Fall TV 2009 – week 3

Week 3 of this year’s fall TV premieres was a doozy! While it’s nice to see the networks returning to the kind of concentrated premiere schedule that kept me glued to the TV during my youth, I have to say that I put my Tivo and timeshifting to the test. To make things a little…

Read More

The Informant! – Movie Review

Seeing the trailer and premise for The Informant! (plus the tongue-in-cheek exclamation point), I expected Matt Damon’s character to be goofy and bumbling (Paul Blart: FBI snitch), but leave it to director Steven Soderbergh to pull off an interesting and thought-provoking character study laced with odd, retro humour. (Is it my imagination, or do the…

Read More

Fall TV 2009 – week 2

After only one week, my first Tivo casualty of the new season is The Vampire Diaries. I just couldn’t keep caring about the teenage melodrama if they didn’t give me more interesting supernatural stuff. The vampire storyline was way too cliche. Fringe It was probably too much to ask to have a season premiere that…

Read More

Fall TV 2009 – week 1

Summer is fun and all, but nothing beats the start of a new fall TV season. This year has many returning faves, but also a large batch of promising new series. Most premieres are slated for later in the month, but Fox and the CW have taken the lead with some hype-worthy starts. Glee For…

Read More

Inglourious Basterds – Movie Review

Most of us come to a Tarantino movie expecting the usual trademark elements: visceral, somewhat gratuitous violence; complicated, witty, scummy, razor-sharp dialogue; and complex, interweaving storyline featuring interestingly off-colour characters. So how does that blend against a backdrop as often-used as WW2/Nazi-occupied France? Well, let’s just say he makes it work (for the most part)….

Read More

“Don’t Stop Believing” – 2009’s pop anthem?

For some reason, “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey, has had a surprising resurgence in popular culture this year, 28 years after its debut (two years after it capped the finale of The Sopranos TV series). It’s been featured on American Idol, it was the number selected from hit Broadway musical Rock of Ages to be…

Read More

15 Flicks for Fall 2009

On the pop-cultural calendar, the climax of the year is supposedly the summer blockbuster season. Fall is when we begin the year again with new TV and more serious cinema (leading up to the Oscars). After a lacklustre summer (where even the stalwart Harry Potter franchise left me disappointed), we could really use some fresh,…

Read More

District 9 – Movie Review

I’ve mentioned before how much I like “intelligent” sci-fi movies: in other words, ones which spend more effort on concept and story rather than just perfecting the CGI or blowing things up in cool ways. District 9 falls into the “intelligent” camp even though its concept is not the brain-twisting kind. Essentially, in the 80s…

Read More