Month: April 2010 (Page 18 of 20)

24 8.15-16: I would die 4 U

In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I’m writing this while hopped up on Oxycodone. And let me tell you, it’s awesome. The only catch is that the line between sleepy bliss and blinding pain is a thin one. So here goes nothing. If my writing goes off the rails…it’ll look like every other week! (*rim shot*)

Starbuck has finally been found out, and her demand to deal only with Jack struck me as curious, given his talents for persuading people to talk. You could tell by the way that she made the demand that she’s following orders, and that her employers have experience with him. I’ll still hold on to Alan Wilson as a possibility, and God help them if they hold Kim and her daughter hostage as a last resort. After the things that happened tonight, that would totally suck to have it undone by Kim, again.

Man, Samir’s people can act fast, can’t they? He’s a dozen blocks away from driving into an ambush, and is able to get the call from Starbuck and relay that information to the drop car in time to get into the one place they can make the switch. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but…it’s a hell of a thing, don’t you think?

24-Ep814_Sc1437_0282

Pity you didn’t get to die with your boots on, Slumdog.

Let’s get straight to the ending, shall we? While I don’t like seeing good guys die, it was nice to see “24” finally act like a show that has nothing to lose. Because hey, let’s face it, they don’t have anything to lose, so why not kill Slumdog President? And the thing is, from the moment Jack broke into that apartment, I had a bad feeling. I knew that their audio wizard had picked up an internet broadcast of Samir rather than Samir in the flesh, but I thought that it would turn out to be the wrong room, not the right room but much too late. Oh well, same result either way, I guess: Slumdog’s dead. Long live Slumdog.

So now what?

All of Samir’s men are dead, or close to it. He has no nuclear rods, and he’s killed the President. We have eight hours left, and nothing to play for. Starbuck’s deal was only good if they recovered Slumdog alive. Since that didn’t happen, I’d quit negotiating with her and put her alone in a windowless room with Buffy so he can hate fuck her to death. The Russians and President Buck Buck Brawwwwwwk look as though they’re being put in play, but it seems too little too late. I’m dying to hear the explanation for why Logan’s not dead though, since the last time we saw him, he was flatlining in the back of an ambulance.

All right, the meds are wearing off. It’s time to wrap this up. I usually finish with a video, but Prince is a right bastard about YouTube. See you next week, and hopefully this drug stuff is far behind me.

Flame and Citron

Conspicuously red-headed, twenty-something “Flame” (Thure Lindhart, “Angels and Demons“) is both a tortured romantic and an efficient killer and anti-Nazi patriot. Whether the target is a Gestapo officer or a pro-Nazi journalist, he’s efficient and not too concerned with moral fine-points — except, perhaps, when it comes to women. Former automotive saboteur “Citron” (Mads Mikkelson, the evil Le Chiffre of “Casino Royale“), however, is overtly troubled by the job, and even more so by his deteriorating marriage. Things become torturous for the pair, comrades but perhaps not quite friends, when a series of events involving questionable leadership, traitors within the resistance, and Flame’s emotional attachment to a sexy and sympathetic resistance spy (Stine Stengade) makes them wonder just how many of right and wrong people they’ve been killing, and why the local Gestapo head (Christian Berkel) isn’t one of them.

“Flame and Citron” attempts to blend the blunt realism of an anti-Nazi resistance thriller like Jean-Pierre Melville’s recently rediscovered “Army of Shadows” with a contemporary action film. Initially, director/co-writer Ole Christian Madsen’s bombast and an overlong first act partially derail matters in this 2008 Danish language production, but once it gets going, the film achieves its goal and becomes an honest look at the real cost of killing. A genuinely affecting, complex story kept remarkably clear by Madsen, strong acting (sometimes too strong), and some painfully effective action sequences makes this film a bitterly poignant reminder of the real cost of World War II.

Click to buy “Flame and Citron”

Breaking Bad 3.3 – Scenes from the Power Struggle in Albuquerque

There is a theorem within the entertainment industry which states that there is no television series or motion picture, no matter how good it may be, which cannot be made at least a little bit better by the additional presence of Danny Trejo, and the accuracy of this theory was once again proven with tonight’s episode of “Breaking Bad.” You may recall Mr. Trejo rearing his head…pun totally intended…during Season 2, but tonight we got a bit more insight into his character…including, most importantly, why he’s called Tortuga. Never has someone who works in the criminal underworld ever suggested that you “come around back” and seen it result in something good happening, and, unsurprisingly, this was no exception to that rule, particularly since it was a flashback, but now we know how far back the Cousins have been involved in Walt’s affairs.

But let’s be honest: although they may have played a key part, tonight’s episode wasn’t really about the Cousins. It was about the power struggle within the White house. We’d seen this coming, with Skyler demanding that Walt stay not only out of the house but, indeed, out of her life altogether, while Walt was refusing to accept this position and offering dipping sticks as a peace offering. It wasn’t until good ol’ Saul Goodman’s pep talk last week, though, that the little light bulb above Walt’s head suddenly went off, leading him to decide that she was bluffing in her claims that she’d call the police on him. So what does he do? Well, first, he gets the pizza off the roof, then he ensconces himself inside and declares that he’s not leaving. It’s an intense war of wills between the two of them, and it’s rough going for us viewers, too, because, hell, who knows where the hell this is going? They’ll do any damned thing on this show!

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Easter Bunny brings pagan box office bounty for “Clash of the Titans,” Tyler Perry, Dreamworks Animation, and Miley Cyrus

Liam Neeson looks disappointed at his share of the grosses for Performing completely as expected and discussed previously here, Warner Brothers’ “Clash of the Titans” earned a technically record-breaking estimated $61.4 million over this Easter holiday weekend as recorded by Box Office Mojo. I say “technically” of course because ticket prices have been skyrocketing for sometime now. So, while it says something that audiences are still willing to pay the increasing freight in the face of a not so great, but perhaps gradually improving, economy, I personally get a bit irritated with this constant trumpeting of broken records.

Still, as much as this reminds of me of ultra-geek baseball stats, I can’t ignore that the past Easter weekend record holder was, as per Anne Thompson’s resident box office guru, Anthony D’Alessandro, 2006’s “Scary Movie 4” at $40.2 million. I’m no math whiz, but I don’t think ticket prices have gone up by quite a third since then. So, it’s definitely a strong performance for the critic-proof, mythological monster-heavy sword & sandals fantasy remake. However, executives who will use the performance to bolster arguments for retrofitting yet more movies to 3-D might want to examine the trends a bit more closely.  D’Allesandro remarks:

In a last-minute post-production business move that paid off, Warner Bros. decided to 3D-ify Titans, stirring debate among critics and fans that retrofitted visual fare just doesn’t cut it.  No matter if you agree with Zeus or Hades on the dimensional debate, Titans played fine with all audiences, earning 52% of its B.O. from 1,800 3D huts.

Well, yes, but it appears to me that all that discussion about the relative quality of 3-D processes filtered out to the general public. 52% isn’t bad, of course, especially considering the brutal competition for screens. However, compare that to the numbers provided last week by the L.A. TimesBen Fritz.  80% of  the grosses for the technologically game-changing “Avatar” made using 3-D cameras, have come from 3-D and 70% for another 3-D film shot with conventional cameras, “Alice in Wonderland,” which got less criticism for its after-the-fact 3-D. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m guessing that Tim Burton‘s visuals are generally pretty stunning however you slice them and, though some have been certainly been critical, it probably helped that he at least knew the film would be presented that way while he was making the film, unlike “Titans” director Louis Leterrier.

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