'What am I, the go-to person for adultery?'
'Grey's Anatomy' 3x19 - 'My Favorite Mistake'
Not the best GA episode that's for sure. Izzie once again makes me extremely irritated and that overshadows practically everything else. I'm not going to talk about the whole Izzie/George/Callie melodrama at all, because that might lead to a keyboard-smashing hate-frenzy and I might accidentally hurt myself. And that would be awfully inconvenient. The fact that Meredith/Sheppard were their usual unexciting selves and Cristina/Burke has been gradually losing its edge for bloody months now doesn't help at all. And I think it's pretty sad that the show that is defined by it's love/sex stories can't pull off ANY of its three featured relationships properly.
Ok, let's focus on the regrettably few good things there:
- Mark, against all expectations, continues to be utterly awesome. It's like the first half of the season never existed. He's the same delightful douchebag that he was in that one episode in season two, ages ago, and I really couldn't approve more. He chooses Meredith for a surgery to score points with the Chief, steals ideas off Bailey (very wisely so, since she's the last rational person left on this show), admits freely that he's an ex-manwhore and then charms the whole board at the interview and makes the other attendings look like losers. I love this man.
- Cally spazzing before the daddy visit and 'Funny. Funny little man. Funny little smelly little man' which actually describes George perfectly.
- Cristina the 'A' Pupil striking again with her 'IknowIknowIknow' hand raising and then immediately volunteering for the clinic duty when she starts to suspect (paranoidly so, but that makes it even neater) that there might be something interesting there and Izzie might steal it from under her nose.
- Izzie blurting out a propos nothing that she had sex last night and Addison making that perfect petrified 'mad person alert! look for a nearest escape route' face.
And that would be it. Now, GA, gimme something better next time. That's not a request.
Cool movie news, in case someone haven't heard them yet:
- M. Night Shyamalan is writing an 'Avatar - The Last Airbender' live-action feature movie. Which might actually be a trilogy. Let's face it, I loathe movies with kids and this one is going to have about a legion of them, but I love 'Avatar' the cartoon beyond all reason, so I'm so going to see it anyway.
- 'Wanted' starring James McAvoy is going to hit the cinemas next year. A graphic novel adaptation. About super-assassins. Made by Timur Bekmambetov. With James McAvoy. Need I say more?
- Will Smith is making a vampire movie. It has a roughly 40% chance of turning out to be total crap, but, come on, a vampire movie. Vampires movies are awesome by very definition. And right after his vampire movie, he is moving to his Superhero with PR Troubles project, which is almost just as neat.
- There is a Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie coming out this week. Damn, it sprung completely out of the blue on me. Still, exciting. Gordon-Levitt is one of my personal favorites. And his next project after that, the release date yet to be fixed lists him as 'a psychopathic young upstart killer'. That's just bloody terrific.
- Depp and Banderas are quite likely to float up in 'Sin City 2'. Which, on the one hand, is awesome, and, on the other, makes the already ridiculously star-studded cast list almost absurd.
Mark Steven Johnson's 'Ghost Rider'
The only reason this movie works, albeit pretty shakily, is that Nicolas Cage is kinda like a comic-book character himself. Everything about him is just, I don't know, hyperbolized. I'm terribly fond of him but it's pretty surreal. However, it makes him fit seamlessly into a comic-book adaptation. It's quite unfortunate, though, that, given the nature of the main hero, Mr Cage didn't have the chance to fully work his magic of endearing almost-caricature. The movie is mildly entertaining when Johnny Blaze actually is Nicolas Cage, and wields as a result The Nicolas Cage Inner Coolness Superpower (and rocks a pair of black leather pants), but it goes dramatically downhill when he morphs into the bad-CGI-effects flaming skeleton, whose superpower is-- actually, I have no idea. Something about sinner detection. Whatever.
I'm pretty miffed that yet another comic-book movie turned out to be, well, uninspiring, bordering on outright dreary at times, what with nonsensical plot and a half-dimensional villain. It makes me, a faithful comic-book movie fan, look bad. I'm losing my cred here.
Curiously, I liked Eva Mendes here quite a lot. Which is pretty surprising since in 'Hitch' I wanted to leap on-screen and beat the living sheer out of her of sheer, unadulterated, if not particularly logical, hate. Here, she's ok. I wouldn't mind reducing her cleavage screentime, though. She has lovely cleavage, no question there, but the key is in moderation.
Zack Snyder's '300'
Nearly naked men! Slow-motion sword dancing! Homoerotic undercurrents! Battle rhinos! Glorious deaths! Army of slaves! Nearly naked men! Bloodthirsty seven-year-olds! Flawlessly choreographed mass slaughter! Dirty old perverts! Doped-up oracles! A wall made of corpses! Nearly naked men! It's like this movie was custom-made for me. I have a few minor plot-concerning issues with it, but visually? Fierce love.
Said issues are as follows:
One. The Queen Lena Headey's subplot was a bit lame. She whored herself to the Asshole Traitor Dominic West for the good of the country, he turned on her, then she killed him when made technically truthful adultery accusations, she killed him and then it conveniently turned out that he happened to have his treason money on him that very day. Bad writing.
Two. The last stand scene felt a bit like the Spartans had given up. I mean, dying under the rain of arrow, all together? Very dramatic. Made stronger impact when they met their end en masse, sure. But I think it would have been more in character, if they had at least taken some of their enemy with for the trip.
Ok, the whining part is out of the way (no, really, I whine because I care). Now, it's the admiration time. The movie really makes you believe these 300 soldiers are unstoppable war-machines, able to take on legions in a fight without all that much effort and more than happy, even elated, to give their lives for the country. It's exactly where I thought Zack Snyder would falter, because it really is a tricky part to get across, but he just glides through it without even losing a step. Great job there, I'm impressed.
And, because I couldn't possibly NOT mention nearly naked men in greater detail, Michael Fassbender and Tom Wisdon were very very pretty. So
'300' might not be as exceptional graphic-novel adaptation as 'Sin City', but it comes very close. And it might not be as unearthly devastating as the trailer - the trailer that made me so giddy with excitement that I practically played it on loop - promised but I'm pretty sure there's no real possibility any movie could ever manage that, so that's alright. All in all, another win for the sword-and-sandals genre.
In other news, it looks like my master's thesis is going to be in econometrics. Which is surreal. And petrifying. And kinda exciting at the same time.
.
Not the best GA episode that's for sure. Izzie once again makes me extremely irritated and that overshadows practically everything else. I'm not going to talk about the whole Izzie/George/Callie melodrama at all, because that might lead to a keyboard-smashing hate-frenzy and I might accidentally hurt myself. And that would be awfully inconvenient. The fact that Meredith/Sheppard were their usual unexciting selves and Cristina/Burke has been gradually losing its edge for bloody months now doesn't help at all. And I think it's pretty sad that the show that is defined by it's love/sex stories can't pull off ANY of its three featured relationships properly.
Ok, let's focus on the regrettably few good things there:
- Mark, against all expectations, continues to be utterly awesome. It's like the first half of the season never existed. He's the same delightful douchebag that he was in that one episode in season two, ages ago, and I really couldn't approve more. He chooses Meredith for a surgery to score points with the Chief, steals ideas off Bailey (very wisely so, since she's the last rational person left on this show), admits freely that he's an ex-manwhore and then charms the whole board at the interview and makes the other attendings look like losers. I love this man.
- Cally spazzing before the daddy visit and 'Funny. Funny little man. Funny little smelly little man' which actually describes George perfectly.
- Cristina the 'A' Pupil striking again with her 'IknowIknowIknow' hand raising and then immediately volunteering for the clinic duty when she starts to suspect (paranoidly so, but that makes it even neater) that there might be something interesting there and Izzie might steal it from under her nose.
- Izzie blurting out a propos nothing that she had sex last night and Addison making that perfect petrified 'mad person alert! look for a nearest escape route' face.
And that would be it. Now, GA, gimme something better next time. That's not a request.
Cool movie news, in case someone haven't heard them yet:
- M. Night Shyamalan is writing an 'Avatar - The Last Airbender' live-action feature movie. Which might actually be a trilogy. Let's face it, I loathe movies with kids and this one is going to have about a legion of them, but I love 'Avatar' the cartoon beyond all reason, so I'm so going to see it anyway.
- 'Wanted' starring James McAvoy is going to hit the cinemas next year. A graphic novel adaptation. About super-assassins. Made by Timur Bekmambetov. With James McAvoy. Need I say more?
- Will Smith is making a vampire movie. It has a roughly 40% chance of turning out to be total crap, but, come on, a vampire movie. Vampires movies are awesome by very definition. And right after his vampire movie, he is moving to his Superhero with PR Troubles project, which is almost just as neat.
- There is a Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie coming out this week. Damn, it sprung completely out of the blue on me. Still, exciting. Gordon-Levitt is one of my personal favorites. And his next project after that, the release date yet to be fixed lists him as 'a psychopathic young upstart killer'. That's just bloody terrific.
- Depp and Banderas are quite likely to float up in 'Sin City 2'. Which, on the one hand, is awesome, and, on the other, makes the already ridiculously star-studded cast list almost absurd.
Mark Steven Johnson's 'Ghost Rider'
The only reason this movie works, albeit pretty shakily, is that Nicolas Cage is kinda like a comic-book character himself. Everything about him is just, I don't know, hyperbolized. I'm terribly fond of him but it's pretty surreal. However, it makes him fit seamlessly into a comic-book adaptation. It's quite unfortunate, though, that, given the nature of the main hero, Mr Cage didn't have the chance to fully work his magic of endearing almost-caricature. The movie is mildly entertaining when Johnny Blaze actually is Nicolas Cage, and wields as a result The Nicolas Cage Inner Coolness Superpower (and rocks a pair of black leather pants), but it goes dramatically downhill when he morphs into the bad-CGI-effects flaming skeleton, whose superpower is-- actually, I have no idea. Something about sinner detection. Whatever.
I'm pretty miffed that yet another comic-book movie turned out to be, well, uninspiring, bordering on outright dreary at times, what with nonsensical plot and a half-dimensional villain. It makes me, a faithful comic-book movie fan, look bad. I'm losing my cred here.
Curiously, I liked Eva Mendes here quite a lot. Which is pretty surprising since in 'Hitch' I wanted to leap on-screen and beat the living sheer out of her of sheer, unadulterated, if not particularly logical, hate. Here, she's ok. I wouldn't mind reducing her cleavage screentime, though. She has lovely cleavage, no question there, but the key is in moderation.
Zack Snyder's '300'
Nearly naked men! Slow-motion sword dancing! Homoerotic undercurrents! Battle rhinos! Glorious deaths! Army of slaves! Nearly naked men! Bloodthirsty seven-year-olds! Flawlessly choreographed mass slaughter! Dirty old perverts! Doped-up oracles! A wall made of corpses! Nearly naked men! It's like this movie was custom-made for me. I have a few minor plot-concerning issues with it, but visually? Fierce love.
Said issues are as follows:
One. The Queen Lena Headey's subplot was a bit lame. She whored herself to the Asshole Traitor Dominic West for the good of the country, he turned on her, then she killed him when made technically truthful adultery accusations, she killed him and then it conveniently turned out that he happened to have his treason money on him that very day. Bad writing.
Two. The last stand scene felt a bit like the Spartans had given up. I mean, dying under the rain of arrow, all together? Very dramatic. Made stronger impact when they met their end en masse, sure. But I think it would have been more in character, if they had at least taken some of their enemy with for the trip.
Ok, the whining part is out of the way (no, really, I whine because I care). Now, it's the admiration time. The movie really makes you believe these 300 soldiers are unstoppable war-machines, able to take on legions in a fight without all that much effort and more than happy, even elated, to give their lives for the country. It's exactly where I thought Zack Snyder would falter, because it really is a tricky part to get across, but he just glides through it without even losing a step. Great job there, I'm impressed.
And, because I couldn't possibly NOT mention nearly naked men in greater detail, Michael Fassbender and Tom Wisdon were very very pretty. So
'300' might not be as exceptional graphic-novel adaptation as 'Sin City', but it comes very close. And it might not be as unearthly devastating as the trailer - the trailer that made me so giddy with excitement that I practically played it on loop - promised but I'm pretty sure there's no real possibility any movie could ever manage that, so that's alright. All in all, another win for the sword-and-sandals genre.
In other news, it looks like my master's thesis is going to be in econometrics. Which is surreal. And petrifying. And kinda exciting at the same time.
.