Welcome back, ladies and gentleman, for one last post before the glorious Memorial Day weekend that lies ahead.
One thing that I haven't had a chance to do properly up to now is to give a final salute to this year's Boston Celtics team. Even without Kevin Garnett in the lineup, the C's played with a lot of heart and a lot of toughness, in two thrilling, 7-game series against the Chicago Bulls and the Orlando magic. The Bulls series may well go down as one of the all-time great playoff matchups, and the Orlando series wasn't far behind in terms of close games, stunning finishes, and overall excitement. In the end, the Celtics were hampered by a weakened lineup and also by inconsistency from its star players. Ray Allen and Paul Pierce both had moments of greatness throughout these playoffs, but Boston needed each to show up and play like superstars each and every game. Ray Allen hit big shot after big shot, but he also disappeared for long stretches and had a couple of long-lasting shooting slumps. Similarly, Paul Pierce rarely seemed on his game for long periods of time. Because of this, it often fell to the likes of Eddie House, Stephon Marbury, or Glen "Big Baby" Davis to step up and make big shots. And oftentimes, those guys came up huge. Big Baby's huge game-winning shot, for instance, was an instant-classic moment that was simply awesome. But at the end of the day the stars didn't carry the brunt of the scoring burden like they needed to. Even Rajon Rondo, consistently solid on D, was often all over the place on the offensive end. But like I was saying, there were too many times where a huge shot was taken by a player like Brian Scallebrini or Kendrick Perkins. Those guys are good, but they're not necessarilly big-game, clutch players. Allen and Pierce should have taken over every game in the fouth quarter. Sometimes they did, but sometimes wasn't quite enough.
But this was definitely a season for Boston to be proud of. When I look at the Lakers, and see the egomaniac that is Kobe and the sense of entitlement that Lakers fans have about their team, it makes me proud to root for Boston sports teams like the C's. Boston is all about the scrappy underdog, about Celtic Pride, and about heart. At least during the Showtime 80's, the Lakers had the likable star-power to back up the hype. But the days of Magic, Rambis, Kareem, and Big-Game-James are long gone. All that's left for the Lakers is to be the foil for LeBron and the Cavs. And that's if they even make it past Denver. In any case, it's been a great playoffs so far, and I'm curious to see where things go from here.
TV REVIEWS:
- One last season finale to review, and that's GOSSIP GIRL. Personally, I think the show has lost a lot of momentum in the last couple of months, and a lot of the spark from Season 1 has been somewhat absent in S2. It reminds me a lot of Josh Schwartz's previous teen soap, The OC, which had a very similar set-up and a lot of the same issues with pacing. Just like The OC, Gossip Girl feels like its characters and themes are starting to become a bit watered down from what we were originally presented with. Some examples:
Chuck Bass and Blair: More Evil, Please - A big problem with this season has been trying to make these two characters less horrible and more sympathetic. Both work best when they are at their worst. And both have done too many bad, horrible things at this point for us to really root for them. Blair and Chuck can be a couple, fine ... but take the focus off the whole will-they-or-won't-they thing and just have them be the main "villains" of the show.
Dan is now "The Insider" - they even said as much in the season finale. The character was originally our entrypoint into this crazy world of Upper East Side debauchery, and now he's pretty much living as scandalous a life as any other character on the show. Even Vanessa seems completely entangled with the Chuck-Blair-Nate crowd at this point. We need a new character who provides a "feet on the street" perspective.
Rufus and Lilly: who cares? - at first, these two had a kind of star-crossed romance thing going, but now ... their ongoing romance / not-romance is just tiresome at this point. Lilly's likability factor has really gone downhill of late, and I just don't buy her anymore as this closeted rock n' roll wild-child. She is played as way too snobbish and upper-crust, and it's really hard to see what a guy like Rufus would see in her. The Serena-Dan relationship just became weird when their parents started dating, and so now that whole thing is kind of ruined as well. My advice? Get the Humphreys and Vanderwoodsons as far away from each other as humanly possible.
Too Insular - the main characters graduating is the perfect chance to reestablish that these guys and girls go to large schools and don't exist in a vaccuum. Have them make new friends and date other people - almost every combo of the main characters has now been done, and do we really want to get to the point where Blair and Dan are goin' at it?
Anyways, this finale was kind of par for the course of what we've seen this season. Some good stuff, some nice moments, but ... I was waiting for the show to have a moment or two worthy of its "OMFG" tagline.
My Grade: B
MOVIES:
- So the big news for this weekend is the release of ... Night at the Museum 2.
Just kidding, dude. I'm talkin' TERMINATOR. Terminator: Salvation, to get specific. Now, I can't help but feel a little disappointed, even at this early stage. Because this one has really been up there for me as probably my most anticipated summer blockbuster of '09. I mean, ever since the original flicks gave us brief glimpses of the post-Judgement Day future war, who wasn't salivating at the thought of an entire movie set in this tantalizing, post-apocalyptic warzone. The fact that Christian Bale, one of the best actors working today, was signed up to play the legendary John Connor only sweetened the deal. But the x-factors remained: could McG actually do right by a serious, big-budget action franchise? Could the screenplay, which has notably gone through multiple reworkings, live up to the memorable writing of James Cameron's T2? Early reviews have been harsh, so I'm now just hoping for an enjoyable popcorn movie. In the meantime, it's strange to think that THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES is cancelled, especialyl after the season ended on a huge cliffhanger that directly ties into the wartorn future depicted in the new movie. While the series had its issues, and had a real stretch of mediocre episodes midway through this season, it rebounded at the end and really delivered an exciting string of episodes, which built towards a memorable finale. I think the show, at the least, earned the right to be a definitive part of the Terminator cannon. I'd love to see it get some shout-outs in any upcoming sequels, and it'd be crazy cool to have Summer Glau's Cameron play a role in one of the films. Afterall, in the TV show, she was depicted as being John Connor's right-hand-robot in the future. In any case, check back here soon for a full TERMINATOR review.
Because, as Arnie said ... I'll be back.
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