Climax de Hiatus: A TV Scorecard

Every show on the nets seems to be going on hiatus -- some for a few weeks, some for a few months.  Among the Rusherrific shows, a number are skidding to a (temporary) halt for quite a long spell ... and the last go-rounds of '09 run the gamut, from the classic cliffhanger to the satisfying pause that refreshes.  Let's be completely arbitrary and take an admittedly spoiler-iffic look at the last pre-hiatus episodes of some of our faves and not-so-faves ...

Stargate Universe: B+  This latest in the apparently immortal line of the Stargate franchise has been  decidedly upsy-downsy since its inception, with some of the best sf on TV in recent years and some of the whiniest do-nothing installments on record.  The tension between the militarists, civillians, and scientists all stuck on this Ancients' Ship to Nowhere has been growing since the beginning, and the chief scientist has been a manipulative and callous asshole from the git-go.  We knew something  had to happen .. but did any of us really think the military leader of this accidental expedition would actualy abandon the slimeball on a planet and walk away?  Yeah, sure, there's a ship there; we know the bastard's going to get it working and come curising back home as the second half's super-villain, but still: harsh, dude.  And rather cool.  Way to advance the premise.

White Collar: C-  Admittedly, this USA Network conman-and-FBI agent 'buddy' show baely qualifies as a mystery or a thirller, but the charm and chemistry between the two principles is undeniable.  That's why the final scene in the last epi was so unforgiveable. The Con Man has been bonding with the Agent all season long, as he helps solve lots of silly high-profile swindle-cases and murders while he not-so-secretly searches for his long=-lost girlfirend (who doesn't want to be found.)  And now, after al this bonding and banter, now we get a scene tha shows the agent as the bad-guy with the kidnapped babe in hiding, Now, come on.  We are not idiots.  Quite.  Yet.  You're not going to throw away one of the two stars on a cheap left-field play like this; you know the first line of the post-hiatus episode is something like, "How did you find me?" or it'll turn out she's the one doing the blackmailing or something else equally cheap and manipulative.  I would have thought better of this moderately clever show.  Now all that's keepingus watching is the denoument, not the characters we'd actually started to like.  *Sigh*

V: D+  And frankly it's be a straight "D" if it weren't for Morena Baccarin, who's so beautiful you have to bump the grade just for her alone (not to mention Alan Tudyk.  Hey, Firefly fans.  When do you think Nick Castle will be makin a cameo?)  The only notable thing about the end of the four-part (four parts?  That's it?) Fall "season" (more like an Indian summer) is that it was exaclty like the other three parts: nothing happened.  The big reveal is a yawner: "Ooooh, look!  More ships!"  And the "secret" of the aliens' real reason for being here makes no sense.  What, they want to use us for food?  This is n advanced civilization that can fly faster tha light; they can aleady grow human flesh so easily they use it as a cheap disguise for infiltrators.  You mean to tell us they haven't invented the concept of domestic farm animals?  Or even grow-in-a-vat Human Snacks?  What are we, a delicacy?  Have we become human caviar And besides, it's hard to take an alient race seriously when it has FTL ships but still uses hypdoermic needles, and apparenlty dislikes its own culture so much that the invaders speak English even when they're alone and away from humans.  *Yawn*  Possibly the most do-nothing non-delivery of the year here.  What was all the fuss about in the first place?  And if they don't think this dud of a conclusion is oging to hurt them, check and see who remembers (or cares) about this hsow when it reapears on teh schedule in four months.  By then, Chuck will be back and V will be a distant memory.

Glee: A.  Yes, it's not really a Rush kind'a show, but it does show you how a hiatus-break epi should work.  All the complex story lines established in the previous six episodes nicely and surprisingly tied up, a strong sense of completion, and yet enough open questions about pregnancies, revenge plots, and new romance to make you ache for its return, and yet be patient for the long, long break for the holidays and American Idol.  If only SGU, White Collar, and especially V had finished up the first half of their respective seasons with half as much lass and content.  We would all be the richer for it.

As it is .. hey, anybody got a spare copy of Christmas Story?  We haven't seen it twenty times this season.  Yet.  We can't wait.

Deadgirl: the most depressing zombie movie EVER

Zombies are fun, aren't they?  Gosh, yes!  Just look at Zombieland, or Shawn of the Dead or even Fido (which is really pretty good). Even look at I Am NOT Infected, here on the web (which we love). Laugh a minute, those shambling, decomposing, corpsefolkken. (We just made that up, but it sure sounds cool.)

But once in a while it's nice to remember the cultural antecedents of the Walking Dead -- you know, back when we shuddered at the dead part.  The idea of bodies physically rising from the grave, even as they rotted away, with no brain but an undying hunger for human flesh -- that was was supposed to horrify and repel us, remember?  For the most part, however -- absent 28 Days Later, which revived the brand a bit, albeit in fast motion -- we've  become inured to the whole concept.

C'mon.  Zombies are fun.  

Until you see Deadgirl.

In fact, Deadgirl has more in common with the bleak, existential "high school as Bergmanesque death camp" genre of filmmaking that has depressed us for years now than it does with Zombieland.  Think The River's Edge, or Brick -- both excellent films, but absolutely unremitting in their hopeless and almost lifeless view of life for the contemporary teenager.  Deadgirl shambles through the same territory, with a slow but relentless plot, a set of horribly convincing characters and portrayals, and a grimy, gray production design that gives "depressing" a whole new level of depth.

The plot is simple enough: a couple of bottom-of-the-barrel no-account teens, ditching school and looking for trouble, break into the sub-basement of an abandoned hospital (asylum, maybe?) and find what looks like the almost-freshly-deceased body of a teenage girl -- an exotic, even wild-looking girl they've never seen before.  She's strapped down every which-way, slightly blue and not breathing ... but as they go for a closer look she snaps to life and attacks them as best she can: with her teeth.  Mindless, roaring, twitching, she's obviously not dead at all and pretty damn crazy ... but she's not quite alive either.  And best of all .. she's theirs.

Rape, kidnapping, necrophilia ... all the very worst that lies just under the repellent surface of really serious zombie movies is here in stomach-churning profusion.  And though the ending may seem as inevitable as an oncoming freight train, you really, really don't want it to happen.  Please.  But it does.

Made for about a buck fifty by people you never heard of, Deadgirl is available on DVD and has been out for a while now.  And if you want to get a sense of just how undeniably creeeeeepy the whole "zombie" thing was back in the days of White Zombie and the original Night of the Living Dead, here's your chance.  Just plan to take a shower right after you watch it.

Is "Dilithium" Klingon for "Budweiser"?

The commentary on most DVDs really isn't worth the time to listen to it (in fact, most of the movie on DVD aren't worth watching that third, fourth, fifth time).  But once in a while you do get a wonderful little nugget.

Consider the otherwise-not-awesome commentary on the reboot of Star Trek, provided by J.J. Abrams, Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and exec producer Brian Burl in what must have been the ultimate Skype conference call.

The chatter and self-congratulation isn't awful; it's just not terribly exciting.  Though you do find out that there were whole chunks of movie, whole storylines that were written, filmed and even edited into the final product, then left for the "Deleted Scenes" section only because it would have made the movie an unmarketable 12 1/2 hours (or so it seems).  We also discover that many of the locations you thought wee sets constructed on the Paramount back lot were actually real, live (if odd) places: a blimp hangar, a mortuar chapel ... and a brewery.

That's the coolest one.  See this picture?

This is one of the busy below-decks places of the newly rebooted Enterprise -- a part of it that actually explains what most of the 400-and-some-odd crew people actually did, since as far as we could tell from the original series, the whole ship could be run by those nine or so people up on the bridge.

Anyway: it turns out this one particular set isn't a set at all -- it's part of a huge brewery in Southern California.  And those big silver tanks that the young, new Kirk is sprinting between?  Not filled with dilithium or some other exotic fuel or coolant or life-supporting gas.  Nah.  Filled with beer.  

Hey, you gotta do something in those long, long nights between planetfalls, don'tcha?

Riese: Gorgeous, Professional and ... Sssssslllloooowwwwwwww...

There are ten zillion web series out there now, and let's face it: most of them are pretty bad.  And the vast majority of them also fall into Rush territory: sf, fantasy, thrillers, mystery, suspense.  Which makes the
bad-osity that much harder to ignore.

The bad-osity isn't entirely because of the low to subzero production values.  In fact, a few -- like the classic, ever-clever The Guild and the lesser-known but pretty damn funny I am NOT Infected! take advantage of the "Hey, we're on the interwebs!" aspect or the non-existent budgets (though The Guild has gotten pretty fancy-schmancy in the last series) as parts of the story itself.  Others are totally obsessed wtih the capabilties of ridiculously inexpensive CGI or the specific sub-sub-subgenre they're part of or spoofing, and some are just plain obscure on purpose (does anybody understand Circle of 8?  Really?)

And then there's Riese, that falls somewhere in between.

Riese (and no, I don't know how to pronounce it. In the three episodes that have been released so far, no one had said it out loud) is a gorgeous wanderer, a mysterious warrior-woman in a damp and misty forest-world that looks slightly sword-and-sorceresque and a little post-apocalyptic. (The medical facilities, for instance, look much like a modern-day health center; the weaponry is pure Society for Creative Anachronism).  She's running from the oppressive religious government run by "The Sect," and they clearly want to get her, too. Oh, and she pals around with a big, beautiful wolf.  Yeah: a wolf.


Riese has production values as high as anything you'll see online, even stuff from the big boys like Paramount Digital and Joss Whedon.  And it's not quite as impossible to follow as some of its kin.  But the pacing?  Slooooowwwwww ... and after three episodes, each about 9 minues in length, we STILL don't know anyhing more a out the main chraacter, really, or the "Sect" that seems to control this mildewy medieval world.(It has that same damp deep-north-forest look that all Canadian series shot out-of-doors has; it owes more to Jeremiah than to Mad Max.

The costumes are great, the production design in general -- especially the matte painting -- is lovely.  But come ON, people, STEP IT UP SOME, willya?  A little less of the ominous and portentous, and a little bit more kickin' ass and telling us who's doing what to whom.  Not to mention how to pronounce "Riese" and why all the women are dressed like extras from that bad Flash Gordon remake froma couple years back.  And if y'all can learn the basic idea of the set-up and the pay-off, the teaser and the cliff-hanger ... well, these nine-minute episodes would seem a whole lot shorter, and we'd be much more inclined to continue.

In oh so many of these web series, you can tell in the first two minutes whether or not the show is worth your time.  Riese definitley is.  Probably.  Potentially.  But pretty soon now, it's going to have to be something other than just pretty to look at. It's going to have to do something, too.

Firefly's "Mal" Makes a Special Appearance on Castle

Yes, it's horribly self-referential and cute, but, as Nathan Fillion/Mal/Castle himself says, "I like it!"  Nice to see he still fits into the old suit.  Imagine William Shatner trying to do this five years after TOS went off the air.  (Nah he was too busy doing The Barbary Coast right about then.  OMG .. The Barbary Coast.  Don't make me remember, don't make me remember!!)

"For Castle Greyskuaaaahhh, never mind..."

Hey!  Master THIS! 

Once upon a time, in a far-off time when Mattel ruled the world, there was an ectomorphic hero with a pageboy haircut with the embarrassing name of He-Man.

He began as a cheaply made toy; became a cheaply made cartoon; and ultimately a cheaply made fantasy/action movie that Dolph Lundgren (and many others, especially Courtney Cox and Frank Langella) would like to forget.

And yet ... it lives on.

In fact, yet another version of He-Man (and, one  must assume, the far more interesting She-Ra and Skeletor) has been in development at Paramount for more than two years.  (No, don't ask why.  No one knows.)  And in a sudden burst of good sense, Warner Bros (and therefore Joel Silver) have let the option with Mattel lapse, and the mythic Grayskull: Masters of the Universe is no more.

WB says they're going to go elsewhere; the director of Kung Fu Panda says he's kinda/sorta interested, but really -- is Matell going to let the denizens of Eterna get the KFP treatment?

We think not.

The whole affair is really just an indication of how desperate the studios are to find, revive, re-animate (so to speak), "reimagine" any damn franchise they can find.  Even the lamest of the lame.  (Sorry, Battlecat, but it's true.)

The Best Horror/Comedy on the Web: I Am Not Infected

For almost a year now, I Am NOT Infected has been telling the story of three ... well, total jack-asses, really -- trapped in a deserted L.A., inhabited by themselves, a dwindling number of really stupid zombies, and not much else.  And given that, it's amazing how much trouble they can get into while accomplishing almost nothing in the way of self-preservation. 

For more than 27 episodes, I Am NOT Infected has told a surprisingly subtle and complex story, with a new ep every two weeks or so (and continuing: the current installment is less than two weeks old).  And it is, by turns, apalling, hilarious, icky, exciting, and just plain weird. 

But rather than describe it endlessly, just go look.  It's one of the best-made and least-known horror web show around.  Let's viralate this mother!  (Did we just make up a new verb?  Well, it's about time SOMEbody did!)

 

Dean Koontz Goes a Little Funny in the Head

Relentless ... or Ridiculous?

It's almost not news that Dean Koontz has a new book out his month. Dean Koontz always has a new book out this month. Or next month. Or last month.

This new one, Relentless, has all the Koontzian commonplaces: a 'soft' man -- a writer -- as hero, with a brilliant kid, and wonderful dog, and a big-ass problem with evil/madness.

But there is something different about this one: basically, it's so over the top, we're not sure if Dean's kidding or not.

In Relentless, the protagonist is a relatively successful novelist, "Cubby" Greenwich ("Cubby"? Really?), whose new book gets widespread good reviews .. except from Sherman Waxx, "the nation's premier literary critic." Waxx (what is it with these names?) hates Cubby's book, and apparently in this Koontzian parallel world, people actually read and pay attention to book reviewers (ew! It's like Salem's Lot, only with critics!).

Cubby's career and mental stability immediately crumble because of the Waxx's wrath, so -- of course! -- he obsesses on Waxx. He even finds out where the creep has lunch, at a bistro in Southern California that just happens to be near Cubby's own digs, and in an ... odd? ... confrontation, Cubby's ever-so-cute six-year-old son -- a prodigy, of course -- nearly pees on the literary lion. To which the critic responds in the only way a nationally recognized book critic could: he blows up Cubby's house.

No. Really. He blows up his house.

Now Cubby and his family are on the run, and the damn near omniscient critic is giving chase. There's even a science fictional element thrown in rather late in the game, to justify some of the more absurd aspects of the story, but all in all, one is rather forced to ask oneself ... what the hell?

You could read this as a dark satire, or as a revenge fantasy from a very successful but wholly unappreciated pop fiction writer, or just a really bad idea for a thriller. There is an element of the irrational in the entire genre, we're aware of that: some absurdly awful thing that happens at just the right time to just the right person to make an interesting story. But this?

Dean Koontz himself wrote one of the best books ever about writing popular fiction called -- get this -- Writing Popular Fiction. It's out of print now, damn it, but we're sure Dean's got a few copies floating around in the library of his Orange County, California home. Maybe it's time to take a quick re-reading and follow some of his own advice. 'Cause Mr. Koontz? Relentless? Not so much.

Great Moments in Special Effects

Giant Shark Eats 747.  No, really. 

There is absolutely nothing to recommend SyFy's recent Saturday Night original movie, Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  In fact, it may be one of the worst pick-ups that SyFy has foisted upon us, and that's taking into account such crap-bad classics as Mansquito and Frankenfish.  Even the, ah, stellar performance by former teenybop singer Debbie "Deborah" Gibson and a bunch of B-level Canadian actors you never heard of couldn't elevate this muddled, boring, and ultimately embarrassing piece of work. 

Except ...

Except this may be the only time you ever get to see a shark eat an airplane.  A big airplane, like a  727 or an L-1011.  But after all, it's a big shark, too.

As the years go by, we may remember M-SvGO not at all ... except, for this:

Sn*kes *n a Pl*ne gets cleaned up. Damn it.

Monkey-Fighting?  Monday to Friday? 

One of our favorite web sites, Black Horror Movies, was the first one to point out this YouTube memoirialization of a classic action line -- the admittedly obscene slogan out of Samuel L. Jackson's Snakes on a Plane -- in what may be the single worst redubbing on film. 

Yeah, yeah, we understand the realities of FCC regulations and 'family hour'  but people, really.  Sometiemes we'd all be better off if you just cut the monkey-fightin' scene entirely, and leave us our Monday to Friday memories alone, you know? 

Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair:

The Shining meets Piano Cat ... the horror!

Just this one time.  We promise. 

We here are the Rush tend not to get involved in viral videos -- whatever the current trend might be -- but somtimes it's almost impossible to resist.

Current star of the interwebs, Piano Cat, has now invaded one of the classics of horror, Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of Stephen King's The Shining.  Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Jennifer's Body? True Blood? YOU be the judge!

We always like to point out this odd little coincidences -- that's all it is, right?  A coincidence? -- in imagery, like the famous Enron/TRON confabulation.  This time it seems to have happened with a promo poster for the Megan Fox vampire-horror-chiller-theater flick, Jennifer's Body ... and the beloved and increasingly cool HBO vampire series, True Blood. 

Look at this remarkable, ah, parallel evolution:

 

Here's the JB poster ...

 

Which came after the True Blood poster ...

Both of which look like a slightly messy version of the famous Rolling Stones logo, but still ...

Must have been a coincidence.  Must have been.

Special thanks to MonsterScholar at MonsterLand, one of our favorite blogs about ... well, monsters ... for being the first to point this out. 

We're just sayin' ...

True Blood: In the Beginning

The Art of the Title

The new season of True Blood  is almost finished, and it's just as weird as it was back on Episode One, Season One.  And one of the weirdest parts -- and least acknowledged -- is the title sequence at the beginning of each episode.

Where else are you going to find a river baptism, a road-killed possum, a country wedding, pole dancing, and a fast-motion rotting fox all in 45 strange seconds of jerky, old-style, over-processed in a single sequence, set to Jace Everett's Bad Things?  If the show itself were half as weird as the opening images, we're not sure if anybody could get through it.

Check out the sequence here ... or every week (over and over) on HBO.

3 out of 4 critics don't like Jennifer's Body...

 

Megan Fox, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.

There was a fair amount of buzz out and about re: Jennifer's Body, the latest in America's endless stream of multiple-murder teen horror flicks. This time, it was enlivened by the presence of ultrasupermegahottie Megan Fox in the title role and screenwriter Diablo Cody, of Juno fame. The basic premise sounded cool, too: gorgeous, popular cheerleader Jennifer is lured into the forest and assaulted by the high school football team (or most of it), but doesn't die: she comes back inhabited by a shapeshifting demon with needle-sharp teeth, bent on revenge. Or is it ... justice?

...Unfortunately, the final mishmash -- commonly described as a cross between Mean Girls and I Know What You Did Last Summer -- hasn't gotten a whole lot of love from critics or viewers. About two out of three of the reviewers didn't care for it. Peter Howell of the Toronto Star says, "Jennifer's Body comes across as Diablo Cody lite, something she seems to have dashed off in-between talk show appearances and updating her MySpace page with her latest caustic witticisms." (Oooh, jealous much?) Ty Burr of the Boston Globe observes, "Jennifer's Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre." Rafer Guzman of Newsday says it best: "Last year, a ... horror flick called Teeth, about a ... girl who had incisors where she shouldn't, covered this territory with more creativity, complexity and humor. Jennifer's Body, for all its promise, could use some of that bite." And even the critics who give it a luke-warm thumb's up damned it with faint praise, using words like, "common, doesn't deliver, serviceable" while excusing it as a send-up, an allegory about women's empowerment, or just "one of those movies that you'll like if you like this sort of movie." Yeah, that's why we go to see horror movies: to see something really, really serviceable.

Probably the most interesting thing about Jennifer's Body is what's going on around it -- the growing backlash concerning Megan Fox's alleged brains and bad attitude, jealousy or skepticism about Cody Diablo as a celebrity screenwriter. Seems like there's more entertainment to be had reading the jibes and counter-jibes at Fox from anonymous Transformers crew members, or even well-reasoned contemplations of the life of times of Ms. Diablo, like Desson Thomson's recent piece in The Wrap.

Dan Simmons' Drood Finally Appears

Those of us who have known and loved Dan Simmons' work through all is genres, way back to the pre-Empyrion, pre-Carrion Comfort, even pre-Song of Kali days -- have been waiting forhis latest masterwork, Drood, for a long, long time.  Now, finally, it's arrived: by far the most anticipated work from this damn fine writer.  

Like The Terror before it, Simmons has taken a shard of 'real' history and  crafted a work of speculative history (?) that is fascinating, terrifying, and even convincing.  This time it is about the dark final days of Charles Dickens, who, at the height of his fame and fortune, was involved in a horrible train wreck that changed his life for the worst and apparently transformed the writer in an isolated, moody and much darker man who became obsessed with death, and with what would be his final (unifnished?) work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  And to add a whole 'nother later, Simmons has this strange story narrated through a recently unearth "journal" authored by Wilkie Collins, a real, live writer and friend of Dickens whose The Woman in White and The Moonstone helped to invent the entire mystery/detective genre ... though this petulant and jealous characterization just adds even more sweet ambiguity to the story, from its very first pages.

Simmons changes genres with a head-spinning ease and authenticity, and though this is a long, long book by today's standards -- just like The Terror before it -- it's worth every minute.

A Werewolf, a Vampire, and a Ghost Walk Into an Apartment...

The BBC continues to produce a far more interesting array of supernatural / action series than the US of A, and Being Human -- now appearing on BBC America -- is a prime example.

It sounds terribly cheesy: it's modern day, and a mousey werewolf, a darkly handsome vampire straight out of Twilight, and a pretty girl-ghost who's a bit of a compulsive talker all rent a flat together in suburban England.  And there are problems almost from the outset with rival vampire sects, the blood-sucker's whacky (and undead) ex-girlfriend, the werewolf's libido and the ghost's unfortunate murder...

Well-acted, well-written, and shot with a strange matter-of-factitude that makes the scary parts even scarier, it's an undiscovered little treasure hiding at the far end of the dial. 

There are six episodes in the first season, and rumors of a second series in the works (nothing official yet, but the first one just finished in the UK, with strong ratings).  And this is good enough that you'd try it even if it wasn't the only new stuff on TV this side of Leverage.

del Toro and Vampires Invade New York. Yay!

A jumbo jet lands at JFK, but instead of rolling up to the jetway it stops dead in the middle of the tarmac.  Its windows are shut.  Its radio is silent.  And everyone inside, lying there in the dark, is dead.

It is the first evidence that something has gone terribly wrong in the world -- of the arrival of vampirism in the modern world. And it is only the beginning. As the promo copy says:

In one week, Manhattan will be gone.

In one month, the country.

In two months -- the world.

Vampire-invasion novels are making a major return this year and next, beginning today with the hardcoverpublication of The Strain, the first in a trilogy by renowned horror/ adventure director Guillermo del Toro and Hammet Award-winning novelist Chuck Hogan (Prince of Thieves).

This is serious horror-adventure, much more in the vein -- sorry -- of Stephen King’s classic Salem’s Lot or Richard Matheson’s original I am Legend than the quasi-romantic Twilight series or urban-fantasy romps of Laurel K. Hamilton and her own dark breed.  And del Toro comes to the field with some great prior experience; he director Blade II, created and directed The Devil’s Backbone, Mimic, both Hellboys, and the amazing Pan’s Labyrinth, while Hogan has already proven himself as a consummate stylist and storyteller.

Modern-day vampires is a substantial horror subgenre in its own right.  You could go all year and read nothing but -- some of it actually very good, like Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series or Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s wonderful wrought historical novels feature Le Comte de Saint Germaine and his spawn.  At any given moment, those friggin' bloodsuckers are inhabiting at least one of the top ten spots on the best-seller list and/or the box office over-achievers, but this is the first time that the movie-guys and the writer-guys have gotten together ... and given del Toro’s already well-established oddness in imagery and conception, this could turn out to be one wonderful hell-ride.

It should be about a day and a half before the film options are announced, though if del Toro himself takes is on we’ll have to wait in line – he’s already committed to directing the two-movie series of The Hobbit for Peter Jackson -- but in the meantime: the bad boys are back.  Enjoy.

Neil Gaiman vs. Stephen Colbert ... and Gaiman Wins!!

Incredible but true!!

It was, without a doubt, one of the oddest interviews this season, part of a show which consistently has the oddest interviews on TV.  Stephen Colbert, in full fulmination, grilled Neil (Sandman, Neverwhere, Coraline) Gaiman about his newest YA novel, The Graveyard Book.  Gaiman actually held his own, didn't try too hard to out-weird Stephen, and actually seemed to be enjoying himself.  And who'd have thought that Colbert would not only know who Tom Bombadil was, but could actually recite a whole Tolkien ditty about the man?  As previously reported: weird...

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Neil Gaiman

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Mark Sanford
NASA Name Contest

Outlander: An Overlooked Gem

It was in the theaters for about an hour and a half, and slipped onto DVD shelves in May with barely a quiver, but amidst all the slam-bang-boom of the summer blockbusters, perhaps the best fantasy / action / adventure / sf / monster / kick-ass movie of the year remains: Outlander.

Simple but surprising plot: an alien soldier, indistinguishable from humans, crashes on Earth and inadvertently releases a horrible creature, the Morwen, on an unsuspecting Earth, where it immediately begins killing as fast as it can. The alien enlists the help of the locals to capture and kill the thing before it can kill even more and propagate. Major problem: the alien landed in Norway c. 905. So it's Vikings vs. Predator/Alien, but better.

Jim Caviezel is tremendous as Kainan, the alien solider/hero. Sophia (Moonlight) Myers is absolutely beautiful and believable as Freya, his warrior-woman love, and you'll barely recognize a near-cameo of Ron (Hellboy) Perlman as a rival king. But the real star of the movie is the Morwen, without a doubt the best CG monster of the year and then some. And you should see it underwater. And on fire! And this ain't even the climax! It's an excellent example of just how good CG can be if the design and animation is top-notch and the context and editing seals the deal.

Here’s a merely representative sequence from the middle of the movie – this ain’t even the climax! – to show just how good CG can be if the design and animation is top-notch and the context and editing seals the deal.



The good news:  Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain, who wrote this nice piece, (McCain directed, too) have just been hired to do a major rewrite on the Conan the Barbarian script (and no, they still haven't cast Conan yet)..  Maybe there’s hope for that project after all…

Netflix or buy Outlander here.

Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself: Now THAT'S Fantasy!

Let's face it: most sword and sorcery books are pretty crappy.  Or at least repetitive.  Or treacly.  All those fairies and elves and boggies and such.

But once in a while, an author comes along with a story that brings the thud and blunder back to thud and blunder: real characters, great action, a convincing take on magic, even a little realpolitk.

We won't even attempt to summarize the plot -- or plots, really.  Suffice to say there are a variety of fascinating folks, from a barbarian named Nine Fingers to a spoiled-rotten swordsman, from an ill-tempered wizard to a sad, mad, cruel ex-swordsman turned torturer ... and they all come together in a complex but hugely satisfying story of intrigue and adventure.

Pyr, a division of the British publisher Prometheus, has released all three books of "The First Law" series at once -- and even the cover designs are cool! -- making for an easy and easy-to-access read.

Last time we saw this kind of enjoyable realism wih a sense of humor was Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series ... and that was fifteen years ago.  If you like that -- and haven't care for a hell o a lot since -- then The First Law, beginning with The Blade Itself, just might be for you.

Life in Mars cancelled, but gets a real ending

Life on Mars, the ABC-TV half time-travel, half-retro, half-cop-show action series starring Jason O'Mara, has been cancelled only four months after its premiere, with 14 shows in the can.  It really never did catch a break, from a lack of publicity at the ouset (in spite of its coverted post-Lost time-slot) to the last-minute re-casting  (Colm Meaney out, Harvey Keitel in).  All in all, you could see the handwriting scrawled across the HD screen weeks ago.

But here's the good news: the Powers That Be were kind enough to cancel the show ealry enough that Life on Mars wwill get an actual ending, and most (if not all) of the quesitons about Sam's sudden trip to the past via car-crash will be answered.  Is he in a coma?  Is he dead and just doesn't know it?  Is he actually visiting the 70’s, God help him?  All will be revealed during its last episode in May.  Watch The Rush for details!

Robert Ludlum: The Busiest Dead Writer in America

It's truly odd: during most of his long and prolific career, Robert Ludlum couldn’t get Hollywood to answer the phone. But since his death in 2001 at the age of 73 from a subdural hematoma, he's been doing very, very well.

It's true that his 25 pre-death novels have done well; enough in bookstores. most are still in print and even during his lifetime, he attached legendary directors like John Frankenheimer and Sam Peckinpah.

Major-at-the-time stars responded, too, like Burt Lancaster and Michael Caine. But the movies that resulted didn’t light up anybody's marquee, and by the time Ludlum died the most interest his work could generate was an off-brand mini-series based on The Apocalypse Watch, starring sadly minor attractors like Patrick Bergin and a pre-Sideways Virginia Madsen.

Then he died. And then came Matt Damon.

Since then, of course, he's had a hell of a posthumous ride. Not one, not two, but three Bournemovies, with rumors of more in the works, that have blown the tops off of various box offices. A string of 'new' novels under the Ludlum name, many of which have sold as well as the old stuff that Ludlum himself actually wrote, and no less than three more Ludlum projects in various stages of big-time movie-making.

And now the newest: a version of his global conspiracy novel The Materese Circle is set to star not only Denzel Washington, but Tom Cruise as well.

You can look on the bright side and say that good material rises to the top, even if it takes some time getting there (though there are many critics that would disagree with that re: Ludlum, and point to how little the movies retain from R.L.'s source material). Or you could look on the slightly more cynical side and lament how the best thing that ever happened to Mr. Ludlum was dying. Since then, he's been a growth industry.

Battle for the Cowl: Batman is Now a Big Dick

It's been the talk of comics this Spring -- or at least DC hopes it's been the talk of comis this Spring.  At the end of the stunning (and horribly confusing) crossover extravanaza called Final Crisis, Batman -- the original Batman, the one and only Bruce Wayne -- was fried in his suit like a lobster in its shell, right there in front of Superman and everybody.  He is presumed dead , once and for all ...

...and yet the world still needs a Batman.  As does the Trademark and Licensing Division of Time Warner, owner of DC Comics. 

Over the last three months, a host of interconnected series and one-shots have followed the "Battle for the Cowl.," as various characters in the DC Universe contemplated taking on the Bat-identity"  For all the hoopla, however, the serious list of major contenders was pretty short: the three Robins and a couple of dead guys:

Tim Drake, the current Robin, #3 in a series (collect 'em all!) seemed a little too young and, well, short, to put on the suit (he's just about to graduate from high school, and smart and determined as he may be, he's still just a Robin, y'know? 

Jason Todd, the fully grown #2 Robin, seemed equally unlikely.  He was infamously killed a few years ago -- blowed up real good by the Joker -- and then brought back to life in a complicated parallel-world-Ra's A Ghul resurrection process, sometimes playing the diabolical villain in a red hood, sometimes the reluctant hero in a leather jacket, and sometimes acting like a flat-out psycho, as in the Battle for the Cowl series where we wears a kind of BDSM incarnation of the Batman suit and shoots people alot (this descent into pure psychosis comes after his lengthy and far less nutso portrayal in the previous big crossover.  Talk about being ill-served.) 

Other likely candidates, like the grimly homicidal Jean Paul Valley, who put on a high-tech version of the suit a few years ago when Bruce broke his back (man, that guy has had it rough!), is also dead and not resurrected, and the new Azrael -- the subject of one of the more interesting series out of "Battle" -- is a newbie in the DC Universe.  The Powers that Be are certainly not going to turn over the company's #1 icon to an unknown -- especially a (gasp!) black man, since that open-bottomed cowl would make it a little tough to carry one without questions.  And all the other contenders presented during the "Battle" -- Hush, Catman, Bane -- don't ask unless you want a five-hour dissertation on recent Bat-History -- just didn't make sense.

No, from the very beginning there's been only two real possibilities: ( 1 ) Bruce himself would come back from the dead, like Superman did after his "death" a few years ago, or ( 2 ) Robin #1, now known as Nightwing, good ol' Dick Grayson, would finally assume the position (so to speak).

One Dead Bruce to Go.  It's generally believed that Bruce is not, in fact, dead; the last couple panels of Final Crisis make is clear (as clear as anything in that series) that some version of Bruce does, in fact, persist -- though how much he's like 'our' Bruce is uncertain.  And he's clearly out of reach at the moment.  At last report no one in the DC Universe knows he exists, and he's stuck in the distant prehistoric past.  And only Tim Drake, now in the guise of an 'adult' Red Robin, is even looking for him.

At last: Bat-Dick?  Dick-Man?  Bat-Boy?  In retrospect, it was pretty obvious from the outset.  Everybody kept saying, "Do it, Dick, DO IT!" and though he refused at the beginning -- after all, he'd worked pretty hard on the whole "Nightwing" persona for a number of years -- it wasn't clear why he was so dead set against carrying on the tradition, especially in view of the other pathetic alternatives.  Ultimately, he mumbled something about a promise that Bruce himself had extracted, that he wouldn't take up the cowl ... but ultimately, he decided, the hell with that.  Gotham's falling apart, despite the best efforts of about twenty other superheroes.  And the only available Bat is Dick Grayson.  Thus, at the end of the third and final issue of the "Battle for the Cowl" series: Dick does it.

The Bat is Dead, Long Life the Bat.  What this will mean for the Nightwing persona is unclear.  Though never as popular as the "A" list heroes, he has a long and well-respected tradition, and no one likely to pick up the Nightmask.   

So who's going to be Dick's Robin? Bruce Wayne's biological son Damien, fathered during his seduction by Ra's al Gul's daughter Thalia, has become Robin#4 while #3 gets the hell outta town. Which, considering he's a spoiled brat and a bit of a violence-prone nut job himself, makes for an  'interesting' duo ... at least until Bruce comes home to claim his birthright and kick some ass.

We're guessing...March 2010 latest: Bruce Wayne reappears and the real battle begins!

Dr Who: "The Next Doctor" Premieres Saturday

There won’t be a weekly Doctor Who in 2009, but there will be a series of two-hour movies, starring the inimitable David Tennant as The Doctor, but without a consistent Companion. He picks up (and drops) new ones in each movie, including this one, which originally aired in the UK on Chistmas Day. And at that time it was also known that David Tennant would soon be leaving the role, as nine had before him, and someone would be taking his place as the Eleventh Doctor.

Why did it take six full months for the Christmas Special to appear on this side of the on?  Anybody’s guess.  But one of the clever centerpieces of the piece is blown to pieces by this, ah, time slip, so to speak. 

At the time of its original airing, much ink was spread and speculation swirled around David Morrisey, a well-respect British actor who appears to be a (slightly befuddled ) future regeneration of The Doctor who has lost his way. Would he be the new Doctor?  Was this the much-anticipated, even –dreaded, Regeneration Episode?

We won’t give it away entirely,  but it’s really not much of a secret anymore.  Any Who fan worthy of the name knows what nobody knows on December 25, 2008: this guy here is going to be the next Doctor, not David Morrisey.

And as of June 25, another Tennant-based Who-movie, The Land of the Dead, has already aired (it’s okay, but not as good as The Next Doctor).  And the next, The Waters of Mars, is filming now and will air in the UK in November.  When it will air in the US is anyone's guess.

As for The Next Doctor, you’re in for a rollckin’ good Victorian time, as The Doctor lands in London, 1851 and unravels a mystery that involves watches, memory, murder and the return of the biggest Cyberman you ever saw, not to mention the King – ah, Queen – ah, King? – of the Cybermen.  Great fun … just a little late out of the starting gate.  

Quite Possibly the Worst World-Whacker Ever Made. Seriously.

Asteroids, comets, moons, planets smashing into Earth and ending everything -- everything.  You'd think the all those celestial bodies ramming into each other, ending in total extinction events, would have enough inherent drama and visual potential to make a bunch of great movies. 

Apparently not.  Global annihilation just isn’t enough anymore.  You gotta go big, son, really big. 

At least that's what the makers of Impact, an 'original' (and never has the term been used so loosely) new miniseries on ABC seem to think .  It's everything but the kitchen sink, and bits and pieces from every bad world-whacker since 1951, all rolled into one big sticky ball, starring the guy from JAG and the babe from Species.  Check out the trailer…

Impact

An asteroid hitting the moon and sending it towards Earth?  Not enough.  So ... having a fragment of a brown dwarf star "hiding behind" that meteor shower, embedding itself in the falling moon, so now it weighs more than Jupiter?  Better, but still ... Okay, have some of the moon-parts moving a zillion times after than the bulk of it, so they arrive, like. minutes after the collision -- and more than a month before the rest of it?  You're getting there.  Okay, okay: have the moon-dwarf-star-thing so hyped up on "electromagnetic energy" (yeah, we don't know what that means either) that it actually overwhelms gravity, so people and trains and stuff can go floating into the air at random points and time -- whenever it's dramatic.  Okay, now we got a movie.

Unfortunately, it's a really awful movie, with bits stolen from every previous bad world-whacker of the last sixty years, from When Worlds Collide (1951 – Barbara Rush!  John Hoyt!  Really cool spaceships!) to Meteor (1979, the first truly awful star-studded extravaganza, with the likes of Sean Connery and Natalie Wood, among too many others) to Asteroid (1997, TV.  A pre-Katrina fantasy with Michael [Terminator, Aliens] Biehn as an actually heroic FEMA Director) to the nearly simultaneous entries of Deep Impact (1998, a true weeper with Tea Leoni being all serious and Morgan Freeman as a – get this-- inspirational black president! Ha!) and the still-embarrassing Armageddon (1998, Bruce Willis as a drilling expert who saves the world but loses his life and Ben Affleck at his most ineffectual [okay, except for Daredevil] has a long and distinguished and/or embarrassing history in literature and film.  Thinking back , there really hasn't been a good movie about the subject yet.  And judging by Impact ... there still isn't.

Not that the battle is over: far from it.  The very first world-whacker, When Worlds Collide, is slated for the remake express, directed by Stephen (GI Joe, The Mummy) Sommers  with a scheduled release date of 2010.  Look ouuuuuuut!