It's all in the marketing - "Shining" trailer

I would love to see the reactions of people who ended up seeing the movie in question based on this trailer.

"Night Stalker" returns to TV

Hope you set your Tivos, boys and girls, because tonight's the night: Night Stalker is back on the air. Unfortunately the days of Darren McGavin are over (save for a cameo in tonight's pilot ep), but with Frank Spotnitz (formerly of The X-Files) in the driver's seat we might be in for a treat. Reviews thus far are decidedly mixed – though the theme emerges that the pilot blows but subsequent episodes are better – and I hope ABC gives the series a chance to find its legs.

Now we all turn to the creators of Lost and thank them for proving that genre TV isn't dead.

Serenity (spoiler-free)

Well.

Well.

Well.

I just got back from a screening of Serenity, and I want to jot down my first impressions, but here's the thing. It is utterly impossible to discuss the most important aspects of the film without letting spoilers out of the bag.

I can tell you that Serenity (the big-screen continuation of the abruptly-cancelled – and much-lamented by me – Firefly TV series) is not what I expected, and in that it exceeded my expectations. It is not the movie I wanted, but it is something far better than that for which I hoped. Writer/director Joss Whedon has made sweeping changes that will send shock waves through the show's fan base while remaining true to the soul of the series. Thankfully, Serenity is more than just an extra-long episode of Firefly with a bigger budget and better special effects.

This is not to say that I'm not bitter about some of the changes or even disappointed with some of the film's aspects. For Firefly fans, some of the character moments will feel rushed. For those coming in with no knowledge of the series, it may all be a bit much to absorb. But there is something for everyone and in the end it's a damn good movie whether you've seen Firefly or not. It's one of those pictures for which a giant screen, a kickin' sound system, and a giddy audience are made.

Scott and I will post a full review (likely with spoilers) sometime shortly after Scott first sees the film, and I'll probably see it again myself before then. Until then, make plans to go see Serenity this weekend. Take your non-Firefly fan friends. Joss Whedon deserves the chance to make sequels.

Amazing Race: Family Edition starts tonight

Just a quick heads-up for those of you who haven't jumped in on The Amazing Race, tonight would be a good time to get hooked. It's the premiere of the "Family Edition" season, in which family teams of four (as opposed to adult teams of two) compete in a race around the globe. I haven't even really scoped out the web site for this season, but I'm sure it's going to be a good time. The Amazing Race has long been the most sophisticated and cerebral of these so-called "reality" shows (what was wrong with the term "game show," I'd like to know?), which is why it keeps winning Emmy awards.

I'm a little worried about keeping the teams straight – it's bad enough to keep track of twenty-odd people at the beginning of each season, never mind double that number – but I know that the weaker teams will quickly fall by the wayside and by the end I'll be familiar with them all. Perhaps too familiar. Kind of like those road trips in the station wagon when I was a kid. I may need a Magic Slate and some Planter's Cheez Balls.

How a Geek Beat Vegas

Rolling Stone has a terrific excerpt from David Kushner's new book, Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids. According to Kushner's occasionally purple prose, Jon Finkel went from being an utter loser to the absolute master of card games. He started with Magic: The Gathering and moved on to blackjack and poker. If you're into nerd non-fiction, this sounds like a great story. Check out the book's page on Amazon.

Joss Whedon interview in NY Times

According to this New York Times interview, Joss Whedon announced that he was quitting TV last year but still has an eye towards going back. Somehow I missed that original announcement, but it's nice to see that he hasn't given up on making TV shows forever.

I love TV. I still have tons of things I'd love to do on TV. But I've also always wanted to make movies, and they were saying, "Come on in." The intention is to go back when I feel there's a place for me.

The rest of the interview concerns Serenity and Whedon's feelings about the cancellation of Firefly. There are mild spoilers about the film, so if you care about that sort of thing I'd recommend going back to read it after you've seen the flick.

Virtual plague wipes out Warcraft characters

An inadvertent bit of game programming resulted in a virtual epidemic among players in the World of Warcraft online role-playing game. Higher-level characters returning from a dungeon infected with the virus/spell/disease "Corrupted Blood" unwittingly passed the disease on to lower-level characters, who couldn't withstand the attacks.

In the days since Blizzard eradicated the plague, the company has remained surprisingly quiet about what happened. But you can still find plenty of players willing to talk about it. One 14-year-old Orc told me openly of the incident: "Humans were dying left and right. We just laughed and laughed."

You can read the full Gadgeteer entry on the incident here.

The eyes of Kansas upon us

Here's a nice little piece of newspaper coverage from the Wichita Eagle about our new shopping blog, Film Buff Stuff. Writer Wendy Zang thinks we may be a bit geekier than she is. She's probably right.

Fox cancels "Head Cases" after two airings

After showing just two episodes, the new Fox drama Head Cases "sank to cancellation territory" as it failed to compete in Wednesday prime time. The show, a comedic drama about emotionally and professionally troubled lawyers in Los Angeles, starred Chris O'Donnell, Rachel Leigh Cook, and Adam Goldberg. Can anyone spot the reasons this series might not have resonated with viewers? They should have tried running O'Donnell over with a train.

Whedon sells script to Universal

Variety reports that Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity) has sold a "fantasy thriller" movie script called Goners to Universal for "seven figures."

Whedon was cryptic in describing the project, but the title conveys that it will tread on supernatural turf comparable to his series creations "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the bloodsucker spinoff "Angel."

All well and good, but I'm taking this a sign that Whedon is finished with television – at least for a while.

Waiting . . .

Even a casual observer of the province of independent film for the last decade would have no trouble placing the inspiration for Rob McKittrick's Waiting . . . . If you're familiar with the work of Kevin Smith and the concept of a fern bar, a four word description of the plot ("Clerks set at Bennigan's") should place in your mind an instant – and likely accurate – idea of the film's content and tone. For the most part the plot and characterization are creatively bankrupt, but the dialogue, performances, and the picture's final payoff keep the experience from being a total dud.



As new guy Mitch (the suddenly towering John Francis Daley) begins his first day on the job at fern bar Shenanigan's, he is asked a very important question: "How do you feel about male frontal nudity?" This turns out to be an equally important question for the audience, and when I found myself wondering whether Luis Guzman used a penile prosthetic, at least I had the answer to an important question that comes with every film: does this movie show me something I haven't seen before? The answer is yes, but what you see may very well be something you will wish you hadn't.

The staff at Shenanigan's is crammed with slacker stereotypes. There is a conflicted but all-around good guy. We meet his girlfriend, who is not too good but wishes that Guy would figure out what he wants in life and pay some attention to her. There's the resident smartass, who is the coolest guy at Shenanigan's, though one of the best jokes comes at his expense when he is told that such a position is "like being the smartest kid with Down's Syndrome." A collection of oafs work the grill while Chi McBride dispenses wisdom from behind the dishwashing station. To round things out we are even treated to a teenaged version of Jay and Silent Bob, though weighted more towards drug humor and less towards profundity.

A large cast is always a potential liability, but in the case of Waiting the sheer multitude of faces supports the feeling of being in a crowded restaurant. There's always something going on or someone to cut to, which keeps the film from becoming too much like a forgotten burger beneath a heat lamp. It helps that so many of these actors are gifted and that they throw themselves into the material with such exuberance, particularly when their parts call for them to behave in unpleasant ways. Alanna Ubach is a perfect example; her character Naomi vacillates from a deranged termagant to a flawless hostess between kitchen and dining room, and Ubach makes it seem natural. As in so many of these stories featuring young layabouts in search of meaning there are a number of rookies in the mix. It is no surprise, then, that more seasoned hams like Guzman steal the show.

The movie obviously has lots to say about the existential side of waiting tables, but the more interesting scenes depict the behind-the-curtain culture of restaurant life. We observe the antagonistic relationship between the grill crew and the wait staff, learn what servers really think about their customers, and in one scene guaranteed to make you rethink ever eating out again, we see the oft-imagined act of restaurant retribution – the application of bodily substances to a meal – acted out in agonizing detail. It is this portion of the film that abruptly polarizes an audience: those who have never waited tables look away in revulsion, while those who have look on in amusement or even feel moved to contribute some scattered applause.

Beyond this look into the back stage of suburban mass-produced cuisine, however, Waiting offers very little in the way of new material. There are plenty of jokes to draw laughs, but these are usually on the level of rude armpit noises and sexual disparagement. From the way they talk and act, most of these people belong at Shenanigan's, and if they served onion blossoms and cheese sticks for the rest of their days I would have trouble feeling sorry for them. I have an equal affinity for the warmed-over coming-of-age plot and retread characters, no matter how well acted. You've seen this picture before, though this time it comes with added volume, raunchiness, and a side of honey dijon.

Just as I had written off Waiting as a younger sibling of Clerks who must act out even more excessively than the original in order to be noticed, the film's final scenes upends the Clerks conceit – almost. It's a thrilling moment of clarity as one character gains the voice of the audience and sums up the laundry list of neuroses that have come together to form the staff of Shenanigan's. Had the film ended there it might have completely won back my respect, but it lingers on as if unwilling to give up on its characters – despite having condemned them in its one scene of true wit.

For first-time writer/director McKittrick and the talented cast, I feel much the same way that we are encouraged to feel about the characters who work at Shenanigan's: they look like they're having fun and this work must pay the bills, but I really hope they move on to something worthier soon.

The Producers trailer

Let the great steaming of Gene Wilder's ears begin anew, as The Producers (you know, that musical based on a movie that's been made into a movie again) nears release. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick are sure to sell a few tickets as they reprise the roles that made them the toast of Broadway, but it's Uma Thurman as Ulla who has me puzzled. I mean, yeah, it's kind of a funny play on the name of the actress and the character, but can she dance? More to the point, can Will Ferrell sing?

Anyway, here's the trailer at the official Sony site.

Gretchen Mol is Bettie Page?

Take a gander at the photo accompanying this Village Voice article and let me know what you think. Ordinarily a single still from a film wouldn't tell you much, but given that Bettie Page is known mostly through her pin-up work (she only ever had one very brief speaking role in a burlesque film), the photo match will be more important than otherwise.

Personally I think they needed to go with someone more buxom than Gretchen Mol, but the jury's out until we see the movie.

Why do people still listen to Rob E?

There's a certain tech industry "analyst" who has made a career out of writing insipid articles that betray a complete inability to discern innovation from simple P.R. His name is Rob E, and I'm only including his last initial because I don't want to send him any more web traffic than he already gets. Despite my best efforts to keep him a mystery from the public, however, he continues to publish and is often quoted in news sources that really should know better.

Rob E's latest bit of twaddle is a piece on Longhorn (as in long-awaited), Microsoft's next version of Windows, which is now being called "Vista." Windows hasn't had a major revision since 2001, when Windows XP was released. In that time Apple has released three or four major revisions to its OS X operating system and increased sales of its computers far faster than anyone else in the computer hardware business. E, however, clings to the "good old days" of Apple-bashing and conveniently ignores this. In the late '90s people used to put Apple Computer on deathwatch every other month. In this day of iPods, iTunes, and iMacs, however, it takes a special kind of man to keep shouting above the music.

I could spend a lot of time regurgitating and rebutting E's claptrap, but fortunately someone else has already done it for me. (They'll even tell you his last name.) I just wonder how many times a man has to proclaim the end of Apple before people quit listening to him. This is apparently time #7 for Rob E.

Bones

Just when I thought there couldn't be another boring police procedural TV show... a ha ha ha ha! I never actually thought that. Of course there are going to be more police procedurals, because we, as a television-watching nation, never tire of watching cops figure out twisted little mysteries of who did what to whom. If television execs could figure out how to do away with the detectives and just show criminals doing reprehensible things to innocent people without losing their advertisers, you can bet they'd do it.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Bones. The series returns us to the bosom of the FBI (there's even a Mulder/Scully reference in the first episode), this time with dark, handsome, former-vampire agent Seeley Booth (David "Angel" Boreanaz) and his forensic-anthropologist ace-in-the-hole Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel, sister to Zooey). Dr. Brennan and her team of young slacker-scientists can do all sorts of amazing things with a long dead corpse, from reconstructing its face from a bashed-in skull to creating the next installment of Grand Theft Auto while re-enacting the victim's death based on the wound patterns. This all happens at a highly-photogenic museum in Washington D.C. called the Jeffersonian Institute. (I'm guessing the Smithsonian wouldn't sign on, because the real-life Jeffersonian Institute is an environmental and cultural preservation organization in Texas.)

You would think a well-paid scientist with access to glamorous FBI crime scenes would be pretty satisfied with her lot in life, but Temperance (c'mon. . . Temperance?) wants more. She wants to work in the field with Booth despite her lack of experience dealing with, well, live people. Sure, she can kick ass pretty good (she biffs an annoying Homeland Security airport agent in the opening scenes, one of the few sentiments in the episode I could get behind) and she knows how to handle a gun, but Booth makes sure she knows she's a "squint" (a nerd with special qualifications but no other investigative experience) and just along for the ride so long as she keeps making with the osteological pronouncements.

And blah blah blah I can't believe I got through that much of the synopsis, because it was even more boring to watch. Boreanaz and Deschanel have zero chemistry, romantically or as crime-solving partners. Brennan's team of teenaged brainiacs are supposed to be snarky but end up just being, well, nerdy. And not in a good way. Temperance's running gag is that she doesn't understand pop culture references because she threw herself into her work and is so, y'know, serious all the damn time. This sort of thing worked occasionally in Buffy the Vampire Slayer with stuffy librarian Giles, but on a main character it wears thin on the second or third repetition.

There are a lot of new shows with a lot of promise this season, but I can't recommend wasting any time on this one. Let's hope it gets cancelled quickly so Boreanaz can move on to something more interesting.

Nintendo unveils Revolution-ary new controller

Nintendo has long been known for standing video game concepts on their heads. True, these wild new concepts aren't always successful (witness the unfortunate Virtual Boy), but while Sony splatters the landscape with mediocre games punctuated by occasional hits, Nintendo takes risks and pushes the industry forward.

So it is with the new (as-yet unreleased) Nintendo Revolution game console – which, according to Nintendo's recent announcement, will feature wireless controllers that can be operated by waving them through the air with one hand. I'm a little concerned whether these will actually work very well; wireless controllers in general have been spotty, especially when combined with motion-sensing technology. There's no question that Nintendo's Wavebird controller for the Gamecube is by far the best-working wireless controller on the market (I have yet to find one that works reliably for any other system), but can they really create a motion-sensing controller that works as the standard method of operation for all the games made for the Revolution? Looks like we're going to find out, kids.

Read MTV's coverage of the Nintendo press conference at the Tokyo Game Show.

"Man With the Screaming Brain" World Premiere

World premiere, that is, unless you count the numerous screenings that Bruce Campbell held across the country on his book-signing tour. But let's just call those "sneak previews," huh?

At any rate, you can see Mr. Campbell's directorial debut on Saturday night, September 10th. I'm afraid I didn't think too highly of it, but you can't fault the man for getting out there and making the movie he wanted to make – within the constraints given to him by the Sci-Fi Channel. Let's hope they let him make more.