The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

The best thing I can say about this movie, is that it is nowhere near as tedious as "The Incredible Hulk" or as pretentious as "Daredevil".
But that of course is faint praise indeed. This time the famed superheroic quartet must get the nigh-omnipotent extraterrestrial Silver Surfer away from the planet before he summons his master "Galactus" and the Earth is consumed like a cosmic cocktail weiner.
And in the midst of this, Sue Storm (an inert but beautiful Jessica Alba) has gone all Martha Stewart whilst planning her perfect wedding to Reed Richards (a baffled Ioan Gruffud).
At a sparse ninety minutes the film has no time to get boring but hits no heights either. Michael Chiklis as "The Thing" and Chris Evans as "The Human Torch" are really the best part of the film and do their best to bring a Marvel Comics feel to the movie. Therein though lies the whole problem, two of the four actors are up for it, the other two range from banal (Gruffud) to outright bad (Alba...who seems to have less dialogue this time around, maybe she has problems spouting the requisite techno-babble who knows?). Frankly if Sony wants to start making some money here, they should decorously drop Gruffud and Alba from the sequel and start anew with Chiklis and Evans and include some decorous actress with talent to bring in the requisite star quality. Think of it as a "Marvel Two in One" for the big screen...

Sighted on the Fellsway Yesterday

A lone guy on roller blades, blithely skating along right in the middle of this major thoroughfare. Utterly oblivious to the fact that the Fellsway has no breakdown lane and twists and turns dangerously making it tough for cars to see this poor shlub if the conditions are right.
Seemed like a laid-back way to commit suicide if you asked me.

"Love's Labor's Lost"

The Actor's Shakespeare Company is throwing a sort of Elizabethan's Mad Tea Party with this, the Bard's deceptively frothy comedy of manners and identity headlined by the one and only Johnny Lee Davenport a noble veteran of Shakespeare and Company and one of the region's best journeymen classical actors.
The cast was tight, the jokes well timed, but the show's outre dependence on a five person ensemble makes the play more of a showcase for individual players and their powers of sheer memorization rather than a coherent whole. I get this feeling a lot whenever a small cast executes a huge play, that the whole mishaugas is mostly about getting the right hat and wig on and hitting one's mark just in time.
It's not so much "stunt casting" as "stunted casting".
Still it was funny, Johnny Lee was particularly good as Don Armando the farcical Spanish Knight, Sara Newhouse shone as the Princess of France and let me just give a nice loud shout out to young Khalil Flemming as the scene stealing page Moth.
Overall I give er' three out of five.
I just wish A.S.P, would give up on this "All Male Titus Andronicus or All Female MacBeth" and give us Shakespeare that is "all good".
:)

I have a new heroine

her name is "Rags to Riches", she can't leap tall building with a single bound or swing from a web, but she sure can shut down the boys at today's Belmont Stakes. Won by a dainty little nose, first Filly to do so in a hundred and two years!
Pretty amazing race, Tod Pletcher the owner was over the damn moon.

Whoops stu-pid meee-ee...

According to David Abel in the Boston Globe that mysterious "tracking ship" tied up on the Black Falcon is the "BEM Monge", a French telemetry ship that has tied up looking for some R & R.
I got those sailors in civies right, but my tin ear for languages ran true, I thought they were Russian.
The above linked article sez the French sailors on liberty are given $290 and the night off to explore Boston. Fair enough, I hope they enjoy themselves, but as soon as those poor boulevardiers taste what passes for domestic wine here in the USA they'll haul up the anchor and make flank speed back to Calais.

Is there a "Tracking ship" tied up on the Black Falcon in South Boston?

Damned if I can figure this out!
I saw some sailors clearly on R & R walking up Drydock Avenue at 5:30pm this evening spouting what sounded like Russian.
When I boarded the Silver Line BMIP and came round the dog-leg what was docked at the pier but an old fashioned "tracking ship" festooned with huge satellite dishes and under guard with the usual anti-terror gimmicks in place.
Scanning dishes that big strike me as only being useful for tracking satellites and manned spacecraft..I could be wrong about this, but why is a Russian space tracking ship tied up in Boston?
Can anyone give me the low down?
Never seen such an odd looking vessel in all my years as a low level clerk in the insurance industry.