Category: Culture Vulture

Argh! Mind! Blown!

Sometimes A Great Notion (Episode 4.11) was the most depressing BSG episode thus far, and that’s saying a lot when you factor in season 3. It was a fabulous episode in terms of character development, acting, scoring and production. Just such a downer in terms of what happens to our beloved characters.

A number of new tidbits thrown our way – the identity of the final cylon and revelations about Starbuck.

I’ll save the full length review for when I’ve fully digested the episode. Off to listen to the podcast

Transformers

Alien robots are searching for the All Spark, a device which gives them power. The race is on to see which side – the Autobots or the Decepticons – will to the All Spark first and caught in the middle are a group of human beings.

Transformers the movie follows three human stories – a group of soldiers who survived a Decepticon attack on their base, hackers trying to help the government figure who is behind the attacks and a teenager, Sam Witwicki, who unwittingly buys an Autobot car, Bumblebee.


My favorite storyline was that of Sam’s – there is so much humor and Shia LaBeouf is brilliant in this role. The interaction between Sam and the Autobots had me cracking up so many times, especially the scenes when they all go to Sam’s house.

I loved the way Michael Bay treated the robots – each one of them has distinct personalities that even though there wasn’t a lot of characterization you still get the sense of these robots from the cartoon.

So now the thing you’re all waiting for…the action. It was FRAKKING AWESOME. I got chills every time one of the robots transformed. And the havoc that they caused…WOW! I was overwhelmed by all the action in the final showdown but on further viewings, my appreciation for the seamless way the robots interacted with human characters and the sheer awesomeness of these robots fighting has kept on growing.

If it weren’t for the nostalgia of the Transformers cartoon the premise of this movie would just be plain silly. But watching Transformers you really begin to believe that alien robots do exist and that they can transform into regular objects.

Michael Bay, thank you for saving my summer. Up until this point I had really been disappointed with the movies I’ve seen but Transformers totally kicked ass. I’ll even go as far as to say that I’ve forgiven Bay for Pearl Harbor.

Favorite Autobot: Bumblebee
Favorite Decepticon: Barricade
Favorite Scene: Sam trying to deal with both his parents and the Autobots

Jim Carrey impersonates Horatio Caine

Pia showed me this clip of Jim Carrey impersonating CSI: Miami’s Horatio Caine and it’s so frakking hilarious!

I have this theory about why CSI:Miami is considered the most popular show in the world. It’s not the storylines, or the great acting, or even the forensics. It’s Horatio Caine and the mocking that goes with watching David Caruso.

As this clip proves, Caine is the master of cheesy one liners and habits made for a drinking game.

Pia and I used to watch CSI:Miami just to count the number of times Caine would:

  1. twirl his sunglasses before putting them on
  2. put his hands on his hips
  3. twirl his sunglasses, put them on before putting his hands on his hips and then say something prophetic before gliding out of the scene

From watching season 1 the most we counted in this episode was 44 but we stopped when RPN went off the air in Bacolod. But Miss(ed) Manners has a comprehensive drinking game.

Pathfinder

Pathfinder

Pathfinder is the story of a young Viking boy left behind after a deadly battle between the Vikings and the Indians. He is found by an Indian woman and raised in the tribe. Year later, he has to defend the tribe from a group of Norseman intent on killing all the Indians in the settlement.

[rate 3]

My Thoughts on Pathfinder

  1. Vikings are brutal! I know that the Vikings of old were a blood thirsty lot but man, Pathfinder really rammed home that point what with all the sword fights, impalements, torture, etc. One Viking gets his eyes torn out and later after someone sews the eye socket, he cuts of the thread by ramming his sword over it. Ick.

    Even Karl Urban’s character comes up with a number of ingenious ways to kill the Norsemen.

  2. I didn’t realize that Clancy Brown plays a Viking leader (Oh Earth 2 memories).
  3. Dialogue is at a minimum – characters could go minutes without saying a word. I didn’t catch Karl Urban’s character’s name (Ghost) until the credits ran! But with the action, I didn’t really feel the time go past.
  4. Speaking of action, even though the choreography of the fight scenes were good, the cameraman must have come from The Bourne Supremacy School of Film-making. The camera work was jerky and I had a hard time concentrating on the fight scenes to the point where I had to close my eyes to prevent a migraine attack from sensory overload.
  5. The Indian settlement is such a beautiful place. Pia and I were discussing if it would be nice to live there what with the cooler weather.
    The mists over the mountains gave the place an ethereal feel, very lush and very peaceful but with all the Viking attacks, not a safe place to stay, even if there was a half-naked Karl Urban running about.
  6. Pathfinder has one of the cheesiest scenes since I watched Ghost Rider.
    It’s on the same level of cheese as Ghost Rider’s “I will fight fire with fire” with three finger pointing action and “He may my soul but he doesn’t have my spirit” (Pia says: isn’t that one and the same?).
    The delivery of this particular line had us cracking up with laughter in the cinema and every single time we think about it. I won’t mention it here because Pia will be going deeper into that particular scene.

I enjoyed watching Pathfinder, inspite of the bad reviews I’ve read, and the shaky camera action. The one thing that I was most disappointed by was the ending. Up until that point I thought that Karl Urban’s character was going to become the tribe’s pathfinder (at least that what the it seemed what the movie as about).

But he doesn’t! I was looking at Pia and both of us had our mouths open, staring unbelievably at the the screen.
What’s the point of going on this journey with this guy as he struggles between the Indian and Viking culture, vengeance and peace, if there’s no pay off at the end. Sure he gets laid (which is only alluded to on screen, Poor Ghost) and he gets the woman but we know he wants to be the Pathfinder not Mr. Pathfinder.

Eragon

Eragon: Rated - GO

Eragon, a 17-year old boy comes into possession of a dragon, the last of its kind. He journeys to become a dragon rider and fights with the Varden rebels to stand up to the evil king, Galbatorix.

  1. I want a baby dragon. Baby Safira is adorable with her wide eyes and long eyelashes but definately a fully grown dragon would be such a chore to feed. I wonder how many rats it would take to keep a dragon full.
  2. Jeremy Iron totally pwns in this movie. He did the best he could with the dialogue that was given to him and made me care about him. Both Pia and I were disappointed that he died 50 minutes in.
  3. Robert Carlyle was in it! I saw a glimpse of his character, Durza, in the beginning of the film and thought to myself, “Is that Robert Carlyle?” 30 minutes later Pia leans in and says, “Doesn’t he look like Robert Carlyle?” And not 5 minutes later, Loi, Rabang’s sister turns to Pia and asks, “Is that Robert Carlyle?” A testimony to the make-up that he looked familiar but not obviously himself.
  4. Special effects were great. The flying scenes with the dragon gave me a serious case of vertigo.

And now the not so good…

  1. Damn! A lot Most of the dialogue was sooooooo cliched. Lots of eye-rolling and groaning at some of the things being said. Everything seemed so obvious and aimed at a way younger crowd which is a shame because the general plot and characterization are both decent.
  2. Continuity Alert: In one part, Eragon decides that he’s going to save Arya, a rebel princess and goes to the Durza’s stronghold to rescue her. Where did he get cloak? How did he get into this evil guy’s lair without being seen? And on escaping, where did the horses come from? So many questions, so few answers.
  3. John Malkovich is barely in the movie for 5 minutes! He’s just there to demand for Eragon to be caught and then at the end he slices through the map to reveal his own dragon. That’s it!!!
    And to add insult to injury, he’s playing an evil King called Galbatorix! What is he? A left over from the Asterix comics?
  4. Julius kept turning to me and going “Lord of the Rings wannabe” which i half-agree. Some of the scenery evoked a sense of the Lord of the Rings but it need not have been the case.

[rate 2.5]

However, both Pia and I agreed that we enjoyed it more than Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Watch it at the cinema only if there’s nothing better showing.

Nancy Drew Movie

I heard a while back that a Nancy Drew movie was being planned and I was really, really excited because I’m a huge Nancy Drew fan.

Well folks, it looks like the movie will be out this year and I’m disappointed that the producers have chosen to go the teeny-bop route with Emma Roberts (Julia Roberts’ niece is playing the titian-haired detective). For some reason I had Kristen Bell (of Veronica Mars fame) in mind.

The trailer makes Miss Drew out to be a obsessive compulsive, hoity-toity, smarmy know-it-all kid.

Check out the images and the trailer for yourself.

I’ll probably wait for it to come out on DVD to watch it. Do you think the Nancy Drew tv series starring Pamela Sue Martin is out on DVD?

Is it frakking October yet?

Last Sunday I had a six-hour marathon of Battlestar Galatica so I could finally catch up with the whole show. And you know what? I want to watch it all over again.

Aside from the season finale, Lay Down Your Burdens, my favorite episodes of season 2 have to be Downloaded and Final Cut.


Final Cut gave us the opportunity to see into the lives of the men and women aboard Galactica. Shot in documentary-style it provided more insight into the different characters (who knew Lt. Gaeta had a tattoo?!) while introducing more complexity by revealing another human Cylon model.

Downloaded was told from the point of view of the Cylons – showing what happens when a Cylon is reborn. We get to see how the heroes of the war, Caprica Six and Boomer are adjusting to their new bodies and their new lives but at the same time wishing for the past.

In the run up to the Season 3 premiere on October 6, SCI FI will be showing Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far. It will be narrated by President Roslin (Mary McDonnell) and recap what has happened since the start of the show. Also in the works is The Resistance, a 10-part web series to fill in the gaps between the end of Season 2 and the start of Season 3. However there’s no word yet when this will air.