Quick note, this is the same review I ran at the home site, http://www.good-comics.com, just mental insert a "clicks" after the score.















It's 2:30 AM, we are freshly back from the theatre, and all I can say is... WOW.



This was worth waiting for.

This was worth fighting for.

Hell, it was almost worth getting cancelled for!



It is a hard line to walk, serving two masters. Joss Whedon dances that line with deft footwork in his big screen follow up to the canceled series, FIREFLY. In short order he introduces the universe, the cast and the conflict and then it's off to the races.



The crew of Serenity are harboring a fugitive from a highly illegal Alliance bio-weapon project. And she knows the secret of another failed experiment, she just doesn't know it yet.



For followers of the unfairly cancelled FIREFLY, there is much to enjoy. Not only do we get to see the method and resolution of River Tam's madness, we also get to see her brother Simon's shining moment in rescuing her. Many other dangling threads from the series are picked up, many times with comic bombshells attached. It truly is everything you would hope for and expect from Joss and his crew, in ways both good and bad.



The good is that he's playing very strongly to the fans. There is a lot of fan service in SERENITY, especially in regards to the Simon/Kaylee relationship. There are moments for all the characters, both comic and tragic, that are going to play a thousand times stronger to the Browncoats. And that's okay.



It may also be the Achillies heel of the film. Don't get me wrong, I think it will play well to the unintitated. It may even send them running out to pick up more FIREFLY dvd sets. I just wonder if the deaths in the crew will have anywhere near as much punch to people who didn't see War Stories or Our Mrs. Renolds. They were devestating to Kris and I, but we are FANS!!! As in fanatics. Sure, we may not have ranks in the Browncoats, but we watched every hour of the show on Fox, and watched the tapes we taped them on before we had the dvd's to watch.



The test, as is often the case, may be in my father's reaction to it. Mom's a Browncoat. She tore through the dvds after we left them. Dad got a little upset at her dvd adultry, but didn't ask for them back to finish. Which is why he's the test. I think he'll dig it. But I've been very wrong about these things before.



There are things in the film that you just couldn't do on TV, specifically the final space battle. It was beautiful. And so was Gina Torres. I don't have a "list", and I know you know what I'm talking about, but if I did, she'd be on it. Big time. Whether kicking ass or mourning a loss, she is beloved by the camera in this film. And apparently Sean Maher lifts a lot of wieghts. A LOT of wieghts. On it's technical merits, it is a remarkable film. In it's performances and writing, also remarkable. But as any Browncoat will tell you, it's got a big flaw. It's about 22 hours to short.



And for that I blame FOX.



I give SERENITY a very enthusiastic 8 and 1/2 out of 10. By the time the weekend's over, I expect it'll be up to 9 and a 1/2. Some things will cost you no matter what, Mr. Whedon! Whether you are our master now or not!



I am a leaf on the wind.

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Adrift:



This episode, compared to last week's slamma-bamma premiere, was a slow burn. It's in the title, the subject matter, the pacing, everything. It's a great technique to control the flow of the intensity of the series. We learned a few new things, and saw others reinforced.

Primarily, this episode was about Sawyer and Michael's floating in the currents leading to nowhere issues. It was disappointing, but in characters, seeing them revert in stress to their defensive, frustrated posturing, after Sawyer, once again playing the closeted hero, had gotten shot trying to save Walt last season int he finale, and now here again, risked his own life, wounded, trying to save Michael. And Michael is almost immediately harping on Sawyer for leaking arterial blood in the water, for not carrying a cross as big as he is, etc. and Sawyer in turn recedes further into his safety zone of glowering self-imposed isolation. I continue to think that Sawyer's character is one of the most interesting on the series. His actions, and responses to stress, are realistically complex.



We also see Locke's journey into the lair, the fate of Kate, and some brief dialog suggesting that Desmond IS Desmond, and thinks the world is supposed to end, and is REALLY bound to his routine. The converging confrontation between Jack, John and Desmond is seen from a different angle, literally, as Kate, bound, trapped, then freed, then escaped, is witnessing it all, balled up like a tarantula in the ventilation system. We also get to see lots of Kate's jiggle as she knee-elbow-knees her way through the ductwork. Sorry, no screencap.



The backstory this episode is another look at Michael's Walt problem. We see him desperately struggling to retain legal rights to his son, despite limited exposure to him as a child, and we also see the seeds of his abandonment issues... voluntarily giving Walt up to his mother's adoption scheme, in the interst of the child (which he later is conddemned for seeming to have abandoned Walt...) so it dovetails nicely with the fact that Michael spends this episode both despairing over losing Walt, his emotional lifeline, and fearful of acknowledging new family bonds with other crash survivors, Sawyer in particular.









It's also nice to see Jin in a sympathetic, if flipped-out-tied-to-a-stick, light, both in that he survived the shipwreck, but also that when they find him, he's greeted as a friend and the animosity and mistrust from last season is long gone. They used to film him isolated and alien, both from language and demeanor, and here, he's hurtling himself at them in relief and hysteria, and he's shown as a protagonist.



Oddities and Observations:



1. Nothing yet has indicated my Bernal Sphere theory is wrong, though I sure was dismissed quicly enough on the Lost forum. Assholes. We'll SEE, I says! In fact, the root of Bernal's thinking in developing the concept of a closed, isolated self-sustaining civilization is the horror of wartime Europe and the spectre of global annhiliation. Desmond's shock that the world appears to remain... in existence... plays into that.



2. We see more of the logo this time. Some people think it's the logo for DARPA, which is a nice idea (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the DoD: http://www.darpa.mil/ ) but not so. And it does look vaguely like the Oceanic Air logo. But what it really is, I tell you, is Feng Shui. Witness:







Same as Jack's tattoo, same as the mural. The company logo, however, as seen on the canned goods and such... and somewhere ELSE this episode... includes a phoenix symbol in the center, and the word, as it looks to me, DHARMA (ultimate truth, hey?) So, is that Phoenix representing rebirth after a fiery apocalypse? Hmm.







3. I've been thinking more about the Dead Man's Switch. Some people remain convinced that the purpose of that APPLE II is to act as a manual reset for a Dead Man's Switch, another words, a doomsday weapon. However, there's no logical reason for any weapon, defenseive measure, or security system, to have a timed manual input. There IS, however, some logic to such input in systems intended to verify a guard is on duty, etc. But there's another interesting possibility. Perhaps Desmond is convinced that entering the code and resetting the clock to...108, natch, prevents a horrible thing, and it's a psychological study, once again fueling the Truman Show theory. I suspect it's not, though. We'll see. One thing that's clear: Desmond hasn't gotten much sleep in the years since Whatever the Fuck Happened. 107 minutes or so of it, max, we can assume.







4. Apollo Candy: Kate finds a batch of apparently fresh Apollo candy bars. Apollo is an intersting name, aside from being a legitimate brand from back in the day (though not THIS bar in particular) the symbolism of the Apollo mission is pretty clear. Science. Experiment. Journey.



5. Random Tidbit: the liner for this episode is listed on TV.com as including a guest appearance by Enterprise's Jolene Blaylock (T'Pol) as Michael's wife's lawyer. However, in the episode, we get whasername, who I recognize but don't remember the name of, instead.







Blaylock wasn't convincing? Reshoots?







6. The Others: OK, who are they, really? There was some early talk that the Others were not, in fact, some mystery group of bad nasties on the island, but rather the tail section folks. I don't think so. I DO think thatthey've been there awhile, as evidenced by their ratty clothes and tribal weapons, etc. but they must have access to some of the island's piecemeal infrastructure, as we know from that small watercraft used in the finale, along with the rain slickers and whatnot in that scene. Same group? Different group? They both want kids, though, that's for sure. And Ethan's appearance last season was all about getting Claire's punk-ass kid as well... so, so.







7. My Favorite Detail: The Shark: SLOW it DOWN, MAN! Dennis Hopper in True Romance, couldn't say it better. Tivo the hell out of that circling shark scene... you'll see what we saw last night: The Dharma company LOGO on the shark's tail. HMMMM! Surveillance system? Mutated sea bass?



8. Finally, Polar Bear Alert: Hmmmmm...









9/10 Clicks

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I saw this news item this morning, and discovered, to my horror, evidence of my own fate. It's like Lost Highway... I've witnessed the abyss!







http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... EUUK51.DTL

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Criminal Minds was almost a show that never enjoyed my scrutiny. I saw Bruckheimer, generic-looking police procedural, and voice-over narrative, all from one preview, and tossed that one onto the pyre straight away. In the end, I decided ti Tivo it just to watch our man Patinkin spit...out...his lines, in Inigo Montoya style. Gladly, it was a fortunate decision, because this one, at least so far as the premiere suggests, is smarter than many of it's competitiors in the genre.



I'm the first to admit there's too many cop dramas on TV, particularly in this lead detective/profiler/genius/savant mode. In some ways, I think Law and Order: Criminal Intent was too smart and quirky for it's own good, because while the specialist procedural isn't new (shit, I watched Quincy as a kid) L&O:CI's blend of creepy, somewhat unlikable lead and articulate, often challenging scripts led, I think, many people to check it out, decide they sort of liked the idea of a guy so smart he can suss out what's going onwhile other experts around him throw up their hands in disbelief, but they weren't compelled to work that hard at enjoying the show. The CSI phenomenon has been an interesting devolution in the pseudo-science-based police procedural genre. Unlike Criminal Intent, much of what we see on CSI isn't factual, but fictional technology, contrived coincidence, and arcane trivia. And it focuses on the FX, the gore, the sensational drama in the character backstory, at the expense of actually challenging the audience. They give you a little bit of mystery, but not enough to solve it yourself (when they want it to be insanely difficult, to show how smart the characters are) or make it too easy (which diminishes your interest in watching the cop-science-heroes study slides to background techno music.) In fact, CSI is most watchable when they don't make any attempt to portray a crime solvable through gun-on-the-mantle visual clues. That way, we can just sit back and watch the models in white science-trenchcoats pucker at each other.



Criminal Minds is different. Sure, it has it's model/cop contingent, with Lola Glaudini's cheekbones (ER, Boomtown, King of Queens, Sopranos, and films like Groove) and Shemar Moore's pectorals (Birds of Prey) and I suppose Thomas Gibson's 'executive contour' haircut (Dharma and Greg) but the show is really a study of a terribly emotionally distressed profiler (Mandy Patinkin) who's brilliance at solving profiling cases of bad nasty murderdeathkillers is matched by his unhinged wigginess over the fact that his last case suffered a minor blow when he got six agents killed. The rest of the team are able-bodied, smart-dressing, confident career cops worrying about whether Gibson (get it! Gibson, same name as Thomas Gibson, who's character is considering naming his young son...Gibson!) will lose it in the heat of battle. There's plenty here that seems formulaic at first glance. Why does Gibson carry a weapon if his stability is in question. Awfully in charge, isn't he, for someone on probation? Older, experienced savant knows everything about everything, and schools his team at every turn while solving routine serial killer cases... and yet, there's more to it, and I was engaged despite my skepticism. Gibson doesn't know everything. In fact, he's fairly well versed in Nietzsche (as the narrative informs us, just in case) and knows that the answer lies frequently enough in knowing that you don't know, and trying to understand why. His character has some good lines, but mostly, Patinkin works because he has that smoldering intensity that William Peterson's Grissom on CSI sometimes affects: he simply stands there, hangdog, and stares at a scene until he has an epiphany. And it's believable. I find it refreshing that he works by surrounding himself with others that actually have a purpose. His associate is a young genius and fractured thinker who's borderline-autistic attention to detail Gibson uses like a tool. Go-to guys on the squad for the heavy lifting, ambitious young female detective to be bait and undercover material, and we watch Gibson slowly chew his way through the problem.



The sets are well done too. There's a more realistic sense of bureaucracy and infrastructure on this show. When they investigate the scene, there's fifteen cops and crew on the perimeter, helicopter overhead, owing much to Law and Order about making a crime scene look realistically crowded, especially contrasted against CSI's we're-the-first-and-only-one's-here method. We see a little bit of the criminal's viewpoint at the beginning, again like Criminal Intent, and then watch the events unfold from Gibson's team's POV.



And I think I was eventually sold on the little details. There's a sense of geography here. The crew have downtime in a private jet, which actually requires them to, you know, sit there and stew while they get wherever, which is a nice touch, showing us their frustration. They make a lot of references to case knowledge, which is fun to try and decipher. There are references to the past, the unseen continuity of the show's back-story, which is only given to us piecemeal, much like Law and Order: Pare does so well. And, surprisingly in these short-attention-span-theatre days, the show appears to be serial: the end of the pilot episode included a surprisingly tense, creepy scene in which Gibson fills gas at a remote station in Virginia, and as he's paying for his purchase, he notices many of the mannerisms in the attendant which he had described for us earlier in profiling the serial killer of the episode's main plot. As he turns to leave, we see the attendant rise and follow him, raising an assault shotgun at him from behind, which he sees in the reflection of a gas pump. End of episode.



it'll take several more episodes to get a stronger sense of whether or not this show is diversified enough to be interesting to watch on a regular basis. But so far, the pilot was more intriguing to follow, and Patinkin more fascinating to watch, than many of it's pre-existing competitors returning this season. And I'll also drop the caveat that in the end, it IS formulaic...compared to the one million other possible subjects for a drama today. It's clearly going to appeal to fans of the police procedural. I'm one of them, so I judge it based on that predisposition.



8/10 Clicks

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I don't get a lot of SPAM these days, but eToys keeps sending me these emails offering inane products I don't want. Until now. Don't let me mislead you, I don't want those idiotic moneypits shown int he graphic.



But I'm always down with SELECT ROBOTICS... what a great way to sell me something.

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This ambitious claymation spectacularama will look very familiar to fans of Burton's Nightmare Before Christman, not only for the animation design, method and tone, the music, the costuming, and the distracting fey whimsy... but even shades of character-reuse, such as the Victor's dog, which could almost be canned fottage from the previous film. But retreads aren't necessarily a bad thing, and it's my opinion that this is the stronger film. For one thing, the design concept is more cohesive, with a certain logic to the living world's grey, morose gothic-victorian european village versus the underworld's bright, colorful, flamboyant carnivalesque spectacle. The film wears it's bias on it's celluloid sleeve, and it;s a good thing.



Surprisingly short, Corpse Bride is the [loosely] story of young Victor, a cte, Deppish fop in an arranged marriage with Victoria, a quicksilver-voiced wideeyed beauty voiced by Emily Watson. They don't know each other, their families each hoping to raise their financial condition through the other's (empty) coffers, and they do initially fall for each other, despite the family drama, until Victor, in a fit of nervousness, flees the rehearsal, and in an act of earnest practice, accidentally marries the half-buried corpse of a bride murdered years earlier in the forest surrounding his village. Comedy and horror insue, as the Bride follows him around in the underworld, preparing to make a happy undead home with her new man, while Victor desperately searches for an excuse to reach the surface world and see his true love once more. Craziness everywhere, as he begins to realize that life after death is a huge fucking party, and man, life in perpetually foggy, cold, severe victorian europe with freakishly grotesque in-laws is nothing to write home about.



Oddly, the tone of the script is uneven. Burton obviously relates with the Bride... she's his typical horror-venus muse, rejected for her 'differentness' while sadly being really, really cool and no one knows it because they won't give her a chance. EXCEPT. The whole thing hinges on the artifice that she, by virtue of coincidence and timing, snared a man that wasn't hers, and spends the whole film trying to keep him from his true love, or whining about not being loved by him. It's a pathetic character that needn't be, as her confidence, sassy charm, and willfulness would otherwise make her an engaging character. In trying to make the Bride more than a gruesome horror film 2D antagonist, Burton and co-director Mike Johnson unintentionally make her a self-absorbed, insecure cow, which is the LAST thing that one half of his audience wants to see while out with THEIR partners, let me tell you.



Fortunately, some of the other characters struck the perfect chord:







Victoria's stodgy parents, Maudeline Everglot (voiced by Joanna Lumley) and Finish Everglot (voiced by Albert Finney) are perfect caricatures of 19th century aged and impoverished nobility, and Victor's are classic stereotypes of poor fishmongers with ambition above their caste (though oddly referred to as noveaux riche.)







In the underworld, Elder Gutknecht (voiced by Michael Gough) the elderly skeletal sage that assists the young, er, star-crossed couple find their way to the surface and later, restore their vows properly, is a wonder of detail: his pourous, brittle jawline, missing teeth, hobbled posture, long wispy beard, and separated crown, habitually itched to near rupture. Some of the minor characters are visual delights in their iconic design. Some of my favorites included:







Dead Pipe Smoker, Scissors Zombie...









Mr. BonesJangles (Lung's favorite, by a shot) ...







Cannonball General and his diminutive counterpart General Bonesapart. The designs of most of the townsfolk are brilliant, and the sets are lavishly rendered, equal parts stern and stylized. This is what Burton's imagination does best when allowed to flip out without the limitations of live-action imagery.







The animation is as smooth as his previous film, excpet where deliberately sticky, such as in the stiff gait of several of the characters. FX are used sparingly, and slight distortions of the models convey wonderfully subtle detail, like Victoria's mother's cheek wobble and breast-heaving, his father's mustache's trembling, and so forth. The music is bearable, though I'm growing tired of Elfmanisms (coming from an old Oingo Boingo fan, too.) And lastly the incorporation of transitional scenes, both inmoving from set to set, and in the introduction of musical numbers, rivaling the best stage productions out there. The whole thing is just CRAFTED so well, it's a great night at the movies, regardless of the thin plot logic and abrupt ending. And I suppose we must be careful what we wish for, since it's groaning length was what soured me on Charlie and the Choclate Factory more than anything else in the film.



All in all, it was probably the most entertaining Tim Burton film I've seen in quite awhile, at least since Mars Attacks!



7/10 Clicks

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Transporter II, a dual-review by one Wrong Robot and one Iron Lung, and aliberal dose of shock and awe...



Premise:



When we last left our man, he was returning to work as a high-stakes, fast-paced combat driver/courier, having just bedded down the luscious young secretary-fetish Asian Honey Pot he'd previously rescued, or something, and who'd baked him madelines...











Now, they've jettisoned the AHP angle, and are back on track. Action! Frank has been transplanted to Miami, regrettably, and in one fell swoop we've lost half the fun of the first one, watching him tear up those European streets (the other half being said AHP) and to make matters worse, his high-stakes client? A cute little dumb-ass kid. We're given an initial combat sequence of some thuggos trying to carjack his new Audi A8... and then suddenly, day care! We do soon learn that the tyke's father is the new Drug Czar for the US, and his hot, neglected wife, Amber Valetta, has her panties twisted for our man, and how could she not? Immediately after some flirting, young laddie is stolen by kidnappers exacting a ransom, and soon, it becomes clear that it wasn't a kidnapping at all, but a plot to infect the Czar with a nanovirus, shortly before a convention of Drug Czars from all of the Pan-American countries (except Venezuela, one assumes.) Fortunately, despite the cheeky child care premise, we DO have ample opportunity to watch Jason Statham kick ass in various elevations and vehicles and with multiple unusual combat tools. And that's what's important! And hot chicks.



Cast:



This movie is all about Statham. A street urchin discovered by Guy Ritchie and Matt Vaughn for use in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (as a street urchin/ hustler) Statham proved himself to carry a certain menace and intensity, combined with wry humor and a mellow demeanor, andhis presence was integral to that film and it's follow-up, Snatch. But Transporter was the film developed by Luc Besson and gang to shocase Statham's blend of physicality and magnetism. Piling on a healthy dose of hong kong cinema F/X and shoe-horning in the AHP and pouring the resulting stew into a BMW 7 series, Transporter was a moderate success, yet troublingly short of it's potential. Not enough car racing, impressive but uneven combat sequences that ran from the numbingly generic kicks and strikes, to extremely complex and humorous grease-pit fighting, utilizing the best appearance of a road bike on film, EVER. So the news of a sequel was exciting. Sure, now we'll have more Statham, more racing, more fighting, more Honey Pots! And yet, we DID get Statham, at least. And he's as sharp as ever. Ripped to high heaven, swarthy in his black suit as usual, and better trained in the choreographed sequences, he's pretty much flawless in this film.



The AHP this time is played by Amber Valetta, who is basically whatever the opposite of an AHP is.











Which is a pouty, busty, lanky white chick. But she's actually really nice to look at, a far better actress than I thought, at least in terms of delivering emotional dialog somewhat realistically. I also recently saw her in Hitch, and I quite like her now, sort of Famke Jannsen's lost genetic twin. LOST, get it? Sadly, though, she's not gussied up with office sex attaire, and never in the trunk, and very infrequently in Frank's arms. Bad decision.



The villains of the piece are Kate Nauta and Allesandro Gassman.















Nauta, a model discovered by Luc Besson (what EVAH that means, really, in Europe) who's been hired to tramp around in lingerie pasted onto her writhing frame, and flip out with dual Ingrams in criminally underutlizied shoulder holsters and flimsy nurse gear like something out of a naughty Halloween catalog, smeared up with bad punkrock make-up and sporting a savvy Bluetooth wireless mic.











Initially, seeing photos of her, I hated her. Too skinny, too blonde, too generic, too obvious. Why can't they do the assassin from Gun Candy, I cried?!?











But lo, in the opening sequence, we got just THAT (in appearance anyway) and while Lung and I were delighted at the visual reference, Nauta's assassin proved to be much more interesting. The sinewy torso I disliked before became intriguing, blood-splattered, oiled, hurtling through glass at 80mph... and her super-slutty heroine-chic vibe ended up working for the character. In the end, it was a good call, because she was interesting to watch, but not so attractive that you don't want to see her impaled.





Alessandro Gassman, on the other hand, desperately needed impaling, and we had to wait far too long for his demise, as entertaining as it was.









This guy is all about cheekbones, freaky chisel-male-stripper frame, and cocksure posing. I hated his accent, his face, his posing, his stupid ascots, everything about him. It was like his character was just too impossibly vain. And so is the actor, apparently, given how many pubic shots there are of him online. This made him Nauta's perfect foil, though, and what's good for the goose right? He's a male version of some of these ludicrous ultra-hottie caricatures, so I can't fault him for that. But his role in the film was effectively nauseating, and it only takes about seven seconds of screentime for the audience to want him drawned like an unwanted kitten.



We also see Matthew Modine as the Drug Czar but he was terribly Blah. Lastly, the talented and engaging Jason Flemyng, Statham's partner in Lock Stock, bulked up, sporting a Russian accent, and proving that comedy in action films need not be farcical. He was awesome. I love this guy.











Flemyng surprised me here... I'm used to him as a the lanky, cynical Tom, not this meaty, combative scientist. I appreciated his physicality as he got to do a lot of running, leaping, dodging, fighting, and sneering... and all with a stellar Russian accent. He was possibly th ebest part of the cast after Statham.





FX/Action/Cool Factor:



First, it's all about the car[s]. Despite being a fan of the Audis, I was disappointed to read early on that the Audi A8 had replaced the BMW 7Series as the limo of choice bad-assery.













However, it didn't take long for the 12-cylinder 4WD beast to win me over, thanks to such wonderful F/X as him hurtling upside down through the air on jumps, swerving through narrow passageways at incredible speeds, and leaping from one parking garage to the other, landing on the front right wheel at an impossible angle, and motoring on through the next garage. It didn't hurt that they sed live five buckets of sperm whale semen to gloss it up.



Later in the film, he switches to Bruce Wayne's ride, the Lambo Murcialago, for a death-defying stunt pitting him against a Lear Jet.











It's hard to make that car look bad, and I read recently thatthey had to wash it after every take. Similarly to how I drive my GTI, of course.



The stunts and camera angles here were, as one reviewer called them, 'relentlessly ridiculous.' This was a very good thing. As in those crazy driving tricks mentioned above, we got plenty of scenes of Statham doing supernatural things, like leaping out of windows to grab objects out of the air, racing cars while on speedboats, beating the shit out of guys using a firehose, doing a double leg kick hop move to didge the impact of two cars slamming into each other below him, and on and on. It was pretty entertaining, and you knew that THEY knew it was all horseehit, and didn't care. It's Pictures, boys!













Bottom Line:



While it had it's share of ludicrous stunts, hammy acting and mind-bending plot irrationality, none of that mattered in the end. Transporter 2 gave us plenty new to see, improving on the first film in some ways. Ultimately, I have to say I still liked the vibe of the first one more. Maybe it was the Euro setting instead of Miami. Maybe it was the Asian Honey Pot instead of the heroine chic. Hell, maybe it was the fact that said AHP cooked him madeline cookies in the first film, and in this one, it was that randy french cop doing the madeline cooking. Between that and the day care stuff, I just felt like this one traded some sexiness for camp. If they make a third one, let's hope they continue the trend of increased driving and complex action choreography, but bring back the sexier ingenues and darker, more interesting setting. Perhaps Transporter 3: Tokyo!



7/10 Clicks



;;;



Want more Transporter 2?



How about Audi's T2 site showcasing that awesome V12 A8: http://www.audi.com



Or perhaps a horde of wallpapers: http://www.allmoviephoto.com/photo/2005 ... photo.html

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Runaways v.2 #8

Writer: Brian K. Vaughan

Artist: Takeshi Miyazawa



The "star-crossed lovers" arc ends here, with a surprising ending. For those following along at home, Xavin is a young Skrull, of the shape-changing race that has dominated much of the 70's Fantastic Four continuity (and Avengers, and more, given the Kree/Skrull War) who has appeared and announced that he is to be married to the Runaways' presumably alien member, the beautifully hippy Karolina. This issue is all about defending her honor against what appears to be a despicable arranged marriage perpetrated by their dead evil bad nasty parents. But after the requisite tussle and escape, Vaughan gives us a great bait-and-switch: after declaring that if Karolina doesn't marry him, the entire planet will die! Exclamation point!



We turn the page and discover he's not delivering threats, but facts. Seems their arrangement was done in an attempt to get his race, Skrulls being military invaders and such, to attack the homeworld of Karolina's people, in some sort of power play that benefitted her parents' schemes. Now, his parents are alsodead, the war has raged to an empasse, and his hope, described in a surprisingly rational sit-down on top of the Tower Building, is that they will joinhands and return to the conflict between their people and be a symbol of peace and unity and other happy hippiness. Not that he couldn't, you know, find another hot young teenage alien of her species' but hey.



Of course, the real hang-up here, beyond the fact that she doesn't KNOW him, is her public announcement, as learned already by Nico last issue, that she's very much gay. Funny thing about Skrulls though, they choose their appearance and gender at will, and he immediately becomes female and gorgeous. Now, my first reaction to this was aggrevation. Gender preference isn't about ANYONE of a certain gender, it's just about what combinations of physical form and genitalia are arousing. This immediately smacked to me as pandering. However, all Karolina did was sort of blurt "whoa!" as any of us might do when confronted with a very attractive individual of our own prediliction. No promise of instant hook-up.



More importantly, though, and trading a bit on Karolina's growing feelings of xenobiological isolation, she chooses to go with him anyway, in the hopes that it will help avert the spilling of this tragic conflict onto Earth's door. She chose the...mature decision. Shocking, especially in a comic about teenagers, for teenagers. I was impressed! So we see the team genuinely saddened and frustrated at her leaving, but the final scene felt all to familiar for any of us who have had to leave friends and loved ones, or were the ones being left. Miyazawa continues to show his brilliant understanding of expression and gestural style here that he's brought to the beautifully-rendered Mary Jane series, and while I look forward to series regular Alphona's return, this was a suitable fill-in.



8/10 Clicks

Related posts:

1. Runaways #25
2. Runaways v.2 #9
3. Runaways #14

New Avengers #9

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis

Artist: Steven McNiven



I read a lot of books that are basically talking head pages. I admit it. Great script, well-defined characters, beautiful subtlety in expression and natural pose, and I'm there. This book is by far the most simply talking-headish of them all. Moreso than any other Bendis book, even Alias! And yet, it's beautifully done. McNiven has once again crafted a piece with so much mood and expression and intensity, even in these static, minimalist panels where the background is negative field. It's truly amazing.



This is the last part of the Sentry arc, and we learn, through Emma Frost's sub-conscious-dwelling character study, where and why Sentry became what he is in his current whacked out form. Last issue verified, in one hazy image, that Sentry had undergone a serious mental wipe by Mastermind, and that all of his manifestations and psychotic breaks were aspects of the massive potential of his power trying to break free. This issue, we learn the identity of the true originator of this plot, the Sentry's real ultimate foe, not the red herring Void, but... the General. And McNiven's spectacular pacing, combined with Bendis' ability to write wonder into the script, allow for a truly majestic money shot of Sentry being reborn, and the surreal finality of his place in the world restored, minus, you know, everyone remembering he ever existed before. This is an especially nice touch, as we have discussed before, the Sentry is Marvel's coolest meta-media experiment, a character who's been erased from Marvel continuity in the minds of the characters, but supposedly existed all that time as the Marvel Superman of sorts... but whom never really existed in print form until now. He's the living embodiment of the power of retroactive continuity, and the way they tie this together at the end, they allow him to enter the Marvel U and the Avengers as if he's as brand new... as he is. All this, and Paul Jenkins the writer talking women into unconsciousness!



Great, great, ambitious comics...



10/10 Clicks!

Related posts:

1. New Avengers #7
2. Review: Dark Avengers No. 14
3. New Avengers #14

Yeeeeehaw boyos, it's ON again. At hyperspeed. I appreciate the fact that they did a pre-show 1 hour catch-up episode to bring new viewers up to speed and to refresh the memories of the less-than-obsessed, clearing the way for all new hit-the-ground-running content in the premiere. And for anyone who felt gipped by the finale (and I'm NOT one of them) there's so much going on in this one that your viewing experience becomes synonymous with [maybe]Desmond's raw egg blender beverage there. Fuck!



The premiere resumes where the finale ended...on the island anyway. The raft is conspicuously absent. Seeing the opened hatch offered only a descent into bad nasty blackness, a broken ladder, and insubstantial light quality, Jack calls for a return to the camp and abandonment of the plan, leading to a tense showdown with Locke. I had forgotten, in my Locke-centric view of the action, that the reason given for this hatch busting wasn't just 'because its there' but to get the castaways something to hide in when the Others show up, being bad nasties as they presumably are. Locke aquiesces, for the moment, and we see the beginning of Jack's series of enlightening flashbacks. More on that in a second.



On the way back, Jack quizzed Hurley about the significance of the humbers, but refused to acknowledge the coincidence as anything more than what it is (implication being that he isn't quite believeing Hurley about the pre-existing bad luck number issue... he believes Hurley believes he always knew those numbers, but I think Jack thinks Hurley remembers them, out of stress, but that it's projection...) and soon, back at camp, Jack is forced to take control as hysteria breaks out over their return (with no good hatchy news) and the untimely arrival of Shannon who, out desperately searching for Vincent, that wacky trouble-causing dog, stumbled into an apparition of young Walt, soaking and mumbling incoherently, freaking everyone out across America. So she's there flipping out about what she saw, now a member of the Forest Freaky Deakies club, with the whispering, etc. and causing mass hysteria, petulantly refusing to shut the fuck up before people grab torches and wig out. Interesting aspect of this scene was the resulting hysteria, not about the seeming impossibility of what she saw (since they don't know the raft went down and Walt was stolen) but because his water-logged, screwed-up appearance would suggest something bad nasty happened on the raft in the first place. Everyone wigs out.



Jack takes control and offers hope, and this was the basis of the flashbacks. We see his experience in choosing to attempt to save the life of the woman who would later be shown as his wife, in from a disastrous car crash. He chooses to save her over the other victim in the crash, and that man passes away as a result of that choice. Later, Jack learns the hard lesson about pragmatic clinical pessimism, and begins to understand his role as a physician is to not only heal, but comfort. He's torn up regardless, because Sarah, his future bride and current brokeback patient, trusts him and he promises to fix her, and fails, as her spine is destroyued. We later see him running steps at the stadium and coming across another man, Despond, also running, who gives him some wry, knowing advice and veiled references regarding miracles and such, and then he's off. Sure enough, out of surgery, she wakes up to the bad news that he couldn't repair her damage and Jack's a mess about it. And suddenly, she CAN move those cute little metatarsals, and it is our first indication that Jack knows a lot more about miracles than he lets on.



Back in the present, so to speak, Locke breaks ranks quite publicly for the last time, taking a bunch of aircraft cable bundle and heading off to explore the hatch, becuase, you know, he can't wait three hours until dawn. Kate follows to help, and Jack is torn. Torn! We cut to Jack and Kate, Kate being selected to descend because of her theoretical physical advantages of being smaller and such. Rope breaks, she falls, everything's claustrophobic and freaky. Soon, Jack finally gives up the pretense that he isn't sitting around obsessing over not ever having the chance to explore Kate's miraculously clean underwear, and off he goes on a one man rescue mission. Open hatch, no light, unattended rope, freaky-deakyness abounds, and down he goes, giving thrills to women in their living rooms everywhere. And what does he find?



In the intro to the episode, we were treated to this surreal scene of an unseen dude waking up in some commune type lair, rocking to some Mama Cass, making egg blendies, working on an Apple II, and injecting himself with mystery serum. Then there's a distant explosion, and he's off to grab a coat, retrieve weapons, and check a clever Rube Goldberg assembly of retro surveillance apparati, mirrors and lights and periscopes designed to give him views of what appear to be lots and lots of tunnels.



So now, here we have Jack, in the most especially exciting payoff yet, cruising through this craaaazy geodesic dome of a lair, full of wierd stuff. Murals, a mix-mash of technologies from the 60s to contemporary... an unattended Apple II, and that crazy music. Sure enough, as he's about to press "execute" ont he keyboard, because it's there (and hey, with power and a data connection) Locke cries out "I wouldn't touch that if I were you." and there's our Locke problem, being held at gunpoint...by DESMOND!



BOOOOOM! L O S T



:::



This was a surreal letter left on my desk by the young child of a cow-worker last year... is this part of MY flashback???







::



GREAT episode. So densely packed with references, I was beside myself. And extremely tense and mysterious. Answer one question, open the door to five more. I was delighted by the hatch lair, and the intro scene in particular, which while we're LED to believe is the same time and place, may not be so. Next week: the raft! But I compiled a list of Hmmmmms below. In trying to do a bit of research, I stumbled acorss the Lost forum, which is a no-no for me, because I don't want to be unwittingly reading the theories of an industry insider leaking plot points or symbolic details. So my list is what it is...



LOST Premiere Hmmmmmma:



1. Desmond...meaning what? Who is this guy?!? I think I accidentally just cracked the mystery of the island. More on this at the end.



2. Desmond's line: "What are you running from? The devil chasing you?"



3. Desmond line: "See you in another life."



4. Mixmatched technology in the lair: new washer/dryer, 90s injection equipment, 80's APPLE II, 70's music, 60's tape-reel computer array...



5. Quarantine is written on the INSIDE of the hatch door.



6. The mural contains the number 108... the sum of the mystery numbers.



7. The injection vials show the serial number... of the mystery numbers.



8. The opening sequence looks to be of another time. Everything is clean, newish, the guy looks healthy and clean. Later exploration of the lair is grungy and dim, and Desmond is haggard and dirty. Was the opening scene from an early disaster on the island that led to the current problem? Was that a Desmond flashback?



9. Walt's ghostly mumbling, according to some internet reports, is "Don't push the button. The button is bad!" backwards... so which button? Execute on the keyboard? Or something in Shannon's future? Last time Walt said not to do something, it was hatch opening... and before that... coming to the US from Australia in the first place...



10. The other victim in the accident that Jack chooses against saving: name Rutherford, age 57. Pronounced at...8:15pm. Familiar number, that. As it turns out, Shannon's last name is Rutherford! Daddy?



11. Desmond's gun locker padlock: combination contained mystery numbers.



12. Desmond's line: "Lift it up." the sprain? Or something in the future?

Shades of SIGNS happening here...



13. Desmond's line: "I'm almost a doctor..."



14. Sarah's line to Jack: "Are you pulling my chain?" They're always pulling on ropes and chains onthe island, including the descent into the hatch.



16. Yin Yang symbol on the walls of the lair, same one in Jack's tattoo... it's I Ching. Someone posted recently to the EW site that the I CHing for the number 42 is... Increase, Further Oneself...Cross the Great Water...Leadership YIKES!



17. Jack is making me think of Faust... sold his soul to the devil for a miracle, you see.



18. Sarah was on her way to try on a wedding dress. Boone's mother owned a bridal business... inherited from her dead ex-husband... Sahannon's father... Mr. Rutherford?!?



19. The login string on the APPLE II contained mystery numbers.



20. Jack drank from Desmond's water bottle. It was a focal point.



21. Music playing in the lair: "Make Your Own Music"



22. This one is an unsubstantiated stretch.... according to another poster, Rousseau was a French mathematician who developed theories on genetic twins.. the poster had all of these specifcs with regards to the numbers, these being fishy to me... but the concept of genetic twins IS interesting. Many characters have disappeared and reappeared changed, different, amnesiac or behaviorally skewed. Is Locke a genetic twin? Is Claire? How about Charlie? That other mysterious 815 crew on the radio? The poster had specifics about the statistical likelihoods of meeting your genetic twin occuring in nature at random, etc. and this could, if truly connected to the show and not just pie-in-the-sky rumor-maneuvering, be a creepy angle. I ahd been wondering about cloning already so... anyway, take from that what you will.



However.



I found this essay online which discusses some alarming things, including Rousseau (Frnch lady , HELLO) behavioral science among twins, connections between thought and reality (cause and effect, neuroscience, ESPing) and basically, while I need to read in some more detail... it gave me chills.



Here's the link:

http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lect ... nker00.pdf



Now. On to my own discovery...





SO, here's my theory:



Take a quick look at Desmonds in history, and you'll find John Desmond Bernal... socialist scientist and achitect of Battle of Normandy, among other things, and inventor of...



...the Bernal Sphere.



Wikipedia:



A Bernal sphere is a type of space habitat intended as a long-term home for permanent residents, first proposed in 1929 by Dr. John Desmond Bernal.



Dr. Bernal's original proposal described a hollow spherical shell 16 km in diameter, with a target population of 20,000 to 30,000 people. The Bernal sphere would be filled with air.



In a series of studies held at Stanford University in 1975 and 1976 with the purpose of speculating on designs for future space colonies, Dr. Gerard Kitchen O'Neill proposed a modified Bernal sphere with a diameter of only 500 m rotating at 1.9 RPM to produce a full Earth gravity at the sphere's equator. The result would be an interior landscape that would resemble a large valley running all the way around the equator of the sphere. Sunlight was to be provided to the interior of the sphere using external mirrors to direct it in through large windows near the poles. The form of a sphere was chosen for its optimum ability to contain air pressure and its optimum mass-efficiency at providing radiation shielding.



This version of the Bernal sphere was dubbed the "Island One" design, and was sized for a population of 10,000. For comparison, Island Two would house 140,000, and Island Three (O'Neill cylinder) would support a population of 10,000,000.





::





WELL THEN!

Related posts:

1. Lost, Season 3, Episode 0: "Recap"
2. Lost- Season 2: Adrift [Ep2]
3. Lost Season 2 Finale Podcast

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