Team Xero #011

Two agencies are again emperilling the world in their eternal battle for world superiority! And, in this special episode, a very special guest star!



And again, the eternal battle with non-English accents to make the words semi-intelligible.

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Torchwood: Miracle Day Five

I received some negative feedback about my last negative review... in which case, let me advise that, generally speaking, this is not the review series for you.

A lot of set up again. They want to find out what's happening to category one patients, and so they spend over half an hour infiltrating various overflow camps to find the secret of the Module. Are the writer's really trying to stretch things out to only one small plot point per episode? What about PhiCorp, what's going on there?

Anyway, the big reveal... the overflow camps are... yes, I'm going to say it... implementing the Final Solution. Although we have yet to find out how much you need to incinerate someone to destroy them. And I would have thought that, presuming PhiCrop is behind the construction of the module, that they'd come up with a better way to eradicate people than with fire... especially with all the alien tech that's lying around... But that's dancing around the point that we are in full on Nazi territory here. Does Godwin's Law now state that the series will end?

So, goodbye Doctor Alverez. Can't say I'm that shocked about it (she was just a guest star after all). But that's what happens when you start accusing people who are more than a little unstable... but what about Phil? Bit of a wet noodle there, doesn't reflect well on the military. Did anyone complain about that? Be interesting to see if what's-his-name-in-charge gets comeuppance for doing that...

Since I've been talking about the last ten minutes, I also need to talk about Danes. This is the first credible performance I've seen from Pullman this series! This kicks that plot line up a bit, however he's still playing puppy to PhiCorp. However... Angels? Not sure about that, but, hey, Danes is whack.

This series could be at a turning point, but it better turn hard. We're half-way into it, so ramp it up people!


Next week: I'm guessing the head of PhiCorp is revealed to be Hitler's brain?

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Page One: Inside the New York Times

This is about the New York Times (as you might be able to tell from the title), and the fight to get onto the front page, Page One. It's also about: is the mainstream media still viable?

This really is a movie of pieces. The movie bounces around several topics, mainly concentrating on the media desk (which is reporting about how the newspaper media is operating), and some colourful characters (it's obvious why David Carr is often front and center before the camera). However... it's that it's a collection of items that causes problems, it hard to say that there's a central story that the movie is trying to tell, instead it gives brief snippets of little ideas that hopefully come together to make something as a whole (hey, it's like a newspaper, lots of articles! ... if the director was deliberately doing that, he can bite me).

Should have been a better film... and I bet Andrew Rossi is kicking himself that this is screening around the time of the Murdoch explosion...

[I saw this at the Paramount, and I was waaaaay in the back. If I had watched this on my netbook, I would have seen a bigger picture! Not doing that again...]


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Something Ventured

This film is not about the companies that have become big, in particular the computer companies. No, Something Ventured is about the people that gave those people money.

This is a talking heads documentary, and most of the people... basically all of them... look to be retired now, so you can tell this is about the last century. There are several success stories about small money being ventured and big returns, and one or two less successful stories.

This is the history of venture capitalism, and we get to meet powerful people... but the blurb said they "speak frankly about risk, loss, gain and the ruthlessness with which business can treat its innovators". Not really. They told their stories, but it was just the stories, no particular lessons learnt (aside from about firing people), so there was an aspect missing there.

Mildly interesting, but nothing incredibly fascinating.


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Five of the Furious

Obviously some exec asked "how can we have a Fast Five million?", to which the answer is "crack out another in the Vin Diesel franchise (and sure sure the series can crank out more)".

In this movie, Vin blah blah races cars, blah blah races more cars around blah blah Rio. Yeah, a simple cookie cutter plot that doesn't stretch itself in any way. Lots of set pieces, although that last one in the movie completely defies any real physics of this world.

But, you know, at least they attempt to put in something approaching a character arc. Whether trying to save the girl, or get back at someone over a girl... there's always something (involving a girl, it seems). And yet, in this one... there's some token effort about 'family', but even then those scenes have absolutely nothing to do with anything, provide no motivation, and aren't so much an 'arc' as 'something shown on screen'.

This movie features such characters as... Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Ludacris, Dwayne Johnson, Joaquim de Almeida... yeah, they aren't playing characters so much as just being themselves, largely because the script isn't really about people, it's about set pieces involving cars.

Blah blah heist movie blah blah cars blah blah see if it you like those things...

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Ghost Riders of the Storm

It's that Nicholas Cage movie where you get to see inside his head! Literally!

Nicholas Cage goes around riding a bike. Then Mephistopheles contracts him to... ride a bike. And get into CGI fights. All in the name of... well, hang on, if Mephistopheles didn't try to get the contract, Blackheart wouldn't have after it either, so it's all his fault... (Law and the Multiverse discusses how the soul contracts work, although they don't address what damages Mephistopheles is liable for when Ghost Rider goes around setting everything on fire.)

Anyway, Cage is there, on screen, doing his thing, and being entirely believable as someone who's skull is on fire. And this comes across as two different movies. Until the end, Johnny Blaze is doing his thing, and Ghost Rider is doing his thing, and eventually the two plotlines meet up. Eve Mendes is there to show off her cleavage (seriously, woman, do some buttons up!). Sam Elliot is there to steal all the scenes Cage is in (note: not actually that hard). And Peter Fonda is there for no-one to recognise him.

I'm not the first person to say this is not a good movie. Moreover, at this point, I'm going to jump on the bandwagon that the sequel probably won't get much better.

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Raising Hell four more times

I liked the first Hellraiser movie (which was very faithful to the book). The second one was bizarre but fun. The third was more of a sequel to the first, although still weird. And I though the fourth capped things off nicely, although it's not as well liked. But, of course, there was money to be made with the franchise, so here's another four movies. (There look to be more, but these were the ones I could get my hands on.)

Inferno (2000): Joe is a Bad Cop(tm). Fools around on his wife, takes evidence from crime scenes, uses others to cover his tracks, etc., etc. So when he stupidly, accidentally opens the gate to the Cenobites, they make his life Hell, tearing apart everything he knew. Yeah, it's not subtle, and the only reason to keep watching is to see what horror tableau the filmmakers came up with next. The best actor by far is still Doug Bradley as Pinhead.

Hellseeker (2002): Not a great movie. Kirsty (from the first and third movie) returns, and it killed in the beginning of this movie. Her husband (who decided that the cube was a good anniversary present) starts descending into hell as all women want to be with him, and it seems that he might have had some nefarious purposes that he now can't remember and so are unraveling all around him. Given the central conceit of this movie (which I won't give away) is stupid, the rest of the movie is just a shell trying to hide that fact, and it doesn't pay out. Doug Bradley, yay, Ashley Lawrence, nay.

Deader (2005): As in 'this series has become' it seems. Amy Klein is tracking down a story, and it leads to a group that can bring the dead back to life, but it interacts with the domain of the Cenobites, and they are not happy about that. It seems there's some kind of war going on, which could be interesting, but that plot line isn't explained further in the preference of investigating Amy's backstory. Which involves a knife, which becomes highly significant as... actually, no, not really. Nothing is significant here. And this seems to be the tenth take on explaining the Cenobites and not doing it well. Another waste of time. This one involve Doug Bradley, Kari Wuhrer and Marc Warren.

Hellworld (2005): [yes, churned out, it seems, the same time as above] Um... is this movie the same franchise as the rest of them? People known about the cube, young people go to a party about it, and then... well, the (near) ending sequence is like it's from another horror series entirely. It's like this was another script entirely that had Pinhead inserted into it (which, you know, it was). This might have been a decent enough movie itself, but hooking it into the Hellraiser series, at number eight, just makes it sad. It does star Doug Bradley, Kathryn Winnick and Lance Henriksen for some reason!

(I even have one of the Hellraiser Cube replicas!)

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