imooredb

In which a man blethers about stuff he has seen.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Oh my god Sly, no!

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no . You poor man.

Linkspack

Just some links, apropos of nothing inparticular. I feel it's important to break up the swathes of text with silliness.

How do you turn a duck into a soul singer?
I don't know, but Reverend Dan provided me with this superb performance by the man Withers. He loves the drummer, but I think the bass player has the right idea.

Two of my favourite things combined. You can't go wrong with that. Gaz usually does, but he didn't when he sent me this.

Finally, just to stay vaguely on topic, watch some trailers. They're invariably better than the film, and these all look like stormingly good films.

1.
2.
3.
4.

Quite frankly, a couple of those make me spuff.

To spoil, or not to spoil?

Over the years I've developed quite a network of non-professionals who keep me well up to date with what's going on in the major TV shows, and some Hollywood productions, some time before the mainstream media gets to hear about it. I probably don't get anything faster than the dedicated fansites, but I bet I get a better spread. I was thinking of doing a weekly column on here keeping readers ahead of the game, but I'm very aware some people *hate* having plots and surprises spoiled for them. So, what do you lot think? A good idea, or should I keep my fat monkey paws in my pocket on that one?

What to watch over the summer, part 4400


I was reminded about The 4400 by a comment on one of my previous posts. It'd been nearly a year since I'd watched any, so I've spent the last couple of days catching up. I was a bit dubious as I'd dismissed it early on as a poor X-Files clone, but I have to say I'm rather pleased I went to the effort. The unlikely story runs thusly:

One sunny day in America (where else?) some clever scientists spot a rather dangerous looking comet on a collision course with earth. Every spends 20 minutes or so running around sweating and firing missiles. We've seen all this before, and we've seen what happens next a few times as well. It turns out not to be a comet at all, but just some odd ball of light that deposits 4400 seemingly normal human beings of all shapes and sizes by a lake near Washington. Again, convenient location. Turns out, each of these people has gone missing in "mysterious circumstances" over the last 60 years. None have aged, although a 6 year old girl taken in 1946 is strictly speaking in her 60's, with family long since dead. Hooray! The first couple of episodes cover this happening, and the usual "what if?" style bumf of government agencies, quarantine etc. There's some quite emotionally impacting stuff featuring people tracking down families that have aged and forgotten about them, but it's pretty predictable stuff and so far, so X-Files. The next development is when several of "The 4400" start developing, yes, you guessed it, eerie powers...

The first episode dealing with this is very disappointing, and by this time the narrative of the show has settled on following a man/woman partnership of quirky government agents assigned to investigate any odd happenings involving the 4400. Astonishingly, the writers seem to be trying to build some sexual tension between them. She's motherly and scientific, and he's a bit maverick. Did I mention it was a bit like the X-Files? Anyway, the series saves itself with the next episode. A slightly retarded "returnee" moves back to his old neighbourhood. He's appalled to find it a crime infested slum (although this guy's only been gone a year, we'll suspend disbelief that his 'hood could turn downhill so quickly on account of this being in America, where everyone eats babies given half a chance). Luckily he appears to have acquired superhuman strength and speed, which he uses to go about cleaning up the town. Quite literally really, his first priority being cleaning up graffiti in the park. While he's at it, he saves a woman from being mugged. Soon the "avenging angel" rumours are circulating and Mulder and Scully Baldwin and Skouris (fucking character names, aaargh!) are on hand to investigate. It's at the end of this story that things get interesting for me. Firstly, in the death of the Avenging Retard the writers show a higher than normal appreciation for irony. The poor fellow is stabbed trying to foil another mugging, as whoever gave him these powers made him fast and strong but neglected to make him invulnerable. Secondly, rather than wrapping him up and moving onto the next thing with little or no pause for thought as is usually the case, these agents are actually asking why these things are happening. There's a very interesting "ripple effect" theory about the people chosen to manifest these powers, which has a good pay-off at the end of season 1, when the crushingly inevitable aliens explanation is also thrown out to the sound of applause from millions (well, probably thousands in its first run) of living rooms. The story arc turns out to be cleverer, and in some way more believable than the X-Files clone conspiracy rubbish ever was. The two leads fail to bone each other, and in fact just seem to drop the idea altogether. Season 2 develops the themes and characters nicely, and for a fantasy show keeps its feet nicely on the ground, focusing on the public reaction to the 4400 and their attempts to first reintegrate with the world, and then defend themselves from it.

It's what I call a creeper too. Not in the way that a song is, where you have to hear it a few times and it grows on you, but in the way it became successful. American Television in case you didn't know is incredibly cut-throat. Shows are cancelled at the first sign of ratings poison, and even the big stars are never on more than a one season contract. Episodes are thus made to very short order. I remember they were still in Hawaii filming the Lost season 2 finale after the penultimate episode had aired. The upshot of this is that when a show gets cancelled half way through a season there has to be something else ready to step in. I think The 4400 is a case of this, as season one only runs to 5 episodes. Season 2 is then an ambitious 13, and season 3 promises the same. The season 3 premier garnered over 4m viewers, which although it launched in the nothing season (episode one aired June just gone) is pretty impressive.

The 5 episode "mini-series" format of season one makes it easy to dip into, and easy to discard if you don't like what's on offer, so if you have a spare 2-3 hours give it a go as you'll need to get to the end of episode 3 to start to appreciate it. The end of season 3 is only a few weeks off so if you want to avoid seeing spoilers you'd better get a move on. First two seasons available on DVD, season 3 is on the USA Network and Sky One, plus its well represented from all the usual sources.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Superpowered Entertainment: A Guide Part One


Well, those that know me will have been wondering when this was going to come along. I'm something of a fan of the "Superhero" genre, and comics to film/tv conversions. I could, in fact, easily write a whole other blog about the topic, and maybe I will. However, for now I'll try and get the subject out of the way in one go so it doesn't overtake what this site is intended to be.

To start off, let's get the big boys out of the way. The feature films are easy, and go thusly:

Good: Superman, Superman II, Superman Returns, Batman (Burton/Keaton), Batman Begins, Spiderman, Spiderman II, Sin City, X-Men II, Hellboy, Unbreakable, V for Vendetta

Average: Daredevil, Hulk (Ang Lee version), X-Men, X-Men II, Superman III, Batman Returns.

Fucking Awful: Superman IV, Electra, Batman and Robin, Batman Forever, Supergirl, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Fantastic Four, lots and lots of made for TV movies.

The sharp among you will notice none of the Blade films are listed. That's because they'd have to go in both the first and last categories, and that would upset me.

Anyway, that pretty much covers the major Hollywood end of things for now. I don't see a great deal of point talking about these films at great length, because chances are you've seen them all already. If not, you now have a handy list to refer to. I get a lot of people asking me specifically what I think of Superman Returns, and to make them stop I'll be doing a separate piece on that soon.

What I'm more interested in talking about here is the less travelled end of the comics conversion market, namely television. There's a lot of it about these days, and yes, a lot of it's very poor. There's also some surprisingly watchable stuff that gets hidden away on the kiddies channels more often than not. Anyhow, I'll start with the relative big boys and work down if you don't mind. (Ooh-er, etc)



I still think that basically, Smallville is a really good idea. One of the things that has kept Superman popular and interesting over many years is that there are essentially three characters to work with. Two of them, the flying alien in tights and the bumbling "mild mannered" reporter have been done time and again. The third, Clark Kent, raised by human parents on a farm in Kansas, has never really been done on film or TV before. Lois and Clark had a go, but it was just...cheap...so I try and forget about it (while, I must admit, still watching it most nights on ITV2 over dinner). So Smallville is a worthy concept, and really they've not done all that badly with it. If you've never watched it before it's best to know what to expect, which is Dawson's Creek with superpowers. Imagine how much more entertaining Dawson's would have been if Dawson had ripped Joeys arms out of her sockets and beaten her to death with them? I can't be the only one with that fantasy. The teen angst comes thick and fast in the first four seasons, and the action is rudely interrupted by gooey loft sequences between Clark and the ever alliterate Lana Lang. I tired of this after season one, and for a long time it really threatened to bury the show in my eyes. Add to this tedious teenage mucking about the fact that the majority of episodes are based around a simple "Freak of the Week" plotline, and it's really starting to sound pretty awful. What saves the whole thing though is maybe 2-3 episodes a season where the producers blow the whole budget and let rip on the action. The effect team win awards year after year, and righty so. Not just that, but it seems that when the writers are told they're doing a big action episode they breathe a sigh of relief, dump yet another "where is our relationship going" bore-fest and turn out some pretty tense and exciting television. This matures as you go through the seasons and the most recent, season 5, had some truly memorable moments. Clark leaping hundreds of feet onto a nuclear missile in flight to remove the warhead in the stratosphere, then walking back in the door with a slightly singed shirt springs to mind. In later seasons the producers have also started sprinkling other characters from the DC universe into the show, and usually to good effect. Episodes in the last two seasons introducing Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman have all been pleasingly above average, and Season 6 promises Green Arrow. Of course the character everyone wants to see, and no doubt everyone on the show wants to introduce, is a young Bruce Wayne. Unfortunately while there's still a live feature film franchise telling a different origin story for Batman that's never going to happen. The other major plus point for the show was the decision to introduce Lex Luthor as a permanent fixture from the outset. Rosenbaum's Lex, and John Glover's frankly awesome Lionel Luthor provide 90% of the drama, and 95% of the decent acting. Glover, frankly, is a god. My advice to the uninitiated is to skim through season one to pick up the characters, then make a jump to the start of season 4. Although, that said, Season 3 Epsiodes 8-9 "Shattered" must be viewed. It's a story that's totally out of character for the show, contains almost no moaning at all, and is my example to people of episodic fantasy television at its absolute best.



I mentioned above that the character Aquaman makes an appearance in Smallville. The episode turned out to be one of the highest rated of the season, and prompted Smallville bosses Gough and Millar to produce an Aquaman pilot for their then network The WB. Around the same time The WB went through major structural changes and has come out the other side as a whole new network, CW. To cut a long story short, CW passed on the potential Aquaman series, and since Warners have the character rights that's the end of that. However, the pilot had become available to download from the US download store and probably other, less reputable sources. It's worth a look as it seems to have had some potential. It' been sat at the top of the US iTunes download chart for weeks, so maybe someone will pay some attention to that and it'll get picked up in sweeps after the entire cast and crew of One Tree Hill are savaged by bears.




Next up, MUTANTS. If any set of characters have come in for more abuse from writers over the years than The X-Men, I'm yet to hear about it. They were a fairly well kept secret for years, apart from Iceman twatting about with Spiderman and Firestar and the whole team appearing in a monumentally awful train wreck of an episode of "Spiderman and his Amazing Friends" (see if you can find this, I have it on VHS and it beggars belief). The comic, running quietly since the 60s, was then adopted by the "Generation X" crowd in the early/mid nineties and it all started to go stupid. Since then I could probably find you about 20 different retellings or every character's origin, each of which would flatly contradict the other 19. You get used to it after a while though, so I don't hate X-Men: Evolution as much as some people do. In fact, I don't hate it at all, I rather like it. For the uninitiated, the X-Men were created along with the earth and the heavens by Stan Lee in the 60's. The basic premise is that (not explicitly, but pretty obviously as a result of nuclear weapons testing) children start to be born with powers and abilities beyond those of normal people. Once these people become public knowledge they're generally met with extreme fear and hostility. The whole concept is a rather blatant allegory for the McCarthy communist witch hunts, although Lee would deny that even to this day. Long story short, bald guy opens a school where these kids can come and learn to control their sometimes dangerous powers in the hope of integrating with normal society and promoting tolerance, while elsewhere his former friend gathers others in the belief that the only way to survive is to subjugate the "inferior" human population. Anyhow, X-Men: Evolution reboots this idea in a contemporary setting. As is a necessity for a mainstream animated show, the majority of the characters are represented as highschool students. They train at the "institute" in their spare time, but attend a regular high school on a day to day basis. A lot of people rage about this being a corruption of the concept, but frankly that's dogshit. The original X-Men characters created by Lee were aged 14-15, and this is a good modern treatment of the story. All the important characters are there from the off, or introduced during the first season. The beauty of the X-Men as opposed to say, Smallville, is they have a vast pool of very strong characters with huge back-stories to introduce on a weekly basis without having to make up stupid excuses for why they can do weird things. Anyone who's seen the recent feature films will recognise just about everyone, with minor cosmetic changes to reach out to as much of a teenage audience as possible. Rogue as a goth for instance is different, but not a major betrayal of the spirit of the character. The only exception on this front is "Spyke", who has been completely made up out of thin air. I really don't see why they needed to do this, except to force a "streetwise" African-American kid into the cast, complete with skateboard. Rad. Anyway, if you enjoyed the feature films or are completely new to the X-Men, give this a spin. It's lightweight, as a children's cartoon will always be, but great fun and a treat to see some excellent characters brought to life. There are four full seasons to go at, from the usual sources.

Right, it's much too late and I'm clearly running away with myself on a topic I have a lot to say about. This has now become a 2-parter that I'll finish tomorrow. I'll sandwich something else in between for those who just don't care. On the slate for that are a write up of US series The 4400, my full thoughts on Superman Returns, and a passion piece about the genius of Jason Lee. Part 2 of this gubbins should feature Justice League Unlimited, lots of Batman, and Lou Ferrino, bless.