Cuculi presents Live Beats music of the 90s & 00s.
Friday, May 9, 2025
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series
Episode 65
The Worry Men
It’s episode 65 and the creators have fulfilled their initial order of episodes for the series. This episode is okay but seems a little phoned in. The Mad Hatter makes little men that hypnotically manipulates people to do stuff in their dreams. He controls Veronica Vreeland into giving out these Worry Men to all the rich people in Gotham. Bruce Wayne gets affected by the Worry Men and is robbed like a bunch of other rich folks in Gotham. That puts Batman on the trail. He traces it back to the Mad Hatter, stops him, saves the day. It’s a fine episode. Nothing horrible, nothing exciting. This same gimmick reappears in the Batman Beyond episode that introduces Spellbinder. We’ll talk more about that when the episode comes up.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
Monday, May 5, 2025
The DC Extended Universe Review Series
The DC Extended Universe Review Series
With a sigh of relief, the DC film universe which was labeled The DC Extended Universe has ended. We’re going to spend the next 30 plus weeks breaking down each film and discussing why it was so terrible. We’ll give accolades where they are deserved but the consensus here is even the films which were well received, were mediocre at best. The ones that received positive feedback only did so because DC set the bar low, extremely low.
Here’s the watch order if you want to play along at home.
Written by
Film |
Man of Steel |
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice |
Suicide Squad |
Wonder Woman |
Justice League/Zack Snyder's Justice League |
Aquaman |
Shazam! |
Birds of Prey |
Wonder Woman 1984 |
The Suicide Squad |
Black Adam |
Shazam! Fury of the Gods |
The Flash |
Blue Beetle |
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom |
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
Friday, May 2, 2025
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series
Episode 64
Read My Lips
This episode gets a lot of love from fans and the initial shock value of the episode is exciting. Overall it really doesn’t hold-up in rewatches. The creator’s take on Scarface is a great deviation from the comic book but his personality is so annoying. Scarface in the comic is the product of the The Ventriloquist who’s actually really bad at throwing his voice. It’s a silly gag in the comic.
The show took a more serious approach. Scarface has a great mind for crime. He exists in the mind of the timid Ventriloquist who suffers from multiple personality disorder. He’s an old-time 1940s mobster villain. These are all awesome nuances that make the concept work.
What doesn’t work is the character’s personality is that of a huge jerk. Yes, it’s deliberate, he’s a bad guy but there’s nothing entertaining about how cruel he is. The Joker is a psychopathically evil criminal but he’s entertaining when he does it. His lunacy is exhilarating. Scarface is actually grounded and almost sane except for the multiple personalities. Scarface just talks down to everyone all the time, he’s arrogant, he knows there’s a connection between him and The Ventriloquist but is willing to kill Ventriloquist and thus himself in the process. It’s a nice plot twist for the episode but hard to really like the character after the gimmick plays out.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
Friday, April 25, 2025
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series
Episode 63
Fire from Olympus
An absolutely amazing episode! Maximillian Zeus is a shipping mogul who becomes delusional and starts thinking he’s the real Zeus. He steals a high tech ray gun and causes problems. Batman is hot on his trail. Zeus thinks Batman is Hades trying to take over Mount Olympus.
Batman enlist the help of Zeus’ assistant Clio to try and stop him. She’s reluctant but realizes Zeus has totally flipped out and helps sneak Batman into the building. Zeus catches her, holds her captive, tries to kill her, attacks a police blimp with the ray gun. A bunch of stuff happens and Batman stops him. What makes the episode so epic is the end when Zeus is hauled off to Olympus and describes many of Batman’s classic rogues as deities from the Greek Mythology and believes he’s truly in Olympus. It’s a comedic twist and brilliant one.
What sells the episode so well is Zeus’ henchmen aren’t blind followers. It is a small layers to the story but they try to challenge and question his reality. One of his henchmen doesn’t want to kill Clio and gets zapped with lightning. The other reluctantly ties up Clio because he doesn’t want to get electrocuted too. The henchmen try to talk Zeus out of attacking the police blimp because of the trouble it would bring down on them. That was a layer of character development never given to other henchmen in the show. In 22 minutes the show didn’t have time to give a backstory or personality to each bad guy. It’s nice to know when they had the time, they added it. A nice change from the “hired thug” trope.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
Friday, April 18, 2025
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series
Episode 62
His Silicon Soul
The HARDAC follow-up episode where we get to find out what happens to the Batman/Bruce Wayne robot duplicate. It’s a million times better than the very excellent HARDAC episode and has layers of action and drama you’d never expect from a children’s animated program.
The Batman robot thinks he’s a real person. When he discovers the truth, HARDAC tries to rebuild himself. Robot Batman struggles with conflicting thoughts which could be construed as feelings based on the different actions he’s taking.
When real Batman tries to stop Robot Batman from destroying the world and bring HARDAC back to life, it doesn’t go according the plan. Robot Batman thinks he killed real Batman and has a complete mental breakdown. He stops the destruction of the world by sacrificing his life. And as we’ve stated in prior posts, the DCAU creators loved killing robots in horrible gruesome ways. They didn’t disappoint.
While the standard and practices don’t have an issue with robots dying, the episode implies this robot might have had a soul. So kids got to see a fairly gruesome death of a living being. The death of Optimus Prime in Transformers traumatized thousands of children in the 80s. It makes one think that TV standards and practices might want to redefine their policies about living robots.
The concept of machines having a soul is still in the science fiction realm but the depth at which it explains what a soul is to children is well defined in the episode. The emotions, actions/reactions, feelings of Robot Batman cement the idea of how precious life is in a brilliant way that doesn’t preach and gets the points across. A somewhat underrated episode in BtAS.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
Friday, April 11, 2025
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)