Friday, May 1, 2009

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen Trailer 2

New Transformers 2 trailer.

I know there is a lot of talk about Michael Bay movies being explosions and circling camera angles, but let's be honest: A person goes to Michael Bay movies for those explosions and fun-times, not for the story. Who cares about the story in a Bay movie? No one, that's who.
I want things to blow up, explode and get mashed to pieces; that's what I want...and it looks like I'll get it...

Check out 2:10 when Devastator gets his devastate on...

District 9 Trailer

What? An original movie idea? Why, that's preposterous!

District 9, from what I can gleam, is about some refugees in South Africa who aren't wanted by anyone. The catch: They are alien refugees, like literally alien refugees. As in from outer-space aliens. It's interesting because they are playing up on how people react when human "alien" refugees move into an area they aren't wanted. I'm sure this may allow some violent things to occur to the aliens because for most people seeing them hurt won't be a big deal, or at least not as heartbreaking as it would to see humans hurt. I don't really get that, either way I assume it will make me sad.

Check it out!

Thursday, April 30, 2009

G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra French trailer

Coming soon to your SyFy Satur...oh, wait...it's NOT a SyFy Channel Original Movie? It's a bloated, expensive piece of crap coming out in actual theatres? Oh...

The French subtitles aren't the bad part...the movie is the bad part. It looks bad, really bad. 1:53 is the start of a particularly bad part.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Arnie to appear in Terminator: Salvation

Well, according to io9.com, via Variety, 'ol Arnie is going to be in the next Terminator movie. It may just be a digital image of his face on someone else's body, which sucks for that actor, but never-the-less, that is frakkin' awesome!

It's been rumored for awhile that he is going to be appearing in the movie, but then the reports kept plopping back and forth that maybe he wouldn't appear.

Arnie to appear in T:4 after all.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Life on Mars Series Finale *possible SPOILERS*

Last Wednesday Sam Tyler's travels back to 1973 came to an end with an ending that was...not good. It's almost like they found out they would be cancelled, went back and filmed an ending that made what was a good episode up until this point, suck.

For those not in the know, Life On Mars is about Sam Tyler, a policeman in 2008, who gets hit by a car while out looking for a suspect. He wakes up on the street in 1973, or is he in a coma? There were a lot of questions about whether or not he was in a coma or was dead or what? He goes to his precinct and everyone is different and well, act like they'd act in 1973. He eventually realizes that he is in 1973 and that he better figure out a way to get home. He thinks he has to rescue himself, his mother, his dad (played as a total ass by one Dean Winters), really anyone who he ever knew. Each time he finds that, no, that isn't the reason he is here. He also hears and sees things. It began with just hearing hospital noises and seeing people from his past (current timeline?) on his TV, but slowly morphed into seeing the Mars Rover all the time, everywhere he went. I believe this is due to the dumb ending they came up with.

SPOILERS!
Anyway, it all boils down to Sam realizing that the reason he's back in 1973 is to find Annie. So he goes back to the station, Annie gets promoted and Sam hugs Gene and then the screen goes pixely and we are on a spaceship. Sam wakes up, as do all the other characters, and it turns out there was a glitch in his sleep-programming which caused him to be hit by a car, go back to 1973 and see Rovers and hear things. The neighbor girl was the ships computer and she called him 2B because that was his sleep pod number. They are on a mission to Mars and the whole thing was, in essence, a glorified dream sequence. A real cop out nowadays.

Overall the show was fun, exciting and Jason O'Mara was not only good to look at, he was also believable. I'm going to buy it on DVD, but I don't think the ending was what it should have been. I think they should have made the ending go from him thinking the whole reason he came to 1973 was Annie. He wakes up in 2008 in the hospital and in walks Annie. Now that would have been a likeable ending.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Best Usage of Music in a TV Show: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

When music is used well in a show, it highlights and amplifies the message being conveyed, so I'm starting a new feature that I will periodically post about that covers music used in TV shows. That is, music used well in a TV show. The first entry will be about music used in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

T:SCC's is about the plight of Sarah Connor to protect her son John from the machines that are trying to kill him. It carries on from the end of the amazing second entry into the series, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and completely skips over any and all events that took place in the third Terminator movie.

There are three stellar entries in the usage of music that I want to share and so they are going to be pasted below:

1. 'Adam Raised a Cain' from Season 2, episode 21. This was just from Friday's episode so *SPOILERS*
It features Weavers daughter, Savannah, singing 'Donald Where's Your Trousers' with John Henry.




2.'Samson and Delilah' Season 2, episode 1.
Song 'Samson and Delilah' as covered by the fantastic Shirley Manson. Used in the opening montage of season 2's premiere episode as Cameron wakes up and finds her chip damaged. She heads off into the house where we assume she is going to help John and Sarah, but instead she is following her original orders from before she was reprogrammed: Terminate John Connor. I'm adding a bonus scene, non-music related because it's awesome.



When Cameron begins to plead with John that she is all fixed now and that she can be trusted and that she loves him and he loves her, the look on John's face is priceless.



3. 'What He Beheld' Season One, Episode 9
Song "The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash. It's at the end of the episode when Ellison and the rest of the FBI arrive to take the man they think is an actor who decided to go on a killing spree, (who is really Cromartie) into custody and things go wrong with deadly consequences.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The Hangover trailer B

So, I admittedly have a thing for Bradley Cooper, so slapping his fine ass in anything will make me go watch it. Now, making that a movie with Ed Helms, Zach G and Justin Bartha and I am there with an even bigger smile. Plus, it comes out the weekend of my birthday.

If you need proof as to WHY I have a thing for Bradley Cooper (ever since his first Alias appearance in the pilot episode), see 0:35. Mmmmm...

Friday, March 27, 2009

Battlestar Music Videos

Because I am having serious BSG withdrawal, here are two fun little videos about the glorious show:




AND...

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Where the Wild Things Are

I know it's been flying around the interwebs all day, but here it is again, courtesy of Trailer Addict.
That being said, I don't remember ever reading this book when I was young. I just don't. I probably did, but I don't remember. Even so, I think this looks pretty awesome. Like a return to the days of yore when children's movies the likes of The Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, scared the shit out of kids and made them scared of the Oubliette (one of my favorite words) and whatever the hell the things from Dark Crystal were.

One of my favorite things about this trailer is that it would appear that Spike Jonze went with his instinct and no doubt fought the studio tooth-and-nail to make the monsters people in suits or animatronics, over CGI. I like that. It keeps the look and feel of what I know of the book and what a kid would see if he were really experiencing it while keeping away the bad CGI of say, The Day After Tomorrow and I Am Legend. I tried to find clips of those two movies, one of which is atrocious all the way through and the other only is marred by it's bad Motion Capture CGI (I Am Legend), but they all appear to be removed from YouTube at this time.


Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood plus catchy little musics and fun facts!



SlagsmÄlsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

SciFi Book Award Shortlist

The shortlist for the award has been announced and includes the phenomenal Alastair Reynolds and his newest book, House of Suns, which I have yet to read as it isn't out yet in the U.S. and I don't want to pay for the cost conversion/shipping to the U.S.

Check it out at the link below:
http://io9.com/5174051/shortlist-for-prestigious-uk-scifi-book-award-announced

Monday, March 16, 2009

Hello and Goodbye to Battlestar Galactica

Five years ago I came across a television show on the Sci-Fi Channel that changed so much with me and with perceptions of what it is to be a science-fiction show. I hadn’t been an avid watcher of the Sci-Fi Channel, I only liked it because they played episodes of The X-Files; in fact I was probably watching that very show when a commercial break rolled around and a promo began to play on my screen. It was an amazing promo for a show about humans being annihilated by something they created to help them. Something that was used and abused and that rebelled in anger. A theme that I find myself being drawn to all the time.



That show was called Battlestar Galactica. A “re-imagining” of an old cheesy show that ran on ABC for a season way back in 1978. A cult favorite for what I can only assume is the nostalgia and cheesy-fun that it provides. But, this new Battlestar show looked intense and heavy, I had to watch it. So, for months I waited for December 7, 2004 to roll around. And when that day came I was hooked for the entire duration. It was the kind of show that I would watch no matter what. I would write off all other responsibilities every Friday night (and Sunday night for a tick). I didn’t care, that show is that good. And then I had to wait for season 1 to start with the intense, suspense-filled episode ‘33’.

Why is it that good? Why should you have been watching this show for the past five years? If you say it’s because it’s not a genre you like, or that you don’t like Star Wars so why would you like this? You couldn’t be more wrong with your knee-jerk reaction. This show is more than space battles, space-ships and Cylons. It’s about the characters, the humanity that is embodied in each and every choice a character makes on the show, good or bad. And there are oh so many times a decision was made that was wrong. In the post-9/11 world that saw this show come to be, there is a relevance to what it means to be human, to invade and take over another “culture”, to be taken over by another culture and to feel compassion and sympathy, at times, for those on the opposing side. This is exactly why this show succeeded as it did, had it been any other time it would have failed miserably.

I can assure you that I have run across my share of people who think I am crazy for loving this show. Then I make them watch it and they become enamored with it what they see. It begins to make sense, they realize it isn’t Star Wars 2.0; it isn’t about the “planet/alien-of-the-week”. It isn’t about glossy ships and gallant heroes that save the day just as the clock reaches one hour of air-time. But, I hear you asking, what is it about then? What is the core story behind this show you are telling me is groundbreaking, phenomenal, astounding and great? Well, let me tell you.

It’s an age old story of man creating a robotic helper to do their dirty work. I don’t mean offing people. I mean man created something, at this point not in his image, to help. At first it was a noble idea but soon those Cylons gain sentience and realize they are being used and they don’t like it. So they rebel against their parents. After a long and lengthy battle they decide to leave to find a planet to call their own. They agree to an armistice with humanity. On a remote station a human and a Cylon would meet once a year. Every year a man arrived and every year there was no Cylon. They haven’t seen or heard from a Cylon in 40 years…until today. The doors slide open; two severely updated Cylon Centurions enter and stand to the side. The man hears the distinctive click of high heels and in walks a leggy, beautiful woman. She asks the man if he is alive, kisses him and, from outside, a large pointed ship (Basestar) hovers above the armistice station shortly before blowing it up.



If that scene alone doesn’t get your attention, why you might be dead.

The meat of the show, like I said earlier, is the characters. Humanity is shortly attacked all over the 12 colonies by Cylons, and a rag-tag group of ships ranging from the Galactica to pleasure ships like Cloud 9 cling together for safety in numbers. They are led by, at the time, Commander William Adama and Colonel Saul Tigh, along with the newly appointed president, admittedly shaken and confused, Secretary of Education Laura Roslin. She was appointed because everyone above her was killed in the initial attack. Together they lead the fleet on a quest to find the mythical 13th colony of the 13th tribe of humanity, Earth.

But, the show isn’t just the story. Without the following things the show would be nothing. The special effects rival those of big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. All on a budget just a fraction of the size of those blockbusters. As a comparison think of the crappy effects in say, Spiderman or The Day After Tomorrow. While I know there technically wouldn’t be any explosions in space since it’s a vacuum, some of the battle scenes are breathtakingly gorgeous. Then there is set design, lighting, videography and the usage of some of the best, untapped directors out there. Namely Michael Rymer and Sergio Mimica-Gezzan (who has worked as a 2nd AD for Steven Spielberg). And the little (great big) cherry upon the icing on top, the music. Bear McCreary manages to weave a sonic tapestry of aural delight into every single episode. He uses instruments and styles from all over the world, including an accordion for Number 6’s Theme, though tweaked for a certain feel.

And it all ends Friday. This Friday March 20, 2009 will be the last episode of this show that has not only captured my attention for the past 5 years, but was one of the major reasons I decided to return to school for video production. The chance to make something that people are interested in, that catches their minds and makes them think. Over 5 years I have watched characters that aren’t real live and die, fight and make up, marry and divorce, shoot and be shot, fly and crash-land, discover and flee, order and disobey and realize they might not be who they were or want to be. When Friday rolls around I will be sad, sad to see a beloved show end and a ship no doubt “die”, and I’ll bid adieu to something that I hold near and dear to my heart as one of the best television shows ever produced. And in celebration of the show I will be doing a season-by-season rollout of episodes starting tomorrow. Catch up, whether it be by internet, DVD, or synopsis and say goodbye to the grand ol’ Galactica with me on Friday in style and respect.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Race to Witch Mountain Review

Witch Mountain is an entertaining movie with some good special FX at times, the acting wasn't too bad, and Dwayne Johnson (who I refuse to call The Rock...I just won't do it) was fine. I gave it a solid 80%, a B-, I'll get to why a little later.

The movie basically opens with the ship crashing in the desert outside Las Vegas and the obligatory government agencies rushing to find the crashed ship and it's passengers. They take the ship and we are treated to Dwayne Johnsons' character as a cab driver who gets a range of weird passengers: a couple Star Wars Storm Troopers (I almost wrote Droids, I am not really a Star Wars fan)and, Carla Gugino's astro-physicist/alien-finder-lady going to the UFO convention. Then he's at the taxi lot and two guys show up in a black SUV to tell him Mr.Wolf needs him for another job. He's all no! They leave after he busts them up a tad. He returns to his car and inside are the kids. They shove some money into his face and say to drive that way. Along the way a bunch of cars show up in pursuit. He thinks they are the guys from earlier, while the kids know they are the government people coming after them. A little later an alien bounty hunter shows up and chases them around. They get away and the government people chase them around, then the bounty hunter, then the government...you get the point. 

Basically the kids were sent by their parents to Earth to retrieve some kind of device which was left here during some other time as an experiment to see if plants and life could be remade even after the environment was damaged, or something. They find it in a cabin and must return to their ship and take it back to their planet so they can convince the warring sides that they don't have to invade Earth afterall. See, they've destroyed their planet and one side, which sent the bounty hunter, believes that they need to invade Earth and make it their home. The kids' parents were arrested for believing this wasn't neccesary. 

Eventually they gather up Carla Gugino and she comes along and there is a lot of awkwardness with Dwayne Johnson along the lines of "we like each other" garbage. Then they run from both baddies and the kids are captured and almost get prodded and poked until they are rescued and they run some more and take off in the ship. Of course the doors to the ship won't close all the way and Dwayne goes back and the bounty hunter makes it on and they fight...now he's gone! Yay! The End. This whole area kind of devolved into a cookie-cutter setup of run and chase and run and some really bland FX came in like the bullet slow-down by the ship, which looked just like it was painted on with some bad animation or something.

Now I gave it an 80% because it wasn't all that bad. There were some good chase scenes and explosions and it was a generally enjoyable story. What I did not like was the ridiculous "let's-make-these-two-characters-appear-attracted-to-one-another" portion as it made no sense and really had no part in the story, and also the whole government going after the kids. It was a little too much. Why couldn't there just be the bounty hunter, and maybe the government took the ship and they have to evade the bounty hunter and get the ship back? Ciaran Hinds' character was evil from the start and he was almost too evil and it made no sense to me. I didn't understand why he was after the kids other than he wanted to dissect them, but wouldn't the ship just be enough? 

So 80% it was. I would recommend it for people looking for an enjoyable, fluffy yet interesting movie to watch. I wouldn't take small kids because it would probably bore them and it's a little much for their little heads to take in. But I could see some 7 year olds and up enjoying it and their parents wouldn't be bored during the viewing.

Orphan Trailer

It's like The Good Son minus a Culkin and Wood and with a girl. Both have an orphan. Only in this movie the orphan is the evil one. This is why people never adopt older children, the fear that they will be crazy, say, "I love you Daddy" in a creepy way and throw random children from wooden jungle gyms (wooden jungle gyms are stupid, I know)...I am, of course, joking; people should adopt older children. 

If the little girl that was already in the home gets hurt while ice skating and there is a cliff where the other kid dangles precariously, I'll be upset and cry copy-cat.



Friday, March 6, 2009

Star Wars Mini-figs build this thing from Star Wars

I'm not that big of a fan of Star Wars, I just think it's a little to *snooze snooze* and not enough *PEW PEW*, but this is cool. A little long, but cool. I like when the little Star Trek mini-fig appears and they cut his head off.

DUDE! He was just stopping by to say "What up?" and you hack his noggin off? Not cool man, NOT cool!

Anyway, now they spend all this time building a death star, or something and it's big and made of a bunch of pieces and giggets (all those little pieces, that's what my sister and I always called them).



Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

3rd Star Trek trailer

Everything J.J. Abrams touches turns to awesome! This is amazing, it looks amazing, it sounds amazing, that music is amazing...and I can't wait. I'm not a Star Trek fan really, and I bet there are some die-hard fans out there that are freaking out, but come on, this looks great!

Up!

The new trailer for UP!

Actually tells what the movie is about and that little dog is so cute. The trailer itself, colors and animation, looks great!


Thursday, March 5, 2009

Internet Exclusive Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Looks dark, dreary and sure to scare the 4 year olds people insist on bringing to see this "kids" movie.

I didn't see the last one and I never read all the way through this book, it was kind of boring me, maybe I'll have to pick it back up?


Pandorum

Creepy. Weird. Creepy. All Alone.
Reminds me of Event Horizon with the whole waking up alone, losing your mind vibe. And what the hell is that thing that shrieks at 1:24? Are they alone on this ship, or what?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

After the debacle that was the last X-Men movie, which for the record, I hated except for the Dark Phoenix storyline, I was really on the fence about this; I still am. Parts look good, plus you have Hugh Jackman sans shirt and Ryan Reynolds with a sleevless shirt on, so that's a plus. Parts look bad, like the end, "Ooh, shiny", and the fact there is a plethora of characters that just may overburden the film and take the cake for the most characters slapped on screen at one time for no reason. I could be wrong...I hope I am. But for the most part, it looks kind of good.




Public Enemies

Not too huge a fan of Michael Mann, but this looks awesome! It has Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, old-timey talkin' Billy Crudup, guns, etc. I like.


Monday, March 2, 2009

Terminator: Salvation trailer B

It appears that dear Marcus is not human afterall, but some kind of cyborg. Is he the start of the human/machine hybrids we first see in Terminator, with Arnold? Is he the "something's changed" Connor talks of? Is he something different?

This series being rife with paradoxes, shouldn't he know of the hybrids already? Since he's spent his life changing the future (which appears impossible), he would have already encountered the various models that are part flesh, since his future self sent one back to protect his past self. But if he doesn't recognize them for what they are, what's going on? He can't be the John that never encountered the machines in the past, because that John never existed since he sent Reese back to protect Sarah which caused him to be created in the first place. Heavy. So what's going on? 

I can't wait to see:




Friday, February 27, 2009

Sneak Peak "Someone to Watch Over Me"




Is Boomer gonna get it for treason? And when will Cavil show up, gun's a blazin'? Sometime in the next 4 (*sob*) episodes, I bet.

Hunger

This doesn't look like it will end happily. It won a crap-ton of awards at various festivals and looks to be quite good. I'm looking forward to it. 





Thursday, February 26, 2009

Planet Man

An interesting little short from New Zealand. It's gorgeous sci-fi Film Noir along the lines of Blade Runner. About a world where all of the women have suddenly disappeared leaving only men. Soon they give up waiting for the women to come back and start making pretty little men into pseudo-women (in a creepy off-putting scene shot very well). Our protagonist (or antagonist?) soon finds a real woman who talks of leaving and lying naked in the sun. She doesn't want anything to do with men, least of all the one standing in her room.

Check it out!

"White Wedding" literal video

Friday, February 20, 2009

LOST "This Place is Death" SPOILERS

Let's see how small I can keep each one of these. I am several LOST blogs behind, and since the episode before this one was sort of really boring and didn't reveal a lot, I am not going to cover it.

Now, this episode was great. Here's what happened: Some of walkthrough is from Lostpedia.

Our fair island folk were jumping all over the place in this episode. I am going to cover each period instead of covering them as the episode went on which included jumping between the current time period (2007, I think) in L.A. and the time periods on the island.

NOVEMBER 18, 1988
At the end of the previous episode, "The Little Prince", Jin came in contact with Danielle Rousseau back when she and her group first appeared on the island, November 1988. They say they left Tahiti on the 15th and somehow crashed here. They are picking up a radio transmission and want to find the radio tower. Jin, unsure what is going on really, wants to return to his camp. They convince him to travel in the direction they believe the tower to be and since he isn't sure where his camp is, he goes with them.

While walking through the jungle, Danielle stops to rest and tells her husband that she would like a sip of water. Someone named Nadine has it but no one seems to know where she went; that can't be good. As they start to look for her, screaming her name as loud as possible, Jin hears the tell-tale sound of the Smoke Monster's clickety-clacking, receipt printer noise-making self. When someone in the group asks what that is, suddenly there is a tree uprooted and PLOP down falls a body; it seems to be the unseen Nadine. She's dead. Jin tells them all to run, but this douchy blonde Frenchie gets grabbed by Smoke Monster and is dragged to this temple and then down under it. Crap. But, he doesn't totally end up under the temple, see the group manages to grab his arm and in one of the most OH! moments of the evening, his arm pops off! Yeah, right off. From the calls they are hearing from the man, it would appear he hasn't died, highly unlikely. He'd at least be really hurt and in shock. But the rest of them want to go down and help him. Jin says no, it's a trap and convinces Danielle to stay up on land because of her baby; she agrees. The others go under and as Jin and Danielle wait, there is a flash and Jin jumps away.

JANUARY 1989
It's two months later and Jin is back in the jungle in front of the ruins, but this time they are covered in some kind of hieroglyphs and Montands (the douchy blonde) arm is lying there all decayed. He sees a smoke pillar off in the distance and I'm thinking he thought it was Rousseau's signal from way back a few seasons ago. It wasn't. He gets to the beach and sees a crapload of shit all littered around the beach and two dead bodies. It appears to be two of the three people who were in Rousseau's crew. He hears two people arguing and sees it's Rousseau and her husband Robert. They both have rifles pointed at each other and Rousseau is saying that they've changed, he's changed and that thing poisoned them. He says no, it's just a security system put there to protect that temple. OK... He tells her to put the gun down and when she lowers it, he tries to shoot her. His gun doesn't fire though, because as she explains to them, she removed the firing pin. Then she shoots him. Jin cries out, Danielle turns and says he's infected too, and where did he go? She chases after him, trying to kill him and he flashes away again. Okay...I'm confused. This is obviously where the paradox begins, because otherwise Rousseau should have recognized Jin when she first met him so many years ago.

Unknown Time One
Jin appears somewhere in the jungle and hears a gun cocking. It's Sawyer! He's back with the gang, well part of the gang. Charlotte tells him, with her translation, where Sun is and they go off to the Orchid. Suddenly...

Unknown Time Two
They flash into night and barely can recover before a third flash grabs them

Unknown Time Three
Now they are back in daylight. Sawyer and Juliet get the nose bleeds and Charlotte collapses. She starts to babble all kinds of crap, part in another language, and yells to Jin not to let them bring Sun back to the island. Why? She also says that this place is death...huh. She starts babbling about events that are possibly from her past like marrying an American, Daddy going with them and knowing more about ancient Carthage than Hannibal...yeah, she getting lost in time I think.

Unknown Time Four
New time! Daniel asks someone to help carry Charlotte to the Orchid and Locke says no, she'll only hold them back. They'll return for her later. Charlotte tells Sawyer and Locke to look for the well after Sawyer asks what they'll do if the station is gone. They leave Daniel behind with Charlotte. When the group finds the Orchid it's in ruins. FLASH!

Unknown Time Five
Now the Orchid ruins are gone and there is just a well there; the well Charlotte mentioned. Locke says he is going down and Jin threatens to cut the rope unless he promises not to bring Sun back. We all know Sun will end up back here, but why exactly is she not supposed to return? Jin says to say he buried his body and gives him his wedding ring to convince her it's true. I knew what was going to happen the minute I saw Locke trying to descend. As he's on his way down the sky turns and the noise begins and then FLASH! the well is gone and Sawyer is left holding a rope stuck into the ground. Locke falls to the ground and busts his leg. This guy just always gets the raw end and to be fair he kind of brings it upon himself.

Unknown Time Six
Daniel is trying to comfort Charlotte and she tells him that she grew up on the island and she mentions the Dharma Iniative. She says that she and her mother left for England and left behind her father and she never saw him again. Her mother told her all through her life that she imagined the island but she devoted her life to finding the island. She says there was a crazy man on the island that scared her and that he told her that she must never return to the island or she would die. Daniel keeps trying to comfort her and she says that the man was him. She says something about having chocolate for dinner and dies.
Locke's at the bottom of a cavern/cave thing and he hears someone start to approach. It's Christian Shepard, Jack's poppa! Wha...? He scolds Locke for letting Ben move the island, it was supposed to be him that moves it. He tells him he has to go back to the mainland and get them all to Eloise Hawking. Ben says Richard told him he had to die and Christian says that's why it's called a sacrifice. Christian says that he has to put the wheel back in alignment and he sees the wheel jiggling around and light flashing out. He pushes the wheel and the light grows brighter and Christian says to say hi to his son. Locke says "Who's your son?" and disappears.

2008
The off-island timeline is really kind of boring so I'll really shorten it. Basically Sun shows up with a gun to kill Ben but he says Jin is alive and he can show her, she just has to go with him. On the way Jack apologizes to Sun for leaving Jin behind and Sun asks if he's saying it to keep her from killing Ben. He says he'll kill him if she doesn't. Ben slams on the brakes and tells them he's been trying to keep them safe all along. When they arrive at the church Ben gives Sun the ring from Jin and says that Locke gave it to him, he's sorry to have kept it so long. He says they all have to get back to the island and the woman in the church can help them, Sun agrees to go along.
Desmond appears and asks if they are looking for Daniels mother too? Ben makes a look like what/how does he know about this/her? They enter the church and see Eloise lighting candles and she asks why they aren't all there. He says there were some issues and this is all he could get in such short notice. She says lets get started...

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Torchwood-Children of Earth

New Torchwood season and a new trailer! Can't wait for this to return. Too bad it's only 5 episodes, but it looks to be an intense, crazy five episodes.


Monday, February 16, 2009

Friday the 13th...the Musical!

So I was at the theatre today to finish up my assignment and had to check trailers for Friday the 13th. I decided to stay and watch the whole movie for two words: Jared Padalecki. While I used to call him a WB rat (his hair was just so damn annoying and he appeared in EVERY WB show imaginable), but now I really like him. Chalk it up to four seasons of Supernatural, a VERY good and creepy show that is really underappreciated.

I can’t say I hated the movie, or even disliked it, because I didn’t. It’s just that it was boring. I wouldn’t really classify it as ‘Torture-Porn”, because it wasn’t. Sure it was gorier than the horror/slasher films of yore, but that’s to be expected in this day and age. Yes, there was plenty of obligatory nudity (by nudity I, of course, mean topless women). Would it kill them to throw in a Padalecki with no shirt on once in a while? We see more skin on his network television show (See: Sex and Violence). And honestly ladies, this man looks good with no shirt on. And before any men start saying, “You only like him because he’s pretty”, remember that there are plenty of titties a-flyin’ in this movie; real and fake (IE: the first bimbettte to die. Man! Those things looked like two water balloons filled with cement and taped to her chest. If you are going to buy fake ones, get the ones that look/feel/seem real) so shut it! I know I am not the target audience, they aren’t out there thinking, “How can we get the average, funny, 28 year old female from the mid-west to go see Friday the 13th?” They want to gather those 18-34 year old males, the ones who want topless bimbos being hacked to pieces (which, to be honest, is a little disturbing and not just a tad masochistic/misogynistic) so they don’t care if I want to see Jared Padalecki with no clothes on, or hell, even a storyline that doesn’t bore me. I’m learning all about filming right now and the one thing we’re told a billion times is that you have a very short window in which to keep your audience’s attention; Friday the 13th didn’t really do that. That said, it was no Splinter/Hills Have Eyes. I say this being someone who generally likes all genres of movies and, though a female, likes things geared towards men (Battlestar, anyone?)

That brings me to what I am going to discuss in this little post: What happens in the movie. Oh yes, there will be spoilers. I don’t know what kind of spoilers you’d classify them as being, because it’s a horror/slasher movie…you know what happens in all of them, right? Right? No…? Are you a newborn or have you possibly been in a coma for the past 20 some-odd years? People get hacked up. That’s what happens, generally, ALL that happens. Friday is no different, there just wasn’t anything new, there was little to no suspense and the old adage that worked so well for so many “horror” movies of the olden days of my youth; It’s best not to see the baddy right from the get-go, was thrown WAY out the window. We all know what he looks like, but the characters don’t. What would Alien have been if we were introduced to the monster right away? What about Predator? They would have been boring as shit.

So what happens in Friday, you ask? What is the story? Well, let me tell you. It all starts out with a little montage of Mrs. Voorhees chasing some girl in the woods and girl cuts her head off and they make a point of showing a locket. Cut to present day, and there is a group of douchy- turds looking for a pot field. Yeah, a pot field. My first thought was, fuck Jason, whoever is growing that pot probably doesn’t just have it nicely planted in the middle of the forest for some retards to find and pillage. Apparently the pot growers in Friday are so stoned they don’t realize morons the world over are going to find their stash. So the group is all around a camp-fire. One girl pulls her soon-to-be-dead boyfriend away to tell him something important and wander around, in the dark. Annoying guy is told to get lost by the previously mentioned Cement-tits and her boyfriend. He dies first, after he stumbles upon the pot. Surprise(So Jason is a pot farmer. That’s why he wanted those pesky kids off his campground)! Cement gets it next, via a burnin’. And the other girl, Whitney, and her boyfriend find a cabin and poke around. It’s Jason’s cabin! Uh-oh…he no likey pesky kids and their rock’n’roll music. He offs boy and Whitney runs away. The boy with Cement has meanwhile stepped on a bear trap and he gets it when Whitney tries to help him. She screams…end scene.

Cut to more douche-nozzles arriving at a store and, look, it’s the guy who ALWAYS plays Trent. He played Trent in Transformers too (seriously) and a similar character in Accepted (yeah, I know). I don’t know what name he played in Accepted, but it was most likely Skip, Flip, Trip, Tad…you name it. So Trent sees Clay (Padalecki) inside asking to put up a flyer for his missing sister (Whitney) and for some reason he is immediately nasty to him. Why? Because it appears that’s all Travis van Winkle (yup, that’s his name) can play; jerks and tools. At least in this movie he dies. They all go off to their little cabin in the woods (little man by the window stood, rabbit hopping by…not included). They brought pot too! Apparently EVERY stereotype is fair game in this modern age. Also, does no one believe in blinds or shades in homes anymore? The whole damn place is nothing but windows. There’s more out there than a disfigured freak out for revenge against those pesky kids. There are aliens and monsters and aliens and maybe Terminators…you don’t know.

So, to make a long story short, the pesky kids get picked off one after another in bland, stupid and predictable ways; nothing new here folks. One of the new bimbettes skis (a character horribly acted out by Willa Ford. Ugh, just because she’s blond, cute and has a singing career and is willing to drop that top for a dumb skiing scene, doesn’t mean she should), with no top on, for some reason, and falls and sees Jason and dies. Blah. They make a wood chipper stand out in a wonderful scene of foreshadowing at one point. Looks like Whitney isn’t dead, see she picked up Jason’s locket back at his cabin and since she looks like his mother, he keeps her chained into what appears to be a sewer? Is Jason retarded too? He knows his mother is dead. Dying, dying, dumbing. Now Clay has realized his sister is down below and gets her out and they run and fight and Jason ends up getting choked by a chain that is thrown, you guessed it, into the chipper. They dump his body into the lake, along with the chain. And here is where they should have stopped. This is where the editor, the director, Michael Bay, the grip guy, the caterer, that homeless guy under the bridge, should have said, “NO! ENOUGH! LET IT GO!” But they didn’t. They couldn’t. Jason pops up, from UNDER the bridge, and grabs the girl…WTF? Why? Because there HAS to be a place where the movie completely derails and ruins whatever bland interest it held over the audience. You know what people did in the theatre at that moment? They scoffed. Yeah, they scoffed. Loudly. There were a few, “Oh come on!”-s too, one was from me; the worst part was that I knew it was coming.

Here were a few more things they could have quit after about the first use:

· - STOP the shaky cam. We know they are running. I have eyes, I can SEE them running. You don’t need to make the camera man run with a 75lb. camera backwards. Give the man a damned dolly! Once, I get it. Every time thereafter it’s just a wasted effect that looks stupid, feels stupid and causes motion sickness in your audience. Cloverfield worked because it was J.J. and because it was supposed to have an amateur look.

· - STOP having a sound effect that goes “SWOOSH” every time a flashlight pans past the camera lens. I mean EVERY time. Look left to right-“SWOOSH” back again-“SWOOSH. SWOOSH.SWOOSH”. We get it. Now knock it off!

· - STOP the blade going “SWINCK” every time something with a blade in unsheathed. Yeah, we know it’s a knife of some sort. Stop SWINCKing. Just stop.

All in all, it wasn’t a terrible movie, but was it worth making $42 million and convincing Hollywood to make a sequel that will be awful, and inevitably cause a downward spiral that leads up to a reboot of “Freddie vs. Jason (vs. the Argonauts)” or Jason X (I think the “In Space” one)? No. It wasn’t. And I better get some topless Padalecki in next weeks’ Supernatural (I’ll take Ackles as well) to make up for it.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Battlestar Galactica "No Exit" *SPOILERS*

I've fallen a bit behind here with the posts on the good shows. So I am going to do BSG's 'No Exit' from last night. What a doozy it was.

The episode starts with a beginning quite different than any we've seen before. 'This has all happened before', 'And it will happen again', something we've been told all throughout the show. Something we shall definitely get more of as the remaining 5 episodes (boo) pass. 'The Cylons were created by man' (we see the old timey Cylons). 'They rebelled' (Again, old timey Cylons rebelling and a space battle). 'Then they vanished'. 'Forty Years later they came back'. 'They evolved'. '50,298 human survivors hunted by the Cylons' (all interspersed with battles in the background). 'Eleven models are known (flashes through Six, Leoben, Doral, Boomer, Simon, D'Anna, Cavil, Tyrol, Anders, Tory, Tigh) one was sacrificed (Ellen). We then see a little blip of when Tigh had to off her for betraying the human resistance and then there are a bunch of flashes and little pixely things. And we hear 'I'd do it all again' and Ellen wakes up in a resurrection tank on a basestar. She seems really terrified to be there and then asks the Centurian standing there to help her up. He strides over and holds out his hand and makes his fingers into little fingers instead of the spikes he had. She says he's very kind. I love how Kate Vernon plays Ellen and has her demeanor and expression change as soon as she stops panicking and seems to realize that she is a Cylon. Fantastic.

Back in the present day: Sam isn't doing so well and he has some kind of thing attached to his head, the kind of thing people use to keep your head still while they drill into it. He says 'Among bright stars, I am lost' and has some flashes and he says something about the colony never forgetting. Cotttle says he has a massive hematoma and it needs to be drained before they take the bullett out. 'He who's guile is stirred with revenge (Cavil and other flashes) and anger'. Something about the mother of mankind and something about forgotten faces and 'we seek...' and then all kinds of flashes from the past and way past. He starts saying they've been to that beach too and sometimes Ellen went because she loved the water. Sam is all kinds of fucked up here and he seems to be rambling all about Ellen and revenge and what not. What is going on?

18 Months Ago: Cavil comes in and Ellen says 'Hello John'. Cavil doesn't like being called John and Ellen says she named him after her father. Cavil says she also made him in his image, so thanks for that. So...apparently Ellen made at least Cavil. He asks why she's there and she says Tigh poisoned her for betraying the resistance and says he did what he thought he had to, it's all any man can be asked to do. Cavil tells her Tigh is a machine, just like her. And she says that depends on how you define things. She says he hasn't changed, to which Cavil tells her quite the opposite, he's made vast improvements. She says he's still the same confused and petulant little boy she loved so many years ago. He basically calls her a Schizophrenic because she refuses to accept the reality of her existance. I'm thinking that Cavil is kind of turning out to be a major antagonist to everyone here. What is he up to?

Now: Tyrol is taking Adama down to show him those stress marks he found last week in the FTL Drive room and says Adama needs to get a team together to go all the way down to check out how far the stress fractures go. Adama says he needs a chief and all he has is a Galen, he offers Tyrol the position of Chief and says they have to accept what they are.

Sam wakes up and tells Kara that she needs to get the others, he remembers everything. He also mentions Ellen coming and Kara says that she is dead and Sam responds, 'Of course, there are too many layers'.

12 Months Ago: Cavil is with Ellen and she asks if he still suffers from night sweats where he's chased by a dog-faced boy through the yellow mist? He says that sleep was a supremely unproductive human trait she chose to write into their software, he however, was able to delete that subroutine. Ellen says if he believes they poisoned them with sleep and notions of a god then why didn't he just ignore it all and be the best machines ever created? Why did he spend so much time with human concepts of revenge and death? He says because his ancestors, on the Centurian side, were the slaves of humanity and he wants justice for that. Boomer walks in with lunch and Ellen asks how she got Cavil to trust her? She says he is teaching her to be a better machine, to let go of her human constructs. Cavil asks to be excused as he has people to kill. He leaves and Ellen tells Boomer to watch and make up her own mind.

Now: Back on Galactica and with Sam. He tells the group they all worked in the same research facility. Tigh and Ellen were married then too and Tory and Galen lived together. Tigh says after the nukes hit he pulled Ellen out the rubble and she said they'd be reborn, did they download somewhere? Sam says yes, in a ship they placed in orbit. They'd been warned that there would be a war. Tory asks why they had the technology if the Cylons on Earth could have children? Tyrol says because they probably invented resurrection. Kara says he's as cold as ice and needs a break but he says he has so much more to tell them. Sam says they didn't invent resurrection, they re-invented it. Organic memory transfer came from Kobol along with the 13th tribe. It fell out of use after their people started to procreate, they worked night and day to get it working again. Tyrol's work was amazing, but Ellen was the one who made the leap to get it back online. Cottle comes in and says that he told them 5 minutes and to get out. Tigh asks where they were going?

Roslin and Lee are talking on Colonial One and he says that they need a new quorum. They aren't from the colonies anymore, they are from the Galactica or Colonial One. She tells him that he should keep it in mind and he is going to be the president. She will remain by title only, it's time for someone else to do the heavy lifting. She says her only concern is that he is so hell-bent on doing the right thing that sometimes he doesn't do the smart thing. He says he promises to be smarter and wronger. I said he needs to promise to keep being hotter...he will comply.

Tyrol is taking Adama down into the bowels and it appears that there major breaks in the struts (is that what they're called?) and they go the whole length of the ship. Adama says if they go the ship will slam shut like a book, how'd it get that way? Tyrol says the ships been through a lot, she was 50 years old when the war started and it looks like they cut corners when building her. He says he can fix her, just don't jump her for awhile. Adama says that he wants the crew human. Why do I have a feeling the ship is the dying leader who will lead them to Earth? And that I will cry when she dies?

Tigh is questioning Anders and asks why they went to the 12 colonies? He says because they needed to warn them, they knew they would continue to creat artificial life and they needed to tell them to treat them well and keep them close. But by the time they got to the colonies they were already at war with the Centurians, it had happened again. Tory says that the holocaust on Earth had happened thousands of years earlier, how was it possible? Anders says they hadn't developed jump drives and they travelled at relativistic but subluminal speed (ok). Time slowed down for them but thousands of years had passed on the colonies. Uh-Oh...Sam's not looking good. Kara tells him that he needs to stop and he says he has to do this; if he had all the answers to what happened to her and why she came back, she'd want them right? She asks if he does, and he says no, maybe...so much is coming back. He says the Centurians were trying to create flesh-bodies, they had made the Hybrids but nothing that could live on it's own, so they made them a deal. Stop the war and they will help them. They gave them the 8 humanoid Cylons and gave them resurrection. Kara says 'Eight? You said eight, we're missing someone'. Now Anders' view is gettin' all goldy! Sam's having a bit of a seizure. Not good.

Ten Months Ago: The Cylons are showing Ellen the planet with the temple and the supernova. Ellen says it's the Temple of Hopes, built by the 13th tribe 3,000 years ago, after they left Kobol. They stopped and prayed for guidance during their exodus and God showed them the way to Earth. Cavil says it was a monument to their vanity and that the supernova was a nice touch. One of her children saw their faces, a 3, and he boxed her entire line. Ellen says boxing isn't permanent, not like the 7's, it can be undone. Cavil says it isn't likely, by planning the trick to show their faces, he had no choice. She says they didn't plant anything, they backtracked the path of their ancestors to find their temple, the one-true-God must have orchestrated these events. He asks her if she's ever experienced a star going supernova? She says no. And he says he has, and how did he witness it? With 'these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull, with eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum, with ears designed to hear only the vibrations in the air", I think he's a tad mad, no? Ellen says the final five designed them to be as human as possible. Cavil screams, 'I don't want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-Rays, I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am, I can't even express these things properly because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me. I'm a machine, and I can know much more, can experience so much more, but I'm trapped in this body, and why? Because my 5 creators thought God wanted it that way". And he walks out. Boomer asks if she feels the slightest bit of remorse over what they did to Cavil, to them all? Ellen says no, because he's wrong. They didn't limit them, they gave them something wonderful...free will. To think creatively, to reach out with compassion, to love. Boomer says to love? Who? Humans? Why would she want to do that? Who would she want to love?

Oh look...Tyrol. What a surprise. Tyrol is in the medic ward and says they have to finish talking to Sam. Tigh repeats what Anders told them about giving the technology to Centurians, it all traces back to us. Tyrol says no, he said 'we' stopped the first war, they bought time for the humans. Tigh says the old man said the humans had to own up to what they did, but 'we' made the skinjobs, it all comes back to what 'we' made. Tory says the humans on Kobol made us, go back far enought it's always them (meaning us...humans). Tigh says maybe they share the guilt with the humans, but we don't get to just shove it off onto them.

Welp, the brain doc (It's the Mac Windows guy, who is a very funny guy) is talking to Anders and tells him that the bullet is lodged in the vascular ring of blood vessels and it erroded one particular one, if blood squirts out again, we're talking about death in minutes. He is also told that he could lose all the memories he's having if the bullet is moved. Anders is talking all kinds of weird crap and Kara says there is obviously something wrong with him. The doc says he has aphasia and it's common. Cottle says that as the wife she can decide to send him to surgery, Anders begs her to let him have time and she says prep him for surgery, he has until they knock him out.

Four Months Ago: It's about the time the humans eradicated the resurrection ships. Cavil says they have to start contemplating their extinction, they can't procreate on their own, so they need to get the technology back; he doesn't know that they can. Ellen tells him good luck and he says they need her help. They don't know about the technology on the colony, all her equipment is there. She says she can't do it all alone, they'd need all five. Cavil doesn't buy it and he's getting angry. He says they're no better than the humans that enslaved them...if she doesn't tell him he's going to cut open her head; he can get Sylar to help! He says he can find anything in there, even the recipe for ever-lasting life...what a dick!

Back on Galactica: Anders says Cavil was the first they built and they treasured him, he helped them build the others. Tyrol questions whether it was a good idea to continue making cylons after they saw what had already happened. He says Ellen knew the Centurians had a single-loving God. If they cylons could embrace the concept of love and mercy then the cycle of violence would end. The idea of a one-true God came from the Centurians. Cavil apparently rejected mercy, he had a twisted sense of morality, he turned on the rest of them. He trapped the five in a compartment of some kind and took the O2 off line. He suffocated them. When they re-downloaded he had blocked their access to their memories and implanted them with false ones. He boxed them for awhile, introduced Saul not long after the war. And then the Ellen. Anders says that the warning signs back on Earth looked different to all of them. Tory saw a man, Anders a woman, no one else could see them, Galen thought he had a chip in his head. At this time they say that's enough and he's ready for surgery. Kara asks about the 7, I think she thinks it's her...Anders says the 7 was the Daniel (Faraday?). He died, he was 7, Anders is sure. As he's being led away he tells Saul that he has to stay with the fleet, it's all starting to happen, it's a miracle, a gift from the angels.

Off to pregnant Six: Isn't Ellen going to be pissed at this?

2 Days Ago: Cavil tells Ellen that the Simons are prepping the ER. They've come a long way with their memory recovery, though it might take a long time. She says she is sure he's going to take as long as possible. He responds that she's wrong if she thinks he enjoys this. She says he's a sadist. Why not just kill them? Why send them to live with the humans? He wanted them to see what they were like closeup, so he gave them front row seats to a holocaust. She says they didn't die, so he took all their pasts and created them so that when they downloaded they'd have all the right experiences to say he was right, then they could give him the approval he always wanted. She says he claims to be the perfect machine but he's plagued by the most basic of human emotions: jealousy and rage. She knows what he did to Daniel (what?). He says that 7 didn't thrive and too bad they aren't made out of something more sturdy...metal, that might be nice. Man, he's an ass! Ellen tells Boomer, who has been patiently observing, that Daniel was an artist, sensitive to the world. She was very close to him and John (Cavil) decided she was too close to him, playing favorites, and maybe she was. Someone contaminated the amniotic fluid where all the Daniel copies were maturing and corrupted the genetic formula, she knew it was John; envious and sadistic. He yells out "And who made me? That's what we're dancing around here, isn't it?" If he's so broken who's fault is it? Sounds a lot like he's playing the blame game. Just because you're dad was a wife beater doesn't mean you have to be, right? He says it's his makers fault, that's not God, that's you! It's all on you! She tells him he isn't a mistake and if he could just accept who he is, what he is, the boy she made, he can be good. She says she loves him because she made him. She tells him it's okay and goes to touch him and he yells out, "Don't you dare!"

Back on Galactica: Adama goes on down to see what Tyrol is doing and he is told that there are hairline fractures running all through all of the beams and her bones are rotting. He says there is a type of organic resin on the basestar that will go in and grow into the ship beams. He says it will take the load as it matures; it's biological. Adama give a resounding NO and leaves.

Kara is talking to Anders and apologizing for keeping him too long. She thought she was the 7, she needs to be something (what the frak is she, damn it!). She says she'll give him all the time to learn the secrets.

Adama goes back to his room and notices a big, giant fracture running the length of his room...perhaps this Cylon crap is needed?

Boomer comes for Ellen and leads her away.

Anders is still in surgery. Cottle gives Kara the bullet and says he'll live. Brain doc says he's surprised he isn't awake yet, and Cottle says that isn't a bad thing really, they are hooking up an EKG to see what's going on and she can see him.

Ellen asks Boomer is she's thought about this and that she'll regret her part in this. And she says she knows she will and boards Ellen on a Raptor and they jump away.

Kara goes in to talk to Sam. Ishay tells her not to bother, there is almost no brain activity; he's not in there.

Adama calls down to Galen and tells him to do what he can to save our girl.

So...what have we learned? Well, a lot, for once. The final five tried to find the colonies and tell them to treat their machines right. They got there late and they were already fighting .The final five helped create the skinjob Cylons for the Centurians in order to stop the first Cylon war. Cavil was the first of the them to be created and he helped them at first, but he soon became sadistic and jealous and so he basically killed the final five, boxed them for awhile and reintroduced them into human society to sort of teach them a lesson, and denied them access to their memories. They sort of didn't learn their lesson, because they didn't die and download. Also...there is another Cylon we've never seen; a 7, Daniel or so Anders says. Could be Gaeta. Could be Starbuck. Either way, we still don't know what Starbuck is.

There are only 5 episodes left...Boo!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Miss March Red Band Trailer (that means it's naughty)

Admittedly I am not the target audience for this movie, but it kind of looks funny. I've posted the non-naughty trailer before and this is pretty much the same only with more swearing and girls banging each other. The best part is when the girl bounces out of the bus and the guy just stands there with that dumb look on his face. Really funny.


Here's the trailer link because the embed code won't work: http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/miss-march/red-band-trailer

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Harvester Robot

Yay! A giant, creepy robot that harvests trees. Next up? Harvesting humans. It will gather, strip them of the "bark and branches" and cut them into standard "log lengths".
Yip Yippy!

Friday, February 6, 2009

Echelon Conspiracy

Since there seems to be an awful large amount of people showing up on here to say how great Echelon Conspiracy is, and how cute Shane West is...I must say they must work for the movie studio, or something. Since everyone is entitled to their own opinion, hence me posting about how terrible this movie will be, I post their comments no matter how wrong they are.

Remember: you don't have to like what I think about movies/television shows/celebrities, etc...and I don't have to think crappy movies are good just because you call my review of a given trailer "lame" or "too harsh".

Monday, February 2, 2009

Battlestar Galactica "Blood on the Scales" previews

Oooohhh!!! It's getting good! When is Gaeta going to kiss that airlock as he flies out of it?





Thursday, January 29, 2009

Fringe "No-Brainer" *SPOILERS*

When Fringe started in the fall, I was interested. They had the requisite weird J.J. Abrams ARG and commercials for Massive Dynamics, the strange little 3 second ads with an apple and two babies instead of seeds, or the hand with 5 fingers and a thumb. To be frank, it was all a little too weird and completely J.J. Abrams, and I loved it thoroughly. I was psyched for the pilot; I mean, a guy literally melts to death on the plane (Jason Butler Harner, who was fantastic in Changeling) and it crashes and now everyone is melted! Freakin' awesome. But then I lost interest, and I don't know why. So I decided, before bed every night, I would watch the episodes I had thought I didn't want to watch. I watched and I fell back into the groove. This show is fantastic! Even Anna Torv's, hopefully, lack-luster acting fits perfectly into the feel of the show. And when the hell did Pacey get hot? I was never one to get into Dawson's Creek or even The Mighty Ducks, but I never thought he was really that good looking. He caught the David Silver-I got into my 30's-hotness, and me likey.

And that little diatribe brings me to today's topic. Tuesdays episode of Fringe entitled, 'No Brainer'. One of the things I like about Fringe is that they don't shy away from almost making you throw up the granola bar you just ate. Like last week's episode, wherein a giant cold virus/slug thing crawled out of people's mouths, this week we get a computer program/virus that literally melts peoples brains out all over the place like so much vomit; yuck! The case begins with a kid who is online and gets this little pop-up that says, 'What's that noise?', which he of course clicks on. Suddenly his screen is filled with a melange of sounds and pictures that cause his brain to liquify. Oh, and Walter gets a letter from some lady who wants to meet with him, but Peter intercepts it because he thinks Walter can't handle some lady blaming him for her daughters death. Turns out that she just wants to know all about her daughter and Peter had nothing to worry about, so his outburst at Olivia was unfounded and he later comes over, drunk, to apologize and continue to flirt with her sister. Now storyline B is out of the way...back to the brain-fryin'.

So as Olivia is tracking down the victims, the kid and now a car salesman, Peter finds out through some melted hard drives, that the computer program was routed through a billion different ports and is currently being downloaded at her house. Her niece is playing with a little pony painting program and on comes the screen and the program and of course, they get there in time to stop her from melting her brain. But, the little webcam is on and someone is watching Olivia, who now knows that someone is remotely accessing it; why it's Andy from True Blood! We don't learn until later that this is the dad of the friend of the kid who died in the beginning. Next up to die is his ex-wife's husband and Olivia finds out that there must be a connection, though the car salesman doesn't fit. Turns out Andy (I don't remember the character's name) was getting back at people who wronged him by killing their loved ones. So the ex-wife and he had a nasty divorce, hence the killing of her husband; the kid at the beginning was killed because his father fired Andy; and the car salesman...I don't remember, I think he fired him or didn't hire him. His stupid son is so stupid he leads Olivia and Peter, who just had the aforementioned tiff, to the warehouse where daddy-dearest is staying in goes Olivia. Alone. Things come to a head and Andy shoots himself.

The ONLY thing that I don't like about the current storyline is the character of Sanford Harris. I don't get him. He supposedly is there to monitor the department that Olivia is now working in, the one dedicated to Fringe science, hence the name of the show. He also appears to have an ulterior motive, because Olivia put him in jail for raping some women he worked with, though he says he didn't rape them or molest them. In the first episode he was in, I think it was the slug one, he was yelling at Olivia saying she didn't know what she was doing and that he'd shut the department down and getting all up in Broyles face. Then he realized that she did, in fact, know what she was doing and laid off her. But in this week's episode he was right back at it! He was telling her that her job was to interrogate people, so get in there and do it! And she had 48 hours (I think he said this last time too) to get the case solved or he'd close it and bury the department...blah, blah, blah. So, I don't get the purpose, maybe there is more to come? But if they keep up with this, it's going to get old.

One thing they can keep up, is the little thing they are insinuating between Olivia and Peter. It's subtle and sweet and they have good chemistry; the kind of chemistry to make a good Mulder/Scully relationship. Since that's what I see this show as: the 'new', but different, X-Files. And that's not a bad thing...not a bad thing at all.

Echelon Conspiracy trailer 2

"If you turn me off, I'll kill you"
Hmmmm....tempting. And stupid. Why is it that any movie where a computer mainframe is sentient and trying to kill someone or do something to someone, is the voice female and monotone? Kinda like Eagle Eye? It's really dumb.

So we get a computer that gains sentience and now it wants to send out phones to random people who will get chased? Why? And I am guessing that they re-cut the trailer because people couldn't grasp the idea of the last trailer? It was really a difficult idea to get. Now we straight up are told that it is a computer called Echelon.

What's next? A television that calls Nielson members and convinces them that the best shows to watch are Survivor and Wife Swap? If they don't watch those shows, random governments are going to chase them around blowing shit up. It makes as much sense as what I just watched; probably more.



Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Everything about this trailer is original. I wonder how it will end? Will she end up with him? Will he realize he was an ass to all of these women? What. Will. Happen?

It's like a mash-up of Scrooged, the one John Cusack movie, any Matthew McConaughey movie and about every other bland romantic comedy. Unfortunately, Jennifer Garner got roped into it.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

New creepy Coraline trailer. Demonstrating why you shouldn't take kids to see it!

This is a new trailer I found over at Trailer Addict (www.traileraddict.com) for Coraline. A movie sure to scare the shit out of your kids come viewing time. Sort of in the time honored tradition of The Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, only with clay instead of puppets.

Seriously, what makes something so much scarier when you slap some freakin' buttons on instead of eyes?


Friday, January 23, 2009

LOST Season 5 "The Lie"

As the episode opens the Oceanic 6 are on Penny's boat discussing what they will tell people about their sudden appearance and about the crash. Jack says they have to all agree on the story. Hurley doesn't want to lie and thinks Penny can call off Mr.Widmore. Jack says the guy sent a boat of people out to kill them and faked a plane crash. Hurley thinks they'll never find it, it disappeared *Bloop*. I love that Hurley line! Jack says if Hurley says the island disappeared, or anything else that happened out there, people will think he's crazy. Hurley gets a look on his face says that if they stick together and make people believe them, they will. He doesn't want to spend the rest of his life lying. Me thinks that this is how Hurley ended up in the institution? Sayid says they have to lie and Hurley tells him that some day he will need his help and he's not going to get it. Of course we all know that he will need Hurley's help and Hurley WILL help him.

Well, Hurley is driving, erratically all over the road with Sayid all passed out in the car. He hears a siren and gets pulled over. By Ana Lucia. Yeah. She's dead, so WTF? She tells Hurley that he has a lot to do starting with getting new clothes and taking Sayid to someone he trusts. She tells him that whatever he does, do NOT get arrested. Uh-oh, I didn't really put that together with what happens at the end. She says that Libby says 'Hi'.

The islanders are on the beach and trying to start a fire and whatnot when Frogurt comes up and starts bitching about starting fires. Sawyer comes by and takes Frogurts shirt. I love how Frogurt has a red shirt on and IS a Red Shirt, so you know what is going to happen to him. Daniel wanders back onto the beach and says he got lost (he didn't) and that he needs to calculate a new bearing on where they are in time. Miles is going to get food (don't worry about it) and Juliet says they'll go get water.

Hurley still can't get Sayid to wake up and goes into a store to buy some new clothes and gets a I Love My Shih-tzu (Oh Hurley, you make me smile so). The girl at the counter says that she knows him from somewhere. Hurley's like no, no. And she guesses he was the one who won the lottery and crashed in that plane. It's great because he keeps looking behind her at the TV that's running the news story about him. Crazy Hurley! As they drive out of the station, in drives Kate. She almost calls Jack but decides against it and instead receives a call from an unknown number. She agrees to meet whoever it is.

Ben takes something out of a vent and puts it in a bag, rather too quickly I think, like he's trying to hide it from Jack. He tells Jack to pack whatever he needs because he isn't coming back, and he'll meet up with him in 6 hours. Jack asks why and he is told that Locke's body is in the van outside and he has to put it somewhere safe. Jack is all, "Safe? He is dead, isn't he?" and then Ben says I'll see you in 6 hours.

What the hell is Hurley's father putting on the sandwich? Who puts pepperoni with caviar? Oh yeah, Hurley's there with Sayid. He says that they are there because people are after them and tried to kill them. Now the LAPD show up, and Hurley's dad gets them out of there. Hurley says they can't go to the hospital because people are after them. He thinks he knows what to do.

Kate's at a hotel. Who is she meeting? Oh, it's Sun!

Now Ben is going to a butcher! Who the hell is Jill? And who is Jeffrey and Gabriel, for that matter? How does she know that Locke is in the van? What the hell is going on? Oh, and what are they about to do and why does it all hinge on Locke being kept safe?

Back on the island (which is three years ago right? Because Locke is still there and in the other storyline, he's already dead. I'm confused!) Bernard is trying to start a fire and Frogurt starts being an ass again. Daniel and Charlotte (I've remembered her name) sit down to eat some fruit and Charlotte says she can't get rid of her headache and earlier she couldn't remember her mother's maiden name. We all know what's happening to her! Oh and Miles comes rambling back to camp with a boar that he found dead in the jungle. He doesn't elaborate on how he found it, probably used his dead people hunting skill or whatever the hell it is he has. He's freakin' weird! So then Forgurt gets all up in arms about not having a knife and not getting off the island and not having fire...and fire finds him! In the form of an arrow. Frogurt totally deserves this, he's so annoying and the Red Shirt always dies. Who the hell is flingin' all those arrows, anyway?

Hurley's dad asks whether he is really crazy or not and Hurley says no, he has a really good reason for lying..."Why is there a dead Pakistani on my couch?" That was Hurley's mom. Hurley's dad takes Sayid somewhere in his car while Hurley says that he can explain everything to her.

Kate is talking with Sun and she says that someone knows they are lying. Sun tells her that whoever it is that sent the lawyers doesn't want to say their secret or else they'd just do it. She tells Kate that she needs to take care of them, wouldn't Kate do anything she could to keep Aaron? Kate asks what kind of person Sun thinks she is? We are treated to a flashback on the freighter and Sun says she's the kind of person who makes difficult decisions when she has to, like she did on the freighter. Kate apologizes for what happened on the freighter and Sun says she doesn't blame her. I think she's lying big-time. She does blame her and maybe has bad something to do with this little lawyer thing with Kate. We know she holds a grudge against Ben and no doubt has one against Kate. I'm not real clear why she's upset with Ben, unless there is something else going on we haven't seen yet?

Jack meets Hurley's dad and Jack takes Sayid. He calls Ben and tells him that Sayid just showed up at his door. Ben looks astonished. Why? What exactly went down? He was working with Ben at some point, presumably doing things he thought we good, but apparently now he doesn't feel this way. Hugo sits down with his mom and she demands to know what's going on? He tells her all about what happened after the plane crash and that they all lied. He says all of this is happening because they lied.

Sawyer and Juliet and still farting around in the jungle and Sawyer STILL doesn't have any shoes on. Damn it man, find some fucking shoes! Fuck the shirt, get some shoes. You're wandering around in the JUNGLE! Oh look, he just stepped on a stick and now it's stuck in his foot. Oh look now someone is wandering around in the jungle. Three people. They grab them by the hair from behind and some guy named Jones with a gun and an accent says, "What are you doing on our island?" Who the hell are you, sir?

Jack gets Sayid back up and running. He asks where Hurley is? Jack says at home and Sayid asks if anyone else knows he's there? Now Hurley is making a Hot Pocket! Ben shows up and Hurley, in true Hurley fashion, tosses the Hot Pocket at him! Ben says that he can get him out of there. Hurley says that Sayid warned him, and Ben says that Sayid is the one who sent him, how else would he know where he was? Hurley ain't buyin' it. Ben tells him that he can go back to the island, leave all this behind. Hurley almost believes and then says HELL no! and runs outside. The cops arrest him and all but remember what Ana Lucia told him. Don't get arrested. Well, Sayid told him to not trust Ben, to do the opposite of whatever he says. Yet, I don't think getting arrested was the right thing to do. So Hurley may be screwed here.

So Juliet might get her hands cut off by these other people. Could these people be part of Rousseau's team? Whoever was on the Black Rock? They are wearing suits, but what kind of suits are they? Here comes Locke to do something right for once!

There's a lady with a pendulum and some chalk and an old computer that is detected an 'Event Window'. She goes upstairs and there's Ben. She tells him that he has 70 hours and Ben says it's not enough time. She says what he needs is irrelevent, what he has is 70 hours. He better het moving. He says he lost Reyes tonight and what if he can't get them all back? She responds, "Then God help us all!" What the hell? What's gonna happen? And why? Aiyee! I want more!

Thursday, January 22, 2009

LOST: "Because You Left" *Spoilers*

This is the first part of the season premiere and here goes this year's coverage of Lost.

It all begins with an alarm clock; 8:15. A man gets up, puts on a Willie Nelson record (and who wouldn't at 8 in the morning?) and goes to warm a bottle of milk for the crying baby. He rocks it in it's crib and gets ready for the morning. And Willie starts to sing, "If you can't make a record, if you can't make a record, if you can't make a record...he's skipping. This makes some sense later on in the episode. He leaves his house and walks through the Dharma camp into a building where they appear to be filming something. It's Dr. Chang and he's filming a video for The Arrow station (goes with some stuff later too). As he's talking in bursts a man who says they have a problem down at The Orchid.

A man tells him, down in the bowels of The Orchid, that they were drilling to his exact specs and that's when the drillbit melted. Chang seems astonished! They went through six bits and then the operator grabbed his head and started freaking out! He also tells Chang that they sonar'd the wall and there is a chamber back there. Why, it's the chamber where Ben turned the little wheel and moved the Island. Chang is getting that look at being terrified again! The man tells Chang that they only way to get to what ever is behind the wall is to lay charges. Chang gets mad and says the station is being built there because of it's proximity to what they think is an almost limited energy and once they harness it they will be able to manipulate time. The other guy looks skeptical...as well he should be. This Chang guy is a mysterious bastard! He tells the man that there are rules that can't be broken and if they drill just one centimeter further, they risk releasing the energy; if that were to happen only God could help them (He says 'us', but whatever). He tells the man to do nothing and stomps away. On his way out he bumps into a man, who turns out to be Twitchy (aka Daniel Faraday, aka Jeremy Davies). The driller guy talks to Faraday and says, "Did you hear that? Time Travel. How stupid does he think we are?" To which Faraday glances at the wall with the holes drilled in it and looks down-right terrified and scared.

A.) What the hell is Faraday doing back when Chang was alive? This is before The Others went all killer on the Dharma people.
B.) Did he travel back in time? Or is he out of time in the current timeline? WTF people, W.T.F?

Jack and Ben are in the funeral parlor (and in a quick aside, had I not already seen the Season Finale last season and then watched GMA the next morning, where they REVEALED who was in the fucking coffin, I would have been SERIOUSLY angry). Ben tells Jack they have to hurry up and get the rest of the people, Hurley is next. Jack says Hurley is in a mental institute and Ben says it should be easy to recruit him. Ben says they have to get the rest of Jack's friends and Jack says they aren't his friends anymore, and why did this happen? Ben says it happened because they left. We know that Jack went all drunkard on us because of all that went on, but we don't know it all yet. I'd like to see that.

Oh good, Jack shaved. He no longer looks like a crazy homeless person. I like my Matt Fox clean-shaven. Jack asks Ben when he last saw Locke, to which Ben replies it was in The Orchid station. Jack says that Locke told him that everyone left on the island would die if they didn't come back. Ben asks if he said what happened to them and when he says no, Ben says he guesses they'll never know.

**Three years earlier**

Back on the island. Ben turns the wheel and the island goes bye-bye! Suddenly Locke is standing all by his lonesome with no more creepy-Richard. Daniel and his raft-mates (consisting of people who never appeared before, you know at least some are going to die) are floating near the island. Daniel concludes that they must have been in the radius. Weird, how do you know this Daniel? Juliet and Sawyer are on the beach and notice that the freighter is no longer there. Odd...Bernard and Rose come running out looking for each other. Sawyer says they don't need to panic, they'll just go back to the camp. Bernard says, rather panicked, that they can't go back to the camp; it gone! Yep...it's gone. Daniel shows up and says it isn't gone. He asks to be taken to something manmade. Juliet suggests the hatch of the station they blew up. Daniel says it's perfect and says they better get going before it happens again; Sawyer grabs his arm and says, "before WHAT happens again?". What indeed Sawyer, what indeed. Daniel says it isn't gone, it just hasn't been built yet. WTF? And awesome!

Oh Kate is making breakfast in her home. There's a knock. She answers. It's Dad-from-My-So-Called-Life and some other dude. They say they are there on behalf of their nameless client to relinquish some blood from Kate and her kid (not her kid). She says she doesn't understand and they will have to come back with the sheriff. Ruh-Ro! She panics, grabs her shit and bolts. Typical Kate, though I don't blame her.

The island group is walking through the woods on the way to the station and Daniel tells Sawyer to move it. Sawyer tells him to give him his shirt. Daniel says they have more pressing issues than giving Sawyer a shirt and says to explain the situation they are in would be difficult for a physicist to understand. Sawyer slaps him and threatens the ginger too (classic Sawyer!). Faraday explains that the island is like a record and whatever Ben Linus did, it seems to have dislodged them somehow. Miles asks what they are dislodged from and it appears to be time. Either the island is moving or they are. Daniel asks is everyone is accounted for, and they say Locke isn't (of course!). Locke is still out in the jungle and climbs a hill. A plane crashes and a little statue falls out. Why, it's Eko's brothers plane. So Locke, at least, is back whenever the plane crashed. Cra-zazy! Locke starts to climb up to the plane and starts getting shot at, eventually being hit in the leg. Oh it's Ethan. Creepy, creepy Ethan! He demands to know who Locke is. Locke says he knows him and Ben Linus made him (Locke) their leader. Ethan says this is ridiculous (probably because Ben is still a kid?) and is going to shoot him when the island goes *bloop* and Ethan is gone and Locke is sometime else in the darkness. The rest of the island gang are in the dark too. Daniel says they are either in the past or the future.

Sun is in the airport and she gets detained. Apparently by Mr. Widmore. He tells Sun that he had her brought here because she disrespected him. He asks what she meant by them having common interests and she says they both want Benjamin Linus dead.

Ben and Jack are off to get Hurley but there is a snag. It appears that the police are looking for Hurley because they think he escaped the mental institution and killed two people. We know he didn't, that Sayid did (poor Hurley, he just can't catch a break. Sayid and Hurley, meanwhile, are off to an apartment. Hurley asks who the guy Sayid killed was. Sayid says he doesn't care who he was, he was after Hurley. Sayid says he became so paranoid after spending two years working for Ben Linus, doing the things he asked him to do. He informs Hurley that if he ever runs into Ben, to do the exact opposite of whatever he says. Two men attack Sayid and one gets thrown over a balcony, the other meets some knives in a dishwasher (Owweee!). Sayid also got shot by some darts. Hurley, of course, picks up a gun and looks over the balcony at the guy who fell. People are gathering and they see him and take a picture.

The islanders, minus Locke, find their original hatch still blown up, so they are in the future. Sawyer says he is going to go back to their camp and Daniel says he can't. They don't know when the island will jump again. He says it could happen before they get back to the beach. Sawyer says what if that doens't happen? What if the helicopter hasn't left yet? Daniel says they can't change anything. Time can go forward and backward but not in any other direction, if they try to change anything they will fail every time. It can not be changed. Sawyer asks how he knows all this and Daniel shows him his journal. He says he's spent his entire adult life learning everything he can about the Dharma Initiative. They can't stop this. But who can...?

Locke is laying in the jungle, he's shot, bleeding and he's fucked up again. He hobbles over to the plane, which is now laying on the jungle floor. He makes himself a tourniquet and someone ambles into view. It's ol' Richard, or actually ol' yet looks young Richard. Richard tells Locke that he has to take the bullet out of his leg. Locke asks how he knew he had a bullet in his leg, and Richard says you told me. Locke didn't tell him, but Richard says he will. Locke says Ethan shot him and is told what comes around, goes around. Richard tells him that when he is is all relative and that Locke was the one who went somewhere when the light flashed. He tells Locke that he doesn't have time to explain what's going on right now, Locke is going to be moving on soon. He says the next time Locke sees him, he won't remember him and hands him a compass and says to give him that. Richard says the only way to save the island is to get all the ones who left back on the island. He says they are fine and are at home. He has to convince them to come back, he has to die. *bloop* daytime again. It looks like it's right after the plane crashed, as it is smoking up in the trees.

Island group: Night time and still blown up station. Miles asks what it was before they blew it up. Juliet says it was a Dharma station where a man named Desmond (whooo) would push a button every 108 minutes to save the world. *bloop* jump! It's before they found the hatch. Sawyer says he's going in the back door for supplies. Daniel says it's not a good idea, Desmond didn't know know him then. Daniel says it won't work and Sawyer is determined to get the door open. He can't change the past. Sawyer says everyone he cared about just blew up on the freighter (Sawyer cares about someone?) Most of the group goes off back to the beach and Daniel and ginger are still at the hatch. Ginger has a nose bleed and Daniel (and us) know why (remember :The Constant?) He tells her that he forgot his pack (he did) and runs off to get out his journal. Since Desmond is his constant, he can interact with him and possibly change things. Desmond answers and Daniel tells him that he does know him in a way and that the rules don't apply to him. He is uniquely special. Desmond, of course, thinks he's off his rocker. He tells him that if the helicopter made it off the island and if he got home...he has to listen or people will die. He tells him his name and says that all the people he left behind are in serious danger, he needs to go back to Oxford University, back where they met and find Daniels mother, her name is...*bloop*
Desmond is in bed, now, and wakes up. He says he was on the island and Penny says he's been off the island for three years. She says it was just a dream but he says it was a memory. Desmond rushes up to the deck and says they are leaving for Oxford. Weird.

So how long have our fair islanders been boppin' around? If the guys who got off have been gone for three years, how is the stuff happening only now to those on the island? Where were they for three years? I have to say it wasn't the most fascinating episode of LOST but it was good. And Desmond and Hurley were prevalent, so I'm good.

Part two will follow tomorrow!