True Blood 4.9 "Let's Get Out of Here"

Run Alcides, Run. This episode finally gives you weres and shifters some room to move. Take advantage of it.

Joe Mangianello as Alcides.

"Let's Get Out of Here"
But, alas, Alcides isn't fast enough. Bill snatches Sookie from his arms to rescue her from certain death in the pre-titles opening. [Editor's note: Certain death in television series means that tense space in time between the cliffhanger of the previous episode and the first three minutes of the current episode]. But his pre-credits run is telling; this episode is speedy and we'll dash through this post, too.

The run for your life plotting makes Antonia's next move extra distressing. She magically slams all the doors shut on the Moon Goddess Emporium, like she's Carrie White at the prom. Her former friends are now prisoners and coerced coven members. 

Is she planning to wipe them out once she's done with the vamps? CLICK FOR FULL POST.

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Michael Sheen is Such a Freak...

Sheen as computer program

Sheen as lycan

How did he ever end up in that stuffy English man groove in all those political movies?

This random question is brought to you by the recent full moon (were any of you killed by werewolves?) and my new blu-ray of Tron Legacy in which Sheen really gets his freak on... presumably to entertain himself since the movie won't. [Editor's aside: The BFCA is honoring the 5th anniversary of the Blu-Ray soon so I'm reinvestigating several titles for their blu-crispness and such so I can vote on the honors.] 

My god is that movie (Tron Legacy) incoherent. And I'm not talking about the plot since one can forgive movies about people getting trapped inside computers and creating malevolent digital versions of themselves for plotholes and diversions; part of the territory! I'm talking about the filmmaking. From scene to scene but more problematically from cut to cut nothing ever makes any sense. Where is this character standing? Which direction are they moving in? Where did that other character come from? Did they leave where they just were? Perhaps they turned around to face another direction? Why are we looking through a window now? Why did we just watch Tron fall into water from underneath the water? Why does that butterfly conveyor built thingie take 21 minutes to take the characters to the climax when every other distance in Tron world seems to be covered in like 4 seconds? We're talking basic spatial incoherency constantly. And you can't blame "the grid"... don't know if you've ever noticed this but cities built on grids are super easy to navigate in comparison to cities that aren't. 

This post was brought to you by 2010. Thanks for listening.

SuperFreak and his unsuspecting lady friend Rachel McAdams

As you were.

Eye Candy: Slave Boys, Female Heroes, Werewolf Routines

The Week in Eye Candy. You deserve it. It's almost the weekend. Soak up the color, the bods, the glamour. Enjoy the diva and the doodles. There's something for everyone unless you're so niche you're impossible to please in which case scroll quickly away (try puzzles or trailers or Oscar buzz)

Jamie the Slave Boy

The Eagle hit DVD (well apart from Netflix which is on a epically annoying month-delay now). Director, Please thinks the whole movie makes no sense on account of why would Channing Tatum spare slave boy Jamie Bell's life...unless there was lust involved. Well, yes. Fair point. But does audience lust count?

Lea Seydoux's Breasts 

She didn't get to roll on the floor or handle fire arms in Midnight in Paris (note that old vinyl records don't pack a punch) but she gets to do just that in the Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol trailer. Her girls look even better in action... 

Jude Law, Lady Gaga and more after the jump

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TV @ the Movies: "Hoosiers" vs. "The Notebook"

I know that MTV's Teen Wolf is based on an 80s movie but it's not set in the 1980s so what to make of the bizarre opening scene of its latest episode "The Tell" in which Jackson (Colton Haynes) and Lydia (Holland Roden) visit that nostalgia-inducing endangered species, The Video Store, and have the following  ½ "80s" argument... 

Jackson: "Hoosiers" is not only the best basketball movie ever it is the best sports movie ever made. 
Lydia: No.
Jackson: It's got Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper!
Lydia: No.
Jackson: Lydia, I swear to God you're going to like it.
Lydia: No.
Jackson: I AM NOT WATCHING "THE NOTEBOOK" AGAIN

[cut to: Jackson, defeated, inside the store]

Jackson: Can somebody help me find "The Notebook"? 

Haha. So, maybe this was intended it as a Men are from Mars / Women are from Venus argument but do today's teenagers (non film-fanatic variety... not you reading, obvs)  even know who Dennis Hopper and Gene Hackman are? It seems like this argument was between a 30something man and a teen girl. Or maybe Hoosiers mania still lives on in high school boys? I'm not a sports person or a high school boy so I cannot speak from authority.

Once inside the store, there are a ton of movies on view but none of them seem intentionally placed there for the camera. Lazy set dressers (kidding!). For instance, there's telltale signs of a dead body (a foot!) peaking out from behind the I Am Love row. But I highly doubt the director's were like "ooh, someone dies in that Tilda Swinton / Italian melodrama that won Best Pic at the Film Bitch Awards, so let's put the body there!".

This one on the other hand is 100% intentional.

Turns out there's an evil werewolf in the store and Jackson ends up hiding right next to a copy of Let The Right One In, the only movie with its own closeup. "The Tell" that it's intentional: It's out of sequence with the other movies sitting next to it, which begin with "S". Video stores may be on the verge of extinction but surely they still alphabetize.

Howling at MTV's "Teen Wolf"

Tyler Posey as "Eddie Munster"... I MEAN, "TEEN WOLF"! Have any of you been watching MTV's new series Teen Wolf? I thought I might give it a go as it premiered right after the MTV Movie Awards which we wrote up here (live blog) and here (fashion). I think with Mad Men missing from my summer schedule, I'm searching for a TV show worth writing about - not that an MTV high school show based on a cheesy 80s movie is equivocal but I was curious. I mean how long can the current vampire/werewolf craze last? Zombies reigned for nearly an entire decade of pop culture so perhaps this trend has got a few more years in it.

As with Game of Thrones I decided three episodes was enough before sounding off...

episode 1 (pilot) "Wolf Moon"
It begins, as many monster movies, do with an investigation: cops, flashlights, woods, dead body ...or half of one at least (ewww). We are then introduced to the lead character Scott McCall (Tyler Posey), who is shown shirtless fixing his LaCrosse gear. So he's already coded as "hot jock". His best friend Stiles (Dylan O'Brien), a cop's son, calls to urge him to sneak out and see what all this dead body business is about. Weirdly, Stiles has Scott who is a severe asthmatic, hold the flashlight while they run up and down forest hills in the pitch black. Pant pant. Cough cough. BITE BITE. wolf attack! Well, you saw that coming. The next morning at school there is this amusing but entirely implausible* conversation, as Stiles berates Scott for being such a nerd.

the writers of that 80s Michael J Fox movie, get a shout out but this is closer to borrowing a "title" than adaptation.

"Dragging me down to your nerd depths. I'm a nerd by association. I've been Scarlet Nerded by you."

The creator of the show cited Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an influence in a recent interview -- another reason I tuned in -- and in dialogue exchanges like this you can feel it reaching for the smart geeky pop culture fun of that classic.

But in no way shape or universe is a guy on a high school's #1 sports team who looks like this a nerd.

No that is not a key party invitation from a cougar. That is a sex talk with his mom! (Cuz, you know, people generally have those talks with their mom while dripping wet and wearing only a towel.) Of course the mom uses this opportunity to make an MTV in joke -synergy!

I'm not going to end up on some reality show with a pregnant 16 year old."

ANYWAY... I was talking to Joe after the show about all this sexiness and I said 'Remember in 80s and 90s movies how the people playing nerds were sometimes not regulation hotties who have personal trainers on speed dial.' And he says...

Oh, you mean the bad old days?"

So... uh, well, Joe won that argument.

Trust: I'm not complaining about looking at Tyler Posey. But when your casting director fills an entire high school with beauties, it's hard not to giggle at the conversations about who's hot and who's not.  There is one moment in particular in episode one that had me totally LOL'ing where I was supposed to be sympathizing: A super hot black girl (unnamed... this school is lily-white but for her) stares at the new girl chatting up the most popular couple in school. She asks Scott and Stiles why the new girl gets to hang with them on her first day and they tell her 'Duh, she's hot!' So basically three hot 20somethings pretending to be highschoolers are staring at three other hot 20somethings pretending to be highschoolers, whilst bemoaning their fate as the Unhot?

The things you're hearing are hilariously irreconciliable with what you're seeing. Hey, maybe the show is a sly satire on body dysmorphia?

But if there's one thing this show is not, that's subtle. [Lots more after the jump, including more Buffy comparisons.]

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