The Evil Eyebrow

Category: TV

  • Dragon*Con 2006

    Wahhhhhh!!!!!!

    As you may notice from the categories tags, Dragon*Con was a multi-threaded, awesomely spectacular, ravingly cool, devastatingly delicious weekend. There’s so much to talk about, I’m not sure where to start. This will probably end up being a multiple posting.

    I’ll start by saying, I bought a new camera the week before Dragon*Con, and I’m still working with the settings. Unfortunately, I had the white balance set on tungsten all weekend, so my pictures are a bit blue. I’ll be photoshopping them to adjust the color balance before I post anything. ‘Til then, you’ll just have to deal with my descriptions.

    I think I will leave this post as is. Dragon*Con 2006 was great! I’ve already made hotel reservations for next year.

    [editorital addition] It seems this post is similar to last year’s post. That’s ok! I feel that this year was even better, but that is probably because of the bevey of friends that made the trip here for the Con.

  • Mission: Unwatchable

    We saw Mission: Impossible III, last night, a serious waste of my precious time. This movie was so disjointed, such a strange mix of action and “feeling” that I still feel a bit whiplashed.

    J.J. Abrams directed and helped to write this movie. It certainly shows. As you may be aware, I’ve expressed my opinion regarding another of Mr. Abrams’ creations, and I believe that the first two seasons of Alias continue to be his only worthwhile accomplishment.*

    Tom Cruise’s scientology-inspired freakiness now permeates everything he does, to the product’s detriment, and was it me, or did his girlfriend in the movie look like Katie Holmes? I liked P.S. Hoffman in his sociopath role, and Laurence Fishburn also did a credible job as the head IMF bossman, although shades of Morpheus snuck through. There were plenty of explosions and lots of death-defying chases and the requisite baseball pitching machine that you see in every credible action flik. I have a list of questions the length of my leg that are similar to, “Why didn’t the sniper just SHOOT Ethan instead of having the drone come by and blow him up with missiles?” I suppose those sorts of questions happen in every action film, but True Lies still sets the bar—in my own very humble opinion—for plausible explosions and crazy shit (other than the flying-a-Harrier-with-one-hand thing).

    Nevermind! I could go on for hours. Suffice to say, I won’t be seeing this movie ever again, and the only reason I would tell someone to see it is so we can complain about it together afterwards.

    *Did you know that J.J. Abrams wrote Armageddon, a movie so bad in its science that I’ve been known to vomit profusely on the TV whenever it’s shown? Well, maybe not that bad, but it’s the worst space movie in a long time. Space Cowboys is a close second.

  • "You gave me an evil hand."

    [Spoilers]

    My wife and I have been watching Angel from the beginning over the last couple months. We’re about two thirds of the way through season two at the moment and we just watched an episode that replaced a previous one as my favorite.

    Previously (and you can stop reading this now if you’re not an Angel fan; it will get realllllllly boring), the episode in season one where Angel is at a party in Cordelia’s apartment and there is a quick montage of him imagining himself dancing. That was freaking hilarious! It still is.

    [Spoilers]
    But now, the episode in season two where Lindsey gets a new hand has taken first prize. His departure from W&H and the end of the episode (“You know you gave an evil hand, don’t you?”) was absolutely classic.

    Joss Whedon is my master.

  • Missed Pop-Cult Opportunity

    I realized today that I missed an opportunity to declare a Jumped the Shark moment. This depresses me because I don’t get to, with little thought, entwine myself deeper into the industrio-tv culture. Maybe next time.

    To that end, referencing previous Blog entries regarding how much Lost sucks now, and how much it should have done better , I’m forced to declare that when they ended this season’s second episode with the SAME CLIFFHANGER as the first episode, Lost had Jumped the Shark.

  • LOST is Crap, Tripe, Shit

    You will note from my earlier post about Lost of one week ago that I was not particularly happy with the second episode of this Lost season. J. J. Abrams has proved to me, like he did with Alias, that he can take a good thing and absolutely ruin it.

    The first season of Lost was an intricate mesh of plot lines and personalities, with just enough mystery to keep us hooked. The personal angle was what made the show great, especially how they all ended up interacting in their past lives, unknowingly.

    The first three episodes of the second season are merely shit, with no real dialogue or character inside. Mystery after conundrum after enigma has been presented without even the slightest bit of an attempt to resolve ANYTHING.

    J.J. Abrams has driven me away from the show (I have vowed never to watch it again) and thus has cost ABC a devoted Wednesday night viewer. Thank you, Mr. Abrams for freeing me from another evening of my enslavement to television. I’m sure my yard and my house will appreciate it.

    P.S. I gave up the end of a hockey game to watch that crap! The first NHL hockey game I’ve watched in 18 months! I will not forget.

  • LOST = Arrrrggh!

    Raise your hand with me if last night’s episode of LOST pissed you off beyond all comprehension!

    “Tune in tonigh to find out the fates of all the castaways,” was the byline (paraphrased) for last night’s episode. What we found out was “squat” to use the technical term. They didn’t even resolve the cliff hanger from the first episode, the damn bastards. What a crock!

  • Battlestar Galactica

    As mentioned in my post concerning Dragon*Con ’05, I saw two of the actors from Battlestar Galactica over the weekend: Tricia Helfer and Richard Hatch (not from Survivor). I refuse to link to his website because it belongs on webpagesthatsuck.com. If you must see it, go to http://www.richardhatch.com/ but don’t if you’re on dialup. You are warned.

    Mr. Hatch played Apollo for the original Battlestar Galactica and now plays Tom Zarek for the new one. He does a good job on the show with his character. I am suitably impressed. He’s not all that in person, though. I showed up for his panel (which was supposed to be with Jamie Bamber and James Callis, but they cancelled at the last minute. Apparently they were called back to Vancouver for shooting), and expected to hear about Battlestar or things related to Battlestar.

    Unfortunately, we got a lot of Richard Hatch talking at us. He had some interesting stories, but he sounded more like an inspirational speaker than someone answering questions about his work. It got rather boring after a while.

    I was amused that he kept staring at Jenn, though. I think he liked her.

    Tricia Helfer was much more interesting. Her panel was on Sunday. She was a stand in for Jamie Bamber and nicely flew out to give us a Battlestar fix. She answered questions about the show–without revealing any spoilers–and herself. She mentioned that the Pegasus storyline would be coming up in an episode or two, but we knew that already (Pegasus is another surviving Battlestar).

    I asked her the following question: “We have seen five human-looking Cylons. That leaves seven. Do you, Tricia, know who they are, and if so, have we seen them on screen?”

    She answered that she knew who one of them was, and she did not think that that character had been on screen yet. She also said that the actors are always the last people to know about the plot twists and anyone we’ve already seen could be a Cylon. I’m still waiting for Adama to turn into a Cylon. That or Colonel Tye’s wife.

    I’m glad I went to those panels, even if Richard Hatch was a bit preachy. Tricia Helfer was engaging–and nice looking!