But wait, before I get into Crank: High Voltage let me just say this of Crank: Highly entertaining, insane, odd, quirky, bald, sexy (public sex with Amy Smart), and completely unbelievable; not give me my money back unbelievable, but just plain Ok-I’ve-had-enough-time-to-end-now unbelievable, and then it does just that. It ends exactly when you’re about to poke your eyes out with sticks.

So onto the sequel:

We open on Chev Chelios on the road. A black van pulls up and some conspicuous Asians and one shovel scrape the clearly Loony Tunes style indestructible Chev off the road and cart him away. We are treated to some cheap and cheesey IntelliVision style graphics and opening credits with cut aways to Chev’s heart being removed from him (somehow he’s conscious for parts of the operation), and then being replaced with temporary battery powered heart. Traditionally this battery powered heart is only meant to keep the body alive for a few days while the donor heart arrives. In this film however Chev’s only being kept alive so those wacky Asians can lift his other organs presumably to sell to the highest bidder. What they implied they wanted with his penis is never explained in the film, and they aren’t allowed to even attempt more than a glimpse of it because Chev wakes up and kills everyone in the operating theatre; and they’re off! Go Chelios go!

The rest of the film is basically crap wrapped in some great visuals which in my opinion were highly necessary since I would have been bored like piss of this film, and chucked it in the bin along with Jason Stratham’s contractual obligation to a Crank 3. There is of course the requisite Amy Smart as nude as they can get her, and fucking in public scene; the return of Kaylo (or his twin brother Venus who suffers from full body tourette’s); the OTHER Verona brother; the missing heart; David Caradine as one twisted ancient evil Chinaman named Poon Dong; and of course Corey Haim reviving his career by getting beat up by Amy Smart–too bad she couldn’t have done that to him in Universal Groove, then it would have at least had two name actors in it…

It’s all very fun, and tongue in cheek. Thankfully it’s obvious the filmmakers Neveldine and Taylor don’t take the film seriously, exemplified by the odd and jarringly placed Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla style fight scene between Stratham and an asian dude who has far too many face piercings for my liking.

The film’s timing is impeccable as is proven by its ending  just before I wanted to ask for my money back. The film is following the same trend as the original by showing poorly in the box office, but picking up a following on DVD. Let’s see if it can perform well enough to give the Neveldine / Taylor duo opportunity to poison the theaters and airwaves with the dreck that’ll be Crank 3D–come on guys Amy Smart’s boobs aren’t big enough to warrant a 3D flick.

Overall Rating: Disappointing

IMBD: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1121931/

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2koYVqwzT4

Jon & Kate couldn’t get preggers, so they went for in vitro and managed to pick up twins. They wanted more kids, and did it again. Now the process of in vitro is that they implant as many eggs as are viable and see which ones last. Then they ask you to terminate a few and keep the ones that you want (usually two) but J&K didn’t want to let go they thought “Fuck it!” let’s keep all six and see what happens. Lucky them they ended up with six viables that went the full term. Kate was on bed rest from 7 weeks into the pregnancy.

Now here comes TLC which once was a great network but very quickly began competing with A&E to be *THE* reality TV network that we all tune into. A&E had The Two Coreys and Gene Simmons, TLC had J&K+8 and pretty much took the grand prize.

So we got to watch the Gosselins go through what originally was everyday life. Struggling to make ends meet, fighting with each other, unable to get out of their shitty jobs, and all the time building contempt for one another. The children of course left to be “struggle” free. Fast forward 5 years later and you’ve got reality TV history in the making (again). Never since Survivor’s first season did a show absent-mindedly make a hero out of zero worthy face: host Jeff Probst. Now once again with Kate Gosselin. Not Jon so much, but then again if you’ve got a hero then you need a villain, and J+K really both seem to take it to super proportions.

Let’s face it people after getting your testicles fed to you everyday for 10 years why wouldn’t you leave that dragging bitch Kate behind. Oh sure she’s a good mother who spends most of the year travelling for her self-help books and promoting her “If my family can make it so can yours…” all the while fucking her bodyguard, and leaving “poor” Jon out in the cold…

Still A&E enjoyed record ratings this final season, and the reality (pun intended) is that they would have continued to enjoy the ratings skyrocket even higher. With separation shenanigans, Kate bangin’ on the bodyguard, and Jon banging on the plastic surgeon who did Kate’s tits’ daughter how can you not have the ratings continually propelled into the stratosphere.

But with Jon’s smoking and drinking and whoring it really became too difficult for A&E to showcase Jon as that caring, loving, nurturing, bossed around, wimpy father who’s testicles are fed to him in an upper cut sandwich. So they canned the bastard, and publicly announced the show’s name change K+8. This of course gives them brilliant positioning to now take their multimillion dollar franchise and kick it up old school against the Octomom show…

Poor Jon you’re just left to your whores, drinks, and pot…not to be out done however he decided to take on A&E and sue them for exploiting his children…why not before? I mean it wasn’t exploitation the entire 5 years prior? Really? What’s wrong with you people. As much as Jon and Kate detest each other these days, it remains to be seen whether they get over  themselves and reconcile for the sake of the kiddies.

For certain the pain of losing the paparazzi, the fame, and the continually growing salaries they’d become accustomed too will pale in comparison to what their emotional scarred, and now mentally deranged children will have to go through when they spill the beans to their therapists 10-20 years from now.

Good on ya’ J+K at least all that coin you’ve made can be put to expensive psychologists, top-notch psychiatric care, and padded rooms for the family when they get older….

Sadly its goodbye to the dysfunctional duo. Their actions will not be lost to their children however; instead they will forever be able to share the embarassement of their parents for decades to come as YouTube videos, television digital archives, e-mails, posts, pictures, and headlines around the world are saved forever in the electrons chasing each other around the circuits of the Internet.

For those who care A&E is working on a new hero show for Kate+8, and likely another network will pick up the villain show for Jon-8.

The fallout will likely arrive on our doorsteps this September, but for now you and I can both stop looking over our shoulders to see if Kate’s crazed hairstyle is lurking in the darkness waiting to jab a jagged edge into our necks.

Overall Rating: $2 Unworthy

TV.COM: http://www.tv.com/jon-and-kate-plus-8/show/72745/summary.html?q=JOn%20and%20Kate%20Plus%208&tag=search_results;title;1

YOUTUBE MADDNESS: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jon+and+kate+plus+8&search_type=&aq=0&oq=jon+and+kate

Of course I only just had the time to watch the film last night, and I was pleasantly surprised with the film’s visual imagery and the director’s overwhelming attempt to make a story that clung together. Sadly there was an overwhelming feeling that something was just plain missing, and the story was quite slow to unfold.

Still Nicole Kidman was looking yummy and when I realized that this was built up to be a trilogy I was quite happy (as trilogies have a tendancy to redeem themselves completely at somepoint during the story) that I’d get to see more of her character Mrs. Coulter. again.

The story focuses on the character Lyra who escapes from her Harry Potter-esque finishing school having been given the last of the Alethiometers in their world–The Golden Compass; a device which allows you to see the ‘truth’ through time by harnessing the power of  dust…this is vaguelly alluded to as being the very fabric that not only holds the universe together, but binds one world to the next (theirs being one, ours being another). Everyone in this world has a demon (their soul) that had taken an animal form and walks next to them. Children–such as Lyra–have demons that shape-shift because they are sensitive to the powers and influence of dust. The baddies in the film are known as the Magesterium. Their goal is to harness the power of the dust and take over the next world (one assumes it’s ours, but there’s really no obviousness the film). They’re secondary goal seems to be (and it really really isn’t explained in the film) to separate children from their demons in the hopes that they will no longer “suffer” from the influence of dust. The reality is (and one again it’s not really explained in the film) that the Magesterium doesn’t want anyone else to know about or learn about the dust such that they will be the only ones who will try to harness its power and attack/take over/destroy the next world.

As talk of dust and other such tomfoolery are banned in this world so is the discussion of Alethiometers. At the Magesterium’s request all of them were destroyed…the significance of the Alethiometer in the film is sorely missed (from what I understand from the books), and it’s really more of a play thing that gets used a couple of times as a deux ex machina to move the characters from one situation to the next–quite simply lining up impossibly disparate aspects of the story.

And finally there is Daniel Craig who brings his cool crisp no shitting around bond performance to Compass. He plays Lord Asriel who comes to Harry Potter University to ask for the support and funding of the academia so that he can travel to the North (one assumes the North Pole because there’s ice and snow) to find out why dust is flowing from the sky through a demon into a man who just stands there. He needs the funds because the location is far and he must travel alone. The HPU staff agree to fund him against the Magesterium’s wishes, and off he goes…we see him infrequently in the film, and while there are subtle etchings that his role has been played down either due to budget holes or the studio’s will his moments are memorable; but barely move the plot along.

Clearly something has been missed in the adaptation from the novel–a book I have yet to read, so I can’t even comment on the studio’s departure from the book; and I say studio because even the director Chris Weitz has said that he wanted the next two to be much more faithful to the books. Good on you mate. Too bad the studio cancelled the project due to gaps in the economy, and the film’s overall ability to perform in the box office despite a memorable video game.

Overall rating: Tepid.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385752/

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vMmf8YALbc