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Archive for May, 2007
Lost Season Three: "Greatest Hits"
May 17, 2007The Life Aquatic With Charlie Pace
What I Liked:
- The way they built tension for next week’s finale. All the pieces are in place
- The return of Rose and Bernard
- Juliet wins the best line of the night award, responding to Karl telling the 815ers that Juliet is a spy: “They know Carl, but thanks!” (it was all in delivery)
- Charlie and Desmond’s interaction throughout the episode was great.
- Charlie’s “Greatest Hits” flashback. I hope they continue to find interesting ways to do flashbacks from this point forward
- Charlie’s goodbye to Hurley was particularly sad
- They almost made me not want Charlie to die
What I Didn’t Like:
- Everything seemed a little rushed
- Charlie lived
What We Learned:
- There is an underwater station called The Looking Glass (more Alice in Wonderland) that is jamming all communications off of the island except for The Others
- There was a DriveSHAFT Greatest Hits album released when the world thought Charlie was dead (despite having only two albums but hey, even the Fu-Schnickens have a greatest hits album)
- Charlie saved Nadia (Sayid’s) from a mugger and she called him a hero
- Bernard can shoot
- The DS ring Charlie wears and bequeaths to Aaron doesn’t stand for DriveSHAFT but were his great-grandfather’s initials (Dexter Stratton) and was also the inspiration of the band’s name
- Naomi is from Manchester
- Charlie can swim (despite saying he couldn’t in season one)
Question:
- Did it not occur to anyone that such an important station might have guards?
- Are those guards Others? Dharma Initiative? Mermaids?
- Why did Ben mislead the Others into believing that the Looking Glass was empty and had been flooded?
- Why did Charlie lie in season one and say he couldn’t swim?
- Why isn’t Claire nervous anytime Charlie goes off with Desmond knowing that Desmond gets visions of Charlie dying?
- If Charlie dies, will Desmond still get flashes? If so, of what?
- Why did Ben move up the time table to kidnap the women? Was he trying to distract the Others from wondering what happened to Locke?
- I know Ben was lying this time out but does Jacob actually give Ben orders or is he some sort of boogeyman he uses to scare the Others straight?
- Who is Nadia’s travel agent? This chick is everywhere.
- Did Charlie ever get some from Claire?
Thank You, TV Gods For Renewing…
May 16, 2007
and
Now, just give me Veronica Mars, and I will stop sacrificing goats in your name.
24 Season Six: 3:00 AM – 4:00 AM
May 15, 2007Body Count: 36 (+6)
For all the shit I talked about Jack’s kills this season, he’s on course to break Season Four record of 44 kills. Fingers crossed.
Big Trouble In Little CTU
So the Chinese grab Josh and leave to meet up with Cheng. Jack and Nadia come up with a plane to overtake their captors. While they are whispering, Chloe comes up to them like a high schooler saying “Hey, what are you guys talking about?” Chloe really misses her alone time with Jack. With a well-placed headbutt, Jack sets off the attack. Morris tries to choke one of the captors from behind, Nadia busts out some nifty punches and Jack continues this season’s penchant for creative kills by choking out head Chinese merc with his gun strap. Doyle and the rest of CTU show up in time to save Nadia from sharing Milo’s fate. Jack wants to run after Josh. Nadia reminds him that he’s still under arrest. He ignores her. She accepts that. No one bothers to clean up Milo’s body. Division shows up to make CTU look bad AGAIN. Blah Blah Blah
Russian Cocktail
Well, Mike Bishop, Russian spy, is no commercial break lover like President Logan last season as we rejoin this Dragonslayer and Secret Service team in the van waiting for Bishop and Aide Slore to finish up which leads to the funniest line of the season,”Aaaaand finally we’re done!” Mark doesn’t fall for the bait and the Aide tries to beat up the spy. Guess how that turned out? Anyway, Dragonslayer and team save her from being choked to death and force the spy to send the e-mails. Doesn’t matter because Russkie Prez was having his spy monitored and knew the e-mails were fake (Question: Why aren’t the Russkies out looking for Cheng if this chip is so fucking important). Presidnt Suvarov gives VP ODB two hours to secure the chip and provide proof or else: WAR! Then the VP sums up the absurdity of this entire season in one line: “We’re about to go to war over a piece of circuitry.” Indeed.
Chinese Take Out
So Doyle “leads” a team with Jack to recover Josh. “Lead” is in quotes because Jack does all the hard work. He kills his way to Cheng and saves Josh who keeps getting himself into Kim-like trouble. Cheng gets away but now has nothing to bargain with to get the chip from Papa Bauer (Question: How did Cheng even find Papa Bauer? Did he look him up in the Yellow Pages?) So Papa Bauer calls the Vice President (apparently on 24, it’s not so hard to get someone in the White House on the phone). He offers to give them the chip in exchange for Josh. VP ODB agrees and Doyle snatches Josh from Bauer and flies off in a helicopter while an entire team of CTU agents holds back Jack. Good, NOW Jack has a reason to kill Doyle.
Bauer Moments to Remember:
- Jack choking out head Chinese merc with his own gunstrap
- During Jack’s rescue of Josh, Jack does this amazing slide and shoot with his chicken legs.
What does it say about me…
May 11, 2007…that I am looking forward to the upcoming season finales, not only for story resolutions and cliffhangers, but because it will give me a break from all the television I have committed myself to watching?
I’ll finally be able to read some books, play all those video games that have been piling up, go out without thinking of the television I’m going to catch up with later in the week.
Nevermind. Don’t answer that question.
Lost Season Three: "The Man Behind The Curtain"
May 10, 2007Help. Me.
What I Liked:
- When Lost ends in 2010, Terry O’Quinn and Michael Emerson should try and find a project together.
- We finally learned what became of the Dharma Initiative
- While it lasted, I loved seeing tough guy Locke. I felt like he was representing frustrated Lost fans (not me) when he was beating up Mikhail and pushing Ben into a corner to stop his incessant stalling
- The 815ers finally got together and talked. Look how easy that was.
What I Didn’t Like:
- I don’t think Locke is dead. But if for some crazy reason he is dead. I. DO. NOT. LIKE. THAT.
- Another season, another secret plan by Jack
- Another character, another shitty father. Thank God this show is off the air before Father’s Day.
What We Learned:
- Ben was not born on the island. He was born outside of Portland to Emily and Roger Linus in the woods after an ill-advised hike. Emily dies shortly after he is born.
- Roger and Ben (as pre-teen) are brought to the island by Horace Goodspeed, who pulled over along the side of the road to help Emily and Roger when Ben was born.
- Roger is given a job as a Work Man (or what we in the real world would call a Custodial Technician)
- Dharma Group is at war with the Hostiles, the island’s original inhabitants
- Ben has a little girlfriend growing up called Annie
- Roger blames Ben for his mother’s death and keeps forgetting Ben’s birthday.
- Kid Ben sees his mother (wearing the clothes a doll Annie made for him).
- When Kid Ben sneaks into the woods to look for her, he runs into Richard Alpert. He tells Richard that he wants to leave the Dharma group.
- Adult Ben kills his father in the van that Hurley found in “Trisha Tanaka Is Dead” and helps the Hostiles to kill the rest of the Dharma Group
- There is a volcano on the island.
- Naomi is NOT with the others
- Mikhail survived the pylons because they were not set to lethal
- Juliet told Jack about Ben’s plan, he just had decided to not share this information until he figured out what to do.
- Jacob lives in the woods in a shack.
- Jacob hates technology.
- Only Ben can see or communicate with Jacob (kind of like Management in HBO’s Carnivàle) until Jaocb says “help me” to Locke.
Questions:
- What the fuck is Jacob?
- How come only Ben can hear or see him?
- WHat is with the ring of ash around Jacob’s shack?
- Did Annie die with the rest of the Dharma Initiative?
- Were there other Dharma members who defected to the Others?
- How is Richard the same age now he was when he met Ben as a kid?
- If Richard has been around for so long with the Others, how come Ben is in charge and not him?
- Is any of the Others supporting Ben at this point?
- How did the Others get to the island?
- Who goes hiking when they are seven months pregnant?
- Was the dynamite Danielle got from the Black Rock for Jack’s plan?
- Can the island heal a bullet wound? If so, can it hurry?
Movie of the Week: Hot Fuzz
May 10, 2007
Here comes the Fuzz!
Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg come up with another awesome parody. What’s next: romantic comedies?
It was really slow in the beginning (it didn’t help that I was a little sleepy). I felt like they rushed Pegg’s character to the country and spent too much time revealing the villain(s).
But when it got going, wow.
The action was incredibly well-directed considering it was Wright’s first foray into this kind of filmmaking. I didn’t expect it to be so bloody though. That was a pleasant surprise.
Pegg and Nick Frost continue to be a modern day British Abbott and Costello.
Awesome cameo by my girl Cate Blachett. I don’t care what she was wearing. There’s no way I couldn’t spot her.
This movie reminded me that I need to buy Point Break already.
24 Season Six: 2:00 AM – 3:00 AM
May 8, 2007Body Count: 30 (+5)
Even when Jack doesn’t go looking for trouble, trouble goes looking for Jack
Political Espinoge – The Skinemax Edition:
Let’s get the stupid (or stupider) part out of the way. Dragonslayer and ODB get VP Aide Slore to call her snitch of a lover and tell him that they got the component back so that he can tell the Chinese. Then she’s supposed to go over there and leave him alone with her PDA so he can go through it. So with Dragonslayer and some men in a van outside, Aide Slore tried to execute the plan but fails because snitch just wants to get laid and isn’t letting her out of his sight. It was a comedy of error. So now they are probably having sex with Dragonslayer watching in the van after requesting for some privacy.
Assault at CTU (Part 4):
Audrey and Heller are gone (Thank God). Jack is still under arrest. Chloe decides that Marilyn needs to know all this information and see Jack so that she can hover over this dead relationship carcass like a vulture. Meanwhile, Chloe and Morris and Nadia and Milo are sorting out their love lives with Silver Spoons is doing the cliched “We’re in the wrong place” thing in his hunt for Cheng.
Now this is how easy it is to infiltrate CTU. It wasn’t even Cheng initial plan to break into CTU. This is something he put together (with outside help but still) in a little over an hour.
The Chinese mercenaries break in and start shooting. They ask who’s in charge. Nadia freezes and Milo is like, “I’m in charge here”. BAM! Bullet in the forehead. R.I.P. Milo. You died like you lived: trying to get laid. The security guard opens Jack cell before he gets shot. Jack takes his gun and killing time. The last thing you want to give Jack Bauer is home court advantage. You think Cheng might have warned them that Bauer was in the building. Jack saves Marilyn and Josh (side note: he continues to prove he’s Bauer’s son because he hasn’t slept this entire day) and they realize the Chinese are after Josh. Jack helps Josh escape but him and Marilyn get captured as a result. Now, why the Chinese don’t put a bullet in Jack’s head right now is beyond me. He is sitting on the ground staring at them like a rabid dog. The head merc gets Josh to come back by threatening to kill Marilyn. I was hoping that Josh’s pants would get caught on something and he would be too late to save her. Oh well. Then we realize that the Chinese were obtaining Josh for Papa Bauer(!) who is fixing the broken chip in exchange for Josh, the kid who he threatened to kill 8 hours ago or so.
Movie of the Week Part II: Spider-Man 3
May 5, 2007
Unfortunately, third time is not a charm
From this point on, all spoilers because that’s the only way I can do this
What I Liked:
- Tobey Maguire still has Peter Parker down
- This was the first Spidey movie that I liked James Franco in
- Thomas Hayden Church was great as Sandman
- Venom looked more like Todd McFarlane’s version than I expected
- The action sequences were great as always. Raimi knows how to kick Spidey’s ass and make it look good
- J.K. Simmons owns J. Jonah Jameson
- Bruce Campbell’s best cameo role yet
- Topher Grace, pre-Venom, was probably the best person in the movie
- The scenes with dark Peter were pretty funny until it went over the top
- I won’t deny that I smiled at the Green Goblin/Spider-Man team-up at the end
What I Didn’t Like:
- Explain to me why Bryce Dallas Howard wasn’t cast as Mary Jane and Kirsten “Snaggletooth” Dunst was?
- So the movie is chugging along and I’m wondering why everyone is whining about this movie and then it happens…the movie suddenly comes to a grinding halt. From the moment MJ and Harry kiss (the crowd actually booed) til Peter rips off the suit, except for a couple of moments (Peter vs. Harry in his apartment & the aforementioned funny dark Peter), the movie essentially stands still.
- I’m getting tired of Aunt May’s speeches
- Who told Kirsten Dunst she should sing multiple times in the movie?
- The constant crowd NYC crowd shots with random kid ab libs get more and more annoying with each one. At this point, they are just poorly staged.
- Venom and Sandman weren’t developed enough. Venom particularly seemed sort of tacked on.
- Spider-Man let a criminal get away at the end.
- The 15 minute cryfest at the end. I thought I was watching the end of The Return of the King.
All and all, it wasn’t bad but we could have done without this one being made.
God help them if they try to make Spider-Man 4.
