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Posts tagged as “Lost”

Back in bold

A few NBC news stories surfaced today, such as the networking ordering Madagascar and Monsters vs. Aliens specials from DreamWorks Animation.

NBC will air its “Monsters” half-hour special on Oct. 28, with voices by Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Kiefer Sutherland and Rainn Wilson. “Merry Madagascar” will air Nov. 17, with voices by Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Cedric The Entertainer, Carl Reiner and Andy Richter.

There was also this spec pilot by Felicity’s J.J. Abrams & Josh Reims which got sold to the highest bidder, the peacock. Reims is most known for his work on family-centered dramas such as Brothers & Sisters and Dirty Sexy Money.
The still-untitled show sounds like a Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Series: Spy Edition. Indeed, it centers around two spies, husband and wife. Not much else is known though.

There’s also some business news with Comcast supposedly on the verge of acquiring NBC Universal, even though both parties are currently qualifying these “rumors” as “inaccurate.”

Chez FX, unsurprisingly both Terriers and Lights Out just got their 13-episode series orders.
We’ve already seen what both those series entailed, though if you have a short memory span, just know that the former, by Shawn Ryan and Ted Griffin, stars Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James as an ex-cop and his BFF hot-shot starting their own unlicensed PI business.
As for Lights Out:

[It centers] around a former heavyweight boxing champion with pugilistic dementia (a disorder slowly leading to complete memory loss) struggling to support his family, including his wife, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon. The boxer is also forced to become a debt enforcer.
The pilot was co-written by The Bucket List’s Justin Zackham and Phillip Noyce and the show described as more family-centered à la Sopranos than The Shield.

Holt McCallany plays the leading man, Patrick “Lights” Leary.
Terriers and Lights Out are respectively scheduled for a summer and late 2010 premiere.
By picking up all of its six pilots this season, FX is trying to regain its lost momentum by introducing a new wave of original programming.

In other TV news, Melissa Joan Hart is returning to television (well, besides her dancing with the stars).
ABC Family has greenlit an untitled series by Bob Young & David Kendall, with Joseph Lawrence as a co-star. Joan Hart will play “Hailey, a political dynasty wild child-turned-politician who takes in her teenage niece and pre-adolescent nephew when her sister goes to prison and her brother-in-law flees. She turns for help to Jack (Lawrence), who, desperate for a job, moves in and becomes the family’s many.”

There’s also Spider-Man/Milk/Pineapple Express’ James Franco who is joining for two months the ABC soap drama General Hospital.
What the hell is he doing on a soap? Perhaps the pot finally got to his head.
Also, I thought he was in college. Does he have that much free time? Or does he need money?
Quick, someone give him a loan or something!

And finally, some good news:
Christopher Nolan’s Inception will come out on July 16, 2010 in IMAX!
Hell yes.

FlashForward premiere: See how I (don’t) care

FlashForward premiere: See how I (don’t) care

FlashForward premiere last Thursday at long last.
I’ve been talking about it since last year and read at the time the pilot script. I liked (loved?) it, so, needless to say, I was anxiously waiting for the final result. I wanted to like this series premiere, I really, really wanted to.

And, in the end, I was very disappointed.
Perhaps I expected more from it, but the pilot script delivered, so how come the end result didn’t?
Let’s take a look at the various negative points from the broadcast version.

First, the opening. Okay, I get it, you want to hook the viewer in. But come on, where’s the originality? The opening scene was like a rehash of Lost’s. Even down to the character’s facial expressions!

But one of my biggest quarrel has got to do with the directing. I’m sorry David S. Goyer, but you don’t know how to shoot. What’s up with you zooming in on everything? Did you just discover the “zoom” function on your camcorder?
The same can be said about all the color filters (blue and orange). For a second there I thought I was on a Canadian show.
In reality, the shot of the (real opening) suburban setting, coupled with the lame transition before it (or was that the credits?) were my first clues that I was watching a Lifetime movie of the week.

Another being the scope of the disaster getting neglected altogether. It’s as if no one cares than a billion people died almost instantly! At least with Lost you could feel the mayhem following the plane crash. Here it’s just people going from one point to the next. There’s barely any interaction. Important conversations are discussed casually, and what should be intense emotions or scenes are almost done matter-of-factly.
The chilling “I dreamt there were no more good days” uttered by Charlie Benford was supposed to be a major moment hinting at the chaos ahead. Instead, you have an almost laughable (dare I say clichéd) scene.
There’s just no soul to it, and Goyer doesn’t care. He keeps on moving to the next scene. Hell, even the flash-forward, arguably the most pivotal scene, is supposed to last 2 minutes and 17 seconds, yet on the show it’s barely 50 seconds!
You don’t have time to know the characters either, they’re like zombies. The relationships all fall flat on their faces. The “I hate you” notes left by Olivia to her husband seemed more mean than anything else. You basically don’t feel for the characters. The scene where Bryce Varley is on the verge of killing himself is barely glanced at. I was expecting a better set-up than him randomly walking up to the beach, pulling a gun, and ten seconds later having his flash-forward. That wasn’t what the script called for!
In the script, actual character beats opened and closed the series premiere. The show began and closed with Mark Benford in his daily life. Instead, here we got a wannabe Lost opening and an OMG moment at the end.

Continuing on the Lost comparison, Ramin Djawadi’s music score was pretty generic. I was awaiting a Michael Giacchino-type level of orchestra; all I got were some bland notes.
The VFX were also pretty awful, not even worthy of Battlestar Galactica.


There’s even this out-of-place kangaroo echoing Lost’s polar bear.
You do realize that you don’t need an exotic animal in a random spot to do a good mystery show, right?

Overall, what worked on the page didn’t work on screen.
I don’t blame the writing though, I blame the plain directing and editing.
A two-hour premiere (and a better-suited director!) would probably have given enough time to develop both the story and the characters. Sadly, this wasn’t the case.
Better luck next time.

The MGM ever-delayed debacle: In the jungle, no one can hear you roar

The MGM ever-delayed debacle: In the jungle, no one can hear you roar

So, I was busy writing a blog on another subject which may or may not see the light of day later, and I come across this story, written by Deadline’s Nikki Finke, about how MGM is on the verge of bankruptcy, and has a $4 billion debt to erase. Actually the past 20 years were a bumpy ride for the firm of Leo the Lion (and his family, The Lionhearts. Yes, I did my homework again, but my curiosity knows no bounds.)

So, I’ll do the Cliff’s Notes version, but the firm with the Lion has been passing from owner to owner. First, there was the very Français Pathé Frères, and the French bank Crédit Lyonnais. During their tenure, successful movies like Thelma and Louise were made. There was also businessman Kirk Kerkorian, who owned MGM no less than three times in the span of 20 years, and finally, from 2004 onwards, Sony and several equity partners, trust funds and banks. But during those 7 years, no really successful movies were produced to speak of.

It’s no wonder that MGM has only one remaining viable franchise, and that is the 007 one. The reason why the studio can’t exploit its catalogue is simple: all the pre-1986 classic movies and cartoons like “Tom and Jerry” and the Tex Avery shorts were sold to Ted Turner and Time Warner more than 20 years ago. Sure, MGM bought off other failing studios such as Orion Pictures. But even moderate successes produced by Orion, like the first “Addams Family”, are not their property.

In short: upcoming Blu-Ray restored and remastered editions of “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone With the Wind”, sure to garner profit from movie lovers….won’t be saving MGM, even though it was originally produced by the studio.

So, there it is, folks: a studio with a whopping 4,000 movies in its vaults, produced in-house or by other studios, and unable to exploit them correctly.

In 2006, worldwide distribution for DVD and Blu-Ray reverted to Fox Entertainment. Did you hear about any “special editions” of forgotten movies such as “Heaven’s Gate”, the swan song of Michael Cimino? Neither did I. Oh sure, there was the “Rocky” collection, but nothing really groundbreaking.

Instead…
This is what we get, for example.


Each MGM DVD of “catalogue” has the same tasteless cover art. I know of…hum, heard of adult DVDs that have better design than this.

Sure, the Stargate franchise does well on DVD. And apparently, two movies are on the way (one for SG-1, another for Atlantis), and the premiere of “Stargate Universe” will surely reboot the franchise…once again.
But then, other long-running franchises such as “The Outer Limits” second incarnation have barely been released on DVD, in their unedited, non-syndication form. Nevertheless, they are one of the better-remembered sci-fi series of the 1990s? So…what’s the hold up? Poor sales can be fixed with the right marketing. Why not start producing more TV shows again?

In the past few years, MGM has taken bizarre decisions. It’s not a studio that big, never has been since the 1980s. Under the supervision of Harry Sloan, its biggest recent move was the hiring of Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner to oversee a “reborn” United Artists. To prove his willingness, Cruise starred in the first two movies: one was “Lions for Lambs”, written by Matthew Carnahan and directed by Robert Redford. It was sure Oscar-bait, right? Wrong.


The movie tanked, and the “New York Times” estimated that UA lost $50 million over the promotion of the movie. Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie” fared better, but still underperformed. Now all development at UA seems to have stopped. Bringing over Mary Parent from Universal led to an “ambitious” slate of films, including Drew Goddard’s “Cabin in The Woods” slated for release in 2010. So yeah, the upcoming remake of “Fame” will do well, if not domestically, at least internationally. But bringing in trucks of cash for the studio? Nope!

MGM partnered with, among others, The Weinstein Co. to finance a lot of their recent movies, but it doesn’t even ear n a dime in DVD sales (Harvey and Bob do, through Genius Corp.). So, last month, they brought in turnaround specialist Steven Cooper to oversee a potential restructuring, that, from the look of things, may come sooner rather than later. Steven Cooper worked miracles for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts; will he tidy up the MGM kitchen as well? Compared to Lions Gate, which is a mini-major with Oscar-winning projects (Crash being the most famous), the Lion firm pales. Lions Gate has profitable filmmakers (African-American mogul Tyler Perry), and great cash cows in the Saw franchise, as well as a flourishing TV division, producing Weeds and Mad Men. Why can’t MGM do the same? When DreamWorks severed its ties with Paramount and John Lesher, the president of the studio, got shown the door, his replacement was ordered to put more projects in the pipeline and revive franchises. It shouldn’t be that hard for MGM to follow the same template.

But in order to achieve these things, it seems that time has run out. The goodwill of the shareholders, too.

About the Author: Lordofnoyze