HBO has come out with some really great shows in the years past. I’m a huge fan of many of them. Among my favorites are Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sopranos, True Blood, Hung, The Wire, and many others which I can’t even think of right now. Just about every show they’ve made has been interesting to some degree. And always well acted. The only one that I really couldn’t get into for some reason was Deadwood. It may be a guy thing, and since I’m a girl, well, I guess there was just something about it’s supposed greatness that went right over my head.

I decided to actually buy the box sets of the two short seasons of one of their prior shows that I was always curious about but had never gotten to check out “Carnivale”. I had no idea what it was about, besides that it was apparently about a motley carnival/circus kind of thing that passed from town to town.  I knew that a lot of the series was written and produced by someone who produced and wrote for one of my favorite shows of all time “Battlestar Galactica”, and I saw that the series had been called David Lynch-ish, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong.

I’m on the eighth episode of season 1 so far, and I’m definitely intrigued .I wouldn’t say I’m over the moon about it or anything at this point, I’m just sort of getting into the mythology and the characters so far.  It’s very well acted, and the sets are pretty amazing and realistic as per usual with a lot of their shows. I’m just not sure where the story is going, and at times it’s a bit hard to keep up with the characters they talk about. But I said the same thing about The Wire at first too, and that ended up being one of my all time favorite HBO shows as well.

The cast is extremely talented and well chosen. There is not one bad actor or miscast actor I can tell you of, because they are all pretty much perfect.  The show’s eerie, somewhat dark feel lends itself to the story, which is essentially supposed to ultimately be about the battle between good and evil. Still haven’t figured out who’s what yet for sure, but I’m definitely looking forward to finding out. I’m sure I’ll end up bummed that it ended after two seasons, because most HBO shows start off with a slow start and end with a bang.

Ok, so I went and saw one of the most fun movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a Robert Rodriguez film – go figure – I think him and Quentin Tarantino are the kings of “fun” when it comes to cinematic masterpieces – oh and how can I forget “cool” as well.

Machete is the movie that basically makes fun of itself and older seventies and eighties movies that were off the charts bad.  And by bad, I mean bad good. So bad that when you watch it you laugh when you’re not supposed to. That’s the kind of movie Rodriguez made, only when you’re laughing, you know it’s because you’re supposed to be laughing at the awesome badness of it.

The title character is played by the uber tough looking but short badass actor Danny Trejo. You’ve probably seen him in ten movies and never knew his name. he’s the scarred up, motley looking mexican guy that you know could whoop ass that’s been cast in a lot of movies since the eighties.  His name is Machete, and it’s because he’s an assassin that likes to use a machete as his weapon of choice.

But he’s a good cop, not a bad guy, who’s become an assassin after being approached by uber bad guy played by Jeff Fahey. Fahey has a lot of fun using a ridiculous low, gravelly bad guy voice, as do Don Johnson, who plays the evil sheriff that runs illegal immigrants out of town by shooting them – including a pregnant woman!  Robert DeNiro is a congressman on his way up – another bad guy – whose primary platform is that he wants to fry illegal immigrants.

This movie basically not only makes fun of itself but also makes fun of the patriotic gun slinging good ol’ boys who feel like no one can be in America but good old fashioned blue bloods.  Some of the scenes where Rodriguez pokes fun at this type of white trash are particularly hilarious.  There is a great scene of violence that involves intestines – I won’t tell you any more – but it’s funny and very entertaining and gets a ten in the over the top meter.

Jessica Alba plays a border patrol agent who has a change of heart after seeing the pain inflicted on her own people, after being chided by her “latina sister” who helps illegal immigrants make it in America, Michelle Rodriguez.  The violence is over the top cartoonish violence, and the movie is fast and fun – that’s all you can ask for. So grab some popcorn and chocolate and go see this awesome release from reality.

A band that’s been around a while that happens to be from my town of Akron Ohio, the Black Keys, is finally getting the well deserved radio play they deserve, and also the notoriety. I’ve been hearing their songs a lot on the HBO shows that my husband and I watch (Hung, Entourage, True Blood), and every time I hear a song by them I just can’t help but be proud that such a talented band is from my area!

The Black Keys are a two man band that sound like a lot more than that. Their sound is a mix between Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and a lot of the other great early seventies influencers that bring about memories of just plain good music that’s simple and sticks with you.

I just bought their latest album, Brothers at Best Buy. I knew I loved the new single they just released from it “Tighten Up” which is in essence a catchy rhythmic jive song with the typical sixties and seventies influences, but with a modern twist. You’d almost hear this song at a dance club, but not quite. And it would have to be a very hip dance club…

I hope that they play some more shows locally. I know that they used to, but I never had a chance to go see them. I’m not sure how they make their sound so big with just two of them, but some how they pull it off, just like the White Stripes do.

My husband and I were talking about how ironic it is that a very similar movie to the little-known movie “Repo Men” with talented actors Forest Whitaker and Jude Law had previews that made it look bad, while the other similarly themed movie “Surrogates” had good previews, but the better movie by a long shot is actually Repo Men.

Repo men is a futuristic movie that has sets reminiscent of Blade Runner. We don’t know where or when this is set, but it’s clear that it’s in a colder, more technologically advanced world than we live in today with lots of slum-like areas.  The movie centers around two repo men played by Whitaker and Law, who actually love their jobs. They are sick and twisted,  but they actually get a charge out of killing people to retrieve their mechanical body organs that were paid for on installment plans that they couldn’t keep up on with astronomical interest rates.

The movie is hard to watch at times, even though the violence is somewhat tongue in cheek.  They basically go after these guys who have fallen behind on their payments and zap them with a stun gun and then take their organs back. Which means they die, so it’s not a job to take lightly, although Law and Whitaker do.  They’ve been buddies for a long time, and they love doing the job together.

The movie has a lot of great songs in it, and it’s somewhat stylized at times, making it more enjoyable to watch, and making it a mix between a dark comedy and an action thriller. Few movies can pull that off well, but this one managed to do so.

Everything changes shortly after Law’s wife kicks him out for failing to make a choice between his family (he has a son) and his violent job.  He also happens to get the shock of his life when the paddles he’s using on one of his reposesees shocks his heart out of commission. You guessed it – he needs a heart transplant and he falls behind on the payments for his heart.

From there, the movie takes an interesting turn as the story of a man who has changed, a man who has “seen the light” and can no longer perform his brutal job duties. He starts to see people as humans, not as punchlines to tell his buddies about after a hard day on the job.

The rest is history, and I don’t want to spoil it. The movie is well worth your time, you won’t be disappointed.  Jude Law turns in a superb performance that is really different from the roles he usually chooses, and so does Whitaker. These two make the movie worth watching.

My husband and I are super excited for the new HBO series to premier, “Boardwalk Empire”.  It’s a series about a corrupt city official in the days of prohibition, played by the unlikely choice of Steve Buscemi. Buscemi hardly has leading man looks, but hey, James Gandolfini didn’t either, or any of his crew, and that show really pulled it off, and then some.

The previews for Boardwalk Empire look really promising, and the fact that Martin Scorsese is on board with it in any capacity, even though I think he’s only a producer, is a great sign that this will be a well produced, directed and acted show.  Nucky Thompson, played by Buscemi, is basically the king of Atlantic City with his political power as well as his gangster activities.

He no doubt will be a fan favorite, just like Tony Soprano was for his dual life as a ruthless mobster, as well as a family man.  There’s always a dichotomy to the characters that take root the hardest. Take Tony Soprano, who could violently murder someone without so much as a thought, but had a soft spot for animals and kids.

This is how these types of characters get into our psyche. They are the very illustration that no one is black in white, everyone is shades of grey.  Another aspect that has me excited about this show is the talented but little known actor Michael Pitt.

I would have never known this actor existed, except I saw him in a twisted and disturbing film where he pulled off creepy like no one else with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth called Funny Games. He was equally as memorable as a white trash kid who gets involved with the murder of a friend in the equally disturbing – I – need – a shower now movie “Bully”.

I think we’re going to see how talented this kid is in Boardwalk Empire. His character in this show looks like he might be with the law, I can’t figure out if he’s a straight guy trying to infiltrate Nucky’s inner circle or what, but it looks like he’s probably in over his head either way.  The show premiers on Sunday, September 19th, after True Blood is over.  Yay, we’ll have something to replace the void!

I just spent my Saturday night on another crap-tastic movie. Last weekend, it was the horrendously awful “Losers” and this weekend, it was a similar, overly stylized movie that tried to have a tough chick and a bunch of tough dudes together that were loco, but some how it just ending up feeling like you had smoke blown up your you know what the whole two hours.

We actually watched Domino to the end, which is our fault, we should have turned it off after a half hour. But it had a little bit of promise. Besides the fact that it just tried to hard to be something and came up way too short, the story could have been a lot more interesting and the acting actually wasn’t half bad.

The script sucked and the situations were totally ludicrous and absurd for one.  This was supposed to be (loosely I’m sure) based on the true story of Domino, the daughter of a wealthy Hollywood producer.  She was always a rebel, always a badass who wanted to cause trouble and who got bored easily, not afraid to punch someone out or tell them off in a heart beat.

She decides to become a bounty hunter so she can “have some fun”.  Could have been a basis for an interesting story. Instead they overly stylized this movie into something that resembled a jumbled mess at the end.  It reminded me of the other movie like this, Smoking Aces, which could have been really cool, and had an ensemble cast of talented actors and actresses, but in the end, it just tried too hard to be cool, hence not being cool at all and in fact invoking some odd feelings of hatred from the audience.

From the grainy filming to the artsy rewinds, this movie is just a disaster from start to finish. Not even Keira’s solid acting or Mickey Rourke’s performance as her bounty hunter mentor could save this piece of drivel.  By the way, apparently the real Domino Harvey actually died of a meth overdose at the age of 35.