2 Edged Blog

Some new CD’s

• 14/07/2008
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• Tags: as/is, bam!, chariot, gavin degraw, hello...x, jason mraz, john mayer, john mayer trio, music, sister hazel, Stuff, the village sessions, tristan prettyman, try!, we sing we dance we steal things

I’ve recenty recieved some long longed for CD’s and decided to take a picture of them - aren’t they beautiful?

There are two albums from Gavin DeGraw: The extraordinary “Chariot” and the latest addition “Gavin De Graw” which I will review soon. Then there are also two albums from Tristan Prettyman, the beautiful “Tristan Prettyman” (What is it with Singer-Songwriters and self-titled albums?) and her newest album “Hello…x” (Which I will review soon, too.). There is a Sister Hazel album (”BAM!”). Then there is the long awaited third studio album from Jason Mraz “We dance, we sing, we steal things” (Which will get a review as well) and there are three albums from John Mayer, two live albums: “the Village Sessions” (You guessed it, review…) and “as/is” (Maybe review…) and his dive into blues with the “John Mayer Trio” one of his best albums “Try!”.

Why Smallville is actually quite good.

• 13/07/2008
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• Tags: 3/5, smallville review, Stuff, tv-show

But the real question is, compared to what?

I’ve started watching smallville some time ago (I’m somewhere in season 2 right now) and I’ve so far liked it. It’s exciting, well written and in my opinion finds the balance between comedy and drama.

The recurring characters are all well developed except for maybe Pete Ross, who seems to me just to be the black quy, so that there actually is a black guy in the series. He’s got almost no character, we’ve never seen his parents (as opposed to Lana and Cloe) and he just seems to be the only black guy in the whole town. ;)

I like Lana (she’s gorgeous) and I especially like the Luthors. To me, the Luthors are what lifts Smallville over the average tv-show. Both characters (Lionel and Lex) are very well developed and they aren’t just black an white, that’s what makes Smallville interesting.

The bad guys, however are mostly poorly written, they are for some reason altered by meteor rock (ok so far) and they just turn evil (or they were already). I mean, they turn into psychos, why, I don’t get it. For me this translates into almost zero depth, which is kind of annoying.

The episodes are almost all in the “monster of the tweek” (or ” ‘person who gets in contact with meteor rock and becomes an evil fiend’ of the week”) style. But it’s alright, there are some issues, that stretch over more than one episode, but I would not go as far and would actually call them plots.

One of the must humorous things in the whole series is, that Clark never actually kills anyone, but the bad guys almost always die (they have to, because if they wouldn’t anyone would know Clark’s secret in a heartbeat). The bad guys always kill themselves out of mere stupidity (best example the evil coach, who burns himself alive.) or they die in an accident, Clark never has to make the moral decision to let an enemy live and risk him doing more damage (especially with the ones, that could not easily be contained) or just kill him and be done with it.

So I guess, Smallville is better than expected, better than average, actually quite good, if you don’t compare it to firefly, farscape or pushing daisies, at least.

3/5