Thursday, November 29, 2007 Rant Archive
So in last week’s teaser everyone is in a tizzy because they’re doing a PROJECT RUNWAY first, which I bet you anything is not going to be dressing people like their Dungeons and Dragons avatar. The first thing we’re confronted with this episode is the fact that Jack is HIV positive and never feeling better. Once I was in Las Vegas and this seedy guy buying drinks for my friends and myself said out of nowhere, “AIDS CAN’T EVEN KILL YOU ANYMORE.” I guess he’s right cause Jack’s had the HIV for the past 17 years. Opening the episode with Jack probably means he wins this challenge. Three cheers for the super gay gym bunny and his HIV.
So the big huge deal with this week is that they’re designing men’s wear for Today Show Correspondent and former New York Giant’s running back, Tiki Barber. He says he has a huge ass and wants to have it covered up and that he likes special attention to detail. He talks about his wife and that is suppose to be our cue to realize he is not gay, but complaining about the massiveness of your ass means you’re gay.
Well, kids, although this reviewer has yet to hear anything official, it seems I’m not alone in suspecting that BIONIC WOMAN, the latest reinvention of a 1970s TV show, is circling the drain. Critical buzz from many quarters has been lukewarm at best; even my own generally positive take on the series has been tempered with troubles. Now, with a pair of stories hitting the Web in the last couple of days, the lack of news is taking on an ominous cast for the adventures of Jaime Sommers.
In a
blog entry on the San Jose Mercury News site, TV columnist Charlie McCollum reports his suspicions that the show has run its course. The November 28th episode was the last one completed before the writers’ strike, he says, and while direct evidence is hard to come by, the circumstantial evidence is pretty damning: persistent rumors of strife between cast members, numerous changes in showrunners, and worse of all, general low quality.
Everyone is super excited this week because there’s a special guest judge that’s described as a fashion maven so I m secretly DYING because I know it has to be someone BIGGER than Michael Kors, right? WRONG. This week’s special guest judge is horse faced killer aka. Sarah Jessica Parker. I am thoroughly disappointed and now I need a drink. SJP says she’s looking for a design for her clothing line BITTEN. It must be fashion forward, fun, and have the ability to work on different types of people. Tim Gunn provides the actual challenge. It must also cost less than FIFTEEN DOLLARS and be a two-piece ensemble. After looking at their sketches, SJP picks the seven she believes mesh best with her own vision and then people have to start pairing up. The last person to pick is Elisa the psycho that sews dresses onto her own person and she’s stuck with Sweet P who looks like someone just asked her to drink Jim Jones’s kool-aid.
Interestingly enough, the Elisa/Sweet P pairing works out nicely as Sweet P has something called common sense and can wrangle in the far out ideas of stupid Elisa who I have decided is an idiot savant. The team’s visions go like this:
News hit the web
recently that HBO will be airing new episodes of the fifth and final season of its acclaimed urban drama THE WIRE using the on-demand service, in advance of their standard broadcast. The premiere episode from the fifth season will appear on HBO’s on-demand playlist on December 31, a full week before it airs on January 6. From there on out, each new episode will appear on the on-demand playlist the day after the previous one is broadcast, until the season ends its ten-episode run to bring the series to a close.
Admittedly this is not a new approach for HBO; the fourth season of THE WIRE also featured episodes available on on-demand before they were broadcast. However, the series’ main hurdle has always been that, despite unequaled praise from critics—who often laud it as the best show on television (it’s my personal favorite,)—it has often performed sub-par in the ratings, despite having a fiercely loyal fan base.
In a way, PROJECT RUNWAY has sort of taken a turn for the REAL WORLD reality TV fate due to casting predictability. I’m probably judging really quickly as there are too many contestants to even typecast each of them perfectly yet—let alone tell them apart or remember their stupid names. With that in mind, I guess the best way to go about explaining this week’s episode is to go through a lineup of the 15 contestants flown into New York to do their fancy design stuff and hopefully not get asked to leave the runway by Heidi.
Check inside for the rundown of who will be facing Heidi Klum on the runway, and a review of the first episode of Project Runway: Season Four.
September 12, 2008 will mark the date that the film industry finally tries to do right by a man named Frank Castle—or as you may know him, THE PUNISHER.
After two unsuccessful attempts to bring THE PUNISHER to the big screen in the past, (the 1989 version with Dolph Lundgren, and the 2004 film with Thomas Jane,) WARZONE will try to score with audiences by pitting murderous vigilante Frank Castle (this time played by ROME’s Ray Stevenson) against savage gangster Jigsaw (Dominic West from THE WIRE), an FBI task force, and an army of goons with guns. Hey, sometimes simple is the best way to go.
Will the third time be the charm? Personally I’ve never understood why Hollywood has such a hard time getting these Punisher flicks right. Think about it: 99.9% of action films are just blazing guns and soaring body counts—how do you mess that up when your subject matter is a character whose entire purpose in life is to blaze guns and raise body counts???
Rant back and let us know your theories on the PUNISHER movie conundrum. I’m hoping for the best from WARZONE, but honestly, a September release date is rarely a good look for any movie. Just saying.
I missed stupid Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) last week when I was busy playing Thanksgiving and he was busy not having his show aired. This week writers do not let us down with a fantastic layered storyline. Detective Ames is dead and Internal Affairs has been trying to pin his murder on Charlie. Charlie’s personal investigation into the murders he was convicted of comes into scrutiny when Internal Affairs shows up at his house and starts snooping around. Ted (Adam Arkin) breaks into Charlie’s closet and steals his entire creepy investigation wall saving Charlie from the grips of the EVIL people at Internal Affairs. Now Ted and Charlie are going over some of the evidence when Charlie points out to Ted that the young girl was in the house and managed to live AND she got a good look at the perpetrator. Charlie also takes the photos he has of Dani’s (Sarah Shahi) father, Jack (Victor Rivers) arguing with the recently deceased Det. Ames. Dani eventually tells Charlie that she spent her childhood trying to figure out if her father was just plain mean or a bad guy while saying she knows that Charlie is weird as hell, but he’s definitely a good guy.
News recently hit the web that lovely Hawaiian actress Maggie Q
(LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD) would be joining the cast of
WOLVERINE, the X-MEN prequel movie about the origins of Marvel Comics’ favorite mutant.
Maggie Q is rumored to be playing the role of Silver Fox, a love interest from Wolverine’s past. As the comic book lore goes, for a long time Wolverine believed Fox, his lover, to have been slain by his nemesis, Sabertooth; however this was just one of many false memories, implanted in Wolvy’s mind by the Weapon X program which created him. In reality, Silver Fox was a famed assassin, part of the Weapon X strike team alongside Wolverine in his years before the X-men. Early rumors indicate that the film version of WOLVERINE will loosely adhere to this same storyline.
As of now WOLVERINE is aiming to start production next year (barring in delays caused by the WGA strike,) for a summer 2009 release. It will star Hugh Jackman, and be directed by Gavin Hood (
RENDITION).
The “Go-See” episode on AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL is always one of the tensest. The girls are put in a challenge situation that actually matters; too many appointments, too little time. And to see five designers in five hours or so, all over Shanghai, well, I feel for them. There’s almost no way they can make it in time. It’s not like they can look at a sign to figure out where they are!
Every year at least one girl gets disqualified from the challenge for being late. This year of the five remaining models, a whopping three are eliminated; Jenah (who made it too all the designers I think,) Chantal, and sadly Heather (who got frightfully lost and only saw one designer.) Bianca and Saleisha were the only ones to make it back in time.
Check out these cool pics from the set of the upcoming
WATCHMEN movie, which is currently in production in Vancouver. From what I see, set designers have done a pretty good job of bringing 1980’s New York City to life.
For those outside the circle of the comic book-geek-elite, WATCHMEN was a groundbreaking miniseries from famed comic book auteur Alan Moore (who recently made a rare public appearance on
THE SIMPSONS). The story follows a retired group of super heroes trying to acclimate to their “normal” lives. Mystery ensues, and old secrets resurface when an unknown assassin begins murdering the retired heroes, leaving the last vigilante in America, the enigmatic Rorschach, to track down the Killer. You can actually see Rorschach if you look closely at the photo with the Nixon poster.
WATCHMEN is being helmed by director Zack Snyder (300), it will star Carla Gugino (SIN CITY), Patrick Wilson (LITTLE CHILDREN), Malin Akerman (HEARTBREAK KID), Billy Crudup (BIG FISH), Jeffery Dean Morgan (GREY’S ANATOMY), Matthew Goode (MATCH POINT), and Academy Award Nominee Jackie Earle Haley (LITTLE CHILDREN) as Rorschach.
For now take a gander at the pics and these cool stats about the set design, then rant back and let us know if you’re as giddy about WATCHMEN as we are!
As the narrator (Jim Dale) tells us, Ned (Lee Pace) has learned that, “Happiness borne of passion is short lived.” Despite this he still asks Chuck (Anna Friel) if he is her boyfriend. After much yammering on his part, she agrees that she is. Olive (Kristin Chenoweth) is suddenly swept away with a well fueled anger over being the odd one out. These wounds take time to heal, but keeping with the strange and beautiful turn of this love triangle from two weeks ago, Olive confides in Chuck.
These women don’t need to hate each other. Not when Dilly Balsam (Molly Shannon) moves in across the street to open Balsam’s Bitter Sweets. Her parents died from the bird flu and when she went to confront the avian killers they “Tippi-ed” her “Hedren.” And she survived, only braver, harsher and more ruthless. So why not open a candy shop?