Moonlight Ep. 1-02 “Out Of The Past” (re-post)

(Note: this was originally published at FADPOV on 08-Oct-2007.)

OK, I think my opinion of this show is rising. And it’s almost entirely based on one tiny item in the plot… it turns out the reason why vampires can’t be photographed is because pre-digital photographic paper used a silver emulsion. Now that we’ve gone digital, the silicon chips in your camera have no problem recording their images. That is, like, the coolest little bit of original vampiric lore I’ve come across in a long time. (And if you’ve heard it before, please don’t email and burst my bubble, ’kay?)

Also? Implying that vampires like playing World of Warcraft? Read more »

Moonlight, Ep. 1-01 “There’s No Such Thing As Vampires” (re-post)

(Note: this was originally published at FADPOV on 30-Sep-2007)

Interviewer: “So, what’s it like being a vampire?”
Mick St. John: “Being a vampire sucks. It’s a bad joke, I know, but it’s the truth.”

Well. I think my opinion of the Moonlight pilot is pretty much a “meh”. It’s not bad enough to make me throw things at the TV, but not good enough to keep me from huffing as it dangerously exceeds my suggested daily allowance of bad puns.

Things I liked? Read more »

FADPOV articles for August 2007

I’ve been hoping to add some things here, but have just gotten busy with other writing projects that have eaten up a lot of my spare time.  A good chunk of it has been for FADPOV, so I thought I would put up some links to those articles:

Painkiller Jane - I’ve been reviewing this show each week.  It’s kind of an odd experience.  The show is…honestly…not that good.  I’m not surprised it’s been cancelled.  But it has some interesting ideas–the germ of a show that could have been good.  Which actually makes it worse than a totally sucky show would have been, in a way.

Life on Mars - this show IS good.  The first series aired on BBC America last year, and the second series is supposed to be airing in early 2008.  I convinced Tamela to let me write up the already-aired episodes, partly because I just plain wanted to, but partly because I like websites to be complete references and I think it’s a good idea to have all the episodes there.

Failure to Adapt: Gold Edition - a smartass article I wrote about alleged failed attempts by movie studios to come up with projects based on video games.

Kobayashi Maru Me, Baby - an article I wrote about the upcoming Star Trek movie that’s partly tongue-in-cheek, but partly serious.  This movie needs to be good, because The worst part was that I so desperately wanted to say something about the Duras family, but I couldn’t because I’d complained about the need for new blood.  Damn it–I miss Lursa and B’Etor.

Kobayashi Maru Me, Baby (re-post)

(Note: this article was originally published at FADPOV on 13-Aug-2007)

A devoted Trekkie and I recently attempted to list the Trek movies, in order. We came up with:

• The first one
• Khan. I mean, KHAAAAAAAN!
• The Search for Spock
• The… one with the whales?
• Um… The Undiscovered Country? Or was there another one in there?
• The one that was kind of boring, except for Malcolm McDowell…

The point I’m trying to make is that when people who are devoted enough to the various Trek series that they’ve sat through the horrific “Sub Rosa” multiple times can’t even remember how many movies have been made… the Powers That Be really need to make the next one unbelievably fantastic. As excellent as Zachary Quinto’s acting is (and it is), and as much as I adore every hair in his eyebrows (and I do), the rest of the movie is going to have to be just as amazing in order to really breathe life back into the franchise. So what, exactly, do I think they should keep in mind?

Get Kirk right. The movie may be focused on Spock, but without an equally capable Kirk, it’s going to fall flat. Some of the casting rumors I’ve heard have made me worry that they might go for an actor who’s got a fan base they think they can suck into the movie, rather than the best guy for the job. They don’t necessarily have to go with a total unknown, but I think they need to get creative in looking for a younger version of everyone’s favorite ladykilling charmer. They need an actor who’s shown he can be authoritatively arrogant yet charming, can toss lines off with sardonic humor, and can fit into those tight outfits without a girdle. Unfortunately, it was at this point that my friend suddenly yelled: “Neil Patrick Harris!” And I had to admit, he’s younger than Matt Damon, and his hair is already the right color for the hairpiece.

Expand the universe a little. There are trillions of sentient beings in the galaxy. Fan out from the stable of established characters - or their forebears, or their descendants - and show us some completely original ones. Part of me does like it when references are made to previous episodes and series, but I sometimes feel that the franchise has become overly self-referential and, in recent years, has spent more energy on trying to link plots into pre-existing storylines than on trying to make said plots good. Familiarity is nice, occasional in-jokes to long-time fans are nice, but I want something new and unexpected, too.

Redeem Archer. OK, having just said that… I think a nod ought to be given to Captain Jonathan Archer. To be honest, I always felt the character was a bit of a jerk despite the fact that he was supposed to so vital to the founding of the Federation, and wondered if he would have become more sympathetic if Enterprise had gone through a full seven-season run. Give Bakula 30 seconds of screen time, somehow, some way, even by having a character view old news clips. Give him a chance to make me like Archer and make me feel like he deserves to be revered (and to ease my unhappiness with Enterprise).

Cast one hell of a villain. This is one area where stuntcasting wouldn’t bother me, because to me, the antagonists are the most fun part of any movie or show. They need to be fun to watch. They need to be intelligent and inventive so that the protagonists are forced to get creative as well to match wits with them. They need to be unpredictable and maybe even slightly insane to keep me on the edge of my seat trying to guess what they’ll do next. Two words: Dennis Hopper. In my house, he’s known as “the man who can make even Waterworld seem like art”. He can chew scenery better than Ricardo Montalban and John de Lancie put together, and yet he’s never done anything in the Trek universe. This is a sad situation that must be rectified… immediately!

Product placement can be your friend. Sort of. One of the more bizarre aspects of the first season of Heroes was the way it made intrusive advertising twistedly fun. It’s hard to weave current products into the storyline of a film set a couple of centuries in the future, but as big as this movie is going to be, companies are going to be wracking their brains for a way to show they’d still be around and relevant in a utopian space-based society. (If you think I’m going to make a Tang joke here, you’re sadly mistaken.) I tried to figure out what kind of product could be worked in with as little intrusion as possible, and then I realized that above all else, the one thing that facilitates interaction between cultures is… shopping. And you can’t go shopping without your MasterCard. “Haircut? 20 credits. New gold lame evening wear? 75 credits. Being able to buy all the Orion slave girls your heart desires, without carting around those heavy bars of gold-pressed latinum? Priceless.”

In all seriousness, I feel a lot of empathy for J.J. Abrams and company as they deal with fan demands and incredibly high expectations. Being pulled between those expectations and the desire to give the story a fresh twist is something that could easily turn into a disastrous, unwinnable situation. When it comes right down to it, all I really want is a movie that fits into existing canon without creating continuity problems, and that doesn’t have a plot I’m able to predict after watching the first 10 minutes. Come on, guys. Make it so.

Painkiller Jane, Ep. 1-15 “The Healer”

So I’ve started doing some reviews for a new website, FADPOV.  Right now I’m doing Painkiller Jane on the Sci Fi Channel.  It’s an interesting experience: I’d seen the commercials but wasn’t drawn in, but a female friend-of-a-friend said I ought to watch it, and I wanted to start writing about something right away, so I took this show.

For the first episode, I did a massive play-by-play recap, since I was trying to learn the character relationships 2/3 of the way through the season.  My shorter, actual review is online here at FADPOV.  I hate letting writing go to waste, though, so here is the detailed recap:

* * * * * * *

So this is something of an experiment…the first time I’ve ever watched Painkiller Jane.  I’ve never read the comics or watched the Sci Fi Channel movie either, so I’m a complete virgin here.  I’ve read up on what’s happened so far in the season, but if I happen to completely misunderstand something in the plot, or leave something important out, feel free to email me and set me straight.  As a quick synopsis, I’ll just say that this show could have been a lot worse, but it could also have been a lot better—I think the most entertaining moment was the local commercial for The Source Comics & Games over in St. Paul.  Hee—I love Game Master Burl and Super-Otaku Chad-son!

After an opening montage that explains the show’s premise—and makes blonde super-healing Jane look way too much like Claire Bennet to me, since I’ve already been watching Heroes for 7 months—the action opens in a bank… Read more »

Zombie apocalypse

Blog Like It’s the End of the World (context)

What’s very shocking to me is how boring a zombie apocalypse is.  I would have expected people running and screaming in the streets, blood, fire, desperation, destruction.  That’s probably happening in the city, but out here in the suburbs where I work, it’s more or less life as usual.  Maybe Simon Pegg and Nick Frost had it more right than they realized: maybe people really are so numbed that even zombiefication doesn’t really change their behavior.   

Several of my co-workers did succumb, and managed to eat one of the engineers back in the clean room before we figured out what was going on.   Read more »

I hope you already made your money on eBay

I just went into a Target and, on the shelf in the Electronics department, I saw 4 Wiis sitting there.  Just sitting there, unpurchased.  I…don’t even know how to react to that change in reality.

There were 7 PS3s further down the shelf, kind of hidden, like the store was a little embarrassed to admit it was carrying them, so at least some things have stayed the same.

George Alec Effinger’s “When Gravity Fails”

I wondered if the world ever got tired of its jokes; no, that was too much to hope for.  The jokes would go on and on, getting worse and worse. Right now I was certain that if age and experience couldn’t stop the jokes, there was nothing about death that would make them stop, either.

There’s a fairly good review of this book at IROSF, which was what prompted me to read it.  I have to say, the people who’ve described this series as the “best cyberpunk ever” aren’t really exaggerating.  Like most people, I went through the cyberpunk phase in college, and its good practitioners create stories that are intricately detailed and whip along as fast as your pulse, but they also feel kind of…plastic.  They’re set in worlds whose descent from the present day can be easily traced, but yet they’re so different that everything has to be explained.  But in “When Gravity Fails”, the storytelling Read more »

China Mieville’s “Looking for Jake”

“Have you guessed yet?” she said.  “What your present is?” She was staring at me, very seriously, very intensely. It made me quite emotional.

I thought of everything that had happened that day, and of my reactions. Everything I’d been through and seen — been a part of.  I realized how different I felt now than I had that morning. It was an astonishing revelation.

“Yes…” I said, hesitantly. “Yes, I think I have. Thank you, my love.”

“What?” she said.  “You’ve guessed?  Shit.”

She was holding out a little wrapped package.  It was a tie.

–‘Tis The Season (Socialist Review, 2004)

Honestly?  I never cared for China Mieville.  I’ve heard people sing the praises of “Perdido Street Station”, and I tried to read it, and…I just didn’t care.  I think that’s the biggest sin a book can commit for me, to leave me just completely indifferent.  At least if a book sucks, I can get righteously worked up over the author selfishly wasting my time.  I managed to get about 70 pages into “Perdido”, and then my dishwasher went off and I went to open the door to dry the few things that might spot, and then…I forgot I was reading the book.  That’s right: I forgot I had been reading it.  That’s how disconnected I was from the characters, the plot, the everything.  That’s frightening.

When I read a recommendation for Mieville’s short story collection “Looking for Jake”, my initial reaction was to say, Read more »

Opening post

   Well, this is the generic first post that WordPress inserts at the time of installation, and which I am now editing simply to get rid of the default text.  I’d try to come up with something witty to say, but it’s been a long day.

   I’m not sure about the kind of disturbing lime green in this theme (Cordobo Green Park), but I really like the clean feeling of the layout and how easy the green headers make it to scan the page.  So for now, I’m sticking with it.