http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:48:19 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/16/124819.php Amber GertzbeinIt's a marvel that there remains in England rolling fields unspoiled by urban sprawl. On the whole, it is amazing that so much of such a tiny country has continued the country tradition and persisted in building charming hamlets instead of condominiums. Although much of the film takes place on elaborate soundstages, the first quarter of the film sets up the gentle naivety of Oliver Twist by his week-long march through lush, green properties.It is a gorgeous and faithful adaptation of Dickens' classic tale, following the learning curve of the ten-year-old orphan as he falls in with a rough group of young scoundrels led by Sir Ben Kingsley (in what's sure to be an Oscar-nominated performance) as Fagin. Kingsley plays Fagin with affected charm and deep psychosis, a man posessed by fear and greed, but also kind and protective of his boys. Besides Kingsley, other standout performances can be attributed to brash actress Leanne Rowe as soft-hearted and increasingly paranoid (for good reason) Nancy; murderous villain Bill Sykes (venomously played by British character actor Jamie Foreman, last seen in similar turns in Layer Cake and Gangster No. 1), and a very bizarre cameo by another of Britain's chamelons, Mark Strong, who plays the flamboyant "bad'un," Toby Crackit. These supporting players add a bit of colour (literally, Nancy and Toby both have flaming red hair) to the dreary world of greys that was industrialised Victorian London. Costume designer Anna Sheppard dresses the world of Oliver Twist in drab, dirty hues of grimey greys and used-to-be white.Young Twist (embodied with perfunctory lovliness and a bit of pouty indignance by newcomer Barney Clark) bounces from the orphanage to a coffin-makers, where he cries and gets in fights over the virtue of his mother and runs away, only to end up getting picked out by the pickpocket The Artful Dodger (Harry Eden) who isn't so much artful as he is a cocky child who brazenly steals while other actors are deliberately looking away. He briefly flirts with normalcy when rescued by the kindly Mr. Brownlow (Edward Hardwicke in a walrus of a mustache), but falls back in with Fagin's thieves, suffering indignity and grisly wounds, narrowly escapes death and eventually ends up in good circumstances. But not before there is more crying.Director Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown) has made a film that certainly looks like Oscar bait (my bets go to the aforementioned Kingsley, Art Direction, Costumes and Best Picture, at the very least). It's a grim, depressing, tearjerker with a happy ending because "he wanted something he could make for children,'' according to writer, Ronald Harwood.Extravagently and meticulously detailed, the film is a visually thrilling production and, while I wouldn't recommend it for very young children, I predict it will become the definitive cinematic version for tweenagers to adults for a long time to come. Ed/Pub:NB Video36296@blogcritics.org Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:48:19 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/21/160816.php Amber GertzbeinI have high hopes for Steve Carell as Michael Scott, the American replacement to Ricky Gervais' brilliant send-up of management mediocrity, David Brent.The US take on the BBC cult comedy The Office is set to air its pilot this Thursday at 9:30pm EST, in an attempt to bolster NBCs ratings after losing its flagship comedy Friends and the lackluster season of spinoff Joey. Entertainment Weekly Magazine has acclaimed that it is not nearly as bad as the ripped-off from the British which was ripped-off from Friends experiment briefly known as NBC's Coupling and, in fact, is fairly entertaining, however (the article continues), Carell's Scott is far from the delicately crafted needy jerk of Gervais' creation, Brent. Carell, most recently seen in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy and as yet another anchorman of a different plummage in Bruce Almighty, was, in my opinion, the best candidate to replace Gervais of all the actors I can think of. He has the ability to play someone so oblivious to the feelings of those around him, yet remain curiously engaging (in a slipping-on-a-banana-peel-then-falling-into-a-snake-infested-pit-full-of-dynamite kind of way). His characters are peek-through-your-eyes-at-the-horror funny while you wait with baited breath for the next opportunity he takes to make an ass out of himself (usually a few milliseconds later, often in a three or four-way combo). Truly in the spirit of David Brent.I would have loved the casting decision of fellow Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry as Scott's sycophantic sidekick. It might have added to the Americanisation (in Canada we use "s" instead of "z") of the show, since the idea was to stay faithful to the British version, while injecting a uniqueness to the show so that it wouldn't be a badly translated carbon-copy. Sometimes a translation must take liberties to be better understood by the translation's audience, where subtle intricacies of the original would simply be lost.All this is conjecture at this point, since it remains to be seen on Thursday. Stay tuned. Video27062@blogcritics.org Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:08:16 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/10/31/211640.php Amber Gertzbein So, I finally saw i heart huckabees, which was AWESOME and hysterical. Great character performances from the always reliable Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman as husband and wife team Vivian and Bernard Jaffe. Isabel Huppert turns in a sexy and frustrating performance as existentialist Caterine Vauban. Jason Schwartzman was hillariously outraged and touching as our confused protagonist Albert Markovski, while Mark Wahlberg quite possibly deserves a best supporting actor nomination for his nihilistic turn as a firefighter struggling with life's big questions. Roger Ebert must be a philosophically, collosally ignorant little man if he couldn't see the redeeming and delightful properties of this film. I think that anyone expecting to see great art when they go to see a movie that focuses so much energy on Shania Twain obviously has unreasonable expectations and has stopped going to the movies for the sheer enjoyment of getting lost in the fantasyland of FICTIONAL movies that tell stories just for the point of telling a story.I've neglected to mention the affable Jude Law and Naomi Watts as yuppies in denial of their own existential, suburban meltdown, mostly because their performance are adequate and serve only to further the likeability of other characters without properly adressing their own vilification. They turn out, like anyone, to be fallable people, just like every other character in huckabees, but their dynamic just isn't as interesting as the Jaffes with themselves or Albert's with Tommy (check out clip 7 on the official website. Click on the pink square that lookes like a polaroid camera). The website itself is expertly designed to suck the reader in, like a sub-website for the Jaffe's existential detective agency (the plain yellow square) that asks the big questions. "If nothing matters, do you matter?" "How am I not myself?" "What does it all mean?"It means that we shouldn't take ourselves so seriously and we should just enjoy a movie for the story and not the complete deconstruction of every bit of symbolism. What will you gain by that, except a loss of innocence? A loss of joy?Asks yourself those big questions, but don't forget that the world is out there, and it's full of pain and misery and wondrous things and magical coincidences that may not mean anything at all. Dress up and be silly, be wildly serious and resolutely absurd. Write bad poetry. Accept no substitutes for the real thing and question everything you know to be real. Then relax and see that we are all connected, even for all the tiny gaps.Oh yeah, and don't forget to listen to the soundtrack. It helps. Video21690@blogcritics.org Sun, 31 Oct 2004 21:16:40 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/24/185733.php Amber GertzbeinTo say that this film sucked is not so much an inarticulate assessment of a not very good film, so much as it is actually an accurate description of the actions taken (as can be seen already in the trailers currently running on TV and in theatres).Without spoiling too much of the "plot," let us, through the magic of visualisation, imagine the most ridiculous, ludicrous plot twist you can imagine ever happening in a mystery. Now, let's imagine that that is the "plot twist" in The Forgotten, a film being hyped as having the most innovative twist since The Sixth Sense.Having actually seen this film, I can say that no, in fact, it's not that innovative at all, and may in fact be derivative, obvious, and, judging from the number of times I burst out in hysterical laughter, completely absurd and unbelievable. It isn't even so much as a twist, as it is a thing all but hammer-on-the-head revealed within thirty minutes of the film's start. Sure, there were times when I was afraid in a cheap, scare-tactics kind of way, and occasionally, I felt bad for Julianne Moore, but then something so unbelievable would happen I couldn't force myself to stay within the unjustifiable lunacy of the movie. It keeps you guessing for a little while, but somewhere around the halfway-mark, I began to wish that it would just be over.Julianne Moore, who I've heard people say they would pay to read the Ann Arbour Phone Book, was mostly believable as lovely and distressed mother Telly Paretta, who is being led to believe that her son never existed. Not easy, given that her script only allowed her to keep chanting "Where's my son? Where's my son?" Anthony Edwards, a wasted resource, plays her husband, who then becomes just another character to fall by the wayside. Gary Sinise sticks through to the end, past the "delusions," past the suspiciously involved federal agents, to the "truth" as Telly's ineffectual therapist. Rounding out the powerhouse cast of well-known actors (who apparently had no better scripts to choose from last year) is Alfre Woodard as a detective who believes Telly, only to become just another wasted actor in a bad film.Finally, Dominic West fills-in as the hunky, reluctant hero, ex-New York Ranger Ash Corell, who gradually sides with Telly and comes to believe he had a daughter (after calling the cops because he thinks she might be stark-raving loony-tunes) he had forgotten.Telly and Ash set out to uncover the mystery of their forgotten children and forgotten lives, while dodging NSA agents, mysterious men, tell-tale winds and the unforgiving light of a blue camera lens. Occasionally, the director switches to a flattering orange lens for Telly's memories of her son, Sam, which often see her from the other side of a chain link fence and, between the laughing children in the playground flashbacks and the fence memories, seem surprisingly Terminator-like.Don't worry, I haven't given anything away. There are no robots from the future in this movie, the twist is even more ridiculous than that.At least Terminator was a defining film of it's genre. It had consistent action and likable heroes. This movie is just rehashing, unoriginal, borrowed drivel. The writers couldn't even come up with original names: Telly Paretta, neighbor Eliot, Ash Corell, Al Petalis, Sheriff Howell...it's like they were obsessed with "L" names.The Forgotten is just another "twist" movie. See it if you want, but you'll wish you could forget it right after.grade: C Video20238@blogcritics.org Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:57:33 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/09/18/001600.php Amber GertzbeinImagination is the name of the game in Kerry Conran's lushly realized Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.Nearly every sci-fi convention is used from giant robots that shoot lasers from their eyes to evil scientists to dashing heroes and damsels in distress. The film is part King Kong, part biblical allegory, but most of all, it's a big part pure adrenaline-pumping, nail-biting, old-fashioned matinee fun!The film opens with Conran's now infamous six minutes of footage involving the docking of a zeppelin at the top of the Empire State building. This is the footage he created in his garage and used to secure big name actors Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow as the aforementioned hero and damsel. It's also what got him the financing to produce this epic, blue-screen fantasy.The film's live action sequences took under a month in total to complete shooting, but it's the digital effects that really make the adventure come to life. Law, Producer John Avnet and Angelina Jolie against the BluescreenConran created the film in black and white and colorized it, a-la The Wizard of Oz, which has several cameos and allusions throughout the journey; only, the effect of modern technology give the picture a lush, yet dream-like quality of shadows and light (mostly shadows), where the brightness of Paltrow's cornsilk, Veronica Lake locks are offset only by the deep crimson of her lips, and every character exudes an almost cartoonish halo to bring them to the foreground of this bluescreen odessey.The advantage of using mostly digital effects is that the mountains of Nepal can be three dimensionally mapped as fearless Joe Sullivan and plucky Polly Perkins fly in search of mysterious islands, dinosaurs that can lope through jungles and ray-guns that can melt holes in tentacled metal monsters. Ribisi as Dex Robots you don't want to play withIt truly is a feat of digital imagination, and the story's not bad either.Reporter Polly Perkins (Paltrow) is tracking the mysterious disappearance of several scientists. She heads out to a meeting with someone who says he knows who's next, only to be ambushed by very real-looking Iron Giants who have taken over the streets of Manhattan.Polly is nearly crushed by one of the evil machines (trying to save her ever-important camera), when Sky Captain Joe Sullivan (Law) comes to her aid.So sets in motion the journey of our two protagonists as they travel from sky to sea to Shangri-La in an attempt to find out who is behind this mayhem, and to what purpose. It's a sinister, misguided one to be sure, but entirely appropriate.Angelina Jolie makes a token appearance with a competetive edge that never really pans out, and Giovanni Ribisi plays the gadget-geeky Jimmy Olsen to Joe and Polly in this super hero equation. Michael Gambon shows up briefly as Polly's blink-and-you'll-miss-him editor at the fictional newspaper "The Chronicle," but perhaps the best cameo of all comes from cobbled archival footage of Sir Lawrence Olivier as the evil Dr. Totenkopf.Paltrow does well in the role of conniving, yet likable (because she's so darn pretty) journalist Polly, and Law is equally well-cast as the dashing Joe Sullivan (because he's so darn pretty). While the chemistry between the two never seems to break out in hot passion, the two are believably amiable towards each other in a sparring lovebird, Hepburn and Tracy kind of way. Paltrow and LawAll the elements are there to add up to one fine throw-back of an RKO Sunday Matinee that make this film an A-, and one heckuva a way to spend a couple of hours.(Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Movies Canada) Video19957@blogcritics.org Sat, 18 Sep 2004 00:16:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/06/07/100607.php Amber GertzbeinI like to be entertained. By movies, television, music. You could say more than most. More than average, to be sure. However, I seem to be in the minority when it comes to the equipment I use to absorb said entertainment.For years, I consumed my tv and video on an ancient creature remotely resembling an early model Zenith circa 1973 (complete with plastic faux wood panelling). I even resisted switching from casette to CD in the vain attempt to slow the ever-growing trend towards digital media. When Napster and MP3s became all the rage, I resisted that, on the grounds that I prefered liner notes and uncorrupted music files (not so much morally, in an "it's wrong to steal music" way, although it was a minor factor).And up until this weekend, I have prized my VHS collection with every intention of obtaining the world's largest non-commercial stockpile of $4 videos from BMV on Yonge Street.What I've neglected to mention so far in this post is that while "true" A/V afficionados insist on the surround-sound experience and enhanced audio perception of digital media, I have been content to listen to my music on a $50 boombox I bought 8 years ago at Bay Bloor Radio, and my videos and TV have audibly streamed just fine out of the left and right speaker that came attached to my 24" Sony TV (yes, I did get a new TV last year, but only because the Zenith kept spontaneously shutting off and emitting radio stations over the cable, no doubt caused by years of watering plants strategically placed on top of the monitor).My point being that I have never felt that my appreciation of a good story has waned because I was not able to experience Dolby Digital Surround sound from the comfort of my couch.However, due to much pressure from a significant other, this weekend, we purchased a DVD/Home Theatre in a Box. Now, even the guy at our local rental place insisted that all you really need is a $60 DVD player, because it's the same component as a more expensive home theatre system, but without the radio tuner and 6 speaker set. It still plays MP3s, CDs, even JPEGs in addition to its primary function: to play DVDs.But no, my boyfriend insisted (despite not knowing what S-Video is, or that he was trying to jam the cable in upside-down, or the fact that he thought you were supposed to hook up the tv through the A/V jacks in the front intended to hook up your video camera) that we needed 5 speakers and a sub-woofer, a 5 CD/DVD changer and a digital tuner, with 750 watts of speaker sound.Some of you may think that I was happy in my ignorance the way a fish is happy in a bowl, not knowing that it could be living in an aquarium, or a pond, or a lake. You may argue that, since I didn't know any better, I assumed a more expansive stereo system would change my mind.You would be utterly and wholeheartedly incorrect, friends.So far, we have watched two DVDs. Granted, they weren't action-packed (my boyfriend kept insisting that we needed to watch Top Gun as the acid test, to which I firmly stood my ground and denied), but they had enough subtle sound intricacies that we could hear thunder coming from behind while Alan Rickman purred from the centre speaker.I have to say, it was not the orgasmic revelation I had heard about. At best, I would say 5 strategically positioned speakers were marginally better than just the TV, but the surround doesn't work for television or music, the universal remote only works to change channels and volume, but the TV remote is still required to switch to DVD mode and the VHS remote is still required to program shows for simultaneous taping. However, the worst feature of our new, enhanced listening regime is having to constantly fiddle with the sound when listening to a DVD, because the dialogue track is too low, but the ambient sounds are too loud.It just doesn't seem worth it for a couple of left to right wing flutters and car explosions.For $500, it especially doesn't seem like it's worth all the hassle. Sure, it looks cool with its royal blue LED display, but the damn thing requires a PhD to figure out which mode to operate in for any given media, and between all the remote switching, the coffee table is awash in plastic and batteries.For the money, I would have to recommend the $60 DVD over the home theatre system any day, because unless you have a 48" screen and a $1200 speaker set with professional installation, trying to DIY is just not worth it!That's my 2 cents (plus $499.98) Sci/Tech16311@blogcritics.org Mon, 7 Jun 2004 10:06:07 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/03/02/095659.php Amber GertzbeinI was fairly disappointed when Larissa didn't pick Brian. I didn't feel bad for her in the least when it turned out that shallow, pretty-boy, jock Gil ran screaming because her ex was Fabio.What kind of world do we live in where a man feels so threatened by a romance cover model with long hair that he has to judgementally freak out on a former beauty contestant...holy crap. Nevermind. Now I see what's wrong. The whole construct is entirely unbelievable. Poor Brian. Just postulating here, but I bet if Larissa had picked him and told him, like a NORMAL person, he would have said "Fabio? You mean the swishy guy that a bird flew into and broke his nose? Hah. Well, we've already proved that you'd pick me over a guy like that, so, you know, that's a funny anecdote, now let's get some chowdah."Not that I really care. I was telling someone last night how I need more willpower to not watch so much tv. He pointed out that what I really need is "won't" power as in: "I won't watch so much TV!"But then I went home and watched The O.C., Las Vegas (oh Sean Astin, I wished you'd died because you'd eaten that money, that would have been awesome), Angel and tidbits of Average Joe. That's won't power for ya. Video13315@blogcritics.org Tue, 2 Mar 2004 09:56:59 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/02/27/002916.php Amber GertzbeinTonight on ER:Finally, Dr. Morris performs an intubation and doesn't even kill anyone. Nor does he pass out, or make up some ridiculous excuse for why he can't be in an operating room.Luka realizes that he can't go around "screwing every nurse in the ER --" or the congo -- because he might give them the clap.A crazy guy threatens to blow someone up (Dr. Morris, to be exact), then actually steals a tank and heads to the hospital.And we finally find out that ancillary character Frank actually has a family, including a Down's Syndrome daughter which I guess is supposed to be some kind of justification for his blatant bigotry and xenophobia (god, I love that word, especially when Parminda Nagra says it).MIA from this ep: Sherry Stringfield's pregnant Susan Lewis, Sharif Atkins' literal Dr. Michael Gallant and one of the med students who had an asthma attack early in the season, and, I'm guessing was deemed too weak to continue being a med student.I would try to be more helpful with names, but neither IMDB nor NBC are offering any help.I don't really care much about Dr. Corday's lovelife, and the boxes in the admissions area seemed like a make-work project for the writers as well as the characters. I'm a little up in the air about the girl who's torturing her pervert father by keeping him alive, even though he's a vegetable. I think it's a great premise for a short story. Oh, wait. Stephen King made it into a book and called it Misery. Still, it was an enjoyable episode, if only for the shameless glee of a man fulfilling a threat with a tank, and the shameless libido of 13 year-olds and hunky Croatians.rating:B Video13190@blogcritics.org Fri, 27 Feb 2004 00:29:16 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/01/31/111400.php Amber GertzbeinI haven't felt the urge to review anything on TV in a while, mostly due to the endless reruns that only enhance the winter blahs, but also because there hasn't seemed to be anything that's particularly piqued my interest.Granted, there are still a few shows that exhibit strong storylines and characters, but for the most part, TV has sunk into a quagmire of mediocrity. There will be some who argue that TV has been mediocre since the early days of colour, but those people generally tend to be luddite subversives and technological xenophobes with unrealistically high standards of entertainment. They are the holdovers of the Vaudeville generation that never learned to embrace the extraordinary accomplishment of the moving picture.For the most part, I disagree that television over the last fifty years has been substandard. As the medium grew, so did the risks networks were willing to take on novel show concepts. Many of the most successful series in history were highly controversial at the time (although judged by today's standards, Mary Tyler Moore's Capri pants on the Dick Van Dyke Show are unbelievably tame).Among the more cutting edge, highly original shows of the last half century, I count The Honeymooners (the seminal sitcom, a comedy about an abusive, drunk bus driver), Star Trek, (finally, a whole show about cheesy looking men in alien costumes), The Carol Burnett Show (a whole hour of comedy spearheaded by a - gasp - woman!), Monty Python's Flying Circus (while not widely understood or regarded in the U.S. during its original run, it remains the weirdest, consistently funniest and most original sketch comedy show of all time) Three's Company (it's ok to be confused for a gay man if you've got two hot chicks to keep you in check), M*A*S*H (probably the most important half hour dramedy ever to come on the airwaves), All in the Family (the first family sitcom to exploit the worst aspect of human nature in Carol O'Connor), Star Trek: The Next Generation (finally a whole show about Klingons and androids), Law and Order (there's nothing like Jerry Orbach's snappy one liners and Sam Waterston's carefully written cliches), Married With Children (the first family sitcom to exploit the worst aspects of human nature in every character) and The X-Files (finally, a show about "real" aliens...) and there's a whole bunch more that you all will no doubt be leaving remarks about me not including.In the last decade, however, the biggest television hits have been Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. Fluffy sitcoms about nothing (thank you Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David), with the occasionally "important" episode thrown in. "Edgy" programming has become a question of how much sex and violence a show can get away with, instead of providing quality original ideas. Critically lauded shows are consistent underperformers, despite their uniqueness and attention to key storytelling components. Alias and the new Fox sitcom Arrested Development continue to drop in the Nielsens while shows like "Come on guys, just give me eight more episodes to stall and I'll get you the virus" 24 and ABC abomination According to Jim continue to dominate. Shows determined to be "too edgy" (use of the word Fuck, discussion of sexual organs) for regular TV are relegated cable stations like HBO, Bravo and Showcase, leaving a large part of the population in the dark about Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm (the funniest show on TV since the criminally cancelled cartoon The Family Guy), Sex In The City, The Sopranos and Queer as Folk.Who knows, it could be a conspiracy by the Nielsens people to only represent households that watch whatever crap the big three (ABC, NBC and CBS) serve up. Innovative shows on boutique stations like UPN and The WB, (Buffy, Angel, Smallvilleand The Gilmore Girls) serve up ratings so low they aren't even in the top 100, and are negatively balanced with schlocky "family" shows like Reba, and 7th Heaven. And just so you don't think I hate all so-called "family-friendly" dramas, Everwood, while not exactly my speed, is still a "Treat" as the second highest rated (non-supernatural) family-centric show on the WB behind 7th Heaven (unless God counts as supernatural, in which case, Everwood would be number one. It's all semantics at this point), and top 30 Judging Amy is the Thirtysomething answer for this generation (that means I will occasionally get engrossed in the antics of one Judge Amy Gray and her mother, the formidible Tyne Daly).Most surprisingly, and I suppose it's a harkening back to its roots, but Fox is actually airing some really good new shows that could potentially fill the huge void left by the bowing out of Sex and the City, Friends and Ed this year. Arrested Development completes the Sunday Night Lineup of The Simpsons and not so much with the funny anymore Malcolm in the Middle, and everybody's new favorite guilty pleasure, The O.C., is quickly proving to be the big breakout hit of the season.This week, tv goes back to airing "four all new episodes" (instead of partially new, partially clip episodes from the last 6 years) of the big shows, and chances are that I still won't have anything to say about them. If I do ever see something remarkable, I'll let you know.In the meantime, might I suggest you go read a book? Video12215@blogcritics.org Sat, 31 Jan 2004 11:14:00 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/16/110059.php Amber GertzbeinI spent the last week in Cuba and spending Saturday in 29 degree sunshine, mopeding in a bikini along a Tropical highway to get a great view and an even better Pina Colada and then coming home to 3 inches of snow is the very definition of suck.I remarked to my sister that although I quite enjoy my job, it would be all the more enjoyable on a sunny beach with non-stop mojito service.Funny coincidence that mojitos were the New Year's drink of the evening on The O.C. last night. Not the strongest episode so far (not really sure what the deal is with the Summer-Seth-Anna triangle, and why should Marissa get away with almost cheating just so that the writers can mirror teen and adult dilemmas?), but still fairly enjoyable, and even though the whole breathless running up the stairs routine to say "I Love You" in the nick of time was totally predicatable, it still made me sigh and get all choked up. That Marissa's bad news, tho. I feel that she's not through getting into trouble. Sadly, we'll have to wait to next year to find out. I was disappointed that Kirsten and Sandy didn't end up swinging. Now that the land development tension's no longer there, I just don't thing "our marriage is in a rut" is a strong enough storyline for a show that started out taking some pretty big risks and leading the pack of high quality soaps (if such a thing isn't just an oxy-moronic pipe dream).But The O.C. wasn't the only show touting "your cheatin' heart."No, the trailer for this Wednesday's "All New" Ed reveals Ed kissing Madchen Amick. Apparently she's no longer busy being a hideous Angelina Jolie blonde on the Gilmore Girls (seeing as how Patrick Owen went off and didn't get cancelled in his new show I'm With Her), and the too-adorable-for-words Adam Brody won't be making an appearance on GG anymore due to O.C. obligations, I don't even know why we watch anymore. When IS Lorelei going to hook up with Luke? We don't really care about Sookie's baby, or Paris' hysterics. Maybe if Paris and Rory hooked up.Other shows that have run out of steam this season: 24 seems to still be shell-shocked from a crack-team of bizarro storylines in season 2, although last week's hook of Guyal, Tony, Jack and Hector Salazar secretly working together seems potentially interesting. I have to admit, I have no patience for Michelle's concerned wife deal, and Kim and Chase are practically irrelevant characters at this point. Is it just me, or does no one care about President Palmer this season? It seems like everything except the Jack-Tony-Hector-Guyal-Ramone storyline is just filler. Especially the deal with Hector's girlfriend. Even if it's foreshadowing that she's a mole and really secretly involved with Jack (because everyone knows Kiefer needs a love interest), I can't recommend watching it over whatever else is on at 9pm on a Tuesday.Alias tied up a bunch of loose ends last week with Allison's death and Sark's encounter with his dad, and Sydney getting it on with Will, but it was kind of a denoument. Where do they go from here? Syd's not on the run anymore, the main source of conflict (Lyndsey) is dead, and aside from Jack being turned into an absolute caricature of an Electra Complex dad (haha...funny Daredevil joke, I wonder if that's what JJ Abrams was going for), there doesn't seem to be a lot of jeopardy anymore. Dixon's director again. Will's not going back to Witness Protection, Leno Olin's nowhere to be found, and there's a teeny amount of intrigue with Sloane's extra-curricular activity.Who knows, maybe Rimbaldi will be interesting again. We'll have to wait to see.Happy holidays folks. See you next year. Video11016@blogcritics.org Tue, 16 Dec 2003 11:00:59 EST