Undecided

Over at paidcontent.org, I found an article indicating that Amazon.com had purchased IMDB a while back and promised to make video available for free online. Well, it’s happened. IMDB now hosts tons of movie and TV database information, and free video.  At least where TV shows are concerned, if they host it, it’s the full episode presented with limited commercial interruptions hosted by Hulu.

Gotta say, it’s pretty astounding the changes going on in the media these days.  Revolutionary, even.  But, if you stop to consider what the Writer’s Strike was all about (royalties for material shown online), I’m glad to see that issue was worked out, because I just might find myself watching less and less programming on the TV and watching more of it on-demand and online.

HBO series True Blood aired last night and after reading the metacritic hype, I’m forced to conclude that when a critic says “sexy” s/he means erotic, that is of course, if (as one critic says) your wheels spin on sex involving vampires or at the thought of being a vampire.   I enjoy the vampire mythology, but parts of the program leave me wondering if I’ll stick with the series.

I would have to agree with the average rating given by Metacritic, 62/100 pretty much spells out how good it is.  Although I have to be honest and say that Premium Programming (i.e., programming on premium cable channels) appeals to me for no other reason than because the language and plots are not dumbed down for the sheeple viewing audience.  I loved (and here is a perfect example of why I need to keep a notebook, because I cannot remember the name of the program, and sadly, it’s not in my blog) Dead Like Me when it aired on SciFi, the first episode was changed and some of the script expanded, especially the opening voice over by Ellen Muth — fantastic!  And yet I found that the occasional curse word added to the show for it’s Premium Channel airing added some spice that made the program even more attractive.

I’m not at all a fan of gratuitous language, sex or violence, but a certain amount of each adds a little realism to the program and helps me suspend my disbelief.  Unfortunately, some of the scenes in True Blood were gratuitous.  And, I found one of the opening scenes introducing a Vampire to the audience to be a but trying.  I think the portrayal of their preternatural abilities is well done on TV, but I dislike the tendancy for some writers to replace to the lateral incisors with canines.  I prefer extending the canines.  Additionally, many of the themes of the TV show have been rehashed numerous times in print, but I struggle to come up with a “Vampires attempting to integrate with mortal society” example that has made it’s way to television.

I plan to give the show a little more time to win my loyalty.  We’ll see how it goes.

Raising the Bar, according to Wikipedia, garnered 7.7 million viewers on it’s series premiere.  It’s easy to understand why with the influence of the recent writer’s strike, America is dying for some original TV this fall.  While a few programs have returned, and some have odd seasons (like Eureka from SciFi which started in July), we’re still waiting for the bulk of our much beloved programming to return.  September marks the start of that with season freshman Raising the Bar which aired along side returning series Prison Break.  Metacritic is where I go for my homogenized reviews and has some excellent quotes about just how bad the program really is.

At this time, Raising the Bar managed a 48/100 from the professional critics and a 1.5/10 from the insignificant number of amature critics/users.

The best review was quoted as:

Good show with fine cast, but it all still feels a little too familiar and old-fashioned.  — Newsday 75/100

My girlfriend said something out of the ordinary for her, and in retrospect, hilarious:  “There are no beautiful people in this cast.”

When you stop to think about it, not a single one of the actors were cast for their striking physical appeal.  This sets the program apart (and above the rest in some respects) for trying to set the stage with ‘ordinary’ looking people, but ordinary is exactly how the program comes across.  Ordinary and contrived.

The first two episodes (I’ve seen the first and the previews for the second, and read the reviews of the second episode) appear to use the same formula:  Defendant on trial, Protagonist Lawyer defending them, Antagonist Judge gets her feelings hurt by the young stud defender, Judge sentences defendant to maximum sentence to teach young stud a lesson, gay clerk for the judge screws judge to get her to be more reasonable.

The martyrd gay clerk (screwing THE (wo)MAN to help his straight friend who keeps running afoul of the judge) was a twist I didn’t see coming, but it’s as contrived as the rest of the show, since we don’t understand why he would do such thing, and what’s more, we don’t understand how the judge can get away with it (violating the rights of defendent and lawyer without reprisal, and engaging in a sexual relationship with a subordinate without consequence) in more than one episode without being turned in to the Bar Association or landing on the front page of the news.

Frankly, I think the whole reason the judge has it out for the young stud lawyer is because she’s got the hots for him and he turned her down (it’s as contrived as the rest of the show and would fit the current theme) so now she’s out to teach him a lesson for spurning her advances.

Needless to say, I won’t be watching this again.

Despite the fact that Riddick is less than a household name, he’s still uber cool.  Vin Diesal seems to agree and has promised that there will not just be one more movie in the series, but two.  The question for him is not if there will be two, but if they will try to film them back to back, “[taking] a page from the ‘Lord of the Rings’ guys”.  Actually, wouldn’t it be more accurate to liken Riddick sequals to the Matrix?  (As I recall, Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions were films simultaneously.)  Although, I do find it amusing that Vin Diesal effectively pronounces that a Chronicles of Riddick trilogy is to Pitch Black what Lord of the Rings is to the Hobbit.

Saw Hellboy 2 yesterday.  I find myself lackluster about it.  It was a good movie, and I think I’d like it for my collection.  I get a kick out of Ron Perlman as an actor, he also had excellent (and attractive) costars.  Unfortunately, I really do not like Guillermo del Toro.  He was also responsible for Pan’s Labyrinth, which I was not fond of.  Amazingly, he was part of Hellboy (the first one) but it looks like someone else co-authored it, which must have been why I liked it.  Likewise, he did Mimic, which was memorable but left much to be desired.