Monday, November 05, 2007 Rant Archive
Danielle had her baby! Lynette beat cancer! Carlos left Edie! Gaby left Victor!
The previews for this week's episode of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES made it look like "the Halloween episode," an excuse to deviate from the set course of all plots and just exist for the sake of fun and holiday spirit. How gratifying, then, that what we actually got was a tour de force episode full of plot development, laughs and even a few touching moments.
The episode began with news that Bob and Lee, the resident gaybors, would be hosting a Halloween party. Judging by their over-the-top lawn decorations, the party was bound to be an affair to remember. Just last week, we learned that the couple spent over 20,000 dollars on an ugly lawn sculpture. This week, their lawn is covered with countless giant pumpkins and expensive-looking Halloween decorations. I'd like to see their annual budget because damn these two like a festive lawn.
And you made it happen!
As you might remember, we here at Criticsrant brought you a scoop a
few weeks back taken from an interview Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had with MTV news, where the former WWE Superstar revealed that he was in talks to play a major role in the upcoming SHAZAM movie. The Rock elaborated that it would be largely up to fans as to whether he would don the red tights of SHAZAM hero Captain Marvel, or the black tights of Captain Marvel nemesis, Black Adam.
UPDATE: the fans have spoken! In a follow-up with
MTV news this past week, The Rock revealed that, due to overwhelming fan response, he would soon sign on as Black Adam, prepared to kick Captain Marvel’s super-powered butt up and down the Egyptian pyramids:
“I sayeth Black Adam as well,” [The Rock] enthusiastically pronounced. “I love that. I love that [fans] were so vocal… I’m meeting with [director] Pete Segal tonight [November 1] and we’re going to talk about it,” he grinned… “Now the goal is just to make a kickass movie, a kickass character.”
The rhetoric of pop culture can make people do crazy things. In 1938, Orson Wells put on a radio show that nearly ended the world. In fact, it was called “War of the Worlds,” and people thought this radio show was real. Imagine millions of people who really believed a show that was meant for their entertainment was a real broadcast about aliens invading Earth. When entertainment strives to be as realistic as possible, it can make some people do insane things. In tonight’s episode of COLD CASE, Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris) and her team get a little taste of the insanity that can be brought on by entertainment, when they investigate the apparent murder of a women who disappeared while trying to outrun those aliens.
This is quit an interesting premise. I mean, COLD CASE isn’t real, it’s a show, and it’s airing an episode about people who died running from the imagined invasion of aliens that came from one of the premiere entertainment artists in modern history, Orson Wells. But, that’s how far TV programming has come. While we should all understand it’s not real, they get some of their best material from real life. Take LAW AND ORDER for example; their tag line is ‘ripped from the headlines.” Pretty much every episode is based on a real life incident. That being said, it is just entertainment. And with COLD CASE, it’s particularly well-done entertainment at that.
As Dexter (Michael C.Hall) furthers his “recovery,” he finds his world crumbling. The walls and foundation of who he is were so carefully crafted by his adoptive father (James Remar) and molded into a set of regulations to point a pathological murderer in the “right” direction. But as the character of Harry slowly erodes, so too does the validity of Harry’s Rules in Dexter’s eyes. Did Harry love his biological mother or was he just using her, “Or me?” Dexter wonders. Did Harry make a monster to exact revenge that was beyond his own ability? And if that is the case, what will Dexter find when he gets to the end of his journey inward.
Dexter’s sponsor, Lila (Jaime Murray), puts it to him thusly, “Plenty of people go through trauma without becoming addicts…Now you get to figure out who you are.”
Yeah, that’s all. And if she didn’t seem so hot and bothered to get him in the sack, maybe this advice would seem more noble and true. What Dexter is discovering is that the world is more complex than simple good and evil. Both can be contained in a singular soul.
The dance with Superstar Special Agent Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine) continues. This week, the Bay Harbor Butcher (Dexter) has a copycat and Lundy calls Dexter to the scene. “If you were the Bay Harbor Butcher, would you use a place like this?” Lundy asks, referencing the abandoned train yard. As the irony and paranoia drip from the screen, there is a delicious feeling that maybe it will get worse for Dexter before it gets better and yet he win still overcome in the end.
Supernatural auteur Guillermo Del Toro (HELLBOY, PANS LABYRINTH) may bring his unique blend of macabre fantasy and stark drama to a film that would be perfectly suited to the style, the seventh and final film in the Harry Potter saga, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.
MTV news recently sat down with the director on the set of the upcoming HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY to discuss his the prospect of his landing the final Potter film. According to Del Toro, the opportunity would be Déjà vu all over again.
“They came to me once, for the third one,” [Del Toro] remembered of THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN. “I’ve read them all, and when I read the books before the movies were done… I saw them as deeper, more creaky, more corroded; then [the stories] were textured very differently when the first two movies came out. They were so bright and happy and full of light, that I wasn’t interested.”
However after seeing the increasingly dark tones of the last few Potter films, Del Toro’s interest in the project has slowly rekindled, leading him to make some not-so-subtle statements about his candidacy for helming DEATHLY HALLOWS.
Damn vampires; no sense of boundaries or letting a guy sleep. That’s probably what Mick (Alex O’Loughlin) is thinking when his buddy Josef (Jason Dohring) starts banging on the lid of his high-tech coffin/freezer and wakes his ass up. Turns out that one of Josef’s on-again, off-again flings has disappeared, and Josef wants Mick to find her. At what is probably the same time, Beth (Sophia Myles) is taking a break from the crime beat and covering a fashion show with as little condescension as she can manage, which isn’t much. Turns out to be lucky for Beth, as one of the models suddenly convulses and drops dead. Is it a crime? According to the cops and lawyers that suddenly show up, that’s a safe bet.
Mick thinks Josef is holding out on him, so he works on his buddy and finds out a few things: the fling, an ancient yet hot vampire named Lola (guest star Holly Valance), stole a cool million from Josef and used it to buy a metric ton of silver, which is kind of like a mortal running out and buying a lot of mustard gas. Spurred on by the model’s death, Beth’s investigation takes her to a hot new nightclub, which features a certain ancient bloodsucker in the VIP lounge. Mick’s investigation, spurred on by Josef, takes him to a bunch of corpses in barrels and an up-close experience with silver. Yes, Mick got screwed on that deal.
It’s one thing to be a predator, but being a serial killer pushes the whole “red in tooth and claw” thing a little far. Being a vampire for any length of time seems to up the odds of tipping from one into another, at least according to MOONLIGHT. After last week’s dinner in the desert, things are a little strained between Beth (Sophia Myles), who seems to be OK with feeding time, and Mick (Alex O’Loughlin), who—judging from the “I’ve been backed into a corner” look he busts out when she’s near—is not. Mick’s been staying clear of her as best he can without shouting it from the rooftops, but after his search for a missing girl intersects with her tracking of a serial killer from the Bay Area, Mick decides reluctantly to team up with her for the search.
Thanks to Mick’s sensitive schnoz, he knows they’re tracking a vampire, but the research he and Beth do lead to them both getting a strange vibe from this dude. There’s a good reason for that: the bloodsucker is a teenager. Stop for a moment and imagine passing eternity as an adolescent. Passing off a failure to age would be tough enough for an adult, but teens can’t blend into society like adults can. Needless to say, this would be a frustrating experience, which would certainly explain some of the more, well, violent marks left on the victims.