My Take Radio

DC con­tin­ues to out­shine Mar­vel in the film depart­ment, both on the big screen and directly-to-video in your home. With the new “Jus­tice League: Cri­sis On Two Earths,” DC has put forth its sec­ond full-length fea­ture star­ring mem­bers of its pre­miere super team. The manda­tory trio of tri­umph: Bat­man, Super­man and Won­der Woman, head up the team along with favorites like Green Lantern, Mar­t­ian Man­hunter, Flash and oth­ers. The good (and not so good) thing about the movies is that they look to sat­isfy fans of both the comic and the tele­vi­sion shows. The JL car­toon on Car­toon Net­work used Jon Stew­art as the Green Lantern, while the new movie uses Guy Gard­ner who is the more pop­u­lar and arguably the best of the (Earth) Green Lanterns. I am guess­ing that the recent GL movie which showed Gardner’s ori­gin may have had some­thing to do with this choice as well. Any­way, the story is quite the clas­sic one, hav­ing been dealt with on a smaller scale in an episode of Bat­man: The Brave And The Bold, another DC car­toon from Car­toon Network.

The story opens on an alter­nate Earth with Lex Luthor and The Trick­ster (alter­nate Joker) pulling off what appears to be a crime. They steal a small device and try to make their escape as the “good guys” are clearly in pur­suit. The Trick­ster stays behind to buy time for Luthor and is con­fronted by Hawk­girl and Mar­t­ian Man­hunter, only it’s not so much the heroes we know as hawk­girl runs Trick­ster through with her sword (not mace). Luthor man­ages to tele­port to the Earth we know and asks the Jus­tice League for help (and he does it but­tnaked, no really). I will leave the rest for you to see as there is plenty of action and fight­ing to keep you enter­tained. This movie, more so than her own, is proof pos­i­tive that you do not wanna piss Won­der Woman off.…ever.

The voice act­ing, while top notch, always puz­zles me in these films. I never under­stand why they choose to use tal­ent other than the well estab­lished voices for Super­man, Bat­man, Won­der Woman and the Flash. Still, Andrea Romano always puts qual­ity inot the voice direc­tion and it is the minor gripe of a fan of the tele­vi­sion shows. The art direc­tion was incred­i­ble and I can­not wait to watch this again on blu-ray. While not exactly the same, this is prob­a­bly the clos­est that any of the movies have come to the look of the orig­i­nal JL car­toon, which was always a joy to watch; fans will not be dis­ap­pointed. The story is prob­a­bly not as deep as some of the other DC movies, but I would for­give that because any story touch­ing on infi­nite Earths has to be done very care­fully; this was a plot line that almost destroyed the DC uni­verse because it got too out of con­trol for the writers.

Cri­sis On Two Earths releases on DVD and Blu-Ray next week on Feb. 23 and if you have enjoyed any of the last five DC movies then you will love this one. The only one I per­son­ally liked more was Pub­lic Ene­mies and that is because that is the only one that was prob­a­bly the most mature of all the DC movies. This is def­i­nitely one that you want to have in your col­lec­tion. Won­der Woman vs Super­woman, Bat­man vs Owl­man, Super­man vs Ultra­man, Green Lantern vs Power Ring, Flash vs Johnny Quick; who will win? Check this flick to find out.

We are fastly approach­ing Smallville’s two-part Jus­tice League episode enti­tled “Absolute Jus­tice”, and the pre­views are in full swing on The CW. Take a look at what’s in store for our favorite res­i­dents of Metropolis…

I, for one, am look­ing for­ward to see­ing how the Smal­l­ville writ­ers pull this off. Any­one else? Catch the “Absolute Jus­tice” episode on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 5, 2010, but don’t for­get, new episodes return prior to that on Jan­u­ary 22nd at 8 pm EST.

Some of you may have read my ear­lier post on Smallville’s upcom­ing 2-part Jus­tice League themed episode. Word is that this is no longer the case — the CW has decided to make it a 2 hour MOVIE!!! The title for the flick?? Smal­l­ville: Absolute Jus­tice. (It has a nice ring to it, huh?)

Addi­tion­ally, the movie will debut yet another char­ac­ter known in the DC Uni­verse — none other than Hawk­man (yay)!

The actor that has signed on to play Hawk­man is Michael Shanks — some of you may know him from Star­gate SG-1, but I know him from his 4-episode arc as Vic­tor on Burn Notice.  Check out the first pic­ture of our artificially-winged friend:

Nice pants guy…

FYI - The air­date for Smal­l­ville: Absolute Jus­tice has been changed from Jan­u­ary 29 , 2010 to Feb­ru­ary 5, 2010. (Boo.)  

Lastly, I have also read that Pam Grier will be join­ing for mul­ti­ple episodes play­ing the won­der­fully bad Amanda Waller. (Hmmm..not too sure about that.) Yummy tid­bit:  Waller was ranked as IGN’s 60th Great­est Comic Book Vil­lain of All Time in 2009. I’d say Grier has some cracked eggs to fill. What do you think??

Credit once again goes to Michael Ausiello for the scoops… http://ausiellofiles.ew.com