All posts in “TV shows”

Heroes: How to ruin a TV show

Posted 19 years ago · Tagged: heroes · 1 Comment

Is it really necessary to yell SPOILERS? Anyway, I know the first part of the second season has received a lot of bad criticism already, but I still feel like giving my 50 cents about it, since I just ran through the entire volume and I’m feeling a bit… agitated. One of the main problems with the first season was the huge amount of creative license, i.e. important people randomly meeting each other in the middle of nowhere, and stuff like that. In the second season they’ve upped the ante, they use creative license every other minute, and the writing is just awful, it seems like every time they stumbled upon a problem in the story they just made some weird coincidence happen, seriously, it’s everywhere. For example: Claire’s love interest West not only has powers, but he’s also been kidnapped by Claire’s dad. Hiro Nakamura goes back in time to the exact place of his hero Kensei, and what do you know, he’s the same guy who’s trying to destroy the world 400 years later. And Sylar just happens to stumble upon Maya and Alejandro in the middle of a Mexican desert.

It’s obviously a result of bad writing, it just didn’t seem like they cared, as mentioned there was a lot of creative license in season one as well, but it seemed to mostly be used at important moments, in season two they just use it all the time, and it’s ruining the show. That and the fact that the new stories are extremely uninteresting, I don’t care about Hiro messing around in Japan. The Monica storyline is so fucking annoying as well, I don’t care about her, and why doesn’t she just watch superhero movies and stuff, she’d be just as invincible as Peter. Then she even gets herself taken hostage, even though she could’ve just kicked their asses. So, to sum it up: unnecessary and/or annoying storylines: Hiro in Japan, Alejandro and Maya, Peter in Ireland, Claire’s love interest, and especially Monica being a douche.

The writers also open way too many solutions, and then I just get annoyed when they don’t use those obvious solutions to solve problems, such as Nathan getting shot in the end, just inject him with some of Claire’s blood for fucks sake…

And what’s with all the fucking gullibility?! Maya believes and trusts Sylar in no time, and Peter protects Adam blindly, even though he’s presented to a hell of a lot of proof that Adam’s bad, just because Adam helped Nathan. Mohinder even fucking joins the company, that didn’t really surprise me though, since he’s more or less retarded.

Kristen Bell is hot though.

EFC: Course-introductions

Posted 19 years ago · 2 Comments

The Shooting Games are almost done, the last one is tomorrow, and from next week we'll start doing courses for two weeks at a time. Seems like I'm gonna be on 'Doc Eye 1: Visions', the course about documentaries. After those two weeks I'll hopefully be on the scriptwriting course.

As usual we've seen a lot of movies this and last week, but we've also been introduced more detailed to the courses, the presentations were more a chance for us to learn stuff about the teachers though. For instance, today we saw a documentary called Memory of Berlin, created by our documentary teacher, a Brit named John Burgan. The documentary is about his life in the UK and Berlin, and how specific things in his life fits into the social regime in East Berlin and eventually the fall of the wall. He's also adopted so there was a lot about his search for his birth parents. It was quite interesting to watch, and it was pretty cool that the creator was sitting next to us, he made the documentary in cooperation with ZDF, the German TV channel.

Earlier this week our direction teacher, Mikael Hylin, introduced his course, and he has an impressive resume. He had brought stuff from all the things he had done; he's made two feature films, opera shows, TV-shows etc. For instance he was the guy who directed and produced the first season of Expedition Robinson (Swedish) and then the first Danish season of it. For some reason he also had the storyboard for Alien: Resurrection, which was awesome! He screened one of his feature films, it's called Hassel, and it's a typical Swedish crime-story. The story was quite bad, and I was relieved to find out that he felt the same way, apparently there had been some problems with the script-writers, the movie was an adaption, and they changed a lot of things. The technical aspect of the movie was very impressive though, his budget was only about 7.000.000 DKK, but it looks like it's cost at least 50 millions, and he was also very proud of that part of the movie, ie. there are a lot of firefights, car chases and some explosions.

I also directed my first movie last Friday, it was the third installment of Shooting Games, and the first movie of all Shooting Games that I actually felt proud to show for the rest of the audience. I'll see if I can get it online. Tomorrow I'll be behind the camera, it'll be fun, I have some responsibility, but I can mostly relax and let the directors run the show.

Kevin Smith to direct Heroes episode

Posted 19 years ago · Tagged: heroes, kevin smith · 3 Comments

At this year’s Comic-Con Kevin Smith was announced as a director for one of the episodes of Heroes: Origin, the spin-off series of Heroes. I’ve been watching Heroes, and it’s pretty cool, and I like Kevin Smith, so I think this is great news. Also because he’s a comic geek, anyway here’s the announcement, it’s worth a watch just because of the crowds cheering.

I’ve also just ordered Smith’s two Q&A sessions called An Evening with Kevin Smith and An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder (6Â£ each), Smith has a real talent for telling stories and I’ve been watching some clips from these sessions on YouTube for a while, and it’s really funny.

Review: Bleach

Posted 19 years ago · Tagged: anime, bleach · Comments Off

I’m very fascinated by manga and anime, recently I’ve wanted to read and watch more of it, and I had heard about the popular manga-turned-anime Bleach, so I started watching it about a month ago…

… and it’s actually very entertaining, it’s about this 15-year old boy Ichigo Kurosaki, who is forced to become a substitute Death God, a warrior who slays hollows, evil ghosts that used to be deceased human souls, that lost their hearts to despair or remained in the real world for too long. Ichigo gets his new powers from Rukia Kuchiki, a real Death God who transfers her powers to Ichigo because she is wounded in a fight with a hollow. Annoyed at first, Ichigo eventually accepts the duty as a Death God, performing so-called soul burials on wayward souls and hunting down hollows, cleansing their spirits and sending them back to Soul Society, the home of souls and Death Gods.

In the second season (or ‘arc’) it all gets a lot more exciting, Rukia is taken back to Soul Society and sentenced to death, because transferring Death God powers to a human is forbidden. The second and third arc is about Ichigo travelling to Soul Society trying to rescue her. So far there are six arcs and I saw the last episode of the third arc today (which means I’ve seen 60 episodes so far, damn).

The coolest part about Bleach is the fighting and build-ups before the fights. The show is very well animated and there are a lot of scenes with powerful characters fighting the less powerful (or so they think) Ichigo and then going “holy shit you kick ass”, kind of like Neo going apeshit in the end of The Matrix. It’s clichÃ©, but for some reason it never gets old, especially not when it’s presented so great. As mentioned there’s a lot of these sequences in Bleach, the second and third arc primarily focuses on Ichigo training, thus building up incredible powers and then gaining the ability to defeat characters that kicked his ass at some earlier point in the series.

But the fights would be nothing without the additional, minor storylines, for example, two fairly unknown characters are about to fight, but before they start we see a long flashback about their history, how they meet, who they are, etc. and it makes the battle more exciting. There’s also a lot of background information about the main characters, and that’s the second reason why I’m enjoying Bleach so much. Some of the episodes are kind of stupid though, they suddenly focus on something completely different than the main storyline, and the Japanese humor and drawing style is a bit too much once in a while, but the majority of the episodes are really worth a watch.

Bleach: 1^st to 3^rd arc: 8/10.

If you’re interested, you can watch the first episode right here.

More information about the show can be found on WikiPedia, here.

Lost Season 3

Posted 19 years ago · Tagged: jj abrams, lost · Comments Off

Spoilers ahead. The best tv-show in the world at the moment, Lost, had its third season finale yesterday with two episodes. I watched them this morning but I still can't stop thinking about them. They exceeded all my expectations, and they are some of the best episodes of the entire show. Jack beating Ben was quite satisfying, Charlie dying was sad, but seemed inevitable, the video chat with Penelope, and the surprise that Naomi probably hasn't got anything to do with her, was a nice little twist, but the most amazing part of the final was, of course, the flash-forward of Jack being a miserable bum, an unknown period of time after they've left the island. That part makes me look forward to the next season alot more than I thought I would. It wouldn't surprise me if we'll see flash-forwards for most characters in the next season, and then see what happens after the flashes in the fifth season. Oh yeah, I'd also really like to see Locke team up with Jacob. Lost Season 3: 10/10.