What I'm Watching: Arrow

The new fall season has begun!  There's new genre shows aplenty, and I'm going to try and run down the ones I'm watching, and gives my thoughts on them.

Hopefully before they're cancelled.  *coughcough666ParkAvenuecough*

Let's start off with Arrow, the CW's answer to a lack of Smallville, by reworking the DC Comics' character, Green Arrow.

The episode opens with Olivier Queen, a rich, spoiled kid, being discovered on an island where he was stranded five years ago.  He's been believed to be dead by the world at large, so his return is a shock to everyone who knew him.

Once he's back, he sees corruption everywhere in his home city, and sets about putting things right, by crafting the guise of...well, I'm calling him Green Arrow, for the sake of simplicity.

It was a solid pilot, laid out all the pieces well, and left a few dangling mysteries to drive the series forward.  The characters are decent enough, and the cast is mostly good...my biggest problem is Olvier Queen himself!  He's not terrible, but he just seems to be lacking a certain quality.  He seems to just be reciting lines half the time.  I hope the actor settles in over the course of things, because that's something that can get better as he grows more comfortable to Ollie's hood.

I felt the pilot was a bit by the numbers.  There weren't any huge surprises.  There was no moment that made me really want to see the next episode.  There is a TON of stuff in there for the comic fans though, that have promise for things to come...but those are further down the road, and not here.  I can't judge the pilot on what MIGHT come some day.

The hour had that feel of television, which kinda made it feel small at times.  But at least they chose a character that works for.  If this was someone in space, or with amazing powers, it might suffer more.  But a regular guy who is an awesome archer...well, you can work with that on a smaller budget.  And hopefully the show lasts and the budget gets better.

There is a lot of room for improvement on the show, but it starts out with a solid base, so there is hope that these issues WILL improve.  It is definitely not bad, and certainly watchable.

But hey.  It's a pilot.  I do not expect perfection.  I'll watch more, definitely.

Master of Puppets

Hey, horrorheads!

I kinda like doing these little post mortems on my reviews, kinda picking my own brain a little in ways that don't seem appropriate for the review, so I'm working through the backlog, and PM1 definitely deserves a few extra comments.

Oh, Puppet Master and Full Moon.  You guys are so responsible for this site existing.  So much of my formative years was spent watching these movies.  Blade is my personal Freddy Krueger.  Or something.

Part of me really wanted to make Puppet Master the 13th review on this site, because of its significance (Although I believe I saw Full Moon's Pit & the Pendulum before it but PM solidified my love), but I had this huge stack of Full Moon movies waiting for review, and I absolutely had to be the first one be Puppet Master.  I just couldn't wait any longer!

This was another movie where I was not wanting for images and captions.  I tossed out a number of images that it was actually painful to leave aside, and I hope I used the cream of the crop.  I also had a number of alternate captions for images that did get used, and it was tough to decide.

The biggest change with this review was titling my in depth look "The Whole Blood Mess".  When I looked at the final reviews, it was always bugging me that it zoomed right from synopsis to my review, and it looked wrong.  I'm still not happy with that title, but it gets the job done and breaks it up.

It was good to have something relatively short after the monster that was Waxwork 2.  I still need to sort out how to cut these down, but I haven't had THAT many complaints yet, so I'm just keeping on.  This actually feels like a good length for this movie, and the images break it up well.

The biggest thing with this review is something yet to come.  I've actually got plans to go back and retweak this review in a few months.  The content will remain the same, I'm just going to make it...better.

I've got the big bad Puppet Master boxed set, so have no fear.  Blade will return shortly.  And the movies just get worse and worse, trust me.  Unlike with Waxwork and Corpse Grinders, I want to space out the Puppet Master movies.  Doing all six or so that I have here in one long run would have gotten boring for me and you guys too, I presume.  It's one thing to do an original and sequel in succession, it's another to do every movie ever.  I'd also hate to be done with them all so soon.

Full Moon alone will keep me in movies for a long, long time.

Speaking of, I need to pick out my next monsterpiece to go through.  See you in April!

J