Chica Busca Chica

Now this is a show I like. It’s kinda L Word like, minus a crazy Ilene Chaiken (you know, the L Word writer who regularly gives the cast personality transplants or kills off characters and such.. and refuses to get rid of that hideous Betty intro music). There are about 16 episodes meanwhile, and the first few have English subtitles and are available on YouTube. The rest I only found without subtitles free on the web. Start watching – the first episode is a bit lame, but it gets better!

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Episode 3:

Episode 4:

The Spanish ones without subtitles are at Terra TV. Enjoy, and comment!

Inside Out (sucked)

A strange doctor moves into an idyllic suburb and turns people’s seemingly perfect lives around when think he might be a killer out to seduce the women and abduct the children in the neighborhood.

If you look closely at that DVD cover, you will see that even before Eriq LaSalle and Steven Weber, Kate Walsh is mentioned there. She’s received quite some recognitio recently as Dr. Addison Montgomery on Grey’s Anatomy, which makes her the second “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV” in this cast. Eriq LaSalle, as we all know, was Dr. Benton on ER for a long time, and wouldn’t you know it, he also plays a doctor in this film.

I wonder if putting those two people in the movie and having a story about a doctor was David Ogden’s plan to get fans of ER and/or Grey’s Anatomy to rent it, but let me just tell you that even if you have the biggest crush on Addison and tuned in religiously every week in order not to miss Dr. Benton, this movie probably still is not for you. Kate Walsh is in it for something like five minutes, and seeing Eriq in this made me wonder just how bad his career must be going that he’d play in this piece of crap.

Plot holes are the rule, not the exception in Inside Out, the characters aren’t likeable, and while the ending may be quite the surprise, it is not exactly a revelation but rather comes off as one of those “see? see? you didn’t expect this! hahaha!” plots rather than something that would make you think. So no, I do not recommend this movie.

Played (okay I guess)

Played has been rated R for pervasive language, violence, some nudity and drug use. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

The movie is, I would say, about a guy that gets out of prison with a vengeance. It was a corrupt cop that got him in there, and now he’s gonna take the cop out.

There were a lot of annoying characters in that movie, and although you’re led to believe by the DVD cover that Val Kilmer is going to be in it, his part is rather short. I’m not a big fan of his anyway, but he did have the funniest scene in the car when he was driving a bleeding passenger to the hospital (or wherever) and his mother called. Turns out it was really Val Kilmer’s mom calling him, and since he stayed in character, director Sean Stanek liked the performance so much, he left it in.

That’s really the funniest part about the movie. The rest is partially interesting, but then all the interesting stuff gets overshadowed by the incessant and pointless swearing of one of the characters (was that supposed to be funny?) and the drug content (seems like drugs are the new nudity). And oh, I didn’t quite understand the ending, but maybe that’s just me.

I have no complaints about the acting except for Vinnie Jones’, but maybe he was supposed to be this obnoxious. I guess I just like my villains a little more subtle.

All in all, although I do not recomment this movie, it was not completely bad.

Modigliani (two hours of boredom)

Have you ever watched a movie and thought halfway through how much time you could save if you played it in fast forward? I wish I had done it with this movie.

Modigliani is a movie about the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani (Andy Garcia), his messed up relationship to Jeanne Hebuterne (Elsa Zylberstein) and his destructive lifestyle of drugs and alcohol. Also, he has a strong rivalry with Pablo Picasso (Omid Djalili) going on, and although he has fathered Jeanne’s baby, they’re not married, ostensibly for her father who – as a Catholic – doesn’t like the fact that Amedeo is Jewish.

One reason why I didn’t like this movie at all is that I didn’t like the main characters. I hadn’t even heard of Modigliani before I watched the movie, so all I say about Modigliani is based on the way he was portrayed in the film, although it’s been suggested in the IMDB.com forum that the way he was portrayed was far from accurate. Regardless, the character Modigliani in this movie wasn’t likeable. He was always somewhere between thinking he’s that cat’s pyjamas and feeling sorry for himself, mostly he’s drunk during both. And despite the fact that he annoys me, Jeanne is sooooooooo in love with him (she says). But I didn’t even feel sorry for her because she’s annoying, too. She leaves her baby behind, just abandons it, doesn’t even fight for it, and then her father is made out to be the bad one. Although, quite evidently, she didn’t make a good mother. Sure, her father is somewhat despicable for disliking Jewish people. I’m not even going to follow this up with a “but”.

I also disliked the pretentiousness of the movie. While it bothered me slightly that everyone had a strange accent, what bothered me even more was the dialogue. “I am empty. Like your glass.” Bla bla bla, whatever. Words of wisdom spread here and there, trying mighty hard to be all artsy. Boring! It didn’t even have a few scenes in it that I liked, not even the cinematography had much to offer. There was blue snow at some point, but it did look rather fake.

So all in all we can conclude, that the movie was not only boring (and did I mention predictable?), it was also two hours long, so that’s a LOT of boredom. Hence, I do not recommend it. And by the way, Rotten Tomatoes agrees with me – it got a rating of 4% there… just like BloodRayne.

BloodRayne II: Deliverance (nope)

When in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Giles once told Buffy that they needed to talk, Buffy replied back to him: “I don’t suppose this is about happy squirrels?” “Vampires,” Giles said, and Buffy said: “That was my next guess.” As for this movie, it isn’t about happy squirrels either, but I wish it had been.

In BloodRayne II, the big evil vampire lord Billy The Kid goes to a town in the Wild West and kind of takes everyone hostage while he’s waiting for the new railroad to come through so he can get more people to kill. Or something like that. And so Rayne, half vampire and half human, passes through to save the day.

BloodRayne II: Deliverance is based on a video game, or maybe it’s only based on the prequel BloodRayne which is based on a video game. Either way, it’s a mystery how it ever got made, considering that most people agree that BloodRayne, which was nominated for six Razzie Awards, was about as entertaining as a root canal treatment. I’m not one of those people, though, and I’ll tell you why: BloodRayne may have had a silly story with silly dialoge, but at least you had Kristanna Loken in it, who makes for a damn nice vampire slayer type heroine. She’s 5′ 11″ (1.80 m) and she kicks ass! *

BloodRayne II on the other hand has Natassia Malthe in it, some model, 5′ 5″ (1.65 m), who looks quite retarded chewing on a match all the time. Of course, she was probably told to do that by Uwe Boll, who already directed part one. Rayne’s weapons look really silly and impractical and she has a very strange leather coat and bullets with holy water in them, I think. I’m simply amazed that Boll is a filmmaker still. Don’t you have to make good movies in order to keep your job in Hollywood? Maybe not. Boll also directed Alone In The Dark and House Of The Dead, by the way, two movies that barely got a 2-rating at IMDB.com. I haven’t seen those movies, but I’ve played the video games briefly, which was really enough.

While I’m one of the few people to actually defend BloodRayne on the sole fact that Underworld sucked so much more (vampires with reflections, daylight bullets…), I can’t think of anything flattering to say about this movie. Except maybe that it’s good to know that you can still be successful in Hollywood, even if you have no talent whatsoever.

*(Those of you who – like me – thought Kristanna was great in The L Word might be amazed by the fact that Guinevere Turner, writer for an actress in The L Word, actually wrote the script for BloodRayne. It doesn’t cease to amaze me.)

Nearing Grace (sure, why not?)

I once had this dream in which I was wearing a short plaid skirt and dating a lesbian super-villain named Lucy Diamond, who looked exactly like Jordana Brewster. And then it turned out that I was actually supposed to capture her rather than consort with her, and then Holland Taylor was chastising me and.. Oh, no, wait, I’m mixing that up with DEBS! And that wasn’t me, it was Sara Foster! Bummer. Well, that explains a lot, since I don’t ever wear skirts.

Anyway, my point is that ever since I saw DEBS, I decided that every movie with Jordana Brewster in it must be worth watching. Turns out, though, that her performance is a lot less thrilling if she’s being all slutty and kissing guys instead. But I digress.

The movie is basically about Henry Nearing, played a little too smoothly by Gregory Smith (I didn’t know him either), and how he meets Grace Chance (Jordana Brewster), who’s dating Lance (Chad Faust, who I disliked much in The 4400) but isn’t completely repulsed by the idea of having a fling with Henry (although I don’t see why, he’s not very charming or cute and he’s not very funny either). And then, let’s not forget Henry’s best buddy Merna Ash, played by the cute Ashley Johnson, who we already really liked in Fast Food Nation. And oh, amazingly, I do remember her short role in that one episode of Roseanne 12 years ago.

The script wasn’t particularly well-written: I was missing some character growth and also, maybe, a surprise element. It was about as predictable as “amen” in church and came like any old movie with some big speeches and ostensibly profound wisdom. However, it was a pleasure to watch Ashley Johnson, and I’ll even say she outshined Jordana in that movie. Sometimes, she looked like a young Uma Thurman. So while this isn’t a movie I’d explicitly recommend as a must-see, it is good for a rainy afternoon.

Tell Me You Love Me 1×01 (not really)

Let me just tell you that the working title of this show used to be Sex Life. That’s actually all you need to know about this show. It’s about a bunch of people in strange relationships that either have very graphic sex a lot, or they lament the fact that they don’t.

Let’s talk cast: I didn’t know any of those actors: Jane Alexander, Michelle Borth, Tim DeKay, Adam Scott, David Selby, Sonya Walger and Ally Walker. That’s not a con in my book, however, since I feel there are a lot of great actors and actresses out there who are immensely talented and can do a part at least as good as their famous colleagues. Should an actor really get millions of dollars simply because he or she is famous? However, somehow seeing all of most of those actors in very graphic sex scenes made me dislike them a little. Maybe it’s just me, but somehow seeing such graphic sex scenes in a TV show that really don’t bring the story forward much (you might just show them getting into bed together) makes me think that those actors would do anything for money.

Patricia Rozema, the writer and director of the great film When Night Is Falling, directed the pilot episode rather unspectacularly, and really the only story line that is remotely interesting is the one about the married couple that stopped having sex. Then again, I don’t think I can be bothered to watch another episode of this show only to see how their storyline continues. All in all, I cannot recommend this show, and maybe there’s some truth to what a reviewer on IMDB.com said – you might as well just google porn and get the same result, just without the shitty dialogue.

Zodiac (does creep me out)

Zodiac tells the story of Robert Graysmith,  a cartoonist for a newspaper who becomes very involved in trying to solve the Zodiac murders.

Robert Graysmith, who lives very much in his own world and doesn’t attract much attention to himself, is played wonderfully by the very adorable and talented Jake Gyllenhaal, who we (should) all know from Donnie Darko (preferrably the Director’s Cut) and of course from his role as Jack Twist, a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain that should have got him is first Academy Award (but didn’t quite).

Robert Downey Jr. plays the drunkard journalist that covers the murders, which might not even have required much acting on his part. He was mumbling throughout the whole movie, and somehow it seems to me that all his roles are alike, which bores me. A lot more interesting were Anthony Edwards of ER fame and Mark Ruffalo (Just Like Heaven, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, My Life Without me) as police inspectors working on the case, and not to forget Chloe Sevigny, who had a nice but comparatively minor part in the movie. She’s another actress I’ve had a soft spot for eversince I saw her in If These Walls Could Talk 2 and then Boys Don’t Cry and then Shattered Glass. (I’m trying to forget I ever watched that horrible Demonlover.)

I was slightly bothered by the graphic violence in that movie, even though it was reduced to a few scenes, but other than that the movie was suspenseful and well-acted. The time frame of things was impossible for me to follow but didn’t play a major part, really, and one scene in particular had me really at the edge of my seat. I’ll say again that Jake Gyllenhaal was really a pleasure to watch throughout the movie, and while I’m not generally much into thrillers, I’ll say if this is a genre you enjoy, I absolutely do recommend Zodiac.

Battlestar Galactica [Season 1] (cool)

Science fiction can be fun!

Alright, I admit, I like science fiction. I’m a big Firefly fan (Joss Whedon is a genius) and if I think long enough, I can probably come up with other cool sci-fi shows I like. I’m not so much into the whole Star Wars stuff, though. But with Battlestar Galactica, you have a cool story and some really cool characters and really, what more do you need?

The story is as follows: there’s humans and there’s Cylons. Cylons are robots created by humans, and as we know from Blade Runner, you don’t just go ahead and create thinking machines and expect them to be happy as your slaves. So a lot of stuff happens in the mini series, which is not part of the Season 1 boxset, though, and basically this show starts when they’re all on a bunch of ships, running away from the Cylons, trying to find Earth.

Let’s talk about the cast for a while. One reason to watch the show is certainly Katee Sackhoff as Captain Starbuck. I sure like me a tough girl that looks good in a uniform. Since I’ve never seen the original show, I’m not bothered (at all) by the fact that Starbuck is now a girl. Check out this DeviantArt drawing of the two Starbucks side by side. “Out of the box is where I live,” the female Starbuck once said. Why wouldn’t you like her?

Another woman that looks stunning in a uniform is Boomer, played by Grace Park whose former credits include playing the “asian dancer” in Rome Must Die. Yeah, I didn’t know her before, either.

Then there’s a female president (president of the human race, kind of), President Roslin, played by Mary McDonnell – you know, Donnie Darko’s mom. She’s fantastic. Certainly no shortage of strong female characters here.

Edward James Olmos (who?) also does a great job playing the Captain of the Battlestar Galactica, and Michael Hogan also is a hot shot on that very same ship. If you’re wondering why he looks so familiar, he played Dana’s dad on The L Word.

The only thing that kind of annoys me about this show is the character of Dr. Gaius Baltar (James Callis), whose constantly imagining that Cylon woman (Tricia Helfer) talking to him. He’s also constantly making out with her. It gets boring after a while.

Anyway, the first season is cool enough that I was left wanting more when it was over, so I do recommend it.

Whose Line Is It Anyway? (fun fun fun)

This is a very positive review of the US version of this great improv show. I understand there’s also a British version I’ve only seen clips of on YouTube and which bored me, but this is about the US version with Drew Carey, Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie and Ryan Styles. Greg Proops and Brad Sherwood are in some episodes, too, and let’s not forget Laura Hall, the piano woman that’s essential for one of my favorite segment of the show: Greatest Hits.

Greatest Hits is when Ryan and Colin are presenting a CD collection (like Songs Of Accouting or Songs Of The Busdriver) and Wayne Brady (and sometimes Brad Sherwood) make up the corresponding songs. Always hilarious.

Their improv skills are really astounding and this is one of the few shows that actually makes me laugh out loud when I’m watching it (I’m usually a chuckle kind of person). So without further ado, let me just wholeheartedly recommend this show to you.