I rewatched the first season of the X-Files recently. I remember watching the first season when it originally aired, and enjoyed it well enough, but I guess not enough to keep watching it beyond that. But I caught an episode on the SyFy channel a little while ago and thought it was good, so I figured I may as well restart it from the beginning. After all, I can't really call myself a true sci-fi geek if I haven't really watched the X-Files.
And... it holds up a lot better than I thought. The entire premise of two FBI agents investigating paranormal phenomena is still a dynamite premise, the two leads are wonderful and charming, and the stories are interesting and well written. However... this is definitely a show that was better watched week to week instead of back to back on DVD over the course of a few hour chunks at a time. The episodes are all a lot of fun and well written, but they are also a little too formulaic and similar when viewed one after another.
Also, it gets a bit silly considering how, after however many episodes, they basically establish that every myth, monster, or paranormal power exists in the X-Files universe. They fight werewolves, vampires, wendigo, shapeshifters, people with telekinesis, and, of course, aliens. And yet, every week, Agent Scully still insists on refusing to believe Mulder when he figures out what every episode's new monster is. After fighting aliens and whatever else, isn't she willing to believe anything else that happens?
But it's all in good fun. And it is fun. I don't know if I'm going to keep watching all 8 seasons (or whatever) and both movies (or whatever), but the first disc of season 2 is already on its way to my house.
That is to say, I have read and reread all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original short stories and novels (well... I haven't reread all of them, because even a Sherlock Holmes fan must admit that some are significantly better than others), most of the pastiches written by later writers after Doyle passed on, and seen more than my share of film and television adaptations. So when I first heard about the adaptation by director Guy Ritchie, I was... cautiously optimistic.
I was optimistic because the first trailer looked like a lot of fun and the cast -- while not what I would've chosen -- was full of talented actors. I was cautious because Guy Ritchie's previous work didn't fill me with much encouragement that he would handle the property all that well, and, as fun as that trailer was, it didn't really look like a Sherlock Holmes film. Oh, and I was also cautious because most Sherlock Holmes adaptations have been pretty terrible.
Well, I suppose it's not fair to say that most have been terrible, just that they haven't been all that faithful to the original stories. People always want to make Holmes fight Jack the Ripper, or they want Mycroft to leave the Diogenese Society, or they want to either play up or completely ignore his drug use. Only Tarzan has suffered more as a character by the adaptions of his work done by Hollywood. Tarzan never said, "Me Tarzan, you Jane" in the novels and Sherlock Holmes never said, "Elementary, My Dear Watson."
So the film didn't scare me away because it looked like a departure from the novels. I'm used to that. What I was hoping for was a good film that worked on its own, while not getting everything completely wrong.
So I was more than satisfied when it turned out to be one of the best Sherlock Holmes films I've ever seen. No, it wasn't completely faithful to the original stories, but it got more right than it got wrong, and it managed to be just as smart, witty, and clever as I could've hoped. It was a Hollywood action picture to be sure, but the Holmes in this film used his wits just as often as he used his strength, and never departed too far from the heart of the character, who was shown to be an expert boxer and swordsman. Holmes did finally beat Professor Moriarty by outfighting him and throwing him off the edge of the Reichenbach Falls, after all.
I would not have cast Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes, but after seeing his performance in this film, I'm glad I wasn't consulted on that decision. He doesn't look like the popular image of Holmes (which is pretty faithful to the description given by Doyle), nor is he even English. But what he is is an amazing actor who understood the heart of the character better than any actor since Basil Rathbone. In fact, he may even have been the best on screen Sherlock Holmes ever.
And Jude Law was without a doubt the best Watson I've ever seen. He gave a fantastic performance as a character very few filmmakers have understood enough to use as anything more than comic interest. The writers and director Guy Ritchie made the brilliant decision to use Watson as the straight man to Holmes's eccentricities. The friendship between the two characters was better captured and illustrated in this film than even in many of the original stories.
The rest of the cast was good too, but this was definitely the Holmes/Watson show, as well it should be. Rachel McAdams was suitably luminous and bewitching as Irene Adler, though the inclusion of her character wasn't all that necessary. Still, I'm glad they used Adler instead of making up some other character just for the sake of throwing in a female character. The bad guy was the bad guy. That's about all I can say about him.
About the story, I can't say all that much because, at the end of the day, there wasn't really much of one. The whole plot made little sense when looked at as a whole, but it certainly proved enough set pieces and excuses for Holmes to use his deductive detective work. And the fight scenes were awesome, and actually managed to show off Holme's brilliant mind as well as his brawn.
Anyway, go see it. It was probably the most fun film I've seen all year.
And, yes, it was a Sherlock Holmes film, no matter what you may hear from some other people who take things too seriously.
You've probably heard that old cliche about how there are two kinds of music fans: The ones who love the Beatles, and the ones who love Elvis. Well, I'm here to tell you about the third kind of music fan... those who love Conway Twitty. That's the kind of music fan I am. That isn't to say I don't also enjoy the music of Elvis and the Beatles. But there's only one Conway. You'll never see Conway Twitty: Rock Band or millions of Conway Twitty impersonators. That's because... he's beyond compare.
A lot of people will try to convince you that Heat was a good (perhaps even great) film. They're wrong. I love the internet because it allowed me to find this one scene from this one movie that has always confused, annoyed, and vexed me ever since I first saw it all those years ago:
Why were people hyping that FlashForward show as the new Lost when V clearly fits the description a lot more? FF has Penny and Charlie from Lost, sure, But V has Juliet... and the inclusion of Scott Wolfe fills that "former actor from Party of Five" slot. If FF wants to catch up, they'll have to cast Lacy Charbert or somehow track down Neve Campbell. (Talk about somebody who's "lost"!)
Oh yeah, and the pilot episode for V was also really good, while the pilot for FF was a snorefest.
Now, I'm not saying V is going to be the next Lost (or even the next V). I'm just saying that the pilot was really well done and entertaining. Whether or not it's going to become must see TV for us sci-fi geeks remains to be seen.
But it certainly got off on the right track, not just because the premise is lifted from a classic TV miniseries (and, frankly, a not so classic TV series that lasted just one episode), but also because the cast is a sci-fi TV fan's wet dream. I've already mentioned the always talented and completely radiant Elizabeth Mitchell who played Juliet on Lost, but we've also got the luminous Morena Baccarin from Firefly, Joel Gretsch from The 4400 and the Taken miniseries, a cameo by Alan Tudyk (who most people will remember from Firefly, but my girlfriend will know him as the pirate from Dodgeball), and this girl, who played "Supergirl" on Smallville.
I was also excited to see Morris Chestnut in the cast as well, but his credentials as a sci-fi icon are so far limited to this TV series. Let's hope it takes off so I can meet him at a convention someday. The only thing really disappointing about the cast was that they missed the opportunity to cast a real sci-fi veteran to give the show a little more history. Does every major character have to be in their mid thirties? If they had included a role -- or even a cameo -- for somebody like Marc Singer, I wouldn've been blown away. After all, the recent remake of Battlestar Galactica found a really amazing role Richard Hatch, the actor who played Apollo in the original series. This show needs to find a role for Marc Singer already!
But, all in all, it was a well done pilot that seems like it'll be a fun, interesting series about Aliens invading Earth. Let's just hope it's as good as the original mini series was and not as bad as the original ongoing series.
And if you know me and are confused, no, I didn't buy an iPhone... I still just have an iPod Touch. But for the sake of argument (and to boost any potential hits to this website through a search engine), I'm just going to refer to the device as an iPhone and leave it at that.
Anyway... here are somethings I'll never use an iPhone for:
Read a Comic Book
There are numerous applications devoted to putting comic books on an iPhone, from simple readers that allow you to download digital versions of the books to just the books themselves. Some of these applications are better than others, but all are completely worthless in my opinion. If you want to read a comic book, chances are good you like comic books. The screen of an iPhone is about one tenth the size of a standard American comic book, so the art either has to be shrinked down to the point where it's too small to read, or stretched out and pixelized so it's too ugly to look at. I definitely think that digital downloads will be the future of comic books, but not on an iPhone. No way, no how.
Read a Novel
I have the Kindle app, but I only use it for one reason: To send samples of novels to my iPhone so I can see if I want to go to a bookstore and buy an actual copy for real. It's a neat feature that allows you to read the first twenty or so pages of any book that is currently available for purchase on Amazon's Kindle store. I've never made it through more than five pages or so of any "book" on my iPhone, however, because it gives me a headache and just feels all wrong. The text is either too small to read, or so big that you have to "flick" the page after about two sentences. Sometimes I'll try to read an iPhone book while sitting on the toilet, but I'll usually just give up and read the back of a shampoo bottle instead.
Play any Game More Involved than Tetris
I love videogames and I think the iPhone has incredible processing power, but most games for it just aren't very fun. There's just something unpleasant about rubbing your finger across the screen for longer than, say, two minutes at a time. Also, the fact that you have to put your hands in front of the screen to control the games means you can't see what you're actually playing much of the time. Tetris is fun. Solitaire is fun. Some of the other puzzle games are fun. But I'm not going to play Metal Gear Solid on this thing, thank you very much.
Watch a Movie or TV Show
Apple obviously assumes somebody is watching stuff on their iPhones, because whenever I actually download an HD episode to watch on my computer (hooked into a TV!), it automatically downloads the SD version alongside it. Again, thanks, but no thanks. First of all, if I actually want to put a movie or TV episode on my iPhone, I have to remove about half of my music just so it will fit. Second of all, the screen is smaller than the palm of my hand! Who's watching movies on this thing? I own a Widescreen TV for a reason: I like being able to see what I'm watching.
I can't believe I liked this movie as a kid. Awful animation based on the work of Maurice Sendak to the toneless singing voice of Carol King. What a piece of shit this is.
So I forgot to post a videoclip of the week on Monday. I suppose I should take a hint from the fact that nobody noticed, but whatever! I'm gonna post one anyway... and because it's late, it's an extra special one. Here's a full ten minutes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, skewering the short film Hired. It's one of their best segments ever:
Maybe you knew him as a wrestler. Maybe you knew him as Mario. Maybe you knew him as Cyndi Lauper's father. Or maybe you just knew him as a regular guest on the Joe Franklin Show.
But however you knew him, to know him was to love him.
"Daddy dear, you know you're still number one!" --Cyndi Lauper.
In anticipation of the release of Zombieland this Friday, I figured I'd take this opportunity to finally compile my definitive list of the top ten best zombie movies. I have high hopes for this movie -- which looks to be little more than two hours of Woodie Harrelson killing zombies and making jokes -- and hope it can find a place on the second version of this list.
10. Land of the Dead This isn't the weakest of George Romero's still-chugging-along series of zombie movies, but it is the least brilliant of all his good ones. But it is a good one, even though it pales in comparison to Romero's original trilogy of film. There are some great set pieces in this film and contains Romero's trademark direction and snappy dialogue. It's also notable for being the first -- and, at this point, only -- Romero zombie film that has actual actors you'd ever recognize from any other film, including Dennis Hopper as the biggest douche bag ever.
9. Dawn of the Dead (Remake) Considering my love for the original Dawn of the Dead, I had no faith that this film would be anything more than an insult to fans like me. Luckily, I was dead wrong. All of the subtext, substance, and social commentary from the original are stripped away in favor of nonstop, gore, action, and thrills, but who really cared about any of that crap anyway? I love Romero's movies, but I don't watch zombie movies for any kind of commentary on the human condition. I want to watch people's heads blow up.
8. Evil Dead Trilogy All things considered, these films (the first two in particular) are absolutely brilliant and should rank higher in terms of quality than most of the other films on this list, but I held it back to #8 because they are only zombie movies in the most literal sense. I'm probably even risking a lot of flack for including them on this list at all. But come on... the monsters in this movie are reanimated corpses called "deadites." They're zombies. Anyway, these movies are brilliant, incredibly funny, and wickedly scary.
7. Zombi 2 I'm going to attempt to tell you the weird, convoluted history of Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2:
To begin with, there was no real film called Zombi, so Zombi 2 isn't actually a sequel to anything. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead was released in Italy as "Zombi," so (long story short) Italian filmmaker Lucio Fulci decided to make a zombie film and call it "Zombi 2." I'm going to give that some time to sink into your brain. But, regardless of its odd and somewhat disingenuous origin, it's still an awesome zombie movie. It's a bit slow and has way too many scenes of people talking (when they should be getting eaten by zombies), but it's an absolutely must see for two scenes:
#1. The scene where the zombie shoves a woman's face so a giant splinter of wood goes right into her eyeball is quite possibly the most gory, disgusting thing I've ever seen. It's absolutely incredible. It's the kind of scene you'll have to rewind a dozen times after seeing it for the first time. If you're into that sort of that, that is.
#2. There's a scene where a zombie fights a shark. And I'm pretty sure it's real. I don't mean that an actual zombie fought a shark, but that a guy dressed like a zombie got into a tank and slapped around an actual shark. I've seen this movie a few dozen times and there's no other possible way they could've filmed it. That's an actual actor pushing around and biting a real shark. It's just about the best scene in zombie movie history.
6. 28 Days/Weeks Later Yeah, I know the "zombies" in this movie are infected with some virus and aren't actually the living dead, but whatever. They're zombies. I lumped these two films together because, frankly, neither one has enough action, gore, and scares to stand alone against the other films on this list, but when taken together, they are quite satisfying and complimentary companion pieces. Both films have amazing first halves but falter a bit toward their ends, but they are still incredibly gripping, incredibly thrilling zombie films. I like 'em.
5. Shaun of the Dead For the most part, I'm not a fan of "funny" zombie movies, of which there have been a great many over the years. They usually aren't very funny or the least bit original... but this one is both. I think what sets this film apart from the other "funny" zombie movies is that it isn't really a parody so much as a comedy that stands alone as something funny all by itself. You don't have to know the cliches of the genre to enjoy the jokes in this movie, since it's just a straight up hilarious comedy. And then, somewhere toward the end, it actually gets incredibly tense and pretty scary as well. And there's some really fresh ideas and a lot of gore.
4. Dawn of the Dead (Original) Not much to say about this one, other than that it's probably most people's pick for the best zombie film of all time. I love it to be sure, but it's obviously not my all time favorite since it's only at #4, but number #4 of all time is still really, really exceptional.
This film is just brilliant. It has become so popular and beloved because -- zombies and gore aside -- it's just a great story that's well told. After the first Dead film, Romero decided to write a sequel where, for all intents and purposes, the zombies had won and taken over the world. This was a brave, bold choice and this was a brave, bold movie. Just watch it. It's a lot of fun. It's just too bad Romero didn't really know how to end it.
3. Return of the Living Dead This movie is both the funniest and the scariest zombie movie I've ever seen. Even more so than Shaun of the Dead, this film finds the perfect balance between over the top, almost cartoonish scenes of pure slapstick comedy, and the overall tone that is just incredibly claustrophobic, unsettling, and depressing. The zombies in this movie eat brains because, we are told, being a zombie is pure agony and only the taste of brains gives them any comfort at all. Also, once your a zombie in this film, you're a zombie forever. Shots to the head just slow these zombies down. The only way to stop them is to burn them, but even that causes more trouble than it's worth. The world presented in this film is the single bleakest, most terrifying universe I've ever seen.
Well, except for the scene where the hot punk chick does a striptease in the cemetery. That scene was pretty inspiring.
2. Day of the Dead Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead introduced us to the zombie plague and let us know how some of the population were dealing with things. Day of the Dead lets us know what the military is doing about it, and it sure ain't much. This movie is just crazy good, and it's a completely underrated masterpiece in my opinion. Night and Dawn are rightly deserving of their place as acclaimed works of horror art, but nobody cares about Day, even though it's the most exciting and clever zombie film ever made. It's just an epic film full of amazing characters and brilliant ideas.
It also has the best death scene in movie history:
1. Night of the Living Dead NOTLD is the Citizen Kane of zombie movies. It didn't invent zombies or even create the genre of films, but it popularized them and introduced the main tropes for which the genre is most well known. But who cares about that? It's just a good movie. It's scary and engaging and fascinating and funny and sad and awe-inspiring.
It's Night of the Living Dead. It's just the best zombie movie ever made, which means it's one of the best movies ever made.
I rewatched the first season of the X-Files recently. I remember watching the first season when it originally aired, and enjoyed it well enough, but I guess not enough to keep watching it beyond that. But I caught an episode on the SyFy channel a little while ago and thought it was good, so I figured I may as well restart it from the beginning. After all, I can't really call myself a true sci-fi geek if I haven't really watched the X-Files.
