The Walking Dead - Season 3

Occasionally, on Raving Reviews we actually watch TV shows and movies and that aren't completely idiotic - one of our favorite of these shows is the Walking Dead. Walking Dead Season 3 began last week, just in time for our Halloween Meltdown. Why do we like the Walking Dead? Here's some of our rating criteria:

1. It's post-apocalyptic.
2. It happens down South instead of where we're living (makes it seem more realistic).
3. It has better than average quality Zombies.
4. It has an excellent cast of characters and even the stereotypical roles are well played by the ensemble cast.
5. We care about what happens to the characters, in other words it transcends the gratuitous Zombie killing that often is associated with the genre.

Just when you though it was safe to drive through Atlanta...

Now having said some nice things about the show; we do have a few issues with the Walking Dead; these include:

• Why doesn't AMC allow any other networks to make good television shows?
• How many times will they let Carl Junior go out and endanger the whole group before they realize he's just not worth it? (and isn't there a Hamburger joint call Carl Jr.?)
• Why don't the characters ever bathe?
• Why don't they all own Samurai swords by now?
• Why don't they find their own island - preferably in the Bahamas?
• Why do they let Ricks wife drive?
• Why does Hershel seem to confuse the flu with flesh easting insanity?

 

 Some criticism is warranted.

And we're not the only ones who have issues with the Walking Dead - it has become a cultural phenomenon and has inspired a number of interesting parodies.

 

This parody is kind of like Walking Dead meets Deliverance....

In previous posts we've tried to uncover why Zombies are so popular in our culture - what is about cannibal corpses that never gets old (besides the fact that they're dead)? Is it that by shooting zombies we can stare death in the face and keep on living, who knows. What we do know for sure is that Season 3 of the Walking Dead is shaping up to be more action packed than the first two seasons combined with lot's of new locations and characters and an endless supply of - Zombies...

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The Beaver - Too Right!

The next movie we're reviewing as part of the 2012 Halloween meltdown is "The Beaver." Wait you say - this movie has nothing to do with the spookiest time of the year - we beg to differ. This movie contains three elements that we are sure will terrify most sane people:

1. Mel Gibson
2. Australian-Speak
3. Beaver hand puppets

 Mel Gibson with his hand up a Beaver's bum...

Kudos to Jody for casting though - Mel Gibson was hands down (or up) the best choice in Hollywood for the role. Randy Quaid and Charlie Sheen no doubt would have turned in great performances but could never have mastered Australian English the way Mad Max can. The plot goes something like this - a fairly depressed middle-aged man on the verge of suicide runs across a hand puppet in the trash and it more or less possesses him. We were wondering if the story might actually be Mel Gibson's autobiography but the movie doesn't include any Russian girlfriends getting punched in the face.

Jody Foster felt compelled to tell this story - we're not sure why - about how mental illness and hand puppets don't mix. Wrapped in this sad personal tale (or tail) is the larger question of why Beavers are so misunderstood and maligned in our society. This movie is just one more blatant attempt at Beaver character assassination. Don't believe there is a plot to ruin the noble Beaver's reputation; well just think about this:

• Why are they the butt of so many adolescent jokes?
• Why do we tend to associate them with kids who have buck teeth and glasses?
• Why do they also seem so busy - are they on something?
• How come we only focus on the fact they cut down trees instead building up the watershed?

Why are they so busy, don't they take vacations - are they on speed?

Now take the Wolverine. Here's a creature not too distantly related to Beavers who gets associated with really cool superheros and Cold War freedom fighters. The Beaver in this movie is not only not cool, he's kind of like an evil spirit (and as we know there is nothing more disturbing than an Australian accent) which opens up whole new avenues to negatively label Beavers. He's funny and lovable at first, but then we're introduced to Darth Beaver who enjoys beating up Mel as regularly as Mel tends to beat up his ex-wives. There are other characters in the movie - Jody Foster just seems to be there in order to do on camera directing. The guy who played Chekov in Star Trek is there looking like he is 16 going on 32 playing a high school senior with some serious beaver-envy issues. The girl from Hunger Games is in this too  - at the high school graduation it seems as though she might pull out a bow and arrow and start shooting but she wimps out on that.

Overall the film is like watching a slow moving train wreck - but not a very interesting one and of course, the noble Beaver is the ultimate casualty here.

Ok - this clip is R-rated, but we show this here only to illustrate the infamous anti-beaver propaganda campaign now underway in our society...

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Season of the Witch & Nick Cage's Hair-volution

Well, it's almost Halloween so welcome to our Raving Reviews Halloween meltdown - actually it began yesterday with our post on "Apollo 18 - Moon Rocks Gone Wild." Anyway, about a year ago we made you a promise that we would review the Nicholas Cage film "Season of the Witch" and that we'd also try to determine what in the heck is going on with this guy's hair - so since we always keep our promises we've combined the two posts for you here today (legal fine print - there is no statute of limitations on promises).

I ain't afraid of no witch - Witch-busters !

Season of the Witch begins with a portfolio review of Nick Cage's Crusader battle performances on his Middle East "Kill the Infidels" Tour. Nick Cage plays a Knight who for some reason felt compelled to fight for the church to capture the holy land even though he doesn't seem too religious. His motivations escape us - perhaps he was just answering a want ad something like this:

"The Crusades - be all that God wants you to be - from the sun-drenched shores of Lebanon to the blood-drenched walls of Tyre. Fight to restore the Holy Land to mother church - and by the way you can keep all of the loot too..."

We'll never be sure why Nick signed up, but it seems as though the only joy he derives from the Crusades is on betting on how many Saracens he can kill with his drinking buddy, Ron "Quest for Fire" Perlman (publicity photo below).

Who wouldn't want to hang out with this dude?

So, after about 15 years of non-stop killing on their victory tour (these guys got around more than the Rolling Stones), Nick becomes disillusioned after having to hack up a city full of innocent women and children. Apparently, the betting with Ron and boozing in local Crusader taverns just looses its charm and he and Ron decide head back to merry old Europe (we're not sure exactly where in Europe they came from or where they were returning to). We do know however that nowhere in the movie did they visit New Orleans.

Redbone and the Witch Queen of New Orleans - yeah that's cool - but not part of the movie

Now Europe at the time was a quaint, charming vacation spot in the 1300's - filled with witches, demons, various fairy tale monsters and the ever-present Black Death. Nick and Ron needed a break so they head directly into the dark woods of what looks like Transylvania. Oh, we forgot to mention an important scene earlier on in the film where we were introduced to some dedicated witch hunters and typical village witches from what seemed to be the region that Nick and Ron would visit later. The scene was remarkable in that it dispelled an important myth about Witches - it seems as though they don't float after all. Although there is still some scientific controversy about that claim - the following video does seem to provide compelling evidence supporting the 'witches are made out of wood' theory.

King Arthur isn't as well known for his focus on STEM education in medieval Britain, but he was a science pioneer...

Nick and Ron manage to get conscripted into an important witch relocation mission. They're given a band of less than merry expendable sidekicks and a cute teen witch who looks a lot like Kristen Stewart after she dumped Robert Pattison (e.g. really guilty). Despite the fact that she can pick up big guys wearing armor with one had and seems fairly creepy, most of the group feels sorry for her - which is surprising considering the general attitude regarding witches in the region. She seems to have the unique talent for spreading plague to each town she visits which makes everyone look as though they've got fruit growing from their faces.

What would have people in the middle ages done with Emo Girls or Goths?, Hmmmm

So anyway - long story short - there's this book and it has power and the demon inside the girl wants it - and she kills everyone (except Nick and Ron and some teenager who looks like he should be in the Twilight series) and then these guys end up being exorcists and then the girl and the demon break up and she goes out with this teen and live happily ever after although Nick still seems miserable and Ron turns out to be dead after all - the end. Whew...

But then - wait - we found out she came back to 1971 - where George Romero made a movie about her - she looks a little older though. That movie is called Season of the Witch too (not 2). Only in this movie she tends to wear a ton of makeup and perhaps uses the blow-dryer a bit too much.

Well, this witch is having a bad hair day, reminds us of Nick Cage a little...

And it looks a though we've run out of time to address Nick Cage's hair - stay tuned we will keep our promise.

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Parabolic Activity – Apollo 18

So, we actually decided to watch cable last night and came across a relatively recent film that we had wanted to see yet somehow managed not to (at the theatre). Of course, we’re getting to the cinema more often these days as they’ve figured out how to make the world’s best (and messiest) funnel cakes there – but we digress. The film we’re reviewing today is Apollo 18, otherwise known as “How to go to the Moon without anyone really knowing about it.”

The moon - it's rocky, cold and filled with pesky spiders

Apollo 18 is a found footage movie – which is code for they were too cheap to hire a cinematographer. Of course, we were somewhat perplexed as to how most of the footage could have been found considering most of the film blew up with the hapless astronauts who obviously needed more practice with orbital docking – but we’ll get to that later.

The movie begins with an interesting premise – namely that it seemed odd that the Apollo program was cancelled before sending the last three scheduled missions. All rockets had already been built and delivered – if you ever happen to drive south on I-65 through Huntsville AL, you can see one of them at the rest stop there. So, with that rocket we’ve accounted for one cancelled mission anyway – an ignoble end to America’s most powerful rocket ever built. Why did Nixon cancel the Apollo program – the movie suggests a partial explanation in that Apollo 18 was used for a secret DoD mission. We have a few theories of our own as to why Nixon cancelled the program:

• He wanted to use the Apollo rockets to spy on the Democratic National Committee
• He wanted to use the rockets to drop bombs really, really fast on North Vietnam (catch them before they can move).
• He wanted to send hippies like John Lennon into lunar exile.
• He wanted to find new sources of minerals in order to bring back the gold standard.
• He wanted to use them as really large fireworks to impress the Chinese.

Perhaps we may never really know why he did it. But in the movie the idea goes something like this – the Ruskies (AKA Soviet Union) have managed to send up their own lunar mission which runs into some sort of strange phenomena and the US sends a team of sacrificial spacemen to film whatever is happening up there.

The moon is spooky enough w/o having Bjork associated with it…

Once on the moon, it’s poltergeist meets Apollo 13. We’ve got these weird moon critters who apparently have their own radio transmitters because they’re always on there making funny noises, we’ve got flying rocks which like to jump into spacesuits and our hero astronauts dropping things and generally trying to scare each other a lot. Funny, they forgot to bring the jumping cat with them and of course there is no attic or basement to go into so basically it’s all scary. Anyway, we view the movie as a a sort of training exercise of what not to do on moon missions.

The top 10 list of things not to do on the moon:

1. Agree to go on secret moon missions.
2. Drive a lunar rover without seat belts.
3. Listen to Space Oddity, Rocketman, Major Tom or anything by David Bowie / Ziggy Stardust while on the moon or in space.
4. Collect moon rocks that move on their own or otherwise seem to be alive.
5. Go down into a deep dark crater without a flashlight
6. Stand next to a deep dark moon crater (with your back turned towards it).
7. Bunk next to a guy who just said he had something crawling inside his helmet while he was moon-walking (and we don’t mean the Michael Jackson kind of moon walking).
8. Open the lunar module and let in the guy with visible moon spiders crawling in his helmet.
9. Follow mysterious footprints on the moon (in a place where no man has walked before).
10. Try to rendezvous two spacecraft traveling at 12,000 miles an hour in orbit without using the brakes.

So now we’ve discovered where the moon spiders came from…

We think these are great moon safety tips and are truly thankful to Apollo 18 for pointing them out. We had blast watching this – it was far out – the finale was explosive – cheap pun alert…

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The Abe Team

Four score and seven days ago a wave of movies was unleashed that shook this great nation to its core...
He's big, well pretty tall anyway. He's bad, killed more people than you can count, at least indirectly sort of. He's like 200 years old and he's back, with a vengeance, although actually he seemed like a mild mannered guy. He's Abe Lincoln and he's taking over Hollywood in 2012.

Last of the Mohicans meets the Civil War. An Irish Lincoln? No Comment

This year, Abraham Lincoln has been resurrected on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, when he declared the Emancipation Proclamation and boy does he means business. He's out there killing Vampires, hunting down Zombies, whipping them dirty rebs and even moderating presidential debates. He's a one man killin' machine; facing down our national demons one by one - many of them literally. We haven't had a chance to see all the movies yet - we missed the Vampire Killer one while on vacation and the new Stephen Spielberg film hasn't been released yet. 

I'm going to send your sparkly behinds back  to Hell!

We've heard rumors that Lincoln will also appear in these upcoming features:

• The Expendables 3 - As the"hatchet man," he'd take any crappy role for money
• The Terminator 5 - as the "Abenator" - he's back
• Friday the 13th (lost count) - as the Boy Scout Troop Leader - chopping wood and serial killers
• Taken 3 - Liam Neeson's replacement - killing everything in sight, no plot needed
• The A-Team - Bad Attitude "BA" Abe
• The Silence of the Lambs remake - Abenal the Cannibal - he'll eat your liver with a side of cornbread...
• The Avengers - Captain "Divided America" Abe 
• The Seven Samurai - Abeosan
• Star Wars - Abe Vader
• Twilight Mooning - Six-pack Abes
• Barney Miller - as Abe Vigoda, with a beard
• The Godfather - as Abe Vigoda, with a beard
• Scarface - "Say hello to my little ax"
• Two & Half Men - Charlie Sheen's even crazier uncle
• Abetar - need we say more...
• Braveheart 2 - Back from the Dead - as McAbe

Yes indeed, Abe's agent has been working overtime lately. One movie we did get a chance to see (because it was on Netflix already) was Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies.This was an Asylum feature - in other words it was made for cheap as a knock off of another movie - in this case the Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter movie we haven't seen yet. But even given its less than promising origins, this film was somewhat entertaining in its own deranged fashion.We got to meet Lincoln's harlot mistress and love child, young Teddy Roosevelt as a zombie fighting adolescent and plenty of distorted historical episodes. The zombie killing action was about average; although watching Lincoln and Stonewall Jackson fighting on the same side was kind of interesting, even though it looked throughout the film as though Stonewall's beard would either fall off or he'd drop dead suddenly from anorexia.

What's 6'4', wears a stovepipe hat and kicks Zombie ass?

There are parts to this 2012 Lincoln phenomenon we simply can't explain; such as:

1. Why are they picking all these foreign actors to play Lincoln?
2. Why do all actors who play Lincoln sound just like Hal Holbrook's impression of Mark Twain? (kind of like why do movie Nazis always speak British English).
3. Why didn't George Washington ever kill any Zombies or Vampires?

Perhaps we'll never explain it, but at least we can enjoy Lincoln's return to the limelight - although come to think of it, last time he was connected with the Theater, it didn't turn out so well.

Ok, this has nothing to do with Abe but it's a cool tune

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Photographing Fairies

Well, we really tried to come up with a better post title, but let's face it, this movie title simply can't be beaten. The movie we're talking about is called - yes - Photographing Fairies. And we found it on Netflix because just about the only movies they've got left in their library are obscure pics like this one from 1997. It stars a guy who seems to have a permanent sneer on his face (he could have been the British Elvis?) Toby Stephens. You might remember him from his villainous roles in the Bond flick, Die Another Day. He played the Korean guy who somehow turned himself into an Aryan supermodel. But enough about that. Hey speaking of Elvis, if you like great pizza you'll have to stop at the Velvet Elvis - located in the middle of nowhere Arizona - but we digress, back to the movie.

Here's the ultimate spoiler - the last scene of the movie where Toby meets his inner Fairy

One thing we can't fault this movie for is that it is indeed a story about a guy who photographs - yep you guessed it - fairies - and no this isn't about Gay Marriage. We're talking, honest God, winged mini-people flitting around in the English countryside just after World War 1. So anyway, this guy (the main character, we forgot his name because the fairies were more interesting) seems predisposed to pursuing strange hobbies after a career of photographing dead soldiers and a really bad vacation where he let his girlfriend fall into a bottomless crevasse somewhere at the top of Alps (we think we should have taken her to Florida instead).

At first he is skeptical, but then he convinced through a combination of photographic analysis and hallucinogenic drugs. The truth is out there - trust no one - he wants to believe, in fairies - Toby is the Fox Mulder of Fairies. But what are these little critters? Well, their FX budget seemed pretty limited - for example WWI ended being one scene with 4 dead guys and a bomb that dropped nearby. Anyway they didn't seem to have much more money for their computer graphics, so the winged tinker-bells looked a little bit like white smurfs or perhaps flying mini-zombies. We also get to meet Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Homes fame) as he seems to be Toby's go to expert on all things Fairy.

We have a theory about those wacky fairies - they're Extraterrestrials !

Ultimately though we learn very little about who or what these fairies really are from this movie and perhaps most disappointing of all, we don't even get to see any decent photographs of them. Right when we think we might get some pictures, Ben Kingsley, who sports a curly wig and the strangest workout clothes we've ever seen smashes up all the equipment before accidentally impaling himself on a tripod (luckily Toby insured all of the cameras). We're left with a tantalizing clue as something leaves Ben's mouth at the moment of his death, but it simply isn't clear whether its a Fairy escaping or terminally bad breath. Although they seem to be suggesting that the fairies are us - a disturbing conclusion considering the obvious innuendo we've been toying with throughout the post, we prefer our theory about British - ahem - all fairies.

The fairies of legend and the fairies at the heart of this relatively anemic plot are in fact an a capella group of extraterrestrials who look remarkably like Japanese teenage girls. Don't believe us, see the proof for yourself...

Actual Fairies captured in slow motion so we can see what they really look like

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The Movies That Could Have Been

It's a well-known fact that in Hollywood that for every movie that gets made, 1000 other projects are waiting for that big break to transition from paper to the silver screen (or LCD depending upon what audience it gets made for).  We've uncovered a treasure trove of "lost projects" and have selected a number of the best ones that never made it to production...

Getting whipped by Julia takes on new meaning in this thriller

1 - "A Recipe for Disaster" - Julia Child as an action hero in this Cold-War drama about a chef who infiltrates the Kremlin to serve the Soviets their just desserts.

2 - "They Eat Horses, Don't They" - The inside story of a Pet Food Tycoon and his back-biting, mangy family.

3 - "Damn the Speedos" - The secret story of how Mark Spitz trained Seal Team 6. 

4 - "The People who didn't know Anything" - The story of how a lot of really stupid people took over American politics and invented the Negative Ad.

5 - "Bad to the Bones" - Former rockers with osteoporosis delicately battle crime, making sure not to get fractured along the way.

6 - "Anatomy 101" - Who needs CSI when this new series brings non-stop dissections, drilling and witty humor - at the cadavers' expense!

7 - "Zumba - the Forbidden Exercise" - need we say more.

The Rhythm is going to get you - in trouble...

8 - "299" - These were the guys from Crete who got lost and never made it to that big battle against the Persians...

9 - "Binder Babes" - What happens when you collect binders full of women, nothing good we suspect.

 10 - "Hoodini" - Wearing hoodies can make some people disappear.

11 - "Pump it Up - The Lance Armstrong Story" - Illegal drugs, roadside blood transfusions and lot's of spirit and gritty determination made him the champion he is - er - used to be.

12 - "The Welsh Evasion" - The little known story of the handful of inept Welsh rockers who completely missed out on the birth on modern rock and roll.

13 - "They Call me Candy" - How the tough-talking lady kicked butt and took numbers at the 2012 presidential debate.

14 - "Some like Hotter" - The inside story as to why many people have inexplicably denied the reality of global warming.

Gosh, we miss this guy...

15 - "The Laying Dead" - This is the follow-up series to Anatomy 101.

16 - "Off Base" - How the Red's managed to screw up the 2012 post-season.

17 - "Googlemania" - The story about how the Googles became rock legends in Britain during the 1960's - with such hits as - Googlution, Hey Google and All you need is Google. 

18 - "Saturday the 14th" - A documentary - day in the life - as a psycho serial killer unwinds after a hard day on the job.

19 - "The Bobbit" - What happens when an angry female hobbit goes crazy and hacks off her husband's wee member. (* 1990's insider joke alert).

And the list goes on - we will bring more of these lost gems from time to time as our celebration of the entertainment industry continues here on Raving Reviews.

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Looper Dooper?

It had all of the elements of possible science fiction classic; Bruce Willis, time travel, Philip K. Dick and yet somehow this movie failed to achieve its desired paradox. But before we delve into the movie itself we must describe the strange dimension we were transported to when our local theater decided to sell beer and wine at the concession stand. Never before (at least not since the days when people used to sneak in their own refreshments to drive-ins) were we exposed to interactive cinema like this. 

Let's all go to the Lobby - and get plowed

So, during the film, there were these two guys behind us - we knew they had been drinking because at several points during the movie they discussed whether or not to go back out and buy more wine. They decided to engage in an interactive dialog between themselves and the movie. The first comments ranged from - "I can't follow this, what's happening here" and quickly degenerated into - "Oh my god this is the worst movie ever - what the hell is going on - how could anyone understand this - it's impossible." This went for nearly the entire film.

Now we could spend a lot of time dissecting the movie, but why bother, we'll never remember it as well we will as the theater dialog about it. Let's do a quick overview on Looper anyway:

• The near-future looks really depressing
• The distant-future looks worse
• Bruce Willis and Robin really don't look much alike
• Bruce Willis with long stringy dark hair is just not something you want to see (5 seconds onscreen was 4 seconds too long)
• That little kid really needed a time-out (no time travel puns intended)
• There was lots of gratuitous violence towards the end - but where were the laser guns ???!!!!

 I'm not working for Batman one minute longer!

Anyway, enough of that, what we really need to address is time travel and paradoxes. This is what seemed to be troubling our intoxicated fellow movie-goers. The basic premise is this; if you change something in the present it effects not just the future but any future travelers who happen to be visiting your own temporal neighborhood. Now just to be clear for all you doubters out there - time travel is in fact possible - we all do it every day - only it's one way - forward. This movie assumes that there is a device which looks like a cross between an iron lung and a vacuum cleaner that can somehow send people back in time (the other way). To help better understand how this might be possible we've brought together the world's two foremost experts on time travel and physics, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking...

 Time Travel is simple, don't believe us, just ask Einstein and Hawking

So, now it's all perfectly clear now right? Still don't get it. We'll this isn't a science blog, but we will provide a checklist to determine whether or not you should attempt to watch complex, alternate reality and time travel movies.

The Sci-Fi IQ Test:

• Jean Luc Picard is the guy who directed The Fifth Element. (T or F)
• If you go back in time and kill your grandfather the only thing you miss out on is Christmas presents. (T or F)
• In the show Sliders, there was an alternate Universe where the Bengals actually made it to the Superbowl and won! (T or F)
• In the original planet of the Apes, the three guys and 1 girl were supposed to repopulate the human race (T o F)  and BTW who came up with the math on that?
• In the Matrix, it was the Machines who scorched the sky or was that the Terminator series? 
• How many levels of dream reality (Inception) can you sink into without getting lost?

Does all of this seem too complicated, perhaps you should just head to the concession stand and get liquored up.

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Colombiana es muy Estupido

Hey there, we're back, after nearly a year-long break. We'll provide no explanation for that and dive right into some new raving reviews. Last night, while watching Netflix we came across Jean-Luc's (Besson's) Colombiana - a movie with nearly no redeeming attributes - perhaps explaining its so-so performance at the box office (losing about $4,000,000).

 

What I want to be when I grow up - a female assassin, by Zoe Saldana 

The story goes something like this - cute, innocent nine-year old Cataleya's parents are killed for no reason other than that they are doubling dealing hit people who betrayed their drug lord boss. Inexplicably, the Drug Lord fails to appreciate that folks need to make a living and that killing people and selling out drug lords can be really profitable. The seemingly helpless waif stabs the head goon from the hit-squad and proceeds to outrun the rest of the crew on a chase through Bogota (which looks a lot like Mexico) doing roof jumping scenes that would make James Bond proud and sewer diving al la Harrison Ford in Fugitive.

She escapes to the American embassy where she proceeds to barf up what looks like an SD card (full of Drug Lord secrets) which somehow gets inserted into a floppy disk. This was supposed to be 1992, SD cards weren't invented yet but who cares right? She couldn't have swallowed a floppy disk. So, naturally after inventing the future and bringing down Colombia's biggest cartel she is whisked away to the US where she somehow magically manages to escape from the airport bathroom and find her way to Chicago. She ends up in Chicago because that's where her uncle lives  (a real nice guy who works in the family trade) and yet no one ever thinks to look for her there.

Fast forward to 2011 or so where we witness the all-grown up and painfully skinny Cataleya infiltrate a jailhouse to kill some really creepy looking guy for apparently no reason. Of course, as an assassin, she's supposed to be smart and deadly - that's why she can do all these amazing things. Her uncle made a big point out of telling her (al la Mel Gibson in Braveheart) that warriors or killers think with their head - he does this while shooting up a stranger's car in broad daylight in front of the school where she's just enrolled with dozens of witnesses nearby.

Note the mysterious flower and the fact that Juan Valdez looks like every Drug Lord ever portrayed in the movies

So anyway, Cataleya, named after an exotic flower - they reminder of this about 57 times - sports her slinky body leotard for hits because as we know wearing a lot of clothes makes it harder to fit into air ducts, sewers and other tight spaces. Cataleya is a very artistic girl as she likes to paint a picture of the flower she is named after on all of her dozens of victims. This is supposedly to ensure that the drug lords who killed her parents come and find her so she can ensnare them in her elaborate trap. Of course it turns out she really doesn't have a trap and gets the rest of her family of killers killed. Did we say that this movie was muy estupidia - si...

Anyway, on the periphery this cinematic misfire there are lousy performances and oddities in all directions. We've got Callum Blue playing a CIA operative who can't seem to master his American accent, we've got that guy from Jericho playing an FBI agent with the same problem. We've got a Chicago police Sargent who can barely seem to speak English at all. We've got locations in Chicago that look oddly like Mexico. We've got a location in New Orleans that looks just like Miami. We've got Cataleya confessing to the FBI that she wanted to be one of the good guys despite the fact she spent her life with killers training in the family business. We've a got big fat guy wearing funny underwear getting eaten by sharks. We've got a movie that associates everything in Colombia with drugs and killers yet seems not to know anything about the place they're maligning.

The only positive thing we might say about this movie is that it isn't as stupid as Taken or Taken 2 - a film made by folks involved with producing Colombiana.

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Firefly Still Burns Bright

It's amazing that a show that only ran for 14 episodes is still relevant and is still making news, but Firefly isn't your typical series. This year the Science Channel relaunched Firefly almost as if it were a new show and remarkably it worked - this was nearly 8 years after it was initially aired on Fox. The short-lived series has become a bit of a cult favorite with many and that devotion led to a 2005 theatrical release that helped tie together some of the unresolved plot lines left dangling at the end of the cancelled first season.

Firefly remains a truly original series concept

The movie version of the series, Serenity, while not a huge commercial success raked in over $40 million which allowed to break even but didn't cross over much beyond its loyal fan base. Perhaps if the series had lasted a little the results would have been different - in terms of quality the film far surpassed the majority of Star Trek Theatrical releases (both in terms of storyline and overall entertainment value).

Although there was and still is a lot of discussion about the interest that was generated because Firefly being linked to Joss Whedon and his previous projects (notably Buff the Vampire Slayer) for us that simply wasn't a factor. When we first watched the series in 2002 we'd never heard of Joss and we couldn't stand "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Firefly for us and we believe in all contexts stands uniquely on its own. The show successfully created a new universe which could still continue to be populated with new plot-lines if anyone decides to give it another go.

So, what is about Firefly that makes it so special. We'll try to put into perspective:

1. The characters were not just unique, they were memorable. This goes for nearly the entire cast which is a fairly remarkable achievement.
2. The show's premise was cool. It's a bit of a civil war theme juxtaposed into space several hundred years hence. We've got a ship full of renegades / pirates fighting to survive in a galaxy ruled by an oppressive "Alliance" with new frontiers and dark dangers lurking out there - just beyond reach.
   
3. The Genre Mash-up was just fun to watch. We love Westerns, We love Sci-Fi - why not combine them? Works for us.
4. The quality of the show's dialog - the scripts. We love good writing.
   
5. The musical score - when someone does it right - it makes a huge difference in helping to create the ambiance for a show. The music for Firefly helped solidify the cultural connection of that is the Space Cowboy.
   

Good writing is fun to watch - sounds odd but it's true

We have to ask ourselves again - why are all the most interesting, innovative shows getting cancelled before they have a chance to really bloom? What's at work here - let's take a look at the possible causes:

• The current ratings system isn't necessarily a good predictor of long-term ratings or marketability. A loyal fanbase can bring profit over a much longer timeframe than one season - yet decisions are based on what happens on in the that season without taking into account other mitigating factors.
  

• People are too unsophisticated to appreciate something novel - naaay - we're not buying that.
  

• The networks and studios are risk averse. It doesn't take much to scare them off of an interesting project. These folks tend to be more comfortable running with show formulas they're familiar with. When something new rolls in it is always scary.
  

The movie version was awesome - what more can we say?

Mr. Whedon has gone on to do some very interesting things since Firefly including the recent Thor movie and the upcoming Marvel Avengers flick, but perhaps he'll give Firefly another shot sometime later on - we certainly hope so.

We'd also like to see more of the cast in other projects, particular the actress who played Inara (Morena Baccarin), as well as Nathan Fillion. Christina Hendricks who had a recurring role on Firefly hit it big on AMC's Madmen and Summer Glau went to star in the Sarah Conner Chronicles.

Check out our complete YouTube playlist for Firefly on the Raving Reviews Channel...


Copyright 2011, Raving Reviews™

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