Three of the shows I’ve been following very closely all aired their respective season finales this last week, much to my chagrin (… well, I guess there’s always the Bionic Woman remake in a couple of months). I have to say that I’ve been looking forward to this week for awhile now, even though it does mean I’ll be without a decent handful of shows to watch for awhile. Heroes in particular, was a really big deal — it’s the new kid on the block, and has been crazy-ambitious with its storyline and format. 24 and Lost are relative veterans, with Keifer’s signature show being the one with the longest history and (I suppose) most loyal fanbase.

Turns out though that it was the new kid that proved to be the biggest disappointment, with a finale that wasn’t nearly as climactic as the show had been building up to. The long-awaited confrontation between Peter and Sylar was sadly bereft of the kind of fancy superhero-type moves that you’d expect from the “end of volume one.” Now, this show has traditionally been very tight-fisted about bandying around its characters’ power, and that restraint is part of its charm. The grand finale though, just really needed to be more bold, and I couldn’t help coming away from it feeling like I had ended an otherwise fine meal with a thoroughly average dessert. I’d give this a 3 out of 5.

24, meanwhile, was surprising. Season 6 tried very hard to break a lot of the traditions set by the first 5 seasons, going so far as to actually have a nuclear bomb finally go off in a populated area, despite our hero’s best efforts. The introduction of Jack’s father and brother, as well as the political struggle within the White House, were all steps in the right direction, but this season still saw 24 drop below the Top 20 TV series list for the first time ever. The season ender though was unexpectedly introspective, and the final conversation at Senator Raines’ house was a nice bit of drama. I was honestly waiting for Raines to say, “You’re just a gun, Jack” or something equally catchy. Good stuff. This one is at least 3.5 out of 5.

But I guess the biggest surprise of all was the mind-bending Lost, which has been losing its primary audience to Heroes for months now. In 90 minutes of really, really good TV, Damon Lindeloff summoned up the magic that hooked so many people to this show’s first season; the Through the Looking Glass two-parter is the first time since Season 1’s wonderful Walkabout that I was really bowled over by this show. I guess you could say I’ve been waiting a long time for another one of those episodes for awhile now.
Without giving away any spoilers, “Looking Glass” takes one of the fundamental concepts of this show, and really turns it on its head. Brilliant, brilliant work. I honestly cannot wait for season 4. 5 out of 5 stars.

Thought it’d be interesting to do a quick visual comparison of the Fantastic Four’s Fantasticar in both its current comics and upcoming movie incarnations. Like the ubiquitous Batmobile, the Fantasticar went through a rather rigorous makeover (courtesy of Dodge motors) to get a Hollywood-friendly face on what was essentially a flying bathtub. It’ll be interesting to see exactly what they use this vehicle for in the movie, as it’s certainly not going to be capable to chasing down the Silver Surfer. (Accoding to the Dodge TV spot, the car can only do about 500mph.)

If you’ve seen Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, you’ll have noticed that he seems to like his Powerbook a whole lot. Debates on Global Warming aside, there’s an interesting photo-essay at Time.com which features — amongst other things — Herr Gore sitting in front of a tri-monitor Apple Cinema Display setup. It’s hard to tell from the image if those are 30-inchers or 23’s (probably the latter), but oh! how wide thy resolution be either way (7680 pixels in a triple 30 setup, and 5760 pixels on the 23). Enough space to have over a half a dozen webpages sitting side-by-side.

(As a small aside, any Mac Pro desktop can drive up to 8 monitors at a time, by adding a couple of NVidia GeForce 7300 GTs. The standard setup — an ATI Radeon X1900 XT — supports dual monitors right out of the box. Geeky little things here.)

I got the chance to visit the recently-opened TriNoma yesterday and was musing at how insane the entire North Triangle area is going to be over the next few months. Right now, the mall is not really much to look at: nearly half of the stores are still under construction and there are safety hazards everywhere. The much-lauded 8,000-slot carpark isn’t really complete so parking was a bit of a bitch as well. But it’s definitely getting there, and when it does we’re going to be witness to one of the largest supermall prize fights in the history of this country.

Consider the strategy behind TriNoma: it’s got 550 shops to SM City’s approx. 600 (not counting the currently-being-renovated Annex), all of which will be undoubtedly peddling the same brands and same products. It has none of Greenbelt’s ultra-designed aloofness, instead going for a more familiar, low-key Glorietta-style architecture. To say that this going after a chunk of SM City’s demographic would be understating the situation. TriNoma is meant to very openly challenge SM for what is generally considered to be Henry Sy’s territory, i.e., everyone below B.

Why does Ayala even think they have a chance in this area? Well, because of 2004’s rather successful joint venture with Metro Gaisano, of course (the bustling Market! Market!). What they weren’t making in price-per-unit, they were making up for in sheer volume, I think. The other big reason is that TriNoma’s geographical location couldn’t be better: you have to walk through half the mall on your way out of the train station. By the time you reach SM City (via the soon-to-be-constructed overpass), you’ve already spent most of your money and you just want to catch a bus home. In other words, TriNoma’s differentiation has nothing to do with being classier or having better quality — it simply needs to be exactly like SM City, but slightly closer to the train station. (Having a bigger activity center also helps; it attracts foot traffic like moths to a flame.)

What SM does in answer to this is going to be very interesting. The Annex renovation is going to be the first step, then I believe we’re going to see some major changes to the way SM City presents itself over the next few months. Either that, or they’ll find a way to transplant that damned train.

I’ve just finished putting together the very first version of the syndeo::media design aptitude test, which I’m hoping will help us qualify job applicants a little more thoroughly before we start the interview process. At the moment, it’s less than 10 questions long and includes items such as:

3. In 300 words or less, explain the differences between JPEG, GIF and PNG, and what each format is most appropriate for. 6. As of July 2006, there were over 60 social video websites online. List down 5 of them, not counting YouTube. (If it takes you more than 5 minutes to answer this question, you are approaching it the wrong way.)

My favorite one is:

8. Design a 160×40 PNG button that says "Hire me!"

One of the questions that didn’t make the cut went something like: there is exactly one syndeo::media logo in Flickr. Look for it and write down the URL here. The main issue was that I honestly could not find the logo myself no matter how many different tag and keyword combinations I tried, although I knew for a fact that it was there coz I uploaded it myself. I’m assuming Flickr has some kind of search server that crawls its database on a regular basis, but for some reason, the graphic I uploaded simply wasn’t showing up. Annoying. We’re not quite at the level of Google (which according to this page, receives 100,000 job applications per month), but considering that I have to interview each applicant myself, this should still save at least a little bit of time.

• Blisterin’ Barnacles! Spielberg and Peter Jackson to make Tintin movie! (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6656635.stm)
  And just like that, all my geek-boy dreams have come true.
• Tim Olyphant as Agent 47 in the upcoming Hitman (http://www.bereitsgesehen.de/wbblite/thread.php?threadid=9135)
  Deadwood fans rejoice! Or maybe not.
• Magneto Rising (http://www.cinematical.com/2007/05/16/avi-arad-gives-magneto-plot-details/)
  Find out how Eric Lensherr got his groove.
• The Long, Long Take.
  (http://dailyfilmdose.blogspot.com/2007/05/long-take.html)
  A collection of some of the finest, single-shot sequences ever captured on film (with Youtube clips! yey!)
• [ UPDATE ] Doctor Strange Direct-to-DVD Feature Website Up. (http://blog.newsarama.com/2007/05/16/animated-doctor-strange-site-and-trailer-go-live/)
  Having only owned exactly one issue of Doctor Strange that wasn’t part of a big Infinity-Gauntlet-style universal storyline, I am strangely ambivalent regarding this effort. (Ooh, the wit.)

And RottenTomatoes’ penchant for countdowns asserts itself yet again, this time with a genre that’s near and dear to me — ye olde comic movie. Unlike the previous RT list I linked to though, this one just ranks all of the comic movies on the site, in order of the ratings they received. (So yes, Catwoman and Elektra are right at the bottom of the barrel.)

My own list (obviously shorter and with less critical verve) would be something like this:

10. Ghost World. Because it’s a genuinely good movie, even without the comic origins. (It’s also the only non-Addams Family Christina Ricci movie I will admit to having seen and enjoyed.)

9. Ichi the Killer. Utterly insane gorefest from Japanese auteur Takashi Miike. The cinematic equivalent of standing in the middle of a freeway and dodging traffic for 2 hours.

8. The Rocketeer. I was in the sixth grade when I saw this movie, and I still get a really stupid smile on my face every time I think about that beautiful, beautiful rocket pack.

7. Men in Black. Will Smith at his best. The sequel was unable to capture most of raucuous brilliance of the original though.

6. The Crow. Hey, it proved that Goth is cool. (Oh, and RIP Brandon Lee.)

5. Superman II. Any responsible comic fan would say that Superman: The Movie put comic-movies on the map, but II was just better all-around.

4. Batman Returns. The better of the two Tim Burton Batmans. This is an example of how really good casting can turn things around for an otherwise by-the-numbers storyline.

3. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. If Tim Burton had this script with Batman Returns, it would have been the best comic movie of all-time, hands down.

2. Spider-man II. It’s ironic that the Spidey movie with the most annoying villain would be the best of the three installments, but hey, what can I say. The only thing that Spidey II was missing was Bruce Campbell sporting a French accent.

1. Batman Begins. Chris Nolan, I salute you.

I won’t ruin the faux excitement by saying which movie is at the #1 spot (hell, I had to click fifty times to see it, and so should you). Start the countdown here.

Saw Spidey 3 today, after waiting for months and months to see the alien costume on celluloid. It’s kind of hard to say which of the three installments I enjoyed the least at this point, but the first one is still easily the most engaging, if only for the fact that the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end the first time Peter climbs up a wall. (I had been waiting all my life to see a really good wall-crawling sequence, and the look of awe on Tobey Maguire’s face when he realizes that he’s got these crazy new abilities was a fan boy’s dream come true.)

III is an interesting animal though. There are sequences here that’ll make your jaw drop — good and bad in equal proportions. The Sandman’s birth is certainly a sight to behold, as is the very interesting use of pipes in the final battle between Spidey and Venom. (In the comics, Spidey uses a sonic gun borrowed from the Fantastic Four to subdue the symbiote.) Unlike the first movie, the fight sequences in III are all very well-executed,  superior even to the already superb Octopus matchup in II. The sheer number of villains in this movie guarantee that there’s a big fight every half-hour or so, nestled in between a cringe-inducing teen drama that feels more like Dawson’s Creek than The Amazing Spider-man. (On the other hand, if it works for Smallville …)

Indeed, it’s the constant attempts at character-development that really bring this feature down. Sam Raimi somehow manages to pack the story arc of your average chinovela’s full season — complete with subplots and supporting characters — into a running time of about 80 minutes (the Spidey sequences account for the remaining 40 minutes or so). As you can imagine, this results in some seriously fragmented pacing and some strange dead-ends: we never see the results of Eddie Brock’s Photoshoppery (we only know he was humiliated because he said so), or the fate of Flint Marko’s daughter, or the state of Peter’s relationship with Gwen Stacy.

And don’t even get me started on the dancing. The emo hairdo and eyeliner was bad enough, but to have Peter strutting about like a freakish, non-mutant John Travolta? (I silently thanked God that he didn’t do the oft-parodied Pulp Fiction dance move; I would have walked out of the theater right there.) I thought it unbelievable that test audiences did not universally pan that entire sequence, to be honest. Wouldn’t some scenes with Spidey seriously maiming some random criminals have been a more effective — not to mention far less revolting — way to show his increased aggression? This isn’t exactly Stomp the Yard, you know what I mean?

But whatever. Spider-man III is the first of the big summer movies, so we still have a long way to go in terms of over-the-top marketing hype and the inevitable disappointments. I suppose you just have to learn to treasure the small moments of brilliance instead of dwelling on the overwhelming ludicrity. It’s actually kinda fitting that my favorite scene in the entire movie was the Bruce Campbell cameo at the French restaurant. Pass me my boomstick, s’il vous plait?