IMac restart is stuck on 'blue screen'

Hello, I have an iMac 27" running OS X. Everytime I try to reboot/restart it gets stuck at the 'blue screen', and does not reboot. Basically it doesn't power down before being able to restart. It seems like the blue screen (with the rotating cursor) indicates maybe that somehow updates are running but I'm not certain about this. I tried to let it go for 10 minutes but to no avail. However, if I shut it off using the power button and turn on again, it starts just fine. Any suggestions as to remedy the restart problem without having to do a hard shut off/turn on?

If the Recovery HD partition does not show up when holding the Option/Alt button at startup, instead hold the Command-R keys together at startup which should boot immediately to the recovery volume.
In addition to a permissions repair, use Disk Utility to verify the hard drive for errors and repair any that show up. You can also try booting to Safe Mode by holding the Shift key at startup, which should spur the system to perform some maintenance tasks. Then reboot normally to see if the problem persists.

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