CAST
Nicolas Cage (Ghost Rider)
Julianne Moore (Hannibal)
Jessica Biel (The A-Team)
Thomas Kretschmann (Wanted)
Tory Kittles (Olympus Has Fallen)
Jose Zuniga (Twilight)
Jim Beaver (Deadwood)
Michael Trucco (Battlestar Galactica)
Jessica Barth (Ted)
Bonita Friedericy (Chuck)
Peter Falk (Columbo)
Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) can see into his future. He can only see two minutes ahead, with the exception of a vision he once had of a woman walking into a diner. Knowing no details other than the time, he goes to the diner twice each day at 8:09 to await her arrival. He works as a small-time magician in Las Vegas, where he supplements his income with gambling, using his powers to win against the house. Cris draws the attention of FBI agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore), who has figured out his ability and wants to stop terrorists from detonating a nuclear weapon. Before she can approach Cris, his gambling draws the attention of casino security. He stops an imminent robbery, yet is chased by security agents. Using his ability to forecast the actions of his pursuers, he eludes them and the Las Vegas police. Ferris tracks Cris to his home, but he escapes after foreseeing her arrival. Later that night, the casino’s security chief is approached by two of the terrorists, is interrogated about Johnson and is then killed.
The following morning, Cris is at the diner again when he sees Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel), the woman from his vision. It turns out that not only can Cris see the future, but he can also see how his actions can affect that future. After envisioning different approaches—all of which fall flat—he intervenes when Liz’s ex-boyfriend arrives. Knowing that she is heading for Flagstaff, Arizona, Cris charms her into giving him a ride. Ferris follows, while the terrorists decide to kill him. A washed-out road forces Cris and Liz to spend the night in a motel. With the weapon tracked to Los Angeles, Ferris convinces her superiors to let her bring Cris in. The terrorists follow in the hope that the agents will lead them to Cris.
Ferris confronts Liz near the hotel. Claiming Cris is a dangerous sociopath, Ferris asks Liz to drug Cris so that they can bring him in peacefully. Instead, Liz warns Cris, who tells her his secret. When she asks why he will not help the FBI stop the terrorists, he explains his limitations, noting the exception for events involving her. Asking for Liz to wait for him, he tries to escape from the FBI agents but is captured after saving Ferris from logs tumbling down the side of a mountain. Unable to kill Cris, the terrorists kidnap Liz instead. In custody, Cris is strapped to a chair with his eyes held open and forced to watch television until he has a vision that can help the FBI. They expect him to see a report about the detonation of the bomb, but instead he envisions a broadcast from several hours in the future in which Liz is killed by a small bomb while strapped to a wheelchair as bait for him. Cris escapes from captivity and races to the parking garage where she will be killed. Pursuing him to the garage, Ferris promises to help save her as long as Cris will help stop the bomb; she also sets up a plan to draw out the terrorists.
Using his ability, Cris helps the FBI track the terrorists to the port where they are based. When they arrive, Cris is able to walk right up to the terrorist leader and avoid being hit, by seeing where the bullets will go and dodging them. After killing the terrorists and saving Liz, they find that the bomb has already been moved. Ferris shows Cris a seismograph, hoping that he will see any tremors caused by explosions before they happen. As he stares at the screen he realizes that he has made a mistake and that he was too late: the bomb detonates out at sea and completely destroys the port, as well as the rest of the city. The timeline reverts to Cris and Liz in bed at the hotel in Arizona, before Liz goes outside to be confronted by Ferris. Because of Liz’s involvement in events, Cris has been able to envision everything that could happen leading to the nuclear explosion. “Every time you look into the future, it changes.” Cris calls Ferris and offers to help prevent the nuclear disaster, then asks Liz to wait for him.
It honestly isnt as bad as its made out to be by some, Just dont expect Shakespeare
It’s Christmas Eve at the Buy More and customer panic abounds because the Omen has infected the world’s computers. A local television reporter conducting a live newscast from the store explains the situation to the viewing audience. Big Mike interrupts, stepping in front of the camera and telling the reporter he thinks the virus is really a gag and isn’t dangerous. He tells everyone not to panic and to remember the true meaning of Christmas. Buying stuff. He announces there are no virus problems at Buy More. Lester then takes his own cue in front of the camera and neuters Mike’s pronouncement by admitting the virus is everywhere at Buy More. In a high security penitentiary, two guards watch the live newscast from the Buy More and discuss the danger of the Omen since every cell at the prison is locked via electronic doors connected to a mainframe. With their attention focused on the television, they fail to notice one of the prison doors opening. An unseen inmate quietly gets out, then ambushes and kills the two guards. The mystery prisoner then puts on one of their uniforms and takes their weapons.
He should just tell her in person that he loves her. He knows the bear won’t make up for all the lost holidays. Alex disagrees and thinks it’s perfect. Casey then tells her she should reconsider Morgan because he’s not such a bad guy. Sarah thanks Chuck and tells him when she was captive Shaw kissed her. Chuck tells her that he had to kiss Beckman. Beckman then asks Chuck for a private word with Sarah. Beckman tells Sarah that Shaw has asked her to visit him in prison. Beckman thinks she shouldn’t go. Sarah goes anyway. In the visitors’ room, Shaw tells her that, in Hungary, he set something in motion she can’t do anything about. He asks her, “Does Chuck know about the baby?”
A great Christmas episode, thou a darker one, it was great to see Brandon Routh Back playing a delighfully evil character and we get tosee just how much Chuck has grown from the the first Season. All in all a great Xmas episode.
Chuck escorts Lester and Jeff to do an install on a private boat owned by philanthropist Lon Kirk (Michael Wiseman) to keep the two out of trouble. However Jeff and Lester still go below deck, where they find men counting a substantial amount of money. Chuck flashes on one of the bills and realizes that it’s counterfeit. Beckman begins to brief Chuck and Casey, but Sarah—who skipped work at the Wienerlicious—is absent. The two attempt to cover for her before she arrives late. Beckman orders Chuck and Sarah to infiltrate a charity casino being run by Kirk to investigate the counterfeiting operation. Chuck later remarks to Sarah how he expected her to be “halfway to Bryce,” but she tells him that this is her assignment. Regardless, the situation between them remains strained and is only made worse when, at the charity event that night, Chuck grows increasingly jealous while Sarah flirts with Kirk as part of the operation. He loses $100,000 at a roulette wheel as a result of trying to show up the philanthropist, but also flashes on an attache to the Taiwanese ambassador, whom he sees Kirk arguing with.
Dr. Stanley Wheelwright (Robert Englund) walks through a secured area at Volkoff Industries. When a guard (Roland Kickinger) stops him, Wheelwright claims he is just looking for the fitness centre, but the guard grabs him and demands identification. Wheelwright feigns an asthma attack, and uses his “inhaler” to spray a toxin into the guard’s face. Wheelwright reveals to a security camera that his nerve gas, Atroxium, is fully functional and can send people into permanent nightmares. An observer, Mary Bartowski (Linda Hamilton), walks out and claims that she knows a buyer in Los Angeles.
Chuck, using his usual cover of “Charles Carmichael”, meets Wheelwright at a restaurant. As Wheelwright starts to talk about price, Mary arrives unexpectedly. To keep her cover intact, Mary reveals Chuck as a CIA agent. Knowing that Chuck is wearing a ballistic vest, Mary shoots at his heart. Sarah approaches them, but Mary shoots at her, as well as a security camera (disabling Morgan and Casey’s security feed on her), and she and Wheelwright escape with the Atroxium.
Mary later returns at the Buy More and kidnaps Chuck at gunpoint. As he enters her car, he activates a tracking device on his phone. While she drives, she reveals that although she had to sabotage the mission and kidnap Chuck to maintain her cover, she will still give them Wheelwright, as he is too dangerous. She leads Chuck to Wheelwright’s portable laboratory, where both he and the atroxium are hidden. Mary finds out that Chuck has activated his distress tracking device and flees, and Sarah and Casey arrive to find Chuck, an unconscious Wheelwright, and the Atroxium.
With Wheelwright in custody at Castle, Chuck and Sarah starts dismantling the atroxium’s container. Suddenly, a timer starts counting down from five minutes. Wheelwright reveals that the only way to disarm it is with his thumbprint. Although he initially refuses to give it, they hold him at gunpoint and point out that he too would be affected if the atroxium where released. He reluctantly gives his thumbprint, but it instead accelerates the countdown, and the toxin is released. Wheelwright reveals that, having been the human test subject for his own toxin, he has learned to suppress fear. Chuck locks down Castle, sealing Sarah safely in a holding cell and chases Wheelwright to the Buy More. Chuck then puts the store on lock-down, but Wheelwright then drugs him with a more concentrated dose from his inhaler which then makes Chuck see even more horrifying visions.
Meanwhile, Casey searches for information on Project Isis with Pierce, an expert on expunged missions. Casey informs Morgan that Mary was telling the truth, just to keep Morgan from telling Chuck the real truth: Project Isis was ended 20 years ago after Mary went rogue. As Mary goes to meet Chuck and Ellie, she is captured by several masked individuals. Chuck attempts to rescue her, and he unmasks one of the captors, revealing her to be Sarah. Sarah tells him that she is protecting his “blind spot” (Chuck’s influenced judgement about his mother), and Mary is taken away. Chuck then reveals to Ellie the truth about Mary being a spy.
As a huge Nightmare on Elm Street fan growing up, I loved seeing Robert Englund, who in the opening few minutes, had me wishing he could play Freddy again, as we saw the effects of Wheelwright’s toxin, which caused “a gigantic nightmare you never wake up from!” The visual of Englund’s jaw opening wide even evoked a similar image in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Englund was a lot of fun switching from the bumbling, soft-spoken doctor to the more openly evil, and sadistic villain Wheelwright truly was. Another classic Halloween themed epsiode.
Veronica Mars is set in Neptune, California, a town without a middle-class. Everyone’s either a millionaire or works for one, and the man largely responsible for Neptune’s unparalleled success is Jake Kane (Kyle Secor), the resident billionaire software mogul. Kane and his family are still reeling from the murder of his daughter Lilly (Amanda Seyfried) some months earlier, and as if that loss wasn’t enough, the beloved Kane family was doggedly pursued by a county sheriff convinced that they were hiding something. Public sentiment turned against Sheriff Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni), who was ousted from office and abandoned by his wife.
Cue the title character. His daughter Veronica (Kristen Bell) had already lost her best friend with Lilly’s death, but standing by her father also cost Veronica her friends, her social status, her house…even her mother. Veronica had already been unceremoniously dumped by Lilly’s brother Duncan (Teddy Dunn) shortly before her friend’s murder, and a defiant visit to face her former friends at a party weeks later led to Veronica being drugged and raped. Despite having lost so much, Veronica is resilient enough to move on with her life, and as her father struggles to stay afloat as a private eye, Veronica puts her smarts and determination to work to help ease the caseload at Mars Investigations. She also puts her talents to use to help her classmates with their troubles — for a price, of course. To cap it all off, Veronica’s faced with a couple of her own mysteries to solve. What convinced Lianne Mars to abandon her family, and where is she now? Who was it who drugged and raped Veronica last December? Also, is her father right — did someone other than disgruntled Kane Software employee Abel Koontz murder Lilly? If there is, who orchestrated the conspiracy that led to Koontz’ confession and why?
The dialogue in Veronica Mars has the same sparkle as Joss Whedon’s work…arguably better, even, since Buffy sometimes sounded like a deliberate attempt to be hip, whereas Veronica Mars manages to be witty and clever without feeling quite so forced. The writing doesn’t skew as young as one might expect from a TV show set in a high school. If anything, the target audience seems to be twentysomething — I don’t know how many fifteen year olds would be able to appreciate references to Archie comics or 21 Jump Street, f’r instance. Characterization is another strength of the series, and part of the reason Veronica Mars works as well as it does is that the audience truly does care about the characters. Despite having a seemingly endless array of talents, Veronica isn’t some sort of idyllic Mary Sue. She’s not always right. Her investigations frequently take morally questionable turns. Things don’t always go the way she wants. Not every episode has a happy ending.Kristen Bell in Veronica Mars (2004)Along with the cases that are solved in the space of forty minutes and change every week, a couple of mysteries are introduced in the pilot that are gradually explored throughout the entire length of the season. That’s right — unlike the hydra that is Lost, where answering one question spawns ten more, all of Veronica Mars’ mysteries are resolved by the time the season finale rolls around. (The finale tosses out a couple questions of its own, but if a second season hadn’t gotten the green light, it still would’ve been a fitting end to the series.)Veronica Mars has a capable cast to match the quality of the writing. Veronica is strong and cynical…bright and sarcastic…and even though all of the trauma she’s suffered over the past year has aged her somewhat, she’s still an emotionally vulnerable teenage girl.
That’s a lot to juggle, but Kristen Bell is talented enough to make such a colossal task seem effortless and captivating enough to carry a show on her shoulders. Of course, Bell is joined by a strong enough supporting cast that she doesn’t have to shoulder it all herself.VM-S2D2_04After cutting down Wallace (Percy Daggs III), the new kid at school, who’d been stripped naked and duct taped to a flagpole, he and Veronica become best friends. In teen-TV land, it’s an immutable rule that people of different genders can’t just be pals…there’s this endless temptation to couple everyone. Veronica Mars manages to resist, resulting in one of the few platonic friendships like this left on television.Enrico Colantoni, who plays Veronica’s father, is another fan favorite, able to shift from warm, loving, and borderline-goofy to secretive and deadly serious when the situation calls for it. There’s also Eli “Weevil” Navarro (Francis Capra), the leader of a local biker gang from the wrong side of the tracks who engages in some mutual backscratching with Veronica.
The character who stands out the most — aside from Veronica, of course — is Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring). Like Kristen Bell, Dohring is endlessly engaging. He’s introduced as an “obligatory psychotic jackass”, but as the season progresses, Logan’s humanized without being watered-down; even when he’s doing something as thoroughly loathesome as bribing a homeless vet to join in on his homebrew Bumfights video, there’s an undercurrent of understanding why Logan is the way he is. The character changes throughout the season, but the shift feels deserved and natural, not just because that’s what’s scrawled on the whiteboard in the writing room.Other guest stars throughout the season include Napoleon Dynamite’s Tina Majorino as computer whiz Mac, Aaron Ashmore as a love interest with a shady past, Logan’s movie star family (played by Harry Hamlin, Lisa Rinna, and Alyson Hannigan), Anthony Anderson, Zachary Ty Brian, Joey Lauren Adams, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and, in a shameless bit of stuntcasting, Paris Hilton. 
The fact that the second episode of Veronica Mars manages to be really good despite a Paris Hilton guest spot really is a testament to how good a series this is. Oh, and, in true Laura Palmer fashion, just because Lilly Kane is dead doesn’t mean that Amanda Seyfried can’t rear her head in nearly every other episode.The conclusion to most of the mysteries caught me by surprise. Throughout the entire season, the only time I correctly guessed the culprit was in “Lord of the Bling”, and even then, the motivation and execution were well out of my reach. The many twists the stories take are clever, and watching these episodes a second time, I could spot all sorts of clues and hints that didn’t seem that important the first time through. Veronica Mars is a series that’s easy to dive into as a marathon, but for viewers catching these episodes for the first time, I’d recommend drawing it out a bit.