Retro Movie Review: Swing Kids

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing."

In the early 1990s there was a popular resurgence of swing music. Many bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, and Squirrel Nut Zippers quickly became famous and many young people learned how much of a thrill Swing dancing could be.

With such resurgence of Swing popularity, it only makes sense that Hollywood would attempt to capitalize on such a fad. You'd expect that whatever came of such theatrical effort would be shallow and corny, much like all of the wannabe Star Wars movies of the 80s… or Dirty Dancing. Instead, the movie that appeared to be cashing in on a flight of passing fancy, Swing Kids, is much, much deeper than the title implies.

In the late 1930s, Germany was undergoing some major changes as the National Socialist (better known as Nazi) party led by Adolf Hitler was tightening its grip on German society. At the same time, Jitter-bug dancing young Germans were relishing in English and American Jazz culture and were doing everything they could to embrace it in their clothing, speech, music and dancing.

Three close friends involved in this movement are Peter Müller (played by Robert Sean Leonard - House, Dead Poets Society), Thomas Berger (played by Christian Bale - Batman Begins, Empire of the Sun), and Arvid (played by Frank Whaley - Career Opportunities, Pulp Fiction). Peter and Thomas are heavily involved in the dancing scene while Arvid - sidelined because of a lame foot - is the temperamental, intellectual musician of the bunch.

One day, in a misguided attempt to bring some joy into the moody Arvid's life, Peter and Thomas attempt to steal a radio that Peter believes was wrongfully taken from a suspected "traitor" and given to a woman giving comfort to the district supervisor. The poorly conceived, attempted theft fails and Peter is left holding the radio.

In order to avoid serving time in a labor camp, Peter is giving the "choice" to join the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) - the Nazi youth organization that is the polar opposite of everything the Swing Kid movement stands for. Shortly after joining, Peter's self-disgust is swallowed-up by Thomas, who in a show of solidarity, joins the Hitler Jugend, or the H.J., as well.

Quickly Peter and Thomas are indoctrinated in the philosophies of the Third Reich and their loyalties to their family and friends are tested. Arvid, who is not only excluded from the H.J. because of his handicap but also because of his undeviating commitment to the accepting and free culture of the Swing Kids, becomes the catalyst that tests what Peter and Thomas really believe about themselves, their friends, and their family, and what they would be willing to do or sacrifice for them.

Swing Kids is a movie that I believe was hurt in the box office by two things. One is the impression that it was just feeding a fad, and the other is the name. While "Swing Youth" is the actual name the Swing movement of the time had, I believe the title, Swing Kids, gives the movie a juvenile feel while the subject matter is anything but.

This movie deals with serious themes; such as how important it is to know who you are and what you stand for. Peter and Thomas joined the H.J. more on a whim than anything else. Little did they know how completely brainwashed they could become if they didn't already have a strong foundation they could cling to. Without knowing what he stood for, Peter becomes a tool used by both parts of the struggle between good and evil in Nazi Germany. Only when it's nearly too late does he realize which side of the struggle he wants to be on.

Swing Kids is a must-see movie that reminds us how easy it is to be taken in by ideologies that on the surface appear to be virtuous, but underneath reveal philosophies that make the uninitiated recoil… reminds us to make sure we know what we are committing ourselves to before we throw in our lot with anyone or anything - no matter how harmless it may seem.

TV Review: Lost, "Some Like It Hoth"

"Let's face it... the Ewoks suck, dude."

Ok, I have a confession to make. When it was revealed that the main characters on ABC’s Lost were sent back in time to 1977, one of the first thoughts that came to my mind was, “Hey! That’s the year Star Wars came out in the theaters!” So tonight's scenes that featured Hurley (Jorge Garcia) scribbling in his Dharma Initiative composition notebook his own script for George Lucas’ next cinematic epic, The Empire Strikes Back, were some of best fun I’ve had watching TV for a while. I figured out what he was doing when he asked Miles (Ken Leung) how to spell Bounty Hunter in the beginning of a van ride they were taking together. Since the title of tonight’s episode was, “Some Like It Hoth,” it probably wasn’t much of an investigative feat on my part.


In tonight’s episode we got to learn a lot about Miles who is one of my favorite minor characters. I’m really interested in his ability to speak with dead people and I’ve wished for a long time that they’d do more with him. I like the actor who plays him too. Ken Leung has had minor parts in a few movies that I’ve really enjoyed—mostly the Brett Ratner productions Rush Hour, The Family Man, and X-Men: The Last Stand.


We learned from the flashbacks that Miles discovered that he had the ability to speak to dead people at a very young age as his mother was trying to make a life for herself and him in the absence of his father whom he never knew. With all of his emotional baggage being left unresolved by his mother who wasn’t forthcoming about his father and their past, he attempted to fill the empty spaces in his life with money that he could earn by hiring out his services as someone who speaks to dead people for profit… whether or not he actually makes contact with the deceased.

By the end of the flashback, we see Naomi Dorritt (Marsha Thomason), recruiting him to be part of the freighter team being put together by Charles Widmore in an attempt to find the island and remove Benjamin Linus from power. You’ll remember Naomi as the first member of the freighter who was found by the Losties who fooled them into thinking that she was there to rescue them.


Before embarking on his journey to the island on the freighter, Miles was kidnapped whilst eating a fish taco by a group of guys offering him an alternative to working for Charles Widmore. I can only assume that these guys were actually working for Benjamin Linus, but who knows what Ben's motives would have been for trying to recruit Miles other than to keep him from helping Widmore. It could be that the information that Miles can get from the dead bodies on the island will actually be very important in the grand scheme of things.

Back to the main timeline in 1977, Miles is asked to fill in for Sawyer (Josh Holloway) who is busy trying to cover up what he and Kate (Evangeline Lily) did with the recently shot, young Benjamin Linus. As we see Miles and Hurley on a top secret mission to transport a mysteriously killed person, we discover that Dr. Pierre Chang (François Chau) is none other than Miles’ long lost father who is the leading scientist on the island and is living there with his wife and 3-year-old son who is, of course, Miles. Miles now has the opportunity to get to know his long lost father who appears to be very different from someone who would abandon his wife and child the way his mother had depicted him. It’ll be interesting to see where this storyline takes us.


I realized tonight what a genius move it is to have the main characters go back in time like they have in this season. What better way to show a large amount of the history of the island than to have the main characters travel back to that period and live when that history happened? It’s interesting to see the main characters involves as the history of Dharma unfolds and it’s making me wonder if they’ll even travel farther back in time to see the history of the island during the period when the four-toed statue was in its prime. I'm guessing probably not as much as what they're doing with Dharma, but it was interesting that one of the guys who abducted Miles in his flashback asked the question, “do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue?” as a test of whether or not he was prepared to make the journey to the island. Perhaps the history of the statue will turn out to be an important element in the grand scheme of things.


One final note, I'm very intrigued by the reappearance of Daniel Faraday at the end of tonight's episode. They were never very clear about what happened to him, only that he wasn't with them anymore, so we'll see!

American Idol Final 7, Results Show

It’s results night on American Idol and even though they could just come out and tell us who’s going home, they have to stretch it out into an hour long show with tons of hype and made-up drama with a couple of guest performers thrown into the mix.

The show opened with the group singing Michael Sembello’s “Maniac” from the 1983 movie, Flashdance. Of all the music from movies, I wouldn’t have thought that particular song would be high on the list to be featured on results night, but what do I know?

After a little cross-promotion of the new movie, 17 Again, starring Zac Efron we got right into revealing the results where we were quickly informed that Allison Iraheta and Adam Lambert were declared safe, but Anoop Desai was the first shuffled into the bottom three.

Following the bad news for Anoop, we were presented with a quick bio of Jennifer Hudson followed by her singing “If This Isn't Love” from her self-titled album. She’s definitely a great vocalist, and while it’s not the kind of music I get excited about, I can see why she’s had so much success.

It seemed a little silly for Ryan Seacrest to try to get the judges to say whether or not Anoop “deserved” to be in the bottom three. Really, at this point they’re all really good and the only one left who has a history of being consistently bad is Anoop, so it only makes sense that he’s there.

After dragging it out a while longer it was revealed that Kris Allen was safe but Lil Rounds was in the bottom three as well. Immediately after that, they revealed the last member of the bottom three is Matt Giraud and Danny Gokey was safe.

As we were watching, my wife observed that they could wipe out this bottom three of Anoop, Matt and Lil and it we could just happily go on with the competition. None of these three really have a chance of winning, ultimately.

The first member of this three declared safe was, surprisingly for me, Anoop Desai. I suppose it’s because he got high marks for his song choice last night, but I thought it was time for him to go.

Miley Cyrus came out next to fill in some of the extra time by singing her song, “The Climb.” I was hoping that this was going to be a cover of No Doubt’s song by the same name, but no dice. That's fine, it probably would have been terrible anyway. I guess I’ve never really heard a song of Miley's—does she normally not enunciate her words? There were some phrases that just sounded like she was slurring. Oh well, I guess her music isn’t really my cup-o-tea either.

After all the delays, they finally revealed that Lil Rounds was safe and Matt Giraud had to “sing for his life” in hopes that he’d receive the judge’s save. From how giddy Kara and Paula were being during his performance it was clear that he had earned the judge’s save and so he’ll be in the competition for another week. The twist with the save is that next week two people are going home no matter what—and it’s Disco Week!

I’m pretty happy with this result. I really like Matt Giraud and I’m hoping he can improve on some of the things that are holding him back. While I do think Matt will have a successful post-Idol music career, I agree with Simon that his chances of winning the competition are pretty slim. Still, I’m happy to have him around for a while longer.

American Idol Final 7

Contestants Perform Songs of the Cinema

On tonight’s American Idol on Fox, the contestants consulted with Quentin Tarantino to pick out songs from the big screen to perform.


Allison Iraheta started off the night singing Aerosmith’s “I Don't Want to Miss a Thing” which was featured in the Bruce Willis movie, Armageddon. With a very subdued beginning she took her time really getting into the mood that the story of the song sets and then towards the end she built up into a very big ending. I liked her version of the song and I think she’s going to be in the final two of the competition.


Next up was Anoop Desai singing Bryan Adam’s song “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” from the Kevin Costner movie, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Once again he took the safe route by singing this ballad because that’s where he’s received the best feedback from the judges. There were a couple of sour notes, but for the most part he did a fine job, although he wasn’t as bold as Quentin Tarantino had coached him to be, I thought. Sure enough, he got the praise from the judges that he normally gets from ballads but I wasn’t as impressed. I thought it was kind of boring.


Adam Lambert came up next and sang a rocking electronic version of Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” from the Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda movie, Easy Rider. There was plenty of energy in his performance and I liked his spin on the song, although I usually don’t care much for his screeching vocals. If he’s in the final two, I wouldn’t be surprised if the glam band Scissor Sisters performs with him that night because it seems like that will be the kind of music he's going to release. I’m not sure if I’ll be buying this performance this week. I prefer the original version of this song.


Usually when Matt Giraud picks his own songs, they end up not going over well with the judges. In this case, his choice of singing the Bryan Adams song, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” from the Johnny Depp movie, Don Juan DeMarco. I’ve always really liked this song with it’s Spanish-style guitar, but I also really enjoyed Matt’s version that featured piano as the lead instrument. Towards the end I thought his vocals got a little shaky, but all-in-all I thought it was a good choice for a song and a good interpretation of it.


Danny Gokey was next in line to sing a song from the cinema, sans glasses. He chose to sing Lionel Richie’s song “Endless Love” from the Brook Shields movie Endless Love. I was relieved to see him sing a song that didn’t erupt into a peppy pop song like he has done in recent weeks. There’s something that does not impress me with his vocals as much as during the audition weeks. In singing this song so much like the original I couldn’t help comparing his vocals to Lionel Richie and I have to say that I prefer Richie’s version. The harp was a nice touch, but I don’t think he’s the sure-thing to win anymore.


Kris Allen chose to sing a song that I wasn’t familiar with from a movie that I’d never heard of—Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova’s “Falling Slowly” from the movie Once. Without anything to compare it to I really liked the song as if it had been a Kris Allen original. I really like it when they pick obscure songs because then we get the chance to judge the performance for what they’re doing rather than comparing versions. This will probably be a song that I’ll buy this week.


Lil Rounds chose to sing Bette Midler’s song, “The Rose” from the movie, The Rose, which Bette Midler also starred in. For me, this was Lil’s best performance and will most likely justify her continued place in the competition. Finally, she sang a song in a style that wasn’t just a knock off of the original. I really liked it.

With the group winding down, it’s getting harder and harder to predict who will be in the final two and who will be eliminated next so I’ll just say who my favorites and least favorites are and just take it as it comes.

Personally, my favorites in this competition are Allison Iraheta, Matt Giraud and Kris Allen. All of them are singers that I would buy music from. My least favorite tonight was Anoop Desai and I think that he, Matt and Lil will most likely be in the bottom three tomorrow with Anoop being the one we say goodbye to.

TV Review: Heroes, "1961"

NOTE: Watch out for spoilers with a bad mood.

In tonight’s episode of Heroes on NBC, “1961,” Angela Petrelli takes her family on a trip down memory lane, and in the process, reveals to us how the idea for the original “Company” came to be. 

During Angela’s flashbacks, we see how she and her sister Alice were taken to an internment camp where Monhinder’s father, Chandra Suresh was researching people with special abilities, presumably with the intent of learning more about them and possibly finding a cure. In the process we see how Angela became acquainted with Charles Deveraux, Daniel Linderman, and Bob Bishop—the founding members of The Company. We also see that Angela had a younger sister named Alice that she never spoke of who had a newly emerging ability to control the weather.


While the young Angela sneaks off with her new friends to try to figure out how to escape the camp (which is weird because they left the camp to try to figure out how to leave the camp?), Alice was taken to be questioned by Chandra Suresh, and ends up starting a chain of events that ends in the massacre of everyone there except Suresh and Alice.


Back in the present day, Angela is trying to find out why she is dreaming about her sister who she presumed was killed with everyone else. Ultimately she finds Alice living as a hermit nearby because Angela had lied to her and told her that if she stayed there she’d be safe. Upon learning that Angela had lied to her, Alice causes a storm that nearly kills Peter and Mohinder and then disappears before Angela can apologize.

Now that I’ve described what the episode was about, can I now tell you how utterly bored I was by it? Throughout much of it I felt like I was watching a stage play put on by a high school drama department. The dramatic moments were so forced and all they seemed to do was sit around and talk about how they felt about themselves and each other!

Lately there's beginning to be so many holes in this series that it makes it look like they can’t make up their minds on what they want this series to be. In the first episodes of Heroes, Chandra Suresh was a geneticist who was seeking out people with special abilities in order to prove a theory he’d been researching, but we were led to believe that he’d never found anyone except for Sylar. Now, according to tonight’s episode, he was involved in this whole government operation back in the early 60s? 

I know someone will probably say that Charles Deveraux most likely erased his memory that he’d ever seen any of them, but I’d say if that’s true, why didn’t they show it? I’ve often heard, and I believe that it’s true, that in storytelling it’s much better to show than it is to tell. Why save a fact for a later episode for someone like Angela to tell Mohinder, “Oh, by the way, your father didn’t remember any of that because Charles erased his memory.” It would have been much more interesting for that to be shown in tonight’s episode. In my opinion, that's where many recent episodes are falling flat. There has been just too much talking about everything when really they need to be out doing things!

It seems to me that the point of tonight’s episode was to show all of the heroes united and ready to begin a new company but I get so frustrated with all of the starting and stopping that this show is doing. I thought the old company was fine, but they destroyed it. Ok, so now we get Danko hunting down the heroes with Mr. Bennet working on the inside as a double agent as they hunt down the fugitives—good, I’m ok with that… that looks interesting. No wait… now we’re changing it again and now the heroes and Mr. Bennet are uniting against Danko? I really wish they’d make up their minds and give us a while to roll with the plotlines they’re giving us before changing things up again.


I’m having such a love/hate relationship with this show that I don’t know how much longer I’ll stick with it. I really love the premise and I want it to do well and be good but there are just some recurring things that keep driving me nuts. Also, the main reasons to stick with an ongoing story like this are because of spectacle and character drama. Well, the shows lately haven’t been very spectacular and all of the characters are so wishy-washy, whiney, pouty and annoying that I’m having a hard time caring whether or not Peter forgives Nathan, if Claire can trust Mr. Bennet, or if Mohinder can forgive or trust himself. I think I just need a really good dose of Hiro and Ando to lift my spirits.

TV Review: Parks and Recreation

When NBC decided to take a British show called The Office and make an American version of it, they took the script from the British pilot and almost remade it word for word. For every character, there was an American counterpart. For every joke, it was either retold verbatim or it was rewritten for American sensibilities. The success or failure of the pilot for the American version of The Office owed more to the creative power of Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant, who created the British version than it did Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, who interpreted it for American audiences.

What could be credited to Greg Daniels and Michael Schur is the subsequent episodes of The Office that took those British version-inspired characters and relationships and put them into very familiar American workplace situations—making it a show that we Yankees could grow to love and appreciate on it’s own merits.


Now NBC brings us “from the team that brought us The Office” a new show starring Amy Poehler (Saturday Night Live) called Parks and Recreation. This show, entirely created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, attempts to take the Documentary/Comedy format of The Office and transplant it into a city’s government agency with an entirely new cast of characters.

As with any new show, it’s hard to get a real sense of how good this one is going to be by the half-hour pilot, alone, but there’s one thing I noticed as they sandwiched it between two new episodes of The Office in an attempt to gain an audience: there wasn’t much laughter happening in my house caused by Parks and Recreation.

Now, what makes The Office work for me are the familiar situations the characters find themselves in as part of an office. For example, when my friend Derek and I worked in the same office space, we had great fun playing pranks on our co-worker, Shirley. One favorite prank of mine was taking a screenshot of all the windows open on her computer and making that her desktop so when she came back to her desk and tried to click on a window or a folder, nothing would happen because it was just an image and not an actual file. This would make her think her computer was frozen and would then have to restart. She did this a couple of times before we broke it to her that we were playing a joke on her. And so I always get a kick out of the pranks Jim plays on Dwight and secretly wish that I would have thought of that, myself.

Part of my problem identifying with Parks and Recreation was that I’ve never attended a public meeting for city planning before so I just had to assume that the meetings portrayed in last night’s pilot episode would ironically ring true and would be funny if I connected with it.


I must admit, though, that it’s not a total loss. Amy Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope, is in some ways similar to Michael Scott in The Office, but without the crude and brash behavior. She is someone who hasn’t let the city government system suck all the enthusiasm and optimism out of her—much to the chagrin of her co-workers. She is the main subject of a fictional documentary that’s being filmed and she is very aware of being on camera and loves sharing her story with the world. Unfortunately, the camera also see’s everyone else’s lack of enthusiasm and their desire just to put in their time so they can go home.


In the pilot, Leslie Knope conducts a public meeting where community members have the opportunity to air their grievances. During this meeting Ann Perkins (played by Rashida Jones who portrayed Karen, the other woman, in The Office season 3,) who has come to complain about a pit next to her home that was dug by a construction company that promptly went out of business. Ann complains that her worthless (my opinion, not hers) boyfriend accidently fell in the pit and broke both of his legs. Leslie decides that this is her opportunity to make a difference in the world and promptly “pinky promises” to take care of the problem and transform the pit into a park, somehow.

It’s clear that the rest of the 6 episodes that have been produced are going to center around her efforts to get this accomplished. I was amused by the fact that they all celebrated so strongly the permission she got to form a “committee.” Well, isn’t a committee just a body of people that sits around and talks about something but doesn’t actually get anything done? I think she has a long way to go in getting her promise fulfilled.

A slight disconnect with the subject of tonight’s episode, though, is that many of Leslie’s character establishing moments were formed in a very nice park. Doesn’t that go against the idea that this town needs another one? I don’t know, maybe that was the point and it was supposed to be funny, but to me it just seemed a bit clumsy.

I’m not the type of person to bail on a show after the first episode, especially one made by the same people partially responsible for my favorite comedy on television, but I sure hope that Parks and Recreation can find its groove soon or I predict it won’t be around for long.

In case you missed it, you can download the pilot for FREE in HD at iTunes.

TV Review: Lost, "Dead is Dead"

“As long as the dead guy says there’s a reason, then I guess everything’s gonna be just peachy.”

In last night’s episode of ABC’s Lost, “Dead is Dead,” we abandoned the story of the Oceanic survivor’s escapades in the Dharma of the past, and focused on Ben’s story where he professed to be on a mission to pay the Smoke Monster a visit to atone for his sins. I say “professed” because I never had the impression that he was sincere about what he was telling John Locke regarding his intensions on the main island.


As Ben and Locke were interacting, I really enjoyed watching how Locke treated Ben. It was like a parent asking a child if they took a cookie when the parent already knows the answer to the question, but is testing the child to see if he’s going to tell the truth or not. Obviously Ben is a huge liar who is very much interested in preserving his own self-interests, so there were many opportunities for Locke to test him like that.


It was interesting to see a little into Ben’s history from the flashbacks in tonight’s episode, which actually make me feel a little more sympathetic towards him and his ability to have compassion on helpless babies and children. This, of course, informed his actions when they showed him confronting Penny Widmore in his effort to take out his revenge on his nemesis Charles Widmore for killing Ben’s daughter. Upon seeing Desmond and Penny’s son, Charlie come on deck of the ship Ben had a change of heart and couldn’t kill Penny like he intended to. But since he had already non-fatally shot Desmond, Desmond proceeded to beat the living snot out of him. Good boy!


Later in the episode we got to see Ben’s final confrontation with the Smoke Monster who showed Ben his history with his daughter Alex and the reasons he sought revenge on Charles Widmore. I’ve heard the producers of the Lost, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, say that each time they show the monster, they want to reveal a little more about it. Well, I’m not sure that I learned anything more about it this time, but it was interesting to see more and to wonder if the manifestation of Alex immediately afterward was a form that the monster was taking or if it was actually a re-embodied Alex who had come back to warn him not to follow through with his intentions to kill John Locke again.


I am believing more and more that the island definitely does have mystical qualities about it and isn't just some scientific magnetic phenomenon. It'll be interesting to see how satisfying the final explanations about the island are when all is said and done.


So now we see that Benjamin Linus is fated (or doomed) to play second fiddle to the seemingly well-intentioned John Locke, whom it seems that the island has chosen as its new human leader. So, will Ben go against the wishes of Alex and try to kill Locke and regain his leadership position over the others? I guess only time will tell.

TV Review: Lost, "Whatever Happened, Happened"

Being a fan of Science Fiction, you’d think that I’d love stories about time travel, when actually the opposite is true. I’m frequently frustrated when I’m brought through a series challenges and triumphs that the characters are experiencing and something happens to the timeline and everything they had experienced is suddenly wiped away and nobody’s the wiser.

You often see stories like that in Star Trek. I remember one particularly painful episode of Star Trek: Voyager where the ship goes through what was called, “The Year of Hell.” In this year they go through a challenging series of battles and struggles and right up to the brink of destruction when the timeline is changed and everything is reset back to normal and nobody remembers anything about it.

Why this is so frustrating is because one of the reasons to watch a continuing story is to share by proxy the experiences the characters are having. It’s nice to see them grow and change from the beginning of their challenges into different people who become almost like family to us.

This may all seem like a long detour around a short point, but this is one of the reasons I’m loving this season of Lost on ABC. I was initially leery of the introduction of time travel into the story, but I’m a big fan of the theory that they seem to be following that whatever might have happened in the past, actually happened—whether or not they knew they were involved in it—that’s how their present became to be the way it was. Which, by the way, is where this episode got its name, “Whatever Happened, Happened.”


In tonight’s episode we see the immediate after affects of Sayid's shooting of young Ben at the end of last week’s episode. Apparently Sayid had also watched too much Star Trek and thought that he’d be able to kill Ben and erase all of the terrible things that Ben had him do. Not so.

We see too that Jack had also subscribed to the belief that he could allow young Ben to die and that would have prevented his problems as well. It seems to me that in reality, Jack’s refusal to help Ben is exactly what turned him into the heartless person that they all grew to hate. If Jack had done his surgical magic and saved Ben’s life, then Kate and Sawyer never would have taken him to the others for their special brand of voodoo help. Interesting.


Also in this episode’s flashbacks, we see what happened to Kate and what caused her sudden change of heart from refusing to consider returning to the island into another happy passenger on flight 316. It all revolved around Aaron and her decision that he needed to return so she could try to save Claire. That her relationship with Aaron could never be long lasting since there was so much unfinished business left on the island.

I was especially moved during her farewell scene with Aaron. During that scene I grew to respect the writers even more, not just for her character’s growth, bur for the growth of all the characters. It would have been so easy for them to have Sawyer bounce back into pining over Kate and leave Juliet and it would have been easy for Juliet to go back to being the other woman with either Sawyer or Jack, but instead the writers are allowing those 3 years that they spent apart from each other to actually mean something to the characters and to the storyline. It’s a brave thing to do, especially because it’s not looking like we’re going to be liking Jack very much after a while.

This episode left me asking the question, “why had they come back?” According to Kate, she came back to try and save Claire. Sayid thinks that the reason he was there was to kill Ben—which backfired pretty spectacularly—but is there a different reason that we’ll learn soon? I’m sure there is. What about Hurley? I'm sure these are all questions that will be answered in the weeks to come, and as always, there will be more questions presented in the process. I’m confident that this show is only going to continue to get better.

American Idol Final 9, Results Show

Let me start by sharing my opinion about something that I’ve heard people say over the years about American Idol and how more people vote for this show than people vote for the President. Well, let me just throw my 2¢ in the ring by saying that you can only vote for President of the United States once, but I know there are many people who gang up and vote multiple times for their favorites.

Well, tonight there were 36 million votes for contestants I think that Ryan Seacrest was looking for new and creative ways to reveal the results by breaking the 9 contestants into groups of three. The groups were Scott MacIntyre, Danny Gokey and Anoop Desai; Kris Allen, Megan Joy Corkrey and Matt Giraud; and Adam Lambert, Allison Iraheta and Lil Rounds. Right off the bat I would have guessed that the group that was in the bottom three would be Kris, Megan and Matt, but whenever Ryan does something like this it’s because the results go against what would be usual reasonable instinct. At the beginning of the show when Ryan referenced the Judge’s Save and said, “based on last night’s show, the judges might have a tough task ahead of them.” I know Ryan knows who is being eliminated so it made me think that we would be surprised at tonight’s result.

Before we got any further with the results last year’s winner, David Cook, visited the show and sang his new song, “Come Back to Me.” Of all the years of American Idol, last year was my favorite so far and hearing David Cook tonight reminded me why I liked him last year. I may just have to pick up his new album. Good song!

Back to the contestants, it turns out that they weren’t going to eliminate them by the groups that they were divided into and the first contestant declared safe was Kris. Next up was Matt who was not in the bottom three either. But confirming that they weren’t going to eliminate by group, they put Megan in the bottom three.

In the next group they visited, Lil and Adam were safe, but Allison was in the bottom three.

The most obvious safe contestant in the next group was Danny Gokey. I honestly think that either Scott or Anoop could have been in jeopardy, because I don’t think either of them were outstanding last night. And sure enough, Anoop Desai was in the bottom three. I got two of the three of them right.

In order to keep us in suspense a little longer, they brought out Lady Gaga to sing her song, “Poker Face.” I must admit, I’ve never heard of her or this song before. I guess I’m probably the wrong person to be reviewing American Idol if I’m not up to speed on our current idols. All of these piano-playing women like Alicia Keys, Nellie McKay and Norah Jones are really interesting to me, but Lady Gaga was truly a sight to behold—kind of a cross between the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper and Joni Mitchell.

Back from the break, they quickly revealed that Megan Joy Corkrey was the bottom contestant and was ultimately eliminated. From the beginning she was one of my favorites, but she was also terribly unpolished and seemed like she was just winging it most of the time. In some ways that might not have been bad, but she was consistently going down in quality. I’m hoping that we can see more of her in the future but I’m sure it’ll be in smaller more cultish venues.

American Idol Final 9

Ok, so this is a belated review of American Idol, but I had a big project to work on so I didn’t get to watch it until tonight. Thank goodness for Tivo. Anyway, on with the show!

If it wasn’t obvious that American Idol is heavily sponsored by iTunes, it was made sure by last night’s theme of anything that can be downloaded from iTunes, which is virtually anything. So what would you pick if you could choose anything from iTunes? Well, personally my favorite band is Crowded House, so I’d probably look at them first but it probably would be a little too obscure for Idol

Anoop Desai decided to draw from the catalog of Usher for his performance last night of the song, “Caught Up.” For some reason it seemed like he mumbled a lot of the song. Was it just me? I’m not familiar enough with the song to know how much he personalized it, I just had a hard time understanding him.

Megan Joy Corkery picked the great song by Bob Marley, “Turn Your Lights Down Low.” I really love this song but her warbling vocals are starting to wear on me. I don’t know if any song by Marley would be a good choice for the show because even his fast songs are terrifically mellow—not great venues to show vocal prowess.

Danny Gokey decided to sing the Country song, “What Hurts the Most” by Rascal Flatts. As I’ve said before, I’m not a huge fan of Country (at all) but I did like his version of this song. It really suited his style. By the way, he must have a bajillion pairs of glasses and tonight’s pair that he wore look a lot like mine. Nice.

Allison Iraheta sang a song that I thought would be a really good choice for her when she sang “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt. The problem was that she added playing the guitar and it sounded to me like she was distracted with trying to concentrate on the guitar so much that she couldn’t keep a consistent rhythm. Once the music picked up and she was singing only with the band I thought it was much better. Not her best performance, but I think that there were enough stinkers last night that she’ll stick around for a while longer.

I really like the singer/songwriter feel that Scott MacIntyre has, and although I really like Billy Joel for the same reasons I think that his song, “Just the Way You Are” is terribly cliché and has been way overplayed over the years. I’m sure he too will be around for a while, but this wasn’t one of my favorite performances. And honestly, I don’t think his vocals are as strong as his piano playing and I don’t think he’s be around if it was just him.

Matt Giraud sang a fairly new song by The Fray called “You Found Me.” I like The Fray and I like the song, but Matt’s vocals seemed too lazy and mumbled. Once the intensity of the song picked up it got much better, but for some reason tonight’s performances seem like the people just don’t really care—like it’s a competition to get us to vote for the worst.

Lil Rounds gave another somewhat mumbling performance. Was there something wrong with my TV? Usually these people are much better than this, I was quite surprised. But signing Celine Dion’s song “I Surrender” seemed like a good fit for her, but I doubt if that will be the style of music she’ll sing when she gets a recording contract so I think she’s doing herself and her fans a disservice by not showing us who she really is.

Adam Lambert knocked last week’s song out of the park when he sang his toned-down version of “Tracks of My Tears. However I was disappointed, as well as some of my friends, that he didn’t do a studio version of that for purchase on iTunes. I see that he decided to keep channeling Elvis with his looks as he screamed Wild Cherry’s “Play that Funky Music.” The crowd sure seemed to enjoy it but, as always, it left me a little cold. I guess it’s just a personal preference thing.

The last performer of the evening was Kris Allen who I think is one of the most under hyped talents on the show, but I think he’s one of the best. I really enjoyed his version of Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” because he really put his own style on it. I hope that he stays in the competition for quite a while and I hope that he starts getting the attention that he deserves.

Well, that’s it. It’s just mere moments away from learning who will go home tonight, but I’ll go ahead and make my predictions now. I think that the three who are in the greatest danger tonight are Anoop Desai, Megan Joy Corkery, and Matt Giraud. I think Matt Giraud will be declared “safe” first and between the last two I think Anoop Desai will be eliminated. I think he was better than Megan, but I think she shows a little more personality than he does and that might keep her around one more week… but just one.

Movie Review: Monsters vs. Aliens

“This place has been X-filed, wrapped in a cover up, and deep fried in a paranoid conspiracy.”

I laughed pretty hard when I saw the first trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens from Dreamworks so I was expecting an extremely funny movie. While there were quite a few laughs in it, I think that this movie has a lot more heart and story than I was expecting.

The movie begins on Susan Murphy’s (voiced by Reese Witherspoon) wedding day. As she prepares to tie the knot, we quickly see that the groom and his family are not going to be as appealing as she may have thought they would be. Still, she’s convinced that marrying her fiancé Derek Dietl (voiced by Paul Rudd) will make her happy, so she resolves to take the plunge.

Unfortunately, mere moments before her nuptials, she’s hit by a meteor. This puts a damper on her wedding as she begins to glow, and then grow into a 30-foot tall giant.

The military quickly shows up, takes her into custody and locks her away with 4 other monsters they’ve apprehended over the years. First there’s the hilariously brainless, gelatinous mass named B.O.B. (voiced by Seth Rogen), the brainy Dr. Cockroach Ph.D. (voiced by Hugh Laurie), the half-man/half-fish The Missing Link (voiced by Will Arnett), and the gigantic Insectosaurus (voiced by what sounds like Godzilla)


Just like most Dreamworks animated movies, there are plenty of pop-culture references in this flick, but I enjoyed all of them as they played homage to many of the B-movies from years back and often included references to Stephen Spielberg’s movies E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

My least favorite parts of this movie involved the military and government characters. It’s easy to see that the filmmakers don’t have a high opinion of the military and poke fun at them a lot. I especially groaned when they introduced the military leader, General W.R. Monger (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland). Giving a character the name “War Monger” immediately gave me the impression that he was going to be a bad guy, but the total opposite was true so I concluded that it was just bad writing that was just trying to put in digs at anything they didn’t like.


The only other aspect of this movie that I didn’t enjoy relates to the animation. With computer graphic technology improving so much over recent years they can make human characters so realistic with their skin and modeling that I thought the human characters in this movie verged on the creepy side.

Fortunately, the President (voiced by Stephen Colbert) and the other humans in the government don’t take up too much of the movie. Contrary to what the trailers show, the story revolves almost entirely around the character Susan Murphy, who is codenamed Ginormica, and her struggle to become a person who takes charge of her own life and destiny. All while battling an alien invasion led by the dastardly Gallaxhar (voiced by Rainn Wilson).


All in all, I really enjoyed this movie. I would recommend it to anyone who’s up for a fun time, although it wasn’t as full of laughs as I thought it would be, what it lacked in constant hilarity, it made up for with heart. Bear in mind, though, that there are parts that might be seen as inappropriate and even scary for little children—an unfortunately common staple for Dreamworks movies—but nothing was terribly over the top and should be enjoyed by most everyone.

American Idol Final 10, Results Show!

Thrills! Chills! Surprise Endings! And Romance! All on tonight’s exciting results show on Fox’s smash hit American Idol!

Ok, so it wasn’t all that exciting, but after a lot of manufactured tension and suspense, and a measly little 36 million votes, here are the results.

The finalists opened tonight’s show with a Medley of Motown songs which was followed up by a performance by American Idol Season 2 winner, Ruben Studdard. It’s been a while since I’d seen Ruben, but I know he’s been busy in “Ain’t Misbehavin’” with disqualified Idol, Frenchie Davis.

The first contestant declared safe was Adam Lambert (no surprise), but right away we learned that Matt Giraud was the first to be placed in the bottom 3. Shortly after that, Kris Allen and Lil Rounds were declared safe, but Michael Sarver wasn’t, he was also in the bottom 3.

Joss Stone and Smokey Robinson sang a duet of the song, “You’re the One For Me” which conveniently showed up on iTunes today.

Allison Iraheta, Danny Gokey and surprisingly Megan Joy Corkrey were declared safe, while Scott MacIntyre was placed in the bottom 3. Shocker! Scott didn’t stick around with the 3 very long, though as he was quickly declared safe… psych!

To serenade us as we patiently waited for the final results, Motown legend Stevie Wonder came out and sang a few of the songs that terrible American Idol hopefuls have massacred over the years.

Ultimately, I wasn’t surprised at all that Matt Giraud was declared safe and Michael Sarver was the one who had to sing for his life. I also wasn’t surprised that the judges chose not to save him this week. There are only a couple of contestants that I think would be worth saving in that manner, and I don’t think Michael Sarver was one of them.


So what thrills and chills await us next week? Hmm... I'll betcha someone sings well, and someone sings bad, and that bad singer may actually go home! But I've been wrong before.

On another note, if you're at all inclined to purchase the contestant's performances from Apple's iTunes Music Store, you'd better do it before the finale, because if this season is anything like the last one, as soon as the final episode airs, the only songs that will be available will be the ones the two finalists sing. Last year all of the other performances were taken down immediately. Just a "head's up."

TV Review: Lost, "He's Our You"

“A 12-year-old Ben Linus brought me a chicken salad sandwich. How do you think I’m doing?”

Beware of Spoilers!

Tonight’s episode of Lost on ABC started with a flashback that showed Sayid when he was a child doing what his older brother was unwilling to do—kill a chicken. It seems like the message we were to get from this was that he is willing to do what it takes to get things done no matter how cruel it might seem. The next flashback seemed to confirm this because we see an adult Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) hunting down a man and killing him with no more hesitation than he had when he killed the chicken when he was a kid. But in this case he was working for Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson) and we come to learn that Ben sees Sayid as a useful killer, plain and simple. We also learn that Sayid wishes for something different out of life and resents Ben for using him to do his dirty work.

While there were minor brushes with the stories of Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Juliet, most of tonight’s episode, “He’s Our You,” revolved around the interrogation of Sayid by the Dharma Initiative. It’s was funny to see Sayid given a truth serum by the Dharma initiative’s scary interrogator (their version of Sayid—where this episode got it’s name). Funny because, when the true story that the serum brought out was as fantastic as Sayid's was, the only conclusion the interrogator could come to was that he had given Sayid too much of it and it’s making him crazy.


The main dillema presented by this episode was what would Sayid do with young Benjamin Linus once he realized that he was in the past and could possibly have a chance to change the future, and in doing so stop some of the horrible things that he perceives were caused by Ben once he got older.

Would someone who knew what was going on in Germany during World War II, if they were able to go back in time to when Adolf Hitler was a child, would they kill him before he could do the terrible things he did? I believe that the honest answer has to be yes, and I think that it was honest storytelling on the part of the writers to have Sayid, when given the opportunity, pull the trigger and attempt to kill Ben—even though he’s still a young boy. In Sayid’s eyes, this is his “reason” for returning to the island and is an attempt to free himself from the hellish life he’s made for himself.

I said “attempt to kill” because I’m thinking that Ben isn’t really going to be dead and that this event won’t really change anything at all. It’ll be interesting to see what would happen, though, if Ben actually did die. How would that change the circumstances that got them off of the island? Would they have made it back? Will Ben suddenly phase out of existence only to be replaced by Ethan who ends up being the one who does the exact same things?


To answer some of these questions, it’s helpful to look ahead to some of the names of future episodes for clues. Next week’s episode is called, “Whatever Happened, Happened.” This sounds like something Daniel Faraday would say and it makes me think that the creators of the show may be sticking to the premise that, although the characters have traveled back into their own past, they will ultimately be unable to change it.

The following week’s episode, however, is called “Dead is Dead,” which makes me wonder if that’s referring to Ben’s mortal state after Sayid shot him.

3 weeks from now is where looking forward to future episodes stops giving useful clues because that episode is named, “Some Like it Hoth.” Well, we all know that Hoth is the snow planet in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back where the rebellion suffers a terrible defeat at the hands of the Empire. How this refers to the Lost storyline is anyone’s guess. Could it mean another visit to the frozen donkey wheel? Is there going to be an uprising of some kind that will be quickly thwarted? Is this where Jacob, A.K.A. Christian Shepard appears to Jack and says, “I am your father!” Who knows?

For me, all of these questions are why I love this show. So far I’ve been intrigued enough by the questions to keep tuning in and satisfied enough with the answers to be patient and let the show run it’s course naturally. I’m excited to see how all of this plays out!

Movie Review: Knowing

“What happens when the numbers run out?”

What do you do if you know that a devastating disaster is about to occur and where it will happen? Do you make sure that you are far away from the event so you can be kept safe? Or do you try to warn as many people as you can and even try to be on the scene to aid as many victims as possible? What if there is nothing you can do about it? Does knowing about it make it better because at least then you can prepare? Or would you want to be kept in the dark?

These and many other questions are raised in the latest film starring Nicolas Cage entitled, Knowing, which was made by Alex Proyas, who directed one of my favorite films, I, Robot.

Knowing begins 50 years ago, as a new elementary school is about to bury a time capsule. A classroom assignment has all of the children drawing pictures to put into it depicting what they think the future will look like. One oddity is a little girl, Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson), who is inexplicably writing what appears to be random numbers on her paper, which also gets placed into the capsule.


Fast forward 50 years, we see the time capsule opened and Lucinda’s strange paper with the numbers on it finds it’s way into the hands of Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), the son of John Koestler (Nicolas Cage). John takes the paper, and in a surprisingly easy turn of events discovers that the numbers are the dates when a disaster occurred, how many people died and where they happened. What’s disturbing, though, is that the last three dates on the list are in the very near future.

Armed with this knowledge, John has the overwhelming dilemma of what to do with it. How hard should he try to convince people of its truth? Should he warn the people where the disasters are about to occur? Is there any way to stop them?

What follows is a movie filled with mystery and tense, edge of your seat suspense. I had my cell phone in my shirt pocked and jumped in my seat at one point when it vibrated with an email during a suspenseful scene. There were times when the feel of the movie goes from disaster film, to horror flick, but all of it is engaging and, for me, very satisfying.

Since the date of 9/11/01 is the catalyst for John’s deciphering of the numbers, I can’t help but think about the impact that tragic day has had on my ability to watch movies like this.

I remember sitting in the theater in 1996 watching the Will Smith blockbuster Independence Day and being in awe as the alien ships destroyed the cities and important landmarks. I remember being rather charged up by the intensity of it all and then the satisfaction of payback that the rest of the movie brought.

But now, I have a hard time watching that movie. Partly because there are many parts that I’ve come to regard as just plain goofy, but mostly because of the reality of what such destruction can bring which was tragically brought to light when terrorists brought down the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001. I remember the devastation caused by such a sudden and real loss of life and I haven’t been able to watch so-called “disaster movies” with the same air of entertainment since. Before 9/11, occurrences like that were pure fantasy, but now we know that things like that can really happen, and we know the heavy cost that events like that have on our psyche and society.


With all of this in mind, let me say that this movie is not for the faint of heart. There are small, personal dangers that our characters have to deal with, but there are also global crises that loom ever more ominously as the last few dates on the list come and go. Much of what we see in the disaster scenes is very realistic and disturbing to see, but I never felt like it was gratuitous—often those events are also realistically accompanied by acts of heroism and selflessness.


Make no mistake, though, Knowing is definitely Science Fiction and is a metaphor that will be colored by your own religious or philosophical beliefs, but I would suggest that everyone see this movie if for no other reason than to start yourself considering some of these dilemmas for yourself. I will not provide any of my own interpretations in this review because I believe that would detract from your own experience with this movie. 

One message that I did get out of this movie that I will share, though, is that no matter how tragic the situation is that we find ourselves in, if we can somehow find hope, that will make the outcome so much easier to bear.

TV Review: ABC's Lost, "Namaste"

To start things off on tonight's episode of ABC's Lost, we see the crash of Flight 316 from the point of view of the pilot, Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey). Through the course of events we see that the Oceanic Survivors that were on the plane all disappeared except for Sun (Yunjin Kim), and went back in time 30 years to be synched up with Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and the others who are now fully integrated into the Dharma Initiative.


The big question that came out of this opening sequence is why did all of the Oceanic 6 that were on the plane go back in time except for Sun (Yunjin Kim)? Could it be because she wasn’t supposed to return to the island according to John Locke and somehow what Locke wants makes some kind of cosmic difference?


For a while we believe that Sun is going to trust Ben (Michael Emerson) and go with him to the main island until Sun suddenly brains him with an oar from a boat. This is apparently how Ben came to be in the injured state that John Locke found him in at the end of the episode “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.”


Sun and Lapidus make their way to the main island where they see some rustling in the trees shortly after getting out of their boat. They soon come across Jack’s alive-again father, Christian Shephard (John Terry), who tells Sun that she has quite a journey ahead of her because Jin and the rest of her friends are in 1977—hinting that he’s going to set her on a journey to reunite them. What came to my mind after seeing this scene is that perhaps the smoke monster and Christian Shephard are one and the same. It appeared that they found him very shortly after seeing the movement in the trees, and that it might not have been just a coincidence. Just a thought.


In previous seasons of Lost I was getting a little impatient with all of the flashbacks to the character’s past. Now that the series is progressing, we’re not seeing glimpses into their backstories, but instead we’re jumping back and forth in time within the main storyline. For me, this is much more satisfying because they all serve to move the story of their adventures on the island forward. Tonight the flashback was 30 years ago where Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) must put their trust in Sawyer as he successfully integrates them into the Dharma community.


All of Sawyer’s plans go almost exactly how he hopes except for a small hiccup where Kate is almost revealed as an outsider when her name isn’t on the new arrival manifest. She is supposedly “saved” at the last minute by Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), but I think that it was the first sign of hostility that Juliet is going to have for Kate out of protectiveness of her 3 year-old relationship with Sawyer. It’ll be interesting to see if we can continue to trust Juliet now that they’re all back together again.


Probably the least interesting storyline for me tonight was the capture of Sayid (Naveen Andrews). It was impressive to see Sawyer so on top of things and handling all of the situations so well, but I’m afraid that his incarceration is going to last a while and might get kind of tiring.


One interesting revelation from tonight was that Ethan, the Other who worked with Juliet trying to help women give birth on the island, who kidnapped Claire and who was ultimately shot and killed by Charlie Pace was actually the baby that Juliet successfully delivered in the last episode, “LaFleur.”

An interesting new mystery introduced to night is where in the world is Daniel Faraday? During the van ride to the Dharma compound Sawyer reveals that for some reason, Daniel isn’t with them anymore. The only time we saw him in what we think would be this time period is at the beginning of this season where he briefly showed up during the excavation of the “frozen donkey wheel” at the construction of the Orchid Station. Did something happen there that either killed him or removed him from this timeline? I guess only time will tell, eh?

The final scene in tonight’s episode was the inevitable meeting between one of the time-displaced survivors and a young Benjamin Linus (Sterling Beaumon). The lucky survivor who had the joy of his acquaintance is Sayid who ironically was the beneficiary of Ben’s kindness as the 14 (or so) year-old brought him a sandwich. It’ll be interesting to see if this pairing of characters develops into anything in the future.


The episode was named, “Namaste,” which literally means, “I bow to you” in Hindi. It seems like this could inform the future of the relationship between Sawyer and the rest of the Oceanic 815 survivors where it appears that he has found a leadership position for himself where he can make great use of his con artist’s ability to think on his feet.

Lost is a rare show that, at least for me, keeps getting more interesting as they continue to reveal secrets while introducing new mysteries. It has already proven that it’s a very difficult show to predict and I’m looking forward to see what happens next!

American Idol Final 11, Results Show

At the beginning of tonight’s American Idol on Fox, Ryan Seacrest teased us by saying that tonight’s results “may shock you.” The thing is, though, that I think they are all so good, that any of them could go at any time, really.

The contestants began the night performing the song, “T-R-O-U-B-L-E” by Travis Tritt. I was amazed by how in sync they all were with the fast lyrics of the song. Having that many people sing at the same time, it would be easy for it to end up being an unintelligible mush. So either they were amazingly well rehearsed or they weren’t really singing it.

After 31 million votes, here’s how it all went down. After a lot of chitchat, the first contestants declared safe were Danny Gokey, Lil Rounds, and Anoop Desai. The first revealed to be in the bottom three were Allison Iraheta and Michael Sarver. I’m actually surprised that Allison was in the bottom three, but I’m not surprised that Michael was; in my opinion his was the weakest from last night.

Brad Paisley then came out and performed his song, “Then.”

Scott MacIntyre was then declared safe which wasn’t very surprising either. Then Megan Joy (are they dropping her last name, Corkrey?), Matt Giraud, and Kris Allen were all declared safe in short order. Then it came down to the final two contestants, Alexis Grace and Adam Lambert of which, the bottom three position went to Alexis. Bummer.

I have to say that I agree with Simon that Adam’s performance of “Ring of Fire” was ridiculous.

Allison Iraheta was the first of the bottom three finalists revealed to be safe. Then they left us to wonder who was being eliminated while was watched a duet from Randy Travis and Carrie Underwood as they sang, “I Told You So."

So, after Ryan got the judges to admit that they would consider using their save on one of the bottom two contestants, Ryan revealed that the person eliminated tonight is Alexis Grace. This was a big surprise to me! In an act of what I thought was utter cruelty, they made her sing while they deliberated whether or not to use their save on her. Once she was done singing the judges quickly revealed that they would not be saving her tonight. I'm sure they're waiting to use the save for when America comes to their senses and votes Adam out so they can keep him around for a while longer. Ugh.

Actually, referring to Ryan's tease at the beginning of tonight's episode, I am quite shocked. Although her performance last night wasn't one of the better ones, I thought overall she was one of the stronger contestants. I guess it's bound to happen to almost all of them, so I'll get over it.

Now that Country night is out of the way, I'm looking forward to the coming weeks. I think it'll only get better! Next week, because President Obama is speaking, American Idol will be on Wednesday and Thursday. See you then!

American Idol Final 11

The theme for tonight’s show is the music of The Grand Ole Opry as coached by Country Music star, Randy Travis. Anyone who has watched the show over the years will know that Simon Cowell has a particular dislike of Country Music so it was interesting to see how objective he could be or if he would let his musical preferences cloud his judgment. I don’t really care for Country Music either, so I wasn’t optimistic about finding much joy in tonight’s performances.

Michael Sarver started off the night singing Garth Brooks’ “Ain’t Going Down (Til The Sun Comes Up),” which I thought should have been a no-brainer big hit for him. The problem is, I think he had to struggle so hard to focus on the lyrics that he was having a hard time walking and singing at the same time. I remembered back to when Josh Gracin sang this same song a few seasons back and knocked it out of the park. I don’t think Michael’s version had the energy that particular song needs and I’m actually thinking it might have put him in jeopardy.


I don’t think that Country is going to be the style of music Allison Iraheta will perform when she inevitably ends up with a recording contract, but with that said; I think she’d be very successful as a country singer judging by tonight’s performance of “Blame it On Your Heart” by Patti Loveless. I think she secured her position for one more week in the finals, but I know I’ll enjoy her more when she’s back to singing her standard Rock songs.


It was nice to hear Kris Allen sing the very nice country ballad “To Make You Feel My Love” without the country twang that Garth Brooks sang it with. Kris Allen was able to sing it as a nice, easy pop ballad. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of him as well.


In her interview, Lil Rounds said that she wasn’t going to sing Martina McBride’s “Independence Day” in Lil’s regular R&B style but that she was going to “honor the Country genre.” I think this was a mistake. I couldn’t help but think that, instead of making the song her own like Kris just did, she sang something that sounded a little more like karaoke and it didn’t show off her natural skills. A little slow and plodding in the beginning, and hard to get into. I don’t think it’s a good idea to try and show that R&B isn’t the only thing you can do if you don’t do the other stuff very well. I’m assuming that she’s built up enough of a fan base from previous weeks that she’ll be here again next week, but that probably wouldn’t be the case if this was the first performance we were seeing from her.


Adam Lambert’s interpretation of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” definitely lives up to the whole glamour rock feel that he’s been giving off lately as he reached deep into the song to pull out drama that didn’t exist there in the first place. Personally, I really didn’t like it and I can’t imagine that the majority of America is going to like it either. The judges sure seem to love just about everything that he does, but I’d really like to get an idea of how many people in America actually like him, or if it’s all just manufactured hype. I’m hoping that he doesn’t last as long in the competition as they’re setting him up to.


I’m not familiar with “Wild Angels” by Martina McBride so I don’t have any way to compare it to the original. What I can say about it is that I appreciate how Scott MacIntyre performed it in such a way that I can easily see it showing up on an album he would release, which I’m sure I would go out and buy. I love his piano playing and singing and I hope he’ll go far.


For me, Brooke White sang my favorite version of “Jolene” that I’ve ever heard so I found myself comparing Alexis Grace to Brooke more than Dolly Parton. Of all the songs she’s done this season, this was probably the least interesting for me. In my opinion, it’s a more tender song that didn’t really warrant some of the extra drama she tried to add to it. In this case, I’m hoping that her past success will outshine this dud and keep her in for a few weeks more.


I’m going to check my Man Card at the door now and say that Danny Gokey’s version of Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus Take The Wheel” gave me shivers. I’ve heard the title of the song before, but I’ve never actually listened to the song. I really liked the feeling that he sang the song with and the power that he sang the chorus with. He sure has a special talent for singing earnest ballads; it’ll just be interesting to see if he can ever really pull of a faster pop song.


I’m more familiar with Elvis Presley’s version of “Always on My Mind” than I am Willie Nelson’s or Johnny Cash’s, so that was the version I was thinking of as I was listening to Anoop Desai’s performance. I liked the restraint that he showed in the way he sang it without trying to color it up with a lot of decorating the notes. As I’ve said before, I really like it when the contestants sing the songs in ways that don’t compare to the original, and I think that tonight he really stood out. I just hope that the stinky performance from last week doesn’t spill over into this week and get him booted off.


“Walking After Midnight” Patsy Cline. In a lot of ways Megan Joy Corkrey reminds me of the lead singer from the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Katharine Whalen, and tonight she really cemented that association in my mind when she sang Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight.” I’d like to see what Megan would do with a pure Jazz or Swing song and I hope that we’ll be seeing enough of her to find out.


Matt Giraud’s rendition of Carrie Underwood’s “So Small” was my favorite performance of the night. I love his singer/songwriter piano player style that he has which reminds me of Elton John, Marc Cohn or Joshua Kadison. I also can’t help but compare him with Scott MacIntyre, which I thought Matt’s performance was the better of the two. He had more power and feeling in his vocals than Scott. He’s pretty consistently good and I hope he’ll be around for a long time.


In my opinion, the bottom three should be Michael Sarver, Lil Rounds and Adam Lambert. My votes tonight are for Scott MacIntyre, Allison Iraheta and Matt Giraud. My choice for elimination tomorrow is Michael Sarver, which is weird because you’d think he would have shone with tonight’s Country theme.

Movie Review: Race to Witch Mountain

Disney has a recent tradition of taking their older, more dated, properties and making newer versions with mixed results. For the most part they are commercial successes, but I can’t say that I’ve seen any of them that I prefer to the original. It’s probably because I grew up watching and enjoying the originals and I can’t help but compare them. Also it’s probably because most of them star Lindsay Lohan, and it didn’t take me long at all to get tired of seeing her everywhere. Fortunately, in addition to being completely Lohan-free, Disney’s new version of Escape to Witch Mountain, renamed Race to Witch Mountain, is an extremely entertaining and very fun ride!

As it began, Race to Witch Mountain first grabbed my attention by the intense opening credits, which featured a montage of fuzzy UFO sighting video edited together with audio clips of people describing their encounters. The pace of the credits got me interested in the film and hoping that the rest of the movie would be just as exciting.


The story begins as the U.S. Government tracks a UFO as it crash lands in the desert just outside of Las Vegas. Agents are quickly on the scene, led by Henry Burke (Ciarán Hinds), and they soon realize that there were two beings on the ship who most likely resemble human beings, and the agents begin tracking their movements into the city.

Meanwhile, Jack Bruno (Duane “The Rock” Johnson) is a man with a troubled past who is trying to make a clean living as a taxi driver who shuttles people to and from the airport in “Sin City.” After a few brief examples of what his life is like we swing right into some exciting chase scenes as Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig) appear in his taxi offering him $500,000 to take them into the middle of nowhere in the desert. From this moment on there were enough car chases, special effects and humor to keep me interested through to the very end.

Along the way they run into Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino) who is a scientist who has massacred her career by her persistent professing of her belief in extra-terrestrial life. I was entertained by the scenes that introduced her character as she tried to talk serious science to a group of costumed sci-fi fans that were attending the UFO convention where she was presenting. Her coming together with Jack, Sara and Seth at the convention and the antics that facilitated their escape from their pursuers were some of the best parts of the movie for me.


While I really liked this movie, there were a couple moments that struck me as weaknesses. The first was the introduction of the mafia-type thugs who show up and try to bring Jack to see the big boss-man. This is a story thread that I didn’t think went anywhere and only served as a device to make a couple of minor things happen. The whole sub-plot could have easily been jettisoned in my opinion.


Another thing that distracted me was that immediately after Jack and the kids get finished fighting an alien bounty hunter. called a Siphon, and then narrowly escape being pursued by the same bounty hunter who chases them in a space ship, Jack has an bafflingly hard time believing Sara when she tells him that they are from another planet! I thought that the point for him to abandon his disbelief was back when the seemingly indestructible Siphon first fired his Boba Fett-style wrist rockets.

There was another moment that I thought was going to disappoint me, but when it didn’t finish the way I was expecting it to, it only made me enjoy the movie even more. Like I wrote in an article about bad foreshadowing a few years back, whenever a trusted character in a movie tells the protagonists not to trust anyone, we usually see by the end of the movie, that the person they were weren’t supposed to trust is usually that same “trusted character” who says something like, “didn't I tell you not to trust anyone?” Two movies that do this are Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Minority Report (both Steven Spielberg movies, hmm). Well, all I can say is when a particular character in this movie said, “don’t trust anyone,” I actually groaned because I thought for sure this was setting him up to be a traitor in the end. To my surprise it didn’t turn out at all the way I was expecting it to, and I really enjoyed what they ended up doing with the character.

I was happy to see the two grown-up stars from the original Escape to Witch Mountain, Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, in small parts as people who lend them helping hands in a restaurant.

In many ways I don’t think that the marketing for this movie did it justice. I don’t know what I was expecting out of it, but I sure wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. The nice thing about this movie is that I never felt like I was patiently sitting through a kids movie waiting for the credits, but I also never thought that I was watching a show that was too mature for my 9 and 11 year old daughters who were sitting with me. The director, Andy Fickman, did an excellent job of making a well-rounded piece of entertainment that all ages will enjoy. Definitely a movie I would recommend and very much worth watching in the theater.

American Idol Final 13, Results Show

Tonight on American Idol they introduced a new twist to the competition. Probably in response to the times when contestants like Jennifer Hudson are eliminated, much to the surprise of the judges. Now the judges are given one opportunity this season to save a contestant from elimination. Since they can only do it only once per season, it'll be interesting to see who they decide to save.

Well, I couldn't have been more wrong about my predictions. I didn't think that Megan Joy Corkery or Anoop Desai (two of my personal favorites) had a chance of staying in the competition, but they were both safe from elimination this week. Instead, I was surprised that Jasmine Murray and Jorge Nuñez were sent packing.

I can't say that I'm upset by the results. As I've said before, this is an extremely strong group of contestants. While I have my own personal favorites, there are are only a couple that I can't imagine winning the whole competition.

So next week we'll be hearing from Adam Lambert, Alexis Grace, Allison Iraheta, Anoop Desai, Danny Gokey, Kris Allen, Lil Rounds, Matt Giraud, Megan Joy Corkrey, Michael Sarver, and Scott Macintyre. My favorites are Alexis, Allison and Scott. Who are your favorites? Who do you think will be heading home next week?

American Idol Final 13

At the beginning of tonight’s American Idol on Fox, we learned that two finalists will be eliminated tomorrow. This will get them back on track with the episode count to finish out the season on time.

Tonight they sang the music of Michael Jackson, which gave them some good music to draw from, but I think that with as much of an iconic singer as Jackson is, they really needed to do whatever they could to make the songs their own and remove any resemblance to the original, or else they’d pale by comparison.

There is no doubt that Lil Rounds can sing really well, but her version of “The Way You Make Me Feel” just seemed to me to be the female version of a Michael Jackson song, and I didn’t really hear anything in it that made it different or better than the original. I wasn’t as amazed by it as most of the judges were but I’m sure it’ll be enough to keep her around for a while longer.


I’ve never heard “Keep the Faith” before, but I definitely loved it as sung by Scott MacIntyre. He’s definitely in his element when he can play the piano and sing—it made him so much better than he was in previous weeks. So far I’d say he’s my favorite of the season. I totally disagree with Simon who thought the contestants should pick songs more familiar to the audience. I love it when they sing more obscure songs because then we’re not comparing it so much to the original and we can just enjoy how they’re singing it.


In the beginning I thought Danny Gokey was going to change “PYT” into one of his standard, earnest ballads, but when the music picked up and he went more in tempo with the beat of the original, I was much more interested. It was good to see a more active side of him. Although the song was not as vocally a challenging as one of his ballads, but he did great with the melody that was there and he showed that he’s a very good stage performer.


I think Michael Sarver will appeal to the country fans and that might keep him in the competition longer, but I don’t think his vocals on “You Are Not Alone” were up to par with the first three contestants and I don’t think he’ll make it much longer than maybe a few more weeks at most.


Jasmine Murray sang “I’ll Be There” complete with original Jackson 5 era harpsichord, which was an element that I very much enjoyed. I liked how her version of the song harkened back to the original more than Mariah Carey’s version. Also, I thought this was a very appropriate song for her age as well.


Kris Allen’s vocals were very good, but it sounded like his guitar wasn’t plugged in properly and so there was this odd, out of tune, strumming that seemed to be creeping into his vocal mike that I found a little distracting. I thought that if he was going to play the guitar, I wish he would have done a more acoustic version of the song instead of the R&B version with an acoustic guitar along with it. I hope to see him go far because I like him, but I don’t think he was the best performer of the night.


Allison Iraheta’s version of “Give in to me” sounded absolutely nothing like a Michael Jackson song, which for me was a great thing! I absolutely loved her performance. She definitely made the song her own and in my opinion that was the stand out performance of the night. I hope to see her around for a long time.


My wife’s favorite, Anoop Desai sang a song that I was hoping nobody would attempt, “Beat It.” It’s so iconic that unless you’re totally changing it like David Cook did with “Billy Jean” last year, the best it could be is really good karaoke. It didn’t show his vocals at all. Against such strong competition, I’m afraid that this might be the last night he’s here.


I love the sound of Jorge Nuñez’s voice and the little effects that his accent gives to his pronunciations as he sang “Never Can Say Goodbye.” In my opinion this was definitely one of the strongest vocals of the night. I think he’ll be around for a while.


Probably one of the strangest song choices a contestant could have chosen to sing tonight, apart from “Ben” is “Rockin’ Robin,” but I can’t say that it didn’t fit Megan Joy Corkrey’s personality. The song only has about a 5 note range so it’s not the most vocally challenging song, but she was able to add her own trademark quirks to it. I like her a lot, but I’m afraid her fun personality probably isn’t enough to keep her in the competition.


Adam Lambert is way too glamour rock for me. Oddly enough, I thought that his version of “Black and White” with his high singing voice seemed to be the closest to Michael Jackson that we heard tonight. It was as if Michael Jackson and Axel Rose had a child and his name is Adam Lambert. I don’t know if his style just doesn’t suit me or if I just haven’t connected with him yet, but he’s not my favorite. I’m sure he’s many other people’s favorite, so he’ll be around for a while. And when Paula Abdul stands up and dances during their songs she looks like the lone drunk girl at the party.


Generally I like it when the contestants can perform with instruments. They usually seem a bit more connected to the song. Vocally Matt Giraud seemed to be singing “Human Nature” like Michael Jackson did an awful lot, but I much prefer Matt's voice to Jackson’s. I thought it was a really very good performance, but I don’t know how strong he’ll seem when compared to some of the other powerhouses who performed tonight.


Alexis Grace really took the judge’s advice from the initial tryouts literally when they told her to “dirty it up” a bit by singing “Dirty Diana.” I really like the harder, more rocking, blues version of this song. I really think—and hope—she’ll be around for a while, and I think that when comparing her to the other performers tonight, she’ll definitely be safe for another week.


One thing I just realized about American Idol is that it gives people the opportunity to be discovered who are in situations where the normal path to stardom really wouldn’t be a reasonable option. Normally people with families just trying to get by, like Lil, Megan and Alexis, wouldn’t have a chance in the world of being discovered in their normal lives. It kind of makes me respect the show a little more.

I actually think that the weakest performances of tonight all came from the 4 Wild Cards picked from last week. I think the two contestants in real danger of going home tomorrow are Megan Joy Corkrey and Anoop Desai.

The Amazing Race, "It Was Like a Caravan of Idiots"

The Amazing Race, on CBS, is one of the most energetic and exciting shows on television. I don’t usually become very enthusiastic about what you might call “reality” shows. But when The Amazing Race is on, I enjoy every minute of it, and when it’s off, I get nostalgic for it and anticipate its return.

So far, this season hasn’t failed to please. It started off with the standard breakneck pace that typifies every season. It’s common on this show for some competitors who appear to be extremely athletic and able to fall behind because of stupid mistakes. Often they choose one task at a Road Block—which is a choice between two tasks—and after struggling for a while make the error of quitting that task to go and do the other.


This mistake of second-guessing tasks is what happened in tonight’s episode where the diminutive team, Mark and Michael, were in the top 3 teams with a huge lead over the remaining 5. In the middle of their Road Block challenge in Siberia, their stack of wood collapsed, making them have to start over. Instead of bucking-up and fixing it, they abandoned the task and went to do the other challenge, which ended up leaving them even more confused. All of these problems caused them to fall from the first group of 3 teams with a huge lead down to the second. Mark and Michael saved from elimination only because one of the most athletic teams, Kris and Amanda had been given a “U-Turn,” which meant they were forced to go back and complete the other task also in the Road Block.

Among the competitors this season, my favorites are mother and son team Margie and Luke. Luke is a totally deaf young man who communicates solely by American Sign Language and does not read lips. If anyone was under the impression that deaf people are any less capable of performing any task, Luke is definitely one to prove them wrong.

The Amazing Race’s host, Phil Keoghan, who has learned how to use sign language to tell Luke their standing in the race when they reach each pit stop, also particularly impresses me. I’m sure for logistics of the show, it made sense for him to do it that way, but they could have just as easily left it up to Luke’s mom to tell him what place they were in. Phil impresses me as probably one of the nicest hosts on TV. Actually, the first year they were nominated for and won an Emmy, I found his email address on his personal site and sent him an email congratulating him and telling him that I hoped to see more seasons. He actually responded to me, thanking me and saying that he was hoping for more seasons as well. It always impresses me when someone takes time to communicate with a random fan like that.

For me, The Amazing Race is much more than just a reality show—it’s like a sporting event. It isn’t as much about social dynamics as it is about skill, luck, and levels of sportsmanship. It’s the only game/reality show that I’ve seriously considered applying for. Who knows… maybe next season?

TV Review: Lost, "LaFleur"

“The record is spinning again, we’re just not on the song we want to be on.”

How a show can keep changing up the circumstances so much and yet remain the most engaging storyline on TV I’ll never know, but such is the case with ABC's Lost. I really like the fact that they are now in a different era on the island and we’re just picking up the story from here and running with it. The quote above from Daniel Faraday definitely does not reflect my sentiments. This is definitely the song I want to be on!



When tonight’s episode of Lost started and we caught a glimpse of the giant statue which we presume has 4 toes, all I could say was, “holy crap!” Unfortunately John Jocke’s fixing of the frozen donkey wheel shot the castaways forward to a different time so we aren’t going to learn any more about the statue, for now. Where that flash did place them was into a period when the Dharma Initiative was in full thrust in the mid 1970s. Skip 3 years later and we see that our little group of Oceanic survivors has integrated quite well into the organization and Sawyer is in a position of authority and is know by the name LaFleur.

Through a series of flashes back and forth in time, we learn that Sawyer and Juliet develop a love for each other. The guy that Locke saw in the woods building the cabin that he would later find Jacob in, was the leader of the Dharma initiative, and that something must have happened on the island to make it impossible for women to survive childbirth.

I’m starting to feel bad for Juliet who seems doomed to play the part of “The Other Woman”—which, incidentally, was actually the title of an episode about her from last season—especially because at the end of tonight’s episode, we see the reunion of Jack, Hurley and Kate with Sawyer and Jin and it appears that Sawyer still has eyes for Kate.

Lost has once again established itself as my favorite drama on television. No other show is brave enough to introduce as many twists and turns as this one, or smart enough to pull them off and not make it look like they’re loosing focus or grasping at straws. This is truly a one of a kind show.

American Idol Results Show, Group 3

Tonight’s results show began with the group doing a peppy job singing Katy Perry’s “Hot and Cold.” It looked like the created choreography for it that would accommodate Scott MacIntyre’s sight impairment that allowed him to remain sitting throughout the number. It seems like a sensible solution.

Lil Rounds was the first contestant reviewed and the first one through to the top 12. She was very good last night so it’s no surprise that she’s through. There were so many other good performers that it was to be hard to predict the rest.

I wasn’t shocked, though, when Arianna Afsar, Taylor Vaifanua, Alex Wagner-Trugman, and Kendall Beard were eliminated in short order. Neither was I surprised when Scott MacIntyre was the second one through to the top 12. He deserves it and I’m sure we’ll see him around for quite a while.

Next up were Nathaniel Marshall and Kristen McNamara and they were both the next ones down. No surprises there.

The Felicia Barton and Von Smith were both up and both of these guys were singers that I really enjoyed last night. So I was disappointed that neither of them were chosen, but that left Ju’not Joyner and Jorge Nuñez, so this was a hard two to decide between as well. I was happy that Jorge Nuñez made it through.

That leaves the Wild Card show tomorrow (Thursday) where only 8 will be performing for the final 3 spots on the final 12. There are a few that I really like so I’m looking forward to this coming show. The Wild Cards are:

• Von Smith
  
• Jasmine Murray
  
• Ricky Braddy
  
• Megan Joy Corkrey
  
• Tatiana Del Toro (oh, brother.)
  
• Matt Giraud
  
• Jesse Langseth
  
• Anoop Desai
  

Well, dang. There are a few that I was hoping would be on this show that aren’t there. Oh well, hopefully those who were picked will make better choices.

American Idol Top 36, Group 3

This was a really good night for the contestants. So many good vocals that I think a majority of the Wild Card show will be filled with people from this group. Here are my thoughts with my predictions.

Tonight’s festivities began with 22-year-old Von Smith’s rendition of “The Better Part of Me” by Marvin Gaye. He definitely has a good voice and marketable looks. I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes it through to the next round—he’s really very good and this was a breakout moment for him. If this were one of the earlier weeks I’d have said he’d be one of the three to go to the finals, but I’m hoping he’ll at least be a Wild Card.

Taylor Vaifanua neither looks nor sounds like she’s 17 years old. I found her walking around while she sang “If I Ain’t Got You” by Alicia Keyes a little distracting. It was like she had to punctuate every word with a step. I thought her vocals were ok, but I don’t think the song was a good choice because it wasn’t anything that could show any personality. I don’t think she’ll be going any farther.

Wow, Alex Wagner-Trugman really tried to liven up a slow swing song “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” by Elton John, in all the wrong ways. It was kind of fun to see and I think his personality showed through, but I didn't like the grunting and growling. I’d like to see him go farther because he’s funny but I think that this group of capable contestants probably just killed any chance of him progressing.

In choosing “The Winner Takes It All” by Abba, I think Arianna Afsar took a song that was too mature for her and then added too many vocal improvisations to try to liven it up. In doing so it looked more like she was singing it in a school play than in a national professional singer competition. I don’t think she’s ready to go any farther.

Ju'Not Joyner’s sensitive rendition of “Hey There Delilah” by Plain White T’s really impressed me. I like how he slowed it down into a very nice and soulful ballad. I like how he personalized it in his own style the way the David Cook would take songs in the rocker direction. I really liked it and I hope that we’ll see him in either the top 12 or having another chance as a Wild Card.

Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” is one of my favorite songs so I was interested to see what Kristen McNamara would do with this slower blues. To me, this song is mostly about feeling a vibe as it starts out slow and then gradually builds more power before the song ends. On a show like American Idol, I don’t think the 2 minute song length limit gives a performer enough time to make an impact with a song like this. The melody itself isn’t all that difficult so she had to liven it up quite a bit to make it impressive enough for the show. I’m not sure if the things she did to it were enough to make it all that memorable. I liked her in the audition weeks, but I’m thinking if she doesn’t make it to the Wild Card round, this is probably the end of the line for her.

The problem with Nathaniel Marshall’s presentation of “I Would Do Anything For Love” was that it was so much like Meatloaf’s version that I couldn’t help but compare his vocals to the original and I don’t think he was anywhere near as good. He’s also one of those contestants like Tatiana Del Toro… memorable for all the wrong reasons. I suppose that there may be some weird 80s throwback niche that really digs him and tries to vote him through, but I’m guessing that this is the end of the road for him.

At the end of Hollywood week, Joanna Pacitti was told that she had made it through to the finals, but the day after that episode aired, Fox announced that Joanna wasn’t eligible to continue in the competitions, presumably because of her record deals. So they brought back eliminated Felicia Barton in to take her place. I really like Felicia’s comeback story, but “No One,” by Alicia Keyes, really didn’t do anything for me. She had very good vocals, but the song seemed to be ramping up the whole time and never really got interesting. Wild Card is probably the most we can hope for her right now which if she ended up making it past that and then far into the final 12, then THAT would be an incredible underdog story.

I expected Scott MacIntyre to be saved to be the last performer tonight because of his inspirational story. His performance of “Mandolin Rain” by Bruce Hornsby really seemed to fit in with the style of music that I’d expect from him—although he sounded a little more pitchy and awkward than I expected him to. I wish that he could have had a keyboard in front of him because I’m sure he would have been indisputably the best of the night. Either way, I expect him to be one of the 3 that goes right into the top 12 tomorrow.

Kendall Beard’s version of “This One’s For The Girls” by Martina McBride was too much like the original song. I know that if I wanted to hear it again, I could just go buy the single. I’d have no reason to buy her music. I’m thinking that unless all the country folk vote her in just because she’s country, this will be the end of the road for her too.

It’s probably Jorge Nuñez’s Latin heritage that makes me think this, but I often think of Jon Secada when I hear him sing. Which isn’t a bad thing because I really like Jon Secada. He did a really good job singing “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down” by Elton John—accent and all. I expect him to make it through to the next round.

I have to admit something here, contemporary R&B really isn’t my kind of music, but it has populated so many of the previous seasons of American Idol so I’m sure Lil Rounds singing “Be Without You” by Mary J. Blige will be plenty to get her through to the top 12. She is very likable and talented, so don’t think I’m saying she wouldn’t deserve it, but If I was basing my pick for the winner on whose albums I’d buy, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be voting for her.

So my three picks to move through to the final 12 are Von Smith, Scott MacIntyre and Lil Rounds with Ju'Not Joyner, Felicia Barton and Jorge Nuñez as the Wild Cards for next week.

Movie Review: Beverly Hills Chihuahua

When Disney's Beverly Hills Chihuahua came out in the theaters a few months ago I wasn’t very excited to see it, but my 10-year-old daughter loves dogs and nearly fainted with ecstasy when she saw the trailers—so off we went.

The movie was a bit different from what I was expecting from the trailers, which amused me with their “Dog Revolution” themes. Instead the story is about a pampered Beverly Hill’s Chihuahua, Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) whose owner, Aunt Viv (Jamie Lee Curtis) has to go away on business and leaves her prized pet in the care of her irresponsible niece, Rachel (Piper Perabo). Rachel’s friends soon coerce her into a road trip down to Mexico and in the process of it all, Chloe ends up getting lost south of the border.

What follows is a frequently funny mismatched buddy movie as she teams up with the reluctant Delgado (voiced by Andy Garcia), who is a washed-up police dog without a home. Meanwhile, Papi (voiced by George Lopez), a hunky Chihuahua who belongs to Aunt Viv’s gardener and is madly in love with Chloe accompanies his owner to Mexico in an effort to rescue his love.

One technical issue that probably annoyed only me, is that I'm not a fan of the animation of animal mouths that started in the 1990s with the movie Babe. I was just as entertained by the dogs and cat in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey even though we never saw their mouths move once. It was the writing and the editing that made that movie as touching as it was and it's also what makes Beverly Hills Chihuahua so endearing. It would be just as good without the animated speech of the animals.

With all of the unmanliness of watching a movie about tiny, fancy, talking dogs aside, I found this movie very entertaining. In many ways it reminded me of the wholesome movies that Disney made years back, like The Shaggy Dog, That Darn Cat!, or even The Apple Dumpling Gangor Pete's Dragon. There were, of course, all of the standard formulaic elements that get tiring in some movies, but I always feel I have to remind myself when watching movies like this that are made primarily for kids, that they are are playing to an audience that hasn't already been jaded by seeing the same formulas play out again and again.

I'd recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys comedies about animals. It's nowhere near as annoying as the movie from a few years ago, Cats & Dogs, but it actually has quite a lot of charm.

Beverly Hills Chihuahua is available today on DVD and Blu-ray and is also available for download on iTunes. Don't forget to download the catchy theme song, "Chihuahua," while you're at it.

TV Review: NBC Heroes, "Exposed"

Tonight on NBC’s Heroes:

• Sandra Bennett (Ashley Crow) stops playing the gullible, only concerned about her dog, doormat and helps her Claire’s (Hayden Panettiere) fugitive friend, Alex (Justin Baldoni) get away from the government agents parked outside. 

• Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) and Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) follow their noses through Building 26 and find out where Daphne “The Speedster” Millbrook (Brea Grant) is only to have Matt captured in the process. 

• Sylar (Zachary Quinto) wanders down memory lane in an abandoned diner to learn that his father apparently sold him to someone there and then killed his mom for objecting. 

• Peter almost gets himself killed for believing that the government will, in fact, negotiate with terrorists, and afterwards gets shot shortly before being rescued by his flying brother, Nathan. 

• And Matt becomes the fulfillment of his own painted prophecy as the man standing on the National Mall with a bunch of explosives strapped to his body.
  

What I really liked about tonight's Heroes is that everyone became active again instead of just sitting around bickering about this and that. Heroes is the most exciting when the heroes are out doing something and not just trying to deal with their inner angst.

I really like that we’re seeing in Claire’s mom more of what we saw earlier in the series when she was actually out taking risks with Claire. It was frustrating for me to see her at the beginning of this volume looking as if she’d had her mind wiped once again by the Haitian. I hope to see more of her taking charge of this modern day “Underground Railroad.”

I think it’s funny that they picked an actor to portray Claire’s fugitive, Alex, who can breath underwater, someone who looks a lot like Olympic swimmer, Michael Phelps. Oh, that’s right… the 2008 Summer Olympics were on NBC this year. Maybe NBC is still trying to ride his wave.

I’m happy that it looks like we’re finally going to ditch the annoying kid, Luke (Dan Byrd), who’s been tagging along with Sylar. One problem is, I didn’t see anything that happened in their little meeting in the diner that made me think that Sylar had any better idea where to find his dad. If anything, I think he’d want to hang on to the little creep a little longer since he still seems to be the only one who knows how to find Sylar’s evil Daddy. I just hope that when Sylar finally tracks down his dad, that it won’t culminate in an epic talk-off.

Finally, who is this mysterious “Rebel” who keeps offering insider tips to the heroes on the run and who facilitated the happy reunion between Claire and Eric “The Puppetmaster” Doyle (David H. Lawrence XVII). My guess, and hope, is that “Rebel” is Claude (Christopher Eccleston), the character from season one who can make himself invisible and tutored Peter initially on how to control his powers. He was a cool character and it would be great to see him return.

American Idol Results Show, Group 2

Well, tonight’s the night we found out who the second group of 3 will get to proceed into the finals on Fox’s American Idol. After 25 million people voted, here are the results:

The show began with the group performing “Closer” by Ne-Yo. They did a really good job, but for some reason I kept watching Nick “Norman Gentle” Mitchell and it looked like he was lost—as if he hadn’t attended any of the rehearsals… weird.

The first contestants to receive the results were Allison Iraheta, Jesse Langseth and Matt Breitzke. It doesn’t really come as a surprise that Allison Iraheta would be the one out of these three into the top twelve.

Between Kris Allen, Megan Joy Corkrey, Matt Giraud, and Jeanine Vailes I was hoping that the next finalist into the 12 would be Megan but I did actually enjoy Kris Allen’s performance too, so when he made it through to the top 12, I can’t say I was disappointed. I am expecting Megan to be one of the Wild Cards in two weeks.

Brook White came on at ‘half time’ to perform her newly released single, “Hold Up My Heart.” I actually think Brooke White is a former American Idol contestant that I could continue to follow. Nice song.

The last of the final 12 finalists were Mishavonna Henson, Kai Kalama, Nick Mitchell, Adam Lambert, and Jasmine. It was no surprise to me that they ejected Mishavonna, Kai and Jasimine Murray straightaway and left us with Nick and Adam for the climax of the show. Neither of these knocked my socks off, but I was happy that Adam Lambert made it through because I don’t really think that this is the right venue for “Norman Gentle.” I’m sure we’ll see him around though.

That’s it for this week on American Idol. While there are some very good performers, I haven’t found any that I’ve clicked with as well as I did with some of last season. Who knows, maybe my American Idol match will be in next week’s group.

American Idol Top 36, Group 2

Jasmine Murray’s version of Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song” Sounded a little flat in the opening and ended up being just kind of OK. Presentation-wise, she sang it basically how I’m familiar with it so I’m not sure if she made herself stand out. Overall it sounded rather dull.

I really love the song “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay, but for Matt Giraud to have an arrangement that is basically the same one that Coldplay recorded but to try to sing it in a jazzier way, really didn’t seem to work. He also sounded a little nervous too. I like Coldplay and I like him, but I just don’t think the two of them should get together anymore.

Have we seen Jeanine Vailes before? It seems like the producers don’t want her to progress very far because I don’t think they’ve shown anything of her in the past weeks for us to form any positive opinions of her. I think that her performance of Maroon 5’s “This Love” showed that it was a song that she knew well and was comfortable with and because of this I think she did a very good job—at least I thought it was much better than the judges thought.

Nick Mitchell is an anomaly on the American Idol stage. Usually people who come in with a gag or a gimmic aren’t anything that can or should be taken seriously, but when Nick came auditioned as “Norman Gentle” he surprised everyone by actually being entertaining. After watching him perform “You’re Gonna Love Me” from Dreamgirls, I realize that he’s a better fit for a grab bag show like America’s Got Talent than American Idol. He reminds me of Jerry Lewis when he’s playing the fool with Dean Martin.

Allison Iraheta sounds a lot more polished and much older than 16, but boy can she sing! And the way she belted out “Alone” by Heart really made think she definitely deserves to go through to the finals. It’ll be fun to see the range of songs she sings.

Kris Allen is another contestant I didn’t see featured in the weeks leading up to tonight’s show, which makes me think the producers aren’t hoping he progresses in the competition. I thought his performance of “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson was a nice clean performance that didn’t include any of the vocal ticks that Jackson is known for. I think he should do well in spite of what the judges say. So if he doesn’t make it past tonight is it because we haven’t seen him enough in the previous weeks?

Megan Joy Corkrey sang “Put Your Records On” Corinne Bailey Rae. I really liked her during the audition week, but it seemed like she sang this song in an exaggerated Corinne Bailey Rae. Almost like a vocal caricature. Her movements were kind of weird too. I’d vote for her, but hoping that she makes different, not as quirky, choices in the future.

Welder fabricator guy, Matt Breitzke sang “If You Could Only See” by Tonic. I hate to borrow a standard critique from Simon, but it seemed like a Karaoke performance. His vocals didn’t really seem all that impressive either. Maybe it was just the wrong song but I don’t think he should go through.

Jesse Langseth’s choice to sing “Betty Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes seems like an odd choice to me. She sang it much like the original, but her voice is different enough that it didn’t sound like she was impersonating Kim Carnes. It’s not the most vocally difficult song, but I think she did an ok job. She was probably not good enough to win the competition, but I thought it was one of the stronger performances of the night.

Kai Kalama sang “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted” By Jimmy Ruffin. Basically he did a good job vocally, but nothing exceptionally memorable and I had was negatively distracted by his movements and expressions.

I really liked Mishavonna Henson’s performance of “Drops of Jupiter” by train and I think she should make it through to the next round. I was a little annoyed by her “ay aaaaay ay ay” stuttering parts but I definitely disagree with the negative critiques of the judges.

“Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones was not my favorite choice of songs, but Adam Lambert was able to take a song with a 5-note range and improvise enough on the melody to show his vocal talents. It’s apparent that the producers are saving their favorites for last, and I think he’s one of their them, but I’m not really a huge fan. He reminds me of an 80s glamour rocker. I’m sure Randy won over a lot of fans for him by comparing to Robert Pattison as Edward in Twilight, though.

My vote tonight would be for two people, Allison Iraheta and Mishavonna Henson. I’m sure the two of them will be in the group of three to proceed to the finals with Adam Lambert being the guy in that group. I don’t have a Wild Card pick from this group.

So far I don’t think that this season’s contestants are measuring up to what they were promising during the audition weeks. Maybe they sent some of the wrong ones home? I can think of a couple that I would have rather seen, like the blonde-haired earthy girl with no shoes, Rose Flack—I think she got a bum deal.

Lost Review - "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"

"There's a war coming, John. And if you're not back on the island when that happens, the wrong side is going to win."

In reality, tonight’s episode of ABC’s Lost probably should have been called the “Death and Life of Jeremy Bentham”. It’s unusual, on Lost, to see someone die and then come back to life (unlike what usually happens on NBC’s Heroes) so when they revealed in the opening of the show that John Locke is not only alive, but on the island with the other survivors of flight 316 (the kind of revelation that’s usually reserved for the end of an episode), I thought that the remainder of the episode would be pretty exciting.


Well, I can’t say that I was blown away by anything else this episode showed, but I am intrigued by the notion that Charles Widmore might not be the bad guy after all. You have to admit, his tactics tonight were much less heavy-handed than Ben’s. Plus, we did see a younger Widmore closely associated with Richard Alpert when Locke, Kate, Sawyer and the others were time jumping, so we know that he did have quite a long history with the island. It’s just so hard to know whom to believe and it’s one of the things that makes Lost something that’s worth returning to every week.

We also got to know a little more about Matthew Abaddon, who was the creepy orderly who guided Locke into taking the Australian walkabout that made him end up on the island. This reveal leads me to wonder if we’re going to see him in everyone else’s back-story at some point in time encouraging them to be on the ill-fated Oceanic flight that brought them to the island in the first place. It would make sense if Eloise Hawking is working for Charles Widmore’s group and would have been able to predict that Oceanic 815 would have brought them into the path of the island. She sure didn’t seem to care enough for Ben to be working for him.

In recent weeks, I had a feeling when Ben showed up with Jin’s ring and used it as a tool to convince Sun to return to the island, that Ben had in reality killed John Locke because of Locke’s desire to be true to the word he gave Jin that he wouldn’t bring Sun back. I knew Ben wouldn’t allow that so I just figured that Ben was the one who killed Locke. Looks like this is one of those rare moments when I was right.

I don’t really have all that much more to say about “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” other than that it was nice to see Locke’s interactions with the Oceanic 6 that we had only heard them tell of in previous episodes, but I can’t say we learned anything by it.

One more thing I can say is that it’s nice that we’re finally into the stage of this series where there are more questions being answered than asked. The creators of this show have an end date and a plan to get us there, and it’ll be nice when it’s over to look at this series as a completed work and finally understand what it’s all about.

TV Review: The Biggest Loser

My Biggest Loser Story

NBC's The Biggest Loser is one of the most inspiring shows on TV. It’s also one of the most discouraging. I believe that whether or not this show works for you depends on where you are in your own weight loss journey.

There was a time in my life when I couldn’t stand this show. I was offended by the name when it first came out because it made me think that they were saying that ALL fat people were losers and that they were just looking for the biggest one. Of course, back then I was about 440 pounds and would usually watch the show while balancing a bowl of chocolate ice cream on my belly, so you can probably guess where my negative feelings were coming from.

Now when I watch this show I have nothing but compassion and awe over the accomplishments of the contestants. What created this change in me? Well, it wasn’t in a method that NBC’s The Biggest Loser trainers Bob Harper and Jilian Michaels would approve of—I had Gastric Bypass Surgery.

The decision to have the surgery came after many years of struggling with my weight, losing it only to find myself gaining more not too long after that. What finally tipped the scales (so to speak) was when I saw the following picture of myself that was taken at my daughter’s baptism.


This was what was a special day for my daughter and was definitely something for the family albums, but when I saw this picture, my heart just sank. It really hit me hard how far I had let myself go. Not only did I come to a realization of how bad I looked, but I was also realizing that I was missing many opportunities to spend quality time with my daughters because I was too tired or weak.

So I had the surgery, the Roux-En-Y version, and had very good results. One of the keys to making it a successful experience is to make sure to have a doctor with a great support system—you need to be a part of support groups and there also needs to be a great diet system. The surgery doesn’t magically make everything in your life better, there is a lot you need to do before and after to be successful and it is possible to gain a considerable amount of weight back. It’s more of a great jump-start to get you on a path to losing your weight and it gives you a tool to curb your appetite.

Two years after my oldest daughter’s baptism, my younger daughter had hers and the following picture was taken.


Needless to say, we’re all much happier now. It’s amazing how kids can forget negative things. When my daughters see my “before” picture, they have no memory of me looking like that. But what they do know is how much more we do together. We ride bikes, go on hikes and just spend more time together. We’re all so much happier now.


So, back to the The Biggest Loser, the people on that show have an advantage that I’d say is every bit as “unfair” of an advantage given to someone who wants to lose the weight surgically. How many other times in their lives are they going to be able to have their diets closely monitored and be able to work out for 8 hours or more a day?

Although their methods of weight loss differ from the path that I took, I am very inspired by this show even though my path to weight loss was quite different from theirs. I know what a change losing a significant amount of weight can create in someone’s life. It’s like a whole new world opens up and people start seeing you for who you are and not as some random fat person. For anyone else who struggles with your weight, I’d say just do what it takes and what works for you. Your future is depending on it.

I’m sorry if this “review” hasn’t been as much of a review as a personal testimonial, but I’ve never known my enjoyment of a show to be as affected by my own personal situation as this show has made me feel. I hope that more and more people will continue to be motivated by it to make changes in their lives for the better.

TV Review: Medium, “…About Last Night”

Medium on NBC is a show that doesn’t get a lot of fanfare. It’s a show that doesn’t have the most glamorous of actors and doesn’t do many stunts to produce a lot of hype. Sometimes I find that it’s even easy to forget that Medium is on and I miss it. It’s interesting, then, how just about every time I watch Medium I come away from it thinking that it’s one of the best shows on television.

Now in it’s fifth season, Medium is about an average family living in Phoenix, Arizona. The dad, Joe Dubois (played by Jake Weber), is an inventor. The mom, Allison Dubois (played by Patricia Arquette), is a consultant for the District Attorney’s office. And they have 3 daughters: Ariel, who’s just learning to drive, Bridgette, who offers much comic relief, and the youngest is Marie. Did I mention that mom, Allison, is a psychic who sees dead people, has visions, and other paranormal experiences?

Yes, the thing that keeps Medium from being a modern day version of Leave It To Beaver, is that it’s really a crime drama centered on a psychic who is trusted by the District Attorney for her paranormal insights. Much of the time Medium is a fantasy grounded in the mundane of every day life, and that seeming mismatch of genres is what makes this show so compelling.

In last night’s episode, “…About Last Night”, Allison blacks out for 6 hours, not realizing how she got from the supermarket in the late afternoon to laying on the sidewalk under a freeway overpass in the middle of the night. As she begins to realize what she’s done, she’s terrified that she may have killed at least one person, maybe two. (SPOILERS FOLLOW) It turns out that she was actually possessed by a recently murdered woman who takes over Allison in the hopes of stopping the deaths of many other people.

Medium is interesting because Allison’s visions and dreams aren’t always clear and she frequently misinterprets them. This leads everyone else to doubt her when her visions don’t make sense, at the same time they realize that her visions often do include important clues that they trust will help them solve whatever mystery they’re facing.

If you’ve never watched Medium, I’d suggest that you give it a try. Often there are great twists at the ends and great writing throughout. Also refreshing about this show is that there are only very minor ongoing storylines. Each episode is a self contained story, so there are no worries that if you miss one or haven’t watched from the beginning, that you’ll be lost, as in ABC’s Lost or NBC’s Heroes.

TV Review: Heroes, "Cold Wars"

"You know me, I've always been comfortable with morally grey."

From the previews last week, we were promised that tonight’s Heroes on NBC would answer the question of whether or not Noah Bennet A.K.A. HRG (Horn-Rimmed Glasses) was a hero or a villain.

Whether or not he’s a good guy is something I’ve wondered for a long time, and been frustrated with. He seems to go through spurts where he’s devious and manipulative, and other times he’s playing the part of “inside man” turning the tables in the heroes’ favor. Personally, I’ve always wanted him to be a good guy trying to stay on the inside of a bad situation so he could turn the tables as a double agent.

When we left off last week’s episode, "Building 26," Noah was in the restaurant of the hotel he’s staying in while he works out his family troubles. While there he discovers that he’s been drugged and looses consciousness. We then saw 3 of our on-the-lamb heroes, Matt Parkman, Peter Petrelli and Mohinder Suresh escort him out.

Tonight’s episode, "Cold Wars" began by skipping back a little before the three “supers” drugged Noah where we see that they weren’t all on the same page on the virtues of abducting and interrogating him. Once the abduction takes place, they spend most of their time in a seedy hotel room where Parkman uses his mind powers to probe Noah’s brain for answers about who is pursuing them and what their intentions are.

I’ll admit that Noah Bennet is one of my favorite characters on Heroes. One of the best things about this episode was that it focused primarily on his interrogation and featured many flashbacks from his memories exploring how he came to be involved in the hunt for the supers. There were echoes of what many consider to be one of the best episodes of Heroes from season one, “Company Man.” What both of these episodes have going for them is their focus on Noah and their black and white memories from Noah’s past.

What I think was lacking in this episode were the supposed-to-be tense interactions between the 3 heroes, Parkman, Petrelli and Suresh. I think the writing just isn’t up to par… or maybe it’s the direction. They’re supposed to be having this internal struggle, but to me it just sounds like they’re bickering about who are the good guys and who are the bad. In previous episodes it made sense for Hiro to call others, “heroes,” “villains” or “nemesis” because he was a geek growing up who loved comic books, but when it comes from one of the straight man-ish characters, it just doesn’t seem to fit, in the midst of this tense situation, that they'd be self aware enough to label themselves like they do.

Another thing that bothers me is that, as a viewer, I know about the powers that these heroes possess. I know that Matt Parkman can use his abilities to give those around him illusions that can change their environment and make them believe things are happening that aren’t true. So why didn’t he use his ability to get away from the small army that was coming to take him? I guess how it played-out was appropriate since the episode was trying to focus on Noah, but sometimes the writers seem to conveniently forget details if it supports their storyline.

Oh, and when is someone finally going to blurt out that Nathan can fly?? It seems like that would be one thing that would seriously undermine his efforts to hunt them all!

Tonight’s episode ended with Mohinder Suresh captured, Peter (we assume, but it could have been Nathan) rescuing Matt Parkman, and Noah Bennet finishing a conversation with Angela Petrelli that he started 5 weeks ago in his memory. It’s in this last scene that we learn that Noah is still working for Angela and he still has the same goals that he had when he was working for the company, which seem to be noble enough in that he wants to save the good people with abilities, and only lock up the dangerous ones. He admits that he’ll have to go deep under cover and do even more questionable things to convince is colleagues that he really is on their side, but I think we, as viewers, are supposed to remember this and keep rooting for him to succeed as a “good guy.”

All in all, I think tonight’s episode was satisfying. Heroes is best when the storylines aren’t getting spread too thin amongst all of the main characters. Hopefully this will be a trend revisited in the near future. But please, the final shot with another painting on the floor of a city exploding–this time Washington DC. How many times are they going to build up to an explosion that never happens? Can't they change their formula a little?

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock

As the Sci Fi channel original series, Battlestar Galactica, comes to a close, it’s interesting to see how the storyline is wrapping up. As someone who has watched the series from the beginning, I’m a little unsure if some of the issues will be satisfactorily resolved in the four episodes that are remaining before the series ends.


One of the problems that I have with tonight’s episode is that as they are preparing to end the series in a handful of episodes, we are seeing a lot of things that I can’t help but think aren’t really important to the resolution of the overall storyline. Are the political issues about the poor on the lower decks really going to help tie up the bigger questions about a final home for the fleet? Or answer the questions about what’s going on with Starbuck? I understand that the reunion of Ellen Tigh with the final five was going to cause conflict between her, her former husband Saul Tigh and Caprica Six who’s four months pregnant with his pure Cylon child, I just wish it wasn’t the primary plotline of tonight’s episode.

In my book, the best ending to a series came from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where they had a 10 episode arc that tied up all the outstanding plotlines from the series and then a two-hour finale where we were able to say farewell to all the characters and feel like things were tidied up well. The worst ending to a series came from Star Trek: Voyager where they vowed to keep you guessing up until the last moment as to whether or not they were going to make it home. When the answer to that question was given that yes, they had finally made it back to earth, 5 seconds later the show ended.


There are 4 episodes left to Battlestar Galactica, and next week promises to focus heavily on the mystery behind Starbuck. They’ll probably need another one to resolve what’s happening with Gaius Baltar and the lower decks and then hopefully they’ll take care of the other group of cylons that the rebels on Galactica abandoned. I’m sure sprinkled in all of that will be the working out of the love triangle between Saul Tigh, Ellen Tigh, and Caprica Six; whether or not Laura Roslin is going to succumb to her cancer; and how many more frakking times are we going to see Adama shaving or brushing his teeth in his bathroom? I mean, can’t that wait until he’s safely home on New, New Caprica? Or New Earth? In his New Bathroom?

Lost Thoughts: 316

LOOK OUT! Spoilers ahead

I’m sure that everyone noticed, as I did, that tonight’s episode of Lost on ABC was the first since the Pilot not to include any kind of flashback or flashforward. Well, I guess that’s not technically true since the beginning of the episode showed them just moments after Jack, Hurley and Kate returned to the island with the rest of the episode revealing the events that led up to their getting there. But the limited flashbacks made me think that this episode was serving as a hub, or a restarting point for the rest of the series.

Tonight's episode, "316" began by showing Jack, Hurley and Kate suddenly finding themselves on the island, but quickly flashed back to show us how they got there.


The flashback begins where we left off last week with Jack, Sun, Ben and Desmond speaking with Daniel Faraday’s mother Eloise Hawking. She explains that the island moves through both space and time and that the place she is working, the Lamppost, was created by the Dharma Initiative for the purpose of finding the island. She reveals that she has discovered a time and place where the island will be and she believes that if the “Oceanic 6” are in a plane as it’s flying over, then they will somehow return to the island.

The remainder of tonight’s episode revolved around Jack’s preparations to return to the island, but what really surprised me is that they actually got on the plane and back on the island by the time the episode was over! That was a huge leap forward in the plot in my opinion because I was expecting to have to wait until the end of the season to see how Jack managed to convince everyone that they all needed to go back.

The insertion of Jack’s granddad into the story that seemed to come from out of nowhere. Unless that particular character is going to play a more substantial role in the future, it seems like they could have accomplished the same if jack just went to his apartment and pulled out a shoebox labeled “Dad’s shoes.” Viola! Plot problem fixed... I should have been a writer.


By the way, I think we received a couple of messages that everything Ben says is a lie. Ms. Hawking revealed that Ben was probably lying about not knowing about the Lamppost station and later in the episode when Jack asked Ben on the plane, “How can you read?” and Ben answered, “My mother taught me.” Remember back… Ben’s mother died in childbirth. The man is a habitual liar.

One of my favorite moments on this episode came when Jack was speaking with Frank Lapidus who just happened to be the captain of Flight 316. During the conversation Lapidus looks around and quickly comes to realize that just about everyone from his doomed helicopter flight from the freighter is on his plane and he says, "We're not going to Guam, are we?"

Once back on the island, the first thing they see is none other than Jin in Dharma duds driving a brand new Dharma VW bus. My theory about this is that when John Locke fixed the frozen donkey wheel last week, the Oceanic survivors remaining on the island were stuck in the time that they just happened to be in and ended up becoming part of Dharma. This also explains how Daniel Faraday appeared at the excavation of the donkey wheel cave in the Orchid Station in the beginning of this season.

But, as the creators of Lost so masterfully do, although they seemed to tidily wrap up getting them back to the island, they left many questions unanswered. Here are some of the questions this episode has left me with:

• What made Hurley and Sayid suddenly decide to get on the plane? 
  
• Who was that lady with Sayid? 
  
• Who was it that worked over Ben and why didn’t they finish the job? 
  
• What happened to the plane and all of the other passengers?
  
• What happened to Aaron and why won’t Kate talk about it?
  

I’m confident that all of these questions and more will be answered eventually, and since there is a scheduled end date for the show in 2010, which means that they will actually be able to end the story with plenty of time to tie up all the loose ends. At the very least, now we can have a fairly good idea of what the flashbacks throughout the rest of the season will involve.

American Idol Results Show, Group 1

Ryan Seacrest announced at the beginning of the show that a record 24 million votes were cast for this show, which is a record high for this point in the season. This brings to mind how people like to complain that more people vote for American Idol than vote for the President of the United States. Let me remind everyone that you can only vote once for Pres, but you can vote as much as the buttons on your phone and your fanaticism will permit.

After some annoying judge banter the semifinalists came out and sang “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz. They did a pretty good job, but I’d say the country guys looked a little uncomfortable with the reggae beat.

They began revealing the results with a no-brainer, and eliminated Casey Carlson. No surprise. I’m sure her performance last night had everyone questioning how she made it to this stage of the competition. Stephen Fowler was no surprise either. I’m actually surprised he made it here after walking out on his last song in Hollywood Week.

Alexis Grace was the first contestant revealed to be in the top 12. No surprise for me, I think she was one of the best singers from last night. But given some of the train wrecks we witnessed, that’s not saying much.

Between Ricky Braddy and Jackie Tohn, neither of them made it through to the 12. No surprise for me about Jackie, or Ricky for that matter, but I fully expect Ricky to be one of the wild cards in a few weeks.

Anoop Desai and Michael Sarver – Michael made it through to the top twelve. Surprised that Michael made it through. I thought there were much better vocals, but I think that he must have gotten the country vote. I’m sure Anoop will be a wildcard too. Maybe Michael’s song was just better than his delivery? I’m sure enough people liked him from the auditions too to put him through. He was one that we liked.

Carly Smithson and Michael Johns from last season appeared on the show and performed a duet of the song, “The Letter.” I have to say it really didn’t do anything to make me nostalgic for the old contestants.

Brent Keith, Stevie Wright and Ann Marie Boskovich were all eliminated in one fell swoop. None of them were surprises to me, or to them by the look of things.

When the two remaining finalists were brought up, Danny Gokey and Tatiana Del Toro, I fully expected Tatiana to faint on stage for the drama of it all. When they announced that Danny was the last of the three to proceed into the final twelve, I was surprised that Tatiana didn’t make more of a spectacle of herself. I really hope that she won’t be one of the wildcards, but for the sake of good television, I’m sure they’ll put her in that pool, especially because they couldn’t keep the camera off of her during Danny’s reprise of his song.

Hopefully in the coming weeks we'll see the contestants to quite a bit better than they did this week.

Thoughts on American Idol Top 36

Group 1

American Idol is like 4 shows in 1. The one-the-road auditions are barely tolerable, but I rather enjoy Hollywood Week. But tonight was the first of the live shows and this is where the excitement really begins.

I liked the funked-up version of Elvis’ “A Little Less Conversation” that Jackie Tohn performed but I thought that her dancing and outfit were terribly distracting. From the auditions I thought that her style was more folky than what we saw tonight. I don’t think she’ll make it any farther.

I didn’t remember Ricky Braddy from the auditions at all. I’m sure that’s because the producers are so focused on Danny Gokey being the front-runner this season, that they’re passing over other real competitors—which is a real shame because he really does have a nice voice. He sang “A Song for You” which is a good song but he did sing it in very much the same way that I’ve heard it sung many times before. He did have good vocal control and form, but did he over sing it a little?

I’d never heard of the song “I Never Loved a Man,” previously recorded by Aretha Franklin, before and it was not really the sound that I was expecting from Alexis Grace. It was probably because of the pink hair I was hoping for something a little more alternative or edgy from her. I didn’t think it was a very good song choice but the judges sure liked it. If history is any predictor, though, the pink hair will get her through to the finals. Think Nikki McKibbin. Maybe then I’ll have a better idea of what kind of music to expect from her.

Brent Keith’s choice of “Hicktown” was probably a good choice for him so that people could appropriately view him as a country artist but it doesn’t seem like country singers ever make it farther than maybe halfway through the finals. Sorry, but country music really isn’t my bag so I can’t really say too many good things about his performance but I’d be surprised if he makes it past this stage of the competition. The problem is that as country goes, there are so many more impressive songs than the one he sang.

Stevie Wright really reminds me of Evangeline Lilly (Kate from ABC's Lost). I think it’s her eyes. I don’t think it matters that I’ve never heard the song “You Belong With Me” that she sang because she was unfortunately very nervous and it showed. It’s too bad that she probably won’t make it past this stage of the competition because I had high hopes for her—probably because I’m such a fan of Lost. Heck, she’s only 17, maybe we’ll see her try out again next year? Maybe she'll get the Lost vote?

Besides the fact that my cosmetologist wife said that his eyebrows need to be taken down a little, Anoop Desai really sang his song, “Angel of Mine,” very well! Again, I’ve never heard this song before, but I would imagine that he probably sang it similar to the original. I do like it when a guy sings a song originally recorded by a girl, and vice versa. That alone has a way of changing it up enough to make it memorable.

Casey Carlson’s version of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” was simply a train wreck. I don’t agree with the judges that songs by The Police are “untouchable”, I just didn’t agree with the touches she put on it. Aside from being too nervous to sing it well, I really hated the gender switching in this song—I think “she” and “her” are too rooted into the lyrics. I thought it would have been good if she would have sung it like the original “Every little thing she does is magic”, but then it would have made it sound like she was switching teams. It also looked like a beauty pageant performance or something from a talent show—might have gone over well in high school, but not on a national stage.

Michael Sarver made a really good impression on me during the auditions. Although I’m not a country fan and could tell that he would probably lean that way, his vocals and his personal story made me root for him to make it far on the show. His choice of the song “I Don't Want to Be” was a bad choice in my opinion. I don’t think anyone has sung this song as well as Bo Bice did a few seasons back, so I was left a little flat by this performance. He was a little stiff to be singing a song as energetic as this one. It would have been nice if he would have sung a song that showed more of the tender vocals that we grew attached to in the auditions.

Ann Marie Boskovich delivered another beauty pageant performance of “A Natural Woman.” The arrangement and performance seemed like just about every other version of this song that I’ve ever heard, and it wasn’t sung nearly as well. Very forgettable.

Stephen Fowler made a huge mistake in singing “Rock With You” by Michael Jackson. In my opinion when someone chooses to sing a song so closely associated with the original artist, they need to make drastic changes to it in order to make it theirs—similar to what David Cook did with Jackson’s “Billy Jean.” The arrangement was very much like the original but he seemed like he was singing to a totally different arrangement in his head. I don’t think that fast songs are very good at this stage because they don’t show how good the contestant’s vocals can be. This will probably be the end of the road for him.

What’s worse? Someone who shows up with at the auditions with a huge ego and thinks they sing perfectly but can’t sing at all, or someone who has a huge ego and thinks they can sing perfectly and they actually do sing very well? Such is the case (or problem) with Tatiana Nicole Del Toro. She’s pretty good but she’s convinced that she’s fantastic and she doesn’t shy away from flaunting it. As could have been predicted, she sang a very dramatic, but surprisingly vocally restrained version of Whitney Houston’s “Saving All My Love for You.” She’s a pretty good singer but often her personality overshadows her ability to sing. I think she has been coached to tone down her personality because she seemed controlled, like she was acting the whole time. I think she’s actually the psychic they keep referring to… probably one of her many personalities.

I’m sure they saved Danny Gokey for last tonight. He was the most comfortable of tonight’s performers as he sang Mariah Carey’s “Hero.” I think it’s clear that the producers think that he should be one of the front-runners too, which explains all of the hype he has received throughout all of the audition weeks. I think it’s also a real shame that they cut Danny’s friend Jamar Rogers. Jamar was so much better than almost all of the other contestants we saw tonight.

I think that the standard that will determine if the contestants progress to the next stage is whether or not the vocals and performances are good enough to inspire people to fork out their hard earned money to buy their music. If you stumble upon one of these people in a bar or in a park you would enjoy it, but would you become a fan and seek out opportunities to financially support them?

I think it’s obvious that my vote along with most of America tonight will be for Danny Gokey. The three that I think will be voted through to the finals in this group are Danny Gokey, Alexis Grace, and Anoop Dasai with Ricky Braddy being one of the wild cards added in week 4.

Out of all of them though, I don’t think I heard any that I would actually buy records from based on what they sang tonight but I guess we’ll see what the other contestants come up with in the future.

Heroes Thoughts: Building 26

Warning: SPOILERS.

At the beginning of the fall season of Heroes on NBC, I was pretty hard on the show. I was worried that they were taking the danger out of the mix by killing characters and then bringing them back as if nothing had happened. Well, anyone who has been watching the series since this season began will have learned, along with myself that many of my criticisms were uncalled for. They actually did kill off Niki/Jessica and it doesn’t look like they’re bringing DL back either. So while the writers of Heroes have done many things to increase my interest in the show, I’m also starting to notice some other things that are really going to bother me if they continue.


In tonight’s episode, Claire goes behind Noah’s back and rescues a potential target and then confesses to her mother what she and Noah were really doing when they were supposed to be college shopping. Hiro learns that he doesn’t need powers to be a hero. Nathan gets a skeptical new boss that he needs to convince that there really are people in the world with almost “magical” abilities. And Sylar learns that his new sidekick, Luke, knows the truth that will lead Sylar to his father.

I really like the apparent direction the show is going. The prospect of having our heroes living in the underground as they try to elude the government has the potential to present some very exciting television. Heroes is definitely a show that I intend to keep my Tivo programmed to record every week and I’m sure I’ll want to buy the rest of the DVDs as they come available.

I finally figured out as I was watching tonight’s episode, however, why my enthusiasm for this show sometimes wavers. It came to me as I thought of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Most of that movie seemed to be centered around the build-up to the climactic battle at Helm’s Deep and the associated tension that went along with it. As long as that build-up continued, every element of it ratcheted up the tension more and more until, when the battle actually commenced, all of that tension was released and the resulting energy paid off all of my expectations, and more.

It seems to me that Heroes is forever stuck in the “build-up” mode and the eventual releasing of the tension that is supposed to happen at the end of their volumes isn’t as satisfying as it should be. This goes back all the way to the very first season which I loved, but by the time the season finale arrived, the climactic battle that had been hyped for the entire season, just kind of happened in a very staged way that left me feeling kind of cheated out of all of my efforts as a viewer.

So you might be asking, what do I like about this show? Well, I do like the Peter Petrelli, Matt Parkman, and Mohinder Suresh team-up. I still really enjoy Hiro and Ando and I hope that Hiro gets his powers back soon. I really like the threat of the government hunting down people with abilities and I think some exciting times are in store with that storyline.


What don’t I like? I’m not thrilled with Sylar. Personally I think Sylar should have died at the end of the first season so the heroes could encounter a new and different threat. I don’t like Noah’s flip-flopping between is-he-good-or-is-he-bad? I like him when he’s good, and I like him when he’s bad, I just wish they’d make up their freakin’ mind! (Something that the preview for next week is promising to resolve… yeah, we’ll see.) And I’m starting to get really annoyed by Claire. She’s starting to seem like one of those annoying kids you see in movies who’s always wandering off chasing their lost pet and getting into trouble that almost kills everyone, but nobody ever does anything to stop the kid in the first place. They either need to lock Claire up like they keep threatening to, or Claire needs to finally go out on her own and get over her misguided loyalty to Noah and her attachment to her real father/creep Nathan.

I still have high-hopes for this show. I think the storylines have real potential but I think that the writers need to be brave enough to break out of some of the seemingly crippling formulas they’ve developed. And for crying out loud, it’s OK not to show us every one of the main characters in every episode. You can cover just one storyline from start to finish in a show and I don’t think the world would end.

But really… I do like this show.