It's based on "All you need is kill". I read somewhere that in America the original novel came out with this title too. It's a bit different throughout the story, but the ending is obviously totally different. It was too tough for an american movie: they have rules to follow: the man and the woman must fall in love and have their happy ending, everybody knows that! Watch away, you won't be able to deny that they all follow the same pattern. Anyway, back to the beginning. They changed it a bit, because Tom Cruise is a major called Cage, and there's a long intro before the actual first battle, then it goes back on track; it was his first battle and when he died he turned back in time and woke up before the battle: anything he tries doesn't stop this, until one day on the battlefield he saves Rita Vrataski's life. She's famous to be a great warrior, although her character is not well depicted as it was in the manga, because all the attention is on him, and a lot of time is 'wasted' on the usual lines people say every time in that same day: still, they keep the nickname 'full metal bitch' and show she's different from the others, she trains alone and never jokes; when he saves her during the battle she understands what he's going through and tells him to look for her next time he wakes up. He does so, and she explains to him how the enemy, called Mimic, has various Alphas that can bring the time back so that they can learn about the enemy and defeat it. Having killed one of those alphas, and having been covered in its blood, Cage has become a alpha himself. Rita also tells him of the omega, the central brain of all the enemy: destroy it and you'll win the war. [:-/ it's a bit too easy this way, isn't it?? In movies it's always so easy: there's millions of them, but you just have to look for the central switch, destroy it, and voilà, the war is won! ]
It's not explained how many times he has repeated the same day, but it's a big number, because anything he attempts to do requires several trys. She trains him, then they fight together, side by side on the battlefield. She explains to him that she was once like him, she had the same gift, but she lost it because she got injured without dying, and was brought to a hospital where she had a blood transfusion that stopped it. That's the reason why she tells him that he must die, to start again and try to win the war. Every time he's injured, she kills him to start again. Every time, he has to start all over again from before they meet, so she barely knows him, while he has lots of memories, and gets to know her. One day, they are at a good point, trying to go where they think Omega is, but he's reluctant to go on because he knows she will die. We didn't know, but he admits they have done that several times, and no matter what he does she always dies at that point. He doesn't want her to die, but she's a warrior, she wants to defeat them, and goes on anyway. After she dies, he dies too. Next time he wakes up, he doesn't go to talk to her like he always did, he doesn't get her involved, he goes on alone, and that was my favourite bit of the whole movie, when he goes to see her, but doesn't tell anything, because he knows what it'll happen and he's decided he doesn't want her to die; also, he has realized that he must think only of the big picture, which is stop the war and defeat Omega, and can't "waste" any time trying to save the soldiers around him. This time, he leaves them all behind to their destiny and goes alone with the only purpose of finding Omega. Still, he finds out that Omega isn't there, it was just a trap. He manages to die so to be able to start again. This time he gets her involved again, so to study together a new plan. She tells him of a device that could link a alpha to omega, and he could use it on himself, since he's a alpha now. The device, though, is locked in the office of the General. After what we are told are several attempts to retrieve it, they get the device, but immediately they are surrounded by soldiers with orders to stop them, because the general didn't believe him, of course, he probably gave him the device thinking 'let's get this crazy man out of my office first, then we'll stop him'. While they are trying to escape, Cage tries the device on himself, and finds out where Omega really is. At that point I was almost screaming to the screen: kill yourself, or tell her to shoot you now, immediately!!! Now that you know where to find it, you should start again with no need to go through all the same stuff again, you could tell her everything right away, and go to kill it together saving a lot of other things you did all the other times !!! I mean, she always went on and on about the importance of not being injured or captured, the trouble of losing your 'gift', every time she had no trouble shooting him in the head, she did it without a thinking for a second the first time they came out to find all the soldiers waiting for them! But now, after he told her he saw everything, after telling her what he saw, she kept driving crazily fast while an army was chasing her... that was so stupid, the only reasonable thing to do at that point would have been to stop the car and kill him immediately, so to start again everything. Can you imagine how much time they could save next loop, not having to do all the battle they always did during that terrible day? After the usual explanation, straight to Paris!
But no,she doesn't do that, they go on with their attempt to escape but are stopped and brought, unconscious, to the hospital where he's given a transfusion: he loses his power! From that moment, they have only one chance to kill Omega. They get his team involved in this, manage to get close to it. Everybody else dies, Rita dies to allow him to get to omega, and even if he's killed himself, he manages to throw a bunch of bombs into its mouth and kills it, being covered in blood.
It should be the end, but as I said before, this is not a japanese manga, this is an american movies, and there are rules! Somehow he wakes up again, only to find that this time things are different. The enemy seems almost defeated, and he's not sent into battle. This is why he wakes up earlier in the helicopter, because in this reality he was never sent to the camp unconscious, so the last time he slept was on the helicopter, just arriving in London. He goes to the camp, goes to see Rita, and although she of course doesn't know him, he remembers everything, and smiles. Happy ending.
Why he woke up again though is not totally clear. I saw that after him went another Mimic, trying to stop him, and I can assume he was a Alpha, so when this Alpha got killed with the Omega and Cage himself, the blood of the Alpha covered Cage making him a Alpha again. So he goes back in time again: one last time, of course, because this time, for the first time in who knows how long, he won't die before a single day is gone. Still, it doesn't seem to make sense, since the omega remains dead, while he is alive, along with all the other soldiers. If he goes back in time and every human that died that day is still alive, why is Omega still dead? Makes no real sense. To me, if they really wanted a happy ending, they should have done what I said above: he should have died as soon as he found out where to find it, and being able to loop again he should have made all the necessary attempt at killing it as were necessary.
Also the fact that she kisses him before going to her death, knowing that they will both die on that mission, is absurd! She respected him, she may have liked him as a fellow fighter, but she didn't know him at all. She didn't love him, not possible. It was totally unreasonable, but that was another of those rules I talked about. The man and the woman must fall in love and kiss before the final battle: you can't fight against movie-rules, I suppose, although I keep hoping that someone will one day have the guts to do so.
It's understandable that he felt for her, he had learned to know her well, in all those days together, because he remembered everything, but she didn't. For what she could remember, she had just met him! That kiss was absurd and ridiculous. I knew for sure she was gonna do it, I had hoped to the contrary, but was so sure of it! Do people really want this? Don't people really care about things making sense? Or is just what they think people want? I keep wondering this.
One last thing: I liked that at the end, during the titles, we hear the song "Love me again"; it's the perfect song because it keeps shouting "I need to know now can you love me again?" which basically is what it has to happen now. Cage can know Rita from the start, since he remembers everything but she has never met him, from what she knows, so he will have to talk to her, explain her what they did together, and start all over again some kind of relationship.
venerdì 31 ottobre 2014
giovedì 30 ottobre 2014
All you need is kill - manga - by Sakurazaka Hiroshi, Takeuchi Ryousuke, Takeshi Obata
I've read this manga, it's only two volumes, based on the novel by Sakurazaka Hiroshi; the manga is written by Takeuchi Ryosuke and the drawings are Takeshi Obata. It's really tough, and thrilling. I liked it very much, although the ending was sad and cruel, but also right, in a way.
It starts with Keiji Kiriya waking up from what he thinks was a very bad dream. He had been killed, and he thinks he's just his nerves, because tomorrow he'll go to his first battle against the big alien enemy that is trying to conquer the Earth. He never fought before, and when the time comes, he's killed in a few moments. He wakes up again the morning before the day of the battle, and understands it was not just a bad dream. He tries to escape, because he doesn't want to die, but is found and killed by the enemy. He tries killing himself, but again he wakes up the same morning before the battle. He understands there's nothing he can do to change things. If he dies, he'll wake up and it'll all start again, so he decides the only option he has is : do not die!
He asks his sergeant to train him, to help him for the battle of the next day, but is told that's not something he could teach him in a day: he became a better warrior only by fighting various times. Keiji understands that he will only learn how to fight by fighting. He writes on his hand the number of times he has repeated this same day, and starts paying attention to an american girl, Rita Vrataski, who is said to be the greatest of warriors. He studies her, how she fights, and understands why she carries such a big sword, and why she wears her armor more light. As he understands he needs to be faster, he modifies it to resemble hers, and has a special sword made for him too, because bullets and such can run out much faster than the number of enemies, so he needs something that won't. He becomes a better fighter, and one day, on the battlefield, Rita watches him, how he moves and fights, and seems to understand something. She calls out to him, and asks him how many loop has he done yet. This was the end of the first volume.
The second volume takes it from here. The next loops he goes to Rita and talks to her, making her realise that he's trapped in the loop, since she doesn't remember talking to him. She cries, relieved to find someone who experienced the same thing she did, and tells him of how she became the full metal bitch so famous among soldiers all around the world. She fought to survive, and was trapped in a loop just like him. She learned to be a great fighter, and explains to him how this happened. The enemy, called Mimic, has one central nexus and various antennae among its "soldiers". They can control their own loops, and that's why they've been so unbeatable, because they can go back knowing when people will attack them and how, but somehow by killing one of those antannae Keiji got trapped in it too, and that's the only chance they have now of actually defeating them. Rita also tells him that what they have to do is to kill all these antennae and only at that point they will be able to defeat the nexus without him being able to go back.
Working together, Keiji and Rita are formidable on the battlefield, and manage very well, and yet when Keiji thought they had done it, he wakes up again. Rita understands why, but doesn't tell him right away. They spend a whole day together, getting to know each other, but when the mimics arrive earlier they have to get ready for battle. They fight them all, they kill them all, then Rita turns against Keiji. He doesn't understand why, and only then Rita explains to him that their brains, because of all those loops, have become like those antennae, and to stop the loop one of them must die. She starts fighting him, telling him to react. He does so, and manages to kill her. She knew he would, he knew he would: he had learn how to fight by watching and studying her. She dies happy knowing that he will go on, that he'll fight the mimics till the end, that he'll win this war. Her death is very painful for him, there was a bond between the two of them, and now she's gone.
Keiji then takes her place in the war, promising that he will win this war for her.
She wore a red armor despite the fact that she didn't like the colour. He understands it was because she wanted to attract all the attention of the enemy, to save her fellow soldiers. He will choose to paint his a different colour: blue, the colour she told him that she loved.
It's only two volumes, but it's very intense, and has time for little, heart-touching moments. My favourite moment was when he goes to tell her who he is, and has to do it more times. The last time he looks at her crying and thinks "I made her cry again".. it was touching. She's actually crying of relief, but still crying. She's happy she's no more alone in the world, and the great unbeatable warrior that people call Full Metal Bitch and think she's icy, for a moment turns back to being a young girl.
It starts with Keiji Kiriya waking up from what he thinks was a very bad dream. He had been killed, and he thinks he's just his nerves, because tomorrow he'll go to his first battle against the big alien enemy that is trying to conquer the Earth. He never fought before, and when the time comes, he's killed in a few moments. He wakes up again the morning before the day of the battle, and understands it was not just a bad dream. He tries to escape, because he doesn't want to die, but is found and killed by the enemy. He tries killing himself, but again he wakes up the same morning before the battle. He understands there's nothing he can do to change things. If he dies, he'll wake up and it'll all start again, so he decides the only option he has is : do not die!
He asks his sergeant to train him, to help him for the battle of the next day, but is told that's not something he could teach him in a day: he became a better warrior only by fighting various times. Keiji understands that he will only learn how to fight by fighting. He writes on his hand the number of times he has repeated this same day, and starts paying attention to an american girl, Rita Vrataski, who is said to be the greatest of warriors. He studies her, how she fights, and understands why she carries such a big sword, and why she wears her armor more light. As he understands he needs to be faster, he modifies it to resemble hers, and has a special sword made for him too, because bullets and such can run out much faster than the number of enemies, so he needs something that won't. He becomes a better fighter, and one day, on the battlefield, Rita watches him, how he moves and fights, and seems to understand something. She calls out to him, and asks him how many loop has he done yet. This was the end of the first volume.
The second volume takes it from here. The next loops he goes to Rita and talks to her, making her realise that he's trapped in the loop, since she doesn't remember talking to him. She cries, relieved to find someone who experienced the same thing she did, and tells him of how she became the full metal bitch so famous among soldiers all around the world. She fought to survive, and was trapped in a loop just like him. She learned to be a great fighter, and explains to him how this happened. The enemy, called Mimic, has one central nexus and various antennae among its "soldiers". They can control their own loops, and that's why they've been so unbeatable, because they can go back knowing when people will attack them and how, but somehow by killing one of those antannae Keiji got trapped in it too, and that's the only chance they have now of actually defeating them. Rita also tells him that what they have to do is to kill all these antennae and only at that point they will be able to defeat the nexus without him being able to go back.
Working together, Keiji and Rita are formidable on the battlefield, and manage very well, and yet when Keiji thought they had done it, he wakes up again. Rita understands why, but doesn't tell him right away. They spend a whole day together, getting to know each other, but when the mimics arrive earlier they have to get ready for battle. They fight them all, they kill them all, then Rita turns against Keiji. He doesn't understand why, and only then Rita explains to him that their brains, because of all those loops, have become like those antennae, and to stop the loop one of them must die. She starts fighting him, telling him to react. He does so, and manages to kill her. She knew he would, he knew he would: he had learn how to fight by watching and studying her. She dies happy knowing that he will go on, that he'll fight the mimics till the end, that he'll win this war. Her death is very painful for him, there was a bond between the two of them, and now she's gone.
Keiji then takes her place in the war, promising that he will win this war for her.
She wore a red armor despite the fact that she didn't like the colour. He understands it was because she wanted to attract all the attention of the enemy, to save her fellow soldiers. He will choose to paint his a different colour: blue, the colour she told him that she loved.
It's only two volumes, but it's very intense, and has time for little, heart-touching moments. My favourite moment was when he goes to tell her who he is, and has to do it more times. The last time he looks at her crying and thinks "I made her cry again".. it was touching. She's actually crying of relief, but still crying. She's happy she's no more alone in the world, and the great unbeatable warrior that people call Full Metal Bitch and think she's icy, for a moment turns back to being a young girl.
mercoledì 29 ottobre 2014
NCIS season 2
This season Sean Murray who plays McGee is in the opening credits since episode one.
ep 1 - See no evil - Captain Watson's wife and daughter are held hostage, and he's being controlled, but he manages to get his assistant to contact NCIS "and only them". Kyle Grayson took them, but unknowingly he was hired by captain Watson himself.
Gibbs tells Abby she's one of the smartest people he knows :-) McGee's name is Timothy, and the little actress playing the blind daughter is amazing :-)
ep 2 - The good wives club - A bride died in her dress, chained to the bed. They find out that chaplain Evans had done that to four girls, but the last one, Carolyn Figgis, eighteen, is found still alive after he shot himself in the head.
Funny : Gibbs talking of the murderer "he's cautious", and Abby replies "So am I, when I chain guys up" :lol:
ep 3 - Vanished - A helicopter is found left in a field, at the centre of a crop circle, and Abby goes crazy! But alas it was nothing supernatural, just a stupid old feud, and they killed the Marine's brother because he had fallen in love with the daughter of 'the enemy'.
ep 4 - Lt. Jane Doe - A girl is found dead with no documents, and Ducky takes it personal because it resembles a case from ten years before where the victim was the only one he was never able to identify, so her family never had closure. It turns out the murderer from ten years ago has died, and this time, the responsible is the Petty Officer that McGee knew years ago.
It was very cute when Gibbs asked Abby to work with Ducky, just to give him something to do.. :-) We learn that Ducky hunted with a falcon in Scotland, in his youth.
This is the first episode with the black and white shots. It ends with Ducky putting his old case to rest, but actually he still hasn't identified the body; okay they know the murderer is dead, the case is closed, but if what bothered him so much was that he could never identified her, seems a bit semplicist that he would now simply let it go.
ep 5 - The bone yard - At a practice bomb site, is discovered a bone yard. The latest victim wasn't a mafioso, but an undercover Fbi agent. The Bureau thinks Fornell is a mole and they arrest him. That's why he asked for Gibbs help.
In the gym, Kate knocks down McGee, and Gibbs boxes with Tony: no need to say who won. :-)
We learn that Kate has three older brothers; we are reminded that she was handpicked to defend the President, but it is understandable how she might want to remind people of that, it's quite an honor, right?
Tony: "My name's Tony DiNozzo. Italiano. Doesn't make me Mafia now, does it?" Well, he sounds as Italian as I sound American, but it doesn't matter, the sentiment is very much appreciated, absolutely, very much!
"Ari's a valuable intelligence asset, Gibbs" says Fornell to Gibbs who is still very much pissed off; he also says "Realising how sad this sounds, you're the closest thing I have to a friend Gibbs." After staging his death, Gibbs says about him "he was my friend!" :-D
ep 6 - Terminal leave - A bomb in a Lt 's car, but she's safe, only her dog died. Ncis protects her and her family. It always annoys me how people under protection act, as if being killed is worth the risk, compared to stay confined for a couple of days, or something like that. It's really stupid, but in every movie, where someone is under protection, they act like that, as if the enemy were the agents protecting them. What should they say: "of course you can go to the cinema, walk in the park with your boyfriend, play football with your friends, why not? Sure, there's someone out there who wants to blow your head off, but if you're ok with that, why should I stop you? ", or should they say: "No, you can't go" ?
The scene with Tony in the same bathroom while Kate was having a shower actually was out of line, I mean that Tony was out of line; usually they are just bickering, but this time he really was a jerk.
I don't like that FBI woman at all, her mouth when she talks.. I don't like it. Not at all, not a bit, I was tempted to fast-forward her...
I liked a lot the scene when Abby tried to explaining what she was doing to Gibbs, then simply said "Machine making pretty pictures now" :lol:
ep 7 - Call of silence - Corporal Ernie Yost, receiver of a Medal of Honor, comes to Ncis saying that he killed his best friends, and Gibbs tries to understand what happened: he respects, admires the man: being given the medal of honor is not for everyone. It turns out that he killed his friend Wade at Iwo Jima because he had stepped on a mine and was so in pain he couldn't keep quiet, and Yost had to silence him, to protect his team.
ep 8 - Heart break - A commander goes on fire on a hospital bed. They investigate, and it turns out that it was caused deliberatly to avoid anyone finding out that the operation had gone wrong, to protect her career the doctor that Ducky liked made him go up in fire to cover it.
Gibbs is again working at his boat, which appears to have a few more pieces now, and his redhead woman is there, and drives him to work.
Kate suffers a lot because the young ensign who was the prime suspect was suicidal and forced her to kill him, but he was innocent.
ep 9 - Forced entry - A marine's wife shots a guy who attacks her at her home. He was a serial rapist and murderer, working with his lover and a computer expert she then killed.
"My brothers are practically psychotic" is what Kate says of her family.
ep 10 - Chained - Tony is working undercover as a prisoner and his escape handcuffed to another prisoner has been well planned, but that Jeffrey is worse than he looks, he already murdered three people, and in the end Tony has to shoot him, with the same gun Jeffrey had given him to cover his back.
McGee talks with the Secretary of State, Anna ... something, and tells her to 'stick it'. What I'd like to know, though, is what exactly are those pills that people take so easily like peanuts? I often see this in movies: a headache, hangover, stress... two or three pills without thinking twice about it! If it doesn't stop, pills again! What the hell are they? Sometimes they call it aspirin, but it can't be what I call aspirina because I have to melt it in water, and I can't drink it without eating before otherwise it's really bad for my stomach, and I can't take any number I like, without consulting a doctor. One, two is you're ill, no more. There's nothing I can think of that I could take so easily... well, vitamins maybe, maybe it's something like that!
ep 11 - Black water - A lieutenant has been missing for two years, and now his remains are found in a lake.
A famous private detective made the accident look like a murder to collect the million dollar price "for catching his murderer". I'm a bit sorry for McGee that admired him, but I'm more glad that Kate was right and that Thomas did not kill his brother. At the end, Kate and Tom leave for New York on his private plane :-)
This was funny: Gibbs: "you know me Duck. I suspect everything" - Ducky:"yes, an admirable trait in an investigator. And also the reason your three marriages ended in divorce" - G:"Oh yeah? All these years I thought it was because I was a bastard" - D: "Well, of course, that didn't help" - :lol:
We learn that Ducky introduced Gibbs to his last wife, and now she doesn't talk to him anymore :lol:
Kate orders a veggie lunch for everyone, and Tony and McGee throw it in the bin! I don't like this kind of waste, food should never be wasted like that!! It's awful!
ep 12 - Doppelganger - Petty officer Lambert faked and staged his own death, but then he's found killed.
This was funny: Lt. Cheney is exactly like Gibbs: he has more than one ex-wife, bad relations with them, drinks lots of coffee, shouts at his team... Cheney works with Miller, a copy of McGee, Rachel Rand, just like Kate, and Primo Monteleone, a copy of Tony so perfect they even gave him an Italian name. Monteleone flirts with Kate like Tony flirts with Rachel, and Cheney smacks the back of his head! Rachel says 'shotgun' and Monteleone calls Miller 'probie'... Gibbs doesn't seem to pay this any attention, but Kate and Tony are left with their mouths open... Lovely the scene when Gibbs and Cheney are doing an interrogation together: I liked that so much!
A nice scene : Abby:"okay Gibbs, I know you think I'm supergirl... actually my hair's probably Wonder Woman, or Isis or the Powerpuff girl" - Kate:"I've always been partial to Xena" - Abby:"I don't know about her. No self-respecting superhero should wear open-toed shoes" - Kate:"oh, I agree" :lol: this was funny, although I admit I didn't remember about the open-toed shoes. I'd have said she had some sort of boots...
Another funny scene was when McGee went with Gibbs to translate computer-language to him.
How comes that Jethro gets a date? Isn't he in a relationship? Who is that redhead woman in the hot car?
Then there was this bit, Gibbs' speech : "Capaci's a town outside Palermo. In '91 there was a Mafia don sitting on a hill side orchard chain-smoking, watching the road below. Two cars in a tight formation came around the corner. The don hit a switch. The road exploded. It killed the chief magistrate prosecuting the sicilian Mafia, his wife, and three bodyguards. The italian Carabinieri, they found the cigarette butts in the orchard, sent them to our Fbi crime lab. They matched the Dna from the saliva on the filters to the don. It's the first time that Dna was ever used successfully to prosecute a killer" The story of this tragedy rang more than one bell of course, who doesn't know about it: Well, it was 1992, not 91, and it was the assassination of judge Giovanni Falcone. I don't know about all the rest though, because frankly this thing about 'prosecuting a mafia boss' is totally new to me. Very good for a tv show episode, of course, but that's so not what things are really like!
Back to Gibbs, it ends with him saying that he hopes it won't match, and again kissing that Karen, but her eyes told us that yes, it will match...
ep 13 - The meat puzzle - Ducky had been working on this for six months, because it took long to find out how many people were in there and reconstruct them. Now Ducky recognizes Michael Grant, District Attorney in Baltimore in one of the three victims. Ten years ago Ducky testified at some of his cases. The second victim is Judge Roland Davis, and the third is Carl Foss. They were prosecutor, judge and foreman of the jury in the same case that sent Vincent Hanlan to prison.
We meet Ducky's mother, a 96 years old woman suffering from dementia, and her four Welsh Corgis dogs. Victim number four is delivered to her house. When Ducky is taken, we see that Gibbs was again right, and Vincent was not dead, he was killing people with his mother, and almost killed Ducky too, but of course they get there in time! Obviously, they couldn't loose Ducky!!!
I loved this : "Gibbs, what did Ducky look like when he was younger?" - "Illia Kuryakin". Adorable! McCallum played Kuryakin when he was younger!
ep 14 - Witness - Erin Kendall witnessed a murder, and McGee goes to investigate. The police didn't believe her, but he does, and decides to get the team rolling. He was right in believing her: they found the dead sailor. Unfortunately, Erin is murdered too, and McGee couldn't save her. McGee goes to the hypnotist Tony suggested to Kate to overcome her fear of dentists, to help him recall every details of Erin's murder and they catch the bastard!
At the end, Kate and Tony are food-fighting like children while McGee is writing something. They think it's his report, because they both had to rewrite their first reports : Tony five times (should have been more, but Gibbs took pity on him), Kate twice, but not McGee, the first one was okay! He's actually writing a sympathy note to Erin's parents! Good-heart, McGee.
ep 15 - Caught on tape - A man is murdered while videotaping the landscape.
I love so much Kate and Abby's friendship! They're great. I also loved that dogs like Gibbs awww
We learn that Gloria is Abby's deaf mother's name, and she calls her by name! What is this fashion to call parents by name!! It all ends with Kate and Abby taking care of the doggie the dead murderer had.
ep 16 - Pop life - A girl is responsible for the death of her sister and another girl, along with a man who helped her, and that killed the boss that owned her. She was about to get everything she wanted, but they catch her.
Abby:"midnight, some guy seems all dark and gnarly, and then you wake up, and his tattoos are fake and he works at a bank" - McGee:"I used to work at a bank" - Abby:"your tat is real, and you don't disappoint me" :-) So what about the present tense, are they still sleeping together, although not planning ahead to avoid Abby to panic? :-) That would explain why McGee went jealous, when while doing a test Jimmy Palmer was so attracted to Abby he ended up making a mess and glueing himself to her, and McGee came in at that moment and yelled at him!!
Kate and Tony ask Ducky to counsel them.
ep 17 - An eye for an eye - A Petty officer receives human eyes in the mail, then kills himself. This episode's real bastard is an intelligence asset in Paraguay named Purcell, a real scumbag who is killed by Intel after Gibbs traded him : "it's him, or Ari"
Again another woman hitting on Gibbs...
ep 18 - Bikini wax - A petty officer gets killed right before her bikini contest. A girl killed her because she was pregnant with her fiancèe's child.
Come on now, in real life they would really spend so much time and money to buy 100 different type of wax and have them all tested?? This is why it's called fiction!
Tony went to college to Ohio State, spending Spring breaks at the beaches, of course. Ducky graduated at Edimburgh Medical School, but I think we knew that, Ari went there too! Abby was in the circus...
ep 19 - Conspiracy theory - Petty officer Jessica Smith claims she was attacked at her house, that monsters are after her again, then someone kills her and fakes her suicide in the hospital room.
Abby calls Gibbs "my silver-haired fox" :-D After Abby cuts herself, Gibbs kisses her wounded finger awww
nice :-) Again, the motive was money. Yeuch.
I loved the scene with Gibbs and Fornell interrogating the suspect together! Also the fact that they are on a first name relationship: Jethro and Tobias.
ep 20 - Red cell - Two college Marine killed by their gunny who abused a female student because they wanted to stop him from doing it again.
Kate and Tony bust into McGee's house, but go out before seeing the pretty girl that was there :-) Abby's nickname was Vamperstein :-) and she apologises for her ranting "sorry, too much caffeine", and McGee is humiliated by a better hacker.
ep 21 - Hometown hero - After Justin Dobbs dies in war, the remains of a girl are found in his truck. Gibbs wants to clear him, because he died a real hero: "petty officer Dobbs died in that uniform saving lives". At the end, they clear him completely. She was killed by her stepfather, so now petty officer Dobbs will be afforded the Silver Star.
Kate and Abby were planning to spend the weekend together at a health spa, but all weekend plans are cancelled to work on a new case. Tony does it again, playing acting-Gibbs while he's not around. Abby was called back when she was at church, and she's so pretty in her Sunday-church outfit and umbrella! A pretty doll in black, and boots. Adorable. Ducky is so funny "Oh Jethro, I can spend forever finding nothing" :-) We see Lt commander Coleman again: I don't like her. Tony's car after being stolen is used in a robbery and then crashed by the thief during the escape chase.
ep 22 - SWAK - A letter arrives sealed with a red-lipstick kiss, and immediately Tony opens it. Some powder comes out, and they initiate biological-hazard procedures, and find that the letter it says it's plague! Tony's infected with this Y Pestis. He's the only one infected, but he'll get well, of course :-)
Tony wears a Ermenegildo Zegna suit, Armani tie, Dolce e Gabbana shirt and Gucci shoes! Abby cartwheeling is so cute! Tamara Taylor plays Cassidy Yates... did we hear about her before? I don't remember...
Swak means Sealed with a kiss. I knew about this, in the book Going Postal a letter has Swalk written on it: sealed with a loving kiss. In this case there was a kiss, but it wasn't loving at all, so just Swak.
ep 23 - Twilight - Tony comes back early from his sick leave, after last episode, in time to avoid his team from blowing up, since there was a bomb in the car with the two bodies of two Lt. pilots. Ari's back, and it would appear he was never trying to help the americans, he was planning something of his own all along: blow up all the families welcoming home five full warships. They stop it all, but then Ari shoots Kate from a distance, right in the head. She dies instantly, and this was quite a shock, I was sorry it ended this way.
Kate apparently broke up with her lawyer boyfriend. Abby was so cute, lying down beside Tony, when he had to lie down :-) We learn Fornell's first bigger mistake: marrying Gibbs' second wife, despite his warning :lol:
ep 1 - See no evil - Captain Watson's wife and daughter are held hostage, and he's being controlled, but he manages to get his assistant to contact NCIS "and only them". Kyle Grayson took them, but unknowingly he was hired by captain Watson himself.
Gibbs tells Abby she's one of the smartest people he knows :-) McGee's name is Timothy, and the little actress playing the blind daughter is amazing :-)
ep 2 - The good wives club - A bride died in her dress, chained to the bed. They find out that chaplain Evans had done that to four girls, but the last one, Carolyn Figgis, eighteen, is found still alive after he shot himself in the head.
Funny : Gibbs talking of the murderer "he's cautious", and Abby replies "So am I, when I chain guys up" :lol:
ep 3 - Vanished - A helicopter is found left in a field, at the centre of a crop circle, and Abby goes crazy! But alas it was nothing supernatural, just a stupid old feud, and they killed the Marine's brother because he had fallen in love with the daughter of 'the enemy'.
ep 4 - Lt. Jane Doe - A girl is found dead with no documents, and Ducky takes it personal because it resembles a case from ten years before where the victim was the only one he was never able to identify, so her family never had closure. It turns out the murderer from ten years ago has died, and this time, the responsible is the Petty Officer that McGee knew years ago.
It was very cute when Gibbs asked Abby to work with Ducky, just to give him something to do.. :-) We learn that Ducky hunted with a falcon in Scotland, in his youth.
This is the first episode with the black and white shots. It ends with Ducky putting his old case to rest, but actually he still hasn't identified the body; okay they know the murderer is dead, the case is closed, but if what bothered him so much was that he could never identified her, seems a bit semplicist that he would now simply let it go.
ep 5 - The bone yard - At a practice bomb site, is discovered a bone yard. The latest victim wasn't a mafioso, but an undercover Fbi agent. The Bureau thinks Fornell is a mole and they arrest him. That's why he asked for Gibbs help.
In the gym, Kate knocks down McGee, and Gibbs boxes with Tony: no need to say who won. :-)
We learn that Kate has three older brothers; we are reminded that she was handpicked to defend the President, but it is understandable how she might want to remind people of that, it's quite an honor, right?
Tony: "My name's Tony DiNozzo. Italiano. Doesn't make me Mafia now, does it?" Well, he sounds as Italian as I sound American, but it doesn't matter, the sentiment is very much appreciated, absolutely, very much!
"Ari's a valuable intelligence asset, Gibbs" says Fornell to Gibbs who is still very much pissed off; he also says "Realising how sad this sounds, you're the closest thing I have to a friend Gibbs." After staging his death, Gibbs says about him "he was my friend!" :-D
ep 6 - Terminal leave - A bomb in a Lt 's car, but she's safe, only her dog died. Ncis protects her and her family. It always annoys me how people under protection act, as if being killed is worth the risk, compared to stay confined for a couple of days, or something like that. It's really stupid, but in every movie, where someone is under protection, they act like that, as if the enemy were the agents protecting them. What should they say: "of course you can go to the cinema, walk in the park with your boyfriend, play football with your friends, why not? Sure, there's someone out there who wants to blow your head off, but if you're ok with that, why should I stop you? ", or should they say: "No, you can't go" ?
The scene with Tony in the same bathroom while Kate was having a shower actually was out of line, I mean that Tony was out of line; usually they are just bickering, but this time he really was a jerk.
I don't like that FBI woman at all, her mouth when she talks.. I don't like it. Not at all, not a bit, I was tempted to fast-forward her...
I liked a lot the scene when Abby tried to explaining what she was doing to Gibbs, then simply said "Machine making pretty pictures now" :lol:
ep 7 - Call of silence - Corporal Ernie Yost, receiver of a Medal of Honor, comes to Ncis saying that he killed his best friends, and Gibbs tries to understand what happened: he respects, admires the man: being given the medal of honor is not for everyone. It turns out that he killed his friend Wade at Iwo Jima because he had stepped on a mine and was so in pain he couldn't keep quiet, and Yost had to silence him, to protect his team.
ep 8 - Heart break - A commander goes on fire on a hospital bed. They investigate, and it turns out that it was caused deliberatly to avoid anyone finding out that the operation had gone wrong, to protect her career the doctor that Ducky liked made him go up in fire to cover it.
Gibbs is again working at his boat, which appears to have a few more pieces now, and his redhead woman is there, and drives him to work.
Kate suffers a lot because the young ensign who was the prime suspect was suicidal and forced her to kill him, but he was innocent.
ep 9 - Forced entry - A marine's wife shots a guy who attacks her at her home. He was a serial rapist and murderer, working with his lover and a computer expert she then killed.
"My brothers are practically psychotic" is what Kate says of her family.
ep 10 - Chained - Tony is working undercover as a prisoner and his escape handcuffed to another prisoner has been well planned, but that Jeffrey is worse than he looks, he already murdered three people, and in the end Tony has to shoot him, with the same gun Jeffrey had given him to cover his back.
McGee talks with the Secretary of State, Anna ... something, and tells her to 'stick it'. What I'd like to know, though, is what exactly are those pills that people take so easily like peanuts? I often see this in movies: a headache, hangover, stress... two or three pills without thinking twice about it! If it doesn't stop, pills again! What the hell are they? Sometimes they call it aspirin, but it can't be what I call aspirina because I have to melt it in water, and I can't drink it without eating before otherwise it's really bad for my stomach, and I can't take any number I like, without consulting a doctor. One, two is you're ill, no more. There's nothing I can think of that I could take so easily... well, vitamins maybe, maybe it's something like that!
ep 11 - Black water - A lieutenant has been missing for two years, and now his remains are found in a lake.
A famous private detective made the accident look like a murder to collect the million dollar price "for catching his murderer". I'm a bit sorry for McGee that admired him, but I'm more glad that Kate was right and that Thomas did not kill his brother. At the end, Kate and Tom leave for New York on his private plane :-)
This was funny: Gibbs: "you know me Duck. I suspect everything" - Ducky:"yes, an admirable trait in an investigator. And also the reason your three marriages ended in divorce" - G:"Oh yeah? All these years I thought it was because I was a bastard" - D: "Well, of course, that didn't help" - :lol:
We learn that Ducky introduced Gibbs to his last wife, and now she doesn't talk to him anymore :lol:
Kate orders a veggie lunch for everyone, and Tony and McGee throw it in the bin! I don't like this kind of waste, food should never be wasted like that!! It's awful!
ep 12 - Doppelganger - Petty officer Lambert faked and staged his own death, but then he's found killed.
This was funny: Lt. Cheney is exactly like Gibbs: he has more than one ex-wife, bad relations with them, drinks lots of coffee, shouts at his team... Cheney works with Miller, a copy of McGee, Rachel Rand, just like Kate, and Primo Monteleone, a copy of Tony so perfect they even gave him an Italian name. Monteleone flirts with Kate like Tony flirts with Rachel, and Cheney smacks the back of his head! Rachel says 'shotgun' and Monteleone calls Miller 'probie'... Gibbs doesn't seem to pay this any attention, but Kate and Tony are left with their mouths open... Lovely the scene when Gibbs and Cheney are doing an interrogation together: I liked that so much!
A nice scene : Abby:"okay Gibbs, I know you think I'm supergirl... actually my hair's probably Wonder Woman, or Isis or the Powerpuff girl" - Kate:"I've always been partial to Xena" - Abby:"I don't know about her. No self-respecting superhero should wear open-toed shoes" - Kate:"oh, I agree" :lol: this was funny, although I admit I didn't remember about the open-toed shoes. I'd have said she had some sort of boots...
Another funny scene was when McGee went with Gibbs to translate computer-language to him.
How comes that Jethro gets a date? Isn't he in a relationship? Who is that redhead woman in the hot car?
Then there was this bit, Gibbs' speech : "Capaci's a town outside Palermo. In '91 there was a Mafia don sitting on a hill side orchard chain-smoking, watching the road below. Two cars in a tight formation came around the corner. The don hit a switch. The road exploded. It killed the chief magistrate prosecuting the sicilian Mafia, his wife, and three bodyguards. The italian Carabinieri, they found the cigarette butts in the orchard, sent them to our Fbi crime lab. They matched the Dna from the saliva on the filters to the don. It's the first time that Dna was ever used successfully to prosecute a killer" The story of this tragedy rang more than one bell of course, who doesn't know about it: Well, it was 1992, not 91, and it was the assassination of judge Giovanni Falcone. I don't know about all the rest though, because frankly this thing about 'prosecuting a mafia boss' is totally new to me. Very good for a tv show episode, of course, but that's so not what things are really like!
Back to Gibbs, it ends with him saying that he hopes it won't match, and again kissing that Karen, but her eyes told us that yes, it will match...
ep 13 - The meat puzzle - Ducky had been working on this for six months, because it took long to find out how many people were in there and reconstruct them. Now Ducky recognizes Michael Grant, District Attorney in Baltimore in one of the three victims. Ten years ago Ducky testified at some of his cases. The second victim is Judge Roland Davis, and the third is Carl Foss. They were prosecutor, judge and foreman of the jury in the same case that sent Vincent Hanlan to prison.
We meet Ducky's mother, a 96 years old woman suffering from dementia, and her four Welsh Corgis dogs. Victim number four is delivered to her house. When Ducky is taken, we see that Gibbs was again right, and Vincent was not dead, he was killing people with his mother, and almost killed Ducky too, but of course they get there in time! Obviously, they couldn't loose Ducky!!!
I loved this : "Gibbs, what did Ducky look like when he was younger?" - "Illia Kuryakin". Adorable! McCallum played Kuryakin when he was younger!
At the end, Kate and Tony are food-fighting like children while McGee is writing something. They think it's his report, because they both had to rewrite their first reports : Tony five times (should have been more, but Gibbs took pity on him), Kate twice, but not McGee, the first one was okay! He's actually writing a sympathy note to Erin's parents! Good-heart, McGee.
ep 15 - Caught on tape - A man is murdered while videotaping the landscape.
I love so much Kate and Abby's friendship! They're great. I also loved that dogs like Gibbs awww
We learn that Gloria is Abby's deaf mother's name, and she calls her by name! What is this fashion to call parents by name!! It all ends with Kate and Abby taking care of the doggie the dead murderer had.
ep 16 - Pop life - A girl is responsible for the death of her sister and another girl, along with a man who helped her, and that killed the boss that owned her. She was about to get everything she wanted, but they catch her.
Abby:"midnight, some guy seems all dark and gnarly, and then you wake up, and his tattoos are fake and he works at a bank" - McGee:"I used to work at a bank" - Abby:"your tat is real, and you don't disappoint me" :-) So what about the present tense, are they still sleeping together, although not planning ahead to avoid Abby to panic? :-) That would explain why McGee went jealous, when while doing a test Jimmy Palmer was so attracted to Abby he ended up making a mess and glueing himself to her, and McGee came in at that moment and yelled at him!!
Kate and Tony ask Ducky to counsel them.
ep 17 - An eye for an eye - A Petty officer receives human eyes in the mail, then kills himself. This episode's real bastard is an intelligence asset in Paraguay named Purcell, a real scumbag who is killed by Intel after Gibbs traded him : "it's him, or Ari"
Again another woman hitting on Gibbs...
ep 18 - Bikini wax - A petty officer gets killed right before her bikini contest. A girl killed her because she was pregnant with her fiancèe's child.
Come on now, in real life they would really spend so much time and money to buy 100 different type of wax and have them all tested?? This is why it's called fiction!
Tony went to college to Ohio State, spending Spring breaks at the beaches, of course. Ducky graduated at Edimburgh Medical School, but I think we knew that, Ari went there too! Abby was in the circus...
ep 19 - Conspiracy theory - Petty officer Jessica Smith claims she was attacked at her house, that monsters are after her again, then someone kills her and fakes her suicide in the hospital room.
Abby calls Gibbs "my silver-haired fox" :-D After Abby cuts herself, Gibbs kisses her wounded finger awww
nice :-) Again, the motive was money. Yeuch.
I loved the scene with Gibbs and Fornell interrogating the suspect together! Also the fact that they are on a first name relationship: Jethro and Tobias.
ep 20 - Red cell - Two college Marine killed by their gunny who abused a female student because they wanted to stop him from doing it again.
Kate and Tony bust into McGee's house, but go out before seeing the pretty girl that was there :-) Abby's nickname was Vamperstein :-) and she apologises for her ranting "sorry, too much caffeine", and McGee is humiliated by a better hacker.
ep 21 - Hometown hero - After Justin Dobbs dies in war, the remains of a girl are found in his truck. Gibbs wants to clear him, because he died a real hero: "petty officer Dobbs died in that uniform saving lives". At the end, they clear him completely. She was killed by her stepfather, so now petty officer Dobbs will be afforded the Silver Star.
Kate and Abby were planning to spend the weekend together at a health spa, but all weekend plans are cancelled to work on a new case. Tony does it again, playing acting-Gibbs while he's not around. Abby was called back when she was at church, and she's so pretty in her Sunday-church outfit and umbrella! A pretty doll in black, and boots. Adorable. Ducky is so funny "Oh Jethro, I can spend forever finding nothing" :-) We see Lt commander Coleman again: I don't like her. Tony's car after being stolen is used in a robbery and then crashed by the thief during the escape chase.
ep 22 - SWAK - A letter arrives sealed with a red-lipstick kiss, and immediately Tony opens it. Some powder comes out, and they initiate biological-hazard procedures, and find that the letter it says it's plague! Tony's infected with this Y Pestis. He's the only one infected, but he'll get well, of course :-)
Tony wears a Ermenegildo Zegna suit, Armani tie, Dolce e Gabbana shirt and Gucci shoes! Abby cartwheeling is so cute! Tamara Taylor plays Cassidy Yates... did we hear about her before? I don't remember...
Swak means Sealed with a kiss. I knew about this, in the book Going Postal a letter has Swalk written on it: sealed with a loving kiss. In this case there was a kiss, but it wasn't loving at all, so just Swak.
ep 23 - Twilight - Tony comes back early from his sick leave, after last episode, in time to avoid his team from blowing up, since there was a bomb in the car with the two bodies of two Lt. pilots. Ari's back, and it would appear he was never trying to help the americans, he was planning something of his own all along: blow up all the families welcoming home five full warships. They stop it all, but then Ari shoots Kate from a distance, right in the head. She dies instantly, and this was quite a shock, I was sorry it ended this way.
Kate apparently broke up with her lawyer boyfriend. Abby was so cute, lying down beside Tony, when he had to lie down :-) We learn Fornell's first bigger mistake: marrying Gibbs' second wife, despite his warning :lol:
martedì 28 ottobre 2014
The mirror crack'd from side to side by Agatha Christie
Well, when I first read it ( I was 13, 14 maybe) I liked it very much, and found it very interesting and catching. Many years later, reading it again the thing was different. Not that I remembered anything, my memory practically doesn't exist, if I were ever to be questioned about my readings, it would almost appear like I never read a book in my life! So much that Agatha scared me at the beginning, when she started talking about her previous book, where a body was found in the library... and I thought: NO, I don't remember that, please don't tell me how it went, please don't say who did it!!! Of course she didn't, thankfully, but for a moment she had me worried.
So I had no idea, really, but being all grown up, andn therefore knowing a bit more about people and things, it really was different. I spotted it right away. Being a woman and all, you know; maybe for a man it would be different.
SPOILERS ahead, just saying in case anyone was actually reading this, I'm about to tell details, and to reveal the name of the murderer, so you have been warned, don't go on if you haven't read it.
Now, first thing first, for Miss Marple things were harder because she had not seen everything step by step like we did; she only heard bits here and there of how things went, but we got to go with her friend Mrs Bantry: we saw Marina's reaction when Mrs Bantry talked of her children and grandchildren, and I was hurting for her - I didn't understand exactly if she still has her son, or if he died young because of his problems, but at that point in the story I didn't even know he ever existed, I thought she never had children, but it was clear as everything that she suffered because of this. Of course I thought nothing of it when Heather told hers to Miss Marple, and when later she told it all to Marina Gregg. At the moment, I had not linked anything yet, but later when filling Miss Marple up with what happened, Mrs Bantry mentioned that Marina had stared behind Heather, and that nobody was there at the moment, and on the wall there simply was a painting of the Madonna and child, but she doubted she was looking at that because living there she must see it every day. At that moment everything was clear, because of the pain I had felf in her heart due of not having children, and then knowing that she was looking at the painting of a mother with her child while Heather was telling her of how she had gone to meet her in spite of the fact that she was ill, had made me think, what if she was pregnant and lost her baby because of her... okay it turned out she didn't loose it, but the fact is the same. Heather was not feeling too bad, but was contagious and was the cause of all her pain.
I liked very much the reference to that poem I had never heard before, The Lady of Shalott: Out flew the web and floated wide, the mirror crack'd from side to side, the curse is come upon me, cried the lady of Shalott - I liked it very much, it was very pertinent and love the title that was chosen, that line from the poem.
Still, when you know who did it, the rest becomes quite boring.
ITA assassinio allo specchio
So I had no idea, really, but being all grown up, andn therefore knowing a bit more about people and things, it really was different. I spotted it right away. Being a woman and all, you know; maybe for a man it would be different.
SPOILERS ahead, just saying in case anyone was actually reading this, I'm about to tell details, and to reveal the name of the murderer, so you have been warned, don't go on if you haven't read it.
Now, first thing first, for Miss Marple things were harder because she had not seen everything step by step like we did; she only heard bits here and there of how things went, but we got to go with her friend Mrs Bantry: we saw Marina's reaction when Mrs Bantry talked of her children and grandchildren, and I was hurting for her - I didn't understand exactly if she still has her son, or if he died young because of his problems, but at that point in the story I didn't even know he ever existed, I thought she never had children, but it was clear as everything that she suffered because of this. Of course I thought nothing of it when Heather told hers to Miss Marple, and when later she told it all to Marina Gregg. At the moment, I had not linked anything yet, but later when filling Miss Marple up with what happened, Mrs Bantry mentioned that Marina had stared behind Heather, and that nobody was there at the moment, and on the wall there simply was a painting of the Madonna and child, but she doubted she was looking at that because living there she must see it every day. At that moment everything was clear, because of the pain I had felf in her heart due of not having children, and then knowing that she was looking at the painting of a mother with her child while Heather was telling her of how she had gone to meet her in spite of the fact that she was ill, had made me think, what if she was pregnant and lost her baby because of her... okay it turned out she didn't loose it, but the fact is the same. Heather was not feeling too bad, but was contagious and was the cause of all her pain.
I liked very much the reference to that poem I had never heard before, The Lady of Shalott: Out flew the web and floated wide, the mirror crack'd from side to side, the curse is come upon me, cried the lady of Shalott - I liked it very much, it was very pertinent and love the title that was chosen, that line from the poem.
Still, when you know who did it, the rest becomes quite boring.
ITA assassinio allo specchio
domenica 26 ottobre 2014
Going postal by Terry Pratchett - Discworld novel n.33
I love this book, because it has lots of good Vetinari in it :-) It's really great, it's incredible how Pratchett books get better and better, always fantastic! He's really an amazing writer.
This time, we get to know a former con man, Moist Von Lipwig, who is assigned to resurrect the post office, no more functioning for many years. He uses his personality and his tricks to conquer the people and bring the post office back to life.
My favourite bits are
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Then there's a little thing. At one point it says "the temple was deserted, except for a little old man in a grubby robe, dreamily sweeping the floor" ... is this who I think it is?? Well, it might be, it might not be, it's not specified clearly, but I think it is! :-)
This time, we get to know a former con man, Moist Von Lipwig, who is assigned to resurrect the post office, no more functioning for many years. He uses his personality and his tricks to conquer the people and bring the post office back to life.
My favourite bits are
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- Miss Dearheart: what is sticking in your foot is a Mitzi "pretty Lucretia" four-inch heel, the most dangerous footwear in the world. The worrying part is that I was forced practically at knifepoing to take ballet lessons as a child, which means I can kick like a mule; you are sitting in front of me, and I have another shoe...
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- And that's when it all went wrong for Mr. Gryle, because Stanley had one of his Little Moments.
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- I won't be long, I'm off to see the wizard :-)
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Then there's a little thing. At one point it says "the temple was deserted, except for a little old man in a grubby robe, dreamily sweeping the floor" ... is this who I think it is?? Well, it might be, it might not be, it's not specified clearly, but I think it is! :-)
lunedì 20 ottobre 2014
NCIS - season 1
I already knew both Mark Harmon and David McCallum. Harmon, I know, has made lots of things, so excuse me if I tell you that I remember him for The Presidio, the film with Sean Connery. I know, moving on. David McCallum I know for two things: first I knew him young in the 70s show Sapphire and Steel, where he played Steel, then in an episode of Babylon 5, don't remember which one right now, if I'll see it again I'll tell you :-)
All ncis episodes have the same structure: there's some kind of prologue, when usually a body is found, then the opening theme, then the team is being called and rushes at the crime scene, where they investigate, with Gibbs giving orders around, they follow every lead until after 40 minutes they get the right person.
ep 1 - Yankee white - It starts no less than with President Bush! I guess they wanted to show they're important and no kidding :-) A guy died on Air Force One, and the case in wanted by the special agency, the FBI and NCIS, till ncis steals the body :lol: In charge is Special Agent Gibbs (Mark Harmon), with Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly); at the end of this episode a job will be offered to former Secret Service Agent Kate Todd (Sasha Alexander).After Gibbs saves the President :-) without getting any credit for it (because our characters here are heroes, they don't do it for glory, they just do their job...yeah) we see him working in his basement on a wood boat , and also a woman picking him up on a fancy car.
Lines I liked: "Ncis, never heard of it" only because it was funny on a first episode; "Wow, Gibbs said please" , because it gives you right away the feeling of how strange that is :-)
Aside from the three special agents, there is also the lab technician Abby ((Pauley Perrete) and their ME, medical examiner, Ducky (David McCallum)
ep 2 - Hung up to dry - Kate is now with them, or Caitlin, her right name, but only Ducky calls her that.
A Marine's chute was sabotaged by another marine dealing drugs, and Tony falls off the plane :-) At the end, Gibbs goes to finish the tree house for the dead marine's son . In this ep we also see Kate and Abby working together, which was very nice, because they started to bond :-)
ep 3 - Seadog - There are two actors I know on this ep: William R. Moses as Agent Ken Fuller, DEA, who used to be in the Perry Mason movies, and also Emilie De Ravin, in the small role of one of two aussie girls on a boat, with her blonde hair, and I know her with black hair for being Belle in Once Upon A Time.
We learn that both Abby and Gibbs know sign language, and he says she knows it because both her parents were deaf. We see again the same woman with Gibbs.
There are terrorists again, like in episode 1; they are after the power grid.
That reporter Diane... I don't like her much, don't know why, the character proved to be on the good side at the end.
ep 4 - The Immortals - "A dead kid wearing dress whites for no reason, with a sword he shouldn't have on, which is not supposed to be sharp, at the bottom of the ocean, with weights on" this is Tony's recap of the case. It turns out he loved to play MMORPG=massive multiplayer online role-playing, for those of you who don't know. I knew this. He played a game called The Immortals, and another sailor on his ship played the same game, so they started playing it for real with swords, then the kid died because he was challenged by his rival to prove it, since he really believed he was immortal, that he really was his character.Before doing so, and ended up dead, though, he had put a bomb in the skipper's cabin, thinking the whole crew was in on it, with his enemy. I agree with Ducky here "you know, sometimes the dead make more sense to me than the living". Yeah. Ducky also teaches me that driving on the left side of the road goes back to medieval times, so that they could fight each other since most of the population was and still is right-handed. Thanks.
ep 5 - The curse - A mummy is found inside a pod. Nine years ago he was killed on a ship by a man and a woman his crewmen, for money.
We learn that Tony has been at Ncis for two years. Kate was very nice here, wanting so much to exonerate the victim from the theft charge, so that his nine years old daughter could get some money (since crewmen with dishonourable discharge do not leave anything to their family)
ep 6 - High Seas - The chief was drugging his sailors with meth without them knowing it.
Abby is first described as a Goth.
Stan Burley, who asks for their help, worked at ncis with Gibbs for five years. Before that he was a Senator's aide. During the whole episode Tony was so jealous of Stan and his friendly relationship with Gibbs, but at the end Stan tells him "he must really like you" because after only two years, Gibbs already calls him by his right name :-) We also learn that before working here, Tony was a Baltimore cop for almost two years, and before that it was Philly PD for 18 months, and before that it was Peoria, don't know how long... than he stopped the list.
ep 7 - Sub Rosa - An ecoterrorist replaced someone on a submarine, planning to kill everyone on board.
We meet McGee, the case Ncis agent at Norfolk. At the end, despite Tony keeps telling them they're not each other's type, McGee goes on a lunch date with Abby, but it ends before we can even see their first meeting :-/
nice lines : "I've never experienced Gibbs without his morning coffee" = Tony after Kate spills it on the floor.
ep 8 - Minimum security - Nasser, at Gitmo, wanted to be transferred to minimum security so to meet his target and kill him, but they stop him. Of course.
It's Tony to spill Gibbs' coffee this time :-) We meet interrogator Paula Cassidy, and see Tony flirting, and his first hint of vulnerability. I like Kate, and this brother-sister relationship she says she has with Tony :-)
ep 9 - Marine down - Two Marine believed dead, actually weren't, but one of them is killed later to cover up, being embalmed while still alive. Gross. The other one is saved by the team, and can get back to his wife, his son and his daughter.
I like when Gibbs' goes all 'Columbo', and turns around saying "just one more thing"... :lol:
ep 10 - Left for dead - This was one of the coolest intro, with a woman coming out of a grave :-) She goes in the middle of the road and stops a car, saying she has amnesia, and also saying that there is a bomb on a ship, so our ncis team is involved. Kate bonds with her, only to find at the end that the man she had an affair with sent another guy to end it with her, and she killed him, then she used a little bomb to kill her man and herself, while the team watches. Kate is shocked, she had been so sweet all along, so worried about her, so keen to help her, so sure she was a good person... poor Kate, I was really sorry.
At least there was no bomb on real ships, only in a lab recreating one.
ep 11 - Eye spy - At Cia, a satellite guy instead of doing constructive work was spying a girl on a beach, and saw a murder, and called them. It was another betrayed woman that killed her husband.
McGee again, he helps Tony with a computer problem. Tony is worried because he's starting to get fat :-)
We meet Abby's ex-boy-toy Ashton :lol: and they are adorable!! :rofl:
Did anyone understand Gibbs' final line? Why was he attacked by his second wife with a golf club? His answer: "seven iron" ... what does that mean?
ep 12 - My other left foot - When the leg of a Marine is found, they trace it to marine Dorn, but it would appear that he died two years ago, not yesterday! It turns out that his half-sister Melissa Dorn's mother planned it; she killed a marine then Melissa identified him as Tommy and had him cremated, so she got the insurance money: 750.000 $. Then she killed Tommy too and cut him into pieces.
It was lovely to see Melissa and Gibbs flirting :-) This is the first episode we see him making that flirting smile :-) And I was glad it wasn't totally Melissa's fault. She shouldn't have agreed, but her mother was the psycho, not her. Good, strangely, I liked her.
ep 13 - One shot, one kill - T.J.Thyne has a little role (Hodgins from Bones), as Carl in the toy shop.
A sniper kills two marine recruiter because he wasn't recruited himself. Gibbs and Kate get into marine uniforms and try to stop him, and they do. I didn't like Gibbs in that uniform, it didn't suit him at all. Kate, on the other hand, looked really good, maybe because the uniform was perfectly taylored to suit her :-)
ep 14 - The good samaritan - Three men are killed in the same way, apparently picked because they stopped to help someone in trouble. It turned out that a wife and her twin sister killed other two men to cover up the murder of her husband.
Kate talks about her security number, Gibbs has two cups of coffee this morning, and Sheriff Charlie keeps hitting on Gibbs.
I love this bit: after one of Ducky's stories, Gerald says: "I actually find that interesting", you know, for once, he's the first to be surprised, but Ducky replies "as opposed to what??" :lol: after all, he thinks all his stories are interesting. :-)
ep 15 - Enigma - This episode had a great intro, with a Marine about to get shot, who frees himself and escapes. He's colonel Ryan, and he'll call for Gibbs' help in what he thinks to be a big conspiracy involving people in high places everywhere. It turns out he's a bit paranoid, he sees a man that's not there, because Lt. Cameron really died years ago, in Gibbs' arms. Good trick , this time, when Gibbs tells him it can't be, that he was dead, and the colonel tells him to judge with his own eyes, and calls for Cameron to come forward, and we see Gibbs' surprised face, but then they change scene, leaving us thinking he saw him too and talked with him. Well done!
As proof of their friendship, we see the inscription on the hip flask the colonel sends him: To lieutenent colonel W.D.Ryan, "semper fi", Gunnery sergeant L.J. Gibbs 1991"
ep 16 - Bète noire - There should be a "^" above the first "e", but I don't know how to do it with my keyboard... sorry. It means 'nightmare' in French.
This one too has a thrilling start: a body is sent to Ncis for autopsy, but when Gerald and Ducky open the plastic bag they find a man, very alive. Cool, huh? He then keeps Ducky and Gerald hostage. Unable to go out, Ducky is forced to tell Abby to bring evidence to him, but since she had a bad nightmare, she can't go down there, and sends Kate. When Ducky sees her, he calls her Abby, trying this way to send a message to everyone upstairs, but the criminal sees her gun and understands she's not just a lab technician, and takes her hostage too. As a punishment , becacuse Ducky tried to deceive him, he shoots Gerald; Fortunately he'll be saved, but the wound was really severe. Although everyone is saved, the criminal shoots Gibbs in the shoulder before his escape.
ep 17 - The truth is out there - This is such an 'x-files' title, isn't it? Rightly too, since aliens are involved .-p
Three pettty officers thought it was just a prank gone badly wrong, but the fourth knew what he was doing when he killed his friend (dressed as an alien), and he did it for the chance to find his 40.000 $
They inform us that Gerald will have to stay in rehab for months, and Gibbs is really obsessed by that criminal that escaped in the last episode.
I know the actors that play Petty Officer Carter and Chief Nutter, but I really can't place them now...still, I'm sure I've seen them somewhere else.
ep 18 - Unsealed - A former Seal escapes from prison. He wants to kill the person who really murdered his wife, and that means the woman she was having an affair with.
McGee appears again. Kate sometimes is depicted really stupid, I mean, it's not the first time she screwed up: without talking of that time with Suzanne, that was good faith, there was the time she had to recognize a sniper with her profiler-training but didn't see because she was looking at somebody else, stupidly. Now, she sees the child and think nobody else's there without even looking, which is stupid for someone with her training, I mean, I would have looked anyway in her situation! Of course the child wasn't scared or hurt, of course he told her nothing, it's his father we're talking about, after all! I was so sure he was there, it looked really stupid for her to be surprised and hit. Luckily McGee frees her. McGee is not dumb at all, and Tony's attitute towards him is annoying. I understand he wants someone to treat as inferior, but it's not a nice thing to do. The mystery of the redhead woman goes on, when she comes to the office to bring Gibbs his glasses.
Wait, when Tony said Tommy Lee, did he mean he was trying to do a Tommy Lee Jones impersonation?? I would have never guessed :lol:
ep 19 - Dead man talking - Chris Pacci, the agent that sits behind Kate's desk, has been murdered, and they continue his investigation. A Lt.Commander, after having stolen a lot of money, faked his own death and hide in plain sight as a woman :-) and Tony kissed him :-) They'll never forget this :-p
The doctor's full name is Donald Mallard, therefore Duck-->Ducky!
Kate made me laugh when she asked Gibbs "permission to shoot him" :lol: I so agree with her, Tony has that effect on me too. :-) McGee is helping again.
ep 20 - Missing - Now, this was a really tough story, it made me chill: four girls lost in a container for I don't know how long, three of them died, the youngest was given their food by her friends and barely survived, after seeing them all die. In the last eight years, she found and gave the same death to the men that put them there ( even if they didn't actually want them to die, they wanted to 'smuggle' them to America). Tony is taken too while he's investigating, but of course he's saved; well, he was doing a pretty good job himself, so save may not be the exact word, so let's say that the others helped him :-) McGee was in this episode too.
ep 21 - Split decision - First Tony then Gibbs go undercover, to frame the Atf girl and the corporal girl for selling weapons and murdering a sergeant. I sure wasn't worried about Gibbs, there had to be something, he sure wasn't going to die just like that in season 1!! He's what keeps them all together, without him there would be no team, just some agents, a technician and a doctor doing their job, but no team.
ep 22 - A weak link - Lt Johnson has a falling accident, and it was caused by himself tampering with his own equipment.
Abby is troubled because McGee told her he really likes her and asked her about where their relationship is going... she talks about it with Kate, then when she has to work with him they make peace, but it's not clear what they'll do next. Breaking up or stay together without planning ahead?
The widow is played by Julie Benz (Darla from BuffyTVS and Angel) and priest Larry Clannon is Doug Savant ( I know him from Melrose Place and from Desperate Housewives). The commander is Adam Baldwin, which is also my favourite Baldwin :-)
ep 23 - Reveille - The man that wounded Gerald and Gibbs is Ari Haswari, and he's not Al-qaeda. He's Israeli, Mossad, apparently. The secret service lets him go because he infiltrated alqaeda and they don't want his cover blown; still, Gibbs leaves him with a shoulder wound, when they meet and talk.
All ncis episodes have the same structure: there's some kind of prologue, when usually a body is found, then the opening theme, then the team is being called and rushes at the crime scene, where they investigate, with Gibbs giving orders around, they follow every lead until after 40 minutes they get the right person.
ep 1 - Yankee white - It starts no less than with President Bush! I guess they wanted to show they're important and no kidding :-) A guy died on Air Force One, and the case in wanted by the special agency, the FBI and NCIS, till ncis steals the body :lol: In charge is Special Agent Gibbs (Mark Harmon), with Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly); at the end of this episode a job will be offered to former Secret Service Agent Kate Todd (Sasha Alexander).After Gibbs saves the President :-) without getting any credit for it (because our characters here are heroes, they don't do it for glory, they just do their job...yeah) we see him working in his basement on a wood boat , and also a woman picking him up on a fancy car.
Lines I liked: "Ncis, never heard of it" only because it was funny on a first episode; "Wow, Gibbs said please" , because it gives you right away the feeling of how strange that is :-)
Aside from the three special agents, there is also the lab technician Abby ((Pauley Perrete) and their ME, medical examiner, Ducky (David McCallum)
ep 2 - Hung up to dry - Kate is now with them, or Caitlin, her right name, but only Ducky calls her that.
A Marine's chute was sabotaged by another marine dealing drugs, and Tony falls off the plane :-) At the end, Gibbs goes to finish the tree house for the dead marine's son . In this ep we also see Kate and Abby working together, which was very nice, because they started to bond :-)
ep 3 - Seadog - There are two actors I know on this ep: William R. Moses as Agent Ken Fuller, DEA, who used to be in the Perry Mason movies, and also Emilie De Ravin, in the small role of one of two aussie girls on a boat, with her blonde hair, and I know her with black hair for being Belle in Once Upon A Time.
We learn that both Abby and Gibbs know sign language, and he says she knows it because both her parents were deaf. We see again the same woman with Gibbs.
There are terrorists again, like in episode 1; they are after the power grid.
That reporter Diane... I don't like her much, don't know why, the character proved to be on the good side at the end.
ep 4 - The Immortals - "A dead kid wearing dress whites for no reason, with a sword he shouldn't have on, which is not supposed to be sharp, at the bottom of the ocean, with weights on" this is Tony's recap of the case. It turns out he loved to play MMORPG=massive multiplayer online role-playing, for those of you who don't know. I knew this. He played a game called The Immortals, and another sailor on his ship played the same game, so they started playing it for real with swords, then the kid died because he was challenged by his rival to prove it, since he really believed he was immortal, that he really was his character.Before doing so, and ended up dead, though, he had put a bomb in the skipper's cabin, thinking the whole crew was in on it, with his enemy. I agree with Ducky here "you know, sometimes the dead make more sense to me than the living". Yeah. Ducky also teaches me that driving on the left side of the road goes back to medieval times, so that they could fight each other since most of the population was and still is right-handed. Thanks.
ep 5 - The curse - A mummy is found inside a pod. Nine years ago he was killed on a ship by a man and a woman his crewmen, for money.
We learn that Tony has been at Ncis for two years. Kate was very nice here, wanting so much to exonerate the victim from the theft charge, so that his nine years old daughter could get some money (since crewmen with dishonourable discharge do not leave anything to their family)
ep 6 - High Seas - The chief was drugging his sailors with meth without them knowing it.
Abby is first described as a Goth.
Stan Burley, who asks for their help, worked at ncis with Gibbs for five years. Before that he was a Senator's aide. During the whole episode Tony was so jealous of Stan and his friendly relationship with Gibbs, but at the end Stan tells him "he must really like you" because after only two years, Gibbs already calls him by his right name :-) We also learn that before working here, Tony was a Baltimore cop for almost two years, and before that it was Philly PD for 18 months, and before that it was Peoria, don't know how long... than he stopped the list.
ep 7 - Sub Rosa - An ecoterrorist replaced someone on a submarine, planning to kill everyone on board.
We meet McGee, the case Ncis agent at Norfolk. At the end, despite Tony keeps telling them they're not each other's type, McGee goes on a lunch date with Abby, but it ends before we can even see their first meeting :-/
nice lines : "I've never experienced Gibbs without his morning coffee" = Tony after Kate spills it on the floor.
ep 8 - Minimum security - Nasser, at Gitmo, wanted to be transferred to minimum security so to meet his target and kill him, but they stop him. Of course.
It's Tony to spill Gibbs' coffee this time :-) We meet interrogator Paula Cassidy, and see Tony flirting, and his first hint of vulnerability. I like Kate, and this brother-sister relationship she says she has with Tony :-)
ep 9 - Marine down - Two Marine believed dead, actually weren't, but one of them is killed later to cover up, being embalmed while still alive. Gross. The other one is saved by the team, and can get back to his wife, his son and his daughter.
I like when Gibbs' goes all 'Columbo', and turns around saying "just one more thing"... :lol:
ep 10 - Left for dead - This was one of the coolest intro, with a woman coming out of a grave :-) She goes in the middle of the road and stops a car, saying she has amnesia, and also saying that there is a bomb on a ship, so our ncis team is involved. Kate bonds with her, only to find at the end that the man she had an affair with sent another guy to end it with her, and she killed him, then she used a little bomb to kill her man and herself, while the team watches. Kate is shocked, she had been so sweet all along, so worried about her, so keen to help her, so sure she was a good person... poor Kate, I was really sorry.
At least there was no bomb on real ships, only in a lab recreating one.
ep 11 - Eye spy - At Cia, a satellite guy instead of doing constructive work was spying a girl on a beach, and saw a murder, and called them. It was another betrayed woman that killed her husband.
McGee again, he helps Tony with a computer problem. Tony is worried because he's starting to get fat :-)
We meet Abby's ex-boy-toy Ashton :lol: and they are adorable!! :rofl:
Did anyone understand Gibbs' final line? Why was he attacked by his second wife with a golf club? His answer: "seven iron" ... what does that mean?
ep 12 - My other left foot - When the leg of a Marine is found, they trace it to marine Dorn, but it would appear that he died two years ago, not yesterday! It turns out that his half-sister Melissa Dorn's mother planned it; she killed a marine then Melissa identified him as Tommy and had him cremated, so she got the insurance money: 750.000 $. Then she killed Tommy too and cut him into pieces.
It was lovely to see Melissa and Gibbs flirting :-) This is the first episode we see him making that flirting smile :-) And I was glad it wasn't totally Melissa's fault. She shouldn't have agreed, but her mother was the psycho, not her. Good, strangely, I liked her.
ep 13 - One shot, one kill - T.J.Thyne has a little role (Hodgins from Bones), as Carl in the toy shop.
A sniper kills two marine recruiter because he wasn't recruited himself. Gibbs and Kate get into marine uniforms and try to stop him, and they do. I didn't like Gibbs in that uniform, it didn't suit him at all. Kate, on the other hand, looked really good, maybe because the uniform was perfectly taylored to suit her :-)
ep 14 - The good samaritan - Three men are killed in the same way, apparently picked because they stopped to help someone in trouble. It turned out that a wife and her twin sister killed other two men to cover up the murder of her husband.
Kate talks about her security number, Gibbs has two cups of coffee this morning, and Sheriff Charlie keeps hitting on Gibbs.
I love this bit: after one of Ducky's stories, Gerald says: "I actually find that interesting", you know, for once, he's the first to be surprised, but Ducky replies "as opposed to what??" :lol: after all, he thinks all his stories are interesting. :-)
ep 15 - Enigma - This episode had a great intro, with a Marine about to get shot, who frees himself and escapes. He's colonel Ryan, and he'll call for Gibbs' help in what he thinks to be a big conspiracy involving people in high places everywhere. It turns out he's a bit paranoid, he sees a man that's not there, because Lt. Cameron really died years ago, in Gibbs' arms. Good trick , this time, when Gibbs tells him it can't be, that he was dead, and the colonel tells him to judge with his own eyes, and calls for Cameron to come forward, and we see Gibbs' surprised face, but then they change scene, leaving us thinking he saw him too and talked with him. Well done!
As proof of their friendship, we see the inscription on the hip flask the colonel sends him: To lieutenent colonel W.D.Ryan, "semper fi", Gunnery sergeant L.J. Gibbs 1991"
ep 16 - Bète noire - There should be a "^" above the first "e", but I don't know how to do it with my keyboard... sorry. It means 'nightmare' in French.
This one too has a thrilling start: a body is sent to Ncis for autopsy, but when Gerald and Ducky open the plastic bag they find a man, very alive. Cool, huh? He then keeps Ducky and Gerald hostage. Unable to go out, Ducky is forced to tell Abby to bring evidence to him, but since she had a bad nightmare, she can't go down there, and sends Kate. When Ducky sees her, he calls her Abby, trying this way to send a message to everyone upstairs, but the criminal sees her gun and understands she's not just a lab technician, and takes her hostage too. As a punishment , becacuse Ducky tried to deceive him, he shoots Gerald; Fortunately he'll be saved, but the wound was really severe. Although everyone is saved, the criminal shoots Gibbs in the shoulder before his escape.
ep 17 - The truth is out there - This is such an 'x-files' title, isn't it? Rightly too, since aliens are involved .-p
Three pettty officers thought it was just a prank gone badly wrong, but the fourth knew what he was doing when he killed his friend (dressed as an alien), and he did it for the chance to find his 40.000 $
They inform us that Gerald will have to stay in rehab for months, and Gibbs is really obsessed by that criminal that escaped in the last episode.
I know the actors that play Petty Officer Carter and Chief Nutter, but I really can't place them now...still, I'm sure I've seen them somewhere else.
ep 18 - Unsealed - A former Seal escapes from prison. He wants to kill the person who really murdered his wife, and that means the woman she was having an affair with.
McGee appears again. Kate sometimes is depicted really stupid, I mean, it's not the first time she screwed up: without talking of that time with Suzanne, that was good faith, there was the time she had to recognize a sniper with her profiler-training but didn't see because she was looking at somebody else, stupidly. Now, she sees the child and think nobody else's there without even looking, which is stupid for someone with her training, I mean, I would have looked anyway in her situation! Of course the child wasn't scared or hurt, of course he told her nothing, it's his father we're talking about, after all! I was so sure he was there, it looked really stupid for her to be surprised and hit. Luckily McGee frees her. McGee is not dumb at all, and Tony's attitute towards him is annoying. I understand he wants someone to treat as inferior, but it's not a nice thing to do. The mystery of the redhead woman goes on, when she comes to the office to bring Gibbs his glasses.
Wait, when Tony said Tommy Lee, did he mean he was trying to do a Tommy Lee Jones impersonation?? I would have never guessed :lol:
ep 19 - Dead man talking - Chris Pacci, the agent that sits behind Kate's desk, has been murdered, and they continue his investigation. A Lt.Commander, after having stolen a lot of money, faked his own death and hide in plain sight as a woman :-) and Tony kissed him :-) They'll never forget this :-p
The doctor's full name is Donald Mallard, therefore Duck-->Ducky!
Kate made me laugh when she asked Gibbs "permission to shoot him" :lol: I so agree with her, Tony has that effect on me too. :-) McGee is helping again.
ep 20 - Missing - Now, this was a really tough story, it made me chill: four girls lost in a container for I don't know how long, three of them died, the youngest was given their food by her friends and barely survived, after seeing them all die. In the last eight years, she found and gave the same death to the men that put them there ( even if they didn't actually want them to die, they wanted to 'smuggle' them to America). Tony is taken too while he's investigating, but of course he's saved; well, he was doing a pretty good job himself, so save may not be the exact word, so let's say that the others helped him :-) McGee was in this episode too.
ep 21 - Split decision - First Tony then Gibbs go undercover, to frame the Atf girl and the corporal girl for selling weapons and murdering a sergeant. I sure wasn't worried about Gibbs, there had to be something, he sure wasn't going to die just like that in season 1!! He's what keeps them all together, without him there would be no team, just some agents, a technician and a doctor doing their job, but no team.
ep 22 - A weak link - Lt Johnson has a falling accident, and it was caused by himself tampering with his own equipment.
Abby is troubled because McGee told her he really likes her and asked her about where their relationship is going... she talks about it with Kate, then when she has to work with him they make peace, but it's not clear what they'll do next. Breaking up or stay together without planning ahead?
The widow is played by Julie Benz (Darla from BuffyTVS and Angel) and priest Larry Clannon is Doug Savant ( I know him from Melrose Place and from Desperate Housewives). The commander is Adam Baldwin, which is also my favourite Baldwin :-)
ep 23 - Reveille - The man that wounded Gerald and Gibbs is Ari Haswari, and he's not Al-qaeda. He's Israeli, Mossad, apparently. The secret service lets him go because he infiltrated alqaeda and they don't want his cover blown; still, Gibbs leaves him with a shoulder wound, when they meet and talk.
domenica 19 ottobre 2014
Buffy the vampire slayer season 1
I've always loved Buffy. I'm rewatching it now so I can write about it here, but I've already seen it at least three times. All the series, I mean. One thing that I loved about the show is that clearly things were bad even before she came to town. It's not like those shows like 'Murder, she wrote' that wherever she is, something happens. No, from ep 1 we can see how big and close the graveyard is, because clearly there has always been an unusual amount of deaths in Sunnydale.
I love Buffy, struggling to be strong enough to do her duty, and I love her mother, always so nice, lovely and beautiful. Mr Giles was always my favourite, and he'll get better and better, if possible.
Eric Balfour is Jessie, and he has such a particular face that when I saw him again years later in other shows I immediately recognised him and went 'that's Jessie!' even if he did just this two-parts episode.
ep 1 - Welcome to the Hellmouth - It makes you immediately understand what kind of a show this is. It starts with a guy breaking into school at night, with a cute blondie that appeares to be scared "they might get caught", and in a moment you understand why, when she turns vampire on him and kills him.
We have Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) with the same enthusiasm at the prospect of going to school as a lot of us had (or have). Another hint at what we're getting ourself into is given by her mother(Kristine Sutherland), when she says "Honey, try not to get kicked out", before Buffy goes in. It was so funny when the Principal read her school history: "You burnt down the gym!", which should not surprise you if you've seen the movie. If you haven't don't worry, it's not worth much.
Funnily Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) is at first so very nice and friendly with her, at least until she thinks she's been attacked by Buffy with a stick. :lol: Willow (Alyson Hannigan) in this first episode was kind of too much, wasn't she? Those thick white collant?? All dressed in white and brown... I'm so not a Cordelia-type of person, but this is too much. Not even a touch of colour, she's not 'Carrie', come on, she has friends, she lives in the world!
Then we meet Mr. Giles! Oh Mr. Giles... He was my favourite. Even Willow says "the new librarian is really cool" :-) In this episode there was Jessie, the 'other' friend that got killed first round.
Soon enough a corpse if found in the shower lockers, and Buffy gets in to investigate. We also meet Angel (David Boreanaz), and he gives her the cross necklace. "I really didn't like thim" says Buffy, then she wears his gift all the time...
We meet the Master, although still weak. Strangely, I'm not a big Master-fan, I found it a bit boring, to tell you the truth.
Here Buffy can not sense vampires, yet, because she passes right in front of Darla (Julie Benz) and doesn't sense anything, since she was dressed ok :-/
Buffy manages to save Willow, but Jessie is retaken, and the episode ends when the big tough vampire Luke is about to kill her...
I always loved Willow's lines: "Aren't you hanging out with Cordelia?" "I can't do both?" "Not legally!" :lol:
and "We broke up" "how so?" "he stole my Barbie". :lol:
and Cordelia's line "the gym was cancelled due to the extremely dead guy in the locker"
and Buffy's philosophy: "seize the moment, 'cause tomorrow you might be dead" :-)
ep 2 - The harvest - so, Luke was about to kill Buffy, but she's wearing Angel's gift, and the cross helps her giving her enough time to escape.
Xander starts already being all annoying because since he's a guy he should be doing all the tough-protecting stuff, and a few minutes later we hear Angel replying to Buffy's question "why don't you stop it?" with "because I'm afraid", because he's older, and doesn't have to "pretend" to be grown-up. Anyway Xander goes go help her, and despite the annoying attitude, I admit he does try his best to help.
I LOVE how the scenes passes from the dark tunnel to the library, it looks so cool!!!
The harvest of the title is at the Bronze where Luke, linked to the master, is supposed to take enough victims to give him the strenght to free himself, but of course Buffy stopped him :-) I was kind of sorry that Luke died, he was cool, but I guess two big enemies the whole series is too much, right?
It all ends with
Giles "we may in fact stand between Earth and its total destruction"
Buffy "I gotta look on the bright side. Maybe I can get out of school"
Willow "Maybe you can blow something up. They're really strict about that"
Buffy "I was thinking of a more subtle approach, you know, like, excessive not studying"
and the final line is for Giles "The Earth is doomed"
Things I remembered well: Buffy asking Angel "do you know what it's like to have a friend?" and his expression which made her understand that no, he doesn't have one. poor thing...
ep 3 - Witch - Buffy wanting to be a cheerleader :lol: Giles was so funny: "you were chosen to destroy vampires, not to wave ponpons at people" :lol: love Mr Giles.
On the board you can read "welcome to 1996 cheerleading tryouts", although the ep is from 1997.
Finally Willow looks all pretty!! No need to dress like Cordelia, just dress like a normal 16 y. o. girl!
We meet Amy, a friend of Willow. This was sort of a creepy episode, where a mother would switch bodies with her own daughter to steal her youth, and also did very bad spells on other teenage girls because she wanted to be a cheerleader again! Poor Amy, here being trapped in her mother's body, and later in the show she'll get stuck in rat form!! At least her mother is young and beautiful! I didn't remember it was her, the screaming figure in the opening titles! The happy ending is that now her mother's gone, Amy is back with her dad, and she loves it. Although I don't remember ever seeing him or hearing talking about him again... we'll see.
I loved this lines:
Giles' : "That's the thrill of living on the Hellmouth! ... Well, pardon me for seeing the glass half full!"
Willow's : "you're the slayer, and we're the slayerettes!"
Xander's : "I laugh in the face of danger... and then hide until it goes away"
ep 4 - Teacher's pet - Let's just forget about Xander's dream, after all he's 16... of course he dreams to be strong, a hero, and a musician! Moving on, let's concentrate on the odd thing that Buffy finds a nice man in her teacher, a good one that might make her want to study and show him that he was right in saying that she can do it! Do these people really exists?? I've never found one, but I've found more than one that would make you loose any will you might have...
Is a surprise to anyone that he'll die before next class?? No, not to me either. Dr Gregory dies and new teacher Natalie French takes over, and she's this episode's monster!! She is a Praying Mantis, a she-Mantis!
This is the first time Angel comes to the Bronze, and gives her his jacket saying she looks cold (also, of course, the usual criptic information). It starts the big jealousy Xander will always have for Angel. That's what I never liked about him!
ep 5 - Never kill a boy on the first date - Buffy has a date with Owen, a cute guy that reads Emily Dickinson and ignores Cordelia! I'm pretty sure that in a shot of them dancing she was standing on something, because he's so much taller than her!
She wants to have a normal date, so Giles goes to the Morgue alone, and when there's trouble she goes to help him, and Owen follows too. He's not clear about what happens, but in the end he asks her out again because le 'liked the danger', so she says no.
ep 6 - The pack - This is when Xander and four others got in them hyena-spirit, and I remember that when I saw it first time back then, I was impressed at how different he was, just by changing attitude, but seeing it now it doesn't have the same effect :-) It's also when they ate the little pig mascot, although only the other four also ate the principal, while being possessed by the hyenas! Not Xander, because he's one of the gang, one of the good ones, and they couldn't have him kill a man, right?
However, sad-Willow was touching, but I was glad that he didn't fool her while in the cage, because for a second it looked like he could, but that would have angered me because she's smarter than that! She might very well be in love with him, but she's smart first! And, she ran into Giles' arms: see? Smart!!
The best thing of the episode was that as soon as he was normal again, Xander ran in Willow's defence!
-->"nobody mess with my Willow" was cute. Of course, after all he did he pretended to have memory-loss. He had been cruel to Willow, and phisically assaulted Buffy! Well, she knocked him out, hitted him with a desk, but still, he had tried!
ep 7 - Angel - Angel comes to her rescue when the master sends the Three after her, and of course when he gets injured she has to take care of him... and of course Xander finds nothing better to do than be obnoxiously annoying with his jealousy. She keeps him in her room, at home, and after an embarassing moment when she thinks he read her private diary, he tells her that he wants to kiss her, then they kiss... and she finds out he's a vampire! She screams, and he runs away through the window. Darla, looking all innocent in school uniform, gets invited in by her mother and then she bites her, so when Buffy comes in she sees Angel and thinks he did it; also, the fact that when they ask her mother she just says 'Buffy's friend'... then Angel tells his story, his curse. Buffy and Angel finally have their first showdown, interrupted by Darla coming to chat :-) but with guns :-) she talks a lot, wanting the two of them to kill one another, but she has a totally different impact, the silly vampire girl, silly silly silly. She starts saying how she was the one that made him a vampire, then goes on saying how lately he hasn't killed anyone, how he's trying to be good because he's in love with Buffy... her conclusion is how the two of them should hate each other, but you can clearly see how her judgement is faulty there... After he kills Darla, Buffy does not kill him, instead goes near him leaning over with her neck, to test him, and he keeps his place :-)
This is the first episode with the crossbow. I don't particularly love crossbows, I don't know why they all look excited around them. Maybe because it's like a gun for vampires, and Americans love guns. Maybe, but I still think crossbows are not all that efficient! This is also where they say that he's 240 years old, 224 older than her :-)
I so didn't like the vampire child near the Master!
ep 8 - I, robot... you, Jane - It starts in XV century Italy, with people trying to speak italian :lol: The demon speaks it so badly, and the priest doing the spell in a bit better italian, but still barely understandable. Then we meet Miss Calendar for the first time. I so didn't like her! What did Giles see in her?? Well, she's pretty, but aside from that! Anyway, it turns out that the guy Willow fell for after chatting with him on the computer turns out to be Moloch the Corruptor, who was trapped in a book since the XV century, and not innocent 18 years old Malcolm.
ep 9 - The puppet show - There's the school talent show, assigned to Mr Giles by Snider (Armin Shimerman), the new principal, or the new fuhrer, as Giles calls him. Snider forces our trio to take part in the show, and Giles can't suppress a smile :-) When Xander acts all shocked at this development, his comedy, his comic timing looks exactly the kind of physical one that Chandler had in Friends.
This Morgan guy tries out with a dummy called Sid, and at first he's so bad he's embarrassing, then the dummy starts talking by himself and everybody laughs thinking he's just a good, funny ventriloquist.
Armin Shimerman as the new principal, since the old one was killed by the hiena-guys. :-) I always thought it was so funny how he is immediately recognizable without the whole "Quark" make-up on, but he looks just the same, but with smaller ears of course :lol:
This is the episode when Giles uses the technique Xander told him to use to stop Cordelia: "your hair.." and she runs away worried :-) Xander plays stupid as always, I mean, why should a wood dummy that can move and talk be so different from any other kind of demon? I admit , they've been in it from, like, nine episodes, but still knowing all that should open your mind a bit.
The switch of the episode is that talking and moving wood dummy is not a bad guy, he's a hunter like Buffy. I liked the end, when they show their act at the show, because it was like, this is what we're really scared of, this is what we don't want to do. And they had just played a demon and helped save Giles from having his brain removed.
ep 10 - Nightmares - Last year Buffy's parents' divorce was finalized.
People's nightmares become real: in class, Wendell is attacked by spiders for revenge, because although he loves them he feels guilty for causing the deaths of those he had at home. Buffy's history test go tragically wrong when time goes really too quickly. A girl is attacked by a monster calling her "lucky 19".... A bully is embarrassed at school by his mother. Xander finds himself in class with no clothes on. Giles that can't read. I mean, is he adorable or what? :-)
Buffy's dad telling her that she's the reason he split up with her mom, that it was her fault, and a lot of really awful horrible things.
Cordelia with impossible hair :lol: Giles getting lost in the library. Cordelia as a nerd, Xander chased by a clown (btw, what kind of a dumb is he? Finds something around and eats it? Just like that?)
Willow is thrown on a stage to sing as a soprano. The Master is free, up and about. Buffy is buried alive, Buffy's grave (this is Giles' nightmare, failing to protect her... so sweet), Buffy as a vampire...
all caused by a poor little kid in a coma because his coach beaten him after his team lost, giving him all the fault. A big man with a little child. The world is full of these pathetic failures, who need to beat up someone smaller to feel powerful, all because they are pathetic loosers who will never accept their own faults and to be on the safe side they take it on someone physically weaker so they know they can win easily, the pathetic scum that they are.
ep 11 - Out of mind, out of sight - We meet Cordelia's friend Harmony.
Her boyfriend is attacked with a bat and her friend Harmony is pushed down the stairs. Buffy says she was the Queen at her school. Angel comes to Giles to help, and I loved their talk, both so embarrassed :-) and when Giles, Willow and Xander gets trapped in the basement filling with gas, luckily he comes bringing the codex book that Giles needed, saving them. Can't be a hero without being lucky, right?
To fight the invisible girl (that I understand only too well, having been an invisible girl myself) Buffy listens to her slayer instincts, I guess, for the first time.
ep 12 - Prophecy girl - Giles reads in the codex that the slayer will die.
Xander confesses to Buffy, asks her out on a date. I usually don't like these scenes, because they are boring and embarrassing to watch, but this one is not. I like this scene: Xander appears all fear and hope, she's looking for a way out without hurting him. " I don't wanna spoil our friendship" and he just gets to the poing that they usually omit in this kind of scenes. He says: "I don't wanna spoil it either, but that's not the point. You either feel the thing, or you don't" - "I don't".
Willow's wearing a black and white sweater that is really dreadful, and Buffy's mom is adorable as always, isn't she? At school, is it normal that they wear skirts so short? Is that allowed in high school?"
Buffy goes alone to face the Master, and that is what he wanted. This way he could use his power on her to bring her close and feed on her, to gain the strength to get out. Angel and Xander come to the rescue, because Angel has no breath and can't revive her, so Xander saves her, bringing her back to life.
Cordelia rescues Willow and Miss Calendar! It really is the apocalypse alright!
They take refuge in the library, but guess what? That's where the hell mouth is... but of course Buffy comes to kill the Master and stops it!
1997
I love Buffy, struggling to be strong enough to do her duty, and I love her mother, always so nice, lovely and beautiful. Mr Giles was always my favourite, and he'll get better and better, if possible.
Eric Balfour is Jessie, and he has such a particular face that when I saw him again years later in other shows I immediately recognised him and went 'that's Jessie!' even if he did just this two-parts episode.
ep 1 - Welcome to the Hellmouth - It makes you immediately understand what kind of a show this is. It starts with a guy breaking into school at night, with a cute blondie that appeares to be scared "they might get caught", and in a moment you understand why, when she turns vampire on him and kills him.
We have Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) with the same enthusiasm at the prospect of going to school as a lot of us had (or have). Another hint at what we're getting ourself into is given by her mother(Kristine Sutherland), when she says "Honey, try not to get kicked out", before Buffy goes in. It was so funny when the Principal read her school history: "You burnt down the gym!", which should not surprise you if you've seen the movie. If you haven't don't worry, it's not worth much.
Funnily Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) is at first so very nice and friendly with her, at least until she thinks she's been attacked by Buffy with a stick. :lol: Willow (Alyson Hannigan) in this first episode was kind of too much, wasn't she? Those thick white collant?? All dressed in white and brown... I'm so not a Cordelia-type of person, but this is too much. Not even a touch of colour, she's not 'Carrie', come on, she has friends, she lives in the world!
Then we meet Mr. Giles! Oh Mr. Giles... He was my favourite. Even Willow says "the new librarian is really cool" :-) In this episode there was Jessie, the 'other' friend that got killed first round.
Soon enough a corpse if found in the shower lockers, and Buffy gets in to investigate. We also meet Angel (David Boreanaz), and he gives her the cross necklace. "I really didn't like thim" says Buffy, then she wears his gift all the time...
We meet the Master, although still weak. Strangely, I'm not a big Master-fan, I found it a bit boring, to tell you the truth.
Here Buffy can not sense vampires, yet, because she passes right in front of Darla (Julie Benz) and doesn't sense anything, since she was dressed ok :-/
Buffy manages to save Willow, but Jessie is retaken, and the episode ends when the big tough vampire Luke is about to kill her...
I always loved Willow's lines: "Aren't you hanging out with Cordelia?" "I can't do both?" "Not legally!" :lol:
and "We broke up" "how so?" "he stole my Barbie". :lol:
and Cordelia's line "the gym was cancelled due to the extremely dead guy in the locker"
and Buffy's philosophy: "seize the moment, 'cause tomorrow you might be dead" :-)
ep 2 - The harvest - so, Luke was about to kill Buffy, but she's wearing Angel's gift, and the cross helps her giving her enough time to escape.
Xander starts already being all annoying because since he's a guy he should be doing all the tough-protecting stuff, and a few minutes later we hear Angel replying to Buffy's question "why don't you stop it?" with "because I'm afraid", because he's older, and doesn't have to "pretend" to be grown-up. Anyway Xander goes go help her, and despite the annoying attitude, I admit he does try his best to help.
I LOVE how the scenes passes from the dark tunnel to the library, it looks so cool!!!
The harvest of the title is at the Bronze where Luke, linked to the master, is supposed to take enough victims to give him the strenght to free himself, but of course Buffy stopped him :-) I was kind of sorry that Luke died, he was cool, but I guess two big enemies the whole series is too much, right?
It all ends with
Giles "we may in fact stand between Earth and its total destruction"
Buffy "I gotta look on the bright side. Maybe I can get out of school"
Willow "Maybe you can blow something up. They're really strict about that"
Buffy "I was thinking of a more subtle approach, you know, like, excessive not studying"
and the final line is for Giles "The Earth is doomed"
Things I remembered well: Buffy asking Angel "do you know what it's like to have a friend?" and his expression which made her understand that no, he doesn't have one. poor thing...
ep 3 - Witch - Buffy wanting to be a cheerleader :lol: Giles was so funny: "you were chosen to destroy vampires, not to wave ponpons at people" :lol: love Mr Giles.
On the board you can read "welcome to 1996 cheerleading tryouts", although the ep is from 1997.
Finally Willow looks all pretty!! No need to dress like Cordelia, just dress like a normal 16 y. o. girl!
We meet Amy, a friend of Willow. This was sort of a creepy episode, where a mother would switch bodies with her own daughter to steal her youth, and also did very bad spells on other teenage girls because she wanted to be a cheerleader again! Poor Amy, here being trapped in her mother's body, and later in the show she'll get stuck in rat form!! At least her mother is young and beautiful! I didn't remember it was her, the screaming figure in the opening titles! The happy ending is that now her mother's gone, Amy is back with her dad, and she loves it. Although I don't remember ever seeing him or hearing talking about him again... we'll see.
I loved this lines:
Giles' : "That's the thrill of living on the Hellmouth! ... Well, pardon me for seeing the glass half full!"
Willow's : "you're the slayer, and we're the slayerettes!"
Xander's : "I laugh in the face of danger... and then hide until it goes away"
ep 4 - Teacher's pet - Let's just forget about Xander's dream, after all he's 16... of course he dreams to be strong, a hero, and a musician! Moving on, let's concentrate on the odd thing that Buffy finds a nice man in her teacher, a good one that might make her want to study and show him that he was right in saying that she can do it! Do these people really exists?? I've never found one, but I've found more than one that would make you loose any will you might have...
Is a surprise to anyone that he'll die before next class?? No, not to me either. Dr Gregory dies and new teacher Natalie French takes over, and she's this episode's monster!! She is a Praying Mantis, a she-Mantis!
This is the first time Angel comes to the Bronze, and gives her his jacket saying she looks cold (also, of course, the usual criptic information). It starts the big jealousy Xander will always have for Angel. That's what I never liked about him!
ep 5 - Never kill a boy on the first date - Buffy has a date with Owen, a cute guy that reads Emily Dickinson and ignores Cordelia! I'm pretty sure that in a shot of them dancing she was standing on something, because he's so much taller than her!
She wants to have a normal date, so Giles goes to the Morgue alone, and when there's trouble she goes to help him, and Owen follows too. He's not clear about what happens, but in the end he asks her out again because le 'liked the danger', so she says no.
ep 6 - The pack - This is when Xander and four others got in them hyena-spirit, and I remember that when I saw it first time back then, I was impressed at how different he was, just by changing attitude, but seeing it now it doesn't have the same effect :-) It's also when they ate the little pig mascot, although only the other four also ate the principal, while being possessed by the hyenas! Not Xander, because he's one of the gang, one of the good ones, and they couldn't have him kill a man, right?
However, sad-Willow was touching, but I was glad that he didn't fool her while in the cage, because for a second it looked like he could, but that would have angered me because she's smarter than that! She might very well be in love with him, but she's smart first! And, she ran into Giles' arms: see? Smart!!
The best thing of the episode was that as soon as he was normal again, Xander ran in Willow's defence!
-->"nobody mess with my Willow" was cute. Of course, after all he did he pretended to have memory-loss. He had been cruel to Willow, and phisically assaulted Buffy! Well, she knocked him out, hitted him with a desk, but still, he had tried!
ep 7 - Angel - Angel comes to her rescue when the master sends the Three after her, and of course when he gets injured she has to take care of him... and of course Xander finds nothing better to do than be obnoxiously annoying with his jealousy. She keeps him in her room, at home, and after an embarassing moment when she thinks he read her private diary, he tells her that he wants to kiss her, then they kiss... and she finds out he's a vampire! She screams, and he runs away through the window. Darla, looking all innocent in school uniform, gets invited in by her mother and then she bites her, so when Buffy comes in she sees Angel and thinks he did it; also, the fact that when they ask her mother she just says 'Buffy's friend'... then Angel tells his story, his curse. Buffy and Angel finally have their first showdown, interrupted by Darla coming to chat :-) but with guns :-) she talks a lot, wanting the two of them to kill one another, but she has a totally different impact, the silly vampire girl, silly silly silly. She starts saying how she was the one that made him a vampire, then goes on saying how lately he hasn't killed anyone, how he's trying to be good because he's in love with Buffy... her conclusion is how the two of them should hate each other, but you can clearly see how her judgement is faulty there... After he kills Darla, Buffy does not kill him, instead goes near him leaning over with her neck, to test him, and he keeps his place :-)
This is the first episode with the crossbow. I don't particularly love crossbows, I don't know why they all look excited around them. Maybe because it's like a gun for vampires, and Americans love guns. Maybe, but I still think crossbows are not all that efficient! This is also where they say that he's 240 years old, 224 older than her :-)
I so didn't like the vampire child near the Master!
ep 8 - I, robot... you, Jane - It starts in XV century Italy, with people trying to speak italian :lol: The demon speaks it so badly, and the priest doing the spell in a bit better italian, but still barely understandable. Then we meet Miss Calendar for the first time. I so didn't like her! What did Giles see in her?? Well, she's pretty, but aside from that! Anyway, it turns out that the guy Willow fell for after chatting with him on the computer turns out to be Moloch the Corruptor, who was trapped in a book since the XV century, and not innocent 18 years old Malcolm.
ep 9 - The puppet show - There's the school talent show, assigned to Mr Giles by Snider (Armin Shimerman), the new principal, or the new fuhrer, as Giles calls him. Snider forces our trio to take part in the show, and Giles can't suppress a smile :-) When Xander acts all shocked at this development, his comedy, his comic timing looks exactly the kind of physical one that Chandler had in Friends.
This Morgan guy tries out with a dummy called Sid, and at first he's so bad he's embarrassing, then the dummy starts talking by himself and everybody laughs thinking he's just a good, funny ventriloquist.
Armin Shimerman as the new principal, since the old one was killed by the hiena-guys. :-) I always thought it was so funny how he is immediately recognizable without the whole "Quark" make-up on, but he looks just the same, but with smaller ears of course :lol:
This is the episode when Giles uses the technique Xander told him to use to stop Cordelia: "your hair.." and she runs away worried :-) Xander plays stupid as always, I mean, why should a wood dummy that can move and talk be so different from any other kind of demon? I admit , they've been in it from, like, nine episodes, but still knowing all that should open your mind a bit.
The switch of the episode is that talking and moving wood dummy is not a bad guy, he's a hunter like Buffy. I liked the end, when they show their act at the show, because it was like, this is what we're really scared of, this is what we don't want to do. And they had just played a demon and helped save Giles from having his brain removed.
ep 10 - Nightmares - Last year Buffy's parents' divorce was finalized.
People's nightmares become real: in class, Wendell is attacked by spiders for revenge, because although he loves them he feels guilty for causing the deaths of those he had at home. Buffy's history test go tragically wrong when time goes really too quickly. A girl is attacked by a monster calling her "lucky 19".... A bully is embarrassed at school by his mother. Xander finds himself in class with no clothes on. Giles that can't read. I mean, is he adorable or what? :-)
Buffy's dad telling her that she's the reason he split up with her mom, that it was her fault, and a lot of really awful horrible things.
Cordelia with impossible hair :lol: Giles getting lost in the library. Cordelia as a nerd, Xander chased by a clown (btw, what kind of a dumb is he? Finds something around and eats it? Just like that?)
Willow is thrown on a stage to sing as a soprano. The Master is free, up and about. Buffy is buried alive, Buffy's grave (this is Giles' nightmare, failing to protect her... so sweet), Buffy as a vampire...
all caused by a poor little kid in a coma because his coach beaten him after his team lost, giving him all the fault. A big man with a little child. The world is full of these pathetic failures, who need to beat up someone smaller to feel powerful, all because they are pathetic loosers who will never accept their own faults and to be on the safe side they take it on someone physically weaker so they know they can win easily, the pathetic scum that they are.
ep 11 - Out of mind, out of sight - We meet Cordelia's friend Harmony.
Her boyfriend is attacked with a bat and her friend Harmony is pushed down the stairs. Buffy says she was the Queen at her school. Angel comes to Giles to help, and I loved their talk, both so embarrassed :-) and when Giles, Willow and Xander gets trapped in the basement filling with gas, luckily he comes bringing the codex book that Giles needed, saving them. Can't be a hero without being lucky, right?
To fight the invisible girl (that I understand only too well, having been an invisible girl myself) Buffy listens to her slayer instincts, I guess, for the first time.
ep 12 - Prophecy girl - Giles reads in the codex that the slayer will die.
Xander confesses to Buffy, asks her out on a date. I usually don't like these scenes, because they are boring and embarrassing to watch, but this one is not. I like this scene: Xander appears all fear and hope, she's looking for a way out without hurting him. " I don't wanna spoil our friendship" and he just gets to the poing that they usually omit in this kind of scenes. He says: "I don't wanna spoil it either, but that's not the point. You either feel the thing, or you don't" - "I don't".
Willow's wearing a black and white sweater that is really dreadful, and Buffy's mom is adorable as always, isn't she? At school, is it normal that they wear skirts so short? Is that allowed in high school?"
Buffy goes alone to face the Master, and that is what he wanted. This way he could use his power on her to bring her close and feed on her, to gain the strength to get out. Angel and Xander come to the rescue, because Angel has no breath and can't revive her, so Xander saves her, bringing her back to life.
Cordelia rescues Willow and Miss Calendar! It really is the apocalypse alright!
They take refuge in the library, but guess what? That's where the hell mouth is... but of course Buffy comes to kill the Master and stops it!
1997
Murder, she wrote - season 1
Angela Lansbury is Jessica Fletcher, her most famous character, as Columbo was for P.Falk . She's a widow, and apparently she started writing books to fill the long, empty days alone. Now, what we see is a lively woman who knows everyone in Cabot Cove where she lives, who is loved and respected by all of them, and also appears to have an unlimited number of friends and nieces spread everywhere. She's loving and kind, but also strong, intelligent and determined.
So often the cases, but specially the was she catches the murderers, appear to be so naive, seeing them now, but of course it probably was different then, it was 1984 after all, 30 years it's a lot of time.
ep 1 - Deadly Lady - Jessica finds a man, calling himself Ralph, working in her garden because, he says, he doesn't want charity, he prefers to work. She invites him home, gives him food and also her husband's pipe.
Four girls were out to sea with their boat, now they come back saying he had an accident, and died at sea, and later one of them confesses his murder... but it was all a plan, their father wasn't on the boat, it was the man Jessica has know as Ralph. Unfortunately, later on the man is killed for real, and when it's found that he had with him Jessica's pipe, it's clear that her version is truer than the one the girls gave. How she catches the guilty one is so naive, she talks about a pair of shoes, and a girl says "she doesn't have pink shoes"... you can't miss such a simple thing, so obvious a ruse: J. never said the colour... so watching it now I didn't think 'good one, Jessica', instead I thought 'what a dumb girl' for making such an obvious mistake.
Also, in this first episode, we have the reason I love crime stories, all in one phrase that Sheriff Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley) says: "this is evidence enough for me!". There! Case closed huh? But the heroes of all the crime series don't think so, it's not enough. Their aim is not to simply close the case; it matters to them to find the person responsible, the one that really did it. They care ! It's the same in Columbo, when other policemen are satisfied with what it has been made to look like, and happy to close it like that and go home, but Columbo isn't, because he cares !
ep 2 Birds of a feather - Victoria wants to marry Howard, but he's accused of Mr. Drake's murder (Martin Landau), but fortunately her aunt Jessica is there to help, and prove that it wasn't him. It was another actor who wanted to free himself from the contract he had with Mr Drake.
ep 3 - Hooray for Homocide - They are making a movie from her book, but making far too many changes. Much more nudity and violence, that is. Jessica storms down there, saying "I'm going to do whatever I have to do to stop this film from being made!", and later "what I must do can not be done on the telephone", talking about her apologies to Mr Decker, after finding out that she had actually signed a contract enabling him to do whatever he wanted. See how words can be easily misinterpreted? When he dies, someone suspects her, at first. Fortunately, the lieutenant doesn't believe it, and lets her keep up her investigation. She discovers the main star was having an affair with her partner in the film, and after finding that out Mr Decker, or Liedecker, something like that, wanted to fire him, so she killed him, and the director had discovered that right away, and tried to get rid of the evidence against her to protect his film.
We learn also learn that she writes under the name J.B. Fletcher because she's called Jessica Beatrice.
ep 4 - It's a dog's life - A man died falling off a horse, and left everything to his dog :-) The lawyer had convinced the deceased's daughter Tricia to drug the horse, then killed her with the help of the innocent but well trained dog.
ep 5 - Lovers and other killers - Jessica is in Seattle for a lecture at a university, where her friend Dr Edmond Girard (Peter Graves) works.
David, a young man, volunteers, insisting, to be her assistant, then takes her out to dinner and acts all flirty, but he's then questioned by Lt. Andrews (Greg Morris) because the woman he had been seeing is dead (turns out it was a burglar, though), then a girl is killed but again it wasn't him, it was Edmond's secretary, in love with him and jealous of her. It ends at the airport, when David comes to say goodbye to Jessica, and to state openly how attracted he is to her; she says the best she can do is to make him a character in her new book. When he asks in which role : victim, suspect or killer, she replies "I haven't made up my mind yet" and it ends with a close shot of him, with a rough expression more similar to that of a killer than a victim, in my opinion.
ep 6 - Hit, run and homocide - At Cabot Cove Jessica, Ethan (Claude Akins) and other people see a man almost run down by a driverless car, and the next day another man from Boston is. When Jessica finds the car, it drives her into and out of town, so she realises the first man was never in real danger. Leslie turns out to be his accomplice; she's engaged to Toni, and Daniel the inventor is his uncle.
ep 7 - We're off to kill the wizard - Jessica is at her niece's: Mrs Donovan. So aunt Jess again :-)
"Horrible Horatio" Baldwin wants to see her because he wants to make a horror park off her books. She refuses, then he's murdered. Mr. Donovan is a cop, so she's easily in the investigation. The Baldwin widow is widow for the fourth time, but it wasn't her, it was the man working for him, and acting all cool.
ep 8 - Death takes a curtain call - It starts at home, while she's giving a piece of pie to Ethan. Then her friend Leo Peterson takes her to a ballet in Boston: not a very good ballet, in my opinion, they were all going their own way. Leo helps two ballet dancers to escape to seek asylum in America, and Ethan hides them at Cabot Cove, disguising them as new workers :-) A Kgb major is looking for them, and Sheriff Amos is looking for Alexander and Natalie too. A dancer, Irina, killed a Kgb man to stop them from escaping, but Jessica finds out everything .-)
ep 9 - Death casts a spell - Famous hypnotist Cagliostro is killed by the journalist that was not in trance like the others. The funniest bit was when a woman insisted Jessica was someone else, even after she showed her the picture on the cover :-)
ep 10 - Capitol offence - A blackmailing woman is beaten to death by her accomplice, the man who drove Jessica around while she was working for the congress.
ep 11 - Broadway malady - Grady invites Aunt Jessica. There's going to be a new show on Broadway, a comeback for an actress and the debut for her daughter. When the girl gets shot, she recovers, and the show goes on. Then her brother almost murders their mother... and I suppose he had just the right face, because I immediately guessed everything, right, everything! Incredible, must have been something in that face, or in his attitude... Anyway, Jessica stops him in time, so Rita and Patti Bristol will go on with their show without him. This might be the only crime-episode where nobody actually dies :-) Or at least, one of the few.
ep 12 - Murder to a jazz beat - In New Orleans, a famous musician is poisoned by his best friend because he wanted to kill his own wife. And Jessica did always, casually get the same taxi-driver every time, no matter where she was in town....
ep 13 - My Johnny lies over the ocean - Pam is troubled after losing her husband over suicide, and her aunt Jessica convinces her to go on a cruise with her. Pam's father is apparently Jessica's brother, since he says "have a good time sis". Leslie Nielsen is the ship captain :-)
On the cruise, Pam is stalked by someone, cruel clues to make her think Johnny's doing it. When a woman is murdered, it's discovered that she was Pam's husband's real mother. Jessica is sure she was murdered by her husband, that he had planned the persecution and the murder! What I'd like to know is why the sailor called Ramon speaks italian instead of spanish...
ep 14 - Paint me a murder - Jessica goes on a small island for a famous painter's 60th birthday. When he's killed, Jessica uncovers Sir John's plan, to make a fortune out of all the paintings he had that now would be worth much more, after his death.
ep 15 - Tough guys don't die - A private investigator, Mr Miles, is working on an old case for Jessica when he gets shot in his office. His partner Harry McGraw (Jerry Orbach) investigates with Jessica, that he wants her or not! Mr. Miles was killed by a man working for him, who wanted to use the facts he had been able to find out to blackmail an important woman. Priscilla is played by Barbara Babcock :-)
At the end, Harry offers Jessica to work with him : McGraw and Fletcher :lol: It was all very 'noir' style :)
ep 16 - Sudden death - Jessica's uncle Saurus is dead, leaving her his 4% share of the local football team. A man with the 46% is killed, and suspicions are on an injured player with a beautiful, adopted little daughter, but Jess proves who the real killer is.
ep 17 - Footnote to murder - Horace is a space-out poet friend of Jessica. He's accused of Vietnam-War-author Hemshell Post, so Jessica starts investigating. The deceiced had stolen a girl's brother's story, than tried to assault her, and in self-defence she accidentally struck him with a little sword hidden in an umbrella.
Here Jessica used the same trick with the glasses that Poirot used in 'Lord Edgware dies'.
ep 18 - Murder takes the bus - Jessica has taken a but to Boston with Amos (Tom Bosley). A man recently out of jail is killed by the father of a young girl he killed years ago.
ep 19 - Armed response - Jessica is in Texas to testify for something, but has a little accident to her feet and goes to a hospital. A doctor is killed at his home, and Jessica is asked to help by the Lt. Again, they used here the same method used in a Christie book :-) It's also funny how in these episodes they always confess.
ep 20 - Murder at the oasis - Johnny, the ex husband of a friend of Jessica, is killed. There are suspicions on all the members of the family, but she finds out the mob hitman undercover as the local investigator!
ep 21 - Funeral at fifty-mile - At the funeral of her friend John Carter, a guy comes saying he has his will, and that he inherits everything, that John left everything to him instead of his daughter Mary because he saved his life in Corea, and Jess tricks him so simply, by asking if he knew her husband : Tom Fletcher! Later four men together killed him because years ago he raped John's wife, and he was Mary's real father, but not even Jessica will ever tell her that!
So often the cases, but specially the was she catches the murderers, appear to be so naive, seeing them now, but of course it probably was different then, it was 1984 after all, 30 years it's a lot of time.
ep 1 - Deadly Lady - Jessica finds a man, calling himself Ralph, working in her garden because, he says, he doesn't want charity, he prefers to work. She invites him home, gives him food and also her husband's pipe.
Four girls were out to sea with their boat, now they come back saying he had an accident, and died at sea, and later one of them confesses his murder... but it was all a plan, their father wasn't on the boat, it was the man Jessica has know as Ralph. Unfortunately, later on the man is killed for real, and when it's found that he had with him Jessica's pipe, it's clear that her version is truer than the one the girls gave. How she catches the guilty one is so naive, she talks about a pair of shoes, and a girl says "she doesn't have pink shoes"... you can't miss such a simple thing, so obvious a ruse: J. never said the colour... so watching it now I didn't think 'good one, Jessica', instead I thought 'what a dumb girl' for making such an obvious mistake.
Also, in this first episode, we have the reason I love crime stories, all in one phrase that Sheriff Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley) says: "this is evidence enough for me!". There! Case closed huh? But the heroes of all the crime series don't think so, it's not enough. Their aim is not to simply close the case; it matters to them to find the person responsible, the one that really did it. They care ! It's the same in Columbo, when other policemen are satisfied with what it has been made to look like, and happy to close it like that and go home, but Columbo isn't, because he cares !
ep 2 Birds of a feather - Victoria wants to marry Howard, but he's accused of Mr. Drake's murder (Martin Landau), but fortunately her aunt Jessica is there to help, and prove that it wasn't him. It was another actor who wanted to free himself from the contract he had with Mr Drake.
ep 3 - Hooray for Homocide - They are making a movie from her book, but making far too many changes. Much more nudity and violence, that is. Jessica storms down there, saying "I'm going to do whatever I have to do to stop this film from being made!", and later "what I must do can not be done on the telephone", talking about her apologies to Mr Decker, after finding out that she had actually signed a contract enabling him to do whatever he wanted. See how words can be easily misinterpreted? When he dies, someone suspects her, at first. Fortunately, the lieutenant doesn't believe it, and lets her keep up her investigation. She discovers the main star was having an affair with her partner in the film, and after finding that out Mr Decker, or Liedecker, something like that, wanted to fire him, so she killed him, and the director had discovered that right away, and tried to get rid of the evidence against her to protect his film.
We learn also learn that she writes under the name J.B. Fletcher because she's called Jessica Beatrice.
ep 4 - It's a dog's life - A man died falling off a horse, and left everything to his dog :-) The lawyer had convinced the deceased's daughter Tricia to drug the horse, then killed her with the help of the innocent but well trained dog.
ep 5 - Lovers and other killers - Jessica is in Seattle for a lecture at a university, where her friend Dr Edmond Girard (Peter Graves) works.
David, a young man, volunteers, insisting, to be her assistant, then takes her out to dinner and acts all flirty, but he's then questioned by Lt. Andrews (Greg Morris) because the woman he had been seeing is dead (turns out it was a burglar, though), then a girl is killed but again it wasn't him, it was Edmond's secretary, in love with him and jealous of her. It ends at the airport, when David comes to say goodbye to Jessica, and to state openly how attracted he is to her; she says the best she can do is to make him a character in her new book. When he asks in which role : victim, suspect or killer, she replies "I haven't made up my mind yet" and it ends with a close shot of him, with a rough expression more similar to that of a killer than a victim, in my opinion.
ep 6 - Hit, run and homocide - At Cabot Cove Jessica, Ethan (Claude Akins) and other people see a man almost run down by a driverless car, and the next day another man from Boston is. When Jessica finds the car, it drives her into and out of town, so she realises the first man was never in real danger. Leslie turns out to be his accomplice; she's engaged to Toni, and Daniel the inventor is his uncle.
ep 7 - We're off to kill the wizard - Jessica is at her niece's: Mrs Donovan. So aunt Jess again :-)
"Horrible Horatio" Baldwin wants to see her because he wants to make a horror park off her books. She refuses, then he's murdered. Mr. Donovan is a cop, so she's easily in the investigation. The Baldwin widow is widow for the fourth time, but it wasn't her, it was the man working for him, and acting all cool.
ep 8 - Death takes a curtain call - It starts at home, while she's giving a piece of pie to Ethan. Then her friend Leo Peterson takes her to a ballet in Boston: not a very good ballet, in my opinion, they were all going their own way. Leo helps two ballet dancers to escape to seek asylum in America, and Ethan hides them at Cabot Cove, disguising them as new workers :-) A Kgb major is looking for them, and Sheriff Amos is looking for Alexander and Natalie too. A dancer, Irina, killed a Kgb man to stop them from escaping, but Jessica finds out everything .-)
ep 9 - Death casts a spell - Famous hypnotist Cagliostro is killed by the journalist that was not in trance like the others. The funniest bit was when a woman insisted Jessica was someone else, even after she showed her the picture on the cover :-)
ep 10 - Capitol offence - A blackmailing woman is beaten to death by her accomplice, the man who drove Jessica around while she was working for the congress.
ep 11 - Broadway malady - Grady invites Aunt Jessica. There's going to be a new show on Broadway, a comeback for an actress and the debut for her daughter. When the girl gets shot, she recovers, and the show goes on. Then her brother almost murders their mother... and I suppose he had just the right face, because I immediately guessed everything, right, everything! Incredible, must have been something in that face, or in his attitude... Anyway, Jessica stops him in time, so Rita and Patti Bristol will go on with their show without him. This might be the only crime-episode where nobody actually dies :-) Or at least, one of the few.
ep 12 - Murder to a jazz beat - In New Orleans, a famous musician is poisoned by his best friend because he wanted to kill his own wife. And Jessica did always, casually get the same taxi-driver every time, no matter where she was in town....
ep 13 - My Johnny lies over the ocean - Pam is troubled after losing her husband over suicide, and her aunt Jessica convinces her to go on a cruise with her. Pam's father is apparently Jessica's brother, since he says "have a good time sis". Leslie Nielsen is the ship captain :-)
On the cruise, Pam is stalked by someone, cruel clues to make her think Johnny's doing it. When a woman is murdered, it's discovered that she was Pam's husband's real mother. Jessica is sure she was murdered by her husband, that he had planned the persecution and the murder! What I'd like to know is why the sailor called Ramon speaks italian instead of spanish...
ep 14 - Paint me a murder - Jessica goes on a small island for a famous painter's 60th birthday. When he's killed, Jessica uncovers Sir John's plan, to make a fortune out of all the paintings he had that now would be worth much more, after his death.
ep 15 - Tough guys don't die - A private investigator, Mr Miles, is working on an old case for Jessica when he gets shot in his office. His partner Harry McGraw (Jerry Orbach) investigates with Jessica, that he wants her or not! Mr. Miles was killed by a man working for him, who wanted to use the facts he had been able to find out to blackmail an important woman. Priscilla is played by Barbara Babcock :-)
At the end, Harry offers Jessica to work with him : McGraw and Fletcher :lol: It was all very 'noir' style :)
ep 16 - Sudden death - Jessica's uncle Saurus is dead, leaving her his 4% share of the local football team. A man with the 46% is killed, and suspicions are on an injured player with a beautiful, adopted little daughter, but Jess proves who the real killer is.
ep 17 - Footnote to murder - Horace is a space-out poet friend of Jessica. He's accused of Vietnam-War-author Hemshell Post, so Jessica starts investigating. The deceiced had stolen a girl's brother's story, than tried to assault her, and in self-defence she accidentally struck him with a little sword hidden in an umbrella.
Here Jessica used the same trick with the glasses that Poirot used in 'Lord Edgware dies'.
ep 18 - Murder takes the bus - Jessica has taken a but to Boston with Amos (Tom Bosley). A man recently out of jail is killed by the father of a young girl he killed years ago.
ep 19 - Armed response - Jessica is in Texas to testify for something, but has a little accident to her feet and goes to a hospital. A doctor is killed at his home, and Jessica is asked to help by the Lt. Again, they used here the same method used in a Christie book :-) It's also funny how in these episodes they always confess.
ep 20 - Murder at the oasis - Johnny, the ex husband of a friend of Jessica, is killed. There are suspicions on all the members of the family, but she finds out the mob hitman undercover as the local investigator!
ep 21 - Funeral at fifty-mile - At the funeral of her friend John Carter, a guy comes saying he has his will, and that he inherits everything, that John left everything to him instead of his daughter Mary because he saved his life in Corea, and Jess tricks him so simply, by asking if he knew her husband : Tom Fletcher! Later four men together killed him because years ago he raped John's wife, and he was Mary's real father, but not even Jessica will ever tell her that!
mercoledì 15 ottobre 2014
K-PAX - 2001
I like this film very much. Well, maybe sometimes Spacey's monologues are a bit too long, there wasn't need for that. That was the only annoying film, phrases too long, about us people of the Earth... had those lines been simpler, meaning shorter, it would have been better. Much better.
First, the main character is played by Kevin Spacey, one of my favourite actors. We see him appearing inside a station, 'in a flash of light'. Well, a moment before he wasn't there, then he was :-) He does nothing wrong, he helps a woman, and every witness is ready to tell the police that he didn't do anything wrong, that he just helped, but since he doesn't seem coherent, they take him to a mental institution. Here doctor Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) tries to help him. He says his name is prot, and he's from a 'planet far far away', although he doesn't uses these exact words, called K-PAX. He says life on his planet is very different, starting from the light, not so strong as ours, which is why he alwasy wears sunglasses, and seems to find everything here on Earth fascinating, like a simple banana, that he eats without taking off the skin. He says he can teleport using light, and he's so interesting Mark gets caught by his case, he can't let it go even when he's at home. With the help of a friend, Mark gives him a test, and later introduces him to some astrophysicists, and his answers are all correct, he's not talking gibberish like Mark was expecting. Prot puzzles every expert. Mark is more and more interested in him, but also worried, when prot starts telling some of the other patients that if they do what he says they'll recover completely. However, it seems that some of them are actually getting better after all. From time to time prot disappears, then comes back, and he simply says he had to go exploring, for the report he'll bring back home, while Mark can't understand how could he escape ( and come back) from the hospital. prot has also set a very precise date, saying he'll be leaving to go back home, and also says that he'll take one person with him. Every patient wants to go with him, but Mark is convinced that date must mean something. He does a research, and finds out that on that date, a very strong man named Robert Porter came back home to find his wife had been raped and killed, and also his young daughter had been killed, and the murderer is still in the house. Completely out of his senses with the terrible pain, Robert grabbed the murderer and broke his neck, then went into the river, and disappeared, and was then believed dead. I liked what that sheriff said that if the man doctor Powell had was really Robert Porter, he preferred not to know. Sure, because you can feel for him, and wouldn't want to put him in jail for murder.
On their last day, before prot leaves, Mark tries again, his last shot. He shows prot a picture of Robert Porter, but nothing seems to happen. However, before saying goodbye, prot tells Mark 'now that you've found Robert Porter, take good care of him'. Which might make you think...
At the moment of departure, the security cameras go off for a moment, and when Mark enters his room, he finds Robert on the floor, without glasses, and completely cathatonic. Also, one of the patients is missing, and despite the searches won't be found. A poor girl, Bess, who had lost her family in a fire, and that never spoke, and nontheless in her mind she was like screaming, only nobody could hear her.
Mark tells all this to Robert, convinced that he can hear him, although still being cathatonic.
Now, what's the public opinion? That it was just a mental problem, and now is onto another stage? Well, he's certainly not cured, is he? Well, I think that's a bit too simple.
I think there really was a Prot, that entered Robert's body when Robert was in such a state he could not function anymore, and was actually about to kill himself drowning in the river, but we could clearly see the light on the river, right where he was. So I think prot came to him through that light, and stayed with him for five years, until he thought it was time to let him back, to find different help, and actually found a good help for him, because Mark will not abandon him.
After leaving Robert, prot took Bess away with him, what other explanation there might be for her disappearance??? :)
Jeff Bridges is also very good, his Mark is a very good character, I loved him, and Bridges was really good. I know I said it already, so what? He was!
First, the main character is played by Kevin Spacey, one of my favourite actors. We see him appearing inside a station, 'in a flash of light'. Well, a moment before he wasn't there, then he was :-) He does nothing wrong, he helps a woman, and every witness is ready to tell the police that he didn't do anything wrong, that he just helped, but since he doesn't seem coherent, they take him to a mental institution. Here doctor Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges) tries to help him. He says his name is prot, and he's from a 'planet far far away', although he doesn't uses these exact words, called K-PAX. He says life on his planet is very different, starting from the light, not so strong as ours, which is why he alwasy wears sunglasses, and seems to find everything here on Earth fascinating, like a simple banana, that he eats without taking off the skin. He says he can teleport using light, and he's so interesting Mark gets caught by his case, he can't let it go even when he's at home. With the help of a friend, Mark gives him a test, and later introduces him to some astrophysicists, and his answers are all correct, he's not talking gibberish like Mark was expecting. Prot puzzles every expert. Mark is more and more interested in him, but also worried, when prot starts telling some of the other patients that if they do what he says they'll recover completely. However, it seems that some of them are actually getting better after all. From time to time prot disappears, then comes back, and he simply says he had to go exploring, for the report he'll bring back home, while Mark can't understand how could he escape ( and come back) from the hospital. prot has also set a very precise date, saying he'll be leaving to go back home, and also says that he'll take one person with him. Every patient wants to go with him, but Mark is convinced that date must mean something. He does a research, and finds out that on that date, a very strong man named Robert Porter came back home to find his wife had been raped and killed, and also his young daughter had been killed, and the murderer is still in the house. Completely out of his senses with the terrible pain, Robert grabbed the murderer and broke his neck, then went into the river, and disappeared, and was then believed dead. I liked what that sheriff said that if the man doctor Powell had was really Robert Porter, he preferred not to know. Sure, because you can feel for him, and wouldn't want to put him in jail for murder.
On their last day, before prot leaves, Mark tries again, his last shot. He shows prot a picture of Robert Porter, but nothing seems to happen. However, before saying goodbye, prot tells Mark 'now that you've found Robert Porter, take good care of him'. Which might make you think...
At the moment of departure, the security cameras go off for a moment, and when Mark enters his room, he finds Robert on the floor, without glasses, and completely cathatonic. Also, one of the patients is missing, and despite the searches won't be found. A poor girl, Bess, who had lost her family in a fire, and that never spoke, and nontheless in her mind she was like screaming, only nobody could hear her.
Mark tells all this to Robert, convinced that he can hear him, although still being cathatonic.
Now, what's the public opinion? That it was just a mental problem, and now is onto another stage? Well, he's certainly not cured, is he? Well, I think that's a bit too simple.
I think there really was a Prot, that entered Robert's body when Robert was in such a state he could not function anymore, and was actually about to kill himself drowning in the river, but we could clearly see the light on the river, right where he was. So I think prot came to him through that light, and stayed with him for five years, until he thought it was time to let him back, to find different help, and actually found a good help for him, because Mark will not abandon him.
After leaving Robert, prot took Bess away with him, what other explanation there might be for her disappearance??? :)
Jeff Bridges is also very good, his Mark is a very good character, I loved him, and Bridges was really good. I know I said it already, so what? He was!
The devil wears Prada - 2006
I don't know why it was such a big success, I didn't like it very much. I liked the outfits, of course, but I didn't liked Anne Hathaway's character at all. She gets a job as the assistant of the editor of a big fashion magazine, but thinks all about fashion is stupid and for dumb people, although after a little while she gets thrust deep into it, starting almost to change who she is, before coming back to her senses and leaving the job to someone that actually wants to do it.
The editor was played by Meryl Streep, which means no other comments are necessary, and there's also Stanley Tucci, which I like very much and was very nice here too, as always. He had a nice character, too.
But I didn't like her, Andy, Hathaway's character, and since it was all about her, I didn't like much the whole thing. I didn't like the fact that she took the job, but then kept putting down the whole fashion business as dumb, while around her there are people working, and people who'd die to have her job. Why then did she take it in the first place?
Ok stop, I'm not having fun talking about this film. I watched it to see what the fuss was all about, and the only answer I got is: the clothes.
The editor was played by Meryl Streep, which means no other comments are necessary, and there's also Stanley Tucci, which I like very much and was very nice here too, as always. He had a nice character, too.
But I didn't like her, Andy, Hathaway's character, and since it was all about her, I didn't like much the whole thing. I didn't like the fact that she took the job, but then kept putting down the whole fashion business as dumb, while around her there are people working, and people who'd die to have her job. Why then did she take it in the first place?
Ok stop, I'm not having fun talking about this film. I watched it to see what the fuss was all about, and the only answer I got is: the clothes.
Bride wars - 2009
A mix between stupid and fun, I admit. Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) are best friends, and chance wants they book their wedding on the same date, so one of them should change the date. I agree with why Emma gets so upset and angry at her friend, because Liv was actually going on with her planning as if the fact that Emma was the one that had to change her plans was a given. When Emma finds out, she decides not to change the date, and they start a war between them, to get in each others way. It's quite funny, in its own way. Specially when Emma mess Liv's hair colour. Also, the sort of stupid thing was that Liv seemed really really in love, and loved back, while Emma didn't.
Anyway, not that big a film, but if it happens on tv and there's nothing else, I'll watch it again, it's very light .
Anyway, not that big a film, but if it happens on tv and there's nothing else, I'll watch it again, it's very light .
John Peter Sloan's I am not a penguin show
I've seen one, it was transmitted on television and I watched it. It had funny moments, and also annoying moments.
It was funny when he said of the embarassing scene he caused when he didn't know italian well enough to know what he was doing, and instead of asking how to cook the fishes he had caught, he said he had just fished two corpses and wanted to know if he could eat them :-) also it was funny the bit where he said he and his english friends (or his brother, I don't remember) don't understand the use italian have for the word balls. It was funny to see all the ways translated in english, and quite right too. It has all those uses :lol:
But it really really annoyed me when he said that Italians should do like the Dutch, learn one language at home and one language on the television, like it's some kind of terrible things that so many Italians don't know English well (or at all). Well, how many languages does he speak? Because you know, after so many years in Italy, his Italian is not all that good, let me tell you. Enough to be understood, yes, but not very good. And if he wanted to know, he should have realized that almost all Italians do know two languages: they learn their own dialect at home, and italian with the television. I know British don't have to deal with dialects the same way, because here it's not just a term or two, it's everything. There are many many dialects I wouldn't understand a word of, if I heard someone speak it. British don't have this. So, in a way, many italians have always learned two languages. Mind you, I'm not attacking britishness of course, because the whole country would jump at my throat; from what I've seen, as much as they like making jokes about other countries and themselves, they can't take a joke coming from a foreigner.
Ok, it's coming off a bit crude, I actually love Britain, and dream to go there, so I'm not negative about it at all.
Also, the end was bad, didn't like it at all, and I found a bit confusing when he told everyone he had cheated on his wife, with his daughter present in the audience. I understand his wife and daughter already knew, of course, but still, it's embarassing that everyone should know about it. I wonder how comes his wife doesn't care about it.
It was funny when he said of the embarassing scene he caused when he didn't know italian well enough to know what he was doing, and instead of asking how to cook the fishes he had caught, he said he had just fished two corpses and wanted to know if he could eat them :-) also it was funny the bit where he said he and his english friends (or his brother, I don't remember) don't understand the use italian have for the word balls. It was funny to see all the ways translated in english, and quite right too. It has all those uses :lol:
But it really really annoyed me when he said that Italians should do like the Dutch, learn one language at home and one language on the television, like it's some kind of terrible things that so many Italians don't know English well (or at all). Well, how many languages does he speak? Because you know, after so many years in Italy, his Italian is not all that good, let me tell you. Enough to be understood, yes, but not very good. And if he wanted to know, he should have realized that almost all Italians do know two languages: they learn their own dialect at home, and italian with the television. I know British don't have to deal with dialects the same way, because here it's not just a term or two, it's everything. There are many many dialects I wouldn't understand a word of, if I heard someone speak it. British don't have this. So, in a way, many italians have always learned two languages. Mind you, I'm not attacking britishness of course, because the whole country would jump at my throat; from what I've seen, as much as they like making jokes about other countries and themselves, they can't take a joke coming from a foreigner.
Ok, it's coming off a bit crude, I actually love Britain, and dream to go there, so I'm not negative about it at all.
Also, the end was bad, didn't like it at all, and I found a bit confusing when he told everyone he had cheated on his wife, with his daughter present in the audience. I understand his wife and daughter already knew, of course, but still, it's embarassing that everyone should know about it. I wonder how comes his wife doesn't care about it.
A walk to remember - 2002
I sort of liked it, the usual film who promises to make me cry my heart out. Sure, at first the two characters are not very nice, because he's the 'popular guy', one of those that can do anything, that think they're so great, only thinking of making pranks and have fun, and she's... hard to know at first, but when he asks for her help in studying, and she says she'll help him only if he promises not to fall in love with her... well, it seemed a bit strange. Not arrogant, no, it wasn't said with that tone, but still it was awkward.
Anyway, as it goes along, you start understanding her better, and he changes totally and makes you weep, at the end I was crying like a baby.
It's not easy at first, because he won't even admit to his friends that she's helping him; she's one of the 'unpopular ones', and his role has always been to ignore or humiliate those people, and she's not willing to forgive him that. When they finally act in the school show together, the one she was supposed to help him with, she's finally dressed like a pretty girl and she sings well (well, she's Mandy Moore, there's got to be a song, doesn't it??), and he kisses her. Of course, before, she was the ugly duckling, but when he can see her like transformed into a shiny swan, then he falls for her. ok.
Anyway, this is just the beginning. He starts spending all his time with her, wanting to be with her all the time, doing all kinds of things for her, making all her wishes come true. All his time becomes devoted to her, but she still hasn't told him her secret. When he finds out she's terminally ill, he doesn't know what to do. He asks for his father's help, despite this costs him a great deal, since they have practically no relationship, and his father doesn't know what to do, there and then, because of course it's not like he could say: of course I'll save her for you, just like that, without even knowing her, without knowing anything, and btw he's not a cancer doctor. However, later it will be revealed that he offered to pay for all the private cure she can get at home, and the scene where the boy goes to his father to say thank you and then they hug, while he's crying, so much in pain, is one of the nicest scenes of the film, to me. I liked that.
They even get married, another one of her dreams, and then we have Landon telling us what happened next, as a voice over. She died very few months later, but he'll never forget her, and their love will always warm his heart, and he'll go on in his life being the better person she made him be.
I'm almost crying right now, recolling it again. Anyway, the main part was the boy, and his unexpected love, that caught him by surprise and took completely hold of him. He was the film, his pain is what made me cry.
Anyway, as it goes along, you start understanding her better, and he changes totally and makes you weep, at the end I was crying like a baby.
It's not easy at first, because he won't even admit to his friends that she's helping him; she's one of the 'unpopular ones', and his role has always been to ignore or humiliate those people, and she's not willing to forgive him that. When they finally act in the school show together, the one she was supposed to help him with, she's finally dressed like a pretty girl and she sings well (well, she's Mandy Moore, there's got to be a song, doesn't it??), and he kisses her. Of course, before, she was the ugly duckling, but when he can see her like transformed into a shiny swan, then he falls for her. ok.
Anyway, this is just the beginning. He starts spending all his time with her, wanting to be with her all the time, doing all kinds of things for her, making all her wishes come true. All his time becomes devoted to her, but she still hasn't told him her secret. When he finds out she's terminally ill, he doesn't know what to do. He asks for his father's help, despite this costs him a great deal, since they have practically no relationship, and his father doesn't know what to do, there and then, because of course it's not like he could say: of course I'll save her for you, just like that, without even knowing her, without knowing anything, and btw he's not a cancer doctor. However, later it will be revealed that he offered to pay for all the private cure she can get at home, and the scene where the boy goes to his father to say thank you and then they hug, while he's crying, so much in pain, is one of the nicest scenes of the film, to me. I liked that.
They even get married, another one of her dreams, and then we have Landon telling us what happened next, as a voice over. She died very few months later, but he'll never forget her, and their love will always warm his heart, and he'll go on in his life being the better person she made him be.
I'm almost crying right now, recolling it again. Anyway, the main part was the boy, and his unexpected love, that caught him by surprise and took completely hold of him. He was the film, his pain is what made me cry.
Day Zero - 2007
I don't know on this one. A good movie, the actors were all good, yes, but the story is tough, and I doubt it very much I'll ever see it again.
Three friends receive orders to prepare to join the war, but they're not soldiers, and are not prepared for this. In the 30 days they have to prepare themselves, we see how they deal with it, their friendship, their personalities, their problems. There's one who's afraid and doesn't want to go, but of course he has to. Another one at the beginning appears like he's not too much troubled by this, but them things happen and he starts caring, and also wouldn't want to go. Elija Wood plays the third friend, who at the start is all about duty, and we must go, and stuff like that, but as days go by you can see he's kind of losing it. In the end, he can't cope with it, and kills himself when day zero finally comes. That was really tough, a real blow.
The other two friends then leave for war together.
It was very intense, so thank you but no more, now I've seen it, no repeats are necessary.
Three friends receive orders to prepare to join the war, but they're not soldiers, and are not prepared for this. In the 30 days they have to prepare themselves, we see how they deal with it, their friendship, their personalities, their problems. There's one who's afraid and doesn't want to go, but of course he has to. Another one at the beginning appears like he's not too much troubled by this, but them things happen and he starts caring, and also wouldn't want to go. Elija Wood plays the third friend, who at the start is all about duty, and we must go, and stuff like that, but as days go by you can see he's kind of losing it. In the end, he can't cope with it, and kills himself when day zero finally comes. That was really tough, a real blow.
The other two friends then leave for war together.
It was very intense, so thank you but no more, now I've seen it, no repeats are necessary.
Predators - 2010
Finally another 'predator' film that's decent. I liked this film, it's intriguing and well done. From the start, where the main character Royce (Adrien Brody) wakes up while falling off the sky, which is not the best way to do it, of course. He has no idea how he got there, no idea of where 'there' is, nothing, just like the other people he meets. They all have combat skills, except a doctor (Topher Grace). ... Now, of course he's not just that, not really, not at all, because what would a doctor do there? Wouldn't he be much of a prey, would he?
When they wander around and found empty cages you start feeling the glimps of a thrill, because maybe the characters don't know, but we've seen the title, we know what that means :-)
Then they go higher and can finally look at the sky, and realise they're not on Earth anymore, like many less-fortunate Dorothys. Of course they don't know which planet they're on, how could they, it's not like we have seen lots of pictures of alien worlds, right? The first to die is Danny Trejo's character.
When they meet the 'predators', there's also a nice memory, when Isabelle tells the rest of them about the first encounter with them, which is the story of the first film and how he could defeat the predator, with the mud story. Then they meet Noland (Lawrence Fishburne), very cool, who has survived a long time on that planet, surviving alone. I know what he does to them is not very nice, but come on, years spent on that planet, living as a prey, only trying to survive. He's bound to be a bit crazy! Cool, anyway.
One by one other three of them die, killed by the predators, but they would have made good klingons, because they die, yes, but bringing their enemy down with them!
Now that leaves Royce, Isabelle and the doctor.
The little doctor turns out to be a psycho, a murderer, when he almost kills Isabelle. Almost. Instead it's them, giving him the end he deserves, but can't escape because the last predator destroys his ship, so they can't leave. In the end, after all the predators have been killed, Royce and Isabelle see other people being parachuted on the planet, and they head back into the jungle.
I guess it's because now that there are new preys, new predator will arrive. With their own functioning spaceship, and they'll try to take it from them. Of course it's not known how they'll manage to use it, if eventually they should succeed in getting on one. But that's for another story :-)
After lots of crappy sequels, this one was good. I liked it, a good action movie.
When they wander around and found empty cages you start feeling the glimps of a thrill, because maybe the characters don't know, but we've seen the title, we know what that means :-)
Then they go higher and can finally look at the sky, and realise they're not on Earth anymore, like many less-fortunate Dorothys. Of course they don't know which planet they're on, how could they, it's not like we have seen lots of pictures of alien worlds, right? The first to die is Danny Trejo's character.
When they meet the 'predators', there's also a nice memory, when Isabelle tells the rest of them about the first encounter with them, which is the story of the first film and how he could defeat the predator, with the mud story. Then they meet Noland (Lawrence Fishburne), very cool, who has survived a long time on that planet, surviving alone. I know what he does to them is not very nice, but come on, years spent on that planet, living as a prey, only trying to survive. He's bound to be a bit crazy! Cool, anyway.
One by one other three of them die, killed by the predators, but they would have made good klingons, because they die, yes, but bringing their enemy down with them!
Now that leaves Royce, Isabelle and the doctor.
The little doctor turns out to be a psycho, a murderer, when he almost kills Isabelle. Almost. Instead it's them, giving him the end he deserves, but can't escape because the last predator destroys his ship, so they can't leave. In the end, after all the predators have been killed, Royce and Isabelle see other people being parachuted on the planet, and they head back into the jungle.
I guess it's because now that there are new preys, new predator will arrive. With their own functioning spaceship, and they'll try to take it from them. Of course it's not known how they'll manage to use it, if eventually they should succeed in getting on one. But that's for another story :-)
After lots of crappy sequels, this one was good. I liked it, a good action movie.
Predator - 1987
I like it for what it is, a sort of 80s cult :-) It's not my favourite things, specially if you look at it now, but back then it made quite an impression, and those predators that you can't see but that can see you perfectly were scary, and the effects were very good. Now of course it has only the charm of remembering when you watched it, and how it was, and stuff like that. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the hero of this one. Well, there was a team of soldiers, but of course it was all about him.
There was some kind of plot , like a rescue mission in Central America, in the wild jungle, but it was only an excuse for them to be there, unprepared. The real deal is when the battle with the creature comes. He learns of this legend, of this alien hunting in those parts, and while all the others are killed by it one by one, he manages to survive until the end, where he famously tricks it.
He covers himself with mud, so not to be pick up by the aliens heat-scanner or whatever it is, and surprises it. They fight, because there's Schwarzenegger and there must be a fight, and in the end he wins with an astute move. He's safe, and goes back home.
Not that much of it, and yet it still has its charm. It was well done, and even if you can feel all its years, it still has value.
There was some kind of plot , like a rescue mission in Central America, in the wild jungle, but it was only an excuse for them to be there, unprepared. The real deal is when the battle with the creature comes. He learns of this legend, of this alien hunting in those parts, and while all the others are killed by it one by one, he manages to survive until the end, where he famously tricks it.
He covers himself with mud, so not to be pick up by the aliens heat-scanner or whatever it is, and surprises it. They fight, because there's Schwarzenegger and there must be a fight, and in the end he wins with an astute move. He's safe, and goes back home.
Not that much of it, and yet it still has its charm. It was well done, and even if you can feel all its years, it still has value.
Avatar - 2009
Big, big James Cameron film, everyone to the cinemas to see this marvellous 3D... well, I don't care much for 3D, I'll tell you, and I don't care much about this story either, but all in all didn't regret the ticket back then, because that world is beautiful , I liked it very much.
The story was full of reality, greedy men only thinking about taking what it's not theirs to take for their own use and profit (Giovanni Ribisi's character was really despiteful), and soldiers ready to take it for them. This soldier, Jake Sully, is a paraplegic, so of course he enjoys being in an avatar body, perfectly understandable, and yet it takes him a lot of time, a life threatening situation and a pretty girl to get him to start thinking about understanding and respecting another society. He jumps in, starts talking to Neytiri as if she was dumb because she didn't know his language (quite mistaken too, because she does, he just supposed that she didn't), and when brought to their place he starts acting as if he was in his hometown. There are many societies on this planet where his behaviour would have been disrespectful, but he acted as if it was them who had to understand him, not the other way around. He starts talking when more important people are talking, which is considered rude at the very least in every society, even his. He thrust out his hand to the chief, as if he were simply meeting another guy, which is not something you do in that situation in a lot of places here on Earth, and reacts as if it was them being strange and absurd reacting as they are. Arrogant.
He even tells everything he saw to his people, when he wakes up. They gave him an honor, and he tells everything about it to the people that had been denied that same honor.
I didn't like Jake Sully (although of course he redeems himself at the end by fighting with them and helping saving them) or the human beings in this film. Grace (Sigourney Weaver) wasn't bad, she was the only one that probably cared, and also the soldier girl played by Michelle Rodriguez was kind of a hero, but all the others were awful.
Things I liked? Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldana, but only seen in her blue avatar, which in her case is not an avatar, though, since that's her natural body), she was cool, I liked her a lot, although of course she had to fall in love with Jake, every one of these movies require that.
And I loved the world, their world, so beautiful, full of nature, without cement, bricks, smog, nothing, only nature and wonderful, beautiful trees. It was beautiful when she ran. Everywhere you looked the world was amazing, the trees, the plants, the nature living with them, not fighting each other as we do on Earth.
That's why I didn't regret paying a ticket to watch it. Even if I didn't like the story, what I saw was so beautiful it made up for everything.
The story was full of reality, greedy men only thinking about taking what it's not theirs to take for their own use and profit (Giovanni Ribisi's character was really despiteful), and soldiers ready to take it for them. This soldier, Jake Sully, is a paraplegic, so of course he enjoys being in an avatar body, perfectly understandable, and yet it takes him a lot of time, a life threatening situation and a pretty girl to get him to start thinking about understanding and respecting another society. He jumps in, starts talking to Neytiri as if she was dumb because she didn't know his language (quite mistaken too, because she does, he just supposed that she didn't), and when brought to their place he starts acting as if he was in his hometown. There are many societies on this planet where his behaviour would have been disrespectful, but he acted as if it was them who had to understand him, not the other way around. He starts talking when more important people are talking, which is considered rude at the very least in every society, even his. He thrust out his hand to the chief, as if he were simply meeting another guy, which is not something you do in that situation in a lot of places here on Earth, and reacts as if it was them being strange and absurd reacting as they are. Arrogant.
He even tells everything he saw to his people, when he wakes up. They gave him an honor, and he tells everything about it to the people that had been denied that same honor.
I didn't like Jake Sully (although of course he redeems himself at the end by fighting with them and helping saving them) or the human beings in this film. Grace (Sigourney Weaver) wasn't bad, she was the only one that probably cared, and also the soldier girl played by Michelle Rodriguez was kind of a hero, but all the others were awful.
Things I liked? Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldana, but only seen in her blue avatar, which in her case is not an avatar, though, since that's her natural body), she was cool, I liked her a lot, although of course she had to fall in love with Jake, every one of these movies require that.
And I loved the world, their world, so beautiful, full of nature, without cement, bricks, smog, nothing, only nature and wonderful, beautiful trees. It was beautiful when she ran. Everywhere you looked the world was amazing, the trees, the plants, the nature living with them, not fighting each other as we do on Earth.
That's why I didn't regret paying a ticket to watch it. Even if I didn't like the story, what I saw was so beautiful it made up for everything.
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