I reluctantly started watching a show that my husband brought home from a friend at work. I figured I’d try it out though, since all of our favorite shows are now off the air for the season, leaving a huge void in our usual tv schedule – which sucks!

The show is called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and it stars and is written by a couple of actors that I had never heard of before. Oh, and the woman on it is absolutely hilarious. I love it when women are funny and can just let loose on screen, and that’s how this girl is.

I guess you can tell already that I have a good review for this show. The show’s chemistry starts off a bit slow, but it builds really fast. The jokes are totally irreverant, which I love. I love that this show is willing to make light of such hot topics as racism, sex, sexism and other social issues that seem to be so taboo.

The show centers around four totally self absorbed friends who own a bar.  It’s basically like a Seinfeld sort of show on high octane.  Danny DeVito joins the show in it’s second season (I won’t tell you who he is though).

Each episode is a half hour. It always starts off with a scene that kind of sets up the whole episode. Since the show airs on FX at a certain time, they are allowed to say certain swear words on it, and I don’t know why, but they often catch me off guard.

And yes, to confirm everyone’s suspicion – being able to swear on a show DOES make it funnier – much funnier. Sorry, but swear words are just funny and ever so appropriate sometimes.

The shows characters are all basically the same – all four of them are pretty absorbed in their own little worlds and don’t have that many redeeming qualities, but they are hilarious together once the show’s chemistry really starts going.

Hello all Flickwiki readers, I wanted to wish everyone a wonderful, Merrry, Merrrrry Merrrry Christmas on this Christmas Eve. I hope you all are planning to see family and/or friends on this special day, no matter what you celebrate.

Be safe, eat lots of good food – or maybe even watch some good TV or a movie – I know I plan to – and have a WONDERFUL MERRY CHRISTMAS tomorrow!!!

So we rented the latest Michael Cera being Michael Cera movie (I love the kid, but let’s face it, thus far acting range has not been in his repertoire), Scott Pilgrim Against the World.  This movie was definitely a shock to the system, mostly because I had no idea what to expect.

Sure, I knew it would be surreal and very stylized and kitchy, but to the degree it actually was, I had no idea. Scott Pilgrim is about a guy, the somewhat nerdy band member of a band that really, really rocks actually, who tends to fall in love easily and get hurt.

He meets a girl named Ramona Flowers, a sulky, angsty youngster herself, and falls immediately in love.  Then he finds out that she has seven evil ex boyfriends that he has to defeat before he can start dating her.  That’s when the real, surreal, video game like sequences, fights and concert scenes take place.

Watching this movie is very fun, but it’s also very ADD – the movie never stays in one place very long, and it’s visually stunning as well as hard to follow intellectually with it’s quick humor and obscure references to pop culture.

The music is awesome, especially if you like punk music or are into anything like the Ramones – you’ll love this movie purely for that alone.  This movie is a ton of fun to watch, but I can see how it would wear on you if it were any longer than an hour and a half.  It could be exhausting to watch any more than that.

The fight scenes were great. Everyone went into full video game mode, with the chings and changs for getting points and the whole nine yards.  My favorite scene was where Scott Pilgrim faces two of Ramona’s evil exes at one time. This time it’s twins who have a band of their own – they’re disco/techno.

They have a rock off, and there are two huge, monstrous cartoons that shoot out of the ground for each of them – Scott’s a gigantic ape like thing, and the twin’s two dragons. This scene alone will make you feel like you should be tripping on hallucinogenic drugs.

I’d recommend it – it’s fun, hip, hilarious at times, and very visually appealing.

When we rented The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from Blockbuster online, we really weren’t sure what to expect.  I had never read any of Swedish author Steig Larson’s books about the evasive female hacker, Lisbeth Salander, but I heard they were good. So we rented the movie with no real expectations.

I knew it was subtitled since it was shot in Swedish, but I don’t mind subtitled movies at all, so that was no big deal to me.  Noomi Rapace plays the title character Lisbeth Salander.  The movie is about how she ends up  helping the journalist she has been assigned to spy on by her employer via hacking into his computer and getting access to all information he researches and finds.

She begins to get interested in his research involving a 40 year old murder mystery.  The journalist that she ends up helping, Mikael, has just ended a rough time in his life being accused of slander.  He was working on a story about a man high up in the ranks who he found some serious criminal activity circling.

After he disclosed all of the information to the media, his sources mysteriously disappeared. Sympathizing with his plight and believing he is innocent, Lisbeth begins to dig into his case.  The case is assigned from a very rich man who has commissioned Mikael to research a 40 year old missing persons case on his niece, whom he was very fond of.

The movie details their research into the old case, but more than that, we get some glimpses of the past life of Lisbeth, who obviously has some hangups about human interaction and intimacy. There are some parts of this movie that are hard to watch as a woman. There is a graphic rape scene where Lisbeth is raped by her guardian, assigned to handle her from a troubled past of run ins with the law.

Noomi Rapace is great to watch in this movie. She really brings the troubled and complex, guarded character of Lisbeth to life (even though I haven’t read the book, I really get a feel for who this woman is through her gritty portrayal).

The supporting cast is also excellent, bringing a diverse cast of characters to life and breathing life into Steig Larson’s novels.  I’m actually looking forward to the others coming out. I know that there is some controversy about the American version being made, which is to star the little-known Roony Mara as Lisbeth and Daniel Craig (who is awesome) as Mikael.

I’ll probably end up seeing the American version as well, but I honestly don’t know why it needs to be made in such close succession to the Swedish version, when the Swedish version is so well done.

After just writing a glowing review of another Frank Darabont production, Shawshank Redemption, I feel a little bad for admitting that his AMC endeavor to make the comic Walking Dead into a TV show, has fallen short of my expectations. My husband and I were really excited for this show to start.

We watched the first episode of Walking Dead, and we thought it was ok, but it just failed to blow us away. The zombie special effects were quite amazing and moving, but other than that, the characters left us a bit cold, and the writing and sound effects really fell short.

The sound effects are particularly bothersome on the show, they are too harsh and fake, and they just don’t match up with what’s going on onscreen.  Also, the show is not broadcast in HD, and when you’re used to watching everything in HD, it’s hard to get used to an inferior picture quality, especially when the zombies are so cool looking, you’d love to see them in HD.

After watching three fairly subpar episodes, we finally saw a good one, episode four, the other night. This one was where some action started, and we actually got to care about what happens to some of these people.

The show, for anyone who doesn’t know what it’s about, follows a group of people who come together after a sort of armageddon of zombie takeover has occurred.  There is really no explanation of why this has happened, but we know that the undead bite is what kills people and then turns them into the undead.

The main character is perhaps one of the most bothersome characters. He’s not terrible, but he’s just not convincingly tough enough.  He’s not a strong or charismatic enough character to really get you on his side. His buddy cop who is screwing his wife behind his back is actually more likable than he is!

Everyone in this show fits into stereotypes of various different types of characters, and they need to be a bit bolder, because after all, even though it’s a show about zombies, ultimately people take up ninety percent of the onscreen time, and those are the stories that are going to make this show a whole lot more interesting.

Well, both my husband and myself never got to see the critically acclaimed and popular movie Shawshank Redemption. Not that we didn’t want to, it’s just one of those movies that somehow escaped our experience when we were younger (this movie is now 16 years old, can you believe it!).

This movie is great, it’s really truly a pleasure to watch. Even though it is two and a half hours long, it goes by fast, and you don’t even notice that it is long. It’s beautifully told, beautifully directed with awesome camera work, and wonderfully acted by the talented Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman.

The movie Shawshank Redemption is based on a story by Stephen King called Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.  There is really no supernatural element to this story, it’s just a story about the beautiful and dark sides of humanity as well as the enduring human spirit.

It follows a man who is quiet and reserved, played by Tim Robbins, Andy Dufresne, accused of killing his wife and his wife’s lover in a jealous and drunken rage.  While Andy admits to being drunk and full of rage the night the murders happened, he declares his innocence and refused to admit to the killings. However, his perceived icy demeanor and seeming lack or remorse help convict him to several years in prison.

He is sentenced to Shawshank prison, where he meets Morgan Freeman. The two become close friends over the years. Andy endures sodomy and beating and other trials and tribulations while at Shawshank, but he always seems to emerge from them with his spirit intact.

As Morgan Freeman’s character Red says (and I got choked up at this part), “some birds feathers are just too bright to be caged up”.  Andy comes from a banking background and is highly intelligent, as well as crafty at getting people to like him, which just comes naturally for him since he seems like such a great guy.

He eventually begins to give out financial advice to the guards at the prison and do their tax returns, and he starts to run an elaborate money laundering scam for the warden, who as we find is a seemingly religious man who turns greedy and downright evil. \

When news comes to light from a young new inmate who Andy takes under his wing (played by a very young Gil Bellows – remember Billy from Ally McBeal!) that sheds new light on evidence that Andy is innocent of his wife and her lover’s murder, the warden has him murdered by the head guard (played by the talented Clancy Brown) to keep Andy incarcerated, keeping him silent and keeping him working his elaborate scheme for him.

I don’t want to go further, but the series of events is really inspiring and you will get goosebumps watching this movie if you have an ounce of sentimentality in your heart. Great movie, LOVE FRANK DARABONT!!!