Smallville 8x8 - "Bloodline"

Huge episode this week that covered a lot of ground, further pushing my enjoyment of Smallville as Action Comics on television:

* Lois and Clark get sent to the Phantom Zone in the first two minutes. It's Lois's first time in the Zone and she thinks they were abducted by aliens. She gets conveniently knocked out when Clark finally finds...

* Kara, who's been banished by Brainiac at the end of season 7. With Lois unconscious, the Super cousins conduct some family business and do some catching up.

* Meanwhile, Chloe finds the mystery crystal at the Kent farm and recruits the Green Arrow to steal the component from Tess Mercer that she can use to activate the crystal and find Clark.

* Kara uses the "back door" portal Zor-El left for her (should she ever get trapped in the Phantom Zone) and sends Lois through, but a Zoner attacks and goes through the portal with Lois to Earth.

* Lois is possessed by the Zoner, who it turns out is General Zod's wife. I forget her name. Feyora, I think. Something like that. For convenience's sake, I'm just gonna call her Ursa.

* Chloe uses her crazy new superpowers given to her by Brainiac to activate the crystal/portal and retrieve Clark. Oliver objects for Chloe's safety. Line of the episode from Chloe: "Oliver, do I tell you how to shoot your arrows?" Oliver sees the extent of Chloe's powers for the first time.

* Back at the Phantom Zone, Kara is seemingly left for dead by Ursa's attack. Clark pleads with her to return to Earth with him. She's strangely obstinant about it. But when Chloe opens the portal to pull Clark out, Kara swerves everyone who expected her to die/be written out of the series here because she's only contracted for this one episode this season. Kara and Clark return to Earth.

* Ursa/Lois meets Tess Mercer and tells her of a Kryptonian spacecraft that landed on Earth. Tess now knows the word "Kryptonian." The BIG BOMBSHELL is Ursa is looking for the son she had with Zod whom they sent to Earth. It can only be...

* Davis Bloome, Doomsday. Mother and son are reunited and Ursa reveals Doomsday's destiny to be Earth's destroyer. She didn't birth Doomsday as no baby; she sent him to Earth as "genetic material" but he hasn't fully evolved into his final form yet. So mom kills son to Doomsday him up.

* Clark and Kara get up to speed with Chloe. Clark orders Kara to find Detective John Jones. (Completely skipping over how much Kara hates "that Martian Manhunter" from the events of last season.) 

* Clark confronts Lois/Ursa and they have one of those Superfights where they Supersmack each other around. Actually, Ursa just smacks Clark around. Kara arrives with some sort of red crystal (again with the crystals!) she presumably got from that Martian Manhunter she hates and traps Ursa in it, freeing Lois.

* At the Kent Farm, Oliver warns Clark that he's worried about Super Chloe.

* Kara frowningly and reluctantly leaves the series, telling Clark she heard that the (bottled city of?) Kandor exists and that she has to go find it. And so Supergirl flies off into the black yonder, towards a spinoff idea that probably won't happen.

* Finally, Doomsday awakens, stabs himself and finds that nothing less than a bursting shell (if even) can penetrate his skin. One giant leap forward towards maybe killing Clark...

Those sound like the ramblings of a madman, but that was Smallville last night. And I'm all for it.

Changeling (**1/2)

CHANGELING

Curious title, "Changeling," for a movie where not a single character grows or changes throughout the course of the 2 1/2 hour story. Everyone is exactly the character they were at the end as from the start. The trailer says Angelina Jolie's son was abducted, the LAPD "found" him, but she says "It's not my son!" (300 times). Then they throw her in the loony bin for making their shitty policing look bad. That's what happens, all right. But there's an extra hour more to the story, most of it pretty unnecessary. The loony bin stuff was Girl, Interrupted circa 1930, only with Amy Ryan in a walk-on instead of, well... Angelina Jolie. Angie looks frail and sickly; it makes me long for the days when she was 25, fit, athletic and Lara Croft. I sure miss 25 year old Angie. The sweetest parts of Changeling were all the scenes they shot at the Universal backlot in the same streets we shot Across the Hall. The final shot of the movie was a long, loving look at the street we shot on, complete with the exterior of our Riverview Hotel. Ah, the memories.

W. (**1/2)

W.

W. is no JFK, no Oliver Stone masterpiece. Not even close. Stone didn't learn his lesson from Alexander about time-jumping structures hurting his biopics. Josh Brolin's performance and impersonation of George W. Bush is Oscar worthy. Brolin is damned amazing as W. and he's surrounded by an all-star cast, caked in various degrees of makeup, portraying Dick Cheney, Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, etc. as a grotesque Saturday Night Live-esque menagerie of lunatics and suck ups. No sympathy is offered for Cheney, Karl Rove and Rummy; none asked. Thandie Newton in her Condeleeza Rice makeup resembles a gargoyle. The most sympathetic portrayals are saved for Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell, Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush, and James Cromwell as George H.W. Bush, who is presented heroically as W's opposite and emotional enemy. Though peppered with entertaining moments, overall, W. is a weird, purposely-manipulative collection of events that may have been or never were. Stone mixes in famous W quotes like "misunderestimated" and "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... I won't be fooled again!" - all dreamed up by Stone and his writer to explain away who the sitting President is. But to what end? Brolin's W never comes off as sympathetic or likeable. Perhaps he's never meant to. I know that by January 2009, I'll be glad to be rid of the real life W.

Body of Lies (***)

BODY OF LIES

Entertaining Middle Eastern spy thriller with strong performances from Sir Ridley Scott's cinematic life partner Russell Crowe and Martin Scorsese's cinematic life partner Leonardo DiCaprio on loan to Sir Ridley, but the attempted verisimilitude gradually chips away and shatters completely by the third act. The budding relationship between DiCaprio and his Iranian nurse was probably the most interesting aspect of the picture for how well the cultural difficulties are played. Some effectively bloody and jarring violence wakes the audience up from the murky politics and talky-talky. Mark Strong all but stole the picture as DiCaprio's handler in Jordan, my dear. Ultimately, it felt a lot like Blood Diamond mixed with Syriana, although I'd say it's a bit better than both. Still, I probably won't ever watch, much less think about Body of Lies again.

Hitman

October 10, 2008

Hitman

Bret "Hitman" Hart's book tour rolled into Boston yesterday and I lined right up with a couple of hundred people to meet one of my wrestling heroes. 

My impressions of Bret in the brief minute I spoke to him while he signed my copy of "Hitman: My Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling" were that he was certainly older now.  Everything that has happened to Bret in the last ten years, losing his brother Owen, his parents, his brother in law Davey Boy Smith, his marriage, his stroke, has taken its toll.  His long stringy hair is now greying brown, no longer the slick greasy black of his heyday. There are more lines on his face than before, and that face is tinged with sadness and loss.  The T-shirt he wore of himself and Owen in happier days of the early 90's was a bittersweet reminder of that.

And yet, he's still Bret Hart. Bret seemed reserved and taciturn, but still carries himself with a bit of that trademark arrogance that helped define "the Hitman".  A little intimidating at first glace, it turned out Bret was gracious, good humored, and occasionally showed that world-famous smirk of his.

I was thrilled to meet him.  While in line with my friend Lance Jr., I cracked numerous jokes to temper the building excitement, but I was honestly nervous to meet Bret. When I was about 17, around the time Bret was WWF Champion for the first time, he was my hero.  Bret still holds my highest regards for his career and accomplishments. 

I hoped I'd be funny and cool, maybe say something clever to Bret when I finally got to the table and shook his hand but no, I just about totally marked out.  Just blathered about what a big fan I was and how I thought his book is fantastic.  It was maybe a minute of interaction but it felt like it was a microsecond.

About Bret's book:  This is the real deal.  Only 184 pages in, I can already honestly say "Hitman" is as good as Mick Foley's "Have A Nice Day"; perhaps in some ways even better.  This is lofty praise.  Bret's book and Foley's first book are the highest level of pro-wrestler autobiographies.  Chris Jericho's "A Lion's Tale" and I think to a lesser extent Edge's "Adam Copeland on Edge" are in the second tier but below what Foley and Bret have written. Every other wrestling biography is crap, crap, crap of varying shades.

A fan of pro wrestling, especially someone who craves an insightful, blunt, and intelligent account of the Calgary Stampede Wrestling era of the 1970's, and the World Wrestling Federation of the 1980's and 1990's, along with stories about working in Japan and the territories in the early 80's and WCW leading to its collapse, would gladly devour Bret's book.  Bret pulls no punches; he is brutally honest, funny, touching, sad, and impressive.  I'm glad to say Bret's autobiography is the equivalent of his wrestling talent.  It's the excellence of execution.

The Duchess (***)

THE DUCHESS

Indulging my Keira Knightley in a corset fetish this time finds a rather fine -- if long, two hours felt like three -- British tragedy of manners. Occasionally felt like Masterpiece Theatre crossed with an episode of Married... With Children. Gorgeous English scenery; the city of Bath in particular. Made me want to book a flight to the UK straightaway. The story spans fifteen or so odd years but no one ages. Ralph Fiennes added another character to his arsenal of thin-lipped, rod-up-his-ass, sneering villains-who-don't-wish-to-be-but-that-doesn't-stop-him. Fiennes was good enough to state the theme of the movie at the end, in case anyone's mind had wandered off: "How wonderful to be so free." Fiennes did have a couple of awesome dogs. There weren't enough of those dogs in the movie. I'd cast Fiennes' dogs with the dog Will Smith had in I Am Legend and make a movie. Two hours of me playing fetch with them.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (*1/2)

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE

A WTF trainwreck featuring one stunning Megan-Fox-in-her-underwear scene. Skip the movie, wait for the clips on the Internet.