Cons
A) Why does John Connor sound a lot like Batman?
B) Why is John Connor so fucking flabbergasted by a Terminator with human skin and characteristics? Didn't one just like it visit him twice in his teenage years?
C) I'm so glad Sony Corp and Oakley survived Judgment Day...and could keep it together long enough to sponsor the Resistance...
D) If mankind was single handily destroyed by technology becoming self aware...why in the hell would the resistance use high tech gadgetry to try and destroy it? I always pictured the Resistance as some down and out "Road Warrior" type bad asses who used the scraps of the post-apocalyptic world to defeat the machines. Not a bunch of way too attractive, gadget carrying super heroes. They're supposed to be the damn helpless underdogs.
E) Acting and screenplay is completely void of any emotion or urgency.
F) Seemingly complete lack of care about original films
Pros
A) All cons are eliminated by the awesomeness that accompanies amazing freaking FX, entertaining as hell action, and robot warfare.
/rant
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Guilty Pleasure: "Veronica Mars" (2004 - 2007)
Guilty pleasures, we all have them...time to air some grievances:
I'll admit it. I spent the entire summer of 2006 catching up on every episode of the CW / UPN, teen noir / detective / awesome drama "Veronica Mars." As far as dramatic teen television goes, I'm not ashamed to contend that this gem was a head above the rest of the crop.
While others fixated on "The O.C." or "Friday Night Lights," for their secret soapish teen drama fix, I myself found fairly latched to this particular brand, solely for it's total dedication to being so damn nerdy, yet incredibly smart, with well written, witty as hell dialogue and solid fuckin addicting story lines.
The show could be basically summed up as a sexed up, t.v. version of Rian Johnson's Brick. The show is completely rooted in detective noir and long winded mystery. The first two seasons of the show followed one overarching mystery that lasted over the entire season. Teen sleuth Veronica Mars (the smoking fucking hot Kristen Bell) navigates through high school bullshit to solve these mysteries (the death of her best friend, her rape, and the death of a school bus load of her classmates) in a episodic narrative page turning fashion akin to shows like "Lost" and "Twin Peaks." Bell's sassy and sci-fi savy (she says "frak" a lot and makes a ton of BSG references...hot) detective is brainy, witty, and for once an intelligent, female protagonist; something that's usually hard to find with shows aimed at this demographic. It's fairly refreshing to watch.
Yet apparently the demographic looking for that sort of refreshing change in formulaic teen TV doesn't exist. UPN forced creator Rob Thomas to dumb down the shows mysteries for the third season. The result was mostly single contained, mystery of the week type episodes, rather than one awesome, long and engaging season long mystery. The show started airing sporadically, and was of course canceled before they could get a full third season in.
I highly recommend blazing through the first two seasons of this show if your looking for a good addicting TV fix. Let the heckling begin, I'm sure I'll address more embarrassing shit I enjoy in future blog entries.
I'll admit it. I spent the entire summer of 2006 catching up on every episode of the CW / UPN, teen noir / detective / awesome drama "Veronica Mars." As far as dramatic teen television goes, I'm not ashamed to contend that this gem was a head above the rest of the crop.
While others fixated on "The O.C." or "Friday Night Lights," for their secret soapish teen drama fix, I myself found fairly latched to this particular brand, solely for it's total dedication to being so damn nerdy, yet incredibly smart, with well written, witty as hell dialogue and solid fuckin addicting story lines.
The show could be basically summed up as a sexed up, t.v. version of Rian Johnson's Brick. The show is completely rooted in detective noir and long winded mystery. The first two seasons of the show followed one overarching mystery that lasted over the entire season. Teen sleuth Veronica Mars (the smoking fucking hot Kristen Bell) navigates through high school bullshit to solve these mysteries (the death of her best friend, her rape, and the death of a school bus load of her classmates) in a episodic narrative page turning fashion akin to shows like "Lost" and "Twin Peaks." Bell's sassy and sci-fi savy (she says "frak" a lot and makes a ton of BSG references...hot) detective is brainy, witty, and for once an intelligent, female protagonist; something that's usually hard to find with shows aimed at this demographic. It's fairly refreshing to watch.
Yet apparently the demographic looking for that sort of refreshing change in formulaic teen TV doesn't exist. UPN forced creator Rob Thomas to dumb down the shows mysteries for the third season. The result was mostly single contained, mystery of the week type episodes, rather than one awesome, long and engaging season long mystery. The show started airing sporadically, and was of course canceled before they could get a full third season in.
I highly recommend blazing through the first two seasons of this show if your looking for a good addicting TV fix. Let the heckling begin, I'm sure I'll address more embarrassing shit I enjoy in future blog entries.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Favorite Albums of All Time : The Walkmen - Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone (2002)
Favorite Song: Wake Up
Favorite Lyric: "They're winning, I know it's not fair, but what is? I'm giving up hope. I've stood in line so many times. How could I do it all again?"
Why?: The Walkmen are a band that strike a chord with me unlike any other. Hell, the title of my blog is the title of one of their songs. The songs on their debut "Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone" are without a doubt the band at their most simplistic and stripped down, and that is what I love about it the most. I feel as if each of their albums suit me for different mood, albeit they are always ho-hum sort of depressed moods at vary levels. The Walkmen's songs exude sort of an honest pessimistic optimism (if that makes any sense) that can just make everything in life seem alright, as self destructive as that sounds. It's an approach, that for me at least, is one of the most honest, down to earth and real things I've heard a band do in the past 10 years or so, it's unmatched. They tell life how it is, no bullshit, in the most poetically, disturbingly accurate way I can imagine. All this talk of the songwriting though isn't meant to overshadow the incredible beautiful music that accompanies it all. It's simple, sparse, haunting, and really does transport you back about 60 years, back to a time that seems a lot simpler and real. Hamilton Leithauser's voice is chalked full of drunken swagger and slurring, and it's perfect for stories he's telling; their ones you can see yourself sitting around drunk rambling on about with good buddies, songs about love, boredom, reality, and the confusion and frustrations of life. Everything down to this albums title is damn near perfect and relevant to me, it really is my favorite album of the 2000's by a long shot.
I really enjoy this snippet from Daytrotter.com about the band, they can describe what I'm trying to say here a whole hell of a lot better. Later on in the article they go on to compare the band to Leonard Cohen, which I have to completely and whole heartily agree with.
Favorite Lyric: "They're winning, I know it's not fair, but what is? I'm giving up hope. I've stood in line so many times. How could I do it all again?"
Why?: The Walkmen are a band that strike a chord with me unlike any other. Hell, the title of my blog is the title of one of their songs. The songs on their debut "Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone" are without a doubt the band at their most simplistic and stripped down, and that is what I love about it the most. I feel as if each of their albums suit me for different mood, albeit they are always ho-hum sort of depressed moods at vary levels. The Walkmen's songs exude sort of an honest pessimistic optimism (if that makes any sense) that can just make everything in life seem alright, as self destructive as that sounds. It's an approach, that for me at least, is one of the most honest, down to earth and real things I've heard a band do in the past 10 years or so, it's unmatched. They tell life how it is, no bullshit, in the most poetically, disturbingly accurate way I can imagine. All this talk of the songwriting though isn't meant to overshadow the incredible beautiful music that accompanies it all. It's simple, sparse, haunting, and really does transport you back about 60 years, back to a time that seems a lot simpler and real. Hamilton Leithauser's voice is chalked full of drunken swagger and slurring, and it's perfect for stories he's telling; their ones you can see yourself sitting around drunk rambling on about with good buddies, songs about love, boredom, reality, and the confusion and frustrations of life. Everything down to this albums title is damn near perfect and relevant to me, it really is my favorite album of the 2000's by a long shot.
I really enjoy this snippet from Daytrotter.com about the band, they can describe what I'm trying to say here a whole hell of a lot better. Later on in the article they go on to compare the band to Leonard Cohen, which I have to completely and whole heartily agree with.
The Walkmen walk and shuffle and juke, their music a corpus of deft reflections of man through the centuries - the dotted line that has met us here from somewhere far off in the distance, only to connect with a new, side-winding or nascent other dotted line on the other side of here. They follow, in both tune and lyric, the never-ending travels of man - no one in particular and no one of any significant importance - just man as he stumbles about out the doors every waking day and finds mischief, confusion, romance, fogginess, temptation and potential enlightenment brewing like a stew before his nose. They seem to subscribe to the idea that you learn something new every day while there are holdovers in the procession of inference and critical processing, of actually digesting those valuable lessons that come with difficulty.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Moon (2009)
Sci-fi flicks these days are all about big budget action and special effects. What happened to the heady curiosity filmmakers used to have when approaching the topic of space? The only recent example of a half decent sci-fi film was Danny Boyle's "Sunshine," which despite it's flaws was a valiant attempt at hearkening back to days of old. Thoughts of Kurbick's "2001," Tarkovsky's "Solaris," and even Cameron's "Alien(s)" came to mind, while watching it, and it was quite refreshing.
Now along comes "Moon," directed by newcomer Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie ?!) and staring THE man, Sam Rockwell. Looks a bit like "2001" (I guess only because of the HAL-esque talking computer companion), yet fresh and trippy. My guess is that it'll be too much for the average theater goers brains to handle so it will only see a very limited release, I hope more projects like this are in the works.
Now along comes "Moon," directed by newcomer Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie ?!) and staring THE man, Sam Rockwell. Looks a bit like "2001" (I guess only because of the HAL-esque talking computer companion), yet fresh and trippy. My guess is that it'll be too much for the average theater goers brains to handle so it will only see a very limited release, I hope more projects like this are in the works.
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