The A-Team

I've never seen the tv series that this is based on, but pop culture has filled me in on all I need to know. We're living in the Age of the Remakes, and the big-screen adaptation of the A-Team sees when the four heroes put their team together, with an absurd, fun escape that just doesn't seem possible. Of course, over the next two hours, these four characters weave themselves in and out of impossible situations, but always manage to escape, no worse for the wear, and able to quip about their close calls. And of course, they work in their well-known lines with Hannibal saying, "I love it when a plan comes together," while Baracus steadfastly refuses to get on an airplane. As expected, they also are framed for crimes they didn't commit, making them fugitives on the run. Make no mistake, this is a campy film. It is not award-winning stuff. The plot is more than a bit convoluted, and villains repeatedly pass up chances to kill our heroes until... sometime later.

This is a pretty by the numbers action movie so there isn't much to talk about. With Liam Neeson leading the team as Hannibal, they definitely cast the right actor to lead the ragtag team of ‘soldiers of fortune. Bradley Cooper also is perfectly cast here as "Faceman," the smooth-talking, womanizing member of the squad. Sharlto Copley is the goofy Murdock character here. And of course, Quinton Jackson plays the character B.A. Baracus, who was famously played by Mr. T in the TV version and sadly doesn't cameo here in the film.My only real gripe with this movie is the same I have with lots of action movies these days: It's way too rapidly edited, to the point that I found it hard to register what the hell's going on during some of the action sequences. I also find a few of the characters a tad annoying, but it wasn't enough to distract from what was a pretty solid action movie.

Final Fantasy XIII

Sure took me a long to complete this game. I've had it seen it was released back in March and was playing it randomly since then. I haven't played too many of the games in the main Final Fantasy series, just III, X, X-2, and the beginning of XII. At the end of the day I liked this one but I have to say that your opinion on Final Fantasy XIII will depend greatly on your ability to like the story, or rather its storytelling method. Like every Final Fantasy game since VII, XIII’s storytelling is derived from anime, and if you don’t like anime for its melodrama, long winded dialogue, and over exaggerated movement, I don’t think you’ll be too happy when the characters start spouting extemporaneous prose posing as conversation at each other like a couple of professional wrestlers cutting a promo in the middle of a ring. This style of storytelling derives from the theatre of ancient Greece, where the primary purpose of their morality plays was further development of their characters, and it is here where XIII’s story truly shines.

As for the gameplay, the first thing that has to be brought up is that the level design is extremely linear. Actually, The first 60% of XIII isn’t just linear, it’s a straight line. There’s very few branching paths to speak of, and the ones that are there aren’t very big. Chapters one through twelve are designed for two things: to tell you a story and to train you how to fight. This sounds like a long tutorial, and it somewhat is, but there’s not a lot of downtime. You’re constantly learning new things, developing the story, changing locales, and you are always moving forward and never backward. It gets kinda boring, but once you hit chapter thirteen, that all changes. Suddenly you’ll be in a big open world with all the optional areas, side quests, and treasure that you were looking for most of the game. This is where Final Fantasy XIII the game really starts to live up to its potential. It's a shame then that you can't fight everything you see, because the difficulty of some of the random enemies suddenly spikes, which brings me to my next point: Final Fantasy XIII's difficulty is a very random. I frequently destroyed my opponents for a bulk of the game's routine encounters and suddenly found myself outclassed by the time I reached the second half of the game.

The combat doesn’t get off to the same blistering speed as the story does, as the game spends the first ten or so hours slowly feeding you the basics of the battle system and this is a good thing, as throwing the unique and complex mechanics at once could’ve been too much to handle for some. In a first for the series, you only have control over the party leader, and instead of micromanaging what each character does, any point during combat, you can initiate a paradigm shift to change the role that each character plays in battle. The combinations of classes your characters can be at any given time are limited to pre determined commands that you can select in the options menu before battle. It's certainly a unique combat setup, but the only downside that the game ends whenever you leader is knocked out, regardless of the status of the other two party members. It's annoying, but it just another of a few small flaws in an otherwise solid game. The JRPG genre has been one that has been starving for innovation and a refreshing change of pace, and Final Fantasy XIII is certainly that. Its originality derives from its streamlined nature and its no-nonsense approach to progression. I've played better RPGs than this and though I can't compare it to other entries in the series, it gets the job done.

Sex and the City

Never thought I'd watch this as I'd never seen the series that inspired but, here I am watching the Sex in the City movie. The movie finds Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda four years after the hit HBO series ended, as they continue to juggle jobs, friendships and relationships and start to navigate motherhood, marriage and Manhattan real estate. Most importantly, the main plot of the film finds Carrie and Mr. Big decide to get married. The film then races through various themes of love, commitment, individuality, forgiveness, friendship, loss, loneliness and just about every other human condition you can think of.

I'm surprised that I really liked this movie. The film was funny. Pure and simple it did the one thing I didn’t really expect it to be able to do: It made me laugh. A lot. The humor was more “male” than I expected it to be, and a little more crude at times. There were several solid laugh out loud moments and the rest was quite entertaining. In most movies, you have characters that make their way through the story. But Sex and the City didn’t really have a story. The characters WERE the story, and in this context it really worked because of the diversity in the 4 main characters and their legitimate charm and likability (aside from the Miranda character)… but most importantly because of the long tested chemistry between them all. The chemistry of that on screen friendship was palpable and carried the movie.

Although sometimes a bit forced, I found the emotional and touching scenes worked. Each of the main characters go through significant challenges in the movie and at times it is communicated quite well. As good as the film's drama is...there was simply too much going on. For some reason the producers felt the need to give each and every one of the 4 main characters a significant story line sub-plot instead of one central story or without tying them together. 4 full stories takes screen time, each one interrupting the other and causing far to many themes to be brought into it. It’s not that any of the stories weren’t good, nor that any of the themes introduced weren’t worthy ones to be explored, it's just that Sex and the City had too many things going at the same time, and as such it hindered my ability to savor or appreciate any single one of them. In spite of that I loved this movie and while I may not check out the series anytime soon, but I'll be watching this movie every now and then.

Hal Sparks: Charmageddon

I've only known of Hal Sparks from acting on Queer as Folk and his appearances on VH1's I love the 80s series. I've never knew he was a stand up comedian and a pretty good at that. His takes on the difference between women and men,sexting and anything else of pop culture,his take on comedy is definitely refreshing and straight forward. From beginning to end his set is packed full of intelligent, hilarious, and perfectly executed comedic insight that's so close to my own that I found myself exclaiming "Exactly!" "Yes!" and "That's so true!" in between fits of uncontainable laughter. His fundamental beliefs on "unsweetened" tea and drink sizes are raised to new levels with his passionate delivery and his priceless insight into the history and execution of "sexting" will made me sigh an enthusiastic "Nnnff..."! Sparks has a way about him, a command of himself and his audience that is at once disarming and just plain hot. And in this one hour special, he showcases his many levels of awesomeness perfectly. "Charmageddon" is indeed charming, but not in a wholesome and quaint B&B way; certainly not in a old school Austen hero way. It, and Sparks, are charming in a "woke up in bed with some guy you just met and are not sure how he managed to get you there or where your pants are" kind of way. And by that odd analogy, I trying to say that I really liked Charmageddon.