Ambience of Media

Life: Season 2

Life has officially been picked up by NBC for a full second season following its move to Wednesday nights. Yay!

Up

Pixar’s Up has a new teaser that shows off a little more of the concept than the previous one’s quick view of the balloons, house and Carl. This time around we get a little action and dialogue, along with an introduction to… well, just watch it.

Teaser #2: Low, High, 480p, 720p, 1080p

Up hits theaters on May 29th, 2009. The film is directed by Pete Docter (Monster’s Inc) and co-directed/written by Bob Peterson, who has worked in a variety of capacities on previous Pixar films.

President-elect Barack Obama

Today is a good day.

Green for Danger

It’s 1944, Britain. A postman has been taken to the local hospital after a German V-1 bombing attack. The injuries are non-fatal. He dies on the operating table, before surgery can begin. As the hospital administration and those in attendance for the failed operation try to figure out whether the postman’s death was an accident or a deliberate act, someone else is murdered. Thus starts Green for Danger’s witty whodunit.

Inspector Cockrill arrives to get to the bottom of things and the film takes off. With Cockrill comes an eccentric personality and comedic wit to stir the situation up. In a way, he gets to do what viewers want to do when watching mystery thrillers. Cockrill jumps into the fray, questions the suspects, throws accusations and innuendo around, and waits to see what happens. In a very self-conscious way, he’ll start some shit, step back and see if the new scenario reveals anything about who was responsible for the murders. It’s all fun and games until more people get hurt.

Life: Season 2

NBC is moving Life from its current 10 p.m. Friday slot to Wednesday at 9 p.m. Swapping with it is Lipstick Jungle. The move is said to be occurring due to the latter show’s steadily declining ratings and Life’s better chances on its original night, now sandwiched between Knight Rider and Law & Order. Hopefully it works out for the best, as I really enjoy Life, mostly for its characters, and it’d be great if the show performs well enough to get a full second season order. Of course, the timeslot doesn’t matter to me personally, since I’ve just been watching it on Hulu.

Lost: Season 4

ABC has released the first teaser footage for the second to last season of Lost, which debuts next January or early February. Writer Brian K. Vaughan (most known for his comics work on Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina) recently said that this season will be “the strangest thing that’s ever been on network television, ever.”

I know for me the most fun in the show’s progression has been the simultaneous rise in stakes and the increasingly active role the main characters take in shaping the strange world around them, and I think this promo definitely indicates that will continue full-force. It’s all coming to a head… in May 2010.

It should go without saying that you should not watch this if you haven’t finished season four.

Dexter

Dexter’s third season is still running, but Showtime has opted to pick it up for not only a fourth season but also a fifth. I imagine that’ll be put a little pressure on the producers and writers to come up with a couple more plot arcs that keep things fresh. Hopefully they can do that. I wonder if there is any kind of endgame in mind.

Season four will go into production next spring, and will presumably air during the fall like the previous seasons.

Björk - "Náttúra"

Björk has recorded a new track “Náttúra”, available today on iTunes and next week on other services, for which all proceeds go to its namesake, an Icelandic environmental campaign. The track features Radiohead’s Thom Yorke doing nebulous background vocals, Brian Chippendale on drums, Matthew Herbert on synth and bass, and Mark Bell on electronic beats. “Náttúra” is definitely an extension of the Volta sound, particularly the likes of “Earth Intruders”.

Náttúra, the campaign, “aims at collating and providing sustainable and eco-friendly options suitable for Iceland, and generating alternative ways to utilize it’s natural resources.”

30 Rock: Season 2 DVD

To whom it may concern,

It may come as a surprise, but commentary tracks featuring only one person tend to be sparse and boring. Commentaries by guest stars who had five minutes of screen time discussing entire episodes by their lonesome? Even more boring. It’s great that about half of the episodes on the 30 Rock season two set have commentaries, but there’s not much value to hearing people struggle to say anything of interest. Because as much as I love Will Arnett, I have no interest in hearing him breathe, point out funny gags and do short improv bits, interspersed with long gaps of silence. It goes without saying, the couple available tracks with two people are infinitely more interesting and insightful. Check out Newsradio and Futurama commentaries for an idea on how these things should work. Less people desperately trying to think of things to say and more cast members and writers inspiring each other into discussion about the episodes, please.

Cheers.

Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Earth

Nintendo has announced a sequel to Treasure’s awesome Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Earth on-rails shooter. Originally released for the Nintendo 64 only in Japan, but was recently translated and released through the Wii’s Virtual Console service. The company cites excellent English territory sales of the title for securing the sequel’s release in North America too. Sin and Punishment 2 is geared for a 2009 debut.

I think this is my second post on gaming news, and it’s unsurprising considering it’s the best news since Beyond Good & Evil 2 was announced. The first Sin and Punishment is an intense on-rails shooter, not unlike Star Fox except your character is typically running along the ground, with anime stylings and an alien invasion plot. Or something, I honestly couldn’t make heads nor tails of the story when I finally got to play the game and eventually quit trying and skipped all the story elements, but damn if the gameplay isn’t fantastic fun. Plus, it’s totally perfect for Wii controls. The original was begging for them.

GameTrailers has a small video sampling of the sequel’s action.

This UK quad for The Chaser gave me a good laugh thanks to the first blurb. (click to enlarge)

The Chaser - UK quad poster

I’m not sure I can think of a film that’s been advertised as being the basis for a remake even before the remake was shot. It’s probably not a bad move though. There are definitely English speakers out there that don’t want to just sit around and consume Asian films as rejiggered by Hollywood. I was enjoying the hell out of Infernal Affairs long before The Departed came around. Likewise for the Japanese Dark Water.

Whether The Chaser is anywhere as good as the film the poster is implicitly comparing it to, I have no idea. Two of the three who weighed in on it over at Twitch say it’s nothing special. On the other hand, I’ve been wary of their consensuses after the months and months of fawning they gave Sha Po Lang, which I found forgettable. Korean audiences ate The Chaser up, and it hit some high profile festivals, so who knows. Just have to see it myself some day.

For now, I got a kick out of its UK distributor’s marketing tactic.

20th Century Fox

I can’t express an interest in seeing the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars feature that introduces the upcoming television show. Any good faith I had towards it was lost the instant I learned the plot revolved around Jabba’s son. For such a large universe, it’s sad how small it often seems.

Anyway, I find it fascinating that this one is being distributed by Warner Bros. It’s not the business part that intrigues me, but rather the change in corporate logos in front of the movie. This one doesn’t open with the triumphant 20th Century Fox fanfare composed by Alfred Newman (back in 1933). Of course, this fanfare was never exclusive to Star Wars, but the thought of sitting down in a dark theater, awaiting a Star Wars adventure and not hearing that theme disturbs me. I can’t imagine watching any of the true six films without it, even those that I don’t like. I wonder why that is. All of those films have a common opening even without the fanfare, with the main John Williams theme blaring before shifting into scene-specific score. Is it a matter of having it ingrained in my brain through childhood? Something special in the way Newman’s fanfare preps the audience for what comes next? Does it effectively cut the viewer from the pre-movie mindframe and set one up to be swept away by Williams’s theme?

I don’t really know, but I sure find it interesting. I can’t think of many examples for when a corporate logo’s absence would be felt. Perhaps some Disney films and Pixar’s output. Actually, the Paramount logo and Indiana Jones would qualify, although that tends to be closely tied to those films’ opening shots.

Tell Me You Love Me

Damn. Here I am idly wondering if there was any news on Tell Me You Love Me’s second season so I hopped over to Wikipedia and find that Variety reported last Friday that the second season had been scrapped. It was apparently a mutual decision between creator Cynthia Mort and HBO after they failed to figure out where the second season should go. I can see how that’d happen with optimistic yet minor closures given to the three couples at season’s end, but I still really liked most of the characters and would glady watch them hash out their problems. Ah well. HBO just won’t give Tim DeKay a break. I still haven’t forgiven them for canceling Carnivàle…

I guess I have an additional excuse to check out In Treatment now.

Coldplay
Viva La Viva Or Death And All His Friends

This is Coldplay dabbling with a grander sound. Less intimate without losing warmth. Everything feels bigger here, in a way that reminds me of Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations. Instruments sweep through the tracks to support bold, self-assured vocals. Viva La Vida is a fun little album with a spring in its step; a leisurely joy to lay back and soak in.

The Herbaliser
Same As It Never Was

The Herbaliser returns focused on big instrumentation, mixing hip-hop and sampling stylings with old-school funk. These guys have no qualms about laying on the horns in a major way. “Amores Bongo” is absolutely infectious tune that harkens back to ’70s swingers culture. The entire album is drenched in nostalgia, and I’m not about to complain.

Tricky
Knowle West Boy

Some tracks, like “Past Mistake”, maintain the trip-hop stylings of his work with Massive Attack and early solo recordings, but that’s no longer the entire focus. Rather, Tricky’s first album since 2003 is often bouncing between seductive blues to rough rap-rock. Of course, it’d be somewhat silly to attempt to best Maxinquaye, so this artist’s continued experimentation is welcome. Unsurprisingly, but much appreciated, he continues to work with strong female vocalists.

UNKLE
End Titles… Stories For Film

This is basically the second follow-up to War Stories after More Stories. The same stylings are found here, along with many of the same collaborators. None of that is bad, but as James Lavelle has repeatedly pointed out, this is not UNKLE’s fourth LP. You won’t find the inevitable reinvention that has come with each new major release. If you liked War Stories, you’ll like what’s here, but don’t look for it to yield any revelations.

I Want to Believe

This post serves as a contribution to The X-Files Blog-a-Thon.

Earlier this week I completed a quest I set out upon last November: to watch all 202 episodes of The X-Files before the new film was released. I’d never really dedicated myself to following a television show until college rolled around, with the exceptions of From the Earth to the Moon and Band of Brothers. Science fiction always intrigued me, and I did manage to watch The X-Files: Fight the Future and a select few episodes from that time period, but otherwise the show slipped by me, to remain on my periphery until I was spurred by the specter of a new film and blessed with the wonders of Netflix. And so I spent nine months combing through all nine seasons.

The X-Files always spent a good deal of time on the debate between faith and reason, the irrational and the rational. The show was in no way subtle in crafting its leads as characters who would embody one or the other. At least until the last couple seasons when some roles were shifted around, Fox Mulder was the one willing to take irrational leaps of faith while Dana Scully stuck to science and fact. Their interpersonal chemistry and philosophical debating sustained much of the series, through subpar plots, hokey mythologies and awful early ’90s fashion.

The problem, as I see it, is that the viewing audience was rarely, if ever, asked to participate in the debate between Mulder and Scully. As most episodes progress, Scully is inevitably asked if not begged by Mulder and/or circumstance to concede the possibility of the impossible. The viewer, however, never even has the chance to make that leap. Rather, the show’s structure leads us to have actual knowledge of what Scully must eventually consider possible, and of what Mulder might suspect and believe. Typical episodes open by giving the viewer a privileged insight into the unbelievable act that the show’s FBI agents will proceed to investigate during the remaining forty minutes. We witness the alien abduction, the creature attack, the religious ritual, etc. Even if certain things are left to our imagination for the time being - like a complete view of the monster-of-the-week - we see more than enough to know that we’ve been privy to something out of the ordinary. Even when Mulder’s initial thoughts about a case prove wrong, often by way of Scully’s scientific sleuthing, we don’t doubt that something unbelievable is happening. The question is always what or how that something is, not whether it is.

Mulder and Scully

I frequently found myself hating the segments of the show that would cut away from our leads to show us suspect’s life or another attack by the monster or shady men in black suits conspiring in smoke-filled rooms. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to be convinced by Mulder. I also wanted to be stymied by Scully’s science. Most of all, I wanted to be in the middle of that battleground of ideas. I wanted to have to grapple with both sides, reconcile one with the other and try to figure out what was truly occurring. Maybe that’s way too much to ask from a network television show riffing on police procedurals, but I think it would have been positively brilliant, especially if they were really daring and didn’t satisfy audience expectations for constant supernatural solutions. Mulder could win some weeks, Scully could win others, along with mixtures of both or neither. Keep us guessing and keep us involved and engaged.

I often mourned the manner in which Scully was in the unfortunate position of almost always being wrong about the big picture answer to any given case. She might successfully sort through the details to help hone Mulder’s crazy theories, but it was Mulder who would be right, even if his thoughts didn’t help write up a report for Assistant Director Skinner. This short-shrifting of Scully would grow more frustrating in the episodes where Mulder actively leaves her in the dark about his theories, generally later in the series. In eventual episodes (dare I point to the series finale?) this pattern would develop into an extreme exaggeration where Mulder is an all-knowing messiah ready with ridiculous insight into a situation while Scully isn’t even sure what the situation involves. There’s a point where I just feel sorry for Scully, having to deal with a partner who denies her true participation in the questions of a case. Not even she would be asked to believe in what Mulder might profess. At these times, Scully became a cypher for my own feelings of not being allowed to join the debate between faith and reason. I couldn’t choose or investigate those questions because the given episode would have revealed part of the answer to me. Scully would be unable to join the debate because Mulder (and the writers) was too busy playing cock-of-the-walk at a pace three steps ahead of her.

There are of course episodes that do a better job at disguising or limiting what the audience is shown, but we’re still rarely invited in. We’re outside observers, nodding in agreement with Mulder and hoping Scully will allow extreme possibilities to exist in her mental framework. [Of course, eventually Scully assumes the position of the believer in opposition to Agent Doggett - occasionally replacing Scully with Reyes - or turning it into a three person spectrum, but the formula remains the same.] I’d submit that this is one of the areas in which “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” succeeds so wildly, by constantly relishing the various narrators’ unreliability and subverting what we think we know until the end. This episode, and the few others by Darin Morgan, had some fun with the lead characters and our knowledge of the given situation, but we were still left out of the show’s quintessential question of faith versus reason.

None of this is meant to take away from all the things The X-Files did well, but I’m left believing there’s plenty of room for further development. Other shows have taken various aspects from the groundwork of The X-Files, so perhaps it’s only a matter of time before the core philosophical debate is rekindled elsewhere and taken to the next level. Time will tell.