Sense and Nonstuff

Review: Hugo (Scorsese)

2011-12-09T02:59:00.000-08:00

I saw the children's film Hugo, oddly directed by Martin Scorsese, on Tuesday. I thought it was fair to good. Not Excellent, not solidly good, but fair to good. I did enjoy it.

Hugo is film based on the extremely popular children's graphic novel by Brian Selznick called The Invention of Hugo Cabret and I think part of its mere fairness is partly caused by the transition from book to movie. The biggest problem with it was that it didn't fully hang together. Someone mentioned that it did have a "first half" and a "second half" and while they were tied just about enough to work as a whole film there was a definite divide and sense of disjointedness between these dual stories.

But first, the good...

The way the movie was designed was quite pleasing, although quite stylized colourfully-- the old blue and yellow was back, although red, white and the occaisional pale green had been thrown in to make you think it wasn't a blue and yellow movie. (But I'm on to that!)

The script was tight; the film didn't show us unnecessary scenes and instead asked us to fill in the gaps and make assumptions, which I know is something I get very uppity about.

I also liked that it was in some ways a love letter to old film; in the first half, I wondered why Scorsese had taken on the film, but it became very clear as the movie developed into this more film-centric plotline. I liked that connections were made between life and the films and once we got into that early film based section the movie came alive.

This will contain some extremely mild spoilers:

As I said above, the major problem with the film is the disjointedness. I got the sense watching it that there were several quite separate stories tucked into one.

First thing you have to know is that the more important story of the film (not the story of the boy but the story of the man) is a True Story. Going in knowing this would actually definitely have affected the way I perceived the story. True Stories are never as well tied up as ones that have little to no requirement to match up with reality.

This True Story is actually a really lovely one and I know why Scorsese and Brian Selznick (the writer of the book it's adapted from) chose it. What the problem is, and this may be a problem with the book as well, is that the titular boy Hugo actually is largely a conduit through which we can get to this other character's story. Yes, the boy has a story of his own, but it's very much as a supporting role-- at least in the movie.

Now, this is fine as a concept. I actually really like it. The trouble is that the film actually doesn't really fully realise it. One of my favourite quotes from a film maker is from Sidney Lumet who talked about a good film being the product of people who were all making the same movie. This means that everyone is onboard with a single vision. All the parts work together perfectly to tell a single, or set of matching, stories. Hugo doesn't quite pull this off.

The movie is centered on the train station, partly because of the True Story, but this is used to make it a convergence of stories. There is a line in it somewhere along the lines of, "This is a train station. People are either getting on trains or off them. Nothing else goes on here." Clearly, the movie says, it does. To an extent, the stories pulled together but maybe an inch more cohesion, a tiny bit more woven together at any point in the movie, would have really pulled this story together.

As it stands there were a few loose threads that I thought were a little too loose.

First, Sasha Baron Cohen. Cast for humour and within his own story, he was quite good, but as part of a cohesive whole he was in a different film. Part of this is the fact it was Sasha Baron Cohen, and there is something a little too satirical about him. The rest of it was simply that I'm not sure Scorsese really knew what to do with him. He was also the only villain in the film but lacked any real convincing villainy. He was simply there to get in the way when the film was getting a little too easy for the characters. It would have maybe been good to have him connect more with the early film plot through some more obvious device and also connect with Hugo through something slightly less simple.

Secondly, the tug of war between Hugo as the main character and Georges was a bit unstable and unbalanced. I would have liked to see more of the early-on story lines converge on or (perhaps more subtley) circle arond Georges. The use of a montage to establish the relationship between Hugo and Georges was especially weak. A single strong scene probably would have done a better job. Perhaps Georges should have been more visually and philosophically part of the train station, even if it wasn't immediately obvious that this was the case.

Thirdly, the girl was I felt a decidedly weak point. She was a tool with character traits, not a full character. I nearly guffawed at some of her more cliched lines and actions. I suspect that this is a flaw of the book rather than simply of the film or the actress. She could have been more key to the story (if you've seen the film, pun intended). Given she was at the station frequently, she could have provided the central character between Georges and the disparate station characters, and clearly did interact with them (teaching all the children to dance), but never became the rounded and full character she could have been.

I may be showing my feminism a little, but I fear part of her problem is not simply that she is a bit of a tool between Hugo and Georges and nothing more, but also that she's a female character in a book about two male characters, by a male writer, made into a movie by a male director. Very little about her rang true for me and I feel this was a significant loss of what could have been a crucial glue that would hold the story together. In fact, as I write this I am becoming more and more convinced that more than anyone she is the most important character in the story and as such should have been much more fully developed and this is a huge problem for the story that she isn't. After all, it's her who creates the mystery by uttering the fateful paraphrased line, "Pere Georges won't let me watch movies, and I don't know why."

!

Lastly, where the girl should have been the literal and central person linking Georges and Hugo, Hugo's invention should have been the philosophical/emotional link. These two people share something very important that is represented by the invention, and we never really got that sense. Partly, I think, because Scorsese was playing his Georges cards very close to the chest, but also because the focus became on early film. The original title suggests that there was also this other key part of Georges-- encapsulated in the invention-- that actually represented him as a person so much so that it was the object chosen to cause [/i]the whole plot to happen[/i]. And yet, it was the film that got centre stage and all the glory. It should have been the invention!

This last problem is possibly/probably an artifact of the movie being filmed by Scorsese, who is clearly and perhaps inevitably more interested in the early film aspect of the story.

What a shame! This was one of these films/stories that was so close. However, I think it used to people and objects as just tools, rather than full developing them. It needed a woman's eye looking at that girl and punching the male writers before pushing her further into the plot to provide more glue between the different parts. It needed someone to remind Scorsese that the story is first about the invention, not about the films.

Review: Alphas (Continued)

2011-08-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

Bad news.

Alphas, the show whose pilot I reviewed most recently, is not-- so far-- delivering. Alphas was always going to be a slow-burn show and I was optimistic that it would deliver a cool, low-tech take on the superability genre.

It hasn't quite made it.

One reason is the premise: there is an Alpha of the week, causing mayhem and the team must track them down to stop them on their often distructive path. Unfortuantely, this isn't enough. Ultimately, this is duller than the usual crime-of-the-week show because there is far less to impede an investigation. Superabilities speed up the search for a missing person, mind-control speeds up their interrogation.

To fill the 40 minutes, there is rather a lot of discussion. In every episode so far the group has rehashed a number of the same points about who they are, what they are doing etc. While this happens in real life fairly often, showing it in a 40-minute tv show slows it down and when the action is primarily occurring in a peripheral, non-threatening way, this is a problem. There's only so many speeches on the same topic the audience can listen to quietly.

Lastly, as sometimes happens once a pilot gets picked up, the environment and locations that I felt were interesting and leant an important air of reality to the show have been neatly swept up and disposed of. Now the office is well-decorated and in some kind of business park. The lives of the characters have been compressed into that solvent middle class nothingness that almost all American tv characters on the more mainstream channels seem to exist in. What a shame!

The only interesting thing is the clear moral ambiguity of the Alpha's goal. They capture and imprison dangerous Alphas and it is obvious that the facility where they go is on the wrong end of the experimental spectrum. And yet this is not the focus of the show and it will no doubt be a while before the character who is aware of the obvious issue actually gets around to even telling the others, let alone acting on his knowledge.

So Alphas is dry and dull, throwing us violence, action and intense emotional outbursts as if those somehow make up for the nondescriptness of the rest of the show and the sense of disconnectedness that is growing among what was initially a fairly promising ensemble.

Disappointing.

Review: Alphas (Pilot)

2011-07-18T04:21:00.001-07:00

With Heroes and Smallville over and buried there is a superhero void in the television world. Syfy has filled this with their offering, called Alphas.

Alphas is very much like Heroes on the surface. A group of people display abilities beyond the norm and use them to handle crime and intrigue. Alphas takes a step away from Heroes in terms of superabilities-- they are more limited and also more unusual abilities, and yet still broad enough to be useful in a variety of situations. Alphas also deviates by being more closely linked to government agencies and while it has all the intrigue and ambiguity raised by the X-Files and Alias, it lacks the mythology that Heroes developed. This is not a bad thing.

So Alphas works as a concept and offers a promising future, but most shows work as an elevator pitch or they wouldn't have gone into production at all. Stargate: Boring certainly offered promise and failed to deliver. Does it work as a show?

Well, Alphas is not excellent. Nothing about it is bold or surprising or even particularly thrilling. It does not deliver the slam-bang opening that, say, an Aaron Sorkin show does. But it does work, and it works for several rather usual, for a television show, reasons.

The first is the cast. It is an ensemble piece where all the characters have roughly the same importance-- Stargate: SG-1 rather than Bones, let's say-- and it has six primary characters who require screentime. This can mean characters who take a while to get going while they jostle for their true position within the group. Alphas is no exception: everyone's got a personality label and in the short time we get for each of them to present themselves we're mostly only getting that one characteristic. However, this wasn't as disastrous as it was in Fringe. Characteristics were usuallt subtle, rather than in-your-face, which meant we weren't being smacked in the face by how much of a jerk one character was or how much of a powerhungry sociopath another was.

And there were a few standouts. David Strathairn fit his role as scientist/psychologist/team leader very well, providing exactly the right mixture of competance, intelligence and concern for his team. Ryan Cartwright, who I recognised as the factual intern from Bones, has also secured himself an interesting part as a person with high-functioning autism-- which as one of the bolder moves for the show could have been a disaster had it gone poorly, but in fact it was played remarkably well and actually gave the characters something to react to and rally around. I suspect things wouldn't have gone quite so well without Cartwright's excellent performance.

Another thing I noticed about the show was the dialogue. It wasn't stellar, by any means. However, it was, for the most part, invisible. The writers, Zak Penn (with a writing past littered with superhero stories) and Michael Karnow (with a comedy background) wrote a very naturalistic script with a lot of naturalistic chatter, which was probably instrumental in saving the characters from having wholly canned personalities. The script felt like a lot of time was spent on it. The only thing lacking was anything more than the faintest whiff of humour-- but it certainly has the potential for a quiet kind of amusingness in the future.

Lastly, what made the show work was location and I suspect this comes from the writers as well. It felt like someone's personal environment-- a record shop, a laundry, a low-end house with older cars on the road, nothing particularly flashy or exuding the kind of wealth that normally populates a show like this. Location choices like that add colour to a show, literally and figuratively, because it looks more real than the beautiful, clean (or all-too strategically cluttered) all-American locations we are used to in shows like this.

"But Teshi," I hear you cry! "You have not talked about any of the normal things you witter on about-- how dense the show is, or what it does in the first ten minutes, or whether things make logical sense!"

Alphas is not a standout show yet. The Pilot wasn't great, but neither was it awful. It does make logical sense, if you accept the superabilities at face value. It is not dense or fast moving but aside from a few moments that overextend their welcome it's dense enough to keep me interested and has the ensemble, the abilities and the location to carry it along well.

And yes, in 10 minutes the opening is done and the plot is in full swing. No stretched out action, no dithering about with mysterious unknowns. It's not a spectacular opening by any means, but it sets the scene, introduces the characters and and puts them all together in ordinary show time by just over the ten minute mark. Good work, team!

There's still something I haven't mentioned because it didn't really strike me until I put all the above factors together above. This show is homey. Most of the characters already know each other well and you get that feeling from their relaxed and familiar dialogue. The settings are lived in and interacted with. You've entered in medias res but that's okay because you don't feel unwelcome in the story.

I look forward to seeing this show develop and I really hope it is a slow burning show that delivers consistantly, because it has that potential.

Stargate: Boring (Pilot)

2011-05-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

I'd been holding off on watching Stargate: Universe for two reasons. The first, because I (gasp) haven't finished Stargate SG-1. I find it difficult to finish a beloved show, but that's another psychiatrist visit.

The second reason was that I had heard uninspiring things about SG:U. However, I love the world of Stargate and knew I would have to give Universe a try eventually. So finally I decided to watch 'Air', the first episode.

I didn't make it even half way.

A while back, I watched two versions of the same pilot of a tv show and lamented how, within the first few minutes, a viewer could already sense problems in the show.

I found SG:U played right into this same issue of struggling before it had started. Being the third in a franchise, it-- like that Life on Mars pilot-- invites comparisons to its stargate predecessors. Both SG-1 and Atlantis had their troubles but were overall highly successful shows loved by many. Both had very tight pilot episodes that sucked me in.

Spoilers!

Universe, starring Robert Carlyle and Brian J. Smith, among others, opens with a large ship gliding in space. So far, so good. Seconds later, we are watching people get tossed at speed through a stargate, presumably aboard the ship. They are landing with enough force to be injured and frequently be hit by flying luggage and other travellers. Initially, I was drawn in, but my content was almost immediately crushed by a single line spoken by Brian J. Smith:

Slow down the evac! We're coming in too hot!

What is it about this line, spoken two minutes and fifty two seconds into the show that stopped me from believing in what was happening? It may have been the self-consciously military phraseology that lacked the specifics to make it interesting, perhaps it was the inevitable knowledge that a lot more people were going to leap through that stargate and lie there shrieking and crying before it was closed and we could get on with things. Perhaps it was also the obvious nature of the statement. Aside from the word "evac", which hopefully you guessed from what you could see, everything the lieutenant says is obvious.

So that's the three minute mark and the air is filled with confused cries. If you listen to the soundtrack alone, you hear two things. One, these confused cries. Two, clearly spoken above the shrieks, some lines of dialogue which only compound the tragedy unfolding.

MAN: My God! Where are we?

WOMAN: What is this place?

Aaah! How awful! These lines are separate from the scene, edited on top of the random screams and crying in an artificial way, evenly spaced. They are spoken in a very amateurish way that sets them apart from the general environment of shock and confusion. Lastly, they are poorly written. Who says, "what is this place?" People in period films written in the fifties. Not only that, these two lines say precisely the same thing and it was something we already knew.

So now my heart is sinking. The writing is unimaginative, the sound editing is bad and nothing about the setting suggests we're going to get some idea of what is going on any time soon.

Other thoughtless actions occur while evacuees continue to fly out of the stargate. A medic identifies herself with a shout. There are people all around unconcious and bleeding and we watch her dealing with a man with a broken arm. The medic says, "hold still, I'm going to put your arm in a sling, okay?"

Hang on. We just saw a picture of a woman, unconcious, with a bleeding head wound. There are still more poeple pouring through the stargate while others lie on the ramp in danger of more injuries and this woman is going to start dealing with a broken arm right now?

Now I start to realise not just in bad writer territory, we're in bad character and environment development territory. The writers have just shown us that they are out of touch with the very situation they have written.

And it goes on. The Colonel is the last through the stargate, thrown much further than the others. There is blood all over him and he slumps to the ground, clearly close to death. The Lieutenant asks the Medic, "Is he okay?" If it was intended to convey the lieutenant's confusion, it didn't quite work. The colonel was clearly badly wounded before he came through the stargate. Of course he's not okay.

Except for quick glimpses of various characters, we've not yet been introduced to any characters. Now, however, the camera focuses on Eli (David Blue) for a moment. And suddenly, we're in flashback mode.

For me, Eli's how-did-I-get-here flashback was the nail in the coffin of Universe's opening sequence. We learn in the next few minutes that Eli was hired by the Stargate program by breaking a secret code hidden in a Prometheus video game. He is, in short, the geek fantasy character-- the audience. Within a minute of opening the door, Eli is offered a non-disclosure agreement (which he doesn't initially sign; he is basically kidnapped by the Air Force and emotionally blackmailed into signing) and we're beamed up into space to have the Stargate Program explained to us by a recording Daniel Jackson.

The crucial ten minute mark has been and gone and we know almost nothing about the characters or the situation. Worse, we do not care about the characters or the situation-- Daniel Jackson's recorded cameo has more personality than the main characters. Nobody's particularly believeable or likeable and the situations are hamfisted stereotypes of scenes most science fiction fans have seen if not on screen, then in their dreams.

Lastly, this flashback has no common link to what is happening in Eli's present at the stargate on this mysterious. Sure, that's the bizarre story that got him off world and no doubt the whole story will be told, but as of yet the audience is not making the link. So far, neither story is really improved by having the presence of the other one. In short, Eli's backstory was entirely unnecessary.

So, compare, if you will, Universe's opening ten minutes to SG-1's.

SG-1 opens with five unimportant Air Force plebs playing cards near something Very Unimportant deep underground. We know all these things in the first thirty seconds of the show after two lines of dialogue. Within a minute, we know that the Very Unimportant object is actually Very Important. Within two and a half minutes, we're already being invaded by aliens. This, if you remember, was the appproximate time of that first disastrous line in Universe. At five minutes, the invasion is over and the wheels of the show are in motion and we meet the first main character of the show.

Colonel Jack O'Neill is on the roof of his house, looking up through a telescope at the place we know this show is going because we saw the promos. We learn in a word and a non-action that he's retired and bitter and he delivers some beautiful opening lines for a show:

A little piece of advice, Major? Get re-ass'ed to NASA. That's where all the action's gonna be. Out there.

That is the main character's first real line. The audience knows: The lead is going to be dry, grouchy and funny. It's going to be space, and it's going to be action. That's at five minutes and fifty-six minutes.

And so the set-up is over and the real plot can begin. Already we're into that moving-right-along feeling that the middle of a show gets. Things are unfolding, introductions being mode, detailed conversations are occuring. At ten minutes, everyone is up to speed: the aliens are here and we have to take action.

The show would be taking action for ten seasons and movies after that.

Back to Universe at ten minutes: The plot was already plodding, the characters were dull, dumb and lifeless, the explanatory flashback unnecessary and too far separated from the action, the action itself thoughtless and grating.

Universe was mostly dead on impact, just like that unfortunate Colonel.

The 'Chaos' Catastrophe

2011-04-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

Hello again.

In case you missed the three whole episodes it aired, there was a show on this spring on CBS called Chaos.

You would be forgiven for missing it, though, based on the picture on the Wikipedia page. Take a look at this:

Ironically, that image is called "Chaospromo", although what exactly it was promoting, I'm not sure. Four men, wearing grey suits of varying shades, on a black background with perhaps the most boring font choice.

This photo, and what it represents, killed this show. The show was shot in shades of grey, promoted as "rogue agents battle the bureaucracy", and seemed-- at first glance-- to be about just that: CIA Office Politics, starring rogueish but otherwise unexciting show.

IMDB tells a different story, bar the promotional description. The show is action, adventure, drama. The greyness of the show belied its actual content, which involved world travel-- one episode took us in the dead of night to the North Korean border-- and was quite reminicent, I found, of McGuyver. McGuyver was bold enough, and ridiculous enough, to go fake overseas-- to dream of far off and tense situations and places. Not just another hospital or city somewhere in America. Not just a few flashbacks to a hotel room in Amsterdam.

It was fun, it was quirky, and it delivered a good time and a few laughs, with truly heartfelt moments. The designer could have made a point of having the CIA all grey and the four characters, whose chemistry grew with each week, be stand out colours against the greyness of the bureaucracy-- but someone went with grey and made it look like the dullest show on the face of the Earth.

Chaos was an adventure show in a world deminated by intrigue, action and endless drama. It was the first genuine adventure show I've seen on tv for the first time-- marketed as colourless bureaucratic drama.

So three episodes aired and then CBS, not able to support anything for longer than that, apparenty, axed it. Did they even watch the show? Did they even know that the promotion didn't sell the show for what it was?

So long, Chaos. I will remember you fondly.

To Mr. Ray Comfort: A Lesson on the Proper Use of Metaphor in Argument

2009-11-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

So, if you don’t know who Ray Comfort is, be glad. Comfort is a religious man who for the last couple of years has been providing arguments for Creationism/Intelligent Design. You might know him as the banana man.

Recently, Mr. Comfort decided that he would issue a version of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species with a foreword of his own. He intends to hand this out at universities. Mr. Comfort’s Origin has caused a bit of a hoo-ha, especially among the skeptical community which opposes people like Mr. Comfort.

This post isn’t actually about evolution or the evidence for it. There are many people who are much more qualified to explain why evolution works than me. The only thing I would like to say that Darwin and the Origin of Species is not the be-all end-all of evolution. A 150-year-old text is not the only thing you should be reading if you want to learn about this subject.

But, as I was saying, I am not going to talk about evolution. In this post, I will respond to a pair of grievous errors in Mr. Comfort’s forward to his edition of the Origin of Species. I feel qualified to respond because they relate to stories and writing.

Here is the text, so you can read it for yourself, if you wish.

After a brief biography of Darwin peppered with dour photographs of the man*, Mr. Comfort’s forward begins: “Darwin’s work has helped fuel intense debates about religion and science…” a mild and even-handed beginning. The end of the foreword, however, sounds like this: “…there’s nothing more important than where they will spend eternity. Thank you for reading this.”

From these quotes, you can tell what happens within this foreword. It goes from introducing Darwin to an extended argument for becoming a Christian of the same type as Mr. Comfort. It is in this section that Comfort makes his two errors.

The first is a mistake in storytelling. Comfort makes a common mistake of many people who are not particularly familiar with storytelling. I see it a lot among young people who aren’t very strong writers. They overlook a crucial detail that is there in their head, but somehow never made it onto the page. The result is nonsensical to the reader.

Both of these occur later in the foreword, when Mr. Comfort has started his conversion attempt.

Here is the quote (pg 44):

To say that there will be no consequences for breaking God’s Law is to say that God is unjust, that He is evil. This is why. On February 24, 2005, a nine-year-old girl was reported missing from her home in Homosassa, Florida. Three weeks later, police discovered that she had been kidnapped, brutally raped, and then buried alive. Little Jessica Lunsford was found tied up, in a kneeling position, clutching a stuffed toy.

How do you feel toward the man who murdered that helpless little girl in such an unspeakably cruel way? Are you angered? I hope so. I hope you are outraged. If you were completely indifferent to her fate, it would reveal something horrible about your character. Do you think that God is indifferent to such acts of evil? You can bet your precious soul He is not. He is outraged by them. The fury of Almighty God against evil is evidence of His goodness. If He wasn’t angered, He wouldn’t be good. We cannot separate God’s goodness from His anger. Again, if God is good by nature, He must be unspeakably angry at wickedness.

What is missing? Do you know?

Comfort begins by telling a story. He goes onto to draw the conclusion than God is outraged by this. But he doesn’t give the bit of the story that tells how we know that God is outraged by this. I’m not entirely a proponent of show-don’t-tell, but in this case, I feel that it would be a good thing for Comfort to look into when telling his stories and making his argument.

The way it is at the moment, it sounds like Comfort knows somehow that God is angry, but that that’s it. He was angry. Surely there is more to the story, Mr. Comfort? Or it seems God is about as good as any one of us who are equally and impotently outraged by this incident. God in Mr. Comfort’s world begins to look like this guy, and surely that’s not what Mr. Comfort was going for.

The second mistake involves metaphor and is another common mistake. Metaphor is great for making arguments because it creates a story that can be used to clearly compare arguments. However, it does contain one pitfall we should all be wary of. Many people, and Comfort is one of them, get so into their metaphor that they forget that it is just an invented metaphor—they start to get carried away.

Comfort’s metaphor compares death to jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet. In this metaphor, Christianity is a parachute (sorry, I spoiled it for you) and—to give another example—Islam is flapping your arms as you jump. You get the idea.

But Comfort begins to take this metaphor and draw conclusions from the metaphor as if it were the argument itself. Saying that you would regard a parachute as crucial in this situation (pg 47) demonstrates what you think of Christianity, but it doesn’t mean that this metaphor can be turned around the other way to prove that Christianity is like a parachute and Islam is like flapping your arms. Metaphors should only be used to convey an idea in a clear fashion, not to make arguments themselves. They only come out of the argument—the argument cannot come out of them. Ray Comfort has made this mistake in his foreword.

In conclusion? Don't forget to take this into account when you are writing using metaphors. Be sure to use metaphors only to illustrate and not to draw conclusions from. In addition-- read over your stories. Have you got all the necessary details? Especially all the cause-and-effects. Without them, your argument, like Ray Comfort's will have nothing to hold it together.

Finally, in parting, a little quote that’s slightly amusing also taken from this metaphor (pg 47):

You know that the law of gravity will kill you when you jump.

* Another side note. Darwin is a favourite photograph of people who wish to dismiss the theory that he proposed. There is a particular photograph of him as an old man, looking a bit sad, a bit pensive, aged, tired, cynical. This is what happens, we are meant to believe, when we become atheist and/or believe in evolution. Lawl.

Disney to Remake Yellow Submarine

2009-09-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read correctly, Disney is going to remake the beloved Beatles-song-based animated film, Yellow Submarine.

I'd like to start off by saying, not all remakes are bad. Some take an old film or an old idea and bring something new to the table. Perhaps new technologies and situations have changed the way something would play out, or the older film just wasn't living up to the potential of the plotline. There is room for remakes and homages, and some of them are excellent films.

But there are certain films for which remakes seem not only unnecessary but actively negative and stupid. I would like to suggest that Yellow Submarine is one of these films.

Now, I have a soft spot for the film: Yellow Submarine was the film my parents put us in front while they had to focus on packing for family holidays. But it goes beyond childhood memories. Yellow Submarine is not just a psychedelic movie set to 16 Beatles songs, it's indicative also of a time of a place and an artistic vision that simply no longer exists. It all came together in 1968, and I doubt very much it can all come together now.

I think that all artists sit around saying, "I wish I could do something like what was done with Yellow Submarine/Casablanca/1984," but it's only major companies like Disney who can afford the rights to the exact songs and the voice actors to actually take the ridiculous step. Other artists have to use their imagination to pull out something 'inspired by'-- and end up with something new and relevant, rather than something that's simply the most thoughtless remake.

What is Disney thinking, really? What can possibly be driving this desire to remake something so intrinsically tied to a date over fourty years ago-- using much of the original film? Is it money? Are they really going to make significant money on this project? I have no idea.

To me, this marks the end of Disney. Nothing about this suggests that there are intelligent people behind the decision making process at Disney. I hope this movie contains jumping sharks, because that would be its only redeeming factor.

Review: Warehouse 13 (Pilot)

2009-07-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

It's pilot season again!

For those of you not paying attention to this kind of thing, you may not have heard that the Sci Fi channel, in a desperate bid to attract more viewers, recently rebranded itself as "Syfy" with a cheerful purple, vaguely feminine colour scheme. The idea, I think, is to attract all those women scared off by the "Sci Fi" label.

You can watch their rather hilariously sparkly! promotional commercial here.

Warehouse 13 is the first of the new shows to come out of the Syfy name. The concept is a reasonably simple one: somewhere in South Dakota there is an enormous warehouse containing a large collection of magical or historically advanced artifacts and technologies from all over the world. Two Secret Service agents are recruited to "snag, bag and tag" stray artifacts causing hijinks across the United States.

I enjoyed this show. I want to make that clear from the beginning, because I have a feeling a lot of what I'm going to say is going to be negative. It was fun, watchable, light, and never made me want to turn it off. I liked the characters.

That said, it was more along the lines of a warm cup of tea that a piping hot one.

I have said that the show was light. I think that most of this episodes luke-warmness stems from its failure to capture the right balance of darkness and light. The writers were Rockne O'Bannon (The Twilight Zone), D. Brent Mote (not very much) and Jane Espenson (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica). Jane Espenson brought you some of your favourite funny Buffy episodes and her kind of undermining wit was very obvious throughout the episode. I think, though, that these three writers together lacked the gravity to bring the show down to Earth.

There were plenty of moments where I think seriousness was intended to take over, but I think overall they were too brief for any kind of tension to build up. Scenes that I think were meant to be eerie were cliche and campy and never allowed to progress for very long before someone broke the silence. Moments where a character was genuinely shaken were steamrollered over by humour. Wit and humour can be used to great effect but without establishing a base, too much humour is like too much helium in a hot air balloon. Once the show gets too high off the ground, anything serious (and there were some moments that could have been very serious) is lost.

The characters, although likeable, were part of this helium pulling the show up. The two agents were played by Joanne Kelly (right brain character) and Eddie McClintock (left brain character). Both characters, despite having traditionally dark reasons for being the way they are, lacked a genuine darkness or seriousness in the way they acted or the way they spoke. Nor did they convince me as Secret Service agents.

Saul Rebinek, playing the kooky milk-drinking keeper of Warehouse 13, curiously managed to pack more of a punch than either Kelly or McClintock. He did manage to scratch the surface of gravitas. However, it was not enough to undo the bumbling, strange-gadget using way his character was written. With Rebinek, however, I felt that there were depths we hadn't plumbed and so of the three main characters I found him most convincing.

I don't think the writing and acting was helped by the direction (Jace Alexander, who directed the Burn Notice pilot). From a waitress going around a genteel occaision calling "champagne!" quite loudly (although, who knows, maybe that's how some genteel parties work?) to editing misdirection that was a felt too deliberate once you realised it was misdirection, I think that it was slightly off. The light, fun writing needed someone who would work to find the gravity in the situation, and I'm not sure Alexander really managed to do this.

Aside from the lightnes, there were a few other issues, mostly plot related. There were things that didn't quite hang together, especially with regards to the way characters interacted with each other and their environment. I think more attention needs to be paid to reality and logic as well as to the fantastical side of the show.

But for a show with a simple premise, Warehouse 13 coughed up a few memorable things-- mostly moments of humour. It's got definate potential, and I feel that there is certainly space for darkness, should a writer or a director go looking for it.

What would I like to see? I think I've answered this question already! A little bit more gravitas from writers, director and actors (or, just two out of three), and a little less corn, would be lovely.

Review: Star Trek (2009)

2009-05-08T20:35:00.000-07:00

There are a few spoilers in this post, that do mention a few plot details, but nothing huge.

I heard so many good things about this film. Rotten Tomatoes gives this film a whopping 96% Fresh rating. How could it not be good?

I did not like it. I'm sorry, and I realise this puts me in a tiny 4% minority, but although I started out being reasonably open, although not blown away, the more I watched of the film, the more I started to dislike it. I left the theatre in a frustrated hurry. I hated this film.

Why, in the face of such overwhelming support?

Let's start at the beginning. The opening of the film is a good fifteen minutes long. A starfleet crew is faced with an enormous, terrifyingly ridiculously designed Romulan ship that dwarfs the starship. After the ship is crippled, he submits to the Romulan's demands to come aboard, leaving the ship in the hands of one Kirk (!). Kirk, after ensuring his very pregnant wife (and newborn son) is safely away, employs the time honoured technique of Ramming Speed in order to destract the Romulans for long enough to save the lives of the remaining crew members. In his final moments he Christens his son: James Tiberius Kirk.

Credits.

A representative of pretty much everything that annoyed me about this film occurred in these fifteen minutes. However, at the time, I was still--although not impressed--looking forward to the film.

This intensely action-filled opening did not engage me in the slightest. I felt no emotional connection with these characters. The action, the desperation, the tenderness of the Kirk family moment, the loss of the lives of the crew... nothing had any meaning. I assumed, at the time, that this was because the characters were just placeholders. But I'm afraid this emotional connection was, for me, almost entirely absent throughout the film.

Perhaps this was because the film had the feeling of a poorly written thriller, where 'exciting' sequences (however meaningless) must occur at regular intervals simply because we haven't had one for a while. After a while, you can predict them. I've said it before and I'll say it again: action sequences do not make a film exciting or tense. Twice, Kirk found himself clinging by his fingertips, Mufasa style, on the edge of a cliff.

So, this film was not exciting or tense, unless you like action for action's sake. Never once did I fear for the life of a character. Weirdly, I feel like they tried to avoid the trap of all prequels, that none of your favourite characters can die, by creating an alternate universe in which all bets were off. And yet, of course, still none of the characters could die. The result: I never once imagined any of them would die, except the Very Obvious Redshirts, who, I may add, were dressed in red. (And never mourned).

Which brings me to a third complaint: unoriginality. Again despite the alternate universe thing, the script was still endlessly bogged down with in-jokes. That is to say, jokes and references that were plucked straight from the fandom of the Star Trek universe. Most of the actors were tied inextricably to their previous incarnations, still repeating the still lines, still treading the same path. When they stepped off it, they stepped off without any real background-- for example Uhura's sudden heartfelt (so to speak) need to help Spock was so sudden and baseless, the film gained nothing from their interaction.

So we come to comedy, which was plentiful. This would ordinarily be great: Star Trek has historically been funny. However, I found this film too funny. Moments of seriousness were so short lived in between the humour and action that no depth was ever achieved.

On top of that, the comedy was poor: In his television show Studio 60, Aaron Sorkin wrote a line I feel applies to this film. One character, struggling with a comedic line about passing butter, asks why she isn't getting the laugh she got before. "You asked for the laugh," her writer tells her. She asks what she did before. "You asked for the butter," he says.

Well--half of the time, the characters were tied to the old jokes and then it's hard not to ask for the laugh, because there was really no other reason for the inclusion of the line. However, this also applied for every other 'new' joke in the script. Again and again, the actors asked for the laugh-- I'd say about a fifth of the people in the theatre laughed. Director's choice; director's mistake.

One actor didn't ask for a laugh, although he had to deliver a few unfortunate lines. Leonard Nimoy, reprising his role as an elderly Ambassador Spock, brought emotional depth and strength and sheer class to the role and to the film. Karl Urban (of Lord of the Rings fame) comes in second place by managing to capture Dr. McCoy beautifully: he, above all of the newcomers, had depth and believability.

The rest of the actors? There was nothing to them: they brought nothing to the role beyond what was written on the page. And there wasn't very much written on the page.

I'm a writer, so for me, films tend to sink or sail on their writing. And this one sunk: it was emotionally dead, sacrificing emotion for action. It lacked logic: as emotional moments shrank to nothing, the movie seemed to seek out what was exciting, rather than what was logical. The biggest, newest, most shiny ship in the fleet has no one more senior than James T. Kirk, who hasn't even graduated from school yet, to take up position of first officer? I'm sorry, you lost me.

Ironically, one half of the film revolved around Spock's 'ongoing mission' (ahem; apparently it's not 'continuing' anymore) to reconcile his Human and Vulcan halves: his emotion and logic. This was swamped by the action-packed mindlessness of James T. Kirk's plot, who's character lacked even the convincing intelligence of his former incarnation, let alone logic or emotion.

I've neglected to mention the driving force of this film, the director and producer, J.J. Abrams. When I heard all the good things about this film, I thought-- maybe he's done it, maybe he pulled it off somehow, after all, it was written by other people, not by Abrams (Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman). But this film has Abrams' hamfisted character-numb cliched paws stamped all over it, and that's not a good thing.

You want emotion and logic as well as action and adventure in the Star Trek universe? Do yourself a favour: watch The Voyage Home.

Why Renew Chuck?

2009-05-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

The lives of one of my favourite television shows, Chuck, hangs in the balance. NBC, true to its Major Television Network name, is umming and erring over whether it should renew this show for the next year. Chuck falls just below the typical cut off for renewal. Fans of the show, myself included, feel very strongly that Chuck deserves renewal. The star of the show, Zachary Levi, led 600 fans to Subway (the sandwich restaurant chain) in order to demonstrate the sheer weight of support behind this show.

But why? Why is Chuck a better show than its ratings suggest?

Chuck is that rare animal, an all-around, good, light-hearted dramedy. It takes a ludicrous premise (young, intelligent but going-nowhere geek gets implanted with top secret knowledge and is thrust, unwillingly, into the super-awesome world of international spies, hijinks ensue) and makes it work. It makes it work every week.

Not many shows do this, not as smoothly as Chuck has for every one of its thirty-six odd episodes.

Chuck sustains what is, for any tv show, an immense cast. Aside from the main character (Chuck) there are more than ten characters who could be considered secondary characters (Sarah, Casey, Ellie, Awesome, Morgan, Lester, Jeff, Anna, Big Mike, Emmett, Orion), plus others who don't appear in every episode. Every single one of these characters has a solid personality and a story of their own. None of the characters do you begrudge any screen time-- all are great characters, played by excellent actors. There is never a sense that there are too many characters. It works, seamlessly and without gimmicks, in every episode.

Chuck melds comedy and drama. It's often more comedy (Adam Baldwin) than drama, but never devolves into complete silliness. There are moments of tension, and moments of genuine emotion (Sarah Lancaster). None of the characters is so continually silly that you lose track of them as a real person, and none of the characters is so serious that the humour in the show is lost whenever they come onscreen. In a world (In a world...) where the measure of the intelligence and quality of a show is often how relentlessly dark and gritty it is, Chuck proves that this is not the case.

Yeah, because it's intelligent too. What else could it be, with so many characters to keep track of and so many threads to weave together? This is not an thin show because there's nothing in it, it's a show that keeps its physique no matter how many doughnuts it eats.

Because it eats plenty of doughnuts. There are cliches aplenty, and all kinds of opportunities for the show to become bogged down in struggling relationships or neverending suspense, both the crutches of many a tv show running out ideas to keep people hooked. But Chuck does not suffer from these pitfalls. Cliches are handled so innocently they're as fun or gripping as if it was the first time we saw them. Chuck stays a slim, fast-moving show.

When you think of Chuck, you may not think of a brilliant show (clearly NBC does not). It seems easy going and light-hearted, a fun Monday evening's fourty minutes. But, as if we are watching a gymnast effortlessly doing back-flips, Chuck is deceiving. It does what is very difficult and it makes it look dead easy every week for thirty-five episodes.

It's solid, which is the best compliment I can give to any show. There is nothing I would change, nothing I wish was done differently, nothing I think is dumb, no character I want to die off (out of like fifteen!) or get shipped to Greenland, no plotline I wish would be over. It may look like a ball of fluff, but it's the best thing on television at the moment.

And that is why NBC should renew Chuck. You can do it, NBC! The sales you will make on DVDs, on associated material that could ensue while other shows disappear without a whisper once they are over, will make up for Chuck being a marginally lower-grossing show this year.

Save Chuck!

The Pirate Bay Conviction

2009-04-17T07:03:00.000-07:00

In February, I wrote an entry about The Pirate Bay, the torrent tracker on trial for providing easy access to illegally copied files. Today, they were convicted. Will this win media companies such as the IFPI reduce the number of people using torrents to access games, movies, television and music?

My guess is no. It might deter a few potential users, but it will attract more.

As I said in detail in my February post, The Pirate Bay is one of the least of those responsible for the chain of file sharing. There are many .torrent sites who are far more responsible for making file sharing possible: members of "The Scene" who provide the actual rips, members of Topsites, and private .torrent sites who provide much more hands-on service than The Pirate Bay does. None of these people will be affected by this conviction in any way.

Nor will it affect the consumer. As many people have pointed out, searching for torrents on Google is just as effective. Even if The Pirate Bay goes offline (which it may not, even with its owners in jail) there are many other torrent sites, although few as classily designed as The Pirate Bay, around.

The Pirate Bay was an easy target. It is large, well-known, has a provocative name and logo and arrogant young people running it. One of the people, convicted Peter Sunde, said this:

It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird.

I think Sunde is feeling pretty weird about being convicted. I'm not surprised: what he and his three friends do probably doesn't feel like crime at all. They effectively run a specialized search engine. There are no dark corners in their world: no vast amounts of money being accumulated, no violence, very little sneaking around (if any!). No other criminal activity runs like this. Sunde goes on:

The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

It was probably a bit of a shock to realise that they are doing what the world might call "organized crime". This trial gives new meaning to the phrase. And yes it is kind of bizarre (although not entirely incorrect).

So what do the spokespeople for the prosecution say? They must have known that The Pirate Bay is just a flag for any number of operations that they could never ever hope to quash completely. The Chairman of the IFPI, John Kennedy, provides some answers:

There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that.

I'm sorry, Mr. Kennedy, but I don't think it will. I think you're sort of missing the point. People don't download illegally because they think it's legal, they do so because it's so overwhelmingly convenient compared to other methods of getting media. Illegal media is unparallelled in its variety of content, size, quality and format, in its ease-of-use, and, of course, in its cheapness.

This is not, I think, the case of illegal vs. legal that the IFPI thinks it is. I think it's a case of supply and demand; product and consumer.

Review: Dollhouse (Pilot)

2009-02-17T13:33:00.001-08:00

SPOILERS, but nothing you can't get from a summary of the premise of the show.

Revered television writer Joss Whedon's long-awaited new show Dollhouse, starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Eliza Dushku aired last week and I finally got around to watching it. (Sorry, that was quite the sentence).

It wasn't great. Pilots have never really been Whedon's strong point-- even the Firefly pilot was slow to get started. However, I felt this lacked the extra spice that made shows like Buffy and Firefly, to steal a phrase, shiny.

Whedon can weave great stories and create great characters. And I did like the characters... but I felt all of them seemed to be not quite themselves. Perhaps that is due to it being early in the show-- many shows lack centered characters at the beginning. But Whedon has historically been pretty good at getting characters right first time, and I didn't get that from this episode.

Dushku plays Echo, one of a set of men and women who can be programmed into being the perfect whatever-- the perfect assassin, the perfect cello player etc. Whedon wrote the show for her to play the lead, but I think that at some point along the way in the development the character slipped from her into someone else and left Dushku's conception of the role behind. I think that the finalized role would have been better off in the hands of a newcomer who came to the role as an outsider, rather than Dushku. Not only did she not manage to quite capture the complete transformation of the 'programmed' characters, she also seemed to lack the qualities that made her a convincing and intriguing blank slate when she is between roles.

Echo's disjointed life makes it difficult to pull her together, perhaps, but the other major characters, among them her handler and the scientist behind the dollhouse project, also seemed to not really have a good sense of who they were. Someone described this as the characters not seeming to have lives that extended beyond where the camera was pointed and I think that's an apt description. The characters lacked the details and consistency that gave both the audience and, most importantly, the actors, a sense of who the character is.

This is especially problematic given the unstable main character-- but I don't think Echo had to be quite so disjointed. I think she needed some minute anchor that is enough to hold her together. This could be some uneraseable feature or something as simple as having the other characters begin to form a predictable reaction to her: some exchange of dialogue. The desire of her handler to create some kind of relationship with her, for example, could help to define even a totally unresponsive Echo while at the same giving her handler a key personality feature.

Although I did not notice this while I was watching the episode, I realised that there was no humour. Humour has always been a key part in the formulation of Whedon's characters and perhaps because this show demands a more serious outlook (especially considering the main character cannot crack jokes) the characters ended up a little blurry and bland.

I think what the show lacked was reality. By "reality" I don't mean gritty darkness, I mean the little details that make characters and worlds work. I've already talked about the characters, but this was also true of the sets, which were decidedly undetailed. In a world as complex as the one of Dollhouse, the sets need to have more practical and imaginative thought behind them than just 'girl's bedroom', 'broken down cabin', 'party', 'futuristic living space'. They need to contribute actively to the story, rather than being a passive (and occaisionally impractical) backdrop.

And finally we come to the plot. The entry was a little ragged, with a lot of disparate threads and backstories coming together all at once-- I do not think quite so many needed to be included; the opening could have been far more streamlined. However, it did hang together and I do think the concept is worth pursuing, and not only because Whedon is at the helm.

It does need work though. The writers need to pin down what their characters are like and give them detailed dialogue. The set designers need to think realistically and creatively to give the world more solid depth and give the actors a further sense of who they are and where they are.

I'm hopeful. Buffy had a start that was less than stunning but proved its strengths over time and I'm hopful that Whedon can give this rather dull show a shine of its own.

Take a look. Don't expect Firefly quality, think instead Dark Angel-- but Dark Angel was watchable, and it wasn't even Whedon.

The Pirate Way

2009-02-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I am no expert on this topic. I have done my best to outline it to the best of my understanding.

You may have read on the news that The Pirate Bay is facing legal action from a variety of media firms. This BBC Article describes the defense of the two fellows who run it. Basically, they claim innocence because they don't actually host any files only the files that link to files. This is the defense their lawyer will use when they go to court.

This is all well and good in the sensible world, but on the internet reality, everyone knows they are one of a small set of people who provide one of the means to facilitate illegal downloading. They do break the law, and they know it.

However, these fellows are only one link in a chain of illegal television dissemination. Sensible world people point to the legal options for music and television downloading as evidence that the media companies aren't simply out of date. However, the chain of which The Pirate Bay is a small lower part outstrips legal downloading companies in efficiency, breadth of content, variety of quality and sheer usability.

At the top of this chain is what is what I'm going to tentatively characterize as The Scene. The Scene is probably the most (self-proclaimed) shadowy internet organization around. One only needs to read the apparently totally benign Wikipedia Article to get a sense of how deliberately shadowy this non-organization is. The article says almost nothing: there is more in the talk/discussion pages-- somebody's rules, somebody's philosophy, and above all the controversial nature of what The Scene actually is (it is not all dedicated to illegality, but even if it isn't). Its unifying characteristics seems to be that it is stoically alternative, libertarian and firmly based on quid-pro-quo.

Nevertheless, whatever variations on different groups within The Scene may define it as, The Scene consists partially of the type of people, formed into Release (or "Warez') Groups, who make up the top of the illegal downloading chain. These are the clever people (always credited at the end of the file name, e.g. "The.Mentalist.S01E01.PREAiR.DVDSCR.XviD-MEDiEVAL" where MEDiEVAL is the group) who turn HD television, DVDs, games and other software into useable computer files. If there are any true Pirates, these are them. They are also part of the reason this system is so efficient-- speed is a mark of skill.

The next link on the chain is Topsites. Topsites are the uberfast FTP-based stock exchanges of the pirated media world. They allow the uploading and quick movement of files between members of Release Groups. They are secret and secure from prying eyes, open only to those in the know both technically and socially.

There is a line here between public and private. Until now, these releases have been elite, restricted to those involved personally in the piracy business which is highly reciprocal-- that is, downloads are balanced with uploads, everyone contributes. As we enter the public sector of piracy, we enter a consumer culture where the downloader gives little back. I have been told that there is a very strong sense of resentment among the more elite towards the masses who leech off the skills and risks taken by people they may not even be aware exist.

Now we have reached BitTorrent tracker sites. Certain individuals-- people who have access to topsites but are not members of The Scene (who tend to be, marginally ironically, highly protective of 'their' files)-- make .torrent files available for public or semi-public download. This is called seeding; all those with partially downloaded versions of a file are peers. The journey to the consumer is very quick: From the end of a television show to seeding on public torrents, a high demand show may arrive in a mere 20 minutes.

There are two types of torrent tracker sites. More elite and generally faster are private torrent sites, generally restricting their users to those chosen by invitation or only opening public sign-ups at certain times. Most popular and far more famous are public torrent sites, which allow anyone with a .torrent client such as BitTorrent or utorrent. Some of these public sites closely control what is shared via their site, and initially seed all content themselves-- for example EZTV, which contains only television torrents, releasing one for each show (whichever is first released by a Release Group). Others are far more lax, providing only the medium for exchange between average joe consumers. The Pirate Bay is one of these.

Other means of exchange exist. For example, some organizations and groups (such as colleges) have their own private Direct Connection groups, which allow direct and rapid exchange of files between consumers on the same network. Again, these small groups value speed.

At the bottom of the chain is you and me: the average consumer, leeching off the energy or skills of the more dedicated pirates above us in the chain. We may be totally unaware of the work that goes into the file we download using our .torrent client. The only remnants of those shadowy upper levels on which we rely are the Release Group's moniker at the end of the file name and the in-built upload/download ratio requirement built into the BitTorrent protocol: We must share in order to receive.

It is bizarre, but perhaps understandable, that it is the consumer and the public torrent tracker that receive the most media attention for the piratical activities. Owners of torrent sites like The Pirate Bay are probably the most public figures in the process: they own vast numbers of servers which process vast numbers of transactions every second, allowing vast numbers of people to connect to each other and retrieve free media. They are easy to find, high profile and making money. They make a splashy, easy to understand story

Yet they are not, generally, the people waving boarding ships. It is the elite who are getting their hands on DVDs before the release date, and encoding television shows moments after they finish airing. Those people are no doubt of great interest to police, but they are the ones who have the skill (and ability, by the nature of their activities) to hide. Neither do they make a good news story, as they have shadowy, complicated, text-based presences.

They are the people who make illegal downloading considerably more attractive than the legal kind. Despite their elite status they are essentially consumers themselves, and so they produce files in formats and qualities they want to use, attach no pesky strings, annoying commercials and DVD menu screens-- and because they are individuals they produce a highly diverse selection of media. Not only is it a completely free product, it is better product. Only when legal sites match the useability of illegal sites will legal downloading become a viable alternative for those who are even slightly technically apt.

I have no doubt that, in sensible world terms, the entire piracy chain is acting illegally as a whole, each contributing a little to a grand scale theft and distribution. I also have no doubt that this is not crime in sensible world terms. They are not doing it for the money or the power. They do it for love of the product or the work, for balance against corporatism, for freedom of information, to screw a rigid system, because it tests their skills, for the sense of importance, for the benefits of the reciprocal culture that defines file sharing and because it's fun.

And why are people like the guys who own The Pirate Bay so brazen? Because the chain of piracy is much bigger than just them. Their involvement seems flashy but is actually negligible. Perhaps the individuals will change their tune behind bars, but the piracy will go on without them nevertheless; perhaps even their own site will go on without them, run by a new set of bright young things with the right passwords. Unless continents shift, the house cannot win.

Likely someday they will. Either some genius will come up with a way to entirely disrupt the chain and/or media companies will figure out how to match it while charging customers-- or, the companies will go out of business and the whole media system will collapse. Until then, the arrest of middlemen will ultimately be a fruitless gesture and one that does not even match the sheer determination and inventiveness that goes on in the admittedly illegal activities of the internet's pirates.

Review: Life on Mars (US) - Pilot Remake

2008-11-18T18:12:00.000-08:00

Remember this? This was a June entry in this blog, comparing two lines from various makes of the show Life on Mars. The former was from the UK version, starring John Simm, the latter from the US pre-air pilot released over the summer and widely panned.

SAM TYLER: I used to come here. I bought my first… Gary Numan. ‘Cars’.

SAM TYLER: I used to get all my CDs here.

This is what I wrote about these two lines, summing up my views on the pre-air episode:

The first is precise, human, delighted with the memory, evocative, and harkens back to another era, if not quite this one. It reveals detail about the character.

The second is boring, entirely uninventive, vague, and perhaps refers to the very first years of the 21^st century, when Sam bought ‘his CDs’. I understand that the choice of artist might need to be different, as may the language used to express the sentiment, but that doesn’t mean that a slick, fat line can be replaced by a shoddy thin one. The lines were there for the adapters (Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Scott Rosenberg) to see. They turned a fat line into one there purely for plot purposes.

But there's a new contender for this line. Yes, they remade the episode and wrote a new line for this moment in the show. Here's the new lineup:

SAM TYLER: I used to come here. I bought my first… Gary Numan. ‘Cars’.

SAM TYLER: I used to get all my CDs here.

SAM TYLER: Wow! My mom used to take me here. I bought my first Hall & Oates album-- er, my, my, first Led Zeppelin album here.

Let's pause for a second to review these lines again, because the gods have indeed been kind to us.

Yes, as evidenced by the above dialogue, this new version of the remake is better than the pre-air. In this new version, the writers fixed many of the problems I noted in my original blog post. Whereas the pre-air was bland, uninspired by the era and muddled the characters in such a way that they lost much of their quality, this new pilot captures more of what made the original UK pilot so excellent.

I've heard it said that the pre-air was much closer to this September pilot script-wise, but I would argue that they are both equally distant. While the pre-air kept many of the exact same lines as the UK version, it seemed to stray exactly in the wrong places, muddling the script so much it seemed . The woman police officer in a man's world Annie lost her moment to be the hero, for example, and it was given to the lead Sam. In the September pilot, the line was returned to Annie, but re-written for her. The words are different, but the important bits are once again the same. The writers, who as far as I can tell are the same fellows who wrote the pre-air, seem to have woken up and the show has woken up again with them.

The writing is only part of the improvement. I wrote before about how I felt nothing evocative from the era to which Sam returns. There was no joy in an era long past but still remembered by so many people. This joy is back- perhaps the transplant of the show to New York opened a few doors in the creators memory. The music of the era once again dominates, the culture is vivid, the camera-work, photography and art direction is more inventive, expansive and full of delicious details.

Here's what I said I would like to see in the remake:

A slicker, wittier, more evocative, far more compact, more detailed and more nuanced performance from the writers and cast, and more expansive, scene-sensitive work from the director.

We got all of this. The show was almost ten minutes shorter than the pre-air, getting right to the details with none of the meaningless, slow talk that we saw before. I've already mentioned the increase in details in the writing and the production.

All that remains is the acting and the actors. It was better, even from the lead Jason O'Mara, who was wholly slab-like in the pre-air. The reintroduced details in the script gave everyone, including Jason O'Mara, a little more to cling onto. It is much easier to deliver the first and third lines of dialogue listed above than the middle one. That said, O'Mara still pales in comparison with John Simm's Sam Tyler, as do all the cast, even with the improved script. The only main actor who really seemed to be making the role his own was Harvey Keitel, playing the role of Gene Hunt. Keitel was, like most of the Life on Mars actors, taking over from another actor played in the pre-air by Colm Meaney. Although I preferred the actor playing Annie (Gretchen Mol), I don't think that any of the replacements were necessary. Perhaps the move from Los Angeles to New York played a significant role in which actor were available.

Although this September pilot mostly sticks to the plot of the UK version, there is a small plot change in the way the pilot unfolds, especially towards the end. I didn't mind hugely, except it seemed a little shoddily handled. (An eyebrow-raising key plot detail had to be explained with the the cringeworthy line, "you're not going to believe this, but..."). However, this new show already has several episodes under its belt and needs to tread its own path, even if it means a few missteps at the beginning.

I must say, having three versions of the same television episode made no more than a few years apart is amazing. I doubt it has ever happened before. It is a unique opportunity to really see what makes a show tick and what makes it grind to a halt.

Will I watch more of Life on Mars? Perhaps. For all the improvement on the dire pre-air it has achieved, the US show must make itself stand apart from the UK show before it can truly catch my attention as the original did. The good news is that from what I've heard it has improved, which is a good thing from a reasonably promising beginning.

I just wonder what was going through the writers heads when they wrote that pre-air.

An American in America

2008-11-07T18:24:00.000-08:00

It must be strange to be an American this week. So many people overseas and not-so-overseas were following this election that it almost seemed as if President-Elect Obama had been elected President of the World, not just one of the United States of America.

I was just beginning to pay attention to government and international relations when President Bush was elected, so for me it feels like Bush has been president forever. It's a shock when I hear a voice on the radio speaking with similar authority but in such an entirely different way. Bush is folksy. He makes foreign policy sound like a very complicated discussion on what kind of barbecue sauce to use.

Obama is the complete opposite: in his much-applauded acceptance speech at midnight on November 5th, Obama promised his daughters a puppy. Discussion about the type of puppy Obama will get for his girls has been rampant. I heard a response from Obama on this topic and the President-Elect can make a discussion about what kind of puppy he's getting sound as serious (although not as complicated) as foreign policy.

Whatever you may think about Obama's policies (more about them later), he will certainly be a very different type of politician. Obama is a fairy-tale President. It's an enlightening coincidence that in the lovely movie Dave, Dave is the 44th president and, at the end, runs on a slogan of change. Dave is an Obama president. Or Obama is a Dave president. Both fulfill an idealism imagined in the fairy-tale world of stories. Obama is an American among Americans.

What kind of resistance will the politics of hope receive among a real population? Can Obama pull off the kind of change he outlines at change.gov? What does the fairy-tale look like when it is put into action on earth? I look forward to finding out.

You will hear more from me about this subject. I'm not an American, but I live less than an hour from the border. And Barack Obama may not be my President-Elect, but his approach to this election has actually elevated his candidacy past the mere winning of the presidency of America. He has in fact managed to centre himself- at least for a brief period- as one of the first new, truly electric leaders of the almost entirely interconnected Earth of the 21st century and this millennium.

Stay safe, Barack Obama. We all want to see what you can do.

Review: Merlin (Pilot)

2008-09-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

This review contains no plot spoilers.

British mythical history is a rich resource that television loves to mine. Doctor Who is arguably a new vein; the adventures of Robin Hood an old one. None, though, is quite so old as King Arthur of Camelot. Merlin delves into Camelot from, obviously, Merlin's point of view- through the eyes of a young man with rather astonishing skills.

I think that the makers would have had to try very hard to leave nothing worth watching, but there is more than just competence here.

First, some parametres. Merlin is a light ahistorical 'family' show- more so than Robin Hood or especially the new Doctor Who ever were. The pilot, at least, has a relatively simple story and the magical aspects usually lean towards the humorous/corny, a fact not due to the special effects themselves, but to the way they are included. However, the show is well written, well-acted, well-produced, interesting, funny and entertaining.

A few things stand out for me in this first episode of what promises to be an excellent show. The first was the dialogue: it is good. For a show that delves into high fantasy (an area avoided by most television due to the difficulties of pulling off the word 'destiny'), having solid dialogue is of the utmost importance. Merlin has managed to do this and it gives the entire production- the acting especially- something solid to stand on.

Or perhaps it is the actors that can make the dialogue sound convincing. This is not a deep drama, but the cast is one that could easily handle something far more complex. We have Buffy's Anthony Stewart Head playing a rather more believable-and-interesting-than-normal 'bad' character. I was delighted to see Eve Miles (Torchwood, Doctor Who) also being highly convincing, and Richard Wilson, who I didn't recognize but has an extensive, high-quality and wide-ranging repertoire of television and film experience that is clear in the first few minutes of his appearance.

Merlin himself, the keystone of the show, is another Doctor Who actor, Colin Morgan. He's got little beyond Doctor Who in his imdb profile but the choice was precisely the right one. He's captured a youth delighted with a new city, over his head in a number of ways but intelligent and confident to act as he sees fit. He brings humor and believability to the role of Merlin and tightly ties the show together.

I can see how this show could disappoint some. It pays no little to other Arthur myths or timelines, or to the real history of Britain. It is not as dark as it could be, nor as complex.

And yet this first episode is solidly written and acted, highly entertaining and hints at greater things to come. It is an apologetically modern, fantastical take on a tale rich with detail to pick and choose from. I hope it continues to develop into its own version of the King Arthur legend, to draw on complex themes alongside the childlike glee it has begun with.

I'm looking forward greatly to the next episode, and what more can you ask for?

Extraordinary People

2008-09-25T21:17:00.000-07:00

Canada’s role on the world stage stands on the brink of a knife. We have all that it takes to say, “Here we are, world; this is the future; Canada is the future.”

Canada is the second largest country in the world. It touches the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. It is hugely rich in all vital basic resources: water, energy, food, minerals. It is not militaristic. It has a reasonably stable economy when its closest ally flounders in economic confusion. It is successfully multicultural and increasingly so. It values education, intelligence, tolerance, ideas. It prospers.

It seems to have everything required to take the future in our grip. We do not have to merely be competent; we do not have to copy everyone else's methods.

So what should we do to turn that corner and set along that path of being the country of the twenty first century? Should we imprison our youth for their entire lives, increasing the prison population and achieving little else in the process? Should we eschew those who value creativity and invention as if there is some real distinction between us (‘ordinary people’) and them? Should we subvert environmental issues in lieu of economic ones and lose out on a chance to promote Canada as one of the first truly environmentally conscious nations?

I do not think that these ideas will help Canada very much.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if Canada, with all its wonderful wildlife and landscape that has historically been so integral to the development of this modern nation, became known world wide as a country that successfully combined energy, mineral and food production with stringent environmentally-conscious efforts? Canada has that chance.

Wouldn’t it equally be amazing if Canadian arts- no, not only Canadian arts, but Canadian invention, Canadian science, Canadian engineering, Canadian creativity- became not only renowned and respected worldwide but also sought after, inviting in droves of budding intelligences to learn and then return to their home nations taking their Canadian values of tolerance and education with them? Canada has that chance.

Wouldn’t it also be great to demonstrate to the world that a multicultural nation can work and work very well? That it can be richer in every area for being tolerant, accepting and even forgiving. That it can be environmentally conscious without sacrificing economic stability. That it can be tough and seek justice without becoming militaristic. That ‘ordinary people’ excludes no single group.

I’m not targeting a sole party leader here, although I am using one particular party’s ideology to illustrate my concerns. Canada has such potential the air in this massive, incredible nation should be palpable with possibility and yet people would rather vote south of the border. We have so much going for us and yet we flounder.

Somebody, please think firmly of that future- one of intelligence, education, environmental consciousness, arts, science, invention, tolerance, multiculturalism, peace, justice, cities and great empty landscapes, imagination and reality- and at least try, at least try, to grab a hold of it and hold on with all your might.

Because we can be that country.

Review: The Mentalist (Pilot)

2008-09-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Concept-related spoilers. It would be difficult to discuss the show without these spoilers but I highly recommend watching it without preconceptions, as I did.

The Mentalist, according to imdb, is a show about a ' A mentalist turned private investigator [who] uses his skills to help the police.' However, this show isn't the science fiction show I thought it was going to be. Patrick Jane (Simon Baker), uses- gasp!- his mind and his astonishing eye for detail in order to help the FBI. It's incredible that the show comes across as refreshing given its obviousness.

The show is good. Simon Baker plays a sly, frank, deadpan, impersonal character that seems to manage to dominate every scene in a very understated way. The character invites comparisons to Sherlock Holmes but manages just to sidestep being an updated version of the character along the lines of Gregory House. This gives the show its surprisingly refreshing feel.

The writing is very sharp and slick, going straight to the point, or keeping back from its audience unimportant information until it sees fit to let us know. Like its main character, the whole tone of the show is understated, although not particularly always surprising. This is not a show where the audience is kept guessing for very long at all. The Mentalist is nevertheless interesting enough too keep us watching throughout, using instead wit and intelligence to capture and hold its audience enthralled. It's not a whodunnit or a howdunnit, but a how-will-he-get-them and perhaps that's another reason it doesn't feel like just another crime show (which it in very many ways entirely is.)

The supporting cast is somewhat standard but promises good things- looks like we might be delving into subjects that don't come up very often in a serious fashion in North American TV. Religion and the supernatural are skirted around, ignored and often complicated by the presence of fantastical elements, but here the characters met them head on- and rather uncomfortably. More particularly, Robin Tunney (you may recognize her as the deathly ill kindergarten teacher from the very first episode of House) was especially convincing and likeable in her role.

There were a quite a few moments of delight, especially at the beginning of the show. There is certainly enough sly humour on the part of the main character to bring us safely through the darkness, which there promises to be plenty of. Overall, this was a very solid pilot which is most notable for its powerful, fascinating main character.

I'm interested to see how well this premise holds up over time. Can The Mentalist's brand of magic tricks pull out a new show every week?

The pilot reaches television on September 27th.

Dramatic Times

2008-09-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

Some of the metaphors used to describe the troublesome economic situation in one edition of the CBC News:

"necrotizing flesh"

"meltdown"

"hurricane"

Review: The Middleman (2008)

2008-09-08T16:58:00.001-07:00

This review contains only very general spoilers for the show The Middleman.

There's a new television superhero on the block. His name is The Middleman and he is very silly and a little bizarre, but highly entertaining.

The Middleman is a new American television show based on the graphic novels of Javier Grillo-Marxuach (a writer I was surprised to find on the other end of that link worked on the first two seasons of Lost, among other things) and Les McClaine (the artist). Grillo-Marxuach is the writer and producer for the show, which I suppose makes him show runner.

We've had rather a lot (too many?) superhero shows and films lately. Most put traditional superheroes in the 'real' modern world. Smallville is still puttering along, tracing the tumultuous life of a young Superman. Tobey Maguire has just signed up for two more Spiderman movies. Batman has of course recently hit the big screen for another of the darkest re-imagining of a superhero's story ever.

Among all these, The Middleman might seem like a rehash, capitalizing on the popularity of the genre. 2007's embarrassingly bad Flash Gordon is an example of a superhero show gone horribly wrong. And yet, The Middleman manages to sidestep both the pitfalls of being yet another superhero-in-the-real-world show as well as all the problems in being what it is-- a show that makes fun of the traditional and modern superhero genre. The result is bizarre and silly, but ultimately a fun, cheerful romp through a familiar landscape.

IMDB characterizes The Middleman as a drama, but it's not. It's a comedy. It's one large, constant joke. If there was a laugh track, there wouldn't be anywhere to put it in. The funny is in the characters, in the dialogue, in the situations, in the monsters, aliens and arch-nemesii that populate each episode, and even in the onscreen place labels.

The characters, especially The Middleman (Matt Keeslar) himself, are deliberate stereotypes of the genre. However, this very fact sets them apart. The Middleman is so stereotypical, he is unusual. Wendy Watson (Natalie Morales), the young artist who becomes The Middleman's sidekick has her own stereotype crosses to bear but again the stereotype becomes part of the character, rather than the other way around. The result is undeniably quirky but (of course) loveable characters.

The whole show coasts on this principle. Instead of avoiding cliche, The Middleman embraces it wholeheartedly and unashamedly. Dialogue, the monster of the week, jokes, scenes, plot elements, music, forth-wall-breaking-comments... all manage to avoid the horrible wincing of cliche by being entirely cliche.

There are moments, yes, especially early on, when this principle doesn't always work. This is the case with almost all pilots of shows, however. The first episode or two, the actors haven't quite figured out how to deliver lines writers haven't quite figured out how to write. The Middleman is no exception to this. However, the pilot moves with such lightening speed that there's little time to wince, and once it truly gets going, there's no stopping it.

It's not the dark superhero show brooding in a pile of gore and angst we've all come to know and love. It's lighthearted and sustains a low hum of hilarity throughout. The Middleman does what every TV show yearns to do: It pulls it off.

Reoccuring Plotline: The Deadly Antarctica/Arctic Virus

2008-09-02T14:40:00.001-07:00

Due to its nature this post contains general spoilers for a number of episodes of a couple of shows, but not specific ones unless you follow the links and read in detail.

I'm sure you've noticed. There are certainly plotlines that occur again and again in science fiction shows. Writers seemingly can't seem to avoid doing their own version of these reoccurring plotlines. I like to play snap with plotlines and I thought that when I come across three shows that contain the same plot I would share it with you.

One that occurs quite often and is strikingly similar in its basic plot elements is The Deadly Antarctica Virus story.

The story goes like this:

A team of Gentle Bearded Scientists (never the main characters) on remote research base in Antarctica or the Arctic make a biological discovery. It can be botanic, zoological, bacteria or 'unknown', but it is always dormant in its frozen state. However, this biological always has the same effect: almost immediately, this biological turns out to have a disease or have disease-like qualities. Gentle Bearded Scientists start acting strangely and/or fall sick.

The Main Characters arrive at the base either because of the discovery or because of the reported strangely-acting Gentle Bearded Scientists. They always arrive before the infection is truly apparent or taken hold and so never take precautions against infection.

However, once the Main Characters are on site, the situation rapidly goes downhill. One Gentle Bearded Scientist likely dies. As the plot progresses, one or more main characters might become infected. The Main Characters must battle against not only an infection that not only kills its carriers, but often turns them into murdering maniacs. The virus often has the added danger of destroying the world should it escape from the remote base (due to its ancient or alien nature).

The situation is remedied by the Main Characters and the few remaining Gentle Bearded Scientists, who in this story are the Red Shirts (for the uninitiated, a term originating in the original series of Star Trek that means they are expendable characters used to raise the stakes of the story by dying.) As always, the world is saved. The biological is never preserved, whatever it is.

Does this sound familiar? Perhaps you've seen this plotline in Stargate SG-1? Or maybe you've seen it in The X-Files? (If you count the movie, twice). If you're like me, and have a fondness for rather old science fiction, you may have seen it in Doctor Who (those are my three examples). Perhaps there are other shows that I've overlooked that also contain the Deadly Antarctica Virus in one form or another.

It is of course the remoteness and unusual conditions of the Earth's poles that make it an attractive target for writers, and not only in Science Fiction. House, for example, once diagnosed a patient in Antarctica. The first season of ReGenesis revolves around a Deadly Arctic Virus (although not an ancient or alien one). Antarctica is the only continent that is mysterious to us temperate creatures. The age of the ice and its preservation properties, the concentration of small groups of humans living in tiny restricted communities on the edge of the world, the ease with which bad weather can cut off communications and travel... all contribute to an exciting alienness that makes Antarctica ideal for a Science Fiction show setting.

And so the Deadly Antarctica Virus is born.

Election (?) Ads

2008-08-31T18:32:00.000-07:00

Today while watching CTV's line up of Sunday Night crime shows, I saw two ads which told me how much I should vote for Stephen Harper. "Hold on," thought I. "There's an election?"

Turns out there might be. I guess Harper's people want to get a head start if they've already started running the election ads. Harper is tough on crime, good for veterans and mustachioed middle-aged men with hair like Harper's, bleached-blonde mothers with their blonde kids in parks, and young, neat Asian women who no doubt represent the 'safe' portion of the immigrants in Canada. The whole ad is topped off by a (creepily) smiling Harper.

I can only imagine two things. One, Harper's people don't know that the ads aren't terribly inspiring. Two, they're not looking for votes outside of the constituencies defined above, and are only trying to remind people within the middle-aged-men-with-mustaches-and-oddly-bad-hair constituency that Harper's their man, and he's no Stephane Dion (I'd like to point out that "squeak" is spelled wrong there).

Either way. I guess we're (Canadians) having an election, too. We should totally have it the same day as the Americans. That would be awesome.

Number of Medals to Population

2008-08-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

Because it makes the most sense to do this. Conclusion: Smaller countries produce higher ratios of medals to population.

Population numbers taken from Google's response. Medal count as of about 11:15pm EST (11:1 am Beijing) today (Tuesday EST, Wednesday Beijing).

New Zealand: 1 medal to 514,471 people

Jamaica: 1 medal to 556,026 people

Australia: 1 medal to 583,833 people

Denmark: 1 medal to 911,353 people

Britain: 1 medal to 1,841,704 people

S. Korea: 1 medal to 2,043,532

Canada: 1 medal to 2,568,472 people

Germany: 1 medal to 2,942,893 people

Russia: 1 medal to 3,366,136 people

USA: 1 medal to 3,811,898 people*

Japan: 1 medal to 5,792,431 people

China: 1 medal to 17,392,788 people

India: 1 medal to 1,129,866,154 people

Congratulations to New Zealand, Australia and Jamaica.

Obviously, there needs to be some kind of shift for lower population values, and also one for the age range of available athletes. Some countries will have more children or more adults too old to compete in most sports. I'd love to see this done properly.

*Eight of these medals are one man's, so the US is producing fewer Olympians than this number implies. This is true for any repeat medal-winners, such as Usain Bolt of Jamaica. This is another thing to consider.

Mr. Whedon and the Conclusion of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-07-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

MAJOR SPOILERS

So, if you're on top of things at all you will have hopefully seen the third and final episode of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. May I remind you again that this post contains Major Spoilers, although I'll try not to spell it out so if you're skimming it over you won't see it. There are also very vague spoilers for all of Whedon's work, so if you want to experience the full effect, don't read this post.

Joss Whedon is one of my favourite writers. I think he's a pretty special guy, especially in his own genre: television. His characters- villains and heroes both- are vivid and unforgettable, each stealing the show as he or she and very occaisionally 'it' passes through, be it for an extended period or simply for one episode. His dialogue is always witty and funny and I think he makes it easy for other writers to write the same witty, funny dialogue for his characters. His plots are gripping, hilarious, surprisingly deep and moving and- on many occaisions- horribly tragic.

However, that doesn't mean that he does have his foibles. Many of Whedon's most ardent fans are able to peg down his style, knowing when he is likely to kill off a beloved character. Like all writers- like everyone in the world- he has a tendency to walk the same path again and again.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog captures Whedon in all his glory. Including, and here's the spoiler, the tragic ending. I have a love-hate relationship with Whedon's tragic endings. By far, the most moving episodes of television I have watched have been Whedon's. I know the traditional Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode to name in this context is The Body, but I put forth The Wish for equal consideration. And then there's of course the final episode of the Buffy television series, among many others. In the Buffy spinoff, Angel, there are a similar number of tragic episodes. And finally there's the movie Serenity which was the capstone of the short-lived but fabulous tv series Firefly, that I have on good authority makes strong men weep.

So Joss Whedon likes to make us cry. What of it? Why am I writing an entire post about this?

Whedon is very cruel to his audience. He knows what the worst case scenario is. He knows who and what we hold dear. Although many of his fans, as I mentioned before, have learned to expect the tragic conclusion or shocking (also tragic) twist, he still manages to surprise us and break our hearts.

It is what brings us back again and again that interests me. Whedon is very dark, but he's more of a realist than a pessimist. People die; Whedon's 'tragedies' acknowledge this, but he's not pessimistic about it. Whedon's deaths, especially the ones that have no episodes following them in which to heal the wound, often have twists that follow them that allow us to look through the tears and smile about it in the end. Think of the end of Serenity, the ultimate end of Buffy and- here in particular interest- the end of Dr. Horrible. Instead of leaving us down and destroying our faith in all that is good and holy, Whedon turns the end up just a very little, and gives us a little hope.

It has been noted by watchers more astute than I that whereas at the beginning of the 'blog' Dr. Horrible is expressing himself through the blog and the public figure is the mousy Billy, this is reversed at the end of the show. Dr. Horrible is very much the public figure and Billy, shown in the last scene, is expressing himself through the blog.

The final line of the show is, "I won't feel a thing." Whedon and his Dr. Horrible comrades have Dr. Horrible, garbed in red, conscience-free, boldly sing, "I won't feel..." then cut beautifully to a very sad, unconvinced Billy facing the camera in his video-blog position, who finishes the sentence with "... a thing." The sentence is complete, but the musical phrase does not end in a satisfying manner.

Not only does the Billy side of Dr. Horrible, however beaten, get the final word, he gets to say it in a way that makes it very clear that he does feel. He feels it very much so. His conscience is still there, crushed but present and, because of that incomplete musical phrase. And that is the little smile at the end of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, betraying the inner core of optimism that keeps us, Whedon's beleaguered but adoring audience, coming back- able to come back- for more.

Now go watch it all again.

Review: Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (Act I)

2008-07-15T10:38:00.001-07:00

Joss Whedon is changing the world. Well, television. Well, internet television.

In a moment of madness brought on by the writer's strike, Whedon- the writer of such beloved shows as Buffy, Angel and, relatively recently, the tragically murdered Firefly- along with a few friends and relatives, decided to turn their sights on low budget internet media far too silly for real television. The result was Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. That link is to a fan site. Why? Because at the time of this post, the real site is down due to the huge numbers of people attempting to watch Act I which was released early this morning.

Dr. Horrible is a three-act of fifteen-minutes-an-episode musical show that is almost, but not quite, as silly is as it sounds. The main character is a wannabe super villain (Neil Patrick Harris) and the antagonist a superhero (Firefly's Nathan Fillion). It's hugely adorable. Despite being only fifteen minutes long, the first act is so full of stuff that it feels much longer. It's got loads of funny, romance, action, science fiction and yep- songs. It's better than any show like it.

But as Whedon and interviewer C.A. Bridges note in this interview, there isn't really anything like it. Dr. Horrible is something new. It is internet media written and acted at the same calibre (above the same calibre) as anything on the major television networks. It doesn't need to conform to any standard rules, and so it's not only very good, it's fresh in a delightful, hilarious, adorable way.

Although the official site is down, you can get it from iTunes or pirate it directly- with a few audio/video errors- from a torrent site. (What!? How am I going to get into the Evil League of Evil if I don't cultivate my skills?)

Tell your friends.

On Absent Parents

2008-07-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

This entry contains very mild spoilers for the movie Spiderwick.

So, I just watched Spiderwick, which is a well-made, reasonably well written, funny kids’ fantasy movie (I’ve not read the book- shockingly- so I can’t tell you how it measures up). No, it hasn’t got the depth or startling newness that other fantasies have, but it’s certainly worth watching.

However, this is not the focus of this entry. After watching the film I headed over to rottentomatoes.com, which for those of you who do not know (!) collates reviews from various sources and, based on what the reviewers say, gives each movie a rating. It’s a good source of all kinds of reviews.

Because I enjoyed Spiderwick, I was more interested in the negative reviews. Most were along the lines of it being fairly run of the mill as far as plot goes. However, one by Cynthia Fuchs focused on a different problem. She writes:

“As Spiderwick keeps time with the notion that kids’ fantasies must feature bad, absent, or otherwise troubling parents, it also offers precious little in the way of clued-in adults or even adults with a modicum of competence in dealing with their children’s fears or worries.”

She’s right, of course, that children’s fantasy contains many bad or absent parents. Think of the Narnia series, of many of Diana Wynne Jones’ books, of A Little Princess, of Roald Dahl and of Harry Potter. Parents are dead, missing, lacking in some way or simply unimportant. Even when parents and family are present and important, such as in Susan Cooper’s Dark series, they are rarely part of the adventure.

But why is this the case in so many of the most beloved series?

Any child knows the answer. Parents, of course, are the barrier between children and the adventures they imagine they would have without them. Parents put their children to bed on time, make them eat their vegetables, make them go to school. Without parents, there are dragons and demons and all kinds of nasties and wonderfuls waiting just around the corner. A child alone is a child on the brink of adventure: they must be brave, and clever, and resourceful, even noble and powerful.

(Not in reality of course, but in fiction and imagination, which is where kids and authors- hopefully- live.)

A child in a fantasy world most often knows things the adults around him or her do not know, or can see things that adults cannot see. This secret knowledge is central to children’s imagination, even if they tell the nearest ear all about it. Even if the knowledge is very mundane, pretty much all children think they know things better than adults. Adults are, in a child’s viewpoint, constantly thinking about the time, and work, and the next thing, and oh-my-god-what-am-I-going-to-cook-for-dinner-tonight. Their minds, in a child’s view, are too busy to perceive the magic going on all around them. Almost every fictional series has the younger members of the group believing- and seeing- first. Think of Madeline L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door: it is Charles Wallace who sees the ‘dragons’ in the vegetable garden. And the Murray family is hardly a normal family.

Adults not believing kids is part of this, which is why so many of these stories have a scene where the truth is revealed. The child is right. The adult is wrong. No, it’s not a reflection of reality. Only adults want to read books where there isn’t really a drove of dragons in the vegetable garden.

In this age, where kids are never far from adult supervision, it’s not really all that surprising that orphans thickly populate the pages of fantasy fiction.

Is this such a problem as Cynthia Fuchs thinks it is? In my view, no. Decidedly, no.

The only people who might mind about the portrayal of parents are parents themselves. Children aren’t reading these books and watching these movies and thinking “Hm, parents obviously are supposed to be absent and mean. What are my kind, caring parents who visit me in the middle of the night when I think I hear something go bump doing wrong?”

And nor is it teaching children that parents are wrong. Most books don’t contradict the normal things that parents say (eat your vegetables, it’s bedtime). Children know that what is happening in the book is complete fiction. It’s a different child, in a different world, with different parents.

If anything, stories like these give children the opportunity to not only dream about adventure, but also the independence they will some day have to embrace (that is a lot more complicated than even the trickiest story describes). Characters in these books are brave, kind and ingenious; the stories are often about finding your true strength in the absence of the protective shield that exists most of the time in the real world. It’s not a bad thing for a child to mentally practice that kind of independence and moral behaviour in complete safety.

And if by chance there is a child who does experience this kind of trauma, what better chance to escape than to a world where the child is powerful and can escape from evil forces? Most of these children find wise, kind parental surrogates who guide them in their adventures. Even happy children can relate to that kind of outsider validation.

All in all, the absent parent does no harm, except to over-anxious and less-absent parents. It sets up the ideal dream adventure world for the reading child, and maybe even helps them on the all-important road towards growing up themselves.

Review: Wanted (2008)

2008-07-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

Summer movies are like Coca Cola. Drink it carbonated, and the bubbles hide the less-than-inspiring flavour and the cloying sweetness. Drink it flat… well, how many people do you know that drink (and like) flat coke?

Wanted, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, is a perfect example of a carbonated movie. Drink it bubbly, full of fights, violence, bullets and explosions, pretty people (James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie), hero moments, reasonably good acting, lots of CGI, and a few interesting plot points, and it is a good summer movie.

However, drink it flat, and you’re left with a bit of a mess. In Wanted, the laws of physics are not only absent they are ludicrous, you see the ‘twists’ coming a mile away, the guiding principle of the movie is more ludicrous than the physics and the characters are ambiguous in their motivations.

Wanted marches boldly beyond normal action movie amorality into a kind of blind amoral madness that is only emphasized further by the movie’s premise. This is so stringent at the end of the movie that I was wondering if the movie was more supposed to be a kind of reverse morality like this Berenstain Bears book (“This is what you should NOT do.”) A little research proved this theory correct, in a manner of speaking: the script is an adaptation of a comic book series of the same name (by J.G. Jones and Mark Millar) which boldly embraces the ludicrously amoral main character.

Sadly, this clarity of vision is lost in the screenplay- perhaps by mistake, perhaps by design. Instead, we are left with a character who asserts morality in fits and spurts, apparently following some inner moral compass that is in reality mostly (but not entirely) ignored. In all… a bit of mess that is carried off solely by carbonated bubbles of gunfire.

Needless to say, Wanted (rated 18A, entirely for violence) is pretty bloody. It’s bloody in slow motion! It’s bloody in real time! It’s bloody for extended periods dedicated entirely to blood! Luckily, there’s a plot device to allow large amounts of gore in a short time without having the characters wind up in a hospital bed for a couple of months.

So, if you’re looking for something carbonated, something a little amoral (but not deep or thoughtful about it), something without the laws of physics or logic, and something a lot gory, Wanted is your ideal summer movie.

Review: Leverage (Pilot)

2008-06-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

There’s nothing more adorable than television crooks, and the new show Leverage has the most adorable crooks I have ever seen. Like Fringe and the US Life on Mars, the available episode of Leverage is a pre-air pilot, presumably released to spark interest. However, where Fringe and Life on Mars have had respectively prompted a mixed reception and an entire remake, Leverage seems to have done what it set out to do.

I’ve been complaining a lot about character development in these new pilots, but Leverage doesn’t have any of the problems that Fringe and Life on Mars exhibited. Instead of fumbling with poor dialogue, the writers of Leverage go (Dean Devlin, John Rogers) directly to the point of the characters, providing a snapshot of a moment that tells you who the person is.

This technique wouldn’t work for every show, but it works for this one because Leverage is a lighthearted, funny show that allows for that kind of thing. However, the characterization doesn’t stop there. The characters act and speak in ways that are consistent with their established personalities, or personalities that become more apparent as the show goes along.

And does it ever go along. If Leverage does have a few weaknesses it gets away with them by being slick, speedy and funny. When we are laughing, we are too delighted with the joke to poke holes in the show. When each scene is just as long as it needs to be, and reasonably fat with content, we are not languishing around, we are on the edge of our seats. A tight show can get away with a few flaws.

All shows have flaws. In Leverage, Beth Riesgraf, playing a character who is supposedly insane, does not quite manage to capture a woman who doesn’t quite have her marbles. She more seems as if she is pretending to be insane to get away with being slightly different. The result is that Riesgraf is almost, but not quite, perfect for the role (there are moments that are great). I feel that if the intention of the writers and directors is to have her be genuinely unhinged, it will not take much to get the actress there.

The other characters, as I mentioned above, are adorable. I’d seen a younger Christian Kane in Angel before, and he was perhaps better in Leverage; his role fit him like a glove. Gina Bellman and Aldis Hodge were great and immediately loveable. Timothy Hutton was immediately charismatic as the ‘Danny Ocean’ character, and when depth was required in an otherwise lighthearted show, depth he had.

My main fear for this show is that it will not manage to keep itself together. I love the lightheartedness of it, and it has great episodic Chuck-like potential, but I’m worried that it will be too happy-go-lucky for its own good. It calls itself a drama, but it was more of a comedy-with-serious-bits. (I forget who said that). Hustle, a great British show which is very, very similar to Leverage (Life on Mars US please take note), also makes good use of the comedy inherent in the situation of criminals, but managed a gravitas that never quite crossed all the way over into heavy drama to lose the show’s greatest strength- the humour. I think Leverage must aim for this same balance between the drama masks or risk becoming all fluff.

Backstory tragedy is not enough. If the final scene of the pilot was an indication, I think the writers might have a chance to go a CSI-style route to emotional growth, exploring the individual characters through their interactions during the episode.

What I want to see is stakes for the characters, even if they are small incremental ones. We already love the characters, now let’s see them get caught, be wrong, and grow while retaining at least some of that adorable glow.

Otherwise, if you’re looking for something with a low emotional commitment to lighten your mood, the pilot of Leverage is an excellent 56-minute ride into the totally unreal, adorable world of television criminals.

Review: Life on Mars (US) - Pre-Air Pilot

2008-06-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

I loved the UK Life on Mars so when I heard there was a pre-air floating around of the US Life on Mars, airing this fall, I snagged it immediately. I thought it would be fun to watch the two together and compare them.

This has minor spoilers on what I consider well-known facts about the show, and a few vague dialogue and character references.

I’m afraid that compared with the sparkling UK show, the US one loses much and adds (almost) nothing to make up for it. The result is a lacklustre copy that leaves you wondering exactly who thought it would be such a good idea to remake, and what exactly they had in mind when they suggested it.

I’ve heard that two of the cast, Colm Meaney (of Star Trek: TNG fame), playing Detective Gene Hunt, and Rachelle Lefevre playing Annie Cartwright, are going to be recast. I’m not sure why this is happening, since they were not the major problem in the episode. The writing was poor, the directing was lacking and Jason O'Mara, playing the main character Detective John Simm, was by far the weakest of the cast.

First of all, if you’re familiar with the UK version, you’ll recognise the plot of the US version. All of the major plot elements are the same, down to, in many cases, the physical attributes of the characters. The setting is LA, rather than Manchester.

However, the US Life on Mars has lost the sharp, slick writing, plot, character development and attention to detail that the UK show immediately demonstrated. In the UK show, which is a whole eight minutes longer than the US version, it takes six or so minutes to get to the moment Sam Tyler time-travels. The US version takes almost twice as long. What is in this extended period of time you ask? Talking about what they’re going to do before doing it. Shoddy conversation presumably intended to develop character. Longer, indistinct fight scenes.

This delay characterizes the pilot in general. What the writers appear to have done is lost details and certain interesting bits of the plot and instead of replacing them with country-appropriate moments of interest, it simply skips them. In order to get up to an average American pilot length (51 minutes), events are slowed down, conversations are longer, scenes flow together in a more languid way. Contrary to popular belief, fight scenes do not build excitement.

For some reason, the dialogue and character development has suffered peculiarly. Although of the dialogue has survived somewhat intact, it is often it is modified or given to another character. In a previous post I argued that this is a good way to adapt, but in this case, the same scene with the same characters exist but the dialogue is exchanged, resulting in less well or re-defined characters. For example: Instead of the main character Sam Tyler being wrong, he is instead made right and the girlfriend (with the tinned characteristic of “spunky”) gets to be wrong. Instead of her getting herself into danger, he sends her into danger. Presumably this is intended to give the character more guilt over what happens, but him being right and then also being responsible for her wholly undermines her character.

This switching of dialogue roles occurs again later on, again resulting in a bit of a muddle. Generally, the main character is given more ‘hero’ moments, instead of being complicated, and showing his intelligence in using other people’s expertise. The character of Annie Cartwright, supposedly the woman in a men’s world who is allowed by the more modern Sam Tyler to show her intelligence, is reduced to spinning camera and romantic music while Detective Tyler gets to answer the question again. (This very much annoyed me.) The choice of actor doesn’t help: Jason O’Mara is a bit of a slab, without the bright-eyed intelligence and nuanced performance given by the less-hunky John Simm.

Two characters from the UK version- the rookie and the enemy- are missing from the US version, and their absence makes the show even sparser. The only new character was an embattled lawyer, who actually introduced a little interest to the show, but his appearances were minimal.

And then there’s the modification of dialogue. Compare these two lines, occurring at the same point in the story, when seeing a familiar music store:

SAM TYLER: I used to come here. I bought my first… Gary Numan. ‘Cars’.

SAM TYLER: I used to get all my CDs here.

The first line is the UK pilot, and John Simm is peering through the stained record shop window in delight (the camera inside the store behind dirty glass, Annie in the background and records in the foreground visible). The second is delivered by Jason O’Hara while crossing the road after seeing the store.

I don’t even know where to start with these two lines. The first is precise, human, delighted with the memory, evocative, and harkens back to another era, if not quite this one. It reveals detail about the character.

The second is boring, entirely uninventive, vague, and perhaps refers to the very first years of the 21^st century, when Sam bought ‘his CDs’. I understand that the choice of artist might need to be different, as may the language used to express the sentiment, but that doesn’t mean that a slick, fat line can be replaced by a shoddy thin one. The lines were there for the adapters (Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Scott Rosenberg) to see. They turned a fat line into one there purely for plot purposes.

It is also the director’s fault. His work is also un-evocative. This show is a chance to lovingly reproduce an era that many of his viewers may remember. It might be a chance to bring a new generation into his audience. And yet he does not deliver with this nostalgia. I’m surprised, because the director, Thomas Schlamme, is one who was heavily involved in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The West Wing, both of which I like very much. Thinking about it, both of those shows required much indoor shooting- corridors, rooms, offices etc. Life on Mars is more scenic and those scenic moments is when I noticed the directing lacking.

All in all, I found comparing these two shows a fascinating opportunity. The same plot, reproduced with different writers, cast and crew? Delicious. Sadly, the comparison was not a positive one for the new Life on Mars. Almost every aspect of the US pilot fared poorly. The writing was slow, empty, thin and confused. The directing did not make use of the era, and was not as slick as I would expect. None of the actors shone, although perhaps they were held down by the shoddy dialogue and character development. O’Hara was particularly uninspiring.

What I would like to see: A slicker, wittier, more evocative, far more compact, more detailed and more nuanced performance from the writers and cast, and more expansive, scene-sensitive work from the director.

Review: The Golden Compass (2007)

2008-06-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

The Golden Compass, controversial work of Philip Pullman, adapted for the screen this last December by Chris Weitz, who also directed. Rotten Tomatoes gives this film 41% Fresh, which I think is pretty darn right on.

I realize December was six months ago, but there are certain movies that elicit from me a reaction that explodes into a long rant that emerges every time I think about the film in question. This is one of these movies.

There are a few spoilers but nothing remotely major. Apologies for length.

I found The Golden Compass what I'm going to call "enjoyable". Frankly, I expected worse, possibly explaining why I actually rather enjoyed it. The strength of Pullman's wonderful story managed to struggle through the failings of the film, against tough odds. The art direction and costumes were stunning, the acting was good and (although I generally pay little attention to such things) I'm told the animation was excellent.

Sadly, in the areas where it really counts, The Golden Compass was weak. These areas include writing, directing, adaptive inventiveness/imagination and plot logic, so pretty much the things that make a film really good instead of 59% heading-towards-a-new-life-form. A great cast dressed in great costumes wandering aimlessly around a great set cannot quite carry a film by themselves.

I’m going to discuss writing in detail, because it’s what strikes me most. Interestingly, the writing has an odd story. The script was originally written by Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) and, although I haven’t, was allegedly slow and ponderous. I can well believe it. Stoppard is brilliant but as far as my experience with his work goes, far too thoughtful for what boils down to a children’s adventure film.

According to the internet, Chris Weitz wrote a fourty-page treatment of the story and was subsequently hired, despite the script already existing. His passion is admirable. The excitement in his script undeniable. According to a New York Times blog the initial Weitz draft, although long, was much better than the finished product. The blog complains that the movie’s trimming ruined the original Weitz adaptation, but I disagree that shorter necessarily has to get so thin and ludicrously cliché as the final product.

Nobody denies the complexity of the plot and characters of this book. Some simplification and modification is inevitable and necessary. The film managed to somewhat do this, reversing the order of elements to give it a more natural, watchable flow of events. However, within the basic framework, the film finds itself weighed down by explicit (as opposed to implicit) exposition and resorts to cliché dialogue, poor logic and tired plot elements.

Part of the problem is caused by simple lack of inventiveness and imagination. In order to modify a well-loved, complex story in such a way to have it fit onto movie-sized screen, some imagination and thought is required. I think this is especially true of fantasy films, where it is necessary to quickly establish an entirely new world in a few minutes. Although I know many people are not huge fans of the Lord of the Rings adaptations, they are nevertheless a good example of an inventive and imaginative adaptation that beautifully conveys a sense of each people it visits without hitting you over the head with a large club. The LOTR books are much longer and yet even the Theatre Releases were bristling with plot. This was not the case with The Golden Compass.

An inventive adaptation expands the basic story down and up, rather than lengthwise. It layers each scene to provide more information than you think you are getting. This is not only using layered dialogue, this is using setting, body language and action to convey plot, character, mood etc. For example, the movie begins well, with the children’s clay-throwing fights described in the second chapter of the book, and yet almost nothing is revealed about the world in this scene that is useful to us in the coming two hours; there’s plenty of time to build Lyra up and all it takes is a well placed clod of clay to make us like her.

What we really need to see is the world and given the way the movie unfolded, what would have been nice would be to set this clay-fight along the river and the gyptians’ longboats. It would have given us a sense of their importance, their culture, could have introduced us to important characters such as Ma Costa. Her calling ‘Billy’ into the dusk would be enough to establish her as a maternal character, introduce the existence of Billy, and, as her voice fades away as we watch Lyra streak towards Jordan College to the next scene, set up a sense of ominousness that did not require the obligatory dark shadow. (Which, if I remember correctly, was employed in the film).

An inventive, thoughtful screenwriter can turn a thin scene into a fat one. They unravel the story and mine the details to put it back together. They should not only provide a competent play-by-play of the plot, but also provide depth, even if that requires shuffling of dialogue, setting and even plot.

This said, I think that one ‘rule’ to think of when writing an adaptation is to not use a new line or scene when an old one will do, even if it’s patched in from the description or another character. Many of the best adaptations make use of the language of their source material liberally interspersed with the new material.

To some extent, Chris Weitz followed this ‘rule’ that I have just invented. However, there are certain instances where his deviations are bizarrely unnecessary. At one point, the little girl Lyra says to another character after a scary moment, “I thought I lost you”, a line that anyone who has read or seen more than a couple of stories knows is far too overused to be used again. Aside from being tired, does anyone really say that, let alone the character Lyra? Here’s what she says in the book: “Let me help you - I want to make sure you e’nt too badly hurt…” We do not need to be told the line “I thought I’d lost you”; the actress was good enough to show us her fear, the original line truncated is enough to show us her concern and, more than that, it reveals things about her character. Her need to do act, rather than talk, for example.

As it stands “I thought I’d lost you,” conveys exactly one thing, and it not a good one.

In all, I disagree with the assertion that a longer script would have been tons better. If the scenes and dialogue were left as-is, with simply more of them, it would have continued to be thin and cliché, if not quite so illogical as before. What the script lacked most was not length, it was depth. Little more than one thing was occurring at once. Ideas were introduced consecutively rather than concurrently. Exposition was clunky, taking up a vast amount of the early dialogue that could and should have been employed much more efficiently.

An adaptation is a challenge not only to trim and rearrange, but also to imagine, to think and to delve. ("When is he going to start delving? I asked myself." - This one's for you, Mr. Stoppard.)

These same ideas apply to the directing. The director can produce a thin film, or he can produce a fat one. It is up to him or her to look beyond the script and pull out things from the book that are not written there. Perhaps it was a bad idea to let Chris Weitz, however competent and passionate and excited he was, to both write and direct alone. A director can bring new ideas to a writer’s script. A director-writer is only bringing to life what he or she wrote. This can work brilliantly, but I feel that in this instance, with a complex story and world to bring to life, the movie would benefit from two separate minds with two separate imaginations.

Review: Fringe (Pilot)

2008-06-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

There's a new super-hyped show coming this September, brought to you by J.J. Abrams, the fellow behind Alias and Lost. Somehow, either by mistake or design, the pilot has made it out onto the internets. I was particularly interested in seeing it because I had "casually" (yes, I know nobody really thinks people just "happened to be passing", even if they were) wandered past this show being filmed on location and a shot I had seen being rehearsed or filmed made it into the commercial, which you can see on YouTube.

Having got my hands on a copy of the pilot, I've reviewed the show for general interest's sake. It's non-spoilerish- I've tried to restrict my 'reveals' to things commonly mentioned in descriptions in the show, but like any review, you're going to pick up some idea of the show. If you want it to be entirely new, you shouldn't read reviews at all. :P

I found the pilot mostly competent, but nothing really striking. The whole thing without commercials (obviously) is 81 minutes long, and apparently cost $10 million to make. Presumably, with J.J. Abrams and his frequent co-writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci at the writing and producing helm, there was a certain amount of carte blanche going on. Perhaps this isn't the best idea. Success tends to make people sloppy.

The opening was grotesque (warning: if you are squeamish, the opening scene might be one to skip) but other than being eye-catching in its grossness, provided little in the way of interest.

The credits were very reminiscent of Lost 's. The title and the various place names throughout the show reminded me very much of the words you create in 3D-Max. I think if it was simplicity they were going for they should have got with flat words. The choice to have place-titles as part of the scene itself was pretty interesting but in my opinion stood out as a little gimmicky.

From the opening hook, the plot progressed in a fairly standard manner, introducing the three main characters, all of whom were pretty standard. All three of the main characters seemed to have been given character traits like you buy tins at the supermarket (I'll have a small tin of womanizer, a tin of tough, a tin of mad scientist). None of these traits, or any others, were particularly convincing. The genius (Joshua Jackson) exhibited few signs of extreme intelligence and never once had a chance to use his brain, the mad scientist (John Noble) didn't seem terribly mad (although he got the only humour in the show and fared well for it). The other main character (Anna Torv) was given few individual traits, but seemed to carry the part off reasonably well.

Any tension between the characters was presented with half-hearted dialogue, and quickly dispelled as the plot progressed.

However, I liked Lance Reddick in his role as someone-who-knows-more-than-the-rest-of us. He managed to provide more mystery and ominousness with his obvious dialogue than any scary shrieks and music could summon. I liked to see ReGenesis star Peter Outerbridge passing through; he didn't have much to say, but he did a good job not saying it, if that makes any sense. A woman who I think was played by Charlotte Rampling was suitably evil, but there was nothing unremarkable or new about her portrayal of the Evil Woman character.

Wobbly characterization is normal in a pilot. The writers are still hammering out the ways the characters act and speak and actors are still figuring out who their characters are off the page. However, Fringe does not suffer from this kind of wobbliness. The characters do not make sense, are inconsistent and bland. Any tensions are resolved or swept away far too quickly (although they may be resurrected in episode two, I suppose.)

Thankfully, despite the problems with character, Mr. Abrams delivered an episodic plot that wrapped up at the end of the episode with hints of more X-Files-type plot to come. That said, at the moment, I'm getting little of the sense of gleeful mystery I get from the X-Files. The characters display surprise at or disdain for the various science fictiony bits, but there's no sense of fascination from even the mad scientist. What scientist working at any level doesn't take some kind of fascination in his or her work, let alone somebody working in a field unknown to majority of the world?

What I most enjoyed was seeing the bit of Toronto I've spent the last four years living in, doubling variously as Harvard and Boston. I'm referring to the environs of the University of Toronto. The choice of the new wing of the Royal Ontario Museum as the Evil Corporation was interesting. It was lovely to see University College and Knox College (and even the stump of the CN Tower- I guess they have a giant tower in Cambridge, too) doubling as bits of Harvard. Meehee. And the flashiest bits of the Bahen Centre for Information Technology as a centre of operations. The University of Toronto looks good on camera (you can also see it in The Hulk).

Overall, I think the show suffers from a lack of heart. J.J. Abrams can deliver a reasonably good show- I truly enjoyed the first season of Alias- but here he has barely produced a competent one.vOn top of that, there's a spark that is conspicuously absent from the plot, the dialogue, the characters and the mystery.

What I'm hoping to see: Much better characterization, better dialogue, a slightly less cliché plot. Much more spark.