Another One Bites The Dust: Terra Nova Axed

Stephen Lang (Avatar) and Jason O'Mara (right) starred in the
ill-fated Fox television science-fiction series

The Fox high-concept, big-budget, science-fiction family drama show, Terra Nova, has been cancelled. Many bloggers, yours included, are sad to see the show go, not because we don't think it should have been cancelled due to its numerous flaws and foibles, but because of the implications of the cancellation of a Steven Spielberg-executive produced science fiction drama will have for the viability of the genre in the medium.

The Other Half is a much more reluctant (and possibly discriminating) television watcher than I am. He watched the pilot, on my suggestion, but although that (allegedly $20 million budgeted) 2-hour extravaganza generally received strong reviews the problems became clear very quickly. Ostensibly, Terra Nova was a story about people from the future (25th century) on an environmentally ruined Earth being given an amazing opportunity to go back millions of years into the past to colonize a pristine paradise when dinosaurs ruled the earth and avoid the mistakes that had ruined the future. (The plot is surprisingly similar to the Julian May Pliocene Exile books of the late 1970s.)


The main problem was that Terra Nova was trying to be multiple shows simultaneously and many of these visions were anti-thetical to each other. For example, it tried to be family friendly by having a too-cute 5-year-old daughter be the focus of multiple plot points, as well as "tension" around teenage angst caused by the presence of a 17-year-old son with daddy issues and a 16-year-old daughter experiencing her first romantic crush. The attempts to try to attract the 18-49 demographic to the show were pretty extreme, such as having co-star Jason O'Mara show off his furry, chiseled torso as well having a group of rebellious teens caught in the forest and menaced by marauding dinosaurs. The structure of the Terra Nova colony was bizarre, with the benign dictatorship of the Stephen Lang character barely questioned, except by the rogue, non-conformists "Sixers" who preferred to live out in the jungle with the deadly dinosaurs instead of in the relatively safe confines of the Terra Nova complex. So the show had family drama, a teenage love triangle, a teenage first-love story, an insurgent war storyline, a police/scientific procedural AND there was an entire series-wide arc about the entire time travel mythology. Too Many Things!

Terra Nova also had very expensive visual effects (lots of people complained about the CGI dinosaurs, but my position was, hey this is TV not film, with proportionally reduced budgets and expectations of verisimilitude) and wildly uneven acting.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the cancellation of Terra Nova after Fox ate the tens of millions of dollars to produce the first few episodes (with ratings that were low but not disastrously so) chills the environment for other sci-fi flavored shows like Fringe and Alcatraz (both also on Fox) as well as, more importantly, future science fiction shows. There are so many amazing hard science fiction books that could be turned into well-done shows. It doesn't have to all be about the effects, one really just needs to be able to communicate a sense of significant difference from our current world.

I have been a longtime fan of Fringe which is now in its 4th season and is co-created by J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost. Abrams has another new sci-fi-influenced show called Alcatraz which simply doesn't look interesting to me so I haven't watched it all.

It's interesting to compare the declining fortunes of science fiction on TV compared to the ascendant fortunes of its sister genre fantasy on cable (HBO). The new season of the critically acclaimed series Game of Thrones is starting on April 1 and HBO has committed to a huge investment in another fantasy series based on the work of Neil Gaiman called American Gods. 


I like fantasy and science fiction so I am happy about the success of Games of Thrones but still sad at the demise of Terra Nova.

MOVIE REVIEW: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

The Other Half and I were feeling like watching something not too serious for the last weekend of the year and since Brad Bird is one of our favorite directors (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant) we decided to go see his lastest film, even if it is the 4th installment in the Mission Impossible movies starring Tom Cruise.

Also influencing our decision to see the film was the fact that it was sporting a surprisingly positive rating on rottentomatoes.com of 93%, pretty high for your typical mindless action flick. The third one (2006's Mission Impossible III) had been produced and directed by JJ Abrams and had (somewhat ineffectively, in my estimation) combined numerous action sequences with intricate, highly charged emotional scenes between Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

This fourth outing stars Cruise again (now 49 years old but astonishingly still able to maintain his credibility as male action hero) as well as Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), Paula Patton (Déjà Vu, Precious) and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, The Town). (Spoiler alert! Tom Wilkinson has a literally short-lived cameo as the Secretary of Defense and Anil Kapoor (the TV host in Slumdog Millionaire) shows up late in the film as comically randy billionaire.) Looks like actor Josh Holloway (Sawyer on Lost) is starting to get some work in movies although his part is also pretty small.

I would talk about the plot of the movie but it is typically simultaneously indecipherable and non-sensical. What is most important in this kind of movie are the shooting locations, the fancy gadgets and the overall production values and on this level Mission Impossible IV does not disappoint.

The movie begins in Budapest, Hungary (the second film I have seen in little over a month to do so: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy also begins with a pivotal scene in this apparently gorgeous city) and then movies on to The Kremlin in Moscow, then the tallest building in the world (Burj Khalifa), located in the United Arab Emirates and then ends in Mumbai, India. It really is quite thrilling to get a close-up look at the interior an exterior of the Burj Khalifa, as well as the view from 130 stories.

There are all sorts of fanciful gadgets used by the "Impossible Mission Force," even the much-maligned, (frankly ridiculous) full-face masks introduced in the very first edition of the series which basically allows anyone's face to appear on anyone else's body (perfect facial impersonation). However, here the writer (or director) do themselves a favor by making fun of the face masks, while still deploying them in a way which forwards "the plot."

The production values are frankly top-notch throughout and though the film is well-over 2-hours it never seems to slow down and due to the penchant for killing characters played by major actors the viewer really does have a sense that perhaps this time the bad guys will actually win and that any member of the team can be killed at just about any moment.

Except for Tom of course. After all, there is the inevitable Mission Impossible V  to look forward to!

Title: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
Director: Brad Bird.
Running Time: 2 hours, 13 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence.
Release Date: December 21, 2011.
Viewing Date: December 30, 2011.

 Plot: C.
Acting: A-.
Visuals: A.
Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: B+ (3.33/4.0).

Celebrity Friday: Bradley Cooper Named Sexiest Man Alive

Bradley Cooper has been named "the sexiest man alive" by People magazine, annoying fans of Ryan Gosling. I have been a fan of Cooper's since his appearance on J.J. Abrams' Alias television show which starred Jennifer Garner as a secret CIA agent with family issues and Michael Vartan as her handler and love-interest. Cooper played Garner's best friend who was also in love with her. Even back then I could not understand why garner's character would prefer Vartan over Cooper.

Now that the 36-year-old single guy has become a bona fide movie star with appearances in The Hangover and its sequel his profile has soared. This was his reaction when he learned he had been named the sexiest man alive for 2011 by People:

"I think it's really cool that a guy who doesn't look like a model can have this [title]," saysthe Hangover actor, 36. "I think I'm a decent-looking guy. Sometimes I can look great, and other times I look horrifying." 


Another reason to love him? Cooper, whose father Charles passed away in January, is especially close with his mom, Gloria. When he learned he'd been crowned Sexiest Man Alive, the "first thing I thought," he says, "was, 'My mother is going to be so happy.' " 

Congratulations, Bradley