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DLM Season 3?

I came across the first two episodes of Dexter Season 2 today. Tempting, tempting, but no. Movie Central airs Dex in HD, so I'd rather just wait and watch it in 1080i or whatever. Makes you wonder how these things get leaked though. I can only imagine it was ripped from a DVD given out to a journalist for reviewing before the next season begins. I know they did this with the first 5 episodes of the second season of Dead Like Me. Which was a good idea, as I thought the first five ep's of that season were probably the best.

Speaking of Dead Like Me, I hear they are going to film a movie of the show! [Direct to video] That's great, DLM is one of my favourite shows! Unfortunately, Mandy Patinkin [Rube] won't be in it. Nor will Laura Harris [Daisy], they are recasting the role of Daisy. Which is too bad, I wish they would just bring in another character like they did with Betty » Daisy. Anyway, this might lead to a resurrection of the series and a season three, which would rock. As long as they have Ellen Muth as George and some solid writing, I'm down with it.

Another one of my favourite shows, Wire in the Blood, is back with Season 5. I had completely forgotten about this one, I wasn't even sure it was coming back for another season. A very nice surprise, I'll have to check it out.

Out on the Highway

I haven't gone for a ride in my Vibe very much lately, so I thought I'd take her out on the road towards Bragg Creek just to get out of the city. Plus it's like fucking 30° out and humid as hell, so it was nice to turn on the air conditioning and cool off.

The first part of the road has a 80 km/h speed limit, which goes up to 100 km/h about halfway. So I set my cruise control to 80, crank the a/c and relax. Not too much traffic, it was very nice. I go past a sign that says something about construction, but I don't get to read the whole thing and I'm not sure if it says anything about the speed limit. Then I see a cop on the side of the road pointing a radar gun straight at me! Eek, am I speeding or am I cool? I have no fucking idea, but he never pulled me over so I guess I was good.

On my way back, I'm on the stretch that is 100 km/h and there's a guy way behind me. The speed limit changes to 80 km/h, so I slow down to the speed limit, knowing what's up ahead. The guy behind me doesn't want to slow down and starts riding my ass. Then he decides to pass me. On a double yellow line. Going around a corner. Right where the cops have their radar set up! I had to laugh, that was too funny. Unfortunately, he saw the cops in time, slammed on the brakes and ditched back behind me, avoiding a major ticket. He passed me shortly thereafter, which was useless because I was still right behind him when we hit the city.

Now I'm back home and it's fucking hot in here. Damn!

300

Finally got around to watching this movie a couple nights ago and I found it rather disappointing. You see most of the "good stuff" in the trailer, so the movie itself feels like nothing more than an extended version of the trailer.

My biggest complaint regarding this movie, by far, is the incredibly annoying and pointless voiceover narration. At one point we see the Spartans laughing about something, except King Leonidas. The narration then tells us how all the Spartans laughed but not the King. Fuck, no shit, I could have sworn I saw that just now with my own two fucking eyes. About 99.99% of the narration is of this kind of useless, obnoxious chatter. I wish they would release a version where the narration is removed, or at least gave you the option to turn it off.

But this film has many more flaws. A lot of the CGI is, well, bad. Most of the acting is pretty atrocious. Except for Gerard Butler as the King, he's pretty cool. The entire storyline with the Queen could have been jettisoned, it added nothing to the story. The soundtrack is all over the place, one minute rock metal, next an orchestra piece. The King tells the hunchback he can't fight for Sparta because he won't be able to stay in formation with the other soldiers. Yet, when we see the Spartans fight, they are out of formation more often than not. There's a lot of shit in this movie that was blatantly ripped off from Gladiator. Did I mention the dialogue? Brutal, embarrassingly bad, I cringed every time somebody opened their mouth to speak. Their spears pierced the enemies way too easily, plus they pulled them right back out again, effortlessly. There's this one scene where a Spartan is fighting a horde of Persians and what does he do? He throws his sword away! That was just stupid. There's supposed to be 300 Spartans in battle, yet we only see maybe 10 or 20 at any one time. The battles were fairly well choreographed, although the Persians were generally just cannon fodder, almost never putting up much of a fight. And the battles themselves were a little too obviously just actors working against a green screen.

What was good about this movie? Well, they were quite liberal with the bloodletting, which I quite liked. I was never a fan of the antiseptic carnage we get in most movies nowadays. They had a handful of cool one-liners - "This is SPARTA!" "Tonight, we dine in HELL!" "Then we'll fight in the shade!" Er, I guess that's about it. I suppose if you go in with very low expectations you might find this flick moderately entertaining, but I was expecting considerably more and was quite disappointed.