Big Brother 11 Review

Well, Big Brother 11 is coming to a close in just a little less than 2 weeks. This has been a season like no other.

This was Big Brother's come-back season after a detremental drop of 1.2 million viewers last summer for Big Brother 10.

Big Brother didn't let up with the twists this season starting with the rise of the high school cliques. The 12 houseguests were split into 4 popular high school cliques based on extensive personality testing. They were split into the brains, athletes, populars, and the offbeats. Making them play the game like never before because the winning Head of Household each week could not nominate a member of their clique for eviction. Then immediatley after Julie (host) revealed that shocker she announced that there was a 13th mystery houseguest which was none other than BB10's Jessie (UGH!).

After 3 weeks the house had dwindled to 10 remaining houseguests. At this point Julie announced that the cliques were no longer in affect. Bringing relief to the populars and the offbeats due to their cliques dwindling numbers (populars ha 1 left, offbeats had 2 left).

Then the Coup d'Etat came into play. America voted on the 10 remaining HGs to receive the power to overthrow the HOH. This power was used a week later and knocked out Jessie (WOO-HOO!).

The house was down to 8 when Big Brother history was made when Chima destroyed production property and was penalty evicted from the game throwing the game into a fast-forward to get back on schedule which brought the un-fair demise of Lydia (made me really mad!).

A week of normal gameplay went by before the next twist: Pandora's Box. The house at this point is down to 5 HGs and from here on out each week the HOH would be given a temptation which could affect the game. The first was Kevin who was greedy and released $10,000 to the other 4 HGs and he was left with nothing (haha serves him right!).

That's all that's happened thus far. With only 4 houseguests remaining, now is the time to jump into BB11 if you haven't already. The finale is September 15.

OPINION CENTER

Rating: A

Age Range: 13+

Pros/Cons: Major step-up from BB10. Many many twists.

Big Brother showtimes:

Sundays at 8pm

Tuesdays at 9pm

Thursdays at 8pm

Official Big Brother Site: www.cbs.com/bigbrother

Halloween II Review

Halloween II is the re-adapted sequel to 2007's remake of the original Halloween. It starts exactly where the last one left off.

The motto for this installment is "family is forever". I won't give it away but one of the main characters turns out to be Michael Meyers' sister.

This installment is even more dissapointing than 2007's remake. It didn't really have an ensemble of main characters; just 2 real characters besides everyone that gets slashed. Constant flashbacks and confusing dreams tricks the audience into getting mixed up between what is real and what is a hallucination.

There also wasn't a real storyline other than the slasher trying to find his sister.

But there was a brief good moment at the end when we finally find out that Michael Meyers has a soft spot. I won't spoil it though.

Halloween III is already slated to release in 2011 and this time it's in 3-D. Let's hope they step it up for H3.

OPINION CENTER

Rating: C-

Age Range: 16+

Pros/Cons: No storyline, poor cast, but good surprise ending.

Don't forget that the sixth season of So You Think You Can Dance premieres tonight at 8/7c on FOX!

The Final Destination Review

The Final Destination is the fourth installment in the "Final Destination" franchise. For this go-around, the premonition occurs at a race track where the main character sees a huge race car pile up that ends up flying into the grand stands and killing everyone at the track, but it turns out to be just a vision.

From here the storyline continues just as the first three films in this franchise did; main character tells of his vision and convinces a small group of people to leave the area. Then, the vision comes true but they have left the area so they are saved...for now.

In this film, 10 people are saved by the vision. But like the franchises motto "you can't cheat death twice". Basically, death has to "correct" itself since 10 people dodged the deadly event. "Death" is very harsh and disturbing in his methods of correcting their saved lives. 1 of the 10 saved people is "corrected" within seconds after the vision comes true when a tire flies from an exploding car and decapitates her. From here the gruesomene deaths only get worse.

The most gruesome in my opinion was when a character had their insides sucked out by a drain in a pool. Yuck.

This film really didn't give closure to the franchise. This is supposedly the final film and it truly...sucked. The deaths were too gruesome to even be believable and the characters were never unified.

OPINION CENTER

Rating: C+

Age Group: 17+

Pros/Cons: Didn't provide a decent closure to the series.

Killer Review

"Killer: The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Times" is a new book by Nigel Cawthorne. It is a compilation of exactly what the title implies; the most barbaric murderers of modern times.

The book is not for the faint of heart but it is still a good book. Each chapter chronicles the life of a famous killer. Amongst these include The Boston Strangler and The Yorkshire Ripper. The author was excellent at keeping your attention. It is not written like a biography but as a suspense thriller which makes it a real page-turner.

My personal favorite chapter is chapter 1: Natural Born Killers. It was written like a suspense thriller and not like a biography.

The only downfall to this book was that some of the chapters were far too short and didn't give the reader a feel of the event.

OPINION CENTER

Rating: B+
Age Group: 16+
Pros/Cons: Some chapters are too short but the author was excellent at making you turn the page.