For thoses who haven't heard, Aaron Ashmore (Troy from Veronica Mars) will join the Smallville cast as Jimmy Olsen. Finally after five years, Chloe will have a love interest. I was starting to believe Lex in season 5 when he implied Chloe was gay.

Here's a picture of Alison Mack (who plays Chloe Sullivan) to remind you we have months to wait 'til Smallville returns. (Sorry)

Well since my last entry, I haven't been watching a lot of TV lately, only been watching the World Cup (congrats Italy), The 4400, and Kyle XY. I have to say that Kyle XY is an excellent new show and I hope it gets an extended run. It's very similar to John Doe but with a teenage protagonist.

Several good movies have also hit the big screen. I really enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean 2, especially Johnny Depps performance as Captain Jack Sparrow. However, I was disappointed with a very lacklustre Superman Returns. This movie should of been a blockbuster but poor casting and a weak story has really made this movie the wreck that it is.

I've still been watching BtVS but it seems that the series hit its peak at about season 5. The ending to season 5 would have been a fitting ending to the series and I feel that the later seasons have been much weaker and less focused. With that in mind though, 'Once More With Feeling' was a brilliant episode.

That's it for now, take care.

I've recently received the boxed DVD set 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Chosen Collection'. This massive thing is 40 DVDs featuring all seven seasons of Buffy. The only Joss Whedon series I watched regularly was the very excellent Firefly which unfortunate met an early demise at the hands of the incompetent Fox network execs.

I never really got in to Buffy when it originally aired but since watching the first season on DVD, I'm starting to become a fan of the series. I've really just scratched the surface but with 40 DVDs, it is gonna take a long time before I see what happens in the Buffy world. I am enjoying what I've seen so far and I hope to enjoy the next 6 seasons of this Whedon classic.

I saw the Da Vinci Code over the weekend and here are my thoughts on what I saw.

I was a bit apprehensive about how good this movie was due to the huge amount of bad reviews but I did notice that the critics were saying some good things about this movie then turning around and giving it a score that seemed incongruent with their review.

IMHO, this movie was pretty much meh. It was better than what critics scored and much better than MI3 which I saw a week earlier but it isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination.

I had read the novel a few years back so I knew what the general plot was before seeing the movie and I have to admit, the movie was pretty faithful to the novel with only minor changes which I would assume was made for time constraints and pacing reasons. Even so, the movie seemed to drag on a bit.

The cast was pretty good, especially Audrey Tautou (yum) as Sophie Neveu and Paul Bettany as Silas. Ian McKellen was brilliant as Teabing and Tom Hanks was pretty solid as Robert Langdon.

I don't want to go to deeply in to the plot but for those who haven't read the book or seen the movie (all 3 of you), it begins with the murder of Jacques Sauniere, the curator of the Louvre, who dies with strange markings and cryptic codes near and on his body. Langdon, a Harvard Symbologist is implicated in his death. Sophie Neveu, a cryptographer with the french police (and also Sauniere's estranged grand-daughter), helps Langdon escape/evade custody. Together, Langdon and Neveu must decrypt the strange symbols and codes that Sauniere left behind to discover a damning secret that the church has kept hidden for hundreds of years while being pursued by the french police, and a deadly albino monk working to protect the church.

I don't want to get in to the controversy surrounding this movie but it looks like this is the blockbuster of the year with the 2nd largest weekend box-office takings (Worldwide) ever and the the largest weekend international takings of all time.



Cheers!

Wow it's been several months since my last entry. I've been pretty busy with work but now I have some extended free time, I thought I would write a bit.

I haven't been watching a lot of TV lately but I did get to watch a few pretty good season finales. First one I would like to write about is Supernatural. Supernatural (for me) has got to be one of the best new series this season, with excellent character development and interesting stories.



I really like Meg as an antagonist to the Winchester brothers and was a little sad to see her die. The ending was spectacular with the Winchesters' seemingly killed but I really hope that Dean, Sam and John survive the crash. Can't wait to see what happens next season.


Next up is another new show this season, Prison Break. I was glad that the gang got out of Fox River ok but was a little dissapointed when I saw that Dr. Tancredi was DOA as I was hoping for her to meet up with Michael at a later date. Abruzzi chopping off T-Bag's hand was a highlight for me as was Veronica comfronting the Vice President's brother.



The Vice President murdering the President was a surprise for me, I was expecting the Company to execute her due to the montage at the beginning (sneaky producers). To be honest, I was a little dissapointed with the finale but my expectations were very high due to the show's amazingly consistent quality this season. The fact that Sara Tancredi died may have clouded my judgement though. Good finale, excellent series.



Smallville's finale, imho, was very disappointing. I am not a fan of the direction the show has headed this season, from Chloe becoming a deus ex machina (who exactly is the hero of the show?), Clark relegated to a moron (he is meant to have a brain equivalent to a supercomputer), the way Clark and Lana's relationship ended and anything to do with Lex and Lana's relationship.



The finale just seemed weak compared to other seasons. Jor El giving Clark the means to kill the vessel but doesn't warn him that the dagger is linked to the FOS and thus can free Zod. The whole Lois and Martha on the plane side story was boring for me. The only redeeming instant was they set up for Chloe to be killed but I have a feeling the writers wont kill off their Mary Sue character as she has become a crutch for them (maybe they are confusing their journalism student Chloe with Chloe the CTU tech specialist from 24).

Anyway, enough of my ranting for now, I'll probably add an entry for Veronica Mars and Lost (after it airs) later. In the meantime I hope everyone has a nice weekend.

Cheers