The Simpsons Guy - Crossover Episode

The media buzz was huge, the fans were counting the seconds, and now it's finally there: The long awaited cross-over episode from The Simpsons and Family Guy!

I have to admit, that I have always preferred Family Guy to The Simpsons (not only because of their Star Wars paradies and tougher humor), but I frequently watched The Simpsons on TV and I was actually quite curious about how they would get those two very successful franchises together.
I was surprised that I didn't really like it and here's why:

It seems like, even though the two shows get compared so much, they are not very alike and don't fit together very well. While the Simpsons tackle social questions in a more sensitive way, Family Guy knows no bounds when it comes to dirty jokes and crass scenes, so this cross-over episode felt like a toned down version of Family Guy and a hopped up version of The Simpsons.
There isn't much story, except that Homer helps Peter finding his stolen car, so they can leave Springfield, while the rest of the families bond with each other.
There are a few VERY funny scenes here and there, but mostly I just didn't really like it.

I can't even point my finger on what it was exactly, but this episode kind of made me like Family Guy more and The Simpsons even less... My 10 cents...

Grey's Anatomy Season 11, Episodes 1-3 [Review]

I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy for a very long time. It’s in its 11^th season right now and there is no end in sight. I predicted its cancellation years ago and boy was I wrong. Even though the ratings dropped a bit, the stories got more and more confusing and unrealistic, Grey’s is still here.
This is my recap to the first 3 Episodes of Season 11.

S11E01 I Must Have Lost It On The Wind

The first episode is basically a “where were we?” from last season. Most of the issues from last season were solved and the basic drama revolves around Derek having to decide whether to stay in Seattle or move to the east coast., Arizona and Callie deciding whether they’re gonna have another child or not and of course there’s Maggie, Ellis Grey’s child from her affair with Richard.

For a season premiere, the episode was not too special, to be honest. It was character driven as always, but some of the patient-doctor-eye-opening-moments were too obvious, like when Derek had to tell a little boy that his mom is dead and it instantly reminded him of leaving his family for his job.
Maggie is actually a really decent character. It would have been better to include her earlier in the series, since it will be hard for the audience to accept yet another half-sister to appear on the radar, especially after killing Lexie off not too long ago.
However her dynamic with Richard was interesting to watch and her (failed) approaches towards Meredith (who is known to be welcoming to all of her half-sisters) were also quite entertaining.

Luckily they didn’t waste too much time talking about the departure of Cristina, she will probably reappear on the series sooner or later anyways, but the aftermath (giving away her seat on the board to Alex) was definitely there and it was quite funny watching Alex grow into his new position as Meredith’s person (there is no other original intern left in the cast, so that makes sense).

In conclusion, the episode had no big surprises for us, it was relatively April-Jackson-free, which is a good thing and adding Derek’s sister Amelia to the cast wasn’t too noticeable…

S11E02 Puzzle With A Missing Piece

The second Episode was much, much better. It was Maggie-centric, which was a good thing to do, since the character is completely new to everyone and she definitely has to position herself in the family that is the hospital.
It was cool to see her being both clever, intelligent and smart, but human and emotional at the same time. Especially her conversations with her adopted parents were really interesting and shed light on her character. To be honest, even though this whole “Meredith has another sister”-twist is completely ridiculous, Maggie has already more depth than April (she lost all of her credibility with her Jesus/Virgin arc).

Along Maggie’s exploration of her new workplace, hassling with (still clueless – at least right until ) Meredith and other doctors, some of the other character’s stories are continued, the focus remains on Maggie and her relationships, though.

In conclusion: Much better than the premiere, giving the absurd story around Maggie a little more credibility, still setting the stage for the next few episodes.

S11E03 Got To Be Real

Finally we get a little bit more insight into Owens mind and his new cooperation with Callie and the army-guys is a promising plot, especially with Callie facing problems with Arizona yet again, when the latter decides to start a new fellowship in prenatal surgery (we need Addison!!!) and eventually deciding against having another baby via surrogacy.

Also, Meredith tries to cope with Maggie’s revelation, while Alex is preparing to claim his place on the board, heading into battle against Bailey.

In addition to that, Avery complains about not being able to operate enough, because of his position as board leader and Derek, who is obviously depressed by Meredith’s decision not to leave Seattle fights with his sister like a little boy…

In conclusion, this newest Episode was the most interesting one and as I see it right now, this season could get a little bit more interesting than the last.

Grey’s Anatomy always had its ups and downs, but it seems to be on the right track to go back to its former glory. If only Katherine Heigl would make a surprise return and mess things up with Alex, but she probably pissed off Shonda Rhimes for the rest of her life…

Star Wars Rebels - Spark of Rebellion [Review]

Finally: New Star Wars material.
This is one of the first BIG things to come from Disney and Lucasfilm since the acquistion! The new animated series started it's run with a 45 minutes pilot that introduced the world to a new batch of Star Wars heroes. And it delivered!

Before I start, I have to admit that I wasn't too interested in Rebels at first. Obviously, the setting between the prequel and original trilogies is super-interesting and hasn't been covered by too many books and comics yet. Since the new storygroup decided that everything we used to know no longer was canon, the creative freedom in this era is endless.
However, I was more interested in the development of Episode VII, so I was relatively spoiler-free when I started to watch the pilot.

First of all: The animations are so much better than it's predecessor The Clone Wars. The faces look more alive, the locations look like actual paintings from Ralph McQuarrie and the characters' movements are much more credible than in The Clone Wars.

The score was a huge fan-service and subconciously brought back the feelings we all had as little kids growing up with the original trilogy. Most of the tracks were taken almost 1:1 out of John William's repertoir. However, the music fit perfectly throughout the episode and didn't distract from what was happening on screen.

The characters are the biggest win of this new series. As a pen and paper RPG-player myself, I couldn't help but notice, that the crew of the Ghost is just like the fictional crews we played throughout our various campaigns. Every single one of them is loveable, memorable and interesting (with one exception). Kanan (voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr.) is one of those Jedi you would trust instantly and he looks kind of hot, too! Hera is the heart and soul of the ship, Sabine is the cunning warrior-chick with a soft spot and Zeb is the muscles of the team.
The only exception for me was Ezra. I didn't like him. He reminded me of Aladdin and his tendency of winning every situation and being the most clever child ever annoyed me a bit. Sure, it's a children's show and kids will probably be able to identify with him more, but I just couldn't stop thinking about the Mary-Sue effect.
In contrary to that, the antagonist, Imperial Agent Kallus was a blast! Lawful evil, perfect voice, kind of bad-boy-DILF-sexy, he was the perfect villain for the episode. Something about him gave me the impression that he won't stay on the Empire's side forever...

Last but not least, let's talk about the story: Ezra meets the crew, the Empire is established as being evil and mean and we find out that Kanan is a fugitive Jedi and Ezra a potential Padawan.
The producers played it safe with this basic, simple introduction to the new characters, that was delightfully entertaining and easy to follow troughout.

In conclusion: except for the main protagonist, this pilot was quite promising and it's no wonder that Rebels was already renewed for a second season. Keep it up!

The Oscars 2014

It is such a sad moment, when you realize that award season is over... In the next few week you won't see that many glammed up celebrities in one room any more and speculating about awards will become more and more obsolete.
However there was one last climax, the biggest celebration in Hollywood, the most important event in the annual movie-schedule. The 86th Academy Awards... And let me say, this year, they were really special!

This award season didn't hold to many surprises. The few movies that were talked about most usually also got the prizes in the end.
However the Academy managed to make this event still very enthralling - with a few unexpected turns - in addition to the amazing performances and a lot of celebrity-fun.

The Show: Ellen DeGeneres (one of my all-time-favourite talk-masters) hosted the evening like in 2007, and boy was she hilarious. She manages to be completely non-PC, while being absolutely sweet, cheeky and snotty at the same time, which makes her a superb comedian and entertainer.
She maneuvered through the show jauntingly and seemingly unburdened. At one point she even ordered pizza from a local L.A. delivery service and gave some slices to the front-row-celebs. Even Brad Pitt helped her passing some paper plates and napkins for the A-List crowd.

And then there was the selfie (pictured above)... In order to do some product placement for Samsung (probably the biggest sponsor of the show?) Ellen shot a selfie using her Samsung Galaxy and uploaded it on Twitter. After she show, she admitted that her original plan was just doing one with Meryl Streep and that all the other celebrities just got up and went along - and they managed to break down twitter, and set a new record for the most retweets (over 2 million by now). We have Jared Leto, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Channing Tatum, Brangelina, etc. all in this single selfie which might go down in history as the most star-studded selfie ever...

The Perfomances: Like the years before we had a lot of performances again. I kind of missed the funny things Hugh Jackman pulled off when he hosted, but the musical acts were all very entertaining.
- Pharrell perfomed "Happy" from Despicable Me 2 and got Oscar Winner Lupita Nyong'o, Amy Adams and even the legendary Meryl Streep to shake and dance along.
- After a heartbreaking "In Memoriam" segment (in which they surprisingly didn't mention deceased Glee-Superstar Cory Monteith), Bette Midler majestically performed "Winds Beneath My Wings".
- P!nk sang "Somewhere over the rainbow" as a tribute to The Wizard of Oz and Judy Garland whose 2 daughters, including Liza Minelli and son were also in the audience. P!nk was presented by a weirdly dressed Whoopie Goldberg, fiercly showing her red "slippers".
- Finally John Travolta got to present Idina Menzel... famously mispronouncing her name, calling her Adele Dazeem, causing a huge uproar in the internet and probably unsettling Idina, whose performance of Oscar-winning song "Let It Go" from Frozen was less than perfect, to say the least... At least her new "stage-name" found a place in pop-culture.

The Winners: Of course the internet is full of lists of the winners and losers and here is my opinion to the ones who made and and the ones who didn't.
I am really happy for Gravity winning all those Oscars. Seriously, even though those are only the "small" ones, they are all well-deserved. However I would have been happy to see the Best Actress Oscar go to Sandra Bullock rather than Cate Blanchett (even though she probably deserved it as well for her brilliant performance in Blue Jasmine, but come on, we're talking about Hollywood's elite, they're all supposed to be excellent), since Bullock basically pulled a huge one-woman-show in space, dragging the viewers through all stages of depression, hope, fear and panic.
12 Years A Slave was obviously gonna win Best Picture - everything else would have come across racist (a fact even Ellen mentioned in the introduction at the beginning of the evening), and Lupita Nyong'o was the shining star of the evening anyways, legitimitely winning Best Supporting Actress.
Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey winning for Dallas Buyers Club were no big surprises as well. Especially Jared Leto who sailed through award season like a pirate picking up every trophy on the way.
However, once again I was hoping Leo would finally get his Oscar this time. DiCaprio has been nominated 4 times and never got what he wanted, whereas it was McConaughey's first nomination (at least for an Oscar).

Red Carpet: For me, one of the most exciting part is the red carpet before the show and the stars making their ways to the various after-parties.
My pic for best-dressed woman of the night must be Sandra Bullock, closely followed by Angelina Jolie and Britney Spears (the latter "only" attended Elton John's Viewing Party).
As much as I like Jennifer Lawrence, I didn't really dig her Dior dress, but compared to the light buoy that was Liza Minelli's outfit, she looked like a complete goddess.

In conclusion, this once again was a really entertaining show/night with a lot of suspense and excitement, beautiful people, light-hearted moments and real emotions. I enjoyed this Oscar night much more than the previous two and one of the many reasons for this is the wonderful Ellen DeGeneres!

Star Wars The Clone Wars Bonus Episodes 5-7 [Review]

This weekend, German television Channel "Super RTL" once again aired a missing story arc from the bonus episodes of Season 6 from The Clone Wars. This time the story centers around Senator Amidala, Anakin Skywalker and old frienemy Rush Clovis.

I really enjoyed the first one of the missing story-arcs, which was mainly about "Order 66". This one here focused once again on intergalactic politics, jealousy and scheming and was also quite impressive, however far from perfect.

The story was much quicker, left only little time for relaxed, fun moments, even though the action was quite impressive in this arc. Like last time I won't recount the story completely, rather than picking out highlights that I really enjoyed and things (if there are any) that I didn't like at all.

First of all, I loved the setting. Scipio is amazingly well-designed and the Banking-Clan buildings looked very cool and smoothly integrated into the planet's snowy mountains. In addition to that I really loved their means of transportation which highly reminded me of a mix between Jabba's Skiffs from Return of the Jedi and Santa's sleigh.
The bounty hunter the protagonists have to run from in the beginning is really cool and the downhill-chase is just thrillingly fun to watch - reminded me of a more mature version of the one in Ice Age ;-)
And then comes the dull part. Anakin and Amidala get in the middle of a big scheme: Palpatine/Sidious longs for power over the intergalactic banks and tries to use Clovis to achieve his goal.
Amidala gets entangled in the whole plot and makes Anakin jealous, since she gets quite close to Clovis in the process.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the idea of seeing a jealous Jedi again, since that's the main reason why love is not allowed in this order, but for a 20-something-minutes TV episode it was a lot to swallow in terms of character development.
Best part about the the whole subplot is when Obi-Wan reminds his former Padawan about his blundering with Dutchess Satine and why it is so important for a Jedi to not give in to his feelings. Loved it.

Of course the whole situation gets solved and all we have is yet another really enjoyable Clone Wars Adventure (even though neither clones nor war is overly present in this one, which is fine by me).

I really do not miss Ahsoka so far and the quality of these stories is way higher than our average The Clone Wars episode. Now I totally understand why they didn't throw these stories away but wanted to show the audience what great plans they had for season 6.

I definitely enjoyed these three episodes, much more than the single Jar-Jar Episode they aired after that...

Star Wars The Clone Wars Bonus Episodes 1-4[Review]

Thank god for German television.
I never thought that we were going to get the new The Clone Wars bonus content before the U.S., but I guess I was wrong.
German TV-Channel "Super RTL" showed the first 4 episodes in a row and picked out the long awaited "Order 66"-arc for the "season"-premiere. So here's what I think about these 4 episodes...

Before I start, big "thank you" to the guys from Lucasfilm Animation who made this possible. It is not very common for a cancelled show to release new content after its cancellation (and I really enjoyed the end of season 5 when Ahsoka walks away from the Jedi Order), so the fact, that we have a whole set of new episodes is really awesome!

The first 4 of the new episodes were broadcast exclusivly at German TV Station "Super RTL", aiming for a younger audience. However they made the content available online after it aired so with a VPN even people not living in Germany (like me) got the chance to experience this chapter of this galaxy far, far away.

The plot was centered around clone-trooper Fives and his pal Tup, who was seemingly infected by a virus, making him murder one of the (previously unseen) Jedi generals (picture above) during a fight against the droid army.
After evil leader Count Dooku finds out about this betrayal he commands his troops to capture the seemingly sick clone and bring him before him, but Anakin Skywalker and Fives manage to free and safely return him to Kamino where further examination is being done.

However Fives - with the help of a very entertaining medical Droid AZ-3 - finds out, that the Kaminoans are planning to kill his friend in order to protect the secret of the built-in bio-chips every clone has in his brain. These chips  - of course - let the clones execute Order 66 (that's why the Clones start shooting at their Jedi friends in Episode III).

During the climax of the story-arc, Fives - unable to safe his friend, but equipped with the devastating truth - is hunted through the streets of Coruscant after being conned by Chancellor Palpatine aka Darth Sidious himself. The tragic ending makes sure, that the Jedi still have no clue about what's really going on...

The episodes were very entertaining and didn't feel like 4 single episodes, but like a solid, dark, interesting Star Wars movie.
The animations were even better than ever and the cast did an enourmosly good job. Especially the character of Fives (who we've met before during the regular run of the show) was incredibly deep and you would regularly forget that he's "just" a clone.
These 4 episodes also make a perfect lead-in to the final installment of the prequel trilogy, Revenge of the Sith, since Order 66 is explained and the Republic, as well as the Kaminoans are portrayed in a more shady and secretive way - slightly detached from the formerly all-powerful Jedi Order.

However, the episodes also have their downsides. Sometimes it seems like Fives is too strong and intelligent compared to the quickly-defeated clones and easily-tricked Kaminoans. Another thing that I didn't enjoy was the space station that surrounded a whole planet like a huge ring. They could have used it as a much more integral part of the plot, however it's like any other spacestation or starship - a mere stage to an exhaustingly repetetive fighting scene.
On the other hand the scenes, in which Anakin and the clones travel through the vacuum of space are intriguing and the death toll of Tup's kidnapping and rescue is quite high. The whole mission to rescue Tup positively reminded me of the scavenging done by the Crew from Firefly.

In conclusion, the good parts of the arc predominate the few weaker aspects and all you get is a great, actionpacked mini-movie worthy of its brand-name.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the rest of the bonus episodes.