N.B. Extreme delay in publication due to technical issues.

Since “99 Problems” let us know that Dean was off to say yes to Michael, I spent the next week wondering when, how, and for what reason Dean would end up saying no in “Point of No Return.” And since I’m kind of sick of Dean lately anyway and I’ve always loved Castiel, imagine my delight in discovering that mainly, Cass was not having it.

Dean’s writing suicide notes and drinking iced tea off in some isolated motel when Sam finds him. Dean, hilariously, is not as crafty as he thinks he is. Since Dean’s not about to abandon his plan, he suggests that he and Sam throw down over it, further adding that Sam’s unlikely to win this time without the help of demon blood (note: this is the first of many verbal slaps between the brothers, so, if genuine animosity between the two of them is like an knife in your heart as it is mine, this episode must have hurt). Fortunately, Sam remembered that he sucks at hand-to-hand, so he has Castiel zap Dean back to Bobby’s place.

The word is that someone, somewhere finally got around to greenlighting Hobo With A Shotgun as a feature, which is pretty much the best news ever if you've seen the trailer (a (Canadian!) contest winner that was including in the full-length Grindhouse). Actually, let's watch it right now, shall we:

Oh, show, just when I think I could not love you more. Remember when Vicki asked Stefan how long it's been since he drank human blood, and he shot a side glance at Elena and cryptically replied, "It's been years." Apparently that meant something! I could not be more impressed with the "apparently that meant something!"s on this show. It didn't mean something until the end of the episode, though, so hang on a moment.

In last Thursday's episode, "Let the Right One In" (incidentally a fantastic movie if you haven't seen it), Pearl once again makes the mistake of thinking she can trust Frederick for even half a second. Pearl and Anna head into town, making Frederick promise to play nice. Turns out his idea of playing nice is kidnapping Stefan, so he can torture Stefan to death. Shirtless, which is nice for the viewers, but unfortunate overall. Damon grokes to the Stefan-is-missing thing pretty quickly, but Mrs. Gibbons' is thralled into keeping Damon out. Elena hilariously thinks she should just go wander into Vamp Camp, but even Damon recognizes that for the stupid plan it is. So they appeal to . . . Alaric?!

Seems that Stefan told Damon all about Alaric's magic ring at some point off-screen. Since Alaric's vampire-invincible and human, that makes him Damon's perfect ally for Operation Rescue Stefan. For reasons unclear, Alaric agrees to this plot (although, TBH, if I were vampire-invincible, I'd probably roll up to Vamp Camp to kill all the vampires sooner or later). They eventually agree to let Elena come along as the getaway driver.

With apologies for not posting about last week's episode of The Vampire Diaries, "There Goes the Neighborhood," sooner, I won't bog you down with the gory details a day before the next episode airs. Suffice it to say:

Stefan is Still the Most Badass Vamp on This Show

Sure, Pearl's the strongest, and she does use her vamp strength against Damon and Frederick (even staking Frederick in the stomach to prove a point), but did she get staked with a huge shard of glass, rip that shard out, break a chair, and stake and kill her attacker? No, but Stefan did. Looks like he's going to pay dearly for that in the next episode, but until then he retains the Most Badass title. Damon let his attacker get away. What does it take, Damon? 

In Thursday's episode, "A Few Good Men," the truth came out. What truth? Whose truth? Pretty much everyone's truth unless the character wasn't in the episode (so, no truth for grieving Bonnie, Jeremy the adopted-sister-having soon-to-be vampire hunter, or probable-werewolf Tyler, though his classist mom is out and about (sidebar: being classist is useless enough, but being classist in a small town? There's probably, like, one other family "good enough" to associate with)). Anyway, despite stone cold liar Stefan's best efforts to manage the situation, the truth round up:

Isobel Fleming is Elena's Mother

We all already figured out that Alaric's dead wife Isobel is Elena's bio-mom, but now everyone and their brother knows it. Jenna tells Elena her suspicions and does research to confirm her theory, Elena tracks down one of Isobel's high school friends for further confirmation, Jenna also tells Alaric (he didn't know that Isobel ever had a child, but he does recognize her poorly photoshopped yearbook pic), Elena tells Stefan and Damon. In short, all the major players associated with this plot (Elena, Stefan, Damon, Alaric, Jenna) have key pieces of information in one (!) episode.

The writers finally remembered that Lucifer woke up Capital-D Death in, oh, November, and comes after residents of Bobby's South Dakota home town in last night's entry, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." While initially lacking in the spectacular gore that made "My Bloody Valentine" so awesome (yes, awesome, even if it did make me mad), "Dead Men" was a Badass Bobby-centric episode, and who can argue against Jim Beaver?

See, Death has decided to wake up a bunch of corpses from the local cemetery, including Bobby's dead wife Karen (Carrie Anne Fleming and not Elizabeth Marleau from season three's "Dream a Little Dream of Me"), only they're more alive-again, Pushing Daisies-style, than the flesh-eating monsters we usually associate with rising from the grave. Actually, they go Daisies one better: the people, like Bobby's cremated wife, are completely restored. Of course, it takes our brainless* heroes forever to figure out what's up with Bobby, even after Dean suspects that Bobby has cleaned. Dudes, just look at Bobby's head: beard trimmed, trucker hat removed, hair parted and neatly combed. Something is just plain wrong with that picture. 

*As always, Dean and Sam are exactly as smart or a dumb as the episode needs them to be. It's consistently inconsistent.

In honour of the great Japanese director's 100th birthday, here's a clip from one of his best, "Yojimbo," starring Toshiro Mifune.

Sometimes I wish it was fashionable to wear a robe out in the street, just so I could imitate Mifune in this scene.

TWoP has a photo gallery up about why The Vampire Diaries is so addictive (don't they know I already wrote all those posts for you in pursuit of what makes the show awesome?), but let me save you the trouble of clicking through with these three words: the Brothers Salvatore. I like Elena, I love Bonnie, Caroline's cool, and mad props go out to my dearly (sexistly) departed ladies Vicki, Lexi, Bree, and Grams. But the Brothers Salvatore make the show. Thanks to the writing and the wily performances of Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder, Stefan and Damon are never who you think they are.

At first blush, Stefan's the earnest, brooding good guy and Damon's his dangerous, bad boy older brother. While Stefan can be earnest and does brood (specifically with his forehead,  Damon would tell you), he's also far more dangerous than Damon could ever hope to be. Damon kills to feed or to protect himself: he's motivated entirely by his emotions. He views humans as a lesser life form, and it comes across in his every action.

Stefan, on the hand, tries to simultaneously embrace the benefits of being a vampire (longevity, super speed/hearing/strength) while rejecting that which sustains him (human blood). The wistful way he spoke of all the different jobs he's held for as long as he could didn't betray a longing to return to his human form: it spoke of someone determined to get as much as he could out of the life he chose. He's not self-loathing like Edward or Bill. He accepts, and he moves on. But you know what it takes to do as much accepting and moving on as he has? Motherfuckin' sangfroid, which he has in spades. Unlike Damon, Stefan readily forms human attachments, and his determination to protect them (not himself) from things that go bump in the night (although sadly not from Bumpits) leads him to some pretty dark places. We've seen him stake and flame-throw other vampires without hesitation. What will he do if another human ever threatens Elena? How far would he go? He's smart, funny, passionately in love, and loyal to both people and place. He's also an icy dispatcher of foes and not above poisoning his own brother. He's a study in contrasts.

Not a lot to choose from from Hollywood this week. If you're a die hard* Kevin Smith fan, you may want to check out the heinous looking Cop Out, which would have you believe that road hauling should be played for laughs. Are funny lynch mobs next? You also have the remake of The Crazies, starring Timothy Olyphant. Anything featuring the triumphant return of Olyphant in law & order mode or with a moustache gets a pass in my book. Theatres in town are being a bit daring with World Exchange Centre picking up Helen, in which Ashley Judd stars as a professor coming to terms with her depression, and To Save a Life, in which a former friend's suicide rocks to boy who seemingly has it all, premiering at South Keys. 

Over at the Bytowne, you must check out The Young Victoria, one of the 10 best movies of 2009. You can also see The White Ribbon, if you're into Michael Haneke, or La Donation, un film québécois about a dying doctor searching for someone to take over his small regional practice.

At the Mayfair, you must check out Red Cliff, which plays at times like a John Wood parody, but he still rocks action sequences harder than most. You haven't live until you've seen what Tony Leung will do after you shoot him with an arrow. There's also original The Crazies, classic Some Like it Hot (possibly the best last line in a movie ever), The Horse Boy, Thundercast are Go!, Black, and new midnight movie The Room on Saturday night. 

EW's Michael Auseillo, King of Scoops (or Two Scoops Magoo if you're feeling it), has revealed that the CW has renewed Supernatural for a sixth season, along with The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, 90210, and America's Next Top Model. 

I watch three of those shows (quick, guess which ones!), so that's good news for me. Not so good news for the bitchy Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki of this feature from April of last year, wherein Ackles claims that they'd have to back up a Brinks truck to get him to do a sixth season and Padalecki whines about having to do photo shoots and getting famous. Alright, that's tough love from me, but, since most of my Supernatural tough love is reserved for the writers, I can stand to spread the wealth a little. 

Meanwhile, that leads me back to trying to figure out where the show is going to go with a sixth season. Again, I encourage the writers to take me up on a "Sam and Dean fix the world" season. It could be just the uplift the show needs. Besides, who is reading the Winchester Gospels after Armageddon? Is there reading in New Jerusalem along with all the farming (as Jehovah's Witness pamphlet covers have long foretold)? I mean, probably, but I still want the writers to follow up on the idea from "The Real Ghostbusters": reading the books will help raise up a new generation of hunters who choose the life rather than get sucked into it by tragedy. Wouldn't that be nice? 

Damon gets to utter last night's The Vampire Diaries episode title, "Fool Me Once," and, since he went for an over the top sotto voce delivery to the tail end of that aphorism, I'm down with that. Actually, I'm down with pretty much everything Damon does in this episode. Elena's a Little Miss Me-ffet for some of it, Bonnie and Grams team up to use super-witchy powers, and Stefan once again proves that he's the most dangerous vampire on the show. See for yourself!

Damon

Damon informs Stefan in no uncertain terms that he won't be helping Stefan track Elena down, telling him first that he hopes Elena dies and, if she still has Damon's blood in her system when she does, at least Stefan knows he'll see her again. Man, is Damon hurting. Anna tries to get Damon to work with her, which backfires because Stefan frees Elena and Bonnie (more on that in a minute) without Damon's help. Newly freed Elena convinces Damon that they all need to work together, and Damon heads down to the tomb with a blood bag for his beloved Katherine (adorable). All his searching is for naught, however, when it turns out that Katerine isn't even in there. He confronts Anna and newly-freed Pearl, who tells him that Katherine compelled a guard into letting her escape and never looked back. To add insult to injury, Anna ran into Katherine in Chicago in 1983, who knew where Damon was and didn't even care. Ouch. By episode's close, Damon's staring numbly in the fire at the Salvatore mansion with Stefan taking up quiet residence next to him. 

As shows go, Supernatural requires greater suspension of disbelief than most. So long as you can pass muster, Supernatural is also a rewarding viewing experience. All we ask in return is that the show follows its own internal logic.

Unfortunately, it hasn't always done so. In the fourth episode of season one, Sam and Dean encounter a demon for the first time, but much of what we learned then about demons and how they operate didn't apply to Meg, her brother, or Azazel toward the end of the season. It was early days, so we could chalk it up to the writers figuring exactly where they were going with this whole "demon" thing (answer: down the rabbit hole).

Since those early bumps in the road, though, the show has been pretty careful to only deviate from its established rules when it's within reason, like when we learned that the Trickster is really the archangel Gabriel in the excellent episode "Changing Channels." Last night's episode, "My Bloody Valentine," however, decided to bite its thumb at us. 

Last January, I reported seven film trends that defined 2008's cinema. The seventh was "vampires are everywhere." Guess what? 2009 was no less obsessed with vampires than 2008. Last night's People's Choice Awards saw seven statues go to vampires or vampire-related properties: Taylor Lautner for Breakout Actor, Twilight Saga for on-screen team and franchise, Twilight for movie*, Vampire Diaries for new TV drama, Supernatural for sci-fi/fantasy show, and True Blood for TV obsession. That last one fits so well it's almost a cliché: you don't watch True Blood. You gasp and yell, "Holy shit!" and get really pissed off if someone tries to call you between 9 and 10 on a Sunday night to interrupt your weekly heart attack. Naturally, Gossip Girl is the only point of comparison in the category.

*Not that New Moon can't fall into a hole for all I care, but Twilight came out in 2008. Why is it on the docket? I know I've become weirdly obsessed with Twilight as a direct result of my disappointment with New Moon, but surely not all the other "people" feel that way.  

Also on the vampire front, CBC put together this quiz, on which I received 10 out of 10 because I am vampire-obsessed or, as they put it, "You’re so badass, you have blood smoothies for breakfast."

Dear Supernatural writers,

You know I love you, and I hate to hate, but someone needs to explain this to me: why is Dean's plan to end Armageddon killing the devil? Last night, as we knew they would, Dean and Sam got a bead on the Colt, a MacGuffin I sort of wish you'd drop, and off they raced to find it. Because Dim Dean's ridiculous plan, in case this wasn't clear, is to attempt to kill the devil with it.  

Now here's the angels plan, which Dean refuses to go along with: have Michael take over Dean's body, so Michael-in-Dean can kill Lucifer. If both plans end with a dead Devil and Dean very specifically does not want what the angels want, how can this be his best idea? Can't College Boy come up with something better? Won't killing the Devil have the exact same net result regardless of who accomplishes this goal? 

Swayze wooed an entire generation of women as the dance instructor in what is perhaps the most popular chick flick of all time, Dirty Dancing.

And while his line, "Nobody puts baby in the corner," will live on forever in cinema history, it's the speech he gave as Bodhi, the adrenaline junkie surfer and bank robber in the early 90s action classic Point Break, that will always stay with me:

"This was never about the money. This was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something. We are here to show those people inching along the freeways in their metal coffins that the human spirit is still alive!"

I cannot believe this didn't occur to me sooner. Normally I like my pop culture worlds to remains discrete (e.g. I don't spend a lot of time wondering what would happen if we got Edward some TruBlood because: Bill), but in last night's episode of True Blood (this season's penultimate), Eric did something that I knew I had seen somewhere before. To wit:

Blair's expression, while not moving in any way, somehow becomes totally terrifying. It is one of the greatest parts of this or any other episode. 

That's from Jacob's recap of The Ex Files, season 2, episode 4 of Gossip Girl.

If you are a Jackass fan like me, and I know you are, you've been chomping at the bit for the release of Jackass 3.  If that Youtube clip of the dude jumping out of the airplane without a parachute, full on Point Break-style, is any indication, J3 is going to be insane!  Unfortunately, it looks like it wont be out until 2011!!

In the meantime, Jackass: The Lost Tapes is scheduled for a DVD release of October 13.  Likely culled from mediocre cut sequences, much like Jackass 2.5, I'm none-the-less looking forward to checking this out.

Hit the Chapters link in the side bar and order your copy today!

I'm obviously already pumped for anything that stars two of my fantasy draft picks, but the new Sherlock Holmes trailer also looks like more fun than director Guy Ritchie's ever had before. I could do without so many of the bullet-speed action sequences that litter the trailer, but that's small potatoes. I think I might starting liking Jude Law again.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY7n9OGU-i0 560x340] 

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