Happy Halloween!

That's right, it's the 31st, which means that it's time to celebrate Halloween in the only appropriate way! By screening a copy of Ghostwatch!

Of course, since Ghostwatch doesn't currently seem to be in print you'll have a hard time buying a copy... but luckily some industrious soul has uploaded the whole thing to youtube! So get some candy and hot chocolate, settle down in front of the monitor, and enjoy!

Part 1

Criminal Minds 116: The Tribe

This episode is going to take the team out into the desert, it seems. The story begins at a house party that some sexy teens are throwing in a unfinished home in the middle of a development. Among the teens is a blonde girl who seems slightly out of it. After saying that she’s looking for the bathroom she heads outside, leaving the back door wide open. She doesn’t get more than a few steps away from the house when she’s grabbed by some men who were watching her from a van out front!

Amazingly, that’s not all the horror that happens, as just moments later a team of killers rushes down out of the hills behind the house and attacks the rest of the teens in the building with long knives! What’s going on here? Are these two events connected, other than spatially and temporally? I guess we’ll find out after the opening credits!

The Saw Diaries

In preparation for theavod’s definitive Sawcast, I kept copious notes while watching the films. I was going to toss them, but then it occurred to me, ‘hey Count, you’re trying to post things more often, right?’ And you know who’d love to read a running commentary of these movies in text form, with a few illustrations? People, that’s who!

Just a warning – the section on Saw 6 may be a little fractured. I took notes in longhand in a dark theatre, then attempted to transcribe them. Also that section doesn’t have any illustrations, for obvious reasons!

Time for a SawVod, Everyone!

Yes, it's true, the Divemistress and myself actually watched all the Saw movies in a row, then stepped out to see the new one in theaters. And I've got to say, you're probably going to be surprised by the things we've got to say about the series over the course our epic 3 and a half hour discusson. Just right-click and download away!

Part 1 - Jigsaw is a Dick
Part 2 - Jigsaw's Corpse is a Dick
Part 3 - Circular Saw is a Dick

As usual, you can also listen to this by heading over to theAvod website (link just over to your right), and streaming it, or just downloading it from the iTunes store, which I should really have a link of some kind to, come to think of it.

What's that I hear about show notes? You'll find my most comprehensive show notes just slightly above this post! Although, since they're going up at the same time, I guess you'll probably see them first!

Is Medium Screwing With Me?

Or am I just that bad at math?

In a late-last-season episode of Medium the oldest daughter, whose name escapes me at the moment, was taking the SATs (or a practice test, whatever), and a single math question appeared on screen. Being obsessive about fake books produced for TV shows, I captured an image of it:

Okay, am I crazy, or are none of those the correct answer?

The World's Most Mixed Metaphor

I know I like to avoid giving any real context with these images, but there’s one thing you have to know before looking at this one:

The Crime Smasher! (that's what Spy Smasher did after the war ended. He smashed crime) is chasing a criminal named Spider. Take it away, panel!

They didn’t just mix that metaphor. They threw it in a blender and turned it on ‘grind’ for five minutes straight.

It’s Official – Credit Score Ads Have No Idea What They’re Doing

Let’s take another trip through the variety of Credit Report ads that show up while I broswe the internet.

Here’s an especially baffling ad I happened across recently:

That’s all six ‘unique’ frames of the animated ad, which I’m presenting here in its non-animated form because I find animated ads obnoxious, and because if I did, I’d basically be putting the ad here for free, which is just crazy.

No, seriously: Halloween Resurrection sucks.

So, last time around we covered Michael Myers killing Jamie Lee Curtis, and with her, his last motivation as a character to continue existing. But he’s not done at the asylum, no sir. While headed for the door he pauses at the tubby guy’s room. And doesn’t kill him. No, instead he hands the self-described expert on serial killers the knife and walks away.

Why? Why would you do that? Are you trying to frame him for the murder of the security guards and Jamie? Because I’m pretty sure the evidence is going to point another way, no matter whose prints are on the knife. Also he’s on a bunch of video camera footage. Or did he steal the tapes as well? But why would he do that? For this whole framing thing to have been included at all in the script the writer would have to know nothing at all about the character of Michael Myers.

A theory that I’m pretty sure I can prove right now.

Criminal Minds 115: Unfinished Business

The episode opens, as many television shows do, with the dad from Unhappily Ever After giving a lecture about the serial killer he’s just written a book about. The killer, one ‘Keystone Killer’, mysteriously stopped killing 18 years earlier, and it’s a huge mystery why this might be. The author explains that a serial killer stopping suddenly is totally unheard of, unless of course you count Jack the Ripper, which most people do. Anyhoo, the author doesn’t buy these theories about him moving away (no similar crimes in other cities), being jailed, or dying. No, his book is written based on the theory that the guy wasn’t compelled to kill at all, he was just extra evil, and enjoyed killing, so he was able to stop whenever he wanted to. Which is kind of a silly idea, but let’s save that for later.

In addition to the killer’s penchant for binding, torturing, and killing his victims (hint hint), he also enjoyed sending letters to the police, where details of the crime would be hidden in word search puzzles. This is not at all a preposterously silly affectation for a fictional killer to have. I mean yeah, Zodiac had his puzzles, but this is as bad as sending a rebus.

Thursday Afternoon Avod!

It's a little earlier than usual, I know (in that I'm posting it at all - by definition anything that appears that wouldn't normally have is early, right?), but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it all the same!

But why would it, really?

Prepare for the most epic debate in the history of conversations about the movie Paranormal Activity! Seriously. That's all the episode is about. So you should maybe see the movie first before right-clicking here to download, or heading over to the Avod's homepage to stream it, or picking it up on iTunes.

Just forewarning (and therefore forearming) you.

CSI Miami Episode 805

The day starts ordinarily enough, with Eric dropping by the creepy ME’s hospital to check in with his doctor, then chat with his old friend. In an amazing coincidence there’s an emergency case just as Eric’s leaving. A young woman comes in, barely able to breathe, accompanied by her boyfriend. Eric takes the boyfriend aside to talk, where he announces his plans to propose to the girlfriend, which means, based on the laws of television writing, that she must immediately die, making it more tragic. She does, and then Creepy ME tells Eric that the boyfriend probably did it, well within earshot of the guy, making this perhaps the first ever pre-credits murder accusation in the show’s history!

Yeaaaaaah!

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react to Californication

I tuned into this show a little while after it started, as I was curious to see what Mulder was up to these days. I was bored and more than a little annoyed by the show’s overwhelming tone of undeserved smugness and superiority. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good intellectual victory lap as much as the next guy, and have always appreciated scenes where a boor is put down with the absolute perfect rejoinder – but that’s not what Californication is. It’s a cut-rate version thereof. It’s a show about a smart person written by profoundly stupid people.

Okay, to be fair, they might not be idiotic, they might just be assuming that their audience is. How can I tell? Here’s a screenshot from the opening credits montage.

You see, they needed an image to establish that the main character, one ‘Hank Moody’ (Get it? His name describes what he is! It’s clever!) is a novelist. How can this be accomplished? By having him read a bizarre bigger-than-a-magazine-yet-smaller-than-a-newspaper thing with the words ‘Book Critic’ on it! Of course! Although he’s not actually reading it, he’s just holding it up in front of his face. Which is an appropriate message, because this really isn’t a show for ‘readers’.

It Seems that the Writers of Medium Watch Criminal Minds

Yes, every story has already been told, and it’s only natural to steal a good idea here or there, and most importantly, when there’s three shows on the air that deal exclusively with serial killers, there’s going to be some overlap, but last week’s episode of Medium demonstrated a basic lack of the care necessary to avoid committing outright plagiarism.

The episode concerned a fake Zodiac Killer, and the author who had written a book about him. The author is played by Marcus Giamatti, who is Paul Giamatti’s brother, and who I always confuse with Beardo from the show ‘Bones’. This aspect of the storyline is fairly close to the true story of the Zodiac case, with Giamatti playing a Graysmith type who’d spent his life tracking down a serial killer, only to have the killer die before he could confirm the man’s identity.

When the murders start up again there are only two possibilities – 1: Giamatti’s doing the killing. Or 2: His investigation was wrong, and the real killer’s still out there.

Of course, since this is an episode of Medium, we don’t have to wait around to discover the truth, they just flat out tell us immediately through one of Allison’s dreams that Giamiatti lied, and the suspect didn’t confess on his deathbed. Which means the real killer is still out there… But who could it be?

Saturday Night Live RapeWatch: Gerard Butler Edition

Last night’s SNL was definitely one of the season’s high points, although that surely says more about the season’s overall direness than the episode’s quality. That being said, Gerard Butler was a completely competent host, game for seemingly anything, and blessed with excellent timing. Most of the sketches were at least bearable, and it only one dipped into utter awfulness. Well, twice if you count Smuggy Smuggerson’s Weekend Update, but his eight minutes is always the death of laughter, so I’ve stopped counting it as an actual part of the show.

So, on to the objectability!

Criminal Minds 114: Riding the Lightning

It had to happen eventually. An episode of Criminal Minds so dull, so unrelated to psychology and so without interest that I can’t bring myself to go into it in-depth. Why not? Because it’s not about solving a murder. Yup, it’s a Criminal Minds episode about the team going to interview a husband-and-wife team of serial killers just before they’re executed.

In an interesting note, the husband part of the team is played by Michael Massee, the man who killed Brandon Lee.

The main mystery of the episode is just how many young women Michael killed, and just how involved his wife was in the deaths. In point of fact, the only death that the wife was convicted of was the death of their 2-year-old son, whose body has never been found – she confessed to the crime.