Buy the Millennium DVDs!

Sometimes being a skeptic means you have to eat some humble pie. It looks like, after a lot of hard work, networking and investment of their time, the folks at Back to Frank Black might be getting close to seeing their dream realized. Very early reports are that the right people are interested in making a movie based in the Millennium universe starring Lance Henriksen himself as Frank Black.

I have to take my hat off to them. When I became a die-hard Millennium fan last year, I dismissed the whole "Back to Frank Black" campaign as one of those overly optimistic online petitions that never really made anything happen. It seems I was wrong. Not only have the folks at BTFB brought together some of the key players from Millennium through interviews and podcasts, including Lance Henriksen and Chris Carter, but they've succeeded in making it well-known throughout the industry that there is a devoted grass roots movement of ardent MM fans who want to see Frank's story continue. Translation: there is money to be made.

That leads me to my next point. The effort still needs steam to keep going, and you can help by buying Millennium on DVD. Fan support must be translated into dollar signs for FOX to take a Millennium movie seriously. Now, I'm not a beggar and I don't do "causes," so I wouldn't bring this up if it weren't for the fact that the Millennium DVD box set is, to put it mildly, a bargain. For only $45.99 on Amazon.com, you get the entire series on 18 DVDs. For 67 episodes, that is $.68 cents per episode. Every single one of them is worth it*. I will stake my reputation on a guarantee that if you buy this series and watch it, from start to finish, you will be glad you did.

Did I mention the DVDs are LOADED with extra features? Each season has commentaries on key episodes and a thorough, detailed documentary on the making of the season, featuring interviews with cast and crew. There are separate documentaries about the Academy Group on which the Millennium Group was based, and you even get the X-Files crossover episode "Millennium" as a bonus!

Again, this isn't BTFB, so I wouldn't bother blogging about this if I didn't really believe there was something in this for the people who read my writings. I have a lot of DVD box sets and I can honestly say that I think the Millennium complete series set is one of the best deals you can get. This series was something truly, truly special.

*except "Human Essence." But even if you don't count that one, it's still only $.70 cents an episode.

Next Bond Movie Announced

Daniel Craig has made public that the next James Bond Film will be shooting in 2010, presumably for a summer 2011 release. Great news. I'm glad MGM isn't rushing these films (I consider cookie-cutter sequels released every two years to be rushed), because they have been the most amazing Bond movies in literally decades.

If you haven't seen the new Craig Bond movies, you owe it to yourself to check them out. If you've never been a Bond fan, put all the goofy garbage out of your head that you see on Spike from the Roger Moore years and give the new Bond a chance.



Just for fun, here's my rating of the best Bonds:

6. Roger Moore - This is the hokey, silly Bond that gives the whole series such a bad name. Most of the parody that is derived in Austin Powers and other spoofs is from the Roger Moore era, which included the second worst Bond movie of all time, Moonraker-- or "James Bond in Space." As much of a Bond fan as I am, Moore's films are the ones I can easily pass over.

5. George Lazenby - His only Bond movie was pretty good, but he wasn't much of an actor. He had only done commercials before Bond, and following Sean Connery isn't an easy thing to do. Still, On Her Majesty's Secret Service is somewhat legendary as "the one where Bond got married--" and to Emma Peel, no less! Lazenby's biggest weakness is that he just didn't have time to make the character his own.

4. Pierce Brosnan - A nice mix of serious and goofy Bond. He's got the gadgets and the cheesy lines, but still gets serious with brutal fights and high end action sequences. Tomorrow Never Dies is a franchise highlight wherein he stars opposite Michelle Yeoh. Still, as good as Brosnan was, his capital was spent, and then some, by the sheer awfulness of Die Another Day, the all-time worst Bond film.

3. Timothy Dalton - He only got two Bond films, but they were both sensational-- especially License to Kill, the only R-rated Bond film and the darkest one outside of the Craig films. That gritty revenge quest established Dalton as a Bond for the 80s-- hard-boiled and violent in a Miami Vice world. It's really a shame Dalton didn't get to do more, because he looked and acted the Ian Fleming character almost perfectly.

2. Daniel Craig - The best Bond since the first, Craig resuscitated my and the public's interest in James Bond after Brosnan crashed and burned in Die Another Day. Casino Royale relaunched the franchise and the sequel, Quantum of Solace, was nearly its equal in gritty action and suspense. Most impressively, Craig's films have brought emotion and humanity to Bond like no others before them.

1. Sean Connery - The standard by which all other Bonds are measured. There's really nothing more to say. Just do yourself a favor and skip Connery's "unofficial" Bond film, Never Say Never Again, and stick with the original six.

Source

Nickelodeon Buys Ninja Turtles

Mirage Studios, for twenty-five years the home of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, has sold their star property to Nickelodeon for $60 million.

If you haven't been following the Turtles recently, it's been a roller coaster of up-and-down popularity for them for the last ten years or so, as it has been ever since their creation. Beginning as a violent, adult-targeted independent comic in the 1980s, TMNT morphed into a kid-friendly multi-media mega-franchise in the late 80s, with a cartoon, toys, video games and movies. After the fad died down, creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird-- who still retained the rights to the characters through it all-- stood by their characters and worked on some small projects.


There were a few attempts at revival, including an awful live action show in the late 90s. The franchise was rejuvenated in the early 2000s with a new animated series and accompanying merchandising, then a successful CG film titled simply "TMNT." Again, the craze subsided, and Laird returned to publishing independent Turtles books which were modestly successful in the adult comics market.

This acquisition is like a micro version of Disney's acquisition of Marvel, but there is a substantially higher chance of Nickelodeon interfering in the creative process of TMNT writers and artists than there ever was of Disney meddling in Marvel's comics. Nickelodeon wants to completely re-brand the Turtles, making them a Nickelodeon product-- which almost certainly means dumbing them down and eliminating the grittiness that made them so cool in their best incarnations. Likely we'll go back to seeing Turtles who can't actually use their bladed weapons to attack anybody, and make dumb jokes about pizza and slime instead of acting like actual teenagers.

Nickelodeon is already planning a new series (CG, of course) and a feature film for the Turtles in 2012. Personally, I could never see signing away my characters, for any amount of money. This essentially means that Eastman and Laird have absolutely NO creative control over the Turtles anymore. They'll be on the outside looking in as other hands-- more business-minded hands-- determine the future for Leo, Don, Mike and Raph.

LOST On Promotional Black-Out for Season 6

As regular readers have heard me mention, I've decided to stay spoiler free for everything LOST-related after what was released at San Diego Comic Con. It seems that Damon and Carlton are pushing the same notion across the board, as they have recently decreed that NO FOOTAGE of LOST Season 6 will air in any advertisements or promotional materials before the premiere airs in January. That's right-- ads for the last season of LOST will contain no new footage at all. The reason? The producers feel that ANY new footage from season 6 would give too much away about the new direction of the show. To me this is yet another clear sign that the show will be "reset" in some fashion. After all, seeing some ads with Boone walking around with the other Losties would be a dead giveaway, right?

I think this is a pretty admirable decision on the producers' part. For many of us, the time travel element of last season was ruined by just a few brief shots in the promos for season 5. Seeing Daniel confronting someone in a radiation suit outside the Swan station doors and Locke witnessing the crash of Eko's drug plane were pretty obvious signs of where the show was going (especially since the idea that the Island had moved in time was one of the most popular fan theories). This season, though, with no in-show clues as to how the story will possibly continue after the detonation of Jughead, it will great to be completely and utterly surprised by each precious twist as the show heads into its final lap.

Still, it's possible that the studio suits won't be keen on this idea. Even Damon and Carlton have only so much control over their show, and advertising falls well out of their purview. Their notion of including no new footage in the advertising is more like a request than an edict. Will ABC really let one of its most popular shows go into "media blackout" before its highly anticipated final season? How about a compromise? Film some original footage that's not actually part of the show for the commercials. Something like this really cool promo for Heroes that aired on the BBC. Certainly grabs your interest, but is totally unrelated to the actual content of the show.

I would still like at least a group photo of the season 6 cast (like the season 4 one below), as I usually make it my wallpaper for the couple of months leading up to new LOST.

Reflections on a Netflix Weekend

Kids Were Just Tougher in the 80s


I revisited an old kids' movie I hadn't seen in many years, Cloak & Dagger. It stars Henry Thomas (E.T.'s Elliot) as a young video game fanatic who loves to role play spy games. After witnessing a murder, he ends up in possession of a microchip full of top secret military information cleverly disguised as a video game, and becomes part of a real espionage thriller as he tries to keep it away from foreign bad guys and mobsters. Dabney Coleman stars in dual roles as the boy's imaginary friend, a spy hero named Jack Flak, and the boy's father.

This would NOT be considered a kids' movie today, and it scared the pants off of me when I was seven or eight and watching it for the first time. Here's a brief list of everything that happens to the poor kid, Davey, in this film:

-- He is shot at repeatedly by mobsters
-- Mobsters threaten him by phone, then break into his home to kill him
-- He sees his young friend held over the side of a bridge as a hostage
-- His adult friend, a game store owner, is murdered
-- He has to hide in the trunk with said friend's lifeless body
-- He is abducted and drugged by spies posing as kind, elderly people
-- He kills three mobsters (shooting one of them at close range)
-- A mobster threatens to blow his kneecaps off and shoot him in the gut so that he dies slowly and painfully
-- A bomb presumably kills his dad (we later find out that he lives)

Pretty rough compared to, say, Spy Kids, huh? In retrospect, I wouldn't recommend Cloak & Dagger to anyone under the age of ten. The "shoot you in the knee caps so you die slowly" speech traumatized me as a kid. On the other hand, I am a little tired of the overly sanitized "kids' movies" we have today. So maybe a little desensitization for the 10 and up crew is okay.


Another great reason to watch this movie is for the video game nostalgia. It's practically a giant commercial for Atari, with posters and consoles everywhere and a video game cartridge being central to the plot. There was actually a Cloak & Dagger video game tie-in with the movie, but it fell victim to the video game crash of 1983 and was only released as an arcade game. Throw in oldschool role-playing and Cold War spy paranoia and you've got a great 1980s nostalgia film.

Why People Be Hatin' on Red Sonja?

It may surprise some people, but I consider myself a feminist-- at least, a feminist in the traditional sense of the term. By that, I mean that I believe women are the equals of men and should be treated with equal respect, and given the same opportunities for power, choice and status in our society. Where I get off the boat of modern feminism is in the assertion that anything that portrays women as sex symbols, or is designed to titillate the hormones of straight males, is inherently sexist, demeaning and anti-feminist. I'm still waiting for someone to explain that to me.


So when you have a sexy heroine like Red Sonja, a powerful woman who also fuels a potent male fantasy, that's where I'm going to diverge from most modern feminists in my appraisal of her validity as a feminist character. Make no mistake, Red Sonja the film is a cheesy romp of sword-and-sorcery 80s camp. But for all of its stock characters, bad acting and terrible lines, it has some genuinely awesome action scenes. It may seem that way just because we so rarely get to see a woman kick as much ass as Sonja. Uma Thurman's Bride in Kill Bill is the only modern equivalent that I can think of with any level of notoriety.


Red Sonja is short. It doesn't try to be deep or philosophical, it's just a high fantasy tale with plenty of sword fighting and a gorgeous protagonist played by Brigitte Nielsen. Along for the ride is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who admittedly "rescues" Sonja a couple of times, but stays out of her way when its time to slay the villainous uber-bitch Queen Gedren. The party comes close to being ruined by a Bratty Half-Pint, but the kid thankfully calms down halfway through the film. Of course, there has to be a little romance, but a woman like Sonja won't consider Arnold as a lover until they've crossed swords, so it's all part of the cornball fun. I recommend this movie if you're a fan of redheads, the 80s, fantasy films or are just looking for something light.


Red Sonja is also a series of novels and comics, which are still published today. Unfortunately, it's being remade with Rose McGowan in the lead role. At least they got her costume right, but that's small consolation for what Hollywood will likely do to the character. Oh wait... they already did.

FlashForward Series Premiere Review

If you watch much TV, you have probably seen an ad or two for FlashForward, a new ABC serial series that premiered last night. Every new season of TV now brings new shows that want to be the next LOST-- an epic, ongoing drama that brings back viewers week after week with bizarre mysteries and unanswered questions. The formula is deceptively simple-- create a compelling cast of well-written, identifiable characters and introduce a science-fiction or fantasy concept that is intriguing but not so overly complicated that it is above mainstream viewers' heads. FlashForward accomplishes this objective to very promising results.

CAUTION: This review contains minor spoilers for the first episode.

In FlashForward, a worldwide phenomenon occurs that causes the entire human population to fall unconscious for two minutes and 17 seconds. But instead of just passing out, every person on the planet is given a glimpse of their future-- the same two minute time frame, about six months from the date of the blackout. The flash-forwards have a profound impact on everyone, some of whom see things they like, and some see things they fear.


The protagonist of FlashForward, an FBI agent named Mark Benford, is part of a government team that will be investigating the cause of the phenomenon. Their priority is to find out how it happened, who (if anyone) caused it, and whether it could possibly happen again. Other characters include Benford's wife, Olivia, his partner, and other people close to them in their business and personal lives. Unfortunately, the writers have taken the easy way out by making Mark and Olivia a cop and a doctor respectively, thus ensuring a healthy dose of the medical and police drama that infests every other corner of prime time television. Do Hollywood writers think that every American who isn't in the entertainment industry is a cop, a doctor or a lawyer? Sometimes I wonder.


While the cast of characters in FlashForward didn't grip me as quickly as those in LOST, there are some interesting possibilities to their stories. One character who didn't have a vision of the future while he blacked out believes that it means he'll be dead in six months. Another was about to commit suicide and sees his vision as a new lease on life. Both Mark and Olivia see things that indicate that their marriage will fall apart in six months, and become determined to stop that from happening.

That last notion, of course, opens up the debate over whether the future can be changed. Are these characters destined to live out the fates that their visions showed them? Even more intriguing is the question of the time loop: having now seen their futures, the characters have been influenced by that information, and the way they react to it may go about creating the very future they are trying to avoid. So which came first, the vision or the reality? This is very heady sci-fi stuff, and I should make the disclaimer that the premiere episode doesn't deal with ANY of it. Much like with LOST, the writers have wisely created a framework wherein deep-thinking geeks like me can ponder these paradoxes and philosophical underpinnings, while more mainstream audiences will find the more immediate effects of the plot on the characters more approachable.


The source of the action in the premiere comes from the effects of the worldwide blackout, which are not altogether hard to imagine. If everyone were to lose consciousness at once, every car and plane in operation at the time would crash. People could fall and die just because they were in the middle of walking up a flight of stairs. Carefully planned operations would go awry. FlashForward tackles all of these consequences in the immediate aftermath of the blackout phenomenon.


I was enjoying FlashForward for most of the episode, but it was in the last few minutes that they dropped a bomb that really hooked me. Not since I've started watching LOST has another television show had a scene that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end... until last night, when two of the FBI agents make a spooky discovery about something that happened during the two minute blackout. I believe that discovery will fuel much of the plot as the series begins to flesh out.

As someone who does not watch a lot of prime time TV, it takes a special show to stand out enough for me to recommend it. FlashForward is such a show. The story is rife with potential, its production values are high and the talent behind the camera seems to be more than capable of executing what could become the next great TV epic after LOST.

By the way, the premiere episode will air again tonight at 8 o'clock on ABC! So you still have a chance to check it out!

Little LOST Updates and a BIG Congrats!

Congratulations to Michael Emerson, AKA Benjamin Linus, for winning Best Supporting Actor on tonight's Emmys!



As amazing as it was to see Terry O'Quinn get his well-deserved Emmy back in Season 3, it was something of a bittersweet moment for many of us since both he and Michael were competing for the same award. Well, now these two gentlemen, who in my opinion pretty much own the show whenever they are on screen (and especially when they are on screen together!), have both been recognized for their outstanding work on LOST.


Couldn't resist another opportunity to put my favorite LOST pic up there.

And here's a little tour down memory lane with that "role of a lifetime:"

























On another fun LOST-related note, ABC is doing a new series of promotions for its shows called "ABC House." Michael Emerson, Josh Holloway and Jorge Garcia have appeared in these promos, behaving like their LOST characters and interacting with folks from other ABC shows. Here they are:







Now, call me crazy, but I think this next one, which features Matthew Fox, might be a big clue for the way the show will go in the final season. It plays into my theory that history will be changed, but the survivors will somehow remember that they were meant to be on the Island. Take a look:



Last but not least, a clear, wallpaper-ready version of the Season 6 teaser poster has surfaced. I'm not sure if it's an official version or if it was pieced together by ambitious fans with Photoshop talent, but here it is in all its glory.

As some of you know, I'm making an attempt to go spoiler-free into season 6 as of the end of Comic Con, so LOST info will be sparse-- I'm not letting myself look at set reports, casting rumors, leaks and the like. But I will look at anything officially released by ABC, so in the next couple of months I'll post as more official material starts to trickle in.

The Office Still Going Strong in Sixth Season

Don't listen to the naysayers or the UK version elitists-- The Office is still a hilarious show six seasons in, as demonstrated in this week's season premiere episode "Gossip." This episode did everything the show does best-- put Michael in embarrassing yet hilarious social debacles of his own creation, and focused on the interactions between the characters in the office. What's great about Michael is that while he is selfish and childish, he still wants to do the right thing, although he always goes about it the wrong way. So when he learns a scandalous secret about one co-worker and spreads it around, he then starts making up phony rumors about others to protect the secret.



By the way, NBC now has bobbleheads of every Office character!

RIP Patrick Swayze

Another 1980s icon leaves us... RIP Patrick Swayze.

Tirian Head Sketches

Here are a couple of Tirian heads. I don't need as much practice with Tirian; since she's my favorite of my own characters, I tend to draw her whenever I'm just doodling. Next I'm going to get some new costumes for her and Cole and do a couple of full body sketches.