This week’s episode starts off more like a classic House episode with an action scene where the patient collapses. House has each of the remaining team members select a case they want to work on. One of them chooses a patient who was a drag racer who collapsed after her race. As they beginning the differentiary diagnosis a man comes in and asks to talk to House. The man flashes a CIA badge and tells House he needs him for a consult. House goes along with the guy good humouredly, only to reach the top of the hospital and see the agency’s helicopter.

Foreman and Cameron declare total war as Foreman copes with trying to gain the respect of the team after he makes a few incorrect diagnoses. With hysterical patients and their relatives as well as the competitive patients biting at his heels, Foreman gets extremely frustrated. He gets revenge on Cameron after she suggests to two of the team members to go rogue and try their own treatment.

House gets to Langley and is greeted by a smoking hot CIA doctor and a kindly-doctor-looking doctor who is widely published. This provides plenty of ridiculous jokes for House who rips apart the other diagnostician as well as playing some serious hardball flirting with the head doctor. Is House finally going to sleep with someone that is not Stacy?

Both Foreman and House have to be wrong and cope with the repercussions, as well as the backlash from the doctors they are working with. House of course takes it in stride and Foreman on the other hand; well he mopes about it for a good twenty minutes of episode time. To cover their asses both doctors sign off on experimental treatments. Will they work? Will it matter?

This episode, complete with Cameron confessing she misses the excitement, makes it seem more likely that the old team is coming back. Chase weighs in and shows some real chemistry with his real life fiancé

Anne Dudek’s crazy bitch goes rogue, the faceless Peace Corps guy finally shows some personality, Kumar does his usual thing, and so does the rest of the team. While a few episodes have gone by without a cast member getting voted off, someone DOES leave the show while at the same time, someone else joins the team.

The next episode looks great – a documentary crew is on hand to follow House and his crew tackle an elephant man style case except the team gets caught up in the reality television bonanza and get distracted when it comes to saving a life.

Could “Avatar” Win Best Picture?

By Brett Hogan

 

Last week, the trailer for James Cameron’s sci-fi experiment “Avatar” debuted. While initially unimpressed with the teaser, I began to wonder: Could this film win best picture? 

 

Buzz has been generating for this movie for years. Years. The technology to make this movie didn’t exist when Cameron conceived it, so he invented it. When is the last time you heard of a director spearheading the invention of anything? The casting started in 2005. Most movies these days, even epics, are done in half that time. I could go on. 

 

The most important thing to take away from all of this is that people are saying this will be the future of movies. Now, I don’t agree with the idea that CGI will become more prevalent than it already is. But I do believe that this will set the bar miles higher for sci-fi. I mean, that is what Titanic did. And that won some awards if memory serves.

 

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, how can you even suggest that a film like this will win Best Picture when the initial trailer was nothing better than visual stimulation? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Academy has expanded Best Picture to ten films. This doesn’t guarantee anything other than improved chances for most films on the cusp.

 

Second, after last year’s Oscars debacle, which saw the best film of the year, “The Dark Knight,” not only get shafted in awards but nominations as well, the Academy is pulling out all the stops to appease those with the loudest voices in the film industry, the fanboys. Now, the Academy probably didn’t lose anything because of that other than some viewers of the award show. Perhaps if people are again outraged with the winners or nominees, the heads of the Academy would lose their jobs. So this is all about the Academy protecting itself, which is not so outrageous.  

 

 

Third, there is an economic motive here. I’ve heard this film will cost $190 million, not counting the R&D costs associated with Cameron’s inventions or the cost of getting 3-D cameras into every theater in the country. The Academy will do everything in its power to get people into the seats and make this the next “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight.” But the Academy doesn’t have much power, besides nominating and awarding, so they will slap the “Nominated for Best Picture” moniker onto every commercial and print ad to get the people who didn’t believe the critics to relent and see this movie.

 

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture, and no revolutionary film (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc.) has ever won the Best Picture category because it changed the game. Except maybe Titanic. But still, could this movie actually win? My answer is no but a nomination is certain and who knows what could happen from there. We’ll know more come February 2010.