First, at long last, the amazing, poised, and sensible Jennifer Lawrence is going to bring the fierce Katniss Everdeen to the screen in “The Hunger Games.” I loved this series, I loved the character, I loved the story, I even loved the conclusion. I cannot say how great a series I think THG is for teens. It looks like they’ve gotten the direction right on this one.

Aaaaaand… while I loved Iron Man I/II and even liked some of the sillier moments of “Thor” (although I liked all the moments Kat Dennings was on screen), I skipped “Captain America” without much of a thought. But…

I am so excite for “The Avengers.”^*

It even appears that they may have found a formulation of The Hulk (eschewing the overwrought Ang Lee vision and the other one) that captures Bruce Banner’s conflict and gives it a dash of, dare I say, humor. I’m not expecting “Apocalypse Now,” but…LOOK AT THIS TRAILER^**

For the first time since maybe The Matrix II (lament!), I am so excite for (pre-?) summer movie season.

^* For super-nerd cred it’s so refreshing to see Thor using Mjollnir with abandon!
^** Yes, the trailer has completely telegraphed the morality lesson of the movie: until the heroes learn to quell their egoes and fight as a team, they cannot win; incidentally this is also the thing that a greasy-haired bad guy is not able to do, since he commands out of fear instead of valor, etc.

Your cover of “Science Fiction Double Feature” won my heart…

In the first season plot served as a vehicle to provide experiences that created emotional tension that, when acted out, could be embellished or advanced by means of singing. The second season lost all interest in this and has focused on creating song set-pieces which the characters are carried into by means of a gruel-thin plot.

For example, in the first season, after a particularly rough bit of romantic let-down, Mercedes gets rather angry and vandalizes the offender’s vehicle to the tune of “Bust Your Windows.” See, reality and frustration and dialog (in short, plot and characterization) before a song.

It is now clear that artistic direction on the show has done a 180. The plots to set up the songs are absurdly stupid (cf. Bieber episode, Britney Spears¹ episode). Basically, pick 12 minutes of video-karaoke you want to do and string it together with a storyline bearing the plot rigor of a “Thundercats” episode.

What I liked, and didn’t realize until the last few episodes of the first season, is that what this show was saying was: “Life in high school is hard ( no news ) and sometimes you don’t know how you’re going to make it through; but sometimes with a few friends, drug use, and a positive attitude about something that gives your life passionate fire (like show choir), you can make it through.”

In the first season there was life and it was prior to singing. You’ll recall that the blonde girl was a teen mother in the first season, the adult character was having some fidelity / marriage issues, one character was dealing with homosexual identity in a place unwelcoming thereunto and another was a “jock” who was penned in by his rôle within the social hierarchy, etc. Those plot points have been simply ignored — effectively there was a reboot and most of the plot’s forward urgency was simply discarded.

As such, it has made the show, as Ryan said: “a karaoke-a-thon” that has no interest for me. Too bad. It should have been more than a fap-fest or political soap-box for the show’s direction.

1. I still love the “Brittany S. Peirce” character whose zingers and ditzy one-liners are the best part of the show. And that girl can dance.

In Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” heart strings are tugged as toys are left behind, subject to jeopardy, or wage petty internecine battles. All of this tugs at our emotional response as they toys seem to say “Remember to play, and play with us, don’t get rid of us — don’t throw away your sense of childlike wonder by scrapping us.”

And so I am confused, Pixar, what am I to think about the acquisition of gizmos and geegaws of plastic and metal?

1. The greatest “Tonight Show” presenter ever was Johnny Carson
2. Conan gets the axe because NBC sucks and he will go somewhere else
3. Jay has ruined audience goodwill and “The Tonight Show” will fail spectacularly
4. Jimmy Fallon will have a “tragic accident”
5. Carson Daly will be left the lone man standing

Check and Mate, sir

Proof

They’re both named “Carson” for a reason.

Imagines pointed ears and eyebrow makeup

Leonard Nimoy playing Bernabe Zamora on “Wagon Train.”

I wasn’t much into the comic books, but I very much liked the television drama. I first felt my true love for the minor key when I heard the Hulk theme “Lonely Man.”

Thanks to the recent addition of rabbit-ears, we get RTN, the “Retro Television Network” which shows “The Incredible Hulk” TV show weekday evenings.

While I’m no Hulk-ologist, I always liked the subconscious and everyman elements of the Banner / Hulk dichotomy. Even as a young kid I “got” that there is, in every man, a powerful force that he, betimes, may not be in control of.

So there you go. You can have your Spidey, or your Bats, but for me, it’s Hulk.

But what if you found out, one day, that the father you had never known was indeed that man who delighted in brutality? And what would you make of your mother, who had worked on her tan within screaming distance to a Polish concentration camp?

And what if your only key for making sense of this was via a woman whose family had been exterminated, a woman who was brutalized and ridiculed in the ornate villa ruled by Goeth? What if you had to encounter the most damaged by that man in order to know that man in order to know yourself?

It’s a story of atonement that not even Philip Roth could have conceived, and it’s entirely true.

“Inheratance” - POV :: PBS

—Richard Burton in 1953 on his first look at Elizabeth Taylor

She loves me…

She loves me not…