Four Torches (Out of Five)

There are a few things everyone should do at least once in life: take a road trip in a convertible, get naked in a hot spring in the woods, and play a Japanese role-playing video game.

Japanese games are different from American-made ones, trust me.

The most famous JRPG may be Final Fantasy, the 13th installment of which was released in the U.S. just last month (it’s been available in Japan since December 2009).

The characters of Final Fantasy XIII

Here’s my advice for those, like me, who aren’t familiar with the series: buy The Complete Official Guide to this particular game.

It’s not that it’s completely impossible to play the game without the guide. They do a pretty good job of making it “idiot-proof,” at least for the first chapters — and there is always a chance to make up for past mistakes, especially once you get past the ninth chapter.

It’s just that this game is so rich and complicated that if you don’t have the guide, you’ll probably get confused very often, and you’ll finish thinking, “Okay, not bad, but I don’t quite get what all the fuss is about.”

Let’s say this upfront: for those not familiar with JRGP, almost everything about the game-play is different. For example, the leveling system is not linear, but involves spending “Crystogen Points” to acquire abilities and upgrade your character.

The plot? Oh, Lord, I don’t know where to begin. Suffice to say that you’re defending the heavenly paradise of Cocoon, which is involved in a battle between two factions of beings called the fal’Cie. You play various human “l’Cie,” each of which has a Focus, or goal to fulfill, and figuring out what those are is part of the game.

Unlike a lot of American games, FF XIII’s story is relatively linear — you go where they want you to go — but that doesn’t mean it’s simplistic. What engages you is the many sub-plots involving all the characters, and — more than anything — the strategizing of the fights.

I thought this would get boring after while, but it never did. The game does an amazing job of varying the fights and their degrees of difficulty.

This is very much a thinking-person’s video game. If you enjoy the “thinking” aspect of gaming, you’ll be attracted to this one. On the other hand, if you’re a roam-around/shooter kind of player, this might not be the game for you.

And if the need to strategize ever gets to be too much, you can always choose to rely heavily on the game’s AI.

But as I said at the beginning of this review: everyone should at least try a game such as this. The graphics are astonishingly beautiful (slightly better on the Playstation, I’m told, although it looked fine to me on the Xbox).

Incidentally, for those who are hearing-impaired (or who multi-task, like me), it’s a little difficult to find the subtitles, but they are there. Explore the “options.”

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Four Torches (Out of Five)

Every time Holly Black’s short stories show up in an anthology, critics always say the same thing: grim, lush, deeply-imagined fantasy.

The Poison Eaters: and Other Stories is her first solo collection, and because it only includes two new tales — “Going Ironside” and “The Land of Heart’s Desire” — I wasn’t expecting to be entirely overwhelmed by it. But I read/reread all 12 stories in one sitting because Black is a skilled wordsmith and her stories are even better piled together in a heap of dark magic.

Black’s short stories are billed as Modern Faeire Tales, which as an apt description because of the vampires and elves and unicorns and anthropomorphism. Yet, even though the themes are consistent, every story is delicious on its own.

(Warning: Mild spoilers below.)

“The Coldest Girl in Cold Town” introduces a homeless, alcoholic teenager who has to stay liquored up so she doesn’t give into her vampire cravings — a total bummer for the guys who want to roofie her at the beginning of the story. (”Let me spell it out: if you don’t get me some alcohol, I am going to bite you.”).

The teenagers in “A Reversal of Fortune” and “The Night Market” take a cue from The Charlie Daniel’s Band and makes actual deals with the devil. Instead of golden fiddles, though, it’s saving pets by an eating competition. And saving lives by entering into pacts with faeires.

“The Dog King” is an age-old quest that will have you rooting for the villain.

“Virgin” tells the complex and tragic story of a teenage junkie who is the kind of handsome that “girls draw obsessively in the corners of their notebooks.” And “The Coat of Stars” is a whole other kind of tragedy that explores the life of a closeted gay fashion designer.

“In Vodka Veritas” is light-hearted and a winner, simply because of the truth of the title.

In “Going Ironside” faeires try to get humans to impregnate them.

“The Poison Eaters” is about three sisters who are poisonous to the touch.

My favorite story in the collection is “Paper Cuts Scissors,” because it’s one of those rare love stories to both readers and writers, and it has the unique gift of not being overly-indulgent. (It’s easy territory to fall into when magical authors are writing about magical readers.) The main character in “Paper Cuts Scissors” has the gift of putting stuff into (and taking stuff out of) books, so that the plot is custom-fitted for whoever is reading it.

After a fight, the main character’s girlfriend thrusts herself into a Russian novel and he has to find the exact book she used to get her out again. There’s a definite Inkheart feel to it, but it’s different enough to be exciting.

The only complaint I have about Black’s stories is that they don’t really have the timeless feel of some other modern fairy retellings (like Malinda Lo’s Ash, for example). The stories are marketed toward teenagers, and while I think actual adults will enjoy the texture and depth, they probably will resonate more with younger audience (unlike Malinda Lo’s Ash, which is written for a young adult audience, but is a goer for all ages.) (Btw, I think you should read Ash. Can you tell?)

Holly Black is a gift to the fantasy genre. She makes reading fun for young people. And she makes sleeping a little harder for everyone.

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Three and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

Get this: according to the new movie The Wolfman, there’s a fine line between “human” and “animal.” There might even be something of a savage beast lurking under the surface of a person who looks very human on the outside!

You’ve never seen a movie or a TV show with that theme before, have you?

I shouldn’t mock. These are classic themes, right? Even if we’ve seen them all before (a lot), they’re worth hearing again. And The Wolfman, and werewolf stories in general, are certainly classic tales.

But I gotta say, after 800,000 variations on the werewolf story, it kinda woulda been nice if they’d had something new to say. Something about “alpha” males, perhaps?

In fairness, the movie is clearly making an attempt to go the “traditional” route, making something reminiscent of the original 1941 classic, The Wolf Man. It plays things far more seriously than Universal’s The Mummy remake.

And for the most part, the atmosphere works. Since the aforementioned thin-line-between-humans-and-animals theme is such a large part of the story, they do a great job of showing how, in 19th century England, human beings and animals exist side-by-side: there are dogs, horses, mounted animals on walls, hedges in the shapes of animals, the occasional gypsy bear, even lots of animal furs mixed in with the costumes.

This lurking “animal” presence, and lots of carriages rattling through the fog on moonlit moors, are part of what I pay for when I go to a movie called The Wolfman, and this one definitely delivers in that respect.

Everyone is all tortured and the look is very gothic, and let’s face it: there’s not nearly enough of that in movies today.

Likewise, the movie starts off telling basically the same story as the original, but then takes an interesting twist halfway through (playing on the expectations of those familiar with the first movie). It’s such an obvious twist that, in retrospect, you kind of wonder why they didn’t include it in the original. And the fact that it is so obvious, and yet still genuinely surprising, makes me think the movie got at least this right.

There’s also a great scene where, after the main character has been committed to an asylum “because he thinks he’s a werewolf,” a group of psychologists gather to watch him under a full moon. It’s all part of his treatment: when the moon comes out and he doesn’t transform, he’ll know it’s all in his mind.

Alas, it’s not all in his mind, but he’s soon to be in their minds — as in, ripping their heads open.

But it must be said: despite what you’d think, Benicio Del Toro makes a surprisingly wooden leading man. Co-stars Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, and Hugo Weaving all fare much better, so you know it’s not just the writing. In fact, not since Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker’s Dracula have I seen such a bad central performance in a monster movie.

The producers made the bold choice to use make-up and prosthetics rather than CGI effects on the wolfman (apart from the transformation). I applaud them for taking the risk, but it also must be said: in an era of omnipresent CGI, it looked like make-up.

Really, really good make-up, but make-up. The howl is oddly flat too.

Interestingly, the coolest effect in the whole movie probably was done with CGI: when the wolfman switches between a “human” run and a wolf-like gallop.

The Wolfman is not nearly the disaster that a lot of other critics seem to think it is. But in five years, no one will remember a single thing about it.

Three and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

In 2003, Robin Hobb ended her third Realm of the Elderlings trilogy with Fool’s Fate. Six years later, the bestselling author has returned to Bingtown with Dragon Keeper, the first of two books in the “Rain Wild Chronicles.”

According to the provisions of their negotiation at the end of Fool’s Fate, Tintaglia has shepherded her serpents up Rain Wild River, but when the tangle begins to cocoon, it becomes apparent that something is dreadfully wrong. The baby dragons can’t fly or fend for themselves, and since Tintaglia took off with her new mate at the end of “The Tawny Man Trilogy,” the task of maintaining the infants falls to the townspeople in Cassarick.

When the financial and physical burden becomes too much to bear, the Cassarickians recruit Thymara and Alise Finbok as dragon keepers to escort the tangle to the Elderling city of Kelsingra.

Thymara is essentially an outcast because of her physical limitations. She is mesmerized by the dragons after watching them hatch, and feels a kinship with them because of her own deformities. Alise Finbok, on the other hand, is a bored housewife with a head full of dragon lore and a nose for adventure.

Hobb is deft at writing strong, complex, authentic female protagonists, and she’s created two highly relatable ones in Thymara and Alise. The Dragon Keeper is as richly-imagined as her other stories, though it reads a little more like her earlier trilogies (with the story being told through four different narrators).

Long-time fans will sink back into Hobbs’ luscious prose with abandon, but newcomers — or anyone looking for a standalone novel — might have a hard time schlepping through the obscenely long setup. The ending is also uncharacteristically abrupt.

Hobbs originally wrote the “Rain Wild Chronicles” as one book, but her publishers decided to split it in two, which explains the bizarre pacing. If you can hang in for the exposition, you’ll reap the payoff in old friends from previous trilogies.

Dragon Keeper was released in the UK and Australia last summer, but only hit shelves in America on Tuesday. The follow-up novel, Dragon Haven, will be released in 2011.

I’ve been a Hobb fan for a long time, and will pick up Dragon Haven with the same eagerness as Dragon Keeper. I have a feeling they will read much better when paired together.

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Four Torches (Out of Five)

I am a huge fan of the original three Kushiel books (which began with Kushiel’s Dart), written by Jacqueline Carey (who we interviewed last year).

Not only were the books an enormous amount of campy, melodramatic fun, Carey did something bold: she brought full-fledged erotic writing — even S&M! — into the sometimes-staid world of fantasy fiction.

Talk about shaking up a genre! As an experiment, I thought it was an unparalleled success.

I admit I was a little less impressed by her follow-up trilogy (that began with Kushiel’s Scion and that focused on the teenage boy character of Imiriel — Carey’s always been a wordy writer, but this seemed to meander too much, and for some reason, I just didn’t get into the main character). And while I appreciate her trying something very different, her two-part series The Sundering didn’t really speak to me either.

So I approached Naamah’s Kiss, the first in a new trilogy set in the world of “Kushiel,” with a little trepidation.

I needn’t have worried. The book is a wonderful return to the triumph that was her first trilogy.

Seventeen-year-old Moirin was raised in the wild, the latest in a dwindling line of magical people. Like Phedre, she is also stunningly beautiful and hyper-sexual — and everyone she meets soon falls madly in love with her.

But Moirin is shown by her bear “god” that she has a big role to play in the fate of the world, so she sets off on a quest, to Terre d’Ange to look for her father, a D’Angeline priest serving Naamah, the goddess of desire (naturally). Soon she’s traveling to even more distant lands: the empire of Ch’in.

It’s all a very heady, readable journey.

So why not a higher “torch” rating? Truthfully, I was tempted, because I really did enjoy the book. But it must be said: the story reads very similar to the story of Phedre in the Kushiel books.

It’s not just that, like Phedre, Moirin is stunningly beautiful, and that everyone, from the queen to the daughter of the Chinese emperor (or at least the spirit of a dragon trapped inside of her), immediately falls madly in love with her, and has explicit, sometimes kinky sex with her.

It’s that the structure of the book is very similar too: she’s “adopted” by a rich noble, scandalizes the city (despite being “above” it all), then sets off for foreign, but historically familiar lands. And despite superficial differences, the “voice” of the character is very similar to Phedre too.

In short, there is a sense of “been there, done that.” Rather than try to completely reinvent herself (again), she’s clearly returning to the font of her greatest success.

No shame in that: it’s still a terrific read. If you enjoyed any of the previous Kushiel books, I guarantee you’ll like this one too.

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Four Torches (Out of Five)

“Was the singing really necessary?” Batman asks at one point in tonight’s musical episode of The Cartoon Network’s animated series, Batman: The Brave & The Bold.

Necessary? Absolutely not. But enjoyable? Definitely!

(Somewhere in some distant, alternate universe, there must be a place where television executives have decided that musical episodes of TV shows are getting tired. All I know is that I never want to visit that alternate universe!)

It seems that the latest super-villain to take on Batman is The Music Meister. “He has the ability to sing a pitch that hypnotically controls anyone who hears it,” Batman explains.

All episodes of this series apparently show Batman teaming up with another superhero from the DC universe. This one has him paired, appropriately enough, with Black Canary (who has both a super-sonic vocal ability and a not-so-secret longing for the Dark Knight).

As with all musical episodes, this one lives or dies based on the music. So how’d they do?

Pretty darn impressively — especially for a 30-minute animated series. The music was catchy and and lyrics clever. (Batman writer-producers Michael Jelenic and James Tucker wrote the original lyrics for the episode, with original music by Kristopher Carter, Michael McCuistion and Lolita Ritmanis, regular composers for the series.)

And How I Met Your Mother’s Neil Patrick Harris, who guests as the voice of The Music Meister? If you didn’t already know it from his show-stealing turns as the host of both the Tonys and the Emmys, he has a terrific voice, put to fantastic use here.

“The show’s closing early,” Batman says when he puts The Music Meister away, “due to criminal intent and bad reviews.”

Incidentally, loved the two new bat-devices: “bat-plugs” (of course!) and a “bat auto-tuning amplifier” that enables Batman to team with Black Canary to defeat the villain.

The soundtrack is available through iTunes and Amazon (Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.)

The full episode:

Four Torches (Out of Five)

If Maurice Sendak didn’t really exist, some writer would’ve had to invent him.

Sendak, who is openly gay, had a miserable childhood, still hates his parents, never wanted children himself, and is obsessed with death.

He’s also the writer and illustrator of perhaps the world’s most famous (and also possibly the best) picture book, 1964’s Where the Wild Things Are, as well as a number of critically acclaimed (and sometimes very controversial) books for children.

He’s also now the subject of a short new HBO documentary, Tell Them Anything You Want, directed by Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze (Jonze is the director of a highly anticipated upcoming film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, coming later this week).

Tell Them Anything You Want is a modest film. It seems to be just Bangs and Jonze with a hand-held video camera in Sendak’s house, asking him questions about his life and his career.

It’s also pretty damn fascinating.

Be forewarned: Sendak is a very dark man who has lived a very sad life. At first, it’s hard to know what to make of this bitter, sometimes unbalanced old man. But the more he talks, the more you realize how perfectly equipped he was to revolutionize the field of children’s literature.

According to Sendak, Wild Things, with its less-than-perfect mother and negative emotions, initially got terrible reviews and was frequently banned. And even Sendak admits, he wasn’t the “best” artist.

But kids absolutely loved the book — so much so that adults could not deny its incredible power. The secret, Sendak says, is that he was willing to say things that other children’s authors would not: he was willing to tell children the truth.

“I don’t believe in childhood,” he says at one point when discussing his belief that there are no subjects that should be “off-limits” to children, but also clearly speaking of his own early loss of innocence. “Tell [children] anything you want, as long as it’s true.”

This HBO documentary is a fascinating portrait of a fascinating man.

Four Torches (Out of Five)

In Part Four of Jane Espenson’s “Retreat” storyline, the Slayers and co. have taken refuge with Oz and his partner Bay in the mountains of Tibet, where they’ve learned to avoid detection by channeling all of their magic into the earth. Or have they?! (Dramatic music plays…)

So far, this particular story arc has been low on action, which has been fine by me because that allows for a lot of wonderful character moments, and with the reunion between Oz and Willow — who last saw each other in the year 2000! — we need that time to soak it in. And with the exception of Joss himself, there’s no writer I’d rather soak with than Jane Espenson, also known as my girlfriend.

Let’s just put it out there. Espenson knows how to write great dialogue, clever and full of emotion, capable of speaking volumes with few words, which makes her especially useful with the character of Oz. Every line she writes has the zing, that snappy pop-culture savvy that defined the television show, and she is every bit as comfortable working with the medium of comics as she is TV. She’s just…she’s just perfect. I love you, Jane.

But this issue takes a major right turn, and for anyone who’s been bored by the lack of action, take cover. When I reviewed the last issue I noted that there were no big panels that went BOOM! Well, in this issue, they go, and I quote, BLAM, FOOOMP, KAKAKAKAKA, and BA-HOOM!! Without giving too much away, let’s just say there are explosions. A lot of explosions. And Espenson is every bit as funny with battlefield exchanges as she is casual conversations.

So is the issue a complete hit? Sadly, no, there’s one aspect that prevents the Five out of Five Torches. I hate to keep picking on him, but I’m just not into Georges Jeanty’s penciling on this book, especially lately. Believe me, I sympathize with having to get a likeness down (hell, I couldn’t even get She-ra right, and she’s not even a real person!), but at this point all the faces look the same, and for an issue that contains some serious saving of Private Ryan, the battlefield looks flat and unimpressive. I’d be interested in seeing his artwork on some other projects, because he is good, but it just never feels like Buffy.

All in all, I’m enjoying the series, particularly now that Espenson is scripting, and while it saddens me that her run will soon end, I’m content to know that the next writer will be the man himself, Joss Whedon. Geeks of the world, begin your stammering and salivating now.

Four Torches (Out of Five)

This is truly a fascinating era in film.

We have the ability to show virtually anything our imaginations can concoct in complete photorealism. Humor has become darker than ever, as the need to be able to laugh at our own misfortunes has never been greater. And the Hero, a stock character usually played by a stoic, confident man with a V-shaped torso, has been replaced by the Shia Labeoufs and Michael Ceras of the world.

All of these things occurred to me as I watched Zombieland, a zombie comedy that plays like a ne’er-do-well nephew of 2004’s superior British zom-com Shaun of the Dead.

The world has been overrun by zombies who, we’re told, are infected by a virus that has evolved from mad cow disease. Telling us this in narration is our Everyman protagonist, Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg. (All of the characters are named after locations they want to get to, as names cause people to grow attached to each other, and apparently the apocalypse causes fear of intimacy.)

Fortunately for Columbus, who has compiled an amusing list of rules that keep him alive, he quickly runs into Tallahassee, played by Woody Harrelson, who’s really just playing Woody Harrelson, but darned if he isn’t someone we’d all like to hang out with. He’s just so cool.

Tallahassee is an expert at killing zombies — in fact, it is his life’s great passion. The two men soon meet two women, or rather, one woman and one girl, and a fun game of cat and mouse is played between the pairs before eventually allying themselves with one another. The foursome fight off zombies and then, for the hell of it, destroy a gift shop with whatever tools they can find.

Which got me thinking why everyone goes so crazy for zombie movies. Really, they’re about escapism, being able to loot, steal, and shoot people in the head with zero consequences. Would you really feel guilty about shooting a zombie in the head?

When the movie is a comedy, and we’re spared all the pesky social commentary found in most zombie films — I swear, if I see one more movie where we learn that the humans are actually worse than the zombies (No! But they’re human! How could they!) — than you can just let loose and enjoy the ride, snickering at the methods Tallahassee uses to kill the undead, including the use of unorthodox weapons like a banjo.

The movie works, because for all the fantastic special effects, it cares about its characters, developing them and showing their depth, which many writers of comedies forget they have to do. Like Shaun of the Dead, the best scenes are the ones driven by the living, not the dead, characters. I found myself actually caring for them, and during the climax, when they were in danger, I worried they might be killed.

Jesse Eisenberg in particular gave a strong and hilarious performance, and Emma Stone was solid as the sultry, badass Wichita. (There’s long been rumors of Catwoman being a character in the next Batman film, and with those feline eyes and cocky grin, Stone would have my vote.)

And I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s a great cameo in the middle of the film, providing many of the more memorable laughs. I knew in advance who it was, but I wish I hadn’t, because it’s one of the greats, and I would have loved to have been surprised. My advice? See the film before you know who it is.

Four Torches (Out of Five)

What would you do if you had a glimpse of your future, and it was bad? Or what if everyone else had a glimpse of their future, and you didn’t seem to have one?

It’s a good bet you’d do everything you could to try to change that future, to make sure what you saw, or didn’t see, never happened.

But can the future be changed? We all know what the producers of Star Trek think, but is that the truth?

These are the questions that drive the new show Flash Forward, the premiere of which airs this Thursday (ABC, 8 PM/7 C).

The series is based on a (pretty good) book by sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer, about how the whole world “blacks out” at the same time for just over two minutes. In the TV series, during these black-outs, everyone has a vision of their futures six months ahead.

(Incidentally, those scenes of disaster on that Los Angeles freeway after everyone blacks out? That’s not all CGI — they actually shut down that freeway in order to film it. There were apparently lots of angry commuters!)

Anyway, will the solution to the central mystery of how these visions came to be end up being the same as in the book? It’s hard to imagine how they could come with any other explanation.

But honestly, this series isn’t really about the solution to that mystery — not any more than Lost is about how they got on the island.

No, it’s more about the individual characters and how they deal with the fact that their futures are not necessarily what they expected. Some of the characters are looking forward to their futures. Some are confused and frightened by what they’ve seen. And some — those who see nothing but blackness during their black-out — are downright terrified.

The pilot, screened for critics by the network, is gripping and fast-paced. But because the show has a large Lost-like ensemble, it’s hard to get a sense of any of the characters, so it’s difficult to know just how engaging this show will be over the long-term.

(Truthfully, I’d just finished watching the pilot for the remake of V and, as single episodes go, I’d found that a lot more intriguing.)

Still, the show is obviously well-done, and there is a plot-twist toward the end of the first hour that’s not part of the book, and it will definitely get everyone to sit up and take notice. It did me.

Better still, the producers promise that, unlike with Lost, almost all of the mysteries introduced in the pilot, including the intriguing plot-twist I just mentioned, will be wrapped up by the end of the first season.

Does that mean that if the show has a second season, the whole world will have another “flash forward”? I think it’s more likely that individual characters will have such visions.

Now I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Flash Forward didn’t strike me as the zeitgeist-y, must-see show that the network is clearly hoping it will be. But it’s worth watching.

Looking to buy Flash Forward, the book (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Three and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

Jennifer’s Body is the second film from Juno scribe Diablo Cody, who once again puts her ear for snappy dialogue to use and turns it into the unbilled third star of her film.

As for the plot? Not as great, but more on that later.

For starters, what can I say that hasn’t already been said about Megan Fox, who plays the titular Jennifer? We all know she’s smoking hot. Her PR people have been unrelenting in their determination to brand her as a man-eating sex goddess, and her character in Body is really just an extension of that brand, with the focus being more on the man-eating, less on the sex goddess.

Still, you have to applaud Fox for taking a role which requires her to be covered in blood and gore and be, frankly, unhot for much of the time, when I’m sure she’s been offered dozens of roles that allow for unblemished skin all the way through the script.

Amanda Seyfried, who seems to be mostly overlooked in favor of Fox (which is true for their characters as well), really shines as Needy, the reluctant hero of this film. Anyone who saw Mama Mia knows how radiantly beautiful she is, and yet she spends the entire film in mousy glasses and unkempt hair, and no one makes a peep. Maybe gentlemen really don’t prefer blondes.

The plot, as I mentioned before, is uninventive — anyone who’s seen the previews knows Jennifer gets possessed by a demon and starts killing her male classmates — but I almost wonder if it was run-of-the-mill on purpose. After all, what makes this film fun, more than anything, is seeing Megan Fox go all Baraka-from-Mortal-Kombat on poor, unfortunate teenage boys.

The other enjoyable factor is, of course, Cody’s dialogue. I found myself cracking a big smile when Jennifer is tired of Needy’s mourning over the death of dozens of their friends from a fire and tells her to “MoveOn.org.”

Another memorable moment is when, while having sex with her boyfriend, Needy somehow psychically witnesses Jennifer murdering a boy, and she begins to scream and sob. Worried, her boyfriend asks if he hurt her, and then, with hope in his eyes, asks “Am I too big?”

It is in these moments when you have to surrender to Cody’s clever vision — a horror movie that’s fun. Twisted and dark, yes, but it never goes too long without a laugh. While it’s my belief that Cody will never find a better actor to deliver her dialogue than Ellen Page, Seyfried and Fox do an admirable job.

There is one thing that bothered me, though. Written by a woman, directed by a woman, with the two lead roles being women, it struck me as surprisingly exploitative in one particular scene in which the two girls, both of whom are sexually active with boys, have a nice little makeout session, and this is after Needy knows Jennifer is an evil demon.

It makes no sense, and is extremely unnecessary. Hints of their sexual attraction to each other pop up every now and then, but never as a sympathetic, realistic plot point — merely, it seems, as a way to titillate male viewers. In my head I pictured Diablo Cody writing this and thinking, “Okay, if I want boys to come see a girl-made horror film, I should give ‘em what they want: two hot chicks making out.”

Believe me, I am in no way against hot chicks making out (or anyone making out for that matter), but it seems like that’s the one time the film forgot it was self-aware. It actually could have been milked for comedy and been really funny by playing on the exploitative nature of cheesy horror films, but no … just close-ups of lips and tongues for no reason. Then Needy remembers Jennifer’s a demon and jumps away, and the plot picks up right where it left off, as if the kissing never happened. Bizarre.

A note to Diablo Cody: Your work is really good, and you should trust in it. You don’t need to go this route just to sell tickets.

All in all, if you’re into horror films, this is certainly one of the most original I’ve seen in a while. I recommend it, and make sure you stay for the credits to catch a satisfying epilogue.

Final thought: While the film takes place in a town called Devil’s Kettle, we’re never told what state it’s in, though from the sizable occult section in their school library, I’m guessing it’s probably located somewhere near Sunnydale, California.

Four Torches (Out of Five)

In the season finale of the last season of Fringe, we learned that parallel universes exist — and that, in fact, Walter Bishop had created a device in order to go into one of them to get an “alternate-Peter” after his son died in this universe.

At the end of the episode, Olivia traveled into that universe too, a dimension where the World Trade Center was never destroyed, to finally meet the mysterious William Bell (played, in darn near perfect casting, by the mysterious Leonard Nimoy).

In the season premiere, airing this Thursday on Fox (opposite Supernatural, damn them, at 9 PM/8 C), Olivia comes back from that other dimension.

Boy, does she come back!

The sequence where she reenters this world is one of the weirdest and most interesting I’ve seen in a long time.

The episode picks up right where the finale left off. But almost everything is left unexplained, so don’t expect to see more of William Bell just yet.

Instead, we get lots of action, and a new FBI character, Meghan Markle’s Amy Jessup, to replace Kirk Acevedo’s Charlie Francis (who isn’t gone just yet).

The opener is fast-paced and fun, but I saw a few red flags that concern me:

First, Olivia has amnesia, which means she doesn’t remember what happened in the other dimension, or what “really important thing” she has to do to prevent catastrophe in this dimension.

Really? Amnesia has looooong been the lazy writer’s best friend. (And the Fringe writers have already used their “amnesia” chit on, well, Walter’s entire character!) Olivia’s amnesia disappointed me a lot.

Second, I have this unsettling sensation (in part, because of Olivia’s amnesia) that they’re bottling up the William Bell/alternate dimension storyline until later in the season — sweeps week, perhaps.

I know that creator J.J. Abrahms has said that, contrary to Lost, he wants this show to be easier to follow. I can appreciate that.

But I like this show best when it get backs to its serialized central mystery. I like it least when it veers into the “monster-of-the-week” territory.

Last red flag? [minor spoiler here] The “Fringe” department is being shut down. This is a fine complication so far as it goes, and probably inevitable given the need for dramatic conflict.

But once again, the show is veering uncomfortably close to The X-Files territory. The fact is, that show is so iconic that Fringe simply has no choice but to steer as far away from The X-Files‘ storylines as possible, to avoid the inevitable comparisons on the part of the viewer. Anyway, I hope this isn’t a major plot-line.

But hey, these are mostly just quibbles. I enjoyed the opener a lot, and I’m sure fans of last season will too!

A preview of the Fringe season opener