Fleeting Obsessions

I finished playing Deadly Premonition several days ago. If you aren’t familiar with it is an open world horror game, something of a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil/Silent Hill type games. I’d call it survival horror, but since there is plenty of unlimited ammo weaponry that you can pick up, I think I’ll just stick with horror. It was great fun.  I had really meant to do a lot more of the side missions, but around episode 3 the game just starts to propel you forward so I did not end up doing nearly as many as I had intended to do. Thankfully, you can go back and replay chapters to do any side quests you missed the first time that are only available in certain chapters. And then after the game’s conclusion you can continue to wander the game world and so do more side missions then.

The interesting thing is that I find myself doing them now. Normally, when I finish a game’s main story, that’s it. I’m done. For example, when I finished up Mass Effect 2, there were still a ton of side missions that I could go and do, but I have zero interest in doing them and no interest at all in the DLC either.  Even Fallout 3, which is by far my favorite game, became less interesting to me once I had completed the final story-related quest (i.e. the Broken Steel DLC) But Deadly Premonition inhabits such a quirky wonderful place and I find the protagonist so charming that I just want to spend more time with him, so I’ve been wandering back into earlier chapters to play whatever side quests appeal to me. The Emily quests are a “MUST DO”.

Now a few thoughts for the End game. *SPOILERS BELOW*

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Ahh, Summer. I’ve been waiting for you to really arrive. I don’t want care what day everyone else thinks summer starts, for me it doesn’t begun until the season premiere of The 4400. It’s a long time between seasons though and I really wish I’d watched last season’s finale because I can’t believe how many things I’d forgotten about. Sean was in a coma? Man, I just don’t remember that at all.

I’m very glad to see Kyle back and Jordan Collier just gets hotter every season. The man is simply magnetic. I really could not stand him in season 1, but by now I’ve done a complete turnaround and I have a feeling that this season I’m actually going to be rooting for him.

Another thing I’d forgotten is that the guy who plays Lorne on Stargate Atlantis plays Agent Garrity on The 4400. And I love him! I love him on both shows, but more on The 4400 than Stargate. And he’s always been something of a bit player on both shows, so I’m hoping that his increased presence in the season premiere means we’ll be seeing a lot more of him.

And now for some episode specifics.

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Since Doctor Who isn’t airing in the US yet and I don’t want to inadvertently spoil anyone who is waiting for it to eventually air on SciFi, clicky clicky!

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Since most of my tv shows are over and the summer shows haven’t started yet, I’ve been watching movies on the TiVo. Most of them have been sitting there for ages.

Mission Impossible 3: As much as I find Tom Cruise the person entirely creepy and just sort of skin-crawlingly gross, he still kinda does it for me in movies. I didn’t think he would and so skipped MI-3 in the movie theatre, but I quite enjoyed it. It was MUCH better than Mission Impossible 2. Of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman is a way better villain than Dougray Scott! So that’s really not saying much. But overall, I enjoyed it.

Alexander: Surprisingly enjoyable – despite the fact that Angelina Jolie is actually a year younger than Colin Farrell and they did virtually nothing to age her to make her look old enough to be his mother, and despite the fact that Colin’s dye job was terrible, and despite the fact that there was no make-out scene with Jared Leto. It was about a billion times better than Troy, but a 100 times less good than Gladiator. I love Colin. And Leto was so fucking pretty.

The Art of War: I watched it for 27 minutes and then deleted it on the assumption that it was never going to pick-up speed and become interesting. I learned my lesson from watching Mr & Mrs Smith almost all the way through. If the movie doesn’t look like it is really going anywhere or getting action-y in the first half hour, delete it!

Poseidon: this almost got deleted during the first half hour as well, and then Josh Lucas leaped into a fiery tank of water and swam to the other side and I was hooked. Also, he is pretty when wet. Actually, he’s just pretty. Stupid movie, but I watched it all the way through.

The Monkey King: It’s four hours. I love Thomas Gibson like whoah, but I watched a half hour or maybe a bit longer last night and I think it is going to hit the delete pile this evening when I get around to turning the tv on again.

Tonight I might watch King Arthur and Walk the Line. I also have about four DVDs to watch, but I will probably wait until I’ve cleared most of the movies off the TiVo.

Other things Currently sitting on the TiVo:

Special Unit 2 (5 episodes) — I usually watch it when I’m only paying half-attention and surfing the web

Painkiller Jane (4 episodes) – ditto
The Tudors (6 episodes) – may wind up deleted unwatched
The Last Sentinel – Katee Sackoff! Some rubbish scifi channel movie. Will I end up watching it? Who can say!
28 Days Later – seen it already, but I may want to see it again
London – Chris Evans, Jason Stathom. Unlikely I’ll actually watch it
Down in the Valley — Edward Norton. Hmm, maybe I will watch this tonight
Damnation Alley — a 70s post-apocalyptic movie. I may even get around to watching it
Reign of the Gargoyles — Stone gargoyles brought to life by the Nazis. Scifi channel movie, of course! And how could I not watch it, yeah?
Roswell (6 episodes) -season 3 eps, so they’ll sit and wait until I’ve seen all of season 2
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada — Barry Pepper. I love him, but this has been sitting on the TiVo since January so I bet I never watch it.
Road to Ruin – A Peter Weller movie I haven’t seen yet. I will probably at least watch the first half hour eventually, because — Peter Weller. OMG I LOVE HIM LIKE WHOAH! But he does a lot of bad movies and many of them don’t make it past the half hour mark.
Madison – James Caviezel. Also on TiVo since January. I already deleted another movie of his unwatched, but I may get around to at least giving this one a go. Maybe. Okay, maybe not.
De-Lovely – destined to be deleted unwatched
The Chronicles of Narnia — I’ll probably get to this sometime this week
Love and Death on Long Island – Jason Priestly, someday maybe. But it’s been sitting on the TiVo since last July LOL
Hotel Rwanda – someday maybe, but has been sitting on TiVo since last April. Heh.
Second Sight (4 episodes) – I’ve watched the others, and will watch these as well… eventually
Backflash – Robert Patrick — has been on TiVo since October 2005, but unlike the other long term inhabitants has been watched in full 3 times and I repeatedly watch various scenes from it. Will likely never be deleted off TiVo ever. If you like Robert Patrick, you have to see this movie. It is fucking AWESOME!!

Now what’s on your TiVo (or DVR)?

I suppose it is now that most of them have happened. In the toss-up between Supernatural and Heroes, it ended up being Heroes that made me cry. Waaah. I want my Nathan back. I’ll be very curious to see where they go with this next season — are we going to spend a lot of time traveling through time? I think it would be interesting if they basically had to repeat the same events over and over again during different points in history, but I’m guessing that won’t be it.

I found myself mostly distracted by other things during the 24 finale and barely paid attention to it. I blame this on the lack of Michael Shanks. This is really stupid of me because I was quite eagerly and happily watching 24 long before Michael Shanks did a couple of episodes, so why I’d be so disappointed that he wasn’t there, I don’t know. Dumb.

Most of the other finales left me “eh”, most especially the Supernatural finale. Once Sam was alive again, I quickly lost interest in whatever they were doing. It was all just a bit too much “Welcome to the Hellmouth.” I’ve seen it all before. Which isn’t to say I’m not looking forward to next season because I totally am.

As for tonight’s Lost, suffice to say that I did not guess what the twist was nor even suspect it for even a minute. Bravo! I suppose I should have been smart enough to figure it out ( since it just aired, I won’t say), but nope. I was totally suckered.

I’m really annoyed that House wasn’t on this week, but I suppose it gives me something to look forward to next week. I guess I’ll be spending most of this week catching up with all the movies that are sitting on my Tivo, doing nothing.

Speaking of Tivo, feel free to check out my 7 Ways Tivo Will Change Your Life over at Hubpages. And if anyone feels like Digging it for me, I’d certainly appreciate it. I really don’t like to Digg my own stuff, but I think it’s Digg-worthy. Hopefully

Heroes – The Hard Part - So far my favorite episode this season has been “Five Years Gone” so nothing was going to be as good as that, but my main complaint is that this seems like it should have been a “Nathan” episode, what with the election and all. And yet, as usual, not enough Nathan. Still, I’m always ridiculously happy with Peter and Claire are together and the light caress made me squeak out loud. I can hardly stand the fact that next episode is the finale and there won’t be any new Heroes eps until at least the Fall.

CSI – The Good, the Bad and the Dominatrix – Lady Heather! Most of this season has been pure rubbish and I’m not even talking about Sara/Grissom. That relationship doesn’t disturb me at all. No, no, my annoyance is over the fact that CSI has flagrantly jumped the shark this season. Between the annoying “dead people talking to each other” episode and the even more annoying “Hodges” episode, I keep wondering why I’m still tuning in most weeks. Of course, lately, my finger has been sitting on the fast-forward button while I watch. But I’ve always enjoyed the Lady Heather episodes and I enjoyed this week’s as well, especially since it let Catherine stick it to Sarah even though she didn’t realize she was doing it.

Supernatural – All Hell Breaks Loose (pt 1) – Oh, most dearly beloved show. Ever since that episode where Sam went a bit evil, Jared Padalecki has really grown on me. So while I will always be a “Dean girl”, I really enjoyed this episode and when Sam bellowed that girl’s name, my heart might have fluttered a little bit.  I did not quite have the same emotional reaction as the rest of fandom appears to have had to the ending, but it’s mostly because I’m not too emotionally invested. It’s weird really. I love the show a lot, but I guess neither character really reflects some aspect of myself on screen so I don’t find either of them to be one of my default fictional characters. I love them both, but they don’t speak to me on that level that, say, Angel or Daniel Jackson does. I think I really have to see something of myself in a character before I can get very emotionally invested. Of course, maybe it is a good thing that it doesn’t leave me weeping every week

Stargate Atlantis – The Game – I saw this episode previously thanks to either Canadian or British airing schedules, but I tuned in again this week because I LOVE this episode. It is so much fun. I actually noticed a lot more going on in it this time around as well.  I had noticed previously that the leader of “Rodney’s Country” was basically a Samantha Carter doppleganger, but I hadn’t noticed that virtually every woman in the town had short blonde hair. That’s just hilarious. Also funny were all the pictures of Rodney. I did not note how many of them were the last time I viewed this episode.

The other thing I really loved about this episode was the scene where Elizabeth tries to negotiate between the towns and the leader of “Sheppard’s Town” just does this spot-on imitation of John with a bit of a hand-wave. And it wasn’t even that the hand-wave is something that Sheppard does, but that the emotional tenor of the motion perfectly matched John’s personality. Really well done. Plus, I love that actor anyway. I know I’ve seen him in some other stuff and he’s HOT.

I’m absolutely certain I watched other shows this week and had things to say about them, but the problem with waiting until the end of the week for a wrap-up is that I’ve forgotten everything. Must take notes.

When I latch onto a new obsession, I latch on tight. Nathan Petrelli has actually been my favorite character on Heroes from the get go and I’ve always enjoyed Adrian Pasdar in anything else in which I’ve seen him, but I didn’t become obsessed until I saw Profit.

In order to indulge my obsession, this week I’ve been watching Mysterious Ways. I’m four episodes in and so far I’m enjoying it more than I expected. Even the presence of Rae Dawn Chong can’t dull my pleasure in seeing Adrian Pasdar being somewhat goofy and sweet. His character, Declan, is quite charming and a big departure from playing Jim Profit. Since Mysterious Ways originally aired on the PAX network, a sort of generic Christian channel owned by NBC, I was expecting the religious elements of the show to be heavy-handed, but so far it is really just a sunnier version of The X-Files crossed with Supernatural and every other tv series that has ever explored the realm of mysterious and spooky events. It is no Touched By Angel and thank God for that.

Tomorrow I expect I’ll have thoughts on this week’s tv — Heroes, CSI, Supernatural, etc. I haven’t quite decided how I’m going to handle discussing spoilers. My preference is to generally not bother with a cut-tag of any kind, so maybe I’ll save my posts on current tv shows for a weekly round-up on Fridays.

According to Arrogantics, Fox is going to burn off the final two episodes of Drive on July 4th. Now, since I’m a loser, I’ll certainly be home on the 4th of July to watch the episodes and, even if I’m not, I have my TiVo to capture them. But honestly, you have to ask yourself — the 4th of Fucking July? I swear that network has some sort of passive-aggressive thing going on with Tim Minear.

It’s a shame really because, as much as I love Nathan Fillion, I could never quite get into Firefly, but I was enjoying Drive. And now, no more Nathan on my tv. Oh well, I guess I can go watch old episodes of Two Guys and a Girl.