Episode 5: “Light up the sky like a flame” 

2 years ago during the 2005 Emmy Awards Kirsten Bell aka Veronica Mars or Elle (Heroes) performed the title song from Fame. She’s actually not that bad. There were rumours of her taking over the role of Elle Woods in the musical version of Legally Blonde on Broadway and now I can see that she would have been perfect for that. I’m glad though that she didn’t take up the offer, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing her in Heroes. Although, how much bad dialogue can those writers cook up for her?

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you’re all enjoying the holidays as much as I am. Even with all my tooth stress, I had a great Christmas at my parents place. This year I really enjoyed picking out and thinking up the appropriate presents for everyone; although, I must say, Amazon has really made it easier for me this year (last year I was still in the Netherlands and the shipping fees are really not worth it). I had also ordered Threadless t-shirts for my brother and sister back in November and strangely they still haven’t arrived yet. I’ve already contacted Threadless and they were no help at all; I have no idea now, how to figure out where my package is.

Anyhow, Santa was very generous to me this year; I got a great bunch of presents (a whole lot more than I expected). Here’s a list of all the stuff I got (hope I’m not forgetting anything):

Comics

Heroes: Volume One: Ever since the first episode of Heroes aired in September 2006, a short comic has appeared online (in Flash or PDF) every week, as a supplement to the tv-series. I only found out about it at the end of last season and never got around to catching up on all of it. Now the comics during the first season (34 episodes) have been published together as a hardcover graphic novel. A must-have for every Heroes fan.

V For Vendetta: I loved the movie and have been meaning to get the comic ever since. I just know I’ll hear Hugo Weaving whispering in my mind whenever I’m reading though.

Sin City 3: The Big Fat Kill: I’ve already got Parts 1 & 2 and I’m hoping I can complete the series before they change the look and size of the edition. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s mismatched book series.

Books

Ash: A Secret History (Mary Gentle): An interesting book about a female mercenary leader in the Middle Ages, who hears a voice in her head. The book is set up as if it was written as an actual biography of a real person by an English history professor and includes letters to an undisclosed university publisher.

The Tawny Man Trilogy (Robin Hobb): I read the Assassin trilogy a few years ago in high school and it sketches an original and imaginative magical world. I’m curious to see how the characters have changed after so many years.

The Rule of Four (Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason): I hadn’t heard of this book before, but it seems to be a history-quest mystery in the vein of the Da Vinci Code. I didn’t like the overhyped Da Vinci Code (preferring the earlier Angels and Demons), but I’ll give it a go and see how it is.

DVDs

The Prestige: I’ve seen this film now thrice this year and it still doesn’t fail to amaze me. Complicated storytelling, but still gives room for the viewer to figure it out (and conquer the movie). Plus Hugh Jackman AND Christian Bale. Double swoonfest.

The Fountain: More Hugh Jackman! One of the most thought-provoking films I saw this year. Again complicated storytelling, but this time open to your own interpretation. Got to love the space traveler in a giant bubble!

The Dark Crystal: Gelflings! Cutest fantasy creature ever (I’m counting the Ewoks now as Science Fiction creatures). I’m slowly building up my collection of childhood fantasy movies. Already got Labyrinth, still missing The Princess Bride, Return to Oz and The Storyteller tv-series.

Serenity: Do I even have to explain? My only gripe with the movie is that every time I see it, I’m saddened by the stark realization that if they had continued with the tv-series the plot and mythology of the show would have just been phenomenal. Stupidest mistake of Fox evah (along with the cancellation of Angel, Dark Angel, Journeyman, Wonderfalls, Kitchen Confidential, Futurama, Tru Calling, Roswell, The Pretender, Point Pleasant, Drive, John Doe, Freakylinks, Harsh Realm, The Visitor, should I continue? This might take a while).

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales: Actually this wasn’t my present, but Cristiano’s. But come on! After 5 years of virtually being dormant, J. Michael Straczynski is back!

Blood & Chocolate and Ultraviolet: I actually tried watching both of these films, but just had to switch it off halfway. I read the book Blood & Chocolate is based on when I was 13 and was hoping for (but truthfully not expecting) a good movie adaption, which unfortunately is not the case. Ultraviolet is a complete different story. It was written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, the genius behind Equilibrium, but the cut that made into cinemas and now DVD isn’t his, but the studio’s (they found the original too emotional). The film is basically scene after scene of action sequences (beautifully choreographed though) with incomprehensible snippets of dialogue in between. I’m desperately hoping that someday there will be a Director’s Cut, cause I can see glimpses of the brilliant film that it’s meant to be.

Other Stuff

Travel Chopsticks

Aren’t these just cute? Now I can have sushi whenever I want!

Body Shop Goodies

I love Body Shop stuff, especially the lip balm Born Lippy.

Cute Tweezers

These are just so cute! My sisters says it’s a dominatrix, but I’m convinced it’s a ninja.

Microwave Mittens

Sweet, little mittens for the microwave. They even have magnets in them so they stick to your fridge.

Travel Hairdryer

After all the traveling I’ve done this year and most probably will be doing next year, this will be nice and handy.

Business Card Holders

Now I can store the business cards of all the people I meet out there.

Hat

I love my new hat! And was straight away useful at the Fireworks last night.

Phew, quite a list, huh? All I can say is I’ve been really lucky this year and got some serious reading and watching to do. So what presents did you get this year?

I was really gutted after Veronica Mars was canceled last year. I understand why though: the second and third season both failed to live up to the quality of that first season. Although the one liners and smart ass remarks from Veronica were always right on target, the storyline seemed to getter weaker per episode.

In a final attempt to convince the network of giving VM a new season, series creator Rob Thomas tried a complete different angle. The new season would skip a couple of years into the future, focusing on Veronica Mars as FBI agent. It sounded like it could work and after seeing the videos below, I’m really disappointed they didn’t give it a go. So take a look at Agent Mars:

By now you may know I’ve been a geek for almost my entire life. What you might not know is that my first obsession geeklove passion was for animation series. When I was about five (maybe even four), I used to get up every morning at 6:00 to watch tv. Looking back, the weird part is that I didn’t need an alarm clock or anything; I just woke up everyday at the exact same time. What I would give to be able to do that again.

This addiction to kids tv series gradually turned into an addiction to normal tv series, but left me with an insane amount of memories of those tv shows I used to watch. To put that knowledge at least to some use, I’ll list a couple of shows you might have forgotten about.

So in no particular order:

20. The New Archies: Not really one you would have forgotten due to the comic, but not eveyone knows there was a tv series. Are you a Betty or a Veronica?

19. The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin: I just loved the world they created here; all the different types of creatures.

18. Gummi Bears: Who didn’t love the magical bears that bounced?

17. C.O.P.S.: I loved the cool nicknames: Mace, Sundown, Nightshade.

16. Captain Planet and The Planeteers: I still know the lyrics of the themesong (which by the way is from Phil Collins). A lot of known actors did (guest) voices for this (Whoopi Goldberg, Levar Burton, Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen).

15. Police Academy: I loved the running gag with the goldfish.

14. Pandamonium: Pandas!

13. M.A.S.K.: First time I realised what an acronym was.

12. Dino-Riders: My brother had a Dino-Riders Triceratops set; I loved playing battles with the Transformer against the Dinosaur.

11. Captain N: Is it weird to have a crush on a cartoon character? I completely adored Kevin when I was 7.

10. Bobby’s World: I only just realise now that that Howie Mandel is the Deal or No Deal Howie Mandel. Then again, I’ve never actually watched the US Deal or No Deal.

9. Mysterious Cities of Gold: This had the most catchiest theme song ever; I still get goose-bumps every time I hear it.

8. Pound Puppies: I had a two-sided jumper with on one side a cross-word puzzle pattern with one of the puppies and on the other side a big version of that same puppy.

7. Muppet Babies: Cute in a very creepy way.

6. Ewoks: I remember watching this before ever consciously having seen Star Wars. When I did see Star Wars, I remember thinking: “Cool, they’re using real life ewoks in here!”

5. Babar: Royal elephants! What more do I have to say.

4. Beverly Hills Teens: I was too young for the real Beverly Hills, but this was one of those real girl cartoons.

3. Kissyfur: I only remember that I watched it, for the rest I’m drawing a complete blank.

2. The Littles: This was just so cute!

1. Ghostbusters: I don’t mean the Ghostbusters animation series based on the movies with Dan Akroyd and James Belushi. No, I’m talking about the other Ghostbusters. The one with the gorilla.

I can’t believe this new IMDB feature slipped by me. If you’re reading this blog, then I assume you have at least an inkling of an idea of what IMDB is. If not, it’s the Internet Movie DataBase and contains info about movies, actors, directors, producers, etc. Pretty handy, if you want to know everything about movies and tv as I do.

IMDB has two main cornerstones: Name pages, for all the people (actors, producers, etc) and Title pages for, ehm, all the titles (movies, tv-series, videogames, etc). Last week they added a new type of page to the mix: Character pages. Every character from a movie or tv-series or video game can have their own page including biography, quotes and appearances. The IMDB staff have already created 20000 character pages of the most well-known characters, but the idea is that users can add and edit pages.

This feature starts to get interesting when considering characters that appear in multiple series/movies or have been played by different people. For instance, did you know that Ursula Buffay, the sister of Phoebe in Friends first appeared in Mad About You? Or that Jack Ryan, a main character in books of Tom Clancy, has been portayed by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck?

Sadly, I have noticed some problems with this new feature. Because the content is user generated, you only need one lazy user to create a new page for someone who already exists. IMDB gives a nice disclaimer:

The content of this page was created by users. It has not been screened or verified by IMDb staff.

But does this mean that there are also pages that are screened and verified? I’ve already stumbled on multiple pages for one person (King Arthur) and I wonder how IMDB will deal with this.

It’s an interesting new feature and it gives IMDB that extra dimension to create an even more complex network. If you’re looking to procrastinate, you can easily spend some time just clicking from one page to another. Don’t look at me like that; I never do that !

Just a quick post to let you know how much I’m loving Pushing Daisies. I saw the second episode and I have to say it’s as good as the first one, maybe even better. It’s so quirky, silly, fairy tale like, that I still can’t believe people are actually liking it. It has that same atmosphere/vibe/whatever-you-want-to-call-it as Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls (no wonder, same creator), yet where those series failed miserably to garner a big following, Pushing Daisies seem to attract much more people. I can’t wait for next week’s episode!

House: Wow, House is back and it’s good! After last season’s slump, I was seriously considering throwing this series off my To-Watch list. So far though this season has been great (4×01 and 4×02). I loved the kidnapping of the guitar and the patient in the first episode. Also all the new doctors add this whole new dimension to the show. I wonder which of them are going to stay and for how long? I’m guessing Kal Penn and “Thirteen”. Does anybody else here think that “Thirteen” is somebody’s sister? I’m guessing Cameron’s.

Chuck: I’m still undecided on this series. It’s geeky, funny, but yet…I’m not really sure where it’s going. I also find it quite weird that the creators chose to name the character “Chuck” because there wasn’t any character on TV called Chuck so far, while now this season we suddenly have 3 Chucks (this Chuck, Gossip Girl rape guy and Pushing Daisies dead girl).

Journeyman: I wasn’t expecting to like this series as much as I do. It’s time travel, which most of the time means plots with gaping holes in it (too irritating for my logical mind; I hate it when they don’t think things through properly). Here though I’m not minding it that much and I think it’s to do with acting of the main guy. He somehow makes it less ridiculous then it actually is and I mean this in a good way!

Heroes: Did anyone else notice that the last episode (2×03) should have been called “Blue Screen” instead of “Kindred”? Last seasons special effects were always very subtle; this was just cringe-worthy. Shouldn’t a bigger budget mean “less crappy effects”? And the Maja/Alejandro storyline…zzzzzzzzzz. Get on with the cool stuff already.

In the next couple of days I’ll be introducing some returning blog topics to (hopefully) get me more motivated to write more regularly. The first of these new topics is Rewind where I’ll reminisce about some old obscure cancelled tv-serie. I’m starting with a series that I’ve mentioned before on this blog: Brimstone (I compared Reaper to it here).

Number of Episodes: 13
Original Run: October 23, 1998 – February 12, 1999
Original Channel: Fox
You Might Know Them Now: Peter Horton (producer and director for Dirty Sexy Money and Grey’s Anatomy), John Glover (Lionel Luthor in Smallville)

Brimstone was about Ezekiel “Zeke” Stone (Horton), an undead ex-New York City Police detective who tracks down escapees of Hell. Fifteen years ago when his wife was raped and the rapist was cleared of all charges, Stone tracked the rapist down and murdered him. A couple of months after that, Stone died in an unrelated incident and was sent to Hell for killing the rapist. Now, though, 113 spirits have escaped from Hell and, because the Devil (Glover) has no power on earth, he makes a deal with Stone: Stone must hunt down all 113 spirits and will get a second chance on earth, if he succeeds and survives.

If you thought Michael Scolfield (Prison Break) was the first to have tattoos all over his body, you’re seriously mistaken. Stone is covered with tattoos, one for every escapee. Every time he kills an escapee (and thus sending it back to hell), the corresponding tattoo burns itself off. He also can’t just kill the spirit in any manner; no, he has to take out the eyes, cause “the eyes are the windows to the soul”. Every episode Stone would track the spirit down, who in most cases was stirring up quite some trouble, there would be a boss-battle and Stone would send the spirit back to Hell. Add to that, his wife that thinks he’s been dead for 15 years and you’ve got the basis of the whole show.

How I described it, the show doesn’t really sound that good, but there were a couple of things working for them. It certainly didn’t deserve the cancellation at that time, but then again we’re talking about the notorious Fox here. For starters, Peter Horton was good as the tortured, brooding hero. The series was in my opinion quite dark for that time, especially because the protagonists were (albeit in various degrees) basically evil. Which brings me to the next good element of the show: the Devil. John Glover had some brilliant one-liners and his portrayal as the Devil will always stick with me.

I’m not in any means saying this was a great show, but it’s certainly one that was original and funny. So does anybody else remember this show? Share your thoughts in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a review about the new TV series starting this year, including the comedy-action Chuck. My main grievance with this new series was that while they were clearly trying to attract a geeky nerd audience, they failed to deliver a logically sounding plot riddled with inaccurate computer facts and this puts off the very audience they’re trying to attract.

Now more than ever I’m convinced NBC is trying to attract a geeky following for this show. Since last week the main character Chuck Bartowski has appeared on multiple social websites. So far these are the ones I’ve found:
del.icio.us
Last.fm
Flickr
Facebook
MySpace
YouTube
Amazon
Twitter
I especially love the del.icio.us bookmarks and the Twitter feeds; you really get a feel for the character, as if he’s a real person.

I’m still not convinced that Chuck will survive it’s first year, but I’m willing to at least give the first couple of episodes a try. Tip to the writers: hire some real nerds as advisors. I mean, Grey’s Anatomy and CSI do it for their specialities, why shouldn’t Chuck?

I do have to applaud NBC though for trying something a bit different. Yes, there have been online marketing stunts before for other tv series and movies, but one that actually makes use of the sites and social networks that people are using daily? I don’t think there has.

Just a couple more weeks and a big chunk of all that wonderful tv-goodness returns back to us. Yeah!! It might be a bit tricky keeping track of when all your beloved series start again (especially if you watch a lot, like I do), but no worries the TV addict has come to the rescue! And no, I am not the TV addict; although I am “a” TV addict, I’m not “the” TV addict (wish I had been so smart to register that url :-p ). Here’s Your Definitive Guide to the Fall 2007 TV Season Premieres.