Warning # 1:by reading this, you might die of chronic boredom.
Warning # 2:it will be infested with spoilers.
Warning # 3: my stupid opinions are just that – stupid opinions. If at any point they seem patronizing, then… what?They are stupid opinions. Just ignore them and move on.
In this installment: I write two micro reviews and vent out my disappointment, the cool bloodsuckers are back, and I finally come to terms with the fact that So You Think You Can Dance will be part of every installment of this little series in some capacity.
But first…
The Girls’ Guide to Comic Con 2009: Pathetic…
I am a hardcore geek. I love all things sci fi and fantasy. I wear geeky t-shirts (my Astroboy t-shirt being my favorite). I am obsessed with violent, dark anime, especially cyberpunk anime. I play gory video games to the point of possible aneurisms. And if I lived in The States, I’d cosplay the hell out of every geeky convention I could attend.
I am also a woman. Yes, there are some actors that make me giggle like a hormonal teenager, but I’m mostly interested in good narratives, high quality content, and some times, pure shameless escapism. So when I hear or read any form of commentary suggesting that women in general are only attracted to sci fi to oogle at beefy leading man, I have to take it personally.
The L.A. Times posted the craptacular The Girls’ Guide to Comic Con 2009 and managed to piss off a hell of a lot of women by suggesting that female attendees would only be motivated to attend Comic Con to offer to do Jake Gyllenhaal‘s laundry on his awesome abs, to line up for the Twilight panel because supposedly the male stars are “dreamy”; that girls only like action films when headlined by hotties, and that supposedly werewolves are female friendly because they are capable of sympathizing with women’s monthly curse.
Here’s the thing: I’d rather stab myself with a fork than seeing or reading anything related to Twilight, I think Jake Gyllenhaal is a really good actor but he could show up on screen with a flabby one-pack for all I care, and seriously, when is The Expendables coming out? It would be nice if people didn’t automatically assume that all women want to see tearjerker movies, read romance novels and secretly prepare for a lifetime of domestic servitude, because there are plenty of women that really don’t care about any of that stuff.
That article is the kind of non war related crap that slowly but surely makes me lose faith in humanity. It doesn’t even anger me. It’s just sad.
Here are a few other opinions on the subject:
“The Girl’s Guide To Comic Con”: Headdesk Powers, Activate!
San Diego Comic Con: Not Really For Girls?
An Open Letter to the L.A. Times from a Geek Girl
As for So You Think You Can Dance Season 5: AAAAHHHHHH!!!!
I’m not sure if there are many CHUD.com readers actually interested in SYTYCD, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I love this show because it’s one of the few reality competitions that actually involves talent.
That being said, there is something fundamentally wrong with season 5. Let’s break it down like this:
Season 1 was the test season and its charm resided in its innovation. After all, a televised dance competition like this hadn’t been seen before.
Season 2 was the soul of this competition. No other season has produced the amount of talent and distinctive personalities that came out of season two. Also, no other season has made me care about the individual dancers.
Because from season 3 onwards, with very few exceptions, instead of looking forward to watching the rehearsal clips and wanting to know how the dancers were doing at the time, I’ve felt more like shouting “Shut up and dance!” at my TV. This is not bad because the focus is on the choreographies, not on the individual dancers themselves. But since this competition is about finding America’s favorite “dancer”, not America’s favorite choreography…
And now we are in performance week 2 of season 5 and the show is really kind of soulless. From Mia Michaels and Lil C’s blunt personal attack to one of the contestants, to the stupid reasons why the Broadway brothers (Evan and Ryan Kasprzak) weren’t allowed to be part of the Top 20 together, to some of the other choices for the Top 20, the show has lost a little bit of its magic.
They better choose Ryan Kasprzak for season 6 because he was majorly robbed. Here’s the Broadway Brother’s audition video:
Speaking of being robbed:
The Max is gone. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
So for this week’s results show, the decision on who was going to get cut wasn’t unanimous, but what is the reasoning behind cutting Max Kapitannikov, a dancer who not only performed great in both previous performance shows, but also – despite finding himself in the bottom three couples – performed one of the best solos of the night?Was a good reason to cut him saying that his ballroom training limited him when there were other dancers that did worse than him?
There were only four dancers I cared about. Now there are only three. At least the choreographies are still great. In general, this season has been weird. I hope it gets better in the following weeks.
Speaking of SYTYCD connections, a brief follow-up: Leading Ladies
I very briefly mentioned this dance film on a previous post and since then, my interest in it has risen considerably. Since it is currently being shot, not much can be said about it, except that it has a lot of SYTYCD alumni in it.
That being said, my interest has risen due to Laurel Vail’s blog. Laurel Vail plays the lead role in Leading Ladies, which also happens to be her very first leading film role. She’s been blogging about her experience quite regularly. It’s an interesting and fun read:
Hong Kong hides the gifted and Irish men are vengeful: Two micro reviews
Cassie: “Are you ok?”
Joe: “He…he made me watch…”
Cassie: “Wha…?”
This little segment will be about two non-summer films I saw recently: Push and Five Minutes of Heaven. I’ve tried to write reviews for them in the last two posts but I always find myself writing about something else. So here are the reviews in micro summarized form:
Push:
– Hong Kong is one of the best locations for films. It is graphically interesting and colorful.
– I liked the story; it was what Heroes could have become had it not strayed away from season 1’s original intensions.
– The performances were pretty good.
– The dialogues got too expositional when Cassie talked about The Company.
– What I loved the most was that the focus wasn’t on the characters’ abilities but on how those abilities were used. CGI lite is not bad.
Five Minutes of Heaven
– Powerhouse acting. Very introspective.
– Liam Neeson is flawless. James Nesbitt deserves an Oscar now!
I was also going to review Hawthorne, a new medical show starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Michael Vartan, but I got lazy and decided not to watch it. I guess I’m just not that excited about yet another medical drama. Whatever.
The Bloodsuckers are back!! – True Blood, Season 2
I remember when this show first started and how I really didn’t know if I’d like it. Vampires in the south? That sounded weird. I thought it was going to be campy as hell. But what a refreshing approach to vampires it ended up being.
This show directly and indirectly reminds me of another great show that took a very original and interesting take on vampires: Ultraviolet, a 1998 English miniseries starring beautiful Jack Davenport and super cool Idris Elba. I won’t write anything about Ultraviolet and how much I love it because it deserves its own blog entry, but what is worth mentioning is that Stephen Moyer (who plays sweet vampire Bill in True Blood) had a small but pivotal role in Ultraviolet as a bloodsucker.
Lafayette is alive!!!
True Blood returned for its second season last Sunday and it was so good! This show is just flawless to me. From Sookie to Jessica the teenage vampire, there are no underdeveloped characters. The story is so well paced and it unfolds so organically, and yes, it is kind of a sexy show. But what else could be expected from Allan Ball? The man is a genius.
I also love how smoothly but quickly the tone of the story within a scene shifts from dramatic, to comedic, to mysterious, to scary. And it never seems rushed or forced. The first episode of season two had one line that had me laughing and crying for a while:
“…My ass is magnetic now!”
Hahahahahahaha…
Here’s a very quick summary of what happened: Sookie is sick of finding dead bodies, Tara is doing better than ever but is forced to meet with her crazy Jesus freak mother yet again, Sam’s past comes back to bite him in the ass – so to speak -, Maryann is not as nice as she seemed, Andy is taking the funky path to brewskiland, Jason finds God, the vamps are still trying to make everyone think they’re not bad, the religious anti-vampire people are trying to make everyone think they’re really good, and Lafayette is alive!
True Blood and Burn Notice are the two shows that will save my summer, and I thank the gods for that.
And now, instead of a YouTube video of the week, I give you this:
In case you’ve got some form of writer’s block (or any other type of block), or if your inner critic is a psychotic bitch (like mine), listen to this, taken from The Sound of Young America via johnaugust.com —
In the next installment of Audiovisual Summer of DOOM: I’ll be pissed about something, I’ll be disappointed with something, I’ll probably bitch some more about SYTYCD, and I’ll see if I can make it through Impact without comparing it to Earthstorm.
Until next time…May the force be with you!
Audiovisual Summer of DOOM, Part 1
Audiovisual Summer of DOOM, Part 2