Thursday, October 25, 2007 Rant Archive
The last son of Krypton is facing his greatest weakness. No, it’s not kryptonite, rather a lack of writers to help bring his next film
SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL to fruition.
Writers
Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris (who worked with director Bryan Singer on SUPERMAN RETURNS and also X2: X-MEN UNITED) have gracefully bowed out of the director’s upcoming sequel to the 2006 blockbuster, which saw only mild success, earning a $200 million domestic gross (it cost nearly that much to make.)
There’s speculation abound about what caused the writers to go AWOL on the project. Some rumors point to the fact that Warner Bros, the studio behind the ‘Supes revival, was disappointed by the modest performance of ‘RETURNS and wanted the next film to be a complete reboot, a lá the upcoming INCREDIBLE HULK. If that were true it would mean that we, the viewers, weren’t the only ones who thought the whole “Superman has a son with Lois” angle was complete crap.
Of course Warner Bros. denies any displeasure with Singer’s work, stating that MAN OF STEEL would be a sequel to ‘RETURNS, with actor Brandon Routh expected to don the blue tights again. Spectacular. On a more positive note, Brian Singer’s comments at this year’s Comic-con in San Diego indicated that MAN OF STEEL would offer significantly more action than its predecessor, a change that actually would be spectacular. MATRIX REVOLUTIONS should not do Superman better than Superman does.
I guess television executives know what young women want and it’s a super lame nighttime soap opera that does not have enough of the high school student’s doing blow to accurately depict the social scene it’s trying to. This week we deal with the snotty elitists of the Upper East Side & their social woes—gag me with a spoon.
Dan (Penn Badgley ) & Serena (Blake Lively), sitting in a tree...not exactly. If you thought they got over their star crossed lover crap last week, well, think again. Serena isn’t sure if Dan wants to go to Blair’s (Leighton Meester) costume ball with her. When she finally calls him she hears a girl in the background. Dan, the quick thinking idiot tells her it’s his sister Jenny. Too bad Jenny (Taylor Momsen) is over at Blair’s house with Serena. Serena never asks him and sort of feels betrayed because she is an idiot. Blair tells some of her ladies in waiting to get Serena a date and get him fast & good looking. For being a total bitch, Blair is my sort of girl.
Now Nate is slowly piecing together the fact that his father’s financial problems are suspicious. His father’s working double overtime to land the account of Blair’s mother, Elinor. This account means mondo buckaroos and would solve the problem for the time being. Still, when Nate stumbles upon a bag of blow he questions if the money problems aren’t so much from poor financial planning, but from his father trying to snort all of Columbia up his nose. He tries to call Blair about this, but she’s too busy being popular so he shows up unannounced at Serena’s house and she tells him to confront his father. He thanks for her help by creepily rubbing her hand as thought he were Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.
Six episodes in and I am tempted to crown this season of AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL the most boring ever. The two best moments from tonight’s episode involved Jay Manuel. It’s bad when the tired old creative director steals the show.
But it’s hard to ignore Jay’s talking head when he’s wearing hot pink lipstick. Honey, I’m not sure that’s your best shade. I laughed out loud when after a very bad shoot, he told Ambreal to trust her innate self because that what was natural to her. Well, duh.
For the challenge this week, the girls had to become spokes-models for a cause, (Keep A Child Alive, which builds treatment centers for AIDS patients in Africa.) They all swoon when Tyson Beckford shows up at their door. I yawned. There was something rather creepy about this guy trying to get the girls to act sexy and sell something. He enjoyed it a little too much, I think. Maybe if I were a guy, I’d be more understanding, but some of these girls are pretty young, and Tyson’s, well ... not.
As I watched the girls, divided into three teams, competently perform their public service announcements I realized something. They were all competent. This season there is no over-the-top character to keep us entertained with her unwarranted diva madness. And there’s no one super trashy to laugh at as she gets it oh-so-very wrong. And there’s no awesome combination of the two. Where is Jade, who was larger then life in her absolute ridiculousness and insistence on referring to herself in the third person? Where is YiaYia with her haughty demeanor? Where is Melrose with her backstabbing ways, and her foil Caridee? Where is the drama???
My crush for Charlie Crews continues to grow on this weeks Episode of LIFE and that’s for one reason since the episode was sort of cheesy. Charlie (Damian Lewis) coming to Constance’s (Brooke Langton) rescue after her scumbag client attacked her. Too bad Constance can never be with Charlie because she is so busy staying in a relationship that isn’t working. Wait, she’s unhappy, but wants to stay in her unfulfilled relationship—this sounds like bad television plot driven drama because everyone I know in real life gets divorced over any sort of minutia.
Speaking of love, Charlie & Dani’s (Sarah Shahi) case this week revolves around a woman thrown from a hotel window. The creepy part is that the woman is wearing angel’s wings. I guess angels can’t really fly, right? After unsuccessfully trying to identify the victim am ugly chubby man comes forth to say he’s her husband. The man is insane and he gives erratic information that leads Charlie and Dani to understand that the woman was a Russian mail order bride. Can you feel it? Can you feel the love in the air? So this fat, ugly guy says explains that he bought the dead woman from a man named Roman. Charming.
This episode defines the relationship between Charlie and Dani as the two find themselves accurately working in a sort of symbiotic relationship. Like a finely tuned machine—they are beginning to work together, and moreover need each other to keep a balance in their detective work. Oftentimes throughout the episode Dani questions things in the same way that Charlie does. When Charlie points this out she rolls her eyes and tells him he’s wrong. These two work like siblings.
Tonight was the first test for the two newest council members, Guylan and Zach, and they were faced with a doozy of a first task. The trash situation had gotten way out of hand, and it was time to take matters into their own hands and clean it out. Besides the four council members, several other townies were called to duty. Apparently being called to duty doesn’t mean you have to jump to action, because our favorite little spoiled brat, Taylor, flat out refused to help clean up. But really this is no surprise conisdering this is the girl who refused to cook when her team was in charge of preparing the food, she refused to help in any other area when her team won upper class and she believed it was her right to order every other child around like a drill sergeant on speed. Seriously, somebody needs to teach this girls some manners. Did she mistakenly believe she was going off to some sort of western spa? Didn’t the producers explain the concept of the show to her and her parents? Maybe Taylor and her family think this is all a joke, but I’d be extremely embarrassed to admit I was the person who raised her, if I were her mother. Of course, there was a punishment for her insubordination, and she didn’t fair much better at that job.
Meanwhile, Guylan has gotten off to a rocky start in leading his district. While he willingly and enthusiastically went to take care of the trash, it appears he isn’t the best at the physical stuff. This didn’t sit too well with some of the other kids in town, but at least the kid attempted to do some work. That’s ok Guylan, just remember a good attitude takes you far in life. That’s a lesson little Taylor needs to learn. After being told she had to fill the water tank, as her punishment for refusing to clean up the trash, she stomped off in beauty queen fashion and threatened to go home. I say, don’t let the door hit you in the tush on the way out honey. Once again, the rest of the town had to pick up Taylor’s slack and get the water tank up to snuff. With that, it was time for yet another town competition.
Everyone knows I hate PRIVATE PRACTICE. At this point I am pretty sure Shonda Rhimes and Kate Walsh have both been informed of my disdain for the entire show. I don’t see the point of keeping it a secret, but it’s a poorly executed rip off of every medical drama ever. Although I firmly believe this to be a fact I cannot help but admit that this is the first episode of PRIVATE PRACTICE that I’ve ever had to watch that didn’t thrust me into the arms of suicide. It’s a monumental occasion indeed.
Judging by the title of this week’s episode In Which Addison Finds a Showerhead you might think it’s about bathroom remodeling, but you’d be wrong. It’s about Addison (Kate Walsh) nurturing her fantasies for Pete with a good old fashioned go at herself with the shower massager. For those of you that need me to break it down, this week Addison learns how to masturbate. I enjoy how Addison tells Naomi (Audra McDonald) and Violet (Amy Brenneman) that she doesn’t diddle herself because she’s from Connecticut and apparently people there look at sex as a two player game or something. Regardless, by the end of the episode Addison runs home chanting that Pete’s (Tim Daly) a cowboy or a gladiator so she can marinate in the shower, or whatever.
A recently repatriated P.O.W. gets up from his hospital bunk somewhere in Iraq. Without a word, he picks up a scalpel, slashes a guard’s throat, then picks up the guard’s weapon and lays waste to the doctors and patients. No, it’s not THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE v. 2.0, although it does turn out the soldier had a neural implant. As Jonas (Miguel Ferrer) tells Jaime (Michelle Ryan) at the beginning of this week’s BIONIC WOMAN, there’ve been a couple of other attacks by guys with similar implants, which are normally used to treat depression but seem to work well in engendering homicidal impulses. Bonus.
This doesn’t sit well with the Berkut Group, so while Antonio (Isaiah Washington) goes on a hunt for whoever is distributing the implants, Jaime gets to go undercover at a university to check out the guy who developed them, a renowned neuroscience professor (Kenneth Walsh). Irony of ironies, her cover identity is an English transfer student, so Ms. Ryan gets to use her natural speaking voice for once. Anyway, she gets to know the professor’s T.A. Tom, which drives Jaime’s handler/lab tech Nathan (Kevin Rankin) slightly mad with jealousy. Maybe that’s why the professor catches Jaime breaking into his lab so quickly. $50 million and she can’t scan the area using those bionic appendages? Nathan can get the security code for the lab, but he can’t tap the surveillance feed? Come on, people.
Midway through Wednesday’s episode of DIRTY SEXY MONEY, Brian Darling (Glenn Fitzgerald) declares, “I’ve made a mess of everything. What the hell am I going to do?” Do you think the writers of this schlocky soap opera, which had high expectations that have yet to be met, might be thinking the same thing?
Brian makes his confession to Nick George (Peter Krause) after his wife tells him she wants a divorce upon learning that their recently adopted “orphan” is actually his son from a different woman. Here’s a little tip, Brian: If you don’t want your wife finding out about the kid, might not want to name him Brian Jr.
He’s not the only Darling child having trouble. The twins, Jeremy and Juliet (Seth Gabel and Samare Armstrong), decide they want separate 25th birthday parties. But they just can’t bear to split the $1 million allotted them, so they learn some harsh lessons in rich-kid economics. Well, actually they don’t. They just end up spending whatever and leaving Daddy (Donald Sutherland) with the bill.
The theme of this week’s CANE was definitely “bros before Po’s.”
The investigation of the Samuels family’s murdered henchman, Quinones, finally reached Alex’s door, as he and loyal bodyguard Santo were brought in for questioning about the murder. Though they were grilled hard, both men kept their cool, Santo’s going so far as to write “Besame el culo.” (I’ll let your parents translate that one for you kids) on the paper laid out for his confession. Before long Alex and Santo’s were ‘George Jefferson walking’ right of the station, free men…for now.
However the law wasn’t the only institution Alex was having trouble with this week. The Duque company took hit on the political front too, when Senator Barnes, their ace card in acquiring the ethanol subsidy, was forced to resign from office when he was discovered in the company of a male prostitute. He should have gone with the Eddie Murphy defense.
Frank proved that white girls are a hard habit to break when he stormed the home of ex-fling Ellis Samuels for a late-night booty call, only to keep it P.I.M.P. and leave her high-an-dry (well, high at least,) when she tried to patch up things between them. Frank was not the only one under the Duque roof to get some action: Alex’s daughter Katie quickly became hot and heavy with her new, older, boyfriend, whom she’d met as long ago as last week’s episode. A video camera taping the pair’s “proceedings” suggests that a sex scandal and a bit of blackmail may be on the horizon for the Vega’s.
We all know the premise of PUSHING DAISIES at this point, right? Ned can touch dead things and bring them back to life for one minute. If he touches them again they are dead forever. If they stay alive for more than a minute death takes another life. Ned touched his childhood love Charlotte Charles- a.k.a Chuck after she was murdered and now they are making a life together, falling in love, touching the dead with P.I. Emerson Cod and trying not to touch each other.
Let’s take a deep breath and muscle our way through tonight’s plot. Bradan Craden’s crop-duster crashes into the Broadview Luxury Apartment building and Chuck, Ned and Emerson rush to help and look for the dead. The tenant of the apartment, Conrad survived. But he didn’t. The plane had been hi-jacked by an escaped convict, Lemuel Winegar, who dressed Bradan in his prison garb, posed as Conrad and stuffed the dead Conrad in a trunk. Chuck is taken with Lemuel because she can touch him and imagines he is Ned. Olive Snook is still smitten with Ned and knows Chuck has somehow faked her death so she gets to know Chuck’s Aunt Lillian and Aunt Vivian better to find out more about her competition for Ned’s affections.
You would’ve thought THE UNIT was doing its best HOUSE imitation with the amount of surgical procedures that were performed on this week’s episode, aptly titled “Inside Out.”
Jonas, Mack and Hector were on assignment in Europe, tracking an agent who was in possession of a microchip containing the identities of American operatives who had infiltrated a terrorist network. The only problem was that the chip had been surgically embedded in the agent’s shoulder was programmed with a GPS signal that let the bad guys track its movement. At first the assignment was easy enough: grab the agent, elude the bad guys, cut out the chip (Hector is a doctor apparently) and save the day. However when Jonas saw an opportunity to lure out the leaders of the conspiracy, things got complicated, and messy.