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... sigh... well, it's the end of November... which in my opinion, was one of the greatest months in the history of entertainment as we know it...

In the video gaming world (the only world I do care about), I picked up Halo 2, Mario Power Tennis, and Metroid Prime 2 the first days they came out... And if only I had a decent PC, PS2, and a hell of a lot more money, I probably would've picked up Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, GTA: San Andreas, Dragon Quest VIII, and Metal Gear Solid 3 as well (and bleh... maybe even the god-awful Killzone), just for the hell's bells fun of it all...

In the movie world, I may not have seen much, but Sideways (well... that's actually October...), National Treasure, and especially The Incredibles will all go down as some of my favourite movies of the entire year of 2004... And I still have to see Kinsey as well, which still counts as a November film as far as I'm concerned...

And in the world of television?... Well, Smallville has royally sucked. And I'm still bitter that Joss Whedon is too still bitter at Fox to ever come back to television as we know it... But Charmed has actually been decent thanks to Charisma Carpenter and their Angel-season four "peaceful" apocalypse. Enterprise has shown just how damn good the series can be without Berman and Braga, with the Augment and Vulcan Civil War arcs...

And Stargate Atlantis? Now there was the wildcard... Whoever thought that Stargate Atlantis would start airing during November sweeps up here in Canada, months ahead of its scheduled dates in America?... and while yes, I have been quite critically harsh on the episodes that have come out in November, the truth of the matter is... I love Stargate, and being able to watch new episodes in November reminded me just how much I missed the series in the first place...

Sanctuary gets the not-so-desired rights of being the absolute last thing I review in the hallowed and Halo'ed months of November... and truth be told, it won't be a negative review, but rather a positively glowing one, actually...

The thing is, yes as a long time Stargate watcher, I did have my complaints about this episode, mostly with Athar... I gotta admit that the actress/model was very beautiful, and actually quite good as the omnipotent, mother-like being of the episode. But in a sense, Sanctuary was too predictable for a longtime Stargate veteran. It was simply a combination of Maternal Instinct and that episode with Orlin, whatever it was called, and it did kind of bug me that nobody but MacKay (not even Beckett) seemed to think of the whole ascension thing. Hell, they were still clueless, even after the doctor mentioned it... I also didn't like how rare the comic relief was in this episode. It maybe took itself too seriously at times, which is never good for a sci-fi show... but that's about where the complaints pretty much end...

Sanctuary just had a solid feeling of writing to it, and a positive glow about it that just somehow worked... Like I said, the actress who played Athar was very good at what she did. She perfectly acted like an Ancient, with all her vagueness and mystical telepathy. And hell, she didn't even try to hide who she was to the audience (thankfully), even giving weird looks behind Beckett's back when he mentioned ascension (guess she didn't think we'd know about that)... I would say she was the best Ancient we've seen so far, except that that hologram girl from the Atlantis pilot was a bit hotter... Still, I also liked how the mother nature thing was much better done in this episode than it was in Maternal Instinct. The idea of a "weapon" instead of just weather and lightning, was much more bearable to me at least. And to be honest, I liked her punishment... It sounds completely dumb that as punishment, the Ancients would allow her to save one world and not all the others. Isn't that unfair to so many, and completely interfering in corporeal matters still then?... But the actress wonderfully pulled off that sense of pain and longing on her face to leave. She was actually good at seeming a) lonely, b) tired, and c) very damn horny, which I couldn't agree with more, mind you...

Another decent thing about Sanctuary, was that it provided a safe haven for almost all characters to shine... Lt. Ford only had a few words, but at least he got to show some guts during the Wraith dart firefight. And Teyla may not have had much to do either, but even she got to tease Sheppard about the whole seaside picnic thing... Dr. Beckett didn't have any comical moments to himself, but he was back to being his jolly ol' self with that MRI machine. And his enthusiasm over Athar's perfect health, was perfectly healthy for a scientist like him... Dr. Weir was a bit off this episode, completely ignoring what Sheppard did last episode, by seeming so damn concerned for him yet again as he left in the Jumper at the end. Still, I loved the T-shirt she was wearing, and I just somehow felt more chemistry between her and Athar than I did with Sheppard. And I certainly liked the feeling of that... And MacKay? MacKay got a bit annoying in the end, being completely tactless in his jealous attempts to prove that Sheppard's new girlfriend was an Ancient. I've always loved the bratty MacKay, but he was a bit too overbearing with his complete lack of diplomacy this episode... Still, he had the absolute best lines in the entire episode. Calling Sheppard "Captain Kirk", and claiming that doing it with the alien lady is so "1967", absolutely had me rolling on the floor in laughter! I see now who on the Atlantis squad worships at the altar of Roddenberry...

This was a John Sheppard episode. And I admit, he did have some chemistry with Athar, if only because their two opposite personalities seemed to click really well (and because she was damn hot...)... It was weird near the start when he was telling MacKay to shut up though. Sure, the doctor was being completely undiplomatic, but it seemed more like Sheppard was under an alien influence at the time, than just the influence of his libido... Still, I may not have liked how the episode revolved around Sheppard, but I did love how the script revolved around everyone else's jealousy. Teyla mocked him, but made a few looks in their conversation that showed she wished she was getting some herself... MacKay's jealousy was completely rampant, and I couldn't have laughed more when he finally sighed, "he is Captain Kirk..."... And Dr. Weir? There weren't many Sheppard and Weir moments this episode, but Elizabeth did certainly seem a bit bitchy towards Athar at times (probably due more to MacKay's warnings about her than what Sheppard was doing with her, but still...)... And c'mon, who doesn't like John Sheppard playing the romantic sweetheart asshole one moment by the sea side, and then kicking ass and taking Wraith names with a Puddle Jumper the next?...

My only complaint about Sanctuary, was that it was a bit too predictable for me, and that Dr. Weir and Athar never really got it on... But still, thanks to the strong writing, the return of almost the entire cast (hell, even Peter and his accent got something cool to do), and just from the surprising effectiveness alone of the actress who played Athar, it was nice to see that November ended off on exactly the same, positively glowing note as it started on...

Normally, I try to be some sort of bullshit elitist in debates and conversations on the web. Because the truth of the matter is, often the elitist bullshitters are right... When the critics all pan a movie as being pure crap, normally the movie turns out to be pure and utter crap...

There's a reason, why the ticket sales for National Treasure almost remained perfectly stable at #1 in America for the past two weeks... The critics may have seriously dead panned this movie, but it's pretty damn obvious why...

Most reviews cited that National Treasure was a pure rip off of the far too popular, The Da Vinci Code novel... While I haven't read the novel myself (since I never read in my life, ever), I certainly have read a hell of a lot about the damn book that Christians and anti-Christians and conspiracy theorists alike are all buying from bookshelves in droves... And yes, when it comes to secret societies, obscenely vague clues, and even when it comes to the links between the modern day and the Crusades, National Treasure might come off as a preemptive rip-off of the Da Vinci Code movie coming out next year... But there definitely is a big difference between the two...

It may be fluff... but it was some of the most entertaining fluff of the entire year, in my opinion at least, goddammit...

I don't know what it is with Nicolas Cage and Jerry Bruckheimer. But of those two together just seem to bring out the best in each other... The Rock still stands as perhaps my favourite movie of all time. And while Gone in 60 Seconds was no masterpiece, it definitely sported one of Nicolas Cage's best performances in all his recent years of acting... And the same goes for National Treasure. The man just somehow can perfectly mold the intricacies of being a neurotic geek, with being a perfectly human action star, all at the same time... Just the way he stares with his eyes as the Declaration of Independence is being shot at, is exactly the kind of passion this movie needed from its star to be truly successful...

Nicolas Cage plays Benjamin Franklin Gates, a name of a Valley Forge play on Ben Franklin and Bill Gates no doubt... But besides the hokey name, I really did enjoy his character. He obviously didn't have any real character development (and why should he? Except for Armageddon and The Rock, has any good Bruckheimer movie ever been able to have any real character development?...), but I just fell in love with his real obsessive passion with his work... Right off the bat, as he was cutting himself and thinking outloud about the clue on the Charlotte that he just found, he was just somehow endearing to me. Nicolas Cage could perfectly somehow make pondering inside his head seem like something actually interesting on screen, and seeing him fret and fluster over having to pay for a fake Declaration of Independence with his Visa card, was definitely one of the highlights of the movie... National Treasure was nothing more than the usual Bruckheimer quick switches between scene A and B, with the requisite car and bullet chases in between. But somehow, just like he did in The Rock and Gone in 60 Seconds, Nicolas Cage makes the whole frantic adventure into something that's actually fun... The movie never takes itself too seriously, and neither does Nicolas Cage, which made the 2 hour and 10 minute movie just fly by as one of the most memorial popcorn flicks of the entire year so far.

And what was really surprising to me, was that for the first time in years, Nicolas Cage actually had chemistry with the female lead... Now, first of all, I was shocked that Diane Kruger not only looked damn fine with her hair down, but that she could actually act as well (after the god-awful Troy, I definitely was shocked...). Not many scenes were written specifically between her and Cage, but somehow you could actually feel the giddy passion these two shared for their work and for each other... The story between the two of them was the usual fare of she hates him at first, he hates her, but they somehow fall in love over a common goal and a common adventure. But as tired of a cliche as this may be, it actually felt fun on screen, as these two personalities really seemed to click... I guess Troy really did give the German actress something to care about over history, because she really did seem to fall in love with the ancient coins on her wall, or those scrolls from the library of Alexandria... And her comedy routines actually weren't bad this film. Her playful banter over who gets to carry the Declaration of Independence was actually refreshing in this day and age of overly epic movies. And I just loved the expression on her face when she finally saw for herself, the code on the back of the parchment... and the movie certainly wasn't hurt by her fine skin as she was changing out of her dress as well...

... ironic, isn't it? She was casted as the world's greatest beauty in Troy, and looked completely ugly and outclassed as a result... and yet here, as a simple Anglo-German (with the name "Abigail", somehow...) gone American historian, she looked absolutely ravishing... well, Troy's loss is National Treasure's gain, I suppose...

... because completely unlike Troy, and completely unlike what all the critics seemed to miss, National Treasure was actually fun... and every single character seemed to contribute to that...

Riley (Benjamin's sidekick) was a decent geek. And I was thankful as hell that he wasn't done over the top, with huge technobabble references everywhere. Instead, we got some genuine "a-ha" moments from him, like figuring out the final word of the code from a bus, or remembering all the stuff about daylights savings hours and boasting about it after... Jon Voight played Benjamin's father, and for the most part, he simply played his Zoolander father self. Of, you know, "I have no son" one moment, and then claiming he's never been more proud of him later... I didn't think Jon Voight did play a good father role this movie, but he certainly played a great Indiana Jones. Sure, I knew he was bluffing at the end of the film, but I still loved that sparkle in his eyes when we knew that he knew where the treasure was. All of his bitterness had subsided, and the old man felt like a kid again, like I was kind of feeling at the time thanks to this film...

Harvey Keitel played the FBI agent, who didn't really have many moments to shine. I did like the ingenious use of the helicopter to mask who Gates was talking to at the pier, although it did make the FBI a bit dumber than they really should've looked... Still, I was surprised as anyone that Harvey was a member of the Free Mason's. I suppose there had to be some remaining members of the secret society still around, and it was nice ending touch, for Nicolas Cage to finally meet one of them and actually get some recognition for his "treasure protecting"... Sean Bean played the villain Ian, as stereotypical of a villain as he was. His attempted robbery of the Declaration of Independence was a bit too brutish for a true intelligent villain's tastes, but overall, he wasn't a bad villain at all. He was able to solve almost as many clues of the puzzle as Benjamin did, and the acting managed to portray a sense of devious cleverness in simply the way he would pay off that little school boy with actually good money (damn Riley and his 1 dollar cheapness... where's child labour laws when you need them?...). It was disappointing that Ian was outsmarted so easily at the end, but besides for the ending, I actually enjoyed his character. He wasn't over the top ruthless - he was simply greedy, and I think it worked nicely...

Hell, a lot of things worked nicely in this film... It was even educational for most of the audience, even if some of the facts were wrong...

Now, I fully admit that National Treasure sure as hell ain't some national landmark of a movie... It had no real character development. And the ending sequence did kind of drag on (although seeing Diane Kruger in that frolicking dress in the end was worth the wait...)... The father-son relationship was cliche, the romance had no real script-written build, and of course, all the critics seemed to have problems with the clues... For instance, daylight savings hours would have no real effect when shadows change depending on the day of the year, and the leap year I do believe... And I do admit that for some of the riddles, Benjamin Franklin Gates solved them way too easily, without giving the audience a chance to get it themselves (not like we ever could...)... And honestly, how the heck did the John Hancock or Benjamin Franklin or whoever get that 3d-like message on the back of the Declaration of Independence in the first place?...

I admit, that the movie's premise alone was almost stupid enough to keep me away from the theatre... I mean, a secret treasure trove hidden by Paul Revere? Since when the fuck was Paul Revere really any damn significant in the first place?...

But Pirates of the Caribbean sounded ridiculous at first too, and look how that turned out...

People are flocking to see National Treasure thanks to great word of mouth, and I couldn't be more happy... The action is top notch, with some great chases that actually did have me on the edge of my seat... The clues aren't nearly as bad as the critics made them out to be. Except for the riddles, I actually liked many of the solutions to the problems, like the foreshadowed time being on the $100 bill for example... I loved the final scenes when father and son were bonding over the lack of treasure room. I knew that the movie wasn't over, and I was seriously hoping that the treasure would actually be found. I was actually rooting for the good guys for once, and feeling a bit lost when they were feeling down... Hell, the movie was even educational. It definitely will get some recognition in classrooms, for making The Declaration of Independence, Wall Street, Trinity Church, and even the Congress library into things that actually seem worth watching, and definitely worth researching, if only to see if this movie was right or wrong...

And c'mon already, this movie had all the keys and ciphers and hidden codes to be a surprise hit of the year... There was romantic chemistry and comedy between the lead actor and actress, there was a great soundtrack (even if it was generic Bruckheimer), it had a stellar actor in Sean Bean as a villain, it had a spectacularly innocent feel of childhood energy and discovery, and it definitely had a plotline that just never let up on the suspense...

And if luck has it, it'll definitely be a movie that stuns and pans the critics by sheer word of mouth...

Y2kk Update: - Stargate Atlantis: Hot Zone and Star Trek Enterprise: Awakening Reviews (Spoilers) -

Once again, it's been a good week for television... because thank God Smallville didn't air a new episode, to continue their streak of November sweep abominations...

Sigh... I just wish I was able to enjoy this week more than I did... I haven't been able to write or review anything, since I've been too bogged down by all the damn projects I have before the end of the university term... And the situation isn't going to get much better next week, considering I have something like another five projects all due and fucking me up the ass at the same time... sigh indeed...

But while it pains me that I can't write for those two fans out there who actually do read this website, I can still enjoy the episodes I watch, now can't I?... doesn't matter what kind of homework I have. Television always takes precedence. It's truly television without pity...

... 'cause keeping our word, is standard... whatever the hell that's supposed to mean...

I watched Stargate Atlantis' Hot Zone episode this week, and while I really did like the writing, the episode did feel a bit too closed off for me... We sort of had a bottle episode last week, with the Defiant One taking place in basically just two locations. Same goes for Hot Zone, although at least in this episode, everyone had a chance to do something... Teyla got to look hot for once in that dress she was wearing. And it was nice that the show proved she could kick Sheppard's ass (although I would've just shot her first...). But besides that? She felt just out of place, oddly knowing about outbreak prevention far more than you'd expect from a villager... Lt. Ford got some great jokes in at the start of the episode with the poor Prime number game (which even as a geek, I really do suck at). But then later on in the episode, it became apparent that the actor just can't act. He was trying to sound panicked about his impending doom, but all that seemed to come out was bitter whininess... didn't seem to work for me...

I've never been a big fan of episodes with outbreaks. I did like some of the touches in Hot Zone though... Nanites being the cause of the disease was a nice sci-fi twist (although it's kinda been done before on Stargate). And I really liked how intelligent the city of Atlantis was, going into lockdown mode as soon as the disease was discovered, and even letting Sheppard through the doors since he was in a Hazard suit... And I did like the solution to the problem. Who wouldn't like a nice nuclear naquaada explosion to lighten up the day?... But the episode did feel a bit slow at times, simply because of the nature of a lockdown. It was nice to finally see Peter back, but for the most part, I didn't really like the character development very much...

MacKay provided a nice mix of his bold self from last episode, and his terrified self from earlier in the season. His final speech of being real damn close to finding a theory of unification was exactly what I planned to say at my own deathbed, but I can't say he had many other jokes besides that one... He was mostly too serious this episode, although it's understandable why, considering his scientists were dying all around him. Still, MacKay normally provides the comic relief in episodes, and it just kind of felt lacking when he was in full scientist soldier mode this episode... Dr. Beckett usually provides some comic relief as well. But besides his close rapport with MacKay, he didn't really offer much of use of anything in Hot Zone. He did the cliche thing of caring about his patients and telling them they're going to be fine, only to have another human just die next to him on his watch... I'm surprised that the nanites couldn't go through the Hazard suits. And I'm also surprised that Beckett was a little slow in his explanation of nanites to the even more slow Dr. Weir... It's interesting to think of who designed the Nanites (Ancients who wanted to kill off humans? Furlings who wanted to starve the Wraith? Someone else? We'll see...), but I certainly cringed at how dumbfounded Dr. Weir looked as MacKay and Beckett were explaining science to her like she was a child... Hasn't she ever watched sci-fi?...

I guess the real story of the episode was between Dr. Weir and Sheppard, since this was their first Voyager "Scorpion"... I loved Scorpion back in the day for its action, but I didn't really like the forcing of conflict between the main man and woman who obviously had a thing for each other... Same goes for Weir and Sheppard today. Weir was being pissy again, keeping everyone under lockdown like any good civilian would do. But Sheppard had a good point as well - with Hazard suits, he could make a difference... It doesn't really matter who's right or wrong. It just matters that Weir went completely stupid somewhere in the middle, opening the doors for Sheppard to go through, yet forgetting to turn off the transporter after power was restored... She couldn't stop Peterson from getting to the Atlantis city, yet she was blaming Sheppard near the end for once again disobeying orders?... He didn't do the right thing, and he knew it. So he tried to save his own ass, by reminding her that he saved her ass... how romantic... But I didn't really like anything about their forced mutual distaste for each other in Hot Zone. It just didn't feel "hot" between the two of them, either romantically or furiously... I did enjoy Sargeant Bates though for once. He chose Sheppard over Weir, which military wise, I would've done the same... 'cause Weir sucks...

Hot Zone wasn't really the hottest of episodes to watch. But once again, thanks to some great delivery of lines by MacKay and Sheppard, the hour did go by extremely quickly. And if only Stargate Atlantis hasn't had so many great episodes already to set the bar so high, then maybe I would think that Hot Zone really was the hot stuff of the week afterall...

... but as always, for about the umpteeth time in a row, my personal bias just has to give the episode of the week award to Star Trek Enterprise...

Now, contrary to what a lot of critics are already saying, I much preferred Awakening over last week's The Forge... The Forge was a bit too slow moving for my tastes. Crossing deserts and having katras sucked into your brain may work in written literature, but I just find it boring on screen... Awakening was a much faster paced episode than its predecessor, and while some critics didn't like it because of that, I personally found it more than welcome... Because c'mon, what fan doesn't appreciate Romulan-acting Vulcans actually kicking the Enterprise's ass and taking names? Thanks to the weird ring ships the Vulcans were using, it honestly looked like a battle between Star Wars Trade Federation ships or Stargate Atlantis puddle jumpers versus Star Trek... and what Star Trek fanboy wouldn't appreciate that?...

The Awakening was definitely an episode that tried to feel epic... maybe a bit too epic however, with so many Vulcan things going on... Last week's Forge was just so full of old skool Star Trek references (like Spock's/T'Pol's pet) that it's no wonder why nostalgic critics would adore the episode... This week was mainly about having Surak's katra stuck in Archer's head. Both the Vulcan High Command the Syrannites weren't acting much like Vulcans, and Surak even mentioned that to Archer (amidst some nice nuclear naquada explosions in the background... go Sheppard...)... I wasn't impressed much by the actor who played Surak. But he was definitely the most "Vulcan-feeling" of all the Vulcans on the episode (although T'Pol's mother, T'Les, was close)... I did like young T'Pau however. While the critics on the net who remember her 140-year old self from the original Star Trek seemed to all hate this version of her, I personally had no problem with her... She acted completely like a rebel leader would - she was uptight, arrogant, impetuous, too damn sure of her own ways, and prejudice against all those who aren't on her side... Sounds like an tree hugger I've met if you ask me... and her clothes proved it, with her looking so much like a Forest Elf that it was actually quite funny. And actually quite horny as well, since thanks to her Forest nymph hairstyle, she was really the hottest Vulcan girl I've ever seen...

Awakening also improved on The Forge, by giving every character on the cast something to do... Now, Phlox was completely missing in action unfortunately. But Mayweather finally got some lines, and even got to have fun with the shuttle joystick as he was getting his ass kicked... Reed got to manually target the Vulcan vessels. Must've been fun for him to finally fire back at the allies who jeer down at humanity... Reed didn't do much else, but seeing him so damn happy to be in a shuttle firefight was enough for me... Hoshi didn't have a single thing to do either, but it felt like she did, simply because of all the communications with the sneering Administrator V'Las. She definitely had that old skool Uhura feeling of useful uselessness going there... Tucker provided all the great scenes on Enterprise. I loved his bonding with Soval over the Vulcan hiding his affinity for earth. And Tucker really does feel like a much more natural captain now, not forcing things to happen, but rather just being his usual self and thinking on his feet... I especially liked how he didn't ignore his prior distaste for Soval this episode. Whenever these two talked, you could actually seen Connor Trineer acknowledging that he was wrong about Soval after all these years. And while Soval's weird change to being completely nice is still completely strange, I must admit that his conviction is somehow making me like his character...

The episode was all about Archer and T'Pol, with some slight hints of 'shippiness between the two... Archer had a damn katra in his head, and T'Pol really seemed interested in it, not just for scientific reasons but for Archer's sake as well... Still, the stare fest between the two was minimal at most, and we got a lot of good dialogue between the two of them for once. T'Pol was not overly emotional for the first time in the season (she even seemed rather Vulcan when shedding a tear over her mother.... or was that just bad acting?...), and I liked her logical explanation of the "katra" in Archer's mind (although the audience all knew that katras existed). I didn't like how pissed off T'Pol was at her mother for joining the Syrannites, but I did agree with the assessment, that these rebels were just as bad as the Vulcan High Council was (is that why critics don't like this episode? It was saying that the anti-Bush activists are just as bad as the Bush administration is, essentially... nice...)...

Now, I didn't really enjoy Indiana Jones Archer. He discovered the Kir'Shara far too easily, and it certainly didn't help that the photon torpedoes the Vulcans were firing were so damn pitifully weak at the time (I have a pet peeve with that, you know)... Still, I liked Archer's confounding combination of conviction and confusion. He didn't want to help Surak, and even wanted to get him out of his head. But he accepted the mission anyways (did he have a choice though?), and that's what the character has always been about in the first place. The unwilling hero... who got to have mind sex with the really hot T'Pau too, but that's besides the point...

The Awakening will definitely not garner the stellar reviews online that The Forge did, simply because it wasn't as nostalgically inclined as the latter was... Still, as a fan of TNG and not the original series, I really did enjoy The Awakening a lot more than The Forge... I can complain that the Vulcan High Command was just too damn evil for their own good (and how did one man get that much power in the first place?). But hopefully, all things will be partially resolved next episode, with a nice little teaser about the Andorians getting involved...

Awakening wasn't the best episode of the season. And maybe I only really enjoyed it, because I watched it after my five assignments for the week were finally due... Still, the fact of the matter is, I did enjoy this episode. Enough to definitely make it my episode of the week, at least...

I loved the Eugenics Brent Spiner arc, because it reminded me so much of the original Star Trek movies... I did enjoy quite a few of them, afterall...

The Forge meanwhile, was definitely an episode that showed that the Enterprise writers are truly forging ahead to bold new places... It had superb acting, perhaps some of the best the series has ever seen. And it definitely took a bold step where no Vulcans have gone before, bringing us a new depth to a species that we really haven't seen in full since the Original Series itself...

... it's just that... I didn't like the Original Series very much... at all... and perhaps the only problem for me and The Forge, is that it reminded me just a bit too more of a series I never liked in the first place...

Let's just put it one way: except for the weird ass conversation, where T'Pol was comparing Porthos to a man-eating beast, I kinda found The Forge a bit boring... It was definitely a tragic episode though. I really felt bad for Soval after Admiral Forrest's death, because you could really see the guilt hanging on the actor's brow... Those two really started the episode off well together. Soval's admittance, that the Vulcans were actually scared of humanity (since they reminded them too much of an impetulant version of their own selves), was one of the greatest speeches I've heard in Trek in a very long time (and that includes the Augment arc). And Admiral Forrest's death was just so quick and unexpected and sudden, that I couldn't help but feel bad for Soval, as he now owed his life to the man he never seemed to respect before in the series... And the acting on Soval's behalf was amazing. He somehow made a mind-meld into the most interesting thing since Star Trek 2, just from the fact that he of all people would be the last we'd ever expect to go out on a limb for the humans. And when he was even honest about the meld to his superiors? That showed real guts for his character, and it made me enjoy Soval's performance for the first time in the entire series...

There truly was some awesome acting in The Forge, but there was a lot of bad characters as well... The Head Investigator guy was so stiff and unemotional, that it really seemed like he was just reading off of cue cards the whole time. And the Head Administrator guy or whatever? I just couldn't help but keep picturing him, giving endless speeches to the SG-1 crew on the Prometheus instead of the Enterprise, but I digress... And that guy that Archer and T'Pol run into on the path of The Forge? I know he was trying to seem all pacifist and calm and everything, but he just seemed rank and arrogant to me instead. Sort of like a hippie, actually... And of course, his raping of Archer's mind was not only kinda inappropriate, but it lead to a super rank and arrogant Archer, who somehow now thinks that he doesn't need to drink water anymore. Just great... where's Airlock Archer when you need him?...

A lot of characters were underutilized in The Forge, but at least every single one of them had a moment or two... Hoshi was only in the basketball scene, but damn, did she look hot in that T-shirt of hers... Mayweather got to flex his muscles by holding up a wall over a bomb. Nice to know he can get a job as a red shirt on Alias if he ever quits Enterprise... Malcolm got to actually create some tension by simply scanning a bomb for DNA. He seemed intelligent this episode in his methodological analyses, but in the end, he didn't really have much to do... Neither did Dr. Phlox, although his superior basketball skills seemed to be a high point. And he certainly made the most of his time in sickbay, as he tried to argue for the sake of his patient in the face of the investigation... I wish Tucker had gone to the planet, just so that he'd somehow become more of a match with T'Pol if he managed to get Surak teachings downloaded into his Matrix brain. Still, he had some great acting chemistry with Soval on the ship, as the two former bicker partners were now showing great concern for one another... As for T'Pol, I see Jolene's recent backlash against the show, was showing up in her acting yet again. It was alright that she seemed pissed off as hell when her husband Koss came by for a visit, but did she really have to seem PMSey with Archer every step of the way through the desert as well?... Sure, her comments about Porthos were amusing, but the actress almost sounded offended by the sheer stupidity of her script lines or something... But hey, at least her cluelessness as Super Archer was walking through walls near the end, made up for her lack of enthusiasm in the rest of the episode. And at least she looked alright with that dainty little cotton hood over her head...

Scott Bakula had some great acting moments with Soval, especially when the two were overlooking Admiral Forrest's body together. Two enemies had come together over the loss of one, which is exactly how the birth of the Federation was always meant to play out. And it worked... I even liked Archer's little moments in the Vulcan Forge of a desert. The electrical sand storm was a nice special effect, and Archer getting completely shot down by T'Pol when offering her his sunglasses, was kinda amusing as well... But then we got stuck with the mind-meld rape scene. Then we got Super Archer acting like a complete zombie, or at least his old self from season one... I'm interested in how this Vulcan terrorist arc will turn out, especially considering it seems the High Council were the ones who engineered the whole attack. But I certainly don't care whether Archer finally gets all that logical bullshit out of his cranium... not until we got some real Quantum Leaping going on there or something...

The Forge was a very professional feeling episode in the end, but perhaps it was just a bit too sophisticated in the end for my bitter tastes?... Yes, I'm sadly the guy who liked Harbringer. I need some excitement in my episodes... and while I'm sure that the later episodes in this Vulcan arc will turn out great, I can't say that besides Soval's sudden turnover to porthos and pathos, that I really cared for what was happening in The Forge...

It was a great episode for acting. It was a great episode, story arc wise. It was a great episode to set up the birth of the Federation... and it was a great episode, for all those original series nostalgics out there...

Y2kk Update: - Nintendo's / Camelot's Mario Power Tennis Nintendo Gamecube Review (Spoilers) -

... for most gamers out there, the above would be considered an insult to the Mario franchise... an insult that, in all due retrospect, the series has quite promptly deserved over the past generation of gaming...

... but to me? Considering Super Mario Kart was one of the best damn racers I've ever played, considering Mario Golf was the only golf game I ever tolerated, and considering Mario Tennis for the N64 was absolutely my favourite tennis game since at least Super Tennis on the SNES?... then, well... maybe the supposed "whoring" of the Mario household name isn't such a bad thing afterall...

I loved Mario Tennis for the N64. I even loved its RPG aspects on the Gameboy... And the pattern holds true to this day, as Mario Power Tennis is definitely the best tennis game I've played since at least Tennis 2K2 on the Dreamcast (not that there's been much competition since then, mind you)...

If there's any real complaint to lob against Mario Power Tennis, it's that at times, it really is too kiddie for its own good... even by my standards... Just take the trophy winning movies or the outtakes as the final credits roll for example. Even some of the power moves that characters do on the court, are just so kid-oriented and so graphically jarring, that it really at times distracts and detracts from the gameplay... and this is coming from a guy who honestly still believes Super Mario Sunshine and The Wind Waker are much more mature games than the PS2 will ever have...

But despite the obvious kiddie factor of the game, Mario Power Tennis really is a great game... I know that not much graphical power is required for a tennis court. But really, Mario Power Tennis is still perhaps the absolute most beautiful sports game I have ever seen in this generation of gaming. Jaggies are almost completely non-existent, colours are more vibrant than anything else I've seen on my non-HDTV screen, and the animation runs so seamlessly at 60fps all the time, that it's really easy to take the amazing graphics in this game for granted... As for the sound, the effects could be of a higher quality (I have gotten used to Dolby Digital on the Xbox, afterall). But Mario Power Tennis sports probably the best damn music Nintendo has done since at least The Wind Waker, if not Super Smash Bros. Melee... I still get kicks out of hearing all the old nostalgic tunes from the past, whether it be from Luigi's Mansion or Donkey Kong Country. And it's great to hear the music from my past as I'm rocking to it in tennis... For some odd reason, I wouldn't have it any other way...

Gameplay wise, Mario Power Tennis is surprisingly deep... I shouldn't say "surprising", considering the original Mario Tennis was the king of the hill when it came to surprising depth, but still... The basic controls in the game are simple enough for anyone to understand, and that's always a real important factor in a sports game. All a person needs to press to play, is the A button and the analog stick to move. That's about it... But for gamers who want to go beyond the basics, it's amazing what kind of variety Camelot put into this game with just two or three buttons. Combinations of A and B produce a huge array of lob shots and slices, that make this game just as complex as Top Spin tennis ever was. And while at first I didn't warm up to the Power shots (especially considering my CPU teammate kept ruining my routine in doubles with them), I really am starting to get to appreciate the added game balance that the offensive and defensive saves seem to do... Sure, I still routinely get annoyed at the jarring and overly annoying power shot animations. But in one-on-one competitions with a friend or family member, matches can go on for a great length of time, just from charging up the R button, and waiting for the right time to show off your stuff...

Single player wise though, I can't say that Mario Power Tennis is even as good as Mario Tennis was back in the day... I still don't get why Nintendo seems to try so much harder on their Gameboy iterations of their games than they do on the GC. Mario Power Tennis is sorely lacking a season / RPG mode, and it didn't even provide the kind of raw challenge that Mario Tennis did on the N64... I blew through all the singles tournaments against the CPU, even without using the B button once, with the only trouble being against Donkey Kong in the Planet Cup... The doubles were more of a pain thanks to dumb CPU partners, but even that took no time to do, as I was more than focused on unlocking all the characters in the game... Sure, I admit that I kinda cheated by using star players. And sure, I admit that I still haven't tried beating All-star CPU opponents in Exhibition Mode yet... But still, I do feel cheated that I blew through pretty much the sum of the single player mode in just a day or two, even to the point of unlocking half of the star players in the game just for shits and giggles. After loving Mario Tennis for the GB, I was really hoping for a bit more from the GC version... but still...

Single player was never the focus for the GC. Multiplayer always has been, and that's where Mario Power Tennis really shines... Four player mode is just amazing in this game. The sheer balance between all the unique characters really brings out the beauty in gimmick matches... Some still complain that gimmick matches (like Luigi's Mansion) take the fun out of the game of tennis. But for the gamers that I know who hated tennis in the first place? They love the gimmick matches, and kept playing them even to the point where they started caring about the actual sport they were playing... As for the mini-games, it was nice that Camelot added them in, considering I still haven't bought any of the Mario Party games for my cousins to play whenever we're bored. None of the tennis mini-games are particularly spectacular, but along with some very clever and very varied gimmick courts (which can all be used as regular courts after beating the Gimmick Cup, by the way), it all so seamlessly solidifies Mario Power Tennis as one of the best damn multiplayer games of this generation of gaming. Or at least, one of my personal favourites...

I admit that Mario Power Tennis certainly isn't perfect... The piss poor single player mode, the extreme kiddieness at times, the power shots that aren't for everyone (although you can turn them off), all seem to give me this weird ass feeling... that this game just doesn't have the same magic as the first game in the Mario Tennis series did... Just like with Mario Kart DD, some charm seems to be lost from its N64 incarnation, and we're left with a game that somehow feels... I dunno... a bit more hollow... and a bit more rushed and inferior, compared to it's amazing predecessor...

But just like with Mario Kart DD, I still love Mario Power Tennis. And my cousins all love it too... It's a game that everyone seems to be able to enjoy, simply because it epitomizes Nintendo's mantra of "pick up and play"... Sure, I hate their new slogan of, "too much fun". But at parties? That's the perfect description of exactly what Mario Power Tennis brings to the fold.

Don't let the Mario name or the kiddie look of the game fool you... Mario Power Tennis is incredibly easy for newcomers to enjoy, yet simultaneously incredibly deep (and graphically wowing) for the gamers like me who demand a bit more. It provides a hell of a lot for everyone, and that's exactly what Nintendo set out to accomplish. It's definitely a feat to be respected and envied, in retro retrospect at least...

Hell, as long as the games continue to be this damn good, I sure as hell won't be complaining.

Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Bound small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers) -

... in a week or two, where literally ever game I play, or television show that I watch, is pure Midas gold... no matter how damn good these November sweeps are turning out for other movies and shows, Smallville just still manages to find a way to absolutely suck the life out of the room...

"Lex is almost killed... again?... by a brunette he fucked... again?!... And this is supposed to be exciting, how?"...

I'm too dead tired right now to even begin to comment on how lame this episode was... Sure, it had moments. Namely Shannon and how evil she seemed with that fucking iPod of hers... But even she couldn't save this episode. She wasn't nearly as attractive as the psychotic Molly was last season (keep the glasses on, dammit! I have a fetish, you know...). And her over the top acting, as she was ironically pouring champagne to start a fire, had just got to be the most cliche villain thing I've seen all season (since at least Mikail's piss poor accent at least...)... Michael Rosembaum tried to save the episode with all his ever patented, evil Lex looks. But even he couldn't muster anything out of an episode written so damn poorly, except for perhaps those few suicidal words he shared with Clark near the end... because sad enough to say, I kinda related to him there... especially after a goddam night like tonight, but I digress...

Bound saw the return of Lionel, but even John Glover somehow got wasted this episode, looking absolutely ridiculously as he was bathed in light near the end... I'm sorry, but as good of an actor as Glover is, I just can't picture Lionel as a "good guy". And I'll be thoroughly pissed off if in reality, he doesn't actually remember his body switch with Clark. He's got to be lying through his teeth, right? And if not, then I'm afraid the show has only downhill to go from here... Martha and Jonathan had basically nothing to do, although once again Clark's mom just looked strangely out of place in the coffee shop... Chloe got to share an oddly romantic moment with Clark in the elevator (he actually cared about the hot girl next to him for once? WTF?...), but it still just bugs me that her discovery of Clark's abilities a while back seems to be completely ignored for now... And as for Jason and Lana, Kreuk was once again a bitch of an orc of an irk as she kept giving these god-awful stares everytime she said something and tried to seem suspensefully surprised. At least she never made me beat my own head with my fists this episode, but her deer in the headlights look when she first saw Mrs. Teague sure came close to ugly stick worthy... Jason's plotline seems actually interesting to me though. I may have hated the witches from last episode, but Bound at least gave the small remote possibility... that maybe the whole Isabel plotline won't be a complete waste...

As for Clark... Well, he was simply Clark. He gave his usual, "oh shit", looks to Lionel as he was questioning about what he remembered. And then there was the friendliness he had with Lex at the start, completely contrasting his "I felt like enemies" line near the end... I wish that I could feel that Bound was a nice step forward in the evolution of Lex as a bad guy. But he's had much better evil character development in past shows, just from collecting supervillains for shits and giggles. And it pissed me off to no end that Clark naively believed Lex was nice to women. Does he not know the lifestyle of rich men who can get any hot brunette they want?... oh wait, guess not... I forgot. Clark's the one too dumbass to even go for Lois or Chloe or both when he has a chance...

... damn, no wonder I hated this episode... Clark reminded me of me then... crap...

Anyhew, I don't want to spend much time on Bound. It's not even an episode worth discussing... Smallville started the season strong with Lois Lane and The Flash making the show feel whole for once. But with both of them now gone?... uggh... now I remember why I only wanted to write "small" Smallville weeks in review in the first place...

Y2kk Update: - Microsoft's / Bungie's Halo 2 LE Microsoft Xbox Review (Spoilers) -

Now, some out there still ineptly believe that Halo 2 is a realistic shooter, in the vein of Rainbow Six 3... And then there's some out there, like my cousin in fact, who actually thought Halo 2 was going to be the biggest game for the PS2 and PC this Christmas season. Hell, I even know some PC-only gamers who preordered the LE version of Halo 2... until they realized that they couldn't play the game in their PCs, at least...

Regardless of the ignorance and incompetence of my fellow gamers out there, one thing's for sure...

Halo 2 was perhaps absolutely the most hyped game of all time, since at least The Wizard showed off Super Mario Bros. 3 in theatres all across North America... But arguably, even Halo 2 eclipsed whatever Nintendo was able to put forth back in their glory days... I mean, can you even imagine the sheer logistics of it all? For a console that has only sold 15 million systems across the entire globe so far, almost 2.4 million gamers in the United States alone bought Halo 2 the very first day... November 9th truly was a hallowed day... And early reports are already affirming that over 3 million copies of Halo 2 have been moved across the globe, in just one week... While I know it'll be practically impossible for Halo 2 (combined with Halo 1's sales, even) to ever catch Super Mario Bros. 3's, The Sims, or even Grand Theft Auto 3's sales records for gaming, the fact of the matter is... Halo 2 has truly made it's mark in the world. Whether you talk to clueless cheerleader girlfriends, or grandmothers who haven't even heard of the internet, chances are... they know of Halo...

Just read any forum review out there for Halo 2 as it stands today. And truth be told, you'll find that gamers out there are definitely having a hard time separating the myth from reality, and the hype from Halo... Now, regardless of how it pans out online, I'm sure Microsoft now has the franchise means to overtake Sony in the console wars next generation (since arrogant Sony will be too divided and conquered by their PSP to pay attention...). But the fact of the matter is, the hate for Halo 2 online is spreading faster than the Flood ever did... and to be honest? As an elitist? Sometimes I wish I could believe that hate over the hype too... sometimes, at least...

... but I just can't... Not for a game this damn good... as long as you go into it with open eyes, at least...

Have all the gamers out there completely forgotten what made Halo 1 such a masterpiece in the first place?... I'm the kind of guy who's played almost every major PC FPS since the dawn of the Wolfenstein 3d age. None of those games (sans Doom 2) I ever enjoyed, and yet when it comes to console masterpieces like Goldeneye and Halo 2? There's just something about them, that just screams... polished and perfection...

My PC-only, pirating friends at university, always love to justify their eternal cheapness and refusal to buy an Xbox, by constantly berating me over just why Halo is so much better than their PC FPSes anyways. I mean, hasn't everything in Halo already been done in PC first person shooters before? Hell, they even played Halo for the PC, and found it a complete bore (which I actually do agree with...)... But there's just something about Halo on the Xbox itself, with its sheer majesty and warm welcoming controls, that you just can't quantify into numbers or words. There's just a feel to the franchise, the utter joy you get whenever you frag an Elite with the L button, and snipe off a brute with the R button... There's just a pervasive charm throughout the Halo franchise, that you just can't measure by any of the damn stats and emotionless statistics people demand as lame ass justifications from me...

There's just something about Halo... something intangible... something magical...

... and yet so many haters on the internet seem to be taking it all for granted right now...

Doesn't it strike you as odd, that none of the spiteful reviews on the internet, have ever bothered to mention just how sublime Halo's controls are at worst, and how divinely heavenly they are at best?... Not only did Bungie set the control standards for all first person and third person shooter games with Halo 1, but they even topped themselves with just how damn polished everything feels in Halo 2... I admit that at first, I didn't like just how quick and accurate the aiming was in the game. I hated high analog sensitivity modes in the first game, and I thought Bungie had made Halo 2 a bit too PC-FPS-like at first... But eventually, everything just seemed to click with the analog sticks, no pun intended. I could snipe off grunts in the head without even thinking about it, or even pick off Jackals through that tiny little hole in their shields. I never used to be able to do that in Halo, but Halo 2 just makes it feel so damn smooth and sexy...

I was upset at first, that plasma grenades were weakened from the original Halo. But I will always be addicted like evercrack anyways, to the mere thought of sticking a glowing grenade to some poor bastard's spine. And the aiming with them is so much damn better now, that I can just pick off as many Elites as I want without trying, even on Heroic... And while dual wielding was confusing at first, I have to admit that Halo 2 has the best damn recoil system I've ever felt in a game in my life. Thanks to the amazing balance Bungie put into the analog controls in this game, I can fire SMGs in short enough bursts that I can take down entire Elite squads before they even know what hit them... And honestly, have we all forgotten just how damn fun the R trigger is in Halo games? The single greatest reason that I give PC-only gamers, as to why Halo 2 kicks the ass and takes the name of any PC FPS out there, is simply because of the R trigger... and how damn sweet it feels to unleash it all into a horde of Covenant... it still sends tingles up and down my spine...

Doesn't it strike you as odd, that almost none of the spiteful reviews on the internet, ever bother to mention just how damn memorable the music in the franchise is?... Sure, we were spoiled by the first game. Because I was expecting more hymnal and choir tunes, I was thrown off guard by all the generic rock that plays at vehicle busting times, and I almost was going to write that I didn't like the music in the game... almost, at least... But then I remembered, for four damn months before Halo 2 came out, there was only one damn soundtrack singing in my head in the morning, and lullabying me to sleep at night... And after one full week of Halo 2? There is still only one damn music track, humming in my head all fucking day long... While I was playing the game, I took the music for granted. But there's a reason why I can't get the tunes out of my mind... Because they flow so damn perfectly with the game, that it almost brings tears of happiness to the eyes... the same way Halo did for me, actually...

Doesn't it first strike you as odd, that so few spiteful reviews out there, complain about the vehicles and weapons of the game? You'd think those two would be important, wouldn't you?... Yeah, I was a bit bitter that Warthogs are now destroyable, considering those fat asses always used to take the shots for me. But Ghosts are now so vastly improved in the game, that I literally keep car jacking them just for shits and giggles, to the point where I once had as many as ten Heroic Ghosts all nicely lined up in my own private parking lot in the second stage... Phantoms are damn annoying to beat off, considering only their weapons can be destroyed. But it's a lot more fun now taking on Banshees at least, especially considering the beefed up homing rocket launchers always around... I love how all the Covenant vehicles have speed boosts now, to counter vehicle jacking in the most slapstick satisfying way possible. Sure, the Scorpion tank feels too damn slow now in comparison, but I just can't get enough of taking over Covenant Wraiths and just grenading the insides of them for fun. This was the shit that all of us gamers demanded back when Halo 1 was still new, so why the hell aren't we complementing it now?...

I can still complain that like in the original, human weapons are too damn weak compared to the Covenant ones. I mean, a charge pistol in the left hand and a Brute plasma pistol in the other, can pretty much take on any enemy in the game... But just like with the original Halo, there's just something so damn fun and polished about the human weapons, that it almost feels wrong for Master Chief to use anything but Earth's trigger happy technology... The battle rifle is so damn good for picking off Grunts from plasma turrets, that my only complaint is that it only holds 36 bullets in a clip. The double SMGs may have awful recoil and reloading times, but damn does it feel nice to bullet spray an Elite's shields while dual wielding... The Magnum pistol may be now useless, but even that gun has a nice feel when against those flying Covenant fucktards... I love both the human and Covenant sniper rifles, as they both have their own weaknesses (Covenant one has more ammo, but blinds your view when overheating), and it just feels so damn sweet in the game, when you can pick off an Elite with just the slightest flick of a thumb twitch... The shotgun is still mostly useless, thanks to the ammo being so damn rare. But damn, I refuse to go into Flood situations without my trusty shotgun, as the pump action trigger is more addicting than any other weapon out there somehow... And the Covenant weapons? I can't believe I actually like them now, but somehow, they just feel like such a huge improvement over their equivalents in Halo 1. Dual wielding makes Plasma pistols into the best of weapons, the Covenant Carbine does the job at medium range, and as for the High Guard Energy Blade (aka the n00b stick online)?...

But perhaps the most definitive thing about the Halo franchise, that all the hateful reviews online seem to be completely ignoring, is the goddam Artificial Intelligence in the game... So many gamers out there are complaining that the game was too easy, and that the game was too damn short. And while I admit, I finished the campaign mode in about 7 hours on normal difficulty, the thing is... have people completely forgotten about all the times they've told Halo-haters before, "You can't appreciate Halo, until you play it with a S-controller on Legendary difficulty"?... I swear to you, everyone who hated the first game in the franchise either a) played it on the PC, b) never touched co-op with a friend, or c) never played on anything but normal difficulty... and of course, all of us Halo fanboys chastised them for that...

So why the fuck are we all complaining now, before we finish the game on Legendary ourselves?...

I admit that normal did have its boring moments, especially against the Flood. And it certainly had its aggravating moments, thanks to certain door glitches and getting stuck in rooms with endless hordes of Hunters and Elites... But after beating the game on normal, I immediately started a new game up on Heroic (now done 2/3rds of it), and I just couldn't fucking believe how damn smarter the AI was all of a sudden... They didn't just have more shields or better aim. They literally used completely different tactics on me, almost seemingly learning from the ploys I would devise to stop them.. They would pin me down around crates, yell at each other, "get him now!", and then flank me from both sides... They would hide behind corners one moment, and just when I'm about the snipe them off, they sneak to another coveted covered position and nail me in the head from there... And have we forgotten about the brilliance of the Marines in the game? Just give them good weapons (rocket launchers, sniper rifles, fuel rods, etc...), and then watch them light it up... I was amazed when two of my Marines managed to cut two Hunters down to size in two bloody hell, single shots as I was running like a maniac for my life. They knew exactly where to get high ground positioning, and Michelle Rodriquez fucking kicked my ass and took my name as bait... It was bloody hell brilliant. And it literally brought tears to my eyes... it was just so beautiful, to see my allies kicking ass, in a game where the AI was truly damn smart enough to take my name...

And this was after I had already beaten Halo 1 on Legendary... now that's damn sweet...

But no, of course not... most spiteful reviews on the net never comment on the controls, music, vehicles, weapons, AI, gameplay, or just the damn fine feel that can only be known as Halo 2... There are definitely problems with Halo 2, namely poor quality sound (on my Dolby Digital 5.1 system at least, where radio voices sound worse than WW2 technology, and the SMGs sound like little firecrackers), numerous pointless graphical glitches (texture pop-up during cutscenes, and awful texture compression or mipmapping or whatever on dead bodies in the streets), unfortunate gameplay glitches (like the empty rooms I got stuck in with no way out, for example), and worst of all, cutscenes with choppy framerates... In-game, Halo 2 feels locked at 30 fps, as it should be. But why the hell can't it stay that way during cutscenes? Sadly enough, as much as I hate to admit this as a Nintendo gamer, I would've much preferred back the overdramatic (and nostalgic, now) Halo load screen from the original, if it could've just cut down on the awful cutscene framerates that happen while the game is loading in the background...

Obviously, Halo 2 is not perfect... But the ironic thing is, besides the graphical and cutscene problems, barely any of the above complaints are ever mentioned by all the spiteful reviews on the net either... There's one thing and one thing alone, that people truly seem to despise about this game... and ironically, for a first person shooter?...

... spoilers... for those two of you who still haven't beaten the game or pretended like they have...

It's obvious why Halo 2 is dividing the Halo factions online, just as much as the civil war did to the Covenant... The fact of the matter is, Halo 2 pulled a Metal Gear Solid 2 on us all, and forced us into playing The Arbiter...

Now, I don't mind the Arbiter. He's voiced by Keith David (Goliath from Gargoyles, one of my favourite cartoons ever by the way...), and he's a blast to play. I swear, he makes Master Chief feel like a pansy, considering I can wipe out entire legions of Elites and Brutes with well placed plasma grenades and Energy Blades, all thanks to the limited cloaking device. And c'mon, who didn't think it was completely damn cool to be playing with Covenant Hunters by your side?... But while I may love the "gameplay" with Arbiter, it just feels "wrong" to play as him, you know?... I didn't mind the Covenant civil war storyline (except that I would much prefer to keep taking on Elites, than go against the Doom-like Brutes all the time), but Arbiter just isn't "cool" enough for us gamers, you know?... I know I sound so shallow, but a huge part of the hype for the game, was the thrill of playing as Master Chief again. I mean, he's so badass, he doesn't even need the girl in the end, even when she's already inside his head... And yet we were forced into playing the Arbiter? I may have loved his active camaflouge, but even I admit, it just didn't really feel "right" to play as the enemy...

As for Master Chief, he just didn't seem as badass as he was in the original either... I hated how his dinky flashlight doesn't even work properly anymore (turns off automatically to save the framerate). And without the Arbiter's cloaking device, swarms of Elites were impossible to defeat on Heroic without shotguns or Energy Blades... I still liked the chemistry between Master Chief and Cortana. Cortana was mostly amusing with her observations (she somehow seemed hot when she snapped and instantly converted Truth's rantings into English...), but a lot of her comments were oddly enough just annoying in the heat of battle as well... And somehow, Master Chief just wasn't as cool as he was in the first game. Maybe it was because of the extended cutscenes, making him seem more human? Or maybe the Arbiter's badass Goliath voice just overshadowed the poor sound quality that Master Chief's dialogue seemed to have?... I don't know, but the poor "demon" just felt weak in Halo 2. I can't really explain why...

As for the secondary characters... As soon as I heard Miranda Keyes' voice, I immediately remarked, "that voice sounds wrong - she sounds like a blonde". Turns out, I was right... Miranda was voiced by Julie Benz, one of my favourite actresses from Buffy/Angel, even if I didn't recognize her until the final credits. While I loved the look of her hair, her character was pretty useless in the end, except as a "reclaimer" tool to set off the Delta Halo... All the good lines in the game went to Sarge instead. From his vague replies as to how he got off the first Halo, to the scripted insults he gives to the Marines on the new Delta Halo stage, Sarge did kick ass... It just bothered me that he just magically shows up in the final stage in a Scarab. Not only could he perfectly communicate with The Arbiter (I thought only Cortana could translate?), but he just seemed "weak" in teaming up with the enemy (not to mention the fact that he shouldn't have known who the Arbiter was)... Still, Sarge and Miranda were welcome supporting characters in Halo 2. I'm sure they'll get their own fan clubs soon enough, if not already...

The real problems with the storyline, are what some people are calling the "Matrix-ization" of the series... Everyone seems to hate the ending of the game, ala Matrix Reloaded. And while I completely admit that for $50 US, I too would want some closure and a finished product, rather than this constant nagging feeling to spend another $50 on the third in the trilogy... still, that's not what I'd consider the "Matrix-ization" of the series...

We all knew that Halo 1 had religious undertones in it... Everything written in Western society can be archetyped and traced back to either Greek tragedies or the Bible itself. And judging by Halo 1's music, the "Flood", and hell, the very name of "Halo" itself, we all knew that the series would pull a Matrix, and try to reinvent the Bible (like goddam Neo as the Chosen One did)...

... I just didn't expect the religious undertones to become so damn obvious, that it hits us over the head with an ugly stick...

Here's the entire plotline of Halo 2 for you... The Forerunners were a race from 100,000 years ago or more, with technology far beyond the scope of either modern humanity or the Covenant. They eventually encountered the Flood though, and no amount of technology could stop them (since the Flood in Halo 2 seem to be able to assimilate technology as well as sentient races). So the Forerunners built the seven Halos, caught some Flood and studied them within the ringed compounds, and when it became evident that the Forerunners could not win the war with any conventional means? They activated the Halo rings, and wiped out all sentient life in the galaxy to starve out the Flood...

100,000 years later, the Covenant came upon the Halo from the first game. The Covenant at the time were a bunch of races at each other's throats, but the Prophets conned them into submission, by claiming the Halo would lead them to heaven and salvation... Enter Master Chief. The "demon" destroyed the Halo from the first game, causing the Covenant to speed up their plans at "Delta Halo", the Halo you find in Halo 2. The Covenant capture 343 Guilty Spark, and learn that only "reclaimers" can access the Halo controls with the "key index"... The reclaimers are the human race. Nobody knew of this, except Truth, which is why he seems so dangerous compared to the other prophets... The game ends with Truth soaring towards Earth, the planet which holds the "Ark of the Covenant"... in the hope of remotely activating all the Halos, and sending him to heaven on his "great journey"... obviously, dooming the rest of us to Doom 3 hell...

So here's the jist of it: this is the story of Atlantis and the Biblical Great Flood... In both stories, humanity (or its guardians) was once an advanced race (eg: Tower of Babel), who eventually were destroyed by a massive "Flood", leaving only us humans behind... There are reasons why the game designers took so many names from the Old Testament of the Bible, although adding "the Ark of the Covenant" to the franchise was pushing it a bit too far... Now, I always appreciate the story of Atlantis retold. Hell, if I made a sci-fi first person shooter, that would be exactly the kind of plotline I'd use (damn Bungie stole my ideas... which I stole from countless sci-fi series before, but I digress...). But taking a classic story and reinventing it is not enough... Halo 1 had a sublime amount of subtlety and subtext in it, which is why the simplistic and overly archetypal story worked so damn powerfully. But where is it in Halo 2? Instead, we get endless rants of "the great journey" and the prophecies being fulfilled, in a bunch of bullshit MGS2-like speeches that show you just how good storytelling can be ruined once the writers finally get the money and chance to write what they want...

The Elites all have perfect English. While it would've been horrible to have them in Star Wars talk the whole time instead, I would've much preferred if they stayed pure enemies (rather than being humanized into religious, misguided suicide bombers...). The prophets have the most overpretentious and overrighteous speech I've heard since The Matrix, which may sound good in paper, but just sounds awful without even a European accent... The Arbiter may have had a lot of cool action scenes, but his dialogue was about as cheesy as a Star Trek Klingon's is, and just as alien cliche as well... And I'm sorry, but without the Elites, the villains in the story just weren't badass enough. I've always hated boss fights (sans Cyberdemon) in first person shooters, and it still stays true to this very day... Regret was just a sheer regret to play against, as jacking his chair with endless fists to the face is not what I'd consider an exciting boss sequence. And Tartarus just took so many damn hits, that it was just a damn pain to have to keep circling around his slow ass body, just to wait for more Elites to show up and die and give me their damn ammo already...

I appreciated the story in Halo 1. I like archetypal stories, especially those of Atlantis, when they're done with fucking finesse and subtlety... But Bungie threw the finesse right out of the window, gave us a migraine with overzealous, pathetic prophetical dialogue, and gave us a cliffhanger right when the game felt like it was getting great... Now, I can appreciate cliffhangers, if I don't pay $70 CDN at least... I've got a feeling that on February 9th, Halo 3 will be revealed and all will be made clear. But until then, yes the overconvoluted plotline did make me bitter...

... end spoilers... although considering everyone has Halo 2 by now, those weren't really spoilers anymore...

Yes, so the story sucked in Halo 2. Even I concede to that... But why the fuck does almost every single Halo hater on the net, completely ignore all the finer points of Halo 2, that seriously make this game far superior to the original, in my honest opinion at least?...

Yes, some of the new controls felt awkward at first. The aiming was a bit too quick, and the framerate doesn't seem as head-dizzy friendly as it used to be at least... But after playing through Heroic, I really can't even begin to go back to the primitive feel of Halo 1 at least. Aiming is so damn accurate in Halo 2 that it puts the original to shame. And the feel of all the new human weapons, and dual wielding Covenant ones, more than makes up for whatever magic and charm was lost when the first Halo was blown into space...

Yes, some of the subtle changes to the gameplay did annoy me at first... Elites don't seem as badass as they once did, even on Heroic, and I will always hate the boss battles in first person shooters... But stealing Ghosts and Wraiths have got to be some of the most damn addictive gameplay I've ever experienced. And even if individual Elites aren't as tough, their superior AI along with their sheer advantage in numbers always makes the game feel new and fresh to me, no matter how many times I play the same stage... Even the Flood was vastly improved in this game, as they coordinate with each other in ways that only a hardy shotgun blast to the face can ignore. And yes, some are still complaining that the stages are too repetitive... but if anything, I didn't find them repetitive enough, as I almost miss the "mechanical" and ancient feel that the first Halo had, if only out of love and nostalgia for the first game...

Yes, there are graphical glitches, with some obviously bitching about the cut off HUD on HDTVs... but overall, this game is fucking beautiful! The water alone in the level, Regret, has got to be some of the best done lakes outside of Pixar's The Incredibles. And have you ever stopped in the middle of gameplay and just looked up at the sky? The view of Halo is just so damn majestically aweing, with Covenant ships eclipsing the Sun in the background, in ways that can only be described as Halo... And just compare Sarge from Halo 2 to the original. The Marines aren't blocks anymore, even if texture pop-up do make them seem so at times... The Elites may forever seem weak now, after seeing the Arbiter without his armour. But damn, do they still look badass in gameplay, with their faces looking so damn close to the cutscenes that I'm almost confused between the two at times...

And yes, we know, we know... The story does suck at times. It's over-pretentious, over-diluted, it's completely over-the-top convoluted... and all the advertisements and teasers for the game made it sound like Halo 2 was a fight to the apocalypse death for earth... when really, that's what the cliffhanger was all about...

There was absolutely no way that Halo 2 would or could ever live up to the hype. Not even if the game was absolutely perfect with twice as many stages as it has, would people ever be satisfied... not considering how damn long we've waited for this game, and how damn much every single man, woman and child on the face of the planet seemed to care for the name of Halo...

But in my honest opinion at least, even if Halo 2 has its fair share of flaws? I'm shocked that it came so much damn closer to meeting my own expectations and hype for the game, than I ever once thought possible before...

The single player campaign may be short, but the raw gameplay and AI alone on Heroic are enough to keep me coming back... And even though I have no Xbox Live, I cannot forget the fact that 100,000 people were all playing Halo 2 online (on a pay service, no less) all at the same damn time of the same damn day... I may not have played Halo 2 co-op on Legendary yet, but if it's anything like Halo 1's? Then Halo 2 will be in my Xbox for a very, very long damn time... much longer than I ever thought possible...

Except for the storyline and campaign, Bungie fixed and polished and nearly perfected every single damn flaw that the first Halo had. And yet that still wasn't enough... not for so many gamers out there, who were expecting so much more than even I apparently was...

It may have been impossible to meet the hype... But in my honest IvanFian opinion at least, Bungie has yet again produced a game that I truly love, and will truly love and cherish for a very long time. Simply from the feel of the game....

... something intangible... something magical... something you truly cannot measure or put into words...

Whether you love it or hate it, this truly is a game that needs no introduction...

You know, I love November sweeps... I just never thought I'd be saying that for a Stargate series, considering their whacked out schedule...

But The Defiant One aired today in Canada, and I gotta say, the Stargate writers have really done a great job in making individual Wraiths seem like a threat... The Defiant One was just the usual one on one, Predator kind of tried and true story, that all guys seem to love. The only thing that truly makes or breaks an episode like this one, is whether the villain turns out menacing or not... And considering basically the first Atlantis team people since the pilot died here against the one lone Wraith, it did make him into quite a formidable threat... The guy wasn't very stupid either, figuring out hand guns in a few seconds and setting up shields around the jumper just for good merit... And of course, you gotta love a villain who's tough as nails. Sheppard really should've just shot him in the head a dozen times, but you still gotta admire a guy who can take on a Wraith grenade explosion to the face and still keep on ticking...

Sheppard was pretty much the lone star in this episode. And while he didn't have his usual array of sarcastic jokes, he did certainly have his moments... It was completely Scary Movie stupid of him just to abandon his scientists like that in the Wraith ship, but besides that, he played the game pretty well. The grenade trap was a nice touch, and although I saw it coming a mile away, the return of the Stargate zap bugs as the final coup de grace was pretty interesting... And you gotta love his Die Hard tactics, always using the radio to the best of advantages. You'd think the Atlantis team would run out of those things, considering how many Sheppard keeps going through, but I digress... Joe Flannigan didn't have much great acting to do. But he put a bandage around his arm just fine, and he certainly acted through the episode with a feeling of suspenseful confidence and seriousness, something the SG-1 team seems to lack after so many years in sci-fi. And that's all I care about for now...

McKay was the only other character really used in The Defiant One, and most of his time was babysitting the lost Nyan from whatever planet he was from... Now, of course I didn't care much for Nyan, except you did somewhat feel sorry for the guy as he looked in the mirror... McKay on the other hand, really played off of Nyan well. This was an episode that showed just how much he changed since the pilot... At the start of the episode, he was his usual cruel self, taunting his other scientists in his usual non-friendly ways. But as soon as matters got tough, he wanted to help Sheppard out, even though he obviously can't aim for shit with his pistol (how can he use up two magazines up just like that?...)... He showed great concern for his fallen red shirt, and even got in a good Captain Kirk reference... If there's any jewel of a character on Atlantis, it's Rodney McKay. He has a great rapport with every character on the cast, and with his eternal sarcasm, acts as a perfect supporting character to John Sheppard. Plus, you gotta love the look on his face when he realizes he's wrong... It was completely dumb of him to assume that no Wraith were just hibernating on the ship, but I digress... at least it made for good red shirt action...

Dr. Weir was a bit weird this episode... Now, with her passionate T-shirt on and her hair all nice and curly, Elizabeth looked absolutely beautiful, which is all I need from the Canadian actress. But she also gave these weird looks while talking to Sheppard, and while convincing Ford to go on the rescue mission. She just seemed like she cared so much for Sheppard, that she really looked like she was desperate, and that really made me horny... nice... Lt. Ford didn't do much, except fire a nice squid missile for good measure. And Teyla was just there for the ride as well, literally, but even she got to look decent in some decent civies clothes... I didn't care that any of these characters didn't have much more of a role than Marco did, whoever Marco may be. Sheppard and McKay are the two spotlights of Atlantis, and they proved it once again by making an hour of my day go by in the blink of an eye...

The Defiant One wasn't a great episode, but it had a lot of great moments, and a lot of great quotes (with Sheppard noting that the 10,000+ year old Wraith would probably win a waiting game against them...). It had some spectacular effects with the Midas Array, which may come in handy one day... It brought to life some nice new aspects about the Wraith, how they cannibalize each other and seem to kick ass as soon as they're full. And oh, did I mention Dr. Weir looked damn hot in that T-shirt of hers?... The Atlantis writers should take a note: whenever she gets captured or anything, make sure she's both wet and in her T-shirt.

Because then I'd really, really love November sweeps, but that's besides the point...

On Tuesday, I bought Halo 2 on what was arguably the biggest day in the entertainment industry of all time... Wednesday, I got to laugh at just how goddam bad Smallville was for the week (it had a nice nostalgic feel to its mediocrity...)... Friday, not only did I get to watch one of the best Star Trek Enterprise episodes ever made, but I also saw in theatres The Incredibles, which will probably end up as my favourite movie of the entire damn year... Saturday, I picked up Mario Power Tennis for the Gamecube, since I loved the original so much... And coming next week, I'll probably be watching The Polar Express around Monday or something, and I'm hoping to pick up Metroid Prime 2 on Tuesday, exactly one week after this Halo 2 week of madness all started...

Sure, I had two midterms and three assignments due this week as well. Probably failed at least a couple of things I handed in... But why the fuck should I care? All that matters is the fact, that if you ask me? This past week, has definitely been a pretty damn good week of entertainment...

I was absolutely caught by surprise, I really was... up here in Canada, eh. No doot aboot it... I mean, we just got Stargate SG-1 season seven up here. And normally, we'd actually be two seasons late... Stargate Atlantis was being aired on TMN two months later than it was on the sci-fi channel in America. I seriously never expected, that for once... just for once... we'd actually get Stargate early... for once... for real... Is this a dream?... in this week of endless entertainment, no less...

And to add on yet another checkmark and huge smile to the November sweeps checklist, Stargate Atlantis' The Eye was perhaps the absolute best episode that Stargate has produced since the series premiere of the Atlantis series itself... It wasn't good enough to take the episode of the week crown from Star Trek Enterprise, but it was damn fine enough to take just about all my other praises away...

The Eye was filled with a kind of suspense and imminent urgency, that Stargate has definitely been lacking the past few seasons or so... The special effects were amazing for such a low budget show, with that tsunami crashing against the Atlantis shield being absolutely the best of the crop. But just the little touches in this episode, like the lightning stikes pulling a Torment of Tantalus, the endless wind on Weir's pretty little face, to the fact that McKay was complaining about getting a cold from all the bad weather, just somehow produced such a great atmosphere to this episode, that I just can't how it can ever be topped... not anytime soon by the Stargate writers, at least...

Major Sheppard was absolutely ruthless this episode, and I loved it. Even with McKay still as a hostage, Sheppard took no prisoners, wiping out three men without even blinking, and massacring the 60 or so Genii that were coming through the Stargate. He showed no mercy for Koyla (or however you spell his name) after the Nazi clone claimed that he had killed Dr. Weir. And if you couldn't see the "shippiness" between John and Elizabeth when he asked her if she was alright at the end, then I guess you're just not watching the same series as I am... And to be honest, for a while I too was second guessing myself over what series I was watching. Because was it me, or was Dr. Weir actually smart, sexy, and interesting for once this episode? A first for the actress, I know... I loved her stalling tactics and routines, bluffing out Koyla and spouting out endless code numbers that really led to nowhere. And the poor girl looked like she cared more for Sheppard than she did for herself as she was being taken hostage... I personally don't care or want the two to hook up in the series together. But out of all characters on the show, they're the only ones who seem to even have a flare of a glare between the two of them. And Sheppard definitely proved it with his Die Hard techniques, not giving a damn about the naquada generators when McKay was the only hostage, but readily giving his own life up as soon as he heard Weir was about to die "again"...

The weird thing about The Eye, is that like the calm of the storm, everything seemed so perfect when you know it really shouldn't be... Now, I know that Atlantis will go back to ignoring all its other actors in due time. But in this episode at least, everyone had a huge part and played it brilliantly... Dr. Beckett looked so damn awkward carrying a P90, that you'd think he was about to drop it and cause some friendly fire or some crap like that... But he did provide brilliant comedy with Lt. Ford, who absolutely surprised me with his non-token blackness this episode. I loved how he took charge for once, and spent the whole time basically telling Beckett to shut the hell up. His one-time commandoness really contrasted well with the poor doctor not even willing to fly straight up into space, and it gave The Eye the very strange feeling, that maybe, just maybe, Lt. Ford ain't such a worthless character afterall... And Teyla? Sure, I normally find her character tiresome and pointless, but she definitely made her mark with that blade in the ground this episode. I didn't care about the rest of her lines in The Eye - all that mattered was the hot, sweaty chemistry she had with that uber-beautiful Sora... Now, I still wish that the actress who plays Sora had been cast as Teyla instead. But damn, at least we got that luscious girl on girl fight sequence between the two gals, which sounded more like something out of a amateur porn flick than anything else... Sora did look damn fine in that tight black shirt of hers. And Teyla's actress (forget her name now... dammit...) actually really pulled off the fighting moves well. She actually did seem like a warrior princess for once, with that most excellent elbow jab to the spine... and I especially liked how Sora may end up being a reoccurring character, now that she's behind Ancient bars. I'll take another girl on girl scuffle between the two gal pals anyday...

Rodney McKay was once again the absolute best reason to watch Stargate Atlantis. He had so many classic lines, that it's almost impossible to name or remember them all... I always love curt he is, telling Koyla right to his face that he's not brave enough to lie (and yet he was lying). Even if I knew his plan, his acting when he pretended the shield wouldn't go up sure seemed convincing to me ("...that's why they call it... acting...", Team America). And he had just wondrous panicked contrast with the always calm (and always wet...) Elizabeth Weir. I just absolutely adore it whenever Rodney screams out that he's an "arrogant man" who always thinks his plans will work, while Weir just looks on and basically nods her head in agreement... There is really one reason and one reason alone to watch the Atlantis series: Rodney McKay... I can't honestly believe that I didn't want him on the show when he was first announced. What the fuck was I thinking?...

And hell, even the villains of The Eye didn't feel so one dimensional this time around... Koyla looked so confused as he didn't know who or what to believe. But that was still great acting - he knew that McKay was probably lying, but he just couldn't take the risk to defy him. He was a smart villain, who's only real flaw was the greed of wanting to take over Atlantis. He lost a lot of men in the process, but even he had some good ideas in the end, taking Weir and McKay as hostages... I didn't care for many of the other Genii, since their American accents didn't make them seem like evil alien nazis enough. But Sora was just so damn hot as she was playing hard to get with Teyla... And if the two of them ever do hook up?... Well, maybe there'll be more than one reason to watch Stargate Atlantis afterall...

I know this pun has been used so many damn times, that it's already become cliche within a week, but... I just gotta say it...

... alright... so maybe that exact pun hasn't been used a million damn times already... or even counts as English, actually... but it's still so damn true nonetheless...

Whether you claim the movie is simply Bamazing, or Dastounding... or Lawesome, or even the ever infamous Tetacular... the principle still stands... a house divided cannot stand, and... simply put?...

And without a shadow of a doubt, stands as my favourite movie of the whole year, bar none. There's really no competition...

It's amazing just what Pixar can do with their animation these days... I swear, the water looked more realistic than anything I've ever seen in a movie to date, computer generated or not. And the walls lining Syndrome's evil fortress of doom looked better than any CGI sequences I've ever seen before, and that's not just the silver lining half of it all... Pixar got around the horrible human faces they implemented in Toy Story and Finding Nemo, by purposely deforming every character in the Incredibles universe to perfectly suit the kind of suped up world that they were all living in... Bob Parr looked just amazing as he could barely fit in his poor cubicle and car. One of Helen's best moments was when she was staring at her ass in the mirror... Dash may not have looked so great, but his facial expressions whenever he was running was a pure adrenaline rush (with the sinking into water bit the best touch for his character in the film...). And Violet?... well... she was kinda hot actually... her legs weren't overly long like Elastigirl's was, and she did seem kind of sweet with her hair half covering her face...

But the true magic and charm of a Pixar movie cannot ever be quantified with pixel counts and rendering sketches... To so many engineers in my damn universe of an ignorant university, whenever I told them I really wanted to see The Incredibles, they just scoffed and claimed it was a kiddie movie... But seriously, why the fuck should that matter? Have they ever seen a Pixar movie before in their life?... This company, time and time again, keeps producing the most deep and thoughtful storylines in theatres today, yet somehow molds them into being the most absolutely entertaining stories for people of all ages as well... Finding Nemo was a bit too childish and feminine for my tastes, but everyone will admit that the father and son relationship in that film was one of the best ever done in a movie to date. And even if I didn't like A Bug's Life, hell - it still had its fair share of magic and charm and legs with that bonafide flea circus and all...

The Incredibles is simply a movie that can't be put into words... Some do complain that it deals with too many adult matters, and that young kids may not fully appreciate the movie as a result. And I found that to be true, especially considering all the kids in my theatre laughed more at that god-awful short Pixar film at the start than they did at anything in the Incredibles... But I'm not a kid anymore. I'm a bonafide geek who loves anything there is to do with superheroes and supervillains out there. Hell, I even watch goddam Smallville - now that's low... And truth be told, The Incredibles was absolutely the most perfect movie for guys like me... it was absolutely the best movie of the genre, since the first Austin Powers shocked the world with the brilliance of Dr. Evil...

The Incredibles was simply an incredible movie... in absolutely a Nincredible way...

Bob Parr was a man in a mid-life crisis sort of denial... Honestly, I've seen it time and time again with men in mundane, cubicle jobs. They feel boxed in - they feel like their life is going nowhere fast. And it seems the world around them only tries to find new ways to celebrate mediocrity... And you can't help feeling bad for the poor guy. Craig Nelson perfectly brought out the voice of a man who used to be someone. He used to be someone great in his glory days, a superhero to the people (maybe the actor can relate?...)... We all have fond memories to think back to. We all wish we could be high school sports stars again, or get back all those pretty girls we had in college... But how many of us were heroes? How many of us were superheroes? And how would you feel if that was all taken away, by lawsuits and the simple fact that you're getting old and docile?...

I loved the 50's feel of the start of the film, even if the jokes didn't nearly come nearly often or hit home enough... But the real meat and potatoes of this film came with the amazing chemistry between Bob and Helen Parr... This was perhaps the absolute first time that I've ever felt chemistry between animated characters (Shrek kinda sucked at it, by the way...), as the family feel that Pixar created in this film was simply mesmerizing at best... I loved how they added in all the little nuances that a loving mother does, giving command to the oldest daughter (at least in my family), and telling them not to interrupt when their father is finally apologizing for once... I don't know how Holly Hunter did it, but she really did sound like a mother in The Incredibles. She cared for her children in ways that simple movie scripts can never convey, and just her subtle reactions (and not so subtle reactions) to all the lies her 'adulterous' (or simply adventurous) husband was undertaking, gave her character a kind of depth that few animated characters have ever had... outside of Pixar movies, at least...

... and besides... heh... at points, she kinda looked like she was going into Pon Farr... what man doesn't want a girl who can churn out three babies, still look that good, and still be that damn flexible in bed?... but I digress...

Bob Parr's powers were the standard fair Hulk abilities. He was strong, strong being good... And he certainly had his moments, impressing little biking Nemo with picking up his car, and even proving why he's called a hero when he refused to kill Mirage for leverage... But it was Helen that truly surprised me this film. I mean, stretching characters have obviously been done before (Fantastic Four, for example), but never this damn creatively I think... She acted as a lifeboat for her children. She was a protective bubble in the plane. And she was a perfect parachute as well... The way she would dodge cars by pressing against the wall was amazing. And honestly, who didn't laugh as she got her ass stuck in one door, and her neck caught in another? Poor guards didn't know what they were looking at, but I would've pinched it at least... The computer effects for both of their super powers were done to sheer perfection in this film. Not once did I ever think her Elastic abilties felt out of place, nor did the weight of the world on Bob Parr's shoulders ever look artificial or null... But the real applause has to go to the Pixar writers, for really picking powers for the couple that truly defined themselves as metaphors for the guy and girl relationship... Sure, he somehow touched my heart when he frantically made sure that Elastigirl was not in Buddy's database. But for the most part, he was simply headstrong and "pigheaded" until the end, looking back at his glory days and ignoring the family he had. A perfect metaphor, for a former football jock far more brawn and testerone than brains... Meanwhile, Helen was far more flexible with her life, knowing what truly mattered, except the fact that she was ignoring everything that mattered to Bob until the end... I may not be able to put it into words very well, but the reconciliation between these two just felt so damn moving in the end, that it even put to shame Finding Nemo.

... then again, it certainly helped that I found Helen and Violet to be kinda hot... Lord knows he'd never allow me to think Nemo was, but I digress...

Dash Parr was a bit too much of a The Flash clone... Sure, every character in this film has pretty much been done in Marvel or DC before, but a super fast being running on water was just seen recently in Smallville, so obviously the memory was still fresh... Still, he provided some of the best comedy of the entire episode, just from the looks on the spectators' faces at the end when Dash had to choose to be second place... And I gotta give credit to the Pixar programmers, for making Dash's run through the forest into one of the most adrenaline pumping scenes I've ever seen in a film to date... Character wise though, Dash was a bit of a cliche. He was just the tried and true, troubled small kid who didn't think he fit in with the world. And to be honest, I agree with his mom - he shouldn't be allowed to play sports... except for maybe curling, but I digress... And of course, at the end, his superhuman abilities and the saving of the world and all, made him love his family in the end. While that's a good message to any kid, obviously it's something we've all seen done better before. Hell, it was done better in Pixar's own Toy Story and Finding Nemo series, but still... man, can that kind run at a nice framerate...

As for Violet... love the name... but after watching her kind of character on Buffy a thousand times fold, the thing is, it kinda bored me how her character arc played out... I may have loved her chemistry with her mom, the way she would get the most pressure (being the oldest) and in a sense, the most trust. And I even enjoyed the few hints of the Electra complex here and there, with her dad noticing how 'attractive' she looked with her hair behind her head, but I digress... The thing is, anyone could see her character development a mile away. She feels invisible at the start, with no drive or force or conviction in her life... But of course after saving the world, she has all the confidence to fully be seen, play hard to get with guys who like her (damn her for that...), and generated rock hard force fields that imply a little too much to a perverted mind like me... Yup, she reached puberty and lived through it. We get it... I didn't particularly care for her character. But I still loved all her action scenes, as her powers slowly matured along with her face and... ahem... body... I've always been a fan of force field superheroes for some odd reason (though Invisible Girl sucks ass...). And right from the starting moments where she would bitch slap her little brother down with a field, I knew I'd like her... not her character arc, but I definitely liked her... She may not have saved the day, but she definitely saved her family in the end. And just seeing Dash roll about in her little bubble boy fields was a very nice touch by the Pixar writers indeed...

If there's any universal complaint about The Incredibles, it's the fact that Jason Lee just wasn't a strong enough villain in the end... Buddy Pine certainly had a comic book reason to undertake the supervillain syndrome. Just watch Unbreakable if you didn't get it, but a true comic book supervillain always has to be friends with the hero, or at least knew him from way back... And that's what Buddy Pine was all about: his poor buddiness turned bitter, and he became basically all the elite movie cynics out there who turned on Pixar as soon as they became famous (fanboy fanatics are cool... Nincredible, indeed...)... The problem was, even with the motive, he still wasn't a good villain. I was glad that Jason Lee didn't play his villain completely over the top, so it wasn't all his fault. I guess then, that the writers didn't put enough of the supervillain cliches into him, to truly make him a memorable parody... Sure, he was caught monologuing, sure he made the ever classic mistakes of feeding his enemies rather than just killing them when he can... But where were all the jokes about his mindless minions? Where were all the classic remarks about his countdowns and sadistic James Bond plans for galactic domination?... And WTF was up with his zero point energy? Since when could Stargate ZPMs do that to guys who move faster than cheetahs? But I digress... Or maybe, I just didn't like Buddy because he wasn't the kind of supervillain you aspire to be to. He just wasn't cool enough, like Samuel L. Jackson was in Unbreakable, or like Frozone was with his bullet freezing (Frozone can kick Samuel L's ass anyday, by the way...)... Sure, Buddy knew his techie stuff. But I don't know... he was just missing that it factor, that I Ching, that makes us wish we were Lex Luthor, that makes us wish we could smash buildings apart like Juggernaut... He just seemed like too much of just another cliche supervillain, rather than a metaphor for a real misguided character in the end...

Still, Buddy's plans to become a superhero of his own certainly did make up for the lack of character on his behalf... That Omni-whatever robot was pretty cool (although the way Mr. Incredible beat the second version of it did seem a bit lacklustre). And the special effects, with Frozone skidding the water, and the skidding of the roads as the Parrs argued over highway exits like any couple would, definitely kept me on the edge of my seat... and definitely kept a real kind of nostalgic smile on my face... I may not have entirely liked the tacked on ending to the movie (Buddy picking on Jack Jack and all), but still, I really can't complain about this film... I've always had a weakness for Dr. Who islands in the middle of nowhere, with Kronos computers built behind lava streams, and giant spherical robots launched out of rockets just to step all over the buildings and tanks of the world... sounds like Pixar read my mind...

... dammit... must my favourite superhero suck in every damn film?... but I digress...

I went into The Incredibles the other night, expecting to see a superhero parody... What I got in return, was just so much better...

This was a movie about family. But unlike Finding Nemo, which catered too much to the damn girls who kept ignoring me in school (damn bitches...), this was a film that spoke volumes to guys... This was a film about living back your glory days, and realizing that the end of an era is not the end of your life. Because when it comes to family, if you just open you eyes, you can just so easily realize... that your life is just beginning...

Sure, it sounds so damn cheesy and cliche when I say it like that, but The Incredibles is simply not a movie you can put into words (well, besides "Nincredible", at least...)... Pixar just has the most amazing and dynamic ways, of taking the most corny of chicken soups for the soul, and molding it into a film that brings home the message without ever making you feel like it was bashed into your head with an ugly stick...

This was a movie about character. Every single member of the Parr family felt like a real person, thanks to their fears and doubts and hopes, and simply thanks to the fact that Pixar (unlike modern Disney) knows that computer graphics aren't just there to wow audiences with jazzy colours... They're about providing metaphors, for the entire human condition as a whole...

And while I know the female population certainly won't be as happy with Bob or Helen or even Violet as they were with little Nemo, the fact of the matter is...

This has been a great week of entertainment for me... Sure, I failed a couple midterms and assignments. But why should that matter, when I got Halo 2 on Tuesday, just came back from watching The Incredibles (review to come tomorrow), am still planning to get Mario Tennis for the GC, and just finished watching one of the best damn Trek episodes I've ever seen in my lifetime, period...

The Augments may not have been a perfect episode, but thanks to Mike Sussman and Levar Burton, it was one of the most epic, suspenseful hours of sci-fi I have ever watched in my life, period... I absolutely loved the Augments and their over-the-top Shakespearean-tragedy kind of feel... Who didn't feel bad for poor Persis, as she was kissed away to death by the blade of her incestuous lover? Who didn't see the huge Oedipus complex that poor Drogyn Malik had, with that god-awful Mullet of his?... And c'mon already. Even if I never liked Wrath of Khan, even I found it to be a blatant, brilliantly nostalgic touch, to see Malik crawling on the floor of the broken Bird of Prey, as Khan did on the Reliant... I loved Malik this episode. He seemed like such a lost boy... I loved how upset he was with Soong when his father wouldn't pay attention to him amidst all the repairs. I loved how Malik was so ruthless in his arrogance, that he was willing to sacrifice all his brothers and sisters along with countless Klingons and humans in a bloody war... I loved the nice little Trek references to the Botany Bay and the Briar Patch, even if I can't remember where I heard of the latter before... And I just found that final battle scene to be epic beyond belief. It bugs me why the Bird of Prey seemed to have absolutely no shields this episode, but at least Malcolm finally proved his worth at the console (using his Star Wars missile defence tactics, I see...). And Malik's appearance on the actual Enterprise ship at the end, fooled me in the best of ways... I really thought he was dead. And then I really thought he'd snap Soong's neck. I was wrong on both accounts... and somehow, those few moments of unpredictability were truly refreshing...

Brent Spiner as Soong was one of the best decisions the series has ever made. It's amazing what kind of raw charisma and character that Spiner brings to the show, just from the way he goads Trip into protecting his woman... Now, sure I found his reference to Data from TNG to be a bit forced and silly in the end. But for every other scene in the episode, Spiner absolutely owned the screen... You could just see in his acting, how disappointed he was both in himself and his augments, as he slowly began to accept the fact that his creations weren't nearly as perfect as he thought they were... I loved how he wouldn't even justify himself to Malik. When he was being escorted away by his children, he stood defiant before them, standing as a man for once it seemed... Soong was also far more brilliant than Malik ever was. I mean, his children were all overly aggressive and short minded, with Malik being all about the testosterone fight and not about the victory. Soong though, made a brilliant move by leaving the Denobulan in a gas giant for Enterprise to save (although I don't see why Ent couldn't just beat the hell out of the Bird of Prey first and then come back, but I digress...)... And once again, the chemistry between Spiner and Scott Bakula was amongst the best the series has ever seen. Archer actually had the right idea in second guessing Soong's motives after finding his escape pod, and it was just great acting, to see how Soong slowly managed to earn back Archer's trust. I mean, you could actually see it happening somehow... And you almost feel bad for the poor doctor. The look on his face when the Bird of Prey self destructed was a bit of overkill. But he just looked so damn sorrowful as Malik was about to crush his throat, that he really did feel like one of the best tragic heroes/villains the Trek franchise has ever produced since Star Trek VI...

... it would've been nice if Levar Burton had appeared in the episode too along with Spiner, just for shits and giggles... But oh well, at least Mr. Reading Rainbow brought in a cute blonde chick to man Trip's usual bridge spot... hell, she even got more lines than Mayweather did, it seemed...

Once again, the only problem with this astoundingly epic Augments arc, is that most of the regular actors had nothing to do... Mayweather just mindlessly pushed buttons as he stared at his paycheque. Hoshi had a few lines, but didn't even get to communicate with her Klingons... Reed got to show some real bragging rights stuff off, with grappling the shieldless D7 Battlecruiser, and taking out the Bird of Prey in a couple of shots. But the actor himself really had nothing to do... I wish Phlox had more of a role, considering his only contribution to this episode was one memorable look in sickbay. Then again, I'm also relieved that this episode didn't really play the morality card, with Soong's bitter disappointment over his children being the only thing I needed to remind me of the moral issues at stake here... As for Trip and T'Pol, they didn't really have many memorable scenes. But it still broke my heart when Trip was being a gentleman... He made me go "awwh" like a pansy girl when he said he was proud of T'Pol for marrying that bitch. But then he did the stone cold snub thing, and admitted that a Vulcan and human relationship could have never worked. Romeo and Juliet in a Shakesperean tragedy indeed... and the look on T'Pol's face was simply priceless... Jolene Blalock looked so amazingly vulnerable there, that I completely forgot that she hasn't been able to act for the entire season so far...

And then we have the main man, Archer... He had an amazing escape from the CS12 hatch (which was realistic, by the way - you can survive in space for 15+ seconds if you exhale with all your might, NASA claims). He brought out the best in Spiner as he stunned Malik with his return from the grave... I loved his trickery with the Klingon ship. The Orion slave girl comments were a brilliant reminder of a brilliant start to the arc, and I just adored that Kirk-like smile that Scott Bakula gave at the end of his speech... Now, I don't know why that D7 cruiser didn't have shields to protect against the grappler hooks. But it was still a brilliant strategy by Archer nonetheless, the likes of which we only caught a glimpse of in season three... And I just loved Scott Bakula's delivery of lines this episode. He was all business - and while sometimes I consider that as a one dimensional bad thing, it certainly wasn't in this episode, where millions of lives were at stake... He gave one of the best quotes of the series yet: "superior abilities breed superior ambitions". And his character just meshed so seamlessly with Brent Spiner, that it almost makes me wish they could keep Soong on as a reoccurring character... Archer truly was The Man this episode. And he proved it by finally kicking Malik's ass and taking his name, right through his bloody gut... To be the man, you have to beat the man... nice...

I really don't have anything to complain about this episode... Sure, some of the Khan and Data references felt forced. Sure, some of Archer's strategies this episode shouldn't have worked... But these are all minor quibbles and tribbles and tribulations, in an absolutely epic episode that I more than just adored... All the special effects looked amazing, from the great looking Bird of Prey, to even the suspense of watching two glowing torpedoes go at it in orbit... And the acting was spot on, from Spiner and the Augments, creating the most Shakespearean feel to the series outside of the original series movie franchise... And really, while I wish there was more Phlox, Trip, and hopefully more Hoshi the Hottie in future episodes, the fact of the matter is, Archer really came into his own in this Eugenics War arc... He's no longer just airlock Archer. He's simply The Man now. And you certainly don't want to get into an "augment" with The Man...

The Augments will forever be remembered as one of the best Trek episodes ever produced, period...

Y2kk Update: - Capcom's Mega Man X: Command Mission Nintendo Gamecube Review (Spoilers) -

November 11th... Remembrance Day up here in Canada... 11/11/11, eh? With Tim Hotons quarters the only thing to truly remember...

It's just too bad that I don't really have anything to review right now that's truly memorable (well, I have Riddick, Alias, Second Sight, etc... on backburner, but since I've played about five minutes combined between the three of them?... well...)...

That's not to say that Capcom's Megaman X: Command Mission is a bad game. It's just that, any objective reviewer could easily tell, that this game just pales in comparison to pretty much every other RPG out there, even for the Nintendo Gamecube...

The thing is, I'm a Megaman X fanboy. Always have been, always will... The original Megaman X still stands as one of my favourite games of all time to this very day. And it still burns me that Capcom hasn't released a Megaman X collection set for the Gamecube or something, since I sure as hell ain't going to spend all that money to get the PSOne originals for the PS2...

But then came along Megaman X: Command Mission, an RPG set in the Megaman X universe that I barely even recognize anymore... I mean, everyone knows Zero, but I've never heard him with an American accent before, let alone a "guy" voice... And who the fuck is Axl?... Yet even though I really have lost touch with the Megaman X series over the years of endless sequels, the fact of the matter is... even if I know Command Mission is a pretty piss poor RPG, I still don't seem to mind it... It thankfully doesn't have an overconvoluted and anime-ish plot like almost every Japanese RPG has. And to be honest? Simply because I get to play as X?... I don't know...

Now, there's plenty to complain about this game... First of all, the load times are unacceptable for the Gamecube. I'm sure they're much shorter than they are on the PS2, but that's not short enough, goddammit... And the cel-shaded graphics, while colourful, just look so ugly at times that it looks like a bad PS2 game (which most PS2 owners admit as well...)... The sound I don't particularly mind, since I'm the guy who still loves midi music from Nintendo, as long as it sounds retro (Wind Waker = best music evar, Mario Sunshine = worst music evar...). But I really do have to draw the line at the craptastic voice work done in Megaman X: Command Mission... X sounds like an emotionless robot (when he's supposed to be an emotional robot, dammit...), Zero sounds like a guy (which he is, but shouldn't be...), Spider is obviously so evil in his monotony, and all the girls are damn annoying to listen to in this game. Capcom didn't design a single robot to be sexy, as Marino has the voice of a man eater, and Cinnamon might as well be kicked to the curb along with Collette from Tales of Symphonia...

And of course, I can easily see that the game design if simply woeful at best in this game... The entire RPG consists of going straight in linear dungeons, picking up items and subtank power-ups along the way. The only way that RPGs ever differ these days, is by the way you encounter all the bad guys... And I'm sorry, but all the random battles in Megaman X are just annoying at best. Later on, I may be capable of running away from all the enemies who yield no experience yet keep chinking away at my HP, but the load times and annoying music involved just don't make it worth my while... It's disappointing that there's only really one town to visit in the entire city. There's really only a couple stores to go to. And you can count all the sidequests in this game on one hand, if not one damn finger... And even in the few stages where the game designers tried to be creative, Command Mission just feels tired and cliche at best. Take the desert stage for example - I hated the game for making me walk around in the dusty winds with nowhere to go, especially after I didn't pay attention to what's-her-name's instructions in the first place... I only take orders from actually cute anime characters, thank you very much...

The reason being, just like with Tales of Symphonia, a bad RPG is often saved by a decent combat system... And while I'll always despise the random battles of ass in Command Mission, I still gotta admit that I prefer playing the X universe characters in battles much more than I do most generic RPG characters... The combinations of missiles, charge shots, special moves add a nice variety to the battles in this game, that kept me interested as least half of the way through. And I will always love the final strike overkill stuff, as I massacre tiny little bugs with 10000 HP off moves, after they annoyingly dodge half a dozen of my damn moves... As for boss battles, at first I didn't like them. They were unbelievably hard for the first few dungeons, unless you had full subtanks and a bunch of Hyper Mode recharges. But once you get Cinnamon as a healer, things get a bit more balanced, and I started appreciating just how cool a lot of the characters in this game were designed... While X and his heroes may lack in graphical detail, the boss characters certainly do not. And it's kind of a nice nostalgic touch actually, thanks to all the cel-shaded graphics, to see the sprite characters I loved back in the SNES done so well in 16/24-bit colour on modern consoles (even if I cringe when they open their mouths to talk...).

I may hate the plotline in this game, but just the coolness factor of wielding Zero's sword, or powering up X's fire buster weapon, seem to make up for a lot of inherent flaws in the game...

Yes, I understand that I'm a Megaman X fanboy. And because of that, this game will probably get a much higher rating from me than I'm sure it deserves...

But hey, it's not like I have any readers, right? So why the hell should I care?...

Megaman X: Command Mission RPG may be an absolutely flawed and linear game experience, that really could've been done just as well in the PSOne/N64 era of gaming... But some of the cel-shading graphics are nicely done, some of the battles you fight are reasonably fun and epic... and c'mon already...

As a Megaman X deprived fanboy, of course I had to pick up this game... heh... I was one of the few thousand who actually did...

... I'm not expecting a sequel anytime soon (although I am expecting Capcom to blame Nintendo and not Sony for their losses yet again...), but I digress...

Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Spell small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers) -

Okay... I've been having a bad day... the details of which I won't bother disclosing on this bloody hell website of mine...

... but oh dear God, I didn't realize just how bad my day was, until I watched this week's bloody hell episode of Smallville...

"We all knew Lana was a bitch... But oh dear God!... she's so damn bad, at being bad, that it's still goddam hurting my brain... Make it stop, please! Somebody make it stop!"

Oh dear God, Spell was a horrible episode... Now, if this was a Buffy episode, Joss Whedon would've just covered up the sheer Beer Bad atrocity of the episode was some clever moments here and here. And I suppose there were a few this episode... We got to feel sorry for poor Lex as his hands bled all over his piano. And hey, I enjoyed watching all the bra and panties women at the party... even though I really don't get why you'd need evil witches to get the libido going, when literally every woman there already looked like they were supermodel sluts, but I digress...

It's good that they didn't try to even hide how bad this episode was, hence Lois and Chloe overdosing on the gothic make-up before even getting to the party... But oh dear God, did this episode ever suck... And why primarily?

I hate Lana. She's an absolute bitch when she's trying to be nice. And an absolute bore when she is trying to be a bitch... Her shrill laughter was so over the top, that the only way this episode could've worked was if it aired around Halloween. And the way that the tone of her voice would switch spontaneously from maniacal bitch to cold bitch, was just so damn poorly done that it puts Evil Dead to shame... Sure, I enjoyed her pussy whipping of Jason with some fancy telekinesis. But honestly, the actress just couldn't pull off any of her damn dialogue... She was awful. And not in a good way. Plain and simple... I hated her when she was telling Jason about e-bay and the book. I hated her when she was trying to cut Clark's hair of steel. I hated her whenever she did that awful punk rock symbol with her hands. I hated her during her over-the-top, touching the stone sort of speech. And I especially hated her, as she was being bitchy to Lex afterwards, and pretending to Clark as if she didn't just fuck over his mind for the past six months... I hate the character, I really do.

Oh dear God, did both of them suck as witches... As least Chloe was bubbly and smily still as she flung sharp knives at Clark. But what the fuck did she do to her hair? I don't care what century you're from - that fro has just got to go... And I thought it was impossible for me to ever hate Erica Durance. But except for calling Clark as "Smallville" at the start, she didn't even feel like herself when she was herself... It was a shame the writers didn't play more of an attraction between her possessed self and Clark. It was also a shame that besides her big boobs remark, she didn't have a single memorable line... She looked absolutely hideous with that eyeliner. And honestly, she just felt completely tacked on to this episode. She just suddenly showed up, then conveniently went AWOL at the end of the episode... Something was amiss, and it wasn't magic...

I already mentioned Lex's role as the only moment of genius for the episode. I don't know what happened to the manuscript, but the map is surely still in his computer systems... Martha and Jonathan Kent were only in one single scene. While that did provide comic relief, with the two of them mocking Clark over his night of passionate "magic", it just wasn't enough to save this episode... And honestly, as for Tom Welling, it was just astoundingly pathetic that I still felt no chemistry between him and Lana. Whether she was grooming his hair, or sucking secrets out from his mouth with her tongue, I just felt absolutely no magic between the two of them... There was no spell. There was no spoon... And honestly, who didn't think Clark was just a pure dumbass for not taking the three witches down with his light speed, rather than just stand there like an idiot? Cocky bastard deserved to lose his powers... Too bad the damn Kryptonian stone still liked him...

I really don't have anything positive to say about this episode, except that at least you could tell the writers knew how bad this episode was, and just decided to go along with it... I was hoping that Jor'el would show up and kick the asses of the witches at end. But even that didn't happen, and we were stuck with yet another episode ending with Clark's patented "oh shit" look after lying through his teeth yet again...

Yup. So the real thing is, even with Lois Lane back, the series felt just as brilliantly bad as it did last season. Didn't think that was possible...

I have a quota, you know. To see at least one artsy, sappy, overrated movie a year... even if I do normally think the overrated movie is good in the end...

The problem with me this year though, was that after missing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I thought I was losing my mind, not to mention my quota... So if only to meet my own supply and demand, I guess I have to thank God that my friend from America came back up here to Canada for a weekend, just so he could drag me to see Sideways... And while Sideways wasn't a great movie, and probably one of the most overrated artsy movies of the year... the truth of the matter is, I did really like it... It had that kind of refreshing feel you get, from movies that rely more on substance than style... without trying too damn hard to have substance over style...

I call it the Old News, New News formula, although even people from my old high school will have no clue what that means... Basically, Sideways was a movie without a plot. It was just a story of two close friends with completely opposite personalities... Paul Giametti played Miles, a depressed alcoholic who pretends like he ain't an alcoholic, thanks to all the fine wines he "taste tests". And then you have his buddy Jack, played by Thomas Haden Church, a piss poor actor who predictably is addicted to carnal lust, even when he's getting married the weekend after... Sideways is simply the story of two completely opposite personalities, going out for a week long excursion away from responsibility, and letting the two duke it out with each other in the confines of a paper bag...

... it's an old formula... it may be old news... but it's definitely one that works...

If you're looking for any real substance in this movie, in the vein of preachy morals or anti-Republican slurs, then go back to all those other annoying artsy, sappy movies of the year... Sideways was a comfort to me, because it didn't try to be epic in the grand scheme of things... It was just a simple story, entirely built on appearance vs reality, and the amazingly strong dialogue between two guys who you honestly can't believe ever became friends in the first place... It had the feeling of a good play, you know? The tragic fall of two different characters, ala Death of a Salesman, without the death and orange peel parts of it, at least...

Miles was the protagonist of the story, and he really was played well, surprisingly by Paul Giametti actually... It's not like there was anything unpredictable about his character. I just identified with him a bit, you know?... Now, I'm not an alcoholic pretending to be a master of the fine wines. But I am a pathetic computer geek, pretending to know a lot about artsy movies, aren't I?... And it's just fun seeing Miles in all his depressive states, about his ex-wife getting remarried. His "drink and dial" moment was one of the most memorable pieces of the entire film, if only because we've all seen, done, or felt like doing something like that before... Hell, that whole dinner scene was entertaining, if only because it accurately depicted the crap we have to go through, when we wear a smile just because we know we should... This film was about a man having a mid-life crisis. Hell, even his banged up car was a nice indication of that... And it's about letting go of his past, and hoping for the future. The future of his book, The Day After Yesterday, at least... He was a frustrated writer that couldn't get anything published. And I'm a sucky writer, writing a website review right now that nobody will ever read. So how the hell wouldn't I identify with the poor slab of meat?...

I can't say I could identify with Jack though... He did remind me a lot of one of my old friends from high school, the kinds of guys who talk big and hide their own insecurities by constantly claiming they gotta get me laid before high school graduation (though that didn't happen, dammit...)... Jack as the lust-bunny wasn't exactly my thing. But the contrast between his morals and those of Miles were what really defined Sideways as a good movie... Take their taste testing in the wineries for instance. Miles would also go off on tangents, using big ass words that only artsy film directors would ever use. Meanwhile, we all could identify with poor clueless Jack on the side, even thinking that the cheap wines laid out for California bus tourists was good enough for him in the end... Like all classic comedies, you didn't just have the difference of intelligence between the two characters. You had their views on love and relationships, with Jack phoning his fiancee with a smile, even after telling some other woman that he loved her... and then you had Miles, obviously completely torn up from Jack's adultery, simply because it reminded him of his own past mistakes... Jack was a man living in the present, while Miles was a no-name nostalgic like me, stuck in a rut in the past. And I more than enjoyed the interactions between the two... I just wish I could say the same for every scene where they weren't exactly clicking with each other...

You could instantly sense the near-homoerotic chemistry between Miles and Jack as soon as they left Jack's fiancee's house. Just the sheer ignorance and manipulativeness of the two, as Miles visited his mother on her birthday just to steal some money, was enough reason for me to watch the rest of the movie... But then entered the two girls: Stephanie and Maya... And to me, regardless of what any other reviewer says, these two women just felt like props on a bad television show, at least compared to how real Miles and Jack felt on screen... Now, sure I got kicks out of hearing Jack lick some pussy in the other room. And sure, the nose job needed after getting pummeled by a motorcycle helmet was one of the finer class moments of the movie... But Stephanie was just pretty one-dimensional, that's all. She knew that the guys would only be up there for a week, and yet she somehow actually believed that Jack and her were falling in love? She was almost as deluded as Jack was, with the only difference being that she (probably) didn't have a fiancee of her own to cheat on... Sure, she led to some great comic moments between Miles and Jack, such as the sharing of the condoms... But she absolutely had no chemistry with Jack whatsoever. Hell, I bet she would've had more chemistry with the bloody hell director of the film than any of the actors in it...

And I'm sorry Roger Ebert, but I absolutely hated the dialogue between Maya and Miles... They had a reasonably good start though. I did like Jack's notice of the disappearing wedding ring on Maya's fingers. And sometimes you could actually feel chemistry between Maya and Miles when they talked about wine, leading to a great scene with a '61-whatever being poured into a fast food drink... But their talk on the porch, when Miles is describing what's great about Penis or whatever kind of grapes? Maya just looked so damn not-interested. The actress perfectly emulated the head nods and "uh huhs" we all do, whenever we're listening but not really listening to another person. And for a romantic scene, that just really turned me off... And then we had the other way around. Miles was completely into what Maya had to say, but I sure as hell wasn't. Because when I signed up to see an artsy, sappy movie for the year, I really really ridiculously didn't want dialogue that was that artsy and sappy and overrated in the end... Talk about overpretentious and melodramatic, she just tried to sum up the ideals of love and honour and all things good and supposedly holy, in absolutely the most preachy of mid-life, overromanticized ways. And I hated her for that... She had completely whipped Miles into falling for her, yet I never really felt that she fell for him back...

By the end of the film, I was really hoping that was the point. But then the writers copped out with a true Hollywood sob story ending... The entire film was about Miles being depressed as hell, stuck in the past with no-where left to turn. But at least at the wedding, after taking Maya's advice and opening up that bottle of wine he was saving, everything seemed fine at first... then the writers really copped out... They made Maya seemingly forgive him... and that sadly gave the film a happy ending in the end, or at least we assume it was a happy ending... But dammit, it just didn't match the feeling of the movie. The feel of the movie, was of Jack crying over lost wedding rings one moment, then forcing Miles to face off against a giant naked man humping against his car the next. That was what the movie was about - appearance vs reality, the vices of lust, and just why Miles was depressed in the first place... The film wasn't really about love. It may have been about the ideal of love, but it wasn't about love... but the ending made it seem like it was trying to be, and it just felt like a complete cop-out in the end...

I hated Maya. I disliked Stephanie. And the only thing that could've saved their roles, was if the director had made them have lesbian sex on screen. But that didn't happen... instead we got a giant cock against a car window, but I digress...

Sideways suffered from a lot of problems that artsy, sappy movies do... But I was more than relieved that sans the ending, there was no real in-your-face message in the movie. It was just about two completely different guys, jerking around with each other, despising whatever the other guy did, then hugging like true friends when their Bill & Ted excellent journey was finally done and over with... It was a great film for dialogue. It was a great film for alcoholics anonymous. And it was a great film, just to see what really felt like a real friendship between two guys on screen... at the start of the film, none of us knew how these two guys could have ever been friends. That certainly wasn't the case by the time the final credits rolled...

Sure, the film was overrated... but just like I always end up doing with artsy, sappy movies, I still liked it...

... and thank God, I finally got that goddam quota of mine out of the way... I guess that's old news and new news by now, but I digress...

I had really high expectations for Enterprise after last week's stunning episode... But just like the up and coming inevitable backlash against Halo 2, simply because the game can't possibly be as good as the hype suggests, Cold Station 12 fell to the same damn greek tragedy... It was a great episode. But it just didn't feel nearly as fresh or invigorating as Borderland did...

Maybe it's because the arc should've been only two episodes instead of three, because the episode just felt weird, being in basically one room of the station for the entire episode... Still, if there's any reason to congratulate Manny Coto once again for his rebirth of the Star Trek franchise, it's because Cold Station 12 had some of the best pacing I've ever felt in an Enterprise episode yet... I was literally caught off guard when the final credits rolled, because the episode just flowed so seamlessly, that I didn't even notice that an hour had gone by... The dialogue was much more natural feeling than it was in Borderland. And while I really could've done without that awful blue screen in the embryo chamber, the Klingon Bird of Prey still looked better than just about any other ship I've ever seen in Trek. And even Cold Station 12 looked impressive, for a dimwitted, low security facility built in the middle of a rock at least...

What made this episode interesting to me, were obviously the Augments... Now, some have already complained against this episode, for just how predictable everything is turning out. We all know Malik will turn on Soong or vice versa, we all know Soong will probably have a change of heart, etc... But you see? This is why I hate television these days, or at least its watchers. Because people who can't understand the classics of literature (myself included...), keep demanding new, unpredictable actions in franchises where everything's already been done... If you asked me, I actually welcomed the predictability. Because it was a sort of Greek tragedy kind of predictability, the likes of which you can just feel and sense in all the amazing (but archetypal) stories of the past, most recently Gladiator included...

Soong is the tragic hero figure. He was a good father, and wasn't a true villain until he pretty much condoned torture. You feel both loathing and sympathy for the character, because you know he's a good man at heart. He just fell in love with his own intellect and power, and it's only a matter of time until he's knocked off from that pedestal by the people he thought loved him... Darth Malik (who was Angel's Drogyn with a bad mullet, something I can't believe I missed last time...) is the typical arrogant fool, reveling in his power. He's such a crybaby too, manipulating Soong with that fake sobstory about Rakin... He's not exactly a tragic figure, but doesn't he feel like someone out of a Greek tragedy to you? He's a guy obsessed with incest, hoping for approval, yet ready to defy and kill his father at any moment, simply because he can? Yup, there should be a play... And Cold Station 12 definitely had that strong, playwright kind of feel to it, especially thanks to the Augments' dialogue... And c'mon already, even Smike was played well this episode. Even with his poor acting, it was hard not to feel bad for the guy. He was betrayed by his friends, was cast aside as his name suggests, and was even denied three times. And then he was gone... he was like a mini-Soong in the end and all, depending on how the arc ends next week... And was CS12 predictable and even campy at times? Of course. But it was also very reminiscent of the classics of Greece and Shakespeare, and I honestly can never call either of those as unwanted television in the end...

If there was any real flaw to Cold Station 12, it was the fact that every character but Archer and Phlox didn't have much to do... T'Pol was just sort of there, without even a mention of her marriage backstory or anything. And Trip? Well, he got to chase around Smike in the Augment's old base, but that ain't saying much... Hoshi just got to look incompetent after Archer ruined her station self destruct plan like a bad villain who just won't shut up... Mayweather got to point a gun, but I really can't point out any of his lines... Reed got to kick some ass by bringing some MACO redshirts into CS12. He definitely had the demeanor in that scenes. He just didn't have the lines, that's all... Now, I was disappointed in Dr. Lucas, considering I've already seen him and his colleague as Watchers back on Buffy. He didn't really have that Dr. Lucas feel that I expected from Phlox's letters, so I thought the casting was a bit off... But I did really love his performance, as his fellow Watcher was being tortured in what was perhaps the first Trek episode since Night Terrors that made me flinch at my television screen...

I did enjoy the mini-story given to Phlox (although it was just strange how Dr. Lucas was willing to let his fellow scientist boil away to a gruesome death, and yet wouldn't even let Phlox feel one ounce of pain... wow, he really must've hated that other guy...)... Now, John Billingsley has openly complained that he didn't have much to do in this Enterprise arc or the next. But with the time he had, he certainly made it memorable... His acting in that torture chamber was laced with subtext. He didn't overplay the scene - he played it like a worried friend... And his conversation with Archer about Clark's syndrome? It was a good history lesson, considering we're still thinking of genetic engineering here on earth... The Eugenic Wars were caused by the arrogance of men who thought they were better than everyone else, including their own. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the entire science should be banned... It's a debate worthy of the Trek name, and I'm really glad that the arc is not hitting us over the head with the message (like a certain horrible DS9 episode did), but rather letting us see why the Eugenics Wars happened... simply by the way Malik perceives everyone else, even his own brothers and sisters...

Now, I know the internet loved Archer this episode. And it's not hard to see why... He got to pull off some Matrix Will Riker kicks, and then got Matrix slammed into an electrical conduit. That action scene alone was possibly some of the best fighting on Trek yet, and it was neat to see a captain actually do well in a fight, but still lose it... Jonathan was a pure captain in Cold Station 12. He made decisions on the fly, and went through with them, no matter how bad they turned out to be (transporting themselves into the station, only to be captured yet again?... fighting against the Augments with his bare hands at the end, for what?...)... Still, although I do love Action Hero Archer, I much prefer the more humane side of him that was actually more prevalent in seasons 1 and 2... I didn't like his indecisiveness, or his hypocrisy at times, but moments like his Clark's syndrome talk with Phlox are what defines his character to me, not the climbing of huge white shafts to stop a cliche supervillain countdown...

I did thoroughly enjoy Cold Station 12. Like I said, I was both shocked and disappointed when the episode abruptly ended... But it just failed to meet the unbelievable hype, you know?... The pacing was great, the script was some of Enterprise's best, and you gotta love the Augments, with their Cro-mag faces going at it in bed... But it just didn't feel like a new era to me. It didn't feel nearly as fresh as Borderland... It definitely did feel solid though. And it definitely did feel like Trek.

The new era is upon us... I just wish that it still felt new like last week, you know?...

Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Jinx small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers) -

Normally, I'd wait until my Buffy or Angel reviews to comment about November sweeps, since Joss Whedon always came through for those times of the month... The problem is, FUCKING SMALLVILLE is still on the air, while Angel got canceled for really no reason whatsoever (leaving the WB with crap like The Mountain and Jack & Bobby in return, but I digress...)... So since I can't wait until whenever Joss Whedon will forgive FOX and come back to television (goddam Serenity movie...), I might as well make my November sweeps comments about Smallville instead...

"Clark actually.... won... the football game?... on drugs?!... What? Was he pushing?... He's a pusher?... He was some sort of pusher of drugs?!... What kind of fucked up message is that for today's youth?... not that they even voted in the election yesterday, mind you..."

Well, Clark wasn't on drugs... But he cheated. At least compared to other humans, he cheated. And that just ain't cool, kids... Just say no to superhuman powers...

As for Jinx as a whole, I can't say it was a good episode... but I can't really say it was a bad episode as well...

I mean, in the end, it felt more like a filler than a November sweeps caliber episode... Mikail was a decent villain. The problem is, even though I know he's supposed to be one of Superman's 'nemesises', I still have no damn clue who the hell he is... So what if I'm not up on DC supervillains, right? The thing is, Mikail did have his fair share of moments in Jinx, cutting Lex's finger with his mind, and getting his ass kicked by a light speed moving Clark to boot... I just wish his forced kiss with Chloe could've felt a little less... forced... Because I don't know. I've always had a thing for girls with no will power of their own when it comes to horny sexcraft, but Mikail's moves this episode just let me down. He didn't go nearly far enough with Chloe (make her take her clothes off, goddammit), and he should've done far more with Clark than just choking him and making him trip or whatever (umm... no comment on the clothes suggestion here...)...

The true villain of the episode turned out to be Lex. And although it sort of came out of nowhere, after several episodes of Lex actually seeming like a genuinely good guy, I must say that Michael Rosenbaum pulled off his supervillain twist with near perfection... Now, I don't know when he started collecting supervillains in his super secret, underground lair. But I am actually interested in how the whole thing will play out... And finally, we have the real reasons why Lex will turn evil, even after being Clark's friend... It's not just that Clark's refusal to tell his secret will drive Lex crazy. It's just that, the only thing that can drive two best friends into being mortal enemies, is the goddam bitchiest of girls between them... and to be honest, I feel bad for Lex. He's always had a thing for Lana. He just never seems to be able to get her, that's all...

As for Lana, she was just a complete waste of excrement again. My God, the actress should just stay the hell away from Smallville on Edgemont, because her over the top, melodramatic performances were already passe by the time the girl power television clones started ripping off Buffy... I absolutely can't stand how elitist all her earrings and completely non-small town clothes seem on screen. And she hasn't been anything but a bitch to Clark all season long... Sure, it's semi-realistic, that a failed couple would hold some hostility towards each other. But suddenly, I'm missing the old November sweeps days, when Willow and Xander or Gunn and Fred could suddenly become friends again, even after they tear each other's hearts out...

I still missed Lois Lane this episode (thank God she'll back next week...), but Chloe wasn't so bad in her absence... With her "Uncle Sam" line, her solution to beating Mikail the locust bug was pretty novel. And it was nice that google managed to bring in the element of Mikail's last name in reverse (I've heard that's significant... don't know how...)... But the real deal with Chloe, was with that look she gave Clark at the end. Does she know about his powers all of a sudden, after four damn years of being absolutely clueless whenever she's saved? I really don't know... they left us hanging there... but along with the evil turn of Lex, I'm actually really desperate to find out... and that's what November sweeps are all about...

The rest of the cast didn't really have much to do, hence the filler type of the episode... Lionel Luthor was sadly missing in action. After his amazing performance last week, his absence was sorely missed in Jinx... Martha Kent got some more air time in return. But I really am starting to hate how out of place she seems in the Talon - the teeny bopper music blaring in the background just doesn't suit her kind of character... And while I'm sure Jonathan Kent will get big kudos on the internet for his speech to Clark before the big game, I personally just thought it was damn weird how he was so pissed off one moment, and then so supportive of Clark the next... It was nice that Clark managed to talk to his father like an adult, and handled the situation with at least a semblance of maturity (even if his decision may not have been correct...). But Jonathan's complete turnaround on his opinion was just plain strange... like there's been some big jinx on his character all season long or something...

And as for Tom Welling... I will admit, that a football jersey suits him perfectly. I'm not sure what the significance of his number of "8" is for (unless it's supposed to look like an "S"), but damn, that scene in the locker room with the overdramatic lighting and everything, looked just as good and far more realistic than any sports equipment commercial I've ever seen (gotta love SDTV...)... Now, like I mentioned before, I thought it was pretty disappointing that Clark won the football championship for his team. Sure, his teammates somehow managed to kick ass and take names themselves, but the moral of the story would've been much better, if the Crows had lost because Clark refused to cheat... Still, I gotta admit that seeing Clark trip and ram a huge player into a touchdown play was rather amusing. And while I really didn't care for the steroid scenes with Jason, I did feel bad for Clark when he had that kryptonite pebble in his hand, if only because it was great metaphor of everyone just wanting to feel normal... Now, after that scene, Clark didn't really have many magical moments. There were the generic football championship scenes, and then that weird ass scene with Chloe near the end... and yes, I was entertained by his super slow-ass walking during the light speed moving scene... but overall?...

... eh, the episode just felt filler. For the big football championship episode of the season, I expected better... for the first November sweeps episode, I expected much better... Still, Mikail wasn't bad for the villain of the week. And Jinx definitely didn't feel jinxed when it came to being just another episode of the week... Jinx did manage to set up quite a few storylines that I'm actually eager to find out just what happens next...

And that at least, is what the November sweeps are all about. Or at least, that's the way Joss Whedon always did it...

Now, I'm the one who's always liked Enterprise right from the start... I thought the first season was a nice change of pace, I loved the action in the second season, and I really thought the third season of Enterprise was one of the strongest Trek seasons in the history of the franchise... Probably at times, I've felt like the only one who felt that Star Trek Enterprise was worthy of the Star Trek name...

... hell, even if I actually liked Smallville this week, it wouldn't have stood a chance against the return of Data... Now, I have no clue why Brent Spiner returned to the universe of Star Trek. I mean, last I heard of him, he was going on tirades about just how much he hated being typecasted for the robotic role he never wanted in the first place...

But damn, am I ever happy to see one of my favourite Star Trek actors come back to the series I love... Because in all honesty, Brent Spiner completely owned the screen with all the amazing lines he was given in this episode... Sure, at times he acted a bit too much like Lore from TNG for his own good. But seriously, why the heck would that matter, when a) that actually makes sense, since Soong's descendent did program Lore, and b) Arik Soong had some of the best script writing I've ever heard on the show, period... Right from the start, Brent Spiner brought in a whole new conviction into the show, with just the way he would mock Archer for being the hero of the world... I absolutely loved the dialogue between Soong and Phlox, not only for bringing up a lot of real world points on genetic engineering, but because you could somehow feel that these two were once friends a long time ago... And you just gotta love Brent Spiner. He was just so damn observant as Dr. Soong, even somehow realizing that Trip and T'Pol had a thing for each other... Just the little nuances in the character, form the oomph he put into zapping the locator in his neck, to even his overdramatic fall from the magnetic handcuffs (which were pretty damn cool, by the way), helped forge a completely unforgettable episode... with probably my second favourite character in the entire Trek franchise next to Captain Picard...

It wasn't just him that made Borderland into absolutely borderline fantastic... His augments were a nice blast from the past, wearing exactly what the Eugenics wore in Wrath of Khan (a movie I despised, though...), and Darth Malik even having the same damn arrogant accent as that Khan prick did long ago... I just loved the first battle scene with the Klingons. Sure, the dancy martial arts were a bit over the top for the Trek series, but at least for once a show "realistically" dodged disruptor fire... And even if it was cliche, I even found the power struggle between Malik and that noname leader guy to be interesting. If only because the Cromag looking girl kept switching sides (like all women seem to do...), it just somehow brought an extra dimension to the Augments, instead of just leaving them as generic bad-guys as Enterprise used to do in the first two seasons... And c'mon already, who didn't love the scene where Archer gets captured (again), and the ship gets boarded (again)? Sure, some roll their eyes at the Enterprise crew getting their asses kicked for the umpteenth time. But dammit, the Augments definitely had style! Malik even warned Archer what he was going to do, and yet Jonathan just froze there like a deer in the headlights... And I even felt happy for Soong in a way, when he saw Persis again for the very first time. The group really did seem like a family... a very incestuous family who inevitably will go Oedipal on their father I'm sure, but that just makes them the perfect supervillains in my book at least...

The rest of the cast wasn't nearly as prominent as the villains were this episode, but every single actor did get a key scene or two to shine... I loved Malcolm Reed's reaction, to Soong knowing his name but not his face. I guess the writers were giving a subtle nod that Dominic Keating definitely hasn't been given his dues on the series... Mayweather only had a single line, but at least he didn't look like a dumbass this episode... I've already mentioned Phlox's outstanding work with Brent Spiner. Sure, the two were only together for one scene, but these two actors just somehow made the slightest few lines into the most memorable 'reading' that I've ever seen... Hoshi didn't get much to do, and I really don't get why such a fine women wasn't beamed away by the Orions. But damn, she looked so alluring in that T-shirt of hers at the start, that I really don't get why she just can't be in civies all the time... Trip didn't have many moments, but his romantic arc with T'Pol sure had short but sweet moments of continuity. I just loved the reaction on his face, when T'Pol basically told him that she didn't do it with her new husband... And c'mon, who didn't notice the poor engineering redneck, get all red in the face when arguing with Soong about slavery in the past?... And T'Pol? Well, once again, she felt a little off this episode. She was calmer than before, and her scenes with Trip just had so much touching chemistry, that you almost think the two in real life could become a couple... I like that she's now part of Starfleet (Spock fans be damned). I just didn't like how damn embarrassed and uncomfortable she seemed, as the WWE wrestler Big Show (all in green, like a fatter version of Shrek somehow...) was having the jolliest day of his life with Jolene... Sure, I laughed my ass off at how damn pissed off Blalock looked as she was fumbled around. But hey, good television is good television, even if the actress has seemed to be hating her job for the past four weeks...

As for Archer... It got on my nerves just how much he walks around when he's addressing his crew. But still, I always forgive him when he takes the ship out of drydock, and the campy music plays to the sight of his eyes glazed over in over-dramatic glory... It just works somehow. And his commitment to the crew later on in the episode seemed to work as well... I absolutely loved Archer in the Orion trading exchange. His control of the situation reminded me so much of his potential in the pilot episode of Enterprise... and I'm sure T'Pol being sold as a sex slave certainly helped as well... Archer had a lot of great moments of his own in those scenes. I loved how bored he looked as the Orion took forever to be knocked out from the hypospray. I loved how calm and collected he seemed when Soong was climbing the wall for his life... And even when Archer was dumb enough to get within arm's length of Malik, he still seemed rather badass and carefree as his neck was about to be snapped in two... But most of all, I really liked his dynamic with Brent Spiner. I loved their arguments over the augments together... Right from the start, when Archer brought up the point that Soong unsuccessfully tried to escape from prison, you knew the banter between these two would be gold. And it all cumulated in the brig... When Soong mentioned the death of Archer's father? Well, I almost expected Bakula to lose it there, neck ringing style... He didn't... but rest assured, when him and Soong meet again... there will be hell to pay... Airlock Archer will be back in full force, and I'm lovin' it...

Borderland was perhaps the absolute best episode that Enterprise has produced since Azati Prime... or dare I say it, even Broken Bow... It had everything a Trekkie would want, from Orion slave girls, to Archer going totally Kirk-style on Soong's ass... It had the best looking Klingon Bird of Prey that I've ever seen, period. And it saw the return of General Martok, as yet another Klingon leader who gets kicked in the face... It had the hottest Hoshi since Broken Bow, it had PMSy T'Pol sold to slavers. And the only way Big Show's appearance could've been better, was if he got hit with a steel chair to both the head and the groin, but I digress...

Every actor was spot on in Borderland. And how the hell can't I love the return of everyone's favourite Data?

Yes, I may have loved Star Trek Enterprise throughout its first three seasons... and I still love those seasons...

... I feel proud, actually... like a father... or a hot, incestuous sister at least...

[c. visitors too bored to return...]
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