Category: Film and TV

Just got these in the mail, and I can’t wait to watch them (though at the moment I’m still making my way through the new Doctor Who season that was just released).

For those of you who missed it, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. was a 1993 TV series that blended two of my favorite things . . . the Old West and science-fiction. Two great things that go great together (sometimes . . . like this time . . . or Firefly).

(It also blended in some of my other favorite things, like humor and action and romance and whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string . . . well, maybe not the last couple.)

I didn’t see the series when it was on the air (because Fox’s advertisements for it make it look a lot more salacious than it actually is), but I discovered it in reruns on TNT and really enjoyed it.

Unlike many of the series on the air back then, it had a definite story arc spanning the entire season (I just love big story arcs) with significant character evolution a surprises as the story evolves. In fact, the main character, Brisco County Jr. (played by Bruce Campbell) starts the series as an ex-Harvard law professor turned bounty hunter to being the agent of 19th century robber barons who want him to track down the gang that killed his father to being a secret agent for the government.

Along the way we run across mysterious orbs from the future that give people superpowers (or kill them), evil robots, neurotic outlaws, a 19th century version of Elvis, Comet the Wonder Horse, and a bunch of anachronistic humor (before Hercules and Xena made it popular)–all of it fitting into a single, overarching Wild West saga.

And then there’s the show’s great theme music, which just makes you feel like it’s a warm, hopeful new day on the range, where anything can happen . . . and will.

Unfortunately, Fox aired the show in the Friday Night Death Slot and it didn’t get picked up for a second season.

Fortunately, the show’s creators did a rousing two-part season finale that tied up all the outstanding plot threads, so it works well as a season-long miniseries.

It took Warner Brothers FOREVER (13 years!) to release it on DVD, but now that it’s out you can

GET THE ADVENTURE!

I’m now working my way through

THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON OF THE NEW DOCTOR WHO SHOW.

For those who are keeping score, this is the first and only season to feature the ninth incarnation of the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston).

I’ve seen some of the episodes in the series, though I also missed a bunch because they conflicted with square dancing, and I’d be too tired to stay up to watch the repeats on Sci-Fi.

Like most Americans (or at least, most Americans who know about Doctor Who), I was introduced to the character when he was being played by Tom Baker (the fourth doctor) and the show was running on PBS stations across the country.

I have to say that, in the main, I like what I’ve seen of this series, though there are things I don’t.

I like the fact that there is an overall story arc to the series and the fact that they try to deal with the impact of time travel on the ordinary life of the Doctor’s main companion (Rose Tyler). Her mom and her boyfriend and her deceased father are significant characters in the series, and it’s nice to see what the effects would be on those close to a person if that person suddenly started jaunting about time.

I also like Eccleston’s portrayal of the doctor. He has a kind of enthusiastic optimism that he uses to hide an inner crushing grief, and the way that these two play off of each other is interesting.

Interestingly, Eccleston (who is a native of Lancashire) is one of the few doctors allowed to speak with a non-BBC accent, leading to one of my favorite lines in the episodes I’ve seen. When Rose has explained to a 21st century woman that the Doctor is an extraterrestrial, the woman asks, "Then why does your friend talk like he’s from the North?" to which Rose replies, "Lots of planets have a North!"

Still, if you’re a dyed-in-the-woolen-scarf Tom Bakerite, you might want to check out the other, recently-released complete Doctor Who season with its own season-spanning storyline,

THE COMPLETE KEY TO TIME SERIES.

So I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest last Saturday (actually, before my pre-written post on it went up) and I thought it really rocked.

It had a bunch of cool stuff in it, some of which I can’t say because it would be too much of a spoiler, but here are some isolated snippets of cool things that won’t give away the plot.

COOL THINGS IN PRACTES OF THE CARIBBEAN 2:

1) Johnny Depp’s performance.

2) The way the crewman finishes the line "The captain is acting strange."

3) Davy Jones (SDG’s really right on this one; Davy Jones has the potential to rival Jabba the Hutt as an iconic image, which is why I’m not posting a picture of him; I don’t want to spoil his entrance)

4) The make-up effects for Davy Jones’s men.

5) In particular the conch-headed man, and especially what he does in his very last appearance in the film.

6) The island escape sequence. MAN, THIS TOTALLY ROCKS! I CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER BEING FILMED BEFORE.

7) The "Jack-kabob"

8) The schlorp / shlub sound effects when the suckers on various tentacles are doing things.

9) The unusual "eye makeup"

10) The way that Jack and Elizabeth’s prophecies about each other come true.

11) The "Hello, beastie" moment.

12) The three-way swordfight.

13) The "rolling climax"

14) The humorous cliffhanger.

Don’t know what I’m talking about?

GO SEE THE FILM!

BTW, if the theaters are even half as hectic this weekend as they were last (when the film was selling out right and left), buy your tickes online or over the phone and make a point of showing up a little early.

If you have seen the film, feel free to share your own cool things in the movie. (SPOILERS OKAY since it’ll be in the combox.)

BTW, next summer’s final part of the Pirates trilogy may not be the end of the series.

JOHNNY DEPP HAS INDICATED HE’D BE INTERESTED IN PLAYING THE  PART AGAIN.

The Pirates of the Caribbean turned out to be the surprise summer hit of 2003 and left the newly-minted fans of the franchise wanting more.

They got a little more later that year when the pirates returned for a brief, cameo appearance to wipe out an orc army at the endmiddle (beginning? it’s hard to tell with a sixteen hour film) of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

They should have been in that film for longer than they were, but Aragorn foolishly released Captain Jack Sparrow from his oath before Sauron had been thoroughly defeated.

But now the pirates are back for another installment of their own franchise!

It instantly became THE BIGGEST OPENER IN BOX OFFICE HISTORY.

And STEVE GREYDANUS’S REVIEW has me anxious to see it!

Here’s a taste (EXCERPTS):

[L]ike Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dead Man’s Chest takes the kinds of things that others have done before, and then does them so inventively that it becomes the new standard.

The sequel takes the slapstick swashbuckling to a completely new level, evoking the ingenuity and physical comedy of a Buster Keaton or Jackie Chan set piece, crossed with the Rube Goldberg logic of a Chuck Jones cartoon.

A slight but distinct spiritual vibe runs through Dead Man’s Chest,
particularly in regard to an uneasy awareness of judgment after death.
“Do you fear death?” Jones asks the sailors of a ship he has taken as
he offers them a Faustian choice between death and eternal service on
his ship. “Life is cruel. Why should the afterlife be any different?
Why not postpone the judgment?” Most of the sailors accept this
Faustian bargain, though one sane soul demurs (“I’ll take my chances”)
and is quickly dispatched.

In a comic variation on the theme, one of the formerly cursed
pirates from the first film has taken a new interest in spiritual
matters. “We’re not immortal any more — we got to take care of our
immortal souls,” he warns his companion while leafing intently through
his Bible.

The other eyes him dubiously. “You know you can’t read…”

But the first is undeterred: “It’s the Bible — you get credit for trying!”

GET THE STORY.

Many have been comparing Dead Man’s Chest to The Empire Strikes Back in that it is (a) reportedly really good and (b) has a cliffhanger ending meant to spring us into a third film.

That film–Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End–is due out next summer.

I haven’t seen an actual in-theater movie in I don’t know how long (maybe a year or two), but I’m going to see this one.

See you at the movies!

INFO ON WHAT THAT WHOLE "DEAD MAN’S CHEST" THING IS ABOUT.

Last week I did a post on the proposal to reboot the Star Trek universe that Bryce Zabel and Joe Straczynski wrote and sent to Paramount.

The post generated a number of comments in the combox, as well as a comment via e-mail from Bryce Zabel himself (who gave permission to use his name). He writes:

Thanks for the mention in your blog… you must have a very popular one because I got a lot of referrals.  I also agree with the comments that a reboot, for those who freak out at the exact word, could simply be to tell the Star Trek story in an existing alt.universe. Anyway, all best to you, Jimmy…

I think that Bryce’s point (and that of other commenters) is a good one about presenting a rebooted Star Trek universe as an alternate timeline.

If a reboot ever goes forward, it might even be possible to deflect some concern by fans by showing the point of divergence for the two timelines or having them interact with each other in some way (via an interdimensional gateway or a timeline jumping means like in that great episode where Worf was jumping timelines accidentally). This would show the fans that all of their favorite, beloved stories were still "real" and still "existed out there"–just not in the timeline or universe that was in focus in the reboot.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, Mr. Zabel runs his own blog, and he frequently discusses matters of the television and movie industry, including science fiction and related genres, so be sure to

CHECK OUT HIS BLOG.

If you’d like to know more about the man himself,

HERE’S HIS IMDB PAGE

HIS BIO ON IMDB IS ALSO QUITE INFORMATIVE

AND HERE’S INFO ON HIS SERIES DARK SKIES.

Thanks for stopping by, Bryce! Hope to see you around the cyberspace!

Yesterday I did a couple of posts about efforts by fans and now, possibly, by J. J. Abrams, to re-cast the characters of the original Star Trek series in order to allow new stories to be told about them more easily.

I did so to build up to this:

A PROPOSAL BY JOE STRACZYNSKI AND BRYCE ZABEL FOR THEIR VISION OF HOW STAR TREK SHOULD BE REJUVENATED.
(CHT to the readre who e-mailed!)

They sent this proposal to Paramount back in 2004 and . . . well . . . nothing came of it. But it’s an interesting proposal.

Basically, they propose rebooting the Star Trek universe so that the writers won’t be boxed in by all the massive continuity recent Star Trek writers have been burdened with. Giving the universe a fresh start would allow them to take the exciting, interesting things about the series that made it popular, without having to be constrained in the stories they can tell by all the material that later followed.

It would also let them re-cast the characters so that we could have new stories involving Kirk, Spock, and McCoy–the triumvirate at the heart of the original series.

The basic idea was to offer another take on the original five-year mission–this time giving it a definite story arc and retelling classic tales in a new way, while supplementing them with entirely new stories.

What they had in mind is quite interesting–putting a significant mystery at the heart of the series in a way that would tie it toghether. They write:

As noted above and as established in television history, Kirk was the youngest starship
captain in the Federation…but what led to this? We know that the Enterprise was sent out
to explore where no human had gone before…but if you stop and think about it for a
moment, isn’t that an odd assignment…to take one of the finest ships in the fleet, give it to
the youngest captain in the Federation, and tell them to just go drive around and see what
they can find?

It’s peculiar…until you allow for the possibility that they were looking for something
specific…something they had to keep a secret even from the rest of the crew.

The series treatment gives you a pretty good idea of what Straczynski and Zabel intended the secret to be, and it would have been interesting to see them get the chance to do it.

I found reading the series treatment quite interesting from a
literary perspective. Not only did they have to do a lot of
salesmanship as part of their attempt to convince network execs to give
them a chance, they also spent a surprising amount of time explaining
the concept of a reboot and how it would work. I guess studio execs in 2004 couldn’t be expected to be familiar with such concepts and had to be given a "let me lead you by the hand" explanation. (Probably not a bad idea. JMS tells horror stories about his initial attempts to get studio execs to understand the idea of Babylon 5 having rotational gravity.) Now you could just point to Battlestar Galactica, tho.

On his blog, where Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel posted the treatment, he indicated that they also held back a lot of what they had in mind from the treatment, indicating that they had in mind a reboot somewhat like the Battlestar Galactica reboot that Ron Moore did, which would have resulted in a much grittier, edgier, and (frankly) interesting series than the kind of clean-as-a-whistle, formal, polyester kind of series that we got in Voyager (for example).

He also mentions that he’s had a whole new set of thoughts about how Star Trek could be revived since the 2004 proposal.

So be sure to

READ THE POST.

Ever since Star Trek Enterprise went and got itself cancelled (due to the bad decisions of its producers, such as not focusing on the Earth-Romulan War, and despite the much better fourth season that came too late to save it), Star Trek fans have had no new Star Trek to watch–except for fan productions like Star Trek New Voyages.

Now it looks like they may.

When Enterprise was cancelled it was stated (a) that there would indeed be future Star Trek productions (Paramount would be foolish to simply let the franchise die) but (b) there would be no new TV show for some time (Paramount would be foolish to put a new one on too soon, before the demand for one had had a chance to build again) and (c) the most likely next installment of the franchise would be a movie.

Rumors circulated around Hollywood for some time about what this movie might be about–possibly the Earth-Romulan War . . . possibly the story of how Kirk and Spock first met (these being the most logical two stories to try to tell next).

Now Paramount has officially announced the movie.

And it’s signed major talent to oversee it: J. J. Abrams, the guy behind Lost and Alias and Mission Impossible III.

Of course, the movie–or Abrams involvement in it–may not work out. Hollywood is a notoriously entropic place, meaning that deals have a tendency to fall apart there.

It sounds, at present, like Abrams and his team are currently thinking about doing the Kirk-Spock story, using new actors to play the young characters.

Which is why I mentioned New Voyages earlier: The New Voyages folks have decided that these characters are iconic enough in our culture that they should not be forever tied to the particular actors who originated them, the way Hamlet or MacBeth or the Mikado are not tied to the actors who originally played those parts.

In other words: Fans should learn to disassociate the characters from the actors.

This would allow the franchise to tell new stories about established and interesting characters and not have to invent and then sell to the fans a whole new cast every time one cast needed to retire.

Y’know: The way James Bond and Sherlock Holmes have been played by something like fifty guys each.

And there’s a reason I mention Star Trek XI and its possible recasting of major parts.

More on that tomorrow.

In the meantime,

GET THE STORY

and

LEARN ABOUT J. J. ABRAMS.

I assume from various pieces of evidence I’ve encountered that there are a bunch of Star Trek fans out there making their own fan films based on the franchise.

I further assume that most of these are pretty lousy.

But I don’t know, because I haven’t seen them.

One fan-produced Star Trek effort has stood out, though, and I have actually seen some of it (though not enough to do a full review at this point).

The series is called Star Trek New Voyages, and it has managed to achieve unprecedented success.

The idea is that the series will use modern amateur film techniques (which are getting quite good) to produce the episodes that would have been needed to fill out the remaining two years of the original Enterprise’s "five year mission" (y’know: the two years they didn’t get to film because they got cancelled after season 3) and these episodes will be released direct-to-web.

The show thus features the original series cast of characters, though with different actors playing them (usually).

What makes the series unusual is the degree of quality that the folks behind it are trying to put into it. Their sets, for example, are virtually identical to those used on the original series–so identical, in fact, that when Star Trek Enterprise needed a copy of Mr. Sulu’s extendible console viewer thingie (as seen here) for their Mirror Universe episodes and the prop department didn’t have it any more, the producers of the TV show called the New Voyages folks to borrow the fans’ version of the prop rather than make their own.

The level of quality that they’re trying to put into the show has been so great (relative to other fan productions operating on a shoestring) that they’ve been able to get numerous professionals connected with the TV series to participate in New Voyages as well. This includes not only Gene Roddenberry’s son and actors who had minor roles in the original series but also writers from the original series, Next Gen, and Deep Space 9, including such noteables as D. C. Fontana and David Gerrold.

And now some of the main cast from the original series is getting into the act.

This September they’ll be releasing an episode in which Walter Koenig reprises his role as Checkov (an older version of himself who meets the younger version normally on New Voyages), and I’m anticipating that this episode will be used as Koenig’s swan song for the character (i.e., I’m expecting the older Checkov to die in it and thus tie up his character arc).

George Takei is also going to be reprising his role as Sulu in an upcoming episode.

Unfortunately, they’re only making one of these a year at present, so they may have to re-cast all the parts once again before they get to the end of the fifth year (if they get that far), but it’s interesting to note the success they’ve had thus far.

ABOUT THE PROJECT.

VISIT THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE.

Now, there’s a specific reason I mention all this.

More on that later.

A while back I posted HERE regarding the efforts of gay-advocacy magazine The Advocate to recast Superman as an icon of gay culture.

In the wake of that story, it was nice to see Superman Returns director Bryan Singer among the many pooh-poohing this notion — Singer’s own sexual preferences notwithstanding.

Singer described Superman as “probably the most heterosexual character in any movie I’ve ever made.”

GET THE STORY.

Incidentally, SDG has posted his review of Superman Returns — so get the straight story on the film HERE.

Being that two of my JA.O blogmates have posted recently on the topic of super-heroes, I had to throw in my two pfennigs.

A few weeks ago our family acquired (cheap) a copy of the original (Adam West) Batman movie (1966).

Okay, I admit it… I have no taste. I like this movie better than any of the darker, more recent Batman films (except Batman Forever) and it is a guilty pleasure that I have passed on to my kids. They have really enjoyed it. One measure of the success of a film in our house is when we go around for weeks afterward inserting bits of the dialogue into our everyday speech. Batman 1966 qualifies in spades.

The movie is campy, fun, clean, goofy, brimming with Bat-gadgets and fisticuffs, and boasts the greatest cast of Bat-villains ever. Like the classic Looney Toons, the humor of the movie (as well as the series) operates on different levels. As a kid I missed a lot of the grown-up jokes and sexual innuendo, but had a blast, anyway.

For the record, in this film Batman is intensely heterosexual.

The main reason I’m posting on Batman, though, is a scene toward the end of the film, where the President of the United States makes an appearance (more or less… we see his chair and one arm from behind). He sports a generic Texas twang and, though it isn’t really a straight impersonation, it is obviously meant to represent then President Lyndon Johnson.

What’s weird is that, though it doesn’t sound like Johnson, the voice sounds remarkably, uncannily like George W. Bush.

SEE IF IT DOESN’T!

[JIMMY ADDS: If you watch this movie, don’t miss the MUST SEE (!) "Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!’ scene. It’s hilarious!]

[JIMMY ALSO ADDS: There’s an interesting episode of the Batman TV series in which they play off Lyndon Johnson’s political misfortunes and the fact that due to his unpopularity he didn’t run for re-election when he legally could have. In this episode, Batman is running for mayor of Gotham City in order to stop a villain from getting the post, and the episode is transparently meant to be a "Batman runs for president" episode under the surface (e.g., they mention the cowboys and indians voting in the western precincts of Gotham City). At the end of the episode, after Batman has won and turned the mayorship over the the guy who really should be mayor, he is in Commissioner Gordon’s office when he receives a phone call from a major, unnamed political party asking him to be their presidential candidate. He politely declines, but he and the commissioner comment on how nice it was of "them" to ask. At this point, we have no idea which party it was that asked, but then Batman gets another call, from the other political party, asking him the same thing, and he replies, "I . . . thought your party already had a presidential candidate for 1968." ZING!]