Spielberg and Dinosaurs are back together again!

Many may not know it but Steven Spielberg along with Brannon Braga and David Fury are prepared to release an all new dinosaur series upon us, in the title of Terra Nova currently Terra Nova is set to be a mid-season replacement show next year and while the official press release has come out today regarding the plot of the show and it sounds interesting it has not been cast yet and no finalized pilot has been shot yet either.

Terra Nova is about the Shannon family who go back in time with a group of explorers to live in prehistoric times from the far future of 2149 when mankind has basically depleted all natural resources and our planet is dying.   These explorers travel back in time to prehistoric time when dinosaurs roamed the world and mankind wasn’t even monkey’s yet.    This could be an interesting series and I am sure with Spielberg involved it will have a good budget for special effects.    The only question remains is the reliability of Brannon Braga and David Fury.    Braga was responsible for the horrid flop that was Flashforward and also a probably barely remembered show called Threshold. His last good series really was Enterprise which was hardly watched by anyone despite it being very good.     There is also David Fury involved whom I like better, Fury was responsible for a lot of what made Lost into the show it became and was also responsible for Angel along with Josh Whedon.  He also worked on a lot of 24 for a while.

The show sounds interesting though I am not totally sold on it just yet.   At least the plot sounds interesting:

The series centers on the Shannon family as they join the tenth pilgrimage of settlers to TERRA NOVA, the first colony of humans in this second chance for civilization. JIM SHANNON, a devoted father with a checkered past, guides his family through this new land of limitless beauty, mystery and terror. Jim’s wife, ELISABETH SHANNON, is a trauma surgeon chosen through a global lottery as a new addition to Terra Nova’s medical team. JOSH SHANNON is their son, mourning the girl he left behind, as he’s torn between two role models – his father and the charismatic COMMANDER FRANK TAYLOR, the leader of the settlement, and the heroic first pioneer through the time portal. MADDY SHANNON, Jim and Elizabeth’s teen daughter, is as independent and adventurous as her parents, but her distrust of authority soon leads her on a dangerous path.

The rest of the press-release is over at Trekweb.com

Bones Season 1-Episode 3

A Boy in a Tree

Booth, Brennan, and Zack go to a private school on the outskirts of the city where a body was found upon the grounds of.    Both Brennan and Zack know the latin on the sign but I like Booth’s response about it more.   The remains are up in a tree hung by a noose and fall to the ground seconds later, the headmaster and everyone else involved with the school want the body taken down as soon as possible with no regard for finding out what happened and why.     The boy had a Cochlear implant which is used for hearing when you are deaf and has a unique serial number for reasons just like this probably.

Booth keeps interrupting Brennan while she is trying to tell him that it might not be a suicide and after he gets off of the phone Booth demands knowing who is all at the school teachers, staff, and students.  Once again Agent Santana wants them to find out what really happened and he wants them to solve it now because a lot of important people want it shoved away as suicide.   They push Bones into a corner to declare that it is a homicide even though she doesn’t have enough evidence yet to say conclusively that it is.

Nester was supposed to be going with a friend to Nova Scotia and yet he ended up hanging from a tree.   Zack is still bothered by what he did right or wrong with Naomi and basically Hodgins suggests that he talk with Angela.  The psychologist is saying that Nester could have killed himself because he was depressed and lonely.    The school is very adamant that it was a suicide almost to the point that it appears as if they are hiding something and of course they are.     They introduce Sid and his restaurant officially in this episode but it goes away pretty quickly replaced by a diner which fits the show better.

Bones interviews the roommate and as I am watching this I remember what happened in this episode but I’ll keep watching so I can tell you exactly what is happening.   The roommate, Tucker lied for his friend and sent out an email so that he could help his friend cover his own lie.   Now it is possible for sure that Nester could have killed himself, the mother Ambassador Olivos comes and shows a video of her and Nester when the boy gets his implant for the first time to show to Bones that her son would not take his own life.

Booth tells Bones to stay there and she runs ahead of him and stops the guy and then Booth stops him a swell when he still doesn’t go down.   The man is security at the embassy to prove that someone could get in and kill her son.     They take a look Nester’s things and find a DVD that has something o it, namely Nester Olivios was with a girl.    The sextapes are common and the students swap them with one another all the time.    The girl’s name is  Camden and she has no idea that she was being video taped (or did she dun dun dun!)

There is a tape with Melody, Camden’s mother who is sleeping with Nester’s roommate Tucker and his parents are claiming that he was raped which he wasn’t, the point being that him and Nester both were going to blackmail the mother over the tape and Tucker still believes that Nester killed himself.      Brennan finds a way that the hyoid could be cracked by suicide and Booth is made because she says that it could be a suicide and he wants to believe still that it was murder but Bones still isn’t sure even though she doesn’t want to believe it is suicide.   If the facts point to it she has to go with the facts not with her gut.

There is a scene with Nester and Camden and Camden rolls her eyes for the camera knowing that she was being filmed the entire time it turns out.   Booth and Brennan both talk with Camden and Tucker again and it comes out that Camden and Tucker planed on Blackmailing the mother and also using Nester.   Camden believes that Nester committed suicide because she broke his heart.  In the end Booth and Bones say that she killed him and they have proof and it turns out that her and Tucker did it together, they killed Nester and made it look like a suicide.

At the close Hodgins gets a real meal that he doesn’t select himself.   Zack gets advice from Angela and she tells him to go to Naomi and tell her that he doesn’t know anything about love-making and she will teach him for sure.   Booth doesn’t like everyone else coming to his place but the are all there, at least for now they have a place with a regular patron.  I am still not sure why they got rid of Sid and his place as no one really explained it….it just went away after the first season.

We close on Booth getting his own access pass into the Jeffersonian.

Quotes:

“She said, ‘take a hint’ but when I asked, ‘what hint?’ Naomi said if she told me what hint, then it wouldn’t be a hint anymore-it would be a statement.”  -Zack really has trouble relating to the opposite sex in any form or capacity especially if he likes the girl.

“I’m going to need an evidence bag.”  Body falls to ground following head, “I’m going to need a bigger bag.”  -Bones.

“You have no idea how open my mind is.”  -Angela.

“So uh what part of this is mine did you not understand?” -Booth to Bones when she sits beside him.

Tidbits:

-Angela and Hodgins are both already enjoying being murder investigators and want new cases, this is why these characters stay together on the show they all love their work.

-I like how Booth doesn’t quite know Zack’s name and calls him Jack instead.

-“Don’t call me bones.”  It’s hard to say when exactly she stopped caring that he called her Bones.

Overall  A

This episode was a deeper one than the one before it, dealing with Booth and his problems with private school and also with the squints themselves.   Brennan also starts in this episode to learn how to relate to other people, to actually sympathize with them on some level though she is no where near where she is by season five.    The best episodes are the ones where the cases work with what is happening to the characters as well, the two working around one another and this is one of this episodes.   Enjoyable from beginning to end.

Bones Season 1-Episode 2

The Man in the SUV

An Arabian man with scars all over his face in an SUV drives crazy and as he parks his car explodes starting an all new episode of Bones.  The mystery is what was this man doing and why did he have these scars on his face.

A man named Masruk was in the SUV and he worked for the white house and was also a member of the Arab Friendship league.  The question is was he a terrorist or was someone else involved.    The wife of course is instant that it is not her husband and the brother has the same strange marks on his face though not as obvious, it all points to a clue about what is really going on.    The agent from Homeland security wants to know everything that is going on while they try to figure out what happened and who the man was.

Hamid apparently had Lupus, at least that is what they say.  Brennan will only work with Booth because she doesn’t know how to break to the wife and she also didn’t want to give it to Agent Gibson because she doesn’t entirely trust someone who she hasn’t worked with before.  Turns out that Masruk had a bomb planted under his car by someone else and he was set up by someone.   Was Masruk’s wife having an affair a lot of evidence was pointing that way for sure if you are one who can read humans and what they do and for what reasons.

Hamid Masruk’s brother Farid converted to christianity at some point when they came over to the Americas, and he knew that the wife was having an affair as well as the wife.  This is where we meet another man named Ali Ladjavardi, who was the one having an affair with the wife.     Homeland security planted Ali Ladjavardi into the Friendship league to find potential terrorists.   Thus Agent Santana takes the man away from questioning because he was working for them and he checks out as in he wouldn’t have done something like this.

The start of Hodgins and Zach working on re-building things and doing experiments is in this episode, and also their competition with one another regarding who is the king of the lab a recurring thing between the two of them over the course of the seasons of the show.  Angela goes and meets with Booth’s current girlfriend Tessa to size up the competition for Brennan.   I had forgotten during the first season that Angela was trying to get Booth and Bones together.    This was one of the first realizations that Booth and Bones belonged together but after five seasons they are still not together, perhaps in the following season we will see something.

The Masruk brothers were poisoned by Dioxin.   It turns out that they were slowly being poisoned.  Again we see the strange holograph machine that is only used in the first season of the show.   It’s a little unbelievable and I am glad that they dropped it once the show officially became a hit.    Bones is one tough woman and she will do what she has to do in order to get her answers especially if she’s sure that the person won’t say anything about her to someone else.    The wife is guilty as far as Booth can tell but there are a lot of holes in the theory.

The bomb was made in Woodley park and that leads to Farid who was making the bomb of course his brother found out that he was making it and Farid put the bomb under his brother’s car to kill him so that he could keep his.   It looks like Farid is going to blow up a peace conference.    Booth and Bones start looking for Farid and find him as they are up on the floor above him, Booth doesn’t want to fire until he see’s a face and Bones makes the man look so that Booth can shoot before he explodes the bomb and kills a bunch of innocent people.

Like all episodes of Bones this one ends with the afterwards, not just with the solving of the case.     Usually these moments involve Booth and Brennan sitting together talking about what happened.   Over the course of the show more of the main characters begin to come to these little after the case meetings though sometimes its still just Booth and Bones.    In the end Bones goes back to work as Booth goes back to his girlfriend who will be one of many over the course of the series.

Quotes:

“I think he likes you, if I were you I’d buy a ticket on that ride.” -Angela discussing Booth to Brennan.

“I think she’s having an affair….personally.” -Booth to Bones regarding Masruk’s wife

“You can always count on the dead.” -Bones

“Fanaticisim and Logic don’t go hand in hand.”  -Booth

Tidbits:

-the Flesh Eating beetles cleaning the bones is a pretty cool scene and is actually something that is done for real if one was trying to study the bones.

-Brennan doesn’t get out much and socialize in this season.

-Looking back at season one really makes you want Zach back on the show.

-Booth is dating a woman named Tessa who only lasts a few episodes.

-Bones knows the traditions of burials for muslims probably for a lot of other cultures as well, it would be a part of her job to know.

-I love that Angela is so curious about Booth’s life outside of work and she’s doing it because she believes that Brennan has a thing for Booth.

-Apparently beetles are sautéed in peanut oil in thailand…remind me not to go there for vacation!

Overall Rating:  B

One of the weaker episodes of the first season, though it was interesting and it did help cement the characters more the episode ultimately was a little too heavy on Terrorists and a little predictable as well, and one thing was off why did Hamid have Dixon poisoning if he wasn’t involved in the making of the bombs, he didn’t live with his brother after all!!   Oh well, over all a good episode.

Sometimes You Burn

DayBreakers

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Sam Neil, and Willem Dafoe

Directed and Written by: Michael and Peter Spierig

The basic premise behind Daybreakers is quite simple, it’s a world in the not to distant future, 2019 and it has been over run by vampires, how this happened isn’t really explained in detail but my guess would be a group of vampires got together and decided that they could offer humans the ability to live forever and didn’t think about the consequences to both the new vampire world and the humans as well.  In this future humans are harvested for their blood, their precious life force.   The humans of course are trying to fight back but in this future there are so few of them that eventually they are over run, but thats just the basic premise for the movie, what really happens is not what you expect….

The rest of the review follows the trailer as is standard by now:

Daybreakers isn’t really about a human/vampire war, the war is already over the vampires have won, but upon winning they have also destroyed that which they need to survive.   They hunt humans and then harvest them until they are dead.   Who ever said that a world run by vampires would be a smart one?   THe human population of the world is so low that the blood supply is almost gone and the vampires are starving thus giving rise to vampires known as subsiders who live underground and have become monstrosities that feed on other vampires.

Edward Dalton (Played by Ethan Hawke) is a hematologist looking for a cure to the blood problem, him and his team are trying to synthesize an agent that will replace human blood for all the vampires.  They are doing so at the command of their boss Charles Bromley (Sam Neil) who is the head of the largest supplier of human blood in the world now that it is the main component to life.   There are some good scenes in the beginning to set up everything although there is one that makes no sense.   The opening sequence with a young girl burning because she will never grow up and die is strange as it leads nowhere for the rest of the film, it’s just there as a title sequence opening.

There is a scene with a morning shop selling blood where once it had probably sold donuts which is really interesting, the signs about 20% blood in all of their products is also wonderful.    It turns out that Dalton is not like other vampires, he’s not feeding on human blood but instead on animal blood which we learn quickly when he meets with his brother and the two of them fight a subsider who has been feeding on vampire blood and has grown huge wings.   Subsiders slowly change into something else, a vampire that is stronger, faster and well to put it mildly ugly as well.

Ethan Hawke walking in the subway....time to capture some humans

In the world of Daybreakers vampires do not have reflections and they always seem to have sharp teeth as well no matter what.  They have a very pasty complexion vampire look to them and none of them can walk around in the daylight or they burn as most vampire legends say.     That evening on his way home Dalton runs into a group of humans and instead of reporting them he saves them and thus that leads to him meeting their leader Lionel “Elvis” Cormac who it turns out was once a vampire and turned back into a human.  This is where things start to get really interesting.   By this point the Spierig brothers had managed to create  real world that had its own rules and its own characters in a future that was not ideal despite everyone living forever.

the makeup effects are really good in this movie as well once things take a turn for the worst in the vampire city  (we only ever see one city despite them saying vampires cover the world now) you can actually see the vampires starving and when they attack the stand all of them going crazy over no longer having much blood you can see their desperation.   They attack and the vampires that come to stop them also attack in the end due to a blood frenzy because of how little blood is in their systems.   Daybreakers does not shy on the blood in the film, there is a lot of it and it is always done in a more tasteful way than you would think.

Sam Neil does evil like no one else

Back with Dalton and Elvis we learn that the sun turned Elvis back into a human, he crashed his car and went flying out of the window during the daylight, the sun burned him but the water he landed into stopped the sun from burning him and together the two made him into a human again, restarted his heart, made him live once more.    Dalton decides that he too wants this as he never wanted to be a vampire, his brother turned him against his wishes.   So he sets up an experiment to control the turn, burning himself and having the fire be whisked away by the fans in a wine tank.   Dalton becomes human again and decides it is time to take the cure to other vampires so that they no longer are dependent upon blood to live.

Of course the others don’t necessarily want this.  Of course why they don’t want it is never really gone into in much detail other than: we want to live forever.  Just like how all of the billions of humans were managed to be turned or killed in just less than a dozen years.  His former friend reports him and Dalton has to pull off a rescue of the girl who was traveling with them, Audrey (played by Claudia Karvan)  this ends up being the best thing as Daltons brother Frankie attacks Elvis and is suddenly crying out in pain being changed back into a human.  Dalton comes up with the ultimate revenge against the man responsible for all of this suffering Bromley himself by going up to his tower and speaking with him convincing the man to bite him.

This leads to the ultimate conclusion where vampires attack the humans including the newly turned Bromley which leads to the large blood bath of vampire feeding on newly turned humans until they become vampires as well.  Dalton and Audrey make it out alive just barely leaving behind the world of the vampires and going out into the light at the end revealing that they have the cure, and it will spread no doubt because the vampires cannot help but feed on human blood.

This marks the second Spierig movie that I found very well done on a small budget.   The film has some good actors in it that are always good to watch.   I love watching Sam Neil be evil and give lines because he just has that kind of voice where creepy comes so natural, ever since seeing him in Event Horizon I have thought he was good as a villain.    In the end the movie has  a message that I think mainly goes out to the twilight crowd:  this is what a vampire really is, it’s not all shiny diamonds and cutesy love, its dark and bloody and violent.

What they Did right: The vampire legends are spot on, from the no reflection to the need for blood and the need to stay out of the sun.  Like the vampires in buffy they can walk around in the daylight as long as they stay out of direct sunlight….this is in line with Dracula as well I believe.   The subsiders are dark and wonderful, I just wish they had gotten a little more spot light, would have been an even better movie if it had been about the war between vampires and subsiders.

What they did wrong: The whole burning to bring the heart back to life seems a little far-fetched.   The vampires are not very smart when dealing with the human population it seems a little unbelievable that in just 10 or so years the entire human population is dwindled down to just a few dozen people.    The subsiders seem to be a sub-plot that either wasn’t necessary or should have been expanded upon.

Overall: 80/100

A fun ride, full of dark and twisted characters, there is nothing that I like more than a good vampire horror movie and this one has to be one of the best in recent years.  It’s defineitly more of a rental than a movie to purchase but all the same its a fun film.