A Personal Blog
Reviews
CSI: Miami Premiere
Sep 21st
H-O-L-Y-C-R-A-P…
How are they going to deal with this? What an awesome episode though :-D
The Benefactor – A Second Chance
Sep 20th
I’m big into second chances.
I didn’t like The Benefactor last week:
The Apprentice is an egomaniac with billions vaguely teaching minute business lessons to people who want to learn… The Benefactor is an egomaniac with billions vaguely teaching minute business lessons to people who don’t want to learn.
But, I decided to give it another go.
Let me just quote from Mark Cuban in two monologues seconds apart:
I am here to teach these people how to become a success.
…
I don’t have any time to have fun.
Excuse me? I’m sorry, but I’ve always defined people as “a success” by how much they live life, not by how much money they earn. Maybe this was all taken out of context. So, I kept watching. This week, 2 people were eliminated… Because 3 second graders thought they were nerds.
…
Okay, okay, I’m a jerk. I’m not really trying to rag on Mark. But I didn’t find it in good taste where he made fun of Donald Trump by telling the second graders “and next week I will choose one of you and put you in charge of one of my companies”.
…
Gah, this never ends. I’ve realised why I don’t like The Benefactor. Because it’s a reality show about Mark Cuban. It’s not actually about the participants. In every reality show there are dozens of monologues where the people talk about where stuff is at. In The Benefactor, 90% of them are Mark Cuban’s monologues.
Mark obviously hates The Apprentice. Whatever. But, at the every least we only really see Donald Trump twice during the show, and only for a few minutes at that. We see Mark talking for, I’m guessing, 50% of the show.
I don’t feel like watching Mark TV. So I won’t be tuning in again. Good luck to Mark in this venture though, I’d hate to count him out on anything.
Sky Captain "Review"
Sep 17th
I don’t have a lot to say about this, so I’ll split it up into two parts: the movie and the effects.
The Movie
They’ll do anything necessary to:
1. Advance the plot 2. Crack a bad line 3. Show off an effect
Yeah… That’s about it. Sadly #1-2 weren’t worth it, which left us with the effects.
The Effects
The effects were good. Think Final Fantasy: The Movie, and then throw in a pound of realism. Everything was CG except for 4-5 (ish) key actors. I’m sure it was closer to 20, but really EVERYTHING you see is CG. And it is very, very good. There was only one or two scenes where some polishing needed to be done. If you’ve followed CG like I have you’ll simply cringe and ask yourself why they didn’t catch / polish them. Hopefully for the DVD I guess (which I won’t buy).
Overall
Just to give Sky Captain a break, one of the folk I went with really enjoyed it. He said it was “the perfect comic book movie”. Dunno. To me it seemed like a cross between Crimson Skies (with less action), Star Wars Episode 1 (with worse dialogue) and listening to the news on the radio (with less personality).
I don’t really have anything better to compare it to. As a CG movie it’s fantastic. But the action is horrible. Considering the hero flies a plane, they don’t let you see very much of what he’s doing. You see a lot of:
1. What he’s seeing 2. What he’s just flown past
…. But not a lot of context. I felt like I was watching someone else play an arcade game.
Oh, look… I did manage to find something to write after all ;-)
The Apprentice 2 – Week 2
Sep 17th
Okay. 2 day task (good thing). Fairly creative (create your own icecream flavour).
…
But then it got down to street selling again. It didn’t NEED to get down to street selling, but it did. Why? Because these two teams decided it was “more efficient” than working with restaurants.
The men went to Times Square. The women followed. The men dressed niely. The women didn’t want to (don’t want to “sell our bodies”). The men were organized. The women were not. The men effectively worked as a team (generally). The women were all over the place.
The women got their pants covered asses handed to them.
So who got booted off? Well this season the PM from the previous week is exempt. So, being a true leader, the exempt PM decides to waive his exemption. No real reason. He just does.
He’s the only guy in a girl’s team. This doesn’t fly very well with the girls. Or Trump. He gets fired.
Despite the other people in the boardroom being complete idjuts and all (basically) deserving to get fired, he got fired because:
You made a life altering mistake. If you were at the helm of one of my companies you would kill the company.
Fair enough Donald. Fair enough. So the strongest player on the team is now out. Can you say Funky Dynamic?Yeah, me too.
Review: LAX
Sep 14th
Yes, last night was a TV night after a huge night at the gym (owwww).
To be honest I wasn’t looking forward to LAX. Yay. A show in an airport.
The opener showed the characters who are generally actors who can support themselves. The actors did okay. The plot sucked. I’m sorry, but dozens of little melodramas in the first 5 minutes does not a great season opener make. I watched 15 minutes and was bored. I watched half an hour and turned it off.
If you like it, great. Maybe the writing team will find their feet later. But I didn’t and won’t be tuning in anytime soon.
