Movie: Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

Much Ado About Nothing
Comedy, Drama, Romance

There's a few reasons I watched this. One, it's Shakespeare and I'm an English major. Two, it's a Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, The Avengers) film and I love him. And three, it has a brilliant Whedonesque cast. I also heard it was filmed entirely at Joss' house and who doesn't want to get an inside look at that? Beware, it is a Shakespeare play so the dialogue is archaic and you really must pay attention. It is also filmed entirely in black and white but I think it works better that way.

I spent a lot of time star spotting in this movie. The two verbally dueling leads are played by Amy Acker (Dollhouse, Person of Interest) and Alexis Denisof (Angel, The Avengers) and they are backed up by an amazing cast including Nathan Fillion (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Castle), Clark Gregg (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Fran Kranz (The Cabin in the Woods, Donnie Darko), Sean Maher (Serenity) and Tom Lenk (Transformers, Argo). I spent more time pointing out actors to my husband than listening to the first half of the film.

I didn't mind it. Like I said, I didn't pay a lot of attention at first but then by the second half I was into it. Maybe it took a little while to get used to the Shakespearean. It was quite funny in places as well. I will probably rewatch it somewhere along the line as part of my study.

3 out of 5 Whedons...

TV: Person of Interest SE3 EP9

Person of Interest
Action, Drama, Mystery

Holy crap! What an episode! The fandom are all up in arms over this one and I don't blame them. None of us saw that coming.

Finally Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson - Boston Legal) with a little background help from Elias (Enrico Colantoni - Just Shoot Me!, Veronica Mars), managed to take down HR, a bunch of crooked cops who have been running the town. She finally captured the head honcho and then just had the problem of getting him through police blockades set up by HR to the FBI building. Sounds simple right? Well with a little help from everyone's favourite silver fox, John Reese (Jim Caviezel - The Passion of The Christ) she makes it through the blockades only to get stuck in the morgue.

Let's talk about the kiss shall we. Ok, yeah, I knew John had a little crush on Carter but for some reason I never thought anything would come of it... I suppose nothing has come of it but we'll get to that in a minute. I felt a little weird watching it, maybe because John is so calm and unemotional most of the time. Though I'd feel less weird if Shaw (Sarah Shahi - Alias) suddenly got it on with John, they're matched, ha! Also, I just read somewhere that the kiss was unscripted and they just went with it... that makes sense to me.

In saying all that, they couldn't kill Carter off without the kiss and if I knew she was going to die I might have thought differently of it at the time. But I honestly thought they were going to kill John off and have Shaw take over. I never for a second thought that Harold (Michael Emerson - Lost) would let Root (Amy Acker - what hasn't she been in! Dollhouse is one of my favourites) out, and he didn't thank goodness! But I thought John was done for when he jumped out the vent to take on HR by himself, leaving Carter locked in the morgue. But of course, somehow they got through that too, as they always do!

Then I thought maybe Fusco (Kevin Chapman) was going to bite it, especially when Shaw turned up at his place to save his kid and then there was that almost teary explanation as to why she couldn't save him too! Shaw does have feelings! Then Fusco kicked some ass! Very cool, I love it when the underdog ends up coming out on top!

Even after they delivered the HR head honcho to the FBI, I kept my eye out for Simmons (Robert John Burke - Gossip Girl, Law & Order: SVU) and when he didn't show up I was thinking that maybe they would spend the rest of the season looking for him. In fact, I had it all planned in my head; Elias would turn into the big bad again now that HR was out of the picture, John and Carter would have to try stop him from doing too much bad, then Simmons would reappear and they would join forces to take him down. Viola, end of season.. after all this is only Ep 9! But no, John and Carter get caught unawares and shot... I'm pretty sure Carter clipped him in the shoulder still.

So Carter is dead, John is going to lose his cool and beat some people up in the rest of this season. Maybe the Elias/Simmons thing will still play out as I think....but no Carter. *sobs* Poor John. And what a closing scene! The phone ringing, Harold just standing there, John crying over Carter. Wow. So good.

This is one of the hubs favourite shows right now. Love John's dry cool style, as always. Fantastic episode. What happens next though?

4 out of 5 silver foxes...

TV: Person of Interest SE2 EP2

Person of Interest
Action, Drama, Mystery

This show is a little underrated I think. I love the idea and it's probably semi true somewhere... I bet there is something that monitors security cameras for suspicious activity, it's not really a far stretch is it? You remember how I said I'm not a major fan of cop shows... I might have to take that back. I'm only just realising how many of those shows I already watch. This is one of them. I started watching this one earlier this year after getting out of hospital and being on bed rest for weeks with no new shows... Now I have to keep watching.

Last season we left off with genius Harold Finch (Michael Emerson who you might recognise from Lost) being kidnapped by the equally genius and devious Root - played by the awesomeness that is Amy Acker (Angel, The Cabin In The Woods). Of course our mutual friend John Reece (Jim Caviezel) eventually rescues him with style but I doubt that's the last we will see of Root. She cannot resist the machine and Harold himself; attracted by the brains of it all.

I loved this episode; finding out about Root. It really had me going thinking she was Hannah when in fact she was Hannah's friend. It was Root who opened the account in Hannah's name, setting up her killer to be murdered. It was Root who kept sending the librarian copies of the book that Hannah had last borrowed as a kind of torture for not believing her about Hanna's killer. I like that Root called Reece afterwards and thanked him for finding her friend.

We know from the first episode of this season that Finch set The Machine up so that it wouldn't pick him up as being in danger... so Reece convincing it to hand out Hannah's number in some round about way of telling him where Finch is... I wonder how that works? Some loophole...

A nice time filler!

3 out of 5 giant computers...

Movie: The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

The Cabin In The Woods (2011)
Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

I love a good horror movie and its been a while since any really good ones have been released in my opinion. Then someone told me about this one... At first I thought it was going to be another one of those piss-take horror films packed with cheesy one liners. Well, it is full of cheesy one-liners but it's actually a pretty good horror flick - I know, I'm surprised too!

I was surprised that is, until I saw Joss Whedon's name on it and now it all makes a little more sense. That man is a god and if you don't know who he is, we can't be friends...

It's a very Whedon-esk cast too with Amy Acker of Angel fame and Fran Kranz from Dollhouse, but the star was Kristen Connolly who's most well know for her appearances as iGirl on Youtube's iChannel, and Aussie Chris Hemsworth - Thor, Norse God of Thunder, duh! I also recognized one of the zombies as Jodelle Ferland (Twilight: Eclipse)- yes, zombies!

It took me a little while to figure out what was going on. I hadn't seen any previews and the only thing I'd heard about it is that it wasn't what I would expect of a horror. From that I half expected it to turn into something like Tucker and Dale VS Evil, hehe, but that wasn't it. It's kind of like Big Brother's Haunted House... at least we know what happened to the Cube machine, ha!

It's a relatively short film at an hour and twenty-five minutes, but how long do you really expect people to survive in these situations? I love the idea of it, something really different and the ending is pretty awesome. Sigourney Weaver as The Director made me chuckle.

Will recommend to friends. Should have watched it in the dark...

4 out of 5 monster cubes...

[Quote] "Oh no, don't kill the gorgeous man, we're endangered!" - Hemsworth