double review: The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three and Action Comics 851 in 3-D

double review:

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (slight spoilers)



While it does lack a firewalk, it makes up for it with a sweet ass 3rd rail suicide.
Walter Matthau is a fucking tough guy in the 70s. Lots of machine guns. New York is way cooler in the 70s. Wicked ragtag heist team. Awesome score. Great ending. Move it to the top of your queue. (Go for the ass kicking Walter Matthau double feature with "Charley Varrick" as well, unless you don't like post noir 70s crime flicks, barnstorming cropdusters and Joe Don Baker as a psychotic hit man. (if you don't, you're a sap.)

rating : 10 out of 10 fucking oscars





Action Comics 851 (3-D special)

Fuck. I have a lot of 3-D comics, but this is THE SWEETEST FUCK OF SHIT MOUNTAIN for 3-D comics. Yup, even better that the Dinosaurs For Hire 3-D special, and you know I wouldn't say something like that lightly. The 3-D is so fucking rad. I laughed. I cried. I tried to reach into the comic way more than I normally do.
This arc has been bad like Michael Jackson on the album "Bad", with Geoff Johns and Richard Donner (yup, that Richard Donner) writing, cool Adam Kubert art, General Zod, Mon-El, The Monstrous Non, the Phantom Zone, sweet as fuck 3-D phantom zone glasses for this issue, cool cliffhanger ending leading into the "Action Comics Annual 1". You can get the Johns/Donner "Last Son" arc, or the trade when it comes out if it has the 3-D shit with it, or have it high on your list of regrets on your death bed (if I was to hazzard a guess, it will probably be regret number four).


now listening:
Voivod - "War And Pain"

Hawaii 5-0 2x1 review "A Thousand Pardons, Your Dead!"

SPOILER WARNING! 5-0 SPOILERS AHEAD!

Season 2 of Hawaii 5-0 finally came out, and I wasted no time in getting the first disc. I'm trying to ration this set out a little more so I don't burn through the whole thing in a few weeks like I did with season one, so I waited for the perfect afternoon to crack a kind micro, pop the dvd in, kick back and enjoy the first episode, "A Thousand Pardons, You're Dead!"

A devil loose on the rock... 5-O's job, find him! Harry Gaurdino, in the performance of his career, as the half mad Sgt. Simms! No way was I going to be pausing this one to answer the phone, so don't even bother. Text me if you have to, but do not fucking call.


Episode opens with Lorretta Switt as Anna, celebrating the death of her GI husband in Nam, and the cashing of her life insurance policy on him. She's drunk and throwing money around in some kind of weird "dance with army guys on leave" bar she works in. Sorry Hotlips, we all know you ain't gonna' make it past the opening theme song alive.

A life insurance scam on GIs? McGarret does not take kindly to the idea. He sends Dan-O in under cover, and he starts hitting up the late Anna's roommate Yoko, played by the very lovely and very talented Barbara Luna, for info. He gets drunk and totally takes her back to her place, but then she pulls the old "I'm sick, I drank too much, I'm sad my roommate got murdered" excuse I'm sure all you fella's have heard a million times before. Boy am I sick of that old gem!

Dan-O has a hangover, and McGarret rakes him over the coals about it with a knowing smile. Oh to be as young and fresh faced as Dan-O, with out the weight of being the head of 5-O weighing down on your shoulders! Kono gets off a real zinger before McGarret gets Dan-O some black coffee and sends him back out to get some more info from the girl.

James Macarthur gets to really flex his considerable acting muscles in this one as he begins to fall for the beautiful and wild Yoko, and he gives a pretty good speech about being a lonesome GI that I may use in my one man show, or at the very least as a pickup line.

Oh fuck yes, it's time for Steve to get all tough with the suspect, the crazy racist Sgt Simms. There's a totally sweet fast camera zoom in shot of Jack Lord as he enters a pool hall to put the scare into him. The two trade threats, but you can tell Simms is getting nervous. Plus, you just fucking THREATENED McGarret! The head of 5-0. Make no doubt about it partner, you will go down.

Enter motherfucking JAMES HONG! A young(er) looking Lo Pan isn't the heavy in this, but a weasley book keeper in on the scam. The roll is really a tour de force for him, and he gives an amazing death scene. If he didn't get an Emmy for it, it's a fucking crime.

Things inevidebly progress into a showdown between Sgt Simms and 5-0, and a sweet as fuck shootout ensues where McGarret deflects a bullet with a search light before wasting the scum bag. Unfortunately, we don't get a speech from Jack Lord about how sick the whole thing makes him. Instead, the director, the gifted Nicholas Colasanto, chooses to end the episode right after the guns blaze, which is actually an original choice for 5-0 at this point, and as much as I love a Jack Lord monologue, I do have to applaud his inovativness.

All in all, another great fucking episode.

10 out of 10 fucking Oscars.

now playing:
The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling
Ozric Tentacles - The Bits Between The Bits
Allman Bros - Dreams Box set, disc 1
James Gang - Rides Again
Grandmaster Flash - The Message
Funerot - july rehearsal cassette
Agent Steel - Skeptics Apocalypse

Currently reading:
H.P. Lovecraft Omnibus Volume 2: Dagon and Other Macabre Tales
By: H.P. Lovecraft
Release date: 18 April, 1985