I’ve been a fan of CSI, in all its forms, since the very beginning. I’ve enjoyed each show as they’ve spun off from the original, but I’ve watched CSI Miami go downhill for so long now that I just can’t take it anymore. It’s a combination of things I just couldn’t take any longer: Horatio Cane’s penchant for standing sideways, appearing out of thin air, wearing his sunglasses indoors, and spouting idiotic one-liners. And poor writing that made CSI Miami into more of a wannabe cop action drama than something that relied on forensics and science.

And speaking of science and technology, all the CSI shows have gone overboard when it comes to one-upping each other with who can have the coolest animations for Codis DNA lookups. But CSI Miami somehow traveled a decade into the future and gained access to 9th generation Microsoft Surface computing workstations - you know, the ones with 120 inch wide-screen displays, the ability to place any phone on the surface and immediately pull data off of it, and 3D projection displays. It’s like each member of the special effects department working on CSI Miami takes a hit of acid before they work on an episode and they come up with increasingly crazier technologies that don’t yet exist. Every year the show gets more and more unrealistic, likely to compensate for the increasingly poor writing.

CSI Miami, you are dead to me. There are better things to watch on TV, like The Mentalist.

Never having played the Max Payne games, or knowing anything about them, I went into this movie purely based on the strength of the movie trailer, which I thought looked cool. All those dark angel-type-creatures, and the dialogue (”The devil is building his army…”) gave me the impression that this movie would have a Constantine vibe to it. I don’t want to ruin the movie for anyone, but let’s just say that the trailer gave me a false impression and as a result I was kind of disappointed in the movie. It wasn’t bad by any means, but in my opinion it wasn’t worth seeing in the movie theatre - it’s more of a $5 investment than a $25+ investment.

Beyond my usual fare of The Daily Show, Smallville, and all the CSI shows (even the oft-mockworthy CSI Miami), I’m enjoying a new show called Fringe. It’s sort of like X-Files for the 2008 era, only with better special effects and a broader paranormal scope. This time instead of a red-headed hot FBI agent, they’re using hot blond Australian import (Anna Torv)…as an FBI agnet. I think she looks shockingly like Poppy Montgomery from Without A Trace…whom I’ve just discovered is also from Australia. Something in the water perhaps?

I’m also enjoying Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles with Summer Glau, who channels some Sigourney Weaver ass-kicking vibes. What are you watching this TV season?

The Watchmen was an absolutely superb 12-part comic book series that ran from 1986 to 1987, and I had no idea they were making it into a movie until I was in the movie theatres watching The Dark Knight and the trailer came on. The trailer gave me shivers - the cinematography is breathtaking, and the music they picked (Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins) sent shivers up my spine. No surprises there: it’s from the director of 300. The comic book series was a wild, sprawling tale that had great depth, so I’m really interested to see if they can condense it into a two-hour movie and have it still make sense.

There’s not much up at the official movie site, but they do offer HD downloads of the trailer. I downloaded the 1080p WMV trailer, put it on my Windows Home Server, and played it back on my Xbox 360 attached to my TV. One word: wow. It looked fantastic! There’s also a 720p trailer if your computer chokes on the 1080p.

Now this is a great movie. Released in 2004, it’s perhaps my favourite Denzel Washington movie (Glory is right up there with it). Great action, believable acting, and a storyline that centres on the very un-Hollywood concept of sacrifice. Well worth watching!

I’m so angry at wasting my time watching this movie, it’s hard for me to put into words how pathetic I think it is. I watched it purely based on the cast involved - I figured with an ensemble cast, it must be decent, even if I’d never heard of it before. And I happen to like sci-fi movies, even the not-so-great ones.

What a huge mistake I made. To call this movie “bad” is an insult to every “bad” movie ever made (and that includes the worst, cheesy sci-fi and fantasy “B” movies I’ve ever seen). This movie is horrible. If I could think of a word worse than horrible I’d use it.

It’s like everyone in the cast thought “Hey, it’s that Donnie Darko guy, let’s not even read the script, let’s just say yes and go for it!”. Each actor involved with this project should immediately fire their manager for not slapping some sense into them. I don’t think this movie was released in theatres - it probably caused riots in testing. It’s not worth the plastic it’s pressed upon. I want to find each of the actors involved and ask them what kind of crack they were on when they signed up for this project.

*Maybe*, just *maybe* if you watched this movie while high on acid you might be able to make some sense of it. Not being the acid-dropping type, I can only report that that watching this movie sober only made my head hurt.

I want to find the “visionary” writer/director, Richard Kelley, and demand that he give me back the 2 hours and 20 minutes of my life that I wasted on his self-fellating opus of idiocy.

I’ll leave you with a quote I found online that sums up my feelings quite nicely:

“For anyone to associate any possible positivity to this absolute colon blow of a movie is insane. This is the worst movie of all time and will be forever disappointed with anyone associated with its making. I would have preferred to have stuck a red hot needle in my pupil and slammed my face repeatedly into a slab of concrete, then to have seen this movie. All movie making is a form of artistic design and expression but some stuff is best kept to ones self.”

Do not rent this movie if you value your time or sanity. This movie, all by itself, has made me re-think my policy of always watching a movie to the very end, to give it a chance. I should have stopped this movie after the first 15 minutes.

I’m a comic book geek, and few things get my blood pumping faster than seeing characters bought to life that I’ve envisioned in my head for years. Iron Man, being released on May 2nd, looks amazing…I sure hope the movie lives up to the coolness factor that the trailer is generating!

The new trailer looks so cool! It’s under VIDEO > TRAILER. I dig the Chris Cornell tune they use in the trailer - hopefully it’s in the movie as well…

When I watch a movie, the single biggest thing I look for is impact. If it’s a comedy, does it make me laugh? If it’s a documentary, does it make me think, and perhaps change my viewpoint on something? If it’s an action movie, does it make my pulse quicken? If it’s a thriller, does it make me nervous and jumpy?

I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, is an action/thriller/horror hybrid that does the job quite nicely. I won’t ruin it for anyone, but the basic premise that the trailer reveals is that Will Smith’s character is the last human left on Manhattan Island, his only companion is his dog, and he has to find the cure to something…something that, when night comes, causes very bad things to happen.

Maybe it’s because Ashley and I went to a late afternoon matinée, so when we left the movie theatre it the sun was setting, or maybe it was because I was dropping Ashley off at her parent’s house and I was going home along to a house with only my dog…but I sure felt jumpy on the way home and for a while afterwards! The movie really got under my skin, but in a good, entertaining way. Will Smith pulls off the nearly impossible feat of not being boring when pretty much the only thing the camera focuses on for the bulk of the movie is him. About the only negative thing I have to say about it is that the CGI “creatures” didn’t look all that believable, but not comically so. It’s still a gripping, tense movie - a movie worth watching. [Web site / HD trailers]

Tonight I saw The Kingdom, and it’s a fantastic movie - given the current world climate, it’s highly relevant to everyone. The first couple of minutes give a great summary of the history of Saudi Arabia, oil, and its link to the United States of America. The story in The Kingdom is solid, the acting is great, and the cinematography is excellent - many times throughout the movie it felt like I was watching a documentary. The gun fights and explosions looked particularly realistic - everything was simply brutal. The last 30 minutes of the movie was being billed as “can’t miss” and it’s not an exaggeration - the pacing is relentless and refuses to let go until it winds down. The ending isn’t your typical “rah-rah America!” ending either - I won’t ruin it for you, but it paints a very realistic picture of how the cycle of violence is perpetuated.

Ashley and I had an interesting conversation on the way home about what it will take for the violence in the middle east to finally come to and end - and neither one of us was able to come up with a solution. That’s not surprising mind you, as many greater minds than ours have tackled this issue, but it’s always good to ponder such things. How do you break the cycle of violence? When it involves one person against another, death or prison tend to be the cycle-ending points. When it involves people of a certain belief system that number in the tens of thousands or millions, ending the cycle is much harder. The Kingdom is a movie worth watching - it might not help end the cycle of violence, but it gives us a glimpse into why the cycle keeps churning. And perhaps, armed with a bit of understanding, we can inch forward toward a solution.

I’m probably the only self-confessed comic-book geek on the planet that missed a big, mainstream super-hero show like Heroes. When season one started last year, the TV tuner in my Windows Media Center PC didn’t record the first few episodes properly, so I gave up on the series and figured I’d pick it up on DVD before season two started. I have to say, it’s a great TV series - Ashley and I are really enjoying it. As I tell anyone who’s sceptical about watching Battle Gallactica, good drama is good drama, regardless of the setting. Great characters and a gripping storyline can exist anywhere, whether it’s in space or in Las Vegas. Heroes is a highly-serialized show where almost every episode is tightly strung together in a “To Be Continued” fashion. Like 24, once you start watching it’s hard to stop. And the HD-DVD version looks pretty damn good - though my digital-noise-sensitive eyes have noticed a few screwy things here and there.

If you haven’t watched Heroes season one, you should rent it before season two starts in a few weeks.