Push the Button, Frank!

So, if you are a rabid – or even not-so-rabid – MST3K fan and desperately want to see Joel in action again, today is the day that Doomsday Machine from Cinematic Titanic is available for your viewing pleasure. It is the second Cinematic Titanic release (the first being The Oozing Skull). I haven’t seen Doomsday Machine yet but if it’s anywhere near as good as The Oozing Skull it will be so worth the $14.99 (not that I’m trying to spoil the eventual review of The Oozing Skull).

In other MST3K related news, Joel managed to give me warm tingly feelings when he mentioned the MST3K 20th Anniversary Edition Box Set that’s coming out in October in his most recent post. My MST3K addiction is going to be getting a huge fix this year. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

How do I get to Amarillo?

Hey, it’s a valid question. And very pertinent to this week’s video (which is late, and I apologize).

When You’ve Been Burned, Call on the Man with the Killer Chin

Everybody knows spies are interesting. How else would you explain the thousand – and counting – 007 movies, Mission: Impossible, and the Bourne trilogy? We are obsessed with spies, the things they do, and how they live. What we’ve never really seen before is what happens when a spy is cut loose, or given what is known as a “burn notice”.

Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) is a spy with a major problem: Somebody has put a burn notice out on him and in doing so has effectively wiped him out. His accounts are frozen, if he leaves Miami he’s dead, and the people he used to work with and for refuse to talk to him. He has essentially become persona non grata and he wants to know who arranged it and why.

As interesting as the premise is, I started watching this show for one reason: Bruce Campbell [edited to add link]. The B-movie king himself. At this point I feel it prudent to ask who is really going to admit that they don’t like Bruce Campbell because, really, the man is a legend. If you have not seen any of the Evil Dead movies- even if it was just a late-night showing of Army of Darkness on TNT – I seriously have to question your dedication to entertainment. We’re talking Bruce Campbell here. But enough about my unhealthy obsession with the greatness that is “The Chin” and your craziness for not having that same unhealthy obsession.

It turns out there are plenty of reasons to watch this show that don’t involve Bruce. For one, there’s Jeffrey Donovan, a man I’ve never seen before but who I’m really starting to like just because of this role. Michael Westen has become a fixer, but he’s not a humorless musclebound meat-head with an overwhelming desire to see if he’s got the bigger gun. He plays it smart, often building crazy contraptions out of different electronics (usually involving cell phones). I never thought I’d say this – and I realize it may just be blasphemy to even think it – but this guy could probably give MacGuyver a run for his money. What he works with is higher-tech than MacGuyver. Still, when a man can take pieces of a cell phone and merge them with the motion sensor from an outdoor floodlight and create a remote alarm you just have to be impressed. That’s not just tech-savvy, that’s artistry in motion.

Aside from being the MacGuyver of our time, he’s also got “the smile”. I can’t really describe it to you, you’ll just have to watch. And trust me, if you do, you’ll know it when you see it. It’s charming and, given the context it’s given in, completely disarming for the viewer. You get the sense that he’s seen these types of situations so many times all he can do is smile. And, to shamelessly steal a line from Rachel Lucas, if you are a woman you just might spontaneously ovulate when you see it.

His ex-girlfriend (who is really his girlfriend sans the ex) is former IRA operative Fiona Glenanne (Gabrielle Anwar). She’s skinny, pretty, and easy to mistake for a girl that needs protection, though nothing could be further from the truth on that last one. She’s feisty, well-trained, and considers violence to be foreplay. She’s no wilting flower. I’d hazard a guess at saying she’s every intelligence agency’s worst nightmare: she’s pretty and knows how to use it either disarm or get information out of just about any man. I am in awe of her awesomeness.

Then there’s “The Chin” himself as Sam Axe, former intelligence operative and Navy SEAL. He seems to have only one goal in life: to live off of whatever wealthy woman he happens to be dating at the moment. He’s one of exactly two people who once worked with Michael who is willing to actually still talk to him without guns or pointy things pointed in his direction. But part of that has to do with the fact that the FBI is squeezing him for information. This of course works out for Michael because he now has his own double-agent sending the FBI chasing after their tails.

This all really points to one thing: this show is awesome. It combines everything you could ever want in a series, whether you are a man or a woman: spies, double agents, FBI agents, Bruce Campbell, Gabrielle Anwar, Jeffrey Donovan’s smile, and a higher-tech MacGuyver-like quality that has me bouncing off the walls waiting for July 10th. Consider:

• The Dark Knight
  Release date: July 18

• The X-Files: I Want to Believe
  Release date: July 25

• Burn Notice
  Season premiere date: July 10

• Psych
  Season premiere date: July 18

Plus there will still be new episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent and In Plain Sight airing. July just may be the most perfect month in entertainment this year. Now if only they were releasing a video game that I really want. Bah, who cares. A new X-Files movie and a new Batman movie in the same month? I’m positively wetting myself in anticipation. Then you add on these very awesome shows (all on the USA Network, which has become my most-watched network, BTW) and I could jump off my apartment building roof and my joy would cushion the fall.

Now, the first season of Burn Notice is on DVD and I command you to rent, buy, borrow, whatever you have to do to watch it because it’s awesome and “The Chin” is calling you.

Abject Apologies for My Absence

So, I’ve been notably absent over the past week but I’ve got a couple of really good reasons that I think you’ll all understand.

First, I was involved in helping my favorite blogger and now good friend Rachel Lucas with a project. Basically it started out as my way to help out in a bad situation, but turned into more of an “all proceeds will be donated to charity” thing. This, BTW, is the final design:

Second, last week the demo for Civilization: Revolution was released on the Playstation Network and, though I absolutely suck at strategy games, I thought I’d give it a go. It was utterly addictive. Which of course meant I had to find Civilization IV and bumble my way through that. Sorry, Fallout fans, my attention was totally usurped by the Civilization crack so I really don’t have much to talk about in the way of my Fallout progress. But fear not, because I really will have more to say about post-apocalyptic simulations and giant bugs in vaults.

In any case, stop by Rachel’s store and pick up one of the “Short Bus to Enlightenment” products and rest assured that your purchase is going toward a charity (once we figure out exactly which one I’ll post it and let you know). And, whatever you may think of any of the politics associated with Rachel’s blog, don’t bring it up here. If you want to send me an email, go right ahead, but this particular blog is about entertainment, not politics so any comments you make that are political will be deleted. I’m not trying to be a censor, Dee and I would just like this place to remain a haven for anybody who wants to read about movies and games.

For those of you looking forward to my Bioshock piece, I’m going to push that back to next week because I simply don’t have it done and it would feel cheap of me to pump out a half-hearted and under-written entry. You guys deserve better.

Anyway, I hope you can forgive me for dropping off the face of the earth, but it was, quite frankly, unavoidable.