True Blood 4.4 "I'm Alive and On Fire"

What we have here is what I like to call a soft tissue episode. It's no mere place holder filler episode but it's not the real muscle of the season either. We are moving along at a nice clip though, advancing all of the plots and raising the stakes.

Marnie watches a witch being burned alive. So that's why her eyes go alight?

I'm Alive and On Fire
In this episode we learn that fairy blood is no joke. If a vamp drains the whole fairy (see last week), he gets drunk and he can spend hours in the sun. Turns out that Alexxander Skarsgård's drunk Eric is just as much fun as his childlike Eric. He flirts shamelessly with Sookie, and he goes skinny dipping in the sunlight (in an episode that's veritably bursting with beefcake). Speaking of which, most of the skin show is far less icky than the past two episodes of Jason Stackhouse's rape at the hands of the werepanther women. Jason finally gets vertical again (thank God) and escapes, though it's probably safe to say that trouble will follow him. In other storylines that evil baby gets a writing on the walll moment "BABY NOT YOURS" and there's more potential trouble for the Merlotte boys as the people they turn to emotionally are less than safe havens.

Something smells fishy. Well, yeah, he's been to the lake.

The strongest element of the episode was its fluid reflectiveness as scenes from disconnected storylines seems to comment on each other. The reveal that Bill's latest conquest is actually his great great great great great granddaughter bounces off all of that sick "brotherhusband" talk in Jason's storyline. And then there's the crazy girlfriends. Take, for instance, Alcides's relationship with his girlfriend Debbie.

Surprisingly it's not his rock-hard body that's made her nuts...

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My Bellatrix vs. Minerva Fantasy

Today at a critics screening, upset that the film was out of focus, I ran out of the theater to tell the people in charge. On my way out I tripped on a step I didn't see in the dark and literally went tumbling, face first (luckily my hands hit the ground before my face). After the screening -- which I winced through in pain -- I looked down to see my foot covered in blood! My toe is all F***ed up.

This is a really long way of saying that maybe Potter fans put some sort of hex on me today, anticipating a negative review of the last chapter of the beloved franchise. But the truth is I was somewhat nice to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two in my review at Towleroad because it is 100 times better than Part One -- not that that's a high bar to jump -- even if I think it's wanting in a few key ways*. Let's say B/B- for solid if limited entertainment. In short: it's a worthy finale and totally representative of the series. 

*Like, for instance you have all these great adult British actors and they rarely interact. I mean I was D-Y-I-N-G for a Helena vs. Maggie / Bellatrix vs. Minerva showdown so I could pretend that Lucy Honeychurch was finally done with "Poor Charlotte"'s constant fussy meddling and enlisted the dark arts to take her down! (Merchant & Ivory's Harry Potter. Haha. Just try to imagine it!) I knew this battle wasn't going to happen because I've read the book but instead all I got was like a disappointing three seconds between Julie Walters and Helena (I'll readily admit it was a great moment in the book.)

Was the Harry Potter finale satisfying for you? Do you think Stuart Craig will win the Art Direction Oscar as a thank you for the whole series? He's been nominated for Harry Potter movies three times out of seven thus far (plus six noms with three Oscars before it).

True Blood 4.3 "If You Love Me..."

Another Monday, another day spent thinking about last night's True Blood eppy. My favorite B story thread this season is definitely Arlene's devil baby so we must begin with my single favorite shot in the episode. The little monster slobbering all over Jessica's Capital C Creepy family heirloom doll.

He's so cute. Don't you just want to procure victims for him and grind them up into mushy baby food?

"If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?" is a solid episode but can't help but feel like a smidgeon of a comedown after last week's instant classic in which Eric was robbed of his memories by the new witch coven led by Marnie (Fiona Shaw). This week's episode provided several fun moments and some promising future-implications but the plot mostly was little beats in which characters were trying to decide how to deal with the major events of the previous episode: where should Sooki hide Eric? is Tara getting sucked back in for good? will Lafayette's fear of Eric continue to get everyone in trouble? who is Pam going to eat if she gets too angry? exactly what is Marnie channeling?

Cheers: True Blood is giving both Lafayette and Tara more subtle emotions to play this season.

The major B story his season appears to be Jason's stud captivity in that redneck nightmare village (they mean to use him to sire new werepups). Someone rescue him!

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I Am Number Four's Power Apps

Have any of you seen I Am Number Four? In a brain dead mood -- it's summer, it happens -- it was watched right here. At first I thought I might write up a whole review. Its jumbled five or six films in one chaos might be worth savaging as it continually reveals itself as a member of the  "we're making this shit up as we go along!" school of storytelling. Pettyfer is number four of a race of escapee aliens who are being hunted on Earth by their old nemesis and they're being killed in numerical order. I'll give you one guess as to how many of them are already dead.

Number three is dead.

Good guess!

I knew nothing about I Am Number Four's origins but immediately assumed it was based on a comic or graphic novel due to its continual expository mythology. All this for one stand alone feature? It must have fuller origins elsewhere. 

But in the end the movie is too disposable and harmless to be mean to. So let's just focus on the troublesome pet peeve: Alex Pettyfer's Magic Hands.

Pettyfer knows he's an alien and he knows he's number four but he doesn't actually understand his own powers yet and strange things keep happening to his body, like pulsing blue light from his hands. Pettyfer is a bit too, um, well-developed for I Am Number Four to double property as a puberty metaphor but it seems to be trying anyway. Once he starts using those hands his powers seem limitless. His hands are always ready with some solution: lock-picking, energy blasts, heat generation, super strength, you name it. At one point when he just decides to use them as flashlights in a dark room where key exposition secrets are hidden we had to add our own dialogue from the couch: "I've got an app for that, too!"

There's just nothing those mitts can't do.

Note to all filmmakers of this and Green Lantern and anyone taking on any future heroes with undefined powers: it doesn't work. If your hero's gifts are never defined there are no stakes. You can't push them to their limits for a dramatic climax if you've never given any indication that they have any. Think it over. 

True Blood 4.2 "You Smell Like Dinner"

Last week on True Blood I bemoaned the scattershot expository-heavy nature of the season 4 premiere but Holy Recovery. This show must have taken a hit of "V" last week because it came on supernaturally strong in the second episode of the season. If they keep this up we could be looking at a peak season. The show managed to pull at least a third of its characters (can we hope for two thirds?) back into a central plot (the emergence of a powerful new witch coven) in organic ways. It's the kind of braided multi-strand narrative that the best television series thrive on and which newly fanatical Game of Thrones watchers are going to eventually realize will never ever happen again on their new favorite show ever -- unless the production team ditches the source material for original stories -- but let's not get sidetracked!

What were those vamp whores up to this week?

'You want to call me that again?'

"You Smell Like Dinner" covers as much recap ground in its first half as "She's Not There" did in its entire hour while actually advancing the story. Jason is being held captive by his were-panther community and we learn why. The vampires at Fangtasia are still beset by Right Wing Christian groups -- Pam gets a particularly choice zinger in before hot-headed Hoyt gets a pumelling. Sam's shapeshifter friends become more interesting, particularly Luna. Eric continues his takeover of Sookie's house and life. He calls her "saucy" which is an impressively perfect word choice on behalf of the screenwriters given that it's 100% accurate, a bit old fashioned (he's hundreds of years old) and English isn't his native tongue.

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