Two and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

After watching Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (a cumbersome title if ever there was one), I left the theater with this thought at the forefront of my mind: if you try too hard to be the next Harry Potter, you never will be.

Ponder this:

A young male hero, who learns of his magical identity which has been hidden from him all his life. Brought to a school where he and other children like him learn to use their powers. A wise-cracking male friend to serve as the comic relief. A know-it-all female companion whose skills outshine the boys, but if only she were more likable …

Come on.

That having been said, the movie had its strengths. Thanks to cutting-edge CGI technology, we can now behold photo-realistic creatures that up until now had to exist solely in the minds of Greek myth geeks like myself. Uma Thurman as Medusa was particularly cool — I’ve never thought of Medusa as seductive, but after this it will be hard not to.

Pierce Brosnan, who I’ve never really had any strong feelings about in the past, was perfectly cast as Chiron, the wise centaur, and I’ll go on record saying the movie has hands-down the best centaur effect I’ve ever seen. (How’s that for an accolade?)

Many of the performances were strong. Kevin McKidd, so magnetic in HBO’s Rome, made for a sympathetic Poseidon, and Sean Bean’s Zeus was a younger, leaner version of the King of the Gods than the Zeuses we’ve seen in the past.

But for all the shine and polish of the adult actors and the digital effects, the story doesn’t hold up as interesting on its own, and the three young lead actors don’t hold a candle to those other three young lead actors. You know who I’m talking about.

What made the first Harry Potter film so effective on screen is that it captured — in full, child-like wonder — what it must feel like to be at Hogwarts, to suddenly learn you can use magic, to fly on a broomstick. It had the sense of awe and splendor one would imagine goes hand in hand with entering a brave new world.

Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), on the other hand, adjusts to his new life awfully quickly and easily, and before long he is whisked away to Camp Half-Blood, a training facility for demigods. Rather than the fully realized world of Hogwarts, Camp Half-blood is filled with teenagers dressed in jeans and casual shirts, with Grecian leather armor over their regular clothes. The effect is not mystical and awe-inspiring, but instead looks like a crowd of adolescents engaged in a complex LARP game.

I always have high hopes for fantasy movies, and it warmed my heart to see the theater filled with children and young teens who had clearly read the book and were excited about seeing the movie. I’m sure they all care very passionately about the characters and the story.

If only they knew they were eating leftovers.

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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.

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Two and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

I hate reviewing mediocre projects.

If something is great, I’m always eager to share the news of it with the world. If something is truly terrible, I admit I don’t mind directing a little vitriol at those involved.

But what do you with something like the new Fox show Past Life, which debuts on a special night this Tuesday (and then starts a regular run Thursday nights)? It’s not terrible, but there’s nothing particularly novel or memorable about it either.

Here’s the premise, loosely “inspired” by the novel The Reincarnationist by M. J. Rose: a skeptical by-the-books cop with dark secrets is assigned to a risk-taking, true-believing doctor who investigates past lives. Together they use past life regression to solve long-unsolved crimes.

Basically, it’s a paranormal Cold Case or Bones, although the leading characters don’t have the personality or the chemistry of the latter show, at least in the first two episodes made available for preview.

Past Life seems mostly plot-driven, like Cold Case or Law & Order, not as character-driven as Supernatural or The Vampire Diaries. Still, I found Kate, played by All My Children’s Kelli Giddish, to be more interesting than her partner, Price, played by Home & Away’s Nicholas Bishop.

The good news:  the episodes start quickly and dramatically, and there’s an interesting plot twist or two along the way — in the pilot episode (which is reportedly running on Thursday), I didn’t expect “Maria” to be who she turned out to be.

And there’s occasionally some nice humor. There’s a cute scene in the Tuesday episode when, after being stonewalled by the manager of a country club, Kate flirts with the teenage bus boy, who, of course, is willing to do whatever the attractive older woman wants.

The bad news is that so much of the show is so by-the-numbers, from the skeptic/true believer male-female partnership, to the assortment of oddball support staff.

My first complaint is that the show takes such a simple-minded approach to past lives. Basically, they’re real, and everyone who says they’ve had a peek at their past is right. I know it’s a TV show, but would it have killed them to add a little nuance?

My second complaint is more substantial: the writers use plot-cheats. Every new plot twist comes not from the main characters unraveling some clue cleverly set up earlier in the episode, but from the subject of each past life investigation suddenly “remembering” something essential about the mystery.

As a result, the main characters don’t really drive the stories, making it almost impossible for me to get very emotionally involved.

So what do I say about a show that’s so … mediocre?

I guess what I’ll say is this: if you’re interested in the genre or the premise, give it a shot. Otherwise, forget it.

Past Life debuts Tuesday at 9 PM on Fox. Another episode runs Thursday at 9 PM, and future episodes will also have that time-slot.

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Four Torches (Out of Five)

In the latest issue of Buffy Season 8, it’s not enough for Buffy to have all the powers of Superman. She and Xander have to prove it … literally, as they go down the list and do tests, only to find out that yes, Buffy is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, well, you know the rest.

The banter between the two is charming, a fact that doesn’t go unnoticed by Dawn, who is now (man, this feels weird to say) Xander’s girlfriend. Dawn, whom all these years later is still occasionally treated like a child, warns Buffy and the rest of the “monkey’s paw” rule — any new gifts always come at a price — yet the original Scoobies pay her no heed. Silly Scoobies.

Dawn is right, of course, as we soon learn that all this power is coming from the Slayers who have been killed. Once dead, their power leaks out of their bodies and is absorbed by Buffy. Yeah, so flying and superspeed doesn’t seem so jolly, now, does it?

Meanwhile, Giles, Faith, and Andrew, who we know from the previous episode have been kidnapped, awaken in the lair of none other than Twilight, with a promise that in the next issue he will finally be unmasked.

Artist Georges Jeanty continues to step up his game, particularly with Buffy  and Xander, as you could see in their poses the mannerisms that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Nicholas Brendan brought to their characters, so that they almost seemed like stills from the show. Well done, sir.

Newcomer Brad Meltzer absolutely nailed the dialogue of each and every character, so he deserves major kudos for his great ear. Furthermore, he provides a nice inside joke where Xander excitedly asks Buffy if she can “phase” and geeks out when describing Kitty Prude to an unenthusiastic Buffy. Joss Whedon has, of course, gone on record saying Kitty Pryde was the basis for Buffy.

The road towards the end of this “season” is winding down, and Buffy’s greatest strength was always its season finales. Season 8 has been an interesting and successful experiment, and I can’t wait to see where it all winds up.

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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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Three and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

After the tantalizing cliffhanger that ended the last issue, in which we see Buffy floating hundreds of yards in the air, we knew we were up for something big. And we get it, as the latest issue picks up with Buffy flying through the air, Superman-style, mentioning to herself how strong she feels.

In the immediate aftermath of the battle that’s been featured in the last two issues, we catch up with the currently powerless Slayers, who are nursing their own wounded, as well as Twilight’s soldiers. The three havoc-wreaking goddesses are still bent on destruction, and Willow can do nothing to stop them. Finally, after a confessional chat with Xander, Buffy outs herself as newly super-empowered and buries the goddesses deep in the ground.

Overview: This issue was written by the man himself, Joss Whedon, and thus the dialogue had that familiar flow of the series (much like the issues written by Jane Espenson), so for that alone it’s worth it. But overall not a whole lot happens here. We discover Faith, Andrew, and Giles have been kidnapped by Twilight, a small heart-to-heart between Buffy and Riley, a lengthy talk between Buffy and Xander, and finally Buffy’s revelation of her new powers.

But it’s really the encounter between Buffy and Xander that is the focus of this story. Having learned that Xander and Dawn are dating, Buffy professes that she has feelings for Xander, who puts her in her place, saying she’s confused and selfish, in a nice way, of course. In essence, he’s having none of it, and Buffy admits it was tactless.

And that’s what’s great about Joss Whedon’s vision: he’s created a hero who is seriously, deeply flawed in the way that we’re all seriously, deeply flawed. Super strength and (now) the power of flight do not place her emotionally above any of us, and she’s as prone to moments of pettiness as the rest of us, even if her pettier moments come between the times she’s busying herself saving the world.

I also want to point out that artist Georges Jeanty, who I’ve said I’ve found unimpressive in previous issues, seems to have upped his game, returning to his more detailed, nuanced drawings that he started the series with. I’m beginning to think the reason his art has seemed a little off is because he’s been rushed. With December off, it’s been two months since the last issue that he drew, and his style is noticeably sharper. So well done, Mr. Jeanty.

Since the series started in March of 2007, we’ve had to deal with something that’s unusual for Buffy (but not comics in general): a masked villain. In the letters column, we’re promised that Twilight’s identity will be revealed in naught but a few months. After three years, I’d say it’s about time.

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Four and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

The premise of The Legend of Neil, a new fantasy-comedy web series, is that a loser named Neil is masturbating to a female elf inside the game of Zelda when he auto-erotic-asphyxiates himself and somehow ends up magically transported to a land of fantasy cliches.

If you find that premise hilarious (and I admit, I do), you’ll like this NSFW series a lot.

First, it must be said: for me, a little bit of ironic-hipster slacker humor goes a long way, at least in these days of irony-overload.

What saves The Legend of a Neil from a feeling of “been there, done that” is its still-ironic, but very fantasy-specific humor, sending up every kind of fantasy cliche and convention imaginable.

It pretty much all works: a cave is marked “Level 1,” and a character is able to carry all manner of equipment by storing it in his (non-existent) “inventory.”  The (cliche gay-esque) villain threatens, “Don’t make me turn the fog machines back on! Yes, fog equals power.” The dragon says, “Hey, you’re in the one part of the room that I can’t reach! That’s not fair!”

Like Buffy and Xena, the show even has a musical episode — the third one of the second season (and the music is surprisingly good!). During “The Mentor Song,” the mentor sings, “Our clues are often confounding, our lessons condescend, and we wait until you’re practically dead before we come through in the end!”

I’m sorry, but for a fantasy (and musical theater!) geek like me, this is some pretty funny stuff.

More humor is mined from the sets and special effects, which are both gloriously cheesy and impressively inventive.

The series flags a little from time-to-time, but it’s still much more consistently funny than last year’s Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, which ran on Comedy Central and, no doubt, had a far larger budget.

I’m not surprised The Legend of Neil has been one of the more successful web-series to date, and even been picked up for distribution by Atom.com (a partner of Comedy Central, all owned by MTV).

It’s pretty great.

Here’s the first episode:

Watch the other episodes.

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One Torch (Out of Five)

Mention the word “vampire,” and watch eyes roll. It’s no secret we’re in a period of overload when it comes to undead properties, so why anyone would greenlight such a mediocre film as Daybreakers is beyond me.

In a way, though, I suppose it was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before someone shook an angry fist to the sky and cried, “No, dammit! Vampires are not sexy! They don’t sparkle, they don’t drip of genteel southern manners, they don’t want to make tender, angsty, emo love to you! They’re not a metaphor for the anguish of the human condition! They just want to freakin’ kill you and drink your blood!”

I’m all for putting a pair of fangs on the current trend of sensitive vampires, but unfortunately, when someone finally did it, they made Daybreakers. It’s a film that offers nothing unique, instead playing as a mash-up of tired, cliche vampire tropes and small pieces of far, far better movies.

So derivative and unoriginal is this film that they even went as far as naming their vampire protagonist Edward, the same name as Robert Pattinson’s romantic lead in the soapy vampire series Twilight. They couldn’t even take the time to come up with a new name? Just look in the phone book.

Edward, played by Ethan Hawke, is a joyless vampire who lives in a future in which most of humanity has been turned into vampires, and living humans are scarce and constantly on the run. He is sullen and morose and feels bad for the humans, a Louis to the rest of the world’s Lestat, an Angel to the rest of the world’s Spike and Drusilla, a … you see where I’m going with this?

The film does have a small success in creating a vision of a total vampire society, and the sight of dozens upon dozens of human beings being harvested for blood is genuinely chilling. Sam Neil is decent as the villain (although he’ll always be the Jurassic Park guy to me) and Willem Dafoe does what he can to entertain as the human-turned-vampire-turned-human gunslinger, Elvis. But not even the Green Goblin can save this dud.

We may not be in a world overrun by vampires, but we are in a world overrun by vampire stories, so the only way to make one stand out is to make it unique. Unfortunately, Daybreakers is as story-by-numbers as you get.

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Three Torches (Out of Five)

It could’ve been a whole lot worse.

When I saw the previews for the new Guy Ritchie-directed movie adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, I thought, “Oh, good God, they’ve turned him into a Matrix-like action hero!”

The truth is, the scenes where Holmes uses his understanding of anatomy to pummel an opponent in slow, perfectly-choreographed motion are a very small part of the film (distracting and unnecessary though they may be).

No, this movie more or less hews closely to the Sherlock Holmes we know and love: the anti-social detective (Robert Downey Jr.) who, along with his hapless companion Dr. Watson (Jude Law), draws sweeping, eerily-accurate conclusions from the most mundane, maybe even ridiculous of details.

This time out, Holmes and Watson are up against Lord Blackwood, the leader of an evil cult that’s terrorizing London (despite the fact that he was recently executed — and Dr. Watson was the one who declared him dead!). Has he really somehow unlocked a secret power of the universe?

The movie has beefed up the humorous “bromance” relationship between Watson and Holmes, who resents his faithful companion for moving out to get married. Meanwhile, Holmes is involved in a tempestuous relationship of his own with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a beautiful con artist who once outsmarted him.

Still, this is a Joel Silver movie, and he’s the producer of The Matrix, Die Hard, Speeder Racer, and a zillion other action movies both good and bad.

That means it looks great — I’m not sure I’ve seen a more convincing 19th century London — but that “story” gets short-shrift.

Frankly, the reason why I like mysteries is that you tell yourself that if you pay attention very closely, you can figure it all out before the main character does — and even if you don’t, you can still enjoy that moment when it all comes together, and you say to yourself, “How did I miss that?! It’s so obvious in retrospect!”

Forget that. The mystery here is strictly boiler-plate. Meanwhile, the villain is absolutely by-the-numbers in every way, clearly just a place-holder until we get to the “real” villain in the next entry in this would-be movie franchise.

And while I thought Law was hilarious as a particularly put-upon Watson, I found Robert Downey Jr.’s performance to be way too Method Actor-y, all quirky and brooding. And not for one second did I ever buy that McAdams is half as smart as her character is suppose to be.

Sherlock Holmes is not the total disaster I feared it to be. But it’s also not nearly as fun as it could’ve been.

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Two and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

Put a fork in Terry Gilliam. I think his career as a major film director is done.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, his most eagerly awaited film in years because it happened to be the last movie Heath Ledger ever made, is also his most inaccessible, and not in a good way.

Once word gets out, it will almost certainly be a massive box office flop (despite the Heath Ledger buzz). And since the budget was somewhere between $25 and $45 million, I have a hard time believing that any investor will be willing to indulge him again, especially considering his history of making expensive, often self-indulgent failed films.

And this is a total shame, for two reasons.

First, I’m a huge Gilliam fan, who is responsible for several of my all-time favorite fantasy films: Time Bandits and The Adventures of Baron Maunchausen. When he’s good, there’s no one better.

I happen to think he’s not only a true visual genius, but a genuine “artist” — someone who listens only to his own inner muse, sticking to his vision. As a result, a Terry Gilliam film is absolutely its own unique creation.

There may be no one else working in films today who is quite as “pure” as he is, and the world needs more like him.

Second, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a failure as a movie, but like all Gilliam failures, it’s a fascinating one.

Dr. Parnassus (an unrecognizable Christopher Plummer, who is sensational in the part) is a thousand years old, having made a deal with the devil (a perfectly cast Tom Waits) to live forever. Now he travels the world as head of a old-fashioned circus show that includes a magic mirror as its centerpiece.

But Dr. Parnassus has unexpectedly given birth to a daughter, and it turns out that in exchange for immortality, the doctor promised the soul of the daughter he never thought he’d have. Now the devil has come to collect — but being the devil, he offers another deal: if the doctor can collect five other souls before the devil does, and the daughter is saved.

The second half of the movie is Dr. Parnassus’s attempt to collect the souls, with help from a mysterious stranger named Tony (Health Ledger, who truthfully doesn’t make much of an impression), luring unsuspecting people into his magic mirror to capture them for the devil.

It’s a terrific premise, and the dimensions beyond the magic mirror, created by the imagination of both Dr. Parnassus and whoever enters it, are absolutely surreal — classic Gilliam in the best possible sense.

Likewise, because Ledger died mid-way through shooting, the director had to come up with some way to “replace” him. As it is, he appears “different” every time he goes into the mirror — and he’s played by different actors: Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, in turn.

It’s seamless and beautifully done.

The problem is that the rest of the movie is such a muddled mess. The first half of the movie is borderline unwatchable, and basic plot exposition is presented in such a confusing, awkward way that you quickly run out of patience. Likewise, it takes way too long to get to the actual story.

The movie perks up considerably in the second half, but I suspect most audiences will have long since checked out. The only reason I didn’t is because I’m such a huge Gilliam fan (and truthfully, he even tried my patience quite a bit).

I’m fascinated to know why the fact the movie clearly doesn’t work wasn’t obvious to Gilliam — or why he didn’t listen if people tried to tell him this. Was Gilliam’s greatest strength — his refusal to compromise his vision — ultimately his own undoing?

A man with great power ignores the nay-sayers, pushing his limits further and further — until he ends up destroying himself completely.

Hey, it almost sounds like a Terry Gilliam movie!

Alas, it’d probably be better than The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

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One and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

You may think it’s easy being a television critic, getting paid to watch television on all day.

What you’re forgetting is that I have to watch television even when it’s bad.

Even when it’s a six-hour mini-series!

And I don’t get overtime.

AMC’s remake of the classic (and wildly influential) 1960s cult TV series The Prisoner is bad.

But you’re very lucky: I slogged through all six, slowly-paced hours, precisely to tell you that you don’t have to.

The story is similar to the original: a man (The Passion of the Christ’s Jim Caviezel) wakes up in a picturesque, seemingly “perfect” small town that everyone simply calls “the village.” People don’t have names here, but numbers: the man is suddenly called Number Six. The village is overseen by Number Two, a creepy, but well-mannered old guy in a white pressed suit (Gandalf himself, Ian McKellen).

Unlike in the original series, Number Two doesn’t clearly remember his past, but he does have vague memories that he recently resigned from a secret agency. Is this pay-back?

Before long, he learns that he’s a prisoner in this town in the middle of a desert — anyone who tries to leave is consumed by a giant white globe that looks a little like the giant, marauding breast in Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask.

Soon Number Two is searching for answers. To bad it takes him so long — six moody, talky, interminable episodes — to find them.

Do the answers, when we finally learn them, make the mini-series worthwhile? Alas, no.

For some reason, we’ve entered a weird, frustrating period where entertainment companies think they can make money by remaking tried-and-true old properties rather than greenlighting all the fresh, new stories that writers are dying to tell. Apparently, this must make business sense, even if it usually makes for crappy movies and TV.

Of course, many of these original properties have great, indelible endings, but when remaking them, producers must feel like they can’t just reuse these original endings, which are often the most organic to the story, for fear that the audience will feel cheated.

So they invent new endings that technically “explain” the preceding events, but that are so complicated and/or ham-fisted that you end up just rolling your eyes. It happened with Tim Burton’s terrible remake of The Planet of the Apes and last week’s The Box.

It’s also what they do here. The ending is simultaneously way too simple – it’s the first explanation I thought of when I started watching – and way too complicated. It takes almost the whole last episode to explain.

Fun fact: Number Two’s gay son is played by Jamie Campbell Bower, who was recently cast as Wayner Royce in the pilot for HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones.

The Prisoner airs on AMC from 8 PM to 10 PM, Sunday to Tuesday.