Magic Happens Here, in Miami

What is the coolest city on the planet? It's not Las Vegas, it's not San Francisco or L.A. and it's not New York. The coolest city in movies and TV is and always will be Miami, Florida. From Miami Vice to Scarface to CSI to Dexter, Miami is and has been writing the book on edgy cool. Let's recount some of Miami's coolness:

With this much cool, Magic Happens here

• It's where Jim Morrison got arrested for the 60's / 70's most legendary on-stage bad behavior.
• It's where Art Deco came to life - it is the pastels capital of the world.
• It's where the CIA has their own university.
• It's one of the few places where an alligator can walk into your backyard and eat your poodle. 
• It's where (all of) Latin America meets the US.
• It's the only US city that has its own gran prix in the downtown.
• It's where Al Capone really got caught.
• It's built on a swamp and even that is cool.
• It's where cigar boats were born (for bootlegging).
• It's actually inside of the Bermuda triangle. 
• It's where style comes to get hot.
• It's where J-lo dumped Marc Antony
• It's where Madonna did something - we're not sure - but she does live there

So, it's no surprise that another great show has built its foundation atop Miami's shifting sands. Magic City is in its second season on Starz and has proven that it has both style and substance. The show is set in the late fifties / early sixties with the Cuban revolution and Kennedys as a backdrop. It's a little like Madmen on the beach but that would not be giving it enough credit. For movie fans, it's got some interesting little nuggets, such as two of the cast members who were in the original Godfather movie and Danny Huston - grandson of the legendary director John Huston. It's got more sex (or at least as much) as Masters of Sex. It's got Olga Kurylenko who is beyond hot and a great actress to boot. It's got father against son - and slew of subplots to keep us busy for several seasons at least.

Season 2 is building an arc - the cool versus the bad...

And it's got style...

The show revolves a mythical Miami Beach hotel - something on the scale of the Fontainebleau. These hotels hosted some of the nation's first television variety series - and Miami was the place to go (before Orlando became Florida's tourist mecca) - an elite vacation destination but also a long-time haunt for the mob. It makes the perfect setting for this troubled tale of family breaking apart as ambition runs headlong into corruption. It is the end of an era and the beginning of the modern age - all wrapped together. Mitch Glazer has realized a unique vision and it is almost totally due to the mystery that is Miami.



Copyright 2013, Raving Reviews

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Play That Foxy Music, Norway...

We don't want to appear culturally insensitive, even if we are - we just don't want to appear that way. But, we're quite concerned about what's happening in Norway these days. Once upon a time we had some friends from reindeerland and they explained to us what things were like there:

• cold
• dark 
• white
• really cold
• boring
• well, you get the picture

This pretty much sums it up - design provided by IKEA

They told us that for the folks who live in the Northern part of the country in particular - drinking was the number one national past-time. Out of this frozen wasteland has emerged a pop sensation - they call themselves Ylvis (no relation to the King), and have solved the riddle of what foxy music is all about among other things...

Over 200 million views on youtube...

We're not sure if these guys are trying to be a real band or the next Flight of The Conchords - jury is still out.  BTW - what ever happened to the Conchords and why do these bizarre comic / signing duos (or trios) emerge from remote snowy and mountain regions - is it the altitude?

They are somewhat politically incorrect as well

We're not sure it was exposure to extreme climatic conditions or simply that these guys are just silly, but they've managed to create an interesting mix of pop comedy songs across a wide variety of topics. But be careful, their comic signing is probably a bit edgier than the Conchords and is often MA rated.

They've come to America - and we think they're mocking us...

Copyright 2013, Raving Reviews

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The Zombification of American Culture

They're everywhere - you can't turn on the TV or go to the movies or play a video game these days without running headlong into a swarm of the undead. Zombies have conquered American popular culture... How did this happen; why did it happen and why now?

American Horror Story: Coven - Halloween Zombie Attack

These are all tough questions - but we will attempt to answer them for you. Now, Zombies aren't really that new and zombie movies have been around since at least 1932. There may have been some during the silent era as well, but we can't find any evidence of it (unless you count Nosferatu as a zombie which is probably fair). The 1932 flick, White Zombie seemed to have inspired rock musician Rob Zombie (we're guessing that's not his real name) as well. Now, this early Zombie flick is semi-racist because they're going out of their way to highlight that these aren't typical Jamaican rasta Voodoo zombies, but instead white chicks (being controlled using Voodoo magic). So, the genesis of Zombie lore does start down in the Caribbean and is tied to various drugs used to place people in trances and such. That traditional zombie theme was resurrected (excuse the pun) in this Season's American Horror Story - with witches doing battle with a New Orleans Voodoo Queen. But we digress.

Bela Lugosi was the undisputed creepiest guy in Hollywood for 2 decades

Zombies have been around for a long time - why are they so popular now? It seems as though the resurgence really picked up in the late 70's and early 80's. much of that was fueled by the many zombie films produced by George Romero. What was going on in American culture at that time? Well, we had Jimmy Carter and then Voodoo economics with Ronald Reagan. We had more of an awareness that we were just 5 minutes away from self annihilation on the nuclear clock. We had the introduction of the AIDs virus and the cultural drought of 1980's consumerism and yuppie madness and MTV. Yet, do all of these frightening elements really explain the zombie pandemic?

Maybe people just enjoy watching gore? (not Al Gore)

Perhaps there's a deeper root cause to this seeming never-ending flood of zombies? Could it perhaps be a reflection of an increasingly cynical and negative perspective that much of the population has to direction that our society seems to be heading to. Things for whatever reason, seem to be less hopeful, less promising and more menacing than before. Prior generations had looked forward to progress and personal growth for themselves and their children. Since the 1980's, we've had stagnation of personal income and upward mobility, the constant drumbeat of terrorism and budget cuts and things just seem a little depressing. It may in fact be more appealing for many of us to imagine an apocalyptic future where survival is the only job skill necessary and bills, college and Obamacare no longer factor in. In a world where no matter what you do there's no chance of progress, then killing zombies becomes both entertaining and cathartic.

Does Rick enjoy his new life more than his old one - hard to tell...

Or maybe, just maybe it's even deeper than that. What's one thing all zombies seem to have in common? Well, besides cannibalism - yes, that's right - Disease. Zombies become zombies through infection of some sort. Zombies in fact represent a collective fear that's been with humanity for thousands of years - zombies are the human manifestation of plague. In a plague, like the Black Death, the ones who were most frightening were the sick and the unknowing carriers of disease. Someone who had caught the plague was for all intents and purposes "walking dead" long before they actually died. So, maybe our zombie pandemic is an indictment on modern society - calling it plagued so to speak. The survivors of all these scenarios are in fact turning their back on what society was and helping to kill it off one zombie at a time.

Or maybe, people just like to see rotting corpses walking around and pulling out peoples intestines. Either way, perhaps it's time to really run these zombies back into the ground.

We're not unreasonable...

Got Brains?

Copyright 2013 Raving Reviews

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The Continuum Paradox

There's nothing we like more than a good paradox. Time travel happens to be the perfect medium for staging flashbacks and flash-forwards in a plot - but of course it can provide so much more than that. It's so non-linear!

Last year we began watching what has turned out to be the SyFy channels best product since the original Battlestar Galactica - Continuum. It's got a lot going for it including:

• Great acting and well chosen actors
• An interesting sci-fi plot (making it seem like less of a cliche than perhaps it is)
• Great special effects for a TV series
• The Smoking Man (yes, he's been hiding in Vancouver all these years).
• The hottest sci-fi actress since James Kirk's (pick any) girlfriend - wait she was Jim Kirk's girlfriend - yikes. 
• Clothes that change color based on what's happening.
• Vancouver of the future (looks pretty cool, of course we've still not really seen the Vancouver of the present).
• Wiki-leaks gone bad terrorists with an Internet name. 
• That bald guy who was in Madmen and about 20 other shows (he's good, we just can't remember who he is).

Rachel Nichols - star of Continuum in her mood suit.

The future in this Dystopian series looks pretty grim. Corporations, technology and the Patriot Act on steroids have all but eradicated personal freedoms. But the cops are cool and the Bill Gates of 2077 or 2079 or whenever it is has had a crisis of confidence about the world he helped to create. He is none other than the Smoking Man... Where's this guy been since 1990's ? And where are the cigs? We're guessing that they're totally illegal in 2079 even for Alec Sadler (a.k.a. Bill Gates or maybe he's Larry Ellison but definitely not Steve Jobs).

Season 2 was better than Season 1 - but they were both good which bodes well for Season 3

Now, there's another web series out there also called Continuum so don't get confused - it's experimental and not quite ready for prime time, see below...

The Continuum knock off - we really don't know what the hell it's about

And apparently Continuum just sounds like a cool title because John Mayer used it for his latest album too...

Before we depart; let's list a few of our favorite paradoxical plot twists from the SyFy Continuum series:

• Did Rachel going cause the terrorist attack?
• Did Alec's dad work for him in the future only to become his dad in the past?
• Did Liber8te invent their terrorist network on Twitter?
• Did Carlos (the sidekick) star in shampoo commercials in the alternative time stream?
• Does Alec send bimbo girlfriends to himself in the past?
• Does Mark Zuckerburg help corporations take over the world?

We'll have to wait for Season 3 to find out the answer to these and more...


Copyright 2013, Raving Reviews

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