Add to that the fact that last year was a big fat dud, with a few notable exceptions, in terms of entertaining cinema, and what you end up with is a movie buff like myself who hardly ever goes to the movies anymore.

With our youngest getting a bit older and more easily manageable without the constant need of her mom, I find myself looking out on the advent of the summer blockbuster season and evaluating what’s out there that looks worth seeing in the theaters, as opposed to waiting for on DVD.  I’m pleased to say that there are actually a couple of really good candidates out there.  Dare I hope that one, or even a few, of them turn out to be good entertainment?  Dare I?  Dare I???

Oh, I dare, though I admit I should know better by now.  So here’s the rundown of the list I’m looking forward to seeing.  We’ll see if Hollywood manages not to turn all these into more turds for their ever-expanding library of turds.

Clash of the Titans (April 2)
This was one of my favorite movies growing up, along with Jason and the Argonauts (which in retrospect I now see was about 13 years older and nowhere near as cool in actuality, but when you’re nine years old, it’s all the same).  I hope the remake lives up to my expectations.  It looks pretty cool from the trailers.  But am I the only person in the world who is adamantly opposed to this new fascination with 3D?  Thank you, James Cameron, for starting a fad that’s going to be really annoying for a while before it burns out again.

Date Night (April 9)
You’d think Steve Carell and Tina Fey would guarantee funny, but Get Smart wasn’t gut-busting, and none of Fey’s movies have been either.  But my wife and I think this looks funny.

Iron Man 2 (May 7)
Loved the first one.  Really hoping for a worthy sequel.

Prince of Persia (May 28)
Looks cool, with a vibe like the first Pirates.  Hopefully it can overcome the typical stumbling blocks of being a video game translation.  They avoided hiring this guy to direct, so that’s a good start.

The A-Team (June 11)
The trailer leaves a lot to be desired.  I can’t tell yet if this is going to be an awesome translation that’s a sleeper in the hype, or is it just under-hyped because they know it’s not that good.

Knight and Day (June 25)
Say what you will about Tom Cruise, I’m certainly no fan of the guy, but I still think he can act.  While the premise of this one doesn’t look all that terribly original, the trailer indicates a good blend of action and comedy, and it has me intrigued.  I’ll leave it at “I’m interested.”

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (July 16)
Nicholas Cage seems pretty hammish in the trailers, but I love a good fantasy tale, so I’m hoping for good things.

That’s the end of the Summer stuff that I know of.  It seemed like the list was longer in my head.  Probably because of these other late year entries that I can’t wait for:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1 (Nov. 19)

Tron Legacy (Dec. 17 = Oh yeah!)

Aside from all those, there are a handful of potentially interesting “maybes,” as in they may be pretty good, but I’m just not sure.

The Last Airbender (July 2) Shyamalan has pretty much lost his cred with me, but this isn’t a story he came up with, so we’ll see what happens.
Inception (July 16)  It’s Christopher Nolan, which gives a good headstart, but I can’t figure out what it’s really about yet.
The Expendables (Aug. 13) The biggest action gimmick ever.  Who would win a fight between all the old school action stars?  Stallone, Arnold, Jet Li, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren.  The funny thing to me is that Van Damme declined to participate.  What?  Has he got something better to do?  This will probably be completely lame, but I bet it makes big money anyway.
The Green Hornet (Dec. 22) No idea about this one, but I’m keeping a lazy eye on it.

I won’t go into a detailed review, except to say that I applaud the way these kinds of kids movies are teaching our children in a simplified manner.  For instance, Snow Buddies relied heavily on one-dimensional characterization for pretty much everybody in the film.  The producers of the movie gave each character some notable trait, behavior, or style, which defined the basic nature of that person.   I imagine that as a child, this approach would have made it so much easier for me to recognize the character archetypes and to take from that a simpler world view, a lens through which I could shape my developing interactions with the people around me, who I could more easily define and understand because movies like this taught me how to stereotype.  Cheers to you, Snow Buddies maker people!

There was Jean Jorge the Third (aka, as Atticusser pointed out, “My fazher waz a bakher too!”), the mean French dogsled racer, who wore raccoon furs and cheated shamelessly.

There was a Chinese dogsled racer, who was the token Asian, I think.

There was a Finnish dogsled racer, a pretty blond woman, whose only line was, “Stay avay from Jean Jorge, he vould do anysing to vin.”

There was a Russian dogsled racer, who said things like “Da, comrade,” and gave enthusiastic thumbs-ups.

There was Deputy Dan, the bumbling deputy sheriff who was looking for the lost puppies.

And of course there were the five puppies themselves.  I won’t give away this part, because this could be a fun game.  See if you can guess in the comments the personalities of the five starring puppies.  I’ll tell you this: they were each distinctive and very recognizable, and they were matched perfectly with the personalities of the kids who owned them, of course.  So guess away.  If you were writing this movie about five talking, adventurous, troublemaking, good-hearted puppies, what personalities would you give them?

And don’t worry, at our house we’re anxiously awaiting the arrival of the next adventure: Santa Buddies!

MightyThor’s Rating: 4 / 5 Starfleet Insignias

On Friday night I did something I haven’t done in some time: I braved the opening night crowds to see a major summer blockbuster, in this case the new Star Trek from J.J. Abrams.  The question you, Word readers, are surely asking is, “Was it worth it?”

I’d have to say yes it was.

I’ve heard this film referred to as this year’s Iron Man, and that’s a description that I can get on board with, because like last year’s Iron Man, this was a big summer blockbuster that had some flaws, but overall was really entertaining.  It was very well-cast, well-paced, funny at times, and full of good action.  It avoided getting too heavy or philosophical, which would have been easy to do.  It made fun of its own ancestry in a respectful way.  But the main reason that I liked it was that it was bold. Unfortunately, this also led to one of the main things I disliked about it.

When I say Star Trek was bold I mean that Abrams and his crew had an early decision to make: they could tell an origin story that would have to conform to all the pre-existing, but post-dated material that’s already been established out there for years, or they could fly in the face of everything else that’s been said and done in the Star Trek universe and execute a complete re-boot on the franchise, and the latter is what they went with.  That decision made the film a lot more interesting and surprising than it likely would have been otherwise, and it let them take a cast of well-known characters and give them a new lease on life to take in whatever direction they choose.  This made for a few startling twists and events that made the movie very intriguing, because nothing that had once been set in stone could be considered untouchable anymore.  So bravo to Abrams for taking that kind of leap.

Now, unfortunately for me, I’m not a big fan in general of the plot device employed to pull this bold re-hash off: MINOR SPOILER ALERT (highlight for the info, which I promise is not giving away much): the plot pivots on a time-travel premise, spinning off an alternate universe than the one we have seen previously.  I’m not a fan of time-travel stories by rule, they’re always messy and seem to have a million logic holes.

Still, in spite of this one area that was a sticky point for me, the story was engaging and interesting throughout.

Perhaps the biggest victory for the whole enterprise (get it) was the casting of the principal characters, those we know from the old days.  I thought the young actors, Chris Pine in particular, did a fantastic job of bringing these characters to life in a realistic way, when it would have been all too easy to just do a hammy imitation of the old crew members.  It’s hard to describe this except to say that I felt like the actors got to know the motives behind the mannerisms and portrayed the characters from those much deeper waters, rather than just regurgitating the same old well-known quips and cliches, although the most famous lines found their way in appropriately.  So it was really fun to watch the young versions of those characters bloom as the story unfolded.  Of all of them, I thought Karl Urban’s Dr. “Bones” McCoy was the most copycat, which bugged me just a bit at first, but grew on me as the film progressed and he settled into the role.  Sulu, Uhura, Scotty, Spock and Kirk all did a great job of painting the picture of what these familiar characters might have been like at the beginning, and I think they did right by the material.

Star Trek was a big undertaking, and unlike some other properties of like magnitude that were reborn with less than stellar results, this one looks to have been given some new legs.  I hope Abrams and those who follow him take it down the path of some of the recent more successful rebirths so Star Trek will keep looking better than ever with age.

Review: FireFly / Serenity

MightyThor’s Rating: 4 / 5 FireFly Class Spaceships

Firefly wasn’t on TV for long, but built a big cult following, and the fans of it are devoted.  I thought the show was pretty good, getting better as it went along, but the movie Serenity that spun off from it was excellent, one of the better Sci-Fi outings I’ve seen in a long time.  I recommend watching the TV show episodes first (there are only about 15 of them) to get the full flavor of the show, which really adds to the movie, but all in all, definitely worth watching.

Review: Eragon

MightyThor’s Rating: 2.5 / 5 Dragons

It was a pretty average fantasy movie.  Honestly, it was better than I expected, and based on the terribly written book it was drawing from (which I could only choke down about half of), you might call it an admirable adaptation, but in the end it was no better than average.  I didn’t love it or hate it.

Review: The Last Legion

MightyThor’s Rating: 1.5 / 5 Excaliburs

This was a really lame movie from top to bottom.  You know how studios do that lame copycat thing where they release the same movies under different titles to piggyback off each other?  (Think Rob Roy vs. Braveheart, Wyatt Earp vs Tombstone, Volcano vs. Dante’s Peak, The Arrival vs. Independence Day etc.)  Well this was a really poor answer to King Arthur, I think.  The acting was lame, the fight coreography was innane, the plot was weak.  You’re casting Colin Firth as the lead action hero and hoping Sir Ben Kingsley can save the day by his mere presence, but unfortunately Kingsley’s credibility isn’t too high with me anymore after he somehow agreed to do Bloodrayne.  At any rate, skip this one.

Review: Twilight

MightyThor’s Rating: 2.5 / 5 Vampire Teeth

I was fully expecting to hate the crap out of this movie, because I read the book, and to put it kindly, I hated the crap out of it.  That’s not entirely fair.  In truth, I never should have read it, because I am clearly not the target audience, and whatever I have to say against it, Stephanie Meyers knows exactly who she’s writing for.  But I actually liked the movie better than the book, mostly because the movie was able to distill the pages and pages of teen vampire love angst (”Oh Edward!  Oh Edward!  He touched me, and my breath caught in my…*HURL!*) down into a manageable few moments.  There are still a lot of aspects of the whole Twilight story that come through in the same way that I hated from the book, but by virtue of cutting away all the excess to fit the story into a movie frame, the movie was much more tolerable than the book.

Review: Live Free or Die Hard

MightyThor’s Rating: 3.5 / 5 Exploding Computers

Exploding computers, you ask?  Well yes, because that’s what this movie is, really.  The same old formula of Bruce Willis blowing stuff up or running from stuff blowing up, but this time, the enemy is a sophisticated and COMPLETELY PLAUSIBLE cyber-terrorist.  You just have to set aside all the ridiculousness of the plot and watch this movie for what it is: a glut of action.  I knew all along how awesomely lame the stunts and plot twists were, but I was quite entertained all the same, and I thought this one was better than Die Hard 2 and 3.

I have a few more to do, but this post is lengthy already, so I’ll add next ones another time.

In that vein, I’ve been meaning to start posting my “now on video” reviews ever since I subscribed to Netflix and started catching up on all the movies I haven’t seen in the theater since we had a kid and stopped going to the movies.  So here we go, short and sweet, one review per post, starting with my most recently viewed and going backwards.

Review: Australia

MightyThor’s Rating: 3 / 5 Didgeridoos

We watched Australia just a few nights ago, and it was pretty good.  It wasn’t anything earth-shattering for good or ill, but I enjoyed it all right.  Hugh Jackman was good, as was Nicole Kidman, especially once her character evolved past the stereotypical headstrong, obnoxious noble-born Brit.  The Aboriginal kid Nullah really stole the show, but that was cool; the writers did right by him with his unique manner of speech, so he was fun to watch.  I thought they played his part up just right, without overplaying it in a movie that would be classified as a saga, where everything is meant to be very Gone With the Wind-esque in its emotional impact.

I thought the film was pretty visually interesting too, fitting a certain style that seemed appropriate to the era depicted and the vision Baz Luhrmann was shooting for.  It did have its own sense of high-mindedness about the treatment of the Aboriginal people, which was pretty much a backdrop to the story, but I didn’t feel so hit over the head with it as I might have, which was good.  So all in all, I’d say I liked it. I wouldn’t run out and buy it, but I wouldn’t recommend against watching it either.

MightyThor’s Rating: 2 / 5 Shiny Black Stones

Recently, Donjuanica and I started engaging in the age-old manly tradition of a Boys’ Night Out (and no, you may not call it a man-date, because we always make sure to bring one or more additional manly persons along).  Really, the whole thing is an elaborate excuse to let us go see movies that our wives wouldn’t be interested in.

Well a week or so ago, we went and saw the only film that was currently showing that seemed in any way interesting, the latest Nicholas Cage supernatural thriller “Knowing.”  Let me prefece this review also by saying that the film was recommended to us by a friend of Donjuanica, whose opinions are forever suspect now.

If you’re planning to see “Knowing” for yourself, just know that I give it a “Wait until it comes to TV” rating, and do not read on because of the dreaded advent of SPOILERS AHEAD (I don’t know why I have to type that in all caps, but it seems the thing to do.) For you intrepid readers who want the skinny, read on.

I’ll freely admit that I was actually enjoying “Knowing” until about the last twenty minutes.  At that point, the film turned so ridiculous as to actually turn back time and punch me in the groin at the beginning.  It was all very strange.  If you don’t know the story, Nicholas Cage is a professor of astro-physics or something, whose son participates in the opening of a time capsule at school.  The capsule contains drawings by the school’s original students of what they think the world would look like 50 years in the future.  Cage’s son gets one of the drawings, which is just a page full of random-seeming numbers, which turn out to be dates of global catastrophes and the number of people killed, separated by another set of numbers that they can’t figure out without what Atticusser and I would call an “extraordinary coincidence,” in the vein of all great SFOP’s.  That extraordinary coincidence is when Cage ends up at the exact spot where a jetliner crashes across a freeway, which was predicted by the magic number sheet, and thanks to his car’s GPS, he realizes that the unexplained sets of numbers are the GPS coordinates of each catastrophe.

So, blah blah blah, the numbers predict the end of the world, blah blah blah, Cage has just happened to have formerly published a paper on super solar flares, blah blah blah, he figures out that a super flare is about to roast the earth and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

Enter the “whisper people.”

Throughout the film there are these semi-creepy Val Kilmer look-alike guys dressed all in black who are kinda stalking Cage’s kid, and they keep giving him these smooth black rocks that are supposed to be significant.  And they whisper to the kid, indicating that he is somehow special, just like the little girl who first wrote the page of magic numbers, except she went insane and killed herself, but not before having a daughter who had another daughter, who also can hear the whispers that only certain people can hear.

Enter the love interest.

The love interest freaks out when the whisper men kidnap her and Cage’s kids while they’re all running away to hide in some caves that have no hope of saving them from the super solar flare.  She runs a red light, gets hit by a semi.

Exit the love interest.

This was about the point at which I realized that this movie had lost its way a little.

To make a long review slightly less long, Cage finds the kids at the dry riverbed where the smooth black stones are found (so much for significant).  The whisper men, as anticipated, reveal themselves to be aliens.  But they’re benevolent aliens, who want to help humanity start over.  So they offer to take the children with them, and Cage thinks, “Great, we’re saved!”  But wait!  No, Cage, you can’t come.  You didn’t “hear the call.”  Meaning he was for some reason immune to the insanity-inducing whispers of random numbers that tell the future, unlike his kid.  So in a desperate bid to save his son’s life, he tells him he has to go with the aliens, and they take off with the kids, leaving him crying on the smooth black stones.

Uh…right.  I know it’s the end of the world and all, but you put your kid on a ship full of creepy aliens and sent him off into space.  Riiiiight.

I wasn’t sure quite how they were going to wrap the movie up from there, but it involved classical music, scenes of looting amid the growing heat, an ever-so-touching reunion between Cage and his estranged parents, who all share a hug, followed by a visually spectacular scene of the earth being swallowed up by fire and burnt to a crisp.

But don’t fret!  The benevolent aliens (did I mention they were glowing featureless humanoids who had wing shapes appear behind them when they took the kids up to their ship?), well they drop the kids off on a planet flowing with golden wheat fields, and in the background you see other ships leaving too, having dropped off other children, we assume.  And the two main kids are all dressed in white linen as they run happily through the tall grass in slow motion toward a great glowing white tree.

The End.

No, I’m not kidding.  That was how it ended.

Donjuanica and I left the theater, and I said, “Oh, I get it.  It wasn’t God, it was kindly aliens!”  And then I went home to put some ice on my reverse-time-impacted manuals.

So my thoughts in retrospect are these:

• “Knowing” was really a bad rip-off of “Signs,” only not nearly as good and like 10 years late.
• Hollywood production studios have to release something to fill the gap between Christmas and Memorial Day, and they don’t much care what they put out there.
• If kindly aliens decide to help us in real life, I hope they can come up with a better way to do so than by whispering encoded messages into the ears of children who have no hope of understanding them so they can only go insane.
• If said kindly aliens want to take away your children, I wouldn’t think twice before agreeing.
• If said kindly aliens decide to start beating you over the head with religious symbology turned into science fiction, get on a bus or something.
• If said kindly aliens drop your stolen children off on a strange planet with no food or water and no adult supervision and leave them in the care of a glowing white tree in a very over-the-top Adam and Eve metaphor, feel free to scoff loudly so other people in the theater can hear you.
• Signs was cool, Knowing was lame.

The End.

Sadly, even with the added benefit of the DVR, I still found myself being peppered by social commentary rife with assumed moral superiority by the most socialist, most permissive, least moral people in the world.

Take, for example, the weepy tirade given by Dustin Lance Black, the writer of the gay-fest, Milk.  I won’t even re-print it here because it doesn’t deserve the press, but suffice it to say that he won the hearts of Hollywood with his tearful hopes of one day falling in love and getting married…to a man.  Ugh.

My favorite line of the night though, and most indicative of my point, was from Tilda Swinton during the presentation of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  First, let me preface by saying that the format for the major award presentations this year was a sickening exercise in sychophantism.   With five nominees in each category, the Academy decided to have five previous winners arrive on stage to introduce this year’s nominees.  But it wasn’t just introductions, it was a love-fest of elitist drivel, speaking of the art of acting and the performances by each nominee as if they had done something actually significant.  You would have thought that they had saved Africa (a favorite, though rarely-visited pet preach of the celeb-elites) by the sheer force of their acting.

Anyway, during one such moment, Tilda Swinton was introducing nominee Marisa Tomei, nominated for her role as the stripper love-interest of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Now, brace yourself: you are about to be so deeply moved with elightenment and higher understanding as imparted by Hollywood that you will never consider strippers in the same way again.  Said Swinton, “[your performance] showed us that a stripper needn’t ever take off her dignity with her clothes.”

Is that a choir of angels I hear?  Yes!  I see clearly now!  Strippers are dignified, beautiful creatures who never have drug habits or STD’s!  Poor strippers!  They have been so misunderstood!  All this time I thought they just got paid to remove their clothes; but no.  They are here to teach us about dignity.

So, anyway, on the whole, the show was actually very boring, what little of it I actually watched.  The production as a whole was seriously the worst I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.  In the past, under the skillful control of such great hosts as Billy Crystal and Steve Martin, we would at least be served by a healthy dose of “are we really taking ourselves this seriously?”  But such was not the case this year.  The excuse given was that, in such troubled economic times (and don’t think that’s not a “hate Bush” message thinly veiled), it wasn’t socially conscious to do a big production, so they had to tone it down.  The reality is, Hollywood lost a TON of money this year so they just had to return to the “sell Hollywood” motif, which they certainly tried to do.

As host, Jackman had little face time, with a couple of big musical numbers mixed in, which only revealed that he actually can’t sing that well and, in my opinion, dropped his stock almost as precipitously as the Dow Jones in recent days.

So, to summarize, it’s not like I really expected much different, but this year was exceptionally appalling with its obvious anti-Proposition 8 agenda and willful encouragement of moral degradation.  The end result is that I’m actually, finally pretty much ready to boycott Hollywood for good.  And I mean that literally, I’m ready to leave Hollywood behind, eliminating it entirely from my experience, in exchange for good.  It’s ever more apparent that the two are becoming mutually exclusive.

Fringe

I’ve already reviewed this one in the past, so I won’t belabor this one, but suffice it to say, this one still is no good and still stands as a beacon to those silly masses who will apparently buy anything.  How it isn’t yet canceled is beyond me.  I can only attribute that to the fact that there is precious little else that’s more interesting to watch (way to go, extremely creative Hollywood).  If you’re one of those still watching this show, let me quote the immortal words of Ross from You Can’t Do That On Television: “Duuhhonnn’t encourage them, [your name here]!”

Burn Notice

Ok, this isn’t a new one at all.  It has been around for a couple of seasons on USA, but I’ve recently been hearing from friends and family that enjoy the show, so I gave it a chance the other day.  Boy, was that a mistake!  Ok, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, but the lead character guy (who knows his name) still annoys the crap out of me with his narrow shoulders and weird under-bite.  What’s worse is the dialog, which although isn’t particularly poorly written (I’ve heard worse) comes across as about as exciting and snappy as listening to the audio book of John Houseman reading the “Important Safety Instructions” section of a hair dryer owner’s manual.

And what’s with that chick?  Has she ever actually eaten anything?  She prances around half the time in tiny tank tops and bikinis as if she’s something to look at.  So get this straight ladies: if you want to look good in a bathing suit, you better freaking eat some food.  No guy likes the waif look.  Let me rephrase that: no normal guy likes the waif look.  The ones who do have issues that you don’t want to get mixed up with.

I guess that’s all for the bad.  I really haven’t tried any other shows that are worth mentioning (again).  So on to the good.

24

Now, before you start laughing, keep in mind that I’ll be the first to admit that this show is completely laughable in most of the technical details, and it’s as far-fetched and convenient in its scripting as you can get…and yet, that’s kind of the charm that keeps me coming back.  I get a good laugh, including many good belly laughs, out of it each week as Chloe or other supposed “super-hackers” try to “get in through the sub-net”, or pull up entire 3D models of every building in LA from their remote terminals, complete with infrared markers of the exact positions of all the bad guys (or good guys sometimes) in the building.  I can’t count how many times Jack Bauer and his colleagues “have a visual” (cause apparently it’s too confusing to say “I can see” something?), and if Jack and Tony get any more intense in their whispering, we won’t be able to hear them at all.

All this I recognize as well as any critic; but it’s all kind of what makes the show fun to watch.  Granted, last season–which was actually two years ago–was pretty weak (but hilarious), but this season started off with the two-hour movie introduction which was actually pretty compelling.  The season so far is pretty much like the rest, with predictable twists and the same collection of moral dilemmas, but it’s interesting enough to keep my…well, interest, and funny enough to be worth the time commitment.  (And you have to believe the producers are intending the humor…I mean, casting Mary-Lynn Rajskub as a nerdy computer geek?  Considering her past resume, you know that’s a stroke of comedic genius.)

What I like particularly this year, on a more serious note, is that it’s about the only show on television that is addressing complicated moral issues–like the line between “coerced interrogation” and “torture”–without picking a side and using it’s powerful media voice as a soap box from which to preach.  The fact that it’s not providing the Preacher’s Podium has to be driving the more liberal part of America crazy–including this year’s new cast member, Jeneane Garafalo (or however you spell her name).  She actually even assisted in the interrogation (torture?) of one person on the show this year, which has got to be killing her. (But just wait…I’m convinced that in the end she’ll have her moment of moral authority. Or maybe there’s just not as much prosperity as promised on the venoumous left.)

Lost

I actually have to say, to be fully honest, I don’t really *like* this show, I’m just stuck with it.  I’m so convinced that the writers have no idea where they’re going that I have to keep watching to find out if I’m right.  This season is showing a little more promise, and Atticusser and I discussed it at length and he makes some good points.  It does look now like there might be some over-arching contiguous story that ties everything together, but considering the monsters and polar bears at the beginning that are now all but forgotten, I can’t see the connection yet between the way this season’s story is shaping up and the first season or two.

It’s all very weird for me, too, because I actually find most the cast to be extremely annoying.  Sawyer?  Geez, get over it dude.  We all know you’re not as bad as you portray.  Hurley?  Man, drop a couple and stop whining.  Kate?  Don’t even get me started (at least they finally got her freaking hair out of her face).  Locke?  Is that guy still on the show?  It’s hilarious to me that he runs around most of the time by himself, chasing shadows and generally being the “leader” of a whole lotta nothing.  And the worst of all, Ben.  Does that dude ever blink?

There are some that could be more interesting if they worked on them more.  Mostly just Sayid and Jack.  A couple of seasons ago they had a really great episode that was about Jack, and I started to think I could really get fully on board with the show.  The episode spoke of the tatoo written in Chinese that Jack has on his arm.  The episode reveals that the interpretation is, “He walks among them, but he is not one of them.”  Jack’s final line (you have to see it to get it in context) is great: “That’s what it says, but that’s not what it means.”  With that line, they set him up to be a great character, but it seems like the writers have bailed on it and he’s back to being a depressed burn-out.

Anyway, all in all, the show is still moderately entertaining, but only because I kind of need to know where they’re going, if anywhere.  So I guess they’ve done their jobs in that sense.  I’m still watching, after all.  But we’ll see for how long.

American Idol

Yes, I watch the show and I actually love the show.  Why?  Well, because the auditions are always hilarious.  I mostly can’t stand the judges, but I recognize that it’s a “TV” thing that they have to stick with (although I seriously cannot stand that new chick, Kara DioGuardi).

But really I love the show because I’m a musician, which means I’m a fan of music and the process of making music, so I actually do like to watch the discovery and blossoming of great recording artists.  Now, obviously not every year turns into greatness (Fantasia, Reuben, etc.), and this season, “if I’m being honest,” (to quote Simon) doesn’t show a lot of promise, except for my early winner pick, Danny Gokey.  But there have been some greats discovered, including Chris Daughtry, David Archuleta (young but will have a great pop career), Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.

So I have my complaints about the format of the show–the “group” auditions which are nothing more than “drama” ploys (can you say ratings?), and the theme weeks–but I enjoy watching the discovery process.

For what it’s worth, I have never voted on any candidate.

Finally, a movie that has to be included:

Taken

Man, this show was intense.  The very definition of a “taught” thriller, because it will keep you muscles taught the whole time.  I won’t go into a long review, but it’s the best, most satisfying action thriller I’ve seen since the original Die Hard.  The subject matter warrants it’s PG-13 rating, as it deals with the very real dangers of a disgusting industry, but it avoids the temptation of going into graphic details, which in my estimation actually makes it a better film.  So don’t take the wife if she’s squeemish, but my wife loved it.  (Being a news junkie, she has read much about this horrible trade industry, so we both enjoyed watching the perps pay the ultimate price under Liam Neeson’s heavy hands, even if only in fantasy land.)

So that’s it.  My reviews of the entertainment world so far this year/season.  Obviously I’m totally right about all this, so don’t bother debating me.

Ok, ok, you can debate if you want.  (Man, I totally caved.)

I guess for my parting comment I can only say this: with as little creativity as there is left in Hollywood, and with as much self-congratulations as there is going on there (see “Oscars”), it’s really amazing there’s anything left to watch.  So enjoy what you can while you can, cause it seems like it’s only getting worse.

PUMPKINHEAD!!

Ok, so here’s the story:

After dying a horrible, fiery death in this summer’s smash hit, The Dark Knight, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) returns as the horribly disfigured Pumpkinhead to exact her revenge on the caped crusader who failed to save her from her explosive demise.

Ok, ok, so here’s the real story:

This guy I work with liked the movie except for Maggie Gyllenhaal, who he argued is the ugliest girl ever, and who looks like a “rotten old pumpkin.”  Determined to validate his assessment, he got online and found a picture of an old pumpkin and then set about finding a photo of Ms. Gyllenhaal that matched.  Sadly for her, it actually didn’t take more than about a minute.

Behold the results.

My mood going in wasn’t helped at all by the fact that I had woken early that morning after only four hours of sleep to play a golf with MightyThor, which proved to be a waste of several good hours that could have been used for sleep. I played like an idiot and was happy to get it behind me. I tried to catch a nap before heading out to the movie, but by the time I had settled into a deep and restorative slumber, it was time to go. Needless to say, I was pretty cranky waking up.

The moodiness wore off soon enough, aided by the animated short that preceded the feature. The short had the simplest of premises: a magician attempting that age-old magician’s staple of pulling a rabbit out of his hat. Simple and–thanks to Pixar’s amazing knack for character creation, artistic rendering, and brilliantly observed idiosyncrasies–hilarious. I won’t go into details of the hijinx that ensues as the magician tries to force his rabbit to perform, but suffice it to say, it’s a gem well worth arriving at the theater on time to catch.

A few minutes of rich belly laughs and my mood was lightened tremendously, so as the curtain rose on the feature (figuratively speaking), I was ready to be entertained, although still a little unsure of what to expect.

What followed was nothing short of brilliance as the stage–a wasted, refuse ridden version of some future Earth–was set. WALL-E is a small compactor robot who was left behind as the human race made its exodus from the no-longer viable Earth into giant spaceships until the planet can be reclaimed. His directive is simple: clean the place up. So he spends his days zipping around the planet, between the towers of garbage that have taken on the appearance of a metropolitan city scape (amazingly rendered by Pixar), picking up trash and stuffing it inside his internal compactor. When full, he crushes the garbage into cubes, spits them back out and stacks them on the next skyscraper pile.

For the first twenty or so minutes of the film, there is literally no dialog. WALL-E is alone, and though he is a robot, he has developed a penchant for collecting certain elements of human memorabilia that he finds interesting for one reason or another. One such collected artifact is a tape of My Fair Lady that WALL-E watches at night when his day’s work is complete.

One of the big surprises of the movie is an unexpectedly sweet love story. Once the scene on Earth is adequately set, a probe from the humans is sent back to Earth to search for signs of change in the atmosphere that might make Earth inhabitable again. This probe–a much more futuristic and elegant looking robot that flies and boasts some pretty wicked weaponry–is of decidedly female persona, and at one glance, WALL-E falls in love.

The rest of the movie follows WALL-E’s adventure as he follows this robot, aptly named EVE, back into space after he gives her a living plant that he has found in his digging. The discovery of the plant activates EVE’s prime directive–proof of viable living conditions on Earth–and summons the ship that brought her to come pick her up and take her back to the larger human space civilization. WALL-E, unbeknownst to EVE, tags along.

I’ll leave the narrative there and leave the enjoyment of the rest of the picture up to you. I’ll only say this much more: WALL-E surprised me in nearly every way. It’s visually stunning, heart warming, and of course, hilarious. And as much as I was afraid it would, WALL-E’s warning message about the degradation of humanity and its effect on the planet (or vice versa if you prefer) doesn’t feel preachy or condescending. In fact, it’s quite effective in its understated packaging, much more so than it would have been were it a more threatening and overt condemnation of man’s gluttonous consumerism.

All things considered, I have no hesitation about designating WALL-E as the best movie of the year, by a long shot. It’s a must-see and if possible, it’s a must-see on the big screen. And there really is so much to see.

Overall Rating: Must See! or Four Stars, or Thumb’s Up, or I Grok, or whatever floats your boat as far as ratings go. Just see the movie.