Thursday, July 31, 2014

MLB trade deadline madness

Not sure exactly what all has happened here, but if I've got it right -- the Red Sox pitching rotation for the rest of this season will consist of fragile china doll Clay Buccholz and the first four guys from the minors who happen to show up at Farrell's office on any given week.

I mean they almost literally traded away their entire World Series winning rotation in the last couple of days. Lester, Lackey, Peavy all gone along with disappointing Felix Doubront and set up guy Andrew Miller.

Also gone is light hitting Stephen Drew and team spark plug Johnny Gomes.

wild

They got slugger Yoenis Cespedes from the A's, so I guess there's someone to sandwich between Ortiz and Napoli that might give the lineup some punch. Which probably means a lot of 10-9 losses for the rest of the season.

There's chatter about getting Lester back in the offseason. But if the A's win the series, the only team that will be able to afford Lester will be the Yankees. And I'll go crazy if I have to see another Boston All-Star pitcher go to New York.

We'll see how it goes, I guess.

*groan*



And this just in -- Courtney Stodden went jogging and didn't black both her eyes (to borrow a line from Dolly Parton):

courtney stodden big boobs jogging

One good thing about all that cleavage -- plenty of room to store your ipod  lolz

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

There's "sin" in both of these

This first "Sin" is the red band trailer for Sin City: A Dame to Kill for:


The "Sin" in this second video is that we've waited a number of years and were teased recently by pictures of my Duffster in a bikini on the beach and this is what we get for our patience:


3:24 of that trailer and I'm wondering how many people are going well, I've just seen the entire movie . . . that saved me a few bucks. And my Duffster . . . oh honey, perhaps a little more Taylor Momsen and a little less Debbie Gibson in the next song, okay?

*sigh*

Monday, July 28, 2014

And this is apparently how Wonder Woman looks

gal gadot as wonder woman

Miss Israel 2004 Gal Gadot has been tagged to play Wonder Woman in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie. Now I hate to be nit-picky here, but I usually like my amazons to look . . . you know . . . amazonian:

gal gadot
gal gadot

She's beautiful and adorable and looks like she should be playing Robin's girlfriend or something, not an amazon warrior princess from an isolated island. She probably couldn't act her way out of a paper bag, but Khloe Kardashian fits the mold, physically, more than Ms. Gadot. And isn't this movie, or at least the big battle between Batman and Superman, sort of based on The Dark Night Returns by Frank Miller? I don't even remember Wonder Woman being in that book.

oh well

Update:
While she may not be my first choice, from strictly a physique standpoint, to play Wonder Woman, Gadot has certainly shown some rarely-seen-in-Hollywood courage by Tweeting her support for Israel. This naturally brought the usual hate-filled blow back from low information anti-Semitic trolls on Twitter. But Gadot hasn't taken the bait or stepped back from supporting her country in their fight against murderous terrorists.
Good for her.

Update:
Don't let it be said that I'm too big to admit when I'm wrong. After watching Gadot's turn in the Batman v Superman movie, I have to say they've done a good job casting her for the role of Wonder Woman. I was totally wrong about her acting ability, and the director's decision to have her keep her Israeli accent was brilliant. It gives her an exotic-ness that fits in with the character's mythology. Snyder's style of cgi & direction for action scenes, ala 300, work well for WW, and Gadot seems fit and athletic enough to make her believable as an action star.

I'm totally looking forward to her stand alone Wonder Woman movie and the Justice League film to follow.

Color me chagrined for my derisive comments above.

Kendall Jenner sideboob

Cause it's been like 5 minutes since this teenager has showed off the goods in a photoshoot or on Instagram:

kendall jenner sideboob

Well, what do you know

Boston actually won a game yesterday, bookending their seven game road trip with a blow out win in Toronto and Sunday's 3-2 win over the Rays. Of course, they lost the five games in the middle, thus the bookending remark.

The Red Sox won the game on David Ortiz' 3 run homer that naturally brought some griping by the Rays, this time from baby-faced Chris Archer. He of the spaz-tastic celebration after an inning ending strike out or kissing his biceps after a K.

Archer took exception to Papi's bat flip, and echoed David Price's earlier season whine about Ortiz thinking he's bigger than the game. After being pressed on the remarks, Papi said that with only a couple of minutes in the league, maybe Archer should hold off calling out players with a bigger portfolio.

If the Rays played as well as they pissed and moaned about things, they'd be leading the division by now.

Boston is not mathematically out of it yet, but I can't see them winning the division or even getting close enough for a wild card. Don't know what's going on, but they simply aren't swinging the bats. Ask Jake Peavy. Their impotence at the plate cost him his job. Hopefully he'll get another taste of the post season in San Francisco.

I'm getting the feeling that Cherri and Farrell are looking at this season as a lost cost as well. They've got wildly inconsistant Del la Rosa in the rotation and have brought up Alan Webster to fill Peavy's spot. Webster may have gotten the win Sunday, but he's pretty much been shelled every time he's tried to pitch in the bigs since he got to Boston.

And rumor has it that Cherrington is looking to rent out Jon Lester like they used to do with hockey players years ago. Don't see much of that any more, but I can remember teams that were out of the playoffs, sending players to other teams who would pay the guys to play out the season with them and then return to their original teams for the next season. That's sort of the talk on Lester. I can't see it and do not think it's a good idea. Pay the dude what he's worth and get on with things.

Tough to watch this season go down the drain after last year's wonderful run, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

bummer

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Thank you Tony Dungy

Thank you coach, for saying what most of us and 31 other NFL teams were thinking -- that Michael Sam doesn't bring enough football skill to the table to offset the extraneous b.s. that will come from putting him on a team.

Understand, had Sam not made the shameless calculated decision to "out" himself prior to the NFL draft, he would probably be suiting up for an arena football team now. Maybe.

A marginally talented player, Sam is woefully undersized for a defensive end in pro football, and not athletic enough to play linebacker or safety in the bigs. So had he not put the NFL in a position to endure endless bad publicity for not drafting an openly gay player, we wouldn't be even hearing about Sam today.

And make no mistake, it was a calculated decision on Sam's part to put his choice of sexual orientation front and center. From his public statement on his lifestyle choice, to his attempt to wrangle a reality show surrounding his life, to making sure he'd be photographed kissing his partner Oh look, and they're an interracial couple too! How perfect! on national television on draft day, Sam is attempting to make himself the Sandra Fluke of the NFL.

And the backlash against Dungy was so predictable. I meant to write this post last night, but I wanted to see how the Tampa Bay Times would turn on him. It's important to note that the Times sportswriters (and I use that term very loosely) have deified Dungy for his time here with the Buccaneers and his personal grace and Christianity.

Not to disappoint me, local sports ass Tom Jones let Dungy have it. First calling Dungy a hypocrite for supporting players like Michael Vick, Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Keyshawn Johnson and Warren Sapp.

Really Tom?! You're comparing Sam's football abilities with those guys?! What a joke! And in the case of Vick, Johnson and Sapp, their careers were Hall of Fame worthy before any of them had p.r. problems. Johnson and Sapp were bores, and Vick made a mistake and paid the penalty for it. And Tebow?! Yeah, all that bible stuff is sooo controversial! Talk about apples to oranges. But with Jones, this is typical.

Jones then makes the usual lefty move of equating Sam's attempt to play football the same as Jackie Robinson trying to play baseball. Yeah, dumbass . . . because someone's race is exactly the same thing as their choice of sexual orientation. Must be the word "choice" that Jones can't get his head around.

Dungy attempted to qualify his statement after the poo hit the fan, but he didn't back off his original sentiment saying that while Sam deserved a chance to play pro football, he simply wouldn't draft him because of all the distractions the kid would bring with him.

So hang in there coach. There's plenty of us rational people who feel the same as you. Thanks for having the courage to speak the truth.

Update:
Holy hypocrisy alert Batman! In Friday's edition of the Times, Jones' article on Buccaneer's training camp was titled "Here's hoping for a boring training camp"

?!?!?!

Yeah, the guy who just got done excoriating a Super Bowl winning coach for saying that he tries to limit distractions during training camp is now saying that a distraction-less camp is highly desirable:
"Nothing about the Bucs reporting to camp Thursday was trending on Twitter...Bucs camp is only a few hours old, but its off to a really boring start. That's really good..."

Jones the hypocrite goes on to remind readers that last year's Bucs had a preseason full of distractions that was followed by a season full of losing. And then says that without having the same mess this year, the Bucs "...can concentrate on -- get a load of this -- football on the field."

I don't know what's worse -- thinking Jones is so incredibly ignorant of his own hypocrisy (on this and many other subjects) or that he is deliberately this way and figures he is somehow entitled to spew these contradictory sentiments daily in his columns.

Also interesting today on The Sports Reporters, Mike Lupica attempted to bash Dungy, saying he had set himself up as self appointed conscience of the NFL, and Mitch Albom slapped him down pretty hard on that. Albom and another host went on to mention exactly what I posted in my bit above -- Sam lacks the skill to play in the NFL to begin with and Dungy was saying what everyone else in football was too scared to say. Jemele Hill showed her own religious intolerance when she said it was impossible to separate Dungy's comments from his faith. That's on her though. As Albom said, Dungy did not deny Sam's right to compete only whether his lack of skill was worth the distractions he would bring to the team through his own deliberate attempts to market himself as a famewhoring trailblazer.

And one last thing -- Michael Sam is the antithesis of Arthur Ashe and giving him the award that bears Ashe's name was ridiculous and insulting to Ashe's dignified career and life.



And for no other reason than I have the picture, here's the not overly well-endowed Lea Michele somehow managing to slip a nipple out of her bathing suit while on a yacht (is everybody yachting these days?):

lea michele nipple slip

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Movie review -- Under the Skin


I don't usually get to do reviews of movies that are in current release or very recently released, but I caught this on pay-per-view last night and thought I'd give it a go.

The movie opens with what seems to be a overly drawn out obtuse visual and audio sequence. I think it becomes more clear once you get the reveal at the end of the flick, but it gives me a sort of 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe.

Afterwards we see a motorcycle zooming around the highways and streets, the rider wearing that head-to-toe leather and padding outfit that seems more popular in Europe than here in America. He skids to a stop, dismounts and marches determinedly into the brush alongside the road. He quickly returns with the limp body of a girl draped over his shoulder and tosses her into the back of a large white van.

The scene cuts to a vast, feature-less all white space where the girl (dead, we're to assume, I think) is dumped on the floor. An all nude Scarlett Johansson appears and undresses her then puts on the girl's clothing, pausing only to stare at the corpse then pluck a small ant off the body and observe it.

Johansson's character then drives the van (one of those odd, tall & skinny vans we see in Europe) into town and enters a mall and buys some clothes. What she took off the dead girl looked a bit like hooker wear -- ripped stockings, short mini-skirt, etc. Now she's clad in skin-tight jeans, a delicate red top, furry jacket and some killer boots.

Perhaps less not-a-hooker wear than simply not yucky from being on a dead girl lying in the scrub brush.  heh

Suitably attired, Johansson begins driving around trying to pick up guys. Random, but not entirely. I should point out here that we may be 15 minutes into the film and not a word has been spoken yet. Very artsy.

When she does speak, Johansson is affecting a light British accent. The movie is set in Scotland, so the locals . . . well, . . . we here in America get used to a certain accent from Scots, Irish and Brits in movies. Think Sean Connery, Liam Neeson, James McAvoy, Idris Elba, etc. The Scots in this movie, are speaking the real, down home thing. And quite frankly, I couldn't understand a word they said the entire movie. Seriously. When Johansson's character is asking for directions to the M8, the guy's reply was just gibberish to me. And I don't mean that as an insult to Scots, I just couldn't dig through his accent and syntax. At one point he says, "This may be hard to follow." Meaning his directions of course, and I just laughed out loud.

I'm sure the director did this on purpose, but to what end? The movie might as well have been subtitled or dialog-less for me.  weird

Anyway, she finally finds a guy and drives him back to a crappy looking building where they enter. The building is as completely black and empty as it was white and empty in the opening sequence. Johansson backs away from the guy pealing off her clothes while he comes toward her doing the same. She ends up in jeans and a bra while he ends up fully naked. Put off by full frontal male nudity? Yeah, this flick ain't for you, bro.

But the guy keeps walking and slowly sinks into the floor which seems to be some sort of black or deep dark blue, thick viscous liquid. He continues to walk, entranced by Johansson, until he is fully submerged. She then walks back over the same area, now solid, collects her clothes, redresses, and leaves.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

That seems to be Johansson's character's thing -- find random guys, get them back to this place, and sink them in the floor. There is no malice in her character. The "seduction" is little more than her verbally convincing these guys to come with her. In fact, I doubt Johansson speaks more than a page's worth of dialog in the entire movie. The majority of her screen time is spent either staring blankly at whatever's going on around her or donning a fish out of water mildly confused expression.

The beginning two thirds of the movie focuses on her search for guys while driving the van around Scotland. The majority of the van interior scenes are shot from the passenger floorboard angle. And she clicks and unclicks her seatbelt so much, I wondered if there was some hidden meaning there.

At one point we do see one of the guys floating under the floor. He can see upwards, watching Johansson walking out. And he sees another victim floating before him. He watches as the guy seems to lose all his interior organs, bones, etc., eventually becoming simply an empty human skin floating in the emptiness.

Things continue in this fashion until Johansson picks up a dude with what looks to be Neurofibromatosis (the Elephant Man disease). Watching her entice this poor guy into coming back with her, via the promise of being with a woman for the first time, was uncomfortable to me. Perhaps part of why it was in the film. But after sinking him in the floor, something goes wrong. Johansson stops on her way out and sees . . . something, about herself in a mirror. We see the guy running naked out the front door and into the scrub brush towards some houses. The motorcycle guy comes racing into the neighborhood and catches the little guy climbing through a fence, stuffs him into the trunk of a stolen car, then races off.

Whatever happened with the little guy knocks Johansson's charcter off kilter. She begins to wander aimlessly, eventually abandoning her van and simply walking down one road after another. Various little events occur to make us wonder what's up with her. She tries to eat a bit of cake and throws it up. Tries to have sex with a kind stranger, doesn't work. And all the while, her motorcycle guardian (partner, whatever) now has two others helping him and they're zooming around the highways searching for her.

The movie ends as Johansson's character is wandering through a 2000 acre managed woods and is attacked by a pervy type and rape is attempted. We get the big reveal here, right before the movie ends.

The film is writen and directed by Jonathan Glazer from a novel by Michael Faber. I don't know if Glazer is supposed to be considered a visionary or auteur or what, but I wasn't bowled over by this flick. There is no drama or mystery here and frankly, I wonder if anyone would bother to watch the movie if it didn't have the novelty of Scarlett Johansson fully nude in it. That's what drove me to it.

And a word about that. I've posted before about Johansson and the crazy fawning over her by magazines, blogs, etc. I've always loved her unconventional beauty -- her face is astounding. But I've not ever found her body to be that jaw dropping. She has a short waisted look (that's what we called it in the old days) that makes her look dumpy, even when she isn't really. She's curvy and has some meat on her bones, and that ain't a bad thing. She's got an impressive booty that allows her to rock the hell out of a tight skirt or jeans and you'll see in the images below, she looks really good. Just not in profile. Something about the way she is shaped, it doesn't flatter her to be photographed from the side.

All in all, I'm not overwhelmed by this movie. There are a lot of questions -- Why only men? Why is the room white for the dead girl but black for men? What is the purpose for her character? What is the motorcycle guy's connection to Johansson's character? I guess it makes good water cooler talk, but is there supposed to be a deeper meaning here? I don't know. My conclusion -- I wouldn't advise someone to spend $5 on a pay-per-view. If it comes on regular cable, I'd say watch it for yourself and puzzle along with me. But basically . . . meh.



Here's some screen caps of Miss Scarlett naked. I did what I could to clean them up, but the quality isn't fabulous:

scarlett johansson nude in under the skin
scarlett johansson nude in under the skin
scarlett johansson nude in under the skin
scarlett johansson nude in under the skin


Did you find this review helpful? Check out my other reviews for my thoughts on the flicks and the occasional gallery of hotness that accompanies them:



Saturday, July 19, 2014

Looking good sweetheart

Lindsay Lohan edition:

lindsay lohan looking sloppy fat on a yacht

I took some crap from a commenter after a post about Lindsay Lohan where I said that maybe she should hit the gym a little more often in lieu of hitting the clubs. These pics surfaced this weekend of Linds on a yacht with her little sister (that's her ass getting the wedgy) and she looks worse than when I did the previous post.

lindsay lohan looking sloppy fat on a yacht

I mean, this gal is only 28 years old. She doesn't have to hold down a day-to-day job. Has enough money to do whatever she wants, and this is how she looks? She's an actress. Part of her hire-ability is how she looks. I remember after watching The Canyons telling a co-worker how horrible she looked in that movie. Sloppy body, no muscle tone . . . like Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lindsay's living off her impressive chest and ignoring how the rest of her is falling into disrepair. She already has a reputation as difficult to work with. If her looks tail off too far, even the novelty of having her in a film isn't going to get her employed. She'll have to live off Photoshopped modeling jobs, if she can get those. Pretty sad state of affairs for someone who was once so highly touted as an up-and-coming star actress.

lindsay lohan looking sloppy fat on a yacht

Friday, July 18, 2014

So Facebook banned this?

university of warwick rowing calendar

So the story goes that the girls of the University of Warwick rowing team put out a saucy calendar to raise some funds. And then Facebook promptly banned the images.

As I eschew the social media, I know little about Facebook, Twitter, etc., and their rules and regulations except what I run across in online stories. So I cannot legitimately call B.S. on this story. But true or not, the girls are getting more publicity now than they would have if they had simply dropped the calendar online quietly. They are college girls after all, so this could be some clever publicity on their part. All I know is that there is barely more nudity here than one sees in a typical episode of Benny Hill, so I don't know what all the hubbub is about.

But since I'm all about supporting amateur athletics . . . what are you laughing about . . . here's some of the pics to help further the gals fundraising efforts:

university of warwick rowing calendar
university of warwick rowing calendar
university of warwick rowing calendar
university of warwick rowing calendar
university of warwick rowing calendar

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Hilary Duff in a bikini = unfortunate

It is not unfortunate, of course, that Hilary Duff is in a bikini. We've waited seven long months for the 2014 version of my Duffster to appear in some sexy swimwear. What is unfortunate is that whoever got these pictures must have used a cardboard disposable camera circa 1980!

Dude, seriously?! Most cell phone cameras have 10 megapixels and come with image stabilization software and some form of Photoshop to enhance the images. And this is the best you can come up with?! We would almost have been better off having a courtroom artist sketch Hilary in her bikini. At least the pics wouldn't be so freakin' blurry.

Anyway, it seems these are from a music video shoot. ?!?!?!   I didn't even know she was putting out music again. But if there are going to be videos of her in a bikini . . . I'm pre-ordering that shit on Amazon right now!

hilary duff bikini 2014

And by the way, as my man Gordon Solie used to say -- how about the definition and confirmation on my girl in these pics. Damn! All that work in the gym is really paying off. She's like MMA hot!

hilary duff bikini 2014
hilary duff bikini 2014
hilary duff bikini 2014
hilary duff bikini 2014

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Tennis . . . it does a body good

Alternate title = Here's something we don't see enough of . . . Maria Sharapova in a bikini.

The 2014 French Open winner was spotted enjoying some time off and getting a kick out of the fact she was being pap'ed and looking mighty nice in the process:

maria sharapova bikini
maria sharapova bikini

50% of the Spring Breakers girls are nsfw

spring breakers promo

There've been rumors going around recently that sweet innocent little Selena Gomez may have gotten breast implants, possibly because on again/off again boyfriend Justin Bieber wanted her to. Recent pics of young Selena seem to show her looking as though she's had some work done:

selena gomez see thru nipple
selena gomez nipples in white seethru bathing suit

And today she released an Instagram pic seemingly blissfully unaware of the fact that her current wardrobe won't get the job done vis a vis her new cleavage:

selena gomez nipple slip

And then also today, we find her co-star, Ashley Benson, photographed topless whilst hanging out at the beach in Maui:

*click for uncensored*ashley benson topless

Don't know how that movie did money-wise, but these girls ought to take a tip from their other co-star Vanessa Hudgens -- to help promote your movie, you're supposed to "accidentally" release those saucy images just prior to the movie's debut, not a year later.

They're young, they'll get the hang of the process eventually, I suppose.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Today in climate astrology

A recent op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times caught my eye. Written by Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth, it appears to be yet another attempt by liberals to point out why conservatives won't buy into the AGW hoax.

Nyhan brings up both a recent Pew Research poll and a study by someone at Yale to show that it is people's religious belief that is stopping them from accepting the leftist position on climate change.

Nyhan burnishes his lefty cred by managing to conflate liberal hobby horses like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccinations with lack of belief in human caused climate change.

Wow.

And when he calls on "opinion leaders" to stop spreading mis-information, he naturally cites the "birther" meme put forth some years back. I'm guessing that wild, groundless accusations about conservatives aren't as troubling to the prof -- such as the "911 truther" meme.

But amidst his, you know the facts, your'e just letting your primitive religious belief get in the way op-ed, Nyhan accidentally shows exactly why there is intelligent resistance to the AGW hoax.

In the post's opening he says there is "...solid evidence that the temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades."

That is provably false. Period. And the data for that is out there for anyone with a computer to see. The fact is that there has been no global warming for over 17 years now. And that is despite an increase of 60ppm of atmospheric CO2. Which is to say that even the endless hullabaloo about CO2 as a "greenhouse gas" doesn't appear to have any merit either:

CO2 doesn't cause global temps to rise

He also drops the lefty fav about "...97% of climate scientists believe human activities are causing global warming." This common falsehood is derived from the fatally flawed Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024 paper.

As I pointed out in a recent post, analysis of the paper shows that in actuality, 95% of the papers used to substantiate that claim are silent on the notion of human caused climate change.

And when you look at everything from Climategate to the desperate attempts by AGW adherents to silence debate on the subject (from the BBC refusing to allow dissent on air to web communities like Reddit banning dissenters) it is only natural to question the validity of supposed scientific truths that cannot be backed up by actual verifiable facts.

Frankly, the only people acting like religious zealots here are lefties like prof. Nyhan. It is he and his colleagues that are conducting witch hunts and attempting to destroy non-believers or bludgeon them into compliance. So in one way, perhaps his own thesis is right -- religious belief is getting in the way of otherwise intelligent people from agreeing with science.

It is just that it is Brendan Nyhan who is blinded by unsupportable doctrine, not us conservatives.

Monday, July 7, 2014

So, what did I think of the season finale of Penny Dreadful?

You guessed it . . . glad you asked  :-)

Heh

Three words -- Is that it?

I just didn't get the vibe that they were looking to continue this series. I mean, usually season ending episodes have an unresolved feel to them. Not necessarily a cliffhanger type scenario, but something that makes you feel like it has to come back next season and finish some plotlines off. Don't get that feel here.

The abbreviated season (only 6 episodes, wtf?!) ends with Sir Malcolm finally finding his daughter Mina, who is of course a vampire, and knowing he cannot save her, he kills her. And at the same time he reveals that Ms. Ives is in fact his daughter (illegitimate, of course) and they have a reconcilliation that seems to end their tempestuous relationship.

Ethan Chandler's paramour Brona Croft finally succumbs to consumption with the help of Dr. Frankenstein and a soft pillow. And as expected, Dr. Frankenstein takes Ms. Croft back to his lab to reanimate her as a companion for his original monster, who's been driven from his home in the theater after making advances towards an actress.

The monster gives the most moving soliloquy of the series as he wishes for death to free him from his loneliness.

We learn, also as expected, that Ethan Chandler is in fact a werewolf. And may have the ability to get wolfy on command. He is also able to perform an exorcism of sorts as he saves Ms. Ives from her fortnight long demonic possession in the previous episode.

The deliciously hedonistic Dorian Grey is summarily dispatched after Ms. Ives reduces him to a stammering teary-eyed schoolboy with a cold dismissal. Something a bit hard to fathom as Grey is an immortal who has lived, heaven only knows, how long. But whatever.

The show ends with Ms. Ives asking a local Catholic (I assume, or perhaps Church of England) priest to perform an official exorcism on her. In what would only happen in a Hollywood version of a church, the priest tells her that being touched by Satan is much like being touched by God -- it makes her special. And she likes being special, right? The show ends as she is about to answer that question.

And there we have it. Everything is sort of tied up. Though things are open ended, it doesn't feel like there's a compelling need to follow up on any of the storylines.

Is there drama left to mine? Of course. Ms. Ives is still being pursued by the main vampire who believes her to be the reincarnation of Amunet. When Ms. Croft is reanimated, will she love the monster or be repelled by him? Will she, as the Dr.'s last creation, begin to remember who she was? If so, will she try to return to Ethan? What will he do when he learns what Frankenstein has done to her? Will the team begin to search London for the mysterious mass murderer who is, in fact, Mr. Chandler? What then? What of Dorian Grey? Will Sherlock Holmes make an appearance?

There's plenty of stuff to go on with. I just don't get the sense that the writers/creators are planning to go on with it. Which seems a shame since they put so much effort into creating turn of the century England for this production.

For my part, I'd like to see it continue. Well cast, well written, and excellent production values. It's worth bringing back, imho.



And here's a bit more Eva Green nakedness from other movies and such to go along with what I posted in my other review, And don't miss my Billie Piper post from last year:

*click for uncensored*
eva green nude
eva green nude

So, what do I think of The Leftovers?

Glad you asked   :-)

We're two episodes into the highly promoted series and my finger is hovering over the guide button on my remote. I'm this close to saying this show isn't worth watching.

You probably already know, but here's the premise -- on Oct 14th three years ago, 2% of the world's population simply disappeared without a trace. The show focuses on the remaining people (the leftovers) in a fictional town in New York state.

I know we're never going to know what happened to those who disappeared, the show is clearly about the aftermath, but to what end? I'm getting the feeling that this is going to be one of those shows that offers all questions and no answers. A televised Rorshach test, where we, the viewers are given these abstract scenes and are expected to fill in important lessons and insights on our own. One of those deals where we see the writer/creator in an interview and he's stroking his chin thoughtfully and offering as how he is simply leading us to the possibility of some greater insight into ourselves or the world around us and he's leaving it up to us to make the leap and discover something magnificent in the progress.

Yeah, whatever. This is what I like to term as "literary legerdemain" or even better "literary laziness." The writer wants to make some profound statement about the world around us or life or whatever but can't come up with one on his/her own, so he sets up some open ended scenario and says we're supposed to make the leap that he/she cannot. And if we don't . . . well that's on us for some reason.

Like I said -- whatever.

I don't mind extended plot lines. I don't mind complex themes or storylines, but I need some answers along the way. Keep bludgeoning me with endless questions, and I'm tuning out, dude. And that's on you.



And while I'm at it, let me gripe about an overused plot device. The opening of the second episode has some sort of BATF-type guy talking to a subordinate about this mysterious Wayne character. The BATF guy is a douche. Know how we know that? He's eating an apple while talking to the other agent. Big, noisy crunchy bites, and chewing while he's talking. How many times have we seen this in movies or on television shows? Apples, or spaghetti, or anything drippy and messy. Who conducts meetings like that in the real world? It could have been worse I suppose. They could have had a picture of George Bush hanging on the wall behind him, or Sarah Palin or something. It is Hollywood after all.

And one more thing I thought of while watching the finale of Penny Dreadful -- where would movie and television be if Brian Singer hadn't shot that coffee cup dropping to the floor and shattering in slow motion in The Usual Suspects? Isn't that one of the most overused visuals in the business?

just sayin'



And to end things on a high note, here's Paris Hilton on the set of her new music video . . . wait, . . . what?

paris hilton music video
paris hilton music video
paris hilton music video