Hola, amigos. Ahhhhhhh I hate Mondays. Luckily, it was a fun weekend for a number of reasons. I'll recap a bit in a second, but first of all I need to wish my friend Alessandra a speedy recovery, after a truly horrific hiking accident that she was involved in last week. Luckily, she is recovering and in amazingly good spirits all things considered, so I am just happy that she is okay!
So, here's one cool event from the weekend that I thought I'd share - as all of you readers know by now, as I repeat this ad nauseum, I'm a huge fan of THE STATE, and all of its various comedic offspring, from Stella to Wet Hot American Summer to The Ten. The other week, I was unable to attend a VERY rare live performance by a re-united State, that occured at the UCB Theater here in LA. I was very disappointed, but there wasn't much I could do. However, this past weekend saw yet another State-related event here in LA - a little shindig known as Wet Hot American Purim. It was a movie screening / Purim party all in one. I would have been happy just to see one of my all-time favorite comedies, Wet Hot American Summer, with a captive audience and get in a little Jewish culture on the side. But, to my surprise, the event got an added layer of coolness when David Wain, Joe Lo Truglio, and Margarite Moreau from the film, along with a few other crew guys, came out to introduce the movie and take a few questions from the peanut gallery. Awesome! In any case, it was so cool just watching the movie with about 100 fellow fans. It really is just brilliantly funny from start to finish, and definitely elevates random, absurdist humor to an artform in a way that few other comedy troupes can do. So yeah, that was cool.
- And by the way, a belated Happy Purim to my fellow members of The Tribe, and hope those who celebrated it had a good Easter as well.
In other news, I have finally entered the world of HDTV, as I took the plunge and purchased a 32" LG set for my apartment. I'm having my cable upgraded this weekend, so I've yet to really see the full capabilities of the set, though thanks to an internal tuner I've checked out a few HD channels over the airwaves, and been impressed with how clear some of the shows look in high-def. I also connected my trusty PS2 to the set via a newly-purchased set of component cables, and this is where things got really cool. Most PS2 games I tried out looked extremely impressive with the component cable, especially one like God of War which support progressive scan and widescreen. Now, the main drawback of using the PS2 with this new TV is that as a DVD player it's less than ideal, and is definitely not upconverting anything to higher resolutions like many newer DVD players do. So while newer films look pretty good, some older movies do look noticeably less defined and sharp than they did on a regular old tube TV. Anyways, I welcome any suggestions on improving picture quality, and now I am just really antsy to try both an upconverting DVD player as well as, eventually, a Blu-Ray player and see how the image quality varies. My current thinking is to hold off for the June-launching 80 gb PS3 that is set to include a bundled copy of Metal Gear Solid 4 (a must-have for me), as well as, finally, a Dual Shock 3 controller. Since the 80 gb systems have backwards compatibility with PS2 and PS1, I've got to think that that, as opposed to the currently available 40 gb system, is the way to go.
Okay, so I never really got to talk about some of the big TV events from late last week, so, here we go ...
- LOST last week presented the story of how long-lost character Michael, who has now assumed the alias of Kevin Johnson, went from departing the island with Walt to showing up as Ben's resident spy on Charlie Whidmore's freighter. Overall, I thought the episode was suitably intense, and presented some very interesting broader questions about who in our story is "good" vs. who is "evil." There were some fun moments thanks to the return of Tom / Mr. Friendly, who has always been a great antagonist and the Other who you'd most like to punch in the face, aside from Ben of course. One thing I thought was interesting was how the flashbacks in this episode were framed under the guise of Michael relating his story to Sayid. Previously, the flashes have always had an almost mystical quality to them, playing off the show's theme of variable timelines and of interconnectedness across space and time. I found it interesting that this week really played around with the usual narrative conceit of not framing the flashbacks with any kind of real storyline-derived justification. Otherwise, it was an interesting episode, though not a truly memorable one in the vein of the Desmond-centric ep from a few weeks back. While I had hoped for that kind of episode, since this one was also written by Brian K. Vaughan, this was definitely more of a standard "fill-in-the-blanks" episode that had minimal forward momentum. Still, what forward movement there was was almost jarring in its abruptness. We had Sayid rashly decide to out Michael to the captain of the freighter, and then, Alex, Karl, and Rousseau brutally attacked while out in the woods, with Karl and possibly Rousseau bitin' the big one very suddenly. The ending, while certainly jaw-dropping, did have a slightly tacked-on feel, and the question of whether the three were set up by Ben, attacked by other Others, etc., is interesting but ultimately kind of frustrating in its open-endedness. Am I psyched for the next batch of episodes in late April? Hells yeah. But has my enthusiasm dwindled a bit since my excitement for the show reached its peak with that Desmond episode? Yeah, it has. While the last few weeks of Lost have been pretty good, they've yet to match that same high.
My Grade: B+
- Now, I have to say I was almost shocked at how good this past week's ep of SMALLVILLE was. I realize that my evaluation of the previous week's Pete Ross ep was probably a bit forgiving. In retrospect that episode was pretty retarded in a lot of ways. But, I feel pretty confident in saying that Thursday's ep was actually a legitimately excellent episode of Smallville, even by Season 1 - 4 standards. It just had a great, bigtime feel to it, with the threat level of both Lex and Lionel really ramped up to the point where it finally felt that Clark was facing some serious villainy. For once, the show had a lot of great nods to its own past continuity, from the Dr. Swan references to the acknowledgement of Lionel's less-than-honorable history with Clark. On top of that, the ep just had an overall epic feel to it. I was commenting to the G-Man that from start to finish, I really toke note of this episode's great, movie-like cinematography. From Clark trapped in that glowing green cage, to Kara's last minute rescue, to that ominous shot of Lionel standing atop his fallen adversary ... this had all the makings of a classic Superman adventure story - great villains, fun action, high-stakes, and lots of built-in drama. I can only hope that the next few weeks' worth of Smallville maintain this same high level of quality.
My Grade: A -
- Good to see PRISON BREAK is definitely coming back for Season 4. I know the show has its detractors, but for those of us who are loyal viewers, the show seems to just get better and more involving each year. Especially in the absence of 24 this year, PB has been the best true action-adventure show on TV.
- Now, my two pet causes for on-the-bubble renewal are these: MISS/GUIDED and ALIENS IN AMERICA. I think it's a pretty safe bet that TERMINATOR will be back, so I'll leave that one alone. But Miss/Guided, for one, has so much potential. It's really a shame that it was pretty much burned off by ABC, as I could see it really catching on with the right marketing. We'll see what happens. Now, Aliens In America has done pretty poorly, ratings-wise ... but, so has almsot everything on The CW, a network that can't seem to do anything right. CW needs to establish a better night for its flagship comedies. Its shows have a lot of potential teen-appeal, yet they always seem to be matched up against other young-skewing shows. Come on CW, show that you can actually nurture a show into a hit, for once!
Alriiiiiiiiiight, I'm out for now. Hope to get on a better blogging streak soon - so stay tuned.
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