Not That You Care

2010-07-27T16:24:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the disappearing act folks. Life's been in a bit of turmoil lately. I haven't abandoned the site, just haven't been able to get back in the groove. In the meanwhile, I've been noodling around at Tumblr. You can find my current interests reflected there: philosophicalwax.tumblr.com I'm working to merge the two sites, but website design is not my forte. Thanks for keeping up with me better than I keep up with you.

2010-05-28T11:57:00.001-05:00

DAN the MAN

2010-04-16T10:35:00.000-05:00

2010-04-05T21:48:00.003-05:00

Let's Clash again

First off, it's a terrible title. Not the words per se, as you've got both CLASH and TITANS in it, two bombastic words that just scream action! conflict! No, it's a bad title because there are no actual Titans in it. In either movie, actually. Not to get too Greek here, but the Titans were the guys that Zeus defeated to take over the world. True, the opening narration tells a brief version of this tale, but in whole you don't call a movie Clash of the Titans if no Titans clash in it. It's false advertising.

Aside from that, the movie was awesome.

No truly. I thought this was a bad idea, not just for nostaliga's sake, but because of how many good movies have not been made. They got it right the first time, isn't there something we haven't seen before? But they found a way. While the first was more of an adventure tale, travelling all over ancient Greece, meeting strange people and gathering forces, this version is much more visceral in that they don't care why they are going somewhere, just as long as there's a great action sequence waiting there for them. Despite what the previews would have you believe, this is not a total CGI-fest. There is a lot of it, but it's by sequence. Most of the environments were actual sets, not green screen. While most of the monsters, giant scorpions, Medusa, are CGI, many are done with make up or even puppetry. They all work in their moments and all blend to a larger whole. One of the moments that gave all of us in my group a Whoa moment was done via puppetry, but was cool and creepy.

But in a movie like this, it stands or falls based on characters. You can do disaster porn like 2012 and convince yourself it's about the human story, and that's what they tell the actors, but we all know it isn't. In a hero's quest, you've got to be invested or the struggle doesn't work. Here's where the movie goes from A to B. The supporting cast is amazing. All these soldiers are given these clever lines and quirks and personified by actors who know to make a lot from a little. One veteran delivers one line so well we instantly fall in love with him. So much so that in his next scene, he only gets a reaction shot to the events happening around him and the audience howled with laughter. Were his exit so memorable...but I digress. The same cannot be said of our champion, he who has been chosen to save the city. After a surprisingly effective family montage, ending of course with a “you killed everyone I loved, now you must die” our simple fisherman become a simple warrior. The trouble comes with the actor.

From what I gather, Hollywood banked on the fact that this guy, Sam Worthington, was going to be the next big thing. Minimal research here, but James Cameron picked him to be the lead in a little film called Avatar. Heard of it? From this, he got tapped for Terminator Salvation and our topic du jour. All of these were shot before anyone had even seen his face on the silver screen. In other words, Hollywood decided this guy was going to be the next big star without any input from the paying crowds. How well does this plan work? Ask Josh Hartnett. If you can find him.

The trouble is this: in what we need an action star to be, dear Sam trying-so-hard Worthington is sadly lacking. What do Arnold, Bruce, Statham, Wil Smith have in common? They're cool. And Sam, sadly is not. Execs have never been that great in finding cool, only in honing it. Sam's got the chops, but seems to me he'd be better as a thug than a hero. I can see him standing next to the drug lord. “Mr. Dominic, show him we're serious with our offer.” Stern nod, harsh look, you know he means business. This movie is saved by the strong supporting cast, and great direction from Louis Leterrier, who's fast becoming one of my favorites of the new breed, the post-Bay directors.

I had a great time at Clash. It worked on more levels than I expected. It's turned into one of the highlights of the spring movie season. I could really say best at this point, as the spring season only has three more weeks when Iron Man 2 arrives and brings summer with it, inside the movie houses at least. It was everything it needed to be and nothing it didn't.

2010-03-13T09:35:00.002-06:00

I posted this so my wife would be able to easily find it, but I've become fascinated by netbook, palm tops, portable computing all around. And I don't mean getting a smarter, and faster, phone. There are some things a phone sized device is just not good for. I have a netbook, and I like it, but it's still just a smaller, dumber computer. I want the next thing. And that next thing isn't an iPad. I was jazzed when it was announced and as they talked more and more about it, I realized they just took their iPhone and embiggened it. That's not what I'm after. But Microsoft has yet to really enter the playing field. Their concept, shown below, is like nothing I'd imagined. Don't know if it's for me, but it is astounding in a way iPhone XXXL is not. Have a look.

2010-03-10T21:13:00.004-06:00

A Girl Walks Into An Alley...

Today is the 13th Anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was 4745 days ago that the first episode of Buffy aired on the now defunct WB network, back when they still had a singing frog between shows. Not many remember that the show was a midseason replacement. I know because I was there.

This has the potential to be one of those I Knew It Before You stories, like the fact that it seems we all know a Baby Boomer who went to Woodstock. That's not my intention though. The nice thing about geek shows is the telling of how you got into it is part of the cultural experience, unlike say hipsters who abandon a band when they become too popular.

Truth is, I followed the writer. It was 1997. I was finishing up my college classes while working full time, living at home of course. At this point, I was just formulating the idea that would become a central premise in my life, the search for why I liked what I liked, to discover the people who made the entertainment I enjoyed, the search for the creative DNA of the shows, movies, books I loved. This search led me to an article in a sci fi magazine whose name escapes me. (I know it became a online only news site before finally folding. Boy, that's gonna bug me.) In this article, I was introduced to a young writer with an impressive resume. He had helped to write Toy Story, Speed and Alien Resurrection. He also was the writer of the big screen Buffy that I was not a fan of, despite a fantastic turn by Paul Reubens. Turns out, Joss was also not a fan of the movie he wrote. Intrigued, I kept reading.

He talked about all the problems he had with their version of the movie and the parts the bugged him. I agreed with everything he said. He talked about the movies he loved. Same ones as me. And he had a great take on Star Wars being a 'lived in universe' and them calling the Falcon a piece of junk being a transcendent moment in sci fi movies. This guy was speaking my language. Joss talked about how he wanted to create a show that was not only funny but also truly scary, with kids who talked like kids not mini-adults. It was his vision well articulated that made sure I would not miss out on seeing his show.

I sat down and watched this show with the silly title and was blown away. It was funny in a way I had never seen before. The characters were talking about movies I'd seen and books I'd read. This stuff is commonplace now, but back in 1997 referencing was unheard of outside of MST3k. And it was genuinely creepy. Heck, one of the main characters is killed in the first episode. I watched every one of those 13 episodes and told everyone I knew about this show. Not many listened. But over the course of the summer, they replayed the show and I videotaped (yes, it was that long ago) every episode. I started showing them to my friends, getting them all hooked on this little show on a little network. So began an obsession, and thirteen years of joy.

I've had the honor of meeting my hero twice, and while I didn't explain to him how he changed my life, I also didn't completely embarrass myself in front of him. Something about that show really affected me. It made me laugh and cry and tell everyone I know about it. I've watched a lot of TV, had a vast collection of video tapes with complete seasons on them before the advent of DVD, but no show has had as much of an impact on me as Buffy. Can't imagine anything else will. It was the right show at the right time done just right. And it all started 13 years ago today.

2010-03-02T22:49:00.002-06:00

Go Ask Alice...

why this movie isn't better.

I got a chance to see a sneak of Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland 3D. First off, if you haven't been clued into it by now, this movie is a sequel. This is not Tim Burton's version of the classic Lewis Carroll stories about Alice visiting Wonderland for the first time or even her second time back through the looking glass. No, the movie is about an 18 year old Alice seeing how Wonderland has changed. Hardcore geeks will recognize this tale as having been told in the video game American McGee's Alice, with the movie adaptation long in development hell, now totally dead. I'll try to avoid spoilers as we proceed, mostly referring to tone and feel rather than plot points, but one man's allusion is another man's movie ruining moment.

I'm beginning to doubt the theory that Tim Burton is a visionary filmmaker and auteur of the highest order. Why? Because filmmakers make films, they don't remake them. Tim hasn't done an original film in what, a decade? Two? Everything he does is an adaptation or a remake. Now I'm not against either type, but what happened to the days of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands? Now the studios just dig out their catalogs and wonder what old material they can get a Tim Burton spin on?

And it's a shame, because the script her is actually a pretty good one. And in the hands of a passionate filmmaker, one who hadn't done this same thing with the same people half a dozen times, it might have been significant. What is is, is exactly what you'd expect. It's pretty good. It's beautiful and weird and Johnny Depp dances all over it, switching between crazy accents. But under it all is a really interesting story about growing up and choices and how you see the world that's secondary to seeing crazy CGI lengthened limbs and giant heads. That being said, I dug a lot of the digital work. There were some real artists sitting at keyboards for this one. The Cheshire Cat was great, well voiced and fascinating to watch whenever he was on screen. All the background animals in the Red Queen's castle were alive with personality even if they never spoke. The card soldiers were cool and creepy. The growing and shrinking effects were pretty cool. Some weird design choices took me right out of the movie. I never got over the bizarre giant head of Helena, or the jittery March Hare. I spent most of the time with Tweedles Dee and Dum trying to place the actor instead of listening to them. And the extra long limbs on the Knave were more distracting than enhancing.

It tends to get a wee bit confusing, as underneath what's going on is making Wonderland from a childish fantasy into a real, complex fantasy world on par with Narnia or Oz. The kingdom has a name, as do all of the characters, beyond their “titles” which leads to people calling, say, the Mad Hatter by that name or by his real name. And since all the characters do this, it does momentarily puzzle as you wonder who they are talking about. Oh right, that's the Red Queen's OTHER name. But Burton doesn't seem to care about this aspect, so it's only there to annoy instead of enhance. Who cares about a deeper plot? Put in more twisty trees!

I'm being hypercritical, I know. Everyone who sees this will dig it. They'll praise the crazy visuals and the 3D effects and Johnny Depp newest crazy character, and they won't be wrong. But I can't help but think of this one as being phoned in by the man in the director's chair. This will not inspire legions of devoted fans, cosplay fervor, or Hatter tattoos. It's simply exactly what you'd expect from putting Tim Burton and Alice together. And that's exactly what we got.

2010-03-02T07:53:00.000-06:00

Dead on Target

I'm a black widow television fan. It's true, whatever shows I enjoy always die. No, better, I'm the Typhoid Mary of TV, what I love...I kill. My mother is the one who brought this to my attention 20 years ago. It was right after some show I adored had been killed, maybe Misfits of Science or Automan. And so it is with a heavy heart I condemn another quality enterprise to one season wonder status: I have fallen for Human Target.

From my earlier trepidation about how much of the central concept was altered, I have come to judge the show on its own merit, not on my preconceived notions and have found it amazing. Why does it work so well? Here's my theory. Action movies died in the mid 90s. No, it's true. It's nearly impossible to find a quality action film after The Rock. It's a bookend of a film. But what about superheroes, you ask? They are their own new popular genre. What I mean by action movie is one that doesn't involve costumes, aliens, supernatural forces, anything beyond that one Super Science device that doesn't quite exist, but might. Eagle Eye would be at the far end of that scale. Now, we've had a bit of resurgence, but it's mostly coming from Europe. Here in the good old US of A, we're still too concerned about filmgoers getting upset at watching people blow up buildings instead of aliens or mummies. It doesn't mean I don't want to watch them even if they stopped making them. Now I get what my dad was talking about with westerns after we went to see Silverado.

The genre flatlined and moved to television, where the ideas are big but the budgets are small. You didn't get to see Will Smith firing a machine gun, but you could watch Chuck Norris beat up the same stuntmen in different wigs ever week. Now we've come to a new era where the quality of the picture has met the high standards of Hollywood stunts with much improved visual effects (no more green screen auras!). Human Target is, essentially, a great action movie every week. It's like Die Hard or Lethal Weapon where you don't have to wait 15 years between gradually diminishing adventures (also known as the Ow! My knees! Factor). Every week, new thrills, new chills, new fights. And I know it'll all turn out all right, that Chance will defeat the bad guy, but like every great action movie, I get caught up in it. But this will all be for naught, as it's a great show, it has sci-fi elements and it's on Fox. Time to get my heart broken again.

2010-02-11T07:41:00.001-06:00

Lost in LOST

I can't believe they found a third way. At the end of the last season, Jack and his merry band of time travelling miscreants decided to enact a plan. By the detonation of a nuclear weapon, they would disrupt the timeline and make is so their plane would never crash, wiping out the previous five seasons of the show. And in the end, as we watched the screen fade to white, we were left wondering which of the two options would it be? Would the plan work and everything would be restarted, a grand retcon that would make the Dallas “Bobby in the shower” moment into a momentary blip? Or would it be a grand failure, thereby negating all the work and effort of the previous season and leaving us right back where we started? But those clever writers, the brilliant brains inside that writers room actually found another OR from their EITHER OR scenario. And they got out of the storytelling hole of Flashback or Flashforward. Now, it's Flashsideways? Flashparallel?

No show confuses me so happily. I honestly have no more idea of what is going on or going to happen than you, and I read books on the outside, peruse message boards, listen to podcasts from both the show's creators and massive fans. But I am just as clueless as anyone else, and blissful about it. Seriously, what other show has done this? Spun so many plates so effectively for so long? It's gotten so dense that major mysteries of previous seasons are quietly answered under even more questions.

I am sure not all the questions will be answered. I would love if every episode leading up to the finale would be amazing, but they won't be. What I know is that these people are doing something I've never seen on TV before. The fact that the show is still on the air does not amaze me. The fact that it is still popular does. This show is smart, it's mental heavy lifting. And while a fair amount of people jumped ship when they knew it wouldn't be spoon fed entertainment, the vast majority stayed with this weird, frustrating, topsy turvy show. And it looks like they'll stay right to the end, as will I. And I'm not even doing it in a weird BSG nerd momentum way. I'm honestly engaged and look forward to every episode, good or bad. All I want is for the show to go out exactly the way they came in, smart, complex, weird, deep, engaging, rich of character and unafraid of ambiguity. Our vacation time on the Island is just about up, but let's make the most of the time we have.

2010-01-26T18:27:00.002-06:00

Midseason Madness

I love midseason TV. Love, love, love and also love. Some of my favorite shows started out as midseason replacements. The queen of this category would, of course, be Buffy. Midseason is the place where, after the networks big time, expensive, star studded shows have come, did six episodes, then died, new shows must fill the gaps. These shows are usually smarter, smaller and who are we kidding, mostly dead in the water. They premiere when no one is watching TV and get almost no advertising to tell the people who are that they should watch. As the shows premiere, I'm hoping to make this a regular feature but for now, I going to discuss two shows that have stood out.

Human Target

I was prepared to hate this show for incredibly geeky reasons. Here's the problem. In the original comic (a phrase which has proceeded many a nerd rant), the Human Target, Christopher Chance is a master of disguise. When someone's life is threatened, he becomes them, thus becoming the Human Target the title implies. This leads to him having severe identity issues, which leads to good drama. In the new show, the second attempt to make a show on this concept but with 100% less Rick Springfield this time out, the Human Target is actually the Human adjacent to the Target. His modus operandi is to become a boring member of the staff, to be ignored until the hit comes where he springs into action and takes out the assassin. All well and good, but not the comic. Why bother to pay the money for the property when you could just make a show called Bodyguard or Human Shield or Ninja Accountant. Incidentally, I'm shopping Ninja Accountant around Hollywood right now, so no stealing.

But having watched the pilot, I'm interested. It's not a great show, but it is a lot of fun and much smarter than I would have imagined. It's got a good pedigree, aside from the presence of the director who most wishes he could be Michael Bay, Simon West. Mark Valley is solid in what my good friend J refers to as the Johnny Squarejaw part. Chi McBride is always good in what he does, but the show stealer is Rorschach himself, Jackie Earl Haley. His intro, where he gets the better of two thugs there to beat him up in five sentences and without getting up from his table. I tend to think of those guys as the Dan Fielding type, fantastic secondary characters who would never work as a lead but who end up making the show, named after John Laroquette's Emmy winning character from Night Court. I'm intrigued enough to give it a couple episodes, have a good time and cry no tears when Fox cancels it in May.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

I can't tell you it's good show. It's not revolutionary, or exemplary in any way. Beyond that, it has a terrible pilot episode packed to the gills with cliches. Then in the final moments, I got a glimpse, a glimmer of what the show might be and how I could enjoy it if I just accepted it on its own terms. The second episode, in that frame of mind, that's what got me hooked.

The best way I can describe the show is to call it Zach Snyder's Gladiator. So far, the story is a combination of 300 and Gladiator, of the noble warrior brought down by the Romans and made into a gladiator, one day to rise up and lead a great rebellion. Where in a movie, this would all be a 20 minute montage, here it is expanded out to a series. The budget is nothing, but well spent. It comes from the creators of Hercules and Xena, who know how to stretch a dime. It's done green screen with that slow-fast camera so well used in 300 and Watchmen. The first time you see someone get an arm sliced off in slo-mo with the way too bright red blood shooting out, you'll roll your eyes in recognition, but I'd much rather they ape that style than the Michael Bay half second shot seizure enducing edits or the Paul Greengrass shake the camera to make it look real nonsense.

Did I mention this is a show for adults? In the list of combinations, I'd also add Rome meets Xena. While it still has the crazy action, if not so cartoony, what it does have is severe language, gore and nudity. And not casual, half glance or carefully edits, but full on full frontal. I was shocked enough when a famous television actress appeared topless in the 2^nd episode, but then to have the next scene be in the gladiator's bathhouse with all their gear on display was even more of a surprise. You've got some good actors, some famous ones, some bad actors clearly chosen for their ability to wield a gladus. And somehow it works, more accurately, it's starting to work. They have the Roman politics, the class warfare, the righteous man determined to fight back, the noble savage, the underdog factor, all very primal storytelling tools. And they are doing a lot with what they have. And I'll take a show with imagination over excess any day.

Human Target is on Fox and can be watched on Hulu. Spartacus: Blood and Sand is on Starz (I know, right?) and is also available for streaming on Netflix Instant Queue. It was also renewed for a second season before the first episode even aired, so at least the network has faith in it.

2010-01-26T09:00:00.002-06:00

FlickForward: The Films of January 29th

Edge of Darkness

There's an Edge of Obscurity joke in there somewhere. Mel is another one of those guys who we chuckle about, or shake our heads at, but forget that when he acts, he's astounding. He's one of the guys who can pull off crazy without hamming it up. What I worry about is this movie makes me think of a mash-up of Mystic River and The Brave One, neither of which I really enjoyed. It irks me that these Serious Films come out and have to spend half their lengths trying to justify vigilantism. It's liberal guilt Death Wish. Novels are for long chapters of should I or shouldn't I? Movies mean should, definitely should. Do I want to see aged Mel getting revenge on the bad dudes what killed his kid? Hell yes. Do I want to see Mel crying at a Formica table in a dark kitchen for 20 minutes? Hell no.

When In Rome

Everybody's got dues to pay. I don't begrudge one of my favorite young actors, who I've met twice thankyouverymuch, taking a role in what seems to be a cookie cutter Rom-Com with that added spice of a supernatural element. It is one of the steps in building a career. Every actress at the top of the charts has had to do it, Even Angelina Jolie. Anyone remember Life Or Something Like It? No? Well, be glad for that. That being said, no way will I pay money to watch it. This movie screams lazy Saturday afternoon, stumbled across on USA Network.

2010-01-19T22:09:00.000-06:00

24: The attack of Grandpa Jack

I've been on and off with 24. I watched every episode of the first 5 seasons of the show. But somewhere in season 6, I developed 24 Fatigue. Somewhere around the 12th hour, my attention starts to wander and by hour 16, I've let several episodes build up on my DVR. And once it starts deleting them, I give up. So I've seen the first half of the previous seasons, but not the end. That way I start every season fresh, not knowing any more than the new characters. I'm not sure if it is the shows fault, as they do tend to drag before their big ramp up to the finale or just that I can't muster up enough enthusiasm for the marathon that a season of 24 demands of its viewers. But that's all part of “Previously, on 24...” We're here for the new post title beeps stuff.

We're four hours in now, and I'm impressed. Where a show like 24 can triumph over a similar plot in a movie is time. Not Real Time, but actual time on screen. We see Jack as a grandfather, and wanting to start a new life close to his family. We even see him smile for the first time without a gun in his hand. And over the first couple hours, we see what he would be giving up to get pulled back into the life. When the moment comes that he must set aside his own desires to help the nation once again, we get to see him agonize over it. We get to see the sacrifice, and are not shouting for the hero to get on with it already like in an action movie.

The great assassination plot to kill some ruler of some country was lame, but we all know that's A plan not THE plan. The guy behind the guy behind the guy gave us his brief appearance, but we all know that guy will be working for one of the main characters, to be revealed close to hour 20. For all its merits, the one thing 24 has never really been good at is mystery. Maybe its the nature of the 24 hour format beast, but the big reveals and twists always seem out of the blue, like they were just made up on the day. It's not really what makes the show great, so I guess it doesn't matter. But for all the scenes of boring government employees talking about how this will appear to the American People and discussing documentation of events, you'd think it would all mean something instead of just filling time.

The new CTU has Star Trek doors on the interrogation room. Ooooh, fancy! It's a pretty slick new layout, with chrome everywhere and the GIANT SCREEN looming over everyone. How long before we see the big giant villain head giving his demands on that thing? And the addition of drones and facial recognition software will make scanning the crowd move along much faster. Lots of new faces for the NYC office as well. Freddie Prinze as an ass-kicker, who'd'a thought it. But he handles himself pretty well. I wouldn't give him the franchise, but he's getting to Curtis/Chase levels of competence. The new head of CTU is the usual ultra efficient pencil pusher type, this time he's always on his bluetooth. But I really like the actor, all the way back to Boomtown and even to Forrest Gump. I just wish he wouldn't hunch so much. Seems like he's always hanging his head. Maybe the producers told him to do that so Keifer wouldn't look so short. Then, we have the women.

First Chloe. I get the idea. You take the smartest person in the room and move her to a room she doesn't know, you get friction, tension, drama. But the trouble is that if you keep up the geek rage, it doesn't come off as extreme confidence/arrogance, it becomes whining and bitching. For the first time, I started rolling my eyes when she'd sass off to the boss. Her vindication helps set things right, but it's still a fine line. My main trouble comes in typecasting. The show doesn't have a great record with women. While on the one side you have Nina, you also have Kim vs. cougar. It's not as terrible to women as say, Rescue Me, but they are not a global beacon for feminism. Not that I know what I'm talking about in any way about this topic. I just know strong women when I see them on the movin' picture box. Yadda, yadda, yadda, Starbuck. I'm glad Katee is getting work. She's a very talented actress and won her golden gloves in the Tuff Chicks On TV competition with not only BSG but being the only consistently good thing on the Bionic Woman remake. Which she should have been the star of, btw. But somehow she ended up playing slick chick who's hiding the fact she's trailer trash. How very Clarice Starling. We then come to the Bad Boyfriend showing up to wreck everything, and she just rolls over for him. I know about story structure and conflict and feeding the beast, but due to their casting I just didn't buy it. Starbuck would have kneed him, rolled him into the back of his van, dropped him off the GW and been back to work before her dinner break was over. This is not a slight against the actress, but against the casting. You don't cast Sackoff and make her milquetoast. It's a waste. I know, her time is coming. In about 6 hours, she'll stand up and tell him off. This is my baggage. Personally, I'd have switched her and Freddie's roles. Now THAT'd be some interesting TV. Tough commando chick getting hitched to a squeaky computer dork with a secret? That's a day in the life I'd like to see.

I admit, I'm hooked. We've moved past the treaty assassination stuff for now and moved into Russian mob territory with the return of an old flame. I like how Jack was freaked out about her cutting off a guy's hand to go undercover when he cut off a dude's head to do the same thing. It reminds me of the end of season 4 of Doctor Who where the Doctor sees what his companions are willing to do to save the earth and is crushed by the realization he has made them into warriors. Now Jack has to live with someone trying to emulate him. Consider me along for the ride, for at least 12 hours that is.

2010-01-19T08:11:00.001-06:00

FlickForward: The movies of January 2010

January 22nd
Extraordinary Measures
I tend to stay away from things based on true stories. Knowing they are changing reality to make their flick seems way more false to me than the 100% lies that fiction is made of. I'll take Varsity Blues over Friday Night Lights. Yes, I have accepted my hypocrisy and am at peace with it. But this one, if it wasn't for the star power, that being Harrison Ford, I'd swear this was a TNT original film, or Saturday night on CBS.

Legion
Paul Bettany as an asskicking angel with a machine gun? Really? Isn't he playing Charles Darwin in a movie playing right now? Wow. The movie looks to be a combination of The Prophecy, which wasn't very good despite Viggo showing up as Lucifer, and, oddly, Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight, one of my favorite, but little seen, horror films from the '90s. As a solid B-movie, it might be kinda cool. But I wouldn't set my sights too high.

The Tooth Fairy
Dwayne would like us to believe this is all part of his “Become a Movie Star in 5 Easy Steps” Plan, but you can only go to the well so many times. The idea should be one for you, one for them. He did The Rundown, then he did Game Plan. The next thing should have been for him, something action or at least for someone more than 12 years old to enjoy. But then we got Witch Mountain, and now Tooth Fairy. Congrats, you're a movie star of the same level as Hulk Hogan. We didn't need another Mr. Nanny. Dwayne, dude, seriously, if I don't see you shooting someone in your next movie, you're gonna be an anecdote.

2010-01-13T21:01:00.003-06:00

COCO Says NO GO!

I hadn't been watching the late night shows for several years. Once in a while, I'd hear about an actor or musician I'm a fan of was scheduled to appear on Dave or Conan's show, and I'd tune in, but I wasn't what you'd call a regular watcher. I'd consider myself a fan of Letterman and O'Brien, Not so much for Leno. From what I've heard, as a comedian, Leno is (or was) one of the best. In standup, he kills. In chat show format, he dies. Don't get me wrong. You don't get 10 million regular viewers by being a chump. What he became is vanilla. Not good, not bad, just consistent, the McDonald's hamburger in a world with Red Robin and In & Out. I couldn't stand his show because of the unwavering formula, especially in his interviews.

I'm a big fan of conversation. I love hearing people talk, and my favorite writers, Bendis, Whedon, Sorkin, are the guys who can make the chats seem real, or better than life. In a great interview, I hope to see two people chatting, the host you know well and the guest you don't, and see where the conversation goes. Dave only asks about what he's interested in, the rest he totally ignores. Conan starts from his cards, but when something catches his fancy, he'll follow it right down the rabbit hole. Leno writes a script and follows it point for point, having worked out all the anecdotes with the guest previously. That's not a conversation, that's a skit, and not even a funny one.

I started watching more during the writer's strike. Want to see if someone is really funny? See them out in the glare of the lights with no script. Watching Conan working so hard to put out a show, featuring bits like Ring Spinning where he'd see how long he could keep his wedding ring spinning on his desk, was pretty amazing. When the time came for the transition, I started keeping tabs on everything. Of course, it helped that I was up with a baby who'd only sleep while being held. What I saw was while Leno was packing up to leave on the date he had decided on, he did the same show over and over right up until the last 10 minutes of his final show. Meanwhile Conan was getting very emotional about not only the fact that he and his staff would have to uproot their lives and head for LA, but he was leaving the job he loved for the job he'd always dreamed of.

Oh, Leno, don't you know we can't miss you if you WON'T LEAVE. Thus the first few weeks of Conan's Tonight Show are overshadowed by the show more people wrote about than watched: The Jay Leno Show, now polluting prime time! I never watched The Jay Leno Show. Why would I? But I did watch the first month of Conan's show and I thought the same thing I thought after seeing his first few Late Night episodes, he was finding his way. Several of his bits were very funny and some were better off left out of a highlight reel. But he's making the show his own, as any new host should.

But the previous tenant refuses to move out. I don't get what's going on with Leno. He announced his retirement six years early. And even if he now says he was fired, he still had SIX YEARS to get his house in order, to plan for his not being on the TV five days a week. But something happened on the way to heaven, and either he got cold feet or his ego wasn't being stroked enough. Either way, he decided he wanted to be the belle of the ball, he wanted to come in and single handedly save the network. Who does he think he is? Regis?

Jay has had his day in the sun. That day is over. Johnny stepped down gracefully. He didn't suddenly demand his desk back but at an earlier time. Now granted, Jay has not put in the time and is younger. We don't need him to disappear. But he does need to go away. Be the bigger man. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. He's got time, money and cars, not to mention a loving family. Most people would be happy with any one of those things and he has all of them. Still not enough? Fine. Send him to Fox. They'll cancel him in six episodes anyway. Meanwhile I'm with COCO, no matter where he goes.

2010-01-11T23:37:00.001-06:00

FlickForward: The movies of 2010

Here's my own sneak previews of the movies about to hit theaters. Haven't seen more than a trailer on any of them, but that's enough to decide if it's worth heading out to the cineplex.

January 15^th

The Book of Eli

I can answer the question of whether this movie will be worth seeing with one word: DENZEL. Does this guy make a bad movie? No, wait, amend that. Is this guy ever bad in a movie? Nope. Even when the flick is not up to scratch, he is always amazing. With him playing a badass in a post apocalyptic America, more Road Warrior than The Road, how can you say no? Add to that going up against Gary Oldman, stretching those villain muscles he developed in The Professional and The Fifth Element and it's gonna be worth seeing. Scenery will be chewed, sawed off shotguns will be fired and I will be there.

The Lovely Bones

Peter Jackson's been a bit quiet since King Kong. After that monster of a film, he wanted to make a smaller film and so chose an adaptation of a quiet novel about a murdered girl who narrates her own haunting. It didn't end up as quiet as he'd hoped, and jumped around the schedule quite a bit before ending up here in the doldrums of January. I'm not expecting to fall in love with Peter's latest, but he's one of the most interesting directors out there, especially at incorporating CGI into his work. Even just for the visuals, this is not one to miss.

The Spy Next Door

Alas, poor Jackie Chan. Hollywood just doesn't know what to do with you. And now here you are stuck in a silly Pacifier retread. I'm thinking it might be time to head behind the camera. Throw in the occasional Hitchcock-esque cameo and you'd be good. I'll just wait until he shows up in the Karate Kid remake coming out in June. Did anyone tell the studio execs that Jackie doesn't know karate?

2010-01-06T06:59:00.002-06:00

Personal Best: The films of '09

Star Trek

It's hard to remember back to when I feared this would be a huge disaster. As it loomed large, I began to worry that I knew too much. But what spoiler filled articles and effect filled trailers could not convey was the best part of the movie, characterization. It wasn't that we got to see new adventures of Kirk and Co. It was that we remembered why we cared about them so much. What I remember most, what I liked the most are not the space battles or the destruction of planets, but the quiet moments, the conversations, the emotion. And this is Trek we're talking about. Win win win.

Zombieland

What annoys me about pop culture movements is how everyone seems to run scared. Couple years back, everyone was talking about zombies being the new In thing, but in the world of movies this movement consisted of the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Days Later. That's it. That's a movement nowadays. True, zombies have infested comics, but in movies or TV, the dead do not walk the earth. Along comes a low budget movie filmed in Georgia starring Woody Harrelson, a bizarre mix of elements that add up to one of the funniest, freshest zombie movies since (inevitable comparison warning!) Shaun of the Dead. Originally pitched as a series (way to go TV execs), this is one horror franchise I'd be happy to see run for a long while.

The Princess & The Frog

What happens when you make a great movie and nobody shows up? How good is this classic hand drawn animated feature? Let me put it this way, before Katzenberg got it into his head that an animated movie should win a Best Picture Oscar and tried to reverse engineer what those voters like to create the beloved by few Pocahontas, THIS movie should have been the next in the string of hits that began with The Little Mermaid. Great animation, songs, performances and one of the coolest villains in years. And finally a princess I can show my daughter who isn't waiting for someone to come along and solve her problems.

Sherlock Holmes

This ended up being my last film of '09 and I couldn't ask for a better bookend to a great year of movies. As I age, I tend to be much less precious with the idea of remakes, reimagining, redux. Why should only one actor get to be Spock, for instance? In this age of preservation, we'll always have the original. We're not using the same tape over and over again. I approached this kung fu, steampunk remake in that frame of mind and found out despite the hyperkinetic trailer, it was more true to the spirit of the books than many other adaptations I've seen. And in a brilliant turn, it was very Batman in all the best ways. Thank god Guy Ritchie finally got free from whatever was killing his mojo.

Avatar

Is it of the moment? Yes, very much so. This is a movie that has to be seen on a big screen, preferably IMAX and even more preferably in 3D. On home video, all the couch potatoes are going to wonder what all the fuss is about as they watch a pretty, but very predictable parable of the American West. For the rest, we've seen a revolution, the right toys in the right hands. Was it too long? Yes. Familiar? You bet. It was also the most stunningly realized alien planet ever filmed and that last action sequence was something for the archives. If you have any interest in this, see it and see it now, as this is a moment in filmmaking that will not happen again.

Coraline

And on the other side of the coin, while Jim Cameron was perfecting his beautiful, but still fake looking blue cat people, Henry Selick was posing dolls and making a stunning achievement. I've never been a big fan of Neil Gaiman. I recognize his talent, but he's always a bit too messy of a writer, with lots of squiggly bits thrown in that ultimately lead to nothing. But this one, which I did not see in 3d, really grabbed me. It's the Alice/Dorothy idea, but with a much darker, stranger turn. The style was perfect for the story, as in animation, there would be less sense of danger, and in live action it would all be green screen fake. A fun, creepy, funny, scary film that looks and feels like nothing else. Don't see many of those come along.

Watchmen

Did the movie need to be made? I'm not so sure. Was this the best it could have been done? All signs point to yes. While it didn't end up being The Comic Book Movie Grows Up many were hoping, the movie was well crafted and at the least got people thinking about what comic book movies could be even with capes and cowls. What I'm hoping is that with this and The Dark Knight, we won't see a reflection in movies like we did in comics, launching a grim and gritty era of comic book movies. A brooding Superman I do not need. Let Stalker Supes from Superman Returns be as dark as Kal gets, please.

Was there a better 20 minutes than the first reel of Up? Even if the movie had ended with the house taking off, it would have been a delight. The fact that it went on and got more complex and compelling is a testament to the quirky geniuses in Emeryville. And in the midst of all the emotion and ideas about aging, they found a way to introduce a dog with a incredibly memorable catchphr – SQUIRREL!

Away We Go

It's not something I'd recommend to everyone, but boy this movie hit me where I live. The story is about a couple who is expecting trying to find where they should live. They travel around the country meeting friends and family trying to find a new home. It's full of funny and sweet and sad moments and resonated with me to a great degree. Sometimes it goes a bit too far, and the laughs tend to be far between, but it's very smart and has its own rhythm. Really powerful stuff.

Fanboys

Another one that drew a bullseye on me. Not just about Star Wars, but about geeks in general and lifelong friends in particular. I went to see this with a couple friends and had one of the best movie going experiences of all time. We were crying from laughter. It does suffer from lack of budget and even worse, from nervous copyright cops, but the heart of the story is true and full of very, very funny stuff. I've watched it half a dozen times over the year and still get caught up in it every time. The Force is strong with this one.

District 9

This one surprised me. I thought I'd dig it as an update to Alien Nation, the same kind of story but done in a documentary style. But somewhere along the way, the movie changes along with the main character, and what starts off as a type of news program ends up with a hybrid alien shooting a gun that can evaporate people. True, it is the “I hate these people, now I am one of these people” story we've seen before, but it's well done, both in acting and in effects. The only thing that surprised me more than my enjoyment of it was that I was not alone in singing its praises. Sometimes quality will out.

Inglorious Basterds

We knew he could do dialogue, even action. But in his latest, QT showed us that he could pull off that most rare of storytelling tropes, suspense. And at times, even dread. More so, what I wanted from the movie is, well, more. QT tends to put more story into his films than he has patience to show, almost the opposite of Robert Rodriguez come to think of it. In this, each dangling plotline could make an interesting movie of its own. It's a hell of a film, and one that doesn't treat its WWII setting with a Veddy Veddy Serious Tone.

500 Days of Summer

I loved this movie so much I hesitate to say too much about it. One way to describe it would be that it's a romantic comedy from a guy's perspective. But even that doesn't really cover it. Because that makes it seem like it's in the American Pie way of thinking. It is far, far from that. Even discussing the larger ideas, the things I've always thought but never seen reflected in a movie, would tip their hand. It's a great, smart, modern movie about relationships but as the narrator intones at the beginning of the film, it is NOT a love story.

2010-01-04T20:54:00.002-06:00

Personal Best: TV in 2009

True Blood

After initially scoffing at the idea of a southern fried Vampire soap opera, I sat down to give the first episode a shot shortly after the first season wrapped. I ended up watching the entire season over the course of two days. It combines not only the dark subject matter of Buffy but also its rich characters. My favorite people on the show aren't even ones with supernatural powers. But unlike the teenage vampire slayer, this show is all grown up and able, through the freedom only pay stations can provide, to get seriously down and dirty. But it doesn't come across as cheap stunts, sex and gore because they can. It's all part of the world they are creating, rich and dark. Plus they use a great bit that I loved in the early days of Alias, the cliffhanger. But in the world of True Blood, when someone's is in peril at the end of an episode, they might not make it out unscathed, or even alive.

Mad Men

It's a hard show to recommend, despite its quality. It look gorgeous, has amazing actors and does the job of setting and keeping a mood better than anything I've ever seen. Even when the episode doesn't quite work, it always feels uniquely Mad Men. But it is slower paced, and has a lot of scenes of well dressed men and women sitting around having long pauses at each other. But I simply cannot get enough of it. The show is set in the 1960s which feels so long ago, this might as well be science fiction. It is so radically different from the way we think and act today, its hard to believe how historically accurate they try to make it. They way it casts a spell, this show might just be magic.

HIMYM

aka How I Met Your Mother. I write this with a bit of frustration. I believe that HIMYM is one of the best sitcoms of the last ten years, and one of the most infuriating. Their trouble comes in the concept of the show, that of an older man telling his kids the story of how he met their mother, warts and all. This was the hook. But it seems that story will not last those magical 100 episodes. So episode after episode, sometimes whole swaths of them fly by without a single mention of the quest. What happens most often is the wife and I will finish an episode and say, “That was great. Really funny. And we're no closer.” It's a great show, and one I never miss. But you think Lost gives up its secrets slowly?

Big Bang Theory

Sometimes simple is the best. It's four guys and a girl and their lives and loves. Oh, and the four guys are all super geniuses and geeks. What's amazing is that in the world of sitcoms, dumber is usually better. Characters who are two dimensional end up being the most popular. But right out of the gate, everyone who steps onto the stage is a fully developed, deep character. And also insanely funny. It's getting to the point where reactions and anticipation are as funny as the punchlines. My only complaint? Get Howard out of his mom's house. People screaming at each other is not funny, no matter what the canned laughter thinks.

Stargate Universe

To say I am not a Stargate fan is an understatement. I have done my best to pretend the franchise does not exist. But when the announcement for their new series came out, I was intrigued. An alien ship out of control, a crew marooned onboard, adult storytelling, no happy endings at the end of every episode, inspired by shows like DS9 and BSG. Could it be that Stargate had finally grown up? I was looking for a sci fi show to fill the gap, and what I found was a new obsession. I know nothing about the SG universe, so I'm as lost as many of the characters. The stories are dark, the tone is serious and the acting is dead brilliant. A scientist willing to sacrifice anyone or anything to learn more, a captain who should not be giving anyone advice much less order, a computer geek in way over his head, each character is smart, flawed and compelling. True it still has SG DNA which makes things a little simpler than I think they should be, but I'm tuning in for every episode. And they found a way to do an episode where you see every main character die a horrible death. Awesome.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

That movie did not convince me. I walked out thinking they had finally jumped the shark. Anakin paired with a sassy sidekick in a tubetop? George finally went and sold out. But like they say in Fanboys, it's still the Wars. I tuned in. For the most part, it was more of the same. Action and adventure, but not much else. But then something started to happen. Things got a little more dark, more serious. And finally in the first season came the episode Rookies, which was all about the clones. No Jedi, no Sith, just a bunch of soldiers trying to do their duty in a Rio Bravo kind of situation. I was hooked. From there the show has just gotten better and better. Now in season 2, the show is all about the price of war, the toll that battle takes, lines are becoming blurred and things are much faster and more intense. And if it is this good now, by the end of the series, this might just be the best thing GL has put his name on since the original movie.

Obvious Admissions:

Lost - only because it was so long ago, but also because I'm planning a longer post once the new season starts.

Battlestar Galactica - I was not a fan of the final episodes or of the clip-tastic movie The Plan, and they are having the reverse ripple effect of making me dislike the series back to its beginning. I'm starting to think the show I liked died on New Caprica.

Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Psych, Eureka - only because I was off line for the summer, I'm still catching up with the latest seasons. All great shows, and well worth the time.

Dollhouse - still loving it, but it's walking dead at this point. Another one for a post all to itself.

Next up: favorite movies of 2009. Check back soon.

2010-01-03T00:49:00.001-06:00

2009-11-02T08:06:00.000-06:00

Not often you see an homage to the Ghostbusters animated series, but here goes:

2009-10-03T20:15:00.000-05:00

The Power of Meanwhile... : Heroes returns

Perhaps it is the power of lowered expectations, but I was quite impressed by the season premiere of Heroes. I have been going through the listings deciding which shows live or die, who will make the cut and who will get sent to the island of lost toys. Sorry Grey's Anatomy, abuse my favorite characters for too long and I have to say NO MORE! Heroes had been on the chopping block. I feel like I could have skipped all last season and would not have been the worse off. People criticize Lost for having bad seasons, but even in their worst times, they still introduced terrific characters that altered the show and stayed on. Beginning of last season vs. beginning of this one? Not one person made it. And several of the stalwarts are (thankfully) absent. Good luck with that hanging out at a military base and watching old home movies project of yours Suresh. Don't call us. No seriously, don't call us.

Back in the slimmed down show, the mandate seems to be “Let's take a breath” and I couldn't be happier about it. All the characters have had a chance to hang out, get into their surroundings, have conversations that aren't about metaphysics and genetics and just breathe. What a wonderful idea. Each of them now feel more alive and awake then they have in years. Claire is still trying to fit in, but is not the whiny teen anymore. HRG is feeling the damage of years of secrecy. Hiro has turned his gaze outward, not trying to make himself the bestest hero of all time. And Peter, my long lost favorite character, has actually found his place in the world, and its a pretty good one. In what should have been the classic heroic refusal of the call to action, Peter really sold it, convincing us and HRG that his way was much better. When he told HRG that they should let Darth Maul have the magical dingus, it was one of those wake up moments that the show would never have stopped for last year.

We are not without issues, however. We still have the dreadful arc of the many named blonde. So through the break, she'd been a relentless killing machine, assassinating all those who hurt her. She meets up with HRG after botching her attempt on him and in a couple hours, now it's all good, water under the bridge (heh). I know you were trying to kill me yesterday multiple murderer lady, but would you like some soup? And all is well. Um, what? It's not that I dislike Ali Larter, but it seems no matter what they do she is always in the worst storylines. And the Petrelli Power Players are running the same scripts from the start of the show. Having Sylar hiding in plain sight is an interesting idea, but how is this going to play out? I don't really want him or Nathan back, so it's never going to end well. Having Sylar as Head Sylar, ala Number Six and Scorpius, gives him a chance to ham it up and torment Parkman, but will eventually lead to him getting his act together and then we're right back to 'what the hell do we do with the villain we created?' problem that has plagued the show since the second season.

But overall, I'm very impressed. The show has lightened up, opened up and seems to be going in new directions. I don't know what to make of the carnival of freaks, and I'm pleased with that. Gray areas and complex choices are what the show should have been making use of all along. As long as they keep focusing on the core characters, don't feel the need to bring back those who have drifted off into the margins (have a good life in fanfic Maya!), and let them have real conversations with each other, I won't be embarrassed to admit I watch the show anymore. And that's not something I could ever have imagined.

2009-09-21T08:53:00.002-05:00

Today's episode was brought to you by the number 9

At this time of year, I don't ask for much from movies. Have an interesting plot OR a cool effect. Have a pretty actress OR a cool ending. I don't expect anything to cover more than one base. 9 doesn't do everything right, but it does so much right that I am simply amazed.

The movie is right in my wheelhouse, a cool sci fi flick about automatons trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world all done in state of the art CGI. You'd have to tie me down to keep me away. All I wanted was for it not to be lame. The movie itself is gorgeous. The visuals look like the best stop motion animation you've ever seen, which is a step up from the glib slickness of most off the shelf computer generated films. You know it's not live action, but it's also not Madagascar. But aside from art direction, which is astonishing, the movie moves well. Action is well shot and paced and is more exciting than anything in Transformers 2. That's not a cheap slap at the latest Bay Blast. While I enjoyed TF2, a session in well choreographed action it was not. Here you are close up with the characters, and get to see each of them doing their part, often in slo-mo, harkening back to the thrilling moments of 300.

If you read the cast list, it's seems pretty safe. Need a crazy guy? Call Crispin “Creepy Thin Man” Glover. Need a sensitive youngster for a quest? Call Elijah “Frodo” Wood. Gruff leader? Christopher “Edelweiss” Plummer's your man. But in concert, they all work so well together. Highlights are John C. Reilly's ultimate sidekick character, and the uncredited, but household favorite, Kevin Michael Murphy's over eager bodyguard with a fetish for magnets. Each of them do a lot with a little, which leads into the central problem of the film.

Slight spoilers here, but we learn that each of the numbered golems, are not in fact whole people, but each is an aspect of the same original person. This way they each represent one primary emotion or goal from their creator. This is clever, but leaves each of them as incomplete. It ties into the overall theme, but still leaves the characters a bit, ahem, threadbare. The same goes for the story. The only knock against the movie would be the plotting. It's very primary colors. The group starts from A, travels to B, then back to A, then to B again and finally returns to A for the finale. And all of this takes place in about a mile square. Toy Story did show us that much can be done when the small world is seen as big, but it does feel small scale and thus makes the stakes seem equally low. This has a twofold effect of thin characters in a thin storyline making the movie feel lighter than the events would have you believe.

But oh those visuals. Having glimpsed the opposite in theaters, that being Delgo, I'll take this mix any day. Movies are predominately a visual medium after all, all that other stuff got added later. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who was interested in it. While the blockbusters this year have been either dumb, dull or entirely predicable, it is these little movies, smaller budgets and more creativity that has renewed my faith in the medium. Let's hope a couple more can sneak through before we're deluged with heavy historical dramas, poignant movies about adultery and my personal windmill, rich white people with problems. Here's to a small check and a big idea.

2009-09-19T00:54:00.000-05:00

2009-09-14T19:42:00.001-05:00

Rest In Peace, Patrick Swayze.

2009-09-11T14:25:00.001-05:00

2009-09-08T20:39:00.002-05:00

And now you want me to WHAT?

I have been ticked off, and so I turn to my ever trusty and ever ready blog to vent. Video gaming, like any other medium, is constantly evolving. It might be doing so at a faster pace but much like comics or TV or movies, it has to change with the times. What is hip and awesome one day is old and tired the next. You must incorporate the amazing new feature your competitor implemented in his last game or you run the risk of being behind the times. This can be a frustrating thing for developers. The video game industry is more dependent on sequels than most other art forms, and they must skate the razor's edge of innovating while not alienating.

As consoles age, games advance and looking back can sometimes make us wince at what we put up with. For me, the best thing to die off was the timer. Why can I only stay in a level for a set amount of time? Besides exploring, maybe I need some more time to master that tricky jump? I was happy when that hit the dust bin of history. Same thing with lives, like picking up 1UP mushrooms. I was shocked and saddened when after being gone for almost a decade, Super Mario Galaxy decided to resurrect the concept with all the ensuing aggravation. Another of these terrible trends has resurfaced, one I hoped had gone extinct.

I remember playing through and loving Sly Cooper. It was a staple on the PS2, a cel shaded platformer about a raccoon thief. It was funny and clever and kept you on your toes. In most levels, the object was not to destroy your enemies, but to sneak through the levels undetected and make off with the object of desire. By the end of the game, I was a ninja, swinging above the heads of the guards, hiding in potted plants and never tripping an alarm. I had mastered my skills and so I charged into the final battle ready to best the boss. And I found out I had to fight him in a jetpack, flying over the city.

I'm sorry, what?

Yes, for the final battle they introduced a whole new concept, one that had been absent from the rest of the game, and demanded you learn a whole new set of skills to beat the game. "Aggravating" does not cover it. All of the work I had done meant next to nothing. And this wasn't an isolated occurance. Halo, that celebrated series of first person shooters, ends their games with driving sequences. Bioshock, the moody atmospheric study of morality and society has you run in a circle and shoot a guy a bunch of times. I thought the game industry had moved on from this practice, but I was wrong.

To be fair, the game in question, Batman: Arkham Asylum, always had a strong combat element to it. Many places in the game, you had to fight your way through a bunch of guys to progress. But the game was about sneaking, detective work, not being seen and fighting your way out when you had to. I was good at all of these things, except combat. It's not that I was terrible, but I never got a rhythm for it, I always felt I was mashing buttons and hoping for the best no matter what combos I bought or upgrades I used. So I come to the end of the game, and what is it? They lock you in the room with a bunch of guys and you have to punch your way out. How very Batman?

And worse, you have to be pretty near perfect to do it. You get no help, no reprieves and no health regeneration. You have to take out wave after wave and do it on one health bar. Here I had gotten through the whole game, beat every boss, solved every riddle and I might not be able to beat the game because the one aspect I never mastered is the only one that ended up mattering. I don't hate the game. I've had a pretty fun time playing through it. But not being able to see the ending of a game I worked so hard on is pretty frustrating when it seems like the last part is out of character both for the game and for the universe it is set in. I won't go as far as BATMAN WOULDN'T DO THAT! but I do feel like the World's Greatest Detective is not really using his smarts. I know asking What Would Batman Do is ultimately pointless, but I'm pretty sure standing in a room full of thugs and punching them out one by one is not it.

Oh well, maybe they'll fix it in the sequel.

2009-09-02T21:40:00.001-05:00

Inglorious Basterds

First off, it's a bad title. No, strike that. The title is fine, but inaccurate. That, plus the advertising, would lead you to believe that the movie is about this group of Nazi hunters, how they got together and showing you their early missions together, leading up to one great Dirty Dozen final mission. This is far from the truth. While the Basterds are a major part of the movie, they are only one part, I'd say, a third of the movie. We get to see their origin, the end of one of their missions and a big operation toward the end. But to suspect that this movie is all Brad Pitt and the boys killin' Nazis is wrong and could lead to disappointment.

Which would be a shame, because this movie is stunning. Like most Quentin Tarantino films, it does tend to have his obsessions writ large. Conversations tend to go on and on, even though seldom do they end up being boring. The reason I started this piece off with a warning is that going in thinking this movie is wall to wall action can be dangerous, because this is a different set of muscles QT is flexing. Instead of blistering violence, we have him showing us nerve twanging suspense. Double agents, false accents, hidden identities, you are enjoying the wonderful rhythms of QT's writing while at the same time asking, does he know about her? Did that mean anything? Do you think he noticed that slip-up? It sizzles, it crackles but only rarely does it explode.

From the long view, this movie ends up being a series of people sitting around tables talking. But in close up, each one is as intricately choreographed as a John Woo shootout, and as unique. I mean that both ways. If you'll permit me a bit of film school, the motifs tend to recur, like how every character has intense and diverse feelings about movies. Was this really what they were talking about in wartime? That leads to another point. Leave history at the door. This movie is no more accurate than any western. It touches on actual bits, but remixes it all. The War is the backdrop, not the subject of a History Channel special.

What it comes down to is character. Besides his fractured storytelling and his penchant for over the top violence, what QT excels at is creating three dimensional characters. And in setting this in the familiar backdrop of WWII, it allows him to work with larger character types. It's my opinion that in this movie, QT has found not only his Darth Vader but also his Darth Maul. He has created his iconic, gigantic bad guy who dominates and fascinates and oppositely the person that the fans will love who gets far too little screen time and leaves the film much too quickly. I've never wanted spinoffs and tie ins to a QT movie until now. It positively demands a 6 issue comic miniseries. Are you listening Boom Studios? Somebody buy Mark Waid a ticket.

The movie is not without its flaws. I found myself much more interested in the margins, in the things hinted at but not shown in several scenes. Rarely do you find a movie with so much story that it spills out into the cracks. It's got some pacing issues but never feels like it's almost 3 hour running time. While some scenes do drag, often their importance is revealed later. It was a much different movie than I expected, but I so rarely get surprised at the movies that it ended up being a pretty amazing time.

2009-06-11T01:47:00.001-05:00

2009-05-19T13:59:00.003-05:00

Here's the LAST WORD from the creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. RIP Cameron and Co. Long may you live on in Digital Heaven.

2009-05-18T14:00:00.001-05:00

2009-05-17T21:22:00.003-05:00

TV and Thee

Wanted to give a quick update on the fates of several shows as of today:

Dollhouse RENEWED!
Chuck RENEWED!
Scrubs RENEWED! (I'm as shocked as you are.)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles CANCELED!
(That one really hurts, what with that game changing season finale.)

Lots of shows still on the bubble and we probably won't know more until the new schedules are announced in the next few weeks. Keep the torches lit.

Unhappy answers: X-Men Origins - Wolverine

2009-05-06T00:10:00.001-05:00

If you love Hugh Jackman and his portrayal of Wolverine, I would recommend seeing this spin off. If not, stay away, as his performance is the only consistently good thing as the movie checks off box after box on its long list of what it thinks people want answered. Stryker at one point warns Logan not to follow this path as he won't like what he finds at the end. I say the exact same thing to you now.

Yes, questions are answered, but you will not like these answers. They range from bizarre to stupidly simplistic to ham fisted revisions but none will give you that tingle of satisfaction when the pieces fall into place. More often than that, you'll find yourself saying 'Really? THAT'S what you're going with?'

Heading into spoiler territory here. I'm a fanboy, I admit. But it wasn't my inner Comic Book Guy voice that had the issues. Wolvie and Victor are bros? OK. It was the fact the movie seemed to have been plotted by bullet points. Each scene ended with a black check mark on some piece of backstory then they dutifully moved onto the next. No narrative flow or momentum. I'd say its like a video game, but I'm playing the game and its better than the movie.

The movie starts badly. Of course the movie would begin with an adaption of Origin. Thing is, this miniseries is generally regarded and tepid and even dull by most fans, at least the ones I have heard from. And the big dramatic moment, the first use of the claws, was so awful I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. I was holding my head down to stifle the giggles. Not an auspicious beginning. From there, things get better. The title sequence was very well done. Showing the claw brothers fighting for AMERICA! in various wars through history was cool, but the trouble is I would rather see a movie based on any of these battles than what we actually got. Wolverine & Sabertooth killing Nazis? Yes please! Their military career over, the brothers get to meet the team 'o freaks. Enjoy this, because it's the highlight of the movie. It's all down hill from here. The characters are interesting, funny in Wade's case, and we get to see them strut their stuff in a big attack sequence. Once Logan leaves the group though, the movie starts to sputter.

Skipping to the end, it all comes down to a fight between Wolverine, Victor and Deadpool on the top of a nuclear cooling tower. I'd throw a spoiler alert in front of that if it wasn't in ALL OF THE PREVIEWS! But midway threw the fight I realized I didn't really care about it. Why? No stakes. All three of them are immortal healers. Any wound, short of decapitation, would be healed including a fall from the top of a nuclear cooling tower. Why have the fight up high when it doesn't matter if they fall? This was cemented when at the end as the structure is collapsing, Logan and Victor have a calm discussion before Victor jumps to the ground.

And then the gun. Seems like late in the process, the creatives realized they had to scramble Logan's memories. Their solution? A gun with Adamantium bullets, a Deus Ex Magnum if you will. Stryker explain that shooting him in the head with it will scramble his memories. First off, how does he know? Its a first generation solution for a first generation problem, how the hell could he predict what it would do? And how would he know what memories would be affected? Blam! No more 6th birthday party. Blam! Now you can no longer ride a bike. Blam! What is your favorite color? YOU DON'T KNOW! MWA HA HA! No nanobots to erase memories. No use of Stryker's psychic son. No mind wave bomb. Nope, big gun, shiny bullets. Lazy writing, folks.

If I had to give one piece of advice to filmmakers doing these movies from here on out, it would be this: USE SOMEONE ELSE. When you are writing a movie like this and you want to take a popular character and vastly change his history, powers and personality, then use a different character. Yes, I am a Deadpool fan and was annoyed about the lame alterations they made to him at the end. What's worse is that there are so many characters in the X-universe that would have worked for this. What about Omega Red? Hell, use Fantomex. Nobody'd blink if you tore that dude to pieces and you get points for obscurity. Now if they want to do a spinoff, they have to do the saran wrapped face, ginsu armed x-bot version with bizarre shushing action.

I didn't hate the movie, I was just massively disappointed. In the large buffet of X-stories, why do they keep going for the bad shrimp and avoiding the sirloin. Hugh emerges from all this pretty much unscathed. His Logan is great all the way through, especially when he keeps it simple. His 'crap' and 'damn' moments are highlights. Speeches? Not so Wolverine. The acting is pretty top notch all around, esp. Ryan Reynolds and surprisingly Will.I.am. It is the laundry list feeling of the rest of the movie that hurts the most. Next time, how about letting the filmmakers make the film rather than the beancounters.

2009-05-01T07:15:00.002-05:00

A little ode to spring, very appropriate for the day. And also very NSFW! Earmuffs for the kiddies please. Enjoy!

2009-04-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

Character Studies: The Whipping Boy

In this series on character, I haven't mentioned the most important part of the equation: you, the audience. Without the people watching, all the writing, acting, producing is all for naught. And when the magic happens, you get people to fall in love with a fictional construct and watch that creation's adventures from week to week, year to year. But this is not without some dangers.

Good drama is all about conflict. We watch people in their worst moments, on their worst days. Sometimes they rise to the occasions, sometimes they fall. And we curse the fates their lives should be so terrible, and bless them that we get to watch the struggle. But in all this, we must believe that it is the universe causing these situations to occur. When the veil parts, when we get a peek behind the curtain, this can be the beginning of the end of the character love affair. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

I loved ER from its first episode. This was a medical show, dime a dozen even today, but it really focused on the individuals. And through its history, it has created many memorable characters. I can only talk about the ones from the start of the show for reasons that will become apparent. It would be easy to talk about Dr. Doug Ross here. It's the birthplace of the phenomenon know as Clooney. Much could be written here about character, how this handsome young actor had tried and tried to catch a break, but just couldn't catch one. But here in this show, with these writers, these directors, these costars, the settings were right for him to create a fantastic, memorable man that audience have loved for over a decade. But that's not my focus. My guy was Dr. Mark Greene.

While Clooney got the spotlight, Anthony Edwards (the BMOC when the show launched) was creating just as memorable and fascinating a creation. His Doc was smart, savvy, passionate and wore his heart on his sleeve. He was the one I was always waiting to show back up on screen. But as the years went by, things changed. While Dr. Ross got his hero moment, his self sabotage times, his loves and his fights, Dr. Greene seemed to be on God's S*** List. He was unlucky in love, savagely beaten and eventually had that long staple of lazy "what do we do now?" writing: cancer. After a time I had to stop watching the show. Not because it had gotten bad, but because I couldn't stand to see what the writers were doing to this character I adored.

I'm not naive, I know how the system works. I've watched Buffy die twice. But in all the shows I watch, with characters I care about, it felt to me like the universe was acting on them, that the story was in control. The more the writers heaped abuse on Dr. Greene, the more aware I became of the almost sadistic joy they seemed to be taking in knocking him down again and again. Joss referred to Alyson Hannigan as The Queen Of Pain because he knew whenever he did something to Willow, she was golden, that she could convey anguish and hurt and make the audience feel it. But it was always in the service of the story, not just a series of punishments just to fill airtime. None of this is factual, to my knowledge. I'm speaking here of how I felt about the situation. But as time passed, I couldn't stand to watch the beatings they put this noble soul through week after week. I had to walk away.

It's a fine line. You have to put characters in conflict. It's the heart of drama and comedy. But in shows like ER, which became more of a machine to feed characters into as it ran on (and on and on), all things serve the franchise and it becomes more grist for the mill rather than putting beloved characters under the knife to carve them into better, more realistic people. And with a character I cared about, it just hurt too much to watch him beaten for their amusement.

2009-04-28T18:00:00.001-05:00

Character Studies - The Troublemaker

It's been a long time since I posted about something really embarrassing I enjoy. A guilty pleasure, if you will. I have seen, and willingly sought out, all three High School Musical movies. I can pause for laughter here.

I'm a big fan of modern musicals, so it wasn't that big a stretch. Plus the idea that the biggest thing in tween entertainment would be a musical was too bizarre to not investigate. I can't say I'm a fan of the series though. I find most of the music to be too similar and sanitized. And while I respect the alternate universe, clean and safe, that the movie was set in, having the main problem being that the leads are too good at too many things! just doesn't engender my sympathies. I can easily recall the names Troy and Gabrielle, but that's mostly because of the relentless marketing Disney does. As lead characters, they are fairly thin. But into the scene walks a fully formed, head turning dynamo: Sharpay Evans.

Rich, beautiful, spoiled, talented, this pink clad shark cuts through the school leaving everyone in her wake. What I love is that she plays it as if it never occurred to her that she's not the lead of the movie. Every scene, your eye is drawn to her. She commands attention. And while I applaud Ashley Tisdale and wish her all the best, it's not just her acting, it's the whole package. And all this without a single great song in the first movie. It's not until the sequel she gets her show stopping number "Fabulous". The creators also knew what a find they had here, as she became the de facto villain in HSM2, and all under the guise of doing what she thought was best for everyone, but mostly her. Every villain is the hero of his (her) own story, as the saying goes.

In most musicals, according to Ashman and Menken of the great '90s Disney animated movies, the heroine gets to sing an 'I Want...' song. In Little Mermaid, you get "I want to be where the people are." In Beauty and the Beast, "I want adventure in the great wide somewhere." And in HSM 3, Sharpay gets her own 'I Want' song. And what does she want? "I WANT IT ALL!" It's a show stopper.

Am I saying that you should all watch HSM now and you'll love it? Sadly, no. The movies are fun and sweet, but ultimately shallow. The music gets better as the series goes on, but it most likely won't win over anyone who is not predisposed to the type of material. What I'm saying is that character is something that can show up regardless of the material that surrounds them. You never know when one is going to catch fire.

2009-04-27T18:00:00.000-05:00

Character Studies

In anticipation of the Wolverine movie hitting screens this week, I wanted to take a moment to talk about character. Not characters, but in the creation and maintaining of a character in films and television. It's not something that is essential. I loved the Michael Bay Transformers movie, but none of the characters were really that interesting. Everyone had their moments, but all of them came out at maybe 2.5 dimensions at the most. Think of it this way: what was Megan Fox's character's name? Right off the top of your head. See? Now there was Sam and Bumblebee, Optimus and Megatron, but as for the rest of the team, it's a bit fuzzy. I know Prowl and Ironhide were in there, but if you put all the robots next to each other, I'd have trouble picking them out. Even what I consider to be the best character in the entire G1 series, Starscream, had one line. He blew some stuff up, but you could have called him Thundercracker or Blitzwing or Skywarp and it wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. That's because the movie was light on character.

0n a recent Facebook list, I put down Ben Linus as one of my top 5 favorites from Lost. It raised some eyebrows. But he's a murderous, lying, manipulative zealot! they cried. True, but every time he's around, the story gets better. He's got a plan. As one of my friends put it, he's always going to move the ball. I'm not the president of his fan club, but I know when he shows up, the show is going to be the better for it. Even in a show like Lost, now 100 episodes strong, not every lead character is full and complete. Sawyer is the most compelling, even if he is not the lead. Kate changes depending on the whims of who is writing her, but Sawyer is always Sawyer. And it's not even about time on the show. We've seen Claire for 5 seasons now and she's still not interesting. But Desmond shows up and in his second episode, he's already a fantastic, fascinating character. It's like that, lightning in a bottle, and like porn, you know it when you see it.

It's a hard thing to do. I'm not singling out writers or directors or actors here. To create a compelling character, it takes the bizarre alchemy of all three. It's not a make or break situation either. But a show won't last if people don't glom onto at least one. Shows like Law and Order and other police procedurals seem to do just fine with bare sketches of real people. They can be switched out time and again, because people watch for the mechanism not the characters. Even taking a show like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Sarah is not an incredibly interesting character. Turns out it was the actor/director-writer combo from the films that made her sing. In the TV show, she's neat, but not attention grabbing. Same with John. The most compelling character is the machine, Cameron, followed by Derek, soldier from the future. Each of them seem to be living their lives, doing things beyond what we see. The others are like animatronics, only coming alive when we are watching them, otherwise dark and still.

I'm bouncing all over the map here, but in the next few postings, I'm going to be singling out characters that have risen up past their original purposes and elevated from their source materials. It'd be easy to say that Patrick Jane on The Mentalist is a fascinating character, but that's fish in a barrel. It'd be like saying that Monk or Columbo is a great character. Of course they are, without them the whole show would fail. I'm going to be casting my net a bit wider to show you what I mean. Follow along, won't you?

2009-04-25T15:09:00.000-05:00

Rest In Peace, Bea Arthur. Thanks for the laughs.

Found Wisdom

2009-04-24T20:52:00.001-05:00

From an ad for a board game:

"You won't believe what your friends can do!"

I like that. It's hopeful.

2009-03-03T01:42:00.000-06:00

From Crackle: Angel of Death Ep 1 "Edge" starring Zoe Bell

And now we celebrate...ourselves

2009-02-23T23:25:00.001-06:00

Another Oscar season come and gone, mostly met with apathy. Seems no matter what, the Academy (all 5000 of them) will continue to champion movies that only they go to see. And the generational tendencies mean your best shot at winning is to set your movie in World War II or show how awesome the 60's were. But this is not about that but about the other thing.

There is a world of difference between the awards and The Show. I started watching the ceremony in high school when I got bitten by the film bug, wanting to know more about the people that made the movies than just their names. I followed the season pretty religiously but soon lost my faith when terrible, overhyped Oscar Bait movies kept winning. Blame Darth Weinstein for that. But I kept, and keep, up with the show not only to put names to faces, but to keep up with how Hollywood feels about itself. And to see the veneer crack.

In a town all about illusion and appearances, the rare moments are the honest ones. It is not every time, but once in a while, you get to see an honest moment from these practiced liars. And I use that term respectfully, honest. Julia Roberts cackling 'I love it up here!' Tom Hanks talking about Heaven being crowded with angels. These have real power. It's what I hope for. And they delivered.

The show told a story, which was very cool. It went through the steps as if a movie was being made right in front of us. Once a step was completed, the award was given, from writing being the first to directing being the last. It was very classy, with nimble host Hugh Jackman noting at each group of people 'They make movies.' It is not just about stars but about craftsmen of all stripes. Very classy.

But what really got me, and appeared to really get the nominees was that instead of last year's winner introducing a series of clips, 5 former winners of that category came out and each one spoke directly to a nominee about their performance. Pure, uncut star power ladies and gents. This was a chance to see actors actually acting, delivering solilliquies at apparently unsuspecting actors. Was it back patting and self congradulatory? Sure. Was it at times honest and moving? Absolutely.

As for the speeches, a couple good ones. I'm not a Penelope Cruz fan (search for my discussion of Sahara for details) but her emotional memoir was pretty moving. Same goes for Kate Winslet. This, like Julia and Denzel, was much more for body of work but it was still her time and she seems honestly surprised. As the only movie of the crop I saw, I was pulling for Slumdog, and so was rewarded. I think Danny Boyle is one of the greats working right now. If Slumdog is not your cuppa, try Millions. Sure it's a Christmas movie, but only in the way that Love Actually is a Christmas movie.

All in all, this had to be my favorite Oscar broadcast. Triple the star power, no lame bits, three amazing musical moments (one by Baz!) and not one mention of Jack Nicholson. If they repeat this same format over and over again, I'd be content. It'll be interesting to see what they do in a good movie season. Either way, top hats off to a great three plus hour show and congrats on bringing luster back to the Oscars.

2009-02-21T01:11:00.000-06:00

Mass Effect 2 'Debut' teaser

2009-02-11T14:07:00.002-06:00

Motion in the ocean

I'm fascinated by this concept, the idea of animating comics to make them into micromovies. It's nothing new, as they did the same thing to Kirby art in the '60s but it's still pretty cool. Plus full voice, unlike the narrator ala Watchmen Motion Comics. What I'm concerned about is another new idea totally reliant on iTunes. I think this would be great to go mobile with, but for those of us who abstain from the Cult of Steve Jobs, doesn't that make it just one more thing to watch when you are at the computer? I'm hoping they cast their net wider than just Apple, but we'll see. Anyway, take a look and see what you think.

Heroes on the run

2009-02-05T00:05:00.001-06:00

Here we have it, the pilot episode 2009 edition. A radical revamping of the show in an attempt to shore up the gaps through which the viewers keep slipping through. Forget everything about time travel, doppelgangers, or power potions. (Oh, but prophecy via Tim Sale art? That we're keeping.) Now, it's people with powers on the run from Johnny Law, excuse me, The Hunter. It's a kinder, gentler Days Of Future Past sans giant robots. Know what? It actually works. I'm interested in where they are going with this. And I love anything in the show that brings them together. So for that, bravo. Doesn't mean there aren't problems though.

Time to roll out the geek. My issues are about their powers. I don't mind the Hiro depowering. I knew from the first few episodes they were getting into deep water. The way they introduced his abilities, he really didn't need any help to take care of any troubles that might show up. Make him a flatscan for a tick? Sure. It's the mimics I don't quite get.

In the Claremont era of X-men, a period the writers like to, ahem, borrow from, one of his recurring tricks was in each issue when a mutant would first use their power, they would describe it. Ask any X-fan of that era what Psylocke's Psychic Knife is, and they can rattle it off with nary a thought. Annoying in retrospect, it served a solid purpose in letting new readers catch on to why the short hairy guy with the claws could shrug off a cannon blast to the face. Now I wish the creatives in question would salt a little of this into the new volume, not because we've forgotten what the powers are but because they keep changing them.

First. Sylar. Last season, if I remember his powers went a bit awry as he tried to control The Hunger and eventually found he could learn new abilities by osmosis as opposed to cutting and pasting from brain wrinkles. (Sylar: the first wiki villian?) Now back in control, he could have up to a dozen powers that are undocumented, besides the fact he rarely uses any of the ones we saw him aquire in seasons 1 and 2. Hey, once you have TK, who needs superhearing? But where did he get immune-to-darts? What's that one? It isn't a TK shield and it isn't healing. When did he get so tough?

My bigger issue is Peter. When we met him, he got his powers from meeting people and then remembering them. Then he got stripped of the mimic power and apparently his hard drive was erased. Now he can get only what he touches and then only one at a time. Except flight. In a conversation with big brother Senator Judas, he revealed the only power he has held onto was flight. So why is it the cliffhanger is him about to be sucked out the side of a plane? That is the one situation we know he will be fine. I'm beginning to like the simplicity of Mohinder: tough or Tracy V3: ice. How about a Tommy Lee Jones pep talk explaining to his cape-killer squad what each one can do? That'd be a nice bone to throw new watchers and get the rest of us up to speed on the new status quo. Overall, it's a nice soft reboot. They've just got some more clean up from the last party.

2009-01-29T01:25:00.003-06:00

Need another item for your "Why BBC shows rule" paper? We get another season of According to Jim. They get:

Fox foxes

2009-01-28T23:28:00.001-06:00

I was in the process of redecorating my...let's say cubicle because concrete wall next to my third hand desk sounds so depressing, and as I hung up a new crop of clippings from various magazines I noticed something.

I taped up full page ads for three shows next to each other when I discovered a trend. The ads were for Fringe, Terminator: Sarah Conner and Dollhouse. All three are scifi shows, all three are on Fox and all have strong female leads. Who'd've thunk it? A geek girl revolution on a network that barely acknowledges women even exist?

And in true liberated fashion, these are all women forward shows, not just shows with strong gals on them. There is no doubt that Anna Torv is calling the shots on Fringe, with Joshua Jackson playing the gal Friday type. Terminator is called The Sarah Conner Chronicles, not John Conner. I really dig that show and their go for broke attitude, but I find it funny that the future leader of humanity has ended up 4th lead on his show. Cameron the she-Terminator has maybe five lines an episode and owns the screen. While I haven't seen the show yet, I do know Dollhouse was created for Eliza Dushku so you know she's going to be getting serious screen time. Add in Amy Acker and it is estrogen power.

I realize this might be reading as a concern or a warning. Far from it. I couldn't be happier. Buffy and Sydney Bristow have held up the banner alone for far too long. What worries me is, of course Fox, king of cancellations. All of these shows are on the bubble. If any or all of them are cut down, I fear the blame game will begin that says female scifi is the kiss of death. Think I am paranoid? How many Superman movies have there been vs. Wonder Woman? After Catwoman bombed, the powers that be used it to show that only men can lead superhero movies. Same might happen for gals in geek friendly shows. Enjoy the smart and smartly written women while you can.

2009-01-28T01:24:00.001-06:00

2009-01-22T01:19:00.003-06:00

Just heard about this in an interview with Ed Brubaker. So many of my favorite people all involved in one project? This is one web series I will definitely be watching. The clip may be a bit gory so the timid among you might not want to watch.

From Crackle: Angel Of Death: Coming soon to Crackle

BSG: And then there we're twelve.

2009-01-19T23:36:00.001-06:00

At last we come to it at last. We've now met the final five just in time for the final nine episodes. Not to cross universes here, but am I the only one thinking 'I've got a bad feeling about this' ?

It's not the identity. I won't spoil that for you timeshifters. My response to the revelation was 'Oh.' And then 'Ah.' Make of that what you will. No, it is more the feeling that this will all end badly. Not that I ever expected BSG to end with the characters at a picnic on top of a grassy hill in the sunshine. It is more that I can feel my frustration and disappointment looming. At the start of the show, they were quick to point out that this is not your daddy's Battlestar. I have to say that after four years, it's not my Battlestar anymore either.

Every show changes and evolves. Look at LOST now as compared to its launch. But the great show are the ones whose hearts, whose cores stay the same. Somewhere, BSG became a political show rather than a show with political themes. Want to know the diff? Look at early verses recent David E. Kelly shows.

It also annoys me that people complain about LOST all the time, but BSG gets a free pass on the same things: bizarre, impenitrable mythology, dangling plotlines, time travel paradoxes (two Karas? Clones?). I know there's a viewership difference, but buzz knows not such numbers. Am I giving up? Of course not. I still have to see how it ends. It just feels like the end I'm watching is the end of a different show than the one I fell in love with. And that a participle I'm not afraid to dangle.

2009-01-15T01:21:00.000-06:00

Dilemma Horns

2009-01-13T23:06:00.001-06:00

Greetings all you Eyeballs. We few, we happy few find ourselves faced with a bit of ye olde irony. Thanks to my relentless campaigning, and my late to the party discovery of Facebook, this site has never had so many visitors. And that's fantastic. But I still find myself with almost no time to post. Not so fantastic. The most people in the 4 plus years of the site and I barely have time for a YouTube cut and paste.

Thank you to all of you who visited the site and who keep coming back and rifling through the archives. Lot of funny stuff there. Lot of crap too. I'd like to say that all the interest in the site has inspired me to post new content all the time. Matter of fact I will say that. It has. Unfortunately, my circumstances have not changed. Some writers have an invisible critic that sits on their shoulder and whispers in their ear that everything they are writing is crap and they should give up now. My critic is two and a half feet tall, very visible and screams and cries at me when I do anything more than update my status on FB. Kind of dries up the creative juices.

Enter technology and beautiful inteconnectedness. The post you are now reading was composed on my new smartphone and emailed to NTYC HQ. Pretty slick. Please forgive the spelling errors as I'm still getting used to thumb typing. My hope is to publish more often and shorter, mostly to prevent hand cramps. I'm also looking to up my Twitter tweets as well.

The upshot is this: stay tuned. I'm still very interested in Not That You Care and couldn't be more pleased that you are too. I'd also encourage you to comment when you feel it. This kind of thing works better as a dialogue than a diatribe. But enough about me. I promise far less chat about the site and more real content. Call it an '09 resolution. Don't even need a scale or a tapeworm to keep this one. Just access to email and a recurring reader. What do you say? You in?

2009-01-08T01:44:00.000-06:00

Please O Please O Please don't screw this up...

2008-12-08T16:40:00.003-06:00

Now that the video game season is essentially over, with all relevant titles already on shelves and still no Wii in stores, attention turns to the games of '09. Could it be we will finally have a good Batman game? Paul Dini thinks so, and so does Mark Hamil, as both of them are involved in the way you'd want them to be. Fingers crossed bat-fans.

2008-12-04T01:21:00.001-06:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

2008-11-20T17:06:00.001-06:00

2008-11-12T01:09:00.001-06:00

Hurm.

2008-11-11T02:12:00.003-06:00

I've been told that looking at kitties with cleverly misspelled captions over them is not to everyone's taste. Instead, check out my latest web obsession that's a bit more accessible. It's name? SLEEVEFACE.

2008-11-05T00:58:00.000-06:00

It's one for the record books. God bless America.

2008-10-27T00:05:00.001-05:00

I tend to keep politics out of these here parts, but when someone manages to take one ad and transform it into another...well, it needs to be seen regardless of affiliations.

2008-10-21T01:03:00.001-05:00

Guess what's on the top of my wish list?

2008-10-17T17:35:00.001-05:00

2008-10-16T00:57:00.000-05:00

Set Phasers to WOW.

2008-10-15T02:00:00.001-05:00

2008-10-08T01:26:00.002-05:00

The Scorpius Conundrum

I'm enjoying Heroes this season. It's clear since the near-year break they've evaluated what was working and what wasn't and have made a sincere effort to get things back on track. And they are taking chances. You've got to give them credit for boldness at least. Instead of resolving or explaining what was going on with Nikki/Jessica, telling us her history or what her powers really were, they nuked the character and the whole storyline and gave the actress a new character who also introduced the idea of genetic manipulation to create abilities. So, hooray for clarity?

But where I see their biggest trouble is in the use of Sylar. Ever since the "It's my Mommy's fault" episode, I've felt the creators struggling to resolve Sylar and make him a team player. It's a TV tale as old as time. A character has broken out, he's evil, now what the hell do we do? To see it done right, see Michael Emerson aka Ben on Lost. To see it done wrong, try everything else, from Agent Smith in The Matrix to my named main point man Scorpius from Farscape. The worst thing the Farscape creators did was in making Scorpius a regular and putting him on the ship. It defanged him and made him smaller, almost pathetic. And while the Heroes crew aren't doing that exactly, what they are trying to do is worse: they are trying to make him a good guy.

What. The. Hell. I realize it's hard to write a villain week in and week out and not have him become 'Curses! Foiled again!' but that's the path you chose. Trying to write off Sylar's mass murders by claiming it as a side effect of his powers is weak and just doesn't wash. Getting put in the situation, like the bank and not being able to resist is one thing. Stealing notes, travelling cross country, killing a man and then impersonating him so you could travel with a dupe and thus get access to more people to kill is a lot more than just pangs. It's methodical, strategic and very cold blooded.

But heck, I'd rather see more of this ludicrous wussification of Sylar than another dreary lab scene with Dr. Sweaty & Naive. Seriously, has Suresh ever helped anyone? He tries, for sure, but it seems like his failure rate is close to perfect.

2008-09-30T01:22:00.000-05:00

2008-09-23T01:10:00.003-05:00

Dare, Dirk, Dare!

This is why I love the YouTube. In theory, this is an instructional video on how to get through all of the classic Don Bluth animated, laserdisc based video game Dragon's Lair, complete with on screen directions. But in actuality, it shows all of us who could only afford a few tries at the $1 per play (!!) game the whole shebang. So now let us step back in time to a dingy arcade in 1983, Journey is playing on the stereo and we're looking over the shoulder of the world's best joystick master...

2008-09-19T01:39:00.001-05:00

Who doesn't love free?

This is really unrelated to anything, but I wanted to make you all aware. A comic company named Top Cow is doing something called Pilot Season where they put out one issue of various series and then the audience gets to vote on which should become ongoing. And the comic I was most rooting for got the call! It's called GENIUS and because the first issue is essentially promotional, they've also posted it online in full for our enjoyment. I should warn you, it's a bit bloody. If I had to movie rate it, it'd be a hard PG13 into R. It's over HERE, so if you've got a few minutes, give it a look.

And no, it's not about superheroes.

2008-09-17T13:32:00.001-05:00

2008-09-02T09:14:00.001-05:00

Alas and alack, we've heard our last "In a world..." Don LaFontaine, Rest In Peace...

2008-09-01T17:16:00.000-05:00

2008-08-30T11:26:00.001-05:00

2008-08-28T14:10:00.002-05:00

With a Bang and a Whoosh...

One day (today specifically) I looked up at the calendar and suddenly realized summer was over. Yeah, I know not technically but as far as Hollywood is concerned it's done and in the record books. I mean, when the biggest opening film of the forthcoming weekend is a Vin Diesel Euro-styled techno heavily edited down post-apocalyptic action flick, you've got to know the sea has changed. But in all the hubbub, I've been on the sidelines. I didn't see everything I wanted to this summer (Wall-E, you'll always have a place on my DVD shelf despite our not having met yet) but I did manage to get out to a handful of movies, which I will write about in no particular order starting now-ish:

Wanted - Some might make a case for not sticking to the source material, but if you are like myself and did not care for the original piece (more swearing and rape than Watchmen! Millar, you should be proud!) it's more a question of did it work out? And yes, it did. It transformed a bitter, angry diatribe against super heroes and slackers into an incredibly inventive action thriller. It kind of falls apart toward the end, but finishes with a thrill and a half. More a tribute to the talents involved in the movie rather than the original comic, I'd say.

Hulk - Surprisingly good. All I wanted was for it to not suck, but I had no idea that it would end up being on par with Iron Man. Not as good, granted, but filled with just as much inventiveness and love for the characters. I think I'd side with Edward Norton that it needed more dramatic scenes sans big green to really make it a classic, but just seeing super soldier vs. angry man was worth the price of admission. My only quibble: there was no room to mention Bruce's cousin Jennifer?

Hancock - Wow. What happened? When did Wil Smith start making movies based on the strength of his personality rather than on the strength of the material? My main issue was that the movie started out as one flick (the one from the ads) and ended up a completely different beast. The movie I went to see was pretty good, but the one I left was not quite as good. And all that in an hour and a half. Did the part where it all makes sense get cut for pacing?

Get Smart - Big budget comedy rarely works, but when it does it can really soar. I totally loved this movie. It had big action, big laughs and quite a bit of heart. I don't know how they found the balance, but I can tell you the crowd was eating it up. I can't say I want this as a sequel vehicle, but it more that shows Steve Carell is worthy of being a movie star.

Star Wars: Clone Wars - Dear, your roots are showing. While I'm all for George liking the show so much he felt it had to be seen on the big screen, I wish he had had the idea sooner and gotten a story written specifically for it rather than what they ended up doing which is combine three episodes (of varying quality). It starts out a bit stiff despite good action, moves into amazing and funny and imaginative and ends overly serious and plot heavy. Three different writers, three different takes but all supposedly telling one movie story. I loved the animation and the pace, but I think it'll be a much better TV viewing than movie experience.

Hellboy 2 - As much as I loved The Dark Knight, I think the most personal of comic book movies I've seen this year had to be this one. In the midst of all the effects and action, it managed to be smart, scary and actually touching. To find in the middle of a huge big-budget action scene that you are sad for the monster the hero is attacking is a master stroke of filmmaking. It's a movie that plays by its own rules and demands you keep up. Yes sir, may I have another?

The Dark Knight - I really don't have the words. I had hoped for a posting all on its own, and maybe that'll happen eventually, but for now I'm just in total awe. Not only one of the best comic book movies, but an amazing movie over all. If this doesn't kill all that "Pow! Bam! at the box office!" or "Holy Revenue!" crap the media keeps spewing I don't know what will. When a character is treated with such respect and still used to tell a complex personal story from a filmmaker, look what can happen. It's a stunning piece of filmmaking and one hell of a good yarn.

And with that, my time is up. Hope this made up for the absence these last few weeks. I'm hoping to get on to talk about Fall TV in the near future, but until then, see you on the Flip Side.

2008-08-20T15:25:00.001-05:00

2008-08-19T02:05:00.000-05:00

2008-08-10T21:52:00.002-05:00

Hey y'all. Just letting you know I'm still here, still livin', still lovin', still making the world safe for geeks. Having a bit of trouble reconciling the new life schedule with blogging updates. Plus chasing a crawling baby is tiring work. In the meanwhile, here's another little tidbit to tide you over.

2008-08-03T20:48:00.001-05:00

And now a trip to the Land Of The Never Was, to see the pilot of a show never made...

2008-07-27T00:43:00.001-05:00

2008-07-27T00:24:00.001-05:00

2008-07-15T01:33:00.001-05:00

Nothing I could post about tonight could be half as interesting as what's going on RIGHT HERE!

2008-07-06T01:37:00.000-05:00

2008-07-04T13:21:00.000-05:00

2008-07-02T17:12:00.001-05:00

2008-07-01T17:10:00.001-05:00

2008-06-25T01:50:00.000-05:00

BEHOLD THE RAW, UNFILTERED POWER OF JOSS!

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

2008-06-13T22:26:00.000-05:00

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

2008-06-13T01:26:00.000-05:00

2008-06-10T14:38:00.002-05:00

Filled With Fun!
It's always a treat when something you love, but is widely considered less than successful, gets another chance to make an impression. Anything from the Farscape mini-series to a canceled comic book getting a new collection. So imagine my surprise when I learned that Viva Pinata, one of my favorite games from the last few years and the only game in which I've gotten all the Achievement points, is getting a sequel. Details are dripping out slowly, but careful viewers can find out a lot by watching this quick in-game montage. Color me overjoyed.

2008-06-10T01:51:00.002-05:00

Indiana Jones and the really long title that's still a better title than The Phantom Menace ever was

First off, it's good. Don't let any bellyaching you'll hear from me or others stop you from going. You want good whip-cracking, fist punching action, this is your movie. Never let it be said that The Spielberg has forgotten how to direct an action sequence. This movie made me remember why Harrison Ford is a movie star. An article I read talked about him sleepwalking through his movies for the last ten years, and I'd have to agree. But he's awake and aware here, and damn it, he's Indy in the way that Mel wasn't Riggs in the last Lethal Weapon and Bruce wasn't John in the last Die Hard. He walks right back into the hat and the whip and plays him at the age he is. What I loved about the performance, and the movie, is that this is a different Indy. While the filmmakers have been twiddling their thumbs, Indy's life has been progressing. We get glimpses of other adventures he has been on in the meantime that we didn't get to see movies about. While that can be frustrating, the idea of the character living while he was missing from the silver screen is a bold one and makes him more of a living person than a character who's been on ice for twenty years.

But all is not sweet in this garden. While the gang of three did manage to pull it off and make a compelling and exciting movie, the filmmakers themselves could not get over the fact that they are Crazy George Up On The Hill and The Spielberg. All their individual quirks and crutches are all here, writ large. There's style and there's compulsion and habit. Knowing the movies and the men, it's hard not to roll your eyes when one of their individual cliches goes rolling by. From Lucas' overarching We'll fix it with CGI! to The Spielberg's capping of an amazing action sequence with a terrible coda (hint: watch out for that tree!), they are too big for anyone to say, maybe that's not such a great idea. From what I've read, there were two scripts on the table, one that each filmmaker liked, so they got The Spielberg's writing monkey David Koepp to stitch the two together so they each got their favorite scenes. But the seams do tend to show, mostly in the amount of time characters all have to sit down and discuss the plot with each other. It stops the movie dead in an "It's exposition dear, it has to go somewhere!" fashion.

I'm brushing up against spoilers here, so I'll have to wrap up. Did I like it? Hell yes. When I was in the movie theater, I was totally caught up. The opening hour or so hums along like the days of old. There's a big clunky, chatty transition when we move into script 2, but then it picks up speed again. The ending sort of sputters out, but that's a topic for another time. All the actors make the best with what they are given and Harrison especially outdoes himself. It's not the second coming, but it's a lot better movie than any of the Star Wars prequels or any of the Young Indy Chronicles. We waited a long time for this one and I'm just glad they didn't fall on their faces.

2008-06-08T20:21:00.001-05:00

2008-06-05T02:10:00.001-05:00

2008-06-03T01:56:00.000-05:00

2008-05-30T01:28:00.003-05:00

Where Hath The Magic Gone?- The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian

So I'm empathic. (Don't laugh. I've got the paperwork from a test I took in one my Psych courses in college. I ranked highest in the class. So there.) And as someone skilled at the sussing out of other people's emotional states, I take delight in trying to glean what people were thinking when they made a particular movie or TV show or comic, what have you. It's as silly as my predilection for ascribing personality traits to television networks, but it helps me navigate the world. But what has all this to do with Narnia, I hear none of you asking? I'll tell you. It seems to me that they weren't having any fun.

I know the movie is a bit dire, it being their Empire Strikes Back I suppose. That's not what I mean. In the grand scheme of things, if a young director finally pays his dues (big green increasingly less funny dues) and gets to make that big budget dream project, it should be overloaded with joy. And the first Narnia movie was. But somehow, when the studio came back and said "Great job, now do it again!" It seems like there was a less enthusiastic response. It's the same way I feel about The Mummy Returns. On the surface, nothing is wrong. But somehow, it comes across as fulfilling a contract as opposed to work of heart.

All the right stuff is here, great effects, big epic action sequences, fascinating characters. But it seems like everyone is going through the motions. There's no sense of wonder or awe, it's very mercenary. Plus for what's vaunted to be a kid movie, there sure are a lot of dull, gray scenes with dull, gray men sitting around in their fake beards talking in their ridiculous faux-Eurotrash accents. Do we need this much politics in a world where the most interesting character is a sword swinging mouse? (Reepicheep steals the show, by the by.) And selling your titular prince as the best choice falls short when he's the ONLY choice. He could be dull as dishwater (and he is) but at least he won't disappear for 1300 years or grow the evil facial hair of his uncle. And thus we shall name him King! Huzzah?

And speaking of lame villains, in a world of minotaurs and griffins, the great evil empire is a bunch of dudes who wear helmets with their king's face on them? Really? You couldn't even throw a near sighted Cyclops on their team or something? A basilisk with a limp? A blind cockatrice? Nothing? And in what turns out to be a very pivotal scene, fantastic for us and deadly to the movie, we get the reappearance of the best part of the first film, The White Witch. Word of advice, when you're making your movie, don't throw in a cameo by a villain who in one scene is scarier than your main villain in his two hours of badly accented treachery. The scene is so good it lets you see a far better film that might have been if they'd been bold enough to go off book. But no, let's go back to a bunch of dull, gray dudes standing in a field...

It's not a terrible movie, or even a bad one. I liked most of it. But it seemed like I was enjoying it more than any of the cast or crew. The action scenes were amazing, the battles epic. Maybe the programmers were the ones who got to have all the fun. The rest is full of sulking, whining and much furrowing of brows. I can think of much better ways to spend my time and money. Next time, I hope they do what they want rather than what they thought we wanted. FYI, it's not this.

2008-05-27T01:47:00.002-05:00

You Can't Stop The Metal: Iron Man

I know I'm a couple weeks back on this one, but travel and the resulting illness that came from said travel have kept me from my site for some time. It's not the most recent movie I've seen, but it is one of the best.

I had high hopes, not just for a new comic book movie (especially one that wasn't a sequel or remake) but also as the harbinger of the Summer '08 Movie Season. And from what I can tell, the future looks very bright. It's astounding to me that in two hours they got right what twenty years of comics got wrong. I've been reading comics since I could read, and for the most part found Iron Man dull as dishwater. Oh, don't get me wrong. A guy flying around in a killer suit of high tech armor is awesome, but more in a supporting Avengers kind of role. The idea of picking up a monthly comic starring him? Not my bag, baby. But they found it, that thing that makes him unique. Can it really be? A movie adaptation better than the comic source material? Face it, True Believers, it happened.

I can't really think of anything bad to say. I mean, it does sort of come to the point where a fight has to happen, rather than really leading organically to it, but as Matt Fraction would say, the battle happens "BECAUSE THE GENRE DEMANDS IT!" All my issues about origin movies were quelled. Even the constant removing of the helmet wasn't annoying, mostly because Favreau found a clever in-helmet-cam way around it. And speaking of Fav, who knew he had it in him? He's made some good movies, but I had no idea he could pull off a big-budget, big-effect type movie. Add to that all the improv-ed lines, the wealth of Marvel references and the fact that he made me like Gwyneth, and it makes up to one amazing movie. Is it the greatest comic book movie yet? Maybe. But it certain holds the award for Most Improved From Source Material. Long Live Marvel Studios! Excelsior!

2008-05-14T01:42:00.003-05:00

They can't do it all on their own

It's been a busy week and I haven't been feeling all that well, but I wanted to do a quick posting about some of the TV news that's come out in the last few days. First off, some of my favorite new shows are coming back next year. Both Eli Stone and Reaper have been granted second seasons. I believe both of them are midseason, but new eps are new eps. The perenially on the bubble How I Met Your Mother is also coming back. But the biggest weirdness is with Scrubs.

As many of you know, last week, NBC aired what it billed as the series finale for our favorite wacky doctor show. But not only was it by no means finale-esque, but it seemed to come from somewhere in the middle of the season. I'll try to give you a bit of insight. NBC has never really been a fan of Scrubs. It does middling numbers by their standards, but I get the impression the suits really don't GET it. They moved it from timeslot to timeslot and kept pushing off the season premiere. And despite their promises of giving it a big send-off, because the writers strike knocked off a bunch of their episodes, the network decided to take what they had, pick what they thought the best episode was and make that the last one rather than actually giving us fans closure. Thank goodness there was a mouse ready to be a hero. Disney is the company that actually produces Scrubs and they love it. They especially love the sweet, sweet syndication money the show brings in, and more eps means more profit. Next year, for its really and truly swan song seasons, the men and the women and the Todd of Sacred Heart will be appearing on ABC. Hopefully not next to According to Jim. It's looking like it'll be in midseason, but when it still up in the air.

Oh and in the mercy killing department, both New Amsterdam and Moonlight have bitten the dust. And the TV says thank you.

2008-05-11T11:21:00.001-05:00

2008-05-07T16:38:00.001-05:00

2008-04-29T01:36:00.002-05:00

Battlestar Galactica: Deep, Dark Space

Between seasons, I get caught up in the BSG mania. I can't wait for it to come back. I count the days, then the hours. I finally get a chance to see new episodes and I get a bad case of smile fade. I forget that while I think the show is great, it's not a great show. Don't get me wrong, it's better than 99% of what's on the air right now, but it's not without its issues. Books could be written on the various plotlines, characters and concepts that have been built up and then abandoned along the show's long strange journey. For all the Big Ideas that finally get revealed, a dozen more have been buried in shallow graves. And this isn't a new problem, nor as big a one as The X-Files had, but it amazes me that Lost gets raked over the coals for stuff that BSG pulls week to week. Take this last week's episode. For those who might have missed it or forgotten, let me get you up to speed and tell you everything to need to know so you can jump right into next week episode. Here goes: Chief lost his job. That's it. That's everything that changed in the lives of the characters from the start of the episode to the end.

'But wait!' you cry. 'What about nuance? What about characterization? What about ambiance?' Sure, great, point made. But what about something actually happening in one of the final episodes we'll ever get to see? This isn't third season with time to kill, this is 4th and goal, last quarter, 9th inning, put up or shut up time. And this episode was full of sound and fury but signified nothing. You've got Starbuck listening for the music of the spheres, Apollo who's become a glorified extra and, oh yeah, a frakkin' Cylon Civil War! And they used this episode to show Baltar still leading his cult and Saul chatting up a Cylon. Really? We needed a whole episode for that? This episode was nothing but B-stories. When we're down this far, you can't afford a clunker. Every lame plot device is one more question that will never be answered. According to Ron Moore, the plotline of the Centurions gaining intelligence has been dropped due to space issues. Why? So we can see more scenes of Apollo making empty motions in a cramped meeting room? Really? Don't get me wrong. I'm not off the show. I just thought the days of the show wandering around in the dark looking for a coherent thought were at an end. Seems like they still have some drifting to do.

2008-04-28T01:17:00.001-05:00

2008-04-23T01:26:00.001-05:00

2008-04-22T01:26:00.002-05:00

Feel the Burn: Summer '08

May 16th

The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian - I can't tell you how much I don't think about this movie. I don't really know what happened. I dug the first one. I thought they nailed it, especially the framing sequences showing the War. Is it because of the delays? Last fall, this would have been huge. But here we are. It might be the shimmering sameness evident in the trailer. It looks good, sure, but it also looks exactly like the last one. No reason it shouldn't, what with the entire cast and crew coming back (mostly). But I think a sequel should at least have a fresh look. Say what you will about the Pirates trilogy, but you can spot the differences between the movies. In this, every scene that flashed past looked like it could have come from the cutting room floor of TCON: TLTWATW. Now I know why they never used that acronym in their ads.

The story from the first was a tale of good vs. evil and the toppling of a wicked queen. This one is about restoring the monarchy by putting a kid on a throne. See the difference in emotional resonance? It could be that I've just lumped it in with all the ME TOO! LOTR clones we've had to suffer through the past couple of years. I'm sure I'll end up seeing it, and not even with dread like most of the romantic comedies, but at this point, it would be at the bottom of my list for summer releases.

2008-04-21T01:58:00.002-05:00

It's about frelling time!

Look who's comic booking now...

2008-04-18T01:17:00.000-05:00