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Aug. 18th, 2006 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charloweenWarning, here be spoilers.
Snakes on a Plane was actually a good movie. I was shocked, surprised and awed. There was plot, there was tension, there was entertainment, there was The Man ("the baddest pimp around?") and there were snakes.
crowd excellent
submarine story
premise that sounds insane, but makes a lot of sense
creative solutions to various problems. Liferaft!
I ended up seeing it with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
philthe25th and alfadir; unfortunately thucyken didn't get the message with the plans until the movie had started. (The plans didn't get nailed down until about halfway through the day's slate of viewing.) You see, philthe25th obtained a slew of pilots for new tv, and we spent a few hours watching some interesting new ideas.
Friday Night Lights. Football in Texas. Not a pair of things I know much about, besides the fact that one is pretty big in the other.
a bit heavy on the flashy editing, but slick cinematography and post-production was what created the tension. They did very well introducing a large number of characters in a short time, and letting the episode's plot play out. I didn't expect the game to end that way - I thought they'd loose the game, and the coach would have to build back his rep and the morale of the team, earn the respect of the town, yadda yadda. What I got was so much better - they won the game, lost their star quarterback and left things in a much more interesting place. Coach Taylor (Tyler?) did prove himself to be a good coach when it counted, so we know he's worthy of the job.
Would I watch the show? Maybe. Download the first few, see how it goes from there.philthe25th is worried that the weekly football game will dominate the show, and I can totally see that happening. It would be easy to have whatever off-field drama translate (dare I say, "play out on") the field for each game. Hopefully they'll do better than that.
Then we took a break for some VMars. I'm in love with Logan, and all is right with the world.
Next came Heroes. Of the four pilots we watched, this was the weakest. (It was better than Traveler, which I saw a few weeks ago. Traveler will give hungry slashers something to chew on, but it didn't come out of the gate running. Limping, at best.)
Best part about Heroes - Adrian Pasdar. A less-evil Profit, who can FLY. I'm pretty sure it's his brother who's the psychic and was having dreams about his brother's flying, rather than the other way around. Peter would have picked up on his brother's accident, rather than Nathan projecting the trans-continental "owie".
Hiro is by far my favourite character.
Too many characters, little indication about where they're taking this. If it goes more on the conspiracy side I'll probably wander away, but if it spends more time on the characters it could grow into something very awesome.
The Black Donnelleys was my favourite. First great thing: four hot Irish brothers as main characters. If that wasn't enough, you have a flashback structure with stories told by an adorably unreliable narrator. Great acting... and PAINFULLY stylish. I'm not sure if there's anything under the flashy story, because (unlike Heroes) they really do put it all out there.
But yeah. Paul Haggis!
Rules of Engagement got about 15 seconds of our time before we made *bleeeech* faces and hit stop.philthe25th and alfadir turned it off after maybe a sentence, but I made them turn it back on, at least for a little bit. However. Canned laughs are probably still cool somewhere, but not in my world. Bad acting, dumb sets, telegraphable plots, and condemned without watching a full episode. I'm sure we should have given it the full time, but there's better things to do with your day than watch unforgivably bad television. For example, we could watch really good television. Or mow the lawn with our teeth. But good television wins. Unfortunately, by this time philthe25th had accidentally deleted the rest of VMars so we couldn't skip back to that.
The Singles Table. A cute sitcom, with the pilot taking place at the wedding, and focussing on the single characters who sit and the other end of the hall from the bride and groom. Best line: "Time to put the finger down." This one didn't grab me right off like Donnelleys, but I warmed to it by the end. It has potential to be very cute and very funny, even if one of the characters (Crazy Ivan) seems to think he's in a different sitcom. I'm sure he'll settle down.
And the best part: all of these eps can be found as torrents. Win!
Snakes on a Plane was actually a good movie. I was shocked, surprised and awed. There was plot, there was tension, there was entertainment, there was The Man ("the baddest pimp around?") and there were snakes.
crowd excellent
submarine story
premise that sounds insane, but makes a lot of sense
creative solutions to various problems. Liferaft!
I ended up seeing it with
philthe25th and alfadir; unfortunately thucyken didn't get the message with the plans until the movie had started. (The plans didn't get nailed down until about halfway through the day's slate of viewing.) You see, philthe25th obtained a slew of pilots for new tv, and we spent a few hours watching some interesting new ideas.Friday Night Lights. Football in Texas. Not a pair of things I know much about, besides the fact that one is pretty big in the other.
a bit heavy on the flashy editing, but slick cinematography and post-production was what created the tension. They did very well introducing a large number of characters in a short time, and letting the episode's plot play out. I didn't expect the game to end that way - I thought they'd loose the game, and the coach would have to build back his rep and the morale of the team, earn the respect of the town, yadda yadda. What I got was so much better - they won the game, lost their star quarterback and left things in a much more interesting place. Coach Taylor (Tyler?) did prove himself to be a good coach when it counted, so we know he's worthy of the job.
Would I watch the show? Maybe. Download the first few, see how it goes from there.
philthe25th is worried that the weekly football game will dominate the show, and I can totally see that happening. It would be easy to have whatever off-field drama translate (dare I say, "play out on") the field for each game. Hopefully they'll do better than that.Then we took a break for some VMars. I'm in love with Logan, and all is right with the world.
Next came Heroes. Of the four pilots we watched, this was the weakest. (It was better than Traveler, which I saw a few weeks ago. Traveler will give hungry slashers something to chew on, but it didn't come out of the gate running. Limping, at best.)
Best part about Heroes - Adrian Pasdar. A less-evil Profit, who can FLY. I'm pretty sure it's his brother who's the psychic and was having dreams about his brother's flying, rather than the other way around. Peter would have picked up on his brother's accident, rather than Nathan projecting the trans-continental "owie".
Hiro is by far my favourite character.
Too many characters, little indication about where they're taking this. If it goes more on the conspiracy side I'll probably wander away, but if it spends more time on the characters it could grow into something very awesome.
The Black Donnelleys was my favourite. First great thing: four hot Irish brothers as main characters. If that wasn't enough, you have a flashback structure with stories told by an adorably unreliable narrator. Great acting... and PAINFULLY stylish. I'm not sure if there's anything under the flashy story, because (unlike Heroes) they really do put it all out there.
But yeah. Paul Haggis!
Rules of Engagement got about 15 seconds of our time before we made *bleeeech* faces and hit stop.
philthe25th and alfadir turned it off after maybe a sentence, but I made them turn it back on, at least for a little bit. However. Canned laughs are probably still cool somewhere, but not in my world. Bad acting, dumb sets, telegraphable plots, and condemned without watching a full episode. I'm sure we should have given it the full time, but there's better things to do with your day than watch unforgivably bad television. For example, we could watch really good television. Or mow the lawn with our teeth. But good television wins. Unfortunately, by this time philthe25th had accidentally deleted the rest of VMars so we couldn't skip back to that.The Singles Table. A cute sitcom, with the pilot taking place at the wedding, and focussing on the single characters who sit and the other end of the hall from the bride and groom. Best line: "Time to put the finger down." This one didn't grab me right off like Donnelleys, but I warmed to it by the end. It has potential to be very cute and very funny, even if one of the characters (Crazy Ivan) seems to think he's in a different sitcom. I'm sure he'll settle down.
And the best part: all of these eps can be found as torrents. Win!
