Hey folks,
Sorry it's been a bit longer than I intended, but you know how it is. Life intrudes.
Anyway...let's get right to the chase. Here's a whole bunch of mini reviews to keep you happy and up to date for a while.
The Devil Wears Prada is a funny film in spite of Meryl Streep actually seeming to repeat herself from Death Becomes Her. It can wait until its on DVD though.
The Pink Panther is probably the most useless remake ever made. I don't understand why Steve Martin & Kevin Kline were even involved in this dreck. The only thing funny about it is listening to all the bad French accents. Steve Martin's is outlandish, Kevin Kline's is either non-existant or British and Jean Reno (taking the place of Burt Kwok as a Kato wannabe) who is actually French even sounds like he's doing a bad French accent. When the best part of the film is the opening credit sequence and main title theme, you know you've got a long night ahead of you. Avoid it like the plague.
Clerks II sees Kevin Smith selling out by bringing back Jay & Silent Bob when he said that Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back would be their last appearance. Luckily, it's still a very funny film (not sure how it got an R rating as there's a scene involving a man having sex with a donkey) and utilizes Smith's wonderful gift for dialog and character very well. I only wish it had tied into the Clerks animated series a bit. Still hoping we eventually get that animated feature.
Cold Comfort Farm is an older film (1996) that I finally got around to watching. Based on a classic novel it's very funny. If you like things like Pride & Prejudice then you should also get a kick out of this film.
Transamerica is a great movie that got much deserved acclaim. Felicity Huffman definitely deserved the Oscar she got for her portrayal of a transgendered man. Funny and touching.
Psych joins USA Network's Friday night lineup and is the perfect companion for Monk. It's about a man who helps the police solve crimes with psychic powers. Of course, it's all an act he's just very smart and has a photographic memory. It's a great way to spend a Friday night if you're in.
Eureka airs on Tuesday nights on SciFi and is a fun, quirky new show that is another notch in the network's belt of good programming (unlike their made for TV movies which are pure drivel). A federal marshall stumbles upon a town that houses a whole bunch of geniuses who work for the government creating new technologies. Of course things don't always go right. Plus there's a small arc story (involving stolen technologies and a conspiracy) that seems to be brewing nicely as well. Add it to your watching list.
Who Wants To Be A Super-Hero is a truly bizarre entry in the "reality" show genre. Stan Lee hosts this show where 12 people are competing to become a super hero...well...sort of...if they prove their moral fiber to Stan, they may get a comic book deal and SciFi TV movie out of the deal if they win. So far the characters are just silly for the most part (Cell Phone Girl?? Fat Momma?? Major Victory -- who is actually a DC Comics villain) and the one task so far was hysterical to watch. The heroes had to change into their costumes in public without being seen and then race to a finish line...but what Stan didn't tell them is that there would be a lost girl along the way who needed help. Only 4 of the ten remaining contestants stopped to help (of the original 12 one turned out to be a spy and Stan booted one after the spy revealed the guy was a jackass). It's very surreal and just plain weird, but a hoot to watch.
Doctor Who finished its second season in Britain. David Tennant steps into the role very nicely. He's different enough from Christopher Eccleston while still retaining certain personality traits set in the character when the first season aired. Unfortunately, a few of the stories were a bit clunky...but the return of the Cybermen more than made up for that. See it however you can. DVDs won't be released here in the U.S. until it gets a broadcast (presumably on SciFi), but who knows when that'll happen.
Well...that's all for today. Not sure when I'll be back next...so...
Be seeing you.
Psych
Monday, July 31, 2006
Thursday, July 20, 2006
A Short Trip
So we came down to
Departure day brought on a fall that produced a small cut on his forehead. With an appropriately placed bandage, we proceeded to the airport. The last time Mac flew on a plane he was six months old and we were taking a six hour flight to
We got some good advice from some friends. They told us when they “pre-board” people with small children, for one of us to go on with all the stuff and set up shop and the other to keep the kid off the plane until the very end (this way he runs around and burns off energy before having to sit for a long time). This was pretty easy since my mom was flying with us. She and I went on early and had everything set up by the time Mac & Tash got on at the end.
The flight itself was smooth and uneventful (aside from some heavy turbulence passing through a cloud). Malcolm was good (if a bit loud…he can be very vocal when he wants). And one of the flight attendants recognized us from the Christmas trip and commented on how well behaved a flier he was both times. I hope she didn’t jinx it for the return trip.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Desperate Dreams
While my ability to read anything longer than a comic book these days has pretty much evaporated, I still remain a loyal (if somewhat backlogged), Stephen King fan. I plan on bringing his latest (The Cell) with my on our trip to Florida next week. In the meatime, I'm catching up on viewing some stuff that was adapted from his works.
Desperation is an interesting novel by King. Published in 1996 as part of a marketing ploy in which Desperation and The Regulators (billed as a lost Richard Bachman book...Bachman being King's alter ego that was "outed in the 1980s). The two novels shared the same cast, just slightly askew (in one book a character would be a young man, in the other it was an old lady...for example). And like most of King's writing it had a very visual flair to it. I still have the image of the crucified cat burned into my brain (and not just because I'm a dog person who's allergic to cats). And I thought it would eb cool if they ever made one into a film that they could do the other using the same cast.
Anyway...at the end of May, ABC aired a three-hour TV movie version of Desperation directed by the King go-to-guy Mick Garris with an adaptation by KIng himself. The story starts off as a "typical" horror story about a psychotic sheriff who arrests and kills people for undisclosed reasons and evolves into a disertation on the existance of G-d and how "he" operates. The novel was a well crafted and sprawling piece with lots of character devlopment. The TV movie is a bit of a mess.
To make this story work on film it either needed to be a mini-series of about 4 or 6 hours, or an effective boiling down of the essence that ran around 2 hours. This seems to be trying for the latter, but doesn't quite succeed. The best example of this is the use of Matt Frewer as Ralph Carver. I'm a bit of a loss as to why an actor of his calibur took on a role that could have been completely removed from the proceedings without really changing anything. Same with Henry Thomas as Peter Jackson (he's dead within the first ten minutes and we don't really get to know much about him).
The casting works pretty well as Ron Perlman makes a forboding Sheriff Entragian and Tom Skerrit does a good job as the writer who's lost his way. But the story's main focus is young David Carver and Shane Haboucha doesn't quite give us what we need to believe in David as a character. At the end of the day, it's not a bad adaptation of a King novel, but it could have been so much better.
King's novels tend to be such rich tapestries of character and story that they are hard to adapt to film properly (in spite of that cinematic aspect his writing does seem to have). His short stories are another entity entirely. Sleek and direct, most of these are wonderfully crafted tales that are perfect for TV. Which is probably why TNT picked up an eight episode anthology series based on the short story collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes (although a few of the stories come from a couple of his other short story anthologies).
The series kicked off last night with one of my personal favories, Battleground, which finds hired assassin Jason Renshaw (William Hurt) receiving a package after killing the head of a major toy manufacturing company. The package contains twenty little green army men, a couple of jeeps and helicopters for them to ride in and a few other surprises. Needless to say, the army guys are there for revenge and Renshaw spends the night defending his apartment from a tiny invasion force.
Brilliantly directed by Brian Henson and adapted by Richard Christian Matheson this story is perfectly adapted to the screen. Running 11 pages in the original hardcover printing it fills out the 50 minutes of screentime (it ran commercial free on first airing) with a wonderfully suspenseful, dark and witty attitude. Matheson has not only updated the story (it was written in the 70s) to take advantage of modern technologies, he has stripped away all dialog from the original story. The tale doesn't need any exposition...it's all in the visuals and William Hurt is the perfect actor for that job. The effects are impressive for TV.
I haven't had a chance to watch the second episode Crouch End yet, but TNT will be airing two episodes back to back every Wedensday night for 4 weeks. The other six stories are Umney's Last Case, The Fifth Quarter, The Road Virus Heads North, The End of the Whole Mess, Autopsy Room 4 and You Know They Got a Hell of a Band. While it's cool to use Nightmares & Dreamscapes as an overall title, if you go looking for some of the stories you'll find them in other collections. Battleground is from Night Shift and both Autopsy Room 4 and The Road Virus Heads North are contained in Everything's Eventual. Let's hope these do well enough in the ratings to warrant more adaptations (like maybe a proper version of Children of the Corn).
That's all for now. Back next week with...something...
Be seeing you.
Desperation is an interesting novel by King. Published in 1996 as part of a marketing ploy in which Desperation and The Regulators (billed as a lost Richard Bachman book...Bachman being King's alter ego that was "outed in the 1980s). The two novels shared the same cast, just slightly askew (in one book a character would be a young man, in the other it was an old lady...for example). And like most of King's writing it had a very visual flair to it. I still have the image of the crucified cat burned into my brain (and not just because I'm a dog person who's allergic to cats). And I thought it would eb cool if they ever made one into a film that they could do the other using the same cast.
Anyway...at the end of May, ABC aired a three-hour TV movie version of Desperation directed by the King go-to-guy Mick Garris with an adaptation by KIng himself. The story starts off as a "typical" horror story about a psychotic sheriff who arrests and kills people for undisclosed reasons and evolves into a disertation on the existance of G-d and how "he" operates. The novel was a well crafted and sprawling piece with lots of character devlopment. The TV movie is a bit of a mess.
To make this story work on film it either needed to be a mini-series of about 4 or 6 hours, or an effective boiling down of the essence that ran around 2 hours. This seems to be trying for the latter, but doesn't quite succeed. The best example of this is the use of Matt Frewer as Ralph Carver. I'm a bit of a loss as to why an actor of his calibur took on a role that could have been completely removed from the proceedings without really changing anything. Same with Henry Thomas as Peter Jackson (he's dead within the first ten minutes and we don't really get to know much about him).
The casting works pretty well as Ron Perlman makes a forboding Sheriff Entragian and Tom Skerrit does a good job as the writer who's lost his way. But the story's main focus is young David Carver and Shane Haboucha doesn't quite give us what we need to believe in David as a character. At the end of the day, it's not a bad adaptation of a King novel, but it could have been so much better.
King's novels tend to be such rich tapestries of character and story that they are hard to adapt to film properly (in spite of that cinematic aspect his writing does seem to have). His short stories are another entity entirely. Sleek and direct, most of these are wonderfully crafted tales that are perfect for TV. Which is probably why TNT picked up an eight episode anthology series based on the short story collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes (although a few of the stories come from a couple of his other short story anthologies).
The series kicked off last night with one of my personal favories, Battleground, which finds hired assassin Jason Renshaw (William Hurt) receiving a package after killing the head of a major toy manufacturing company. The package contains twenty little green army men, a couple of jeeps and helicopters for them to ride in and a few other surprises. Needless to say, the army guys are there for revenge and Renshaw spends the night defending his apartment from a tiny invasion force.
Brilliantly directed by Brian Henson and adapted by Richard Christian Matheson this story is perfectly adapted to the screen. Running 11 pages in the original hardcover printing it fills out the 50 minutes of screentime (it ran commercial free on first airing) with a wonderfully suspenseful, dark and witty attitude. Matheson has not only updated the story (it was written in the 70s) to take advantage of modern technologies, he has stripped away all dialog from the original story. The tale doesn't need any exposition...it's all in the visuals and William Hurt is the perfect actor for that job. The effects are impressive for TV.
I haven't had a chance to watch the second episode Crouch End yet, but TNT will be airing two episodes back to back every Wedensday night for 4 weeks. The other six stories are Umney's Last Case, The Fifth Quarter, The Road Virus Heads North, The End of the Whole Mess, Autopsy Room 4 and You Know They Got a Hell of a Band. While it's cool to use Nightmares & Dreamscapes as an overall title, if you go looking for some of the stories you'll find them in other collections. Battleground is from Night Shift and both Autopsy Room 4 and The Road Virus Heads North are contained in Everything's Eventual. Let's hope these do well enough in the ratings to warrant more adaptations (like maybe a proper version of Children of the Corn).
That's all for now. Back next week with...something...
Be seeing you.
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