Alright, so it’s a couple of days late, but I’ve got plenty of material! Leading off with some TV stuff.
After posting last week’s column, I realized that I didn’t really touch on the Emmy nominations being released. So here are some quick thoughts on the issue and I might do a more comprehensive Emmy thing if I can find time to watch some more episodes of shows I’ve never watched to gauge how good actors are and how good shows are.
— I don’t really have a problem with Bree and Gabrielle being left out of the Housewives’ domination in the Actress/Comedy category.
— I’m going to have to watch the other episodes nominated in Outstanding Animated Program, but it would seem with Family Guy’s return episode and South Park’s Terri Schiavo episode that the competition is already fierce.
— Jason Bateman deserved that Emmy nod in Actor/Comedy, and the competition in Actor/Drama (with the exception of “Huff”) is insane.
— Don’t know how Jennifer Garner is still getting Emmy nods for her Alias work, since it seems to be getting rougher and rougher, but I guess the other Emmy peeps aren’t seeing that.
— Very happy about Sayid and John Locke getting nominations for Best Supporting Actor. I would really love to see Locke get that award, no matter what the competition is. Down with Shatner, I say.
— I’m sure Everybody Loves Raymond will be the sentimental winner of this year’s Best Comedy Series, even though I’d give it to Arrested Development, probably.
— Some pretty stiff competition in Best Drama, too. I can’t even predict a winner there.
— Kudos for The 4400 managing a Best Miniseries nomination. They deserved it.
The 4400
So the “It’s A Wonderful Life” episode turned out to be more significant than I once thought, as Kyle is really getting hung up on the idea that he’s such a huge success in an alternate universe, even though it’s the same person inside of him, he’s just blacking out too much and killing Jordan Collier. The plague girl storyline wasn’t nearly as exciting as I thought it was going to be. It kinda picked up towards the end but for the most part was plodding along. Something awful is going to happen to Shawn with his healing powers, he might get a death threat or two…thousand from people that he doesn’t heal. Of course, it won’t be his decision. That’s shitty that there was a witness to Kyle’s sniping, but that makes next week all the more interesting as I’m sure Kyle will do something crazy again.
Family Guy
Another good episode from MacFarlane. Some of the highlights were Peter on ecstasy, Cookie Monster, and Stewie handling business calls on Sesame Street. I don’t know when the end of the season is, but I do know that the Family Guy straight-to-DVD movie is on its way (see below), so it must be nearing the end.
30 Days
Season Finale, and this one was kind of a disappointment, because the partying girl just didn’t seem to be affected in the slightest bit over the fact that her mother was drinking herself stupid. It was just like she was this party girl who was immune to getting awfully, awfully drunk and she just didn’t care what her mother did, since she wouldn’t be changing her mind. Pretty frustrating to watch this episode, actually, since lately I’ve been having a problem with those kinds of girls–the partying girls, the sluttier kind. They’re just bothering me. I’m around a lot of them. It sucks. Moving on.
The Dead Zone
Back to the same old way of telling the story, and this episode is a pretty big drop off from the previous week, with a silly storyline and some subpar acting all around. The only interesting thing around was some more interaction between Johnny and Sarah, which is good no matter how good they’re acting at the time.
So last night, I went insane and watched six movies in one night, five of them at the theater. So, to end this column, I’ll go ahead and lay down my opinion on all six.
I kicked it off with Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, the Family Guy DVD movie that is coming out in late September. This is mostly three Family Guy episodes wrapped up in one 90 minute segment. The story is solid and the censors are nowhere to be found, which gives the Family Guy writers free reign to talk more about sex and to even let off a few swear words. It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed so much at Family Guy. Highly recommended.
Then I went to the theaters to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I liked both versions of this movie, as Johnny Depp is the man and don’t you forget it. The children were all excellent as well, and I think my favorite was Mike TV, who had that real “child star” look to him. Well, they all did. Very well done by Tim Burton, and kinda makes me want to see Edward Scissorhands finally.
Next up was Wedding Crashers. A friend of mine hailed this as the best movie he’s seen this summer, even over Sin City, and I must say that I was justified in saying he was wrong about that. It’s not an awful movie, but there’s not a whole lotta plot going on as the movie is mostly carried on its laughs, which didn’t come as frequently as I had expected them to. The final few minutes of the movie provided much laughter, though. Recommended.
Devil’s Rejects was fourth, and this was a weird movie, man. I’m not entirely sure how they didn’t get an NC-17 rating for this, since some of the scenes are pretty brutal. There is some clever dialogue between the characters in this movie, and it does provide some chuckles, but this is a weird, weird movie. But I’ll recommend it.
Land of the Dead is next to last, as this was a perfectly acceptable zombie movie. It didn’t blow me away like the remake of Dawn of the Dead did, but the acting was pretty solid and the zombie action was cool too. It was very to the point at a runtime of barely 95 minutes, so I’d say it’s a great popcorn flick, but maybe one you should sit on until it goes to a bargain cinema or on video.
War of the Worlds was the big finale, and I must say that plot holes aside, this had some really crazy action in it. Looking at Tom Cruise, I never thought once about his whole tour of shenanigans leading up to the movie’s release, as he just put forth a pretty damn good performance and the movie itself looked beautiful. Just lots of destruction without going overboard on destroying landmarks, lots of memorable scenes and Dakota Fanning is such a cutie pie. I was kinda confused by the ending until Morgan Freeman brought me back in, so I must say that this movie is highly recommended because you have to experience it in the theater unless you’ve got a high-quality surround sound system in your house.
And that’ll do it for me this week. See you next time, hopefully on Tuesday instead of Thursday.
