Saw episode 2 of Simpsons Season 21 and this was a lot better than the debut. A grat story arc involving Edna Krabapple and her drinking problem. It was spoilt somehwat by a very Ffamily Guyish interlude with Homer yelling for one minute straight which should have by rights been cut short almost totally but otherwise its a good return to form.

Finished Season 1 of The Wire and this is one super TV show. Totally loved this and not a boring moment in the entire season. This is one cops and robbers drama that's almost like reading a book. The whole drug dealer slang takes some getting used to and there is an occasional "huh? what the fuck did he just say?" moment when the black guys are talking but the story's full of awesome characters each of whom are given some depth and great turns from Dominic West as the good cop who's an asshole with the self righteous attitude, the guy who plays Omar Little like some modern day Robin Hood (the scenes where this character walks down the street with a shotgun and the crowd running to the safety of their houses with the chant "Omar coming! Omar coming" is fucking deadly), the guy who plays Stringer Bell, second in command to the chief bad guy has some serious presence and just about every person seems perfect for the role.

There is a fair amount of cliche in the team building process with the team being a mix of washed up old has beens, the Morgan Freeman type wise old black cop with eccentric hobby, the alcoholic, the snitch, the boss who may have a corrupt past and even a black lesbian cop. But overall, this is just done really well.

Also, started on Season 2 and got through the first two episodes and there's an added dimension of the port workers union thrown into the mix and I guess the gang's going to get back together soon enough to tackle corruption on the docks but overall the first two episodes feel like a drop in quality. Hopefully, I'm wrong about this and the show will continue to kick ass.

Also, finished reading Jim Thomson's The Rip Off about a down on his luck writer who first gets conned into marriage, then gets accused of trying to kill his wife, then hooks up with a super hot woman who also gets him a job and great money and then finds out that someone, somewhere is trying to kill him and it could be his new super hot girlfriend, her ex husband or his wife and father in law or maybe even the hot young nurse who's supposed to be looking after him. It's a pretty good book but the women are all a bit irritating and a lot like Myra Langtry from Thomson's The Grifters. Not his best but decent timepass anyway.

Saw Wanted last weekend, which is the first time I saw a Salman Khan movie in a theater. What difference does that make? None probably. Anyhoo, Wanted has some well-executed action sequences of the exaggerated variety and some WTF moments of cheerful absurdity that add to the fun when you go with the right group of friends. Unfortunately it also has huge amounts of completely dull and annoying romance filler material.

General Knowledge wrote:
Also, started on Season 2 and got through the first two episodes and there's an added dimension of the port workers union thrown into the mix and I guess the gang's going to get back together soon enough to tackle corruption on the docks but overall the first two episodes feel like a drop in quality. Hopefully, I'm wrong about this and the show will continue to kick ass.
Stick with it - the basic premise is that they introduce new perspectives each season:

1st - Cops & Drug dealers
2nd - The Docks
3rd - The City Council
4th - The Education system
5th - The Press

Each new angle takes a little while to kick off and really get into gear, but they always keep the main story of the drug trafficking and the Major Crimes Unit tied in to everything. And by the time they wrap up everything at the end of season 5, it's been one motherfucker of a journey.

^^ Totally! Season 3 is the best.

New South Park episode out. This one's sort of Family Guy-ish being chock-full with pop culture references.

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies

Animated movie based on a story arc by Joseph Loeb. This one has Luthor becoming President of the US, denouncing all superheroes that do not "work for him" and a giant kryptonite meteor poised to collide with Earth. The movie has some nice moments, especially in the large-scale action segments and in the banter between Supes and Bats. But the plot is shaky and with the condensation of a story arc into a "just a little over an hour" running time (WHY?) appears very rushed and bungs in a ridiculous number of convenient contrivances. Decent as a casual watch but nothing like the superlative Superman: Doomsday.

@ Chax - Sticking with it. Its picked up quite nicely also.

Just started reading Dust of Dreams, the first of the epic two part finale in Steven Erikson's Malazan epic. The book starts off pretty well with the Bonehunters getting together and another Card reading with Fiddler dealing the cards. Looks like a pretty good set up so far and we're all one step closer to the end.

Saw season 1 and 2 of the office (the british version). Liked it quite a bit. Also saw a few episodes of the American one. Without the awkward feel of the british one, this seemed like just another american sitcom - wont be following up on this one.

Caught a couple of random episodes of "The Extras" on "BBC Entertainment". This looks interesting. Need to catch the rest.

Have any of you been following this "BBC Entertainment" channel? Seems to have some interesting stuff. So far i've caught Black Adder, Extras, Ashes to Ashes, etc.

Well i think the US office is vastly superior to the UK edition cause the awkwardness soon got to be a bit of a one trick pony. I mean, there's a limit to how many times people staring in their froggy brit way works and that was arrived at rather quickly. Of course, the US office dispenses with the basic premise: the presence of the camera team while the UK office almost never forgets, and I can see why people would consider that good, but it just doesn't make for as consistently an entertaining show.

The Extras OTOH is one of the most brilliant shows to have ever hit TV anywhere.

Reading Ramchandra Guha's mammoth book, India After Gandhi and it is one very comprehensive study of India post-independence. Long and tiresome read, but its not too blandly written and seems to be highly informative.

Either my standards have gotten real high or American TV is going through a very terrible phase. The new South Park was frankly awful. I get what Hellion was saying about it being very Family Guyish. In fact the spirit of that vile, supremely unfunny series seems to be infecting everything. Even every Simpsons episode generally has one moment that seems cadged right out of Family Guy where they try to beat a joke out of something that's inherently unfunny and just plain annoying by repeating it for around a minute. The writing on the last Simpsons episode was mediocre with immensely predictable jokes. There was just one chuckleworthy moment in the whole episode, when Moe shows up with Homer disguised as Marge but the rest of it was just dross. Am not surprised that are trying to invigorate this increasingly flaccid franchise by putting poor Marge on Playboy. Season 6 of the Office has been pretty good though. Nothing exceptional but I'm yet to come across an episode that bored me.

Trawling through a Fantasy and The Supernatural anthology (Stephen Jones) which follows the usual pattern of a few good stories with some really poor ones. Also started off on an anthology of Roaring Twenties Mystery Stories. The first story is a bit of a mis-step since it's written sometime in the 1990's and attempts a little over-enthusiastically to evoke the 20's feel (yes, yes, women used cigarette holders and lived together in relationships called Boston Marriages).

Saw 'The Boat That Rocked'

Recommended.

Saw a couple of interesting films over the longish weekend. Years ago, the first film I ever remember actually anticipating and looking forward to was Masters of the Universe the live action He Man movie. I knew for a fact that this movie was going to be among the best I'd ever seen and I'd pretty much cleared the decks on my list of favourite movies to make a place for it in the Top 3. I landed a VHS copy and after an okeydokey beginning, He Man and co for some WTF reason hotfoot it to earth and spent an inordinate amount of time in what looked like someone's backyard playing tunes on a keyboard. The fight sequences were lacklustre. There was no Orco or Battlecat or Ram Man or Trap Jaw. Beast Man was a very tangential presence. It was my life's first (and probably biggest ever) cinematic disappointment. After that I pretty much stopped playing with my He Man action figures tainted as they were by awfulness of the film. And later on, speaking to other friends who were also He Man fanatics at the time I realised the disappointment with the film was fairly widespread.

And so when I came across a DVD with director's commentary I just had to hear what the man himself had to say about the film. By the end of this,I no longer want to kick Gary Goddard in the balls for having destroyed a part of my childhood but buy him a beer for doing possibly the best job he could under very tough circumstances. With a budget of a rather slim 17 million Goddard had no money for fancyass special effects. He had to contend with interference from the studio and from Mattel who wanted to personally greenlight every single frame shot. The decision to shoot the film on 'Earth' and not 'Eternia' had already been taken when he was approached with the script - another device to save cash. And then halfway into the shooting of the climactic fight scene, the studio pulled the plug on the project, leaving Gary to complete the film in an entirely different set, financed by a cut in his own director's fees. For all that Goddard is mostly cheerful and enthusiastic about the film and seems quite refreshingly devoid of bitterness and rancour.

Also saw Hannibal which, after I got over it being a very different movie in general tenor from Silence of the Lambs, struck me as a hilarious and campy minor shlockfest.