Being Human - A Twofer

 

“The Times They Are a Changin”

Nora and Xander (who I’m sure has a character name but I don’t care) are ok after the standoff in the storage unit.  He helpfully reminds her of some wolfy code that “there is no worse sin than turning on one of your own.”  Oy.  This is the last we see of Xander but I’m guessing he’ll be back soon enough.

In other Josh and Nora news, Josh meets a teen patient, Erin, who got scratched during the last full moon.  Erin’s parents are meth addicts or some such so she’s been stuck in the foster system, which is why Josh and Nora break some rules and bring Erin home to help her through her first shift.  She finds their prediction about her turning into a wolf a bit hard to swallow.  Even more difficult is watching Josh’s video of him turning, especially the nekkid bits.  Heh.  The night of the full moon, they send her and Nora into the woods with a slab of meat and tips for pre and post-shifting.  Josh reveals that he’s packing some tiny heat (not a euphemism) just in case things go sideways.  The shift goes fine…bringing a new meaning to terms like ‘female bonding,’ ‘that time of the month,’ and ‘ladies’ night.’

If you remember, Sally kissed a guy from her past, Trent, and he died.  She wants to go to his funeral but there’s too much risk that other folks from her past would be there.  She manages to find his ghost and explains how she’s sort of responsible for his death. He takes it as well as you might expect.  To help make amends and to possibly help him get his door, Sally agrees to talk to his fiancé and apologize on his behalf for cheating on her with Sally.  Turns out the fiancé had been cheating on him for over a year so she felt a lot less guilty.  Trent yells at Sally a bit more, eventually finds his door and goes through it.  On the other side of the door is Donna the witch, with a really big knife.  She slices him, turns him to dust and eats it.  Then Donna the witch gets younger.

And Aidan?  Well Aidan and Henry are trying to find folks with clean blood.  It doesn’t go well and Henry is still pretty pissed at Aidan for setting his blood-slave girlfriend free.  Aidan asks Josh for help finding folks at the hospital who never got sick.  Josh is hesitant at first but agrees.  Henry is weak and has apparently fed on a tainted human because he’s sick now.  Oh and he feels the need to remind Aidan that everyone who loves him dies.  Nice.

“I’m So Lonesome I Could Die” aka Aidan Dances!!!

It’s 3am and Aidan is having a party while Josh and Nora are trying to sleep.  Erin’s drinking and Josh shuts that down quickly (she’s 15).  Sally spot checks to make sure she doesn’t know anyone and then joins the party.  She’s dancing with Aidan and it’s pretty cute.  Unfortunately Aidan is just covering up his pain with frat parties. 

Nora’s going home for her mom’s birthday and Josh wants to come along.  Nora doesn’t think this is such a good idea but he wears her down.  So he and Erin go with her and Erin makes an impression on Nora’s brother, RJ.  Josh was hoping to make a good impression on Nora’s dad (by asking his permission to marry his daughter) but the dude doesn’t have much personality.  Later RJ shows up at their house and makes out with Erin.  Josh shuts that down pretty quickly and they throw him out of the house.  This pisses off Erin and she runs away.

Sally has a dream that she’s killing people she knows.  She decides she needs a new identity and goes to Aidan for suggestions since vampires have been doing just that for hundreds of years.  He takes her to a dive bar where she’s sure to not run into anyone from her past but he’s really only interested in the rather large tattooed gentleman at the end of the bar.  Aidan follows tattooed dude outside and leaves Sally alone.  She goes outside and finds tattooed dude on the ground with fresh bite marks.  Later Sally yells at Aidan for being so careless but he makes a point about even people who didn’t get the virus before could be getting it now so there’s no way to be totally safe.  Aidan awakens to find Sally straddling him with a stake pointed near his heart.  They have a heart to heart, he shows her where the heart actually is and he decides to get his life together.  He takes a shower, the universal symbol for starting over and goes back to the hospital to get his job back.  At the hospital he finds a bubble boy who’s been locked up for the past eight months.  Oh boy.  Oh and Sally gets caught at the funeral home where she talked to Trent’s finace.  She was looking for possible new identities in the dead baby files (ew!).  The hot funeral director offers to help her and offers her a job too.

Last Night's Being Human

"(Dead) Girls Just Want to Have Fun"

I’m trying to make these recaps a bit shorter because I don’t need to recount absolutely everything that happens on the show.  Like Will says, “Brevity is the soul of wit” and wit is a goal of mine so I'm gonna attempt some brevity.  I just love the show and the actors so very much that I want everyone else to love them too.

Xander Berkeley (if you don’t recognize his name, you’ll recognize his face) opens the episode and he’s on a hunt for his son.  He’s under the impression some vampy Amish might have some information about him.  Xander looks off to the side, sees a wolf head tacked to the wall, and gets the unfortunate answer to his question.  After dusting the vampy Amish he vows, to the wolf head, to avenge his death and take out the killer’s loved ones too. 

Sally is back and in a new outfit!  Plus her hair looks very cute.  Apparently they found and unearthed Stevie and Nick and they’re looking pretty good in Josh’s clothes.  Nick is reunited with his girlfriend, Zoe the medium. Stevie wants to see the world so they send him on his way but before he departs, he promises not to kill himself again. 

Josh and Sally reunite with Aidan (yay!) and he’s understandably confused as to why he can hug a now corporeal Sally.  Oh and he notices that Josh doesn’t smell like a dog anymore.  Aidan’s been buried for a year but it seems like some pretty huge things have happened.  Back at the house and Aidan’s beard is gone.  Boo.  They throw out some literary jokes about him looking like a young Mark Twain, etc. and I’m bummed because I think he could have totally rocked a well-tended beard.  Oh well.

Sally is dying to get out of the house but they’re very nervous she could be recognized.  It’s a tv show, so it’s bound to happen, but I’m out all the time and never run into people I know and Charleston is a SMALL town compared to Boston.  Predictably she runs into a guy who cried at her funeral.  She tells him some unbelievable story about how she had to fake her death to get away from her abusive fiancé.  He walks her home, they kiss, she invites him in, but he refuses (huh?).  Apparently he’s not feeling well but would love to take her on a date tomorrow.  The next day he’s found dead on her street.  Uh oh.  Josh surmises that this is part of that clause about not talking to people who knew you before you died.

Aidan is nervous to drink from the blood bags Josh brought home for him because they could be infected.  Josh offers himself but is afraid that if there are still traces of the wolf inside him that it might send Aidan into fits.  So Aidan heads out in search of fresh blood, tries to buy baby blood (really?!?!) and gets beaten up by werewolves because of it.  Hottie Henry swoops in and saves him.  Henry brings him back to his place where he introduces Aidan to his uninfected but also compelled girlfriend, Emma.  Poor Emma hasn’t left the apartment in months because Henry doesn’t want her to risk getting sick.  Aidan is not ok with this and sets her free.  Henry is not ok with that and storms off.

Josh and Nora are sweet as usual.  She wants him to go enjoy his new life as a human and to stop babysitting her during her special time of the month.  No, not that time of the month; the one where the moon is full.  Josh has plans to propose to Nora but Sally doesn’t want him doing it the morning after a shift.  She probably has a point considering Nora will be all tired and bloody, etc.  Remember how Xander Berkeley was in town?  Well he finds Nora in her protective storage locker.  He catches her up on his search for his daughter, Brynn, and his wanting revenge for the death of his son, Connor.  We flashback to how Aidan killed Connor last season and we know it was to protect Josh and Nora but I’m guessing Xander won’t care.  Instead he wants to shift in the storage locker with Nora to find out what kind of wolf she is.  Ooookay.  The next morning, Josh shows up but there’s a huge hole in the door and no Nora inside.  Not good.

Being Human Season 3!

 "It's a Shame About Ray" 

Our friends, Aidan, Sally and Josh, are in the kitchen having a discussion about death.  Sally and Josh insist we all have to die someday.  Aidan, who is already sort of dead, counters that he’s not going to die.  Wait a tick, this isn’t right.  This isn't how we left everyone at the end of last season!  Then we see that this conversation is a hallucination and instead, Aidan is buried deep underground and fully bearded (love the beard!).  Oh and he’s freaking out a bit, understandably.

Being Human is back, y’all and I hope you’re watching. 

Nora is visiting another psychic in a long line of psychics because she is trying to contact someone dearly departed.  The psychic does her stuff and we cut to a handy-dandy flashback that acts as a “previously on Being Human.”  We get to see what happened to Josh, Nora and Josh’s maker, Ray at the end of last season.  If you don’t remember, the theory was that if they killed Ray, Josh and Nora could break their wolfy curse.  So they killed Ray but we don’t know if it worked.  Luckily for the psychic, she doesn’t see the gruesome flashback but instead sees that Josh and Nora are totally good for each other, blah, blah, blah.  As it turns out they’ve been trying to contact Sally who is stuck in limbo.  Speaking of…poor Sally and her two ghost buddies, Stevie and Nick, are stuck together.  Sally keeps unsuccessfully trying to get into the house.  Nick and Stevie keep unsuccessfully trying to talk her out of it.

At the hospital (where Josh and Nora work), Josh is questioning vamps about Aidan and his whereabouts.  The interesting this is that the vamps have all been showing up at the hospital as patients (instead of being there to feed) with these really gross lesions.  We flashback to see Josh and Nora on the first full moon after offing Ray.  This is so exciting!  Did it work?!?!  For Josh?  Yes.  Yay!!!  For Nora?  Not so much.  Boo!!!  Geeze, that sucks.  So I guess she’d have to kill Josh to break her own curse, right?  It’s too bad the law of transference didn’t work in this instance.  They’ve got another psychic en route but she refuses to even enter their house.  Um, no kidding.  Plus she’s been there before (during Sally’s exorcism).  There’s bad juju in that house and Ms. Psychic knows better.  Plus she tells them that bringing Sally back isn’t so simple.  Nora pleads with her and Ms. Psychic tells them to visit a Ms. Gilchrist who may help.

Meanwhile Sally pulls Nick out of the water (he’s back to his daily drowning schedule) and cuts Stevie down from a tree (he’s now killing himself every day and in places where he can watch his family go on with their lives).  The madness must end.  Josh and Nora find Ms. Gilchrist, er Donna, at a soup kitchen.  She’s up for it as long as they have $2,000 and a heart.  Oh and the heart has to be from someone they’ve killed.  It’s a good thing they’re murders!  Oh and they aren’t just bringing back her ghost.  They’re brining Sally back completely.  Like dig up her body because she will be rejoining it completely.  Whoa.

Donna wants to make sure they know she won’t be quite the same.  She’ll be like an aware zombie with emotions and stuff.  But she absolutely can’t have reunions with loved ones.  No contact whatsoever with folks from her past.  Yeah, I’m sure they’ll stick to that rule.  In limbo, Sally, Nick and Stevie are giving the door to the house one more shot.  Nick and Stevie are giving the whole talking her out of it thing one more shot too.  Except that the door opens ever so slightly this time.  Sally, the dear that she is, encourages the boys to come with her through the door.  Yeah, that’ll go well. 

Josh and Nora are keeping vigil and suddenly her body starts breathing.  Sure, she’s wrapped up like a mummy and covered in bits of heart from dead Ray but she’s breathing.  Somehow they have moved Sally’s body home now and are still watching her as she breathes.  She mumbles a bit and they know she’s awake now.  This is creepy, even if it means Sally’s back.  They unwrap her and the corpse is gone and has been replaced by lovely Sally instead.  She’s having trouble talking  but manages to squeak out the words Stevie and Nick.  Josh, bless him, hears something about Stevie Nicks coming back with her (my friend Dana tells me this was an ad-lib from Sam Huntington and it makes me love him more; even if he doesn’t have a beard).  It dawns on Josh that she’s referring to Stevie and Nick and that they’ve been brought back too.  Hey, they got three ghosts for the price of one.  Except, are they back in their own bodies?  Their bodies, which are still currently buried?  Yipes!

Lastly, we see Donna out in the woods and she’s pouring one out for her homies.  Actually she’s pouting out the rest of the witchy brew made with Ray’s heart.  The liquid starts flowing in one direction and she follows it.  Right. To. Ray’s. Grave.  Crap.  We don’t need him back.  And he’d be back as a ghost, right?

While all that was going on with Josh, Nora and Sally, poor Aidan has been having quite a day.  I mentioned the beard, right?  Well it’s worth mentioning twice.  He’s uncovered by a stake wielding dude who fits Aidan with some sort of torture helmet straight out of the Saw movies.  This will go well.  Aidan and his very special helmet awaken to get a glimpse of his new digs.  Then he passes out again.  Not that I’d offer to feed him, per se, but dude is very obviously starving to death.  I could not abide that.  Plus, I mentioned the beard RIGHT?!?!  Aidan’s kidnapper is draining his blood (like he has any to spare) and all the while is rambling about people paying big money because he’s pure.  Odd. 

A bit later, Aidan’s captor is making a deal for some blood and the deal goes pear-shaped.  The captor dude is now dead and we’re joined by the creepy Amish dude from last season.  He takes Aidan away from the helmet and creepy basement but doesn’t seem to be in a good mood about the whole thing.  Oh and he stops Aidan from drinking any of the blood that’s just hanging around because he’ll get sick.  They’re in a van and creepy Amish guy catches Aidan on what’s been going on since he’s been buried.  Vamps are getting sick and dying (again) from feeding on tainted humans.  I’m liking the potential of this storyline. 

Aidan is hallucinating again and is having a conversation with Sally, Josh and Bishop who are all in the van with him and creepy Amish dude.  Bishop is trying to encourage him to fight to save himself.  Too bad Aidan is done fighting.  He’s over it.  Bishop gives it one last try and convinces Aidan as well as Sally and Josh.  So Aidan gathers all his strength, which isn’t much, and tries to fight creepy Amish dude.  It doesn’t work.  Instead, creepy Amish dude feeds on Aidan and is really bummed when it doesn’t cure him.  Then he dies.  Yay!  Unfortunately now Aidan is stuck in the middle of nowhere and the van has crashed into a pole.  This seems like the end for Aidan but no.  ‘Cause remember at the beginning he was convinced he wasn’t going to die (again)?  He’s muttering to himself, while lying on the ground near the van, that he’s going to live.  Hallucinogenic Sally and Josh are there to watch him slowly die from his blood loss.  But then Birdie is singing “Skinny Love” and Aidan is just not giving up.

Hang in there, bearded Aidan!

Breaking Dawn Part 2: Twi-hard with a Whimper

Oh Breaking Dawn Part 2, how desperately I wanted to psychotically love you. I hoped you could be the Citizen Kane of second parts of fourth parts of vampire romance sahhhhgaaahhhs (pace Alisa). But, and it hurts me to admit this, especially considering New Moon exists, even thought I was totally into it and will buy the DVD the second it comes out, this is probably my least favorite of the Twilight Pentalogy. Mainly because, I think, the shortcomings that sparkly vampires and teen angst distracted me from in the earlier films are pretty much all I noticed this time. Since Alisa aptly covered the plot of the film, along with what makes this movie work in her review (which I agree with), allow me a little character-specific kvetching.

Part of me always felt Twilight lacked the courage of its convictions, particularly when it came to Bella. In a lot of ways, the series lives and dies (literally) with her character. She's our narrator, our human emissary into the vampire mythology Stephenie Meyer created, and, for a large percentage of the fan base, our avatar in multiple Edward make-out sessions. Almost in spite of herself (or her creator), Bella is refreshingly sex-positive in the novels. She initiates almost all physical contact with Edward, argues (convincingly and successfully) for the importance of physical intimacy in their relationship, and insists on experiencing sex before being turned into a vampire because she recognizes it is an essential aspect of the experience of being human. (Sort of like how Edward feels about going to college.) This sexual aggressiveness is matched by her character's insistence on pursuing a relationship with Edward despite the obvious risks and problems. She's annoying, but she's got a goal and she follows through on it.

At least all this is true before she becomes a vampire. In both the novel and the film, after Bella vamps out (with the notable exception of a couple of steamy chapters in the book and a satisfyingly sexy scene in the film, complete with vampgasm visual effects) she loses almost all of the self-assurance and agency that marked her actions, stupid though they usually were, in the previous books and films. The Bella of Breaking Dawn 2 is utterly consumed with her Maguffin, er, daughter Renesmee. You know: the kid with the Ted Nugent hair and American Girl (TM) face. The problem posed by Renesmee, a half-human, half-vampire hybrid, makes the plot go (very briefly, the vampire ruling clan of the Volturi think she's an illegal immortal child and set out to eliminate her and the Cullens), but it seems to make everyone else stand still, especially Bella. Rather than enhance her physicality, Bella's vampire superpower is remarkably passive--a "shielding" capability that involves her standing still and furrowing her brow a lot. I never thought I'd say this, but I sort of miss the Kristen Stewart who would fidget and squint and jut out her jaw a lot. At least she was doing something.

This tendency of the story to flirt with subversion and then send it home with a fake number is also evident in the film's "twist" that you've probably heard about. I won't reveal the Shyamalan moment here, but let me say I loved the twist so much that I ended up loving the movie less. That will make sense, should you ever see it. It's endemic of the film's desire to have its vein and eat it too.

However, there are two very good reasons to see Breaking Dawn Part 2, and they are (unsurprisingly) Michael Sheen as Aro, and (surprisingly) Robert Pattinson as the no-longer-long-suffering Edward. R-Patz seems to have caught the joke that Sheen was in on from the beginning: This is kind of a stupid premise for five movies, and it's taking itself super seriously, so let's camp it up, shall we? Sheen minces and smirks his way through a deliciously sadistic performance, highlighted by a shrill vibrato vamp laugh that must be heard to be believed. Pattinson, despite numerous extreme close-ups and a montage that only proves what I've long suspected--as he ages, his face is beginning to look like it took a trip down the Large Hadron Collider--is a pleasure to watch because he actually looks like he's having fun with this one. All the other characters don't have nearly enough to do. I enjoy Jacob's snark, and Alice's exasperation, and even Jasper's look of perpetual nausea. And only giving Billy Burke's Charlie approximately five minutes of total screen time is the real crime the Volturi should be investigating.

I think this film is the first (but probably not the last; looking at you Hobbit) of the season to suffer from too-many-sequels syndrome. I think a one-film Breaking Dawn could have combined all the Grand Guignol grossness of the first part with the nostalgia drenched wrap-up of the second. As is, it was a little too bloodless for my taste. (Sorry for all the puns--this is my last Twilight review, and I couldn't resist.)

Problems with the poster - Twilight 4.2

I was going to present this without comment but I can't help myself.  For some reason this poster just cracks me up.  I don't know if it's because they seem to be taking themselves too seriously or maybe it's that I can't help imagining the three actors and how this photo shoot went down.

If they're lucky someone just superimposed their heads on the bodies of stand-ins.  There isn't much that is more awkward than pretend running. Maybe more awkward is having to do press with your pretend boyfriend who you supposedly cheated on and are possibly back together with now...just in time for press for your new movie.

Also, who are those people behind them?!?! And what's with the wolves?  They're suddenly smaller than they were in the previous movies? 

Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows

Director: Tim Burton

Stars: Johnny Depp and Eva Green

I don’t know why but I’m finding it difficult to get motivated to write about Dark Shadows.  I enjoyed it but the film had some issues.  It was exactly what I thought it would be, which is campy and silly.  It didn’t make me love Tim Burton any less.  Same goes for Johnny Depp.  The music was great, if you like 70s classics.  Though I’m not convinced all the songs used were released before 1972 (however I’m not nitpicky enough to look that up).  The look was very Burton-esque, which I always dig.  The idea of sticking someone from the 18^th century in the early 1970s is a fun one with lots of potential.  I just can’t put my finger on why I’m so meh about it.  My friends and I walked out of the theater saying we enjoyed it so there’s that. 

I won’t spoil it for you but the main story is how the Collins family is cursed, each in their own way.  It’s almost like they forgot about cursing Chloe Grace Moretz until the end of the movie and then just threw it in to emphasize the point.  It was strange.  But there were plenty of fun jabs at 70s culture and they really worked the camp angle, which I enjoyed.  I've never seen the television show but I know it was filled with campy goodness.  I'd like to think this did the show some justice without being too on-the-nose.

The cast was fine, especially Eva Green who, well, how do you encapsulate what she is?  Uh...she cannot be ignored.  If that woman is in a room or, even in the general vicinity of a room you know it.  It was nice to see Michelle Pfeiffer though I don’t enjoy seeing her in supporting roles.  I feel like her character, the matriarch of the existing Collins family, should have had more to do.  Helena Bonham Carter, the resident psychiatrist, was good as usual but she, along with most of the rest of the cast, didn’t have much to do.  Mostly it was just Depp being weird with his weird fingers and Eva Green stomping around threatening Depp.

They really did emphasize his hands throughout the movie.

I feel like I could add a new measurement to this blog.  It was better than Conan the Barbarian but it was no Avengers.  Hmmm, I need to see The Avengers again.