Porco Rosso

Ok, anime is always a good thing, but most times the disjointed storytelling is really annoying. The writers and animators seem to think you've been following their story arcs since inception, and if you haven't, don't care enough to fill in enough backstory to tell you what the plot is really about. Porco Rosso is different.

The storyline is clean, well exposited and easy to understand. That is to say, written for an average Western audience, aged 5 to 7 years. Few anime conventions are present beyond the absolutely required. the artwork and voice-over is very well executed, and if I have any issues, it is with the popeye villains, but even they are well rendered and more than cardboard cutouts.

The cast includes many famous North American actors such as
Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Susan Egan, Brad Garrett, David Ogden Stiers, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Bobby Edner and Bradley Pierce, and has seamlessly integrated the english dialog into the original japanese mouth movements, not an easy task.

Great flick for the family. Parents, adults and small children, will all enjoy this tale of pirates and love and realization.

Critiquegod's grade O for OUTSTANDING!

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Ok, Jessica Alba is a very pretty lady, but Sue Storm is a pretty gutsy lady. Michael Chicklis and Julian McMahon as The Thing and Dr. Doom are very good. The movie wasn't worth the price I paid to watch it. Stan Lee's appearence notwithstanding, I was very disapointed. Galactus was a shadow figure of Doom, not a hyper appetite with reason, and the ease with which the character of Reed Richards seperated the Silver Surfer from his board was annoying. Not to mention the agony of put upon celebrity weddings. Special effects can only tell so much of a story, and they were really hard pressed to tell anything of the story. Go to your local library, read the comics, save your money, and your sanity.

Critiquegod's rating D for Dreadful Not even a semi nude Alba could save this turkey

The 11th Hour

Ok, so my wife is a closet member of the PSEB, and so I've had to watch just about everything that Patrick Stewart has ever acted in. Some of it is great, both in concept and in execution, and some of it isn't.

The 11th Hour is a 4 part TV series built in concept and written originally by Stephen Gallagher of Dr. Who fame and was presented as a drama of sorts, written to showcase the terrible dangers of science and the evils thereof.

So I watch as the main character, Ian Hood, played by Patrick Stewart finds himself in a field where stillborn fetus' have been buried, along with crucifix's by a person who is in the employ of someone who Mr Hood has dubbed Jepeto. Fortunately for the plot the person who was hired to dispose of the "medical waste" has an attack of conscience once he realizes that what he is being asked to dispose of is unborn children. However it is not enough of an attack to make him call the constabulary and report his part time employers. The labyrinthian trail leads us to a 19 yr old pregnant girl with a truly repulsive ex boyfriend, and then on through a somewhat torturous path to a multi-millionaire who lost his son to a genetic disorder.
So, lets keep this short. You can find the plot summaries on Wikipedia.

The problems that I have with this is not the acting. Mr Stewart does an admirable job with what he is given, as does Ashley Jensen, who acts and Mr Hoods bodyguard and police (sorry Special Branch) and who actually fires her weapon at the fleeing car that they have managed to track down. Ms Jensen should have gotten a role on the new series Torchwood, she isn't nearly as naive as the current police girl.

No, the problem with this program is that they didn't see fit to assemble an ensemble that could engage the brain with the different areas of science portrayed. CSI is more than just Grissom. It's Grissom, Katherine, Warrick, Sara, Nick, Hodges, and Brass. 11th Hour is Mr Hood and his trusty bodyguard. It's not enough. I believe there can be some truly awesomely intelligent people in the world, but nobody is the best at every aspect of science. Hood apparently is. This isn't even Dr. Who, which suffers in my humble opinion, from the "pennies" budget problems. The sets were fine, the locations fine, the acting fine, but the stories just wouldn't hold me. I watched 3 of the episodes, and just couldn't really watch the 4th one.

Critiquegod's rating A for acceptable (but you better like Patrick Stewart)

Political Blogs I've been reading.

So, I'm a political junkie, and you've all read the OCD post about webcomics so it should come as no surprise that I read the news, depressing tho most of it is, and I follow the political football game that is played out on so many of the world's stages.

I've run across a bunch of political blogs that I like, and some that are just annoying as hell... I'll mention the ones that I like.

The Onion. Satire at it's finest.
Loliticz.com Political commentary and humor in the general theme of the lolcats meme. Sometimes dang funny, mostly current, and some interesting srsly articles inside as well. Promotes voting if you live in a democracy.
Jon Swift's Blog Jon is a conservative blogger who likes to skewer pols almost as much as I like to see them skewered.

Ok, that's it for now... I'll add to this list as I get more time..

all of the above get an E for exceeds expectations.

Boondock Saints

This is a movie that was pulled from general release due to the Colombine Tragedy, but even in our Politically Correct Society this movie should have been re-released and hyped for all it was worth.

Boondock Saints is told from an odd point of view, with information displayed on the screen so even the less gifted among us can follow along. We are introduced to two young men during a church service, who seem to have their own ways of worship. We follow through several clips of these two young guys working in several jobs, none of which seem to click with them, and all of which seem to show the audience that they are prone to solving many of their problems by fighting. A third character is introduced as a "runner" for the local mafioso, and he is seen to be the two brothers friend, at least in as much as he is defended by the brothers when trouble (in the form of three Russian mobsters) rears its head in the brothers favorite pub. This defense has consequences that are rather dire for the mobsters and the brothers as well, and leads them down a path towards more violence, in the name of eradicating evildoers. The appearance of an FBI crime task force expert on the scene (played by Willem Dafoe) serves to lend the film a rather surreal atmosphere while helping the narrative along by showing the audience various other crime scenes and interpretations. Comedic relief is provided by Dafoe's character singling out one of the detectives whose theories are most absurd.
We are led down a slippery slope of somewhat theoretically Christian based vengeance to a conclusion that is exceptionally graphic and thought provoking. Should individuals be entitled to commit the worst of crimes to defend the innocent? This movie asks the question and lets the audience answer as it will.

Critiquegod's grade O for OUTSTANDING!