Category: Reviews

Three posts in one night. I’m on a roll.

So…Smallville Season 2. I watched 23 episodes (42 minutes each) over the Christmas holidays. 6 of those in one sitting. I love holidays.

What do I hate?

TV Shows on DVD. They are the devil. You can’t get away from them.

There should be the following label on TV Shows on DVD:

Do not even think of having a social life after watching a few episodes.

Anyhow, onto Season Two.

I enjoyed Season Two more than the first one. They introduced some more powers to Supes, as well as a chock load of origin story. I think I enjoy Smallville for the fact that I never read the Superman comics so I really didn’t know half the stuff they are talking about, and I sure don’t remember it coming up in Lois and Clark. However, I’m taking it with a grain of salt as I heard they don’t stick to the story in some parts of the series.

I like how they went away from the X-Filesish stories of how the town brought out freaks, but focussed more on other unexplained phenomena. Also, I found Lex had less of a role in this season, but there was more of Lionel Luthor. I’ve watched the season premiere of Season 3 and I think I like what they are doing with Lex. They gotta make him bad sometime soon.

Two thumbs up.

iplaying: I Ain’t Got You – The Yardbirds

Trish Plamondon – Fromage de Noel: Never has there been a greater Christmas compilation compiled. Let me tell you…I know now pretty well every band who has made a Christmas song…and then some! What’s up with the song called Backdoor Santa though? Random sidenote: Found the old record player at Christmas time and hauled it out and found Bing Crosby’s Christmas on vinyl. There’s nothing like a vinyl. Mom prefers Perry Como, however Dad says (and I quote): “Perry Como sucks.” Never have more eloquent words been uttered by Dad.

Here‘s a review of the double album over at Artoos’. Check out the December 12 entry.

favesong: Mele Kalikimaka – Bing Crosby

The Trews – Den of Thieves: Ever hear one of those albums that don’t resonate with you at first, but you give it a few more listens and then it becomes one of your favourites? That is Den of Thieves for you. A little different than the hard hitting rocking of the previous album, but this is a more solid album.

favesong: Ishmael and Maggie

Our Lady Peace – Healthy in Paranoid Times: Yet another one of those albums that take a few listens to get into. Everyone has been waiting a LONG time for this one since Gravity and I cannot say that I am dissapointed. I am constantly returning to this album to fall in love with more and more songs. It doesn’t hurt to see them live and have them show a different side to the music.

favesong: Will The Future Blame Us?

Nickelback – All The Right Reasons: Here’s one that hits you hard off the bat and doesn’t stop. After the first listen, I felt that Nickelback had done it once again. They are constantly getting better and better with their albums. One may argue that they are just playing the same songs over and over again, but no one said that was a bad thing, right AC/DC?

favesong: Animal

Billy Corgan – The Future Embrace: Billy’s first solo record comes out strong after a weak, weak presence with Zwan. And in a weird twist of fate, the day this album was released was the day that he announced that the Smashing Pumpkins will be reincarnated. Joy! No real Pumpkinesque tunes on this one, but it is enjoyable.

favesong: Mina Loy (L.O.H.)

Dream Theatre – Octavarium: Upon preparing for this summer’s Gigantour, I decided to pick up the new album by Dream Theatre after Vero was telling me that Dream Theatre kicked ass. Well, let me tell you metal lovers, they do not disappoint. Complexity is Octavarium summed up into one word.
Foo Fighters – In Your Honour: Suprisingly, this is my first Foo Fighters album. Will it be my last? Heck no! This double album (comprising of one side electric, one side acoustic) shows that the Foos have an eclectic musical talent and know the ways around a riff. I’ll start picking up their back catalogue (although I must admit their first album is not the best).

favesong: In Your Honour
Audioslave – Out of Exile: I cannot say that I’ve listened to this as much as I did the first album, but it is still a great effort put out by Audioslave.

Coldplay – X&Y: Took me awhile to get really into this one, but have grown to love it as much as their other releases. I enjoy the sounds of Coldplay and file this album into the ‘light some candles and have some wine’ folder.

favesong: Twisted Logic

Nine Inch Nails – With Teeth: Can NIN beat their last release (The Fragile) with this one? No. Not in my opinion at least. I would actually say it’s my least favourite NIN album. But does that make it a bad album? Hell no! It starts off with some classic, classic NINesque tunes and then descends into more rocking than usual. But rocking in a different sort that we’re not used to with NIN.

favesong: All the Love in the World

Theory of a Deadman – Gasoline: If there is a number #1 to this list, this is it. Theory of a Deadman have blown their previous release out of the water with this one. Who would have thought they had some ballads in them? A top notch album which can be seen by my Top 50 most played list in my iPod. I highly recommend this album.

favesong: In The Middle

Elektra Soundtrack – Cannot say that I’ve seen the movie since I’ve heard it was so bad (which is disappointing to hear since I dug Daredevil) but the soundtrack is amazing. I constantly return to this soundtrack as much as the Crow.

favesong: Photograph (12 Stones)

TV shows on DVD are the devil.

You can get so addicted to watching a show without commercials at any time you wish.

The curse is that you may end up spending a few hours each night trying to watch a few more episodes. Or just take a 5 episode marathon on a Sunday evening trying to complete the season.

Word to the wise…if you can get the next Season of a show, do so right before you watch the season finale…because you know those bastards will have a cliffhanger and then you’ll be just ranting on your blog about how you should have grabbed the second season from Eric.

(very minor spoilers here…I wouldn’t even consider them spoilers but you know how I hate to accidentally read a spoiler. Like when I accidentally read that someone died on Lost) Anyhow…Smallville. I enjoyed the first season. I didn’t know what to expect since my only intro to Superman was the Lois and Clark TV series and recently, the Superman movies. I thoroughly enjoyed the first season as it introduces Clark Kent in a manner which you’ve never seen him – confused, and not in control of his powers. Heck, he doesn’t even know some of his powers that he will end up getting. I also like the constant funny references to the Superman legacy such as Clark saying he never was one to dress in a uniform and save the world. If you only knew…

I really like how Lex Luthor (hey, did anyone know that Lex is short form for Alexander? I just found that out.) is friends with Clark Kent and you can see that it will be very interesting when they end the series to show how they become enemies. Or maybe that happens in Season Two?

I highly recommend the series even to non-Superman lovers. It’s a great show, great cast, good plots (although I was getting tired of the X-Files type oddities showing up every episode) and I cannot wait to grab Season Two off of Eric. That will keep me busy during the holidays.

iplaying: You and Me – Lifehouse – Lifehouse

I would have to say that I thought the First Annual Christmas Party was a success. Highlights of the night include:

• Shannon coming to the party dressed as an elf
• Door prizes galore
• The guys winning the Christmas trivia match – “Nah nah…nah nah nah nah…hey heyyyyy…goodbye!!!” addition from Trish – plastic kazoos to accompany “hey hey hey goodbye”
• Way too much rum put into the eggnog by Sam
• The constant theft of some great beer glasses during the gift exchange
• The enormous sweater Duncan brought which we straightjacketed Maureen into
• Great treats brought by some great friends
• Good times had by all
• During the Christmas Trivia game, the question “When the did the electric Christmas tree lights first appear?” in which Holly proclaimed “They were around when I was a kid!”. Holly was born in the late 70s.
• Addition from Trish – Ryan saying the words “this is my FAVORITE part” for every part of National Lampoon’s Christmas

Cannot complain. I am surprised I am living right now as I had to wake up at 6:30, 9:00 and 12:00 to wake people up (for various reasons) while I went to bed at 4:30. Ah well, all in good fun.

Merry Christmas to all.

iplaying: Sleep Now in the Fire – Rage Against the Machine – The Battle of Los Angeles

I just finished The Battle of Corrin last night after going on a reading blitz since the book was engaging near the end.

The Battle of Corrin is the final book in the Legends of Dune trilogy.

I shall first speak about the trilogy, then I shall talk about the Dune series as a whole.

Legends of Dune span over a few hundred years which was an interesting concept because they use the characters from who are young (20s) in The Butlerian Jihad (Book One) and then they skip to the age of sixty in The Machine Crusade (Book Two) and then throw everything away and jump a good sixty years in The Battle of Corrin (Book Three). They can manage to do this because a lot of the characters are either robots or people with life-extension treatments. Personally, I liked the first two books the most because they revolved around the same main characters, but then since so much time has passed by the third book, not many familiar faces are around. It was as interesting concept to show that this war that they are fighting against the machines doesn’t just take a few years of a lifetime.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Legends of Dune trilogy as it showed the origins of MANY concepts in Dune such as where the Mentats came from, where the Bene Gesserit were formed, and more importantly, how they fold space. Many questions which were just not questioned in the original Dune series. I felt the characters were dynamic and even though there were probably 15 main chracters in the entire trilogy, they flow from one chapter to the next very well. These books were written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. I cannot speak about Mr. Herbert, but I have enjoyed Kevin J. Anderson’s work on the Star Wars novels and they keep me captivated.

As for the Dune series on a whole, I have finally completed reading them. For a rundown of the series along with ROUGH release dates…can’t seem to find any on the Net:

Legends of Dune (2000)
The Butlerian Jihad
The Machine Crusade
The Battle of Corrin

Prelude to Dune (late 90s)
House Atreides
House Harkonnen
House Corrino

Dune (1965 onward to 1984 when Frank Herbert died)
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune

Essentially, Frank Herbert made the Dune universe and with six Dune novels but then died before completing the final seventh novel. Talk about a cliffhanger. He builds up so many plot points that just never get resolved.

In comes Brian Herbert (his son) who finds outlines of Dune 7 years later as well as backstories for much of the fabled Butlerian Jihad and other characters. He teams up with Kevin J. Anderson to pull off an Episode I like movement and creates not only a prequel to the series, but a prequel-prequel which takes place thousands of years before the series.

In doing so, they have commented that elements from these prequels will lead into Dune 7 (which has now become two separate novels which are being written right now) which I find interesting because there are certain elements which were never mentioned in the series by Frank Herbert that I can see being re-introduced in Dune 7.

It’s been a long ride reading all 12 Dune novels but I must say that the Dune universe rivals the Star Wars universe. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and say that I enjoy the Dune universe more, just for it’s high end science fiction. I’m not knocking Star Wars…I’m just saying I really like the original concepts found in the Dune universe. I just went on the website and noticed the Dune series is considered the science fiction equivalent of Lord of the Rings. Whoa, that’s a high claim, but totally justified.

Heck, while I’m on a roll, let’s talk about the movies. I was introduced to Dune by renting the movie from…1984 I believe? This movie sucked big time. It was awful. However, it did have Captain Picard and Sting. You cannot go wrong there.

Anyhow, the redeeming factor in the Dune media series was a great mini-series back a few years ago, which followed with Children of Dune mini-series (a combination of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune). I thoroughly enjoyed the Dune mini-series…Children of Dune…not so much. I encourage everyone to watch the Dune mini-series – it’s only six hours long.

I look forward to Dune 7.

Worst.movie.ever.

So…was over at Eric’s on Friday night (which was excellent…had some great dinner prepared by Annie, had a few beers, power went out, jammed in front of the fireplace for three hours…essentially, an excellent night) and he lent me the first season of Smallville and I mentioned that I had never seen the Superman movies.

Yes, yes – I have never seen the Superman movies. I don’t know why…I just haven’t.

Anyhow, other than hearing that they are very cheesy, I must admit that I enjoy the first two. Duncan was talking about how they are essentially one giant movie split into two parts. I liked how they show the wit of Lex Luthor (aka, having Superman save the day in two places at the same time…how can he do that?!) and having Supes kick some Kryptonian ass in the form of Zod and his cronies. Two thumbs up for the movies…I will check out Part 3 and 4 this week, however Eric really warns me that Part 3 is pretty lame.

Then I’ll check out Smallville which I’m pretty excited for. I remember watching Lois and Clark when I was younger and it was great. The chronology may be screwed up between all the TV series and the movies, but who cares? Heck, chronology is always messed up in the comics.

I’m going to send some props out to Mike for introducing me to my new fave show: Prison Break.

Before I forget, Benoit resurrected his blog. Check it out here.

Back to my props. Mike told me about Prison Break around Thanksgiving…since I was a little low on good shows to watch, I decided to download it.

Holy crap this series is great. I love television these days…all serialized format where it’s like you’re watching a mega-movie. (sidenote here about how Quentin Tarantino directed the season finale of CSI last year just to see how TV production is. Now he loves it and thinks he can do a lot more with story in a series than in a 2 hour flick. Awesome.)

Anyhow, the show revolves around one guy in jail on death row and his brother getting himself thrown into jail so he can break him out. Oh yes, and supposedly the brother on death row didn’t do it, so there’s that side story of lawyers/friends trying to prove he is innocent.

Why do I love this show? Excellent storytelling for one. I am engaged the whole way through. I thoroughly enjoy the cast and the character development. Working inside a prison, you can create a character you need out of thin air since there are thousands of people there. It’s not like they are on some mystical island in the land of nowhere…actually this brings me to Lost (my other fave show right now) and how they smartly said that there are more people who crashed on the island than they actually show. So if they ever need a new character (read: someone to blow up, like the ensigns on Star Trek) they just pull them from this random pot of survivors.

Anyhow, I haven’t finished watching the season yet…about half way through (I download them off the Internet since I don’t have TV cable) but I may try and have a marathon run this coming weekend to finish the season off.

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Should I start talking about how Alias is biting the royal big one lately and how I’m not depressed that the show is getting cancelled? For the past two seasons, I have found the show to start out slow and uninteresting…but then they ramp it up near the end to make it all worthwhile. I’m hoping they will do that for the series ending.

Should I start talking about how I love the fact that I can download TV shows and watch them whenever I want instead of being pulled from my every day doings to go sit and watch a TV show? I just wrote an essay on this subject which I should put up here which analyzes how broacasting companies like the CBC should offer up their shows on the Net as free downloads and keep an archive forever. I like the ‘on-demand’ society better than the ‘must be in front of the TV at 8:00. No worries I can set my VCR…NOOOO! I forgot to set my VCR!!!’

Granted, it takes awhile to download a show…overnight usually. But hey…if I’m not in a rush to see them anyhow, I’m saving some sweet cash from not paying for TV cable. Granted, this may change when Mike moves in with me in January. Heck, I don’t mind paying for TV cable. Scratch that…I do mind. We’ll see what we can do to get around that. In no way am I talking about illegal means that I was using at my previous home. 😉

Gearing up the concert on Friday, I decided to pop my new purchase into my DVD player. Can’t hurt to listen to a little U2 in some sweet surround sound.

I bought this last week and previewed a few tracks at Vero’s (where I discovered that U2 may or may not be a liked band by her. I have to introduce her to the Joshua Tree.) and I must admit I was disappointed. The band seemed to just stand there, no energy whatsoever…almost like they were starting to become…old.

I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and watch it from the beginning. So far, I watched 1/2 the concert and all my fears have been dismissed. The experience which is U2 is still evident in the Vertigo tour (at least, from the DVD) and I was in awe watching it. If you like tour dvd’s, I would say pick this one up. So far, it’s great. I must admit I think the Elevation Tour DVD may be a little better, but I haven’t watched the whole thing yet.

Last night, I went to La Nouvelle Scene on King Edward to watch the play Couteau…SEPT FACONS ORIGINALES DE TUER QUELQU’UN AVEC.

This is another forray into the theatrical arts wish I thoroughly enjoy. I like going to see people act in front of me…if I may say so, it may even be better than watching a movie. I prefer the smaller productions than the massive ones where you are a kilometer away from the stage.

Let’s be honest. My first language is not French. I am not perfectly bilingual. I think I’m above average. So how is watching a French play?

Not bad. I get the gist of much of the play usually (with the help of watching actions also). Sometimes they go off on monologues with lingo I don’t understand…it’s understandable as not many people speak the language they learn in school. Take the difference between yes/yeah and oui/ouai.

Anyhow, the play was pretty good. Actually, I personally thought it was quite disturbing. It revolved around a simple premise…a knife (couteau). The knife was shown in many different ways, whether it be in killing someone, shaving, cutting St. Hubert chicken (no joke!), or (my personal fave) being advertised on an informercial (these knives can cut through anything!).

The play revolved around a psychologist analyzing a patient who was saddened because he threw away a fisherman’s knife into the water when he was a child, and that this knife was the sole thing that the fisherman loved. He ruined the fisherman’s life. A dialogue would take place between the psychologist and the patient, and then the play would switch over to a different skit involving a knife…whether it be a murder, or someone shaving, etc.

The more disturbing scene was when the knife is used in a very violent fashion and you were left in shock, and then it changes the scene to the most satirical use of a knife I’ve ever seen – the infomercial; where the knife does not become some object of violence, but a wonder tool which can bring you happiness. I found this concept to be enthralling after witnessing the brutality of what a knife can do to a human being. Instill fear, inflict pain.

All in all, I was impressed with the entire production and one day hope to understand French just a little more so I can go back and watch this again.