Month: January 2010 (Page 15 of 25)

TCA Tour: 24

January 14, 2010 /

Having already seen the first four hours of the new season of “24,” I can tell you without hesitation that it’s absolutely going to be worth your while to tune in when Jack Bauer’s latest day kicks off on January 17th, but, then, if you’re a fan of the show, you’ve probably already had your Sunday night planned out for quite some time now. What you’re likely more interested in knowing is if this will be the last season of “24.” Fortunately, that was the first question posed of Kiefer Sutherland and his fellow executive producer, Howard Gordon, during Fox’s panel for the series.

“We’ve always approached each season, just the task of doing it, as so great that, literally, from the very first season on, we’ve completed that season, and it was really FOX’s decision to pick us up,” said Sutherland. “There’s never been one specific season that the next season was guaranteed or ensured. This has been one of the greatest gifts of my life, the ability to do ’24.’ So for me, yeah, it’s something that is absolutely open. I’ve always said that as long as people wanted us to make it, and people were really interested in watching it, I would be interested. There’s a lot of components involved. The task of writing it is far greater than the task of acting in it, so Howard can talk about that for a moment, but certainly, it’s always open to continue on doing it.”

“I sort of second Kiefer’s thoughts about it,” said Gordon. “It’s always been a very year-to-year, minute-to-minute, day-to-day experience. There’s the intellectual and sort of emotional and creative curiosity. The writers sit around, and in the margins of the time when we aren’t working on Season 8 we do ask ourselves, ‘What if…?’ So it certainly is a possibility.”

So there you go: now you can safely enjoy the new season without feeling a sense of dread that they’re entering it with feelings of finality. We’ll get back to Messrs. Sutherland and Howard in a bit, but with that bit of pressing information out of the way, let’s check in to see what some of the other “24” folks are thinking about as they prepare for the premiere…

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24, External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, News, TCA Blog 2010, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas

American Idol: southern hospitality

January 14, 2010 /

Last night “American Idol” on Fox moved to Atlanta, hometown of host Ryan Seacrest. Oh really, you say? Seacrest wasn’t created in some robot factory? Nope, guess not. Anyway, Mary J. Blige was the guest judge and as always they showed us the best and worst of the auditions. Here is your recap….

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(500) days of Spidey news?; all together now in the uncanny valley…and a whole lot more

January 14, 2010 /

Yes, we ‘ve got movie news…

Peter Parker/Spiderman* Nikki Finke’s new best friend, Mike Fleming (or someone, it’s written in the third person), writes tonight that director Marc Webb of the very popular indie relationship comedy, “(500) Days of Summer” is right now the most likely director for the just announced “Spiderman” reboot.  Fleming, or whomever, writes that  Webb has “no superhero experience,” which is not really the issue. The issue is that, while he’s quite capable of making an okay indie comedy (I’m not the movie’s biggest fan), he has no action experience and Sam Raimi had obviously quite a bit before attempting “Spiderman.” Still, the choice of Webb wouldn’t be half so strange as another one mentioned by Fleming (or whomever) apparently in all seriousness: Wes Anderson.

I wish we lived in a universe where studio executives would be so weirdly brave. And, hey, if Anderson’s not available, they could try David Lynch. I don’t know about the masses, but I’d definitely pay to see either movie.

Fleming (or whomever), however, is absolutely correct that, if he were just a bit younger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be the guy to play the new Peter Parker. Oh, well.

* Fleming also has it that Daniel Craig is “in talks” to replace a vacating Robert Downey, Jr. on the comic book adaptation, “Cowboys and Aliens.” Interesting transition. Downey seems more alien than cowboy; Craig is definitely more cowboy than alien.

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Action Movies, Actors, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Wes Anderson needs a shave; goodbye, Art Clokey

January 13, 2010 /

This video acceptance speech for a special achievement award for “Fantastic Mr. Fox” from the National Board of Review Awards has been making the rounds at a bunch of sites, so why not here, too?

Via Inside Searchlight, and thanks to Nathaniel R. for linking to this on his Facebook page. I understand an entirely human Anderson actually did show up to pick up the award as well.

By the way, we’re very late on this, but it’s probably as good a place as any to mention the passing of stop-motion animation great Art Clokey of “Gumby” fame, who died last week. As Eddie Murphy might say, RIP damnit.

External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Movie Comedies, Movies, News, TV, TV Cartoons

“Fringe” producers, what were you thinking?

January 13, 2010 /

If Monday’s episode of “Fringe” is still sitting unwatched on your DVR, you may want to skip this post for now, and come back when you’re thoroughly confused. In fact, I’ll give this a good ol’ **SPOILER ALERT** for those who skim intros instead of reading them.

Anyway, Monday’s episode of “Fringe” started like any other episode of the series — with some sort of strange or creepy event. This time, it was a young girl who was considered brain dead and was about to have her organs harvested for donation when she woke up and started spewing military codes to the surgeon.

Fine, no problem. But then something strange happened — Charlie Francis appeared on screen! And it didn’t seem to be Shapeshifter Charlie (the one who looks dastardly no matter what he’s doing), it was the actual Charlie Francis. I paused the show and had the following conversation with my wife:

Me: “Wait, isn’t he dead?”
Her: “Yeah, didn’t she shoot him in the alley?”
Me: “The shapeshifter guy killed the original Charlie, right?”
Her: “I thought so.”

My guess is that some form of this conversation happened in millions of living rooms around the country during the first 15 minutes of the episode. I hit play and pulled out my trusty laptop, determined to find out what exactly was going on.

Can zombies do math? Find out on the next episode of “Fringe.”

As it turns out, this episode (“Unearthed”) was an unaired episode from Season 1, before Charlie was replaced by Shapeshifter Charlie. Why the producers would decide to air this episode as the first of 2010 is beyond me. Wouldn’t it be better not to thoroughly confuse your audience as you try to retain all those viewers that lived just fine without “Fringe” during the holiday break?

I don’t mind the unaired episode (I guess), but how about reshooting the scenes without Charlie? Or, at the very least, how about a graphic that says “15 months ago” or somesuch thing? Better yet, let’s have Kirk Acevedo (who plays Charlie) introduce the episode by telling people not to be alarmed when Zombie Charlie appears out of nowhere.

For their part, Fox put out the following press release before the episode aired:

While the girl’s mind-bending condition intensifies, Walter dusts off some old lab videos and hypothesizes the unthinkable, sending Olivia and Peter to investigate the bewildering case in an original “Unearthed” episode of FRINGE and here’s another mystery: is it an unaired episode from Season One or is it from an alternate universe?

Wait…what?

This sounds like a half-baked justification of airing an old episode in the middle of a new season. Normally, that would be somewhat acceptable, but what percentage of the audience was aware that this was an unaired episode (or one from an alternate universe–oooh) before they sat down to watch it? One percent? Two percent?

“Fringe” producers, what were you thinking?

External Entertainment, External TV, TV, TV Action, TV Sci-Fi

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