Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture

Sherlock Holmes – Movie Review

I have to admit that I’m a bit Downey’d out. When I found out that the role of the latest incarnation of the British super-sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, was going to Robert Downey Jr., I was less than excited. It’s not that he’s not an excellent actor, or that his movies are not enjoyable, but the…

Nine – Movie Review

Nine, the new movie-musical from director Rob Marshall obviously faced the same challenge as its Oscar-winning predecessor, Chicago: How do you integrate musical numbers with serious drama? In the case of Chicago, the songs were figments of the character Roxie Hart’s imagination. In Nine, it’s not clear what the songs are there for. In fact,…

Avatar – Movie Review

For a film with revolutionary CGI effects, such as Avatar, all eyes are definitely on the visuals. Director James Cameron (remember him from Titanic and Terminator 2?) has taken his time to produce this amazing new movie. Using the kind of computer techniques that brought to life Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series,…

2009 Tops and Bottoms: TV Shows

2009 has been a really fun year for TV. Lots of good shows returned or debuted. There’s so much exciting stuff to write about, that I’m going to split my year-end post into 3 parts: TV shows, TV characters, and Movies. (I’m saving Movies to the end because there are a whole slew of intriguing movies…

The Princess and the Frog – Movie Review

I might have felt slighted that Disney’s first 2D animated movie in a while was so derivative if it did not successfully remind me of the things I’d been missing from Disney animation for so long. Unlike the recent hit Enchanted, which up-ended the conventions of the Disney fairy tale movie and squeezed it into…

New Moon – Movie Review

It’s difficult to be disappointed with a movie that gives you exactly what you expect. Going into New Moon (the second in the highly successful book, now movie, franchise known as The Twilight Saga) it was not surprising that half the movie would be spent on looks between attractive teens prone to longing and melodrama….

Sci-Fi TV – Fall 2009

While the fall tv season started strong, it was not really because of new science fiction shows. Several of the new series that fit that bill delayed their starts until October and November, so as an addendum to my Fall TV reviews, I want to talk about them here. Sadly I don’t have much good…

Where The Wild Things Are – Movie Review

I can’t say that I really understood Where The Wild Things Are when I read it as a kid. Sadly, 30 years later, I can’t say that I understand the new Spike Jonze directed big-screen adaptation of this children’s classic either. While the visuals were great, and the characters (especially the Wild Things themselves, of…

Zombieland – Movie Review

Zombieland is hardly a zombie movie. Sure, there are throngs of the undead (a zombie-making virus struck down the entire planet — take that, H1N1!) who are happy to disembowel people for fun and snacking; but they don’t appear for large chunks of the movie. This is more of a post-apocalyptic, survival, road movie mash-up….