Tom Charman

All alone, sad and alienated from everyone in Los Angeles, can Fred rise to the challenge and free the minds of her friends? Well, of course she can, but how will she do it? Especially if she’s being pursued by her very happy but ever so slightly murderous ex-colleagues at Angel Investigations…

And so, for the most part, we’re treated again to most of our favourite characters acting not only unlike themselves, but also in extremely boring ways — with the exception of Connor and Angel’s rendition of ‘Jasmine’ to the tune of ‘Mandy’. In fairness, Amy Acker is able to hold the episode herself, doing a fairly good ‘desperate’, and in general proving herself to be almost as endearing when in danger as Alyson Hannigan.

Meanwhile, in the plot, it turns out once again that it doesn’t take much in this fantasy world for people’s blood to be equivalent. It was a decent revelation though, that was subtly signposted and made sense. Followed of course by a nifty slow motion gunshot.

Ultimately this wasn’t a bad episode as such, just another boring one, with a few pointless moments slipped in to fill it out. I’m not sure what the point of Cordy’s hand moving was, other than to provide a silly cliffhanger over the ad-break. But I hope things pick up soon. And with everyone back to normal, I have some hope that this will in fact happen.

Andy:

Excuse me! Can I say a few words here? It’s only fair that as I am now a part owner of this website, I am entitled to a say in everything that goes on around here. Which I intend to take full advantage of. This season of Angel is looking pretty good now, especially when compared to that sorry excuse for a slayer’s season.

Jasmine’s so beautiful! We’re not worthy. All my life I’ve been so empty and it’s over now that we’ve found her. I can’t believe it’s all happening. It looks like Fred will have to be put down, what with her being crazy and all. There’s no other way. It’s too bad she’s evil. I was just beginning to like her.

Tom:

I’ll start this review off with a question. Why, if you’re aware that your TV show generally goes to air with about a minutes clips from previous episodes, would you then write a bizarre scene in which, for no reason at all, your protagonists describe everything that’s happened in the last few episodes? Odd, that.

Anyhow, we’re soon into the meat of the episode, where everyone becomes entranced by the lovely Jasmine. Sadly, most of these scenes are terminally boring. Yes, we get it, they like her. Things become more interesting when an insane, shouting person attempts to go on a rampage, but then, they always do. Meanwhile, Angel tries on a new shirt that has to be seen to be believed, and Jasmine tells them all the story of how she’s a disgruntled former Power that Be. Actually, this explaination was fairly believable and interesting, which was a surprise as I expected the usual dodgy, half-baked explaination.

My problem with this episode is probably that despite how excited by Jasmine the characters seem to be, and the general intriguing nature of her story, her way of life just doesn’t seem that attractive to us. Though my co-reviewer was sufficiently enchanted, I found it rather depressing to see all the characters suddenly reduced to one-note, irritatingly cheery charicatures of their former selves. If we’d seen them enjoying themselves more, and perhaps as relieved that everything was nice and simple as Gunn was two weeks ago, then the audience might have had some small affection for Jasmine.

As it was, I imagine everyone is expecting, as usual, that Jasmine is simply another demon to be killed horribly. And, it seems, Fred is the one to do it. Wesley, much to his annoyance I imagine if he ever comes out of this euphoric state, completely misses his chance to run off with Fred and have a big bonding experience over their shared fear of Jasmine, and instead reports her. The final lonely shot of Fred might have been more exciting if she’d walked further towards the camera through crowds of bowing Jasmine-lovers.

Not a bad episode then, but a rather dull and predictable one. It seems it’s too much to hope for something wildly unexpected to happen this season.

Ah, Bond films. A guilty pleasure of mine, I have to admit. And in general, I’ve enjoyed the Brosnan films as much as the Connery films, which naturally makes me an outcast from any ‘serious’ Bond discussion. But no one’s going to tell me to shut up here, are they? So I’d better get this reviewed before we put any irritating ‘comment on this review’ boxes on this website. There are a few key elements to a Bond film, so I’ll go through them individually.

Opening Sequence

Nice work. Far better to my mind that of ‘The World is not Enough’, and with a twist ending too. I liked this a lot, but unfortunately it ends with Madonna’s not so good title song. I quite enjoy the song in a general level, and I’ve seen it put to good use in other places, but it just doesn’t work here. For a start, it doesn’t have enough of a recognisable melody to run through the rest of the film, which is a pity as I really enjoy it when that happens. A good example is the theme from k.d.lang’s ‘Surrender’ that pervaded ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’.

Action

Generally good, with exciting stuff in the opening sequence and an excellent sword fight between Bond and Graves that is one of the high points of the film. However the ball is dropped somewhat at the end when the whole thing degrades into a punch-up between the two, with Graves taking rather longer to get around to using his cool electro-zapping gear than I would if I were fighting a cool super agent.

It happens.

Girls

I should probably mention Halle Berry’s entrance here — it can’t be denied that she is a very well put-together woman. But acting-wise, she doesn’t seem to be putting that much effort in. In fairness to her, some of her dialogue is rather lame — her meeting with Bond being a prime example. She does however get a good fight at the end that almost makes up for the snorefest going on elsewhere with Bond. I’ve been puzzled by the peculiar publicity her character garnered however. “An equal to Bond, an agent from another country”. This is no first. Have people forgotten ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ and the inimitable Michelle Yeoh? I can’t remember enough about ‘The Spy who Loved Me’ but I suspect there was a dynamic female spy in that too…

Rosamunde Pike comes across as a rather superior Bond girl, and not just because she’s cuter (which she is). Her amusing comments on Bond’s charms and subsequent conquering by them were very enjoyable, as were her icy exchanges with Bond and Jinx.

Bond

Brosnan is looking fairly assured in the role, though probably starting to approach the ‘too old’ stage. I give him one more. And he needs to watch his weight a bit. 14 months of torture doesn’t normally leave you in such… healthy shape, but then, he is Bond. He remains a cross between a fun loving Bond who glories in the action and an angry emotional Bond that will kill with much vengeance if necessary. Sadly he is not offered much in the way of closure concerning his ordeal at the start of the film, and the movie suffers for this. Indeed, after the first half things are almost Roger Moore-esque, Bond included. A less important point is the editing out of his joyous expression at performing a cool stunt in his Aston Martin on the ice. It was in the trailer, but doesn’t appear in the actual film, which is a shame. One of my favourite parts of ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ was his obvious enjoyment of the carpark chase, and I like the idea that Bond gets off on his crazy action as much as we (theoretically) do.

I also wasn’t particularly impressed by his cajoling Jinx’s frozen body to wake up. I like my Bond just a little less flappable than that.

Q

John Cleese fits perfectly into the role, with dutiful nods to his late predecessor, Desmond Llwellyn. The Q scene in fact becomes probably one of the best parts of the film, and is the funniest one since ‘Goldeneye’.

Plot

Hee hee.

Oh, you’re serious?

Well, things aren’t as solid as they were in ‘The World is not Enough’. There’s this guy with diamonds, and he uses them to make a big destructo ray in the sky, with apparently no complaints from any authorities. I do hope people can’t really do that. There were many complaints about the portrayal of North Korean baddies in this film, but considering that we are also offered the villain’s wise, cautious father as a postive portrayal of a North Korean makes this all seem a bit odd. The suggestion of the film seems to be that it was the English influences on Graves that made him peculiar in any case.

Overall, I found myself loving the first half of the film, and being intensely bored by the second half — reminding me somewhat of ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’. It’s a shame, because after raising the stakes at the start, they could have taken this movie anywhere they wanted. What a pity they decided to take it to ‘Moonraker’.

DVD Review

Bond’s first 2-Disc set! There’s a few informative documentaries. It’s embarassing seeing all the effort that went into the opening surfing sequence, when you know that the audience completely forgot it ten minutes later. Somewhat more interesting is the information about the ice-based car chase. What with warming temperatures, and driving at breakneck speed across 30 centimetres of ice, it seems a lot of risk to go to simply to make a Bond film. On the warmer side of things, there’s a fairly well publicised ‘easter egg’ in which we are shown Halle Berry emerging from the water… from all three angles, on loop. Presumably this to allow all the Bond fans to compare it frame by frame to Ursula Andress’ similar scene in ‘Doctor No’.

‘Die Another Day’ is also the first Bond film to have Bond give an audio commentary. Pierce Brosnan and Rosamunde Pike both provide fairly interesting insights, but sadly were recorded in separate rooms. Pike tends to gush about the whole experience in places, but she’s so damn cute I really don’t care. Brosnan is worthwhile too, speaking of how sometimes he’d like to do an all out, gory, sexy, R-rated Bond film. He also appears to have an orgasm when seeing the ice-bound car chase.

I’ve not yet heard the director’s commentary, so I’ll update the review at that point. But so far, it seems a decent release.

Ah… A new layout, and more importantly some new reviews to go with it! Hopefully in the future Andy and I will catch up with our Angel and Buffy reviews… I’ve got Gosford Park to review later also… I hope everyone enjoys the shiny new design. The more observant of you may have noticed a lack of blog updating recently – this will hopefully change when Jackson works out a new system for us.

One of our reviews is by the ever-insightful Jimbo ‘FilmBEAST’ Jones — I recommend his site, which reviews Hong Kong cinema (in an especially accessible way, this week!). I’ll be posting his non-Honkie reviews here for your enjoyment! I myself need to get watching more films. Hopefully I’ll manage to see The Dancer Upstairs this week.

Before I go, my friend Carol offers a one-word review of Bruce Almighty: Crap.

OK, not really. Life’s reasonably relaxing in fact, if a touch depressing in places. One bright side is the move to a new and exciting server, however — as a result I’ve spent the last day working on a completely new layout for grapefruit — involving no javascript whatsoever which is nice. Well, apart from the top navigation bar anyhow. Hopefully you’ll see the results shortly.

It’s heartening to see the percentage of people viewing our site that use Internet Explorer going up. Well, not really — you should all be using Mozilla Firebird if you’re on Windows — but it does mean that people are looking at the site who aren’t the actual reviewers. Still, we need to publicise the site a tad more I think…

I’ll be playing in the Leonardian Players’ production of Company next week, and you should all come and see it if physically possible — Wednesday to Saturday, email us if you want details.

It should be said before I begin this review that I’m a sucker for exposition and revelations. I love the Council of Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, I love the bits where the Master explains his evil plan in Doctor Who. So I probably enjoyed this episode substantially more than those of you who aren’t immediately excited by a bunch of folks sitting around and working out what the heck has been going on for the past season of Angel (or even further back).

While I did have some reservations about the evil plan — I was happy for it to extend back to when Cordy ascended in the first place, but not so much for it to go further — one has to consider that a being that has proven itself to be outside of time in some ways (i.e. the dimensional fiddling about the Beast’s origin) isn’t going to be limited by just manipulating the past few months.

But enough about the fun revelations, because the big strength of this episode was the direction. There was some clever stuff here. As well as some good scene transitions, we also had yet another cool fight scene, between Angel and Skip. This season of Angel, I think, wins ‘best fight scenes’ hands down. I challenge anyone not to cheer when Angel wraps up the chain in slow motion and smacks Skip in the head with it. Wesley’s sharpshooting was also pretty impressive (and, of course, in character — he’s been deadly accurate with ranged weapons right back to season 1).

Again, it was also fun to have Angel back. I hadn’t realised how much I missed him. His exausted request that everyone incapacitate Skip was very funny. “Before he wakes up would be nice.” And his sad but resolute willingness to kill Cordy — and not to let any of the others nearby when he did it — was perfect.

But enough of the fun. We have a dull, dingy Cordy-Connor plotline to wrap up. Never has it been more painful to watch them together — as evil-Cordy completely annihilates Connor as a character. This despite the last ditch efforts of the Powers that Be, via Darla. It’s been a while since we saw either of them — Darla is welcome, but if the best that the ‘PTB’ can come up is an ex-vampire spouting lines from Return of the Jedi then they should just go home.

I had quite a bit of sympathy for Connor by this point, but I have to admit now that he’s not the brightest spark — and probably pretty much gone as a character now. Say it with me, people:

“If someone is ritualistically killing virgins — especially virgin girls — they’re EVIL.”

Thank you.

I’ve been generally positive about this season of Angel, but the fact is, it’s been wearing. Doom, gloom, and the loss of the happier sides of Wesley and Cordelia has resulted in one pretty depressing season — even if it has been well written and realised sometimes.

So it’s an incredible relief to get a (largely) standalone episode, with Gunn suddenly transformed — and believably so — from gloomy, grumpy ex-boyfriend of Fred to sharp, witty action hero. And doesn’t he just get the best day ever? He gets to put his movie knowledge to good use, he gets to have one of the best fight scenes on Angel ever with two stick-wielding blokes, and he gets… well, that would be telling.

Seeing Gunn so relaxed gives J. August Richards a chance to shine, and shine he does — and not just the top of his head. The character’s description of the past year — a “turgid demon soap-opera” is pretty much what we’d all been thinking, but comes across better than Fred’s repeated “Isn’t their relationship kinda…. icky?” lines. He also benefits from having Gwen as a foil, and she gives his character some much needed support.

This story also gives Gwen’s story some nice closure, and cements her as a very successful addition to the Angel world. Plus, her last scene with Gunn could be the sexiest thing ever done in the series. And I’m counting Angel and Cordy in ‘Waiting in the Wings’.

Meanwhile, of course, back at the Hyperion, things are still a little peculiar — though it looks like the characters are beginning to wise up. It’s nice to hear that Angel agrees with me about the Beast-Master’s ‘voice’ and how lame it is. It’s even more nice to see Angel putting all the pieces together, and proving that he’s deserving of his leadership of the group. I tried watching specifically to spot the point where Angel works it all out, but I’m none the wiser — perhaps when Cordy starts her hypothetical “I’m the Master” routine? But surely everyone has to know by the time Lorne comes in with his cape. Perhaps the whole inscription thing was just a test to see if Cordy would try to stop them? Surely no one could have missed the coffee-moving.

So in short, one of the better episodes this year by virtue of its simplicity, the intelligence granted to (most of) the characters within it. And a very good ending.

And, one assumes, the end of evil-Cordy. Thank goodness for that.

Well, I’m off to Canada at the end of the year. Isn’t THAT exciting. This will allow us to visit the site of many impressive television shows — The X-Files, Max Headroom… Well, that’s all I can think of. Actually, I’m told that it’s in fact the skiing and the scenery that will be more impressive.

In other news, Jackson and I are considering moving Grapefruit to a new server with a proper domain name and server-side scripting. This would make everything even cooler and allow all sorts of exciting things, like web-comments on reviews/blogs, searching capabilities, and more.

Now that exams are finished I’m hoping to see some more films, too. It’s not too good when Grapefruit becomes just a small factory churning out Buffy and Angel reviews. Though of course I’m behind on those too — that’s next on my list.

Thanks to Andy of course for his engrossing animated series. Though I’d just like to point out that he can no longer bag my spelling on the end credits of Igor Episode I, given his amusing typo in episode 12.

In just a few short hours, the World Wide Developers Conference hosted by Apple Computers will start, and many exciting new pieces of software and hardware will be announced. Despite the unfortunately horrible time that this converts to in sunny Melbourne, I shall be up to watch the excitement unfold.

In less than a day and a half, my Astrophysics and Optics exam will start. This fills me with something rather different to excitement.

Luckily when I wake up tomorrow, this damned uncertainty will be banished and I will be able to sit comfortably in abject TERROR. Woo.

While watching the special features on the X-Men DVD, I cam across the amusing story of a kid who had come across an X-Men filming site, snuck in and deduced from the labels on some huge pieces of stainless steel that there would be a massive, satellite dish shaped laser in the film. Unfortunately for the kid, Laser was simply the name of the company who made the steel.

However other hollywood films have not been as lucky with their contractors. Oh My God Data Dies in this One Water Coolers were foolishly hired to provide the Star Trek: Nemesis set with it’s water dispensers. Fight Club director David Fincher was appalled to discover in 1999 that Ed Norton IS Tyler Durden, Dipshit! Electrics were doing the wiring on the set. And who could forget the massive 90s set design company – Leo DIES at the end! Ha ha. Loser Constructions?