Not new Spaced, but it will have to do
The American DVD collection for Spaced is finally coming out, and Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes and Edgar Wright will be promoting it through their US invasion. Well, by “US invasion,” I mean they’re going on a four-city tour, screening episodes and answering questions in NYC, LA, San Diego’s Comic-Con, and Austin. That’s sort of an invasion, yeah?
Anyway, I was just sitting here and feeling sorry for myself, like I do, doubly so this time because I won’t be able to attend any of those inevitably textbook events. Then, I stumbled across this recent blog entry from Simon Pegg.
Remember when it looked like McG and the big bad Americans were about to take Spaced and turn it into a monster for Fox? Dig through that repression; it’s in there somewhere. During that time, the original creative minds were feeling pretty crummy, but Pegg, as the writer that he is, decided to approach the situation with a Spaced short. Fortunately, the American Spaced pilot died and Pegg never had to continue with this little side project. However, he has posted the first draft for us all to enjoy. It revolves around Tim making a tape featuring the whole gang for Daisy’s 30th birthday, and hilarity ensues.
It’s amazing how strong the characters from this show are, especially considering the fact that they were had only 14 episodes. I laughed even as I read through the script, because each and every character’s voice and tendencies were so clear in my head. That’s the way to pick out a genuine Spaced fan, folks: just listen to the way they read “What-you-doin’?”
Christian Bale: A "Kindred Spirit" to Heath Ledger
Christian Bale wants people to know Heath Ledger’s work as the twisted and morose Joker in The Dark Knight was just thatwork!
“I hope in a small way that The Dark Knight can be a celebration of his work,” Bale says in the new issue of Parade magazine. “Not like the hideous circus after he died, which I felt was an invasion of a private life. This movie is not a personal home video. This is what he did. I hope people will embrace that in the correct fashion.”
Bale misses his late costar dearly. “He was a unique character, a very infectious character,” he says. “He was a good man, and I was glad to have spent time with him…He was something of a kindred spirit to myself.”
Bale also opens up about his own life, including spending much of his childhood on the road because his mother was a circus dancer. These days, he lives a much more stable existence with his wife, Sibi, and their three-year-old daughter (whose name Bale refuses to reveal publicly).
“There’s a hard line you find in yourself when you become a parent, an absolute belief that cannot be questioned,” he says. “It’s something that you will kill and die for in a way that you never experienced before. I’ve always enjoyed the gray in life. This is an area of total black and white. This is something that is unquestionable.”
Fear Itself: Spooked
This is what is fun about anthology shows, and why I can never understand why they never do better in the ratings. As much as people bitch about and resist taking a chance on long-form new serialized programs like the ’05-’06 trinity of Invasion, Surface and Threshold, you would think they would embrace a series where each episode truly stands alone. With a show like this, your investment into it won’t be impacted in any way if the network pulls the plug after only thirteen episodes, or even just four.
And yet, anthology shows tend to struggle even more than heavily serialized fare. In fact, Fear Itself got its ass handed to it by Swingtown in the head-to-head premieres last week. The big question is, with the “not-so-good” nature of the premiere, how many people came back to see this much improved second episode, and how many will stick around for Daniel Knaupf’s outstanding episode next week? While last week was a poorly written and acted “monster of the week” boobfest, this time we got a well constructed good old-fashioned haunting.
I liked the set-up to get us into this haunting. Eric Roberts played a police officer stripped of his badge for essentially killing a suspect to get more information out of him. Then we cut to years later and now he’s a private investigator, spending his time taking pictures of cheating spouses and extorting his clients when he gets the chance to. With the background established, he was hired to watch a house overnight so that he might catch a cheating husband, and the client (Cynthia Watros) even suggested he go to the abandoned house across the street to set up as he wouldn’t be bothered there.
And just like that, we got the character into the haunted house. From there, I really enjoyed the twist of the house he was set up in, giving him visions of events occurring in the house he was watching; visions for him alone, as his partner (Larry Gilliard Jr.) who was set up down the street in a van never experienced any of it. The effects on the spectral manifestations were spot on, and the tension was very well handled. About the only thing I would have appreciated more was a true sense of danger for Roberts’ character.
All in all, though, the hauntings seemed to be more about addressing the sins of his youth as channeled through his adult behavior. Of course we were going to tap back into the incident that got him removed from the force, but even more compelling for me was the ultimate sin committed as a result of a childhood accident. In a way, his emotional and psychological issues emanate almost completely as a result of what his father forced him to do.
Good horror pulls us into the psyche of our victim and a good haunting is as much psychological as it is just violence and gore (see last week’s “The Sacrifice” for just such a lack of depth). “Spooked” gave us disturbing images, from Roberts’ father jamming bullets into his gums to the ever-changing images on the wall, and a complex back story connecting all of the disparate elements by the end. But it was the personal connection to those images by both Roberts and Watros that made them all the more compelling.
Again, the only thing that could have made it more “scary” would be if the specters came across as true threats to Roberts. As it was, they appeared to simply be there to show him things he didn’t want to remember, freak him out a bit and think about what kind of a person he was. The real and physical dangers came only from the encounters between real people within the episode.
The potential in the story is such that it could have been made a lot more intense and exciting by increasing the threat factor from the hauntings themselves and doing more with Gilliard’s character. As it was, his role was essentially to sit in the van and say to Roberts, “Nope, I don’t see anything.” I get that it was Roberts who was the target of the hauntings, but to pull his partner and friend into the danger, even if he remained skeptical to the whole thing, would have increased the tension and the stakes tremendously for the already embattled Roberts.
In the end, though, we got a typically satisfying horror short story conclusion. Lessons were learned, in some cases, but as is often the case, these lessons are learned too little too late and we must pay for the mistakes we’ve made in life. And as we pay for those mistakes, we in turn corrupt the next generation of innocents, so the cycle can continue. Maybe I’m over-analyzing things, but I’ve read a lot of horror stories and novels, and seen a lot of horror shows and movies and I just found this to be a wholly satisfying experience of the genre.
Warner Bros says “No More Female Lead Characters”?!
Update: Warner Bros Denies Comments
Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov has made a new rule that “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead”, according to DeadlineHollywood. Apparently, Robinov won’t even look at a script with a female lead.
And why has Robinov come around to this new way (Neanderthal, so rather old way) of thinking? Because it is the recent Hollywood trend: Both Jodie Foster’s The Brave One, Emma Robert’s Nancy Drew, Hilary Swank’s The Reaping, and Nicole Kidman’s The Invasion fared poorly at the box office.
So 1 1 must equal 3, because The Invasion probably didn’t fail because of the highly documented re-scripts, re-shoots, and two different directors. Aside from those factors, Kidman has never been a bankable name, so why did they even hire her in the first place? And Foster is coming off two recent hits with Flightplan and Panic Room, and now all of a sudden can’t get people to buy tickets to a movie, how strange. It probably has nothing to do with her core audience (mainly women) not wanting to watch a vigilante/revenge film? Because that might make entirely too much sense. And people in Hollywood executives don’t live in the realm of the real world.
Now first off, I’m not a politically correct obsessed person. If none of the films with female lead characters had made money in the past 10 years, and had Warner then made this decision, I would say that it was unfortunate that society can’t get behind a woman-led story, but I would agree that it was a smart business decision. But the fact of the matter is that a female-driven film can make money, so in this case I’m pulling out the “sexist” card (alongside the “dumbass” and “moron” cards).
So I wonder if this means the end of a Wonder Woman movie? With Justice League being fast tracked into production, who needs a single franchise film anyway. I mean, one comic book movie with many superheros is likely to make a lot more than 6 self contained superhero films combined, right? Oh wait, the math is wrong there too. Not that I want to see a Wonder Woman movie, I’m just saying.
How about this: Why not review each screenplay based on it’s potential as a cinematic story, and not based on an archaic set of self imposed rules. Because the best film I’ve seen so far this year is Jason Retiman’s Juno, and that not only features a female lead (with oscar potential), but was also written by a female screenwriter. And now that I think of it, more than a few of my favorite films this year also have female leads: Waitress, Once, Eagle vs. Shark, and The Orphanage.
Gloria Allred is already calling for a boycott of Warner Bros productions. One thing is for sure, people must be vocal now - the louder, the better. Or maybe someday female characters will all be reduced to nothingness. Remember Sue Storm in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer? Jessica Alba’s sole purpose and driving point was to be to wed to Reed Richards. Talk about one dimensional.
Update: Warner Bros Denies Comments