• I wish I could live in a world where oatmeal cookies didn’t have raisins in them
• Weird Al made a VERY cool announcement during the week, that he’d be releasing a new single online this coming Tuesday (10/7). He’d already talked about changing the way he did stuff, moving away from strict album productions to more timely single releases online. This’ll be the first of that new release model, and I look forward to a more constant stream of great material from Al.
• So, looks like Christopher Nolan and the rest of the gang are on board for the next Batman film. Expectations will be insanely high, but I think they can pull it off, or at least come close enough to success. Here’s hoping that Nolan can push for more IMAX shooting, or perhaps entirely IMAX shooting…
• On the subject of Batman, you aren’t gonna believe what The CW just put into production: The Graysons. Yes, as in The Boy Wonder. All odds will be against that show to not completely suck.
• In semi-related DC universe news, the house where Siegel & Shuster created Superman has been saved by the fans thanks to an auction to raise the money to preserve the historic residence.
• Here’s a very cool collection of photos from Chicago’s 1893 Colombian Exposition, which was only a couple decades after the great Chicago fire. You’ve likely never seen these photos before.
• Looks like Iron Man had no trouble entering the high def record books
• The surprisingly great single season series Moonlight from last season has gotten the official DVD announcement.
• For those wondering how the average consumer was going to start blowing past Comcast’s bandwidth cap crap
• Looks like Sprint is looking to finally sell off their terrible mistake of buying out Nextel. Man, what a mess that became.
• Here’s a particularly funny approach to sticking it to the TSA folks at the airports. Not sure I’d wanna be the one doing it, through.
• Spore goes to show the real outcome of truly evil forms of DRM (they are all evil, but ones like this are from the seventh level).
• Lastly, it’s sad to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua open at nearly $30 million dollars in 1st place…
• More movie reviews to come tomorrow.

Rather than trying to do any kind of structured TV reviews, I’m just gonna do the occasional post of random TV review thoughts for whatever points in time, regarding whatever random shows (in random order)…

Star Wars - The Clone Wars (Through 1.02): I thought the theatrically distributed debut film for this series of animated episodes was passably entertaining. It was certainly not without its flaws, but I liked it well enough. Then again, I’m not the average fanboy who loathes the prequel trilogy. In fact, I quite like Episode 3. So shoot me. I mildly liked the previous set of Cartoon Network’s Clone Wars animated shorts, but haven’t really watched them since they first ran. However, I must admit that I really liked the first Cartoon Network episode of this series, and the second one wasn’t half bad, either. If there’s one complaint I need to make, it’s that I hate the battle droids. They were bad in the prequel films, but they weren’t in it all that much, frankly. With the amount of time they are getting in these Clone Wars episodes, I think they are a bigger blemish on the franchise than Jar-Jar Binks was. Still, Yoda was great in the first episode, and the clone troopers work quite well. The animation seemed more impressive in these TV episodes than the theatrical debut film, as crazy as that sounds. Overall, I’ll continue watching if they can keep up the production quality.

Knight Rider (Through 1.02): I rather liked the backdoor pilot film that NBC made, and had hopes of liking the TV series that was green lit after the pilot film did well. I’m a fan of the original series, and thought the pilot film did a pretty good job staying true to the original while still finding a new approach. Then along came writer/producer Gary Scott Thompson to overhaul the production when it got picked up for series. I can only assume he’s to blame, because in this new series form, this show sucks. The moderate amount of intelligence from that pilot film has been completely lobotomized. This might as well be WWE Wrestling for all it’s worth. If it weren’t for the holdover cast from the pilot film, this would be complete garbage. The first episode was abysmal. The second was an improvement, but not particularly good either. I’ll give it one or two more episodes to improve, just for my loyalty to the original, but I’m not expecting a wild turnaround.

Fringe (Through 1.04): Looks like JJ Abrams and his gang have the breakaway best new show of the year on their hands. This is definitely my favorite new show so far this season. I’m totally loving it. From the fantastic cast to the creepy stories and plot arcs to the great production quality, I’m very thankful to have a successful X-Files styled show back on the air. There’s also the fantastic gimmick of their “floating in mid air” title cards for location names, reminding me of stuff like David Fincher’s opening titles for Panic Room. It’s surely a gimmick, but it works wonderfully. The network must like what they’re getting, too, since they just picked it up for the full season.

Do Not Disturb (Through 1.02): Since I just talked about a great new show that just got a full pickup, I’ll follow it with this lame sitcom that just got a quick cancellation. I was hoping it would be good, since it starred Jerry O’Connell, but it just wasn’t meant to be. After his great Carpoolers comedy series from last year didn’t succeed, it’s only fitting that a truly lame sitcom would fail even worse. Never mind the fact that the original pilot episode (which I saw a leaked copy of over the summer) was as bad or worse than what actually aired. This was a bad sitcom, plain and simple. In fact, it looks like this will be the first year I can remember there not being a new multi-camera sitcom that I like, unless there’s another new one I haven’t seen yet. I imagine this will be the last I write about this show.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Through 2.04): This surprisingly good TV series entry to the venerable Terminator franchise continues to be impressive. From the typically excellent production quality to the great cast, it fights against the odds and just plain works. After the wonderful final act of last seasons’ final episode, I was hopeful for a good continuation. Though the John Connor character has been a little bit weak and annoying during the first couple of episodes this second season, the show has otherwise been very good. Brian Austin Green continues his nice performance and has been added to the main cast. This second season has done another bit of odd and interesting casting with the addition of rocker Shirley Manson to the main cast, in an intriguing role. While this show continues to stray into the Battlestar Galactica world of machines rising against their creators and questioning their possible humanity, it remains a uniquely Terminator take on the idea. I look forward to further episodes. And speaking of Battlestar connections, composer Bear McCreary continually hits his episodic scores out of the park on this series. Perhaps not quite to the amazing level of quality that Battlestar has gotten from him over the years, but he’s doing some darned impressive thematic and texture scoring for Terminator.

Anyway, more to come soon. Or later. Or whenever.

• OK, three more reviews added today, 2 newer and one older. I hope to keep them coming for a while.
• Bear McCreary continues his impressive posts to his official blog. This time, he’s doing an interview with genius composer Bruce Broughton, relating it to his short experience scoring a brief cartoon sequence in a recent Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles episode.
• Now here’s one insanely impressive cruise ship. Yikes.
• Here’s an interesting bit of history involving the vast tunnels that Hitler and Albert Speer were working on when WWII broke out. It’d be an interesting piece of history to visit.
• Speaking of interesting (and disturbing) pieces of history, here’s one on the ol’ Russian gulags, “then and now.”
• I’m sure I’ve mentioned them before on this site, but if you’ve never checked out writer/producer Chuck Lorre’s web site, where he archives all his “vanity cards” from over his many years producing TV, you’re missing a lot of fun. Having just watched today’s episode of The Big Bang Theory (a very funny show), his vanity card for this one was amusing. It stated that “Tonight’s vanity card is about censorship. It was censored. As always, you know where to look.” Yes, us fans know where to look (his web site, of course), which revealed his amusingly censored card for the week (surely just a joke in being censored). If you’ve never dug through the cards on his site, you can sit there for hours reading them all. Some of them are insanely hilarious. And he semi-recently passed up the 200 mark on his insane collection of them.
• Here’s another excellent collection of HDR photos
• Of course, the big news of today was the $700 billion Wall Street bailout being shot down. I rarely talk politics on this site, but I was in favor of shooting it down. I’m with Ron Paul on this one. And for those who want to deny the length of history to this issue, and simply blame the Bush administration for all of it because that’s the popular thing to do, there’s articles like this.

This is a surprisingly fun romantic comedy, featuring a great cast and a rather good script that somehow manages to put a slight spin on a tried movie formula.

Writing: Writer/director David Koepp tries his hand at the romantic comedy genre, with success. Having written and directed a number of thrillers and action event films, this is definitely a change for him. And true to his typical talent, he manages to pull it off quite well. The interesting thing is that the film actually plays into many of the typical elements of this genre film, borrowing pretty freely from the likes of Ghost, Hearts & Souls and others. However, through the use of distinct character writing and amusing situational writing, he manages to find a unique voice for the film. And the casting didn’t hurt.

Production: The most notable thing for a film of this type is how well the “ghost effects” work. In this case, they are about as perfect as one would hope for. They don’t actually try to go for any kind of ghostly appearance, but rather settle for just having the actors in the scenes and only use effects when they pass through something. While it’s an easy budgetary decision to make, I think using the simple approach like this typically helps the film creatively as well. It’s not needlessly distracting for the audience. The other tech areas of the film are first rate, with no shortcomings to point out.

Cast: Ricky Gervais brings his very British sense of humor to this leading man role, and it works spectacularly. His droll sense of humor is razor sharp and spot on, and he really makes the introverted, jerk of a lead romantic comedy character work from every angle. He also manages to make the transformation of the character seem real and not at all forced, not to mention still feel like the same character, which is often a danger of films like this. Then there’s the perfect casting of Greg Kinnear as the other kind of likable jerk - the one who really is more of an actual jerk. It’s somewhat hard to make a movie that centers around two lead characters that would on paper seem to be very off putting. These two very entertaining actors manage to not only make it work, but elevate it to a higher level. Add in the always-great Tea Leoni, an actress who often doesn’t get the attention or casting she deserves, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic cast. Leoni and Gervais work very well together in the film, which is key to a romantic comedy. Rounding out the cast are plenty of fine actors and actresses, including the likes of Alan Ruck, Billy Campbell and Kristen Wiig.

Music: Composer Geoff Zanelli is seemingly channeling the likes of Rolfe Kent and Rachel Portman, two composers who are very well versed in this kind of film. While it may just be a heavy amount of temp track influence, and not a choice on his part, it does work pretty well for the film. That might not result in the world’s most original score, but it works all the same.

While I’m a fan of writer/director Neil LaBute, this wasn’t my favorite of his films. It’s certainly entertaining enough, I guess, but it falls into a few too many genre trappings to work completely. One other problem this movie had was a trailer I’d seen a bunch of times that was at least twice as long as it needed to be, and gave away far too much of the film.

Writing: This isn’t a particularly bad script, it just doesn’t avoid some of the obvious trappings of the genre. One of the more interesting aspects to the film is the character played by Sam Jackson, who is an interesting mix of a good guy and a bad guy. He’s VERY gray area. At the start of the film, I was totally on his side, as he constantly corrected the terrible grammar of his kids. As somebody who is also depressed by the total lack of language skills of the up and coming generation, I almost cheered out loud at some of his moments correcting them. All things being equal, he’s a good parent, until his bad traits escalate a situation that causes him to come unglued, then all bets are off. The racial tension of the film is also one of the more uniquely styled parts of the story, and is thankfully one that plays against stereotype, with Jackson being the outright racist.

Production: There’s little to criticize here, as it’s a very solid production. Everything from cinematography to editing and sound design are well done. None of it is standout, overly praise worthy, but it’s all quite well put together. The final act is particularly effective in terms of location and filming technique.

Cast: The real scene stealer in the movie is Sam Jackson, but I guess that shouldn’t come as a major surprise. He plays the conflicting gray areas of the character very well, managing to come off as charming even at the character’s worst. Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington are adequate as the neighbor couple moving into the neighborhood, and setting off Jackson’s character. I suppose the two of them do lack the chemical spark that the characters needed, but they still manage to pull it off pretty well. The great Ron Glass gets to have a couple scenes, but doesn’t get material of particular importance. Generally speaking, a good cast highlighted by Sam Jackson.

Music: Neil LaBute chose brother composers Mychael & Jeff Danna to score this character thriller, which is an easy choice given their combined experience in scoring movies of the genre. Mychael in particular has done plenty of material previously to make working on this film a walk in the park. The two of them delivered a perfectly functional and well styled score, downplaying the dark nature of the material and giving it that moderately gritty tone. Not the greatest score for either of them, but definitely a solid effort.

I’ve mentioned numerous times during reviews of mindless actions movies starring Jason Statham that I really do like him as an actor, it’s just that he continually picks action movies that are actually dumber than the one before. Crank was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. But I’ve always said that when given the right material, Statham can be quite good. Here is one such example - one that was sadly overlooked at the box office.

Writing: While being a rather charming and intriguing crime thriller, rather closely based on a true story, this film is not afraid to embrace its R rating. There is no shortage of pretty much everything that can earn an R rating. It’s an odd combination of said charm and risque material. I’m not sure how much of that comes from the script, let alone the true life event, and what is imbued by the cast and director. The story is quite layered and pretty insane, not to mention British through and through.

Production: Guided by the ever-reliable, solid hand of director Roger Donaldson (well, we won’t hold Cocktail against him), this production is top notch and pretty slick. It isn’t overly slick like a Michael Bay film would be. It’s down and dirty, but very well crafted. Cinematography is very realistic, but adequately stylish. Same goes for the editing and sound design. Overall, a very classy production.

Cast: As I already stated, I actually quite like Jason Statham as an actor, and he is at his absolute best here. His rogue charm is in full force, and he easily drops into the role. Then there’s the constantly under appreciated actress Saffron Burrows, who does a marvelous job as the catalyst for the story. She gets to play multiple angles to the character, and she plays against the rest of the cast very well. The rest of the casting is done with spot on character actors, filling all manner of supporting characters, from scumbags to good ol’ British aristocracy and intelligence operatives. It’s like a veritable who’s who of “hey, I recognize that actor/actress” casting.

Music: J. Peter Robinson gets to have all sorts of fun with his crime caper score, striking a very nice balance between modern film making and 70’s period scoring. This is definitely one of his best career scores. He may not be an a-list composer, or one of my absolute favorites, but he does get some material from time to time that lets him show off his skills.

• OK, I think I’ve got the server issue squared away (fingers crossed)
• RIP: Paul Newman
• Well deserved congratulations go out to the many folks involved in SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket and its successful launch as the first privately developed rocket into orbit. After three disheartening previous failed attempt, it’s wonderful to see them finally pull it off. If anyone thinks that’s a bad track record, they should go back and research the success rate of the early NASA rockets. It’s anything but easy to design and make rockets of this magnitude work. So to the SpaceX crews, congratulations. Welcome to the ranks of civilian space exploration.
• Congratulations also go out to The Simpsons, for beginning their record-tying 20th season on the air.
• Nice. Google’s error page for their error page.
• Would that the USA could have nearly the broadband service that Japan does. Let alone what they are about to get.
• Nice time lapse of a Boeing 720b getting taken apart
• As you may have noticed, I finally got a couple movie reviews posted. I’m gonna try to do them in sets of a recent review and one from earlier in the year for which I hadn’t yet posted the review. Also, the 2008 Films and the 2008 Film Scores lists have been brought up to date. The order of the top half dozen entries in the films list is not yet final. I haven’t decided quite how to rank those as yet.

This is one of those movies that manages to remain entertaining enough, despite a completely implausible and ridiculous script. I’d probably give this a 6 out of 10 were it not for Michelle Monaghan (one of my favorite actresses) being one of the stars, which helps me justify bumping it up to a 7 out of 10.

Writing: While I must admit that this story went in a direction that I honestly wasn’t expecting, and the fact that it actually does contain some interesting ideas, most of the material is insanely unrealistic. Now, a movie can be great without being even remotely realistic. I happen to love many such films. The key is to not be trying to play into a realistic framework. And that is the first mistake of this film - trying to be real. Granted, there are some amusing bits of dialog here and there that poke fun at the ridiculous nature of what’s going on, but it doesn’t do enough to undercut the insanity. On top of the core ridiculous aspects of the script, there’s a complete lack of common sense and logic throughout the film. This is like those overly-complicated plans that Bond villains would make to kill James, when they should have simply shot him between the eyes. You know, the kind of stuff for which Scott Evil would make fun of his father, Dr. Evil. This story could have been over in 30 minutes if the ultimate goal would have been accomplished by one of a thousand simple methods, avoiding the whole cat-and-mouse material. But then you wouldn’t have a movie, would you?

Production: Having said all that about the writing, the production goes the extra mile to compensate. This is a first rate production. It features dynamic cinematography and editing, a wild sound mix, aggressive scoring and a nice attention to detail. Those who say that a production or cast can’t make up for a bad script are often right, but in this case I think it was pulled off. It’s hard for it to make it a great film, but it can certainly make it entertaining enough, as it did for this film. Director DJ Caruso (who’s previous film was Disturbia with LaBeouf) manages to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Or at least a well nourished chipmunk. Having also shared many production elements and people as Transformers, I will say that I enjoyed this movie more than Transformers.

Cast: Shia LaBeouf is one of those hot button actors these days, with many people either loving or hating his work. I’m not a huge fan, but I do enjoy most of his performances. This movie got one of his better performances (certainly better than Transformers - though the stuff he got to play in Transformers was much worse than what he gets in this film). As I said earlier, Michelle Monaghan is a favorite actress of mine, so my opinion is considerably biased. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), I thought she was great. Then there’s the rest of the cast, which is filled in by such a roster of quality, known actors, I was surprisingly impressed. From Michael Chiklis’ nice performances as the Secretary of Defense to Billy Bob Thornton’s intelligent pursuer, this is a well cast film. Rosario Dawson feels just a tiny bit out of place in her role, but she still does a good enough job to make it work. She at least plays off Thornton nicely. The great William Sadler gets a small role as the father to LaBeouf’s character, and of course he does a great job. The under appreciated Ethan Embry gets a small role as Thornton’s partner. The rest of the cast is well rounded out.

Music: Like his great score for AvP2, Brian Tyler swings for the fences with this score. Full of rich, dynamic orchestration and pacing, it succeeds in the struggle to keep up with the material on screen. He also manages to sneak in some nice thematic character material from time to time, particularly in the first act of the film. While the script may be overly ridiculous, it does give ample opportunity to dynamic music scoring.

This is one of those odd and charming indie films that moderately breaks through into the main stream. In this case, I think it’s primarily for the cast involved, and the somewhat easily marketable story.

Writing: There no doubting the low key, indie mentality of the script, featuring a number of screwed up and quirky characters. It’s the kind of stuff that actors spend their careers trolling for.  While the writing may not be perfect, it definitely has a unique voice and an interesting set of characters and interactions.

Production: Like the writing, the production of the film works to find a balance between low key, normal kinds of production and oddly unique levels of design and environment. Most everything is designed to allow the cast to cut loose and play around with the fun material.

Cast: Here’s the real shining highlight of the film. Anton Yelchin (the soon-to-be Pavel Chekov in Star Trek) delivers a fantastically charming and slightly off-center performance as the titular Charlie Bartlett. He manages to play both the naive and the wise aspects of the character equally well. And he plays off the rest of the cast spectacularly. Robert Downey Jr, who’s long been a favorite actor of mine, is spot on with his downplayed character. Him and Yelchin in particular are great together in their scenes. Kat Dennings, who stars in the upcoming Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (a movie that seems to appeal to many of the characteristics of this film), is a refreshingly unique foil for Charlie, and an effortless romantic interest. Then there’s the perfectly odd Hope Davis playing Charlie’s very off-balance mother. Davis is an under appreciated actress, one who can play odd and complex roles like this to perfection.

Music: Christophe Beck, a very talented composer, comes through with an appropriately odd and downplayed score. It’s nothing that’ll grab attention as the best score of the year or anything, but it drops into the film with ease.

• This site may continue to be a bit flaky for a little while. I’m having problems with the server that hosts this site, with it crashing once every day or two. I’m trying to narrow down the issue, but until then, there may be some random times where you can’t get at the site. This is the primary reason I haven’t started to get the movie reviews posted that I was intending to finally get started on.
• As if Dubai needed even more extravagance when it comes to hotels, there’s no denying that this is some pretty impressive stuff.
• Google has a nice 10th Anniversary web site setup. The time line is quite cool.
• Congrats to MiniNova.org for not only crossing that 6 billionth download mark, but doing 10 million of them in one day (both of which set new records).
• Anyway, very short post for today. Back soon with more. And if I figure out the server problems, hopefully some movie reviews as well (finally).

• You’ve gotta check out this hilarious (and very impressive) editing work to create Robocop vs The Terminator…  Here’s episode 1, then episode 2, then the trailer for episode 3.
• Looks like my new AT&T U-Verse service will be making a jump from 2 to 3 simultaneous HD streams.
• An interesting collection of WWII security posters
• Great. Crank 2 is described by Statham himself as “Most Offensive.” If it truly is Crank 1 times 1000, as he says, this sequel will be the worst piece of narrative ever made, of any kind. Surely no worst book, song, movie, painting or sand castles built by a 2 year old could be combined together to be even 1/10 as bad as “Crank 1 times 1000.”
• Another collection of excellent HDR photos
• “Kitten Of War” - great photo
• Here’s a very cool panoramic shot wrapping all the way around from the top of Everest
• Here’s a cool photo of the shuttle breaking the sound barrier
• And speaking of cool shuttle pictures, I took a high res version of Atlantis & Endeavour on their neighboring launch pads, amazingly accompanied by a rainbow, and made a 1920×1200 resolution widescreen wallpaper from it:

So, just finished watching the Emmy Awards a bit ago. Overall, a decent enough show. I didn’t get a chance to put together my list of predictions this year (I started to, but didn’t get very far). The major failure of the show was in the chosen hosts. Their panel of 5 reality TV hosts (nominees in their category) was a miserable failure on stage. Heidi Klum managed to hold out as the best of the group, and even she was only abundantly average. When you have presenters like Steve Martin and Ricky Gervais come out and effortlessly upstage the main hosts, it becomes clear just how bad those hosts are doing. Then there’s Don Rickles, who amusingly refused to stay on script. While he may not seem physically top notch, he’s still as quick on the joke as he ever was. By coincidence, I was just watching his Get Smart appearance earlier this week on DVD. Barry Sonnenfeld won a much deserved award for directing the Pie-Lette of Pushing Daisies - the best broadcast network show on the air (which is my way of ruling out Battlestar Galactica in the comparison). And while I think Alec Baldwin is fantastic on 30 Rock, it was still sad to not see Lee Pace get an upset win a leading actor in a comedy award for Pushing Daisies (not that I expected such a long shot possibility). I would have at least loved to see Tony Shalhoub win another for playing Adrian Monk, but I guess 3 wins in a row is good enough. Steven Colbert & John Stewart had a great night at the awards, yet again. It was nice to see Greg Yataines win his best director in a drama award for his excellent work on House’s great season 4 finale. And as much as I truly hate reality TV shows (100%, absolutely), I did like Jimmy Kimmel’s presentation of the best host for a reality TV series award, where they went to commercial before revealing the winner. But the real winner of the night, and deservedly so, was Tiny Fey and 30 Rock. When did Mary Tyler Moore turn into a walking skeleton? Amazingly, though, Betty White still somehow manages to look nearly the same as she did back on the Mary Tyler Moore show. While 30 Rock was one I was very happy to see win the best comedy category, I was sad to see fantastic shows like House and Boston Legal lose to Mad Men for the best drama series. And if there’s one series I’m gonna have to hunt down and check out after seeing the Emmy Awards broadcast, it’s AMC’s Breaking Bad. I hadn’t actually even heard of it previously, but it looks great, and it’s writen/created by the great Vince Gilligan. Lastly, how is it the show ran long? I mean, there were more winners that weren’t there than usual, leaving the presenters to accept. And it seemed like they were getting extra aggressive in playing people off stage. Where did they waste so much time that they didn’t find in rehearsal? As a closing through, I must emphise how much they need to find a real host for the event next year.

• So, did you enjoy International Talk Like A Pirate Day today?
• After being introduced to the horrible new title song for Quantum Of Solace that I mentioned in yesterday’s post, here’s a refreshingly amusing comedy title song for the film. The video is from a couple months ago, but I had just stumbled upon it today.
• NASA is ready for disaster with an ultra-rare situation of having a second shuttle on the pad and waiting should the the repair mission for Hubble run into trouble. Kind cool picture to see two of the shuttles waiting at the pad simultaneously.
• Speaking of rare space shuttle photos, here’s a collection of shots during lesser known parts of the shuttle’s preparations.
• Google is adding extension/script support to Chrome, which is the primary reason I would have continued to use Firefox over Chrome. Now, if we start to see an excellent collection of extensions like Firefox currently has, I may become a Chrome user at some point.
• While it comes as no surprise, it’s still great to see the announcement of a season 4 score CD release for Doctor Who. Murray Gold continued his fantastic work on season 4, and I look forward to the release.
• Here’s a photo to make the soulless killing machine look cute.
• The future of anti-virus software? An interesting approach, anyway.
• A great article from our friends at The Onion
• Hmmm, a Greatest American Hero feature film? Could be fun.

• I guess I should congratulate Alicia Keys and Jack White for coming through with the worst title song for a Bond film in the history of the franchise. At this point in the life of the venerable film series, it takes a good amount of effort to be the single best or worst for any aspect of the franchise.
• Congratulations go out to Doctor Who Magazine for reaching issue #400. DWM is by far the best genre fan magazine ever published, with a long and proud history. It’s one of my favorite magazines to read month after month, and I look forward to 400 more (assuming I live that long).
• I mentioned Pushing Daisies winning a creative arts Emmy for composer Jim Dooley’s excellent score yesterday, but I forgot to mention that Varese Sarabande is going to be releasing a CD of his wonderful score on October 21.
• For years, I suffered through watching Heathers on crappy quality pan & scan VHS. It was the best there was for quite some time. Then came the widescreen laserdisc, and I was very happy. Later there were quite a few DVD releases, all of which were quite nice. They didn’t add much when they kept re-releasing it to DVD, but it was still nice to have some quality releases of the film out there. Now we get another big step in the video release history of this film, as it is being released in high def to Blu-Ray. I know that given the source material that this will hardly be any kind of reference quality demo material. Still, I would have never dreamed of ever getting my grubby little paws on Heathers in such quality back in the days of watching the horrid quality VHS. How very.
• Cool, there’s going to be another 3D Blu-Ray release - Journey To The Center Of The Earth. It’s a surprisingly fun movie, and I hope they can get the excellent 3D production quality well represented in the home video format.
• Looks like Fox is going to get it right with some very nice sounding Blu-Ray releases of the recent X-Files: I Want To Believe as well as the first X-Files: Fight The Future film. I’m very happy to see them including an isolated score (on I Want To Believe, anyway).
• Greatest news clip. Ever.
• MediaDefender - one year after the e-mail leak.
• And if you think MediaDefender was evil, try these dudes.
• GMail has added one of the cooler and more useful little features to their Labs list - forgotten attachment detector.
• As a new U-Verse customer, I’ve been keeping a close eye on news items about them. After Comcast’s bandwidth cap idiocy, people are misinterpreting and reacting wrong to news like this. That minor adjustment in their service statement is nothing like throttling. They’re just giving better definition to the way they divide your connection between data and video.
• Now this is my kind of humor
• I’ll get the many pending movie reviews started tomorrow. Gotta end my posting for today with this. I’m busy doing some rewiring of stuff, to best include the new U-Verse DVR unit.

• OK, time to resume the ponderings posts. I’ve got a ton of backlogged stuff to mention, so I’ll try to space it out for the rest of the week. Some of this stuff will be from over the last month or two (during my connectivity blackouts at the house).
• First, I must wish Battlestar Galactica a happy 30th birthday today. I was a Galactica fan as a little kid. I adore the original series, and I’m a rabid fan of the current remake - one of the greatest series in television history. Darth Mojo also posted a nice history of the cylons.
• Speaking of Battlestar, here’s a very cool look at the impressive book that was given to the cast and crew of the series when the series wrapped.
• Here’s an awesome bit of news from way back at Comic-Con: The character of Mary Ann Marie Beetle from Wonderfalls (one of the greatest TV series of all time) will be making an appearance on Pushing Daisies this season. Since that was also a Bryan Fuller show, it’s cool to see him cross over some characters. His mention of wanting the lead character of Jaye Tyler from Wonderfalls to appear would be SO awesome if he could pull it off. There’s plenty of quirky characters from Wonderfalls that could easily drop into Pushing Daisies (which, btw, is the best show on network TV - which is a convenient way of ruling out Battlestar Galactica, being a cable series).
• Speaking of Pushing Daisies, congratulations are in order for their two creative arts Emmy wins last weekend. Both are well deserved, but I’m particularly proud of Jim Dooley winning a best score Emmy for the show. He does fantastic work on the series.
• And just to prove that I can’t get off the subject of Battlestar, I must also congratulate them on winning two creative arts Emmy awards as well. And like last year, Galactica took home a VERY much deserved visual effects award. No other TV series comes anywhere close to the fantastic vfx work that Battlestar cranks out. Most feature films should be jealous of the show. How they pull off the stuff they do on a TV budget and schedule is a mystery, but boy do they ever.
• While it’s fantastic news to hear via yesterday’s online chat with Warner Home Video that Night Court will be seeing another season set on DVD, as will Everwood (hopefully they’ll get this one right, too), and that Moonlight will be getting a release, it’s downright frustrating news that the brilliant folks at Warner really aren’t going to release the 4th and final volume of Animaniacs. It’s a darn good thing that Pinky & The Brain fit onto 3 sets, so it didn’t suffer the same retarded fate. Come on WB, finish what you started. Seriously, how stupid and annoying could it be to release 3 out of 4 sets for an entire series run then stop? For this one colossal screw-up alone, Warner gets the spot of worst studio for video releases in 2008. This completely negates all the amazing work you did with Blade Runner.
• Mr. & Mrs. Vader
• You think you’ve got dialing skills…
• An actual feral girl - and a sad story.
• Coolness. A TARDIS cabinet for MAME play.
• How to protect your car in a hurricane
• The awesome ninja cat
• The Dream Hamster, indeed.
• That’ll do for today. Much more will be on the way, including some movie reviews. I’m going to try and start doing at least a movie review a day. If I’ll actually manage that will be another matter entirely.

OK, ladies and gents, I think I’m back on the net for good now. As of this afternoon, I’m an active AT&T U-Verse customer. The rest of the story has been added to the Comcast Sucks page.

• Another short list for today
• Lightning seems to be a hot topic (sorry for the pun) lately on the net. Here’s another set of amazing lightning photos.
• While we’re on the subject of photography, here’s some cool motion blur photos
• A fun collection of great Daily Show clips regarding Olympics coverage
• The $60 Microsoft Office Ultimate deal for students has returned
• The deepest hole ever dug
• Some of the craziest medical conditions you’re likely to hear of
• Do not click this link

Since I’m so far behind on reviews anyway, I’ll ignore the big box office hits I still have outstanding and go with this movie that I just got back from seeing. So, I’m assuming when you first saw this review, your first thought was “I’ve never heard of this movie.” Well, neither had I until this past weekend. For those curious how I track down these movies, it’s quite simple. I look at showtime listings each week. In particular, I’ll make sure to pay attention to the listings for the 30 screen AMC theaters in the area. They tend to pick up a lot of under-the-radar “art house” films just because, well, they have 30 screens. If I don’t know what the movie is in a listing, I’ll do a click on it to see more details. And yeah, more times than not, it’s some Bollywood movie. But frequently, it’s some little independent gems that only get a limited release run. Such was the case with Transsiberian. The single greatest thing about trolling showtime listings for films like this is one can get away with knowing pretty much nothing going into the movie. I love a good movie trailer, but there’s a definite advantage as a viewer to know pretty much nothing about a film going into it. When I saw that it starred Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer, the cast already had me interested. I also quite liked the one-sheet poster (as featured in this review), which also gave away next to nothing. Then I did one other thing that I’ll occasionally do when I’ve locked onto a movie like this that I’m interested in seeing - I pulled up Roger Ebert’s review and simply looked at his score for the movie, which in this case was 3.5 stars. So that was enough for me. So, if you’ve got any real intention on seeing this movie, I encourage you to do the same, and stop reading this review. This was a great movie to go into not knowing a thing. It’s got a some language and occasional violence. If that’s not gonna bother ya, then stop paying any more attention and just see it.

Writing: This is a taught little thriller. It has a nice variety of characters, intertwined with some nice complexities and interactions. Then there’s the apparently simple plot, which if you think about it closely is actually pretty clever. It pulls off some nice misdirections of suspense, and plays against genre stereotypes in a subtle manner to keep the viewer a bit off balance. And in the end, it achieves a surprising amount of real life believability. Would that big budget studio films could pull off this kind of slick subtlety.

Production: One knows that they are viewing an independent movie at the very start, by not only counting the number of production companies, but the number of nationalities of said companies. The general rule is that the more production companies with logos up front, the tighter the budget (and pity the poor producer of the film, wrangling all these backers). This film is chock full of production companies, and boy the array of nationalities. From what I’ve figured out in a cursory glance at production info online, most of the film was shot in Lithuania, including the gorgeous exterior train shots (featuring some very nice aerial footage). Apparently, Lithuania is a good double for Russia (and why not, it’s a former Soviet state). It totally works. The crew does a fantastic job at making the movie look equally gritty and beautiful, but not overtly stylized. It features some fantastic scope lensing. Given the state of big studio “thrillers” these days, it’s fantastic to see a movie like this, steeped in the Hitchcock world of thrillers.

Cast: If the excellent writing and first rate production weren’t enough, we are treated to a great cast as well. Woody Harrelson gets to play his charming good guy side for this role, and he works marvelously. As the most overtly “good” character, he still brings some nice depth and chemistry to the role. Emily Mortimer get the lions share of the suspense material to play on screen, and as always, she does a fantastic job. I’ve never seen her give a bad performance, and this is certainly no exception to that pattern. She does a nice job selling the troubled history of the character, and she plays very well off all the other actors/characters. One of said characters is that of fellow traveler Abby, played very well by Kate Mara. It took me a bit to figure out what I recognized her from (We Are Marshall - in which she was excellent). Abby’s boyfriend, Carlos, is played by Eduardo Noriega, an actor that I didn’t really have any familiarity with. He does a good job in the role. Always reliable character actor Thomas Kretschmann delivers a silent, cold and menacing performance. And then there was the pleasant surprise of Ben Kingsley in the film. I failed to notice his name on the poster, and had no idea he was in it. Not surprisingly, he does a very good job (and pulls off a very convincing Russian performance - at least to my lowly American ability to recognize a convincing Russian portrayal).

Music: The low key score is well delivered by composer Alfonso Viallonga, somebody I was previously unfamiliar with. While the score does feature in the mix for some of the scenes, it manages to blend into the mix quite well throughout. It definitely lends the right mood and flow to the story. Not the best score of the year, but certainly a solid effort.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: One bit in the movie I particularly loved was the finale sequence, with Roy & Jessie making their big getaway on a train. That must be the first time I’ve seen characters attempt a spontaneous getaway on a steam locomotive. And the true shock is that it’s realistic in the fact that Roy, only an amateur train enthusiast, is unable to figure out all the controls on the fly, and their big getaway fails - as it most likely would in real life. The script relies more on being clever in realistic ways for their survival than making a big getaway using a train.

• Shorter post for today. I’ve sufficiently distracted myself with other online projects this weekend, and didn’t do as much posting to make up for all my down time as I had intended. I did get one movie review posted, and will hopefully do a number more soon.
• Eeeeek, I say, EEEEEEEEK! Rounder Records has announced a delightful surprise for us Buffy nerds (of which I am without a doubt definitely one) - an actual, official release of Christophe Beck’s splendiferous score material from his seasons on the show. Sure, much of it has been available on the long circulated composer promo CD’s of his stuff for seasons 2 & 3 for the show, not to mention the few score cues included on the CD release for the musical episode, but it’ll be great to get an official release, not to mention the new stuff that’ll be on the disc.
• You know, it really makes me sad to see a fantastic movie destroyed by one fatal mistake. Such is the case with Sunshine, which I was re-watching on Blu-Ray recently. Up until the end of the film, this is an utterly fantastic movie. Then it all goes right out the window when the up-till-this-point brilliant script takes an overdose of stupid. Even still, I love watching the movie up until that point. Where is the studio to step in and ask the writer what in the world he’s thinking? I mean studios love to get involved for insanely dumb reasons all the time. Where were they when they really NEEDED to get involved and fix this otherwise great film they were pouring money into?
• Ruh-roh. Warner Bros is doing the typical studio-exec stupidity with their Superman franchise. After the perceived failure of Superman Returns (which I quite liked), and the success of Dark Knight, Warner is doing the unimaginative thing of “rebooting” the Superman franchise, this time darker. Now, let’s not start on the fact that Superman as a franchise isn’t meant to be dark. If you wanna do that, make another Batman movie. Second, I’m one of the few people that thinks that Ang Lee’s Hulk was far better than the new Incredible Hulk film from this year that did the similar “reboot” of a franchise after a luke-warm performing previous film. This all points to a disaster of a Superman film to come.
• Ah, fun with optical illusions

This may sound strange, but this movie was both exactly what I was expecting and a big disappointment. Perhaps I was hoping for something more than I was expecting. I continue to have to point out that I don’t dislike Jason Statham as an actor. Far from it, actually. But more times than not, I just don’t like the movies he is in. Typically, they are the outright action movies in his resume. While this one is nowhere near as bad as Crank (almost nothing could be, since it’s the worst movie I’ve seen this decade - though I fear the sequel to Crank likely will be), it’s still a headache-inducing, paint-by-numbers, utterly-forgettable action movie.

Writing: Legend has it that Paul W.S. Anderson has been trying to get this movie made for nearly 15 years, since he had success with the first Mortal Kombat and had struck up a relationship with Roger Corman, and had told him that he’d love to remake Death Race 2000. I’d be curious to see what his original treatment/plans were for said remake back then, before they became what I saw on the screen. I have to wonder if it was more in line with Corman’s satirical film, or was still the same brain-dead action movie I just saw. Corman’s movie at least had wit, humor, cleverness and despite a lower budget production, had more audacious action material. The cast is the main saving grace for this film, which I’ll get to in a bit. What was in no way of any help to the film was the writing. Tyrese Gibon’s character, in particular, is a confusing mess of a character (not in terms of being a messed up person, but in terms of unbelievably inconsistent writing). The elements of the plot that aren’t insanely predictable are otherwise pointless. Let’s see, what have we got: distopian future, check; wrongly-accused anti-hero, check; the world’s most copy & paste prison scenes, check; an overbearing prison warden, check; the elderly and intelligent prison inmate to become friends with, check; and on and on and on. It’s little more than a plot to hang the action scenes on…

Production: …Which is a particularly sad thing, because the action scenes aren’t even worth being hung onto the thin plot. First, let me get my biggest frustration out of the way - the cinematography, which is annoying at best. I’ve heard writer/director Anderson interviewed, where he was talking about what he had done to update the production to a modern quality, with a higher budget. Part of his intentions was to be able to get the viewer closer to the action, since he had fancier camera equipment than they had decades ago in the 70’s when they made similar gritty action films. Well, Mr. Anderson, thank you for your efforts, but after seeing the end result, I’ll go back and watch those 70’s films over and over again, and enjoy the VASTLY superior filming. With all the incompetant shakey-cam work all over the place in the action scenes, the over-edited confusion making it impossible to follow any spatial logistics, and the washed out malaise that makes every racer and car darn near interchangeable, I couldn’t care less about what happened to anybody on the track - including our anti-hero. All of this is a huge shame for the special effects teams, who seem to have put on quite the show from what I could see in the finished film. Anderson has gone on and on in interviews stating that he wanted to do everything in-camera, and not rely on visual effects and CGI, and “not make Speed Racer.” While I’m all for doing things in-camera if you can, you’ve got to still come up with something worth watching and be able to competantly deliver it to the screen. This film lacked imagination in every way. Or if it had any, the film makers couldn’t figure out how to catpure it. For the record, Speed Racer is one of my favorite movies of the year (and has a shot at actually being my favorite movie of the year). Frankly, I don’t care what technique was used in filming/producting the movie if it’s engaging, exciting and imaginative. At that, Death Race fails miserably. You’d think it would be at least as engaging as a boring NASCAR race, but I’d dare say it isn’t even that, with the aggitated editing and the frustrating camera work. At least NASCAR employs camera crews who know how to film an event. Ulimately, would I have watched the “Death Race” event as somebody who lived in the world of this movie? Absolutely not. Then why would I want to watch this movie, which is NOTHING more than watching the carnage of the event that’s being portrayed in the film. Frankly, this movie IS a video game. One in which you have no control. And how much fun is it typically to watch somebody else play a video game?

Cast: Here’s the one saving grace of the movie. Without the cast, this would be a complete failure. Like I said, I rather like Jason Statham as an actor. And he does what he can with his cookie-cutter role. They couldn’t have made his role more genre stereotyped if they tried, but he still manages to find a way to make it at least mildly interesting. One of the biggest disappointments in the movie is Joan Allen. Now, let me explain that. When the trailers first started running for this movie, it was Joan Allen that really made me interested and wanting to see it. It was such a wild bit of casting for such a role. I’m a big admirer of her acting, and thought it would be very cool to see her in such an atypical role. The disappointing thing about it is that that’s all there was to it. Take this weakly written role, and just to try and make it unusual and interesting, cast it against type. While that’s a smart thing to do, it does no favors to Allen, who gets absolutely horrible dialog, and almost nothing to do on screen. I mean, our anti-hero and her character get, I think, just two brief scenes together. And despite liking both cast members, they didn’t really hold much of a magical spark playing against each other. Arnold and Richard Dawson played off each other FAR better under similar circumstances in The Running Man, for goodness sake. Then there’s this piece of utter nonsense dialog they give Joan Allen’s character for shock value. After that line, I sat there bewildered as to who would come up with such an INSANELY lame line. It’s as if somebody wanted to come up with the lamest piece of foul language dialog, that didn’t make a lick of sense. Poor Joan Allen (and the audience). Another fantastic cast member is Ian McShane, who actually drops into his role with remarkable ease. Frankly, he’s the true highlight to the film. He’s the one that actually does manage to elevate the cookie-cutter writing into something memorable. Tyrese Gibson gets the single worst written character in the movie, and he does it no favors. Though I hardly blame him. Natalie Martinez doesn’t bring much to her “look at me, I’m hot” sidekick role, but she doesn’t make anything worse by being there, either. I must also give some praise to Jacob Vargas and Frederick Koehler, who play the crew hands Gunner and Lists respectively. In particular, Koehler really jumps off the screen in his small role.

Music: Paul Haslinger goes all-out in over-the-top gritty metal action score mode. He actually does succeed in writing a few good action cues in the process. And I must begrudgingly admit to kind of liking what he did with a couple of the guitar riffs in the scoring. Not a great score, but one that at least meshes stylistically with the film and does its job.

• OK, the Ponderings postings are gonna have to be split up for the rest of the week. After the long down time, things have built up to the point where I don’t wanna overwhelm you with too much at once. So, let’s see if I can sufficiently whelm you. And I’m hoping to catch up on a number of movie reviews throughout the rest of the week.
• RIP: Isaac Hayes & Bernie Mac
• Check out this fantastic Willy Wonka recut trailer perfectly titled “Wonka” - it’s so awesome, I wish I had thought to do it first.
• Happy 100th birthday to animated film
• I can’t wait to see James Cameron’s new, technology-pushing, state-of-the-art, 3D extravaganza Avatar. Here’s an interesting article on it.
• Speaking of 3D, The Polar Express is coming to Blu-Ray in 3D! Now I’d like to see Monster House and Beowulf get 3D releases on BD.
• Holy cow! 9/11 really was a conspiracy…
• Now this is one very impressive obituary
• The crazy Burj Dubai skyscraper is nearly finished. This thing is insane. Check out these photos.
• Here’s some very cool lightning photos from the massive lightning storm that rolled through here in the Chicago area a couple weeks ago.
• Speaking of lightning, you’ve gotta check out this awesome slo-mo footage of a lightning strike
• Still speaking of lightning, here’s one crazy video of a CLOSE strike (warning: strong language)
• And if you think that lightning strike was close, how bout being on a bus as it’s hit by a tornado (or grazed pretty darn close, at the very least)
• Google Insights is a pretty cool new service
• Now here’s some awesome chess set design
• Too cool - Yoda The Cat
• Warp Drive: yet another Star Trek technology that scientists are determined to actually make possible
• In the market for a new car?
• Here’s a vantage point that I bet you’ve never seen a shuttle launch from before
• Slightly older news that somehow got past me, which I had to learn about in print form in Doctor Who Magazine. Anwyay, something I’ve been wanting since Doctor Who returned to the airwaves is to have Nicholas Courtney return as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. I’m finally getting my wish. Well, almost - he’s appearing on spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. Frankly, that’s almost a better show for him to appear on, as he has a direct history with actress Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane.
• Speaking of Doctor Who, congratulations are due for the brilliant Steven Moffat for winning his third consecutive Hugo Award for Doctor Who. This time for the episode titled Blink, which is possbily my all-time favorite episode of the series (new or old). I’ve watched it dozens and dozens of times.
• Composer Bear McCreary hasn’t done as much posting to his blog over the summer, what with Battlestar between episode runs and him being busy on multiple other shows. However, he just popped in with this amusing bit of trivia that was brought to his attention. As always, the stuff he posts is fascinating in its detail. Not only does he point out and provide clips of the two versions of the sequence, but he even provides the clip with the rejected original cue. This is what us film score nut-jobs geek out on (and BSG fans). Yeah, I’m a dork. A dork who’s anxiously awaiting the new CD release of Bear’s score for Eureka, which I’ve ordered, and will be winging its way to my door very soon.

Can be found on its very own dedicated page on this site, here. (it’s available in the Various menu up top)

This blog, and my broadband connection at the house, is finally back online. I’m going to have a flood of stuff posting here during the rest of this week, including a long rant against Comcast. For now, suffice it to say that Comcast sucks. More to come soon.

• So, longer space between posts than usual this time. I’ve had a fairly chaotic couple weeks, and have barely been home. So, let’s cover some of the stuff from the last couple weeks.
• With Comic-Con 2008 going on this week, there has been plenty of news. I’m not gonna attempt to comment on most of it, cause there’s just too much of it. But there’s one bit that I just CANNOT avoid geeking out on in a major way. Anyone who knows me knows how big of a Tron fan I am (one of my all-time favorite movies). Heck, I sit here typing this on my computer which sits right next to a Tron arcade machine. Anyway, Disney surprised the attendees at Comic-Con in a major way - a VERY cool teaser trailer. FEATURING JEFF BRIDGES, NO LESS! This sequel has been on-again off-again at Disney for many years, but it’s clear seeing this promo that there’s no turning back now. Despite the fact that the clip has only floated in poor quality cam recordings so far, I can’t help but get goose bumps every time I watch it. Seriously, too cool for words. OK, I’m a dork…
• In almost as big news, Ebert & Roeper And The Movies is now over, and in ending brings to close the end of an era.
• As expected, The Dark Knight smashed records on opening weekend. And it deserves to, as it’s a great film. My review for it will be posted tomorrow, btw.
• This just in from the “I never thought I’d hear these in the same sentence department” - Darren Aronofsky is set to direct a Robocop movie.
• SciFi has released a promo video for Caprica
• Can’t Hardly Wait is coming to Blu-Ray. I’m a fan of the film, and think it’s something of an overlooked comedy gem. Now Sony, could we please have the original cut of the film on this disc, from before it got cut down for the rating? (restoring Amber Benson’s drunk character, etc)
• Here’s a fun Worth1000.com Star Wars photoshop contest
• Looks like us fans will soon get our grubby little paws on a lot of material by the late, legendary Delia Derbyshire (of the fantastic BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who was the key person behind the sound of the Doctor Who theme).
• The hilarity of suicide
• Could it be? Actual season sets of Spin City on DVD? And from a quality producer like Shout Factory? One can hope.
• While I still have my doubts about anyone ever adapting The Prisoner successfully, I’ll be intrigued to see the results.
• In anticipation of seeing the new X-Files movie (for which I will post a review tomorrow), I’ve been watching my favorite couple dozen episodes of the series over the last couple months. While watching the episode titled The Goldberg Variation, which is one of the great 7th season episodes from 1999, I was suddenly struck by the realization that the actor playing the little kid in the episode was Shia LaBeouf. Sure enough, when I looked it up, I was right. Given how young he is in the episode, it’s actually a little tough to see the similarity. It was in the delivery of the dialog that I noticed it was him.
• Sadly, I’ve seen similar shipping stupidities on the part of large companies before.
• I have no response to that
• Eh, that’ll do for now. There’s plenty more that I need to roll into the post, but I’ll try and do another one tomorrow with more. Too much time between posts, dang it.

I was a big fan of the original Hellboy, and considered it a shame that it never quite got the success and attention it deserved. So, I was very happy to hear that a sequel was finally in the works - at a different studio no less (the original was a Sony film, with this sequel from Universal). In between the first Hellboy and this sequel, director Guillermo del Toro found huge success with Pan’s Labyrinth (a film I kinda liked, but didn’t think was all too great). So as I saw the first trailers for Hellboy 2, I definitely noticed some design influence from Pan’s Labyrinth. Of course, since making this movie, del Toro has made a bigger name for himself as the director of the upcoming Hobbit films. After having seen Hellboy 2, I must admit to not liking it as much as the first. Almost all the elements were entertaining enough, but not quite up to the level from the first film. The only exception I’d make to that statement is the visual effects, which were a bit hit-or-miss in the first, but gorgeous in this sequel.

Writing: The story for this sequel kinda holds together, but it’s a bit unfocused and forced. Worse still, much of it is a bit too genre standard in nature. It all just seems to be there to bounce from set piece to set piece. The character interactions are either a bit too contradictory, or a bit too convenient. And the ultimate big moment of the ending is a bit too obvious. And we also have characters that make little sense to have included in the plot, like that of Johann Krauss. For all his setup as a nemesis, they never pay that off in any real way, then suddenly he’s a good buddy? I don’t know, the writing in this one wasn’t horrible or anything, but it was very definitely the weakest point of the film.

Production: There’s little to complain about here. If there’s any weakness in the production, it’s almost a feeling of them trying just a bit too hard in sequences where less would have been more. It had that “sequel that must top the original” feel to it. Fewer action scenes and more character scenes would have been welcome. But the action is well staged with good practical and visual effects work. Cinematography is solid all around, with no real weaknesses to mention. Were I to have directed the Hellboy films, though, it would have been in 2.35 aspect ratio. But hey, if I were a director, I think everything I shot would be in 2.35.

Cast: The best strength of this sequel is the return of the great cast. Well, with the exception of the insanely lame off-handed mention of Rupert Evans’ character of Agent Myers absense. Ron Perlman is fantastic as Hellboy, of course. He’s not quite as playful as in the first, taking the role in a more aggressive direction, but he still works magnificently. Selma Blair, a favorite actress of mine, is excellent returning as Liz Sherman. Doug Jones makes an excellent return as Abe Sapien. And Jeffrey Tambor does his usual (and always fun) bumbling performance. Heck, even the great John Hurt gets to put in a small appearance in a flashback. Joining them in this sequel are Luke Goss and Anna Walton, who are very well cast as the brother-sister set of twins that are the new friend/foe quandry for the plot. All in all, not a problem to be found in the casting department.

Music: I was most saddened to find out that composer Marco Beltrami wasn’t returning for this sequel. Danny Elfman took over scoring duties for this one. His score is just like the movie itself, entertaining enough, but not up to the standards of the first film. It’s a playful and energetic score, with some nice moments here and there, but it’s missing the heart and soul of Beltrami’s original masterpiece. I flat out love Beltrami’s original, particularly Hellboy & Liz’s theme, and it was a sad thing that not only weren’t any of the original themes used, but there weren’t any particularly solid thematic elements to Elfman’s sequel score. His is certainly entertaining, but not a masterpiece.

So it’s a bit sad that I didn’t enjoy this entry quite as much. Am I sad they made it? No. It’s a fun enough follow-up. Do I wish it were better? Absolutely. Though after such a horrible super-hero movie as Hancock, I was happy to enjoy this one. But hey, in two more days, I’ll be seeing The Dark Knight - a genre movie which by almost all accounts so far is spectacular.