Smallville: Review of Season 9 Premiere and Episode 2

Since last we spake of all things Smallville, the season premiere of Season 9 has come and gone: “Baby” Zod introduced, Tess the not-quite-hot Lex replacement reintroduced, Chloe weepy, Lois flummoxed, Green Oliver shirtless. And, of course, Kal-Neo with the black trenchcoat. To my surprise, early on in the plot there was a brief argument with Jor-El (The Useless) about flight, which the writers are setting up to be something of a reverse-impotence problem: whenever Clark thinks of Lois he can’t get it up, or rather, he’s never gotten it up. There’s even a throwaway scene where Clark leaps from the Statue of Liberty and plummets (the outcome is never shown so we can assume he went straight into the ground).

Most of the show was TIVO chow, that is, filler and needless exposition, but that’s true of most shows. The Kryptnonian Ninja-Girl who looked like a rip-off of a Mortal Kombat character made little sense. In the “sky train” she and Lois trade blows but later on KNG is seen using heat-vision. Well, does she have The Powers or not?

KNG introduces an extra minute or so of hot barn combat that comes free-of-charge with every Season Premiere. It was pleasing to see Clark FINALLY kicking some ass/holding his own after ninja-girl uses blue K to temporarily strip his powers. Before exiting stage left KNG warns Clark that he betrays everyone ‘one year from now’. Even Marty McFly had the good sense to write a goddamned letter explaining WTF is going on; just seems like common sense for any time traveler would be to have a ready explanation DVD or other media for when she meets herself, knowing she might be killed or knocked out on arrival.

Ah yes, I almost forgot, the most magical MacGuffin of all, the Power Ring which can alter entire plotlines in a single bound, and which in future eps will no doubt be used to bring Jimmy Olsen back and possibly even Lex.

The scenes with “Baby Zod” were all right, Callum is trying his best. The best thing about Zod and Friends are those Kryptonian army dog tags they wear, which I hope the WB has the good sense to make and sell to many nerds such as me.

“Special Guest” Brian Austin Green I’ve saved for last because his character runs right into the second episode, where he, as John Corbin, mysteriously becomes Metallo. It’s a mostly useless, predictable transformation, using the absurd and totally fake-looking CG hit-by-a-speeding bus effect. Corbin awakens not knowing how or who or why he suddenly has a kryptonite heart (in case he seems too sympathetic, writer laziness also has the kryptonite affecting his brain to make him ‘eviler’).

Actually, 9-0-2-1-Metall-0 makes a surprisingly strong case against Clark and his meddling. Turns out Clark saved a busload of prisoners from crashing…one escaped and raped and killing Corbin’s sister. To Corbin (and me) Clark is ultimately responsible for this negative outcome. It may not be right, it may not be fair, but godlike powers = godlike blame. Now we all know Superman doesn’t kill, but given the choice between saving a runaway bus loaded with rapists and killers blessedly heading for a tall rocky cliff of taxpayer savings or rescuing a kitten from a tree 100 miles away in the other direction…

Smallville Season 9 is off to a better-than-average start, but before anyone gets a big head over at the CW, let it be known when I mention the very name Smallville, almost universally the response is, “Wow, is that still on?“

The witty primer to this Season 9 ep review can be found here.

‘Surrogates’ coulda been a contender

Surrogates is standard sci-fi action fare, so much so I’m not going to bother reviewing the plot. Bruce Willis is always likable, the limited action was decent, but I’ll be damned if I saw where they blew 80 million making it.

I’d never really thought about the possibilities presented by Surrogates: rather than having the entire world live in a computer simulation via the Matrix, turn the real world into a Matrix of sorts by having people cocooned at home, experiencing life via uplinked neural connections to androids that are perfect-looking idealized versions of themselves (or anyone else).

It’s a great idea for dangerous work (such as war) or play (extreme sports) but for everyday use seems kinda dumb. Why the hell would you pay for a younger, more fit robotic version of you to go to an office and sit in a fucking cubicle every day? That would mean you’d still have to dress and maintain your unit (ha) plus transport it.

I would hope by 2017 telecommuting is the norm. That and fuckbots.

Surrogates dabbles in these ideas but doesn’t take them far enough. Like the Matrix sequels, there’s a great story here waiting to be told, but the one we got wasn’t it.

Lovable Grandmother Not Tasered Enough

Madam, you’re a fucking liar and a scumbag. You don’t deserve a red fucking cent, and if the Texas bacon is stupid enough to offer you 40 grand for being a total asshole, they ought to charge you double that for the electricity used to put your rudeness in its place. Fuck you.

While we’re on the subject, why should I give a shit that the perp is old and/or a woman? Where’s that EQUALITY the egalitarian shit-for-brains are always whining about? DOUBLE fuck you.

Terminator Salvation and Transformers 2

Both Terminator: Salvation and Transformers 2 are frozen shit Popsicles. If I had to watch one of them again I’d choke down Terminator only because it’s shorter. If I had to choose between watching either movie again or suicide this would be my last post.

T:S was rife with clichés, unexciting action and zero-dimensional characters no one can possibly give a shit about, with the exception of the guy who played Kyle Reese (and Chekhov in the new Star Trek).

A post-apocalyptic Terminator film would be a challenge to make by the best filmers, because as the story begins, humanity has lost, rendering the better “prequels” irrelevant (even T3–which really isn’t so bad–is a masterpiece compared to this travesty).

There’s no getting around the fact that Christian Bale is a spoiled ass. I have no numbers to back it up but it’s my opinion the yelling-at-some-lackey-on-set (turned into a brilliant techno song) struck a blow against the buzz. His portrayal of John Connor had me rooting for the machines.

Salvation’s plot isn’t worth regurgitating. The movie is a total loss, but what kills it above all else is the way Skynet is depicted. For a murderous artificial intelligence it’s way too sane and collected, to the point I was wondering why it ever viewed humans as a threat.

Given the “rules” of the post-nuke Terminator universe it would be easy as hell to win a war against humans, simply by waiting them out. For human numbers to grow they need food, water, infrastructure. What’s time to a machine? Why don’t the ‘robits’ simply do nothing for 50 years, let the humans grow soft, while the machines gather or build neutron bombs for radiation attacks? Burn all the forests and arable land, kill everything green. So much possibility, all unexplored.

T3 and Salvation are dumb movies, which is fine, except they’re not fun. Movie audiences know too much so it’s time to put the T-franchise to sleep for awhile.

Transformers 2 is a rainbow-colored turd. Everything bad you’ve heard about it is true. The effects are seamless, and yet it’s vulgar, cheap, bombastic and aimed to evoke mass guffaws from the lowest common denominator of society. Its primary target audience is 10-year-old boys (so, presumably, was Star Wars’, by SW didn’t need bodily function and ghetto jokes).

At 2 hours, 30 minutes Tran 2 is impossibly long; longer still if you can’t stand Megan Fox, a spoiled ass in her own right. Yeah, she’s “pretty”, so what?– a lot of porn whores are as hot or hotter. Had Fox not gotten her break, she could easily be choking on Sean Michael’s blacksnake like Avy Scott or any number of strumpets.

By now you’ve probably seen both of these cineturds. Like circumcision, they only have to be endured once and you’re done for life.

Reviews of movie previews I watched with disdain

When I went to see Star Trek, I got hit with the endless stream of previews I’d hoped to avoid by showing up 10 minutes late to Wolverine.

I already knew Will Ferrell is a talentless asshole from his last 10 movies, so why make Land of the Lost? There wasn’t a single reaction from the sizable crowd to anything in the preview. The best “funny” line the morons who made this turd could come up with is, “Matt Lauer can suck it.” That wouldn’t be funny even if people knew who Matt Lauer is/was/whatever.

The preview for the new Terminator movie, now out and given awful reviews, also garnered no reaction from the crowd. I felt silly-assed for ever liking Terminator after seeing it. After the audio of what’s-his-face yelling at some poor shlub on the set was leaked two months ago I lost interest. Hey, Jerkoff: you’re a multi-millionaire actor and beloved Batman. No less than Ivanka Trump called you, “some kind of Adonis”. You don’t need to piss and moan over an honest mistake. People go to the movies to escape from asshole bosses yelling at them.

The only preview that got any reaction at all was the CG movie UP, which should’ve been called “The Old Jew’s Flying Balloon House”.

SkyJew* would also be a badass name for a movie, but it doesn’t yet exist. No one tell Will Fuckface Ferrell about SkyJew.

Thanks.

*(Apparently, the term “skyjew” already exists, as an anti-Semitic reference to seagulls! What a world, what a world).

Smallville Season 8 Finale – Sucked

I’m not gonna put any more effort into this review than the writers did with Smallville’s season finale.

Really, the show is so bad that I’m more impressed with how little the producers are offering fans and how much they’re getting away with rather than how well any story is told.

Doomsday, both character and storyline, was a total flop, and the featured non-battle lasting less than a minute was exactly what I figured they’d do, with the exception that Super-Lana was nowhere to be seen.

I didn’t look for any announcements online that a Season 9 had been approved, hell, maybe it hasn’t been. It would almost be a blessing to leave it all in limbo.

The obscenities against fans are stacking up: power orbs, talismans, prophecies, the female Lex wannabe, a dumbfuck Clark whose powers are stripped from him or their limitations rewritten every other episode, and now future/time travel shit with the League from the Future or whoever they are, brought in as a plot-saving cheap stunt in the vein of “it was all a dream”: I can’t believe there’s any Smallville fan over the age of 12 who shed a tear when Jimmy Olsen “died”.

I’m wondering if the one guy who actually visited M39 to argue that ‘you’re not being forced to watch the show’ would still show his face after tonight’s miscarriage.

Why do I still subject myself to Smallville? Because I love Superman and the Superman mythos.

Unfortunately for the still-millions of Smallville fans, we’re not being entertained and rewarded for caring.

We’re only watching for signs of life.

The best damned review of the new Star Trek movie you’ll ever read

The new Star Trek is a good–not great–science fiction romp that could have just as easily been made without the Star Trek brand.

The only notable standout was Mr. Spock, and either because I’m insane or just love him, I was weeping in the theater (Spock has a rough time of it).

I will probably buy the DVD, but not watch it over and over.

That’s it!

You’re now done reading the best damned review of the new Star Trek movie you’ve ever read.

I’M WOLVERINE!

Got to the theater to see Wolverine! The Motion Picture 10 minutes late and was shocked to find the movie half over. What, no COMMERCIALS (the nerve of those advertisers) followed by three coming attractions for diarrhea-inducing romantic dramedies?

Walking up to the window to buy the ticket and on through to the lobby with the smell of fake butter coating everything I couldn’t stop thinking of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at Comic-Con shouting, “I’m Wolverine! I’m Wolverine! I’m Wolverine!”

I couldn’t feel any more like a failure if I was wearing black socks with sandals and wielding a metal detector.

I entered the theater when Wolverine was in the tank (last seen in X2) about to be injected with cockamamium or whatever the hell. Suspense, for me, was nil. Of course during The Procedure the Bladed One’s heart stops. The military milf reading Wolverine’s vitals says with alarm, “Blood pressure, 280 over 160!” which is my normal blood psi., especially eating movie popcorn floating in butter.

Once Wolverine escaped (of course) the movie got a little more interesting. Were it not for Hugh Jackman’s considerable acting, this movie would’ve been like sticking your hand between the plates of a hot George Foreman grill. Did I say hand? I meant dick.

There was some kickass fighting (not enough) but being an old(er) fuck, I was thrown out of suspended disbelief by small inconsistencies rather than gaping plot holes. Example: the movie’s supposed to take place in the mid-70s and the sinister secret government agents were driving Humvees instead of Jeeps. Humvees didn’t go into service until the late 80s.

“Yeah, but they musta had the prototypes, being top secret and all!”

Shut up, nerd.

Also, if there was a raucous battle in an alley on Bourbon Street that shattered fire escapes and blew up hundreds of stacked boxes, wouldn’t there be at least a few dozen extras running to find the source of the rumpus?

And this Gambit fellow that’s all the rage, would you seriously sit down to play cards with a guy who could make the whole fucking deck float perfectly as if he had the mutant power of CGI?

I paid 4 bucks to see Wolvy and that was about right. I was more excited watching 16-year-old White girls with their bubble buttocks in shorty-shorts in the butter lobby. But then, I’m a failure. I have a right.

Another Jeopardy! Ball-Churner

There hasn’t been a hottie on America’s favorite trivia game show in awhile.  Kara more than makes up for this.  She would’ve made a better Supergirl than the eponymous ‘Kara’ on Smallville.

Kara lasted two days on Jeopardy! to my none.  She’s a high school history teacher and, being as hot as she is, has great potential to end up on The Smoking Gun.

She told Alex one of the two foreign language phrases she used while vacationing was something to the effect of:  “Is it OK to swim naked here?”  I think Trebek went home and masturbated furiously.  Wait, that was me, except it couldn’t have been, since Trebek had to go home and I was already home.

Everyone Loves Smallville!

And I mean EVERYONE!

I meant to cover Season 8 before the episodes started up again in 2009, but failed.

Three 2009 episodes premiered before I even knew S-ville was back on!

Season 8 is much better than the dreadful Season 7.  That’s all I’m gonna say about it for now.