All posts by archangel

Television

Joss Whedon Borrows from William Gibson for Dollhouse

Joss Whedon is launching a new show called Dollhouse. It’s about people who have their minds wiped, and then have new personalities and skill sets imprinted on them for various activities.

This sounds strikingly similar to William Gibson‘s take on prostitution in the Sprawl Trilogy1. The character Molly Millions once worked as a prostitute, but brothels temporarily imprint a new consciousness on working girls and wipe the memories when it’s over. This very neatly allows all parties to go about guiltless, unless you wake up in the middle of a bad session like Molly does. Then things are not so good.

Ok, that’s just speculation on my part, but tons of people have borrowed from William Gibson. I mean, he coined the terms matrix and cyberspace – the man is a legend.

In Dollhouse, the people (victims?) are given a child-like personality in between gigs. That sounds a lot like Michael Bay’s The Island. Let’s hope Dollhouse is a lot more like the works of William Gibson and less like those of Michael Bay.

Either way, I’m happy it will star the lovely Eliza Dushku.

Eliza Dushku

  1. Which comprises Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is preceded by the short story collection Burning Chrome. My memory is a little fuzzy, so it may be from Buring Chrome, which includes Johnny Mnemonic. [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Film

Universal Gets Hasbro’s Leftover Crap

Paramount got the film rights to Transformers and G.I. Joe1. Clearly big wins. Universal has pounced on what’s left: Monopoly, Candyland, Clue, Ouija, Battleship, Magic: The Gathering and Stretch Armstrong. Uh, did they think this through? I can see how video games with intricate plots can work as movies. But… Candyland?

Then again, Ridley Scott is already working on the movie based on Monopoly. No, I am not kidding. I imagine it’s about 4 real estate magnates all vying to buy up the slums of Atlantic City. Keanu Reeves will be playing the shoe, his first convincing role since Ted “Theodore” Logan.

  1. Which comes out next year [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Film

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

1 Comment

If you hadn’t already heard, they’re making a movie about Wolverine. According to Wikipedia, it’s not based on the Origin miniseries. Instead, it focuses on his more recent past. Here’s the current lineup (with some spoiler-free commentary):

Wolverine: Hugh Jackson. I’d love to follow this up with “Duh!”, but with WB mixing up casting for the Justice League movie1, you never can tell. Anyway, I like Jackman, even though he is way too tall for Wolverine, who is 5’3″ in the comic books. Glenn Danzig is the obvious choice, but he supposedly turned down the role in 2000.

Deadpool: Ryan Reynolds. I collected Deadpool for a while; he’s a real wiseass. Reynolds can handle that. I never saw his face in the comics, which would make this a voice acting gig when you factor in the stunt men. But this is backstory so who knows.

Sabretooth: Liev Shreiber. Shreiber is a great actor, but I wonder if they’re going to do anything about the size difference between him and Jackman. Sabretooth is huge and towers over Wolverine. It’s sort of a David and Goliath situation. Shreiber is 6’3″, but only 1 inch taller than Jackman. My guess is that they’ll pretend it’s normal, like Burton did with Keaton.

William Stryker: Danny Huston. Another great actor.

Gambit, a major character in the X-Men comics, will be played by a Taylor Kitsch, a relative unknown. Ironically, the relatively unknown characters John Wraith/Kestrel and Barnell/Blackwing will be played by will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas and Dominic Monaghan (LOTR, Lost), respectively.

  1. Which might be delayed as long as Superman Returns was… [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Film

Kristin Kreuk Is Chun Li!

1 Comment

This is awesome. Kristin Kreuk will play Chun Li, the speed-kicking, high jumping uber cutie in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.

I’ve sunk more quarters into Street Fighter II than any other game. I even have an X-Arcade stick, pretty much just for fighting games on MAME. And I think Kristin Kreuk (Lana Lang on Smallville) is one of the loveliest actresses on earth. So this is a big win for me.

I’m also happy to hear Balrog will be played by Michael Clarke Duncan, and Chris Klein will play Nash1 . Moon Bloodgood (the hottie from Journeyman), will also star, but I don’t know who she’ll be playing2. To top it all off, it will be choreographed by Dion Lam who did The Matrix.

The only bummer is that we’ll have to wait ’til 2009 for the release. In the meantime, there’s always Smallville. And a couple photos of our heroines:
Continue reading Kristin Kreuk Is Chun Li! →

  1. I’ll be honest, I didn’t remember Nash/Charlie as I didn’t spend as much time on Street Fighter Alpha. [↩]
  2. Chun Li’s better-endowed sister? [↩]
Share/Bookmark
Television

Aftermath of the Writer’s Strike

So you’ve probably heard by now that the writer’s strike is over. Variety has some interesting articles on the subject:

  • History and results of the strike. Long term could be better for writers, but it depends a lot on “new media” like streaming TV shows. Short term they’ll lose money, esp. writer/producers who will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, a lot of deals were broken, studios invested more heavily in reality, etc. So it’s hard to say how much better off they are long term.
  • Impact on TV. For the most part, we won’t start seeing new episodes of suspended shows like The Office until late March. They might try to extend the season into June, but a lot is up in the air. Most likely we’ll just get gypped several episodes.
    • Share/Bookmark
Film

Horror Gets a Do-over

Update: George Romero is now remaking his 1972 film Crazies. It’s about a Pennsy town that accidentally has a bio weapon dumped in their water supply, which I guess drives them crazy. Of course, it may not look any different from your typical Steelers game.

Some horror remakes in development:

  • Nightmare on Elm Street is getting a complete overhaul, which I assume means the end of Robert Englund in the title role.
  • The Birds will be remade and star Naomi Watts. I’m sure it will be just as good as when they remade Psycho.
  • The Wolf Man is being remade and will have Benicio Del Toro in the title role with Anthony Hopkins co-starring.
  • The Invisible Woman isn’t really a remake, but it’s in the same territory. It will be directed by Matt Reeves, and might not happen until he directs the sequel to Cloverfield.
  • Young Frankenstein is more of a horror parody, but it has been remade as a Broadway play. “Premium” tickets cost $450 (and no, that’s not a scalper or eBay price).
Share/Bookmark
BTW, Television

The voice of Kitt is… Val Kilmer?

1 Comment

Ok, this is just weird to me. In the new Knight Rider TV movie, the voice of KITT will be played by Val Kilmer. He is replace Will Arnett – yes, the guy who played Gob on Arrested Development. Turns out Arnett is already the “voice of GMC Trucks” in all the commercials, so GM wasn’t too happy about him voicing a Mustang. Considering their recent all-time record yearly loss of $38.7B, they must have been devastated. So Val Kilmer is filling in.

Kilmer’s voice is so different from William Daniels (the original KITT) that I have to assume there’s a major personality change in the car.

Share/Bookmark
Internet, Television

The Internet TV Survival Guide

3 Comments

So the writer’s strike is raging and there’s less and less scripted TV to watch. And the cable bill is past due, and the TV is broke, or at the very least, it’s all the way in the other room. Too much damn walking. What to do, nephew?

I have cataloged here all best the ways to legally obtain video entertainment on the Internet. So no jackbooted stormtroopers from the MPAA will kick down your door and haul away your computer. And your children.

Note: As much as I love Firefox, I find most embedded video players perform far better on IE. Many won’t work at all in Firefox, even with IE Tab.

Crack TV!
The Crack Team has been pointing you to great videos since this site was launched. Through the miracle of tagging (and the back-breaking labor of back-tagging over 400 posts), you can now see an archive of all video posts on TCT. Try to find good stuff sites like YouTube and you’ll end up slogging through one mediocre video after another – even when you stick to the popular and highly rated ones. Save your time and watch Crack TV!

Netflix
Netflix is awesome. Without a doubt the biggest DVD selection anywhere, including HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.1 They also have a streaming service. While the selection of downloads is limited, it’s still good. I just finished season 1 of Dexter and next is Dead Like Me. They also have several NBC shows and a bunch of crap shows from the 70’s and 80’s. Best of all, they now allow you to download as much as you want! The quality is high, too. I’ve had no problems since signing up several years ago and they even give me an early adopter discount.

Broadcast
If you can, you’re probably best served by getting a good TV tuner card2 and using DVR software like Windows Media Center. This way you can get everything and skip all the commercials.3

All major broadcast networks have some video content online, but vary widely in the quality, selection, and commercial content. It’s a great way to try new shows now that so little new stuff is produced. Journeyman would be a great example, if you didn’t watch it before it was canceled.4 You can now watch the entire series. Similarly, I recently discovered Life at the suggestion of a friend and now I’m all caught up.

Cable networks are much more conservative, choosing to only offer video clips like you might see on YouTube. Full episodes (for the cable channels I watch) are nonexistent.

Fox
Most TV shows I watch are on Fox, and they’ve done an awesome job with Fox On Demand. The selection is great:

New shows appear 1-8 days after airing; it depends on the show. The videos are high quality; some are even in HD. I find that cranking up the resolution to 1280 x 1024 on my 21″ monitor gives a great HD image for shows like Terminator.5 And most shows are commercial free! Rupert Murdoch is my homeboy.

NBC
NBC is the #2 network for online viewing. The video quality is excellent. The bad news is that all their shows run commercials during the normal spots for commercial breaks. The good news is that they only run one 15-30 second spot. The bad news is that it’s the same commercial, over and over. Better than watching it live, but not as good as a DVR. Like Fox, NBC also has a great selection:

ABC
The only ABC show I really watch is Lost, but they seem to do a great job with it. Amazingly, they have all 4 seasons online in HD (1280 x 720), and when I boosted my resolution, full screen looked fantastic. Lost is easily the best looking show on the Internet. I thought I might try Pushing Daisies, as I heard that was good, but I found they only offer a few episodes of their other series.

CW
Smallville is one of my longtime faves, due in no small part to Kristin Kreuk. And Reaper is great. But CW’s online video offering is weak sauce. Very few full episodes and what they have is low quality. I have to admit, I am surprised they put online the director’s cut of the next new Smallville episode before it even aired. But it still wasn’t enough to get me to watch.

CBS
It sucks. First, I didn’t watch it when I had a TV. CBS has picked up Dexter, which is an awesome show, but they’re just airing censored versions of the Showtime series. When it’s all on Netflix, what’s the point? The only current CBS show I’m interested in is Jericho, as it was recently suggested to me by a few friends. When I went to watch past episodes, however, I found the video quality sucked. Full screen is almost unwatchable; it’s just stretching the original size, which is only 9″ diagonal on my monitor.

Headline News
I used to watch this more often to get a quick feed of major stories. This is still possible online through their Prime News segments. Personally, I can’t stand Nancy Grace, and don’t often bother with their other shows.

Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet
Decent quality full episodes, but very few shows (3 total at this time, none of which I watch), and only a couple episodes per show.

Comedy Central
More of a video clip outlet with no full episodes. Do you really need to see every second of The Daily Show or Colbert Report? Maybe not, especially now that the strike is affecting them. But I would like to see full episodes of South Park, Reno 911, and, should they ever return: Chapelle’s Show, Dr. Katz, Stella, Strangers With Candy, and Upright Citizen’s Brigade. I won’t be holding my breath.

Cartoon Network
They’ve produced some fantastic animated series, especially their superhero adaptations (Justice League Unlimited) and Adult Swim (Harvey Birdman, Sealab 2021). But the site seems very much geared towards kids, and only provides video clips. Nothing to see here.

  1. If you tell them you have either player, they just automatically send you those. [↩]
  2. Make sure it’s ATSC for HD [↩]
  3. Except for the upcoming Agent Mystery-produced So You Think You Can Dance. Be sure to watch it live and soak in all the commercials. [↩]
  4. Thanks for killing a great show. [↩]
  5. They do force you to download a proprietary video player, but it seems harmless. And yes, I know it’s a tragedy to watch Terminator on anything less than a 50″ 1080P screen. [↩]
Share/Bookmark