Film - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (B-)

Starring William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley, Ben Barnes, Peter Dinklage, Eddie Izzard, Liam Neeson.
Written by Stephen McFeely.
Directed by Andrew Adamson.

PG for epic battle action and violence

Having enjoyed the first Narnia film, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I had eagerly awaited Prince Caspian. Being a huge fan of author C. S. Lewis, I had the same trepidation I'd had with the first installment over the filmmakers' faithfulness to the original material.

Well, the book had maybe one fight in it and one battle. This movie has about a hundred fights and a half dozen battles. I don't think a single solitary scene went by in which someone didn't either draw a weapon or hit someone or both. It has little or no blood in it but the body count is as great or greater than that in Braveheart. Even the swashbuckling mouse, Reepicheep, cracks jokes then kills his opponents by cutting their throats. The kids in the audience are busy chuckling during the slashing bit, though, so I suppose it's all good. A decapitation replete with rolling head in another scene, however, offers no such distractions.

I've got no trouble with all this on the face of it. It's a sword and sorcery war movie, essentially. Soldiers die in these things. But this movie is marketed primarily to children and Disney and the MPAA are blatantly gaming the ratings system by not assigning this a PG-13 - blood or no blood.

Preview - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (A)

This needs no commentary except that it is going to ROCK!

Download hi-def at Narniaweb.

TV - Bionic Woman premiere (B-)

Starring Michelle Ryan (Okay, I give in. She's a PBA), Miguel Ferrer, Katee Sackhoff

Now that the pilot has come and gone, how good was it?

First of all, it's manic. It essentially crams a two-hour movie into 43 minutes. The main character, Jamie Sommers, is introduced three minutes into the show, cajoles her sister, goes to work, gets proposed to, survives a devastating crash, is fitted with bionic parts, goes berserk, gets sedated, gets loose and is out on the street - all before the episode is half finished! It never stays in one place or on one emotion more than fifteen seconds.

Jamie spends about ten seconds (I timed it) dealing with the emotional impact of being turned into a cyborg without her consent - then goes back to tending bar. There's also a very serious, life-changing conversation between Jamie and her fiance during a car ride in the opening act that is obviously edited down to the bare bones. All reaction shots and pauses are cut out. It gives you the information you need and moves on. The editor is like Joe Friday with ADD. At any rate, it gives extremely short shrift to the characters.

Apart from that, I thought it still had great potential. Seriously! It has very high production values, good special effects (some very good), and passable acting by most parties. Michelle Ryan (Sommers) holds her own and does some good stunt work, all while keeping her American accent consistent. Keep in mind she's only 23. A pretty scary villain (the prototype bionic woman, who's gone mad) and a good fight sequence with her didn't hurt either. In fact, if they can spread the tension in that scene over more of the show, it could be very interesting indeed.

One thing that bothered me about that battle was a glaring violation of the "Show, don't tell" rule of drama. You should show actions that illustrate the characters' motives, not have them announcing their motives to each other outright. Give the audience credit. In this case the villain, Sara Corvus (played impeccably by scene-stealer Katee Sackhoff), comes right out and says she's gradually replacing her humanity with bionics because "I'm cutting away all the parts of me that are weak." Well, there goes a year's worth of symbolism down the tubes. I'm surprised Jamie didn't respond, "I have abandonment issues. So there!"

I realize it's an action show and they don't want it to get bogged down like Heroes did for a few months last year but I hope that once the audience is hooked the writers will slow down long enough to let these characters breathe. Give them some real back-story beyond having the bullet-point version read by someone in a suit (which is how we find out about most of Jamie's life!)

Watch it yourself at NBC.com.

Final score: B minus

News - 'Bionic Woman' sister recast, healed

Just read an article on the change of actresses and abilities for the role of Becca Sommers on Bionic Woman. She's no longer played by Mae Whitman and she's no longer deaf.

I am not happy about this, for two reasons.

First, could it be any more obvious that they are trying to up the hottie factor? They dropped a short, average-sized, cute-but-punk actress and replaced her with petite, pretty, former tween pop singer Lucy Hale.

And how many beautiful women do they need? Can't anyone on TV be simply average? Michelle Ryan (Jamie Sommers) is very pretty. She's also, in Hollywood parlance, "voluptuous." This means she actually looks like she eats three squares a day and fills out a C naturally. Is that their problem? A little insurance against people who find the bionic woman "fat"?

Secondly (and most egregiously), they took away Becca's deafness. They say it doesn't serve the plot anymore. Since when does deafness have to be a plot device?!?! Is Jamie Sommers' skin color a plot device? Can't she just have a deaf sister and know sign language without it being a special thing? Could they not just communicate that way and nothing be made of it? And if they felt compelled to have it be utilitarian, fine. Make Jamie insist that her bosses give her sister bionic hearing. Have her sister argue with her about the identity aspects of it. Just Google cochlear implants' divisive effect on the deaf community and you've got material for a month. It was not rocket science to think of that. Took me three seconds.

I am SO disappointed about this move. I was looking forward to seeing a disabled character with depth, who wasn't played as a saint and had a giant chip on her shoulder that wasn't related to her disability. Not gonna happen now.

I'll watch Bionic Woman for all the other reasons I said I wanted to earlier: Female empowerment; promising lead actress; great fight scene potential. But I'll be more skeptical about it. They'll have to impress me to keep me coming back. And Lucy Hale had be better be good.

Preview - Bionic Woman 2007 (A-)

Starring Michelle Ryan, Miguel Ferrer, Katee Sackhoff

I plan to preview a few shows from the upcoming TV season that I find interesting. So here's the first one. Be forewarned: This is a really extensive trailer that's essentially a 5-minute distillation of the pilot movie. So if you don't want the episode spoiled, skip past the clip!



This re-imagination of one of my favorite childhood shows, The Bionic Woman, looks pretty cool. It certainly has greatness potential. With what little I can see, Michelle Ryan seems to be doing a commendable job so far with a role that has tons of 1970s-pop-culture-icon baggage. The "realness" upgrades could easily trip her up in writing that makes her merely another angsty superchick but I truly hope this doesn't happen. And her American accent is darn good. Most Brits play it safe with a flat, generic accent but she's doing a regional one! I can't quite figure out which, though.

Sadly, solo female action heroes almost never bring in huge numbers on the big or small screen, regardless of the quality of the material. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, though it was popular for a WB show and a huge critical success, routinely came in the bottom 50 in the Nielsens. Alias (which struggled for all of its five years on a major network) opened with two of the best seasons of any show ever then fell into a funk of ratings-desperate plotting and schedule changes and limped to a closure that would not have been afforded most other shows. I'm afraid the same gender bias may hurt this show's chances as well. And that' what it is. Bias. If I took the same show with the same writing and production and reversed the genders, it'd be an instant hit. Please send our young women a better message than this. It's shameful.

NBC is either extremely confident about Bionic Woman or is taking a huge gamble, hoping it and the superhero-related Heroes will boost their ailing flagship network. It may perform better on a niche channel, though. We'll see.

Final trailer score: A minus

Movie - Spider-Man 3 (C+)

Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard
Directed by Sam Raimi
PG-13 for intense action violence, adult themes, profanity

I had such low expectations going into this movie that it had nowhere to go but up in my book. I am a firm believer in comic book movies having only one villain - two at the most if it's handled exceptionally well. Beyond that the story always becomes a muddled mess with no character development and therefore no emotional stakes in the outcomes of the battles. The multiple villain approach helped kill the Batman franchise in the 1990s and it comes perilously close to killing this one. It has four: The Sandman, Venom, the New Goblin, and a symbiotic goo from space that makes Spidey evil.

But what really killed the Batman series was campiness - and it rears its ugly head in full force right smack in the middle of Spider-Man 3. Director Sam Raimi flirted with silliness in Spider-Man 2, when he built a Peter Parker montage around B.J. Thomas' "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", replete with a goofy freeze-frame finish that reeked of 70s TV shows. But the rest of the film shook that bit of misjudgment off as though it were just a momentary in-joke. This time around, Raimi indulges in a protracted sequence of events over several scenes that becomes more and more incredible and painful to watch as it goes on.

In this story, Parker is gradually transformed into a mean-spirited jerk by an alien life-form that has attached itself to him and feeds off his negative emotions. As this progresses, Parker becomes more selfish, narcissistic, and sadistic. It starts off with a believably uncomfortable callousness towards his girlfriend Mary Jane and a vengeful, murderous battle with Sandman.

But it immediately veers off into the ridiculous, starting with an extreme makeover of expensive European suits and an Adolf Hitler haircut (no lie), proceeding to Parker jive-walking down the street winking at women who are openly disgusted with him - all set to funky music rejected from a blaxploitation film. This goes on for some time. Then he blows off a one-ended phone conversation with exaggerated, cliche-riddled preening (and more winking) for a gawky girl. Then he goes to a nightclub and commandeers the piano, dances on the bar with super-powered computer-generated swings and flips right out of The Mask, and the crowd goes wild. Well, the crowd in the nightclub did. The crowd in the theater said, and I quote, "Boy, that was lame," and "This is getting stupid," and "That sucked." My wife had covered her eyes. She couldn't watch it anymore.

The rest of the movie was a B flirting with a B minus. But that sequence yanked it down to a

Final score: C+