Watched the Watchmen last night, so that answers that question (inside joke).  I hustled up after all the school open houses and choir concerts. (brief aside, my kids rock) Met some friends for the 9PM show, and the parking lot was *empty* for the whole theater.  Been hitting the Thursday night 9ish time slot for a while and its never been sooooo empty.  *shakes fist at economy*

Going into the movie I was excited, because I’m a fan of the graphic novel, the story is convoluted so I wasn’t sure how it would be recieved by the non-fanboy public.  About an hour in a few people of the sparsely populated theater got up and left.  Which I kinda expected, if you come into Watchmen thinking, oh this is like Xmen or Spidey, you’re not gonna like what you get.  Its a darker theme, and really it laid the groundwork for some more popular movies (The Incredibles pops into mind).

The good stuff without being too spoilerish.  Rorschach! awesomely portrayed, and his mask is just awesome.  The Comedian is well done by Jackie Earle Haley, and Billy Crudup’s Dr. Manhattan well done (could have used a little less blue penis though).  As stated in other reviews, the awkward love scene was awkward (as the comic portray it too I believe) and the song choice, a bit redundant.  Several people giggled through it, including myself.

Overall Zach Snyder did a great job translating comic to film.  Visually stunning.  For the uninitiated, pay attention to the opening credits.  On first look, several things are probably going back and rewatching, since the plot is all intertwined, some early things would be better understood after the first go round.

Overall: 3 stars.

*Monday Morning Laugh Out Loud Moment

I think Larson might have something here.  ‘Course if we tried it Michael would attack it growling his dog growl, biting into the floating head of death, popping it and falling into the bushes below.  Then I’d have to buy new bushes.

Gary Larson – soooper genius

C’mon, say it with me!

This show is getting better with each episode, I hope that NBC’s showing the first three post-pilot episodes back-to-back on Sunday night, brings more audience to this awesome show. The standard cliff-hanger re-applies without the gore, infact this was the least gory Heroes I’ve seen. The powers are coming out, as the cast starts migrating in the right directions. Click to read the spoilerish? spoilery? recap.

Other links:

• Michael has his recap up, and thinks this is a treadwater episode.  He’s right of course, but there are some good reveals.  Peter’s power takes shape, as does Nathan’s and Matt’s.  Hiro does no time stopping, and Claire finds a new wardrobe.  Ya gotta look for the bright spots!

Peter

We pick up where we left off last time, with futureHiro time freezing with current Peter. Peter isn’t effected by the time-freeze, because Hiro is close enough to leech his time-stopping pow3r. So Hiro, in perfectly fluent and husky English, can deliver a message to Peter. He must go see Issac, and he must tell Hiro when he calls where to meet, and then Hiro turns heel, jiggles his samurai sword and leaves before a rift occurs, or some such.

Mohinder that got frozen in time, doesn’t understand Peter yelling out for Hiro, and only makes him more suspicious of Peter’s motives. Mohinder lacks passion, he only flew half a world a way, took a job as a taxi driver to investigate this, and one look at a funeral urn and he’s ready to pack it in, head back to India and forget all this next step in evolution. Bah, good riddance, he didn’t have any powers anyhoo, just was a whiney preachy boy. ‘There are no answers”, says Mo’ leaves Peter to go back to Issac’s place alone.
This time Issac is not flying high (in a metophorical sense, Nathan is the flyer) and hears Peter knock. They have a chat about help, leaving Simone, and seeing the future in comic-book styled art. Peter browses through the Issac-heroin induced comic book art, and finds the picture of the cheerleader Issac painted last week, and recognizes it as ‘the cheerleader’.

Peter show’s competence as a comic book editor and hangs Issac art on the handy art hooks, arranged just so to put the pictures in comic book order. Issac says, “I was high dog, I did all of this for nothing…” Peter gets all passionate (see this Mo!?) and tells Issac we need to finish it, but Issac doesn’t want to paint, he just wants to get high, then Peter thinks real hard and sees the future in an unfished painting, grabs some paint, and his eyes glaze over.

Peter finshes the painting and reveals that the cheerleader gets offed with a big round hole in her abdomen (I guess they don’t know the cheerleader is a healing MACHINE) and decide they have to save her, or at least get her another outfit. Ring Ring, Hiro Nakamura calling. This is Peter, I have a message for you… *cue cliffhanger music* (Ah.. Peter gets ALL the GOOD cliffhangers!)

Claire (the cheerleader)

Arrives at the hospital all bloodied by her end of the episode car crash (oh, and btw, NBC has a neat weekly comic books *ahem* graphic novels that are ‘outside of the show’, somewhat spoilerish, but feeds the addiction a bit… Last weeks novel teased that Quarterback Rapist didn’t expire in the crash) but really none the worse for wear (after wearing a windshield actually). She looks over and our favorite QB, Brody is alive and calling Claire all kinds of choice names. Mom’s gonna call her Daddy Horned-Rims, and have him come. Dad is actually in Las Vegas apprehending Superman, so he’ll be home in a while.

When Daddy finally makes it home from the desert, Claire is nicely cleaned up and confesses to father dear that she crashed the car into the building on purpose. She confesses that she lied to him, Daddy H-R asks about what (because he knows she is a teenager and has several lies in the queue), and Claire says that the QB had raped her, and that she isn’t the only rape victim. Daddy calms her and says that no-ones gonna know, because I have this friend, that wipes memories. (okay, so he didn’t say that part, but that was what he was thinking…)

Daddy visits the troglodyte QB and after talking calmly with the rapist, gets all physical and up in his face, then says, “Claire is a very special girl, its confusing whats happening to her, and she doesn’t need some punk making her life more difficult. blah blah… I’m gonna give you a new life, and maybe you’ll make something decent of it.” Draws back the curtain to reveal silent dark man with the funky necklace. Daddy commands, ‘Hollow him out, take everything.’ The Sith Lord must do his master’s bidding, so the curtain gets closed and Brody is alone with blackhole-guy!

Claire heals so qucikly that she decides to visit Brody, and talks to him and says that what he tried to do to her was wrong, and so was what she did to him. Bordy has know idea what she is talking about, and why does she call him “Brody”?

Nathan

A shirtless Nathan is in the clutches of Daddy Horned-Rims and the Dark Sith, they are walking him through the ubiquitous Las Vegas parking structure. Nathan tries to intimidate and bribe the twin, then when that doesn’t work, he takes advantage of Claire’s mom’s call to break free and run. Course he can’t get past the tall chainlink fence outside of the parking garage, so he’s quickly recaptured, but then… Swoosh!!! he flies up into the bright blue sky, then like a UFO out of Roswell, breaks right in a air-popping 90 degree turn and flies away, leaving Daddy HR with nothing to do but empty the brains of high school quarterbacks.

Nathan flies to a diner, where he meets up with Hiro who saw him fly. Hiro’s engrish is getting better, but is totally freaking out Nathan, talking about special powers and big bombs, but Hiro is a hero, so he’ll stop it. Nathan is only concerned about one thing, though… does he win the election in this bombastic future of Hiro’s. Hiro recalls him winning, so Nathan is all cheery and gives Hiro a ride back to Las Vegas.

Back in Las Vegas, Nathan bumps into Niki, and he didn’t expect to see her. He suspects her of getting him captured, and she suspects him of slipping her a mickey. A match made in heavan, Clark Kent and Wonder Woman… well except Nathan is married and running on a family values platform. Niki explains that she was used to blackmail Nathan, and all she wants to be is someone ‘good’, and not the person she ‘sees is the mirror’. Nathan puts on the politician shades and walks away.

Nathan confronts the hotel manager with the whole blackmail thing, and asks for a copy of the tape, because he and his wife get off on those things. (okay… maybe not the later part) Lindeman wants to keep it for a future promise. Nathan wants to ensure that Lindeman has a real live congressman in his pocket, so ups the ante for Lindeman’s contribution to 4 million. He is a creepy Clark Kent, that’s for sure.

Niki

Wakes up to the tapping of Nathan’s cheif of staff/henchman and wonders why she is in Nathan’s bed. The hotel manager comes in and chases off the political advisor guy, and then compliments Niki on her blackmailing skillz. Niki goes, huh? I left? The manager show her the tape (which looks amazinginly like a disk) of her and Nathan doing the humpty-hump and says job-well-done, you are cleared of your debt to Mr. MobsterLinderman!

After talking with Nathan in the hotel, Niki makes it home to a house full of cops, and they are looking for her prison escaped husband. D. L. Hawkins (see the graphic novel for backstory) She’s all worried, someone is coming. Headed for the back door… freaky music… the attacker is … ANDO! Waves at Niki.. so cute!

Niki remembers HuggerZ from her web-site and tells the cops that Ando is cool, just a little horny and smitten. Ando found her address from the whois database (nerdz rulez) Niki lets Ando down gently, and reminds him that she is a nice and wholesome mother, when she isn’t stripping for chatrooms on the internet… Two different people really. Ando leaves, and so do the cops, with a squad car outside, just in-case DL shows up. Which he does! He’s in the HOUSE! Get Out Niki! Run!!! (course if you read the graphic novel, you may have a different opinion of D.L. Plus he’s on the cast, so he’ll be around a while.
Matt

Wakes up on his couch (we last saw him at the beginning of last episode, getting treated by the Sith Lord… he was supposed to ‘go deep and clean him out’ iirc.) with his wife freaking out because he’s been gone for a whole day. Matt searches his memory and comes up blank, though he does remember that he is working with the FBI, but forgot to tell his wife that, but really she basically told him to ‘get out’… Matt can still grab the thoughts of untalkitive people, so he plays the ‘get into your wife’s head’ card, and makes nice.

Matt orders a steak dinner in secret, and really, orders too much. Time to make things right with the wife, and get totally inside her head. A one sided conversation with Matt talking is exactly what Matt and his wife need. Course telling the wife to wear something nicer, well, just isn’t done.

Middle of the day wine drinking and porterhouse steak’s from Mickey’s and the wife’s favorite song, and she is totally swooning. This mind-reading thing, it is good for the wooing. She of course smells the stink of sex on Matt, and accuses him of an affair. Matt gets frustrated and defends himself by saying he’d thought he was just trying to anticipates his wants. Wooo.. Matt gets the woo on, go mind reading power husband!

Matt has gotten the whole love making thing down, what with his ability to pull all the wonton thoughts from his wife’s head. She’s amazed and wants nothing, well except coffee icecream. Dude! Cuddle! no… Matt runs out for the instant gratification of coffee ice-cream. *sigh* Wife is totally smitten with Mr read-my-mind. The convience store doesn’t help Matt, too many open minds yelling at him, including one creppy guy that is going to rob the store. Matt confronts the guy, creeping him out with the mad mind-reading p0w3rZ! and the guy drops the gun and flees. Matt picks up the gun and then succumbs to the overwhelming thoughts the rest of the convience store crowd is tossing his way. Black out. Okay, Matt needs to work on the focus part, because Magneto would get all up in his stuff with this weak-mindedness.

Hiro and Ando

In their Raymond and Charlie outfits get dumped on the sandy outskirts of town, but the nice tough-guys drop them outside of a coach-car restaurant. Hiro is starving and can only speak Japanese unlike his futuristic doppleganger. Ando is all mad because Hiro can’t fight, and gets knocked out with one punch. Hiro is all mad at Ando for using Hiro’s power for personal gain… Waffles! Hoo! Hoo! (pre-future Hiro has a focus problem) Ando gets mad and storms out, off to find his love Niki of the intertubes. Hiro watches Nathan fly into the gravel field outside the diner. Shirtless Nathan comes in the diner, and Hiro takes the opportunity to make good conversation with the congressman wannabe. Japanese speaking Hiro is so cute, and begs a ride from Nathan back to town.

Hiro is converted to a Peronelli suporter, and after sayin ‘Up up and Away’ heads off to his and Ando’s abandoned car (A Nissan Versa) and shows his aptitude for engaging the windshielf wiper, however the actually driving part, no-can-hiro-do… cuz the instructions are all in engrish.
(current day.. not future )

Ando returns to the Versa after from being rejected by Niki, and makes up with Hiro, partners again. They decide to call the artist again… Flash up to Peter’s story, and the cliffhanger, and future Hiro’s instructions.
Questions, Theories

D. L. apparently has the ability to move through physical objects, and wants to clear his name. Is he good or bad?

Daddy Horned-Rims and the Sith Lord apparently didn’t wipe Matt’s ability, just the memories he had of being in captivity. Didn’t Daddy HR want his memories wiped, or only the QBs?

Claire doesn’t know that Daddy knows about her ability, but Daddy seems very protective of his little girl, and he’s following the trail left by Mohinder’s dad, which was looking for Sylar. Is Daddy working for the side of good? Did Daddy just wipe the memory of Matt’s confrontation of Sylar? To protect Sylar?

There was the thing last week, where the picture of Mohinder’s dad, Chandra, was different than the one that was shown the previous week. Some people think that Chandra and Sylar are the same, like Niki/ikiN. Agree? disagree?

Who is after the cheerleader? Sylar? Daddy? someone new?

Does Nathan win the election, or if the future changes, and NYC doesn’t explode, does Nathan lose the election, and embrace his inner superhiro?

Good show, and only getting better.

The rest might spoil, so click on to read more.

We’ve got six genetically mutated heros (maybe six, if you include Peter’s brother) that are trying to figure out their powers, and we have got to learn each of their backstories along the way. So we have to have someway to tell the story of Niki and the father of her child, Mohinder and his father, etc… This is the benfit of the Lost format, that can take the story a bit slow, with character centered flashbacks, but that is at the cost of the storyline, because the losties are only 70 days in after two seasons. It seems Heroes is trying to stay somewhat ‘current’ to the airing of the episodes (since Hiro jumped to the future on a set day, that seems to be an anchor point…)

By far my favorite story is the Hiro line, he is the only one that sees his power in the true ‘comic book’ form, as a Hero, not as a ‘oh crap, what a pain’ (yeah, i’m looking at you Claire!, and you too Niki!) The freezeing time effect for Hiro’s saving of the girl was awesome. The Japanese dialog is also well done, and hilarious as we are reading faster then they talk, so their gestures come across as badly timed or staged. Still the banter between the two is great, and that Ando is a fan of Niki the stripping menace is a nice twist.

Claire is trying to be just a plain jane high school cheerleader. I dated a cheerleader back in high school, and to counter Michael’s critique during football season, that is all they wear. But she must have to do some explaining to her mom, for the repairs to the sweater, and the constant cleaning of blood and gore. She’s a sympathetic reluctant hero, and really what does having a healing power do, unless she starts breaking out some Buffy like moves, she’ll be a mediocre hero.

Mohinder and the neighbor (who I don’t think is a mole, just a greek chorus, to move the story along and provide backstory) stumble upon Sylar’s lair, and it seems that he was following the same research as Mohinder’s dad (we see his father’s face, too, on the back of a book cover) and has a cool wall map, with more nodes than ol’ pops. Also a freaky confessional booth, that sends Mohinder scurrying for police backup. One point contra Michael is that they broke in, staying at the scene might be good, but the cops can’t know that, or everything is worthless. But still, they run for the police (which could give pixie girl time to call the agency and have them wipe the room… hmmm.. perhaps Michael does have a point…)

Matt gains the trust of the cop that busted him, and catches a glance of ‘Sylar’ though how the chick knew is beyond me. My gut says the Sylar is a ‘rogue-like’ mutant, that can absorb different powers, and that could explain why he wanted to research other mutants. Also explains his multiple powers (telekensis, regeneration and possibly flight). Matt then sharpens his mind-reading skillz by visiting the bar after a fight with his wife. Impressively, he doesn’t use his mad-p0w3rs to hit on the lonely babes at the bar when he is in a funk (unlike What About Brian‘s Adam that thinks it is just cool to mac-daddy with a stripper on the eve of his wedding… though will FREAK-OUT I’m sure when he learns about Brian and Marjorie.. oh wait, sidetracked, surry.) but just randomly focuses his powers around the room. Then he hits a ‘black hole’ in an ominous black man sitting alone. He passes out. The previews have this guy as a partner to Claire’s dad. I think that we have two factions, Claire’s dad (and this black hole guy) are government operatives, trying to head off the evolutionary process. Sylar is a mutant, who either for self-preservation (like Magneto) or malice is looking out for number one, and trying to keep other mutants from gaining their powers. Which if I’m correct, means the little girl. Mutant. (check it!)

The episode ends with Claire finding a limitation to her healing powers. Lumber embeded in the skull stops if COLD. However, bodily organs removed and weighed… not such a bad thing, tune in next week to see how she does after her autopsy. (and I gotta agree with Michael, how convient that the doctor has left her on the table wide open… )

This season the other networks are playing catch-up, two new series try their hand at a serial television drama that after their premeire’s have many questions that have left unanswered.

Jericho has a post-nuclear war (or so we think) town in Kansas that starts off with little knowledge about what has happened. At the end of the first show (a one-hour premeire, so comparisons to Lost’s first airing need to take that into account) we know that nuclear explosions have happend somewhere west of Jericho, assumed in the show to be Denver, and that another explosion in Atlanta (we really don’t know if it is nuclear, but the cast has assumed that it is, so we’ll go with it) took the life of one of the character’s mother, this was revealed in a shocking answering machine message. After the second episode, the mysterious (I think he has something to hide, and so does his wife) Hawkins listened to a morse-code message and has started pinning red pens on a map (how convient to have that set-up in his basement/fallout-shelter) to include the aformentioned Denver, Atlanta and also San Diego, Chicago, Philadelphia (my recollection starts to fade…) and more and more. There are certainly questions, but the execution of the drama on television has left some holes in the plot, that makes me wonder if this will really be a long-lasting show. It airs currently before the Lost time-slot on another channel, and so I don’t think it will pull people away from Lost, but might end up losing viewers if ABC wants to play time-slot games (a few minutes here, a couple extra minutes there…).

Heroes on NBC is another thing all together. This had a refreshing vignette of stories aligned along the ‘x-men’ like premise that humans are continuing to evolve and some ‘special’ humans are developing ‘super’ abilities. The character mix is interesting, and while the USA seems to have a lock on the random genetic mutations, there is at least one Japanese hero, or Super-Hiro (yes, I spelled that right) that is developing his time-shifting/transportation abilities. Seriously, this guy is awesome, and his quirky, geeky, innocent persona is gonna make this a fun show to watch. We also have a suicidal cheerleader with super-fast healing powers, a cyber-porn mother with an unknown power that kicks some mobster butt, but can’t remember ‘how’ (kina hulk like, in that she wakes up with gaps in her memory), a disfunctional brother duo that can fly or at least levitate. We also have a heroin addict artist that has the ability to see and paint the future, and a cop that has the ability to read minds. The show also has a mysterious Indian scholar that is following his deceased father’s research into the ‘super-human’ field, and a bespeckled mystery man (who just happens to be the wolverine-cheerleaders dad) that is also trying to figure out the mystery (with a far more nefarious goal, we are led to believe). There is also a looming catastrophe in a mid-town Manhattan blast that is surmised to go off on November 8th (Heroes, it seems is loking their clock to the actual airing of the episodes, last night Hiro thought he had teleported to NTC on October 2nd, but is faced with the fact that he jumped to November 8th…) All in all, Heroes is executed much more deftly than Jericho, and NBC seems to be behind the production of this show in a major way. They already have an online comic, an online blog, and interviews with the production team.

One of the features that Lost pioneered is the fusion of the internets with the series, including secrets available on the Lost website that fostered a slew of fan-sites and communities. It seems that definately Heroes, and to a degree Jericho (they have an online map of the fictional town) are trying to have the same ‘viral’ type of marketing. Both shows are intriguing, and I’m holding out hope that Jericho can become a bit more engaging. It is interesting that in both shows, the horror of a nuclear blast seems center to the story…

UPDATE: Big Orange Michael has his hero recap posted, always enjoyable to read.

In recent years Tony Stark’s greatest nemesis has been alcoholism. As a wealthy socialite, alcohol had been a constant part of his life. When his company, which had changed its name from Stark Industries to Stark international, was threatened with the takeover at the same time he was experiencing oppressive personal problems, Stark began to abuse alcohol. Although he managed to recover quickly from his first serious bout, the compulsion to drink remained a constant temptation. The second time he succumbed to alcoholism, due to even more devastating personal problems than the first time, Tony Stark went on a several month binge during which he was cheated out of Stark international, had all Iron Man suits destroyed (except one), lost the leases on his various apartments, and had his personal assets frozen so that he could not touch his fortune. All of this was the result of the machinations of the mysterious European entrepreneur Obadiah Stane, who took over Stark’s company, renaming it Stane International.

On that note, Marvel comics has done an ok job of getting their mainstream books onto the screen. We’ve had Spiderman (spidey-riffic all of ‘em), X-men (great), Fantastic Four (eh), Hulk (lol!), Daredevil (eh+), and Elektra (didn’t see.. but c’mon Jennifer Gardner was THE reason you saw Daredevil…. don’t lie!!) . Coming are Ghost Rider and Ironman. Meanwhile DC Comics just relies on Supes and the Dark Knight (would love to see Dark Knight Returns made into a movie) though Joss Whedon is supposed to bring Wonder Woman to the screen sometimes… In the end the Marvel Universe has a bigger bag to pick from, so they can go deeper into the genre. Will there be a Flash major motion picture, that I’d see.

Update: Jack M. @ Ace of Spades has a pic of the issue that popped into my brain as well. (geeks unite!)