Our favorite bad "drama" TV show, Zero Hour, is going to be airing its remaining episodes this summer!
Prepare for more posts!
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Syfy original movie: Stonehenge Apocalypse!
So I couldn't resist when I saw the title on the screen. And then it turned out that this also involves Misha Collins
It starts with Syfy forgetting completely that a) you can't walk inside Stonehenge, or take guided tours in there and b) that some of the rocks there have fallen over. The stones begin rotating, and quite predictably, everyone nearby gets killed.
Although, five minutes in, Misha Collins is not wearing a very tiny toga, unlike some other actors from Supernatural in their Syfy movie debuts... but he is sneaking around some bushes taking photos of Stonehenge, and saying something about an "underground current."
Tori Higginson, of Stargate Atlantis, also shows up, and then Stonehenge kills a whole lot more people, and then for some inexplicable reason, a volcano erupts out of a Mayan pyramid!
(And I swear, I'm sober. This is only the first commercial break!)
At some point, someone says "50-ton stones don't move themselves" which is very obvious. However, he goes on to say "I don't think it's Merlin waving his magic wand" but he's in a Syfy movie so that actually could be the explanation for all of this.
Then. Misha Collins has some kind of device that's showing something that looks like the X-Men movies. And utters the line "Top of the morning." And then there's something about radio waves cycling and electromagnetism changing the structure of organic molecules in the soil or something. Hey, this is less inaccurate than Ancient Aliens! And somehow they determine it's a countdown with 37 seconds left!
But they find out that Misha Collins' papers have a "planetary energy grid" which they promptly, and correctly, denounce as psuedoscience. But, alas! It's shortlived. And it turns out that they can't say "NASA" onscreen so they keep saying "The US Space Agency." This is priceless!
Also, this is all happening in a high school. Although obviously it's because Syfy didn't have the budget to film anywhere fancier than an empty high school, I'm trying to imagine what in-universe reason was given for this: Were they broke, and attempting to save the UK government money, like how the notorious and now defunct Detroit crime lab ended up in an elementary school? Or is this their attempt at being covert? Or was it simply the nearest structure with internet access and a coffee maker?
(Electromagnetic currents don't criss-cross!) and he claims that ancient civilizations knew about energy grids and built pyramids, and stonehenge, on top of the places where they crossed. And also that there's an undiscovered "ancient site" in Maine.
And apparently the soil around the stones is turning purple because of bacteria. The scientists try to lower something from a helicopter to read an energy field in the middle of stonehenge. But, rather than having a helicopter with a piece of equipment on a winch or something, the equipment is just stuck on the bottom of it and the entire helicopter goes lower. Predictably, it explodes.
(and there's a commercial with William Shatner doing some kind of Syfy original series that involves him being "weird." I'm almost afraid to look)
Strangely enough, this event is being handled by the US military. I don't even know if they bothered to try to explain it. And the soldier says line like, "In my world, when something counts down, it goes boom." Therefore, the US military decides it wants to demolish Stonehenge. With explosives.
Unsurprisingly, this only causes the stones to make lots of electromagnetism again. Meanwhile.... I can't even keep track of what's going on, but we see the thing that looks like the X-Men logo again, and they're talking about a "key" and "advanced technology" and apparently Misha Collins' token non-white friends are doing something somewhere else that's related.
(disclaimer: I may or may not be multitasking and cooking mac and cheese and assembling my new Iron Man 3 legos right now)
This time, a volcanic eruption has "flattened" Indonesia, and they said that there's a "planetary military" that "requires a global military response." Oh, so is the US government finally going to let the British government's military get involved in what's going on in their own country? Anyways, this is at the point that they decide to listen to Misha Collins. But the military people think that the "joint council" (IDK, the UN?) is going to order them to nuke stonehenge. And then they want to use a radio telescope to try to jam the EM signals stonehenge is making in order to prevent it from being nuked.
At some point, Misha Collins asks what the bacteria were, and decides that Earth is being terraformed. Or reverse terraformed. Or whatever. And then someone says "the stone's wavelength is approaching visible light" and then uses the phrase "going gamma" and then says "gamma waves are atomic." This, apparently, is an excuse to CGI pretty things around stonehenge, and make the stones glow.
So, somehow, Misha Collins & co are in a museum in NY. Maybe all of this has been headquartered and happening in the US to begin with? But they see a "relic" that's got the X-Men logo on it, too. And it starts to glow, too. And they end up deciding to steal it, just at the same time that someone else does and starts shooting up the place. It now also appears that this movie may have been filmed using solely whatever lighting was already existing on location.
It turns out that the person doing the shooting was the Token Black Friend (way to go, writers!) and apparently he was in Egypt, and the X-Men thing can "activate" some kind of buried pyramid that will be safe from the apocalypse. Seriously, did they just take random words from Ancient Aliens and make them into a screenplay? Also, Misha Collins is apparently supposed to be angry, or passionate about saving the human race or something, and he's talking in his Castiel voice now.
(Now I'm eating mac and cheese. And consuming certain adult drinks. And putting together my Iron Man 3 legos)
The next 10-hour countdown is almost over, and they've said "It's going to be a bigger bang." This time, the volcano is under the Great Pyramids, to nobody's surprise, and apparently this causes the Mediterranean sea to flood into Egypt. Then, they decide not only to evacuate all pyramid-like sites, and to nuke stonehenge after all.
Also, Misha Collins mocks his Token Friend of Color's belief that Earth goes through cycles of destruction and rebirth. Like the theory about Merlin, that's not really any more weird than the "correct" theory. One also has to wonder how much Syfy is paying these actors for this movie... their entire budgets can't be more than 1-2 million, so deduct salaries for the crew and filming permits alone... I'm not an expert on film financing, but some of the actors have got to be doing this for the pure fun of it.
So our antagonist puts the X-Men stone on the altar, stuff is happening, and someone says "Holy Crap!" and a giant pyramid is rising out of the ground in Mexico.
And, apparently, it was an American military base that was over near stonehenge. Because once the order to nuke it was given, and therefore the order to evacuate, everyone runs and climbs over stuff like the building is on fire. Because I guess whoever's got their fingers on that red button can't wait twenty minutes to allow everyone to exit in a calm and orderly fashion?
For some strange reason, once they get into the pyramid, it turns out the guy with the stone has... activated that pyramid and run away? Why? Back where the scientists are, they say that the stones are "sucking up the entire planet's electromagnetic energy." What?
Misha Collins chases his ex-friend/antagonist through the woods of vancouver maine and eventually retrieves the X-Men thing. Meanwhile, the scientists discover that someone is a mole, and they shout at him to get out of the base that's apparently been evacuated or something? But the mole points a gun at them, as if they would be capable of forcing him to leave otherwise, or as if they weren't about to all die anyways.
In the end, Misha Collins' character sacrifices himself to save the planet (in a way I'm still not sure about) and Tori Higginson's character takes over his radio show. And we get two brilliant newspaper headlines: One calling his character a "fringe scientist" making me think of a certain favorite show, and the second, "Death Toll Too High To Count." Not "tens thousands" or "hundreds of thousands" or "estimated at two million," just "too high to count."
It starts with Syfy forgetting completely that a) you can't walk inside Stonehenge, or take guided tours in there and b) that some of the rocks there have fallen over. The stones begin rotating, and quite predictably, everyone nearby gets killed.
Although, five minutes in, Misha Collins is not wearing a very tiny toga, unlike some other actors from Supernatural in their Syfy movie debuts... but he is sneaking around some bushes taking photos of Stonehenge, and saying something about an "underground current."
Tori Higginson, of Stargate Atlantis, also shows up, and then Stonehenge kills a whole lot more people, and then for some inexplicable reason, a volcano erupts out of a Mayan pyramid!
(And I swear, I'm sober. This is only the first commercial break!)
At some point, someone says "50-ton stones don't move themselves" which is very obvious. However, he goes on to say "I don't think it's Merlin waving his magic wand" but he's in a Syfy movie so that actually could be the explanation for all of this.
Then. Misha Collins has some kind of device that's showing something that looks like the X-Men movies. And utters the line "Top of the morning." And then there's something about radio waves cycling and electromagnetism changing the structure of organic molecules in the soil or something. Hey, this is less inaccurate than Ancient Aliens! And somehow they determine it's a countdown with 37 seconds left!
But they find out that Misha Collins' papers have a "planetary energy grid" which they promptly, and correctly, denounce as psuedoscience. But, alas! It's shortlived. And it turns out that they can't say "NASA" onscreen so they keep saying "The US Space Agency." This is priceless!
Also, this is all happening in a high school. Although obviously it's because Syfy didn't have the budget to film anywhere fancier than an empty high school, I'm trying to imagine what in-universe reason was given for this: Were they broke, and attempting to save the UK government money, like how the notorious and now defunct Detroit crime lab ended up in an elementary school? Or is this their attempt at being covert? Or was it simply the nearest structure with internet access and a coffee maker?
(Electromagnetic currents don't criss-cross!) and he claims that ancient civilizations knew about energy grids and built pyramids, and stonehenge, on top of the places where they crossed. And also that there's an undiscovered "ancient site" in Maine.
And apparently the soil around the stones is turning purple because of bacteria. The scientists try to lower something from a helicopter to read an energy field in the middle of stonehenge. But, rather than having a helicopter with a piece of equipment on a winch or something, the equipment is just stuck on the bottom of it and the entire helicopter goes lower. Predictably, it explodes.
(and there's a commercial with William Shatner doing some kind of Syfy original series that involves him being "weird." I'm almost afraid to look)
Strangely enough, this event is being handled by the US military. I don't even know if they bothered to try to explain it. And the soldier says line like, "In my world, when something counts down, it goes boom." Therefore, the US military decides it wants to demolish Stonehenge. With explosives.
Unsurprisingly, this only causes the stones to make lots of electromagnetism again. Meanwhile.... I can't even keep track of what's going on, but we see the thing that looks like the X-Men logo again, and they're talking about a "key" and "advanced technology" and apparently Misha Collins' token non-white friends are doing something somewhere else that's related.
(disclaimer: I may or may not be multitasking and cooking mac and cheese and assembling my new Iron Man 3 legos right now)
This time, a volcanic eruption has "flattened" Indonesia, and they said that there's a "planetary military" that "requires a global military response." Oh, so is the US government finally going to let the British government's military get involved in what's going on in their own country? Anyways, this is at the point that they decide to listen to Misha Collins. But the military people think that the "joint council" (IDK, the UN?) is going to order them to nuke stonehenge. And then they want to use a radio telescope to try to jam the EM signals stonehenge is making in order to prevent it from being nuked.
At some point, Misha Collins asks what the bacteria were, and decides that Earth is being terraformed. Or reverse terraformed. Or whatever. And then someone says "the stone's wavelength is approaching visible light" and then uses the phrase "going gamma" and then says "gamma waves are atomic." This, apparently, is an excuse to CGI pretty things around stonehenge, and make the stones glow.
So, somehow, Misha Collins & co are in a museum in NY. Maybe all of this has been headquartered and happening in the US to begin with? But they see a "relic" that's got the X-Men logo on it, too. And it starts to glow, too. And they end up deciding to steal it, just at the same time that someone else does and starts shooting up the place. It now also appears that this movie may have been filmed using solely whatever lighting was already existing on location.
It turns out that the person doing the shooting was the Token Black Friend (way to go, writers!) and apparently he was in Egypt, and the X-Men thing can "activate" some kind of buried pyramid that will be safe from the apocalypse. Seriously, did they just take random words from Ancient Aliens and make them into a screenplay? Also, Misha Collins is apparently supposed to be angry, or passionate about saving the human race or something, and he's talking in his Castiel voice now.
(Now I'm eating mac and cheese. And consuming certain adult drinks. And putting together my Iron Man 3 legos)
The next 10-hour countdown is almost over, and they've said "It's going to be a bigger bang." This time, the volcano is under the Great Pyramids, to nobody's surprise, and apparently this causes the Mediterranean sea to flood into Egypt. Then, they decide not only to evacuate all pyramid-like sites, and to nuke stonehenge after all.
Also, Misha Collins mocks his Token Friend of Color's belief that Earth goes through cycles of destruction and rebirth. Like the theory about Merlin, that's not really any more weird than the "correct" theory. One also has to wonder how much Syfy is paying these actors for this movie... their entire budgets can't be more than 1-2 million, so deduct salaries for the crew and filming permits alone... I'm not an expert on film financing, but some of the actors have got to be doing this for the pure fun of it.
So our antagonist puts the X-Men stone on the altar, stuff is happening, and someone says "Holy Crap!" and a giant pyramid is rising out of the ground in Mexico.
And, apparently, it was an American military base that was over near stonehenge. Because once the order to nuke it was given, and therefore the order to evacuate, everyone runs and climbs over stuff like the building is on fire. Because I guess whoever's got their fingers on that red button can't wait twenty minutes to allow everyone to exit in a calm and orderly fashion?
For some strange reason, once they get into the pyramid, it turns out the guy with the stone has... activated that pyramid and run away? Why? Back where the scientists are, they say that the stones are "sucking up the entire planet's electromagnetic energy." What?
Misha Collins chases his ex-friend/antagonist through the woods of vancouver maine and eventually retrieves the X-Men thing. Meanwhile, the scientists discover that someone is a mole, and they shout at him to get out of the base that's apparently been evacuated or something? But the mole points a gun at them, as if they would be capable of forcing him to leave otherwise, or as if they weren't about to all die anyways.
In the end, Misha Collins' character sacrifices himself to save the planet (in a way I'm still not sure about) and Tori Higginson's character takes over his radio show. And we get two brilliant newspaper headlines: One calling his character a "fringe scientist" making me think of a certain favorite show, and the second, "Death Toll Too High To Count." Not "tens thousands" or "hundreds of thousands" or "estimated at two million," just "too high to count."
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Hemlock Grove, Part 1
So my roommate and I were bored the other night and ended up slogging through two episodes of the travesty that is Netflix's second foray into original programming.
I feel like someone attempted to mash up Revenge and Teen Wolf and Grimm or something but failed to do it with any remote kind of competency. The series opens with a guy drinking in his front yard, and someone who's acting like a "precocious child" stereotype telling him that she's decided he's a werewolf.
Turns out, they're both in high school, and he is a werewolf. Also, he gets butt-naked, probably because of the werewolf thing.
In fact, lots of the characters are high schoolers. And much of the plot so far involves the high school.
There's a Victoria Grayson type character, who I guess isn't human. She seems to be having sex with everyone in town. She's got a high school age son, who is strangely pale-looking and apparently has a foot fetish. I guess he's supposed to be one half of this show's werewolf/human/vampire trio that's a staple of fantasy? She also has this daughter, who is hairless and supposedly has scars or something on one side of her face but I don't think that eye is even human. In any case, it's definitely not fitting with a human skull. Normally, this girl wears a wig worthy of Cousin It, and apparently bandages on her hands, and I guess her mom has everyone thinking she's severely mentally challenged or something. But, she types eloquent letters to her mom's brother, who from here on out I'll refer to as Uncle Fester.
Uncle Fester has a wife, and a daughter who's pregnant and completely and genuinely believes that an angel did it.
Also, werewolf boy is living with either his mom or his sister in what looks like a double-long version of a double-wide somewhere out in the forest. That set is the one thing I love about this show: The way that the lawn chairs are on the flat, empty space in front of the house, the years-old beer bottles in the dead leaves, bring up memories of the kinds of unfurnished "outdoor living space" kind of places all over the rural, working-class-to-poor areas where I spent my childhood.
The rest of it... for a show supposedly set in PA (or maybe OH, but either way, close enough) it's got believable scenery. At least they didn't film it in Griffith Park, or worst of all, Bronson Canyon. But there are other problems: The camera work is generally not impressive, and oh dear god, the lighting. There's a scene where they're outdoors, in a field, on a partially cloudy day. Now, the light there will be generally sunshiny, although not as intense as LA - maybe white with a slight greyish tint on a cloudy day, and a slightly warm white on a sunny day. But, the lighting on the characters and props make it look like they're standing under one of those giant yellow-and-white striped tents that you see pop up at county fairs and large church parties.
And the writing. Where do I get started with the writing? For that matter, where did anyone get started with that writing? I feel like each writer was given a different character's plot line, and then at the end they each swapped papers with another writer in an attempt to "edit" and give it some sense of continuity, and then declared it ready to be filmed.
Apparently, this series had a $45 million budget. I'm trying to figure out what they spent it all on: My current best guess is the funds that were required to haul an entire film set off to the middle-of-nowhere kinds of locations where they filmed.
I feel like someone attempted to mash up Revenge and Teen Wolf and Grimm or something but failed to do it with any remote kind of competency. The series opens with a guy drinking in his front yard, and someone who's acting like a "precocious child" stereotype telling him that she's decided he's a werewolf.
Turns out, they're both in high school, and he is a werewolf. Also, he gets butt-naked, probably because of the werewolf thing.
In fact, lots of the characters are high schoolers. And much of the plot so far involves the high school.
There's a Victoria Grayson type character, who I guess isn't human. She seems to be having sex with everyone in town. She's got a high school age son, who is strangely pale-looking and apparently has a foot fetish. I guess he's supposed to be one half of this show's werewolf/human/vampire trio that's a staple of fantasy? She also has this daughter, who is hairless and supposedly has scars or something on one side of her face but I don't think that eye is even human. In any case, it's definitely not fitting with a human skull. Normally, this girl wears a wig worthy of Cousin It, and apparently bandages on her hands, and I guess her mom has everyone thinking she's severely mentally challenged or something. But, she types eloquent letters to her mom's brother, who from here on out I'll refer to as Uncle Fester.
Uncle Fester has a wife, and a daughter who's pregnant and completely and genuinely believes that an angel did it.
Also, werewolf boy is living with either his mom or his sister in what looks like a double-long version of a double-wide somewhere out in the forest. That set is the one thing I love about this show: The way that the lawn chairs are on the flat, empty space in front of the house, the years-old beer bottles in the dead leaves, bring up memories of the kinds of unfurnished "outdoor living space" kind of places all over the rural, working-class-to-poor areas where I spent my childhood.
The rest of it... for a show supposedly set in PA (or maybe OH, but either way, close enough) it's got believable scenery. At least they didn't film it in Griffith Park, or worst of all, Bronson Canyon. But there are other problems: The camera work is generally not impressive, and oh dear god, the lighting. There's a scene where they're outdoors, in a field, on a partially cloudy day. Now, the light there will be generally sunshiny, although not as intense as LA - maybe white with a slight greyish tint on a cloudy day, and a slightly warm white on a sunny day. But, the lighting on the characters and props make it look like they're standing under one of those giant yellow-and-white striped tents that you see pop up at county fairs and large church parties.
And the writing. Where do I get started with the writing? For that matter, where did anyone get started with that writing? I feel like each writer was given a different character's plot line, and then at the end they each swapped papers with another writer in an attempt to "edit" and give it some sense of continuity, and then declared it ready to be filmed.
Apparently, this series had a $45 million budget. I'm trying to figure out what they spent it all on: My current best guess is the funds that were required to haul an entire film set off to the middle-of-nowhere kinds of locations where they filmed.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Doctor WHAT. THE. HELL?!?
So, Saturday was the season finale of Doctor Who. In an episode titled "The Name of the Doctor" - which worried fans because not knowing his name is a big thing over the 50 years of the series - we were promised answers to questions that had been raised over the past season and some, including "Why doesn't Clara remember that she was a Dalek and a nanny?" and "Why does she keep using the same phrases over and over?"
Well, without spoiling anything, all of those answers, as well as a few things that were mentioned in previous seasons, were wrapped up neatly in a package that made sense and didn't really require any universe-resetting.
But then, at the very end, after all of that, we got...
[BIGGEST SPOILER WARNING FOR THIS SHOW EVER]
[I swear I'm not exaggerating. I don't think anything so unexpected has ever happened in the reboot. Or in a lot of other canons. You have been warned!]
Well, without spoiling anything, all of those answers, as well as a few things that were mentioned in previous seasons, were wrapped up neatly in a package that made sense and didn't really require any universe-resetting.
But then, at the very end, after all of that, we got...
[BIGGEST SPOILER WARNING FOR THIS SHOW EVER]
[I swear I'm not exaggerating. I don't think anything so unexpected has ever happened in the reboot. Or in a lot of other canons. You have been warned!]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)