Reviews

That doesn’t look pleasant…

Coming to the Discovery channel in the fall, “Time Warp” is basically a show about a couple of MIT guys with a fancy (and admittedly, it’s pretty fancy) video camera that can take up to 20,000 frames of video per second, or to put it in layman’s terms….it can make EXTREMELY slow motion videos.

And that’s really the whole premise of the show. They take a few random things, like getting punched in the face, and they slow it WAY down to the point where it looks strange (and potentially cool). In the pilot episode they have a guy punched in the face, show what is happening to a wine glass as it shatters due to sound waves, show how a dog’s tongue works while it’s drinking, and do a couple of silly things with balloons just to show off how fast the camera is.

It was interesting I suppose, and maybe some of the future stuff will be cool to see, but it really didn’t grab me. They tried to keep things light with a bit of banter here and there (think “Mythbusters”), but failed miserably. That might be due to it being the pilot and they haven’t really found their groove yet, I don’t know, but it was a bit awkward from time to time…

Glass, bending and then shattering…really REALLY slowly.

All in all, if you want to see how strange things look when slowed down an insane degree, or enjoy things exploding, this may be a good show for you. There’s really not much else to it.

You can check out a video preview on the discovery.com website right over here to get a feel for the show, and they even have a forum setup to allow people to suggest things that they would like to see slowed down, so if you have an idea for them, head over here.

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When I first heard about CBS’s upcoming Investigative Drama, surrounding a man who uses his “razor sharp observation skills” to solve crimes and generally just annoy people around him by knowing things they don’t think he should, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, they’re ripping of USA Networks “Psych”‘.

And while it certainly seems to pull a lot of themes from “Psych”, it’s by no means a ripoff. It leans far more to the drama/investigation than the humour, though there still is a fair bit of humour injected into the show by way of the character interactions. This is especially apparent in the main character’s smart ass attitude towards…just about everything.

Patrick Jane’s last job…fake psychic.

I enjoyed the premiere episode, which should be hitting CBS on September 23rd. And if you want to avoid spoilers, I’ll just tell you that you should definitely check it out. The story and dialogue are interesting, the acting is well done, and the whole thing is just generally fun to watch. If on the other hand you want some details about the premiere, keep reading…
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As a fan of magic of all sorts since I was a little kid with a pack of cards too big for my hands, I always enjoy seeing magic on TV. Be it a special from Penn and Teller, or one of the other current crop of pretty damn entertaining magicians, or a series like Darren Brown’s “Trick or Treat” (which focuses more on mentalism, but still a damn interesting show more often than not). What I really can’t stand though, is when BAD magic is allowed to run rampant on the unsuspecting (or just ignorant) public.

Such is the case with Criss Angel. He’s actually a pretty decent magician when he sticks to the closeup or forced angle stuff (card tricks, slight of hand, etc), and in his private life, he’s been known to call out anyone pretending to have “real” mystical powers for the scam artists they are. For some reason though, when he’s on TV, he’s like a completely different person. Playing to the lowest common denominator of magic (the supernatural), and using planted audience members and camera editing rather than sticking with traditional (note: non-bullshit) tricks.

Pulling a card out of a planted audience member’s head.

I don’t watch his show “Mindfreak” often, but since the premiere of season 4 started yesterday I thought I would give it another go to see if he had changed his ways… and he hasn’t.

The show was one long build-up to the final trick of the hour, where he was going to walk on water, on lake Mead to be specific. There were a few other short tricks in there first, of course, nothing that interesting really… two planted audience members, a cooperative aquarium store owner, a trick that probably wasn’t faked (but wasn’t that impressive) with his new SUV, and some fake reaction shots, and then it was off to the lake…and that’s where it gets REALLY bad.

Criss Angel walking on water…sort of.

The trick was simple enough really, and with the build up simply walking over the lake would have been a fine trick (if a bit overdone), but Criss Angel is never happy with “a fine trick”, and had to ham it up so much with editing and closeup reaction shots and over excited squealing women, that even if none of the camera editing and close ups were used to fake the trick, it still LOOKED like that’s what they were for. That bears repeating I think….even if he did the trick 100% legit without fake audience members or camera editing being a part of it, it still looked like that’s exactly what he did. That is not good magic, even if he really did it….which I sorta doubt at this point.

It’s sad to see someone with obvious talent (which Criss Angel has) waste such a gift by selling out to A&E for a few bucks (ok, probably more than a few…). He COULD be doing great magic (even some of the tricks in this show would have been good without the extra bullshit he pushed into them that needed to be staged) and instead he’s pulling bullshit stunts, using camera editing, and telling fake audience members to be freaked out at the right time. Not cool Criss…..not cool.

And as a bonus, for anyone interested in learning how one of Criss Angel’s biggest tricks (jumping through a fireball and disappearing) was faked, check out the video below… and if you want to learn more, that same youtube user has other examples here and here.

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I caught the premiere of G4TV’s new show “Hurl!” the other day. I don’t want to dwell too much on it, as it really isn’t worth the time it would take to fully explain just how stupid it really is, but I thought it would be good to put a quick post up as a warning to anyone that might not have realized just how dumb TV can be.

If you don’t know, “Hurl!” is a game show of sorts, where morons try to eat more than other morons without puking, for the huge prize of $1000 (no really…that’s it, and I’m pretty such that’s more then half the show’s entire budget…).

It works like this: The Contestants eat something…a LOT of something, then they get spun around in what is basically a hamster ball, then they eat some more, and the last one to not puke wins! That’s it…the whole premise is “eat until you puke, last man standing wins”. That’s now a TV show….

The whole thing looks like it was filmed by a half-dozen drunk college kids (which, since it’s on G4, is probably the case), using high tech equipment like 99 cent notebooks, and duct tape for special effects.

G4TV, you can expect a bill for that 30 minutes you wasted…I want a refund.

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As you may already know from my review of the Middleman pilot episode, I found the show to be annoying, poorly written, and just pretty much bad all around. However, I’m a fair person (so people tell me…not sure where they get the idea), and so I have to give it a second chance.

I’ve caught up to the fifth (and most recent) episode now, and I will admit I’ve got to change my verdict….sorta.

Chased by a flying zombie fish…harsh.

After 5 episodes, the writing has gotten quite a bit better in some respects, and other aspects of the show have been growing on me. The subtitles during scene changes for example, are usually pretty funny. While the acting is still a bit bland, the characters are filling out nicely, except the Middleman, who is still pretty dull to watch (and being one of the stars of the show, that’s not good). I do greatly enjoy the artificially intelligent robot, Ida, with her crankiness and seeming to be bored with pretty much anything from watching TV to kill flying zombie fish…her dialog might just get me to watch another episode…maybe.

The plots have been varied, but seem to be getting stranger and stranger (and when you START with a hyper-intelligent ape with an obsession for mobster movies as the villian, that says something). I’m still not sure I like the style of the whole thing, but it seems pretty consistent at least, so if you enjoy one episode you will probably like the others.

Smart Car with jet rocket….check.

About the best thing I can say about the show now is that it doesn’t completely suck. It’s still a bit mind-numbingly corny at times, but it seems to be getting more and more successful at making the corniness work on a comedic level that the pilot just didn’t pull off…..so that’s progress.

Maybe I’m still recovering from the terrible “Do Not Disturb” pilot, and being a bit more lenient then I would otherwise be, but Middleman seems to be getting better…so I’ll be giving it another chance….for now.

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