solex10

One of the actors on the show, Roxanne Biggs-Dawson, DID survive this show to go on to something else: she would play B'Elanna Torres on Star Trek: Voyager for seven seasons. So yes, SOMETHING good DID come out of this failed show, one of several clones of BH 90210 made by Aaron Spelling.

I remember reading an article in Sassy magazine about this show and others like it; the article was called 'All Roads Lead to 90210', and the upshot of the article was about how these shows (including Covington Cross) was a clone of Beverley Hills 90210. The article was right about the other shows mentioned in the article (The Heights, Freshman Dorm, Malibu Road, The Roundtable) being clones, but it was wrong about Covington Cross which was like Bonanza.

I just saw this great pilot for a Saturday morning kidvid show, and I think that it's amazing, as well as a shame that this wasn't made into a series, for girls needed an action character of their own as well as boys. The character's somewhat like the girl action characters we see now on Saturday mornings, except that she came first. I would love to see more of her from (and on) Nickelodeon (whose corporate sibling CBS Studios owns this character, as well as most of the Terrytoons library) or on the current kidvid blocks on the CW or CBS.

Although I've never said this before, this will be my first time saying it: Come on CBS/Nickelodeon/Paramount, make this into a cartoon already (or maybe even a live action movie series similar to the Cody Banks franchise.) What do you say? You'll get the girl market, and then some!

....is with a group of people saying witty things after each character says them on the screen, mockingly...and that's what I and some people did when we saw this movie one night in Toronto!

We were the only ones seeing this movie at night (nobody else was there) and so we proceeded to mock the movie, MST3K (Mystery Science Theater 3000) style, We had a ball doing so, and so we were able to enjoy this movie. It's a tragedy that none of us had the Professional Walkman, or we could have recorded the whole session, but as the theater had Dolby Surround, it most likely would have drowned out our voices anyway.

As for the movie? It's your typical Power Rangers episode, except brought to the big screen, and with big production values than the TV series (which as everybody knows consists of using the original Japanese effects shown when the characters get into their Zords to kick bad guy butt), but not more than that (except for what seems to be a small tender moment between Kimberly and Tommy!) The movie appeals to KIDS, NOT adults, and should be taken in that spirit when seen on the big screen or at home. Those adults and young teenagers who love the Super Sentai/tokomatsu genre might go for it as well though, too-there's no accounting for taste.

As it is, I'm giving this movie just five stars-not really bad, but not super great either; something to enjoy on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon (and also great to run as a kid's matinée some days.)

Transformers: Revenger Of The Fallen may not be Lawrence Of Arabia, but as a sci-fi flick, it kicks ass for me. Once again, ILM has stepped up to the plate with effects that make you believe robots look real, can fight, and even have emotions (Bumblebee's 'crying' as Sam Witwicky leaves for college is a stand out). The story isn't much....or is it? I think that it is, and that having all of the solar system be threatened with a supernova due to Megatron's need for Energon qualifies as a plot point: I sure was on the edge of my seat hoping that Optimus Prime would stop him, or that somebody would. I was also scared for Sam when that lady Decepticon almost broke up his relationship with his girlfriend (and left to go to the washroom hoping he'd be okay).

The part of the plot that's weak for me is the comedy relief robots whose names I forget now; they don't add much to the plot, and they should have use a better comedy relief template than Afro-American B-boys (I would have used Larry, Curly, and Moe from The Three Stooges, or Abbott & Costello instead, as they are timeless!): I would rather have seen more of the female Autobots (Arcee & Co.) but overall, a fine adventure movie, with the fantastic most satisfactorily realized and put up on screen, and also NOT a bomb in the way that others think that it is-I'd rather go to the movies to see this than watch ANYTHING from the Sundance Film Festival, with its plethora/parade of messed up human beings masquerading as characters.

Anybody fooled into thinking that this show is the adventures of Plastic Man-think again!!!

First, some vital info:

Plastic Man was created in 1941 by Jack Cole and first appeared in Police Comics #1 (August 1941), published by Quality Comics (itself later purchased by DC Comics). He was a crook named Eel O'Brien, who while trying to rob a chemical company, fell into a vat of experimental acid after being shot. Running away from the building, he fell unconscious, and was found and revived by a group of monks; while recuperating, he found out that he had these amazing stretchy powers, and decided to do good instead of doing bad. After getting Woozy Winks as a sidekick, he fights crime in a series of quirky, offbeat and surreal slapstick adventures-NOT the idiotic and dumb ones as seen in this TV show. He also did not ever meet or have adventures with Penny (although I must admit, now that I know that the current Plastic Man is the son of the original character seen in this show, having Penny as a girlfriend/wife doesn't seem like a bad idea!) or Hula-Hula (an insulting slur on Polynesian people), nor did he have a Plasticmobile or a Plastiplane. It would have been better if the writers had actually tried to read the original stories-they were reprinted up the yingyang since 1965, for frack's sakes-but they didn't, and we have this silly show that's not as funny as the original comic books, complete with a sidekick that makes Woozy Winks look like Dr. Watson.

Let's hope that Warner Bros. Animation can create a new show based on the original characters, situations, AND quirky, offbeat and surreal slapstick the character is known for, and not the nonsense seen in this show.

People will say this movie was the worst of the year, and that Frank Miller's 300 and Sin City was better. I humbly disagree.

Both 300 and Sin City sucked big fat sparrow's eggs. I did not care for either movie, and thought that the dialog in Sin City was crappier than that in The Spirit.

On to the movie.

As with the two other films mentioned above, The Spirit is filmed in the same CGI background (BTW, the first movie to use this was NOT these two pictures, but a Japanese movie called Casshern from 2004) designed to resemble the original book somewhat, or at least Miller's idea of it. Although I'm getting kind of tired of this film technique, once again, Miller makes it work.

As for the plot and characters; both sound like a silly version of Sin City's characters, which to others might be bad, but I didn't care. I didn't know much about The Spirit's characters other than a brief sketch, but I just sat back and enjoyed the movie. I loved how old and new were combined in one movie (1940's attired people using modern tech, as seen in the 1989 Batman film) and at least the product placement wasn't as blatant as other movies (but then again, I'm not that offended by product placement). Overall, a quite strange movie to see over the Christmas holiday, but for me, alright.

However, NEXT time I'd like to see Mr. Miller adapt his four part comic book Give Me Liberty into a movie or TV miniseries, and WITHOUT the CGI backgrounds. Either that, or make it an animated movie instead.