blake johnson

I have seen several movies in the last couple weeks: Wall-E, Wanted, and Batman: the Dark Knight. Two of these were spectacular. Another was spectacularly terrible. I have already encouraged you all to see Wall-E, so let me say a few things about the other two.

Wanted

This movie is a perfect example of a movie made for Mystery Science Theater 3000. The main character is so utterly unlikeable as to make the audience completely apathetic to his fate. The story is ridiculous, and I am not talking about the usual level of comic book ridiculousness either. When you (spoiler warning) find out that the assassins are getting their targets from a loom, and that the other characters find this completely normal, you know something has gone wrong with your screenplay. The movie could get away with this if it were about explaining the origin story of the hero; however, the plot and morality of the actions of the main characters depend crucially on this plot device.

The upshot of this, though, is that it makes the movie mostly laughable. I was left thinking, “what?!” so many times that I was laughing. So, in the end I was entertained by the impressive special effects and the (unintentional) hilarity of the story. I left the theater in a good mood.

The Dark Knight

Wow. I mean, wow. Spooky, creapy, dark… but with enough sunshine seeping through the cracks as to not become so depressing that it loses its audience. Summed up well by the movie itself, sometimes “the night is darkest before the dawn”. A probable posthumous Oscar is in the works for Heath Ledger.

Let me join the everyone else in proclaiming that Wall-E is a great movie, among the best Pixar has produced. Pixar must have an amazing shop to continue to deliver such high quality.

You also shouldn’t miss this intriguing op-ed comparing the themes of Wall-E to the presidential race.

I am excited for the return of Battlestar Galactica next Friday, despite a rather ho-hum season 3. I am told that the writers recognize that their project to do more standalone episodes did not work with the show’s story and characters. Consequently, I am hoping that we see a return to the broad story-arcs of seasons 1 and 2.

Michael Heilemann of Binary Bonsai reminded me of this excellent moment from season 3:

Is anyone else considering canceling their cable TV? With this writers’ strike, there is nothing on TV.

I have recently gotten sucked into the TV series Heroes. I think I watched the entirety of Season 1 in about two weeks. Those that know me are probably unsurprised that I like this show… what can I say, I like superheroes. In any case, I thought the first season had great momentum. The episode “Five Years Gone” is probably one of the best TV episodes of anything I’ve seen in the last year. Season 2 has faltered a bit. The show has lost its momentum by getting dragged down in new characters (the Maya story is SOOOOO boring) and love stories (Hiro spent far too much time in Japan).

Last week, Heroes finally returned to form with the episode “Out of Time”. (Spoiler warning) I found the reveal at the end that Adam is/was Takezo Kensei to be fantastically intriguing. Theories were spilled left and right in my living room when the show ended. I thought I would voice mine here for general amusement.

So, if Adam exists in both 17th century Japan and in 21st century America, I figure that there are two possibilities:

a) Adam is immortal/has an extremely long life span. He really was born 400 years ago and has been around the entire time. This is the most straightforward possibility, but also probably the least interesting.

b) Adam was actually born 400 years after the era of Takezo Kensei. He somehow convinces Peter Petrilli to teleport him back to 17th century Japan. He would then, presumably, kill the real Takezo Kensei and pretend to be him. Adam’s motives for this latter course are unknown at this point, which gives the writers a lot of flexibility.

Thoughts?