watchin' the detectives....
Catching up on the boob tube:
NCIS, since I suppose it's okay to talk about it now in this space... Did I watch episodes out of order or something? Because you guys were all kvetching about the most recent episode and I thought it was an improvement over the previous one. It wasn't an awesome episode by any stretch, although I have an admitted soft spot for any episode with Franks, but it beat the pants off of the wall-to-wall are you kidding me? the week before with the ring and the boyfriend and the crazy secretary and the passive-aggressive weepy daughter. Seriously -- that episode was miserable. This one was just... they had a workable-if-tired idea for the crime arc, but then they tried to give it a little flavor at the end and they ended up adding crack instead of salt. It was an honest mistake -- little white rock crystals, that's what you get when you share a kitchen with CSI:NY, etc... And they corrected quickly and it didn't end awfully (although it would've ended less awfully if they'd trimmed Vance's Speech of Expository Doom down a little). In short, it was not awesomesauce, but it was edible.
Dollhouse... I was not blown away. I am going to give it another week because I know that this was the tacked-on pilot they made Whedon write because they thought his original pilot was too in media res, but... some of my problems are not because this wasn't snappy and sharp. (And it wasn't. It was clunky in the introduction of both concept and characters.) I think I'm going to have the same issues I had with Alias -- you put an amazingly hot babe as your uber-competent jack-of-all-trades (and Eliza Dushku is eons hotter than Jennifer Garner), you have a really hard time selling her as anything other than the really hot babe. And Whedon knows this and tried reverse psychology -- there was a whole scenelet with Echo/Whedon telling us that her being really hot didn't matter. But it totally does, both within the scene and in the meta sense. So you're either going to have to use her awesome hotness as part of the 'active' personality, which sort of limits what you can do with her outside of 'sex toy', or it requires an extra level of suspension of disbelief that nobody Echo interacts with is going to realize how hot she is. Or else she has to have the same tell-not-show conversation every time to explain that no, it really doesn't matter that she's awesomely hot.
And speaking of people who can be anyone you need them to be... they're making another go at Human Target. And it's got Mark Valley in it, whom I have never seen in anything except the first five minutes of Fringe (which I then turned off because the ghost plane freaked me the hell out). But years and years ago, smittywing decided that he could be a future version of Reletti, so I'm fond of him by proxy. (Although I don't know that Reletti would be so happy to be played by a West Point grad.) Also, it's Human Target, which was a fabulous mini by Peter Milligan and a less-than-fabulous couple of episodes of television with Rick Springfield and I will dutifully throw my support behind it.
And speaking of remakes... The Taking of Pelham 123. I have affection for the original movie because it's a NYC subway movie and also I commuted on the 6 train (the Pelham train, for you out of towners) for years. And now they're remaking it with John Travolta and Denzel Washington and I was all prepared to be Really Really Annoyed (and Really Really Skeptical, because, like the Bourne novels, technology and time have rendered the originals profoundly dated). Denzel just can't do cynical and worn (certainly not like Walter Matthau) -- he just gets chubby-and-noble instead of toned-and-heroic -- and Travolta... Broken Arrow and Swordfish, anyone? He's been here before. Hell, he's even got that speech at the start of Swordfish about the hostages... But the trailer doesn't suck. (Watch it in high quality.) And it was shot in NYC, so there's a chance it will look real to anyone with a Metrocard. And so now I'm... cautiously hoping it won't suck.
Totally random bleg: does anyone have Peter Schilling's "Terra Titanic" in English? I have the German original, but the English version is what is stuck in my head...
NCIS, since I suppose it's okay to talk about it now in this space... Did I watch episodes out of order or something? Because you guys were all kvetching about the most recent episode and I thought it was an improvement over the previous one. It wasn't an awesome episode by any stretch, although I have an admitted soft spot for any episode with Franks, but it beat the pants off of the wall-to-wall are you kidding me? the week before with the ring and the boyfriend and the crazy secretary and the passive-aggressive weepy daughter. Seriously -- that episode was miserable. This one was just... they had a workable-if-tired idea for the crime arc, but then they tried to give it a little flavor at the end and they ended up adding crack instead of salt. It was an honest mistake -- little white rock crystals, that's what you get when you share a kitchen with CSI:NY, etc... And they corrected quickly and it didn't end awfully (although it would've ended less awfully if they'd trimmed Vance's Speech of Expository Doom down a little). In short, it was not awesomesauce, but it was edible.
Dollhouse... I was not blown away. I am going to give it another week because I know that this was the tacked-on pilot they made Whedon write because they thought his original pilot was too in media res, but... some of my problems are not because this wasn't snappy and sharp. (And it wasn't. It was clunky in the introduction of both concept and characters.) I think I'm going to have the same issues I had with Alias -- you put an amazingly hot babe as your uber-competent jack-of-all-trades (and Eliza Dushku is eons hotter than Jennifer Garner), you have a really hard time selling her as anything other than the really hot babe. And Whedon knows this and tried reverse psychology -- there was a whole scenelet with Echo/Whedon telling us that her being really hot didn't matter. But it totally does, both within the scene and in the meta sense. So you're either going to have to use her awesome hotness as part of the 'active' personality, which sort of limits what you can do with her outside of 'sex toy', or it requires an extra level of suspension of disbelief that nobody Echo interacts with is going to realize how hot she is. Or else she has to have the same tell-not-show conversation every time to explain that no, it really doesn't matter that she's awesomely hot.
And speaking of people who can be anyone you need them to be... they're making another go at Human Target. And it's got Mark Valley in it, whom I have never seen in anything except the first five minutes of Fringe (which I then turned off because the ghost plane freaked me the hell out). But years and years ago, smittywing decided that he could be a future version of Reletti, so I'm fond of him by proxy. (Although I don't know that Reletti would be so happy to be played by a West Point grad.) Also, it's Human Target, which was a fabulous mini by Peter Milligan and a less-than-fabulous couple of episodes of television with Rick Springfield and I will dutifully throw my support behind it.
And speaking of remakes... The Taking of Pelham 123. I have affection for the original movie because it's a NYC subway movie and also I commuted on the 6 train (the Pelham train, for you out of towners) for years. And now they're remaking it with John Travolta and Denzel Washington and I was all prepared to be Really Really Annoyed (and Really Really Skeptical, because, like the Bourne novels, technology and time have rendered the originals profoundly dated). Denzel just can't do cynical and worn (certainly not like Walter Matthau) -- he just gets chubby-and-noble instead of toned-and-heroic -- and Travolta... Broken Arrow and Swordfish, anyone? He's been here before. Hell, he's even got that speech at the start of Swordfish about the hostages... But the trailer doesn't suck. (Watch it in high quality.) And it was shot in NYC, so there's a chance it will look real to anyone with a Metrocard. And so now I'm... cautiously hoping it won't suck.
Totally random bleg: does anyone have Peter Schilling's "Terra Titanic" in English? I have the German original, but the English version is what is stuck in my head...