Q: "Welcome to Collinwood" is kind of a disaster. Considering the people involved, it should've been multiple times better.

Watching it, if you're at least somewhat attached to the faith that it'll get better, will probably make you cry. It's one of those movies that had potential, but was robbed of this potential thanks to a terrible script and some bad acting, not to mention the strangely annoying and unnecessary George Clooney character and the guy who reminds me of Richard Dreyfuss but about whom I care so little that I don't even want to know his name.

The film's only saving grace is the weird con vocabulary it introduces. I found myself thinking of it time and time again as I watched more crime capers. This is the only reason I gave the film a 3. The plot is boring, the characters are neurotic, needlessly offensive, and highly unlikable. They are in a constant state of agonizing stress and they're all so irritating that I celebrated their obstacles. They yell at each other and swear crassly. The dialogue is insipid at best and insultingly stupid at its low points.

I find that Steven "Traffic" Soderbergherabracadabrablahblah and George Clooney are to blame for this. They should be tried for war crimes, if anyone actually remembers this crap long enough to care.
A: negative
Q: I must pat myself on the back for watching this movie all the way through because it truly was painful. An incapable painter becomes a fully capable hit-man? This movie was rife with absurdities of which if I mentioned them all I would be giving away the movie. Norm Peterson aka George Wendt must really be in a rut to have agreed to do this movie. The acting was deplorable and the story was even worse. As a sane minded and rational individual, I could not understand where the writer came from nor where he was going with this movie. There was ineptness on the part of every main character, there was a string of hapless and ridiculous events, then the movie ended. One absurd act after another with dialogue doesn't make a movie, it only makes a talkative train wreck.
A: negative
Q: I'll get to the movie in a minute. First, someone wanted "proof" about Clinton's comments at Georgetown, where he claimed that the USA "deserved" the 9-11 attacks. Well, here's what Clinton said:

"In the first Crusade, when the Christian soldiers took Jerusalem, they first burned a synagogue with 300 Jews in it and proceeded to kill every woman and child who was a Muslim on the Temple Mount. I can tell you that story is still being told today in the Middle East and we are still paying for it."

WE'RE still paying for it? Whaddya mean "we", paleface? The Marines didn't storm the Temple Mount.

But in truth, Clinton never really came out and flatly said that we "deserved" 9-11. Like all his statements during his presidency, he IMPLIED that we deserved 9-11. Just point out "fact" A, B, C, and maybe D, and let the listener deduce that they must add up to conclusion X. When in truth, most of Clinton's "Facts" added up to guacamole.

But that's beside the point. We're here to talk movies, not politics. Unfortunately, when Oliver "Captain Conspiracy" Stone does a movie, you can't escape his warped politics. It was only a matter of time before he focused his paranoia and bitterness on the Reagan Era, and what better time than when Stone's dreams almost came true, on the day Reagan nearly bought the farm. Unable to find any nefarious plots or schemes in Hinckley's assassination attempt, he invents one with Al Haig. From a simple misunderstanding of the chain of Constitutional authority, Haig is transformed from a public servant who really should have brushed up on his remedial civics into a raving megalomaniac. You almost expect Haig to rub his hands together like Montgomery Burns and tell Cap Weinberger to "Release the Hounds." Stone even recruits the smarmiest person in Hollywood to play our former Secretary of State, Richard Dreyfuss. A guy you love to hate on sight.

Overall, the movie is OK. Average, hovering on below average. Don't bother renting or buying. Try to catch it on cable. 4 out of 10.
A: negative
Q: 24 has got to be the best spy/adventure series TV had ever aired. The whole idea of telling a story in a 24 hour real time period is dazzling. The style of filming and pacing is what hooks us to watch it. And Jack Bauer is one of the greatest protagonists in a TV series in a long time. I rate this, along with The Simpsons and The X-Files, my three most favorite TV series.

This first episode begins with the conspiracy to assassinate US Senator David Palmer who is also running for president. Bauer is called to his office in order to discover who is behind all this and, at the same time, figure his daughter's path to the unkwown after fleeing from her bedroom. Thus, begins an adventure on the best political style and, what's best of it, is that it always takes place in real time, which makes this TV series a real work of originality in a time where almost every program on TV seems to be showing us the same things over and over and over.
A: positive