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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.
House - Season 6, Episode 6: "Known Unknowns". Original Air Date: 9 November, 2009.
OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH HOUSE IS BACK FROM THE WORLD SERIES BREAK.
Thank goodness I have nicer things to say about this one than about Fringe.
A girl comes into the hospital after a night out partying. She's told her friends that she went to the band's hotel room and went skinny dipping with one of the musicians, but actually, she and her stalked their favourite sci-fi author all evening. When she decides to come clean about her actions that evening to the doctors, she can't; something in her brain [which is also making it bleed] is making her lie! Cameron and Chase try to talk to the author to see if he can give them any tips, and Cameron gets really upset with him because she's still upset with Chase and she's taking it out on the writer. And where is House during all of this? He and Wilson and Cuddy and her baby all go to a doctors' convention. Wilson is going to present a paper on euthenasia, but House doesn't want him to risk his license, so he drugs Wilson and steals his pants, and presents the paper himself under the nom de plume 'Perlmutter'. You can be sure that there were lots of lulz. House is also trying to impress Cuddy. She told him that she tracked him down in med school, and he confessed that he's basically been in love with her since he first set eyes on her, and then she leaves. And then we find out that apparently she's with that private eye from way back when. Remember him? Yeah, I didn't either, until a friend had to remind me. Oh well. Oh yeah, and the girl's okay in the end, and she did not get raped by the sci-fi writer.
In the very, very end, Chase finally comes clean with Cameron and tells her about his murder. Intenseeeee.
I think this was a very great episode. The mystery surrounding what the patient did that night was very intriguing, but even more important was the House-Wilson-Cuddy arch. Everything was there: lots of hilarity, new and old House, tearful moments, painful moments, and touching moments. It was so exciting! And the end was so intense, touching, and open-ended. Oh my gosh.
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 absolutely loved Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and I'm SO glad I read it. This book was not in the AP English curriculum, but my other friends read it, and when I helped them do a video project about it, I was intrigued. I'm so glad I got the chance to enjoy the book, even though it took me a while to read [I'm slow, I had school, I just don't like reading the last chapters because then the book is over, etc.].
The first part of the book is all exposition, and that's good. It really paints a picture of this Utopian futuristic society in which the action will take place. And it was very well written, with quick, sometimes disorienting scene changes, and sometimes vague dialogue, all of which seemed to further illustrate the collectively low attention span of the population. This is also when we're introduced to a myriad of characters; at first we are uncertain as to which characters the story will start to focus around, but after a while, Lenina and Bernard emerge as fully developed, complex characters. Allusions to Shakespeare in this section are almost meaningless because the characters do not know about him.
Which brings us into part two, where the action starts. Bernard feels a little differently about society than everyone else; we can relate to him the most because he, miraculously, holds onto some of our ideas of happiness and success, and we empathise with him because no one in the book can. He takes the seemingly simple-minded Lenina to a Native American reservation in the USA, and everything changes. The contrast between the reservation and the UK is so drastic, and we look at it with wide-eyed curiosity and wonder because it is nothing like anything we've been reading about up to this point, but it's also very different from the world we live in today [or is it?]. In this chaos, we meet John, the "Savage", but not an Indian and unable to fit in in either world. Bernard decides to bring him and his British mother back to England, as if he is a saviour or benefactor.
The last section of this book is ultimately depressing. All the fine thinking that Bernard had been doing, all the epiphanies he might have come to are destroyed, replaced, instead, by thoughts of self-importance and worth. The fame he achieves from bringing John to England has gone right to his head, and consequently, to his penis. John, too, is facing changes. He has a very hard time adjusting to this new way of life, he can't agree with the methods of the Brits because they are so contrary to everything he's learned on the reservation, and he feels himself falling in love with Lenina, but he can't do anything about it because the only way, according to his own beliefs, to have a woman, is to have only that woman, through marriage, for the rest of their lives. In the end, this is what kills him. It drives him to a life in the 'wilderness' in England, but when even that becomes nothing more than a spectacle for the curious Brits, he kills himself. The change was too great, the society was too devolved that it ultimately killed him.
The allusions to Shakespeare throughout the book were an important and helpful tool in the telling of the story. Shakespeare was the only ally John ever really had, and he could quote the plays almost entirely, even before he knew what they meant. The book is especially full of allusions to The Tempest [fitting, because I started it shortly after I had seen the play over the summer, and my school just put it on this past weekend], a mystical story about savages and Europeans, love, and freedom. Of course, from the colonialist point of view that the director took with the college's production, we see the same sort of interaction when the 'civilised' Lenina and Bernard step into the dirty reservation, and when they take John and his mother back, as if they were their saving grace. The title itself, Brave New World, is an allusion to The Tempest. Miranda speaks it when she sees humans other than her father and herself for the first time. It carries many meanings in the context of this novel, the most obvious of which is John's transportation to England from the reservation in America. But it also serves as a nod to the social context of the story: the England portrayed in this novel is drastically different from that of 2009 or of the 1930s, and is, therefore, a brave new world. But, as Miranda was, herself, human, and so the apparitions before her were not truly 'new', the chilling part of a dystopian novel such as this is that this could be us, and is it really all that new to us? Is it really so different from what we have now?
Just some little things~
1: Every once in a while, a section or statement would ring so true and so possible that I would go back to the title page and check the publication date. This book could easily have been written last year, and it is as true now as it was in the 30s.
2: Even though it was written in the 30s, I still imagined 1970s-style clothing, especially whenever Huxley described Lenina's fashion.
Heroes - Season 4, Episode 6: "Strange Attractors". Original Air Date: 26 Oct 09.
This was a fun, sad, and scary episode. It starts with sex - Sylar and Mrs. Parkman? Oh wait. That's Matt. Or.... What? Apparently Sylar has been taking over Matt's body little by little and it's driving Matt insane. His storyline quickly heats up, and eventually, he realises that the only way to protect his family from Sylar's control is to leave, and he tries to explain this to Janice. She insists that he stays in the house and she'll go. After she leaves, Matt starts drinking and he realises it's making Sylar hurt. He drinks and drinks until Sylar disappears, but then he blacks out. Janice comes back with the policeman who'd been helping Matt through therapy, and they wait until he wakes up. But now it's Sylar in control of the body and Matt is just the premonition; he has no control whatsoever. Scary!
There's also a Claire and Gretchen storyline. They get kidnapped and taken to some faraway location, which turns out to be a slaughterhouse, to do some initiation thing for the sorority. During the scavenger hunt there, Invisibitch tries to kill Gretchen twice; eventually there's a fight, and Claire ends up slightly impaled. Of course, that's no problem for her or Gretchen, but for the other two pledges, well let's just say they were more than a little freaked out. And this might mean uprooting Claire all over again. Sad!
And then there's Jeremy. He's being kept in the town jail and Noah can't get him out. He calls in a favour with Tracy Strauss, and he forges some paper work that makes her Jeremy's 'aunt' so that she can sign him out of jail. A brief meeting between Tracy and Samuel leaves Tracy wondering whether she should bring Jeremy to the carnival where he'll be at "home" or give him a new life where he can be invisible. When they finally get him out, half the town is lined up outside in protestation, and one man breaks through the police line and starts threatening him. Jeremy uses his power and kills the man and walks back into the jail. That night, a few cops decide to take the law into their own hands; they chain him to a pick-up truck and they drive away, leaving him dead. Noah is, of course, very upset, knowing that he failed him, and Tracy is equally as upset. Then Samuel comes in and destroys the police station with his brainnn.
And some little comments: I don't like the way they shoot Matt in close-ups, and Gretchen has the same IKEA comforter as I have at home! ♥ A fun quote from Gretchen: "Sounds like some crazy-ass conspiracy theory. Which... pretty much describes your entire life."
It was a good episode. It was gripping, to use the traditional review language. I wanted to keep watching, and I was genuinely upset when it was over because I wanted to keep watching. I'm a little tired and way behind on watching, so that's about all the opinion you'll get. Have fun watching this one!
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.
