Damages
1x05 A Regular Earl Anthony [2nd watch]
1x06 She Spat at Me [2nd watch]
1x07 We Are Not Animals [2nd watch]
1x08 Blame the Victim [2nd watch]
Tin Man
Part 1 Into the Storm
Sci-Fi's SF/F re-imagining of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, originally shown last December in the US and this May in the UK... but I watched it on a legal download via TV. That works fine, though I swear it was shot for widescreen and presented here in 4:3 (not iTunes' fault, I'm sure). As for the show itself... well...
3 comments:
It improved slightly with the final part, but there was something important lacking overall.
I've no idea whether it was down to the direction or whatever else, but for some reason Zooey Deschanel (who I know can act) came across as being made of cardboard. Blonde Guy was cheesiness personified, and also seemed like the worst actor ever. Only Alan Cumming came out of this with respect levels intact.
If you're only up to part one, I don't know if you've come across the dreadful "jogging-on-the-spot-in-front-of-a-green-screen" yet? *shudders*
Oh God, yes -- lots of jogging at the end of part one. Though I think jogging might be a generous description of how fast they seemed to be going.
Everyone performs really badly in it; I think Alan Cumming only looks good because he wound up with all the good (a term I use here loosely!) dialogue. Blonde Guy has been a lot better elsewhere (Boomtown, for example, which was a great show), and I was also quite startled by how poorly Zooey Deschanel was acting.
It reminded me most of cheap-ish mid-90s cable sci-fi/fantasy; things like Hercules, Xena, or those two-part adaptations that are always on Channel 4 around Christmas (things like The Odyssey, Gulliver's Travels, etc). Considering it was made in 2007, when we have all sorts of sophisticated SF/F dramas with movie-level production, it should've been better.
What's really annoying, though, is that it's not necessarily a bad idea, it's just poorly executed. They seem to have got too caught up on converting the original, bolted on a standard "I am the chosen one / return to original homeland / fight evil same-sex relative" fantasy plot, lost any sense of making it work in its own right, and tossed it out assuming people will watch it. Tsk tsk tsk.
And it was bloody slow too.
But The Odyssey adaptation was good! Mostly...
PS. The word verification for this post was "shcag". Just say it. Shcag. Shcag. Shcag.
Awesome.
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