Review: tv-show, "The Legend of the Seeker" season 1

Ha, I found this ridiculous review of a bad tv show recently. It was in draft mode, so I published it, pretty much unchanged from when I wrote it in 2014. 

I saw the first few episodes when it first came out, but never continued. I found it on youtube.com recently and decided to watch the first season from beginning to end.

The 2-part first episode is pretty much the story of Star Wars. A wizard (Jedi) named Zed (Obiwan) kidnaps a special baby named Richard (Luke) and hides him away in a far away place with some good people. He lives near-by as a crazy old hermit/wizard for years while the boy grows up.

Kahlan/Princess Leia runs away from the D'harans/Empire and is rescued by Richard/Luke and the wizard and then go off on adventures. It's Richard/Luke's destiny to kill the evil Darkan Rahl/Darth Vader. It wouldn't surprise me if Rahl ends up being Richard's dad, but to find out, I'd have to look ahead. :)

Based on Terry Goodkind's quite appalling "The Wizard's First Rule", which depends on deus ex machina at every step of the story - some new magic, some new skill suddenly appears to save the day. Rahl had no chance I guess. Whatever.

The tv-series is pretty low quality, with lazy writing quite similar to the book. I found there are obvious solutions or hints that are ignored until something hits the characters on the head to warn them. Also, an extraordinary number of episodes ends in a big sword fight, where the invincible seeker comes out ahead (of course). There is also a ridiculous number of lazy bits where someone sneaks past a guard, or "tricks" them with some obvious and ridiculous ruse that no decent soldier would ever fall for. Also, there is little continuity, and past plans are often ignored just to have a battle scene or more wizard's fire. Also, there is a running theme where the seeker puts the entire mission/quest in jeopardy in nearly every episode in order to save someone, do the right thing etc.. etc... Somehow, no one else sees this, including the evil Darth Vader/Darken Rahl, who could use this at any time to beat the seeker. Funny too, Kahlan the confessor and Zed the wizard also seem to forget this quite often for some reason.

On the plus side, the cast is ridiculously attractive, especially Bridget Regan who plays Princess Leia/Kahlan.

Movie: Bad Words (4/5 stars) 2013

I have to say, I'm a Jason Bateman fan. He's consistently funny, can do serious, is likable sometimes, unlikable others and always good, even if the movie isn't. The little kid, Rohan Chand, is such an innocent foil to Bateman's bad guy as well - a superb casting.

In "Bad Words", Bateman plays Guy Trilby, a miserable, genius who notices a loophole in the American spelling bee system that allows him to compete. So, he works his way through the spelling bee championships from local to state to nationals.

The inappropriate behavior with the other competitors (all children) is completely hilarious. The only weakness for me is the ultimate reason why Trilby is in the competition, but that's a minor thing and the entire movie is worth your time.

Movie: Pacific Rim (1/5 stars) (2013)

Oooo... smelly! If you want big, giant, atomic robots fighting huge, dinosaur-ish monsters that spit acid and produce EMPs, you're getting what you want. If you want any kind of acting, directing or story-line, sorry, don't bother.

I love Guillermo del Toro as a director. I've enjoyed Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Pan's Labyrinth, and even pieces of Blade II (that does NOT count as a recommendation!). That being said, he  has a few issues and a few misses. This is one of them.

For such a good director, I find that there are all these looks, from the Martial to the pilot, from the pilot to the the ops guy and so on and so on... Looks - you need a "look" to convey meaning and seriousness, or humour or whatever. So awful!

And, just like so many other movies, there are great special effects. Of course - who has bad special effects these days? No one. I noticed that almost all the scenes with the giant robots happened in the rain, so they could show that, yes, we've come far enough to do believable rain falling off giant, metal robots. WE CAN DO IT FUCKAS!

Ug! Hated this movie. Bad, bad, bad. Of course - if you want giant robots, you've got them!

Movie: Man of Steel (3/5 stars) (2013)

Wasn't it just last year that we saw a bullet bounce off Superman's eye in "Superman Returns"? Really, do we need another one of these? They did it with Spiderman (badly) in "The Amazing Spiderman", which could have used a miss. I digress.

There's lots good about this movie. The main cast, Henry Cavill, is pretty much perfect as Superman. No one has ever been better suited. The special effects are superb, as good as they have to be to completely fool us into seeing and believing the situations. Loved the space ships, the scenes on Krypton, how smart Lois Lane was in finding out who this guy ways and so on and so on...

On the other hand, really, you don't just make a movie because you have a good cast and some special effects? Everyone has good special effects - bad ones almost don't exist any more. So, why do you make this movie? To tweak Superman's powers? To re-cast General Zod (Michael Shannon)? To not have Clark Kent as a reporter? What? Really... there's no need.

Some spoilers, all revealed in some dumb things about the movie:
- the Krypton atmosphere affects Superman's powers. This is a guy who can fly in space, orbits the earth in the movie, all under his own power. I think the guy could probably hold his breath for a few minutes. 
- Very inconsistent display of Kal-El's powers. At one point, he's struggling to fight a couple of guys in battle exoskeletons, and then he's weakened by the Kryptonian terraformer and STILL managed to smash through it like a meteor. No damage to Superman at all.
- Jor-El (played by Russell Crowe) fights Zod a couple of times and takes him out pretty easily. Zod says a couple of times how he's trained his whole life to be the ultimate warrior, genetically selected and trained to be the head of the military. Jor-El is the chief scientist. Yet, somehow, he still kicks Zod's ass. What is that about?

Anyway, fun enough to watch, but I doubt I will again. Good casting and acting throughout, really good special effects. It could used better writing and a bit of consistency and thought in the rules of the world.

Movie: The Guard (4.5/5 stars) (2011)

One of my favourite movies of 2011, about an uppity Irish policeman, Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), forced to deal with an FBI agent (Don Cheadle) arriving to investigate $500 M (Half a billion. Is that street value?) worth of smuggled drugs.


Gleeson is awesome in this movie - not that he isn't always awesome, but he's given some of the best lines ever and they are delivered with complete seriousness, for example: "I thought only black men were drug dealers. And Mexicans." and "Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, these men are armed and dangerous, and you being an FBI agent you're more used to shooting at unarmed women and children..."


The FBI agent could have been anyone, but Don Cheadle does a good job of being the fish out of water in a small, Irish town where people just don't want to speak English to him. 


Hilarious comedy - worth watching. It's a real sleeper.

Movie: The Prince of Egypt (1.5/5 stars) (1998)

The Prince of Egypt is the story of Moses, starting as a child in a basket floating down the Nile (because the Pharaoh was killing Hebrew babies to control the population), to a young prince of Egypt, having a bit of fun, playing practical jokes with his adopted brother Rameses and eventually discovering his history and then being chosen by God to lead his people out of Egypt.

Things I thought were done well: I liked the voices and the animations, as well as the visual choices for some of the miracles and plagues. This is nothing less than a star studded cast,  Val Kilmer  (Moses AND God - not quite sure what the message was with that),  Michelle Pfeiffer  (Tzipporah - Moses' wife),  Sandra Bullock (Miriam),  Ralph Fiennes (Rameses),  Jeff Goldblum  (Aaron) and  Patrick Stewart (Seti) all do good jobs as their relative characters.

A few annoyances - they state at the beginning that they are faithful to the original story, however, leave Aaron out of the scene with the staff-to-snakes when Moses visits Ramases to free the Hebrews. I have no idea why. They also show Moses as regretful of the various plagues - sure, any normal man would be, but there is nothing of that in the original story.

The rest of the awfulness of the movie comes with the story itself. It's even more creepy/evil told as a children's story in cartoon form. It's obvious from the movie that God can pretty much do anything he wants to, but rather than free the slaves earlier, or even prevent the slavery from happening at all (I assume hundreds of years ago), he puts generations of Jews through torture for some reason before choosing Moses to free them. Also, he could free them in lots of ways that doesn't involve plagues like killing first born innocents, or drowning thousands of soldiers under the Red Sea who are just following orders of their king. No, no - none of that reasonable behaviour. Instead, he decides to really do some damage and kill people who haven't done anything wrong at all. It comes across as evil and more than a little petty and vindictive for a being who is essentially omnipotent. It's just a sorry, sorry story of an evil super being who doesn't care about people at all and doesn't mind a little pain and suffering.

Unpleasant movie to sit through and not worth the cool animations and the good voice acting to get there.

Movie: Drive (3/5 stars) (2011)

Ryan Gosling plays an unnamed driver in this 80's throwback thriller. 


I was amazed at how 80's it felt, with pink script for the starting credits and heavy, 80's style music. On top of that, there are lots of long, quiet shots with two people not saying much at all, which feels older.


There was lots good in the movie. I like Gosling and he had good supporting actors, especially Bryan Cranston as Shannon, and the lovely dimpled Carey Mulligan as Irene, the love interest (there is one kiss in the movie, which is quite amazing and on top of that, a brilliant scene). There isn't much range here though and Gosling is mostly stoic, with the odd smirk on his face when something he likes happens. Still - he's believable as the likeable, yet psychopathic and cool-headed stunt driver with plenty of mad skills. The story starts slowly, but by half way, the amount of tension is enormous and satisfying.


I found the soundtrack distracting and rather than background mood setting, it seemed to try and tell the story with the song lyrics for some reason. 


So, a bit of a mixed bag, and 3 out of 5 from me.