OK OK!

I admit, the double-barrel Dollhouse episodes in the past three weeks have totally thrown me off-guard. They’ve been pretty damn awesome (with a few iffy bits), and I’ve been trying to take screenshots, but I just haven’t had time to collate them all into a blog post.

If you haven’t been watching Dollhouse — due to mixed reviews, or lack of time, or whatever — it’s probably worth watching for what promises to be a pretty spectacular finale. The last 6 episodes have played out like some kind of mini-series: very condensed, very action-packed. This week’s episodes (9 and 10) were visually spectacular: I don’t know if they borrowed some sets from elsewhere, or Dushku ploughed a ton of money into it, but it was really quite an adventure! Obviously, it leaves you wondering, if they’d made every episode this good, would the show have been axed…? Are they only this good because they’re trying to prove something? (Were these episodes made before it was axed?) It feels like they knew the end was coming, so they’ve shoehorned the finales from the next 2 or 3 coulda-woulda seasons — all the exposition is suddenly occurring.

At least they’ll get to finish it, unlike Firefly…

[I actually want to write more of a review, but I don't have the time, grrr. -S]

Let’s not forget the vast number of cameo/bit parts. I have no idea if everyone ‘wanted in’ for the last few episodes, or if there’s just a glut of actors looking for parts at the moment — either way, it was a lot of fun to see faces like Ray Wise from Reaper and Glenn Morshower (Aaron Pierce) of 24. And who can forget Detective Lundy — er, I mean, Keith Carradine?

Anyway, depending on your point of view, the remainder of this post is either going to bore you senseless, or completely blow your mind, because there are frickin’ hundreds of screenshots here. I hope you don’t have a monthly Internet traffic limit. I admit, I rushed a few of them, so they’re not quite up to my usual standard… but they should do! (Check out the topless Victor and Sierra!!) As usual, you can hover over an image for a little more information.

Note: Dollhouse day not Dushku Day because, well… there was hardly any Dushku this week.

Instead… we were treated to an episode full of Sierra — Dichen Lachman — and Victor (the always-delightful Enver Gjokaj). And… it was OK! Surprisingly OK. Deep and meaningful. It was certainly let down a little by Dichen’s acting a little… but she did better than usual! Enver was great as usual. Keith Carradine (who is absolutely awesome in Dexter) also made a surprise appearance — is he here to stay? He seemed to know Adelle. It’s suggested that he’s a big-wig from the Rossum Corporation or something?

But yeah, not much Dushku this week. Only one photo of her looking very pretty in a very small and very tight cocktail dress. No sign of Paul this week either (though the guest star looked a lot like him…)

Ah yes, and there was news this week that Dollhouse almost certainly won’t get renewed for a third season. They’re putting repeats of Bones and House on throughout November, as they get more viewers… (if I were to ever make a sad face on my blog, now would be the place I would do it — fortunately, I refuse to use smilies/frownies on the blog…)

I think that’s all for now. Do we get Yummy Summer Glau next week? Or do we have to wait until December?

Note: Click the images for a bigger picture! My notes for each image are in the tool-tips, if you hover over them…

Heroes finally comes of age.

Thank you, Lord.

Week 3 of Dollhouse season 2 and… jackpot!

I don’t know if it was the fact that Eliza Dushku was prancing around like some 18 year old university freshman, flouncing and giggling and and and… *takes a breath* Or maybe it was the deliciously creepy sociopath and his great pre-intro sequence.

But still no sign of Dr Saunders. I did a quick Google search and turned up nothing. Is Amy Acker pregnant or something? I can see she’s in another show this season too…

There’s probably a few spoilers in today’s set of screen-captures, but it won’t give away too much.

See if you can spot this episode’s ‘BSG alumnus of the week’. Still no sign of Summer Glau however…

Note: As always, you can click the images for a much bigger version. Hooray for High-Definition TV! My (hilarious) commentary can be found by hovering your mouse over each image.

Dollhouse had its season 2 premiere last night in the US. If you didn’t watch it… for shame! It was really quite good. Surprisingly so. I assume it was written by Joss Whedon himself, which would probably explain the pithiness — and the sexuality! He sure seems to like sexiness, eh? Amy Acker and Eliza Dushku were both stunning this week.

I don’t know if Dushku has put on a little weight or something but she looked positively glowing last night. Real, lip-biting, she-is-almost-as-pretty-Cheryl-Cole luminescence.

Anyway, as you know, I try to write as little as possible on the weekends, so I will let a whole bunch of captured stills from the episode do the talking instead. Enjoy!

Dushku Day is back, baby!

Warning: Dushku is seriously hot this week. There’s also some Jamie Bamber of Battlestar Galactica fame for the girls to enjoy. I have to admit, he made me swoon a little.

Note: You can click each image to zoom in. If you mouse-over you will see each photo’s comments/notes.

… it’s because I’m busy playing video games.

If, for some Godforsaken reason, you still don’t play video games, let me tell you something: Winter is gaming season. The summer blockbusters have been and gone. The warm, hazy friend-filled nights spent outdoors have dissipated with the first chills of September. Slowly but surely we retreat to our warm, cosy caves, fall to our sofas, plump our pillows and… turn on the TV! Autumn is when most big games and TV shows are released — no big surprise, considering that’s when the biggest, voluminous-backside-on-seat audience is available!

Now, historically this time of year wasn’t a problem — far from it! There used to only be 2 or 3 big games a year. I could stagger them and start one every few months. But now with the industry ballooning and game budgets growing to the size of feature films — because they are that profitable — there’s simply too many games. There used to be one big FPS a year, one or two RPGs, a sports simulator and… that would be it. There’d be other oddball games that could entertain you for a few hours, but nothing big. Some years you might not even play a single stand-out game!

That’s not the case nowadays though, and I suppose it never will be again. Just in September alone, I have the following games that I need to play through: Guitar Hero 5, Rockband: Beatles (well, I might give this one a miss…) AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (really a game), Murumasa and Batman: Arkham Asylum. That’s just on the PC and Xbox360. If I include the DS/Wii… well… you would probably never see me again. I’ve never been able to pull myself away from the Cake Mania series of games…

October’s even worse, but I won’t bore you with the specifics. All I’m trying to say is: if you’re the kind of person that keeps track of at least five TV shows a week (or four, if you’re a True Blood fan and you’ve just watched the finale — please don’t spam me with comments on how you want to have Cullen’s babies. Wait, that’s Twilight! Ahh, I can’t keep up…) — anyway… if you watch a lot of TV, perhaps you will now understand why it will almost feel like hard work being a games player this Autumn. Think about it: an average, big-budget game takes between 20 and 60 hours to finish. That’s the same length as a standard 24-part drama season on the short end, and three seasons on the long! And I have to play three games a month if I want to keep up with all of the releases this Autumn/Winter! That’s a minimum of 60 hours a month, or as much as 180 — or 8 solid days of gaming…

But the best thing? The caveat and saving grace? It doens’t even make me a nerd any more! Video games are now part of popular culture. They are as much a consumable commodity as movie DVDs or TV box sets. In fact, I laugh derisively at those people with LoveFilm or NetFlix subscriptions! HAH!

The point of this entry was actually to warn you that you may get an awful lot of games-related blog entries over the next few weeks and months. But that’s healthy. I’ve been ignoring the gamer side of me for much too long. And there are actually a lot of gamers that read this blog: so these months are for you, gentlemen (and lady).

* * *

Incidentally, if you’re not a gamer, but you are interested in playing them, you should read my guide: A Beginner’s Guide to Gaming. It will walk you through from the very beginning (it doesn’t tell you how to hook up a console to your TV, but everything else!) Think of gaming as ‘interactive TV’, or ‘entertainment for the intellectual’, where you give a little of yourself to make it a much more interesting (and sometimes fulfilling!) experience.

There is a reason it’s the only growing segment of the media industry.

I’ve just watched episode 12 of Dollhouse, the finale — well, the season one finale, let’s keep our fingers crossed that it’s not the finale — and I thought it was a little sad that throughout the main thing on my mind was Eliza Dushku’s cleavage.

Eliza’s not a big girl. She’s short, petite, and certainly not that well endowed in the boob department, but due to the wonders of modern technology — tit-tape and carbon-fibre push-up bras (do they exist yet?) — Dushku’s breasts performed admirably.

The plot itself was OK; it went out with a whimper, rather than a bark, as I expected. Whedon and Dushku both played for a second season which I hope we get (we find out in a week or so). Alan Tudyk was fantastic again as he explored a bunch of identity issues, played out by Echo and Wendy.

That’s Echo and Alpha kissing. Nothing like a bit of old-school symbolism: sparks may fly, eh? The girl behind them is busy being implanted with another personality, with some truly Frankensteinesque lightning providing the atmosphere. Why does everything require lots of sparks and bangs? Haven’t we moved past that yet as a culture?

No half-assed review of the finale would be complete without an honourable mention for Amy Acker who finally lost the nasty scars to play some retrospective ah-so-that’s-what-happened scenes. She’s really rather pretty. Sorry for the gratuitousness — blame Joss Whedon, not me, I’m just the camera man…

You know, I’ve never been fortunate enough to strip a pair of leather pants from a girl? For some reason, none of my girlfriends have been ‘into’ them. Looking at the first photo of Amy’s ass, I have to ask… why not? I would seriously expect the poor guy to be enjoying himself a bit more too. Check out his stare in the second photo, though…

Finally, a few more photos, just to complete this bumper ‘Finale Special’ (don’t ever question my journalistic integrity!) Dichen Lachman, the Witless Wonder (but if you’re reading, Dichen, please, email me — I loved your work in Neighbours), looks absolutely stunning when she quickly seduces Paul — Tahmoh Penikett — who, seemingly, will be playing quite a different role next season.

Goddamnit, just KISS her! Heck, throw her on the floor and screw her brains out. She’s so up for it, Paul… so up for it.

It might look like she needs to pee, but there’s something about that pose which I find quite sexy. Perhaps it’s because you can’t tell if she’s wearing shorts, or a skirt?

This one needs no caption. Needless to say, when you’re elevated like that, crawling across a steel girder, gravity does the rest of the work for you.

I guess that’s the end of Dushku Day, and considering the American TV season is just about over until September, I might struggle to find a pretty little strumpet to feature until then. I’ll see what I can do… and maybe find a few more topless men to tide the girls over too.

I’m going out in a moment, so I didn’t have time to creatively title this entry. Sorry. How about, ‘Dushku and Dichen get it on!’ or ‘Oh, so he’s not actually a stoner?’ (disregard both of those, please, they’re both potential spoilers…)

There’s a word that describes this episode: Finally. Finally, so many bits of the story slot into place. Plot strings are tied off. AND it’s to be continued; all proper TV watchers love a good TBC! The 40-minutes-out-of-an-hour allotment that American TV shows get often causes incredibly cramped plots, shoehorned twists and turns, and forced, ugly character development. When you stretch outside the 40 minute mold and start looking at longer story arcs, things get a lot better (look at the first season of BSG or Heroes for a fine example).

There’s a reason the longer 60-minute episodes of BBC dramas tends to feel more ’rounded’, or why the old-school multi-part Dr Who episodes felt much more developed than the modern, 43-minute variants. Heck, when you tack two episodes together, you’re almost at movie length.

Anyway… I don’t want to spoil the plot because, no doubt, some people haven’t watched episode 11 yet. Two of the following screencaps are safe to look at, but one of them might give a little bit of the story away. I won’t tell you which one. Most importantly, Alan Tudyk makes a cameo appearance as the designer of the Dollhouse (or the technology behind it) — Alan’s the guy that played the cute pilot in Firefly. Actually, looking at a photo of him, he’s not actually that cute…

There was this rather-skimpy red pyjama thing that she wore at the end of the episode, but she looked cuter here, fully dressed…

Dichen can’t really act, but she does look good, strapped down into a chair. I think I speak for most of the male population when I say that a cute, Asian-looking sex slave would tick most of the boxes.

The look of someone very happy to see their long-lost girlfriend OR a psychotic ‘Here’s Johnny!’ maniac? You decide (or watch the episode!)

Episode 10 of Dollhouse saw a very interesting ‘mechanic’ examined (one almost identical to Caprica, incidentally, if you’ve seen the leaked pilot): If you can be uploaded into one of the Dolls, can life continue after death? At what level of complexity/accuracy does the the copy become more than just a copy and gain sentience? That’s a complex, existential dilemma which I certainly won’t argue about on a sunny Saturday afternoon, but no doubt a topic being discussed on geekier blogs than mine.

Echo finds herself implanted with the memories/spirit/soul/?? of an older lady so that she can discover who murdered her. Quite an interesting take on the formulaic murder-mystery with the standard twists. Unfortunately, being some 60 year old, Dushku doesn’t wear anything particularly skimpy this week, though she does wear a rather fetching silk negligee thing:

There’s a fantastically uncomfortable bit where the old lady’s son kisses his Echo — his mother, in other words. Though, in a negligee like that, I probably couldn’t fault his logic… ‘Meh, Oedipus knew what he was doing…’

Anyway, because of Dushku’s complete lack of slutty sass this week, you get a couple of topless photos of our intrepid investigator Paul — Tahmoh Penikett. He’s really in way too deep with his current girlfriend — he knows she’s a Doll, and he’s obviously suffering some major turmoil — but that doesn’t stop him from throwing her down on his bed like some kind of beast. Really, watching that scene in slow-motion to get this screencap was quite an experience. The facial expressions he makes… blimey.

And then, of course, he has to take a shower after their wild, animalistic sex.

Just two episodes remaining. Still very dubious about a good ending; will we get a big, juicy, two-parter finale, or just a standard episode? Was it written as a mini-series (expect some explosive fireworks), or will we see some real plot progression (low-key finale)? The son mentions a ‘Dollhouse Manhattan’ in this episode, and unless I’m mistaken the current Dollhouse is in Los Angeles, yet again alluding to something bigger. No doubt yet another ‘international, omnipotent shadowy corporation’ that governs most of the known world, ala Prison Break, Heroes, Fringe… I can’t wait; it’s not an over-used plot device, honest.

A small review to justify this blog post: Episode 9 of Dollhouse. Quite strong. Dushku, somehow, is actually becoming quite a strong actor. Was good to see more of the British girl (shows how much I value journalistic integrity). They finally gave the Australian girl, Dichen Lachman, an almost-mute part to hide her truly atrocious acting. It’s looking more and more like a mini-series, though I guess with the whole ‘The Dollhouse Is Global’ thing, they could stretch it out to another season if it gets continued — it seems unlikely, though.

Anyway, more importantly, here’s Eliza Dushku in some leather one-piece dominatrix outfit. The girls amongst you will be glad to note that her ass is a bit… well… saggy. Though, I imagine the outfit provides very little, if any, support. If anyone thinks they would look more pert in such an outfit, please send proof.

You can tell he quite likes her get-up. Okay, he likes it quite a lot.

She looks awesome from this angle.

‘Hurry up, bitch!’ She doesn’t look so great from this angle, though.