Category: TV Action (Page 89 of 145)

A Chat with Adrian Paul (“Highlander: The Source”)

Although he’s been bouncing around Hollywood as far back as 1987, when he played Kolya ‘Nikolai’ Rostov on the “Dynasty” spin-off, “The Colbys,” it’s fair to say that Adrian Paul is more often remembered for his role as Duncan McLeod in the “Highlander” saga. After quite a few episodes of the TV series and a feature film, Paul took a break from the “Highlander” universe for several years, but he returned at long last for last year’s “Highlander: The Source,” which turned up on the Sci-Fi Channel and has recently seen DVD release. We spoken to Paul about his experiences in making the film (and whether there’ll be any more), his thoughts on longtime “Highlander” producer Bill Panzer, why his other sci-fi series, “Tracker,” never really took off, and what he’s been working on recently.

Adrian Paul: Hi Will.

Bullz-Eye: Hey Adrian, how’s it going?

AP: Good, good.

BE: So how hard was it to step back into the shoes of Duncan MacLeod after a few years?

AP: It was interesting. It was a different time, too, you know, and they wanted a slightly different type of character; you know, a little darker. But, you know, it’s fine, and you can do that because you know the values of the character; you kind of step back into it and try and find new stuff. So what with the old and the new stuff, you hopefully have a character with some new twists.

BE: Was it painful to lose your katana after all these years?

AP: (Laughs) No. The thing was, I think nothing’s lost, y’know? I mean, we know where it’s buried! But I love the katana. I love tai chi and working with the katana; I find it a very malleable type of weapon. But I do like using other weapons, too, and we wanted to sort of give it a whole different type of flavor. So we tried it, and even though a lot of the fights were sped up…which wasn’t my idea…we had some really interesting fights. The thing was that we actually tried a whole bunch of different types of weapons and stuff so that we’d have a roundabout look on it, but we didn’t know what we were facing when it comes to visual effects. That was an unknown quantity to us, so all we could do was choreograph it and hope for the best.

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“Friday Night Lights” lives!

It looks like FNL has bucked the odds yet again.

Nikki Finke over at Deadline Hollywood Daily reports that the powers that be at NBC have seen the light about a little show we love called Friday Night Lights and have partnered with DirecTV to bring us season three. The series will air on both NBC and on a DirecTV-exclusive channel.

I feel like Landry after a night with Tyra right now.

Jericho 2.3 – He’s back! (And so is he, and so is he, and…)

First off, if you didn’t see last week’s write-up, there’s a perfectly good reason for that, but to find out what it is, you’ll have to click here.

Are you back? Excellent. Let’s move on, then, shall we?

Hey, everybody, Dale’s back! I always thought the guy was a little squirrelly because, well, he is squirrelly. But, wow, the guy’s really grown up over the course of the past few months. One trip to Missouri, and he’s become a man. And by “man,” I mean he’s actually about one evil look away from being a full-fledged bad-ass. I think I’ve said it before, but, seriously, you don’t want to be around that guy when he’s finally fed up.

Y’know, I’ve heard some people say that D.B. Sweeney is too damned likable to accept as the devious Goetz, but, personally, I think the combination of this against-type performance and a disconcertingly dark second season of “Jericho” makes him exceptionally off-putting in the role…which I mean as a compliment, if that wasn’t evident. Jake’s hatred of Ravenwood is understandable, given his history with the organization in Iraq, but it doesn’t take long for the majority of the town to turn against them when they start screwing with Dale’s shipments of the Hudson River Virus vaccine. (More on that in a moment.)

Hey, everybody, Jimmy’s back! Or, to put it another way, “Narc, narc, who’s there? Jimmy!” Not that we should’ve expected him to anything other than tell Beck what he knew about Sarah Mason, but what wasn’t expected was the way Hawkins decided to handle the situation: by bursting into Beck’s office and saying, “You’re killing my investigation!” It’s actually a good ploy, given how readily Hawkins has had lies spill forth from his lips during the course of the series, but in this case, it’s for the greater good, as he attempts to pick and choose bits and pieces of the facts at his disposal in order to sway Beck into realizing that the government isn’t telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It’s a slippery slope he’s treading, but Major Beck’s conversation with Thomas Valenti was clearly sufficient to sway Beck into believing Hawkins’ story. And as long as we’re speaking of Beck, I like him a little more each episode, especially after the scene with him and Heather in the waning minutets of the episode

Hey, everybody, Dr. Dhuwalia’s back! The guy’s not a very good liar, though, and he’ll clearly break under pressure at the drop of a hat. Still, I love the character, so I’m glad to see him return. Plus, even though he’s got the kind of loose lips that sink ships, the whole issue with the virus made for great drama, from the transmission Heather received that clarified just how bad things had gotten to the tension-racked scenes in the warehouse.

So Bonnie’s going the Kerouac route and hitting the road with Jennings & Rall, eh? Well, we did get our first full-fledged CBS’ing of Season 2 with the way the music swelled during the front porch conversation between Stanley and Bonnie, but we also got a bit of heretofore-unrevealed information about how Stanley and Bonnie lost their parents, and I’m sure fans – like, say, myself – enjoyed getting those details. It’s nice to see that the cute girl from J&R seems to have some scruples; at least it looks like Bonnie will be in good hands.

So who’s this mysterious person on the other end of the line from Hawkins…? Time, as they say, will tell…

A belated look at “Knight Rider”

First off, my apologies for waiting until Wednesday afternoon to write up a movie that aired on Sunday night.

I really did try to get an advance look at NBC’s new 2-hour “Knight Rider” movie, but I was denied. This wasn’t just a case of my not having enough pull: no-one got a look at it beforehand. The stock answer for why screeners weren’t being made available was that the special effects were being worked on right up until the last minute, but, truth be told, someone should’ve spent less time on the effects and more time trying to figure out who this movie was being made for…but I’ll get to that.

So why did I wait so long to watch it? Well, you know how it is: Monday was President’s Day, my wife was off work, my kid was home with us, and, basically, the day got away from me. But you want to know why I didn’t watch it Tuesday, and…well, the truth of the matter is that I was scared.

My wife was battling a case of insomnia on Sunday, and she watched part of it without me; when I asked her how it was, she said, “Not good. The two leads didn’t have any chemistry, and David Hasselhoff is still one of the worst actors ever.” Fair enough…but I didn’t watch the original show for The Hoff. I watched it for The Car. But, still, reports on the flick kept popping up all over the ‘net, and they were all universally awful. More and more, I wondered if it was even going to be possible for me to enjoy this movie that I’d originally excited as hell about watching. After much delay, I finally decided that, as a professional critic, I was quite capable of rising above the opinions of others and could not only still manage to establish my own opinion about this film but, indeed, might possibly find something to like where others could not.

So I watched it.

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Jericho 2.2 – Well, hellooooooo, Mr. President!

You know, you’d think it would be awesome to get advance screeners of TV shows…and, okay, yeah, for the most part, it IS pretty awesome. But there’s one problem with it: you forget when shows are actually on. That, in case you were wondering, is why this entry is mysteriously appearing in the archives almost a week after the episode originally aired. Not that you’d know this without my telling you, since it’s actually been backdated to seem as though it was posted more or less on time, but I feel guilty enough about the ruse that I felt I needed to acknowledge it upfront.

There, now that’s out of the way. Now, let’s talk about how happy I am about the way “Jericho” is continuing to maintain this seriously dark tone.

It didn’t start dark, of course. The lighthearted breakfast scene with Stanley and Mimi was funny, thanks to Stanley’s well-intentioned but poorly-phrased observation, “That’s probably the most boring story I’ve heard in months.” It seemed a bit odd that the President’s team needed to land their helicopter in Stanley’s front yard to ask if “Condor” could make his speech on the front porch of the farmhouse. What, couldn’t they go through channels with the military instead of using the Whirlybird Express? But let’s stay on our original topic and keep talking about the Stanley / Mimi relationship. Once again, Stanley has proven to be a lunk-headed sweetheart, accidentally putting his foot in his mouth about who Mimi might invite to the wedding, then trying to backpedal by seeing if he might be able to use Jennings & Rall to find some of Mimi’s family. Last season, they might’ve CBS’ed things by miraculously discovering her mom or even a long-lost cousin, but not so this year: even with the resources of J&R, it’s a big ol’ goose-egg on the family front. It’s depressing, but I applaud the producers for not shoehorning in a happy ending.

Okay, back to the Presidential visit. Y’know, I realize that they were trying to show that the President’s men weren’t screwing around with their security measures, but it seemed a little over the top when one of them snapped at the local sheriff, “Sir, nobody told you to move.” Really? Not any respect for local law enforcement…?

Hawkins’s buddy, Chavez, got busted in his guise as Lieutenant Parker, which I think we all figured would happen sooner than later. I definitely like this new relationship between Hawkins and his wife, but I still find it weird that we haven’t heard so much as a whisper about their kids so far. By episode’s end, of course, Chavez was out of custody and on his way to Texas, but not before stepping up the mystery about this Project Boxcar.

As a Democrat, it probably won’t surprise you that I snickered at the suggestion that the new government would immediately attempt to rewrite the textbooks in order to make it look like America screwed up by not attacking the Russians during the Cuban-Missile Crisis and by pulling out of Vietnam too early. Do I really think the Republicans would do something like that? Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think so. But, then again, Bush got elected to a second term by riding on his post-9/11 high, so what do I know?

Okay, enough personal politics. How about the situation with the journalist? From “okay, I’m in” to “okay, I’m dead” just a few short hours. Now that’s what I call an effective cover-up. Again, though, I was shocked that he met his end as quickly as he did; I’d really anticipated that that plot thread would go on for several episodes. I guess this is another case of a short season paying off in terms of rapid-fire plot progression; there’s definitely no moss growing under anyone’s feet this time around. At least Writer Boy managed to leak the info to Jake about the progression of the Hudson River virus.

As things wrap up, Gray leaves for the constitutional convention in Cheyenne and grants Eric the status of interim mayor, and we get the return of the dastardly Goetz. Yep, he’s made good on his ominous assurance from Season 1 that Ravenwood would be called in to help the U.S. Government put the nation back together again. Boo, hiss, etcetera. Can’t wait for next week.

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