"Blade" cancelled

I’m gonna suppress my pun reflex because there are a ton of them about this already. There’s not a whole lot to say here. Not a bad series, I’ve seen worse -- “Birds of Prey” anyone? It just couldn’t deliver the martial arts and special effects on the level of the “Blade” films. An impossible task when you consider the limited budget of TV and Kirk Jones’ lack of martial arts experience.
It is a little surprising that the news came so soon. The planned DVD release promises all kinds of gratuitous nudity and violence. The TV DVD culture is still new and it seems as if the suits are still trying to figure it out. A show like “24” really started to take off when people started watching whole seasons on DVD. It’s not crazy to think that season 1 of “Blade” on DVD could have increased interest in a second season. Why not hold off on cancelling the show until seeing how it performs on DVD? Too short of a window?
The last few minutes of the season (now series) finale were disappointing. Now Krista will be be stuck in Marcus’ clutches for all eternity. I’m curious if more shows are going to be written with major arcs being wrapped up in thirteen episodes, you know.... just in case. Probably not, nobody wants to go into a series with the idea that it’s going to fail -- even though, most of them do. Nowadays, cancelled shows aren’t exiled to some musty box of tapes in the basement. People will actually buy them on DVD, just don’t leave us hanging...
Speaking of TV, my scriptapalooza TV pilot should be polished by next Saturday.

Heroes

Liked it. Didn’t love it. Damn you, J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon! Damn you both to hell! I used to able to take whatever drivel the networks fed me, but now I have all these blasted high expectations. You’ve ruined television for me.
On a pure fanboy level, the super powers, the hot chicks, the comic book references/art are golden. The stuff in between, not so much. I wished it had focused on one or two characters at a time and gave them a chance to breathe. I mean, Web Stripping/Gambling/Dopplegang Murdering Mom with the biracial Genius Kid on the run from the mob, is more than enough for a stand alone series -- Spoilery guess: GK or his Dad also have powers. It’s hard to pull off a show with so many characters (note to self: hint, hint) and apparently, more will be popping up as the season progresses. I read somewhere that the producers didn’t want to do one of those slowly unraveling dramas. That’s not always a bad thing. It works for “Lost”, didn’t work for “Invasion”, “Surface” and “Threshold”. I’ll keep watching -- anything to avoid “Vanished” -- with my feet firmly planted on the ground.

Good Site

I’m probably breaking my streak of frivolous entries, but I came across a pretty useful site. A good DVD commentary can provide a great deal of insight as to how the pros do it, but how do you weed out the crappy ones? RateThatCommentary.com does just that. It's "the definitive commentary track database, as well as your guide to finding the best and worst in DVD commentary tracks." Haven’t signed up yet, but at some point, I’ll be adding a couple reviews of my own to their database.

UPN R.I.P.

The WB had a proper send-off last night with the "Felicity", "Buffy", "Angel" and "Dawson's Creek" pilots, but what about the good ole United Paramount Newtork? How about a moment of silence for the likes of “Star Trek: Voyager”, “Enterprise”, “Jake 2.0”, “Nowhere Man”, “Special Unit 2”, “Level 9”,“Homeboys in Outer Space”, “Seven Days”, “The (New) Twilight Zone” and “Shasta McNasty”. Ah, those were good times -- okay, they were more like hit and miss, mediocre times but I appreciated the effort.

Ultraviolet

About a month ago, I was robbed. A guy hit me over the head, went through my pockets and ran off with $4.95. That guy was Kurt Wimmer. If you listen carefully, you can still hear him chuckling as he takes his ill gotten gains (as meager as they were) to the bank.
This is easily one of the worst movies of the year--maybe of the last decade. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear it was a video game adaptation. All the elements are there: gravity defying stunts, an almost infinite supply of weapons stored in hyperspace, instant costume changes, sword fighting, endless evil henchmen, vampire viruses--my head is about to explode. Maybe Kurt’s in the wrong business. Just get rid of all that pesky dialogue and any attempt at a coherent story.
“Ultraviolet” even fails on a it’s-from-the-director-of-Equilibrium-so-there’s-gotta-be-some-cool-gun-kata level. All the shooting and killing become mind-numbingly repetitive after the first action sequence. Now I’ve heard the stories that the studio edited the movie to their liking and cut Wimmer out the process, but still...this is a bad, bad movie. The curse of the action chick flick continues...

Eureka

After you get past its obvious charms--took me a while, there’s a whole lot to like about this show. Smart, funny, quirky. I wanna say a sci-fi “Northern Exposure”, but that’s not quite on the button. Nevertheless, if the Sci-Fi Channel is going churn out stuff like “Eureka”, it almost makes up for all those Saturday nights I spent watching the likes of “Mansquito” and “SS Doomtrooper”. Almost. It also takes away some of the sting from cancellation of “Stargate: SG-1”. As for my own pilot script (aka the writing sample), steady as she goes for Scriptapalooza tv. The last I need is a eureka moment where I decide to take a buzz saw to ACT II.

Story Starters

Cancer survivor cured by the Devil

Giant Wasp nests puzzle experts

Hot dogs may cause genetic mutations.


Pastor indicted on rape while 'casting out demons'

Physics proves horror movies get it all wrong.

Voodooo causes man to kill kids then self.

The Covenant

Sony Pictures' official "The Convenant” website has the first three minutes online... they fail to mention that the first two and a half minutes are the opening credits. I don't know about you, but nothing makes or breaks a movie for me like an opening credit sequence. The other thirty seconds shows the four leads jumping off a cliff, ala “The Lost Boys”. If you’re wondering why the “producers of Underworld” are churning out what essentially looks like an extended boy band video, it turns out that today’s teen girls love horror, much more than their male counterparts (a blurb I got from Variety). The movie’s myspace page has over forty-thousand friends. It’ll be interesting to see how much of that will translate into actual box office (worked for “Step Up”). So teen girls like horror. Does that mean we should have more strong female characters or come up with more reasons to keep Biff shirtless?