"Pushing Daisies" for sure is one of the best TV shows of its genre in the last 5 years, agree you with that or not. Bryan Fuller, the creator, has an amazing creative mind. He's the mind behind other great TV Shows as "Dead Like Me" (2003), "Wonderfalls" (2004), and the other one not as great as these ones, but also interesting, "Heroes" (2006). It's a mix of the marvelous worlds Brian Fuller created in previous TV shows, mixing once again an amazing fantasy world with real kinds of people disguised into colorful images and exaggerated feelings, something that a fairytale always is. So, being a kind of fairytale, you cannot expect more than a unrealistic world and unexpected situations, or also situations a lot expected but not in a way that it would usually be told.
A gift always comes with a curse, and what is sweet can also be bitter. That's so, Ned (Lee Pace), The Piemaker, is a simple guy with an interesting gift other than being an amazing chef: he can give life to the dead with just a touch. This could be a power that everybody would die - or live - for if wasn't for another simple and very sad thing: he can also gives the forever dead if he touches it again. The curse of this amazing gift doesn't stops there... everything has a compensation and if he brings anything to life for more than one minute, another specie of that one would die instantly. He's a guy full of unfortunate events in life in a way that he grown up introspectively, always afraid to touch everything and lose once more things he one day used to love. Till the day he could finally be close to his biggest childhood love, Chuck (Anna Friel), if wasn't for another sad fact: she was dead. He gave her life again and she loves him so much as he does, but this love is untouchable. The truly kiss of death. And that's how this beautiful modern fairytale starts.
When I heard about "Pushing Daisies" for the first time it was promoted as something very familiar (or maybe some kind of tribute) to everything that Tim Burton has created since "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" (1985) to "Big Fish" (2003) and "Charlie And The Cholate Factory" (2005). The results could not be better. The world around The Pie Hole was magnificent. The stories around Ned and Detective Cod (Chi McBride) to solve unsolved crimes can be a lot common in TV, but this is just a way to guide people thru amazing stories surrounding characters as Chuck and Olive (Kristin Chenoweth) in a wonderful world full of beautiful and dreamy images that you can almost sense the taste of the colors. Not only that, you are merged into a bunch of amazing and charismatic gentle characters, even those ones with the most deep dark humors.
Forgetting the trivial concept of murders and unsolved crimes, the show brights and is triumphant in a lot of other things. The actors here are top of note. Lee Pace is tender, soft and contained as the character asks for. Anna Friel is the muse of the show as her character is supposed to be. But the most superb times are always with the supporting actors as Chi McBride (Detective Emmerson Cod), Swoozie Kurtz (as Lilly Charles), Ellen Greene (as Vivian Charles) and Kristin Chenoweth (as Olive Snook). Swoozie Kurtz shines performing a so dried character drowned in a impossible dark humor that could frighten a clown, for sure she has the best dialogs and her expressions and body languages are mesmerizing. But if the best dialogs are given by Swoozie and her character, the best funny moments are given by Kristin Chenoweth. Seems that she's improvising all the time, she's so naturally fun that every single scene is a show aside. Kristin shines so bright in the show that winning the 2009 Emmy for her supporting role in the show was totally fair and deserved. Also there's the chemistry between actors and their characters, that are also amazing.
There are no words to express what this TV Show really is and what it was meant to be. For those ones who think this show is a waste of time or claimed to find no sense in it, for sure needs to open their minds and comeback to a time that they probably never had: childhood.
Truth be told... TV has never been so daring in a TV Show as with this amazing one. "Pushing Daisies" was a huge step forward in terms of great artistic entertainment and its sudden death was a lot disrespectful. It's true that TV doesn't respect great TV shows as those ones Bryan Fuller created - except "Heroes" that's still on air and is far from being so amazing as the other ones.

How this movie escaped the wrath of MST3K I'll never know. "Gymkata" is a ridiculous action movie, filled (or is that empty?) with paper-thin plots, dumb characters, and preposterous situations. But take it from me, if you enjoy watching poor, yet goofy, movies, you will enjoy "Gymkata" a great deal.
The action centers around a gymnast who is chosen by government agents (at least I think they were government agents) to become a spy. You see his dad was another quasi-government agent, who has gone missing competing in this game, called, eloquently, "The Game." So the gymnast (played blandly by Kurt Thomas) trains to compete in this game and find out what happened to his lost dad.
Sounds promising doesn't it? Okay, so it doesn't but still, that bare bones plot sypnopsis doesn't begin to describe the joys of this movie. They can be found in the movie's strange details. Like the gymnast's mysterious Asian girlfriend, who doesn't speak for the first half hour of the movie, then all of a sudden begins to talk, and doesn't shut up for the rest of the time! Or the really tough shirtless bad guy who likes to make and break "The Game"'s non-existent rules whenever he so pleases. And of course there's our hero's delightful romp through the "Village of The Crazies" (Evidently that's the place's real name!). Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
But where this movie really shines is the action scenes. Since our protagonist is a gymnast, the director thought it wise to stick gymnastic equipment into the back alleys and town squares of Middle Eastern cities, so that our Gymkata master would be better able to use his gymnast skills to fight the scourge of evil on parallel bars and pummel horses. It has to be seen to be believed.
One interesting thing of note. A lot, I'd say about half the cast, dies from being shot with an arrow. Interesting because the arrows are the only believable effects or action in the entire movie. If these were indeed effects, my one major note of compliment to whoever devised these very realistic arrows wounds. More likely, this was the film's way of not paying extras. Nevertheless, "Gymkata" deserves a look if you can see it without paying and are looking for some silliness that is an easy target for riffing.