Later Leno

May 29, 2009

I don’t much like Leno. I find his comedy flat, his interviews timid. He had Obama on and he spoon fed him pre-approved drivel. Now, I don’t expect him to be tearing into his guests, but do you honestly see him doing something like Letterman did to Phoenix? Hell no. Leno would never captialize on a situation like that.

Maybe he was viciously awesome sometime in the past before I ever saw him. Maybe he wasn’t so dead inside yet, caring more about his incredible collection of cars then he did about actually entertaining people. I mean, he was given the job over David fucking Letterman, and David (despite being lacking nowadays) was an incredible comedian and host. I hear it’s because of Leno’s “everyman” persona, but what everyman has a gigantic mansion and an airplane hangar filled with over a hundred vintage cars and motorcycles?

With Kimmel and Colbert, there are better options to watch from 11:30 to 12:30 so unless those are on reruns I don’t much care to tune into NBC. But the man somehow became a legend, and that legend ends (sort of) tonight with Conan “Cone-zone” O’Brien being the final guest to transition into Conan taking over the show.

I say watch it for Conan, because if nothing else he’ll classy up the joint. Hopefully fans will continue to stick around for Conan because he honestly is superior to Leno in every way, from an entertainment standpoint to simple likability.

So, farewell Chin, we’ll see you around…in primetime this fall, when NBC really loses its fucking mind.

It's kind of like the tombstone for NBC, isn't it?

It's kind of like the tombstone for NBC, isn't it?

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Posted by Sang

Top 10 movie and television pet peeves

May 23, 2009

After watching Criminal Minds, there were two scenes where a girl can escape chooses to, well, not to. Well, she chooses not to in one scene and just acts stupid in another. Watching this had me thinking of other stupid things characters do in movies and television that completely infuriates me because anyone with half a brain would know better. Here are some of the things that came to mind, though I’m sure I’m missing a bunch.

  1. Tripping. When a character has a clear path for escape, probably in a forest, they trip. It’s not a “holy shit my shin just splintered from my leg” kind of trip. Just an “awwww man, I scraped my knee” kind of fall. But for some mysterious reason, the inconvenience of the scraped knee incapacitates the character just long enough for whatever bad guy to catch up. This is stupid and lazy writing.
  2. Doors Ajar. Whether snooping around a house or opening a safe, there’s a 95% chance that the characters in a movie will forget to close a door all the way. This will invariably lead to someone listening in or see something is amiss. This will then lead to a completely unnecessary confrontation, which will lead to me sternly shaking my head. It always pisses me off when the show or movie makes it obvious the door isn’t closed all the way. Like it’s taunting me. Well fuck you movie and or television. Fuck you and your doors.
  3. Separating. Oh hey, I think there’s a murderer/monster/alien/hungry Oprah somewhere in the woods/factory/house/hell. I think the best way to go about is to split into smaller teams, because that’s the safest solution that comes to mind. This is obviously the most efficient way of finding him/her/it/Oprah. What’s that? How are you going to survive if you do confront it alone? Fuck if I know.
  4. Choosing to Go In. I’ve been weened on enough movies to know never to enter anything derelict looking, even if I’m fully armed, have a band full of friends, and am immortal. Even in real life, where it’s 80% sure I won’t be attacked by gremlins, I will outright, and quite rudely, refuse to enter an abandonned house or factory setting. I don’t care if it would possibly get me some poon tang afterwards, I’ll gladly spend the night with good ol’ lefty to spare me the risk of getting cannibal raped.
  5. Shortcuts. Why? Why take unmapped shortcuts when the shortcut leads into some dark road, dodgy looking farmland or a goddamned dessert? In the age of Mapquest, you don’t need Rusty the pegg-legged gas station manager’s “secret” route. In fact, why are you even talking to Rusty? If nothing else, he’s probably a pedophile.
  6. Poetic Narration. I’m not one of those film-snobs who condemn narration movies. I rather like it, but only when it’s good (Forrest Gump or Shawshank). But when it bundles pretentious quotes from philosophers or poets, or worse the poetic ramblings of the script writer, then you have me immediately despising the movie or episode right at the outset. Because I tend to hold grudges, chances are I’ll hate the end result.
  7. Symbolism. I get it. He’s supposed to represent a saviour or something. You don’t need him dying in a crucified position. Or if the girl just lost her virginity, I don’t need shots of flowers blooming. I’m not a fan of gratuitous metaphor. You know why? Because that’s just the filmmaker thinking I’m stupid and that without 54 allusions to the bible or something I won’t understand that’s what he or she was going for.
  8. Not Escaping. Similar to tripping, only you don’t even make the attempt to escape in the first place. Like I mentioned, this was also from Criminal Minds where the girl had about five minutes where the mentally deminished murderer was 20 feet away and couldn’t even see her. Run you dumb kidnapped skank, run your prostitute legs off. Even if I liked the character up until that point, I’ll be amped for his or her death if the chance to run like hell isn’t capitalized on.
  9. Not Killing the Hero. I get that killing the hero would end the movie, but when it’s revealed that the villain’s ultimate goal is for their death it kind of puts the rest of the movie into perspective. All the failed opportunities and boneheaded moves are starkly illuminated. This was most recently demonstrated in Terminator Salvation when (spoilers) Skynet doesn’t kill Kyle Reese or John Connor despite numerous chances to. Why lure them to Skynet’s HQ in the first place when you had a sleeper Terminator beside John Connor the entire way there?
  10. Not Killing the Villain. Unless you’re fighting a ghost, make sure the fucker is dead. If you are fighting a ghost, get at least three exorcisms done. Don’t just walk away from a burning house thinking just because you left the body in there that it still is. See the body, and give him or her a shot to the brain. Hell, four shots. Don’t half ass this. In war, soldiers check the bodies of their opponents and stab or shoot it even if it isn’t breathing. Whenever I see this happening in a movie, I want to kill the hero. Well, throttle because killing is wrong.

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Posted by Sang

Insomnia = Lost season 6 prediction

May 19, 2009
See you in another life, brotha'

See you in another life, brotha'

It’s 4:30 in the morning and the sandman seems to have skipped over me tonight so I’ve just been watching some informercials. And then a new thought on the Lost finale struck me.

Where the hell was Desmond? But it’s all becoming crystal clear now.

I fully believe Desmond will become the most important character in Lost’s final season. There’s simply been too much build up with the character from a plot stand point for him not to be. Faraday drove home the point that for whatever reason Desmond existed outside of the time stream, able to remember multiple time events. This means that whatever becomes of Jack’s plan, Desmond will still remember everything. Because of this, I do believe that Jack’s plan ultimately succeeds andhe new season will open up with everyone landing in LAX just as scheduled on that first Oceanic flight. Everybody goes about their lives, Jack to bury his dad, Kate to jail, etc, as if nothing happens. Things finally seem okay.

And then somewhere in England a Desmond who never went on that boat race, never crashed on the island, and never reunited with Penny will suddenly “remember” everything that happened in that other timeline. He’ll remember what happened on the island, marrying Penny and having a son. And now all of that is gone and I believe it’ll be his drive to undo what Jack did, to save his marriage and child, that will be key next season.

If I had control of the series, this would definitely be the route I would go, at least for the early parts of the season. Go from last season’s relative spectacle to a more intimate story of love and lost with Desmond, which has time itself steal everything away. This would be a kickass plot thread if the writers choose to go that route. A Desmond that’s desperately trying to fix time itself for the sake of his never born kid. That’s epic material right there.

Of course, that’s just my 2 cents.

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Posted by Sang

24 season 7 finale thoughts and spoilers

May 18, 2009
Jack Bauer once stepped into quicksand. The quicksand couldn't escape and nearly drowned.

Jack Bauer once stepped into quicksand. The quicksand couldn't escape and nearly drowned.

Having the pleasure of watching tonight’s 24 finale a few hours early, here are some of my preliminary thoughts, strewn about with copious amounts of SPOILERS. So, continue reading after you watch it, or simply want to know the details. Hopefully not for villainous deeds like ruining it for your 24 fanboy buddies.

Would Jack Bauer ruin the season finale of his closest friends favourite TV series? Well, unless that friend is a suspected terrorist, no he wouldn’t. Be a Jack Bauer, not a Jackass. Of course, this is all your prerogative.

NOTE: Now that the season is over and done with, I guess this went from an early look to just a plain old opinion piece, though you can take it as a sort of written Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the finale.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Sang

Chuck renewed!

May 17, 2009

chuck_lglYou probably can’t see it, but I’m doing a little dance of joy with my feet while typing this. NBC’s decided to keep Chuck around for another season, though a shortened one at only 13 episodes. Still, 13 episodes is infinitely better than no episodes.

Similar to Dollhouse’s renewal, it’s coming back with a much reduced budget, so expect some cast cuts and a reduction in action extravaganzas, though the show was never really known for that. As long Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski and Adam Baldwin are all on board I’m sure they can kick some ass with whatever reduced budget they have on hand.

This has really been a weekend of plesant surprises, with two shows that were all but cancelled being given another chance. Hopefully Chuck can pick up some momentum so that it won’t put its fans through another stint of anxiety overload next year. Dollhouse, on the other hand, will probably continue to suffer at the ratings sinkhole known as Friday nights.

Michael Ausiello over at Entertainment Weekly also speculates the show will be”scaling back the number of episodes several members of the show’s stellar supporting cast will appear in and, per one insider, possibly eliminating one actor altogether (R.I.P. Anna Wu?). The show is also expected to cut two of its staff writers.”

Unfortunate news, but necessary if they show wants to stay on the air.

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Posted by Sang

Fox officially renews Dollhouse!

May 16, 2009
What happened toyou Whedon? I thought you were cool.

Killer

Good ol’ Variety just reported that, beyond all logic but to my immense surprise, that Fox has decided to give Dollhouse a second 13-episode run. Despite the show’s ratings decline each week (with the finale ending on the series’ lowest note) and cutting an entire episode from airing, Fox saw something it wanted to save. It may just be a courtesy second season for Joss Whedon, I don’t care. I’m just excited by the fact that the show somehow beat all the odds.

Unfortunately, it’s still slated for a Friday timeslot, so it isn’t exactly going to be growing. You can tell this is an expensive show to make, so I don’t get why it’s being kept on the Friday night death slot where unless you’re ghost whisperering or a reality show, you’re almost guaranteed to lose money. This would work awesome as a lead in or lead out for 24, like Fox had originally planned for the show before deciding to have a themed Friday night with Terminator.

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Posted by Sang

Battle of the finales

May 15, 2009
That's a deal breaker

That's a deal breaker

With all the finales nearly up, I’ve been bombarded with a whole bunch of shows trying to finish up their run. On the one hand, it’s pretty much been a consecutive string of really high quality programming, on the other hand, most of my favourite series are done until the fall (or forever). So how did they fare? Here’s my countdown of the top 5 finales over the past week. Chances are it’ll be revised depending on whether 24 or Ugly Betty’s finales are up to snuff.

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Posted by Sang

“What’s done, is done,” goes the Lost finale

May 14, 2009
This picture was taken when Matthew Fox still cared

This picture was taken when Matthew Fox still cared

I’ve been pretty vocal about how stupendously awesome this season of Lost has been. So enthused was I that it was simply inconceivable that the show could’ve lived up to the self induced hype.

And it didn’t. Not that it wasn’t any good, it definitely was, but that nothing mind blowing happened. What was in the metal case those mysterious people who keep asking “what lies in the shadow of the statue” I called early on, and so when they make their ‘big’ reveal it was more “huh, that’s cool,” than “Oh my fucking baby Jesus!” As for finally revealing who Jacob was? That was also a pretty big let down, what with him being an even bigger mystery now than he was before. Oh, so he’s been in the background of every main characters life? *Yawn*

A positive from the ho-hum Jacob reveal is the realization of the audience that the thing Locke and Ben had seen in the cabin wasn’t Jacob, but rather the disembodied ghost of some dude who has a thing about finding loopholes to kill Jacob. That was a pretty neat turn of events, finding out Locke was being manipulated by the bad guy this whole time.

I was also glad Miles pointed out that maybe, just maybe, what Jack was planning on doing with the bomb might be the cause of the event, not the prevention. I always get annoyed when characters don’t point out this fallacy in time travel stories. Too bad apparently nobody paid attention to our poor Asian ghost hunter.

It was nice seeing Jack and Sawyer finally throwing the gloves off and having at each other, but the fight was just this side of satisfying, with it ending abruptly. It was bloody and intense, but it didn’t last long enough. Back in the present (well, two years ago) there was just a lot of walking, cryptic conversations and a broken path of ash. Not exactly the most interesting of events.

As for Juliette’s ‘death’, I knew instantly that it was a red herring because there was no requisite Sad Lost Theme playing while, or shortly after, she ‘died’, all while everything is moving in slow motion. This has become such a troupe of Lost that without it, unless you see someone being shot and confirmed dead (or throttled by a smoke monster), you can’t be sure they’re actually dead.

Well, what about the patented Lost cliffhanger? Well, this ain’t no “We have to go back!” It’s no moving island. Just a rock, a nuke and a white light. A real big let down that doesn’t exactly leave you salivating for next season’s premier. Especially with the very previous scene had someone saying, “they’re coming.” Kind of ruins the, “are they going back to the future or aren’t they?” debate that could’ve happened.

In the end, it was a perfectly serviceable episode of Lost. Shit happened, mysteries revealed, more mysteries added, mysterious Egyptian tombs, etc. The usual. But for a supposedly explosive two hour finish to what’s been an astonishingly great season, it left a lot to be desired.

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Posted by Sang

Lost finale…WATCH IT

May 13, 2009

lost-20cast

Saying its been one crazy fucking season would put it lightly. Lost went from the mysterious “what the hell’s happening show” to the mysterious “it’s a fucking time travelling show?”

And damn if it hasn’t been a fun ride. It’s probably handled the sensitive matter of time travel better than any science fiction show has, setting up concrete rules that it has yet to break and that makes sense with the continuity, to an extent, of the previous seasons. You can’t change the past, and that’s that. No matter what you do, what happened, happened. A simple solution to the Grandfather paradox. You can’t kill the grandfther, or in this case Benjamin Linus, in the past because he’s alive in the present.

It’ll be tonight’s 2 hour finale that sees if what has so far been a steady adherence to the ‘rules’ of time travel unravels or not. With what’s happened so far, I doubt Jack will succeed in his plans to blow up the island before they had ever crashed there, therefore undoing everything. One, because that would be the biggest fucking cop out in TV history and two, there’s still one more season.

Whatever happens, this is going to be one crazy episode. If you haven’t yet, you have have roughly five hours to catch up on the season. Wikipedia helps.

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Posted by Sang

Worth your attention: Fringe

May 13, 2009
Like the X-Files, only less aliens

Like the X-Files, only less aliens

Now that the first season is over and done with, how did Fox’s attempt at a contemporary X-Files fare? Better than I expected. Coming from the men behind the new (and in my opinion, best) Star Trek movie, Fringe shares more than a passing similarity to Fox’s previous sci-fi procedural.

There’s the FBI and there’s wild and crazy shit happening. What separates Fringe of Files, though, is its underlying serialized nature. Sure, X-Files had the whole Mulder’s sister being abducted story but it meandered over nine seasons and never really resolved. Here you can tell Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman have a very specific idea they want to hit and these seemingly random ‘cases of the week’ all add up to something bigger, and even crazier than Abrams other batshit crazy series, Lost. If you haven’t seen the ending, or the show, yet I’ll be getting into spoilers…..now.

Fringe has a dense mythology. Not too shabby for what started off as a monster of the week type of fare. In fact, I almost stopped watching early on because it didn’t seem to be leading anywhere. Just random shit happening every week and the heroes come in a solve the case. Pretty much a sci-fi CSI and nothing more.

But then at around episode nine or ten, you realize that almost everything that’s happened mattered! You realize these strange events are being set up by a shady organization preparing to battle some sort of extra-dimensional war. That children had been doped with drugs to become soldiers in this war. That the grotesqueries happening in the Boston region was all a giant power grab by a disgruntled scientist.

Once the show revealed its hand, I was pretty much hooked. It helps that the show also has one of the better casts on TV. Anna Torv as Special Agent (are all FBI agents special?) Dunham is convincing, though she did have a slow start. It’s nice watching Torv grow into the role. Joshua Jackson is surprisingly fun to watch as Peter Bishop. Snarky, nihilistic and sarcastic. He just might erase his constant tag as “that guy from Dawson’s Creek” yet! Most notable, though, is John Noble as the crazy, forgetful and in a weird way adorable Walter Bishop. Some may find his constant non-sequiturs and irrelevant comments off putting, but I ate it up. He brings a lightness to every scene without being cheesy.

While the best new show on TV, it’s not without its flaws. For one, it seems almost every case is solved with Walter remembering some obscure past experiment he had tinkered with. Takes away investigative ingenuity when you have a walking deus ex machina. There’s also some very questionable plot points. The fact that Leonard Nimoy’s William Bell is currently inhabiting an entirely different dimension is a relatively tough pill to swallow. Even the X-Files didn’t get this crazy. Not even Lost’s time travelling is this crazy. I’m not quite sure if this is a good crazy or a jumping the shark crazy yet.

Still, it’s a great show, and seeing that Fox has already greenlit a full second season new viewers can go in knowing the story will be continuing, while those who were around since the beginning like me feel fulfilled and can eagerly anticipate the fall.

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Posted by Sang

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