Heroes Season 1

Heroes sucks! It certainly has its moments, but the overall quality isn't what the hype machine preaches it to be.

First the storyline is silly. Gene mutation can't possibly allow you to do all those amazing acts, can it? Besides, we do use our whole brain! That crap about using only 10% of it is so out of fashion. I'd rather the writer goes with Marvel/DC's traditions: touched by some sort of space rocks or x-energy or whatever. And how do you track "special" people to such accuracy that you have a list of names! I want to puke everytime that Suresh guy mentioned the human genome project in all sincerity. Since the creator tries to stage a superhero drama in a real life setting, at least you can make your basic premise a little more plausible. Looking serious doesn't mean you're convincing. The major part of the plot is plodding and slow with plot holes big enough for an oil tanker to comfortably sail through and the ending is sort of the pinnacle of its mediocrity.

Another thing that bugs me is the characters. They are so unloveable. Peter is bitching all the time (having his hair covered his forehead means that he's a badass? And then a good guy when it's combed back? come on!) Is Nikki/Jessica simply having multiple personality disorder like the shrink suggested? A dopplerganger you can't control is hardly superpower and how can that be linked to gene mutation? Nathan the flying man, this guy has no principle at all, and the season finale practically doesn't need him to be there (I mean Peter can fly, too, so...) And then there's Peter and Nathan's mother - what a strange character! She's a vulnerable widow who has to shoplift to feel the pulse of life in the first episode but by mid-season, she suddenly turns into this stone-hearted super mastermind behind the biggest conspirancy of all time?! Wow, which planet does this psychotic bitch or, her creator, the writer come from? The rest of the characters are boring, stereotypical and forgettable. The saving grace is the Japanese duo and somehow Sylar the sicko.

The production is good, most of the sfx shots are very well done. I just hope that the writing and acting match the same level of quality. Season 2 is officially a no-no for me.

Inland Empire (A Woman in Trouble)

I'm not overly impressed with Inland Empire. Granted, I was not exactly in my best mental and physical state when I watched it (have been losing sleep over the last few months). Besides, I hate movies shot with HD camera, which's lifeless and doesn't register light very well (or maybe too well). Guess Lynch's inclination to HD has a lot to do with budget. He's not a box-office wonderboy in the eyes of the studio suits, and he has his share of the "clash of the titans" with them. In Mulholland Dr and Inland Empire, his profound distrust of the Hollywood system is evident. HD gives him a lot more autonomy for sure.

Going back to the movie itself. I'm ambivalent about it, a somewhat love-hate entanglement. The first hour is sheer brilliance, loaded with tons of typical Lynchian motifs and build-ups: mystical dialogues (how I love that demonic neighbour of Grace, her thick European accent and the "old tales" she recounted), jumbled timelines, multiple identities assumed by each character, convulsive emotional outbursts, parallel stories, retro set design, the return of crazy close-up shots from Lost Highway, so on and so forth. But the problem is, unlike Lost Highway or Mulholland Dr., they never pay off. It's as if these Lynchian devices buckled under the weight of their own eccentricities. Lynch tries to mesh his short films (e.g.the rabbit family) and half-baked ideas (e.g. a cursed unfinished film) into one package. It works to the extent that his signature style is all over the place, but it fails miserably to integrate everything organically. The film is almost plotless, or simply too fragmented for anyone to make any sense at all. It's like Dr Frankenstein's little experiment went horribly wrong: a mish-mesh of rabbit head, human limbs and donkey torso stubbornly remained inanimated after repeated jolts of electricity. It's a bit frustrating. One can call it an experience, surrealistic for sure, but is this merely an attemp to dress up its shortcomings? The film tries too hard to obfuscate and confuse. As much as I still enjoy the style, I'm disappointed that after a five-year hiatus, Lynch simply decided to pull out all his tricks and served them in one plate instead of coming up with something fresh. The subheading of the film should be changed to "A Director in Trouble" (for Lynch to employ a subheading is quite the telling clue to the state of the film). Lynch probably has little idea about what he's doing. Nevertheless, given his cult status, a sneeze from him is good enough to send his fans churning out film readings and creating myths to the proportion of the Lords of the Ring. I'm a fan, too, but I was sorely underwhelmed. Maybe I'm just a nitpicky curmudgeon.