Monday

The week starts off softly, with nothing worth watching until 8 p.m., when you have too many shows even for TiVo to choose from. Shall it be the second night of the so-disappointing-I-may-cry The Prisoner on AMC? New episodes of House on Fox (in which House treats a porn star and decides to bring together his dream team of minions) or Heroes on NBC (in which Tracey loses control of her ability, Matt fights inside his mind with Sylar and OH MY GOD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP ALREADY)? Or a marathon of nature doc redux Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel, which offers six hours of stunning footage and soothing Sigourney Weaver voiceover?

I'm saying TiVo Planet Earth for when you need to be reminded how amazing life can be, and watch House, because you know they'll get some good jokes out've the porn star patient.

Tuesday

While The Prisoner finishes up its run over on AMC at 8pm, ABC's V decides that it's time to copy - Sorry, I mean, "homage" - another sci-fi classic as Erica is forced to team up with a Visitor officer to protect Visitors from death threats in this week's episode, "Wow, do you remember Alien Nation with its buddy comedy pairing of human and alien cops? We sure do." Oh, wait. It's actually called "A Bright New Day."

(If you're in the mood for something a little more classic, Syfy is running an Outer Limits marathon from 8am through 3pm.)

Wednesday

With no new episodes of Mythbusters, you might as well spend the day either (a) not watching television, or the much-more-likely (b) flipping between Syfy's The Twilight Zone marathon (8am through 3pm) and AMC's classic run of Young Frankenstein (1pm), Ghostbusters (3:30pm) and, um, Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (8pm). Someone's told them that T3 isn't a comedy, right...?

Thursday

As if the traditional Thursday evening crush isn't enough, Syfy are willing to suck your life away with a First Wave marathon from 9am through 3pm, and AMC are willing to contribute with the original Stargate movie at 2:30. Before you know it, you'll be choosing between Flashforward on ABC (Everyone keeps trying to solve their FFs just like they've been for the last few weeks, except Bryce is finally getting off his ass and wondering about his future girlfriend a bit more) and Vampire Diaries on the CW (Jeremy takes up drawing and Elena discovers something terrible, which may just be a future script for the show), both at 8pm.

And then you have to choose again between Fringe on Fox (The truth behind the Observer! And Walter wants a milkshake, with guest-star Kelis. Okay, sadly that part about a guest-star isn't true) and Supernatural on the CW at 9 (The Winchester Bros. team up with Bobby, Ellen and Jo to send Lucifer back to Hell. Don't be surprised if things don't go to plan, considering it's still relatively early in the season). We might just watch Community and 30 Rock instead, though, and catch up with everything else online later, if that's okay with you guys.

Friday

Relive the first wave of post-Lost network television with Syfy's Invasion marathon (8am through 3pm), before switching over to watch Dustin Hoffman worry about his paycheck in Outbreak on AMC.

Let's be honest, Fridays are really all about the evening shows, though; Smallville finally tries to get to the bottom of Lois' future abduction/visions on the CW at 8pm (Kneeling before Zod is optional, I believe), while CBS' Ghost Whisperer is worried about someone dying at the same time, which makes no sense. Wouldn't that just mean she'd have someone else to whisper to? Why do they never think these things through?

At 9pm, you can choose between Medium on CBS, wherein Allison develops a strange sensitivity to light, or Syfy's Stargate Universe, wherein everyone catches their breath and uses those weird psychic projection stone things to talk to those they've left behind. Alternatively, you could switch over to Cartoon Network for a new episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, before ending the night with the latest episode of Sanctuary at 10pm on Syfy.

Saturday

Syfy tries to get your attention with a triple bill of cut-rate dragon movies (In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale at 9pm, Fire And Ice at 11:30 and Dragon Sword on Sunday at 1:30 in the morning), but there's no way that can compete with AMC's quadruple bill of the Alien movies: Alien starts at 5:30, followed by Aliens at 8pm, Alien 3 at 11 and Alien: Resurrection at 1:30 on Sunday morning. The first two, at least, are worth it.

Sunday

Oh, people. You all know by now that Sunday is Venture Bros day, right? I don't know what else to tell you aside from that, apart from the episode being entitled "Self-Medication". Oh, and that it's on Cartoon Network at midnight, and is really the most essential piece of television in the entire week. Don't leave home without it.

Surrogates, opening today, is at its most potent when it reminds us just how much having a body totally sucks. Bodies break down, they get sick, and they fall apart. No wonder that everybody would rather jack into impervious, lovely robot bodies to face the world. Of course, it all goes horribly wrong, because somebody finds a way to destroy a robot "surrogate" and kill its operator at the same time. You won't be too shocked to hear that this turns out to be the result of a huge, confusing, nonsensical conspiracy in which nothing is what it seems.

There's been a lot of body horror involving technology lately — both Robert Downey Jr. and Jason Statham have had crude batteries inserted into their chest cavities, in Iron Man and Crank 2 respectively, and there was lots of cyborg self-loathing in Terminator Salvation. But Surrogates is the first movie I can remember seeing where the real self-loathing comes as a result of removing the body from technology.

When FBI agent Tom Greer, played by Bruce Willis, first ventures out into the world in his "meat bag" body, all of the robot-avatar people stare at him with pity, when they're not just ignoring him and elbowing him aside with their super strong robo-limbs. He's like the old man surrounded by perfect young people at the end of Logan's Run. The scenes of Willis staggering around the perfect robo-world, the stench of bodily decay coming off him, are extraordinarily powerful. They've managed to make him look way older and more decripit than he really is, while his ideal robot body (which we see a lot of early in the movie) is airbrushed into looking vapidly handsome.

And just to drive the point home, Willis takes more punishment than even an action-movie hero ought to be able to handle. He rarely manages to land a punch, but he's constantly being beaten, kicked, slammed, and caught up in nasty car accidents. Super-robots throw parking meters at his head and he barely ducks in time. He gets more and more bruised and slashed up, over the course of the film.

The movie aims to tell us that Willis' weakness and vulnerability is a result of too much reliance on technology — this is what happens when you lean on something too much, and then it's yanked away from you. But actually, you could just easily see Willis' decrepitude as proof that technology is awesome, and it's a mistake ever to yank yourself away from it.

The main thing standing in the way of that interpretation is how disturbingly candy-coated the robot bodies in the movie look. Sometimes, you start getting used to seeing the airbrushed loveliness of almost everyone in the film, and then you catch sight of a real person — or you just get a weird robot crowd scene — and you're unnerved once again. The movie has some really nice visual effects and concept design, especially in those scenes where we see the ugly, Terminator-esque endoskeletons under the immaculate skins.

And the movie definitely wants you to know that excessive reliance on technology is bad and wrong — it's one of the preachiest films I've seen in ages, and it's by no means subtle. Willis' character starts out being opposed to the use of robotic "surrogates," and his conviction rapidly hardens. Meanwhile, we are lectured constantly about the evil of using robot bodies to interact instead of communing in the flesh. And the people who are pro-Surrogate are always revealed to be evil, misguided or in need of an epiphany of some sort. Some of the preachiness comes from the Prophet (Ving Rhames), the leader of the anti-surrogate and generally Luddite resistance, but a lot of it comes from various mouthpiece characters, and bits of symbolism that are labeled "SYMBOLISM" in bright flashing colors.

The surrogates, of course, are a metaphor for our own reliance on technology to interact with the world. Our iPhones, our Blackberries, our laptops, our xBox lives. We're cutting ourselves off from real humanity by using these toys instead of going out and getting a sexually transmitted disease the way God intended.

The movie's preachiness is one huge problem — and it does get awfully tiresome after an hour or so of having messages shoved in your face — but the movie's other huge problem is that it is every bit as moronic as you'd expect from a film from the writers and director of Terminator 3. I went into this film trying to have no preconceptions, and hoping that T3 was just an aberration — but no, this film is the absolute definition of an idiotic action movie. Stuff happens for no particular reason, and there's a shocking twist every 10-15 minutes that comes out of nowhere, and then goes right back there. If you tried to diagram the plot, you'd wind up drawing an evil squiggle. One great source of plot twists is the fact that you never quite know who is really operating a robot surrogate.

Oh, and characters regularly say things like, "The only way to deal with addiction is to kill the addict!"

For some reason Surrogates reminded me of I, Robot. Maybe because both movies feature James Cromwell in a similar role. And they both have technology that everybody insists is safe inevitably biting us in the asses. But most of all, both movies have absolutely gorgeous concept design, amazing visuals, some really fun action sequences — and completely braindead storytelling. I would say Surrogates is slightly better than I, Robot, if only because it packs more of a punch to the gut.

Honestly, if you don't expect the plot to make sense, and if you enjoy giggling at ridiculous and often preachy dialog, you'll probably enjoy Surrogates a whole bunch. Bruce Willis keeps getting up, no matter what they throw at him. Even after his FBI boss says he's off the case, he keeps investigating the case. He's got some backstory involving a kid who died in an accident and a wife who's never really recovered, but mostly he's a stock-standard Willis character who won't quit until he gets to the truth. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The other thing that I really liked about Surrogates is the world-building. You get lots of interesting and sometimes horrifying hints about how this world works, including glimpsing an army "peace action" where robotic troops blow the shit out of meatsacks in some third-world country. And you sort of gather that poor people are stuck with shitty robot bodies, and you witness what looks like two surrogates beating up on a prostitute at one point. There's a nice undercurrent of corruption under the perfect shiny robot-sleeved world, which is way more effective than the movie's overt attempts to harangue us.

So to sum up: dumb movie, weak nonsense plot, incredibly preachy and sledgehammery. At the same time. it's a fun action movie with some nice set pieces, and the production design and world-building are really lovely. And it's mostly worth it for Bruce Willis' craggy, saggy, excessively mortal countenance, as he stumbles in some state of grievous injury through a landscape full of way too pretty people.

We asked you guys what you thought about T3 versus T4 and the majority of you voted that it was either much better, or at least slightly better. I narrowed down the most important aspects of the Terminator franchise, and weighed them side by side.

John Connor:

T3: Nick Stahl was a depressing casting choice, who has thus far carried the title of "worst John Connor ever." But his character's story was at least slightly more interesting to watch than one-note Bale. Still the voice-cracking teary-faced "Why me?" moments got real old, real fast.

T4: While a completely intimidating military leader, his inability to make anyone remember why they loved the little rapscallion smart ass from T2 brought out zero audience identification for the troubled savior of man. Plus, he was kind of a dick.

Winner: T4. Even though Bale leaned a little too much on the Batman voice, he was still a much more believable bad ass than Nick Stahl could ever hope to be.

The Big Action Scene:

T3: Watching Arnold get dragged through building after building (debris and glass flying) all while dangling on the end of the crane zooming down the road was one of the two saving grace moments from Terminator 3. More importantly, it looked and felt believable. Say what you will about Jonathan Mostow, his decision to use real props and stunt men gave the big action scene a sense of realism.

T4: When the Harvester let out its robo-moan, I got excited. But watching the giant robo-monster pluck the kindly old lady out of the gas station and then swing and miss an easy target while our heroes peeled out in front of it was pretty unforgivable. Sure you could argue that the bots would never fire on Marcus, but that didn't stop them in LA, or keep them from throwing him off the side of the prisoner transport. But if you open up that can of worms, you've got to start debating why the machines were dumb enough to keep Kyle Reese prisoner in the first place, and not just execute him on sight. (Boom — future John Connor, dead.) Already there's entirely too much thinking for an action scene. Also if you're going to build moto-Terminators with built-in guns, make them use it. This way, some jerk who's lost in time and his two kid sidekicks won't be able to take them out in a few minutes.

Winner: T3. Shoot as many moto-transformers out of the Harverster's legs you want, in the end it all felt like a Transformer with terrible aim. Give me Arnold getting thrown through cement walls.

Friendly Terminators:

T3: Seeing an aged Arnold picking up a coffin and taking on a pack of cops was, well, frighteningly upsetting and silly (and boy did they run with it — remember the heinous star sunglasses?). But the one thing Arnold had over Marcus was a sense of realism. Watching the original Terminator knife open his own chest, ripping away his fleshy covering was, well, freaking cool. That robot just cut into his chest with a knife!

T4: Sadly, Marcus' robot innards (while part human) always looked and felt like a failed Photoshop contest. And let's not forget his magic ability to heal off-screen because damn, CG is expensive, so thank God we threw that line in the script. Also, not once, even when he was fighting off other Terminators, did I get a feel for his super-strength or robot abilities. Nor did I believe that he had any sort of emotional attachment to Kyle Reese that would validate his big rescue attempt.

Winner: T4. While Arnold appeared to be a more realistic robot with his flappy exoskeleton bits and charred flesh (which is really saying something when you look at the money McG had to make Marcus seem like a half human half robot) the insufferable robot feelings climax throws the win to Marcus. Let's all thank the robot gods we didn't have to sit through another "I....can't...control...my...functions...John Connor....having....feelings" red to blue view finder moment.

Bad Terminators:

T3: I've heard many a "thanks, but no thanks," to the T-X after she came out. Granted, her excessive amount of robot gadgetry seemed forced and got a little confusing at times (why doesn't she shape shift more? And if she can control all robots, why doesn't she attack John Connor through other machines?). But the T-X was above all things ruthless. Her primary function was to kill the human leaders of the Resistance, and that was always in the front of her mind. The she-terminator stuck to the franchise robot code that is, kill, kill, kill. Which made her frightening. Especially when she walked into a house full of kids and opened fire at point blank range. This is a robot that wants to kill you, not kidnap you in some poorly thought out plan and then leave only one Terminator to guard the door, when they have an ARMY being made in "the basement." Also the blood-licking DNA decoding scene was delightful. I was sometimes scared of this robot, which is more than I can say for the pack of blundering puppets from our Doomsday future.

T4: Was seeing the CG T-800 with the face of Arnold neat? yes. But the impact of that moment passed minutes after uttering the phrase "Hey, cool." The T-800 was not scary, and neither was Skynet. Never did I ever get the feeling of being menaced by superior robot intellect. Maybe the fight scene was difficult to follow, or perhaps it was because the T-800 insisted on throwing John Connor about when we all know it could snap his neck in seconds. It was a muddle of incompetence.

Winner: T3, for making a robot that never stopped trying to kill humans.

Kate Brewster (Connor)

T3: Claire Danes was not good in this movie. There was zero chemistry (from her end) and I just couldn't get on board with anything she did as Kate. Did she even care when her fiance was murdered? This character came across as a whiny girl, who conveniently knows how to fly a plane. I couldn't listen to her talk about so-and-so's basement for another second.

T4: Bryce Dallas Howard is a wonderful actress who was given nothing to do but stand around and make bug eyes for the entire movie. This is not her fault.

Winner: T4. For not having Claire Danes in the film.

The Big Finale:

T3: The whole thing was a lie. Judgment Day was inevitable. The two kids are tricked by a caring father into an underground bomb shelter, thereby just missing the nuclear war. This was the second saving grace moment of T3 and possibly the best part of the film. As a viewer, you kind of got the feeling it was being set up, but the big reveal was still shocking. Plus the bomb shelter was time-capsule gorgeous, and part of me wanted to live down there and start on the Resistance — after we killed Danes and ate her for sustenance, of course.

T4: Marcus gets his second chance, by giving John Connor his heart. Do we care about his second chance? Not really. No one ever truly believed a dude who befriended orphaned kids in a run-down future was ever really that bad to start off with. So the whole "this is your moment, Marcus" thing was a total waste. But it all worked out in the end, and the team flies away on the wings of helicopter angels to have a big teddy-bear picnic in the sky. From high above, Marcus looks down from Heaven and winks. John Connor lifts his weak limb and shoots back a thumbs up, to heaven. And for one moment in the hell we call a future, things are A-OK. At least that's what I got out of it.

Winner: T3.

So as of right now, it's a tie. Hmmm, I leave it in your hands. But I'm starting to lean more towards T3, which at least doesn't have a wily sidekick child in it, who just so happens to have a bag of convenient tools on her at all times. But that's just me.

The seller's description says it all:

This Torso is very unqiue with a Grey Male Torso shell that contains two chromed Robot arms that each contain several LEDs at the end, along with a red lighted chest plate and chromed metal neck. There are two long 12" strands of LED spinal cord which hang from the bottom. But the real fun lays inside the chest when the front is removed with a great android inside featuring over two dozen light up LEDs, Fiber lights, along with a Strobe in the center that you can hear charge up to flash.

Terminator 3 T3 Robot Light Up Torso Movie SciFi Prop [eBay.com]

I wasn't able to include all of your suggestions in this list because I ran out of time. And I was already frantically sourcing clips from Fifth Element and Deja Vu when I posted part one yesterday. But this includes most of your suggestions as well as a few surprises:

The Fifth Element (1997). This is basically just an old-fashioned chase. You have a cop scanner-blocker instead of a radar-detector, and the cop cars have machine guns on their hoods. But then it ends in the traditional way, with Bruce scooting onto the train tracks and avoiding a freight train, which the cops crash into, spilling cartons onto their hood. You can practically hear the banjo music.

Deja Vu (2006). Denzel Washington is wearing a headset which lets him see four days into the past. He drives around looking at the past (night-time) through one eye, and the present (daytime) through the other. He's chasing the past movements of a terrorist who blew up part of New Orleans three days ago. And of course he wreaks major havoc in the present while he tries to chase a phantom from the past. It's an amazingly brilliant moment in an otherwise dull movie. Washington drives a Hummer H1 modeled on a real robot car, the H1ghlander. An autonomous robot car built by Carnegie Mellon for the 2005 DARPA challenge, the H1ghlander features LIDAR laser-ranging units, an intertial navigation system and SICK laser sensors. (I have no idea what SICK laser sensors are, but they sound hard-core.) Director Tony Scott used a Porche SUV with a special robot camera arm that can film at 180 MPH, for this sequence.

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999). Because you demanded it, here's the pod-racing scene. Wacky aliens, goggles, funny zappy lightning running between the poles of the pod, zoomy video-gamey action. It's pretty kinetic, and one of the few moments in Menace that isn't bogged down by weird ethnic alien people talking too much, or grasshopper-headed fight robots fighting.

Matrix: Reloaded (2002). Sure, a lot of this movie felt like a powerpoint presentation about fate vs. free will and the meaning of something or other. But it was almost all worth it for the giant freeway pileup, where Neo and Trinity try to get the Keymaker to safety. The white-dredlock guys have guns that magically make the cars flip over, and then they can turn into carjacking ghosts. Meanwhile, Agent Smith can jump onto cars and smush/flip them without slowing down. Here's the clip:

Terminator 3 (2003). Like we said, cyborgs just make better car crashes. Every one of the Terminator films has an awesome car chase at some point. In the first movie, Arnie steals a cop car and tries to run Reese and Sarah down. In the second movie, the evil Terminator is in a giant tanker truck trying to run down the Connors' pickup truck, but Arnie jumps onto the tanker and manages to flip it over, so it skids on its side into a steel factory and bursts. But the best car-chase spectacle of all is in Terminator 3, where a female Terminator chases John Connor's van while Arnie follows on motorcycle. Oh, and half a dozen cop cars also try to catch John Connor. Laser hand-blasts, crane-street-fu, Arnie carjacking a firetruck after he gets splatted on the windshield... it's all pretty awesome.

Next (2007). Nicholas Cage plays Johnny Cadillac, who can see two minutes into the future and adjust his actions accordingly. As any normal person would, he uses this ability to drive really fast and lead the cops on a crazy-ass chase through the streets of Las Vegas. It's based on a Philip K. Dick story, so you know it has to be brilliant. Right?

Based on the 2005 murder mystery comic The Surrogates by Robert Venditti and indie star Brett Weldele, Variety is reporting that the new movie will be brought to you by the same team who gave the world Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines: writers Michael Ferris and John Brancato (who have also scripted the upcoming Terminator 4) and director Jonathan Mostow.

Whether this means that the comic's subtle conspiracy plot is going to be replaced by explosions and Clare Danes' inability to act is still open to question.

Bruce Willis to star in 'Surrogates' [Variety]