Terminator Salvation

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Favorite Albums of All Time: Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die (1994)

Favorite Song: "Gimme the Loot"

Favorite Lyric: "If I wasn't in the rap game, I'd probably have a key knee deep in the crack game. Because the streets is a short stop, either your slingin crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot."

Why? I don't listen to much rap these days, its such a bloated over saturated market of people trying to imitate the genre's for fathers, but in doing so never paying any homage or respect, and rather are just jerkin themselves off as the next latest and greatest. The thing about Notorious BIG that I've always respected is that you actually believe him, his songs are honest, humble, and a true portrait of rags to riches success. BIG isn't some rapper who claims he was from the ghetto and actually grew up in the suburbs, he lived a tough life, and he's one of the few rappers who could actually convey this without sounding like a total tool. That said the songs on "Ready to Die" are about a lot of the same things other rappers of the era were singing about: big booty hoes, smoking grass, violence and drug dealing, stuff that when coming out of most others mouths can come across misogynistic, asinine and just plain laughable. BIG actually had a sense of humor about these things and his songs are more of a celebration of life. He was just a happy dude who was thrilled he didn't have to sell drugs to feed his daughter anymore. I still love the look on peoples faces when I can out of no where recite word for word "Gimme the Loot" and "Juicy," fairly priceless. See also Nas-Illmatic, one of the only other 90's Rap Albums I can call a favorite.

Favorite Albums of All Time: Misfits - Walk Among Us (1982)

Favorite Song: They're all good

Favorite Lyric: "Brains for dinner, Brains for lunch, Brains for breakfast, Brains for brunch, Brains at every single meal, Why cant we have some guts, HEY HEY HEY"

Why?: Maybe its because i've listened to this album a good 20 times in my car over the last few days (it only clocks in at around 25 mins), but every song on this album is golden. Every single song is a sing along anthem, and about the best things you could ask for: zombies, murder, brains, martians, murder, satan...you know, cool shit like that. Few albums get me as amped up as "Walk Among Us," Danzig's voice has the uncanny ability to make me shout at every utterance of the word "oi" or "hey" and pound my fist on anything with in site (frequently the steering wheel). The album itself is a perfect exercise in punk, short sweet and too the fucking point with no bullshit, and when it's over you don't know what hit you, but you have a bloodlust for more. The bands taste for theatrics and schlocky horror and sci-fi are what got me into them the first place, their have been many imitators of the "horror punk" genre but no one will ever be able to touch the success of their style, and dedication to the craft of it, with a ten foot pole.

Favorite Albums of All Time : Leonard Cohen - Songs From a Room (1969)

Favorite Song: "The Old Revolution" and "Story of Issac"
Favorite Lyric: "Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows"
Why?: Leonard Cohen is a fucking poet. Songwriters are songwriters, but Leonard Cohen is actually truly, first and foremost, a poet, with the aid of simple, apt, and appropriate musical accompaniment. Amongst Cohen's discography, "Songs from a Room" is the one that stands out to me the most. It's such a musically simple album, but the stories its songs tell are some of the most heartbreaking, hopeful and honest, ones about the human condition I have ever came across. Good album for late night pondering.