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: