Erm, Walgreens and Marvel. I mean will there be a new line of heroes based on laxatives and Vicks Vaporub? This is fear inducing. I'm having visions of an aged person donning Depends, Dr. Scholl's foot inserts, and those pharmacy brand reading glasses, with dueling kinetic powers of prune juice blasters and expired candy corn grenades. Bob Newhart to star.
Well, I really don't like Patricia Cornwell's "Scarpetti" novels because they're too graphic; but I do love Angelina Jolie so I definitely will see the movie(s). From what I remember from the two novels I did read, Angelina seems like a good match for Scarpetti.
@mslewis: You don't like Patricia Cornwell's "Scarpetti" novels because they're too graphic?!?!?! Jesus, honey. What about because they are anathema to literature?
It took too many liberties in the name of dramatic effect to be taken very seriously. For example, in the first episode, the soldiers were all clean and scrubbed. Go to any U.S. Army installation and take a good look at the enlisted men. Soldiers in the field are required to wear camo paint and body armor. Nobody's going to just run out of a World War One style trench and into No Man's Land and survive. To do so would take a miracle. The enemy, if the Geneva Conventions are given any weight at all, are not going to have POW's in a tent 50 meters from the front. Finally, the King is not going anywhere near the front lines on the pimped-out royal chopper to cradle his wounded son in his arms. Any Secret Service agent who would let our President do that should be hanged, drawn and quartered, and beheaded.
Can we all just say that NBC resoundingly sucks? I mean, really. It just sucks. When you have, what, three shows on your entire network anyone gives a Twinkie-tower about, then yeah, you suck.
Also, Amy Poehler, I'd get my SNL gym shorts warmed up 'cause it's not going to be pretty.
The marketing for this was terrible. They hyped it up for weeks but never really gave viewers a sense of what it was about. It really should have been on cable.
@FaceMelter: Aw, I think Macauley Culkin gets a bad rap. He's not mind blowing or anything, but it's not like he's Paul Walker.
I really like this show, but I think part of the issue is that the acting is really stylized for TV, and David and Michelle aren't able to pull it off like the rest of the cast (I'm not sure if this is due to their acting, or their characters being written so incredibly flat). But this is really disappointing to hear.
I really hope you're joking. It's almost as if he was competing with Seth Green to see who could act more shitty. Seriously, his performance in that movie was depressingly bad.
@FaceMelter: I don't want to act like I can act better than those kids, but yeah, it was like they were doing their best to do the WORST gay-person. The movie is kinda fun, though.
Sadly, NBC's promotion didn't persuade me to watch. It looked too trashy to me, although I know it wasn't. I'm still mourning the loss of "Life on Mars".
@Bellyboop: I started watching Life on Mars and I realized that it was too good to make it on a prime time network. Check out the original BBC show, if you get a chance.
Ian McShane is riveting. He reads every word like he is doing Macbeth—I just can’t get over how good he is.
David, on the other hand, is something of a cipher. Is it Chris Egan’s acting? The writing? The direction? Maybe I need to see more than three episodes. So far, I find him boring and don’t care much what happens to him.
Sebastian Stan has given strong performances. It’s a shame his character has been drawn so crudely as a frivolous, spiritually void homosexual. It would have been much more challenging to write his character as the noble, worthy one, and to make David sly, calculating, usurping. In the end, Jack would give up his birthright to the peasant usurper out of love or love’s promise—only to be rejected, of course, once the other’s hand held firm his scepter. (Sorry, but I could resist neither the image nor the inversion.)
@propertius: Ha, even better. (And I like the idea of love’s surrogate: an all too realistic possibility.) Nothing like a good tricolonic to cleanse the mind; it reminds me of a line in that Stoppard play, given to Housman (of course) during his teaching of Horace IV.1: "me nec femina nec puer, iam nec spes animi credula mutui / nec certare iuvat mero
... that’s four necs and a fifth to come before the ‘but’, that’s why we call it poetry." Nothing like a good old-fashioned climax.
@iplaudius: That may be my favorite of Horace's odes. The following two stanzas are Horace at his most unguarded. I found it kind of a shocking poem, in the context of the persona he craftily builds in the odes. It's as if he peeps from behind his mask.
@propertius: Some day I hope to appreciate those poems on the level you do; having little Latin, I can perceive them only faintly through translations, apparatus, and witty plays by Tom Stoppard. Even so, I love them, especially IV.1 and IV.7. I don’t know why I find the end of IV.1 so moving. I always think about it when I stand and look into the ocean:
Nightly, in dreams, now I hold you, now, winged, I pursue you across the grass of the Field of Mars, now, hard to the touch, through swirling water.
I am sad about the demise of this show, and I'm also still angry about The Black Donnellys, which was hokier than corned beef cabbage with a side of Guinness, but still better than endless forensics dramas. Why can't they just move Kings to Bravo or AMC or something? Mad Men never would have made it in a primetime spot either.
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More realism and less "reality" please.
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Also, Amy Poehler, I'd get my SNL gym shorts warmed up 'cause it's not going to be pretty.
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I really like this show, but I think part of the issue is that the acting is really stylized for TV, and David and Michelle aren't able to pull it off like the rest of the cast (I'm not sure if this is due to their acting, or their characters being written so incredibly flat). But this is really disappointing to hear.
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04/07/09
I really hope you're joking. It's almost as if he was competing with Seth Green to see who could act more shitty. Seriously, his performance in that movie was depressingly bad.
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David, on the other hand, is something of a cipher. Is it Chris Egan’s acting? The writing? The direction? Maybe I need to see more than three episodes. So far, I find him boring and don’t care much what happens to him.
Sebastian Stan has given strong performances. It’s a shame his character has been drawn so crudely as a frivolous, spiritually void homosexual. It would have been much more challenging to write his character as the noble, worthy one, and to make David sly, calculating, usurping. In the end, Jack would give up his birthright to the peasant usurper out of love or love’s promise—only to be rejected, of course, once the other’s hand held firm his scepter. (Sorry, but I could resist neither the image nor the inversion.)
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P.S. My mind - such as it is these days - couldn't resist orring another clause to your two, to make it nice tricolonic climax of the classical kind:
out of love or love's promise or LOVE'S SURROGATE.
04/07/09
... that’s four necs and a fifth to come before the ‘but’, that’s why we call it poetry." Nothing like a good old-fashioned climax.
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04/07/09
Nightly, in dreams, now I hold you, now, winged, I pursue you across the grass of the Field of Mars, now, hard to the touch, through swirling water.
(based on a prose translation here)
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