TV for Me

American Idol:: I think Chris Daughtry is going to win. From the beginning I have said they want a guy to win this year so they chose a lot of mediocre girls to compete against the guys. Whatever. I don’t care. I thank American Idol for bringing us Kelly Clarkson. The end.


Lost:: This show pisses me off. I loved the first season on DVD b/c it allowed me to get all addicted to it without commercials and whatever..but watching it on a weekly or tri-weekly basis if they show a re-run.. I can’t do it. The show is good at giving you 50 minutes of boring and then 5 minutes of AMAZING that make you tune in the next week. The smart thing about this show is that the writiers can do ANYTHING they want because the audience is always lost..you don’t know these characters and every episode can change anything about the character or the story..you constantly know nothing while watching this show.


America’s Next Top Model:: I just started watching this show in the middle of this season and somehow Im hooked. It seems so unbelievable how serious the posing and facial expressions and whatever are taken on the show. Tyra Banks is so .. just .. I don’t have any words for her.

Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire

::he’s back

I kept getting confused while I was watching this. I kept wondering if I was watching the right Harry Potter movie because characters kept mentioning Azkaban and then I would think about ‘The Prisoner of Azkaban’ and then..it was all in my head. I was watching the Goblet of Fire. This movie scared me. If I had children they would not be watching this movie unless they were over 12. Voldemort! I was so frightened seeing him take form. Ah! Run, Harry!

What I like about this world of Harry Potter is the huge scope of imagination involved. Imagine if there was this amazing school for wizards out in the mountains with pieces of art that come to life and ghosts floating the halls. Potions and curses and magic and the basic good vs. evil theme. Love it. I can imagine being a true Harry Potter fan dying everytime news was released about one of the new books being released and news about the next book being a movie. Glad I’m not so addicted. Very glad, indeed. Good movie, look forward to watching (not reading) the next installment.

9 out of 10 stars

Derailed

::don’t miss your train

Ah, Derailed. Where do I begin? I am so happy I didn’t have the time to see this in the theaters because I wanted to. If I had I think I would have been very pissed off at spending my money on this piece of work. Meet Joe, played by Clive Owen. The characters name was not Joe, but it might as well have been, wouldn’t make a difference. This everyday guy with a wife in a marriage on the rocks, strained even more by his daughter with a bad case of diabetes. Joe meets a pretty lady on the train one day, Jennifer Aniston. Wow. Not. Why this movie didn’t work for me? I kept waiting for a good satisfactory twist. I kept waiting for something, anything to happen. Every time something happened I would ask, “is that the big twist? Is there another one? If that is the big twist I’m going to be angry.” Stupid plot put to the side – I don’t buy Jennifer Aniston as a sexpot, I just don’t. For this role I suppose she was supposed to just be the pretty girl that can be sexy to the average Joe..which is how our guy gets lured in..but, it’s Jen Aniston. No.
There is one line in the movie that is delivered so awkwardly..so full of ..’I don’t know how to be sexy, but maybe if I say it like this it will sound sexy’ from Jen Aniston..

Jen Aniston as sexy: “I think…(awkward pause) ...I want to fuck you.”

Maybe it was because I just never want to hear her say “I want to fuck you” – maybe it was the way the line was written -- maybe Jen Aniston shouldn’t be in this movie. And then the two actors start kissing all sloppy and hot the way people do when they’re so turned on because they’re so desperate and doing something wrong. Eck. No spoilers for this movie, not even worth it. It is worth mentioning the talents of the guy from Irreversible and Ocean’s Twelve, Vincent Cassel, was wasted in this movie. Clive Owen, please, I love you. You were wonderful in SinCity and Closer. What’s this..? Derailed and Inside Man. Please, no more taking roles in movies with “stunning twists” that aren’t actually that stunning. Thanks.
I was not a fan of this movie.

6 out of 10 stars

Irreversible

:: do you want revenge

Yay! A French movie. Rented this movie in order to share it with a friend that I am exposing to the wide and vast world of French, German, and British cinema. Someone recommended Irreversible to me in a film class a year or so ago and I watched it, a little confused, a little annoyed with the camerawork, but in the end I liked it. This time around watched it with an idea of what was to come and was able to dissect it more than the last time. So – we see two guys who live above the gay club, The Rectum – how appropriate, right? And then the camera spins and takes us to The Rectum where we meet the two main characters of the film running through the club looking for ‘Tenia’ .. and I guess that means worm in French because people kept yelling back things about having ringworms in their asses. I like that this movie is in reverse. There are some fun moments in the movie one involving a horde of prostitutes and transsexual prostitutes chasing two guys down the street in a rage. There are two very explicit scenes in the film, one is a murder, the other is a rape. Difficult scenes to stomach. One thing I don’t understand about the film is why the director felt the need to make one feel as if they’re going to have an epileptic seizure watching the opening scene..wow, I had to look away. It didn’t make me feel anymore connected to the film or the rage and confusion the characters were going through. Felt like a waste of precious film. I like this movie.

8.5 out of 10 stars

A History of Violence

:: we never got to experience high school together

I really wanted to see this movie in the theater, but never got the chance. Thank you, Netflix! I’m thinking the movie is about a small town guy who has a history of violence. I’m thinking this means he spent some time in the Marines working special-ops and killing innocent civilians before he came to this little town where he runs a diner and meets his wife and raises a family. I thought when some bad guys come to rob his restaurant and he kicks their asses it’s because of his Marine training and then the whole town knows he has kick ass skills and people are afraid of him. Or something. The movie was not that. The movie was good. I was engaged the entire time..except for Ed Harris’ bum eye, I wasn’t a fan of that or Ed Harris as a “bad” guy either. Viggo Mortenson and Maria Bello had some chemistry. Aside from the cool violent action sequences, the scenes that stand out in my mind are the sex scenes. There are two and they are both longer than your average sex scene and explicit. Very much like a European sex scene rather than a Hollywood sex scene. What surprised me about the first scene is how I realized I couldn’t remember ever seeing the 69-position portrayed on-screen outside of a porno. What surprised me about the second scene was how rough and uninhibited it was. The music is swelling and the actors are going at it..and just when you think the scene is ending and the music is mellowing, it swells again and the sex continues. I think I liked this movie. I don’t know that I would purchase it, but I would recommend it.

8.5 out of 10 stars

Silent Hill

:: It’s raining ash.

I went into this movie with no idea whatsoever of what this movie was about. I knew it had a thrilling theme and was based on a video game. That’s it.
Well. The leading lady was simple enough to portray your everyday mom, the daughter wasn’t a cutie pie like the kid in ‘Dark Water’ therefore I didn’t care what happened to the kid or how mom would manage to save her from Silent Hill. Oh, by the way, Silent Hill is a place. A town which has been condemned after a fire ravaged the city and coal still burns underground so it’s an unsafe place to live. So, the little girl has nightmares, sleepwalks, and cries out, “Silent Hill” in her sleep. Long story short mom takes the little girl to Silent Hill (illegally) to find out why her adopted daughter is having these night terrors.

Wow, I’m bored already just writing the exposition.

The production design on this film is amazing. The town Silent Hill was totally creepy and from what my friend told me looked just like the video game. What creeped me out about the town of Silent Hill and it’s raining ash was how much it reminded me of what I imagine a concentration camp to look and feel like in 1942. The ash falling from the sky made me uncomfortable and all I could think of was freezing cold weather at Auschwitz and people being burned in crematoriums. But, that’s just my take on it.

Back to the story..mom takes the little girl to Silent Hill, nearly crashes, passes out and when she wakes up the girl is gone. Naturally she goes looking for her, but not without a little harassment from your neighborhood butch-but-cute-dyke police officer who happens to be wearing an all leather S&M-esque uniform. I swear. They didn’t explicitly call her a dyke, but come on. It’s the underlying theme for the subplot – she would later be burned at the stake.
The ladies go about the town looking for the girl, they run into some burning babies or something. My favorite part - a gang of funky evil twitching nurses with syringes and scalpels.

For most of the movie I didn’t know what was going on and the filmmakers didn’t do anything creative to explain to me what was going on. I guess if you’d played the game you would know what was happening and why..but for the non-gamer I was lost. Where I felt this movie failed the most was with a flashback sequence just past the halfway point of the movie. Because at this point the viewer has no idea why certain things are taking place in the movie. So, how do they explain what they couldn’t figure out how to write into the film in a decent way..? A long flashback, of course!! What better way to tell you what you just watched so that it makes sense. A cheap and easy way out, I say.
That’s all I have to say about Silent Hill.

6 out of 10 stars

Lucky Number Slevin

…I am not Nick.

Watching previews for this movie made me want to see it..but sometime after the film came out the studio changed the way the film was advertised and made it seem ‘serious’. So, went to see Lucky Number Slevin. No real expectations except some sort of “twist” .. well, the performances were good. Josh Hartnett was pretty hot in a towel for a sequence of scenes. Morgan Freeman and Sir Ben Kingsley made good enemies and I would have loved to have seen them put to use in such a way in a better film. That said, there is also a kindness about both men that made it hard to believe they’d ever be any sort of Kingpins.
Bruce Willis was present but didn’t leave any last affect on me or the film.
No spoilers necessary for this movie. It’s worth renting and watching with a few drinks one day.

7 out of 10 stars