Summer movie watch: Rough waters ahead

So my new EW has the provocatively titled article "What's Wrong With This Summer's Movies?" It appears that box office revenue's are down about $147 million so far, and 2010 had the worst Memorial Day box office since 2001. Eeep! The article argues that by this time last year two future Best Picture nominees had been released and several blockbusters had arrived. Definitely not so this year.

So what gives? Bad movies seems to be the main explanation. Sex and the City 2 fizzled both with critics and with ticket sales, and has since had the even more dubious distinction of being taken off my must-see summer movie list. The Killers, Prince of Persia and Shrek: Forever After all have taken big hits from their reviews and it shows in their weak opening weekends. Could it also be, as the article suggests, that we've been majorly spoiled with great TV shows that have just wrapped for the season, and we therefore don't have the patience for mediocre crap like we used to? Both valid arguments.

What irks me, however, is there have been a couple of good movies released the last few weeks that I think should have gotten higher box-office draws. Get Him to the Greek is one. The night I went to see it my roommate and I had narrowed our choices to either that or SATC. We went with Greek because, as I argued, it had better critical praise and it was an hour shorter. And it was good, damn it, as I pointed out in my earlier review. So why did it cough up only $18 million it's opening weekend.

Anther film is The A-Team, which, I've discovered, pulled in a low enough opening weekend that hopes for a sequel have been pretty much scrapped. What the hell? It was so fun! So what if it wasn't Oscar worthy, it was a great summer movie! I would've loved to see round two. Life so is not fair.

So what does all this mean? Not sure. Perhaps Hollywood's umpteenth wake-up call? The summer season is still early, so hopefully things can still pick up. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World has been added to my summer list, which will hopefully salve my wounds over Sex and the City. I'd even bought a shirt with a stiletto to wear when I went and saw Carrie and the girls. That shirt will have to wait for something special (cue tear drop).

New music videos you might want to check out

Couple new music videos out this week that have made it onto my iPod.

First is the new flashy Adam Lambert video for his latest single "If I Had You". Awesome song, but basically the clip is a rave in a forest; pretty to look at, but not much else to it. Still, bonus points for Lambert's weird ass, Braveheart hair.

Second is the new Gorillaz video for their latest single, "Melancholy Hill" (in my humble opinion, a much wiser choice for a second single than "Superfast Jellyfish", which was originally slated to be the next single but has been bumped). At the moment this one is offered exclusively from iTunes for a nominal fee. I really like it, but anyone unfamiliar with Gorillaz mythology would be lost. Basically it's about how the band and their collaborators made it to the Plastic Beach, and kind of picks up where the video for "Stylo" left off. Gorgeous animation though, and it propels the vague storyline along.

My iPod is officially jammin'.

Movie Review: The A-Team

After a few false starts (read: shows being sold out) and much speculation on whether it would be worth checking out I finally saw The A-Team. Before we get into it though, bear in mind my analysis of this pic comes from having never seen the TV show before, so I apologize in advance to all die hard fans out there who might find that I'm lacking the true scope of all this, but just consider it my two cents from the outside looking in.

The A-Team was much of what I expected; lots of action and maybe not a whole lot of plot...but damn it, it was fun! The action was truly action, and the plot, though thin, was enough to keep you guessing and intrigued as you watched it unfold. The premise is basically the same as the TV show: an elite special forces unit is convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and now must try to clear their names (this time the setting has been updated to the Iraq war instead of the Vietnam war), and of course the people who set them up soon realize they screwed over the wrong guys. But I can't overemphasize those action scenes! Motorcycles and tanks and helicopters and guns and explosions. Perfect for a summer movie.

But not only that, the four members of the A-Team are just so likeable, and the actors who play them have great chemistry together. For this outing we have the always classy Liam Neeson as team leader Col. 'Hannibal' Smith, his hair dyed silver as an homage to the original actor to fill that role, the late George Peppard. Hannibal's "boys" include the nicely buffed and very gorgeous Bradley Cooper as Lt. 'Faceman' Peck; Ultimate Fighting Champion Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson as Sgt. B.A. Baracus; and District 9 star Sharlto Copley as Cpt. 'Howling Mad' Murdock (roles originally inhabited by Dirk Benedict, Mr. T. and Dwight Schultz respectively). Wow, that was a lot of nicknames to type. But this quartet was a real team on screen, and each inhabited the uniqueness of their characters, from B.A.'s toughness to Face's superficiality. Copley in particular impressed me; what passed for crazy in the original series doesn't do so now, and he brought a manic and hilarious new take on Murdock, with glimpses of something deeper.

Patrick Wilson and Brian Broom make suitably slimy villains, and Jessica Biel adds a feminine touch with a tough, smart female character who (of course) has a romantic past with Face. Overall, lots of energy and lots of laughs abound. And from what I hear, despite any flaws, this film does capture the noisiness and bombast of the TV show on which it's based. So for a movie adaptation, what more could you ask for?

My Verdict: Not cerebral, but who cares? It's just awesome.

The only Doctor I trust

There's a t-shirt on ThinkGeek.com that I have been sorely tempted to buy. On it is a 1950's style London police call box. Underneath that are the words "You never forget your first Doctor."

To the uninitiated into the pantheon of Sci Fi, that t-shirt probably wouldn't make a lick of sense. What, some would ask, does a police call box have to do with a doctor? And what the heck is a police call box, anyway? (There's a Wikipedia article on them here.) Shall I fill you in? The shirt is in reference to Doctor Who, a British Sci Fi series that first aired all the way back in 1963. I actually just finished reading the graphic novel Doctor Who: The Forgotten, which was excellent by the way, so it's been on my mind lately. Why should anyone care? Because Doctor Who has the distinction of being the longest running Sci Fi series ever. Ever! And not just in England, or in North America, but in the entire world! Check the Guinness Book of World Records, it's in there. 31 seasons (or series, as they call them across the pond), and as of June 12, 2010, 767 episodes! Considering how some shows barely last a season, that's an amazing feat.

And that's also a surprising feat, considering that the premise for the show is a little out there. It would be almost impossible to summarize the entire show here, but in a nutshell the main character is an eccentric, mysterious, 900-and-something-year-old humanoid alien known only as The Doctor. From the planet Gallifrey, the Doctor is a Time Lord, which is an extraterrestrial race that has mastered time travel through advanced technology. The Doctor achieves this through a device called the TARDIS (and to really earn my geek stripes: that stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). The TARDIS is a vast, complicated space ship capable of going to any point in time or any planet in the galaxy, but from the outside looks like a standard police call box (aahhh, now the t-shirt makes sense). With this ship the Doctor goes on many adventures to face foes and right wrongs, often bringing along at least one companion on his journeys (a companion is a general term for whomever the Doctor travels with, often human and often female, who acts as a stand-in for the audience).

So how can the series have lasted this long, you may ask? I mean, surely one actor hasn't played the Doctor since the 1960s, right? You'd be right, and actually the show's creators found a way around this, and rather brilliantly I think. You see, Time Lords are able to do something called Regeneration. What that means is when they've been critically injured and/or about to die, they're able to regenerate into a new body. Same character, different appearance. So whenever an actor is tired of the role, a 'death' scene is filmed, and a new actor steps into the part. As of right now, eleven different actors have played the Doctor over the years, starting with William Hartnell in 1963, all the way up to Matt Smith, who took over the role in January of this year. Likewise there has also been a stream of companions and villains, many of which are unique to one Doctor, others of which have transcended several regenerations.

You know how the shirt says you never forget your first Doctor? For me, that would be Paul McGann, the eighth incarnation. My first exposure to the world of Who came in May of 1996 (I would've been 14 at the time). Fox had created a TV movie with the BBC, starring McGann, as a continuation of the Who franchise. The show had been off the air since 1989, and this movie was intended to be a back-door pilot for an American produced Doctor Who series, which would've also starred McGann. Alas, it was no meant to be, as the film did not do well on American televisions and the show was not picked up. Though McGann only appeared on the screen once as the Doctor, he continued to play him in radio serials and the Eighth Doctor appeared in other media. I remember when the movie aired, but as I had school the next day I was only able to watch the first half. Looking back on it now, I realize it was a pretty bad movie. Still, in spite of that, it managed to capture my imagination, and I never forgot about it.

Then in 2005, I got my second taste of Who when the BBC decided to relaunch the series as an hour long, modern, action-packed Sci Fi drama. Bring in Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston (btw, the Doctor's change from his eighth to his ninth incarnations is the only regeneration that has not been shown on screen). After one season, Eccleston dropped out and then David Tennant stepped in as the Tenth Doctor (pictured above with companion Martha), who is probably my favorite incarnation thus far, and also a huge fan favorite in general. Though I haven't seen all the episodes of the revamped series, every single one I have seen has been tense, funny, deep, filled with action, sometimes dark and often resonant. It's really breathed new life into the series as a whole and created a whole new fanbase. While I haven't seen Matt Smith's work on the role yet, the general buzz has been good. Things are going well.

So there's Doctor Who in a fairly large nutshell. It has a cult following, critical acclaim and awards, longevity, instantly recognizable theme music and a fair share of spin-offs, including other British Sci Fi cult series Torchwood. It's influence in the Sci Fi world as well as in pop culture, particularly British culture, is beyond measure. Call me crazy, but I think it's here to stay, at least for a while longer.

If you're curious, check out this YouTube clip to see the different regenerations over the years in order. Now, I should probably just order that t-shirt. Fan Expo's coming, and I'll need things to wear.

Lady Gaga's Alejandro video bows

So Lady Gaga's new video for "Alejandro" was released today, which happens to be one of my favorite Gaga songs. And may I just say that I totally called that "Alejandro" would be one of her singles from her last album The Fame Monster.

My summary of this new 8min clip: Cool, but what the hell?

Gaga does what she does best; selecting different aspects of the cultural landscape and mixing them together into something new. For this particular offering she takes her cues from gay culture, the military, Cabaret and even Catholicism to come up with something vaguely Gothic, rather stylized, risque and compelling to watch, though you're not quite sure what you're looking at. There's no storyline to speak of, and there are bowl cuts on a lot of the guys to go with their high heels, and a bra with machine guns. Yeah, I don't get it. Like it, but don't get it. And there seems to be a funeral and a gang bang in it as well. Hopefully an explanation will be forthcoming.

Check it out here.

After a long & glorious year, season one of Glee ends at Regionals

Can you believe it was over a year ago that we got our first taste of Glee? May 19 2009 was when the pilot episode first aired as a sneak peek right after American Idol. Two long hiatus', 21 episodes, 5 albums, a slew of guest stars and a whole lot of musical numbers later it all came down to tonight. And I think you'll be hard pressed to find a single Gleek that was disappointed with how the show wrapped up it's ground-breaking first season. Check out my recap but be warned, lots of spoilers ahead.

"Journey" saw the long-awaited showdown between our intrepid heroes New Directions and bitter rivals Vocal Adrenaline. And after Jesse St. James defected back to VA last week and showed what kind of lying despicable snake he is, I was eager to see their asses handed to them on a platter tonight. But *gasp* Sue Sylvester is one of the judges, along with fellow celebrities Josh Groban, Olivia Newton-John (both guest starring as themselves) and local news anchor Rod Remington. All hope seems lost. To add insult to injury, Emma tells Will that she's seeing someone else. Moment I Almost Cried #1: Will, after hearing Emma's news, is driving in his car and Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" comes on; Will pulls over and bursts into tears.

But the team rallies back, deciding that even if they don't win they're going to plow ahead because they love to do it. And of course they do a medley of Journey songs at regionals, with Will watching from the wings, including "Faithfully", a mash-up of "Anyway You Want It" and "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'"...and of course, and this brings us to Moment I Almost Cried #2: a new version of "Don't Stop Believing'". Ahhhh! It was a fantastic performance, one of the best I've seen on the whole show, and that's saying something.

Quinn's mother Judy, who you'll probably remember kicked Quinn out of the house upon discovering her pregnancy, made a surprise appearance at regionals and caught Quinn coming off stage to ask her to come back...'cause, you know, kicking your daughter out when she needs you the most can all be fixed by just coming to one of her shows. Before Quinn can unleash the anger that's plain on her face, her water breaks (kind of convenient for the plot, but alright). While Vocal Adrenaline is overdoing "Bohemian Rhapsody" on stage Quinn brings little Beth into the world at a local hospital with her mother, Puck and Mercedes in the delivery room with her; otherwise known as Moment I Almost Cried #3.

The judges confer amongst themselves, and Olivia Newton-John reveals herself to be a bigger bitch than Sue. The glee clubs gather on stage to hear the news...and New Directions looses! WHAT? Not only did they loose the championship to Vocal Adrenaline they didn't even place runner-up, not fulfilling their end of the deal with the school's principal to keep the club running. Oh no! Honestly I had a suspicion that might be the outcome. You don't want the show to conquer all of it's obstacles too quickly in the series.

Thinking the club is over with, the kids gather on stage at the school's auditorium to tell Will how much he and the club has meant to them and to sing "To Sir, With Love" especially for him. That was Moment I Almost Cried #4.

But this is Glee after all, and just when thing's look their bleakest a happy ending is often not too far away. This time it came in the most unlikely of places. Sue ended up buying the club one more year, having not only been moved to defend them against Newton-John at the competition but to realize that with the club gone her sparring matches with Will would come to an end. And who wants that, let alone a woman who lives for a good fight? Sue continues to be a complex and oddly lovable character, and with Jane Lynch's handling of her and the writers keeping her one step away from being a caricature it really works.

So good news all around. Shelby adopts Quinn's and Puck's baby, Will professes his love for Emma and leaves that hanging for next season, Rachel and Finn seem to be back together and the kids can keep being social outcasts and loving every minute of it. The final scene brings us to Moment I Almost Cried #5; with everyone reunited in the choir room, Will returns the favor to his kids with a rendition of "Over the Rainbow". A touching end to a true phenomenon.

So we only have to wait until September for new episodes. We've waited before, we can do it again. Glee's already been picked up for a third season, so hopefully this Journey isn't over yet. Now I want to be in a show choir. Anyone want to start one with me?

Who else saw the finale? Any other takes on it? You know where to turn...

Movie Review: Get Him to the Greek

It's not often that a side character from a movie can become enough of a break-out that they earn a starring role in their own film, but Aldous Snow, played by British comedian Russell Brand, the lecherous, old-school rocker from Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of those rare characters that was too big for his small part and just had to be upgraded.

The end result of that is Get Him to the Greek, directed by Sarah Marshall helmer Nicholas Stoller. The plot centers around Snow's fall from grace after releasing a disastrous album. Aaron Green, played by the always likable Johan Hill, works as a talent scout at Pinnacle Records, and suggests that Snow stage a comeback show at the Greek Theatre in L.A. The idealistic young man is then charged with getting the demanding, messed up rock star from London to L.A. within three days. As you expect, hilarity ensues.

And it is hilarious. Hill and Brand have great chemistry together, and their differing personalities clash nicely onscreen. The supporting cast also adds some great laughs, particularly and surprisingly Sean "Diddy" Combs, who plays the head of Pinnacle Records. Combs' public persona is always so serious you wouldn't expect him to deliver the laughs he does here, but boy howdy you're laughing whenever he's on screen. And despite the craziness, there are some soft, genuine moments as well as the characters rub off on each other.

There's some great music too, put on display through music videos and performances, courtesy of Snow's band Infant Sorrow. Apparently along with being a comedian and an actor, Brand can be a rock star as well. As soon as I got home I found the soundtrack on iTunes and downloaded three of my favorite songs. "Furry Walls" in particular is the one to get (you'll know why when you see the film).

My Verdict: A funny and crazy night of rock & roll excess.