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[Cross-posted from 4:12.]
Comic book hero movies and summer blockbusters haven't necessarily been good. Ever. Of course there are a few gems out there. That's only natural. I mean, last summer the only movie we had to look forward to that fit that profile - based on a comic book, huge budget summer blockbuster, lots of explosions - was the infamous Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. So I understand why anyone might be wary when it comes to 2010's The A-Team.
But it was really good.
That's right. I liked it a lot.
First of all, the cast was amazing. Obviously, the original team was built perfectly - you've got the brains, brawn, charm, and the wild card. None of them would be particularly amazing alone, but when you bring their very specific talents together, the team is basically unstoppable. The team in the movie specifically was all that and more. Liam Neeson does wonderfully as the no-nonsense, intelligent, plan-it guy slash killing machine. No question there. A part towards the end I found myself thinking, "Of course he's not dead, didn't you see Taken?" Bradley Cooper, of Hangover fame had me nervous for a little while. Before I saw the film, I was thinking, "How could this charmer from The Hangover POSSIBLY fit in with Liam Neeson the BAMF in an action hero movie?," but he worked so well as Face. Of course, I don't know the original A-Team, but his character was charming, silly, and excellently executed. Then, of course, there was Sharlto Copley, better known as Wikus from District 9. Initially, I was worried he was just going to be a stereotype of a crazy guy, because that's definitely how he came off in the beginning, but he was pretty amazing. He had me laughing much of the movie through, and when things got rough, he pulled something crazy out of his bum and saved entire operations. For instance [spoiler], he and B.A. are trying to clear customs and he was supposed to be the rabbi and B.A. was supposed to be from an African country but their passports get switched, so to keep his cover, Murdock ends up improvising Swahili, and it worked. Then there was B.A., played by Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson, an actor I have never seen or heard of before, though apparently he was in one of Jesson's favourites, The Midnight Meat Train. He was also very good - he never tried to be Mr. T., which I think was very appropriate, and he filled out the character quite nicely, bringing him a human side and a charm that one might not expect from a comic book depiction of "the muscle". Overall, the acting was exceptional and the characters all worked together wonderfully.
The plot was fairly decent too - it wasn't about taking down bad guys or saving the world so much as clearing their own names. But for that reason [spoiler], the ending was unsatisfactory. They clear their names but "breaking out of prison is still illegal," so they have to go back in. Face got his ex back, too, which at first bugged me a lot - she doesn't deserve him - but [spoiler] she actually slips him the key to the handcuffs through an overly-passionate kiss, leaving the ending wide open. Though if the cast is the same and the plot is as good, I would definitely not mind seeing a sequel in a couple years.
The effects were great but the CGI was never overwhelming, which is typically a problem that's been bothering me a lot in more recent movies.
There were also times where the dialogue was a little... cheesey... bordering on awful. But the chemistry of the actors and the light-hearted feel of the whole movie more than make up for any faults. I would be lying if I said anything short of "I loved it". I highly recommend this movie - and face it, if you want to see a movie this summer, your other options are kids' movies [though Toy Story 3 was amazing and I've heard good things about Despicable Me, they're simply not for everybody], Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Twilight Saga: Eclipse. So weigh your options carefully : I think you'll find that, besides Toy Story 3 if you're into it, The A-Team will be the best movie you see all summer.
Unless Inception turns out to be really good.
Fringe - Season 2, Episode 7: "Of Human Action". Original Air Date: 12 Nov 09.
The episode opens with cops pulling in to save a kidnap victim, but one walks himself off a roof and one shoots all the other cops and then herself. When the team arrives, Walter guesses hypnosis, but Peter says it can't be that because hypnosis won't make you do anything you wouldn't do yourself. After more thought, Walter considers mind control as a completely viable option. Studying the body of a corpse, Walter tries to figure out a way to combat the mind control, and they stage a way to get the kid back. Except it turns out the kid, Tyler, is really the kidnapper, and he kidnaps Peter! Walter has trouble letting go of Peter, and he can't work without him. Meanwhile, Peter is trying desperately to fight Tyler's control, but can't. Eventually, he brings him to a strip club. He keeps trying to dissuade Tyler, but the kid is set in his course. He tells Peter that his father has lied to him all of his life, telling him that his mother was dead when in fact she was alive and well in Maryland, and that's why he's doing this. Walter figures out another way to block the mind control, with an EMT like in The Matrix I guess, and so they use it on the kid. Peter purposefully crashes his father's car in Tyler's moments of disempowerment. They wean the kid off of the drugs he'd been on and his powers go away. In the end, Walter and Peter share a sweet scene: Walter makes Peter crêpes and talks to him about when he was little and his mother. But then, we see Nina writing an email to Mr. Bell, of all people. She says that "one of the Tylers" showed mind control ability but that it had unintended consequences, and he went looking for his "surrogate mother" and so she is discontinuing the research completely, and there's a shot of Tyler's father wheeling Tyler into a room filled with Tylers!
This episode leaves a lot more questions than answers: surrogate mother? ONE of the Tylers? WHAT?! And what IS Nina up to? What are they planning?! Aaaah! I liked it! But I was also incredibly worried when I watched this episode. The bonds the watcher has 'created' with the characters are really put to the test watching this, which is somewhat embarrassing to admit.... :D
Glee - Season 1, Episode 9: "Wheels". Original Air Date: 11 November, 2009.
This one's just summary, sorry.
This episode's primary focus is Arty, which is awesome, because he has yet to have his own episode or song. The problem is, the school won't front the money to get the Glee Club a wheelchair accessible bus to sectionals, so the club needs to fundraise in order to afford it. Arty gets his own solo, and we learn that he likes Tina. When Will suggests that everybody does a bakesale, the kids are less-than-enthusiastic; disappointed with their decision, he makes them all spend three hours a day in a wheel chair, and they have to prepare a wheel chair number. At first, it's not very easy for them at all. The club really pulls together for Arty, and they raise the money necessary to get the wheelchair accessible bus, but he tells them that he'd rather the money go to installing a ramp in the auditiorium. When they go to tell the principal this, everyone is shocked to discover that Sue has already donated enough money for multiple ramps to be installed throughout the school.
At the same time, Quinn continues to press Finn for financial support. Finn is trying, but no jobs are hiring, and in the meantime, Puck keeps trying to move in on Quinn. He says that people say he's a screw-up because he doens't care for school, but he would never desert his family. We can see that the sparks between the two of them aren't completely gone, but Quinn remains adament that she doesn't need him. I feel bad for Finn, because he's doing what he can. I mean, this is a difficult situation for both of them, but I can't imagine any of my male friends from high school really being able to do so much to help, especially if no place will give him a job. And I still think that Quinn is being a total jerk in being dishonest with and using Finn. At the same time, however, I think that a teenage father should step up and do what he can to help the mother. As if things aren't hard enough for her. Rachel has an idea for Finn: she goes to a store and tells the manager he needs to hire Finn because he's disabled and not hiring him could look like discrimination.
And then there's the issue of the song to sing. They're going to do "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, one of Kurt's absolute favourites. Initially, Will won't let Kurt try out for the solo, but after Kurt complains to his father, and the father gets the principle involved, they arrange to have an audition between him and Rachel. Kurt's father receives an anonymous phone call that says, "Your son's a fag," before hanging up. This clearly bothers him, so Kurt misses the high note in the diva-off so that his father doesn't have to go through more of that than necessary.
Sue has to hold try-outs for someone to replace Quinn on the Cheerios. She picks a girl named Becky who is mentally disabled [sorry, I really don't know with what or how to call it], and Will is freaking out, trying to discover her angle. At the end of the episode, we see that Sue's big sister is like Becky. I guess, if there's anything Sue has a heart for, it's disability.
Arty and Trina go on a date in wheelchairs, and it seems like it's going very well. Trina gets up and kisses him and then admits that she's been faking her stutter since middle school. This really offends him, something, it seems, she did not take into account.
Things I liked:
I like that there are multiple male cheerleaders, and they're not portrayed as anything but male cheerleaders, none of the silly things that come along with the label.
Kids are busier than when Shu was in school. They've got "homework, football, teen pregnancy, lunch?"
Kurt's father to Kurt: "It's not about a guy, 'cuz I'm not ready to have that conversation."
Arty tells Tina the story of how he was in a car accident. "I still retain the use of my penis." Oops.
Castle - Season 2, Episode 8: "Kill the Messenger". Original Air Date: 9 November, 2009.
The episode begins with a bike courier; a masked man crashes a car into him and steals the package the man was set to deliver. The team tries to figure out what was in that package, so they track down the sender, an old woman, hooked up to oxygen in her own home. She says that she had no idea what was in the package she'd sent that morning, and that it was from her nephew, Brady. He had sent it to her years ago, and told her to keep it safe and to never look at it when he went to prison, and now, he wanted her to send it to whom it was addressed. That person? The captain. But when they want to talk to Brady, they find out that he's been murdered that morning in prison. Talking to others involved with Brady's case, in which he pleaded guilty to murder, they learn that he may not have been the murderer. A lot of digging around in Brady's victim's case brings them to one of the wealthiest families in the city: the Wellesleys. In the end, they discover that the Wellesleys' attendant / butler / everything man, Frank Davis, was not only responsible for the biker's death, but also Brady's [I think?] and the young woman from all those years ago. In the previous episode, Castle said, "I'm going to go with the butler," and tells Beckett it's who the mystery writers always go with when they're out of ideas. It's a cute bit of foreshadowing into the end of this episode.
The minor plot in this episode is very minor; Grams gets a 'MyFace' as she calls it, and she has to deal with multitudes of friend requests. And then she has a date!
Like last week's Fringe, I like that we got to learn about a higher-up that we don't normally get much character development. Unfortunately, I thought it was too similar to Fringe's story, with the captain having to close up an old case and all that. I do not like weird TV coincidences like those.
The plot was quite gripping, however, I did not love this episode. Maybe I just wasn't into it, who knows, and I can't really say why, but I just didn't feel myself being drawn in the same way as I normally do.
Castle - Season 2, Episode 6: "Vampire Weekend". Original Air Date: 26 October, 2009.
America's current vampire obsession has invaded... my half of the world...
It's Halloween, and Castle is preparing for a big party. He keeps mentioning it to Beckett, reminding her that costumes are mandatory, and hinting that he'd love to see her in something sexy. But even more important is the case: a vampire was murdered by a stake through the heart, in a cemetary. Yeah. Apparently this boy, Crow, belonged to a small geek community of vampires [I say geek meaning a person who is fascinated by one specific thing or culture and strives to live as close to the object of his emulation as possible, no negative connotations intended]. He was a young artist, who, together with his friend Damon, also found murdered, was creating a graphic novel about a real life NYC vampire named Morlock. The team finds Morloch and takes him into custody. He's a case, because he has a condition, I forget what it's called but its nick-name is the Vampires' Disease, and he is very sensitive to sunlight, to the point where his skin burns and blisters up with contact. With that condition come hallucinations and other craziness, so it's no wonder he actually believes he's a vampire. In the end, it was his insane babble and crazy talk that solved the case. Crow's step-mother had killed his mother so she could marry the father, and now, many years later, Crow figures this out and so she kills him too, trying to frame his group of vampire friends because of his father's disdain for them, in an effort to keep her husband close to her. In the meantime, Alexis is going to her first 'real' high school party with her friend and co-parent [for a health class baby egg project], and her dad knows she won't get into any trouble, but he tells her to call him if she feels uncomfortable or compromised in any way because he will come get her, no questions asked, no punishment. She thinks she won't have to, but she does because the punch was spiked and her friend was really wasted. Castle picks them up and does the right thing in calling the girl's parents, despite Alexis's protests that she would get in a lot of trouble. In the end, the friend was so mad that she broke the egg baby.
The episode was good, and very Halloweeny. Castle began the episode by saying how much he loved Halloween, but Beckett says it's the worst as far as weird crimes. I think the show did a decent job, too, and not making fun of the geeks. Of course, individual characters mocked the vampire Covent a little, but the way they were portrayed in the show was as a little weird, definitely different from the 'norm', but not dangerous or bad or stupid. And, I know I say this a lot, but I really love the relationship between Alexis and her father. There are so few 'like me' teenagers on television, whether it be adult programming on basic channels, like this, or on pre-teen shows on Disney. This girl is well-adjusted, has a few issues, but nothing she can't handle, and she's not angsty or slutty or deceitful like so many TV teens are. In this episode, she had to learn a bit of a lesson between choosing the right thing and the easy thing, but she followed her father's orders, and doing differently in that situation could have ended really badly.
I'm skipping Castle this week. I watched it, and it was good, but my roommate came in and talked to me for like fifteen minutes and I was very distracted. I'd like to watch it again, but that seems like an even bigger waste of my time than the way I already waste my time, and I'm just a little too stressed out for that. So I will simply post the notes I took while watching, typos and all, and leave it at that.
Castle - Season 2, Episode 5: "When the Bough Breaks". Original Air Date: 19 Oct 09
He's late so they tease him.
He's pretty distracted thinking about his upcoming launch party.
Candy wrapper.
"Mmm, kinda tastes like soap. I like it."
postcards in home
Alexis is excited to go.
Certain British spy. WHOO? I've probably never heard of him.
My roommate came in and distracted me for ten-ish minutes. Oops. Something about the kid she babysat or something.
They arrest a Czech man, the victim's ex-husband, but he thinks they were chasing him as immigration cops.
There's a woman that they didn't get to interview on their first go-around, and she says that the night of the victim's murder, she recalls seeing the victim arguing with a man; the artists' rendering looks an awful lot like someone they already know.
So they talk to this doctor - he's the husband of the woman they interviewed, the father of the kid the victim was giving candy to. Apparently, they were having an affair. But what else?
Launch party! Did you read the dedication? "To the extraordinary KB and all my friends at the 12th."
"You are extraordinary."
"can I close the deal, already?"
"What if the wife got onto the affair?"
They fight. British secret agent or new Nicky Heat novel? Hmmm...
WHAT AN AMAZING PLOT TWIST
not enough alexis in this ep.
"That was Esposito. There's been a murder. Are you coming or not?"
Oh, yeah, and guess what?? Some good news about the show!
Tomorrow? Last night's Glee. And Fringe is taking a break until 5 Nov. Yay -.-
House - Season 6, Episode 6: "Brave Heart". Original Air Date: 19 Oct 09.
This episode was intense. The intro was crazy, with a police chase, some parkour, and some guy jumping off a roof. Turns out, that guy is convinced that he's going to die, since he's just turned forty and all his ancestors died of heart complications shortly after they reached that milestone. House is convinced there's nothing to find, and they look at the heart in every light possible, yet still find nothing, even when examining his son for genetic problems. So, House lets him go with some placebos.
Hours later, there's a knocking on Wilson and House's door: it's Foreman. Apparently, their guy collapsed, dead, hours after his discharge.
So they bring the body to Princeton Plainsboro's morgue and prepare to do an autopsy. In a cute, ironic twist, House picks up a saw and prepares to cut into the man's chest, but Foreman says, "You can't perform an autopsy without a license," and takes the saw. He does it himself, and they notice the way blood is coming out of the gash in the chest - it looks like the man is bleeding. But that would mean..... AND THEN THE MAN OPENS HIS EYES AND STARTS SCREAMING IN PAIN!!!
Yeah, crazy.
So the pressure's on to find out what's wrong with him. They put him on steroids for a genetic auto-immune [and lots of painkiller, btw], but nothing works. His new pain in his jaw is only getting worse, so bad that he pulls his own tooth out.
Meanwhile, Chase is struggling so hard with his decision regarding James Earl Jones. It's really hard to watch him, because he's a mess [naturally] and has no one to really turn to. At least when we see House like that, we know, oh, he's just a crazy dummie, he's always like that. It's different for Chase. You can also see how this plays itself out in his marriage. Which is crappy. And the priest at confession doesn't help.
House thinks he's going crazy again. He thinks he's hearing voices when he sleeps in Wilson's study [which used to be the bedroom]. He's not; it's really Wilson whispering to Amber at night. It's pretty sad, really. Like, boo hoo sad, not pathetic.
Finally, House figures it all out. The man has something of an aneurysm in his brain somewhere that's been growing and it causes pain and his heart to stop. They remove it and the one in the kid's head, and that story line is resolved, too.
All in all, a fun episode. It was shocking, which made it really fun to watch.
Sorry, my House stories are always smaller because I watch them live in the common room with a group of people; I watch the other shows either live on my own tv or on my computer the day after, so I take better notes.
Glee - Season 1, Episode 7: "Throwdown". Original air date: 14 Oct 09.
In this episode, Sue is still on a war path to destroy Glee Club from the inside out. She separates the group and takes all the minorities under her wing, leaving Shu with the well-adjusted white kids. They're at war. Sue gives her group an R&B song, and, oh yay, Mercedes has a song! She never gets to sing, but she has a great voice.
For retribution, Will flunks Sue's Cheerios. He says that "Most of your Cheerios are functionally illiterate!" [To which she replies "So what?!"]. With them failing Spanish, they can't be on the cheer team. Uh-ohh... Sue's going mad, but the principal shuts her down. He says that he doesn't care about her bribe and that she's being crazy and it's time to stop.
Meanwhile, at home, Teri's baby is *gasp* still not there. Except one little problem: Quinn's baby is a girl, but Teri promised Will a boy. Furthermore, Will really wants to go to Teri's next doctor appointment; he wants to be involved in his kid's life from the start, so he schedules an appointment. What will Teri do? Well, she bribes the doctor to fake an ultrasound and say that he made a mistake in the initial reading, and that the kid is a girl. That scene in the office was funny, and at the end, it was very touching, when Will started crying with joy.
The dorky boy who runs a gossip blog is threatening to run a story about Quinn, Finn, and Rachel, unless Rachel gives him a pair of her panties. To save herself and them, she complies. But, thanks to Sue, he runs it any way. The end was really touching, though. There was a scene in which Rachel told Quinn that, even though they're 'enemies' she's there for her. Then, there was a group number, and it was very sweet.
Gripe? They shouldn't use auto-tune on songs that are supposed to be "live". It makes the lip-sync even more unconvincing. And a cappella and glee groups are supposed to be about the natural, fresh sound. And I hate the way that in a show about high school, if you're a cheerleader, you wear your uniform 24/7. Seriously?
Some fun quotes:
"This meeting doesn't end until I see bodies touching."
"Let me break it down for youuu: NOBODY CARES!"
"...but that's no excuse for treating you like some half-priced hooker in Amsterdam's red light district."
Oh, and hey! You might notice that this doesn't have the "I should be Studying" tag! That's because I actually finished all my homework before dinner and have absolutely nothing to do, yay!
Coming Soon: Two episodes of Fringe, House, Castle, and Heroes!
