[WARNING: Smallville season finale spoilers incoming!]
Continue reading “Smallville Season Finale”

So last night I finally watched the end of Angel.

[WARNING: SPOILERS]

I’ve had a real love/hate relationship with the show. When it was serious, I’ve really enjoyed it. When it was dumb, well, who really needs more dumb TV? Lorne, for instance, was awful. From day 1 to the ending, the character was just what he was… a big dumb pun (Green Lorne, get it? Lorne Greene? … in case you never made that connection).

But when the show went dark, I thought it was pretty good. And I will miss it.

The biggest surprise to me, in the ending arc, was how well Amy Acker did in jumping from Fred to Illeria (spelling?) and back. And she was pretty hot when she was blue, too, but that’s a post for another blog.

As for the very last episode…I thought it was ok. Its…savage, when a cast is killed off in the final episode of a series. It feels like a betrayel. Remember the last show of Blake’s 7? They all died and it was just like… “Shit, how could you do this to us fans?”

So Angel’s “They probably die but maybe not” ending seemed like a decent balance, though it was odd how it was juxtaposed with Wesley’s death. OTOH, the latter wasn’t as awful as the way Anya’s death was played so ‘lightly’ at the end of BTVS.

But was it stellar? No. Was it satisfying? Again, no. I’ll miss Angel, even though a lot of the acting was bad, and so too were a lot of the episodes. But my Season Pass list on Tivo is getting mighty thin these days and with no shows from the Buffyverse on…well, I’m just feeling a bit blue.

I just watched a movie called Druids in English, and Vercing�torix in French. It wasn’t a great movie. But it portrayed a period of history that had never even crossed my mind before. In fact I wasn’t sure it was based on real history at all until I did some Googling.

Turns out that Vercing�torix was a Gaul chieftain who opposed Julius Ceasar for a time around 52BC (when Ceasar finally defeated him). If you search on his name you’ll find a lot of pages in French, but sadly I don’t read French very well. But I did find a couple of links in English:
The Iron Age in the Auvergne
From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Neither of these are extensive references but they at least show that the movie was based at least loosely on history. And so I’m glad I saw it, from the point of view of it exposing me to a bit of history that, as I said, I’ve never even considered before.

I just found out (because I am the Last to Know Everything!) that Ioan Gruffudd is going to play Lancelot in the upcoming King Arthur movie.

You may know Gruffudd from The Titanic (I know he was in it, but as I never saw the movie I don’t know how big a part he had) but to me, he is Horatio Hornblower!

Looking forward to seeing him portray Lancelot…

Yesterday I vegged out in front of the TV and watched two movies: Apollo 13 and Igby Goes Down.

Apollo 13 is a great movie, but everyone knows that by now. What really struck me was how, even though I lived through the events and even though I’ve seen the movie a few times, I still get totally caught up and find myself perched on the edge of my seat, tense as can be. Seems to me that says volumes about Ron Howard’s abilities as a film maker. If for some reason you haven’t seen it, make a point to do so.

Igby Goes Down on the other hand… well, I did like it, but if the lead character was supposed to be garnering my sympathy, well, I didn’t get that. I find it hard to feel for a bratty trust-fund kid who has issues with his parents. Growing up in The Hamptons, I just hung out with too many of these kids during my late teen summers. I mean, yeah he has problems, but so does everyone else, y’know? At least he’s got people handing him cash every 5 minutes so he isn’t going to starve.

But maybe I’m reading too much into it. Watch it as a dark comedy and its fairly entertaining. Everyone in it is a caricature, but they’re all played pretty well, in my very amateur opinion. I especially liked Jeff Goldblum as “D.H.” since I’ve not often seen him in a role like this one and he was pretty good.

[Disclaimer for all the above: I am no student of film. I don’t really take movies all that seriously. So this is just the opinions of an average joe…]

At the risk of proving what you’ve already suspected — that I’m a complete and utter geek-nerd — I have to draw your attention to a Major Error in the “100th Episode” of Angel (the one in which Cordelia returns). And yes, I’m sure this has been pointed out by many others, but darnit, I’m behind in my Tivo watching.

Anyway, in this Angel ep, Spike is shown playing a video game. We’re facing him so we can’t see the screen, but we can see the console. It’s an XBox. But we can also hear the sounds, and he’s playing Donkey Kong, of all things! In fact his dialog even says something about a big ape throwing barrels.

So what’s up with that? Playing Donkey Kong on an XBox? If they’d gone with Galaga or something, we could pass it off as him playing one of those Namco Museum type games, but a Nintendo property on Micrsoft hardware! That just ain’t right!!! 🙂

I jest of course. Actually, it was a pretty damned potent episode, and yet one more reason to lament the fact that the show has been cancelled.

So my latest Britcom ‘discovery’ is Next of Kin starring Penelope Keith (To the Manor Born) and Richard Gaunt (No Place Like Home). They play an older couple whose son and daughter-in-law were killed in a car accident. Now their three grandchildren have come to live with them.

It’s a comedy with a definite dark edge. First, the basic premise…here’re 3 orphans, after all.

Second is, the couple, and especially the wife, really aren’t thrilled with the arrangement. They’ve been living the good life: weekends in France, lounging about drinking wine with friends…just a comfortable life of idle retirement. Now they’re going to football matches and cleaning up after kids and pets and frankly, they resent it. Continue reading “Next of Kin”