Recently in TV Category
So over the last few weeks I've been watching a fair bit of movies and TV simply because I have to spend about 4 hours a day lying in bed doing nothing. In addition to watching all of the commentaries and extra features in my Freaks and Geeks boxed set (which, by the way, is well worth it -- I'm still horribly disappointed I never caught it when it was first airing and that it got canceled), I upped my Netflix subscription to two movies at a time to try and fill the hours.
The first bunch of DVDs I got were the third season of Forever Knight. I'm more than willing to admit that the first two seasons of the show were a lot cheesier than I remembered (though I don't really regret having them on DVD), but the third season really struck me as a very Silk Stalkings-ified version of the show when I saw the first few episodes on USA (and promptly gave up on it, after staying up at weird hours to watch the second season). I figured I might as well watch to see if it was as bad as I thought (and see the last episode, which I had never seen). On the whole, it ended up being probably a little better than what I expected, but I think it was definitely still a big step down from the first two seasons, which had quite a few episodes that were far better than the usual late night syndicated junk. Probably the worst change was the loss of John Kapelos and Deborah Duchene (Schanke and Janette) for Lisa Ryder and Ben Bass, something that always struck me as kind of a lowest-common-denominator move. And the last episode was....well, really pretty disappointing and a definite downer.
That was followed, however, by probably the best find I've come across in quite a while, No Maps For These Territories, a documentary that's basically an hour and a half discussion with William Gibson on his writing, information age society, futurism, and a variety of other topics while he rides around in the back of a limo. If you are a big Gibson fan (and I am), you will probably enjoy it; if you aren't that interested in William Gibson, there's no reason for you to see this movie (well, duh). He talks about almost every aspect of his life, and his discussion of Neuromancer was especially interesting for me, going a long way towards explaining why it is so different from most of his other books. I'll probably end up buying this one actually, simply because I didn't get enough time to really digest the movie or the associated extras (including more interview snippets that didn't make it into the body of the movie itself). The only thing I can say is that the movie is made in such a way that it is a little more "artistic" than it had to be for me, since I was mostly interested in what he was saying and not the visuals of the movie.
The next on this list is Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. Honestly, if I hadn't been told that this was his first movie as a director, I would never have known. Almost every aspect of the movie is done in a way that really shows a good eye for the camera and for getting the actors to really bring their characters to life. I suspect that the fact that the movie takes place (and was shot in) Affleck's hometown of Boston helped contribute to this in the same way it did with Good Will Hunting; many of the people in this movie are simply residents of the Boston neighborhood where it was being shot. The plot is well-written, and while I may agree slightly with Chesnut, who said it seemed a little convoluted for his tastes, I did not feel like the "twists" were just thrown in to be twists -- each one highlighted the moral choices the characters had to make. Really, without them, the movie would not have been worth making because those twists are in the movie to highlight the central point. I highly recommend seeing this movie, though I will say it will probably not leave you with a good feeling at the end.
Michael Clayton is a movie that probably won't leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling at the end either, but it too is a good movie. Unlike Gone Baby Gone, though, this film feels a bit more formulaic and not nearly as authentic (but maybe it wasn't trying to be). The performances, by George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and Tilda Swinton most notably, were as good as I'd expect from actors of that caliber, and the writing for each scene was well done, but the plot that holds it all together, as Chesnut wrote in his capsule review, seems kind of like Another Lawyer Movie. Still worth watching, though, and I think the actors and writers probably deserved their Oscar nominations, but on the other hand, I am glad that it didn't win the Best Picture Oscar, though so far I've only seen one of the other nominees.
Last for this installment was The Golden Compass, which I just watched the other night. Obviously made as a Narnia-like attempt to cash in on the Lord of the Rings' success (which doesn't necessarily make it bad), this suffers from the fact that it feels like half of a movie and there was no guarantee the other half was going to get made. The film's climax seems like should be about where the Mines of Moria scene was in Fellowship, but instead it ends with the film's real conflict hanging in the wind. That being said, I didn't think the movie was really bad, it just felt like it fell short of what it was trying to be. The CGI, which was a large part of the movie, was competently done, and for the most part looked real, and I liked the sort of Victorian steampunk style aesthetic. It sounds like the sequel is still going to be made (largely due to its strength overseas, it sounds like), so maybe I'll like it more with the next part. I was disappointed by how bare-bones the DVD is though; there's no commentary, no deleted scenes (and I know there were quite a few), no behind the scenes stuff. For a movie like this, you'd think there'd at least be a little of that on the DVD, but maybe with the perceived failure of the movie at the box office no one wanted to put any money into it.
The first bunch of DVDs I got were the third season of Forever Knight. I'm more than willing to admit that the first two seasons of the show were a lot cheesier than I remembered (though I don't really regret having them on DVD), but the third season really struck me as a very Silk Stalkings-ified version of the show when I saw the first few episodes on USA (and promptly gave up on it, after staying up at weird hours to watch the second season). I figured I might as well watch to see if it was as bad as I thought (and see the last episode, which I had never seen). On the whole, it ended up being probably a little better than what I expected, but I think it was definitely still a big step down from the first two seasons, which had quite a few episodes that were far better than the usual late night syndicated junk. Probably the worst change was the loss of John Kapelos and Deborah Duchene (Schanke and Janette) for Lisa Ryder and Ben Bass, something that always struck me as kind of a lowest-common-denominator move. And the last episode was....well, really pretty disappointing and a definite downer.
That was followed, however, by probably the best find I've come across in quite a while, No Maps For These Territories, a documentary that's basically an hour and a half discussion with William Gibson on his writing, information age society, futurism, and a variety of other topics while he rides around in the back of a limo. If you are a big Gibson fan (and I am), you will probably enjoy it; if you aren't that interested in William Gibson, there's no reason for you to see this movie (well, duh). He talks about almost every aspect of his life, and his discussion of Neuromancer was especially interesting for me, going a long way towards explaining why it is so different from most of his other books. I'll probably end up buying this one actually, simply because I didn't get enough time to really digest the movie or the associated extras (including more interview snippets that didn't make it into the body of the movie itself). The only thing I can say is that the movie is made in such a way that it is a little more "artistic" than it had to be for me, since I was mostly interested in what he was saying and not the visuals of the movie.
The next on this list is Ben Affleck's directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. Honestly, if I hadn't been told that this was his first movie as a director, I would never have known. Almost every aspect of the movie is done in a way that really shows a good eye for the camera and for getting the actors to really bring their characters to life. I suspect that the fact that the movie takes place (and was shot in) Affleck's hometown of Boston helped contribute to this in the same way it did with Good Will Hunting; many of the people in this movie are simply residents of the Boston neighborhood where it was being shot. The plot is well-written, and while I may agree slightly with Chesnut, who said it seemed a little convoluted for his tastes, I did not feel like the "twists" were just thrown in to be twists -- each one highlighted the moral choices the characters had to make. Really, without them, the movie would not have been worth making because those twists are in the movie to highlight the central point. I highly recommend seeing this movie, though I will say it will probably not leave you with a good feeling at the end.
Michael Clayton is a movie that probably won't leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling at the end either, but it too is a good movie. Unlike Gone Baby Gone, though, this film feels a bit more formulaic and not nearly as authentic (but maybe it wasn't trying to be). The performances, by George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and Tilda Swinton most notably, were as good as I'd expect from actors of that caliber, and the writing for each scene was well done, but the plot that holds it all together, as Chesnut wrote in his capsule review, seems kind of like Another Lawyer Movie. Still worth watching, though, and I think the actors and writers probably deserved their Oscar nominations, but on the other hand, I am glad that it didn't win the Best Picture Oscar, though so far I've only seen one of the other nominees.
Last for this installment was The Golden Compass, which I just watched the other night. Obviously made as a Narnia-like attempt to cash in on the Lord of the Rings' success (which doesn't necessarily make it bad), this suffers from the fact that it feels like half of a movie and there was no guarantee the other half was going to get made. The film's climax seems like should be about where the Mines of Moria scene was in Fellowship, but instead it ends with the film's real conflict hanging in the wind. That being said, I didn't think the movie was really bad, it just felt like it fell short of what it was trying to be. The CGI, which was a large part of the movie, was competently done, and for the most part looked real, and I liked the sort of Victorian steampunk style aesthetic. It sounds like the sequel is still going to be made (largely due to its strength overseas, it sounds like), so maybe I'll like it more with the next part. I was disappointed by how bare-bones the DVD is though; there's no commentary, no deleted scenes (and I know there were quite a few), no behind the scenes stuff. For a movie like this, you'd think there'd at least be a little of that on the DVD, but maybe with the perceived failure of the movie at the box office no one wanted to put any money into it.
I'm usually pretty wary of most attempts to undermine the popularity of stuff like YouTube or other "upstart" websites by established media companies; usually they end up being pretty lame or at least critically gimped in some way. However, after having both benoc and Deidei mention watching a few things on hulu.com, I checked it out just to see how it was, especially because Deidei was trying to get me to watch Kitchen Confidential (vaguely based on Anthony Bourdain's book, which I really liked). So I checked it out this weekend, since it's easy enough to leave a webpage open while I play Eve in another window or something.
Surprisingly enough, it doesn't suck too bad. You are forced to watch brief commercials at certain points; this isn't horrible, since most shows would have them anyway and the commercials are only 15-30 seconds. The only time it gets a little annoying is when it's a show that was originally shown on pay cable, like Total Recall 2070, where the commercial breaks can come at odd moments. Furthermore, the selection of shows is surprisingly good. I knew that it was a joint venture between NBC and FOX, but I forgot how many shows on other networks are done through them, and the catalog of old shows is surprisingly good as well. They don't have full catalogs of all the shows there, but especially the one-season shows that were cancelled (like Firefly) they have there, which is nice if you wanted to see a show you heard about but didn't see, and don't want to take a chance on buying the DVDs (or the DVDs aren't available).
So far, I've gone through all of Kitchen Confidential (which was okay -- it was definitely better having read the book and being vaguely familiar with the craziness in a restaurant kitchen) and Total Recall 2070, which I only saw a few episodes of when it was in syndication. It's worth checking out if you have some time to kill and you're bored.
Surprisingly enough, it doesn't suck too bad. You are forced to watch brief commercials at certain points; this isn't horrible, since most shows would have them anyway and the commercials are only 15-30 seconds. The only time it gets a little annoying is when it's a show that was originally shown on pay cable, like Total Recall 2070, where the commercial breaks can come at odd moments. Furthermore, the selection of shows is surprisingly good. I knew that it was a joint venture between NBC and FOX, but I forgot how many shows on other networks are done through them, and the catalog of old shows is surprisingly good as well. They don't have full catalogs of all the shows there, but especially the one-season shows that were cancelled (like Firefly) they have there, which is nice if you wanted to see a show you heard about but didn't see, and don't want to take a chance on buying the DVDs (or the DVDs aren't available).
So far, I've gone through all of Kitchen Confidential (which was okay -- it was definitely better having read the book and being vaguely familiar with the craziness in a restaurant kitchen) and Total Recall 2070, which I only saw a few episodes of when it was in syndication. It's worth checking out if you have some time to kill and you're bored.
So I have been a fan of the new Battlestar Galactica series since it started three or so years ago. I have to admit that last season I wasn't so fired up about the show; the first part of the season, dealing with New Caprica and the skeleton-crewed fleet, leading up to quite possibly the most balls-to-the-wall scene ever (this one, if you've never seen it before), was pretty good. The second half, though, dragged, and had way too much mystical claptrap, especially dealing with Starbuck.
This season though, has really just gone completely out the window. Some of you might not of seen it yet, so I'm going to tuck my rant behind the cut. The short version is that there's nothing fucking happening and the characters seem to have morphed into complete assholes in the last few episodes. Very frustrating.
This season though, has really just gone completely out the window. Some of you might not of seen it yet, so I'm going to tuck my rant behind the cut. The short version is that there's nothing fucking happening and the characters seem to have morphed into complete assholes in the last few episodes. Very frustrating.
Continue reading BSG...WTF?.
Last night was the premiere of Battlestar Galactica's Razor TV movie, which shed more light on the plight of the Pegasus and Admiral Cain before they meet up with Galactica as well as shedding some light on the history of the Cylons, the first Cylon War, and giving a bit of a teaser for the upcoming season as well (which is now scheduled for frigging March). I'll be posting my spoiler-rific review and other thoughts behind the cut, so as not to inadvertently blow it for anyone that hasn't seen it yet.
Note: I accidentally forgot to post this, so it's a bit later than I expected. Oops!
Note: I accidentally forgot to post this, so it's a bit later than I expected. Oops!
Continue reading Razor.
Since I spent Thursday night checking out Second Life, and Friday night playing Guitar Hero with Jeremy and Jen, the last two new shows I decided to throw on the TiVo were put off until this weekend -- Big Shots, the "Sex and the City with guys" starring Christopher Titus and Josh Malina (among others), and Moonlight, the new vampire PI show. For what I thought, you can look behind the cut.
Continue reading New Show Wrapup -- Big Shots and Moonlight.
