Quite simply the best piece of movie…nay…all history.

For the past few months I’ve been involved in a podcast with my friend Nagy over at The Movie Blog. We both own a copy of the Warriors 50-pack, a collection of Italian sword-and-sandal movie from the early ’60s, and we’re watching every movie in the set in order, a week at a time.

After a short absence The Macho Movie Review makes its triumphant return with an all new installment, this time discussing the merits of David and Goliath starring Orson Welles. For some reason I swore twice as much as usual, and I usually swear a lot. If you’d like to tag along, the set retails for less than a dollar a movie, and in most cases less than fifty cents a movie. That’s a whole lot of beefcake, cheap.

Previous episodes include:

Hercules and the Masked Rider
Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators
Conquerer of the Orient
Last of the Vikings
Two Gladiators
Ursus in the Land of Fire
Cleopatra’s Daughter

Little known fact: Riverdale was lousy with sharks when Archie was a kid.

When I first started comic blogging nearly six years ago, it was as a progression from my experiences on comic book message boards, particularly Barbelith. Now it appears that members of that board are making the leap into comic blogging themselves, with the launch of Mindless Ones (via Journalista). The highlight so far may be an in-depth look at Hellblazer #51, the comic which cemented an obsession with laundromats that I carry with me to this day.

Like many people, one of the titles that got me to sample superheroes again was Iron Fist. The revamp was a textbook example of how to pull off the comic equivalent of a b-movie, and I don’t just mean that in the sense that it dealt with both pulp and exploitation themes. Iron Fist is one of those titles that seemed to draw a fair number of readers from outside the regular Marvel readership, justifying its continued existence by bringing fresh money into the company as opposed to just transferring it from one property to another.

Word on the street is that the team behind Iron Fist’s resurgence is stepping down en masse, to be replaced by hard-boiled writer Duane Swierczynski and artist Travel Foreman. I’m almost as into crime fiction as I am kung fu flicks, so I’m hopeful that Swierczynski brings it. From the sounds of it, he’s not immune to the charms of a well-placed kick to the face himself.

Commentary on the latest animated incarnation of Batman seems to be split right down the middle between people piling on it for being a show aimed at children and people piling on the people doing the piling. I’m of the opinion that Marvel and DC are far past their best by date, so I’m happy to indulge the fantasy that something minor like this could destroy either company.

That said, the promo image they released is the kind of thing that hurts my inner animator. Blue Beetle looks great. Love the fingers. Forward shots are rarely flattering, but rules are made to be broken and Batman pulls it off with some dynamic foreshortening. But what’s up with Green Arrow? Is he ditching his friends? I probably would too if all I had was a quiver full of arrows. And why is there so much nice negative space between Batman and Blue Beetle, but none between Batman and Green Arrow? Does he just take bad pictures?

Alex Ross is doing the cover for Uncanny #500. While I may not have the awe that I had many years ago when I’d see his work, it’s still pretty killer! There’s a lot of Andrew Loomis in his work, from his figures to his composition. It really is the way he can lead the eyes with so many X-dudes and X-dudettes that I like most about this pic.

Dude to the Dude, Alex. Dude to the Dude.

For years I’d always hear about how great Battlestar Galactica was, but never really gave it a fair chance. Now that I’m finally watching it, I can’t stop and it’s all thanks to this guy. I’m pretty bad with names on TV shows, so I only know him as the drunk ass-kick guy, but he’s great. Every show needs one of him.

In general, my favourite thing about this show is the amount of drinking and smoking everybody does. If I had to pick between this world and star trek’s, there’d be no question as to which I would choose.

It’s going on a decade now since I pulled my favourite April Fool’s joke.

At the time, my family was living about seven hours away in North Bay, so I didn’t get to see them as often as I would have liked. It’s even worse now, with everyone spread across the globe from Canada to Japan. So I decided it would be nice to remind them that I was still alive and send out an April Fool’s salutation.

My youngest brother (and the co-host of this very blog) was North Bay’s leading cryptozoologist, and had appeared in this capacity on a local television station. With this in mind, I asked my friend The Healthiest Man In Canada to give Gary a call from a payphone at The Donut Diner. HMC introduced himself as a representative of the government assembling a think-tank devoted to unexplained phenomena. He had seen Gary discuss his theories on television, and he was interested in having Gary join their group. Gary was overjoyed that, after years of toiling in relative obscurity, such an opportunity had finally come his way. He immediately agreed to the proposition, and HMC began making the arrangements, which included transporting Gary to an undisclosed location for an unspecified number of months and ensuring that Gary would not tell anyone where he was going, why he was going, or that he was leaving at all. Feeling a little overwhelmed, Gary finally got a word in and told HMC that he was only a kid. HMC assured Gary that ‘they’ were aware of this, and that it was irrelevant. Every objection was dismissed. Drowning in panic and paranoia, Gary ceased to protest and began to hang up the phone. The last thing he heard was HMC’s declaration that someone would be there to pick him up immediately.

I called later to find out how it had gone over. My Mom answered the phone. She couldn’t stop laughing. She told me that Gary had walked upstairs, pale and shaking, and hugged my Mom for what he believed to be the final time. Gary related his experience to my family, and they all became very concerned. When Gary heard the sound of the Black Helicopters, they dug out the shotgun and waited for the inevitable.

The memory of that day still gets a laugh out of me every year. Happy April Fool’s Day, bro.

Illustration by Takeshi Miyazawa, from his mini-comic MIB.