Midseason 2009, Part 1: January

As I’ve already written, this midseason has a lot of things going for it. For me, there’s the return of the big three this month: Lost, 24, and Battlestar Galactica. On top of other shows later, like Medium, there are many new shows, including the eagerly anticipated Dollhouse. Premiere dates will span January to March,…

The Reader – Movie Review

Kate Winslet stars as Hanna Schmitz, a woman who has an affair with a teenage boy in Germany. After a few summer months, she moves away and disappears from his life. Years later, that same young man, Michael Berg (played by newcomer David Koss), attends a trial as a law student and sees Hanna again….

Fall TV 2008, part 4

Here I was thinking that this fall premiere season was going to be boring simply because all my top shows (Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Medium, Dollhouse, Burn Notice) were not coming until mid-season, but now I’m writing a 4-part post about new and returning shows. Go figure! Well, this will be the last part. There…

Fall TV 2008 (part 2)

Sorry for snoozing a bit while the new fall TV season barrels on. There are quite a number of new and returning shows to recap, so I’ll get right to it: οΎ  Smallville – The usual brand of stuff. Frankly, I have no clue where this show is going or has been for the last…

The Dark Knight – Movie Review

By the time I saw The Dark Knight (which was after about 40 million of you out there had already seen it) the hype had overflowed and I was half expecting to be disappointed, certain that it would not live up to the praise that people were giving it. At first I was a bit…

Wanted – Movie Review

Do you know director Timur Bekmambetov? If you’ve seen his Russian vampire flicks Night Watch or Day Watch, you will recognize his trademark spectacular, physics-defying car stunts (cars flip and leap-frog over one another) and zooming camera effects (the screen image even throbs to mimic the lead character’s special rapid heartbeat condition; and we get…

wall-e – Movie Review

I’ve commented before that it’s a testament to Pixar’s animation and storytelling skills that they can make hard, inanimate things like cars or generally uncute creatures like bugs, fish, rats and monsters into adorable, fun characters. That is definitely true of wall-e, where they’ve taken a bunch of robots and made them delightful, cute, and…

The Spiderwick Chronicles – Movie Review

What kinds of magical creatures lived in your backyard as a child? Did you imagine any fantastic lands just beyond the next tree? The Spiderwick Chronicles (based on a series of kids’ books) is about Jared Grace (played by the ubiquitous Freddie Highmore) and his twin brother Simon (ditto re Highmore), and their sister and…