• Nice short post today to make up for the lack of them recently…
• For those that missed news of the big event, Bill Gates officially stepped down at Microsoft on Friday, ending a major era of computing. One little tidbit: I’m roughly as old as Microsoft (born in 1975).
• The official site for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog has launched, along with a trailer. This is the production Joss Whedon did during the writer’s strike. Should be loads of fun.
• The fourth Jason Bourne movie is now a go.
• This’ll teach you kids to not capriciously jump around in mud puddles.
• Tweak Firefox 3 to display fancier colors
• I’ve seen WALL-E twice now, and loved it just as much the second time round. Go out and see it, folks. And while you’re at it, look for the usual hidden bits in the movie.
• Here’s an interesting little piece of history from the Apollo program. Not to mention the Cold War.
• Sony has been taking quite the loss on the PS3. Doesn’t come as a huge shock, given that most game consoles cost their companies quite a bit up front. Now, if only Sony hadn’t screwed up the line by dropping the Emotion Engine from recent models.
• Interesting. Robert Rodriguez is remaking Red Sonja with girlfriend Rose McGowan. I hope they at least reference Ennio Morricone’s score - easily the best part of the original film.
• IsoHunt has gone SSL. That’s a move that I think all the torrent sites should be doing (The Pirate Bay also recently did the same).
• One of the many strange places one might find a server room, due to the expense of moving them: a women’s bathroom
• For those who think there just aren’t enough monuments in this world
• An interesting and exhaustive set of Q&A facts about LEGO
• An amusing mistake in a Dell support online chat session
• Putting those undergarments to good use
• The Oasis Of The Seas: for those who want to take a cruise, but have zero idea that they’re on a ship.
• Is Sears really too incompetant to take your money? Wouldn’t surprise me.
• For you fellow Chicagoans, here are some fun stats about heat waves in the area over the decades. Sure does make the global warming nutters seem a little bit wrong.
• Speaking of Chicago, the Tribune has posted a collection of pretty nifty Chicago photos.
• Composer Bear McCreary has been doing detailed breakdowns of his scores for Battlestar Galactica over the past couple years, episode by episode. They may be a bit steeped in musician technical jargon, but they are still great reads. He even does plenty of responses to fans in the comment sections. Check out his particularly detailed and interesting write-up on Revelations, the recent mid-season finale (which had some amazing scoring work).
• This wouldn’t be quite as pathetic if she actually did look hot.
• This will teach you better than to actually believe your own brain
• Is it really a surprise how much people hate dealing with communications companies?
• Some more amusingly poor Enlglish sign translations
• Speaking of amusing English translations, here’s an interesting article on the dominance of English as a language, and how the control of the language may not be in the hands of those who actually know how to speak it. Suddenly, the world of Firefly may not seem like too much of a stretch.
• A write-up that the rest of us Windows users would likely agree with
• What it’s like to go gun shopping in Mogadishu
• A book on Steven Seagal that I might actually have to check out.
• Here’s a fascinating hobby: documenting secret satellites
• Shiptool is an interesting utility site for hunting down cheapest shipping rates
• Here’s a great, detailed history of video game consoles of the 70’s. I have very fond memories of some of them (and own a handful of them that are still functional)
• The fascinating great grandfather of modern computers
• Speaking of which, check out this amazing work in 1934 that has some eerie early hints at what would eventually become the internet.
• The next generation of tornado tracking equipment
• You think you’ve made some mistakes in job interviews and on applications…
• They were seriously going to let this talentless hack do the next Bond title song?

It’s that time again. Time to start checking out the leaked copies of the new fall season TV series pilots. As always, many of these are original pilot cuts where cast members and scenes will be recast and reshot. These original pilots aren’t always completely accurate representations of the finished product. But, I’ll check ‘em out and offer my opinions on which ones work, which ones don’t, and why. I’ll list this first batch starting with the good ones and work my way down to the bad ones.

FOX: Fringe (9/10) (official site)

Here’s yet another fantastic sci-fi/action/drama series from J.J. Abrams and his team of talented collaborators at Bad Robot. Featuring many Alias/Lost vets like Jeff Pinkner (show runner for Fringe), Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Burk, it’s hard to not assume that this’ll become something great. While this pilot I saw is slightly rough around the edges, it’s still a wonderfully dynamic and engaging series, and does feature some nice, final-looking on-screen title graphics.

The cast is led by Australian actress Anna Torv and ex-Dawson’s Creek veteran Joshua Jackson. Torv does a very nice job with the strong FBI agent character, easily breathing life into the multiple levels of her character. She definitely feels like an excellent piece of casting. Joshua Jackson does an admirable job channeling the like of Liev Schreiber, and it works. While I’m not much of a Dawson’s Creek fan, I consider most of the cast of that show to be rather talented (well, except for Dawson himself, James Van Der Beek, who couldn’t act himself out of a paper bag). Jackson definitely nails the charming rogue nature of his character, and he plays very well against his co-stars. One of those co-stars is John Noble, who plays his estranged and also brilliant father. The three of them work very well together. The rest of the cast is well rounded, but don’t get all too much time to get a good grasp of who’ll be important in the long run of the series. Mark Cherry, of Boston Legal, is a nice bit of casting.

The story will definitely attract fans of The X-Files, because this show is RIGHT up that alley. It’s got the feel of the show, the hints at big mythologies, the supernatural and experimental sciences, and, well, the FBI. This show has the potential for greatness. Let’s hope FOX can, after all these years, be the one to get The X-Files lightning to strike twice. Many networks tried during the 90’s, and failed. Perhaps the network that made The X-Files work can be the one to do it a second time. We can hope.

TNT: Leverage (9/10) (official site)

While we may have seen this kind of heist story done many ways over the years, I can’t help but love this pilot. It has the potential to be a series I’ll totally love. Executive produced by the notable Dean Devlin (who partnered with Roland Emmerich for years on the likes of Stargate & Independence Day, and went on later to vastly underrated movies like Eight Legged Freaks), who also directed this first episode, this pilot totally works.

Casting of the pilot is fantastic. I’ve long believed Timothy Hutton to be a undervalued actor, and he’s great as the lead character of this series. His dynamic as the leader of the team, and the one of them that used to be “the good guy” tracking down the rest of them, works amazingly well. He brings the tragic past of the character to life, which will surely be a well exploited aspect to the character for the run of the series. And he plays off the more flippant characters who make up the rest of the make-shift team very well. The wonderful Christian Kane (who played the great Lindsey McDonald in Angel) is a hoot as the suave action hero of the group. Beth Riesgraf is hilarious and loads of fun as the nimble cat burglar of the team. Aldis Hodge is also lots of fun as the tech nerd hacker. Gina Bellman brings a nice elegance as the grifter of the team, and perhaps romantic co-lead. And tossed in for good measure in the pilot is Saul Rubinek, an actor who always reminds me of Elliot Gould.

The production of this pilot is excellent. It’s very well paced, has a great sense of comedic timing, and pretty much works all around. Dean Devlin clearly has a fondness for the heist genre, and this series plays off the trapping of the genre very well. Does it reinvent the genre? No, not really. Most of it has been seen before in varying ways. Regardless, it’s still a phenomenally entertaining pilot. I look forward to the series, which has been greenlit by TNT for at least a 13 episode run.

TNT: Raising The Bar (7/10) (official site)

While we’re on the subject of Angel alumnus (not to mention TNT), we have this series which features an ensemble cast including J. August Richards (who played Gunn on Angel). Featuring a pedigree of creator Steven Bochco, one would write it off as just yet another legal drama. And they’d be somewhat right in doing so. Still, it’s a pretty good legal drama, with a bit of a twist. In this one, we have the young characters from both sides as a group of friends, from the DA to the prosecuting attorney to the defending attorney, they all end up sitting at the bar at the end of the day together. It’s an interesting tack on the age-old genre. And I suppose Bochco is a likely as anyone to try it.

The cast is an assortment of interesting choices. The lead character is arguably the defending attorney played by none other than Mark-Paul Gosselaar. Yes, Zach Morris from Saved By The Bell. I suppose it’s unfair to still be tying him down to that show, since he’s been in plenty of stuff since, like Commander In Chief. I’m not entirely sure if his performance completely works. It borders a little bit too much on the emotional, but that’s the type of character they’re trying for, so it might be a spot-on performance. It’s just a bit hard to tell at first glance. Melissa Sagemiller is a nice piece of casting, and her character gets to play that balancing act amongst the group of characters the best. J. August Richards is good as the DA, but doesn’t get a whole lot to do in this pilot. Jane Kaczmarek is surprisingly slimy in her holier-than-thou role of a judge. Jonathan Scarfe comes through with a nice performance as her clerk, among other things. The rest of the cast works well enough.

The series definitely has the potential to work well. Or it could fall flat on its face. This one’s hard to peg on just the pilot episode, so we’ll see how further episode shape up.

FOX: Do Not Disturb (3/10) (official site)

This is an unfunny sitcom that falls into nearly every trapping a sitcom could succumb to. It has amateur, lazy writing with either stereotyped or completely unfunny punchlines. It also has cookie-cutter characters, almost none of whom should work if not for a couple good performances. And I’m not sure if they are intentionally trying to poke fun at the two-set sitcom setting by having “the upstairs” and “the downstairs” as a division of the classes of employees or not. If so, perhaps they are a bit clever. If not, it’s yet another sign that this lame sitcom ain’t long for this world. Still, this series is for the most part harmless. It’s not Cavemen. I suppose Cavemen will be an abysmal low for the sitcom genre by which all future sitcoms will be forgiven for not being nearly as bad. At least I hope we’ll never see another sitcom as bad as Cavemen again (I doubt anyone could accurately sum up how much that show sucked, beyond just showing somebody a copy of said series).

In terms of casting, Jerry O’Connell may be a bit typecast as the shallow, misogynistic hotel manager, but it works none-the-less. It’s sad that that O’Connell’s previous sitcom, last season’s Carpoolers on ABC, didn’t survive. It was a lot of fun, and criminally overlooked. Molly Stanton (who was great in the also-overlooked series Twins, a sitcom on the final year of The WB that co-starred Sara Gilbert, Melanie Griffith and Mark Linn-Baker) does another great job of playing the airhead blond. And Jesse Tyler Ferguson (who was fantastic on the also-overlooked sitcom The Class the season before last on CBS) gets in a few good jokes. Well, he makes a few bad jokes work, anyway. Niecy Nash is completely forgettable in her unbelievably stereotyped role. And then there’s the surprise guest casting of Robert Wagner as the hotel owner, which works well enough.

Put simply, this is a totally skipable sitcom. If only the ones I referenced in this review could have survived rather than this one ever existing. Don’t waste your time on it.

FX: Pretty/Handsome (2/10) (IMDB site)

Joseph Fiennes, Carrie-Anne Moss, Blythe Danner, Sarah Paulson and Robert Wagner. A very impressive cast. If not for that cast and their performances, this train wreck of a drama would be nigh unwatchable. FX seems to be striving to become a lame, pathetic HBO wannabe. Why anyone would want to be HBO is beyond me, but they seem to want to do so all the same. Basically speaking, this is the story of a controversial transsexual doctor in an uptight, high class community. It’s “edgy” approach to the subject will surely gain it some press. It’s just that “look at us, we’re pushing the envelope!” nature of the show that makes me completely uninterested in it. From the cliche upper class trappings of the community to the “shocking” transsexual plotline(s), I got bored with this pilot quickly. It’s such a complete waste of a fantastic cast. I did manage to get through the whole pilot, though my mind did start to wander a couple times while watching it.

Oh, and it was strange to see Robert Wagner and Niecy Nash, who were both in Do Not Disturb, together in this pilot as well (very together).

HBO: True Blood (2/10)

In yet another example of how much I despise HBO, there’s this abomination of a great series idea botched in almost every possible way. I couldn’t even manage to finish watching this pilot. Aside from the casting of the excellent Anna Paquin (in a fairly uneven character), and the idea itself that the series is based on, I can’t say anything nice about this show. The production feels amateur (which is at least the one thing HBO could usually be relied upon to do right), the characters are all over the place and a complete mess (if not just downright annoying people that I wouldn’t want anything to do with in real life). The narrative is anybody’s guess. They seem to simply be taking the idea of vampires having revealed themselves to the public, and becoming second class citizens, and have dropped various characters and scenes in around the idea. If they’re planning to go somewhere with this narrative, it sure escaped my viewing of the first 2/3 of the pilot.

Then there’s the foul-mouthed, explicit nature of the show, which is a completely tired and annoying aspect of nearly everything HBO puts their name on. Just once, I want to see HBO make something that could even remotely have a chance at airing on a broadcast network. Or even stand a chance at a PG-13 in theaters. I became sick of their one-note reason for existing long, long ago. Look at us! We can swear! We can show nutidy! We can have bloody violence!

It’s funny how some movies can get away with the ridiculous, almost by the simple act of embracing said insanity. From physical insanity like curving bullets to mythological insanity like the “Loom Of Fate” (a truly brilliant piece of make-believe), it’s hard to not be amused.

Writing: Having not read the graphic novel material this is based on, I can’t comment on adaptation qualities. I’ve read other places that the original authors of it were pleased with the adaptation. There’s no denying that it has many story qualities one would find in such source material, and the movie makes such textures and story elements work for itself. The backstory for “The Fraternity” is equal parts genre-standard “skulls” material and audaciously original goofiness. Ultimately, the story pays itself off well in the end. One thing’s for sure, it doesn’t back down on the violence and language.

Production: Director Timur Bekmambetov has a proven track record of being able to direct surprisingly elegant and striking action scenes in his bold Night Watch and its sequels. While the action scenes are spaced a bit apart in this movie, when they kick off, they really kick off. While not all the bits in these sequences come off as realistic, they certainly come off as impressive. From the playful visual effects to the slick editing and unrestrained performances, it all has an odd vibe that works. Sound design is particularly striking. And the cinematography is spot-on.

Cast: The unusual casting of James McAvoy works very well. He brings something akin to Edward Norton’s performance in Fight Club to the film. In fact, there’s a number of moments in the movie that made me think of Fight Club. And while the casting of Morgan Freeman isn’t completely normal for this kind of film, it’s hardly unprecedented (see his great performances in films like Lucky Number Slevin and Hard Rain for example). Freeman definitely brings that stately calm to the role, as well as that slight edge of danger. Terence Stamp is a bit wasted in his brief role. But when it comes to style and action, the real star of this film is Angelina Jolie. It hardly comes as a surprise to see how easily she handles a role like this. I’m sure the film makers had to think for about one billionth of a nanosecond about who would be the easiest casting choice for her role. This is an “Angelina Jolie kind of role,” so why not just cast her in it, confident in your end result. It kind of helps offset the genre-first casting of McAvoy in the lead.

Music: Speaking of unexpected moves, picking Danny Elfman to score this film isn’t exactly a wild notion or anything, it’s just a bit unexpected. One would fully expect one of Hans Zimmer’s stable of composers to take on a film like this, or perhaps the current trend of picking Tyler Bates. Elfman brings a very cool range of styles to the score, fusing it with cool action cues and elegant orchestral and thematic style. It’s one of the highlights of the film, easily. Add to the fact that even does the vocal performances on the main song he wrote (”The Little Things”) that’s used in a couple places in the film (and shares some thematic bits with the rest of the score). One of Elfman’s best scores in recent years.

Put simply, WALL-E is the reason I’m a movie fan. I’ve been a PIXAR fanboy for many years. In fact, I’ve been a fan of theirs longer than most others, because it predates Toy Story. I’ve been a follower of the technologies of computer animation ever since seeing (and loving) Tron when I was 7 years old. It’s no secret that PIXAR was partially born out of John Lasseter seeing the production of Tron, having worked at Disney as an animator while it was being produced at the studio (though he didn’t have any involvement with said production). During the 80’s, PIXAR formed and started producing animated shorts, including the likes of Red’s Dream, Tin Toy, Knick Knack and the historic Luxo, Jr. When I initially heard they were going to produce the first fully CG feature film, I was thrilled to see the final product. And I wasn’t the only one, as Toy Story changed the world of animation forever. Since then, PIXAR has been firing on all cylinders, producing hit after hit, in stark defiance to those who continually predicted each film to surely be their first failure. Always imaginative, PIXAR continues to come through, time and time again. They are easily the best thing to happen to Walt Disney Pictures since Walt himself.

Writing: Despite the fact that PIXAR is on the leading edge of technology, always a step ahead of anyone else, it’s not the technical aspects that primarily drive a PIXAR film, it’s the story and character. WALL-E is a different film compared to the rest of their feature length productions. It actually has more in common with their short films. It has a minimal amount of dialog (their short films are notable for their lack of dialog) and is much more rooted in physical performance and precisely choreographed energy and blocking. The character of WALL-E himself may very well be one of the most fundamentally engaging and sympathetic characters ever committed to film (or saved to disk). The determined nature of the character combined with the effortless charm makes it basically impossible to not love him. I’m not typically much for action figures, but I think I will pick up one of the inevitable WALL-E action figures/toys. The story itself is actually rather simple, rooted in a great many science fiction staples and character stories. While PIXAR has proven themselves perfectly capable of more complex storytelling, they have an amazing talent at nailing the most simplistic of ideas and making them endlessly entertaining. Their animated shorts are just such examples. Speaking of which, WALL-E is preceded by yet another wonderful animated short, Presto.

Production: Having said all that, I continue to have my mind blown with each successive PIXAR movie I see. The technical aspects of this production are peerless. The cinematography is simply gorgeous, not to mention wonderfully dynamic. Production design is also spectacular, from the garbage-strewn, used up Earth to the hyper-real world on board the spaceship Axiom. The editing is extremely slick, keeping a brisk and smooth pacing throughout. The computer animation is breathtaking, not just in texture and quality, but in character animation. WALL-E is a remarkably animated character, both drawing on previous robots such as Number 5 or R2-D2, but also as a fantastically original design. We also get to meet a number of other fun robotic characters.

Cast: With such a small amount of dialog, it’s hard to think of the performances in the film in terms of casting. The real star is Ben Burtt, who is interestingly credited as the cast performer for WALL-E, as well as M-O, pretty much giving him top billing. It’s well deserved, as his sound design is a key component to making the character of WALL-E work so well. It’s no surprise that he is able to do such a good job, given the fact that he’s the man responsible for R2-D2 himself. I will be rather shocked if Burtt isn’t at least nominated for a sound award or two come Oscar season next spring. Other voice castings are amusing, such as having the Axiom ship’s computer voiced by none-other-than Sigourney Weaver. Fred Willard gets to perform a first for a PIXAR movie, that of an actual live action character. He’s a fun choice for the role. And of course it wouldn’t be a PIXAR movie without John Ratzenberger performing one of the voices. This time, they amusingly just went ahead and named the character “John.”

Music: While not his greatest score, nor the greatest score for a PIXAR film, Thomas Newman’s score is very good. Actually, Thomas Newman’s other PIXAR score is the best of the PIXAR scores, for Finding Nemo (also for writer/director Andrew Stanton). For WALL-E, Newman balances the ethereal sci-fi with the action and emotion of the film quite nicely. Of course it features Newman’s typical rich orchestration and unique instrumentation. A worthy score to a fantastic film.

I can’t praise this movie enough. Everybody get out there and see this one. I’ll be seeing it again very soon.

• RIP: George Carlin - may you be stuck on the roof for a great long while
• I’m going to go off on a topic at the moment which is a bit unusual for me - alternative music. I heard a song the other day that immediately piqued my interest. I only heard the first part and did a little research to find out what the song was. Turns out is was a song called New Born by some music group I’d never heard of named Muse (that’s no surprise, as I don’t follow much popular music). Still, I was floored by the simplicity and beauty of what I heard. After tracking down the song, I was immediately impressed again. That is, until it kept playing. I then heard the song butchered, as it disintegrated into something I just wanted to end. It’s sad to heard such a brilliant piece of melody and harmony so completely slaughtered. I also thought it vaguely familiar when I first heard it, and after a bit more research figured out that it had been remixed by Paul Oakenfold for the Swordfish soundtrack, which I was quite familiar with. I like the beginning of the original version best, but overall would definitely prefer Oakenfold’s non-butchered version. Perhaps there could be a cover version with a new arrangement that I could actually enjoy for more than the first minute. Cause that first minute is gorgeous. Reminds me quite a bit of the best qualities of Coldplay, a group who did one great song (”Clocks“) then did a myriad inferior variations on the same thing (one of those CD’s I got suckered into by one song and then was unimpressed by the rest). Anyway, that’s some of my rare non-film score music discussion for the blog. Take it for whatever uneducated value it’s worth.
• “Real Snail Mail” - quite possibly the coolest useless project ever.
• Here’s a well-deserved write-up of composers Michael Giacchino and Bear McCreary, who are correctly singled out as the most impressive composers working in TV today.
• Burma, I mean the Union of Myanmar, just ain’t likely to be a place anyone’s gonna wanna visit any time soon. On top of all their brutally insane internal strife, nature sure ain’t cutting them any slack. Now the rats have been called in.
• Speaking of rats, there sure are a lot of them jumping ship over at Yahoo these days.
• A new Starship Troopers 3 trailer has surfaced. I’m not expecting a whole lot from this one, so I hope to be pleasantly surprised, like I was with the second one. It is amusing that they will finally stop the whining fanboys always complaining about the lack of the marauder suits.
• “Baby tossing.” Who could make this stuff up, anyway? Lunatics.
• On the topic of odd, how about having it rain cement?
• Who says there’s no such thing as bad advertising?

I’ve been a huge Get Smart fan since I was a kid. It’s a series that has always been pretty much in line with my dry sense of humor, so it’s been a natural favorite of mine. I own the series collection on DVD. I’ve got the soundtrack CD’s. I’ve got beat up old novelizations from the 60’s. Heck, I think I even have a Get Smart thermos around in a box of stuff somewhere. It was with some trepidation when I started to first hear about this new feature film in the works, wondering if it would end up as bad as most TV-to-movie translations over the years. Frankly, Get Smart has already had one disastrous feature film version from 1980, titled The Nude Bomb. They did make up for it with a surprisingly fun made-for-tv movie years later in 1989 titled Get Smart Again. However, this new version would be the first time somebody other than the late, great Don Adams was playing the role of Maxwell Smart. As soon as it was announced that Steve Carrell was taking over the role, I began to think that this new version might actually work.

Writing: The greatest thing I can say about the writing is that it does a marvelous job at referencing and respecting the source material. It touches on a good majority of the catch phrases, characters and dry humor that made the original so great. And while it may be rather vague and convenient in the plot department, I can’t really knock it too much, cause that was always a secondary concern to the original series as well. All we need to know is that there are bad guys trying to do bad things (as Max himself pretty much paraphrases during an intelligence briefing). One criticism I would make in that regard is that KAOS is shortchanged a bit in the film. I think they could have tossed another 5-10 minutes of screen time to that side of the story to round it out a bit.  I do like a lot of the little character touches, like Maxwell Smart being the secret agent that would rather make friends with the henchman than defeat him. Overall, the plotting does little more than hold the character writing, jokes and dialog together into a narrative arc, which is fine.

Production: I never quite expected to ever see a version of Get Smart with such a high production level. There’s no shortage of big action scenes, most of which are well executed in terms of production, performance and timing. And it’s all done in the correct, “let’s have fun with it” approach that the rest of the film has.

Cast: The highlight of the movie is the casting. Steve Carrell is fantastic as Maxwell Smart. His dead-panned delivery of jokes is spot-on. And his earnest, loyal personality is perfectly offset by his knack for unfortunate situations. Carrell nails Maxwell Smart, without even trying to mimic Don Adams. That’s an impressive accomplishment. The same can be said for the casting of Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. While I was a little bit surprised to hear of her casting in the role, primarily for the age difference, I was a fan of hers and figured she could make the role work. I was later a bit cautious when they started to show pictures and clips of her being this kick-butt super agent. But that was a bit of a misleading partial representation. They certainly portray her in that manner, but only as far as need be to make the softer side of the character that much better. It’s actually a fitting enough reworking of the character that holds true to the source material. Carrell and Hathaway manage to pull off the cute relationship factor that always made Max & 99 work in the series. And they even adopt a dog named Fang, which is a fun little touch for us fans. Alan Arkin is fantastically funny as The Chief, landing a few of the funniest moments in the film. Arkin’s always had a wonderfully dry sense of humor, so he was an easy bit of casting for this role. Dwayne Johnson gets to have fun chewing up the scenery as Agent 23, and he plays well against the other cast members. Terence Stamp, an actor who always seems to enjoy playing bad guys, does so with maniacal glee. He’s a nice bit of casting for the arch-nemesis role of Siegried. James Caan has fun playing a no-nonsense and somewhat inept President. Masi Oka (from Heroes) and Nate Torrence (from Studio 60) are a great duo of tech nerds. They get one particularly funny scene later in the film. Patrick Warburton gets to make a brief appearance as the robotic Hymie, in another nod to us fans (and perhaps setup for a sequel film, perhaps). I can’t think of a better bit of casting for Hymie than Warburton. And they get no less than Bill Murray to play the secluded and lonely Agent 13, turning up in a typically unusual location. Other small appearances are made by a fun roster of actors, from the likes of Kevin Nealon to Larry Miller. But I think the greatest bit of fun for us fans are the cameo appearances by Bernie Kopell (the original Siegfried) and Leonard Stern (executive producer/writer/primary dude during the run of the series).

Music: For the most part, Trevor Rabin does a great job with the score. He works in Irving Szathmary’s theme tune quite a lot throughout the score, in quite a few ways. There’s no doubt that Rabin can score action scenes, which he does here pretty well. He also gets the “spy” kinda vibe right in the scenes of the them sneaking around. Overall, a good score.

OK, so the 07-08 season is beginning to come to a close. The time frame for the end of the season is pretty vague this year, thanks to the big chunk of time eaten from most shows by the writers strike. I’m going to do a paragraph for each series in these posts, which will continue for the next month or two, with a final post breaking down the overall opinions of the shows amongst each other. So, without further ado, here’s the first handful of entries, in no particular order.

Pushing Daisies (Season 1): The greatest new show of the year. Hands down. Without a doubt. It’s a wonderful combination of fantastic casting, magically bizarre writing, genius set design and visual effects. And the snarky quirkiness is spot-on. This has been the year of Lee Pace, from his fantastic lead role in this show to wonderful movie performances in Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day and the magnificent The Fall. Add to that the rest of the brilliant cast, and things couldn’t possibly fail. While this show only got 9 episodes produced before the writer strike cut it short, it made them count. I look forward to what the second season will bring.

Eli Stone (Season 1): My second favorite new series of the season. OK, so it’s another series that features fantasy pretty heavily, but not nearly to the level of Pushing Daisies. It’s great to see Johnny Lee Miller get a nice, high-profile role like this, cause he’s a very under appreciated actor. Add to him a cast featuring the likes of Victor Garber and Natasha Henstridge and you’ve got a winner. But the icing on the cake is easily Julie Gonzalo, who was a regular on the third and final season of Veronica Mars. She’s flat out flawless in her naive, idealistic sidekick role. As a mid-season series, I suppose the writer strike didn’t have much of an effect on the fact that the first season closed out with the initial 13 episode order. I definitely look forward to what the second season will be like. They took some big steps near the end of the first, so it’ll be interesting to see where they go with it.

The Dead Zone (Season 6): After appearing to cut as many corners as they could to produce this sixth and ultimately final season of the show, I will admit that despite all the production changes made they still managed to come through with a nice season. They also did a satisfying enough closing episode. Sure, they didn’t manage to wrap it all up, but the final one felt right, so it works. That final episode is certainly a series highlight episode, so one can forgive some of the other loose ends. As always, Anthony Michael Hall does a great job in the lead, and the wonderful Nicole DeBoer is equally fantastic. And this final season features pretty much just them as main title leads, with a couple other regulars mixed in here and there. The excellent Sean Patrick Flannery gets in some nice episodes. And the rest of the cast do a pretty good job making their occasional appearances work. All in all, another good USA Network show comes to a nice close after a respectible 6 season run. USA is one of those networks that in more recent years doesn’t know how to produce a bad series. They are the unsung heroes of the cable channel lineup.

House (Season 4): I cannot praise this fourth season of House enough. The series has never been afraid of doing big shake-ups in story, and have gotten a bit better at it with each passing season, but the big changes they made this fourth season paid off in every possible way. I won’t hesitate to easily call this the best season of the series so far. It’s absolutely a contender for best show of the season, either new or returning. This season had so many truly fantastic episodes, and not a lemon among them. The additions to the cast were brilliant, and the material they gave them through the “audition process” through to the “new team” dynamic was top-notch. I couldn’t have asked for better.

Medium (Season 4): Of all the shows that were “on the bubble” before the upfront presentations last month, the one I was rooting most for was Medium. As many critics like to point out, this is “the best show that you aren’t watching.” The best way I know to compliment the series is that it’s one that you can always count on to be great. No matter what the episode, they know how to make it work. And the series strikes a marvelous balance between stylistic fantasy and being grounded in reality. In fact, you’re not likely to find a series more grounded in the reality of day-to-day life than Medium. Nor are there many series that feature such a well rounded cast, from both child and adult actors alike. This fourth season saw them shaking things up a bit in the overall story department, and as always, they manage to make it all work so very well.

CSI (Season 8): The original remains king, despite a few missteps here and there - such as the well-intentioned, but flawed eighth episode, “You Kill Me.” However, the biggest mistake of the year is the handling of the Warrick character. While I’m a fan of this series and CSI: New York, I’ll be the first to admit that none of the CSI franchise shows are particularly good at writing the characters outside their work environment, or most any other running story arcs, for that matter. Their strong suit is what they are famous for, the procedural aspects. I kinda liked the way they handled writing out Sara, and her slow burn out. But they did Warrick every which way but right. And could they have telegraphed their big shocking ending any more? Still, beyond those problems, still a mostly enjoyable season.

CSI: New York (Season 4): I might as well follow up the original CSI with the New York variety. I’ve not hidden my contempt for the Miami spin-off, which I quit watching a number of years ago (after the third season, I think). The New York series is one I’m still happy to enjoy, though. A couple of the weaker episodes of this season include “Down The Rabbit Hole” about some less-than-interesting Second Life online VR stuff and “Playing With Matches” about a self-cleaning rest-room (which ironically, despite how it sounds, wasn’t the particular weak part of the episode). The one actually bad episode of the season without a doubt goes to the penultimate “Taxi” where almost everything was done wrong, banking heavily on the hit-and-miss “Cabbie Killer” running plot of the season. Like I said, CSI shows aren’t particularly talented at big running story arcs.

• RIP: Stan Winston. This one comes as a huge loss to the movie industry. Winston was a modern legend when it came to creature effects and animation, and later in all realms of visual effects. From his days with Jim Cameron working on Terminators and Aliens, to breakthrough work with Steven Spielberg creating dinos for Jurassic Park. While his top-notch studio will carry on, Winston’s constant brilliance in both pushing the art form to retaining classic techniques will be greatly missed by film fans like myself.
• Not to mention - RIP: Tim Russert.
• Here’s a nice remembrance of the LaserDisc format (of which I was a huge supporter and fan for the decade of its popularity).
• Hurray! Bear McCreary’s scoring work for both Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles and Eureka will be getting their own soundtrack albums.
• So, Bones has gone filming in the UK for the upcoming season.
• The first trailer for the new Death Race remake has surfaced. While my expectations are exactly high, I must admit that it’s a cool trailer, and the simple act of casting Joan Allen in that role is enough to pre-sell my ticket.
• Good grief. Check out this traffic flow (to say the least).
• Here’s a nice collection of aerial photography (of sorts).
• Amelia - the movie that may finally get my to break my Richard Gere boycott. The rest of that cast is too great to pass up, and the topic is hard for me to resist.
• Google will be helping out in detecting if your ISP is messing with your connection
• And yes, I know, I’ll be taking some heat for liking The Happening and not particularly liking The Incredible Hulk. And if you hadn’t gather from my review of the film, I’d recommend any of you who are able to go out and see The Fall.
• And oh yeah, don’t forget that tomorrow is the possible record setting download day for the release of Firefox 3.

One of the best films of the year is one you haven’t even heard of. It’s also a very hard movie to try to explain to someone when recommending it (which I do, to anyone, without reservation). It’s actually kinda sad that a movie like this gets an R rating, because the violence that earns it said rating is quite fantasy-driven and story-book in nature. Personally, I think it should have gotten a PG-13. I’ve seen the film twice now. I really like it a lot after the first time seeing it, but after the second time, I think I’m going to go ahead and give it my favorite film of the year spot so far.

Writing: For lack of wanting to try to describe the story myself, I’ll just paste in a plot summary from IMDB: In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances. That’s an adequate enough description, I guess. Though I can’t believe it’s as modern as 1920’s LA, rather than perhaps from the mid-teens. The worlds of fantasy and reality do blur in a wonderful manner in the film, thanks to a fantastic combination of stories and character that interplay quite well. I love the fact that some of it is even left open to interpretation. Director Tarsem has stated that he let much of the movie’s plot be dictated, very literally, by a little girl who didn’t even speak English. After shooting the interplay between the two actors in “real life,” much of the fantasy to represent the story they were sharing was fit to the results of that first shooting process. All things being equal, it’s a miracle that things work as well as they do.

Production: Everything about this production is perfect. Scratch that. Everything about this production is magnificent. It’s hard to not use superlatives when describing this production. After reading Roger Ebert’s report of interviewing Tarsem about the making of this movie (which is totally worth the read), it’s truly astounding to know that all these locations exist, as shot in the film, and are not CGI driven. The cinematography is breathtaking. Even in the “real world” the filming manages to find interesting ways to present and frame scenes. Editing is smooth as silk, and gets to have a lot of fun when in the realm of fantasy. Sound design is quite creative, paricularly in ways of finding unusual uses of silence. And the production design is beyond fantastic. Check out the great trailer for proof.

Cast: Lee Pace is somebody who I was already a huge fan of, from his great TV roles in Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies (both of which are two of my favorite TV series). He also had a great role in the very overlooked and great Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day from earlier this year. He gets to play both reality-based and fantasy-based characters in this film, and does a great job with both. And his chemistry playing against Catinca Untaru is spot-on. Which brings me to my rave review of the performance of Catincu Untaru, the little girl of the story. The fact that the girl doesn’t actually speak English is amazing (the movie is in Enlgish). It definitely lends to that “little girl” method of delivery she has, since the Enlgish dialog she’s speaking is something she doesn’t even understand. There’s a sense of innocense that such a delivery brings that probably gives a whole new level of reality and honesty to her performance than what a child actor would normally embue such a character. Untaru & Pace just shine together on screen. Other performances vary wildly in nature and style, most of whom share counterparts between fantasy and reality (in some cases, in an almost Oz-like manner). But all those performances are excellent. I won’t bother listing them all off individually, but will just say they are all great.

Music: French composer Krishna Levy, who I had no familiarity with previously, does a fine job with the score. With the opening and ending so perfectly scored with Beethoven’s 7th, the rest of the score perfectly shifts gears between reality-based drama and the fantasy-based adventure. I wish the score would get a release. I may have to try and hunt down some of Levy’s other scores. Apparently a half-dozen or so of his French film scores have been released to date.

At any rate, if you have a theater in the area actually playing this film (most likely an art house theater or one of the massive 30 screen megaplex theaters, like where I saw it), get out there and see this movie.

A movie full of sound and fury; signifying nothing. I’m gonna be one of the unpopular people who likes Ang Lee’s Hulk much more than this paint-by-numbers superhero action movie. This film gets a sideways thumb.

Writing: Perhaps this movie can be saved by the rumored longer cut that’s headed to disc later this year, with possibly as much as 70 minutes that was removed from this film. From what’s rumored, much of that is the character writing that Edward Norton added into the script. I know that the highly publicized disagreements between Norton and Marvel were blown way out of proportion, but I will certainly be interested to see what a cut of the movie with some character depth is like. I rather liked Ang Lee’s film, despite how disliked it was. I don’t care that it “wasn’t the comic book.” Couldn’t care less, actually. If this movie is what the comic book is, then it’s not a comic I would find particularly interesting. Pretty much every character is one dimensional, even Bruce Banner - who’s main signature as a character is having a split personality. Despite that, Banner/The Hulk still comes across as one, flat, single-dimensioned character. The other main characters are total cookie cutter characters as well. Then there are ones like Betty’s current boyfriend, which feel as though they got left completely on the cutting room floor (heck, that character has almost as much cut footage in the trailer as he does in the finished film). It all feels like a movie that could have been quite good, but got too bogged down in “not being Ang Lee’s Hulk.” Most reviewers can’t help but compare this to Marvel’s other big movie this year, Iron Man. This film PALES in comparison. The wit, humor and intelligence of Iron Man is almost 100% absent from this monstrosity.

Production: This is a VERY hit-or-miss production. First and foremost, as one would expect, is the CGI character animation and effects. About half of it works, and about half of it doesn’t. And once it becomes CGI beast-on-beast fight, which we know is coming, even without having seen the sequence billions of times in the advertising, it becomes a complete and total yawn. Action scenes exist simply to be action scenes, and the effects feed right into that line of thinking. Very little of this film’s production doesn’t feel stolen from other far more inventive films, such as the big foot chase action sequence through the dense Brazilian city which is completely ripping off the Bourne franchise (right down to composer Criag Armstrong ripping off composer John Powell’s Bourne scores).

Cast: This is the one true saving grace of this film. The cast tries their darnedest to make things work. And quite frankly, with a lesser cast, I would totally give this movie a thumb down. Edward Norton manages to keep the Bruce Banner character at least marginally engaging. William Hurt, as one dimensional as his character may be, still lends some intelligence to the performance. Tim Roth somehow, against all the odds, makes his zero dimension role slightly work. Tim Blake Nelson tries a bit TOO hard to make his small role near the end of the movie entertaining, and succeeds more than not. Poor Ty Burrell, who plays Betty’s current boyfriend, is barely on screen, and I’m betting he had more material that would make his performance work. In the finished film, he doesn’t even get the chance, one way or the other. The one cast member that does manage to completely pull things out of the fire is Liv Tyler. She actually manages to get her role to leap off the screen and totally make it work. Despite having a few scenes that feel totally stolen from Ann Darrow’s role in the King Kong films, her sense of empathy with The Hulk, and with Bruce Banner, all feel right on. And hey, it’s cool to see them give a small cameo role to Lou Ferrigno.

Music: I expected so much more from the talented Craig Armstrong for this score. He was an unusual choice for the genre, but I was sure he could bring something new to it. Sadly, he doesn’t. His score is a miss-mash of action film scoring. The stuff that isn’t directly stolen from other films (such as the Bourne films) feels rather bland and been-there-done-that. It lacks emotionality and a good thematic base. It is cool to have at least a tiny bit of an appearance from Joe Harnell’s excellent “Lonely Man” theme from the TV series.

OK, with the release of The Happening this weekend, I figured I’d do a list of Shyamalan’s directed films, in the order I like them. And just because Lady In The Water is at the bottom of the list doesn’t mean I don’t like it. It’s just that I only moderately like it. I also know that my opinion of liking The Village the best of his films is an unpopular opinion. So be it. I’m also not counting Wide Awake, because it kinda preceded “M. Night Shyamalan” as a the filmmaker we would come to know, and, well, because I haven’t actually seen it…

• The Village
• The Sixth Sense
• The Happening
• Unbreakable
• Signs
• Lady In The Water

A wonderfully engaging “what if” suspense film. Made with the typical elegance of writer/director/producer Shyamalan, this is a surprisingly cerebral movie to kick out in the middle of the summer movie season.

Writing: Shyamalan is most notorious for his twist endings, which I think is actually a side effect of his real intentions in making films. He probably got a bit trapped into coming through with them once it became something of a trademark. I would assume that the initial driving force of his scripts is the question “what if?” In a number of cases where one asks that question, a natural outcome is a story-shifting twist ending. This movie comes at it from another angle. This angle is more obvious in some ways, and actually more subtle in others. Make no mistake, the central preconceptions of the film are audacious, but surprisingly uninterested in the supernatural. Peppered throughout the lofty idea of the primary plot is a string of oddly eccentric characters and ideas. I found them to be fascinating ideas and characters, but I know full well that the audience was extremely divided on this one. Be it the main plot or the little details, I was fascinated to listen to some of the conversations as the (nearly full) audience left the theater. This is one of those movies that divides opinion to polar opposite viewpoints. Not entirely surprising was the breakdown in demographics of the arguments. For the most part, the moronic, ADD-addled modern teen could do little more than mock everything about the film, and the more mature of folks were reading interesting angles into it. Though I will point out that there was one group of 5-6 teens (I’d guess to be around 15-16, a mix of male and female) a couple rows in front of me that had the most intelligent of comments and discussion as they sat through the credits (I always sit through credits). I was very impressed to hear their discussions. So it’s true that not every 15-16 year old is a slasher-loving neophyte. Personally, I was happy to go along with the “what if” notion of the plot, and actually find it a rather amusing idea. It must have been one heck of a pitch to the studios to get made, particularly after the box-office stumble of Shyamalan’s previous film, Lady In The Water (which I moderately liked, but consider his weakest movie). The easiest comparison to make for this film is probably to say it could easily be an episode of The Twilight Zone. I’m sure this movie will have a great many naysayers, critics and audience alike, but I’ll be happy to be one of its fans.

Production: There are a great many sequences in this film that are absolutely gorgeous. In the modern hand-held-obsessed, fast edit film world, it’s fantastic to see somebody with Shyamalan’s sense of composure and rhythm still working his magic. He’s often compared to Hitchcock (and is a self-admitted fanatic). Frankly, of his films to date, I’d think of The Happening as the most likely to have been directed by Hitchcock himself if here were making films in this era. A fair amount has been made of this being Shyamalan’s first R-rated movie. As he himself admits, it really needed to be R-rated. It earns that rating through pretty much violence alone. The casualness of the acts of violence need to be explicit to make their impact work for the story and suspense, and I totally agree. I’m always impressed by the rarity that is an R-rated movie with little-to-no language. This is just such a film. If memory serves, there’s only one small scene with a few mild language uses. For that feat alone, I commend him. As far as the rest of the production goes, I have nothing but praise. The cinematography is beautiful. Production design and location scouting are great. Editing is silk-smooth and great at building the suspense. An all-around fantastic production.

Cast: Mark Wahlberg may not be the greatest actor ever, but I usually enjoy his performances. He comes through just fine as the charming, likable, every-man protagonist for this story. Zooey Deschanel is one of my favorite actresses, and this features another great performance from her. In fact, it’s an interestingly restrained performance, but one with a great, subtle depth. Wahlberg and Deschanel fire on oddly engaging on-screen chemistry. It really works well (for me, anyway). This isn’t much of an ensemble cast, as Wahlberg & Deschanel are the key players. Young Ashlyn Sanchez is the only other cast member that probably comes close to the same amount of screen time, and she does a nice job. John Leguizamo does a nice job as well. Also featured are brief appearances by the great Alan Ruck (VERY brief appearance) and Spencer Breslin (who I didn’t realize was the actor playing the role cause, wow, did he suddenly get older).

Music: If there’s any justice in this world, the director/composer team of M. Night Shyamalan and James Newton Howard will never be split up. These two are so completely in tune with each other that it would be a crime to separate them. As always, Howard comes through with a spectacularly gorgeous score. Like many of his previous scores for Shyamalan’s films, this one features the piano quite predominantly (and uses a nice thematic approach to scoring the ethereal villain of the story). It also features some very nice cello work, credited to soloist Maya Beiser. Overall, a beautiful score. Not the greatest one he’s done for Shyamalan (which would be The Village, followed by Signs), but it’s still a great score.

• The petaflop barrier has been broken. Good grief.
• Speaking of computing power, the x86 processor celebrated its 30th anniversary on Sunday
• I will never, ever watch anything on TBS. Not ever. Not after seeing this.
• Leo DiCaprio is set to play Nolan Bushnell in an upcoming biopic on the Atari founder. Guess DiCaprio really is a gamer nerd as has always been said to be true.
• Here’s an interesting write-up on the death of the 60gb PS3. Frankly, if the 60gb model were readily available today, I’d be a PS3 owner.
• A full scene from Wall-E (and links to all the cute little promo reels)
• Gotta be impressed by this one legged little league player
• Get your very own Flux Capacitor
• The 1st anniversary edition of The Smoking Gun’s great “Mug Shots Of The Week” feature
• An amusing law suit against SBC/AT&T (one that was correctly tossed)
• Some cool aerial photography
• A hilarious (and genius) Firefox add-on to prevent you from accidentally wandering onto a MySpace page.
• Is Google making us stupid? An interesting topic, to be sure. Frankly, when I see what gets posted to YouTube comment threads, I weep for the future of humanity. If I look at enough of them, I just wish a big comet would wipe us off the face of the planet, for the good of the universe as a whole.
• Not a big surprise, really, but here’s some interesting info on how airports profit from situations that are bad for everyone but them.
• How broken is the legal system? When they ban the use of the word “rape” in a rape trial, how much more broken can it get?
• The term nerd just hit a brand new level. Holy cow.
• Wow, here’s an approach to the environmental cause that I’d actually back. (language warning)
• Where are the now: Sirhan Sirhan
• Interesting. Burt Rutan has stepped down as president of Scaled Composites. Looks like he’s just shifting focus back to the more hands on stuff. Must have gotten tired of some of the political/corporate flack.
• Define irony
• The math nerds will be happy that the universal solution to Rubik’s Cubes has been cut down from 25 to 23 moves.
• Here’s a fun water slide
• Yikes. Western Digital is prepping work on a 20,000 RPM SATA drive. Wonder what “raptor” variant name they’ll drum up for this one.
• And you thought minutiae was small…

• RIP: Alexander Courage
• RIP: Robert H. Justman
• (sad week for us Trek fans with both of those passings)
• RIP: Earle Hagen
• Add to that the fact that Kelsey Grammer had a minor heart attack
• This is a compilation of some amazing pool shots
• Security camera and camera phone angles of one insane cube-farm worker meltdown
• Surely y’all have seen coverage of the fire at Universal Studios by now
• Here’s some cool stuff - magnetic fields, visualized
• Hold strong, NewzBin…
• Must…Stay…Awake…
• Good grief. A terrorism pitch meeting.
• Could it be? Comcast might actually put the correct system in place for their bandwidth woes? This is what they SHOULD be doing, not the other retarded stuff they’ve been doing so far.
• Thinking of taking up a musical instrument? Try one of these.
• The Simpsons has gotten their official pickup for next season, which will give the show a historic 20th season, and tie it with Gunsmoke’s 20-year primetime record.
• Breaking news: people don’t read manuals
• Windows Desktop Search 4.0 has gone final
• Could you repeat that? Classic stuff.
• Talk about an overly aggressive security screening
• Coolness. As a Get Smart fan, I’m gonna have to keep my eyes peeled for references to the series.
• Shuffle up and deal. Or, uh, perhaps not.
• Don’t quite agree with that ticket the cop just gave you?
• Google Finance has gone real-time with quotes
• A poetic ending
• That’s just wrong