tv review

I finally caught the first 3 episodes of Alcatraz on Fox.  I have to say that it is interesting and written well enough to be a wee bit engaging.  Even with its flaws.

Alcatraz on Fox

TV Review:

Alcatraz comes to us from Elizabeth Sarnoff (Lost, Deadwood), Steven Lilien (Kyle XY), Bryan Wynbrandt (Kyle XY) and is executive produced by J.J. Abrams.

The cast includes Sarah Jones (Sons of Anarchy), Jorge Garcia (Lost), Jonny Coyne, Parminder Nagra (ER) & Sam Neill.

The premise of Alcatraz is that back on March 20th, 1963, everyone on the island disappeared.  Now, here in 2012, the folks who disappeared seem to be returning.  And that’s not good.

The interesting thing is that there’s an organization that has already been set up and expecting the inmates to be returning.  Their advanced office of equipment is set up under the prison and is run by Emerson Hauser (Neill).  Lucy Banerjee (Nagra) is his partner and Jones plays detective Madsen who gets herself recruited to their team.  She tags a comic book writer to help her, who also happens to be an expert on Alcatraz history (Garcia).

So each case of the week has them hunting down the newest perp who has reappeared and doing what they do best, is evil stuff.  We watch the perp do his deed here in the present, but we also get flashbacks to their lives back in the 60′s.  It’s some filler, background material giving us their motivation, if there’s motivation to be understood.

PhotobucketHere’s the gang at Comic-Con 2011, meeting, greeting and signing things fans brought by…

And once they do catch their man, Hauser transports them to a new version of Alcatraz, somewhere off in the woods.  This is where they’re putting all the inmates they reclaim.

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Brad Douriff (L) and Cleavant Derricks in Syfy Movie Swamp Volcano - a TV Review

This is a TV review of Swamp Volcano (AKA Miami Magma) Original Saturday Night movie on Syfy.  It stars ex-model Rachel Hunter (Gravity), Melissa Ordway (In Time, Escapee), Cleavant Derricks (Sliders) and acting veteran Brad Dourif (Catch .44, Priest; on TV: Deadwood).

Swamp Volcano (AKA Miami Magma) was produced by Activity Film Services and directed by Todor Chapkanov (Monsterwolf).  It was written by Declan O’Brien (Wrong Turn 3 & 4; Sharktopus).  [I keep saying aka because it's referred to in IMDb as Miami Magma.]

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Swamp Volcano starts out on Syfy looking and sounding like an older TV show, my first thought was Miami Vice, but that opening was better.  (I was starting to worry right away, but things settled down for me.) Then we switch to a dad video chatting with his daughter and wife on his smart phone.  He’s on a Holter Energy drilling rig (called Trans Ocean Alpha) when a funky computer read out suggested they should stop drilling but of course, they argue about it until they try to shut down.  But it’s too late and the rig runs into trouble.  As in volcanic trouble and blows up… in a tiny CGI explosion.

(Oh dude, you’re supposed to put the life vest on, then dive in…  not throw the life vest in and dive after it!)

The movie distinctly looks/feels like it was filmed on tape!  It’s got that fuzzy, noisy sound.

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Liam McIntyre in Spartacus Vengeance

The 2nd season of Starz’ Spartacus, Spartacus: Vengeance, kicked it in gear tonight, January 27th, 2012. (It’s been on VoD, as a free preview, since the 20th)  Spartacus: Vengeance stars Liam McIntyre, Manu Bennett, Viva Bianca, Peter Mensah and more cast from last season, with a few new characters.

Last season ended with Spartacus leading a revolt and escape of slaves from the house of Batiatus.

The second season premiere starts with Spartacus (McIntyre) running from several horsemen in pursuit, hell-bent on skewering Spartacus.  Yet this is but a trap as the Roman soldiers ride head-long into the awaiting swords of Spartacus‘ men.

Viva Bianca in Spartacus: Vengeance

And thus we see how the escaped slaves are existing… hidden in tunnels, foraging for supplies and needing to share amongst themselves.

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The season premiere of Touch aired on Fox and to be honest, I found myself pleasantly surprised and entertained…

TOUCH on Fox, starring Kiefer Sutherland

Fox’s Touch, starring Kiefer Sutherland and David Mazouz, premiered tonight on Fox.  It’s about a father and his autistic, mute son.  That is, until dad learns that his son in reality, is in touch with life like no other human is, and can predict events and hence, prevent bad things from happening.

The series is from Heroes showrunner Tim Kring.  But unlike Heroes, there’s only one special person and many character stories in this series premiere of TouchDanny Glover was also part of the cast.

Though Touch never really caught my attention through the months of marketing up to tonight, It was, I felt, a fortuitous bit of timing that nothing else was on TV so I tuned in.

I’m glad I did.

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LOST GIRL premiering on Syfy

This is a quick TV review and recap of the series premiere (and season premiere) of Lost Girl on the Syfy channel

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In the first 25 minutes (that includes ad time) of the season premiere of Lost Girl, we learn that our main character does not know what she is, she kills by kissing, she coerces humans via touch, there are two groups of meta-humans or creatures that seem to control what these entities do in their neighborhoods or regions or what ever.

They are called Fay…

We also get an EYE-FULL of close-ups of legs, butt, more leg and more butt.  Yea, this guy is hooked for the moment.  I see why this show could be popular, even if it does spell everything out in the first 25 minutes.

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This is a TV review of the Syfy televised movie, Collision Earth.  In yet another original Saturday Night Movie on Syfy, humanity is once again threatened.  This time, the entire planet and all of humanity is threatened by the planet Mercury, or more accurately, pieces of Mercury.  (It’s complicated…  you’ll see.)

Collision Earth on Syfy

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Collision Earth cast includes Fringe’s Kirk Acevedo, Diane Farr (Californication, Numb3rs) & Jessica Parker Kennedy (In Time, on TV: The Secret Circle).  It’s directed by Paul Ziller (Iron Invader, Ice Quake and other Syfy staple movies) and written by Ryan Landels (The LXD: The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers).

Collision Earth starts on Syfy with a spaceship in, well, space, “approaching coordinates” or so their ship’s computer informed them.  Then a solar-looking event occurs, where a huge solar flare reaches out and threatens the ship’s crew as it destroys the little moon they were trying to go into orbit around.

(Either I missed  it or about 15 minutes later I learned they were going into orbit around Mercury.)

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Stargate SG-1 Gate GolfStargate SG-1: Col O’Neill going for a serious distance record with “Gate Golf!”

The other day while watching repeats of the sci fi TV series Stargate SG-1 on Syfy, the episode titled “Window of Opportunity” aired.

It was the 6th epi in the 4th season.

After heading to a planet where a heart broken archeologist named Malakai is trying to use a defective ancient time machine to go back in time to visit his dead wife, the SG-1 team encounters the saddened soul, but the time machine is malfunctioning even more so than it might have normally been.  When it goes off, Col. O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) and Teal’c (Christopher Judge) find themselves restarting the day over.  Much like Ground Hog Day.

It’s determined through various time loops of 6 to 10 hours, that O’Neill and Teal’c need to learn ancient to decipher writings on the time machine and fix the situation.  That premise alone is fracking funny.  But the duo have to live the short time frame over and over again.  It’s estimated that they relived this day for an estimated 3 months worth of time.

Each time, they need to convince the base staff what’s happening and git on with their studying.

It’s hilarious because they realize that they can do anything they want and no one will remember / know about it.

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Earth's Final Hours on Syfy

This is a TV review of Syfy channel’s Saturday Night Original movie, Earth’s Final Hours.

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Earth’s Final Hours opens with a few quick scenes to set up the situation for the Syfy TV movie viewer.

We watch something hurtling through space towards Earth.

We see two federal agents, (played by Robert Knepper and Alex Zahara) looking at some DirecTV-looking dishes in a field.  (Robert Knepper note:  He has no accent and he’s the good guy.  How weird.)

The feds find the guy setting up the dishes, but something comes out of the sky and drills him through the chest.  Before the scientist dies, he asks agent Streich (Knepper) to “Take care of my circles”

We watch a conversation between two uber-secret govt guys in Washington, talking about the scientist who just became the human hole-punch.

We then meet a scientist, Chloe Edwards, played by Stargate Universe‘s Julia Benson.

Then we meet Streich’s son, Andy (Cameron Bright).  The meddling computer geek son who manages to break into computers and never listen to his father’s requests.

About mid-movie, we meet Bruce Davison, who plays the scientist who understands what’s happening and how to fix or stop things, using a satellite system that’s in orbit already, set to go.  He knows what the circles statement means.

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HBO aired a preview of the season premiere of Luck, which is officially going to premiere in late January.  This TV Review of Luck is a non-spoiler review of the premise of the new series from HBO.

LUCK on HBO

For me, Luck on HBO has a certain draw due to the setting of the horse racing industry, and any serious fan of the sport recognizes Santa Anita, in Arcadia, California from a mile away.

Luck has an all-star cast,  with Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte, John Ortiz, Kevin Dunn, Dennis Farina, Michael Gambon and more… and the premiere episode was directed by Michael Mann, from creator David Milch (Deadwood).

But this season premiere seemed more steeped in the technicalities of horse racing than they were the details of the many characters this premiere episode of Luck introduced.

The non-fan in my household with me was confused with the story developments.  And this fan found a few beautiful and confounding points to the season premiere.

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This TV Review has DVR Viewer Spoilers for Boardwalk Empire

Boardwalk Empire on HBO promo art

I’m not sure what to say or where to start.  Most of this season of Boardwalk Empire,  Nucky (Steve Buscemi) has been trying to dodge legal hot water, as that pesky investigator was building her case against him.  But as usual, this series, from Terence Winter (The Sopranos) and Martin Scorsese rocked my Sunday evening once again.  How can Boardwalk Empire not rock?

Boardwalk Empire cast member Michael Shannon

But then things started falling apart for her as the Boardwalk Empire season started to mature closer to the season finale.  The creepy but focused Agent Van Alden’s (played well by Michael Shannon) life started to fall apart, from an illegitimate baby, pending divorce and then  to have his murder of his past partner come to light put him on the road and on the lamb!

Then the political underpinnings of the city were turning against Nucky until James Darmody’s (Michael Pitt) father (Dabney Coleman) died… or, well, was killed.

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