The Beginning of the End: Lost

Don't forget to tune into Lost tonight. 2-hour premiere event with a recap episode from 8-9 and the premiere "The Beginning of the End" airing at 9pm on ABC. Hurley-centric tonight.

Must See Movies of 2008

These are the movies I've deemed a must see for 2008 (a Top 19 if you will). I'll give a little write-up for each movie so you know what is what, but I believe each of these will be worth going to a theater and watching for $10.

Be Kind, Rewind (February 2008)

From director Michael Gondry (Being John Malkovich), this stars Mos Def as a clerk at a New York video/thrift store, and his friend Jack Black somehow manages to erase all the videotapes in the store because he's magnetized. So they have to "swede" (make by themselves) all the movies Jack Black erased.

Synecdoche, New York (Early 2008)

Written/Directed by Charlie Kaufman (writer Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener. I'm not exactly sure what this is about, something to do with PSH as a theater director, but anything from the mind of Kaufman should be worth seeing.

Iron Man (May 2)
No need for a description here. But Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark I think will be pretty sweet. Should be a good popcorn flick.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22)

He’s back! 20 or so years later, but finally a fourth Indy film, featuring his son played by Shia LaBeouf and the return of Marion Ravenwood. Unfortunately there is no Sean Connery but still this should be interesting. The plot is still unconfirmed but I’ve been hearing a return to the Lost Ark storyline and something about aliens. Not sure how it’s going to turn out but I’m sure it’s going to be fun.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (April 18)

Another movie from the Apatow camp, although not written or directed by the leader, Judd. This one, written by the star, Jason Segal, is about how he breaks up with his famous girlfriend (Kristen Bell) of a couple years and goes to Hawaii to get away from life, but ends up bumping into her there with her new boyfriend. So far the Apatow guys have yet to lead me astray.

Righteous Kill (April 18)

De Niro and Pacino in the same film! Say no more, two legends are back on screen together as two cops hunting a vigilante who may be one of their own. Both of these haven’t had the best track record in the past couple of years, but both should put in a hell of a performance.

Choke (Unknown)

Based on a novel written by the same guy who wrote Fight Club, this is sure to be a good film. I’ve heard this book as better than Fight Club, so maybe the movie will be as well, although it will be hard to top one of David Fincher’s masterpieces.

The Happening (June 13)

The new film from M. Night Shyamalan should be interesting at least. I’ve heard that this was his best script since The Sixth Sense, possibly even better. And say what you will, I’ve yet to hate any of his movies (I didn’t see Lady in the Water). But Unbreakable still remains my favorite movies of his. Should be good, Friday the 13^th.

The Incredible Hulk (June 13)

So the Ang Lee directed Hulk sucked, but let’s face it, that movie didn’t star Edward Norton, who pisses excellence in the morning. Show me a bad movie with him in it, and I’ll fight you on it. Also add in the fact he may have had a hand in writing part of it, I’m sure this one will be much better than the other piece of crap.

Wall-E (June 27)

Pixar is king. I’ll just say that. Never have they turned out a bad movie. Never (Maybe Cars…). And this surely will not be their first. They know how to make good movies and this will just add to the resume.

Hancock (July 2)

Pixar is king….well so is Will Smith. He could be starring in a movie about a guy taking a crap and it would still gross $200 million. Right now I don’t think there is an actor with more appeal than him. Directed by Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom), Will Smith is a superhero who has lost the faith of the people and needs help getting back into their goodwill. Also stars Jason Bateman, who I love.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (July 11)

The first Hellboy I won’t say was amazing, but it was definitely entertaining. Guillermo Del Toro really knows how to relate his vision onto the screen (Pan’s Labyrinth anyone?). Returns all the same old characters, but should be better I think. Del Toro doesn’t turn out many bad films.

The Dark Knight (July 18)

I’ve been waiting for this one for about two years now, and it’s inching closer day by day. Everything about this should and will kick serious ass. Heath Ledger should really bring a new twist to The Joker which will be superior to Nicholson’s. It’s unfortunate about Ledger’s death, but this movie will really show how versatile an actor the Aussie really was. I have complete faith in both Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale (who also pisses excellence, right alongside Edward Norton, and possibly better than him). Add to that Katie Holmes is out of the picture, and we’re golden.

Pineapple Express (August 8)

The last script written by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg was Superbad, and that was phenomenal, so this should be just as good if not better. This movie is supposed to be a merger of comedy and action, something about two stoners on the run for witnessing a murder with Rogan and James Franco in the lead roles, should be a whole mess of fun.

Quantum of Solace (November 7)

The next Bond movie, back with Daniel Craig as James Bond, this should be good. Casino Royale really surprised me with how good it was and how well Craig played the 007 agent. This movie starts a couple hours after the last one ended and revolves around the group/company that made Eva Green’s character do what she did.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (November 21)

I like the Potter movies, say what you will. My favorite being the third (Prisoner of Azkaban), but 4 and 5 have also been very good. The sixth probably won’t be the best Potter movie (save that for the two Potter movies for book 7!) but it should still be some fun. Dumbledore dies here, so should be fun to watch on screen. And yes I said two movies for Book 7, I’ve been hearing they’ll break up the book into two parts because it’s so dense they want to get a lot of the material in, and that’s what they should do.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (November 26)

David Fincher’s next movie sounds pretty damn intriguing. First off, Seven, Fight Club and Zodiac I all loved, with the latter being my favorite of the bunch. This stars Brad Pitt as an 80 year old man who is born that way, and ages backwards. Based on a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it should be really good. Also stars Cate Blanchett.

Star Trek (December 25)

I’m really not into Star Trek at all. I’m more of a Star Wars guy. That being said, this is directed by JJ Abrams, who I loved. Creator of Alias and Lost, I stand behind him whenever he puts his head into something. Also directed Mission: Impossible III which was much better than I thought it was going to be, mainly because of him. I think this is going to be a whole lot of fun. Check out the video of JJ Abrams below, under Mystery in a Box – best twenty minutes you’ll spend all day.

Frost/Nixon (Unknown)

I was actually lucky enough to see an advanced screening of this movie back in November. One word: excellent. Ron Howard is really in top form here with Frank Langella playing Tricky Dick to the tee and Martin Sheen playing David Frost very, very well. This movie is about the interviews that David Frost gave Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal, and when Nixon finally apologized to the U.S. for his devious schemes.

Santana to Mets

The Santana sweepstakes seem to have finally come to a close. It looks like the Mets got their hands on the ace pitcher from the Minnesota Twins for outfielder Carlos Gomez and pitchers Phil Humber, Deolis Guerra and Kevin Mulvey. The Mets now have 48-72 hours to finalize the deal with the pitcher otherwise the deal falls through. They have to offer Santana the right extension offer or he'll most likely return to the Twins.

I'm happy. I'm a Yankees fan, so by nature I hate both the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets (although if you ask my friend you're allowed to like both the Yanks and the Mets, but I personally think that's bullshit). But the Mets here are the lesser of two evils. The Yanks only have to face the Mets 6 times throughout the year, that means only twice could the possibly face Santana. If he were dealt to the Red Sox that would mean the Yanks could've faced him 5 possible times, which is no fun as we've seen how good pitching can shut down the Yanks powerful lineup.

I'm also happy because the Yanks weren't stupid in trying to acquire the star pitcher. They had an offer of Melky Cabrera, Phil Hughes, and two prospects for the pitcher that the Twins refused, and I'm glad they did. They Twins were pushing for Ian Kennedy to be added to that deal but Cashman and the Yanks didn't budge, and I think it'll payoff in the long run. Hughes in the playoffs really showed how much of an addition he'll be to the pitching staff, and Kennedy is going to be an ace pitcher in the near future. Cabrera has been amazing in centerfield gathering 16 outfield assists last year to lead the AL. Add in Robinson Cano and Joba Chamberlin and you have a very strong, young core of players who can both make an immediate impact now but be good enough to stick around and hopefully win more World Series' in the future.

Mystery in a Box

Botwin and Draper Back to Work

Lionsgate and the WGA made an interim agreement this past Thursday, so Showtime's Weeds and AMC's Mad Men as well as other Lionsgate productions can head back to the writing board. Weeds and Mad Men are two very well-written shows on cable television (Mad Men recently won the Golden Globe for Best TV Drama and Best Actor in a TV Drama while Weeds was nominated for Best TV Comedy and Best Actress in a TV Comedy) and this interim agreement means that starting tomorrow the writer's can start to write more episodes.

This is another step in the right direction for all this strike nonsense. It's been almost 4 months since the strike began and TV is finally coming down to the wire with scripted shows. Almost everything is a reality show. I'm a huge TV fan and normally have about 10-12 shows I watch during the week, but because of the strike I've only been able to watch a few of my favorite shows.

It's time to stop with these interim deals and just make one huge deal so everyone can be happy again. It's probably too late to save this TV season, but at least if this strike was resolved sooner rather than later it could give TV scribes a jumpstart on writing new episodes to good TV.

I saw this story posted on Ain't It Cool News.

Jordan XX3

Saw this commercial a couple of weeks ago and felt indifferent about it. Every year come February I look forward to the new Air Jordan sneakers. I've had every pair of Air Jordans since I was a kid, but in recent years I've stopped getting them, mainly because they're expensive as hell ($230 for a pair of basketball sneakers is a bit ridiculous). I still like to check out the sneakers, just to see what they're made of, but recently I've looked forward to the commercials that his company puts out. Each one has been different and unique, and each one hits me in a different way. I've been a Michael Jordan/Chicago Bulls fan ever since I can remember, so I like to check out the stuff he puts out. What do you think of the commercial?

Lost !

Lost is finally returning after an extremely long 8 month hiatus! Next Thursday we finally come back to the island. When we last saw Lost, we were treated to one of the greatest twists on a show...ever. We saw that Jack and co. made contact with Naomi's ship using her satellite phone. The person on the other line locked onto their signal and can now get onto the island to rescue everyone...or so we think. It's not going to be as easy as that, for I think these other other's are going to be worse than the other's that everyone had to deal with. But that wasn't even the big twist. Throughout the episode we got what looked like Jack flashback's to a very troubled time in his life, only to find out in the last minutes that it was a flash-forward, not a flashback, and he was trying to get back onto the island! If that didn't make you jump off you're seat, I don't know what sort of twist would.

Unfortunately this season we only get 8 episodes due to the WGA strike. Even if the strike ended today they wouldn't be able to finish the season in time. With only 48 episodes of Lost remaining the producers Damon Lindloff and Carlton Cuse decided to make three more seasons of 16 episodes each. They said each season would be treated as a chapter of a book. To stop reading a chapter in the middle of it would be such a tease for the reader, and that's what's going to happen to viewers. We're most likely going to be treated to some sort of cliff-hanger at the end of the episode, but not one worthy of a season cliff-hanger. I would equate the cliff-hanger we're going to get to reaching the end of a page, when all you have to do is turn the page to continue and finish the chapter. But some Lost is better than no Lost.

I've waited 8 long months and I'm ready for arguably my favorite show to return (reading my other posts you see it's pretty much tied with The Wire) and it's finally (almost) here.

Season 4 premieres Thursday, January 31 at 9pm on ABC.

Cloverfield

Just saw Cloverfield last night. Simply put: I loved it. It was exactly what I thought it was going to be, and the payoff was awesome. I don't remember any marketing campaign for a movie as genius as this movie's campaign. It started in July when the teaser trailer for this movie was released alongside Transformers. It left audiences gasping, desperately trying to figure out what this movie was, but more specifically, what this movie was called. There was no title attached to the trailer making the teaser even that much more of a teaser. The teaser (and the movie) was shot only with a handheld camera, giving it a very Blair Witch Project vibe. We only got some people at a party wishing Rob good luck on his trip to Japan. Then there's an earthquake and people started freaking out and from the roof of their apartment they can see a huge explosion that takes place at or around the Chrysler Building. They all head down to the streets to see what's going on, and then again from the direction of the Chrysler Building comes something flying through the air. This huge thing hits a building and then comes flying towards the people on the street and lands, and its the Statue of Liberty's head. Then the teaser ends, only giving the date of release. After I saw that I was obsessed with trying to figure out what the hell this thing was because it left me speechless.

I went online searching all movie sites and their forums and whatever else could give me news on this mystery movie, only known by the codename of "Cloverfield." On a couple of the sites I checked there were links to this puzzle site that these sites said were geared towards the campaign for codename Cloverfield. So after a couple of weeks I finally completed the puzzles, which was no easy feat, and after which I received an email saying to come back to this site and enter in the password (which was in the email) and I would be told how I could help save New York. I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, the next day, I found out that this site as actually a campaign for a video game, and not only that, a game that has nothing to do with codename Cloverfield. Since then I sort of was in the background for the movie, I didn't want to jump onto another false bandwagon. So I waited, bided my time, and finally I got to see the movie last night.

The movie kicked all sorts of ass. What's great is that this movie isn't about a giant monster that somehow got into New York and is causing havoc; this movie is about five friends, and how they are trying to survive through all of this. They're trying to navigate through the blazing streets of New York to find one of their other friends who is stuck at her apartment. So we only get these five people's perspective on how this all went down. We don't know how the president reacts firsthand, or what the military leaders are thinking firsthand, we get that information only by what's available to these five people and what's available on the camera.

If you want a good time at a theater, go see Cloverfield. It's not the greatest movie ever, but it's an entertaining movie that's worth seeing at least once.

Superbowl

So it's going to be the Patriots against the Giants. Unfortunately. I'm a Jets fan, so this is almost as bad as if the Red Sox were facing the Mets in the World Series. Who can I root for? The lesser of the two evils is obviously the Giants, so I'm going to be rooting for them, but in all honesty I cannot see them beating the Patriots. As good as the Giants have been the last couple of weeks (outside of last night, they were "ok"), I don't see them either playing up to the level of the Patriots or getting the Pats to play down to their level. The Pats are just too good and it just bugs me to death.

First the Red Sox won the Series, now the Pats are going to win the Superbowl, and it's a high possibility that the Celtics could get to the NBA Finals and even come out on top. As a Yanks/New York fan, this is my worst year for sports ever. The Giants need to pull off one of the greatest upsets in Superbowl history. Everything about the Pats annoys me, they just need to win.

I realize that the Pats are easily one of the greatest teams ever, and I'm not trying to downplay them in anyway. But I hate them. Why does Belicheck wear a sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves? They're just one of those teams that anything they do I will always hate them. And need I say spygate? As good as they are and where they make their mark in history, no one will forget about spygate. It's a huge blackeye on their perfect season.

So please, Giants, for the sake of all mankind, win.

Sunshine

I just watched Sunshine this morning, haven't seen it in a couple of months. I forgot how great the score was to this movie. Especially this song I just added: "The Surface of the Sun." The score is by John Murphy who does a great job really capturing each moment of the movie. This song really stuck with me for a couple of weeks after I first saw the movie, unfortunately it wasn't available anywhere. But now that I have it I can share it with you. Enjoy.

Sunshine is listed below as my fifth favorite non-comedy of 2007

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Favorite Movies of 2007

I just got finished watching David Fincher's Zodiac and it got me thinking about my favorite movies from the past year. I absolutely loved this film but I wanted to see how it compared with other movies from this year. Now being a film buff I keep a list of my favorite films of all time, and I break that down into Non-Comedy and Comedy lists, just because I don't feel it's fair to judge comedies against dramas or whatever else, and I'll do the same for these lists. These lists do not mean the best movies of 2007, these lists are just my favorite movies. For instance, I'm Not There is a better movie than The Bourne Ultimatum (in my opinion), but I liked TBU more so it ranks higher on the list. So here goes Top Non-Comedies of 2007:

1. No Country for Old Men/There Will Be Blood
2. Zodiac
3. The Bourne Ultimatum
4. Grindhouse: Death Proof
5. Sunshine
6. I'm Not There
7. 300
8. The Kingdom
9. Transformers
10. Live Free or Die Hard
11. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
12. American Gangster

Top Comedies of 2007

1. Knocked Up
2. Superbad
3. Juno
4. Hot Fuzz
5. Enchanted
6. Dan in Real Life
7. Ratatouille
8. The Ten
9. You Kill Me

No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood are tied atop my non-comedy list for a couple of reasons. First of all, I've only seen them each once, so to make a fair judgment I would have to see each film at least once more, maybe even twice more. The Coen Brothers really returned to form with NCFOM writing a stellar script (based on the book of the same name by Cormac McCarthy), getting great actors (Javier Bardem won Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor), and just visually creating a movie that reads just like a book. When books are adapted into movies it is very hard to keep true to the book, but Joel and Ethan really did a great job in this fact.

P.T. Anderson's last film Punch Drunk Love I did not see, but I've seen both Boogie Nights and Magnolia and both of those I loved. TWBB blew those out of the water. Daniel Day-Lewis stars in a movie about once every 50 years, but when he does he absolutely knocks the role out of the park. His portrayal of oil tycoon Daniel Plainview is haunting as we see how he deteriorates throughout the film. He already won the Golden Globe for Best Actor and I'm sure an Oscar is just around the corner.

I'd go into more detail about why I put each film where it is on my list, but for right now I'll leave it be. What do you think?

The Wire

I just watched the third episode of the fifth season for "The Wire." Currently there is not a better show on television. Even if the writer's strike wasn't happening, this would still be the best show out there. Slowly but surely it's overtaken my now second favorite show ("Lost") as something that's constantly on my mind. So far this season it has been a bit slow with the action, but at the end of this episode we get a look at the infamous Omar, who will be sure to make the game much crazier now that he's back in town.

With only seven episodes left in the season, "The Wire" is going to get messy, and quick. It's just too bad that this is the last season of the show. David Simon, the co-creator, had always intended the show to only go five seasons, each season telling a different chapter about the city of Baltimore. How those five seasons have come and gone. This show is a wake-up call to the rest of the U.S. because it's not afraid to show us what most audiences don't want to see. Namely that the system is flawed.

Do yourself a favor, and buy season one of the "The Wire." Watch the first couple of episodes, and if you're not instantly attracted to this show then I'll stand corrected. But there is nothing better on tv. I promise you that this show will instantly be on your mind constantly, and that you will care for each and every character that you see. Buy the first season, and before you know it you'll be craving for seasons 2, 3, 4 and 5.

"The Wire" airs on HBO on Sundays at 9pm.

Welcome

Welcome to my first blog. I've never done this before so this will be a learning experience. Enjoy.