Pinch me, I must be dreaming

It's hard to believe but things are actually looking up for Cleveland sports.

- The Indians finished the regular season today with a win over the Royals and ended up being tied for the best overall record in Major League Baseball with the Red Sox. Unfortunately, since they had a better record against us, they'll have home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Now the Indians begin the playoffs against the hated Yankees on Thursday. I can't deny that I'm a little bit nervous about facing a team that we didn't win one game against in the regular season. However, we do have home field advantage and the pitching matchups should be in our favor. Let's hope we can continue the roll that we were on in Sept. all the way through the postseason.

- Then, low and behold, the Browns ended up winning again today. Even better, it was against the detestable Baltimore Ravens. I won't fool myself into thinking we're really that great. It seemed today to be more a case of the Ravens sucking than us outperforming them, but I'll still gladly take the win. At the beginning of the season, I would never have predicted we would be 2-2. Now if we can beat the Patriots next week, then maybe I'll start to become a believer in this team.

- Finally, the Cavs don't start playing again for another month, but I still got to see Lebron last night as he hosted SNL. For the most part, I thought he did a decent job; at least for an athlete host. There was some funny skits, but it helped that they had a summer of notable stories to mock last night (Michael Vick, Larry Craig, OJ, High School Musical, etc.). Plus, I was thrilled to see the return of the Ambiguously Gay Duo. It's nice to see Colbert and Carell take time out of their busy schedules to do fun stuff like this.

All in all, it's actually good to be a Cleveland sports fan these days. We can't say that often, so I'll cherish it for as long as I can.

Tuesday/Wednesday night TV

With so little to watch on Wednesdays for me, I decided to just lump my thoughts for the past two days into one post.

House: I wouldn't always like it this way, but tonight's episode that was sans Chase, Cameron, and Foreman was a lot of fun. Without them around, we got a whole bunch House/Wilson banter, which was awesome. Their friendship is so remarkable in the way they tolerate each other, despite knowing how to push each other's buttons so perfectly. I loved Wilson kidnapping House's guitar and then House retaliating by kidnapping one of Wilson's patients. As for the medical mystery of the week, it wasn't anything particularly groundshaking (despite that being what brought the woman into the hospital in the first place. Ha!) until the big reveal at the end. Once again, the themes of the medical mystery perfectly connected with House himself is dealing with. And now the games begin as House will put 40 hopeful candidates through the ringer to try and find a new team. Should be fun to see how it all plays out.

Reaper: They intrigued me with the premise and hooked me with the actual initial episode. This show is great! Everyone is perfectly cast in their roles. Ray Wise as the devil is superb. You might as well give the guy an Emmy nomination right now. I can't wait to see his antics every week. The whole bounty hunter aspect of the show is really cool too and it should be very interesting to see what kind of powers/capabilities the escaped souls will have that Sam must capture each week. Sam's buddy, Sock, is hilarious and I'm glad to see Tyler Labine get some work after Invasion was preemptively canceled a couple of years ago. And Heroes loss is Reaper's gain, as Candice the shapeshifter is playing Andi, the girl Sam has a crush on. Her presence was the only negative of the show. Not because she was miscast (she's absolutely adorable and makes for a very "crushable" girl), but because she wasn't the original girl for the part. They filmed the pilot with a different girl, but then changed their mind. So when they added Missy Peregrym, instead of reshooting the pilot, they just reshot her scenes and spliced them in. The end result was Sam having different facial hair in different scenes of the show. Luckily that problem is isolated to this episode. Overall, this is a definite winner and I hope it really catches on with viewers.

Back to You: After being on the fence with this show last week, tonight's episode did nothing to help it's cause. There is a good show buried in here, but they're having difficulty digging it out. A lot of the lines/jokes are so obvious that I'm saying them before the actors are. And the station manager and reporter who got passed up for the anchor job do nothing for me. However, Fred Willard was just fantastic tonight. His stuff consistently had me laughing throughout the half hour. I just wish they would focus more on the newscasting aspect of the show, instead of the tired relationship/personal issues of the characters. I'll give it another week or two to turn around, but right now, this show is on notice.

Monday Premieres

I'm hoping that my TV thoughts won't typically be posted this late, but with Mon. and Tue. being my busy days, it's hard to tell. Anyways, here are my thoughts...

I gave my thoughts on Chuck and Journeyman already in my pilot preview, so I won't talk about them, but they will be included starting next week. Here's hoping that some of you got to see them as they are both high on my list.

How I Met Your Mother: With The Office a stable hit and 30 Rock winning the Emmy, it looks like I'll have to push harder for people to start watching this show. Their return was a welcome one and they came out firing with a hilarious premiere. The beginning and end of the show provided some great continuity moments from last season. As for the primary story, it was great to see how Ted was grieving over his breakup with Robin. His various beards and his friends witty remarks about them made for an awesome scene. I also loved everybody mocking the name of Robin's new boyfriend, Gael (Gail? Girl?) Mandy Moore was a good guest star and it was fun to see her play against type. And after all that, there was still a ton of hilarity over the fact that Ted drunkenly got a tramp stamp. I'm sure they'll make more references to that throughout this season. About the only negative is the fact that I wish Ted and Robin were still together. They just seem like such a good fit. If the producers are intent on having someone else be the "mother", they better do a hell of good job casting someone or else you're going to have a whole lot of pissed off fans.

Heroes: Mixed emotions about the premiere. On one hand, it was great to have (almost) the whole gang back. But everyone was seemingly so sad throughout the episode, it was tough to enjoy it. Hiro's image of his hero was ruined. Claire hates having to be unextraordinary. HRG is actually having to work at a paper factory. Nathan's life is in the toilet. And on, and on.

But with their sadness came the development for some interesting storylines. First, casting Stephen Tobolowsky (Ned Ryerson!) as the acting head of the Company is just awesome. Plus, they gave him a sweet power (the Midas touch!!). Double awesome for the fact that HRG has Suresh trying to infiltrate the Company. There's nothing better than a motivated Noah Bennet, er, Butler. We also have a (new?) killer on our hands who seems intent on killing the older generation of Heroes (RIP Sulu, you will be missed). There certainly were clues that Nathan left the notes for Mr. Nakamura and Mrs. Petrelli, but they wouldn't be that obvious, would they? Speaking of Nathan, what exactly was going on when he saw the scarred figure in the mirror? And of course, we can never talk about Nathan without also talking about Peter, who finally showed up at the end of the hour. His appearance was a mixed bag in itself. Yay to the haircut and awesome new lightning bolt power, boo to the cliched amnesia angle. Let's hope he regains his memory quickly.

We also got a glimpse at some new Heroes. I was glad they provided a little extra backstory to Maya and Alejandro in this past week's online graphic novel, but it's still unclear what exactly her power is. Still, being able to cause that much destruction has got my interest peaked. Also, does her power only occur when she's seperated from her brother? Kind of like the Wonder Twins in reverse. Kensei didn't really do much of anything for me, but if he ends up having a power himself, it could be interesting. Still, I'd much prefer Hiro back in real time with his buddy Ando. Finally, we didn't get to see much with them, but I'm hoping they do something cool with the Irish mobsters who found Peter.

I can't believe I haven't even talked about Parkman or Molly yet. I'll have to talk more about them next time. I will say that their situation sounds like a bad episode of My Two Dads. Also, it seems unrealistic that Parkman would be where he is just four months later (divorced, adopted Molly, recovered from four shots to the chest, and made detective in New York?!?)

MIA thus far are Niki, DL, Micah, Syler, the Haitian, Claude the Invisible Man, Hana Gitleman, and Candice. Some look like they'll be back next week. Others we may not see for a long time or perhaps even, never again. Only time will tell. One thing's for sure, it's great to have our Heroes back!

Animation Domination Sunday

Might as well talk about FOX's Sunday animated show since I took the time to watch them last night.

The Simpsons: The same problems that have plagued this show last year and the few years before that, apparently still exist. The show has its moments, but overall, the episodes just seem uninspired. Last night's highlights included a revised opening which showed Bart skateboarding around Springfield amongst the aftermath of the events of the movie. Also, Stephen Colbert was a great guest voice, especially since he wasn't playing himself. Frankly, I wish he would have been more involved in the episode. The idea of Homer using a life coach was interesting but underdeveloped. Sadly, there was too much of a focus on some extraneous plot points and the result was a disjointed story.

Family Guy: I don't watch Family Guy on a regular basis, but I made a special effort to check out their homage to Star Wars last night and I'm glad I did. From a visually standpoint, the show was amazing as they recreated certain scenes exactly from the movie. They also did a nice job of making some funny observations about the film's story and characters, which surprised me considering the fact that I thought every possible joke about Star Wars had already been made. I also thought they did a good job of pairing characters from their universe with the ones from the film (Gotta love Meg being the monster in the garbage chute). I think what made this episode of Family Guy so great is that they had a specific, focused story to work with. Lately, Family Guy has just been this hodge podge of random jokes with no story to support them. Here they were given the plot and all they had to do was create the jokes around it. The end result was a very effective and funny episode.

How sweet it is!

Not even the Browns blowing their game in the last seconds could ruin this day. The Indians are going to the playoffs and I couldn't be happier. The pictures say it all...

A little less Live Free and a little more Die Hard

Budget theater movie this week is the fourth installment in the Die Hard franchise, Live Free or Die Hard. I can't believe it's taken me this long to see this one. And given the dreck I've seen the past few weeks, it looks like I should haven't waited so long.

This movie is just pure action and makes for a great popcorn flick. Sure most of the action sequences are utterly preposterous, but they are done in such a great, "hold your breath and brace yourself" style that you can help but enjoy yourself. And kudos to them for coming up with some new and inventive ways for creating massive carnage. You can't help yourself but sit there and marvel at all the destruction that is taking place on screen.

Of course, if this were any action film, this would be enough and we could move on. However, given that this is a sequel in a storied franchise (the first in twelve years, no less), the question is, does this film do the Die Hard name justice? Unfortunately, it's not a resounding yes. The film doesn't ruin the franchise's legacy, but it also doesn't feel like it completely fits within the franchise either.

I think there are two key aspects that were needed here: more swearing and some authority figure for McClain to butt heads with. The film is rated PG-13, which means McClain barely utters a curse word. Even his signature phrase is altered to remain clean. Given all that happens to him in this film, you would figure he would be cursing up a storm. Yet, he remains relatively civilized throughout it all. And another appealing aspect of the McClain character was that he didn't care about anyone and was going to do whatever he wanted. In the past, that typically meant disobeying his superiors in the police dept. or the gov't. In this film, nobody stands in his way to take down the villain.

Speaking of the villain(s), they aren't necessarily memorable, but they do an adequate job of causing mayhem. Maggie Q gets a chance to kick some ass and Timothy Oliphant does a nice job of expressing building frustration in his failing efforts to kill McClain. It's a shame though that our current world standing forces us to make Americans the villains in films instead of the typical foreign terrorist.

This is another frustrating aspect of the film; its desire to be so modern. At one point, someone tells McClain that he's a Timex watch living in a digital world. Well, you know what, as far as I can tell, a Timex watch can still tell time and John McClain can still defeat any terrorist. People are going to come to a Die Hard film to see kick-ass action, not hear a message about how our government has become our own worst enemy.

One last negative I'll mention is the editing, particularly the audio editing. There were a number of times where it looked like the words didn't match up with what the actor was saying. Or else, it sounded like they didn't enunciate what they were saying. I'm wondering if maybe this film had originally intended to have more coarse language, but then for whatever reason decided to cut it out so that they could get a lower rating and have more people see the film.

I feel like I'm overanalyzing this film, given that it's just mindless entertainment. And as mindless entertainment, it's great. When you just want to shut your brain off for a couple of hours and enjoy stuff blowing up, this is a good movie to watch. I know Bruce is getting up there in age, but I still would love to see another installment. There will always be terrorists out there that need to be stopped, and frankly, there's no better guy (save for maybe Jack Bauer) who I would want to take them down. Yippe-ki-yay motherfucker indeed! Grade: B+

Fall pilots to watch

Now that the new TV season is underway, I feel it's my duty to help all of you out there decide on which new shows to add onto your DVR/TiVo. Luckily, the networks, in an effort to create buzz about their shows, have put a lot of the pilots online for people to get a sneek peek at them. Here now are my thoughts on the ones I've been able to see. You'll note that none of the pilots are from ABC as I continue to boycott that network until they start putting on some shows that appeal to men (aka when Lost returns in February)

Must-See TV
Chuck (NBC, Mondays at 8): This is the only fall show, as of now, that I can say I will be watching on a regular basis. After watching the first episode, I can safely say that this show is crazy, but in a good way. It's almost like a virtual cartoon. The action is so over the top, but because the show doesn't take it seriously, you can have fun watching it, instead of rolling your eyes at it. The show does a nice job of delivering on both action and comedy. One of the producers described the show as a mix of The Bourne Ultimatum and The 40-Year Old Virgin. If that doesn't sound like the ideal show for me, I don't know what does. Check this out, you won't be disappointed. This is a great lead-in the Heroes on Monday nights.

Give Them a Try
Journeyman (NBC, Mondays at 10): This show probably has the strongest premise (Man mysteriously travels through time and ends up helping people in the process), but I need to see more of it before I render a verdict. For me, the show was a little too serious. Plus, given that pilots are typically all about exposition, this show was a little too vague on how he's time travelling and the reasons he's going to the places he lands in. Hopefully these minor problems will be rectified and this show can solidify NBC's Monday as the most awesome night in TV.

Reaper (CW, Tuesdays at 9): I can't believe I'm recommeding a show on the CW, but this one looks really appealing. I'm not going to give it a full recommendation because I actually haven't seen the complete pilot. However, based on the extended clips I have seen, this seems like it'll be a lot of fun. The premise is that a young man must recover lost souls for the devil after his parents sold his soul to Satan when he was born. The cast looks strong and the first episode was directed by Kevin Smith. This show has a lot of promise, so I hope it delivers.

Aliens in America (CW, Mondays at 8:30): Yet, another CW show? I must be going crazy. This one is about a dorky teenager who is an outcast at his high school. To help him, his parents sign up to have a foreign exchange student live with them and it turns out to be a Pakistani boy. Hilarity ensues. This could be really corny, but the humor is actually twisted and funny. They do a lot of cutaways ala Family Guy, which give the show some of its biggest laughs. Same basic rationale for why this doesn't get a recommendation from me as of yet as Reaper. Hopefully though, this will be another winner.

Back to You: (FOX, Wednesdays at 8:00): This one actually already began airing this past Wednesday. Watching the first episode, I wasn't completely impressed, but I think a lot has to do with the fact that so much of the episode was revealed in FOX's endless promos, so a lot of the laughs fell flat. The shows earns a reprieve based on the strength of the lead actors. Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton play to their strengths with these two characters. The rest of the cast, save for the fantastic Fred Willard, leave a lot to be desired. If the show focuses on the bickering between the two newscasters, it has a chance to be as good as shows like Murphy Brown or Newsradio.

Probably can skip
Bionic Woman (NBC, Wednesdays at 9:00): Easily the biggest disappointment of the new fall crop. The show was just plain boring. All of the primary characters were too vanilla for me to care about any of them. I understand the reason this concept was resurrected after the success of Heroes, but this one just did not execute properly. Now I have heard that a lot of changes were made to the pilot, so I'm not sure if I saw the original or the re-tooled one. Because of this, and since there isn't much else on Wednesdays for me, I may give it one more shot. However, I'm not giving this one much hope.

The Big Bang Theory (CBS, Mondays at 8:30): This one could have been decent. The basic idea here is that two friends who are geniuses have their world turned upside down when an attractive young woman moves in across the hall from them. While I like the premise, the show fails as a result of the two geniuses not being very likeable. The writers bludgeon you over the head with the fact that these guys are smart by having them mention some quantum physics theory everytime they speak. It got so annoying after a while. The cute girl character is also confusing as it's not clear why she bothers to give these guys the time of day. The show did have a handful of good laughs, but it's weak characters and the fact that it's on a crowded TV night for me makes me likely to skip future episodes.

So there you have it, some fearless picks for the new fall shows. Feel free to voice your own opinions on these or any of the other new shows you happen to see in the next week.

Thursday Night TV

Boy does it feel good to be blogging about new television again. As much fun as I had this summer, there was still a part of me missing without my favorite shows. Tonight marked the official kickoff to the new season for me as Survivor returned with a new crop of castaways.

Based on tonight's episode, I have a feeling that the locale will be more appealing than the contestants this season. Everything about the environment and how the show connected with its culture was very cool. The opening ceremonial stuff was kept low-key and reverent, although some didn't appreciate it as much as others.

As for the castaways, there's no one I immediately gravitated toward. Even worse, there were quite a few that really annoyed me. Interestingly, most of the people who gave me bad vibes in the introductory online videos before the season began ended up being the ones who I didn't care for in this episode either: Ashley (didn't care for her as a WWE diva, still don't like her), Dave (the "former model" who thinks way too highly of himself and pulled an asshole move by lying to Ashley that her being ill wouldn't cause people to vote for her), Denise (aka She-mullet), and Courtney (who was copping a 'tude the entire episode because people weren't acting like they do in her beloved New York City).

Sadly, I put points on these four and it turned out to be Chicken who got voted off, in a move that threw me for a loop. It's not that Chicken didn't have his flaws; his complete 180 from leader to being a non-commital wussbag was annoying. But not voicing an opinion seems like a lesser offense than pathetically lying around all day (Ashley) or barking out orders like a commandant (Feih-gee). In general, I think this tribe is going to be losing quite a bit, which is a shame since I much prefer when the Tribes are evenly matched.

I think the biggest surprise of the night though was James, the grave digger. The token black guy has historically been lazy, yet charismatic. James is the complete opposite of that as he is a quiet beast. If he can work on his social game, he has a chance to dominate this game in the likes of Tom or Yul.

In general, it's just good to have Survivor back. It may not be watercooler TV any more, but it's equivalent to comfort food. No matter how many times you've had, you always welcome another serving.

See ya later Detroit!

Comings and goings

First some sad news, as I learned today that Brett Somers passed away over the weekend. As you may know, Brett was one of the signature panelists on one of my favorite game shows, Match Game. It's sad to realize that both her and Charles Nelson Reilly died within a few months of each other. Their banter was one of the primary reasons that the show was so popular for so long. Here's just one of the many instances of their fantastic banter:



Onto more exciting news, it was announced today that actor Jim Broadbent has been cast to play Professor Slughorn in the next Harry Potter film. You may not recognize him by name, but it is likely that you've seen him before in a film or on TV. In thinking who would make a good Slughorn, I had not considered him, but after hearing this announcement, I think he'll make for an excellent choice. Here are a couple of picture of Broadbent from other films looking Slughorn-esque:

As Trump would say, that win was yooog!

After a flat loss to the Royals yesterday (which was easily ignored in favor of that crazy Browns/Bengals shootout), the Tribe came up big today against 2nd place Detroit. We're down 5-2 in the 8th and somehow come out with a 6-5 in 11 innings. Unbelieveable. The magic is definitely back at the Jake! That win now puts up back up to a 5 1/2 game lead on the Tigers and our magic number sits at 7. If all goes well that number could be down to 3 by the time the Tigers leave town on Wednesday. I haven't gotten a prescription yet, but I do believe I have pennant fever!

The Emmys

You'll forgive me if I don't have a clever or funny name for this post, but last night's show was so uninspiring that I can't even muster up the creative juices to write anything better.

Once again, the awards show that is meant to celebrate television's excellence was a mixed bag of confusing and frustrating results. There were the nauseating results for overhyped shows (Sopranos wins Best Drama, insert random whore from Grey's Anatomy here for Best Supporting Actress is a drama, Jeremy Piven for Best Supporting Actor in a comedy). Then you had the completely random winners (James Spader as Best Actor in a Drama? Ricky Gervais for Best Actor in a comedy??) Even the pleasant surprises were frustrating as they still seemed underserving. I mean, I'm glad 30 Rock was recognized as Best Comedy, but was it really better than The Office? And if so, why didn't Alec Baldwin or Tina Fey win for Best Actor/Actress in a comedy?

Then as for the show itself, it was a typical bloated affair. Seacrest was his usual smug, pandering self. The Sopranos tribute seemed unnecessary and ill-conceived. There were too many awards, particularly anything in the miniseries categories.

There were a few bright spots, not surprisingly involving members from The Office. Rainn Wilson competing against Kanye West in a kareoke contest was cute. Office cast members giving their "real thoughts" on Steve Carell was short and effective. And best of all we got a Daily Show reunion when Steve joined Jon Steward and Stephen Colbert on stage to accept Ricky Gervais' Emmy since he wasn't there.

All in all, I think it's becoming apparent that awards shows, even ones steeped in history like the Emmys, are becoming outdated and inconsequential.

Fun House!!!

So in my late night boredom, I started surfing around YouTube and stumbled on a blast from the past; the 80s game show, Fun House. I remember loving this show and watching it along with the Super Mario Brothers Show every afternoon after school. While many may argue that Double Dare was better, I didn't have cable so this was the only one I got to see. I've included two videos below which show the essence of the show. The first one shows the regular game play which is a mix of messy stunts and trivia questions. The second shows the bonus round where the kids got to go into the fun house.





After watching these videos, you can see the show is equal parts awesome and totally game. I mean, as a kid, who wanted to be a contestant on this show and go through the fun house? Now as a cynical adult there's plenty for me to mock as well: the creepy announcer "Tiny", JD Roth's mullet, special guest star Danny Pintauro!, etc. Still, I thank God every day for YouTube so that I can wax nostalgia with clips like these.

Anything but Wedded bliss

So with the Indians having a (much needed) night off tonight, I decided to head over to the budget theater. In hindsight, I was probably better off staying at home and staring into space, because I just saw the atrocious License to Wed. Now normally a movie like this would have been one I would have skipped altogher, but I'm such an Office mark, that I wanted to see John Krasinski in a movie, plus having to look at Mandy Moore for 90 minutes aint so bad either. What I underestimated, unfortunately, was the obnoxiousness of Robin Williams.

Williams, who plays a priest helping Krasinski and Moore determine whether they're ready to get married or not, is just one aspect of the "ick" factor that is found throughout the film. There's also the young boy who plays Williams' assistant. Not to mention Moore's family members who are all so oftputting that they seem to be from a different film altogether.

But most troubling of all is all the tests that Williams puts the engaged couple go through. It's apparent that these tasks are designed to break the couple down before building them up again and help them realize that they are made for each other. But instead of being helpful to the couple or funny to the audience, they end up being uncomfortable, obtrusive and sometimes just downright bizarre. Worst of all, the film doesn't give you any indication upfront that this couple needs counseling. They seem pretty normal and would be able to handle any of the problems that come with marriage already. At worst, they just haven't learned how to properly communicate with each other yet.

And maybe it's the communication scholar in me that has such a problem with this film. I'm sitting there thinking to myself, "Just talk to one another and all this will be over". To a degree, that's the point of the film, but it gets its message across in such a terrible way. The fact that by the end of the film they get married (oops, spoiler alert) and actually thank Rev. Frank for what he's done is just repulsive. It should not have taken his tactless actions to get them to realize they need to open up more with one another.

The only saving grace is the fleeting cameos by some of the other cast members from The Office. Unfortunately, their time is cut short so that we had plenty of time for Robin to do some of his unfunny voices and ad-libs. I was sitting there shaking my head half the time asking myself "Who finds this funny?". Sadly, I didn't have to look far as there were a handful of chucklehead girls sitting behind me who apparently didn't see any of the bits in the trailer, nor Robin's act over the past twenty years.

But I digress. The bottom line here is that even if the film was funnier, it still would be just a cheap knockoff of better films that have come before it. This film takes elements of Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers, and Anger Management and does each of them worse. I'd like to provide you with something positive about this film, but I'm at a loss here. To paraphrase John Krasinski's better character, Jim from The Office, "Who has two thumbs and hates this movie? This guy!" Grade: D+

Cleveland sports highs and lows

As the title indicates, there were some positives and negatives seen by my beloved Cleveland sports franchises yesterday. Let's get the negative out of the way...the Browns are terrible. I mean, really bad. I don't know how you can spin any positives out of that embarassing loss to the (yuck) Steelers. Of course now you've got a bunch of boneheads who are clamoring for Brady Quinn to begin starting for us. If we have any hope of this kid being a star then they cannot start him for a while. He is going to get murdered out there with the line that we have right now. And this line is supposed to be better than last year's. Ha!

Onto more positive things, I was very pleased to see the Tribe split a 4 game series with the very formidible Angels. Considering that the pitching matchups didn't favor us in this series, getting 2 wins was huge. And we almost took 3 out of 4, but lost a tough one in extra innings. Also against us was one of the worst umpiring crews I've seen in quite some time. Let's hope that quartet isn't assigned in the playoffs. Overall, this team continues its roll toward the playoffs. And while it isn't a given yet (Magic number 14) it's looking more and more likely now. Tonight, they begin a series with Chicago and if all goes well that should be a sweep. October here we come!!

Almighty is just all righty

Well, if last Friday was a Stephen King kind of day, then yesterday was a Steve Carell kind of day. Early on I bought season 3 of The Office on DVD from Circuit City (which was a big headache. The few bucks I saved getting it there was not worth the hassle I went through in trying to buy it there) Then I checked out Evan Almighty at the budget theater; the only film this summer which truly had the label flopped attached to it.

On one hand, I can understand why it did not do well as it just wasn't very good, but on the other hand, the film seemed to try to have broad appeal which should have made it successful. I mean if Wild Hogs can make $168 million in the U.S., then this should have easily made $200 mil.

I'd relate the plot to you, but let me save myself some effort here and just have you watch the trailer. It gives you everything. There was nothing in the film that I hadn't already figured out based on the trailer.

In addition to the lack of surprises, the film uses the old sledgehammer of plot to dictate the story right from the get-go (Evan puts work in front of family, Evan hates animals, Evan drives a Hummer, etc.) As the film rolls along, the cliches, just like the animals boarding the ark, come 2x2. I could not believe they actually used the tired "I'm taking the kids with me to stay at my mother's" to indicate the height of the marital strife between Evan and his wife. I will say that the film does succeed in getting you to pray...unfortunately it's to pray that the film will produce something creative or different before reaching its obvious climax.

The only thing divine with the film is the casting. Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Wanda Sykes, John Michael Higgins, John Goodman, and Jonah Hill each have a couple of lines that are chuckle-worthy. It's too bad that these talented folks aren't given better material to work with. They all deserve better than what they had here. And it's probably the pedigree of the cast that makes this film so disappointing.

With no name actors, this would have made for a decent made-for-TV movie. But when you have such talented comics involved on a film that is linked to a previously popular comedy, the end result here comes off looking real bad. We were looking for something divine and got something mortal instead.

I didn't hate this movie, but I won't recommend it to anyone either. The film is so obvious and formulaic that you've probably already seen it, it just went by a different title. If you're looking for a laugh and enjoy Steve Carell, do yourself a favor and just watch The Office instead. I know that's what I'm going to do. Grade: C