Liz-39

Some of these actors have been good in other things. I don't think the problem is the acting, but the writing.

And the writing is the worst. I was hoping this would be a fun, silly, dumb show that I could enjoy. And it's just dull as dirt.

Too bad. I have liked the lead actors before, and I like that they shoot in South Africa, with a bunch of local talent.

On its surface, this is a film about a man returning to New York to finish the film he began in 1970, when he was a 22 year old film school hotshot. Along with his former lover and star of the film, they transfer the film, hire an editor, and get to work.

Sort of.

Like all great documentaries, this film is about so much more. Robert finds it nearly impossible to cut his film together. Miles of unedited footage have infinite possibilities - it can be easy to imagine that there is a masterpiece lurking in the old canisters of film. Setting out to actually making a film out of the footage brings up insecurities, fears and doubts.

This film is about lost youth, the optimism that one has when the whole world is full of possibilities, versus the small lives most of us actually end up leading. We turn out not to be masters of the universe. Often, we can't even get over our own fears to even become masters of our own lives.

Too often, it is easier to retreat into familiarity, and hide out in mundane, safe lives, where we can imagine what might have been.

Well, I saw the third episode of this, and I'm shocked I got through the whole thing.

Here we go again. Bait and switch - the network advertises a cool show with strong female characters in tough, traditionally male jobs.

They cast lots of cool folks (Angie Harmon, Sasha Alexander, Lee Thompson Young (loved him on FlashForward), Lorraine Bracco, Bruce McGill & Donnie Wahlberg) And then they give all the good actors high school characters to play. Seriously, we are supposed to expect that these two grown women are upset about mean names kids called them in high school? And Rizzoli gets dragged to a dress shop by her mother? Sure, when you're a kid, your mom has some say over your wardrobe.

This show is for teenagers, not grown-ups.

(And I didn't even get into the racist "Ooohh, black people are into voodoo" aspect of this episode. Ugh.)

First of all, you should know what you're getting into when you see this movie. A plot summary is misleading, but here it is anyway: Four people with unexplained illnesses find a secret lab in the desert, where a scientist is trying to develop a "good" virus. This virus will invade a human body, driving out any other illness. So the only symptom of this virus would be to make people healthy.

So far, all of the tests have been fatal.

The government finds out and takes over the lab to shut down the dangerous experiments. Four people (three of them were accidentally infected with the latest test batch) flee across the desert.

They do not know what will happen - will the virus kill them, or the government? Sounds like an action movie, right? It is very definitely not a run-from-the-shadowy-government action movie.

The film has a slow, contemplative pace. There is an almost surreal quality about it. The film opens with videotaped interviews of the patients. These grainy, extreme closeups are intimate and dreamlike.

As they travel into the desert, the landscape seems unreal, with saturated colors and polarized skies. There are thunderclouds on the horizon, puring down tremendous amounts of rain very far away.

The musings (in voice-over) of the uninfected man cover ideas about the speed of light, about the chemical composition of primordial oceans, and the pain of connecting to other people.

These four broken people are healed - they become radiant.

So, in short, if you are interested in ideas, and how we fit in the universe, and in finding a way to overcome the fear of opening yourself to others, this is a film for you.

It takes the time to slow you down, then rewards your patience.

I really did enjoy this show for a while. The Miami-Vice-without-the-angst premise was fun. I liked the jokey voiceovers and the funny title cards that identified the clients and the bad guys.

There was even some nice character work in 2009 or 2010 When Fiona seemed to realize that she would never get what she wanted from Michael.

Bruce Campbell is a hoot. I've always liked him.

Unfortunately, the show is wearing a little thin. Adding a new regular is not nearly enough of a shake-up. The show has always been a little over-the-top. To keep me interested, I'd like them to become more over the top, and they seem to be doing the opposite.

I could care less about the plots - I just tune in for the silliness. More of the "I can't come home right now ma, I SPYING" would suit me fine.

Really? We're still making shows like this?

A formulaic cop show / romantic will-they-or-won't-they that is neither bad nor good.

Do people write these shows because they think they're good, or because they think TV viewers are dumb? I think the viewing public can handle more interesting shows. We don't need to be fed the same ones over and over.

I liked Nathan Fillion in Firefly. There his handsome rogue schtick was tempered with some real emotion. Here, he's just cute TV guy. There was a moment once in a scene with the daughter that I thought was nice. And Stana Katic is dull. Of course, she has to be. Her character is written to be dull.

I wish we could cancel all the pointless shows and funnel the money to some really interesting ones.

I am a big Joss Whedon fan, and Dollhouse makes me sad. He seems to have had lots of cool ideas swirling around in his head, and failed to synthesize them into a decent show - at least in season one.

In the beginning, the premise of the show is "Dushku is hot, and we don't have to be bothered with her character, because we'll just write a new one every week. She can be Hot Archery Hunter in the Woods, Hot FBI Agent, Hot Blind Girl in a Cult." Nevermind that this character must have once been a person, and why is she here, and what are the free will considerations, and if she is programmed to want to have sex with someone, is that rape? etc, etc, etc.

In season one, there is one episode that points to some deeper issues. Once a year, a man hires her to play his dead wife. He had thought of himself as a failure, and on the day he sold his invention, and finally got what he was working for, his wife died before he could tell her.

In this episode, Joss dealt with needs, and how we all need things from each other. Even the people we love are important to us, because of how they make us feel. So where are the lines between love and using someone.

Ah well. In season two, the show did a 180 and started to explore identity and free will, but by then it was too late.

I am writing this review years after I saw this movie, but it is still very clear in my mind. I have only seen it once, and I will not watch it again.

I was channel-flipping a few months ago, and this movie was on. I made the mistake of not immediately continuing to the next channel. I only watched a few minutes, but I was still bawling an hour later.

The film is about the last man on Earth. It's just him and his dog. Alone. Except for the former humans, who have caught a virus that pretty much turns them into vampire-zombies. So they're alone, and probably going to die a horrible, violent death.

Will Smith is amazing. The film is gorgeous - I think you should see it.

But probably only once.

Bones is a good show, and I have enjoyed it, but I really hope they shake things up when they come back next season. It had gotten pretty repetitive.

At the end of last season, though, everybody went off in different directions, got new jobs, or went on scientific expeditions to far away places.

I'm afraid when they come back, they'll just spend a couple of episodes getting everybody back to the lab, and get everything back to the way it was.

I hope not.

I know it is a tough thing to do when you've got a hit show, but after a while, a series really needs to re-invent itself or it gets stale.

This show falls into a category I often like.

We get blue-collar folks, or criminals, or otherwise non-exalted characters in a story about palace intrigue. There are struggles for power and leadership. Strategies for building the kingdom, and protecting its members from attack are a main thread.

The Wire was a good example of this, too. Although The Wire also included distinctions between the cops and the drug dealers. The drug dealers led these big, Shakepearean lives of power and glory, while the cops were much smaller -- ordinary, sometimes petty men.

While SOA is not nearly as complex or nuanced as The Wire, it is carefully put together show.

I sometimes worry that a show like this might never find as much audience as it could. I know I was pretty sure I wouldn't have any interest in a show about a motorcycle gang.

Sometimes, this was a bit of a run-of-the-mill cop show. There were elements of it, though, that were some of the best television moments I have ever seen.

Damian Lewis is a terrific actor. I hope we get to see more of him, and he doesn't just stick to theater and English TV from now on.

His character was a cop who was imprisoned for 12 years for something he didn't do. Now he's out and back on the force. He cultivates a peaceful, zen lifestyle. On the surface, he is almost always calm and cheery. Lewis' performance is a nicely subtle one. What we can see, without any fakey, actory, overt behavior, is that he is so angry he can barely contain it. The reason he works so hard at being peaceful is because if he didn't, his rage would take him over.

The show avoids some of the tired old cop show formulas. There is no romantic cat and mouse between him and his (gorgeous, sexy) partner. In fact, she ends up with the police captain (great work from Donal Logue as the captain), in a fun, grown-up relationship.

Unfortunately, many episodes do fall into standard cop show territory.

My second favorite episode is "Badge Bunny" which is funny and smart, and does all the things I like about "Life." But the masterpiece is the final episode. We see how tough -- how violent -- Charlie can really be. And even then, he is driven by his desire for a more peaceful, more just world. He just can't quite figure out how to get justice and peace at the same time.

Fairly predictable, kind of old-school show.

Cast is good, but the writing is uninspired. We've seen all these stories before. If you like 80's TV - A-Team, MacGuyver, Knight Rider, with a little James Bond thrown in, then this may be for you.

Jackie Earle Haley, though, is great. His character is so much more fun than the others. Some of this has to do with the writing, but mostly, the performance is terrific.

Here's hoping the series makes more use of him! I still record the episodes in my dvr, but I pretty much fast-forward through the episode, stopping at scenes with Haley in them.

First off, I am a big Joss Whedon fan, but not a check-the-blogs and go-to-the-conventions kind of fan.

The music and singing in this is superior to the fun (but kind of terrible) singing episode of Buffy, so that's good.

Joss Whedon usually has a smartest-kid-in-high-school kind of vibe, so you have to be up for that when you watch this.

I also think it makes for a much better experience if you know nothing about all the hype before you see it. When I saw it, it was some little web-thing that Whedon fans were excited about, but no one else knew about. I saw it on my computer - not on a DVD.

SPOILERS: But the reason I'm writing, and the reason I give it a 10, is because of the ending. For all Whedon's silliness, he has a few serious themes that come up again and again. One is that you can not be happy, nor truly love, if you are not right with God. You don't reform because of loving another person. You aren't forgiven if your plans get derailed and are unable to complete your evil plan. You must make a decision to be a moral person. Without your soul, your love is selfish, destructive and possessive.

This story of Irish immigrants in a tenement in NYC is a lovely, sad film. Husband, wife and two kids are dealing with loss (of home, and other losses) and trying to find a way out of being an unhappy family.

The time period of the story is not really clear to me, but it feels like the seventies. The environment seems both harsher and more innocent than now. The girls are sometimes looked after by a lady who works at the diner across the street. The building has its share of junkies, who are mostly (but not always) harmless.

The story is told from the point of view of the older daughter, which adds to the innocent, from-another-time feeling.

Great performances by all, including Djimon Honsou, as the artist who lives downstairs.

Studio 60 has some nice elements. There were some moments that were smart, some that were funny. But as a whole, the show never really gelled.

We'll at the very end, it got pretty good. After they turned it into "The West Wing". At the very end, they started dealing with war, and the military, and the kinds of big issues The West Wing dealt with.

No the reason the show was fascinating was psychological, not artistic. There was lots in the press at the time about the on-again, off-again relationship between Sorkin and Kristen Chenoweth. In the show, Sorkin wrote a TV producer and a really talented performer who were parallels of them. Week after week, Sorkin would show us the conflicts between these characters. Sorkin was still trying to explain himself, win the argument, or accept blame for the conflicts in his own life.

It was fascinating and creepy to watch art imitate life.