Week of Saturday, December 16 through Friday, December 22, 2006

Saturday, December 16, 2006
Tru Calling, Season One – 2003

This is a TV series that a friend loaned me, saying that I would enjoy it. Since it stars Eliza Dushku (Faith in Buffy and Angel) and had a fantasy/supernatural premise, this was a pretty safe bet. The premise is that Tru (played by Eliza Dushku) gets a job at a morgue, where corpses occasionally ask her for help, and then her day “rewinds” and she tries to keep them from dying. Sounds good, right?

The problem is, and you’ll see from my comments on the individual episodes, that they become pretty predictable. This is a pretty well-worn path, what with TV series like Quantum Leap and movies like Butterfly Effect I & II. They did, in the end, start to add some twists that complicated the matter, to sort of differentiate themselves from those stories. Fox had just renewed them, so the writers started to pull out the stops. And then, after 6 episodes were made (before any Season II episodes had aired), Fox did an about face and cancelled the series. As with Firefly (and I’m sure others, but I’m not much of a TV guy), Fox sucks.

Anywho, here are my comments on each episodes.

Pilot
Not as good as I would have hoped. Very predictable. I saw everything coming. The good news is that since each episode is only 42 minutes long, you’re not too irritated at the predicatability before the next episode starts.

Putting Out Fires
I called this one at minute 17.

Brother’s Keeper
Better, but still saw it coming. At least it was a little more complex.

Past Tense
Better yet again.

Haunted
Okay, I’m finally hooked now. Before this, I was just watching it because I was expected to. Pretty iffy though that it took me until the 5th episode to really get into it. I’m surprised that Fox even thought about renewing it.

Star Crossed
Oh oh, we’re backsliding. This one was pretty predictable.

Morning After
REALLY getting predictable. I’m getting irritated. Better quit for the day before I get too irritated to finish the series.

Sunday, December 17, 2006
Closure
I noticed a subtle change here. Up to now, the corpses have always said “Help me”. This time, the corpse said “I need you”. Don’t know if that means anything or not. But I knew the outcome before the 20 minute mark again.

Murder in the Morgue
Back to better. This was a pretty well done episode. I notice that there’s a website called TV.com
(http://www.tv.com/tru-calling/show/17237/episode_listings.html?tag=subtabs;list_)
that rates each episode, and the ones I like better (ie weren’t as predictable) scored better. Huh, what do you know about that?

Reunion
Hideously, painfully predictable. I called this one EXACTLY, down to the twists and red herrings. Shesh!

The Longest Day
The cool music really helps the mood here. Ahhh, I knew they’d have to start double dipping/rewinding multiple times at some point. And when they do it, they do it with gusto, rewinding 4 times. However, this was the best episode so far, by a long shot. Not predictable at all.

Monday, December 18, 2006
Valentine
Okay, this one through me for a loop. Didn’t see that coming. Not too shabby.

Drop Dead Gorgeous
Neat ending.

Daddy’s Girl
Hmmm, not sure about this. My wife says that this is where it jumps the shark. I’m not too sure. It obviously is about to get more complicated. I don’t normally like Jason Presley, but he seems to be playing the character as designed. So is that good acting, or good casting?

The Getaway
Only comment I wrote on this episode was “ehhhh”. Don’t remember what that means.

Two Pair
Called it again. Right on the money. It really hurts the series (in my mind, at least) that the writers aren’t any more creative than I am).

Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Death Becomes Her
(a terrible movie, BTW) This episode was different, at least.

Rear Window
(a MUCH better movie). Will the real Chris Barrason please stand up? This was a pretty clever (and timely) plot. I liked it better than the last several.

D.O.A.
Them? He said help them. Well, at least that other shoe has finally dropped, and we know what the deal is with Jack. Not that it’s a great surprise either.

Two Weddings & A Funeral
Nice. If the whole series had been this clever and convoluted, it would have been a lot better, IMHO.

Commentary to TW&AF
Cuts in and out too much. They don’t talk, and the show’s volume jumps up, so it has a real back and forth vibe that’s really “off-putting”. And they talk like the 2nd season hasn’t even been shot, which doesn’t seem possible.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Chinese Ghost Story – 1987
Completely changing gears, here I’m watching classic Chinese cinema. And I’m impressed by the fact that there’s stop motion animation in a Chinese movie. And a budget of $5.6M! Very impressive. Subtitles (obviously, since only Chinese dialogues).

Very Evil Dead ish.

This was a fun flick, with good music. Although it’s definitely a Chinese movie, this is pretty assessable for folks who only watch the more “mainstream” movies.

Extras include an About the Film text documentary, and Synopsis of the film (which didn’t match what I thought and read what happened at ALL). Also a cast and crew text histories that were pretty interesting.

Thursday, December 21, 2006
Chinese Ghost Story 2 – 1990
Picks up from where the first movie ends nicely. But the ghost from the previous movie has undergone a name change. I wonder why that is? And when did our hero learn the song sung by Swordman Yen in the previous movie? Swordman Yen was alone when he sang it.

Great monsters in this one. And there are some really funny gags with a Freeze spell. Very well done for a Chinese movie made over a decade ago.

Friday, December 22, 2006
Christmas Evil – 1980 aka You Better Watch Out
And now, as the holidays approach, I’m watching some “Bad Christmas movies”, starting out with this classic. You gotta like a movie that starts out with Santa coming down a chimney, getting a glass of milk and making a sandwich (!), and then getting some hair pie! Don’t see THAT too often.

And seeing this traumatizes Harry so much that he busts a snow globe and purposively slashes himself with a shard?

The guy playing Harry does a first class job of playing a complete wacko! Very well done, and cutting edge for it’s time.

Two commentaries! The first was just the director, which is usually a bad idea, but this was not as bad as some. Interesting that it was meant to be a Dark Comedy, and that it cost $750K. Sad that in the end, it cost him his points to get it released, and so he lost control until last year. There was, alas, not enough tech info.

Second commentary has the director (Lewis) and John Waters (director of lots of great and weird movies like Dirty Shame). John obviously loves this movie, and asks good questions. A much better commentary than the first. If you listen to only one commentary, make it this one.

Other extras include 26 minutes of audition tape excerpts. An example of just how much this movie was storyboarded. Deleted scenes, and screening card comments, which were very funny (I thought).