Sunday, September 30, 2007

New TV

This weekend was fairly easy going for me, which is a many splendid thing. So I decided I would do a little job research. I have decided that my first foray into the film biz will be through becoming a Production Assistant, or PA. Basically a grunt, but hopfully I'll get noticed and get bumped up quickly. Anyways, I was doing research on the shows filming around here, and these are some of the new ones.

KYLE XY- When I first heard of this show I thought it wouldn't be around for one season. Apparently it's already in it's second, who knew? I started watching an episode last night to see what it was all about, and ended up watching just about both whole seasons. The premise is; A boy wakes up, naked, in the forest, not knowing who, or where he is, no even knowing how to talk. He is arrested for being naked and a kindly psychiatrist takes him in, oh yeah and he dosen't have a belly button... Fairly ho hum premise. It's kind of a Pretender, Dark Angel mixed with a little Smallville and a dash of some highschool drama... say like O.C or something a little less crappy. I guess Smallville is a highschool drama for the most part too.. It's a fun coming of age show, that should do fairly well. I was impressed.

BIONIC WOMAN- Yeah... what's there to say. It's a throwback to the original show from the 70's and I was not so much impressed with this one. It was very... hm.. lame. I gave it a shot though. The premise is, a woman gets into a car accident, and her various body parts get replaced to keep her alive. It was just very tacky. It seemed cheap, used a lot of sub par visual effects, and it had Katee Sackhoff, whom I dislike. It'll stick around for awhile, as it's got large network funding, but I wouldn't look for more than 3 seasons.

FLASH GORDON- I can't believe they haven't canned this show already. It reminds me of classic shows like beastmaster or sinbad. You know, really cheesey, bad guy's in weird costumes bad lazer effects and the like. Yeah. Not cool, not cool. This show shouldn't stick around, and if it does, I'll be weirded out.

So yeah, three shows looked into, one worth chcking out, If you're into the whole scifi teen drama thing. If not, watch 60 minutes or something

Friday, September 21, 2007

The Kingdom

Welcome to the first blog of the rest of your life. We're going to start this film related blog off with a bang.

Being the connected film tycoon that I am, I got into a prescreening of the film "The Kingdom", Peter Berg's new offering. I have been waiting for this film ever since I heard of it's existence. My friends, naysayers that they are, were all telling me I was getting my hopes up for no reason, that it would be a mediocre film at best. My friends are stupid.

The basic concept is that there is a compound of americans that gets bombed in Saudi Arabia, and an American FBI team is sent in to try and find those responsible. With intense results.

It was awesome. I couldn't even believe it. It certainly is not a film for the young or faint of heart, and definatly earns it's R rating for violence. I would argue that that's the power of films like this. It's no longer the cotton candy violence of James Bond, where killing is something you do at the drop of a hat. This film is viceral and messy. You can hardly believe what's happening as the end of the movie approaches. It's killing for a cause, and even so, it holds no glamour, the way it would be in real life, I would imagine.

There are a few spots where this film rings a little hollow; The montage of fathers playing with their children seemed a litttle forced, but it made sence to the plot, so it's a forgivable sin. The magor flaw, as with most studio pictures, is that it couldn't follow through, in a particular case. One of the team is captured, and is giong to be exicuted. They take their sweet time with a video of threats, he fights and breaks free for a bit, and the camera breaks for a second... just long enough for the team to save their comrade's life. How convient. They do kill off another one of the characters, as to not completely sell out, but still, it's kind of lame. But still, over all, this movie was very well done, save for those few little errors.

Jamie Foxx was well cast as was Chris Cooper. Jenn Garner was better than one would think she should be in this film. Jason Bateman as the snarky comedian was a slightly odd casting, but I enjoyed it. He seems kind of like he should be running the Bluth company rather than talking about bombs and shooting guns however. Fun nonetheless. And Tim Macgraw as the distraught husband of a woman killed in the attack was perfect. That man can play a man falling apart at the seams. For instance, Friday Night Lights as the drunken father, which insedently is another Berg film. Go figure..

I highly recommend this film for anyone who likes war/swat ish type films, or middle east political thrillers and isn't squeemish, as the last half hour gets a little intense.

Even my friend who went into the theatre not wanting to like it, loved it. I tink he may even like it more than I did. Go figure.

77%
Go see It!

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Blog power

I don't really feel like posting right now, but this is my new blog on my journey into the film industry, and the industry in Vancouver in general.

Movies are awesome. I like to talk about them. So now this is the best of both worlds.

Peace