fire Nation Navy approaching hints at the large scope this film could have. I think I will be on the fence until I see how they handle (or exclude) fantastical elements like Apa and Momo. I am looking forward to the full trailer. Yip Yip.

Smallville Goes Green

Brain Austin Green (the "cool" Vanilla Ice looking guy from 90210) is coming to Smallville to play (you probably didn't guess it) Metallo - the cyborg with a heart of gold kryptonite. Sure, why not. I certainly see the resemblance. If anyone is going to beat the living snot out of Superman, this guy seems like the one to do it.

BAG joins fellow Hillbilly Tori Spelling as columnist for the Daily Planet. Spelling had portrayed gossip columnist turned water-based Krypto freak Linda Lake on two previous episodes.

To be fair, most of the comic book based villains appearing on Smallville have been presented favorably and either way, Metallo has been one of the main Superman baddies yet unused. Basically all that is left now is uberthreat Darkseid. Below is a list of Superman villains previously used in the series (though some of them simply inhabited the bodies of regular characters) and ranked from best to worst.

1. Lex Luthor
2. Brainiac
3. Bizarro
4. Doomsday
5. Morgan Edge
6. General Zod
7. Vandal Savage
8. Toyman
9. Faora AKA Mrs. Zod
10. Maxima
11. Mr. Mxyzptlk
12. Bruno "Ugly" Mannheim

Feel free to make requests for future installments of the spotlight feature if you are unfamiliar with any of these folk.