Reviews and More

I’ve been watching Season 1 of The Mentalist off and on for the past couple months, and I’ve finally finished all the DVDs! I didn’t think the pilot was particularly great, but I kept plugging along and ended up really getting into the characters and their dynamic. The cases are pretty much like any other procedural out there (in other words, nothing special), so it’s the characters that kept me coming back.

In particular, I love Simon Baker as Thomas Jane. I think he’s very…charming in the role — and charming is a word that I almost never use! But it’s definitely the best way to describe him. I also love Rigsby and Van Pelt (I totally ship them), and think Lisbon is ok (though I can tell from various message boards that lots of fans think she’s the weak link). Cho I can take or leave, though.

I think it’s great how friendly they all are together. I enjoy watching workplaces where everyone gets along, because that’s just something that doesn’t happen where I currently work. Sure, it’s not like Jane and Rigsby get together and light baccarat cigars out on the balcony after a long day at work like Denny and Alan from Boston Legal, but I like that they all grab some pizza when they close a case.

I’m definitely planning to continue watching Season 2!

We’re trying to turn our basement into an entertainment/media center, but the process has been pretty slow-going — mostly because of financial challenges. Nevertheless, we’re still moving forward and purchasing furnishings and equipment whenever we can, which is why I keep scoping out the deals at places like Buy.com. When I saw this LG 42-inch LCD TV offered at less than half the retail price this morning, I immediately checked my savings account to see how much money I had in there.

This LG LCD TV looks like a great bargain! It comes with a bunch of features such as Auto Tuning, Channel Labeling, four language choices (English, Spanish, French, Korean), customizable closed-captioning and subtitles, child lock, and more. Plus, it even has HDMI inputs to accommodate sophisticated gaming systems like the PlaySation 3. I won’t pretend to understand all the technical specs, but I’m going to assume that they’re commensurate with similar television models out there.

Anyway, the best part about this LG 42″ LCD TV is the price tag. It’s on sale for just $649.99 as part of Buy.com’s Weekly Deals — and comes with free shipping. Now that’s the kind of bargain that I simply can’t afford to pass up! I know furnishing our basement media center hasn’t been a priority in the past, but we’ve got to get a move on here.

It’s been awhile since I’ve watched any of my X-Files DVDs, so I was feeling a bit nostalgic for them today. I’m not sure why… possibly because I was noticing how few TV couples I’m rooting for these days. I remember back when I first started watching The X-Files, I thought Mulder and Scully were the perfect for each other. I watched more for their interactions than for the cases. They had such amazing, understated chemistry that it was hard not to imagine them as a couple.

Anyway, One Breath was the eighth episode of the second season, and although it’s pretty widely regarded as a wonderful ep and a fan favorite, I have to say that I appreciate it more for the last five minutes than for the preceding 37. This was filmed at a time when Gillian Anderson had just given birth to her first child, so she wasn’t really a big part of the ep until she woke up from her coma at the end. And as good as Mulder is, it’s just not the same watching him on his own — just as it wasn’t the same watching Scully without Mulder after David Duchovny left the show. The X-Files was never about one character or the other to me. It was about Mulder and Scully together. Take that dynamic away, and the show becomes rather boring.

Anyway, it’s hard to make sense of “One Breath” if you just see it as a standalone because events rely so heavily on “Duane Barry”, “Ascension”, and “3″. I recalled that Scully was abducted by Duane Barry and had tests performed on her, but I didn’t remember the details. Perhaps that affected my enjoyment of “One Breath” this time around. So all I really liked from this ep was the shot of the tombstone at the very beginning. It was made particularly jarring because the sandblaster place had its exterior shutters closed even though it was daytime, giving the whole scene a rather surreal feel. The tombstone said Dana Katherine Scully 1964-1994 Loving Daughter & Friend. “The Spirit is the truth”. I John 5:07 (which is a mistake actually, as that should be John 5:6.)

At the end, I liked how Mulder gave up the chance to question/kill the men who were after him just so he could say goodbye to Scully. That was as clear a demonstration of his love as had been shown in the series to that point, and went far beyond their FBI partnership. Oh, and who could forget the present he bought her: Superstars of the Super Bowls… and her reaction, “I knew there was a reason to live!” Ha!

House 6×15 — “Private Lives”: Though parts of this episode were pretty good, I thought as a whole it was kinda dumb. The POTW case was boring (I barely even watched while she was on) and I’m not at all interested in House finding his biological father. Also, does every single episode have to contain jokes about pr.0n and mast.ur.bation (sorry, trying to thwart the bots)? That is getting very old. I liked the Chase stuff (I’m not overwhelmingly attracted to him, but I can see why many women would be) and thought the Wilson pr.0n flick appearance was completely random and weird. The funniest punchline to come out of that thread was the huge banner at the end of the ep that Cuddy nonchalantly asked someone to remove!

Castle 2×16 — “The Mistress Always Spanks Twice”: I thought this episode was ok, but maybe a little to cutesy for my taste. I usually look forward to the Castle/Beckett banter, but this time around it felt pretty forced — probably because the subject matter made the jokes far too easy/predictable. I have to admit that I didn’t see the roommate twist coming, though I probably should have. After all, the episode title usually doesn’t give away the answer, so by that “logic” alone it couldn’t have been the dominatrix! Loved Ryan and his girlfriend, especially because we got to see what Ryan really thinks of the crew when they’re not jokingly putting each other down. Aww!

Lost 6×07 — “Dr. Linus”: While I liked the alternate universe stuff well enough, I can’t help but getting impatient here. Where is all this going? Once again, we were treated to a patented Lost episode, where nothing much happened until the final few minutes. Why is Widmore coming in a sub? I forgot why he is interested in the island. What’s he gonna do when he gets there, kill everyone else and resume control of his precious piece of land?

I do have to say that I thought the dynamite scene between Richard and Jack was great. I usually don’t like anything involving Jack, but that was tense. And it showed that he has finally stopped trying to analyze every little thing. He took a leap of faith for once — believing that Jacob’s touch prevents him from being killed — and he was right. I wonder how that will change him going forward?

Criminal Minds 5×17 — “A Solitary Man”: I didn’t like this episode very much. The unsub and his motive were uninteresting to me, and there wasn’t much of an investigation either. I did enjoy seeing Gabrielle Carteris in her guest star appearance. In particular, I loved her shout-out to 90210, when she said to her daughter (on the show), “I was in high school once too, ya know.” The daughter’s response? “Yeah, like 50 years ago!” Ouch.

24 8×11 — 2am – 3am: This episode was pretty good. I really liked the stuff with the suicide bomber, and I knew Mare Winningham would be brought in to talk him down. I figured Jack would save the day and disarm the bomb with 2 seconds remaining on the timer or something like that, so it was kind of a nice twist when the thing went off. I guess I should have predicted Nicholas (was that the kid’s name?) wasn’t going to live as soon as he revealed the name of the guy involved in the plot. That’s usually the kind of info Jack has to get through torture, so the fact that he got it simply by asking should have been a tip-off.

Thank goodness there was no White House stuff this week, but the CTU “drama” between the employees was just as bad. I seriously cannot stand Arlo and hope he gets killed before the end of the season. I envision Dana snapping when he starts in on one of his idiotic “upgrade” jokes, and putting a bullet in his head. He is so smarmy and disgusting that I fast-forward the TiVo whenever he’s on screen.

I wonder what Dana is going to do about Kevin’s parole officer. How stupid can she possibly be? If the guy had her phone number, she should have realized he got it from Kevin’s call records… doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. She should have just said, yes, Kevin kept calling me to meet with him, but I refused. That would have likely been the end of it. Cole already knows her past with Kevin, so it wouldn’t have mattered to admit it. Now this whole thing is going to turn into a big mess. Wonder if Dana will try to kill the parole officer in order to stop that line of inquiry. Oh, boy….

HIMYM 5×17 — “Of Course”: Since I’m a big Robin/Barney shipper, I really liked this episode. It provided the kind of closure to their relationship that we never got before, and finally addressed the issue of Barney being such an ass about his conquests with Robin sitting right there. There were lots of callbacks/moments of continuity too, which was a good thing. Sometimes I think the show goes too far in this department, but in this ep the “but, um” and Marshall making up stupid song bits were good.

I know a lot of people were not looking forward to JLo in this ep, but she has never particularly bothered me — not even during that horrid “Bennifer” pairing with Ben Affleck way back when. I thought she did a pretty good job here.

Robin needs a less violent hobby than shooting guns, something like collecting gold coins or knitting. She didn’t even seem particularly good with the gun during the shooting range scene. Did you see how much her hand was moving up and down every time she fired? What kind of target would she hit like that? Ugh, and I just hate the fact that Don is still in the picture. So the minute he puts on pants and acts like an adult he’s totally attractive to her? Whatever!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Daigo Kobayashi (played by Masahiro Motoki) is a professional cellist with a struggling Tokyo orchestra. When the orchestra disbands because of lack of funds, Daigo and wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) decide to move back to his old home town of Sagata, where they can take up residence in the old coffee shop/house that Daigo’s mother used to run.

Daigo’s immediate concern is to find a job. The next morning he sees an ad in the paper for an NK agent to handle “departures”, and, thinking the position might have something to do with travel, he goes in for an interview. The boss, Ikuei Sasaki, asks Daigo a few basic questions, looks him over, and decides he will be perfect for the job. He pays 500,000 yen per month (roughly $5,000) and gives Daigo 20,000 yen in cash (about $200) right there at the interview. Daigo is puzzled, but accepts.

Soon Daigo discovers that the job has nothing to do with travel after all. Instead, he is to be a “nokan” specialist, someone who performs a ritual cleansing ceremony to prepare dead bodies for the coffin prior to cremation. This was not at all what Daigo had in mind, but the shacho convinces him to give it a try for a little while, claiming that Daigo is a “natural”. Daigo reluctantly agrees.

Things go along relatively well until Mika discovers the true nature of Daigo’s job. She is horrified, because working with dead bodies is considered “unclean” in Japan. She demands that Daigo quit, and when he refuses, she leaves him. Eventually, though, she returns, announcing that they will soon be parents. Once again she exhorts Daigo to quit, saying that their child will be teased mercilessly once others find out about Daigo’s occupation. But after she sees Daigo in action, she changes her mind.

The film ends with Daigo performing the cleansing ceremony on his father, who had abandoned the family when Daigo was just six years old. Previously, Daigo resented the man and couldn’t even remember his face very clearly. But after seeing how his father died alone, while clutching a souvenir from Daigo’s childhood, he can finally put the past behind him and move on.

Liked:

• The boss was the most interesting character in the film. He took everything as it came, rolled with the punches, and knew Daigo better than Daigo knew himself. He seemed like he had some great stories to tell. Too bad the filmmakers didn’t let us get to know him a bit more.
• The cleansing ceremony seemed quite peaceful and beautiful. I’d never seen anything like that before, and was very interested whenever they showed one in the movie.
• The last 40 minutes of the film were wonderful. Yes, the ending was extremely sappy and viewers were shamelessly manipulated with that “stone letter” thing, but it somehow still worked.

Disliked:

• I thought the actor who played Daigo was just terrible! I couldn’t stand looking at this guy because he only had two facial expressions: completely dumbfounded and sad-sack mopey. He was so annoying!!! I wanted to scream at him to buck up and be a man, for god’s sake. Ugh! It took me several days to get through the first hour+ of this movie because I got sick of watching Daigo.
• I hate seeing people vomit in real life or on screen, so the couple of scenes where Daigo did this had me scrambling for the remote control so I could hit “Skip”. Nasty!
• This film took way too long to unfold. As I mentioned, things didn’t start to get really good until the last 30-40 minutes. I wasn’t expecting shoot ‘em up action or anything, but man, it was tough to slog through the beginning. The ending was worth it, but this is NOT the kind of movie I could ever watch twice.

Rating:

Overall, I have to admit that I was rather disappointed by Departures (Okuribito). After the Oscar win for Best Foreign Film, this movie received a lot of hype, but I didn’t think it was that great. Then again, I rarely like Japanese films (other than Miyazaki) so maybe it’s a cultural thing. I give this one 3 stars out of 5.

Are you going to watch the Oscars tonight? I usually tune in for the opening monologue from the host (might be a dialogue since there are two hosts this time around), and then come back at the end for the big awards. There’s no way I’ll be watching for all three hours, as most of the broadcast is just too boring for me. Plus, I’m not really interested when celebs get on their soapboxes and preach about their pet political projects, global warming, green shopping,or whatever the flavor of the month happens to be. I mean, it’s cool that they’re using their celeb status for good causes, but that’s just not my style at all.

Anyway, go Sandra Bullock!! And here are the weekend box office returns for 3/7/10:

1. Alice in Wonderland, $116 million
2. Brooklyn’s Finest, $13.5 million
3. Shutter Island, $13.3 million
4. Cop Out, $9.14 million
5. Avatar, $7.7 million
6. The Crazies, $7.02 million
7. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, $5.1 million
8. Valentine’s Day, $4.27 million
9. Crazy Heart, $3.35 million
10. Dear John, $2.85 million

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Holly (played by Hilary Swank) and Gerry (Gerard Butler) are a volatile 30-something married couple living in Manhattan. They’ve been together for 11 years already, but still haven’t quite figured out what they want from life. Holly worries about money and finding a job she can love. Gerry is far more laid back and is ready to have kids regardless of everything else being up in the air. Though the two fight passionately, they always make up with even more passion. It’s clear that they love each other.

Then Gerry dies of a brain tumor, turning Holly’s entire life upside down. At first, she is so devastated that she can’t even leave her apartment, but finally her mother Patricia (Kathy Bates) and best friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) come over to celebrate Holly’s birthday. After getting cleaned up, Holly receives an unexpected delivery: a birthday cake and letter from Gerry. In the letter, he explains that he arranged to have a bunch of letters delivered after his death to help Holly get through the grieving process. His first wish is that she get dressed up and go out to celebrate her birthday in style with Denise and Sharon. A shocked Holly eventually complies.

Gerry’s series of letters takes Holly through the next year, forcing her to take action (call some long distance movers to haul Gerry’s stuff off to his mother’s instead of holding onto it forever), make decisions (find a career), and even travel to Ireland where the two first met. Along the way, Holly flashes back to different adventures she had with Gerry, thus allowing the audience to learn more about their relationship. Eventually, thanks to Gerry’s help from beyond, Holly makes a full “recovery” and emerges from her grief with a whole new outlook on life.

Liked:

• I found Holly and Gerry to be compelling characters when they were together. They didn’t exactly have a ton of chemistry, but they still managed to be interesting. Maybe it was just that I couldn’t figure out why they hooked up in the first place. At any rate, I was invested in their love story and wanted to see how things ended.
• Gerard Butler was fantastic in this! He was charming and good-looking, and brought an involuntary smile to my face whenever he smiled on screen. I’ve seen him in other films, but have never been this…mesmerized by him before! He is reason enough to watch this movie, despite not being in nearly enough scenes.
• I was very thankful that Holly did not end up with Daniel (Harry Connick, Jr.). They were not a good couple at all, and I would have felt that Holly’s journey of self-discover was wasted if she had ended up with him.

Disliked:

• That Daniel character was the worst of the bunch. I have a feeling he was supposed to provide comic relief or something, but HCJ just did not pull it off at all. He came across as a buffoon, and I just wanted skip every scene he was in.
• It was weird to see Hilary Swank try to pull off being a 19-year-old college student in that flashback scene to where she and Gerry first met. All I kept thinking was that she looks 30 years old!! And apparently her idea of being a college student is to act giggly and vacuous. Whatever.
• Because of his annoying character on Grey’s Anatomy, I now have an irrational hatred of Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Ugh. And is he really the type of guy that women fall in lust with at first sight??? I look at him and see an overweight average-looking guy. Meh.
• I thought the film ran a bit too long. It dragged in a couple of places and wasn’t as tight as it could have been.

Rating:

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by P.S. I Love You. This film exceed my expectations and held my interest almost the entire way through. Gerard Butler carries the action when he’s on screen, and the promise of seeing him again was able to sustain me through most of the Hilary scenes. I give this film 4 stars out of 5.

Burn Notice 3×16: — “Devil You Know”: Ugh, I hate that there are only 16 episodes in an entire season of Burn Notice! If this were on one of the four major networks, we’d get 24 action-packed hours of Michael, Fi, and Sam every year! This was a decent finale, though it didn’t quite provide the satisfaction or sense of anticipation as previous years. I have to say that I’m glad Michael ended up in that library/office or whatever it was and not Gitmo, because I would not have been pleased to have a Prison Break season on this show!

Well, if nothing else, we finally got a bit of an answer about what happened to Michael. Apparently, Simon was the one who went rogue and did all those bad things. When Management couldn’t control him anymore, they imprisoned him — and then blamed all his misdeeds on Michael, which is why he was burned. But why? That part just doesn’t make sense. Simon was in custody and out of the way. Why the need to find an additional scapegoat for his crimes?

I loved Maddie in this episode, and really felt bad for her. I’m glad she stuck by Michael and refused to believe that he killed all those innocent people. Plus, she went to jail for him!! Is that loyalty, or what! Granted, she’ll probably start looking at Saint Louis homes for sale or something just to get the heck out of Miami, but at least she got the better of that FBI dude this time. Hopefully Fiona and Sam will fill her in on what’s going on with Michael so she doesn’t have to worry too much longer. And then of course Fi and Sam have to launch their rescue operation.

Can’t wait to see where this goes in Season 4!