Yes, I have run out of things to say so I am going to talk about Movees and Teevee. Oh wait, is that snow outside?? Maybe I should write about that. Bleh, I'm bored already. Movies and TV!
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
This is a remake of a movie that most of us love but hardly any of us actually remember except to call it a classic, and maybe we're right, maybe we're wrong. Anyway, I'm writing about the new one, which I watched because I have contracted, in my old age, an addiction to slasher films. The badder the better.
Anyway, you know the deal: 25-year-old actors playing teenagers fall asleep and get finger-banged by Fred Krueger and his scissorhands. The only difference between these teens and those of the 19(googling...)84 original was that one of them was Asian American. Progress!
The actors are okay, I guess. I wouldn't say any of them were good, but I wouldn't say they were bad, yeah? No? Well, for elucidation, let's use my toilet as a reference. I would neither praise nor criticize my toilet because it either functions or it does not. My toilet functions (knock on porcelain), therefore it is sufficient. In this way, Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, and Kyle Gallner are like my toilet. They are required only to speak in low tones, shout on occasion and stab each other and that is all accomplished.
If you have 90 minutes of free time then, for the love of God, clean your house.
THE PENTAGON PAPERS
I'll be brief on this one, please don't give up on me. I didn't even finish it. The parts I saw were okay in a god-forbid-I-say-something-bad-about-a-movie-based-on-the-fucking-Pentagon-Papers kind of way but I didn't really care about Daniel (googling...) Ellsberg's relationships with women so I fast forwarded through those parts then eventually bailed. Movies like this insult the intelligence of the viewer (especially a viewer that *wants* to sit and watch THE PENTAGON PAPERS) by implanting a generic love story like somehow I would feel an absence, deep in my heart, if I went two hours without seeing James Spader have pillow talk with Claire Forlani about... well, I don't know because I fast-forwaded it. Okay I'm done with this one. Zzz.
FRINGE (SEASON 1 and HALF OF SEASON 2)
I hate when people tell me that a tv show is great and then I watch it and it's not great. Don't you hate that? I'm curious to know what experiences people have had with that. Feel free to share in the comments.
Anyway, Fringe is not a great show. But it is a good show. It's, essentially, THE X-FILES but instead of including aliens and the supernatural, FRINGE deals exclusively in pseudo-science, meaning stuff like teleportation, mind-reading, smart germs, etc. The idea is that these things can actually occur, except they can't. But it's still fun to pretend.
The first season is way too connected. Each episode's mystery has to do with a Bigger Picture Mystery and since we didn't know what the latter actually was, it made for Frustrating TV. Still, the characters are fun, and TV is lacking a decent science fiction series so this one works fine. I should add that the second season is much better since many of the episodes are self-contained, meaning they don't connect to the Bigger Picture Mystery and so there are plenty of satisfying conclusions. If you are a sci fi nerd then you must absolutely rent this show. Otherwise, do what you want.
Goodbye
Brandon
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