Fringe

• So, did those of you who actually care about Valentines Day have a good one today?
• Looks like the Friday night Death Slot is going to claim two more genre victims. Dollhouse did worse than even the low expectations the slot had warranted. And looks like the move for The Sarah Connor Chronicles was a mistake as well. Thanks very much, Fox. Perhaps it sounded like a good idea, but if this doesn't prove that The X-Files was a fluke hit on Friday nights, I think the network will never learn. What's even more sad is that I didn't love the Dollhouse pilot episode. Granted, this is after much rumored behind-the-scenes difficulties between Whedon and the network (when are these shows going to learn to stay away from the Fox network?). It was a decent pilot, with some interesting ideas and a slick enough production, but this is not Whedon's best work. Still, it's just a pilot, and one can rarely dismiss a show on just the pilot. It's certainly worth hanging in there to see where it goes. Since it is Whedon (And Dushku, and Acker, and Penikett, etc), I'll be watching every episode, no matter what.
• The Witches Of Eastwick pilot has signed on the great David Nutter to direct, basically guaranteeing that it gets picked up to series. Nutter is on a 14-for-14 streak of directing/developing series pilot episodes that get picked up by the networks to go to series. So, we'll see if Witches will make it a 15-for-15 track record. While not every one of them may have lasted all too long (Traveler, Dr. Vegas & Tarzan), they've all been very well done. I've certainly been loving his latest success, The Mentalist (my favorite new show of the season, followed by Fringe).
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars has been picked up for a second season. The show has been more enjoyable than I would have initially anticipated.
• Dang it. Looks like Germany will get to see the final 3 episodes of Pushing Daisies long before the rest of us.
• These boots were made for Walken? Indeed. Yikes.
• And on the subject of Rifftrax, I've been enjoying some of the former MST3K gang's "trax" over the last week or two. Great stuff. And if you haven't been following Mike Nelson's month of eating nothing but bacon, you're missing some great coverage.
• Lots of cool news for the TV on Blu-Ray front from a recent Rumor Mill post over at The Digital Bits. Coming to the format is Chuck: Season 2, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Season 2, Torchwood: Season 3 and Fringe: Season 1. Not only that, but there's cover art and news about all three of the Star Trek original series seasons HD remaster sets. But of course the coolest news in that post is that Disney is, indeed, working on a Blu-Ray release of Tron, in anticipation of the upcoming sequel. I imagine it's going to take a whole lotta work to get Tron up-to-snuff for a great quality high def master. The amount of laborious effort that went into the myriad elements and layers of the film resulted in some rough-around-the-edges end results.
• After nearly a year of deafening silence, it looks like things are still moving forward with JPEG XR (formerly Microsoft's HD Photo format). I began a film/slide scanning project (which I will NEVER finish) about a year and a half ago, and committed to the format in it's VERY early infancy. Still to this day, one of the very few apps to support the format is Photoshop, via a plug-in (which is how I'm doing the work with the project). Good to hear that the finalization of the format is now done and that it is imminent for popular use. It'll be nice to have some real support for the format.
• Conan did a funny rant against the NY Times about their boron mistake.
• And Joaquin Phoenix made a dazed, half-hilarious, half-scary appearance on Letterman.
• And you thought your fingernails were long? Ouch.
• Beverly Eckert is somebody who did not have any manner of good fortune with airplane disasters. Definitely a sad set of circumstances.
• If you've never checked out the ultra-cool, Tesla-coil-weilding music group ArcAttack, you should hunt around their site and all the videos of their performances up on YouTube. Awesome stuff.
• I don't care if this is staged/planted or not (I vote not), this is hilarious. Here's a camcorder recording from the audience of the jumbotron. Great stuff.
• Coolness - The Pong Museum. Happy 40th anniversary, Pong.
• And on the topic of video games (and my previous post about Tron coming to Blu-Ray), and of no particular surprise, Disney is supposedly working on a new Tron video game to tie in with the upcoming sequel.
• And I'll transition from Tron to other modern remakes of fun retro-franchises of my childhood. The first is the very cool trailer for GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra. Helmed by a perfectly chosen Stephen Sommers directing, and featuring Christopher Eccleston (The ninth Doctor), I have high hopes for the fun looking movie. If nothing else, it will surely result in a great new score from Alan Silvestri (who has worked with Sommers before on the second Mummy film and on Van Helsing). The second is Land Of The Lost. It is also helmed by a talented director, Brad Silberling, and the great cast includes none-other-than Pushing Daisies' own Anna Friel. The third almost defies belief, The A-Team. I'm a fan of the series, and had been interested in the number of rumored attempts to do a new film based on the show. The newest incarnation of that idea has Joe Carnahan directing (hopefully not as crappy a choice as my instincts would tell me), but most interesting is that Ridley Scott will be producing with his brother Tony exec producing.

• I post this entry from down in comfortable Phoenix, AZ (technically speaking, I'm in Laveen, which is just outside of Phoenix). It was roughly the same temp inside and out tonight. A bit wamer than the 17 degrees of Chicago, from whence I came.
• Great to have Medium back with a new season this week. It's one of those shows where I don't realize how much I missed it until it's back. It's also a show I don't mention enough, because it really does deserve it. It's one of the most consistently great shows on the air. It's extremely rare for there to be a less-than-solid episode of the series, and it's always striving to be creative and try something risky and interesting. And it's one of those TV shows that really understands how to visually tell a story. The show's not just about visual style (which it certainly does have), but about using the visuals to help convey the plot and characters. Hopefully, the show will survive a good while longer.
• Here's a fun new official promo from FOX for their upcoming Friday pairing of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse, done Grindhouse style. It's a fun and cool promo (particularly for being an official promo from the network), and I really do hope these two shows can help each other survive in their crazy Friday "death slot" schedule. It all kicks off on 2/13, and I can't wait. The Whedon geek in me loves seeing Summer Glau and Eliza Dushku joining forces in different shows together.
• Speaking of sci-fi on Friday nights, did y'all enjoy last Friday's Battlestar episode, "The Oath?" After two fantastic and gritty character episodes, this one launched things forward at a breakneck speed. Awesome episode. I cheered out loud when Starbuck, uh, made an appearance in the landing bay...
• Speaking of Battlestar, Universal is doing an interesting move releasing the pilot for Caprica on DVD this April, LONG before it airs on Sci-Fi in 2010 along with the episodes that will follow it.
• And just to prove that after praising the above shows so much there's the other side to the coin, here's another low for reality TV.
• The Obama administration has made their first move that annoys me.
• Doctor Who will be making the big jump to being fully produced for HD starting with the upcoming 2009 Specials.
• And you thought you've stayed at some strange hotels...
• Here's an amusing bit of subterfuge pulled off by Anna Torv and Mark Valley, stars of the series Fringe, having gotten married over the holidays without the press noticing.
• Speaking of subterfuge, looks like you'll wanna pay close attention to those M&M's you are buying.
• And if you wanna see something equally strange and cool, check out these hit songs reworked through Microsoft's rather interesting and impressive Songsmith platform. There's numerous other ones you can find on Youtube if you go looking, a number of which are quite interesting.

Rather than trying to do any kind of structured TV reviews, I'm just gonna do the occasional post of random TV review thoughts for whatever points in time, regarding whatever random shows (in random order)...

Star Wars - The Clone Wars (Through 1.02): I thought the theatrically distributed debut film for this series of animated episodes was passably entertaining. It was certainly not without its flaws, but I liked it well enough. Then again, I'm not the average fanboy who loathes the prequel trilogy. In fact, I quite like Episode 3. So shoot me. I mildly liked the previous set of Cartoon Network's Clone Wars animated shorts, but haven't really watched them since they first ran. However, I must admit that I really liked the first Cartoon Network episode of this series, and the second one wasn't half bad, either. If there's one complaint I need to make, it's that I hate the battle droids. They were bad in the prequel films, but they weren't in it all that much, frankly. With the amount of time they are getting in these Clone Wars episodes, I think they are a bigger blemish on the franchise than Jar-Jar Binks was. Still, Yoda was great in the first episode, and the clone troopers work quite well. The animation seemed more impressive in these TV episodes than the theatrical debut film, as crazy as that sounds. Overall, I'll continue watching if they can keep up the production quality.

Knight Rider (Through 1.02): I rather liked the backdoor pilot film that NBC made, and had hopes of liking the TV series that was green lit after the pilot film did well. I'm a fan of the original series, and thought the pilot film did a pretty good job staying true to the original while still finding a new approach. Then along came writer/producer Gary Scott Thompson to overhaul the production when it got picked up for series. I can only assume he's to blame, because in this new series form, this show sucks. The moderate amount of intelligence from that pilot film has been completely lobotomized. This might as well be WWE Wrestling for all it's worth. If it weren't for the holdover cast from the pilot film, this would be complete garbage. The first episode was abysmal. The second was an improvement, but not particularly good either. I'll give it one or two more episodes to improve, just for my loyalty to the original, but I'm not expecting a wild turnaround.

Fringe (Through 1.04): Looks like JJ Abrams and his gang have the breakaway best new show of the year on their hands. This is definitely my favorite new show so far this season. I'm totally loving it. From the fantastic cast to the creepy stories and plot arcs to the great production quality, I'm very thankful to have a successful X-Files styled show back on the air. There's also the fantastic gimmick of their "floating in mid air" title cards for location names, reminding me of stuff like David Fincher's opening titles for Panic Room. It's surely a gimmick, but it works wonderfully. The network must like what they're getting, too, since they just picked it up for the full season.

Do Not Disturb (Through 1.02): Since I just talked about a great new show that just got a full pickup, I'll follow it with this lame sitcom that just got a quick cancellation. I was hoping it would be good, since it starred Jerry O'Connell, but it just wasn't meant to be. After his great Carpoolers comedy series from last year didn't succeed, it's only fitting that a truly lame sitcom would fail even worse. Never mind the fact that the original pilot episode (which I saw a leaked copy of over the summer) was as bad or worse than what actually aired. This was a bad sitcom, plain and simple. In fact, it looks like this will be the first year I can remember there not being a new multi-camera sitcom that I like, unless there's another new one I haven't seen yet. I imagine this will be the last I write about this show.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Through 2.04): This surprisingly good TV series entry to the venerable Terminator franchise continues to be impressive. From the typically excellent production quality to the great cast, it fights against the odds and just plain works. After the wonderful final act of last seasons' final episode, I was hopeful for a good continuation. Though the John Connor character has been a little bit weak and annoying during the first couple of episodes this second season, the show has otherwise been very good. Brian Austin Green continues his nice performance and has been added to the main cast. This second season has done another bit of odd and interesting casting with the addition of rocker Shirley Manson to the main cast, in an intriguing role. While this show continues to stray into the Battlestar Galactica world of machines rising against their creators and questioning their possible humanity, it remains a uniquely Terminator take on the idea. I look forward to further episodes. And speaking of Battlestar connections, composer Bear McCreary continually hits his episodic scores out of the park on this series. Perhaps not quite to the amazing level of quality that Battlestar has gotten from him over the years, but he's doing some darned impressive thematic and texture scoring for Terminator.

Anyway, more to come soon. Or later. Or whenever.

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!