No matter what scares you...

No matter what scares you, have a fantastic Halloween...!

News round-up...

Brian Grazer has been talking about The Dark Tower moving to HBO - HBO's not talking. Grazer claims he's shaved $45 mil off the overall budget to make the project more appealing to distributors.

After only 2 episodes, AMC has already green-lit a third season of The Walking Dead. The show has been phenomenal this season thus far. Sunday night's episode was compelling as hell.

Great news over on Fringe where fan-fave Jared Harris was recently spotted on the show's Vancouver set. This can only mean that David Robert Jones is somehow back. For that, I cannot wait!

TV report card

October is almost over, so it’s time to check in and make with the gut reactions to what I’ve seen so far on the new crop of shows – let’s start with the good news:

Prime Suspect – I was completely off here – this is one of the best new shows on TV, period. While it may be an Americanzation of the Helen Mirren series, Mario Bello’s Jane Timoney is a fantastic character and the ensemble of NY cops she works with, coupled with fantastic writing, makes Prime Suspect must-see viewing. There’s a repeat tomorrow, NBC/10:00, definitely check it out and prepare to be hooked. Great stuff.

Homeland – Another terrific surprise. Disclaimer: I’m not normally a Claire Danes fan. But she’s terrific here as a tightly-wound homeland security agent who thinks that a returning POW from Afghanistan is really The Manchurian Candidate. The problem is, she’s on powerful anti-psychotics and we’re not sure what’s real. A smarter 24, Homeland costars Morena Baccarin, Damian Lewis and Mandy Patinkin. On Showtime following Dexter, Sunday nights. Whether you DVR or wait for the discs, Homeland is a top-notch conspiracy paranoia thriller.

Sons of Anarchy –Talk about a return to form! After last season’s biker brogue, Sons is back on terra firma and kicking serious ass. It’s all character-driven mayhem and Clay Morrow is a much darker fellow this season. Secrets abound and the suspense has never been better. FX has already renewed them for a 5th season, so they must love where the rest of this season is going. Pulp awesomeness.

The Walking Dead – Admittedly we’re only one episode into season two, but I loved it. Record premiere numbers ran over 7 million viewers, up 38% from last year’s smash – a series high. Feels like they’ve taken the chain off, so look out! Love that cast and tone of this show. What’s NOT good is the recap program that follows, The Talking Dead. Smarmy host Chris Hardwick and his disturbingly animated Adam’s apple make snarky jokes with the likes of Patton Oswalt. A clever after-party this ain’t, fellas.

Fringe – So far, so good! Can’t say much without spoiling, so I’ll just say this show continues to thrill – great performances and surprises.

Dexter – Starting a little slow, but feeling like a good year. Need to see more Edward James Olmos, but the writing is sharp and things seem promising. After Breaking Bad, Dexter actually feels a little tame in comparison now!


Now, the bad news:

Terra Nova – Wow, that was one bad pilot. Other than Stephen Lang, those generic characters just don't grab me. Too many freshly-scrubbed teens. It also feels like they're really trying to copy the vibe of Lost, with the cliff markings acting as their version of the numbers. I would have been content to just roll with it, being a huge dino fan, but the CGI has been sub-par. To be fair, have not gone back since the pilot.

American Horror Story – Just too weird. Not scary, just odd and uncomfortable. Jessica Lange is a hoot, but it feels like this one is too depressing to stick with on a regular basis. You True Blood fans will probably love it.

Person of Interest – Isn’t.

Pan Am – Eesh. Painfully overt attempt to ape Mad Men with a weirdly synthetic and completely unconvincing depiction of the sixties. Howlingly awful characters and teeth-cracking dialogue. Barbie’s Glamour Jet is more convincing.

See you on the couch!

"It wants to hide inside an imitation..."

The creature in The Thing imitates the people it kills, but it's just a copy, it's not really them. Just as this new version of the story that calls itself a prequel is in reality just a remake - an almost note-for-note restaging of John Carpenter's 1982 sci-fi horror classic.

Carpenter's movie was perceived at the time as a disaster, having the misfortune of opening just two weeks after E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial. The audience at the time, giddy in love with Steven Spielberg's Reeses Pieces-gobbling cutie, reacted like they'd been offered a bowl of upchuck, and stayed away in droves. Universal even fired Carpenter from the movie he was about to direct, Stephen King's Firestarter. But then home video came into being and the movie found a rabid following. Now it's considered one of the greatest horror films of modern times.

Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. is clearly one of those fans. So much so that he's essentially made the same movie Carpenter did, recycling many of the earlier film's moods and key sequences. It's designed to be a prequel, letting us in on what happened to the Norwegian base that we saw after the fact in Carpenter's movie. Evidently nearly the exact same thing happened to them, too.

Which is not to say this is a bad movie, as it's much better than some of the reviews out there lead you to believe. It's well directed, the cast is good and the effects (largely CGI here) are convincing, though nowhere near as revolutionary as Rob Bottin's work in the 1982 version. While they give us the Norwegian camp, several of the main characters are Americans, visiting the Norwegian base. Uh...huh. You'd think given the popularity of all things Stieg Larsson and a Dutch director that Americanizing things wouldn't have been necessary, but think again. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Death Proof) is Science Officer Ripley-- I mean a paleontologist, hired by the Norwegians to help unearth the titular critter. Evidently they don't teach paleontology in Norway. She quickly begins to fear the worst, along with an American helicopter pilot.

Things chug along nicely, there are some very effective sequences and some decent shocks. The location work is awesome and the film has a realistic and moody sense of design. It's keeps you engaged and never fumbles the ball. There's a very inventive twist on the infamous blood test sequence in the Carpenter film. I won't spoil it here, but it was clever and realistic - it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, but I bought it while watching the movie.

I'm not sorry I saw The Thing, I even really enjoyed parts of it. These guys did a good job. But you're left with a feeling of "What's the point?" It really is just a remake - getting dressed up in dad's clothes. At the end of the day it's a pretty good imitation of John Carpenter's movie. But it's still an imitation - and isn't fear of imitation really what the movie's supposed to make us scared of?

Reminder: The Dead return this Sunday!!!

Forget ye not, the coolest show on television returns this Sunday, with the special 90 minute premiere of The Walking Dead on AMC. We get a full run of 13 episodes this season. Frank Darabont may be gone but it's hard to find a more committed team of actors and writers who truly want to deliver the best show possible. Comic creator Robert Kirkman continues to be very involved as a producer of the show and early word on the scripts is that this season may very well surpass the first in terms of suspense, mayhem and all out quality. One look at that farm in the poster gives comic readers an idea of where we may be heading. Will we finally get to meet Michonne this season? Todd McFarlane action figures are in stores and fans are foaming at the mouth for another helping of the one show on TV that should come with tranquilizers. Don't miss it.

A special howdy to any of you out mingling at New York Comic-Con this weekend! I'm definitely with you in spirit.

PSA for all you dads!

It's important to know when it's time to have "the talk..."

Escape to Alcatraz

Sometimes when you finally get to do something you've always wanted to, there's the potential for it to disappoint. Not this time. San Francisco is an amazing place, but visiting Alcatraz, the most notorious island prison in American history, was an unforgettable experience. The Rock is easily visible from shore.

A short ferry ride from Pier 33 and it looms up before you. You feel like you're about to set foot on The Island of Doctor Moreau, or some lost Nazi experimental compound.

Because it's a National Park, great care has been taken to leave much of the facility exactly as it was when it closed down in the early sixties. It was a Civil War prison, back in the 1800's, before becoming the one basket meant to hold all the rotten eggs.

It has an eerie feeling to it. Even though fierce winds rip across it from the bay, the place has a strange quiet, broken occasionally by the fog horn echoing across the water.

The guard tower still looks down, ever vigilant.

Many of the outbuildings are in ruins - this was the Warden's house...

...but the prison itself is in remarkably solid shape. It's a strange feeling to step inside...

First, the showers...

Be careful with the soap.

"Welcome to Broadway..."

All the comforts of home.

Three square meals a day...

A well-stocked kitchen...

One of the most amazing placed is the exercise yard. Immortalized in Clint Eastwood's Escape from Alcatraz (which actually filmed there), the massive concrete steps of the "bleachers" where your status determined where you sat. It's a large, open, windswept space. It was very empty the day we went there. You feel like someone's watching you.

I had the priviledge of getting to sit on those steps - a real treat.

"D Block," where they kept the worst of the worst. D Block contained the isolation cells. "The Hole" was for the most dangerous and violent convicts, kept locked in there 24 hours a day, often in total darkness.

What madness and desperation must have happened in here.

Even Big Al did time on The Rock.

While no one can say for sure, some men did escape - at least, they were never found again. The bay is brutally cold and full of sharks. But some men tried anyway and were never seen again.

Frank Morris was one of three men who used spoons to dig their way out behind the air grills. They even fashioned dummy heads to leave in their bunks, so the guards thought they were still in their cells, sleeping late...

Eastwood played Morris in Escape from Alcatraz. 

I like to think he made it...

If you ever get the chance, don't miss Alcatraz - there's nothing like it.