Bert Vandecasteele

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  • Fringe 401 – Neither Here nor There

    “It’s been there as long as I can remember.” (Olivia)

    Fringe is back, continuing past what might be the greatest season-ending cliffhanger since “We have to go back”! All throughout the Summer, we were left wondering what the five final minutes of season 3 would mean for the fourth season. Have all memories of Peter Bishop been erased from existence? Does he still exist somewhere? And what about the two worlds? Have they merged into one or is the room with the machine a mere bridge between the universes? Many of these questions – if not all – were answered in a spectacular way, and we got a nice case-of-the-week for free.

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  • Assassin’s Creed 2

    “Nulla e reale; tutto e lecito. Requiescat in pace.” (Ezzio)

    At the end of my Assassin’s Creed review, I asked where my game was. Assassin’s Creed was an awesome tech demo – it was just too repetitive to be called an actual game. And lo and behold: here it is. Assassin’s Creed 2 is a mastodont that improves on its predecessor in every possible way.

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  • Boardwalk Empire 110 – The Emerald City

    “That’s me. The tin woodsman. Just need a bit of oil.” (Richard)

    It should be no secret that I love The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I don’t know what it is about the book that seems to stick the way it does, but it does, and for that I’m glad. So naturally, I’m completely in love with this episode and am left with but one question: how much does Atlantic City have in common with The Emerald City?

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  • Boardwalk Empire 109 – Belle Femme

    “If we only elected good men, we’d never have leaders.” (Nucky)

    What an episode. Slowly but surely, the plot’s picking up pace, steering away from leaning on metaphors and towards some sort of a narrative climax. Bridges are burnt, others are built and we once again saw Nucky is right about at laest one thing: the roads leading to Atlantic City are absolute garbage.

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  • True Blood 103 – Mine

    “You’re wearing gold pants.” (Jason)

    The mysterious killer strikes again! This time, chainsaw-massacre-extra-Dawn was the victim. You will be missed – or at a later point referred to that one character you thought would be important but ended up being a red shirt after all. True Blood’s version of Boone.

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  • Boardwalk Empire 108 – Hold me in paradise

    “That idiot is going to be the next president of the United States of America.” (Nucky)

    What a great plot twist; a great dramatic decision at the expense of Van Alden’s poor wife. It was the ultimate pious dick move to send Angela the money (that actually belonged to her) instead of giving it to his wife to get fertility treatment. Holy crap – Boardwalk Empire’s continuous shift in morality seems to be reaching me as well.

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  • Assassin’s Creed

    “Be at peace now. Their words can no longer do harm.” (Altair)

    Let me just get this out of the way: I played Assassin’s Creed in the Summer of 2011 – four years after the game’s release. At this point, two direct sequels have been made, one’s down the pipeline and I’m not even starting to count the mobile and handheld spin-offs. This franchise is huge. So naturally, I know this game is supposed to be good.

    And that’s just it – supposed to be. (more…)

  • Boardwalk Empire 107 – Home

    “Three years. France, mostly. It’s almost impossible to describe the horror… It’s a living… waking… nightmare… There was a soldier, a German; him and his men tried to attack our position in the Argonne forest. It was nighttime. While he was trying to climb through some barbwire, I shot him twice; once in the stomach, once in the neck. He slumped over the barbwire, and no matter what he did to try and wriggle free, it just got worse for him. I left him there, like that, for days, listening to him moaning, crying, “mutti, mutti, mutti”; that’s German for “mama”; “mama”, that’s what he kept saying. The curious thing is that despite the fact that his situation was utterly hopeless, he didn’t wanna die. I offered to kill him several times, but he just kept fighting. Like some miracle would befall him, get him out of his predicament. We hold on so desperately to life; some people feel, certainly in that soldiers situation, that being alive is much, much worse…” (Jimmy)

    That quote goes on for ever, but boy, the way Michael Pitt delivered those lines sent shivers down my spine. What a terrific actor.

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  • Crazy, stupid, love.

    “Fuck! Seriously?! Looks like you’re photoshopped!” (Hannah)

    I’ve always had a soft spot for Steve Carell. It is my dream that he would start a sitcom together with Tina Fey. They could play Michael Scott and Liz Lemon. They’d share a flat. Eat cheap Spanish chips together. I would write it. I so would. It would be the most glorious fan fiction since the Harry&Draco dragonbody slashfic.

    But in Crazy, stupid, love. (ugh! a period in the title! now you read that sentence all wrong!) he teams up with Julianne Moore – and it’s actually this kind of schizophrenic casting that made me go see the movie in the first place. Glad I did, by the way.

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  • Boardwalk Empire 106 – Family Limitation

    “I try to be good. I really do.” (Nucky)

    I’m probably not the first one to say this, but I think that quote sums up half a season of Boardwalk Empire quite accurately. There’s not a single character that’s morally unambigious anymore. Nucky has show to have his softer sides. Van Alden – whom we figured a devout man – has a dark sexual passenger of his own. Even Al Capone, whom I thought a loose cannon, has something worth fighting for: his son. How can you be black or white in a world this grey?

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