A very Muppety post

The Muppets
Film, 2011, dir. James Bobin

A totally charming movie that leaves you feeling good.  I don't know that it added anything to the franchise other than a new muppet, but it was endearing and nostalgic and funny and everything else you want it to be.  I dare you not to cry when Kermit plays "The Rainbow Connection."  And who doesn't love Jason Segel?  He and Amy Adams were both cute and appropriately Muppet-y enough to fit in with the puppets themselves.  The comic highlight for me was probably the cameo by Jim Parsons, although I also laughed out loud when James Carville appeared for no particular reason.


Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street
Nonfiction. Michael Davis, 2008

This is a good book and an interesting book but not the book I wanted it to be.  It would more aptly be subtitled The Complete History of the Origins of Sesame Street and a Glance at the Show Itself.  As you may have seen in an earlier post of mine, it takes about half the book to get to the point when Sesame Street is on the air.  This isn't, in principle, a bad thing; the show's brilliant creators deserve their time in the sun, and Davis tracks the show business beginnings of each.  Along the way, he captures some interesting anecdotes about the shows that influenced Sesame Street, including Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, and the puppet-centric show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.

It's a pleasant little thrill when the book finally does get to the show being on the air and you start to recognize the stories of beloved characters or songs from episodes you remember.  The book still focuses on the people behind the camera or under the puppets, though, so little time is spent on talking about the various episodes.  Thus entire decades are covered in one chapter.  The book misses out on some of the late history of the show, opting instead to follow its original characters through their retirement from the show, or, in many cases, the ends of their lives (Jim Henson, Joe Raposo, Northern Calloway, Dave Connell, Jon Stone, etc.)  This leaves you with a sort of depressing end to the otherwise triumphant story of one of the most important television shows in history.
I'd recommend this book if you're looking for a nonfiction read that's not too heavy and you have an interest in television production.  If you're just looking for a Muppet story, though, this is not your book.  Go see the aforementioned movie instead.

Friday roundup: Breaking Dawn, Matched, and more

Happy Friday, readers!  Here's an update on my reading and viewing life of late.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1
Film, 2011, dir. Bill Condon


Ooh steamy! No wait, his skin is icy cold.  Brr!

 Breaking Dawn was just what you would expect if you have seen the other movies and you are familiar with the story.  In case you have managed to avoid the media buzz (good job!), the plot is that Bella and Edward get married, consummate their passionate love, and end up with a vampire baby growing inside still-human Bella.  This makes Jacob (wolfy friend/third corner of love triangle) mad.  I imagine Taylor Lautner's in-character thoughts as something along the lines of "JACOB SMASH! RAWRRRRRRR!" (because he phases into his werewolf form when he gets really mad...)  This led to the most ridiculous scene in the movie--and trust me, that's saying something.  Jacob's pack of wolves can talk to each other mentally when they are in their wolf form, so there's a bunch of CGI-ed giant wolves on the screen growling at one another while the helpful captions let the rest of us in on the conversation.  This is backed by some truly dramatic score--nothing reinforces wolf drama like soaring violins.  Anyway!  Props to whoever did the makeup and CGI on Kristen Stewart, because that girl looked like the living dead for most of the movie (see, her life force is being soaked up by the demon baby because vampires are stronger than humans...leading Bella herself to drink blood...leading everyone in the theater to laugh uncomfortably because it's really gross to watch when her teeth get all red.)  The acting was meh, the writing was meh, the source material was terrible, but I still had fun!  Yayyyy Twilight.

Matched
YA Novel, Ally Condie, 2010

This is a kind of cool cover.
That is the only other nice thing I will say.

Matched is really not very good.  I saw some good reviews of it and I am puzzled.  I will give Ally Condie a little bit of credit for being a pretty good writer.  She puts together some nice images and turns of phrase from time to time.  However, the plot of this book is boring and derivative.  It's like The Giver and 1984 and Twilight all raised a dull child together.  Our heroine Cassia is repressed by her post-some-kind-of-apocalypse overlord government, and has to navigate the troubling waters of her budding rebellious spirit as she debates between the guy the Society "matched" her with (Xander) and the guy she secretly loves because he's dark and mysterious and has pretty eyes (Ky).  I was intensely irritated to find that the "matching ceremony" where people get assigned to their mates seems to be strictly heterosexual, and no other sexual preferences are even mentioned.  Cassia notes that you can opt out of the matching and be "a single" instead, but that doesn't really address the issue.  Anyway, on to other things that bother me. Cassia gets an illegal copy of Dylan Thomas's famous poem "Do not go gentle into that good night."  One thing that really grinds my gears about YA fiction is when a book latches onto a poem, book, symphony, etc. as an example of fine art and then smashes in our faces for the rest of the book (cf. If I Stay's classical music selection.)  That is what happens here, as Cassia adopts "I will not go gentle!" as an obnoxious refrain.  My biggest problem with this book, though, is my own fault--I listened to it on audiobook even though within five seconds I was terrified to find out that chipmunks have acquired the powers of speech and are recording audiobooks.  The girl reading the book just drove me nuts, and every time she used her "voices" for the characters (often) I felt annoyed with her.  Don't ask me why I kept listening--I dunno, I just did.  Actually, I guess it was because I was intrigued by the beginning of the book, before it was entirely clear that it would suck.  Oh well, it was free--did you know you can get audiobooks from the library!  Crazy!

The cover is misleadingly Oscar-centric.

I'm currently in the middle of a second underwhelming book (hard copy this time)--Street Gang by Michael Davis.  The cover promises to be the history of Sesame Street, which it is.  Sadly for me, I didn't read the rest of the summary, which clarifies that it mostly explores the histories of the various writers and producers who brought the show to life and how the idea came to be.  Thus I am about half way through and we haven't even gotten to the first episode being written yet.  I was really looking for more of a behind-the-scenes expose of what went down between Ernie and Elmo, you know?  Oh well.  I'll update again when I finish it. (To clarify, it's not a bad book, just kind of rambly.  I don't do a lot of nonfiction, so maybe I just have a short attention span.)

Oh, is Christina Hendricks in this show?

On TV, I've been watching my usual shows that are currently on air (How I Met Your Mother--decent, Glee--meh, The New Girl--hehe she's so awkward!, Community--ridiculous, Parks and Rec--my personal fave) and supplementing with Netflix streaming of Mad Men.  So far I'm about 10 episodes in, and I like it but I'm not sure I get what all the fuss is about.  It seems like a PERIOD PIECE where we are forced to appreciate every time they say "swell" or all light up a cig together.  But I do like well-drawn character dramas, in the end.

I'm going to see The Muppets this weekend, hooray!  I've heard many of you already saw and enjoyed it, but that won't stop me from opining on it at length next week!

Movie opposites: Winnie the Pooh and The Others

Last week I watched two movies that were from opposite ends of the general movie-interest spectrum.

1. Winnie the Pooh, 2011, dir. Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall

Super cute. I mean, what else do you expect from Winnie the Pooh? The plot this time around was that Eeyore lost his tail and everyone was trying to find a new one for him, along with a subplot about a monster called the Backson and our friends' efforts to capture him. You might be slightly thrown off by the fact that all the voices aren't exactly the same as they were when you were a kid, but I thought all the performances were winning. It's also full of my favorite Pooh element, which is the interaction with the text of the book (e.g. letters sliding across the screen as the characters bump into them.) There isn't anything particularly new about this movie or compelling to adults, even, other than that it's a pure, sweet kids' movie, which I suspect was great for parents, and huge doses of nostalgia all around.  Watch it when you want a smile.

2. The Others, 2001, dir. Alejandro Amenabar
I actually remember seeing this in the theater in high school with my friends.  I remember thinking it was both good creepy fun and also just plain strange--my friends and I often quoted the out-of-nowhere ridiculous line from the husband, "Sometimes I bleed."  My teenage assessment still rings true, pretty much.

In this movie, Nicole Kidman plays a mother who lives in a giant spooky house with her two kids who are "photosensitive," meaning that the movie is very dark all the time, which is a great concept.  Her husband is off at war, and she's looking for some domestic help.  A trio of helpers (including the old woman from Lost!) show up on the door and say they used to work at this house in the past.  Thus the scary scene is set, and we start to see the evidence of ghoslty presences around the house and how the two kids are dealing with it all.

Kidman gives a great performance, endowing her character with good doses of hardass, heartbroken, and terrified all at once, and the director does a nice job with the setting and mood.  There are some good startle-scares and other thriller tropes (creepy kids, drop cloths on old furniture, lots of fog), but it's not gory or cheap-feeling like many scary movies.  It does have some bizarre moments (like the aforementioned interaction with the husband) and unravels a little slowly, but overall, it works.  Watch it in the dark and try not to jump.

Trailer review! The Hunger Games

I don't usually enjoy movie trailers. I find their grandiosity that producers must deem necessary to attract audiences repetitive and irritating. So this morning I found myself surprised to be completely captivated by the new (first) Hunger Games trailer. (Check out my take on the books at this post.)

Full disclosure, I'm completely biased by the fact that my friend Sash of http://www.sashandem.com/ is an extra in the movie. But I don't think I'm off-base in saying that this movie looks AWESOME.  Casting fell into place perfectly, world building looks great so far, and they definitely nailed the anticipation for the start of the games without spoiling anything that happens!  I'm impressed that they built in so much tension by showing only things that happen before the games.

I'm going to see Breaking Dawn soon and, even though I am a big fan of the movies generally (don't argue about this with me now, not the point), I'm not even excited about it because that book is so terrible.  So, thank you, Hunger Games, for providing me with a dose of good ol' YA-book-to-film-adaptation happiness.

Bite-sized review catch-up! Tron Legacy, The Misfits, Drive, State of Play, Dune

Someone's been slacking on review writing lately, and that someone is me.  So here is a mini-review of each thing I've taken in recently, things which I may or may not expand upon in a full review later (let's be honest, probably not).

Tron: Legacy
Film, 2010, dir. Joseph Kosinski

This is a pretty awesome-looking movie that has few other redeeming qualities.  You don't really need to know what it was about beyond seeing the preview.  It probably was sweet in IMAX.  See it for the nifty new motorbike-thingies, see it for the Matrix-y fight scenes, see it for the aging technology on Jeff Bridges.  See it if it's free on your Netflix and you feel like a no-thinking kind of night.  Otherwise, don't bother.  The story doesn't make any sense and the dialogue is stupid.  Oh, I should mention I never saw the original Tron, so maybe that makes a difference in how much you appreciate the story, but I kind of doubt it.

The Misfits
Novel, James Howe, 2003

A good YA (that's young adult, my friends) book, one that I would have recommended to some of my former students.  It's about a group of outcast friends in middle school who decide to try to shake things up by running for student government on the platform of stopping the name-calling all around them.  It's got a very heavy "everyone is special and you can change the world" theme going, a theme that became too obstructive of some interesting character potential for this adult reader.  (For example, the main character is an overweight boy who works in a department store with a cold, lonely boss so that he can bring home a few extra dollars for his reformed drunk widower father.  So much potential that gets sidetracked for the quick resolution!)  But it's quickly digestible and lots of fun, so if you run across it, recommend it to your young teenage relatives.

Drive
Film, 2011, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

Here's another rare gem for this blog--something you can still see in the theaters!  But honestly, don't.  Well, maybe do.  But not before you read this warning: it's gross.  Horribly gory violently gross.  The thing is, it was a totally normal movie for the first half an hour or so, and I was thinking, hey, I'm glad Jamie wanted to see this even though I didn't know anything about it.  Then someone's (I won't spoil whose) head gets blown off by a point-blank shotgun.  And there's more where that came from.  Ok, warning over.  Horrifying violence aside, this was a really interesting piece of art, which is I think why reviewers seem to love it.  Ryan Gosling plays "The Driver," who gets mixed up in driving a getaway car for the wrong crowd.  It's a unique story and avoids cliche at every turn.  Gosling pulls off his character surprisingly well, and there are some nice performances by the supporting cast as well--Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, and Albert Brooks, to name a few.

State of Play
Film, 2009, dir. Kevin Macdonald

This movie won't be one of my all-time favorites, but I liked it, and I'd see it again.  Ben Affleck plays a politician whose staffer died in suspicious circumstances on the Metro tracks here in DC.  Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams are the journalists digging around in it, and Robin Wright Penn is Affleck's pretty if mostly plot-irrelevant wife.  Oh and Helen Mirren's in there too, also in a non-interesting role.  That cast list is mostly why I Netflixed this one, and because I like movies about politics.  The mystery was interesting if not totally groundbreaking and the script and acting were good.  The thing I enjoyed most, though, was identifying each scene as "I've been there, that's totally DC!" or, "NO WAY that is totally NOT DC!"  Side note for those who also live here: You see the soon-to-become-a-metro-delay staffer walking through Adams Morgan before she gets to the Metro, but all of a sudden she's on the platform in...Rosslyn!  Amazing!  (Non-DCers, that's a jump all the way across town--in fact, into Virginia.)

Last but certainly not least...
Dune
Novel, Frank Herbert, 1965

I'm running out of steam here, and out of the five mini-reviews here, this one is most likely to make it into a longer review later, so to keep it extra short: A science fiction classic that didn't disappoint.  I found the writing to be a little opaque at times, but the story was exciting and complex, and I was left wanting to read the sequels even though I already decided I wouldn't since I've heard they're not worth it.





And that's it for now!  I'll try not to be a slacker in the future (that's what I always say...), and I promise to consider giving Dune the attention it's worth.

How to handle spoilers: one guy's treatise

I ran across this post on the blog Book Riot, about when you are allowed to talk about the details of something and perhaps spoil it for others and when you're not.  Fun for me to ponder as your blog author, and perhaps you will enjoy it too if you like giving your opinions about stuff all the time, like me.

If I spoil the blog post right now, how meta is that?  The post includes two sections of different spoiling situations and subcategories of each section!  Bwahahaha, has the world exploded with my meta-ness?

50/50

Film, 2011, dir. Jonathan Levine

A quick run-down on this movie, which you can still catch in theaters.  (I thought it would be a riot to review something semi-relevant.)

1. I cried for approximately 40 of its modest 100 minutes.  Twice it was like, try not to disturb other theater-goers with awkward noises because you're choking back sobs type-of-crying; the rest of the time it was just gentle tears.  Some happy, some sad.
2. If you have been affected by cancer in some way, there will be at least one moment that you will feel captures the experience profoundly.  Or at least accurately and without too much saccharine music.


They are both super cute, admit it.

3. I loved pretty much every actor/actress in this movie.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, even Anjelica Huston--they were all fabulous.
4. In case you haven't seen the previews, it's about a guy named Adam (Joseph G-L) who gets cancer, and how he and his friend (Rogen), therapist (Kendrick--yeah, interesting role there), girlfriend (Howard), and mother (Huston) all deal with it.
5. It's funny at times (mostly Seth Rogen times) and sweet and sad or some combination of all of the above at others.  It's kind of hard to pick a genre for it.  Perhaps that stupid word "dramedy" would cover it.

In short, I really enjoyed it, and I would recommend it.  I'm not sure I want to see it again anytime soon because I don't always enjoy being drenched in my own tears, but it's one of those ones to put on the "good cry" shelf.  And, for the record, my friend sitting next to me didn't cry at all.  She's brave, I guess.

Prey

Novel, Michael Crichton, 2002

My husband and I were on a road trip this weekend, and we have a habit of reading out loud to each other as we drive.  This usually works best if the passenger reads to the driver, btw.  Since I'm in the middle of Dune, we opted for another book that we could get through quickly and that neither of us had started yet.  Enter Prey.  I found this lying on the side of the road, so I picked it up, hoping it would be as much fun as Jurassic Park or Sphere, which are my only other two Crichton reads, I think.

Is it wrong to imagine
nanoparticles as fleas?

Well, it wasn't.  It was certainly good for an amusing car ride, and there were some very suspenseful passages, so I wasn't disappointed on my major expectations.  However, I found the whole thing a little disjointed, and some of the pseudoscience was really insufferable.  More on that after a brief summary for those who haven't read it:

In Prey, Jack Forman (solid hero name) is a computer programmer or something, and his wife Julia works for a nanotechnology development company.  The first part of the book sets up some strange events going down around their house--Julia seems irritable, the baby gets a mystery rash, etc.--that, since this is Crichton, after all, are inevitably the effect of said nanotechnology run amok.  The middle of the book is when the nanotechnology gobbledegook gets thick, as we are led on a tour of the company's creepy desert facilities and are introduced to their product: a swarm of tiny particles that can control themselves as a group, like a flock of birds.  This swarm is rapidly evolving, to the extent that it "learns" new behaviors every few hours.  Oh yeah, and it's trained to be a predator.  Why, you ask?  Well, that's how Jack got involved in this whole mess--he wrote some predator-imitating software that Julia's company bought.  So he's trying to kill the swarm.  The rest of the book really picks up the pace as the swarm develops crazy new ideas and hunts down the humans at every step.

An official science picture of nanotechnology

This last part is pretty fun.  However.  The two thirds of the book it took to lead up to the crazy swarm madness were way too much.  Crichton spends a few hundred pages setting up all these great mystery hooks in a slow-ish pace, then races to the end with an entirely different plot than what he started with.  He took the last two pages to explain those little teasers he started with and blew his climax on a crazy subplot that entered in the last section of the book.  This rapid change in pace (nothing-at-all-happening to holy-crap-everything-happening-at-once to what-it's-over?) is what leads to the book feeling disjointed, I think.

What I kept hoping was coming in Prey

I also happen to have a pretty low tolerance for the technical specifications of the nanotechnology.  I understand that that is probably what a lot of people like about Crichton--the THIS COULD ALMOST REALLY HAPPEN BECAUSE LOOK IT'S SCIENCE sort of feeling.  But I don't like when the story gets interrupted every few pages so that Jack can explain to the reader "key" details like what exactly the nanoparticle assemblers are made of.

Anyway, my husband and I just skipped those parts and used some funny voices for the dialogue, and it turned out to be a very enjoyable trip.

Rear Window

Film, 1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock

I feel like this is one in a string of random things I've been reviewing that are not current, so this by way of explanation: I think this movie ended up on the old Netflix (soon to be Qwikster? Noooo!) queue because it's on the AFI top 100 movies list and I had never seen it before.  Not to say I've seen all the other ones, but you gotta start somewhere, right?

Loved it.  See it if you haven't.  Now, for the rest of the review.

Someone forgot to color in part of Ms. Kelly

Rear Window is about temporarily-wheelchair-bound Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) staring out the, um, rear window of his apartment all day.  He lives in this group of apartment buildings whose backs all face each other across a courtyard-type area, so he gets to spy on people all day long, because apparently no one ever closes their blinds.  One day he notices that one of his neighbors is missing and her bed is all packed up, but her husband is still there.  He becomes slightly obsessed with this anomaly--an obsession which proves to be contagious, because soon his girlfriend (Grace Kelly), his policeman friend, and his nurse are trying to solve the mystery too.

It's fascinating that Hitchcock can create a mystery full of clues without anyone ever doing anything except watching across the courtyard.  That means every clue must be only visual and has to be observed by one of the characters.  That aspect really brings the movie viewer along for the ride, because we're in the exact same position as Jeff--just watching.  This is one point among many that one could make that proves Rear Window is a well-considered Film (yeah, capital F Film--you know, with good cinematography and music and lighting and stuff.)  I'm not about to go all academic on you in this post, so if you want something dissertation-y, email me.

But still, some highlights:

Example of awesome dress.

• I haven't seen too many other Hitchcock films, so I wasn't sure how suspenseful it was going to be on a scale of Dial M for Murder to The Birds.  Most of the movie was just a slow build of curiosity, but the end had a few genuinely nail-biting moments.  Excellent payoff there.
• I greatly enjoyed the supporting characters who lived in the other apartments.  There's a scantily-clad dancer, a lonely single woman, a talented musician, some newlyweds, etc.  It's fun to meet all of them, however briefly.
• Grace Kelly has some awesome dresses.

Any other Hitchcock favorites I should see?  Probably Psycho...Vertigo...North by Northwest...Jamie says they're in the old AFI top 100 too.

Dracula

Novel, Bram Stoker, 1897

As a Twilight fan (sort of), I felt I owed it to myself to read Dracula.  My dad--who writes an intelligent and entertaining blog over here--has told me that he thought it was one of the scariest books he's ever read.  (Dad, if you're reading this and I'm misquoting you, my apologies.)  I'm not sure if I agree with that, but it was pretty creepy for sure.

500 pages! Ah ah ah!

I thought I knew the basic story of Dracula, but I think that was actually mostly based on the Count from Sesame Street.  So for anyone else in that situation, here's an overview: A circle of friends is plagued by a mysterious demon, so they call in Van Helsing, noted professor of crazy stuff, and together try to identify and destroy the evil force.

To be a little more specific: The book (written in an epistolary style with contributions from all the major characters) begins with the diary of Jonathan Harker, who has been sent by his employer to Transylvania to help a certain Count Dracula get the purchase of his new England home in order. (Gotta love those international real estate agents who make a lot of house calls.)  This is the longest contiguous section of the book, as Harker describes the at-best-unnerving and at-times-downright-terrifying experience of staying in Castle Dracula.  Spoiler alert--he makes it out, but Dracula too makes it to England, and all of a sudden people start dropping like flies.  The middle section of the book concerns a girl named Lucy, who is Jonathan's wife, Mina's, best friend, and her torment by an elusive monster of some sort--bet you can't guess what.  The rest of the books finds our heroes figuring out how to corner and kill the Count and the obstacles they encounter in trying to do so.

Bela Lugosi. Shiver-tastic.

Dracula is WAY longer than I expected it to be.  I read it on my Kindle (it's free! yay copyright law) so I didn't have a clear sense of how long it was when I started.  Not gonna lie, that middle part was really slow reading.  The whole Lucy part is also dragged out by the story of this guy Renfield, who's in an insane asylum and has a bug-eating fetish and seems to be connected to the Count somehow.  None of it seemed to be all that relevant to the major story line.  I really enjoyed the major story line when we did get around to it, though, and found Harker's opening account and the build-up to the climax to be thrilling.

I don't read a lot of Victorian novels these days, so I don't have a huge frame of reference for this, but it was very strange to me that the men in the novel took a very worshipful attitude to Lucy and Mina, the main female characters.  Everything the girls did was pronounced endearing, charming, witty, intelligent, and they were of course angelically beautiful at all times.  That oddity aside, I really liked that Mina was involved in the action and shown as a heroine, because I guess I was expecting that women in a book from this era would be more... dainty--cf. those crazy Bennets in Pride and Prejudice.  The Wikipedia article on the book suggests that there is a lot of critical literature about the roles of gender and sexuality in the novel (oh, did I mention that there are also these wild ghost vampire women who want to either have sex with or suck the blood of everyone? pretty interesting stuff there), which I would be interested in reading.

It was evolutionarily beneficial for Dracula's kind
to develop sparkles and foofy hair.

This post is getting longer than I intended, which is either because the book is long or because it is the masterpiece that many have called it so I end up having a lot to say about it.  So just a couple more points in bullet form:

• In this age of Twihards and vampire mania, it does get tedious when the characters spend the first half of the book wondering where these mysterious bite marks on the neck could have come from, but I can imagine that it would have made for a great mystery when vampire lore was less common.
• The mood of the book is one of its greatest strengths.  I felt more Gothic just reading it.  It made me want a fireplace and a cold winter night.  Just thinking about the castle makes me hear an ominous thunderclap.
• I bet there are some pretty good abridged versions of this book out there (if you believe that such a thing exists in principle, which I'm not sure I do.  But it might be worth looking into.)

Next up for me is Dune, which is also a doozy for length, I think.  Maybe I will post some status updates on the way through that one.  You can check out how far I am by being my friend on my new Goodreads account!  (Goodreads is sort of like Netflix meets Facebook but all about books.  It's awesome.)

Dexter, Season 5

TV show, 2010-11 season

Do any of you have Showtime?  Calling all premium cable owners.  I need a friend with Showtime so I can watch season 6 when it starts in October.

I've been a Dexter fan since Netflix had the first two seasons streaming about two summers ago.  Since then it has been an arduous process of waiting for each DVD by mail.  It's always worth it, though, because Dexter never disappoints.

This is Dexter. He kills people.

If you haven't seen the show at all, read this paragraph and then stop.  If you have seen the show, jump ahead if you like, where I will go more in depth about the particulars of this season.  Gone?  Ok, noobs.  Dexter is not for the faint of heart.  It's about Dexter Morgan, who is a serial killer.  But he's the good guy.  See, he only kills other killers.  Vigilante-like.  By day, he's a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police, so he's an expert in forensics and murder, a handy combination.  The series follows his close calls as he takes down one baddie after another, and also follows his family and friends--his potty-mouthed tough cop sister Deb, his girlfriend Rita and her kids, and his intriguing mix of police coworkers.  Each season has a driving plot arc that usually has to do with a tough-to-catch serial killer and how Dexter and the cops are both going after him/her.  The pace is good--early and mid-season episodes sometimes lose steam as they set up the big reveals to come, but those last few episodes are always a good payoff.  I recommend this series highly--to adults only--and only those adults who can handle copious fake blood and bad language.

Dexter with Deb.  They were married in real life. Gross.

Now for you veterans.  Note: spoilers throughout for this season.  I heard some of you didn't like season 5 as much as some of the previous seasons.  I agree that it can't top the Trinity killer, but I thought it was still a good to very good season.  I think its major weakness was that the bad guys (all of them up to and including Jordan Chase) were just not as deliciously maniacal as, say, Trinity or the Ice Truck Killer.  These were just some perverts.  So when push came to shove at the end of the season, it wasn't as fun when the bad guy went down.  I thought Julia Stiles held her own, though--that was one thing I was worried about when I heard she was in this season.  Lumen was an interesting enough character and Stiles played her just right.  The end of her plot line felt a little abrupt, and I was pretty heartbroken for Dexter.  He had what might be his only chance ever to share his lifestyle with someone he loves, and it didn't work out.  That makes me sad.  Leave it to me to get caught up in the romantic subplot of a serial killer show though.

Speaking of which, how about Quinn and Deb, huh?  What's up with that?  Like Deb, I came around on Quinn by the end of the season, after he stopped being a giant jerkface (he also stopped being a good cop, but whatever).  I was pulling for her to get her butt in gear and return his affection.  I hope that Deb has a least a few episodes of solid happy romance in the next season, but I'm not holding my breath.

Get out of my show, you baby.

I was also happy that we managed to ditch Astor and Cody.  They are always just in the way of more important plot lines.  And Astor still managed to get her drunk emo butt in the way of an entire episode.  Harrison was annoyingly both over-involved ("too many nanny stories") and under-considered ("now that I think about it, where is Harrison anyway?  still with the nanny?  that's weird")  I guess part of the draw of the show is trying to figure out how this guy can be a family man and a serial killer at the same time, but I feel like we kind of played that one out back when Rita was still around. I really just want some more creepy crime scenes and Dexter sneaking up on terrifying serial killers.  Also Deb.  I do like Deb.

Seeing Lumen let go of her "dark passenger" (I really hate that phrase) at the end of the season made me wonder if they are setting up the series finale.  Now that they've proven it's possible for a killer to come back to the light, they're allowing for Dexter to do that too.  I hope that we get some more good murders in before then though.  So, who's hosting me for season 6 watching parties?

Some Like It Hot

Film, 1959, dir. Billy Wilder

Random Bonus Review not mentioned in recent check-in!

AFI named this movie the funniest of all movies of the 1900's.  Let me go ahead and say off the bat that you will not laugh harder at this movie than you did at whatever your current favorite comedy is.  That being said, it's a fun little movie and a "classic" that you probably ought to have seen.  (Actually, it's not really a "little" movie--more on that later.)

It's about these two musicians, Joe and Jerry, who witness a brutal gang killing (seemingly the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago) and need to run away so they don't get taken out too.  The only gig they can get at the last minute, though, is with an all-girl band.  So of course they dress up in drag, go by Josephine and Daphne, and get the heck out of Dodge.  They meet Sugar, the band's singer (slash ukelele player?), and Joe tries to win her heart in a complicated clothes-and-gender-switcheroo plot line that rivals Mrs. Doubtfire in quick-change dexterity.  Meanwhile, Jerry/Daphne buddies up with all the girls and ends up showing an old millionaire a good time.  Hilarity ensues, as well as a chase scene when the mobsters of course catch up with the band.

Joe and Jerry deciding how to portray women is what makes this movie funny.  I can't help but imagine that if the movie were made today as a screwball comedy, there would be a lot of gay jokes and unfunny stereotypes about women.  This movie manages to stay away from that, and it's funny because of the characters that they create.  Then there's the lovely Marilyn Monroe as Sugar, who gets some laughs here and there for her antics in trying to find a rich husband (which, of course, Joe is trying to portray).  She won a Golden Globe for her performance (as did the film itself for Best Comedy and Jack Lemmon as Jerry for Best Actor), and she is certainly magnetic on screen.

A few minor issues.  One, it's too long, as I alluded to in the opening paragraph of this review.  The amount of time it takes to set up the whole gangster plot at the beginning is disproportionately long.  Two, looking back from the future as we are, there is something uncomfortable about watching Marilyn be the dumb blonde without any apology.  She calls herself "not too smart" several times in the film for allowing herself to be drawn into affairs with no-good men, and dreams of a rich man to take her away to her dream life of luxury.  Oh, Marilyn.  I just want more out of my female icons sometimes.  But, she is beautiful and luminous and we manage to love her anyway.  Wilder certainly doesn't have any compunctions about showing off her assets with the costume choices, either.

Here is a longer and smarter take on the whole thing by Roger Ebert.  Try to ignore the fact that he talks about Monroe's breasts in detail, but otherwise a good read.  As he points out at the end of his review, you've got to watch this movie if you don't know the last line.  It's a classic.

Checking in!

Hey friends!

Sasha reminded me that I haven't posted in a while (visit her very popular blog at http://sashandem.blogspot.com), so here's an update.

• Movies: I saw The Help and it lived up to my expectations.  It might be one of those rare movies that I like better than the book--the book was good, but there were so many great performances in the movie...it's a tough call.  I didn't even know my perennial favorite Allison Janney was going to be in it!  Best surprise ever.
• Books: I've been reading Dracula (Bram Stoker) for like three weeks.  It's long.  And kind of slow.  But I do like it.  More on that later.
• TV: Finally caught up with season 5 of Dexter.  Have seen all but the last episode.  More on that later too.

I'll get on the ball trying to finish that book and be back with a real review soon.  Until then, here is a picture of a kitty:

Milk

Film, 2008, dir. Gus Van Sant

I always meant to see this movie, but then never did because I was afraid it would be too sad.  So we put it on the Netflix queue somewhere, and lo and behold it showed up in the mailbox one day.  Then it sat on top of our DVD player for the next two months.  (Granted, it was high wedding season at the time so there wasn't a lot of movie watching going on, period.  But still.)  Finally we watched it the other night because the new season of Dexter is finally on Netflix so we had to send the old DVD back.

Well, I'm glad we watched it.  It's a very well-made movie, visually pleasing and with great acting.  Sean Penn was phenomenal as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay official elected to public office--he completely brought the character to life for me, from the accent to the mannerisms to the individual dynamic he created with each character.  I guess that's why he won the Best Actor Oscar for it.  I also really felt like I learned a lot about a story I knew next to nothing about before seeing the movie.  It was a fascinating look (although I can't attest to how accurate) at the rise of political activism in the gay community in San Francisco while also being a compelling character narrative about Harvey.

Yeah, it was sad, but it was also uplifting to see the progress that Harvey and his colleagues made for the gay rights movement.  The film did not shy away from the characters' gay lifestyles (appropriately), and I thought it treated every character with great respect.  I don't really have any drawbacks to this movie, except that it's a little bit emotionally draining, like many great films, I suppose.  So check it out if you didn't see it when it made a splash 3 years ago.  And don't ignore it on your Netflix queue.

World War Z

Novel, Max Brooks, 2006

This is a unique book.  If you are looking to try something a little different, here it is.

World War Z is a series of interviews about what happened when the Earth that we know and love was overcome by a devastating zombie apocalypse.  It's implied that this happened right around our current time (2000s ish).  The "editor" interviews people from all around the world about their experiences and thus chronicles the initial outbreaks, the ensuing chaos as more and more people are infected, and how humans eventually rally to fight and bring about the resolution of the war against the zombies (this isn't a spoiler--the opening pages let you know it's been about ten years since the end of the war).

Brooks works very hard to capture the details of what it would really be like to have an all-out zombie apocalypse on our hands.  The interviews show how different countries' militaries were prepared (or not) for the formation of active armies and massive stocks of weaponry, what strategies civilians took to try to save their own lives, even what happens to the economy in a state of global warfare.  It is a truly impressive feat of imagination, and Brooks' interviewees are fully-fleshed out to deliver all his horrifying details--even requiring footnotes where the "editor" explains the acronyms and other post-apocalypic-critical knowledge.  (Side note: this footnote business was very annoying on my Kindle--I recommend picking up a hard copy.)

Some of my favorite interviews were with an American business tycoon who invented a "cure" for the zombie disease and then moved to Antarctica with his riches, a Japanese computer nerd who has to rappel his way down his high-rise building to escape, and a man who runs a shelter for the dogs who were trained for zombie combat.

As much as these individual and widely varying interviews are fascinating, they also create the book's major weakness--it's very hard to build momentum or engagement in the novel as a whole when it functions more a a series of short stories.  There starts to be a certain dreariness in hearing about the same thing over and over again even though the telling varies each time.  About 75% of the way through the book I had to drag myself through each interview, even though if I had been reading them as stand-alone pieces I probably still would have enjoyed them.  (It did pick up again towards the end, happily.)  There's also a lot of technical military talk that's a little dry for my tastes, but I'm sure other people enjoy all those details.

Still, definitely worth a read (or a skim, if you get bored partway through).  And, in continuing with the theme of every book I read these days, it's going to be a movie in 2012!  With Brad Pitt!  And that girl from The Killing!  I do like her.

Thoughts about The Help

The movie version of Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel opens today, I believe.  My mom gave me this book last year, and I read and enjoyed it.  There were some interesting writing techniques too--Stockett uses three different first person narrators, which I found entertaining but some people apparently found annoying due to the dialect she employs.  I recommend it for a fun read, but it's not the Best Book Ever and I think it was way over-hyped.

The plot is that a young white woman in the South interviews several local black maids about what it's really like to be them and work in white ladies' houses (not naming names of course).  The story follows her difficulties getting the book written and the controversy it causes when she publishes it.  Spoiler alert: it's mostly uplifting.

There's a lot of jibber jabber floating around about whether or not The Help is politically correct (see this article on Slate for a nice summary of the various opinions).  It does bother me when white people seem to drop in to save the day for black people in popular fiction/movies (see The Blind Side for another example).  But, as Slate says, you can argue that that's not exactly the situation here, which leaves me free and clear to be really excited to see this movie.  I'm getting good vibes from all the actresses (Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard) and it seems be holding strong in the 70s on Rotten Tomatoes.

So who wants to go see it with me?

Cowboys and Aliens

Movie, 2011, dir. Jon Favreau

The key to enjoying this movie is managing expectations.  I went into this movie expecting something akin to Snakes on a Plane in terms of tongue-in-cheek-itude, and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a fun little Western instead.

If you are expecting something new and genre-bending a la Black Swan (dance/horror!) or anyting by Tarantino, you will be disappointed.  It's basically just a standard Western, but the shoot-outs happen to be with aliens.  And the Indians are the allies.  I was sort of hoping that we would get the aliens' perspective on things too, but it was indisputably good guy = humans, bad guy = aliens.

Here's Harrison Ford's third appearance on my short blog, and probably my favorite of the three.  He's great as a tough guy cowboy (what?? Ford as a tough guy?? inventive casting!) who is the big man in town because's he's rich, but has to deal with the tomfoolery of his weirdo son (the teenager from Little Miss Sunshine, who was also good) and the arrival of a new tough guy in town--Daniel Craig.  They don't get much touger than Daniel Craig, so that's a definite challenge to your manhood.  Luckily Craig and Ford band together to work on the movie's central plot--chasing down the aliens who have abducted some of the townspeople.

It's worth mentioning that there are some great supporting actors as well--Sam Rockwell and Keith Carradine were both good, but they played a distant second fiddle to the leads in terms of material.  The male-dominated theater I was in on Friday night approved highly of Olivia Wilde as well.

A warning to all you sensitive types: this movie was, for lack of a better word, scarier than I was expecting.  There are a few make-you-jump moments, and a lot of loud noise and generally startling fight scenes.

The bottom line on this one is that if you're looking for a fun summer shoot-em-up, you'll be satsified.  If you were hoping for more, lower your expectations.

The Hunger Games Trilogy

Young Adult Fiction, Suzanne Collins, 2008-2010

I reserve the right to review each book separately in the future.  Right now, I am writing this review as a trilogy because I don't want to bore you, new readers, if you haven't read the series yet.  And, let's be clear, I don't know anyone who's read only one of these books.  They're like Pringles.  Except you read them.

You should read these books in the same way that you should have read Harry Potter.  I personally do not enjoy them as much as HP, but they are about to be a teen movie phenomenon on a somewhat smaller scale than HP/Twilight.  Or maybe bigger, who knows.  But that would be hard to pull off.  So anyway, if you want to be in the know at the water cooler, read these books.

The heroine is named Katniss ("what kind of name is that?" you ask. I don't know.)  She and her mother and sister live in post-apocalyptic-war-America.  In this America, the Capitol is in charge, and to reinforce their power over their states, they force each state ("District," of which there are 12) to send two of their teenagers to a televised battle-to-the-death event called the Hunger Games.  Yes, you read that right--to the death!  It's very dark and exciting.  Katniss has to abandon her childhood friend (slash love interest) Gale to go compete, and then teams up with a new love interest, Peeta, to try to survive the deadly arena.  Many casualties and changes of heart ensue.  I won't spoil the next two books, but suffice it to say that Collins takes young adult fiction to some very dark and dystopian places, full of political intrigue, strategy and battles, and lots more deaths.

Review time:  Super fun, takes a day to read each one--definitely go for it.  Collins does some intriguing world-building and you will definitely get hooked on the story.  Unfortunately, I really disliked the end of the series, but by that time you'll be in it for the long haul anyway, so don't worry about it right now.  (In case you are wondering, I thought the ending was way too dark, and that the third book in general was very poorly paced.)  Shout out to my friend Sasha: you may find yourself in love with some of the boys :)  I'll be interested to hear which side of the love triangle you all pick, readers.  Shout out to my friend Alex: you may really hate Katniss.  If you ask me, she's kind of fun because she's a scrappy action hero girl, but she is annoyingly incapable of emotions or rational responses.

So what are you waiting for? You have until March 23 to get up to speed before the first movie comes out. (look out for Sasha, she's an extra!)

Presumed Innocent

Novel, Scott Turow, 1987

A courtroom/crime/suspense story.  You would think that CSI/NCIS/my DVDs of Ally McBeal would be enough crime drama to satiate me, but you would be wrong.  I picked this up as a vacation read and actually liked it.

It's about this guy Rusty who is accused of murder, but he's a lawyer so the narration is interesting because he captures the finer points of the trial better than your everyman-narrator.  The defense strategy is intricately plotted, and if you're into lawyer-ishness you'll be hooked from page 1.  Of course there are plot twists galore, but what really sold me on this book was each character's shady motivations.  No one in the entire plot is straightforwardly "good", which is pretty cool.  Oh and it's got something for everyone, romance lovers--the whole case is based on an affair between Rusty and the hotsy totsy murder victim Carolyn, his lawyer coworker (the affair was before she was murdered, duh.)  And for you politicos, there's even a heated race for prosecuting attorney!

My major complaint is some latent racism/homophobia, supposedly part of the characters' natural speech, but I just don't like it and am not entirely convinced it doesn't come from Turow himself rather than the characters (this is not just policemen making racist remarks, it's also the way he writes the dialogue for black and Asian characters, among other things).

Other than that, it's a fun summer read.  Plus there's a sequel!  (Innocent, 2010.)  And a movie!  How did Harrison Ford end up on this blog again so soon?  Oh well, Netflix, here I come.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Movie, 2011, dir. David Yates

Let me start by saying that I am incredibly biased on this one.  I have an unabashed love for the Harry Potter books and an only slightly abashed love for the movies (Chamber of Secrets, you abash me, and yet I continue to watch you in ABC Family marathons).  So, yes, I enjoyed the movie a great deal.  Assuming that at this point no one really needs an explanation of what the movie is about, here is just a quick summary of my main thoughts on the final installment EVER of HP.  Note: spoilers throughout.  You've been warned.

Pros:
a. Acting, especially on the part of the main characters, was at its finest of the series.  Not that I have any special connection to Daniel Radcliffe or anything, but just look at the progress he has made over the eight films.  I think the actors pretty much all have a chance to succeed in the real, post-Potter acting world.
b. Special effects.  The movie's big battle scenes didn't disappoint. I was especially impressed with the big "protection dome" that the professors constructed to cover all of Hogwarts, and the ensuing attack from the Death Eaters.
c. A separate entry alone for the fight between Snape and McGonagall.  Grown-up wizard fights are the best.

Cons:
a. The epilogue.  One of my least favorite parts of the books, and now one of my least favorite parts of the movies.  The aging technology they used on the actors was...not aging enough.  As my husband put it, it seemed that the main way they aged Hermione was to put her in a sensible blouse.  Ron grew a beer belly.  Ginny got a mom haircut.  But they all had roughly the same faces, allowing for the disconcerting conclusion that Ginny and Hermione became pregnant immediately post-Battle of Hogwarts.  I guess the victory was cause for celebration, but come on now, keep your pants on until the dead are buried at least.
b. The lack of Grindelwald, and really any explanation of the whole Hallows vs. Horcruxes dilemma that Harry struggles with.  Along with that, the lack of the do-we-trust-Dumbledore-or-not subplot.  There were just some key story elements missing that, in the book, added cohesiveness to the entire plot.  Without them, we got the main action sequences--find Horcrux, destory Horcrux, fight Death Eaters, rinse, repeat--but we missed the resolutions of some story lines I was looking forward to and the whole thing felt a little jumpy.

With that, I close this review and eagerly await the release of Pottermore so that the world of HP will continue and I don't have to feel like my childhood has abruptly ended.

Why People Like Twilight: My official take on it

With the Comic-Con panels this week, so officially begins the upcoming season of promotion for the first installment of the Breaking Dawn movie, which will be released in November.  Like birds heralding the news of spring, so internet commenters will rant or rave about Twilight, mostly nonsensically.  In the past, people have certainly taken on academic-style defenses of what draws fans to Twilight, and others take equally intelligent jabs at why it is a terrible influence on girls, a bad piece of writing, etc etc.  I'd like to take my own (decidedly non-academic) approach to why people (including me) like Twilight.

Plain and simple, it comes down to the force of the love between Edward and Bella.  People often get lost in posts like these by trying to explain WHY Bella loves Edward (and this is where the anti-Twilighters can really have a heyday, because Edward IS creepy and abusive and all those other things they claim he is).  Doesn't matter.  For whatever reason, she is desperately in love with him, more or less from the first time she sees him.  And what draws people to Twilight is that he's desperately in love with her too!  How great is that???  How many people find that their teenage crushes--which we all know are the most violent and inescapable crushes of one's life--are returned with equal force?  Edward and Bella's longing is passionate and yet restrained, which is another facet of the attraction to these books: the longer the consummation is dragged out, the more rewarding it is when it eventually happens.  And boy, do we have to suffer through some drawing out.  But that is why the screaming will be deafening when this honeymoon finally comes to pass.  It's a story of all-consuming teenage obsession/love, finally played out to a happy conclusion.  Everyone can relate to wanting that, which is why the series is so popular.  Done.  Yes, there are flaws in the books and the movies (lots! many flaws!  I do not dispute this!), and if you want to go over all the problems with the writing, the pacing, the characters, anything, go for it--but don't say you can't understand why people like Twilight.  For the fans, the love story is grand enough to absorb all these flaws.

The books were enough to sell the early fans on the intensity of the love between Edward and Bella.  The movies have stoked the flames and turned this into a phenomenon.  The casting was brilliant.  Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are both hot and have both mastered the smoldering stares necessary to communicate the intensity of passion that the readers crave.  Take any stills from the movies of the two of them staring at each other, and you can see how any 12 year old would long for more from them.

I'm about to tackle one other issue that gets bandied around on chat threads: Twilight vs. Harry Potter.  HP fans get all riled up on Twilight boards about how much worse Twilight is than HP.  Yes.  You're right, it is worse.  Now get off the Twilight boards.

They're totally different series.  Just because they are both YA phenomenons does not mean that they need to be evaluated against each other.  Rowling is a better author.  Meyer wrote a better love story.  News flash: HP is about wizardry, friendship, and battles between good and evil, not teenage hormones and undying passion.  (While Twilight may purport to be about vampires, this is my point: that's really a subplot to the love story in terms of what motivates the fans.)  When it comes to Twilight and HP, you can like either, neither, or both--they don't need to be in conflict with one another.  Stop hating on each other and find something new to read.

One final point: an alternate motivation to like Twilight.  Some people who are mega Twihards don't like Edward; they are Team Jacob.  Totally fine.  Unrequited love and/or shirtless Taylor Lautner are equally compelling reasons to love the series, and I am not saying you are wrong.  Just in the minority.

Blade Runner

Movie, 1982, dir. Ridley Scott

Now, I'm all about some dystopia (loved Hunger Games! must review...), but to my lovely fiance's chagrin I don't always like "dark" movies.  This one may have crossed into that territory for me a little bit.  Let me explain.

First of all, I was sort of hoping that there would be, like, ice skates or at least roller blades involved in this movie.  Perhaps more like Rollerball, which I didn't see, but judging by its 2.8 stars on IMDb, looks to be just a fun romp.  Once I realized that the title Blade Runner was just a seemingly somewhat arbitrary name for the profession of the main character, Deckard, I got over the ice skates thing, but never ceased to be a little disenchanted.

Main idea: Deckard hunts down fancypants robots that look just like humans and have escaped from their slave colony or something.  This does lead to some cool scenes, like interviews where the blade runner people try to tell if they're interviewing people or robots (they call them "replicants"), and chase scenes through the thoroughly depressing-looking future LA.

It also leads to some ridiculous noir detective-type voiceovers and, as a product of its time, horrible synthesizer music to emphasize how dark and lonely the crowded future can be.  Those elements aside, I can see why a lot of people really think this movie is edgy and genre-defining and generally just cool sci-fi.  In the end, it's just too...dark for my taste.  Also, I did not care for Harrison Ford (Deckard) at all.  Guy seems like he is reading his lines off cue cards and hasn't decided what inflection to put in them yet.

The Gravedigger's Daughter

Novel, by Joyce Carol Oates, 2007

I am an Oates fan, although her prose can be meandering and dense.  Oates is big on characters, not so big on plot, which is something you just have to appreciate going in.  If you're not into that kind of book, just stop reading now and know it's not your thing.

For those interested in character studies, I thought this one was pretty excellent.  The opening scene is something of a chase scene, but the impeccable first person narration follows Rebecca's frantic thoughts to convey the urgency of the scene and take care of a great deal of exposition at the same time.  The story then backtracks, though, to Rebecca's youth.  I found this early section of the novel to be somewhat tedious, because I kept wanting to get back to the time the novel started with; I was interested to read in the "P.S." interview at the end of the book that these early scenes were Oates's personal favorites.  Perhaps this blinded her to the fact that they were kind of boring.  Anyway, we follow Rebecca's entire young adult life, adding incredibly vivid characters to her surroundings and ending with a strong enough sense of closure to appease those looking for some idea of plot.

The book is perhaps about the Holocaust, and perhaps about American in the 50's through 70's, and perhaps about upstate New York (as most of her books are, in some way or another), but mostly about creating a fully realized life for an excellent female character.  More, please.

The back of the book recommends other Oates novels--she has written approximately 1,000,000--among which I would most like to try: The Falls (2004), Blonde (2000), and Black Water (1992)

Alias: Seasons 1 and 2

TV Show, 2001-2006

Take this entire review with a grain of salt, because I have just started season 3, and so far, am skeptical of where we're going with this whole thing.

That being said, seasons 1 and 2 of Alias are awesome and totally worth your time.  It's a spy show, full of double agents, fake-out deaths, geeky spy gadgets (you know, lipsticks that can blow open safes and stuff), and even heart-wrenching love stories and family drama.  J.J. Abrams, as he is wont to due, leaves you dangling at the end of each episode, so it's highly addictive with its international underground crime-busting missions packed with action sequences.

Here are the things that propel Alias above and beyond your typical procedural:
1. Victor Garber.  Plays every scene with incredible intensity.  If that's not enough acting clout to impress you, consider that he was great as Jesus in Godspell back in the day.  Now that's range.
2. It's the best elements of Mission: Impossible (crazy spy gear in creative new situations each week!) combined with season-driving plot developments in the vein of Dexter or Lost.
3. For those of you who care about this kind of thing, Jennifer Garner wears more sexy outfits in pretty much every episode than Gillian Anderson did in all nine seasons of the The X-Files combined.  Or, for those of you more interested in the male species, you've got Bradley Cooper in the prime of his youth.  Plus previously-unknown-to-me Michael Vartan.  Just imagine the love triangle possibilities!

Maybe more than anything else, though, I have to love a show with a kick-butt female lead.  She can shoot guns, dominate hand-to-hand combat, and speak a zillion languages.  There's really not a male counterpart who she backs up; all the men are her accessories and behind-the-scenes support.  Rock on, Sydney Bristow.