Archive | 2014

Whiplash Review

25 Oct

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“There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job’.”

The above encapsulates the mindset of Terence Fletcher, a sadistic, uncompromising, drill sergeant-like music instructor, an imposing presence laced with an increasingly appalling dark wit. The image of a simple black t-shirt around a muscular frame creates a physicality that is matched by very few, and Fletcher utilizes both that physical presence and his biting words to rip apart his students psychologically, to push them to the very limits of their abilities. This movie, as a result, becomes 1 hour and 45 minutes of sheer intensity that rivals the very best thrillers.

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Saturday Night Live “Jim Carrey/Iggy Azalea” Live Blog and Review” (40×04)

25 Oct

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EBOLA CZAR COLD OPEN: The sketch opens pretty weakly, but it gets better as it progresses. Taran Killam’s Ron Klain doesn’t truly bring the laughs until he starts talking about Latinos being immune to ebola and until he begins urging southern voters to stay away from polling booths. Thompson later gets in a good line with “All of New York is contaminated!” GRADE: B

MONOLOGUE: What the hell? (Ha). This is just weird, and not in a funny way. I think everyone was stoned when this was pitched. GRADE: D+

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Person of Interest “Prophets” Review (4×05)

21 Oct

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“Sometimes, it’s better not to know.”

The POI team, for the most part, spends this episode on the outskirts of the action, never directly interacting with the case of the week subject–Jason Ritter’s Simon Lee–until the end of the episode; rather, they resort to tactics such as crashing a random car in order to get him to turn a certain way, and this all serves to highlight the necessity of keeping a cover, of avoiding Samaritan’s watchful eye. However, this is also an episode that clearly delineates the mindsets of our main characters, forcing them to confront the idea of Samaritan, of the past, the present, and the future.

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The Affair “2” Review (1×02)

20 Oct

Episode 102

“Marriage means different things to different people.”

“2” does a great job of shading in more of the nuances surrounding each of the characters and the environments they inhabit, and there is a common theme–aside from differing perceptions–that seems to tie everything together nicely: water. The first scene of the pilot was of Noah swimming, and from the opening credits on, I get the idea of two people floating in the middle of a large expanse of water, moving forward and backward and side to side, desperately searching for something around them.

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Homeland “Iron in the Fire” Review (4×04)

19 Oct

Episode 404

“What I need is your help, not your goddamn foot on the brake.”

We’ve seen time and time again that Carrie Mathison throws herself into her work, that she’ll oftentimes do anything it takes to come out on top and to complete her mission. She’s faced the consequences of her stubbornness before, but she’s also been able to get results, and this season places her in a position in which the main opposition she would face–Washington–is an ocean away. This is all, simply put, her element, and the question being asked is: How far will she go? Whether that question still interests the audience is left up to us.

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Boardwalk Empire “Friendless Child” Review (5×07)

19 Oct

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“Dumber than I knew.”

Tony Soprano. Vic Mackey. Walter White. We’ve had our fair share of main characters with empires, characters brought down and crushed under the weights of their own powers, but what those characters don’t seem to have in common with Nucky Thompson is an opportunity to recover some semblance of morality. Yes, Nucky’s lost everything and the future belongs to people like Lansky and Luciano, but there’s a small ounce of redemption to be found here, a true confrontation of the past and all the terrible things he did.

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Battlestar Galactica Season 3, Episodes 1-4 Review (New Caprica)

18 Oct

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EPISODES COVERED: “Occupation”, “Precipice”, “Exodus Part 1″, Exodus Part 2”

“The dignity and the integrity of the human race rides with us. Good hunting.”

The Cylons occupy New Caprica. What was once a beacon of hope for so many has become a war zone, a deadly situation in which humans and Cylons live next to each other, but don’t necessarily live with each other. There are a vast number of conflicting viewpoints here, and they eventually clash and escalate the conflict beyond the realm of control; here, we have the Cylons attempting to create a peace between their kind and humankind, but they just don’t realize how difficult a task on that magnitude would be to accomplish.

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Battlestar Galactica: Razor + “The Resistance” Webisodes Review

17 Oct

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Razor

I’ve already touched on many of the thematic ideas circling Razor, considering it simply shows us the Pegasus backstory that was told in “Pegasus” through “Resurrection Ship”, but there are a few key bits of information presented here that we didn’t know beforehand. It’s all done through the character of Kendra Shaw, a bridge between the story we’ve seen and the story we’re seeing, and we observe how she essentially becomes Cain’s legacy and how that influences her mindset in the present. The kind of stories the writers are crafting probably need more time to breath–as did the Pegasus arc, as thrilling as it was–but all in all, it’s well done for a 90 minute movie.

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Arrow “Sara” Review (3×02)

16 Oct

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“I don’t want to die down here.”

“Sara” is an exploration of grief, of the various ways our characters cope with the loss of someone they cared deeply about. It’s also a turning point in the series, a transition period for characters like Laurel and Felicity and Oliver in response to Sara’s death. Death often reminds us of our own mortality, and here, that certainly is the case; death also reminds them of their seeming lack of identity, of the fact that they’ve spent all this time in a high-tech basement, that they’ve done good in the world, but that they’ve done so while they’ve been closed off emotionally from life in general.

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Person of Interest “Brotherhood” Review (4×04)

15 Oct

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“There’s just one rule: we all die in the end.”

The unrelenting cycle of violence and crime seems to be a common topic among television shows these days, with The Bridge exploring that idea in terms of the U.S.-Mexico border and with Boardwalk Empire doing so in a historical, gangster world context. Person of Interest is tackling the issue in present-day New York, in a steadily evolving world that gets more restrictive as time progresses.

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