11/17/2009

Blu Tuesday: Star Trek, Fight Club and Rome: The Blu-rays keep on rolling this week with more great titles making their debut. It’s actually gotten to the point where I wish I had more time to write, because there’s too much stuff coming out, especially compared to the last few months. That’s the domino effect of the holidays in full swing, but just because you don’t want to break your bank on all these Blu-rays doesn’t mean you can’t add them to your Christmas wish list.

“Star Trek” (Paramount)

If you were to ask any “Star Trek” fan a few years ago if they thought there would be another movie so soon, they’d probably laugh in your face. That’s because the film franchise was practically DOA until Paramount managed to lure J.J. Abrams into directing an origin story reboot. By introducing a time-traveling villain that allowed him to explore alternate storylines without tainting “Trek” canon, Abrams was able to create a film that appealed to longtime fans and newcomers alike. To say it was a success would be a major understatement, and that carries over to the film’s Blu-ray release as well, which is jam-packed with so many special features you’d swear they were Tribbles. The three-disc set includes everything from an audio commentary and deleted scenes to a whopping ten production featurettes on just about every aspect of the moviemaking process. It’s a great bang for your buck, although Trekkies will no doubt be tempted by Amazon’s limited edition gift set, which includes a replica U.S.S. Enterprise.

“Fight Club” (20th Century Fox)

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been ten years since David Fincher’s “Fight Club” was released, but Fox has made sure that you won’t forget about it any time soon with one of the best Blu-rays of the year. That may sound like a pretty bold statement, but between the new 1080p video transfer and the hours upon hours of special features, it’s one that would be pretty hard to argue against. Not only has Fox included all of the bonus material from the previous DVD releases (including four audio commentaries, deleted scenes, and several production featurettes), but they’ve also added some new extras as well. “A Hit in the Ear” is a cool featurette that allows you to remix four different scenes with the help of sound designer Ren Klyce, while “Flogging Fight Club” offers a behind-the-scenes look at Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and David Fincher’s acceptance speech for the film’s induction into the Guy Movie Hall of Fame. The piece de resistance, however, is “Insomniac Mode: I Am Jack’s Search Index,” an interactive database that allows you to search any part of the disc from a large glossary. This is truly a game-changing addition – especially for movies with as much bonus material as this one.

“Rome: The Complete Series” (HBO)

HBO’s series about the rise of the Roman Empire may not sound very appealing to some, but it’s one of those shows that slowly grows on you the more you watch it. The series only ran for two seasons, but in that time, they managed to cram in a ton of history – from Julius Caesar’s invasion of Gaul to the beginning of Emperor Augustine’s reign – all experienced through the eyes of a pair of Roman soldiers played by Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson. For as great as those characters are, however, the show is truly an ensemble effort, and there’s not a weak performance in the group. It really helps make everything feel more realistic, because while most of the show is based on historical fact, there’s definitely some dramatized fiction in there as well. For those that may have been hesitant about tuning in while it was on TV, you can now experience the entire 22-episode run in a complete series box set that includes hours of bonus material like audio commentaries, production featurettes, and an interactive database highlighting the connections between the various characters.

Also Out This Week:

“Bruno” (Universal)
“The Professional” (Sony)
“Galaxy Quest” (Paramount)
“My Sister’s Keeper” (Warner Bros.)
“Gone with the Wind” (Warner Bros.)
“Kevin Smith Box Set” (Walt Disney)

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8/1/2009

TCA Tour, Day 2: “Spartacus: Blood and Sand”: Back in January, I covered Starz’s panel on their upcoming series, “Spartacus,” and at that time, I freely acknowledged that I didn’t personally have much to say about the show because there wasn’t anything to see. I mean, nothing. All we had to work with were the assurances of the executive producers that it was going to be a hell of a show, which I responded to thusly:

Executive producer Rob Tapert describes it as “our reinterpretation of the famous Stanley Kubrick movie,” calling it “a hard-core, testosterone-driven action drama unlike anything on television right now” and “a totally R-rated, hard, hard show that still has all the things that you need in storylines but that delivers the action component that theatrical audiences expect from their entertainment.” Sounds great…but it would sound a lot more impressive if they actually had anything at all to show us or, indeed, had even cast Spartacus yet.

Well, it’s over six months later, and the premiere is “Spartacus” is still another six months away, but at least we’re finally making some headway. Hell, just hiring some actors would’ve been forward motion from where we were last time, but we actually got to see a clip from the show…and, better yet, it was a kick-ass, completely unedited version that had never been screened for anyone else. So suck it, Comic-Con!

First and foremost, Spartacus will be played by Andy Whitfield, an actor who’s virtually unknown outside of his native Australia (and, to look at his paltry list of credits, possibly isn’t even known very well when he’s at home), with Lucy Lawless and John Hannah playing the owners of a gladiator camp, and Peter Mensah serving as Doctore, a trainer of gladiators.

As you may already know, “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” is going to have a very unique look for television, though it’s similar in appearance and tone, not to mention subject matter, to a certain numerically-named film, a fact which executive producer Rob Tapert tackled headlong.

“Yes, ‘300′ had a particular look and style,” Tapert admitted. “Zack Snyder brought that hyper-realistic style to a period piece, you know. Certainly, ‘Sin City’ prior to that had been all digital backgrounds, and there’s other shows currently on television that have digital background, from ‘Blue’s Clues’ all the way through to ‘Sanctuary.’ So what ‘300′ did so well was make a great deal of money so everyone said, ‘Hey, the audience will accept that,’ and equally the drama played. So it was very easy to point to something and say, well, it worked in that style. Plus, having a digital environment and not having to have ultra-realistic backdrops and an arena like in ‘300,’ or in, like, ‘Gladiator,’ it allowed us to actually bring this to the screen. There was no way to do it without having the artifice, so to speak.”

As Tapert noted last year, this is a reinterpretation of the classic story presented within the 1960 Kubrick film, but there is most definitely a tribute to the man who played that version of Spartacus. At least, I think it’s a tribute.

At first, Tapert was hesitant to speak of it at all, but he finally relented and explained, “There’s a great deal of nudity, both male and female, and some guys are not as well-endowed as other guys, so we had to create the Kirk Douglas, as it was aptly named, so that certain actors would have a prosthetic that they could wear and feel comfortable. Someone lovingly called it the Kirk Douglas,
and the name stuck.”

“That was Erin Cummings, who plays Spartacus’s wife, Sura,” said Ms. Lawless. “She thought she should have the right to name it. That thing gets shared around, though. At the moment it’s pinned to the wall next to all the merkins* in the makeup truck.”

Say, Lucy, about this nudity thing: is that going to include you getting naked?

“I’m afraid so,” she sighed. “Sometimes.”

It hasn’t happened yet, though, and she admits, “I’m kind of praying that day never comes. It’s really stressful. I don’t like it.”

But enough about nudity. (Well, at least for a moment, anyway.) Given their obvious similarities, people have been wondering how “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” will compare to HBO’s “Rome,” specifically if there’ll be room for any drama amongst the action.

“There’s a lot of morality in it and a lot of struggle,” said producer Steven S. DeKnight. “It was a very, very harsh, violent time. Pre-Empire, still, gearing towards the last days of the republic, and every day was a struggle. We don’t get into so much classic Judeo-Christian religion. We do delve more into the religions at the time with the gods, and one of the fascinating things that I found out about with the gods…? It wasn’t worship like we consider worship at all. Most times how they worship is that they would pray for good fortune. It was really, you know, ‘What can you give us? And if you’re not giving me what I need, I must have done something wrong to offend you, so let’s do some sacrifices and clear that up.’ But it wasn’t praying for salvation like we think of it today at all.”

Lawless clarified the vision of the show further, and if I’m to be honest, her statements will probably tempt you more than DeKnight’s.

“There’s a lot of sex and violence in this,” she said. “They don’t run along the same morals as we have. What strikes me, having worked in this and dragging slaves around and behaving a sort of way towards them, is that it’s just a singular lack of empathy. Human beings are just chattel and all about stages, and if you’re at a lower stage, forget about it, I can kill you tomorrow and buy another two of you with my spare change. So it’s really amazing, the high stakes for every slave, every gladiator and even high status people. It’s shocking.”

What’s arguably even more shocking is the trailer to the show, which is filled with more than enough blood, sex, and action to get your pulse racing, and a level of violence that’s liable to leave the more squeamish viewers in a puddle on the floor.

“You know, the initial rollout is to get something out there,” said Tapert, “and Bill Hamm, to his credit convinced his bosses. What you would first say is that it’s a kind of an action show is nowhere on premium cable. Certainly, there are shows that have violence flare up, but what you would consider an action show is still not there. We know, as everybody here knows, that action is just a component that is a tool that allows you to have a resolution happen differently. You still have to have great drama, and so that’s really what’s hiding behind the initial push out there: ‘Hey, this is a show that has action, has blood, has sex, has all of those components that you don’t get on network television shown in a balletic and different way.’ But all of that is just the initial wave, behind which really good drama is awaiting.”

“Spartacus: Blood and Sand” premieres on Starz on January 22, 2010. Mark your calendars now.

* Merkin (mûr’kin), n. A pubic wig for women.

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6/22/2009

“Rome” feature film coming soon?:

In an interview with MovieWeb.com, Ray Stevenson (who played Titus Pullo on the HBO series) confirms that a feature-length script is in full development.

Is the Rome movie still moving ahead?

Ray Stevenson: Apparently so. It is no longer a smoke and mirrors rumor. The script is in full development. As you are probably aware, this is a pretty strange process. We could go into production in a year, or it could be as quick as six months. Who knows? It will happen. At least it is no longer a rumor. From what I have heard, they are nearing the end of script development. We shall see. We shall see.

The second half of the second season of “Rome” was quite rushed, so I’m sure there is plenty of story to cover. This is obviously great news for fans of the series and a good reason for neophytes to pick up the DVD sets to get caught up.

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1/16/2009

TCA Tour, Jan. 2009: “Spartacus”: For as long as this write-up may be, I don’t personally have a whole lot to say about Starz’s “Spartacus,” mostly because Starz didn’t have a whole lot to offer up about “Spartacus” except a lot of talk from the show’s creative team.

Executive producer Rob Tapert describes it as “our reinterpretation of the famous Stanley Kubrick movie,” calling it “a hard-core, testosterone-driven action drama unlike anything on television right now” and “a totally R-rated, hard, hard show that still has all the things that you need in storylines but that delivers the action component that theatrical audiences expect from their entertainment.” Sounds great…but it would sound a lot more impressive if they actually had anything at all to show us or, indeed, had even cast Spartacus yet.

“Goddammit, I said I’M Spartacus!”

Granted, it’s promising that the show is being produced by Tapert and his longtime associate, Sam Raimi, and to have Steven S. DeKnight as head writer and show-runner is certainly good news for those who’ve followed his work on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” and “Smallville.” (He’s also a major player in Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse.”) But you’d be a fool to be but so optimistic when you’ve not seen a single frame of the series, and the fact that it’s going to be extremely CGI-heavy makes me a little nervous, but here are a few quotes from the creative team to help get your hopes up.

SEX AND VIOLENCE:

“It was a brutal, brutal time in history where the Roman society was taught not to shy away from blood and violence. It was part of being a man. You had to prove yourself with the military basically to climb up the political class system, and these gladiator fights could be incredibly brutal. I mean, it was guys going at each other with swords and tridents and various weapons. So we are not shying away from that element. We are embracing the brutality of the fights. The sexuality of the times…it was a very different kind of sexual feeling, particularly with the slave class, where it was completely acceptable to have sex with your slaves, even inside of a marriage. Usually it was fine for a man to have sex with female slaves and sometimes the male slaves. It was a little bit trickier for the woman, but we don’t want to shy away from either the violence or the sexuality of the period. We’re trying not to put it on screen just because we can. We want it to come from the story that if this story leads us to an extremely violent incident, we want to be able to show it and the same thing sexually.” (Steven S. DeKnight)

STAND-ALONE EPISODES VS. STORY ARCS:

“Each season will have its arc. Within that, within the arc, episodes will have a beginning, middle and end, not necessarily your complete move away from the main story and have it a completely self-contained story, but there will be beginnings, middles, and ends of each episode under the umbrella of a bigger arc.” (Steven S. DeKnight)

“It will allow people who don’t watch it every single week to watch an episode and feel like they’re not lost at the beginning and they have a complete entertainment experience within that hour. I love serialization, I love the ability to tell that, but that said, within an hour, I like to have a beginning, middle, and end to the entertainment experience.” (Rob Tapert)

THE CHARACTERS:

“We are adding characters (that weren’t in the movie). We’re fleshing it out. There will be the main characters. There will be Spartacus, the owner of the school Batiatus. There will be the other two main gladiators Crixus and Oenomaus. Along with this we are creating new characters to fill out the ranks. There will be other gladiators. We’re giving Batiatus a wife. There will be a bunch of new characters. Within most of them, we’re pulling from usually a composite of actual historical characters or our best guess or suggestions from our historical consultants. You will see Crassus. You will see Glaber at some point.” (Steven S. DeKnight)

THE INEVITABLE “ROME” COMPARISONS

“I love the HBO series. I watched it. I wish that it had delivered more testosterone for me. It was pretty darn historically accurate, and we feel like “Rome” was its own show and this is a very different stylistic approach to the same material…or to historical material that has nothing to do with that. We’re a green screen show. We’ll never go outside. We’re not building Rome. We’re building Rome in 3-D models basically or Capua in this particular case. So it’s a different take and a different presentation of a historical event.” (Rob Tapert)

“I absolutely loved ‘Rome.’ But I think if you want to encapsulate more towards what this show is, there’s a gladiator fight in ‘Rome.’ I believe it was in Season 1 that actually I leaped off my couch when I saw it. And I think that’s closer to what the essence of this show is. And just speaking towards Crassus, Crassus, oddly, historically was not gay. He had a wife and kids and an entire family. But there will definitely be gay characters on the show, and relationships.” (Steven S. DeKnight)

ON THE CGI LOOK OF THE SHOW:

“It’s not going to be super monochromatic like a ‘Sin City’ or a ‘Spirit,’ nor is it going to be totally like the action scenes within ‘300.’ The stylization will come in the action scenes and the portrayal of violence. Once you get into Batiatus’s bedroom or into the school itself, it will have a design and a look that is slightly stylized, but no more so than a modern-day feature film. When you think of ‘300,’ there were a lot of scenes away from the action that took place just in him sleeping with his wife, or back in the Senate, or within the house, or within the garden at the beginning. Those were effected in the post-production process, but they actually weren’t special effects. There was no CGI. So we will make sure that the process serves the storytelling and not the other way around.” (Rob Tapert)

ON CASTING SPARTACUS:

“We are having a worldwide search for the role of Spartacus. We have our eyes on certain other characters, No. 2 through 13 on the call sheet, so to speak. So there are some people that we have in mind or that we’ve seen that we like for some parts. Percentage-wise, I don’t know where people are coming from, but I’m going to guess the bulk of the cast will come from outside of New Zealand, for a whole host of reasons. So we are actively looking. We have casting directors kind of everywhere, and we’re right dead smack in the middle of that. Ultimately, we want somebody who is an undiscovered action star. And when I think of the Daniel Craigs and the Viggos and Russell Crowe and all these characters, there aren’t many recently that have been Midwest American boys. We don’t know, and we’ll take them where we find them. But just if you were a betting man, it seems like history recently has shown that these heroic arc types come from somewhere else, but we certainly wouldn’t close a single door, and we’re looking here (in Los Angeles) and in New York and everywhere we can.” (Rob Tapert)

“Spartacus” premieres on Starz in the summer of 2009.

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9/23/2008

Greetings to the New Show: “The Mentalist”: I believe I put this out there in another post, but I think it bears repeating: “The Mentalist” is the new series that my mother-in-law is the most excited about. I can appreciate where she’s coming from. I’m pretty excited about it, too. Mind you, my reasons are different than hers – I love the concept, she thinks the show’s star, Simon Baker, is hot (and has apparently felt this way since he starred in “The Guardian”) – but, still, it means that I can count on her getting excited when I get an advance screener of any future episodes of the series.

In “The Mentalist,” Baker plays the title character. His name is Patrick Jane, and he’s an independent consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI) who has a remarkable track record for solving serious crimes by using his razor sharp skills of observation…not that that’s a direct quote from the CBS press release or anything. Jane is a guy who knows how profound his abilities are, and it shows in his every word and deed when he’s on a case.

We get an example of his trademark confidence (or possibly hubris) in the first minutes of the first episode as we watch him walk into the home of a murder victim, brew a pot of tea, and make himself a sandwich. It isn’t until the kettle whistles that the victim’s mother even knows he’s there, but he quickly offers her a cuppa and, after demonstrating his powers of observation, says with a sly smile, “I used to make a good living pretending to be a psychic. I tell you this because I want you to understand that there’s no point in hiding things from me.” After a brief conversation with the missus, he then greets the child’s father by identifying himself as being with the police, adding with no further preface, “Did you murder your daughter?”

I won’t tell you how the rest of the scene plays out, but it’s a testament to Baker’s charisma that his last line – “Honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks” – earns a laugh.

When “Psych” premiered on the USA Network, I was – pun intended – psyched about its premise. I love the idea of a guy who’s so trained his skills of observation that he can actually pose as a psychic and get away with it, but for the most part, I find James Roday’s smarmy performance in that show to be downright obnoxious. (Sorry, JT.) So when I heard that CBS had a new show in their line-up that was playing more or less on the same concept, I kept my fingers crossed that it would pan out better. Now, normally, I’d loudly proclaim, “Behold the power of crossed fingers,” but given that “The Mentalist” was spearheaded by Bruno Heller, best known as one of the co-creators of HBO’s “Rome,” there was always a better-than-average chance that this show was going to turn out really, really well.

Though Jane acknowledges his charlatan-psychic past right up front, we also get a few full-fledged flashbacks to this time in his life, where the resemblance to John Edward (”Crossing Over with…”) is possibly not coincidental. Even during that era, however, Jane was already easing his way into a position with the police department due to his work in pursuing a serial killer known only as Red John. Shortly after the events at the beginning of the episode, however, a possible new Red John case shows up, and Jane quickly weasels his way into the investigation, despite the protestations of Senior Agent Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney), in order to confirm that it is indeed the work of his old nemesis.

(I’d guess the CBS publicist handling “The Mentalist” was up late on Sunday night, adjusting all applicable press releases in order to promote the premiere of “The Mentalist” as guest-starring Emmy-winning actor Željko Ivanek, who turns up as part of the case surrounding this particular murder.)

The relationship between Jane and Lisbon is one which I suspect will earn Heller plenty of battles with the network. I can’t imagine he has any interest in going down the obvious road of having them give into the obvious sexual tension between them, and yet I can imagine the folks at CBS pitching that particular plot point every other week until he gives in.

Be strong, Bruno. Be strong.

Beyond Lisbon, we don’t really learn a great deal about the other agents who it appears will be working regularly with Jane – Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman), Kimball Cho (Tim Kang), and Grace Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) – except that Grace is rather religious, a trait which Jane absolutely does not share, and that Kimball is close enough to Jane that, when the new Red John case turns up, Kimball pointedly calls Jane to let him know about it, even though he knows that it’s really gonna piss Lisbon off.

It’s hard to watch “The Mentalist” and not immediately be reminded of NBC’s “Life,” another series about a detective with a unique methodology who’s teamed with a female partner who doesn’t really get what he’s all about. The big difference – at least between the debut episodes for the two shows, anyway – is that Charlie Crews initially came off as desperately quirky and not particularly endearing, while Patrick Jane is suave, debonair, and…holy crap, do I have a man-crush on Simon Baker?

You know, it’s very possible that I might.

I never watched “The Guardian,” and even though I’ve seen some of the movies he’s been in (”Land of the Dead,” “The Ring Two,” “The Devil Wears Prada”), I guess he didn’t make much of an impression on me in any of them, since I didn’t recognize him, but based on his role here, the guy’s definitely got that “men want to be him and women want to sleep with him” thing that Sean Connery had back in his James Bond days. The character of Patrick Jane is intelligent and egotistical, a guy who likes to take information that he’s discovered and use it to play games with the people who he’s deduced to be guilty. He’s a guy who does things his way mostly just to amuse himself, other people’s feelings be damned (making comparisons to a certain Vicodin-addicted doctor not inappropriate), and you can only imagine how poorly things could’ve gone if someone less charismatic than Baker had been cast in the role, but he successfully manages to make Jane more likeable than asshole-ish.

If CBS goes out of their way to promote this series to both men and women rather than taking the easy way out by focusing solely on the latter, then “The Mentalist” could be the network’s biggest hit of the new season…and, frankly, it couldn’t go to a more deserving candidate.

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