Four and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

I realize I might take some heat for this, but … I’m thinking that Syfy’s new remake of the UK show Being Human is better than the original.

I know, I know: anyone who reads this site regularly knows how down I am on the fact that so much coming out of Hollywood these days is either a remake,  a sequel, or a “reimagining.” Let’s have some original thinking, please!

But maybe the reason I think a US remake of Being Human isn’t such a terrible idea is that I also think the original wasn’t wholly successful to begin with.

Yes, I appreciated that they were willing to go “dark” (and blend “dark” and “funny” in interesting ways), and the cast was certainly appealing.

But the pacing was sometimes off in the original (a lot); I thought Annie was a crazy-sexist stereotype (at least at first); and I am so beyond-tired of “good” vampires struggling against their natures — not to mention wars between vampires, or between vampires and werewolves.

Syfy’s Being Human keeps the tired vampire elements, but the storytelling is simply stronger and more consistent here. And the character of Annie doesn’t take a whole season to stop being a whiny, passive stereotype — she’s confident and active right from the start (despite being a ghost with agoraphobia issues).

Weirdly, this actually turns out to be the perfect show for Syfy. It’s got that great “high-concept” premise to attract attention (a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf get an apartment together…). It’s also basically a one-location (the apartment), one-town, small-cast show — and it’s special effects-light — all of which means it can be produced at least semi-cheaply, but it doesn’t have to look cheap (like, um, the more “epic” Warehouse 13, with its incredibly cheesy “warehouse” effects and ridiculous “foreign” locations).

Syfy made the first three episodes of this new show available for preview by critics, and I was surprised how different it was from the original. I found it interesting that they took plot-elements that they thought worked (the mystery involving Annie’s death, the big brother-little brother rapport between the werewolf — “Josh” here — and the vampire Aiden), and they completely jettisoned the stuff that doesn’t work (like Annie’s passiveness). In addition, Josh’s backstory seems stronger and more fleshed out, and the mechanics of the Annie’s afterlife are spelled out and grounded more quickly too.

It’s also worth noting that can’t do much better than Mark Pellegrino (”Lucifer” on Supernatural) as the Vampire Ringleader.

Will Syfy’s Being Human be as “dark” as the UK version? At a panel last week at the Television Critics Association, the producers went to great lengths to emphasize that it will.

I’m not so sure (but I’m also not so sure it matters). Sure, they may include some of the UK version’s particularly provocative plot-elements. But this is simply a different show — no less smart, but broader, more “mainstream,” and also more accessible. It’s a “reimagining” in a very real way — but in the good sense of the word.

I’m not trying to start an argument with any fans of Syfy’s current and past programming. But with the notable exception of Battlestar Galactica, I think the channel’s programming so far has been mostly sub-par (I’m still holding a major grudge for the apparently script-free Haven!).

Being Human is something different. This time, no allowances are necessary to see fantasy programming on television — this one plays in the big leagues.

Being Human premieres Monday, January, 17th at 9 PM.

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Three Torches (Out of Five)

I’ll be frank: any movie with a title like Dinocroc Vs. Supergator starts off with at least two torches on our five-torch rating scale.

I think SyFy knows that most genre fans think like this, which is why their SyFy Original Movie series keeps featuring movies with increasingly campy concepts and ideas.

Nutshell: how does this movie hold up against other recent SyFy movies? It’s much better that Mega Pirahna (which I found so terrible as to be unwatchable), but it’s not as good as Mothman. Storywise, it’s about as good as Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus (although, alas, the graphics aren’t quite as fun).

The movie is produced by famed movie exploitation pioneer Roger Corman (who also produced 2004’s Dinocroc and 2007’s Supergator, although I’m frankly not sure either have much to do with this movie).

On a remote tropical island, geneticists are experimenting with creating oversized vegetables when they’re forced by an evil industrialist to turn their attention to mixing the DNA of alligators, crocodiles, and dinosaurs. Soon the creatures get loose and –

Oh, hell, you really want me to recount the “plot”? Let’s just say that these creatures get loose and start killing people.

What’s interesting about this movie?

• It has some nice humor, with a lot of intentional jokes (women auditioning their screaming for a role in an upcoming horror movie, only to encounter dinocroc and begin screaming for real), and also a fair number of unintentional jokes (mostly the cheesy, video game-level CGI).

• It has the late David Carradine, in what must surely be one of his last roles. The leads are also appealing, especially Amy Rasimas and Corey Landis.

• It has lots of women running around in bikinis (but very few men, which doesn’t seem fair, but is pretty typical).

• It has some nicely explicit, but totally fake-looking gore as people get eaten aplenty.

It’s all very stupid and ridiculous, but because the movie knows it’s stupid and ridiculous, it’s mostly watchable.

But if SyFy wants my unsolicited advice regarding their whole series of “original” movies, it’s this: it’s time to shake things up. How many times now have we seen the genetic-experiment-gone-awry? How many times have we seen the arrogant industrialist dismiss the concerns of the earnest “hero” scientist? The long shadow of Jaws and its ilk is still falling over monster movies all these decades later.

I understand that when you’re working on an ultra-low budget, it’s easier to be in on the joke: then when people accuse your CGI of looking cheesy, you can say, “Yes! We meant it to be that way! Isn’t it hilarious?”

And it’s fine to lampoon or mock monster movie cliches, but at some point, the irony wears thin. Not only have we seen all the cliches a zillion times, we’ve now also seen all the satires and homages a zillion times.

Here’s what I think SyFy should do: forget the old, tired Roger Cormans of the world. Instead, go online and start looking for fresh new talent. Take pitches, with the explicit instructions that you want something new and different. Tell them:  Go beyond the exploitation and satire. Show us what’s next in the monster movie genre.

Then pick the best pitches, give them a modest budget, and prepare to be dazzled.

Yes, I know SyFy recently announced a program where viewers will “collaborate” on an upcoming SyFy Original movie, voting online on various concepts and plot-lines, but this is just a cheap promotional gimmick. It’s not what I’m talking about at all.

If SyFy takes my advice, I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised. Better still, we viewers will be too.

Dinocroc Vs. Supergator airs Saturday, June 26, at 9 PM on SyFy.

Two and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

There are two ways to do superhero TV projects: you can take the silly, campy approach favored by the original 1960s Batman series or Wonder Woman in the 1970s, or you can take the earnest, “serious” approach that’s been favored ever since the success of the CBS TV series The Incredible Hulk in the late 1970s.

(Some shows, like Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, manage to use both approaches, but that definitely a high degree of difficulty.)

The “serious” superhero approach is obviously the choice that fanboys prefer, because it’s much closer in tone to the actual comic books upon which most superhero projects are based.

It’s also the choice made by the creators of the new four-hour SyFy miniseries (and potential weekly series) The Phantom (based on the long-running daily comic strip), airing this Sunday at 7 PM (6 C).

But I’m wondering if the makers of The Phantom made the wrong choice. I’m wondering if it maybe wasn’t time to bring back superhero camp.

No, wait! Hear me out!

Yes, yes, I know it’s sacrilege to say this in the era of Iron Man and Batman Begins — an era, in other words, when superheroes are being done seriously and taken seriously.

But the success of projects like those is part of the problem with The Phantom: we’re used to seeing big, splashy, and expensive superhero projects.

The Phantom isn’t big and splashy — or, rather, it tries valiantly to be that way, but it doesn’t work because it was obviously done on the cheap.

By going “camp,” they could’ve somehow cheekily acknowledged or riffed on the cheesy sets, hammy acting, and paltry action scenes — and gone somewhere interesting from there.

Honestly, when you have Isabella Rossillini playing evil in a cheap blond wig — or a secret organization called BPAA-THAP — I’m not sure what other choice you have.

(I still remember a scene in the pilot for the original Wonder Woman TV series back in the 1970s. Cloris Leachman, playing the Amazon queen, declares that they don’t need men on Paradise Island — but it’s a total wink-wink-nod-nod acting riff on the fact that she’s absolutely desperate for a man — any man! — even clawing at the furniture. Faithful to the original comic book? Of course not! But hilarious and watchable nonetheless.)

And what about counter-programming? If SyFy had gone back to the “camp” route with The Phantom, they would’ve had something to truly set it apart from the myriad other superhero projects mucking up the world right now. (They also would’ve pissed off a couple million fanboys, but let’s face it: with a new $200 million superhero movie opening every weekend, fanboys don’t really have much to complain about lately, do they?)

All I know is that when one of SyFy’s ultra-low budget Original Saturday Night Movies takes an obviously “camp” route, it’s a hell of a lot more fun than when one of those movies takes itself seriously. Mothman and Mega-Shark Vs. Giant Octopus did (and worked wonderfully), but Mega-Piranha didn’t (and was terrible).

As for The Phantom, it isn’t quite good enough to be enjoyable as straight superhero entertainment, but it’s also not quite bad or laughable enough to be enjoyable as camp, like the original Batman (which clearly knew it was camp) or Wonder Woman (which didn’t).

It’s four hours of mediocrity — and frankly, I have a hard time believing there’s going to be much of an audience for that.

Four Torches (Out of Five)

Now this is how you do low-budget monster movies!

Let’s face it: SyFy’s Original Movies series of B monster movies has been hit-and-miss — sometimes really miss. Like, “my-kid-brother’s-home-movies-are-better-than-this” miss.

But this weekend’s entry, Mothman, is flat-out terrific: smart, funny, and sometimes genuinely scary.

The movie begins with the proverbial group of teens on a camping trip. The annoying little brother of one of the boys had tagged along, so the older teens decide to pull a prank involving Mothman, the legendary flying man of West Virginia. When the little boy is accidentally killed, they all agree together to cover up their roles in the death.

Flash forward ten years later, and the former teens are now all haunted by what happened all those years ago.

But in the world of this movie, Mothman doesn’t just exist, he also has an agenda: seeking revenge on those who pull pranks-gone-bad.

It helps that the movie has a terrific, engaging lead actress, Jewel Staite (who played Kaylee in Firefly).

Look, this isn’t Citizen Kane (or even The Exorcist). But as B monster movies go, it does practically everything right: it has well-acted characters who act (more or less) like characters really would, a mysterious old man who reveals the “plausible” explanation for the Mothman’s existence (and who also has a secret of his own). It even has a decent, well-conceived plot-twist or two.

As for the special effects, Mothman “exists” on mirrors and other reflective surfaces. The CGI was obviously done on the semi-cheap, but it looks terrific: campy, yes, but genuinely different and scary.

Like last year’s terrific Drag Me to Hell feature film, Mothman takes itself seriously, embracing its old-fashioned B-movie roots and ridiculous premise, not mocking them. Sure, it’s tongue-in-cheek, but only in the “meta” sense. It cares enough about its characters and story to avoid sinking into irony and self-parody,  as so many monster movies do these days.

It’s hard to care about the story and characters in those movies when even the writer and director clearly don’t care.

And Mothman really moves, moving from one fun, creepy sequence to the next.

This one is worth watching, folks. Seriously.

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Tiffany as Dr. Sarah Monroe

They’re not just giant piranha — they’re genetically-enhanced giant piranha that are growing ever-larger by the hour.

And that’s pretty much all you need to know about Mega Piranha, SyFy’s latest original campy monster movie, premiering this Saturday at 9 PM.

It’s also the latest movie from The Asylum, the appropriately-named B-movie production company that’s become known for ripping off paying homage to whatever big budget movie is coming soon to theaters near you. In this case, The Asylum is stealing some of the thunder from Piranha 3-D, a much-anticipated actioner set to bow in theaters this August.

For last year’s brilliantly titled Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, The Asylum garnered headlines by casting singer (and for teen pop sensation) Debbie Gibson as the lead.

So who did they turn to for Mega Piranha? None other than Gibson’s one-time so-called singing rival, Tiffany.

“I think The Asylum doing Deborah and then turning around and doing myself is awesome!”  Tiffany tells TheTorchOnline.com. “It is kind of cheeky, but who cares?

“There’s healthy competition between us,” Tiffany says of her so-called one-time “rivalry” with Gibson, but she insists, “We’re friends … People love to expect us to fail, but we just keep cranking out the stuff.”

As for Paul Logan, who plays the movie’s male lead, Jason Fitch, “He’s a bad-ass, and I love playing that role.

“It’s a roller-coaster,” Logan says of the movie. “Literally, you start at the top of the roller-coaster, and then you just hang on. If you can pull it out, you can make a fun movie, and I think that’s what we did.”

The movie’s third lead is Barry Williams (Greg on The Brady Bunch).

Not surprisingly, the movie tries to have a sense of humor.

“The whole joke in the movie is that I’m just an analyst,” Logan says of the role that has him battling piranha in freshwater, in saltwater, and, in one pretty hilarious kick-boxing scene, even on land.

Paul Logan. No, he didn't get to keep the fake piranha.

One of the movie’s funniest lines is when Tiffany’s Dr. Monroe is mocked as a member of Greenpeace and told that they have no choice but to blow the piranha up with 20 kilotons of nuclear weapons.

Dr. Monroe listens patiently, and then says, “If you want my opinion as a Greenpeacer, I’d double that amount.”

“She created these creatures, and she feels bad,” Tiffany says simply. “But she does what she needs to do to destroy them.”

Still, just because the movie is sometimes campy, don’t tell the actors they didn’t take their roles seriously.

“I know this [movie] is far-out there,” Logan says. “But if I don’t believe there’s a two-foot piranha coming at me in the river, or there’s a 20-foot piranha coming at me in the ocean, how can I expect the audience to believe my characters is there and in danger?”

“I’m a sci-fi fan,” says Tiffany. “That’s where I’m coming from. So that’s why I wanted to do this. Anything I do, I take seriously, as a professional. You are being hired for something — you should show up and do your best.”

Tiffany also sang and co-wrote the movie’s theme song, “Frozen Skies.” ”

“It’s a kind of hard,” she says with a laugh. “Mega Piranha –w hat do you write about?”

As for Tiffany’s plans this weekend, “I’m having a big party at my house! This is my big coming out [in film]. All my friends are coming out. We’re going to hang out and grill and have a good time.”

Most of the piranha’s were CGI, but there were at least two puppets.

So did the actors get to keep the fake piranha when filming was over?

“Man, I wanted the piranha puppet so bad!” Logan admits. “But after Belize [where we filmed], being down there in the salt water, it was kind of like a Nerf football with teeth after a while.”

This Friday, SyFy will begin airing the second season of the BBC fantasy-dramedy Merlin. NBC showed the first season last summer, but if you missed it back then, and didn’t have a chance to DVR SyFy’s Sunday-long season one marathon last weekend, don’t worry; I can catch you up to speed in no time.

Here are eight things you need to know before galloping into Merlin’s second season.

1) If you’re an Arthurian legend purist, Merlin will blow up your brain. It’s better to just rip this band-aid off right now: Merlin isn’t a canonical exploration of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. It’s not even as close as Disney’s The Sword in the Stone. No, Merlin is sort of Smallville meets Medieval Times, with better accents. And actors.

The first season is mostly about the relationship between Merlin (Colin Morgan) and Arthur (Bradley James) [more on that in a second], and the way that Merlin has to hide his mad magic skills because every other sentence out of Uther Pendragon’s mouth is, “Evil sorcery is evil and magicians must die a dead death of deadness!”

2) Every line Arthur and Merlin speak to (or about) one another is riddled with subtext. In this incarnation of Arthurian legend, Merlin and Arthur are the same age, and Merlin actually “gains” the “honor” of becoming Arthur’s servant in the first episode. You can watch Merlin for sword fights, fantasy and comedy. You can watch Merlin for the blossoming affection between Arthur and Guinevere. Or you can watch Merlin because of the subtextually epic love between Arthur and Merlin. It’s there. The writers know it’s there. The actors know it’s there. And heavens to Excalibur, do the fans ever know it’s there.

3) If you can get inside the castle on one of Merlin’s vacation days, the entire kingdom of Camelot can be yours by lunch. Arthur’s dad, ol’ Uther, is the most gullible ruler in the history of fictional kingdoms; an even easier mark than that emperor with his naked new clothes. In every single episode, he falls for the same shenanigans by the same kinds of shady characters, while sending Merlin to the stocks for daring to disagree with him. And in every single episode, Merlin has to quietly save the day (because of secret magic!) and then do Arthur’s laundry and polish Arthur’s armor and clean out Arthur’s stables.

4) It’s always sorcery. Merlin is like Clark Kent, if Clark Kent never got to transform into Superman and had to fight every supervillain as a mild-mannered reporter, while pretending to everyone around him that superpowers don’t exist. There are no normal threats to the kingdom: no wars, no plagues, no natural disaster — just sorcerers and the stuff they can conjure. Merlin is seriously Camelot’s only line of defense.

5) If Gaius isn’t mansplaining, he’s probably not talking. Gaius is the court physician who takes Merlin under his wing and helps keep his magic powers hidden. You might be tempted to call Gaius’ dialogue “exposition,” but while Gaius is always convinced that he’s right, he is almost always wrong. I mean, he’s good with medicine, but every time Merlin faces a moral quandary about using magic or letting people get killed, Gaius prefers the death option.

6) Guinevere is not what you’re expecting. Far from the mysterious, ethereal beauty with which we’re familiar, Guinevere is Gwen: an adorable, plucky maidservant to the Lady Morgana. She kind of loathes Arthur, actually, in the beginning. When a farm boy named Lancelot tries out for Team Knights and is rejected because he’s not of noble birth, Gwen finds herself falling for him. Merlin sees her staring at Lance and Arthur and asks: “So, if you had to choose … ?” Lance doesn’t stick around in season one, but he’ll be back. Oh, he’ll be back.

7) You didn’t accidentally flip over to your Harry Potter DVD; it’s the Dragon. John Hurt is the voice of the Dragon, the magical beast that Uther keeps tied up in the basement of the castle. He’s the one who beckons Merlin to the castle in the first place, and he hands out cryptic advice like Halloween candy. It’s kind of distracting, actually, because John Hurt’s voice is legend. But the CGI isn’t bad for a BBC One show. It’s certainly better than the first two seasons of Torchwood.

8 ) If ears or Adam’s apples are your thing, you’re going to fall in love with Merlin or Arthur. You literally will not be able to help yourself.

I think that’s everything you need to know. If you really want a treat, seek out some Merlin/Arthur or Lance/Gwen/Arthur or Merlin/Arthur/Gwen, or Lance/Merlin/Arthur/Gwen/Dragon fan videos on YouTube. A shipper’s musical montage is worth a a hundred thousand words.

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It’s pilot season!

All year long, broadcast and cable networks hear pitches from writers and producers, which they then commission into actual scripts. Every winter and spring, they order some of these scripts to “pilot,” which means the show is cast and a “pilot” episode is shot.

Ron Moore's Virtuality

This does not mean that the show is necessarily going to make it on the air. Pilots are ordered precisely so the networks can decide whether they want to invest in them. From the pilot, they can see how the show looks, whether or not it “works,” and whether casting changes are necessary. Case in point, last year Fox passed on Ron Moore’s sci-fi drama Virtuality (though the project was so high-profile and expensive that they did end up airing the two-hour pilot as a mostly-incomprehensible TV movie last July).

Many more pilots are shot than ever become TV series — though the number of pilots ordered has fallen considerably in recent years as the networks try to save money.

Still, pilots are how networks pick their future schedules.

How does the current slate of sci-fi and fantasy-themed TV pilots look? Franky, not good. Despite strong starts, high-profile genre shows such as V and FlashForward have seen their ratings sink — and returning shows such as Fringe and Dollhouse fared little better.

Their relative failure has translated into a widespread consensus in Hollywood that sci-fi and fantasy shows are risky bets, especially since they tend to be more expensive than other shows due to elaborate sets and special effects.

In short, the current thinking is that the era of genre mega-hits like Lost and Heroes is over and that genre shows will now gravitate to pay cable channels like Starz (which airs Spartacus: Blood and Sand) or niche channels like SyFy (which is airing the second season of NBC’s Merlin).

Could some future show “break out” into a massive hit, upsetting the conventional wisdom all over again? Since everything in Hollywood is cyclical, you can bet on it.

In the meantime, Hollywood is playing it cautious. Here is the smattering of sci-fi and fantasy shows that we might be seeing on TV screens this fall and next winter:

The Cape (NBC): The highest-profile genre pilot to date is surely this one, about a former cop who is framed and opts to become a superhero to clear his name. Clearly an attempt to capitalize on superhero-movie-mania, the show stars E.R.’s David Lyons as the cop, and Firefly’s Summer Glau as an investigative blogger. Simon West (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) directs the pilot episode.

Betwixt (The CW): Taking a cue from The Vampire Diaries, this is based on the young adult novel series of the same name, about three teens who are “changelings,” or the children of fairies, who can transform into mythological creatures: one has claws and fangs, one can fly. The show stars Jessy Schram (Life, Veronica Mars) and Allison Miller (Kings).

Three Inches (SyFy): Syfy has ordered a 90-minute pilot of this show about a “professional daydreamer and underachiever” who is struck by lightning and develops a “super-power” of the ability to move objects with his mind, but only a distance of three inches. SyFy has had enormous success blending humor with action in Warehouse 13, and this seems to be an attempt to build on that sort of cheeky irreverence.

2012 (ABC): ABC has officially passed on Roland Emmerich remake/sequel of the end-of-the-world movie 2012, which was supposed to be set in 2013 and tell the story of the survivors of the cataclysmic events of that movie trying to resettle the earth.

Nikita (The CW): This isn’t strictly sci-fi, but the CW is readying an update of the USA Network’s La Femme Nikita (which was itself based on the 1990 movie). Live Free or Die Hard’s Maggie Q will star — an interesting choice in a genre that almost always casts white actors as leads.

A Game of Thrones (HBO): As previous announced, this pilot, filmed last fall and based on the George R.R. Martin novel, has officially been picked up as a 10-episode series, though a broadcast date is not yet know.

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The Syfy channel recently announced its plans to air the second season of Merlin, the British fantasy series that NBC aired last summer (where the ratings were dismal).

In short, American viewers will finally get to see what happens next in this brand spankin’ new version of Camelot.

Just to bring everyone up to speed, in this Smallville-tinged re-imagining, the action is set before Arthur ascends to the throne, and he and Merlin, a closet-case sorceror acting as Arthur’s servant, are the same age. The kingdom is ruled with an iron fist by the magic-hating Uther (Buffy’s Anthony Stewart Head), but Uther is secretly undermined by his trusted friend Gaius, who is training Merlin in the arts of magic.

Uther’s ward is the beautiful Morgana, who is starting to recognize magical powers of her own, and her best friend and lady-in-waiting is the kind-hearted Guinevere.

Much of the fun of any retelling of Arthurian legend is the different spin put on specific characters, events, places, etc. None of the leads are similar to most versions we’re accustomed to, and the first season brought us Nimue as a wicked sorceress, Lancelot as a commoner aspiring to be a knight, and Avalon as a haven for evil things.

So what does the future hold for this series set in the past? (Minor spoiler alert.)

For one, we finally begin to see an attraction grow between Arthur and Guinevere, and Morgana becomes more aware of her powers, thus setting her on the road to become Morgan le Fey. Morgause, Arthur’s villainous aunt (or half-sister depending on who’s telling the tale), will appear, and that darned dragon that’s chained up beneath the castle finally gets free.

One of the strengths of the first season was the way the writers used standard Arthurian legend as a jumping point for their own imaginations, and thus we were treated to a lot of stories set in this world that never felt tired or overused.

The four young leads are incredibly charming, and Colin Morgan is a fun and quirky young wizard. And in my humble opinion, one of the best aspects of the show was the very Buffy-like set-up of teenagers fighting the forces of evil, while under the tutelage of a rather crusty old mentor. And that Anthony Stewart Head is in it only makes it sweeter.

Merlin begins airing on the Syfy channel Friday, April 2nd.

The trailer for Merlin, Season Two