Remember how I recently praised Demetri Martin’s upcoming new Comedy Central series, “Important Things with Demetri Martin”? Well, now’s your chance to see that I wasn’t bluffing about its hilarity…
Month: January 2009 (Page 5 of 27)
Come on out, you tinfoil-wearing conspiracy theorists. After playing coy for the first six seasons, “24” has finally delivered an episode that does what the show had previously been reluctant to do: hit us where we live. Where we all live.
But first thing’s first: Save Freckles! (Insert Ferris Bueller water tower joke here.) Her predicament was actually more dire than I made it out to be, and she had stopped breathing by the time 4B and Chloe arrived. The scene created a clip show of sorts in my head, a History of Cinema Resuscitations. I thought of Ed Harris pounding the bejeezus out of Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio in “The Abyss,” which is still one of the most powerful scenes I think I’ve ever seen. Then Chloe pulls out the syringe filled with adrenalin, and I thought: what on earth did we do before “Pulp Fiction”? That movie really did rewrite the rules, didn’t it?
My next thought, by the way, was of Nicolas Cage injecting himself in the heart with the VX gas antidote in “The Rock.” Anyone else have that same thought?
Emerson is taken out after foolishly putting a gun to Jack’s head, which did not surprise me one bit. Jack and Tony were asking way too many questions, and it was only a matter of time before Emerson decided to call them on it. Tony’s now in charge, but he also knows, after the botched attempt on his life, that Col. Dubaku has no further use for him. Prime Minister Matobo/Bassett is now in play with a wire (Chloe, once again, gets the line of the week with “No, I’m a stay-at-home-mom” as she’s putting the chip on one of his teeth), but something tells me that Jack and Tony need to worry more about Freckles than they do the Prime Minister. You just know that she’s going to spill the beans to someone before the next hour is over, and blow their cover.
“Seriously, did you read my file? If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Now shut up and marry me.”
As for the other B-story, I was stunned when SS Agent Gedge actually succeeded with half of his plan to kill Samantha and the First Man, and man, was his murder of Samantha brutal. I hate seeing pretty girls die, but to be fair, she was a dead girl walking from the very beginning. At the same time, I watched Gedge throwing the rope over the rafters and thought, “Isn’t this crime scene going to look just a tad suspicious?” Seriously, you just know that the forensics people on any of the “CSI” staffs would see right through that ruse and suspect foul play. But hey, Gedge was young; maybe he hadn’t done enough killing yet to have a feel for the subtle.
And now, the main story: President Taylor knew an attack was imminent, and refused to stand down to a butcher, even though doing so meant risking the lives of innocent Americans. This is about as unwinnable a position as one person can be in. If she capitulates to General Candyman, then she’s admitting that terrorism works as a form of diplomacy, and opens the door for anyone to take a shot at squeezing us for this or that. If she holds her ground, and lives are lost – and they were, in the form of two colliding planes, and possibly a power plant somewhere in Ohio (I’ve never heard of the city, and I live in Ohio) – then she’s the President that had the chance to stop it but chose not to.
Sound familiar? The President that had a horrific attack happen on their watch, with the world speculating how much they knew before it happened? Uh huh, they just went there.
Granted, the circumstances are much more black-and-white here – Bush wasn’t dealing with rampant corruption, or the dreaded CIP device – but I never thought “24” would get this close to real life, ever. I have to think that an episode like this is going to get the 9/11 conspiracy chatter going again. I’m not sure there is a point to getting it started again, but I don’t expect that to stop people from wondering what Bush “knew.” Mind you, I was not W’s biggest fan, but here’s the thing: whatever it is that Bush knows, you can bet that it’s something you don’t ever want to know. Just sayin’.
I either wasn’t paying enough attention, or there wasn’t a single “Damn it” this week. Can anyone confirm this?
Jack finally killed someone, yay! The streak is over. And from the looks of the preview for next week, he makes up for lost time. Ehhhhhxcellent….
With each subsequent “Super Friends” set that emerges from the Warner Brothers vaults, my childhood memories are tarnished a little bit more. I spent more Saturday mornings in front of the television that I’d care to count, held rapt by the adventures of Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the Wonder Twins, but as I revisit those adventures now, I’m really, really disappointed with how poorly they’ve held up for me. Maybe it’s just because the world of superhero animation changed so dramatically with the premiere of “Batman: The Animated Series” in 1992 that it’s hard to take the Super Friends’ adventures seriously anymore. That’s not to say that you won’t find yourself experiencing plenty of fun flashbacks with the heroes’ various puzzles, magic tricks, and safety lessons, but the segments with actual storylines will result in little more than giddy laughter at their ridiculousness.
There’s only one special feature, but as ever for these “Super Friends” sets, it’s a good one: “The Wonder Twins Phenomenon,” which features talking-head contributions from Doug Goldstein and Tom Root (“Robot Chicken”), Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn (“Attack of the Show”), super-writer Paul Dini, original “Super Friends” writers Alan Burnett and Rich Fogel, and animation historians Jerry Beck and Andy Mangels. Everyone offers their usual blend of childhood reminiscences, first-hand experiences from the animation trenches, and complete and total snark…and, in truth, the combination is exactly what The Wonder Twins deserve. There’s even a brief discussion about Zan and Jayna’s predecessors, Wendy and Marvin, and how inappropriate it was for a couple of powerless teenagers to follow these superheroes around. Say, where did Gleek always manage to pull that bucket from? Never mind. I don’t really want to know.
Click to buy “The All New Super Friends Hour: Season One, Volume Two”
“Jericho” fans seemed bewildered when, after all the hype their show received upon its last-second reprieve from cancellation, its second season didn’t find a huge surge in viewership. They shouldn’t have been. There have been precious few occasions when series have been saved from oblivion and suddenly had the masses respond by saying, “Wow, you guys were right! This is awesome!” That’s just not how the mind of the average TV viewer works. They’re not thinking, “Say, if all these people like the show that much, there must be something to it.” Obsessive fans freak out the average TV viewers, and their actions generally only serve to convince Joe Average that this show, whatever it may be, can’t possibly live up to the hype that’s being heaped upon it, and since it can’t, then why bother tuning in?
But here’s a dirty little secret for you: the minds of critics have been known to work the exact same way.
“Moonlight” seemed like a perfectly viable concept when it was originally pitched by CBS. Certainly, “Angel” fans were immediately on edge when word got out about this new series about a vampire private detective…and so, for that matter, were the rabid “Forever Knight” aficionados… but, still, it was going to be produced by David Greenwalt, who had actually worked on “Angel,” so there was hope that the vampire mythos would at least be done right. But then things got a little dodgy on the creative end, with cast and creators being switched out left and right, including the aforementioned Mr. Greenwalt, and critics were left lingering in wait for a pilot episode that took forever to come to fruition. Once it did, we were grumpy and, frankly, we just couldn’t see what all the fuss was about…but, dear God, those Alex O’Loughlin fans sure as hell could. They attacked in droves, criticizing my opinion of the series while invariably finding a way to mention how incredibly hot O’Loughlin was in the role of Mick St. John (the aforementioned vampire), yet they rarely offered much in the way of reasons beyond his sex appeal for me to give the show a second chance.
So I didn’t…until now.
Matt Damon is a pretty opinionated guy, and he didn’t hold back in a recent interview when asked about the James Bond films.
”They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,” Damon says scornfully. “Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He’s repulsive.
“Steve [Soderbergh, who produced yet another of Damon’s spy movies, Syriana] told me that years ago he was offered a Bond movie. He told them he’d do it if they gave him creative control. Absolutely not, they said. They have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they’re doing, and they’re going to keep doing it.”
Maybe he should lighten up a little.
FOLLOW US!
CATEGORIES
© 2026 Premium Hollywood
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑