Disinformed Education

The audio commentary: the greatest love of many a modern film enthusiast. How we appreciate these glorious guided tours into the making of our favorite films! Many times we are treated to fascinating creation stories from writers, horrifying financial stories from producers, explanations from directors and even scene and method analysis from cinematographers, editors or score composers. After I finish a great film (and often even a horrible film) I nearly always click back to the special features, select ‘feature-length commentary’ and push ‘play’ again. Today, often just as fascinating as film commentaries are television commentaries. There are times though that these very commentaries that I love are nearly destroyed by one fatal error: the actors should never be invited!

Almost every time an actor appears on an audio commentary, they fill up the audio track with such inane chatter that the great work put forth by the rest of the crew is unmistakably and irreversibly degraded. I have a theory as to why this phenomenon occurs: all actors are idiots. I’m just kidding (sort of). The fact is though that the actors have one job to do in a film and that is performing in it. Outside of this cursory (albeit rather important) task, they tend to know absolutely nothing about the films’ construction. The other problem with actors on audio commentaries is quite obvious: most actors like to be the center of attention. This causes them to speak more loudly and frequently on the commentary than the people who actually matter.

One television DVD set seems to have remedied this problem… Freaks & Geeks includes multiple commentaries on every episode: one done from a technical standpoint and one done by the actors. This solves everyone’s problems because the actors are still able to pretend that they are important and the viewer (or listener) who actually cares about film can ignore them. I, for one, hope that other DVD producers follow this method and save the audio commentary from a fate worse than death: irrelevance.

Heroes meets Superman?

Did you watched Heroes last Monday? Well I did. If you did watched Heroes and have happened to catched a glimpse at Superman Returns DVD or at the movies…you would have been shocked(well maybe not schocked, but you get the idea).

If you haven’t seen the last episode then sorry but this contains spoilers! So I suggest you go to Hulu.com and watch the episode. Or! Continue reading on at your own Risk.

In this episode we finally get to see who Rebel is..and that my friend is Mika~! I just got one thing to say… I KNEW IT! The writers thought they had me fooled, but I came, saw and conquered! Because I knew it was Mika all along. Enough Bragging.

We also saw a new side of Tracy that we (well at least I) didn’t expected.She became a frozen statue and so did everyone else around her. However, the bad guy came in and put a bullet through her Icy body..Is this the end for Tracy? I sure hope not.

Now, turning it to the romantic side of the episode we saw Parkman finally getting reunited with his beloved Daphne! They finally are able to escape Building 26 and head on to a hospital where she can be treated. However when Daphne wakes up she storms off and tells Parkman is not going to work out. Parkman now is finding her through out everywhere and finally catches her in Paris! Now you are asking me how did he got there? Well he claims that he “Flew”..Really? Matt Parkman.. Flying? Are we in the right Heroes??  Well yes indeed!~ Matt Parkman flew! And so we begin to the point in this story. Daphne finally realizes that Matt Parkman is the right guy for him and Matt decides to taker her flying around Paris so she could see Paris in a whole new different way. Then.. We see Louis, I mean, Daphne get on the feet of Superman, I mean, Matt Parkman and they both fly off to the distance around Paris. Now How did I got confused? OH! Could it been that this was the exact same scene as in Superman Returns (except this was in Paris)? Coincidence? I think not. Ok well I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. We all hope that Superman and Louis, I mean, Daphne and Matt Parkman were happy…Darn it! I keep getting confused.

Now was all this a Dream? Did this really happen? Does Superman, I mean, Parkman has flying abilities? Why don’t you find out for yourself? at Hulu.com

Netflix goes after the Wii…or is it?

Do you have a Wii? Are you sick and tired of waggling the controller around and not getting the result you desire? Are you teased because your console cannot run DVD’’s, or play in High Definition Movies? Well… No More… or so we think…

According to Joystiq.com, a survey taken by fellow “netflixers” has stirred quite the commotion around the Nintendo area (at least this is what many people believe will be the case in the future). This new innovative product will allow Wii users buy a disc from Netflix and use the Wii as a streaming movie player…ain’t that neat?!

So instead of waggling your controller around and getting some calories burned… you get to point on and voila! Sit back. Relax. And enjoy the show. And have some butter smothered popcorn while you are at it too.

Dollhouse or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Joss Whedon

Joss Whedon has created some of my favorite pieces of media including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the great spin-off Angel, the doomed Firefly, the awesome feature film Serenity and everyone’s favorite straight to the internet evil super villain musical: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog. Last month came the debut of his latest potentially doomed project Dollhouse. It is about a secret facility called the Dollhouse which houses men and women called Dolls who have programmable personalities. Rich people pay to have their fantasies come true with a doll programmed specifically to their needs. There is also a subplot involving an FBI agent who is attempting to track down and expose the Dollhouse for what it really is.

Every Friday night for the last six weeks, I have been watching the new episodes of Dollhouse. Right now, you may be thinking to yourself, “I’ve got better ways to spend my Friday night than watching a television show”. Well, I do not and until this week I was feeling pretty upset about it. Episodes one through five felt extremely disjointed. There were great moments (some really awesome action sequences like the human hunting in episode two) but there were also awkward moments (every time Eliza Dushku tries to act like anyone who is not Eliza Dushku) and none of it seemed to coalesce into the high caliber entertainment experience that I have come to expect from Mr. Whedon. This became increasingly frustrating until episode five. In episode five, the subplot with the FBI agent, Paul Ballard, hunting for the Dollhouse finally seemed to be going somewhere. Immediately following the episode’s satisfying conclusion, Fox aired a trailer for episode six. While the preview used a lot of fancy marketing trickery, I luckily am able to sum it up in one simple sentence: “Tune in next week and be amazed as the show finally gets good!”

For once, the marketing department did not lie. Episode six ditched the awkward moments in favor of some serious plot exposition. We were shown how the outside world feels about the idea of the Dollhouse. We got to know the character of Paul Ballard a little bit better and started to see a reason for his unwavering determination to find the Dollhouse. We found out why Joe Hearn (the doll ‘Sierra’s’ handler) seems like such a jerk all the time (mostly because he is one). Finally we were shown a major surprise in the plot which promises to come into play in later episodes. I searched Twitter for peoples’ reaction after the show ended and a lot of them wrote things like “I knew it!” I am not afraid to admit that I did not ‘know it’. This plot twist was actually surprising! Finally my Friday nights are not being used in vain, Joss Whedon is back! If you haven’t already, you can check out new episodes of Dollhouse Friday nights on Fox. You can catch up with back episodes on hulu.com.