Where does the time go...

Summer being what it is, television tends to become a little less relevant. Spare me the sob stories about the great options cable gives us these days! Summer is here, which means top-notch programs like Lost, Survivor, and 24 are not. What's a guy to do? I usually use this time to catch up on the films I may have missed throughout the year, but, last night, I found myself reaching back to my college days for The Rock. For those who don't know, this is around the time when someone had the clever idea to make Nicholas Cage into an action here. Face/Off, Con Air and The Rock all hit theaters within the span of a couple years, but this rollicking little break-into-Alcatraz number might be my personal favorite. Does this mean I buy Cage as an action star? Not necessarily, but the film moves along at a brisk pace, its from an era before Michael Bay fell too much in love with himself, and it heralds from a time when films were produced by Simpson and Bruckheimer. With the former's passing, the latter now rules film and television. Oh, where does the time go?

That was some marketing campaign!

Before the film had even started, I already had my headline: "Cloverfield is more marketing campaign than movie." In case the name doesn't sound familiar, this was the J.J. Abrams effort that featured grainy footage of New York under siege. By what? Unknown. Buzz built around the film's trailer, which showed precious little, and the film opened with a boffo weekend this past January. A few months later, I finally was able to squeeze this film in, and, much to my surprise, it's actually a very entertaining movie!

The best of our lifetime?!

Entertainment Weekly recently released its list of the best / most influential television shows of the past 25 years. Topping the list was The Simpsons, which struck me as a bit of a surprise. (Considering its fawning critics, I was not surprised that The Sopranos ended up #2 on the list.) Personal favorites like Survivor (never fully appreciated), Lost, and Friends also cracked the top ten, but the most intriguing item up there had to be The X-Files, a show that whose presence is only occasionally invoked when discussing today's television landscape. Was it groundbreaking? Sure. Did I enjoy it? Usually, although no one seems to care for the way the series sputtered to its conclusion. Then again, some would argue that shows like Lost would not even be possible without The X-Files. Maybe so, in which case a tip of the hat is definitely in order...

Is that why it's called Special Edition?

Watching Aliens: Special Edition for the first time, I cannot say that I saw anything that added substance to the final film. Aside from Bill Paxton (aka Hudson) having a legitimate beef with director James Cameron for cutting so many of his lines, I didn't see much of interest. Most bizarre was an extended sequence on the planet's surface with Newt and her family before the aliens even move in. Interesting, maybe, but not ultimately that exciting, and it makes the movie look rather dated. As for Paxton, despite the decreased screen time, he should be grateful that the final version trims the majority of his most inane chatter. Thankfully, he gets to keep the classics. "That's it, man. Game over. Game over."

Or should it be when is the island?!

Nothing can top the mind-bending finale of Lost's 2006-2007 season, but I won't hold that against Lost, which delivered a whopper to close the 2008 season. Where did the island go? Did it move in space, or did it move in time?! Let's just say that seven months is a long time to wait for such an answer...