Geek seems to be chic this season on television. Inspired by the success of shows like Lost, Heroes and Battlestar Galactica the networks are creating shows directly at what they see as the “geek market” I assume. Two shows that fit this trend and are premiering this season are NBC’s Chuck and The CW’s Reaper. After viewing the pilots for each you have to wonder if the writers were sharing notes.

First, lets look at Chuck. The show’s title character is the employee of an obvious Best Buy pastiche called Buymore and works for the Nerd Herd (read Geek Squad). He lives with his sister and her husband and of course has a wacky slacker best friend. The “sell” of the series is that his college roomate, who is now a super secret agent, downloads all the information from a database used jointly by the NSA and FBI. Now that he’s gone rogue he’s targeted by both agencies and with his dying strength sends the files to Chuck’s email. Chuck views them (they’re a series of images encoded with the information) and finds he can recall sensitive national security info. Eventually both agencies send assassins but agem Sarah Walker discovers a sweet spot for him and negotiates a way for him to live in the outside world but use his knowledge to help from time to time.

My biggest problem with this show was the lack of genuine geekspeak. The characters are quick to talk about playing video games all night and computer programming, etc. but it comes off as very forced dialogue and very false. The show was created by the creator of The OC who included some geek stuff in that series via the character Seth which also always struck me as disingenious. Its the same here especially with the Nerd Herd. This is an obvious parody of the Geek Squad at Best Buy except for one thing. The real Geek Squad doesn’t know jack about computers. They’re usually teenagers or college students who just get assigned because they know a little more than the average employee. That aspect of the show, the Buy More store made me wonder if Best Buy wasn’t subsidising this series. I also wondered how Chuck’s email account could hold the entire NSA/CIA database and that it was sent so quickly. Definitely not a show that had me jazzed.

Then there’s Reaper, the series produced by Kevin Smith. There’s an extreme Buffy vibe here which I’m sure is intentional. There’s a big fan base for that series and you’d be crazy not to try and rope them in. Reaper focuses on Sam, a young man just turning 21 and working a dead end job at a Home Depot pastiche. He lives with his parents and had a wacky best friend…wait a minute, this sounds familiar. The sell for this series is that before Sam was born his father sold the soul of any future first born son to the Devil in an effort to save his dying wife’s life. His wife was cured and through an accident they had Sam. Now Sam is visited by the Devil and told his job will be to capture souls who have escaped from Hell. So Sam and his best friend suit up and start hunting these devils down.

The show is an obvious take off on Ghostbusters straight down to the jumpsuits worn by Sam and his buddy. I liked this pilot much better than Chuck because the geekspeak seemed a lot more real. They didn’t strain to drop references and it flowed very well. One of my fears is that this first episode was so good because it was the origin story, much like the first Spider-Man film compared to the sequels. There’s something special about the story of a hero’s discovery. However, I think this show could slip into a Monster of the Week scenario becoming increasingly uninteresting. The saving grace of the show, hands down, is Ray Wise as the Devil. Wise played the role of Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks way back in 1990 and its a treat to see him on tv again. He plays the Devil as such a charmer and it totally works. The more of him on the screen the better.

My final verdict after the pilots is Reaper is a tad better than Chuck. I don’t see either show lasting very long because they don’t seem to have anything to pull me in quite yet. It can be argued that the first episode of Heroes was also light on big stuff so I’ll give both shows time to develop and grow.

So the second chapter in the Heroes saga began Monday night. The series continues to follow the comic book mold by leaping four months ahead of the season one finale. This sort of device was employed by DC Comics last spring as all their titles were under the banner of One Year Later. This literary device can prove very effective because it takes our characters to a new place quickly and also creates some mysteries about what happened in that lost time. The premiere of Heroes definitely threw the viewers for a loop by putting many of its characters in new situations and surprising us quite a bit. Beware! Spoilers beyond this point.

First, lets look at the new characters introduced. There’s the Herrara twins; Alejandro and Maya. They’re being pursued by Dominican authorities for murder though it looks like the mysterious nature of their powers is responsible. The premiere pretty much showed that as long as they are in close proximity to each other their power is dormant and it also looked like Maya bears the brunt of the power. Her victims appeared to be bleeding from their eyes so whatever it is she does its quite gruesome. It also looked like the twins had a copy of Soresh’s father’s book so I see them coming in contact with Soresh at some point. Then there’s Tekezo Kensei, Hiro’s childhood idol who turns out to be a con man from the British Isles. Kensei bore the strange S symbol that was seen throughout season one on his banner. That coupled with the strange eclipse makes me think Kensei has some power he haven’t yet seen. It also looks like Hiro has messed with time by changing the events of the stories he’d been told.

Our returning characters from season one are also in some interesting spots. The Butler (formerly Bennett) family is in California. Claire is told to be invisible which she already seems to be failing at and she’s also found a way to keep in touch with her biological father, the not dead Nathan Petrelli. I enjoyed the sequences with her father at his Kinko’s-type job, sort of a humilating place for him but a price he’s paying for protecting his family. I was interested in seeing that Parkman and Soresh were living in New York and taking care of Molly Walker. I’m very interested in finding out who the evil figure is Molly glances in her dreams. It also seems like something interesting happened in the sky after Nathan flew Peter away before he exploded. This begs the question did Nathan see Peter die? Also, how did Claire get back into contact with Nathan after that event? The biggest moment came with the death of Kaito Nakamura, Hiro’s father. He received the picture of himself, which I think was taken from a group photo, bearing the S mark and was subsequently pushed off the roof of the Deveaux building. My feeling is that we know Kaito, Angela Petrelli, Linderman, and Deveaux were organized as some sort of group in the past so there are stories about what this group did and enemies that they made. I would guarantee Mrs. Petrelli will be receiving one of these death threats soon. The biggest twist was Peter Petrelli being discovered in a storage container in Ireland, begging the questions “how long has he been there?” and “why can’t he remember who he is?”

Overall, this looks like a great start to the second season. There’s already plenty of new mysteries to explore. We still haven’t heard from Nikki yet so I’m sure there’s something there. There’s also two more new characters to be introduced this season including Veronica Mars’ Kristen Bell. Looks like we’re in for some fun this season.

Just doing some housekeeping here:

As for the Tell Me What To Read Results (also posted on Livejournal and Facebook) it looks like Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro won. Will be getting the review on here as soon as I finish it.

Also, with this week being premiere week on television I’ll be looking at some returning shows and the first episodes of the new ones. The shows I’ll be reviewing will be:

Heroes, Bionic Woman, Reaper, Kid Nation, Chuck, Journeyman, The Office, and Family Guy. I also hope to write some time this week about the new seasons of two great Adult Swim series; Frisky Dingo and Lucy, The Daughter of the Devil.

Keep an eye out!

I’ve been waiting for director Richard Kelly’s follow up to Donnie Darko since I first heard about it in 2004. Kelly billed it as a sci-fi action comedy musical and claimed Andy Warhol and Philip K. Dick as influences. In intereviews he said the script had been written pre-9/11 as a parody of the Hollywood system but in the wake of that event an the Patriot Act it began to evolve into a commentary on the surveillance culture we live in now. Take a look at the trailer below:

The cast stood out as one that wouldn’t normally draw me to a film. According to IMDb here’s just sampling of who’s in this: The Rock, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, John Larroquette, Kevin Smith, Cheri O’Teri, Horatio Sanz, and many more faces you’ll recognize. The film got a standing boo at the Venice Film Festival last year and Kelly has since gone back and made edits that knocked 25 minutes off the original 3 hour runtime. The same thing happened to Donnie Darko and as a result the theatrical cut seems to do a better job than the director’s cut. No matter the quality of the acting and script it definitely looks to be a very strange and unique film

At the start of the year the death of a beloved American comic book icon got a lot of press coverage. It was the death of Captain America, a figurehead in the comics world since his creation in 1941. But this was just the beginning of new chapter with the series still continuing after his death in #25. There’s a lot of players involved in this storyline and they all have an interest in control of a possible new Captain America.

First, lets look at the events surrounding his assassination. It was the aftermath of the Marvel comics event Civil War. The U.S. government had decided after years of civilian deaths and private property destruction that those people with powers should have to be registered and enrolled into programs where they would either learn how to control their powers or be kept locked up. Cap rebelled against this while his former friend Tony Stark aka Iron Man became the chief proponent of the registration act. A great battle occured with heroes against heroes and in the end it was Cap, looking around and see the death and destruction caused by the fight, who turned himself over to authorities to end it. He was being escorted into the courthouse in New York City by agents of SHIELD (the top level governmental security force in Marvel) when a sniper hit him from a building across the street. This wasn’t the shot that killed him though. His on-again-off-again paramour Sharon Carter was one of the agents escorting him. She heard a signal word in her head and shot Cap point blank in the stomach. Because of the chaos caused by the sniper’s bullet no one notice, not even Sharon. Instead she began to remember it is bursts of images in the following days.

Also present was Cap’s former sidekick from the 1940s, Bucky Barnes. He was presumed dead during the final days of the war but had been taken by Soviet scientists and turned into a killing machine by them. It has only been in the last year that Cap discovered that the super soldier calling  himself The Winter Soldier was Bucky. In the sky was another of Cap’s ex-partners The Falcon. Both men have taken a strong interest in tracking down Cap’s killers. The identity of the hand behind the killing has not been kept secret from the readers. It’s Cap’s long time arch-enemy The Red Skull. The Winter Soldier put these pieces together and last week in #30 he tracked down Red Skull and confronted him. The battle was cut short when Red Skull uttered one word: “Sputik”. This turned out to be a word the Soviets had programmed into Winter Soldier as a shutdown command. It was also revealed in this issue that Sharon Carter is pregnant with Cap’s child and that Iron Man was sent a post-mortem letter by Cap stating that there needs to be new Cap and that Iron Man’s top prioroty is saving Bucky.

Writer Ed Brubaker has been raising his stock since he started getting top tier writing chores. He delivered an amazing run on Daredevil as well as Batman. His forte seems to be the more grounded heroes. He’s not going for the “out there” cosmic material but stories involving an element of crime and heroes who push their physical limits. There’s definitely pieces of the fantastic in his writing with the flamboyance of the Red Skull and the impossible technology of SHIELD but there’s a bigger emphasis on the characters. Steve Epting’s art is not something that would normally pop out to me but it’s a very dark, fluid style that is a perfect match for this book. It’s always a treat when you have a writer/artist team that click like this. Definitely one of the best books out there. Rare that a comic that no longer features its title character can be said to be so good.

So I’m trying to figure out what book to read next and once read I’ll post my thoughts about. However, I can’t decide so I’m wanting you to decide for me. Here’s the three I’m eyeing with basic plot descriptions. Just reply to this with a comment with the title of which you think I should read. I’ll give this about a week and whichever one has the most I’ll read and report back to ya about:

Brooklyn Follies/Paul Auster
The 60-year-old Nathan Glass returns to Brooklyn after his wife has left him. He is recovering from lung cancer and is looking for a quiet place to die. In Brooklyn he meets his nephew, Tom, whom he has not seen in several years. Tom has seemingly given up on life and has resigned himself to a string of meaningless jobs as he waits for his life to change. They develop a close friendship, entertaining each other in their misery, as they both try to avoid taking part in life.

When Lucy, a little girl who refuses to speak, comes into their lives there is suddenly a bridge between their past and their future that offers both Tom and Nathan some form of redemption.

Never Let You Go/Kazuo Ishiguro
The novel describes the childhood of Kathy H., a young woman of about 30, focusing at first on her youth at an unusual boarding school and eventually, her adult life. The story takes place in a dystopian late 20th century Britain, in which human beings are cloned to provide donor organs for transplants. Kathy and her classmates have been created to be donors, though temporarily, the adult Kathy is working as a “carer,” someone who supports and comforts donors as they are made to give up their organs and, eventually, submit to death.
The Road/Cormac McCarthy
The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together for many months across a post-apocalyptic landscape, several years after a great cataclysm (which, although unspecified, has some of the earmarks of a nuclear holocaust) has destroyed civilization and most life on earth. What is left of humanity now consists largely of bands of cannibals and their prey, refugees who scavenge for canned food or other surviving foodstuffs. In imagery similar to prospective accounts of “nuclear winter,” ash covers the surface of the earth; in the atmosphere, it obscures the sun and moon, and the two travelers breathe through improvised masks to filter it out. Plants and animals are apparently all dead (dead wood for fuel is plentiful), and the rivers and oceans are seemingly empty of life.

Science fiction is a messy genre. Much like comics, its become hemmed in by the public as escapist fare. When you think sci-fi images of Star Wars, Star Trek, and convention centers full of awkward costumed pubescent males come to mind. The Hollywood studios seem to be stuck in that mindset as well putting out pastiches of the previously mentioned franchises. For the well-read science fiction fan, its easy to tell the space opera/blockbuster is merely one sub-genre of science fiction. There’s some very profound philosophical and metaphysical sci-fi out there as well and it seems to have not gotten its due. Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain is a great example of something following in the footsteps of writers like Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury and a definite successor to Kubrick’s 2001. Despite these roots, The Fountain was not well-received by the audiences and many of the critics.

The problem with The Fountain is that it’s going back to a style of filmmaking that modern audiences aren’t used to, and are in fact trained not to understand. Now, this could easily turn into me railing against what I see as the dumbing down of audiences but I’m going to try and take a more positive outlook about it. The Fountain is a film that demands multiple viewings. And why is that such a bad thing really? The motivation for most studio-produced films (even the Oscar bait material) is to be as easily consumed as possible. It makes business sense as you don’t want to alienate your audience, but I think there is an important place for films that should be examined, not merely consumed. The label of “pretentious” has been slapped on this film and I really think its undeserved. It’s no more pretentious than any other special effects laden film. I feel that the term pretentious has become negative short-hand for “convoluted”. This complexity is a welcome change in my opinion to the more obvious style of film making seen in works like Crash or whatever movie is being touted as the next Oscar winner. I believe art should challenge you, should force you to contemplate. It should not just be, but demand that you bring something to it, you must give something in exchange for the contemplation of the piece, not just your $8 for the ticket.

So what is going on in The Fountain. There are clues sprinkled throughout the film to decipher the three stories. There are obvious places where they intertwine and then other points that are a little more hidden. The film tells us in a very straightforward way that the Spanish/Tomas story is merely a fiction. We see this when Tom reads from the novel, The Fountain that Izzy has written him. What Izzy is doing is writing about her husband’s obsession with trying to save her. He looks for some miracle to keep her alive. The future story comes next where an unnamed man (who appears to be Tom and has memories of Izzy) floats through space in a bubble containing him and a dying tree. The man could easily be seen as what happens to Tom. He plants a seed at Izzy’s grave and ascends into space to take her to the dying galaxy and allow her to be reborn when it explods. However, in the finale as the three stories intertwine there’s an interesting moment. Future Tom and Tomas appear in each other’s stories for a brief moment, future Tom at the very moment where Izzy stopped writing her novel.

Now, we know that Tomas’ story is fiction. There was never an effort to show that in researching the story Izzy found some account of a conquistador’s search. She refers to Tom as “my conquistador” so I think its pretty solid that the story is metaphor about she and Tom. This means the future bubble story is a fiction. It is Tom’s continuation of the novel after Izzy died. The future Tom appears in the Tomas story at the very moment Izzy left off signaling the shift. We see Tomas find the tree and he’s consumed by it which is pretty direct metaphor to Tom’s obsession with finding the cure. The most important scene for me is the way the Tomas/future Tom story ends and how it juxtaposes with Tom’s story. The ending of the fiction is this wild, elaborate explosive ending, while Tom’s ending is quiet and subdued. I see this as commenting on the way fiction works in opposition to actual life. In fiction we can have definite endings while in life there is no clear cut ending.

I think The Fountain is a film, that given time, will be appreciated much more. Its the same feeling I have about Spielberg’s A.I. These are both films that aren’t playing the same notes as the majority of science fiction. They are delving into more metaphysical waters and while they aren’t perfect they are pleading with us to think about some important things. They ask us questions about some very primal human aspects such as love and pain and how humanity continues on in the face of pain. So, if you felt lukewarm to The Fountain the first time you saw it, I encourage you to return to it and view it with some awareness of the way the story is working underneath things.

In the wake of 9/11 the major comic book companies put out tribute books featuring their heroes present at Ground Zero, partaking in the grief and pain of the moment. Much like the citizens of America, as the agenda of the current adminstration became apparent and the country began to experience quite an ideological divide it became a matter of time before the comics reflected that. The most mainstream example would be Marvel’s Civil War event of last year wherein the heroes are divided into one government-supported team while the others must live in the shadows. It was a good story but definitely very cautious of stepping over any sort of line. DMZ is definitely not afraid of that.

Published by DC Comics’ “Mature Readers” imprint Vertigo, DMZ is the creation of writer/inker Brian Wood and penciller Riccardo Burchielli and as of this week has twenty-three issues to its name. From the first issue we’re thrown into the midst of a familiar but terrifying vision of what could be. New York City has become the center of an uprising in America. A group of insurgents calling themselves the Free States of American began a march across the country that ended in New Jersey with a standoff against the American military. Now the FSA have control of “New Jersey and inland” while the Army has hunkered down into Long Island and boroughs like Queens. Its never specified how much territory the FSA control and I have a feeling this will play a role later in the series. 9/11 is a constant prescence in the film. It’s referenced constantly through graffiti, through characters’ remarks, and through the fact that Ground Zero is the one place everyone claims they won’t commit acts of violence at.

The series follows Matty Roth, the son of a government official who gets an internship with Liberty News and is brought into the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) which is what we would call Manhattan. Its the one place between the FSA and the American government where neither has a foothold. Matty’s press entourage is ambushed and he survives with help from Zee, a female med student who stayed behind in the DMZ to help care for the people who were unable to evacuate.Through Zee, Matty learns bits and pieces of the history of this world. Wood uses the fact that Matty comes from the traditional American side of things ,and sets the character up as fairly apathetic, to explode our conception of this world. Matty is learning just how bad everything is as we do as he becomes Liberty News’ unofficial embedded correspondant.

Wood does an excellent job of refraining from taking sides in the series. The tactics of both sides are shown to be questionable. The American forces use Blackhawk helicopters to attack residential areas of the DMZ under suspicion of insurgent activity while the FSA employ more covert but just as harmful tactics. The series has already tackled issues like the role of the media in wartime, suicide bombers, and private contracting. The private contracting storyline is one of the most brutal as the Trustwell corporation is hired to rebuild some of the damaged areas of the DMZ. The UN brings in peacekeeping forces who evacuate after a series of insurgent bombings so Trustwell dispatches its own private security force who employ vile tactics in interrogation. It’s a definite parallel to what Haliburton has been doing in Iraq and Wood tries to explore it from all possible angles.

This is a comic made for people who may not be too keen on the superhero genre. It really displays that comics aren’t locked to that genre but are a form of expression that can be adapted to tell any number of stories. DMZ will appeal to you most if you have a high interest in current events and politics. One of the best reads of the year. Right now there are three collections available:

DMZ Vol.1: On The Ground
DMZ Vol.2: Body of a Journalist
DMZ Vol.3: Public Works

Juno (dir. Jason Reitman)
I was definitely NOT a fan of Thank You For Smoking, Reitman’s last film. However, from the looks of this trailer and the cast (Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Rainn Wilson) it looks like it could be one of those great Fall indie pics.

There Will Be Blood (dir. PT Anderson)
This is a much meatier trailer than the last one . Definitely getting a Flannery O’Conner vibe from the prescence of the boy-minister. I also didn’t realize it was based on an Upton Sinclair novel, I’ll have to check that out.

Iron Man (2008, dir. Paul Favareau)
This looks to be an okay comic book action film. Nothing that makes it stand out from the crowd quite yet. I just hope that Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” isn’t actually used in the film. That would guarantee its cringe-worthiness.

Youth Without Youth (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
Coppola can be good or he can be terrible. This one look intriguing. I’ll definitely give it a shot.

I went into Shoot ‘Em Up with fairly high expectations. I’m big fan of those stylized sorts of action films like Sin City and the Kill Bill series. When I saw the trailer to this film, directed by Michael Davis, I was expecting something along those lines. Its fairly transparent that this film wears its influences proudly as it references action classics like John Woo’s Hard Boiled and the spaghetti westerns of Serigo Leone. However, the filmmakers here don’t have that deft touch that takes the film from being another generic action film and make it a visually-stunning piece.

Plot is extremely secondary here. Mr. Smith (Clive Owen), the carrot-chomping stranger is pulled into a labrynthine conspiracy right from the opening. The claim that the film is non-stop action is very true. The bullets start flying and there’s barely a moment where they aren’t. Mr. Smith witnesses a pregnant woman in distress, stumbling down the street in the middle of the night. She’s pursued by a yelling man, brandishing a handgun and with a pained sigh, Smith becomes involved. Paul Giamatti plays the aptly named Mr. Hertz, an incredibly despicable leader of a gang of thugs in pursuit of Smith. There’s a bit about midway through the film that irked me and stood out as the writers trying to explain away something. Hertz mentions that he can sense things, alluding to a form of ESP. This didn’t so much serve as to help the plot but stand out as a painful example of how self-aware this film is. This is its downfall, the inability to decide what it wants to be. One the one hand it really wants to be an action-comedy, winking at the audience but on the other hand it wants to be a badass, “take no prisoners” action film. It’s extremely hard for any film to do both those things, especially a film that’s being helmed by a director who still seems to be finding his bearings.

Yes, there are some inventive sequences in the film. Mr. Smith is delivering a baby in the middle of a shoot out and, to save time, simply shoots the umbilical cord. There’s another scene where he and his prostitute companion (Monica Belluci) are the victims of quite a violent coitus interruptus and instead of breaking their concentration, she latches on to him and finishes while he finishes off the intruders. What keeps these sequences from really taking the film into that next sphere is the lack of finesse in camerawork, in actor choreography, and personality. Smith is meant to reference classic mysterious heroes but at some point all of those heroes displayed an interesting twist in their personality, some large act of compassion, something unexpected. Smith never does. He’s the same one-note the entire film. The same could be said for Hertz, he merely grumbles and mumbles throughout the film and is nothing more than a one-dimensional villain. The editing has pretty big flaws and that hurts the fluidty of the action sequences. They never seem to be what great action sequences are which is merely a dance of violence. Instead they feel like something a 12 year old boy and his friends just thought was “cool”. Yes, there’s a place for that in film but its the same mentality that brings about the majority of films The Rock and Vin Diesel star in, just generic action, not classic action.

It’s definitely a film worth at least one viewing but I doubt you’ll feel compelled to return to it. I think Kung Fu Hustle is a good film to compare this with. Both are action-comedies but Hustle is able to sell it because it has the confidence to not take itself seriously on a consistent basis. Stephen Chow also brings a lot of charm and personality to his hero, something that Owen isn’t allowed to do from the script.