What to get your geek for Christmas / Hannukah / Solstice / Festivus / whatever

The Stomp Tokyo Holiday Gift Guide has been revised for 2004. So someone made a multi-region portable DVD player, huh? Put that on the list of things I'll never be able to justify buying. Hell, at this point I'd rather have a Roomba. How lame is that?

New Stomp Tokyo review: Zombie 5

Our review of Zombie 5: Killing Birds is now available for your perusal.

CSI, The West Wing, and Me

More time spent over at Scott's place recently means more time exposed to the bizarre and just plain awful. For someone who seeks out the extremes of the cinematic bell curve (to borrow a phrase), my friend certainly does have his finger on the pulse of mediocre television. You can read his take on CSI Miami's recent "Crime Wave" episode. The only thing I have to add to his analysis is the fact that I really miss the vibrant character of Ainsley Hayes on The West Wing, as played by Emily Procter. Ms. Procter plays a character on CSI Miami who is so obtuse and lifeless that I wonder at the fact that the same actress speaks the lines on both shows.

Why single out Ms. Procter, you ask? Shouldn't I be missing all the other characters too, since I stopped watching The West Wing about four episodes into the last season? It's time I confessed my dirty little secret: they sucked me back in. I skipped the oh-so-eventful Middle-East peace-brokering episode, yes, but I've seen all the other eps this season and I'm engaged, if not hooked. Leo's departure from the Chief of Staff slot and the subsequent promotion of CJ has made for some really interesting television -- and how can anyone resist Kristin Chenoweth (so luminous as Glenda in Wicked that I actually went to see it twice) as the deceptively ditzy new deputy press secretary?

It's true that the John Wells moments are ridiculously easy to spot. Wells and his stable of like-minded writers handle important scenes with sweeping melodramatic gestures instead of Aaron Sorkin's quiet and graceful moments of emotion. The fact that CJ's potentially poignant farewell speech to the Press Corps was interrupted by the President of the United States and a standing ovation was practically an admission that this crew doesn't have the dramatic finesse required to handle the moment. Still, there's some sharp dialogue and the characters remain more or less true to themselves. I'll keep watching. For now.

Weekend wrap-up

Yes, I saw The Incredibles, and yes, it was freaking awesome. Go read any other film critic this week for a lengthier review. I am, however, a bit annoyed that the only available Elastigirl toy is a keychain. (But hey! Check out this cool Violet-in-a-bubble keychain!)

Around the World in Eighty Days with Jackie Chan took a spin in the DVD player this weekend, and while I can see how it might not have captivated the younger audiences to whom it was pitched, it is a solid romp that will please Jackie's fans. This flick also has the dubious distinction of having made me laugh at Rob Schneider, which is a rarity. (A cameo from the brothers Wilson (as the brothers Wright) was also quite welcome.) I do wonder, however, why the film's "bookend" sequence -- featuring an animated chicken in a dream of Phileas Fogg's -- was gutted, leaving only confusing fragments of later appearances by the chicken which seem like non sequiturs without its first introduction. Most importantly, though, is the fact that Jackie Chan gets to goof around with his stunt monkeys -- watch for callbacks to Drunken Master and other Chan favorites.

For those of you thinking that we skipped the Month of Z this year, you couldn't be more wrong. We just pushed it back to November. Reviews of the new Takeshi Kitano Zatoichi (due out on DVD tomorrow) and Zombie 5: Killing Birds are both in the works. In the process, however, we seem to have forgotten that November 6th was the eighth anniversary of Stomp Tokyo's creation. Yeah, eight years. Scott and I will probably put up our customary anniversary recap at some point in the near future, but for now we'll just hum the Godzilla theme for a few minutes in celebration.

Indecision 2004

As expected, the best thing about Election Night was the coverage by The Daily Show. Jon Stewart and others (including the rarely-seen Steve Carrell!) spent the evening skewering American politics, opting (as usual) to pick apart the process instead of particular candidates.

That is, until later in the evening when some of the Senate race results started to come in. Stewart, who has been somewhat more forthcoming about his own political opinions on- and off-camera in recent months, looked bewildered at the victory of Republican Tom Coburn, who won a Senate seat in Oklahoma. Coburn famously called Oklahoma City legislators "crapheads." He also repeated, on camera, a bit of gossip that girls in local schools were only allowed to go to the bathroom individually for fear that, upon their return, they would have been converted to lesbianism. When Jon Stewart finds himself speechless at the absurdity of a situation, it's time to check Hell's weather report for falling temperatures.