I’m back to do another post! Apparently claiming I would do more writing at the end of my last post counts as a written contract in my state, yada-yada; several calls to Goldberg law offices (800-600-6014!) later, it turns out I actually do have to fill more space with letters. Fortunately, I like doing this!

Movies

• Time Bandits - Directed by Terry Gilliam, this “children’s movie” challenges beliefs in ways that most adults probably could never handle. On the outside, it’s a quirky romp through time with a band of little people determined to rob history itself blind; within this are serious questions about morality, friendship, and the nature of good and evil.
• Equilibrium - Every few years, when I haven’t seen this for a while, I somehow convince myself that it’s overrated. Then I find a friend who hasn’t seen it, and while showing it to them think “Man, I was way off.” Christian Bale stars in this 1984/ Farenheit 451 blend of action movie and political piece. Think V for Vendetta, but with Batman instead of Agent Smith at the center.
• Date Night - Tina Fey and Steve Carrell. Together. Plus James Franco and Mila Kunis in a cameo. Plus Mark Wahlberg, minus shirt. I expected good, but by-the-numbers comedy from this; what I got was sharp, poignant satire mixed with a healthy dose of genuine chemistry, and one really awesome car chase.

Television

• Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - When the original run of FMA happened, the manga hadn’t been completed yet; thus, the admittedly bad, sometimes awful second half of the series was more or less filler. Thankfully, with the full run of story now completed by the creator, the animation studio saw fit to completely reboot the franchise. The first two volumes (26 episodes) have commercial releases, and the blu-rays look flawless. And if you don’t mind reading subtitles, the whole 64-episode run is on Hulu, though I don’t know for how long.
• Rubicon - New from AMC – Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and the upcoming Walking Dead – give us their spin on the “espionage drama.” Except it’s way better than anything else that has ever tried this. Based around a fictional private-sector intel-gathering, code-breaking, foreign-policy-altering think-tank, the only thing more interesting than the conspiracy within the conspiracies are the characters themselves.
• The Venture Bros. - Now into the “second part” of its fourth season on Adult Swim, this show is just too damn funny. I really don’t know how else to describe it. Part Johnny Quest spoof, part pop-culture riffing, and all genius, my best suggestion is to have your pop build a box to teach you how awesome it is. Just remember that it sometimes gets very hot, in the box, that pop built.

Comics

• Batman & Robin by Grant Morrison – I’m aware that Morrison’s current work isn’t something everyone is a fan of. But this series – with Dick Grayson as the caped crusader, trying to wrangle an out-of-control Damian Wayne as the boy wonder – has consistently delivered for my money. Removed from this time-travel craziness, it finds it focus in examining just what these personas represent to Gotham, to the people behind the masks, and even to costumed heroes the world over. 
• Chew by John Layman – In a world where certain food has become illegal, a young detective makes his way by using his ability to psychically connect with anything he eats. Whatever ideas might spring to your mind from that statement, they’ve probably been incorporated. With elements of (and jabs at) crime dramas, prohibition-era mob fiction, and noir flicks, this is a great read for someone looking for some new indy love.
• The Marvels Project by Ed Brubaker – The man who helped resurrect Daredevil and has turned Captain America into something amazing again asks us an interesting question: What if Marvel superheroes, from first to last, weren’t just happy accidents, but part of something very carefully orchestrated? Highly reminiscent of the groundbreaking Marvels from a decade ago, this is the universe we all know so well, but through fresh eyes and without the prejudices and pre-conceptions we also know so well.

That’s all for this time.

Well, Kinda.

The biggest thing that most of the fans have to keep in mind, at least for a little while, is that these episodes might not be perfect in every single way. Granted, the crew did release four movies since their cancellation, but they are still a little rusty. And, for the most part, that was the case last week when two brand new episodes premiered. We were willing to give the show a little bit of breathing room because we understood there was a possibility it wouldn’t be the Second Coming of Jesus that we were expecting.

That being said, the new episodes were really well-made and quite entertaining. The first of the two, “Rebirth”, was my favorite by far. It tied up the events that ended the film Into the Wild Green Yonder while setting up some great new jokes. The episode involved the Planet Express ship crashing after coming out of a wormhole while being chased by Zapp Brannigan. Fry and Leela had just declared their love for each other, before becoming piles of ash, bone, and skin. And Professor Farnsworth depserately tried to bring his dead comrades back to life through cloning, except for Fry, who seemingly somewhow survived the crash. The Professor’s plan worked as one by one, everyone came back to life, fully intact, except for Leela, who was in a vegetative state. Fry, so distraught that his love might not live, creates a robot version of her, a la Lucy Liu bot, so he doesn’t have to spend his life without her. Meanwhile, Bender is having to party for his life so after having a doomsday device shoved into him by Farnsworth. If he stops partying for even a second, the device will detonate, killing himself, and any poor soul who happens to be near him.

This episode had some fantastic jokes while nicely tying up any questions the fans had going into the premiere. Hands down, my favorite joke of the episode was after we find out Leela’s in a coma. Bender comes dancing along, singing, “Coma-coma-coma-coma-chameleon!” I honestly couldn’t stop laughing for a few minutes. Farnsworth’s joke about Comedy Central, followed by Amy’s reponse was quite clever and hilarious. With this episode, it felt like things were going to go smoothly from here on out and our good old show was back.

And then, the second episode premiered.

The premise for “In-a Gadda Da-Leela” was brilliant; an evil satellite was coming to Earth to destroy all things impure and vile, which translated into destroying the world. Zapp Brannigan is enlisted to help and ropes Leela into coming along with him. When the encounter with the satellite doesn’t go as planned, the two are stranded in a remote area with seemingly no other signs of life, and contemplate restarting civilization.

This is very much a Zapp episode. My favorite moments involved his 1950′s style, B-Movie sci-fi dreams where he always won and saved the day. It shows the kind of mand Zapp wants to be, but spends too much of his time non-deservingly thinking that really is who he is. His “fish in a barrel” bit was probably the funniest thing of the episode mostly cause it showed off classic Zapp.

I honestly thought it was a good episode for the most part. The parallels with Adam and Eve were humorous, Amy’s suggestion of an End Of The World Orgy, and the crew launching their own mission to save the world were all fun and entertaining. Everything was great…until the last five-sevin minutes. It went downhill very quickly.

Zapp’s achingly slow and increasingly predictable revelation made for a godawful ending. As it turns out, the entire stranded on a remote planet event was a massive elaborate plot by Zapp to get Leela to sleep with him again. The first two reveals were humorous,  but after that, it got really stale really quick. And then, when the satellite arrives, it believes that Zapp and Leela really are Adam and Eve, so it forces them to consummate their relationship in exchange for the sparing of the destruction of Earth, as a horrified Fry looks on. It was all quite unnecessary.

Overall, it was a good night. Longtime fans of the show will be happy with the way things have gone so far, and hopefully will continue watching. It honestly feels great to have this show back on the air. It’s almost like welcoming back a long-lost friend that you haven’t seen in years and picking up almost exactly where you left off. Here’s hoping Futurama can regain everything it’s known for and keeps its staying power. The future really is back, ladies and gentlemen. And it’s a good thing.

and more…

Ok, first off, a quick rundown of the premise for this season. Dexter, who is now a husband and father, is trying to give suburban life a shot. He has everything he could possibly want: a loving wife, great children, and a good career. However, soon his Dark Passenger’s cries for attention cause Dexter to wonder if this is the life he really wants or not. Meanwhile, a dangerous new adversary returns to Miami after 30 years to finish a lifelong cycle of killing…

I’m going to go ahead and run through this season’s flaws, mainly because they were few and far between. I honestly did not like the LaGuerta/Batista love story subplot. It had almost nothing to do with everything else in the season and it was almost like the writers wanted to put some filler into a few of the episodes. Next season will probably play with their whole marriage thing, and how neither one of them will like it, and we’ve seen it a thousand times before. The only reason that it might be worth it will be because the writers of this show can make it somewhat interesting. Also, I did not enjoy how Astor was used in the first half of the season. Now that we have Daddy Dexter, he obviously needs to be put into situations that will show he’s a good father to her, and also cody and Harrison. But they couldn’t resist the cliche of preteen drama, so Astor hated basically everything that Dexter was trying to do for her. The lowest point was when she begged for an iPod, and I started to get worried that it wasn’t going to be a fulfilling season.

Despite these very few flaws, this was a near perfect season. Michael C. Hall was superb in his portrayal of our dark hero, so much so that he was recognized for his performance at the Golden Globes this year. Keith Carradine, what little bit he was back, also brought a new layer to his Agent Lundy, and we realized that he was a truly great character, but his life was sadly cut short. Other good performances include C.S. Lee and James Remar, as Masuoka and Harry respectively. Julie Benz’s Rita was rather underused this season, but she did her best to hold her own, all the way through to the shocking end.

Two actors really broke through this season that made it so worthwhile. Jennifer Carpenter, playing the always feisty Debra Morgan, stole many of the scenes she was in. It was by far the best story she had been given to work with. Not only did she have to deal with Lundy’s return and sudden death, but then she had to put together the pieces as to why the shooting happened and she showed a lot of range. I’ve never cried during this show until this season. It was when Deb broke down to Dexter in the parking lot where she was shot and Lundy was killed. I do admit I shed a few tears as she was because her performance hit home and put Lundy’s death into perspective for everyone; She cheated on Anton with Lundy, and ended up paying the price for it. It was depressing, but a smart move on the part of the writers.

Without a doubt, the best performance goes to John Lithgow’s Trinity Killer/Arthur Mitchell. It was perhaps the most disturbing, morbid, and terrifying villains in recent television history. His meticulous, calculating kills were but a small part to his madness. As the season progressed, it was revealed that his victims meant something pertaining to his own life: the bathtub murders represented his sister who died after slipping in the shower(which young Arthur accidentally caused), the seemingly suicidal mother represented his own mother who jumped off a building, and then the middle-aged man who was beat to death was a parallel to Arthur’s father, who he himself killed. After this initial cycle was studied for the majority of the season, Dexter discovered there was a fourth victim which started the kill cycles; a ten-year old boy, representing Arthur himself. These death scenes were always worth a good shudder and were executed brilliantly.

The truly horrific part of this whole thing was the way Arthur treated his family. They all feared him, most of all his wife, his daughter developed a sexual obsession with any man who payed her attention because she was cut off from the world, and his son was the only one who wanted to put a stop to the madness. The torture came to a head in the now infamous episode, “Hungry Man.” This thanksgiving special found Dexter pulling double tine, trying to be at his own thanksgiving dinner, and also Arthur’s in his pursuit to understand the man behind the monster. During the course of their awkward and disturbing day, Arthur’s daughter came onto Dexter, who was given a blessing by her mother as long as he didn’t tell Arthur; Arthur broke his son’s finger as soon as Dexter left the room; he called his wife a cunt to her face after wondering why no one side they were thankful for him; and then ultimately tried to kill his son before Dexter put a stop to all of the madness and had to make a hasty escape. It is without a doubt one of the best episodes of this season, if not the series.

One of the constant themes I saw this season dealt with the possibility of being alone. Everyone entered a situation where they questioned if they were better off spending life alone, with no one to love. Dexter had the obvious problems of juggling his Dark Passenger with his family, and for a while, he thought that the only person worth listening to was the Passenger, though he knew it would devestae his family. Deb also had to confront this problem after she found herself with no one to love after Lundy’s death. Hell, even Lundy figured it was better for him at one point because he knows he cared more about the job than people. The only one who had a somewhat decent relationship was Quinn, who dated reporter Christine Hill, and even that blew up in his face. Ultimately, it comes down to that no one can truly deal with people and relationships the way they want to, so they should just try their best to make it work, which was a struggle for every character to understand.

Another them I noticed was that Dexter’s need to kill turned damn near into full-blown addiction this year. He intentionally planted evidence to throw the police off just so he could have a kill all to himself, which repeatedly blew up in his face(See: Benito Gomez, Arthur Mitchell). However, in the season finale, he realized how much he’s let his Passenger control him and he could see a brighter future, one where he didn’t have a Need to kill. This bright vision came crumbling down soon after.

After disposing of Arthur’s body, Dexter returns home to finish packing for his honeymoon getaway with Rita, who he thinks has already made it to their destination. He checks his voicemail to discover that she was late for the early flight, and she booked a later flight and came home to wait until it was time to go again. Dex gave a quick smile, then called Rita’s phone to let her know he was on the way. After placing the call, Dexter hears a familiar ring coming from the kitchen. When he walks over, he discovers Rita’s phone and purse still there. And that’s when he hears it. Harrison’s crying from the bathroom drives Dexter to find him…only to realize he’s sitting a massive pool of blood. Dex looks over to see Rita, lying motionless in the bathtub, killed in the same manner as one of Trinity’s victims.

Dexter’s obsession with being the one to kill Arthur ended up being his worst nightmare. He lost his wife, and now his son will most likely grow up to be like him, right down to being “born in blood.” Harry was right; Dex might not be able to have it all while the Dark Passenger is around.

I think John Lithgow said it best after the finale: “I do not envy the writers for next season.” How are they going to handle this situation? Is she really dead? Was it all a dream? How will Dexter deal with being a single father? Will Rita be used the same way as Harry, but on a more encouraging, reasonable level? One thing’s for sure; I cannot wait until September to find out.

Overall, this was one of the best seasons of Dexter yet. Shocking, disturbing, and suspenseful, it had all the elements a show like this needs. This easily gets a 9.5/10 from me, and I cannot wait to see what’s being cooked up for Season Five.

P.S. As many of you know, Michael C. Hall recently revealed he’s undergoing treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. On behalf of the writers here at Loaded Couch Potatoes, we’d like to extend our thoughts and prayers to him  and his family during this trying time. Get well soon, Michael. We all believe you can defeat this Dark Passenger.

You love the title.

In less than a week, the TV series LOST returns for its final season. We will finally have all the questions that they have left with us answered. We will see who ends up with who, who ends up dead, and why / how the hell was walt killing so many birds?!?!

Being a huge fan of the series, I like to theorize whats going to happen, and then rub it in everyones faces if i get it right. So ill be using Loaded Couch Potatoes as my logging site to time and date stamp my theories. I will post a few general theories i have in the main body below, and then after each episode i will amend the theories in the comments. I am more than open to hearing thoughts on my theories, or your own theories. Feel free to use this as a way to timestamp your ideas so you can rub it in later on. I know LOST can spawn some pretty heated discussion, but plzplzplz keep it civil if you do want to chime in.

If you have not caught up to thru season 5 of the series, you may not want to read this as it may spoil some of your fun later on.

So. Without further delay.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

ENDING THEORY: Jacob has used his loopholes and crazy magic powers to have the real John Locke, not Unlocke / Smoke Monster Locke, replace him as the “Man of the Island”.  For some reason something happens and throws the cast back in time to an alternate reality or timeline where the whole process starts over with Jack in a wheelchair being the man of faith, and telling the whole story again with different people in different roles. The story continues to loop itself with changes in roles each time the loop cycles thru.

Other Theories

– As soon as Ben and Unlocke emerge from the chamber inside the foot of the statue, all Hell will break loose.

–The man we saw with Jacob on the beach will wind up being responsible for any of the “bad” things that happen on the island, possibly even off-island. “Bad” is in quotation marks because at this point the “good” and “bad” sides are getting more and more blurred. His name will be Esau. For the rest of the article, even if its not his real name, i will be referring to Jacob’s nemesis as Esau to make things easier for me and everyone else to follow. Dont get the reference? Let me google that for you.

– Ben will have been the victim of a long con (really really really long con) that was created by Esau to eventually work him in to being the loophole that Esau needed to kill Jacob.

– Aaron and Ji-Yeon will team up and be some crazy powered team. I dont know what they will do exactly, but i can guarantee you that whatever it is will be based in the realm of the paranormal. Fooooor sure.

– The black and white stones  that Jack took from the corpses in the cave from season one will show up again. If i had to guess, id say either in the very beginning, or the very end of the season. Nowhere in between. I also think the general reference of black and white will be used much much more frequently.

– Im still sticking with Aaron and Ji-Yeon being the Adam and Eve skeletons from season one. However im hearing filming rumors and whatnot that may make me amend this later.

– There wont be Team Locke / Jack / Ben / Whidmore anymore. Now its all Team Jacob and Team Esau. Black and White. Good and Evil. And i would love to see this Team Jacob beat the shit out of the sparkling glitter fairies version of Team Jacob.

– Everything that we have been taught and learned will be completely broken down and re-learned. Characters will switch attitudes, careers, really just lives in general. I want to say that they will switch within each other, so that all the lives still exist in the same way, just lived by different people, but there could be completely new elements. Confused? Example: Jack gets reset and starts out as a man of faith instead of a man of science, and “re-lives” his life accordingly.

– Jack will be in a wheelchair. When exactly I cant really predict. But I think that with all the irony that floats around on this show, that Jack in a wheelchair absolutely has to happen.

– The Others ancestors came to the island on the Black Rock. Before that it was just Jacob and Esau.

– Im going out on a limb with this one, but in the end after all of the facts are revealed, i think Jacob will wind up being more of a villain than everyone thinks.

– Alive or dead, Charlie will sing me a song and make me cry.

– Whidmore will be found to be telling the truth about Ben tricking him and the Others in to getting him off the island and replacing him with Ben as the leader. I also believe he will come back and perform one or two tricks to completely woo you back to his side.

– Claire will be found to be alive, and will be the new Rousseau of the island. Crazy jungle lady looking for her stolen baby.

– Richard will not be revealed as a time traveler, but as some form of immortal. Ive switched my stance on this one. I believed the opposite for a season or two. I hear we get an entire Richard episode this season. Im pumped.

– The whispers will be revealed to have some sort of scientific backing related to time travel. Not just purely paranormal.

– Vincent will return, and he will save the day. Twice.

– Miles will be the source for more info.

– The dead people that Hurley talk to will not be considered the same dead people that Miles talks to. I almost think that the people hurley are talking to are part of a long con from Esau. Im not completely sold on that yet, tho. But I am sold on them being a different type of interaction.

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

That’s all I have for the moment. Im sure more will start flowing after I get in to more discussions with my fellow Losties, and they will be added to the comments to preserve the original post date for this blogish deal.

The Waters of Mars is the 3rd episode to air since season 4 concluded.  With only a 2-part episode left for the tenth doctor the tension rises.  In this very dark episode, the doctor finds himself on mars.  The doctor realizes that he has come across Earth’s first colonists of Mars, who are doomed to die that very day.

The doctor is brought to the base by the singular weakness of this episode, a “funny robot”.  The robot says “gadget, gadget” and is supremely annoying.  It’s only function in the plot is to enable the doctor several quick get-aways.  First, while fleeing a couple of infected crewmen, and second, the escape at the climax of the episode.  It would have been really easy to write this robot out, but I’m guessing because of how dark this episode was Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford wanted something to pin a couple light hearted scenes to.

There the doctor meets Captain Adelaide Brooke and her crew of Bowie Base One.  Although nobody in history ever knew what happened on Mars (the captain ordered “Action 5″ which set off a nuclear bomb destroying the base), the doctor and the colonists find themselves up against a versatile bad guy – water.  Not just water really, but the waters of mars ability to infect their bodies with a new martian host.  The look of the person after being infected is pretty scary.  Face make-up, contact lenses, and some water effects make up a pretty unsettling costume.  With a couple of exceptions when the water effects are clearly CGI.

 Once the doctor realizes that he is at a “fixed point in time” and there is nothing he can do, he tries to leave.  But he is detained by the captain, who is suspicious that he could be involved.  The doctor hangs around long enough to see what is happening to her crew.  He tries to communicate with one of them speaking in ancient north martian.  But with Earth at stake, the captain and doctor have to make sure that everyone isn’t already infected. 

The doctor spills way to much information with the captain, as time brings her closer to her death.  The doctor tells her about her lineage following her out into space and creating history.  Thinking that she and her crew will get away, she lets the doctor leave (looking very good in his blue suit).

But she stops him in the air lock on his way out, demanding the truth.  The doctor reveals all to her, and we find out that more than just the time lords code is keeping him from intervening.  After The Fires of Pompeii, the doctor has felt that even if he does try to save them, he may only end up causing death.  Torn by the decision the doctor trudges back to the TARDIS, all the way hearing the screams and terror through the head set in his space suit.  He listens to them struggle to escape and one by one are taken over by the “water”.

While he’s walking, the doctor thinks about how he is the last time lord, and realizes that there is nobody who can stop him from doing what he wants.  The episode gets intense as the doctor goes slightly mad with power in his desperation to save the three remaining people.  He knows that his death is coming soon and that “he will knock 4 times”.

His own impending doom seems to only fuel the need he has to save Captain Adelaide.  But she starts Action 5, knowing that it is what is supposed to happen.  With the help of “gadget, gadget” flying the TARDIS into the base (boo robot), the doctor safely delivers the three to earth.  But Adelaide has resigned herself to her death knowing what her family will be inspired to do because of it. 

She tells the doctor that what he’s done is wrong.  But there is nobody to stop him.  She goes into her house and shoots herself.  The doctor is horrified.  Like I said, very dark episode.

“I’ve gone too far.”  The doctor sees an Ood and he says “my death? is it time?”  But it disappears.  The doctor scrambles back into his TARDIS where the cloister bell is tolling.  Defiantly he says ”No!” and begins to take off in the TARDIS.

Very dark and very ominous, this episode has great intensity.  Now, having the broken the laws of time, the doctor seems to be running scared, for the moment.  It will be very exciting to see what happens next in The End of Time – Part 1.  Thankfully, this episode airs only one(!!!) day after it airs on the BBC.  So catch it, the day after Christmas on BBC America 9/8c.

The great challenge with any new show is to create a premiere that is good enough to have the audience think, “You know, maybe I should stick around for a while.” Most of these shows rarely get it right, but then you have those special, rare few that hit the nail right on the head. Men is one of those few. At times humorous, and, more often than not, depressing, this show seems to capture something real and human from the actors and it pays off very nicely.

The story involves Joe, played by Romano (also the co-creator of the show), who is a recently seperated, gambling-addicted party store owner that used to dream of being a professional golfer with a gentle heart and spirit. He enjoys hiking and going to a diner with his two best friends; Terry, played by Bakula, is a washed-up part-time actor looking to rekindle what little success he did have in his past while taking any temp jobs he can get; and Owen, played by Braugher, a diabetic married father of three that works under his demanding father at a car dealership.

These three friends are just trying to make it in life, but they’ve all been dealt pretty shitty hands. Owen cannot seem to impress his over-powering father no matter what he does, and is instead being shown up by a rival salesman. His father tells him that he will not be the sales manager because he wants to “make a good image for the company.” Damn. He is willing to disown his own son because he doesn’t believe he will live up to people’s perception of the company, which, by the way, contradicts the motto of “keeping it in the family.” Owen knows that because he is “4-mothershit-8″ then the clock is really starting to tick faster for him to make a name of himself.

Terry, on the other hand, has a pretty great life. He can still bag any girl he wants, has others willing to do his work for him, and he’s in great shape for his age. The problem is that because he has all those things in his life, he feels that he can still turn down auditions because he feels they are beneath him. Even though he wants desperately to get back into the spotlight, he’s willing to throw it all away because his ego is larger than his career ever was.

And then there’s Joe. You get the sense that he in no way wanted a seperation from his wife, but it kills him to know that all they are right now are friends. He is staying a cheap motel, with a repetitive wake-up call every morning that he has nearly memorized and tried to guess the temperature before the automated line does. He is looked down upon at his own store, not because he treats his employees badly, but because he is old and they can tell the sadness he feels, and they almost feel sorry for him. He gambles, which is probably one of the big reasons for the seperation, but he truly seems to want to stop. He desperately tries to connect with his kids, but struggles with it tremendously.

However, beneath all the depression and sadness these friends feel, there is some comedy in this show. After Owen has a diabetic seizure, Terry and Joe have to rush him to the hospital. While arguing over a gorgeous girl, they pull out into the road and almost hit a car. The resulting slamming of the brakes launches Owen forward and he hits his nose on the dash, causing it to break. After he wakes up, the exchange between the three of how his nose got broken is pretty awkward, but very funny. As is a scene at the beginning where Romano accidentally hits a possum in the road, and can’t bring himself to just leave it alone. Despite the urging from Terry and Owen to just keep driving, he feels a duty to the animal to actually do something and not leave it. The whole scene, while touching, is humorous, especially after Joe backs over it, and then drives forward over it again to end the suffering, and the damn thing is still alive and walks away.

Clearly, this show is meant for a very specific demographic. The target audience would be people like the three stars: over the hill, mid-life crisis suffering people that don’t really know what to do next. However, as a 19-year-old college student, I found this to be a very easily relatable show because I am also at a time where I am wondering what to do. I think it goes for people of all ages. At some point every year, people stop and asks themselves where they should go now and what sould they do. Everyone’s felt this way, and the show captures it quite nicely.

By the end of the premiere, every one at least tries to make an effort to improve their situations. Terry goes for an audition he has no desire to do, but it would mean work. Owen literally shoves over his competition at work to prove to his dad that he’s not out yet. And Joe makes an attempt to stop gambling, which fails, but he is trying. For right now, that’s ultimately all these guys can do, is try. And I will definitely enjoy watching them try a little harder each week this show is on.

(C) indicates Criterion

(B) indicates Blu Ray

(C) Seven Samurai, Directed by Akira (Stray Dog) Kurosawa,

and starring Toshirô Mifune

Samurai 7 (the Anime)

(C) Charade, Starring Cary (Walk Don’t Run) Grant,

and Audrey (My Fair Lady) Hepburn

Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels

Directed by Guy (Sherlock Holmes) Ritchie,

and starring Jason (The Transporter) Stathem

Luther

Starring, Alfred (Spider-Man 2) Molina,

and Sir Peter (We’re No Angels) Ustinov

(B) Star Trek

Directed by J.J. (“Lost”) Abrams

and starring Chris (Smokin’ Aces) Pine.

What with Black Friday coming up and Barnes and Noble having their first ever black Friday sale many more will be added and soon.

J.S. Wolfwood

This video focuses more on the inverted, Cylon track.

This one focuses more on the sit-down, Human track.

Universal Studios Singapore is still on schedule to open summer 2010.