Sunday, October 04, 2009

Watched in September.

Doctor Who Season 3 & 4 - Martha Jones is awesome... and John Simm is a phenooooooooooomenal bad guy. The season itself I thought lagged a bit in the middle, but Simm - praise be to Life on Mars, plus David Tennant - made this season straight awesome.

Didn't particularly like the Donna Noble character from the Xmas special, but she grew on me. Rose in the series premiere was particularly awesome. Season 4 showed me that Doctor Who is far smarter and entertaining than standard sci-fi fare. Good, good times.

Generation Kill - [the HBO series. I read the book ages ago... I remember it being quite good.] As for the TV show. It was really well done. The dialogue, in particular, rang true. I was an air wing pogue who never deployed, let alone saw combat, when I was in Corps, but the dynamic between Marines was spot on. Well acted and well written.

Leverage - highly entertaining TV.

Patton Oswalt - My Weakness is Strong - not as strong as his last special, I thought [Werewolves and Lollipops] but still damn funny.

Eureka, Robot Chicken, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Ultimate Fighter and Ultimate Fight Night, The Office, Parks and Recreation [Louis C.K. is awesome], Community [potentially good, shows promise], It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Mentalist, NCIS [hooked on this when I was home this summer. NCIS LA, otoh, was an abomination. Had to turn that off after 20m.] House - interesting twists this season. True Blood. Castle - Nathan Fillion rocks. UFC 103. Modern Family - best new comedy of the season. SNL. K1 WGP Final 16. Bored to Death - new HBO series... quirky, has promise.

Sasuke - my favorite Japanese program, ever. Nagano Makoto missed it by ONE SECOND this year.

Movies - Grandma's Boy. Space Cowboys. Gran Torino - best movie I've seen in quite some time. Clint rocks.

Victory - used to be on rotation on HBO when I was a kid. So I picked up the DVD for cheap when I was back home this summer. Michael Caine, Stallone, Pele, Von Sydow... great cast. I don't even like soccer, but I dig the film quite a bit. And found out this, thanks to the magical internets - Escape to Victory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"The movie is based on the 1961 Hungarian film drama Két félidő a pokolban ('Two half-times in Hell'), which was directed by Zoltán Fábri and won the critics' award at the 1962 Boston Cinema Festival.

The film was inspired by the true story of Dynamo Kyiv's players, who defeated German soldiers while Ukraine was occupied by German troops in World War II. According to myth, as a result of their victory, the Ukrainians were all shot. The true story is considerably more complex, as the team played a series of matches against German teams, emerging victorious in all of them, before finally being sent to prison camps by the Gestapo. Most of the team were killed there, but a few survived."
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - disappointing Simon Pegg vehicle. Pegg was engaging, but a clever book was turned into a generic rom-com. Boo. The Search for Robert Johnson. Iron and Silk. Nobel Son.

State of Play - both the BBC mini and the Hollywood flick. The BBC series was vastly superior. You can't beat John Simm, Philip Glenister and Bill Nighy. The only real standout in the flick version was Jason Bateman's character, which was deft and entertaining.

The Punisher and Punisher War Zone. Thomas Jane and Ray Stevenson play the same character very differently. Both good, though I'd lean towards Stevenson's. Both films suffer from crappy villains though. The actors - John Travolta and [especially, given his chops in The Wire] Dominic West capable of far better performances.

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