Quickies

Due to being buried in work and being messed about to the point of insanity with my new degree on top of being a new father I have been a little distracted.
Here are a few quick reviews:

Wonder Woman DC should just plug Bruce Timm into everything they do and wait for world domination. Wonder Woman's main flaw is it is far too short, the end shots really make you wish that you could watch another 45 minutes of top-notch arse-kicking. Nathan Fillion is as charming and funny as usual, Kerri Russell lends the role the blend of naivety and will that is needed and Alfred Molina is simply disturbing.
Wonder Woman continues to be the best character to be waiting for a comic that consistently does her justice, but is immensely interesting in Timm's animated universes.

Castle

Castle continues to be utterly predictable, unimaginative and stupifyingly watchable thanks to Nathan Fillion being Nathan Fillion and his devotees smiling blankly for an hour and chuckling.

Dollhouse
Since the 6th episode (where apparently the Fox executives waved their hands in the air and let Whedon and Co. get on with it) Dollhouse has improved immensely, with the supporting cast becoming much more compelling; twists and turns effecting the story arc with more purpose and a focus on making the audience actually want to watch the next episode.
Dushku is still erratic at times (her confused, doting turn in Man on The Street was plywood when put alongside Patton Oswalt), but she is beginning to form a personality as Echo which will help with audience empathy and she is spending less time attempting to be convincing as a passive victim.
At the current rate of improvement the show should be just about good enough for me to be a bit pissed off when it gets cancelled.

Monsters vs. AliensSlightly amusing at times but mainly uninspired and certainly guilty of criminally wasting some of its cast. One of those films that News of The World critics would describe as "great for the kids!" while the rest of the world remembers that Toy Story happened and films like Monsters vs. Aliens are not good enough any more.
I didn't see the film in 3D but when one of the first shots is of someone playing "Bat-'n-Ball" towards the camera you can imagine how earth-shattering that experience is. The only time I want that old gag used is when the 3D Blazing Saddles is made.
Watch Kung-Fu Panda again instead.

HeroesCouldn't give a toss.


Ultimatum
Marvel realised that other than the always readable Ultimate Spider-Man, their Ultimate universe had gone astray.
Their answer was to have an event (which is their answer for everything lately) which restructured the Ultimate universe. Fair enough, sounds like a good idea.
Then they asked Jeph Loeb to do it.
Not so good an idea.
A fictional universe created by Bendis, Millar and Vaughn being eviscerated by someone who wasn't deemed imaginative enough to write on Heroes this season. His other big contribution recently is a Hulk who, now get this...is RED!
His follow on from Mark Millar's Ultimates series was so bad it was almost a parody.
Ultimatum is the latest example of Loeb's take on writing comics for Marvel: a process that involves writing "shocking" events onto small pieces of card, tying the cards to 30 bones, throwing them into his back garden and then listing whatever his dog shits out the following day. I figure his dog is a Bull-Mastiff as there's a lot of shit making its way into each issue of Ultimatum.
Someone dies, then someone else dies followed by a tragic death. Characters speak about the deaths in odd exposition laden mumbling with the tone of a 60 year old trying to imagine what a teen sounds like. The end.

Garbage.

More to follow when my brain becomes less entwined with my arse.

Jack Bauer Power Hour

kevlar girdles are very chic

Some spoilers may be included in this article though none of them earth-shattering to anyone who watches the opening titles or who knew anything about the last few seasons or who has used the Internet much.

Sunday evening 24 returned with some fanfare but more concerned misgivings.
After the general apathy surrounding last season, 24 needs a return to form with the urgency that Jack Bauer displays when stabbing someone in the head with whatever is at hand (including his hand).

One of the reasons I personally got tired of last season's 24 was the politicisation of the show. It seemed each episode was a call to torture and a protestation against the criticisms of those bleeding heart liberals and their "legality" and "morality" complaints.

Don't those pig-headed do-gooders realise Jack Bauer has a country to save? Jack himself had been brought up at various Republican conferences as a shining example of what the good ole USA needed and what on earth was a Geneva Convention anyway?

Becoming the poster boy for Bush propaganda certainly didn't endear the all-new more-torture Bauer for me, but it was mainly the repetitive plot conventions and the foregoing of tension for inventive object insertion in various ethnic stereotypes that pushed me away.
Jack didn't use his wits to sort problems out, unless his wits were a brand of pliers or a fancy new blowtorch-chainshaw combination. The tension of the show was petering out, the shaky camera caused by yawning cameramen rather than quivering anticipation of what revelation would happen next(a mole in CTU? NOOOOOOO!).

So with the writers strike delaying the full season, 24: Redemption was released to some positive responses but certainly not with the anticipation one would have expected 3 seasons ago. However the tv movie did prove to be a palate cleanser to get the fetid taste of the 6th season out of the mouth even if it wasn't a full return to form of the first three seasons.

Jack shoots dwarf

What I liked the most about 24: Redemption was that it was Bauer being the unequivocable good guy, it is difficult to be more of a good guy when saving a village full of photogenic war orphans from genocidal warmongers. There were no attempts at being thought-provoking (in the same way that Fatal Attraction was thought provoking in the US, ie it wasn't anywhere else) by having Jack make tough decisions all the time, which were mostly decisions about whether to be lawful or stab someone in the kneecap to make them instantaneously want to divulge everything they knew and certainly not just make up crap that they thought might make the bad man stop.

Season 7 begins with Jack under investigation for his actions. Kurtwood Smith plays the smugly self-righteous senator who berates Bauer for his actions and flagrant disregard for the law. My toes were starting to curl just as Jack is served a subpoena and forced to help the FBI with a matter of national security.

"I'll take Kitchen Utensils in Orifices for $1,000 Alex"

At this point I will be more general as I don't want to ruin anything.
Although the question on just how far one should abide by the law in order to save the day is touched upon (spoiler alert: Law 0 - Mavericks United 3) more time is spent building the plot and making events important than on blood and bluster.
Jack even gets to seem competent when investigating the latest threat to the USA (though this does make most of the FBI seem like well-dressed radishes).

Devil with a pant-suit on?

The new President (gasp it is a lady! And she's more Hillary than Caribou Barbie!) is introduced, her husband is hinted to be mental (harkening back to a previous presidential spouse) and subplots are introduced and quickly brought together with the main thread of the story arc.
This in itself is a pleasant change from the interminable side stories that have gone nowhere in past seasons and were mainly used to fill time while we wait to get back to Jack saving the day.

GILF: Chloe never looked better

New faces are introduced (it is nice to see Janeane Garofalo as the requisite uber-geek and reassuring Liberal) and old ones return (I won't say who, but speaking of old faces: Jack's is certainly starting to show the wear and tear of being shot a lot while shouting "DAMMIT!").

By the end of Monday's episodes, the first 4 hours were done with but my interest wasn't.
Yes there are a lot of reused plots and familiar character types, but it still felt more like the 24 of old where the daftness was easy to overlook in pursuit of regular thrills and dramatic payoffs.
Even my wife who has never watched an entire season of 24 was checking that Mondays were the regular night for the show as she has been drawn in by the opening episodes.

Could this be the revival of the Bauer Power Hour?


I hope so, though if it does NBC might be hammering nails in Heroes' coffin.


Ho hum.

Shoot the Scriptwriter, Save The Series

Ahh Heroes, here we are again, still the awkward exposition, the clumsy acting and the head scratching plot holes that were evident in season 1. Such a shame that the cliffhangers and fun didn't return.

Lets do a rundown of the movers and shakers of season 2, spoilers included.

The Bennets

Noah (HRG as he is also known) is working a menial job in order to keep his profile low, he tried to play nice but his moronic boss annoyed him so a finger lock and a talking-to later and he takes a coffee break whenever he damn well wants to.

Some might wonder why Noah isn't just keeping completely out of sight, particularly as he can apparently afford a shiny new Nissan (got to keep the show sponsors happy) for his perky daughter Wolverine.

Noah is the sly spy as ever and has plans to bring down his former employers from the inside, but there is a snag. One of the 8 remaining paintings of the future has Noah's horn rimmed glasses shattered by a bullet hole with him still wearing them. Save the HRG save the world?

Claire is trying to not bring attention to herself by never answering a question in class and avoiding any sort of social interaction. Just like any normal High School kid. Perhaps the next part of her brilliant strategy will involve wearing a black trenchcoat and muttering about hunting season in the cafeteria.
Fortunately for her, a foppish rebel with his own secret (he can fly, like Nathan, apparently they ran out of new powers), pretends to be an infinitely boring version of Christian Slater in Heathers and takes a shine to her and floats outside her window gazing at her from afar.
Some would call this creepy (and reminiscent of Superman Returns) but no, he's just smitten and he forces Claire to admit to her power and they go and fly around a bit and kiss in a non-threatening manner.
Last season Claire was destined to die. This season she is destined to have a clumsily brief entry into the Mile High Club.
Their burgeoning relationship is threatened though as it turns out the boy that Claire could give a flying f@#! for has had a run in with HRG in the past. Riveting.

The Petrellis

Nathan Petrelli wonders around drunk sporting a huge beard while wearing suede and talking to a grizzly bear called Ben, who is his friend and they go on adventures. He mutters about how he survived the giant explosion he heroically sacrificed himself for but we all stick our fingers in our ears and try to forget that episode ever happened.

Peter Petrelli is being attacked by a viciously stupid amnesia plot and some even more ferocious accents. Begorrah. He has kept all of his powers except for his ability to keep a shirt on.

Their Mom has been marked for death and may join Sulu in leaving the Titanic when the waters got chilly.

Matt and Mohinder

Matt and Mohinder try to raise Molly Plot De La Device as she struggles with nightmares and visions of this season's villain. She also struggles with being convincing when speaking but she's young, let's not dwell.
Matt thinks he is now Jackie Chan in Super Cop while more closely resembling Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz.
Mohinder is in league with Noah in trying to take down the organisation he now works for. He gets inside the belly of the beast as his own blood is the only cure for the deadly plague killing people with powers (for more see the Legacy Virus story in Uncanny X-Men throughout the 90s).
Brilliantly, he keeps in contact with Noah on a standard mobile phone that he even uses at the evil company's own buildings. They'll never figure out what is going on, or where Noah is or even shoot him in the eye in the near future.

Last Year's Popular Character

Hiro is in Japan in the 1600s forcing an English Wolverine (not the Cheerleader Wolverine, easy to confuse, but theres a new powers drought going on) into becoming the hero he idolised as he listened to profoundly dull stories as a child.
He sends messages to his friend Ando by placing them in Kensei's sword hilt. Fortunately noone in the ensuing 400 years bothers to look at the bottom of the sword's handle which reads "Open This Ando, Not Anyone Else Please"*.
Hiro makes us all feel like true heroes as while he can travel back in time we can see the future with amazingly obvious clarity.
He also sends us back in time to an age when Comics didn't have a recap page and we had to suffer through 4 pages of annoying exposition every single issue.

The Dynamic Duo

Maya and Alejandro Herrera desperately scramble to the United States to use the fantastic health system ( sorry couldn't resist) and find a cure for Maya's deadly power which makes her cry black toxic tears that kill all around her in a devastatingly uninteresting way. Next week they reach the border and find their ultimate enemy: Robo-Romney and his appeal-to-the-base immigration policy.

Scary Spice

Sylar is in the middle of a jungle, recovering from a gut wound which somehow made him lose all the powers he has learned. He discovers that after murdering Illusion Girl he can't use her abilities either. The audience discovers this all seems far too convenient to take seriously.

The Sanders

Niki drops Micah off with Uhura so she can do a job for The Company as they have promised to cure her of the Legacy Virus. Noone cares.

Micah is upset at leaving Las Vegas as his father D.L. Shadowcat is there, underneath 6 feet of dirt and a tasteful headstone. Niki tells Micah whenever he wants to visit with Dad she will make it happen. Hopefully this isn't a death threat.


So that is how things stand 3 episodes into the 2nd season and apparently the viewership is shrinking quicker than The Atom in a cold shower.

This cannot be a surprise to many people as there just isn't anything to get excited about so far and a lot of each episode seems to be filler, putting the characters out of each others' way until they can come back together again and have a communal letdown like last season.
The tension has palpably slackened and a lot of the glaring faults of season 1 are starting to become the only things to judge the second season on.
The second story arc needs to pick up faster than a speeding bullet.


Look, up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's Kristin Bell!

Save us Veronica Mars, save us!

*Translated from the Japanese and ludicrous.

Plastic Appendages

Last night was a chance to catch the second episodes of NBC's The Bionic Woman and Life.

I was willing to give Bionic Woman the benefit of the doubt and thought my good friend the Admiral was being a little harsh in his review of the pilot episode last week.

I hoped that the second episode would improve as much of the exposition had been done with.

The following contains spoilers.

What a crock of dross.

The episode opens with the funeral of the ex-Eastender's boyfriend, which is kind of out of the blue in some ways but either a) this is a nice turn from the usual injury that is easily survived or b) a painfully uninteresting surprise to be revealed later in the series.

Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan) has responded by getting hammered at a bar (apparently the nanotech doesn't cure poisons) and dives on the nearest bloke that smiles on her and breaks his rib amidst some clumsy fumbling in the bathroom. The tryst is interrupted by Jonas Bledsoe (the woefully wasted and patently bored senseless Miguel Ferrer) her shadowy benefactor who explains to her what his company does.

"We're a private clandestine group dedicated to stopping rogue organisations from ending civilisation as we know it, to put it simply we save the world."

Did Miguel Ferrer read that line and think "Hmm do I play it with a rushed "Someone Shoot Me Now" glance or a "Just think about the money" sneer?

This episode strives so hard to be cool and smart and does it through so many cliches it is staggering. Anyone can write better lines than some of those perpetrated in here, and I'm including those advertising hacks who write for local second hand car dealerships.

Our Bionic Lass discovers that her supposedly dead boyfriend had a dossier on her stretching back 2 years before they met. She finds it not by use of her Bionic Bits (tm) but by noticing a loose floorboard that she'd somehow managed to always miss before, even though it is an obvious health and safety hazard and would normally have one of those bright yellow plastic signs sitting next to it.

The Bionic Cockney (c) has to go into school as her little sister has been smoking the reefer but she manages to talk her out of trouble so she can still do the talent show that week.

I thank watching Moonlight last week that I didn't black out halfway through this subplot, it girded my brain for such zombifying mediocrity.

Jaime meets up with never before seen friends so they can congratulate themselves on being successful and thereby making our hero question whether she should be doing more with her life.

Jaime tries to figure out where she's going with her life by reading a self-help book in a bookstore and it just so happens bigot-of-the-month Isaiah Washington arrives and offers such philosophical gems as:

"Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," and "Maybe you just need to find out uh what Jaime Sommers has to offer the world, that's all."

Dr. Phil take notes as this fellow is out to save the world, one badly conceived character at a time. As he walked into shot I thought about how he got another job since his escapades in Grey's Anatomy and also if we weren't intentionally supposed to automatically assume we would be seeing him as part of the shadowy organisation very quickly. They couldn't have seriously thought this was a set up to a twist could they?

Jaime walks out of a coffee house and spots a woman about to jump off a roof next door and saves her. That may seem like a random event mainly due to it being ridiculous.

The main plot is introduced after an apparent biological weapon has been used in a small town, killing a number of people and Manly Woman (played by Molly Price who surprisingly wasn't in Spandau Ballet) thinks she should investigate as it may be a test run for something bigger.

The Bookstore Homophobe shockingly turns out to be working for Jaime's new company as she signs up to save the world and heads out with Manly Woman (a butch Eddie Izzard) to solve the mystery.

Thanks to the power of her bionic ear, Jaime hears a survivor noone found for some unexplained reason and who is immune to the toxin for another unexplained reason and is important for another unexplained reason. She does however explain that it was odd that a gas truck spent all morning driving around town in a circle. Elementary my dear Watson!

Then the evil mercenaries appear in the middle of their own biological hotzone for some other unexplained reason except that it is time for our pasty-faced heroine to bionically kick some arse!

She goes toe to toe with a Blackwater reject and basically gets smacked around and squeals until she lands a bionic right hand on his chin. And then he gets back up, which kind of undermines her status as a devastating powerhouse. Fortunately the fight is therefore prolongued so a stunt double can round house kick a tin of paint into the mercenary's head.

They then run away (without the diabolical special effect) and Bigot's Eye for the Queer Guy turns up all dressed in black with some friends (who wear balaclavas so they can deny working with Isiaiah Washington) and saves Manly Woman and Bionic Woman.

It turns out Manly Woman was right and this is just a test run (because you only really know if a lethal airborn toxin works for sure when it has been tried in a suburb) and the bad guys want to ship over 20 trucks to cities across the country that night.

Shipping them at the same time as the test run to make it more difficult to stop them would have just used up too many quarters on toll roads. Or something.

Miguel Ferrer turns up dressed in black and yawning like he is wearing pajamas with other ninja soldiers who then stop the bad guys with one flashbang and stern voices.

Jaime stands around pondering her new life while doing nothing (maybe her batteries were low) but is sure she has done the right thing and goes off to see her equally pale sister at the talent contest where warm smiles and a sudden realisation that I had lost an hour of my life occur.

Why on this increasingly polluted Earth would you get past the pilot episode and then spend most of the next episode adding more exposition? Did blurry running really cost that much to do in the pilot?

Plot twists are signposted with the cunning subtlety of a nuclear explosion, actors get to sound like they want their Mommy now when delivering utterly shocking dialogue and Michelle Ryan might be getting a hankering for jellied eels about now.

A scrotum-shrivellingly bad episode.

But worry not, Life is here and after getting the exposition-fest over in the pilot episode we get to see Damian Lewis acting up a storm and the best procedural police drama in years.

Or we get to see Damian Lewis hoping the writing gets as good as the pitch meeting and yet another bloody Scooby Doo mystery.

A bride is murdered on her wedding day, the groom is outside the hotel near the pool drinking tequila and mumbling incoherently covered in blood.

So I guess it'll be the deputy from Veronica Mars who walks in and out of shot in the first 10 minutes who murdered the bride for very little reason then.

50 minutes of supposed misdirection later and Old Man Guy From Veronica Mars pulls off his mask and states "I would've gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you pesky-ginger-Zen-Detective-types".

Life is an example of a good idea that falls apart when written by lazy hacks who stick to regurgitated scripts while praying to whatever God despises them that the audience is too stupid to notice.

Then I slept fitfully and had nightmares about Lost being this bad when it returns.

On the bright side Smallville is on tonight and Moonlight tomorrow.

I swear it is all a conspiracy to make Heroes seem watchable.

Just for One Day

Warning: The following post includes spoilers of The Matrix Revolutions. And as I am talking about that film it is absolutely guaranteed I will get rabid.

You have been warned.

I was having a conversation with a friend tonight and she asked me the following pertinant and interesting question:

"Why am I looking forward to Heroes?"

It got me thinking.

Heroes has shoddy dialogue, hackneyed plot devices, homage-a-meter originality (this week: Days of Future Past, the whole season: Watchmen without balls) and the kind of 6th Form socio-religious rambling that The Wachowski's (one now not a brother) fell into with their betrayal of all things wonderful The Matrix Revolutions.

Added to that the huge build up across the season to an ending so anti-climactic Trinity dying in a car crash a day after being brought back to life becomes satisfying.

Well ok nothing could make that satisfying.

Anger building, rage growing, Ben Stiller in Mystery Men rip-off peaking...

Anger subsiding.

Anyway, yes Heroes, crappy yet still infectiously entertaining.

However I do think the strange enchantment that Heroes has over the world populace will wain quickly if it doesn't manage to do a number of things.

1) Have a plot not taken directly from a comic then watered down.

2) Avoid Masi Oka leaping from charming and fun to annoying at the level of Chris Crocker parody videos not done by Seth Green.

3) Have Volume 2 pay off spectacularly. If we have 2 story arcs with a clunky ending there will be little faith that the 3rd will be worth hanging around until 2008 for.

4) Kick arse super hero battles. It was hinted at last season but the money shots were played out behind closed doors, this year we need our jaws swinging from raw power exploding on the screen.

If they make those 4 steps I will be in for the exhilirating journey towards porridge once more.

Well that or they could do something insane like put Veronica Mars on the show hehe.

Cunning bastards.

Life

As the mighty Admiral Neck and charismatic Canyon have already stated, there are a lot of new shows about to debut in the Autumn season here in the US of A.


One of them is a show called "Life" in which a cop is wrongly convicted for murder and spends 12 brutal years in prison before being exonerated, receiving a huge amount of cash and being reinstated and promoted to Detective as part of the settlement.


When I first heard of this series I was wondering if it would be a basic procedural with a Prison Break conspiracy arc, which frankly didn't grab me.


Then the prospect of two copper-headed investigative heroes in TV arose as Damian Lewis plays the lead role of Charlie Crews. Lewis was utterly brilliant in Band of Brothers and I've been hypnotised to forget Dreamcatchers, so when I got to watch an advance preview of his new series I was quite hopeful.


The first episode is packed with all the exposition that a TV executive requires and the first case for Crews and his beautiful, tough but troubled partner Dani Reese (played by Sarah Shahi, former NFL cheerleader and The L Word alumni), revolves around the murder of a child.


Crews' Zen philosophy that kept him mostly intact in prison serves to set him apart in the real world as he approaches things from an alternative perspective. Predictably this brings him into conflict with his new partner who herself is trying to put her career back on track after drug issues, hence being lumbered with the partner nobody wants.


We are also introduced to Ted Earley, an ex-con who served time for some creative accounting who was saved by Crews while inside and now handles the Zen Detective's cash. Earley is played by Adam Arkin which is another reason I'm cutting Life some slack.

As the episode progresses the audience is shown that Crews isn't just different because of a paperback book on Zen he read but because he might just be insane.

There are attempts at levity through Crews coming to term with the modern world, mainly to add to Crews' almost childlike sense of wonder as he discovers "the future is now" in more than a philosophical sense. These moments reminded me of Angel and how hilarious David Boreanaz was getting frustrated at his mobile phone. Except Angel was much funnier, but if you've seen Boreanaz dance you know it is unfair to make a comparison.

The case is wrapped up in a way to show Crews knows how things work from both sides of the prison bars and the story arc for the season is mapped out for all to see. And I literally mean there is a visual aid.

Frankly, the procedural element of the show doesn't hold together very well but hopefully that is due to it becoming almost an afterthought due to cramming in as much information for the audience as possible.
Things the audience is to remember:
1) Crews likes to eat fruit.
2) He owns a mansion without any furniture in it (keep an eye out for a cave full of bats in the future).
3) He is NOT GAY (as shown as he bounds upstairs like a puppy chasing a ball whilst following a scantily clad and never to be seen again blonde).
4) He says he is not looking for revenge against those who framed him. Nuh-uh. It wouldn't be Zen. Honest.

This is really a series that will take a few episodes to get up and running but I'll certainly have another look at it when the series begins 26th of September on NBC.

It could go either way, at least it isn't on Fox so it might get a few episodes to find its feet, plus it runs after Heroes on Monday nights and we know that means it will be an instant success and will immediately get renewed.





My wife tells me I lost my memories of something called "Studio 60" along with Dreamcatchers in the aforementioned hypnosis session but I don't know what she's talking about.