Alright Lost, you are intriguing me yet again. This week’s Sawyer-centric episode had us hanging with the Not-Locke crew and featured an alterverse episode I didn’t actually hate for once. Not bad Lost, not bad.

Not-Locke has everyone setting up camp uh, somewhere, I’m not sure exactly but it’s all full of trash and random household items. I thought it was 815’s old camp, but isn’t Team Jacob over there right now? Whatever.

This week, Not-Locke has a very special assignment for Sawyer, who has finally shown up after a two week hiatus, along with Jin who has apparently been unconscious for a solid week due to bear trap-related injuries.

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I wasn’t too familiar with Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, knowing him only as a Japanese animator whose works are just now starting to see appreciation in the West.  I decided to rent Ponyo, his most recent film, mostly for the reason that Ponyo features no computer generated imagery, instead animated in the traditional 2-D style that Disney had made so popular.  With Ponyo, I learned that Miyazaki is rightfully acclaimed as a filmmaker and animator and, perhaps more significantly, the 2-D style of animation is far from dead.  Keep reading for the full review; minor spoilers ahead.

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The rollercoaster ride screaming to the end of Lost continues again this week, with things settling down a wee bit after Smokey raided the Other temple and massacred pretty much everyone there. Surprisingly, we got a Linus-centric episode this week, as I was expecting a Jin adventure due to his sudden appearance in a freezer last week. But alas, he’s still missing, and that makes two weeks in a row now. I guess bear trap wounds take a while to heal.

Linus is with the “Jacob” group as I guess we should call them, which is now made up of Illana, Sun, Lapedus and Miles. On the hike back from the temple, Ilana gives Miles Jacob’s ashes to confirm how he died and whoops! It’s Linus, a fact that quickly turns Ilana’s mood toward him from distrusteful to murderous.
The gang marches back to the 815’s original beach camp, because why the hell not, and Ilana immediately shackles Ben to a tree and tells him to start digging a grave next to Nikki and Paolo, a gun pointed at his head as he does so.

Meanwhile, this week’s obligatory alterverse episode centers around Ben Linus: History Teacher, and it’s exactly as riveting as it sounds. Cameos abound as Locke, Artz and even Alex show up, because of course her French explorer mother would relocate to LA and send her to the exact school where Ben Linus teaches.

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There’s no point in telling Hollywood not to remake films and resurrect dead franchises, as they’ll keep doing it no matter what we say. What I will caution studios however, is to stop giving these projects to Tim Burton.

Just because a director has a certain artistic flair, that does not translate into necessarily a good film, and it’s become quite clear that though Tim Burton has filmed some classics of his own over the years, when it comes to re-filming what’s already been made, the man just adds nothing worthwhile, and only serves to taint whatever original film he’s trying to “reinvision.”

It’s thirteen years after Alice made her first trip down the rabbit hole, and she’s grown from a naïve child into a slightly less naïve adult, who doesn’t realize she’s been invited to her own engagement party until her fiancé –to-be is moments away from popping the question. He’s gawky-looking ginger kid, but he’s a lord, so both of their families are pushing her into acceptance. But when she can’t deal with the pressure, she flees the scene, and goes dashing through the adjoining hedge maze where she finds yes, you guessed it, a rabbit hole.

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It’s been awhile since I’ve written a review as part of our “Movie Vault” category, but Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was such an unexpected, unusual experience that I felt obliged.  I don’t recall hearing about this movie when it was released in the United States, which I suppose I can attribute to Perfume being a German film.  Directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), Perfume is one of the most original stories I’ve seen in a long time.  The film doesn’t try and cater to the audience’s expectation of what’s appropriate or what a protagonist should be, and the result is a film that, whether you love it or hate it, you will absolutely remember.  And really, what fate is worse for a film than being forgettable?  Keep reading for the full review; some spoilers ahead.

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Well good lord, where to now? Last night’s Lost was perhaps one of the most eventful in the show’s history, with nearly all of the straggling groups smashing together in one epic demi-god rampage for the ages. Things started out slow, but picked up about two thirds through, and I can’t even imagine where we go from here, though I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made that exact statement about this show.

This week was a Sayid-centric episode, which worried me as Sayid has long been my least favorite character on the show (until recently when they made Sun the most useless person alive). But I have to say, I’m really coming around to the man, as his actions in both this world and “other” world were pretty damn impressive and terrifying.

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The horror genre is something that I feel has been dying a long and slow painful death as of late. We’re forced to submit to waves of shitty remakes crash against the rocks again and again, in the hopes that something decent might break through. When we do find something worthwhile in the genre, it’s usually in the form of an indie film with a minuscule release, or a foreign movie neglected because we’re all too lazy to read. It’s rare that a mainstream American horror film ends up actually being worthwhile.

The Crazies, though a remake itself, is a completely surprising and well-made horror effort that offers a clever new twist on the classic zombie genre. It’s tense, and genuinely frightening at times, and actually surpasses its original film in terms of quality.

The small farm town of Ogden Marsh turns from a picture of serenity to a burning, murderous hellhole in under forty eight hours. It all starts with a few townsfolk acting a bit off, turning mute and then unleashing unrepentant violence on their friends and families. The madness soon spreads and town sheriff David (Timothy Olyphant) and his wife, the local doctor, Judy (Radha Mitchell), must gather as many of their friends as they can and escape the nightmare.

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Let’s be honest here, Dante’s Inferno IS God of War. People always go back and forth between arguing over who stole what between the Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden and God of War series, but those comparisons pale to Dante’s Inferno’s blatant and unapologetic hijacking of nearly everything GOW has done.

You can argue that God of War has established a new sort of genre of these hack and slash adventure games (though it didn’t), but it gets to a point where if you use not only the exact skeleton the series has created, but the muscle and flesh as well, you have to wonder when it starts to dip into plagiarism. However, what’s been stolen from GOW has made Dante’s Inferno a very fun game in itself, albeit a mere shadow of the classic franchise that “inspired” it. It doesn’t bring a whole lot new to the table, but its artistic direction alone is something to behold, it’s unquestionably fun to play, and it’s definitely worth a weekend rent if you’ve got a few spare hours to kill.

We’ll start where the two games diverge, the story. Rather than a Greek warrior on a mission to kill the God of War, we have Dante, an 11th century crusader (not poet) raiding the depths of hell on a mission of rescue to find his love, Beatrice, who has been taken from him. On his way down he finds he must face many of his own sins, and he’s not the holy hero we might have initially expected.

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And back across the island we go. I’m torn between what’s the more interesting group on Lost these days, the Jacob-influenced temple crew or the Not-Locke dominated Linus/Sawyer brigade. But both teams seem to be having new secrets revealed to them by their respective leaders, and this week was all about Hurley, Jack, Jin and Claire learning new and terrifying things.

Boredom has set in at the temple, as everyone sits and waits for Not-Locke to come charging in. Hurley and Miles are playing tic tac toe, Jack and Sayid are discussing his “darkness” infection. But things pick up when the ghost of Jacob appears to Hurley, and tells him he has a very special secret mission for him, which involves getting Jack to trudge across the island to activate something which will lead someone, somewhere to the island.

A ways off, Jin finds himself caught in a beartrap and being “rescued” by Claire from the clutches of the Others. She hauls him and an alive Other back to her makeshift hut, and Jin discovers she’s been living on the island in a practically feral state for the past three years, and has lost the vast majority of her mind in the process. The baby crib full of animal bones would attest to that. She claims the Others have her baby, a fact she knows because her father and her “friend” have told her. Hmm.

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24 used to be one of my favorite shows on TV. As recently as last season, I was still enjoying it years later, and thought I would be content watching Jack Bauer kill terrorists until 2020.

But this season so far has convinced me that the show may be all but washed up. I can barely think of one thing this season has done right, and I made this list to put all my rants about the show in one place, so my roommate doesn’t have to keep hearing me yell them at the TV.

Fundamentally, I think 24 should continue on with MUCH shorter seasons, and possibly even getting rid of the restrictive “real time” format. I know taking away these two things are “key” to the premise of the show, but let’s be honest, all we really want to see is Jack Bauer f*cking shit up. Right?

Check out my issues with season eight below:

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