A Bit of an Update

Hmmm, a few moments ago, it occurred to me that I have a blog, several blogs to be more precise (but not of course, completely precise). So, I had a quick look at my last post which consisted of me saying I had started watching Battlestar Galactica, I expressed some mad Once Upon A Time In America love, some Crash dislike and some Dark Knight indifference. Now, to recap. I have managed to watch every episode of Battlestar Galactica, some more than once, I have the same feelings towards Once Upon a Time in America and Crash and I’m yet to watch The Dark Knight again.

I haven’t written for quite some time, one month and nine days to be exact. What the frak has happened since August 7th?

The IMDB war has ended, but do we care?
Nope, not really

Some of us may remember that around July/ August, there was a bit of a war going on. The Dark Knight fans and The Godfather fans fought a lengthy battle of mice and keyboards all try to get the favourite movie onto the number 1 spot on imdb’s top 250. As you may have noticed from the title, the war is now over. The Dark Knight remained at number one for quite some time but, as some of use predicted, it is number 1 no longer. The Dark Knight has trickled down to number 3, and I believe it will only fall further. However, evidence of the war remains. Initially, the top 3 films were, in order, The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption and The Godfather: Part II. There’s been a bit of a switcheroo between The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption, the damage from the war brought The Godfather’s rating down.

The keyboards were at a bit of a disadvantage

Saturday Night Live returns
Political sketches n’ all.

Saturday Night Live has returned from its Summer hiatus with some good stuff…and some not so good stuff. I opened, as we have come to expect, with a sketch about the upcoming election. Amy Poeler appeared as Hillary Cinton and surprisingly, Tina Fey played Alaska Governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. The aesthetic similarities between these two had not occurred to me until I saw the sketch. I believe this calls for a split screen.

Palin, left, Fey, Right. Or am I messing with you?

I strongly suggest checking it out, ‘tis hilarious. That was part of the good stuff, now for the not to good stuff. The first episode back was hosted by American Olympic hero, Michael Phelps, lets just say, he’s not the best actor.

Dr Horrible and that gosh darn sing-along Blog
Is there nothing Joss Whedon can’t do?

A while ago, by a while I mean weeks ago, a web series named Dr Horribles’s Sing-Along Blog was a available to watch for free online. It was fantastic. I wouldn’t say it was the greatest internet creation since gmail but it was great for what it was. It told the fun story of Dr. Horrible, a less than terrifying villain who was trying to get into the Evil League of Evil (run by Bad Horse). All the while being impeded in his efforts by Captain Hammer (played by none other than Firefly’s Nathan Fillion) who had caught the eye of Dr. Horrible’s love interest, Penny. If you’re a fan of Whedon, particularly the humour found in Whedon’s creations, I’d say you’d enjoy it. Oh snap! Yeah…it’s not free online anymore, check if you like it on you tube and if you do, you can buy the episodes and the soundtrack on iTunes….or…go through other channels *cough* torrents *cough*.

Welcome to the Dollhouse
We've got fun 'n' games

Continuing with the Whedon theme, the trailer for Joss Whedon’s new TV series, Dollhouse. Rather actually write about it, like some kind of peasant, here’s the trailer. It looks good to me, but then again, I intentionally watch rubbish.



Trailer Daze
Phrase “borrowed” from the IFC news podcast

Apple trailers has released some goodies since I last wrote. I’m not sure if the Watchmen trailer adventure happened before or after I last wrote, but here’s the story. Empire Online basically said that they had the exclusive new Watchmen trailer and it would only be available at 5am on the site on this day in question. Losers such as myself actually woke up at 5am to watch the trailer and lo and behold, it was available on Apple trailers already. I watched it, downloaded it in HD and went back to sleep. Now…about the trailer. In my sleepiness, it looked like the best trailer I had ever seen. Hooooowever, in my awakened state, it wasn’t too great. The images in the film looked good, but on the whole, not the best trailer I’ve been privy to. Watching the trailer made me even more aware of how unfamiliar I am with the cast, which may turn out to be a good thing as I don’t have them typecast. The thing is, I recognised one of the cast member, and he played a rather interesting character in another film. The film in question was Hard Candy, and he played a paedophile…hopefully I’ll forget once the film comes out of his performance will be so awesome that he’ll make me forget. Watchmen is a comic (trade paperback if you want to be precise) that had a lot of complex story that is generally hard to tell, I can’t help but worry that a lot will be left out. Kevin Smith saw it and said it was great, but he also liked Star Wars episode 3.

Woah, Watchmen got loads of attention. Erm, I think I’ll just do a separate post for trailers. Yeah…

The (not so) Secret Life the American Teenager
How this is still being made, I don’t know, but keep it coming

Have you ever watched something knowing that it was absolutely awful? This is the relationship I have with the ABC “family drama”, The Secret Life of the American Teenager. I was just browsing…a website, and I stumbled upon The Secret Life of the American Teenager. The thing that caught my attention was Molly Ringwald’s name who I have seen since in anything made after, erm, 1986? So, I watched the first episode and what terrible goodness it was. The acting is atrocious, the characters are walking stereotypes and the story is just, blah. However, as it is so bad, I can’t help but watch it. This drama is one of the best comedies I watch at the moment.

Guess what it‘s about

Getting tired…

On a final note, additional things that have happened, of that I have become aware of are:
-Ingmar Bergman is awesome
-The Ice Bar is as cold as you think
-Tropic Thunder was not as funny as I expected
-Caribbean Ice Tea is so very tasty
-Ruby Blue is rubbish
-The Daily Show is the best way to spend 25 minutes

And…

When you want people to arrive at a particular time, tell them to arrive half an hour earlier

Once Upon A Time

Yesterday, I spent much of the day doing filing for my mother. I didn’t accomplish much, all I really did was put the papers I was filing into different piles, by the time I finished doing this I suddenly felt sick and didn’t do anymore. It dawned on me during the course of the day that I still hadn’t finished watching season three of Battlestar Galactica, I blame Virgin Media (never shall I forgive them). So, as I filed and sat on my living room floor thinking about how ill I felt, I started watching Battlestar again. For the life of me I couldn’t remember where I left off so I began from the first episode. I haven’t watched much Sci-Fi recently so it was good to get back to what I had been neglecting.

I lent my laptop to my mother in the evening and suddenly I was without anything to watch. I looked at my DVD shelf and not one thing appealed to me, I need more DVDs. I decided to go through all my recordable DVDs to see what I had recorded over the last few months and hadn’t gotten around to watching. It was then that I stumbled upon Once Upon a Time in America on a disc with My Beautiful Launderette. I’d taken my time to watch it largely due to the length, it’s 4 hours long. Anyway, for some reason I started watching it at 11pm. This is something I don’t usually do because of something I call, “The Godfather Effect”. This basically refers to something that happens to me when I watch films late at night, and it has happened to me most often when watching The Godfather. The Godfather never comes on before 10pm, so whenever I watch a 10pm showing I start to fall asleep by 11ish. I just can’t seem to help it.

Back to Once Upon a Time in America. I started watching it at 11 expecting to fall asleep by 12, this didn’t happen. After 3am I finished watching it and couldn’t believe 4 hours had passed. The story didn’t seem slow or boring, I was engaged throughout the whole film. I’m glad I saw the 4 hour version as apposed to the shorted version as I don’t see how it could be edited down. I’m sure the storyline must suffer quite a lot. All in all, I’d say it was great film, it has easily become one of my favourites. As soon as it finished, I wouldn’t have minded watching it again but that would have meant going to bed after 7 and I usually wake up around 8. I’m thinking of watching it again right now.

A few days ago I was talking to someone about Crash (the Paul Haggis one) and why I have problems with it. As I was explaining this, I decided that I should probably watch Crash again as it had been a while since I saw it. There was strong possibility that I made it worse in my head so my motivation was the unreliable nature of human memory. So, I watched Crash again. My opinion of it is no higher. It’s just so obvious in it’s exploration of problems in society, and human nature, I found it hard to watch. Apparently, loads of people are racist and there are many ways in which racism can be represented. Who knew? What I can commend Crash on is the performances, on the whole they’re very strong, but apart from that, blah.

I can’t believe I written so much but failed the write about the fact that I saw The Dark Knight last Friday. It was a good watch. “ONLY and good watch” said the internet. Damn right, I said only. The thing is, the theatre was packed, I had a really bad seat and when I see certain films with my sister I can’t help but see what her reaction is. So, it wasn’t the best viewing experience. I’m going to see it again this week with my brother, his seat was worse than mine, I’ll comment on it again then.