My husband and I tried to watch Guy Ritchie’s more modern, fight club styled version of Sherlock Holmes last night, and well, I don’t know if I just wasn’t in the mood for it, but we ended up not even making it through 40 minutes of the movie, and decided to instead go to bed. Yeah, we were really tired, but still, we can be quite the troopers when we are watching a movie we like and we’re tired.

It’s really nothing bad that Robert Downey Jr. or Jude Law did, Sherlock and Dr. Watson respectively, it’s just that the premise seemed a bit tired of a martial arts style hero, the slow mo fight scenes, and the effort to be edgy was almost overbearing. That being said, some of the fight scenes were shot kind of cool, but I guess I just couldn’t rectify this new superhero style Holmes with the more nerdy, less physical hero that I had read about in elementary school, like Hounds of Baskerville and other Sherlock Holmes stories like that.

The premise is also very fuzzy. They are pursuing a villain named Dr. Blackwood (yes, I guess he’s evil) in the beginning, and stop him just second before he murders a young girl who seems to be a in a trance in a seance-like surrounding.  It’s not really clear who Dr. Blackwood is, but he is soon sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of several young girls.

Soon after his hanging death (spoiler alert, but I’m not sure how much of this movie can be spoiled by that, I’m sure there was a lot more that we missed), Dr. Blackwood says that there will be three more deaths that Mr. Holmes cannot do anything about. This was minutes before his hanging, he had requested to see Sherlock minutes before he died and told him this.

From there, I can only assume that Sherlock uses his quirkily odd sense of investigations and his uncanny success as revealing who people really are and what they’ve been through by his keen sense of observation to crack the codes behind Dr. Blackwood’s warning. Oh, and then there also appears to be another villain who stays in the dark and seems to have a gun as a hand.

Don’t ask, it was all too cheesy to bear, and we shut the movie off after that particular scene, with the villain in a carriage talking to Rachel McAdams’ character, whose name escapes me.  Overall, I rate this about a 2 1/2 out of 5. It wasn’t unwatchable, I just never got interested enough to finish it off.

The gritty, and perhaps all too realistic (I find this show very good, but also intensely depressing at times) show “Breaking Bad” starring Bryan Cranston, premiered it’s second season a few weeks ago. Our DVR was backed up, so I just recently had the opportunity to watch the first episode.  Breaking Bad is about a mild mannered chemistry teacher, Walter, who finds out he has terminal lung cancer.  He starts to make methamphetamine for sale on the street to help pay his immense medical bills, a story that is all too familiar and ripped from the headlines today, which makes this show all that much more visceral.

Season 1 was mostly dedicated to developing the story about how this mild mannered man becomes essentially a drug dealer (or maker) and becomes invovled with the lowest of low lifes and the most dangerous criminals off the street.  You can probably guess since the show is called “Breaking Bad”, that it’s about him constantly getting worse and worse in his ethical decisions and choices he makes. You always want to yell at the screen that it’s the wrong choice, but you see the glint in his eye that becomes more and more sociopathic unfortunately as the season went on.

The premier has his wife leaving him, having just had their little baby girl. He’s lost his entire lifestyle and family and for once, it seems like Walt is going to start making some of the right decisions.  Well, until he starts making bad ones.  He gets up in front of his high school in an assembly mourning the loss of the people on board the plane crash.

The fatal plane crash that killed all those on board, which was caused by Jesse’s girlfriend (who died by choking on her own vomit, which Walt could have prevented but did not, prompting a whole series of events which he is clearly in denial over him having anything to do with it).

He tells the kids that life just goes on, which of course sounds callous. Walt is seeming more and more callous, and yet our heart goes out to him because he has lost his family and his wife doesn’t even want him to see his own kids.

We’re really not sure how to feel for him though when he goes and does things that either don’t bode well for other people, or that puts him in harm’s way.  We see now that two bad ass Mexican gang members are out to get him for revenge of the murder of Tuko, the gang leader who was basically the former drug lord before Walt’s made up character “Heisenberg”.

Whoo, sounds like a lot when I start typing it out. At any rate, Breaking Bad is a taut, well written show with excellent, top of the line acting. You really identify and like each character they present, even the terminal screw up Jessie Pinkman.  It’s definitely a keeper, and it actually earned top ratings for best new TV show from Entertainment Weekly magazine.

I finally got around to watching a show that I’ve been dying to see since it came out. I’m usually not really in to “legal dramas”, but this one offered a sense of intrigue that others didn’t, with a seemingly sinister twist. Plus, I love Glen Close.  I don’t know, ever since I saw her give it her all in Dangerous Liaisons, there is not one bad performance I can remember seeing this talented woman in.  She was also great in the more recent show “The Shield”.

Damages is a legal drama.  It revolves around a young law school graduate named Ellen Parsons. In the beginning of the first show, the pilot, we see a pretty young brunette girl running out of an apartment building, bloody, bruised and battered looking. She runs through the city streets bewildered, crying and clearly traumatized over something that has happened.  This is a flash forward. Flash back 6 months and we begin to see the story unfold to tell us how this young promising attorney gets embroiled in whatever has her so distraught.

Ellen is sought out by Patty Hewes, a huge litigation attorney who will win at all costs (that’s actually the tag line for the show I believe).  At the outset of the pilot, we think Patty is simply a very ambitious woman who has a generous and heart felt streak, that she really wants to win class action lawsuits for people who have been wronged.

She seeks out Ellen agressively, which sort of tips us off that something is a little amiss (you find out what at the very end of the episode), and fires her right hand man (also seems a little bit staged, I actually figured this part out before they tipped us off).

You’re not quite sure though, who is the bad guy, Ted Danson’s character who plays a billionaire that has been charged in a criminal suit with insider trading, costing his employees millions of dollars after he dumped stock before it tanked.  He was found not guilty in a criminal trial, however, now he has to take his turn with Patty Hewes and her representation of several employees.

Throughout the litigation, we see Ellen’s suspicions start to grow, only to be alayed by Patty’s former right hand man, played by Tate Donovan. Her fear is that Patty hired her and agressively pursued her because she knew she had family ties to a woman who was found to be a potential key witness against Ted Danson’s character.

The intrigue and mystery deepen, and although I got annoyed with how many times and different ways they said “shit” (probably because that’s the only swear word they’re allowed to use liberally on FX), and some of the scenarios could be construed as preposterous, this show had me hooked to see the next one. Only reason I didn’t watch the next one right away was I had to get stuff done!

My currently favorite show to watch (now that we’re done with Battlestar Galactica) is Lost. Now, with only five more episodes to go, and a demanding and discerning fan base, they are trying to explain away as many of the secrets and mysteries of the beautiful tropical island and exactly why Jack, Kate, Hurley, Locke and company all landed there.

The facts are now leaning heavily to the religious/spiritual side, with most signs pointing to this being some sort of a purgatory where people have the opportunity to make better choices or to fulfill some unfulfilled purpose before they say bye forever and move on the the afterlife.

So, are they all dead? Well, it certainly is looking more and more like that, but it’s hard to tell with the twists and turns and sometimes conflicting plot points that don’t quite mesh with my ever expanding list of theories. The recent Hurley episode seemed to point more to the idea of both Hurley and Desmond having some sort of pivotal roles in the fate of all the other Oceanic passengers and their destinies.

We see Hurley in his “flash sideways” where he happens to meet Libby again in the outside world. Except Libby knows him, but he doesn’t know her. Oh, and in this world, as in the other parallel world, Libby is in a mental institution (just like Hurley was after the crash).  She says she knows him, has memories of him and that they had feelings for eachother, remembers being in a plane crash with other survivors on an island, and remembers them going on a date.

Hurley kisses her, and finally the memories come flooding back, another indication that some of the people in the flashes sideways are having memories of their plane crash and of life on the island or the people they met on the island who meant something to them.  So are these flashes sideways their real purgatory, a chance to put things right, or is the island?

Locke shows his evil side again by throwing Desmond into a well when he asks why he isn’t afraid to be alone with him when anyone else would be .Another sign that Desmond is perhaps some sort of guardian angel?  He runs Locke over in the flash sideways, Locke being in his wheelchair. I’m not quite sure what that accomplishes, but hopefully we’ll get some more clues in the next heart pumping episode of Lost, next week!

Ok, so I’ll admit I had my reservations about the movie “Zombieland” being really, really stupid and way too campy and over the top for my taste.  My husband loves campy and over the top. I like it, but I can only take so much of it before I start to feel like I have the intelligence quotient of a gnat (WWE, yes I’m talking about you).  So, I knew Woody Harrelson was in this one, and I really like him. Shoot, I like Woody since he played Woody the airheaded bartender on Cheers. Just something about his aw shucks down southern charm that I really liked.

Zombieland is the story of four people who happen to come together in the post apocalyptic world of the zombie virus. You see, just like so many movies before it, the world has been taken over by lobotomized, flesh hungry, mute, savages humans because of a virus that started off my some poor sap eating a burger (ok so they didn’t all start like that, but that was the method of transmission in this one).

A Michael Cera wannabe plays the main character, and Woody plays second to him.  Columbus and Tallahassee are their names. You see, in post apocalyptic America, no one wants to get too close because you never know when a flesh eater is gonna get ya.  Enter Abigail Breslin and a relatively unknown actress as her bigger sister. They’ve been on the grift for years before the zombie attacks, and they are professional con artists.

What ensues is a a lot of funny moments, a lot of zombie blood and guts, and some great rock music. One scene at the beginning is particularly cool for those of us that grew up on Metallica. It depicts the mayhem of the zombie world in slow motion, playing “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. I must say it was one of the finer moments of the movie!

If you like a little camp and comedy mixed with horror, this is the movie for you.  Bill Murray makes a fairly long and surprising cameo too, I had no idea!

I have a few favorite characters on the show “Lost”. One of them being Desmond. I don’t know why, but this talented actor’s air time was always intriguing, and you always wanted to learn a bit more about his back story and how he got to the island.  Of course, being a die hard Lostie, I have other favorites as well. I always liked Richard, and of course his back story episode which just aired a few weeks ago was one of the best in Lost’s history.

One thing we’ve known about Desmond is that he came to the island and became the “button pusher” to prevent the island from suffering a major electromagnetic disaster.  He wasn’t even sure why he had to do it, but he thought that if he didn’t, everyone would die.  It ends up that he was the reason behind the Oceanic flight that brought Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sun, Jin and all the other passengers to crash on the island.

His character has taken long breaks from the show, but whenever he has come back it’s a great one.  This time we get to see Desmond’s alternate reality.  In it, he is a business man who works for the uber wealthy Charles Widmore (Penny’s dad who he could never win the acceptance of in his “real” life).  He’s a bachelor in this life, and he is tasked with bringing home a drug addict who is a band mate of his son’s (Farraday reprises his role, this time though, he’s a musician, something he has said in the past he wanted to be).

The musician he has to bring home is of course none other than the (singer this time) for the band Drive Shaft, Charlie.  Charlie says some strange things to him from the beginning, accusing Desmond of being unhappy, of missing out on love in his life, and asks him if he can “feel” it.  Desmond of course is in total denial until Charlie takes the wheel and slams the car into the ocean.

Desmond escapes the car, then goes back down for Charlie.  Charlie, who appears unconscious, re-animates for a moment and puts his hand up to the window, just like he did in the submarine right before he died to sacrifice himself for everyone else.  His hand reads “Not Penny’s ship”, just like it did on the island.  Desmond then starts thinking that he needs to find this Penny woman, that maybe she is the woman in his waking dreams when he was in the MRI machine.

He then gets further conviction when he runs into Daniel Farraday, who says he also had a dream about a woman (Charlotte) that he knew he was destined to be with. Desmond ends up seeking out and finding Penny, and becoming a believer that he must seek out the rest of the Oceanic flight and figure this puzzle out.  We get more answers on what the alternate realities may be. It sounds like they are playing out their true destinies in these alternate realities, but we can’t be sure because some of them choose the wrong paths, again.

I really was looking forward to reading the Dennis Lehane thriller book “Shutter Island”. I must confess though, I had not heard of the book before I read about Martin Scorsese making a film based on the book’s story line.  My sister recently stayed with us and was reading it, and lucky for me, she left the book here at our house, so I picked it up and started reading it about four weeks ago.

It was one of those books that inrigued me, but I often had a difficult time really caring for any of the characters, or really getting drawn into the story line so much that I found it hard to put it down. Many times when I have a really good book to read, I’ll read way past my weekday bedtime, but with this one I felt sometimes like I had to force myself to keep reading just to get through to the next part.

I know the premise probably makes the writing come off like this (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve read it), but it often came off as disjointed and confusing. You were not sure if the author was talking about reality or not (which I get now was kind of the point), but it could have been written better to maybe convey that point.  Also, I noticed a lot of run on sentences. Only reason I noticed that flaw was that I’m guilty of that myself and have been told, so I’m aware of it.

The movie adaptation stars Scorsese’s favorite muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, as Teddy, a US federal marshal, who is sent to a mental hospital for the criminally insane, most dangerous criminals in the US, on Shutter Island.  He is sent there to investigate the disappearance of one of the mental patients Rachel Solando, who is in the hospital because she drowned all three of her children.

We soon find out that nothing really is what it seems, but we’re not sure why.  There are tons of codes, and interesting back stories, but you don’t really know what the hell is going on until the very end.  It’s interesting, and the end may make the sometimes cumbersome reading worth it (and the macho fifties language, something about that just irritated me).  I’d recommend the book, but probably more so if people were already a fan of Dennis Lehane. This was my first book of his I read, and I’m not sure I get his writing style entirely. He also wrote Gone Baby Gone, which was also turned into an acclaimed movie.

In a surprise move, because I don’t think anyone gave it a second thought about the quirkily beautiful Anna Paquin, the star of True Blood who also happens to be dating her vampire costar, Anna came out as being a bisexual woman. She came out in support of other gay and bisexual people who feel that they can’t say anything about their sexuality because they are afraid of what people will think. She even says that she was afraid she might be fired from certain jobs or looked down upon if she came out with her true sexual nature in the press.

But the talented actress (although I skewered the second season of True Blood, I couldn’t stand it for the most part, not because of her but because of the terrible writing) decided that enough was enough and she thought that if she could come out and show people it was ok to be honest, she would help those that felt like they were being censored.

It still surprises me that people feel ashamed to come out in this day and age, but certainly there is still a lot of anti gay and bisexual sentiment that labels you as something you really aren’t even in other facets of your life.  The group she came out for, their goal is to end those false perceptions and help people who have different sexual taste than the average hetero male of female be free to state that, eventually without fear of retaliation or false impressions of their talent, work ethic, and morals.

Another reason why some may be surprised is that she is happily dating, and engage to marry, her costar that many of the ladies find attractive Stephen Moyer, who plays her love interest, the vampire Bill, in True Blood, which is based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels, about a character that Anna plays in the series.

I really hope that True  Blood gets back on track when it comes back on HBO in the fall. I’ll be bummed if not. It started off as promising and different, and the characters all just seemed to implode and the plots seemed to take ridiculous and totally uninteresting twists in the second season. It became almost an obligation to watch whereas before in the first season I looked forward to it every week, like I did to “Lost”.