Category: Arts & Entertainment
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An Inconvenient Doofus
It’s an old and tired cliche that Hollywood producers are greedy, clueless, and artistically bankrupt, eager to cash in on something without really understanding it. But apparently it’s not enough of a cliche that there’s a standout example, at least there’s not one I can think of. When you think of gimmicky plot twists, you…
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Too Hot for Television
Last night Fox aired the two-part pilot for its series “Drive”, with another episode tonight. It’s about an illegal cross-country Cannonball Run-style car race for 32 million dollars, where the racers are coerced into participating, spies hired by the race operators are everywhere, and death is one of the punishments for finishing last (presumably). It’s…
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Reel Missing
I got even more to say about Grindhouse. Cory made the point that people are trying to claim if you didn’t like Death Proof, you didn’t “get” it. You can see that in a lot of the internet reviews, and I’m sure if I had a job where I actually talked to people, I’d be…
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Grindhouse
Man, Grindhouse pissed me off. I knew as soon as I heard about it that this was a movie that’d have me shifting uncomfortably in my seat, but I thought it was going to be from the gore and cheap scares. Not out of annoyance. The “problem” was Quentin Tarantino’s half of the double feature,…
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I can’t stop it I don’t know how it works!
I watched Thank You For Smoking a few weeks ago, but I was so let down by the ending I didn’t know what to make of it. Surprisingly, the whole Don Imus scandal puts it into perspective. Thank You For Smoking plays out as a well-produced, well-performed, cleverly-written story that seems to be building up…
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One of Them
I think I missed the cut-off date for talking about this week’s episode of “Lost,” but it’s kind of difficult. For one thing, I feel guilty. Maybe I’m seeing something that’s not there, but it feels like the show’s in desperate-to-please mode, like a dog that’s been scolded for getting on the couch too many…
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Hellboy + Obakemono = Nerd Bliss
Normally, seeing my favorite things come together three separate times in one week would be downright eerie, but I don’t think Hellboy: Sword of Storms counts. For one thing, it’s old news. It was aired on Cartoon Network back in October, and due to a TiVo mishap, I’m just now catching it on DVD. For…
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So Like Us
Speaking of set detail and “Battlestar Galactica,” I think I may have uncovered more shocking evidence that the colonists have connections to Earth. This has all happened before, and it will all happen again: Like all of the Battlestars, the Galactica relies on NEC’s Multisync Series for the brightest, sharpest LCD displays in the entire…
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Many anal-retentive Bothans died to bring us this information.
I was just watching a few minutes of the original “Battlestar Galactica” series, and because I’m a nerd, I noticed that the displays and panels in the Vipers were full of English text. Because I’m a really big nerd, I started to wonder what that means in the context of the series as a whole.…
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Idiot Box
Back when I was writing columns for SFist, one of the things I kept harping on was that Apple should make a DVR. If they could do for television what they did for the iPod, that’d be huge, right? An interface for TV as slick as OS X, without as many of the weird limitations…
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No Post Left Behind
Even if I weren’t too busy to ramble on at length about TV shows, there’s just not a lot to say about this week’s episode of “Lost.” Just look at the final score: Pro About a minute of marginally interesting character development from Locke Cool, creepy scene with the smoke monster flashing itself at Juliet…
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Two more of my favorite things
The planets must be aligning or something. I saw that two more of my favorite things are coming together: the RiffTrax guys released a track for the pilot episode of “Lost”. I haven’t listened to it yet, but of course I bought it the second I saw it and realized what it was. This RiffTrax…