- Want to know how hot Jessica Alba is? You don’t need to do a Google image search or watch an E! celebrity news show to find out. Just take a look at the box office earnings for her new movie Good Luck Chuck and you’ll see clearly how strong the pull of seeing Alba’s gorgeous face and smoking hot body on the big screen are. She managed to take a movie with the unenviable burden of having Dane Cook as one of its stars and carry it to a second-place finish in the weekend box office earnings race with $14 million in ticket sales. If you’re wondering, the zombie thriller Resident Evil: Extinction was the top earner at $24 million, so it was not a stellar weekend for movies. However, if anyone can rescue a movie with an absolute idiot like Dane Cook, a flimsy plot and piss-poor writing and make it even a marginal success, then you know she’s either a) really, really hot, or b) a phenomenal actress. Since I’ve seen Alba’s acting before, I can confidently say it’s the former, but then again, does it really matter? I suppose the answer to that depends on your gender……
- I made a promise and gosh darn, I’m sticking with it. The Buddhist monks in Myanmar are at it again, protesting against their dictatorial government, and I’m here to salute them. This time, those crazy dudes were joined by Buddhist nuns in the largest anti-government protest in Myanmar in nearly two decades. More than 20,000 protestors marched in the city of Yangun, showing their support for detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. At one point during the demonstration, a group of about 400 protestors broke off from the larger group and tried to approach the home where Suu Kyi is being held. They were rebuffed, but it was still a solid effort. The monks also held a banner aloft that read: “Love and kindness must win over everything.” I don’t know how that jives with the property damage these monks inflicted on the shops of pro-government store owners, but I really don’t care. You can have love and kindness and still be tough and play a little dirty when need be. Let’s just hope that the result of this large demonstration isn't the same as the last one of comparable size, when the Burmese military used force to crush the resistance and killed thousands nationwide. A spokesman for a coalition of anti-government forces cites the role of monks as leaders in Myanmar as a reason for the large turnout at the march, saying that when monks take a stand on an issue, people will follow. This cause is definitely gaining momentum, so I’m rooting for it to escalate even further in the days ahead. All of this because a small group of monks was fed up with their government and decided to speak out…..
- I had a hard time deciding whether to hit on this next story, because it’s so graphically disturbing that it makes me sick just thinking about it. However, if we don’t openly rip, mock, scorn and ridicule idiots who do things like this, other like-minded morons might think it’s ok to follow suit. Scott D. Clark, an absolute ass-hat of a human being staying at the Embassy Guest Suites hotel in St. Paul, Minn., decided it was a good idea to have a beer or eight and then wander through the hotel lobby. The hotel, apparently a nice establishment, sports a decorative pond in its lobby. In that pond lives, scratch that, LIVED a tame duck that swam around, amused the guests and bothered no one – well, except for drunken imbeciles like Scott D. Clark. This a-hole cornered this poor duck, grabbed it and ripped its head from its body. He then turned to onlookers and exclaimed, “I’m hungry. I’m gonna eat it.” Scott D. Clark is now rightfully in police custody, and whatever charges and jail time can be thrown at this piece of crap are not nearly what he deserves. No, it’s not a human being or even a pet like a dog or cat, but it’s still an innocent and defenseless animal killed in an excruciatingly brutal fashion. Even your average drunk doesn’t do something this despicable, but clearly Scott D. Clark is much dumber, much more ignorant and possesses much less class and intellect that your average drunk, or your average lamp post for that matter. You suck, Scott D. Clark, and here’s hoping that your death, whenever it comes, is equally painful and horrific.
- A Milton Bradley update for you…..as it turns out, the result of that confrontation with umpire Mike Winters in Sunday’s game and Padres manager Bud Black resultant efforts to restrain Bradley that sent Milton tumbling to the ground, Bradley has a torn ACL and will miss the remainder of this season, the postseason and a large chunk (if not all) of next season. Worse yet, Winters is denying he said anything to incite Bradley’s tantrum, which is so obviously a lie that it makes me want to call time out, charge over and assault Winters myself. Milton Bradley isn't the most sympathetic figure and he’s been the driving force behind most of his problems in his baseball career, but this is one time where the wrong was brought upon him by someone else, someone who is supposed to be there to enforce and apply the rules, not to bait players they don’t like into confrontations. If nothing else, Winters should be fined and reprimanded by MLB and banned from working any playoff games this year, because the second the sport begins condoning this kind of offensive, confrontation-seeking behavior from umpires, it’s in for a world of problems that it’s not prepared to cope with.
- I’m going to do the abnormal and take a big picture view of the Heroes season premiere. By that, I mean I’m going to do my best to think of the season as a whole and not focus too much on last night’s premiere, because if I focus solely on that episode, my review isn't going to be very positive. Although there’s no bigger Heroes fan than me, I thought last night’s episode was scattershot, erratic and disjointed. It was al over the map story-wise and had no sort of flow or consistent direction to it. There was Hiro Nakamura, teleported back to 1671 where he comes face to face with the legendary Japanese warrior Takito Kensei, only to discover that Kensei is actually a British mercenary who is more greedy opportunist than hero. Then there’s Nathan Petrelli, who has apparently become a wino/hobo, with a scraggly beard, unkempt appearance and a massive guilt complex over what happened to his brother in last season’s finale. And what of Peter Petrelli? It wasn’t until show’s end we found out his fate; namely, chained to the wall of a cargo container in a ship yard in Cork, Ireland, with no memory of who he is and how he got there. Over on the other side for the world, there’s the Bennett/XXXXX family, with H.R.G./Noah having moved Claire and the rest of the family to Costa Verde, Calif. to assume new lives and new identities. Claire struggles to just be a normal, nondescript teenager, totally unaware that her new friend at school, West, has a special ability of his own, just like her. Flash over to Cairo, Egypt, and there’s Dr. Mohinder Suresh, giving some sort of lecture on a dangerous virus threatening people with special abilities worldwide. He’s followed and courted by a mysterious stranger representing a mysterious foundation that promises to help Suresh in his research for a cure for this virus. Back in New York, the story of Matt Parkman has skipped about two dozen steps and he’s now moved cross-country to New York, where he’s an NYPD detective and has adopted little Molly, the girl whose power is to locate other people with powers. The pair is living in Mohinder’s apartment while he tours the world and Molly is having progressively worse nightmares about the boogeyman. Then there’s the cryptic phone call between H.R.G. and Mohinder which reveals that Mohinder’s lecture trip is a trap to catch the very people who have just contacted him and that H.R.G. and Mohinder hope to bring down “The Company.” Also in New York, Mrs. Petrelli and Hiro’s father both receive death threats with a mysterious symbol painted over top of photographs of them, the same symbol showing up in drawings of th boogeyman that Molly is doing at school. We learn that the person making these threats is someone who was once a part of an organization of which Mrs. Petrelli and Hiro’s father were part of, and at the end of the show, this person shows up and fights with Hiro’s father, with both falling off the roof to their death. Oh, and then there was the substantial amount of time spent following Maya and Alejandro, two twenty-somethings from South or Latin America trying to make their way to New York to meet Suresh (Mohinder’s father, who is actually dead, unbeknownst to these two) in the hope that he can help Maya with her power, which is vague at this point but results in her killing people unintentionally and them bleeding from their eyes. So as you can see, there was a lot of jumping around, both geographically and story-wise, and it made for an uneven, often-confusing episode that didn’t really answer many questions. Also, other than one brief scene with Nathan and his mother discussing what happened in last season’s finale in the climactic scene at Kirby Plaza, no one mentioned what happened there or seemed affected by it. Hopefully this episode was just a necessary evil, a bulky, over-stuffed way to set up a spectacular season. Much better was the second show of the season for Prison Break, which continued the travails of Michael Scofield as he tries to survive in the Panamanian hell hole that is SONA. The episode centered around the quest to find James Whistler, a sought-after man who is hiding in the sewers of SONA because he killed the son of Panama City’s mayor and is wanted dead by many people. However, the people pressuring Michael and brother Lincoln to break Whistler out of SONA want him alive for a reason yet to be disclosed. While Michael tries to break a wanted man out of a prison that no one has ever escaped from and do so in the one-week time frame he’s been given, Sucre comes to SONA to find out where Bellick has hidden his beloved Maricruz. When Sucre learns Bellick never really held her captive, he starts searching desperately and finds out that his girl is back in Chicago, where he plans to go until he realizes that doing so will get him arrested and only bring more danger to those he loves. Lincoln convinces him to stay in Panama and help in the fight to free Michael, a fight that includes Lincoln trailing Whistlers’ girlfriend and stealing an item she has retrieved from a safety deposit box at a local bank. All of this almost goes for naught when Mahone catches wind of Scofield’s plan for Whistler, captures him and tries to hold Whistler hostage, perhaps killing him to collect on a bounty that could free him from SONA. An ingenious plan by Scofield that brings much-needed water to SONA wins him custody of Whistler, but there’s still the tiny matter of how to escape in time to save L.J. and Sarah…..like I said, this season of PB has been stellar so far and it just keeps getting better. The drama is at fever pitch for the entire hour and although the plot is layered and complicated, it’s never confusing or overwhelming. In summary, last night’s episode of Heroes and Prison Break, disappointing and stellar, respectively.
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