There's No Time!!!

This summer I have gained a new interest in a tv series that has been running for a few years now.
I have been watching the tv series 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland, son of Donald Sutherland. The basic plot line is that Kiefer plays a federal agent in the United States, working for an anti-terrorist organization called the Counter-Terrorist Unit, or CTU. Throughout the series (up until season 3 anyways; i've only finished the first 3 seasons) Jack is portrayed as an agent who cares more about saving the innocent people of America (or when localized, Los Angeles, where CTU is based) than following protocol, which puts him in the crazy but not stupid category.
This particular show has a certain twist that sets it apart from other series is that each episode is supposedly run in real-time, meaning that each one-hour episode shows only one hour in real time on the show. Each season chronicles a day in the life of Jack Bauer - 24 hours.

Season 1: 12am to 12am - *SPOILERS*

The first season of 24 kicks off with an episode starting at 12am and going to 1am. The last episode is from 11pm to 12am. This season begins on the day of the California Presidential Primary (which I think serves as a vital event in bringing Senator David Palmer to office). A report comes in to CTU about an assassination on Senator Palmer. Bauer is called to investigate while finding out that his daughter, Kim, has gone missing. Soon enough, his wife, Teri, is kidnapped, where she joins Kim, by terrorists who are looking to assassinate Palmer. Using Jack's wife and daughter as hostages, terrorists blackmail Jack into trying to assassinate Palmer himself, while also demanding the release of the father of a family of war criminals. In addition, there is a mole within CTU.
In the 24 hours of what is known as the "longest day of Jack's life", Jack is able to find out who the mole is, who the terrorists are, avert Palmer's assassination, and find his wife and daughter, rescuing them from the terrorist camp. However, we learn that since Teri found out who the mole was (Nina Myers, then second in command of operations at CTU-LA), Nina killed her.

Review
Since this was the first ever season of 24 I have ever seen I was impressed by the way everything happened. The way they formatted the show to make it in real time was appealing and made it more interesting. However, I found this season the most ridiculous of all the 3 seasons I've seen so far. A few times I found it frustrating how Teri and Kim would keep getting into trouble, further hampering Jack's ability to fight the terrorists. Jack seemed in the show like a very powerful agent of CTU, yet his Achille's heel was inevitably his family. He would put their lives against the life of Presidential Candidate David Palmer.
Another thing that annoyed me was Sherry Palmer. The entire tone of her character just screamed snake (for lack of a better, non-expletive term) to me as with every word that came out of her mouth, she was trying to use an easier, deceptive path to help her husband and kids. She repeated ad-nauseum that she was "trying to help his presidency", and she was willing to play hardball to get it. More importantly, I think she was doing this to help herself gain a position of power.

Season 2: 8am to 8am

This season starts off with the White House receiving intelligence reports of a nuclear bomb set to go off within the L.A. area. Jack Bauer, having been estranged from his daughter ever since the death of his wife, no longer works for CTU but is called by the president and asked to help stop the threat. Within the walls of the White House, now President Palmer is discussing with his secretary of defense a possible response to the bomb. This is done because a tape has been released that reveals a meeting between terrorist cells and their native countries. This tape has been analyzed by Whitehouse and Pentagon experts and been determined to be authentic, yet Jack Bauer has suspicions that this tape may not be authentic. With only Jack's word to go on, Palmer decides to hold off retaliation until absolutely necessary. His cabinet and joint chiefs disagree and are screaming bloody murder. As a precautionary measure, Palmer orders the mobilization of stealth bombers. Meanwhile, Jack is able to start following leads to who the terrorists are by cutting the head off an anti-terrorist informant and delivering it to a gang of known terrorists in order to get accepted as turning rogue. While undercover, Bauer accompanies the terrorist gang while they bomb CTU-LA HQ, which receives heavy casualties, and their head computer technician dies just after giving them an encryption key they need to access critical files. After following lead after lead, one of which includes former CTU agent Nina Myers, Jack finally learns that Syed Ali is behind the plot but is also working with a Marie Warner, a mid-late twenties caucasian female who was about to get married on that day. After finding the bomb, it is flown out into the Mojave Desert by CTU-LA director George Mason, who inhaled a lethal dose of radioactive plutonium in an earlier raid. After safe detonation in the desert, the focus now turns toward averting a war with the countries of the middle east. More specifically, Jack's new mission is to prove that the tape received by the White House has been fabricated and never happened. Meanwhile, Palmer's cabinet has invoked the 25th Amendment, which removes him from power and puts the current Vice President into office as President. After following more leads, Bauer finds out that the man behind the fabrication of the tape is Kingsley. The person who can prove it is no other than Sherry Palmer, who was divorced by Palmer at the end of the First Season. Sherry gets Kingsley to admit (while Palmer wears a wire) that he fabricated the tape and the war is averted. In the last scene of the season, Palmer succumbs to a toxic substance (but doesn't die) absorbed through the skin.

Review:

This season was a little better than the first one. The re-emergence of Nina Myers as a double agent was an interesting twist to the plot as she is the only terrorist agent who knows Jack and how he and CTU operate. She could be considered by many to be the wild card for the terrorists. Again I was annoyed by Sherry's presence as she plays hardball but by now I've accepted her role in this show. Kim gets into trouble on her own again as she herself tries to solve other problems in a kind of sub-plot but this doesn't seem as irritating or prevalent as before. Overall, this season seemed interesting but I felt it had its climax in the middle of the series when the nuke goes off.

Season 3: 1pm to 1pm

A few years have passed since the nuclear threat and war have been averted. Now it is election season for David Palmer as he is preparing for a critical Presidential Debate against a senator. Sherry has been removed from the office adminstration and Palmer has a new love interest. As it turns out, his new love interest has a skeleton in her closet that hurts Palmer's campaign. Palmer doesn't care but she realizes that she isn't ready for the high calibre politics of the office and decides to leave him. But this is more of a sub plot that I will explain later.
The main story revolves around a biological threat that threatens not only Los Angeles, but the entire country this time. CTU has been reorganized at the command level. Jack Bauer has been named director of CTU Field Ops and now has a partner, Chase Edmunds. Chase has been going out with Bauer's daughter Kim who now works for CTU. Tony Almeida is in command of CTU-LA HQ with his wife, Michelle Dessler (apparently she kept her maiden name). This time, Jack Bauer finds himself going rogue once again as he breaks his adversary, Ramon Salazar, out of a maximum security prison and heads towards the Mexican Border. There Ramon joins his brother Hector and they begin to organize a trade with Belgium terrorists to buy a virus. Once meeting with them, they learn that there has been another buyer interested this buyer is none other than Nina Myers, who outbids them in an auction for $240 million. Later, they learn that this was all a deception and the virus never left the hands of the Belgium terrorist (who we learn is known as Michael Amador).
Failing to gain control of the virus, they learn that Amador, who is soon killed, has already sold the virus to another man. This one is a former MI6 (British Secret Service, produced James Bond) agent who summarily calls the President, informing him that he has taken the citizens of the US hostage. CTU finds out that a vial of the virus has been taken to a hotel in LA. They send Michelle and Gael there to help contain the occupants within the building. They arrive there too late to disarm the bomb and it goes off in the ventilation room, distributing it throughout the hotel. Soon emergency crews arrive and start quarantining and testing the occupants. Gael dies from the virus along with about 700 to 800 of the occupants, including the head of security at the hotel, who helped contain the occupants. Once learning that Michelle is immune to the virus, she is transported downtown for a debriefing. While in transport, she is kidnapped by the terrorist's agents and held hostage. The terrorist, Stephen Saunders, threatens to kill/torture Dessler if Almeida doesn't provide him with a means of escape when Bauer has his building surrounded. In order to help bring Saunders in, Bauer kidnaps Saunders' daughter and they organize a trade: Saunders' daughter for Michelle. while the trade is going through, a strike team moves in and kills Saunders' henchmen. Saunders is apprehended but remains adamant about keeping the locations of the remaining vials of the virus to himself. Taking drastic measures, Bauer takes Saunders and his daughter to the hotel where most of them have died and threatens to have his daughter join them, making him watch while she dies. Literally waiting to the last minute, Saunders breaks and tells them the details they need to find the GPS trackers on the 11 remaining vials of the virus. Within 10 minutes, 10 of them are recovered, with their occupants being killed by headshots. The 11th one is tracked down to a trainstation where the carrier has discarded the tracker on a decoy and proceeds to lead Bauer and Edmunds on a chase which ends in a public school science lab. Not being able to disarm this bomb, it is detonated in a fridge which is sealed, containing the virus.
As with the president's campaign, it is again put in danger when one of his largest supporters learns that Palmer's brother, Wayne Palmer, had an affair with his wife. This supported, called Miliken, has the power to destroy Palmer's presidency and threatens to do so unless Wayne is fired or resigns. David refuses and decides to play hardball, calling....yep you guessed it...Sherry Palmer. While she is doing her dirty work Miliken ends up dead. After a series of other events happen, Sherry ends up dead as well as the Miliken's wife. At the end of the season Palmer informs Bauer that he will not be seeking a second term in office and hopes that he and Bauer can be friends as private citizens.

Review:

I liked this season the best of all 3 seasons. This is mainly because of David Palmer. Here you see that he has really got the guts to do what he has to and doesn't really like doing anything deceptive. He learns how dirty things can get in the office and decides that it's not for him. Also in this season we see the lives of many major characters ended:

• Sherry Palmer dies when she is shot by Miliken's wife
• Miliken dies when Sherry refuses to give him his medication when needed
• Miliken's wife commits suicide after killing Sherry
• Ryan Chapelle is executed by Jack Bauer after receiving an order from Saunders under threat of releasing the virus
• Nina Myers dies after being shot by Jack Bauer after he determines that she has no more information for him.
• Gael dies at the hotel after the viral bomb explodes in his face
• Saunders dies at CTU after Gael's wife shoots him in revenge.

This along with the 700 or so occupants of the hotel, agents of CTU, henchmen, Ramon and Hector Salazar...the list goes on. This season also marks the end of much of the major cast of 24. Since Palmer doesn't seek reelection this is the last we see of him and his cabinet.

Stealth vs Fantastic Four

This summer I have seen plenty of movies. Most of them probably the mainstream blockbusters: Star Wars, Batman Begins, War of the Worlds, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Kingdom of Heaven (possibly others but I can't remember them at the moment). This past week I added two more movies to this list of films, which means this summer I've spent between $50 and $60 on movies at the Theatre. Add to that movies that I've rented and I've seen quite a bit of movies.
Anyways, the movies I saw in theatres in the past week were Stealth and Fantastic Four.

***Warning - Spoilers will most likely be in these reviews.

Stealth:
First, the trailer for this movie was what first caught my eye (which is probably what it was intended to do). The basic premise of the movie was this: The USAF has set up a division of elite fighters (more elite than Top Gun, apparently) who are selected to train to fly the newest technology they have in aircraft: stealth fighters. Out of 200 pilots across the country that applied only 3 were selected (1.5%) to be trained to fight as a team. After training for a certain amount of time, they are informed of assignment into the field and a new team member. This member is an artificial intelligence designed to learn. It has all the abilities of the planes themselves but does not require a passenger to fly it.
So anyways, the AI plane, codenamed Tinman, is caught in a lightning storm, struck by lightning, which fuses its circuitry and somehow makes it self aware. The on-site techy doesn't know what's going on and isn't confident of Tinman's abilities/safety with the crew, but nevertheless, the Commanding Officer on the ship clears it to fly with the others. As you would expect it goes awry.

Situation?

Now you have a rogue stealth fighter with enough armament to launch a moderate ground assault that is no longer in control of those who let it go. What's worse is that it is heading to attack fictional targets (created for simulation test purposes while in experimentation stage) in Russia, which may lead to war.

Solution?

Send the three elitely trained stealth fighter pilots to track it down and bring it back to the aircraft carrier where it came from so they can make repairs.

Problem?

Tinman is able to successfully defeat one of the pilots by flying through a mountainous region and making the pilot crash into it. A second pilot has their plane damaged by debris from the first plane and has to bail out somewhere over North Korea, which currently has no diplomatic relations with Americans and will be hostile towards them. This leaves the leader of the team in the remaining stealth fighter, which is low on fuel, to try and bring Tinman back.

The rest of the movie focuses on the pilot gaining the trust and friendship of Tinman. War is averted; situation is returned to normal.

This movie had its corny elements where the pilots seemed to have larger-than-normal egos since they were considered the most elite pilots in the USAF and possibly the world. The action sequences and computer imagery/graphics/special effects were great. The plot, though, was fairly simple and generic for an action movie of this type; only the toys were different.

I'd give it a 3/5 - Good but not great.

My Movie Rating System
0 - This rating is given to movies I've walked out on (Traffic)
1 - This rating is given to movies I've felt like watching to see if it gets better. (Alexander)
2 - This rating is given to movies I at least found entertaining to watch the first time but would most likely not watch again. (Aliens vs Predator)
3 - This rating is given to good movies that I could watch more than once without looking at my watch or the time. (The Last Samurai)
4 - This rating is given to movies I thoroughly enjoyed watching and would watch twice in theatres if the occasion arose (different groups?). (Star Wars Ep. III)
5 - In order to get this rating, a movie would have to pretty much amaze me. There would have to be in there some elements that, well, stuck out, and made the movie an icon of its time. (For its time - The Matrix: First time I saw Bullet Time and thought about brain-in-a-jar theory, Sixth Sense - First movie I saw with a twist, etc...).

Fantastic Four:

This is yet another movie based on a Marvel comic series created by Stan Lee (who's other creations include Spiderman, X-Men and the Punisher - all of which have made it onto the silver screen).

Like the first Spiderman, XMen movies as well as Batman Begins (Batman is not created by Marvel, but by DC Comics), this movie focuses on the origin of these superheroes; that is, how they got their powers. Spiderman was bitten by a spider, the XMen are given them by genetics (are born with them and later develop them at puberty), and Batman creates his own special equipment to serve his purpose.

Having not read the comics on their origins, I will only be able to describe how they got their powers according to the movie itself. A team of four scientists (Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Ben Grimm, and Johnny Storm) accompanied by their rich sponsor, Victor Von Doom, to Doom's space station where they will be able to monitor the effects of a cosmic radiation storm on human cells (assumingly a sample). When the storm hits the station, its apparent shielding fails and they are knocked unconscious. Later they discover that they have super powers and the only thing that they can wear that allows them to stay clothed while using their powers is the suits they were wearing on the station. *gasp!*
Reed is given the power to stretch his body and takes on the name Mr. Fantastic - the leader of the F4.
Susan is given the power to make herself invisible - but not her clothes unless she's wearing the suit. She takes on the name the Invisible woman and can also project forcefields around objects to either protect them or contain them.
Johnny is able to heat his body to temperatures approaching Supernova (that happens when a star explodes), which is about 3,500,000,000K and fly too. He calls himself the human torch.
Ben Grimm is turned into a huge rock-like being with immense strength. He is simply called The Thing.
Victor Von Doom, also is affected by the cosmic radiation, which turns his body into a metallic alloy harder than diamond or titanium. He also is able to control electricity/lightning energy.
After they figure out their powers, Doom decides he wants to get ride of the other four. So he freezes Mr. Fantastic (Rubber becomes rigid when froze), launches a heatseeking missile at the Human Torch, changes The Thing back into Ben Grimm (which is what Grimm wanted at the time after losing his wife), and tries to choke the life out of the Invisible Woman. Long story short, he fails, and they stop him.

This movie focused more on the characters playing/dealing with their powers and their dis/advantages. Namely, The Thing. Grimm's wife leaves him after seeing his new appearance and he finds himself an outcast because of it. Susan learns she can't really wear any other pieces of clothing if she doesn't want to be seen. Johnny loves his powers and tries to make them work. Reed is more conservative with them.

Like Stealth, I enjoyed the special effects they had in this movie, but found the plot rather lacking. The humour element in this movie was good and it was a good movie to watch for those who are interested in the comics. Beyond that, this movie wasn't great but it wasn't bad.

3/5