In Review

Things have been kind of quiet here. Many other concerns have kept me from getting to the backlog of reviews and previews that have been piling up in my “drafts” box. But I have been diligent enough to let you in on a few nice things like the solid online scifi actioner Trenches. And I have been watching bunches of shows and movies, just not making the time to write about them.

Coming Attractions

It’s Oscar Time! Unfortunately, I haven’t seen most of the movies up for awards. So don’t expect a whole lot of current Oscar talk here. But don’t expect to not see anything at all, either–there’s an interesting Best Picture race this year and I may end up quite satisfied or disdainfully perplexed at the winner. That will be shared with you.

As I said, I’ve also got a huge backlog of half-finished reviews. We’ve burned through half of the current TV season already and I haven’t talked a lot about what I’m loving, what I’m hating, and what I’m not bothering with. Expect some of that.

Also, a movie by some people I know is premiering at the DC Independent Film Festival. I’ll be there to see it with the rest of the public and you’ll definitely get a write up on that–good or bad. (I’m expecting good from this crew.)

I’m also planning on getting you in touch with some more excellent online entertainment (along the lines of Trenches). If you have a show that you know of (or produce) and want me to check it out, let me know.

So, yeah, lots of reviews in the near future–some going back to last season. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy ‘em. If not, there’s always reruns you could be watching, I’m sure.

My friend Kelley doesn’t show up just yet, but the production value is pretty high and the space battle and ground conflict are intense.

Unfortunately, the arm of Disney/ABC that was going to release it got chopped off and boxed away during some restructuring.

For the past year or so, there’s been some doubt about whether we’d ever get to see Trenches.

That day is now just a few weeks away.

For a web series, it carries a pretty hefty budget. a reported $250,000. But that price tag shows in the trailer. From what can be seen in that and the behind the scenes bits posted on the show’s main website, this looks at least as good as SyFy Channel Original Movie. It definitely looks to have better effects and acting than most of those.

On February 16, the first episode will go live on Sony’s Crackle.com.

According to the LA Times:

Business affairs executives at Sony Pictures Television, which runs Crackle, became aware that Disney was looking to sell distribution rights to “Trenches,” and the company decided it could find a slot for it on Crackle, which mixes original series with television shows and movies from Sony’s library.

After debuting on Crackle.com, “Trenches” will later be shown on the sites of Sony distribution partners, including YouTube and MySpace.

I know I’m looking forward to finally seeing it. Even better, according to the Times article, after it makes the rounds online, it stands a chance of being expanded into a property that may see DVD and cable release, too.

This is just the first of a handful of projects friends of mine have been working on over the last year or two that will see public release this year. Keep an eye here for more details on everything from Browncoats: Redemption to Ghosts Don’t Exist.

If this weren’t being billed as The Karate Kid, I don’t think it would be that bad.

My problem is that, once again, we’ve taken everything except the most very basic story idea (kid learns martial arts from an older dude who really knows what he’s talking about so kid can not get beat all to hell in school) and some names and thrown it out the window. That leaves us with a very generic plot which can be gussied up in any way possible. There are a dozen (or more) movies with similar enough plots that this film (if you change out Miyagi’s name) could be a remake of.

They’ve obviously gone with The Karate Kid to capitalize on the name recognition and probably the strong emotional connection many of us from Generation X have with the story.

But the story–the details that made it really important and easy to relate to for those of us who saw it in the 80s–are pretty much all gone.

First, our protagonist is 11 years old. That leaves me wondering who the target market for this film is. In the original, Daniel was in high school–eager to get his first car and get a date. Here, from the trailer, it looks like we’re dealing with a situation firmly rooted in just plain old bullying. Why do you want to learn that stuff? So I don’t get beat up. Why don’t you want to get beat up? Because it sucks. It doesn’t get any more basic than that, but being that basic removes more than a little of the drama from it all.

I’m betting it’s going to be more a mother-son dynamic than the original. Heck, it has to be. The kid’s freakin’ 11, not much romantic involvement that you get into there.

We know Jackie Chan knows his stuff, but I’m curious if the bulk of this film is going to be some sort of “love letter” to the wonders of China. Chan’s been talking up the Chinese party line a bit more of late, so it wouldn’t surprise me. I’m going to be very interested to see what kind of backstory gets used for his updated sensei.

And we’ll attempt to completely ignore that this is set in China and karate is Japanese in origin. Of course, we’ll happily continue to ignore that what your young hero is being taught is kung fu (which is Chinese), just like in the original.

Will I see it? Maybe. But it’s not high on my list. The original may just hold too high a place in my personal list of movies that made a difference for me. Mostly, though, I don’t think the writing will be able to make the film as strong as it could be.

Maybe future trailers will prove me wrong and change my mind. (I really hope they do, actually.)

How do you feel about this film, based on that trailer?

To say I didn’t hold out a whole lot of hope for the reboot of the Friday the 13th franchise would only be a slight understatement.

I was relatively happy with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, so seeing the same team involved kept my expectations from being totally negative. There was some small spark of hope that it would cut to what I think is the core of the character and story, that it would get at least some of the terror right, that it would fix what I saw as some of the problems with the original.

Well, I’ve just finally gotten around to seeing the new Friday the 13th and it managed to disappoint me more than I thought possible.

What it has is a pretty cast and a pretty good production value.

What it doesn’t have is pretty much everything else.

If you’ve been living under a rock since the early 80s, you may not be familiar with the basic plot of a Friday the 13th movie. Let me run it down for you: Kids go into the woods to party, most of them end up dead, killed by a dude named Jason in a hockey mask who is, eventually, subdued and apparently killed by the end of the film. That pretty much covers the bulk of the other 11 films that have carried the Friday the 13th name.

And, really, it sums this one up, too.

The big difference is that the most recent incarnation of the film lacks pretty much everything that makes the franchise unique.

Jason is one of the iconic killers of the golden age of slasher films. Along with Freddy, Michael Meyers, and Leatherface (who, in my opinion, really doesn’t fit, but is typically put in the grouping… I’d be more prone to add Norman Bates) he’s part of a deeply ingrained pop culture of dark morality tales and nightmares. Like the rest of the familiar names in that list, he exists to kill. What has always set Jason apart was that he was a more blunt killer–not witty like Freddy, not single-minded like Meyers, not full of rage (or hunger?) like Leatherface. He killed in direct ways, approaching slowly, always up close.

This move got rid of all of that.

The film is populated with an overly-large cast of paper-thin stereotypes of social detritus: douchebags, pot heads, sex-hungry vixens, and horny dudes. So eager are the filmmakers to top the kill count of all the previous iterations, they give us nearly three groups of mostly white trash that get taken out. (The first is mostly implied in the poorly done prelude that more or less runs through the plot of the very first Friday the 13th in less than ten minutes.)

There are only three characters that even come close to being decent human beings. Bad news is, they’re not fleshed out much more than the cannon fodder… and one of them doesn’t make it (kind of spoiling any message one could attempt to read into the film).

The worst thing, though, is the complete and utter lack of anything to differentiate Jason from any other random serial killer. Sure, there’s the hockey mask and the oft used machete, but those don’t mean anything if anyone could be behind them.

In this movie, Jason runs. There’s none of the ominous slow stalking that upped the tension of many of the previous films. He also kills from a distance using a bow and arrow. Perhaps worst of all, he makes use of numerous tunnels and traps that betray a much higher-functioning personality behind the mask than was ever present in Jason.

He was, after all, a slightly mentally challenged 8-year-old at heart.

And then there’s the kills. While there was plenty of blood and gore in the deaths in this movie, there was no real creativity–and especially not any creativity that would be in line with Jason (if he were a unique character in the film). More than a few of the killings are convoluted and none are anywhere near as forthrightly brutal as what’s been shown in older Friday films.

(As a side note: While I was bouncing around looking for some art to put with this post, I came across a nice review of the film from James Melzer. He touches nicely on the lack of uniqueness of the Jason character as portrayed in this film as well as a few other important things. Check it out.)

The bottom line is, this film would have been just as good–or bad, in my opinion–without having the Friday the 13th brand on it. Of course, without that, no one would have gone to see it and I most certainly wouldn’t be talking about it at all now. So, good business decision, I guess.

Especially since they’re all ready to roll on a sequel. (Which I most certainly won’t be seeing in the theaters.)

I recommend you stay away from this iteration of the classic slasher flick. You’d be much better served going back and watching the originals.

Just finished watching the first two episodes of the new season of Scrubs on ABC.

I think that’ll be the last time I’ll be watching it for a while.

I’ve been a bit of a Scrubs fan since it first hit the airwaves. It was different, creative, and populated with solid actors playing horrendously quirky characters. More importantly, it was written and acted with heart.

It showed up right when we all needed some good human comedy, premiering on 2 October, 2001. All along the way, even when I wasn’t watching regularly, I could always count on the show for something worthwhile. More than once, I’ve found myself tearing up a little as an episode progressed. Always, though, the show would leave me feeling a little better and with a smile on my face.

Not so with the new season.

With such a solid finale at the end of last season, the convoluted explanation for how and why everyone is back pushed the limits, even the limits of such a wild show as Scrubs. The old hospital is gone, demolished. It’s been rebuilt attached to a college. So now everyone who’s back (which is a little over half the main and extended cast, it seems) is teaching and running rounds at the new hospital.

Oh, and there’s a new batch of med students. Half of whom seem to be clones of the original characters being groomed to replace them when they finally actually, really, leave the series (in another few episodes).

Kerry Bishé plays Lucy, who’s incessant internal monologuing would be great if it hadn’t already been JD’s shtick. Obviously, her character is going to be the main focus of the “new” show. Dave Franco’s pretty boy, self-important, womanizer (who also happens to be the son of the main money behind the college/hospital) Cole could be a gold-mine of crude humor. But he’s just a more cultured version of The Todd (who also shows up). And Michael Mosley’s Drew is the “bad boy with a heart of gold” who’s also serving as the love interest for returning character Dr. Denise Mahoney.

There is a lot of potential here. But the way things have been handled in these first two episodes obscures a lot of it. If anything, this season deserves to be treated as it’s own series. Until that happens–and that’s going to require JD, Dr. Cox, Turk, and Dr. Kelso to vanish–it’s not going to be anything other than a lackluster “extra” season to an otherwise great show.

Maybe when it’s given a chance to be it’s own show, I’ll tune back in. Until then, maybe I’ll watch if there’s nothing else on. (Of course, I do have about 40 hours of stuff on my DVR that I can watch instead…)

It looks like Comcast is well on its way to becoming part-owner of NBC-Universal.

According to a post at the New York Time DealBook blog:

General Electric has reached a tentative agreement to buy Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBC Universal for about $5.8 billion, helping clear the path to a sale of the television and movie company to Comcast, people briefed on the matter told DealBook.

This is one of those slightly worrisome business dealings that only gets worse the more one thinks about it.

While NBC may be faltering a bit in the regular TV network ratings, it still holds a lot of broadcast clout. Add in the stable of entertainment properties that it’s Universal branch brought in and the online suite of destinations (like Hulu) and it’s a major player across the new media board.

Comcast, of course, the largest of the big cable companies that now bring television, Internet, and voip phone service to our doorsteps.

The combined NBC-Comcast behemoth would be, without question, one of the most powerful media conglomerates around. Check out this bit of analysis from Media Daily News:

“You become a cable network,” he added. “You become the most powerful network. You would eclipse USA Network.” Malone was one of the main architects of the U.S. cable TV industry in the 1980s and 1990s — especially with his dominant cable system operation, Tele-Communications Inc.

That’s from someone who definitely knows what he’s talking about.

In the paragraph before the one quoted, Malone mentions that the best way to get to that point is for NBC to divest itself of it’s local affiliates. Not something easy to do, but not an impossibility.

Mergers like this do more to hurt the diversity of news, entertainment, and information in general than anything else around. With fewer providers, we’re left with fewer choices. And here we even have the potential for a tremendous loss of jobs (if local affiliates are, indeed, axed in the name of more power and profits).

Will the FCC step in and say something about this? That’s kind of up in the air. Over the last decade, the FCC has been going back and forth on its media ownership and saturation rules. Those are coming up for discussion again. According to the LA Times Blog Company Town:

That the FCC is looking at reevaluating how it measures media could be a good or bad thing for the industry depending on what direction the Obama administration wants to take. The consensus is that his FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, will look more harshly on media concentration than the Bush and Clinton administrations did.

Free Press has set up a campaign to stop the merger. Josh Silver, the executive director of Free Press, said in a statement:

“Approval of such a merger would trigger a new wave of mega-mergers, as other giants like News Corp. and Disney bulk up to exert more control over new media. We don’t have to speculate about what this would mean for consumers. Decades of disastrous media consolidation have already given us higher prices, fewer independent and local voices, and the same cookie-cutter content wherever we go.”

On this, I tend to agree with him.

We’ve seen very clearly what big business can do when it gets “too big to fail”. For years we’ve let our media companies–old and new–glom together into larger and larger homogeneous hunks, all the while sliding into more and more partisan places. Polarization is not diversity. Homogeneity is not choice. And lack of competition does not breed quality. (Though these days I often wonder what does breed quality in the media.)

I’m going to wait for a few more details to come out over the next few weeks before I really start to worry, but I will be watching. If you care about your media–be it online, in print, or over the airwaves–I’d recommend you keep an eye out, too.

If this goes through and bad things happen, we have only ourselves to blame.

I finally got around to watching the remaining four hours of AMC’s new version of The Prisoner.

After watching the first two hours when they ran last week, I can’t say I was terribly impressed. It had potential, sure, but it was missing something. And it seemed a bit more surreal at times than the original (which, if you remember the original, is saying an awful lot). But, I figured, maybe the two thirds would clear some of that up.

No such luck.

First, let me give credit where credit is due. This show is darn pretty. The sets and scenery have just the right feeling of “off” to them to echo that sense of unease one should have while watching the goings on in The Village. Scenes flow pretty well from one to the other and the music choices are interesting, atmospheric, and just as disconcerting at times as the visuals. James Caviezel as Number Six does an adequate job (with what he was given to work with) and Ian McKellan as Number Two catches some fantastic nuances of that character as it’s written in this iteration.

But none of that good stuff can balance out the lack of spunk and downright disjointed writing that fills the space between good bits.

Without question, there should be some of that off-balance and lost feeling in this show. The main character doesn’t know what’s going on, where he is, why he’s there–he doesn’t even have a clear memory of who he is. It shouldn’t all make sense. There should, however, be some baseline of “normal” to judge things by. For a while, it seems like there is, but as the hours drag on (pacing is another issue all together), things become more and more surreal and disjointed instead of more coherent.

Having watched all six hours, I’m pretty sure I know what the point was and what the filmmakers were trying to do with their splicing together of two (or three?) realities and time lines. It was done sloppily. The cues separating one from the other just fell apart, leaving the narrative dangling in an ambiguous space.

Which would be fine if this were some avant garde art film with a two hour or so run-time. In a six hour television series, you’re not going to make any friends with your viewers if you do this–unless you do it very, very well. (HBO’s Carnivale managed to do something similar to what The Prisoner has attempted, but managed to keep it organized and tight enough that it didn’t get in the way of the story.)

The problem of lack of solid ground to stand on was exacerbated by total lack of story flow from one hour to the next. More than once, I was left wondering if I’d missed something important–if there was some reason Number Six or Number Two or someone else was suddenly behaving very differently than he had been. Some of it is explained, but too much of it just “is”.

Worst of all, though, this Number Six spends most of his time brooding, moping, or swooning. Lacking is the sharp and impassioned verbal banter between Six and Two that was a high point of a number of episodes of the original show. The rivalry–and kinship–between the two key characters is much more subtle and drawn out. Again, something that would be OK if there was more solid ground to set it against.

Over all, I’m less than impressed with what AMC did to this franchise. It managed to suck out most of the life and all of the mystery while adding nothing but some pretty scenery and confusion.

It comes out on DVD in March. Without some very compelling special features, there’s no way I’ll be buying it. I’ll stick to the full box set of the original series I picked up years ago (which, oddly, I still haven’t gotten around to watching all of).

Liv Tyler attempts to escape from one of the interlopers in The Strangers.

It being the Halloween, I’ve been in the mood for horror films.

Over the last few years, there has been no shortage of supposedly scary movies. Problem is, most of the ones I’ve seen haven’t been all that scary.

Disgusting? Yes. Full of loud noises and quick movement? You bet. Violent? Uh-huh. But scary? Really scary? Nope. Not really.

“Really scary” takes some subtlety and time that’s lacking in most modern horror. Instead, writers and directors go for the quick “gotcha!” or the over-the-top blood & gore effects to try to scare the audience. When I first saw the ads for The Strangers, I was a little worried that it was just another torture porn film along the lines of Hostel.

Well, I finally got around to watching it and I’m happy to say that it’s a lot better than I was expecting. The buildup to the scares is a slow burn that gets every edgy nerve going one by one until the anticipation of the inevitable jump is barely alleviated when something actually happens. The characters–both protagonists and antagonists–are mostly a mystery to us, we’re left to fill in backstory all on our own. (Something else too many films don’t do any more–leave a little work for the minds of the audience to do when it comes to characters.)

Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) arrive at a secluded home, James’ parent’s house, that they’ve requisitioned for what was supposed to be a romantic weekend. It’s clear right off the top that things didn’t quite go as planned earlier in the evening–both are upset and distant from one another. The mood is heavy and sad as they go about settling in as best they can, brushing away the spread rose petals and sullenly drinking the champagne straight from the bottle.

That’s when the first knock comes at the door. A young–perhaps teenage, perhaps 20something–girl asks for someone who is definitely neither of them. We never see her face, for some reason the lights on the front porch aren’t working, even though they clearly were before.

And from there, the sadness turns to tension which turns to fear which culminates in a scene of true horror.

And it does it all with a minimal effects budget, next to no gore, mostly implied violence, and a whole lot of atmosphere.

Writer/Director Bryan Bertino did a fantastic job. Granted, the story is about as simple as you can get, but it’s been done much worse before. The run time of the film is short, which is good–any longer and it would have been too much of a strain or filled with gimmicks and cheap thrills. Bertino keeps things tight and tense, something much more seasoned directors seem to have more trouble doing as time goes on.

If you’re prone to an overactive imagination, I recommend you don’t watch this one while home alone, you’ll be jumping at every little noise. And for those who are looking for some sort of gore-fest… well, you probably won’t like this movie at all. Same goes for those who like everything handed to them on a gilded platter. You’re going to have to work your brain just a little to put all the pieces together. But when you do, you’ll get a good solid shiver and a lasting sense of unease that usually only comes from more classic horror films.

Heroes is wobbling along, sometimes more steady than others. There are some interesting new characters, but a strong, clear theme that helped make season one a popular and critical success–and was missing from the subsequent seasons–is still nowhere near strong enough to raise the show above the bad taste the last season left in many people’s mouths. I think the writers may be biting off more than they can chew by keeping the number of “main” characters as high as they have. Old habits, I guess. I do like the traveling carnival that’s been introduced, though… lots of potential there, especially after this week’s episode.

Castle is still a lot of fun. As a police procedural, it leaves a lot to be desired (man, the cop work is really not that good at all), but as a bunch of pulpy, camp-leaning characters, it is full of win. NathanFillion and Stana Katic are getting even better bouncing dialog off one another and the supporting cast is getting a little more time to shine. If you’re looking for a serious show, don’t bother. If you’re looking for something that’s got some cheese in it, then Castle is where to find it.

The Forgotten, I watched one episode of it and decided it was better left to live out its title. As much as I want to love Christian Slater in anything he does, this show just didn’t grab me at all. I would have been much happier if his vehicle from last season, My Own Worst Enemy, had survived.

Mercy was another show I only bothered to catch one or two episodes of. While it’s fun to see Michelle Trachtenberg (once again) play a sparkly, naive, newbie, it mostly felt just like every other modern hospital drama that I’ve seen ads for.

Modern Family has been a pleasant surprise from the first episode on. The show has heart and a kind of quirky sense of humor about half the stuff in it. The other half is standard sitcom fodder, but is usually carried out with just enough push from the cast that it works. Everything I’ve seen in it so far has either made me laugh or smile, and I’ve always felt better after watching an episode. That’s more than I can say for most shows I’ve ever watched.

Cougar Town had a first episode that just left me not wanting more at all. The way the main character was written in the first episode, co-star Krista Miller would have been a better fit for the lead than Courtney Cox. They seem to have fixed that problem now. The comedy now fits with Cox’s appearance better, making the whole character more sympathetic and, overall, much more funny. They still try a little too hard at times, though… and it looks like this week’s episode is going to be full of “trying too hard” moments.

Eastwick has been a very pleasant surprise. I had more then a bit of trepidation going in, seeing as how I absolutely love the film, but the cast and writers have done a good job of adding enough depth and breadth to the story to keep it interesting and on-message. The leads are doing fantastic jobs bringing three very different characters to life–different from one another and different from the 1987 film, which is good because they are different characters in a different time. Even Paul Gross is doing a good enough job to make me believe his Darryl Van Horne isn’t Nicholson’s in a good way.

Flashforward has a lot of potential. So far, we’ve seen a few different ways of dealing with characters who know a little bit of the future. They’re pacing the questions and answers (and red herrings that may not be so red or so herring) well early on, so they may actually have a plan for where this all is going. At the absolute least, we’re getting some good haunted looks from members of the core cast. If they ratchet up the strange factor just a little bit, they could be on par with early seasons of Lost for water cooler discussion factor. As it is, while I’m hooked, I question if they’ll be able to keep enough of the general population interested to keep themselves on the air.

Supernatural is in its best season yet… and it looks like its only going to get better as it goes on. Last week had a killer Abe Lincoln and Gandhi–with Paris Hilton as a guest star–and it worked fantastically! Sometime in the future, it looks like we’re up for a 70s sitcom inspired demonic infestation and numerous other things that I’m sure will leave me wanting more–but also hoping that the show goes out on top, before it all goes to hell.

Fringe is really ready to take the X-File mantel as “strange FBI show”… but it’s got more scifi in it than Mulder and Scully ever ran into. Kind of hard to avoid when your key plot involves interdimensional travel. The important part is, their characters have grown a lot since the first episode of the series and are now really coming into their own (both literally and figuratively). This is another I’m going to keep watching until they cancel it.

Smallville… I’ve only been able to make myself watch the series premier so far. And that… well… I’d have to go back and check but I think they have once againretconned their own continuity. I really hate that. The plots are also looking more and more ridiculous–some of them look to be right out of the Silver Age comics,wich were always downright silly. Again I say, this show should have ended a few seasons ago and we should be watching The Justice League instead.

Dollhouse has continued its upswing since episode six of season one. They’ve made some compelling changes to the show and have really piqued my curiosity on some other areas of how things work inside theDollhoue. The inevitable bleed-through of past imprints on some of the dolls has been distinctly creepy and sweet to see happen.

There’ll be more once I have the time to dig into the DVR and hit up Hulu.com for back episodes… and then there’s movies I want to talk about, too. Oh, but for more time in a day!