Film Blender

Short's Tap Takeover at Churchkey, part 2

2011-07-27T01:33:00.000-04:00

Well guys, I totally forgot to follow up on my first part... until now.

Short's Bloody Beer. If you’re not a fan of a Bloody Mary, avoid. Roma tomatoes, dill, peppercorn both on the aroma and taste. This was fantastic. I never thought I would enjoy a beer as savory as this one, as odd as this one, one with ingredients that are strange. Who knew?

The Magician arrived with a cloudy red body and a small white head. Aroma was pretty unremarkable, caramel notes, grain. Flavor was about the same. Grain, nuts, malts.

Mama’s Strawberry Milk poured a dark brown color, darker than I had expected for a beer which includes the words "strawberry" and "milk." Aroma was mellow strawberries, sugar, cream. Flavor was more mellow than I had hoped for, sugar notes, creamy strawberries.

Shorts Anniversary Ale was another highlight of the night. It poured a ruby orange color with a small white head. Aroma was a touch citrus, with mellow spice notes, and something familiar that I still can’t quite put my finger on while writing this - probably the blood oranges. Beer was certainly not as hot as I would have imagined based on the ABV - 10%.

I took a gamble on the next one with, The Gambler, a tobacco "inspired" brew. The aromas I got off this one were tea and "tobacco" notes. The flavor was a touch citrus, dominated by herbal teas, tobacco-like notes and other various spices.

Samaritan Ale poured a golden color with a small white head. Aroma was cider, sweet, touch of tartness. Flavor was tart apples, touch of spice - clove maybe? Certainly a change of pace.

The Black Licorice Lager poured a dark brown color, tan head. Aroma was mostly mint, though some licorice shown through. The beer was, as my friends described, like mint chocolate chip ice cream. A very unique brew to be sure and certainly one I'm looking forward to try again.

I finished that night with a few more, less remarkable beers from them, and then rounded it off with the Belgian IPA, which was awesome. Slightly hazy golden color with a perfect small foamy head was only bettered by the wonderful mild, Belgian yeast strain in an IPA, mild citrus and pine note aroma.

The night finished with the fantastic, non-Short's, Sierra Nevada Barrel Aged Life & Limb. OH MY... Brown sugar notes, caramel, chocolate notes and bourbon. Near perfection.

SAVOR was up next. And it blew my mind.

Short's Tap Takeover at Churchkey

2011-06-09T01:32:00.000-04:00

Well, I got the weekend started off right. On a Thursday, as it should be. Last week was SAVOR week, the premiere beer event in the DC area, so all week bars and pubs all across the DC area were celebrating.

On Thursday, Short's Brewing Company came to Churchkey, their first time in the DC marketplace in an event dubbed "Short's Brewing Monster Tap Takeover." As reported, no beers from Short's had ever been in DC before and so debuting 30 beers all at once was pretty phenomenal. While I didn't get a chance to meet them or even confirm if they had arrived from their flight into the city, the brewery's Founder Joe Short along with CFO Scott Newman-Bale, Tony Hansen (Head of Brewing Productions) and Jon Wojtowicz (Beer Liberator & Field Representative) were all set to be at the bar that night.

I got there promptly at 2:40, worried that there would be a long line like when I went to 2010's Stone Total Tap Takeover. Meeting my friend Chris, we entered the bar at 3:00 and grabbed seats at the bar. The list was overwhelming.

I started with Hangin Frank, their IPA brewed exclusively with Simcoe hops. The beer poured a dark golden color with very little head. Aroma was pine hops, caramel malts, touch of sweetness. Flavor was incredibly tasty to say the least. The night was starting out right.

Next up was the Key Lime Pie. Okay, I understand that this beer will not be everyone’s thing. It’s gimmicky. It’s silly. It’s really sweet. With all that said, it was *just* like drinking a key lime pie. The beer came and was a copper color, no head. The beer had a pretty bland aroma (certainly not bad, but no key lime notes), which made me a bit disappointed and worried when it first arrived. The first taste was initially average, and then it hit me. Lime. Graham cracker! Wow. I’d have to say that more than 8oz of this would probably drive me up the wall.

So I was really stoked after the Key Lime. Next up: Carrot Cake. Poured a Aroma of this one is mild carrots, with almost cream cheese frosting like characteristics. Woah. Flavor is kind of like a carrot cake, though it is a bit heavy on some spices - I noticed nutmeg in mine. My mind almost went straight to what I normally expect from a pumpkin beer.

Then... Another Caucasian Gary. One of my bosses thought it was the funniest name when I told them I was headed out for the day. My mind's eye thought "gray" but it came out almost brown. Aroma was coffee notes, almost sugary sweet vanilla. Flavor was like Southern Tier’s Creme Brulee. It’s pretty close to a White Russian. Brown sugar, vanilla notes in the flavor. Would probably rather just get a White Russian if I had the choice, but it’s an interesting beer worth a look.

Shorts Soft Parade poured a copper color, tiny white head. Aroma is mild tart fruits (raspberries, strawberries, blackberries). Flavor is certainly raspberries, strawberries, blackberries. A bit sweet, not too tart, flavor is pretty darn tasty and the alcohol is nearly untraceable.

The Whiskey Sour. I’ll share my comments on this one by echoing the comments I made on the Key Lime Pie. It’s gimmicky. It’s really sweet. It’s not for everyone. Now, unlike the Key Lime Pie, this one had a noticeable pie flavor immediately off the bat. And by gum, this one really did taste like a whiskey sour. The small taster of this one was about perfect.

Bananarama came to me as a dark brown brew with a tiny, vanishing head. Aroma was average, seemed like there’s something up with it. Flavor was, well - disappointing. I caught the banana in there, but it was, neither all that powerful, nor was it all that good. It could have been simply that pour or that keg, but I don’t think I’ll be seeking this one out again. My buddy Ryan thought differently, so I don't know what could have been the problem.

Sustenance poured a dark, almost black color brown, with a small tan head. Aroma was chocolate, roasted malts. Flavor was roasted malts, earthy hops, chocolate malts. While not a gimmick like most of the beers I had had up to this point, it was solid.

The next beer was another normal offering from the brewery, Bellaire Brown. This one poured a solid translucent brown color, ruby notes, small head. Aroma was caramel, sweet nutty notes. Flavor is caramel notes, a tad nutty.

And here we come. The beer that changed it all.

Coming soon.

The Bier Baron: A Vast Improvement Over The Brick

2011-05-29T17:34:00.001-04:00

Guys and gals, when The Brickskeller closed I had mixed emotions. The place was one of my first big eye-opening experiences with Beer. It also was a dump that rarely had the beers I was hoping to order from its menu.

Yesterday was the first time I had been to this establishment since just before "The Brick" closed its doors in December. The place was falling apart for years. The beer list was *willfully* neglected, and it was a well known "joke" that a patron would need 3-4 backup choices in case their first, second or third choices were unavailable. Once even a 5th choice had to be offered before I simply told them to get me *anything* they could find.

Well, I finally returned and I to my surprise, I was greeted with taps downstairs! Finally! No "smart alec" responses from the staff that you'll have to go upstairs to get a draft beer. They can pour it right in front of you.

Their beer menu is about as honest as any beer establishment can get. The specials were a bit out of date, but the rest of the offerings were available upon my ordering. Far better to only list 400 instead of saying "GUINNESS RECORD!!!" and having +500-600 beers "permanently unavailable." I’ve been spoiled by places like Rustico and Churchkey that both have very unique offerings, served the way that most of the beers presumably should be served.

I have to say that the changes from the Brick to the Baron have only improved the place. New men’s bathroom! Honest beer list! Food is a vast improvement over the previous owner’s food! I can now say that I want to return, and will tell all the people I know to do so.

So join me, won't you?

The Brickskeller: Closed

2010-12-21T00:40:00.021-05:00

The Brickseller was a DC institution for beer lovers. I say was for two reasons. One, it's closed now. Two, it hasn't been an “institution” for DC beer lovers for what I'd wager is nearly 5 years. Like many, The Brick was my first “real” introduction to a bar that catered to craft beer, at least until I thought about all my fond memories in Norfolk Virginia going to the Taphouse at Ghent and Cogan’s Instant Art Bar, two places with much smaller beer menus, but much better experiences in terms of service and food. I had never seen as many beers at one time in a bar as when I first entered the basement of The Brickskeller. When the sale was first announced a few months ago, I wasn’t sure if a purchase by anyone would be a good idea. My first thoughts were that the name made the place, and without it there would be absolutely no point if the name didn’t come with the purchase.

Well, after making such a statement, I weighed my thoughts about this place. Should we only remember the good times? Should we just put aside the bad times or even the truth?

The Brick has “history,” but like most things they have their time and at some point, it is past. This most certainly needed to be acknowledged with The Brick. Whatever The Brickskeller was even just 15 years ago was long gone by the time I started to frequent it by 2007. The bathrooms were nauseous. The service was pitiful almost every night. The food wasn’t that great, but if you knew what to choose off the menu, you could usually scrape by. Now, before I get too nostalgic, the beer list was not just a joke, it was an outright sham. The cellar was always touted as having over a thousand beers, but can you really make that claim if they're always out of hundreds of beers? Their beer menu was at best a list of items they had at one point and hadn't carried for 6 to 8 months (or a few years prior), at worst, beers they may never had carried. A friend of mine joked they may have just picked up one six pack of a particular beer at some point. While The Brick painfully clung to their Guinness World Record, other people in town were innovating.

While people may think back now and remember that The Brickskeller introduced them to craft beer, I'd wager that the name "Brickskeller" means very little in today's DC beer culture beyond the simple nostalgia factor. The sad part is that The Brickskeller could have easily kept up with the times. Rustico and Pizzeria Paradiso opened years ago, Churchkey not long after that – I actually feel like those places care about the beer they’re serving as well as the food and overall service they provide each customer. The Alexanders (or whoever was running the show the last decade) should have been taking notes. The once unique establishment became a dinosaur, frequented mostly by loyal patrons who were likely blissfully unaware of these better establishments or decided to remain ignorant and by those who went there once simply to say they did. The latter would include my parents, who I went with on my birthday the week before it closed.

That last experience wasn't awful - I sat at the same exact table two nights in a row. The beers, as you'd expect were few and far between. We had partial menus Saturday night, but were greeted on Sunday with beer stained menus, but menus that were intact. We are after all, talking about The Brickskeller, where if are ordering a beer and get the first one you order you're doing something wrong. You might as well not order from the menu at all! "Surprise me with something special" sometimes worked if you had a competent waiter. After a few frustrating attempts, you just ask for whatever they had of a particular brand. That last night I was there I saw they had a bottle of Stone Lucky Bastard on another person's table, but apparently that was the last bottle. Bummer. That would have been a way to go out.

After spending over a year away from the place and entering it right before it closed, part of me is sad to see it go but after a nice short chat with one of the new owners, I’m hopeful that these people can breath life into this fading establishment as soon as possible. Clean bathrooms (one of their top priorities) and an up-to-date beer menu is really all it would need to surpass the existing Brickskeller’s current conditions. You know you're probably in for a good experience when the new owners say "What's on the menu will be here. If we run out, we'll grab every menu and cross it out." Here's hoping.

Quick Fire Review: The Bat (1959)

2010-11-19T01:27:00.005-05:00

The Bat is a horror film that is more horrible than it is horror.

I suspect that this film is largely forgotten except for that it starred Agnes Moorehead and Vincent Price. The Bat concerns itself with a writer by the name of Cornelia van Gorder (Moorehead) who purchases a house of a recently deceased bank president who had committed a serious case of embezzlement.

The Bat plays a lot more like a strung out television anthology episode than it does an actual film and would have probably best been suited as a 25 or 50 minute story. The themes are a mish-mash of horror, thriller and mystery and none really meld too well together. There's just not a lot of vision here. The film is bland and boring to the point that not even Vincent Price could save it.

Bilbo Baggins

2010-10-22T01:37:00.000-04:00

What I'm Watching

2010-10-13T00:56:00.000-04:00

This post is about what I'm currently watching, primarily on Hulu.

The new TV season has begun. I'm about all caught up with each episode of the new series, and I've finally been able to watch Lone Star, so I can join in with the crowds of people annoyed with it's early departure from the Fall television schedule. It has joined Happy Town, which I did enjoy, and was killed early too. I suspect the Magic Man did them both in.

I'm still working through Highlander: The Series, the syndicated 1990s show about Duncan MacLeod. The show's setting is now Paris, though most everyone speaks pretty good English. Gotta love Canada.

I've finished the first season and am about 30 episodes into the second season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the anthology series hosted by none other than the master, Alfred Hitchcock himself. The only show I can really compare it to is The Twilight Zone, and there are some episodes that I've recently watched that rival that show's great ones. Hitchcock's dry wit remains hilarious and his remarks add a decent sense of snark and wit. I'm about 63 episodes into the 363 episodes, so I still have quite a ways to go until I'm done with this one.

The bizarre, Lexx, remains a staple on my plate, which I'm going to start watching this odd, strange, bizarre show again.

They're replacing 'CSI Miami' with 'Hawaii Five-0'?

2010-09-21T01:09:00.001-04:00

Maybe the audience has just been... *puts sunglasses on* ...taken for a ride.

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Star Trek 2009 Red Letter Media review (review on a review)

2010-09-18T23:25:00.002-04:00

The review was pretty good – though it is not as enjoyable when he doesn’t hate the movie in question, but there's good criticism there. “So much for your peaceful vision of the future, idiot”

I wouldn’t say he likes it, at least not with some qualifiers. He states that he realizes what it is a film made to make money – basically dumbed down for the “popcorn eating dimwitted masses.” He takes some serious cracks at the characterizations (everyone’s “HYPERCHARGED”).

He does point out something that I didn’t quite catch when first watching this – that Bones is pretty useless. Sure he’s Kirk’s friend and he gets Kirk on board, but rewrite that scene (where he could simply stowaway on a shuttle), and he’s down for the count. Uhura – who I thought was largely a pain in my rear through the story (I thought Zoe Saldana was a major weak-link in the film, “HYPERCHARGED” or not).

He points out exactly what I have said about the Kobayashi Maru. Each time I see this film the K. Maru makes less sense. But hey, “popcorn eating dimwitted masses” love new-Kirk's unlikable cocky attitude for some reason. Who would have thought a scene involving WESLEY CRUSHER from Star Trek: TNG would be used to prove a legitimate point (other than Wesley Crusher being a complete tool). Wesley’s test in a TNG episode where he tries to get into Starfleet Academy induced legitimate “fear” *and* proved that he was able to make a tough life or death decision. The Kobayashi Maru in the new film is like a simple flight simulator that could *never* produce one iota of fear in the subjects. And Kirk’s smug attitude was something I just can’t get behind. He’s simply an a$$hole in the scene – regardless of whether or not he’s right about how useless the test is (as it’s presented in this film).

RLM also takes a serious crack at the TNG episode "Parallels," which he states is the “worst episode of Star Trek ever" – which may be a bit embellished, but it is pretty bad. This episode is the very foundation that the writers used to create this new film’s convoluted “we’ve changed the past so these events are in a different time line” plot. That’s pretty rough.

The review’s point about branding and name recognition only serves to embolden my opinion that Star Trek (with Kirk, Spock, and everyone else) will either be rebooted again by 2019 in the theaters (if they’re even able to get a third film off the ground by 2015-2016), or will probably be rebooted for television by 2016 (with a whole new cast since most of these people will have film careers and won’t want to do television). This criticism is more about my disgust with Paramount more than it is with the current producers of Star Trek.

Star Trek wasn’t exactly terrible in my eyes, but in my opinion it was only barely was able to capture the essence of Trek at fleeting moments, and most of them were due to good performances by Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban and off-and-on in the film, Zachary Quinto. It was the minor things that bugged me – which is why I complain about it so much.

Generally the films that get to me most, the ones that continue to fester disdain in my mind are the ones that I really wanted to like – and like a lot – but was let down for some reason or another. This film shares a lot with Nemesis (beyond the Romulan stories). Both Star Trek and Nemesis were films that I desperately wanted to love, but was let down because of poor decisions. Similarly, I can’t buy into the premise of Star Trek V or Star Trek: Insurrection, so there isn’t a lot for me to complain about – they’re both range from terrible to mediocre throughout both films. With that said, I can only hope that the sequel can improve on the foundations presented in this film and do something unique and new to the Star Trek universe.

Machete was worth seeing

2010-09-07T12:01:00.002-04:00

Jessica Alba's character's cooking forced me to do some cooking of my own.

Star Wars: How George Lucas destroyed a franchise

2010-09-06T11:32:00.009-04:00

This particular post may be a bit rambling, as it's a combination of a slew of different conversations I had over the last few months about Star Wars. Red Letter Media's Star Wars prequel reviews sum up most of my problems with the series, but I'd like to touch on a few more. Nothing like clubbing a dead horse a bit more, right?

Lucas doesn't understand the word "balance"

While it has been endlessly debated, "balance" - the strict definition of the word can be summed up by "equilibrium." Wiping out the Jedi so that only two remain (Yoda and Obi Wan), the same as the presumed number of Sith (Palpatine and Vader) makes sense. The "prophecy" being that all Sith need to be wiped out for "balance" to occur is absurd and defies the definition of the word. If this is really what Lucas was going for he should have found a better word to describe the prophecy.

I like to think that Anakin/Vader brought "balance" by helping to destroy the unbalanced "light side" of the Jedi - and bringing equilibrium to the two sides. Think of it as poetic justice.

After all, in the Expanded Universe stories, there used to be thousands of "dark side" Jedi/Sith/or force-sensitive people out there. Wouldn't that mean that it was extremely unbalanced?

We have no one to root for

The problem is that the first time we see the Republic, it's corrupt through-and-through. We're never able to see it in its glory days.

The Republic is a bureaucratic nightmare - probably just a tinge better than the Empire's presumed iron-grip on its subjects. They debate endlessly while planets are invaded.

Honestly - I thought the intentions of the Separatists were a lot more noble than portrayed in the second and third prequel films. Sure they're being used as pawns by the Sith, but they want out - they wanted out of this corrupt, decadent Republic. In a twist of irony that probably would be beyond Lucas' grasp, it would have been really interesting to have seen the Rebels stem directly out of the remains of the Separatist movement.

The problem lies in that we're never really able to see the day-to-day life of someone in the Empire. Luke grows up relatively unaffected by the Empire on Tatooine because they're just not that interested in that speck of dust. We're given signs that the Empire is brutal - killing the Lars' because they harbored (unaware) the droids, as well as the Death Star, destroying planets in its path at the whims of both Grand Moff Tarkin and later, the Emperor himself. I think had we just a better peak into the brutal nature on a more personal, day-to-day level (beyond Luke's very personal involvement with them that kicked off his quest) the contrast would likely have been better, even keeping the Republic's entirely corrupt politics intact.

Fred Astaire's Inception - two levels deep

2010-08-14T01:38:00.001-04:00

Can't help but thinking about Inception's hotel fight whenever I see this clip. Can we have someone edit them together?

Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff will likely remain fresh and innovative

2010-08-12T01:04:00.001-04:00

As we all have gotten to know the Comedy Central Roasts of the last decade, you never know what to expect. Right?

Most the jokes will be cutting edge. In fact, quite a few will be about how huge Pamela Anderson's "rack" is compared to the size of a normal woman's "rack."
If the jokes are not about Anderson's "rack," they will be about her sex tape that is over 12 years old. Expect the material to remain creative as ever with numerous jokes about Tommy Lee's large genitals.
Of course, as we all know, most jokes will not actually be directed at Hasselhoff. Lisa Lampanelli will be there, and as the second-tier comics always like to tell us: She has sex with so many black guys she's lost count. In fact, she likes to tell us that too so I guess I shouldn't single out her peers. Apparently her audience is stuck in the 1980s and still finds the "taboo" angle clever.
Colin Quinn will be there because he hasn't had anything better to do since Comedy Central canceled "Tough Crowd" back in 2004.
Greg Giraldo will be loud and unshaven. He will have bed hair and look like he woke up in an alley.
Lewis Black, if he appears, will do some innovative material about how angry he is with the world. He will probably talk about how much he hates watching Baywatch re-runs.
Jeffrey Ross will be spontaneous and crack a Jewish joke for the first time in his career.
Nick DiPaolo will call at least one person a derogatory name in an attempt to elicit a laugh. Of course it will probably be directed at everyone but Hasselhoff.
People will wonder how much blow Comedy Central had to give Andy Dick to show up to the Roast.

As fresh and innovative as ever. I can't wait until the next one.

Where Superman Returns messed up

2010-08-02T23:53:00.002-04:00

Casting
Lois Lane. Kate Bosworth may have been the "it" girl a few years running according to Entertainment Weekly a decade ago, but she brought no gravitas to the role. However, I give her one up on Margot Kidder, who acted like an imbecile most of the time. Teri Hatcher is still the best portrayal of Miss Lane.

Kal Penn? He has, what, one freaking line - and a line said when he wasn't even in focus! Poor guy. His role can be summed up with a close-up, blank, wide mouthed stare.

Cheese Platter
In the first scene we're introduced to Lex Luthor in a hammy, Donner/Lester style cheese-scene, instead of starting the movie off with Superman returning to Smallville. The credits created a buildup that was only natural given that after the Luthor introduction, we see Superman crash.

Lois is a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter. How come she asks how many 'f's there are in the word, "catastrophe"?

Editing
The movie was too freaking long. I'd probably be able to trim at least 40 minutes off of the running time. There are very few scenes I watched that I didn't think to myself, "That could have been a few seconds shorter." Some scenes I wondered why they weren't completely cut down because it felt like I was watching a rough cut.

Plot
The plot was a rehash of Superman: The Movie. I don't really know what else to say. Lex Luthor wants to do another land-grab, real estate scheme. BORING. Where was Darkseid? Where was Brainiac?

I don't have high hopes for the reboot (or is it a sequel this week?). I fully expect another origin story rehash, and another film that has Lex Luthor plotting and scheming. Like half of the movies that came before it. Do you know how boring the Batman films would be by this point if the Joker had shown up in 4 of the movies doing practically the same things in each of them?

Lost's Worst Season

2010-07-19T23:11:00.002-04:00

Season 6 certainly was (at least for me) the lowest point of the entire series. Worse then even Season 5, which suffered from a lack of direction nearly all season and certainly worse than season 3's aimless early episodes.

In season 6, almost all of the on-island stuff was ultimately unnecessary. Most of the cast sat around for great lengths of time, walked from place to place just to sit some more, and lacked any cohesive direction. Had the story progressed during that time, I wouldn't have a problem, but almost none of the things they did the first half of the season made a single lick of difference.

Character growth on-island was not only stunted, but regressed. All the character growth of the last 3 years (in-universe, off screen mostly) was swept away. It was like they ignored all of season 4 and 5 and were writing these people like they were still in early season 3.

About the only shining moment of the season was Ab Aeterno. Desmond's episode would have made the list for me, had the whole "going into limbo-world" made any sense at all. Across The Sea was as close to Star Wars' midichorians as Lost ever was able to get. After seeing the results of the episode and it's ramifications for the remainder of the series, I would have preferred them just skipping the whole back story and left the origin and beginning struggle between Jacob and the Man in Black an unknown.

The "sideways" universe was such a cop-out that the final season may almost be unwatchable to me when it finally arrives on DVD. I frankly don't care about any of their actions in this alternate world - considering it's a fake construct and whatever personalities they had before they "awoke" never really existed in the show.

Bruno and Borat

2010-07-08T23:49:00.001-04:00

While I can buy the comments that Bruno and Borat were made to "highlight their prejudices" - especially commonly mentioned about "middle America" or whatnot, there were only a few notable scenes that really conveyed this in both films. The guy at the rodeo who they captured on camera making racist and bigoted comments is one of the few genuine moments of the film.

The problem is, even when he was able to pull a fast one on someone and get them to say something bigoted, racist, or sexist, a lot of coaxing was needed to get them to that point. The college students they got liquored up started playing loose with their tongues is one of those situations that took a lot of work to get them to "show their true colors."

In some cases this "experiment" backfired. It took Cohen to defecate in a bag and bring a prostitute to the house to drive the people who had been *very* accommodating and respectful to Borat all evening at the dinner party to finally kick him out. Even with what I suspect is creative editing, it wasn't until he started singing the fake Kazakhstan National Anthem (long after he butchered the US National Anthem) before the crowd erupted in boos.

Some other instances didn't really show a particular group in a bad light, but was there to make fun of said group. For instance the Evangelical Church was accepting of Borat, they welcomed him in, were kind to him and apparently even helped him get out to where he needed to go (or so the story claimed). In turn, audience members mocked the guy "speaking in tongues" and labeled them all as idiotic and insensitive as the a$$hole at the rodeo.

All in all I enjoyed Borat the first few times I saw it, though it grows incredibly old after numerous re-watching. I was only really surprised with the *reaction* and opinions some people took away from the film.

I however, can't say the same about the 81 minute feature film, Bruno. That film was made to shock and offend first, entertain last. People are thrown into situations with a character so over-the-top and offensive that there's little recourse but to become offended or angered by what he says or by his outrageous actions. The Borat character was naive enough that you could write off quite a bit of his behavior - that he was unaware of the impact of his words. Bruno came off as more of a twit that performed reckless and criminal behavior, not because he was naive or unaware, but because he was amoral and didn't give a rip about anyone or anything around him. It dawned on me that people who were in the presence of the Cohen-as-Bruno *knew* he was "reckless" and not just ignorant.

And that's where Bruno failed where Borat succeeded. Now I just wish that people who like Borat realized exactly who the distasteful people in that film are.

Reimagined by JJ Abrams: Star Trek "Where No Reboot Has Gone Before"

2010-06-29T01:37:00.001-04:00

The new Star Trek movie had a lot of lens flares. I've made it pretty clear. The movie made it pretty clear. So there's a conference room we see for the first and last time in the second pilot episode of Star Trek. Lots of flares, some coming from nowhere discernible (mostly because the room didn't have frosted glass everywhere). Note that Kirk's uniform is a lot more golden and Spock's is now Blue, because hey, who cares about continuity if people don't remember it that way?

Reimagined by JJ Abrams: Star Trek The Undiscovered Country

2010-06-27T21:49:00.001-04:00

This time I went a bit more subtle and decided against the use of lens flares. I know this goes against J.J. Abrams very liberal use of lens flares or blinding contrast from a sun or explosions, but I figured I'd leave this one a bit untouched.

The battle looks pretty cool:

More to come...

What I'm Watching

2010-06-19T03:16:00.000-04:00

This post is about what I'm currently watching, primarily on Hulu.

I currently have gotten into Highlander: The Series, the syndicated 1990s show based on the 1986 movie. I watched it off-and-on back when it was first on, and am currently digging it, and not because the theme song by Queen is kickin'.

Over the last few weeks I've been watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the anthology series hosted by none other than the master, Alfred Hitchcock himself. The series ran from 1955 to 1965. Suprisingly, it's been forgotten (it was forgotten even by me). While I don't know if it can reach the greatness of The Twilight Zone, most of the episodes I've watched so far rival an average Twilight Zone episode, and some surpass some of the great ones! Hitchcock's dry wit is hilarious and his intros and closing remarks are humorous and occasionally side splittingly funny. I've only watched about 30 of them out of a total of 363 episodes, so I have quite a ways to go until I'm done with this one.

Going back a few additional decades is the The Three Stooges, which has a collection of their shorts (mostly 18 or so minutes long). Humorous, slapstick, mindless. Good entertainment. The old SNL shorts, The Mr. Bill Show, back when the show was actually cutting edge, are a mixed bag. Of course those familiar with Mr. Bill will know Mr. Hands and Mr. Sluggo will be "mean" to Mr. Bill and well, you know the rest.

In more recent shows, and one that takes itself just about as serious as the Three Stooges (though no pies or seltzer in the face yet) is the new FOX show, The Good Guys, which currently has three episodes available to view on Hulu. A funny show that I've finally caught up with. It's like a buddy cop show that constantly mocks the CBS crime procedural shows that network airs.

I've also been watching the now canceled, Happy Town, which I enjoyed, but could see how the show probably failed. They should have waited until the summer to debut this show instead of dumping it around the time that the rest of the shows were [i]ending[/i] and a few weeks before the new shows started. Oh well.

The bizarre, Lexx, remains a staple, though after picking up other shows to watch, I'm taking a short break from this odd, strange, bizarre show.

What the heck did I just watch? (June 2010)

2010-06-11T23:31:00.014-04:00

I'm not sure which series I should be more confused about: Lexx: Tales from a Parallel Universe or Emmanuelle in Space.

Emmanuelle in Space

Emmanuelle in Space is a late-night (see "Skinemax") 1994 science fiction television series starring Krista Allen as Emmanuelle, a character loosely based on the long standing fictional softcore-character named Emmanuelle. Well going into that territory, Emmanuelle in Space contains quite a bit of nudity. The series lasted 7, roughly 90 minute episodes.

This series kicks off with a hilariously flimsy framing device where aliens, unaware of what "love" is land on Earth to "learn" about us. And by "learn" I mean have lots of sex.

The highlight of the series is the nonsensical transitions (mostly taken from old educational videos about space) and the silly ship computer voices that play over whatever "action" might be going on screen. Even though Krista Allen couldn't act her way out of a paper bag in this series, there's at least some sense that she's taking it in stride, knowing exactly what kind of role she's in. Meathead "Captain Haffron" is as wooden as wooden gets and line-reads like he's auditioning for the role.

Lexx

Lexx is well, just bizarre. Lexx follows a band of misfits including Stanley H. Tweedle a security guard who fails at just about everything in life; Zev Bellringer a human partly converted into a "love slave" with lizard DNA thrown in (though you wouldn't know it by looking); Kai, an undead assassin; and 790, a robot head that received Zev's love slave programming and is madly in love with Zev. As an aside, I completely buy 20 year old Eva Habermann's (Zev) silver hair so much that it's odd looking at her normal blond hair color and would probably be floored if I ever saw her "Tatort" episode (which is unfortunately not a Hauptkommissar Max Ballauf and Freddy Schenk story, but I digress).

The show is laced with a lot of innuendo and borderline-softcore scenes (though only one scene where Eva Habermann's Zev showers nude). Other than that, the gimmick is the odd characters and the (usually) bizarre situations they're thrown into.

Lexx started off as a science-fantasy series consisting of four 90 minute TV movies. It later went on to become a regular series, but I won't talk about those right now. The original movies (or episodes as they're later called) are "I Worship His Shadow," "Super Nova," "Eating Pattern," and "Giga Shadow."

The stories range from mediocre to just plain strange and are mixed with a level of insanity that I just can't measure. I... I just don't know how to classify these. Were the people certifiably insane when they put together these stories or were these entirely honest attempts that were halted by no-budget?

Something that differentiates this from Emmanuelle in Space is that the people behind the show had put at least some effort into creating a very complex and diverse universe. The only problem is, without an outside force or character the audience can put itself into their shoes, I'm at a loss to a lot of the things that have been talked about and introduced. We're not talking about some quirky world like in The Fifth Element, but one that's so alien, so odd, and has a mythology that's complex and largely unexplained. The stories also just can't fill the 90 minute timeslots they've been given. I don't even know if they could fill 42 minutes worth of material if they weren't walking around, staring, or being involved with some unrelated subplot.

Watch the first episode here.

I don't know if I can fully justify why I am watching Lexx, but something, just something odd about it intrigues me enough to keep at it. I watched some of the later episodes a few years ago and frankly I'm not looking forward to the Xenia Seeberg-as-Xev transition once Eva Habermann leaves the series. At any rate, would I buy this? No fraking way. Hats off to HULU for providing this to me.

I still am not sure why I watched Emmanuelle in Space except for the laughs it was able to illicit from me.

Dude, that beer's been sitting there since before Rocky III

2010-06-05T15:16:00.001-04:00

Dharma Initiative Beer!

Jacob's Craigslist ad

2010-06-01T00:24:00.001-04:00

Fantastic.

Reimagined by JJ Abrams: Star Trek The Motion Picture

2010-05-28T21:02:00.000-04:00

I've also realized that not only is Star Trek a lot like Star Trek V, but it's pretty close to TMP. Again, I'm not joking. So rev up the absolutely ridiculous lens flares, brightness and contrast used in Star Trek and the results are not that dissimilar:

Going to warp actually looks kind of cool:

The Bridge looks, well, silly, but wasn't the new Bridge with what, it's price tag scanners and goofy colors?

And what's an Abrams Star Trek movie without gross product placement?

More to come...

Lost: The End

2010-05-26T19:18:00.019-04:00

The ending was very emotional, very sentimental. I enjoyed it on that sentimental level, but now that I think more and more about the events that occurred throughout the season compared to how they came together in the finale, not a whole lot of it makes sense.

As I've only seen each episode of this final season once, I really am hard pressed to say I caught everything that appeared on screen. I still catch new stuff each time I've watched the show and I've seen season one probably at least 5 times at this point.

Problems With the Season

The two biggest problems with the season right off the bat:

Widmore's involvement this season with Desmond makes even less sense now than it did before the finale. Where does Desmond go when he's experimented on?
So after all of that, if the "flash-sideways" is a place they all went to they could meet up when they died, why the heck did they:
- Have to forget who they were?
- Not just create entirely new "lives" so when they all were there they'd be set?
- Make it so difficult to remember their past lives?
Fill the entire season with SO MUCH FILLER?

Why was it necessary to bring Desmond? Why was that experiment run on him? Why would Widmore be doing this experiment? Was it really just so he could remove the stone? That's it? They couldn't just write that some other way to have, say, Richard do it? Why even bother with this other than to "trick the audience?" While Desmond is experimented on, he "jumps" to a point where apparently they're all dead, and in limbo (mislabeled by most people I've talked to or read as "purgatory"). Why would he appear there? And why the heck would he appear to be self-aware in both realities? Did Desmond "realize" that they were all dead and together in the afterlife? How would he know this? Is what we got really the answer they believed we were going to buy?

This appears to be the case of what I like to dub, "Tim Kring" writing. For those unfamiliar, Tim Kring was the producer of the fast-tanking fantasy show, Heroes, where he would proudly mention that the writing staff often did not know what the heck they were going to be doing more than 4 episodes from the point they were currently in production. They claimed to have mapped out the remainder of the series sometime in season 3, but I sincerely believe that the limbo-world was an afterthought, a last minute "twist" to throw a wrench into the mix – and that there are plenty of pieces of evidence that not only contradict the ending they showed, but go against the logic they were developing during this final season.

Everything they did with this "sideways" world was just to tease and trick the audience - not for a clever ending, but to string us along. Precious time they could have spent developing the on-island actions and motivations far better than they did. The most the characters did when they returned to the island was move around - a lot. No honest interaction, no real character growth, no character movement at all.

I believe their intentions from the start of the season were that they were actually in an alternate world, that they "succeeded" in somehow creating an alternate universe in which the island "ceased to have any influence" over the people (though this is partially ruined when they showed the island underwater, it should just not exist). Without the island and its influence, it could not affect the people connected with it. I'll get to the avenue they should have taken a bit later in my post.

What the heck did I just watch?

Since they're in limbo, who is real and who is "fictional" and who was "real"? Obviously some are real people, most of the survivors that appear are real, while others aren't such as was implied with Jack and Juliet's son. My problem here is, who's real? Everyone connected to the island? Are Danielle and Alex real? Artz? Ana Lucia? Where's Michael and Walt? Mr. Eko? What about Ethan Goodspeed? Are those people who appeared but did not "pass" at the end just fictional constructs invented in this "meeting place" that Hurley talked about? Where were the other people? We got an indication that Ben was not ready, but why? What issues did he really still need to work out if he is dead? Was he going to make Danielle and Alex aware? Would Danielle be better off the way she is now, even if it's not "real"? How the heck does Eloise know about this stuff if they're all dead? Does she have "special powers" in limbo too?

With so many other things changed, why not just do away with the island and it's influence altogether? Have Ben grow up on the West Coast with his father and mother (who ended up not dying). Show that his (apparently fictional) life was completely different with two living parents. Assuming Alex was "real" and not some fabricated prop like Jack's son, she'd have lived her entire life off the island, never being born there.

Reason: Because the writers were stringing us along.

Had the "sideways" flashes taken only a small fraction of the screen time throughout the season, instead of taking up a huge chunk of the story from the on-island scenes it may not have been all that of a shock when the ultimate nature of the "sideways" reality was revealed. But no, we became invested in "fabricated" lives. Lives that all but ceased to exist when their eyes were opened to who they really were. Looking back, I would have been a lot happier had they just cut the serious fat from the "limbo world" scenes - instead we got Keamy talking about how good his eggs are, John having a good old time with his fictional wife, Jack hanging out with his fake kid in a few episodes. In the end it was like caring about what happens to completely fictional world and completely fictional characters on the the holodeck in Star Trek.

My Humble Solution

My solution is not too drastically different from what we saw, but certainly keeps (in my opinion) sync with what we saw happen in the "sideways" reality. With everything they built up earlier in the season, they would have been much better off killing off EVERY character one by one throughout the season, have them "remember" their lives in the flash-sideways reality, and have them live their lives out in peace in the flash-sideways reality. We'd already spent the entire season believing it was an alternate reality (akin to "Back to the Future II") so it wouldn't have been that much of a shock to accept it as an actual alternate time line.

I'm not saying that this would solve everyone's problems with the show. The ending I think would have worked better would have most definitely not satisfied everyone. However, I think a lot of people are mad not necessarily the direction they went, but because they introduced the "sideways universe" and at the 11th hour, with moments before the clock struck one, revealed that the entire thing was LIMBO.

With all that said, had the "sideways universe" been *real* the backup plan Widmore talked about would have been Desmond "awakening" all the people in the other universe to what happened to them on the island. This is what they were doing for the last half of the season anyway. My first noticeable realization that the writers were pulling a fast one was when Eloise talked about if Desmond would take her son away from her. That was it - I knew they dropped the ball and that they were all dead. Stick to the original plan (or what appeared to be the original plan).

The Incident splits reality into two universes.

1) One reality where the island is "destroyed" and has no influence over the people, save the events that occurred before the island sunk.
2) One reality where the island is unaffected and "the incident" forces DHARMA to modify the Swan Station so they can push a button every 108 minutes to keep the electromagnetism under control. Okay. So there's two realities.

Now follow me:

1) Jacob dies.
2) Desmond "awakens" in the other reality and begins to do the same for the rest of the characters.
3) Have EVERY character die off one by one throughout the last season and finale. By the last hour of the finale, have some variation of Jack/Hurley/FakeLocke and maybe Ben/Richard be the only surviving people on the entire island.
4) Jack becomes the new protector of the island.
5) Jack secretly gets (Hurley?) to promise to take over as protector if Jack dies "he becomes like him"
6) Jack and FakeLocke must descend down to the Source together. Jack removes the stone, appears to be dying. Jack recovers long enough to fight with FakeLocke and push him into the center pit of the source.
7) Jack gathers just enough strength to put the stone back, saving the island.
8) Jack dies at the beach, where he first woke up after the crash. Would Hurley be the best choice to take over, would Richard? Going down the route I'm suggesting would mean that everyone closely associated with the island would be alive and "aware" of their old lives in the "sideways" universe once they've been made aware of it's existence. Could Richard take care of the island all alone, with everyone in the other reality? Could the island be moved to this 'sideways' universe entirely? The ultimate "fail safe?" I don't know - I personally think just about any explanation rather than "oh you're all dead and in limbo" would have been a better way to end the show.

But then again I'm not some small bald guy with glasses who decided not to answer jack about the show when they finally got around to penning the finale. Take the following from former producer, David Fury, a guy who left the show a few years back:

"What we are trying to do is make sure everything has a very Scully explanation, this is not a show about the supernatural, despite the fact that we have a very huge creature that likes to eat people. Despite the surreal, bizarre aspects of the island, there will be an explanation for it. It may not come for a very long time, but certain information about the island will explain how things are possible. We'll try to root it in real science or real pseudo-science. There will be no mystical reason or an island of monsters."

THIS IS WHERE THEY FAILED.

The End

I was satisfied emotionally, and it was a fine send off in that regard, but mentally? No freaking way.

If this world is somehow limbo, are the other people real? Is everyone there real? Why would they be forced to live out their lives again, especially since it was inferred that they "created" (assuming Hurley as the new Jacob) this place to "meet" - why is "Eloise Widmore" concerned about her son, "Daniel Widmore," unless they're both real? Which returns me to my previous question about why these other people would be forced to live in this "created" place? Why wouldn't they all go at once if they're supposed to all be dead?

I'm not even asking for answers about "what the island is" who built the statues, what happened to the original inhabitants, who did the DHARMA airdrops, and who was in the other outrigger during the ocean gunfight during one of season 5's time-flashes. I just wanted better closure for the brand new plot threads that were introduced during season 6 and ended up being pushed aside to tell a story about all the characters being in "limbo" after all of them were long dead.

I have a feeling that upon re-watching it that I won't buy it, that I will simply be unable to accept that this was the end result of everything that occurred *this* season. Forget about previous seasons, this one introduced a whole lot of new stuff to the mix, and a lot of it might not jive well once I get around to viewing it again, especially since we now know the end result.

Reimagined by JJ Abrams: Star Trek TOS

2010-05-20T09:08:00.002-04:00

The new Star Trek movie made it a point to show the ships at angles not normally used in Star Trek (or most science fiction for that matter). I've added a sun to the Enterprise/Romulan confrontation in "The Enterprise Incident" to add in some much needed glare for a Abrams space-shot, and a rotated image about 45 degrees. I thought about rotating it further, but it started to look silly. It actually doesn't look that bad when you kill off the "sun."

Lost: Leadup to the finale

2010-05-19T18:19:00.000-04:00

Woah. What a rush. This Sunday. It's finally here - The End.

"Everybody Loves Hugo" - Hugo tries to be a leader. Ilana has some explosive ideas. Black Rock goes boom. Man in Black insulted by Desmond - throws him down a well. Even in Death, Michael is still annoying. Libby's still crazy - but only sorta. Desmond tries to hit Locke with some ideas.

"The Last Recruit" - Claire still appears to be crazy. Sayid prepares to kill Desmond. The Elizabeth makes a reappearance. Jin and Sun, together again. Jack recognizes a future client.

"The Candidate" - Jack just can't keep his mouth shut and visits Dr. Bernard Nadler to talk about teeth. Widmore offers a fast escape from the surface of the island. Fake Locke provides some sinking truth to the survivors in the submarine. Um... Lapidus?

"Across the Sea" - A woman strikes a rock-solid bargain with Claudia to care for her children. The woman shows a very illuminating side of the island. MIB makes sure she gets the point of his message. ~~FLASHBACK!~~

"What They Died For" - Um... Lapidus? Richard takes a very large leap backwards. Desmond knocks some sense into Ben. Ben provides Widmore some ammunition when talking to Fake Locke. Zoe finally shuts up.

FlashForward canceled; at least I can now watch Community

2010-05-14T17:52:00.020-04:00

Well, I've just found out that FlashForward has been canceled.

I watched it weekly, but man, the show was a mess.

Had they been able to cut the fat by not introducing some of the minor characters from the show, or having them appear very rarely, the show could have more effectively focused on the plot that every seemed to care about. At the start of the show there was far too much emphasis on Lloyd and his son interacting with Olivia. Even with this heavy interaction I, along with quite a few others, don't buy their relationship. I feel like the introduction of savant Gabriel McDow (James Callis) was thrown in there to try to convince the audience that their contrived relationship "had" to happen.

They really should have decided at the very start whether or not the show was going to:

1. Have a time line that could not be changed.

Pro: Characters would all end up where they saw themselves. Possible chance to "trick" the auidence with twists such as Demetri being unconscious during the blackout instead of being dead.
Con: Show could become predictable with the knowledge that things can't be changed.

2. Have a time line that could be changed.

Pro: Characters could make assumptions that turn out to not be true, the future would be unpredictable.
Con: The auidence will not see the end results of where they were on April 29th the way they saw it at the start.

3. Have a time line that can be changed, but have "destiny" play a part in keeping events as close to the "way they were supposed to be" as possible.

Pro: Keeps flash forwards or potential flash forwards as close to what the auidence saw, even if major changes occur.
Con: The constant nagging that everything will always turn out a certain way, and that destiny is forcing people to do things or "fix" events that were supposed to happen. If that is not done correctly the show becomes a muddled mess.

4. Having people see events happen slightly differently in each of their flash forwards.

Pro: It would immediately introduce the possibility of different universes and an infinite combination of futures that could happen. It would work best if most of them were about the same, but slightly different such as Mark wearing a red tie in one person's flash forward and a blue one in someone else's or Olivia being on the couch while Lloyd is on the couch in another.
Con: This could be incredibly confusing.

The problem is that the show couldn't decide where it wanted to go.

I honestly think that now, after seeing where the show went, things would have been better with the knowledge that "nothing can be changed" (option one). They could fight their hardest, but that every action they took always made sure that the event happened the exact way it was supposed to (none of this "Final Destination" garbage).

Heck, let's just forgo that conversation at the moment. What else could they have done differently?

The first few episodes where they went case-by-case introducing guest characters like they were a patient in an episode of "House," where they investigate this one-off character's flash forward and slowly add to the main story, is how the show should have gone through the majority of season one. The show could have kept momentum, remaining pretty consistent in the story they were telling, and had ended the season on a cliffhanger months before April 29th even occurred. Having Demetri shot would have made a pretty good cliffhanger. Season 2 could have delved directly into the conspiracy behind the blackout and could have covered the remaining weeks leading up to the blackout.

The plus to doing it slow and methodical would mean that it would have been far less serialized in their first season. People could tune in and out without missing much of the overall storyline, even while they slowly introduced the blackout conspiracy. This could build momentum and a loyal fan base, without immediately neglecting the simple nature that people want something more stand-alone. Once that base is built up, they could jump into the meat of the storyline involving government double agents, secret societies, and rogue scientists full on, and actually have the base to support that kind of show. Basically, I'm talking about making it like the early years of the X-Files.

Lost did the standalone/serialized mix pretty well, even if the show was heavily serialized in season one, you could conceivably miss a few episodes in it's freshman season and not feel like you had completely dropped the ball. You just couldn't do that with FlashForward.

Heck, my blood sugar was so low one night I passed out in the last 15 minutes (not aware I actually missed the end or anything important) the following episode they talked about one of their agents dying... I had no idea what they were talking about! Another episode I walked to the kitchen to get some food, I missed about 5 minutes of the show, and I couldn't follow what the heck was going on later (they even had a flashback that no one watching could remember seeing, even though it happened earlier in the episode).

The show was a jumbled mess. I'll miss it, mostly because of the potential it had.

Reimagined by JJ Abrams: Star Trek V

2010-05-12T18:27:00.002-04:00

Since seeing the new Star Trek film, I realized how closely related that film and Star Trek V are. No, I'm not joking. One decent emotional scene (Kelvin's destruction and McCoy's vision), misplaced humor, silly inner workings of the Enterprise, and a madman Vulcan/Romulan as the primary villain. So rev up the absolutely ridiculous lens flares, brightness and contrast used in Star Trek and the results are not that dissimilar:

More to come...

Reimagined by JJ Abrams: Star Trek III

2010-05-11T22:27:00.002-04:00

I noticed a while back how the new Enterprise bridge looks quite a lot like the old Excelsior bridge from that 1984 film. Rev up the absolutely ridiculous lens flares, brightness and contrast that J.J. Abrams and his Director of Photography used to cover up the fine details of the extremely expensive sets and the results are not that dissimilar:

Quite a few more are coming...

The Greater Marvel Universe

2010-05-10T19:57:00.002-04:00

A few quick things to note now that I'm decompressing my viewing of Iron Man 2 on Sunday, and the movie was fantastic by the way.

Any minor plot threads that have been left "unresolved" at the end of Iron Man 2, and I can honestly think of none at the moment, were probably left open because they play into the larger Marvel Film Universe.

Marvel is doing something brand new that hasn't been tried before. This company is creating a movie franchise that spans multiple, and unique properties, tying these films together in a consistent and clear universe.

Films so far include Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 2. Coming up next is "Thor." So far they've done a pretty good job tying in these films. Iron Man introduced Nick Fury. The Incredible Hulk had a nice cameo of Tony Stark. Iron Man 2 established that it takes place during the events of The Incredible Hulk and includes a fantastic tease... Stick around until after the credits (you may as well for all films since theaters have its people rush out of the theater the second the film ends so you're not going anywhere for a few minutes anyway).

This may benefit the narrative of this fictionalized universe far better than some of these other comic book franchises have been handled, where the "goal" is a "trilogy" and that's that. If Avengers is a hit (I see no reason why it wouldn't be), I suspect that that least the rest of the decade will be filled with additional Marvel comic book films that will tie directly into new comic films with tons of cameos from already established characters with zero "reboots" of the franchise anytime soon.

This prospect is far more exciting than knowing every few movies they'll just "reboot" Spiderman again.

LOST Season Six:"Happily Ever After"

2010-05-04T18:20:00.007-04:00

Desmond, Desmond, Desmond.

Finally, the season gets some Desmond and it was good.

Of course, with Desmond, things also got a whole lot more confusing.

Charles Widmore has convinced Desmond to take part in an experiment. This experiment has somehow changed Desmond in both the "real" universe and the "sideways" universe.

The "sideways" universe is starting to look more and more like one where everyone has gotten their wish (at least some wish).

Desmond finally appears to have gotten respect from Charles Widmore in the sideways universe. He's on an errand to pick up Charlie. Charlie tries to kill himself, and causes Desmond to "remember" things that happened in the real universe, notably, the death of Charlie ("Not Penny's Boat"). Trying to decipher what that means, he runs around the city, both trying to keep Charlie to his schedule, and to figure out what he saw.

Charlie goes AWOL ultimately, and Desmond goes to Widmore's party where he meets not only his wife, Eloise Widmore, but Widmore's son, Daniel Widmore. Eloise Hawking and Daniel Faraday respectively. Not that this would be a surprise since they were all related in the other universe. But what about Penny?

Desmond overhears "Penny Milton" being mentioned on the guest list, but Eloise stops him from looking, and in her typical creepy and knowing demeanor, said it was a "a violation." A violation of what, we'll find out eventually (we can hope).

Daniel stops Desmond before he can leave, and spills the beans. He's a musician, but not long ago he started to write down things he "remembered" - it turned out to be advanced equations that only a skilled and learned person would be able to do. He saw Charlotte for the first time but felt like he had loved her for years. He spills the beans and lets Desmond know where he can find his half-sister.

Desmond goes with his driver, George Minkowski (originally from the freighter in the real universe), to meet Penny.

While the scene may appear a little creepy, it's touching to know that they're together in both realities.

And with that, Desmond steps to on the island to get started.

Watch the episode here:

LOST Retrospective: Did Charlie get 'The Sickness' in Season 2?

2010-04-30T08:15:00.002-04:00

With the upcoming series finale looming over our heads, I got to thinking about what's happened since the beginning of the show. There's a lot to cover here so over the last few months I watched all the episodes released so far on DVD (season 5 was on blu).

Okay, so picture the last episode of season 2, "Live Together, Die Alone." Got it? Good.

At the end of the episode, after the hatch is destroyed and The Others have put hoods over Jack, Kate, and Sawyer to whisk them away to Hydra island, we're given a brief scene back at the camp at night.

I've always had a problem with the following scene.

(the embedded HULU clip jumps right to the start of the scene)

Charlie has returned to the beach. He's sitting, not doing anything of importance. At first I assumed he was shell-shocked from the hatch implosion, but since he's capable of having a straightforward, "normal" conversation with Claire, I don't think that's the case. However he's acts ODD. Really, really odd.

He cracks a joke about almost being killed by a "flaming fireball" and then mentions almost being killed by "flying fog." I assume that the 'joke' is meant to convey recent events, and as such we're actually never privy to his recent "flying fox" encounter on screen. After that point he says "nothing happened" and playfully mocks Claire's interpretation of events when she mentions that the sky turned purple.

He shows no urgency to investigate the fates of Eko, Locke, or Desmond. None whatsoever. From time to time the show has brushed over obvious human responses to situations, such as where characters don't ask questions that any sane person would ask in some given the same circumstance, but this takes the cake. From my memory Charlie's behavior is equally as strange for the first 1 or 2 episodes he appears in of season 3.

In Season 3, normal mocking of John would be expected, especially after the events of "Fire + Water," but he was detached in those episodes, not really interested in why Locke couldn't speak, and didn't seem all the interested that Eko was missing or in danger. He appears to be "back to normal" a few episodes in, indicating to me that they dropped whatever plot arc involving either being infected or "turned" somehow by the smoke monster. Either way whatever they appear to have originally intended him to be part is no longer part of the show.

Without some meaning behind some of the telling signs we're presented with in his conversation with Claire, as well as his disregard towards his fellow survivors (plus Desmond) the entire "night on the beach" scene serves really no point other than to tell us that Charlie is alive. In that context the scene is entirely trivial and is a needless detour between the scene where The Others blindfold Jack, Kate, and Sawyer and the reveal of the polar station immediately after the scene ends. Frankly, the fate of Charlie alone isn't enough to spend 2-3 minutes on when the fate of far more popular characters were in the balance.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this and that what I'm seeing here is really a poorly realized scene thrown in at the end of season 2 and bizarre, strange acting from Dominic Monaghan in his first episodes of season 3. But I really don't think that's the case. Could this have been part of a sub-plot they dropped? Perhaps signs that Charlie actually got "The Sickness?"

Doctor Who is back! (The Eleventh Hour and The Beast Below)

2010-04-24T23:16:00.005-04:00

Being in America, I just saw "The Eleventh Hour" a week ago and "The Beast Below" tonight - and boy I was not disappointed. It makes "Rose" look amateurish by comparison.

I thought "The Eleventh Hour" was a better 'introduction' than even the first 2005 episode, "Rose." I gauge this on a scale of how likely I would be to suggest this to one of my friends who are unfamiliar with the series, Doctor Who. It was certainly better than the spinning-Christmas trees in "The Christmas Invasion" which had one and only one good sequence once the Doctor was on the space ship, leaving the rest of the story to be pretty useless. The giant eye in "The Elevent Hour" was a little over the top, but I'll take that since the episode was pretty timeless (no reference to any specific time that the story occurred over) and it wasn't strewn with cheap pop-culture references like in years past.

There was just a moment in "The Beast Below" which really hit closest to the original series more than almost anything that was present in the last 5 years of Doctor Who. This makes me optimistic that the series is finally back on track.

The Russell T. Davies era was, by far, my least favorite era of the entire history of Who - and that includes some of the seasons that were full of incredibly terrible episodes. Season 17 which included some pretty lame stories and the dreadful Season 24 which included the lowest points of the entire classic show, but they were by far less disappointing than a huge chunk of Davies' time producing because they just didn't have that potential to be so much greater than they could have been. But hey, I spent an entire post last week complaining about the guy so I should lay off a bit. Maybe just a bit.

So anyway, I don't want to jump the gun, but if the series holds up as well as the two episodes did, I could almost forget the last 5 years happened.

It's too soon to say if the most recent season will be a critical success of dismal failure, but I haven't enjoyed Doctor Who this much since I saw the leaked version of "Rose."

Who the hell is Ke-dollarsign-ha?

2010-04-22T00:21:00.005-04:00

If I didn't know what that performer, Kesha, looked like, I would have just assumed the musical performance on last Saturday's SNL was some new cast member doing a spoof of terrible contemporary club music.

And this person is popular? How? Popularity does not a quality product make.

If she's even notable in a year there may be some point to her "success" as a media, well, person. At the moment I look at it more as a matter of successful market saturation by a bunch of industry executives who have a stranglehold over the music industry as a whole. Do you really think that most DJ's actually select the music they want to play? It all comes from a thousand miles away from their station on preselected play lists. They screen callers who tell the call screener what they want to hear and put them on the air to "request" that song be played.

But anyway, that performance...

The terrible "ballad" she attempted at the start of one of her songs and the occasional heavy breathing into the mic during her SNL "act" was almost enough to convince me that the heavily auto-tuned song was actually performed live until the backing tune continued to play when she actually didn't move her lips. I don't care if it's an industry practice or what they do on SNL. Live means LIVE to me. If people "want to hear what is on the CD" stay at home and save 50+ bucks and listen to the music at home. Is the money really worth seeing someone move on stage like an interpretive dancer? Do you need to see Britney Spears go through the motions walking around on stage lip-syncing? Do you need to see Kesha move around like a someone doing a string dance to a prerecorded music track?

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for these people (I hesitate to say artists or musicians) since they're heavily manipulated by the machinations of record executives who keep almost every penny of their record sales. These naive young people burn through whatever money they got when signing their contract and after a spike in album sales often times have extremely poor concert sales (the thing that oftentimes is the only think that makes them any money) and end up broke or crazy or both.

LOST Season Six: "The Package"

2010-04-21T08:20:00.000-04:00

The Package marks the 10th episode of the 6th season. It's all downhill from here. The show is almost over. Forever.

This episode is all about Sun and Jin. While in LAX, customs discovers $25,000 in their suitcase. The money won't be returned unless the proper paperwork is signed. Apparently neither Jin nor Sun know English. By the time they leave the airport, Jin has already missed his meeting.

They arrive at the hotel and book two different rooms! However, they appear to be having a romance, considering the actions that end up taking place in Sun's house. Sun and Jin both appear to be ready to run off together. Just then, a knock at the door.

Martin Keamy, the evil mercenary from season four enters the hotel room. He's arrived at the hotel because Mr. Kwon has promised him money. He finds Jin hiding, and they bring in a translator. Mikhail.

Mr. Eye Patch himself. Mikhail translates for Sun. She offers to get money from the bank, but her father has closed her secret account. Jin, in the meantime, has been taken to the Restaurant. Keamy tells an unsuspecting Jin that the money was meant as a payment to have him murdered. Locked in the storeroom, he hears the confrontation that occurred a few episodes back when Sayid took out Keamy and his crew. Sayid gives a tied up Jin a box cutter to escape.

Mikhail returns to find the restaurant kitchen in ruins. Keamy's last dying breaths gives Mikhail a few moments to fight Jin. In the following fight, Mikhail is hit in the eye (YES!), but not before Sun is wounded.

On the island Sun runs away from The Man in Black and loses her voice. This is probably the silliest part of the entire season so far. In a touching moment, Jin is shown pictures of his daughter, Ji Yeon. Widmore wants his help. Widmore says everyone they know and love would simply cease to be if the Man in Black got off the island.

DESMOND IS THE PACKAGE.

Too bad they couldn't do something about that freaking annoying "V" promo they ran all episode.

Christina Hendricks... because

2010-04-19T23:53:00.002-04:00

Esquire's "Best-Looking Woman In America," beat out the fabricated, artificial Megan Fox.

Oh Red!

LOST Season Six: "Ab Aeterno"

2010-04-18T21:19:00.011-04:00

Wow, give this man a Emmy. Right now.

Ab Aeterno may be the standout episode of the season - assuming that the finale isn't Earth shattering (figuratively if not literally).

This episode was all about the illustrious and mysterious Richard Alpert. The title of this episode, "Ab Aeterno", means "from eternity" in Latin, which is pretty fitting for a Richard episode title.

As you likely know, Richard does not appear to age. He appeared as youthful in 1954 ("Jughead") as he does in 2007. The episode opens up, "Tenerife, Canary Islands — 1867," and again, Richard looks roughly the same. He lives with his wife, Isabella, in a remote section of the island. Isabella is very sick, so Richard heads out to get help from the local doctor, who is a few hours ride away. Arriving at the Doctor's place, Richard is unable to convince him, and accidentally kills the doctor after a small tussle. Acquiring the medicine and unfortunately arriving too late to administer it.

He is captured and sold into indentured servitude, being shipped off to the New World on the Black Rock, captained by Magnus Hanso. As a side note, Alvar Hanso is his great-grandson, and the person who funded the DHARMA Initiative in its early years. Who knows if this will play a part in later episodes this season, but it's an interesting thing to note. The ledger from the Black Rock was found off the coast of Madagascar and was eventually purchased by Charles Widmore in the 4th season episode, "The Constant."

After crashing on the island, the Smoke Monster comes and kills the remaining crew, save Albert. The Man In Black convinces Richard that it is Jacob who killed everyone and that by killing Jacob, they could be set free. Richard almost succeeds in killing Jacob, but is stopped and convinced that he is not the Devil, and that they are not actually in Hell. He explains that he's helping keep the MIB on the island like a cork keeps a the wine in the bottle. Jacob lets Richard ask anything of him, and although he can not bring back his beloved Isabelle, he grants him eternal life. Jacob gives the MIN a white rock and a bottle of wine. After Jacob leaves, the MIB throws the stone and shatters the bottle of wine, releasing it everywhere.

In the present day Richard finds out that Jacob is truly dead, and has a crisis of faith. He runs off to find the MIB, to align with him instead. Hurley runs after Richard, in an attempt to stop him.

After catching up to him, Hurley helps Richard communicate with his love, Isabella in one of the most touching scenes of the series.

Miles is given his most memorable line to date when Hurley runs after Richard: "Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

Best episode of the year as of the time I posted this.

Doctor Who: A New Era begins (hopefully)

2010-04-16T23:39:00.000-04:00

In less than 24 hours, Doctor Who returns to America with the 5th season (or more accurately, Season 31), with a whole new cast and a new man in the producer's chair.

Russell T. Davies (or as I will refer to him, RTD) did an *okay* job helming the series as producer these past 5 years. However, I wish he could have avoided most of the writing duties and instead penned one or two stories and co-penning one or two others, allowing more seasoned science fiction and fantasy writers to take those duties.

What I want to see with this new series is more two-part stories that allow for proper build-up and additional time devoted to building a stronger plot. This should also help reduce costs for a given episode, as sets, locations scouting, design of props, and cast would be spread across multiple episodes.

The stark difference between the way the old series and the new series have developed their stories is that the story is based almost solely on the Doctor. He's in almost every single scene, with the occasional cold-opening where he doesn't appear. In fact, Blink wouldn't be too out of the ordinary for some of the classic series stories, where the Doctor sometimes didn't appear until almost the 10 minute mark, and occasionally only had brief appearances in a given episode while he's working on this-or-that (allowing for the companion or a minor guest character to be the focus for a short time).

Often times we aren't actually given a reason to like or even *care* about a given guest character, except through melodramatic music and the doctor getting a teary eye every once in a while. I can only imagine if episodes like 42 had had a bit more buildup for the characters, instead of just having them basically be the "stock" characters of the week. Obviously the episode wouldn't be called 42, but something like 84, or something along those lines.

At the very least with additional time, they could reduce the number of scenes where characters have to run to obnoxiously loud Murry Gold music.

Oh and the graphics... they were not phenomenal. Most of the effects were not a problem, but they were far too ambitious and often they end up being, well cheap looking.

They could probably afford to do more "off world" stories if they didn't waste the budget on dodgy graphics like from The Lazarus Experiment or Fear Her, or the unnecessary CGI wasp from "The Unicorn and the Wasp" and the still terrible looking Adipose from "Partners in Crime" and "The End of Time: Part Two."

RTD's biggest complaint was that all the alien planets looked like quarries. I'd take a quarry or two over some contemporary Earth setting which includes a companion with another bitchy mother and idiot siblings. Heck, they used quarries in Utopia and Waters of Mars (at least it appeared so in the latter) and I don't recall a single complaint from people watching those at the time that the were "cheap" by using a rock quarry.

RTD just never really *got* Science fiction. Let's just take a quick look at RTD's final-final story, "The End of Time:"

Personally I thought the psychotic Eric Roberts Master from the FOX television movie was far more believable than the "cartoonish" Harold Saxon version of the master played by John Simm. The Harold Saxon Master may have been "more evil" but he just wasn't a believable character. I couldn't take any of the things he did seriously because of how hammy the performance was written and acted. The "Blond" Master who appeared in the latest story was pretty terrible, but was probably the closest we'll get to a Delgado or Ainley in part two of that story. The character never grew to his full potential and was probably only saved by Simm's acting.

After seeing both parts of "The End of Time," the entire subplot of the Time Lords, the race the Doctor comes from, returning was entirely unnecessary. The story could have been entirely a struggle of the Doctor trying to rescue the Human race from being turned into an abomination. But nope, let's just throw in multiple threads to make it more "epic." If anything the addition of the Time Lords was done to tie the hands of future producers and writers from bringing them back by vilifying them to such a degree that fans of the new series (unfamiliar with the original series) would be in an uproar should anyone attempt to bring them back.

For those who watched, can anyone explain how the Ood's development was affected by the Master or the Timelords? Why did he introduce Donna to the story (and especially the cliffhanger) where she was immune to the Master's huge scheme, only to then ignore her until after the entire crisis was already resolved? How did the white star diamond escape the Time Lock? Wibbly-wobby time-locky-woky. Make stuff up that sounds good and not mention it again. The famous Russell T. Deus Ex Machina.

Most of his stories had huge science fiction buildups and always had disappointing resolutions compared to what they *could* have had. The one exception was Midnight, which was RTD's finest writing of the entire series. Had he written more solid stories like Midnight, people wouldn't be bashing him the way he was bashed since the show returned in 2005. His stories were full of distracting camp, "easy buttons" and plot threads that were dropped almost as fast as they were introduced. Personally I hope the incoming production crew sticks two large fingers up at RTD and retcons nearly all RTD's established "history" that was introduced by him in the series. As someone else put it, "Rot in Hell, Russell T. Douchebag."

Epic Beer Weekend!

2010-04-11T23:50:00.001-04:00

Okay, wow. What a weekend. A testament to the strength of my liver. I'm still not sure I survived.

Friday night was relatively mellow, with the only brewski consumed being the Great Divide's Espresso Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout. This one is ranks up there. The beer, in retrospect may not have been as good as the other Yeti offerings that Great Divide offers, but it was damn close. The aroma was roasty, with heavy notes of coffee (espresso beans) and certainly a good dose of chocolate. Alcohol presence was not too overpowering, but it was certainly there. The flavor was equally rich, with chocolates, coffee, and a touch of vanilla. The beer warmed quite well as it was consumed. After consuming this I went promptly to sleep and woke up to find it was morning already.

Saturday night was a different matter. A test of wills, you might say.

It all started off with Rogue's Dead Guy Ale. As always, a fantastic beer. Nice label on the front of the bottle. Taste of hops, but more malty than hoppy.

Boulevard Double Wide IPA vsmr in a 750ml bottle. The beer poured a hazy orange color with a big, fluffy just-barely off-white head. Aroma is citrus, with notes of pine, floral bouquet. Flavor is citrus with a touch of caramel malts, slight citrus, but not overpowering in the hops department.

Next up was Dogfish's Wrath of Pecant. This beer came in a 750 ml bottle. A very interesting and unique beer, still not sure exactly how I'd describe it. Touch of unidentifiable aromas (probably the plantains, other fruits). Flavor is certainly a bit smokey. Until reading the bottle I had just naturally expected this beer to be 10% or more, so I was pleasantly surprised that this clocked in at just over 6%. Drinkable, but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to have it unless it happened to be at one of the alehouses.

Chris' home brew was fantastic. Good notes of vanilla, creamy. Good! After this, we got into the Zywiec which was a pretty by-the-numbers European lager. Aroma is grassy, flavor has a grassy, almost bready taste. Immediately after the Polish beer the Stella was passed along. I passed on it as well.

Bear Republic's Big Bear Stout 22 oz bottle. Pours black with a good tan head. Aroma is heavy on rich, creamy sweet malt notes, with a nice touch of chocolates. Flavor is a nice, rich malty one with an almost toffee character with heavy notes of coffee and chocolate. A pretty decent stout, and a good one to break from the beers that we had been consuming prior to this one. Our first stout of the night.

Following Bear Republic's offering was Rogue's Chipotle ale. Aroma was a bit, well unremarkable, but with a certain malty character, so it wasn't too displeasing. I had this beer before, and it was a lot more smokey than I remembered it. As discussed, the beer would probably be good pared off with a meal instead of just consuming it on it's own.

And we finally got to Seth's beer of the night (or life?), Red Oak Amber Lager. I had previously had this on tap almost two years ago, so I was happy to try this again in bottles. I'm not that big of a fan of Amber ales either, so it's a surprise that I enjoy this one so much. This beer is a quite nice, refreshing beer and a good one to follow up a stout and the chipotle ale.

This one was followed up with Ryan's Dunkel homebrew, which was pretty fantastic. After that it was Anderson Valley 20th Anniversary Imperial IPA, which I'm still surprised is called the "20th Anniversary" since I think I had this about a year ago. This came in a 22oz bottle. A hoppy beer, but is pretty heavy on the malts. It was time to pass on the Delerium Tremens, a good beer, but I needed a break by this time.

Up next was the Heavy Seas Siren Noire which came in a 22 oz bottle. It poured a dark, opaque black with a small tan head. Aroma was chocolate malts, with touches of bitter dark chocolate. Flavor was bitter, with dark chocolates, touches of heavy malts, touch of coffee. Alcohol wasn’t too noticeable, which was nice for this imperial stout.

And on to the Rogue John John Ale, Dead Guy Ale aged in Dead Guy whiskey barrels. This one was sampled from a 22oz bottle. It poured a dark amber color with a white head. Aroma was pale malts and caramel, with a good deal of vanilla. The flavor was pretty smooth, not too alcoholic, which was a nice surprise considering the "whiskey aging" which usually correlates with very high alcohol content.

Ah, the night was moving on at this point, beer #14 for me, the next up to bat was Flying Fish Exit 4, a Abbey Tripel. This beer poured a clear amber color, with a fluffy white head. Aroma was pretty strong on the citrus hops, pretty clean, floral. Flavor was very hoppy for a tripel, quite a nice beer!

Unfortunately Seth didn't get the memo as the beers kept pouring faster than we could drink them. The Shipyard Summer Ale was next as the night began to slow down for most of us. The beer poured an light orange color and had a sweet aroma of fruits. This beer was relatively inoffensive, and cleansed the palate pretty well.

We were finally approaching the final inning. König Ludwig Weissbier was FANTASTIC. A great, smooth, creamy hefeweizen which was refreshing and had a fantastic balance of wheat, bananas, and a mild amount of spices. Great lacing on the glass. At this point I was able to avoid any Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, which may be a crime against humanity, but I just had to do it because what was coming next needed to be savored as the last of the three beers I brought to the party was up next.

Lost Abbey Lost and Found was up next. This beer poured a rich brown color with a thick, dark tan. This beer contained a lot of lacing. Aroma was malty, with raisins and other dried fruits, and a pretty yeasty character. Flavor was heavy on the raisins as well as the sweet, almost candy like sugars. Probably not my most favorite beers, but decent none-the-less.

And with that beer, I was done.

LOST Season Six: "Recon"

2010-04-08T00:16:00.002-04:00

Reconwas, well, not my favorite episode of this season.

There were a few problems I had with the "buddy cop" aspect of it, where James and Miles are partners on the police force in LA. One, James had already helped Kate escape from the airport. Knowing she was on the run he would have been compelled to at least alert the authorities to her, or even attempt to detain her long enough for the authorities to show up. None of that happened, so finding out he is a cop, and apparently not a corrupt cop is surprising. Also the choice of Miles is interesting. They certainly have a dynamic on-island so it's not too bizarre, but I fully expected Ana Lucia, I guess the actress was busy or they're waiting to bring her back in a later episode.

So anyway, Miles is suspicious of James. He ends up setting up James with Charlotte. Now, he did that either so she could snoop around or later on she accidentally found his "Sawyer file," the file that contains all the information covering Cooper and the death of his parents.

My problem is that the scene as portrayed showed Charlotte searching around - and not in the 'I can't find a shirt' kind of way, but with a purpose - she was looking for something. That would make Miles a pretty disgusting human and terrible friend to both Charlotte and to James since he'd be using Charlotte's sexuality to snoop around James' place. If it was all by chance, they sure didn't film the scene that way. If she just happened to come across this, they should have filmed her carefully looking in the drawer, unable to find a shirt - and happened to see, mostly hidden - the photo/binder. She may as well had dumped out the entire drawer the way she was digging around as the scene was shot. Her reaction later, of being thrown out seems to indicate it was an "accident" but the way the crew filmed the scene would seem to indicate otherwise. I thought it was pretty sloppy.

Kind of a lot to talk about one small scene, but I found the episode pretty unremarkable compared to the earlier episodes of the season, so that is where we're at.

On the island James has become Saywer again, deciding to pit both Widmore against Fake Locke.

LOST Season Six: "Dr. Linus"

2010-04-07T00:34:00.007-04:00

Woah. Dr. Linus was fantastic. Before this point I wasn't quite sure about this season. I mean, "Sundown" had an amazing conclusion and "The Substitute" was a pretty good episode, as the case usually is with John Locke stories.

If there's anyone further from the Ben Linus we know it would be Dr. Linus, the kind European history high school teacher. Scene chewer, Leslie Arzt, also happens to be a teacher at this school and the two are pretty chummy. Ben takes care of his father, Roger, who reminisces about leaving the Dharma Initiative and that everything he ever did for Ben was to try and make his life better. This reality is *very* different.

It also introduces what I think is our first real peice of information that does not jive with a 1977 detonation and "sinking" of the Island. I mean, we aren't Rep. Hank Johnson and the island won't "capsize" like Guam might... Anyway, so yeah, if we remember "The Incident" - Ben was still at The Temple being healed and Roger would have been running around after shooting Sayid. No, this is something else entirely. Whatever happened, didn't happen the way we thought. The island didn't sink because of the explosion otherwise these two never would have made it off the island alive except through "magic" - which Roger does not appear to indicate. He left voluntarily (or was forcibly removed) prior to the event.

This reality we're seeing is not directly resulting from the bomb. Good job Jack.

Anyway, Ben tries to blackmail the principal, played by regular asshole-character actor William Atherton. He tries to blackmail the principal, but is countered with a threat that he will bury (metaphorically, like "the box" that Ben talks about in earlier seasons) his star pupil, Alex. Alex is of course, none other than Alex Rousseau. Faced with either taking the principal down and taking the job or helping Alex get a letter of recommendation, and ultimately taking the later really shows the kind of character Ben has in this reality.

On the island, Richard Alpert tries to kill himself. Jack, intervenes and tries to explain that fate won't let him die, and to prove it he sits next to Richard and a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite at the Black Rock. At the last moment, the fuse goes out.

Ben is forced to start digging his own grave by Ilana, who blames him for Jacob's death - of course, he's guilty as sin, since he stabbed Jacob himself. He's spared, but only after a heart wrenching scene where he apologizes for (basically) being a monster. The ending is heartwarming when Hurley, Jack, and Richard join up at the beach with the rest of the group (they always seem to appear from around that same dang bush). That is, until we see a sub and it's revealed that Charles Widmore is aboard.

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

2010-04-04T22:47:00.007-04:00

If you've never heard of Ben-Hur, get out of the rock you're hiding under. This review covers the 1925 silent version of this tale. The movie starred Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman, May McAvoy, Betty Bronson and was directed by Fred Niblo.

The advanced nature of the cinematography for what you would normally expect in 1925 is phenomenal. There were forty-eight cameras used to film the epic sea battle, which was a record for number of cameras used for a single scene. 42 cameras were used in the chariot race. Few films today could pull that off, and none would have had thousands of extras, they'd mostly be CGI today. Almost all the religious scenes, specifically when Jesus is present during the film, were shot in two-strip Technicolor so you'll actually get some color in this film! Had the Academy Awards been around in 1925, this film would have surely been nominated across the board and would have likely won a slew of those awards.

William Wyler, one of the assistant directors filming the chariot race of this movie, went on to be the director of the 1959 version of Ben-Hur. This was the version that starred Charlton Heston as Ben-Hur.

Sure it's silent, sure it's mostly black and white, but does that make it less enjoyable? Not on your life.

**** and a half out of *****

Chatoe Rogue Dirtoir Black Lager

2010-04-02T11:56:00.000-04:00

This 22 oz bottle was fantastic! I was not expecting that from this beer. I've had Rogue beers before, but WOW.

The beer poured a motor oil black with a small dark tan head. Aroma is heavy on the roasted malts, touches of chocolate, oatmeal, touch of spice. Flavor is full of chocolate, tons of malty notes. One of the better schwarzbiers I’ve ever had, and one of the best lagers I've had.

LOST Season Six: "Lighthouse" and "Sundown"

2010-04-01T23:55:00.000-04:00

This is the third of my LOST Season 6 recaps. Each post will cover two episodes. Most of these will be moderately stream of consciousness and will not exactly follow the narrative that the episodes followed. Enjoy.

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"Lighthouse" is the 5th episode of season 6 of LOST. This episode is a Jack-centric tale, and boy, was it something unexpected.

Jack's story picks up in the Sideways universe. Jack's appendix has been removed! For those who remember, he almost died in season 4, when Juliet was forced to help remove it (with Jack's help). Jack apparently can't seem to remember exactly when he had it removed, probably another one of those instances where the characters are unknowingly aware of the other timeline.

Jack goes to PICK UP HIS SON. WOAH. Who the heck is David and who is the mother? Tell us! Anyway, they don't seem to be on the best of terms and Jack and the unknown mother appear to be divorced. They really don't appear to get along. Okay, David has that "punk kid" attitude (and not punk like the music/sub-culture) the "I want to smack this kid real good, just once" kind of kid. Or that's how it seems.

Jack appears to have his drinking under control (though he does have some on the plane, so he probably does have a problem). Jack's mom thinks that the reason that Jack and David can't get along is because David is terrified of Jack. The same could be said about Jack and his late-father, Christian.

Who's Claire Littleton?

On the island, Jack and Dogen talk. A lot. Hurley sees Jacob's ghost (or whatever he is), who leads him to a backdoor out of the Temple. Hurley doesn't have time to investigate further when he's interrupted by Dogen. Hurley repeats what Jacob tells him to say, including that he's a "candidate." Apparently this is enough to keep Dogen from doing something stupid, but man are the Other's terrible people. Bloodthirsty may be a better description.

Hurley and Jack take off, following Jacob's ghost's instructions (or whoever he may be). They're headed to an, at this point, unseen lighthouse. Jacob's lighthouse. In the lighthouse is a dial (with all their names on it) and a mirror, which after Jack looks into, he sees his old childhood home. Ticked off, he shatters the mirror. Hurley believes that Jacob wanted this to happen, but forced the round-about way to have Jack shatter the mirror. Maybe this will allow people to come to the island freely now, without having to be on one specific heading? Perhaps the dial opened a door in a specific location/direction? Interesting. Someone's on their way to the island.

Sideways again... Jack returns home to find David missing. He heads to David's mother's house. Jack basically breaks into the house and does some "investigation." He listens to the messages on the answering machine, something most people do when they break in, right? So he finds out his son is at the Williams Conservatory. He enters and sees his son playing the piano. In the back of the room, he meets.... Dogen! Jack waits until the end, waiting for his son. They appear to be making amends.

At Claire's hut, she has Jin and an Other tied up. The Other wants to get free and kill Claire, and tries to get Jin to help. Unwilling to help, Jin sits there while Claire comes in, and slams an ax into the Other's chest. Claire's "friend" comes in, who is none other than Fake Locke himself.

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"Sundown" is the 6th episode of season 6 of LOST. This episode is a Sayid-centric tale. Based on the title alone, I figured it would be a Sun and Jin episode (they've pulled that before).

Sayid arrives at Nadia's house, and unexpectedly, he's not married to her. She's married to his brother! And they have a kid! Woah. Anyway, it becomes clear that he still likes her, but that he's trying to stay away because of Omer (Sayid's brother). The brother is in massive debt, and wants Sayid to "convince" them to leave him alone. Sayid still did terrible things earlier in life, so this does not appear to be any different.

Omer is attacked, and Sayid becomes livid. On his way out of his brother's home, Sayid is picked up by henchmen, and taken to a restaurant. The gangster wanting money is none other than Martin Keamy, the cruel mercenary from Season 4 who killed Ben's adopted daughter Alex and her mother biological mother, Danielle Rousseau. Anyway, he goes freaking nuts, and now he's killed the whole lot of them! NO REDEMPTION. And omfg, Jin is in the walk-in fridge!

Claire shows up at the Temple, looking all screwy. She asks for everyone to leave the Temple. Dogen knows this is a trap, and knows if he leaves the Temple he'll die. They plan to send Sayid out to kill Fake Locke, and tell him not to let him talk, or he'll forever be cursed (or something close to that). He stabs Fake Locke, but to no avail, he's not going to die (at least not that easy). Sayid returns to the temple with another message, for those who want to get off the island to leave with him and that Jacob is dead. This sends many into panic (Cindy being one of them). Kate goes to rescue Claire, unaware that Claire wants to kill her. and then ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. Sayid kills Dogen and Lennon and good old Smokey shows up and kills everyone who did not leave the Temple. Lapidus, Sun and Ben are caught there, and find an escape. Things are freaking CRAZY this episode.

LOST Season Six: "What Kate Does" and "The Substitute"

2010-03-24T11:55:00.000-04:00

This is the second of my LOST Season 6 recaps. Each post will cover two episodes. Most of these will be moderately stream of consciousness and will not exactly follow the narrative that the episodes followed. Enjoy.

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"What Kate Does"

While the season opened with the shocking two-parter "LA X," the third episode of the season is "What Kate Does." Finding out the title name a few days prior to broadcast, I gave a sigh, and prepared for a Kate episode. Kate bugs me and it's actually pretty hard to describe. Not as annoying as Claire Bennett, but the focus on both her on Heroes, and Kate on Lost frustrates me because they're just not very interesting characters compared to the rest of the cast.

Well thank goodness for this "Sideways" universe. Kate may still be bland and annoying as ever, but we'll get something new and interesting and hopefully not too contrived. Well, were we left Kate off last time, she was on the run, kidnapping the "puppet master" from Heroes and Claire, who is not related to the Heroes character of the same name. He takes off, leaving the two. Kate eventually relents and takes Claire to the hospital - where... Doctor Ethan Goodspeed helps Claire with her crisis. Ethan's actions in the LA hospital mimics his season two appearance, where he takes care of Claire and injects her to "help" her baby. The

Claire calls the baby Aaron. I can't remember if that's what she planned to call him, or if it was pulled out the the Lost ether. Okay, later on Claire says she picked the name because she "knew it or something."

Back to the Temple... Okay, well Sayid is all screwed up. Something is seriously wrong with this guy. Dogen tortures him, and it appears to really hurt. Bad. Poor guy. Jack forces his way in to talk to Dogen, and is told that Sayid has the sickness, and will soon change. They try to get him to to give Sayid poison, but the plan fails. Apparently the same thing happened to Claire on the island.

Oh, sucks for Aldo. Bye bye Aldo - I hope you like your sleeveless shirts back in the real world. And who's the shooter? None other than Claire. What the frak.

"The Substitute"

Is a John Locke centric episode. Since Locke is dead, it's primarily set around the life of Locke in the "Flashsideways" universe.

John seems to have a much happier life than the one he ultimately had in the "real" universe. I don't say that it is happier because in the "real" universe he's dead. Almost any reality is better than one where you're dead. He seems to be much happier. Still in a wheelchair, but happier.

He's with Helen, and the two are to be married. She makes mention of his father, who I suppose while still probably a con-artist apparently have reconciled and (from what I gather) has probably given up the life of crime. Perhaps he even asked John for the kidney and didn't proceed to cut all ties with him (and didn't fake his death). The one problem (aside from the wheelchair) is that he's still at the box company and his boss is still Randy.

Well, it turns out that he lied about his trip to Australia, and that he had used the company dime to attempt to go on the Walkabout. My only issue with this is that if he was planning on going on a Walkabout for that week or so, why didn't he attend the company function a day late? He was supposed to be there, so it would seem that he went to Australia, didn't bother going to the conference, and then after a few days went to the Walkabout, it also seems to indicate that he probably didn't go to work for a few days, unless he got back on a Friday and was supposed to return on Sunday...

But anyway.

John is fired by Randy. On his way out, a vehicle blocks his handicap exit, frustrated, he tries to take out his anger on the vehicle, to no avail (Maybe important...). The vehicle is owned by none other than Hurley who understands Randy and offers to help John. He sends John to his temp agency and is helped by none other than Rose, completely unaware that they were on the same airplane just days prior. John gets a job as a substitute teacher at a school. He enters the teachers lounge. Another teacher is railing on the other teachers about the coffeemaker. That teacher turns out to be none other than...Benjamin Linus.

On the island, The Smoke Monster lets Richard, who he had trapped, go. Richard takes off into the jungle. The Smoke Monster then sees a young boy, in the woods (Jacob?). The Smoke Monster then travels to James, who is currently sitting in his old Dharma house. He convinces James to come with him, and they trek off to answer why they are on the island.

Richard appears to have been following the two. When The Smoke Monster takes off to chase down the young boy who has made another appearance, Richard tries to convince James to return to the Temple and tells James that the Smoke Monster wants "everyone dead." Unable to convince him, Richard takes back off into the jungle. The Smoke Monster and James make their way to a cliff and begin down a ladder. Not quite "Jacob's Ladder" right? Har har.

John is buried. Ben admits that he killed him and that he was sorry. Frank comments about the "Weirdest damn funeral [he's] ever been to."

At the bottom of the cliff there is a cave. Both James and Smokey enter, and Smokey throws a white rock, removed from it's scale. It's an "inside joke" between the two. Smokey is evil. EVIL!!! All the survivors are apparently "candidates" to replace Jacob. Why he needed replacement is unknown, unless he knew about his impending death. All

"23 - SHEPHARD," "8 - REYES," "16 - JARRAH," "42 - KWON," "15 - FORD," and so on. "4-LOCKE" is crossed out by Smokey.

James joins Smokey. duh duh DUHHHH!!!

To read previous Season 6 Reviews, follow the links below:
LOST Season Six: LA X (Parts 1 and 2) Review

LOST Season Six: LA X (Parts 1 and 2) Review

2010-03-17T17:36:00.005-04:00

This is the first of my LOST Season 6 recaps. Each post will cover two episodes. Most of these will be moderately stream of consciousness and will not exactly follow the narrative that the episodes followed. Enjoy.

----

Wow. LOST has been a ride so far this season.

The season opened with the shocking "LA X," which opened with an almost shot-for-shot scene that matched the scene that followed the first opening way back in 2004.

Wow. This strange turn of events threw me off initially. What the heck is going on? Why didn't the plane crash? What the heck is going on? Why is the island under water? What the heck is going on? Why did Desmond seem to appear and then disappear almost as soon as he appeared? Needless to say, for almost two hours I was gripped, confused, and extremely happy LOST had returned.

Jack appears to recognize Desmond, even for just a moment. Hmmm. Okay, so Jack saved Charlie's life on the plane (he apparently was choking on his heroin). Cue the "Maybe I was supposed to die" ominous line and music. Perhaps not subtle enough folks. Perhaps a bit more subtle than Boone's "subtle" performance where he says he'd follow Locke. Leslie Arzt chews the scenery... again. Can he get blown up again? Please?

Jin and Sun appear to be pretty much unchanged from their "real" selves - Sun is submissive, and pretends she doesn't know English. There has been some speculation that she really doesn't know - but that would destroy the entire scene where she struggles to answer the person, and finally does with a "No English."

Okay, everything is alright. Wait, no it isn't... They're back on the island. "They" being Kate, Jack, Sayid, James, Miles, Hurley and Jin wake up, disoriented from their "travel" back to the present day from the 1970s. Juliet is nowhere to be found. Distraught, James attacks Jack, blaming him for all of this. And who can't blame Jack - the plan apparently failed. Juliet somehow survived the fall and explosion - and is trapped below the wreckage of the Swan. James is able to dig to her, but she dies while apparently trying to order coffee. I suspect that the coffee ordering will play a part in a future episode.

They all travel their separate ways, with most of the group traveling to the Temple after Jacob, in all his dead glory (Ben killed him in the season finale), tells Hurley to take Sayid there to save his life.

Sun, Lapidus, Richard, Ilana and Bram wait with the others outside the Temple. Ben exits the Temple, fresh from killing Jacob. Bram and his men drag Ben back into the Temple - and discover that not only is Jacob dead, but that Locke isn't really Locke (they already knew that since they saw the body). When you start hearing the "tika tika" sound - shit's about to hit the fan. Sure enough, Locke turns into "Smokey" and decimates the whole group. Bram attempts to save his life by putting ash around him, but "Smokey" is able to circumvent it by hitting something into the circle to knock him out. Ben and "Locke" (who I will keep referring to as Locke) exit, with Ben confused, but quickly realizing what he is. Richard appears to be the most shocked - and is quickly knocked out and picked up by Locke. He announces that he is "very disappointed" with everyone on the beach.

Well, damn. The Temple is full of trademark "DOUCHE-BAG OTHERS" - I have a theory that the only way to become an Other is to at least act like a complete asshole, scumbag, or psychotic. Looks like Cindy in all her ratty hair has caught this bug. Well Lennon and a Japanese man named Dogen appear to be in charge. Interesting - we've never seen these guys before and they appear to be pretty high up in The Other's power structure. Interesting. Okay, all this talking has made sure that Sayid is dead. Dead as a... whatever is dead. Remember "Dead is Dead." But... apparently he isn't. Sure. Hey "Sayid."

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

2010-03-15T23:17:00.004-04:00

Butch Cassidy: Alright. I'll jump first.
Sundance Kid: No.
Butch Cassidy: Then you jump first.
Sundance Kid: No, I said.
Butch Cassidy: What's the matter with you?
Sundance Kid: I can't swim.
Butch Cassidy: Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.
Sundance Kid: Oh, shit...

While this film never pops to the top of my head when I think of westerns, this is a solid, wonderful, and fun film. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 western, staring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid respectively. The movie was directed by George Roy Hill who went on to direct The Sting and Slaughterhouse-Five.

My favorite westerns are no secret. Sergio Leone's Man with No Name trilogy, which includes A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly are always top picks, as well as the crowning achievement, Once Upon a Time in the West. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid certainly ranks up there with the best of them even if the film wasn't shot in Spain and directed by an Italian.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is about two bandits, the namesakes of the film, who are out to score big by way of armed robbery. Butch is called out by one of his Hole in the Wall Gang members, but not only beats this hapless member, but takes his advice on a few additional jobs. The second job backfires, and Butch and Sundance are now on the run. They decide that the best place to go is far away Bolivia, which is like somewhere in Central America or something (little do they know...). Soon they become not just American outlaws, but International ones.

My father told me a story about the first time he saw this film when it first premiered. In the row in front of him, he remembers hearing a distraught person who exclaimed that they didn't know the movie would be in Black and White. The entire first scene is in sepia for 6 minutes.

This film is much more light-hearted than many westerns out there. The film is wonderful and perfect escapism. The leads, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, play off each other perfectly. The soundtrack is perfect. "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head"? Brilliant! That made the scene. The ending to this film is one of the most memorable ever on screen.

*****/*****

BREAKING: Lindsay Lohan sues Lindsay Lohan for ruining own image

2010-03-10T00:56:00.002-05:00

I'm normally willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt but Lohan's been off the deep end for years.

A lawsuit has been brought against E-Trade for the use of the name "Lindsey/Lindsay" in an E-Trade commercial, where Miss Lohan believes her first name is such a staple that the public will recognize it alongside names such as Cher, Madonna, or Oprah is laughable at best.

Lohan's own destructive behavior has already caused enough damage on its own.

Put a fork in it, she's done. One can pretty much mark the end of her career when William H. Macy ripped her a new one. I sincerely hope she likes filming movies in Bulgaria because she's only going to be in SyFy Original Pictures from this point on in her career.

82nd Academy Awards

2010-03-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

I watched a lot more of it than I had originally expected I would. Overall pretty tame, nothing spectacular, most winners were suspected to win so there were few upsets.

I saw my standard 20% of the Best Picture nominees before the ceremony, Inglourious Basterds and District 9. The only films that I saw that actually won an award was Inglourious Basterds and Star Trek. I guess that means that fu*king annoying little midget creature will probably make it to the next Trek movie. Great.

The interpretive dancing segment was, as usual was my least favorite part of the entire performance.

The best part of the program, and the one that forced me to look and say to my Father, who I was watching it with, "What the heck is going on?" was when Elinor Burkett, looking crazy, stormed on stage, cut off the director who was in mid-sentence, and blabbered on about nothing. Larry David wouldn't have been able to make heads or tails of what was going on and Seinfeld is too busy with that stupid staged marriage show but I digress. From my understanding, there should be one and only one person who speaks (which is why throughout the night the mic was cut whenever the first person finished). Looking into the story behind what happened is pretty clear cut. Roger Ross Williams should have given that speech and Burkett should have kept her trap shut.

The Hurt Locker won the big prize. I'm going to try to see this by the weekend at the American Film Institute Silver theater.

Rundown: Week ending in March 6th

2010-03-08T22:17:00.003-05:00

Okay, last week was terrible. Terrible, terrible terrible. I think I was attached to a desk chair almost all week, sun up to when the moon was at its apex in the night. So that really put a damper on my week. But not to worry, the weekend provided plenty of time for me to unwind, relax and watch.

Hulu
I love Hulu, I know my friend Jonathan apparently doesn't, but I do. I knocked off so many things off my never shrinking queue. After enjoying Ed O'Neill on Modern Family, I decided to take a look at Married... With Children. Wow, glad I did. Visually dated at times, mostly due to the cheap sitcom video they used to use. The stories, even today can be pretty edgy, with comments that are less veiled than they are today. A lot of shows would imply that the oldest daughter is no longer a virgin through some kind of innocent innuendo, but Bud Bundy outright says it at the dinner table ("at least there's one virgin at the dinner table"). Hulu doesn't have all the episodes, and I suspect that the Frank Sinatra song, "Love and Marriage" has some sketchy legal rights that don't quite allow it to make the cut so a muzak version of the theme is present on many, but not all, episodes. Having a blast watching.

Tremors ended on a whimper. Perhaps it was a good thing, but after stepping away, perhaps this show deserved a full season to see if it really could hit its stride.

I'm still on the slow road to finish M.A.N.T.I.S. Wow, it's really starting to hit rock bottom, though the latest episode was actually not too bad. I'm completely drawing a blank on these episodes, so perhaps we just stopped watching or the show changed nights when it first aired back in 1994 and 1995.

La Femme Nikita
The La Femme Nikita re-watch continues. I just about finished the second season. Upon second viewing, and I say second because I only caught the odd episode when I was up at 2am back in my youth, the show really does have a lot more continuity that I had given it credit for. While there aren't many story arcs to speak of, there are threads that start in one episode which eventually push over to other episodes. However, this show, as I've already stated, is still pretty depressing. You really get sucked into and feel Nikita's desperation at being powerless to escape Section. The show really picked up its production values and dumped the silly "stone castle" theme of Madeline's office for something that actually fit the rest of the facility. Two episodes until season 3. More stories have cropped up that bear striking resemblance to some of Alias'.

The Olympics are Over!
There were new episodes of Community and The Office. I'm of two minds for the most recent Office episode, where Pam finally gives birth. Mind you it wasn't awful, but the show has really lost a lot of it's realism (and it didn't have a lot to begin with), at least there was some continuity, which I feel they generally push to the back burner and ignore. I think the show is far past its fresh date, though it's a lot better than it was around the time of the writer's strike.

The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is dead to me. Fuck Jay Leno and his stupid jean jacket. You know there's a problem when HE is the one copying George Lopez's lame jokes.

Caprica
Caprica never ceases to amaze me. The show seems to be getting better and better. Everyone, watch! Look for it on iTunes or Hulu!

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

2010-03-04T22:52:00.005-05:00

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is the wonderfully fantastic 1988 fantasy film directed by Robert Zemeckis. The film mixes live-action and animation together. It may looks "rough around the edges" today, but it is a revolutionary film.

The film was produced and released by Walt Disney Pictures under the Touchstone banner, and includes Disney (Mickey, and the rest you should be aware of), Warner Bros (Bugs Bunny, and the rest you should be aware of), MGM (Droopy, as well as others), Paramount Pictures (Betty Boop), Universal Studios (Woody Woodpecker), as well as others.

The film stars Bob Hoskins as private detective Eddie Valiant, Christopher Lloyd as the notorious Judge Doom, Joanna Cassidy as Eddie's girlfriend Dolores, Charles Fleischer as the voice of our illustrious title character, and Kathleen Turner as the voice of the sultry Kathleen Turner.

The casting was fantastic. Bob Hoskins plays a great detective. For my entire youth I didn't even know he wasn't a warm-blooded American. Of course in retrospect if you listen closely you can hear the typical "I have a cold voice" that many actors put on to mask the Britishness of their voice – but I digress. Christopher Lloyd was a masterful villain – how he doesn't make it somewhere on the AFI's 100 Villains list I don’t know. And jeez... Jessica Rabbit? I mean, I don't want to get inappropriate... She's not bad, she's "just drawn that way." Oh yeah, "Nice booby-trap".

Animation-wise this is a masterpiece. Most films made which combine animated characters were relegated to simple gimmicks and in musical numbers. This could range from either kind of hokey like the dancing penguins with Dick Van Dike or wonderful but pretty much banned like the film Song of the South. And before you say, hey Chris, what about the Blue Man Group people from Avatar? What about Jar-Jar Binks? Well CGI really has gone a far way, but it's just *not* the same. This isn’t even mentioning that this film did most, if not all of the heavy lifting without the extensive help of computers – unlike later films like Space Jam or Looney Tunes: Back in Action. As an aside to the conversation, Looney Tunes: Back In Action is a far superior to the dated, and pretty lame Michael Jordan vehicle that is actually pretty difficult to watch these days.

The film is jam packed with cameos from just about every famous classic cartoon character that was created in the heyday of Hollywood's golden era. The sheer sight of seeing both Bugs and Mickey on the same screen at the same time is amazing. It's also full of references to sight gags, and other classic gems. I never realized that the Toon Town musical entrance was based on a 1931 Foxy cartoon (Smile, Darn Ya Smile!).

Perhaps the best scene in the entire film is when Eddie enters the club and sees Daffy and Donald in a piano battle. A fan of classic cartoons who wasn't sold on this film's brilliance by this point could never be swayed seeing both ducks, from rival studios together in a honest to goodness film fighting each other. The scene is almost as good as the later scene where Eddie meets Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse during an unfortunate time to ask a 'toon for help.

The reason I always come back to it so often is that the film is not designed for only the kids to enjoy. This film is so full of adult themes that I may have a hard time letting my kids watch it until I think they're "ready." It can appear downright crude at times, through the crafty minds behind the film were able to make a lot of the jokes so implied, that without the right context, it'll go right over your head. That's because I did watch this as a kid, and for the life of me most of the mature themes did go straight over my head. It wasn't until I was much older where I really appreciated the subtle nature of the adult humor of the film.

Playing "patty cake" and having Roger get all worked up over a simple game when you watched it as a kid? How about the increasing pitch of her voice during that scene when you watched it when you were older? Woah. That was funny as a kid but taken to a completely different level, perhaps building, as an adult. Oh the joys of my naïve youth. I mean, seriously? Is Jessica Rabbit singing "Why don't you do right?" anything but for the dads who were dragged to see this film?

Honestly the saddest story to come out of this film was that animation director Richard Williams eventually got recognized because of his work on this film, and then subsequently got his life's work, The Princess and the Cobbler, taken away from him. The resulting film is the kind of movie that you see in a Supermarket rack with the rest of the crummy $6.99 DVDs. Occasionally some of the films turn out to be gems, but "Arabian Knight," the bastardized version of William's work is not that film.

The film was a resounding success, the second biggest film of 1988. It spawned 3 short films that appeared before some family and kids movies over the next few years, but no sequel has ever been able to get off the ground. Some rumors have been passing around the last year or so that there may finally be one on the way. I can only hope that it can live up to even half of what the first film was able to. Things have changed and I don't think that a sequel can ever have the same kind of appeal without making it more childish and less adult instead of finding some good balance between the two. But here's hoping.

***** out of *****

Rundown: Week ending in February 27th

2010-02-27T19:06:00.002-05:00

District 9
I finally saw District 9. FANTASTIC movie. I'm still thinking about it, but will eventually write a more substantial review.

La Femme Nikita
My La Femme Nikita re-watch continues. I've finished the first season, which ends on an extreme downer, and a pretty decent cliffhanger. Had the series ended right then and there, it would have been satisfying. Since entertainment news on decade old niche shows is spotty at best online, I don't know if this was done "just in-case" the show was canceled (absolutely no pun intended for those familiar with the show) after its first season.

Season two starts off looking a lot like the second half of the Alias series premiere. Gee, I wonder where those guys on Alias got the plot to that story? The reuse of that thread was less transparent than the discussions that Star Trek Deep Space Nine ripped off Babylon 5 (and there's some pretty clear evidence to that, but that's for another day).

The spy show still centers around Nikita, an innocent person convicted of murder (which she did not commit, unlike the film "Nikita" or "Point of No Return") and forced to work for a secret organization. Section One, still protecting the free world from the dangers of evil and rogue groups, are more sinister than ever. There is no moral dilemma for Section; They're willing to kill innocent people to catch the bad guys without batting an eye. I'm halfway through season 2, and they've certainly fleshed out the rest of the main cast finally.

The Olympics
I'm enjoying Human Target, but was bummed out they didn't do an episode this week. The same goes for Community or The Office, thank you again, Olympics. I was out and about last night, so I completely missed Caprica, but will promise to watch it the moment it hits Hulu. Again, if you haven't caught Caprica, please please please catch old episodes online.

Modern Family
I'm quickly catching up on this show, and it's hilarious.

And the rest
I'm still working through M.A.N.T.I.S. the show has really hit a serious downturn now that the season has hit its midpoint. I honestly don't remember a whole lot of the later part of this show during its initial 1994-1995 airing. I did halfway enjoy the episode with the aliens that all looked like Tommy Wiseau.

I'm almost done with the television spin-off of Tremors on Hulu. Only two episodes left.

Rundown: Week ending in February 20th

2010-02-20T00:53:00.004-05:00

Well, what a busy week. After all the snow we've had, the weather has finally started to "warm," accelerating the snow removal from the roads. People are finally making it back to work, so I guess I should too. Oh wait, I've been working harder than ever. Also, happy Birthday Adobe Photoshop (20 years) and Richmond's Legend Brewing (16 years).

Anyway, I've tried to keep up with the shows I watch, and since I'm done with the "Lost: Revisited" reviews,I had to figure out what would be next.

Well, after careful debate, I decided to suspend my "Avengers" re-watch and start my La Femme Nikita re-watch. For those who don't know what La Femme Nikita is, go watch it. Just do it, it's great. If you liked Alias (or at least the first two seasons) you'll like La Femme Nikita. The spy show centers around Nikita, a innocent person convicted of murder, and later forced to work for super secret "Section One," who are convinced she did in fact murder and believe they can train her to be a secret agent to protect the free world from the worst of the worst. Sounds far fetched? Sure. The show is extremely depressing at times, with a lot of "downers" by the end of the episode, where either the good guys (or Nikita) have failed. But through this downtrodden atmosphere comes a fantastic and gripping universe. I'm usually on the edge of my seat while watching.

I'm about 3/4ths the way through the first season, and suspect I'll finish by the end of the weekend. This season was a lot better the second time around. When I first watched it in late 2008, I wasn't as enamored by it as I was with later seasons.

Well, on further review, the season starts off pretty strong, with a lot of character building on the part of Nikita and Michael. The rest of the cast so far haven't had a lot of fleshing out. Operations is the man in charge, cold, calculating, and treating lives like pawns in a greater scheme. Madeline is little better, a slight soft touch, but that even proves to be fabricated, she is cold and at times even more calculating than Operations. Their portrayal show that Section One can be no better than the enemy they claim to be saving the free world from. Bigger things are to come, but so far - it's pretty wonderful.

On to other shows, and what better than to go to another show started by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, 24. This episode showed a marked improvement over the pretty lame and boring story progression that occurred in previous weeks (two episodes ago really got better towards the end, but was about on par with earlier weeks).

I'm enjoying Human Target. It's like an shorter and more over-the-top version of a James Bond movie. Mark Valley does a good job portraying Christopher Chance and I'm surprised to say it, but I'm finally liking Chi McBride. The show would not be nearly as good if not for Jackie Earle Haley's fantastic character, Guerrero. Should the show keep being this fun, and not become repetitive, it could last a while.

No new Community or The Office, thank you Olympics.

Caprica was FANTASTIC. This show really hit the ground running and hasn't let up. The show's drama is on par with some of the best programming that I've seen, and this most recent episode shows some fantastic acting from the main cast members. Please please please if you haven't watched this show, catch old episodes on Hulu.

Was Castle new? I think I saw that episode before, but I may have missed some of it before. Still good, will keep watching.

I've been watching the Tremors series on Hulu. Since the show only lasted 13 episodes, I'm almost done. I suspect I'll try to do a more substantial review later covering this series. If you enjoyed the first film, catch the sequels (skip the 4th film, it's a boring 19th century "prequel") and then catch the show.

Is this the last season of Heroes?

2010-02-12T23:20:00.001-05:00

I suspect this is it. That was a perfectly fine series finale. Should the show not continue, I'd suggest they change "Chapter Six" to "Epilogue."

After Season 2's nominal disaster (opinion was much lower than season one), they should have sat down and really mapped out the future seasons right then and there. They weren't able to plan out a suitable ending to that season, even though they had ample chance to actually write it ahead of time, with the assumption that they may not make it to the end of the season. They only got 11 episodes in.

Even today, two seasons later, the writing staff still appear to only be pumping out episodes about 4 episodes ahead of one another, with no foresight into what is coming next. This season has been erratic at best, with "twists" that show up as quickly as they're gone (or as quickly as they are ignored).

With that said, I thought that the season's overall plot was a lot more cohesive than I expected. Way better than Volume 3. It was slightly better than Volume 2, but not as good as Volume 4, and doesn't even reach the greatness of Volume 1. I thought that the Carnival was a good idea, however the season was muddled with way too many subplots, and minor plot points that either never started, or appeared to have no foresight to what was going to happen just a few episodes down the road. There was far too much hesitation from the characters, and in turn, the writers.

I liked the concept behind the Carnival, but the execution of the season was pretty poor (mostly due to Claire's subplots this season). I just felt there was absolutely no "art" in the way they handled the show’s story lines, which is sad. It felt as though they just jumbled a few scenes together with no grace at all. Stories that occurred in adjoining episodes that that would have worked perfectly together, were just thrown by the wayside, losing any kind of deeper meaning that they could have.

They've had numerous chances to write out characters last year and this year, though that goes without saying. Every season shows characters complete their character arc, and could promptly ride off into the sunset. Nathan, Hiro (with Ando), Mohinder, Parkman, all could have been written out of the show entirely at the end of last season. Parkman's out, which was provided in one episode this season would have gone down as one of the best exits ever. Nathan's exit made a lot more sense last year compared to the one given to the character this year. Last season it was a shock when his character died, but this season it was lame. It was the kind of lame that makes you wish they had just killed off the character once and for all a while back. For those who kept up with the show, it was almost as lame as D.L.'s exit, entrance, then exit again in a flashback. Those were “perfect outs" for characters were given that were never taken, and unfortunately that meant that the resolutions were poor.

Hiro's silly tumor subplot which appears to have been resolved. This was without resorting to his acceptance of death, which would have made for a good character departure. Instead he healed by his dead mother, in some mental vision. Huh? Parkman, who would have had the *best* character departures in the show's history had he been gunned down when he tricked the person who was controlling his body, "head Sylar," into a showdown with the police.

But anyway, back to Hiro’s brain tumor. In one episode, Hiro, the time traveling character, with his own wacky "brain tumor" sub-plot, sent Mohinder, one of the original cast members, to an insane asylum presumably to keep him safe from the main villain of the season, Samuel. Of course, the writers are on record for not planning more than 4 or so episodes ahead of themselves, so it may not be too much of a stretch to believe they had absolutely no idea how they would resolve him being in the institution when they filmed the episode, though it did make for a "shocking" cliffhanger. Kind of like the fantastic cliffhangers and lame follow-ups written by Russell T Davies for Doctor Who. Mohinder’s addition in "Close to You" and "Pass/Fail" was filler at best, when he was eventually rescued. I'm still not really sure why the writers didn't just send Mohinder "home" when Hiro made him "disappear for a while" - Samuel didn't appear to really pay attention to the outside world beyond a few people (Claire and everyone surrounding her, Emma, and a handful of other 'specials'). Mohinder would likely have been forgotten by Samuel, like a good storyline is forgotten by the writers from time to time. Claire, the perpetual cheerleader of the series, more than probably any previous season, ate up the screen time. And more than probably any previous season, this was a huge detriment to the overall story.

What is sad is that the show is one of (if not the most) pirated shows on the air today. If people watched the show through legal means on HULU or NBC.com (if they failed to catch the initial broadcast), or watched the show during native country's broadcast (for international viewers), the show could probably survive at least one more season.

Unless we can be sure that Tim Kring (or someone more competent in the role) actually maps out 18-22 episodes FROM THE VERY START OF THE SEASON, it's time to end the show right where it ended. Since I don't think that's going to happen, just change "Volume Six" to "Epilogue" and be done with it.

So Far: Lost Season Six

2010-02-06T05:08:00.021-05:00

While I don't really like the idea that the Producers of Lost "spoon feed" us answers, there are a few notable items that probably will get no more screen time to answer. Questions that really need to be explained through some sort of "official" means. This means producer approved information that actually "fits" in with established on-screen events.

To that point, I'm still not even sure what ancillary material is "canon" - the mini-episodes appear to be, the "The Lost Experience" from between seasons appears to not be but I'm not sure about something like "Mysteries of the Universe" from just a few months ago.

Personally, with the whole time-jump, I don't see why they didn't officially integrate "The Lost Experience" into the Show's mythos.

So what really "counts" in terms of the way that the material shapes the way that the creators of the show care about?

Unanswered Questions
The Food Drop is probably the biggest and most glaring issues I have that hasn't been answered, and probably won't be answered. It would appear to indicate that the Dharma initiative still exists, and is aware that someone is pushing the button. It would also appear to indicate that they know the location of the island. If it wasn't Dharma doing the food drops, why the hell would they keep up the pretense by creating "Dharma brand" food? And if it wasn't Dharma doing the food drops, then why didn't Charles Widmore just go after them instead to find the location of the island? Ben appeared to be pleased that the Button was no longer being pushed. If it was Ben/Eloise Hawking at The Lamp Post, Why would they have been providing Desmond with food all that time?

Solutions
In some ways I wouldn't mind some kind of spin-off material (Direct-to-Video, or something akin) to be produced which followed some additional "Lost mysteries" throughout the eighties. Of course, making all material adhere to the Lost mythos and having the blessing of Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse.

I suppose we won't know until the finale.

Lost Season Five Revisited

2010-01-30T22:04:00.032-05:00

Lost continues with its explosive Fifth season, staring Matthew Fox, Josh Holloway, Evangeline Lilly, Henry Ian Cusick, Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson, Elizabeth Mitchell, Jeremy Davies, Ken Leung, Rebecca Mader, Jeff Fahey and many many more.

If Season Four was the season that really kicked the show back up a few notches in my book, Season Five threw everything in the blender. Things got c-r-a-z-y this season. The previous season represented major change, and the events this season only get weirder. The episodes are so tightly wound, with threads interwoven so tightly, that flashbacks in one episode may be even more pertinent in another, a small mention in one may turn into something huge in another, and so on.

I complained about Rebecca Mader's Charlotte Lewis, last season. I felt that the cultural anthropologist never really pinned down the role exactly. Either because she was given direction to act like a villain, or tried to play mysterious but just couldn't quite do it, I felt like she was given a whole new lease on life at the start of season five. She drops the "villain/mysterious" act, and is instantly more likable.

Jeremy Davies' Daniel Faraday turns even more absent-minded, spacy, and later on, mopey. I still like him. He still keeps the tie on until he wears a jumpsuit. This is Miles Straume's season to shine. Ken Leung plays the character perfectly, unchanged from the previous season.

Frank Lapidus, the freighter helicopter pilot in season 4, returns in a surprising twist. Frank, compared to many of the characters in this show, simply accept the situations he is placed in

In one of the most infuriating scenes in the entire series, Miles tries to explain to Hurley, the time travel situation they are in. The writers, either to mock the less adept members of the auidence, make Hurley even dumber than he normally is. The situation they're in isn't hard to explain, at all. The icing on the cake is that he appears to one up Miles at the end of the conversation by presenting some sort of "touche" response that is even easier to explain away than the entire "time travel" conversation.

I picked up the Blu Ray for season 5. I found this very interesting when I got to the end of the first disc (included are screen shots of the first and fourth discs):

To help out a bit, here's a episode-by-episode recap of Season Five to catch anyone up before Season Six starts:

"Because You Left" - The Losties who didn't make it off the island, become "unstuck" in time, jumping into the past, present, and possibly future. Lock sees The drug running beechcraft airplane crash and is shot in the leg by Ethan Rom. Juliet, Sawyer, Charlotte, Miles, Faraday head to the old Swan station to ascertain exactly where they are at "in time." Charlotte begins to get terrible headaches and bloody noses begin. The Oceanic Six picks up where they left off at the end of Season 3 and Season 4.

"The Lie" - The Losties on the island head back to camp, and find that a barrage of flaming arrows wait them. All the survivors of 815 run into the jungle to escape certain death. "Frogurt" gets one right to the chest. Men dressed in military uniforms capture the "significant" Losties, but are saved at the last minute by a limping John Locke. Off island, Ben and Jack separate to prepare their return to the island. Ben tries to convince Hurley to return, but instead turns himself in, trying to implicate himself in multiple murders so that he can be locked away, presumably safe.

"Jughead" - This was a phenomenal episode. The Losties interrogate their former captors, and deduce they are in 1954 and that they are Others, one of which is none other than Charles Widmore. Locke talks to a "youthful" Richard Alpert, convincing him to visit himself in two years when he's born (Which occurred in Season 4's "Cabin Fever"). Charlotte's not doing well. Faraday finds the titular Jughead, a thermonuclear device. He's convinced he recognizes Ellie, an Other. Instructions are given to bury it.

"The Little Prince" - More time jumps. Charlotte gets worse. 1988: A French team of scientists come across a floating body, Jin. Pregnant Danielle Rousseau. Norton, suspicious lawyer hired by Ben. Hurley released from jail. Kate convinced that Claire's mom knows the truth, but actually doesn't.

"This Place Is Death" - Sun plans to kill Ben, Ben convinces her that Jin is alive. Eloise is at the Dharma station, "The Lamp Post," a way to get back to the station. James, Juliet, Jin, Miles, Locke get to the Orchid. Faraday stays behind to comfort a incapacitated Charlotte. With her last words being "not allowed to eat chocolate before dinner," she dies. Locke makes it down a old well, but another time flash occurs, sending them way into the past (The Statue is whole). Locke turns the wheel, which had been slightly dislodged when Ben moved the island, and leaves the island.

"316" - opens just like "Pilot, Part 1." Jack, Hurley, and Kate are back on the island. Hours earlier, all the Oceanic Six, Ben and the body of Locke, are on the Ajira Airways Flight 316, piloted by Frank Lapidus. They fly, big flash, they're back on the island. Van pulls up, Jin in Dharma uniform. Frak.

"The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" - Locke's time from when he left the island to when he got back to the island. Ben killed him. Woah. Frank saves the day by landing the plane on the smaller, Hydra island. Ben is on the island again.

"LaFleur" - James, Juliet, Faraday, Jin, Miles back in 1974. Convince Dharma to let them stay on by claiming they crashed their boat and saving Amy's (Reiko Aylesworth) life. James and Juliet are together. 1977. Everything seems fine until Jack, Hurley, and Kate show up.

"Namaste" - James has to con everyone in the Dharma initiate to convince them that Jack, Hurley and Kate are new recruits. Amy's baby is Ethan Rom. Frak!

"He's Our You" - Sayid Jarrah, now captured and presumed a Hostile (Other). Episode full of flashbacks of what brought him to this point (childhood, working for Ben, being captured by 'bounty hunter,' Ilana). Creepy young Ben returns, breaks Sayid out of Dharma jail. Sayid returns the favor by shooting Ben in the chest.

"Whatever Happened, Happened" - Kate and James try to save young Ben. In a flashback, Kate tells Carole Littleton that she has a grandson named Aaron. Kate also visited Cassidy Phillips, the mother of James' daughter, Clementine. Cassidy is still bitter. Back in 1977, Ben is taken to Richard, to save his life.

"Dead Is Dead" - Dead really is dead. Ben struggles to come to grips with his past, tries to summon the Smoke Monster to be "judged." Flashbacks of Ben taking Alex from Danielle, banishing Charles Widmore from the island. Caesar is unexpectedly killed. Ilana and Bram threaten Frank. "What lies in the shadow of the statue?" Ilana is more than just a bounty hunter.

"Some Like It Hoth" - Miles-centric story. Miles fantastic character. Hurley is an idiot and beginning to test my patience. The construction site of the Swan is finally seen. 4 8 15 16 23 42. "Long time no see," Daniel Faraday is back from Ann Arbor.

"The Variable" - Faraday centric episode. Poor, poor Faraday. Upon second viewing the entire episode is tragic, probably far more than any whole episode up to this point. He seems to forget in this episode that, "whatever happened, happened." *Everything* so far, save Desmond's odd time-travel adventures, has been in keeping with this very basic premise. They always went into the past, Ben always was shot, "I'm not allowed to eat chocolate before dinner" always happened, Eloise always shaped her son into the same man who would travel into the past, and his plan will always result in.... well, keep watching.

"Follow the Leader" - Richard centric episode. Too many leaders to count in this episode. Locke, James, Jack, Ben, Locke, Widmore, Eloise, Radzinsky, Horace, and even Richard all lead something in this episode. I like to repeat again, "whatever happened, happened." Jack's an idiot, convinced that Faraday's crazy ramblings actually can change the future, even though his final moments are a realization that his own Mother always knew that she would send her son back in time to be killed, by her. To his credit Jack is not exactly aware of this, but it doesn't change that he hasn't once thought that this entire plan may be The Incident that he first became aware of when he first watched the orientation film back in Season two. Locke plans to kill Jacob. Ooooh.

"The Incident, Parts 1 & 2" - Locke plans to get Ben to kill Jacob. Ooooh. Rose and Bernard! Their cabin looks like Jacob's, but I don't think it is. Oh, cabin burnt now by Ilana. Oh frak, inside the box is.... Locke! Oh and, The Incident just happened. Poor Juliet. "They're coming..."

But if the above wasn't good enough for you, here's the last 5 seasons in 8 minutes and 15 seconds, enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3zvM0EzT7c

Just two more days until Season Six starts.

Lost Season Four Revisited

2010-01-28T01:20:00.002-05:00

Lost continues with its explosive Fourth season, staring Matthew Fox, Josh Holloway, Evangeline Lilly, Henry Ian Cusick, Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson, Elizabeth Mitchell, Emilie de Ravin, and many many more.

Season Four is the season that really kicked the show back up a few notches in my book. This is where things got interesting again, or more aptly, where they became even more interesting to me.

This season represents major change. Gone were the flashbacks to pointless Jack and Kate back stories. The show was looking forward, three years forward to be exact, following the survivors who made it off the island, the "Oceanic Six." These survivors, Jack Shephard, Kate Austen, Hurley Reyes, Sayid Jarrah, Sun-Hwa Kwon, and baby Aaron made it back to civilization. You'd think they'd be happy, right? Well they're all miserable. Sun is racked with guilt and anger over the fate of her husband, Kate is in constant fear that they'll discover that she's not the mother of Aaron, Jack has survivor guilt and falls into a heavy drinking habit, Hurley goes back into his old mental institution, and Sayid takes out his anger on the orders of Ben. Major action occurs off island, years after the events on the island occurred. Jack who fought so hard to get off the island wants back on and is a broken, sad mess of a man. Ben even realizes this when the "rules were changed" in one of the most depressing scenes in the entire show's history.

The antagonists this season come from a freighter docked a few miles offshore. Kevin Durand's portrayal as Martin Keamy, the leader of a group of mercenaries, is chilling. Durand has always played the wacked out weirdo or bad guy, so his talents are not wasted.

Rebecca Mader joins the cast as Charlotte Lewis, a cultural anthropologist and part of the freighter team. I personally had a hard time accepting her performance, at times it felt bland and silted. It was hard to tell if she was instructed to "play both sides" in her performance, as her role greatly improves later in the season, even though we hardly know the character and have little reason to start liking her any more later on in season 4 than when we're first introduced to her.

Jeremy Davies also joins the cast as another member of the freighter team, Dr. Daniel Faraday, a seemingly absent-minded, almost bumbling physicist. Faraday takes less time getting used to, and I personally took to his character certainly by the 3rd episode of the season, The Economist. I think he wears a tie the entire season.

Miles Straume, played by Ken Leung, is another new face to the cast, a snarky and cocky spiritualist who I really wanted to hate, but grew to like in much the same way that Sawyer grew on me as the show progressed.

Helicopter pilot Frank Lapidus, played by Jeff Fahey, is simply awesome.

The season is truncated, shortened like most shows which came out during the same season, due to the writers strike. Personally, the writers strike may have been the best thing for the show. It forced them to focus on where they wanted to go, figure out what they wanted to do with the show, and allowed them time to really focus on a reasonable endgame for the entire series. By this point they had decided that they wanted to go out in six seasons, and unlike Jay Leno, they're going to stick to it (one can hope).

One last thing to note, I found it quite interesting that the previous season ended and this season ended practically minutes apart from each other.

Now on to Season Five. Just one more week until Season Six starts.

Tonight Show R.I.P., part 3

2010-01-22T01:01:00.000-05:00

Well it's a done deal. Friday, January 22nd is Conan's last night.

A new network?

The claim is that Fox affiliates have a low level of interest of picking up a 11:00pm telecast of Conan because they're either currently locked into syndication agreements or have 11:00pm news broadcasts in addition to their 10-11pm news broadcasts.

The Fox network would likely compromise on getting some of the more hard-headed affiliates out of those syndication agreements, and since the show wouldn't be starting on February 12th there would be time to arrange the "start" of a Conan show. Channels that have a 11:00pm news broadcast will likely be out of luck or Fox will begin Conan at 11:05 of 11:10. When all is said and done, when The Fox Network wants a nighttime talk show, it will win out over reruns of Seinfeld and The Office.

Of course I'm just an outsider with an opinion that doesn't take into account most of the nuances that take place behind the scenes, so who knows.

What's next?

So why did they want to keep Leno? That decision didn't make sense you say? Well what decision has Zucker or any other NBC exec made in the last decade that made any sense? I fully expect them to fire Lorne Michaels from SNL and replace him with Jean Doumanian if the ratings drop any further. Poor Matt LeBlanc, if Joey had been canceled today, he probably could have been made head of some NBC department!

NBC really screwed up. Leno's image is practically ruined among the 18-34 group, and probably the 18-49 group as well. Assuming he's able to sustain enough of an auidence after this PR disaster, he's probably going to retire in 5 years (Carson was 66 when he was "forced" into retirement). Assuming Tonight Show is still a viable commodity, NBC will either have to bring Fallon into the show, or find talent outside NBC to replace Jay. And trust me, it'll be hard to find someone willing to take the job without a solid contract ("one hour show at 11:35 or nothing" for starters) assuming that Leno doesn't get an itch to take the seat again, or some exec make a harebrained decision to put him back in the seat in 2017 or 2018.

Even if this was some idiotic decision from the NBC execs and Leno had "no part" in the tentative decision to shuffle shows, the situation has poisoned Leno. The best decision was to retire with as much grace as possible, move on and do a antique car show or something.

Oh well.

Tonight Show R.I.P., part 2

2010-01-20T01:38:00.001-05:00

The Late Shift, Part II

Leno's ratings have gone DOWN amidst the controversy, Conan's have gone up. Who has ratings that lower when their name is in every news paper, on every news website, and part of just about every single news broadcast every single day since this whole controversy started? You know you're backing the wrong horse when people are not only not interested in the controversy enough to tune into the program, but that people tune out because of it. Conversely, O'Brien has practically doubled his ratings. This could have been his "Hugh Grant moment," sadly, NBC can't even see more than a few months ahead.

Conan passed on a much more lucrative contract to host The Tonight Show. NBC probably offered The Tonight Show precisely because they didn't want the competition (a common theme). NBC appears to be the ones who forced Jay into retirement. Jay then was available to go to other networks, and NBC didn't want Jay to be competition. So they offered him a 10:00 PM weekday talk show. His show is canceled. So they decided that they didn't want Jay leaving the network so they hatched up a plan to put Jay into his old spot and throw Conan to 12:05. This would have also pushed Late Night to 1:05, and Last Call (should it survive the move) to 2:05. The Leno move would have been disastrous for The Tonight Show, Late Night, and even the already paltry viewership of Last Call. Instead of just letting him go like any sane person would have done, they're rewarding him with his old timeslot back (and with Conan leaving, his old job back). Say what you want, but "The Jay Leno Show" at 11:35 may as well have been called "The Tonight Show" had Conan stuck around. NBC had and has no respect for the brand.

Conan put out a letter saying that he would rather leave the show than take part in this move that would destroy The Tonight Show. It appears that this only made the execs more headstrong in their opinion. Leno lays low, and doesn't say much. More than 10 days later Leno comes out and says he's a "victim" and is basically being forced to retake The Tonight Show because Conan is leaving.

Was he really "forced out" in the first place?

From all I've seen (strictly from the outside), I don't think that Leno was actually "forced out" - this seems to be historical revisionism by Leno (and his fans) as it probably was just simple regret that began to form years after he decided it was "time to leave." The decision seems amicable, otherwise why the hell would he later decide to return to NBC? The deal for "The Jay Leno Show" came years after he agreed to "retire" from The Tonight Show. If he had "bad blood" due to being "forced out" why wouldn't he just go to ABC, likely for more money than NBC would offer?

Certainly he was given better treatment than the way that he was rumored to have treated Johnny Carson. Forcing Carson out and making sure that Carson's chosen replacement, Dave Letterman didn't get the job. He also made a huge publicized stink about how he would basically "leave NBC if Letterman got the job."

All this puts in perspective the "oh gee, sorry Conan for taking the Tonight Show's timeslot, oh well" attitude that he's been pushing these past days.

(Even More to Come)

The Tonight Show R.I.P.

2010-01-18T23:58:00.004-05:00

Well Jay, it only took you 17 years, but you've finally killed The Tonight Show.

The problem is that Leno's ratings at 10:00 are abysmal. He couldn't maintain the numbers that he got when he was on at 11:35. You'd expect someone with such a "loyal fanbase" would have pulled in all those viewers and then some. Who moves an entire hour and a half earlier in the evening and loses viewers? Leno should have conceivably had higher ratings because millions of more people are watching television at that time of the evening. They talk about his large fan base. Where were they? They certainly didn't follow him to his new show, or didn't stick around very long.

Alternatively, Conan's ratings aren't as good as Leno's, but they're certainly not as terrible as everyone makes them out to be. For much of Conan's tenure on the Tonight Show his ratings have hovered near Letterman's, been a little behind Letterman's, or been better than Letterman's. About a third each. One could point out that Conan's only been on at 11:35 for 7 months and that Dave should have an astronomical lead since he's been doing the same show for 17 years.

Conan's fan base on Late Night was always smaller than the fan base of The Tonight Show at that time. Conan's show aired an hour later. Most people can't stay up until 12:37 let alone 11:35. Are they as good as when Leno was up against Letterman? No, but Leno's were never even close to what Johnny Carson got when he was on the air so the "lower ratings" argument is all academic.

Leno not only hurt the Evening news, but the ripples of low viewership even made their way to the Tonight Show. Had they dropped Leno and I fully expected that the ratings would have increased for the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

Leno's new show failed. NBC is rewarding his failure by giving him his old time slot back. What kind of backwards mentality is that?

(More to Come)

Spider-Man franchise dead, will be rebooted. Others just as cursed?

2010-01-11T23:53:00.003-05:00

In a shocking display of incompetent decisions, the powers that be have decided that if they can't get Sam Raimi to direct the 4th installment, that they'll just reboot the franchise and start all over again.

What? Peter back in high school? Another origin story?

I don't need to see a 3rd origin story of Spider-Man. Yep, I said third. I contend that Spider-Man 2 is basically a remake of the first film, rehashing the same themes and villainous behavior as the first film, and actually serves as a fine introduction to the franchise as it turns out the first film *is* unnecessary to watch because the second film does such a good job covering all the plot points that we *don't* see on screen during that film.

Spare us, please. Find a new director. Re-cast the principles if they refuse to work on a 4th film without Raimi. Keep any of the actors who chose to remain in the series. If worse comes to worse, make Spider-Man 4 like a vague sequel/reboot in the vein of Superman Returns. Say what you want about how boring the film was, but it was clever enough to serve as an unconventional reboot since Superman is already Superman. We didn't need to see him launched from Krypton again, or growing up for 50 minutes in Smallville again, or get a job at the Daily Planet again, or meet Lois Lane for the first time, again. It was already done and the film implied that.

I can only imagine that the tedium of seeing Peter Parker go through the motions of high school life, get bit by a radioactive/genetically altered spider, and then grow into his powers will seem, well, sort of unnecessary. Should they begin the film with Parker already Spider-Man, along the lines of Batman (1989); The Incredible Hulk (2008); or even Hellboy, where we're not forced to sit through the tedium of seeing the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense created and Hellboy "fit right in"; I may be less perturbed.

Though this does not bode well for any franchise.

In my occasional lambasting of the Star Trek franchise, I like to point out that I can't imagine that this young cast will stick around for more than 2 or 3 films before at least one of the main cast wants out, or asks for too much money and is written out (either in a quick cameo death scene or has been "transferred" and never seen again). Especially if follow up films take so long to get even pre-production started. I fully expect that within the decade they'll "reboot" Star Trek again.

The Hobbit was a sure fire green-lit project, and what even with the legal issues a few years back, it may not even be released in 2011? What a joke. The first drafts should have been completed 8 years ago, and the moment any legal issues were finally resolved (it was always a matter of *when,* not *if*) the film should have gone into real pre-production. The film(s) should have already been released.

I suspect that with the financial problems that are plaguing MGM, that Daniel Craig may only get one more James Bond film in under his belt before hanging up his Walther PPK. Franchises like James Bond, which will almost always be guaranteed an additional film, should already begin lining up their script for the subsequent film before the previous film has even been released. Script revisions can (and should) be done if any carried over elements from the prior film into the current script needed tweaking. The film should lock down the roles of Bond, M, and Leiter far in advance and production should begin within a year for the next film to be released two calendar years later.

Do I blame Spider-Man's reboot woes entirely on long gaps between production of sequels? Not entirely. I do see it as an industry wide problem with studios unable to keep their shit together, especially when it comes to handling franchises. It really should not be that hard. They used to be able to do this with a lot more ease in the past. What is happening?

Lost Season Three Revisited

2010-01-08T20:15:00.001-05:00

Season Three continues the epic storyline with Matthew Fox, Josh Holloway, Evangeline Lilly, Henry Ian Cusick, Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson, Elizabeth Mitchell, Dominic Monaghan, Emilie de Ravin, and many many more.

The first time I watched Season three, I felt that it started off VERY poorly. It in no way felt like it had come off the high point created by the end of the previous season, "Live Together, Die Alone." It almost felt like the series had lost focus.

Looking back, my issues probably stem from the fact that the "mini-season" was a sham. The story is left hanging mid-stream, and doesn't provide any reasonable conclusion or cliffhanger to wrap the "mini-season" up. Perhaps it was just a misnomer, perhaps the people who decided upon that name just didn't care and wanted a cheap answer to explain why they were airing 6 episodes and then taking a three month break before returning with new stories.

If I had some control over the show, I would have put the Jack centric episode, "Stranger in a Strange Land" as the "finale" and started the season off with the Desmond centric episode, "Flashes Before Your Eyes." Desmond's episode is by far the most notable and fantastic episode of the season, it features Flashbacks from my favorite character of the series.

Even though I found "Stranger in a Strange Land" incredibly weak, with an unnecessary and boring flashback, and seemed to only exist to give a guest starring role to irrelevant-but-somehow-notable actress Bai Ling, the episode at least had a half-way interesting on-island story, with some relatively crucial and interesting information provided to the audience. And no, I'm not talking about explaining what Jack's stupid tattoo stood for, which the producers claimed that hard-core Lost fans cared about for some reason. "Stranger in a Strange Land" also provided a real conclusion to the Hydra Island storyline, with Jack finally accepting his place with the Others and traveling off into the horizon, shrouded in shadow as the episode ended. I found this ending leaps and bounds more exciting than "Kate, RUN!" which served as the actual "cliffhanger" of that mini-season when it first aired.

However, with all the trash talk I give towards "Stranger in a Strange Land," it is not the biggest crime that the season thrust upon the viewers. This season introduced people who I would consider the least developed "main" characters EVER introduced into a popular television series in at least a decade. Niki and Paulo, two people added to the regular cast at the start of Season three have no real introduction, they're just *there* one day. "Wait, who the hell are these people?" is what went through my mind the first time I noticed them on screen. They never really develop beyond frustrating, annoying, and terrible characters. I do almost feel bad for the "Brazilian Tom Cruse," who was introduced by the heads of the series as a huge player to the show, only to bomb horribly. Their arc was only marginally resolved in their final episode, "Expose," which turned out to be a really fantastic dark episode.

The season really picks up after "Flashes Before Your Eyes" (aside from my previous mention of the terribly pointless "Stranger in a Strange Land"). From that point on the season is terrific and almost reaches the quality and consistency presented in Season one.

The season finale, "Through the Looking Glass," is riveting, exciting, and shocking. Charlie, a character that I pretty much despised most of season two, and even the first episodes of season three, was fully redeemed in the end. I finally feel like he's grown completely into his character, and his reaction when being beaten by Greta and Bonnie is wonderful. The season ends in something that I can only compare to some mobster's baseball bat slamming into my gut after I neglected to pay someone protection money.

The best episodes of the season were "Through the Looking Glass," "The Man Behind the Curtain," and "Flashes Before Your Eyes." The worst episodes of the season were "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Left Behind" (side note: why the hell don't they shower and change their clothes at the Barracks before heading back?).

The final season returns February 2nd.

Been There, Done That.

2010-01-06T00:13:00.003-05:00

One has Dharma beer, the other has Tricia Helfer.

Lost Season Two Revisited

2010-01-03T22:55:00.016-05:00

Well Season Two of Lost kicked off with cast, Matthew Fox, Josh Holloway, Evangeline Lilly, Henry Ian Cusick, Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson, Dominic Monaghan, Emilie de Ravin, and many many more opening up Pandora's Box, and a plethora of new and exciting storylines.

When I first watched season two, I felt it started off relatively strong, with a number of interesting twists at the very beginning of the season. Unfortunately the show suffered somewhat in its sophomore season, which I thought became obvious towards the middle of the season.

I also thought that "The Other 48 Days" was one the best stories the series aired, which in retrospect I can't agree with watching it again. It wasn't as entertaining as I found it the first time around, and it felt like the entire episode was just a recap of scenes we've already seen. This is disheartening because we haven't seen any of these scenes yet. When first watching the season, I thought the "Henry Gale" arc was pretty terrible. It was drawn out, frustrating, and I thought it was slapped together without thinking more than two episodes ahead.

Well as many may know, this character is not who he seems and takes part of the spotlight in future seasons. This character wasn't originally planned, and if not for Michael Emerson's portrayal, the character would never have been. In retrospect it is an even better set up for season 3 than I originally thought.

My biggest qualm with the season is Michelle Rodriguez. I've never been particularly fond of her in any of her other work. Her characters are generally abrasive, annoying, and I can't take her "tough guy" attitude. So it came to no surprise that Ana Lucia comes off harsh, unlikable, and irritating to me. Partly Michelle Rodriguez's acting, and partly the writing. Her introduction backfires and the character never really is able to shake the initial perceptions cast on her by the audience until her swansong flashback episode.

A joke that stated to gain more and more momentum by this point was that nothing ever happens in the episodes. That you could watch the first 5 minutes and last 5 minutes of an episode and not miss anything. People appear to keep secrets for no particular reason other than to spring them on the unsuspecting party in the closing moments of an episode. Some of the flashbacks this season were pretty, well, underwhelming. Kate's back story had been sucked dry and Jack, well Jack's are starting to look a bit thin. Thankfully the introduction of additional characters and on-island flashbacks added enough meat to the season to keep things fresh.

The Dharma Initiative is introduced. This puzzle really adds to Lost's mythos, a wonderful introduction that pays off quite a lot down the road in subsequent seasons and explains away some "oddities" that appear on an otherwise deserted island.

The best episodes of the season were "Man of Science, Man of Faith," "Lockdown," "?," and "Live Together, Die Alone." The worst of the season were "Fire + Water" and "Dave."

Waiting Patiently

2009-12-27T04:32:00.000-05:00

12 Days of Christmas: The Advent Reunion

2009-12-24T03:07:00.000-05:00

A different kind of Christmas story.

Andrew Klavan's Christmas Ghost The Advent Reunion, Part 1

Andrew Klavan's Christmas Ghost The Advent Reunion, Part 2

Andrew Klavan's Christmas Ghost The Advent Reunion, Part 3

Andrew Klavan's Christmas Ghost The Advent Reunion, Part 4

Andrew Klavan's Christmas Ghost The Advent Reunion, Part 5

12 Days of Christmas: This and That

2009-12-22T23:08:00.002-05:00

Start watching the Black Adder Christmas Carol.

Start watching the The Office UK Christmas Special.

I've been busy, and haven't really had a lot of time to watch much the last few days. The winter storm really set everything back a few days so I've been running around like a Christmas goose with its head cut off. What can I say?

12 Days of Christmas: How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

2009-12-21T22:49:00.001-05:00

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
You really are a heel.
You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Grinch.

You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

You're a monster, Mr. Grinch.
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You've got garlic in your soul.
Mr. Grinch.

I wouldn't touch you, with a
thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

You're a vile one, Mr. Grinch.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
Mr. Grinch.

Given the choice between the two of you
I'd take the seasick crockodile.

You're a foul one, Mr. Grinch.
You're a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk.
Mr. Grinch.

The three words that best describe you,
are, and I quote: "Stink. Stank. Stunk."

You're a rotter, Mr. Grinch.
You're the king of sinful sots.
Your heart's a dead tomato splot
With moldy purple spots,
Mr. Grinch.

Your soul is an apalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.

You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch.
With a nauseaus super-naus.
You're a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked horse.
Mr. Grinch.

You're a three decker saurkraut and toadstool
sandwich
With arsenic sauce.

12 Days of Christmas: Christmas Vacation

2009-12-20T22:32:00.000-05:00

Granted the only real good Vacation film was the original National Lampoon's Vacation film, but Christmas Vacation has always found a warm spot in my heart. Better than "European Vacation", and certainly better than the subsequent Vacation films such as "Vegas Vacation," Christmas Vacation just hits the right spots.

Being a Vacation film, the plot is pretty straightforward. Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) gets the Griswold family together at his house for the Christmas celebration. Crazy antics follow as expected. The kids look different, yet again. The film then revolves around slapstick moments and prat falls. This film never takes itself too seriously.

It's a good film to catch at Christmas time amongst so many of the same style films, where the main characters either go visit their crazy relatives or receive a visit from said family members. I'm just shocked that the film came out 20 years ago.

12 Days of Christmas: Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

2009-12-19T17:51:00.002-05:00

Well, I remember my first reactions of this film. While my enthusiasm has diminished quite a deal since the film was first released, I still find myself quite happy with the end results.

I still feel that this film was one of the few gems of 2005. Not to pass over the many fine films that came out this year, but this is one of the few films that I had really been looking forward to that year. I was skeptical at first, wondering if they could actually do the book justice, much like I was skeptical about how well they could do Lord of the Rings justice.

Then I saw the first trailer. I was sold right then and there. It looked the production crew honestly know the source material and what they were doing. I was completely amazed at the entire thing.

The story begins with the opens up with the Pevensie children (Lucy, Edmund, Peter, and Susan) going to the home of Professor Kirke, who lives in the country. It's World War II and the Germans are bombing London, so it's safer to get those children out of the city. One day they are playing hide-and-seek, Lucy comes across a wardrobe and enters. She's entered an entirely new world! No one believes her until they enter as well.

They meet some of the creatures that reside in the magical land, notably the Beaver family. By the way, they look amazingly done in the film. The White Witch is the ruler of this land, a land where it's always Winter and never Christmas. How horrible is that thought? Well they are perused, as the Sons and Adam and the Daughters of Eve (humans) are not welcome in this land.

Aslan, a mysterious Lion (voiced by Liam Neeson) is returning to the land, and the spell that the Witch has placed over the land is beginning to break. Time to rally the troops. Now, in the book they don't dwell too much on the actual battle, but in our age, it would be a major disapointment to not expand and show whats going on, so it looks like we're gonna be given a fantastic battle. A lot of other stuff goes on, but I'm not gonna discuss that in here because, well you need to go see the film.

This is the first story of seven in the Chronicles of Narnia, and as it's looking at the moment, probably the first of three films that will make it to the big screen.

I was in college when the film came out, and had to drag along one of my good friends to the film. Well, he wasn't a real big fan of the movie, but I loved it. Prince Caspian was strong in may respects, but doesn't have the same *feel* that I got when watching this film. Fox Studios picked up Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which will be out December 10th.

**** out of *****

12 Days of Christmas: Critter Christmas

2009-12-19T12:11:00.000-05:00

Woodland Critter Christmas is a disturbing episode of South Park in which a story is recited about Stan and his adventures with the seemingly innocent Woodland Critters in the days leading up to Christmas.

The critters are kind, polite, and speak in innocent and cutesy language around Stan, befriending him, though it is through force by the narrator. Stan, again through force by the narrator, builds the Critters a manger. Unfortunately for Stan, he realizes far too late that the Critters have something a bit more sinister.

Not for the easily disturbed.

Bryan Singer returns to X-Men franchise

2009-12-18T00:27:00.000-05:00

Bryan Singer will develop and direct "X-Men: First Class" for 20th Century Fox based on an article I read at IMDb. I'm not sure how to feel about this after seeing his Superman film, however he did make two solid X-Men films and none of the Superman films have been "great."

Before you freak out, the first Superman film has wonderful Smallville scenes at the beginning than collapses into parody, the second film has some moments but just isn't that good, and the less that's said about the next two, the better. Singer's Superman film wasn't an awful Superman film, but it wasn't a good film. However, I'd consider X2 a good film, and not just a good X-Men film, so there is promise.

12 Days of Christmas: Red Green Christmas

2009-12-17T21:49:00.013-05:00

The Red Green Show and my family go way back. The Canadian comedy show which aired on PBS here in the States from 1991 to 2006 (apparently the longest running live-action scripted comedy in the world), was something I regularly watched.

Sure some of the comedy doesn't make sense from a cultural standpoint - it is designed for a Canadian audience, but most of it translates well across our Northern border.

Every few years I pop in one of the two Red Green Christmas specials. They're funny. The show is silly.

Probably the one downside is that you really need to *know* some of the minor characters a bit better than being introduced to them the first time when watching this, but not necessary. Folks watching will understand the quirky "Possum Lodge" members, their criminal tendencies, their frugality which borders on psychosis, and their Canadian insanity.

The handy tips on how to create your very own sleigh out of a old car and a van that blasts Christmas music while driving down the street end in glorious disaster.

After watching these again, they're permanently on the Christmas viewing lineup.

"Remember, we're all in this together..."

Has The Asylum done it right for once?

2009-12-16T08:16:00.003-05:00

On my birthday this past weekend, my buddy Jonathan and I were perusing The Asylum, the wonderful company who has made wonderful movies which were knock-offs of films such as:

100,000,000 BC ... 10,000 BC
Alien Vs Hunter ... Alien Vs Predator
I Am Omega ... (A mix of "Omega Man" and "I am Legend")
Snakes on a Train ... Snakes on a Plane
Transmorphers ... Transformers
The Da Vinci Treasure ... The DaVinci Code

Well we came across the trailer for the upcoming Princess of Mars, based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs science fiction novel.

Well, while I don't know how good or bad the script is based on this teaser, nor do I know how well acted it is, I do have to say that the effects do appear to be of much higher quality than I'm normally used to (the ones in the War of the Worlds films they made were "terrible"). It also has filters applied to it and something other than the "set the camera down and shoot" style that many of these films have.

I'm not that familiar with the work itself, but I'm not sure that Antonio Sabato Jr. can really pass himself off as Virginian Confederate soldier, John Carter. Though judging on one of the screen shots I saw, I'm guessing he's just going to be a modern day US Soldier.

The film will be released December 29, 2009. We'll then be able to see if they've infused a little passion into this production.

12 Days of Christmas: A Charlie Brown Christmas

2009-12-16T01:34:00.002-05:00

A Charlie Brown Christmas is the popular 1965 Peanuts special following Charles Schultz's creations.

I haven't seen this for years. That said, upon re-watching the Vince Guaraldi music is probably the best part of this entire special, followed by Snoopy's antics.

Charlie Brown's portrayal is so depressing that I'm not sure I'd ever want to show this to my kids. What's worse is Charlie is complaining about the commercialization of Christmas and then within 30 seconds we're barraged with commercials for, guess what? Christmas sales!

The special doesn't really get good until it's over half over until Linus tells everyone "what Christmas is all about." Well, I bet I could find a youtube clip of just that part.

NBC Thursday Night

2009-12-15T01:56:00.002-05:00

While certainly not the bastion of comedy as it was in the 90s, I enjoy at least 3 of the 4 shows that air on NBC Thursday nights, which is the most I can safely say I've been able to enjoy in almost a decade.

The Office Christmas episode, was "Secret Santa," this season's Christmas episode. Michael's jealous about Phyllis taking the part. The episode starts off pretty meandering, slow, and a little bad. The episode quickly picks up speed and is a lot better by the end, even if I'm not totally convinced that the arc is the smart route to go down.

The Parks and Recreation Christmas episode, was "Christmas Scandal." Leslie is accused of having an affair with a council member by runaway local media outlets.

Here's a few other Christmas Clips:

12 Days of Christmas: The Avengers

2009-12-14T22:48:00.009-05:00

Too Many Christmas Trees is an episode of the Avengers, the classic 1960s british detective and spy show staring Diana Rigg as Emma Peel and Patick Macnee as John Steed.

Too Many Christmas Trees doesn't contain a lot of "Christmas" in the story, but is set in December, with Steed and Mrs. Peel traveling to a Christmas party. The story mainly consists of a group of people who are trying to psychically control John Steed's actions. The story heavily involves Dickens, with notable instances of "A Christmas Carol" being introduced into the story during the Christmas party.

The episode deviates slightly from the normal formula that the show normally revolves around, where the team is brought in to solve a case or mystery. The story involves an organization going after Steed himself. The episode prior to this "Two's a Crowd" also follows this same formula.

12 Days of Christmas: Merry Christmas Mr. Bean

2009-12-13T17:29:00.029-05:00

"Merry Christmas Mr. Bean" is one of those quintessential Christmas staples around my family's household during the Christmas season, as essential to our Christmas celebration as decorating the Christmas tree or eating candy canes. This hilarious episode is brought out once a year to enjoy and laugh at Mr. Bean's insane antics.

Like all Mr. Bean episodes this one is segmented into different parts, however unlike most episodes, these have much more in common with each other - it's Christmas Eve. At the start of the episode Bean arrives at Harrods, the mega-huge London store, to do some shopping. He buys a "special" gift for his girlfriend, "finds" a Christmas tree, and stuffs a turkey. This is by far the Bean episode filled with the most laughs and will have you laughing till you cry.

Throughout the years I've come across people who love Mr. Bean, hate Mr. Bean, and some who just don't get Mr. Bean and are confused or terrified of him. Bean's social awkwardness and complete disconnect to the real world are both humourous and sad at the same moment. This is a lonely man, who has no real friends, and has a girlfriend always on the verge of leaving him. Yet he's incredibly content with his life. He is annoyed quite easily by some of the most littlest of things, and quite frequently too (much to our delight), but he is still happy in a life that most would probably be constantly depressed about.

Rowan Atkinson has played many different characters over the years (in the various Black Adder series and Thin Blue Line) but none are as iconic as Bean, even if I find his Edmund Blackadder much more hilarious with his use of wit and sarcasm.

The Room is an awful film that must be watched

2009-12-13T13:05:00.001-05:00

I was finally able to see this monstrosity of a film, and it did not disappoint.

I have a feeling people like my brother that do this and want to do this type of thing for a living would cry just at how poorly framed, plotted, and edited every single scene was in this so-called movie.

Lost: Season One Revisited

2009-12-10T23:00:00.001-05:00

Spurred on by my Brother's quest to watch all the episodes of Lost before the Season 6 premiere in February, I've joined in as well. This started on December 6th. I finished Season one on December 11, only delayed slightly by the fact I have a good paying job that I have to go to and that I had to catch up on the first nine episodes of "Better Off Ted" on Hulu (before the episodes expired). This Grand Lost Viewing has pushed back my upcoming Christmas viewing slightly, but only by a few days. However, 5 days is nothing. I was able to watch this season in roughly 19 hours straight, with a short break for pizza for dinner with some of my good college friends, Matt, Ellis, and Stephanie (though she chickened out and didn't stick around for the entire thing).

Well Season One of Lost kicks off with a cast comprising of Matthew Fox, Josh Holloway, Evangeline Lilly, Terry O'Quinn, Dominic Monaghan, Emilie de Ravin, Naveen Andrews, Emilie de Ravin, Jorge Garcia, Maggie Grace, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, Harold Perrineau, Malcolm David Kelley, and Ian Somerhalder.

So Season one is over, and it didn't fail to impress, just as always. Lost's first season is at the moment the strongest season they made. Full of emotional highs and lows, even in the weakest episodes there are worthwhile moments. Essentially it was almost completely flawless, which as I've said before is something that very few series are capable of and every show yearns for.

The episodes I found to be strongest this season were Walkabout, with one of the most heart wrenching moments I've seen on a television show; The explosive Pilot, with the greatest opening to a television series ever; and the season finale, Exodus. The episodes I found to be weakest this season were Charlie's flashback-centric episodes and "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" which I just couldn't quite connect with.

Something that my brother noticed that I have to agree with was that the flashbacks are handled quite differently in this season than later seasons. The first batch of episodes were primarily filled with flashbacks that focused on brief glimpses of the character's pasts. Most of the back stories presented were well integrated into their respective stories, allowing for a good idea of where the character was, and where they were now. The few that didn't do this well were Charlie centric-flashback episodes.

The cliffhanger ending of season one caused one of the most painful and long waits I had to endure in my entire television-watching life.

MST3K now available on Hulu

2009-12-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

Yes! Took long enough.

Five episodes have appeared on Hulu!

Christmas is coming

2009-12-07T22:48:00.001-05:00

Be good.

More later.

How did I miss theses?

2009-12-03T00:17:00.001-05:00

This will hopefully become a regular post of various musings and interesting tidbits I've come across over the last week (two weeks, month?). So he's the ones I've come across just over the last few days:

Mad Max

I knew a fourth installment of the Mad Max series was green-lit (probably called Mad Max: Fury Road). What I didn't realize was that UK actor, Tom Hardy is the lead. Hardy was the main villain of the tenth Star Trek film, Nemesis. The poorly edited film butchered not only the main cast's performances, but his as well and it appeared to almost destroy what many believed was a rising star.

1. Let's hope this Mad Max film is good.
2. Let's hope that time has been good to Hardy and that if he still has that promise, that he can capitalize on it.

Heck, based on the last few sequels, I don't expect much, but hey - it's gotta be better than "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome"

Green Lantern

In February I mentioned that they got director Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale) attached. Then, back in July they cast Ryan Reynolds as the most well known and probably the most popular Green Lantern, Hal Jordan. Now I've read that the upcoming Green Lantern film will not be an "origin" story. Thank God. I'm sick of these things - where the film never picks up until the final act because the first 3/4ths of it were spent introducing everyone to the "universe." This may backfire, but I'm hoping that it works and could set a sta

When it works, it works - the newest Hulk film was a vast improvement over the 2003 version - which presented the "origin" as an arty montage in during the opening credits instead of spending the entire film setting up the pieces for a sequel that never happened. I personally find that Spider-Man was essentially all build up, with Spider-Man 2 re-hashing the exact same plot points (walking into Spider-Man 2 without any knowledge of the events in the first film is extremely easy). Batman Begins and Iron Man are exceptions, but with the rumors of a "origin" story Superman film in the works, I was worried we couldn't just be introduced mid-stream to someone (a la Batman '89).

Parker Brothers is insane

The toy company, Parker Brothers, and whoever those production companies that bought the rights to their boardgames are morons. Clue at least had established characters that could conceivably be expanded into a whodunit mystery film. Battleship? Monopoly?

What, does the film primarily follow Mr. Moneybags as he gets $15 bank errors in his favor and is consistently thrown in jail only to be released because of lucky dice throws? I'd hate to even look to see if a "Risk" movie is being made...

Jules Verne's Mysterious Island

2009-11-28T11:15:00.000-05:00

Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, a 1961 film, is based on the novel of the same name by Jules Verne is a loose sequel to 1954's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea staring Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Michael Callan, Gary Merrill and Herbert Lom. The movie was directed by Cy Endfield.

The story is about a group of Union Civil War prisoners who escape prison just as Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army capture Richmond at the end of the war. They take a balloon and capture a Confederate soldier while they make their getaway. Unfortunately they are caught up in a severe storm, which blows them thousands of miles off course, deep into the Pacific Ocean. Yep, all the way from Richmond to the Pacific. Record time. World records broken. When the storm has finally ended, they find themselves on a bizarre island which is inhabited by huge, fearsome creatures, and a mysterious host behind it all.

The Bernard Herrmann score was brilliant, one of his best works. It takes some of the best elements he used in Citizen Kane with cues from North By Northwest. Not at all bad.

But the truly amazing thing about this film is the effects. This is a Ray Harryhausen film. It has all of his trademark stop motion photography, and for the most part it's well done, especially when you consider that they did all of this without the aid of computer technology to assist them. The only downside are the flock of seagulls that for some reason were animated (as in cartoon) instead of just going out and finding a bunch, or going without them altogether. The same issue crops up occasionally in Hitchcock's The Birds so it may be more about the time than anything else.

One striking thing to note about the film is that the explanation behind why the creatures were actually there/made wasn't really explained, well at all. Some make a certain amount of sense in that you would want to experiment with some creatures to see if it was possible, but I would suspect that most people would consider giant bees to be, well, not the best idea. For those who watch the film, you'll catch my drift about two specific creatures near the end of the film. The book may explain this, but somehow I never read this particular movie.

If anyone recognizes the director's name, Cy Endfield, it's the man who who directed Zulu 3 years later.

Verdict *** 1/2 out of *****

What a weekend for Beer!

2009-11-21T21:57:00.005-05:00

Well the weekend was quite an epic experience.

Friday night was kicked off at 9:00 with me headed off to my friend Seth's place for a large scale beer tasting. At least 15 people were there off and on throughout the night, and everyone appeared to bring beer, none the same if I recall (aside from my 2004 Old Guardian).

The night went on, and sure enough the next thing we knew 7 hours had passed and it was 4 am. Highlights of that night were the Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, a wonderful beer which currently ranks my favorite new beer I've consumed in 2009. Comparing the 2009 and 2004 versions of the Stone Old Guardian was a treat. The 2004 had mellowed and the 2009 had a strong, sharp hop kick to it as well as more notable alcohol characteristics. By consensus of the group, the Breckenridge 471 Small Batch Mighty Brown was the worst beer of the night, however it may have been an infected bottle.

Saturday night started itself off at 6:00 when I arrived at the wonderful, but always crowded, Churchkey in Washington DC. I'm not normally a fan of going to bars alone with the intent to drink, but I had to, I just had to.

The new Dogfish Head beer,Black Thai, was there. And the man himself, Sam Calagione was going to be there to tap it. I couldn't pass that up. Aside from the Black Thai, I consumed the oh-so wonderful, Olivers Merry Ole Ale, from Baltimore's Pratt Street Ale House and the quite interesting sour Magic Hat Odd Notion.

The Prisoner

2009-11-19T22:01:00.000-05:00

The Prisoner: Checkmate

2009-11-18T00:20:00.000-05:00

Hour Six of The Prisoner remake, Checkmate, is the final hour of the third night's Prisoner episode. The Prisoner remake stars Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen as Number Six and Number Two.

Checkmate is trippy. The only thing this could have made this more complicated and bizarre would have been a speech by Kenneth Griffith in the final episode of the original series. Or a rendition of "Dry Bones" and a gun fight to the tune of "All You Need Is Love." Will have to think and let the story sink in before passing final judgment. I really don't know.

The title is also the title of original series episode, "Checkmate," though it bears no resemblance to it. It's more similar in tone with "Once Upon a Time" and "Fall Out."

*** 1/2 out of *****

The Prisoner: Schizoid

2009-11-17T23:03:00.002-05:00

Hour Five of The Prisoner remake, Schizoid, is the first hour of the third night's Prisoner episode. The Prisoner remake stars Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen as Number Six and Number Two.

Following 4-15's death, Six seeks out Two and announces his intentions of revenge.

313's dreams continue. The following day Six tries to confide in 313 about how devistated he is at the loss of 4-15. 313 claims that Six was at her house the previous night and is annoyed as to why he appears upset now when he wasn't just hours earlier. Six is confused as to why she, and others claim to have seen him in places he wasn't, or in conversations he doesn't recall having. Could there be another Six? Two announces an imposer Two in The Villages midst. M2 and 11-12 reconnect for a short time while M2 is off drugs.

The conversation between the shop owner and Two is probably the best yet. The episode's eventual revelation at the end is an interesting twist. The show is really coming together.

The title is a shortened version of the original series title, "The Schizoid Man," though it only bears a slight resemblance to it. Next up, "Checkmate." One hour to go.

**** out of *****

The Prisoner: Darling

2009-11-17T20:02:00.002-05:00

Hour Four of The Prisoner remake, Darling, is the second hour of the second night's Prisoner episode. The Prisoner remake stars Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen as Number Six and Number Two.

Six is convinced to try a dating service, at the Modern Love Bureau. He isn't willing to take part in the scheme, until he recognizes the woman who had been matched to him, 4-15, who looks exactly Lucy, a female he knew in New York.

A plot point carried over from the previous episode, Two shows 11-12 a large sinkhole in the ground, which is dismissed as something due to the weather. Another sinkhole appears outside 147's house. Both Six and 313 wonder what the hole really may be. 832, 147's daughter, falls into the hole.

Six falls in love with 4-15, but is this love too good to be true?

And remember: "Keep a Pig for Stability."

The title is a shortened version of the original series title, "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling," though it only bears no resemblance to it. Next up, "Schizoid."

*** out of *****

The Prisoner: Anvil

2009-11-17T17:50:00.005-05:00

Hour Three of The Prisoner remake, Anvil, is the first hour of the second night's Prisoner episode. The Prisoner remake stars Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen as Number Six and Number Two.

The title is a shortened version of the original series title, "Hammer Into Anvil," though it only bears a marginal resemblance to it. It has more similarities to "It's Your Funeral" and "Free For All."

This episode has Two assigning Six to work with 909, a village spy. Six knows it's a trap and Two knows that Six knows it is a trap, even addressing it as such. Six accepts the role, trying to find the right angle to play it at. Six and 909 are assigned to investigate 1955, a history teacher. Six takes a teaching position as a surveillance teacher.

Six finds surveillance equipment on 313's roof and Two finds surveillance equipment in his house. 909 suspects Six, with Two suspecting his son, 11-12, could possibly be spying. 313 begins to doubt her own memories and starts to open up more to Six.

This episode is far more original than the first two, and the homages to the original show appear to be diminishing. At the very least the imagery is top-notch and I'm starting to put comparisons to the quality of this series compared to the original on the back burner. We'll see how well "Darling" is.

*** 1/2 out of *****

The Prisoner: Harmony

2009-11-17T00:15:00.051-05:00

Hour Two of The Prisoner remake, Harmony, is the second hour of the first night's Prisoner episode. The Prisoner remake stars Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen as Number Six and Number Two.

It opens with Six lying in the desert. Seagulls. He is found and brought back to the village, where Two and the Clinic staff try and convince that a man, Sixteen, is Six's brother. When Six denies it, 16 produces a picture of the two of them as boys. Two suggests Six go to therapy. Not convinced with any of the evidence presented supporting this claim, he never the less goes along with the charade, presumably because it's easier than fighting at the moment. Six continues to spend time with his "brother" over the next few days, coming across "ruins" (a boat anchor and a old train station) which are dismissed by the locals but only embolden Six's belief in escape. He's convinced that he's not related to Sixteen, and that the entire ploy is an illusion, but he starts to question his own memory. Almost convinced, he begins to crack, unsure what to believe.

End Episode.

I'm not sure I liked this hour as much as the first one, probably because I'm still trying to compare it to the original series. There's just no comparison. While Battlestar Galactica was dated cheese, the original Prisoner has held up (costumes and technology notwithstanding) with deep psychological, allegorical themes. It's not bad and is certainly opening up the series to a completely different kind of mythos and reality than the original series had. I'm not sure if I'm liking the overuse of character numbers-as-names, considering most of the time the original never used "names" - usually with conversations just directed toward a character.

Nore sure if I like how they "explained" what he did and (worked for a private company) or why they actually had him really really allude to why he resigned, worried that it's going down the "evil corporation conglomerates" route. Not sure if I like Two having a family either. Again, I'm trying to compare this to the original. I need to stop. We'll see if it happens in the next installment, "Anvil."

*** out of *****

The title is a shortened version of the original series title, "Living in Harmony," though it only bears a marginal resemblance to it.

The Prisoner: Arrival

2009-11-16T22:09:00.027-05:00

Well, it's arrived. The Prisoner remake staring Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen as Number Six and Number Two has aired and I've finally caught the first episode.

The series, or should I say mini-series, is based off the wildly popular cult classic, The Prisoner, staring Patrick McGoohan. I've been on a massive Prisoner kick lately, dressing up as Number Six for a Halloween party, and flying through 15 of the 17 episodes as of writing this on my newly purchased Blu-Ray set of the series so this new show couldn't have come at a better time.

What I observed was an interesting adaptation of the series in "Arrival," the first hour of the new mini-series. There are many homages, some subtle, some overtly obvious throughout the first hour.

The first hour concerns us with Six, a man who wakes up in the middle of a desert under mysterious, and is there due to circumstances unknown to him. As he begins to get his bearings, he sees an old man (dressed in a costume reminiscent of the original series) who is being shot at. He's able to rescue the man, who is gravely injured from fatigue. He's happy to "escape" and tells Six to "go to 554" before he dies. Six wanders into the Village, confused and unaware of exactly where he is. The locals he runs into, a taxi driver (played by Lennie James of "Jericho" fare) and then later Number 313 (played by Ruth Wilson) only add to his confusion. Two (McKellen) enters the picture and Six finally collapses. He wakes up in the hospital, but is told he is allowed to leave. When asked if he could leave the town, he's essentially told there that there is nothing else out there. He befriends 554, who is later killed in a bombing of her cafe - she tells him to head out into the desert. He finally makes a break towards the desert, where Rover attacks him and leaves him passed out on a dune.

End Episode.

*** 1/2 out of *****

On a side note, they wrapped up filming on my birthday last year.

Maybe if I went back I could keep myself from being sick?

2009-11-14T13:49:00.001-05:00

I've been sick the last week, so viewing/posting has been quite light. But not to fret, some new stuff is on the way!

In the meantime, catch one of the better representations of a specific type of sub-genre here:

Christmas is coming early!

2009-11-11T23:23:00.002-05:00

Santas Slay is an absurd Christmas comedic-horror film staring the wrestler Goldberg as Santa Claus. The film also stars Douglas Smith as Nicolas Yuleson, Emilie de Ravin as Mary Mackenzie, Robert Culp as Grandpa Yuleson, Dave Thomas as Pastor Timmons, and Saul Rubinek as Mr. Green. This is probably the only worthwhile thing that Brett Ratner has ever produced (directed by his former assistant, David Steiman).

The film is a jolly old tale where Santa is revealed to actually be a child of Santa who lost a bet with an angel and was forced into a 1000 year life of spreading cheer and happiness. It's been 1000 years.

The film isn't scary. It's not even that good, but somewhere in there, it's fun to watch. It is really fun to watch. And I think that's where people missed the point. The film wasn't designed to be scary. It wasn't designed to be anything but a tongue-in-cheek absurd film where Santa is played by a pro-wrestler and nothing is taken seriously.

Highlights of the movie are when James Caan is stuffed to death by turkey and the silly "hell-deer" 'shaky cam' scene towards the end of the movie.

** 1/2 out of *****

The most horrible person ever in cinema

2009-11-05T22:14:00.001-05:00

Ebola Syndrome or Yi boh lai beng duk is a 1996 Hong Kong horror film about a murderous undergound criminal named Kai who contracts the Ebola virus and then proceeds to give it to people across South Africa and then later, in Hong Kong.

If you want to know the most horrible fictional non-supernatural character presented on film? Look no further Kai has the competition beat. He's a horrible person. And I mean real horrible. Everyone wants to bully him (the poor translation decides to present us with "bully" for something that would probably better be translated to "don't frak with me."

Kai literally gives people the Ebola virus, through sexual intercourse, spitting on them, and even killing, butchering, and making his boss and his wife into "African Buns" to serve at the restaurant he worked at. This is almost as horrible as how he contracted it, raping a Zulu who dies in the middle of the act. What, the film can't be as bad as I'm describing it? Sorry, it's worse.

Shocking. Disgusting. Almost surreal, the film is a disaster to look and stare at. And if you don't like it, don't bully me. But do, please check it out, won't you?

31 days of Halloween: Slaughter High

2009-10-31T20:42:00.002-04:00

Slaughter High is a 1986 slasher-horror film written and directed by George Dugdale, Mark Ezra, and Peter Litten.

Slaughter High is a film I first saw a few years ago at the Washington Psychotronic Film Society, a fantastic organization that shows some very obscure and zany films ranging from horribly bad comedies to little known or largely forgotten horror films. This is one of those horror films that, well, everyone forgot about.

The film is about a group of post-graduate high schoolers (played largely by people in their late twenties and mid-thirties (Caroline Munro, who was I believe 35 in this film). They used to treat their classmate Marty Rantzen horribly. They would play pranks on him and treat him like garbage. The problem here is Marty was a loser, and was either oblivious to most of the hazing from his classmates or he had just gotten so used to it it didn't phase him.

Unsuspecting Marty ends up smoking a joint (full of poison or something along those lines) using one of the science lab's Bunsen burner (real smart). He gets sick and the kids play a trick on him by adding chemicals to his experiment to cause an small mishap when he proceeds with his experiment. Well Marty returns, and what do you know, his experiment is a bust, and woops, a jar of acid that was not secured very well falls and shatters in front of him, spraying his entire face and body.

Years later they all are invited to their High School reunion. The entire gang shows up, and soon realizes they're the only ones there. Unfazed by that suspicious situation, they all break into the school - which appears abandoned - another thing to be suspicious at which none of them appear to be.

The gang finds a party all set up just for them. The problem is, it's April Fool's Day - and they're about to be punked.

The film is silly, and the characters are mind bogglingly stupid. Who has sex after one of their friends dies in front of them? Who jokes around after one of their friends dies in front of them and then it becomes clear they're unable to get out of the house? Who pranks someone who's using dangerous chemicals? Ah, stupid people in movies that just deserve to die. That's who.

On a side note, Simon Scuddamore, who plays the film's slasher, committed suicide shortly after the film's release.

The music is epic.

** out of *****

Dennis Hopper has Prostate Cancer

2009-10-31T20:26:00.000-04:00

Moments after watching his Twilight Zone episode, "He's Alive," I find out Dennis Hopper has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Let's hope for the best.

Zooey and Katy - A Halloween made too easy?

2009-10-31T02:25:00.000-04:00

31 days of Halloween: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

2009-10-30T22:06:00.001-04:00

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German expressionism horror film directed by Robert Wiene.

Overall the movie was absolutely astonishing in terms of its visuals, but for the most part the story was lacking a bit. Only toward the end did it really start to pick up. Then again, for being a 67 minute film (at least the version I saw), it was pretty good.

The visuals were breathtaking and like a nightmare at the same time. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is regarded as the first German expressionist film (or at least the film that broke the technique into mainstream) - if I remember correctly. The sets are a sight to see, and frankly no film could honestly pull something so bizarre off today. Absolutely all of the doors are crooked, the windows slanted, walkways are bent, roads twist and turn, and it all looks like some bizarre painting that Salvador Dalí would have relished in.

Even though I found the story lacking a little bit, though it's the dawn of cinema, what should I expect, it was quite clever. The set up of the story is completely innocuous, and is dashed to shreds later on, much to my surprise. The story opens in a pretty dull and "normal" setting, and quickly thrusts the viewer and the characters into the "expressionistic reality" which could easily be viewed as a dream-world nightmare of epic proportions.

I personally would have to say that the more seasoned film buffs should check this film out, as it will probably confuse or bore the plebeians. It's not quite so scary as it is creepy and disturbing. The story has been lifted time and time again over the years, probably lessening the impact of the story to today's audience compared to when it was first released.

***/*****

31 days of Halloween: The Tripper

2009-10-29T18:06:00.002-04:00

The Tripper is a 2007 American horror film. The film is directed, produced, written by, and stars David Arquette. Other actors in this film include Courteney Cox Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Jaime King, Lukas Haas, Thomas Jane, Stephen Heath, Jason Mewes, Marsha Thomason, and Paul Reubens.

The film is a silly, absurd story which reminds me of the over the top, "so bad it is good" horror films of the 1980s.

The film deals with a group of twentysomethings who are traveling to a "love and peace concert." Paul Reubens (Pee-Wee Herman) plays the unscrupulous manager of the concert, hamming up just about every single line he has in the film. Thomas Jane plays the local sheriff. The teens traveling to the concert include Samantha (King), Jack (Heath), Jack (Haas), Joey (Mewes) and Linda (Thomason).

The villain of the film is a killer who dons a Ronald Reagan mask. Hence the name, "The Tripper" - a play off a line from "Knute Rockne, All American" where Ronald Reagan says the line "Win one for the Gipper." Well, the film devolves into a series of hippies getting axed to death in the woods. Hey, better than that "evil Republican" chopping down the forest, right?

So silly. Very enjoyable. This film was originally part of 2007's After Dark Horrorfest.

** 1/2 out of *****