Stargate: Continuum (2008)

The second of the made-for-DVD Stargate SG-1 movies, following on from Stargate: The Ark of Truth (2008).  Not bad given that the cult TV series was only cancelled just over a year ago.

(After 10 full seasons, making it the longest running American SF series – and hint it wouldn’t have run for 10 fucking seasons if it wasn’t really good, so why you don’t like it is beyond me.)

In Continuum, the team are overseeing the extraction of the Baal goa’uld symbiote from his host – undertaken offworld by the Tok’ra, with the SG-1 team attending as witnesses, accompanied by our Jack.  Of course Baal isn’t going to take extraction lying down (or, ahem, bolted to a wall), so of course we know that something is going to happen

*Spoiler* Time travel may or may not be involved, so pretty much everyone on the team may or may not be brutally murdered then may or may not be restored with the convenient ‘we may or may not have just temporarily visited an alternate timeline where lots of really awkward things happened before we finally prevailed and may or may not have now restored our own timeline‘ trick. *Spoiler*

As a made for DVD movie that you won’t see, I don’t see any point in saying much more than:

This is very good if you’re already a fan of Stargate, but if you’re not, you’ll be completely lost. (“Who’s that guy? What’d that guy say when I said who’s that guy? Why did that guy’s eyes just glow like that? Hur hur that chick must be a tranny ‘cos her voice is really deep.  Braaaaaaaaap.”)

Fans really should buy it – otherwise they won’t make any more, and that would suck ‘cos Atlantis is like… methodone to the SG-1 Heroin.  Non-fans didn’t even read this far, so I feel safe in saying they must be broken in the brainmeats to not love this awesome show (that may or may not have jumped the shark years ago, but it’s so good it doesn’t even matter).

I may or may not be labouring a really lame joke, and may or may not continue until everyone gets really angry with me.

But do trust me when it comes to Californication.

There is no question in my mind that Californication is by far the best new TV show of the year. And when I say by far, I mean nothing else compares, not even close.

If you’re not a digital media junkie like me, then your time has already come.

Ok, that sounded menacing. All I meant was that it’s starting on free-to-air TV in New Zealand already, this Thursday night on TV3, in fact.

The only drawback to the show is that it’s a half length season – 12 episodes – and each episode is only 30 minutes. 12 glowing precious little 30 minute nuggets. Of brilliance.

I call it a drawback, but is it? Perhaps not, in fact you could say: Californication is brilliance, distilled.

Please try it, I’m quite certain that even if you don’t like it as much as your mum likes me, you’ll still like it a great deal.

Californication (TV, 2007)

If you don’t like Heroes, and you can only find the time to watch one TV show right now, you really, really (I can’t emphasise this strongly enough) MUST make that one show Californication.

David Duchovny in what must be one of the strongest roles I’ve seen in a TV show in a long time. The premise is reasonably simple: writer, living in LA, separated from the mother of his daughter, and his travails in writer’s block, being a dad, wanting his ex back, and getting a hell of a lot of hot L.A. women. It’s funny, cool, smart, mean, sweet, and hot.

There’s a lot of sex. An incredible amount. I don’t want to pretend that’s all there is, because it isn’t – this really is a great show in many ways – but two of my favourite scenes happen to be sex scenes. Forgive me. (Bygones.)

Bookshop Girl: “Are you going to come?”
Hank: “I don’t see why not.”
Bookshop Girl: *punch*… *punch*

Californication (TV, 2007) - Sex Punch

Hank: “I don’t think Tom & Katie would approve of what we’re doing right now.”
Hot Scientologist: “Oh God, shut up and fuck me already.”
Hank: “Are you Clear yet?”
Hot Scientologist: “Shut up and fuck me.”
Hank: “You’re one kinky Thetan.” *proceeds to get ass-bumped off the bed, bashes his head, then pukes on a painting*

Californication (TV, 2007) - Coitus Inter-pukus

It’s really, really good.

Ok, so maybe part of why I like it is that I really want a lot of this guy’s lifestyle – and I’m not talking about the easy women here – the lounging around, writing when he can, trying to be a great dad, hanging out with friends drinking, doing bumps off a hookers ass, and so forth.

Anyway, I’m working my way towards some of it. I reckon I’ve nailed the drinking and crying about my broken heart part, not doing quite so well with the successful novels, or movie deals. Walk before you can run, right?

Californication (TV, 2007)

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve woken up on the floor of the lounge, naked and still drunk from the night before.

Super Hiro!

If you’ve been anywhere near me at any point in the last few weeks you will have already heard me talking about Heroes, a new TV show that’s jut started playing.  The reason I’ve been talking about it so much, is really simple: it’s completely friggin’ awesome!

The premise is fairly simple, some people have mutations that give them super human powers – sort of like X-Men, only no laser vision yet.  But these people aren’t spandex clad super heroes, straight out of Professor Xavier’s Academy, these guys are… a male nurse, a politician, a cheer leader, a Japanese office worker, and a webcam girl.  (There are others as well, but they haven’t played very big parts yet.)

My favourite character has to be Hiro, who has developed the ability to bend time and space.  Not bad for a Japanese salariman.  (He’s a complete friggin’ dude, with his excited, high-pitched babbling and Star Trek references.)  But it’s a close call between him and Cheerleader, with the power to… get smashed all to bits and live.  Man she’s awesome.  I knew I was going to like her from the first time I saw her pushing her broken ribs back into her chest.

I strongly encourage you to try Heroes out for yourself, it’s weird, and it’s cool.  You have to give it at least 3 or 4 episodes, it gets better and better, and the first one might be more weird than awesome.

Armageddon outta here…

We took advantage of our Labour Day off to head on down to Armageddon, the pulp culture expo.  Allow me to let you in on a little secret only known to a few industry insiders…

Armageddon friggin’ sucks.

It’s getting worse and worse every year.

It’s now at the stage where I wouldn’t even go if I had free tickets.  I wouldn’t go if I had to pay for parking.

This year, I had free tickets, and free parking, and it took a total of approximately 30 minutes to see EVERYTHING.

They had a Wii stand there, but no Wii.  They had a Playstation 3 stand there, but no Playstation 3.

They have NOTHING good.

I couldn’t even be bothered going into any of the panels, even though they had folk from one of the TV shows I like (Stargate Atlantis).  It just wasn’t worth it if it meant hanging around in that useless hell hole of Look-At-Me Emo kids and fat girls with battleaxes.

Unimpressed.

Tonight we headed over to Adam & Sandra’s place and watched the new Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood with them, Karl & Louise, and a lot of curries.  It was, amazingly enough, quite good.  Swearing, sex, violence.  Everything that Doctor Who always should have had.

Impressed.

Look at them, brain-washed imbeciles!

The days have been growing ever shorter and colder at Casa del Fernleigh, but we don’t care.  I cooked up some felafels, and heated up a few store bought pita pockets for a delicious dinner.  Now we’re kicked back on the sofa snuggling and watching DVDs of The Prisoner.

That’s all you need for happiness, you know.  Fists full of felafels and ears & eyes full of number 6.

I know the hair makes you look different, but, didn’t you used to be more gold coloured?

The end of Stargate Atlantis season 2 (which I must say felt pretty abrupt, guess we’ll see what comes down the track in season 3) has lead me back into the fold of Wormhole X-treme!  I mean, uh, Stargate SG1.  I’m watching Season 8 right now, and it features what might very well be the finest ever recap episode: ‘Citizen Joe’ (ep 15).  Funny, sweet, in-jokes & ffan references galore (which while protesting any attempt to label me a fanboy, I still noticed and enjoyed – in my humble opinion, there is a huge difference between a fan and a fanboy, maybe I’ll go into it some time).

Stargate really does kick a whole lot of arse, and heading back into SG1 has really reminded me how much is missing from Atlantis.

I’ve also been watching some Babylon 5 lately, I’m not quite sure what to make of it, I’d caught a couple of episodes before, and my first thoughts on popping the first DVD was "this is rubbish, what’d they use for the graphics, a Commodore 64?" and similar thoughts, it’s hard to watch SF created in 1993.  I might skip ahead a season or so and see if it catches me.

Surprisingly, the alien makeup in B5 is still better than in Stargate Atlantis – which is quite an achievement for a show well over a decade old.

We’ve watched maybe 5 or 6 episodes of Invasion, and it kicks the arse off Surface.  I mean, really.  It just goes to show, if you want to make a TV series that doesn’t suck, hire actual actors.  Probably a good idea not to have cute little aliens on screen as well.  If for some reason they bother making a second season of Surface, I’ve got a good feeling I’m not going to be watching it.

Lastly, I got a cheque from the Ministry of Justice today, how many people can say that?  (Ok, the answer is hundreds, but you know.)

Things and things and stuff.

I’ve been writing ‘things that aren’t this websote’ lately, you may have noticed.

The other day I put up another noodle review, another one from Trident, this time from their Sensations range – Pad Kee Mao.  They’re not very exciting.

We’re thinking very hard about moving house again – and to this end we went and looked at a lovely place in Epsom this afternoon, the garden was nice, the inside was us sized (but certainly no bigger), and so forth.  We’ll see what happens with that.

We’re considering the move thing due to, frankly, being sick of living with other people.  If it wasn’t little things like Heloise wearing cast iron hobnailed trollish stomping boots when she walked around the Paice Ave place; it was the far more revolting sound of painful shrieking anal sex (with or without horrible little toys) from our last flatmate.  Also his cooking.  Honestly, if you’re ever offered any fresh baked muffins or bread by that guy, say no.  Muffins aren’t supposed to taste like vinegar.  He was completely clueless in so many ways – but quite an accomplished bad debtor.  Oh boy but we had a lot of debt collectors dropping by, chasing him down.

So, we’re considering moving, even though I really really hate moving house.

In entertainment news, I’ve been watching a lot of American television.  Have you seen ‘My Name is Earl’?  It’s Jason Lee’s newest thing, I’ve only grabbed a handful of episodes, but it’s pretty good so far.

If you have seen it, do you remember the second episode where Earl tries to make up with his scary old psychopathic friend for letting him do two years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, well the same actor is a crazy guy in my favourite TV show of the moment – Prison Break.

If you haven’t seen Prison Break, you’re nothing to me, and I don’t know if I’d even bother to scrape you from the bottom of my shiny shiny shoe.

Talk about your awesomeness.  I bet they blow it eventually, but 10 or so episodes into the season, and they still haven’t.

What else have I been watching?  I mentioned Surface already I think, I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I’ll keep watching it until it really drives me away.

Oh, but Lost, season 2 is pretty good.  I don’t really care if I spoil it for you, but I’ll speak circularly here…  The thing with the others, and the someone who gets shot by that nasty skank bitch?  That was horrible with the backwards talking and all the shh shh and "they’re getting very close" and so forth.  Oh boy.

This has really devolved into little more than stream of conciousness, so bye for now.

Uh-oh, I’m in trouble again.

So it turns out if you decide to have a wine or two with dinner, and then decide to have another couple, and don’t bother with a glass, and then finish the bottle.  Well…  It turns out you get mean looks and unkind words.

So, I’m in trouble again.

A long time ago, when we lived on Fourth Ave in Kingsland, we used to get kebabs from Great Northern Kebabs, and they were super good, I had a great relationship with the owner, he was a good guy, who always seemed to be fathering more and more children, anyway, he was a cool, nice, genuine guy, and he made the nicest lamb on rice, and really super nice spinach borek, and for a long time he made moussaka and it was really really good, but then the price of aubergine went up, and he stopped.  Blah blah,  So he sold the place to some other guy, and he’s also friendly and nice, but I never really bothered to talk to him too much as we moved, and I stopped going there every week.  We went there tonight, just on a quest to find something different, and it was ok I guess.  It tastes clean and fresh, but it also tasted really bland.  Claire ended up having to get out the sweet chilli from the fridge, and I liberally coated mine with tomato sauce.  Still, nice fresh tasting bland stuff is better than nasty-ass cheap ‘ol sick making rotten d-cert hygiene rating stuff.

They just had a Macleans toothbrush advert on TV and I got in trouble again, some big tall basketball player comes over and helps a short girl get stuff out of her up-high mailbox and the voiceover says "now with Macleans whatever the fuck, no place is hard to get to," so I said "are they talking about her vagina?" and claire stabbed me in the hand with a pen. Ouchie.

What was I saying?  Oh yeah, don’t drink a bottle of $7 wine.  You’ll get in trouble, then write a seemingly endless website update, then get in trouble and stabbed with a pen, then write even more on your website, then start talking about The 4400.

So, the 4400, is it good?  I’m still not sure.  Some of the characters are cool, I like the skinny black guy, but I can’t remember his eerie power, I seem to have some recollection of it being awesome fighty toughness, but his power might be the power to be really vulnerable like any other human man

There don’t seem to be many of the 4400 with the power of exploding the fuck out of your body, which is disappointing, maybe that’ll happen if ratings flag.

Would you watch that?

Be even more impressive than the power to make your ears sting.  Or the power to make fruit ripe.  Oooooh, ripe fruit

I’d better go now.  Thanks.

Press the button, no button’s bad…

So we’ve started to watch Lost season 2, and it’s as weird-ass as you’d expect.  I sure am glad they’ve finally gotten into the bloody hatch, but I’m not sure what to think about the whole Desmond thing, brother.

I’m waiting to see more about the guys on the raft, was a bit surprised that they didn’t say anything about them at all – I want to know what’s going on with Jin, I love that guy.