I saw Watchmen tonight at the IMAX theater. I’m intentionally writing this review a mere hour after seeing the film so as not to have read any other reviews before giving my own unbiased and uninfluenced opinion.

First, a brief background: I purchased my copy of Watchmen around the year 2000, finally giving into the hype around what was said to be one of the greatest comic book miniseries of all time. After reading it, they were right. Nine years later, it still holds up and is probably my favorite comic book story that I’ve ever read. It’s not just a great story, it’s a deep story, with many different threads and themes and so many details that after close to a hundred read-throughs, I am still finding things that I missed before.

It’s so deep that I even wrote a paper about the author Alan Moore’s creative process in writing it. My thesis:

First I will attempt a brief summarization of the plot, characters and overlying tones of the story. This will be followed by an examination of Moore’s creative process as influenced by Freudian thought, and an overall deconstruction of the notion of a hero. Lastly I will equate two of the characters in the story to Harold Bloom’s theory on poetic influence. This will support my contention that the heroes in Watchmen are written from an emotional and fantastical state of mind in the effort to deconstruct the notion and relevance of a hero.

Following is my review of the movie. Spoilers abound, so if you have not read the comic or seen the movie, I suggest you don’t read any further until you have done so. Read the rest of this entry »

We here at Breathingfire.com listen to and carefully consider the feedback from our readers. So when we heard from a carefully selected portion of our vast audience that our famous movie reviews did not seem consistent, we immediately set out to make it right.

Thus, all reviews before January 2008 (an approximate time when I decided to rate on a tighter scale) have been re-considered and adjusted accordingly. Each adjusted review is accompanied by any edited review text and a claim of how many stars were added/deleted. For example, “Superman Returns” and “The Break Up” both lost 3 stars, while “Cars” raised 1 star and “Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” raised 2 extra stars. Some reviews passed all of our exhaustive tests and did not need any adjusting.

Yes, we take our movie reviews seriously here folks.

So remember, if you have an issue about the content that you read on a daily basis here at Breathingfire.com, please let us know. We’ll be happy to address your concerns.

Hello readers. Welcome back to Breathingfire.com I apologize for not updating more. I’ve added a few links and movie reviews lately, but other than that I’ve been busy with work and websites and things other than this.

I saw Pineapple Express on Saturday with Scott and it was pretty good. I gave it a 6 in my movie review but it’s a full six instead of an empty one. I’m trying to review on a tighter scale from now on, as most of my star-ratings were averaging in the 7s and 8s no matter how mediocre the movie was. So from now on I’m basing more of my reviews on an average of 5, and going from there. Exciting, huh?

Yesterday I signed up for and participated in my first fantasy football league. The draft went well, and I think I have a fairly decent yet middle-of-the-road team. But, I have little to no knowledge of football outside of knowing what’s happening on the screen, so we’ll see what happens. But it’s pretty fun so far, and it will make watching and attending games more fun. I’ll be in Detroit with Ed on November 23rd to see the Lions whup on Tampa Bay.

Speaking of sports, I’m preparing to play one myself. I’m going to attempt to keep up with the young lads in my local higher education institution’s men’s Club Volleyball team this year. I’m really excited to learn a lot and get into shape and play as much volleyball as my body will let me. The thing is, practices start at 6am. Did you see what I just typed. That is not a typo. I am still typing without going back and correcting that ghastly time. Three days a week I have to get up at approximately 5am and get ready to go run around and hit a ball. I’m a night person 5 times over as much as I am a morning person, so this is going to hurt. But I want to play, so I’ll do it.

Speaking of sports again, the Olympics have been fun. I’ve watched more this year than ever and enjoyed many of the sports that have been on, including (but not limited to) beach and indoor volleyball, basketball, swimming, gymnastics (yeah I said it,) badminton, water polo, sprinting, tennis and even freaking handball. And if you think handball is weird, look up Netball sometime.

You just can’t say enough about Michael Phelps. It was pretty cool to witness one of the greatest performances in athletic history. Plus at least 2 or 3 of the races were insanely close so it made for some good TV watchin’.

Well, I guess that’s all for now. It’s sad to see summer winding down, but now comes Fall in all of its awesomeness. Cooler weather, back to school, football games, falling leaves, Halloween and lots more stuff I can’t think of. Haha! Wherever and whoever you are, make sure you take the time to look around you and be thankful for what you have. I’m doing it now and I feel so lucky. Things are definitely not perfect, but that gives me something to do. Thanks for reading.

No, not the vinyl ones. These are of the box office variety, and they are only so far (up until 7/23):

• widest release (4,366 theaters)
• biggest opening weekend ($158.4M)
• biggest July opener ($158.4M)
• biggest PG-13 rated opening ($158.4M)
• biggest single day ($67.2M)
• biggest opening day ($67.2M)
• biggest Friday ($67.2M)
• biggest Sunday ($43.6M)
• fastest to $200M in five days ($203.8M)
• already #84 top-grossing domestic films of all time (in 5 days!)

(numbers pulled from SuperHeroHype)

I’m into comic books so I was looking forward to Iron Man. The trailer was a work of art and really showed off what this movie was capable of. The trailer was just a taste thankfully, as the movie was completely awesome.

Shan liked it as well as I did, judging from our constant conversations about the movie the entire night after seeing it. She wondered what parts were true to the comic, why this guy did that, etc. Most of the time I could give some sort of answer for her. I have read Iron Man here and there in Secret Wars, New Avengers, and the recent Secret Invasion crossover. But I wasn’t an expert on the character by any means.

That didn’t keep me from loving this movie. I thought Transformers was a miracle adaptation from toy/comic to movie, this is that and more, 10-fold. It definitely won’t win any Oscars, but it should be nominated for “Most Fun Movie” of 2008 (so far.)

Robert Downey Jr. surprised me and Shan as being genius in this role. He plays Tony Stark like he IS Tony Stark. He’s arrogant, egotistical, and confident. He’s good with his hands, good with women, and good with the one-liners. Just a spectacular performance. I wanted to be him and Shan wanted to do him.

So yeah, go see it. I’m pretty confident that you won’t be wasting your money.

Check them out, as well as all the rest….

If you either:

1. Enjoyed the toys/cartoon/comics as a kid/adult
2. or like action-packed blockbusters

…then go see this movie now. It’s worth it. They do a great job in translating it to a live-action stage. I gave it 10/10 for many reasons, but mainly for not ruining but enhancing a childhood treasure.

New look and feel provided by the Akon theme. Modified slightly by myself, over time.

Don’t forget to check out the Movies page.

Coming soon: Links, new header image, and lots of fun, new things. Things might still look a little hairy until I style the links at least.

One advantage of this period of time where my website sits in limbo is the use of this ugly cookie-cutter theme, which allows me to show off my movie ratings! On the right there you’ll see a link to the Movies page, so go on over and see what I’ve seen, and then see what I’ve seen…. if you’re so inclined.

Click the little plus symbol for my comments.

Shan posted a little about the surprising site we saw when hading back from lunch on Sunday. The fact that those people had their kids out there doing their dirty work was just terrible. Okay, fine, I respect your beliefs and your need to express them. I have no problem with that. but at least wait until your children can make up their own mind before you send them out, protesting something that they most likely have no idea about. Especially something like abortion, where most of the grown men can’t possibly know enough, let alone the little kiddies.

Anyways, I just wanted to say a little something about that.

Besides that, let me officially announce a new feature here at Breathingfire.com. I’ve alwasy wanted to post movie reviews, and now I have. On the front page, and maybe on an upcoming ‘Movies’ page, I’ll list all of the latest movies I’ve seen plus a rating from 1-10 stars. And I’ll probably write a little something if it’s deserved. That’s it.

Edit: It’s now on it’s own page!

Ok, come back soon!