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Posts tagged as “Six Feet Under”

Pilots in the Woods

Two actors have finally been cast for the Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard extremely-awaited horror movie inauspiciously entitled “The Cabin in the Woods“.
The two actors I am referring to are Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford, also known as great actors. Just Richard Jenkins’ performances in Six Feet Under or The Visitor show how talented he is. Unfortunately I haven’t seen much of Bradley Whitford’s but a lot of praise was given to The West Wing so I’m sure his work there was tremendous.

You can sense by this casting that this horror film is going to twist the “young people stranded in the woods and scared shitless” movie.

Even Goddard (almost) says so:

It’s really just your basic typecasting: When you need two actors to run through the woods in low-cut nighties, you immediately think of Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford.

The pair should play white-collar co-workers that have a mysterious connection to ‘the cabin’.
I just hope we’re not talking about Jacob’s cabin here.

The movie is set for a Feb. 5, 2010 release with a Spring shoot.

I am really excited about this pic. I like genre-twisting, I love Whedon and Goddard, and both Jenkins as well as Whitford are sublime actors; so this is going to be phenomenal.

FOX has ordered 7 pilots for its pilot slate, including 4 comedies, and 3 dramas.
Let’s take a quick look at them.

For the comedies:
The Station co-produced by Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films, is about a covert CIA operative and his workmates who are embedded in a South American banana republic with a mission to install a new dictator.
That sounds like a prequel to a Fulgencio Batista biopic.
Walorsky revolves around a lazy ex-cop-turned-security guard patrolling a mall in Buffalo, N.Y., and is forced to grudgingly step it up after he is assigned an idiot partner.
Two Dollar Beer centers on a blue-collar couple and their extended family and friends in Detroit.
Sons of Tucson will talk about a charming but misguided hustler hired by three rich young brothers to act as their “father” while their real one serves time for a white-collar crime.
So is that Drillbit Taylor meets daddy-issues?

As for the dramas:
Maggie Hill will be about a brilliant female surgeon who thrives despite enduring adult-onset schizophrenia.
There’s also an untitled reincarnation pilot about ex-investigators using faking the idea of reincarnation to help clients solve mysteries from their past lives in order to resolve their problems in the present.
The Mentalist without the mental in it?
And last but not least we have a 24-companion on our hands with Human Target, based on the DC Comic of the same name. The show centers around a mysterious body guard named Christopher Chance that assumes the identities of his life-threatened clients to become himself the “human target”.

Another great news this morning is the announcement of Michelle Obama’s hairstylist inking a TV deal.
Isn’t that just great.

Why TV is where you must be

Why TV is where you must be

Showrunners and TV writers have never been more talked about than this past year.
The writers’ strike showed the world how vital writers are to the entertainment industry, especially TV.

In TV, writers have control.
In a world were creator-owned content will soon become the norm, having control over one’s creation from beginning to end is important.

Showrunners have become an intricate part of the entertainment industry, multi-tasking in every direction.
Writers have now become prominent A-list figures.

Television is where everything happens.

Nothing is more symbolic of that than the other face of TV: actors.
How many big names have made the jump to TV?
How many no-names became A-listers by doing TV?
Is Jon Hamm on his way to become the next Clooney?

Sure, there isn’t that much money to be made on TV (unless your name is J.J. Abrams or Dick Wolf); especially now that everything is converging into the Internet.
But chances are you’re in this not for the money but for the passion.
You want to make groundbreaking stories.
You want to impact people.
You want to write your vision.

TV has never been as much on the forefront of our society as it is now.
Although total medium convergence is inevitable, for now original Internet content is either taken from TV or at least inspired by TV. And Strike.TV is no different.
The Internet is on its way to produce major content and, yes, 5-10 years from now most people will work in some form on the Internet. But for now, it just doesn’t have the professional clout that TV has.
The content is not yet creator-financed and creator-owned in TV, but it is a medium that uses all the new technology and expands on it: interactive convergence.
Write for the future, not for the past.
But don’t be like Tim Kring who described faithful Heroes TV viewers as “saps” and “dipshits”.
Embrace technology. Humbly.

TV is also the leading writer-based industry.
Don’t take my word for it.
Ask the guy who wrote Story.
Robert McKee himself declared the other day in Paris that Hollywood films are “the death rattle of a dying industry.”
The film industry is probably not going to die tomorrow of course, but still.

Academy Award-winner Alan Ball went to TV after American Beauty because of all the projects that were rejected by movie studios.
He then made Six Feet Under.

Creativeness is nurtured in TV.
New channels are growing every second, producing more and more shows, taking chances on something that only yesterday was thought to be crazy by many networks.
Opportunities are created every second in TV.

Who would have thought 2 years ago that a small basic-cable movie channel was going to make not only one but two innovative shows, let alone one that wins Best Drama?

Television is continuing its momentum thanks to exceptional writing talents.

And this is why Television is where you must be.