Hart to Hart to Bartowski to Walker

NBC's been having much fun with these cute "Sneak Peeks" of their current series, showing up on the web and elsewhere, and this one's a keeper: a promo for Chuck that's an affectionate tribute to one of the great cheesy whodunnits of the 70's, Hart to Hart.

Enjoy ...

 

A New Rockford? No. Just ... No.

Let's be clear here: we have nothing against Dermot Mulroney. We can't actually can't remember anything he was in, except maybe The Family Stone and a couple of romantic comedies. Still, we're sure he's a perfectly nice guy. But ... Jim Rockford? 

There is only one Jim Rockford.  There were always only be one Jim Rockford. And he's not making TV shows or movies anymore.  He's in  graceful, modest retirement in his mobile home down in Crystal Cove, and we should just leave him alone.

Sure, there's an attempt to treat this "property" - ew! -- with respect. Alan (Dollhouse, Firefly, V) Tudyk will impersonate Dennis Becker; Beau (Do we even have to list them?) Bridges will stand in for the late Noah Beery, Jr. as Jim's dad, but it doesn't matter. There are certain stories that are unique to their times, intimately and irrevocably connected to a special time and place -- and a special face. James Garner and the folks who created the original show deserve to have that artifact left undisturbed. There are plenty of new ideas, plenty of "properties" that haven't been done or were done poorly the first time around. Go find them. Expand the world. Just don't mess with one of the brightest spots in 70's TV. Garner deserves better.  Hell, Mulroney deserves better.

Let Jim Rockford alone.

 

Stargate: Universe on its way back, and cooler than ever

... as if that's possible.  Yes, it's kind of the Battlestar: Galactification of the strangely cheerful and daffy Stargate Universe, but still: VERY cool. The "lost in space" story that Voyager only wishes it could have been.

It looks like many of the plot threads laid down in the first half of the season are picked right up without a pause when the second half of Season One premiere on April 4 on the SyFy Channel.  The trailer barely whets our appetite.  And we agree with the funny guy: in the Stargate universe(s), "We are 0 for 3 when it comes to close encounters." (If you don't count the ancients, and we don't.) Let's hope things pan out better for them this time. Or at least that they stay interesting.

Here's the trailer:

 

Woody and the Hatter: Separated at Birth?

In honor of the wide release of Alice in Wonderland, we bring you this post from last month ... 

 Images of Tim Burton's take on Alice in Wonderland have been leaking out for quite a while now, and yes, there has been something disturbingly ... familiar about the art direction.  Sure, sure, obviously the Queen of Hearts is a grotesque rendering of early Queen Elizabeth I with a dash of  Bette Davis, the White Queen looks like a marceled silent film star, and the March Hare resembles a pop-eyed, brain-challenged Senator from Sath Ca'lina.  We just couldn't figure out who Johnny Depp's Hatter most resembled ... until Rotten Tomatoes made the mistake of putting these two pictures next to each other:

Need we say more?  And -- wait, is that Pixar's attorney calling?  Hellewww....?

 

Bob from ReGenesis Returns (if only for a moment)

Once upon a time -- from 2004 to 2008, actually, there was a totally cool Canadian TV show called Regenesis. (Yes, we are well aware: using the words "cool," "Canadian," and "TV show" in close proximity is a rare and often erroneous thing, unless, of course, you're talking about Corner Gas.  Still, it's true.) The hour-long drama starred the remarkably intelligent and intense Peter Outerbridge as a brilliant viral investigator with an unlikeable, almost House-like temperament, running NorBAC, an international team of equally brilliant viral investigators who try to keep nightmarish outbreaks from occurring throughout the Americas. The show lasted for four seasons; the first two are particularly absorbing and complex, in no small part because of some creative and unexpected characterizations. (And best of all the first three seasons are available for free on Hulu. Start with Episode 1, Season 1. You won't regret it.)

Chief among the fascinating characters: Bob Melnikoff, Outerbridge's right-hand man and probably the only scientist on staff who was actually smarter than Outerbridge's David Sandstrom.  Unfortunately, Bob had a fairly serious case of Aspberger's Syndrome, and though he was thoroughly off-putting at first, fans of the show -- and there were plenty -- quickly warmed to the quirky but charming work of Dmitry Chepovetsky as Bob himself.
The show ended rather abruptly and unceremoniously, and one can't help but wonder whatever became of poor Bob, a great scientist but -- outside of this fictional facility -- completely unemployable.

Well, good news! Chepovetsky may not have landed another series -- yet! --, but Bob lives on! Under the obvious and embarrassing pseudonym of "James," Bob somehow made it all the way into the U.S. and over to California, where he apparently found a gig with an ill-fated biotech company outside Santa Barbara.  That's where Sean and Gus of Psych caught up with him, in a recent episode called "Death Is In The Air." (Also available on Hulu, as it happens.)

It really is kind of odd. It's the same actor playing essentially the same role, in an entirely different context. But it almost makes you feel like you're dropping in on an old friend, and it's nice to see that Bob's still lhanging in there (though, as you'll see from the clip, his muted delight at the prospect of the company "coming back" is particularly poignant with the backstory.

Anyway: here's a shout-out from The Rush to Bob Melnikov: HEY, BOB!

 

Reality Horror? Dahhh...

Sometimes we just don't know what to think.

Suicide Girls has been a strange punk/hip/sexy website for a long time. Reality TV has become a staple of broadcasting over the last decade or so. And horror movies are as old as movies themselves. But ... all three at once? In a single movie?

Here's the nearly inexplicable hook for Suicide Girls Must Die, opening next week:

"Twelve sexy, edgy, beautiful women from the famed SuicideGirls website shoot a pin-up calendar while staying at a remote cabin in Maine. One by one, the girls start disappearing, leaving the others scared and running for their lives. Seen through the eyes of both hidden and the girls' own cameras, this unscripted story captures the ladies - all non-actors and unaware their every move is being recorded - in the first reality horror movie of its kind."

Directed by ... ah ... "Sawa Suicide." Uh-HUH And starring  Amina, Daven, Evan, Fractal, James, Joleigh, Quinne, Rigel, Roza, Sawa  herself, and of course the ever-popular Roach.  

We will absolutely avoid any silly, punny titles like "The Blair Bitch Project" or "Pornographic Activity." Instead, we'll just share the trailer and take one of the girls' advice: "Don't wear glasses or have sex with anyone."

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RiffTrax: MST3K 2010

We loved Mystery Science Theater 3000.  It was the perfect marriage of bad science fiction and horror and syspense movies with the smart-assedness that got us into so much trouble all the way through high school.  And it was a sad, sad day when MST3K left the telewaves some time back.

But there's good news on the intertubes.  Mike Nelson,Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy --  Mike, Crow, and Servo from the affectionaltely remembered Satellie of Love -- are back doing damage in RiffTrax, a growing bunch of cool "commentary" MP3's that are, basically, MS3K in a can.  They regularly riff on everything from Halloween to Aliens; they've also brought in a bunch of guest riffers, from Weird Al Yankovich to Neil Patrick Harris and beyond.  And best of all the Riffs themselves are cheap -- like $3.99.  If you don't own the movie being riffed, you can Netflix it for pennies and enjoy the experience for mere centavos her giggle.

A small sample: here's The Boys speculating on a young John Carpenter coming home from a hard day of making the original Halloween ... illustrated, of course, by a scene straight out of Halloween.  

It's fun, it's inexpensive, and it makes everything old new again -- and even better.  Rifftrax rules.

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A Hawaiian, an Australian and a Brit Walk Into a Car Wash ...

There's nothing wrong with The Crazies, Breck (Sahara) Eisner's new remake of an almost-completely-forgotten George Romero quasi-zombie movie of the early Seventies.  There are a few pretty cool scenes, some credible acting, and decent production values throughout. The script itself has some real logic problems and fuzzy continuity, but the feeling in general, with more than 0% positive reviews clocking in on Rotten Tomatoes, seems to be, "What the heck? It's just a friggin' zombie movie, dude!" 

A minor but mildly interesting thing is that the main characters in this survival-slash-government-paranoia actioner are all salt-of-the-earth Midwestern types; the story takes place entirely in a small Ohio town, population 1,200 and something (think of it this way: they keep talking about escape to the Big City ... of Cedar Rapids).  However, not one of the three principals is actually from the continental United States, and two are from much farther away.

Timothy Olyphant, playing the earnest and admirable sheriff in a bad place, is best known as Seth Bullock in HBO's rather amazing series Deadwood, in which he played an earnest and admirable sheriff in a bad place.  Tim was born in Hawaii. His wife, the town's doctor, is played by the radiant Radha Mitchell, an Australian actress best known for kicking ass a little more efficiently a few years back in Pitch Black.  And the most convincing and 'regional' role in the mix in Joe Anderson, playing Olyphant's deputy Russell.  Anderson is British, though he's been hanging around American movie-makers for a while now. He's probably most memorable to Rush-types as one of the ill-fated tourists in The Ruins (but then weren't they all ill-fated?).  Only Danielle Panabaker, in a decidedly secondary (and sadly temporary) role, could lay claim to some kind of Midwestern roots -- if you consider Georgia the Midwest.  It's just worth nothing that the most convincing, even quintessential "American" roles are taken here by people that are anything but.  And they're all actually pretty good.  (They all have pretty good horror-movie pedigrees, too: not just Mitchell's Pitch and Anderson's Ruins, but Panabaker was a principle in the remake of Friday the 13th, and even Olyphant did his horror duty, as a major player in The Perfect Getaway earlier this year and in the best-forgotten film version of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher n the fortunately dimmified past. The Crazies opens today, Friday the 25th.  You can see one of our editors' take on it over at ScriptPhd, or a different (and far more sarcastic) version here at The Rush, in Contrariwise.

 

Survivors Returns, To the Beeb and BBC America

A couple years back, the BBC premiered one of those rare reboots that's actually not half-bad (see an earlier post on Plisskin, Snake for a short and incomplete list of the bad remakes/reboots). This one is Survivors, the modernized of a popular speculative series of the Seventies, in which a deadly "European Flu" wipes out 99% or more of the population, and we follow a group of good-hearted but damaged survivors as they try to ... well, just survive at first, and then more intentionally try to rebuild the world, with the interference and help of other survival cells and the remains of a government that's going very solidly to the right.

There's some good thinking, some strong British acting, and some realistic and heart-wrenching characterizations in this piece, which manages to stay ominous without being grim. And it was good enough for the BBC to commission a second set of shows, which began running in the UK this January.  Now BBC America is reshowing Season One, hopefully in preparation for bringing the second series across the pond.  Worth a look, especially if you're a lover of the post-apocalyptic thriller ... or just good suspenseful storytelling. 

Series One is not yet available on DVD, so see if you can catch one of the multiple showings on BBC America in the coming weeks.  And strangely, you can get the British novelization of the first series from the late Seventies, written by the notorious Terry Nation.  Odd.

 

May the Best Wolfman Win

The Benicio del Toro Wolfman opens today to decidedly mixed reviews (our favorite, from the often insight What Would Toto Watch: "Where  did we put that silver bullet again?"), but one thing is undeniable: our culture loves the icon of the Man-Beastt.  

Other, far better popcult polymaths than us have already put together nearly endless lists of lycanthropic antecedents in the media, beginning with the 1941 Lon Cheney Wolfman (upon which the del Toro Wolfman is oh so loosely based) to The Wolfen, American Werewolf in London, The Howling, She-Wolf of London, Werewolf By Night, Silver Bullet, The Monster Squad, Wolf Lake, Wolfie of The Groovie Ghoulies, and on and on and on.  But what's the real attraction here?  Why does this cultural icon continue to have such lunatic (literally!) attraction?

It's something more than multiple personalities, or more precisely with the Jekyll and Hyde phenomenon, or the acknowledgment of each human's darker, bestial 'inner self.'  At some level, it's really -- strongly and simply -- about raw madness, about losing control, and the endless fascination with watching a man go insane, right in front of you.

Unfortunately, the imagery of transformation that was so powerful when it was created by Universal more than 75 years ago has lost much of its impact with age; it's sad to recall that some of the most vivid and durable reiterations of the image, from Teen Wolf to the Lycans, were partial or complete parodies of the horror-movie cliche.  But the hallucinatory strength of the wolf did get a much-needed revivification in animator Tom Hope's remarkable animated short, The Wolfman.  Made more than ten years ago, it's a six-minute reminder of  just how all-fired crazy the idea of a human becoming a wolf really is, and why we love it so.

Watch it here or hop on over to YouTube.  But believe what we say: you can get all the wild-ass excitemen tof The Werewolf, and probably more than The Wolfman (2010) can offer, right here in this powerful little package.  

Click below, but .. .bewaaaaaare ...