TV Review: Shark Tank

I normally veg out the last few hours of the weekend on my couch in preparation for the weekend. It’s always a struggle to find something to watch this time of year. I stumbled upon this new summer replacement on ABC called the Shark Tank. The show places desperate entrepreneurs in front of a panel of blood thirsty investors. You might think the fact that these people are on television would make the want to cut honest deals with these people…not a chance. If they aren’t berating someone for wasting their money on a stupid idea they are presenting them with unreasonable investment deals. Much like a shark they can smell blood a mile away. The sadist in me loves this. Example: There was a 30 something school teacher who had invented a teaching tool. The tool utilizes songs he wrote to teach Shakespeare over rock style music. The entire teaching tool was complete; booklets, teachers manual, music and all. He was looking for 500,000 dollars for 15% of the business. The counter offer was 500,000 and 5% of royalties on the music he wrote and composed for 100% of the company spread across the entire panel. One of the panelist piped up with another offer, much to the chagrin of the other panelists. His rational was that their offer was absurd and that the guy would never be stupid enough to take it. Mind you this is all said in front of the teacher. He walked away to think, came back and made another counter offer to which the panel quickly dismissed. The panel saw that this man truly desired to be rich. So much so that he was willing to give up all of his hard work so quickly to get there. The worst thing was how they discussed how much of a stupid bad deal that was for that guy as they slapped fives. Check it out for yourself. It’s an interesting show, but I don’t think it will be on for long.

Movie Review: Public Enemies

Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and a bunch of other familiar faces in the story of a charismatic modern day Robin Hood directed by Michael Mann. Looks great when you put it like that, which is why I decided to check it out. The movie never really pulls you in. It plays out like; jail break, bank robbery, love story, bank robbery, jail break, bank robbery, Dillinger gets blasted. Oops...did I give away the ending? BTW...the ship sinks at the end of Titanic. This movie might be good for history buffs of the depression era, like the majority of movie goers are. It seems to imply a certain amount of knowledge into the subject before entering the theater, which I had little of. The style of direction is very familiar (see Collateral, great movie IMO. Tom Cruise plays a great crazy person...go figure). I am a fan of originality in film direction so I give it points for trying, but I think it works sometimes in this film and others is just too much. No complaints in the acting, how could I. Yet again I am disappointed by my movie going experience but this time I won't blame the Meningitis. I would say if you have the History Channel locked in at home you may want to check it out, all others wait to watch it on cable TV.