Romance and cigarettes - The soundtrack of a life

Christopher Walken with an umbrella and the ode to redheads

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Sometimes happy, sometimes sad, life isn't always the same. That's what "romance & cigarettes" obviously wants to show us.

It comes with a great cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Walken, Kate Winslet and Steve Buscemi. And it also comes with a pleasant story that could happen everywhere around us.

Nick Murder(James Gandolfini) cheats his wife with a redhead hot girl from around the block since years. His marriage isn't working out anymore and when his wife finds out about the affair he has to choose between them two and she has to get her head, and feelings towards him, right again. And while she goes to the church he goes through hard struggeling between sex and love.

The movie is mixed up with various songs fitting the story and while the music plays, the characters sing with it. So we can, for example, see Christopher Walken killing "Delilah".

A good thing in between drama, comedy and just reality I would call the movie, not made for musical lovers but also watchable for people who don't see an artistical meaning in actors dancing around.

Mini's First Time - or: How to kill your Mum

One of the best dark comedy movies I've seen in a long time and Jeff Goldblum playing piano - again!

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Mini lives in a fucked up environment. Her mother is rich and mostly drunk but doesn't really care about her and now she brings this new boyfriend to the house. When Mini starts to job at an escort service besides school she meets her new stepfather as costumer - and falls in love with him. So while her mother is busy taking drugs, drink till she passes out and organize parties for other rich people who aren't better depending on that, Mini builds up her first relationship ever, with her stepfather.

But soon them two make up a plan to get rid of Mini's mother. What's the easiest way to get rid of someone? Right, you just kill him and u got many choices how to do so!

This movie brings great actors and a funny but crazy story up. Niki Reed as Mini, Alec Baldwin as her new "Dad" and Jeff Goldblum as their neighbour.

Now some people may say "How can it be okay to kill your mum and what is funny in it?" which is a good question actually. Maybe you really gotta be a fan of movies like "American Psycho 2" (Part 1 is unbeatable and has nothing much to do with this one) to love the story.

So for everyone who likes this kind of dark humor it's the movie of the last years!

Primeval - Mammoths as pets

An impressive collection of absurd thoughts

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When I first heard about the ITV series "Primeval" my little paleozoologist-heart made a big jump like "Cool, they made a series just for me! Jurassic park on weekly episodes!" but I was so wrong about it.

The story behind "Primeval" is that time teleports bring "monsters" of all time eras to the present time and a team of evolutionary scientists has to bring them back through the "anomalies" and find out what causes them. It might actually be a great thing for a series for unfortunaly the fun is kind of disturbed by amateur animations and a strange confusing story that wraps it all up.

The first season ended in kind of a total mess and every single fan will have thought "How do they wanna fix that again?". The answer was easy, "Primeval" left the screen and went back to the papers of the producers. They worked on it a while and when it came back it was like it had never disappeared. They even brought the character back in that had disappeared at the end of the first season, just as someone else. But for the ones who thought, it would come back better than before it must have been a shock when they saw the even worse animated "monsters" of the new season. While season one tried to stay realistic, season two turned out to be full of maneating mean animals from past and future and some that actually never existed as shown.

It was really kinda disappointing. I do still watch it and wait for the third season because it is still the only good thing for a dino nerd to watch but for real, it could have been done better!

"Primeval" brings us great actors ( Douglas Henshall, Hannah Spearritt, James Murray, Andrew-Lee Potts and a few more) , nice made up characters, a creative story and long gone animals back to screen but it became more like a scifi series than one based on actual time eras.

Open questions: Why do all the anomalies appear in London? Why are all the characters sporty when they are actually scientists who are supposed to sit in labs? How did they get the mammoth in the second season into the research building?

"Raines" - A forgotten masterpiece

In 2007 NBC brought us one of the best TV series for many many years - and took it away again. That's the story of "Raines".

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Jeff Goldblum as a cop? Well now that's surprising.
Spit out your sarcasm, in "Raines" he wasn't just a cop, more the ultimate mad cop with a bunch of intelligent halluscinations. And as the title told us from the beginning "there's a method to his madness".

The LAPD detective Michael Raines (Jeff Goldblum) has always been a great cop, solving every possible case - till his partner died in one special case he can't get from his mind. Since then he's started to "see things". They are not really ghosts, more like the picture his imagination draws him of the murdered victim who's case he has to solve. And what he doesn't know, he doesn't see, it's simple as that. But the more he sees the more he also cares.

"Raines" was set up as a great idea with great cast and a certain touching story. Matt Craven as the captain, Malik Yoba starring as Raines' dead buddy Charlie, a bunch of good actors, mostly topped by Jeff Goldblum, of course.

And then after just 8 episodes NBC said bye bye Raines, hello again to boring, common crime series that just don't surprise you anymore.

Now let us recover. A fresh idea, great and well known actors, (according to the board of imdb.com) everybody loved it.
There comes a question crawling to my mind - why did they take it off the screen? Some say it was too much like "Monk", I personally don't think that, maybe that should have chosen other costumes, okay that's probably a point. Some say they claim most of the people didn't understand the fact that Raines didn't see ghosts.

However, we miss the series and we also still miss the DVD because no company did bother yet to release one - is there still hope for a new season? Who knows ...