Watching the first part of season 5 of Breaking Bad. It is a pretty intense show and I've really enjoyed it. It is a lot more predictable than say, Game of Thrones, but it is very enjoyable.

Game of Thrones. Trolled us. Hard. In this season finale. They really did.

Mr. Grits and I had a “discussion” earlier about what would be in the final episode. I won!

(All right, I didn’t guess what was in the episode, but I did say NO IT’S NOT or something similar about things that were not in it. So while I wasn’t technically right, I still call it a win! )

I thought it has been pretty generally accepted that this will occur in episode 2 of season 4.

There has been some dispute over whether the other event you mention would occur this episode. Myself, I've always been in the camp that was certain that couldn't happen. In terms of narrative pace, it's way too soon for that. If I were the show runners I would certainly hold off on that until next season and was not surprised when Benioff and Weiss did so.

I can't say I feel trolled in any way. Just my opinion.

About the pace, I actually was under the impression it would be an hour longer, so I was expecting many things to happen. Since it didn't happen that way, season 4 may just begin with a bang with Lady Stoneheart and the event I mentioned above. Episode 9 was great, but episode 10 was alright. Not what I expected though.

But man oh man did I enjoy seeing Arya. Love this scene.

And of course, our heroic Dany in the last scene! Go Dany! So emotional!

I started watching The Night Stalker. Not the original series, but the reboot with Stuart Townsend. It did have a nice cameo of Darren McGavin from the original show, cgi'd into one scene in the pilot. That was really cool. So far so good. I noticed that one of the writers is Frank Spotnitz. X-Files fans should remember that name.

Stuart Townsend looks really weird though. Maybe it is just the short hair, but he looks completely different from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He looks even more different in XIII. I wonder if he has been killed and replaced by a not so accurate Life Model Decoy?

Superman: Man of Steel...

Oh my frickin' Gods... ...

It's really quite an amazing bit 'o' film that is...

Fair dues to Goyer, Nolan and Snyder...They really have completely ignored the other films (including no references to the John Williams theme, which I was expecting to hear towards the end.) and it works far better than any of the others ever did...

Henry Cavill is brilliant, Russell Crowe is proper superb and Amy Adams is just Amy Adams with attitood...But hey, who cares?... ...

And finaly, a damned decent Super-fight!!...

It actually gave some hope towards a decent Flash film at some point...

But anyways...Amazing stuff...Loved it...

So, I saw Man of Steel this past weekend, going with my father as a Father's Day activity to see a movie about a son of two worlds.

Let's start with this: I think they're better about 'getting' Superman. They definitely took the best approach I have ever seen when it comes to Krypton's death and I for one would not change any of that part of the film. It is Glorious and Magnificent in everything it does for Kal-El's homeworld.

The acting is superb. Amy Adams makes a tough b!tch of a reporter that Lois Lane has desperately needed. Henry Cavill brings us a Superman that is truly 'Super,' a verifiable god amongst us mortals that is finding his place in a society that he wishes to simultaneously be a part of and be an inspiration towards greatness. Christopher Meloni sheds Stabler and truly fills out the role as an Air Force colonel that is determined to defend his country and his way of life. I could go on about the rest of the cast, but suffice it to say I think no role was mis-cast, but five must be discussed in greater detail.

Ayelet Zurer, the least depicted of Superman's parents, is about as good as can be expeceted in the role of Lara Lor-Van, birth mother of Kal-El and wife of Jor-El. The story (spoilers, but not) starts with her birthing of Kal-El, which, we learn in about five minutes, is the first natural birth of any Kryptonian in centuries, the planet's society long ago having turned to artificial birthing means. She displays all of the emotions of a mother, torn at once between keeping her precious son and sending him away on a trip that might kill him. Alas, there's little enough of this in the final film, and at two hours and twenty-three minutes, it seems like Snyder and co. were cutting seconds wherever they could. Cross your fingers for a Director's Cut, and this will matter soon.

Russell Crowe reminds us why he's an Oscar-winning actor, portraying Jor of the House of El with all the gravitas he brought to Maximus Decimus Meridius and the forward thinking intelligence he demonstrated in A Beautiful Mind. He appears more often, the function of a computerized projection with his memories encoded in the key sent with his son to guide him in the same manner Marlon Brando did with the Donner-verse Superman. The technology's evolved and the source of Krypton's death has changed, but Jor-El remains constant as the scientist and philosopher that foresaw the death of his world and tried one last gamble to save his son and his world by flinging a light into the future to a world that is just beginning to reach for the stars.

Kevin Costner as Jonathon Kent was the other half to Jor-El's paternal influence, and anchors the thematic elements of nature vs. nurture that Man of Steel is advocating. He recognizes Clark's world-changing nature, and the manner of Clark Kent's upbringing is shown as a series of flashbacks that involve the use and development of his abilities coupled with the response you should expect out of Costner playing all-American Dad. The film starts with Clark as an adult, so the majority of the Smallville scenes play out as flashbacks to this incidents of a formative youth in Kansas. If Jor-El wasn't enough reason, then Papa Kent's loving fatherhood alone is enough to make this a Father's Day movie, and I don't give that one up easily.

Diane Lane as Martha Kent is exactly what you should expect of her, a great actress depicting a great mother to a son that needs more than most when it comes to parenthood. Her scene with a very young Clark hiding in a closet is the first we get of Superman's Earth parents. and for her alone we could have made this a Mother's Day movie, were it not for the fact that Marvel has basically called 'Dibs' on all of May. By the design of the narrative, she actually gets the most amount of time present, sharing not only the scenes with Jonathon Kent but also some of the expected mother-son scenes when Papa Kent was presumably out of town delivering the harvest and she would be expected to run the entirety of the farm. She's good, she shows why she should be in more films of this type, and she shows a certain toughness to old farmers you'd expect out of a piece of Daedric plate armor.

The one actor, however, that puts this all to shame is Michael Shannon, who takes the role of General Zod and makes you ask "Terence Who?" It's tough for me to say this, because I always found it difficult to reconcile the character development of Zod in the comics since the release of Superman II (Keep to the Richard Donner Cut, the original release is a piece of Cacat) but it's something that's been happening for years, and at this point the story in the films needs a new start. Shannon delivers. Boy, does he deliver. There are a few moments there where you truly understand the villain, and his actions come off as being perfectly in line with his stated intentions. There's a sort of sympathy in there, if only because it becomes apparent that he refuses to see himself as a victim of circumstance even when he is, but Michael Shannon owns the role and this is why I love the guy. Well, this, and his reading of that sorority profanity letter on FunnyOrDie. That stuff's hilarious, but I won't link to it because the sheer amount of profanity in the material that Shannon reads would blow the moderators here to about the same degree as Krypton's destruction.

All of this, however, detracts from one important thing: writing pace. This is the biggest screw-up of the movie, as it speeds certain elements of the mythos to a solar-empowered Kryptonian's top speed while slowing other parts down to about the level you'd expect of molasses running uphill in a New England winter. Clark Kent doesn't become Superman until he's 33, much longer than depicted in the comics, and then Lois Lane launches a blitz into trying to track down a mysterious do-gooder, a film in its own right, only to be interrupted by the rapid arrival of Zod and crew. What follows is more extended dialogue, flashbacks, monologues, and then a seemingly endless climactic fight between super beings. Individually, all good. PResentation: spot on. Hans Zimmer's score, or the magnificent use of visual effects, I don't know what's better.

But it is paced so poorly. And the writing is particularly at fault, which makes it all the more difficult to reconcile the spectacle with the narrative. It feels like a rushed version of the myth, like a recounting of Heracles's Twelve Labors with the first three rushed through, the next seven quietly detailed in exposition, and then a long, drawn-out detailing of every part of the final two, with pages focusing on each step of the journey. They could have done this part better, and the ending feels rushed as a result, shoe-horning a bunch of dangling plot threads to a conclusion that could have been left as the strings for hooking up the sequel. Instead, we get one scene at the end to do this, and it's nowhere near enough to compensate for all the events that were used to wrap up the final big fight scene. That scene, by the way, is about what you'd expect for a knock-down, drag-out fight between Kryptonians, and its resolution is going to remain controversial for a while.

In all, I can state that this is a new Superman. It's got a lot of potential. The ground is fertile for this story. I just wish the next project remembered that the Kents were farmers, and they allowed more even growing to occur while leaving enough left at the end to seed a potential third film or Justice League crossover.

So...you recommend seeing this movie?

Yeah.

Watching the new Kolchack: The Night Stalker got me in the mood to see the original series with Darren McGavin. I have been just loving them. I would not call it good, but it is a ton of fun. Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland (the editor Vinchenzo) are just great together. I just love their arguments!

I also noticed something. The new show from 2005's episodes are about 42 minutes long. When I was watching Babylon 5 before it (from 1995) the episodes were 44 minutes and change. The original Night Stalker from 1974 were 51 minutes long! We have been getting robbed of airtime by the commercials! Lousy money-grubbing networks...

I’ve been watching Longmire, a quiet crime series set in modern Wyoming. I am generally not a fan of CSI type shows, so watching a low-tech rural sheriff’s department deal with so far pretty simple crimes is enjoyable to me. These guys don’t talk about trace evidence. They have to figure it out.

I also like the somewhat bleak setting and taciturn locals. When the newcomer characters come on the scene the cultural differences are evident without any explaining. Even the wardrobe choices speak. For example one woman’s clothing and accessories look western, but they’re the sort of things one might buy from an expensive catalog. That’s not an accident.

The main character is likeable but has real issues. It takes an entire season for the most recent backstory to be revealed, and by then the characters are ready to be real with each other rather than sharing a round of the swelling-music-hugs so often shown.

We’re almost caught up. There’s a this season marathon on A&E this weekend, and then the new episodes air Mondays. (In the US.)

Longmire is in my instant viewing queue on Netflix, same with Continuum, which also looks neat. I just have not gotten the time to watch either yet.

Over the last three nights we've watched the Jurassic Park movies...We quite enjoyed them really...There was good and bad in all of them...But still a decent watch...

The wife and I were shocked at how many bits that we remembered from the cinema seemed to be cut out...And we can't for the life of us figure why?...

Usually cutting for time is done for the cinema - hence the extended version DVDs...*Shrug*...makes no sense why...

Just watched "Stand Up Guys" and enjoyed it immensely. It was a fun movie that kept me entertained for the entire play time.

I watched The Seven Samurai a few days ago. A simply outstanding movie. But a bit long at 3.5 hours. Toshiro Mifune was just spectacular. I read that he had been originally cast as the kensai, and it was going to be The Six Samurai. But after thinking about it, Kurosawa decided that six stone-faced samurai would be a bit too staid. So he added the character of Kikuchiyo (whom I will always lovingly think of as "The Monkey Boy"), and recast Mifune in the role. He wanted a character who was off-kilter, that would add some fun to the whole thing, and gave Mifune a lot of license in making that happen. It worked!

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Jun 26 2013, 01:59 AM

Dude. Jurassic Park was my childhood movie. When I was seven all I did was watch The Lost World over and over

It was my favorite dinosaur movie of all time. Still is.

Same here, DE. Same here.

This reminds me of cereal boxes. The net weight of cereal boxes has gotten lighter and lighter over the decades. Like they think we won't notice. Ha!

(Most of you are probably too young to know what I'm talking about, but hey... )

Jurassic Park was and still is good. The Lost World was and still is crap.