Cowa-Sequential

2013's Man of Steel  was a success for Warner Brothers but it didn't bring in the billion dollar box office of Iron Man 3 or the Avengers. In order to get higher box office take for the next Superman film, DC announced Man of Steel's sequel Batman Vs. Superman at Comicon.  Subsequently they announced the casting casting of Ben Affleck and Jessie Eisenberg as Batman and Lex Luthor respectively. Additionally Gal Gadot has been cast as Wonder Woman for the film. Everyday there are new rumors as to who will appear such as Green Lantern or Nightwing. As much as I would love to see Superman and Batman one the same screen, I feel that it is too early for this. Marvel started building towards the Avengers using Two Iron Man films, and Capt. America, Hulk, and Thor films. The Avengers would have  not been a s nearly as successful without this build up. Man of Steel 2 would be building its world using just some Easter eggs  hidden with in the original and the public's memory...

Dragonball/ Dragon Ball Z was a hit manga  and anime series created by Akira Toriyama during the 1980s and 1990s that found success both in Japan and in the United States. Its success created at series of movies, video games, and merchandise and inspired subsequent manga series including One Piece. Dragonball  followed young Son Goku and his friends as he gathered the seven mystical Dragonballs , fought enemies and rivals, and became the strongest man in the world. During DragonBall Z Goku is revealed to be an alien and has to defend the Earth from aliens and other threats. While the original DragonBall was fighting manga with comedic overtones, DragonBall Z has a more serious series with heightened violence and danger. Goku's son Gohan is introduced and Piccolo, a villain from the previous series, becomes an ally. One the major characters of DragonBall Z is Vegeta who is the prince and one of the last remaining Saiyans. The Saiyans are a  harsh race of super-strong a...

Man of Steel was one of the more controversial superhero films of last year and found itself in a rather unique position. It was a reboot of the franchise from the 1970s and 80s Christopher Reeves films and followed the acclaimed Dark Knight Trilogy. Additionally it faced competition from sequels Iron Man 3 and Star Trek into Darkness. Unlike Marvel, who's Avengers, X-Men and Spider-Man films franchises struck box office gold, DC's heroes outside of Batman have struggled finding an audience. The 2011's Green Lantern and 2006's Superman Returns were generally regarded as failures tho I liked Returns. I am unsure how to categorize Watchmen. In any case, Superman is brought back to bring the Last Son of Krypton into the 21st Century.  Man of Steel is a movie of two halves . The first half is quieter and focuses on Clark Kent's isolation from society and the second half  is more action oriented with Superman confronting Zod and his team of  Kryptonian survivors...

While I realize this is a weeks late, I still feel like I should comment on the NFL Playoffs and their conclusion. The Philadelphia Eagles did  defeat the Dallas Cowboys to clinch a playoff spot but were defeated by the New Orleans Saints in the Wild Card Game. While Nick Foles and Lesean McCoy made great strides under first year coach Chip Kelly, they are far away from being an elite team in the National Football League. Elsewhere former Eagles coach Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs blew an incredible lead to lose to the Indianapolis Colts. Finally the NFC and AFC Championship games were seemingly the matchups everyone wanted. The San Francisco 49ers played the Seattle Seahawks in a fierce divisional game while old rivals and future Hall of Famers Peyton Manning anf Tom Brady faced of in a matchup between the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots. I found both games were full of tension and thrilling, with great plays on offense and defense. Ultimately Seattle and Denver...

George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman, and Bill Murray star in Monuments Men a film that is both a war film and an art celebration. During World War II the US Government sent a team of specialists, historians and preservationists who's main job was to try and save Europe's cultural and artistic treasures from the ravages of war. The movie opens rather powerfully with Italians frantically working to save DaVinci's Last Supper from the bombing and gunfire erupting around it. Furthermore the Nazis have robbed Europe's museums of their treasures to feed Adolph Hitler's insatiable appetite for dominance and control. George Clooney's character leads an team that goes into Western Europe in an effort to locate and reclaim the stolen.  For most of the film, it focuses on specifically the Ghent Alterpiece and the Madonna and Child statue. The movie repeatably brings up the issue whether art and cultural objects are worth human lives. The Monuments men are not f...

Nintendo was founded as a playing card making company in 1889, survived the Second World War and  reinvented itself as a video game console maker and developer during the digital age. However now in 2014, the Japanese company finds itself at a crossroads, its newest console Wii U has failed to capture the attention of the public and is struggling mightily at retail. There as been pressure from both investors and the gaming media for Nintendo to publish its games on either smartphones or Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's Playstation consoles. Nintendo has money from the 3DS and from last generation's successful Wii and DS systems but expenses from producing the Wii U have caused the company to take on losses. Right now there's been a significant amount of talk stating that Nintendo should pull a Sega and go third party. However I feel like that would be a bad move. In the last few years, third party video game publishers such as Square, EA, Capcom, and Konami have all had so...

Earlier this week, President Barrack Obama gave his annual state of the union address and to be honest, it was quite a familiar scene. Vice President was there looking odd and Speaker of the House John Boehner was flanking him looking tanned and constipated. However much of what the president said was seemingly regurgitating points from earlier speeches and campaign such as  the points on Guantanamo Bay and the war in Afghanistan.  While it's good to remind the American public that we still have troops fighting on foreign soil, he could have ended both instances years ago. I'm a bit tired of the war on women and  wage inequality arguments at this point given women have higher graduation rates from both high school and college and lower incarceration rates. Our nation is a service economy with ever increasing numbers of people with college degrees, this will eventually cause a gender gap in the opposite direction. Formerly male dominated fields such as farming and manufact...