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Showing posts from July, 2012

Inspector Lewis, Season 5: Fearful Symmetry

A babysitter is murdered while watching a couple's young son. Once again there's a list of potential suspects. I won't go through the whole list, but can I just complain about a couple of the characters for a minute? Alright, the photographer woman who lives in the studio apartment all alone with no one else in the building. (1) Must she be a typical artist? I don't just mean the way she looks, I mean her attitude/personality. (2) How can she be so naive? She tells her assistant that someone has been coming in and out of her apartment when she's gone. She can tell because the chess pieces on the board have been moving. So what does she do? She declines her assistant's offer to stay over, you know, just in case a murderer or rapist is out to get her, which wouldn't be too surprising since one of her subjects was just murdered. She also acts as if it's not a big deal and in no way related to the murder. So...someone is breaking into your apartment,

Inspector Lewis, Season 5: Generation of Vipers

First of all, Toby Stephens is in this episode. Why am I mentioning this? Because I love Toby Stephens. *sigh* Toby Stephens... Alright, back to the plot. A pretty, female professor dies, and it looks like suicide. Was it because she was lonely? Was it because a video of her on a dating site went viral and caused her to be embarrassed and harassed? Lewis doesn't think so. He believes she was murdered. But is it just that he's taking it too personally and wants to point the finger at someone? Nah. She was murdered. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who might have done it. The journalist whom she rejected? The old classmate who was also her rival? No! Toby Stephens plays him, and I refuse to believe he's a bad guy! Ahem. The pretty blonde boy whose dreams of going to university in America were shattered because of a crappy reference? Well, it could be anyone. This was a depressing episode, I'll just say that. It also wasn't surprising. You expect t

The Amazing Spiderman

I think I mentioned this before, but I'm not the biggest Spiderman fan. I like it enough to see the movies, but I've always felt rather lukewarm towards the whole series in general. Can't get excited about it. After seeing this new adaptation, and inevitably the first of a new series, I can say that this is probably better than its predecessors (I need to watch them again, but I'm 99% sure I'm right), and while I'm still not fangurling over Spidey, this movie makes me like it a bit more. It's not without its flaws, of course. It occasionally falls into some way overused cliches and cheesiness, and it uses some of the same plot points that we saw before. I wish they had changed it so that it wasn't so predictable. When you're rebooting a franchise, you need to put a whole new stamp on it and make us forget that Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were there first! Ahem, anyway, there are plenty of positives. First of all, Andrew Garfield was perf

Inspector Lewis Series 5: The Soul of Genius

Yay, more Inspector Lewis! We have four new episodes, and here is the first. The body of a man obsessed with solving a riddle in a Lewis Carroll story is discovered buried in the woods, and his death is linked with the botanical gardens nearby. Who done it? His brother who is also his rival? The woman obsessed with finding out how her son died years ago? The doctor? One of the women at the botanical gardens? This was a decent episode, but I rarely have any major issues with this series. They're pretty consistent, I would say. The only thing I would point out is that they, predictably, tried to set up Hathaway again  with a new female character who probably won't be in the next episode. They never are. I wish they didn't feel the need to insert romance into almost every episode, as it's unnecessary and annoying. If they're going to get Hathaway a girlfriend, then fine, just get someone whom he has chemistry with and be done with it. Just let us get on with the

Horror Review: Paranormal Activity 3

I admit to being a fan of this series, and I also admit, without shame, to looking forward to each of the sequels as they came out, even though it always takes me awhile to get to them. Unsurprisingly, this is the worst out of the three. That's not to say it's bad, it's just...nothing we haven't seen before. If you've watched the previous two, you'll note that they both give us the same scares at the same pace, the same characters types (i.e. one of them knows something bad is happening, the other one doesn't want to hear it, and they certainly try not to believe it until it gets to a certain point), and they end the same way. This prequel is no exception. It truly follows the same exact formula, although it does provide some scares. It does amaze me how stupid the mother is in this. I mean her kids are in danger, and what does she do? She denies that anything weird is happening, then she blames her boyfriend, who is more concerned about her kids tha

Documentary Review: Talhotblond

Oh, the joys of becoming obsessed with someone online, someone you have never met and probably never will. This is the creepy true story of three people who communicate online and have never met, but who start a bitter love triangle that leads to one of their murders. First we have "Marinesniper" Thomas Montgomery, a 46 year-old married man with two young daughters and a boring job. He lives in New York. Then we have "talhotblond" Jessi, the hot 18 year-old graduate in West Virginia who he becomes obsessed with. And lastly, we have "Beefcake" Bobby, a much younger co-worker of Thomas'. Thomas meets Jessi online, and their online friendship quickly turns romantic/sexual. Unfortunately for Jessi, Thomas isn't who he says he is. In fact, he's pretending to be "Tommy" a young marine who goes off to fight in Iraq. After Jessi finds out that she's been talking and cybersexing with a much older married man, she retaliates by getti