The Cove is a film you’ve probably heard of, but don’t know a thing about.  You probably saw the trailer for the film which plays like it’s advertising a horror film.  That might not be too far off.  The film is horrific at points (not bad, hard to watch), but if I had to liken it to any genre it’d be a sort of heist film.  In actuality it is a documentary.  About dolphins.  Wait, don’t click away yet.  This isn’t any kind of boring nature film.  Let me tell you some more.

Ric O'Barry

The Cove is primarily about Ric O’Barry.  Ric was the dolphin trainer, and in fact caught the 5 dolphins that played Flipper in the original Flipper tv series.  He was really a pioneer of dolphin training.  Through the filming of the show he lived 24/7 with these dolphins for 7 years and really got to know first hand what these species were like.  He very quickly noticed their intelligence and self awareness.  After the show went off the air the dolphins were moved to the Miami Seaquarium where, as Ric puts it, the main Flipper committed suicide in his arms.  He since dedicated his life to freeing dolphins from captivity.  It is through this course of work he learned about the Japanese town of Taiji.

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The Pixies started their 3 day, 4 show, 95% sold out NYC run tonight at the Hammerstein Ballroom.  If you didn’t know this is the Doolittle Tour.  For the anniversary of Doolittle the band is doing a tour and playing the entire album plus b-sides.  Very cool.  Anyway I’d seen The Pixies once in 2005 and was incredibly impressed.  They really brought it.  And tonight was no exception.

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Today is that day that Lady Gaga releases her second recording, The Fame Monster which is the followup to the wildly successful The Fame. Once again it’s a combination of Gaga’s contagious hooks, catchy lyrics, and cutting edge, yet retro dance beats.

For her second effort she takes on the personal monsters that have surrounded her during her rise to the top over the last year. It shows a much deeper and thoughtful look at life than the party atmosphere presented on her first recording, some perhaps the consequences of the life spoken of in The Fame. The songs reflect a new maturity indicating that Gaga may be around for many years to come.

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The Twilight Saga: New Moon has already made a bajillion dollars over the weekend due to crazy Twilight fans.  But is it actually any good?  That’s what I set out to find out by sitting through all 2 hours of it.

She's adorable

First of all yes I’ve read the books.  You can’t properly insult something without actually reading it and so I wound up reading the whole series.  Hate reading pretty much.  Also I saw the first Twilight movie.  My review of that can be summed up as “worst movie ever”.  I actually only bothered to see it because I think Kristen Stewart is extremely cute.

Anyway for this second movie they went and got themselves a new director.  I don’t think directing was entirely the first movie’s problem, but hey maybe it’d do something.

Oh I’m skipping over the plot synopsis for those of you that don’t know.  It’s ok, it’s so batshit insane and nonsensical that you’re not missing much.  In fact that’s one of the first complaints I have about this movie.  Basically if you didn’t read the book you would have absolutely no clue what was happening ever.  They didn’t even try to properly lay out this movie as a separate entity that maybe a newcomer could enjoy.  You’d also be lost if you didn’t see the first movie.  While they have two flashes back to that movie, you’d have no clue as to what importance they had.  Guys we know exposition is boring but you need some somewhere.  Seriously.

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Misfits is a new show on BBC’s E4 network.  The premise is that a group of young adults (it’s never really clear how old they are) who have been given community service get struck by lightning during a freak storm.  Slowly they discover that they have powers, like superheroes, only these kids are anything but.
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Friday Night Lights Season 4, episode 4, “A Sort of Homecoming”, is definitely one of the better episodes this season so far.  Pretty much most of my complaints from earlier episodes have been dealt with.  But it’s not perfect.

So Coach Taylor’s plot this episode is that he is going to hold a pep rally for the Lions.  This like everything else he’s tried to do for the team turns out to be much harder than it should be.  Coach’s plot really takes a backseat though.  A lot of this episode is dedicated to our newer characters.  Oh also everyone hates Tami because she had that kid transferred.

Panther Hater

Speaking of transfer kid (Luke), he’s still not getting along with Juvie.  They get in a fight on the field and then Juvie steals his wallet.  Cause that’s what Juvie does.  Later on in the episode Luke is driving around with the Panthers and JD and they see Juvie walking along the side of the road so they all get out and jump him but it’s really just Juvie and Luke fighting.  The cops come and arrest the two of them.  By the way it was interesting that they took quite a bit of care to show that one of the Panthers was black so as to not make the entire scene a big hate crime, which really it was.  So Luke is white and he’s fine to get out of jail, but Juvie is black and also is Juvie so the cops tell Coach he’s going to Juvie for reals.  Coach makes Juvie and Luke change their story and manages to get Juvie out.  He then leaves the two of them stranded in the middle of nowhere.  They suddenly work everything out and Juvie somehow has Luke’s wallet on him at that exact moment and gives it back to him.

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Funny People is money printer Judd Apatow’s latest directorial work.  He chose to re-team with several actors whom he’d previously worked with very successfully, most notably the two stars Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler.  The plot is that Sandler’s George is a very successful comedian who has starred in a ton of big blockbuster movies and had a dream career, and is pretty much Adam Sandler, finds out that he has a rare form of Leukemia and there’s very little chance of recovery.  Spurred on by this news he heads to a local comedy club where he catches part of Rogen’s character, Ira’s, set.  He thinks his material was pretty good and winds up hiring him to initially be a writer for him, then to be his assistant.  He lays the news on his new assistant and tells him that he must keep it to himself.

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So two little bits of site news.  I’ll get the first out of the way quickly: I’m going to be adding a ton of old concert and movie reviews from my livejournal to the site over the next few weeks, but since it’s mostly old material I won’t be publicizing any of it on Twitter, etc.  So there will be a ton of new old stuff, just so that you guys have more stuff to check out.

Now onto the important piece of business: we’re starting a new article series about the best TV episodes of all time.  And we’d love to have your help.  Just leave a comment on this post with the name of the show and the name of the episode or a few of your favorites and we’ll see if they make our final judgement.  If you can’t find the name of the episode try to give us a general idea of it, like the plot, any memorable guest stars, what season it was in, or if you happen to know the exact episode number and title that would be great.

This will probably be a monthly series and will probably start later this month.

(500) Days of Summer is about a wannabe architect who winds up writing greeting cards and his relationship to the girl of his dreams, Summer.  The story chronicles from their first meeting to their breakup, although not in order.  The narrative skips around in the 500 days they were a part of each others lives.

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