"Nominations for Everyone!" - Saturn Awards

I maintain that a lot of "special interest" awards bodies would instantly be more respectable if they'd limit their number of nominations in a category. The Saturn Awards, who've been handing out prizes for sci-fi/fantasy/horror films for 40 years now, are one such group. When you narrow your field of eligibility -- as all special interest awards bodies must to still fit within their special interest boundaries -- why then should your nominee list be larger than the standard model (that'd be Oscar. pay attention). Despite what seems like a neverending barrage of pictures released that are catering to the comic-con community, there are actually less movies like that than those that are eligible for other prizes which only have "release date" as criteria. And yet the Saturn Awards feel the need to have six-seven nominees in all the acting categories and multiple Best Picture awards. If you combine all of their Best Film categories, they have 34 Best Picture nominees! though Gravity and The Hobbit: The Smaugening are the nomination leaders.

It must be so insulting for any picture that was not nominated... though I can't think of any that weren't offhand. Hundreds of nominations with brief grumpy commentary are after the jump. 

Best Comic-to-Film Motion Picture:
“Iron Man 3″
“Man of Steel”
“Thor: The Dark World”
“The Wolverine”

The only snubbee I can think of here is Blue is the Warmest Color but those lesbians have no superpowers beyond very limber bodies and the ability to eat huge amounts of food without gaining a pound. 

30 more Best Picture nods after the jump...

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Teen Wolf Eye Gougings (& Shark Jumpings?)

Teen Baby WolfIf my eyes were to glow like a werewolves on Teen Wolf I'd want them to be purple or green -- my signature colors. But, since werewolf eyes seem to be mood driven, right now they'd be ice blue. After the TV highs of last week when we got Orange is the New Black (so good!) on Netflix, a decent Emmy nomination list with a little something for everyone and fun to play with, Sunday and Monday were brutal: True Blood began to truly suck again despite the vague sense that it was limping back towards former mojo after the debacle of Season 5 (please stake this show!), Bunheads was cancelled just as it was really hitting its stride (those last few episodes were giant leaps forward for a show that was clearly only just starting to hit its stride) and Teen Wolf...? well my guilty pleasure that I've kept telling people not to feel guilty about, delivered its single worst episode. And made me feel guilty for watching it. 

I was so bored and annoyed I felt like the eye-gouging scene was basically projection. And what's with the sparkler effect on punctured lupine eyes? Last week I joked that Teen Wolf goes everyone but to high school these days but this episode was a disaster, accomplishing  a truly bizarre thing no TV series should want to accomplish: it had an entire episode devoted to backstory exposition starring actors who are tertiary characters or playing younger versions of the characters in which NONE of the show's central players got more than a few minutes of air time. No Lydia and very little Allison, Scott, Derek or Stiles? No thanks! 

Do you agree that flashback / backstory episodes are The Worst? To me it nearly always signals creative trouble. Even shows as consistently excellent as my two all time favorites (Mad Men and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) tend to trip up when they leave their main actors behind or put them in bad wigs to tell us some story from days of yore.

Teen Wolf in... a Hospital ☑ a Bank ☑ a Motel ☑

Lydia freaks out well and oftenWould you forgive me for continually not writing up Teen Wolf episodes if I gazed off into the distance like I was seeing something invisible and horrific, as psychic Lydia does, and let out a bloodcurdling scream? Because that is actually what I do each morning on my second cup of coffee when I realize I have about 45 minutes of free time for the next 12 hours of deadlines and demands and I've already wasted 15 of it on the first cup.

Let this post serve as my train-of-thought apology to those of you watching Teen Wolf which I hope you will accept and do, respectively. It won't be the last time I go "damn, I wish I had time to write up Teen Wolf!" but ...yeah. Moving on so we can catch up. 

Deucalion barks a lotThis season began, memorably, with an episode called "Tattoo" (written to accomodate star Tyler Posey's new tattoo... thus rationalizing the hilariously dumb 'how do werewolves get tattoos when they heal so fast?' C-plot). Since then it's settled into three repetitive mysteries. The first is about when a team of hateful alphas who want Derek (Tyler Hoechlin) to kill his pack will attack?Answer: Every episode. mystery solved! [more]

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I Am Linking

Hollywood Richard Matheson, sci-fi novelist of I Am Legend fame, dies at 87. You can (partially) blame him for the zombie apocalypse craze that's still with us today.
Kevin Patrick O'Keeffe on why Teen Wolf is the most important show on TV for gay viewers. Interesting argument even while admitting that the sole gay character is largely left out of the action.  
TFE Don't forget. The 4th season of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" returns next Wednesday with American Graffitti. Will you be joining us? 

In Contention alerts us to an awesome thing. iTunes has 88% of the Best Picture winners available for purchase or rentals. 
Antagony & Ecstacy thinks Bling Ring might just be Sofia Coppola's best work

World War Link  
Empire James Badge Dale lines up yet another new role. That character actor career is booming and with good reason. How good was he in Flight, World War Z and Iron Man 3?
The Film Doctor discusses World War Z and zombie conventions with a young film buff
Hammer & Thump another take on World War Z as a three-headed movie

Tweet LOLz
For fans of Wonder Woman... I know you're out there. This exchange from my an old online friend Pfangirl and GarethNN made me lol this morning.

@pfangirl Only one way to really settle this question, in my mind. Bikini jello-wrestling showdown.

— Gareth Fouche (@GarethNN) June 26, 2013

 

Teen Wolf Returns, Gets "Tattoo"

With Smash gone to its grave and Mad Men nearing its end and still no official word on a second season of Bunheads (i'm losing hope) I need a new TV show to write about weekly. So indulge me in TEEN WOLF which has finally given werewolves a good name again. It's roughly three trillion times better than Hemlock Grove and roughly one billion times sexier than The Twilight Saga probably because the guys and girls are hotter and have personalities that extend beyond "mopey" and "lovestruck" though they amply cover those character traits, too.  I have flirted with covering it before writing up the first three episodes and ogling the muscles. But weirdly, though I realized the leaps and bounds it made in quality in Season 2, I didn't commit to blogging it. So... Season Three!

Teen Wolf Magical Logic #1: Werewolves can't get tattoos because they heal too quickly. Unless those tattoos are by torch in which case the healing just gives up or something?

"Tattoo"
In the first episode we pick up as the school year begins (teen shows always have this trouble of built-in expiration dates that they always botch by NOT allowing for a rotating cast of different-aged main characters right from season 1!). Scott and Stiles (Tyler Posey, Dylan O'Brien) are still pining for Alison (Crystal Reed) and Lydia (Holland Roden) who they've barely seen during the summer. Lydia's boyfriend and season 1 & 2's half villain / full hunk Jackson (Coulton Haynes) left the show *sniffle* so we learn that his rich daddy has moved him overseas. In a supernatural show where killing off a main character would be totally dramatic (and dramatically sensible) this feels like a cheat. It's obviously only Blighty so they can make an American Werewolf in London joke. That honor goes to Lydia.  [more...]

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