Monday, January 31, 2005

Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation

Just got back from the sublime geek haven that is the original Alamo Drafthouse, where Christina and I saw S&M's S&T F of A. (Yeah, I'm pretty lazy tonight.)

If the Festival comes to your town, promise me you will do anything -- including the wholesale raffling off of your young relatives -- to go see it. Some of it is gross, some of it is unfunny, but it is all worth it just to see Here Comes Doctor Tran. Seriously. Your sides will split. Painfully.

Other than this superbly funny short cartoon, the Festival was a nice follow-up to B-Fest 2005 (journal coming up in a day or two), kind of like a late-night dessert after a fine meal. I need to meet some of the film geeks in this town.

Monday, January 24, 2005

"B" as in bleary-eyed

An article from Catherine Arnold about B-Fest. I think this was originally intended for a larger media outlet, but it ended up on Arnold's blog instead. Still, it's good stuff and it features quotes from me and Scott prominently, so check it out. The first quote from me is a little munged-up (I'm pretty sure The Lonely Lady and Alice in Wonderland didn't play the same year), but it's all good.

Monday, January 10, 2005

Quick thoughts on The Amazing Race, Bouldercam, and Macworld Expo

The Amazing Race has been a show where some truly spectacular couples fighting has taken place, but never has it been quite so hideous a display of self-destruction as when the dysfunctional Jonathan and Victoria Baker took center stage. At points Jon has become so abusive that I thought for sure they'd yank him from the show, but apparently both contestants managed to reign in their behavior. It seems they were given a talking-to by the show's executives after a Berlin incident in which Jonathan gave his wife a mighty shove when they came in second during one leg of the race.

Since that episode aired, one of the TAR's producers came forward to say that there were no further incidents of physical abuse between the Bakers. So J&V may be on the show to stay (at least until -- I hope -- their elimination), but it's a joy to see Jon's jaw work in frustration during difficult moments of the race, and it's elating to see host Phil Keoghan's physical discomfort at being on screen with the man. At the very least this should send a message to the hosts of other extreme game shows: when you select your contestants for their competitiveness, don't be surprised when some of them go over the edge.

And speaking of animals, if you haven't caught the Discovery Channel's Spy in the... series, you're missing some of the best animal television to be shot in years. Aided by a hidden mobile camera (think Mars rover disguised as a rock -- or elephant dung), this documentary team has captured sequences that (for the first time in what feels like years) left me slack-jawed, wondering how in hell they got that shot. Bouldercam must have one heck of a suspension system, because there weren't any of the bumps or jostles I expected to see as the lens follows right behind the animals. Who knew that lion cubs could operate Steadicams?

Tomorrow we should see some pretty nifty stuff coming out of Apple, as it will be the Tuesday of Macworld Expo. The rumors (which were pretty much confirmed when Apple decided to sue Think Secret, the web's most reliable tech rumor mill) say we'll see new flash-based iPods (dubbed "iPod Shuffle" or some such) and a new, inexpensive Macintosh designed to woo budget-minded consumers who are ready to switch from the Windows operating system. I was pretty close to buying a $200 processor upgrade for my Graphite G4 PowerMac tower, but it may turn out that that money would be better put towards a new CheapyMac.

Normally I'd watch Steve Jobs' keynote speech as it happens via the Quicktime stream they usually set up, but this year that broadcast will be delayed -- by nine hours. What the--?

Friday, January 07, 2005

BMMB network problems

Looks like there may be some problems with the B-Movie Message Board tonight; our hosts tell us there's an insecure script running somewhere on one of the servers and it keeps going up and down. I assume it'll be fixed by morning. In the meantime, get some sleep.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Medium

Upon seeing the success of Lost and Desperate Housewives, two big-budget scripted dramas that buck the current bottom-dollar reality television show trend (at least on network TV), NBC put a lot of marketing muscle behind two of its new mid-season replacements: Committed, a situation comedy I'll probably see eventually, and Medium, a crime drama with a supernatural bent.

Medium was created by Glenn Gordon Caron, writer on such beloved TV shows as Taxi and Moonlighting. Caron's scripting on the pilot episode didn't disappoint -- a good premise with lots of room to develop (if somewhat dogeared from all the paranormal shows that followed in the wake of The X-Files), some pretty snappy dialogue, and a compelling set of characters. (Caron must be applauded for having the nerve to include three young girls under the age of twelve as fairly central figures.) Overall, however, I was reminded of J. Michael Straczynski's science fiction series Babylon 5: there's some good storytelling going on here if you can struggle through the troublesome acting.

Lead actress Patricia Arquette, as the titular Medium, is the main source of frustration in the pilot. Though she illuminated screens single-handedly in pictures like Ed Wood and True Romance, her performance here brings to mind Ed Wood's actual movies. For most of the episode Alison Dubois (Arquette) wanders the set like a zombie, only coming to life when an external force exerts pressure. Maybe it's the fact that her dialogue doesn't fit her character – does an over-worked, over-stressed mother of three trying to gain admittance to law school really crack wise about the sexual undertones of The Partridge Family? Even if she does, wouldn't she deliver it a little less like it were a line with which she wasn't quite comfortable? A lot of Arquette's dialogue sounds like it was written for someone peppier, someone smart-assier, someone – well, younger. (Arquette's makeup and lighting crew could be doing her a few more favors as well. She's not even forty, for Pete's sake -- why does her forehead look like a sand dune?)

Paired with Arquette as her television husband Joe Dubois is Jake Weber, who gives his own character the life that is so obviously missing from Arquette's. His interactions with Alison are as natural as he can make them given the circumstances, and one can only hope that Arquette will tether herself to the rock offered by Weber's talent. The rest of the cast seems competent enough, though we weren't given much of a chance to see them in the pilot. One can hope we'll be seeing more of Miguel Sandoval as the District Attorney for whom Alison works, but the first episode doesn't offer many clues as to the series' future direction. Will it become a "monster of the week" show, a sort of Law and Order: Paranormal Victims Unit? Or will it be less episodic, with a continuing storyline for Alison and her family? Given that the series appears to be based on the life of a "real-life medium" who specializes in child abduction cases, one prays that it won't become Touched By An Angel for the psychic set.

With Medium's fantasy elements and the dialogue that wants to be hipper than the characters who speak it, I was reminded of last year's cancelled Wonderfalls, in which the words flowed naturally from the actors' mouths, the emotional moments were expertly pitched, and I never once felt like someone was sleepwalking through an episode. (Coincidentally, the complete first season of Fox's abruptly cancelled series -- at least the 13 episodes that were filmed, nine of which tragically never aired -- is to be released on DVD in a few weeks.) I'm rooting for Medium to improve and I hope it endures, but so far I'd trade four years of this for thirteen more episodes of Wonderfalls.