The Sarah Connor Chronicles and a NEW LOST Teaser!!

Okay, so what did I think of the rather clumsily named TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES last night? I actually thought it was pretty cool. Nice action, engaging story, good actors. The biggest compliment that I can give Lena Headey, is that I didn't think of Linda Hamilton once during the premiere. She became Sarah Connor, playing the role with the weight it deserved. She was haunted, burdened, tough yet maternal. Thomas Dekker played John Connor as less of a kid than Eddie Furlong, but then again his innocence would be stripped away after the events in T2. Summer Glau is Summer Glau, River Tam always rocks. I liked the way the series bridged the gap between T2 and now, the time travel was a nice element. The action was suitably action-y and it appears like they got away with a lot for network TV.  Apparently the Connors versus Skynet is going to be the predominant arc of the show, so you're not going to want to miss an episode. 

So was it all peaches and cream? Of course not. There were... things. Bad things. For instance, they decided to make the good terminators eyes glow blue instead of red. You see? Red bad. Blue good, dumb TV audience. Also, a terminator, posing as a substitute teacher, felt the need to hide his gun in his fleshy thigh, the only way of being able to extract it being to cut into the aforementioned fleshy thigh with a knife. In front of a roomful of students. I know. Now I know when you time travel you can't take items or clothes. You arrive to your temporal location naked and empty-handed. But the substitute teacher-terminator was able to get a hounds tooth jacket. Wouldn't buying a gun and putting it in the pocket of your jacket be a better plan than slicing open your leg in front of a bunch of fifteen year olds? I'm just saying. Also, the very instance Sarah Connor and her clan arrives in 2007, naked as the day they were born, some kid videos them with his cell phone and apparently gives it to the news. And the news plays it! Because it was newsworthy? I don't know. And, also every single person who knew Sarah Connor eight years before happens to be watching the newscast. But I guess if I lived in a town where naked ladies lead the day's stories, I would be watching too. The whole thing just screamed, "PLOT DEVICE!" But all in all, none of these things were enough to put me off from watching. I mostly enjoyed what I saw. I can handle a little cheese. I'll be tuning in tonight for episode 2.

The last thing here is a teaser for the first episode of LOST, season 4. I can't wait for this series to start back up. The teaser's pretty cool. Check out the reflection in the water at the end.

What Does Sarah Connor, Spider-man, and Robert Plant Have in Common? (Not a thing).

I don't have much today. First off, The Sarah Connor Chronicles starts tonight on FOX. This is the show that actually starts right after T2 and kind acts like Claire Danes and pretends T3 never happened. I, for one, dug T3 but obviously the producers of this TV show didn't because they've been talking all sorts of smack about it to the press. But I like the fact Sarah Connor lives on and didn't die of leukemia inn 1997 or whenever, as T3 put forth. So I'll be tuning in. It's actually getting fairly decent reviews. Check some of them out here.

Also, I kind of wanted to say something about Spider-man's Brand New Day story arc. In a previous post I was fairly vocal about what I thought of the direction this comic was taking. Basically I thought it was a half-cocked idea and it was disrespectful to the past of the character and the previous creators. I thought the book was going to suck and from the rumblings around the net it seems that I was in the large majority.  Well, then I did something. I read the first issue of Brand New Day. Did it put the amazing back in spider-man? Quite frankly, no. But it wasn't that bad either. In fact it was kind of cool. Parker does ask his Aunt May about wheat cakes but it was a joke. J. Jonah Jameson does yell, "PARKER!!!!" But then he drops to the floor with a heart attack. The villain is not Doc Ock but some sinister badass named Mr. Negative who looks awesome and gin-sues two of his henchman to make a particularly bloody point. So basically it seems like Dan Slott (the writer) and Joe Q. (the editor) knew what the arguments against were and tackled them head on. It works. Well mostly. I think MJ is a superhero named Jackpot who runs around saying "Tiger" all the time. I know. Lame. But Greg Land did the art on Jackpot's bonus story so it was a little easier to stomach... but still. Regardless, they kept me around. I'll keep reading.

One final thing. Before turning in last night, I was flipping channels and came across VH1, one of the last "music" channels to actually play music (albeit sporadically) and I saw the Robert Plant/ Allison Krause video for "Gone, Gone, Gone." I had known Plant and Krause had done an album together and I had absolutely zero interest in ever hearing a track off it. But this song was awesome. It reminded  of something that would be playing on a roadhouse  jukebox in a Tarantino movie. It had that certain kind of seedy yet cool vibe to it. I ended up buying the CD of Amazon MP3. It's not something I would normally buy, (in my eyes, Plant stopped being a Rock God when Led Zepplin broke up and who the hell is Allison Krause anyway?) but I dig it. Check out the video below. I like the way Plant claps.

Brutal Legend Trailer (A Heavy Metal Video Game)

From the demented mind of Tim Schafer, the man who brought us Psychonauts, comes BRUTAL LEGEND, the tale of one roadie who's "hurled back in time to the mythical age of metal" to save mankind. This is the game I'm most anticipating in 2008. Yes, even more than GRAND THEFT AUTO IV. It's basically like Schafer took the artwork from every heavy metal and rock album since 1970 and incorporated them into one kickass game. We're talking demons, skeletons, scantily-clad barbarian chicks with feathered hair, and giant axes, baby. Throw your devil horns in the air and check out the trailer.

CLOVERFIELD Monster Seen

So Harry Knowles, over at the fantastic web site Ain't It Cool News, has seen CLOVERFIELD and in turn has seen the Cloverfield monster. And what does he say it looks like? He says, "It's not a fucking upright walking whale. It doesn't look like any iteration of GODZILLA that we've ever seen. It is enormous. And even though I've seen it... I am hard-pressed to come up with a comparative creation. You know that big fucking thing in THE MIST? It isn't that. Is the creature a biped? I'm not sure, I think it might've been a four-legged beastie... it has a tail, it has teeth and freaky eyes like that horse that died in ANIMAL HOUSE. It's kinda of a grayish-yellowish-off-white  looking thing." So it's not a whale and it's kind of yellow and off-white. Harry can really paint a mental picture. I guess we'll just have to keep wondering till the 18th of January. He does rave about the movie, however and his review has me amped to see this baby all the more. His review has some minor spoilers but it's an entertaining read. Find it HERE.

Pursuit of Happyness Review (and yes I know it's been out for like a year)

In my everlasting quest to keep you, dear readers, up to date with the latest movie critiques and most current film analysis, I bring you my "Pursuit of Happyness" review. I know it's on STARZ. Shut up. Don't judge. "Pursuit of Happyness" follows a down on his luck single father, played by Will Smith, as he tries and becomes a stock broker while taking care of his son. His unpaid internship and a series of unfortunate events causes him to lose everything, including his fleabag motel room. He and his son are put out on the street but he refuses to give up. There's no Plan B. He's determined to be a stock broker. As he goes from subway station bathrooms to various shelters for the night, he dotes on his son, cramming for his final internship exam as his son sleeps. This film is about one man's perseverance to make a better life for himself and his son. It's about not giving up, no matter what. It's about a parent's love for their child.

So in other words, "Pursuit of Happyness" is a sappy, string pulling, overly sentimental film that does everything save kill a puppy, to wring a tear out of you. And you know what? It works. Or at least it did on me. I got a text from a friend and when I replied that I had just watched this movie and loved it. His response was "Eh." Of course his response was that. He's a single guy who's well enmeshed in his bachelorhood. When we saw "House of 1000 Corpses" together in the theater, and Sheri Moon is walking up to the liqueur counter and the camera is trained on her chaps-laden ass, he blurted out, "Daddy likes." No shit. He's that guy. Beer and bimbos are the order of the day. To him responsibility is bagging it before you're tagging it.

I, on the other hand, lead a completely different life. I have a son who is three years old who I would do anything for. I do have a beautiful wife and a nice home and my son didn't drop his Captain America doll in the street (see the movie) but I can relate. I have responsibilities to my son, my wife, my family. I put them above all else. So I guess you could say that I'm this film's target demographic. I think all parents are. So what can I say? I dug it. Will Smith did a fantastic job, as usual, and his son in the movie, played by his son in real life, did a pretty good job as well. Can't say it was a bad way to spend a Sunday night. Goddamn, I'm getting soft.

Rock Band on Conan

This isn't exactly that new, but it is awesome. The fantastically, addictive game gets a little love from Late Night. The best part is at the end, when Edith Bunker via Conan O'Brien does the Beastie Boys "Sabotage." You just need to watch it.

New Comic Day, Spider-man, and um...yeah, TRON

So another new comic day is upon us. So let's see what is notable, at least in my corner of the comic universe. The Amazing Spider-man starts it's thrice monthly schedule with it's Brand New Day arc. I'm looking at the cover and I hardly care. I'll read it. See what I think. But after the One More Day arc, we are back at square one. And that just sucks. I always liked the comics because it was like the comic readers had a little piece of the mythos that the movie fans and cartoon watchers didn't have. Peter grows up, gets married, still fights crime, lets his identify be revealed to Aunt May, reveals to the world that he is Spider-man (maybe this could have been erased), fights more crime. The character was about change and that's all gone. I'm sure the new arc will have Aunt May trying to get Peter to eat his pancakes because he's too scrawny and Peter will be having girl trouble and J. Jonah Jameson will be low-balling Peter on his pictures and yelling, "PARKER!" and Spidey will be fighting Doc Ock and the like. Make it stop. It seems so tedious. Maybe the new book will surprise but I doubt it. I'll stick it out for a few issues. Rant over.

Ghost Rider also came out. It's a fun book. The Mighty Avengers came out with the blurb Secret Invasion above the title. Wonder what that's about? Messiah Complex Chapter 11 in X-factor #27 is on the stands. I'm really enjoying this massive X-title crossover. Reminds me of the X-men titles of the 80s only written much better. And The Evil Dead issue 1 from Dark Horse is out today! This will make the second monthly starring Ashley Williams. I gave Army of Darkness a try, and a good long try at that, but eventually I had to drop the title. It just didn't feel like Ash, it felt like someone  writing Ash. Does that make sense? Kind of like someone describing a South Park episode to you rather than you actually watching the episode. It was just kind of phony. So I dropped it. Now I see Dynamite Comics is planning an Army of Darkness crossover with Xena. So I rest my case. Here's hoping that Dark Horse succeeds where Dynamite failed. Of course there were other titles that hit today but those are the ones I was most excited about. Not a bad week.

So, yeah... TRON. I remember a few years ago I was telling all my friends that Phantasm was the scariest movie of all time. It was hard to find so no one had really seen it. I happened to catch it on HBO when I was like seven and it remained ingrained on my imagination. The Tall Man, the metal sphere, the graveyard, the Jawas (still don't know what they were doing there), this was the stuff of cold sweats and sleepless nights. Anyway, long story short, I got my hands on a copy and I sat down to re-watch it. Let's just say the mind can play tricks on you. Horror movies had progressed at this point to make Phantasm seem silly and quaint. It was not the movie my mind had told me for years it was. And last night, I was reminded of this experience as I played TRON. The graphics are, of course, terrible but that's not what really sinks the game. The controls are awful, beyond awful. The right analog stick stands in as the little dial thingy that was on the cabinet and let's just say it doesn't works. At all. So that means you can't aim. At anything. Ever. You die. A lot. All the time. It's an exercise in frustration. Stay away. Far away. Easily one of the worst titles I've purchased on arcade. Which is disappointing since I was really looking forward to the game. TRON is easily the Phantasm of video games. Too bad.