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Scott

I tend not to get stuck on TV series that you've got to watch every week. It seems like way too big a commitment. Other than HBO on Sunday nights; HBO is just plain different.

As far as network TV goes, I've discovered "Commander in Chief," "Invasion," and "Surface" and I've stuck with them. I really like the former; Geena Davis is great and Donald Sutherland is greater. "Surface" is mildly interesting but I keep coming back. "Invasion" ... well, I am hoping it will grab me more, but I also still keep coming back.

Sadly, I didn't follow "Lost" from the beginning last year, and now I'm truly lost if I try to watch it.

I've also got to throw in "3 and a Half Men," for whatever reason I enjoy that silly show.

However, the channel that is my hands down favorite is HGTV. LOVE IT! Gives me lots of ideas about fixing up and redecorating my apartment and I am addicted. Too bad I don't have a garage where I could learn carpentry. Man, I'd love that!

This has a Robert Altman feel and was obviously influenced by Nashville and its successors. It's about racism in America but there's no KKK or Black Panther characters. It's more about shadings. (Probably a bad choice of term, but better than saying there was no black and white.) The acting is superb, with Ludacris the biggest surprise. He's a natural and nailed his part through the heart. (Of course it didn't hurt that he had the best lines.)

The only time I hit the FF button was when the "acting" scenes ran too long. And too many of them did. The actors want opportunities to strut their chops. But my thumb thought a number of what should have been straightforward scenes about relationships and such ran longer than they should -- okay, we know you're a good father and we know you love your daughter, now get off the screen. Sort of like writers who fall in love with the sound of their own words and ramble on about wallpaper patterns and waving meadows of grass. My thumb screamed "We know! We know!" and jumped on the button.

I've said more than I intended. Better quit now.

FF= 1.5

S P O I L E R S for RJ novels (and for an early episode of "24"!)


Oss here again, describing some things that interfere with the otherwise perfect pleasure provided by Repairman Jack-brand bath salts.

Set me straight, you Kung Fu fighters!

- Legacies. The totally cool Japanese agent. We're set up to like him and be interested in him for the entire novel. At the end, he's captured, stands alongside Jack, escape the cabin and, er, gets shot and killed. Um. So long, Japanese guy. I would've liked to see him kick some ass and (if it were necessary) meet an end more appropriate to his training and promise.

- Gateways. I'd like to have seen Jack kick more ass than he did. The only Jack-like treat we get is his extortion of info from the Gateways manager, which was fun but not enough for an entire novel.

- Crisscross. Having the head of the Dormentalists be a pedophile (and one who eschews curtains) was too easy a solution. If the leader was not a pedophile, what would Jack have done? I'll tell you: Jack would have had to be Repairman Jack, and figure out some amazing way of dealing with the situation (even if it were just falsely incriminating the leader, to create a way to blackmail him) in a way neither you nor I would have had the wit or the balls to do.

(Also, somewhat relatedly, I've gotten very tired of the whole pedophile card being played so frequently in pop entertainment of the past 15 years or so. There are many examples, but one that happens to come to mind is in "24", when -- in the first episode of the second (?) season, Jack (!) Bauer kills a police informant in order to back into the good graces of a gang in which he used to work undercover. And naturally, the police informant is not just any old bad guy, he's also a (zzzz....) pedophile, I guess to make Jack's summary execution of him more palatable to Mr. and Mrs. Couch Potato watching at home. I realize that easy moral trump card is not why FPW made the Dormentalist a pedophile -- it was to have a quick, easy way for him be blackmailable. What I've described is simply a pet peeve of mine.)

- Crisscross. Jack is able to reprogram an elevator from inside the elevator shaft, so the corridor doors open when the elevator is not there. I feel like I'm pretty willing to suspend disbelief, but... if Jack can do this, is there _anything_ he would not be capable of doing if a given novel's plot demanded it? I fear that we begin to get into Roger Moore-as-James Bond territory here, where he can just pick up an instruction manual for a nuclear bomb, written in Chinese, and figure out how to disarm the nuke in 30 seconds.

Bye for now!

-oss

I know, I know, I know . . . but li’l F got hooked on hensei when he first saw “Godzilla” in the movies, and every so often big F likes to revisit his youth. Hensei is Japanese (maybe Kenji can give a better translation) for “giant rubber-suit monster movie.” The hensei parthenon is full of silly, improbable monsters, but none sillier or more improbable than Gamera, the giant turtle that spins through the air like a rocket-propelled frisbee. This is the first of a re-imagined Gamera series; it will be the last I’ll watch. They say you can never go home again. In this case, they’re right.

FF= 4.5 (I started off FF-ing between the monster sightings, then found myself FF-ing through the monster-fu)

I started off FF-ing through this because it looked just plain bad. Then I realized it was good-bad, and watched. A cheapo-cheapo that's perfect for Bad Movie Night - some laughs are intentional, many are not. If you have a group that doesn't mind nudity (a fair number of bare breasts here), break out the six packs and the wisecracks and watch.

FF= 3.5

Noobie here. Just wanted to say hi to all of the fans (Legions?) of FPW and RJ. I've read......well, not extensively, but the characters in the RJ/Adversary Cycle stand out as much as anyone I have ever read about. I love the journey that I get to go on with RJ in each book. I'm sure that FPW gets a little sick of the fawning, but only truly gifted storytelling can foster that. I hope to become a regular poster, with approval of course. I hope to be welcome to this world, and maybe spread some of the darkness in myself.
Later.

"Scary monsters my butt! I'm married"

Synopsis: Let's see...Bob Hoskins is a British mobster type who raised Jet Li to be more of a "dog" than human and uses him as his enforcer, then as a source of income as a pit fighter (is that the correct word?). When the leash is on, he's doclile. But when it comes off...Holy Shit!! In a really cool scene, Li finds himself without a master and winds up with caring people in the form of Morgan Freeman and his step daughter. They help Li to become more human and find a new life. But Li finds himself forced back in to his old world that he has learned to hate. You can guess what he has to do in order to escape this life.


Jet Li's acting was really good - an emotionless 10 year old trapped in a man's body. He's able to express his feelings without words. Something a lot of actors think they can do. Bob Hoskins was great! A real silver tongued bastard at times and complete scumbag the rest. Morgan Freeman...always great but his lines were really lacking. The fighting was well choreographed and chaotic at the same time. A strange effect. I believe the fight choreographer was the same guy for The Matrix and Kill Bill. There were times it was kind of stupid - Li kicks or punches a guy sending him spinning across the room then later repeatedly hits someone fast and hard without knocking them out. :confused: The story itself isn't all that great. They did take more time with Li's development as a person rather than a black screen with "1 year later..." or something like that, so that was nice. The ending is pretty much the norm with this style of movie. Not a bad movie but not great. At least we get to see that Li can act. Worth renting but not buying, IMHO.

I'm only admitting that I watch this show because, 1-I don't see any of you in person, so you can't really laugh at me, and 2-because I missed last week's episode. Actually, I'm not sure what week it was, but I went to read Matthew his bedtime story around 8:20 and woke up at 3:30 Monday morning with a major crick in my neck. (If that's a southern word, it means that my body was on the bed while my head was against the headboard which left my neck at a 90degree angle for several hours.) So, anyway, when the "prisoner" guy actually escaped from the basement, what happened? Who is he? Who was hurt? Did he escape/die/kill anyone? Did any of the neighbors hear? (like Susan?) I thought that storyline would be continued into last nights episode, but it wasn't.
I know how hard it is to come forward, so in your reply you can say something like...."I would never watch that show, but my __________ (wife, cousin, daughter, neighbor, etc) loves it and she said.................happened."
I'll never tell....

At last on DVD. I’ve been looking for this 1967 Lee Marvin film for years. Directed by John Boorman and based on Donald Westlake’s THE HUNTER, it’s dated but still works to some degree. I like Mel Gibsons “Payback” (based on the same novel) better. If you haven’t seen “Point Blank,” rent it along with “Payback” and watch them back to back. It’s a great tutorial in how movie making – directing, lighting, tinting, cutting, scoring, cinematography, etc. – changed over three decades.

FF= 1.0